The Indian influences in early Philippine polities, particularly the influence of the Srivijaya and Majapahit thalassocracies on cultural development, is a significant area of research for scholars of Philippine, Indonesian, and Southeast Asian history, and is believed to be the source of Hindu and Buddhist elements in early Philippine culture, religion, and language. Because the Indonesian thalassocracies of Srivijaya and Majapahit acquired many of these Hindu and Buddhist elements through Indianization, the introduction of such elements to early Philippine cultures has sometimes been referred to as indianization. In more recent scholarship, it is termed localization, as in, e.g., localization of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Some scholars also place the Philippine archipelago within the outermost reaches of the Indosphere, along with Northern Vietnam, where the Hindu and Buddhist elements were not directly introduced by Indian travellers.
The most updated scholarship notes that there is no evidence of direct political or economic interaction between India and the various polities of the Philippine archipelago prior to the Philippines' European colonial era. Scholars such as Milton Osborne and F. Landa Jocano instead suggest that "indirect cultural influence" mostly arrived through these early Philippine polities' relations with the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires. during the 10th through the early 14th centuries. This updates the theories of earlier scholars, who posited that Indian elements in Philippine culture suggested relations between the two societies as early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE. This also places the Philippines and the northern part of Vietnam outside the pattern of "Indianization" which took place elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
History
Historians prior to the later part of the twentieth century such as Zaide and Manuel generally believed that Srivijaya and Majapahit played a significant role in the development of cultures throughout the Philippine archipelago, although the degree of Srivijayan influence was later questioned in seminal works by Jocano and Scott.
Hindu and Buddhist influences first reached Nusantara or Maritime Southeast Asia as early as the first century. There are two major theories for the arrival of Hinduism in the region, both focusing on Indonesia. The first is that South Indian sea traders brought Hinduism with them, and second being that Indonesian royalty welcomed Indian religions and culture, and it is they who first adopted these spiritual ideas followed by the masses. Either way, Indonesian islands adopted both Hindu and Buddhist ideas, fusing them with pre-existing native folk religion and Animist beliefs.
This meant that the Buddhism and Hinduism introduced into the Philippine archipelago by the Srivijaya and the Majapahit were of a distinctly (Insular) Southeast Asian variant, as Osborne, in his 2004 history of Southeast Asia, notes:Much, but not all, of this culture was absorbed by the local population and joined to their existing cultural patterns.[…] Because Indian culture “came” to Southeast Asia, one must not think that Southeast Asians lacked a culture of their own. Indeed, the generally accepted view is that Indian culture made such an impact on Southeast Asia because it fitted easily with the existing cultural patterns and religious beliefs of populations that had already moved a considerable distance along the path of civilization.[…] Southeast Asians, to summarize the point, borrowed but they also adapted. In some very important cases, they did not need to borrow at all."
Possible influence through early contacts with the Srivijaya
Popular literature and some 20th century history textbooks often suggest that Hindu and Buddhist cultural influences first came to the Philippines through early contacts with the Srivijayan and Majapahit thalassocracies. Jocano notes, however, that there is insufficient physical evidence to suggest that Philippine polities traded extensively with the Srivijayan empire. He suggests that contact between Philippine polities and the Srivijaya was probably limited to small-scale trade.