Book Review: Upinder Singh and Parul Pandya Dhar,eds,Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories

As the editors note in their introduction, this rich collection of 10 essays, stemming from a 2011 conference in Delhi, addresses ‘the historical importance of cultural interactions across the Asian regions’ (xiii). While this might appear to suggest that equal attention is given to interactions across all regions of Asia, it should be noted that the volume adopts a decidedly South Asian point of view, as the editors tacitly acknowledge (p. xiv; ‘… while several essays deal with relations between South and Southeast Asia, others talk about the equally important connections between South and East Asia, and South and Central Asia’ [emphasis mine]). In fact, the only essay that does not include South Asia as one of its reference points is Geoff Wade’s on Ming China’s military actions in Yunnan and Southeast Asia.

The essays represent several different disciplinary approaches and relate to diverse spheres of interaction, including those of politics, trade, religion and art. With such diversity always comes the potential for lack of coherence, but this volume successfully avoids that problem, thanks to its clear chronological focus on the period from c. 500 to 1500, roughly, South Asia’s ‘medieval’ era. As a result, many of the essays share common themes or otherwise complement and illuminate one another. The one essay that does not stay within this chronological boundary (Yumiko Kamada’s discussion of early modern Deccani carpets in Japan and Europe) nonetheless fulfils an important role by vividly documenting new forms of interaction that were associated with European commercial activity at the dawn of the colonial era.

The editors have arranged the essays under four sections. Under the first section, ‘Changing Perspectives’, two essays address primarily historiographic and theoretical issues. Hermann Kulke provides a useful updating of his earlier (1990) ‘convergence thesis’ for understanding the relations between South and Southeast Asia, taking into consideration the recent work of Sheldon Pollock on the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ as well as important critiques of Pollock. In place of the hierarchical model of ‘Indianisation’, Kulke stresses the ‘social nearness’ of the societies involved in southern India and Southeast Asia, and the practical simultaneity of state formation processes in the two regions. In the second essay, Geoff Wade turns to East Asia and examines several episodes of military conflict in the context of Ming expansion into Yunnan and Southeast Asia. He stresses the need to distinguish between the unquestionably military nature of these episodes and the ways in which they have been represented historiographically as expressions of China’s paternalistic benevolence, which have served to mask the reality of the Ming state’s proto-colonial nature.

The second section, on ‘Political Connectivities and Conflicts’, opens with an essay by Upinder Singh addressing the political and religious implications of endowments given by Southeast Asian rulers (from three different kingdoms: those of the Sailendras of Java; Pagan in Burma; Srivijaya in Sumatra) in support of Buddhist religious institutions in India (Nalanda, Bodh Gaya and Nagapattinam). These ‘trans-regional’ endowments, recorded in the form of inscriptions issued by the Indian rulers, are unusual in that they appear to be the only known instances of kings making donations within the territory of another ruler, a pattern unparalleled within India itself, suggesting that Southeast Asia was conceived to represent a distinct political sphere (rāja-maṇḍala) beyond that of South Asia. In the next essay, Tansen Sen returns to the topic of Chinese military interventions, analysing two cases of Chinese-induced regime change in South Asia, one at mid-seventh century Kanauj, and the other in early fifteenth-century Sri Lanka. Intriguingly, Sen also demonstrates that a desire to acquire Buddhist relics contributed to the unfolding of these incidents. In the final essay of this section, Sunil Kumar explores the continuing Central Asian connections of the rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and their military–political elites, whose Turkish and Mongol origins have been obscured by a ‘historiographic amnesia’ brought on by Persian historians, who struggled to emphasise the differences between the Delhi Sultanate—represented as a sanctuary for Islam—and the dangers of the Mongol infidels. By carefully reading between the lines of these sources, however, Kumar is able to demonstrate both the operation of this historiographic strategy and the continuing impact of steppe customs on political and social life in Delhi.

The third section of the book, on ‘Religion, Rituals and Monuments’, opens with an essay, by Parul Pandya Dhar, documenting her attempts to piece together the assorted sculptural fragments from the ruined Buddhist temple at Dong Duong in Vietnam, and to determine the larger iconographic programme according to which the cult icons would originally have been placed within the different buildings of the complex. The architecture and sculpture of the complex is shown to have both South Indian and Chinese influences, and an imported Sri Lankan bronze image of the Buddha was also unearthed at the site, pointing to the rich confluence of influences from both South Asia and East Asia at this Southeast Asian site. In the next essay, Soumya James argues for the importance of the Goddess Durga in Angkor-period Cambodia, based on a consideration of the subjects in the sculpted pediments of the temple at Banteay Srei, their relative placement, and the worshipper’s haptic experience in moving through the monument. She suggests that the Cambodian Durga represents ‘a synthesis of an Indian divinity and a local spirit’ (p. 153), invoking Oliver Wolters’ process of ‘localisation’ (p. 138).

The final section of the book, devoted to ‘Trade, Icons and Artefacts’, opens with Osmund Boppearachchi’s essay addressing Mahayana Buddhism in Sri Lanka and its connections with merchants engaged in the Indian Ocean trade. He focuses in particular on the cult of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara as the protector of mariners, reviewing the evidence provided by sculpture and iconography, inscriptions, Mahayana texts and the recently discovered shipwreck at Godavaya. The next essay is by Suchandra Ghosh, who also addresses Buddhism and inter-regional trade, but does so by focusing on the production, distribution, and use of ‘votive tablets.’ She shows that in Thailand, these small stamped clay sealings with images of stupas or Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are concentrated in the area of the Isthmus of Kra, the location of one of the main trans-peninsular routes linking the Bay of Bengal with the South China Sea. Finally, the last chapter, by Yumiko Kamada, is devoted to a recently identified group of early modern carpets produced in the Deccan, their distribution by the Dutch East India Company, and their differing modes of reception in Europe and in Japan. She convincingly argues that these Indian carpets functioned as a medium of cross-cultural interaction, as matters of size, format and design could be changed to meet the demands of consumers in different societies.

This rich volume provides a diverse collection of case studies with which one can begin to consider the larger processes and patterns of cultural interaction across Asia’s regions. The essays raise in the reader’s mind a multitude of compelling questions. How do cultural interactions between world regions differ from interactions within a single region? What exactly is the nature of these world regions, and are there perhaps qualitatively different kinds? Are they stable throughout time, or do their boundaries and even natures shift diachronically? What are the factors that provide the basis for their definition? By considering the nature of interactions between them, can we perhaps refine our conceptions of the regions themselves? Tentative answers to many such questions are implicit in the rich data presented in the essays, but some consideration of these questions and an explicit discussion of the larger implications of the collected studies would have helped make this important book accessible to a broader readership.

As is often the case with edited volumes, the essays vary somewhat in development and in the degree to which they explicitly engage with the volume’s ostensible theme. Nonetheless, Asian Encounters presents an effectively varied complement of essays, each and every one of which has something of interest to offer the reader. Taken as a whole, the collection raises many useful questions about cross-regional interaction within Asia, even if it stops short of addressing them at a more general, theoretical level.