most of the earliest evidence for Buddhism in South-
east Asia comes from the peninsula, and that both the
peninsula and the islands reveal in their art, culture,
and religion very direct and frequent interchanges with
South Asia.
These interchanges, based on trading activities,
brought Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia.
There is archeological evidence on the Malay Penin-
sula for the presence of both Hinduism and Buddhism
from about the fifth century C.E. Both these Indic re-
ligions are present together for centuries to follow at
sites on the Malay Peninsula and in Indonesia, specif-
ically on the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Bali. While
one religion may have been favored over the other at
certain times and places, they rarely were set in oppo-
sition to one another. Indeed, as on Bali today, they
tended to blend together.
The evidence for Buddhism comes from three
sources: Chinese histories, local inscriptions, and art.
The Chinese histories that mention early Southeast
Asian polities have been very thoroughly explored by
scholars. The Chinese sources present the Indian im-
pact starting in the first century C.E., and at times ref-
erences to Buddhism can be discerned for this early
period. By around the fifth century, there are reports
from Chinese monks who traveled by ship to and from
India, and who thus passed through Southeast Asia.
One monk, YIJING(635–713), stopped in the capital of
S ́rvijaya in 671 on his way to India in order to study
Sanskrit. The capital is believed to have been Palem-
bang on Sumatra. Yijing returned to Palembang after
ten years in India to live again in S ́rvijaya from 685 to
695 (with one visit to China in 689), and it is there that
he translated Indian texts into Chinese and wrote his
memoirs.
Srivijaya remained a center for Buddhist studies for
hundreds of years. The famous Indian monk ATISHA
(982–1054) went to Sumatra to study with the Buddhist
teacher Dharmakrti. Atisha later traveled to Tibet in
1042 and founded the Kadam lineage, which became
the DGE LUGS(GELUK) school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The second category of evidence for Buddhism on
the Malay Peninsula and in Indonesia is inscriptions.
The earliest inscriptions, mostly written on stone, date
from around the fifth to the eighth centuries C.E. They
are written in Indian-related scripts in Sanskrit, and
often include phrases from, or similar to those in,
Buddhist texts. The dating of these inscriptions, scat-
tered at various sites, is generally based on paleogra-
phy (that is, the style of the letters), which gives rise
to varying opinions by scholars. Most of these in-
scriptions hold little historical information, but they
tell us that Buddhism was practiced by some of the
population and sometimes the school of Buddhism
can be broadly identified. When the early Buddhist in-
scriptions are compared to those of similar date that
relate to Hinduism, it appears that Hinduism was as-
sociated with those in power, the local chiefs or kings.
Hinduism in Southeast Asia served the role of build-
ing royal power more frequently than did Buddhism
during this early period.
When one thinks of Buddhism in Java, it is the Cen-
tral Javanese period (seventh to tenth centuries) and
the truly spectacular monument of BOROBUDURthat
come to mind. Borobudur is but one of the many Bud-
dhist monuments built during this time, when hun-
dreds of Buddhist images in stone and bronze were also
made. Hinduism was practiced here as well, and the
old theory that the two religions represented contend-
ing dynasties is today discounted. The coexistence of
Buddhism and Hinduism continued when the culturalINDONESIA AND THEMALAYPENINSULAA Buddhist ceremony at Jakarta, Indonesia, 1994. © Don Farber- All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.