South Asia and Southeast Asia

Author(s):  
André Wink

For many centuries, South Asia and Southeast Asia did not constitute two distinct regions of the world but one. This one region encompassed the bulk of the landmasses, islands and maritime spaces which were affected by the seasonal monsoon winds. Throughout its fertile and often extensive river plains it adopted recognizably similar patterns of culture and settled organization. Early geographers mostly referred to it as ‘India’. This article describes the expansion of agriculture and settled society; kings and Brahmans; a graveyard of cites in the Mediterranean that were centers of power and civilization geography and the world-historical context; the Indo-Islamic world; pathways to early modernity; and the effects of European imperialism.

English Today ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kingsley Bolton

ABSTRACTThe contemporary visibility and importance of English throughout the Asian region coupled with the emergence and development of distinct varieties of Asian Englishes have played an important part in the global story of English in recent years. Across Asia, the numbers of people having at least a functional command of the language have grown exponentially over the last four decades, and current changes in the sociolinguistic realities of the region are often so rapid that it is difficult for academic commentators to keep pace. One basic issue in the telling of this story is the question of what it is we mean by the term ‘Asia’, itself a word of contested etymology, whose geographical reference has ranged in application from the Middle East to Central Asia, and from the Indian sub-continent to Japan and Korea. In this article, my discussion will focus on the countries of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, as it is in these regions that we find not only the greatest concentration of ‘outer-circle’ English-using societies but also a number of the most populous English-learning and English-knowing nations in the world.


Islamisation ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
A. C. S. Peacock

The Arab conquests of the Middle East and much of North Africa and Central Asia in the seventh century mark the beginning of a process of religious and cultural change which ultimately resulted in the present Muslim-majority populations of almost all of these regions (see Figure 1.1). Yet the countries with the greatest Muslim populations today exist outside the Middle East in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and in Southeast Asia, where Indonesia constitutes the largest Muslim-populated state in the world. Islam spread far into Africa and Europe too, and significant Muslim populations also arose in parts of the world which remained mostly non-Muslim, such as China and Ethiopia. This spread of Islam is often referred to as ‘Islamisation’, a term widespread in scholarship and in recent times in more popular media.


Focaal ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (63) ◽  
pp. 8-19
Author(s):  
Blai Guarné

It is well accepted that the discussion about intellectual centers and peripheries has a reductionist character that conceals the complexity of a globalizing world. Despite this, we cannot ignore that in the academic history of anthropology central traditions and hegemonic discourses were established, while others were rendered as peripheral or marginal. This historical context has set a disciplinary framework of inequalities and imbalances that created the conditions of possibility for the global production and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. By re-examining the controversy surrounding the anthropology of the Mediterranean and its relation with debates about native anthropology, this article points out the challenge of revising this disciplinary framework in the project of developing a truly global anthropology.


2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahrul Hayat

<p>Abstrak: Beberapa ahli memperkirakan ada sekitar 1,6 miliar orang Muslim di dunia, di mana 62.1 % dari mereka hidup di kawasan Asia. Hanya 15 % adalah Muslim Arab, sedangkan hampir sepertiga hidup di Asia Tenggara. Islam di Asia Tenggara relatif lebih moderat dibandingkan Islam di Timur Tengah. Sifat moderasi ini merupakan bagian yang tidak terpisah dari perkembangan Islam di Asia Tenggara. Islam sampai ke Asia Tenggara melalui jalur perdagangan dan tidak melalui penaklukan militer seperti yang banyak terjadi di dunia Arab, Asia Selatan dan Timur Tengah. Islam juga diwarnai pada paham animisme, Hindu, dan tradisi Buddha di Indonesia, yang memberikan ciri sinkritisme. Islam baru tersebar di Asia Tenggara pada akhir abad ke-17. Kebangkitan Islam telah mengubah wajah politik  Islam di Asia Tenggara. Memang benar bahwa Islam Asia Tenggara termasuk di antara Islam yang sangat minimal corak kearabannya yang diakibatkan oleh proses islamisasi yang pada umumnya berlangsung damai.</p><p><br />Abctract: The Contribution of Islam towards Southeast Asian Future Civilization. By some estimates there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, of which 62.1% live in Asia. Only 15% of Muslims are Arab, while almost one third live in Southeast Asia. Islam in Southeast Asia is relatively more moderate in character than in much of the Middle East. This moderation stems in part from the way Islam evolved in Southeast Asia. Islam came to Southeast Asia with traders rather than through military conquest as it did in much of South Asia and the Arab Middle East. Islam also was overlaid on animist, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions in Indonesia, which are said to give it a more syncretic aspect. Islam spread throughout much of Southeast Asia by the end of the seventeenth century. The Islamic revival is changing the face of political Islam in Southeast Asia. It is true that Southeast Asian Islam is among the least Arabicized forms of Islam, largely as a result of a process of Islamization that was generally peaceful.</p><p><br />Kata Kunci: Islam, Asia Tenggara, peradaban</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Erik Bleich ◽  
Maurits van der Veen

This chapter confirms that Muslim newspaper articles in Britain, Canada, and Australia are similar to those in American newspapers. Patterns in both the amount and the tone of coverage closely parallel our US findings, as do the factors associated with the greatest negativity, and the words most commonly used to describe Muslims or Islam. A probe into six newspapers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa, however, demonstrates that coverage of Muslims is not simply dictated by world events. In most of these newspapers, coverage of Muslims remains negative on average, but this negativity is simply far less intense than in the Anglophone North. In addition, the specific words most commonly associated with Muslims and Islam in these six newspapers are much more varied. Media around the world have more latitude to select stories and to frame discussions than an analysis of Anglophone North newspapers alone would imply.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melandri Vlok ◽  
Hallie R. Buckley ◽  
Justyna J. Miszkiewicz ◽  
Meg M. Walker ◽  
Kate Domett ◽  
...  

