It’s never the case that those who are rich and wealthy have any need to travel for survival needs. Millenia ago too, people tended to travel when traveling, unlike today, was dangerous, expensive and often fatal, especially overseas, for economic reasons. In fact people of Indus valley civilization were intrepid travelers, traveling by sea to ports in the gulf region, the oldest recorded date right back to the Mesopotamian times, around 2100 BC. They were traders and it is likely that those traveling into the south east Asia were traders too. While Sri Lanka and Myanmar are just over the horizon for Indian seafarers, negotiating tricky straits and storms to land in Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bali and the Philippines demonstrated their real test of skill and endurance over 2,500 years ago. Sailing west was relatively easy as the annual monsoon winds carried their sailboats from Kutch to the Gulf and then south to East Africa and a few months later, on their return journeys the trade winds, which had changed direction, would take them into lands beyond their motherland of Jambudvipa or India as it was known then.
Ancient Nomenclature
Many of the countries of South-East Asia with Indian names were colonised by sea-faring travelers from the south-eastern parts of India, namely Tamraparn or modern Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Kalinga or Orissa. The table below lists some of the ancient Indian names of countries in SE Asia. Some of these names can be found in the early Indian epic of Ramayana, where Sugriva, a monkey, is sent in search of Lady Sita in the forests of Yavadvipa, or Java. Two possibilities are relevant. Either these regions were populated by people of Indian origins for a very long time or these were inhabited much later, when the migrants replaced indigenous names with the names of places they had left behind. Something similar can be found in the practices of migrants throughout history as demonstrated by those who populated north America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, where they used names of the original British towns and villages they came from. Thus New York must have been populated by those from York in north England, while Perth is likely to have been inhabited by people from the county of Perthshire in Scotland. Note the phonetic similarities in the ancient and modern names.
Ancient Indian names of Modern South-eastern states
Indian Name - South & S-E Asian countries
Jambudvipa - Bharatavarsasha or India
Dvipantar - India abroad or ‘beyond the seas’
Indradvipa - Myanmar, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam
Nagadvipa - Thailand and parts of Malaysia
Soumya - Laos, Vietnam and parts of Thailand, also Soumya - Siam in recent past
Kamboj - Cambodia and parts of Vietnam
Malayadvipa - Malaysia
Balidvipa - Bali
Suvarnadvipa - Sumatra. Palembang was known as Srivijaya
Yavadvipa - Java
Varunadvipa - Borneo
Simhapura - Singapore
Hamasvati - Parts of south Bangladesh and Myanmar
Tamravarna - Sri Lanka
Individual vs State
The colonisation of south and south-east Asia by ancient Indians was not driven by the dual needs for power and subjugation. The driving force was one of exploration and commerce. But trading was not a fashionable occupation in ancient India, preoccupied with notions of purity and contamination. Manu, the Indian Adam, is documented in the scripture of ‘Manusmriti’ to describe trading as a "low" profession. He lumps them with arsonists, dancers, musicians and ordains that those that undertake voyages beyond the seas are 'mlechchhas' : the ritually impure, who should be ostracized socially.
As such many Indians or rather Jambudvipians were making one-way trips away from home. In line with the prevalent thinking in those times, the priestly Brahmin class looked down upon the traders, while the Kshatriya clans who were usually kings took no notice of this entrepreneurial zeal. This lack of organisational and military support for the intrepid traveller and settler from India, is probably the major driver behind the process of acculturation and assimilation that stands in direct contrast to other colonists this region has experienced since.
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