“According to Raffles, Java’s Hindu-Buddhist past and Islamic present were separated by a distinct break. However, there were contradictions between what he thought and actual Javanese practices. The Javanese valued ancient Hindu and Buddhist images and objects as heirlooms and incorporated them into contemporary rituals and belief systems. This indicates there was no lapse in Javanese cultural continuity, but rather natural adaptations in philosophies and the uses of objects”(Murphy, Wang and Greed 2019, 120).

The quote underscores the cultural continuity of ancient ritual objects in societies that produced them, yet this continuity was fractured as these objects were collected in the 19th and 20th century and were moved into museums for display or as tools for an understanding of Java’s ancient history. Raffles’ comprehension of the role of these objects was no doubt framed by a 19th-century European perspective on the history of religions in Asia. Bronze, silver and gold religious sculptures were produced on Java from 600 to 1500 CE, and more than a hundred metal artefacts are recorded in Raffles’ collection. The British Museum holds the largest assemblage of objects collected by Stamford Raffles during his tenure as Lieutenant-Governor of Java from 1811 to 1816. While Raffles drew on them for writing his two-volume History of Java, in their present context as museum collections and exhibition pieces, these are admired for their art and aesthetic beauty (Figures 1 & 2). The Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), Singapore is no exception to this as its collections of bronze images are displayed in the ‘Faith and Belief’ galleries of the Museum based on the assumption that these are material manifestations of religious beliefs, though these beliefs are not spelt out or contextualised. An aspect that Raffles failed to understand and one that continues to be under-researched is the significance of ancient bronze sculpture as a community’s heritage.

This chapter aims to fill this lacuna by contextualising two of the objects in ACM’s collection of pre-14th-century Buddhist bronze sculptures within the larger maritime network of the Indian Ocean world. In the first section, I present an overview of metalworking and metal sculpture in Southeast Asia with a focus on the ACM collection. The second section includes an account of ritual objects found at shipwreck sites and the salient issues that these finds underscore, since artefacts from shipwrecks are often categorised as trade goods. This is followed by a discussion of coastal shrines and the final section concludes by highlighting UNESCO’s global platform that provides countries of the Indian Ocean world with an opportunity for reconnecting with communities who produced and used the copper and bronze ritual objects now displayed in museums across the region.

Metal-working and production of Buddhist bronzes

Perhaps the earliest archaeological find of gold jewellery in Singapore was made in the 1920s during digging for building Singapore’s new Service Reservoir at Fort Canning. The gold hoard comprised large armlets, a ring of pale gold, six rings set with diamonds, a large elliptical ornament and a clasp of a neck chord (Miksic 2014, 222). The jewellery was identified as being of Javanese Hindu-Buddhist workmanship dating to mid-14th century CE. It was found on the hillside directly above the Tomb of Iskandar Shah on Bukit Larangan or Forbidden Hill (Winstedt 1928, 1–4). The Sejarah Melayu or “Malay Annals” refers to the kingdom of Singapura on the Singapore River and Raffles refers to a local belief that forbade people from climbing up the hill (Miksic 2014, 214). Another important find was the ‘headless horseman’ which was discovered during an excavation in May 1998 along the Singapore River. The statue made of lead is unique and measures 59mm long, 55mm high, 3mm thick, and weighs 52 grams and stands on a flat base 18mm wide.

Copper-bronze technology developed together with that of iron in insular Southeast Asia around the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. Khao Sam Kaeo on the east coast of the Siamo-Malay Peninsula near the mouth of the Tha Tapao River was settled between 400 BCE and 100 CE. Copper–bronze was largely used for vessels and ornaments and there is evidence for local production as well. Metallurgical analysis of copper-base artefacts from Khao Sam Kaeo indicates wide-ranging cultural contacts of the 34-hectare site from China, Vietnam, mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia regarding ‘typological, technological and raw material variability’ (Bellina 2017, 536).

High-tin bronze bowls with geometric patterning have been found from the 4th–3rd century BCE onwards at sites of Khao Sam Kaeo, Ban Don Tha Phet and Khao Jamook (Thailand), Prohear (Cambodia) and Sembiran (Bali). The decorative motifs include animals both natural and mythical, such as the griffin, and the bowls have been linked to north Indian prototypes dated 800 BCE. Gold was not found in Southeast Asia before contact with India (Calo et al. 2015, 378–96). ‘A possible route for gold artefacts from the northern Indian subcontinent to Southeast Asia across the Bay of Bengal can be suggested based on stylistic parallels from early first millennium AD contexts at Sirkap (Taxila) in Pakistan, Oc Eo and Khao Sam Kaeo’ (Calo et. al. 2020, 10).

