In pre-modern times, India served as a fulcrum of trade from the South China Sea and Southeast Asia. At a recent lecture at National Museum, art historians discussed the cultural exchange between India and the rest of the world
India was the fulcrum of transoceanic trade carried through the Indian Ocean in ancient times which also promoted the export of its visual cultural products through its ‘trade diasporas’ to contemporary civilisations, shared an American art historian while giving a talk on ‘India and the World: The Visual Culture of Indian Ocean Trade to 1600’, organised by the National Museum.
The Indian expatriate community of traders settled in coastal towns across Southeast Asia, south coast of China and the Gulf region led to export of Indian cultural and religious objects, underlining India’s role in a very old world system that connected South Asia with the populated coastal area of the entire Indian Ocean, said Frederick M Asher, who teaches at University of Minnesota.
“India served as a fulcrum in the trade from the South China Sea and South East Asia on one hand and trade with Greece, Rome, North Africa and Arabian ports on the other, in pre-modern times,” pointed out the art historian.
India’s visual products — textiles, architecture, sculptures as well as religions such as Buddhism, Saivism and Vaishnavism — came to be enormously coveted in the polycentric world. At the same time, India also absorbed visual products from other centers of the world.
There are Harappan representations of a boat and the great dock at lothal (Gujarat) as well as of Harappan seals at Ur (a city in ancient Mesopotamia) and at two sites in Bahrain and Mesopotamian cylindrical seals at Harappa.
“By the first century BCE, the evidence of cultural exchanges expanded considerably. A first century potsherd discovered at the Egyptian port of Quseir-al-Qadim, on the Red Sea, bears a fragmentary Tamil inscription,” he said.
Among other Indian export items found in Egypt are a considerable number of textile fragments discovered both at Quesir-al-Qadim and at the river port of Berenike. Much later, large numbers of textile fragments were found at Fustat (ancient Cairo) as also in Indonesia, indicating the huge geographic area over which Indian textiles were exported.
Begram, now the site of a US airbase in Afghanistan, also yielded a considerable cache of objects from India and from the world with which India traded: first-century BCE ivories from India and glass from Syria. A few Malay inscriptions in Brahmi and Arabic scripts have also been found.
“As for religion, Vaishnavism, Saivism and other Hindu religions were adopted as a result of initiatives from South East Asian monarchs, who imported Brahmins to raise their status and legitimacy,” pointed out Asher, also a specialist in South Asian art.
Architecture was another important import from India by the contemporary civilisations. “The remains of a stone temple erected in 1281 by an Indian merchant guild in Quanzhou, in coastal China, provide a definitive clue to the spread of temple architecture. Some of these features are built into the Kaiyuan temple, which resembles Chola-style architecture. It also points to the existence of an Indian trade diaspora in Quanzhou, a diaspora that must have included priests and artists,” he said. The surviving temples in Cambodia, Vietnam, Java and Burma also point to some modest collaboration by Indian architects and sculptors — a sculptural or architectural evidence of a trade diaspora. In the Kedah region of Malaysia, material connections with India, including Sanskrit inscriptions dating fourth century and written in Pallava-style script, have been found.
“The extensive remains at sites in Kedah, the Quanzhou temple, and the widespread use of Pallava script across South East Asia as well as the prevalence of Roman trade works at Arikamedu and Alagankulam all point to the importance of south India in pre-modern world,” Asher noted.
North India, on the other hand, was able to foster its international profile through the support of landlocked powers like the Guptas, the Vakatakas and Harshavardhana to Buddhist institutions such as Nalanda and Ajanta. Buddhism had a pan-India footprint and had regular traffic in both directions between India and East Asia.
In the post-Gupta phase, prosperity seemed to have shifted to coastal regions, marked by temple buildings in Odisha, in the Pallava realm at Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram) and by the Chalukyas. “It is with the rise of these coastal regions that we see well-established trade diasporas across South East Asia,” he noted. On the import side, the sites of Arikamedu and Alagankulam, both in Tamil Nadu, show ample evidence of trade with Rome and North Africa during the first century, and here is some evidence for Roman trade unearthed at Pattanam on the Kerala coast (shards of Roman pottery and coins).
“We need to recognise the adoption of Buddhism, Vaishnavism, Saivism, Sanskrit language and the widespread use of Brahmi across South East Asia as Indian exports. Then, there is the style of architecture and sculpture based on Indian models,” he said, adding: “It is safe to imagine relatively small communities of Indians functioning as a trade diaspora across coastal Southeast Asia.”