Greater India

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dark orange: The Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal
and Bhutan). Light orange: Other countries culturally linked to India, notably Burma, Thailand,
Cambodia, Laos, Champa (Southern Vietnam), Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.
Yellow: Regions with significant Indian cultural influence, notably, Afghanistan, China's Yunnan
and Tibet provinces and the Philippines.
Greater India was the historical extent of Indian culture beyond the Indian subcontinent. This
particularly concerns the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism from India to Southeast Asia,
Central Asia and China by the Silk Road during the early centuries of the Common Era, and the
spread of the Indian writing systems like the Pallava script of the south Indian Pallava dynasty to
Southeast Asia[1][2] and Siddham script to East Asia through Gupta Empire.[3][4] by the travellers
and maritime traders of the 5th to 15th centuries. It also describes the establishment of Indianised
Kingdoms in Southeast Asia and the spread of the Indian script, architecture and administration.
[5][6]
To the west, Greater India overlaps with Greater Persia in the Hindu Kush and Pamir
Mountains. The term is tied to the geographic uncertainties surrounding the "Indies" during the
Age of Exploration.

Contents

1 Definition and nomenclature

2 Indianised kingdoms
o 2.1 Individual mainland kingdoms
o 2.2 Individual island kingdoms

3 Indian cultural sphere

o 3.1 Cultural expansion

o 3.2 Cultural commonalities

3.2.1 Shared traditions

3.2.2 Religion, mythology and folklore

3.2.3 Architecture and monuments

4 Linguistic influence
o 4.1 Linguistic commonalities
o 4.2 Toponyms

5 See also

6 Citations

7 References

8 Further reading

9 External links

Definition and nomenclature

Further information: Indies

The 9th-century Shivaistic temple of Prambanan in Central Java near Yogyakarta, the largest
Hindu temple in Indonesia
In medieval Europe the concept of "three Indias" was in common circulation. Greater India was
the southern part of South Asia, Lesser India was the northern part of South Asia, and Middle
India was the region near Middle East.[7] The name Greater India (Portuguese: India Maior[8][9][9]
[10][11]
) was used at least from the mid-15th century.[9] The term, which seems to have been used
with variable precision,[12] sometimes meant only the Indian subcontinent;[13] Europeans used a

variety of terms related to South Asia to designate the South Asian peninsula, including High
India, Greater India, Exterior India and India aquosa.[14]
However, in some accounts of European nautical voyages, Greater India (or India Major)
extended from the Malabar Coast (present-day Kerala) to India extra Gangem[15] (lit. "India,
beyond the Ganges," but usually the East Indies, i.e. present-day Malay Archipelago) and India
Minor, from Malabar to Sind.[16] Farther India was sometimes used to cover all of modern
Southeast Asia and sometimes only the mainland portion.[14]
In late 19th-century geography "Greater India" referred to Hindustan (Northwestern
Subcontinent) which included the Punjab, the Himalayas, and extended eastwards to Indochina
(including Burma), parts of Indonesia (namely, the Sunda Islands, Borneo and Celebes), and the
Philippines."[17] German atlases sometimes distinguished Vorder-Indien (Anterior India) as the
South Asian peninsula and Hinter-Indien as Southeast Asia.[14]
In plate tectonic models of the IndiaAsia collision, "Greater India" signifies "the Indian subcontinent plus a postulated northern extension".[18] Although its usage in geology pre-dates plate
tectonic theory,[19] the term has seen increased usage since the 1970s.

Indianised kingdoms
Further information: Hinduism in Southeast Asia

Ruins of Ayutthaya in Thailand which was named after Ayodhya

The concept of the Indianised kingdoms, first described by George Coeds, is based on Hindu
and Buddhist cultural and economic influences in Southeast Asia.[20] Butuan, Champa, Dvaravati,
Funan, Gangga Negara, Kadaram, Kalingga, Kutai, Langkasuka, Pagan, Pan Pan, Po-ni,
Tarumanagara and Tondo were among the earliest Hindu kingdoms in Southeast Asia,
established around the 1st to 4th centuries CE. Despite being culturally akin to Hindu cultures,
these kingdoms were indigenous and independent of the Indian mainland. States such as

