Conclusion

Buddhism having originated in India travelled beyond the frontiers of the land of South East Asian, the process having begun over two thousand years ago. The religions provided the main motivating force and in many ways, moulded the beliefs and faith of the people of Vietnam and South East Asia. Buddhist art serves to remind, to support and to reinforce the eternal truth of the religion and its development and style remain integral to the history of the religion, the two not being easily separated. Since the ultimate goal of Buddhism is the transcendence of this delusory world for nirvana, it required an art of highly idealized images, infinitely finer than those apparent in one’s mundane existence. Because donations to temples were one of the primary means available to lay followers of gaining merit (Punya), enormous numbers of books, images, buildings and ritual implements were created, often in mass produced to meet the demands of worshippers.

Buddhist art remained central around the human dimension, featuring images of individual human endeavor and episodes of heroic, moral struggle, all designed to blend a sublime message with a mortal world. Buddhism and its art have gone hand in hand, the inherent ‘idea’ being expressed through various artistic ‘forms’ sculpture, and architecture as well as the performing art traditions. Trade, political ambitions and religious pursuits led to a dissemination of philosophy, language, literature and art. Imported ‘ideas’ and ‘forms’ were amalgamated with indigenous practices, the assimilation leading to the development of a new idiom of expression with a distinctive, localized identity.

From the Ashoka’s missionaries, Indian traders in the first millennium had spread Indian scripts languages, literatures and faiths, especially Buddhism in South East Asian. The Buddhist art of South East Asian illustrate artistic contacts between India and greater India and help to show that Indian creative genius under colonial condition. Indeed, the arts of South East Asian recover for us one of the lost pages in history of Buddhist art. The Indians came as merchants to seek gold and spice. The monsoon wind compelled them to set up trade posts in South East Asia and at least to stay there one season before they could collect exotic goods. This led to the spread of Indian culture through trade connection and intermarriage. From this Buddhist communities soon sprang up in them. Buddhism served to raise their spiritual life to a new level–the highest that existed any where in the Asian world at that time. It opened up new dimensions of thought, which even the most advanced native philosophies and creeds had not been able to reach. At the same time this decisive step towards a spiritual life that transcended regional limitations was only made possible through the far ranging contacts and exchanges which Buddhism facilitated–on a more extensive scale than was the case with any other cultural movement. With the coming of Buddhism, only through the stimulus it provided and the aspirations it awakened, that art could develop fully and reach standards acceptable in all parts of South East Asia. The development of Buddhist art was that there was no such thing as a single system of Buddhist ideas and artistic themes laid down by orthodox doctrine, with their limits clearly defined. Instead, primarily because all obligatory dogmas were lacking from the very beginning, and because a continuous dialogue took place with other philosophies, ‘primitive Buddhism’ began to divide already at an early date into different ‘schools’, representative of almost every type of religious thought and practice such as Hinayana and Mahayana. Each of these forms of Buddhism thought and experience provided manifold opportunities for symbosis or even synthesis with non-Buddhist regional and ethnic ideas and practices such as the combination between Buddhism and Hiduism as at all of South East Asia country. A parallel process occurred in art; all these manifold tendencies and types of Buddhist thought and belief have left their imprint upon certain visual images, many of which had been put into poetic form already in the sacred scriptures, and lent themselves to artistic representation. For instance, Theravada Buddhism prevailed generally in the Mon-Dvaravati polity of Thailand between the sixth and tenth centuries, whereas both Mahayana Buddhism as well as the cults of Shiva and Vishnu existed simultaneously in the Khmer and Cham realms in Cambodia and Vietnam, in northeastern Thailand under strong Khmer influence, and in the enigmatic polity known as Si Thep in northern Thailand. Although the rulers of the maritime empire known as Srivijaya, which straddled the Malaysian peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, predominantly followed Mahayana Buddhism, which was transplanted in central Java in the seventh-eighth centuries, artistic and epigraphic evidence suggests that by the seventh century both Hindu and Buddhist divinities were entrenched in central Java.

Buddhist art from both the north and the south of their country but the impact of the southern cultural influence seems to be strongest in South East Asian especially from Amravati in south eastern India. From about the 5th to the 7th century A.D., through the spread of the Indian Gupta and Post-Gupta cultural influences, the historic arts of South East Asian became firmly established. Buddhist art by direct and indirect routes: overland and southern sea-route as via those Cambodia, Java, Champa. Which was the seat of a highly developed ancient civilization, the situation was different from what prevailed in other parts of South East Asia. So need to understand in this context. At first they more or less copied the art of their cultural masters but then the native influences slowly crept in until these arts became independent from their prototypes and varied according to each country, each having its own characteristics. They resemble a tree with the same roots and trunk but which spreads out into many branches.

These South East Asian arts not only gain their common impetus from the Indian culture but also have certain interchanges among themselves.

The knownledge on the development and interchanges of these arts in South East Asian can be further improved through the archaeological excavation in each country and the study of the evolution of motif recommend by some research project.

To understand the Buddhism and its art in South Vietnam and South East Asia not only to make clear up the history of South Vietnam and South East Asian Buddhist art. But also clear up our understanding of the role assumed by South Vietnamese in the context with South and South East Asian.

Although Vietnamese and South East Asian cultural was influenced by Indian and Chinese culture but in reality the art and architecture of this region developed to a radiant grade. They receiving influence from outside but they did not get dissolved by outside.