All the ancient Khmer manuscrits are lost. No text still exist, is it administrative, commercial, religious documents, is it written on latania leafs or on paper that the Khmers could have received from China. All the literature was destroyed.

The image of books fleetingly appears on some of the bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat and on the ones of Bayon style monuments.

Therefore this ancient Cambodian epigraphy is the only source of information on the past history of Cambodia.
This epigraphy is closely linked to the sacred domain. Almost all of them were engraved to commemorate a religious foundation and typically encompass first an invocation to gods and then the genealogy of the donor and finally the encomium on his deeds. These engravings were not concerned by the daily life of the Khmers.

Most of the preserved ancient texts up to the 14th century were written partly in Sanskrit (the official part) and partly in Khmer, a language belonging to another language family, the môn-khmer languages.

After the 15th century, the Pali language and writing were almost exclusively used, due to the introduction of Theravada Buddhism in Cambodia which is still the dominant religion of the country today.