we travel from P nom Penh city to Kampong Cham province along national road 6A arriving at a road sign-post number 116, and have a look at the northeast of the left side of the national road, about one kilometer from the road, we will see two hills standing side by side. The higher one is Phnom Srey (woman hill), and the lower one is Phnom Bros (man hill).
Once upon a time, there was a1queen named "Srey Ayuthyea", reigning in Khmer territory. During her reign, no man dared to propose a woman to marry, so the queen asked for a good looking man she loved to marry her. By following her track, her female subordinates also asked the men to marry them.
During that era, it was pitiful for the unattractive women who proposed the men to marry, but the men generally refused to accept their proposals. They only picked up the pretty girls to be their wives. This custom was carried out in the reign of Queen Srey Ayuthyea.
In the later reigns of other kings, the women assembled together and said,
"It is not appropriate for us to propose the men to marry.
We will make a competition with the men. The competition is to dig up the soil and pile it up to make a hill. If the men lose the match, they must ask us to marry them."
After the discussion, they went to challenge the men to compete by piling up the hills with strict promise and conditions. Then the women selected group leader to collect the many members. As for the, the men, they did the same way by mobilizing a lot of members.
After meeting together, the women group leader said to the men group leader, "We all have to pile up a hill for each group from the falling of the dusk until the morning stars rise up."
After the agreement, the two sides began to carry the soil by using their own techniques. Some dug up the soil, some carried it on their heads, some carried it with a bar across the shoulders, and some carried with baskets.
When the night came in and after the women carried the soil for many hours, they came up with an idea. They played a trick to put up a small lantern on a high post at the northeast. When seeing the lantern and supposing it as a morning star, the men asked all of their members to stop working and went to sleep.
As for the women, they continued to carry the soil to pile up their hill until the morning star shone.
Once cocks crowed at dawn, the men got up and saw the morning stars shining and exclaimed, "We are all wrong. The morning stars have just shone." And then the men saw the women's hill was higher than theirs, they felt great ashamed because they were cheated by the women.
Since then men request women to marry.
- The END -
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