Lack
of Talent and Backwardness of the People of Southeast Asia:
The
Problem of Local Genius
Ria
Meiliza Sudirman, University of Indonesia
Journal for Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
1. Introduction
The
region of Southeast Asia which stretches out from the mainland of Asia until
the Indonesian and the Philippine archipelagoes is the most scattered part of
the world. The region of Southeast Asia has certain similar characteristics,
i.e. each is located in the equatorial area or the tropics with is warm and
humid climate dominated by the dry and rainy seasons. This special climate, in
fact, influences not only flora and fauna of this area, but also its people.
In
this most scattered and extensive region during the centuries a variety of
people and cultures arose each with its own language. We can clearly see that the
people of Southeast Asia have their own physical characteristics which, in
general, are different from those of the Chinese people in the East or those of
the people of India in the West. Although it is obvious, that in the formation
of the people of Southeast Asia the influence of India and China has been
great, as was the influence of the Melanesian people who are darker and have more
curly hair, one cannot reject the fact that the people of Southeast Asia can be
distinguished from the people who surround them, so we can call the people of
Southeast Asia the brown race or if we want to use a name, the Malay race.
Accepting
that the people of Southeast Asia are not the original natives and that they
have experienced many intermixtures for hundreds and thousands of years, we
cannot escape to recognize that the region of Southeast Asia as well as the people
expresses a unity which is striking. Here, I would like to discuss a name for
Southeast Asia as well as for the people who inhabit it. The name that I would like
to discuss is Bumantara, i.e.
combination of the words Bumi (land)
and Antara (between) which has
introduced by Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana in 20th anniversary of the creation
of ASEAN. The reason of the name Bumantara
is because in fact what we call Southeast Asia—which consists of Burma, Laos,
Thailand, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines
and Brunei—is the unification of the regions as well as the people which are
different from China and India.
2.The
Problem of Local Genius
The
lack of a name to indicate the area and the people of Southeast Asia as a unity
and as a totality, so that various names have been used like Further India, Indo-china, Netherlands Indie, L’Inde Esterieur, Greater
India, Little China, have very often been considered as evidence for the
unimportant meaning and position of the people as well as the cultures of
Southeast Asia. They did not have special characteristics, did not procedure
great personalities and great creations like India, China, and the Middle East.
In the past in these areas no great philosophers, religious builders have
arisen and neither great kingdoms comparable to the kingdom of Tsin Chi Huang
Ti in China, the kingdom of Asoka in India, the Roman empire under August.
Von
Eickstedt was even sharper in expressing his ideas about the Palae-Mongoliden which according to him
inhabit the whole area Southeast Asia. For him the race of Palae-Mongoliden of Southeast Asia of Bumantara was a retarded
branch of the Mongoloid race, the
most backward in its physical development. Furthermore, he explained that like
the Veda race which is a backward
branch of the European race, the Palae-Mongoliden
race represented the very weak part of mankind which was pushed out from the
highlands of Asia and escaped to the dense of jungle of the tropics: They were border races from a biological as
well as spatial aspect. Their capacities to develop themselves were not strong
to break the ever increasing strangling hold of an unfavorable environment and
space seeking arch morph races.[1]
Sutan
Takdir Alisjahbana (STA) has rejected the idea that the people who inhabited
Southeast Asia belonged to the weakest races which escaped from the highlands
of Tibet and South China because they were defeated in their struggle for
survival in the highlands of Central Asia as indicated by Von Eickstedt. If
Eickstedt’s hypothesis was true, then the European, the Japanese, and many
other races should all belong to the defeated races too, which left the
highlands of Tibet which Von Eickstedt called the Bio-dynamic Centre where the human race and many animal species
developed in the course of evolution.[2]
STA
argued that the people of Southeast Asia or the Malays belong to the weaker
races. On the contrary they were full of vitality and adventurous spirit
because they were always on the move, courageously crossing the limitless
oceans as if they were pushed forward by a restlessness which they were not
able to suppress. The fertile and rich plains on the mainland of Southeast Asia
were left behind: they built ships which were able to overcome continue their
adventures as if far on the horizon there was a paradise waiting for them, as
sometimes vaguely indicated in their myths.[3]
STA
emphasized that the races which Von Eickstedt called Palae-Mongoliden, i.e. the Malay race with its brown-yellowish skin
who we want to call the people of Bumantara, are not a race lacking in talent
and skills. It’s because in the course of history they have had various great
achievements such as testified by their social structure, they religious
beliefs, expressed in their mythologies as well as in their rituals. Concerning
this matter, Milton Osborne wrote: Southeast Asian and foreign scholars alike
come to recognize that Indian and Chinese influence had been overemphasized in
the past and that insufficient attention had been paid to fundamental
similarities existing in the societies making up the region.[4]
At the same place he said, “Indian artistic and architectural concepts played
an important part in development of Southeast Asian art. Yet the glorious of
Pagan, Angkor and the temple complexes of Java stem from their own individual
character, just as the exquisite Buddha images that were created in Thailand
are quite different from the images to be found in India. Even in Vietnam,
where dependence upon an external Chinese cultural tradition has clearly been
more significant than elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the strength of non-Chinese
life, particularly below the level of the court., belies any picture of that
county as a mere receiver of ideas, unable to offer traditions of its own.”
