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The ‘Indianization’ of Southeast Asia: Reflections on the Prehistoric Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

I. W. Mabbett
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Extract

How did Indian influence spread in Southeast Asia during the opening centuries of our era? The following quotations give some idea of the extent to which authorities are agreed:

It seems almost to be a universal law, that when an inferior civilization comes into contact with a superior one, it gradually tends to be merged into the latter, the rate and extent of this process being determined solely by the capacity of the one to assimilate, and of the other to absorb. When the Hindus first settled in Suvarnabhumi and came into close association with her peoples, this process immediately set in, and produced the inevitable result.

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Articles
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Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 1 - 14
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Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1977

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References

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12 Such as one-faced tools, core tools, frequent use of flakes, a distinctive pattern of food remains, use of rock shelters, and, towards the end—perhaps intrusive—edge-ground tools and cord-marked ceramics. See Gorman, C. F., “Hoabinhian: a Pebble-tool Complex with Early Plant Associations in Southeast Asia”, Science, CLXIII, 3863 (1969), 671–673CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Excavations at Spirit Cave, North Thailand: Some Interim Interpretations”, Asian Perspectives, XIII (1970), 79–107Google Scholar. For a recent description of North Vietnamese finds, see Vien, Nguyen Khac, Traditional Vietnam: Some Historical Stages (Hanoi, n.d.), pp. 10f.Google Scholar Cf. L. Bezacier, op. cit., pp. 25–53.

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16 See C. F. Gorman, loc. cit., “Hoabinhian: a Pebble-tool Complex with Early Plant Associations in Southeast Asia”, op. cit., and “Modelès a priori et préhistoire de la Thailande”, Etudes Rurales, LIII–LVI (1974), 63f.Google Scholar

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18 See Barrau, J., “Gardeners of Oceania”, Discovery, I (1965), 12–19Google Scholar and “Witnesses of the Past: Notes on some food plants of Oceania”, Ethnology, IV (1965), 282–294Google Scholar; Sauer, C. O., Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (N.Y., 1952Google Scholar).

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21 Hill, R. D., “Rice in Malaya: A study in historical geography”, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Singapore University, 1973), 21Google Scholar; also Kuala Lumpur (OUP), in press; Cp. Chandraratna, M. F., Genetics and Breeding of Rice (London, 1964).Google Scholar

22 Haudricourt, A. G., “Domestication des Animaux, Culture des Plantes et Traitement d'Autrui”, L'Homme, II (1962), 41.Google Scholar

23 Copeland, E. B., Rice (London, 1924), p. 21.Google Scholar

24 R. D. Hill, op. cit., 34ff.

25 Harris, C. R., “Agricultural Systems, Ecosystems and the Origins of Agriculture”, The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, eds. Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W. (London, 1969), p. 12.Google Scholar

26 A. G. Haudricourt and L. Hédin, op. cit., p. 153; A. G. Haudricourt, op. cit., 41n.

27 R. D. Hill, op. cit., 383.

28 Treistman, J. M., “Problems in Contemporary Asian Archaeology”, J.A.S., XXIX (1970), 363–371.Google Scholar

29 Gorman, C. F., “The Hoabinhian and After: subsistence patterns in Southeast Asia”, World Archaeology, II, 3 (1971), 300–320CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sees the exploitation, known from archaeology, of bovids, fish, seafood, pigs, deer and goat-antelopes as a good “pre-adaptation” to the introduction of cereals.

30 See Srensen, P., Archaelogical Excavations in Thailand, II, Ban-kao (Copenhagen, 1967), pp. 137ffGoogle Scholar; and Bayard, D. T., “Excavation at Non Nok Tha, north-eastern Thailand, 1968”, Asian Perspectives XIII (1970), 109–143 at 140.Google Scholar

31 P. Srensen, loc. cit.

32 Several important articles discussing the implications of recent finds are listed by Solheim, Wilhelm G. II, “Communication”, Southeast Asia, I, 4 (1971), 410–411Google Scholar. The author is much indebted to Professor Solheim for invaluable information and references.

