Greater India In Southeast Asia (451) Kalki Gaur

Hindu Influence ASEAN

The key-point of Southeast Asian history is that the South Vietnam region the ancient kingdom of Champa, present-day South Vietnam was a Hindu Kingdom under the influence of Indian civilization. Even North Vietnam, the Dai Viet had successfully repelled Mongol invasions of 1257, 1285 and 1287, and expelled Ming Chinese influence in 1428, which lasted only 10 years uncontested from 1407-1418. Only for 20 years North Vietnam, Da Viet was under Chinese Ming domination from 1407-1428. Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, and Indonesia were never under Chinese civilization’s influence and domination. Chinese played only important commercial role and they had limited civilization’s, cultural, religious and political influence in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has historically been the part of Greater India. It is inevitable that India would reassert its historical patrimony in Greater India, in Hindu-Buddhist Southeast Asia during 21st Century and challenge Chinese and American domination of the region. Chinese Ming Dynasty that came into power in china after Mongol Dynasty sent seven Ming naval expeditions dispatched to southeast Asia and beyond from 1405 and 1433, that were on gigantic scales but after that banned every form of maritime buildup. Had China continued with Buddhist Ming type naval expeditions, then China would have conquered Australia, New Zealand, North America and South America. Then the White race would have remained confined to Europe. Then the New World would have become Buddhist Lands of Brown and Yellow races.

AYUTHIA: Ayuthia means Ayodhya. Ayuthia State formed by Prince of U Thong. In 1350, Capital was established at Ayuthia, and rapid expansion follows. Sukhothai conquered by 1376 and suzerainty imposed over petty Malay states. Intermittent wars with Kambuja result in expansion of Ayuthia kingdom to the east during 1350-1390. Repeated military intervention in Lan Na. Contact established with Portuguese in 1509. Invasion by Toungoo in 1548-1549 lays unsuccessful siege to Ayuthia, and enduring Thai-Burmese hostility follows.

KAMBUJA: Authority of State in Kambuja Kingdom based on Hindu Devaraja cult. The Hindu Devaraja cult was undermined by Sinhala form of Buddhism in late 13th -14th centuries. Kamubuja's continuous wars with Thais during 1350-1390, when Thais seize Angkor in 1369 and 1389. The Thai wars and Cham raids and internal dissension weaken Kambuja Hindu State. In 1444, Kambuja Capital shifted to Caturmukha.

LAN CHANG: Fa Ngom aided by Kambuja consolidates Lao principalities in 1353, to form Lan Chang Kingdom. It introduces Khmer civilization and Singhalese Buddhism. In 1478, major invasion by Dai Viet on Lan Chang occurs. Lan Chang extends control to Lan Na during 1548-1556.

PAGAN EMPIRE: Mongol invasion during 1283-1287 destroys Buddhist Pagan Empire in Burma. Under Pagan puppet Chien-Mien and Mien-Chung provinces established. Shan Brothers oust pagan Dynasty and end Mongol Rule in 1299-1301.

Rival Shan States of Sagaing and Pinya established early in 14th Century. Maw Shans destroy them in 1364.

DAI VIET: Dai Viet Kingdom repulses Mongol invasions in 1257, 1285, and 1287, though Dai Viet acknowledges nominal suzerainty of Mongols in 1288. Dai Viet was under Ming Domination during 1417-1428. Dai Viet undertook successful struggle to oust Chinese during 1418-1428, and in 1428 Ming domination ended. Dai Viet never accepted Ming Chinese domination. Invasion of Lan-Chang took place in 1478. Power struggle among several rival dynasties in early 16th century resulted in the division of kingdom by 1533.

CHAMPA: Champa withstands Mongol invasions during 1283-1285. In 1306, Northern provinces ceded to Dai Viet. During 1312-1323, Champa was the Vassal State of Dai Viet. During 1360-1390, Champa experiences political resurgence marked by repeated attacks on Dai Viet. In 1402, Indrapura province lost to Dai Viet, but regained through Chinese intervention in 1407. Continuing pressure from Dai Viet results in final conquest in 1471, but for lingering petty state in South Vietnam.