Srivijaya, Majapahit and the Khmer empire developed territories and economies that rivalled
those in India itself. Borobudur in Java, for example, is the largest Buddhist monument ever
built.[21] Coeds has been criticised for understating the Southeast Asian element of these
kingdoms, in an unconscious echo of the European "civilising mission."[22]
Professor Robert Lingat characterised by law professor John Henry Wigmore as the greatest
(and almost the only) authority on Siamese legal history[23] tended to emphasise the
contribution of Southeast Asian societies and rulers to the formation of these states. In particular,
where Coeds saw Indian merchants as the founders of these states, Lingat saw Southeast Asian
rulers as founding them and then importing Indian ritual specialists as advisers on rajadharma,
or the practices of Indian kingship. This view is supported by the argument that Indian merchants
would not have possessed the ritual knowledge which became so prominent in these kingdoms.
[24]

These Indianised kingdoms developed a close affinity with and internalised Indian religious,
cultural and economic practices without significant direct input from Indian rulers themselves.
The issue remains controversial; Quaritch Wales in particular is cited[25] as holding that
Indianisation was the work of Indian traders and merchants as opposed to political leaders,
although the travels of Buddhist monks such as Atisha later became important. There was also a
merchant named Magadu, known to history as Wareru and founder of the Hanthawaddy
Kingdom, who commissioned Mon specialists in Indian traditions to compile the Code of
Wareru, which has formed the basis for Burmese common law down to the present. Most
Indianised kingdoms combined both Hindu and Buddhist beliefs and practices in a syncretic
manner. Kertanagara, the last king of Singhasari, described himself as Sivabuddha, a
simultaneous incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva and the Buddha.[26]
Southeast Asian rulers enthusiastically adopted elements of rajadharma (Hindu and Buddhist
beliefs, codes, and court practices) to legitimise their own rule and constructed cities, such as
Angkor, to affirm royal power by reproducing a map of sacred space derived from the
Ramayana and Mahabharata. Southeast Asian rulers frequently adopted lengthy Sanskrit titles
and founded cities, such as Ayutthaya in Thailand, named after those in the Indian epics.
Cultural and trading relations between the powerful Chola dynasty of South India and the
Southeast Asian Hindu kingdoms led the Bay of Bengal to be called "The Chola Lake", and the
Chola attacks on Srivijaya in the 10th century CE are the sole example of military attacks by
Indian rulers against Southeast Asia. The Pala dynasty of Bengal, which controlled the heartland
of Buddhist India, maintained close economic, cultural and religious ties, particularly with
Srivijaya.

Individual mainland kingdoms

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is the largest Hindu/Buddhist temple in the world

Langkasuka: Langkasuka (-langkha Sanskrit for "resplendent land" -sukkha of "bliss")

was an ancient Hindu kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula. The kingdom, along with
Old Kedah settlement, are probably the earliest territorial footholds founded on the Malay
Peninsula. According to tradition, the founding of the kingdom happened in the 2nd
century; Malay legends claim that Langkasuka was founded at Kedah, and later moved to
Pattani.

Funan: Funan was a a polity that encompassed the southernmost part of the Indochinese
peninsula during the 1st to 6th centuries. Centered at the lower Mekong,[27] Funan is
noted as the oldest Hindu culture in this region, which suggests prolonged socioeconomic interaction with maritime trading partners of the Indosphere in the west.[28]
Cultural and religious ideas had reached Funan via the Indian Ocean trade route. Trade
with India had commenced well before 500 BC as Sanskrit hadn't yet replaced Pali.[29]
Indian author Dr. Pragya Mishra even postulates: "Funan Was One Of The Colonies
Established By Indians Within Cambodia...[sic]" in his essay "Cultural History of Indian
Diaspora in Cambodia".[30] Funans language has been determined as to have been an early
form of Khmer and its written form was Sanskrit.[31]

Chenla was the successor polity of Funan that existed from around the late 6th century
until the early 9th century in Indochina, preceding the Khmer Empire. Like its
predecessor Funan, Chenla occupied a strategic position where the maritime trade routes
of the Indosphere and the Sinosphere converged, resulting in prolonged socio-economic
and cultural influence and the adoption of the epigraphic system of the south Indian
Pallava dynasty and Chalukya dynasty.[32][33][34] Chenla's first ruler Vravarman adopted
the idea of divine kingship and deployed the concept of Harihara, the syncretistic Hindu
"god that embodied multiple conceptions of power". His successors continued this
tradition, thus obeying the code of conduct Manusmr ti, the Laws of Manu for the
Kshatriya warrior caste and conveying the idea of political and religious authority.[35]

Champa: The kingdom of Champa (or Lin-yi in Chinese records) controlled what is now
south and central Vietnam from approximately 192 through 1697. The dominant religion
of the Cham people was Hinduism and the culture was heavily influenced by India. It was
later conquered by the Vietnamese, then known as Dai Viet ().