The
people of Bumantara have many extraordinary creative capacities. So, that none
of the writers on Southeast Asia has failed to emphasize the greatness, the
grandeur, and the beauty of the arts which have been created in Burma, Laos,
Thailand, Kampuchea, Vietnam, as well as Indonesia and the Philippines. The
influences of India and China have not resulted in an imitation of
architecture, of sculpture, of paintings, of dances from these great cultural
traditions, but have created work of arts quite different which often in their
greatness, grandeur, and beauty surpass the architecture and art of India and
China. It is not surprising when Bernard Groslier[5]
wrote that around the third century BC the deltas of Burma, Siam, and
Indochina, the Malaysian peninsula, and the further the Indian archipelago became
centers of original cultures, centers
of cultures created by local artists themselves. On the same page, he quoted
the remarkable statement of Rene Grousset: ‘their spiritual colonies
represented by Borobudur and Angkor, continue India’s greatest title to fame,
her contribution to mankind.’
What
is the local genius of the Malay people, the people of Southeast Asia, and the people
of Bumantara? This question is very important in relation to the exceptional
blossoming of the society and culture of Southeast Asia after its encounter
with India. How was possible that after the reception of the influence of the
spiritual culture of India in Southeast Asia emerged great kingdoms with a
magnificent architecture and beautiful sculpture besides a great literature,
dance and music, in many respect even greater than those created by India?
In
the 19th century and at the beginning of this century, this question
has been widely discussed and many people assumed that the great kingdoms with
their splendid buildings and beautiful works of art were the creation of Indian
Satrias who were chased out of India
or left their country in search of adventure. There were also other groups who
gave the honor to the merchants who brought India’s culture to this part of the
world, where they traded and where part of them settled down. From these
standpoints, the active and creative groups were considered to be the people
from India, while the people of Southeast Asia were only passive receivers.
It
was the great merit of Van Leur[6]
who indicated the important role of the Malay people in seafaring and trade in
South Asia. He indicated that it were the Malay merchants and seafarers
themselves who played the important role in the spreading of Hindu and Buddhist
religions. He also indicated that the Indian merchants usually stayed in the
harbors, along the coast, whereas the center of the great kingdoms which was
the center of the Malay-Indian culture usually was in the interior. Van Leur’s
argument was later elaborated by Bosch[7]
with new arguments, that it was the people of Southeast Asia who held the
important role in the reception of the influence of India’s high culture and in
this way changed their own primitive cultures into a high culture.
In
the Conference of the Malaysian Society
of Orientalist, Kuala Lumpur, STA was stressed in his speech that the
blossoming of the culture of Southeast Asia after its encounter with Indian
culture did not take place under political domination: the people of Southeast
Asia were fascinated by the religious culture of India and considered the
acceptance of its elements as a blessing and advantage for their life and their
culture.[8]
This is not surprising, since the Indian people who came to Southeast Asia or
those whom they encountered in India travels had already thought and
contemplated far and thoroughly about the spirits and mysterious forces within
the cosmic process. While in the Southeast Asian native culture the concepts of
the spirits and other mysterious forces were still rather vague in their forms
as well as in their functions, in Indian high culture these spirits and
mysterious forces had developed into gods with clear personalities and
characteristics as a symbols of the natural forces—whose functions were
arranged in a certain hierarchical order in the cosmic process as well as in
the life of man. The entire system of beliefs has been very rationally
formulated within the framework of the doctrine of Atma-Brahma and
Maya-Nirvana.
Thus
the people of Southeast Asia did not feel that their religion and culture were
suppressed and oppressed, on the contrary, they felt that their religion and
culture developed and gave them new enthusiasm and creativity. In the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana,
the greatness and beauty of the concepts and imagination of Indian high culture
are clearly expressed. The Javanese people have added new figures from their
culture to the heroes of the Mahabharata, Semar, Gareng, Petruk, Bagong.
