Greater India
Greater India, also known as the Indian cultural sphere, or the Indic world, is an area composed of several countries and regions in South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by Indian culture, which itself formed from the various distinct indigenous cultures of the Indian subcontinent. It is an umbrella term encompassing the Indian subcontinent and surrounding countries, which are culturally linked through a diverse cultural cline. These countries have been transformed to varying degrees by the adoption and incorporation of cultural and institutional elements from each other.
From around 500 BCE, Asia's expanding land and maritime trade had resulted in prolonged socio-economic and cultural stimulation and diffusion of Buddhist and Hindu beliefs into the region's cosmology, in particular in Southeast Asia and the Far-East.
In Central Asia, the transmission of ideas was predominantly of a religious nature and short-lived, often co-existing with native philosophies such as Zoroastrianism and being quickly supplanted by the rise of Islam. In contrast, the spread of native Indian culture to East Asia was more multifaced and involved wide-ranging cultural exchange beyond religion.
By the early centuries of the common era, most of the principalities of Southeast Asia had effectively absorbed defining aspects of Indian culture, religion, and administration. The notion of divine god-kingship was introduced by the concept of Harihara, and Sanskrit and other Indian epigraphic systems were declared official, like those of the south Indian Pallava dynasty and Chalukya dynasty. These Indianized kingdoms, a term coined by George Cœdès in his work Histoire ancienne des états hindouisés d'Extrême-Orient, were characterized by resilience, political integrity, and administrative stability.
To the north, Indian religious ideas were assimilated into the cosmology of Himalayan peoples, most profoundly in Tibet and Bhutan, and merged with indigenous traditions. Buddhist monasticism extended into Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and other parts of Central Asia, and Buddhist texts and ideas were accepted in China and Japan in the east. To the west, Indian culture converged with Greater Persia via the Hindu Kush and the Pamir Mountains.
Evolution of the concept
Geographical designation
The concept of the Three Indias was in common circulation in pre-industrial Europe. Greater India was the southern part of South Asia, Lesser India was the northern part of South Asia, and Middle India was the region near the Middle East. The Portuguese form was used at least since the mid-15th century. The term, which seems to have been used with variable precision, sometimes meant only the Indian subcontinent; Europeans used a variety of terms related to South Asia to designate the South Asian peninsula, including High India, Greater India, Exterior India and India aquosa.However, in some accounts of European nautical voyages, Greater India extended from the Malabar Coast to India extra Gangem and India Minor, from Malabar to Sind. Farther India was sometimes used to cover all of modern Southeast Asia. Until the fourteenth century, India could also mean areas along the Red Sea, including Somalia, South Arabia, and Ethiopia.
In late 19th-century geography, Greater India referred to a region that included: " Himalaya, Punjab, Hindustan, Burma, Indo-China, Sunda Islands, Borneo, Celebes, and Philippines." German atlases distinguished Vorder-Indien as the South Asian peninsula and Hinter-Indien as Southeast Asia.
Geological connotation
Greater India, or Greater India Basin also signifies "the Indian Plate plus a postulated northern extension", the product of the Indian–Asia collision. Although its usage in geology pre-dates Plate tectonic theory, the term has seen increased usage since the 1970s. It is unknown when and where the India–Asia convergence occurred, at or before 52 million years ago. The plates have converged up to ±. The upper crustal shortening is documented from geological record of Asia and the Himalaya as up to approximately less.Cultural sphere
The use of Greater India to refer to an Indian cultural sphere was popularised by a network of Bengali scholars in the 1920s who were all members of the Calcutta-based Greater India Society. The movement's early leaders included the historian R. C. Majumdar ; the philologists Suniti Kumar Chatterji and P. C. Bagchi, and the historians Phanindranath Bose and Kalidas Nag. Some of their formulations were inspired by concurrent excavations in Angkor by French archaeologists and by the writings of French Indologist Sylvain Lévi. The scholars of the society postulated a benevolent ancient Indian cultural colonisation of Southeast Asia, in stark contrast – in their view – to the Western colonialism of the early 20th century.By some accounts Greater India consists of "lands including Burma, Java, Cambodia, Bali, and the former Champa and Funan polities of present-day Vietnam," in which Indian and Hindu culture left an "imprint in the form of monuments, inscriptions and other traces of the historic "Indianizing" process." By some other accounts, many Pacific societies and "most of the Buddhist world including Ceylon, Tibet, Central Asia, and even Japan were held to fall within this web of Indianizing culture colonies" This particular usage – implying cultural "sphere of influence" of India – was promoted by the Greater India Society, formed by a group of Bengali men of letters, and is not found before the 1920s. The term Greater India was used in historical writing in India into the 1970s.
