The spread of Sanskrit in Southeast Asia (original) (raw)

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The Spread of Sanskrit in Southeast Asia*

Johannes Bronkhorst

Sanskrit makes its first appearance in inscriptions in South Asia during the early centuries of the Common Era. It then gradually takes over and becomes the inscriptional language par excellence in the whole of the South Asian subcontinent and much of Southeast Asia. For almost a thousand years Sanskrit ‘rules’ in this enormous domain. Sheldon Pollock (1996,2006)(1996,2006) speaks for this reason of the ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’, which he dates approximately between CE 300 and 1300 .

How do we explain the strange vicissitudes of the Sanskrit language? Was it a lingua franca for trade, international business and cultural promotion? Is the spread of Sanskrit into Southeast Asia to be explained by the same reasons that also explain its spread within the Indian subcontinent?

Pollock, by using the expression ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’, draws attention to the political dimension of the spread of Sanskrit. One defining feature of the Sanskrit cosmopolis, he states (1996: 197), ‘is that Sanskrit became the premiere instrument of political expression in the polities that comprised it, those of most of South and much of Southeast Asia’. He rightly points out that Sanskrit was not a lingua franca: 1{ }^{1}

[1]

1. Sanskrit’s spread was effected by traditional intellectuals and religious professionals, often following in the train of scattered groups of traders and adventurers, and carrying with them disparate and decidedly uncanonized texts of a wide variety of competing religious orders, Saiva, Buddhist, Vaiṣnava, and others. […] There is little to suggest […] that Sanskrit was an everyday medium of communication in South let alone Southeast Asia, or that [it] ever functioned as a language-of-trade, a bridge-, link-, or koiné language or lingua franca (except among those traditional intellectuals) […] ↩︎

Pollock continues: ‘We have little direct evidence that Sanskrit actually functioned as a language of practical imperium - the medium of chancellery communication or revenue accounting, for example - certainly not in Southeast Asia, almost certainly not in peninsular India or the Deccan […]’

The hypothesis he then goes on to propose (pp. 198-99) is
that Sanskrit articulated politics not as material power - the power embodied in languages-of-state for purposes of boundary regulation or taxation, for example, for which so-called vernacular idioms typically remained the vehicle - but politics as aesthetic power. To some degree the Sanskrit ‘cosmopolis’ I [i.e. J.B. Pollock] shall describe consists precisely in this common aesthetics of political culture, a kind of poetry of politics. 2{ }^{2}

Further explanation follows on p. 199: ‘Constituted by no imperial power or church but in large part by a communicative system and its political aesthetic, the Sanskrit ecumene is characterised by a transregionally shared set of assumptions about the basics of power, or at least about the ways in which power is reproduced at the level of representation in language, and Sanskrit’s unique suitability for this task.’ Having discussed the epigraphical and related evidence from a number of regions, Pollock then depicts the situation around CE 1000 in the following passage (pp. 229-30):
A traveler around the year 1000 […] would have seen, from the plain of Kedu in central Java to the basin of Tonlé Sap in Cambodia, from Gangaikoḍacoapuram in Tamil Nadu to Patan in Gujarat and beyond, imperial formations that had many features in common. The material and social ones I have ignored here: their largely hierarchized societies, administered by a corps of functionaries, scribes, tax collectors, living in grand agrarian cities geometrically planned in orientation to the cardinal points and set within imaginary geographies that with their local mountains, rivers, and springs recapitulated the geography of India, urban structures ‘freighted with cosmic symbolism, helping one to visualize the order of things’ […] It is their common political-cultural, especially literary-cultural, features I have emphasized: the existence of cultural and political élites assiduously mastering the intricate codes and protocols of Sanskrit poetry, and the publication of their works throughout these cities, in varying degrees of density and grandeur - stately public poems in Sanskrit engraved on the ubiquitous copper-plates recording gifts and donations, or on stone pillars looming up from gigantic architectural wonders.

