Krama

The krama (ក្រមា) is the checkered cotton or silk cloth that Cambodians wear and use every day as a scarf, head wrap, belt, sling and much more. Worn by men, women and children of every class, it is a national symbol, and in 2024 the practices around it were inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Illustration inspired by a weaving village in Takeo province.

Tradition details
Khmer name	ក្រមា
Also known as	Cambodian scarf; Cambodian traditional textile
Practice type	Craft practice
Usual occasion	Everyday and special occasions
Subjects	Crafts & Material Culture

The cloth

A krama is a sturdy rectangle of cloth, woven by hand on a traditional loom, with a grid or checkered pattern. Most are cotton, and some are silk. The traditional krama had red, indigo or black checks on a white ground and was about 40 to 60 centimeters (16 to 24 inches) wide. Red and blue have long been the common colors, and blue-and-white or red-and-white checks remain the classic patterns. Older kramas were often just dark blue and white, and chemical dyes have since brought many more colors. Many kramas today are woven from cotton mixed with nylon or polyester, and contemporary handmade scarves may join traditional motifs with new colors and designs. A typical cotton krama sold today measures 45 by 180 centimeters (18 by 71 inches).

There are two kinds: cotton "thread" kramas and silk kramas. Cotton kramas are the everyday kind, since they wash easily. Silk kramas are kept for celebrations and ornament, since frequent washing can break them, and they are now also sold as souvenirs. Handmade silk kramas can take several months to weave, and they were long kept for the well-off or handed down as heirlooms. Wealthier Cambodians once set themselves apart from farmers by wearing a silk krama around the neck.

In the cities the cloth is called krama. In the countryside it may be called kanseng, sampot dondob or chhnuot, depending on the dialect. The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts gives krama as a loanword from Persian. Another explanation traces it to the Middle Persian kamar, a belt or girdle, and gives the fuller Khmer name as pha kromah, "kromah cloth."

Uses

Farmers wear the krama on the head in the rice fields against sun and sweat, cyclo drivers in the cities wear it over the shoulders, and in villages it carries babies. It serves as a scarf, belt, blanket, bandana, lower garment, decorative cloth and children's hammock. It can be pulled over the nose and mouth against dust, wrapped around the waist as a sarong, rolled into a ring called a kandeung to cushion a heavy load on the head, or used as a towel, a seat, a shopping bag or a bundle for firewood. In an emergency it becomes a rope, an arm sling or a bandage for a snakebite. It also helps the feet grip when climbing trees, and it keeps off mosquitoes. Children play with it as a toy, and it can be shaped into a small doll. It is used to prepare food and in health care.

The way a krama is worn gives it a name. Wrapped around the hips it is a sampot; worn diagonally across the upper body it is a peanea; draped across a woman's chest it is a chorn pong. A large krama, at least 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) long and 70 centimeters (28 inches) wide, can serve as a hip wrapper, and wrapped around the torso under the arms it becomes an eam, worn by women over a shirt for field work. In the countryside, middle-aged men wear it as a skirt at home and when changing after bathing, and women wrap it around the body. In the past it gave privacy when people bathed in lakes and rivers, and on long journeys women covered themselves with it while men used it as a belt.

Ceremonies and games

The krama marks life from birth to death: newborns are wrapped in it, and it has a place at weddings, religious rites and funerals. At a Khmer wedding ceremony it wraps betel flowers, areca flowers, bay prolung (spirit rice) and the thong rong offering trays. Elders spread it on the floor to sit on while monks preach, as a form of offering. A krama may also be given between lovers or spouses as a keepsake or pledge. Worn as a peanea, it is part of dress at Visak Bochea.

In games the cloth is bundled into a ball for Chol Chhoung, hidden in leak kanseng, and twisted into a blindfold for reay bangkong, a shrimp-catching game, and veay kaom, pot hitting, during Cambodian New Year.

In Bokator

In Bokator, the Khmer martial art, fighters tie the krama around the waist, head and sometimes the fists, and its color shows rank, from white for beginners to black for the most advanced. The gold krama is reserved for grandmasters. The cloth is also a weapon: it can block a strike, bind an arm or leg, or be knotted into a whip, and a heavy object tied into it turns it into a flail.

Making a krama

Making a krama begins with cotton. The seeds are removed in bos krapas, and the cotton is beaten, carded and swabbed into thin strips, spun on a wooden and bamboo wheel, wound onto tubes, dyed, and warped onto the loom. Thread is strengthened by steaming it with rice, then set through the wooden teeth of the loom and woven on the kei. The traditional kei is about four to five meters (13 to 16 feet) long, while a modern one is about two meters (6.6 feet). Hand looms are also called kei dombanh. Weaving is now done both by hand and by machine.

White, yellow, red and blue dyes come from plants and insects. Indigo, prahoot and makluea are among the plant dyes, while some weavers now use chemical dyes. Wild indigo gives light green after one night of soaking and blue after two, and black is made by dyeing thread green first, then black. Weavers hold that natural dyes last longer and look better than chemical ones. Growing cotton, raising silkworms, processing the raw materials, threading the loom and drawing dye from plants and insects are all part of the work. Keeping the environment healthy matters for the quality of these materials.

