Mandala (political model)

[further explanation needed][1][2] 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.

[3]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 European historians from ancient Indian political discourse as a means of avoiding the term "state" in the conventional sense.

[citation needed] Other metaphors such as S. J. Tambiah's original idea of a "galactic polity"[5] describe political patterns similar to the mandala.

The historian Victor Lieberman[6] prefers the "solar polity" metaphor, referencing the gravitational pull the sun exerts over the planets.

The most notable tributary states were post-Angkor Cambodia, Lan Xang (succeeded by the Kingdom of Vientiane and Luang Prabang) and Lanna.

Cambodia in the 18th century was described by the Vietnamese emperor Gia Long as "an independent country that is slave of two" (Chandler p. 119).

The tributary states were then divided between the colonies and Siam, which exercised much more centralised power but over a smaller area than thitherto.

In the case of the more tenuous relationships, the "overlord" might regard it as one of tribute, while the "tributary" might consider the exchange of gifts to be purely commercial or as an expression of goodwill (Thongchai p. 87).

This was put forward as one cause of the sudden rise of Sukhothai under Ramkhamhaeng, for example, and for its almost equally steep decline after his death (Wyatt, 45 and 48).