Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7: Lecture I: The Background of Hindu Colonization
Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7
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Lecture I: The Background of Hindu Colonization
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I am deeply thankful to the authorities of this University for having invited me to deliver the Sayajirao Gaekwar Honorarium Lectures. The illustrious person with whose name these lectures are associated has now secured a definite place in modern Indian history and will long be remembered as one of the most enlightened rulers of Indian States during the British regime. I had the rare good fortune of coming into close personal contact with him during a steamer trip from Bombay to Marseilles just a quarter of a century ago, and the impression I formed of his frank and jovial personality during the ten days of our travel is still vivid in my mind. I take this opportunity of paying my humble tribute of respect to his blessed memory. The association of his hallowed name with these lectures as well as the long list of distinguished scholars who delivered them in the past adds to the gravity of my task, and I am fully conscious how unworthy I am to discharge the heavy responsibility that lies on my shoulders. I can only try my best and crave your indulgence for my shortcomings.
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I propose to deliver a course of five lectures on India's contact with South-East Asia. As the region covers a wide and extensive area, and the contact was both political and cultural, the subject cannot be treated in detail in a systematic manner in course of these lectures. Nor is it necessary to do so. There are already a few books which give general information in respect of the different countries comprised within the geographical area, and I have myself written several books and articles on this subject. I do not wish to traverse the ground already covered by these publications. I would rather attempt a general survey of the whole area, laying special stress upon those problems and topics which have formed subjects of special study or keen controversy in recent years. I would thus make an endeavour to bring up-to-date our knowledge of this important and fascinating subject in some of its aspects, which have recently emerged into importance by new discoveries, researches and discussions.
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It will not be desirable, however, to plunge immediately into these problems without a general reference, however brief, to the important factors which form the background of our study. This is all the more necessary in view of the fact that the study of the subject is of recent growth, and is still in its infancy in our country. It is true that archaeological discoveries in Indo-China and Indonesia, bearing upon India's contact with these regions, date back to the last century, but unfortunately the publications on the subject, being written in Dutch and French, were but little known to Indians who are generally ignorant of these languages. I still recall that the text of Indian History which I had to read in schools emphasised the unique character of Indian culture due to the fact that India lived in splendid isolation and never came into contact with the outside world. We were gravely told in these books that India never influenced nor was influenced by any foreign country.
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These ideas are so deeply rooted in the minds of Indians that even the educated section is not quite free from them. The result is that though the conception of a Greater India had been promulgated by a handful of Indian scholars, during the last thirty years or more, it has not yet made much headway, and the general Indian attitude towards this subject is marked by apathy and ignorance.
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I would therefore begin these series of lectures with a brief survey of some preliminary points of a general nature, a correct knowledge of which is essential to a proper understanding of the subject, *viz.* India's contact with South-East Asia.
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In the first place, it is necessary to define the geographical area which I have in view. As is well-known, India's cultural contact extended to wide regions all over Asia. But I purpose to deal with only that part of it which is now covered by East Indies, Burma, and the Peninsula of Indo-China, excluding Tonkin, which, though a part of Indo-China, is excluded from my purview as its political and cultural contact was with China rather than with India.
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The area, thus defined, falls into two broad divisions, *viz.*, the continental plain and the islands. The former is separated from India and China by high mountains starting from Central Asia. These throw out parallel ranges of hills, called Yomas, running north to south, right across the whole area. The valleys enclosed by them are watered by a number of rivers also running north to south. Beginning from the west these are the Irawadi, with its tributary the Chindwin, the Sittang, the Salween, the Menam and the Mekong. The first four are in Burma, while the Menam runs through the whole of Siam or Thailand as it is called today.
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Northern Siam, laying between the Salween and the Upper Mekong, is a land of narrow valleys separated by steep longitudinal spurs rising occasionally to a height of more than 8,000 ft., but Central Siam is mostly an alluvial plain watered by the Menam and a number of smaller rivers. The northern part of Malay Peninsula, up to the Isthmus of Kra, is politically part of Siam and is generally referred to as Southern Siam. But geographically Malay Peninsula extends from the head of the Gulf of Siam to Singapore Strait. Its most characteristic physical features are the long range of granite mountains running along its whole length, and the ever-green forests, mostly dense jungles, which cover a large part of the country and the major part of which is yet untrodden by human foot.
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The country now called Viet Nam (till recently Annam), but whose central and southern part was formerly known as Champā, forms the eastern boundary of the area. It is bounded on the east by the Sea of China and on the west by a chain of hills covered with rich forests. This long narrow strip of land between the sea and the high mountains, ranging in height from six to eight thousand feet, is further intersected by numerous spurs of hills and a large number of small rivulets issuing from them. The habitable zone of Champā nowhere exceeds seventy miles, in breadth.
