Cultural Developments in South and Southeast Asia

Hinduism and Buddhism Shaped South Asia

South and Southeast Asia have a rich and diverse cultural history. South Asia birthed two of the world’s great religions/philosophies: Hinduism and Buddhism. Southeast Asia adopted both religions/philosophies during different periods in their history, as trade links diffused South Asia’s beliefs. Starting in the 13th century, Islam’s influence in both regions increased.

Hinduism and Hindu Beliefs

Hinduism is the oldest major world religion that is still widely practiced. The earliest Hindu beliefs date back at least 1500 years before the birth of Christ.

Four concepts are essential within Hinduism:

Brahma: Brahma is the universal soul that connects all life. It is the Hindu manifestation of god. All other Hindu gods and goddesses are avatars of Brahma.
Dharma: Dharma is the purity of one’s soul. One achieves good dharma by living a life of righteous deeds and fulfilling one’s role in society. In traditional Hinduism, the caste system defined one’s social position.
Karma: One’s dharma determines karma. If you have good dharma in life, then you will have good karma in death. With good karma, you can potentially be reborn into a higher position in the next lifetime. The inverse is also true. If you have bad karma, you could be born into a lower place in the next lifetime.
Moksha: Moksha is the ending of the cycle of rebirth and the gaining of union with Brahma and the universal energy

Lord Brahma

Brahma is the most important Hindu god from which Hindu’s believe all other gods and everything in existence arises.

Goddess Parvati and Her Husband God Shiva

Shiva and his wife Parvati are two of the most important gods in the Hindu pantheon.
Aperture: 1.8
Camera: iPhone 7
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Hindu God Genesha

Ganesha is one of the most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon. He is widely revered as the remover of obstacles; the patron of arts and sciences; and the god of intellect and wisdom

Priest saluting the sun in the Ganges, Varanasi Benares India

Hindu priest saluting the sun in the Ganges, Varanasi Benares India
Author: Jorge Royan
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Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Caption: Hindi priest saluting the sun in the Ganges, Varanasi Benares India
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Copyright: Copyright Jorge Royan
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The Hindu Caste System

The Hindu caste system is a rigid social hierarchy that defines one social status based on religious purity and closeness to god.

The castes fit within four larger groupings called varna: the higher their varna, the higher their status.
Outside of the four varnas are the Dalits. Throughout much of Hindu history, Dalits have suffered extreme discrimination at the hands of upper-caste Hindus. Dalits continue to struggle to achieve an equal status in Indian society.
One’s varna/caste traditionally also guided one’s occupation. Certain castes were assigned specific jobs within the community. One caste might be responsible for milking cows, while another would be responsible for trash collection.
These traditional distinctions do not always bind modern Indian occupations among the urban and educated classes.

The Bhakti movement developed in India between the 7th and 12th centuries. It began in South India before spreading into Central and Northern India. The Bhakti movement’s main idea was that devotion to God was enough to achieve union with God and break the rebirth cycle.

Bhakti followers worked against the power of the high caste Brahmins to control religious ceremonies.
Bhakti followers believed that all castes were equal in God’s eyes and equal on earth.
Poetry was an influential medium of expression for Bhakti followers to spread their ideas. Bhakti poets left behind an extensive collection of poetry.
Mira Bai was a 16th-century female Bhakti poet. Her songs about love and devolution to lord Krishna are still familiar to most in modern India.
Another Bhakti poet by the name of Kabir was born a Muslim. He preached that there was a single god who came in many forms. That spirituality and worship were all that mattered, not whether one prayed to Shiva or Allah.

Historical comparison: Most societies have social ranking systems. Throughout history, different cultures have used other ranking systems to determine social status. Merchants had mid-level status in the traditional Indian caste system. In traditional China, merchants had little social status. While in the Islamic culture merchants had a high status because Mohammad and his wife had been merchants.

Buddhism and Buddhist Beliefs

India also gave rise to Buddhism in the 5th century BCE. It was started by the young Kshatriya prince Siddhartha Gautama who, unsatisfied with royal life behind palace walls, left on a journey to seek out the causes of suffering in life.

For years Siddhartha wandered around North India, meditating and searching for answers to the causes of suffering in life. Buddhists believe the Buddha’s search for answers led to his enlightenment. During the Mauryan and Gupta empires in South Asia (3rd century BCE – 6th century CE), Buddhism replaced Hinduism as the dominant religion in South Asia. However, after the 6th century CE, Hinduism experienced a revival and reasserted itself as the dominant faith in South Asia.

The Buddha developed a series of teachings to help his followers achieve enlightenment and break the rebirth cycle.

The goal of Buddhism is to break the cycle of rebirth by becoming enlightened. To gain enlightenment Buddha stated that one had to release themselves from the continual cycle of wanting and devote themselves to a life of meditation, teaching, and good deeds.

Buddha preached the Eight Fold Path as the way to achieve good karma and enlightenment.

Right seeing and understanding – e.g., the Noble Truths
Right thought or intention – e.g., acting considerately
Right speech – e.g., avoiding lies or gossip; saying what you mean
Right action – e.g., honesty and not harming living things
Right work or livelihood – e.g., avoiding jobs that harm other beings
Right effort – e.g., seeking to overcome desire, selfishness, and attachment
Right mindfulness – e.g., thinking before acting; meditation
Right concentration – e.g., freeing the mind of distractions before meditation

Buddhist Monasticism

Buddhist monasteries, where monks and nuns live as near as possible to Buddhist ideas, functioned as Buddhist thought and learning centers. From these Buddhist monasteries, Buddhist thought was studied, taught, and preached.

