Gerard Ravasco
2
Jesus Christ was born in a particular time and place. He spoke a
particular language and mingled in a particular culture. The Bible
speaks about him using a language which communicates that
particular time’s way of living. We know that we can understand
more the message of the Bible when we can understand better the
world of Jesus. We can better understand Him when we understand
the very milieu He lived in.
1.3 Our target location: Cambodia
This brings us to our target location – Cambodia. Cambodia is a
country in Southeast Asia and is also known as “Kampuchea.”
1
This
country lies at the heart of Indochina, bordered by Thailand to the
west, Laos and Thailand to the north and Vietnam to the east. It is a
fascinating place that, despite its tiny size and its large, powerful
neighbors, it has managed to remain uniquely Khmer.
2
Its cultural
traditions predate those of Thailand, and unlike Vietnam, which was
always influenced by China, its dominant influences stem from the
Indian subcontinent.
At least 85 percent of Cambodia’s inhabitants adhere to
Theravada Buddhism, which is the dominant religion in most
Southeast Asian nations. Buddhism arrived in Cambodia during the
first centuries AD. At first Mahayana Buddhism predominated, but
after the 14th century Theravada gradually replaced the older school
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3
as the primary religion. Christianity and Islam are also practiced by a
minority.
3
In a country where a Buddhist philosophy is dominant, how
does one go about introducing his own culture and creed? In the
words of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Council for Culture:
“You must help the Church to respond to these fundamental questions
for the cultures of today: how is the message of the Church accessible
to the old and new cultures, to contemporary forms of understanding
and of sensitivity?”
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1.4 Our Particular Challenge: Cambodian Culture
Our challenge then is the process known as inculturation.
Umoren offers the following definition: “Inculturation refers to the
missiological process in which the Gospel is rooted in a particular
culture and the latter is transformed by its introduction to
Christianity.”
5
People of different places and cultures think differently. Jesus
Christ lived as a Jew – his language, way of thinking and doing is
definitely different from the Cambodian people. If we want the
Cambodians to know Jesus, we have to present him in a language they
can understand and in a manner attuned to their thinking. The
Pontifical Council for Culture asserts:
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For all culture is an effort to ponder the mystery of the world
and in particular of the human person: it is a way of giving
expression to the transcendent dimension of human life. The
heart of every culture is its approach to the greatest mystery: the
mystery of God. The decisive challenge of a pastoral approach
to culture, for a faith that does not become culture is a faith not
fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived.
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1.5 An Invitation to Inculturation
Pope John Paul II in a special Synod which he had with the
Asian Bishops and produced the document Ecclesia in Asia tells us
why knowing the culture of the people we live with (in our case,
Cambodia) is of paramount importance for us:
Culture is the vital space within which the human person comes
face to face with the Gospel. Just as a culture is the result of the
life and activity of a human group, so the persons belonging to
that group are shaped to a large extent by the culture in which
they live. As persons and societies change, so too does the
culture change with them. As a culture is transformed, so too are
persons and societies transformed by it. From this perspective, it
becomes clearer why evangelization and inculturation are
naturally and intimately related to each other. The Gospel and
evangelization are certainly not identical with culture; they are
independent of it. Yet the Kingdom of God comes to people
who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building of the
Kingdom cannot avoid borrowing elements from human
culture.
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Christians in Cambodia should therefore take upon themselves
this challenge of striving to understand their culture, to know the
minds and hearts of those they live with, their values and customs,
their problems and difficulties, their hopes and their dreams. It is only
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when we immerse ourselves in this task of inculturation that the
Khmers will see that the message we bring is one of universal value
that does not take them away from their cultural upbringing but rather
enriches it via a process of transformation. John Paul II further adds:
In the process of encountering the world's different cultures, the
Church not only transmits her truths and values and renews
cultures from within, but she also takes from the various
cultures the positive elements already found in them. This is the
obligatory path for evangelizers in presenting the Christian faith
and making it part of a people's cultural heritage.
