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QuoteReplyTopic: India and Naval Power Posted: 16-Oct-2006 at 08:40
7. The Jesuits came to South India from 16th century onwards. They aided and abetted the European Companies - the Dutch, the Danish, the Portugal, the French, the British. Marks, they came here with the help of Indian merchants, who trading with Arabian, African and European countries (read articles in "Antiquity", a Journal on Archaeology published from UK).
I didn't know that the Jesuits actually assisted the Dutch in anything.
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Mission of St.Thomas (Thomas Dadymus) reached India in 52 AD (fifty two AD). the first to preach Christianity in India. St Thomas reached Mylapore in Madras.
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Ashok Harsana
The Real Ranas, The Real Emperors of India. http://ashokharsana.proboards107.com/index.cgi?board=gurjars
1. "Please understand that it is not my intention to denigrate Indian history, in fact I do wish it received more attention in the western world. But at the same time, articles which contain wild and inaccurate statements tend to put off the reader and make him/her doubt the veracity of the whole article, thereby dismissing it as pseudo-science".
In earlier posying above, I have give the references.
2. The article that you posted does have a good number of such statements, and while I enjoyeed parts of it, I couldn't help but notice some pretty wild, inaccurate, doubtful or poorly presented statements. More very debatable statements in that article... "The mention of ivory by Homer and of several other Indian articles assign the trade a very ancient date". Right, and the fact that one could get ivory from Africa, which was much closer to Greece does not matter. What are the other articles which are Indian?
Cloth, rice, teak wood, all have been mentioned by Kennedy, Warmington etc.
3. "Homer knew tin by its Sanskrit name" - There is no source or quotation. This Sanskrit name is not even given. Greek and Sanskrit are related: how do we know that the name for tin was not derived from the original IE language?
Read Illiad and Oddessy.
4. "Of the producer of loom, silk was more largely imported from India into ancient Rome than either in Egypt or in Greece... The most valuable of the exports of India was silk, which was under the Persian Empire is said to have exchanged by weight of gold." Silk was produced in China at this date, not in India. In fact, the Chinese had a monopoly on its production until the 6th century AD.
For this, you give evidence.
4. "The name China is of Hindu origin and comes to us from India." Silly me! I thought that the name came from the first unifying imperial dynasty of China: Qin (pronounced Chin). "Still it is remarkable that whereas many Hindu missionaries preached Buddhism in China, the idea of making Confucianism known to India seems never to have entered the head of any Chinese." This is due to the Chinese xenophobia and disinterest in the rest of the world, and not to some sort of Indian cultural superiority, as the article seems to imply.
In the India literature it is mentioned like that.
5. "The tradition is reported also by old American sea-captains that fishing boats like the sloop, yawl, cutter, etc. so common in the United States waters were modeled in the '"colonial period" on Hindu patterns" I have a good deal of doubt over this statement.
Read the books on history of Shipping, navigation, Stellar navigation, longitude problem etc. I have mentioned some references above.
6. "The ruler of Travancore, Marthanda Varma, routed an invading Dutch fleet; the Dutch commander, Delannoy, joined the Travancore army and served for decades; the Dutch never recovered from this debacle and were never again a colonial threat to India." The Dutch were not a colonial threat to India not because of this defeat, but because of the English sea-power and also because of their destructive trade practices.
I have explained above. The European Companies tried, but they fought with each other and finally the British could manage in "colonialism" is different.
1. "Please understand that it is not my intention to denigrate Indian history, in fact I do wish it received more attention in the western world. But at the same time, articles which contain wild and inaccurate statements tend to put off the reader and make him/her doubt the veracity of the whole article, thereby dismissing it as pseudo-science".
In earlier posying above, I have give the references.
Just because an article gives references, that does not mean the references themselves are accurate. Again, Indian history is very interesting and important, but many articles on its history posted on the internet make wild claims and should be taken with a grain of salt. This goes for the history of many countries, not just India.
Originally posted by M. Nachiappan
2. The article that you posted does have a good number of such statements, and while I enjoyeed parts of it, I couldn't help but notice some pretty wild, inaccurate, doubtful or poorly presented statements. More very debatable statements in that article... "The mention of ivory by Homer and of several other Indian articles assign the trade a very ancient date". Right, and the fact that one could get ivory from Africa, which was much closer to Greece does not matter. What are the other articles which are Indian?
Cloth, rice, teak wood, all have been mentioned by Kennedy, Warmington etc.
3. "Homer knew tin by its Sanskrit name" - There is no source or quotation. This Sanskrit name is not even given. Greek and Sanskrit are related: how do we know that the name for tin was not derived from the original IE language?
Read Illiad and Oddessy.
I have read it, but that does not answer my question. Greek and Sanskrit are related: how do we know that the Greek word for tin came from Sanskrit, and not from the original IE root language, or from another language from which Sanskrit also borrowed?
