The galactic polity in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Previous article FreeThe galactic polity in Southeast AsiaStanley Jeyaraja TAMBIAHStanley Jeyaraja TAMBIAHHarvard University Search for more articles by this author Harvard UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI have coined the label galactic polity to represent the design of traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms, a design that coded in a composite way cosmological, topographical, and politico-economic features. The label itself is derived from the concept of mandala, which according to a common Indo-Tibetan tradition is composed of two elements—a core (manda) and a container or enclosing element (la). Mandala designs, both simple and complex of satellites arranged around a center, occur with such insistence at various levels of Hindu-Buddhist thought and practice that one is invited to probe their representational efficacy.Mandala as cosmological topographyCosmological schemes of various sorts in Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism have been referred to as mandala—for example, the cosmos as constituted of Mount Meru in the center surrounded by oceans and mountain ranges. At a philosophical and doctrinal level, the Buddhist Sarvastivadin school represented the relation between consciousness (citta) and its associated mental phenomena (caitta) in terms of the law of satellites, wherein consciousness placed in the center is surrounded by ten caitta, each of which again is surrounded by four laksana, or satellites (Stcherbatsky 1923; Conze 1970). The design and arrangement of the magnificent architectural monuments like Borobodur and Angkor Vat have been called mandala (Mus 1935, 1936).At quite a different level, Kautilya in his Arthashastra used mandala as a geopolitical concept to discuss the spatial configuration of friendly and enemy states from the perspective of a particular kingdom (Shamasastry 1960). The human body is likened to a mandala (Tucci 1971), a description that finds its resonances in ritual and medical practices. Finally, mandala designs are printed on textiles or are reproduced in the transitory designs drawn with powdered colors on numerous occasions.My primary interest in this paper is the traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms that are described as conforming to the mandala scheme in their arrangement at various levels. Mandala as geometrical, topographical, cosmological, and societal blueprints are not a distinctive feature of complex kingdoms and polities only. The evidence is quite clear that simpler mandala designs appear in tribal lineage-based segmentary societies practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, and that the most elaborate designs are manifest in the more complex centralized polities of valley-based sedentary rice cultivators (for example, see Mus 1935; Heine-Geldern 1942; de Jong 1952; Schrieke 1955; Shorto 1963; Moertono 1968; Wheatley 1971). But this is a simplification. There are indeed expressions both simple and complex found in phenomena standing between these poles—at the level of tribal polities and local communities. An excellent case in point are the Atoni of Timor. They have named patrilineal descent groups, live in villages, grow maize and rice by shifting agriculture on mountainous terrain, and at the same time belong to princedoms. Their village houses are made to a complex center-oriented design wherein con-cepts of inner and outer, right and left, four major mother posts, twelve peripheral chicken posts, and so on build up a scheme that simultaneously has cosmological, ritual, sexual, and practical ramifications (Cunningham 1973). And, as may be expected, the wider encompassing polity as such is constituted according to an ela-borate design of center and satellites and of successive bipartitions of various kinds (Nordholt 1971).Examples of the elementary geometric designs are the five-unit (quinary) and nine-unit samples. The first consists of four units deployed around a central one, and the second is composed of a center, four places in the major cardinal positions, and four more placed in between at the lesser cardinal points (Figures 1 and 2). In Indonesia, for example, the quinary formula called mantjapat ("five-four") had various usages: it denoted the arrangement of four village tracts around a fifth cen-tral one; it represented the rotational location of village markets in a five-day cycle; it made its appearance in the settlement of Minangkabau land-ownership disputes in that the unanimous testimony of the heads of families owning the four surrounding plots was required (de Jong 1952); it described the headman's council at the village level (in the same sense as that of the panchayat in village India); and it appears (Schrieke 1955) to have been the underlying pattern of the Mataram king-dom during the second quarter of the eighteenth century, arrived at by successive bipartitions (Figure 1, upper right).Similarly, the nine-unit design appears in stereotyped accounts of the king and his ministers arranged in two concentric circles. It also appears in the territorial design of the traditional Negrisembilan polity (Figure 2), with the domain of Sri Menanti in the center, immediately surrounded by four "verandah" (serambi tracts and these again being flanked by four major districts (de Jong 1952). Figure 1: Upper left: The mantjapat. Upper right: The Mataram state—a five-unit system through successive bipartitions (after Schrieke 1955) Lower left: Nine-unit system, showing a radical pattern. Lower right: The king's council, showing two concentric circles.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointHere is the first problem posed by these facts: because these geometrical and radial constructs, traditionally conceived as cosmological designs, occur in slash-and-burn and wet-rice economies, occur at the level of local community and the widest conception of polity, and occur in simpler and more complex societies, there are no prima facie grounds for explaining their manifestation as immediate and direct projections of ecological considerations or the logistical constraints of sociopolitical organization. The logic of their use cannot be reduced to a simple causal explanation. It is clear that if we approached these center-oriented constructs or models as a form of classification, we could start with an initial pentadic or quinary system and progressively build up an expanding series of mandala circles comprising seventeen, thirty-three, and still larger clusters of units.Perhaps the most famous of these complex schemes was realized in the Hindu-Buddhist polities of Southeast Asia that employed the thirty-three-unit scheme to express and organize cosmogonies and pantheons as well as religio-political groupings. In this scheme the king as wielder of dharma (the moral law), as the chakra-vartin (universal emperor) and bodhisattva (buddha-to-be), was seen as the pivot of the polity and as the mediating link between the upper regions of the cosmos, composed of the gods and their heavens, and the lower plane of humans and lesser beings.1Figure 2: Negrisembilan (after de Jong 1952). Bottom: Schematic design of the Negrisembilan polity as a nine-unit system.