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The central region, lying between Siam and Annam or Champā, is to-day covered by three countries known as Laos, Cambodia and Cochin-China. In the ancient times they formed a political unit known as Kambuja-deśa from which the modern name Cambodia is derived. Through this entire region flows the mighty river Mekong, first along the eastern border of Burma and Siam, and the western border of the hilly country of Laos, and then passing over the Dangrek range enters the plain of Cambodia proper near Khong. From this point the river is enlarged to nearly double its breadth and covers almost the whole of Cambodia by its ramifications. Indeed this majestic river played the same part in Kambuja as the Gaṅgā in Northern India and the Nile in Egypt. A wide sheet of water connects this river to the vast lake called Tonle Sap, the border of which, known as Angkor region, formed the centre of Kambuja history and culture. From this point of junction, near the modern capital city of Pnom Penh, the Mekong branches off into two wide streams, connected by numerous cross canals till they both fall into the sea forming the rich delta of Cochin-China.
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The southern part of Malay Peninsula forms the tongue of land by which Indo-China projects far into the Indian ocean, between China Sea on the east and the Bay of Bengal on the west. The narrow strait of Malacca separates it from the big island of Sumatra lying to its west and south. The very narrow strait of Sunda separates Sumatra from the island of Java to its south-east. Then follows a series of small islands in a long chain from west to east beginning with Bali and stretching almost up to New Guinea. To the north of this is another chain consisting of the big islands of Borneo and Celebes and the group known as Molucca islands. Further north is another group known as Philippine islands. These islands of varying size more than six thousand in number, are collectively known by various names such as Indian Archipelago, Malay Archipelago, Asiatic Archipelago, Indonesia and Insulinde.
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Almost all over the geographical area described above, we find settlements of the Hindus during the early centuries of the Christian era. The term Hindu is used here in a very broad sense. It does not refer to followers of Brahmanical, as opposed to those of heterodox religions like Buddhism and Jainism. As is well-known the word Hindu is derived from Sindhu, the name of the mighty river on the western border of India. The Parsis used this name to denote also the territory lying on the bank of the river, that is to say that part of our country which was then known to them. Gradually the name Sindhu in its phonetically changed form Hindu came to denote the whole of this country. The European forms Indika, India, Inde and the Chinese from Indu are all derived form this. The term Hindu, therefore, means the same geographical area as India, as well as its people. But the people of this country never called themselves by this name before the advent of the Muslims when the sharp differences in religion necessitated the use of two different terms to denote the two distinct classes of people. Henceforth the term Hindu came to denote the people of India other than the Muslims. I have used this term in the same sense, in the absence of a better one, to denote the people of India as a whole before the Muslim invasion. The term Indian would be misleading as it would include also the Muslims who had nothing to do with the phase of colonization which it is the object of these lectures to describe.
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Having broadly defined the region where the Hindus set up their colonies, it is necessary to discuss the different routes by which they proceeded to these distant lands. This can be approximately determined by archaeological evidence, and the chinese and other literary accounts including local traditions. These routes can be divided into three classes *viz.* ( 1 ) by land; ( 2 ) by sea; and ( 3 ) partly by sea and partly by land.
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From early times, there was a regular trade-route by land between Eastern India and China through Upper Burma and Yunnan. We know from Chinese chronicles that in the second century B.C. merchants with their ware travelled from China across the whole of North India and Afganistan to Bactria. Through this route came twenty Chinese priests for whom, according to I-tsing, an Indian king built a temple in the third or fourth century A.D. From different points along this route one could pass to Lower Burma and other parts of Indo-China, and a Chinese writer, Kia Tan, refers to a land-route between Annam and India.¹ There was a more direct route between Eastern India and Burma through Arracan to which reference is made in the Burmese chronicles.
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¹ *JA*, II-XII ( 1919 ), p. 461.
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The all-sea route at first lay along the coast from Indian ports to different parts of South-east Asia. The two extreme points in India for the departure of the vessels were Broach on the west and Tāmralipti on the east, and there were many good harbours between these two, both along the eastern and the western coast. We know detailed accounts of these from the *Periplus of the Erythaean Sea* and Ptolemy. According to the latter, the vessels, bound for Malay Peninsula and other ports further beyond, made the coastal voyage as far as Paloura, near modern Gopalpur in Ganjam District, and then made a direct voyage across the high seas. Having reached Malay Peninsula the vessels could pass through Malacca Strait to the different islands of the East Indies and the coast of Indo-Chinese Peninsula. But, as in the latter case the vessels had to double the entire length of the Peninsula, many travellers got down at the Isthmus of Kra, and cut across the Malay Peninsula at its narrowest point from Takua Pa to Caiya and other places on the opposite coast of the Bay of Bandon. This is proved by archaeological remains round about these places. There is also a persistent local tradition in favour of early migration of Indians across this route. Persons of an Indian cast of features are common on the west coast near Takua Pa, while colonies of Indian descent still survive on the coast of the Bay of Bandon and trace the arrival of their ancestors from India by an overland route across the Malay Peninsula.²
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In addition to the coastal voyage described above, there must have been direct voyages from South India, either through the channel between Andaman and Nicobar Islands or to the south of the latter, making respectively for Takua Pa or Kedah in Malay Peninsula, where ancient archaeological remains have come to light.
