Bedevilling Sino–Japanese relations into the twenty-first century, the history issue raises many questions, but no simple solution is in sight. Why have China and Japan not buried the hatchet like France and Germany, but continue to carry their burden of history even though the two Northeast Asian powers are emerging as among each other's best trading partners? Why are the many “apologies” Japan has made over its invasion of China between 1931 and 1945 deemed insufficiently “sincere” by many Chinese? Why did Prime Ministers Koizumi Junichiro and Abe Shinzo insist on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine (the symbol of Japanese militarism to many Chinese and Koreans) even though such visits were repugnant to his Northeast Asian neighbours and plunged bilateral relations to its nadir?

Undoubtedly, antagonism over competing interpretations of history between the two neighbours continues to dampen their bilateral ties. But one must not take a reductionist view of Sino–Japanese relations and perceive them through the prism of historical contention. Indeed, why were historical disputes not a constant irritant or catalyst to a permanent crisis in Sino–Japanese relations throughout much of the post-war period? Why did the history issue surface only sporadically to ruffle post-war bilateral ties before the advent of the Koizumi administration? And why is history a matter of bilateral dispute during the second and not the first Abe administration? Why was the history issue between Beijing and Tokyo swept under the carpet for the most part of the Cold War era? Are there other issues which supersede the history problem in bilateral relations?

For analytical purposes, we can focus on the history issue, but Sino–Japanese ties are complex and multifaceted and in reality this is just one among many problems, and not necessarily always the most significant one to dog bilateral ties. Other challenges for China and Japan include territorial disputes in the East China Sea, especially over the Japanese-administered Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands; the structural shift in East Asia (the rise of China coupled with the relative decline of Japan) and its implications for international relations; and Tokyo's alliance with Washington, which obliges the former to provide logistical support to its U.S. ally in the event of a crisis in the Taiwan Straits or Korean Peninsula — much to the chagrin of Beijing.

In 1978, American political scientist Walter Vella stated, “Like any system of loyalty, nationalism has its virtues and its faults. Its good lies in its power to unite; its bad lies in its power to divide.” This assessment of nationalism has never gone out of fashion. The current state of Thai–Cambodian relations has been ostensibly moulded by the powerful, yet dangerous, sentiment of nationalism which has its deep roots in the bitter historical intercourse between the two kingdoms. In their modern-day context, the ransacking of the Royal Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh in January 2003 and the recent eruption of armed conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia over the Hindu Temple of Preah Vihear, known in Thai as Phra Viharn, exemplifies the work of nationalism and the impact caused by historical overhangs or legacies on this fragile relationship. Nationalism has over the years been exploited by the two countries’ political leaders to fulfil a myriad of their own political interests. Nationalism has been capable in many instances of driving them into confrontations, and even war. While the rationale behind nationalism might be discursive, nationalism in itself is a systematic construct. Countries fabricate history to celebrate their past, using nationalism as a political tool in their manipulation of public opinion. As history is remodelled for political agendas, old wounds are reopened. Past bilateral conflicts are refreshed. It is evident that contemporary Thai–Cambodian relations have become a casualty of the remade past.

This chapter examines how history has been distorted and nationalism employed to serve the power interests of the Thai and Cambodian leaders. It discusses the implications of the historical overhang or legacy on today's interactions between Thailand and Cambodia, and elucidates why and how such a phenomenon has endured despite the fact that the international environment has consistently changed. The chapter argues that historical overhangs or legacies have been firmly sustained and have frequently emerged as a primary determining factor in Thai–Cambodian relations, particularly whenever their political leaders encountered legitimacy crises at home. To divert the people's attention from domestic issues, leaders fanned the flame of nationalism while making enemies across the border.

History has often been used and misused by statesmen and political leaders to serve their national, regime or personal interests. Historical lessons are, rightly or wrongly, employed to guide the nation's domestic and foreign policy. In countries with nation-building projects, history is presented, in different formats, with a particular nationalist discourse to inform the general public of their roles and duties and to imagine their nations through lenses of a specific socio-political context. In many cases, a particular historical juncture serves as the basis for creating collective memories, shaping perceptions of self and others, framing issues and prescribing particular courses of action. In the introductory chapter to this book, N. Ganesan conceptually defines historical overhang as “a negative perception that derives from historical interactions and subsequently becomes embedded in the psyche of a state, both at the levels of the elites and the citizen body”. In the context of bilateral relations in Asian countries, he argues that the historical overhangs or legacies have been kept alive and consciously cultivated and embellished in order to make them more durable and invoke emotional responses.

