We don't usually take a serious note when nutcases like Syed Ahmed Bukhari who says "Talking about terrorist attack on the Sankat Mochan Mandir by the terrorists early this month, Bukhari said that this was a well planned conspiracy to defame the Muslims." See Pankaj's take on terrorist's real objectives. But this caught our attention (via IANS):
The 140 million Muslims in India constitute the largest minority in the Hindu-majority country. While the community has many common problems, it has generally kept away from the separatist conflict raging in Jammu and Kashmir since 1989.
Attending the meeting in the premises of the 17th-century Jama Masjid, the country's largest mosque, was Abdul Ghani Bhat of the Hurriyat Conference, the moderate wing of the separatist grouping in Jammu and Kashmir.
"Our main agenda includes Jammu and Kashmir" said Mr Zafaryab Jilani, the Lucknow-based convenor of the Babri Masjid Action Committee.
This is setting a dangerous precedent. By allying themselves with the so-called 'moderate' pro-Pakistan groups like Hurriyat, some Muslim groups are now openly advocating the secession of a Muslim-majority state from the Indian Union. Using their freedom of speech and rights guaranteed under the Indian Constitution, they are attempting to cause a great damage to the Indian democratic set-up itself. Talk of the wooden handle of an axe helping to chop down a tree. While we are on the subject, how come these worthies (and their media cronies) never talk about the displaced Kashmiri Pandits.
¶ 3/23/2006 09:40:00 PM 1 comments links to this post
thal·as·soc·ra·cy - n., Naval or commercial supremacy on the seas. Greek thalassokratiā : thalassa, sea + -kratiā, -cracy.
A golden age of Indic maritime activity (525-650 A.D.) which witnessed the expansion of India and the spread of Indic thought and culture to the farther East Java, Cambodia, Burma, Siam, China and even Japan), was largely a South Indian enterprise in which the Andhras and the Cholas played a key role. Bengal:
In the time of Kalidasa, the people of Bengal appear to have been widely famous for their nautical resources, for in his Raghuvamsa the poet sings about harbors and dockyards had come into existence as early as the 6th century A.D. A copper-plate grant of Dharmaditya (dated 531 A.D.) refers to a navata-kseni or ship-building harbor.
Kamarupa:
The ancient kingdom of Kamarupa consisting of the Brahmaputra river valley and surrounding areas. King Bhaskaravarman (7th century A.D.) was in "possession of splendid ships" fought a naval battle with Mahasena Gupta on the waters of the Lohitya (Brahmaputra). The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang (Xuanzang) who visited Kamarupa estimates that Bhaskaravarman’s fleet was large as 30,000 ships. Chalukyas:
Pulakeshi II (611 A.D. to 639 A.D.) was the most powerful ruler of the Chalukyan dynasty who led his forces in all the directions – land and sea. Pulakeshi’s principal naval expedition was directed against Puri, a great and wealthy city which prospered by its overseas trade and was famous as “the mistress of the Western sea”. The city of Puri has not been properly identified - some consider Puri as the Elephanta Island, others think it is the modern town of Gharpuri on the West coast of Gujarat. The most important fact is that it was the support of sea power which made Pulakeshi the master of the land. The Peak of Chola Power: According to Chakravarthi, “the impress that the people of the Tamil states have left on the naval history of the ancient Hindus is the deepest and most indelible”.
Under the Cholas, Indian naval power attained its culminating point. The great Chola king Rajaraja 1 (985 to 1014 A.D.) tried to take the Chera country under his control and took the key part of Quilon. He is also said to have attacked Maldives Islands and Sri Lanka. His son Rajendra Chola 1 (1014 to 1042 A.D.) knew the great importance of foreign trade and built a powerful navy meant for trade and war. Rajendra prepared a naval expedition against the Srivijaya empire, first taking Andaman and Nicobar Islands to serve as an advance base. The Chola fleet sailed on and took several coastal ports. This attack was only to break Srivijaya's commercial monopoly and not to occupy it permanently. He contained Arab competition by sending a naval expedition against Maldives to stop the Arabs from building and equipping merchant ships there. His successor Virarajendra continued and strengthened the maritime tradition and made Tamil naval power invincible. Rajendra Chola's naval adventures covered the Nicobar Islands, the Malay peninsular and Sumatra. Under his rule, the Bay of Bengal and the eastern Indian Ocean became a “Chola lake”. Conclusion: While our posts obviously sing paeans to past Indic maritime achievements, sometime down the lane its power waned and almost became non-existent. While analyzing this decline can be left to serious military historians, it is evident that building and maintaining a strong navy was essential for guarding commercial and strategic interests. It is a lesson from the past which is still applicable to this date and even in the future. In a coming post, we intend to present the technological breakthroughs, strategic alignments and regional threats for the Indian Navy to become one of the big-leaguers and reclaim its historical role as the custodian of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) – from the Sea of Oman to the Straits of Malacca and we daresay even beyond. -End of series- References:
Prithwis Chandra Chakravarti, “Naval Warfare in Ancient India”, The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1930, p p. 645-664 O.K. Nambiar, “An Illusrated Maritine History of the Indian Ocean”, Excerpts available from the official Indian Navy website. Paul Lunde, “The Indian Ocean and Global Trade”, Saudi Aramco World, July/August 2005
thal·as·soc·ra·cy - n., Naval or commercial supremacy on the seas.