SRIVIJAYA EMPIRE-ADITYAVARMAN: Adityavarman a king of Malayu and a vassal of Majapahit, by 1347 rules over a new state centered in the Western Highlands. Chinese trade in Southeast Asian ports weakened Sri Vijaya State. The territorial incursions of Thais in second half of the 13th century weakened it further. The rise of Singhasari further weakened Srrivijaya Empire.

ACHIN: Samudrapasai was the first important center of diffusion of Islam in the Southeast Asia. Achin State was founded in 1496. Achin Sultanate conquers Pasai and Pedir and wrests coastal regions to south from Minangkabau by 1524. Achin becomes a major trading state and center of Islamic culture by mid-16th century.

THAI STATE: Thai State formed in 1290. It was a Hindu state. Singhalese Buddhism introduced in mid-14th century. Chronic conflict with Ayuthia from 1387 onwards. In 1548, Tai State comes under control of Lan Chang. In 1556, the area passes to Toungoo.

SOUTHEAST ASIA IS HINDU LAND: During last 2000 years, Indian culture has played a predominant role in Southeast Asia. Only North Vietnam had been under the influence of China. Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines had been under Hindu influence. Cambodia had been virtually an outlet of Indian culture in Cambodia. United States fought in Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia not to check the influence of China but to undermine Hindu Buddhist culture of Cambodia and Laos. Frontiers of Christianity are clashing with the frontiers of Buddhism and Hinduism in Southeast Asia especially Cambodia and Laos. United States pursued its Christian goals in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, to the detriment of its national interests. India’s civilization’s interests in Southeast Asia, clash with those of Protestant United States.

CRIMES OF POL POT STALIN AND MAO: Christian Pol Pot massacred 3 million Cambodian Buddhists, but no western nation recommend war crime trials for Pol Pot, even 25 years after the massacres. Slobodan Milosavic is declared a war criminal. Catholic Joseph Stalin murdered 30 million Orthodox Christians. Mao Zedong murdered 60 million Buddhists during 1950s and 1960s. When Nazism is declared a criminal organization for murdering Jews then why the murders of Joseph Stalin do not result in declaring Communism a criminal doctrine. Why media denigrates Swastika when the Catholic Christian Hitler murdered Jews aided by Catholic Nazis. The Swastika is the most sacred symbol of Hinduism and Buddhism and represents Almighty God. Spaniard missionaries massacred the 90 million Native Americans but no one denigrates Christian Cross. Hindu symbols are under Christian assault.

WHY CHRISTIANS FOUGHT VIETNAM WAR: United States expanded the Vietnam War to include Cambodia and Laos, the neutral countries as well as Non-aligned nations, primarily to destroy Hindu influence in Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam War was not the ideological war between Capitalism and Communism. The real purpose of the Vietnam War was to push the frontier of Christianity in the Buddhist-Hindu world of Southeast Asia. Christians represented only 15 percent of South Vietnam population. Christian President Diem devoted more time in torturing Buddhist monks and confiscating properties of Buddhist temples, then fighting Viet Cong. United States under the influence of Vatican invaded and Bombed Cambodia to overthrow the democratically elected Buddhist regime of Prince Sihanouk. Christian nations succeeded in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as due to war Buddhists lost power and influence. India should have joined forces with Vietnam and dispatched 200,000 soldiers to hang Khmer Rouge murderers.

Cambodia:

CANNIBAL KHMER ROUGE: The Communist regime that controlled Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979, was known as Democratic Kampuchea (DK), and led by Christian Pol Pot of Khmer Rogue. The people who achieved a prominent place in the new government were a mixture of Christian intellectuals who had studied in France (Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Ieng thirith, Hun Nim, Thiounn Thioenn, and Son Sen). Christian leadership of Khmer rogue forced Buddhist Cambodians to work ten to twelve hours a day, twelve months a year. Mao Zedong died in early September 1976. Christian Pol Pot (pseudonym for Saloth Sar) murdered 3 million Cambodian Buddhists. United States is supporting the present Christian leaders of Khmer Rogue. The Christian Khmer Rogue Army had the strength of 40,000 soldiers. The Western Christendom is opposing the prosecution of the Cannibal Pol Pot because he served the cause of Christianity by massacring Buddhist and Hinduized Cambodians, to pave the way for Christianized Cambodia.