History

No one knows exactly when the krama began, partly because cloth does not survive long in Cambodia's tropical climate. Figures in checkered or patterned loincloths and head wraps appear on the twelfth-century bas-reliefs of the Bayon at Angkor Thom, and many Cambodians see them as early kramas. Hab Touch, director of the National Museum of Cambodia, dates the krama to at least the pre-Angkor Norkor Phnom era, from the first to the fifth century CE. Statues of Shiva and other Hindu gods from Angkor Borey wear the kben, a large krama-like hip wrapper, and one shows a man in a krama-style head wrap. Another account places the krama in Khmer dress from the first-century reign of Preah Bath Hun Tean. Some link its origins to cloth traditions that came from South India by way of Malaysia and Thailand, or to the Indian dupatta, but these remain theories.

Evidence of weaving itself is older still. Part of a weaving tool and a bundle of thread found at the Mlou Prei site in Preah Vihear province date to about 200 BCE. The word krapās, taken to mean cotton, appears in ninth- and tenth-century Khmer inscriptions. In 1296 and 1297 the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan found that the people of Angkor wove cotton cloth from kapok and made fine fabrics in Angkor Thom, though they did not yet raise silkworms or sew. Their hip wrappers were likely cotton and about the size of a large krama.

The krama appears in some of the earliest photographs of Cambodian dress. In 1896 the French photographer André Salles recorded a woman in a krama head cloth at a market in Kampong Chhnang and a farmer with a krama around his neck. Photographs of the covered market in Siem Reap around 1927 and of a religious ceremony at Angkor Wat in 1949 show kramas everywhere. Before 1975 the cloth stood for the plain, hardworking life of farmers and laborers.

The Khmer Rouge made the krama part of their uniform of black peasant clothing, usually a red-and-white or blue-and-white checkered cloth worn at the neck or on the head, and from 1975 to 1979 all Khmer people were forced to wear it. In April 1973 King Sihanouk had been photographed in a red krama for Khmer Rouge propaganda in the zone they held. The regime's State Warehouse Department sent cotton krama cloth to Party organizations across the country. Silk weaving was banned as bourgeois and mulberry trees were cut down, so cotton krama was the only weaving allowed. In late 1977, Eastern Zone cadres who had fallen under suspicion were moved to Pursat and made to wear special blue kramas that marked them as traitors. Bokator was nearly wiped out when the Khmer Rouge executed its masters. Because of this history, some Cambodians avoid red-and-white kramas and prefer blue-and-white or other colors.

Refugees at the Thailand–Cambodia border in 1979 were photographed wearing kramas, and the cloth stayed in daily use after the Khmer Rouge years. A 1995 UNESCO survey found that Koh Sutin in Kampong Cham, once a major center for silk sampot hol, was making only cotton kramas.

UNESCO inscription

Krama weavers first said they wanted a UNESCO nomination in 2018. The krama entered Cambodia's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2019, and that year the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts formed a team to prepare the file, with weaving communities, NGOs, academics, the media and several ministries taking part. On December 4, 2024, at the 19th session of the Intergovernmental Committee in Asunción, Paraguay, "Cultural practices and expressions linked to Krama, a traditional woven textile in Cambodia" was inscribed on the Representative List as element 02115. UNESCO had helped with training workshops for the nomination, and Cambodia had ratified the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2006. UNESCO's representative in Cambodia, Sardar Umar Alam, called the inscription a chance to support community empowerment, poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

Meaning and significance

The krama marks the journey of life from birth to death, and it carries greetings, respect and the milestones of a life. Each krama is believed to bring its wearer good fortune and protection. The checkered cloth is a visual sign of Khmer culture that sets Khmer people apart from their Thai, Vietnamese and Lao neighbors. Once tied to farmers and soldiers, it is now also worn as fashion by wealthy city dwellers, and the King of Cambodia has been photographed wearing one in informal settings. Cambodia ties the krama to food security, health, education, gender equality, inclusive development, the environment and peace. Safeguarding the krama means keeping weaving knowledge alive while letting its materials, techniques and meanings change.

New forms

The krama became a dance, Robam Krama Khmer, in 2001. It was first performed at a national cultural event on March 3, 2002, and it is taught at the Faculty of Choreographic Art. Young Cambodians have taken it up as fashion. Krama Yerng, a group of five students from the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia, began in 2014 as a school-fair project and made dresses, keychains, headbands and pencil cases from krama. The actress Mean Sonyta started a Krama Project that turned krama into cardigans, shirts, scarves and shoes. Kramas also serve as souvenirs, ornaments and material for garments and household goods.

Community

Women do most of the weaving: they prepare the yarn, dye it and weave, while men plant and harvest cotton, collect dye materials and keep the looms in repair. In the past most women knew how to weave and taught their daughters, handing down patterns and wooden looms from mother to daughter. Individual weavers have grown fewer, and professional groups and producers now carry much of the work. Fifteen active communities and associations keep the tradition and took part in the nomination, and schools, NGOs and institutes run training courses. Surveys count more than 1,000 handicraft communities in Cambodia that make krama, many of them relying on it for their living. The Ministry of Commerce, through its National Silk Board, helps silk krama makers reach new markets.

Much handmade krama comes from villages around Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor. Krama Krama, a brand founded in March 2012, sells scarves woven at a partner workshop in Siem Reap that trains young Cambodian women as weavers, and it gives 10 percent of each sale to the Sala Baï school.

For Cambodians abroad, wearing or displaying a krama is a tie to home and to Khmer identity, and giving a krama to a visitor is a gesture of friendship.

References