In Myanmar, in terms of framing a nationalist discourse, the most important historical juncture is the period of British colonial rule from 1885 to 1948. For several hundreds of years, under different dynasties, yet on more or less the same area of land, Myanmar had remained an independent polity. At one stage, Myanmar under King Bayint Naung (1551–81) extended its influence over most of present-day mainland Southeast Asia. King Sinphyu Shin (1763–76) of the Konebaung dynasty was famous for his victories over Qing troops in four military encounters (1765–69) and his subjugation of the Kingdom of Ayutthaya in 1767. Beginning with the defeat and the loss of coastal provinces in the first Anglo–Burmese War (1824), followed by yet another defeat and the loss of lower Myanmar in the second Anglo–Burmese War (1852), Myanmar eventually lost its independence in 1885. This was the most humiliating moment for the very proud people of Myanmar. Therefore, the anti-colonial struggle or national liberation movement has been the epitome of Myanmar's historiography.

This introductory chapter, and the book in general, deal with the theoretical concept of overhangs or legacies in international relations. An overhang or legacy is a negative perception that derives from historical interactions and subsequently becomes embedded in the psyche of a state, both at the level of the elites and the citizen body. Specifically, the book examines legacies affecting important bilateral relationships in East Asia with a view to understanding the historical origins and how and why they have been utilized and refined for public and policy purposes. The ultimate aim of this chapter and the configurative case studies is to document overhangs or legacies in five sets of East and Southeast Asian bilateral relations and then deal with them on a comparative basis to see if any significant observations can be made. Naturally, such observations are likely to be useful for the political elites and those tasked with discharging policy if they are interested in bringing these bilateral relations to an even keel.

The chapter is divided into three broad sections. The first section briefly surveys international relations and the theoretical contours that have obtained since the conclusion of World War II. Subsequently, the chapter places the discussion within the much more narrow context of Asian international relations and bilateralism. Then the third section identifies and rationalizes the five sets of bilateral relations that have been chosen for this book. Additionally, it lists the common questions that were distributed to all the chapter writers in order to facilitate a comparative treatment in order to document the issues that are similar and dissimilar across the cases. Such an understanding is likely to nuance the findings of the book and assist in setting the agenda for future work on the same or related issues.

INTRODUCTION

The study of international relations has traditionally focused on three levels of analysis. At the highest or global level, the terminology that is normally used is that of a system. This system is meant to be a reference to structural conditions that inform relations between states, providing in turn opportunities as well as constraints for action. Naturally, superpowers and great powers have overwhelming influence in determining the structural characteristics and attendant dynamics at this highest level.

“Historical overhang or legacy”, the key concept for this book, is defined by N. Ganesan as “negative perception that derives from historical interactions and subsequently becomes embedded in the psyche of a state, both at the level of the elites and the citizen body.”

We have another similar concept, “historical animosity”, which is traditionally employed for describing or explaining the fluctuations in Korea–Japan relations. The term “animosity” is defined as “a feeling of strong dislike, ill will, or enmity that tends to display itself in action”, and “feeling” is defined as “an emotion or emotional perception or attitude”. Accordingly, we may define historical animosity as “an emotion or emotional perception or attitude of strong dislike, ill will, or enmity that has historically developed between states and that tends to display itself in the states’ actions or behaviors.” Thus, the word animosity itself indicates it is a type of emotion and perception at the same time. However, the usual identification of emotion with irrationalism by most experts on Korea–Japan relations is somewhat misleading in that scholars on emotion do not regard it as always irrational, but they consider emotion as rational at least sometimes.

Both definitions have cognitive and psychological aspects. Moreover, perception and emotion are not necessarily separate phenomena. Rather, they reinforce each other in affecting Korea–Japan relations negatively. With this interaction in mind, this chapter analyses the nature of the historical overhang or legacy in Korea–Japan relations from a theoretical perspective that regards historical overhang or legacy as being inseparably intertwined with both a state's realpolitik calculation of its national interest and its moral consideration of justice in bilateral encounters.

Here I will discuss, first, the historical background of Korea–Japan relations; second, the realist nature of historical overhang or legacy in Korea–Japan relations; third, the history-perception gap, historical injustices, and historical overhang or legacy in Korea–Japan relations.

