Events in South East Asia 800-1600

 In the 3rd Century BCE, Buddhism had spread from
India to the rest of Asia, especially under Asoka.

 Ashoka the Great, Mauryan , made Buddhism the state
religion of India.

 Buddhist monasteries were built, and missionary work was
encouraged. Over the next few centuries, Buddhism began to
spread beyond India.

 Buddhism spread across Asia through networks of overland
and maritime routes between India, Southeast Asia, Central
Asia, China and Japan.

 Anonymous foreign monks who traveled between India and China
along the silk routes were responsible for the transmission of
Buddhism at sub-elite levels.

 Buddhism is appealing to many as it is an egalitarian religion with
simple rules and ceremonies. Merchants adopted it quickly and the
mass of people.

 The environment of South East Asia is mostly
rainforest (tropical wet) with some Savannah and
Tropical Dry.

 Both Song China and India influenced the
region of South East Asia greatly.

 South Asia’s culture diffused to South East Asia.
It influences today's Indonesia, Malaysia,
Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Indian
merchants had contact with these Southeast
Asian lands as early as 500 B.C.E. The merchants
sold gold, silver, metal goods, and textiles in the
region and brought back its fine spices. Trade
voyages introduced the Indian religions of
Hinduism and Buddhism to Southeast Asia.
Much of the region became and remains today
mostly Buddhist.

 Chola and Vijayanagara Empire impacted this
region by spreading Hinduism into this region
that lasts until today.

 Why would Hinduism not become popular in
China or Japan?

 For example, the Khmer (Cambodia) people's
founding legend centers around an Indian Prince
marrying a Naga princess Nagi Soma.

 A long time ago in the time of myths and legends,
there was a prince of India named Kaundinya who
was descended from the god of the Sun.

 One day Kaundinya heard a mysterious voice calling out
to him telling him to set out on a journey to the land of
gold where he would become king. This was a dangerous
journey by sea following the monsoon winds and
dangerous ocean currents.

 He gathered his courage and set out. Upon nearing theforeign
coast of the land of gold, Kaundinya's ship was attacked by a
fierce sea creature. It was a serpent woman with sharp fangs
and a whipping tail. Her name was NagI Soma, and she was
the beautiful daughter of the serpent king.

 Kaundinya fought her and after a long battle, he
emerged victorious. He spared the serpent woman's
life and she was impressed with his skill. She offered
her hand in marriage.

 In celebration, Kaundinya held his golden lance at
the coast and where it landed he resolved to build his
royal city in the land of gold which he gave the name
Cambodia.

 For her dowry, the Naga King drank all the water that
covered the land and gave the new land to them.

 Preah Thaong Kaundinya and Nagi Soma establish
the first Kymer (Cambodian) royal dynasty.

 Hinduism and Buddhism strengthened by the
Chola and Vijayanagara Empire impacted this
region lasting until today.

 Many ruling families of Kingdoms in South East Asia
accepted India’s hierarchical social structure based on
caste.

 Many Kingdoms of South East Asia accepted India’s
adopted Sanskrit.

 Many Kingdoms of South East Asia accepted India’s
pantheon of gods and religious ceremonies.

 However, the majority of non elite people eventually
followed Buddhism. Hinduism the religion of the rulers.

 Distinctively, Society, power and wealth was passed
down through the mother’s family, a matriarchal society
throughout the region.

 Also, indigenous people worshiped nature spirits,
that become part of the Hindu and Buddhist
traditions.

 Neolithic people were highly skilled farmers,
growing rice.

 By 3000 BCE, the Khmer and Thai people used
bronze, 1000 years earlier than China or Egypt.

 By 900 AD the Funan Kingdom prospered by
controlling maritime trade in the region.

 Around 100 AD, Funan met traders from India.

 The Kingdom of Funan built a Maritime
Kingdom.

 Funan traded with India, China, and Persia,
perhaps even Alexandria Egypt.

 The islands are an important midway point
between China and India.

 The region, like Southwest Asia, was strategically
significant. Whoever controlled this region could
influence the valuable trade between South Asia and
East Asia.


 Sea-Based Kingdoms
 Several kingdoms emerged, two were particularly
long-lasting (Srivijaya and Majapahit).

 The Srivijaya Empire (island of Sumatra) took control
of the seas from 670-1025.

 The Srivijaya Empire had a powerful navy.

