Civilizations in Embrace: The Spread of Ideas and the Transformation of Power; India and Southeast Asia in the Classical Age

2. Debating Indian Influence in Southeast Asia

2 Debating inDian influence in SoutheaSt aSia thanks to its geographic location between two of the largest and oldest civilizations, india and china, and its central place on the classical trade route between china and india extending to the Middle east and africa, Southeast asia has been a region with significant exposure to foreign ideas, culture and concepts of statecraft, including indian, chinese and Western, through­ out history. not surprisingly therefore, Southeast asia for a long time was regarded by many as a cultural extension and “lesser version” of india and china, a receptacle of cultural and political ideas from the two. Paul Wheatley draws attention to the importance of indian influence as a case of transmission of culture and ideas: “the process by which the peoples of western South­ east asia came to think of themselves as part of bharatavarsa (even though they had no conception of ‘india’ as we know it) represents one of the most impressive instances of large­scale acculturation in the history of the world.” (Wheatley 1982: 27–28). early writings about Southeast asia reflected a preoccupation with the influence of indian ideas and culture and to a lesser  Civilizations in Embrace extent, the influence of other cultures, including chinese, islamic and Western. as John legge put it, “most pre­war studies … of Southeast asian history” were marked by “a tendency of scholars to see that history as shaped by influences external to the region rather than as the product of an internal dynamic” (legge 1992: ). it was this view which came under attack, especially in the post­World War ii period, as a result of new research, archaeological discoveries, and an element of nationalist “imagining” by local scholars about the region’s distinctive and “autonomous” past. in the new context, historians asserted Southeast asia’s claim to be a “culturally independent region” (osborne 1990: 5). not only did they point to Southeast asia’s distinctive civilizational past pre­ dating the advent of indian and chinese influences, but also to the resilience of its cultural, social and political features which had survived the coming of foreign influences of all kind. Moreover, the emphasis of the new scholarship was less on how Southeast asians adopted indic, or Sinic art, religion, political concepts and practices, and more on how they “adapted these foreign ideas to suit their own needs and values” (osborne 1990: 5–). the region’s “symbolic and organizational patterns” which were once regarded as being of indian origin, were now seen to be “merely redefinitions of indigenous institutions” (Wheatley 1982: 27). the argument was that Southeast asians were not to be “regarded as recipients (or victims) of history, but as makers of it” (bentley 1985: 299). in sum, the new scholarship on Southeast asia moved away from the indo­ and Sino­centric prisms and acknowledged the “right of Southeast asian countries to be culturally independent units” (osborne 1979: 13). initiative and adaptation became the dominant themes; instead of considering the region as a cultural extension of india and china in terms of its “art, 7 Debating Indian Influence in Southeast Asia religion or political theory”, the revisionist view pointed to im­ portant variations between indian and chinese ideas and prac­ tices and those found in Southeast asia. among the examples of these variations cited most frequently were: Southeast asia’s rejection of the indian caste system, the “individual character” of temple art of the hindu­buddhist kingdoms of Pagan, angkor and Java which differed from those of india; and, the nature of buddha images that were created in thailand which were “quite different from the images to be found in india” (osborne 1979: 13). the salience of the nuclear family in Southeast asia, as opposed to the extended family in india, and the important role of women in traditional peasant society of Southeast asia represented marked differences between Southeast asian societies and those of china or india. historians used a variety of expression to describe the adaptation: how indian culture and political ideas were “absorbed by the local population and joined to their existing cultural patterns” (osborne 1979: 24). While Southeast asian rulers and societies used foreign ideas, they did so selectively. for example, kings used the indian caste system to describe themselves, but the caste system did not catch on in society at large. Southeast asian art, while draw­ ing upon indian models, developed its own distinctive forms. the use of Sanskrit...