Ships and Maritime Commerce: Rethinking of Early Indian Influences
and Transcultural Encounters in Southeast Asia
Victoruia P. Valenzuela, D.P.A.
Introduction
Maritime history is a branch of world history that cover obvious topics like shipbuilding, maritime trade, oceanic exploration, human migrations and naval history. Considered as a perspective however, the premise of maritime history is that the study of event that take place or in relation to the water offer unique insight into human affairs. The maritime historian therefore draws on such disciplines such as the arts, religion, language, the law and political economy (Paine, 2013).
Imagine a world of people bound to the land. Without maritime commerce neither Indians nor Chinese would have exerted the substantial influence they did in Southeast Asia. The region would have been spared the cultural sobriquets of Indo – China and Indonesia. Without mariners, the history of the past five centuries would have to be reimagined in its entirety. The past century has witnessed a sea change in how we approach maritime history particularly in Southeast Asia.
Upon reconsideration of Indian maritime trades’ contribution, it serves as the principal source of political and cultural traditions widely observed throughout Southeast Asia. For a millennium and more, Southeast Asian people adapted Indian Political structure and religions to local needs and interests. Although Indian armed forces rarely ventured into the region, Southeast Asian lands reflected the Influence of Indian society, as merchants introduced Hinduism, Buddhism, Sanskrit writings, and Indian forms of Political Asia, as Muslim merchants, many of them Indians, established trading communities in the important port of the region. During the next five hundred years, Islam attracted a sizable following and became a permanent feature in much of Southeast Asia.
A transcultural approach to the study marks a shift in its direction. According to Ann Curthoys a transcultural approach adds another dimension to postcolonial critique in deconstructing the Eurocentric enclosures of the past – which not only created the Third World but also defined the cultures confined within in as much as analyzing international connection, flow, hybridity and syncretism reveals the and alters our understanding and offers a new direction.
Given the reality of globalization and international relations, it is timely to explore the historical, political, cultural and economic relationships between native people and other oppressed groups throughout the twentieth century. And at the start of twenty first century, ships and shipping lines are the warp and woof of globalization. Thus, the purpose of my study is to rethink the efforts of historians on ancient ships and boats, ship models and designs, images and its impact to the lives of the sea – going people during the early Indian influences and transcultural encounters in maritime throughout Southeast Asia exploring international connections and the subsequent transcultural focus of my work. This study also attempts to revisit how people came into contact with one another by sea and by river; how they spread the maritime endeavors from one place to another; what exactly has happened; how did it happen; and why did it happen.
Methodology
The purpose of this ethnographic study is to examine how experiencing the cultures firsthand of different Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, one can vividly imagine and contemplate on how people came into contact with one another by sea and river; how they spread the maritime endeavors from one place to another; what exactly has transpired during those early exchanges as evidenced by the modern way of life; and the how and when these life changing situations happen.
This paper is inspired by a keen interest to broaden our understanding of how transferred ideas influence international relations, and the fact that those who keep a trading relationship are unconsciously and or consciously adopting and adapting cultures, way of life, arts and language among others. In this interest, let us allow ourselves to keep in mind the statement that “Understanding the impact of world views on general politics or foreign policy would require a broader comparative study of cultures” (Goldstein and Keohane, 1977:9) and that knowledge of these influences impact our daily lives, in different ways and in different neighboring countries.
Results and Discussion
Indian merchants in the period of the silk road of the sea sailed between India and Southeast Asia, and in later centuries Banias – Hindu merchants – also called Aden. When the Portuguese reached Malabar in the fifteenth century, they found its foreign trade in the hands of Hindu Chetties from the Coromandel Coast and Banias from Gujarat, in addition to Malabari and Arab Muslims.
Southern India was farmed for its pepper, which had marked both east and west, and was known as a transshipment point for spices from Indonesia. Indian sources are a poor guide to the activities of maritime merchants, but Abu Zayd includes a revealing description of a highly disciplined approach to long distance seafaring that must have facilitated the expansion of trade along the routes favored by Indian navigators.
Between seventh and eleventh centuries, Indian Ocean mariners led the process of integrating the disparate regional markets of the Monsoon Sea between East Africa and the Red Sea in the West, and Southeast Asia and China in the east. In so doing, they laid the foundations for all but uninterrupted maritime growth of this region that has lasted to the present day. The maritime trade of Monsoon Asia shows many of the hallmarks of what we now call globalization, a process that creates networks of interdependence in which changes in one place can have ripple effects that spread from region to region. The clearest manifestation of this are seen in the rise and shifting fortunes of the Islamic caliphates and the Tang and Song Dynasties, whose wealth exerted powerful forces on the Maritime endeavor of the two realms, as well as on other regions from East Africa and India to Southeast Asia and Japan. The resulting interdependency had many positive benefits, facilitating the growth of commerce and its underlying enterprises from agriculture to crafts, and encouraging the spread of religion and technology. At the same time, technological and political change in one place could have a negative impact on thousands of miles away. Overall, however, the period was one of growth in maritime trade and political consolidation. While much of this resulted from local initiative, these were spurred by the unification and intensifying sea-mindedness of China in the Tang and Song dynasties.
