Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0067/00679.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 39KB | 612 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00679}
$Pretitle{250}
$Title{Cambodia
Chapter 2D.   Languages and Religions}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert K. Headly, Jr.}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{khmer
monks
cham
cambodia
buddhism
buddhist
cambodian
spirits
life
wats}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Cambodia
Book:        Cambodia, A Country Study
Author:      Robert K. Headly, Jr.
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 2D.   Languages and Religions

Religions

     The majority of Cambodians, even those who are not ethnic Khmer, speak
Khmer, the official language of the country. Ethnic Khmer living in Thailand,
in Vietnam, and in Laos speak dialects of Khmer that are more or less
intelligible to Khmer speakers from Cambodia. Minority languages include
Vietnamese, Cham, several dialects of Chinese, and the languages of the
various hill tribes (see Other Ethnic Groups, this ch.).

Austroasiatic-Mon-Khmer

     Khmer belongs to the Mon-Khmer family of the Austroasiatic phylum of
languages. American linguists David Thomas and Robert Headley have divided the
Mon-Khmer family into nine branches: Pearic in western Cambodia and eastern
Thailand; Khmer in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos; Bahnaric in Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia; Katuic in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; Khmuic in Laos,
Thailand, and China; Monic in Burma and Thailand; Palaungic in Burma, China,
and Thailand; Khasi in Assam (India); and Viet-Muong in Vietnam. Of the
languages in the Mon- Khmer family, Vietnamese has the largest number of
speakers (about 47 million); Khmer, has the next largest (about 8 million).

     Khmer, in contrast to Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, and Chinese, is nontonal.
Native Khmer words may be composed of one or two syllables. Khmer is
uninflected, but it has a rich system of affixes, including infixes, for
derivation. Generally speaking, Khmer has nouns (including pronouns as a
special subcategory), verbs (including stative verbs or adjectives), adverbs,
and various kinds of words called particles (including verbal auxiliaries,
prepositions, conjunctions, final particles, and interjections). Many Khmer
words change, chameleon-like, from one part of speech to another, depending on
the context. The normal word order is subject-verb-object. Adjectival
modifiers follow the nouns they modify.

     Khmer, like its neighbors, Thai, Lao, and Burmese, has borrowed
extensively from other languages, especially the Indic languages of Sanskrit
and Pali. Khmer uses Sanskrit and Pali roots much as English and other West
European languages use Latin and Greek roots to derive new, especially
scientific, words. Khmer has also borrowed terms-- especially financial,
commercial, and cooking terms--from Chinese. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, Khmer borrowed from French as well. These latter borrowings have
been in the realm of material culture, especially the names for items of
modern Western technology, such as buuzii (spark plug) from the French bougie.

     Khmer is written in a script derived from a south Indian alphabet. The
language has symbols for thirty-three consonants, twenty-four dependent
vowels, twelve independent vowels, and several diacritic. Most consonants have
reduced or modified forms, called subscripts, when they occur as the second
member of a consonant cluster. Vowels may be written before, after, over, or
under a consonant symbol.

     Some efforts to standardize Khmer spelling have been attempted, but
inconsistencies persist, and many words have more than one accepted spelling.
A two-volume dictionary prepared under the direction of the Venerable Chuon
Nath of the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh is the standard work on Khmer
lexicography.

     Khmer is divided into three stages--Old Khmer (seventh to twelfth century
A.D.), Middle Khmer (twelfth to seventeenth century A.D.), and Modern Khmer
(seventeenth century to the present). It is likely that Old Khmer was the
language of Chenla. What the language of Funan was, but it was is not at all
certain, probably a Mon-Khmer language. The earliest inscription in Khmer,
found at Angkor Borei in Takev Province south of Phnom Penh, dates from A.D.
611 (see Prehistory and Early Kingdoms, ch 1).

Austronesian

     The Austronesian languages are spread over vast areas of Asia and the
Pacific, from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to Malaysia. Four
Austronesian languages--Cham, Jarai, Rade, and Malay--are spoken in Cambodia.
Cham is spoken by the largest number of people. Before 1975, there were about
100,000 speakers of Western Cham. Western Cham is the term used to distinguish
(at least two mutually related dialects of) the Cham spoken in Cambodia and
that used in adjacent inland Vietnam from Eastern Cham spoken in the coastal
areas of central Vietnam. Western Cham is written in Arabic script, or, since
the late 1960s and the early 1970s, in a romanized script devised by
Protestant missionaries. The traditional Cham script, based on an Indian
script, is still known and used by the Eastern Cham in Vietnam, but it has
been lost by the Western Cham.

     The Cham language is also nontonal. Words may contain one, two, or three
syllables. Cham contains much linguistic borrowing from Arabic, Malay, and
Khmer. The normal word order is subject-verb-object, and, as in Khmer,
modifying adjectives follow the nouns that they modify. Most Cham in Cambodia
are bilingual in Cham and in Khmer and many also know Arabic and Malay. Rade
and Jarai, close relatives of Cham, are spoken by several thousand members of
both ethnic groups in northeastern Cambodia. Both languages are written in
romanized scripts based on the Vietnamese alphabet. Rade and Jarai have rich
oral literatures, and the former has two epic tales that have been transcribed
and published.

Religion and Buddhism

Origins of Buddhism on the Indian Subcontinent

     Theravada Buddhism is the religion of virtually all of the ethnic Khmer,
who constitute about 90 percent or more of the Cambodian population. Buddhism
originated in what are now north India and Nepal during the sixth century B.C.
It was founded by a Sakya prince, Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B.C.; his
traditional dates are 623-543 B.C., also called the Gautama Buddha), who, at
the age of twenty-nine, after witnessing old age, sickness, death, and
meditation, renounced his high status and left his wife and infant son for a
life of asceticism. After years of seeking truth, he is said to have attained
enlightenment while sitting alone under a bo tree. He became the Buddha--"the
enlightened"--and formed an order of monks, the sangha, and later an order of
nuns. He spent the remainder of his life as a wandering preacher, dying at the
age of eighty.

     Buddhism began as a reaction to Hindu doctrines and as an effort to
reform them. Nevertheless, the two faiths share many basic assumptions. Both
view the universe and all life therein as parts of a cycle of eternal flux. In
each religion, the present life of an individual is a phase in an endless
chain of events. Life and death are merely alternate aspects of individual
existence marked by the transition points of birth and death. An individual is
thus continually reborn, perhaps in human form, perhaps in some non-human
form, depending upon his or her actions in the previous life. The endless
cycle of rebirth is known as samsara (wheel of life). Theravada Buddhism is a
tolerant, non prescriptive religion that does not require belief in a supreme
being. Its precepts require that each individual take full responsibility for
his own actions and omissions. Buddhism is based on three concepts: dharma
(the doctrine of the Buddha, his guide to right actions and belief); karma
(the belief that one's life now and in future lives depends upon one's own
deeds and misdeeds and that as an individual one is responsible for, and
rewarded on the basis of, the sum total of one's acts and omissions in all
one's incarnations past and present); and sangha (see Glossary), the ascetic
community