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Southeast Asia Of The Ninth ToFourteenth CenturiesR.H. BarnesPublished online: 15 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: R.H. Barnes (1987) Southeast Asia Of The Ninth To Fourteenth Centuries,Canberra Anthropology, 10:1, 74-85, DOI: 10.1080/03149098709508529

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SOUTHEAST ASIA OF THE NINTH TOFOURTEE TH CENTURIES

A review article by R.H. Barnes

David G. Man and A.C. Milner (eds). Southeast Asia in the 9thto 14th centuries (with an introduction by Wang Gungwu).Singapore and Canberra: Institute of Southeast Asian Studie andthe Research School of Pacific Studies, The Au tralian National

niversity. 1986. xviii, 4JOpp., index. US$J6.00(Singapore), A 15.00 plu po tage (A , Bibliotech) (paper).

The best way to approach a collection of thi kind is to look at itsgeographical and topical cope. The papers derive from a conference offorty historians, epigraphers, archaeologists, linguists and anthropologistheld at The Au tralian ational Univer ity in May 19 4. One of thetwenty essay di cu s kingdoms throughout outheast Asia. Thirteenr lat to the mainland: two on Thailand, three on Cambodia, six onVietnam, one on Arakan of Burma. and one on Burma and Cambodia.There are four essays devoted to Java alone. The. two papers on insular

outheast Asia bring in some reference to the Philippines, Sulawe i, theoluccas and other parts of eastern Indonesia. Largely n glected are the

highland and remote interior districts of the mainland and of most of theislands, excepting Java. Great attention is given to questions of kingshipand state formation or it ab ence to local reaction to Indian and Chinesereligious and cultural influenc , as well as to writing and to templearchitecture and culpture.

The period covered is situated at that time between the ancient andmodern eras for which th re are some written sources upplemented byarchaeological findings, but before the advent of significant Europeanpres nce (and observation) from the sixteenth century onwards. It is a

difficult period from which to derive any sort of coherent overview,especially in a region of 0 much geographical, historical, linguistic andcultural diversity. Inevitably, the boundaries of the region as a whole arequestionable in respect to g ography, history culture and language as is itpotential unity for ·cholarship. The difficulties only point up the gratitudew owe those who have atl mpted to do omething about the cholarlyproblems. The diversity of kinds of scholarship repr sented by thecontributors i it elf daunting to a reviewer, who may reveal his per onal

Canberra Anthropology 10 (1) 19 7:74-85.

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R.H. BARNES 75

preferences and intere ts but cannot hope to judge in detail each of theoffering and cannot, therefore, aspire to do justice to the book as a whole.

For my own general ducation I much benefited from Loofs­Wissowa's search for the rea on why the true arch was u ed in Burma andnowher el e in outheast Asia. tone and the corbel arch were common inHinduist Cambodia while brick and the true arch were the order of theday in Buddhi t Burma. Ther was a clear di tinction in outheast sianarchitecture between religious buildings made of stone and brick on the onehand and, on the oth r laic constructions of perishable materials. Even inelas ical Angkoran time (thirteenth century), monuments weretran lations into tone of wood n buildings. To this day, the principle ofthe true arch is unknown in rural Thailand, even to pro£ s ional masonsalthough it was introduced into Thailand in th late- ev nt enth centuryby the Italian Jesuit Thomas alguarnera.

Loof -Wi owa appear at fir t to have a convincing answer to hispuzzle. Th true ar h, with it gr ater carrying capacity was required inBurma for the large rooms in which people gathered around Buddhafigure for worship whereas Khmer kings did not use the true arch b cau eth y did not n ed it. They pos es ed the means, but did not require thlarge, roof d assembly room th true arch alone would have madepossible. However, Loofs- Wissowa pulls the rug out from und r hisexplanation when he ob erves that although Khmer culture would havknown of Chine bridge construction in which th true arch had been u dince th fir t millennium Be they stuck to the unsatisfactory corbel arch.

Why th Y did not u it in bridg he say i a que tion hi tori cally moreimportant than why they did not us it in monument. The rna ivecon tructions based on corbel arches dammed up torrents rather thanletting them pass through capacious arched passages, and caused theeventual 10 through wash-out of the bridge. What in effect is his finalansw r is rath r unsatisfactory. H argues that Khmer engineers implystuck desparately to the principle of Hindu architecture and its 'horror' ofthe true arch, an explanation which leave op n the question why th ycould not bring them Iv s to br ak with Hindu ideas.

