Contacts and Communication in Early Bengal and Southeast Asia
Aksadul Alam History Dept, University of Dhaka, Dhaka,
BANGLADESH
Antara Mitra, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, INDIA
Abstracts
Contacts and communications between India and South-east Asia in
early times emerged as a serious academic issue during the colonial milieu in
India, which symbolized the intellectual and academic counter-hegemony to the
colonial megalomania that India, in her ancient days, was a land isolated from
the rest of the civilized world. Some historians have even talked about a
process of Indianisation (G. Coedes, 1968) of South-east Asia. However, despite
this exaggeration about Indianisation of South-east Asia, it cannot be totally
over-ruled that India had some trade and cultural contacts with South-east Asia
in early days. And Bengal had a definite role to play in this contact and
communication because of her geographical location, situation and land and
overseas routes. Some scholars have brought to light valuable data regarding
the contributions of Bengal to this process (A.M. Chowdhury, 1996). Though a
comprehensive study is yet to be conducted, it is now considered to be beyond
any doubt that Bengal and Southeast Asia had a close association in trade and
consequent cultural contacts from the very remote past. The Bay of Bengal,
monsoonic wind, climate and agriculture had made the contact easy and
meaningful. The contact resulted in very profound influence - mainly in the
spheres of religion, art, culture and society. In this paper our attempt is
simply to highlight how Bengal’s geographical situation, location and land and
sea-routes played a part in the contacts and communication with Southeast Asia
in the ancient period. Scholars considered Bengal as a ‘region’ with
‘identical’ geo-features. Bengal, the largest delta in the world, is located at
the easternmost part of the South Asian sub-continent. Surrounded on the north,
west and east by disconnected mountains or hill systems, thick forests and on
the south by the sea, termed Bengal as ‘frontier zone’ (Richard M. Eaton,
1994). Some of its ‘unique’ geographical features are old and new alluvium
land, many rivers and their tributaries, a distinct climatic conditions, and
rainy season. With these geo-features a regional ‘personality’ developed in
Bengal with an individuality of its own, and it bears the definite stamp of
this deltaic land. On the other hand the region roughly East of India and South
of China (but excluding Australia and the Pacific Islands) has been called
Southeast Asia, the separate entity and distinct in many ways from rest of
Asia. In shaping the culture and civilization of this region India and China
played dominant roles and in this process Bengal had a mentionable role to
play. The multitude of rivers afforded easy communication and Bengal’s location
on the Bay of Bengal offered her the opportunity of participating in sea-borne
trade and commerce and consequent cultural contacts with Southeast Asia
(Ranabir Chakravarti, 2004). Bengal has lot of common traits with Southeast
Asia: rice and fish is the staple diet, betel nut and betel-leaf chewing is
common, and there are similarities in the way many tropical articles, such as
bamboo, are used. Bengal is situated in a ‘transition zone’ between Southwest
and Southeast Asia. It forms the capstone of the arch formed by the Bay of
Bengal, and because of the Tibetan massif to the North, it is a comparatively
narrow land-bridge between the subcontinent of India and the subcontinent of
Southeast Asia. Enjoying this geographical situation, Bengal commanded trade
with Southeast Asia from the beginning of the Christian era, if not earlier,
both by land and sea.
The 2nd SSEASR Conference
