The Issues
In his study of Borobudur published in 1935, Paul Mus discussed architecture as a material representation of religious doctrines of Buddhism and this has been the dominant practice since (Mus Reference Mus and Macdonald1998). Writing more than five decades later in 1987, Schopen argued that if the history of religions, which was text-bound had focused on the archaeology of religions instead, “it would have been preoccupied not with what small, literate almost exclusively male and certainly atypical professionalized subgroups wrote, but rather, with what religious people of all segments of a given community actually did and how they lived” (Schopen Reference Schopen1987: 193). Schopen goes on to state that this did not happen, and that even in cases when archaeology was taken into account, for example in Paul Mus’ study of Borobudur, inscriptions were not considered. What Schopen failed to take note of was the colonial intervention in the creation of sacred landscapes, as new disciplines such as archaeology were introduced as ‘scientific’ methods for the study of the past in Asia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the colonizing powers (Ray Reference Ray2014). The questions then are as follows. Do monuments provide autonomous insights into the practice of religion rather than reflecting its precepts, as enshrined in religious literature? Should monuments be studied within their cultural landscapes or should the practice of seeing them as markers of religious doctrines continue? Should we factor in conservation practices adopted in the colonial period, which often irretrievably altered sacred landscapes, into a study of religious architecture?
This paper discusses these issues in two sections. The first section focuses on the three contemporary Buddhist sites of Nalanda in north India, Borobudur in Central Java and Nakhon Pathom in Thailand, while the second section highlights their interconnectedness within the maritime network of the period. This paper maintains that the larger issue of interconnectedness within a trans-national maritime system that cuts across present political boundaries remains under-researched, though there are significant studies detailing the art and architecture of the three structures listed above.
One possibility of interconnectedness that presents itself is UNESCO's 1972 World Heritage Convention which has been ratified by 193 countries. It is based on the five Cs: Credibility, Conservation, Capacity-Building, Communication, and Communities, though often it is ‘Conservation’ that tends to dominate the discourse at the expense of Communication and Communities. Is it possible to reinstate the two marginalised ‘Cs’ into the academic discourse and highlight the role of multi-layered maritime networks in promoting partnerships across the seas rather than prioritising either the State or Trade Networks in initiating cross-cultural exchanges?
This re-examination entails establishing the centrality of the sea and viewing it not merely as a space that permits movement, but rather as a site of intertwined cultural encounters and shared experiences, as expressed through religious architecture. The sea then becomes the site of crisscrossing surfaces that need to be articulated through histories of material remains found at archaeological sites, many of them inland and away from the sea but linked through routes and sacred landscapes (Ray Reference Ray, Schnepel and Alpers2018: 347–368). Thus, the first section examines the sites of Nalanda, Borobudur, and Nakhon Pathom to appreciate their unique features though these monastic centres were linked through pilgrimage networks and movements of scholars and monks. The second and third sections build on the linkages and suggest a possible trans-national World Heritage platform such as Project Mausam that could provide discursive space to integrate mobility within histories of World Heritage Monuments. The section examines the extent to which these proposals differ from those suggested by other researchers. The final section presents an overview of current trends as is evident in secondary writings.
Buddhist Sites in Maritime Asia
This section focuses on three Buddhist sites that date back to the seventh to the thirteenth centuries and are located in three different parts of the maritime world to underscore their interconnectedness. It starts with the site of Nalanda in north India and then travels to Borobudur in Indonesia before shifting the discussion to Nakhon Pathom in central Thailand. The first two are World Heritage Sites, while the third is a ‘living’ shrine and continues to attract visitors for worship. Although these sites are not situated on the coast, they formed a part of the ancient Buddhist sacred geography that was linked through travel and cultural routes. Sculptural representations and inscriptions at all three sites indicate an active engagement with the maritime world.
Renowned dhamma teacher Atisa (982–1054) served as a link between the Buddhist centres of north India and Indonesia. Atisa was born in the village of Vajrayogini in Vikrampur region, which was situated in what is now known as Dhaka, in Bangladesh. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk at a young age and studied with several famous teachers such as master Dharmakirti of Suvarnadvipa, which was situated in what is now known as Sumatra, from 1012 to 1024. He travelled to the Indonesian archipelago on board a merchant ship along with his students. On completing his studies, he returned to eastern India and taught at several monasteries including that of Nalanda. He arrived in Tibet in 1042, at the invitation of the king of Tibet. Atisa is considered the father of Tibetan Buddhism. This example illustrates the mobility of scholars as they traversed large parts of South and Southeast Asia in search of knowledge, as also the close connections that they forged between religious institutions and learning.
Nalanda:
Nalanda is located 80 kilometres south of Patna, the capital of the state of Bihar, and 12 kilometres north of Rajgir. The region around Nalanda is known for its extensive remains of religious architecture of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu affiliations, as well as tanks in the surrounding villages of Jagdishpur, Begumpur, Baregaon, Kundalipur, and Kapatiya (Kulshreshtha Reference Kulshreshtha2018: 130–132). Although Tibetan sources underscore only the Tantric aspect of Nalanda and other Buddhist sites such as the five great Mahaviharas in north India at Vikramasila, Nalanda, Somapura or Paharpur, Odantapura, and Jaggadala known for their Vajrayana preceptors, there is a need to contextualize the site of Nalanda within a multi-religious context and to underscore the ‘creation’ of its ‘Buddhist’ identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Kulshreshtha Reference Kulshreshtha and Ray2019). Asher (Reference Asher2015: 13–14, 43) suggests new possibilities of examining the site of Nalanda beyond the currently defined limits of the mahavihara, which is restricted to the area excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1915 to 1937 and again from 1974 to 1982.
