High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! South-East Asia was under Indian influence starting around 200 B.C. till around the 15th century. India`s had trade, cultural and political relations with Burma, Thailand (Siam), Indonesia, Malay , Peninsula and Cambodia. The peoples of maritime South East Asia - present-day Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines - are thought to have migrated southwards from southern China sometime between 2500 and 1500 B.C. They continued to have contacts with the Chinese civilisation (well established in the second millenium B.C.), but the influence of the other long-established civilisation of India gradually became predominant among them, and among the peoples of the South East Asia mainland. Indian traders*, adventurers, teachers and priests continued to be the dominating influence in South East Asia until about A.D. 1500, and Indians often ruled the earliest states in these regions. Hinduism and Buddhism both spread to these states from India and for many centuries existed there with mutual toleration. Eventually the states of the mainland became mainly Buddhist.