CAMBODIA
Cambodia in the twenty-first century understands it-
self as a THERAVADABuddhist nation. While this self-
conscious identification as a Theravada nation is fairly
recent, the history and development of Buddhism in
the region that constitutes present-day Cambodia ex-
tend back nearly two millennia. During this time nu-
merous transformations occurred that led scholars to
suppose that the Khmer Buddhism of today is markedly
different from Khmer Buddhism even two centuries
ago, before the rise of modern Buddhist institutions in
Cambodia. Certain major continuities are also evident
in the past two millennia: the intertwining of Buddhist,
brahmanist, and spirit practices and understandings;
the close ties between religion and political power; and
the important role of Buddhist ideas in the articula-
tion of social and ethical values.
The region known today as Cambodia was inhabited
two thousand years ago by Khmer-speaking peoples
who appear to have congregated in small chiefdoms re-
ferred to as Funan by the Chinese. Archeological evi-
dence suggests that Indian merchants, explorers, and
monks imported Buddhism into this region at least as
early as the second century C.E. The exact manner of the
importation of Buddhism, along with other Indian
ideas, into Southeast Asia, a process called Indianiza-
tion, is not fully understood. A consensus has emerged
among many historians, however, that Indians proba-
bly never established a political and economic process
akin to modern colonization by Europeans in Southeast
Asia; nor is there thought to have been a large-scale
movement of Indian emigrants to Southeast Asia.
Rather, many aspects of the language, arts, and litera-
ture, as well as philosophical, religious, and political
thought of Indians, were adopted, assimilated, and
transformed by Southeast Asians during the first cen-
turies C.E., possibly through a combination of economic,
diplomatic, and religious contacts both with India and
Indians directly, and also through the cultural medium
of other Southeast Asian courts and traders.
Buddhist and brahmanic practices coexisted and be-
came intertwined with local animist traditions and
spirit beliefs in the Khmer regions from the second cen-
tury onward. Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims were
active during this period, which may have contributed
to the introduction of Buddhism into Southeast Asian
courts. Chinese histories indicate that at least one Bud-
dhist from Funan, a monk named Nagasena, traveled
to China in the sixth century. Chinese monks traveling
to India by sea stopped en route to visit many sites in
present-day Southeast Asia. While no indigenous Bud-
dhist texts from this early period remain, items discov-
ered by archeologists at the site of Oc-Eo (a port city
during the Funan era) include Buddha images associ-
ated with the MAHAYANAtradition. Chinese records
from the period describe Buddhist, S ́aivite, and spirit
cults and practices among the Khmer, with the central
court rituals seemingly concerned with devotion to
S ́iva, especially through the worship of S ́iva-lingam.
Epigraphic evidence for the Buddhist presence be-
gins to appear in the seventh century, during the pe-
riod referred to as pre-Angkor, when the Khmer
regions were apparently dominated by a group of
chiefdoms or kingdoms referred to in Chinese records
as Chenla. It is difficult to characterize the nature of
religious life during this period. Recent historiogra-
phy on the pre-Angkor period resists the tendency of
older scholarship to overinterpret limited epigraphic
evidence or conflate European or Indian models of105