It is also important to underscore the distinctiveness of Nalanda in comparison with other contemporary sites, such as for example in coastal Odisha. In her study of the inscriptions and images found at another site labelled ‘Tantric’, that is, that of Ratnagiri in coastal Odisha, Hock (Reference Hock1987: 4) has shown the wide range of texts and types of texts that were in use at the site from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. In addition, Ratnagiri has provided evidence for the presence of a large number of icons of female deities, especially those of Cuṇḍā and Tārā, which sets it apart from other monastic sites in Odisha, namely Udayagiri and Lalitagiri. Cuṇḍā does not figure in the large stone sculpture at Ratnagiri, but she is repeatedly represented on votive stupas (Ray Reference Ray2013, Reference Ray, Schnepel and Alpers2018).
As an excavated site, Nalanda consists of five temples and between nine and eleven monasteries, as some of the monasteries are subdivided. Generally, the temples face east, while the monasteries open to the west. Monastery 1 is the largest. Several copper plates were found here, including the one by Devapala. A Sanskrit inscription engraved on a large copper plate found in Nalanda in 1921 records that the king of the Pala Dynasty, Devapala (ruled c. 810–847) allocated five villages to support a monastery established there by Maharaja Balaputradeva, Lord of Suvarnadvipa (Shastri Reference Shastri1924: 310–327). The inscription emphasizes such religious tenets as ‘bodhisattvas well-versed in tantras’ and the copying of Buddhist texts. The bronze sculptures found during excavations at Nalanda that date back to the eighth and ninth centuries AD were mainly from the monastic dwellings. Only three of the bronze figures were inscribed and included a Panchika and Hariti, as well as a four-armed image of the Hindu deity Balarama. Labels such as Hindu and Buddhist as used in current practice need to be re-examined when applied to earlier periods. It is also significant that the seals of several so-called ‘Hindu’ kings of the Gupta dynasty were found at Nalanda. These were no doubt attached to documents making donations to the monastic establishment.
Written records from Nalanda such as inscriptions, seals, and copper plates are all royal records and we know very little about the members of the Buddhist Sangha at the site or the community of monks who studied there (Asher Reference Asher2015: 21). It is also important to emphasize that the monastery was rebuilt nine times and there is no clarity on the changes that were introduced over time. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, for example, refers to a monastery in the seventh century during his visit to Nalanda where a golden Buddha image had been installed, symbolizing the victory of the Mahayana sect over the Hinayana sect (Asher Reference Asher2015: 68). Given this lack of data on the precise nature of Buddhism at the site, it would be unwise to label it Tantric or Esoteric, as suggested by recent writings (Acri Reference Acri2016: 16).
The map in Acri's edited book shows an Indian Esoteric Buddhist Circle comprising the kingdoms of the Palas in eastern India from the eighth to the twelfth centuries with Nalanda as an important centre. While Kanheri and Ellora in western India are shown as important Buddhist centres, there is no mention of the large number of Buddhist sites in present day Tamilnadu, which had close interactions with Nalanda, as evident from inscriptions at Tamil sites. One prominent example is the site of Nagapattinam, which housed a Buddhist temple from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries and indicates interconnections both along the coast as also across the seas, since it received gifts from the kings of Indonesia and China. This temple was destroyed by French Jesuits in the nineteenth century to provide space for a college. Thus, in place of the Buddhist temple, the present town of Nagapattinam provides examples of French colonial architecture (Ray Reference Ray2015).
Fifty kilometres to its north was the site of Kaveripattinam located at the point where the River Kaveri enters the Bay of Bengal. It was a flourishing Buddhist establishment from the second century BC to the sixth century AD. Around the eighth or ninth century AD, the centre of activity shifted to Nagapattinam, which has yielded a rich hoard of Buddhist bronzes, some of them from a ritual deposit under the Buddhist temple. As many as 350 Buddhist bronze icons were discovered between 1856 and the 1930s at Vellipalayam and Nanayakkara Street in Nagapattinam, while 42 stunning Buddha bronze icons and three Buddha artefacts in stone were found in 2004 in Sellur village, Kodavasal taluq, Tiruvarur district, Tamil Nadu. They can all be dated back to the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries AD. Nagapattinam was by no means an isolated centre. Instead archaeological data from the Tamil coast indicates the presence of 127 contemporary Buddhist sites (Dayalan Reference Dayalan2017) which complement those that have been located further north along the Andhra coast and underscore the vitality and vibrancy of Buddhism at this time.
It is evident that this Buddhist tradition of south India cannot be subsumed under a single category of Esoteric or Tantric Buddhism. Writings in languages such as Pali of the Theravada monastic tradition depict south India as a bastion of conservative Buddhist orthopraxy with close contacts with monastic centres in Sri Lanka (Monius Reference Monius2001: 122–123). Inscriptions on many of the bronze icons also show that the Buddha statue was invested with attributes of divinity and was involved in several rituals with close parallels to those associated with the Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu, indicating considerable inter-religious and inter-cultural overlap (Schalk Reference Schalk2002: 603).
Peter Schalk refers to three kinds of Buddhism at Nagapattinam: the first is evident from bronze pedestal images, which indicate that it was so close to Shaivism that it was difficult to differentiate between the two. The second is documented in the twelfth century text Viracoliyam and its commentary, which propagates a devotional form of Buddhism mediated by sage Agastya. The third was that of the acaryas. Very little of this last form survives, except in the form of stone icons from several sites along the Tamil coast (Schalk Reference Schalk2002: 517). To ignore this complexity of Buddhist traditions in favour of a single Esoteric or Tantric category that is said to have swept through maritime Asia is not substantiated by data from the region. In a study of the iconography of Buddhist sculptures from Bodh Gaya, the site of the Buddha's Enlightenment in north India, dated between the eighth and the twelfth centuries, Janice Leoshko concludes that dynamic artistic regional traditions developed in Buddhism from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries at a time when manifesting the divine presence played a central role in many Indian religious practices (Leoshko Reference Leoshko2003: 18). The worship of the stupa was particularly important from the eighth and ninth centuries onwards, which helps explain the increase in the number of stupas that were constructed and dedicated across the Buddhist world. The kriya and carya tantras emphasized the maintenance and worship of stupas and identical funerary and meritorious practices were prevalent in Mahayana, Mantrayana, and Vajrayana texts (Hock Reference Hock1987: 109).