Khmer empire: The Khmer Empire was established by the early 9th century in a
mythical initiation and consecration ceremony to claim political legitimacy by founder
Jayavarman II at Mount Kulen (Mount Mahendra) in 802 C.E.[36] A succession of
powerful sovereigns, continuing the Hindu devaraja cult tradition, reigned over the
classical era of Khmer civilization until the 11th century. A new dynasty of provincial
origin introduced Buddhism as royal religious discontinuities and decentralisation result.
[37]
The royal chronology ends in the 14th century. Administration, agriculture,
architecture, hydrology, logistics, urban planning and the arts saw an unprecedented
degree of development, refinement and accomplishment in execution on the basis of a
distinct expression of Hindu cosmology.[38]

Mon kingdoms: From the 9th century until the abrupt end of the Hanthawaddy Kingdom
in 1539, the Mon kingdoms were notable for facilitating Indianised cultural exchange in
lower Burma, in particular by having strong ties with Sri Lanka.

Individual island kingdoms

A statue of Hindu goddess Durga Mahisasuramardini in Prambanan northern cella, dated to the
9th-century Medang i Bhumi Mataram kingdom in Central Java.

Srivijaya: From the 7th to 13th centuries Srivijaya, a maritime empire centred on the
island of Sumatra in Indonesia, had adopted Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism under a
line of rulers from Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa to the Sailendras. A stronghold of
Vajrayana Buddhism, Srivijaya attracted pilgrims and scholars from other parts of Asia. I
Ching reports that the kingdom was home to more than a thousand Buddhist scholars. A
notable Buddhist scholar of local origin, Dharmakirti, taught Buddhist philosophy in
Srivijaya and Nalanda, and was the teacher of Atisha. Most of the time, this Buddhist
Malay empire enjoyed cordial relationship with China and the Pala Empire in Bengal,

and the 860 Nalanda inscription records that maharaja Balaputra dedicated a monastery at
the Nalanda university in Pala territory. The kingdom ceased to exist in the 13th century
due to various factors, including the expansion of the Javanese, Singhasari, and
Majapahit empires.

Medang: Medang i Bhumi Mataram Kingdom flourished between the 8th and 11th
centuries. It was first centred in central Java before later moving to east Java. This
kingdom produced numbers of Hindu-Buddhist temples in Java, including Borobudur
Buddhist mandala and Prambanan Trimurti Hindu temple dedicated mainly for Shiva.
The Sailendras are the ruling family of this kingdom in an earlier stage in central Java
before replaced by the Isyana Dynasty.

Majapahit empire: Majapahit empire centred in East Java succeeded the Singhasari
empire and flourished in Indonesian archipelago between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Noted for their naval expansion the Javanese spanned westeast from Lamuri in Aceh to
Wanin in Papua. Majapahit was one of the last and greatest Hindu empires in Maritime
Southeast Asia. Most of Balinese Hindu culture, traditions and civilisations were derived
from Majapahit legacy. A large number of Majapahit nobles, priests, and artisans found
their home in Bali after the decline of Majapahit to Islamic Demak Sultanate.

Kingdom of Tondo: Originally an Indianised kingdom in the 10th century, Tondo

capitalised on being central to the long-existing ancient regional trading routes
throughout the archipelago to include among others, initiating diplomatic and commercial
ties with China during the Ming Dynasty. Thus it became an established force in trade
throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia.

