Living in multicultural Singapore, we sometimes take our cultural influences for granted – after all, it’s not that uncommon to have thosai for breakfast, fish soup for lunch and satay for dinner! But did you know there was a time when a single culture pervaded this region – not just Singapore and Malaysia but the whole of Southeast Asia as well? In KaalaChakra: The Wheel of Time currently exhibiting at the National Library, find out how much of early Southeast Asia (from the early centuries CE to about the 15th century) was influenced by Indian culture.

As early as the 3rd century, Southeast Asia was mentioned in Indian literature as a source for rare goods, and it is likely that trade between the two regions was established long before then. With trade came opportunities for cultural exchange, and thus the spread of Indian religion and ideas.

Not surprisingly, one of the most long-lasting effects from Indian interactions manifest themselves in the regional languages and scripts. For example, the many scripts used in Southeast Asia – Khmer, Thai, Old Javanese, Old Sumatran – all share the same roots: the Pallava-Granthi script from South India. A significant proportion of Malay has root words originating in Sanskrit, the language of Indic religions like Hinduism and Buddhism.

Speaking of religion, it comes to no surprise that the early dominant religions in Southeast Asia were Hinduism and Buddhism. Local rulers readily adopted these religions because it supported a worldview where the ruler could easily control his or her population, by setting themselves up as God-kings or as people with exceptional virtue and merit. No wonder, then, that some of Southeast Asia’s most spectacular ancient monuments include the Hindu Angkor Wat and the Buddhist Borobudur!

We call this phenomenon of Indian cultural assimilation Indianization – it’s an often-misunderstood term, and you can find out more about it on The Indianization of Southeast Asia. In KaalaChakra, you can learn how Indianization formed the early cultures of Southeast Asia through language, religion, art and war.

KaalaChakra: The Wheel of Time is on at the 10th floor of the Lee Kong Chian library at Victoria Street until May 2008. Special thanks to the National Library Board for the kind permission to take photographs of this exhibition.