By Smitha Bharti
In the lush borderlands between Thailand and Cambodia, an ancient temple has become the focal point of a 21st-century standoff. Preah Vihear, a majestic 900-year-old Hindu shrine perched atop a cliff in the Dângrêk Mountains, has witnessed not only centuries of tropical sunrises but also gunfire and diplomacy in equal measure. In recent months, long-simmering tensions over this temple and nearby ruins have escalated into military clashes, a stark reminder that history is never truly bygone in Southeast Asia’s geopolitics. As troops face off over crumbling sandstone sanctuaries, the conflict’s roots reach deep into the region’s shared past. It is a dispute born of colonial-era maps and nationalist fervour, yet underpinned by the grand legacy of the Khmer Empire and the cross-cultural imprint of Hinduism and Buddhism. This is a story spanning a millennium, from the medieval glory of Angkor Wat to the modern-day crossfire on the border, illustrating how ancient heritage, religion, and national identity intersect in Thailand and Cambodia’s ongoing temple feud.
Origins of a Modern Temple Conflict
Preah Vihear Temple, known as Prasat Preah Vihear in Khmer, has been a lightning rod in Thai-Cambodian relations since the two nations gained independence from colonial rule. The crux of the dispute lies in competing territorial claims around the temple compound. In the 1950s, as French colonial forces withdrew from Cambodia, Thai troops moved in to occupy Preah Vihear, arguing that the watershed ridge-line formed the rightful border. Cambodia protested, pointing to French colonial maps from 1907 that clearly placed the temple on Cambodian soil. The matter went to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in 1962 awarded Preah Vihear to Cambodia by a 9–3 decision, reasoning that Thailand had “acquiesced” to the French-drawn map for decades. Thailand grudgingly withdrew its soldiers and handed over the temple, but notably did not renounce claims to adjacent land, maintaining that the boundary in the area was never fully demarcated. This ambiguity, a few square kilometers of scrubland next to the temple, set the stage for future flare-ups. Tensions over Preah Vihear lay mostly dormant during the Cold War, when Cambodia was mired in civil strife, but reignited in the early 2000s. In July 2008, Cambodia’s successful bid to list Preah Vihear as a UNESCO World Heritage Site touched off a nationalist uproar in Thailand. Thai ultra-nationalist groups seized on the issue, accusing their government of effectively ceding territory by supporting Cambodia’s UNESCO application. The temple became a cause célèbre for the Thai opposition, which rallied public sentiment with claims of lost sovereignty. Troops from both countries rushed to the border, and sporadic firefights broke out that year and again in 2009–2011. These skirmishes, involving infantry, artillery, and even rockets, turned the temple’s vicinity into a conflict zone, sending villagers fleeing and damaging ancient stonework. By the time a ceasefire was reached in late 2011, around 20 soldiers and several civilians had been killed in the clashes. The UNESCO listing and the ensuing standoff also intertwined with domestic politics. In Bangkok, the Preah Vihear issue helped topple a government, as nationalist protesters argued Thai leaders had betrayed the country. In Phnom Penh, the temple’s inscription on the World Heritage list was celebrated as a national triumph, televised concerts and fireworks marked the occasion, bolstering the Cambodian government’s popularity ahead of elections. The temple thus became a potent symbol on both sides, of pride and heritage for Cambodians, and of sovereignty and patriotism for Thais. Legal efforts to resolve the impasse continued. In 2013, the ICJ reaffirmed its 1962 judgment, clarifying that Cambodia holds sovereignty not just over the temple, but the entire promontory on which it sits, and ordering Thai security forces to withdraw from that area. While both governments pledged to respect this ruling, on-the-ground demarcation proceeded slowly. For a time, the crisis cooled; joint border committees negotiated and soldiers eyed each other warily from a distance. Yet “unfinished business” remained in the public imagination, easily reignited by political events or nationalist rhetoric. Indeed, in 2025 the smouldering dispute flared anew. A series of incidents, from a spat over tourists singing anthems at a smaller border shrine to an exchange of gunfire that killed a Cambodian soldier in May, escalated tensions once more. In July 2025, a Thai ranger’s foot was blown off by a landmine near the frontier, and within a day full-scale fighting had broken out. Both sides traded fire and blamed each other; Thailand even deployed F-16 fighter jets in strikes along the border. As of this writing, emergency negotiations have yielded a ceasefire. The recurring clashes over Preah Vihear underscore how fragile the peace remains when national honour and historical grievances converge. To understand why a centuries-old ruin commands such fervour, one must look back to the medieval empire that built it, and to the deep cultural currents that still ripple under the political surface.
