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MAR-MAY 2018 o8 Features — Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre: Back to the Future — Early Christianity and Asian Interactions — Cultivating the Way in the Eastern Dragon Mountain — Pulau Ubin Anti-Motor Torpedo Boat Battery: The Gun That Never Was — Angkor World Heritage Management: Lessons Learned from Inception to Present Upcoming Events — Public Lecture IMAGE: WALL PAINTING OF PALM SUNDAY (PROBABLY), NESTORIAN TEMPLE (683-770 CE), FROM GAOCHANG, XINJIANG, CHINA - ETHNOLOGICAL MUSEUM, BERLIN. (CREDIT: DADEROT / WIKIMEDIA) NSC Highlights ISSUE 8 / MAR-MAY 2018 is published by the Nalanda- Sriwijaya Centre (NSC) at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and available electronically at www.iseas.edu.sg Contents Editorial Chairman Choi Shing Kwok Executive Editor Terence Chong 1 Editorial Managing Editor 2 Features Foo Shu Tieng Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre: Back to the Future Editorial Committee Fong Sok Eng Early Christianity and Asian Interactions Mark Heng Kao Jiun Feng Cultivating the Way in the Eastern Dragon Mountain Lim Chen Sian Hélène Njoto Pulau Ubin Anti-Motor Torpedo Boat Battery: The Gun That Never Was ISSN: 2424-9211 9 Centrefold The ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute Ancient Southeast Asian Polities: A Primer (formerly Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) is an autonomous organization 13 Features established in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio- Angkor World Heritage Management: political, security, and economic trends Lessons Learned from Inception to Present and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research 16 Events programmes are grouped under Regional Economic Studies (RES), Regional Imperial Rice Transportation of Nguyen Vietnam (1802-1883) Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies Calligrams in Islamic Southeast Asia (RSCS). The Institute is also home to the ASEAN Studies Centre (ASC), Heritage Plan Roadshow the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre (NSC) and the Singapore APEC Centre. Classical Javanese Figurative Sculpture: Examining ornament and style The Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre (NSC) at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak 20 Correspondence Institute, Singapore, pursues research on historical interactions among Asian Reflections Upon The Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre- societies and civilisations. It serves as Nalanda University Internship a forum for the comprehensive study of the ways in which Asian polities and societies have interacted over 21 Recent Publications and Upcoming Events time through religious, cultural, and economic exchanges, and diasporic networks. The Centre also offers innovative strategies for examining the manifestations of hybridity, convergence and mutual learning in a globalising Asia. ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute is not responsible for facts represented ISEAS – YUSOF ISHAK INSTITUTE 30 HENG MUI KENG TERRACE and views expressed. Responsibility rests exclusively with the individual SINGAPORE 119614 author(s). No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form TEL: (65) 6778 0955 without permission. Comments are welcome and may be sent to FAX: (65) 6778 1735 the author(s). Copyright is held by the author(s) of each article. 1 Editorial Chong Guan’s article – ‘Nalanda- Sriwijaya Centre: Back to the Future’ – is a contemplation of the Centre’s possible direction. The key point Kwa makes is that NSC should not only use the history to understand the present, but to show how the present appropriates history for its own interests. Barbara Andaya’s ‘Early Christianity and Asian Interactions’ is a thoughtful piece that persuades us that investigations into historical Christianity in Southeast Asia must attempt to go beyond the era of colonialization. Earlier evidence of Christian transmission, Andaya suggests, would be found along the pathways of trade and commercial activities. In ‘Cultivating the Way in the Eastern Dragon Mountain’, Show Ying Ruo demonstrates the complex and multiple ISEAS - YUSOF ISHAK INSTITUTE uses of Vegetarian Halls. As Buddhist spaces, these Halls were de facto self- help sites for cultural networking and 2018 marks ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s 50th anniversary. building of communal identities that had linkages to the mainland. Aaron Kao’s Established in 1968, ISEAS was born into uncertain times. work on WWII archaeology is laid out The Vietnam war was in full swing, Indonesia’s New Order in ‘Pulau Ubin Anti-Motor Torpedo Boat Battery’. He enhances our understanding regime had just begun, and Konfrontasi between Indonesia and of the British army’s coastal artillery Malaysia waged on. Singapore had just been expelled from defence and the evolutionary process of such military technology. Malaysia