The pap rs by Guy, Gutman and or I yare also related to art andarchite ture. Guy tak s up Vi tnames c ramie design during the Ly andTran dynasti ,el venth to fourteenth centurie. During the fourt enthcentury, Vietname e potters shifted from dome tic production toparticipation in international trade. ]n th centuries immediatelypreceding this hift, \ hich coincide with a r nai san e of Vietnamese

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76 CANBERRA A TTHROPOLOGY 10 (1) 1987

culture, the sophisticated ceramics show the strongest expression ofVietnamese cultural identity. Gutman examines Arakan royal symbols asfound on an ancient ston pillar of the Shitthaungpara or Shrine of theEighty Thousand Images and on two early sculptures. Worsley interpretsthe narrative bas-reliefs at Chandi Surawana (Java) which, a cording toJavanese literature, the Majapahit King Hayam Wuruk visited in AD 1361.

Cambodian dynastic genealogies, according to Vickery reflect aranking of gods and chiefs in a single hierarchy and indicate an ambilateral(cognatic) conical clan structure in which all m mbers were rankedhierarchically in terms of degree of relationship to the common ancestor orgod. The issue of cognati kinship is one of several which rec iv repeatedattention from the authors and which will b given more consid rationbelow.

Jacques looks at epigraphical evidence about Khmer and Chameconomic activity. Very little in fact can be known by these means. Eventhe advisory board of the Angkoran king annot be pieced together. Therewas no hereditary nobility, but lineage was important and marked bytemples dedicated to anc stars. Regional rebellions were common in theAngkoran period. No references exist to the economic implications of thehuge artificial lakes and the nature of landownership is not illuminated byinscriptions. In the absence of money, which did not exist, rice fields werebought and sold in exchange for gold or silver ingots bronze orcopperware clothes, cattle or slaves. Cham inscriptions are less wellstudied and provide even scantier but similar information. Mabb tt writesthat although early Cham populations was sparse and scattered, they werenot isolated. Instead Cham society was robust and subsisted from seatrade piracy fishing, horticulture and agriculture, and it participated inthe international life of Hinduism and Buddhism.

risakra Vallibhotama disputes the interpretation that CentralThailand was dominated from the sixth to eleventh centuries by a singlestate known a Dvaravati. Art objects from sites in th Chao Phrayavalley reflect two different religious systems, Buddhism in the west andHinduism in the ea t. From this distribution of evidence the authorconcludes that at least two ri al states were present from early times untilthe fifteenth century.

targardt summarizes fifteen years of excavations by a jointCambridge/Thai archa ological team carried out in the south rn Thai siteof Satingpra. The results, with finds from the second century BC to thefourteenth centur AD provide counter evidence to the great river valley

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R.H. BARNES 77

theory of the origin of civilization. In mainland outh ast Asia the earlycivilization develop d on the fringes of the alluvial tracts of the greatrivers, rather than exploiting their richer soils. targardt thinks that themajority of outhea t Asian titi s and stat s develop d in lowlandenvironmental situations similar to atingpra where under naturalconditions agricultural returns were marginal. The proximity ofsecondary rivers and small streams made these habitats on of the earliestspheres of man's experimentation with water control, diversion and storageIn outh East Asia (p.37). There a highly integrated and very largehydraulic network came into existence through expansion of adi continuous et of village orks. The e system converted low yields intosubstantial and reliable surpluses which permitted urbanization in the fifthto sixth centuries AD. Wet rice agricultur co- xi ted in th area with long­distance maritime trade from the s cond century AD. Trade across thepeninsula increa ed In volume after the sixth century AD, whentransportation canal wer con tructed. Much of the hydraulic work seemsto hav b en the re ult of horizontal o-op ration on an inter-villagearrangement. targardt emphasize the enduring interconnection betweenmaritime trade and agriculture and argues that there is no necessarylinkage b tween early civilization and great river valleys, hierarchical'de poti m and irrigation agri ultur , and that th re is no nec sary dividbetw en agricultural societies and trading communities.

