People/paulstange/voices/1.html

Ancestral Voices in Island Asia

by Paul Stange

chapter 1
VISION ACROSS CULTURES AND TIMES

--constructions of 'culture' and 'Asia'
--localising historical perspective

Conventionally the project of history refers to political events and high cultures yet fundamentally it touches the whole of society, taking in everyday life and ordinary people through time. While no longer concentrating exclusively on dynastic lists and dating battles, the grand narratives of states still appear as the core of narratives and implicitly elites, at the centre of texts they produce, remain our subject. Along the way preliterate and illiterate peoples are largely speechless and out of sight, along with women, workers and peasants. Yet these voiceless peoples underwrite the struggles we record, they are the cannon fodder of process, their invisible lives expended as glorified princes and generals engage. Recently excellent works in every field of history enlarge our senses of social process, shifting concentration away from chronological transitions of dynasties, kingdoms or governments. While encompassing heterogeneity and pluralism simultaneously these advances highlight political-economic modernity and, as that consumes attention, the nuances of earlier intuitions and cultures are overshadowed. As time collapses into the present our senses of historical depth and cultural variation appear to diminish.
This thematic exploration of the contours of Southeast Asian history is focussed on cultural traditions. Beyond establishing an overview perspective on the region the aim is to characterise and trace shifts in the dominant idioms which have framed life. In treating each era of evolution I situate local societies relative to each other and global communications, outline key cultural patterns in regional terms and explore Javanese illustrations to highlight dynamics. In concluding I turn to the politics of representation, problems of grasping local vision and praxis within western scholarship. Every topic we touch has occupied lifetimes of scholarship and this overview does not aim to distill that corpus, condense facts or synthesise static knowledge. Instead the multiplicity of identities, sites and events we touch are a context for exploring the trajectories and mechanisms of culture in general. Our target is to clarify the structure of regional history while highlighting perspectives which facilitate registration of local vision and agency within it. Along the way we will probe consistently to discern the ongoing role of indigenous impulses within the evolving societies of the region.
As it deals only with predominant cultures and broad epochs this text cannot pretend to be balanced or comprehensive. It will not adequately represent the diversity of local histories. Wet rice producers--the Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Khmer, Malay, Tagalog and Javanese, all groups which have became dominant--will be closer to the foreground than their many cousins. Focus on classical, mainly Indian inspired, traditions and on the institutions of Buddhism and Islam will be at the expense of Catholic Filipinos, fishing and trading peoples or hill tribes like the Karens. While every survey is selective in precisely this way--each prioritises specific periods, cultures, groups or aspects of history--our reflexes make it seem most natural to focus on the recent past, dominant groups and economics. The dominant culture of our time guides us to view those as critical so consequently we prioritise them in imaging the past, as though importance was constructed similarly in distant times and places. Thus, though essentially religious history is no more narrow than political history only the latter easily conflates with "history" in our time. Religion and politics may touch everyone in all societies but the ways in which those domains are brought into consciousness vary with culture and time and such shifts in priority are in themselves central to the history of culture.

ecologies of cores and zones
As the concept of Southeast Asia is new it is worth reflecting critically on whether thinking in terms of the region is useful. Even if in starting we believe we know nothing images we harbour need challenging. Preconceptions arise from maps and news media which treat "nations" as self-evident, highlighting units defined in this century and enforcing tacit impression each is distinct and cohesive. Visualising early history requires elimination of images based on present realities. Contemporary maps also imply that within states citizens relate equally to a centre, yet neither the social nor conceptual basis for such imagination existed until enabled by print and other technologies of the industrial revolution. Current identities of Indonesians, Malaysians or Lao are recent; nothing like the "Philippines" existed in prehistory and "Indonesia" emerged through a Dutch colonialism consolidated only early in this century. Even in three centuries of influence Spanish rulers had effective power only in Luzon and the Visayan islands, neither controlling Luzon's mountains nor subordinating the Muslim south. No government has controlled the whole population of that "nation" and strong currents counter unity, as in "Burma" which also remains torn by competing nationalisms into the present.
The rich variety of ethnic groups in the region related loosely, if at all, in the past. Most peoples, if bowing to distant rulers, were autonomous in social routines and culture. Even the greatest early empires did not integrate peoples as contemporary states do. Majapahit influenced much of the archipelago culturally, but its power was more cultural than political-economic. Current boundaries tie Sumatra to Java, but until the 19th century Sumatra and Malaya were more closely bound than either was to Java. So to begin with we must envision a geophysical rather than political map, emphasise morphology rather than boundaries and even use maps extending beyond Southeast Asia as we know it. Southern India and south China may be seen as belonged to Southeast Asia in prehistory. Whether there is such a thing as "Southeast Asia", even now, depends on our criteria and no interpretation is definitive: ethnic bases, sources of literate traditions and political histories produce different conclusions. Insofar as there is a foundation underlying regional cultures it lies in modes of subsistence, kinship organisation and shared animistic beliefs, an aboriginal pattern extending beyond the boundaries of today's region. If there is unity to its history, that lies in the syncretic power of its cultures, in the extent to which its primal substratum has been able to assimilate diverse influences the oceans brought without being overwhelmed by them.
Anthropologists include Taiwan, Hainan and Madagascar within the region, as aboriginals of those islands are related to Southeast Asians. Natives of Assam, the province of India between Tibet and Burma, are kin to hill peoples of Burma, Thailand and Yunnan. SriLanka is linked to Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia through Theravada Buddhism. Others have considered the Philippines along with Latin America, as it too was shaped by Spanish Catholicism. For a millennium Yunnan, in southwest China, housed the Indic empire of Nanchao, one integral to the world of Indianised Southeast Asia. Through the Tang period in China wars with Tibet and Yunnan underscored the independence of the latter until Mongol conquests of the 13th century brought Yunnan into China. Conversely many treat Vietnam as part of East Asia because its inheritance is Chinese. From the 2nd century BC until the 10th century AD the Red River delta, now northern Vietnam, was a Chinese province. New Guinea was marginal to the region until recently on every count--ethnically little connected Melanesians of that island to the Malayo-Polynesians predominant in what is now Indonesia. Historically Malayo-Polynesians visited it, to fish or trade, but in the same marginal way they also touched the north of Australia. Only Dutch colonialism and Indonesian rule since the 1960s firmly connect Irian Jaya to Southeast Asia.
The region is not defined by a language family. Its hundreds of distinct ethno-linguistic groups, even ignoring New Guinea, belong to separate Malayo-Polynesian, Tai-Kadai, Tibeto-Burman and Sinic language families. No language or "great tradition" has given it the cohesion of "East" or "South" Asia. Chinese writing originated from the Yellow River valley, in the north, and transcended linguistic barriers. The same characters are used by diverse language groups, reinforcing the grip of an imperial tradition most regions shared over many centuries. Sanskrit, arising from the Gangetic plain, stamped all of South Asia. The peoples of that subcontinent shared mythic, philosophical and religious discourses through texts which touched most of its societies. Nor is Southeast Asia defined by the predominance of a world religion, as the Middle East is by Islam; it contains adherents of virtually all the world's religions. It is hard to avoid impression the region is a catch-all. However Southeast Asia is not exclusively a modern fiction. Early Chinese records treated it as "Nanyang", the southern regions, and the Sanskrit term "Nusantara", islands between, was applied to the archipelago. Definitions such as these did treat the many kingdoms and ethnicities of the region as a category in the eyes of early peoples, but do not coincide with postwar concepts.
Prior to World War II "Indo-China" at times referred to the whole region, but then Burma was associated with South Asia through the British empire. French Indo-China included Laos, Cambodia, Tongkin, Annam and CochinChina; the Netherlands East Indies covered what is now Indonesia; the American Philippines and independent Thailand remained separate. Each colony interacted with an imperial system more than neighbours, looking outward to a metropole rather than to transactions with neighbours in what we now call Southeast Asia. It is not incidental that under Japanese occupation the region came closest to constituting a single field of political and military power, as "Southeast Asia" became established as a term through being defined as a theatre of operation during World War II. Since then we assume the region has cohesion and, no doubt, regional identity will mean more in future. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) facilitates connections, as the European Economic Community does elsewhere.

