ISBN10: 0824830326, ISBN13: 9780824830328, [publisher: UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS] Hardcover This ambitious cross-disciplinary study of Buddhist modernism in colonial Cambodia breaks new ground in understanding the history & development of religion & colonialism in Southeast Asia. The book argues for the importance of Theravada Buddhist ethics for imagining & articulating what it means to be modern in early 20th-century Cambodia. The 1920s in Cambodia saw an exuberant burst of new printed writings by self-described Khmer Buddhists on the subject of how to behave (as good Buddhists & moral persons) & how to purify oneself in everyday life in the modern world. This book examines the modernists' questioning of Buddhist values that they deemed most relevant.
[New York, NY, U.S.A.] [Publication Year: 2007]