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThe best expression of this scheme is the thirty-two myos of the medieval Mon kingdom and the thirty-seven nats of the subsequent Burmese pantheon so well elucidated for us by Heine-Geldern (1942) and Shorto (1963); both these schemes derive from the paradigmatic heavenly scheme of the god Indra, flanked by the four guardians of the world (lokapala) and twenty-eight lesser devatas as retinue. For example, Thaton, the Mon kingdom overrun by Anawrahta in 1057, had thirty-two myos or provinces, each the seat of a subordinate prince, ringing the capital. All these political and territorial units were further linked together by the Buddhist cetiya cult of relic pagodas, also thirty-three in number. Similarly, the kingdom of Pegu in 1650 and the Mon kingdom of Rammanadesa of Lower Burma had their own permutations and variations of these schemes (Shorto 1963).All these Buddhist courts also provided prolix examples of such mandala schemes as the king surrounded by thirty-three queens and thirty-three lineages into which they married, and the like.Following is the second problem of interpretation. The classical descriptions of these Southeast Asian polities arranged in center-oriented galactic schemes were and are accompanied by a certain interpretation of their raison d'etre, which I shall label as the cosmological mode. It is best exemplified by the writings of Eliade and Heine-Geldern (among others), and repeated by Shorto and Wheatley; surprisingly, it is also espoused by Riggs (1967) in his characterization of the traditional Siamese polity. Even Geertz's (1973) trinitarian formulation of the traditional Javanese and Balinese polities in terms of the doctrines of exemplary center, graded spirituality, and theater state resonates with a "cosmological" ontology, which provides the impulsion for the politics in these traditional kingdoms to be the enactment of ritual.The doyen of contemporary cosmological interpreters is Eliade, who for instance in his Cosmos and history: The myth of the eternal return (1959) argues that Archaic Man, as opposed to Modern Man, constantly enacted archetypes or exemplary models in his rituals (as well as other activities), of which the symbolism of the center as the axis mundi is the most celebrated. For Eliade, these center-oriented cosmologies are enacted and implemented by the archaic mentality, not because of any rational or practical considerations but because they constitute a prior ontology and therefore an absolute reality for the actors. in other words, the "sacred" orientation provides the impulsions and guidelines for the "profane" activities of traditional man. Thus, in Eliade's vision, archaic man's "reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype [and this] reality is conferred through participation in the 'symbolism of the center': cities, temples, houses become real by the fact of being assimilated to the 'centre of the world.'"Again, more recently, Wheatley, the author of a large work, The pivot of the four quarters (1971), repeats in his inaugural lecture the same interpretive perspective: "in these religions which held that human order was brought into being at the creation of the world there was a pervasive tendency to dramatize the cosmogony by constructing on earth a reduced version of the cosmos, usually in the form of a state capital. in other words, Reality was achieved through the imitation of a celestial archetype by giving material expression to that parallelism between macrocosmos and microcosmos without which there could be no prosperity in the world of men" (1969: 10).Let me be clear about what i am questioning in the received wisdom so persuasively purveyed by these eminent scholars. My own stand is far from a vulgar utilitarianism or pragmatism in terms of which the schemes in question ought to be explained. one must grant the validity of the galactic model as a collective representation. But what i question is seeing the rationale for this model in a cosmo-logical mode of thought as an ontological priority, which is so interpreted as to constitute a sociological anteriority as well, such that for the imputed "traditional" or "archaic" mentality a notion of the "sacred" is alleged to engulf the "secular" and to serve as the ground of reality.Apart from the limitation that such a cosmological mode of explanation is static and cannot account for either variations between the schemes employed by societies or polities or dynamic changes in the schemes over time, there is the major objection that in these examples of traditional thought and practice, the sacred as such cannot be persuasively distinguished from a profane domain, and that the cosmological, religious, political, economic dimensions cannot be disaggregated. What the Western analytical tradition separates and identifies as religion, economy, politics may have either been combined differently, or more likely constituted a single interpenetrating totality. If, as I believe, these entities under scrutiny were total social phenomena in the Maussian sense, then one has to employ a different analytical strategy from those already cited so as to recover something of their con-tours and relations.My approach, which I shall call "totalization," aims to give an integrated account that is, as far as possible, a true representation of the traditional Southeast Asian kingdoms as extant actualities. But the task is not easy, least of all the problem of translation of indigenous concepts and their elucidation in terms of the analyst's concepts and vocabulary.My thesis is that the kingdoms in question were arranged according to a galactic scheme, and that this scheme was conceptualized and actualized in ways that are best elucidated in terms of certain key indigenous concepts. The most central of these concepts is mandala (Thai: monthon), standing for an arrangement of a center and its surrounding satellites and employed in multiple contexts to describe, for example: the structure of a pantheon of