Besides, travels and visits to different monastic sites across the seas have been a regular feature of Buddhism in Asia (Buswell Reference Buswell2009: 1055–1075). In the seventh century, the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang decided to travel to Nalanda after hearing about it from the Indian monk Prabhakaramitra, whose Chinese translations of Indian texts he had studied (Asher Reference Asher2015: 32). Such mobility and travels by scholars and monks need to be factored into any discussion on religious architecture in South and Southeast Asia, even though the architecture itself may draw from diverse traditions. For example, compared to the brick and stucco construction of the Nalanda temples, the site in Borobudur in central Java was built of stone and provides a very different perspective on the practice of Buddhism in Indonesia as will be discussed in the next section.
Borobudur:
As in the case of Nalanda, the origins of the name Borobudur are unclear. The only old Javanese manuscript that hints at the monument is Nagarakertagama, dated to AD 1365, which mentions Budur as a Buddhist sanctuary. The eighteenth century Javanese manuscript, the Babad Tanah Jawi (or the History of Java), recounts the history of Java from the prophet Adam up to the eighteenth century depending on the version of the text and is an important narrative of Javanese culture. The author of the text wanted to demonstrate that the realm of Mataram was a successor and a copy of Buddhist Majapahit, whose dynastic history of Java begins with Watu Gunung or the eighth century Sailendras of Central Java, thereby drawing Borobudur into the meta-narrative (Berg Reference Berg1964: 100–103).
Construction at Borobudur probably began around AD 760 and was completed by about AD 830. Two inscriptions found in the region may be relevant. The first dated AD 824 refers to the construction of a religious edifice by king Samaratungga and the second of AD 842 mentions queen Sri Kahulunan who allocated revenue from a village to support the sanctuary (Miksic Reference Miksic1990: 23). There are indications to suggest that one part of the monument collapsed during construction and there were other setbacks as well. The plans for the structure changed over time, requiring more work. It would also seem that the entire monument was originally coated with white plaster and then painted. During the Dutch colonial period, ochre was applied to several sculptures to increase contrast and facilitate photography and some of the stones continue to retain this change in colour (Miksic Reference Miksic1990: 26, 151).
It is suggested that leading monks promoted specific texts, which were then adapted to suit ritual practices that required appropriate architecture (Chemburkar Reference Chemburkar, Dallapicola and Verghese2017: 205). One such was the Yoga Tantra text the Sarvatathagatatattvasangraha of the eighth century, which formed the basis to represent the monument as a mandala at Borobudur and at Tabo in the western Himalayas, even though the two monuments of Borobudur and Tabo are architecturally different. This recourse to texts to explain architectural development needs re-examination in view of the rich sculptural representations at Borobudur, but more importantly, in the context of the interconnectedness of the site with that in the western Himalayas, further underscoring travels by teachers such as Atisa.
Borobudur is a unique Javanese monument consisting of a series of terraces of decreasing size that rise above the Kedu plains. Exquisitely carved with 1460 stone panels, Borobudur contains more than 500 life-sized Buddha images set around the monument. In the middle of each of the four sides, a long, straight stairway leads from the ground to the uppermost terrace, stretching over a climb of nearly 26 meters. The most striking feature is the sculpted galleries, which illustrate five Buddhist scriptures, some of them highly abstract. Of all the texts, one that occupies 460 panels in the third and fourth galleries is the story of Prince Sudhana and his quest for knowledge, as inscribed in the Gaṇḍavyūha.
The Gaṇḍavyūha was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese in the fourth century and was popular both in China and Japan. In Java, there is not only a divergence between image and text, but the representation is also very different from the representations seen anywhere else in the Buddhist world (Miksic Reference Miksic1990: 127–129). Short inscriptions that remain on the figures on the base have often been assumed to indicate instructions for the artisan, although De Casparis has argued that these were meant to provide indications to pilgrims visiting the monument (De Casparis Reference De Casparis1975: 32). This is further supported by the recovery of a large number of ritual objects at the site. These include silver plates with one-line inscriptions, 252 clay votive tablets, and 2307 clay miniature stupas, many of them inscribed with short Buddhist verses (Miksic Reference Miksic1990: 34–35).
The 1460 reliefs on Borobudur are often seen as representing texts with a view to impressing Buddhist wisdom on the believer's mind, as stated by N.J. Krom in Reference Krom1926. This perspective reduces narrative reliefs to a corollary of the written text and is one that Gifford (Reference Gifford2011) argues against. She proposes that while some relief panels in the first and second galleries may be compared with Buddhist texts, their fundamental function was to articulate a ritual space for the worship of the Buddha. Narrative art by its definition must represent more than one event from a story, which is then organised both spatially and in a chronological sequence (Gifford Reference Gifford2011: 52). An example of narrative art is often seen in the 120 relief panels in the first gallery that depict scenes from the life of the Buddha as narrated in the first century AD Sanskrit text, Lalitavistara. One of the popular scenes is that of the Great Departure of Prince Siddhartha from the palace, depicted in ten relief panels. However, it should be emphasised that rather than linear narration, the relief panels underscore the temporal nature of existence. The relief panels from the Gaṇḍavyūha in the third and fourth galleries depict visually descriptive passages of the text and present panoramic rather than narrative art. Gifford (Reference Gifford2011: 76) suggests that these were meant to encourage the devotee to imagine the panorama of a purified field emanated by the Buddha and were designed “to create a ritual space in which one could at least symbolically achieve some of the benefits of visualization meditation”.
