South-East Asian Proto-History

Abstract

The term ‘Hinduization’ has been generally applied by scholars to the impact of Indian culture upon South-East Asia. Coedès goes so far as to term the states which developed under its influence les états hindouisés, in spite of the fact that Buddhism played an important role in the movement, and Theravada Buddhism¹ ultimately became the dominant faith of Burma and Arakan, the Tai states and Cambodia. And whereas Hinduism disappeared before Islam in the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia at the end of the European Middle Ages, Buddhism continued to receive the staunch allegiance of the countries it had conquered.