Spirits and Ships

<p>This volume seeks to foreground a “borderless” history and geography of South Southeast and East Asian littoral zones that would be maritime-focused and thereby explore the ancient connections and dynamics of interaction that favoured the encounters among the cultures found throughout the region stretching from the Indian Ocean littorals to the Western Pacific from the early historical period to the present. Transcending the artificial boundaries of macro-regions and nation-states and trying to bridge the arbitrary divide between (inherently cosmopolitan) “high” cultures (e.g. Sanskritic Sinitic or Islamicate) and “local” or “indigenous” cultures this multidisciplinary volume explores the metaphor of Monsoon Asia as a vast geo-environmental area inhabited by speakers of numerous language phyla which for millennia has formed an integrated system of littorals where crops goods ideas cosmologies and ritual practices circulated on the sea-routes governed by the seasonal monsoon winds. The collective body of work presented in the volume describes Monsoon Asia as an ideal theatre for circulatory dynamics of cultural transfer interaction acceptance selection and avoidance and argues that despite the rich ethnic linguistic and sociocultural diversity a shared pattern of values norms and cultural models is discernible throughout the region.</p>