Having erased the borders of current systems, we should first consider the geophysical context and ecological patterns which frame and underpin cultural evolution. As Southeast Asia straddles the equator temperatures within it vary more from night to day and with altitude than with season. Villagers shared a common stock of essentials underpinning everyday life--diet, agricultural technology and domestic animals have been shared through the region. The tropical atmosphere produces vigorous and varied vegetation, including a rich range of fruits. Originally bamboo was a primary building material everywhere, but teak and rainforest hardwoods were also plentiful until this century. Pile supported and wooden floored dwellings were common through the region, only the Javanese and Vietnamese built homes on the ground from an early time. As their populations became dense relatively earlier presumably wood become precious. Only in the past several decades have brick and tile replaced palm thatch and bamboo as the primary construction material for ordinary dwellings. The earth is alive; volcanoes generate soil and deltas have extended significantly during the millennia we touch. Silt extends the Irrawaddy and Mekong deltas by as much as one hundred metres a year. Mount Muria, in north central Java, was an island six hundred years ago; Krakatoa, in the Java Straits, exploded in 1883, so that what was an island virtually disappeared. Now landscapes change more through the depleting excesses of human beings than the replenishing forces of nature, but natural forces of the earth remain especially visible.
Geographically the region is most distinguished by its high ratio of seacoast to landmass: it is the largest area of peninsulas and islands on the planet so its peoples have been profoundly oriented to and influenced by the sea. During the ice ages, most recently ten thousand years ago, the Sunda shelf, taking in Sumatra, Java and Borneo, was joined to the Asian land mass. The earliest inhabitants of the islands thus moved there as on the mainland. Since then migrations into the archipelago have been by sea and that is how the ancestors of most contemporary peoples of the islands arrived. All of Southeast Asia belongs to monsoon Asia, as do southern India, Bengal, south China and southern Japan, and is influenced by seasonal winds which bring rain mainly between October and April. Those set the rhythm followed by early sailors, from within or beyond the region, as during the first millennium traders were forced to lay over for months each year, waiting for winds which could take them home--the winds combined with constraints of early sailing technology to ensure that depths of cultural transaction accompanied even transit trade.
The "mainland" is distinguished from the "islands". The former, refers to convoluted peninsulas of Eurasia taking in Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The latter to the archipelago, or "insular" Southeast Asia, including what are now Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Brunei. Though the Malay Peninsula is literally connected to the mainland, it is culturally and historically part of the island world. This geographical divide corresponds to division, crystallised by the 15th century, between a predominantly Theravada Buddhist mainland and a mainly Islamic island world. Generally Southeast Asia has been a region of low population density until recently. The Vietnamese felt land pressure a millennium ago and the Javanese have for over a century, but more commonly available space ensured that control of people has been historically more at issue than claims to land. When pressed by those in power farmers could usually relocate and clear forest land for cultivation. Dwellings, constructed of bamboo, were light enough to move and in any case easy to rebuild. In the early states of the region nobles measured authority by the number of households they could claim services from and wars aimed to capture populations rather than claim territory.
Rice, grown in paddies or dry fields, is the staple and preferred food crop everywhere. Cassava, maize and root crops are common in dry or mountainous areas and as supplements in times of drought. Cultivation of wet rice provided incredibly settled subsistence. The region, including prehistoric southern China, is the home of wet rice and some of its elaborately terraced and irrigated paddies have been cultivated continuously for over two thousand years. Paddies are based on rich volcanic soils and constitute an almost self-replenishing micro-environment, they are highly responsive to the intensive labour input required for cultivating transplanted wet rice. Beyond the areas suitable for wet rice, slash-and-burn, also known as swidden or shifting agriculture, predominates. These terms refer to systems involving rotating cultivation of dry fields. In this pattern areas of forest are cleared, burned off, then planted with a rich variety of root and vegetable crops. Usually a plot could be cultivated for about seven years, until the land was worked out, as rain forest soils, in contrast with the volcanic loams of core areas, are not rich, and, with the removal of forest cover, soils loose quality quickly. The process was generally repeated in a cycle which led back to the same plot after it had regenerated.
The most socially significant ecological substructure of the region lies in contrast between "cores" and "zones". Core areas have been those suitable for intensive and extensive wet rice agriculture. These have sustained dense populations from early on and thus facilitated concentration of political power. In contrast zones have been sparsely populated, dominated by shifting cultivation, fishing or trade and politically fragmented. Density of population everywhere indicated a core area. Using figures suggestively, in cores ten people per unit of land have been counterpointed by one person to ten units of land in a zone. The social and cultural correlates of this ecological contrast are profound and, if the peoples of cores dominate both history and the texts treating it, it is because archaeological remains and written records are also primarily their testament.
The cores of the mainland focussed on great rivers rising from the Himalayas and creating expansive valleys of land which was easily irrigated. Extensive settlement produced surpluses of rice which sustained courts, facilitated warfare and fed the builders of monuments. The major riverine plains of the mainland are those of the Red River in North Vietnam, the Mekong in South Vietnam and Cambodia, the Menam in Thailand and the Irrawaddy in Burma. These are the heartlands of dominant ethnic groups today. The Vietnamese, Thai and Burmese each number at least fifty million, the Khmer about six million. Weaker geographical barriers set the latter off from neighbours and the decline in their relative strength has occurred not only in the past several decades but gradually over five centuries. On average in mainland states over eighty per cent of the population belongs to these dominant groups. Significant valley pockets, suitable for wet rice, have housed the largest minority groups in the hills. Other more marginal and tribal peoples have been scattered, characteristically engaged in slash and burn agriculture and trade and the hills have been occupied by hundreds of distinct linguistic communities.
The balance between core and zone differs in island Southeast Asia. Through the first millennium central and eastern Java was the only core area. Complex states developed there by the 4th century of the Christian calendar and their peasant populations, like those of the mainland, built substantial monuments which now remain as tourist attractions. Even at the core of early states, populations are unlikely to have exceeded a million, but in context that was relatively dense. Only later in history did central Luzon came to constitute a core, following the establishment of Spanish Manila, and the Tagalog speakers occupying it remain less proportionately dominant in their context than Javanese speakers in Indonesia. Roughly half, perhaps eighty million, Indonesians are Javanese whereas about a third, or twelve million, Filipinos are Tagalog. Elsewhere a dozen significant communities and hundreds of small ethnic groups on other islands, have been predominantly engaged in shifting agriculture, as in the hills of the mainland, or oriented toward seagoing trade and fishing.
Within both mainland and island zones there have also been significant pockets of wet rice cultivation and the distinction between cores and zones is certainly not black and white, especially in the island world. Nevertheless major core areas stand out. In addition to practices of slash and burn or dry rice cultivation the societies of zones were especially oriented toward transit trade connecting China to Indian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean regions. In early history portage routes were prominent and rivers provided major arteries. Long distance trade moved at times as actively through the hills of the mainland as through the archipelago. Almost every part of Southeast Asia was a separate site of transit between the early cultures of China and India and there is no doubt that location between those early civilisations profoundly shaped all of its peoples' histories.
If we start with the notion that Southeast Asia has been a remote and relatively unimportant backwater of global history, or imagine studying it as specialised and esoteric, we betray unconscious bias, culturally rooted prejudices not recognised as such. Even maps, visual keys to imagination of the world, distort perception. Most familiar images, such as the backdrops for television news shows, are Mercator projections. These grossly exaggerate the northern hemisphere relative to the equator, subconsciously inculcating imbalances in our perception. At the same time the inherited self consciousness of every culture prioritises the lineages it derives from, in Europe imagined as tracing to Mediterranean, not Asian or African, roots. Due to the industrial revolution and dominance though colonialism Europe looms larger than it should and we do not have a balanced view of world history. Java may be the size of England, but as it has not had comparable impact in recent centuries we are unlikely to imagine the depth of its history, scale of its population and sophistication of its culture are as rich in nuance. In addition Java, Bengal or Szechewan, each significant in history and complexity, appear invisible on world maps which highlight only nations with colours.