three years earlier. While different in topics and periods, the articles in this issue conveys Then Deputy Prime Minister Dr Goh Today, 50 years later, the regional three points that seem to characterise Keng Swee realised that a small and landscape has changed dramatically Southeast Asia. The first is that networks vulnerable state had to better understand but is no less challenging. The Institute and links across the region animate its neighbours for survival. Dr Goh has undoubtedly grown in capacity local communities. The second is that observed that Singaporeans “knew and ability, not least with the addition external flows into the region were more more about Melbourne than Medan”. of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre disruptive than intra-regional flows, leaving The need for ISEAS was clear. (NSC) in 2009. Incidently, next year Southeast Asia very diverse and highly marks NSC’s 10th anniversary. absorbent of the foreign. And finally, On 7 June 1968 Parliament passed these external flows, however disruptive, the Institute of Southeast Asian It is in this special year that NSC offers a very quickly became localised and thus, Studies Act. This was highly significant revamped and refreshed NSC Highlights. over time, unique to Southeast Asia. because the birth of ISEAS bucked the Although new in look, NSC Highlights trend of western centres of learning retains its original aim – to offer the We hope you will enjoy this issue studying the region from afar. For work and research of scholars written and join in our activities as we the first time Southeast Asia had a in an accessible for the lay reader. celebrate our Golden Jubilee. research centre located in the region, And we certainly have our fair share of dedicated to the study of the region. prominent experts in this issue. Kwa FEATURE 2 Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre: Back to the Future — BY KWA CHONG GUAN NSC ASSOCIATE FELLOW The Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre (NSC), “The challenge for NSC then, is to go beyond this conventional answer established some forty years after ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s founding, of pointing to the deep cultural continuities and the wide historical complements the latter’s vision of connections underlying today’s problems to be able to probe how generating knowledge to enhance our awareness and understanding of the deep past might have been appropriated and adapted for the region around us. NSC however political ends.” works on a time zone far removed from ISEAS’ concerns about contemporary trends and current issues. Historic ruins in Southeast Asia such But this dominant narrative of a “Greater as the temple of Preah Vihear can be India” reconstructed by Indian historians How can NSC’s work on state and social sites for contested heritage, spilling for a nationalist history of their nation formations or the connected histories over into issues of national identity. persists and shapes Indian perceptions of the region a millennium or more These issues are often a consequence up today as they “Look East.” earlier be relevant to ISEAS concerns of divergent reconstructions of the about the stability of the state in the deep history of these sites. Was This dominant Indian narrative of their region today? The conventional answer Bagan and its successors down to subcontinent as the cultural heartland is that NSC studies can illuminate Myanmar today Theravada Buddhist, of the Indian Ocean region and its ports the historicity and the deep cultural or was there Mahayana and possibly were the nodes of Indian Ocean trade for continuities that led to today’s issues. even Vajrayana Buddhist worship millennium counters an emerging Chinese at Bagan? The issue is central to narrative that China was the main driver Vietnam’s complex relations with China, Myanmar’s Buddhist identity today. of a “Maritime Silk Road” which has for example, may be more comprehensible provided for the peace and prosperity if viewed within the time frame of its Research coordinated by NSC into of all communities along that Silk Road millennium-long contested history of Buddhism’s long history in Southeast Asia since the Han dynasty. China’s grand being a small southern neighbour of is revising popular perceptions that the strategy for “One-Belt and-One-Road” Imperial China. Deciding whether we are region was essentially Mahayana until the revives and continues this old Maritime today on the upswing of a new cycle of 13th century conversion to the Theravada Silk Road which China pioneered. globalisation may look rather different tradition. We are now recognising when framed within the long cycles of that there was an extensive network of The role of the ports in the Mekong premodern economic interactions in Vajrayana Buddhist masters, texts and Delta, on the Isthmus of the Malay the region, which NSC does look at. icons across Southeast Asia from the