Buddhist Connections in the Indian Ocean: Changes in Monastic Mobility, 1000-1500

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blackburn

Since the nineteenth century, Buddhists residing in the present-day nations of Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka have thought of themselves as participants in a shared southern Asian Buddhist world characterized by a long and continuous history of integration across the Bay of Bengal region, dating at least to the third centurybcereign of the Indic King Asoka. Recently, scholars of Buddhism and historians of the region have begun to develop a more historically variegated account of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, using epigraphic, art historical, and archaeological evidence, as well as new interpretations of Buddhist chronicle texts.1 This paper examines three historical episodes in the eleventh- to fifteenth-century history of Sri Lankan-Southeast Asian Buddhist connections attested by epigraphic and Buddhist chronicle accounts. These indicate changes in regional Buddhist monastic connectivity during the period 1000-1500, which were due to new patterns of mobility related to changing conditions of trade and to an altered political ecosystem in maritime southern Asia.

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 845-861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chandra Godavitarne ◽  
Natasha Udu-gama ◽  
Mathini Sreetharan ◽  
Jane Preuss ◽  
Frederick Krimgold

On 26 December 2004, a devastating tsunami struck the coasts of 12 nations on the Indian Ocean. Over 300,000 people in 12 countries died in the wake of the tsunami, millions of housing units were damaged or destroyed, economies were devastated, and ecosystems were disrupted. The lessons from this catastrophe have worldwide implications, but the tragedies were local. Sri Lanka and the Aceh province of Indonesia suffered most of the casualties. The Sri Lankan experience illustrates that the recovery can be hindered by a country's social and political conditions. Challenges to recovery include the need for centralized coordination and organization, planning and development control, gathering planning data, political leadership, equitable distribution of recovery assistance, and disaster education.


1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. D. Newitt

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.


2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
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...  

AbstractThe harbor town of Berenike functioned in the long-distance trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean Basin from the third century BC to the early sixth century AD. This contribution aims to view the Berenike material within its wider historical context through a preliminary analysis of the combined archaeological and textual evidence. By comparing the results of the work of different specialists, the potential of a multi-disciplinary approach becomes apparent. A number of caveats are given, which illustrate the interpretative problems arising from comparing the results of different disciplines. Lastly, this attempt at integration shows that the discrepancies between the different sources offer important insights. Le port maritime de Berenike fonctionnait dans le commerce de longue distance entre la Méditerranée et le bassin de la Mer des Indes depuis le troisième siècle avant JC jusqu'au début du sixième siècle après JC. Cette contribution examine le matériel de Berenike dans un contexte plus large par une analyse préliminaire croisant des données archéologiques et textuelles. En comparant les résultats proposés par plusieurs spécialistes, le potentiel du travail multidisciplinaire devient évident. Un nombre de caveats est présenté pour illustrer des problèmes d'interprétation, provenant des comparaisons de résultats de plusieurs disciplines. Enfin, cet essai d'intégration montre que les divergences entre plusieurs sources offre des aperçus importants.


Author(s):  
Manish Karmwar

Indo-African trade relations are one of the imperative segments to understand African settlements in different parts of Indian sub-continent. Several Africans rose to positions of authority as generals and governors, in the Janjira and Sachin kingdoms they rose from king-makers to Emperors. The evidence of African trade in India has a significant history. From ancient times, three valuable export commodities which were prized in Africa: pepper, silk and cotton. The migration from the African sub-continent into India went up only in the sixth century A.D. but we have had an incredible trade-relation from time immemorial. From the Sixth century through the fifteenth century the history of the East African coast is somewhat illuminated by Arabs, Persians and Europeans. During the course of the sixteenth century the Portuguese dominated the Indian Ocean and its shoreline. Portugal was determined to remove Muslim merchants, especially Arabs, in the Indian Ocean system. This paper tries to explore India Africa relation especially with east Africa from earliest times to nineteenth century A.D. The paper recognizes the fact that trade and natural resources have been the principal reason   behind the age-old links between Africa and India. The paper identifies the Cultural assimilation and African diaspora through the ages which has a vital facet to further strengthen the Trade Relations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-125
Author(s):  
Wan Ming