Important for this discussion are sites such as Phu Khao Thong (meaning “golden mount”) on the Andaman coast of south Thailand and Khao Sam Keo, 8km upstream from the present Gulf of Siam, which have provided evidence for the presence of large quantities of beads, metal artefacts, Rouletted Ware, inscribed sherds and gold objects dating from c. 400 BCE to 200 CE (Chaisuwan 2011, 83–112). The evidence from late prehistoric sites in Thailand and Indonesia (Manguin and Indradjaja 2011, 113–136) is further supplemented by Sa Huynh sites in central Vietnam (Dzung 2011, 3–15). Some archaeologists have suggested that though gold deposits were widespread in Southeast Asia, gold working may have been introduced by Indian and/ or Chinese goldsmiths (Bennett 2009, Reinecke 2015). On the other hand, the earliest gold objects such as beads, face covers, and items for personal adornment, do not display any influences from foreign designs (Miksic 2011), though there is no doubt similarity between gold foil eye covers from urn burial sites in Southeast Asia and Tamilnadu in India, such as the site of Adichanallur (O’Connor and Harrisson, 1971).

Several communities participated in trans-oceanic contacts; relevant here is the identification of an inscribed small flat rectangular touchstone of 3rd century CE recovered from Khuan Lukpad, now kept in the temple Museum of Wat Khlong Thom in southern Thailand. The eight letters in Tamil-Brahmi read perumpataṉkal, meaning “(this is) the (touch) stone of Perumpataṉ”. Perum means big, and pataṉ (pattaṉ) means goldsmith. Therefore, Perumpataṉ is a title or the name of the goldsmith who possessed this touchstone (Bennett 2018, 81).

When did the use of copper/ bronze and gold shift from the making of ornamented bowls and jewellery to images and ritual objects? By the early centuries of the Common Era, Buddhist auspicious symbols such as the triratna representing the three jewels of Buddhism namely the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha appeared in gold jewellery at Pyu sites in Myanmar and at coastal sites in the Malay peninsula (Bennett 2018, 82) along with ring-stones whose function has been identified as moulds for making jewellery. A small Buddha head of gold found in chedi 2, U Thong monastic complex in central Thailand is dated from the 5th to 9th century CE (Figure 3). It is 4 cm wide and 5.3 cm high and is displayed at the U Thong Museum.^[1]

Two major gold hoards were found in Borneo at Sambas and Limbang in 1941 and 1899 respectively. The Sambas hoard consisted of images of the Buddha and Bodhisattva, such as Avalokitesvara, in gold and silver dated to the period between the 8th and 10th centuries (Miksic 1990, 48–9). In addition, Hindu deities in gold have been found at Gemuruh and Puger Wetan, Jember in East Java (Miksic 1990, 50–1). As compared to those in gold, there are many more surviving images of bronze. Two objects of relevance to this paper are: an exquisite example of a stupa-shaped reliquary in the ACM collection (ACM 1999-01619, Figure 4); and a bronze image of a standing Buddha from Bujang valley archaeological site (ACM A-1354, Figure 5).

The Relinquary

The large stupa-shaped reliquary of bronze dated to the 3rd and 4th century CE has pillars with lion capitals at the corners and multiple chhatras or umbrellas. Gold and silver relic caskets were found inside the reliquary. Another example of a stupa-shaped reliquary with multiple chhatras dated to the 4th and 5th century CE is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1985.387 a, b, Figure 6). The use of bronze as a medium for relic containers in the Kabul and Jalalabad region may have started after the mid-2nd century CE but has continued well into the present (Rienjang 2017, 231–2).