AbstractThalassemias are inherited blood disorders that are found in high prevalences in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These diseases provide varying levels of resistance to malaria and are proposed to have emerged as an adaptive response to malaria in these regions. The transition to agriculture in the Holocene has been suggested to have influenced the selection for thalassemia in the Mediterranean as land clearance for farming encouraged interaction between Anopheles mosquitos, the vectors for malaria, and human groups. Here we document macroscopic and microscopic skeletal evidence for the presence of thalassemia in both hunter-gatherer (Con Co Ngua) and early agricultural (Man Bac) populations in northern Vietnam. Firstly, our findings demonstrate that thalassemia emerged prior to the transition to agriculture in Mainland Southeast Asia, from at least the early seventh millennium BP, contradicting a long-held assumption that agriculture was the main driver for an increase in malaria in Southeast Asia. Secondly, we describe evidence for significant malarial burden in the region during early agriculture. We argue that the introduction of farming into the region was not the initial driver of the selection for thalassemia, as it may have been in other regions of the world.


1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Reid

Maritime Southeast Asia is one of those parts of the world destined by geography to be an international marketplace. Not only is it the largest of the world's archipelagos, penetrated throughout by sea and river, it also lies athwart one of the major international trading routes, between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean on the one hand and China and Japan on the other. These factors have always given to maritime Southeast Asia a role akin to the Mediterranean world, in which sea-borne trade was the vital factor in urban growth and in political power. In addition, however, Southeast Asia was the principal source of the items in greatest demand in the world's markets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and camphor.


Author(s):  
David B. Gray

Tantric Buddhist traditions emerged in South Asia during the seventh century c.e., and rapidly spread into Central, East, and Southeast Asia. One of the most notable features of these traditions was the presence of antinomian elements. Many tantric scriptures contain descriptions of rituals involving violence as well as sexual practices. These works led to resistance to tantric traditions in some cultural contexts. They became well established in Tibet, and have spread throughout the world with the Tibetan diaspora from 1959 onward. The dissemination of tantric traditions in the contemporary world, however, has arguably been hindered by problems relating to the transgressive texts and rituals preserved by these traditions. These include controversies concerning the continued practice of violent rituals, as well as the sexual abuse of students by tantric masters who evidently secretly maintain the practice of tantric sexual rituals.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nienke Blom ◽  
Andreas Fichtner ◽  
Alexey Gokhberg ◽  
Nicholas Rawlinson ◽  
Deborah Wehner

&lt;p&gt;In this work, we present results from waveform tomography conducted in the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia. Whilst computationally more expensive than ray-based imaging methods, the advantage of waveform methods lies in their ability to incorporate in a consistent manner all the information contained in seismograms &amp;#8211; not just the arrivals of certain, specified phases. We can therefore naturally and coherently exploit body and multimode surface waves, and take into account source effects, frequency-dependence, wavefront healing, anisotropy and attenuation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here, we look at applications of this method in two geologically complex regions: the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia. Both are characterised by broadscale convergence and a complicated pattern of interactions between larger and smaller-scale tectonic plates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Mediterranean is historically one of the best studied areas in the world, with an impressive density of seismic stations which greatly aids the detailed imaging of the region. We have been able to image the Central and Eastern Mediterranean down to the mantle transition zone, thereby illuminating the complex slab structures and geometries within the domain. We identify several main slabs that correspond to major current and former subduction zones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Southeast Asia, we work at a larger scale, with a model domain encompassing the Sunda arc (which gives rise to some of the world&amp;#8217;s most significant natural hazards), the Banda arc with its spectacular 180&amp;#176; curvature and various smaller-scale features, such as the tectonically complex island of Sulawesi. To date, sparse instrument coverage in the region has led to a heterogeneous path coverage, in particular around Borneo which is located in an intra-plate setting. A recent series of temporary seismometer deployments in Sabah (North Borneo), Kalimantan, Sulawesi and the Celebes Sea allows us to fill the gaps in the publicly available data, thereby providing new opportunities to investigate the region's complexity using waveform tomography.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this presentation, we will also discuss a number of features and &amp;#8220;best practices&amp;#8221; that can significantly influence waveform tomography results. In particular, we highlight how we can optimise sensitivity to deep structure by combining long-period data with a window selection approach that specifically targets body wave signals, and we discuss the effect of uncertainties in earthquake source parameters on the seismic inversion process.&lt;/p&gt;


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-170
Author(s):  
Yingfu Li

AbstractBased on the discussion on the shape, nature, iron-smelting products and technical characteristics of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries of the iron-smelting remains of the Han dynasty at Liuchen Town in Pingnan County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, this paper puts forward the issue of the origin of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries in China, and referring to the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries found in West Asia, South Asia, Europe, and Africa and their smelting technical traditions. This paper pointed out that the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries in China had the same origin with that of the other regions of the world, which was the result of the far and wide diffusion of the “bowl-shaped” bloomeries of West Asia, and its introduction route might be from West Asia via South Asia and Southeast Asia along the Indian Ocean.


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