Penelope Edwards, Assistant Professor, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
| DATE: | Wednesday, February 20, 2008 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM |
| PLACE: | IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor |
| FORMAT: | IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on East Asia |
| SPONSORS: | Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies |
From the 1910s to the 1940s, two gifted monks oversaw the emergence of a particular form of Buddhism as Cambodia’s sasana jiet [national religion]. Working from within the chief Mahanikay temple in Phnom Penh, Chuon Nath and Huot Tath sought to purify Buddhism of “corrupt” and “superstitious” elements and to promulgate Buddhist teachings through print media. Their movement was known variously as the Dhamma Tmae [New Dhamma], and the Mahanikay Tmae [new Mahanikay]. In the 1960s and 1970s, each would serve as Supreme Patriarch of the Mahanikay Order. Few could have predicted this outcome from their positions of isolation within the Mahanikay in the 1910s.
Critical in steering their transition from the margins to the mainstream was Suzanne Karpelès, who served from 1922-1941 with the Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient [EFEO] in Phnom Penh, where she became the founding director of the Buddhist Institute. Focusing on the encounters between these three figures, this talk explores the cultural and political repercussions of colonial attempts to engage Buddhism in Cambodge, and considers how the “new Mahanikay” contributed to the ascendance of a new superstition: that of the Khmer nation.
Program followed by reception and book-signing.
