Syncretic religious texts in Cambodia function less as objects of abstract theology and more as living manuals that sustain a shared ritual world. They blend Pali Buddhist formulas with Sanskrit or Khmerized Hindu mantras, and are drawn upon by Brahman priests and senior monks in royal rites, state ceremonies, temple consecrations, house blessings, and village festivals. Within these texts, the Buddha, Hindu deities such as Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahmā, and local spirits appear side by side, not as competing authorities but as participants in a single ritual field. Their authority lies in their capacity to organize ceremonial action and to make sense of the many layers of Cambodia’s religious inheritance.

Alongside these formal rites, syncretic manuals of astrology, divination, and protection play a notable role in everyday religious life. Horoscopes, omen books, and ritual handbooks—often described as traditional or ancient texts—interweave Indian astrological and tantric elements with Theravāda ideas of karma and rebirth. They are consulted to select auspicious dates, avert misfortune, heal illness, and counter malevolent spirits, thereby addressing the practical anxieties of laypeople. In this way, they extend the reach of the monastery and the Brahman priesthood into the intimate decisions of family, livelihood, and health.

Narrative and mythic literature also participates in this synthesis. Retellings of Hindu epics, especially the Cambodian Ramayana tradition, are interwoven with Buddhist cosmology and ethical themes, and they echo in sermons, festivals, and temple art. These stories do not function as canonical scripture in the strict Theravāda sense, yet they shape imagination about kingship, merit, and moral conduct. Through them, Hindu cosmology and deities are quietly reframed within a Buddhist moral universe, so that older Brahmanical motifs continue to resonate without displacing the primacy of Buddhist teaching.

A further dimension of these texts is their role in legitimizing political and social order. Royal liturgies and state ceremonial texts preserve the Brahmanical notion of the king’s sacral status, while simultaneously situating that status within a Buddhist framework of virtue and merit. By ritually linking political authority, prosperity, and cosmic harmony, they help maintain a vision of society in which worldly power is accountable to a higher moral law. At the same time, the integration of local spirits, Hindu deities, and Buddhist figures within a single ritual vocabulary allows both villagers and urban dwellers to move fluidly among different sacred presences, without feeling the need to draw sharp doctrinal boundaries.

Taken together, these syncretic texts show that Cambodian religious life is less concerned with constructing a systematic synthesis of doctrines than with sustaining a flexible, shared ritual language. Their influence remains subordinate to the Theravāda canon in matters of ultimate doctrine, yet they are indispensable in the texture of lived worship. They provide the words, gestures, and stories through which people seek protection, good fortune, ethical orientation, and a sense of connection to the sacred powers that surround and permeate their world.