A Civilisation of Shared Gods

Across Southeast Asia, Hinduism and Buddhism did not clash for supremacy but intertwined across empires and scriptures to forge a uniquely unified civilisational ethos.

Troluwan: Ruins of Majapahit Kingdom.

History knows for sure as to when the Buddhist thought entered Southeast Asia, which was when the great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka sent messengers Sona and Uttara into then known ‘Suvarnabhumi’ consisting of Burma and Thailand, to preach Buddha’s message there. Ashoka’s effort did certainly bear fruit especially in neighbouring Burma, where the reputed Buddhist kingdom of Shri-kshetra was formed as early as in the 2nd century CE.

The Buddhist thought as such, however, does not seem to have spread evenly or at a steady pace throughout the entire region. The evidence lies in the fact that it had to wait for three more centuries before getting introduced in the Indonesian archipelago. There is no such record available of the entry of the Hindu thought in the Southeast Asian region. But that can be speculated to have preceded that of the Buddhist by the sheer logic of its uninterrupted existence before Buddhism was born in mother country India.

Shared Sovereignty

The speculation of an earlier Hindu entry in Southeast Asia is proved by the existence of a vast and prosperous Hindu empire of Funan, based in much farther Cambodia in the same, that is, 2nd century.

Theologically speaking, both Mahayana and Theravada branches of Buddhist thought spread in the region, and got rooted in different territories depending on their compatibility with the respective local soil. In the case of Hinduism, its major branches of Shaivism and Vaishnavism flourished in different eras, in the order of the latter following the former, but not necessarily replacing it. Interestingly, a less known fact is about the Vedic stream of the Hindu pantheon, which, along with its yajna system, did exist in fewer pockets like that of Kalimantan Island of Indonesia, in the 4th century CE.

Although there may have been a healthy competition between them with regard to attracting followers, both these streams of thought – Hindu and Buddhist – appear to have existed in almost all of the Southeast Asian territories simultaneously and peacefully throughout, except until their existence was challenged by the Islamic and Christian proselytization around mid-second millennium in the maritime sub-region.

Their peaceful co-existence before that phase has been vouched for by most of the world historians. Although a minority among the Western historians doubted it, and from their strictly binary lenses imagined territorial competition between the two, their speculations could never be proved on the test of evidence.

Sacred Kinship

This peaceful co-existence of theirs is underlined by the royal recognition of their equal status, highlighted in case of mighty polities. The example in the mainland was the Cambodia-based Khmer empire – 11th-12th centuries’ Angkor, including its preceding as well succeeding polities of its heritage, whereas in the maritime domain it was the Indonesia-based 13th-15th centuries’ Majapahit empire.

Elsewhere, the mental unification reflected in intertwining of things apparently coming from two different sources, as it happened in case of the 6th-11th centuries’ Dvaravati kingdoms, spread from southern Burma, northern and central Thailand and parts of Laos, which were Buddhist; but the name Dvaravati was fashioned on Dvarakavati or Dvaraka of Mahabharata’s Krishna, an incarnation of Hindu deity of Vishnu. Similarly, Kyanzittha, an avowedly Buddhist king of the 11th-13th centuries’ Pagan empire of Burma, had considered himself an incarnation of Vishnu.

This background may have supported the current tradition of the Thai royal court, where the reigning Buddhist king is titled as Rama, another incarnation of Vishnu.

While this religio-spiritual unification had the sanction of the ruling class, the societal integration of the thought was at scriptural as well as at the rituals level.  The 10th century Buddhist text of Indonesia called Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan refers to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the trinity of the Hindu pantheon, as the emanations of Vairochana, the meditating Buddha. One of the famous heritage literatures of Indonesia is 14th century Suta-soma, which is another Buddhist text, which treats Shiva and Buddha as equals or even identical with each other. While both the above texts originated in the Java island of the archipelago, the Bali islanders took the spiritual proximity between Shiva and Buddha to the level of establishing familial relationship between them – according to a 19th century historian’s discovery, Buddha was treated as an younger brother of Shiva by the Balinese, a situation that was found to have been made more intimate in the 20th century where Buddha had become Shiva’s son.

This legacy of spiritual unification is found to have been followed by the natives of the profoundly Hindu Bali even today, where the publicly performed religious rituals involve participation by Hindu as well as Buddhist priests. Cynics may smell a division and paint a picture that suggests one-upmanship between the Hindu and Buddhist ideas, where comparatively higher or lower status may have been assigned to either of them in this process. That, however, is not likely to stand, taking into account the sheer sincerity of purpose and effort that shines through this historical process of unification taking place in that region across centuries. Having presented this picture, it may not be out of place to point out that this effort at Hindu-Buddhist unification was attempted even in India, speculated to have taken place in 11th-12th centuries, which treated Buddha as the ninth out of ten incarnations of Vishnu. This Indian move can rather be viewed as a trigger for a similar process in Southeast Asia that started taking a serious shape in later centuries.

(The writer is a research scholar in international relations. Views personal.)