religions paid scant attention to religious texts. This state of
affairs began to change in the 1960s and 1970s as anthropol-
ogists became increasingly concerned with systems of sym-
bols and meanings and as scholars of religion turned their
attention to contemporary versions of world religions. This
convergence began in communities of scholars focused on
Therava ̄da Buddhism and Balinese Hinduism and has prog-
ressed to the point where works by cultural anthropologists
and scholars of religion are difficult to distinguish. Its great-
est impact is seen in the study of Southeast Asian Islam,
which has moved from the margins to the mainstream of
scholarly discourse on Southeast Asian religion and the Is-
lamic tradition more generally.
CONCLUSIONS. Southeast Asia offers a wealth of research op-
portunities for scholars of many disciplines concerned with
the study of religion. Scholars can study particular variants
of most of the major religions of the world or social and cul-
tural systems comprising multiple religious communities,
with their different religious traditions and languages.
SEE ALSO Anthropology, Ethnology, and Religion; Bud-
dhism, article on Buddhism in Southeast Asia; Fiction, arti-
cle on Southeast Asian Fiction and Religion; Hinduism in
Southeast Asia; Islam, article on Islam in Southeast Asia.
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MARK R. WOODWARD (2005)8640 SOUTHEAST ASIAN RELIGIONS: HISTORY OF STUDY