Tinto Maps #26 - 15th of November 2024 - Indonesia

[SenatorSnowBear]

I was ready to take out the books for northern Borneo before the dev diary dropped but I think Tinto did a good enough job for the area!

 

[matfer13]

Man some people need to learn some geography, do you really think that they aren't putting Australia in Oceania?

 

[Javilos Septim]

Oh, also, the Hindu and Theravada colors are too similar IMHO. Would you consider changing Hindu to a darker brown? Like a typical earth brown. I think it would help with the aesthetics and readability of the map. Also making Theravada a stronger orange tone would help.

 

[GastonEstBonne]

First of all the Iban did not have that massive distribution back then, they only spread out in the 1700s-1800s.

Kepercayaan: Throughout Indonesia and before recently across all of Southeast Asia there was an organic blend of various schools of Hinduism and Buddhism that melted into local indigenous belief systems. It is a somewhat similar situation to what happened in China, but there was even less differentiation between the different religious systems. Thus western Indonesia and Malaya should be dominated by a religion called Kepercayaan with rural areas and eastern Indonesia following their indigenous religions fully. It is also likely that throughout mainland Southeast Asia at this point there were likely still many who weren’t fully converted to Theravada Buddhism so you could justify having minorities scattered throughout mainland Southeast Asia, especially in remote and low control areas, but I don’t have any information about locations for them so I’d understand their exclusion. Yet for gameplay, it would allow for more varied possibilities as players can try to stamp Kepercayaan out (as happened historically) or try to revive them. You could justify giving them mechanics similar to what I or others proposed for the mahayana/sanjiao/whatever blob in the China Tinto Maps, but you could also justify having them function in a unique way mechanically as well. Representing buddhism, indigenous religions and hinduism separately builds a religious conflict into the game that I don’t think existed historically outside royal courts and patronage. Kepercayaan means belief in Indonesian and is already used by the government as a catchall name for religions that aren't christianity or islam and are descendants of this blended religious landscape. It's an anachronistic name, yes, but I know of no alternative.

Edit: You could call the Minangkabau religion: Adat. scratch that one

 

[matfer13]

@Pavía review? When plz?

 

[Goblin Slave]

Currently Hinduism and Buddhism seem way to monolithic in the religious map mode, the makeup should be a lot like Mali with a common animist population ruled over by Hindu/Buddhist elites. (Nobles/Merchants)

“But Indonesia did have organized religions, Hinduism and Buddhism! But while that satisfies criterion 1, were Hinduism and Buddhism really a fundamental part of pre-Islamic Indonesian society? Would your average Indonesian peasant been a 'Hindu' or a 'Buddhist'? The little evidence we have suggests no. In all of Indonesia, Hinduism and Buddhism had the greatest impact in Java. But even in Java in the 14th century during the Majapahit empire, which was the height of Hindu Javanese civilization,1

primeval native Javanese religious speculation and popular belief in fact still dominated life of the majority of Javanese, both high-born and common, at court and in the country. [...] Probably among the gentry and the common countrymen in the rural districts education in the Indian sense was superficial.

Similarly, while the Indian caste system was known in Java, it "seems to have had no validity in actual life."2 Hindu dietary laws also had little impact on what commoners ate. One 14th-century Javanese poem contrasts the Hindu rules for food with what people actually ate (Nagarakertagama 89:5 and 90:1):3

Dogs, tortoises, worms, mice are forbidden [to eat under Hindu law], on the other hand frogs are mean, very.

[...]

Frogs, worms, tortoises, mice, dogs

How many there are who like those [meats]! They are flooded with them, so they appear to be well-pleased.

This isn't to say that the average Javanese had no knowledge of Indian religious concepts. They most likely knew at least little, thanks to things like networks of ascetics and ashrammonasteries or puppet plays about Hindu heroes. But Indian religions weren't strong enough to fundamentally influence the Javanese lifestyle, as Islam was to do. So, to quote one anthropologist, "clearly there was no Hinduism in Java, only a Javanese religion that drew on Indian religious praxis and mixed it with local ones."4

Outside Java, people were even less attached to Indian religions. For example, one Sumatran king (Adityavarman) encouraged Buddhism in the mid-14th century. But once he dies, "nothing more is heard of Buddhism." Adityavarman's "demonic form of Buddhism" involving "rites of human sacrifice, the drinking of blood and the rattling of human bones in ecstatic dances" might actually have scared any potential converts out of the religion!5 And in many places in Indonesia there just weren't any Buddhism and Hinduism in the first place.

So when most Southeast Asians converted to Islam, they weren't converting from Hinduism to Islam, which we know from India didn't happen that much. The vast majority of Indonesians were converting from animism to Islam, which we know can happen much more easily. This animist heritage, more so than Indian religions, would be what shaped initial perceptions of Islam in Southeast Asia.”

---

0 Of course Buddhism is much more diverse than most Abrahamic religions, while Hinduism really isn't one religion at all. But here I mean the variants of these religions officially backed by the state - I'm not sure how Hinduism worked in India, but Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy was strictly enforced by law in Myanmar and Thailand.

