Spirits and Ships: Cultural Transfers in Early Monsoon Asia eds. by Andrea Acri, Roger Blench, Alexandra Landmann (review)

What is early Monsoon Asia and how we have to interpret its historical developments are the main questions of the book under review. Monsoon Asia covers a vast geographical area 'from the eastern shores of the Indian Subcontinent (and their hinterlands) in the west to the South China Sea, the Philippine islands and Papua New Guinea' in the east (pp. 4–5). The authors of the volume view Monsoon Asia as a genuine historical region, with its own historical trajectories. In their opinion, this region encompassed South as well as Southeast Asia and it is this commonality of historical developments that accounts for the similar ways of cultural evolution. In fact, Andrea Acri, Roger Blench, Alexandra Landmann and their colleagues search for a common cultural bedrock, or 'matrix', of Monsoon Asian cultures and societies. They find the theories of Indianisation, Sheldon Pollock's 'Sanskrit Cosmopolis', and Oliver Wolters' 'local genius' of Southeast Asia inappropriate to formulating a genuine nature of early historical developments of the Southeast Asian societies. Acri and his colleagues try to look for the common roots of South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures that promoted historically well-documented processes of Sanskrit spreading in the southern parts of the Indian subcontinent and throughout Southeast Asia, as well as of the diffusion of other Indic cultural traits.

Though very insightful and promising, the 'Monsoon Asia paradigm' looks slightly problematic. Robert Dentan in his chapter 'Fearsome Bleeding, Boogeyman Gods and Chaos Victorious: A Conjectural History of Insular South Asian Religious Tropes' tries to show that the Vedic god Rudra and the Semai thunder god Nkuu' have a common origin. According to Dentan, the images of these gods originate from an Austroasiatic prehistoric deity of thunder squalls. Therefore, the Vedic Rudra turns to be a part of the Austroasiatic legacy in the Indo-Aryan Vedic culture. But, pace Dentan, Rudra in the Rigveda has no sign of trickster nature whereas Nkuu' of the Semai is a bogeyman and trickster. Rudra was venerated and feared by the Aryans but Nkuu has been feared but not venerated by the Semai. The name Rudra is derived from Indo-European roots *rud- 'to cry, howl' or *rud- 'red' (cf. Russian рудой rudoi '[dark] red'). The connection of both Rudra and Nkuu' with thunder and fierceness seems insufficient to the conclusion about their common Austroasiatic origin.

Andrea Acri in his chapter 'Tantrism "Seen from the East"' elaborates the concept of 'a shared cultural matrix in Monsoon Asia' which is based on the writings of the French scholar Paul Mus (1902–1969). Acri shares Dentan's idea about Rudra' and Nkuu's common origin, and adds a few presumably Austroasiatic loanwords in Sanskrit and Tantric tradition, including lākula 'club', and tumburu 'a kind of tree, esp. cucurbit'. Acri also argues for the connection between the feminine and power in religious traditions of Tantrism throughout South and Southeast Asia by the example of yoginī. However, I do not see how it works in the context of a common cultural matrix of the two geographical areas. Acri also stresses deep fascination with the Dark Lord in various Southeast Asian traditions, for example, the god Kāla-Bhairava in medieval Javanese Tantrism, and believes that such an approach stems from 'convergent developments' of common 'deep-rooted cultural tropes' (p. 120). The scholar uses a lot of ink to show shamanistic features of many South and Southeast Asian traditional 'magicians' that, for him, are signs of the same cultural matrix. On the contrary, I suppose that all traditional 'magicians' were mediators between the human and the other world due to the common conviction of various traditional societies that the other world (of deities, spirits, ancestors, and other imaginary beings) does exist and can be achieved, whatever that means, by some kinds of humans.

One of the most discouraging chapters...