The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast

Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

THE MAIN MONASTERY OF RATNAGIRI in Odisha (formerly known as Orissa) was built over a period of several centuries to fit the needs of a changing Buddhist community. Unlike the structure of a Hindu temple with power radiating outward from the sacred centre, the plan of the Mahāvihāra of Ratnagiri features a central axis leading through the monastery to the rear shrine. This axis is deliberately broken up by a series of portals or façades which serve both as demarcations of sacred space and as markers of developing theologies. At least two stages of construction of the monastery are evident, and while some of the underlying modifications were for purely structural purposes, transformations in religious ideology and ritual practice are reflected in changes in architecture and iconography. The imagery used in earlier stages of building suggests links to long-standing traditions in India, including worship of deities associated with nature, like the river goddess Yamunā, as well as figures connected with notions of wealth and fertility, like Pāñcika and Hārītī. The Mahāyāna roots of the monastery are evident in the frequent depictions of Bodhisattvas, especially paired images of Avalokiteśvara and Vajrapāṇi, who can be seen as role models for the monastic community. Evidence from later parts of the monastery demonstrates the relevance of a wider range of deities, as well as what seems to be an increasing interest in Tantric Buddhist practices. Aspects of iconography found at Ratnagiri are also seen at temple sites in Java and Sumatra and may reflect similarities in the development of religious practices across maritime Southeast Asia. Beginning with an overview of connections between ancient Odisha and Southeast Asia and a summary of past scholarship on the site of Ratnagiri, this chapter will then look closely at the monastery itself. In particular it will explore how the development of religious practices is mirrored in the architectural framework of the monastery and, when applicable, in Buddhist sites in island Southeast Asia.

ODISHA AND MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA

The ancient region of Kaliṇga (which encompassed much of Odisha, northern regions of Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Madhya Pradesh) is perhaps best known for its conquest by the Mauryan emperor Aśoka in the 3rd century BC.

THE RISE OF THE PĀLA DYNASTY in the 8th century ad brought paradigm shifts in Buddhist text, ritual, and sacred architecture that sent cultural waves across the expanding maritime and land trade routes of Asia. This chapter focuses on how the architectural concepts travelled in the connected Buddhist world between the Ganges valley and Java. A movement of architectural ideas can be seen from studying the corpus of the temples in the Pāla (ad 750–1214) and Śailendra (ad 775–1090) domains of India and Indonesia. This chapter proposes that we see a paradigm shift in the design of a stūpa architecture at Kesariya (Bihar) that emphasizes the arrangement of deities in the circular maṇḍalic fashion with a certain numerological configuration of life–size Buddha figures placed in the external niches of the monument. This new architectural concept possibly played a key role in the development of a more elaborate structure of Borobudur in Java.

The architectural linkages emerge stronger with the central fivefold structure of the temples of the Pālas and Śailendras. In order to make the essential comparison, a quick method of drawing architectural plans is developed that is based on the basic measurements and not archaeological plans.

ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN STŪPA STRUCTURE

The main archaeological sites of the middle and lower Ganges plain were recorded in the 19th century by Alexander Cunningham, following the travel accounts of the Chinese scholar-pilgrims Faxian (ca. 337–422) and Xuanzang (ca. 602–64). Northeast India contained not only early Buddhist stūpa s and monastic complexes, but also a range of stūpastructures that advanced from the traditional hemispherical stūpaof Sanchi, through the cruciform, terraced stūpa structure of Nandangaṛh (Fig. 8.1) to the elaborate stūpa-maṇḍala of Kesariya. Most of the Pāla structures that may have served as a model for Central Javanese temples are in dilapidated state today, making it difficult to track the architectural borrowings.

RESEARCH INTO THE Sanskrit-Old Javanese Buddhist compendium SaṇHyaṇKamahāyānikan (hereafter SHK) has been going on for over a century. Despite the long history of scholarship, however, a number of pertinent questions still linger. We are yet to identify the date when this scripture was compiled. We also are far from being able to map its relationship with other Buddhist scriptures or to appreciate its role in the development of Buddhism, particularly in Indonesia. Suggested answers to these questions from previous studies are generally conflicting. The status quo is thus intriguing and urges this study to re-examine this unique Buddhist scripture. This time I will necessarily limit the report to providing preliminary answers to some key questions, namely the origins of the SHK, its date and relationship with other textual as well as visual materials, and its role in the development of Esoteric Buddhism in premodern Indonesia.

My report is briefly sketched as follows. Having summarized the inherited issues on dating and origin of the SHK, I will retrace the prototypical sources from which the text drew its teachings. My reassessment individuates some Sanskrit texts that were previously not deemed to have any relationship with Buddhist developments in the premodern Indonesian Archipelago. Those newly identified sources help confirm the SHK's claim that its own teachings came from Dignāga–perhaps through oral tradition. I will then argue that bits and pieces of data from the Indonesian Archipelago contribute in recovering a still poorly documented stage in the development of ‘hidden’ Buddhist teachings that, as suggested by Chinese Buddhist sources, might have already started as early as the 3rd century AD.

