Since the late 13th century, Theravada Buddhism has been a way of life among the Khmer and other lowland peoples of mainland Southeast Asia. To this day, some 85 per cent of the population in Cambodia live in villages whose symbolic centers are still the wats, or temple-monasteries. The wat was not only the moral-religious center
 
of village communities, but served important educational, cultural, and social functions as well. Until very recent times, the temples were the main centers of learning with schools and libraries where the Khmer culture and language was preserved and transmitted from generation to generation. They also served as culturally- and environmentally-sensitive foci for people-centered development that included, indeed featured, social safety nets for the poor, destitute, and needy. Until the recent time of troubles that began with civil war in 1970, it was still common for all men to ordain as monks at least once in their lives, an act most commonly done as rite of passage for young men entering adulthood and society.

               Through the 1960s, the Kingdom of Cambodia was commonly known as a peaceful, Buddhist country. It was tolerant of the other faiths -- Muslim, Chinese, Christian, as well as indigenous peoples -- that constituted approximately 10 per cent of the population. At the Sixth World Council of Theravada Buddhists in Rangoon in 1955-56,  the  Cambodian  Sangha,  or  monastic community,  was  singled  out  for its
 
 
strong adherence to the Vinaya, or Buddhist discipline. But soon thereafter, it became caught in and the victim of the ideological conflicts (the "isms" such as nationalism, whether of "left" or "right," and communism) that swept through the region.