Early Southeast Asia States

1. Early Southeast Asia States • Oct. 9, 2012

2. Review • What is the difference between an aristocrat and a bureaucrat? • What sort of government did Tang China have? • What was the relationship of Tang China with Tibet? • What was the relationship of Tang China with Silla and Parhae (Bohai)?

3. Tang Culture • Guanyin (Bodhisattva of Compassion) becomes depicted as female. • Porcelain (China) is invented • Tri-color glazed pottery is developed • Tang poetry: • Regulated verse • Free-flowing verse (like Turkish folk songs) • China’s greatest poets: Li Bai and Du Fu

4. A Li Bai Poem • 對酒不覺瞑 • 落花盈我衣 • 醉起步溪月 鳥還人亦稀 • Facing Wine--I don’t notice the dusk • Falling flowers cover my robe • Drunkenly I rise, and walk with the moon in the stream • Birds have gone back, and people are few.

5. Impact of buddhism • printing (woodblocks) • New forms of architecture and art (sculpture in particular) • the adoption of the chair • the use of sugar • the drinking of tea • The Tang temporarily withdrew most official support for Buddhism in 845--Buddhist temples took too much land off the tax rolls.

6. Indianizationof Southeast Asia • Trade between coastal and island Southeast Asia and India brought more than just goods. It also brought religion and ideas about government. • Some people from India settled in Southeast Asia and advised those who built or led early kingdoms. • Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism were both strong at this time in Southeast Asia. Sometimes they intermingled so much that it was hard to tell them apart. • Two Chinese pilgrims visited Southeast Asia: Faxian and Yijing. (Xuanzang visited India, but not Southeast Asia)

7. Vietnam • We don’t list Vietnam as having the 1st Southeast Asian state, since the kingdom that we can see in the 3rd century BCE was more a part of China than of Southeast Asia, both politically and culturally. • Vietnam was more influenced by Confucianism than the rest of southeast Asia was, and was also more influenced by Chinese writing. In addition, one thousand years of Chinese rule made Chinese culture a very strong component of Vietnamese culture. • However, at this time, this was only true of northern Vietnam. Central and southern Vietnam were part of the Indianized cultures of Southeast Asia 1,500 years ago.

8. Anti-Chinese resistance • There were rebellions, however. In 39 CE there was a rebellion led by the Trung sisters. In the third century, another rebellion was led by Lady Trieu. Both rebellions were unsuccessful. • However, over the centuries the elite of Chinese-run Vietnam became more and more ethnically Vietnamese, though those Vietnamese also became more culturally Chinese than their Southeast Asian neighbours.

9. After Funan • The Khmer kingdom of Zhenla, based farther inland that Funan, appears to have replaced Funan around the 6th century. • In the middle of what is now Vietnam, a Malay people called the Cham emerged about the same time. • Off to the West, the Tibeto-Burmese speaking Pyu established a kingdom in what is now Myanmar.

10. The first Malay states • Champa--in what is now central Vietnam. Was a trading federation • Srivijaya in Sumatra, exercising hegemony over trade in its corner of the world. • Sailendra--an inland kingdom on Java. Built Borobudur • Attack by the Cholas from India causes a shift in power to East Java. (That didn’t happen until the 11th century.) • These are trading kingdoms, but merchants are not the kings. • Hinduism-Buddhism used to give an aura of supernatural authority to the king.

11. Mainland political culture • Except for Champa, the first states appeared along major rivers. • In many cases, the peoples who created the first states were replaced by new peoples from the north who had more advanced agricultural methods (using irrigation systems). • Governments were like a solar-system, with power weakening away from the centre. • Except for Vietnam, religion in the first millennium was a mixture of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism, just like in the islands.

12. Southeast Asia Society • Many trading societies, so merchants were more important, as at least as important as, warriors, priests, and scholars. • Perhaps because of the men were often away on business, women appear to have had more autonomy and economic clout in Southeast Asia than in South Asia or East Asia. • Bilateral or matrilineal kinship were more frequent in Southeast Asian than in South or East Asia. • Women played a more visible role in markets than they tended to do in South or East Asia.