33 C. F. Gorman, “Excavation at Spirit Cave”, op. cit., 102.

34 Solheim, Wilhelm G. II, “New Light on a Forgotten Past”, National Geographic, CXXXIX, 3 (1971), 330–339.Google Scholar

35 D. T. Bayard, “Excavation at Non Nok Tha”, op. cit., 135.

36 A very considerable variety of strains of wild rice, and many also of wild millet, have since been found in a valley near Spirit Cave. Wilhelm G. Solheim II, personal communication.

37 See Treistman, J. M., “Ch”ü-chia-ling and the early cultures of the Hanshui Valley, China”, Asian Perspectives, XI (1968), 69–90Google Scholar, and Chang, K. C., “The beginnings of Agriculture in the Far East”, Antiquity, XLIV (1970), 175–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 See Treistman, J. M., “China at 1000 b.c.: a cultural mosaic”, Scienc, CLX, 3830 (1968), 855Google Scholar; Sankalia, H. D., Indian Archaeology Today (N.Y., 1962Google Scholar). J. M. Treistman, “Ch”ü-chialing”, op. cit., contests the association of this culture with Lungshan.

39 See Chang, K. C., “The beginnings of Agriculture in the Far East”, Antiquity, XLIV (1970), 175–185CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the debated relation between Yangshao and Hoabinhian, see idem, “Radiocarbon dates from China: some initial interpretations”, Current Anthropology, XIV, 5 (Dec. 1973), 525–528Google Scholar, and Solheim, Wilhelm G. II, “Northern Thailand, Southeast Asia, and World Prehistory”, Asian Perspectives, XIII (1970), 145–162Google Scholar.

40 D. T. Bayard, “Excavation at Non Nok Tha”, op. cit., 123.

41 Idem, “Early Thai Bronze: analysis and new dates”, Science, CLXXVI (1972), 141f.Google Scholar

42 Idem, “Excavation at Non Nok Tha”, op. cit., 136.

43 Ibid., 131, 139.

44 Saurin, E., “Nouvelles Observations Préhistoriques a l'est de Saigon”, B.S.E.I., n.s. XLIII (1968), 1–17Google Scholar. Recent finds indicate that there was a well established bronze culture in Vietnam in the second millennium b.c., along with relatively advanced political organization. W. G. Solheim, personal communication.

45 Cited by D. T. Bayard, “Excavation at Non Nok Tha”, op. cit., 134.

46 Barnard, N., “Bronze Casting and Bonze Alloys in Ancient China”, Monumenta Serica, 1961Google Scholar.

47 Bayard, D. T., “An Early Indigenous Bronze Technology in North-East Thailand”, International Congress of Orientalists, Seminar E (Canberra, 1971)Google Scholar.

48 Agrawal, D. P., “Harappan Chronology: a re-examination of the evidence”, Studies in Prehistory, eds. Sen, and Ghosh, (Calcutta, 1966), pp. 139–148Google Scholar.

49 Solheim, W. G., “Research Report: Early Bronze in Northeastern Thailand”, Current Anthropology, IX, 1 (1968), 59–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Reworking Southeast Asian Prehistory”, Paideuma, Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, XV (1969), 125–139Google Scholar. See also Nguyen Khac Vien, op. cit., pp. 14–17.

50 Dates for the beginning of iron around 1,600–1,200 b.c. have been advanced. See Solheim, Wilhelm G. II, “Early Man in Southeast Asia”, Expedition, XIV, 3 (1972), 29.Google Scholar

51 Benedict, P. K., “Austro-Thai Studies: 3 Austro-Thai and Chinese”, Behaviour Science Notes, II (1967), 275–336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Wilhelm G. Solheim II, personal communication.

