Cultural Acculturations in Early Time
(Archaeological Evidences for Early Indian Influences in Vietnam)
Lâm Thị Mỹ Dung
“The South China Sea (Vietnam Eastern Sea) is the first leg of the long distance trans-Asian trade route leading from China to the Mediterranean. It fed into this route the products of its own interregional exchange network. To its north, natural and manufactured products from the vast Chinese mainland were gathered in the harbors of the southeastern and southern provinces to be shipped, through various stages, to South- East Asia, the Indian Ocean countries, the Middle East and Europe. Further to its south and east, the wide variety of tropical and equatorial climes of South-East Asia produced an array of trade goods that were in high demand the world over. The peoples living around the South China Sea, another "Mediterranean" in its own right, was among the shippers and traders that kept this major trade route of the Old World in lively operation”. (Manguin P., 1993:253)
1. Early time
1.1. Defining term
The time from 500 BC to AD 500 (the proto-historic and early historic periods) is defined by scholars as the critical period in the cultural and historical process of Vietnam in particular and in Southeast Asia in general. According to scholars, this early historic period in mainland Southeast Asia straddled two critical junctures. The mid-first millennium BCE marks the transition to an ‘Iron Age’ and all the shifts that accompanied such a technological change. A second transition occurred in the later centuries BCE with the shift to the early historic period; changes during this time set the stage for the emergence of the region’s first centralized polities (Stark and Bong Sovath 2001: 85).
Recent archaeological finds and discoveries lead us to recognize the dynamic cultural contacts of the area with the external world and strong acculturation between the exogenous and indigenous factors which led to formation of various kinds of early states. Due to these qualitative and critical changes, a big number of local cultural features disappeared, while the forms and behavioral patterns of the new cultural structure appeared to replace the old elements.
1.2. Southeast Asia/ Vietnam – Location, Position and Peoples
Regarding the geo-cultural position of Southeast Asia (Mainland and Islands), it is worthily to note that South East Asia is as the bridge and crossroad of various flows of cultures and civilizations. In the arena of South East Asia, the cultures from China and India have met each other and each of them has affected the local cultures in certain sense. Both big civilizations have left many vestiges intangible and tangible.
There is enormous diversity in all dimensions of Southeast Asian life during long history; variations in topography have contributed ecological niches within Southeast Asia – an incredible diversity of cultures as follows:
- River, Seas: Settlement of fishing villages and coastal trading centers
- Low lands: Wet rice cultivation, fishing and craft productions
- Uplands: Inhabited by vibrant and diverse peoples free from the grip of civilizations
Among these factors, it is worthy to emphasize the important role of the sea, the sea brought settlers and visitors from distant shores. For millenniums there have been frequent contact, trade, migration and social exchange from other parts of Asia. Cultural influences from the outsider have blended with local traditions in religion, economic organization, and statecraft. Historically, settlement patterns in South East Asia were shaped by access to the sea and rivers (Hirschman Ch., and Sabrina Bonaparte 2014).
So, South East Asia in the mind and knowledge of scholars has a strategic position along the major pre-modern maritime route and critical point of connection between East and West. South East Asia is famous as a land of immense wealth, “Land of Gold”, land of spices, aromatic woods, resins... and skilled craftsmen. “South East Asia: Spice Capital of the World” (Hall K., R., 2011: 4).
1.3. Peoples
The multi-ethnic group structure of Southeast Asian countries. Every Southeast Asian country in the past, or nowadays, has gotmulti-ethnic groups.This ethnic group structure is typical in the whole of Southeast Asia. From this structure, other characteristics of Southeast Asian culture emerged, that is, the unification in diversity.In Southeast Asia, the solidarity and unification are very crucial factors for the people to exist and develop. The people here have to learn how to get on well with others, accept other people as they are work and exist in harmony with the others because only small conflicts can cause a lot of trouble and even wars. Separation is always the permanent danger to the development and progress of this region. It is the unification in diversity that becomes a vital condition to the people in Southeast Asia. This characteristic rules over almost every aspect of economic, political, social, religious and artistic life in this region.
