page_title: Mandala (political model)
section_title: Obligations
hierarchical_section_title: Mandala (political model) / Obligations
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bunga Mas (translates as Golden Flowers) was a tribute sent every three years to the Siamese government in Bangkok, as a symbol of friendship by the Malay rulers of the northern states of the Peninsula (Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu and Patani). The sending of the Bunga Mas began in the 14th century as a colourful ceremonial presentation including four spears with gilded shafts, a kris encrusted with gems, a spitton, a box, an arrangement of betel leaves and two rings. In return, the King of Siam made gifts of equal value. The sending of the Bunga Mas stopped at the end of the 19th century.
context_page_description: Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word meaning 'circle'. The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power distributed among Mueang or Kedatuan in early Southeast Asian history, when local power was more important than the central leadership. The concept of the mandala balances modern tendencies to look for unified political power, i.e., the power of large kingdoms and nation states of later history — an inadvertent byproduct of 15th century advances in map-making technologies. 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.
  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.
context_section_description: The obligations on each side of the relationship varied according to the strength of the relationship and the circumstances. In general, the tributary was obliged to pay bunga mas, a regular tribute of various valuable goods and slaves, and miniature trees of gold and silver (bunga mas dan perak). The overlord ruler reciprocated with presents often of greater value than those supplied by the tributary. However, the tributary also had to provide men and supplies when called on, most often in time of war. The main benefit to the tributary was protection from invasion by other powers, although as South East Asia historian Thongchai Winichakul notes, this was often "mafia-like protection" from the threats of the overlord himself. In some cases, the overlord also controlled the succession in the tributary, but in general interference with the tributary's domestic affairs was minimal: he would retain his own army and powers of taxation, for example. 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).
caption: Bunga mas (Flowers of Gold), tribute from northern Malay states in Malay peninsula for Siam. National Museum, Kuala Lumpur.)
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