Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.68

c7.68

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.