Interesting is that these Indonesian figures on various occasions appear to be
wiser and more powerful than the heroes of the Mahabharata. Rassers[9]
in his book The Panji Roman,
explained to us that the pattern of Ramayana is essentially in accordance with
the pattern of the stories and myths of the Southeast Asian people.
In
the Indian teaching of Karma and incarnation was witness that the beliefs of
the Southeast Asian people in the wandering spirits which we have called animism have been elaborated more
rationally, so that it required an ethical function in life. Meanwhile, it should
be recognized that this rational and strong ethical function has contributed to
the division of the India society in a rigid hierarchy based on the belief
incarnation. During its life the human being, whatever its efforts maybe is not
able to change it destiny which is already determined at his birth. Viewed from
this standpoint, the concept of incarnation has become the most important
ground for the development o the rigid caste system and feudalism in Indian
life. It is fortunate that the people of Southeast Asia did not accept the
caste system as in India.
In
social life feudalism created centers of power and political life, from there
developed a strong dynamism, enabled by the progress in central organization,
supported by laws and technological progress, as a result of the progress of
rational thought. Great personalities emerged who were not able to develop in
the small communities of Bumantara.[10] This
whole process of the emergence of new larger entities in the form of kingdoms,
had its impact on every aspect of life: the small economy of the village was
broaden to become a part of economy of the kingdom with a great exchange of
commodities and labor; the small village community become a part of the larger
organization, taken care of by a hierarchical
system of civil servants, with a clear cut division of labor, supported
and protected by the armed forces and
the police of the kingdom.in the context of the larger unity of the kingdoms,
we can understand the possibilities for the erection of great buildings of
temples as centers of religion or of palaces of the kings, besides other great
achievements such as the creation of a large irrigation system.
These
organizations extended their influence to the whole life of human endeavor and
provided the possibility for a
blossoming, not only of the economic life and religious institutions, but also
art, commerce, and industry. In this connection, it's very important that the
people of Southeast Asia accepted from India the art of writing because through
it, they were not only able to read the various work of philosophy, science,
and literature from India, but more important was that a native philosophy,
literature and science developed which opened new social and cultural
perspectives.
Thus,
by the influence of the Indian culture, the cultures of Southeast Asia which
were the culture of small communities with very limited possibilities started
to move, expand, and blossom. The emergence of great kingdoms in Southeast Asia
after the first century like Funan, Sriwijaya, Majapahit were only possible
because of the spiritual as well as the material revolutions which had taken
place in the life of the society and culture of the small communities.It
is here not the place to elaborate on the existence and achievements of the
great kingdoms. I would like only to indicate that what took place in the
fields of politics, technology, economics, and social life is expressed with
greater vigor and exuberance in spiritual life. The development of religion was
concentrated around the king in his palace; he was considered as an incarnation
of the Gods. Religious thought and belief with its abundance of Gods, holy
powers and ceremonies reached its apex in the philosophy and doctrine of
Atma-Brahma and Maya-Nirvana. From the palace cultural life radiated until the
small villages.
It
was in this time that palaces of the great kingdoms became centers of spiritual
life, and especially or artistic life. Dance and music blossomed. We know that
the art of wayang and the gamelan music have their origin in the
native cultures of Southeast Asia. The same can be said of the art of batik, the art of wood and stone
carving, and architecture. The stories of Mahabharata and Ramayana gave a
dynamic content and a new broadness to the aesthetic life if the small
communities, especially the art of architecture and sculpture experienced a
tremendous growth. It
is indeed only in the context of the exuberant development of the life of
society and culture as a whole as is expressed in the emergence of the great
kingdoms, in the hierarchical organizations of the civil servants and the army,
in the development of economic life in a large area, in the formation of law,
and in the spiritual blossoming in religious and aesthetic life. We can
understand the creation of the great, powerful, and beautiful architectural
monuments like Angkor Vat, Borobudur, Prambanan, and many others.
In
my opinion, in the large area of Southeast Asia which did not produce great
systems of philosophy and religion because of a lack of a strong, rational
creative thinking, arose a strong intuition, an enthusiasm, and a creative
imagination of art which dominate the whole life of society as well as the
individual. I do not need to elaborate on the arts of Southeast Asia or Bumantara
because so many books have been written on the arts in Burma, Thailand,
Kampuchea, Vietnam, and Laos, besides the arts of Indonesia and the
Philippines. About the arts in Indonesia, STA has already written a long essay
in Indonesia: Social and Cultural Revolution[11] under the heading of The Profusion of the Arts.