'fran Quo Vuong take us for a quick excur ion through Vietnameshistory down to 'the dawn of Vietnam s nationa.l-modern culture in themiddle of the xxth century' (p.277). Both Whitmore and Taylor deal withthe Ly dynastic period of Vietnam (AD 1010-1225). According toWhitmore, Vietnam was not then separated from the re t of outheast

sia by virtue of hine e domination, characterized by a bureaucratizedConfucian state with strong central control and the presence of patrilinealand patriarchical clans. Instead, he interprets the Vietnamese state asbeing eclt' ti , 'litist and non-bureaucratic like others in Sou the t Asia,with shifting power centres. The ruler united a heroic image withrepre entation of cosmic unity, while kinship was cognatic.

Taylor 801 0 reject the interpretation that at this time Vietnam hada c ntralized state wielding effective administrative control over the realm.instead, one powerful clan came to be recognized by its peers as pre­eminent, and the pre-eminf'nce was formalized and expressed in 'Lydynasty religion. Their moral and. piritual qualitie , defin d in Buddhistterms, commanded obedience, not their administrative ability to enforce

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7 CA BERRA ANTHROPOLOGY 10 (1) 19 7

ompliance. 'The Ly king wer ob yed b cau th y w r believed'(p.170). The dynasty ro e to power through an unbroken eries ofbelievable kings and faded when Ly kings ceased to be beli vable.

ngar urveys six official and unofficial ourc s for Vietnam eorigin from AD 1272 to AD 1400. The arliest sugg t a piritual map ofsacred place and un p cific time. The cond phas how awar n ofcultural boundaries whil the polity i dated from a much rlier time.The third phase trac s origins through a succe ion of politic by means ofg n alogy ext nding back to pr hi tory. Th final contribution byWolters, pr sent a st.ructuralist r ading of ietnamese annal of thperiod AD 1293-1357.

Kulke' chapter on the arly and imp rial kingdom att mpts ad velopm nt bond rent writing uggesting that outhf'ast sian states

r oft n rath r 100 Iy tru tur d, rather than th rigidly hi rar hicalsystems, replete with berian crit ria of bureaucratic st.ates envisagedby earlier hi torian . Th newer view in que tion has been advancedel wh r by among other orne of th contributor to thi book. Kulkacknowledge that hin ac ount of outh t sian tat tran I tedfactual knowledge about th m into a kind of hinese official jargon whichb,tt r repr ent d the realiti of the centraliz d Chine estate. Kulke al 0

att mpt to tam a re ent op nn by hi torians to anthropologicalth orie of tate formation. H prop s a ch me of thre succe ivcph of tate formation. The fir t i a local con lidation of pow r und ra 'big man' or under lineage eld r. Further development leads to whatKulke dubs the arly Kingdom (p.7). Perhap a sisted by Hinduism,10 al lead r subordinated n ighbouring chief by military means andel vatcd th m I to bcom king with primarily religiou val nc('within an articulat d region. This form of power was compatible withmultiple centre, uncertain boundaries and th expansion and contractionof influence.

It i to h fir t two t g that Kulk think anthropolog i mo tr J vant. Toward the nd of th fir t millennium 0 imperial kingdomappeared. mark d by t rritorial nlarg m nl forcibl unification of (> ralformer! independ nt kingdoms replacement of former ruler and thee tahli hment of d nasti . The shift from sta e two to tage three didnot, how v r n il a radi al hange in a ce to 10 al r our , mer I achang in th ize of the tribut.ary area. her a th court of th arlyKingdom depend d mainly on th r our E> of its direct hint rland the'\ hole enlarged core area of the Imp rial Kingdom wa linked to the entre

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R.H. BAR ES 79

by a y tern of decentralized collection of dutie and their redistribution'(pp.13-H). More dramati wa a tran ition in the use of ritual andr ligion by imp rial ruler. T mpl ,for xampl cad to b builtmer Iy at particular holy place and became increasingly associated withth politi al n r. Kings becam dir ct]y ti d to divin power throughthe e entres and umed 0 mi r ponsibiliti . The n twork of religiousinstitutions focused on the king might have provided th basis for thetran t r of r our e with political implications.

D Ca paris tak up precisely thi problem of the communicationbetwe n c ntral and local go ernm nt in an ient Java during the period AD

875-950. At this time direct control by th c ntra} go ernm nt had noty t taken the form achieved during the ajapahit era. D Casparisconclude that r lation pass d through various channels of which hexamin th following fiv : (1) royal officials, (2) land d nobility (3) tax

colleetors, (4) religious au horitie and (5) dir t contact between villageld rs and th king or hi immediate ubordinates. H onclud that th re

was a balance betw n ntral government d ands and village autonomy,although h cone des that the relationship may hay b n Ie sati factorythan it appears.

i eman Chri ti argu s that Marx's siatic Mode of Production'mod I and ittfogel s 'Hydraulic oci ty' hypoth i do not fit early Javaat all, whereas though the Javan e kingdom as closer to the negara

picture of various writ r including Wheatley and Ge rtz, rul r w reneither politically strong enough, nor ritually potent enough to fit Geertz s'th atre state. he also rej ct the mandala and alacti polity modelsof oJt rs and Tambiah on th grounds that Ja ane estates w re morecohesi than these mod Is would suggest.

, ith th help of P.J. Zoetmulder, who provid d lexical references toancient Jav n e kinship t rms, Fox tests Rassers's hypothesis that ancientJavane e kinship was radically different from that of today. He i able toshow that old Javanes kinship i entirely ustronesian, displaying little

anskrit influ n e in it basic stru ture. Furthermor, old Ja ankin hip wa 1101, fundam ntally din rent than mod rn, which means that itwa cognatic.

Th i\ 0 remaining articJ tak u away [rom topics of kingship andtate and the h avy mphasi on the mainland plus Java and they

sugg st additional historical topic which might be brought intocon ideration. Manguin pre nt an ten i sur y of th ymbol of thboat as a m taphor for th ord r d oci I group. Thi theme in ites

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80 CA BERRA A THROPOLOGY 10 (1) 1987

comparison to the use of the house for the same purpose. Either subjectmight help inform the discussion of religious archit cture kinship and thenature of social, particularly, royal groups that repeatedly come up in thisset of essays. Macknight offers a suggestive overview of themes pertainingto the eastern and southern boundari s of outheast Asia which goes along way toward acknowl dging and to an xtent rectifying theg ographical imbalance in the book's coverage.

Hovering behind Southeast Asia in the 9th to 14th centuries is theshadow of another book, O. W. Wolters's History, culture and region inSoutheast Asian perspectives (19 2). In this work olters attempts tosketch out features of an historical and cultural matrix which wouldfacilitate general discussions in Southeast Asian scholarship. His article inMarr and Milner's book does not much furth r these themes, except fortextual criticism, but most of the authors refer to them. In fact, in hisintroduction Wang Gungwu writes that the organizers had begunplanning their conference when Wolters's book appear d, having such animpact on their project that Wang Gungwu even say that having set outthe key questions Wolters s publication actually led to the 19 4conference (p.xiv). Among the features in Wolter's cherne of things, allof which were influential for the contributors to the confer nee, were thefollowing. Hierarchical distinctions were widespread. Leadership wasexerci ed by 'big men or men of prowess', possessing abnormal soulstufP. Hindu influence brought indigenous beliefs into sharper focus whilintroducing personal d votion (bhakti) and cults of i a and Visnu. Divinekingship followed, but thi development did not I ad to fully-fledged states.Instead the map of early ouLheast Asia was marked by a patchwork ofoverlapping mandalas or circles of kings. These mandalas were oftenpolitically and militarily un table. They focu d on c ntr rather thandefining boundaries. The tributary rulers r plicated the court culture ofthe centre and occasionally threw off its influ nee in order to establishthemselves as new centres.

Wolters downplays the distinction between coastal and inlandpolitie , pointing to inland Majapahit and its maritime connections. Healso rather oddly dismiss s the importance of maritim communication onth ground that outh ast A ia did noL match th Mediterranean pictureof history shap d by cities in commercial trade with each other and incompetition for monopolie. Appan·ntly his view i Lhat sea trade was tooecure to produce events of historical proportions. Wolters emphasizes

r gional diver ity and the 'localization of Hindui m and Buddhism. He

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R.II. BAR ES

prid him elf on in ludin unlik Co de , the Philippin and Vietnam inhi purview. Howev r he admits that hi mod I of hi torical outheastAsia applies onl to the lowlands. He ay that we cannot as ume thatpowerful lord in the plain ignor d the re ource and manpow r of thehill and mountain but 'tile historian relying on writt n r cords has toremove vast t rritories from th historical map of earlier outh a t Asia'(Wolt rs 19 2:32).

This is a tiling admi sion, and on which would hav n arly theame pertinence to the collection under review. An indication of this

lopsided p rspective is the exclusive interest in cognatic kinship whichWoltf'r' includes among his Ii t of features. Given the wide distribution ofcognati sy. tem' in lowland 'outh a t sia, cognatic kin hip de ervmilch of th(' att nti n it r c iv . Howe r it i di maying that historiancan se no hi tori al qu tions in the syst ms of unilineal descent andpo itive marriage alliance whi h are also v ry much part of the outheastAsian pictur. Thu oil r a kno ledg that hi, gcn rali~ation about('ogn ti kin -hip Ie aside uch important group as th Chams andMinangkabau. Is it not possible that the relation between the unilinealgroups of the highlands and the often cognatic people of the lowland wasin itself of som historical importance? L a h w II-kno n. tud of u hr I tion hip in nin te nth- and twenti th- entury Burma (1954) ought tobe abl to stimulate imaginations working on different period of theregion history. Furthermore Blust has produc d a reasoned argument(19 0), wh ther readers ace pt it or not that early Austrone ian ocialorganization was hara terized by unilin al de ent and mmetrimarri g alli nce.

ot all of the contributors to the 19 4 confer n e support all aspectsof Wolter matrix. \ i man hri tie for example is openly ho tile toth mandala interpretation. Most however, tak up one or mor f atureswi h r I tiv ('J)thusia m. for th· mandala perhap hi torical d batewould b fa iii tat d by di tinguishing on the one hand betwe n explicit useof th idea of mandala derived from Hinduism and Buddhi m and on theoth r hand. ry irnilar cultural configurations which may relate to pre­Hindu tradition. Furthnmore it would help to parat th i u ofwh ther t h mandala or imilar pattern de crib tru politicalr lationship from th wid pread ideological intere t in uch hapes andpatt rn - no just in th sphere of politic ( e Bertling 1954).

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2 A BERRA ANTHROPOi-OGY 10 (1) 19 7

The ih m of' localization' i , I take ii, just a al utary reminder to

tak an inter st in the particular and th anomalou ev n wh n in th

proce s of generalizing - a warning hardly un· xpe ted from historians and

certainly congenial io thnographer. It furth r r mind u of th well·

known resili nce and adaptability of outheast sian culture, which

means their ability to remain r lativ Iy tru to themselv while

naturalizing influence from out id. 'oul tufr sound awfully old

fa hion d and the r ad r may wonder if Wolt r i reall comfortable with

equating the variou xample he cites: emangat Toh, akti power

radiance hpon merit and 0 on. The 'big man model derive in the first

place from the Papuan ultural nvironm ni, and Wolters doe not xplaln

what tran form tion it nut undergo t b uccessfully transplanted to

outh a t A ia.

o anguin' r fer n to th a t rn Indon ian 'fi Id of studi may

not be immediat Iy omprehended by all readers· yet it is a reference to an

alternative speculative ndertaking hich an in som way b us fully

ontr t. d to that of Wolt r. R f rring t.o Iingui tic and ar ha ological

evidenc for th rat.her late populat.ion of w stern Indon sia by peak r of

ustrone ian languages (possibly during the fir t millennium Be),Macknight comm nt that the new und rstanding of prehi tor 'mo e t.h

fo u of centrali and temporal priority in the archip lag fr m Java and

further w t t.o the ulu and I bes ea' (p.217). a onsequence h

in ite hi torians t abandon the habit of thinking of in ular outhe t

sia as divided into Java rsus th Outer Island - a derivation of

ninet. enth·century Dutch administrative structur. In 1935 J.P.ll. de

Jo elin de Jong and F.A. J. van Wouden publi hed a plan for identif ing

t.h(' . tructural ore of an it'nt. Indone ian ('ultur , d fining th Malay

Archip lago a fi ld of thnological st.udy (J.P.D. de Jo s lin d Jong

1977' van \ oud n 196). In r c nt years, P.B. d Jos elin d Jong hasattempt d to draw attention to a revi d version of this sch me ( e

p ciall J977 and ]9 4). 1 ha t'di. us cd thi approa hand includt'd a

brief comparison with that of Wolter' (Barnes 19 5). Th fact that

\ olt r in luded th mainland while th Dutch t nd d to 1ude it

1I0uld not be ov r1y mpha ized in the Liden authors oc asionally

r ferr d to mainland parallel.. n int r st of this field of study tradition is

that it i the only such programme devi d primarily with eastern

lndone ia in mind. Teverth Ie.. , it has wide pread ographi I r I a.ll ,th ugh pcrhap' n t. quit to the am t nt i author originally

intended.

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R.H. BARNES 83

There are many debatable points in the Leiden versIon of outbeastA ian cultur, which in any case was not specifically designed tocorrespond to any given historical range of time. Fox s paper on Javanesekin hip speaks to on of the~e points of argument. ev rtheless, it isinteresting to see Wolters and most of the other contributors writing asthough they were unaware of its existence and potential relevance. Itposits, for example, unilin al de cent and circulating connubium as generalfeatures. Even if this generalization cannot be accepted, the presence ofrelated institutions in such widely-separated places as highland Burma,highland Laos, highland umatra and eastern Indonesia might attract thejot r st of anthropologically-minded historians.

The issue of why Hinduism did not bring to outheast Asia thepragmatic trappings of Indian caste is another point on which the twoapproaches might make contact. The Leiden authors Jist Indonesiancultural resilience as a feature which is relevant to localization. Also ofcommon interest are 'social·cultural dualism' and four-fold or mandala-likeconfigurations, not to mention symbolic uses of numbers and hierarchicalpatterns of etiquette. The two schemes differ most on questions ofleadership and kinship without perhaps a clear victory going to either.But it certainly helps to appreciate each, if it is contrasted to the other.

There may be further room to expand historical questions in the areaof trade. The fact that Majapahit lay in the interior but had importantmaritime links does not seem to be a very telling point againstcommonplace distinctions between coastal populations and peopl s of theinterior. That in various places the people themselves so often seethemselves in these term would seem to me to be sufficient grounds torecognize the distinction as would the fact that trading conventions areoften arbitrarily arranged (by self-imposed restrictions on producingcertain goods, lik textile or pots, for example) to emphasize thedifference. Howev r, ] think it i helpful to recognize that agriculturalpopulation carryon trade. orne writers seem to imply that historicalqu tion arc exhau tcd when attention shifts from internationalcommercial trade. Ceremonial exchange also seems to hold little interestfor them. Recent anthropological studies, however, have tended to showhow significant are th links between internal cycles of exchange with fixedab tra t but purely indigenou standard of value and foreign commercialtrad which feeds objects of wealth into these cycles in return for surplusproducts and, in hi torical time~, slaves. It seems once again that adimension could b added to the di cussion of trade and patterns of tribute

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4 CA BERRA A THROPOLOGY 10 (1) 1987

to th state by thinking about what may be happening in the culture ofthe hint rland.

Given Wolters's interest in textual criticism perhaps the study ofwritL n literature could be usefully supplemented by referenc to possibleinfluenc from oral tradition of acral language and poetry. Macknight'ssurvey on the distribution of writing i appo it ,particularl his quotationof de Ca paris's sugge tion that writing may have been more widespread inancient outhea t A ia, including the eastern islands, than has beenthought. If the changes in Indian-d rived cript have been greater outsideJava, Bali and the Malacca traits, something of intere t must hav b ngoing on. Furthermore, if Philippine scripts derive from ulawesi, thenacliviti there may have been of more moment than w urrently know.What was the relation between th se scripts and the oral nvironment?

M general impre ion of the book is that the more the contributorssucceed in delin ating the general lines of outheast A ian history themore likely it will be that que tion can be u efully asked about tho e 'vastterritorie which olter say historians have initially removed from thehistorical map. outh ast A ian history will in the pro e s become evenmore interdisciplinary, if that is at all pos ibJe, than it i in thi impres iveexample of scholarly co-operation.

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