constructions of culture and tradition
Scholarship is always a part of culture and the dominant versions of it have emerged from societies validating rational scientific thinking linked to a modernism which also shapes society at large. Modernism is not only reference to economic organisation since the industrial revolution; it denotes a complex of ideologies, practices and values which are also cultural. As a cultural style it prioritises and directs attention toward the physical conditions of life. Related values, guiding senses of what is important or peripheral, filter through to condition academic interpretation as much as popular vision. Since the Enlightenment scholarship has aimed for universal theories rooted in notions of progress toward (presumably superior) scientific views and has vigorously expanded in conjunction with capitalism. Only recently has the self confidence of this conventional thinking been challenged. In the humanities postmodernist currents now disavow grand theorising, holding we cannot wrap the world up or imagine everything will be explained within a unified theory. Through it we are increasingly aware of implicit interventions conditioning scholarship, however enlightened, registering that thought as such, including theorising, is culturally embedded.
The everyday ideas we are most secure in are precisely those most challenged by engaging other cultures and every discipline is challenged by cross cultural exploration. By aiming to conceive culture as such, beyond its construction in specific sites, anthropology highlighted ethnocentrism, that every worldview distorts perception across cultures. Related distortions also occurs over time. Whenever assuming societies move toward the modern condition, as though it is a natural endpoint of history, projected assumptions from the present influence imagination of the past and produce misreadings. Currently Enlightenment notions of equality are profoundly embedded in the west, taken as self evident truth, and it is easily presumed other societies move toward an enlightened reality it is imagined we embody. Yet our beliefs in democracy and justice are, as Dumont suggested through exploration of hierarchy in India, essentially mythic in the same way notions of caste (more obviously) appear to be for western observers. We only clearly see culture in general, including our own, as a construct by engaging contrasting sites of it.
With the Oedipus complex, referring to tension between father and son, Freud believed he had articulated an essential principle of psychology. Then when Malinowski interrogated Freud's theory through ethnography in the Trobriand islands he observed that there comparable tension was between sons and their mother's brother, the latter being prime disciplinarians, and concluded Freud's insight was culturally constructed, not universal. Exploration of how literature, religion, politics and economics related to each other in early societies may also produce appreciation of dynamics between domains we enshrine in isolation in modern disciplines. Academia constructs explanations based on the narrow logics of psychology, economics or sociology as though each is autonomous; multi-disciplinary approaches highlight the relevance of contextualising each aspect of life in awareness of its wider field. Beyond academia there are utilitarian reasons to labour at cross cultural understanding, but ultimately pragmatic benefits will be by-products of an increasingly global consciousness which has intrinsic value.

Like womens studies, Asian studies is an affirmative action program, one necessary to counterbalance the Eurocentrism of traditional academic disciplines. Counterpointing affirmative action there is also often apartheid styled segregation: insofar as Asia is treated in sites dedicated to it disciplines choose to read that as license to continue ignoring the region. Generally philosophy departments still construe the traditions of China and India as adjuncts to European (real) philosophy; if treated they have token status. When Asian theories enter academic theorising they have to be localised as European to be taken seriously. Bahktin's works, sanctioned as virtually obligatory reference in cultural studies, build partly on Tibetan notions he absorbed in Paris during the 1930s. However if the same notions came in unfiltered university conventions dictate they would be treated as objects rather than authorised as theory which could guide scholarship. Scholars, like yuppies, generally buy designer labels; in doing so reflecting how they constitute, as well as explore, culture.
Academic practices remain embedded within and foster an imperialism of knowledge which disempowers Asian subjectivities through the same asymetric separations which underlie other cross cultural relations. Imbalances between Australia and Asia, for instance, are levelling out in economic life, yet as it evolves in Australian academia Asian studies is increasingly framed by an instrumentalism which is itself a statement of Australian culture. Consequently the rationale underlying Asian studies is increasingly political-economic and focus on cultural issues has faded. Conversely the positioning of Asia within Australian cultural studies is guided largely by epistemologies, theories of knowledge, which produce conviction that no essence exists apart from mental construction. Students of Asia are positioned within it as interminable tourists, as accessing only images of others, never possibly substance different from themselves--Asia is positioned most firmly as other within the very discipline illuminating the process of "othering". Constructions of culture within Asian studies and of Asia within cultural studies, only now beginning to intersect, ironically collude most, if implicitly, in obscuring engagement with difference.
Neither the utilitarian thrust of global governments nor the capitulation of universities to it are self evident necessities. Preoccupation with economy may be as natural as concern with subsistence, but even brief reflection would inform us that deployment of income and energy is constructed by a multiplicity of values, pleasures and needs, not just by maximisation of gain. If education is framed as training for careers in business, government or industry, not defended according to intrinsic values, or economics is taken as the "solid reality" those are cultural statements, indicating what we hold central or peripheral. Yet essentially the power of the market and value of money are cultural, resting on symbolic forms and beliefs rather than physical existence. By tacitly internalising consumer culture we embody it and ensure it is further manifest; prioritising the market arises from belief in it, not the market itself; and, if pragmaticism appears self-evident, we fail to notice that we elect it by choice, implicitly dismissing other priorities. Exposing such tacit agendas of cultural praxis is the project of cultural studies.
Within Asian studies Edward Said's work Orientalism has become synonymous with acknowledgment that western scholarship on Asia has been embedded in imperialistic power relations. Said showed how the knowledge Europeans cultivated of the "Orient" enshrined unequal power relations, how it was part of the colonial enterprise, also noting that western scholarship shapes even what Asians know of themselves. Said rested his work on extremes, mainly on Victorian scholarship and almost exclusively on studies of the Islamic world, but in general terms his thesis is instructive. It is worth pausing to consider the thrust of this thinking. Catchwords in cultural theory include semiotics, poststructuralism, postmodernism and deconstruction. If "modern" refers to industrial societies and schools of thought associated with positivist social sciences and ideas of progress, then postmodernism is both after that and a critique of it. The term originated as a designation for styles of architecture and art, but is applied to philosophies, since Nietzsche in the late 19th century, critically concerned with industrial society. Thus Foucault's exploration of the history of systems of knowledge, including medical as well as educational structures, exposed their relation to the emergence of the industrial state. He showed how such institutions serve as tools to establish and police disciplines, even in spheres such as personal sexuality, which facilitate the power of increasingly pervasive regulating authorities.
Structuralism is associated in the social sciences first with the French anthropologist Levi-Strauss, whose quest for universal ordering principles led to emphasis on systematic paired oppositions such as those linguists identified earlier. "Post-structuralism" refers both to works using structuralist principles as a given and those which reject emphasis on formal oppositions. The latter argue that pluralistic everyday practices cannot be read strictly through formal universal rules. Semiotics arose through linguistics and language philosophy but approaches cultures as systems of signs and leads to conclusion that "meaning" resides in relations between sign systems, systems taken as including body language and actions along with words. For example, Geertz's anthropological version of semiotics, especially influential in Southeast Asian studies, is linked to the philosophers Mead and Ryle and the position that "...all consciousness is intersubjective, mediated by public communicative forms".
Deconstruction refers both to the taking apart or contextualising of practices, a common strategy within social analysis, and, more technically, to analytical practices associated with Said and Derrida. The language of this style of discourse is demanding, as words are used without straightforward definitions, a feature of recent work integral to their theorising, one resisting notions of definition and meaning maintained by older theories. New theories insist, in the way they present themselves and about discourses generally, that every discourse or communicative structure rewrites rules, if always also through relations with other texts: meaning is defined "intertextually". Thus sequences of definition would be a contradictory entry to these styles of thought, according to them meanings are in every instance made only on the run, remade by use rather than fixed.
These movements push away from universalising generalised statements, such as those of modernism, early Marxism or structuralism, and toward recognition of multivalenced local perspectives. They direct attention away from elite culture or centrist perspectives such as dominated earlier scholarship. Writers influenced by Foucault, Said, Derrida and others generally "theorise" "texts" and "discourses". Recognising the plurality of actors and perspectives in every context scholars now follow them in rejecting generalised characterisations of culture and we are all now sensitive to the resonances of politics as a play of dominance in all fields extending into gender relations, not merely as restricted to formal institutional practices of societies as a whole.