Indian cultural sphere

Candi Bukit Batu Pahat of Bujang Valley. A Hindu-Buddhist kingdom ruled ancient Kedah
possibly as early as 110 CE, the earliest evidence of strong Indian influence which was once
prevalent among the pre-Islamic Kedahan Malays.
The use of Greater India to refer to an Indian cultural sphere was popularised by a network of
Bengali scholars in the 1920s who were all members of the Calcutta-based Greater India Society.
The movement's early leaders included the historian R. C. Majumdar (18881980); the
philologists Suniti Kumar Chatterji (18901977) and P. C. Bagchi (18981956), and the
historians Phanindranath Bose and Kalidas Nag (18911966).[39][40]

Some of their formulations were inspired by concurrent excavations in Angkor by French

archaeologists and by the writings of French Indologist Sylvain Lvi. The scholars of the society
postulated a benevolent ancient Indian cultural colonisation of Southeast Asia, in stark contrast
in their viewto the colonialism of the early 20th century.[41][42][43]

A golden statuette of the Hindu-Buddhist mythical beings Kinnari found in an archaeological dig
in Esperanza, Agusan del Sur, The Philippines.
The term Greater India and the notion of an explicit Hindu colonisation of ancient Southeast
Asia have been linked to both Indian nationalism[44] and Hindu nationalism.[45] However, many
Indian nationalists, like Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore, although receptive to "an
idealisation of India as a benign and uncoercive world civiliser and font of global
enlightenment,"[46] stayed away from explicit "Greater India" formulations.[47] In addition, some
scholars have seen the Hindu/Buddhist acculturation in ancient Southeast Asia as "a single
cultural process in which Southeast Asia was the matrix and South Asia the mediatrix."[48] In the
field of art history, especially in American writings, the term survived longer due to the influence
of art theorist Ananda Coomaraswamy. Coomaraswamy's view of pan-Indian art history was
influenced by the "Calcutta cultural nationalists."[49]
By some accounts Greater India consists of "lands including Burma, Java, Cambodia, Bali, and
the former Champa and Funan polities of present-day Vietnam,"[50] in which pre-Islamic Indian
culture left an "imprint in the form of monuments, inscriptions and other traces of the historic
"Indianising" process."[50] By some other accounts, many Pacific societies and "most of the
Buddhist world including Ceylon, Tibet, Central Asia, and even Japan were held to fall within
this web of Indianising culture colonies"[50] This particular usageimplying cultural "sphere of
influence" of Indiawas promoted by the Greater India Society, formed by a group of Bengali
men of letters,[51] and is not found before the 1920s. The term Greater India was used in historical
writing in India into the 1970s.[52]

Cultural expansion

Expansion of Hinduism in Southeast Asia.

From about the 1st century, Indian civilisation started to strongly influence Southeast Asian
countries. Trade routes linked India with southern Burma, central and southern Siam, Malay
peninsula and Sumatra all the way to Java, lower Cambodia and Champa (modern day Southern
Vietnam). Numerous urbanised coastal settlements were established there, and numbers of local
polities modelled after Hindu civic organisation began to sprung in the region.
For more than a thousand years, Indian Hindu-Buddhist influence was therefore the major factor
that brought a certain level of cultural unity to the various states of the region. The Pali and
Sanskrit languages and the Indian script, together with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism,
Brahmanism and Hinduism, were transmitted from direct contact as well as through sacred texts
and Indian literature, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics.
From the 5th to the 13th centuries, Southeast Asia had developed some prosperous and very
powerful colonial empires that became extremely active in Hindu-Buddhist artistic creations and
architectural developments. Some of these art and architectural creations are even rivalled, or
even exceeded those built in India especially in its sheer size, design and aesthetic
achievements. The notable examples are Borobudur in Java and Angkor monuments in
Cambodia. The Srivijaya Empire to the south and the Khmer Empire to the north competed for
influence in the region.
A defining characteristic of the cultural link between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent
is the spread of ancient Indian Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist culture and philosophy into Myanmar,
Thailand, Indonesia, Malaya, Laos and Cambodia. Indian scripts are found in Southeast Asian
islands ranging from Sumatra, Java, Bali, south Sulawesi and most of the Philippines.[53]

Cultural commonalities

Atashgah of Baku, a fire temple in Azerbaijan used by both Hindus[54][55] and Persian Zoroastrians

A 5th century marble Ganesha found in Gardez, Afghanistan, now at Dargah Pir Rattan Nath,
Kabul. The inscription says that this "great and beautiful image of Mahvinyaka" was
consecrated by the Hindu Shahi King Khingala.[56]
The diffusion of Indian culture is demonstrated with the following examples:
Shared traditions
One of the most tangible evidence of dharmic tradition commonality, probably is the widespread
of Ajali Mudr as the gesture of greeting and respect. It is demonstrated in Indian namast, and
similar gestures are known in Southeast Asia, as it cognate to the Cambodian sampeah,
Indonesian sembah and Thai wai.
Religion, mythology and folklore

Hinduism is practised by the majority of Bali's population.[57] The Cham people of

Vietnam still practices Hinduism as well.

