Discuss how power was understood and maintained in the Indianised kingdoms of Southeast Asia.
INTRODUCTION.
This paper attempts to look into some common traits showed by three Kingdoms, namely: Srivijaya, Angkor and Ayudhya, in order to probe into these kingdoms’ understanding and maintenance of power. Religion, succession and the concept of mandala are selected as outstanding features contributing to the understanding of power for certain kingdoms and the paper also look into the administration, law and last but not least diplomatic relations with medieval China and India during the period as the means how maintenance was done. Although there are similarities among the three Indianised kingdoms, important differences will also be highlighted. Throughout the paper, emphasis is placed on the indigenous elements in all aspect of thought and state craft because these Kingdoms did not blindly adapt, but selectively adopted suitable foreign influences.
UNDERSTANDING OF KINGSHIP
In traditional Southeast Asian history, religion played an important part in providing the people and any man of prowess with an understanding of the part they were to play. Likewise, Buddhism provided the moral justification for the rulers’ legitimacy, models of ideal kingship and certain prescription for the rulers’ behavior in the moral sphere for Ayudhya kings. The ideal of Universal Monarch was important because it provided the rationalization for resistance for a particular king. It could be explained that just as there were those who would take heed the teachings of the Buddha there were also those who would resist against it. The added political imperative was that submission of tributaries was tied directly to a king’s superior status in Buddhist moral terms.
For instance, the founding monarch of Ayudhya, Uthong, might well come from a Chinese, non royal background. He based his claim to kingship on his marriage into local ruling family, Lopburi, because of their lack of a male heir. Uthong also married into the ruling house of Suphanburi, and his claim to kingship undoubtedly was strengthened by his marriage alliances with two most important ruling houses of central Menan Basin. As Uthong had a shaky stand in the Muang politics in the early days, hence it is not strange that the Tamnan documents strengthen the legitimization of Uthong by tracing his origins through a long chain of Buddhist kings back to the Buddha, making Uthong a link in the continuity of Buddhist tradition.
Furthermore, the heart of classical Southeast Asia Buddhist notions of what constituted royal legitimacy was the karmic concept of merit. Borommakot, the last relatively successful king before the misfortunes that preceded Ayudhya’s fall, faced the problem of knowing his personal store of merit. The king was always in implicit competition with potential rivals. Therefore, the anxiety concerning one’s merit status was an intrinsic condition of being a Buddhist king.
However, Buddha was not the only deity the kings used in defining their kingship. Cambodia kings in Angkor tied strongly the relationship with Siva. No single religion in Angkor operated exclusively, Jayavarman II, in additional to being a Sivaite Devaraja, proclaimed himself to be a Buddhist cakravartin. Angkorian inscriptions often make simultaneous use of Hindu and Buddhist concepts.
Thus, the Angkor Wat was suggested by Coedès to be a monument dedicated to Vishnu, as its builder, Suryavarman’s patron-deity was Vishnu. The reason for this leaning towards Vishnuism reflected that this cult was more capable than Sivaism of inspiring devotion (bhakti), the mystic pouring out of the soul towards divinity. Hence, rulers sought to search for more powerful deities to uphold their power in the moral realms.
At this point, it is interesting to point out the importance of localization. Local perception of earth and ancestral spirits coincided with the similarity of Siva’s role. Jayavarman II, himself took up the cult of Devaraja to signified the ritual and ideological connections between Cambodian kings and Siva.As a result, the ability of the Angkor kings to choose a suitable deity to fix the commoner's attention on themselves as the patrons of agriculture became the reason for their enduring legacy.
On the other hand, the use of religion to legitimized the kingship had it flaws as well. The building program of Javavarman VII may be the greatest of all Khmer monarchs, and it may be claimed that his reign represented the apogee of Cambodia, but he impoverished his people with heavy taxation and insatiable demands for forced labour and military service. His megalomaniac actions created a vicious circle: the anxiety to prove to the people of the merits he had achieved in the present life. Also, the anarchical spirit of Sinhalese Buddhism proved to undermined the prestige of the sovereign so much so that the "god king was thrown from his altar."
