15 Facts About Chuon Nath

Chuon Nath was a Cambodian monk and the late Gana Mahanikaya Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia.

Chuon Nath's ashes were interred at Wat Ounalom in Phnom Penh.

At the age of 12, Chuon Nath was brought to the temple to learn, as was typical for Khmer boys at the time.

Chuon Nath became a novice monk in 1897 and was fully ordained in 1904 at the age of 21.

In 1913, Chuon Nath sat the Pali exam for monks, earning the highest score among the test-takers for that year.

Chuon Nath passed the second exam two years later and was appointed professor at the Senior Pali High School in Phnom Penh.

Chuon Nath was the head of a reformist movement in the Khmer Buddhist Sangha which developed a rationalist-scholastic model of Buddhism, rooted in linguistic studies of the Pali Canon.

Chuon Nath pushed for a series of innovations in the Khmer Sangha beginning in the early twentieth century: the use of print for sacred texts ; a higher degree of expertise in Pali and Sanskrit studies among monks; a vision of orthodoxy based on teaching of Vinaya texts for both monks and lay-people; and modernization of teaching methods for Buddhist studies.

Chuon Nath oversaw the translation of the entire Buddhist Pali canon into Khmer language; and the creation of the first modern Khmer language dictionary.

Chuon Nath dedicated his life to upholding Buddhism and the conservation of Khmer language in the country that was highly influenced by French colonialism.

Chuon Nath had an extensive knowledge of the Khmer language.

Chuon Nath was probably the most famous and most knowledgeable monk Cambodia had ever had.

Chuon Nath thus derived the word for train from Sanskrit and Pali word of Ayomoyo which means something that is made of metal.

However, Chuon Nath's Khmerization was not overall accepted by all Khmers.

Chuon Nath was a member of the original committee granted royal order to compile a Khmer dictionary in 1915 and was credited as the founder of the dictionary as he pushed for and finally succeeded in printing the first edition of the current Khmer dictionary in 1938.