ABSTRACT
Indian culture introduced for political purposes, as was the case with the sinicization of Vietnam, which was conquered by China and then administered for several centuries as a province of the empire, none of the Indochinese States of Indian type was ever a dependency of an Indian metropolitan power. It was spread by high-caste Indians who ventured forth to seek their fortune in the lands of gold and spices. Christian era was a particularly active period for the spread of Indian cultural influence, and various theories have been put forward, mainly by Dutch scholars, to account for this. There were various centres of Indian culture external to India proper which acted as relay stations between it and countries overseas. The Indianists, basing their views mainly on archaeological and epigraphic evidence, see the early civilizations of Indochina and Indonesia as branches springing directly from the main trunk of Indian civilization.