The Khmer Empire and the Temple Heritage
Long before modern nation-states drew lines through the jungles, the Khmer Empire united much of today’s Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and beyond into a classical Southeast Asian civilisation. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, the Khmers ruled from their capitals at Angkor, crafting an elaborate culture steeped in Hindu and Buddhist theology. The dispute over Preah Vihear is, in essence, a dispute over the legacy of Angkor, for the temple was one of many built by the Khmer kings as they extended their realm. Preah Vihear’s construction spanned generations, initial foundations laid in the 9th century under King Yasovarman I, major expansions by King Suryavarman I around the 11th century, and additions by Suryavarman II in the 12th century. Clinging to a cliff edge overlooking the Cambodian plains, the temple was dedicated to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration, and designed as a symbolic recreation of Mt. Meru, the sacred mountain of Hindu cosmology. Its long processional stairways and intricately carved gopura gateways lead pilgrims upward, southward, toward heaven, as it were, in a unique orientation (most Angkorian temples face east, but Preah Vihear faces north toward now-Thai territory). Angkorian temples like Preah Vihear and the more famous Angkor Wat were far more than stone monuments; they were political and spiritual centers that anchored Khmer imperial authority. At its zenith in the 12th century, the Khmer Empire was building Angkor Wat, a sprawling temple-city near the Great Lake (Tonlé Sap) that remains the largest religious structure on earth. Angkor Wat, originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and intended as both state temple and mausoleum for King Suryavarman II, epitomised the empire’s grandeur. Its construction required an immense mobilisation of resources, by one estimate, perhaps 300,000 workers including architects, artisans, masons, and slaves laboured on the project. Inscriptions reveal that thousands of support staff, priests, dancers, gardeners, and cooks, were assigned to maintain the temple, with tens of thousands of farmers in surrounding villages growing rice and supplying food as a form of devotion and taxation. The Khmer king was venerated as a devaraja (god-king), often identified with Shiva or Vishnu, and these massive temple complexes were the stage upon which divine kingship was enacted. In basreliefs on Angkor Wat’s walls, the king is depicted in epic pomp, riding an elephant under parasols, surrounded by courtiers and celestial maidens, presiding like a living god over his domain. The Khmer Empire’s territory was not static, it expanded and contracted over the centuries, but at various times it encompassed large swathes of what is now Thailand. Khmer rulers established outposts and temple sites westward, and influences flowed both ways as new powers arose. By the 13th century, the tide was turning. Upland Tai peoples, ancestors of today’s Thais, who had migrated into the region, formed their own kingdoms and gradually eroded Khmer hegemony. The Ayutthaya Kingdom of Siam (Thailand), founded in 1351, became a formidable rival to Angkor. Siamese chronicles and Chinese visitors record that Ayutthayan armies besieged Angkor multiple times. In 1352–53, King U-Thong of Ayutthaya invaded and briefly installed a Thai prince on the Angkor throne. Later in 1431, after years of conflict and decline, Angkor succumbed again, the Khmer king abandoned the ancient capital as indefensible against the Siamese onslaught, retreating southward to establish a new seat of power near Phnom Penh. This marked the effective end of Angkor as the imperial capital. The once-mighty temple city, its moats and towers swallowed by strangler figs and the encroaching forest, was left to the monks and local villagers, and even briefly a small colony of Japanese pilgrims in the 17th century. The decline of the Khmer Empire had many causes. Historians point to incessant dynastic infighting, vassal rebellions, foreign invasions, ecological strain, and possibly even the Black Death pandemic, as reasons why Angkor’s civilisation faltered by the 14th–15th centuries. Crucially, a profound religious and social transformation was underway as well, the very underpinnings of god-king rule were shifting, owing to the rise of a new faith among the Khmer people. That faith was Theravada Buddhism, carried into the region by monks and merchants from Sri Lanka and other parts of the MonKhmer world, and it would dramatically reshape both Cambodia and Thailand in the late medieval period.
