Tom G. Hoogervorst - Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean World Combining historical linguistic and archaeological approaches (original) (raw)
Tom Hoogervorst is a post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), where he examines the linguistic history of Malay and other Southeast Asian languages. He has finished his DPhil at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, as part of the ERC-funded Sealinks Project. His present research interests include vernacular Malay literature, historical linguistics (in particular Austronesian languages), Indian Ocean studies, youth language, and the languages and cultures of South and Southeast Asia in general. Tom Hoogervorst may be contacted at: hoogervorst@kitlv.nl. Abstract 1 This PhD dissertation examines the role of insular Southeast Asia in the trans-regional networks of maritime trade that shaped the history of Indian Ocean. The work brings together data and approaches from archaeology, historical linguistics and other disciplines, proposing a reconstruction of cultural and linguistic contact between Southeast Asia and its maritime neighbours to the west in order to advance our historical understanding of this part of the world. Numerous biological, commercial, and technical items are examined. The study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is one of the strongest tools to detect and analyse contact between two or more speech communities. It demonstrates how Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by speakers of Malay varieties, although other communities played a role as well. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the study offers new perspectives on the role of insular Southeast Asian agents on cultural dynamism and interethnic contact in the pre-modern Indian Ocean World.
Related papers
Linguistic Imaginations of the Indian Ocean World: Historical Viewpoints from Western Java
2002
A recurrent theme in Southeast Asian history noted by Oliver Wolters has also typified the Indian Ocean littoral more generally: “a propensity for modernity that came from an outward looking disposition encouraged by easy maritime communications.” This paper explores the outward-lookingness historically characterizing linguistic imaginings of the Indian Ocean region, from the vantage point of the Sundanese ethnic group in western Java. One early sixteenth-century Sundanese treatise invokes a highly nuanced ethnogeography of the Indian Ocean world, from the Arabian peninsula to southern India to mainland and insular Southeast Asia, in terms of the languages associated with each place. According to the manuscript, a “polyglot” (juru basa darmamurcaya) was expected to command all of these languages in his repertoire. Written a century before the Dutch East India Company established its headquarters of Batavia on the site of an old Sundanese port, the treatise conjures up the striking linguistic cosmopolitanism of Sundanese intellectuals on the eve of European colonialism. Though this outward-looking stance would be challenged by colonial-era efforts to shelter Sundanese from the “contamination” of foreign tongues, an Indian Ocean orientation has continued to inform Sundanese language ideologies, particularly via the perduring valorization of Sanskritic and Arabic models of linguistic excellence.
Linguistc and philological data towards a chronology of Austronesian activity in India and Sri Lanka
Archaeological research of the last three decades in Southeast Asia suggest a greater role of the region in world culture development than had been assumed before, raising new interest in the role of Austronesians in global maritime communication. Basing on literary tradition, mythology and folklore, particularly on Nagas and the Serpent cult, also of linguistic data associated with the sacred tree cult and megaliths, names and distribution of some domesticated plants and spices, and early spice trade, a chronology of Austronesian activity in Indi and Sri Lanka in four periods is proposed, covering the time from c. 1000 B.C. till 700 A.D.
The interactions between South India and Southeast Asia need to be studied from a holistic perspective, as part of the connectivity across the wider Indian Ocean network, in which interactions with China, the northern Bay of Bengal regions, Sri Lanka and other islands, the Red Sea region and West Asia were also equally crucial. However, at one level the interactions can be studied from the perspectives of two independent regions, as the networks of the Bay of Bengal region can be dissected into smaller, regional or micro components. This paper focuses on an overview of the interactions between South India and Southeast Asia, up to ca. 1100 CE based on material evidence. The focus is mainly on the ancient Tamil region, comprising modern Tamil Nādu and Kérala.
The Languages of Indian Ocean Studies: Models, Methods and Sources
History Compass , 2022
This introductory survey offers a critical reflection on the development of Indian Ocean studies over the past three decades. It pays particular attention to the gaps in our understanding left by adopting foundational paradigms from elsewhere (particularly the Mediterranean) rather than developing "tailor-made" models based on primary sources in the languages of the Indian Ocean itself. Looking back over previous scholarship, the critical part of the essay focuses on the influential model of a holistic, environmentally determined maritime “world” of enduring and persistent interactions, and the longstanding focus on trade as a sufficient enabling mechanism for “cosmopolitan” cultural interactions. Looking forward to future avenues of research, the constructive part of the essay then turns to the importance of written source materials in Indian Ocean languages, and the new methods and insights suggested by this evidentiary corpus.
Re-evaluating the linguistic prehistory of South Asia
South Asia represents a major region of linguistic complexity, encompassing at least five phyla that have been interacting over millennia. Although the larger languages are well-documented, many others are little-known. A significant issue in the analysis of the linguistic history of the region is the extent to which agriculture is relevant to the expansion of the individual phyla. The paper reviews recent evidence for correlations between the major language phyla and archaeology. It identifies four language isolates, Burushaski, Kusunda, Nihali and Shom Pen and proposes that these are witnesses from a period when linguistic diversity was significantly greater. Appendices present the agricultural vocabulary from the first three language isolates, to establish its likely origin. The innovative nature of Kusunda lexemes argue that these people were not hunter-gatherers who have turned to agriculture, but rather former cultivators who reverted to foraging. The paper concludes with a call to research agricultural and environmental terminology for a greater range of minority languages.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 2016