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Similarly vessels from Andhra coast or countries further north could sail either along the coast or directly to Tavoy. The travellers landed there and then, crossing the mountains by the Pass of the three Pagodas, proceeded to the delta of the Menam by the Kanburi river near the banks of which ancient ruins have been found at Pong Tuk and Pra Pathom. Further to the north there was a practicable route from the port of Moulmein to the town of Raheng on one of the branches of the Menam. From the valley of the Menam there was a route to the valley of the Mekong across the plateau *via.* Si Tep where very old remains have come to light.³
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We may now consider some problems in connection with the Hindu colonization in South-east Asia.
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flourshing Hindu settlements in those far-off regions in the south-east beyond the sea. Not only was there lack of any positive evidence, but such evidences as we did possess were rather calculated to negative any such idea. The prohibition of sea-voyage and the general aversion to association with non-Hindus or *mlechchhas* who were regarded as unclean or impure, are so strongly emphasised in our Smṛtis that one would naturally rule out the possibility of the Hindus ever crossing the sea and settling among the primitive tribes of South-east Asia.
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How are we, then, to reconcile the Indian testimony to the patent fact of Hindu colonization on a wide scale in South-east Asia? The question is not easy to answer, but we may offer a hypothetic reconstruction of the whole process of this colonization which will explain the reticence of Indian records in this respect.
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In the first place, we must not presume that this colonization was the result of any military expedition, deliberately undertaken by any Indian king for this purpose.4a There is, of course, no inherent impossibility in such a view. We know that the Chola emperors in the eleventh century A.D. fitted out naval expeditions and conquered a wide region in Sumatra and Malay Peninsula. About 700 years earlier the Gupta emperor Samudra-gupta claimed to have exercised suzerainty over “all islands.” Still earlier, the figure of sailing vessels on the coins of Sātavāhana kings may be taken to indicate their supremacy over lands beyond the sea. The specific statement by Megasthenes that the Maurya emperor had an organised department for Admiralty brings such a maritime expedition within the range of possibility for the period after 300 B.C., if not before it.
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4a No one has seriously taken the suggestions of K. A. N. Sastri that the Pallava king Nandivarman III made conquests in this region (*J. Mal. Br. R.A.S.* XXII—30).
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But while colonization as a result of political conquest cannot, therefore, be altogether ruled out as a theory, it is hardly compatible with the Indian evidence or rather lack of it, to which reference has been made above. A deliberate scheme of colonization, sustained by military force from India, would necessarily have involved close contact with the motherland, at least for a fairly long time. Is it likely that such a prolonged and intimate contact would not have left any trace in our literature, at least in the shape of an improved knowledge of the topography of this region? But there is no such trace, and even the late Purāṇas do not seem to indicate any advance in the idea of the geography of this region.
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For the same reason the Hindu colonization does not also seem to be due to any organised private effort on a large scale like that of the Pilgrim Fathers in America, though this is less unlikely than the theory of political conquest.
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It appears more probable that the colonization was the culmination of what was originally mere adventurous enterprise of individuals or small isolated groups who undertook the risky voyage for their personal ends. Such voyages were not likely to draw public attention or to create any commotion or excitement, but nevertheless our literature has kept a faithful account of it in the form of legends or fables.
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There are many references to sea-voyages between Indian ports and Suvarṇa-bhūmi or Suvarṇa-dvīpa, in old popular stories in the Sanskrit works based upon the lost *Bṛhat-kathā*, as well as in Buddhist Jātakas, Jain *Samarāïchcha-kahā* and other works. The heroes of most of these stories are merchants and, in a few cases, princes, or chiefs in straitened circumstances, who wanted to acquire wealth by trade or other means. The *Kathākośa* relates the story of Nāgadatta who went to Suvarṇa-dvīpa with five hundred ships in order to acquire wealth. The Buddhist works *Milindapañha* and *Niddesa* also refer to regular trading voyages to Suvarṇa-bhūmi.
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I have elsewhere⁵ discussed in detail the location of Suvarṇā-bhūmi and Suvarṇa-dvīpa which figure prominently in Indian literature and are also referred to in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Chinese writings. There is hardly any doubt that they at first denoted, in a vague general way, both Indo-China and Indonesia, though in later times either name was applied to denote particular regions in this vast area.
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⁵ *Suvarṇadvīpa*, Ch. IV.
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The folk-literature in India thus clearly refers to regular voyages between India and South-East Asia and there is no doubt that Indian merchants visited different parts of that region for purposes of trade.
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The merchants in India, as in other countries, must have been the pioneers in the exploration of South-east Asia. The knowledge and experience gained by them must have induced not only other traders, but also peoples of different categories to follow in their wake. Kṣatriya chiefs, dispossessed of their territories, are represented in Jātakas to have betaken themselves to Suvarṇa-bhūmi to try their fortune. On the other hand the traditions current in various countries of South-east Asia represent individual Kṣatriya chiefs of India—princes banished by their fathers, or fleeing from enemies, or directed by supernatural agencies—as conquering heroes who founded royal dynasties. We have also stories of religious missionaries, visiting these lands for religious propaganda. These individual stories cannot, of course, be taken to be true, but they are not altogether devoid of historical value. They support the theory, mentioned above, that individuals or small groups—merchants, Kṣatriya chiefs and religious missionaries—were the pioneers of the Hindu Colonization in South-east Asia.
