Sanskrit Influence in South and Southeast Asia + Rise of the Chola Dynasty

Most of India was heavily Sanskritized by the 5th century BCE; even South India, where Dravidian language and culture held sway; Sanskrit words and rituals found themselves seeping into the local culture. As maritime trade flourished in Tamilakam, the lands of the Tamil people (modern day Tamil Nadu and Kerala), this sort of Sanskritization became even more widespread, though that would be much later.

At first, Sanskrit introduced the abugida writing system where vowels are fully written only at the start of a word (with certain exceptions) and vowel markers are used on consonants to denote sounds other than ‘a’. All consonants have the inherent vowel ‘a’ and have to be modified with a marker to not have a vowel. Vedic Sanskrit did not have a written form, but the Brahmi script comes at us from the Mauryan Empire. It was used to write Classical Sanskrit, the form known to us today in the Upanishads and the Puranas and various other texts. Classical Sanskrit was established by Panini’s grammar. Panini was not an Italian sandwich but rather a well respected scholar and philologist in the late Vedic era who was born in Pakistan sometime in 4th century BCE. His work, the Ashtadhyayi (Book of 8 Chapters) was the defining moment that Classical Sanskrit was born. This language was different from the dialects that the common peoples spoke, the Prakrits (or natural tongues). The word Sanskrtam in Sanskrit means ‘refined’ or ‘perfected’ and it is seen in the copious grammar laws of the Ashtadhyayi.

One of the scripts Brahmi gave rise to was the Gupta script in North India, which split into Sharada, and Siddham scripts. Siddham was the ancestor of modern-day Devanagari, (used for Hindi and many other languages) Eastern Nagari (Bengali and Assamese) as well as Odia and Nepalese. Sharada was used to write hymns by Kashmiri Pandits, though now Devanagari is more common in Kashmir. Descendants of Sharada include the modern Punjabi script. The Gupta script also gave rise to the Tibetan abugida, which was transformed into Phags-Pa, the official script of the Mongol Yuan Empire. Brahmi also gave rise to the Tocharian script used in Central Asia, the Sinhala script of Sri Lanka, the Kadamba script which would give rise to Kannada and Telugu, and the Tamil-Pallava script, which is the important script that we are going to focus on. Brahmi had three main variations: Asokan Brahmi (used by Emperor Asoka of the Mauryas), Bhattiprolu (used in Karnataka) and Tamil Brahmi (used all over South India). Tamil Brahmi evolved into the Pallava script and the Grantha script while Bhattiprolu evolved into the Kadamba script and finally the Kannada-Telugu scripts. The Pallava script gave rise to most of the scripts across Southeast Asia as well as Tamil and Malayalam. This had to do with the exploits of the Chola dynasty of Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu was first ruled by three dynasties: The Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas. The Cheras ruled in the west and and in parts of Kerala, the Pandyas in the south, and the Cholas in the Tamil heartland. During the 3nd century CE, a tribe called the Kalabhras conquered the three dynasties and many people converted to Jainism or Buddhism. In the 6th century CE, they were defeated by the Pandyas and the Pallavas, a clan from the northeast of Tamil Nadu. The Cheras also seem to have risen at that time. Eventually the Pallavas conquered all of Northern Tamil Nadu as well as parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The Pallavas introduced the Pallava script and began to import it eastwards. The Pallava writing system gave rise to the Thai script, Khmer script, Mon script, Burmese script, Javanese script, Balinese script, and just about every other abugida in Southeast Asia. During this time, Buddhism spread to Southeast Asia and the Srivijaya Empire of Indonesia controlled trade and culture in that area. The Pallavas did not impart a lot other than their writings onto the kingdoms there. However, in Tamil Nadu, the Cholas rose again under Vijayalaya Chola.

Vijayalaya Chola miraculously defeated both the Pallavas and the Pandyas and almost single-handedly conquered a sizable kingdom for himself. His descendants, Rajaraja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola would defeat the Rashtrakutas of Karnataka, conquer all of East India up to Odisha, and dominate the sea trade by defeating the Srivijaya Empire. Rajaraja Chola brought Hinduism to the modern day countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Indonesia, especially Vaishnavism. The successor of Srivijaya, the Majapahit Empire was mainly Hindu and Thailand still has a lot of Hindu influence. However, Chola influence waned after a while and Buddism became the predominant religion in Southeast Asia. Muslim traders found their way to Indonesia and established the Malacca Sultanate. Today Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei are mainly Muslim, but in the island of Bali and parts of Thailand Hinduism is still followed, and in the mainland Hindu culture exhibits great influence even now. Sanskrit words are common in all Southeastern languages, regardless of family; for example in Indo-Malay the word for language is ‘bahasa’, which comes from Sanskrit ‘bhasha’. The Hindu epic Ramayana is a popular play to enact in ‘Wayang’ or puppet theatre in Bali, Indonesia, and the main character Rama has many namesakes among Thai royalty.

Similar to how Sanskritization swept across India and Southeast Asia, today Western culture is sweeping across the globe at a much faster rate due to advancements such as Internet, content creation, movies, etc. English is the lingua franca in most places and we use so many words in our native languages too! Now, one shouldn’t really think that integration of foreign cultures is necessarily a bad thing, I mean, a lot of good ideas go either way. Today Starbucks is a hit in India while Americans turn towards Yoga; Food is also a great example. Indian food as we know it today would not have happened without the Portuguese bringing tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, mangoes, cashews, and a bunch of other things. Today Indian food is appreciated worldwide, but in India you can also find burgers and pizza on the next corner. I think this article is a reminder that cultural change is constant and not always bad. Cultural change brings new ideas and new innovations, and at least people don’t go waving swords and guns and all kinds of sharp and deadly implements in other people’s faces today. Most of the time, at least.

History should always tell us what to do, but it should also tell us what not to do. A global culture is just one of the things that we can connect back to the past, and hopefully what we learn doesn’t involve using WMDs; or any weapon in general. We’ll see what happens.