Mainland Southeast Asia has been termed the "crossroad of religions," for in this region, today divided into the countries of Burma, Thailand, and Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), and Vietnam, a large diversity of autochthonous tribal religions are intermingled with Hinduism, Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity, as well as the modern secular faith of Marxist-Leninism. Beneath this diversity there are many religious practices and beliefs that have common roots in the prehistoric past of peoples of the region. This is not to say, as have some scholars, that the historic religions are merely a veneer and that those Southeast Asians who adhere to religions such as Buddhism have been, as Reginald LeMay said of the Northern Thai, animists from time immemorial. Although certain beliefs and practices can be seen as linking peoples of the present to ancient Southeast Asian religions, they...