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Although this task of inculturation has been part of a Christian’s
pilgrimage throughout history, this challenge becomes all the more
pressing for us here in Asia (and more specifically here in Cambodia)
because of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural situation
and where Christianity is still too often seen as foreign. In fact many
Khmers, especially in the past, called Christianity the “religion of the
enemy,” since many of the Christians here are of Vietnamese origin;
Cambodia was under the Vietnamese regime for many years after the
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was defeated by them.
The task of inculturation is indeed great. But as a Chinese
proverb says: “The journey of a hundred miles begins with the first
step.” Our paper then will try to make these first small steps which
could lead us on to that long journey of sharing our faith with the
Cambodian people.
Gerard Ravasco
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1.6 My Personal Context
I have been walking the roads of Cambodia these past four
years. I am a Catholic priest belonging to the Salesians of Don
Bosco. In our technical schools here in Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville
and Poipet, we help orphaned and poor out-of-school youth learn a
trade they could use in order to find a place in the workforce. The
students are mainly Buddhists. It is in my journeying with them that I
encounter the difficulties of sharing what I hold dear, what I value and
what I believe. This is not just because of the difficulty in expressing
sophisticated ideas in a foreign tongue but also because of our
differences in culture as well as in faith. It is in this context that I
want to journey with you in this research.
1.6.1 My Objectives
I would like to take you on a journey towards inculturation by
working towards a Christian pastoral approach to Cambodian culture.
This can be done if we can trace out the various religious influences
the Cambodian culture has gone through and their extent. And from
the understanding of these influences to the culture, we could create a
practical roadmap towards a true dialogue with the Cambodian
people.
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1.6.2 My Limitations
The many wars that have come and gone in this country have
made theological and religious sources in the English language hard
to come by. This is not only because few have been written, but also
because Cambodia is still struggling past the mortal wounds dealt by a
regime that wiped out its literature and systematically exterminated all
its intellectuals just some twenty-five years ago. This explains the
dearth of literary materials, which along with my location outside of
the reach of academic libraries, limits my research.
1.6.3 My Methodology
Thus in this short paper we shall try to attain my objectives through
these steps:
¾ First I shall present a historical overview of Cambodia
pinpointing out the origins and duration of her religious
influences.
¾ Then I shall describe in detail each of the three pre-Christian
religions having a great influence on Cambodian culture.
¾ After that I shall point out the particular influences of each of
these religions to the Cambodian way of living.
¾ Finally I shall infer some insights on the observations made
focusing on how to present the Christian perspective in a
manner attuned to Cambodian thinking.
Gerard Ravasco
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Chapter 2
2.0 Religious Influences in Early Cambodian History
In this chapter, we shall go through Cambodia’s early history
and see how different religions came and influenced its culture. For
the purpose of our study, the historical survey we shall undertake will
focus on the formative period prior to the 16
th
century AD. From this
period on, other religions will arrive including Christianity, but with a
reduced impact on Cambodian present life styles, and a simple
historical overview will suffice. But from this century however, we
shall also include a short overview of the history of Christianity to see
some trends of how it developed until the present.
2.1 The Beginnings of a People
Around 4200 BC, men were already living in the south of the
Indochinese peninsula. They were a people of brown skin, of
Melanesian type, close relatives of the aborigines living in the islands
of the warm waters of Indonesia and Malaysia. Some of their tools
dating from the neolithic period have been found around these areas.
Living in the forest, these men built cabins in the trees, a habit
that their descendants transformed into building their houses on piles.
Their principal food was fish but they already cultivated rice, and for
this work had domesticated oxen and buffalo. They were relatively
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9
well adapted to this malaria-infested forest, thanks to the presence in
their blood of hemoglobin “E” which partially immunized them
against this fever.
Ponchaud best describes their belief:
These remote ancestors of Khmer people seemed to have
already honored the dead souls. They worshiped the spirits of
earth and water, the “Neak Ta”, “the Ancient People”, according
to popular etymology. These spirits of the dead, or mythic
founders of their villages were the true masters of the soil. They
assured protection of the villages, the health of the people,
regular rains, therefore, it was proper to offer them fruit, food
and alcohol. To forget them or to offend them made one sick or
exposed one to accidents. The cobra was represented with three
or seven heads; this “Naga” symbolized all divine forces, both
beneficial and deadly, and it was essential to agree with it.
