Introduction
One day in the middle 1960s, the Juilliard School of Music, where I was a student, held a rummage sale to dispose of deaccessioned books from its library. While poking through modest piles of worn volumes my eyes were caught by one that looked slightly more dared than the others. I skimmed through the book and came across some pages about Johannes Brahms, a composer who, I truly believed, was the very envy of the gods. I was however confused to find Brahms being spoken of in the present tense, until I realized that when this book was published in the 1890s, Brahms was a contemporary composer (he died in 1897). The book was, of course, not especially old. But even as a voice from the recent past, it impressed upon me the fact that Brahms, as well as all the other 'prop hers' of my religion called music, were flesh and blood, real people who had walked the earth as do we who are alive today.
Time and place were never the same again. 'Michelangelo' was no longer merely a name affixed to a museum plaque; rather, it was the name of a human being who, like those who composed maps and charred music, laughed and worried and drank wine and just happened to create things that transcended mortal bounds. My feeling for history suffered the same demise, for I was no longer content to navigate the past by mere rote. Regardless of how flawed our record of the past is, the fact is that the past existed Someday it will be we who are the 'past', and people will peer back at us and consider how we lived, loved, and did the best we could in the world that was transiently ours.
Early maps offer a window into worlds which none of us now alive have known. But maps, like music, cannot be understood in a contextual vacuum. Neither one is, as the cliches would have it, a universal language. While a person raised in the highlands of Borneo might find the music of Bach to be aesthetically pleasing, he would scarcely understand it any better than I would understand his music, regardless of how enamored I might likewise be of its sounds, for neither of us is literate in the other's musical idiom. As with music, maps which please the senses on the simplest level are those which the casual observer usually finds most appealing, while those which require dedicated attention are often ignored altogether, and those which are 'exotic' risk being appreciated only for their bewitching mystery.
This applies both to the intellectual data of a map as well as to its metaphysical meaning, for there is a subliminal map language which is part of our collective subconscious. But even within a given culture, this language must be learned. How many Western school children, never having studied the grammar of the Mercator-projection world map that hung in their classrooms, grew up believing that Greenland is larger than the United Stares? Like the music of Sirens, faulty or misunderstood maps can lure travelers astray, cause devastation to ships, instigate wars, and cause untold other miseries.
Early maps present additional challenges. Just as it is not possible for ears which have known Mahler and Bartok to hear Palestrina as Palestrina heard it, it is not possible for eyes which know 'correct' geography and which harbor the modern concept of 'map' -and, indeed, the modern concept of geographic space itself- to see a primitive map as its creator did. Yet to enjoy a medieval mappamundi merely for its 'quaintness' is to see it only from the modern language of maps, not the language in which it was created. The challenge of our contemporary selves is to develop a frame of reference with which to see it, just as our ears have established different modes with which to hear Bach, to hear Mahler, and to hear Stravinsky.
Though use of the term 'Southeast Asia' dates only from the Second World War, the recognition of the southeastern part of Asia and its adjacent Pacific islands as a distinct region dates back to antiquity. Indeed, the earth herself created Southeast Asia with its own unique identity, both the mainland and insular regions sharing the same underlying mountain ranges, connected to, yet separate from, neighboring India and China.
The region has been known by many names, in many lands. For China, Southeast Asia lay in the 'Southern Ocean' (Nanyang); for India and western Asia, Southeast Asia was the 'lands below the winds', referring to the region's relation to the monsoons. Southeast Asia was a realm of gold to classical Greece and Rome (Aurea Chersonesus and Chryse) and to India (Suvarnadvipa). For Ptolemy, and in turn for Renaissance Europe, it was 'India beyond the Ganges' or 'further India' or 'Aurea Chersonesus'; to many people of medieval Europe and India, Southeast Asia was the 'gold and silver islands'.
The definitions we will use for the regions of Southeast Asia are fairly standard. By the Southeast Asian mainland, we will mean the region comprising what is now the country of Burma to the west, continuing through Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to the east. The areas which are now Bangladesh and eastern India are included since they lie east of the Ganges, the ancient frontier of Southeast Asia, even though they are now culturally distinct. 'Indochina' will refer to the eastern section of Southeast Asia, which includes the countries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Although
