The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  We know that the ancient Egyptians sailed down the Red Sea on frequent trading expeditions to the Land of Punt. One of the expeditions is depicted on a panel at the memorial temple of Queen Hatshepsut who ruled Egypt between 1473 and 1458 BC. Hatshepsut is a fascinating character—a female pharaoh who dared to rule in her own name. There are other female rulers in Egyptian history but she overshadows them in terms of the scale of her building projects, her military victories and, of course, her ambitious maritime expedition to the Land of Punt.

  The temple panels depict large galleys with sails, oars and stern-side paddles for steering. They probably embarked from Wadi Gawasis on Egypt’s Red Sea coast where archaeologists have found coils of rope and cedar planks from that era.32 From here they would have sailed down the Red Sea to what is now Yemen and Eritrea. The expedition would return with gold, ivory, different kinds of wood, exotic animals and, most importantly, frankincense (also perhaps Indian black pepper for stuffing up some mummy’s nostrils).

  Frankincense was a very valuable product of ancient Yemen and Oman. It is the dried resin of a thorny tree and gives off a pleasant smell when burned. It was widely used in religious ceremonies and is one of the gifts that the ‘three wise men’ are said to have brought for the baby Jesus. Even today, anyone visiting the Yemen–Oman coast will find it commonly sold in traditional markets and the smell of burning frankincense pervades shops, restaurants and homes.

  So, who were the people who lived in the Land of Punt? Today we think of the Yemeni as being Arab but till the advent of Islam, south-eastern Arabia was home to a culture that was quite distinct from that of the rest of the peninsula. Its mountains and coasts were home to a number of related but constantly feuding tribes such as the Himyar, the Hadramawt and the Sabeans. Archaeologists have found as many as ten thousand inscriptions describing the lives, feuds, treaties and rulers of these tribes.

  The Sabeans were one of the most powerful tribes. Around the eighth century BC, they created an empire that extended from Yemen into Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia. The Sabeans may have introduced wheat and barley to Ethiopia although a local cereal called ‘teff’ continues to be popular to this day. They also introduced their script which was originally written left-to-right and right-to-left on alternate lines; not such a silly idea if you think about it. The Sabean script would evolve into the Ge’ez script of the kingdom of Aksum and survives as the modern Ethiopian script (although it is now written exclusively left-to-right).

  These early interactions between the Yemenis and the Egyptians would later extend to neighbouring lands and probably gave rise to the legend about King Solomon and Queen Sheba (i.e. Saba). According to the Ethiopian version of the legend, when Queen Sheba returned after meeting Solomon in Jerusalem, she gave birth to a child named David. This child would grow up to be King Menelik I, founder of the Solomonic dynasty of Aksum. The legend also says that when David was a young man, he visited his father Solomon’s court. At the time of departure, he stole the Ark of the Covenant and brought it back to Aksum. The Ark is supposed to be a wooden box covered in gold containing the two tablets received by Moses on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed by God himself.

  Although there is no historical evidence supporting this story about Solomon, Sheba, Menelik and the stealing of the Ark, it has been part of the national founding myth of Ethiopia since the medieval ‘Solomonic’ dynasty came to power in AD 1262. The medieval dynasty promoted the story to give itself a biblical lineage and it would provide legitimacy to the royals till their rule ended in 1974 with Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia. Nonetheless, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that it is still in possession of the original Ark and replicas, known as tabots, continue to play an important role in religious festivals across the country.33

  The Sundaland Diaspora

  With all this migrating and churning going on in the western Indian Ocean rim, one adventurous band of Indians decided to be different and head east. They seem to have got into their boats somewhere on the country’s eastern shore and sailed along the coast, past Sumatra and Java and eventually ended up in Australia! Recent genetic studies show that a bit more than 4000 years ago, a band of Indians turned up in Australia and contributed their DNA to the aborigines. This finding confounds the earlier belief that there were no new arrivals to the island continent between the initial migration of Melanesians 45,000 years ago and the arrival of the Europeans. Moreover, the new immigrants brought along their pets, the ancestors of the dingo dog.34 This is possibly why the dingo looks suspiciously like the stray dogs one sees all over India.

