Tevodas, Rakshasas, and Other Cambodian Lore

By Supriya Savkoor
A couple of months ago, my book club chose to read a novel that I hadn’t yet heard of—In the Shadow of the Banyan, by Cambodian-American author Vaddey Ratner. I’ll admit, I was ambivalent about this choice as I knew it would require some fortitude to read. The novel is set against the backdrop of Cambodia’s darkest hour—the 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge systematically decimated about half of its own people, through torture, starvation, and, most of all, outright murder. And yet I soon discovered this semi-autographical book is extraordinary, as uplifting and hopeful as it is heartbreaking.
As I’ve told everyone I know, this important book has so many complex facets and layers to it that schools and universities should be adding it to their required reading lists. Which subject? Take your pick—history, psychology, sociology, ethics, religion, spirituality, politics, cultural studies, philosophy, literature, even poetry.
And add one more to that list: mythology, which also happens to be the topic of the week here at Novel Adventurers. (Oh, but I would really love to expound on all those other topics!
Ratner’s story led me to a startling discovery—that many aspects of Cambodian civilization were influenced by Hindu myths, legends, and folklore. It’s startling because, while the faith of nearly all Cambodians is Buddhism—a faith that also hails from India, but has morphed into the local cultures and more or less lost its “Indianness”—I could not have conceived of a Southeast Asian culture that's seemingly so different from Indian culture, yet so closely aligned to it. Especially when it comes to ancient Hindu mythology, which is still very much alive in present-day in India and, it seems, in Cambodia as well.
Ratner seamlessly weaves in mythical characters that are often as real as her human ones. She also infuses her story with poetical metaphors such as my favorite, the one about the Reamker. 

A mural that shows a scene from the Reamker.
At the Royal Palace in Phnom Pen, Cambodia. (Photo by hanay)

Hopefully, it’s no spoiler to tell you about the beginning of In the Shadow of the Banyan. We enter the privileged world of our protagonist, seven-year-old Raami, a Cambodian blue blood. Surrounded by her loving family, Raami enjoys all the joy and magic of an innocent childhood. While sitting under a banyan tree (an image evoking the Buddha) in the courtyard of her family’s palatial home, Raami begins rereading her favorite book, the Reamker.
“In time immemorial there existed a kingdom called Ayuthiya. It was as perfect a place as one could find in the Middle Realm. But such a paradise was not without envy. In the Underworld, there existed a parallel kingdom called Langka, a flip-mirror image of Ayuthiya. There, darkness prevailed. Its inhabitants, known as the rakshasas, fed on violence and destruction, grew ever more powerful by the evil and suffering they inflicted.”
I include that passage because, on several levels, it fills me with awe.
The story of the Reamker is surprisingly familiar to me, one that I too had read many times as a child of about Raami's age. It’s the Cambodian version of one of India’s best-known epics, the Ramayana. It's one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts as well as one of its most famous mythological legends, its roots in an ancient India filled with a pantheon of gods and goddesses with inexplicably human desires and weaknesses. 

A view of Angkor Wat, the world's largest
Vishnu temple, in Angkor, Cambodia.

The story of the Reamker/Ramayana is a rather brilliant metaphor for Ratner’s story. As the titles imply, it’s the story of Rama (aka Preah Ream), whom Hindus believe to be a human avatar of the Lord Vishnu. As the story goes, Rama led a happy, privileged life as a prince in the benevolent kingdom of Ayodhya (Ayuthiya). As a young man, he’s banished for reasons out of his control. He spends years in exile, far from home and separated from most everyone he loves. Soon, his wife is abducted by a jealous king from Lanka (modern-day Sri Lanka, called Langka in the Cambodian version). Ram eventually returns home but not before a long, bloody war pits all the forces of good and evil against each other and ends in devastating losses for both sides.
Sound familiar? Yes, it sums up Ratner's telling of the Cambodian genocide, with young Raami a sort of avatar of the noble Ram. Raami’s world is filled with rakshasas in the form of Pol Pot’s vast army of soldiers and tevodas (angels who are possibly counterparts to the mythical devas who battle the devil’s rakshasa minions). Raami’s father is frequently compared to Indra, the powerful god of thunder and lightning, who also happens to be the king of the devas (the good guys).
Likewise, the rest of the novel is steeped in the Hindu mythology I grew up with, albeit with a Cambodian flavor.
Another surprise were references to the old animal fables known as Jataka Tales, similar to Aesop’s Fables, and filled with all kinds of morality lessons. These short stories had titles such as The Monkey King’s Sacrifice, The Mouse Merchant, and The Demon Outwitted. Though they always kind of bored me (a ploy by Indian parents, I believed, to brainwash their naughty kids), I was surprised to learn that the Jataka Tales are well-known stories all over Southeast Asia and are actually stories about the Buddha’s previous births, in both human and animal form.

Po Rome, a Hindu Cham temple
near Phan Rang, Vietnam. (Photo by Irdyb)

All this cross-cultural exchange, it turns out, occurred because, for a few thousand years starting in the first century, Hinduism dominated as both a religion and a culture in Cambodia—and to varying degrees, in modern-day Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia (see my related post here), Java, Bali, Vietnam, and even the Philippines. Hindu kingdoms across this region were later described as “Indianized” kingdoms or states, part of “Greater India” or “Farther India.” India’s influence, however, was entirely cultural, not connected in any way to politics or government. (Historians have called this India's "cultural expansion," even "cultural imperialism.")
Much of Southeast Asia's oldest sacred texts, literature, and philosophy were written in the ancient Indian languages of Sanskrit and Pali; modern-days languages across the region still retain vestiges of these now-archaic ones. As well, some modern Southeast Asian names sound a lot like Indian ones.
For thousands of years, Southeast Asian kings stylized themselves after Indian devarajas, or god-kings (such as Prince Ram). They took on royal, Indian-sounding names, such as Jayavarman VII (Cambodia) and Wikramawardhana (Java), and consulted Brahmin priests from India before making big decisions (such as going to war or relocating a capital). They performed the Hindu ritual ceremony known as a puja. Some even adopted the infamous caste system.
These kings also erected numerous temples and statues—many of which survive today—in honor of Hindu gods and goddesses. Cambodia has preserved one of the world’s only two temples dedicated to Brahma as well as the world’s largest Vishnu temple, Angkor Wat, located in Angkor.
The Hindu kingdoms of Southeast Asia flourished for about a thousand years, before, bit by bit, they began infusing more Buddhist beliefs in with their Hindu ones until, eventually, Buddhism prevailed. But as I learned from Ratner’s amazing novel, remnants of the region’s Hindu past still linger and inspire. (A post-script: I'll be writing a follow-up to this post in 2 weeks, when we cover history. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit Vaddey Ratner's web site, www.vaddeyratner.com, or connect with her on FaceBook. Most importantly, read her book!)