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

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  The Roaming Roma

  Even as Arabs, Parsis and Jews were settling in India, at least one group of Indians migrated to the Middle East. It has long been suspected on cultural and linguistic grounds that the Roma (Gypsies) of Europe were of Indian origin. Genetic studies have confirmed that they are the descendants of medieval migrants from north-western India.20 What were they doing in the Middle East?

  One thing is certain, they were not there as slaves because they would not have been allowed to stay as a cohesive group and maintain their culture. Whatever they were doing, it was useful enough for Muslim kings who allowed them to maintain some sort of ethnic identity. Given the long history of Indian soldiers in the region, it is possible that the ancestors of the Roma were mercenaries. A more intriguing possibility is that they were imported as metal workers. India was famous in the ancient and medieval world for its metallurgy and we know that the famous ‘Damascus sword’ used by Muslim armies against the Crusades was made with Indian steel technology.

  In the fifteenth century, the Roma accompanied the Turkish armies into the Balkans. Ottoman records mention Gypsies as blacksmiths, craftsmen and other service providers. They are also mentioned as musicians and dancers. Their attachment to military campaigns meant that they maintained their nomadic lifestyle. Over time they would leave Ottoman-controlled lands and wander far and wide across Europe. Their link to ironmongering, however, would survive into recent times.

  7

  Merchants, Temples and Rice

  The Great City of Angkor

  Even as the Arab conquests changed the political and cultural landscape of the western Indian Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean continued largely as before. The Palas of Bengal and the Pallavas of Kanchi continued to trade with South East Asia and beyond. South East Asia remained a patchwork of Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms that were heavily influenced by the Indian civilization.

  In the second half of the eighth century, the kingdoms in Java, Indonesia, began to flex their muscles and we have records of their raids on the Khmers of Cambodia and on Champa in southern Vietnam. A Javan inscription even claims that King Sanjaya ruled over the Khmers.1 Not to be left out of the action, the Sri Vijaya king of Sumatra–Malaya also made a surprise raid on the hapless Khmers and killed the ruler of one of their kingdoms. It was amidst this turmoil that a new ruler, Jayavarman II, came to the Khmer throne. It was he who founded the Angkor empire, though not the city by which the empire is now known.

  Very little is known about the origins of Jayavarman II but later inscriptions say that he came from Java to take the crown. What was he doing in Java? Was he a Khmer prince taken away by the Javanese as a hostage or was he Javanese? The only thing we know for sure is that he was very devoted to the Hindu god Shiva. It is also likely that his claim to the Khmer throne was acquired by marriage to a Khmer princess.

  Having acquired power, he systematically subdued local rivals as well as fended off the raiders from both Java and Sri Vijaya. He next conducted the ancient Vedic ceremony that declared him as a Chakravarti Samrat or Universal Monarch. By doing this, he was signalling that the Khmers were no longer vassals of any external power.2 A new capital called Indrapura was founded, the first of several new cities that Jayavarman II would establish. At the same time, the territories around the great lake of Tonle Sap were added to the growing kingdom and systematically settled. This would later lead to an economy based on hydraulics and intensive rice cultivation.

  Jayavarman II died around AD 850. He was succeeded by his son who seems to have consolidated the fledgling empire till AD 877. The next king, Indravarman I, however, was Jayavarman II’s queen’s nephew.3 Inscriptions also tell us that Indravarman I’s wife traced her lineage back to the royal family of ancient Funan that had been established by Kaundinya and the Naga princess. As one can see, matrilineal descent was a very important component of royal legitimacy in Angkor. This is explicit in the inscriptions of the Angkor monarchs. For instance, when Indravarman built a grand Shiva temple at Bakong, he dedicated statues to Jayavarman II and his queen, his own parents and his maternal grandparents.

