The Indian Ocean (14 page)

Not surprisingly, most rulers tried to ward them off, or even eliminate them. In the seventh century BCE the Assyrian King Sennacherib sent out an expedition against Gulf pirates, and over 300 years later Alexander the Great's fleet was harassed by them. Even the distant Roman emperor Trajan led a naval expedition to the Gulf to try and root them out. In the first century of the Common Era Pliny noted that ships in the Red Sea and those going across the Indian Ocean to southwest India carried archers to ward off pirates.
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Navigation in this early period is probably better depicted as wayfinding. A description of this in the Pacific fits very well with what we know of early Indian Ocean practice. Wayfinding is 'navigation by "reading" the stars, sun, ocean swells, wave patterns, cloud formations, wind directions, colour of the sea, flight of sea birds, and integrating all this information with the aid of a mental compass to
determine or maintain a sailing course toward an unseen or unknown land target.'
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An early Pali text says that a navigator needs to know how to dock a boat, and take it out to sea, know the seasons, and the stars, and be able to find his location at sea 'by observing the fishes, the colour of the water, the species of the ground, birds, and rocks.' The magnetic compass came late to the Indian Ocean as compared with Chinese practice, but the astrolabe, the kamal, was used in the Indian Ocean from quite early times. Observing stars made finding a ship's position much more precise.
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Dr Varadarajan did a series of interviews in the 1970s with traditional coastal people in Gujarat, and as the knowledge is passed on orally from master to pupil over generations she claims what she was told was authentic for centuries past. Sailors and navigators learnt by experience, by sailing with a master. The nakhuda was all important. Not only was he the captain and navigator, he also was the commercial agent for the owners of the cargo, assuming they were not on board. She was even told what food should be taken. The list included tea, dried fish, cereals, pulses, onions, potatoes, and dried vegetables and pickles, these chosen as foods which could last for a year on a long voyage,
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not that a vessel would ever be at sea for this long. It may be that the notion was that ritually pure food from home would be available throughout a long voyage, so that possibly dubious food did not have to be taken on board at foreign ports.

Finally, what do we know about the actual experience of people at sea at this early time? The only extended account we have comes from the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hsien. Here is his account of a long voyage, the first we have of an actual passage over the Indian Ocean. He set out from China overland for India in 399 and returned by sea in 413–14. In Sri Lanka:

he took passage on board a large merchant vessel, on which there were over two hundred souls, and astern of which there was a smaller vessel in tow in case of accidents at sea and destruction of the big vessel. Catching a fair wind, they sailed eastwards for two days; then they encountered a heavy gale, and the vessel sprang a leak. The merchants wished to get aboard the smaller vessel, but the men on the latter, fearing that they would be swamped by numbers, quickly cut the tow-rope in two. The merchants were terrified, for death was close at hand; and fearing that the vessel would fill, they promptly took what bulky goods there were and threw them into the sea. Fa-Hsien also took his pitcher and ewer, with whatever else he could spare, and threw them into the sea; but he was afraid that the merchants would throw over his books and his images, and accordingly fixed his whole thoughts on Kuan-Yin, the Hearer of Prayers, and put his life into the hands of the Catholic [that is, Buddhist] Church in China, saying 'I have journeyed far on behalf of the Faith. O that by your awful power you would grant me a safe return from my wanderings.' The gale blew on for thirteen days and nights, when they arrived alongside of an island [somewhere in the Andamans], and then, at ebb-tide, they saw the place where the vessel leaked and forthwith stopped it up, after which
they again proceeded on their way. This sea is infested with pirates, to meet whom is death. The expanse of ocean is boundless, east and west are not distinguishable; only by observation of the sun, moon, and constellations is progress to be made. In cloudy and rainy weather our vessel drifted at the mercy of the wind, without keeping any definite course. In the darkness of night nothing was to be seen but the great waves beating upon one another and flashing forth light like fire, huge turtles, sea-lizards, and such-like monsters of the deep. Then the merchants lost heart, not knowing whither they were going, and the sea being deep, without bottom, they had no place where they could cast their stone-anchor and stop. When the sky had cleared, they were able to tell east from west and again to proceed on their proper course; but had they struck a hidden rock, there would have been no way of escape.

