On the slopes of Kong Rey Mountain in Kampong Chhnang, legend says an ogress‑queen still lies in stone, her “hair” growing wild across the ridge. This haunting folktale of Puthisen and Neang Kong Rey weaves together abandoned daughters, shape‑shifting ogres, and the tragic love that turned a woman into a mountain.
Setting and local beliefs
In Kampong Leng district of Kampong Chhnang province, there is a tall mountain that looks, from a distance, like a person lying down. The mountain is covered with many kinds of trees, like the other mountains nearby, but what makes it special is that around its “waist” there is a thick band of rice paddy herb (ម្អម mâ’âm, Limnophila aromatica) growing all over. Local people do not eat this herb, because they have long been told by their elders that this mountain is actually the body of the ogress Neang Kong Rey, chief queen of Prince Puthisen, and that the rice paddy herb is in fact her pubic hair.
This Khmer version of Puthisen Neang Kong Rey is part of the broader Southeast Asian legend of “The Twelve Sisters”, which is treated as an apocryphal Jātaka (Rathasena Jātaka) in the Paññāsa Jātaka collection. In that tradition, Puthisen (Rathasena) is a Bodhisattva in one of the Buddha’s previous lives, and the tale circulates in parallel Thai, Lao, and Cambodian versions under different titles. The version presented here is a simplified prose retelling that condenses longer literary and oral variants, especially by shortening the gambling episodes and romantic ending and focusing on the core plot of the twelve sisters, the ogress, and Neang Kong Rey’s transformation into the mountain. In Khmer, this story is known as The Story Of Neang Kong Rey (រឿងនាងកង្រី).
Long ago there was a wealthy man in a certain city who had no children. He and his wife went to pray for a child at a sacred banyan tree. Their prayer was answered, but in an unexpected way: the wife became pregnant and eventually gave birth to twelve daughters. After so many births, the man’s wealth declined; he became very poor and could no longer support his family. In desperation, he loaded his twelve daughters onto a cart and abandoned them deep in the forest.
The twelve girls wandered through the forest until they reached another city, which belonged to a female ogre named Neang Sondhamea. Neang Sondhamea had a daughter called Neang Kong Rey. When she saw the twelve sisters, Neang Sondhamea changed herself into the form of an ordinary woman, brought them into her city, and kept them in her palace to serve her daughter as attendants.
Eventually, the sisters discovered that this was in fact an ogre city and that Neang Sondhamea was a yakshini (ogress). Terrified, they fled and made their way to a human kingdom where they became the principal queens of King Rothasit. Neang Sondhamea pursued them and, seeing that they were now royal consorts, disguised herself as a beautiful young woman, went to King Rothasit’s city, and won a place there as one of his chief queens as well.
Once installed at court, Neang Sondhamea pretended to be gravely ill. She manipulated the royal physicians so that they told King Rothasit there was only one cure: the eyes of the twelve queens. She also demanded that the twelve, who were all pregnant, be thrown together into a pit without food and that their eyes be removed. After the eyes were taken, she had them sent back to her city and locked away in a special treasury, watched over by her daughter Neang Kong Rey.
Her cruel plan was carried out. The eleven elder sisters had both their eyes gouged out. The youngest, Neang Pov (“Youngest Sister”), lost only one, because earlier she had caught a fish and gouged out only one of its eyes, leaving the other untouched. All twelve sisters were pregnant. In Neang Pov’s womb was a Bodhisattva-to-be.
When the elder sisters gave birth, they themselves killed their babies and tore the bodies apart; the flesh was shared among the mothers, who, starving in the pit, ate it. When Neang Pov gave birth, she named her son Puthisen and hid him so that her sisters would not find out about him.
As Puthisen grew up, Neang Sondhamea eventually learned that he was the child of the twelve sisters. She ordered him to mount a horse and carry a letter to Neang Kong Rey. In the letter she wrote: “If Puthisen arrives at night, devour him at night; if he arrives by day, devour him by day.”
By the power of his good karma, as Puthisen was riding through the forest a great hermit saw his worried face and noticed the letter tied to the horse’s neck. The hermit took the letter, tore it up, and wrote another in its place. The new message read: “Daughter, if Puthisen arrives at night, marry him at night; if he arrives by day, marry him by day.”
When Puthisen reached the ogre city, Neang Kong Rey read the letter and immediately married him. Puthisen then reigned in the ogre kingdom, and Neang Kong Rey revealed to him that the eyes of his mothers were stored in the treasury, and that there were special medicines: one to restore sight to eyes, and others to transform things into ocean water and mountains.
One midnight, Puthisen slipped away from Neang Kong Rey and fled back toward his native human kingdom. Neang Kong Rey chased after him. Puthisen threw the magic medicine behind him, and it turned into a vast sea, cutting off her path. Neang Kong Rey stood weeping in the forest, calling after him, and died there from grief.
Puthisen returned safely to his kingdom. Using the medicine, he restored the sight of his mother and the elder mothers and then killed Neang Sondhamea. Afterwards he went back to search for Neang Kong Rey, but she was already dead. He buried her body and then returned home, where he ruled in his father’s place in peace and stability until his death.