  The Indians were not the only people on the move in the region. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the coastlines of South East Asia witnessed major changes as Sundaland was inundated by the post-Ice Age floods. Recent genetic studies confirm that the region’s current population landscape is heavily influenced by human migrations following the floods.35 These South East Asian migrations involved two major ethnic groups—the Austronesians and the Austroasiatic. Someone with a dark sense of humour must have given them such similar names in order to purposely confuse future generations of researchers. To make it less confusing, let’s call them AN and AA respectively. The AN included the ancestors of the Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos, Bruneians, Timorese and significant minorities in neighbouring countries. It also includes Taiwanese aborigines and the Polynesians spread across the Pacific. As one can see, they had a strong maritime culture.

  It was once thought that this group originated in Taiwan but it now appears that they lived along the eastern coast of Sundaland and were forced by the floods to search for new homes. The outrigger canoe was an important part of their maritime culture. It is a simple design but clearly very effective as it allowed the AN to colonize most of the islands in South East Asia during the Neolithic period. Some of these islands may have had existing Melanesian populations who seem to have been squeezed into a smaller area in and around New Guinea and Fiji. A few centuries later, the eastern Polynesian branch of ANs would set out to colonize a swathe of islands across the Pacific—from New Zealand to Hawaii and Easter Island. Similarly, the western branch would sail across the Indian Ocean and settle in Madagascar. Thus the AN came to colonize a large swathe of the planet from Madagascar to Hawaii!

  The speakers of AA languages were the other important ethnic group of South East Asia. They include the Vietnamese, Khmer (i.e. Cambodian) and the Mon in Myanmar and Thailand. Unlike their Malay and Polynesian cousins, however, this group seems to have preferred to migrate over the land rather than over sea. At some point, small groups of AAs drifted into north-east India. The descendants of these migrations are the Munda-speaking tribes, such as the Santhals, who are scattered all over eastern and central India. A somewhat later wave survives today as the Khasis of the state of Meghalaya. Thus it came to be that India’s population mix includes people who speak languages related to Vietnamese and Khmer!36

  The folk tales and legends of South East Asia recall the Great Flood. For instance, the Laotian founding myth of Khun Borom tells us that the gods once became angry with the sinful and arrogant behaviour of humans and caused a flood that washed away all mortals. After the deluge they sent a buffalo that died and from its nostril grew a creeper that bore giant gourds. When the ‘khun’ (i.e. lords of heaven) cut open the gourds, a new generation of humans emerged from them with different gourds giving birth to different ethnic groups.37

  The Laotian story is quite different from that of Noah or Manu, but it too remembers an earlier way of life that was destroyed by a huge flood and of how civilization had to be re-established. Similarly, the oral traditions of Australian aborigines also speak of swathes of coastline that were flooded. Till just a decade ago, it was common for scholars to dismiss indigenous oral histories as mere fantasy but latest research shows that they often contain folk memories of real events.38

  The Daughters of Chitrangada

  Matrilineal customs appear to have been an impor
tant feature of the AA-speaking groups migrating across South East Asia and into India’s north-east. The Khasis of Meghalaya, for instance, remain matrilineal to this day. Traces of matrilineal customs seem to have been imbibed even by neighbouring communities that may never have been matrilineal. For instance, in Assamese Hindu weddings, the ‘sindoor’ (red vermilion) is applied to the forehead of the bride by the mother-in-law at the ‘jurun’ ceremony that precedes the wedding. The act of applying sindoor is a key part of Hindu marriage rituals and is usually the prerogative of the husband. The performance of this rite by the groom’s mother symbolizes the women of the family accepting a new member—a very matrilineal view of a wedding.