CAMBODIA IS INDIAN CULTURE: Indianization was the revolutionary change that swept Cambodia at the beginning of the Christian era. Indianization was the process whereby elements of Indian culture were absorbed or chosen by the Cambodian people in a process that lasted more than a thousand years. The process of Indianization made Cambodia an Indian seeming place. In the nineteenth century, Cambodian peasants still wore recognizably Indian costumes, and in many ways, they behaved more like Indians than their closest neighbors, the Vietnamese. Cambodians ate with spoons and fingers, carried goods on their heads, and wore turbans rather than straw hats and skirts rather than trousers. Musical instruments, jewelry, and manuscripts were also in Indian style. Cattle raising had been introduced by Indians at a relatively early date, it is unknown to a great extend in the rest of the mainland Southeast Asia. Trade between prehistoric India and Cambodia began long before India itself was Sanskritized. Cambodia, southern India and Bengal shared the culture of monsoon Asia, which emphasized the role played by ancestral, tutelary deities in the agricultural cycle. Cambodian saw some of his own cults among Indian gods.

PEACEFUL INDIAN INFLUENCE: During the first five centuries of the Christian era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon of gods, meters for poetry, a Sanskrit language, Buddhism, and the idea of universal kingship. Without India, Angkor Wat would never have been built, yet Angkor Wat was never an Indian city, any more than medieval Paris was Roman one. Indian influence in Cambodia was not imposed by colonization or by force. Indian troops never invaded Cambodia. Indianization failed to produce the identity crisis among Cambodians. Cambodians never resisted India. Indianization gave a format and a language to elite Cambodian life. (David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, p.12)

INDIAN INFLUENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Southeast Asia cultural superstructures is based on Indian and Chinese influences, developed around indigenous substratum. Large-scale penetration by Indian and Chinese cultures began 2,000 years ago, two or three centuries after the first major political consolidation in China under Shi Huang Di and India under Ashoka Maurya in the third century BC. Except Tongking Delta, Indian cultural and commercial domain spread in the Southeast Asia The mountain range of Annam denoted the Sino-Indian cultural demarcation. “On the map of Asia, there is a range of mountains running down the spine of Annam, and this range marks the boundary or dividing line between Chinese and Indian culture. Everything North and East is culturally based on China, while everything West and South is based on India, and the two neither overlap nor clash.” (Reginald Le May, The Culture of South-East Asia, London, 1954, p.9) Except Vietnam, entire Southeast Asia is a sphere of Indian cultural influence.

NO CHINA-INDIA CLASH: Southeast Asia did not become a cultural battlefield between China and India. In the field of religion, there was no rivalry between the two great Asian peoples. On the contrary, the Chinese adopted Buddhism, which was introduced from India by way of central Asia at the court of eastern Han emperor in the first century AD. China and Southeast Asia were areas of Indian religious influence. When Aryanized Indians migrated to Southeast Asia, the people discovered among Indian immigrants a similar cultural base, which were pre-Aryan, and common to all peoples of monsoon Asia. Non-Aryan cultures, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada and Kerala cultures spread to Southeast Asia. Indian culture was welcome to Southeast Asia because it came without political strings. Traditional Chinese shyness toward the sea left the field largely to Indians.

Bramanic Influence

The initiative for the Indianization process in Southeast Asia came from regions ruling classes who invited Brahmins to serve at their courts. Brahmans introduced Indian court customs and ensured their proper observance. Brahmins underlined the divine nature of monarchy through a variety of ritual sacrifices and ceremonies, thereby enhancing the prestige and power of Southeast Asian rules in the eyes of their subjects. The Brahmins promoted administrative organization on the Indian pattern and introduced laws based on the Code of Manu. The process of Indianization also included the alphabetical basis of the Southeast Asian scripts, and importance of Sanskrit in the vocabulary. Brahmans introduced the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata and religious lores.

