Ancient history of Greater India
E. W. Hutchinson, a senior British colonial administrator in Malaya, reviewed Georges Coedès’ Histoire ancienne des états hindouisés d’Extrême-Orient (1944) in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1947. The review, written after the French reoccupation of Hanoi finally made the volume accessible outside the Japanese-occupied sphere, assesses Coedès’ synthesis of the pre-Indian ethnolinguistic layers of Southeast Asia and the subsequent process of Indianization, with particular attention to the identification of Funan and the transmission of the concept of universal kingship from Cambodia to its neighbours.
Summary
Hutchinson’s review is organised around Coedès’ methodological innovation: the replacement of the conventional “vertical” approach (treating each country’s history in isolation) with a “horizontal” one that traces cultural processes across political boundaries. This shift is presented as the book’s principal contribution to the field, and Hutchinson contrasts it favourably against the earlier, now superseded, work of Fr. Calenge, whose posthumous manuscript Between India and China had attempted a similar synthesis but lacked the benefit of Coedès’ access to the École française d’Extrême-Orient archives in Hanoi.
The substantive core of the review traces the pre-Indian cultural sequence: Melanesian elements in Tongking, Veddoid stocks in Sumatra, Java, Borneo and the Celebes, Neolithic Indonesians, and Austro-Asiatic groups, all pressed southward by successive migrations from the northern hinterland. Hutchinson highlights Coedès’ argument that the Indianization of Southeast Asia was driven less by dynastic upheaval in India than by post-Alexandrian and post-Kanishka trade expansion in luxuries, the diffusion of Buddhism as an incentive to travel, and a revolution in shipbuilding that enabled the carriage of several hundred passengers. The mechanism of political imposition—small Brahminical bands securing control through marriage with local princesses—is drawn from the legends of Cambodia and Champa.
The most significant new identification discussed is Coedès’ equation of “Funan” with the Chinese rendering of the Cambodian word Phnom (mountain), and his placement of primitive Funan in the southern tip of Cochin-China, the most natural landing point for Indian adventurers who had crossed the Malay Peninsula on foot between Takuapa and Bandon. Hutchinson notes that recent air reconnaissance and excavation in that semi-submerged area have revealed extensive irrigation and trade-emporium remains dating to the age of the Antonines, lending support to Coedès’ hypothesis. The review closes with Coedès’ interpretation of Jayavarman’s ninth-century ceremony on Mt Kulen as a ritual severance of Java’s claim to universal sovereignty—a claim Coedès traces back to the Sailendra’s adoption of the Funanese title “Lord of the Mountain.”
Key Findings
- Coedès’ volume was published in 1944 by E. de Brocard, Paris, as part of Cavaignac’s World History series, and won the Giles Prize in Paris; it reached readers outside the Japanese-occupied zone only after the French reoccupation of Hanoi in 1945 (pp. 156, 158).
- Coedès identifies “Funan” as the Chinese rendering of the Cambodian word Phnom (mountain), a term that pervades Cambodian topography and reappears in the ninth-century title “Lord of the Mountain” (p. 159).
- The southern tip of Cochin-China is proposed as the cradle of Indianized Funan, with air reconnaissance revealing extensive irrigation in a now semi-submerged district and excavations yielding objects proving it was a trade emporium with the West in the age of the Antonines (pp. 158–159).
- Coedès interprets the Sailendra (eighth century, Mahayanist, inspirers of Borobudur) as reviving the early Funanese title “Lord of the Mountain” to justify a claim to universal monarchy, and as injecting new life into Srivijaya in Sumatra, which then dominated the Straits between Kedah and Palembang for six further centuries (pp. 159–160).
- The Indian achievement in Southeast Asia is characterized by its success despite the numerical insignificance of its agents: the modern population shows no physical links with Aryan India, yet its culture is thoroughly Indian (p. 157).
- Coedès attributes the Indianization process primarily to post-Alexandrian, post-Seleucid, post-Kanishka, and post-Roman trade expansion in luxuries, the diffusion of Buddhism as a counter to the prior taboo on travel, and a revolution in shipbuilding enabling vessels of several hundred passengers (pp. 157–158).
Conclusion
Hutchinson’s definitive takeaway is that Coedès’ horizontal method, combined with the new identification of Funan’s geography and the etymological link between Phnom and the Sailendra title, establishes Cambodia as the central inheritor and transmitter of the Indianized concept of universal kingship associated with high places—a rigid, superstitious state system that Cambodia imparted to Java, Sumatra, and ultimately Siam, and which persisted in ritual form (as La Loubère’s seventeenth-century account of a Siamese audience demonstrates) even after the T’ai had nominally overthrown Khmer rule.
Context
- The review draws on Coedès’ access to the École française d’Extrême-Orient in Hanoi, which the war had paradoxically preserved for him while cutting off European scholars; Hutchinson also references the posthumous manuscript of Fr. Calenge (Mission Etrangère, Siam) and the earlier contributions of Ferrand and Winstedt on the Brahmin-princess marriage legend (pp. 156, 158).
- Historiographically, the review marks the moment when Coedès’ synthesis became available to the Anglophone Malayan scholarly community, and it positions the work as rendering obsolete the earlier Calenge-based brochure Between India and China that Hutchinson and colleagues had been preparing for publication in London (p. 158).