all right let's take a tour of South Asia and Southeast Asia around the year 1200. I'm going to answer those up at night how did various belief systems affect over time and well don't worry because I'm about to explain it up real nice for you so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked well let's get to it so first things first if you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say south Asia and Southeast Asia I'm talking about this place and this place the first thing you need to know about these places around the year 1200 is that three main belief systems have been well established and we're struggling for dominance namely Hinduism Islam and Buddhism and by the way if you want note guys to follow along with this video and get all its contents firmly crammed into your brain folds well then check the link below for my video note guys so let's start in South Asia the main portion of which consists of this giant honking subcontinent known as India so from time immemorial the dominant religion in this region was Hinduism and if you're in the mood for a gross oversimplification of its doctrines and beliefs well here it is first Hinduism is a polytheistic belief system which means its adherents believe in many gods not just one God like they do in monotheistic faiths like Judaism or Islam second the ultimate goal of the believer is to reunite his or her individual soul to the all-pervasive world Soul known as Brahma but because human beings for the most part are the moral equivalent of sentient turds that reunion with Brahman usually takes many lifetimes cycling through death and rebirth otherwise known as reincarnation to achieve now it's very important to understand about Hinduism is that it created the conditions for a more or less unified culture in India for Millennia and one significant way that it did that was by structuring Indian Society according to the caste system now this was essentially a five-tiered system with the more virtuous people on top and what they considered the refuse of society on the bottom and in general it wasn't possible to move up in status during your lifetime but if you were pretty good in this lifetime and avoided egregious sins like failing to disclose a camel's illness when selling said camel well then when you were reincarnated maybe you get born into a higher cast okay now I spent a good deal of time on Hinduism because it's real important to understanding Indian culture but second Buddhism established itself in South Asia as well now explain Buddhist beliefs in more detail in the video on East Asia so I'm not going to rehash that here however it is important to know that Buddhism was founded in India and shares several beliefs with it for example Buddhism carried over the idea of the cycle of birth and death and reincarnation and the ultimate goal was similar which is to design evolve into the Oneness of the universe however there were some significant differences as well for example Buddhism rejected the caste system and emphasized the quality of all people and that's crucial to understand and let me explain Hinduism is what's known as an ethnic religion which means that the belief system is tightly bound to a particular people in a particular place and in general ethnic religions don't spread very well like can you imagine Hindu missionaries showing up in China and being like all right y'all let's organize all your crap according to the caste system yeah not gonna happen but Buddhism is what's known as a universalizing religion which means it can be planted in any culture without completely overturning that culture that means that a belief system like Buddhism is much more likely to spread and I'll tell you more about that spread in a moment but for now you need to know that by the time 1200 rolled around buddhism's influence in the land of its birth was waning big time okay now the third belief system you need to know for South Asia Islam and again I talked about this in the last video but here you need to know that in 1206 turkic Muslim Invaders came into South Asia and set up a Muslim empire known as the Delhi sultanate and that meant that in India while Buddhism was going the way of the dodo Islam became the second most important belief system there and because in large parts of India the Muslims were in charge it became the religion of the elite and then throughout southeast Asia okay we'll get back to the deli sultanate a little bit later but now I've neglected belief systems in Southeast Asia for far too long so let's see what's going on over there going to be fair southeast Asia was a very diverse place but in general States in this region practiced Hinduism Buddhism and Islam and I'll show you what effect that had in a minute but now that you know the three main belief systems present in this region it's going to be important to know that during this period each of them experienced some change as well the Hinduism front a new expression of the faith known as the bhakti movement this is a form of Hinduism that encouraged Believers to worship one particular God in the Hindu Pantheon of God additionally it rejected the hierarchy of Hinduism and encouraged spiritual experiences of all people regardless of social status and then Islam also experienced some change as well recall in the last video we talked about the rise of Sufism which was a more mystical spiritual experience-based version of Islam I don't know about you but I smell a comparison in the