Nalanda University (6th century C.E. – 13th century C.E.) in modern-day Bihar, India, was one of the world’s largest learning centers for hundreds of years.
As Buddhism transferred along the Silk Road to East Asia, Buddhist monks and nuns set up monasteries along trade routes.
Wealthy traders and merchants who had converted to Buddhism helped finance Buddhist temples and monasteries along these routes. This process repeated itself over hundreds of years until Buddhism reached China.

Comparing Hinduism and Buddhism

Buddhism and Hinduism both seek to help followers to break the cycle of rebirth by following a path of inner reflection. For Hindu’s breaking the rebirth cycle is accomplished by following one’s caste duties. Buddhism rejected the rigid social hierarchy and distinctions outlined in the caste system. For Buddhists, the caste system was a worldly creation that was unjust and violated the principle of showing mercy to all people. The path toward breaking the cycle of rebirth lay in detaching oneself from the world and achieving enlightenment.

The Islamic Conquest of South Asia

Islam was present in South Asia long before Islamic rule dominated the region. During the time of Muhammad, Islamic traders were trading along the East coast of India. In 629, the Cheraman Juma Mosque was constructed along the Kerala coast in South India by the Chera king.

Islamic armies entered South Asia in the 13th century and established the Delhi Sultanate. Muslim religious beliefs and practices spread throughout South Asia as portions of the population converted. Later, in the 16th century, the Islamic Mughal Empire replaced the Delhi Sultanate. Islam was most dominant in North India. Hindu rule remained dominant in Southern India under the Vijayanagara Empire until the 17th century.

The Role of Sufi Missionaries in Spreading Islam in South Asia

Sufism is a type of Islamic worship that focuses on looking inside oneself in the search for God. Sufi Muslims believe in renouncing material goods, purification of the soul, and questioning God’s nature. Sufi practices spread widely through the expanding Islamic world as Sufi followers adapted their Islamic practices to the areas in which they lived. Sufi were influential in spreading Islam into Hindu South Asia. Sufi missionaries often had the most contact with native inhabitants outside of urban areas. Their mystical practice of Islam was easier to adapt to native traditions that often looked very different than traditional Islam.

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam Shape Southeast Asia

Before the 15th century, South Asian (Indian) kingdoms had a significant influence on Southeast Asia. South and Southeast Asia traded both goods and culture across trade and communication networks. Hindu and Buddhist culture blended with local traditions and became dominant belief systems across potions of Southeast Asia.

Hinduism was first introduced to Southeast Asia as early as the first century CE. Regional kings provided state support for Hinduism. Rulers began adopting Hindu philosophical ideas, rituals, art and architectural styles, and literature.

As early as the 1st century CE in the Funan kingdom in modern-day Cambodia, the Hindu epics the Ramayana and Mahabharata were popular with the ruling class.
Traditional Indian and Hindu architecture became common within the region and incorporated into various royal monuments and religious sites.
Angkor Thom, the capital city of the Angkor kingdom (889-1431), contains a magnificent set of royal monuments replete with carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Just a few miles away in Angkor Wat, the Angkor rulers built Angkor Wat as a temple to the Hindu god of Shiva.

Buddhism entered Southeast Asia from trade with India, China, and Sri Lanka during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries. One of the earliest accounts of Buddhism in Southeast Asia was of a Theravada Buddhist mission sent by the Indian emperor Ashoka to modern-day Burma in 250 BCE. Buddhism largely replaced Hinduism as the dominant religion on the mainland of Southeast Asia. Islam later became the dominant religion on the Islands of Southeast Asia.

The following are significant events in the expansion of Buddhism into Southeast Asia.

Srivijaya, a maritime empire centered on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia between the 7th and 14th centuries, adopted Buddhism.
From the 9th to the 13th centuries, the Khmer Empire dominated much of the Southeast Asian mainland peninsula. The Khmer built more than 900 temples in Cambodia and neighboring Thailand. Angkor was at the center of this development.
By the 13th century, Khmer rulers had converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. Rulers quickly went about converting the Hindu temples at Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat to Buddhist temples. However, Angkor rulers did not destroy the Hindu elements of the temple complexes. Hindu details were left and integrated with new Buddhist additions.

Islam also had a substantial impact on Southeast Asia. Islam’s entry into the region was primarily a result of merchants who moved to the area for economic opportunity as early as the 700s. As Islamic merchants built relationships with urban residents and fellow traders, Islam slowly gained influence.

By the 14th and 15th centuries, Islam had become powerful enough on the Malaysian peninsula and Indonesian islands that local rulers began converting to Islam and providing state support for the expansion of Islam.
The first Southeast Asian king to convert to Islam was King of Kedah Phra Ong Mahawangsa. Mahawabgsa converted to Islam from Hinduism in 1136. His conversion resulted from an attack on his kingdom on the Malay peninsula by the Hindu Chola kingdom.
The first significant and successful Muslim dynasty in Southeast Asia was the Sultanate of Malacca. Parameswara, the King of Singapore, founded the Sultanate in c. 1400.
Initially, Islam was a religion of the ruling classes. Over time, the religion spread to the masses, partially through the work of Sufi missionaries.
Despite the expansion of Islam on the Malay peninsula and the Islands of Southeast Asia, Buddhism remained dominant in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Cultural Developments in South and Southeast Asia

Learning Objective

Historical Development 1

Historical Development 2

Historical Development 3

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