ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes what he will call the main modules in the spread of what people now call 'Theravada' from India and Sri Lanka across Southeast Asia, from the latter centuries BC, when the process presumably began, till the early centuries of the second millennium AD, when the beginnings of the modern cultural pattern start to emerge. Then he discusses the three periods of Theravada history, and what kind of historiography he thinks possible in relation to them. The three periods are: early pre-Asokan Buddhism, the extended Middle Ages and modernization itself. Historians of both premodern and modern periods have often drawn a parallel between the spread and modern development of Theravada in mainland Southeast Asia and Islam on the islands. Both were and are trans-local, patriarchal, text-centered and bureaucratic 'high cultures' which sit on top of oral, polytheistic localisms; the latter often had a high percentage of female practitioners.