Garuda, a Hindu mythological figure, is present in the coats of arms of Indonesia,

Thailand and Ulan Bator.

Muay Thai, a fighting art that is the thai version of the Hindu Musti-yuddha style of
fighting.

Kaharingan, an indigenous religion followed by the Dayak people of Borneo, is

categorised as a form of Hinduism in Indonesia.

Philippine mythology includes the supreme god Bathala and the concept of Diwata and
the still-current belief in Karmaall derived from Hindu-Buddhist concepts.

Malay folklore contains a rich number of Indian-influenced mythological characters, such

as Bidadari, Jentayu, Garuda and Naga.

Wayang shadow puppets and classical dance-dramas of Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia

and Thailand took stories from episodes of Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Architecture and monuments

The same style of Hindu temple architecture was used in several ancient temples in South
East Asia including Angkor Wat, which was dedicated to Hindu god Vishnu and is shown
on the flag of Cambodia, also Prambanan in Central Java, the largest Hindu temple in
Indonesia, is dedicated to Trimurti Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.

Borobudur in Central Java, Indonesia, is the world's largest Buddhist monument. It took
shape of a giant stone mandala crowned with stupas and believed to be the combination
of Indian-origin Buddhist ideas with the previous megalithic tradition of native
Austronesian step pyramid.

The minarets of 15th- to 16th-century mosques in Indonesia, such as the Great Mosque of
Demak and Kudus mosque resemble those of Majapahit Hindu temples.

The Batu Caves in Malaysia are one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside India. It is
the focal point of the annual Thaipusam festival in Malaysia and attracts over 1.5 million
pilgrims, making it one of the largest religious gatherings in history.[58]

Erawan Shrine, dedicated to Brahma, is one of the most popular religious shrines in
Thailand.[59]

Linguistic influence

A map of East, South and Southeast Asia. Red signifies current and historical (Vietnam)
distribution of Chinese characters. Green signifies current and historical (Malaysia, Pakistan,
parts of Indonesia and parts of the Philippines) distribution of Indic scripts. Blue signifies current
use of non-Sinitic or Indic scripts.
Scholars like Sheldon Pollock have used the term Sanskrit Cosmopolis to describe the region,
and argued for millennium-long cultural exchanges without necessarily involving migration of
peoples or colonisation. Pollock's 2006 book The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
makes a case for studying the region as comparable with Latin Europe and argues that the
Sanskrit language was its unifying element.
Sanskrit and related languages have also influenced their Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbours to
the north through the spread of Buddhist texts in translation.[60] Buddhism was spread to China
by Mahayanist missionaries sent by Emperor Ashoka mostly through translations of Buddhist
Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and
added to the Chinese vocabulary. The situation in Tibet is similar; many Sanskrit texts survive
only in Tibetan translation (in the Tanjur).
In Southeast Asia, languages such as Thai and Lao contain many loan words from Sanskrit, as
does Khmer to a lesser extent. For example, in Thai, Rvan a, the legendary emperor of Sri
Lanka, is called 'Thosakanth' which is derived from his Sanskrit name 'Daakan t ha' ("having ten
necks").
Many Sanskrit loanwords are also found in Austronesian languages, such as Javanese
particularly the old form from which nearly half the vocabulary is derived from the language.[61]
[62]
Other Austronesian languages, such as traditional Malay, modern Indonesian, also derive
much of their vocabulary from Sanskrit, albeit to a lesser extent, with a large proportion of words
being derived from Arabic. Similarly, Philippine languages such as Tagalog have many Sanskrit
loanwords.
A Sanskrit loanword encountered in many Southeast Asian languages is the word bhs , or
spoken language, which is used to mean language in general, for example bahasa in Malay,
Indonesian and Tausug, basa in Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese, phasa in Thai and Lao,
bhasa in Burmese, and phiesa in Khmer.

Linguistic commonalities

Indonesian, Javanese and Malaysian have absorbed a large amount of Sanskrit loanwords
into their respective lexicons (see: Sanskrit loan words in Indonesian). Many languages
of native lowland Filipinos such as Tagalog, Ilocano[63] and Visayan[64] contain numerous
Sanskrit loanwords.