gods; the deployment spatially of a capital region and its provinces; the arrangement socially of a ruler, princes, nobles, and their respective retinues; and the devolution of graduated power on a scale of decreasing autonomies. Other key concepts in the Thai language (which have th eir counterpar ts in other Southeast Asian languages as well) are: muang, which in a politico-territorial sense signifies kingdom/principality in terms of center-oriented space, and of central and satellite domains; and krom, which represents the radial mapping of an administrative system of departments and their subdivisions, as well as the constitution of successively expanding circles of leaders and followers or factions.The range of meanings of these and other concepts will emerge in due course. Here I shall note certain features integral to the notion of totalization. First, there is a semantic overlap and a certain amount of redundancy in the meanings attributable to the Thai concepts cited, although they are not identical and do not occupy equal semantic space. Second, these (and other similar) concepts are polyvalent, and if their meanings are mapped onto a Western conceptual grid of "levels," they are revealed to be, in varying degrees of overlap, at once cosmological, territorial, politico-economic, administrative, and so on.Thus, from the standpoint of the integrity of these traditional polities, it would be a mistake to disaggregate them into the above-mentioned Western conceptual levels and to treat them as analytically adequate and exegetically sufficient. Although not committing this error, I, as translator and analyst, can only give some idea of the totality by showing that the key concepts do resonate with the polyvalent implications that we attribute to these levels. Therefore, I shall adopt the descriptive strategy of showing that the galactic scheme was characterized by certain structured relations, which were reflected at various levels that I disaggregate or deal with in succession only so that later I can reconstitute the totality.My descriptive strategy has two implications, which are paradoxically the two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, because the levels—cosmological, territorial, politico-economic, and so on—have no true analytical validity, it follows as a corollary that we cannot assign a deterministic and privileged role to any of them. on the other hand, because the key polyvalent concepts are totalistic and simultaneously carry those significances which we descriptively disaggregate (as cosmo-logical, political, economic), we have to see the galactic scheme as encoding all the impulsions that we customarily attribute to each level. Thus, in requiring us not to assign priority to any one level or to ignore its impulsion—cosmological or logis-tical—the approach makes it possible to integrate the claims of a cosmological imperative with other imperatives without contradiction. Finally, the approach also makes it possible to relate the model of the galactic polity to certain parameters that define the outer limits of its existence and explain processual oscillations within those limits.From cosmology to political processThe so-called cosmological schemes can be seen dynamically as serving as frames for political processes and outcomes of a pulsating kind. Furthermore, and this is i hope a novel argument, the cosmological idiom together with its grandeur and imagery, if read correctly, can be shown to be a realistic reflection of the political pulls and pushes of these center-oriented but centrifugally fragmenting polities. in this instance myth and reality are closer than we think.Before I enumerate its salient political and economic features, let me provide some factual illustrations of the galactic polity.The kingdom of SukhothaiThe kingdom of Sukhothai, which historically marked the first political emergence and realization of a Thai polity in the thirteenth century (in what is now Thailand), bore the unmistakable marks of a galactic polity (principal sources here are Wales 1934; Griswold 1967).The concept of muang (the Mon parallel is dun) had a range of meanings signifying kingdom, country, province, town, capital, and The most for that concept is that it referred to or as opposed to space, and for a capital, town, or settlement with the surrounding over which it At the widest it was the case that the of a kingdom was with the of the capital The Javanese was that of a with its with decreasing the power of the center the range of its conception of as a space, over which as power from a center, is integral to the characterization of the traditional polity as a mandala composed of concentric usually in number. concentric system, the relations, was in the center was the king's capital and the region of its direct which was surrounded by a of by or by the and these again were surrounded by polities more or that the capital itself was an architectural representation of a Thus, the capital had in the inner core of the the king's and the major and standing by this center was surrounded by circles of with four at the cardinal points is cited by Wales as giving this description of the territorial and administrative of Sukhothai, it had itself from and had in and within a of two its At the center was the capital or by the muang or this domain, the king was in his capital and within it again in his At the four cardinal points were the muang, each by a of the king (and their in by the as kingdoms, were as the of with to the capital province, as by the expression muang The were received from the king and on the same as the capital, the being to with the for and on of of a of units that one in that they of finds expression also those units as the of the structure of a muang, capital or of these are the of the village at the level, the the of the of The outer the concentric the four provinces, was the region of kingdoms, brought under were in a is, in a relation of than direct political as of his kingdom various polities of the and the kingdom of Sri in the and the kingdom of Pegu to the was at best this give evidence of the social of the (and are of the Mon concepts cited the nobles, of the the of the the for the who was also called of the who were lesser to the capital muang and who as of the body of which the of his capital and the immediately the king in of up other examples of the galactic polity, I shall a the constitution of the central or capital region of the king and its provinces, and the between them. On the one hand, there is a on a reduced scale of the center in its on the the satellites the of and in of we constantly in the expanding and of the