Ancient India's Interrelations with the World: History of Ancient India (Vol-11)

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Ancient India's interlinks with the outside world have long been understood, but the present volume has focused on their geographical, historical and archaeological frames which result in these interlinks being historically meaningful. In addition, there are two primary studies of the Graeco- Roman sources by a noted Indian scholar of the subject. Attention has been drawn in detail to two major areas - the whole belt of southeast Asia and the Tarim basin of central Asia where 'Indianized' states came up, with both Buddhism and Hinduism being most visible among the ideology of the elite. The closeness of the regions of Khotan, Kashgar and Yarkand with the Indian areas of Kashmir and Ladakh has been highlighted both from the points of view of religious interaction and trade. This landmass as a whole is as much a part of Indian borderlands as of anything else. The volume ends with a brief but clear note on the historical links between India and Tibet.

Dilip K Chakrabarti is emeritus professor of south Asian archaeology at Cambridge University.

India is presently undergoing a multidimensional renaissance. Tremendous political, social, economic and demographic changes are underway. In the last few years, there has been a great deal of interest the world over in rising India. People are curious what India's rise means to the world. More important, people want to understand what fresh ideas India brings to the high table. It is therefore essential that Indian scholars should explain India to the world. One way to do so effectively is to understand what true India is like. There is no proper appreciation of India's history and culture even among Indians, let alone the foreigners. I would like to quote from the foreword written by Shri Ajit Doval to the earlier volumes of this series: "One can never understand a society, civilization or a nation unless its past is understood and interpreted correctly. Both by design and default, India's past has been mutated, events arbitrarily selected disproportionate to their real historic import and interpreted to substantiate a preconceived hypotheses. When myth masquerades as reality, then reality becomes the casualty".

K.T.S. Sarao's essay on the contacts between ancient India and southeast Asia first discusses the academic context in which this historical problem has been generally discussed. His next point is chronology- whether these contacts began in the Gupta dynastic period beginning in the early 4th century AD Gangetic valley or whether they can be dated to the pre-Gupta period. The weight of evidence leads him to argue for a much earlier, pre-Gupta beginning, possibly as early as the second half of the first millennium BC. The next question is: which part of India contributed most to the Indianization of southeast Asia? The claims of west, south and east India are separately considered and the upshot is the inference that the contacts emanated from all over these regions. Historically, the succeeding problem - the nature and extent of southeast Asia's Indianization - has been very perceptively discussed, adequately highlighting the process of adaptation and localization of Indian ideas. In the same context, he discusses the possible southeast Asian historical factors behind the acceptance of Indian culture. The remaining part of the essay is taken up by the historical narrative of the distribution and development of India-inspired city states and kingdoms in various parts of southeast Asia. This is followed by the concluding remarks. The essay as a whole is a well-balanced historical treatment of the ancient contacts between India and southeast Asia.