Histories of Cambodia before Democratic Kampuchea (DK, 1975–1979) are sometimes teleologically framed in light of what happened in the 1970s, and any discussion of the country thereafter is thoroughly embedded in the debates over the legacy of DK. Studies of Cambodian Buddhism are no exception; the impact of DK as well as the previous and subsequent regimes are frequently invoked in discussions of material, literary, and ritual dimensions of contemporary Buddhist culture in Cambodia. There is the danger, however, that such invocations of DK's destruction of Buddhism are not supported by verifiable details.
Before Harris's 2007 Buddhism under Pol Pot (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2007), the previous incarnation of the book under review, reliable analysis of the impact of the DK era on Buddhism was scarce. Harris skillfully combines archival research, largely conducted at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, with eighty-seven of his own interviews of monks and other key figures. His scholarship is exemplary in his insistence on corroborating interview data with print and archival sources, for “no interview, however lucid, coherent, and convincing, can stand as evidence in isolation” (p. 9). The result, first witnessed in Buddhism under Pol Pot, is a sober yet eminently humane account of some of the most harrowing years for Buddhism in the twentieth century.
Buddhism in a Dark Age is a revised, and somewhat condensed, version of Buddhism under Pol Pot. The former lacks many of the excellent archival images of the latter, which also includes more significant reflections on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and an informative appendix on Khmer Buddhism in Southern Vietnam. In their place, Harris provides a more coherent thesis to tie some of the disparate parts of the book together. He provides one version of this thesis at the end of the second chapter: “A bricolage of protestanized and rationalistic Buddhist categories, concepts, and practices retained a place in [DK's] ideology and continued to inform its actions” (p. 42). My main criticism of Harris's book is that this thesis is neither as carefully justified nor as satisfactorily woven into the various chapters as one would hope, especially given the judicious historical chronology he presents on the basis of his interviews and archival research.
In the first scene-setting chapter, “Unraveling the Buddhist State,” Harris provides an excellent narrative detailing the political role of Buddhist monks in the two regimes preceding DK, led by Norodom Sihanouk (1955–1970) and Lon Nol (1970–1975), respectively. The key section in this chapter, “Politicizing the Saṅgha” (pp. 18–23), provides riveting details concerning conflicts between monks on either side of the civil war in the early 1970s. We get a glimpse into some of the key intellectuals at the time, including the prolific Khieu Chum, and a sense of how politicians employed Buddhist ideas to serve their own ends. What is missing, however, is a more fine-grained discussion of how and why monks as well as lay Buddhists may have justified communist or republican forms of government during this period of upheaval.
This lacuna is partially filled by the following two chapters, “Buddhism and the Origins of Khmer Communism” and “Buddhism and Khmer Communism: A Shared Conceptual Terrain.” The first of these is short and based largely on secondary sources concerning the Khmer communist leaders before and during DK. Although not explicitly stated until the end of the chapter, Harris seems to be using this chapter to argue that Khmer communist leaders, or at least a faction therein, were strongly influenced by Buddhist ideas. While Harris suggests that this faction was eventually suppressed to the benefit of the more expected communist anti-religious zeal that characterizes most depictions of DK, he nevertheless argues for the continued relevance of Buddhism. The third chapter continues in this vein by arguing that even after the supposed purge of pro-Buddhist elements, DK retained many parallels to Buddhism in its ideology. This chapter is more speculative than the rest, even though it is perhaps the most important to his thesis. Harris takes issue with scholars who argue that Khmer communists were influenced almost exclusively by contemporary Chinese or Vietnamese models. He presents a number of ways in which the leaders of DK developed a distinct ideology that could be traced to indigenous Khmer Buddhist ideas.
The trouble with Chapter 3 is that what constitutes “Buddhism” remains vague. For instance, Harris comments that a 1952 essay by the future Pol Pot evokes “the same Buddhism-tinged thought universe” as other competing Khmer intellectuals (p. 45). What such a “thought universe” would contain is left unsaid. Harris lays out a smorgasbord of Buddhist ideas that have some parallels with communist thought in twentieth-century Southeast Asia, including monastic-like discipline (vinaya), ethical precepts (sīla), just rule under a universal monarch (cakkavattin), renunciation (Khmer: laḥ paṅ’), and even a taboo on the word “I” (anattā). These parallels are certainly thought-provoking, but it is difficult to piece them together into a coherent Buddhist ideology, and Harris fails to show how these categories became “protestanized and rationalistic” in communist hands. His suggestions that the tantric Buddhist idea of the overlord (rājādhirāja) may have influenced Khmer communist thought, along with the notion that DK leaders were trying to create a Mahāyāna-like Pure Land, are especially unconvincing: esoteric traditions in Cambodia do not square with Ronald Davidson's “imperial metaphor” of the rājādhirāja, and Cambodian monastic boundaries (sīmā) are not related to the Pure Land of the Sukhāvatīvyūha sutras (pp. 60–61).
Chapters 4 (“Dealing with Monks”), 5 (“Buddhist Practice and Material Culture under the Khmer Rouge”), and 6 (“Monk Mortality and the Destruction of Institutional Buddhism”) form the core of Harris's book and reflect his most careful research. Each of these chapters seeks to paint an accurate and balanced portrait of the direct effects of the DK era on Buddhist monks, practices, objects, and sites. The fourth chapter confirms a standard view of the Khmer Rouge, vividly describing the brutal ends faced by monks who resisted the Khmer Rouge's attempts to co-opt, convert, enslave, defrock, marry, and conscript them, leaving no doubt about the horrific violence faced by monks and many others under DK. The following two chapters paint a milder picture of DK's treatment of Buddhism than is usually imagined. Chapter 5 details how “Buddhist practice was restricted and finally extinguished by the Khmer Rouge” (p. 117). But Harris is careful to note that this restriction was quite unevenly applied and that the material culture of Buddhism may have suffered less under this period than many have previously suggested. The sixth chapter, a masterful and eminently balanced analysis of the number of monks who perished during DK, continues in the same vein by arguing that the true figure is considerably lower than estimated by the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) government in the 1980s. Both the fifth and sixth chapters take the controversial view that DK's occasional tolerance toward Buddhism might be attributed to the lingering pro-Buddhist factions in the government along with the parallels between Buddhism and Khmer communism highlighted in Chapter 2.
The final substantial chapter, “Aftermath: Rebuilding the Saṅgha under Socialism,” skillfully analyzes the 1980s, one of the most contentious decades for historians of Cambodia. Harris's study of the reemergence of Buddhist institutions under the PRK government brings together individual stories, government policies, and statistics to narrate one of the least-understood eras in twentieth-century Buddhism in Cambodia. My only critique here is that, unlike the rich depictions of Buddhist practice provided in Chapter 5, little attention is given to the development of Buddhism outside the realm of socialist fiats and party-appointed monks. What of the many laymen and laywomen who returned to reconstructing Buddhist institutions, practices, and learning in the 1980s and 1990s? What continuities and discontinuities characterize a Buddhism recreated in the absence of a robust monastic community?
Buddhism in a Dark Age, particularly its excellent inner chapters, will remain the definitive statement on the fate of Buddhism under DK for some time to come. Ian Harris, who sadly passed away just as I began to read his last book, is much missed in the world of Cambodian and Buddhist studies. He was always very encouraging to me as a younger scholar, and I hope that others will follow up on the work Harris pioneered with Buddhism under Pol Pot and Buddhism in a Dark Age.
