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AMITAV ACHARYA, Civilizations in Embrace: The Spread of Ideas and the Transformation of Power. India and Southeast Asia in the Classical Age. Singapur: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013. 88 pages, 22 color photos, US$ 32.90. ISBN 978-981-4379-73-1
The title which renowned Southeast Asian scholar and political scientist Amitav Acharya has chosen for his latest book embodies the major thrust and content of his main argument: when two ancient civilizations - the Indian and the Southeast Asian - met, they embraced, and they did not clash.
While much has been written about the spread of Greek and Roman ideas in the Mediterranean, the diffusion of Indian ideas - political and religious - in Southeast Asia has received much less scholarly attention (one of the best known scholars in this field is Hermann Kulke, see e.g. Hermann Kulke / Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India, 5th ed., London: Routledge 2010, Chapter 3, Part 4). This book manages to fill this gap. In six chapters, Acharya chronicles the transmission and spread of ideas originating from India to Southeast Asia over a period extending from the fourth to the fourteenth century, focusing on the diffusion of Indian religious (Buddhist as well as Hindu) and Indian political (kingship and statecraft) concepts. The study explores how those ideas and concepts were instrumental in the process of increasing the legitimization of...