WHO BROUGHT THE SCRIPT TO SOUTH EAST
ASIA: HINDUS OR BUDDHISTS
IN OTHER WORDS, WHO IS THE REAL BUMIPUTRA?
I was merrily walking along the street in
front of the hotel in Bali when I noticed that the road signs were in Latin
Script as well as a script.
My heart raced when I looked closely at it,
since it was easy to decipher the similarity of BALINESE script to MALAYALAM
script of Cochin in India.
Pallava and Chola empires of South India of
the TAMIL people had exerted great influence over much of South East Asia. In
fact only in Bali, the Hinduism has survived. Hindu kingdoms had existed in
Jawa, Sumatra, Kedah, Central Vietnam, and Cambodia. Just to give a few
examples.
(Copper Plates depicting the Royal Order of the Rajah of Cochin granting Anjuvanam to the Jewish Community and to one Joseph Rabban..pallava to tamil to malayalam.. evolution of a script)
Pallava traders
and travelers and artisans including those who built Angkor introduced their writing to Southeast Asia, and it was by all
accounts much admired, appreciated and emulated. Earliest exported texts are in
Sanskrit and Pali, but soon local languages adopted forms of the script. It was
the parent of:
- Pyu (Burma)
- Mon – Burmese
- Kawi – Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, Buginese and others
(Indonesia, Philippines, Borneo)
- Lanna, Tham (Thailand)
- Khom (Thailand)
- Khmer – Cambodian
- Thai and Lao
- Tai Lue and other Tai language scripts (Burma,
South China, Thailand, Vietnam)
- Cham (Vietnam)
(Pallava Script)
In fact if you look at the scripts of these
various languages, you can see that they are bear similarities to Tamil and the
roundedness of Telugu, Karnataka and Malayalam.
The archeological site in Kedah, which is
part of now Malaysia dates to 4th century. So does the oldest archaeological
site in Indonesia, in a place called Kotai in East Kalimantan,
It might be good to look at the scripts on
the inscriptions found on these sites. The Kutai script is not found outside
Kalimantan, but there are other interesting parallels: Cho-dinh Rock
Inscription of King Bhadravarman dated probably towards the end of fourth
century. (Phu Yen district in Vietnam). Another similarity is to Ruvanvalisaya
Pillar Inscription at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka of King Buddhadasa or Bujas (c.
CE 337-365).
The Inscriptions of Purnavarman of Taruma
in West Java are written in a type of Pallava, which is essentially similar to
that of East Kalimantan but also shows characteristic differences denoting a
later date.
(Balinese above, Jawanese below..the same name written in the two scripts)
It would be tempting how the script got
from Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu to the walls of Angkor Wat in Cambodia?
Trade?
War?
Intellectuals including the artisans and
people who could read? This at a time when majority outside the priesthood or
monkhood couldn't read, including warriors or kings for that matter.
I chanced to find a book called An End to
Suffering by that great public Intellectual of India (who like many Indian
intellectuals lives in London!) PANKAJ MISHRA. A delightful read and would love
to re read it again (my copy is at the Blue House among the UmonHon)
Here is what a New York reviewer had to
say:
India, he writes, once the “fount of wisdom,” is “now engaged in
slavishly imitating Western countries,” an assessment that wounds Mishra’s
quiet nationalism—and, one would think, his intellectual vanity, since Mishra
himself came to his Buddhist studies through such figures as Borges and
Thoreau. Mishra looks to the Buddha, “one of the great men, if not the greatest
man, born in India,” for an untapped source of Indian pride. It doesn’t hurt
that so many of the Western writers he admires were themselves armchair
Buddhologists. Mishra’s explorations of this diverse company make for a
consistent East-West rhythm throughout the book, as the author twins the Buddha’s
insights with a series of speculative thinkers, including Hume, Nietzsche, and
Marx.
Buddha was or is probably the greatest
Intellectual India has ever produced and his influence is felt all over the
world, and paradoxically not in India, his birthplace. Mishra goes into the
discussion of how Buddhism was virtually wiped out in India.
(Unexplained Buddhist panels at the Big Hindu temple at Tanjore)
I had been to the now extinct capital of Pyu
Kingdom, also to the Museum of the Mon people in Mawlemayne, visited Bangalore
where Karnataka is freely available to look at, as is Malayalam in Cochin,
Tamil in Madras, Thai in Bangkok, Lao in Vieng Cheng, Khmer in Phnom Penh. Have
been to a Hindu Cham village in central Vietnam, and seen a Christian bible
translated into Jawanese in the vernacular script kept at a Church museum in Paris and now Balinese script in
the streets of Bali….
Each time it excites me to see this ancient
connection and was it Tagore who wanted to visit India outside its political
borders? In South East Asia?
To symbolize India’s millennia old tradition to connect
to South East Asia with humanistic ideas, religious values, music and culture
along with merchandise. The poem explores the necessity to renew this bond
within the framework of mutual respect.