Indianization
The concept of "Indianized kingdoms" and "Indianization", coined by George Coedès, originally describes Southeast Asian principalities that flourished from the early common era as a result of centuries of socio-economic interaction having incorporated central aspects of Indian institutions, religion, statecraft, administration, culture, epigraphy, literature and architecture.Expansionist and political concept
The term Greater India and the notion of an explicit Hindu expansion of ancient Southeast Asia have been linked to both Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. The English term was popularised in the late 19th and the 20th century as a view of an expansionist India within the context of East Asia. However, many Indian nationalists, like Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore, although receptive to "an idealisation of India as a benign and uncoercive world civiliser and font of global enlightenment," stayed away from explicit "Greater India" formulations. In addition, some scholars have seen the Hindu/Buddhist acculturation in ancient Southeast Asia as "a single cultural process in which Southeast Asia was the matrix and South Asia the mediatrix." In the field of art history, especially in American writings, the term survived due to the influence of art theorist Ananda Coomaraswamy. Coomaraswamy's view of pan-Indian art history was influenced by the "Calcutta cultural nationalists."Its modern meanings often invoke images of soft power. The region is considered in Indian political circles as part of India's extended neighbourhood, and modern integration was propelled through a multifaceted acceleration of economic and strategic interaction under the "Look East" policy, and more recently has involved deepening military ties as well.
Sri Lanka also continues to have strong political links with Southeast Asia, asked by ASEAN to be a founding member, and has recently been increasing integration with Southeast Asia through its own "Look East" policy; politicians view the relationship between Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia as second only to South Asia.
Indian cultural influence
Cultural expansion
Culture spread via the trade routes that linked India with southern Burma, central and southern Siam, the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra to Java, lower Cambodia and Champa. The Pali and Sanskrit languages and the Indian script, together with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Brahmanism and Hinduism, were transmitted from direct contact as well as through sacred texts and Indian literature. Southeast Asia had developed some prosperous and very powerful colonial empires that contributed to Hindu-Buddhist artistic creations and architectural developments. Art and architectural creations that rivaled those built in India, especially in its sheer size, design and aesthetic achievements. The notable examples are Borobudur in Java and Angkor monuments in Cambodia. The Srivijaya Empire to the south and the Khmer Empire to the north competed for influence in the region.A defining characteristic of the cultural link between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent was the adoption of ancient Indian Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist culture and philosophy into Myanmar, Tibet, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaya, Laos and Cambodia. Indian scripts are found in Southeast Asian islands ranging from Sumatra, Java, Bali, South Sulawesi and the Philippines. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata have had a large impact on South Asia and Southeast Asia. One of the most tangible evidence of dharmic Hindu traditions is the widespread use of the Añjali Mudrā gesture of greeting and respect. It is seen in the Indian namasté and similar gestures known throughout Southeast Asia; its cognates include the Cambodian sampeah, the Indonesian sembah, the Japanese gassho and Thai wai.
Beyond the Himalaya and Hindukush mountains in the north, along the Silk Route, Indian influence was linked with Buddhism. Tibet and Khotan were direct heirs of Gangetic Buddhism, despite the difference in languages. Many Tibetan monks even used to know Sanskrit very well. In Khotan the Ramayana was well cicrulated in Khotanese language, though the narrative is slightly different from the Gangetic version. In Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan many Buddhist monasteries were established. These countries were used as a kind of springboard for the monks who brought Indian Buddhist texts and images to China. Further north, in the Gobi Desert, statues of Ganesha and Kartikeya were found alongside Buddhist imagery in the Mogao Caves.