Indian Influence: Hinduism’s Footprint in Early Southeast Asia
To grasp how Hindu temples came to be built in Thailand and Cambodia in the first place, one must consider the Indianisation of Southeast Asia. Long before the Khmer Empire, Indian civilisation had radiated across the Bay of Bengal through trade, travel, and the spread of ideas. By the first centuries CE, port cities in the region were in contact with the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of the Indian subcontinent. Indian merchants and Brahmin priests began arriving in what Chinese records called Funan, the earliest known Khmer polity, centered in the Mekong Delta, as early as the 1st– 5th centuries CE. They brought with them Sanskrit language, Vedic religious concepts, new political models, and art and architecture styles. Over time, local elites eagerly blended these Indian influences with indigenous traditions, a process scholars term Indianisation. The allure of India’s prosperous civilisation was strong, its philosophies and religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) offered a sophisticated cosmology and statecraft that early Southeast Asian rulers found useful for legitimising power. According to legend, the kingdom of Funan itself was born from an Indian adventurer’s arrival, an Indian Brahmin prince Kaundinya is said to have sailed to the Mekong, married a local Naga (serpent) princess named Soma, and founded a dynasty, a tale symbolising the union of Indian and native cultures. Whether or not this tale is literally true, it reflects a broader reality. By the mid-1st millennium, Hinduism was taking root among the region’s elites. Funan and its successor state Chenla adopted the trappings of Indian royalty, including Sanskrit royal names and the concept of the chakravartin (universal ruler) or devaraja. Priests also known as purohitas, performed Hindu rituals at court, and Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata were integrated into local folklore. In fact, the very name Kambuja, whence “Cambodia”, is derived from Sanskrit, hinting at a claimed Indian lineage, the legend of a sage Kambu and Princess Mera is another origin myth for the Khmer people. Throughout Southeast Asia, kingdoms styled themselves as moral replicas of Indian polities, even as they indigenised those imports over generations. Economically, maritime trade was the engine driving this cultural exchange. As Indian traders plied the waters to import spices, gold, and exotic goods, they also established diasporic communities in port cities. Over time, local rulers found it advantageous to welcome Indian advisors to boost administration and commerce. With Indian trade came Indian faiths, Shaivism and Vaishnavism (worship of Shiva and Vishnu) spread along the trade routes, followed by Buddhist missions as well. By the time Jayavarman II proclaimed the foundation of the unified Khmer Empire in 802 CE, Hinduism was firmly entrenched as the state religion. Jayavarman II famously declared himself devaraja in a Hindu ceremony atop Mount Kulen, likely conducted by a Brahmin priest from Java or India. Sanskrit became the sacred and administrative language of Angkor’s courts, running parallel to Old Khmer for local usage. The Khmer rulers, like their contemporaries in Java or Champa, central Vietnam, patronised the construction of magnificent temples that echoed the styles of Indian sacred architecture, yet developed distinct local characteristics. Angkor Wat’s layout is essentially a mandala and a microcosm of the Hindu universe, with its five towers representing the peaks of Mount Meru. At the same time, its aesthetic, lotus-bud tower shapes, the sheer scale of its moated enclosure, was a Khmer innovation that left Indian temples far behind in size . Politically, Hinduism underpinned the god-king ideology that made vast Angkor possible. The king was seen as an incarnation or vassal of the gods, and the social hierarchy mirrored a caste-like stratification inspired by Indian notions. The Khmer adopted a modified caste system, dividing society into hereditary categories such as Brahmins or priests, Kshatriyas or the warrior-aristocrats, and so on, albeit less rigid than in India. This helped stabilise rule by sacralising the social order, an Indian formula applied to local conditions. Additionally, Indian influence brought new skills in art, astronomy, law, and literacy. Khmer inscriptions in Sanskrit praised kings and recorded donations to the gods, indicating a literate court culture linked to pan-Indian scholarship. It is telling that even in today’s Thailand and Cambodia, many royal and religious terms are derived from Sanskrit or its sister liturgical language, Pali (used in Buddhism). The Thai and Khmer words for king (raja) and numerous place names, e.g., Siem Reap – from Yasodharapura, an Angkorian capital, have Sanskrit roots, reflecting this ancient cultural overlay. The Indian footprint in Southeast Asia was thus deep and enduring. It was not a one-way imposition but a creative adoption,“Indianisation” did not erase local customs but blended with them. By the 12th century, the Khmer Empire’s Hindu-Buddhist culture was uniquely its own, yet still recognisably part of what historians call the Indosphere. It even engaged diplomatically with Indian powers, one Khmer king sent tribute to the Chola Empire of Tamil South India, forging an alliance against common enemies. Reliefs at Angkor Wat depicting scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata show how intimately the Khmer had made Indian epics their own, carving them on temple walls as sacred history. In neighbouring Siam, too, the foundational myth of the Thai state, recounted in the Trai Phum cosmology, and the Thai adaptation of the Ramayana (Ramakien) betray the same heritage. So when modern Thais and Cambodians gaze upon a Hindu temple like Preah Vihear or the towers of Angkor, they are looking at the shared civilisational wellspring from which both nations drew, even as they contest who are the true heirs to that legacy.
