Asian Cultural Traditions

Asian Cultural Traditions

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SECOND EDITION

Asian Cultural Traditions

Carolyn Brown Heinz California State University, Chico

Jeremy A. Murray California State University, San Bernardino

WAVELAND

PRESS, INC. Long Grove, Illinois

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To Chloe, Bella, Emily, and Zoe,

and to all of our students

For information about this book, contact: Waveland Press, Inc. 4180 IL Route 83, Suite 101 Long Grove, IL 60047-9580 (847) 634-0081 info@waveland.com www.waveland.com

Cover image: “Back Home” by Vietnamese artist Do Xuan Doan

Copyright © 2019, 1999 by Waveland Press, Inc.

10-digit ISBN 1-4786-3620-3 13-digit ISBN 978-1-4786-3620-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

Preface xi

PART I Land and Language 1

1 Asia as Cultured Space 11 “The Great Collision” and Asian Landforms 13

Rivers 19 The Outer Ring of Islands 23

Monsoon Asia and Rice Adaptations 27 Rice, Dry and Wet 28 Origins of Rice Cultivation 29 Two Rice Cultures 30 Rice and the Green Revolution 32

Early Asians 34 ■ REFERENCES CITED 37

2 Tongues, Texts, and Scripts 39 Voices from the Past 42

Making Family Connections: The Indo-Europeans 42 East Asian Homelands 47 Austroasiatic 49 Austro-Tai 49 Sino-Tibetan 51

Texts 57 “You Are Hurting My Language” 57 The Search for Sacred Texts 59

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Scripts 64 South Asian Scripts 64 Written Chinese 67 Korean and Japanese 71

■ REFERENCES CITED 73

PART II Outsiders 75

3 Central Asia, Xinjiang, and Tibet 81 The Silk Roads 85

Silk and Steeds 86 Travelers 87 Religions along the Silk Road 90

Barbarians 91 Women on the Steppe 93 The Xiongnu and the Mongols 94 Genghis Khan (Chinggis Qa’an) and

the Mongol Empire 95

Xinjiang and Tibet 100 “New Dominion” 100 “Western Treasure-House” 102

■ REFERENCES CITED 104

4 Tribal People 105 Self-Governing People and Expansionary States 107 Ethnic Identity 111 The Colonial Theory of Ethnicity 112 Hmong: A Case Study 115

Who Are the Miao? 117 Hmong in Thailand 120 The Transitory Community 121 Adaptation and Response: Opium 123 Fathers and Sons 126 “Silver Celebrates the Worth of Women” 131 Spirits, Domestic and Wild 133

■ REFERENCES CITED 138

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PART III South Asia 141

5 India 147 A Forgotten Past 149

Puzzles of Indian Origins: The First Civilizations 151 Indus Valley Civilization (2500–1500 B.C.E.) 153

Brief Outline of Indian History 157 The Vedic Age (1500–450 B.C.E.) 157 The Mauryan-Guptan Empires (323 B.C.E.–550 C.E.) 164 Medieval Period (550–1210 C.E.) 167 The Indo-Islamic Period (Twelfth to

Nineteenth Centuries) 168 British Colonial Period (Eighteenth to

Twentieth Centuries) 171 Era of Independence 172

The Caste System 172 Ancient Sources on the Caste System 173 Economics of Caste: The Jajmani System 175 Case Study: Two Hundred Years of Caste in

a North Indian Village 177 Social Justice: Reservations for Scheduled Castes

and Scheduled Tribes 178

The Dharma of Women 179 Patriarchy 181 A Woman’s Life Cycle 182 Two Social Problems 186

■ REFERENCES CITED 188

6 Religions of South Asia 191 Early Core Ideas 194

New Ideas Emerge: Upanishadic Thought 194 The Proliferating Gods 196

The Hindu-Buddhist Traditions 197 Life in Society: Clean and Unclean in Caste Society 198 Life In and Out of Society: Having It Both Ways 200 Temple Worship and Bhakti 202 Pilgrimage to Buddhist India 207 The “Three Jewels” of Buddhism 209 The Four Periods of Buddhism 213