air now bhakti's and sufis had a lot in common obviously they fell under the banner of different belief systems but both of them emphasized mystical experience both of them rejected the elaborate doctrines and religious requirements of the elite and both of them emphasized access of spiritual experience to all people which made both of them better candidates for spreading through the region and finally Buddhism changed as well during this period now even though the original teachings of the Buddha emphasized access to Enlightenment for all people by this time in South Asia to become more and more exclusive basically the only Buddhists seeking that sweet Nirvana sandwich were monks who had confined themselves a monastery so at least in South Asia Buddhism was definitely on the decline okay now let's turn the corner and talk about how states formed in these regions and how they maintain their power and I reckon we ought to start with South Asia now earlier I mentioned that the Muslims had established the Delhi sultanate in 1206 and it ruled over Northern India however Muslim rulers in the Delhi sultanate even though you know they were the ones in charge had a lot of trouble imposing Islam on India at the end of the day Hinduism was just too dang entrenched socially and culturally and so Islam remained a minority religion here and there were other pockets of resistance to Muslim rule as well namely the rajput kingdoms which was a collection of rival and warring Hindu kingdoms that it existed since before Muslim rule in Northern India over time some of them were conquered by Muslim rulers but some of them maintained independent Hindu States and to further annoy Muslim rulers in the north a new and Powerful Hindu Kingdom was founded in the South namely the vijayanagara empire in the 14th century and the events leading to its establishment were kind of spicy so Muslim Sultans in the north wanted to extend the rule of the Delhi sultanate to the South so they sent a group of emissaries down there to make it happen but as it turned out those Emma series were Hindu who had converted to Islam and once they found themselves out from under the watchful eyes of their Muslim overlords they went ahead and tossed their Muslim faith in the trash and established a rival Hindu Empire so that's fun okay now let's head over to Southeast Asia and see how State Building is going over there and first let's begin with sea-based States now back before our time period began the SRI Vijaya Empire which is here Rules From The 7th to 11th century they were a Buddhist state but they were also heavily influenced by Indian Hindu culture and the main source of their power was their control over this little Waterway right here namely the Strait of Malacca it's kind of the best way for merchants to get anywhere in the Indian Ocean and so srivijaya rulers got Filthy Rich by slapping taxes on on ships passing through that straight okay now later which is to say the end of the 13th century the majapahit kingdom was established here on Java formerly it was a Hindu Kingdom but there were strong Buddhist influences there as well the way the majapah had maintained power was to create a tributary system among the various states in the region if you forgot what tributary means it just means the reality that the majapah had had the biggest popsicle of power in the region and exerted some control over other states by requiring tribute or goods and services from them and finally let's move out of the sea and check in with the major land-based states in southeast Asia and first let's check in with the sinhala dynasties right here in Sri Lanka now this is a Buddhist state that existed in some form or another for something like 2 000 years to which I say damn maybe you're looking at this map and you're like looks like an island to me but you're just flapping your mouth hole about it being a land-based state excellent observation let me explain when we designate a state a sea based or a land-based state what we're really talking about is where they get their power from the sea or the land remember the SRI Vijaya and the majapah had gathered up all the power in the region because they controlled the sea but the sinhala dynasties weren't messing around much in this because they had everything they needed for the most part right there on their land which is why it is a land-based state and then one more land-based State let me introduce you to the Khmer Empire which was located right here now the khmera empire was founded as a Hindu Empire and that's kind of weird because didn't I say like two minutes ago that Hinduism was an ethnic religion and therefore didn't spread to other places well yeah but there are exceptions to the rule and the Khmer Empire is one of them anyway this became an exceedingly prosperous State and so they took a lot of that boom boom and built the most magnificent Hindu temple in existence namely Encore watch it was supposed to represent the entire Hindu Universe in a single building but later Khmer rulers converted to Buddhism and they just went right ahead and added Buddha's statuary all over this Temple without destroying the Hindu elements and when two religions blend like that we call it syncretism all right click here to watch my other unit one review videos and click here to get your hands on my video no guys are going to help you follow along and learn all the content of this course thanks for hanging out not catch on the flip-flop heimler out