Southeast Asian Empires(Mandala)

Which seat of power was greatest in Southeast Asia?

I would say Angkor and Srivijaya were great for its time. Even surpassing their mother civilizations from mainland South Asia in glory and sophistication .

Later Ayuttaya and Majapahit were dominant forces

Burma was stronk, but they were mainly just occasional invaders

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_(political_model)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bubat
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palapa_oath
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>I would say Angkor and Srivijaya were great for its time. Even surpassing their mother civilizations from mainland South Asia in glory and sophistication .
ok.

Khmer Empire existed longer than Ottomans. So they are pretty based.

Bagan :DDDD

what time period?

there's a decent chance the peoples who built borobodur and similar things aren't even really reltaed to the people who live there now. it was pretty cool, and why they couldn't sustain what they were doing is a question for all time as to whether they were incompetent or unlucky.

the khmers outright disappeared. the dai are probably responsible for part of it, but it's obvious they were regressing backwards beforehand, andthe dai just scattered remaining evidence to the wind.

I give the torch to the dai. but they obviously only came about some half a millenia ago.

whichever built the most pyramids (heaviest total)

What criteria are you using? Trade? Military power? Cultural influence? Why write such baity OPs?

>surpassing their mother civilizations from mainland South Asia in glory and sophistication .
what did he mean by this

Once upon a time southeast asia culturally was an extension of India

Like how North Africa pre-islam was an extension of Europe, then post-islam an extension of the Middle-East

Or how Vietnam is an extension of the Sinosphere

Indian culture still has an impact on SEA.
SEA culture doesn't have greater impact on india.

Angkor is clearly the best, possessing the largest pre-industrial city in history, the greatest architecture of its time and the greatest cultural and political legacy by laying down the foundations of later Thai states. Bagan and Mataram almost equaled Angkor in their art and architecture, but their influence mostly remained in their countries of origin.

Srivijaya's just a big meme known only for briefly hosting some decent Buddhist libraries or something. I don't know why people act like it's something special. It's basically Mali with Buddhism instead of Islam.

Ancient texts state that the Khmer empire rose to power once they freed themselves from "Jawa". Historians belive it means the Khmer Empire was a Javanese colony. It explains the similarity with buildings such a Prambanan.

After much research Ive come to think SE Asias mother culture is from Java. Even Cham sources suggest Javanese influence

For example most of SE Asia followed the Devaraja cult of the king where the King was an literal incarnation of Shiva. This originated in Java I believe

>Historians belive it means the Khmer Empire was a Javanese colony
Most believe it just meant there was some Sailedra influence in the country, since there's no evidence anywhere else that it was any kind of 'colony'. Others attribute it to a mistranslation.

>It explains the similarity with buildings such a Prambanan.
Angkorian architecture grew out of earlier Chenla architecture which flourished in the early 7th century AD before the Javanese started to build their famous temples in the later 7th and 8th centuries. There are a few Javanese-influenced temples, but these are a minority. Angkor also derives its urban tradition from Chenla and earlier Funan, while early Java was a civilization without cities.

>After much research Ive come to think SE Asias mother culture is from Java.
SEA's mother culture is India. Java was definitely an important center in the maritime world, but it was hardly a 'mother culture'. Different centers seem to have developed under Indian influence relatively independent from one another and influenced by different Indian regions; Burma was mostly influenced by the Palas and Sri Lanka for example, having little connection with the rest of Southeast Asia until much later. Java mostly adopted influence from the Tamil Pallavas. Angkor and Chenla developed as Funan's coastal urban culture was transferred to the agricultural interior. Etc.

>Even Cham sources suggest Javanese influence
The Cham were a maritime Austronesian culture and were definitely politically close with Java, as were the Malays, but the inland empires were less close.

I used to think Java might be a kind of mother culture too, at least in places like Cambodia, but the more I read into the more I realise that's wrong and it's probably a mistake to treat Southeast Asia as a single region with a common development. The Austronesian and Indochinese worlds experienced separate and very different developments, and the only things they really share is Indian influence.

A book I read said Chenla and Funan were not Khmer and was either Javanese ethnically or an unknown ethnicity

There is even speculation of Dvaravati in Thailand.

So much speculation involved in se Asian history. The mystery makes it even more fascinating

As far as I know there are plenty of Chenla inscriptions in Khmer, so there isn't much doubt there. Then again, Chenla wasn't really a single state but a group of related states that might have spoken different languages, but I'm not aware of inscriptions in anything other than Khmer and Sanskrit. Funan is a bit more vague though, and I suppose it's possible that before the expansion of Angkor there were probably a wider range of Mon-Khmer or maybe Austronesian languages spoken in the Mekong Delta.

The Dvaravati were probably also Mon-Khmer speakers, but the exact language they spoke I'm not sure about.

>Khmer Are Best Mer, thai n'wahs out! REEE!!!

most underrated region

shailendras were GOAT architects

>Srivijaya's just a big meme known only for briefly hosting some decent Buddhist libraries

Other than being center of buddhist learning the srivijayans were also adept merchant and sea explorers, at some point int time they were colonising madagascar

> The migration to Madagascar accelerated in the 9th century when Srivijaya controlled much of the maritime trade in the Indian Ocean.[34] The migration to Madagascar was estimated to have taken place 1,200 years ago around 830 CE. According to an extensive new mitochondrial DNA study, native Malagasy people today can likely trace their heritage back to the 30 founding mothers who sailed from Indonesia 1,200 years ago.[35] Malagasy contains loan words from Sanskrit, with all the local linguistic modifications via Javanese or Malay, hint that Madagascar may have been colonised by settlers from the Srivijaya.[36] At that time, Srivijaya was expanding its maritime trade network.

