Book Review #98: The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History By Sanjeev Sanyal

Title: The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

Author: Sanjeev Sanyal

Publishers: Penguin India

Genre: Geo-political History/History/Maritime History

Pages: 374 (Paperback)

Source: Personal Copy

Being a regular reader of the history I was fascinated by this book by the author Sanjeev Sanyal. Having read his previous book "Land of the Seven Rivers" I was all eager to read this new book. In his previous book, he talked about the seven important rivers of India including the mighty Saraswati River. The Land of seven rivers was summed up in one line as “Seven Rivers (Sapth Sindhu), One Country, Five Millennia, Startling History”.

Asian histories have been rendered in a biased manner since time immemorial. As a famous saying that goes, until an animal has its own history, the history of the hunting will always glorify the hunter. If we take any history curriculum in Indian education system, we can read leaps and bounds of Mughul Empire, the British regime, the Sultanates and such similar accounts. 

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to read the histories of Cholas, Pandyas, Pallavas in greater detail and their glories have been limited to few pages here and there. This book, one of a kind in its genre, breaks that stupor and gives us a riveting account of how the Indian Ocean has shaped the human history. Indian Ocean is itself a big mystery. It holds many unresolved or undiscovered history that is hidden deep into its core. Author Sanjeev Sanyal tried to uncover this in this vast researched and well articulated book and succeeded in satiating his readers.

The book opens up by a fascinating tale of how the Pallava dynasty has traced an heir to their Kingdom when the erstwhile King, Parameshwara Verman II died in 731 CE. A delegation of Brahmin scholars, which travelled across the Indian Ocean to the far ends of Cambodia, and got back an heir that traced his roots to the Pallava dynasty from five long generations ago!! Thus, the reign of Nandi Verman II has started.

Hundreds of questions pop up as we read further through the book. For example:

Why did Vasco Da Gama worship in a Hindu temple when he set in India for the first time?

Why there are fossil remain of marine animals have been found in the Himalayas?

How come the Parsi community of India embraced the Guajrati culture so effortlessly?

How did the Sinhalese come to Sri Lanka?

What was the connection of the Sri Vijaya Empire with the Chinese?

How did the world’s second Mosque (King Cheraman Perumal) have been built in Kerala, India? What was the motive behind it?

How did Portuguese and Dutch have taken advantage in conquering parts of India?

How come we see oriental faces of engravings by Pallavas?

And so on…

The Ocean of Churn begins its journey even before the formation of the Indian Ocean. It talks about the super continent called Gondwana (This name is derived from the Gond tribe of the central India) that existed more than 270 million years ago and the mighty Saraswati River and how it dried up due to the tectonic plate shifts, how the Himalaya has been formed, and how the races have been migrated from India to outside world. This book traces the history through the Ocean way. How people set up its civilizations, how their trade hub got established, what was their commercial aspects, how they dealt with various traders inside and outside their territory and so on.

Sanjeev Sanyal views this history as Complex Adaptive System. Given his background in Economics, where he considers multiple factors act upon a system to determine the direction it takes. From Harrappan times, Indians have been trading with the world in many ways. Maritime trading is the major aspect during those times when land routes were hardly discovered. The powerful Chola king, Rajendra Chola made a naval attack on the Sri Vijaya Kingdom of Sumatra by 1025 is one such example. Chola Empire was one of the powerful empires in the entire South Asia region during that time. There were a major geo-political-economic alliances or rivalries between Indians, Chinese and the Sri Vijaya Kingdom.

Kerala being the hub of the maritime trade have witnessed a vast amount of geo-political-economic tradeoffs. As a testimony to those, even today in Kerala, we have the world’s second Mosque and India’s first mosque (Cheraman Perumal Mosque) built by the king Cherman Perumal by the orders of Mohammed the prophet himself in 629 AD. We also get to see the memorial of St. Thomas (doubting Thomas fame), a disciple of Jesus, who visited Kerala via sea route.

Overall, this book is a well researched one. It starts right from the origin of India Ocean due to the tectonic plate shifts and ends right at the transformation of Bombay to Mumbai with the reclamation of land over the Ocean. This book is full of rich details of all Kingdoms that throve around the Indian Ocean, Indian coastline, and several islands of the Indian Ocean that also had cultural trade ties with India and its Kingdoms.

Author personally visited several of these places that he mentions in his book. It shows what kind of painstaking research that he has put in this book. It is extremely informative and knowledge enhancing. As the author himself remarks at the end of the book “A systematic bias I have found in the existing literature is the preference given to the writers and sources from outside the continents.” This is evidently true, as we are fed with the histories that are written by mentally enslaved minds. It is time to look through a new perspective and stop looking towards the west for our recognition. India was and is an ancient lands with many millions years of history. Authors like Sanjeev Sanyal should be encouraged by reading these kinds of books.

My Rating:

5/5

Book Review #13 - Sartha By Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa

There are few books that can easily translocate you into an alternate universe. Sartha penned by Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa is one such book. From among his many gem of novels, Sartha surely finds place in top 5 without a doubt. This is one of the profound works of Dr. SLB sir under historical fiction category.

Sartha first published in 1998 in Kannada have seen numerous reprints in the following years. Later, this book got translated into all the major languages of India including Sanskrit. The beauty of this book lies in its usage of the various sanskrit verses which is tactically adopted to the novel. This book translated to English under the title "Sartha - The Caravan".

