A History of India, Third Edition

THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIA

In this period he went to China for a few months in 689 to recruit assistants
for his great translation project (completed only in 695). On his return to
China he explicitly recommended that other Chinese Buddhists proceeding
to India break journey in Shrivijaya, where a thousand monks lived by the
same rules as those prevailing in India. In subsequent years many Chinese
Buddhists conscientiously followed this advice.
Prominent Indian Buddhist scholars similarly made a point to visit
Shrivijaya. Towards the end of the seventh century Dharmapala of
Nalanda is supposed to have visited Suvarnadvipa (Java and Sumatra). In
the beginning of the eighth century the South Indian monk Vajrabodhi
spent five months in Shrivijaya on his way to China. He and his disciple,
Amoghavajra, whom he met in Java, are credited with having introduced
Buddhist Tantrism to China. Atisha, who later became known as the great
reformer of Tibetan Buddhism, is said to have studied for twelve years in
Suvarnadvipa in the early eleventh century. The high standard of Buddhist
learning which prevailed in Indonesia for many centuries was one of the
important preconditions for that great work of art, the Borobudur, whose
many reliefs are a pictorial compendium of Buddhist lore, a tribute both to
the craftsmanship of Indonesian artists and to the knowledge of Indonesian
Buddhist scholars.

The link between Southeast Asia and

South India

Indian historians have conducted a heated debate for many decades about
the relative merits of different Indian regions with regard to the spread of
Indian influence in Southeast Asia. Nowadays there seems to be a
consensus that, at least as far as the early centuries are concerned, South
India—and especially Tamil Nadu—deserves the greatest credit for this
achievement. In subsequent periods, however, several regional shifts as well
as parallel influences emanating from various centres can be noticed. The
influence of Tamil Nadu was very strong as far as the earliest inscriptions
in Southeast Asia are concerned, showing as they do the influence of the
script prevalent in the Pallava kingdom. The oldest Buddhist sculpture in
Southeast Asia—the famous bronze Buddha of Celebes—shows the marks
of the Buddhist sculptures of Amaravati (Coastal Andhra) of the third to
the fifth centuries. Early Hindu sculptures of Western Java and of the
Isthmus of Siam seem to have been guided by the Pallava style of the
seventh and eighth centuries. Early Southeast Asian temple architecture
similarly shows the influence of the Pallava and Chola styles, especially on
Java and in Cambodia.
The influence of the North Indian Gupta style also made itself felt from
the fifth century onwards. The centre of this school was Sarnath, near
Varanasi (Benares), where Buddha preached his first sermon. Sarnath