  So why were the AAs matrilineal? The answer to this riddle is found in the study of the genetics of the AA groups. It appears that the Indian branch is the result of almost exclusively male migrations.39 At the risk of oversimplifying, one could say that groups like the Santhals and Khasis are the result of male migrants from South East Asia marrying local women. This fits in with the hypothesis offered in the previous chapter of matrilineal customs emerging in South East Asia due to a Neolithic male population that was relatively more mobile than the female population. We do not know exactly what drove these migrations but this movement was not quite one of conquest since the incoming males seem to have accepted the property rights of the local women.

  It is fascinating that the Iron Age epic Mahabharata hints at the matrilineal streak in India’s north-east. It tells us how the exiled prince Arjun visited the kingdom of Manipur. There he met the warrior princess Chitrangada and married her. However, note that the marriage took place on the explicit condition that Chitrangada would not have to follow Arjun back home as she and her children were heirs to the throne. Again notice the easy acceptance of a male outsider combined with the rootedness of the local female. The story does not end here. Ulupi, the queen of a neighbouring Naga tribe,40 also falls in love with Arjun and kidnaps him. The epic then tells us of how Arjun is eventually restored to Chitrangada.

  We are not concerned here about the historical veracity of this story. What is interesting for our purposes is the portrayal of two strong female characters and a social context that is different from that of the Gangetic heartland. It appears that the Iron Age composers of the Mahabharata, based in the north-west of India, were aware that the status of women was different in the north-east. Manipur remains home to formidable women including Mary Kom, five-time world boxing champion. The daughters of Chitrangada are alive and well.

  4

  Kharavela’s Revenge

  A number of sites in the central Gangetic plains have shown that iron implements were being used by 1700 BC but ‘the quantity and types of iron artefacts, and the level of technical advancement indicate that the introduction of iron working took place even earlier’.1 Recent discoveries near Hyderabad have confirmed that iron technology was indeed fairly well understood by the time it was adopted by northern India.

  By 1300 BC, the use of iron had become commonplace across north and central India. This is also a time that India embarks on a new round of urbanization. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata mention several of the cities that emerged during this period. One can debate whether or not the stories in the texts are loosely based on actual events, but there is adequate evidence that many of the places were real. Some of these Iron Age cities, such as Varanasi, have survived as urban centres till today.

  It is during the Iron Age that two major highways came to connect the subcontinent. The first is an east–west road called Uttara Path (i.e. Northern Road) that ran from eastern Afghanistan, across the Gangetic plains to the ports of Bengal. This road would be repaired and rebuilt throughout Indian history and survives today as National Highway 1 between Amritsar and Delhi and as National Highway 2 between Delhi and Kolkata.

  The second was a north–south highway called the Dakshina Path (i.e. Southern Road). This was more like a tangled network that started around the Allahabad–Varanasi section of the Gangetic plains and made its way in a south-westerly direction to Ujjain. Here it split into two with one branch going to the ports of Gujarat and the other branch making its way further south via Pratishthana (Paithan) to Kishkindha in Karnataka and beyond. People, goods and ideas would have made their way across India on these highways. It is no coincidence that many of the events described in the epics took place along them. Even if the narrative is fictional (or considerably embellished), many of the places are real enough.2 In the sixth century BC, Gautam Buddha would preach his first sermon at Sarnath, the spot where the two ancient highways met. To this day, two of India’s most important highways (NH2 and NH7) meet here.

  Kingdoms of the Lion

  The injection of Indian DNA into Australia around 2000 BC shows that people living on India’s eastern seaboard were capable of sailing long distances even before the Iron Age. Archaeologists have found remains of a possible river port at a place called Golbai Sasan in Odisha that dates back to 2300 BC.3 However, there is a distinct boom in coastal trade from around 800 BC. At the heart of this maritime boom was Kalinga (roughly modern Odisha) and the adjoining areas of West Bengal.