Sartha which literally means trading caravan of ancient India. This book is a physical as well as a metaphysical journey that takes the protagonist of the novel; a vedic scholar Nagabhattta.

The entire story takes place somewhere around the 8th century CE. This era mainly depicts the historical, political, economic and religious conditions of India. This is also the period where Buddhism was at its peak in India, followed by other monotheistic religions.

The protagonist Nagabhatta is a well educated vedic scholar trained in famous Mimamsa under an ace guru Mandana Mishra. Nagabhatta lived in a kingdom called Taravati. King Amaruka was ruling this Taravati state. This place is a fictitious place created by the author somewhere between the Northern and Southern India. Amaruka is also happened to be a good friend of our novel's protagonist Nagabhatta.

The plot opens when King Amaruka, who insists Nagabhatta on a voyage to understand the various trade secrets of other countries and kingdoms. Nagabhatta, leaving his wife and his mother begins his epic journey along the trade routes of ancient India. Having disguised himself as a student of religious studies, he joins a Sartha group and travels along with them. He informs the Sartha headman that, he is heading to Kashi to study the advanced vedic subjects. But in reality, his intentions was to know the trade secrets and thereby helping his friend and king Amaruka.

It so happened one day during their journey that, the Sartha group leaves Nagabhatta in a town and informs him that they are heading to a different direction. The headman of the Sartha group takes Nagabhatta to a nearby Buddhist temple and arranges a stay for him by talking to a Bhikku. Here, Nagabhatta explore various intricacies of Buddhism and other stories of it. This will gradually makes Nagabhatta to foreget his mission of finding the trade secrets.

This event marks an impact on Nagabhatta's ideas about all religions. Thus, his tryst with various religious subjects, practices, cultures, and philosophies beings. This also led Nagabhatta to realize himself more deep and deeper.

Without going much deep into the novel. I will only highlight the important events of the novel, thereby maintaining the surprising stories of the novel in between. In the course of his stay at Buddhist temple and wandering the places around he encounters Buddhist Bhikku's, Yogi's, Left hand tantric experts (popularly known as Vamachara). He also meets Adi Shankaracharya, and Kumarila Bhatta. Having an emptiness throughout his life and in order to find a purpose for his life, Nagabhatta tries his hands in all of these practices. He starts to learn Yoga, at one point in the novel he becomes an Aghori by joining some Naga Sadhus. He also tries to revive his vedic studies and finally he visit the first university of the world Nalanda.

The vivid description of the Nalanda University is an awesome attempt by the author. He describes the length and breadth of this ancient university. He also emphasizes on various subjects that might have been taught at this university and the number of students that might have studied at one point of time, etc...

As the book progresses further, Nagabhatta loses his interests in finding out the trade secrets. He just wanders many cities, forests and countries. Finally, he settles down in a town where he joins a troupe that enacts the episodes from the chronicles of life of Sri Kirshna and Sri Rama. Here, he befriends Chandrika a fellow artist in the troupe and the female protagonist of the book. She was a lead female character in the troupe. She was a good singer and known to practice yoga as well. Nagabhatta took interest in her and soon their love story takes another track in the novel.

As the novel progresses towards the end, various circumstances leds Nagabhatta to witness an epic debate between his guru Mandana Mishra and Adi Shankaracharya. This debate was presided by Ubhaya Bharati, the wife of Madana Mishra. This debate was mainly based on the vedic related topics. Outlines of this debate, which leads to the defeat of Mandana Mishra at the hands of very young Adi Shankaracharya. This loss made Mandana Mishra to become a disciple of Adi Shankaracharya.

The interesting section arrives when Ubhaya Bharati, wife of Mandana Mishra, tries to save her husband from becoming a follower of Adi Shankaracharya by leaving everything. She poses various questions to Adi Shankaracharya, which leads Adi Shankaracharya to find out the details about Parakaya-Pravesha.

At the very end of this novel, Nagabhatta's troupe was performing in Mulasthana which is present Multan.
This was controlled by Arabs at that time. Arabs have disrupted the fair practice of Sartha. There is an interesting tale of Arabs trying to destroy the Mulasthana temple and Nagabhatta's troupe is trying to garner enough support from the local populace for a coup. But, these plans were failed miserably, which was severely dealt by Arabs. Arabs have detained Nagabhatta and Chandrika. Nagabhatta was severely tortured whereas, Chandrika was brutally raped. Getting released from the clutches of Arabs, Nagabhatta and Chandrika decides to runaway to a far place and finally decides to get married. This marks the end of the book.

The canvas which the author sets for his novel is very panoramic. A transition period in India where there was a lot of turmoil. There were lot of cultural clashes, Buddhists, Purva-Mimamsa, Tantric and Uttara-Mimamsa, etc... And, our protagonist's roller-coaster ride; Advent of monotheistic religions to India. The author presents before us a work of historical fiction where little damages has been done to the historical accuracy yet leaving enough room for him to build his plot very creatively.

Finally, the language used is very simple but so powerful. With many sanskrit verses used in between the story is very apt and justifiable. I find this in all works of Dr. SLB. It is certainly a treat to read him. Only his readers can experience the joy in his works and one is hard-pressed for words to describe the whole reading experience.

My Rating: 5/5