The Rise of Theravada
If Hinduism provided the cosmology for early Southeast Asian kingdoms, it was Buddhism, specifically Theravada Buddhism, that eventually won the hearts of the masses and became the dominant religion in both Cambodia and Thailand. The transition was dramatic, amounting to a peaceful social revolution. By the 13th century, Theravada Buddhism had begun to displace Hinduism as the state religion in the Khmer realm, a shift that coincided with Angkor’s political decline. This new form of Buddhism, with an emphasis on the Pali canon and monastic community, arrived via missionaries from Sri Lanka and perhaps through contact with the thriving Mon Buddhist traditions of present-day Thailand and Myanmar. Khmer King Jayavarman VII, late 12th century, had earlier embraced Mahayana Buddhism, building temples like the Bayon adorned with Buddha images, but after his reign the Theravada school steadily gained ground. By the early 14th century, every Khmer king’s inscription in Sanskrit had ceased, the last known one is dated 1327, and thereafter royal inscriptions were in local language, reflecting the waning of Hindu court ritual . The devaraja cult faded, kings no longer saw themselves as incarnate Hindu gods, but rather as pious Buddhists. Enormous statetemples were no longer built; instead, Buddhist monasteries (wats) and simpler shrine halls proliferated in towns and villages. This religious transformation had profound socio-political consequences. Historians have theorised that Theravada Buddhism’s egalitarian ethos undercut the hierarchy of the old Hindu order, contributing to Angkor’s decentralisation . The new faith taught that salvation was attainable to all through merit and meditation, not reserved for those supporting a divine king. As one scholar described it, the mass adoption of Theravada was a “nonviolent revolution” that touched every level of society. Buddhist monks preaching in the vernacular reached parts of the populace that the Sanskritchanting Brahmins never could. Common farmers and villagers became active participants in the religious life, donating to local temples and sometimes even ordaining as monks for part of their lives. Education and literacy, once confined largely to priestly or royal scribes, spread via monastic schools, to the point where later European observers were surprised to find higher literacy in the Buddhist countries of Siam, Cambodia, and Laos than in many parts of Europe. In short, Theravada Buddhism “went grassroots”, eroding the prestige of the extravagant Hindu priesthood and introducing a new social paradigm focused on the community of monks and laity. The embrace of Buddhism did not happen overnight, nor by outright force; it was a gradual, voluntary conversion over several generations. Even as late as the 14th century, traces of earlier religion persisted, a Mahayana Buddhist image appears on a Khmer stele from that era, suggesting some hybrid practices lingered. But by the 15th century, Theravada Buddhism was firmly the de facto faith in Cambodia as well as in the ascendant Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya. One Cambodian chronicle likened the change to finding a “modest, peaceful faith” after the tumult of the old regime. The new Buddhist kings still patronised religion, but in a different mold, as lay sponsors of the Sangha (monkhood), rather than objects of worship themselves. They took on titles like “Protector of the Religion” instead of claiming godhood. Notably, the magnificent Angkor Wat was not abandoned; it was gradually converted from a Hindu temple into a Theravada Buddhist shrine, a role it fulfills to this day. The countless carvings of Vishnu and Shiva at Angkor were joined by new Buddha statues, and Hindu ceremonies gave way to Buddhist prayer, a poignant illustration of continuity amid change. By the time European colonisers arrived in the 19th century, both Siam (Thailand) and Cambodia were overwhelmingly Theravada Buddhist societies, even as they retained some vestigial Hindu elements in royal court rituals; the use of Brahmin astrologers, or the annual ploughing ceremony for instance. The shared religious shift further blurred the cultural distinctions between the two peoples, a Thai monk and a Khmer monk follow the same Vinaya and read the same Pali scriptures. Yet, historical memory of past slights and wars, such as the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya, continued to colour relations. In modern times, the irony is often noted that Thais and Cambodians, fellow Buddhists, are fighting over an old Hindu temple, originally built by their mutual ancestors during an epoch when Indian gods ruled the region.
Heritage and Historical Identity in the Present Conflict
From this long view, the dispute over Preah Vihear and other border temples is more than just a quarrel over a few meters of land, it is a clash of historical narratives and identities. For Cambodia, heir to the Angkorian heartland, these monuments affirm a glorious past as a regional powerhouse. Angkor Wat itself adorns the Cambodian flag, a national emblem of continuity and pride. Preah Vihear, though smaller, taps into the same wellspring of Khmer pride; Cambodia fought hard diplomatically to secure its recognition as World Heritage, implicitly reasserting ownership of the Angkor legacy. For Thailand, which was never colonised by a Western power, history takes on a different nuance; Thai nationalist historiography sometimes paints the Thai kingdom as the liberator of peoples from Angkor’s domination, pointing to 1431 as a moment of Thai triumph. In the early 20th century, when Siam ceded Angkor and surrounding provinces to French Cambodia, it left a sting that still surfaces in school textbooks and political rhetoric. Thus, to some Thai nationalists, claiming Preah Vihear is a proxy for asserting that Thailand too is a rightful inheritor of the KhmerIndian civilisation that once sprawled across the region. After all, dozens of Khmer-style temple ruins dot Thailand’s northeast, reminders that the boundary between Thai and Khmer was once fluid. Yet, history also offers points of reconciliation. Both countries celebrate the Angkorian civilisation in their scholarship and tourism, and both acknowledge profound cultural overlap. In recent years, Thailand and Cambodia have cooperated in joint heritage management; working together on restoration efforts at Angkor and training Cambodian conservators in Thai institutions. Officially, Thai leaders have stated they respect the ICJ verdicts on Preah Vihear, and the two sides have often used ASEAN forums to de-escalate tensions. The current clashes, many observers note, are fuelled less by genuine territorial hunger and more by domestic political calculations and nationalism. In quieter times, pilgrims and tourists from both countries have been allowed to visit Preah Vihear, Thais would climb up from the Thai side, Cambodians from theirs, to marvel at the same sunset over the Dangrêk range. Such scenes underscore the temple’s potential to be a shared heritage site symbolising friendship, rather than a barricaded bastion. As of mid-2025, with fresh blood spilled on the border, that hopeful vision seems distant. But history’s long arc in Southeast Asia shows that identities have continually intertwined. Hinduism and Buddhism, India and Indochina, Khmer and Siamese, over centuries these were not fixed binaries but part of a blended cultural ecosystem. The very fact that Thailand and Cambodia now largely share a religion and much of their vocabulary and customs is testament to those deep historical bonds. In the end, the fate of an ancient temple like Preah Vihear will not be decided solely by treaties or troops. It will hinge on whether Thais and Cambodians choose to embrace the narrative of common civilisational inheritance or persist in viewing each other through the narrow lens of 20th-century nationalism. The stones of Preah Vihear have no voice, but if they did, they might tell their besiegers that empires rise and fall, gods change guises, and borders shift, yet culture and faith flow on, oblivious to the lines on a map. In this way, the clash over temples on the border is really a struggle over history itself, whether it will divide or unite. The hope is that a greater awareness of the shared history, the epic of Angkor, the spread of holy Sanskrit syllables and Pali chants across the land, can light the path to a peaceful resolution, turning a flashpoint back into what it once was, a sacred sanctuary above the fray of mortal politics.