Relic worship, and the practice of inserting relics, among other objects, into a cavity in Buddhist icons, have been considered important themes of analysis and re-examination since the 1980s. Peter Skilling has analysed an extensive range of textual sources on relics and concludes that the “cult of relics is central to all Buddhisms” and links the history of Buddhism to the history of relics (Skilling 2005, 269–332). Detailed analysis of reliquaries found in the region of Gandhara shows that approximately 10% of 406 Gandharan reliquaries are inscribed, and one of the five principal types of Gandharan reliquaries is in the form of a miniature stupa (Jongeward 2012, ix). It is also evident that the acquisition of Buddha’s relics involved the redeposition of already deposited relics. The 1st century BCE Indravarman inscription from Bajaur in Gandhara refers to relics being obtained from another nearby stupa and re-enshrined in a secure, deep and previously unestablished place (Salomon and Schopen 1984, 107–23). Thus, the engagement with the relics was a dynamic process that underwent transformations and modifications over time. But was it limited to the region of Gandhara, as is often suggested, based on the rarity of the scene showing the distribution of relics in other parts of the subcontinent (Jongeward 2012, 19)?

It is significant that in Gandhara and elsewhere, the stupa with multiple chhatras was often used as a reliquary. An inscription on the base of a miniature stupa from Gandhara now in the Asian Art Museum (1999.49) reads: “[in] the year 57, in the month Protha, the nun Utaraya establishes the relics of the Blessed One [the Buddha] in the Grove [or monastery] of the forest of Kharavela, in honour of her mother and father,” as translated by Richard Salomon. As detailed in a recent study (Ray 2021, 82–110), the enshrinement of relics at stupa sites along the east coast of India and parts of Southeast Asia was a potent means of linking the local with the universal Buddha dhamma. The nature of relics was diverse and changed over time, though these continued to be a part of an important ritual that connected Buddhist communities across the Bay of Bengal.

By the 6th century, bronze images were being produced for enshrinement inside stupas, as is evident from Raffles’ collection discussed at the beginning of this paper. The ACM collection includes early silver linga covers from Vietnam in the form of Shiva’s head and 8th to 10th century bronze images from Angkor Borei, Cambodia; Bujang valley, Malaysia; Yunnan, China; and Java, Indonesia. The ACM’s display includes a 12th–13th century Khmer style chedi from Lopburi, Thailand and an unusual 10th-century bronze seated multi-armed Avalokitesvara from Yunnan, southwest China (ACM 2011-01482). Legend associates the Avalokitesvara image with an Indian monk who visited Yunnan around the 7th century and was regarded as an incarnation of Guanyin. The display also includes several images from eastern India and Nagapattinam, which may have been imports.

The Bujang Valley Buddha

An important icon in the ACM collection is a standing bronze image of the Buddha 20 cm in height, which was recovered during the 1941 excavations at site 16A in Bujang valley, Malaysia. A re-examination of archaeological data from sites in the Bujang valley has shown that the west coast of the Malay peninsula was an important centre in the maritime network connecting the east coast of India and Southeast Asia (Murphy 2018, 383–5). In addition to religious architecture and finds of images of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara dated from the 5th to 13th century, Kedah is also known for the finds of stele with inscriptions. These inscriptions, such as the Buddhagupta inscription, which is now in the Indian Museum in Kolkata refer to a mariner from eastern India setting up a stupa on the successful completion of his sea voyage (Ray 2021, 97–102, Figure 7).

The finds of bronze Buddha images, reliquaries and relics in the Bujang valley provide a link to the Andhra coast across the Bay of Bengal where relic worship dates to at least 2nd–1st century BCE and bronze Buddha images and a gold relic casket were found in excavations conducted by Rea from 1905–06 to 1908–09, outside the stupa at Amaravati (Shimada 2016, 6). He traced brick foundations of small stupas around the main stupa. At the south gate under a small stupa, Rea found a globular pot that contained a relic casket and lid. Inside this was a reliquary of gold in the form of a stupa 3.5 inches in height, surmounted by an umbrella. Inside the reliquary was a piece of bone and six flowers in thin leaf gold (Rea 1912, 88–9). Another important discovery included a hoard of bronze images about 350 feet (110 meters) from the centre of the main stupa consisting of standing Buddha images, Buddha heads, image bases and other fragments (Rea 1912, 90). It is evident that many of the bronze Buddha images admired in museum collections for their aesthetic appeal need to be studied in the context of relic worship as Buddhism expanded across South and Southeast Asia.

Ten bronze standing Buddha images ranging in height from 36 to 230 cm from north India and Thailand, now in museums in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, were examined. All of them were made by the lost-wax casting technique and date from the 6th to 8th centuries. The images were cast horizontally face down, and metal was poured in from the back. The reverse of the image was generally left plain and undecorated, except for the head. Based on the evidence from metal casting workshops at the site of Nalanda, it has been suggested that metal working was associated with monastic complexes (Schorsch, Becker and Caro 2019, 131–143). Unfortunately, the study was not able to trace the metal content of the images.

