Vicissitudes of the Sanskrit language? The SANSKRITIZATION OF MANY ANCIENT S.E. ASIAN COUNTRIES (original) (raw)

2022, Indo Nordic Author's Collective

There was definitely a thriving sea-trade to South East Asia in the Gupta Age 1,500 years ago. Sages like Agastya and Kaundinya did travel to faraway lands like Malaysia and Cambodia. Chola kings travelled over the sea to Sri Lanka and Malaysia to expand their empire and to increase the wealth of the land through trade routes. Even today, in Odisha, and in the island of Bali, there are festivals related to the departure and arrival of ships, reminding us of ancient travel over sea. It is this sea travel that ensured epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata, the art of shadow puppetry and weaving, reached as far as Indonesia and Thailand. India has a long history of sea travel. The major epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, do not refer to sea travel (Ram builds a bridge to go to Lanka, and Ravana flies through the air in his Pushpak Viman), but the vrata-kathas of India like Satyanarayana Puja and the Topoye story of Odisha, and Sanskrit plays like Ratnavali by Harsha, refer to sea-travels and shipwrecks. We do know that sea-merchants travelled from India to Arabia in the West in Harappan times 5,000 years ago. There are Vedic verses that suggest (but not conclusively) awareness of the sea and sea-travel nearly 3000 years ago.