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How these individuals, unaided by state or other organizations at home, succeeded not only in establishing their political authority over the numerous foreign peoples in such distant lands, but also in transforming their entire cultural life, is the problem that should next engage our attention. Some writers, possessing intimate knowledge of primitive tribes in Asia and Africa, have suggested the different stages in this process of Hindu Colonization on the analogy of what happened in later and more recent times when Islam gradually established itself among them. According to this view, which seems highly probable, we may reconstruct the process of Indian Colonization somewhat as follows.⁶
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⁶ Ferrand in *JA*, 1919, pp. 15 ff. Winstedt in *J. Mal. Br. R. A. S.* XIII, p. 18, *JRAS*, 1944, p. 186.
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Two or three Indian vessels sailing together reach a coastal town. The new-comers ingratiate themselves into the favour of the local chiefs by costly or curious presents, their real or pretended knowledge of healing arts, and also magical powers to prevent illness or drive away evil spirits. Some of them assume lofty airs as belonging to royal or noble family and possessing immense wealth. All these highly impress the ruling chief as well as the common people who look upon the Hindus as people of superior race. The latter settle down among them, learn their language and marry the local girls. The leaders of the new immigrants naturally select the daughters of the chiefs or at least girls of high family. These wives are soon initiated into the religious and moral ideas and beliefs and social customs of their husbands and become instrumental in spreading them among the indigenous people. It is almost a universal law that when a higher and a lower type of culture come into close contact, the latter yields to the former. The native wives of the Indians become the best missionaries for the propagation of Hindu religion and culture. Gradually the new culture spreads from the coastal region to the interior, and from one locality to another. Ultimately, either the king adopts the Hindu faith, or some Hindu immigrant succeeds in winning his favour and marries into royal family, thus assuring the complete triumph of Hindu culture. In some cases the Hindu immigrants, backed by support of Hinduized natives, take advantage of changing political situations to seize the royal power. To explain satisfactorily the thorough-going conquest of Hindu culture in all aspects of life, we must assume that the Hindu immigrants included not only merchants, but also Brāhmaṇas and Kṣatriyas, as well as people following different arts and crafts. It is not necessary to suppose that they all came together; it is more likely that they represent successive waves of immigration from India, each being encouraged by the good reports about the new settlements carried by the returning emigrants. For we must suppose that all the original emigrants did not settle permanently in those far-off lands, and while some chose to stay on, others returned home after a short or long stay.
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This imaginary picture, based on actual happenings in later times, is corroborated by the local traditions current in different Hindu colonies about their founders. The earliest recorded tradition of this nature describes the foundation of the Hindu political authority in Cochin-China and South Cambodia. There was a kingdom in this locality, called Fu-nan by the Chinese. Once a follower of orthodox Brāhmanical faith, directed by God in a dream, came to this kingdom in a trading vessel. The female ruler of this place came to plunder the vessel, but being overawed by the military skill and prowess, submitted to the new-comer, who married her and ruled the country. This story was recorded by the Chinese in the middle of the third century A.D. and must have been current long before that. It is echoed in an epigraphic record, dated 657 A.D., in reference to the foundation of Bhavapura, the capital of Kambuja. We are told that the Brāhmaṇa Kauṇḍinya married Somā, the daughter of the Nāga king, and from this union sprang the royal family. The Chinese form of the name of the hero, *viz.* Huen-tien, is an exact reproduction of Kauṇḍinya, and both the stories are obviously different versions of the same, though one refers to Fu-nan and the other to Kambuja. A somewhat modified tradition about Kambuja ascribes its foundation to a son of king of Indraprastha who was banished by his father. He occupied the country by defeating the local ruler and then married the daughter of a Nāga ruler who extended the boundaries of his kingdom. Similarly the foundation of Ligor in Malay Peninsula is ascribed by tradition to a descendant of Aśoka who fled from Magadha, embarked a vessel at Dantapura, and was wrecked on the coast of the Malay Peninsula. Finally, we have a story preserved in the chronicles of Java that the island was first colonised by a prince of Hastināpura who sailed from Gujarat.
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In contrast to all these stories, where the foundation is ascribed to individual heroes, the Burmese chronicles record a regular military expedition. We are told that Abhirāja, a prince of the Śākya clan of Kapilavastu, marched with an army to Upper Burma, founded the city of Sankissa on the Upper Irawadi, and set himself up as the king of the surrounding region. It is worthy of note that in all these traditions current from one end of the region to the other, such a story is told of the only country where it was not beyond the range of possibility. For the military conquest of a region in Upper Burma by an Indian chief was not a very difficult operation even in those early days.
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Side by side with the stories of individual Hindu chiefs founding the different colonial kingdoms, we have also many traditions of small Indian settlements having developed into important kingdoms. Thus according to traditions current in Pegu Hindu colonists from the country of the lower courses of the Krishna and Godavari had, at a remote time, crossed the sea and formed settlements in the delta of the Irawadi and on the adjoining coast. Later, some of these settlers founded the kingdoms of Thaton and Pegu. Similar traditions are current about the Hindus from the Kaliṅga coast having colonised Java and other islands.