A technical study of 39 bronze images of Hindu and Buddhist deities from Indonesia dated from the 7th to 11th century in the collection of the Musée Guimet, Paris, has provided insights into their ritual use. Of these, a majority of 24 images are Buddhist, 4 are Hindu, and 8 display shared Hindu-Buddhist iconography, such as Kubera/Jambhala and Vasudhara. The images were made of unleaded bronze, largely a copper-tin alloy. The tin content in the alloy increased gradually from the early 9th to the early 10th century CE. The use of a high-tin bronze for casting Buddhist images is also a feature that Javanese bronzes share with those from eastern India, such as from Nalanda made from the 8th to 12th century. The base of all the images was hollow-cast by the lost-wax technique and subsequently joined to the image. An examination of the pedestals showed that in many cases they incorporated consecration deposits, comprising metal foil and unidentified objects. A few examples of this practice are also known in India (Yael Bentor 1995, 254). Over time, this cavity for consecration deposits was enlarged. It has often been assumed that Java was the main centre of production of the Indonesian bronzes, though workshops on other islands such as Sumatra cannot be ruled out, as is evident from variations in metal content, stylistic divergences, and shipwreck discoveries. It is also apparent that Javanese bronzes share several common features with those from Thailand and Vietnam (Mechling, Vincent, Baptiste and Bourgarit, 2018, 63–139).

All the Indonesian statues investigated are solid cast, even the largest ones. However, they all have a hollow part necessary for inserting a consecration deposit after casting. This hollow part is constituted by the lotus flower or cushion supporting the figure… The marked presence of tin in most Indonesian statues constitutes another distinctive technical feature…. The importance of tin in Indonesian bronze statuary is even more significant when one considers that the material used to seal the consecration deposits—as demonstrated for seven out of the nine statues which still have their sealing material—is almost pure tin (Mechling, Vincent, Baptiste and Bourgarit, 2018, 88).

No doubt many of the images were locally produced, though the transportation of reliquaries across the seas is also evident from data from shipwreck sites as discussed in the next section.

Ships and Shipwreck Sites

Maritime archaeologists consider boats and ships as expressions of the societies that built and sailed them and hence as indicators of innovation and transformation (Adams 2003, 25–30). It is suggested that fastenings used for connecting the planks were cultural constructs; several methods are known to have been used in the past in specific regions, such as the sewn-plank tradition of the western Indian Ocean (Ray 2012, xiii–xxix). Similar shipbuilding technology, defined as the lashed-lug construction technique, has been identified on ship remains found in different national waters in Southeast Asia including Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, and Indonesia (Kimura 2015, 1–4; Manguin 1993). This neat classification needs further research considering that increasingly new discoveries of shipwrecks, such as the Phanom Surin wreck, provide evidence for the adoption of a hybrid technology. Michael Flecker rightly states that ‘it is very difficult to differentiate between Arab and Indian ships, the interaction and inter-influence across the Arabian Sea being so great’ (Flecker 2001, 337).

The 9th and 10th century wrecks found in Indonesian waters, such as the Intan and Belitung shipwrecks, are unusual for the unique finds of ritual bronzes and gold objects that they carried: gold jewellery in the case of the former and gold dishes in the case of the latter. The Intan wreck was excavated off the coast of southeast Sumatra (Flecker 1997 and 2002). Several hundred ceramics were looted from the Intan wreck in 1996 when it was discovered by fishermen. Subsequently, a salvage company was given the license to explore the wreck. The company recovered 650kg of tin ingots, 196 kg of bronze ingots, 277 kg of lead ingots, 14 silver ingots, 426 ceramic items, 1 tiny gold disk and many bronze artefacts. Most of the figurines are corroded, but one 9th-century standing Buddha image (13.1 cm high) is significant as standing images of the Buddha are rare in Sumatra. Other shipwrecks dated to the 10th century from Indonesia include the Cirebon and Krawang shipwrecks. The Cirebon wreck was discovered by fishermen on the northwest Java coast in 2003 and was commercially excavated (Liebner 2014). The vessel was wrecked on her journey to Java and was salvaged 90 nautical miles north, northeast of the city of Cirebon on Java’s northern coast (see also Michael Flecker’s chapter in this volume). Ritual objects on board the vessel included a piece of gold sheet with a Buddhist mantra (Art.148341), a small amulet mould and a number of beads with short invocations of Buddhist and Islamic faith. The dharani inscribed on the gold sheet has been translated as follows: “Homage to the Triad of Jewels! Homage to noble Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva, the great being, of great compassion. [The mantra is] like this: Om, … of the wind …, goddess who have the lustre of …, you bear …” (Griffiths 2014, 157). Griffiths proposes that the gold foil may have been worn as an amulet for protection against dangers encountered at sea.