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Islam 220 Sufis, Saints, and Shahs 221 Sunnis and Shias in Colonial India 223 The Umma and the Independence Movement 226

Sikhism 227 ■ REFERENCES CITED 231

PART IV East Asia 233

7 China 239 The Beginnings: Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin 245

“The Ruins of Yin” 246 The Uses of Bronze 248 Communicating with Heaven 249 Idealized Zhou Feudalism 250 Two Sages: Confucius and Laozi (Lao Tsu) 254 The First Emperor and the Unification of China 260

Emergence of the Confucian Elite (Shenshi) 263 The Buddhist Challenge to Confucian Civilization 267 Neo-Confucianism 273

The Confucian Model for Kinship and Gender 276 Ancestor Worship 278 Wealth, Power, and Morality in the Large Lineage 280 The Family in the Twentieth Century 284 Women in Confucian China 288

■ REFERENCES CITED 294

8 Japan 297 The Yamato State 300

Chinese and Early Japanese Sources 301 Shinto, Folk and Imperial 304

The China Connection: Asuka, Nara, and Heian Periods 313

Buddhism Comes to Japan 314 The Failure of the Centralized State 318 Romance at Court 320

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Warrior Culture in Feudal Japan 325 The Shogunate 327 The Samurai Class 328 Zen Buddhism and Samurai Culture 335 The Practice of Zen 337 Zen Buddhism’s Institutions 339 Zen Culture: Zen and the Arts 340

■ REFERENCES CITED 342

9 Korea 343 Religion, Ritual, and Korean Culture 347

Myths of Origin 347 Korean Shamanism 348

Three Kingdoms Period (378 B.C.E.–935 C.E.) 353 Koryo Dynasty (918–1392) 357 Neo-Confucianism in Choson Dynasty (1392–1897) 359

Neo-Confucianism and Scholar-Officials 359 Writing the Korean Language 361 Turmoil in Late Choson: The Tonghak Movement 362

Korea as Japanese Colony 364 Challenges of Modern Korea 366 ■ REFERENCES CITED 368

PART V Southeast Asia 369

10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 375 Four Stages of Southeast Asian History 377

The Prehistoric Period 2500–150 B.C.E. 379 Period of Indian Cultural Influence 100 C.E.–1300 C.E. 382 The Period of Chinese and Islamic Influence, 1300–1750 389

Theravada Buddhism and the Thai State 394 The Buddhist Ramayana 398

Buddhism and Popular Religion 400 The Soul and Other Spirit Entities 403 The Monkhood 404 Women in Theravada Buddhism 407

■ REFERENCES CITED 408

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11 Insular Southeast Asia 411 Borneo 413

Haddon in Borneo 413 Death in Borneo 418

Head-Hunting in the Philippines 422 Romanticized Bali 423

Trance and Dance in Bali 423 The Balinese Cockfight 429

■ REFERENCES CITED 430

PART VI European Empires in Asia 433

12 The Colonial Period 437 Trade in the Precolonial Period 441 European Empires in Asia 443

Portuguese Port Cities and Priests 443 English and Dutch Merchant Companies 446 Britain’s Indian Empire 447 China: Opium Wars and the Treaty Century 452 “Below the Winds”—Colonizing the Islands 458 Burma and Thailand 461 Vietnam 463 Cambodia 464

The Meiji Era 466 ■ REFERENCES CITED 468

Index 469

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PREFACE

It has been almost twenty years since the first edition of Asian Cultural Tra- ditions was published in 1999. In many ways, changes have been rapid and almost bewildering to the student of Asia, with economies and geopolitics shifting considerably. But the cultural traditions of the region have continued to shape the lives of billions of people who live in the region, even while those cul- tures are adapted and transformed for changing times. We aimed to capture both the changes and continuities of the histories and cultures of the region in this revised and updated edition.