There was thus, I think, a certain concrete reality to the ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’, one that does not exist only in the retrospective gaze of the historian. For a millennium, and across half the world, élites participated in a peculiar supralocal ecumene. This was a form of shared life very different from that produced by common subjecthood or fealty to a central power, even by shared religious liturgy or credo. It was instead a symbolic network created in the first instance by the presence of a similar kind of discourse in a similar language deploying a similar idiom and style to make similar kinds of claims about the nature and aesthetics of polity - about kingly virtue and learning; the dharma of rule; the universality of dominion. A network, accordingly, wherein the élite shared ‘a broadly based communality of outlook’, and could perceive ‘ubiquitous signs of its beliefs’.

Readers may be surprised to see that this passage makes no reference to

Brahmans. Isn’t there an old and well-established link between Sanskrit and Brahmans? Can one speak about the spread of Sanskrit without speaking about Brahmans that presumably travelled with the language? Pollock speaks very little of Brahmans in these publications. 3{ }^{3} Where he does so, his aim appears to be to weaken or even deny the link between the two. He does so, for example, where he criticises the notion of ‘legitimation’. 4{ }^{4} He cites (p. 236) in this connection the following passage from an article by Hermann Kulke (1990: 20 ff .):

At a certain stage of this development Brahmins ‘came hither’ [to mainland Southeast Asia] in order to legitimize the new status and wealth of these chiefs. Obviously there existed a tremendous need of additional legitimation which obviously no other traditional institution was able to provide fully … Brahmins appear to have been invited particularly as a sort of ‘extra’ legitimators of a new and more advanced type of authority which was not sanctioned by the traditional societies of South-East Asia. … Obviously in both [South India and Southeast Asia] there had existed the same or at least similar sociopolitical needs for a new type of legitimation. 5{ }^{5}

Pollock is very critical about the notion of ‘legitimation’, and he argues that ‘there is no reason to accept legitimation theory’. 6{ }^{6} However, he seems to think that the rejection of ‘legitimation theory’ also does away with the question of the connection between Brahmans and Sanskrit in south India and Southeast Asia, for he does not return to it. And yet, there is ample evidence to show that there were Brahmans in virtually all the regions that were affected by the spread of Sanskrit. Even if one were to accept that legitimation theory does not explain their presence in all those regions, this hardly justifies leaving their presence altogether out of consideration. Innumerable Sanskrit inscriptions, both in India and in Southeast Asia, testify to the presence of Brahmans, who were no doubt involved in many, if not most, Sanskrit inscriptions. It is a fair question to ask whether the users of Sanskrit in all these regions were not preponderantly Brahmans. Even if one were to admit that ‘legitimation’ was not the reason why these Brahmans were there, this is no reason to deny that they were there, and that their presence was intimately connected with the use of Sanskrit in those regions.

By disconnecting Sanskrit from Brahmanism and from Brahmans, Pollock can formulate the questions relating to the spread of Sanskrit in terms of the language itself rather than in terms of its users. This allows him to propose his hypothesis of ‘politics as aesthetic power’. A consequence of this disconnection is that ‘we cannot simply read off automatically from the choice to express political will in Sanskrit any particular social consequences (e.g., hierarchization, hegemony; the production of false belief)’ (p. 245). No, the qualities of the language itself have to account - if not fully, then at least to a large extent - for its extraordinary expansion: 'This had to be a language of transethnic attraction; a language capable of making translocal claims […];

one powerful not so much because of its numinous qualities […], but because of its aesthetic qualities, its ability somehow to make reality more real. […] These aesthetic qualities, moreover, are authenticated by the language’s possessing a tradition of literary texts that embody and realize them’ (pp. 23940). Indeed, ‘the unique expressive capabilities of Sanskrit poetry allow the poet to make statements about political power that could be made in no other way’ (Pollock 2006: 139). 7{ }^{7}

All this leaves one with the apprehension that the traditional connection between Sanskrit and Brahmans has been too hastily disposed off. Pollock is no doubt right in rejecting ‘the received account that imagines a “resurgence of Brahmanism” leading to a “re-assertion of Sanskrit” as the language of literature and administration after the Maurya period’. Indeed, one of the consequences of the main argument of my book Greater Magadha (2007) is that Brahmanism did not resurge after the Maurya period but commenced at that time its spread over the subcontinent and beyond for the first time. We are, as a matter of fact, confronted with two remarkable instantiations of spread: the spread of Brahmanism and the spread of Sanskrit. And the question that cannot be avoided is, were these two really unconnected? Is it not more likely that they had something to do with each other?