HINDU FUNAN & CHAMPA EMPIRES: Funan and Champa were Hindu kingdoms. The Funanese were earlier arrivals of the Mon-Khmer people. Chams belonged to the Malay race. The foundation of Funan ascribed to an Indian Brahmin, Kaundiya. Kaundinya in the first century AD following instructions in a dream, reached Funan, defeated the local queen Soma, daughter of the king of the Nagas, married her, and began a royal line. Champa included the present provinces of Quang Nam, Quang Tin, Binh Dinh, Nha Trang, Phan Rang and Binh Tuan almost South Vietnam. Champa came under Indian influence around the middle of the fourth century. Champa’s expansion southward in the areas previously controlled by Funan introduced the Chams to Indian culture, which they embraced. The kings of Champa assumed the Pallava style, their names ending with –Varman, as in Bhadravarman, who built the first temple of the Hindu god Shiva. Hindu Chams withstood for more than a thousand years the political and cultural pressures of China and Vietnam. Chams society was and is matriarchal, with daughters having the right of inheritance. Following the Hindu traditions, Chams cremated their dead, collected the ashes in an urn, and cast them into the waters. Their way of life resembled that of the Funanese. Today about 40,000 South Vietnamese and about 85,000 Cambodians claim Cham ancestry. (D.R. Sardesai, Southeast Asia, p.43-50)

HINDU KHMER KINGDOMS: The ancestral home of Khmers was northeast India. They call themselves the descendents of hermit Kambu and the celestial nymph Mera. The kingdom was called Kambuja, and people call themselves Khmers. Khmers moved eastward Mekong into southern Laos and Korat plateau in Thailand. Khmer established the state of Chelna, which became a vassal of Funnan. Khmers had assimilated Indian culture. Chelna controlled Lower Myanmar, upper Malay Peninsula, central Thailand, Cambodia and South Vietnam. Chelna was a land power, not a sea power. Khmer kings were Shiva worshippers. Jaayavarman II revived the Devaraja (god-king) cult of Indian origin. He built Angkor Wat. In Angkor, the kings were portrayed as Avatars, re-incarnations of Shiva or Vishnu.

Shaivism

SHAIVAISM IN CAMBODIA AND CHINA: the record by the Chinese envoy, Chou Ta-kuan, of his stay in Cambodia in 1296-1297 is the most detailed account of the everyday life and the appearance of Angkor. Chou called Shaivites Taoists. Shaivites inhabited monasteries in which the only image, which they revere, is a block of stone analogous to the stone found in shrines of the god of the soil in China. There were three religions enjoying official status at Angkor; they were Brahmanism, Theravada Buddhism, and Shaivism. (David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, p. 72)

SHIVA KALI SACRIFICES: The 'Pasuputa' enjoyed a vogue in India and elsewhere in Southeast Asia around the fifth and sixth centuries AD. These wandering ascetics preached that personal devotions to Siva was more rewarding than meticulous attention to brahmanical rituals or to the law of destiny, or karma. Kings devotion did not require the intercession of the Pasuputa. Self-made Hindus were perceived as superior men, vehicles of Siva, the god who ceaselessly descended onto the holy mountain. The transmission of Siva’s potency via the King and his ritual acts to the people and the soil was an important source of cohesiveness in Cambodian society. It has also been a source of continuity. As late as 1877, human sacrifices to a consort of Siva (Kali) were at Ba Phnom, at the beginning of the agricultural year, took place. These had the objective of transmitting fertility to the region. (p.18)

HARI-HARA: Occasionally, two Indian gods blended with each other, as Siva merged with Vishnu to form Hari-Hara, a composite deity much favored by Angkorean kings. The passage that refers to Siva’s continuous descent onto ‘Mount No-Tan’, also mentions a Bodhisattva, or Buddha-to-be. Hindu temples were built near sites favored by pre-Indian celebrations. The ideas of continuity of habitation and a continuity of sacredness had deeper roots in Cambodia than in most of India. If ancestors became Indian gods in times of centralization and prosperity, the gods became ancestors again when the rationale for Hinduism and its priestly supporters disappeared. Thus at Angkor, and in Cham sites in Vietnam, Indian images and temples were worshiped in recent times as mysterious products of the ‘Nak Ta’. This is partly because the language village people used in their religious lives remained to large extent unchanged from the pre-Indian era to colonial times.

