Notes on Brahmanic Gods in Theravadin Cambodia

With her vast knowledge of Khmer linguistics and epigraphy, the author effortlessly leads us along the often unexpected and always inventive way of how the Cambodian people adapted external influences to their own beliefs and worldview. The most fascinating aspect of the Cambodian syncretism is perhaps the fact that many deities remained in the spiritual realm as ​“venerated but not worshipped” forces.

From these notes, we will underline:

• Adaptative Freedom: ​“Two of the chief Brahmanic gods were neatly taken over by Theravada faith, i.e. Indra and Brahma. Nearly nothing was left from their past lofty and impressive features. But these were substituted for by highest ranks in the Buddhist cosmology. Indeed, they were assimilated with their Buddhist namesakes, with the result that their names were carried over, untouched, into the new system, and prefixed by the sacred headword brah.”
• Secularization : ​“God Yama had kept a vague and dim figure of judge in hell. But Theravadin eschatology was now more concerned with the working of karmic retribution, than with the threat of effective punishments of evil-doers in hell. In other words, the pragmatic Khmer Buddhists rather dreaded the action of yamapâlas, the ​‘hell-wardens’, while holding unanimously the Buddha as the main judge of their deeds. The name Yamarâj, now redundant, was secularized, and applied to the ​“Minister of justice”, nowadays written either yama- or yomarâj. As for Skanda, the young god also named Kumâr, he was too involved in healing sick children to disappear completely. His name was wholly secularized, hence the modern word skand, ​“convulsions” as disorder of infants, then any such disorder in all creatures. The most fantastic story concerns Kâma, Skt. lexical item and name of the god of love. It was a well-known noun in ancient Cambodia, as one of the elements of the trivarga, thus meaning ​“desire, longing after, pleasure, love …”. Predictably, austere Theravada could not accomodate such a concept, especially in the sense of ​“sensual love, sexual enjoyment”. It banished it from trivarga, and cast out god Kama altogether. But the other side of Theravada, made of kind- and open-mindedness, tolerated effusive expression in poetic and lyric creations. Especially in lyric poetry, lovers went on singing their griefs and joys and the part played therein by a « god » of love whom they addressed as Kamadeb, and who is still very popular nowadays.”
• “Recycling” the gods: ​“I have focused my attention on the particular subject of Brahmanic gods, and the ways they were allowed to survive and to have an active part in the Cambodian Theravadin community. A few were adopted by the Buddhists because they suited weil their new world-representation. Several others owed their survival to a transfer into magic, therefore joined happily the most popular and active sphere of supernatural world, whilst a few were rescued from the sinking Brahmanism by linguistic and institutional usages. And this is one of the best illustrations of the present-day multifaceted Khmer culture.”