Early Southeast Asia
Little is known about Indian trade and contact with Southeast Asia
during this early, but crucial period. What we do know is that impor-
tant trade routes ran from the mouth of the Ganges down the coast of
Burma, and from south India across the Bay of Bengal. These con-
verged on the Kra Isthmus where low-weight, high-value luxury goods
from as far away as the eastern Mediterranean were transported over-
land to be reshipped in the Gulf of Thailand. From there small ships
hugged the coast all the way to Canton. Another trade route must at
least by the early centuries CE have led south through the Strait of
Melaka to southern Sumatra and northern Java, though at this stage
there seems to have been no corresponding link between Indonesia
and China.
It was along these maritime trade routes that Indian civilisation
reached Southeast Asia. From Burma to central Vietnam and from
Sumatra to Borneo, the peoples of Southeast Asia borrowed elements
of Indian religion and ritual, statecraft and social organisation,
language, literature and art. Most Indian traders were probably either
Tamils from south India or perhaps Sinhalese from Sri Lanka, whose
pearls were in high demand. For them, trade east to Suvarnabhumi,
the fabled ‘land of gold’, promised great profit. But these merchants
did not come alone. By the first century CE, they were accompanied
by Brahmin priests and Buddhist monks literate and learned in all
aspects of Indian culture and religion. Southeast Asian seamen mean-
while reached India, and returned with their own accounts of Indian
civilisation.
The process by which local chieftains throughout Southeast Asia
adopted and adapted elements of Indian civilisation that would legit-
imise their rule and enhance their power is usually referred to as
Indianisation. It proceeded, especially over the first two centuries CE,
initially in coastal trading ports, but in time penetrated inland to
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia