Buddhism in Cambodia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Buddhism in Cambodia has shaped nearly every corner of Khmer life for more than fifteen centuries. As of 2019, an estimated 97.1 percent of Cambodia's population identified as Buddhist. That number represents not just personal faith, but a civilization rebuilt after one of the most deliberate campaigns of religious destruction ever attempted anywhere on earth. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge reduced a monastic community of between 65,000 and 80,000 monks to fewer than 3,000 surviving worldwide. Temples were razed, libraries burned, and patriarchs killed. What allowed Buddhism to survive, and then revive? The answers stretch back through thirteen centuries of kings, monks, invasions, and quiet village wats, and they say something profound about how a religion becomes the marrow of a civilization.

• 2. Two Streams Enter Funan

  ›

  Unconfirmed Singhalese sources trace Buddhism's arrival in mainland Southeast Asia to the 3rd century BC, during the reign of King Ashoka. According to these accounts, two monks named Sona and Uttara were dispatched to the region following a great council held in 274 BC at Ashoka's capital of Pataliputta, India. The early footing was fragile. The Funan Kingdom, which flourished between 100 BC and 500 CE, was fundamentally Hindu, with kings sponsoring the worship of Vishnu and Shiva. Buddhism existed there as a secondary presence, gradually asserting itself from around the year 450 onward. By the late seventh century the Chinese traveler Yijing recorded its continued presence. Two Funanese monks, Mandrasena and Saṃghabara, relocated to China in the 5th to 6th centuries and translated several Buddhist sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese, including the Mahāyāna Mahāprajñāpāramitā Mañjuśrīparivarta Sūtra. Both monks independently translated that same text, centering on the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. The kingdom that replaced Funan, Chenla, endured from 500-700 and saw Buddhism weaken further, yet inscriptions from Sambor Prei Kuk dated 626, and from Siem Reap dated 791, confirm the religion never disappeared. Khmer-style Buddha images are abundant from the 600-800 period, and Mahāyāna bodhisattva figures often turned up alongside predominantly Hindu images of Shiva and Vishnu in the same sanctuaries.

• 3. The Angkor Synthesis

  ›

  King Jayavarman II (802-869), the founding monarch of the Angkor period, proclaimed himself a Hindu god-king identified with Shiva, yet he proved increasingly hospitable to Mahayana Buddhist influence. The form of Mahayana that spread through the region traced its theology to the Pala Dynasty's Nalanda University in Bengal, a center of scholarship operating under Pala protection from 750 to 1060. Out of Nalanda came a Shivaist interpretation of Buddhism tinged with Tantric mysticism, and inscriptions from Cambodia's 9th century show Tantric texts being taught at Jayavarman II's court. Yashovarman I (889-910) appears to have blended Shivite and Buddhist practice in this Nalanda mode. King Rajendravarman II (944-968) studied Buddhism intensely, and though he remained a Shivaist himself, he appointed a Buddhist named Kavindrarimathana as chief minister; that minister built shrines to both Buddha and Shiva. Rajendravarman's son Jayavarman V similarly kept a Buddhist chief minister, Kirtipandita, who fostered Mahayana learning. The Sailendra dynasty, which exercised suzerainty over Cambodia at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries, also built the Mahayana temple Borobudur (750-850) in Java. That monument appears to have influenced the later Angkor building projects, including Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. Images of Hevajra, a distinctly Tantric deity, have been recovered from the ruins of Angkor Thom itself.

• 4. Jayavarman VII's Revolution

  ›

  Jayavarman VII (1181-1215) stands as the most significant Buddhist king in Khmer history. He understood himself as a Dharma-king, a bodhisattva whose duty was to save the people through service and merit-making, liberating himself in the process. His reign cut a clear line between the Hindu past and a Buddhist present. Before 1200, temple art across the Angkor empire largely depicted scenes from the Hindu pantheon. After 1200, Buddhist iconography became the standard. The shift in resources was equally dramatic. Where previous rulers had poured wealth into temples serving elite Brahman priests, Jayavarman redirected those resources toward libraries, monastic dwellings, and public works accessible to ordinary people. The theological center of gravity moved away from the devaraja concept of the god-king toward the sangha, the community of monks. A parallel current was quietly gathering force beneath his reign. His son Tamalinda, believed by some to be a Khmer monk, took part in an 1180 Burmese-led mission to Sri Lanka to study the Pali canon, and by 1190 had Sinhala-doctrine adepts in his own court. A Chinese diplomat named Chou Ta-Laun, who led a mission into Angkor in 1296-97, confirmed the significant presence of Pali Theravada monks in the Khmer capital. Suryavarman I (1006-1050), considered the greatest Buddhist king before Jayavarman VII, left behind a posthumous title that serves as the clearest evidence of his faith: Nirvanapada, meaning the king who has gone to Nirvana.