  It was under Indravarman I that the Khmers began to build the complex hydraulic network of canals and lakes that allowed a major expansion in rice cultivation. By the time his son and successor Yashovarman I wore the crown, the Khmers ruled much of what is now Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. The empire now needed a grand capital and Yashovarman I laid out the first city in Angkor and named it after himself Yashodharapura. He also built a number of large Hindu temples. This includes the Preah Vihear temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, built on a mountaintop on the Thai-Cambodian border which is now the focus of a bitter dispute between the two countries. Despite the International Court of Justice in Hague ruling that it belonged to Cambodia, the conflict spiralled into an armed skirmish in 2011 and nearly escalated into a war.4

  Angkor grew and prospered through most of the tenth century but there appears to have been instability and civil war at the beginning of the eleventh century. Yet again, power was captured by an outsider with a matrilineal claim to the throne. Suryavarman I was a prince of a vassal state but his mother came from the same maternal line as that of Jayavarman II’s queen and Indravarman I’s mother’s family. Some Western historians have suggested that Suryavarman’s claim to the throne was tenuous.5 However, from a Khmer perspective, a matrilineal link to the royal Naga clan was an entirely legitimate claim to the crown.

  Suryavarman I ruled over the empire for almost half a century (AD 1002–1050). He re-established control over territories that had broken away during the civil war as well as established temporary peace along the eastern border with Champa. He also expanded the capital and built a large palace complex that included a tiered pyramid called the Phimaen Akas or Sky Palace. A Chinese visitor, who visited Angkor a few generations later, reports that the stepped pyramid was topped with a golden pinnacle that no longer exists.

  A modern-day visitor will almost certainly be told of the legend of how the ruling monarch was expected to spend the first watch of every night in the pyramid tower where he would sleep with a serpent princess in the form of a beautiful woman. While I am a little sceptical about the bit where snakes turn into women, it is a reminder of the importance of the Naga lineage in establishing the legitimacy of royal power. This is why the royal symbol of the Khmer kings was the seven-headed cobra which shows up frequently in their art.

  After Suryavarman I’s death, the empire again suffered internal wars as well as renewed hostilities with the Chams. In 1113, order was restored by another powerful leader, Suryavarman II. It is he who built Angkor Wat, still the largest religious building in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its sheer scale must be seen to be believed but, in order to imagine what it looked like in its heyday, one must remember that the towers were originally covered in gold leaf!6

  Note that Angkor Wat was originally a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. When it was adapted to Buddhist use in later times, the main idol of Vishnu was moved out of the sanctum to a corridor near the main entrance. Visitors will find that it is still lovingly worshipped by the locals. This should not be surprising as Hinduism and Buddhism remain closely related and their adherents routinely visit each other’s shrines. Just as Cambodian Buddhists worship Vishnu, Hindus venerate Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu.

  After a period of stability under Suryavarman II, the familiar pattern of war and disorder repeated itself. Suryavarman II’s successors were particularly harassed by repeated raids made by the Chams. In 1177, the Chams made a naval attack that bypassed the usual land defences and took the Khmers completely by surprise. The invaders managed to reach the capital where the wooden palisades and moats of Yashodharapura proved inadequate. The Khmer king was killed and the city sacked. The empire descended into chaos. Once more, an energetic new leader, Jayavarman VII, came to the rescue of the empire. The maternal line was again important as he derived his legitimacy from the fact that his mother was
Suryavarman I’s granddaughter. The new king first dealt with the Chams and defeated them in a major naval battle that is vividly depicted on the wall of the Bayon temple. He then rebuilt the capital. Recognizing the limitations of the old defences, he built Angkor Thom to be more compact than Yashodharapura, but added laterite walls and a wide moat. Five stone causeways gave access to this royal city through monumental gates that were surmounted by gigantic human faces; this is the stuff of a million tourist photographs.

  I apologize if the above narrative about Angkor’s history seems like a long list of kings with very long names. It was unavoidable for two reasons. First, the idea was to illustrate the importance of matrilineal systems in the history of South East Asia. This was only possible by giving a taste of who succeeded whom. Second, I hoped to give the readers a sense of how Angkor evolved as an empire and a city.