They finally reached Java, but the subsequent voyage, on a large ship which carried 200 men and had provisions for fifty days, was equally trying. They went northeast for a month, and then met a 'black wind'. Seventy days out from Java they knew they should have been near Guangzhou (Canton), so they went northwest and in twelve days got to Lau-shan, on the southeast of the Shantung Peninsula.
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Fa Hsien was a pilgrim, engaged in a Buddhist act of piety. His travels open for us the matter of non-economic exchanges across the Indian Ocean in this early period. We need to look at the ideas that travelled with the goods, and especially the matter of the spread of Indic ideas, notably Buddhism and later Hinduism, to southeast Asia.

From at least the beginning of the Common Era we have good evidence of the spread to southeast Asia of Indian cultural and religious influences, first Buddhism, and from the fourth or fifth centuries brahmanical Hinduism. Indeed, Glover claims that economic contacts began even around 500 BCE, so that even this early southeast Asia was linked to a vast trading world spreading from the Mediterranean to Han China (
circa
200 BCE to 200 CE). It could be, he claims, that this trade was done by Buddhist missionaries, or alternatively that Buddhist missionaries even this early (remembering that the Buddha lived during the sixth century BCE) accompanied traders. Such very early contacts are not universally accepted
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yet certainly from the first century of the Common Era there is evident an increasing use of Indian Hindu and Buddhist religious ideas, monuments and icons, and Indian scripts and languages.

The connection between Buddhism and trade, including that to southeast Asia, is not really causal. Rather we can see in the early Common Era a mutually supportive interactive system. At the ideological level Buddhism encouraged lay devotees to accumulate wealth by trade; at the social level donations to Buddhist monasteries gave status to traders; and at the professional level Buddhist monasteries were repositories of knowledge and essential skills, such as writing. Not all traders were Buddhist, though many wealthy ones were. It is very unlikely that traders were the main agents in the spread of Buddhist, and later Hindu, ideas in
southeast Asia, for most of them, while no doubt personally devout, were really ignorant peddlers whose opinions would carry little weight.

The initiative lay in southeast Asia. Local rulers there heard of south Indian ideas of kingship and ritual and imported Brahmins to raise their status and legitimise them. They were thus not mere passive recipients of a higher culture. These connections continued for centuries, as Buddhist pilgrims not only from southeast Asia but also East Asia visited holy sites in India, and studied in Sri Lanka. In Fa Hsien's time in the 420s we have two references to Sri Lankan Buddhist nuns travelling to China by sea,
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and from the fifth and seventh centuries we know of many Chinese pilgrims visiting Sri Lanka, and India. In the former they went to the tooth relic, that is an actual tooth of the Buddha in the interior at Kandy, and also studied important texts and worked with distinguished teachers. In India, where Buddhism was in decline, they went to places associated with the life of the Buddha, such as Bodh Gaya, where he attained enlightenment. There was a quite complicated circulation. In the early eleventh century the important southeast state of Srivijaya built a Buddhist shrine in Nagapattinam, the main port of the great Cola Tamil kingdom, and the Cola ruler, who was a Hindu, allocated revenue from a village to support this shrine.
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These contacts from insular, Malay, southeast Asia declined as Islam spread in the area soon after this, and new connections, now to Mecca, were created.

Others also travelled for religious purposes. In about 330 CE a Syrian Christian bound for India was shipwrecked off Ethiopia, and subsequently helped to convert the Aksumite empire to Christianity. Later a Bishop of Adulis called Moses visited India, along with a Coptic bishop from Egypt, to examine Hindu philosophy.
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The origin of the so-called St Thomas Christian community, and more generally other Christian activity in India, is a matter of much controversy. Perhaps our guiding principle here should be to follow a recent detailed study of early Christianity in Asia and ask ourselves which is most important, 'clearly established historical veracity or an ongoing enlivening tradition which has given and continues to give purpose, dignity and significance to the lives of thousands?'
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If we follow this line of argument, then we really do not need 'proof' that St Thomas, the apostle Doubting Thomas, really visited and died in India. Gillman points out that many other early Christian traditions are accepted as 'real' without the need for any documented evidence, such as the notion of Peter as the first pope and an unbroken line of succession since then. Similarly, the first life of St Patrick of Ireland dates from 300 years after his death, and so strictly speaking can hardly be taken to provide an historically veracious account. We need to give the same latitude to the St Thomas Christians, even to the extent of accepting that his tomb, in a suburb of modern Chennai, is indeed 'authentic'.

