Indianisation

Indianisation (also spelt as Indianization) may refer to the spread of Indian languages, culture, diaspora, cuisines, economic reach and impact beyond the Indian subcontinent.

History

Ancient era

Presence and spread of Sanskrit

Indianisation took place in Southeast Asia mainly from the first millennium onwards through trade and religion.

Indo-Greek Kingdom

The blending of Indian and Greek cultures eventually produced the unique Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, the region spanning parts of present-day Afghanistan and the northwestern frontier.

The Indo-Greeks and the Shungas seem to have reconciled and exchanged diplomatic missions around 113 BCE, as indicated by the Heliodorus pillar, which records the dispatch of a Greek ambassador named Heliodorus, from the court of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas, to the court of the Shunga emperor Bhagabhadra at the site of Vidisha in central India. A pillar known as the Heliodorus column stands at Besnagar, near Sanchi in Central India. Dating back to the first century BC, it features a Sanskrit inscription that offers valuable insight into the Indianization of the Greeks who had settled on the Indian frontier. The pillar illustrates how these Greeks absorbed Indian culture. The inscription has been translated as follows:

This Garuda column of Vasudeva (Vishnu), the God of gods, was erected by Heliodorus, a worshipper of Vishnu, the son of Dion, and an inhabitant of Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the great King Antialcidas to King Kashiputra Bhagabhadra, the saviour, then reigning in the fourteenth year of his kingship.
Three immortal precepts, when practised well, lead to heaven—self-restraint, self-sacrifice (charity), conscientiousness.

Kushan Empire

During the reigns of Kanishka I and Huvishka, the dynastic self-representation of the Kushan emperors was formed from ethnic and cultural elements characteristic of Bactria. This may have been intended to reinforce the conception of Bactria or more precisely, Tokharistan as the imperial homeland of the Kushans, the site at which Kanishka’s successful conquest of India was commemorated. Such a reorientation is especially noteworthy in view of the pronounced emphasis on Indian cultural motifs that characterized the coinage of Vima Kadphises. In the later period, the western territories of the Kushan Empire, including Bactria itself, fell under Sasanian control, confining Kushan rule to Indian lands alone. This territorial contraction appears to have encouraged a further evolution of their dynastic self-representation toward a more distinctly Indian identity.

Colonial era

The term Indianisation was used in British India to describe the inclusion of native people in running India. For example, the Indian Armed Force began to Indianise in 1917. In the early 20th century, discourse around Indianisation also revolved around the emerging scholarship on an ancient Greater India and the possibility to re-assert India's value and independence. Initially, the theory considered it likely that Indians had colonised Southeast Asia in developing it, though later it became clear that influence occurred mainly through trade and peaceful contact.

Indian cultural influence

Silk Road transmission of Buddhism

Historical spread of Indian culture beyond India proper:

Indian inventions

Indian soft power

Historic Indosphere cultural influence zone of Greater India for transmission of elements of Indian arts, architecture, culture, religion, martial arts, etc.

Global spread of Indian soft power:

Names

Indian diaspora

Global Indian diaspora is world's largest diaspora, which includes NRIs, OCI, PIO, and mixed races:

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "On a seal of Kaniška II or III, the king has lost his designation ‘Kušān’ but now has the new title υνδογανο þαο ‘king of the Indians’ (Sims-Williams – Tucker 2006, 588). The Kamra inscription of Vasiška does mention the designation, whereas the Ārā Inscription of his son Kaniška III does not (on both inscriptions cf. Falk 2009, 27–28); at the same time the title Kušānšāh was used by the Sāsānian subsidiary dynasty in Bactria, and the territory was also named the Kušānšahr in Sāsānian inscriptions, (so noted by Cribb 2018, 17)."

References

  1. ↑ Smith, Monica (1999-01-01). ""Indianization" from the Indian Point of View: Trade and Cultural Contacts with Southeast Asia in the Early First Millennium C.E.". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 42 (1): 1–26. doi:10.1163/1568520991445588. ISSN 1568-5209.
  2. 1 2 Khilnani, Sunil. The Discovery of India. p. 138.
  3. ↑ Ravindran, T.K. (1973). Journal of Indian History. Vol. 51. Department of Modern Indian History. p. 441.
  4. ↑ Härtel, Stefan. Studia Hercynia XXVIII/2 (PDF). Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. p. 117–118.
  5. ↑ Sundaram, Chandar S. (2019-04-25). Indianization, the Officer Corps, and the Indian Army: The Forgotten Debate, 1817–1917. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. ISBN 978-1-4985-7952-0.
  6. ↑ Vivekanandan, Jayashree (2018-01-02). "Indianisation or indigenisation? Greater India and the politics of cultural diffusionism". Commonwealth & Comparative Politics. 56 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1080/14662043.2018.1411232. ISSN 1466-2043.
  7. ↑ Trautmann, Thomas R. 1997, Aryans and British India. Berkeley: University of California Press., Bryant 2001.
  8. ↑ "Indology | Definition of Indology by Lexico". Lexico Dictionaries | English. Archived from the original on 30 August 2019.