This edited volume is the first of two forming an anthology that programmatically reconsiders the creative contribution of the littoral and insular regions of Maritime Asia—Southeast Asia in the first place—to shaping new paradigms in the Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture of the mediaeval Asian world. Far from being a mere southern conduit for the maritime circulation of Indic religions, in the period from ca. the 7th to the 14th century those regions transformed across mainland and island polities the rituals, icons, and architecture that embodied these religious insights with a dynamism that often eclipsed the established cultural centres in Northern India, Central Asia, and mainland China. This collective body of work brings together new research aiming to recalibrate the importance of these innovations in art and architecture, thereby highlighting the cultural creativity of the monsoon-influenced Southern rim of the Asian landmass. This approach aims at favouring the integration of these findings into the mainstream academic discourse pertaining to various disciplines, such as Art History, Archaeology, Religious Studies and Textual Studies, which too often have ignored the constitutive role played by the (supposedly ‘peripheral’) maritime regions in the genesis and development of cultural, religious, and artistic motifs across the mediaeval Indic world.

Current research increasingly shows that the Southeast Asian ‘peripheries’ were freer to innovate than the traditional ‘centres’, while the flourishing trade routes provided them with the necessary flow of human and material resources. As a result, the early kingdoms of Maritime Asia became wellsprings of cults, ritual technologies, sacred art/ architecture, and the new political models they underpinned. A transforming southern stream flowed from India and Sri Lanka, across the emerging island and littoral states, touching East Asia and eventually reaching Northeastern India, Nepal, and Tibet. For instance, images in the Chinese Mogao and Yulin caves, which have been hitherto ascribed to Tibetan influence, can now be seen to be influenced by the art of the Pallava dynasty of Southern India and related to teachings introduced to China by Vajrabuddhi/Vajrabodhi and popularized by his pupil Amoghavajra (Khokhlov, this volume). The early propagation of the new maṇḍala- and mantra-based soteriological and ritual systems beyond the subcontinent begins to be recorded in the late 7th century in the journeys of learned and enterprising monks over the so-called (land) ‘Silk Routes’.

Introduction

A unique feature of Cambodian temple complexes dating from the early to the late Angkorian periods was a small annex building (of brick and sometimes stone or laterite) with ventilation holes, built in the southeastern quarter of the main temple, which scholars have tentatively called either a ‘library’ or a ‘fire shrine’. These enigmatic structures and their function call for further investigation.

In what follows we tentatively seek to establish the original function of those structures, and its possible evolution from the early Angkorian through the Angkorian period, by analysing their peculiar architectural features against the background of the Sanskrit inscriptional record from the Khmer domains and Sanskrit transmitted texts from South Asia describing the observances and ritual practices of (Pāśupata or Pāśupata-influenced) early Śaivism. We do not deny the possibility that (some of) these annex buildings might have functioned as manuscript repositories, but rather argue that they served predominantly (or, perhaps, even simultaneously) as sacred spaces for specific Śaiva rituals, including ash-related rituals of the Pāśupata sect, as well as initiation- and homa-rituals.

Having first analysed the architectural features of the annex buildings and similar structures, for which we propose a threefold taxonomy, we review the interpretations thus far advanced by scholars on the basis of both archaeological data and Sanskrit inscriptions from the ancient Khmer domains, and start to elaborate our own in terms of a possible dual function for the buildings. Then we look for traces of Pāśupata practices and their underlying ideology in the Khmer temple architecture, in particular in the annex buildings under scrutiny, by matching the archaeological data with textual data, including Pāśupata texts and early Śaiva sources like the Śivadharmottara. We conclude by elaborating on the importance of sacred fire and the bestowal of the Śaiva gnosis by the ācārya in the Pāśupata initiation ritual, which may have provided one of the raisons d’être for the annex buildings, and by giving a brief survey of the archaeological finds recovered from some of those buildings, which would seem to support their use for homa rituals.