 Trade routes went through the Strait of Malacca
linking the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

 The Srivijaya Empire taxed all ships going threw the
Straits.

 By the 1330’s, the Buddhist Majapahit Kingdom
(1293-1520) replaced the Hindu Srivijaya Empire and
prospered from theses same routes.

 Majapahit Kingdom (1293-1520) was based on the
island of Java (Indonesia) .

 By 800, Arab traders introduced Islam into the
region.

 During the 13th and 14th, Islam spread from the
coasts to the interior areas of Malaysia.

 A war leader Parameswara (1344 – c. 1414) spread
Islam.

 Sultan Parameswara founded the Sultanate of Malacca,
which would rule the islands until the Portuguese
invasions of 1511.

 As a bustling international trading port, Malacca
emerged as a center for Islamic learning and
dissemination. Malaysia considers it a golden age in
the archipelago.

 The third Cham (Vietnamese) Kingdom had adopted
many of Song China’s political culture (1220-1474).
Peninsula.

 The third Cham and Dai Veit (Vietnamese) Kingdom
had adopted many of Song China’s political culture
(1220-1474). Peninsula.

 The Chinese brought their philosophy, and
government.

 Three philosophies Confucianism, Daoism, and
Legalism.

 Yet, the Cham and Dai Viet people retained their
matrilineal society, and rejected the patriarchy of
Confucianism.

 Like Song China, Buddhism was popular with the
Dai Viet people.

 Unlike Song China, the Cham people adopted
Hinduism.

 Both , the Cham and Dai Viet people were maritime
trade kingdoms with thousands of trade and war ships.

 The Cham people got their name from the Sanskrit word
"champaka", a type of tree known as the yellow jade
orchid.

 Around 900, Indravarman was the first Cham monarch to
adopt Mahayana Buddhism as an official religion.

 The Cham people a powerful trading empire with Redstone
towers and vast fleets of ships with dragon-headed prowess
that crushed any resistance to their rule.

 The Cham Kingdom flourished by maritime trade with China.
They sent regular envoys to the Song then Yuan (Mongol)
Emperors that sat on the Dragon Throne of China.

 But their dominion over the region, especially the
Khmer people was soon to be challenged.

 By the 11th Century, the Khmer had built an Empire,
which rivaled the Cham and Dai Viet Kingdoms.

 The Khmer Empire ruled much of Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 15th
century. At its height, it covered an area that today includes much of
Thailand and Cambodia, as well as Vietnam and Laos.

 And at the Empire's heart, was the megacity of
Angkor.

 Angkor was over 1,000 square kilometers, larger than
New York City today.

 During the 11th and 13th centuries, its wider
agricultural area supported at least 1 million people,
or 0.1 percent of the world's population.

 That means that for a period of a few centuries one in
every thousand persons in the world lived in the city
of Angkor.

 The Khmer are one of the oldest ethnic groups of
Southeast Asia. They were one of the first people in
the world to use bronze and to invent the number
zero, and they developed the earliest alphabet still
in use in Southeast Asia.

 The Champ Kingdom ruled over the Khmer for
much of their early history.

 The Champ Kingdom’s rivalry and instability in the
8th century, allowed the region to be broken up into
a set of small Khmer kingdoms ruled by local lords.

 Around 802, Jayavarman II, a local strongman was
making a very clear statement: "I am the second
coming of the kings of old and I will return
Cambodia to its glory days."

 Jayavarman II forged an independent united kingdom for
the Khmer people and successfully rebelled against the
Charm

 He first seized the city of Vyadhapura in the
southeast and then pushed up the Mekong River to
take Sambpuhura. He and his followers swept from
southeast Cambodia to the northwest and
everywhere he went people joined his army.

 But the more power Jayavarman amassed, the more
resistance he faced.

 In the West he found that many Khmer leaders were
still loyal to the king of Champa. They fought back
against Jayavarman and managed to force him into a
retreat.

 Bodied and humiliated, he and his followers retreated
to the Kulen mountain range or Lychees Hills.

 For a time it must have seemed like all was lost, but
as he gathered the remains of his forces together
Jayavarman knew that it would take more than just
military might to unite the Khmer peoples. He
decided that what the people of Cambodia needed
was not a warlord but a king.

 He would crown himself something that had never
before existed, the king of the Khmer.

 And to do this he would have to devise an elaborate
and mystical Hindu ceremony.