These dangers from shipwrecks are graphically depicted at Buddhist sites in India and Southeast Asia, especially at Borobudur in central Java. Perhaps the earliest representation of a seafarer in distress is to be seen on a medallion on a railing bar from Bharhut, now in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi. The medallion shows a gigantic sea monster threatening to swallow a boat. An inscription reads: “Vasugupta rescued by Mahadeva from the belly of the monster (timitimimgula)” (Cunningham 1879, plate 34).

Inglis (2014) has examined the cultural context of the representations in detail and indicates that it shows the unique Javanese perception of the seas and the dangers of seafaring activity. The representations of ships at Borobudur are associated with several Buddhist stories. A riverboat is depicted in a scene from the Lalitavistara, while a single ocean-going vessel is depicted in Supāraga’s story from the Jātakamāla. Three vessels are shown in the legend of King Rudrāyaṇa from the Divyāvadāna, and two ships are depicted together in Maitrakanyaka’s story from the Avadānas̒ataka. One ship is found on reliefs associated with another collection, the Avadānakalpalatā (No. 97). A unique single-masted outrigger is depicted in the reliefs from the Gaṇḍavyūha (Inglis 2014, 162–163).

It is thus essential to integrate data relating to ritual objects from shipwrecks with other objects in the ACM’s collection. An issue that necessitates a response relates to travels by ritual specialists or Buddhist monks and nuns across the waters. An appropriate example is the Chinese monk Faxian (337–422 CE) who travelled via the overland route to India in search of Buddha’s teachings. In 411 he returned to China by sea, setting off from Tamralipti in Bengal to Sri Lanka. From there, he crossed the Bay of Bengal to reach the island of Yepoti identified with Sumatra/Java. After spending five months in Yepoti he took another ship to the town of Guangzhou on the south China coast.

Nor was Faxian the sole Buddhist monk who travelled by ship in search of the true Buddhist faith; several examples of both Indian and Chinese monks and nuns may be quoted starting as early as the 4th and 3rd century BCE based on finds of inscribed potsherds at coastal sites in Sri Lanka (Ray 2021, 25–43). These ceramics include the fine pottery termed Rouletted Ware.

It is now widely accepted that Rouletted Ware first emerged in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE and belongs to a group of pottery that has been found at archaeological sites along the east coast of India from Bengal to the Tamil coast and further south to Sri Lanka (Schenk 2006; Schenk 2014). The arrival of Rouletted Ware at sites in Southeast Asia must have occurred between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. The pottery has been reported from sites in coastal Malaysia, Thailand, Java, and Bali, as well as Vietnam. Finds of Rouletted Ware sherds inevitably lead to questions about how they got to the places they were found in, as well as their significance for the people who brought them over. Was this pottery traded on its own? If so, would it not have been reported from market centres and landing places, rather than in burials, as seems to be the case? Since the primary shapes are shallow dishes, would they have been used for serving, eating, cooking or storage? Inscriptions on the pottery provide clues to the possible use and also establish the fact that writing was closely associated with the spread of Buddhism and the travels of learned monks and nuns. The archaeological excavations at the site of Tissamaharama in Sri Lanka establish the presence of Buddhist monks and nuns even in the absence of monastic complexes. Clearly, a distinction needs to be made between trade activities and the spread of religion, though often monks and nuns used merchant ships to travel as discussed above. It is here that the cultural context of economic activity gains significance.

The Cultural Context

Economic processes—including market processes—are embedded in cultural norms and practices (from destroying a surplus to leaving a tip), institutional structures (from kinship relations to joint-stock companies), internalised rules and knowledges (from timing a gift to paying in a shop), and legal and political frameworks (from village hierarchies to laws of contract). (Slater and Tonkiss 2001, 101).

