Southeast Asia. Early Southeast Asia viewed from India: An anthology of articles from the Journal of the Greater India Society Edited by Kwa Chong-Guan New Delhi: Manohar; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series no. 10, 2013. Pp. 300. Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

Early Southeast Asia viewed from India: An anthology of articles from the Journal of the Greater India Society Edited by KWA CHONG-GUAN New Delhi: Manohar; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series no. 10, 2013. Pp. 300. Bibliography, Index, doi: 10.1017/S0022463414000393 This eclectic collection of essays from the eighteen volumes of the Journal of the Greater India Society invites us to revisit the historical pursuits of the Greater India Society and see how its history-writing projects shaped the nature of 'Indian thinking towards Southeast Asia' (p. xii). It is a delight to note that in this book, Kwa Chong-Guan, who has been engaged in the understanding of the long cycles of Southeast Asian history and the editor of the volume under review here, has selected and put together 31 articles by leading historians and philologists of the society showing critically how the society painted the image of Greater India through its journal. Though these scholars used the image of Greater India with details of Indie influence across the Indian Ocean to show a brighter phase of the subcontinent's past against the backdrop of its colonial domination by the British, Kwa goes beyond the frame of their mentality and shows how this image became 'a way of thinking' and 'part of a social memory of India' that influenced its outlook towards the East. The publication is timely given the profound transformation of the object of study, and consequent changes in the field. The image of Greater India and the historical contexts of its changing character over time as portrayed in the eponymous society founded in 1926 are analysed critically by Kwa in his Preface and Introduction. The editor has arranged the articles--first published between 1936 and 1959--into various themes to substantiate the broader logic and reasons for bringing out this volume at a time when Indian perceptions about Southeast Asia have considerably changed with recent research. The introduction displays his familiarity with the historiography of Indian-Southeast Asian cultural interactions. Rabindranath Tagore's foreword to the Journal, as well as articles by Kalidas Nag, J. Przyluski and U.N. Ghosal, have been included in the first section of the volume to elucidate the society's vision and programmes. In this section, Greater India is projected as being indicative of Indian internationalism; this argument is taken further by analysing the works of Sylvain Levi, the great Indologist, on the one hand, and India's links with the Pacific world on the other. One of the significant pieces in the second section of the book dwells on contemporary research on Indian influences on Afghanistan, Burma, Siam, Cambodia, Champa, Java, Bali, Borneo, Celebes, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. The third section titled 'History and historical sources' has been enriched by the contributions of O.C. Gangoly, R.C. Majumdar, W. Pachow, J. Przyluski, Baij Nath Puri and H.B. Sarkar, K.A. Nilakanta Sastri and H.G. Quaritch Wales, who delve into the cultural relations between India and Indonesia as well as the meanings of conflicts between the Sailendras and the Cholas, besides the nuanced nature of Indian influences in Java and Sumatra. …