Mandala (Form of Government)

**~~Selurong~~** · 05-31-2014, 02:12 PM

What do you guys think of the Mandala system of government?

From Wikipedia...

Maṇḍala (मण्डल) is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power distributed among Mueang or Kedatuan (principalities) in early Southeast Asian history, when local power was more important. The concept of a mandala counteracts modern tendencies to look for unified political power, i.e., the power of large kingdoms and nation states of later history — an inadvertent byproduct of 15th-century advances in map-making technologies. In the words of O. W. Wolters who further explored the idea in 1982:

The map of earlier Southeast Asia which evolved from the prehistoric networks of small settlements and reveals itself in historical records was a patchwork of often overlapping mandalas.

It is employed to denote traditional Southeast Asian political formations, such as federation of kingdoms or vassalized polity under a center of domination. It was adopted by 20th century Western historians from ancient Indian political discourse as a means of avoiding the term "state" in the conventional sense. Not only did Southeast Asian polities not conform to classical Chinese and European views of a territorially defined state with fixed borders and a bureaucratic apparatus, but they diverged considerably in the opposite direction: the polity was defined by its centre rather than its boundaries, and it could be composed of numerous other tributary polities without undergoing administrative integration.

In some ways similar to the feudal system of Europe, states were linked in suzerain–tributary relationships. Compared to feudalism however, the system gave greater independence to the subordinate states; it emphasised personal rather than official or territorial relationships; and it was often non-exclusive. Any particular area, therefore, could be subject to several powers, or none.

TLDR Version:

It's like the Ancient Greek model.

The Mandala system of government: power center shifts and kingdoms in the alliance alternate the possession of scepter. Thus, the center of power shifts, one day the seat of power will be Sri Vijaya the next, Java or Malacca.

The same as the Greek system of government: same same, power center shifts and kingdoms in the alliance take turns to alternate the center of power, one day the seat of power will be Athens, the next, Sparta or Macedon.

More politic than just imperialism with a focus on one imperial capital or modern nationalism.