Many Indonesian names have Sanskrit origin (e.g. Dewi Sartika, Megawati Sukarnoputri,
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Teuku Wisnu).

Street signs in Yogyakarta and other major cities in Indonesia are written in Pallavaderived Javanese script.

The name of the King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, can be written in Sanskrit.[65]

Toponyms

Several of Indonesian toponyms has Indian parallel or origin, such as Madura with
Mathura, Serayu and Sarayu river, Semeru with Sumeru mountain, Kalingga from
Kalinga Kingdom, and Ngayogyakarta from Ayodhya.

Siamese ancient city of Ayutthaya also derived from Ramayana's Ayodhya.

Names of places could simply renders their Sanskrit origin, such as Singapore, from
Singapura (Singha-pura the "lion city"), Jakarta from Jaya and kreta ("complete
victory").

Some of Indonesian regencies such as Indragiri Hulu and Indragiri Hilir derived from
Indragiri River, Indragiri itself means "mountain of Indra".

Some Thai toponyms also often have Indian parallels or Sanskrit origin, although the
spellings are adapted to the Siamese tongue, such as Ratchaburi from Raja-puri ("king's
city"), Buriram from Puri-Rama ("city of Rama"), and Nakhon Si Thammarat from
Nagara Sri Dharmaraja.

The tendency to use Sanskrit for modern neologism also continued to modern day. In
1962 Indonesia changed the colonial name of New Guinean city of Hollandia to Jayapura
("glorious city"), Orange mountain range to Jayawijaya Mountains.

While Malaysia named their new government seat as Putrajaya ("prince of glory") in
1999.

See also
SAARC portal

Silk Road transmission of Buddhism

Hinduism in Southeast Asia

Indies

Two-Nation Theory

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"Khmer Ceramics by Dawn Rooney - The language of Funan was..." (PDF). Oxford
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Some Aspects of Asian History and Culture by Upendra Thakur p.2
"Considerations on the Chronology and History of 9th Century Cambodia by Dr. KarlHeinz Golzio, Epigraphist - ...the realm called Zhenla by the Chinese. Their contents are not
uniform but they do not contradict each other." (PDF). Khmer Studies. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
"Cultural History of Indian Diaspora in Cambodia by Dr. Pragya Mishra Associate
Professor Department Of Ancient History, Raja Mohan Girls P. G. College Faizabad U.P., India
- III. ESTABLISHMENT OF FUNAN AS STATE Funan Was One Of The Colonies..." (PDF).
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
"As in Heaven, So on Earth: The Politics of Visnu Siva and Harihara Images in
Preangkorian Khmer Civilisation". academia edu. Retrieved December 23, 2015.
"Jayavarman II's Military Power: The Territorial Foundation of the Angkor Empire O.
W. Wolters The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland No. 1 (1973),
pp. 21-30". Khmer Studies. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
"The emergence and ultimate decline of the Khmer Empire - Many scholars attribute the
halt of the development of Angkor to the rise of Theravada..." (PDF). Studies Of Asia. Retrieved
11 June 2015.
"Khmer Empire". The Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
(Bayley 2004, p. 710)
Ram Gopal and K. V. Paliwal, Hindu renaissance, page 83, Hindu Writers Forum, 2005
Quote: "Colonial and Cultural Expansion (of Ancient India)",[citation needed] written by R. C.
Majumdar, concluded with: "We may conclude with a broad survey of the Indian colonies in the
Far East. For nearly fifteen hundred years, and down to a period when the Hindus had lost their
independence in their own home, Hindu kings were ruling over Indo-China and the numerous
islands of the Indian Archipelago, from Sumatra to New Guinea. Indian religion, Indian culture,
Indian laws and Indian government moulded the lives of the primitive races all over this wide
region, and they imbibed a more elevated moral spirit and a higher intellectual taste through the
religion, art, and literature of India. In short, the people were lifted to a higher plane of
civilisation."
(Bayley 2004, p. 712)
Review by 'SKV' of The Hindu Colony of Cambodia by Phanindranath Bose [Adyar,
Madras: Theosophical Publishing House 1927] in The Vedic Magazine and Gurukula Samachar
26: 1927, pp. 6201.
Lyne Bansat-Boudon, Roland Lardinois and Isabelle Rati, Sylvain Lvi (1863-1935),
page 196, Brepols, 2007, ISBN 9782503524474 Quote: "The ancient Hindus of yore were not
simply a spiritual people, always busy with mystical problems and never troubling themselves
with the questions of 'this world'... India also has its Napoleons and Charlemagnes, its Bismarcks
and Machiavellis. But the real charm of Indian history does not consist in these aspirants after
universal power, but in its peaceful and benevolent Imperialisma unique thing in the history of
mankind. The colonisers of India did not go with sword and fire in their hands; they used... the
weapons of their superior culture and religion... The Buddhist age has attracted special attention,
and the French savants have taken much pains to investigate the splendid monuments of the
Indian cultural empire in the Far East."

