Quotessence
Home / Books / The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

Book by William Dalrymple · 4 quotes · India, Cambodia, Indosphere

Filter quotes by topic

AllIndiaCambodiaIndosphereEpicsGovardhanKrishnaMekongSoutheast Asia

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World Quotes

“The archaeologists who made the study noted that ‘Southern Indian ancestry was estimated at 42–49%’ for the Cambodian individual whose remains they were studying. They identified ‘Irula, Mala, and Vellalar’ caste types as the most likely South Asian contributors to the ancient individual’s genome. These are all specifically low-caste non-Brahmin groups. It appears that we are dealing with the emigration of a large and socially varied group of Indian individuals, leading to intermarriage with Cambodians and the emergence of mixed-marriage families. This implies a varied mercantile diaspora rather than just the boatloads of literate Brahmins who record their own presence on inscriptions. It also helps explain the presence of non-Vedic, non-Brahmanical Tamil folk and village guardian deities like Aiyanar turning up from the beginning in shrines across the region, where he seems to have been worshipped as the Protector of Travellers and the Night Guardian of Reservoirs”

IndiaCambodia
Book:The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
Create image

“Whatever their DNA contribution to the region, the Brahmins did bring with them from India three crucial gifts that proved irresistible right across the region: Sanskrit, the art of writing and the stories of the great Indian epics. No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the deeds of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. From the fifth century, right on through to the dance and shadow puppetry of the present day, these would remain a major feature in the art and culture of South-east Asia.26 In time, even the landscape of South-east Asia began to be renamed under the influence of the great epics and the stories of their respective heroes, the Pandava brothers and Lord Rama. The earliest inscription in Khmer territories dating from the fifth century records that a ruler in what is now Laos took the Indic name Devanika and the grandiose Sanskrit title Maharajadhiraja, ‘King of Kings’. This happened during a ceremony when the King installed an image of Shiva under the lingam-shaped mountain that towered over his capital of Champasak. There he consecrated a tank which he named Kurukshetra, after the plain to the north of Delhi where the great battle of the Mahabharata was fought”

IndiaCambodiaEpics
Book:The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
Create image

“Although the King has a south Indiansounding Sanskrit name, his grandfather, the chief credited with founding the dynasty, is clearly indigenous Javanese: he is called Kadungga, implying that the same family dynasty continued to rule while changing their names and court language. The transformation, in other words, came not with the sword or conquest but peacefully, possibly with intermarriage, as local chieftains took on the Brahmins’ new religion and, with it, new Hindu names, titles and rituals. The adoption of Indian practices, in other words, came voluntarily over generations, with conversion and influence, and not by conquest and military subjection, as earlier Indian historians once believed.”

IndiaSoutheast AsiaIndosphere
Book:The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
Create image

“It now seems probable that the Krishna statue was erected at the place which was revered as the site of the founding Khmer myth: the place where the newly arrived Indian Brahmin Kaundinya was believed to have met and married local Mera the naga princess (we will hear more of this myth shortly). By erecting a major temple there to Lord Krishna, ‘Phnom Da becomes a new Mount Govardhan, and probably, by extension, the Mekong River becomes the holy river Yamuna,’ thereby ritually extending the sacred geography of India to South-east Asia.”

KrishnaIndosphereMekongGovardhan
Book:The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
Create image