One of Hinduism's central tenets is the belief that Truth is one, but different people find different ways to realize that Truth. This belief is the source of its tolerance and pluralism and the reason why Hindus never ventured out of India to conquer and convert people to their faith. However, despite the lack of any proselytizing spirit in Hinduism, it has still been able to attract, in the past as well as the present, people from so many different ethnicities, races and nationalities that it's no longer appropriate to call it an Indian religion. The amorphous and evolutionary nature of Hinduism has helped facilitate the smooth assimilation of its beliefs and practices into the indigenous cultures of the civilizations it has influenced and vice versa.

Hindu cultural influences outside of India are most evident in the cultures and civilizations of Southeast Asia. The languages, scripts, literature, art and architecture of the nations of Southeast Asia bear witness to the extent to which Hinduism has been thoroughly infused in their cultures. For example, until the arrival of Arabs and Spaniards to the Philippine archipelago, the chiefs of many Philippine islands were called rajahs and even today the Tagalog (Filipino) word for teacher is guru.

Hinduism was initially transported to these lands by traders, merchants and other seafarers, some of whom married the natives and settled down in the region. The earliest Indian reference to Southeast Asia is to the Dvipantara or Jawa Dweepa kingdom on the islands of Java and Sumatra around 200 B.C. Gradually, Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices started to permeate their societies, starting from the aristocracy and ending with the general public. Soon, Hinduism was adapted to suit the religious, spiritual, social and political aspirations of the local populations.

The Champa kingdom of Vietnam (192 A.D. – 1697 A.D.) was one of the first Hindu kingdoms in Southeast Asia. A fiercely independent and distinct ethnic group, they fought off invasions by the Chinese, Khmer and Vietnamese kingdoms for many centuries but were ultimately absorbed by the Vietnamese. Today, the Chams, the remnants of the Champa Dynasty, are a scattered minority in Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam. They have two distinct religious communities, Hindu and Muslim or Cham Bani, and, while they share a common language and history, intermarriage between the two is taboo.

The Srivijayan kingdom of Sumatra (200s – 1400s A.D.) was instrumental in bringing Hinduism to Indonesia and promoting it throughout the neighboring areas. It was a coastal kingdom centered around Palembang and rose to power as a major kingdom in the 7^th century through its maritime prowess. Ironically, its decline began after a raid by pirates from the Chola kingdom of southern India, and was eventually overshadowed by the Javan kingdoms of Singhosari and Majapahit. Muslim traders and merchants brought Islam to the island and in 1414, and the last Hindu Srivijayan king converted to Islam and founded the Sultanate of Malacca on the Malay peninsula.

The Singhosari and Majapahit kingdoms (1200s – 1600s A.D.) of Java and Bali were the last great Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia. However, even before these kingdoms, smaller Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms promoted the two religions by building temples. The largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia, called Prambanan, was built in the 9^th century under the Sailendra dynasty. The three main shrines of this temple are devoted to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and the bas-relief around its walls depict various scenes from the Ramayana. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is currently undergoing renovation. The legacy of the Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia is reflected in the fact that the national symbol of Indonesia, an overwhelmingly Muslim country today, is Garuda, the mythological mount of Lord Vishnu.

In Cambodia, Hinduism flourished under the great Khmer kingdom of Angkor, which ruled over most parts of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand from the 9^th to 15^th century. The Khmer (Cambodian) script is derived from the Brahmi script in which Sanskrit was written at that time. Cambodia’s earliest written documents, dated to the 6^th Century A.D., are stone slabs inscribed in Sanskrit providing genealogies of Khmer kings and their endowments to temples. Sanskrit was the official language of their court and hundreds of Hindu and Buddhist temples were built under the Khmer kings. The biggest Hindu temple in the world, Angkor Wat, was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II as a dedication to Lord Vishnu in the 12^th century.

The jewel of Cambodian literature, the Reamker, composed between the 14th and 16th centuries, is an adaptation of the Hindu epic Ramayana. Khmer classical dance is derived from Indian classical dance and puppet performances depicting episodes from the Reamker called “shadow plays” are still popular in the Cambodian countryside. Many Cambodian myths and legends, passed on orally from generation to generation, are derived from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Jataka tales.

Finally, I leave you with an amusing incident to illustrate the significant influence of Hinduism in contemporary Southeast Asia. In the closing words of a recently published book, “The Ramayana in Indonesia,” the authors, Vinod C. Khanna and Malini Saran, recount an encounter with an elderly Javanese Muslim woman while doing research for the book in Jakarta. The elderly woman had innocently asked the authors, “Do you also have a Ramayana in India?”