Greater India - Indianized Kingdoms

Indianized Kingdoms

Further information: Hinduism in Southeast Asia

The concept of the Indianized kingdoms, first described by George Coedès, is based on Hindu and Buddhist cultural and economic influences in Southeast Asia. Butuan, Champa, Dvaravati, Funan, Gangga Negara, Kadaram, Kalingga, Kutai, Langkasuka, Pagan, Pan Pan, Po-ni, Tarumanagara and Tondo were among the earliest Hindu kingdoms in Southeast Asia, established around the 1st to 4th centuries CE. Despite being culturally akin to Hindu cultures, these kingdoms were indigenous and independent of the Indian mainland. States such as Srivijaya, Majapahit and the Khmer empire developed territories and economies that rivaled those in India itself. Borobudur in Java, for example, is the largest Buddhist monument ever built. Coedès has been criticised for understating the Southeast Asian element of these kingdoms, in an unconscious echo of the European "civilising mission."

More recent scholars tend to emphasise the contribution of Southeast Asian societies and rulers to the formation of these states. In particular, where Coedès saw Indian merchants as the founders of these states, contemporary scholars see Southeast Asian rulers as founding them and then importing Indian ritual specialists as advisers on rajadharma, or the practices of Indian kingship. The modern view is supported by the argument that Indian merchants would not have possessed the ritual knowledge which became so prominent in these kingdoms.

These Indianized kingdoms developed a close affinity with and internalised Indian religious, cultural and economic practices without significant direct input from Indian rulers themselves. While the issue remains controversial, it is thought that Indianization was the work of Indian traders and merchants as opposed to political leaders, although the travels of Buddhist monks such as Atisha later became important. Most Indianized kingdoms combined both Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices in a syncretic manner. Kertanagara, the last king of Singhasari, described himself as “Sivabuddha”, a simultaneous incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva and the Buddha.

Southeast Asian rulers enthusiastically adopted elements of rajadharma (Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, codes, and court practices) to legitimize their own rule and constructed cities, such as Angkor, to affirm royal power by reproducing a map of sacred space derived from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Southeast Asian rulers frequently adopted lengthy Sanskrit titles and founded cities, such as Ayutthaya in Thailand, named after those in the Indian epics.

Cultural and trading relations between the powerful Chola dynasty of South India and the Southeast Asian Hindu kingdoms led the Bay of Bengal to be called "The Chola Lake", and the Chola attacks on Srivijaya in the 10th century CE are the sole example of military attacks by Indian rulers against Southeast Asia. The Pala dynasty of Bengal, which controlled the heartland of Buddhist India, maintained close economic, cultural and religious ties, particularly with Srivijaya.