In order to answer these questions we must be clear what we are talking about. Pollock’s observations about the spread of Sanskrit are enlightening and, by and large, sufficient for our present purpose. But what is meant by ‘spread of Brahmanism’? The expression Brahmanism can be used to designate the religion and culture of the Veda, but it is only in a very limited sense that these can be said to have spread during the period following the Mauryas. No, the spread of Brahmanism was primarily the spread of Brahmans as Brahmans. That is to say, a region is Brahmanised when its population, or its rulers, accept the Brahmans that have settled there as by right the most eminent members of society. This population, or these rulers, are not so much converted to a different religion: no converts are made to Vedic religion or to any other specific religion promulgated by the Brahmans. No, these populations or rulers are made to accept a different vision of society, in which Brahmans are highest because they have access to the supernatural. An important instrument in the hands of the Brahmans is their knowledge of the Veda, a collection of texts which the vast majority of the population is not even allowed to hear recited, much less study. It is their often secret knowledge that gives them the power to work for the good of a kingdom, its ruler and its population. It also allows them to do the contrary, and this is an important reason to humour them.

For reasons that are not at all clear at present, Brahmans succeeded in the course of time to convince many rulers that it was a good thing to provide them with what they needed to carry out their rites and do whatever else

would benefit the kingdom. The growing presence of Brahmans all over South Asia is well documented, but they also showed up in Southeast Asia, even in countries that became Buddhist: ‘even in states where Hinayana Buddhism prevailed, Brahmans played an important ceremonial part, especially at Court, and still do so in Burma, Siam and Cambodia, though themselves strikingly different from their counterparts in India’. 8{ }^{8}

The oldest known inscriptions in Indonesia - we read in The Economic and Administrative History of Early Indonesia (Van Naerssen & De Iongh 1977: 18) - are those of East Borneo. Here there are seven stone sacrificial posts, called yūpas by archaeologists, that date from around CE 400 . What is written on them is described in the following terms: 9{ }^{9}

In clear, well written Sanskrit verses Mūlavarman ‘the lord of kings’, his father Asvavarman, ‘the founder of a noble race’ - and his grandfather, ‘the great Kulotunga, the lord of men’ - are mentioned on the occasion of a sacrifice. ‘For that sacrifice’, we read on one of the stone poles, ‘this sacrificial post has been prepared by the chief amongst the twice-born [dvija, JB]’. (‘Twice-born’ is applied to the members of the brahmanical or priestly caste.) Apparently these ‘priests [vipra, JB] who had come hither’ (as is written on the second pole) were rewarded by king Mūlavarman for their religious services. Thus the third inscription sounds: ‘Let the foremost amongst the priests and whatsoever other pious men hear of the meritorious deed of Mūlavarman, the king of illustrious and resplendent fame - (let him hear) of his great gift, his gift of cattle, of a wonder-tree […], his gift of land. For this multitude of pious deeds this sacrificial post has been set up by the priests.’

A Sanskrit rock inscription in West Java dating from about CE 450 deals with an occasion on which the Brahmans were presented with 1,000 cows. 10{ }^{10}

About Cambodia we read: 11{ }^{11}
In Cambodia the Brahmans for many centuries maintained a powerful hierarchy. They were the only one of the four castes that was really organized, this caste having taken form in the fifth century and been constantly augmented by immigrants from India. 12{ }^{12} In the days when Yaśovarman was king (acceded A.D. 889), Saivism was predominant, and we learn from the following inscription that the Brahmans still enjoyed a position similar to that which was theirs in India:
'This king, well-versed (in kingly duties), performed the Koṭi-homa and the Yajñas (Vedic sacrifices), for which he gave the priests magnificent presents of jewels, gold, etc. 13{ }^{13}

The cult of the Royal God, though founded by Jayavarman II (CE 802), did not reach the height of its development until some two centuries afterwards, and was especially associated with Vaiṣnavism and the temple of Angkor Vat. This cult led to the Brahmans enjoying an even more exalted position. The Cambodian hierarchy was established by Jayavarman II, and the priesthood became hereditary in the family of Śivakaivalya, who enjoyed immense power; indeed, this sacerdotal dynasty almost threw the royal dynasty into the shade. 14{ }^{14} Brahmans were depicted on the reliefs of Angkor Vat and Coedès has identified Droṇa and Viśvāmitra amongst them. 15{ }^{15} In one of the reliefs that illustrate a royal procession, it is interesting to note that the Brahmans are the only onlookers who do not prostrate themselves before the king, as was also the case in India. 16{ }^{16} […] Another

point of interest that we learn from the reliefs of Angkor Vat and Angkor Thom is that not only the Brahmans, but also the aristocracy wore the chignon, the lower classes having short hair. 17{ }^{17}

One very remarkable sign of the power of the Brahmans during the Angkor period is that, contrary to the modern custom, by which princesses of the royal blood rarely marry, formerly alliances were common with the Brahmans; 18{ }^{18} and up to the present day there is a tradition amongst the Bakus, who are the descendants of the ancient Brahmans, that in the event of the royal family failing, a successor would be chosen from amongst them. 19{ }^{19}

As early as the reign of Jayavarman V (CE 968) we find evidence of the admixture of Mahāyāna Buddhism with the cult of the Royal God.
‘The purohita should be versed in Buddhist learning and rites. He should bathe on the days of the festivals the image of the Buddha and should recite Buddhist prayers’. 20{ }^{20}

And the rites and duties of the purohitas remained a mixture of Hinduism and Mahāyānism until the introduction of Pāli Buddhism in the thirteenth century, 21{ }^{21} after which this powerful sacerdotal caste degenerated with their religion to the position occupied by the modern Bakus. 22{ }^{22} But the Brahmans of Cambodia perhaps never sank so low as did those of Campā, where ‘In the Po Nagar Inscription (No. 30) we read that the king’s feet were worshipped, even by Brāhmaṇas and priests’. 23{ }^{23}

King Yaśovarman of Cambodia created numerous āsramas, among them some that were specifically meant for Vaiṣṇavas, Śaivas and Buddhists. Interestingly, in all three, including the Buddhist āśrama, Brahmans had to be honoured more than anyone else: 'In the Saugatāśrama, too, the learned Brāhmaṇa should be honoured a little more than the āchārya versed in Buddhist doctrine […]2.24[\ldots]^{2} .{ }^{24}

The situation in Thailand was not independent from the one prevailing in Cambodia: 25{ }^{25}

Though the Thai were Buddhists, their kings surrounded themselves with the appurtenances of Khmer royalty, and recruited their Court Brahmans from Cambodia. For centuries, indeed, Brahmanism enjoyed quite an important position; for although Buddhism was the religion of the people, and was protected by the kings, Hinduism was still considered as essential to the monarchy, and so received a great share of royal favour. The famous inscription (about A.D. 1361) of King Dharmarāja I mentions the king’s knowledge of the Vedas and of astronomy; 26{ }^{26} while the inscription on the Śiva statue found at Kāṇbèn Bejra records the desire of King Dharmaśokarāja to exalt both Hinduism and Buddhism. And this is as late as A.D. 1510.271510 .{ }^{27}

It would be a mistake to think of the Brahmans in Southeast Asia as an endogamous group of people, as they were in India. Indeed, G. Coedès (1964: 54) cites a Chinese text from the fifth century which states that 'dans le royaume de Touen-siun [Dun-sun] il y a plus de mille brahmanes de l’Inde. Les gens de Touen-siun pratiquent leur doctrine et leur donnent leurs filles en mariage; aussi beaucoup de ces brahmanes ne s’en vont-ils pas. 28{ }^{28} (In the kingdom of Dun-sun there are more than a thousand Brahmans of India. The people of Dun-sun practice their doctrine and give them their daughters in marriage. Consequently, not many of these Brahmans do no go away.)