1
2.2 Early Cambodian Kingdoms
By AD 400, the first Southeast Asian kingdoms appeared.
Increased rice production freed some people to engage in other work,
such as elaborate boat building, house decoration, bronze manufacture
and making arrangements for feasting. Others were freed to be
soldiers, and a few became priests and rulers. These men soon
became the most honored people in society. Often they demonstrated
their power by the size of their followings and the amount of their
wealth.
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In Cambodia, the present Khmers claimed that they were
descended from the Neak Ta (ancestral spirits) who had been the first
settlers in a given region. The ancestors, in turn, were seen as
responsible for a community’s well-being, expressed in terms of
agricultural production, peace, and good health. In short they were
animists.
Seanglim Bit comments on this:
Folk religious beliefs in spirit worship and the supernatural
existed in Cambodia long before the Hindu influences. An array
of guardian spirits (both benign and malevolent) called “Neak
Ta” inhabited the mountains, rice paddies, trees, etc. of the
physical environment. Others were ancestral spirits, and still
others are composites of mythological heroes from legends…
The cults combined astrology, magic, animism, sorcery,
talismanism, etc. in attempts to tap the spirit world for its
magical powers to provide the protection urgently sought by
believers to ward off evil. Spirit worship has centuries-old roots
in Cambodia….
2
Those Khmers who claimed high status demonstrated it by
sponsoring feasts and by displaying their accumulated wealth which
in the case of chieftains often included several wives, married to form
alliances between families from different villages. There is no
evidence, however, that these societies were literate or that they drew
their inspiration from abroad.
It was at this stage ( around 1
st
-6
th
century AD) that Indian
traders and missionaries little by little began to appear on the
Southeast Asian mainland in search of spices, tropical birds, ivory,
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and other forest products. Another important export from Southeast
Asia at this time was gold and precious stones. From the earliest
times, this Mekong region was known in India as Suvarnabhumi (The
Golden Land). Unfortunately, written records of these early visits
have not survived.
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2.3 Funan
The coastline of what is now southern Vietnam, then inhabited
by Khmer, made an ideal stopping place, where traders turned the
corner of Southeast Asia as they plied between the Roman Empire,
India, and China, hugging the coasts where possible. Because of the
monsoons, the Indian ships that reached Southeast Asia often had to
stay for several months, waiting for the prevailing winds to change. It
is likely that during these layovers, local chieftains became interested
in certain Indian practices, such as those that measured the solar year
and others that set priests and chieftains above and apart from the rest
of society by means of a system of ranks, or castes. Chiefs were also
interested in technology useful for the royal displays of grandeur that
was made possible by gold working and silk weaving. From hence
started India’s influence over the Khmer kingdoms, especially
through the Brahman traditions.
In fact the very legend of Cambodia’s origin as told by Chandler
proves this early influence:
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… an Indian priest named Kaundinya, armed with a magical
bow, appeared one day off the shore of Cambodia. The dragon
princess in a dugout, paddled to meet him. The priest shot an
arrow in her boat and frightened her into marrying him. Her
father, the dragon king, enlarged the possessions of his son-in-
law by drinking up the water that covered the country. He later
built them a capital, and changed the name of the country to
Cambodia.
4
The dragon’s action may be a reference to the drainage canals that
were built in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam perhaps in the
second century AD and are still visible from the air.
Chinese visitors in the third century AD first reported this
legend but called the coastal kingdom “Funan.” Funan sent tributary
gifts to China between AD 250 and 519, but there is no archaeological
evidence of such a powerful, centralized kingdom anywhere in the
region at this time. Probably Funan was a loose federation of coastal
settlements, with several local chieftains, allied with inland groups of
villages, who may have called themselves “kings” when writing to the
Chinese court. Chandler documents a Chinese visitor in the fourth
century AD who reported that:
The king’s dwelling has a double terrace on it. Palisades take
the place of walls in fortified places. The houses are covered
with leaves of a plant which grows on the edge of the sea.
These leaves are six to seven feet long, and take the form of a
fish. The king rides mounted on an elephant. His subjects are
ugly and black; their hair is frizzy; they wear neither clothing
nor shoes. For living, they cultivate the soil; they sow one year,
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