1 The main general source on Majapahit AFAIK is still Java in the Fourteenth Century: A Study in Cultural History by Theodore G. T. Pigeaud, even though it's more than 50 years old (from 1962). I could be wrong and there might be newer general sources, but if there are I haven't seen them. For religion in Majapahit, see Java in the Fourteenth Century volume IV, p.479-494. I specifically quoted p.480-481 and p.487.

2 For caste see Java in the Fourteenth Century vol. IV, p.260-261.

3 From Java in the Fourteenth Centuryvol III, p.106

4 Durga's Mosque: Cosmology, Conversion and Community in Central Javanese Islam by Headley, p.363

5 The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia vol I, p.322; Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847 by Christine Dobbyn, p.118.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5o8avu/how_did_indonesia_and_malaysia_become

 

[AHumpierRogue]

Because Australia by itself is fairly large

and then you have Papua and NZ, with the smaller islands, and there are a LOT of them
plus with the scale of PC so far, you can probably expect that nearly every island chain will be represented with multiple provinces

Sure Australia is large, but I predict it won't be particularly interesting at least in terms of the things PC gameplay cares about, namely the lack of tags(and I'd bet lack of SoP's as well, should be mostly "horizontal societies" I feel).

 

[matfer13]

No location for Makassar?

 

[lazprune]

Have you considered making the various sea nomads Naval-Based Countries?

Will you keep the bold outline for locations even though it makes it harder to read than during the first tinto maps?

 

[bimbamdingdang]

Speaking as a local, I believe the Central Visayas province should be a bit more granular in its number of locations. This is at least for the mere fact that the island of Cebu (in the province of Cebu) has only two locations—Singhapala and Kangdaya—while the sparsely populated, isolated, rugged, mountainous interiors of Mindanao (the island region containing Agusan, Davao, Mindanao, etc.) have relatively way more locations than it should have in comparison.

Might update this comment if I have more to say (haven't finished reading the entry).

Edit: Gotta say, I'm astounded by how granular the religion map is for the Philippines. I assumed some simplification would be utilized (such as the creation of a Philippine regional religion), but this is just great. Very good representation of the diversity of the Philippine belief systems.

(Finally made a Paradox account just to comment this )

 

[Flower_Marlin]

Singapore/Temasek is real and its an island I could die happy... Now only if you guys could figure out a way to do the same for Venice.

Also a lot of countries like Palembang, Melayu, Sambas, Tanjungpura all the way upto Pasai share a same pinkish-red colour range, are they all vassals or tributaries of Majapahit?

 

[nyetflix2]

Maybe the Ifugao would work as a society of pops?

 

[Roger Corominas]

Great! I've got a few questions as usual:

1-Is it gonna be possible to restore the Srivijaya empire?
2-Are there any special mechanics or events that will bring Islam to spread in region, including inside tags that are not muslims?
3-Why are there present some many tags that(I think) shouldn't really be a thing in 1337 like Brunei, Ternate and Cebu?
4-Any I.O. or situations in the region that you can name?
5-I that red tag the kingdom of Singapore?
6-Any events for the enstablishmet of the Sulu sultanate?

1. Not currently
2. Not anything specific yet afaik
3. It is difficult to assertain the exact time of appearance for some countries, but in some cases we have opted for making them appear if some predecessor polity was already forming
4. Not that I can name
5. Yes
6. The tag is already there, they are just not a sultanate yet

 

[Atromb]

Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines are way too big to be a single area, I would suggest splitting them in two.

 

[Roger Corominas]

Hope that the area of Philippines can be named after a pre-colonial name, for example Luzon. Even if it is not that representative for the entire region, it is at least better than using an anachronistic name that breaks the immersion...

Sometimes we have to unfortunately use anachronistic geographical terms due to the lack of better options, but if you have any suggestion for a pre-colonial name for the whole Philippines feel free to make suggestions.

 

[Cephei80]

Can we expect Australia to be included in Oceania?

there is no such thing as Australia. it doesnt exist

 

[Roger Corominas]

Are coloured wastelands fully done in code? I would have expected Siguntur to have coloured the bit of wasteland that it mostly surrounds as the borders with Palembang and Melayu are quite small.

To color them they have to control the majority of locations surrounding the wasteland, in this case they don't.

 

[theEXPERTpt]

Very fun region. Expecting to have some fun colonizing and getting all those spices as Portugal

 

[matfer13]

That is all for this week. Don’t put away your boats yet though, as next week we will continue our seafaring adventures and take a look at Oceania. See you there.

Can't wait to play as the kangaroo and giant spider tribes!!!

 

[Bluehunter]

Sometimes we have to unfortunately use anachronistic geographical terms due to the lack of better options, but if you have any suggestion for a pre-colonial name for the whole Philippines feel free to make suggestions.

Perhaps Panyupayana since "Scholars and traders from the Indian subcontinent historically referred to the Philippines as Panyupayana, a term which emanated from the geopolitical orientation of the Indians, that started with the cosmological orientation".