One aspect of architecture in Borobudur that distinguishes it from other contemporary religious architecture either in Indonesia or India is the inclusion of detailed reliefs depicting local life and events, and the more prominent ones among these are the representations of eleven boats and ships. Inglis (Reference Inglis2014) has examined the cultural context of the representations in detail and indicates that it shows the unique Javanese perception of the seas and the dangers of seafaring activity. Most importantly, Sudhana's journey to gain knowledge includes visits to fifty-three spiritual mentors. One of the spiritual teachers mentioned is the ship captain Vaira, whose ship is also depicted in these reliefs. In more recent times, these ship depictions have led to full-scale reconstructions of what have been termed as ‘Indonesian ships’ that sailed the seas, such as the Sarimanok, the Spirit of Majapahit, and so on.
Five ships with outriggers are shown in the reliefs in Galleries I and II. All five are represented with canted rectangular sails, bipod/tripod masts, outriggers, rowing galleries, deckhouses, and quarter rudders, as well as distinctive bow and stern decorations. Two small boats are also associated with the outrigger vessels and are shown laden with vessels (Inglis Reference Inglis2014: 108). While researchers focused on the large sailing ships with outriggers, they neglected four other vessels that are very different in their depictions. These include a small ferry boat in Gallery I that is identified as South Asian or Arabic and also showing similarities with others located on the southern side of the monument in the east end of the first gallery (Inglis Reference Inglis2014: 131–138).
The representations of ships at Borobudur are associated with several Buddhist stories. A river boat is depicted in a scene from the Lalitavistara, while a single ocean-going vessel is depicted in Supāraga's story from the Jātakamāla. Three vessels are shown in the legend of King Rudrāyaṇa from the Divyāvadāna and two ships are depicted together in Maitrakanyaka's story from the Avadānas̒ataka. One ship is found on reliefs associated with another collection, the Avadānakalpalatā (No. 97). A unique single-masted outrigger is depicted in the reliefs from the Gaṇḍavyūha (Inglis Reference Inglis2014: 162–163).
These Buddhist stories are a part of the Buddhist narratives associated with the sea and are found at several sites in India and Southeast Asia (Ray Reference Ray, Skilling and McDaniel2012: 47–66). It is striking that neither Avalokitesvara nor Tara are shown as saviours, though this is a scene found at contemporary Buddhist sites of Kanheri and Ratnagiri on the west and east coasts in India, respectively. Though representations of the Gaṇḍavyūha are also found at Tabo monastery in the western Himalayas, they do not include scenes of travel and seafaring (Thakur Reference Thakur2006: 32). Skilling (Reference Skilling, Skilling and McDaniel2012: ix) refers to ‘narrative zones’ along which the Buddhist stories travelled and formed avenues for the intersection of intellectual and material cultures. These stories were not only reflected and represented on monuments but also helped locate the macrocosm of the Buddha dhamma within the micro-contexts of religious architecture. As discussed in the next section, in addition to the life of the Buddha and his travels across the seas, another prominent figure responsible for the spread of Buddhism was the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (r. 268-232 BC) whose memory as a righteous Buddhist King has survived into the present (Olivelle et al. Reference Olivelle, Janice and Himanshu P.2012: 1–16; Ray Reference Ray2014: 98–133).
Nakhon Pathom:
Ashoka is unique among ancient Indian rulers and was the first to propagate his dhammalipi or writings on dhamma or dharma, loosely translated as religion, which were engraved on pillars and rocks across the subcontinent. By bringing dhamma to the centre stage of political life, he redefined it by emphasizing its ethical connotations and an ever-increasing narrative Buddhist literature preserved his memory. For example, an eleventh century pedestal inscription found at Sarnath near Varanasi in north India records the restoration of the stupa of Ashoka at Sarnath and its dharmacakra by two brothers from Gauda, which was situated in what is now known as eastern India (Vogel Reference Vogel1990: 222–223). The Buddha preached his first sermon at Sarnath. Though an Ashoka pillar was unearthed during archaeological excavations, there is no evidence that king Ashoka built a stupa there. In the post-Ashoka period a large monastic centre developed near the pillar and the king's memory was also kept alive through Buddhist writings on the Ashoka legend, which circulated in northwest India and found its way into Central Asia, China, Korea, Japan, and Tibet. It also inspired several later writings, including the sixteenth century work titled History of Dharma of the Tibetan monk Taranatha (Strong Reference Strong1983: 19). There is evidence that the historical memory of Ashoka survived not only in India but that his model was adopted by several rulers in Southeast Asia. The Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk drew his legitimising principles from King Jayavarman II (1181–1220) of Angkor and King Ashoka (Gyallay-Pap Reference Gyallay-Pap and Harris2007: 87).
“In Theravada countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos and Burma, he [Asoka] was and still is portrayed as a paradigmatic ruler, a model to be proudly recalled and emulated” (Strong Reference Strong1983: 39–70). It is significant that the Pha That Luang, or the Great Stupa, in Vientiane, the capital of the Lao People's Democratic Republic is a national symbol and also the most sacred monument in the country. Popular belief suggests that the site was the location of an ancient stone pillar supposedly erected by King Ashoka and containing the relics of the Buddha. The present stupa was built by King Setthathirat in 1566 as he shifted his new capital from the town of Luang Prabang and connected it to the narrative of the origins of Buddhism in the country (Grabowsky Reference Grabowsky and Harris2007: 128). This phenomenon is evident in several parts of Southeast Asia.