53 Dahl, O. C., Malgache et Maanjan: une comparaison linguistique (Oslo, 1951), pp. 370–372.Google Scholar

54 W. G. Solheim, “New Light on a Forgotten Past”, op. cit., and Burkill, I. H., “The Rise and Decline of the Greater Yam in the service of Man”, The Advancement of Science, VII, 28 (1951), 445.Google Scholar

55 W. G. Solheim, loc. cit., and “Southeast Asia and the West”, Science, CLVII, 3791 (1967), 896–902.Google Scholar

56 Idem, “New Light on a Forgotten Past”, op. cit.

57 Idem, “Northern Thailand, Southeast Asia, and World Prehistory”, op. cit.

58 Wilhelm G. Solheim II, personal communication. For evidence of water buffalo at or just before the earliest period of Indian influence, see Bronson, B. and Dales, G. F., “Excavations at Chansen, Thailand, 1968 and 1969: a preliminary report”, Asian Perspectives, XV (1972), 15–46.Google Scholar

59 Bronson, B. andHan, M., “A thermoluminescence series from Thailand”, Antiquity, XLVI (1972), 322–326Google Scholar.

60 On this distinction see Whyte, R. O., “The gramineae, wild and cultivated, of monsoonal and equatorial Asia. I. Southeast Asia”, Asian Perspectives, XV (1972), 126–151.Google Scholar

61 W. G. Solheim, “Research Report: Early Bronze in Northeastern Thailand”, op. cit., 160.

62 See Srensen, P., “Prehistoric Iron Implements from Thailand”, Asian Perspectives, XVI, 2 (1973), 141Google Scholar.

63 The bronze-yielding layer 20 was accorded one dating of 1315 b.c., but this was discarded in favour of datings of 2290 b.c. and 2325 b.c. from two different laboratories for layer 19 samples. Reports from Florida State University suggested bronze manufacture at the conventionally accepted date of about 600 b.c., but other tests elsewhere suggested that all the Florida samples must have been contaminated. On the newly accepted interpretation, however, one secure sample still yielded a surprisingly late date. See W. G. Solheim, “Research Report”, op. cit., 60, and D. T. Bayard, “Excavation at Non Nok Tha”, op. cit., 133. Whether the uncertain bronze-yielding level 3 should be dated to the third or second millennium b.c. has been debated; K. C. Chang, using Chinese synchronisms, favoured the later dating in one place, but thermoluminescence tests support the earlier. So, perhaps, does the back-dating of the bronze age suggested by the analysis of the early-period socketed tool mentioned above. See Chang, K. C., “Radiocarbon dates from China: some initial interpretations”, Current Anthropology, XIV, 5 (Dec. 1973), 525–528CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bronson, B. and Han, M., “A thermoluminescence series from Thailand”, Antiquity, XLVI (1972), 322–326Google Scholar; Bayard, D. T., “Early Thai Bronze: analysis and new dates”, Science, CLXXVI (1972), 1411f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 This is suggested by Groslier, B. in “Our Knowledge of Khmer Civilization: a Re-Appraisal”, Journal of the Siant Society, XLVIII, 1 (1960)Google Scholar. Indians appear to have brought to the isthmus area their own breeds of bullocks and grass for fodder: see R. O. Whyte, “The gramineae”, op. cit., 137f.

65 As late as 1964, G. Coedes listed irrigated rice fields among the material attributes of pre-Indian-culture. Les Etats Hindouisés, op. cit., p. 27.

66 Colani, M., Emploi de la Pierre en des Temps Recules, Annam-Indonésie-Assam, Publication des Amis du Vieux Hue (Hanoi, 1940Google Scholar). Bezacier, L., Asie du Sud-Est, II, Le Vietnam (Paris, 1972), pp. 252ff.Google Scholar refers to the possibility that such sites represent arboreal cults.

67 Wales, H. G. Q., “The Pre-Indian Basis of Khmer Culture”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1952), 117–123Google Scholar; idem, The Mountain of God (London, 1953), pp. 97–103Google Scholar; Spencer, J. E. and Hale, G. A., “The Origin, Nature and Distribution of Agricultural Terracing”, Pacific Viewpoint, II, 1 (1961), 1–40Google Scholar; see also III, 1 (1962), 97–101, 101–105.

68 P. Wheatley, Discursive Scholia on Recent Papers on Agricultural Terracing and on Related Matters pertaining to Northern Indochina and Related Areas, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Institute of International Relations, University of California, Reprint No. 196.

