21 - Buddhism in Cambodia since 1993

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Buddhism has had a long history in the country we now call Cambodia. Inscriptional and archaeological evidence suggest that it was already well established by the fifth century of the Common Era (CE) when the lower Mekong appears to have become a significant entrepôt in the passage of Buddhist ideas and material culture from India to the Middle Kingdom. In the Angkorian period Buddhist influence waxed and waned, sometimes thriving in a syncretic nexus with Brahmanical beliefs and practices, at others playing an important role in the rituals of state. The zenith of this Mahayanist and Tantric state-supported Buddhism coincided with the reign of Jayavarman VII (c. 1243–95) and declined swiftly following the fall of Angkor in the first decades of the fifteenth century. From this point on, and largely as a result of rising Siamese influence in the region, a grassroots, village-oriented form of Therava¯da Buddhism took hold, and this has continued to be the dominant religion until the present. However, Cambodia's Theravāda tradition never remained static. It underwent a small, Bangkok-inspired renaissance during the reign of King Ang Duang (1848–60), while its bureaucratic structures were modified and its educational facilities enhanced during the French colonial and early Independence periods.

As is now well known, Buddhist institutions were dissolved during the Democratic Kampuchea era, many thousands of monks lost their lives, and religious practice, where it occurred at all, was entirely hidden from public gaze. With the demise of the Pol Pot regime and establishment of the People's Republic of Kampuchea [PRK] in early 1979, organised Buddhism gradually re-emerged, although for the next decade it was obliged to operate within a strictly socialist setting. This meant that the activity of the monkhood (saṅgha) was largely restricted to the patriotic, nation-building role assigned to it by the government. Despite these restrictions there is good evidence that Buddhism rapidly regained its relevance at the popular level. This was most apparent in regard to a greatly felt need to perform funerary rites for those who had perished during the country's appalling upheavals. Knowing that relatives had not been properly cremated, thus effecting transition to a new form of rebirth, appears to have been a great psychological burden.