At about the time that the ancient peoples of Western Europe are absorbing the classical culture and institutions of the Mediterranean, the peoples of mainland and insular Southeast Asia are responding to the stimulus of a civilization that had arisen in northern India during the previous millennium.

The Britons, Gauls, and Iberians experience Mediterranean influences directly, through conquest by and incorporation into the Roman Empire.

In contrast, the Indianization of Southeast Asia is a slower process than the Romanization of Europe because there is no period of direct Indian rule and because land and sea barriers that separate the region from the Indian subcontinent are considerable.

Nevertheless, Indian religion, political thought, literature, mythology, and artistic motifs gradually become integral elements in local Southeast Asian cultures.

The caste system never is adopted, but Indianization stimulates the rise of highly-organized, centralized states.