This workshop aims to collect histories of travel, enchantment and wonder in Southeast Asia across the longue durée. In doing so, it brought together scholars whose work spans the geographic and temporal scope of societies, from the medieval era to the modern period, with a focus on ‘magical’ connections. The workshop argues, in trying to write a connected social and cultural history of the Bay of Bengal, it is essential that the histories of religious enchantment, religious history, mobile saints, missionaries, mediums, Gods, spirits and other travellers be collected as well.
Workshop: Circulating the Bay of Bengal, Miraculously: Translating Wonder and Travel in Southeast Asia
Tuesday, 7 February 2017 – The Workshop on Circulating the Bay of Bengal, Miraculously: Translating Wonder and Travel in Southeast Asia was organised by the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre and convened by Dr Terenjit Sevea. Held on 7 February 2017, this workshop is one of the few its kind to undertake a comprehensive investigation of religious records and oral histories of wonder and travel in Southeast Asia.
This one-day workshop sought to explore the historical context and discourses about miracles, wonder, travel and circulation from medieval, early modern and modern Southeast Asia. It also aimed to collect histories of religious enchantment, religious history, and histories of mobile saints, missionaries, mediums, Gods, spirits and other travellers.
Dr Teren Sevea, Visiting Fellow of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre and convener of the workshop giving his opening remarks (Source: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute)
Dr Terenjit Sevea set the tone for the workshop with his opening remarks where he underlined the works of historians who argue that looking at religious enchantment and studying wonder enables us to explore elements of a social history that would otherwise remain unrecoverable. Looking at the history of the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia through this lens, Dr Sevea underlined several questions that the workshop sought to address — How do we write a history of travel and wonder? Can we enchant the history of Southeast Asia? Are there histories of wonder, saints, Gods and spirits in societies of Southeast Asia that we can trace or write? How have Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Chinese religion interwovened across the Bay of Bengal? How do we attribute epistemological leverage to wonder, miracles, spirits and the ephemeral and ethereal in the course of history writing? How do we engage with understandings of wonder comprehensively? How does wonder intersect with both the abstract and intangible in terms of notions, beliefs, concepts, definitions and rationale for actions? How does wonder intersect with the visible and concrete in terms of the organisation of sacred, social and economic spaces and commercial calculations? How do we take into account religious notions of space, chronology and time zones as we scrutinise time and space travelling? What histories of circulating the Bay of Bengal, travel and wonder can we yet trace from Southeast Asian societies? What varieties of materials and histories are available for scholars to produce academic works?
Panel I: Enchantment, And Religious Crossings
Professor Peter A. Jackson, chair of the first panel introducing the two speakers (Source: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute)
For the first panel, Professor Barbara Andaya argued that there was a deeply-entrenched belief in the existence of underwater kingdoms, humanoid beings and the special relationship between seafarers and large sea creatures which provided the framework that embraced the idea of religious figures who came to the rescue of mariners in distress, protected shipping and carried their teachings to distant parts of the world. Professor Vineeta Sinha used the history of Malayan Railways to narrate the interlocking accounts of Indian, Hindu labour arrivals into Malaya and the forms of Hindu presence on the island — in particular the marking of sacred sites along railway tracks dedicated to Muneeswaran, a deity from rural Tamil Nadu who has since been described as the railway god and is still worshipped today.
Panel II: Wonder, Encounters, and Miraculous Economies
Dr Indira Arumugam, chair of the second panel with the other two speakers (Source: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute)
For the second panel, Dr Ines Zupanov analysed manuscripts and printed texts from the 16th to the 18th centuries written by Europeans with regards to the Kingdom of Aceh in Sumatra to show how enchantment in a religious sense and wonder in a secular register mediate between the fear and horror of individual human experiences and the political and commercial calculations of European actors scrambling to get riches from Southeast Asia. Dr Terenjit Sevea spoke about documents relating to ascetics whose miraculous travels were central to the development of cults in Batavia, Rangoon and Singapore and explored the peripatetic nature and technological plasticity of faqirs, miracles, religious articles and spirits traversing the Bay of Bengal.
Panel III: Sacred Histories, and Mediums
The line-up of moderator and speakers for the third panel (Source: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute)
For the final panel, Associate Professor Sumit Mandal spoke about stories detailing the biographical details, miraculous acts and exceptional piety associated with keramat or gravesite shrines of notable Muslims which allow him to chart the sacred geography of the Malay World. Professor Kenneth Dean focused on the unique characteristics of the Chinese religious sphere in Singapore through examining the role of spirit mediums as agents of ritual change in a fragmented syncretic ritual arena.
The Workshop attracted over 53 participants from government ministries, foreign embassies, academia, private sector firms, museums, and the broader public.
Participants at the workshop (Source: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute)
Report by Veena Nair