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These local traditions are mostly concerned with the foundation of political authority, and may be taken to indicate in a general way how the Hindus gradually usurped royal power in the various localities. But they do not throw much light on the actual process of colonisation and cultural penetration by the Hindus. Some light is thrown on it by the Chinese accounts of the kingdom of Tuen-siun in Malay Peninsula.
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On account of its advantageous geographical position, on the sea, it formed a meeting ground between the east and the west. The merchants from India and Parthia came here in large numbers to carry on trade and commerce, and the local market was frequented every day by more than ten thousand men.
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A Chinese chronicle preserves an account of this place given by an Indian who visited it in the fifth century A.D. We are told that five hundred Indian families of Hu or probably mercantile class and more than a thousand Brāhmaṇas lived there. Most of these Brāhmaṇas permanently settled in the country with the result that the local people followed their religion and gave them their daughters in marriage. This short but valuable account of the kingdom of Tuen-siun fully supports the general process of Hindu colonization sketched above. It shows that while trade was the first or the main incentive to colonization, its character was entirely changed by the missionary zeal of the Brāhmaṇas.
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Fu-nan, which exercised suzerain authority over the kingdom of Tuen-siun, was itself an important market town where met the traders from India and China. It was the oldest Hindu colonial kingdom in this region known so far, and the first to build up an empire. It is not unlikely that it was the result of the same process of colonization which we find at work in later times in Tuen-siun.
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Having thrown some light on the nature and process of Hindu colonization we may now proceed to discuss its antiquity.
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Reference has been made above to the tradition about the conquest of Fu-nan by Brāhmaṇa Kauṇḍinya. This was recorded by the Chinese ambassador K’ang T’ai who visited Fu-nan, probably some time between A.D. 245 and 250. He refers to a number of kings who succeeded Kauṇḍinya. One of these died at the advanced age of ninety, and his third successor sent an embassy to China in 243 A.D. Kauṇḍinya must have therefore reigned in the first century A.D., if not earlier still. For the present this is the earliest date to which we can definitely trace back the foundation of Hindu political authority in Indo-China.
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The oldest Sanskrit inscription in Indo-China is engraved on a block of granite found close to the village of Vo-canh in the province of Khanh-Hoa in South Annam. It records the donation made by a king belonging to the family of Śrī-Māra. As this inscription has been referred on palaeographic grounds to the second or third century A.D.,⁷ king Śrī-Māra must have flourished some time before it.
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⁷ This question has been further discussed in Lecture II.
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Ptolemy’s Geography, composed in the second century A.D., refers to many geographical names of Indian origin from Burma to Java. The Buddhist canonical text *Niddesa*, probably composed about the same time, if not earlier, similarly contains a long list of place-names of Sanskrit origin which can be located in the same region.
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Reference is made in a Chinese history to an embassy sent to China in 132 A.D. by Tiao-pien, king of Ye-tiao. Pelliot recognised long ago the identity of Ye-tiao with Yavadvīpa, and Ferrand took the name of the king as a Chinese rendering of Sanskrit Deva-varman. If these identifications be accepted, we must date back the foundation of a Hindu Kingdom in Java towards the end of the first or the beginning of the second century A.D. at the latest. It may be noted in this connection that the Sanskrit name Yavadvīpa also occurs in the *Rāmāyaṇa*.
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The discovery of isolated Brāhmī alphabets on stones in Burma carries back the association of the Hindus with this region to the first two centuries of the Christian era. According to Chinese chronicles of the third century A.D., a kingdom called Lin-yang, which has been located by some scholars in Central Burma, had a Buddhist population of over 100,000 families including several thousand monks.
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The Chinese history of the Liang Dynasty mentions a country called Lang-ya-su situated in Malay Peninsula “which, the people say, was established more than four hundred years ago.” As this king put a high value on Sanskrit, and the Chinese history deals with the first half of the sixth century A.D., we find here an evidence of a Hindu Colony at the beginning of the second century A.D.
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The few definite facts, culled above, leave no doubt that by the beginning of the Christian era the Hindu Colonization had taken deep root in the soil all over the region from Burma in the north to Java and Annam in the south and south-east. This is also corroborated by the discovery of the images of Buddha of Amarāvatī style, of approximately second or third century A.D., The ground is literally stuffed with fragments of pottery whose decoration connects them with pottery found on other prehistoric sites of southern Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. The shape of this pottery, when a vase is by chance discovered intact, is clearly Hindu in origin.
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Numerous beads of rock crystal, carnelian, onyx, amythist and coloured glass completely prove the Hindu origin of the culture of Oc-Eo if there were not also other finds even more convincing.
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First, there are numerous lead amulets inscribed with Brahmanic symbols, and coins of the classic type called " *A soleil* " ( decorated with a sun ).
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Second, there are gold ornaments—bracelets, rings, pendants and seals—engraved with inscriptions in an alphabet of Hindu origin, which may be dated in the second century A.D., and later periods.
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There are also, and above all, hundreds of intaglios and cameos in carnelian rock crystals or sardonyx, either with Sanskrit inscriptions or with Hindu-Hellenistic ( Graeco-Hindu ) animals, symbols, figures or profiles.