To quote from Tagore’s diary:
Tibet, Mongolia, Malayas,
wherever India had preached her wisdom, had been through genuine human
relations. To-day my pilgrimage is to witness those historical evidences of
man’s holy access everywhere. Also to note is, that India of yore did not
preach some cut and dried sermons, but inaugurated the inner treasure of man
through architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature, stamps of
which remain in the deserts, woods, rocks, isles, rugged terrain and difficult
resolves………”. [Java
diary, July, 1927]
At a send-off to his journey to Singapore, Malaya, Java,
Borneo, Sumatra and Indonesia on a three and a half month Southeast Asian tour
in July 1927, Tagore said that he was going on a pilgrimage to India beyond its
modern political boundaries. ‘India’s true history reflected in the many
stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata will be seen more clearly’, he wrote,
‘when we are able to compare with the texts that are to found here [in
Southeast Asia]’
While he journeyed
from Singapore across the straits of Malacca towards Batavia Tagore wrote his
poem ‘Srivijayalakshmi’ celebrating the renewal of a bond after a
thousand-year separation, an ode to the ancient Srivijaya empire. A classical
response to this poem was composed by a leading Javanese poet Doetadilaga (Timboel):
“Remember how we never could believe in days past that
our love would know separation; perfect was our harmony, one our thought, one
our soul and one our body, – the unity of God and creature nigh. Verily I saw
in you my elder brother guiding me in the ways of the world, teaching me
scripture, tongue and behavior, and all that we need to exist.”
I think it is the
intellectuals that brought the script along with their Sanskrit and Pali rolls
to these lands. These monk students had gone to study Buddhism in the greatest
centres that existed in South India of that time. A case in point is Tanjore in
South India, which used to be a great centre of Buddhist learning. There is
some credence to the theory that the Brahmins were afraid of the rapid
expansion of Buddhism and felt threatened and were involved in a conspiracy to
put an end to the spread of Buddhism. In any case, histories in the recipient
countries such as Myanmar all speak of journeys by the Buddhist monks to
Tanjore and Sri Lanka and bringing back of the manuscripts in Sanskrit and Pali
and then putting down of Pyu, Mon and Bamar languages into the Pallava Script
which evolved into the current written form.
Countries, which
were Hindu or Buddhist, have remained so till today: Thailand, Burma, Laos,
Cambodia, and Vietnam. All are predominantly Buddhist. The newly converted
countries (to Islam) are Bangladesh, Malays of Malaysia and most Indonesians,
where Buddhism and Hinduism survive to a small degree.
There were no
Sultanates in what is now Malaysia. A HINDU prince from Majapahit kingdom
PARAMESWARA by name came to the area, where the current city of Malacca stands,
this was in the early 15th century. Soon after the mighty navigator Zheng He/Cheng Ho came through Malacca and had taken the ruler to the Ming Court as a guest and had sent a Chinese
princess as his consort. Malaccans surrounded themselves with clever Guajarati
Moslem traders and shrewd Chettiars from Tamil Nadu. It was from the Guajarati,
among who could be counted the First Bendahara of Malacca, that Islam spread in
Malacca and what we now call Malaysia. Converted people are always more
obstinate in their approach to religion than people born into the faith.
But Malaysia from
the beginning had Indigenous peoples, also people who had migrated down from Yunnan
and also people who had come up from Indonesian Islands including Bugis from
Sulawesi. Interesting to note that the Bugis language was written with a script
influenced by the Pallava script. Even the world MALAYA or Malay may have
Pallava or Tamil origin since it means HILLS in Tamil and I have actually met
an indigenous group in Kerala who are Australoid and are called MALAYAN. Meaning
people of the Hills.
So, who are the
Bumiputra anyway? Is Mahathir who was a PM before, who is the son of a recent migrant from India, an
immigrant or Malay? And the Current PM of Malaysia, Najib Razak, who is
descended from recent immigrants from Southern Sulawesi, an immigrant or Malay?
Or many prominent businessmen who have gotten on to the Bumiputra concessions,
who are of children of Afghan or Iranian migrants, Bumiputra?
India is the
cultural motherland of most of these countries and their people, not the
deserts of Arabia. The majority of the loan words in Malay language are from
India, whereas the loan words from Arabic are usually related to the Religion
of the Arabs.
It is nice to think
of these things, after a very pleasant and short visit to Indonesia and
Malaysia. Where I enjoyed such warmth and affection and needless to say. Excellent
food.
As an erudite young
man at our dinner party at Gotong Jaya up in the Genting Highlands remarked,
And beyond that: Human. The same Species,
despite our very human trait of segregating ourselves into one tribe or
another, we are all in reality just one tribe!
I would borrow the title of the book from that great Indonesian writer,
Pramoedya Ananta Toer…
We are not just BUMIPUTRA.. Meaning Children of the Land but BUMI
MANUSIA. The earth of mankind.
