Transcript Southeast Asia The first states

Southeast Asia
The first states
October 3, 2012
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?
Where did the first states
arise in South Asia?
in South Asia
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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)
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)
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.
Defining religion
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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.
Indianization of Southeast Asia
Lockard, 21-25
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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)
Faxian’s journey
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http://www.chinaexpat.com/2010/03/15/chinas-buddhistexplorers-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=78.444288,8
4.023438&z=3
Funan (Lockard, 2526)
• 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)
After Funan
(Lockard, 26-28)
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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.
The first Malay states
Lockard, 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.
Mainland political culture
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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.
Vietnam
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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.
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.
Southeast Asian
Society
Lockard, 32
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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.