Originally posted by M. Nachiappan
4. "Of the producer of loom, silk was more largely imported from India into ancient Rome than either in Egypt or in Greece... The most valuable of the exports of India was silk, which was under the Persian Empire is said to have exchanged by weight of gold." Silk was produced in China at this date, not in India. In fact, the Chinese had a monopoly on its production until the 6th century AD. For this, you give evidence.
4. "The name China is of Hindu origin and comes to us from India." Silly me! I thought that the name came from the first unifying imperial dynasty of China: Qin (pronounced Chin). "Still it is remarkable that whereas many Hindu missionaries preached Buddhism in China, the idea of making Confucianism known to India seems never to have entered the head of any Chinese." This is due to the Chinese xenophobia and disinterest in the rest of the world, and not to some sort of Indian cultural superiority, as the article seems to imply. In the India literature it is mentioned like that.
The Indian name for China : Cina, came from the state of Qin, which was closest to the silk trading routes crossing Yunnan and Burma. The Europeans first knew of China as Seres (from the latin word for silk) during Roman times, then as Cathay (from the state that the Khitans formed in Northern China in the 10th century), and finaly as China, from the Qing dynasty. The confusion probably arises from the similarity between Qin and Qing.
Originally posted by M. Nachiappan
5. "The tradition is reported also by old American sea-captains that fishing boats like the sloop, yawl, cutter, etc. so common in the United States waters were modeled in the '"colonial period" on Hindu patterns" I have a good deal of doubt over this statement. Read the books on history of Shipping, navigation, Stellar navigation, longitude problem etc. I have mentioned some references above.
By this time, the Americans were the beneficiary of a centuries long naval tradition originating in Europe and had minimal contacts with India. Given this situation, the odds of them borrowing naval designs from India are rather small. Let's look at the names too: sloop for instance is derived from Dutch,a nother people with a very long naval tradition.
As a general statement about naval history, some elements of ship-building used in India were indeed borrowed by the west but from the muslim world, not India. Also, this did not happen in the colonial period in America, but rather much earlier.
Originally posted by M. Nachiappan
6. "The ruler of Travancore, Marthanda Varma, routed an invading Dutch fleet; the Dutch commander, Delannoy, joined the Travancore army and served for decades; the Dutch never recovered from this debacle and were never again a colonial threat to India." The Dutch were not a colonial threat to India not because of this defeat, but because of the English sea-power and also because of their destructive trade practices.
I have explained above. The European Companies tried, but they fought with each other and finally the British could manage in "colonialism" is different.
Well that's the whole point: it is not a minor defeat at the hands of an Indian power which made the Dutch not be a threat to India anymore, but rather the competition from the British East India Trading Company, as well as the poor management of the later VOC (the Dutch India company).
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.- Mohandas Gandhi
You ask anything speciically, I shall give the proof.
If you could refute, do it with proof.
Yes, we have to remove chaff from the grains, but do not call all grains are chaff. You refer to "many articles" making tall claims, but here in the context, let us debate.
It was William Jones, who first pointed out. I do not want to repeat all the known facts. If etymological exercise is done, wee can find out the origin of Greek word for "tin". Anyway, how Tin is called in Greek?
Indian shipping dates back to BCE only. But, there have been the problem of archaeological evidences. I just posted about Navy of Cholas as written by KAN Sastry. I shall try to elaborate it with Tamil literature, as it has long tradition.
The Danish-Dutch-Portuguese-French-British issue shall be dealt with separately, whaich I shall do it.
The archaeological remains of the ships sailed on the oceans some 5500 YBP cannot be shown. The maps of that period would not be available. How they handled "longitudinal problem" would not be known.
Indian goods had been found abundantly in the ancient world.
I am arguing with sources only. That is why I have mentioned about the archaeological evidences.
In fact, about the maps, several claims are made giving credit to Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese and Arabs of different periods. But, no Indian maps are talked about!
It is well known that the ships made of wood or even rheeds would not have been available because of time, but the the correlative evidences cannot be ignored.
The maps of Hindus, Jews, Chinese are strikingly similar.
Even upto medieval period, the Arabs and Europeans could draw only approximate depiction of world in circular shape with the circular land mass.
Indian maps are taken away by the jesuits. I give the following details:
Anthony Monserrate (1536-1600), Claude Stanislaus Boudier (1686-1757), Jean-Venant Bouchet (1655-1732), Joseph Tieffenthaler (1710-1785), Francis Xavier Wendel (c.1730-1803), James Runnel (1742-1830), etc, have collected many-many Indian maps, charts, tables, samples and books on different sciences including Geography.
Thus, the first reliable map of India was the work of DAnville, achieved due to the meticulous field-work done by the above Jesuits.
As the Indian maps, geographical diagrams, pictures, charts were continuously taken away by the missionaries, there were no maps drawn by Indians are available and they are accused of their ignorance of cartography in spite of their ship-building, navigation and oceanic adventures undertaken to different countries! But, it is evident that Indians had maps, as they had the required knowledge of gnomon, longitude-latitude, triangulation, geodetic survey, projection and the maps prepared were definitely taken away by the Chinese, Arabs and Europeans.
History is not what was written or is written, but it is actually what had happened in the past.
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