Tum Teav

[1] Although its first translation in French had been made by Étienne Aymonier already in 1880, Tum Teav was popularized abroad when writer George Chigas translated the 1915 literary version by the venerable Buddhist monk Preah Botumthera Som, one of the best writers in the Khmer language.

When Tum sees that Teav is to marry the king, he boldly sings a song that professes his love for her.

Enraged, Archun commands his guards to kill Tum, who is beaten to death under a Bodhi tree.

Tum Teav was the exemplary text in a 1998 article, "A Head for an Eye: Revenge in the Cambodian Genocide,"[5] by Alexander Laban Hinton that tries to understand anthropological motivations for the scale of violence perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

[7] In 2021, an updated version of the Tum Teav was uploaded to YouTube by a group of young actors, causing a national scandal, for its explicit character.