Abstract
This volume explores Western India’s contributions to the intangible connectivities of the Indian Ocean World. It points to invisible ties across seas between individuals, social groups and landscapes which participated to the reality of that world and endured far longer than the merchandise. The approach is intentionally plural and eclectic, in order to offer path-breaking perspectives on the movement of ideas, knowledge, beliefs, designs, aesthetic sensibilities, memories, values and genetic programs; as well as their carriers, pilgrims, sailors, slaves, indentured labour, books, plants and seeds, etc. The chapters presented here demonstrate the pivotal role of Western India in these criss-crossing connections and the function of the maritime world as a transmitter of knowledge, as well as the long-lasting unity of a colourful maritime rim.
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Notes
- 1.
Makrand Mehta, Professor Emeritus in History at the Gujarat College, Ahmedabad , explored forgotten local sources underlining the commercial and navigational activities of historical Gujarat, thus inspiring generations of historians in India and abroad (“I have been inspired by the work of Makrand Mehta” Simpson, Chapter 14 of the present volume, p. 247). We are glad to host his paper in this publication.
- 2.
- 3.
Darshak Itihas Nidhi is a Baroda-based foundation encouraging studies and literature in the field of history and local heritage. The symposia series on maritime Gujarat was inspired and made possible by its visionary chairman Hasmukh Shah.
- 4.
“Western India” encompasses the intricate coastal line which runs from Kachchh to Konkan and which port towns share historical linguistics and economic commonalities. This includes port towns from Kachchh, from the Gulf of Khambhat and from the Konkan coast till the region of Chaul (thus including the Bombay islands). The large province of the Gujarat Sultanate (including the Peninsula of Saurashtra , parts of the Thar desert and of Deccan ) and the Bombay presidency can be used as broad territorial references of a dynamic region.
- 5.
- 6.
And the Gujarat’s capacity of overcoming the recent survival of drastic economic measures of demonetization shows how much this is still true today.
- 7.
“Lien de vie, nœud mortel,” Charles Malamoud quoted by Louis Baslé in Baslé (1992, p. 182).
- 8.
The debt as cornerstone for the social link, as described by Sarthou-Lajus in “La dette fondatrice du lien social” (Sarthou-Lajus 1997).
- 9.
On the original brokerage system of Gujarat, see Pearson (1988).
- 10.
The Persian and Mediterranean world also strongly affected Gujarat’s architectural landscape : see Keller (2017).
- 11.
Not insignificantly, Indian Institute for Management (IIM) and National Institute of Design (NID), deal with management, communication and designing.
- 12.
See the article on “Aḥmad Khattū” in Iranica Online.org; also Balachandran (2012, footnote 151, p. 84).
- 13.
- 14.
In 2016, the Gujarati community of La Réunion island invited me to present lecture series on the “Port Towns of Gujarat.” Most of their ancestors had left the region of Surat as young sailors and/or entrepreneurs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Taking advantage of their trading knowledge, they developed a strong and wealthy community in the heat of Saint -Denis and the island’s other big centres. Today, some of them continue to visit their distant relatives near Surat , and all keep a strong attachment to India (Ismael-Daoudjee 2002).
- 15.
Encouraged by financial measures such as NRI bank planning.
- 16.
See, among others, the work of C. Markovits, J. Verne and E. Lambourn.
- 17.
Engaging oneself in a sea voyage was a taboo that crossed large cultural arenas. The Odyssey, for instance, relates the wandering of Ulysses who had committed the forbidden, propelling him an irreversible spilt with his family and origins. In the Indian subcontinent , crossing the kala pani or black waters, jeopardized the traveller unable to observe the rituals of his varna , he put himself in a position of no return (even returning as a changed man, like Ulysses, meant the non-return of the person who originally set out—Penelope did not recognize her husband). Crossing the sea was thus traumatizing for those who were from a respected jati and/or had strict religious routines. Jains especially avoided going on board ships, and those who did not normally come into contact with the sea . This was particularly true of indentured labourers, hence the kala pani phobia developed in East India towards the end of the nineteenth century: “Many (kulis ) believed that traversing the ocean caused immediate exclusion from jati and varna (the social, economic, and familial organization of South Asian societies that the British administratively subsumed under the rubric ‘caste ’” (Gabaccía and Dirk Hoerder 2011, p. 126). Ghosh makes poetic reference to the subject in his novel Sea of Poppies: “Her village was so far inland that the sea seemed as distant as the netherworld: it was the chasm of darkness where the holy Ganga disappeared into the Kala-Pani, ‘the Black Water ’.” (Ghosh 2008, “One”). Also see Chakravarti, p. 32, footnote 2.
- 18.
As mentioned by French archaeologist Michael Rakotozonia during a field trip in Bharuch in 2013.
- 19.
See, for instance, the importance of Buddhism and Jainism in Bharuch and the city’s philosophical and gymnosophists embassies to the Mediterranean Sea in Ancient Rome (Beckwith mentions the memorial stone in Athens of the gymnosophist Zarmanochēgas of Barygaga: Beckwith 2015, p. 252).
- 20.
“On the other site, philosophers probably did not give enough attention to the scientific upheaval that happened before their eyes, as if a change of perspective on the nature of the reality could stay without echoing in their discipline” (Klein 1991, p. 63).
- 21.
Creativity follows diversity, and this is where Lakshmi and Saraswati reconcile, since Lakshmi needs the imagination and inspiration of Saraswati.
- 22.
It is noteworthy that the sources say the rhinoceros was gifted by the “king of the city of Combaia of India” rather than Muzaffar II, sultan of the kingdom of Gujarat, a Western Indian territory. This confusion reminds us that, across many centuries, until British colonial forces made a detailed exploration of the Indian subcontinent , Gujarat was the representative of India for the West.
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Keller, S. (2019). Introduction. In: Keller, S. (eds) Knowledge and the Indian Ocean. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96839-1_1
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