Although several other examples could be added to this, King Mongkut (reigned 1851–1868) who was the architect of Thai suzerainty is most relevant. As the British and the French pursued their interests in mainland Southeast Asia, Siam (the kingdom's name until 1939) or present-day Thailand was the only region that was able to maintain its autonomy and avoid colonial rule. King Mongkut took positive steps to gain Western knowledge and allowed diplomatic concessions to the Europeans so as not to present them with an excuse to impose foreign rule. This policy paid off and was continued by his son and successor King Chulalongkorn (reigned 1868–1910). In spite of this, the European challenge could not be entirely avoided and Thailand had to cede territories over which it had control for over a century. Thus, Thailand relinquished its control over western Cambodia and Angkor in 1907, thus making Cambodia one of France's prized possessions (Osborne Reference Osborne2004).
The extent to which the reforms of Prince Mongkut (1804–1868) had a bearing on the study of archaeology of Buddhism is a related issue. Thai Buddhism has three monastic lineages. The oldest and the largest is the Mahanikaya, which traces its origins to the introduction of Buddhism into Thailand. The other two are the Ramanyanikaya, the nikaya of the Mons, which was absorbed into the other two in 1902, and the Dhammayutikanikaya founded by King Mongkut in 1824. These royal reforms were aimed at re-establishing the authority of the Pali Canon, rather than the commentaries. In keeping with this objective, the King invented the Ariyaka alphabet to replace the commonly used Khmer script for writing Pali (Sakya Reference Sakya2008). No doubt the revival of interest in historical Buddhism had far-reaching implications for a study of the past – a case in point being the restoration of Phrapathom Chedi, near Bangkok. As a monk, King Mongkut had visited the Phrapathom Chedi that was in a state of disrepair in the jungle, though it was still considered a centre of pilgrimage by the local communities. On his accession to the throne, the monarch not only restored the Chedi, but also developed the surrounding areas. Two new canals, namely the Mahasawas and Chedibooja (1853–1862) were dug linking Nakhon Pathom and the waterways of Bangkok (Phrapathom Chedi 1999: 66–72).
“In as much as the Buddhist faith was preferred at Nagor Pathom before it was adopted in any other of the cities of Suvarnabhumi, the earliest caitya erected there was from its first foundation called Phra Pathom Cetiya” (Damrong Rajanubhab Reference Rajanubhab and Crosby1919: 11).
King Mongkut set up this inscription at Nagor Pathom declaring that the introduction of Buddhism into the city took place at the time of King Ashoka. He arrived at this conclusion based on two things: the shape of the stupa which resembled those said to have been constructed by Ashoka in the Indian subcontinent, and the fact that brick was used rather than stone. Secondly, Nagor Pathom has yielded a large number of dharmacakra stones fashioned in the shape of a wheel (Damrong Rajanubhab Reference Rajanubhab and Crosby1919: 1–66).
Two stucco reliefs from Chulapathon chedi need to be brought into the discussion here. One of these shows two merchants seated on a tortoise, the Bodhisattva incarnate who saved the merchants. This theme identified as Kachhapa Jataka is also found at Borobudur. The second stucco panel shows a ship carrying two merchants identified as a representation of Supparaka jataka, which occurs both in the Pali Jataka collection (no. 479) and in Aryasura's Jatakamala. These reliefs were brought to light during excavations by the Fine Arts Department in 1968 (Woodward Reference Woodward2008). As the present chedi had covered the earlier one, Pierre Dupont's 1939–40 excavations had failed to unearth them. It would seem that the chedi was renovated and expanded thrice in the past. How are these depictions to be explained in the context of the monument at Nakhon Pathom, especially as there is no evidence of their presence at other stupa sites? Are these representations linked to the association of the site with the landing of Buddhist monks sent by Ashoka and the setting up of the earliest stupa in Thailand? The larger issue addressed in this paper is the ‘reading’ of monuments as visual texts with multi-layered histories rather than somewhat narrowly through the lens of religious writings. The next issue that needs to be addressed is the sense of interconnectedness among the monuments. Travelling monks and pilgrims across the seas draws in sailing networks and navigation zones into discussion, areas that have received little attention in scholarly writings.
The relationship between seafaring groups and religious shrines needs further research as several inscriptions from the Indian subcontinent refer to differential taxes on commodities meant for religious establishments. To appraise coastal centres and maritime communities comprehensively, it is vital to examine and understand the intertwined strands of religious architecture, economic activity, and political intervention. In recent years, studies on the Indian Ocean have acquired vibrancy and dynamism. Moulding these into World Heritage sites would certainly highlight them on a global platform. However, there is a need for both vision and flexibility on part of the World Heritage Committee and the State Parties involved. This is especially so if the dialogue around this should be translated into the actual preservation of the maritime heritage of the Indian Ocean of all kinds, namely monumental, intangible, and the living heritage, by engaging maritime communities using traditional means of boat construction and navigation skills (Chou Reference Chou, Chandra and Ray2013: 41–66).
The two trans-national projects discussed in this paper, namely Project Mausam and Maritime Silk Routes draw attention to the politics of cultural heritage in the context of the Indian Ocean. More importantly, they focus on the generation of knowledge of the past and its manipulation in keeping with contemporary interests. It also highlights the somewhat skewed construction of heritage that results from an undue emphasis on conservation practices over multi-layered histories of monuments and archaeological sites.