 "His majesty Jayavarman came from Java to rein in
the royal city of Indrapura. A Brahman proficient in
the law of magic power came from Janapada in
response to his Majesty's invitation to perform a
sublime right which would release the kingdom from
the tyranny of the Charm."

 This Hindu ceremony was known as the devaraja,
or the god-king ritual.

 By the time the ritual was finished, Jayavarman had
established himself not just as a king of the Khmer but
as a kind of deity.

 And the symbolic power of this ritual seemed to
work. When the remaining kingdoms of the Khmer
heard that a god-king had been crowned, their will
to fight dissolved.

 Jayavarman was cunning. Through a smart
program of military campaigns, alliances,
marriages, and land grants, he gradually gathered
all the remaining kingdoms of the Khmer under
his banner

 Once his conquest was complete, Jayavarman built a
capital at a place he called Hariharalaya. And it
would be a city suited for a god-king.

 He built his palace on high ground, and nearby dug
a vast reservoir, marshaling enormous workforces to
build embankments, drain swamps, and dig ditches.
And he even diverted the course of the Siem Reap
river to build his new capital.

 And everything that was built for the new god-king
was designed to testify to that direct link that existed
between him and the gods.

 In Hindu belief, the gods Shiva, Vishnu, and the rest
of the Pantheon live on a great mountain called
Meru, similar to the idea of Mount Olympus in
ancient Greek mythology.

 Mount Meru is believed to be surrounded by a sea
of milk..

 Jayavarman built his capital at Hariharalaya, he
designed it to emulate this cosmic image. His palace
on a hill overlooking the great reservoir.

 It set the tone for the ambition and scale that would
mark the constructions of the Khmer, but it would be
Jayavarman's successors that would transform his
kingdom into a truly great empire.

 And the vast grandeur of their constructions would
reach heights that even Jayavarman could never have
imagined.

 Every king who followed after Jayavarman II would
follow his example in conducting the Hindu ritual
of the Devaraja to crown themselves as the god-
king of Cambodia.

 For much of Angkor's history, its king was both the
executive power and the center of a religious cult.

 800 years ago, they built Ankor Wat, the largest
temple complex in the world.

 Ankor Wat was the Rome of Asia with a population of 20
times larger than any European capital of the time.

 By 910, the Leper King Yasovarman, Angkor's
Empire grew and flourished until it was the most
powerful in Southeast Asia.

 Main factors in its’ success:
 1. Firstly, the ruler's status as God King. The people
saw royal authority and service as a religious
devotion.

 . The second was the Empire's efficient and decentralized tax system.

 Each village in the Khmer Empire had its own temple
and this temple was also an administrative center.

 Each temple was run by a powerful family in the
area who were responsible for collecting taxes from
the people who lived there.

 They would use these taxes to support the
functioning of their own lands, paying their laborers
and soldiers, and supporting their own luxurious
lifestyles. But anything left over would then be
funneled back to the royal treasury in Angkor.

 The status of these families depended on how much
money they could send to the King and so, they
competed bitterly to swell the royal funds.

 Thirdly, the Khmer were experts at controlling
water and agricultural engineering.

 King Suryavarman II 1113–1150 built Angkor Wat in
37 years, while at the same time Europeans took
centuries to build cathedrals.

 Angkor boomed it was 40 times larger than London
at the time.

Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure ever built,
four times larger than the Vatican City in Rome. Angkor
used more stone than the 118 pyramids of Egypt.

 Compare the social structures of South East
Asia with Dar Islam, China, and India.
 How did South Asia and East Asia impact this
region?

 Like most of the Khmers Hindu temples, Angkor
Wat is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of
the gods. Its five-kilometer moat encloses three
rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. And
it's five towers are designed to look like lotus buds
about to bloom.

 Although King Suryavarman II 1113–1150 wanted to
continue expanding the empire, he had no skill at warfare.

 Kings led their armies in battle liked to lead his man
into battle, and Suryavarman planned to take over
trade routes to China from the Charm and Da Viet.

 King Suryavarman led three separate invasions of
Vietnam, each of them resulting in failure.

 In the year 1128 for instance, he led a huge army of
20,000 soldiers against the Viet people, but his great
army was decisively defeated and the king barely
made it back to Angkor alive.

 Suryavarman tried again in the year 1145, this time
invading Champa.

 Suryavarman managed to defeat its King and sacked
its capital of Vijaya.

 but as the Americans found out in the 20th century,
Vietnam is a difficult country to hold. The puppet
king that Suryavarman installed lasted only about
five years.

 Cham rebellions overthrew the king, and when
Suryavarman marched back into Champa to
support him, his army destroyed by the rebels.

 Suryavarman died in battle.

 For the next 30 years, civil wars, rebellions, and
foreign invasions further weakened the Khmer state,
until it began to seem like it's collapse was imminent.

 But in the year 1120 - 1219 another prince Jayaraman
7, a devote Buddhist would become was born who
would the greatest of all Khmer kings.

 Like Ram in the Ramayana, Prince Jayavarman went
into exile instead of making a civil war against his
brother in 1160.

Jayavarman's Buddhist faith forbade him from
shedding blood, so he gave up the crown and went
into voluntary exile in the land of Champa for 5 years.

 Jayavarman returned to help his brother facing a
rebellion, yet was too late. On return, he found his
brother dead and the rebel chief Tribhuvan F—
G•
a sitting on the throne.

 Once again, Jayavarman's , he returned to exile in
Champa.

 10 years rebellions later, the King of Champa
successfully invaded and sacked and burnt down
Ankor Wat.

 The Cham King had built a huge dragon fleet, sailed
up the Mekong river and burnt the city of Angkor to
the ground, leaving it a smoking and desolate waste.

 Jayavarman return home to help his people.

 The people there greeted him as their king, crowning him Jayavarman
VII in 1181 without ever having shed a drop of blood.

 Angkor's buildings still smoked with the bodies of its people still in
the streets, as the Champa armies still rampaged through his land.

 Jayavarman's Buddhist pacifism ended, he ordered a great army to be
gathered and marched out to meet the Charm on the battlefield.

 Jayavarman won victory after victory,. He took revenge on the Cham by sacking
their capital and dethroning their king.


 Cham finally became a part of the Khmer Empire.

Jayavarman restored and rebuilt the city even grander than ever
imagined Today, this part of Angkor is known today as Angkor Thom, or
the Great City.

Angkor Thom, was a perfect square surrounded by a moat two miles on
each side.

 He was not the first Buddhist king of
first to declare Buddhism the state religion.

Before the year 1200 art in the temples of Angkor mostly portrayed,
after the year 1200, Buddhist scenes began to appear on the
temples instead.

The great temple of Angkor Wat was slowly transformed into a center of worship,
not for the Hindu god Vishnu , but for the Buddha.

 Buddhism had always been a part of medieval Cambodia., it was
popular among commoners, but elite people were Hindu.

 Like Christianity during the 1st and 2nd centuries in the Roman
Empire, some Hindu rulers were tolerant to Buddhists, others
persecuted them.

 Like 4th Century Christianity had in Rome, Buddhists began to
take over the culture that had once persecuted them .

 Buddhism succeeded in Cambodia because it was inclusive and universal in its
outreach. It recruited its disciples and monks not only from the nobles and royal court
but also from the villages and among the peasants.

 Western historians teach that King Jayavarman VII enormous
temple built in Angkor Thom called the Bayon has Buddhist ideals.

 They teach that it was the first temple in Cambodia to be built
without any walls, indicating its openness to all of Angkor's people.

However, under Jayavarman 7 both agree elite society converted to
Mahayana Buddhism.

Jayavarman 7 conversion to Buddhism would have wide-reaching
consequences that Jayavarman may not have anticipated.

Jayavarman renounced the title of God King, instead giving himself
the humble title the Lord who looks down.

As Mahayana Buddhist, Jayavarman retained the traditional
religious power of the god-kings who had come before him.

He could be seen as a bodhisattva refers to anyone
who has generated bodhicitta, a spontaneous wish and
compassionate mind to attain Buddhahood for the
benefit of all sentient beings.

Bodhisattva show 4 mportant spiritual ("four
brahmaviharas) loving-kindness (metta), compassion
(karuṇā), empathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity
(upekkha).

In the century that followed Jayavarman's rule, the state
religion would change multiple times, depending on
the varying beliefs of the ruler.

 The Khmer Empire would be Buddhist for one king's
reign and then return to the Hindu god-kings for
another.

However, the spread of Theravada Buddhism would weaken these traditional
powers after Jayavarman death.

The common people must have asked themselves,
"Well, is the King of God, or isn't he?“

 Into this confusion of trust came Theravada Buddhism.