To speak of traditions, as we will, is not just to refer to the dead cultures of ancient elites; the term, like culture, refers to diverse, contesting, dynamic and popular manifestations which are transformed through time. Neither term refers exclusively to ideological or artistic spheres, as though constituting a realm separable from social practice. Though engagment with animistic and esoteric notions in this context will stretch the limits of modernist thought, this is not to emphasise the exotic, as if focussing on people different in essence; it is to challenge ingrained views so we learn from, not just about, our subject. Such endeavour, essential to the global worldviews we move toward, remains as slippery in academia as in the wider cultural politics of our time. Earlier constructions did associated culture with refinement and the elite arts, but contemporary cultural studies highlights everyday sites, providing tools allowing us to register even capitalism and materialism, along with religious systems, as cultural rather than naturalised realities.
Nevertheless the notion of tradition remains highly problematic, requiring careful consideration. Related ideas of East and West, intuitive and rational, passive and dynamic or traditional and modern easily lead to misguided stereotyping. How can we position ourselves in speaking of traditions as at first we read those as reference to general ordering principles in history? Within the school of thought which focus on the perennial philosophy, the timelessness of essential spiritual wisdom, there is a distinctive use of "tradition", usually capitalised. Scholars including Schuoun, Guenon, Burkhardt, Lings and Needleman developed refined understanding of the architecture of classical and traditional civilisations housing esoteric spiritual knowledge. Their works show that key concepts and wider practices were profoundly interwoven with mystically religious notions. For the most part such scholars bemoan what they see as a loss of wisdom coming with the collapse of civilisations, like Tibet, which they imagine were structured around it. Their sense of the term invokes romantic imagination of a Shangrila, of kingdoms providing harmonised relations and fostering spiritual realisation. This usage of the term is firmly repudiated by dominant schools of cultural thought within our academies now.
The perennial philosophers may have a point. They demonstrated how esoteric spirituality informed centrally situated conceptualisations within earlier civilisations and counterpoint modernity rightly with "different" and subtle insights of societies we too easily imagine as "simple". While doing so they have been generally unconcerned with and perhaps blind to the political-economic underside of the same societies, with how monastic establishments controlled peasant labour for example, but the term tradition need not be associated only with the way perennialists wedded it to hierarchical spirituality. In this context, though instructed by the perennial philosophers, I do not capitalise tradition, associate it only with the pattern they focus on, identify it exclusively with elite culture, mourn its loss or read it as static and fixed. Just as culture no longer means high civilisation, as it used to, there is no reason to correlate tradition with stasis, it is also reference to cultures as transformed through time. In debates about the role of tradition within Asia and scholarly interpretations of it, contemporary reference, whether advocacy or critical scholarship, refers to predispositions and practices growing out of the past, but not only defined by it. Excepting a minority of fundamental traditionalists, even local theoriest do not advocate simple return to early forms; but invoke roots to form new cultures. Imagined opposition between static tradition and dynamic modernity no longer applies; culture is in all contexts changing, in contention, differentiated in modality according to the classes and communities which are its sites.

In debates among historians about how to conceptualise early influences on Southeast Asia, external forms have been counterpointed to indigenous uses. Early studies, as hinted already, depreciated local populations by seeing early states as part of "greater India", all inspiration as imported. This explicit disempowering and devaluation of locals was framed by colonial structures which encouraged it: it appeared to demonstrate a long history of local people needing dynamism from outside. Students now disavow this view, seeing it as an aspect of colonialism, and instead tend to emphasise the power of receiving cultures. Wolters coined the term "localisation" to replace what Wales earlier called "local genius". Both aimed to foreground what anthropologists speak of as "acculturation", a reference to the power borrowers exercise over what they adopt. He employed insights from literary theory to highlight how imports were adapted by indigenous systems to local purposes. Through these strategies the creative volition of local actors reappeared in our views of history and we come much closer to local perspective.
In the immediate post-revolutionary context liberal modernisers and radical revolutionaries alike could see tradition as a residual force which they expected would inevitably give way to emergent modern society. As attempted transposition of parliamentary democratic models gave way to distinctive local political systems which departed from western conventions, new interpretations of the role of tradition also developed. Works on neo-traditionalism pointed out that societies were built on engrained patterns which still dictated the logic of social interactions. Benda spoke of the "river of history" returning to earlier deep channels. Geertz showed how the political style of Guided Democracy in Indonesia during the early 1960s resonated with Indian ideas of politics and how political affiliations, the identification of different components of the Indonesian population with new political parties, corresponded with cultural variations imprinted within contemporary social groups. Anderson demonstrated the coherence of Javanese notions of power and their relevance to understanding recent political leaderships under Sukarno and Suharto.
These efforts to register the persistence of indigenous traditions were related to, though distinct from, emphasis on local perspectives in history. They relate to notions of autonomous history through the fact they drew attention to the significance of indigenous uses of culture. These cultural interpretations thus allow recognition that practices are not always appropriately read against western models they ostensibly follow. Thus elections are not only a transposition of parliamentary models; Asian elections may not be understood if interpreted by European ideals, they also need to be understood as new ways of enacting rituals of unity such as were enshrined in religious ceremonialism of early states. New theories emphasise varied localised purposes and allow us to view recently independent societies as creatively adapting, experimenting with, rather than mechanically imitating, modern models for social life.
At the same time in recent scholarship there has also been increasing weight to the view of political-economists. They have generally emphasised universal forces and seen local cultures as contributing only minor stylistic variation to patterns of social organisation which are understood as being dictated by other, mainly economic, forces. Political-economists may imagine that exploration of culture, especially attribution of explanatory significance to it, implies emphasis on classical texts, elite culture and conservative politics, as all of those indeed used to underlie cultural studies of Asia. However emphasis on culture does not correspond to conservative politics or scholarship anymore. In recent literary theory there is a strong strand of Gramscian emphasis, on culture as an instrument of domination. Postmodern readings of culture are usually conditioned by critical theory. If anything, even those who focus on culture now do so with an eye to political issues, culture is usually subordinated to issues of power and economy.