Project Mausam
This section discusses the significance of religious architecture and archaeological sites in the context of the trans-national maritime heritage of the Indian Ocean. This significance has drawn the attention of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee through two recent nominations: Project Mausam, which was proposed by India at the 38th Session of the World Heritage Committee held at Doha, Qatar; and Maritime Silk Routes, proposed by the World Heritage Committee during an Expert Committee Meeting held in London on 30–31 May 2017.Footnote 2
The 1972 World Heritage Convention has been ratified by 193 State Parties as of 31 January 2017. It continues to provide an important global platform for the protection and preservation of heritage. The 1972 World Heritage Convention seeks to identify and preserve heritage of outstanding universal value, thereby drawing monuments and nation states into the ambit of cultural diplomacy, although the recognition of ‘universal values’ itself remains debateable (Labadi Reference Labadi2013). Increasingly researchers have argued that values are not inherent in monuments and sites, but are ascribed to them by communities, nation-states, and those tasked with the responsibility of protecting and preserving them (Chapman Reference Chapman2013). Unfortunately, neither the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee nor the States Parties have been successful in promoting multi-layered and inclusive narratives of archaeological sites in Asia, as this paper argues.
The website of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, describes Project Mausam as a ‘Transnational Mixed Route’ including both natural and cultural heritage, with a focus on monsoon patterns, cultural routes, and maritime landscapes.Footnote 3 The project aims to collaborate with several countries in the Indian Ocean region to understand the conceptual framework and manipulation of the monsoon winds in the pre-modern period and the extent to which these interactions across well-defined navigation corridors led to the spread of shared knowledge systems, traditions, technologies, and ideas (Ray Reference Ray2014). Thus, the central theme of Project Mausam is to focus on nautical histories, architecture, and archaeology, on the central experience of trans-locality of maritime communities and the mapping and remapping of maritime conceptions of space across two millennia.Footnote 4
These exchanges were, no doubt, facilitated by coastal centres located at landing places and anchorage points of sailing ships. Many of these coastal centres show continuity over time, such as the island of Socotra (Ray Reference Ray, Schnepel and Alpers2018), but many others have undergone changes and transformations beyond recognition. For example, the island of Salsette is currently a part of the urban sprawl of Mumbai on the west coast of India. Project Mausam was conceived from the beginning as a trans-national nomination that would, in addition to becoming a part of the World Heritage List, also further academic research and collaboration. It has the potential to reorient the 1972 World Heritage Convention from an emphasis on conservation to grounding in maritime archaeology and collaborative archaeological research, as part of UNESCO's global vision to promote cultural diversity. With a view to underscoring the academic content of the Project, the Ministry of Culture shifted its usual administrative position of assigning all World Heritage work to the Conservation Section of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and made an exception in this case by involving one of the autonomous research centres under its administrative control, the Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts (IGNCA) as “the nodal coordinating agency with support of the Archaeological Survey of India and National Museum as associate bodies”.Footnote 5
The Maritime Silk Route Project proposed by the World Heritage Committee implicitly reduces this complexity of maritime interactions to a mere mono-cultural category subsumed under the nomenclature of ‘trade’. This runs the risk of undercutting UNESCO's agenda of promoting a plural and multi-cultural understanding of the past. Instead, it implicates the world body in a narrow promotion of current economic interests of Nation States, such as China's ‘One Belt, One Road’ programme. It is no coincidence that in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the creation of a new Maritime Silk Road during his visit to Indonesia in October 2013. This was followed by a keynote address at the Boao Forum for Asia in March 2015, which provided details of China's vision for a new Silk Road Economic Belt and Maritime Silk Road, collectively known as the ‘Belt and Road’ (Kwa Reference Kwa2016: 2). Perhaps it is time to delink culture and heritage from economic interests of Nation States and instead emphasize on research and academic linkages to underwrite World Heritage nominations (Meskell Reference Meskell2018; Ray Reference Ray, Schnepel and Senforthcoming). This delinking would also impact an understanding of the expansion of Buddhism in East Asia as discussed in the next section.
Monuments and World Heritage Sites: Introduction of Buddhism in East Asia
The terms ‘Silk Road’ and ‘Maritime Silk Route’ have gained a new lease of life in recent years largely through the efforts of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. In 1988, the centre launched a ten-year project called ‘Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue’ to “highlight the complex cultural interactions arising from the encounters between East and West and helping to shape the rich common heritage of the Eurasian peoples”.Footnote 6 More recently, the UNESCO has expanded this terminology to include interactions across the seas. In keeping with this emphasis on the Silk Route, it is often suggested that under the Silla Dynasty (57 BC to 935 AD), Danghangsung, which is situated at the site of the fortress at present day Dangsung on the central western coast facing the Yellow Sea, was the main gateway to China at the time, through which Buddhism was introduced into the Korean peninsula (Bae Reference Bae2016: 9–12).
There are other accounts of cultural interactions across the seas. According to a thirteenth century Korean historical chronicle, the Samguk Yussa or Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, in 48 AD, Princess Suriratna from Ayuta journeyed across the seas to reach Korea and married Prince Kim Su-ro. She was accompanied by her brother and Buddhist monks, and subsequently ascended the throne to become Queen Heo Hwang-ok of the Gaya Kingdom (42-562 AD). The extant records do not identify Ayuta except as a distant country. In the twentieth century, Kim Byung-Mo, an anthropologist from Hanyang University, suggested that Ayuta could be Ayodhya, a site in north India based on phonetic similarity (Kim Reference Kim2011: 34).
The archaeological remains at Gyeongju Historic areas, which were declared as a World Heritage Site in 2000, corroborate the narrative of the expansion of Buddhism by sea. Gyeongju contains a remarkable concentration of outstanding examples of Korean Buddhist art in the form of sculptures, reliefs, pagodas, and remains of temples and palaces from the period of the Silla dynasty, especially between the seventh and tenth centuries.
