Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks Across India and Southeast Asia by Himanshu Prabha Ray (review)

Abstract

Himanshu Prabha Ray’s first book on cultural exchange across the Bay of Bengal, entitled The Winds of Change: Buddhism and the Maritime Links of Early South Asia (Ray 1994) was a pioneer work. In a time when too many Indian scholars still viewed Southeast Asia as “Greater India,” she carried out a thorough investigation into the then burgeoning field of Southeast Asian archaeology, resulting in a renewed, balanced approach to the “Indianization” of Southeast Asia and the role of Buddhism in this process. The book was an inspiration to many historians of Southeast Asia, including this reviewer. The author then became one of the most prolix writers on matters of exchange between India and Southeast Asia and on the maritime history and archaeology of the Indian Ocean. A quick perusal of the web and my own notes brought up some fifty-five titles to this day that deal with such matters from a variety of angles and formats (articles, book chapters, and many authored and edited books), some fifteen of which were published in the past ten years. The work under review here is her latest single-author, book-form production and again deals with the relationship between India and Southeast Asia. The present book’s agenda, as clearly expressed by its title, is to explore the close relationship between those shrines that can be said to be “coastal” (even if built some distance inland) and the innumerable networks that link them to other such sites in South and Southeast Asia. Nine chapters