There are three ways an early Southeast Asia ruler could claim rights to succession: a patrilineal relationship with a historical personages; a matrilineal relationship with a more distant famous historical personages; and bilineal relations with mythical figures. It was the way how a king was chosen that one could see how the nobility understand kingship.
Vickery noticed a recurrent thread in the inscriptions of three overlords of Angkor in that they claimed the highest possible position in lineal descent from senior line of the ancestors. This was seemed as compatible with the presence of a conical clan whereby status was defined by the seniority of descent from the earliest ancestors. Thus, overlordship could be passed, laterally between brothers rather than downward to the next generation, a situation plagued by problems over the succession, and therefore, a possible cause of friction.
On the other hand, Kirsch pointed out that Khmer royal genealogies, which emphasized kinship connections through female links, were not primary aimed at demonstrating legitimacy by birth. Rather such genealogies were a list of the family lines of the claimants’ political allies who had assisted them in gaining and holding power against their rivals. Also, the main contenders for the throne were likely to be half siblings, sons of the late King born of different mothers of queenly rank. These contenders then had partrilineal kinsmen in common but were distinguished by having different matrilineal kinsmen who might be called on to support their claim to the royal power.
From above, the two differing views reflected the pragmatic way leaders handled succession. If partrilineal ties to a previous ruler could be claimed as well as to other distant illustrious rulers, then it was done.Although, Southeast Asia rulers had religion such as Hinduism and Buddhism as legitimizing concepts, they were too general to have any stabilizing effects. Hence, the lack of strict rules of succession lead to the weak political cohesion.
The emergence of kingdoms in Southeast Asia seemed to be tightly connected with the leadership of charismatic leaders. The so called Kingdoms were actually the result of the prowess of an individual leader which would dissolve quickly when the charismatic leader died or lost the confidence of his allies.
The attraction of such leaders lay in his lineage, the support he obtained from his kinsman or he might display his special status by some rituals, for example; Jayavarman II performed the ritual on Mount Mahendra in 802. Hence, people were attracted to such leaders on the basis on extended kinship and when his sphere of influence grew. Indeed, this demonstrated that authority in Southeast Asia was dependent on the control of manpower.
In addition, the concept of a multicentered political system is a necessary framework for an analytical study of the actual structure of the early state in Southeast Asia.O.W Wolters noticed that the evidence reflects the multiplicity of regional centers in Ancient Angkor. Thus, such kingdoms were in fact a patchwork of intersecting mandalas(circle of kings), each claiming lordship over its territory and hegemony over the other rulers who in fact his allies and vassals. The mandalas of the Thai state of Ayudhya was, to some extent, the same mandala which the Khmer rulers had once claimed to control but with its overlord in a new center. This was in practice an unstable situation; mandalas expanding and contracting in relation with the power of the center, without fixed political boundaries and where the periphery states looked in all directions for security.
Considering this outlook, one could perceive a pattern: at the beginning of each cycle, political power and economical control were scattered among hamlets ruled by individual chiefs. The second phrase began with the emergence of a man of prowess, who using military skills and a band of loyal followers consolidated authority and built a centralized polity. At the peak of the cycle, the king controlled a centralized state and its revenues. However, within a few generations, when the center became weak the outlying tributary states then declared their independence and decentralization follows.
MAINTENANCE OF KINGSHIP.
The administration of Traditional Southeast Asia was mainly in the hands of the aristocratic hierarchy. The chief offices were held by members of the royal family and of the great sacerdotal families which exercised religious functions and intermarried with the royal family. The King seldom interfered in the administration: indeed his chief function was to preside over the many religious ceremonies considered necessary to the welfare of his realm. The sovereign was seen as the pivot of the political organization of the state. He too, was bound by the rules of the princely caste and by the maxims of policy and royal conduct, and he was the guardian of the law and established order. Thus, the King appears less as an administrator than as a god on earth.