And artists.

all these empires and so little things we know about them, man i would kill for some more detailed record about the chola invasion of srivijaya

...

Malagasy came from Borneo and they weren't Malays. Some Sanskrit loanwords might mean that they were influenced by Srivijaya, but there's no way it was an outright Srivijaya colonisation.

I was memeing calling Srivijaya shit, but they do seem to be pretty overblown on this board. They were just a loose confederation of Malay ports, barely even a coherent state. They left very little behind in either art, architecture or literature and were almost completely forgotten by later Malay states until rediscovered by modern researchers.

...

>They were just a loose confederation of Malay ports, barely even a coherent state

not true, they were a thallasocratic empire. the telaga batu inscription mentioned the administrative workings of the empire with all of them swearing allegiance to the king.

rājaputra (princes, lit: sons of king),
prostara (ministers),
bhūpati (regional rulers),
senāpati (generals),
nāyaka (local community leaders),
pratyaya (nobles),
hāji pratyaya (lesser kings),
dandanayaka (judges),
tuhā an vatak (workers inspectors),
vuruh (workers),
addhyāksi nījavarna (lower supervisors),
vāsīkarana (blacksmiths/weapon makers),
kumārāmātya (junior minister),
cātabhata (soldiers),
adhikarana (officials),
kāyastha (municipal officials),
sthāpaka (artisans),
puhāvam (ship captains),
vaniyāga (traders),

research on the srivijayas were hard because of how all over the place their traces was. and that most of their architecture were made of woods with stone being the exception

What does that have to do with being a unified state? Regional rulers swearing loyalty to a more powerful ruler sounds far more like a loose confederation than unified empire. It was the same with Majapahit, where direct rule only existed in eastern Java and the rest of the 'empire' was just a sort of hegemony. At least that's how most historians interpret the data.

>Early Srivijaya was neither an empire nor a chieftaincy but a typical Early Kingdom, characterized by a strong centre and surrounded by a number of subdued but not yet annexed (or "provincialized") smaller polities. The unique feature of Srlvijaya's future development was its peculiarity that it never succeeded, or perhaps even never tried, to change this structure of its bhumi polity... In fact, one may even argue that the longevity and the flexible greatness of Srivijaya was based on the very non-existence of those structural features which historians regard as a prerequisite of a genuine empire.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_(political_model)

I really hate this concept. Generalizing all Southeast Asian states with a single unified 'Mandala System' is extremely simplistic and completely ignores the variation throughout the region. Srivijaya was hardly anywhere near as unified as somewhere like Angkor. Central power becoming more diffuse towards the peripheries is something common to almost all pre-modern states, it makes no sense to treat Southeast Asian political systems as something completely unique and uniform. Just like early states all over the world, they ranged from hegemonic empires with only small core regions under direct royal rule like Srivijaya and Majapahit, to massive sprawling empires like Angkor with road systems spreading out from the center to regional administrative centers under direct control of the state.

Anyway I'm not trying to say Srivijaya wasn't a real political entity, I'm just saying it wasn't very unified outside the relatively small capital region, like other hegemonic empires.

>subjugate most of modern day indonesia
>can't take control of the entirety of Java

Why was this?

Java as a whole is pretty fertile, so I guess the kingdoms in western Java were fairly powerful and hard to subjugate, while all those other islands were fairly sparsely populated except around the coasts and thus easy to subjugate by a far more populous kingdom. Plus, Majapahit was mostly interested in controlling trade and thus more interested in the seas than the rest of Java.

I don't know about borneo in particular, but almost the entire region is a malayam stratum of one form or another ntil you get to java. the north stratum of the phillippines is also malayam.

I love this shit carved into city walls. cool as fck

largest might not be correct. certainly the largest pre-iron age city. but don't discount accounts of hangzhou and suzhou in ancient china. they were literally cities that never ended. pre-industrial urban sprawl. they were so larget hey developed their own languages.

in some cases, generalizations are more accurate than individuations, because political models become competetive equilibriums, which, if not obeyed, quickly lead to death.

not saying this was necessarily the case in SEasia. but it was definitely the case in china and in eurpe post-westphalia. deviate from the schelling poin/mandate of heaven, and you get destroyed. no room for variation.

It's ironic that after Srivijaya fell, no one in the region remembered their past glory. No one recognised the ruins or remembered stories of a great kingdom that once stood. Really made you think huh?

there's a decent chance they were replaced completely by invasions of lower iq people. the things they accomplished were not replicated ever, anywhere in the region, and the closest appromixations came 1k years later, far to the north, to a people who were themselves migrants into the area and conquerers, which suggests that srivijayans were killed and replaced

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bubat

tl;dr the majapahit prime minister fucked up big time and accidentaly slaughtered the entire sunda royal family. the shame was so great that the majapahit empire just kinda forget sunda existed and that the bali kingdom even make a book about this event dissing the majapahit

also this was so infamous because the majapahit prime minister that fucked the whole thing was actually the most famous and mos tcompetent general in majapahit's history. before sunda he already conquered the whole modern indonesian territory plus malay peninsula, southern pillipines and timor

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palapa_oath