Hinduism in Cambodia

Hinduism is a minority religion in Cambodia which is followed by nearly 1,000 individuals. Even being a small minority in the Buddhist majority nation it highly influences the vast culture and history of Cambodia with being prominent religion under the Khmer Empire. Today most of the Cambodian Hindus are Indians in Cambodia.

Quotes

• In seventh century Cambodia, Khmer citations attested to the popularity of the Ramayana. An inscription declared that a certain Somasharman presented “the Ramayana, the Purana, and the complete Bharata” to a temple.
  • Rama and Ayodhya by Meenakshi Jain (2013)

• "The culture of India has been one of the world's most powerful civilizing forces. Countries of the Far East, including China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia owe much of what is best in their own culture to the inspiration of ideas imported from India. The West, too has its own debts. But the members of that circle of civilizations beyond Burma scattered around the Gulf of Siam and the Java Sea, virtually owe their very existence to the creative influences of Indian ideas. No conquest or invasion, no forced conversion imposed upon them. They were adopted because the people saw they were good and that they could use them."
  • Rawson, Philip The Art ofSoutheast Asia p. 1 - 77.

• "The sculptures of Indian icons produced in Cambodia during the 6th to the 8th centuries A.D. are masterpieces, monumental, subtle, highly sophisticated, mature in style and unrivalled for sheer beauty .... "
  • Rawson, Philip The Art ofSoutheast Asia p. 1 - 77.

• "One of the most interesting pieces of all is a fragmentary bronze bust, from the western Mebon, of the God Vishnu lying asleep on the ocean of non-being. Head and shoulders and the two right arms survive. It shows the extraordinary, delicate integrity and subtle total convexity of surface, which these sculptors could achieve by modeling. Eyebrows, moustache and eyes seem to have been inlaid, perhaps with gold, silver or precious tone, though the inlay is gone and only the sockets remain. This was one of the world's great sculptures."
  • Rawson, Philip The Art ofSoutheast Asia p. 1 - 77.

• "Another magnificent bronze of Shiva, from Por Loboeuk, suggests the wealth of metal art that once must have existed III Cambodia (Kamboja) at the height of its power."
  • Rawson, Philip The Art ofSoutheast Asia p. 1 - 77.

• "The genius of the artists of that age was for re lief. Indeed one might say that Angkor Wat is a repertory of some of the most magnificent relief art that the world has ever seen. The open colonnaded gallery on the first storey contains over a mile of such works, six feet high. The main sources for the relief subject matter are the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as legends of Vishnu and his incarnation Krishna. The wars of classical legend, in which incarnations of the various persons of the Hindu deity triumph at length over demonic adversaries. The artists' skill is everywhere apparent."
  • Rawson, Philip The Art ofSoutheast Asia p. 1 - 77.