and the shift in iconography from images of Indian
deities to images of the Buddha; Pali replaced Sanskrit
as the language of inscriptions and literature; Khmer
also came increasingly to be used, and much of the
classical Khmer literature was composed during this
time. Theravada ideas of kingship, MERIT AND MERIT-
MAKING, and KARMA(ACTION); a growing emphasis on
the biography of the Buddha; and a COSMOLOGYand
ethical orientation expressed in ideas about birth, RE-
BIRTH, and moral development in the three-tiered
world of the Trai Bhum are reflected in the art, epig-
raphy, and literature of the period. At Nogor Vatt, for
instance, a sixteenth-century inscription translated by
Thompson refers to the merit produced by a royal cou-
ple, the king’s subsequent rebirth in Tusita heaven, and
his resolve to become an ARHATat the time of the Bud-
dha MAITREYA. Buddhist iconography from the period
focused on the depiction of the Buddha, and vernac-
ular literary compositions such as the Ramkerti trans-
formed its hero into a Buddhist bodhisattva.
The eighteenth and much of the nineteenth cen-
turies in Cambodia were a period of almost continual
warfare and unrest, with the Khmer trying to repel in-
vasions from both their Siamese and Vietnamese
neighbors. Historical sources from the period suggest
that the Buddhist material culture that had been de-
veloped during the middle period was widely damaged
or destroyed as a result of warfare and social chaos. Be-
ginning in 1848, when Ang Duong (r. 1848–1860) was
installed on the Khmer throne by the Siamese, a ren-
ovation of Khmer Buddhism was initiated that would
last for at least a century. During the rest of the nine-
teenth century, Khmer Buddhists rebuilt damaged
monasteries and monk-scholars traveled to Bangkok
to copy lost manuscripts and study Pali.
The two most prominent Khmer monks of the nine-
teenth century were Samtec Sangharaj Den (1823–
1913), who became the san ̇gha head in 1857, and
Samtec SugandhadhipatPan (1824–1894), the monk
who is attributed with the importation of the Tham-
mayutnikai to Cambodia. Both were educated and or-
dained in Bangkok, which served as the regional center
for Buddhist education during this period. Den was
captured as a prisoner of war by the Siamese army as
a young boy and sent to Bangkok as a slave, where he
served in the entourage of Prince Ang Duong. He was
ordained as a novice at the age of eleven and by the
time he ordained as a monk in 1844, had already won
attention for his intellectual pursuits. In 1849 Ang
Duong requested that Den be sent to Cambodia to
head up the restoration of Buddhism in the kingdom,
which he undertook until his death in 1913. He resided
at Vatt Unnalom in Phnom Penh, the chief Mahanikai
temple. Pan was born in 1824 in Battambang (a Khmer
province under Siamese control until 1907) and was
ordained as a novice there. In 1837 he went to Bangkok
to study Pali, and eventually ended up as a student at
Wat Bovoranives under Mongkut. The date of his re-
turn to Cambodia and the founding of the Thammayut
sect in Cambodia has been attributed both to the reigns
of Ang Duong and Norodom (r. 1860–1904), either in
1854 or 1864. Under Norodom, Pan constructed the
seat of the Thammayut order at Vatt Bodum Vaddey
in Phnom Penh. In the 1880s he sent a delegation of
Khmer monks to Ceylon to obtain relics and a Bo tree
to plant in the new monastery. He died in 1894, with
the title of “Samtec Sugandhadhipat,” the chief of the
Thammayut order and the second highest monastic
rank in the kingdom.
The new Khmer Buddhism that began to emerge in
this period was probably unlike the older Buddhism it
replaced. François Bizot has argued that in spite of the
presence of Pali inscriptions and literature, Theravada
Pali scholarship was in fact not well established in
Cambodia before the nineteenth century, that canon-
ical Tipitaka texts were not widely used, and that
tantric teachings were more prominent in Cambodia
than in other Theravada areas of Southeast Asia. If this
theory is correct, traces of this older Khmer Buddhism
were increasingly destroyed after the mid-nineteenth
century, and new ideas of Theravada orthodoxy took
its place. This newly emerging Buddhism had Siamese,
Khmer, and French sources and influences.
Although the Thammayutnikai imported from
Siam and patronized by the royal family never took
wide hold outside of urban areas, its reformist ideas
influenced young Khmer monks in the more tradi-
tional Mahanikai order in Cambodia. These young
monks, led in particular by Chuon Nath (1883–1969)
and Huot Tath (1891–1975), pushed for a series of in-
novations in the Khmer san ̇gha beginning in the early
twentieth century: the use of print for sacred texts
(rather than traditional methods of inscribing manu-
scripts); a higher degree of competence in Pali and San-
skrit studies among monks; a vision of orthodoxy
based on understanding of VINAYA texts for both
bhikkhu and laypersons; and modernization in peda-
gogical methods for Buddhist studies. These reforms
were not uniformly accepted within the Khmer san ̇gha.
Early attempts by Nath to introduce print were met
with resistance from established san ̇gha officials and
led to increasing factionalism between modernists andCAMBODIA