Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.23

c7.23

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.