New Delhi, Jan 12: 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 civilizations, a celebrated American art historian said.
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| Prof. Frederick M. Asher speaking at the 13th NM Lecture Series |
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 Prof. Frederick M. Asher, who teaches at University of Minnesota.
“India served as a fulcrum in the trade from the South China Sea and Southeast 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 while giving a talk on "India and the World: The Visual Culture of Indian Ocean Trade to 1600", organized by the National Museum on Friday evening.
India’s visual products -- textiles, architecture, sculptures as well as religions such as Buddhism, Saivism and Vaishanavism – 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 and at two sites in Bahrain and Mesopotamian cylindrical seals at Harappa.
India’s engagement with the Roman Empire, shared motifs and even the export of luxury goods beautifully fashioned from ivory document the engagement of two of the most important civilisations of the time.
“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.
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| 13th NM lecture by Prof. Frederick M. Asher |
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, Vaishanavism Saivism and other Hindu religions were adopted as a result of initiatives from Southeast Asian monarchs, who imported Brahmins to raise their status and legitimacy,” pointed out Prof. Asher, a specialist in South Asian art.
Architecture was another important import from India by the contemporary civilizations. “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 dispaora 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 Southeast 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,” Prof. 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 regular traffic in both directions between India and East Asia.
In the post-Gupta phase, prosperity seems to have shifted to coastal regions, marked by temple buildings in Odisha, in the Pallava realm at Mamallapuram and by the Chalukyas. “It is with the rise of these coastal regions that we see well-established trade diasporas across Southeast 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 recognize the adoption of Buddhism, Vaishanavism and Saivism, Sanskrit language and the widespread use of Brahmi across Southeast 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.
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