Contemporary cultural studies, following Said, suggest that local traditions may be creations of western scholarship. Colonial Europeans looked for classics, an emphasis consistent with education in their context, one focussed on Greek and Roman classics and imaging a decline into the dark ages of the medieval world. Transplanted into Asian environments they sought the culture of high societies, counterpointing refined insights of classical texts to the low opinion they held of Asians of their day. They concluded there was evidence of a decline in local cultures such that European"discoverers" of Angkor in Cambodia could not even imagine ancestors of living Khmer were the builders. It was common to interpret Asian decline into stasis in the terms Europeans applied to thinking about their own middle ages, as the loss of a higher status present in the classical, loss similar to that bemoaned by perennial philosophers. In the imperial order these views justified western intervention, they implied Europeans were needed to provide a stimulus local societies lacked.
When Asian elites were exposed to modern education, especially early in this century through colonial systems, they acquired new notions of their past. European ideas arrived through informal channels as well. The Theosophical Society was a powerful medium of exchange. It developed through intersection between esoteric European and Indian thought in the late 19th century. Annie Besant, an early leader, became a powerful influence within early phases of Indian nationalism, where her contribution extended into stimulating feminist as well as radical political activism. Within colonial systems, the Theosophical Society provided an extremely fertile channel of change. In itself a synthesis between European and Asian thought it was thus especially attractive to Asians. At the same time within its spiritual context Europeans and Asians met on relatively equal terms, a rare event in colonial contexts. Many leaders of nationalist movements formed images, of the spirituality of their own earlier cultures, influenced by European thinking.
Noting such influences, scholars now tend to devalue Asian interpretations of their own traditions as invention. Images promoted by local elites are not seen as genuinely rooted in early local perceptions or formulations of tradition. Instead local constructions of tradition are interpreted as convenient for essentially utilitarian political reasons, instruments used by governments to mould passive populations which will not resist authoritarian rule. Such arguments can be made unobjectionably; there is little doubt the political uses of ideology deserve the exposure recent scholarship offers. Interpretations of the past, by politicians as well as historians, are profoundly mediated by current political purposes and lenses and our reading of them should situate traditionalism politically. However we should also question the exclusivity of focus and weight of explanatory emphasis in recent works.
Bowen, for example, deconstructed political uses of gotong royong within Indonesia under governments guided by Sukarno and Suharto. The term is deployed to mobilise labour by invoking idealised views of cooperation and self-sufficiency in villages. Its use has been tied to suggestion modern development build on egalitarian villages imagined as traditional. This ostensible meaning of the term was subverted, even in early states, the idea more commonly used to mobilise labour for state projects, building royal monuments as well as for maintaining village irrigation or roads. Similarly Dove has argued the mythology of wet rice (sawah) cultivation in Java was mainly used to justify state power over populations. Governments, from classical times to the present, have promoted wet rice as more productive, as though implying advantages for people who produce it. Dove shows there has been misreading of the relationship between wet rice and the state: swidden, dry field cultivation, is more labour efficient for producers; the prime advantage of sawah is for states, which can extract surplus production more readily from wet rice systems.
However if older European scholarship privileged classical and imperial powers at the expense of local voices, new interpretations give power to material and discount subtle forces. In doing so readings of contemporary culture imply a dualism the theories they are based on reject; they also empower European lineages of theory at the expense of indigenous voices. If we concentrate exclusively on exposing mediating forces, social interests and political purposes we implicitly neglect and depreciate dimensions of shared cultural meaning which may be crucial in the eyes of locals. Inner religious concerns are vital even in recent cultural production from local vantage points. Noticing economic and political logics does not render registration of other planes of meaning unnecessary. If it does then our representations of local process are guided by imposed priorities, dictated by our evaluation of what matters. If we highlight political-economic domains while voiding, by failing to mention, realms of shared meaning and spiritual purpose, then a continuing imperialism is implied by our very focus.
Establishing, as new works do, that tradition has been enmeshed in political process and economic interests does not mean spirituality is not present within the same moment. To speak of the intricate web which binds gotong royong and Dewi Sri, the spirit of rice, to each other and to systems of power is to speak of the exoteric, the outer dimensions. The esoteric, or inner, side is not as though in conflict with or an alternative to the exoteric, it is rather another aspect, reference to a different dimension within precisely the same transactions. Even to imagine, as modern theories encourage us to, that we can separate economic, political, social and spiritual realms is called reification, it is to operate as though concepts are concrete realities. Thus, while emphasising the popular and multivalency within indigenous cultures, recent works often appear disdainful or dismissive in reference to tradition, read mainly as a construct of suspect high cultures. Recent thinking thus positions Asians as victims of imperialism whenever they invoke anything imagined as their own; "actual" local motives are seen as essentially political according to our readings.
However artificial traditionalist constructs seem to outsiders, that it is not all there is worth saying about them. If we leave commentary at that point it is precisely equivalent to viewing early states as creations of Indian princes, while failing to note processes of active appropriation by local peoples. Thus, though at one level new theorising has brought wonderful intimacy with locals, those we come closer to may be accepted less and less for what they profess and aim to be. While there have been gains in theorisation of cultural process there is every reason to question costs and implications. New elites have indeed been shaped by colonialism and owe ideas to western scholarship. However it is incorrect to read local interpretations of mythology as fabrications of the Theosophical Society or see references to tradition, within political philosophy, exclusively as manipulative ploys by cynical powers. The prevalence of such reading is connected to incapacity, dictated by our conventions, predispositions and epistemology, to attend to the intuitive knowledge and inner orientations which form the ground on which traditional culture is localised, appropriated for personal purposes.

localising historical perspective
Increasing integration into wider global systems is an overriding theme in Southeast Asian history. Every transition has been signalled simultaneously by increasing contact with cultures beyond the region and intensified interaction between regions. Though systems of transport, shipping or media are its obvious referent "communication" does not refer exclusively to technologies, it refers also to patterns of kinship, authority and language. These, along with material networks, shape, facilitate and mediate interactions and so provide keys to grasping social evolution. Southeast Asians entered written records as the rise of complex states occurred in conjunction with transit trade between India and China, the earliest emerging hand in hand with literacy and ceremonialism, each instrument facilitating enlarged discourses tied to courts. A millennium later waves of Chinese, Islamic and Christian traders increased focus on trade products from the archipelago, simultaneously bringing an "age of commerce" and religious systems which extended literacy from courts into villages. With each shift in degree of external contact, regional economies, cultures and communications altered. Over time cities became an increasing centre of gravity and within them, especially on coasts, people from beyond the region contributed to cosmopolitanism.
As history, the open ended dimension of time, does not start or stop at a particular point the scope of our subject is immense, equivalent to the cultural history of Europe. It is crucial to bear this in mind to maintain a reasonable perspective on what we can accomplish through brief overview. Southeast Asia resembles Europe in geographical scale, depth of history, diversity of cultures and the nature of its relations to classical centres. Two thousand years ago inhabitants of both appeared "barbarian" to "civilised" neighbours; northern Europe was subordinated to Rome in the same era Southeast Asia was reshaped by India and China; literacy reached Vietnam, from China, and Germany, from Rome, at about the same time; Burma became a centre of Indic states while England was being incorporated into the Roman empire.
Periodisations of Southeast Asia emphasise three eras. The first era brought Southeast Asians into contact with Asian wide religious idioms and systems of power. This initial era of stateformation produced kingdoms which stamped the "core areas" of the region, the lowland river valleys where wet rice cultivation and dense populations concentrated from early times. These included "Sinic" (Chinese inspired) Vietnam and "Indic" (Indian derived) Angkor, Pagan, Dvaravati and Mataram (in valleys of the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Chao Praya, and Progo/Solo rivers). The classical period ended as Vietnam became independent of China in the 10th century and Indic states declined between the 13th and 15th centuries.
The second era occurred in the context of what McNeil referred to as the "closure of Eurasia", definitive communicative linkage of Europe and Asia. It is associated with the formation of distinctive zones of regional culture. Traditional Theravada Buddhist (mainland) and Islamic (archipelago) states proliferated. Neither zone was politically integrated but within each cohesive and widely shared religious idioms increasingly defined rules of daily life. During this phase Vietnamese expanded through increasing interaction, not only through warfare, with neighbouring Cham and Khmer peoples. At the same time a "Hispanic" (Spanish Catholic) Filipino society in Luzon emerged to constitute a new core area; the ethnically mestizo (mixed) Portuguese mercantile empire became a new element in the trading world, one earlier dominated by Champa, Srivijaya and Malacca; and a new conquest dynasty, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), gradually dominated Javanese states, in the process adopting elements of their style.
The third and modern era is the one in which regional peoples have been integrating within global networks constructed with industrial technologies. This era began in the 19th century, by the end of which not only emergent global capitalism, but also the political maps of we know at present had largely been established. Though the successive mediations of imperial, colonial and national institutions are usually highlighted in our histories to mark distinct phases of modern history, in this context continuities between those override distinctions: colonialism has been above all a vehicle for the transmission of economic and social forms deriving from the industrial revolution.