 Theravada Buddhism undermined the authority of
the Khmer monarchs.

Theravada Buddhism is egalitarian, yet austere and
uncompromising, monks living in poverty, forbidden
from even touching money.

 For centuries now, Khmer society had been a picture
of inequality.

 Khmer peasants paid punishing taxes to the temples,
did back-breaking labor in the fields, and could be
conscripted into vast work gangs whenever a new
temple, reservoir, or royal mausoleum.

For example, tt's estimated that the construction of the
great reservoir of the West Baray, for instance, would
have taken the work of 200,000 peasants working for
three years.

 Meanwhile, the king and his nobles, as well as the
priests and holy men in the temples, lived in luxury.

 The king's palace required the services of up to 4,000
palace women.

 A medium-sized temple required a staff of a 1,000
administrators, 600 dancers, 95 professors, and a
whole host of other staff, amounting to nearly 13,000
people.

All of this opulence came at the expense of the peasants.

Theravada Buddhist monks lived in grass huts among
the villages rather than in golden temples.

Theravada Buddhist popularity spread quickly among
the people, and became dangerous to the authority of
the crown..

By the year 1295, only 70 years after Jayavarman VII's
death, the spread of Theravada Buddhism meant that
the king no longer had any religious authority.

The reign of the god-kings had come to an end, and for
the rulers of the Empire, this would spell disaster.

Powerful rival states Thai and Vietnamese put more
pressure on the Khmer Empire.

Ayutthaya was once part of the Khmer Empire, but
it had broken free in the early 12th Century.

Ayutthaya was a rising power in the region, a trading
kingdom with a vast port capital, that swelled with the
wealth of trade in the Gulf of Thailand.

When early French explorers visited Ayutthaya, they
would compare it to Paris in terms of its size and
wealth.

By the year 1350, Ayutthaya had gained enough
confidence to start challenging the Khmer Empire in
open battle..

A hundred years War saw the Thai gain and the Khmer
lost more land, taxes, and resources

 In 1352, the Thai king Uthong marched a great army
into Cambodia, and encircled the city of Angkor.

Angkor defenses were set against the East Charm
people, this western attach easily marched through
the flat plains of rice fields of that part of the city.

King Uthong's siege succeeded. The walls of Angkor
fell, its defenders were overcome, and the Thai soldiers
swept into the city and toppled its king.

Angkor was ruled by a series of puppet kings loyal to
the Thai, yet the Khmer rebelled again and again, with a
Khmer king finally retaking the throne.

In 1431, the final siege lasted for seven months, and the
Thai armies completely encircled Angkor, cutting off its
supplies on the land, and blocking the canals.

The Thai forces sacked it completely, looting it of all its
valuables. Statues from Angkor had been found
decorating the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya,
suggesting an organized campaign to loot and despoil
the city that was once the Rome of this region.

Future Khmer kings moved southward to a more
defensible location Phnom Penh, the modern
Cambodian capital is today.

It was the end of the Great Golden Era of the Khmer
Empire, and for the city of Angkor, and by 1500 it had
been reclaimed by the jungles and monkeys that lived
among its ruins.

 The Khymer Empire fell to the Siamese Empire.

 Kingdom of Ayutthaya, King Utong (1351-69) converted
to Theravada Buddhism and wrote down a Hindu legal
code.

Theravada Buddhism
 The “Way of the Elders” or the “Small Vehicle.”
 The monastic life is the best way to achieve nirvana.
 Goal is to become a “Buddha,” or “Enlightened One.”

 By 1700 CE, Ayutthaya was among the largest city
in the world with a population of around 1 million.

 They welcomed the Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese and
Japanese traders. The Dutch named them Siamese.

Chines
e
Vietnamese
Japanese
Dutch
Portugese
Malays

 Burma burned down to the ground in 1767

 General Taksin led the remaing Thai people South to Thonbury..

 General Taksin reunited the Thai kingdom from Thonburi in 1769,
then declared himself king and Buddha.

 However, Taksin became unpopular when he
claimed to be a Bodhisattva.

 Another General Chakri beheading Taksin, and
founded Bangkok and ruled as King Rama 1.

 In 1782, he decided to move the capital of Siam to
the east bank of the Chao Phra River founding
Bangkok.

The Rama Chakri
dynasty would go on to
reconquered most of the
peninsula.

 His Majesty Rama 10 today is a direct descendent.

Events in South East Asia 800-1600

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