SHIVA CULT: The most enduring cult is the cult of the Lingam, or stone phallus. This widely diffused motif and the cults associated with it exemplified links between ancestor spirits, the soil where they and lingam grew, and the fertility of nearby soil for agricultural use. Because of the territorial aspect of the cult, a lingam can be removed from place to place ceremoniously, but was potent in one place at a time. The notion that the lingam was a patron of a community, it was closely supervised by local overlords and in the Angkorean era by the King. As early as the fifth century AD a cull honoring a mountain god at the hill of Lingaparvatta in southern Laos, now known as Wat Ph’u, involved human sacrifices. The site was notable because it contained an enormous natural lingam, some 18 meters (59 feet) high. Lingaparvatta, like Ba Phnom was patronized as an ancestral site by several Angkorean kings. ( David Chandler, p.18-20)

BUDDHIST SRIVIJAYA EMPIRE: Srivijaya empire extended by the middle of the ninth century over all of Sumatra, Kedah, and western Java, with its capital at Srivijaya. In AD 1025, Rajendra Chola of South India dealt a crushing blow to Srivijaya’s maritime might and monopoly. Cholas conquered and administered large portions of the Srivijayan Empire, including its ports of Ligor, Kedah, and Tumasik, which lasted two decades. Srivijay acknowledged Chola’s suzerainty.

Sailendra's Borobudor Temple

SAILENDRA BUILT BOROBUDOR: It was a Java Empire. Bhanu acquired a kingdom and named it after his own name Sailendra, a title held by his Funanese ancestors. Sailendras raided Tongking and Champa, defeated and beheaded the king of Water Chelna, and ruled the mainland kingdom from Java, until AD 802, when Jayavarman II, founded Angkor monarchy. Sailendras began building Borobudor in AD 778, under king Vishnu and completed in 824 by his grand son, Samaratunga, along the same cosmological lines as the later Angkor monuments. The Borobodur is the best example of Indo-Javanese art. It has 400 statues of Buddha. It has carved galleries about three miles long. The Borobudors nine (9) terraces are carved out of a single hill.

Sanjaya, Mataram, Kediri

The Sailendras matrimonially related to old Sanjaya ruling family in North central Java, as well as to the Srivijaya ruling house in Sumatra. In AD 832, a Sanjaya prince usurped the Sailendra throne. The infant Sailendra prince in AD 850 ascended to the Srivijaya throne in Sumatra. Capital was shifted to Mataram in 929 AD. Mataram rulers were Hindu, which reasserted in 832 AD. At Prambanaan near modern Jogjakarta, show three central temples (chandis) dedicated to the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. The Singhasari dynasty’s greatest King Kertanagara (1268-1292), was a devotee of Shiva as well of tantric Buddhism. He promoted a syncretic cult of Shiva-Buddha, which claimed to work for the redemption of the souls of the dead and was very much in tune with the Indonesian practice of ancestor worship.

Indian Maritime Power

Imperial history of India is a South Indian imperial history. Hindu India is at war against Christianity in Hindu-Buddhist Southeast Asia. Even when North India was under Mughal rule, The Cholas and Sri Vijay empires created empires in Southeast Asia. Aurangzeb conquered South Indian Hindu Empires in 16th century, then only Indonesia and Malaysia could become Muslim nations. South Indian Hindu empires regained independence within few decades. Marathas liberated India, established Maratha Confederacy soon after the death of Aurangzeb. It is wrong to divide Indian history as Mughal period and British period. Nuclear Hindu India should assert its sphere of influence in Southeast Asia.