This issue is acknowledged by archaeologists and historians who often rue the fact that metal analysis and descriptive accounts of bronze artefacts found in archaeological contexts have simply been viewed as items of exchange, neglecting the cultural framework of this exchange (Costin 1998, 3–16). Arjun Appadurai has argued that the craft objects themselves create social relationships and hence are a means of communication across a shared cultural ethos, such as the Indian Ocean (Appadurai 1986, 3–63). For example, though a local weaving tradition has existed for nearly 4,000 years in the Indonesian archipelago, Indian textiles were nonetheless considered special and continued to be imported. These imports included the double-ikat silk patola and the block-printed cotton textiles, which were traded to the region because of their status and ritual significance (Bühler 1959, 4–46).

Shrines and temples, both Hindu and Buddhist, were important consumers of metal objects, as discussed elsewhere (Ray 2018, 22–31). Coastal stupas, shrines and Hindu temples in Andhra and Tamilnadu in India have been repositories of bronze images found inside stupa deposits and used in ritual. Especially significant are sites such as Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda and Buddhapad in the Krishna Valley. By the 6th century, Buddhist stupas at Kaveripattinam and Nagapattinam on the Tamil coast gained prominence and became important consumers of bronze images of the Buddhist pantheon, which were also used as mobile objects of worship (Figures 8 and 9).

<Insert Figures 8 and 9>

In a recent publication, I have analysed the role of religious institutions located along the coasts in transnational maritime networks (Ray 2021). This essay adopts the position that the temple was primarily a place of worship for the community and that the built structure was established in synergy with the natural environment. Often located at strategic places where navigable rivers meet the sea, these shrines along the coasts served dual functions, as these were also used as major orientation points by watercraft while approaching land. Several examples may be provided, but perhaps the most relevant example for this paper is the Buddhist temple at Nagapattinam, popularly known as the Chinese Pagoda, which was a major landmark on the Tamil coast from the 7th to the 19th centuries CE, when it was demolished to build a Jesuit college. Sir Walter Elliot (1803–1887), a Scottish civil servant in India visited the Chinese Pagoda in 1846 on board the government steamer Hugh Lindsay, which travelled down the coast, and described it as a ‘four-sided tower of three stories constructed of bricks closely fitted together without cement’. The larger issue addressed here underscores the need to include coastal structures such as shrines, archaeological sites, etc. as a part of the country’s maritime heritage and to aid in their preservation for posterity.

The Indian coasts were home to sacred structures, both local and representative of institutionalised religions, as well as diverse religious groups from the 2nd to the 1st century BCE onward. How are these shrines linked to larger maritime networks? I suggest that one way of understanding the complex web of interactions of the past is through a deeper engagement with the markers of maritime cultural landscapes and the communities that inhabited these spaces. In the absence of maps and nautical charts, coastal architecture provided orientation to sailing ships and hence defined the sailing world in the ancient period. The coastal shrines had inter-linkages with travelling groups that travelled with relics and ritual objects both across the sea, as well as on routes into the interior. These routes have been under-researched and neglected, as they cut across political boundaries of nation-states and hence cannot be repurposed to shine light on a country’s past but need to be promoted in partnership with other countries. It is in building transnational networks that UNESCO’s conventions on the protection and preservation of cultural heritage acquire significance.

Heritage Routes and UNESCO’s 1972 Convention

The General Conference of UNESCO in 1972 adopted the “Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”. The Convention sought to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity. The term “outstanding universal value” is significant since this substantially enlarges the appeal of cultural heritage from local and regional audiences to international partners.

Between 1988 and 1994, the concept of “cultural or heritage routes” emerged and evolved as an idea of movement and dialogue in UNESCO. The first initiatives related to the Silk Road and the Slave Road were launched as the “Roads of Dialogue”. The focus on the “Silk Road”, launched in 1988, was primarily intended to rediscover the links between East and West. The emphasis was on roads as a means of transmission of knowledge, ideas, culture and beliefs, which had a profound impact on the history and civilisations of the Eurasian peoples. Under this initiative, in 2014, a 5,000 km stretch of the Silk Road, extending from Central China to present-day Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, was inscribed by the three countries on the World Heritage list called “Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor”.^[2]

Similarly in 2014, India presented ‘Project Mausam” at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Doha, Qatar, emphasising cultural corridors or heritage routes created by winds or monsoons which powered wooden sailing ships across the Indian Ocean. India’s objective was to partner with other countries and to inscribe on the World Heritage list some of the heritage routes through which knowledge, traditions and religious beliefs had spread across the Indian Ocean. As emphasised in the publication released in 2014 at the time of the launch of Project Mausam in Doha, the focus of the initiative was not only to re-connect and re-establish communications between countries of the Indian Ocean world but also to highlight local community initiatives and to underscore the importance of regional governance and the management of heritage sites by creating public awareness at the level of the society (Ray 2014).

