Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.66

c7.66

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