69 Gaspardone, E., “Champs lo et Champs hiong”, Journal Asiatique, CCXLIII, (1955), 461–477Google Scholar.

70 P. Wheatley, op. cit., p. 131.

71 Nguyen Khac Vien, op. cit., pp. 12f.

72 Malleret, L., L'Archéologie du Delta du Mekong, II (1960), 88Google Scholar; III (1962), 324; IV, (1963), 131.

73 L. Malleret, op. cit., IV (1963), 132. R. D. Hill suspects that irrigation began, not in deltaic areas (until well into historical times), but in areas of substantial slope where terracing was already known (personal communication).

74 R. D. Hill, Rice in Malaya, op. cit., 73ff. On this thesis, as well as on a personal communication from the author, the present discussion of wet rice is largely based. See also Wheatley, P. in Sandhu, K., Early Malaysia (Singapore, 1973), p. 43.Google Scholar

75 R. D. Hill, loc. cit. It is suggested in this source that the Mons probably had irrigation (though the evidence is scanty), that the Thais were good at drainage but not irrigation, and that there is a possibly long history of shifting cultivation among the Khmers, 82ff.

76 Harrisson, T., “100,000 years of stone age culture in Borneo”, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, CXII (1963–1964), 174–191Google Scholar.

77 See Vlekke, B. H. M., Nusantara (The Hague, 1959), p. 22.Google Scholar

78 R. D. Hill, op. cit., 89, considers that millet was the chief cereal in Java, following Merrill, E. D., “The Botany of Cook's Voyages”, Chron. Bot., XIV, 5–6 (1954), 161–384Google Scholar, who points to the fact that setaria italica, millet, is figured at the Borobudur while rice is not, and suggests a link between the word for millet, daua, found in Malaya and Philippines, and the Sanskrit, yava, grain.

79 R. D. Hill, op. cit., 91ff.

80 R. D. Hill, personal communication.

81 Groslier, B. P., Angkor et le Cambodge au XVIe Siècle d'apr sèles Sources Portuguaises et Espagnoles (Paris, 1958), pp. 107–121.Google Scholar

82 See Leach, E. R., “Some Economic Advantages of Shifting Cultivation”, Proceedings of the Seventh Pacific Science Congress, 1957.Google Scholar

83 Hill, R. D., “Dry Rice Cultivation in Peninsular Malaya”, Oriental Geography, X, 1 (1966), 10–14.Google Scholar

84 Idem, Rice in Malaya, op. cit., 44.

85 W. G. Solheim, “Northern Thailand, Southeast Asia and World Prehistory”, op. cit.

86 The author is indebted to G. Benjamin for suggestions and references on this important point. See his “Prehistory and Ethnology in Southeast Asia: Some New Ideas”, Working Paper 25, Sociology Department, University of Singapore (1974)Google Scholar.

87 The Lake Tien sites, near North Vietnam in Yunnan, show similarities to Dongson culture, with no writing or “mature urbanization” but with socially stratified villages, according to Chang, K. C., Archaeology of Ancient China (New Haven, 1968), p. 436Google Scholar. See also von Dewall, M., “The Tien Culture of South-West China”, Antiquity, XLI (1967), 8–21Google Scholar. W. G. Solheim refers to urbanization in northern Thailand during the first millennium b.c. in “Northern Thailand, Southeast Asia and World Prehistory”, op. cit., 158. On the bronze-age fortified site at Co Loa, dated to the third century b.c., see L. Bezacier, op. cit., pp. 247–249, and Nguyen Khai Vien, op. cit., 21f. The fortified village site at Chansen in Thailand had an early, pre-Indian phase (c. 200 b.c. − 0. a.d.) characterized by use of bronze, iron and weaving: Bronzen, B. and Dales, G. F., “Excavations at Chansen, Thailand, 1968 and 1969: a preliminary report,” Asian Perspectives, XV (1972), 15–46.Google Scholar

88 On this special usage of “folk” and “peasant”, see Redfield, R., The Primitive World aud its Transformations (Ithaca, N.Y., 1953), pp. 37–42Google Scholar, and passim, and Chang, K. C., “Some Aspects of Social Structure and Settlement Patterns in Southeast Asia”, Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, VI (1958), 67–78Google Scholar.

89 Furnivall, J. S., Netherlands India (Cambridge, 1939/1944).Google Scholar

90 This is a point which will be taken up in a later article.