College and university instructors have used this book as an introductory companion to courses on Asian cultures across several disciplines since its pub- lication. An impetus to begin work on a revised and updated edition of the book has come from the constructive comments of instructors who have used the book in their classes, and from written reviews from sixty students in Prof. Murray’s classes. We have considerably updated and revised the text to reflect new developments in scholarship as well as changes in the region and the world. We have also added chapters on Central Asia, Korea, and Southeast Asia, included new images and maps, and added a section of color plates.

This second edition is a collaboration between an anthropologist specializ- ing in India and a historian specializing in China, and this pairing has been lively and rewarding. We hope that the reader benefits from our enjoyment in working together, and that this volume carries on the interdisciplinary spirit of the first edition.

We are grateful to Waveland Press for the hard work of its production team, and especially Jeni Ogilvie, in tracking down artwork, snaring infelicities and errors in the manuscript, and making better writers of both of us. Tom Cur- tin, senior editor at Waveland, has supported this project since the launch of the first edition with encouragement and sage advice; he also has a remarkably good eye and we thank him for making the book beautiful, inside and out.

We are grateful to several readers of chapters, including Morris Rossabi and Cheehyung Harrison Kim. Sinwoo Lee clarified the puzzle of romaniza-

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tion of Korean, and we have followed his advice. Above all, we are grateful to the hundreds of students who have read the book over the years and shared with us their likes and dislikes; we have rewritten it with these opinions in mind and hope that future students will continue to let their opinions be known. We are listening.

Carolyn Brown Heinz California State University, Chico

Jeremy A. Murray California State University, San Bernardino

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Part I

Land and Language

1 ASIA AS CULTURED SPACE

2 TONGUES, TEXTS, AND SCRIPTS

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The Study of Asia If ever there was a time when Asia could be ignored, that time is not the

present. At the end of the twentieth century—a century plagued by war, domi- nated in its first half by the great European colonial empires in their heyday and in the second half by the “Cold War” between the US and the USSR—most of the old certainties had slipped away. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, economic and political weight is shifting eastward, to Asia.

An argument could be made that the last 400 years, the centuries of Euro- pean dominance, have been the aberrant ones. Prior to this period, the great civilizations of Eurasia—China, India, the Middle East, and Europe—main- tained a balance of power for many centuries. There were occasional interrup- tions in this balance by ambitious empires of conquest. The European one from 1700 to 1950 is only the most recent; before that, the Mongols in the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries went thundering in every direction from their Central Asian homeland, conquering China, Iran, Afghanistan, and India, and threatening Europe. But these civilizations absorbed the blows, civilized the invaders, and carried on, enriched by the new cultural strands contributed by the foreigners.

Asia is in such a period of recuperation now, in which great and ancient civ- ilizations, after enduring humiliation and defeat at the hands of colonizing European powers, are absorbing the cultural contributions of the invaders and recasting their civilizations. Meanwhile, the old balance is being restored. Once again there are European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese cultural spheres.

By “Asia” we mean, in this book, only “monsoon Asia”—the geopolitical regions of South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia (see Map I.1). Our focus is not nationalist, but cultural. We do not take as given or eternal the nation- states that have emerged in the postcolonial world, enduring as those may prove to be. Hard at work as they are at proving ancient natural rights to pres- ent borders, none of the current outlines of Asian nation-states, with the single exception of Japan, have a time depth of even a century.

Our subject here is rather more amorphous; it is those old civilizations themselves. Not, of course, “Asian civilization,” for there is not and never has been such a thing. Like “the Orient” and “the East,” “Asia” has always been something of a fiction created by Europeans whose capacities to truly engage with a culture stopped at the eastern edges of the Greek world. Beyond lay “Asia,” the “East.” In fact, the word Asia appears to come from the Assyrian word for east, asu. In recent times the simple dichotomy between “the West” and “the East” has contrasted European civilization with all the rest of Eur- asia, lumped as “the East.” However, we tend to think, more subtly, of the

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