 (Keenleyside 1982, pp. 213214) Quote: "Starting in the 1920s under the leadership of
Kalidas Nag-and continuing even after independence-a number of Indian scholars wrote
extensively and rapturously about the ancient Hindu cultural expansion into and colonisation of
South and Southeast Asia. They called this vast region "Greater India"a dubious appellation for
a region which to a limited degree, but with little permanence, had been influenced by Indian
religion, art, architecture, literature and administrative customs. As a consequence of this
renewed and extensive interest in Greater India, many Indians came to believe that the entire
South and Southeast Asian region formed the cultural progeny of India; now that the subcontinent was reawakening, they felt, India would once again assert its non-political ascendancy
over the area.... While the idea of reviving the ancient Greater India was never officially
endorsed by the Indian National Congress, it enjoyed considerable popularity in nationalist
Indian circles. Indeed, Congress leaders made occasional references to Greater India while the
organisation's abiding interest in the problems of overseas Indians lent indirect support to the
Indian hope of restoring the alleged cultural and spiritual unity of South and Southeast Asia."
(Thapar 1968, pp. 326330) Quote: "At another level, it was believed that the dynamics
of many Asian cultures, particularly those of Southeast Asia, arose from Hindu culture, and the
theory of Greater India derived sustenance from Pan-Hinduism. A curious pride was taken in the
supposed imperialist past of India, as expressed in sentiments such as these: "The art of Java and
Kambuja was no doubt derived from India and fostered by the Indian rulers of these colonies."
(Majumdar, R. C. et al. (1950), An Advanced History of India, London: Macmillan, p. 221) This
form of historical interpretation, which can perhaps best be described as being inspired by Hindu
nationalism, remains an influential school of thinking in present historical writings."
(Bayley 2004, pp. 735736) Quote:"The Greater India visions which Calcutta thinkers
derived from French and other sources are still known to educated anglophone Indians,
especially but not exclusively Bengalis from the generation brought up in the traditions of postIndependence Nehruvian secular nationalism. One key source of this knowledge is a warm
tribute paid to Sylvain Lvi and his ideas of an expansive, civilising India by Jawaharlal Nehru
himself, in his celebrated book, The Discovery of India, which was written during one of Nehrus
periods of imprisonment by the British authorities, first published in 1946, and reprinted many
times since.... The ideas of both Lvi and the Greater India scholars were known to Nehru
through his close intellectual links with Tagore. Thus Lvis notion of ancient Indian voyagers
leaving their invisible imprints throughout east and southeast Asia was for Nehru a
recapitulation of Tagores vision of nationhood, that is an idealisation of India as a benign and
uncoercive world civiliser and font of global enlightenment. This was clearly a perspective
which defined the Greater India phenomenon as a process of religious and spiritual tutelage, but
it was not a Hindu supremacist idea of Indias mission to the lands of the trans-gangetic
Sarvabhumi or Bharat Varsha."
(Narasimhaiah 1986) Quote: "To him (Nehru), the so-called practical approach meant, in
practice, shameless expediency, and so he would say, "the sooner we are not practical, the
better". He rebuked a Member of Indian Parliament who sought to revive the concept of Greater
India by saying that the honorable Member lived in the days of Bismarck; Bismarck is dead,
and his politics more dead!' He would consistently plead for an idealistic approach and such
power as the language wields is the creation of idealismpolitics arch enemywhich,
however, liberates the leader of a national movement from narrow nationalism, thus igniting in
the process a dead fact of history, in the sneer, "For him the Bastille has not fallen!" Though

