The Sacred Word: The Influence of Religion on Khmer Literature

The Sacred Word: The Influence of Religion on Khmer Literature
Chapter One: The Two Great Fountains: The Foundational Impact of Hinduism and Buddhism on Khmer Texts To read the classical literature of Cambodia is to read a sacred text. For most of its thousand-year history, the concept of purely secular literature—art for art's sake—did not truly exist. The written word was a powerful and revered tool, and its primary purpose was to explore, explain, and honor the great religious truths that were believed to govern the cosmos and human life. The entire body of classical Khmer literature, from the royal inscriptions of Angkor to the beloved epic poems, springs from two great fountains of spiritual thought, both of which flowed from the Indian subcontinent: Hinduism, or Brahmanism as it was practiced in the court, and Buddhism. These two faiths provided the narratives, the characters, the philosophies, and the moral framework for nearly every story the Khmer people chose to tell. The Brahmanic Foundation: A World of Gods and Epics The first great …