INTRODUCTION

The ruins of Chedi Chula Prathon lie at the very heart of ancient Nakhon Pathom and date to approximately the second half of the first millennium, often labelled as the “Dvāravatī Period” (Figure 6.1). The monument was partially excavated for the first time by Pierre Dupont and his team in 1940 (Figures 6.2 to 6.4) and excavated again in 1968 by the Fine Arts Department of Thailand. The original appearance of the complete monument remains something of a mystery, since it was missing its superstructure and there seemed to be no comparable complete structures from this period with which to compare it. The question of the superstructure has, therefore, raised much speculation and discussion.

Scholars subsequently focused much attention on the fine stucco and terracotta panels which were discovered at the foundation's base in 1968 (Figure 6.5). Various iconographic studies of the latter and disputes over their interpretation have divided the scholarly community with no consensus yet to be found. The panels were first studied by Jean Boisselier who saw illustrations of jātakas, revealing strong Indonesian or “Śrīvijaya influence”, Mahāyāna in inclination. Later on, Piriya Krairiksh, in the course of carrying out research for his PhD dissertation, interpreted these reliefs as Sanskrit avadānas rather than Pāli jātakas and saw evidence for a (Mūla)sarvāstivāda presence in Chedi Chula Prathon. Not long thereafter, Nandana Chutiwongs indicated that Piriya's deductions were somewhat inadequate. All that can be safely concluded from these reliefs is that narrative traditions different from those transmitted in Pāli by the Mahāvihāra Theravādins of Sri Lanka may also be represented in the art of central Thailand. Some of these traditions may have been Mūlasarvāstivādin, but they might just as well have belonged to other schools or nikāyas using Sanskrit, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, or different Prakrits such as, respectively, the Dharmaguptakas, the Mahāsāṃghikas, or the Mahīśāsakas, to name just a few.

That is not all that can be said, however, about Chedi Chula Prathon. I have recently shown, for instance, the need to reconsider the material deposits from the site that were found in an archaeological context while paying particular attention to the well preserved khakkhara finial now displayed at the National Museum in Bangkok.

The papers collected in this volume were presented at a conference held in March 2011 at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. The conference aimed to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and different geographical, linguistic, and temporal specializations and encourage historical criticism on Buddhism in premodern and early modern Southeast Asia. As such it was one of the first and only conferences devoted to this broad, necessarily comparative, and deceptively straightforward topic. In a simplistic sense Buddhism as a general intellectual, institutional, devotional, literary, and social phenomenon was a dominant force throughout much of Southeast Asia during the precontemporary period, attested through its early traces at Dvāravatī, Śrīkṣetra, Śrīvijaya, Haripuñjaya, and Campā, across the medieval terrains of Đại Việt, Pagan, Angkor, Majapahit, and Sukhothai, and in the later polities of Mrauk U, Ava, Lan Xang, Sipsongpanna, and elsewhere. Regional Buddhists, regardless of how we define the ascription, were responsible for an array of innovations and cultural products that cut across diverse fields of learning and ritual, ranging from medicine, law, alchemy, political economy, and grammar to scriptural hermeneutics, apotropaic technologies, and art and architecture. However, as the papers in this volume suggest, the Buddhist cultures of historical Southeast Asia are best understood as multivocal, marked by a dynamism and difference that varies across geography and time. It is therefore more appropriate to speak of Southeast Asian Buddhism in the plural — of Buddhisms rather than a Buddhism — and it is to this plurality that one sense of the “dynamics” of the volume's title seeks to draw our attention.

Today the study of historical Buddhisms in premodern and early modern Southeast Asia stands at an encouraging juncture. In many ways the field — or rather the constellation of multi-and inter-disciplinary scholarly projects seeking to understand different facets of regional Buddhist pasts — is in the process of being re-envisioned. Comparison and macrohistory are becoming increasingly desirable frameworks of analysis although critical of their past prejudices. Scholarship is marked by a turn towards careful examination of local and vernacular expressions of Buddhist culture as well as a return to long-standing questions concerning the transregional diffusion and networked interrelationships among varied texts, aesthetic forms, and religious ideas and practices.

ABSTRACT

This paper studies Khmer Buddhism from the perspective of the relations between the Thai and Khmer courts during the reign of King Rama IV of Siam (contemporary Thailand). After a period of civil war and war with Cambodia's neighbours Thailand and Vietnam, many Buddhist temples had been destroyed. Therefore, when King Ang Duong came to the throne, he undertook to restore Khmer Buddhism, drawing on Thai court Buddhism.

