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Hypotheses on the Unity and Differentiation of Cultures: Patterns of Architectural Development in Monsoon Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
One of the major problems (or sometimes pseudo-problems) that archaeologists and historians encounter in the study of ancient cultures is the need to differentiate and to identify the sources of the various concepts, techniques, institutions, forms, designs, motifs, etc., that, at any given moment of time, form the constituent elements of the culture or cultural product to which they have turned their attention; or—to pose the question in its proper framework—to analyse the process of cultural formation inherent in the subject of their study. Such considerations have a special significance for archaeologists, whose essential concern is with the often incomplete assemblages of material remains left behind by the cultures and civilizations of the past, and whose central task is to enumerate and reconstitute the structures and processes that were operative in the societies in question. The study of acculturation—culture change, cultural diffusion, “stimulus diffusion,” culture contact, etc.—has been part of the theoretical and empirical concerns of anthropologists and sociologists since some decades ago, and the subject of an old and now almost abandoned debate. While the terminology of the social sciences concerned with living societies can also be found in archaeological and historical discussion, such concerns have had inadequate application in the fields of archaeological and historical practice. What has dominated and, to a great extent, continues to dominate historical studies is what we might call “the ‘theory’ of influence” and its corollary, “the migration hypothesis.” Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to say that one of the leading aspects of the study of a past society or culture is the concern with the “parent” culture(s) which influenced it, or the search for the location of its “migratory origins.” While this is especially true of studies relating to the societies of the Third World, it is not exclusively so—as we see, for instance, in the case of European prehistory. The immediate epistemological sources of such approaches are not difficult to identify, being principally located in 19th century diffusionism and, as we shall see shortly, in colonial ideology.
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- Copyright © 1980 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 Coedès, G., The Indianised States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu, 1968, p. 252.
2 Irwin, J., "Art and the East India Trade," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. CXX, 1972, p. 450.
3 Reflecting, on the one hand, an understandable reaction to colonial histori ography and, on the other, the tendency of specialists to see only the primacy and distinctiveness of their own areas of specialization and to ignore transcultural patterns outside their focus of attention. Perhaps it is unfair to Irwin—the admiration for whose work is in no way diminished by the above observation— to reproduce his comment outside the context of his paper as a whole, but there is no doubt that the lack of a theorical approach and the dominance of empiricism in the British and British colonial traditions of scholarship in the historical and social sciences, has encouraged the latter of the two tendencies noted above.
4 What is meant by "pseudo-architectural" is that these superstructures serve more an expressive and monumental than an architectural function; like sculpture, they occupy space, rather than enclose it. Thus, these masonry temples have superstructures which are capable of being fashioned in a great variety of shapes and forms, to such an extent that sometimes the sculptural ideas completely dominate the architectural conception.
5 For example, the Central Javanese monuments in Indonesia, Dong Duong and Mi-Son in Vietnam, Angkor in Cambodia, some of the masonry monuments at Pagan, Burma and the phra prangs and the superstructures of the mondops and prasats of Thailand.
* The meaning of the words marked thus is given at the end of this article.
6 In certain countries where the timber tradition was generally dominant, there were relatively limited periods in which a large number of important masonry structures were erected. This phenomenon seems to be linked with epochs of great economic prosperity when "extravagant" imported ideas were adopted on a substantial scale and developed into distinctive local styles.
7 For brief surveys of the Sri Lankan architectural tradition see: Paranavi tana, S., "Architecture (Ceylon)," Encyclopaedia of Buddhism (ed. Malalase kera), Vol. of Specimen Articles, Colombo 1957, pp. 8-22; Godakumbura, C.E., Architecture of Sri Lanka (The Culture of Sri Lanka, 5), Colombo 1976; Ban daranayake, S., "The Historical Architecture of Sri Lanka," Viskam, Colombo 1976, pp. 16-34. For a detailed study of the archaeology of the Buddhist monasteries of Anurādhapura, see: Bandaranayake, C., Singhalese Monastic Architecture; the Vihāra of Anurādhapura, Leiden, 1974.
8 Bandaranayake, S., op. cit., 1974, pp. 351-378.