Having explored a range of possibilities with regard to the transmission of Esoteric Buddhist teachings to Sumatra and Java, I argue that the advanced ‘hidden’ teachings recorded in the SHK may be dated to the 8th century at the latest. Because of the long period of incubation occurring between the earliest attestations of those teachings and their appearance in the SHK, I venture to suggest that this text has preserved components of esoteric doctrines attributable to a Buddhist lineage that died out, and has thereby been forgotten ever since.

CANDI JAGO IS LOCATED AT TUMPANG, some fourteen kilometres east of Malang in East Java. It is commonly held that the shrine was commissioned in ad 1268 by King Kṛtanagara on the death of his father, Viṣṇuvardhana, with a date of completion around 1280 to coincide with funereal rites held twelve years after death. Its relatively small size and current state of deterioration possibly belie the scope of its importance. This monument came into existence during a dramatic period not only in Javanese history, but in the history of East and Southeast Asia. This was the time of Khubilai Khan, whose expansionist aims throughout Asia were known to include Java. However, with Kṛtanagara also keen to broaden his sovereignty well beyond Java, conflict was inevitable. Tension between China and Java may well have continued until the Yuan dynasty came to an end in 1368. As I have indicated elsewhere (O'Brien 1988, 1990, 1993, 2008, 2011), much of the design and embellishment of Candi Jago reflects the tension of those times.

Since the publication of Brandes' extensive monograph on Candi Jago in 1904, most of the narratives portrayed on its five tiers of bas-relief panels have been identified. However, for some years two series did continue to resist efforts at positive identification. One is located on the southern and eastern faces of the first terrace (see Diagram 12.1) and has since been interpreted in terms of a Buddhist redaction of the Aji Dharma tale. The second series begins at the eastern end of the southern face of the beugel and continues on the eastern and northern faces of this same band. This latter series—the subject of this chapter—was interpreted some years ago as being an extension of the Kuñjarakarṇa tale, which had much earlier been correctly identified among the reliefs of the first terrace and beugel by van Stein Callenfels (1916: 445ff.).

As an alternative identification, I propose to show that in fact the second unidentified series is the tale of the Bodhisattva prince Sudhana and the kinnarī princess Manoharā. As will become apparent, such an interpretation is not without problems.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BUDDHIST ART in Eastern India from the 8th up to the 12th century has been recognized since the late 19th century as a major source of inspiration for the arts of Tibet and Southeast Asia. This artistic period has been associated with ‘esoteric’ practices and rituals and shows aspects which can differ from region to region over the centuries. Eastern India is a vast geographical area that includes Bangladesh and the modern Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and West Bengal. Bengal (Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal) and Odisha stretch along the Bay of Bengal, and the former region–in particular South and Southeast Bengal, an area which extends from the south of Dhaka up to Chittagong –was instrumental as the source of various aspects of Esoteric Buddhism in Southeast Asia.

This art is usually labelled as ‘Esoteric’ or ‘Tantric’ and belonging to the Vajrayāna, and in inscriptions which mention them or in colophons of manuscripts which they had ordered to be produced, the Buddhists of Eastern India defined themselves as followers of the ‘excellent Mahāyāna’ (pravaramahāyāna; see below). The creation and development of a rich pantheon of characters, male and female, from the 6th century onwards, culminated in 12th–century Eastern India. But how was it really perceived and viewed? What were its functions? And were all its different types of production, i.e. stone, terracotta, stucco or cast images, manuscript illuminations, cloth-paintings or murals, regarded in the same way, without forgetting that images could also be visualized? It is beyond the scope of this chapter to try to answer these questions, which have already been assessed by authors in various different ways. For a long period, a major interpretation was the sectarian view, according to which the images are seen as reflecting a conflict between the Buddhist community and Brahmanical or Hindu society. More recently, Rob Linrothe has put them in a new perspective, as reflecting or symbolizing philosophical or religious experiences. This should however not lead us to abandon completely the more basic interpretation of some of these images as picturing deep tensions occurring between the different faiths existing in the region, which could surface and find expression in the art–thus acting as a form of religious propaganda or helping to ease off the pressure.

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES OF vajra s and inscribed gold objects in Sumatra and under the water near the island lend support to the hypothesis that Sumatra was a significant centre of Esoteric Buddhist activity during an important phase of that religious orientation's genesis and growth. Archaeological and historical data suggest that several streams of Buddhist thought and practice coexisted in Sumatra for more than half a millennium. Geographic correlations between these artefacts and inscriptions with ethnic groups and imported items suggest that Sumatra offered fertile ground for the development of Esoteric Buddhist concepts. This chapter will summarize the archaeological correlates of Esoteric Buddhism in Sumatra from the late 7th to the end of the 13th century, and explore the implications of this data in terms of Buddhism's links to social, political, and economic variables.