  At its height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Angkor was the largest urban agglomeration in the world. Analysis of satellite images have confirmed that the royal capital was surrounded by a densely populated, semi-rural ‘suburbia’ where non-agricultural activities were mixed in with intensive farming sustained by a complex water management system. Estimates vary, but it is reasonable to say that more than a million people lived in greater Angkor.

  So what was Angkor like as a living city? In 1296, Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan visited Angkor and stayed there for eleven months.7 He has left us a detailed account of his visit which makes for fascinating reading. Enough of the city has survived that we can follow his footsteps and identify landmarks. But he also provides details that make the place come alive. For instance, he mentions the grand gateways of Angkor Thom topped with gigantic human heads, but he adds the detail that the middle face was covered in gold! This allows us to better understand what these monuments originally looked like.

  Zhou Daguan has left a vivid description of a royal procession. The processions were led by a body of cavalry accompanied by standards and music. A few hundred beautifully attired palace women followed. Some carried gold and silver vessels, others burning tapers and still others were female warriors with swords and shields. Ministers and princes were next. Seated on elephants, they had gold and silver parasols according to their rank. After this came the queens and other women of the royal family—on palanquins and chariots. Finally, the king himself entered on a large elephant surrounded by an escort of palace guards, also on elephants. The king held in his hand the sacred sword, the symbol of royal power, and would be shaded by twenty parasols. It bears mentioning here that the last such procession took place in Cambodia as recently as 1901 during the ceremonial cutting of hair of Prince Chandralekha, son of King Norodom.

  Zhou Daguan has also left us descriptions of more mundane everyday life. He tells us that the rich lived in houses with tiled roofs while the poor used thatch. The floors were covered in matting but there were no tables, chairs and beds. People both sat and slept on the mats. Moreover, the climate was so hot and humid that people sometimes got up at night to bathe. This would come as no surprise to anyone who has spent the day exploring the sites at Angkor—the still, steamy heat can wear down even those used to Singapore or Mumbai.

  Interestingly, the Chinese diplomat wrote that commerce in the marketplace was mostly conducted by women. By paying rent to the local authority, they could set up a stall by displaying their goods on a mat laid out on the ground. Such scenes can still be seen across India and South East Asia. While women shopkeepers are not unusual, their dominance in the marketplace is particularly visible in the north east Indian states of Meghalaya and Manipur. Just wander around the local markets in Shillong or the Ima Keithel market in Imphal to understand what I mean. Readers will recall that the matrilineal Khasis are genetically and linguistically related to the Khmer. It is remarkable how certain cultural traits have survived from Neolithic times.

  Geopolitics of the Chola-Era

  The Cholas, as the reader will recall, were one of the three clans who dominated the southern tip of India in ancient times. During the period of Pallava rule, they had accepted the overlordship of Kanchi but still retained significant political clout. At the end of the ninth century, a Chola general called Aditya helped the Pallavas crush a revolt by the Pandyas, the other ancient Tamil clan. As a reward, he seems to have been given sizeable new territories. Aditya used the new resources to build up his military capability and in AD 873 he marched against his Pallava overlords. The Cholas defeated and killed the last Pallava king Aparajita (whose name ironically means ‘he who cannot be defeated’). Aditya took care, however, to marry a Pallava princess and thereby absorb their lineage into his own.8

  Over the next several decades, the Cholas steadily expanded their kingdom. They repeatedly defeated the combined armies of the Pandyas and their Sri Lankan allies. However, not all their military campaigns went well. When the Cholas attempted to expand northwards, they were beaten back by the Rashtrakutas who had replaced the Chalukyas in the Deccan plateau. In fact, the Rashtrakutas pushed back and occupied the old Pallava capital of Kanchi. It took several years for the Cholas to recover from the defeat but they seemed to have clawed back the lost territory by the time Rajaraja Chola came to the throne in AD 985.