In the field of Khmer Buddhist literature, he had Thai Buddhist literature translated into Khmer, for example the Paṭhamasambodhikathā (the Pali- Thai account of the life of the Buddha) and the Trailokavinicchayakathā (Buddhist cosmology). King Ang Duong also requested King Rama IV to send Dhammayutika Nikāya monks to ordain Khmer monks and to disseminate Buddhism in Cambodia.

INTRODUCTION

Thailand and Cambodia have a long-standing relationship. Particularly language, literature and Buddhism have extensive connections, both in terms of cultural borrowing and of cultural exchange. This relationship has been there especially since the founding of Sukhothai in the eighteenth century of the Buddhist Era (BE), and the founding of Ayutthaya in the nineteenth century BE, and has continued through the Thonburi and Rattanakosin eras to the present day, without interruption, only changing according to the circumstances in each era.

Buddhism in Siam had a particularly close relationship with Cambodia in the early Rattanakosin period and Oudong period in Cambodia, and especially so when King Mongkut (Rama IV) reigned in Siam and King Ang Duong ruled Cambodia.

Since the reigns of King Ang Chan II and King Ang Mey, Cambodia endured civil war due to Vietnamese interference. At this time, Vietnam destroyed temples and burned numerous Buddhist scriptures in Cambodia, as evidenced by inscriptions at the Phnom Penh temple Wat Preah Putkosa about temple restoration by Chao Phraya Bodindecha (Sing Singhaseni), which states that

After King Ang Duong ascended the Cambodian throne in Oudong in 1854, he issued a royal letter to request a copy of the Pali Tripiṭaka and other Buddhist scriptures, as well as for Dhammayutika Nikāya monks to spread the religion and convene a council for compiling a version of the Tripiṭaka in the city of Oudong.

INTRODUCTION

This verse is not known from any Indian inscription, and it is yet to be traced in any Indian Buddhist text, whether in the original Indic language or in Tibetan or Chinese translation.

Southeast Asia is rich in epigraphic material: historical, secular records (royal praśasti with their lineages and accounts of temporal deeds); historical, religious records (the foundation and dedication of buildings or images); and non-historical religious records containing praises of brahmanical or Buddhist deities, scriptural citations, dhāraṇī, or mantra. As in India, several or all of these elements can be combined in a single record.

Religious records can be read for the information they contain about the diffusion of Buddhist practices or ideas in the region. In this chapter, I trace the travels of a single Sanskrit verse, which is known from lithic inscriptions from three neighbouring sites in north peninsular Malaysia, from three sites on the island of Borneo (one each from Brunei, Sarawak, and Kalimantan), as well as from a terracotta tablet and gold plates from Java. At the end, I briefly examine the relationship of the verse to the texts and stūpa images with which it is associated.

The documentation of some of the artefacts discussed here goes back to the first half of the nineteenth century, a period of expansion and consolidation of the horizons of orientalist knowledge; their modern history reflects the shifting boundaries and fortunes of the region that we know today as “Southeast Asia”. The first notices of some of the inscriptions were published in Calcutta, then capital of British India, known today as Kolkata, the capital of Paschim Banga (former West Bengal). One of the artefacts was in fact removed to Calcutta, where it remains today. Early studies were published by scholars or colonial officers associated with the Asiatic Society of Bengal, then the leading organization for Asian studies, in the pages of the Proceedings or Journal of the Society. Other artefacts, from the Dutch East Indies, were published by Dutch scholars. The prevailing framework was antiquarian; at the time, field archaeology was in its infancy.

INTRODUCTION

This article explores a number of ways in which to reconstruct the possible extent of monastic Buddhism in the Khorat Plateau during the Dvāravatī period. In an attempt to so, it is consequently multidisciplinary in its conception, being primarily archaeological while also drawing on areas of anthropology, art history, demographics and Buddhist studies. In doing so, it attempts to move beyond the sole analysis of archaeological and art historic objects in order to investigate the social, demographic and geographical factors that lie behind the production of these artefacts. It proposes to do so by a number of quantitative means: first, by giving hypothetical population estimates of urban centres/moated sites during the Dvāravatī period and consequently the number of monks these settlements could have supported. These estimates are then used to consider how many monks may have been sustained according to these figures. Second, by carrying out a quantitative analysis of sema stone numbers and their distribution throughout the Khorat Plateau this also provides a method to calculate the number of possible consecrated spaces (viz., sīma) in the region and their geographic extent. The analysis shows that institutional, monastic Buddhism primarily spread and settled along the major river systems throughout the region. Third, by plotting the distribution, quantity and quality of Buddhist narrative artwork on sema to pinpoint the locations of possible workshops and centres. This also allows for a number of conclusions to be drawn in terms of the socio-economic support needed to develop and maintain workshops and craftsmen and relates directly to population densities.

