mandalarelationship between polities, with its emphasis on contin-
gency and flexibility.
Theravada Buddhist kings took particular pains to structure their
kingdoms as microcosmic replicas of the divine macrocosm. At the
centre stood the palace, earthly equivalent of the divine abode of
the gods on Mount Meru. A king’s right to rule derived both from his
superior personal karma, and from possession of the symbols of power
housed in the palace (including notably a potent Buddhist image that
served as the palladium of the dynasty or the kingdom). Kings thus
ruled over competing centres of power, each claiming superior divine
status, to be demonstrated, as circumstances permitted, through con-
quest leading to expansion of the mandala. This was a world of fluid
power, shifting relationships, and flexible responses, ready to adapt as
occasion demanded.^9
Islam, as it seeped through Indonesia, carried by Muslim
merchants and missionaries, brought with it an entirely different
worldview, one that was essentially incompatible with the earlier
Hinduism and Buddhism of maritime Southeast Asia. For most of the
Malay world, Islam was at first but a thin veneer acquired through the
statement of belief in Allah and Muhammad, his Prophet, that is
required of all Muslims (those who submit to God’s will). But Islam
brought with it some potentially subversive ideas. One was that all
Muslims are equal before God, as symbolised by the ummat(the people
of God) at prayer in the mosque.^10 This was never enough to shake the
foundations of Malay social hierarchy, for Islam also taught obedience
and submission, which could without too much difficulty be trans-
ferred from God to man, but it did make it more difficult to accept
pretensions to superiority by non-Muslims.
As a revealed religion, Islam itself engendered a sense of superi-
ority through the exclusivity that comes from possession of divine
truth. It was a characteristic of Christianity, too, that marked both
Europeans, and subsequently Filipinos. As revealed religions, both
Islam and Christianity tended to be less tolerant of other beliefs than
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia