It is unknown how immigration, interaction and settlement took place, whether by key figures from India or through Southeast Asians visiting India who took elements of Indian culture back home. It is likely that Hindu and Buddhist traders, priests, and princes traveled to Southeast Asia from India in the first few centuries of the Common Era and eventually settled there. Strong impulse most certainly came from the region’s ruling classes who invited Brahmans to serve at their courts as priests, astrologers and advisers. Divinity and royalty were closely connected in these polities as Hindu rituals served to validate the powers of the monarch. Brahmans and priests from India proper played a key role in elevating ruling dynasties through exact rituals. Dynastic consolidation was the basis for more centralized kingdoms that emerged in Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, Burma, and along the central and south coasts of Vietnam during the 8th century.

Art, Architecture, rituals, and cultural elements such as the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata had been adopted and customized increasingly developed a regional character. The caste system, although adopted was never applied universally and reduced to serve for a selected group of nobles only.

States such as Srivijaya, Majapahit and the Khmer empire with territorial continuity, resilient population and surplus economies soon rivaled those in India itself. Borobudur in Java and Angkor in Cambodia are, apart from their grandeur examples for a distinctly developed regional culture, style and expression.

Southeast Asia is called Suvarnabhumi or Sovannah Phoum - the golden land and Suvarnadvipa - the golden Islands in Sanskrit. It was frequented by traders from eastern India, particularly Kalinga. Cultural and trading relations between the powerful Chola dynasty of South India and the Southeast Asian Hindu kingdoms led the Bay of Bengal to be called "The Chola Lake", and the Chola attacks on Srivijaya in the 10th century CE are the sole example of military attacks by Indian rulers against Southeast Asia. The Pala dynasty of Bengal, which controlled the heartland of Buddhist India, maintained close economic, cultural and religious ties, particularly with Srivijaya.



Indosphere
ধারন এবং গ্রহণ
ভারতীয়কৃত রাজ্যসমূহ
অন্যান্য ব্যবহার