Vietnam

CHRISTIAN ROOTS IN VIETNAM WAR: United States policy towards Vietnam governed by the doctrine of containment of Buddhism, propagation of Christianity, and promoting Christian politicians. The doctrine of containment of Communism was a ruse to conceal the Christian component of the policy. France appointed the U.S. supported Christian Ngo Dinh Diem as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam during the Geneva conference in July 1954. Then South Vietnam was under the control of three Buddhist religio-military sects: the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hoa, both had private armies of 50,000 each. The third sect Binh Xuyen controlled the Saigon City police. Diem was successful in the first six months in crushing the sects and all challengers to government. He handled the problem of rehabilitation of nearly a million refugees from North Vietnam, mostly Catholics. Catholics were told in their parishes that God had moved to South where the government was headed by one of their Catholic brethren.

 BUDDHIST EMPEROR BAO DAI DEPOSED: Through a referendum held on October 23, 1955, which he rigged, he secured an embarrassing 99 percent vote against Emperor Bao Dai and in favor of Diem. Three days later Diem deposed the Emperor proclaimed South Vietnam a republic with himself as president. The United States supported Diem as an intense anti-French, anti-Buddhist, anti-Communist leader. Ngo Dinh Diem was a fervent Catholic with a monastic background. Madam Nhu a recent convert from Buddhism to the Catholic religion, became an ardent champion of her new faith in public life. Diem’s elder brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Archbishop of Hue, the highest Catholic official in the land.

Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc,

TERROR OF CATHOLICS: Ngo Dinh Diem’s principal sources of power were the United States, extended family and Catholic refugees. Catholics constituted 10 percent minority and were largely refugees from the North Vietnam. Catholics were hated by most of the southern Buddhist population because of their religion and northern origin. Catholics and Diem branded dissident South Vietnamese nationalists as Communist traitors. Censorship was imposed. By 1957, Diem’s state had become a quasi-police state.

VILLAGE REFORMS: Diem introduced land reforms, but few farmers who benefited from the program were more often than not northern Catholic refugees. Diem confiscated the lands of the Buddhists and allotted them to the Catholics. In June 1956, the Diem government replaced village notables with its own list. Most of the new appointees were northern Catholic refugees. Between April 1957 and late 1961, Ngo Dinh Nhu launched a strategic hamlet program. It uprooted Buddhist farmers and placed them in strategic hamlets.

BUDDHIST PROTESTS AGAINST DIEM: Diem’s downfall was brought by non-Communist elements in South Vietnam. In the spring and summer of 1963, Buddhist monks and nuns, led the Buddhist opposition to Diem. With Diem’s overly pro-Catholic policies, the Buddhists felt threatened enough to organize themselves into the General Buddhist Association in 1955. In 1963, in direct response to the religious crisis, the Unified Buddhist Church was created. On May 7, 1963, Ngo Dinh Thuc, Diem’s brother and Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, Archbishop of Hue, Vietnam of Central Vietnam forbade the display of Buddhist flags in Hue to commemorate the birth of Buddha and banned the general festivities as well. To protest the government’s action, the Buddhists launched a series of self-immolation, beginning with Monk Thich Quang Duc. Ngo Dinh Nhu brother of Diem ordered the police to raid the pagodas. Generals overthrew the government and assassinated President Diem and his brother Nhu on November 1, 1963.

12(32) Indianize Thailand, Burma, Laos & Cambodia

First, nuclear India shall fight civilization’s wars in Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Thailand. Protestant United States expanded the Vietnam War to bomb Viet Cong Trail in Laos and Cambodia, not to contain Communism, but to destroy Hindu influence in Cambodia and Laos. It was an undeclared war of Catholics and Protestants on Hindu and Buddhist civilization of Laos and Cambodia.

HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF INDIANIZATION: The Gupta India probably merited a claim to being the most orderly and civilized country in the world of its day. The animistic pagan peoples of Indochina were receptive to the appeal of Hindu Saivite worship largely because it had developed in India by absorbing a large variety of spirit cults, including nature worship and fertility rites, cults which were similarly prominent on the other side of the Bay of Bengal in Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. The law of Karma also appealed to the Southeast Asians because it provided a means of rationalizing wide variations of fortune and status. The transmission of the Indian concept of the divine nature of kingship was the lost lasting impact of Indian culture upon Southeast Asia. The major Hindu gods, Siva, Vishnu, and Indra were allegedly capable of reappearing indefinitely in the persons of divine rulers, conceived as reincarnations of particular godly progenitors. Southeast Asian kings, by claiming divinity, enlisted the services of Brahman priest to function officially at their courts. In Buddhist countries, the kings were usually regarded as reincarnations of Vishnu or Indra, or they might pose as emergent Bodhisattvas in their own rights. Indigenous to Cambodia in particular was the royal symbol of the nine-headed Naga snake, the traditional god of the soil and fertility. The Naga serpent symbol featured prominently in Angkor Wat. The association of royalty with fertility principle, which was inherent in Naga tradition, afforded a convenient basis for Cambodian accommodation to Siva worship, under which Linga symbol became the very essence of royal power. Indochina's court officials and scholars borrowed principal Sanskrit treatises on kingship, legal code of Manu, Buddhist writings. Sanskrit and Pali provided the bases for developing indigenous writing systems. (John F. Cady, Thailand, Burma, Laos, & Cambodia, p. 39-41).

THE PROCESS OF INDIANIZATION: The principal initiative in the Indianization process came from the Indo-China's peoples themselves. There is no evidence of any attempted Indian conquests, apart from the Chola (Tamil) attacks on the Srivijaya Empire around 1020. Indianizing agents were predominantly literate Indian scholars and Brahmin priests. The earliest Indian inscriptions in virtually every area, whether Hindu or Buddhist, were cast in impeccable Sanskrit, as attested by records of fourth century Kedah and Champa and of seventh century Srivijaya. The Mons in particular demonstrated from the outset a preference for Buddhism, with a secondary interest in the Vishnu sect, as contrasted to their small regard for Siva worship. Funan and Champa, by comparison were strongly Saivite in the early centuries, as was Khmer Chelna. The Thai arrived on the scene after the influence of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism had largely spread among Khmer neighbors. The full impact of Gupta and Pallavan cultural influence, both Buddhist and Hindu are reflected in the celebrated reigns of Funan’s Kaundinya II (died 434) and Jayavarman I (478-514). The characteristic suffix to the royal title, namely Varman, was a Sanskrit term meaning ‘protégé of, which was commonly used by princely Ksatriya caste in India. Under Khmer control, Siva worship gained the ascendancy, but the Indianization process in Chelna slowed. Meanwhile Guptan and Pallavan cultural impact along the isthmus continued unimpaired, although commercial activity declined.

Hindu cultural traditions survived in both Burma and Siam with equal vigor during nineteenth century. Marriage ceremonies were also Hindu in character. Popular Holi festival was celebrated. The courts followed the Hindu ceremonial ritual plowing. The white elephant veneration, which characterized the traditions of Mons, Burmans, Siamese, and Lao peoples was of both Hindu and Buddhist origin. The systems of astrology and numerology practiced in Burma and Siam was of Indian origin. (John F. Cady, p.81)

Theravada Buddhist countries of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos had their historical and cultural development, derived in part from common Indian associations, can be correlated in a meaningful way. The civilization and governmental forms of Vietnam were adapted from the Chinese tradition rather than from the Indian. The temporary political association of Cambodia and Laos with Annam and Cochin-China for a little more than a half century within French Indochina, did not serve to bridge over in any substantial fashion the basic cultural and historic divergences. (p.v)

The cultural affinity developed during the first Millennium AD, between the peoples of peninsular Indochina and those of India. It owed much to the retention and refinement by Hinduism of animistic beliefs and practices, which were originally similar to those of the Southeast Asians. Siva and Vishnu cults while in the process of development integrated many ancient animistic cults and articulated them within the intellectual framework of Sanskrit literature. The Devanagari script used in Sanskrit and Pali language supplied for centuries the principal media for written communication and patterns for interpretive thought and expression throughout most of Indochina. The Buddhist religion, which also entered Southeast Asia from India in the early centuries AD, developed a popularity and social significance, which Hinduism could not match. (p.3)

http://Indiatalking.com/blog/kalkigaur/

(c) 2006 copyrights Kalki Gaur

Kalki Gaur