ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the question of the ''Indianization'' of Southeast Asia, not including Vietnam, which historically has been influenced by China. Vietnam was officially a province of China for slightly more than a millennium and later was a tributary state for most of the second millennium of the Common Era. In the last millennium BC, the people who were to become the Vietnamese stood in the middle of a wide network of foreign contacts. These contacts extended into the Yangtze Valley and the Yunnan Plateau on the north and west, and down the coast to various parts of the island world of Southeast Asia on the south. Vietnam at different times in the first millennium AD formed an integral part of the international Buddhist world, connecting northern India, the island world of Southeast Asia, and China. The Vietnamese cultural core would be a constant though shifting entity.
