[Tlc] C-book review

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded by Dr. M.R. Pattaratorn Chirapravati.
Best,
justin

John Marston and Elizabeth Guthrie, eds. _History, Buddhism,
and New
Religious Movements in Cambodia_. Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press,
2004. 272 pp. Index. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8248-2666-3,
$25.00 (paper),
ISBN 0-8248-2868-2.

Reviewed for H-Buddhism by Erik Davis, Religious
Studies Department, Macalester College


It used to be a common misperception that Cambodia had no history
outside of the supposedly "Indianized" civilization of Angkor
and the
European colonial modernity imposed by the French. It was
assumed that
without these gifts of history from outside, Cambodia would have
stagnated. Models of the past therefore treated the period
between the
end of Angkor and the beginning of the French Protectorate as
a "Dark
Age," a period underlining the notion that there was nothing
essentially
Cambodian about the Cambodian past. The presumed dark age of
Cambodia
was mirrored by a dark age in foreign studies of Cambodia, the
latter a
result of the thirty-year civil war and the geopolitical
battles that
discouraged fieldwork, if not actively punishing it. This
edited volume,
_History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in Cambodia_,
helps to
rectify this situation.

Earlier there was a lack of scholarship in Cambodian
religion--whatever
existed was usually written in French, or depicted Cambodian
Buddhism as
a degenerate or heretical religion. Cambodian religion was
seen as being
interesting mostly for its deviations from South Asian
authenticity (for
instance, see the works of F. Bizot). With the recent
publication of
several excellent works on Cambodian religion (e.g., works by
Penny
Edwards, Anne Hansen, and Ian Harris), that gap too has begun
to be
filled. _History, Buddhism, and New Religious Movements in
Cambodia_
contains ten essays, which are sometimes uncomfortably
heterogeneous, a
fact that is perhaps due to the enormous void they are
attempting to
fill. One vital theme runs through all the essays: religion is not
merely a shadow of Cambodia's history, but possibly its
matrix. The book
is, as Ashley Thompson writes in the first chapter, "about
history in
the making, when the object of historical study is also in the
process
of 'doing' history" (p. 13).

The book is organized into four sections. The first,
"Cambodian Religion
and the Historical Construction of the Nation," includes three
uniformly
excellent essays. The first, by Thompson, makes short work of
the notion
of a static Cambodian dark age and focuses on the national
unification
accomplished under the reign of sixteenth-century king Ang
Chan. It was
he, according to Thompson, who mobilized the symbolism of
Maitreya, the
Buddha of the future, to conjure past glory as a legitimate
inheritance,
and future greatness as a promise. The temporal dimension of this
promise was symbolized in the funerary monument of the _st?pa_.

Anne Hansen's essay on the relationship of Khmer identity and
Therav?da
focuses closely on the institution of the Buddhist Institute in
Cambodia. She tracks the path of early Cambodian nationalism,
and the
cultural creativity unleashed by the coincidence of religious and
national concerns. She demonstrates that the connection
between Khmer
nationalism and Buddhism is neither merely invented--for it
draws on
real histories and traditions--nor a function of an eternal or
essential
relation, for it was forged in an identifiable and institutional
crucible at a particular point in history.

The first section ends with Penny Edwards' essay. Where Hansen
concentrates on the production of a particular form of
nationalism,
Edwards concentrates on the concept of the nation as "an
intellectual
and conceptual framework through which certain members of the
sangha
were able to synergize the disenchanting projects of modernity
with
their visions for the moral rectification of Khmer Buddhism"
(p. 66). While
these latter two authors have published full-length treatments
of the
same material, which should be read by anyone interested in
the subject
matter, these articles continue to provide a welcome and brief
introduction to the arguments, and could be very profitably
used in
university-level courses.

The second section, which deals solely with the "Icon of the Leper
King," an enigmatic figure of worship and kingship, stands apart
somewhat uncomfortably from the rest of the book. Originally
conceived
as a single co-authored article, the two essays in this
section were
eventually split apart. Thompson's second essay here breathes in
European scholarship on the "king's two bodies" and Foucault's
theories
of government to examine inscriptions and representations of
the leper
king as an icon of national and personal healing. The
connection to
contemporary kingship at the end of this chapter will undoubtedly
inspire further studies. Hang Chan Sophea's more ethnographic
study of
the cult of Yay Deb is less successful, but nevertheless
serves as an
interesting counterpoint since it proposes Yay Deb as a sort of
Cambodian queen to the Leper King's king.

The third section, "The Ethnography of Contemporary Cambodian
Religion,"
begins with Elizabeth Guthrie's work on contemporary female
ascetics,
called Tun Ji. This is a welcome addition to the ethnography
of women's
special religious practices, but is somewhat marred by its
frame, which
posits a supposed decline in gender equality that is not, to
my knowledge,
supported by the current state of knowledge on the topic.

Didier Bertrand's piece contributes to our understanding of
the way in which
culturally embedded concepts of power are produced through a
sort of  dual
mediumship, both between spirits and humans, and between
Buddhist and
non-Buddhist practices. He demonstrates the guiding influence of
Buddhist norms even in the most non-Buddhist practices, without
subsuming the latter to the former (p. 165).

Finally, Marston's excellent piece deals with a lay ascetic
who claimed
to be able to transform objects into purified stone or metal,
through
ascetic powers gained in forest meditation. Marston places this
ascetic's practice in the context of social change (it
flourished in the
period surrounding the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia),
but also
demonstrates how the beliefs the ascetic drew on were rooted in
conceptions of a broader and more durable type.

Marston's essay also serves as a useful transition to the
final section,
"The Transnationalism of Cambodian Religion." This is one of
the few
areas that had engaged sustained scholarly attention prior to
the 1990s,
due largely to the relative accessibility of these populations
compared
to Cambodians living in Cambodia (for instance, Ebihara et
al. 1994). Still, these two pieces do not retread old territory.

Kathryn Poethig's contribution on the Dhammayatra describes
the "Dharma
Walks" organized annually by recently deceased monk Maha
Ghosananda, an
event she characterizes as transnational both because of
Ghosananda's
residence in the United States, and because of its
intersection with the
transnational concerns of the Engaged Buddhist movement.

Terri Yamada's article breathes fresh air into the study of
transnational Cambodian Buddhism. She insists on returning an
analysis
of power to rituals of healing, showing that a ritual in Long
Beach,
California, intended to heal a communal rift among Khmer-Americans
there, was also imbricated with the "political aspirations,
politics,
and personal spiritual life" of the person who organized it
(p. 220).

Edited volumes tend to suffer from a tendency toward a
fracturing of
focus and a certain topical heterogeneity, and this volume is no
different. The editors could perhaps have brought about a
greater degree
of focus. However, _History, Buddhism, and New Religious
Movements in
Cambodia_ offers multiple and novel glimpses into Cambodian
religion,
bringing new methods to discussions, and unveiling periods and
intersections that have been characterized as "dark" for too
long. This
collection of essays can be used successfully for courses in
Buddhism in
Southeast Asia.


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[This review was transacted by Mahinda Deegalle, H-Buddhism
Area Editor
for Southeast Asia]

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu