3 - “Indianization”, “Localization” or “Convergence”?

Summary

If Majumdar and van Leur represent the two ends of the debate over “Indianization,” a newer perspective accords significant local autonomy and agency to Southeast Asians without dismissing the impact of Indian ideas. It accepts the view that Indian ideas did inspire political change and development in Southeast Asia, but this was neither a case of “wholesale transplantation” nor did it acquire the character of a “thin, flaking glaze” (van Leur 1995: 95).

O.W. Wolters, in a major reinterpretation of Southeast Asian regional political history, provides further evidence and argumentation to illuminate the political motivations behind the Southeast Asian rulers' borrowing of Indian ideas. Wolters argues that the transmission of Indian ideas is best described as a process of “local construction” by Southeast Asian rulers in search of greater authority and legitimacy. Wolters believed that pre-Indic kingship in Southeast Asia was “cognatic” in nature, marked by a relative indifference towards lineage descent (as well as recognition of descent through either male or female offspring). In this situation, there existed numerous small territorial units which could only be occasionally centralized through the personal efforts of a “man of prowess” — a “big man” who was thought to possess a lot of “soul stuff ” (a concentration of spiritual power) (Wolters 1982: 4–5). But the rule by such “men of prowess” was limited in scope and would not usually survive his death. In this context, the arrival of Hindu devotional ideas filled an important gap in a ruler's search for authority and legitimacy. A Southeast Asian ruler could now identify himself with Indian divine figures to augment his innate “soul stuff” and develop a more enduring basis of power. As Wolters puts it, such “construction of Hindu devotionalism … led to heightened self-perceptions among the chieftain class and prepared the ground for overlords' claims to universal sovereignty, based on Siva's divine authority” (Wolters 1982: 52). Wolters provides evidence of this process in cambodia, whose kings developed the Devaraja (god-king) cult beginning with Jayavarman II's inauguration in ad 802.