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Several objects are, undoubtedly, of a Roman origin. There is, for example, a gold medal bearing the effigy of the celebrated Marcus Aurelius, one of the most famous Roman Emperors of the Antonine dynasty.
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This medal enables us to date the remains in the second century A.D. Reference may be made in this connection to a Roman lamp at Pong Tuk, in Siam, belonging to the same period. These finds may be connected with the journey of a band of musicians and acrobats from Rome to China via Burma in 120 A.D., and also the embassy of Marcus Aurelius to China, about 166 A.D.
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The view that the beginnings of Indian Colonization in South-east Asia should be placed not later than the first century A.D. is also supported by the fact that trade relations between India and China, by way of sea, may be traced back to the second century B.C.⁹ As the Chinese vessels did not proceed beyond Northern Annam till after the first century A.D., it may be presumed that the Indian vessels plied at least as far as Annam even in the second century B.C. As the vessels in those days kept close to the coast, we may conclude that even in the second century B.C. Indian mariners and merchants must have been quite familiar with those regions in Indo-China and Malay Archipelago, where we find Indian colonies at a later date. It is therefore quite probable that Indian colonies were set up in the first century A.D. or even earlier.
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⁹ *T'oung Pao*, XIII ( 1912 ), pp. 457-61; *IHQ*, XIV, 380.
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The archaeological remains at Oc-Eo prove that the site was originally a settlement of the neolithic period, which was directly occupied by the Hindu colonists without any gap or intervening period. Such immediate transition from Neolithic to Hindu period is also attested by archaeological finds in other places such as Sa-huynh in Annam, Samrong Seu in Cambodia, Kuala Selinsing in Malay Peninsula, and at Sempaga in the island of Celebes. All these prove that when the Hindu colonists arrived in this region, they found the local people in that primitive state of culture which may be collectively referred to as late Neolithic.
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This has a great bearing on an important question on which there has been a great deal of discussion and considerable difference of opinion, *viz.* the culture and civilization of the peoples with whom the first Hindu Colonists in this region came into contact. Without entering into these controversies in detail, I may state here the main conclusions together with the arguments on which they are based. The inference drawn from the archaeological evidence that the local people were in a state of Neolithic culture when the Hindus first came into contact with them cannot be brushed aside except on very strong positive evidence. Certain Dutch scholars hold the view that these peoples, specially those of Java, had a very high degree of civilization, including a knowledge of shadow-play, called Wajang, together with the music accompanying it known as gamelan, different kinds of metre, and the art of weaving Batik cloth. This conclusion, based upon a study of the people of modern Java, is incompatible with the Neolithic culture, and has not therefore found much favour with scholars. The Neolithic culture, evidenced by archaeological remains, resembles to a great extent that of non-Aryan peoples in India like the Khasis and the Mundas. It has also been held by eminent scholars that the languages spoken by these aboriginal peoples of India and those of Indo-China and Indonesia belong to the same stock. It has further been held that these aborigines of India, driven by the Aryans and Dravidians, migrated to Indo-China and Indonesia, and imposed their authority upon the primitive peoples of those lands. According to this view, the Hindu colonization of South-east Asia is merely a further eastward extension of the Aryan conquest of India, and was merely a continuation of the process already begun by the peoples who inhabited India before them. Such a theory, from its very nature, cannot be regarded as an established historical fact. It has been argued, for example, on the other hand, that the early process of colonization was just the reverse, *viz.* that the peoples of South-east Asia colonised before the Aryans conquered the country and drove them away. But whatever we may think of this, there is a general consensus of opinion that the peoples whom the Hindu colonists met in South-east Asia had not developed much beyond the state of culture which the Aryan conquerors of India found among the ancestors of Khasis and Mundas, and which is still to be found among them.
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But these primitive peoples were not savages or barbarians, and we may get some idea of their culture by a study of their languages and of the manners and customs of their descendants who still live in hills and dales unaffected by later civilization. They cultivated banana, sugarcane, cucumber, etc. and also probably rice. They were fond of hunting and fishing and tended buffaloes, pigs, and probably also cows, for meat and milk. They built houses of bamboo, wood and rattan and knew the use of iron. They wore barks of trees, though some of them knew the art of weaving. They knew the art of navigation and the elementary knowledge of astronomy necessary for it. Their religion was animism pure and simple.
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This picture is only true in a general way, for there must have been variations in different localities. For example, we have the positive statement in Chinese records that the people of Fu-nan, both men and women, went about naked until the Indian settlers taught them the use of cloth. This indicates that some elements in the population were in a more primitive state than the above picture would suggest. It is also a warning against the too ready assumption of a high degree of culture in the communities among whom the Hindu colonists settled.
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But while it is necessary to admit variations in the degrees of culture among the different communities whom the Hindu colonists met, it is not easy to make an assessment of their individual nature or worth either qualitatively or quantitatively. The recent attempt in this direction by H. G. Wales seems to be too speculative to be of much historical value, and will be discussed later.
