Traces of Hindu-Buddhist Culture on the Mahakam River Basin: Does the Settlement of its People exist?

Abstract

The Mahakam River Basin with its tropical rainforest ecology offers a beneficial environment for humans to conduct productive activity, whether livelihood or settlement. The river branches that provide valuable infrastructures for the interaction between the coastal communities and the hinterlanders had in the past initiated the occurrence of cultural contact, whether economic or religious. The Hindu-Buddhist remains found at the upper stream of the Mahakam River show the assessment of the width of territorial range of this cultural influence. The potency of the Mahakam River Basin, the community at the basin area, and the Hindu-Buddhist remains, however, are weak variables to encourage the assumption in regrad to the settlement establishment of the Hindu-Buddhist adherents on the Mahakam River Basin. On the other hand, the religious architectural concept regarding Boechari's formula of 'sacred structure and its settlement', which could be relatively expected to be applied easily in Sumatera, Java, and Bali, is in fact problematical for the study of the Hindu-Buddhist settlement at the Mahakam River Basin. This circumstance has likely arisen due to factors such as: 1) characteristics of archaeological remains, whether sporadic or moveable; 2) inquiring methods employed, which were most performed unscientifically by the locals; and 3) lack of valid supporting data, whether inscription or toponym. Therefore, more intensified achaeological researches using excavation and absolute dating methods implemented upon the region that nota bene had witnessed the early contact between the local and the great Indian culture are unquestionably encouraged.
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Published in: Kusmartono et.al. (eds.). Naditira Widya. Archaeological Bulletin. Banjarbaru: Centre for Archaeology, Banjarmasin. Special Edition No. 9, October 2002: 40-59. ISSN 1410-0932