Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.61

c7.61

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.