Maritime Southeast Asia Between South Asia and China to the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

AbstractThe maritime regions of Southeast Asia played an important but varying role in connecting South Asia and China prior to the sixteenth century. With regard to commercial exchanges, traders, ships, and polities in Southeast Asia facilitated and sometimes controlled the flow of goods. Additionally, merchant associations from South Asia and China established their bases in Southeast Asia to participate in trading activities in the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea regions. At least three distinct networks emerged as a result of these maritime interactions: 1) networks of exchanges among the polities skirting the Bay of Bengal; 2) networks that connected the areas around the South China Sea; and 3) networks of direct exchanges between South Asia and China. Buddhist ideas also circulated through these networks, but seem to have made limited inroads in the maritime regions of Southeast Asia prior to the fifth century AD. By this time, Buddhism had already spread widely in China, with significant number of Buddhist missionaries arriving in the region through the maritime routes. Rather than playing a staging role in the transmission of Buddhism to China, the doctrine may have penetrated maritime Southeast Asia due to the vibrant Buddhist interactions and a significant increase in commercial activity along the networks linking South Asia and China during the fourth and fifth centuries. The use of Buddhism to legitimise new regimes in China and the diplomatic exchanges between Southeast Asian polities and these courts may have also facilitated the spread of Buddhism in the region.