The people of mainland and insular Southeast Asia are responding to the stimulus of a civilization that had arisen in India during the previous millennium at about the time that Western Europe is absorbing the classical culture and institutions of the Mediterranean.

The Indianization of Southeast Asia happens as a consequence of the increasing trade in the Indian Ocean.

Vedic and Hindu religion, political thought, literature, mythology, and artistic motifs gradually became integral elements in local Southeast Asian cultures.

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