Author: Sanyal, Sanjeev
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The story of Nandi Varman II is intriguing in many ways. At one level, it is about the extraordinary life of a twelve-year-old prince who is unexpectedly invited to rule a faraway kingdom and somehow succeeds against the odds.
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There are many examples, including the famed university of Nalanda in Bihar, that attracted students from around the Indian Ocean rim as well as from China and Central Asia. Few people realize that the university was partly funded by the Sri Vijaya kings of Sumatra.
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the oldest living Jewish community in the world is to be found in the Indian state of Kerala, although its numbers have dwindled recently due to migration to Israel.
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the Dutch considered it a victory when they forced the English in 1667 to hand over the tiny nutmeg-growing island of Run in the East Indies, now Indonesia, in exchange for a much larger island in North America’s eastern seaboard. That island was Manhattan.
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Readers should also note that this book does not strictly adhere to the exact geographical definition of the term ‘Indian Ocean’ as defined by the International Hydrographic Organization, Monaco.
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Thus, the Cholas of India, the Majapahit of Indonesia and the Omanis are mentioned almost as footnotes. This is the equivalent of telling European history with little reference to Athens, Venice or the Vikings.
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Parsi opium merchant Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and the African slave trader Tippu Tip who became very wealthy by taking advantage of new opportunities. There were the large numbers of desperately poor Indian and Chinese labourers who used colonial-era networks and braved their way to far-off islands like Mauritius and Singapore.
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What is extraordinary is that this story about invading Aryans continues to survive, especially among the elite, despite the lack of any textual or archaeological support, and a plethora of genetic and other evidence against
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In the Marxist version, the narrative of history flows along a predetermined track like some Victorian steam engine driven by the inescapable laws of Newton.
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I view the world as a Complex Adaptive System—a chaotic place where the flow of events is influenced by the constant and often unpredictable interactions between a host of factors and independent agents. Examples of complex adaptive systems include ecological systems, financial markets, economies, the English language, cities, weather systems, common-law systems and arguably the Hindu religion.
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As Mark Twain is said to have remarked, ‘History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.’
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Let me clarify at the outset that ‘matrilineal’ is not the same as ‘matriarchal’. The latter relates to societies where women are the rulers/leaders as a matter of custom, but in reality, there are very few genuinely matriarchal societies in the world. Matrilineal societies, in contrast, are those that mark lineage through the mother and female ancestors. In such societies, men still run the show, although, in general, the status of women tends to be higher than in societies that are purely patriarchal and/or patrilineal.
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Moreover, the tradition can be so deeply engrained that it often survives major sociocultural changes. Thus, the Minangkabau of Sumatra have mostly retained their matrilineal family structure to this day, despite having adopted Islam and the constant pressures from orthodox clerics.
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Along the south-western coast of India, for example, the custom probably evolved as a result of long-distance maritime trade which meant that the male population was constantly churning while the women were more rooted. This is why the Muslim community of the Kerala coast is still called Mappila or ‘son-in-law’ in memory of the Arab traders who came here from pre-Islamic times.
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It appears that such tsunamis have taken place many times in the past and are remembered in the oral traditions of aboriginal tribes in the region. When rescue parties arrived to look for survivors among the Onge and Jarawa people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, they found that the tribes had suffered almost no casualties despite being very close to the epicentre. Evidently, they had followed an old oral tradition that instructed them to move inland to higher ground whenever the ground shook.
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The collision pushed up and created the Himalayas. As a result, the seabed that had existed between India and Asia was thrust into the sky. This explains why fossils of marine animals can be found high up in the mountain range.
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We may even be witnessing the creation of new rifts. The western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, runs along the boundary between the Indo-Australian plate and the Sunda plate (which covers much of South East Asia). This is why the area is prone to frequent earthquakes and tsunamis;