Many Indian scholars insist that St Thomas did reach South India, where he established Christianity and later was martyred. Certainly there is evidence of Christians in south India from at least 300 CE. Jews may have arrived in India even before this time. There was continuing contact with the Persian church, which was Nestorian. This contact was maintained in harmony with the existing extensive sea
trade from the Gulf to Malabar. There are indications that in this period, before Islam reached India, the various Christian communities, while not extensive, were prosperous and well-regarded.

The greatest movement of people for other than economic purposes is the migration, if this be the right word, of Austronesian peoples both east and west, though the movement west to Madagascar is our main interest. Broadly speaking, we know that Austronesian people, originating in modern Indonesia, possibly Sumatra, arrived in then uninhabited Madagascar at least by the middle of the first millennium CE, or probably some centuries before this. This is confirmed by linguistic evidence, among other things. Proto Malagasy comes from Indonesia, possibly not from Sumatra but rather from Borneo, as its closest relative is the Barito languages of Borneo.
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The fact of a migration of Austronesian speakers to Madagascar is not in question. Apart from linguistic evidence, several food crops now found in Madagascar, which moved from there to the coast of East Africa, derive from Indonesia. These include banana, coconut and sugar cane. It is possible that the outrigger canoe also came from east to west across the Indian Ocean. As to bananas, there are two main kinds in Africa. The species found on the east coast is definitely Austronesian, that is it came with the migrants to Madagascar and on to the east coast, but so apparently is the plantain in West Africa.
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Another contribution seems to be the disease of elephantiasis, which it is claimed originated in southeast Asia, but is widespread in southwest India and East Africa.

This movement west across the Indian Ocean was only a part of a remarkable migration of these Austronesian speakers. They left from an original homeland in south China or Taiwan perhaps six thousand years ago, and moved to southeast Asia. From there Austronesian speakers, in ocean-going canoes, sailed and settled all over Remote Oceania, from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand) between 300 and 1200 CE. When we add in their movement to Madagascar, these intrepid sailors spread over a total of 225° of longitude.
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Manguin stresses that these migrations, including that to Africa, were not chance affairs, but rather were organised, and were done not in primitive outrigger dugouts but in planked boats.
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He sees all this as further evidence of an initiative from the peoples of southeast Asia, in contrast to the older wisdom that the area was merely a passive recipient of high culture from China and India.

Three problems remain. First, the evidence of Austronesian contact and influence on continental East Africa is fragmentary and controversial, for even if there was a substantial Austronesian presence there at one time, this was submerged as Bantu people early in the Common Era spread south to the area and incorporated them. The evidence in Madagascar is much clearer, for the island was uninhabited when they arrived. African people arrived later to produce the complex mixture which is today's Malagasy society. Second, there is the matter of how they got to Madagascar. Some argue that they sailed direct from insular southeast Asia, taking advantage of the westward drift of the South Equatorial Current, and prevailing southeast trades in these latitudes. Others point to technological barriers to such long voyages, and claim rather that they proceeded westward piecemeal, going
from port to port and island to island until they reached Madagascar. The latter scenario implicitly belittles their achievement, and has been discarded by those who stress southeast Asia autonomy. Third, was this a round trip? Did they go back and forth across the southern Indian Ocean? Many claim that they did, pointing to the xylophone as an example.
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Manguin claims that there was continuing reciprocal contact between the two areas up to the early centuries of Islamisation in Sumatra, that is up to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.
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If this be so, it is then a matter of how this was done. The only possible route to take would be in the far south, taking advantage of the strong westerlies in latitudes 40 and 50° S, but we have no evidence of their doing this. The case for continuing contact is not proven, and indeed seems improbable.