Papers originally presented at a conference held Nov. 21-23, 2007 at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. New archaeological evidence from South Asia and Southeast Asia 1. Central Vietnam during th period from 500 BCE to CE 500 /​ Lam Thi My Dzung 2. Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao Sam Kaeo : the earliest Indian contacts re-assessed /​ Ian C. Glover and Bérénice Bellina 3. Preliminary study of Indian and Indian style wares from Khao Sam Kaeo (Chumphon, Peninsular Thailand), fourth-second centuries BCE /​ Phaedra Bouvet 4. Early contacts between India and the Andaman Coast in Thailand from the second century BCE to eleventh century CE /​ Boonyarit Chaisuwan 5. The Batujaya site : new evidence of early Indian influence in West Java /​ Pierre-Yves Manguin and Agustijanto Indradjaja 6. Continuity and change in South Indian involvement in Northern Sumatra : the inferences of archaeological evidence from Kota Cina and Lamreh /​ E. Edwards McKinnon 7. South Asia and the Tapanuli area (North-West Sumatra) : ninth-fourteenth centuries CE /​ Daniel Perret and Heddy Surachman 8. Emergence of early historic trade in Peninsula India /​ K. Rajan 9. Contacts between India and Southeast Asia in ceramic and boat building traditions /​ V. Selvakumar 10. Marine archaeological investigations along the Tamil Nadu Coast and their implications for understanding cultural expansion to Southeast Asian countries /​ Sundaresh and A.S. Gaur II. Localisation in Southeast Asia 11. Tamil merchants and the Hindu-Buddhist diaspora in early Southeast Asia /​ John Guy 12. The spread of Sanskrit in Southeast Asia /​ Johannes Bronkhorst 13. The early inscriptions of Indonesia and the problem of the Sanskrit Cosmopolis /​ Daud Ali 14. Indian architecture in the `Sanskrit Cosmopolis' : the temples of the Dieng Plateau /​ Julie Romain 15. The importance of Gupta-period sculpture in Southeast Asian art history /​ Robert L. Brown 16. Individuals under the glaze : local transformations of Indianisation in the decorative lintels of Angkor /​ Martin Polkinghorne 17. Early musical exchange between India and Southeast Asia /​ Arsenio Nicolas 18. Buddhism and the circulation of ritual in early Peninsular Southeast Asia /​ Peter Skilling 19. Early Buddhism in Myanmar : Ye Dhammā inscriptions from Arakan /​ Kyaw Minn Htin 20. Hindu deities in Southern Vietnam : images on small archaeological artefacts /​ Le Thi Lien 21. `The depositing of the embryo' - temple consecration rituals in the Hindu tradition of South and Southeast Asia : a study of the textual and archaeological evidence /​ Anna A. Ślączka 22. Localisation of Indian influences as reflected on the Laotian versions of the Ramayana /​ Sachchidanand Sahai 23. Broken threads : contested histories of Brahminism in Cambodia and Thailand and the construction of ritual authority /​ Boreth Ly.

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. -- Publisher's blurb.

English

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