Nil Teang was fully ordained on May 22, 1844, on Thursday, in Wat Mahathat Yuwaratrangsarit, in front of the Royal Palace in Bangkok, with Somdet Phra Ariyavongsanana V known as Don presiding over the celebration.

In 1849, Teang was asked by King Ang Duong to settle in Oudong at Wat Prang by the Royal Palace to restore the state of Buddhism in Cambodia.

[2] In 1857, King Ang Duong appointed Samdech Preah Maha Sangkha Reach Nil Teang as the first Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia.

Symbolically, at the request of King Ang Duong, Tieng brought back a Buddhist relic from Sri Lanka to be installed in the Prang pagoda that was then restored at the foot of Oudong mountain.

[4] When in 1866 Norodom moved the royal court to Phnom Penh, Tieng followed the movement and established Wat Ounalom as the center of the Mahanikay sect.

[8] One year after his death, the less popular, and less educated, Venerable Ker Ouk, was appointed as head of the Mahanikay even though he was never given the title of Supreme Patriarch.

[9] In 1880, Norodom established two patriarchs Pan and Tieng respectively for the Thammayut and the Maha Nikay sects to structure the hierarchy of Buddhism in Cambodia.

This new organization of the sangha was done along the same lines at Buddhist hierarchy in Thailand and similar reforms were being applied in Southeast Asia in order to modernize Buddhism.

And Teang himself, until his death was in charge to name the head of the Cham mosques for the Muslims of Cambodia since the 1880 royal ordinance of King Norodom.

[2] in his 1880 convocation, Norodom ordered Nil Teang to gather the most learned monks in Cambodia in the Royal Palace to promote the knowledge of the Tripitaka within the Cambodian sangha and to begin the translation of Pali canon into Khmer.