  The remains of many ancient ports have been found all along the coast between the western most mouth of the Ganga and Chilika lake. The river connected the seaports to the kingdoms of the interior while the lake, which has an outlet to the sea, acted as a safe harbour. You will find bits of ancient pottery strewn everywhere if you walk along the banks of Chilika lake.

  The Bengali–Odiya mariners were not capable of sailing directly across the Indian Ocean at this early stage. Instead, they would have hugged the shore and traded their way down the Andhra and Tamil coast. At some stage they seem to have sailed across to Sri Lanka and begun to settle there. Genetic studies have confirmed that the island was already inhabited by the ancestors of the Vedda, a small tribe that has long been suspected of being the original inhabitants.4 They are probably descendants of people who had migrated here before the Great Flood separated them from the mainland. The new migrants from eastern India, however, would soon become the dominant population—the Sinhalese.

  The Mahavamsa, an epic written in Pali, tells the founding myth of how the Sinhalese came to Sri Lanka.5 It is said that at the beginning of the sixth century BC, the king of Vanga (i.e. Bengal) had a beautiful daughter who was kidnapped by a powerful lion. He kept the princess prisoner in a cave and had a son and daughter by her. The son Sinhabahu grew up to be a strong lad. One day, when the lion was away, he broke open the cave-prison and escaped with his mother and sister. The lion followed in hot pursuit. Eventually, after several adventures, Sinhabahu faced his father and killed him.

  Sinhabahu then established a kingdom and built a capital city Sinhapura, which means Lion City (notice that this is derived from the same etymological roots as Singapore). Many years passed and Sinhabahu had a son called Vijaya who turned out to be a violent lout and a disgrace to the family. My guess is that he inherited that from the paternal grandfather. After hearing repeated complaints from his subjects, King Sinhabahu eventually decided to banish Vijaya and 700 of his supporters. So, Vijaya sailed south and landed in Sri Lanka. There he faced some resistance from the locals, presumably the Vedda, led by a woman called Kuveni. However, Vijaya prevailed and established his kingdom. The Mahavamsa tells us that King Vijaya now gave up his earlier erratic behaviour and ruled responsibly for thirty-eight years. He also married a Tamil princess from the Pandya clan.

  The legend of Prince Vijaya should not be taken literally; I have always harboured some doubts about the bit related to the lion kidnapping the princess. Nevertheless, the epic makes it clear that the Sinhalese retained a memory of their Bengali–Odiya origins when the Mahavamsa was composed and compiled almost a thousand years later.

  The Sinhalese link to eastern India matches genetic, linguistic and cultural evidence and survives in many little ways. For example, the lion is an important symbol of the Sinhalese people; they are lite
rally the Lion People. One finds this echoed in Odisha which remains a major centre for the worship of Narasimha (the god Vishnu as half-lion and half-man). The town of Puri is famous for the temple of Jagannath, another form of Vishnu, but also has a very ancient temple to Narasimha and there are several rituals where the latter is given precedence to this day. Similarly, in Bengal, the goddess Durga is almost always depicted as riding a lion. In other words, the lion on the Sri Lankan flag and Durga’s lion share the same cultural origins.

  The clinching evidence on the origins of the Sinhalese, however, comes from another custom. Robert Knox, an Englishman who spent many years in Sri Lanka in the seventeenth century, made the following observation: ‘In their infancy they have names whereby one may be called and distinguished from the other; but, when they come to years, it is an affront and shame to them, either men or women, to be called by those names.’6 Bengali and Odiya readers will know exactly what this means.

  Did the Phoenicians Circumnavigate Africa?

  At the same time that settlers from Kalinga were colonizing Sri Lanka, a Greek historian called Herodotus was writing a remarkable book, The Histories, which is the first known attempt to systematically research and write down a historical narrative. Like a modern-day researcher, he weighed the evidence and often disbelieved what he was told. This does not mean that Herodotus is always right or unbiased (he seems to have a pro-Athenian tilt), but the approach is quite different from simply listing out the achievements of a powerful ruler or composing epics about heroic characters.