• 5. The Theravada Transformation

  ›

  Tamalinda's decade of ordination at the famous Mahavihara Monastery in Sri Lanka (1180-1190) coincided with a specific moment in that island's Buddhist history. The tradition being taught there was militant and highly disciplined, forged in reaction to Tamil wars that had nearly destroyed Buddhism in Sri Lanka during the 9th and 10th centuries. Tamalinda returned as a Thera, a senior monk, carrying the authority to administer ordination into this vigorous lineage. It rejected Mahayana innovations, including Tantric practices, and insisted on orthodoxy. What followed in Cambodia struck scholars as a nonviolent revolution at every level of society. Theravada succeeded, in part, because it was inclusive, drawing disciples and monks not only from elites and court circles but also from villages and peasants. A 1423 Thai account records a mission to Sri Lanka in which eight Khmer monks returned with the orthodox Mahavihara sect of the Singhalese order. The social structure shifted from a priestly class model toward a village-based monastic system. Monks developed their wats into education, social-service, and cultural centers. Early Western explorers reported widespread literacy among male populations across Theravada lands, and until the 19th century, literacy rates in these regions exceeded those of Europe. In Cambodia specifically, Buddhism became the primary transmitter of Khmer language and culture. The founding of Phnom Penh itself is woven into this Theravada fabric: Lady Penh is said to have found a four-faced Buddha floating down the river on a Koki tree during flooding season, then had the Wat Phnom constructed to house the image.

• 6. What the Khmer Rouge Tried to Erase

  ›

  In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized power, they classified Buddhism as reactionary. What followed was systematic. The 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea nominally permitted freedom of religion but banned any religion deemed detrimental to the country. The minister of culture declared Buddhism incompatible with the revolution. Monks were expelled from their wats and compelled to perform manual labor. Monasteries were destroyed. Those who refused to comply faced execution. Observers estimated that 50,000 monks died during the Khmer Rouge period. The patriarchs of both Cambodian monastic orders perished somewhere between 1975 and 1978; the circumstances of their deaths were never established. By the time the Vietnamese invasion ended the Khmer Rouge's rule in 1979, the global count of Cambodian monks had fallen to fewer than 3,000. Those who had survived and avoided execution lived among the laity, sometimes secretly performing Buddhist rituals for the sick. Even the chol chnam, the New Year festival, was among the very few observances the regime grudgingly permitted. Recovery after 1979 came unevenly. A government circular under the subsequent People's Republic of Kampuchea instructed civil servants to stop celebrating the traditional New Year Festival, and the state collected a 50 percent tax on donations to temples. By 1981, approximately 4,930 monks served in 740 wats, compared with 53,400 monks and 40,000 novices in more than 3,000 wats as recently as 1969.

• 7. Monks, Modernists, and the Village Wat

  ›

  Since 1855, Cambodia's Buddhist monastic community has been divided into two orders: the Maha Nikaya and the Dhammayuttika Nikaya. The Maha Nikaya claims the allegiance of a large majority of Cambodian monks. In 1961, the Mohanikay had more than 52,000 ordained monks in some 2,700 wats; the Thommayut order had 1,460 monks in just over 100 wats. Divisions within the Maha Nikaya between modernists and traditionalists were recorded as early as 1918. Modernists sought to reinterpret Buddhist teachings through modern secular knowledge and the Pali Canon; traditionalists preferred practices handed down through monastic oral tradition, centered on merit-making ceremonies and concentration meditation. Maha Ghosananda became the most prominent modernist figure, introducing Engaged Buddhism to Cambodia through his Dhammayatra program, drawing significant support from Western Buddhists and NGOs. Government officials, by contrast, tended to support the ultra-conservative boran movement, whose monks teach the worldly efficacy of rote Pali recitation and group repentance rituals. Senior officials including Hun Sen patronized boran temples, financing extensive expansions. A smaller faction, the young monks movement, operates differently still, primarily drawing from temples in and around Phnom Penh, expressing direct political opposition to government corruption and associating with opposition figure Sam Rainsy and his SRP party. The wat itself remains the architectural heart of this entire landscape. A typical rural wat contains a sanctuary, residences for monks, a hall, a kitchen, quarters for nuns, and a pond. Stupas holding the ashes of extended family members are built near the sanctuary, and fruit trees tended by local children grow within the walls. The main entrance faces east and is usually reserved for ceremonial use; there are no gates.

• 8. Spirits, Shamans, and the Living Faith

  ›

  Cambodian Buddhism exists side by side with pre-Buddhist animism and Brahman practices, and the boundaries between them are deliberately porous. Most Cambodians believe in a rich supernatural world populated by entities including khmaoc (ghosts), pret and besach (spirits of those who died violent deaths), arak (evil spirits, usually female), neak ta (tutelary spirits residing in objects), and mrenh kongveal (elf-like guardians of animals). Local shrines to these spirits appear in houses, Buddhist temples, alongside roads, and in forests. Aid in navigating this spirit world comes from a kru (shaman or spirit practitioner), an achar (ritualist), or a rup arak (medium). The kru prepares charms and amulets; soldiers wore amulets to ward off bullets, and the kru were believed to establish a supernatural link between an amulet and its owner. Many kru are former Buddhist monks. An American missionary observing village life in the early 1970s recorded a new province chief holding a ceremony to seek the protection of spirits over his province, and soldiers obtaining magic cloths from mediums before missions against enemy forces. Fortunetellers and astrologers known as haor teay are consulted on decisions such as marriages, building a new house, and journeys. Brahman influences persisted in the royal court in the form of the baku, a Brahman priestly group attached to the palace, who conducted rituals for the well-being of the nation; those rituals reportedly stopped after Sihanouk's ouster in 1970. Cambodian Buddhism is organized nationally under regulations formulated in 1943 and modified in 1948, a structure that continues to frame a faith that, at its lived edges, draws freely from every tradition that has passed through Khmer lands.