Sampot

What the word means

In Khmer, sampot covers several related things: cloth, a woman's skirt, and any piece of fabric used as a lower garment, in particular the Khmer sarong. The root of the word is ba't, which carries the sense of encircling or surrounding; forms built on it mean to wrap or gird the body. The term appears in the Inscription Modern Angkor Wat, which dates from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the middle Khmer period. The scholar Ramanlal Nagarji Mehta has suggested a link to the Sanskrit sam-patola, meaning "like a Patola", and thinks Hindu settlers may have brought the fabric and its technique in the third or fourth century. George Groslier wrote that the word is as old as the garment itself.

From Funan to Angkor

Chinese envoys reached Funan in the third century. Kang Tai and Zhu Ying reported that people went mostly uncovered and that women wore only tube-shaped cloth, so the king ordered men to wear horizontal wraps. The rich had brocade made; the poor wove plain cloth. By the early thirteenth century Zhao Rukuo noted that Cambodia exported raw silk, yet Zhou Daguan, writing later in that same century, found silk neither spun nor woven by local people at Angkor, where kapok was worked on a backstrap loom. Khmer art shows pre-Angkor deities in skirt cloths knotted at the waist, and women appear this way from about the tenth century. Two styles have lasted: panels pleated into a bundle fastened with a belt, and cloth tucked in at the waist.

Silk and pattern

Cambodian silk is patterned in several ways. Chong kiet is the Khmer ikat method: parts of the weft yarn are bound and dyed before the cloth is woven, so the pattern resists colour. In the dictionary, kiet names a silk dyed by the Cham method, and as a verb it means to tighten or draw up; chong kiet is "tying strings". Hol is a weft ikat silk with many colours, woven on an uneven twill so one face is brighter than the other while the pattern tone stays even. Weavers in the eastern part of present-day Thailand use the same twill. Phamuong silks are single-coloured twills, sometimes called shot silk, made on a two-framed loom and now counted in fifty-two shades.

Ways of wearing it

The best known form, chong kben, is unisex. The cloth goes round the waist; the ends are twisted into a knot, drawn through, and a belt secures it. Scholars compare the shape to the dhoti of the Indian subcontinent, and an elaborate male version carries a pendant sash, the pamn muk, at the front. In Thailand and Laos the same garment is called chong kraben. Samloy is the opposite approach: a free-hanging wrap, or tube skirt, with pleats and folds, shown in Khmer sculpture from Funan onwards. Sampot sup is a samloy cut with darts and a waistband. Sampot bot has a long flat fold down one side, said to come from western influence.

Where it travelled

The suggestion that the modern sampot came from Siam is repeated in old scholarship and questioned in the same breath. George Groslier, writing in 1921, called the fashion shared by men and women modern and probably a Siamese innovation. Harriet Winifred Ponder, travelling in 1936, said the version with one end drawn through the legs was imported from Siam. George Benjamin Walker, gathering historians in Angkor Empire in 1955, reported the same claim and pointed out that bas-reliefs show the garment centuries before Siamese influence, comparing it to the Indian lungi and the Malayan sarong. The word also entered the Thai court as sompak. In 1856 King Mongkut and his second king sent President Franklin Pierce Cambodian silk sampot along with a patterned silk shoulder cloth.

How Sampot is kept

The sampot goes on at the waist, and it takes a hand or two to settle. The wearer winds the cloth around the body, twists the loose ends together, and adds a belt in the styles that need one. Chong kben is worn by men and women alike; samloy is left to hang free like a skirt. Plain cotton suits daily wear, while patterned silks such as hol and phamuong are kept for ceremony and court. Groslier held that until the twelfth century the sampot was for men and certain sacred dancers, with women in a sarong, and that the shared fashion came later.

When and where

Sampot belongs to Cambodia, where it is the dress most often named as traditional. It is strongest among Khmer people, including Khmer communities in the eastern part of present-day Thailand, whose weavers share the uneven twill. In Thailand and Laos the wrapped form is known as chong kraben. Silk for it has been woven in Takéo Province since the Funan era.

What Sampot means

For many Khmer people the sampot is more than clothing. It carries the idea of being Khmer. In 1993, before Cambodia's general election, the leader Son Sann argued in debate that a woman's right to vote could be tested by whether she could cover a short distance in a close-fitting sampot, which he treated as proof of Khmer identity, in contrast to Vietnamese women who often wore trousers under the áo dài. The word itself is modest: Groslier noted that it means cloth, not a decorated part of costume. Silk weaving, too, is remembered as part of the country's past.

Questions people ask about Sampot

See also

LongyiA tube of cloth worn from waist to feet in Myanmar, folded shut with no knotKebayaA front-opening blouse and wrapped cloth, worn by women across Southeast AsiaApsara DanceA classical Cambodian court dance inspired by the stone carvings of AngkorThai solar calendarThe official solar calendar of Thailand, numbered in the Buddhist Era

Good reading and sources

• Sampot on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.