Efforts to present local perspectives have been prominent in texts on Southeast Asia. The obvious significance of external influences from early times meant indigenous identities and volition were obscured. European and Indian scholars initially viewed the region as dominated by external stimuli, societies as defined by the "fertilising influences" of China and India, as is implied in terms such as "Indochina" and "Indonesia". Southeast Asians thus appeared passive in relations long predating subordination through imperialism. But if Burma is viewed through focus on Indian, SriLankan and English influences, all important, locals hardly appear as actors in their history. In Vietnam, where locals were instructed to cut their hair, dress and interact according to Chinese customs two thousand years ago, it is easy to register the power of China as records detail it. External actors and local elites produced texts; the lives of ordinary villagers are difficult to register. Though accounts of religious pilgrims and Chinese emissaries combine with taxation records to allow glimpses into everyday life, few personalities show through the slim sources we have. Court poetry, modelled on epics, focussed on royalty and local histories were guided by ritual and magical, not descriptive, purposes.
In early imagery indigenous peoples are presented, as women are within patriarchal societies, as like the moon, reflecting dynamism from elsewhere rather than being its own source of light. Colonial histories brought additional problems. Early accounts of Europeans do provide insight into local social life, certainly more than we have for earlier periods. However colonisers naturally reported most on the sites and concerns dominating their interactions, writing as though readers, presumed to be European, looked over the shoulders or through the eyes of administrators, entrepreneurs and adventurers. Dutch versions of Indonesian history thus focussed on interaction between governors, native rulers and the progressive encorporation of indigenous peoples within colonial frameworks. More recently we note it is virtually impossible to conceive Vietnamese history without reference to consuming wars against the French and Americans; books about it remain narrations of political and military interaction, as though that interface is the whole of contemporary history. Students will always most readily grasp perspectives and values conveyed through compatriots, no matter how conscious effort to counterbalance the tendency, and acknowledging such problems does not resolve them. Nevertheless there have been gains: Southeast Asians cannot now be seen as passive recipients of external influences.
As, for a variety of reasons, it is more difficult to adopt balanced perspective on Southeast Asian than European, Chinese or Indian history, it is not surprising historians of the region pioneered construction of autonomous history early, beginning to do so as regional nationalisms matured in the 1930s. At the same time in the 1950s interpreters of the region still usually viewed events through analytical tools of politics and history developed in western contexts. Recent works reflect more sociological depth, making it evident local actors were guided by distinctive notions and could not be read only through western understandings, even of politics. Shifting interpretations registered deeply rooted forces active in the postcolonial era. In explaining why communism became the dominant strand of Vietnamese nationalism, Mus drew on indigenous political culture to explain it did not mean, in that context, what French and American cold warriors presumed. Others have highlighted the debts Sukarno, Sihanouk and U Nu to cultural notions of power, illustrating it is crucial to register local concepts to comprehend events ostensibly occuring within western political frames.
Further gains have come through reassessment of local texts. Classical texts used to be read by philologists, who concentrate on language in technical terms, as of little use to understanding the times and societies which produced them. Now interchanges between history and literary studies produce insight into society from the same texts, we register that understanding does not have to come only through texts designed to "describe". Everyday practices of ordinary people are also now subjected to analysis which in the past was reserved for elites. Neither are we restricted, as we once imagined, to contemporaneous written sources for access to the past. In exploring transitions to independence historians have focussed increasingly on local scenes and inquiry is no longer restricted to the politics or diplomacy of states. Micro-histories probe marginal societies and previously unnoticed organisations, pushing the margins of vision through interviews, oral histories and local, rather than colonial, archives.
Generally the movement toward autonomous histories has guided scholars to explore social history. Diverse classes and local processes have come into view and we do now appreciate that in each moment and site perspectives are multiple and contending. Yet, though the range and depth of our vision has expanded, the rules of the game have not necessarily changed. Exploration of political, social and economic process initially operated as if fundamental rules of the scholarly game were not at issue across cultures. Focus on cosmologies and cultural praxis, on the other hand, does highlight that how we construct thinking, in effect our culture, influences what we see and imagine our subject to be. To construct autonomous histories accounting for cultural change we must challenge the rules underlying the way we write and imagine.
One tacit rule which is still enforced must go: Asian subjects cannot remain simply food for western theory. Autonomous histories will truly emerge when division between European and Asian knowledges, constructed on a subordination of the latter to the former, dissolves. Local theories are not just information, they may also be tools. Ultimately ways of thinking are as much at issue as what we think about if we aim to assimilate local perspectives. One barrier to entertaining local perspectives is that we link myth to fantasy, distinguish that from history, and imagine only the latter objective and factual. Yet local frameworks may guide understanding precisely in the way images from the social sciences do; neither should be taken uncritically; and engaging indigenous theories on the same plane as our own does not imply abrogation of commitment to critical use of evidence. In the very least local views reveal how actors think within their own histories; beyond that local visions may frame and supplement conventional histories when they converge.

Linear imagery remains foundational within European constructions of history, most consumed by focus on change. Emphasis on the continuity of village animism as a substratum has roots reaching the Enlightenment in European thought. Marx's theory of the "Asiatic mode of production" maintained that peasant communities are unchanging and Asian feudalism especially static. Wittfogel's related notion of hydraulic societies implied that irrigation networks underpinning wet rice agriculture produced particularly despotic and centralised Asian states. But theorisation of the substratum is not tied to ideas of stasis nor readings of Asia through European feudalism. Current works emphasise the varied and fragmentary composition of early Southeast Asian states. Wolters suggested that we call them "mandala" instead of "states" to side-step presumptions we have about the latter. He emphasised thatpower relations within mandala were personalised, based on kinship and charisma, and each substate effectively autonomous even when within the ambit of greater powers. Some scholars now invert the Wittfogel thesis, arguing that centralising states create wet rice agriculture rather than the reverse; still others note that control of irrigation may not be tied to centralised authority at all.
Neither is conceptualising the substratum tied to linear and evolutionary views of history. Interplay between a multiplicity of culturally embedded realities becomes increasingly complex with time; each ethnic group or social category in always embodies distinctive perspectives, separate rhythms and visions intersect in every moment of time and space. Simultaneously the worlds of agriculture, trade and empire each contain distinct senses of time itself; the substratum, related most to the agricultural sphere, is only one of those. Formed in prehistory, the village world which carries it into the present has also been transformed repeatedly, internally and by the gestalt, the frame, which holds it. History is not just a series of eras replacing each other in linear sequence, as though in each the old is eliminated; within new phases elements of older epochs are both reconstellated and maintained.
We need to subsume linear and cyclical images, imagining that distinct modalities of time and timelessness coexist. According to Eliade primitive or peasant rituals "regenerate time", they are rooted in agricultue and rites of passage--life cycle rituals of birth, puberty, marriage and death--and related mythic cosmologies are cyclical and repetitive. Insofar as villages maintain regenerative cosmologies, such as likely characterised prehistoric societies more generally, we may think of them as maintaining a "timeless reality" even within the present. In this vein McKinlay made an intriguing suggestion as noted that for today's Malays distinct time zones, "zaman" and "masa" relate to indigenous, Islamic, colonial and modern realities. In urban contexts in the 1970s he found people envisioned these as overlapping, coexistent epistemic eras, accessible ways of knowing. In his image these layers of history, each carrying a different notion of time itself, exist simultaneously. Along the same lines Becker suggested in the Javanese shadow puppet theatre, the wayang, shifts in language, performance mode and character bring distinctive times and spaces into one dramatic moment and diistinct epistemologies thus converge. Living peoples may be imagined as experiencing timelessness to the extent they do not engage coexistent but subsequent historical realities, those within which linear time gains progressively greater prominence.
Notions of change omnivorously consume attention in historical imagination but critical consciousness of how frameworks and strategies we habitually deploy construct historical imagination has been sharpened recently. Hayden White's work has brought awareness that historical texts build on specific "tropes", modes of discourse dictating how we imagine events and process. We may now admit "non linear realities", worlds not obsessed with time, into narratives, allowing imagination of a "timeless substratum" as a shifting background within historical process. Inevitably focus on the rise of new structures through history brings other rhythms of time into view. Though the relevance of transformations demands such focus, it inevitably also deflects attention to the foreground. In attending, as we also must, to processes of change, new developments implicitly undermine notice of the, simultaneously present, spheres of life which preserve ongoing realities, including diverse experiences of time itself.
Cycles are embodied in Hegel's vision of history as a dialectic between thesis and anti-thesis or Toynbee's reformulation of it as interplay between stimulus and response, images which may help us assimilate local views. Envisioning a spiral, traced as rising in circles up a cone to encapsulate line (movement in time) and circle (indicating recurrent return to a point), provides the most appropriate frame for our task. In prehistory time stood still; people experienced it through seasonal and life cycles, not change. Cyclical repetition came with classical times, as dynasties rose and fell within the grasp of oral narratives. Indic images began to suggest senses of progress and linearity, implicit in suggestion individuals and collectives move toward realisation, but those became established only as Semitic traditions reformed local imagination. Even in our terms we can identify cycles as well as linear change in the region; it is not difficult to construct regional history as a spiral. Obviously history cannot be imagined as a one dimensional line through time, as though that is given and independent of other features of existence. Nor is stasis in space, implied by focus on three dimensional social systems at singular points, adequate. Eventually we will move to more subtle senses of circularity built also on notions of time and space as relative, as relating in the way mass and energy are conceived to within contemporary physics. Implicitly time exists only in relation to timelessness and change is only conceivable when implying a constant. It is hardly surprising conceptualisation of history requires stretches of imagination such as those we accept in imagination of the physical universe.

