From the temples of Angkor Wat and Borobudur to images of Ganesh and references to the Ramayana, anyone who visits Southeast Asia cannot fail to be struck by the influence of centuries-old Indian culture, an influence that seems more profound and deeply rooted than that of China. Yet in today’s Southeast Asia, the situation is largely reversed; India is very much a political and commercial also-ran.
For something so omnipresent, the story of how this influence came to be manifested is far more obscure that one might have supposed. Maritime Southeast Asia: History, Culture and Religion; c First Century CE–Fifteenth Century CE is a collection of papers that represent some strands of current thinking. Despite being very much to the academic end of the scale, and there being little attempt to bring the uninitiated reader up to speed, the persistent reader will find much of interest.

Structurally, the book is made up of two relatively long survey essays—one on, in effect, the historiography and the other on the Southeast Asian “empire” of Srivijaya—followed by four shorter articles on relatively narrow aspects of the subject; three of these discuss individual archaeological sites.
Andrea Acri leads off with “‘Local’ vs ‘Cosmopolitan’ in the Study of Premodern Southeast Asia” in which he decisively runs through the various ways that Southeast Asian history has been perceived, in general, but also vis-a-vis India. He dispatches the “Greater India” paradigm, an idea prevalent a century or so ago, that India had colonies (one wonders where that idea came from). But he also takes aim at the more contemporary tendency to see the pro-modern period through the lens of national narratives. Southeast Asian history, it seems, has long been a tug-of-war between “externalist” and “autonomous” camps. It comes as no surprise that Acri isn’t in either one, but rather speaks of “long-lasting circulatory processes and translocal interactions.”
Hermann Kulke takes up the case study of Srivijaya, perhaps the most important polity in the region for most of the period in question, from the 7th through 13th centuries. In addition, Srivijaya
enjoyed the reputation of a centre of Buddhist learning… On his first voyage to India, the famous Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar Yijing (I-ching) stayed during 671 to 695 altogether about eight years in Srivijaya, translating hundreds of Sanskrit manuscripts. During his first visit he studied Sanskrit for three months.
Kulke presents it as a “thalassocracy”, that is a polity based on the sea. Based in Sumatra, and mentioned extensively in China, Indian and Arabic sources, Srivijaya,which exercised suzerainty in differing degrees over much of the region, is not the best fit for “empire”. He invokes the by now reasonably well-known “mandala “ paradigm, where borders and authority were fluid and rarely binary (something Bill Hayton discussed in The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia).
What is however most surprising, however, is
the strange lack of any indigenous source of Srivijaya’s long post eighth century rule over Sumatra until its end in the thirteenth century, whereas Arabic and Chinese sources depict it as a powerful kingdom, controlling and temporarily even dominating the transoceanic trade of Southeast Asia.
There is much, then, about Srivijaya that remains mysterious.
Although Srivijaya seems to have been pretty aggressive in its own backyard, the wider region seems to have been relatively tranquil, at least until the 10th century.
The peaceful Indian Ocean trade system, dominated by Srivijaya and the Persian and Arabic traders, was both disturbed and intensified by the almost synchronous rise of the Fatimids in Egypt (969 CE), the Song in China (960 CE) and the Cholas in south India (985 CE), which soon began to interfere in Asia’s maritime trade.
Srivijaya attempts to steer a path between China and India ran aground when the Cholas invaded in 1025: “as, curiously, neither Southeast Asian nor Chinese and Arabic sources refer to it, there is no evidence of its immediate cause.”
Kulke includes a number of fascinating titbits. In 1079, Srivijaya
donated the unbelievable amount of 600,000 gold pieces for the repair and maintenance of a Taoist shrine at Canton.
It also seems that the Malay-origins of the inhabitants of Madagascar were known and taken advantage of:
From the Arabian geographer al-Idrisi, who studied at Cordoba and stayed for some time at the court of the Norman King Roger II, one learns that the spread of the Malayo-Polynesian language to East Africa and Madagascar promoted Srivijaya’s trade, ‘The inhabitants of the islands of Zabaj go to Zanzibar in various kinds of ship and profit by selling their goods since they understand each other’s language’…
The remaining chapters are more specific and granular. Maritime Southeast Asia, hardly a primer, may prove more thought-provoking for many readers not so much about the past, but the present: what happened to all that Indian influence and why does it seem to have so little resonance in today’s world?
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