Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice

 

 

 

Author: Ian Harris.
Publisher: Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005
Size: xvi + 352 pages
ISBN: 0-8248-2765-1

Book Review

This extremely impressive work has been reviewed several times. Ashley Thompson’s discussion in Buddhist Studies Review (24, 2 [2007]: 250-56) includes a metaphor for Harris’s work that is worth restating here. In synthesizing a truly massive array of materials, Harris provides “a sort of google-earth view of Buddhism in Cambodia, from the smallest details to the biggest picture.” Indeed, after a preface that surveys available secondary source material, Harris navigates for his readers the histories and practices of Cambodian Buddhism from the earliest Indic arrivals up through the present day. Harris has been praised (and rightly so) for his success in distilling work in French (especially that of François Bizot on esoteric Buddhist trends) and making it accessible to an English speaking audience, as well as for his success in shedding light on the relations between Buddhism and the traumas of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Thompson herself implies that not since Adhémard Leclère’s (Download full article). The book was also translated into Khmer by Nokorwat Publishing with the support of Prof. Ian Harris.

*Courtesy of http://www.buddhistethics.org