Archaeological excavations conducted in Hwangnyongsa, at Gyeongju, have provided evidence of early Buddhist practices in the Korean peninsula, especially between the seventh and tenth centuries AD. The three pedestals in the Golden Hall for the placement of the colossal 16-foot images of the Sakyamuni-Tathagata triad are relevant here. These pedestals were uncovered in the course of archaeological excavations. As narrated in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, these gilt-bronze images were made of metal that was said to have been dispatched from India by King Ashoka. The ship landed at Ulsan in the Silla kingdom. The people of the kingdom made the images. The Samguk Yussa is a collection of foundational accounts of the ancient Korean kingdoms of Silla, Paekche, and Koguryo. It was compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryeon (1206–1289) in 1281 (Ilyon Reference Ilyon, Mintz and Tae-Hung2006). These thirteenth century references to the introduction of Buddhism into Korea from India and the association of King Ashoka are significant. It is evident that the memory of dhammaraja or righteous ruler Ashoka in the spread of Buddhism had spread beyond India into East Asia (Olivelle, Leoshko and Ray Reference Ray, Skilling and McDaniel2012).
The Chau Tan shipwreck off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea of the eighth and ninth centuries helps place these thirteenth century references in context. The salvaged ceramics from the Chau Tan shipwreck indicate the presence of merchants from many different regions. The ceramics recovered from the site were inscribed in ink in a range of different languages. As many as 147 inscriptions were in Chinese, 26 in Arabic, and 150 in the Southern Brahmi script from India. These characters are mainly inscribed around the lower sections and on the bottoms of non-glazed jars as well as on the surfaces of flat bowls (Kimura Reference Kimura2016: 121–130). The ceramics represent two facts: inscriptions on pottery were a continuing tradition from an earlier period (Ray Reference Ray2019) and long-distance maritime networks existed in the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.
The larger issue that this paper is concerned with is the more complex task of identifying linkages between monastic sites and changes in these networks over time with the emergence of new monastic centres. The emphasis on Buddhist religious architecture and its unique features in this paper has left several questions unanswered, such as: To what extent was the religious shrine or temple a motivating factor in providing anchorage to mobile communities? Studies (Mishra and Ray Reference Mishra and Himanshu P.2017) have shown that the religious shrine was not merely a place of worship but played a larger role in providing social cohesion to the lay community. Monastic and temple-centred religious institutions formed an important intermediate group between the state and the family. Thus, the temples and monasteries were not only centres of devotion and worship, but were also principal institutions for establishing laws and enforcing them on their members in the period between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries. The importance of the temple in the cultural life of the community was not limited to India alone. Skilling (Reference Skilling and Harris2007) argues that rituals were essential to the functioning of the Thai State. “Ritual needs influenced trade, since certain ritual paraphernalia – for example the cāmara, the whisk fashioned from the tail of the yak – had to be imported over long distances” (Skilling Reference Skilling and Harris2007: 183). One final issue that remains to be addressed is how the formulation of interconnectedness between Buddhist religious architecture across the seas as discussed in this paper differs from the secondary writings available on the theme. This is addressed in the final section to locate the paper within current trends.
Historiography of Trans-oceanic Contact
Monuments have been considered as significant markers of ‘civilisation’ and intercultural contact across the seas. These magnificent structures first drew the attention of Europeans who travelled to Asia from the sixteenth century onward. It is significant that the Buddha and Buddhism are rarely mentioned in Graeco-Roman texts and it was largely through early Christian writing that some information on Buddhism filtered into Europe (Karttunen Reference Karttunen1997). As European missionaries travelled to Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they discovered a new religion that they labelled as bauddhamatam or Buddha's point of view. In addition, missions travelled to Tibet and Siam and the resulting accounts exposed Europe to writings on Buddhism. For example, in 1687–88, Simon de La Loubère published Descriptions du royaume de Siam containing translations of Buddhist texts in what he called balie or baly. By 1860, the large collections of Buddhist manuscripts and texts that are now available in oriental libraries and institutions of the West ensured that it became “a textual object, defined, classified and interpreted through its own textuality” (Almond Reference Almond1988: 13).
These beginnings framed an understanding of cross-cultural dialogue through the prism of colonisation and the spread of Indic influences termed as ‘Indianisation’ as a result of French writings on the archaeology of Southeast Asia. The Director of EFEO George Coedès (1886–1969), the author of the pioneering study titled The Indianized States of Southeast Asia Footnote 7 praised these attempts at rediscovery of the Indian heritage of colonisation and the interactions between Indian and French scholars of ‘Further India’ and ‘Greater India’ continued well into the 1950s (Bayly Reference Bayly2004: 703–744). The most strident critic of the concept of Indianisation was Oliver W. Wolters (1915–2000), the British historian, academic and author who taught at Cornell University. He put forward the idea of selective ‘localisation’ of Indian cultural elements and emphasised the innovative and dynamic character of Southeast Asian societies. He argued that:
…unless there is convincing evidence to the contrary, Indian materials tended to be fractured and restated and therefore drained of their original significance by a process which I shall refer to as ‘localization’. The materials, be they words, sounds of words, books or artifacts had to be localized in different ways before they could fit into various local complexes of religious, social and political systems and belong to new cultural ‘wholes’…. Not only did Indian materials have to be localized everywhere, but those which had been originally localized in one part of the region would have to be re-localized before they could belong elsewhere in the same sub-region. (Wolters Reference Wolters1999: 55–56)
Wolters believed that while there was often ubiquitous evidence of foreign elements in Southeast Asia's past, these elements could and should be ‘read’ as what he termed as ‘local cultural statements’. In other words, Wolters argued that the Southeast Asian past was like a text that we can read, and that while the language of that text might be Indic or Sinitic, the statements that were made were ultimately local, such as Khmer or Vietnamese. Hermann Kulke suggested the concept of ‘convergence’ in between the courts on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, linked by intensive maritime trade relations and being united in a mutual process of civilisation (Kulke Reference Kulke and Schulte Nordholt1990: 8–32). This evolutionary process of early state formation in the first millennium AD was not restricted to Southeast Asia. In many parts of eastern, central, and southern India, too, in the same centuries, a similar ‘trajectory’ of political and socio-economic evolution as in Southeast Asia was observed. Kulke (1990) thus suggested that it was the State and the political elite that were the agency for initiating cultural change.