In
his book The History of Southeast Asia,
D. G. E. Hall wrote: “The art and architecture which blossomed so gorgeously in
Angkor, Pagan, Central Java, and the old kingdom of Champa are strangely
different from those of Hindu and Buddhist India. For the real key to its
understanding one has to study the indigenous cultures of the peoples who
produced it. All of them, it must be realized, have developed on markedly
individualistic lines.”[12]
Meanwhile,
Philip Rowson wrote in his book The Art
of Southeast Asia: “Most interesting of all, there apparently existed a
fairly advance native artistic tradition in Cambodia and Cochin China, probably
in perishable material. For hen the earliest versions in stone of Indian
prototypes were made there, they were far from being more copies, or even
transcriptions. The sculptures of Indian ion produced in Cambodia during the 6th
to the 8th century are masterpieces, monumental, subtle, highly
sophisticated, mature in style, and unrivalled for sheer beauty anywhere in
India”[13]
About
Angkor Vat, Malcolm Mac Donald wrote in his book Angkor and the Khmers,[14]
“Angkor Vat is the supreme masterpiece of Khmer art. Built I the first half of
the 12th century, it is an ASEAN contemporary of Notre Dame de Paris
and Chartres Cathedrals in France. But in spaciousness and splendor it is more
ambitious than any of them, indeed, with the possible exception of Banteai
Chmar in Cambodia, it is said to be largest religious building ever constructed
by man.”
Furthermore
he said about Angkor Vat: “It combines a glorious mixture of qualities. It
sprawls spaciously, and yet its overall proportions are perfect; there is a
suggestion of austerity about its simple, massive design, but the details of
its decoration are in places riotously lovely, and contrast between its wide,
smooth, grassy enclosures and its acres of sculptured masonry is almost
theatrical. The galleries, stairways, libraries and shrines in its courtyards
are palatial, and they stand solidly. No building on earth seems surer of
itself.”
This is natural in the grand climax of several centuries of building by a race of architectural geniuses. [15] Whoever has seen the performance of the dance and the drama of the Ramayana in Thailand, Java, and Bali, and also have seen the dance and drama of Ramayana in India will realize that the first three cultures have created out of the Indian story of Ramayana a dance and drama which by far surpass in greatness and beauty the dance and drama of Ramayana created by India. By accepting the tendency and the power of the creativity in the art of the cultures of Southeast Asia or Bumantara, we can maybe interpret the expression of Rabindranath Tagore when he visited Bali: that of the dancing Shiva the ashes remain in India and the dance is in Indonesia.
3. Conclusion
The
cultural relation between Southeast Asia and India in the past indeed has
developed on the basis of the characteristics and native capacities of the
Southeast Asian or Bumantara people. From the rich culture of India, they only
took elements and traits which fitted their own native potentialities in order
to be able to strengthen their own ambition in exuberant enthusiasm to create
forms of beauty and grandeur in the arts.
Arriving
at this point, we can define the local
genius of the people of Southeast Asia or Bumantara as the strength of its
creativity aesthetic power, parallel to an openness to accept, assimilate and
synthesize the concepts and ideas of other cultures in an integrative
structure, realizing a new form of equilibrium and greatness.
References:
Alisjahbana, Sutan Takdir. 1965. The Cultural Problems of Malaysia in the
Context of South Asia. Kuala Lumpur:
Malaysian Society of Orientalist.
-------------,
1961. Indonesia: Social and Cultural
Revolution. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur.
Bosch, F.D.K. 1961. The Problem of Hindu Civilizaton in Indonesia in Selected Studies in
Archaeology. The Hague.
Rowson, Philip. 1967. The Art of Southeast Asia: Cambodia,
Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Java, and Bali. New York.
Donald, Malcolm Mac. 1987. Angkor and the Khmers. London: Oxford
University Press.
[1]Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, Stutgart, 1934, p. 205
[2]Ibid
[3]Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, The Cultural Problems of Malaysia in the Context of Southeast Asia. Malaysian Society of Oriientalists, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, p. 27
[5]Bernard Groslier & Jacques Arthaud, Angkor, London, 1957, p. 30
[7]F.D.K. Bosch, The Problem of Hindu Civilization in
Indonesia in Selected Studies in Archaeology. The Hague, 1961.
[8] S. Takdir Alisjahbana, Ibid., p. 27
[11]S. Takdir Alisjahbana, Indonesia: Social and Cultural Revolution, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961
[12]D.G.E. Hall, Ibid., p. 4
[13]Philip Rowson, The
Art of Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Java, and Bali.
New York, 1967
[15]Ibid,
102, 103
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