Greek thalassokratiā : thalassa, sea + -kratiā, -cracy.
Part I here.
Indian Thalassocracy Part II - From the 4th century B.C. to the 5th century A.D.:
The first known Greek book devoted entirely to India is from the late fifth century B.C., written by a Greek doctor named Ctesias, who served the Persian king Artaxerxes. Everything in it is hearsay, filtered through Persian sources. It would not be until the arrival of Alexander on the banks of Indus in 326 B.C. that we start getting a better picture.
According to the Greek ambassador Megasthenes appointed to the Mauryan court shortly after Alexander’s death, Chandragupta’s war-office was divided into six boards, of which the first was associated with the “Chief Naval Superintendent”. Kautilya's Arthasastra agrees with Megasthenes, in describing an official called Navadhyaksa or the “Superintendent of Ships”. Of the duties described in the Arthasastra, the Navadhyaksa had to see through that pirate ships were pursued and destroyed whenever they were found. The same regulation applied to ships and boats of an enemy's country when they violated their territorial limits.
After Chandragupta, his grandson Emperor Asoka maintained diplomatic relations not only with Sri Lanka but also with the Hellenistic monarchies of Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia and Epirus which presupposes the existence of a “sea going fleet as well as an army”.
Greek trade with the peoples of the Red Sea coast and eventually with India strengthened under the Ptolemies, the dynasty that derived its name and foundation from one of Alexander's generals, who took power in 320 B.C. At Berenik, archeologists have discovered fragments of documents in 12 different languages, including Tamil and Prakrit, evidence that this Red Sea port was in touch with both southern and northern India.
The Andhras:
The decline of the Mauryas resulted in the ascent of the Andhra Satavahanas in the South. This Buddhist dynasty who ruled large portions of the Deccan between 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. The Satavahanas maintained a large fleet to rule over the Coromandel coast and fend off the pirates. A Ptolemic account mentions several important ports on the Andhra Coast between the mouth of the Ganges and the Godavari from where ships sailed to the East. Podouke (Pulicat, north of Chennai), Masulipatnam (in Andhra) and Melange (Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu) were a few of the important ports which exported spices, sandal, pearls, camphor and silk that was imported from the farther East. Chinese merchants had their warehouses at the mouth of river Krishna. After the Satavahanas, the Pallavas, who were originally from Andhra continued the seafaring tradition. It appears from a study of the Buddhist stupa found at Prome (in Myanmar) that Buddhism probably came to that country from Andhra. The cultural influence moved on further to the Malay peninsula with the creation of the Sri Vijaya dynasty (see Part III).
Early Tamils:
According to early Tamil Sangam literature, Poompuhar (or Kaveripoompattinam on the Kaveri river delta region) developed into a great port city of the early Chola kingdom only to be washed out by a tsunami later around 500 A.D. Writing in the 1st century B.C., Ptolemy noted about Poompuhar and another port town of Nagappattinam as the most important towns of the Cholas. These two towns became seats of trade and commerce with Greece, Egypt and the Far East and acted as a cosmopolitan center of learning.
In the first century B.C. 'King Pandiod' or the Tamil dynasty Pandyas is recorded to have sent two embassies to Augustus Caesar, desiring to become his friend and ally. One of these reached Augustus when he was at Terracona in the 18th year after the death of Julius Caesar, and another reached him six years later. The Tamil poet Madalan sang in praise the Chera king Cenkuttuvan who led an expedition to the Gangetic plain via an expedition to Orissa by sea.
The Romans:
We get a more clearer account during the Roman Age thanks to a Greek work by an unknown author written around 70 A.D. called The Periplus of Erythraean Sea. According to the Periplus, trade with India was booming at Barygaza (or Bharuch in present day Gujarat), Greek traders sold or exchanged Italian and Greek wine, copper, tin, lead, coral, cloth, glass, storax and antimony for ivory, bdellium gum, onyx, myrrh, woven and unwoven silk, “mallow cloth” and pepper.
In the 1st century A.D., Roman author Pliny complained that trade with India was threatening their economy “Affnd by the lowest reckoning India, China and the Arabian Peninsula take from our empire 100 million sesterces (about US $10 million now) every year - that is the sum which our luxuries and our women cost us,”
To be continued in Part III.
References:
Prithwis Chandra Chakravarti, “Naval Warfare in Ancient India”, The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1930, pp. 645-664
O.K. Nambiar, “An Illustrated Maritime History of the Indian Ocean”, Excerpts available from the official Indian Navy website
Paul Lunde, “The Indian Ocean and Global Trade”, Saudi Aramco World, July/August 2005
'We would still like India to sign the NPT. We do not know the details of the India-US (nuclear) pact and therefore can't comment on whether it contradicts provisions of the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group),' said F.W. Weisglas, president of the House of Representatives.