In the history of the development of human civilization, the Silk Road has been an important route of traffic and exchange between the East and the West. From Zhang Qian’s 張騫 opening up of the Silk Road across the Western Regions (Xiyue 西域) to Zheng He’s 鄭和 sailing to the Western Oceans (xia xiyang 下西洋) more than 1500 years later, China had a continuous desire to explore beyond its borders. At the time of Zheng He, the term “Western Oceans” (xiyang 西洋) had a specific meaning. As shown by the account of Ma Huan 馬歡, who personally joined Zheng He on the voyages, the people of Ming China considered the “Western Oceans” to be the Namoli Ocean (Namoli yang 那没黎洋), later called the Indian Ocean. Thus, it could be concluded that the Western Oceans where Zheng He’s fleet went meant the Indian Ocean. Even today most scholars still divide the Eastern and Western Oceans at Brunei, with no clear understanding of where the Western Oceans to which Zheng He sailed were actually located. It is therefore important to make clear that the Western Oceans in his time referred to the Indian Ocean, before moving on to investigate the purpose of the voyages and related historical issues. Even more important is to point out that Zheng He’s expeditions in the early fifteenth century reflected that Chinese people took to the seas on a scale larger than ever before and joined the maritime and overland silk routes together. The place where this occurred was the Indian Ocean.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.


Author(s):  
Samia Khatun

Australian deserts remain dotted with the ruins of old mosques. Beginning with a Bengali poetry collection discovered in a nineteenth-century mosque in the town of Broken Hill, Samia Khatun weaves together the stories of various peoples colonized by the British Empire to chart a history of South Asian diaspora. Australia has long been an outpost of Anglo empires in the Indian Ocean world, today the site of military infrastructure central to the surveillance of 'Muslim-majority' countries across the region. Imperial knowledges from Australian territories contribute significantly to the Islamic-Western binary of the post- Cold War era. In narrating a history of Indian Ocean connections from the perspectives of those colonized by the British, Khatun highlights alternative contexts against which to consider accounts of non-white people. Australianama challenges a central idea that powerfully shapes history books across the Anglophone world: the colonial myth that European knowledge traditions are superior to the epistemologies of the colonized. Arguing that Aboriginal and South Asian language sources are keys to the vast, complex libraries that belie colonized geographies, Khatun shows that stories in colonized tongues can transform the very ground from which we view past, present and future.


Author(s):  
Roy Livermore

Tuzo Wilson introduces the concept of transform faults, which has the effect of transforming Earth Science forever. Resistance to the new ideas is finally overcome in the late 1960s, as the theory of moving plates is established. Two scientists play a major role in quantifying the embryonic theory that is eventually dubbed ‘plate tectonics’. Dan McKenzie applies Euler’s theorem, used previously by Teddy Bullard to reconstruct the continents around the Atlantic, to the problem of plate rotations on a sphere and uses it to unravel the entire history of the Indian Ocean. Jason Morgan also wraps plate tectonics around a sphere. Tuzo Wilson introduces the idea of a fixed hotspot beneath Hawaii, an idea taken up by Jason Morgan to create an absolute reference frame for plate motions.


1909 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. W. Tarn

No apology should be needed for treating afresh these much-discussed battles, if only because the last two years have produced new and important evidence from Delos; though in fact the literary allusions, scanty as they are, have hardly even yet been sufficiently elucidated. I hope in this paper to fix the dates of Andros and Cos by the Delian archon-list, and to consider what that means in terms of B.C. In a subsequent paper, to be published in the next number of this Journal, I hope, by working out the history of the ship which Antigonus Gonatas dedicated to Apollo, to confirm the date assigned to Cos in this paper. If these two dates could really be fixed, they would be invaluable for our understanding of Aegean history in the middle of the third century.


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