The same year as India proposed its Project Mausam, the Indonesian President promised to turn his country into a Global Maritime Fulcrum between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. China also allied its Maritime Silk Road initiative with the Indonesian Spice Route proposal. As the UNESCO website developed with the support of Azerbaijan, China, Germany, Oman and Kazakhstan explains: the Spice Route stretched “from the west coast of Japan, through the islands of Indonesia, around India to the lands of the Middle East—and from there, across the Mediterranean to Europe.”^[3] Thus, the issues that have taken centre stage during the last few years include mobility, interconnectedness and the sailing ship.

Transnational heritage ties in with UNESCO’s agenda of shifting attention from national histories to the international domain. Transnational nominations provide the prospect to move beyond bilateral state-to-state relations and to use cultural heritage resources for sustainable development, but more importantly for enhancing international collaboration in the cultural sector. Transnational World Heritage nominations are an innovative approach to recognising many cultural heritage sites located across political borders and harmonising their protection and preservation while consolidating friendly relations with countries. Can the spread of Buddhism across the seas provide a way forward?

The history and archaeology of the spread of Buddhism across the seas is complex and continues to be under-researched. The complex dynamics of survival of ancient relics, stupas and monasteries, their recovery and resuscitation through the discipline of archaeology and imbuing them with new meanings as World Heritage sites with universal appeal is a process that can unite and harmonise communities across South and Southeast Asia, extending well into East Asia. The identification of heritage routes linking several Buddhist sites in India and Southeast Asia provides a suitable avenue for taking a transnational nomination forward. The concept of heritage routes, which was approved by the World Heritage Committee Board at its meeting held in July 1994 in Paris, is shown to be a rich and fertile one, “offering a privileged framework in which mutual understanding, a plural approach to history and a culture of peace can all operate. It is based on population movement, encounters and dialogue, cultural exchanges and cross-fertilisation, taking place both in space and time” (UNESCO 1994, 10).

Recent archaeological research in Myanmar supports the presence of a complex cultural landscape known as the Pyu ancient cities, dated from 200 BCE to 900 CE. Inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2014, the Pyu cities provide the earliest testimony of the introduction of Buddhism into Southeast Asia. The monastery and stupa at Beikthano show several similarities with those from the site of Nagarjunakonda in the Krishna valley in coastal Andhra. Archaeological research in Thailand has shown the presence of several competing centres in Thailand dating between 2000 and 200 BCE, based on rice agriculture, bronze and iron production and involved in long-distance maritime exchange through the Gulf of Siam with India. Thai scholars have suggested that the Thai term muang, literally ‘coming together of communities’, best describes these economically, socially and politically self-contained units. It is largely these communities that accepted and adapted Buddhism. As with other parts of the Indian subcontinent, the Buddhism that developed was suited to local requirements (Dhida Saraya 1999).

Given this emphasis on community involvement and cultural linkages across the seas, it is important that bronze ritual objects discussed in this paper be admired not only for their artistic appeal but also studied in their ritual contexts. It is important to remember that much of what we know about the rituals conducted during the enshrinement of relics comes from inscriptions, rather than from Buddhist texts. The relics and reliquaries were often taken in procession before interment in stupas and the inscriptions read aloud to the congregation during the festivities. As evident in the context of the relics found in the Bhattiprolu stupa on the Andhra coast, relic enshrinement involved participation by members of the lay community, such as the raja or king, members of the nigama, or market centre, and gosthi, or association, and of course, monks and nuns. This power of the relics to bring lay devotees and monks together was far more pervasive than has hitherto been recognised.

Bibliography

Footnotes

1. http://www.virtualmuseum.finearts.go.th/uthong/index.php/en/virtual-model-360/129-golden-buddha-head-statue.html accessed on 14 December 2020. ↩︎

2. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1442 accessed on 24 November 2020. ↩︎

3. https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/content/what-are-spice-routes accessed on 24 November 2020. ↩︎