Recentering Southeast Asia

Himanshu Prabha Ray is Research Fellow at Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford, UK. She was the first Chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture in New Delhi, India, from 2012 to 2015, and former Professor at Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research interests cover Archaeology of Religion in Asia, Maritime History and Archaeology of the Indian Ocean. Her recent books include Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks Across India and Southeast Asia (2021), Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia (2018), Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections (ed. 2018), The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: The Temple in Western India, 2nd Century BCE to 8th Century CE (with Susan Verma Mishra, 2017), The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation (2014) and The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia (2003).

1. Introduction Section I: The Making of the Discourse 2. Nehru’s Southeast Asia 3. Greater India Scholars in a Decolonizing World: The Asian Relations Conference and the Indian Council of World Affairs 4. Modern Japanese Interest and Understanding of Buddhism in Southeast Asia: The Case of Chikō Satō and Thailand 5. Buddhist-mediated Relations between Japan and Myanmar after World War II Section II: Beyond Binaries: The Way Forward 6. Maritime Buddhism: Of Relics, Rituals and Shipwrecks 7. The ninth century Lakṣmīndra-Lokeśvara vihāra Đồng Dương viewed as a maṇḍala architecture 8. Multiple Lives of Temples Across the Bay of Bengal 9. Early India and Vietnam (ancient Campā): Revisiting the Vo-canh stele and the Indianization debate