De Casparis & Mabbett (1992: 287) sum up present knowledge about the role of Brahmans in Southeast Asia:

Brahmins had great influence in the Southeast Asian courts in various capacities. As they had access to the sacred texts, the lawbooks and other literature in Sanskrit, they were employed as priests, teachers, ministers and counsellors: the principal advisers of the kings. Government, particularly in early centuries, depended upon such men, who were the chief available sources of literacy and administrative talent and experience. As in the early Indian kingdoms, an important office was that of the purohita, a chief priest with ritual and governmental functions. The epigraphic record of the mainland kingdoms demonstrates the powerful influence of purohitas, notably in Burma and Cambodia, where they often served under several successive rulers and provided continuity to the government in troubled times. In ninth-century Angkor, for example, Indravarman I had the services of Śivasoma, who was a relative of the earlier king Jayavarman II and was said to have studied in India under the celebrated Vedānta teacher Śankara.

About the origins of these Brahmans - where they Indians or not? - De Casparis and Mabbett have the following to say: 29{ }^{29}

If such brahmins were Indians (the Indian brahmins are indeed occasionally mentioned in Southeast Asian inscriptions), one wonders how or why they should have left India. This is the more surprising since Indian lawbooks contain prohibitions for brahmins against overseas travel, which was regarded as ritually polluting. These prohibitions may have had little practical effect, and would not have deterred ambitious men lured by the hope of honour and fortune in a distant land. It has been suggested that some learned brahmins were invited by Southeast Asian rulers at a time when commercial relations between Indian and Southeast Asian ports had spread the fame of such brahmins to the courts. It is indeed likely that this happened sometimes, but probably not on a large scale. It is, for example, striking that the Indian gotra names, never omitted in Indian inscriptions, are not normally mentioned in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, in the few cases where they are mentioned it is likely that they refer to Indian Brahmins. It therefore follows that the great majority of Southeast Asian brahmins would have been Southeast Asians, many of whom had acquired their knowledge of the Sanskrit texts and of brahmanic ritual in Indian ashrams.

The services of the Southeast Asian Brahmans extended beyond the limits of any single religion: 30{ }^{30}

Not only in the ‘Hindu’ courts, such as Angkor, but also in the Buddhist courts, such as those of Pagan in Burma and Sukothai in Thailand, the brahmins conducted the great ceremonies, such as the royal consecration, and functioned as ministers and counsellors, but had to share their influence with that of the Buddhist monks. By its very nature Buddhism was concerned with the acquisition of spiritual merit and moral perfection rather than with the rites and ceremonies of a royal court, which were left to the brahmins. The grand ceremonies in Pagan […] required the services of numerous brahmins, although Theravāda was then well established. In Cambodia, as late as the thirteenth century […], Jayavarman VIII built a temple for the scholar-priest Jayamañgalārtha, and likewise for the brahmin Vidyesavid, who became court sacrificial priest. The Chinese visitor Chou Ta-kuan refers to the presence of brahmins wearing the traditional sacred thread.

De Casparis and Mabbett (1992: 288) draw the following conclusion:
What is shown by the role of such brahmins is that it is appropriate to speak of Brahmanism as distinct from the specific cults of Śiva or Viṣnu, or any of their innumerable kin: the priests stood for a social order and for the rituals that gave to the political or local community a sense of its unity and its place in the world.

The part of this conclusion which must be emphasised is that Brahmanism is distinct from the specific cults of Śiva or Viṣnu, or any of their innumerable kin, and that the Brahmans stood for a social order. 31{ }^{31} This seems obvious and undeniable. It is yet often overlooked by scholars who wish to assign Brahmanism to the category ‘religion’. In reality, Brahmanism is primarily a social order. Only this way can we make sense of the evidence from Southeast Asia as well as of the evidence from South Asia.

It appears, then, that some of the proposals made already in 1934 (in Dutch) by J.C. van Leur still hold good. 32{ }^{32} About South Asia he said (van Leur 1955: 97): 33{ }^{33}

The chief disseminator of the process of ‘Indianization’ was the Brahman priesthood; the aim of the ‘Brahman mission’ was not the preaching of any revealed doctrine of salvation, but the ritualistic and bureaucratic subjugation and organization of the newly entered regions. Wherever the process of ‘Indianization’ took place, ‘religious’ organization was accompanied by social organization - division in castes, legitimation of the ruling groups, assurance of the supremacy of the Brahmins. The colossal magical, ritualistic power of the Brahman priesthood was the most characteristic feature of early Indian history. The rationalistic, bureaucratic schooling of the priesthood as the intellectual group, which went to make up its great worth, its indispensability even, for any comprehensive governmental organization, was […] interwoven with the sacerdotal function. The Brahman priesthood developed high qualities in that field as well, but its decisive influence came from the magical, ritualistic power of domestication it in the absoluteness of its power was able to develop.