2. Local Foundations of Cultures in South East Asia before Influences of China and India and the ways, nature of interactions
1.1 Local cultures of Southeast Asia
South East Asia had already been for centuries “region with a distinct cultural identity”, early South East Asian civilizations not as extension of India (“Indianized States”) and China (Vietnam as a “Lesser China”), but as the products of indigenous agency, via their conscious adaption and synthesis of an external in ways that reinforced indigenous culture rather displaced them (Hall K., 2011:4) Prof. Phạm Đức Dương remarked:
“The ancient states in Southeast Asia were all formed during the conquest of the deltas of great rivers and during the converging ethnic cultural process. These states all made wet rice agriculture their background and built the traditional cultures with unique national characteristics in the myriad contacts with the two great civilizations in India and China”. (Phạm Đức Dương 2000: 9)
During the metal Age (Bronze and Early Iron periods), there were established and developed the cultures of local communities inhabited both in mainland and islands of Southeast Asia.
South East Asian Mainland (Higham Ch., 1989: xv-xvi)
2000-500 BC: Bronze working spread among autonomous lowland communities. Ores mined in hills, ingots traded and implements cast in lowlands. Increase in ranking within small communities, some family groups had high rank signified by jewelry and bronze implements, subsistence wide-ranging and included rice which was probably cultivated, autonomous village life in a wide range of environments; bronze-working and complex food production.
500 BC: The iron working, centralization and formation of chiefdoms, the initial contact with Indian traders and Han Chinese armies and increased exchange, social ranking and agriculture. Specialist bronze-workers produce ceremonial drinking vessels, decorative body plaques, and bowls in boat coffins, centralization and complex chiefdoms; iron working and sophisticated bronze metallurgy.
AD 200-1500: The rise of states or mandala in the lower Mekong valley, Coastal Vietnam, Northeast Thailand and Chao Phraya valley. Increased centralization in court centers, Indian inspired religion, statecraft and the Sanskrit language. Angkorian Mandala founded in A.D. 802 and attracted widespread loyalty. Han Chinese set up comraderies in Bac Bo, early states and complex society; contact and impacts from South Asia and China.
Island Southeast Asia- Prehistoric cultural stages ((Bellwood 1985:106-107).
Second/first millennia BC?; Beginnings of mobile (proto-sea nomad ? ) adaptations around the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas, and possibly elsewhere. These, in turn, might have laid some of the seafaring groundwork for:
+ Middle and late second millennium BC; Lapita colonization of Remote Oceania to as far as Tonga and Samoa. Seafaring skills were here developed further admits an ever-expanding vista of uninhabited islands, but with few opportunities to settle on large western Melanesian islands (especially New Guinea) already inhabited by Papuan-speaking peoples.
+ Second/first millennia BC?: Austronesian settlement in Vietnam and Malaya, in both regions in competition with pre-existing agriculturalists.
+ 500 BC and after: Introduction of bronze and iron metallurgy into Island Southeast Asia. Dong Son drums were also traded from Vietnam into the Sunda islands, extending from Sumatra to the southern Moluccas.
In South East Asia, the period 2500 – 1500 BP was called the early historic period, which evidenced the transition from prehistory to history and sometimes was recognized as proto historic time.
During this period in South East Asia it was evidenced the localized earthenware pottery traditions (often cord – marked/comb – marked, sometimes burnished, painted, or incised, and occasionally smudged) and bronze and iron metallurgical traditions (or metallurgical provinces), which produced the various range of agricultural tools, weapons, and ritual paraphernalia, some weapons are bimetallic (bronze and iron), and high-tin bronze bowls have also been found. Some regions have evidence for elaborate elite burials (so-called Big Man burials) such as interments in wooden logs called ‘boat burials’ – Đông Sơn culture in Vietnam and some parts of Southeast Asia, big jar burials – Sa Huỳnh culture in Vietnam, Tabon cave, Kalanay in Philippines...or extended burials with rich grave goods in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia...It is also including the moated settlements with large organized cemeteries and centralized settlement systems with large fortified centers, and most prominent among them is the Cổ Loa citadel in Vietnam. The artifacts yielded from these sites also evidenced the local production and import activities.
2.1 Interactions: Ways and nature
There were existed various kinds of interactions including intra-regional, inter-regional, intercontinental... during the early time in Southeast Asia.