It should, however, be stated at the outset that this paper proposes nothing more than a possible scenario to aid in explaining and understanding the extent and spread of Buddhism during this period. I am here using the term “scenario” in reference to Donn Bayard's cautionary remarks regarding archaeology and the use of models. As Bayard explains, a model, strictly speaking should be based on reliable datasets which are testable and “ideally consists of a set of relationships between variables to which more or less precise numerical values may be assigned”. As will become clear in this paper, the assigning of such precise figures to the subject under investigation (viz. Buddhism) is unrealistic given the current incomplete state of the datasets from the region and time period in question.

INTRODUCTION

It is a commonplace within much scholarly writing (including textbooks) on Buddhism in southern Asia that the second millennium CE witnessed an intensification of ties between Laṅkā (now Sri Lanka) and parts of mainland Southeast Asia now referred to as Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. Buddhist monks said to be Lankan, or participants in monastic ordination lineages and educational practices rooted in Laṅkā, are described as altering the character of the mainland Southeast Asian Buddhist world by dispersing Lankan Buddhist monastic forms of practice, as well as linguistic and textual preferences, through kingdoms like Pagan, Sukhothai, Chiang Mai, and Pegu.

Our understanding of the history of southern Asian Buddhism during the second millennium remains very limited. The careful research required in order to understand movements of people, ideas, linguistic preferences, and textual forms, as well as social relations and institutional arrangements relating to the Buddha-sāsana (the world of Buddhist texts, persons, and practices) has barely begun. The reasons for this are many. They include a preference for the study of “early Buddhism” and doctrinal texts (understood narrowly) among early generations of Buddhist studies scholars, research programmes oriented by the boundaries of contemporary nation-states and national languages that have sometimes deflected or hindered the examination of regional and transregional histories, the daunting multilingual competences required for research, and a relatively weak intellectual interface between the disciplines of Buddhist studies, Asian history, art history, and epigraphy. This chapter draws on a new research project examining texts related to Lān Nā's Buddhist history during the late second millennium. Reading these texts raises valuable questions for historians of Buddhism, questions that carry us beyond the particular context of Lān Nā's Buddhist history. These texts invite us to consider how we can — creatively but with empirical rigour — use Buddhist textual sources from the later history of southern Asia as evidence to reconstruct histories of monastic mobility, including the sorts of travel that are understood to have linked Laṅkā and other parts of southern Asia more closely as the second millennium wore on.

ABSTRACT

The pervasive use of Buddhist terms and notions in the political field is a well-known example of Buddhism's dominance as a cultural force throughout premodern Southeast Asia. While scholars have duly recognized the key concepts pertaining to Buddhist kingship, the tendency to generalize the meaning of common concepts such as dhammarājā may have obscured the fact that expression of such concepts is always local and meanings may have varied over time and place. This paper offers a case study and may contribute to comparative approaches. As he was relentlessly waging war against the Mon king Banya Dala, the Burmese king Alaungmintaya sent letters to Pegu to demonstrate his political claims, letters that were countered by similar claims on behalf of Banya Dala. Read against the background of the political record as drawn out in Burmese historiography, an examination of the letters offers an exceptional insight into diplomatic practice carved out of the ethical and cosmological stuff of Burma's Buddhist environment. The paper presented here offers an example of the practical and complex use of Buddhist rhetoric at a critical moment of Burma's eighteenth century history.

Alaungmintaya (r. 1752–60, aka Alaungphaya) was the founder of the third Burmese dynasty (1752–1885). Banya Dala (r. 1747–57) was the ruler of the predominantly Mon kingdom of Pegu (Hamsawadi). The years 1755–56 were the key years of Alaungmintaya's war efforts to gain supremacy over the whole of the territory traditionally understood to have been the realm of Burmese kings.

INTRODUCTION

Addressing the plural dynamics of Buddhist culture across geography and time, this paper offers a study of Buddhist diplomacy with its rhetorical modes as they are revealed in the letters that a Burmese and a Mon king exchanged while they were waging war against each other. Both kings were Buddhists sharing in the same Weltanschauung and religious background. They were also new men without proven links to preceding dynasties.

From the early seventeenth century onwards, a single kingdom had existed in the Irrawaddy valley. Its unity was broken when in 1740, a new, predominantly Mon kingdom was refounded in the old and prestigious city of Pegu.