The spread of Brahmanical institutions to Southeast Asia was hardly more than a continuation of this process (pp. 103-04):
The Indian priesthood was called eastward - certainly because of its wide renown - for the magical, sacral legitimation of dynastic interests and the domestication of subjects, and probably for the organisation of the ruler’s territory into a state.

Pollock may object to the word legitimation in these two passages. Nothing much is lost by removing it. 34{ }^{34} The factual situation remains the same. Brahmans were called to Southeast Asia (or were found in Southeast Asia; there is no reason to insist on the Indian origin of these Brahmans), and these Brahmans brought with them their sacred language, Sanskrit. 35{ }^{35}

We see that it will be hard to separate Sanskrit from Brahmans, both in South and Southeast Asia. The one complicating factor is Buddhism. What was the relationship between Buddhism and Sanskrit, and why had Buddhists

already in South Asia adopted Sanskrit for their texts? These questions require a detailed discussion, which cannot be provided within the limits imposed upon this article.

NOTES

• This is part of a more encompassing study ‘The Spread of Sanskrit’, dealing with the phenomenon in both South and Southeast Asia, which will appear in the Felicitation Volume for Dieter Schlingloff.

1. Pollock, 1996: 198.
2. Similarly Pollock, 2006: 14.
3. This in spite of the fact that he observes in another article that ‘to choose a language for literature […] is at the same time to choose a community’ (Pollock, 1998: 9).
4. Nemec (2007: 210), reviewing Pollock’s The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (2006), expresses some reservations about the rejection of legitimation.
5. See, however, Kulke, 1986: 274: ‘legitimation was not the only attraction of Hinduism for tribal leaders. As pointed out by Wolters, Hinduism must have been particularly attractive for “men of prowess” because of its highly developed system of magical power derived from meditation (tapas)’.
6. Elsewhere Pollock calls it a ‘functionalist explanation [which] is not only anachronistic, but really is a mere assumption, and an intellectually mechanical, culturally homogenizing, and theoretically naive assumption at that’ (1998: 13; cp. 2006: 18). And again: ‘It is typical […] to reduce one of these terms (culture) to the other (power) - a reduction often embodied in the use of the concept of legitimation of power. There is no reason to assume that legitimation is applicable throughout all human history, yet it remains the dominant analytic in explaining the work of culture in studies of early South and Southeast Asia.’ See further Pollock, 2006: 511 ff.
7. See further Pollock, 2006: 254 f .
8. Hall, 1968: 12. About Champa, Mabbett (1986: 294) observes: ‘Except for a short while around the end of the ninth and the beginning of the tenth centuries, Buddhism in Champa never really rivalled Hinduism. Epigraphic statistics give some idea of the relative importance of the two faiths, at least in royal and courtly circles: of 130 inscriptions published, 21 are not sectarian, 92 refer to worship of Śiva, 3 are directed to Viṣnu, 5 to Brahmā, 7 to Buddhism, and 2 to Śiva and Viṣnu jointly.’ (These numbers correspond to those given in Mus, 1934: 369.) For the fate of Sanskrit after the introduction of Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, see Bechert & Braun, 1981: xxxviii f.: this language continued to be used for some time for the secular sciences, i.e., grammar, lexicography, metrics, poetics, medicine, pharmacology, astrology, gemmology, logic. Interestingly, in Burma a work dealing with the right conduct of a king (Rājanīti) was composed in Pāli by court Brahmans (Bechert & Braun, 1981: lxi). However, ‘it seems that all Rājanīti verses are direct translations from Sanskrit’ (Bechert & Braun, 1981: lxxvii).
9. Van Naerssen & De Iongh, 1977: 18. Cf. Vogel, 1918.
10. Ibid.: 23.
11. Quaritch Wales, 1931: 58-60.
12. Aymonier, 1900-04: III: 548. Even though the system of four varnas does not seem to have taken root in Southeast Asia, this may not be due to lack of trying.

In Cambodia, according to Chatterji (1928: 239), Sūryavarman I is stated to have ‘established the division of castes’, and Harṣavarman III boasts of having made the people observe strictly the duties of the four castes. Chatterji adds, however (p. 240): ‘We do not get much substantial evidence of the other [i.e., different from Brahmins] castes however.’ See further Mabbett, 1977 (p. 439: ‘varnas [in Angkor] were largely ceremonial orders’). A text which seems to have been issued in the fourteenth century CE by King Kṛtanagara of East-Java prescribes: ‘The Śivaite’s son shall be a Śivaite, the Buddhist’s son a Buddhist, the rāja’s son a rāja, the manuh’s (common layman’s) son a manuh, the Sūdra’s son a Sūdra, and so on all classes shall follow their own avocations and ceremonies.’ (Ensink, 1978: 188)
13. Chatterji, 1928: 114.
14. Chatterji, 1928: 80 f .
15. Coedès, 1911: Pls. XII and XIII.
16. Delaporte, 1878.
17. Groslier, 1921: 58.
18. Aymonier, 1900-04: III: 531. Cp. Coedès, 1964: 219: ‘Jayavarman V [Cambodia, 10th century] maria sa soeur Indralakshmī au brahmane hindou Divākarabhaṭta, né dans l’Inde sur les bords de la Yamunā, auteur de diverses fondations çivaïtes’; p. 223: ‘Les familles brahmaniques s’alliaient souvent avec la famille royale: les mariages entre brahmanes et kshatriyas semblent avoir été fréquents, ces deux castes constituant, audessus de la masse, une classe à part, représentant l’élément intellectuel et la culture hindoue, sans qu’il faille en conclure que, du point de vue racial, cette aristocratie ait été très différente du reste de la population’.
19. Aymonier, 1920: 178.
20. Chatterji, 1928: 163. Pāsādika (2006: 468), referring to an unpublished lecture by Peter Skilling, provides the following information about the second Sambor-Prei Kūk inscription in Chenla: ‘A Sanskrit inscription … from the reign of Ásānavarman I, records the erection of a linga in Śaka 549=549= CE 627, by the high official Vidyāvisiesa, a Pāsūpata Brahman, who was versed in grammar (sābda), the Brahmanical systems of Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya, and Sāṇkhya, and the doctrine of the Sugata.’
21. Aymonier, 1900-04: III: 591. An inscription from Arakan, which Johnston (1944: 365) dates to the beginning of the ninth century, speaks of a king named Ānandacandra, who was a Mahāyāna Buddhist and an upāsaka. This did not prevent him from having four monasteries (matha) built for fifty Brahmans, ‘provided with lands and servants, furnished with musical instruments and musicians’ (pp. 38182).
22. Aymonier, 1900-04: III: 614.
23. Majumdar, 1927: Chapter 14.
24. Goyal, 2006: 221.
25. Quaritch Wales, 1931: 60.
26. Coedès, 1924: 98 .
27. Coedès, 1924: 159 .
28. Coedès explains in a note (1964: 54, n. 6): ‘Le Touen-siun était une dépendance du Fou-nan, probablement sur la Péninsule Malaise’.
29. De Casparis & Mabbett, 1992: 287.
30. Ibid.: 288. Cp. Golzio, 2003: 79 f.
31. Pāsādika (2006: 465), referring to Bhattacharya (1997), mentions the ‘synthesis of Śaivism and gruesome local cult or possibly “the” indigenous religion of Cambodia’. 'Originally this cult culminated in human sacrifices to the mountain-spirit performed

by the king himself. […] The early Cambodian kings could have had no objection to the assimilation of a primitive and gruesome cult by Brahmanism thanks to which […] the mountain-spirit […] became Bhadreśvara, i.e. Śiva […]’
32. Cp. Kulke, 1986a: 256 f.
33. On the ‘Indianization’ of Southeast Asia, see further Mabbett, 1977a.
34. Or one might replace it with protection: ‘protection of the ruling groups’ and ‘sacral protection of dynastic interests’ may give less reason for objections.
35. They also brought with them the information about the consecration of temples that we find in Indian texts such as the Kāśyapaśilpa, information which was also used in the building of Buddhist structures; see Ślaçzka, 2007, esp. Chapters 7.3 and 7.4.

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