Architectural Features And Functions Of The Annex Buildings

This edited volume is the second of two forming an anthology that programmatically reconsiders the creative contribution of the littoral and insular regions of Maritime Asia to shaping new paradigms in the Buddhist and Hindu art and architecture of the mediaeval Asian world. Both volumes, inscribing themselves in the same intellectual trajectory of the edited volume Esoteric Buddhism in Mediaeval Maritime Asia: Networks of Masters, Texts, Icons published by ISEAS (Acri 2016), bring together new interdisciplinary research that contributes to a new sense of the historical role of Maritime Asia. Overall, they aim to recalibrate the importance of these innovations in art and architecture, thereby highlighting the cultural creativity of the monsoon-influenced southern rim of the Asian landmass. They also make a case for the importance of comparatively studying those phenomena from the prism of intra-Asian connections, taking into account circulatory dynamics while remaining anchored to the disciplinary traditions specializing on the various regions that constitute the rich cultural mosaic of Maritime Asia.

Most of the proposed studies stem from papers presented in two summer programmes held in East Java in 2016 (co-organized by the SOAS Southeast Asia Art Academic Programme [SAAAP] and the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre of ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute) and in Central Java in 2017 (co-organized by the SOAS SAAAP and Universitas Gadjah Mada). These scholarly gatherings aimed at rediscovering the influence of the Buddhist and Hindu paradigms of mediaeval kingdoms adjoining the maritime trade route. With contributions from leading local and international scholars, the anthology expands on themes of innovation and transfer in the unique monuments, icons, and rituals developed in South India and Sri Lanka, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Java, and the Khmer and Cam domains that strongly impacted Buddhist and Hindu art, architecture, and religious culture in India, Nepal, Tibet, and China, and incite to deeper explorations.

Having discussed the intellectual framework informing this collective body of work in the Introduction to Volume One (Acri and Sharrock 2022), containing nine studies mainly dealing with intra-Asian transfers and mainland Southeast Asia, we will now summarize the nine studies contained in this volume, mainly covering the regions of Odisha and Java.

The Malay Annals narrate how Sri Tribuana, sailing towards the land of Temasek that he espied while out hunting, was caught in a storm that threatened to wreck his ship. The crew could not bale the water out fast enough and the ship was in danger of being wrecked. Sri Tribuana was asked to throw his heavy crown overboard to lighten the ship. This he did, and the storm abated. The symbolism of this avoidance of shipwreck has not been satisfactorily explained. This essay searches for this symbolism of the avoidance of shipwrecks in Buddhist narratives of maritime crossings.

Seafaring Monks in Maritime Asia

The spread of Buddhism from the Indian Subcontinent to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia and China via the maritime routes goes back at least to the early centuries of the current era. Historical evidence records a steady traffic of monks travelling both eastwards and westwards along the sea routes linking the swathe of territory between the Indian Subcontinent and Japan. Written and material evidence becomes substantial from the fifth century onwards, testifying to an efflorescence of long-distance maritime contacts across Maritime Asia. This vast geographical expanse of sea and land, largely coinciding with a trans-regional “Buddhist Cosmopolis”, became the natural theatre for the journeys of hundreds of travelling monks who crossed the seas far and wide in search of texts, teachers and patrons. The vehicles of their travels were the Monsoondriven merchant ships that plied the maritime routes connecting a web of entrepôts linking the Indian Ocean to the China Sea, carrying— alongside their valuable cargos—pilgrims, diplomats and religious personalities of disparate affiliations.

Most of the monks travelling in both directions between India and China preferred the maritime route to the overland one, or at least sought to include a maritime leg in their journey, which usually included stopovers in Sri Lanka and the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. Maritime mobility of Buddhist agents, besides being numerically significant, was also quicker and easier than hitherto assumed. In spite of this, both the Jataka tales and the Sino-Japanese and Tibetan biographies of monks travelling from China to India or vice-versa make clear that travel across the maritime trading channels linking the two regions was not devoid of perils.