Cambodian Buddhist festivals reveal a long, layered process in which Theravāda Buddhism has been woven into older patterns of spirit veneration, ancestor rites, and agrarian celebration. Rather than displacing pre-Buddhist practices, Buddhist teachings and monastic institutions gradually provided a new language and framework for them. Village calendars tied to rice cycles, royal water rituals, and local cults of territorial spirits were mapped onto Buddhist holy days and narratives, so that what had once been primarily about fertility, protection, or royal power came to be interpreted as occasions for merit-making and devotion. This is why many major observances simultaneously address the Buddha and the Sangha, the dead of one’s lineage, and the unseen beings that inhabit land and water.

Pchum Ben is a particularly clear example of this evolution. At its heart lies an older concern with the restless dead and the need to feed and placate them, now reframed as a Buddhist festival of merit for ancestors and hungry ghosts. Monks chant to transfer merit to departed relatives, while laypeople still perform practices that echo pre-Buddhist fears and hopes, such as night-time offerings in temple grounds and at stupas. The emotional logic of obligation to family and clan persists, even as the cosmology is articulated in Buddhist terms, with folk spirits and canonical pret effectively treated as the same beings inhabiting lower realms.

Other festivals show similar patterns of integration. The Khmer New Year, once closely tied to agricultural and solar cycles, now begins with visits to monasteries, offerings to monks, and ritual washing of Buddha images, yet retains sand stupas, water-play, and the bathing of elders that carry older motifs of fertility and purification. The Water Festival, rooted in river and flood-cycle rites and the veneration of powerful water beings, has been overlaid with Buddhist prayers, blessings, and merit-making, even as boat races and illuminated river processions continue to direct communal energy toward the living presence of the river itself. In all these cases, Buddhist meaning has been added without stripping away the older, more this-worldly concerns.

Within and around temple compounds, the presence of neak ta shrines, the work of ritual specialists and lay experts, and the use of divination, protective magic, and traditional performances further illustrate this syncretic evolution. Local spirits are honored alongside the Buddha, folk healers and achar operate in cooperation with monks, and classical dance and masked drama—heirs to earlier temple and court rites—now unfold under explicitly Buddhist auspices. Over time, state and social forces have reshaped how these festivals are staged and spoken about, yet at the village level they still function as occasions to negotiate relationships with both the Buddhist cosmos and the older world of spirits, ancestors, and the land itself.