Indian states
Indianised States or Indianised kingdoms ( English Indianized states ) is a collective term for various historical political system that existed in the first and the first half of the second millennium in Southeast Asia - both on the mainland of the Indochinese and Malay Peninsula , and on the western islands of the Malay Archipelago . Their culture was shaped by Hinduism and / or Buddhism and their written evidence is predominantly in Sanskrit .
The term and the concept were essentially coined by the archaeologist and epigraphist George Cœdès (1886–1969), who specialized in Southeast Asia , who published the first edition of his Histoire ancienne des états hindouisés d'Extrème-Orient in 1944 , and was taken up by many other historians further developed. Today's knowledge of the history of the Indianized states is mostly based on archaeological evidence discovered on site, especially inscriptions, as well as contemporary Chinese chronicles. It is generally assumed that around the turn of the times the population of large parts of Southeast Asia spoke Austro-Asian (this includes, for example, Khmer and Mon ) and Austronesian languages (the latter includes, for example, Malay , Javanese and the Cham language ). However, there are few inscriptions in the respective native languages, while most are in Sanskrit.
Cœdès assumed a first wave of Indianization in Southeast Asia in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The inscription of Vo Canh (near the present-day Vietnamese city of Nha Trang ), the oldest Sanskrit inscription discovered in Southeast Asia to date, dates from this phase . Around the same time, the first evidence of Southeast Asian states appeared in Chinese chronicles that are mentioned as having close contact with India. Cœdès dated a phase of the "second Indication" from the middle of the 4th to the middle of the 6th century. How strong the Indianization took place through actual immigration of Indian colonists or rather through the mere adoption of elements of Indian culture by the local population, and whether the Indian influences only represented a cultural facade cultivated by the respective elite or also reached broad sections of the population, is still an issue today academic debates.
The obsolete name of the region behind India can be traced back to the strong Indian influence on the cultures of Southeast Asia . In ancient Indian sources, the states of Southeast Asia were referred to as Suvarnabhumi ("gold country"), with the name Chryse Chersonesus in Ptolemy's and Aurea Chersonesus correlates in Latin sources.
The Indianized states include Funan (1st to 7th centuries) and his successors Chenla (6th to 8th centuries) and Angkor (Kambuja; 9th to 15th centuries) with their center in present-day Cambodia , the city-states of the Pyu im today's central Myanmar (1st to 9th century), the Champa network in today's South Vietnam (2nd to 19th century), the Buddhist city network Dvaravati of the Mon in the basin of the Mae Nam Chao Phraya (today's central Thailand ; 6th to 11th centuries) Century), Langkasuka (2nd to 15th century) and Tambralinga (7th to 14th century) on the Malay Peninsula (today southern Thailand and northern Malaysia), the Buddhist sea trade network Srivijaya with its center on Sumatra (7th to 13th century ), the empire of the Sailendra dynasty on Java (8th to 9th centuries), the first Burmese empire Bagan (11th to 13th centuries) and the Hindu thalassocracy Majapahit with its center in eastern Java (13th to 16th centuries) counted. Within or next to these large empires or networks (“ mandalas ”) there were a number of smaller, indexed states.
The decline of the Indianized states is accompanied by the Mongol invasions and the spread of the Tai peoples in Southeast Asia in the 13th century. However, the Tai empires (e.g. Sukhothai , Lan Na , Lan Xang , Ayutthaya ) took over strong cultural and religious influences, and in some cases also political structures from their respective Indianized predecessor states. The end of the most important Indianized empires marked the abandonment of Angkor in the 15th century after a decisive defeat against the Thai empire of Ayutthaya, the abandonment of the Champa capital Vijaya under the pressure of the Vietnamese spreading south , the spread of Islam in Malaya and Indonesia in the 15th and 16th centuries and the colonization of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511.
literature
- George Cœdès: The Indianized States of South-East Asia. Australian National University Press, Canberra 1968. (English version of the third edition of Cœdès' Les États hindouisés d'Indochine et d'Indonesie , 1964.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ William A. Southworth: Indianization. In Ooi Keat Gin: Southeast Asia. A Historical Encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor. Volume 1. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara (CA), 2004, pp. 642-645.
- ^ Paul Wheatley: The Golden Khersonese. Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula before AD 1500. Greenwood Press, 1973.
- ↑ Coedes: The Indianized States of South-East Asia. 1968, pp. 235-246.