Most modern Malays, even those who are highly educated, believe that their ancestors were Hindus. Archaeological data flatly contradict this assumption: they show that Buddhism was much more popular than Hinduism in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula during the Classic period (approximately 1,000 years long, from the 4th to the 14th century ad). In Kedah, one of the bastions of the Buddhist kingdom of Śrīvijaya, an invasion by the Cōḻa Tamils of 1025 led to a period of Hindu domination lasting through the 11th century. The large ruin of a temple probably dedicated to Śiva at Candi Bukit Batu Pahat built during this period, and the eventual decline of Buddhism in India, may have biased public opinion. Another potentially confusing factor includes the tendency of early European scholars to label everything pre-Islamic as ‘Hindu’.

Much of the art generated in the Malay realm during this period is very different from Buddhist art in modern Southeast Asia. Whereas the figure of Buddha and the stūpa dominate in modern Southeast Asian Buddhism, early Buddhist practice in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula tended to favour a multiplicity of deities more reminiscent of contemporary Hinduism. The stūpa was present but rare in the architectural inventory. Statues of some deities associated with Hinduism have been found in Sumatra and the Siamo-Malay Peninsula, but this is also true of such major Buddhist sites as Nālandā in India.

FOLLOWING UP ON MOENS’ (1924) remark that Kṛtanagara's Buddhism was similar to the Tantric Buddhism of Khubilai, C.C. Berg argued in a series of publications during the 1950s and 1960s that Kṛtanagara of Siṇhasāri adopted the particular form of Buddhism that he knew to be practised by Khubilai, great Khan of the Mongols, in order to acquire spiritual powers to aid him in an expected military engagement with the latter. Many others have argued that Khubilai adopted that particular form of Buddhism as an instrument of rule in order to justify his military conquest and reign over Tibet.

Is religion a mask for the will to power and its justification? Do the political–military situations of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai explain their adoption of Tantric Buddhism? Or are the relationships between religious and political practices not so simple and unidirectional? In this chapter I examine the connections between and proposed explanations for the Tantric Buddhism and political actions of Kṛtanagara and Khubilai in light of Rosenstock-Huessy's theory of religion as life in the service of what one loves. If religion is understood thus, then both the religious and political practices of these two kings can be explained as following from their devotion to power: instead of politics explaining their (and our) religions, the gods they served explain their religion and their politics.

KṚTANAGARA VERSUS KHUBILAI

Moens (1924: 544) argued that the Buddhism ascribed to Kṛtanagara in the Deśavarṇana (formerly called Nāgarakṛtāgama) belonged to a kālacakra tradition of Tantric Buddhism, and that Kṛtana- gara's initiation into this form of Buddhism was much like Khubilai's consecration as Hevajra. As a result of his consecration Khubilai would have become Mahāmitābha, which Moens regarded as the same as Mahākṣobhya, with which Kṛtanagara was associated by a statue in his image. In a series of publications throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Berg took Moens' association with Khubilai and went further with what he described in his last paper on the topic as a ‘guess’:

IN HIS GROUNDBREAKING ARTICLE ‘A Buddhist mantra recovered from the Ratu Boko plateau: A preliminary study of its implications for Śailendra-era Java’, Jeffrey Sundberg (2003) highlighted an important gold artefact recovered from the Ratu Boko hillock near Prambanan in Central Java. The artefact, an inscribed gold foil consisting of two connected diamond-shaped leaves recalling a vajra, bears the Sanskrit mantra oṁ ṭakī hūṁ jaḥ svāhā repeated on each of its four sides. A unique, and intriguing, feature of the inscription is the engraving of the words panarabvan and khanipas within an exaggerated circular bubble in the two cases of the grapheme ī in the sequence ṭakī. This feature led Sundberg to advance the hypothesis that the artefact, and the mantra(s) inscribed on it, was connected to King Rakai Panaraban (r. ad 784– 803), who is known to us through the inscription of Wanua Tengah III recovered from Central Java, as well as from the 16th-century Old Sundanese historical chronicle Carita Parahyaṇan(Sundberg 2011). Sundberg (2003) discovered instances of very similar mantras (i.e., TAKKI HŪṀ JAḤ, ṬAKKIJJAḤ HUṀ) in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Sino-Japanese Tantric Buddhist texts, and pointed out that in the Sanskrit Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṇgraha(STTS)— a 7th-century mūlatantraconsolidated over time into the Yogatantra tradition (Weinberger 2003: 4)—the mantra occurs in the context of the Buddhist Trailokyavijaya myth or the ‘Subjugation of Maheśvara’ by the Bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi, while in Sino-Japanese sources it is associated with Aizen's subjugation of Īśvara and Nārāyaṇa. In view of these interesting facts, Sundberg concluded that the epigraphic document was Vajrayāna in nature, thus opening the grounds ‘to find expressions of these tantric convictions in the stone temples of Java’ (ibid.: 181); that it might have had an anti-Śaiva character (and purpose)—being a repudiation in strong terms of the religion of Panaraban's ancestor Sanjaya (ibid.: 183); and that it was devised by Panaraban, in order to ‘link himself to the mantra or the cosmic being it points to’ (ibid.). In the conclusion to his essay, Sundberg anticipated that the study of this mantra ‘has hopefully only just begun’ (ibid.), and invited scholars with the necessary philological skills to search for attestations of this mantra in textual sources from South, Central, Southeast, and East Asia…