Southeast Asia The first states

1. Southeast AsiaThe first states • October 3, 2012

2. Review • Who ruled northern China after the fall of the Han? Were they Chinese? • What is sinification? Did many peoples become sinified? • What were the religions of China in the centuries following the fall of the Han dynasty? • Who was Faxian? • If you walk into a Buddhist temple, can you tell if it is a Theravada temple or a Mahayana temple?

3. Where did the first states arise in South Asia?in South Asia • http://www.manualphotography.info/ganges-river-map/ • To the east, near the Ganges river. The Indus River culture had cities but no state (no centralized political authority)

4. Daoism and Buddhism • Daoism does not argue for the extinction of desires. Buddhism does. • Daoism seeks physical immortality. (Ebrey, 72) Buddhism seeks nirvana. • Daoist philosophy rejected what it called the arbitrary distinctions in human society in favour of nature. Buddhism denied that either nature or human society were ultimately real. • Daoist religion is very different from Daoist philosophy. Daoist philosophy has no gods or rituals. Daoist religion has many gods and rituals. (Ebrey, 72)

5. Common errors in discussing religion • Confusing what the sacred texts of a religion say, and what the practitioners of that religion do • confusing what the religious professionals do with what the average lay practitioner does. • imposing a Western understanding of religion (theistic, doctrine-centered, generating a moral code, etc) on an Asian religion which emphasizes ritual over belief, has no formal theology or creed, or maybe doesn’t even generate its own moral code.

6. Defining religion • Religion: Any attempt to explain the otherwise unexplainable, predict the otherwise unpredictable, or prevent the otherwise unpreventable by relying on forces that transcend the human realm. Neither belief in a supernatural personality nor the generation of a moral code are necessary for a way of thinking and behaving to be called religious. (Some Buddhists do not believe in a god. Shinto has no moral code of its own.) • Religion normally involves ritual and/or prayer. • Religions provide behavioral guidelines as well as guidelines for making value judgments. Examining religion in Asia therefore helps us understand what people in the past considered important and why they did what they did.

7. Indianization of Southeast Asia Lockard, 21-25 • 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 (Lockard, 21, Sen 47-49) and Yijing. (Xuanzang visited India, but not Southeast Asia)

8. Faxian’s journey • http://www.chinaexpat.com/2010/03/15/chinas-buddhist-explorers-part-one.html/ • Also, check out a google map of Faxian’s trip: • https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=105829849220243868489.00045718e4fbdc0096f3c&t=h&source=embed&ll=17.644022,107.226563&spn=78.444288,84.023438&z=3

9. Funan (Lockard, 25-26) • The first indigenous large-scale political entity • an “Indianized” trading state. Khmer, not Malay • 1st century to the 6th century • Was it a country or a trading federation? • See Lockard, p. 27, for a map of Funan (Remember, those borders are not exact)

10. After Funan(Lockard, 26-28) • The Khmer kingdom of Zhenla, based farther inland that Funan, appears to have replaced Funan around the 6th century. (Lockard, 26) • In the middle of what is now Vietnam, a Malay people called the Cham emerged about the same time. (Lockard, 26-28) • Off to the West, the Tibeto-Burmese speaking Pyu people established a kingdom in what is now Myanmar.

11. The first Malay statesLockard, 31 • Champa--in what is now central Vietnam. Also a trading federation • Srivijaya in Sumatra, exercising hegemony over trade in its corner of the world. • Sailendra--an inland kingdom on Java. • Note: there was no “Indonesia” yet.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. The Vietnamese • Gained their independence from the Chinese in the 10th century. • are more influenced by Chinese culture than any other people in pre-modern Southeast Asia. • Slowly began moving against the Hindu Champa kingdom.Took several centuries to eliminate it. • Successfully resisted Mongol attacks in the 13th century. • Did not cover the same amount of territory Vietnam covers today until the 19th century.

15. Southeast Asian SocietyLockard, 32 • Many trading societies, so merchants were more important, or at least as important as, warriors, priests, and scholars. • Perhaps because 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 (see Key Terms page) 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.