  Rajaraja is widely regarded by Tamils as their greatest king. He defeated the combined armies of the Pandyas, the Sinhalese and the ruler of Kerala. This gave him control over ports on both the eastern and western coasts. Next he decided to teach the Sri Lankans a lesson. A naval raid occupied the north of the island and sacked the Sinhalese capital of Anuradhapura. The Maldives was also added to the empire. As thanksgiving for his victories, Rajaraja then built the enormous Brihadeswara temple dedicated to Shiva. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  The next Chola ruler was Rajaraja’s son Rajendra who assumed the throne in 1014. He initially had to put down revolts by the old rival clans and consolidate his control over Sri Lanka. He then led an extraordinary military expedition that made its way north to the banks of the Ganga. Although the Cholas did not attempt to maintain control over these northern lands, Rajendra was clearly very proud of having made his way to the holy river. Water from the Ganga was carried back in golden vessels and a new capital was built—‘Gangaikonda Cholapuram’ meaning, ‘The City of the Chola who brought the Ganga’.

  From the perspective of Indian Ocean history, however, the most significant event of Rajendra’s rule was a major naval raid on the Sri Vijaya kingdom of Sumatra and Malaya. In order to appreciate the historical context of this event, one needs to step back and understand the geopolitical dynamics of the times. The maritime trade route between India and China had become very lucrative and there were two main routes. The first passed through the Straits of Malacca, between the Malay peninsula and Sumatra. The Sri Vijaya kingdom controlled this route. The second, more southerly route, passed through the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java. Although it was a bit of a detour for those going to China or Champa, it had better access to the spice growing Maluku and Banda islands. This route was usually controlled by the Javans. Not surprisingly, there was constant rivalry between the Sri Vijaya and the Javanese kingdoms.

  The late tenth century was a period of prosperity in the Indian Ocean rim as trade boomed between the Song empire in China, the Cholas in southern India and the Shiite Fatimid caliphate that controlled Egypt and the Red Sea. The rivalries of South East Asia were proving to be a major threat to this economic pipeline. In AD 987, a Sri Vijaya diplomatic mission made its way to China.9 During its stay in China, the diplomats were informed that their country was under attack from the Javan kingdom of Mataram. They decided to head home but the war escalated and the mission found itself stranded in Champa for a year. It is likely that they received new instructions from the capital for they headed back to China and pleaded with the Song emperor to place Sri Vijaya under its protection. Thus, China came to have influence in the region.

  The Sri Vijaya would have been aware that the entry of the Chinese into the I
ndian Ocean could elicit a response from the Cholas. Thus, they simultaneously sent missions to the Chola kings and made generous grants to Hindu and Buddhist temples in Chola ports. Amusingly, Chinese records show that the Sri Vijaya were playing a double game because their diplomats were deliberately misrepresenting the situation by claiming that the Cholas paid tribute to them!

  The Sri Vijaya seem to have used Chinese protection to build up their own strength. Not surprisingly, this caused their neighbours to become concerned. Around 1012, Suryavarman I, the king of Angkor, chose to send an unusual gift to Rajendra Chola—his personal war chariot with which he had defeated his enemies. In the Indic cultural context, such a gift has great symbolic importance and it is likely that Angkor was trying to woo the Cholas as a way to counterbalance the Sino-Sri Vijaya alliance. It is also possible, that Angkor was trying to reopen the old trade route through the Isthmus of Kra as a way to bypass the contested straits. Amidst all this hectic diplomacy, the Cholas sent a direct diplomatic mission to China in 1015.10

  The ground situation, however, suddenly changed in 1016 when the Sri Vijaya and their allies defeated the Javanese and sacked the Mataram capital. This left the Sri Vijaya in control of both sea routes. We have evidence to suggest that it soon exploited this situation by exacting exorbitant tolls on merchant ships. Rajendra Chola probably sent a small naval expedition to Sumatra in 1017 as a warning but it was not taken seriously. Thus, the Chola returned in 1025 with a much larger fleet.