A similar interpretation is made for the name of Thai national hero Pha Mueang who played a significant role in the founding of the Sukhothai Kingdom, freeing Siam from Khmer rule after the reign of Jayavarman VII in the 13th century.
According to another interpretation, khlāṃṅ is also a Siamese word loaned from the Khmer and can take the acception of “magically strong, having a sacred power” which is in tune with qualities attributed to Ghlāṃṅ Mīoeṅ in some legends.
As the issue of the battle between the two camps became more and more uncertain, one of his generals, Ta Moeun, dug a pit, filled with poisonous swords and threw himself to a certain death promising to come back.
[7] According to an oral tradition in the Cardamom Mountains, Khleang Moeung was actually a Pear tribal named Nup who managed to raise the phantom army through the intervention of the tribe's guardian spirit.
The king protected his capital by venerating the potent Buddha Kaya Siddhi image at Wat Brah Inda Deba and worshipping at the shrine of Khleang Moeung.
[11] At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain rewriting of national Khmer history was needed to reinforce the moral and political power of the Cambodian Royal Palace, which had been shaken by revolts and protests, as well as by the tightening of French colonial rule over the kingdom.
Sisowath thus instructed the narrative to be rewritten to make Sdach Korn into an unmistakable usurper in order to underline that Srı̄ Sugandhapad's younger brother Ang Chan, like himself, was the legitimate ruler.
A 1943 article in the newspaper Kampuchea likened the spirit of self-sacrifice demonstrated by Khleang Moeung and his wife to Joan of Arc's "valiant conduct and patriotic fervor".
[13] In 1953, after Cambodia gained independence from France, King Norodom Sihanouk built a hall to shelter the grave of Khleang Moeung in Pursat through which the latter acquired a country-wide reputation.
In 1967, Khmer author Kouy Laut published a novel titled Khleang Moeung with a strong anti-Siamese bend,[15] which would be brought on the stage of the National Theater of Cambodia.
[16] However, in Tren Ngea's two-volume classical history book on Cambodia's national past, published between in the 1970s, when telling the story of Sdach Korn's success in claiming the throne as well as his defeat of Ang Chan, the author does not refer explicitly to Khleang Moeung.
[21] A provincial judge built a wooden shelter to thank neak ta Khleang Moeung after the spirit helped to release Samnang's wife from Khmer Rouge custody.
[22] Khleang Moeung was chosen as the name of one of the best and more successful[23] anti-communist resistance groups[24] that pledged loyalty to the king after the formation of FUNCINPEC in February 1981 and was formally incorporated into the ranks of A.N.S.
Since 1990, his legend has become part of the official patriotic discourse as school students in Cambodia learn that he was a military commander who fought and defeated the Siamese army toward the 16th century.
[27] In 1993, Prince Ranariddh built a concrete hall to replace the wooden shelter, in commemoration of the spirit of neak ta Khleang Moeung for bringing him electoral success[28] as his father Sihanouk had done forty years earlier.
[31] In December 2015, opposition leader Sam Rainsy brought up the tale of Khleang Moeung, using the version of the story reported by French researcher Adhémard Leclère in 1914.
[32] As a matter of fact, His Excellency Prime Minister Hun Sen has never been to the shrine in Pursat, as he has fostered since the early 2000s the idea that he is the reincarnation of Sdach Korn, King Ang Chan's enemy, and thus also Khleang Moeung's.
[43] The Royal chronicles of Ayutthaya mention human sacrifices taking place at the feet of pillars of cities such as Bangkok, Vientiane and Luang Prabang in order to produce a land guardian spirit (phi muang).
The mytheme is also similar to the story of the land guardian spirit Cao Com, “Lord of the Summit”, who died voluntarily by impalement — on the tusks of an elephant rather than on spears as in most Khleang Moeung legends.
[44] The ritual institution of Khleang Moeung, as center and protector of the village, developed as a practice aimed at protecting the Khmer territory in the aftermath of the destruction of Angkor, especially in places where such borders were threatened.
In Wat Ounalom in Phnom Penh, now the headquarters of the Maha Nikaya sect, a statue was dedicated to neak ta Khleang Moeung fairly early on.
In Pursat, the neak ta Khleang Moeung has evolved from an amorphous form, i.e. a termite mound and a usual sign of the presence of a chthonian spirit, to an anthropomorphic one with statues becoming more and more realistic.
In 2010 the Culture department of Pursat province had a new statue made, projecting a very different message about Khleang Moeung's identity: seated, in a noble but very human pose, on a throne, under a chatra parasol denoting his rank[57] as a modern-looking Khmer man.