A new discovery by a Cambodian scientist may prove that Buddhism was practiced by the ancient Khmers far earlier than their neighbors, shattering the conventional picture of Southeast Asian religious history.
Dr Michel Tranet, an archaeologist and undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Culture, has translated an inscription of Buddhist verses and devotionals in the Khmer and Pali languages on a stele—a large, inscribed stone tablet—thought to date from the eighth century.
“This is a very big accomplishment for Khmer culture,” Tranet said last week. “It can change the face of Khmer history.”
Historians currently believe that the Khmers mostly worshipped animist and Hindu deities until Thai and Burmese missionaries brought Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Tranet’s stele says otherwise. Measuring 1.77 meters by 0.40 meters, the stone comes from what is today Thailand’s Prachinburi province, northeast of Bangkok. It was discovered more than 25 years ago and dated to the eighth century by Thai researchers but never translated because they could not read ancient Khmer, Tranet claims.
The Thais dated the stone to the year 683 of the Saka era, which is about 761 AD, Tranet says. The earliest Pali writing of the ancient Thais dates to 1361 AD, or 600 years later, he says.
Tranet came upon the stone by chance, he says. Prachinburi’s Wat Moha Po is a famous Buddhist site because it houses imprints thought to be footprints of Buddha. Making a pilgrimage to the site last year, Tranet, who can read Pali and ancient Khmer, noticed the large stele in the pagoda’s museum.
The stele’s 27 lines of text—14 in Khmer, 13 in Pali—are written in the Pallawa script style that was characteristic of southern India and Sri Lanka, Tranet says. The Pali portion recounts the traditional extracanonical Buddhist verses of the Telakatagatha, the Tale of the Cauldron of Oil, Tranet says.
“This is evidence that Pali came to Cambodia directly from Sri Lanka before the Thais from South China brought it,” Tranet says.
The inscription indicates that it was written by a monk named Pudhsiri, who dedicated the stone to the Three Gems of the Buddhist faith—Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
“This is proof of the presence of Theravada Buddhism in the Khmer kingdom. It proves a direct relationship between Sri Lanka and the ancient Khmers,” Tranet says.
Other clues of Buddhism in the early Khmer empire have been found before, he says, but none so definitive. For example, the seventh century statues of Angkor Borei, in Takeo province, are in the Mahayana Buddhist style.
“But we need text to prove it,” Tranet says. “Now we have textual evidence showing Buddhism was practiced by the early Khmers.”
Tranet has so far published only the first part of his analysis of the stele, covering the Pali portion of the text, in the most recent issue of the Khmer-language quarterly journal Kampuchea Sorya (Sunshine Cambodia) published by the Buddhist Institute.
“The Khmer portion is also about Buddhism,” he says. “I will talk about it soon.”
