MOTHER-RIGHT IN ANCIENT CAMBODIA 21 ticn (Kau^dinya),the first Indian adventurer in the country, met the resistance of the queen ofLieou-ye (coconut or willow8 leaves) who came to plunder his ship but was defeated. Houen-tien, the Chinese tells us, married her and started the first dynasty of Fou-nan. Incidentally, the Chinese report throws light on the material civilization of the country at the time when it states that Houen-tien was displeased to find the queen completely naked and he got apiece of cloth with plis which he put over her. From the above account it is evident that at the time of the advent of the Indians Founanese society was totemic and matriarchal and material civilization was in the state of early barbarism. As it is only to be expected, the Indians brought with them patriarchal ideas of the Dharmasastras. At the head of their polity was an absolute despot who claimed divine origin and transmitted his authority in the male line. Their socio-economic structure was also largely determined by the varna^ramadharma, which was pronouncedly against any freedom to be accorded to womenfolk. It therefore appears that when traditional Khm6r society with its matrilineal social structure met the challenge of the materially superior and politically more console dated Indian civilization, there ensued a period of tussle and turmoil in the course of which the traditional indigenous society had to concede defeat but did not at any epoch completely capitulate before the aggressive Indian culture. Further, it was a particularly slow process. Indianization remained confined to the elite society which included the nobility, admini-trative and military, and the high clergy of the court and other adminis-strative headquarters. It did not penetrate much beyond the large towns and for long left the commonalty including free labourers as also slaves unaffected. The material condition of life and social structure of these latter classes of people are very little reflected in inscriptions which have mostly aristocrats, lay and ecclesiastical, as their authors. But these remain, nevertheless, our most important source of information. In the course of the present paper an attempt will be made to show that matrilineal principles either predominated or considerably modified the workm^ bf^atriar-chal institutions among the court nobility. In fact, social equilibrium was hardly achieved even in the heyday of the classical AAkor civilization dating from A D 800 to 1300. , , MATERNAL LINEAGE For a better appreciation of our problem it may be recapitulated that in a matrilineal society (i) lineage, (ii) place of residence of the married couple, (iii) succession to office or status, rank and dignity, (iv) inheritance of property, and (v) authority over the groups are determined through the female members of the group. Though the Gambodian inscriptions, written both in Sanskrit and Khmer, recognize bilateral kinship, references to mat'rvMS^ o'r maternal family are more numerous. There is a keen controversy ^toio^^st ^Lholars as to the raison d^etre of mdtrvamsa. As early as 1883 ^m ^is i'ntrodudtory