Classical Civilisations of South East Asia


Book Description

This collection provides a diverse picture of the classical civilizations of Southeast asia, with a particular emphasis on history, religion, literature and the arts.




Classical Civilizations of South-East Asia


Book Description

With particular emphasis on history, religion, literature and arts, this collection provides a multifaceted and representative picture of the classical civilizations of South-East Asia which will be of interest for comparative and cross-disciplinary studies in this field, as well as providing a number of historical and literary documents and translations of great scholarly value.




Ancient Southeast Asia


Book Description

Ancient Southeast Asia provides readers with a much needed synthesis of the latest discoveries and research in the archaeology of the region, presenting the evolution of complex societies in Southeast Asia from the protohistoric period, beginning around 500BC, to the arrival of British and Dutch colonists in 1600. Well-illustrated throughout, this comprehensive account explores the factors which established Southeast Asia as an area of unique cultural fusion. Miksic and Goh explore how the local population exploited the abundant resources available, developing maritime transport routes which resulted in economic and cultural wealth, including some of the most elaborate art styles and monumental complexes ever constructed. The book’s broad geographical and temporal coverage, including a chapter on the natural environment, provides readers with the context needed to understand this staggeringly diverse region. It utilizes French, Dutch, Chinese, Malay-Indonesian and Burmese sources and synthesizes interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives and data from archaeology, history and art history. Offering key opportunities for comparative research with other centres of early socio-economic complexity, Ancient Southeast Asia establishes the area’s importance in world history.




Civilizations in Embrace


Book Description

This study revisits one of the most extensive examples of the spread of ideas in the history of civilization: the diffusion of Indian religious and political ideas to Southeast Asia before the advent of Islam and European colonialism. Hindu and Buddhist concepts and symbols of kingship and statecraft helped to legitimize Southeast Asian rulers, and transform the political institutions and authority of Southeast Asia. But the process of this diffusion was not accompanied by imperialism, political hegemony, or "colonization" as conventionally understood. This book investigates different explanations of the spread of Indian ideas offered by scholars, including why and how it occurred and what were its key political and institutional outcomes. It challenges the view that strategic competition is a recurring phenomenon when civilizations encounter each other.




Early Civilizations of Southeast Asia


Book Description

Using the archaeological record, O'Reilly traces the rise of the state in Southeast Asia in a general synthesis.




Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia


Book Description

This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.




The Civilization of Ancient India and Southeast Asia


Book Description

Buddhism has produced a cultural legacy more glorious than most great faiths. Initially spreading throughout Asia, over the centuries it triumphed not by the might of military conquest but by virtue of its revolutionary ideas and profound insights. For two-and-a-half millennia, both wealthy patrons and humble devotees have created a rich legacy of sacred art and architecture, from devotion paintings and manuscripts to some of the most magnificent temples and monasteries ever built. Stunning color photographs present a vivid portrait of this venerable religion and its great treasures—from its place of origin in northern India and out through its diffusion among the different kingdoms and empires of central, southern and eastern Asia—examining each geographical region in turn and Buddhism's influence on and contribution to the culture. An illuminating commentary places the creations of Buddhist artists and artisans in their geographical, historical, and artistic contexts and explains the significance of the faith's devotional paintings, manuscript art, sculptures, architecture, and sacred motifs and symbols.




Asian Civilizations (2011 Edition - EPUB)


Book Description

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. The Asian continent can be further classified into five regions—West Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Each of these regions has witnessed the rise and fall of many great civilizations throughout the centuries. West Asia, for example, had nurtured one of the world's first civilizations—the Mesopotamian civilization which dates back to the Neolithic period. East Asia too had seen the rise of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean civilizations since 5,000 years ago. Who are the great conquerors of the ancient land? How have these civilizations influenced the world we live in today? This book gives a quick overview on the expansive history of each Asian civilization. Little-known aspects of Asian history and culture will no doubt enthrall readers. Let's read on to find out more!




The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia


Book Description

Southeast Asia ranks among the most significant regions in the world for tracing the prehistory of human endeavor over a period in excess of two million years. It lies in the direct path of successive migrations from the African homeland that saw settlement by hominin populations such as Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis. The first Anatomically Modern Humans, following a coastal route, reached the region at least 60,000 years ago to establish a hunter gatherer tradition that survives to this day in remote forests. From about 2000 BC, human settlement of Southeast Asia was deeply affected by successive innovations that took place to the north and west, such as rice and millet farming. A millennium later, knowledge of bronze casting penetrated along the same pathways. Copper mines were identified and exploited, and metals were exchanged over hundreds of kilometers. In the Mekong Delta and elsewhere, these developments led to early states of the region, which benefitted from an agricultural revolution involving permanent ploughed rice fields. These developments illuminate how the great early kingdoms of Angkor, Champa, and Funan came to be, a vital stage in understanding the roots of the present nation states of Southeast Asia. Assembling the most current research across a variety of disciplines--from anthropology and archaeology to history, art history, and linguistics--The Oxford Handbook of Early Southeast Asia will present an invaluable resource to experienced researchers and those approaching the topic for the first time.




Southeast Asia in the Ancient Indian Ocean World


Book Description

This thesis casts a new light on the role of Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean World. It brings together data and approaches from archaeology and historical linguistics to examine cultural and language contact between Southeast Asia and South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East. The interdisciplinary approach employed in this study reveals that insular Southeast Asian seafarers, traders and settlers had impacted on these parts of the world in pre-modern times through the transmission of numerous biological and cultural items. It is further demonstrated that the words used for these commodities often contain clues about the precise ethno-linguistic communities involved in their transoceanic dispersal. The Methodology chapter introduces some common linguistic strategies to examine language contact and lexical borrowing, to determine the directionality of loanwords and to circumvent the main caveats of such an approach. The study then proceeds to delve deeper into the socio-cultural background of interethnic contact in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as a whole, focusing on the oft-neglected Southeast Asian contributions to the cultural landscape of this region and addressing the nature of pre-modern contact between Southeast Asia and the different parts of the Indian Ocean Word. Following from that, the last three chapters look in-depth at the dispersal of respectively Southeast Asian plants, spices and maritime technology into the wider Indian Ocean World. Although concepts and their names do not always neatly travel together across ethno-linguistic boundaries, these chapters demonstrate how a closer examination of lexical data offers supportive evidence and new perspectives on events of cultural contact not otherwise documented. Cumulatively, this study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is a strong tool to examine interethnic contact, particularly in pre-literate societies. Throughout the Indian Ocean World, Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by Malay-speaking communities, although others played a role as well.