Readers who have seen this video (higly recommended), may recall that the most infamous A.Q. Khan started his proliferation career while he worked in the Dutch uranium treatment company Urenco. The failure of the Dutch authorities to prevent Khan from stealing Uranium enrichment details is actually a violation of the NPT to which it is a signatory. Meanwhile, the German media has been all over the trial of one, Gotthard Lerch, a German citizen tightly linked with the Khan network throwing even more light on the Dutch and other perfidies.
via Deutsche Welle (article in English):
via Der Spiegel, see map of the Khan proliferation network with involvement of several European firms (The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland) all being signatories of the famed NPT. Quoting from the accompanying Spiegel article (in English):
Khan remained at Urenco until 1975, when he copied the company's most important plans and then fled to Pakistan to build the bomb for his country. However, in addition to being theoretically complex, uranium enrichment poses extremely difficult technical challenges -- especially for a scientist without access to a high-tech laboratory and working in a third-world country like Pakistan.
thal·as·soc·ra·cy - n., Naval or commercial supremacy on the seas.
Greek thalassokratiā : thalassa, sea + -kratiā, -cracy.
We attempt to present some aspects of the Indic maritime history. This blogger accidentally fell upon some of these extraordinarily interesting information while researching on contemporary naval defense issues. We hope the readers too will find it absorbing. We are not an 'eminent' historian and so we make no guarantees on the veracity of the information nor on its completeness. We have simply compiled the information as per our comprehension in chronological order. Further references and links have been liberally provided for serious history buffs.
Indian Thalassocracy Part I - Ancient Period:
Indic maritime prowess was spread all over the coastal regions: from the Indus valley, the Saurashtras in the Gujarat coast, the Coromandel coast by the Tamil and Andhra kingdoms and in Bengal in the sea and the great rivers of Ganga and Brahmaputra. Long before the birth of Christ, there were several references in Jatakas (ancient Indian folk tales), Greek and Roman accounts, early Tamil poems and Pali texts with some supported by archaeological proof showing the navigation of skills of Indians in the rivers and the high sea. There were ports and harbors all along the Indian coastline such as Tamaralipti, Poompuhar, Bharukaccha and Surparaka.
Obviously there is very little solid archaeological evidence of the ancient period. But there are several references to maritime adventures of kings from sacred texts proving at least that the maritime instincts existed in popular imagination. There seem to be innumerable references in Sanskrit and Pali literature of men lost to the might of the high seas and of wrecked vessels.
The Rig Veda for example talks about King Tugra who commissioned his son Bhujyu on a naval expedition which was ship-wrecked on the ocean, “where there is no support, no rest for the foot or the hand”. He was subsequently rescued by the twin Asvins in their hundred-oared galley. The Baveru Jataka indicates “that the Vanijas of Western India undertook trading voyages to the shores of the Persian Gulf and of its rivers in the 5th, perhaps even in the 6th century B.C.”
Tamaralipti was a large port city in the kingdom of Vanga (Bengal). According to the Buddhist epic Mahavamsa, Prince Vijaya Simha was banished from Vanga and took off from Tamaralipti with a large fleet to land in Sri Lanka in the 5th century B.C. Hence the name Simhala is derived from the Simha dynasty which he created there. An Ajanta painting depicts the scene of the landing of Vijaya in Sri Lanka with his army we see a fleet of large ships with many passengers, elephants and horses.
Indus valley and Initial Greek Contacts:
The port of Bharukaccha is referenced in ancient Pali texts of Jain and Buddhist accounts as part of the historic trade route of Kamboja-Dvaravati between Dwarka and Kamboja Mahajanapada located in north-eastern Afghanistan is supposed to belong to the Indus Valley period.
Even before Alexander's arrival on the banks of Indus, there were accounts about the people of the Indus basin indulging in the practice of piracy on the high seas. Many such accounts were told by the Persians to the Greek envoys to the then Persian Empire. Such accounts tend to freely mix facts with fiction with tales about India consisting of beast-headed human creatures and people living for 200 years. This was skeptically expressed by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who published the earlier accounts in his great compilation in 7 B.C.
The Indus people, per Strabo were the ‘Vikings’ of ancient India, and the great Persian monarchy was the worst sufferer from their depredations. Strabo and Arrian (another Greek historian) add that in order to protect their cities against piratical attacks, the Persians made the Tigris entirely inaccessible to navigation.
Ironically, Strabo also describes India as “the greatest of all nations and the happiest in lot”. One might wonder why would a ‘great’ and ‘happy’ set of people terrorize the Persians. Of course, for the Greeks at that time anything to their East means India, so some of the reference could also have meant also East African or Arabian pirates. We will get a much clearer after the eventual the arrival of Alexander
To be continued in Part II.
References:
Prithwis Chandra Chakravarti, “Naval Warfare in Ancient India”, The Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4, 1930, pp. 645-664
O.K. Nambiar, “An Illusrated Maritine History of the Indian Ocean”, Excerpts available from the official Indian Navy website.
Paul Lunde, “The Indian Ocean and Global Trade”, Saudi Aramco World, July/August 2005
