Greater India's magnificent heritage
Rajeev Srinivasan on India's cultural empire
I went to Indonesia several times a while ago, and especially enjoyed the magical island of Bali. One of the most beautiful and serene places on earth is the Ulu Danu water temple there -- an old and extremely picturesque temple out on a lake framed by clusters of bamboo in the foreground. There are old temples, candi in Bahasa (or bhasha) Indonesian, all over Java; in Hindu Bali, these are places of worship to this day.
All these places show the remarkable and enduring legacy of great cultural achievement under Hindu and Buddhist influence from India. What is particularly endearing is that existing local cultures and ideas were not denigrated or demeaned, but gracefully incorporated into the imported Indic ideas. This is in stark contrast with what Semitic desert people do: wherever they spread their religions, they wipe out indigenous ideas.
Extraordinarily, the spread of Indic ideas was not by fire and sword, nor by padres accompanying victorious armies. The indigenous people of the Indian Ocean Rim recognised that Indic ideas were useful, and therefore they adopted them. On the other hand, India was not above using force now and then: for instance, there were the repeated invasions of Sri Lanka, and Raja Raja Chola sending the greatest flotilla in ancient history clear across the Indian Ocean to defeat the maritime Srivijaya Empire in Sumatra.
The history of these temples prompt one to look at the socio-economic background of these times and places. Roughly contemporaneous with the Pallavas and Cholas of Tamil Nadu, Javanese and Khmer empires rose based on rich agricultural surplus, exactly the same as in the Thanjavur delta. It was the bountiful rivers -- such as the Kaveri in Tamil Nadu and the Mekong in Cambodia -- that enabled the remarkable cultural flowering. This is one of the reasons why India should not underestimate the value of agriculture-based products in a mad rush for industrialisation. These great temples are also roughly of the same age as the great cathedrals of Europe, also monuments to faith.
It is a bittersweet experience going to the ancient temples of Southeast Asia: because the temples are often mere shadows of what they were before. After all, they are mostly not living centres of worship, just stupendous buildings mostly of archaeological, artistic and architectural interest.
But it is not hard to imagine how much more magnificent they were in their glory days, when they were centers of worship with elemental fire, water, milk, honey, fruit and flower offerings, the chanting of hymns, the ringing of bells, the archanas and aradhanas; the splendid vestments worn by the deities; the fragrance of lotus and other flowers! Just like the great temples of India, they would have been centers of spiritual power. Today the deities are vandalised, headless, limbless, alone in the small, womb-like garbhagrha. Many of the images have vanished, presumably to appear in private collections or museums elsewhere, leaving behind sad pedestals.
Image: The enigmatic faces at the bayon, Angkor Thom
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