Nehru was not to the language born, his utterances show a remarkable capacity for introspection
and sense of moral responsibility in commenting on political processes."
(Wheatley 1982, pp. 2728) Quote: "The tide of revisionism that is currently sweeping
through Southeast Asian historiography has in effect taken us back almost to the point where we
have to consider reevaluating almost every text bearing on the protohistoric period and many
from later times. Although this may seem a daunting proposition, it is nonetheless supremely
worth attempting, for the process by which the peoples of western Southeast Asia came to think
of themselves as part of Bharatavarsa (even though they had no conception of "India" as we
know it) represents one of the most impressive instances of large-scale acculturation in the
history of the world. Sylvain Levi was perhaps overenthusiastic when he claimed that India
produced her definitive masterpieceshe was thinking of Angkor and the Borobudurthrough
the efforts of foreigners or on foreign soil. Those masterpieces were not strictly Indian
achievements: rather were they the outcome of a Eutychian fusion of natures so melded together
as to constitute a single cultural process in which Southeast Asia was the matrix and South Asia
the mediatrix."
(Guha-Thakurta 1992, pp. 159167)
(Bayley 2004, p. 713)
(Handy 1930, p. 364) Quote: "An equally significant movement is one that brought about
among the Indian intelligentsia of Calcutta a few years ago the formation of what is known as the
"Greater India Society," whose membership is open "to all serious students of the Indian cultural
expansion and to all sympathizers of such studies and activities." Though still in its infancy, this
organisation has already a large membership, due perhaps as much as anything else to the
enthusiasm of its Secretary and Convener, Dr. Kalidas Nag, whose scholarly affiliations with the
Orientalists in the University of Paris and studies in Indochina, Insulindia and beyond, have
equipped him in an unusual way for the work he has chosen-namely, stimulating interest in and
spreading knowledge of Greater Indian culture of the past, present and future. The Society's
President is Professor Jadunath Sarkar, Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, and its Council is
made up largely of professors on the faculty of the University and members of the staff of the
Calcutta Museum, as well as of Indian authors, journalists, and so on. Its activities, besides
meetings, have included illustrated lecture series at the various universities throughout India by
Dr. Nag, the assembling of a research library and the publication of monographs, of which four
very excellent examples have already been printed: 1)Greater India, by Kalidas Nag, M.A.,
D.Litt(Paris), 2) India and China, by Prabodh Chandra Bagchi, M.A., D.Litt., 3) Indian Culture
in Java and Sumatra, by Bijan Raj Chatterjee, D.Litt. (Punjab), Ph.D (London), and 4) India and
Central Asia, by Niranjan Prasad Chakravarti, M.A., Ph.D.(cantab.)."
(Majumdar 1960, pp. 222223)
Martin Haspelmath, The World Atlas of Language Structures, page 569, Oxford
University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-925591-1
Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson (1911), From Constantinople to the home of Omar
Khayyam: travels in Transcaucasia and northern Persia for historic and literary research, The
Macmillan company, ... they are now wholly substantiated by the other inscriptions.... They are
all Indian, with the exception of one written in Persian... dated in the same year as the Hindu
tablet over it... if actual Gabrs (i.e. Zoroastrians, or Parsis) were among the number of
worshipers at the shrine, they must have kept in the background, crowded out by Hindus,
because the typical features Hanway mentions are distinctly Indian, not Zoroastrian... met two
Hindu Fakirs who announced themselves as 'on a pilgrimage to this Baku Jawala Ji'....

 Richard Delacy, Parvez Dewan (1998), Hindi & Urdu phrasebook, Lonely Planet,
ISBN 0-86442-425-6, ... The Hindu calendar (vikramaditiy) is 57 years ahead of the Christian
calendar. Dates in the Hindu calendar are prefixed by the word: samvat ...
For photograph of statue and details of inscription, see: Dhavalikar, M. K., "Gaea:
Myth and Reality", in: Brown 1991, pp. 50,63.
Balinese Religion
lonelyplanet.tv Batu Caves Inside and Out,Malaysia
Buddhist Channel | Buddhism News, Headlines | Thailand | Phra Prom returns to Erawan
Shrine
van Gulik (1956:?)
See this page from the Indonesian Wikipedia for a list
Zoetmulder (1982:ix)
http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view/20091011-229561/The-Indianin-the-Filipino
Kuizon, Jose G. (1962). "The Sanskrit loan-words in the Cebuano-Bisayan language and
the Indian elements to Cebuano-Bisayan culture". University of San Carlos, Cebu.
Sharma, Sudhindra. "King Bhumibol and King Janak". nepalitimes.com. Him