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Wales, and others who think like him, seem to be obsessed with the great importance of the Neolithic culture of the peoples with whom the Hindu colonists first came into contact, and attach a far greater value to it in their historical evolution than the influence which centuries of close and intimate contact with the Hindus had exercised upon them. This conscious or unconscious attempt to exaggerate the local factor and belittle the importance of Hindu element, and thereby change the entire conception of the value and importance of Hindu culture in South-east Asia, seems to be a characteristic of certain classes of writers.
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Finally we must refer to two questions of a speculative nature in connection with Hindu Colonization which have aroused great interest and provoked much discussion. The first relates to the cause or causes of the Hindu Colonization. Reference has been made above to the probable stages of this colonization, beginning with motives of trade and ending in political and cultural conquest. Some scholars, however, seek to particularise a few definite waves of migration from India and assign causes to the same. They hold that as the Aryan conquest drove the pre-Aryan settlers of India towards the countries beyond the sea in the east and south-east, the Hindus, too, were forced to migrate there in large numbers by political events in later times. The first wave of Hindu Colonization in the early centuries of the Christian era is attributed by them to the invasion of India by the foreign hordes such as the Greeks, Śakas and Kuṣāṇas. A second wave of Hindu colonization, inferred from certain traditions and the simultaneous rise of a number of Hindu states testified to by Sanskrit inscriptions, is explained by Samudra-gupta's conquest of the Deccan leading to a wholesale migration of coastal people.¹⁰
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¹⁰ H. G. Q. Wales—*The Making of Greater India*, pp. 24 ff.
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It is to be remembered, however, that the conquests of the foreigners in the early centuries of the Christian era hardly affected the area beyond Banaras and spent their force long before that. There was ample space in India itself for the refuges to take shelter, and it is therefore difficult to regard the foreign conquest as a sufficient cause, by itself, for a large scale migration to a distant land beyond the sea. Similarly, the conquest of Samudra-gupta in the south was more an assertion of suzerainty than any actual subjugation. Even the defeated kings were restored to the throne. So, here again, we cannot conceive this conquest as a sufficient cause for a large migration of princes and peoples. Further, though military defeats may operate in some cases as a sufficient cause for migration, we need not specify any particular incident or period as specially favourable to such a contingency, for internecine wars and foreign invasions are almost constant factors in Indian history. Similar objections may be urged against the causes of other waves of periodical emigration (wars of the Pālas, Pallavas etc.) suggested by some other scholars.
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A French savant has suggested that the progress of Buddhism gave a great impetus to the Indian colonization by the abolition of caste distinctions and the removal of the notion of untouchability which stood in the way of an orthodox Hindu's sojourn in foreign lands. As an evidence he cites the discovery of Buddhist images of an early date in the different colonies.¹¹
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¹¹ Coedés—*Etats*, 44.
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This view, too, does not rest on a strong basis. In the first place the influence of Buddhism on the social condition and ideas of the laity, as opposed to the monks, is very imperfectly known. While it is true that caste distinctions and untouchability were unknown among the Buddhist monks, it is difficult to say how far the lay Buddhist community followed their example. The very fact that the caste-system not only continued, but assumed greater and greater rigidity during the very period that Buddhism was a dominant force in India, does not lend countenance to this view.
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Further, it is a well-known fact that compared with Brahmanical religion, Buddhism had a very feeble hold in South-East Asia. This is clearly proved by epigraphic records and images actually found. The discovery of early Buddhist images does not prove the contrary, or even that the first colonists were Buddhists. For even in India itself the practice of making images was more in vogue among the Buddhists in the early period than among the followers of Brahmanical religion, and it has even been suggested that the latter adopted it in imitation of the former. It is natural, therefore, that as in India, Buddhist images would be more predominant than the Brahmanical images during the early centuries of the Christian era. But the oldest epigraphic records certainly prove the dominance of Brahmanical cults. Mention may be made of the fact that the dominance of Buddhism in the Hindu colonies in Central Asia, known from literary sources, is also clearly proved by archaeological remains. In South-East Asia, on the other hand, the archaeological remains clearly prove the dominance of Brahmanical religion. It is true that Buddhism had very important centres and played an important part in the spread of Hindu culture in this region, but there is no evidence that it had supplied the chief stimulus to the Hindu colonization there. If we have to give credit to any particular religion, it rightly belongs to both Brahmanical and Buddhist sects and, on the whole, the balance would probably incline to the former.
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Far more plausible causes for the Hindu colonization are the improvements in navigation, particularly in the art of constructing large vessels which could carry six or seven hundered passengers. Of this we have clear evidence in Chinese texts. According to these texts, no Chinese vessels plied in the Indian Ocean at the beginning of the Christian era, but products of the western countries reached China by way of sea at the beginning of the first century B.C. and probably even somewhat earlier.11a We gather from a text of the first century A.D. that even then Chinese merchandise, and probably also Chinese merchants, had to be transhipped to the vessels of the barbarians which were big enough to carry six or seven hundred passengers. Who these barbarians were, has not been specified and there is no reason to think, as some European scholars do, that they were Persians, or that the technique of building large vessels originated in Persian gulf.¹² As a matter of fact, the known facts would certainly favour the presumption that the knowledge of the maritime developments referred to above should also be credited to the Indians, although we have no evidence from Indian sources. It is, however, easy to understand how such arts, even if they originate in certain countries, are quickly learnt by other countries in close contact with them. We know that, partly due to this reason and partly to the discovery of monsoon-winds by Hippalus, to be noted below, there was a large increase in the volume of trade and navigation between western countries and India in the early centuries of Christian era. We may hold that for similar reasons India, too, had developed her trade in the east about the same period, and this satisfactorily explains the beginnings of Hindu Colonization in South-East Asia during the early centuries of the Christian era.