Exchange of exotic goods and their use in mortuary rituals in a recurrent feature of inland Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in South East Asia, pottery, marine shell ornaments, cowrie shell, marble ornaments and items cast from copper base alloys survive to document extensive exchange links, but less durable items were surely also valued such as cloth, plumage, and salt (Glover Ian 1998).
It could be notice that intra-regional, inter-regional exchange network have been existed within the South East Asian world prior to any significant trade with China or India. The scholars working on archaeology and history of South East Asia have developed various theories on these issues, among them; it could be named as follows:
Theory of Nusantao (the Nusantao, i.e. the people who carried the technologies and languages across Asia and the Pacific) trade and exchange among Southeast Asian settlers developed by Solheim W.
Theories of movement of Austronesian people by Solheim W, Bellwood P... and the impacts of these movements in the diffusion of goods and ideas, there is documentary evidence of trade and exchange between Island Southeast Asians and people from mainland Asia for about the last three millennia related to the origin and spread of the Austronesians based on archaeological and linguistic proofs.
Theory of “Sahuynh – Kalanay” tradition was recommended by Solheim W and developed by other scholars, they considered the similarities in cultural assemblages, especially pottery and jade ornaments, shared between Sa Huỳnh sites in Central Vietnam and many contemporary sites in Philippines, Borneo, and Southern Thailand.
It is also important to notice the nature of the interactions by the periods, in prehistoric time, the contacts and exchanges were people movements and good trade while in proto-historic and historic times, there were the economic, politic and religious interactions. Most scholars argue, by the fourth century BC, South East Asia had become part of a world network of interaction linking the Mediterranean Basin via India to China. The importance of Southeast Asia at this time stemmed both from its own desirable resources and its geographical location on the various trade networks that linked the large civilization to its West and North and it is worthy to note the dynamic role of South East Asia in shaping these trade networks.
Recent developments in the field of maritime archaeology and trade archaeology have provided many evidences which supported the existence of such long-distance network (see Ian Glover, K.Hall, P. Manguin, Belina Bérénice...), the networks bring the diffusion into the whole region, as far as New Guinea in the last few centuries BC of artefacts such as Đông Sơn bronze drums, axes, ling-ling O pendants, bi-faced animal pendants... Other proofs were of ship images (boat), shipbuilding in Southeast Asia (in comparison with shipbuilding techniques of China and India). It is important to note the fact that boats and trade played crucial role in South East Asian communities laid in the existence of burial rites which were using the coffins in shape of boat widely distributed in the region, and the boat symbols carved on the Đông Sơn bronze drums, these symbols have been considered as the earliest representations in South East Asia if are not evidences of ocean going but are evidences of the boat using and boat making technology (Maguin P., 1993).
Regard the ship and shipbuilding in South East Asia and Asia, we could introduce the research results done by P. Manguin, G.Wade and other scholars (Manguin P., 1993: 262-263; Wade G., 2003). According to them there were existed shipbuilding traditions as follows:
a. Ships on Đông Sơn bronze drums are considered as oar propelled, like many of the Austronesian ships and associated with a sea-going or at least ship-going traditions.
b. The first millennium AD: South East Asian developments, so-called Kun lun bo (i.e Southeast ships). These ships share the constructional features as follows (Manguin P.,1993: 263-264):
i. They were large ships, even by modern sailing standards.
ii. No iron was ever used in fastening their components together (using vegetal fibres).
iii. They had several layers of planks (a feature common in later South China Sea ships).
iv. They were rigged with multiple masts and sails, a sure indication of sophisticated high-seas sailing skills (and again a feature of later ships of the region).
v. They most probably had no outriggers, for such a conspicuous device would no doubt have struck the minds of Chinese witnesses, unfamiliar with this kind of exotic gear; moreover, it is difficult to conceive the fitting of outriggers on such large vessels.
The people of the maritime realm were pioneers of early watercraft developed on the Southern Oceans (Maguin P., 1994). They know the monsoons, the seasonal winds to across the oceans. From the ancient annals it could not know exactly when this far-reaching maritime activity began, but “Malay” (Kunlun) sailors were known in China by the third century BC, and there is evidence that they were settling along the East African coast by the first century AD (Hall K., 2011: 5). Not long after the third century BC, they began to across the Malacca and Sunda to going into Indian Ocean, so they played the active role in the earliest contacts and interactions between South East Asia and South Asia.