Modern Cambodian Buddhism rests upon a deep Angkorian foundation, where Theravāda doctrine has been laid over older Hindu and animist structures without fully displacing them. The Angkorian ideal of the *devarāja*, the god-king, did not simply vanish; it was transformed into the image of the *dhammarāja*, the righteous Buddhist monarch whose merit protects the realm. This sacralization of authority extends into respect for religious leaders and the continued presence of Brahmanical elements in royal and national ceremonies, where Buddhist monks and Brahman specialists may appear side by side. In this way, the spiritual hierarchy of the Angkorian court still echoes through the ritual life of the kingdom.

The sacred landscape itself also bears the imprint of Angkor. Many contemporary wats occupy or echo Angkorian temple sites, preserving orientations, enclosure walls, and the symbolism of the cosmic mountain that once framed Hindu and Mahāyāna shrines. Temple architecture and ritual space continue to reflect Mount Meru and a stratified cosmos, now interpreted through a Theravāda lens. Artistic traditions, such as narrative reliefs and decorative motifs, similarly bridge eras: naga balustrades, for example, remain prominent as protectors of the Buddha and the dhamma, while older images and sacred objects are retained and re-read within a Buddhist worldview.

Equally significant is the way Angkorian religion normalized a syncretic ritual life that still characterizes Cambodian practice. Pre-Buddhist spirit cults, especially the veneration of *neak ta* as guardians of land and community, were never abandoned; they were instead woven into Buddhist observance. Offerings, protective rites, and requests for rain, fertility, and safe harvests are now accompanied by Pāli chanting, yet they preserve an agrarian and cosmological logic that reaches back to Angkorian times. Festivals and ceremonies centered on ancestors, water, and seasonal cycles thus carry a double heritage, Buddhist in form yet Angkorian in their ritual grammar.

This layered inheritance has also shaped the roles of religious specialists and the texture of everyday devotion. Court Brahmans survive in attenuated form within state ritual, while village mediums, healers, and astrologers blend protective magic with Buddhist texts and recitations. Stories and legends associated with Angkor—cosmic histories, Jātaka tales, and narratives of great kings—continue to inform moral teaching and popular imagination, casting the Cambodian landscape as karmically charged and cosmologically ordered. Modern Cambodian Buddhism, therefore, is not merely a doctrinal system but a living synthesis in which Angkorian royal cults, Hindu-Buddhist cosmology, and local spirit beliefs remain quietly but powerfully at work beneath the surface of Theravāda practice.