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11a N. K. Sastri (*IHQ*, XIV, 387) refers to the passage of Pelliot. Houangche, the last point of the journey (in the above text), is identified by Ferrand with Kanchi; thus South India had relations with China in 2nd Century B.C. Reference may also be made to the find of a Chinese coin in Mysore whose dates are variously suggested to be 138 B.C., 502 A.D., 886 A.D.; the first appears more probable. Cf. also *Suvarṇadvīpa* 1.70, f.n. 2.
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¹² Coedés—*Etats*, p. 44. But Pelliot who first notices this passage says that these big vessels were known to Persians, Indians and Chinese (*Etudes Asiatiques*, II, 255-7). For the account of the Chinese navigation, cf. Pelliot in *T'oung Pao*, XIII. 457; Ferrand in *JA*, 11, 13, pp. 451 ff.
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The second question concerns the particular localities in India which supplied the Hindu colonists. The view that only the Indians of Malabar and Coromandel Coasts colonised South-east Asia by the sea-route was held by eminent scholars. In a book published more than twenty-five years ago, I combatted this view and tried to prove that North India, through the port of Tāmralipti in Bengal, had a fair share in this colonization. There has been much discussion on this point, and my esteemed friend Professor Nilakanta Sastri has opposed my view. This has led an eminent French scholar to remark, in a recent publication, that the Hindu scholars do not take a positive or detached view of the subject, and according as they belong to Madras or Calcutta, they attribute to the Tamil land or Bengal the honour of having colonized Greater India.¹³ Although I do not regard this criticism a just one, it becomes a somewhat delicate task for me to discuss the problem. But nevertheless I cannot altogether avoid this discussion, and therefore state below the important data which must be taken into consideration before arriving at any conclusion.
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¹³ Coedès—*Etats.*, pp. 55-6,
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It is a well-known fact that in early times the ships normally kept within sight of the shore and we know from the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, that it was not until Hippalus's discovery of the monsoon winds, some time about 42 A.D., that there was any direct voyage from the western countries to the Indian coast. The same book, *Periplus*, does not clearly refer to any direct voyage between South India and the Malay Peninsula, but describes the coastal voyage from South India up to the Ganga, and then mentions the Malay Peninsula as near the mouth of this river. This hardly leaves any doubt that normally the voyage was all along the coast. This view is confirmed by Ptolemy who locates the *apheterium*, or the point of departure for ships bound for Malay Peninsula, immediately to the south of Paloura (near Gopalpur in Orissa). He evidently means that this is the point from where the vessels bound for Malay Peninsula “ceased to follow the littoral and entered the high seas.” If, therefore, the normal course of the voyage between India and South-east Asia lay along the entire eastern coast, we cannot presume, except on very strong grounds, that only the people of Malabar and Coromandel took advantage of this long and tedious journey, and the people of North India merely looked on as idle spectators while the South Indian vessels passed through Paloura and Tāmralipti (Tamluk in Bengal), two excellent ports of embarkation at their disposal, the reputation of which goes back to the time of the Buddhist canonical literature. As mentioned before, the Jātakas and other texts, both Buddhist and Jain, refer to persons from various parts of North India sailing from Tāmralipti to Malay Peninsula and other localities beyond the sea.
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More positive evidence is furnished by the Chinese text of the third century A.D. We know from these that a trader from Western India reached Fu-nan in the second quarter of the third century A.D. Having learnt from him detailed account of India, Fan, Chan, the king of Fu-nan, sent one of his relations as an ambassador to India. The latter embarked at Teu-Ki-li, probably the famous port of Takkola, reached the mouth of the Ganga, and then proceeded up the river for about 1000 miles. Now this account shows that the trader from Western India made a coasting voyage up to the mouth of the Ganga, which was in active intercourse with South-east Asia. If a direct voyage between South India and this region was quite familiar, and South India played the dominant role in this colonization, the West Indian trader would not have proceeded to the mouth of the Ganga, and the king of Fu-nan, who got all his information about India from this trader, would have probably sent his embassy to South India rather than to North India. In any case, it is certainly worthy of note that the first definite account that we possess of a political and maritime intercourse between India and South-east Asia refers to North and not South India, and implies the absence of any direct voyage between South India and South-east Asia.
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Linked texts (8)
- Jātaka — Pāli
- Milindapañha — Pāli
- Samarāiccakahā — Haribhadra Sūri, Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit
- Ἰνδικά — Μεγασθένης, Ancient Greek
- Bṛhatkathā
- Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
- Kahakosu — Śrīcandra (Apabhraṃśa), Apabhraṃśa
- Tamralipta