The maritime world changed tremendously at the start of twentieth century, the size of a country’s merchant marine and navy served as a barometer of economic and military prestige, but this was no longer the case by the start of the third millennium. Thus, the world of maritime industry increasingly operates without reference to specific national interest. This explains globalization which the maritime industries have been both midwife and mirror, most obviously in their embrace of containerization and flags of convenience. This study fosters cross-cultural interdependence over five thousand years in as much as we are in the midst of an era of sustained and dynamic change. Developments however, in maritime technology, commerce, warfare, exploration and exploitation have altered our collective and individual relationships to the sea and maritime enterprise as we experience transcultural encounters ranging from technology and legal regimens to international relations and the application of Indian influences.
The most obvious reason for the shift in people’s appreciation of seafaring and its related disciplines is that maritime industries have largely vanished from public view due to automation and efficiency. Today, there are about 1.2 million seafarers in international trade worldwide, which means that less than half of one percent of the population moves 90 percent of the world’s freight over sea that cover 70 percent of the earth’s surface. Still, ships, boats and vessels emerged in different styles, designs and at the same its uses. The seagoing people such as fishermen, sole proprietors who own and operate their own boats have undergone as much change over the past century and a half as any other maritime enterprises.
In an attempt to reconsider and rethink how the early Indians’ presence as mere maritime trade partners – to say the least – had shaped the way of life of Southeast Asians, from the first time their ships anchored on each nations’ harbor, trading goods and transmitting their culture to evidences of such influences in the lives of the modern folks, this paper aims to showcase such traces of the culture transferred and diffused by the Indians.
The mariners of the east coast of India were already aware of the current and monsoon winds and have used such to their advantage, even before the discovery of such monsoon winds and have been used for maritime trade. The maritime trade from India to Southeast Asia was a singularly recurrent. Evidences that point to the active maritime trade between India and Southeast Asia include the dissemination of Buddhist settlements, trading of beads and inscriptions along the trading centers. Artistic representations on cave walls, stupas and temples indicated that traders, craftsmen, even religious people used the ancient ships and sailed together periodically were also among the early indications of such phenomenon. As time progressed and people became more and more civilized, the ancient methods of trade have ceased to exist, leading to remembrances and celebrations in the form of rituals and social events along the Indian coasts. But for the Southeast Asian countries that they have set sails upon in the earlier ancient times, their presence in their lands whether as friendly visitors or productive trade partners or cultural educators – has given specific nations a new perspective and a more contemporary way of life that has affected them so much, their legacy lives on and continues in practice in such modern times.
These practices are exemplified below, with Southeast Asian countries which evidently adapted Indian practices through the years, has evolved as their own – either as a way of life, as a means of survival or by unconsciously remembering, in their own way, remnants of a legacy that has once transpired in their shores.
As one passes through one of the many markets of Thailand, particularly in one of its renowned floating markets, presents a great opportunity to witness how the locals now live, as one catches a glimpse of their stilt houses, businesses, the temples and other aspects of their simple, charmed and charismatic way of life.
Boats with flat leveled surfaces are loaded with locally harvested produce – ranging from fresh fruits and vegetables, condiments, handicrafts, paintings, souvenirs and other merchandise – touted by sharp and insightful lady vendors ready to stop and bargain with their customers, creating a spectacle of a richly colorful and cultural spectacle, busily unfolding, likened to an aquatic cultural show, surely capturing hearts and spaces in one’s memory card; as snapshots of this humbling experience make for one extraordinary moment.
The Indian post was somewhat unlike the "colony" during the colonial period, as it was rarely meant to involve in politics of the native land. The Indians were concerned mainly in trading and in collecting goods from the local to sell in distant lands.
The excavation at Eo Oc, a Funanese main port lying in South Vietnam today, revealed that the region was one of the prominent transitory points between the West and the East, and the trading connection between the two distant continents was well established. The unearthed artifacts at Eo Oc disclosed those goods originated from as far as the Roman Empire in the West and the Chinese civilization in the Far East.
During those days, the indigenous people were far less civilized than the Indian travelers and it was not surprising to find that they accepted many aspects from their foreign folks by which they deemed to be better and beneficial. One of these aspects was the religious and cultural elements of the Indian civilization. The natives adopted Hinduism as their religion and its gods Shiva and Vishnu were revered as their supreme gods. It was also found that the Brahmins, a learned caste of India, were invited into the royal courts to help in administration during the Funan period (1st century - 613 A.D) which was a predecessor of the Khmer civilization. In addition to the religious belief, the natives also learned the engineering skills such as the irrigation system as well as stone carving from the Indian Brahmins.
When the Khmer civilization evolved in early 9th century, the Khmer inherited several elements from its predecessor as well as those from the Indian civilization. Its first king Jayavarman II crowned himself as a deva-raja or "god-king" in 802 A.D, and his regime was more or less a replica of the successful Indian monarchy. Numerous impressive temples and monuments were built throughout the empire in successive centuries in order to praise the Hindu gods. These monuments are collectively known to us as the Angkor Temples (or Khmer temples), and the most famous ones are the Angkor Wat and the Angkor Thom (Bayon), both of which resided on the vast plain of Siemreap in Cambodia.
The process through which the Indian civilization had asserted a great influence upon another civilization was termed by the historians as "Indianization". However, the Khmer had never been fully Indianized as the term suggested. Although the Khmer adopted many aspects of Indian cultural and religious elements, the way of Indian life did not penetrate deeply into the root of Khmer civilization which was consisted of the laymen who still maintained their own way of lifestyle.