The magnificent religious architecture in Asia was seen as the outstanding achievement of political dynasties and royal patronage – a theme that continues to be repeated in recent writings. For example, the USA based Sanskritist, Sheldon Pollock suggested that a linguistically homogenous and conceptually standardised form of Sanskrit political poetry came into use almost simultaneously across the subcontinent as also in Southeast Asia. “Power in India now had a Sanskrit voice” (Pollock Reference Pollock2009: 122). Sanskrit, through the medium of kāvya or poetry, came to define a global cultural formation or ‘cosmopolis’ that at once transcended political boundaries and religious affiliations, uniting intellectuals and their masters in a common aesthetic culture which stretched across a wide geographical expanse. This theory of the Sanskrit cosmopolis found support from some archaeologists such as Pierre-Yves Manguin (Reference Manguin, Dallapicola and Verghese2017: 24–36), though others have argued against it (Brown Reference Brown, Dallapicola and Verghese2017: 38–50) claiming that it essentially reformulates an earlier theory of the spread of Indian influence to Southeast Asia and does not take the unique features of Southeast Asian cultures into account.
While suggesting a ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’, Pollock does not take into account the fact that a detailed analysis of the inscriptions from Southeast Asia shows that as in India, there is no overall pattern that is followed. For example, though inscriptions in Sanskrit and Khmer are found in Cambodia, bilingual records from Indonesia are rare and the monolingual Sanskrit inscriptions tend to be in verse, similar to north Indian inscriptional practice (Daud Ali Reference Daud, Manguin, Mani and Wade2011: 283). In contrast, inscriptions in central Thailand are dated from the fifth to the eleventh centuries and the languages used include Pali, Sanskrit, and other vernacular languages (Prapod Assavavirulhakarn Reference Prapod2010: 72).
It is important to reiterate that the written record in Southeast Asia, as in India, was diverse and included not only inscriptions on stone and copper plates but also stamp seals and other objects inscribed with Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil legends that have been found in south Thailand (Boonyarit Chaisuwan Reference Boonyarit, Manguin, Mani and Wade2011: 86). These have been dated from the first century BC to the first century AD, while the rectangular prism seals are assigned a time bracket of the second and first centuries BC based on corresponding prism seals in India (Bellina Reference Bellina2017: 592–613). A third and second century BC ring-stone that is exquisitely carved and made of mud-stone was found near the site of Khao Sam Kaeo in 2014 together with high tin bronze bowls. Ring-stones are characteristic of sites in the Early Historic Ganga Valley that extended into eastern India. So far, 32 ring-stones have been recorded. All these ring-stones have been characterized as sacred objects or jewellery moulds and in addition, one of them from India is inscribed (Bennett Reference Bennett2017).Footnote 8 An inscribed, small, flat rectangular touch stone was identified as belonging to the third and fourth centuries AD. It is now preserved in the temple Museum of Wat Khlong Thom in south Thailand. The eight letters inscribed in Tamil-Brahmi script read together as perumpataṉkal meaning ‘(this is) the (touch) stone of Perumpataṉ’. Perum means big and pataṉ (pattaṉ) means goldsmith. Therefore, Perumpataṉ is either the title or the name of the goldsmith who had this touchstone. The information drawn from the languages used in Southeast Asia is both diverse and complex.
Recent writings such as Acri (Reference Acri2016) have displayed a fervour to shift the balance to Southeast Asia and to emphasize the centrality of the Indonesian archipelago and the Malay peninsula as sacred locales of the ‘Buddhist cosmopolis’ from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. In doing so, they have taken recourse to biographies of Buddhist masters who travelled between India and China (Sundberg and Giebel Reference Sundberg and Giebel2011) and portable objects such as bronze idols and unbaked clay sealings. They have also relied on the use of the Siddhamatrka script that originated in Nalanda and spread to Indonesia and Thailand to suggest a Buddhist Esoteric or Tantric system across Maritime Asia from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries. Nalanda was seen as a centre of the Asia-wide Tantric network by the ninth century (Hall Reference Hall2010: 21). These exchanges have often been discussed as a part of diplomatic and economic exchanges across the seas, where Nagapattinam, a small town on the Tamil coast, is defined as a port (Acri Reference Acri2016: 16; Sen Reference Sen2003). Singularly missing in these writings are discussions of religious architecture located within its cultural context and its interactions with other sites in the region and across the seas, as discussed in the section on Nalanda.
Finally, it is evident that the shared culture that extended across not only South Asia, but also the Indian Ocean was part of a literate tradition, which was by no means controlled by the ruler or the brahmana, but included Buddhist and Jaina monks, navigators, and trading and crafts groups. It is important to appreciate that this shared culture was far from homogenous and instead incorporated affiliations to a diversity of faiths and belief systems. This paper suggests that it is time to shift the emphasis from national to trans-national histories and to draw networks of knowledge and learning into the discussion.
Acknowledgments
Grateful thanks to Prof. Heejung Kang for the invitation to present a paper at the conference on ‘Maritime Silk road in Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Culture,’ held at the National Museum of Korea, Seoul on 1 December 2018 and to the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant for travel support.
