For many decades, historians of early Southeast Asian history have drawn attention to the phase of Indianization, which was characterized by Indian-influenced buildings, sculptures, and inscriptions. Yet, previous emphasis on the dissemination of Indian civilization has been largely replaced by one on indigenous initiatives. What remains indeterminate, however, is the phase of transition, fittingly called protohistory, from prehistoric society in the Iron Age to the early history of Indic states. Recently, this standstill has changed as a result of challenges taking place, particularly in two fields: first, archaeological research over the last twenty years has attested to the existence of sustained networks of exchange in material culture between South Asia and Southeast Asia across the Bay of Bengal. Second, more recently, Pollock's “Sanskrit cosmopolis”, in which Sanskrit was the universal language of religion and politics spread within South Asia and beyond, caused a fresh stir in those interested in the Indianization of Southeast Asia. Although these trends might seem to be a reversion to the old dissemination theory, they are clearly not so, because ongoing studies equally emphasize the agency of Southeast Asian societies and the localization of Indic influences.

Against this background, researchers of both India and Southeast Asia in diverse disciplines gathered, and an international conference on early Indian influences in Southeast Asia was held in Singapore from 21 to 23 November 2007. The conference, where fifty-two scholars presented papers, had four themes: “naval expeditions of the Cholas”, “archaeological and inscriptional evidence of early Indian influence”, “ancient and medieval commercial activities”, and “regional cultures and localization”. The papers were published in two separate volumes: one is Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia; the other is this volume with twenty-three papers, preceded by an informative introduction by one of the editors. The papers in this volume are further divided into two parts; Part One is concerned with the new archaeological evidence from South Asia and Southeast Asia on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, whereas Part Two is mainly concerned with the issue of localization in Southeast Asia.

The first five papers in Part One concern recent developments in protohistoric archaeological research in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Lam Thi My Dzung (1) discusses the cultural transition processes in Central Vietnam from the indigenous Sa Huynh culture to Indianized Champa. Ian C. Glover and Bérénice Bellina (2), based on the distribution and production of glass beads, maintain the possible presence of Indian artisans at archaeological sites in Thailand, which sustained relationships with South Asia as early as the fourth to second centuries BCE. Phaedra Bouvet (3) suggests that ceramics made in South Asia were traded across the Bay of Bengal and local ceramics production was possibly influenced in styles and techniques by the presence of Indian artisans. Boonyarit Chaisuwan (4) indicates that the centre of economic activity on the Andaman coast shifted until it reached Thung Tuk near Takua Pa, located at the western end of a land route across the peninsula in the ninth to eleventh centuries. This paper is particularly interesting, as it suggests that Takola, a historically documented port town usually attributed to the present Takua Pa, was a generic reference for the port towns along the Andaman coast. Batujaya in Indonesia, as Pierre-Yves Manguin and Agustijanto Indradjaja (5) discuss, is a systematically excavated site, like sites in Central Vietnam, which shows the transition from the local Buni culture to an Indianized one. The Batujaya settlement had contact with Indian material culture for four or five centuries before it adopted Indic religious features. The authors, however, show prudence in deciding the process of the adoption of Indic elements, as well as its connection to the fifth-century, Vishnu-worshipping Tarumanagara kingdom.

Two papers call attention to South Indian involvement in North Sumatra. E. Edwards McKinnon (6), tracing the passage of the centre of trade from Lobu Tua, near Barus, through Kota Cina, near Medan, to Ujung Batee Kapal, near Banda Aceh, maintains that there is an “ethnic continuity” despite the change of religious situation, as these sites were occupied by Tamil merchants. Daniel Perret and Heddy Surachman (7), based on studies on three sites in Tapanuli, in North Sumatra, argues that the mid-fourteenth century was a major turning point because the old South Indian trade guilds' activities in the area collapsed, while the Pasai sultanate throve as a major centre of the pepper trade, which was probably aided by Muslim family networks.

The last three papers in Part One focus on archaeological sites in Tamil Nadu. K. Rajan (8) discusses the importance of coastal states because of their location between the Mediterranean, in the west, and China, in the east; he maintains that well-established trade networks and production centres enabled the exchange of goods across the Bay of Bengal, such as glass and semi-precious stone beads and high tin content bronze over a long period. V. Selvakumar (9) argues that certain aspects of ceramics and boat-building technologies in South Asia may have originated from Southeast Asia, which indicates that the exchange in material culture across the bay could have been bidirectional. Sundaresh and A. S. Gaur (10) demonstrate that marine archaeological investigations can testify to the important role of Poompuhar and Mahabalipuram, two major ports, in maritime trade activities across the bay during the early historical period.