India began to affect the region early in the Christian era. Archaeological sources suggest at first there was a relatively sharp gap between imported customs and the indigenous ancestral world, the prehistoric pattern of the region. The literate culture of imported civilisation, Sanskrit texts and Indian arts, initially stood apart from village cultures which continued at the base of states. Temples of early kingdoms may have been built according to imported architectural manuals, the style of decorative artwork remained close to those in Indian temples of the time. Gradually, between the 5th to the 15th centuries, art historians suggest fusion took place through dialectical interplay. Contacts with India were in any event irratic; interchanges between indigenous courts and villages ongoing. Early inscriptions of Angkor and Mataram were in Sanskrit; by the end of the classical era the Burmese, Thai, Khmer and Javanese had adapted Indian derived scripts for their languages and the Vietnamese produced literature in nom, based on Chinese, adaptations paralleling contemporaneous shift in England from medieval Latin to the vernacular of the King James Bible. Borrowed tools are deployed to generate indigenous meanings in local styles. In Southeast Asia Indian epics filtered down to blend with indigenous legends, foreign heroes merged literally into the landscape, enshrined at sacred sites as local ancestors. Everywhere temples, languages and myths became indigenous. "Domestication" is a way of talking about this process: what came as borrowed appeared in the end uniquely local.
Courtly Javanese histories held the peak of the Indic period came five hundred years ago in Majapahit--the last Indic empire in their terms and ours. When that collapsed, assaulted by a coalition of Muslim states, Sabdopalon, a retainer of the ruler, left the court and fled to Gunung Tidar, a hill in the middle of the island known as the "navel of Java". There early gods had pounded in a nail to keep the island balanced and later Semar, guardian spirit of the island, planted an amulet to subdue the wild spirits of the forests so Javanese could plant rice and createg civilisation. Semar was incorporated into Indic myth--where he is the elder brother of Siva--and as guardian spirit symbolises the common people. Sabdopalon, as an incarnation of Semar, was told to reveal that Java would be under external powers for five hundred years before his next incarnation, subordinations read as reference to the subsequent centuries of Islamic and Dutch power. Belief that Semar incarnated as Sabdopalon affirms that Javanists considered their own spirit to be alive in Majapahit. In holding that Semar is the elder brother of Siva they assert imported religion had been domesticated, exposing their sense of syncreticism. Even today many Javanists believe their cultural essence transcends transitions, looking to a resurfacing of indigenous identity, believing it inevitable they will return to roots in modern dress, as once they did in the idiom of Majapahit.
The Khmer myth of origins presents local ethnogenesis through the marriage of a Brahman with a Naga princess. The Brahman, of the priest caste, came from India while Nagas, dragon-like snakes of myth, represent spirits of the land, forces Khmer earlier identified with. This tale too is analysis of spiritual genealogy, its significance lies not in relation to events, but within a mythology of earth, water and sky. As a myth it states essentials of relationships, at once historical and environmental, which were primary for the living. The test of mythic truth lies there, as statement of relationships. In the 1970s the Pol Pot regime brought virtually incomprehensible effort to eliminate everything from outside: cities, the middle class and Buddhist institutions, to return the population to villages and concentrate on rice cultivation. We interpret the Khmer Rouge as Maoist and explain their actions as a distorted consequence of pressure generated by warfare, especially American bombing in the early 1970s. Following the logic of local myth we may read the Khmer Rouge as representing a local drive, albeit as warped as Nazism, to renew indigenous identity. In this instance resurrecting cultural roots appeared to require literal elimination of external structure.
Early idioms, foundational within distinct phases of time, thus still resonate in recent practices, albeit receeding into shadows as distance in time makes their echoes into the present elusive. Radical transformations indeed occurred as classical civilisations, world religions and modern media interacted with local animistic cultures, but each shift has been characterised by complex interplay. Local cultures reformed not only in conjunction with changes in regional and global communications, but also in tune with logics embedded in indigenous systems of knowledge and ways of being. Indigenous grammars assimilate borrowed vocabularies yet retain local transactive rules. Similarly other cohesive patterns of indigenous culture frame adaptation, guide expression and infuse distinctive flavour within ideas and practices deployed otherwise elsewhere. It is thus crucial to register local contours as a starting point in order to register how they condition reception of introduced systems; even when new idioms reframe understandings undercurrents of local sensibility are consistently nurtured. When Hindu deities, or more precisely Sanskrit names for them, came into the region they registered as universal references for spirits already known by local names. If Confucianism shaped Vietnamese courts, as Brahmanic idioms did throughout the region, villagers retained ancestral rituals, preserving their ideas of spirit and nature. Syncretism has been a crucial mechanism of this regional process. It helps account for the resilience of early cultures, traces of which still resonate in social life, and, until the modern era, modulated dominant Southeast Asian worldviews.
Syncretism, a key to grasping both indigenous ethos and the mechanisms of cultural evolution in the region, is problematic because in the west the term is associated with heresies which Christian orthodoxies self-consciously suppressed and we inherit Church interpretations even though repudiating the orthodoxies which generated them. Notable suppressions of syncretism occurred in the 4th century, when councils denounced Neo Platonic and other heterodox doctrines. Later the Reformation, witch trials, Inquisition and wars against the Albigensians in France and Italy all essentially aimed to irradicate magical undercurrents from folk practice. Europeans thus generally continue to read syncretism as a mixing of irreconcilable doctrines, jumbling of diverse beliefs into one image or squaring of opposites through pseudo rationality--senses of the term still enshrined in dictionaries. But these readings are rooted in the exclusivist idioms of the theologically monotheistic and philosophically dualistic Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and do not correspond to what syncretism means in traditional Asian terms.
To access the notion, even if only as a tool to understanding regional evolution, we have to entertain senses of it rooted in local cultures. Within Asia syncretism has been facilitated by ontologies, senses of the real, which register all being as One. In animism this foundation remains tacit; in mystical religious philosophies it is explicit. According to these notions reality will always appear diverse in the finite domain of forms human beings mentally grasp, but in essence and at root, beyond the veils which filter perception, being is One. Monism in this sense underpins dominant premodern convictions throughout Asia and produced a reading of diverse symbolic systems, including the idioms of formal religions, as surface references to an invisible and unsayable essence which is unitary. Widespread attribution of significance to this invisible core of life has certainly conditioned cultural evolution: it produces syncretic receptivity through the contingent sense that new symbols may be received as supplements, which enrich by elaboration, rather than replacements for what went before.
Opening by questioning mappings of Southeast Asia in our imagination, we proceed with the challenge to see through each era of evolution to the inheritance of local ancestors. Exploration across cultures demands reflexivity: registering the resonance of ancestors elsewhere may require encounter within ourselves. Whenever we focus on borrowed structures locals appear to have been defined by them; only attunement to adaptation, domestication and indigenous vision clarifies how local purposes animated process. Now, as modernity consumes the attention of Asian and foreign interpreters alike, subordinating culture to economics and making capitalism seem the self-evident victor of today, shifting our gestalt is especially difficult. From every perspective we notice what we imagine as apprehensible and exclude what cannot be real by the rules of discourse we are embedded within. Subjective intervention, by every agency of knowledge, is as relevant to history as it is to ethnography, problematic in all scholarship. Confidence that desires such as greed, ambition, hunger and sex are timeless produces failure to note the way they are modulated, blindness to the fact that as discourses shift through history there are changes not only in dominant images of reality and idioms of expression but also in modes of access to awareness.

Notes

Most surveys of the region concentrate on political and social history while emphasising the modern transformation. Sakar

H Benda (1962)

BRO'G Anderson (1983)

J McAlister & P Mus (1970); G Coedes (1968)

R Burling (1965)

J Steadman (1969)

DGE Hall (1st edition) (1955)

JK Fairbank et all

R Redfield

Agricultural Involution and Hanks

In the island context Legge characterized this as a dichotomy between 'trade based' and 'rice based' states, related to tension between Java and the rest of the archipelago.

M Hodgson called the Mercator projection a 'Jim Crow projection', referring to racially discriminative legislation in the southern United States.

qualify with refw to early Kroeber etc, its continuing relevance, diffs with British and continental theory, and recent thinking

Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus...

B Malinowski (1954)

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979).

Similar observations about Said's work are noted at greater length in George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986) p. 1-2.

G. Marcus and M. Fischer, Op, Cit. p. 50.

Their essays on the subject appear in the festschrift for Sartono Kartodirdjo. Ibrahim Alfian et. al. eds., Dari Babad dan Hikayat Sampai Sejarah Kritis (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Madah University Press, 1987).

This argument relates closely to an excellent paper by Freya Matthews, "Destroying the gift: rationalising research in the humanities", Australian Universities' Review Nos 1 & 2 (1990). Freya sharply counterpoints Mauss's sense of the 'gift economy' with our politically dominant culture of monetary rationalism, drawing attention to consequences within the humanities. relate this to For the Commn Good, & Homo Economus ?

John Steadman, The Myth of Asia (London: Macmillan, 1969).

Recent republication of Achdiat Mihardja's Polemik Kebudayaan (Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1986) indicaties continuing interest. It was published in 1948 and summarises debates rooted in the 1930's. It is noteworthy that Takdir Alisjahbana, in those debates arguing for a radical break with tradition, has reversed his position in important respects. Now he holds that the spiritual element of tradition is extremely relevant for the postmodern world. See his Socio-Cultural Creativity in the Converging and Restructuring Process of the New Emerging World (Jakarta: Dian Rakyat, 1983) especially pp 74-80. Another major cultural figure, W.S. Rendra, a leading poet and dramatist, has collected his comments on tradition in Mempertimbangkan Tradisi (Jakarta: PT Gramedia, 1983). Even in Indonesia it is understood that the opposition between "tradition and modernity" is neither simple nor static. Nor do positions on that issue correlate mechanically with the political spectrum--as many analysts imagine it does.

Continuing Indonesian interest in this way of framing their own cultural history is reflected in the recent symposium of writings by anthropologists and archaeologists. Ayatrohaedi, Kepribadian Budaya Bangsa (Local Genius) (Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya, 1986). Oliver Wolters, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspective (Singapore: ISSEAS and Singapore UP, 1982).

Harry Benda's most relevant contribution is "Decolonization in Indonesia: The Problem of Continuity and Change", American Historical Review Vol. LXX N 4 (July 1965). Clifford Geertz's The Religion of Java (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) links historical phases and contemporary cultural and social groups; in Islam Observed (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1971) his analysis touches contemporary politics. Benedict Anderson's most widely noted contribution is "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture" in Claire Holt et. al. eds., Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1972). His lectures at Monash University in Australia in 1975 push even farther, reconfiguring the gestalt in which we interpret the relation of religion to politics, recognising that politics can be a vehicle for religious purposes rather than, as we are more likely to presume, the converse. In his: "Religion and Politics in Indonesia Since Independence" in B. Anderson, M. Nakamura, and M. Slamet, Religion and Social Ethos in Indonesia (Clayton, Victoria: CSEAS, Monash University, 1977).

N.G. Schulte-Nordholt, "The Indonesian Elections: A National Ritual" in R. Shefold et. al., Man, Meaning and History (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980).

Richard Robison's most notable contribution is Indonesia, the Rise of Capital (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1986). In the work he edited with Richard Higgott, Southeast Asia: Essays in the Poltical Economy of Structural Change (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985) p. 8, the editors underline their sense that "Orientalism" is "culturalist" and conservative. In comments on the disruption of Australian-Indonesian relations in 1986, Robison makes the linkage more explicit, connecting cultural analysis to an "Indonesian lobby" in Australia. See Richard Robison, "Explaining Indonesia's Response to the Jenkins Article", Australian Outlook Vol 40 No 3 (December 1986) pp. 132-133. Robison and his colleagues are tied to models which read culture as ideology in dualistic terms, distinguishing "ideas from material" in a fashion the new cultural analysis usually no longer does.

Reeve, Op. Cit., pp. 5-6 makes the point properly.

Clifford Geertz, "Culture and Social Change: The Indonesian Case", Man Vol 19 No 4 (1984).

John Bowen, "On the Political Construction of Tradition: Gotong Royong in Indonesia", Journal of Asian Studies Vol XLV No 3 (1986).

Michael Dove, "The Agroecological Mythology of the Javanese and the Poltical Economy of Indonesia", Indonesia No 39 (1985).

S. Supomo, "The Image of Majapahit in Later Javanese and Indonesian Writing" and other essays in Anthony Reid and David Marr eds. Op. Cit. are especially instructive.

Reid, SEA in the Age of Commerce.

Reid, SEA in the Age of Commerce.

problematise terms and attribute to Smail

comment on the significance of the shift to Sinic/Indic rather than Chinese/Indian.

ref to Smail again for framing these in lectures.

ref to McNeil

My characterisation follows Benda's influential outline. (1962); Smail's framing is incorporated in DJ Steinberg (1987)

Smail, Benda, Hall, etc

J Holmgren (1980), A Woodside (1971)

Berg & co debates

This aspect of colonial historiography was clarified in the 1930s by the Dutch scholar and administrator JC van Leur (1955), who spoke of it as 'history written from the deck of a ship'.

Smail's term for this

See the survey of historical interpretation in the last chapter of JD Legge's book Indonesia (1980) and the essays in D Marr & A Reid eds, Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia (1979).

JD Smail (1964); A Kahin (1985); A Lucas (1990); R McVey ed.(1978)

JF Warren (l981;1986)

A Vickers (1989 p 22)

As noted by Steadman (1969) and lampooned by Said (1978)

OW Wolters (1982); D Marr & AC Milner (1986)

M Dove (1985); C Geertz (1980)

Smail's (1961) treatment of Acehnese perpectives on Sumatran history showed a multiplicity of perpectives through emphasis on the structures of local process.

This image is convergent with F Braudel's (1974 pp xi-xv) attention to the differing, but continuing rythms of agriculture, trade and empire in the Mediterranean.

R Ileto's (1988) drive toward non-linear constructions of Filipino history is convergent. Smail provided a frame which already resolved the problem Day (1986 pp 2-6), drawing from White, identifies of implicit commitment to singular narrative and moral constraints in historical writing.

M Eliade (1959)

R McKinlay (1979) & AL Becker (1979 p 232)

M Eliade

BRO'G Anderson (1972); BJO Schreike (1966); S Kartodirdjo (1972)

relate to schrieke, andersn, moertono, etc, sartono

C Holt (1967)

Ibid

OW Wolters (1982); Q Wales (1974);leMay

If recently the term comes under question (Wolters 1982 p 53) it may be because the Christian sense of it is still emphasised in our dictionaries.

---

New: 26 October, 2021 | Now: 26 October, 2021

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally hosted at freotopia.org/people/paulstange/voices/1.html, and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.