For example, Angkorian government was in the hands of the aristocratic oligarchy, and great offices were held by the members of the royal family. Even Brahmanic families were often related to the royal family, these two castes representing the intellectual element and Indian culture, constituting a class separate from and superior to the masses.The system was not maintained by established appointments and bureaucratic procedures, but rather by favour, influence, cliques and sponsorship. It was more effectively to retained a hold on the provinces by attracting the devotion of regional landowners and spiritual leaders than by coercion. Therefore, Southeast Asia state systems remained highly personalised in administrations and dependent on the mystical for legitimization.
Despite this, a highly developed administration could be seen from a wide array of inscriptions in Angkor. Court Officers were divided into four categories: they were divided into ‘inner and outer’, into ten ranks according to the different status of the four’ houses’(eka, dva, tri,and catviri), and into left and right divisions for ceremonial purposes. However, supra-regional administrations were divided into categories eka, tri, catviri. ( The ruler, the abdicated ruler, the heir, the chief queen.)
A similar bureaucratic structure based on a metaphysical concept of the state could also be found in Ayudhya. All royalty and officials were ranked according to the genealogical proximity to the monarch. The heir apparent was the Lord of the Eastern house, while the other sons were ordered as Southern, Western or Northern princes, in the order. Similarly, the Queens who were ranked below the princes were ranked in the same way. The royal family was supported by four chief ministers who were responsible for administration, regulatory, judicial and governmental functions and they also played a role in linking the peasantry to the king and ultimately to the divine or universal.
The main disadvantage of such an administration could be seen in the instability of provinces in the early days of Ayudhya. The persistence of some locally or regionally based power, represented in personal relationships with local elite demanded reconciliation and not alienation. Therefore, that arose the practice of sending Ramathibodi’s line of princes to rule Lopburi and Borommaracha’s line to Suphanburi. This was done mainly to appeased the two territorial powers.
There has always been an uncritical acceptance of the proposition that many Southeast Asia laws are Hindu derived. This fallacy is based on the simple similarity of the content or the subject-matter between some Southeast Asia texts and the law of Manu. Although early Southeast Asia rulers had laws familiar with Great Tradition Indian laws like the various Dharmasastras and the Arthasastra, recent research has established that early Southeast Asia had local indigenous laws that were more influential than the Dharmasastras and the Arthasastra, which came into use far later than had previously been assumed.
The king was the fountain of justice who could absolve penalties already imposed and to whom subjects had a right of petition, there was usually a local tribunal and the process of litigation closely resembled the Indian vyayahara-matrka.The laws seemed to be more concerned with domestic and communal affairs than with large-scale administrative affairs, and the ruler acted approximately as arbiter in the disputes of his people.
From the limited evidence of the documents, Angkor had a consistent tradition of laws on the question of land ownership and the ownership of slaves, but these were not codified and it seemed to be just commands which established no precedent. Although, King Bhavavarman I was know to have two councilors versed in the Dharmasastra and Arthasastra, the brahmans introduced some political ideas found in Kautilya’s Arthasastra which offers no philosophical basis for the relationship between subject and sovereign, but insists upon religious sanction of the subject’s duty of obedience.
.Nevertheless, the Ayudhyan polity was said to have been formally structured. The Dhammasattaham was known to be in use as a Thai view of law. Uthong was attributed to the Law on Evidence, the Law of Abduction and the Law on offences against the People. The significance of the Thai laws is three fold: First it was subjected to periodic revisions; second, the use of concrete categories rather than schemes of abstract principles and third, there were the rules of conduct of the Monarch. However, as the nature of Thai’s Muang politics was highly fluid, the application of law and justice thus, remained decentralized at the periphery.
Thus, this decentralised character of law forced the early Southeast Asia rulers to come up with visible and easily understandable rituals for their periphery vassals. In fact, one of Suryavarman’s first actions in reaching Yasodharapura were to arrange that an oath of loyalty be sworn to him publicly, by as many as four thousand officials, known as tamvrac, at the newly constructed royal palace. The oath has survived in an inscription, the only one of its kind. It states that officials will be loyal to the king and promises dreadful punishments on those who stray. The oath closes by asking that those who keep it be awarded religious foundations to administer. Therefore, the oath marks an intensification of royal power and also the imposition of a newly constituted elite connected to the control of land.
Similarly, in three imprecation inscriptions, the Telaga Batu, the Kota Kapur and the Palas Pasemah, the contents of the inscriptions is divided into 3 parts: First, an invocation to all divinities; the Second, curse on all evildoers and traitors and the last, blessings on all those who submitted to the rule of Srivijaya. The shape of the stone on which the Telaga Batu inscription was curved and the seven-headed naga carved in relief above the inscription indicated that it had an additional function. It is believed that it must have been used for the oath-taking ceremonies. Water was poured over the stone and collected in the depression below the inscription. The water would then be drunk by the various chiefs. This would mean that they were now bound by the holy oath. Hence, such local indigenous rituals might be more useful than Hindu laws.
An important skill for a leader in traditional Southeast Asia was to have up-to-date information on what was happening on the fringe of the mandala. This was of vital importance as threats could be anticipated. Rulers who maintained communication with distant places were able to cultivate far-reaching geographical perspectives easily. For example, the Angkorian ruler was in communication with Tamil ruler in southern India and Vietnamese ruler in Thang-long, in 1592: the Thai ruler of Ayudhya offered to invade Japan for China well knowing that his offer would be kindly denied but the gesture appreciated.
Early Ayudhyan period showed that the Chinese played a significant indirect role in the competition for the throne of Ayudhya. The rival families attempted to enlist Chinese support even though China never intervened directly in the internal Ayudhyan politics. The degree of interest the Thai leaders demonstrated in seeking Chinese support was well reflected in their frequent in their frequent dispatch of missions to China. Because, the Chinese emperor usually accepted only missions from reigning kings, and therefore acceptance of such missions was a confirmation of de facto kings as de jure rulers of Siam. Thus, by establishing tributary relations with China, a ruler in Ahudhya could strengthen his position politically as well as economically.
On the other side of the coin, Srivijaya tried to gain the patronage of the emperor of China through cultural contacts, in order to keep other vassals in their place and to counteract the new commercial autonomy developing among some Southeast Asia polities. For example, in 1097 the Srivijaya ruler Diwakara, had a Taoist temple at Canton repaired, to which the emperor of China donated some bronze bells.
The friendly attitude of Chulamanivarmadeva toward the two great powers of the era-China and Cholas of Tanjore- made it possible for his son to have a free hand against Java in revenge for the Javanses aggression of 992. However, The expansionist policy and the commercial methods that the kings of Srivijaya were obliged to apply to maintain themselves in this privileged position were bound to put them soon in conflict with the Cholas. The conflict occurred shortly after Srivijaya had accomplished its aggressive designs against Java, thus bringing to an end the temporary need for conciliating the Cholas.
CONCLUSION.
It seems clear now that the uniqueness of the political
structure of these Indianised kingdoms is attributed to their
ability to incorporate foreign influences into their own
indigenous structure and the persistence of local power elements
at the periphery of the mandalas. The elite used religion to help
the people accepted their suzerainty and they themselves
perceived power through the practical means of succession. Faced
with problems particular to their kingdoms, one see unique ways
such kingdoms sought ways of administration, laws and foreign
relations to retained their kingdoms. Thus, this process of
integration and structural change which emitted from the courts
to the extended core areas was perhaps the most important change
which took place during the short period Indianised kingdoms in
Southeast Asia History.
BIBLIOGRAPHY