The first paper in Part Two by John Guy (11) effectively bridges the two parts, as the paper traces the dynamic expansion of Tamil merchants in Southeast Asia and, further, in China from the third or fourth to the thirteenth centuries. The following three papers squarely examine Pollock's Sanskrit cosmopolis. Johannes Bronkhorst (12) draws attention to the agency of Brahmans, which is curiously absent in Pollock's argument, in spreading Sanskrit, whose services extended beyond differences in religion. Daudi Ali (13) critiques Pollock's division between Sanskrit as symbolic and local languages as mundane, because it is not supported by epigraphical evidence in Southeast Asia. The author argues that, however universal Sanskrit may seem, Sanskrit did not have a single “thought world” but accommodated local ideologies and practices. Julie Romain (14), based on the analysis of early Hindu temples of the Dieng Plateau, argues that even though Sanskrit may have been constant within the cosmopolis, Indian visual art in Southeast Asia has been vernacular in character from the beginning, as the styles were taken from different regional styles in India.

Art history is also represented by two other papers. Robert L. Brown (15) finds that Gupta-period Buddhist sculptures in Southeast Asia and China were both directly influenced by North Indian Gupta art in the sixth century, whereas Southeast Asia's artistic relationship with South India and Sri Lanka began only in the seventh century. This indicates that, despite the strong presence of South Indian trade networks, religious influences originated from North India at least in the sixth century. Martin Polkinghorne (16), using a computer-driven quantitative analysis on the decorative lintels of Angkor, brings to the fore the agency of artists and workshops in selecting and adapting Indian iconographic and decorative elements, where variations need to be read as “artistic idiosyncrasy”. The paper's argument represents an interesting case for localization. From a rare musicological point of view, Arsenio Nicolas (17) traces the spread of two Sanskrit musical terms in Southeast Asia and the change of their meanings in local contexts, which appears to be an interesting counter-argument against the universality of Pollock's Sanskrit cosmopolis.

Two papers look at Buddhism in terms of practices in local contexts, rather than religious doctrines. Peter Skilling (18) maintains that the spread of mass-produced clay images throughout Southeast Asia from the sixth century indicates the naturalization of Buddhist practices. Kyaw Minn Htin (19), based on the analysis of Ye Dhammā inscriptions from rarely researched Arakan, asserts that Mahayana Buddhism from North India established itself in Arakan in the fifth century, whereas Theravada Buddhism may have arrived in Arakan from Sri Lanka in the seventh century.

Hindu archaeological artefacts are represented by two papers. According to Le Thi Lien (20), an analysis of Hindu deities represented in small gold plaques found in southern Vietnam suggests continuous contact between southern Vietnam and India. Anna A. Ślączka (21) argues that, based on an analysis of objects installed in the ground of Hindu temples in eastern Java and southern Vietnam, a great number of temple consecration deposits correspond to the Sanskrit textual tradition, while the presence of animal remains indicates the influence of local traditions.

The last two papers concern broader themes. Sachchidanand Sahai (22) asserts that a Laotian version of the Ramayana, told in the form of a Jataka, contains both exogenous Buddhist teachings and the indigenous cultural ethos set in the social space of the Mekong Valley. Boreth Ly (23) reconsiders Brahmanism in Cambodia and Thailand from a political perspective and provides several fresh understandings: for instance, the importation of Brahmans to Southeast Asia involves the mutual legitimization of the Brahman's ritual authority and the king's secular power; moreover, the Brahmanism in present-day Southeast Asia is a modern construction in the wake of modernization and the rise of nationalism.

Obviously, it is impossible to draw a coherent conclusion out of a compendium of diverse fields and disciplines such as this volume. For instance, one of the broad conclusions of this volume is that a long, drawn-out period of sustained contact and exchange preceded the period of Indianization. A question naturally arises as to whether Southeast Asia was indeed Indianized before Indianization. This is one of the questions not reconciled in the volume – of course, this is a matter of definition, but Manguin's opinion of keeping the term for the conventional sense, which is suggested in his introduction to the volume, seems to be a sound one. Nevertheless, this volume will definitely contribute towards understanding the protohistory of Southeast Asia, as it succeeds in providing a space for dialogue among archaeologists, historians, and scholars of other related disciplines of both India and Southeast Asia. Anyone seriously interested in early history of the region, or for that matter, anyone interested in the root of contemporary cultural exchange in the era of globalization, should benefit from reading this volume, as well as its companion volume Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa.