Written by James Cooper
“Indian art had accompanied Indian religion across straits and frontiers into Sri Lanka, Java, Cambodia, Siam, Burma, Tibet, Khotan, Turkestan, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan. In Asia all roads lead from India.” Will Durant (1885-1981) American historian
Observing the battlefield, the great emperor Ashoka surveyed the vanquished. For once his mind did not dwell upon victory, he saw only
severed heads, severed arms, headless torsos and rivers of blood. Sick of war, Ashoka was experiencing a change of heart, one which would coincide with an emerging philosophy known as Buddhism.
Some two thousand years ago, Buddhism, firmly established through the patronage of King Ashok, began to migrate and spread its influence to foreign shores. Through the gateway of Manipur it entered Burma, Siam and Cambodia and for a thousand years it became the spiritual influence of the Indo/Chinese peninsula.
Throughout Burma ( Myanmar ) we find over ten thousand pagodas, temples and monasteries, remnants of the ancient Kingdom of Pagan, a Kingdom which flourished for over a thousand years, and then suddenly in the 13th century it inexplicably disappeared. Sri Ksetra was the capital of Pagan, it was home to three Vedic dynasties known as Vikarma, Gupta and Varman. We also have the Irrawady river, the largest and most prominent river which flows throughout Burma. Its name has been transported from Vedic India, reflecting the river Iravati, also known as the Ravi. Iravati is the mother of Airavata, the celestial elephant, the great mount of lord Indra. The Mekong also seems to be a reflection of its ancient Vedic past, it originally being “Ma Ganga”. Theres no dispute about the “ma” and the “mother” and it seems that Ganga is a term which for the locals means “mother of all rivers” and so there seems to be little reason to look beyond Ma Ganga as its original name.
Upon the border of Burma was the once great Kingdom of Siam ( Thailand ), around 600 AD the Buddhists installed a princess from the town of Lavapuri to become one of its prominent Queens. Her name was Camadevi, a Sanskrit name meaning the God of love. She named her Kingdom Haribhunjaya which means “the victorious land of Hari”. She is revered throughout Thailand as an icon of female emancipation and loved as a great Queen of its ancient history. Buddhism and its influence had spread from India to Burma and here we see it crossing the border into the Kingdom of Siam.
Hari
From the Kingdom of Siam the Buddhists once again crossed the border to Cambodia and one of the great temples of the world Angkor Wat. Henry Mouhot the French naturalist and explorer expressed his amazement upon encountering the great temple “It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome. To obtain any idea of its splendour one must imagine the most beautiful creations of architecture transported into depths of the forests in one of the more remote countries in the world.”
Inside Angkor Wat
Bernard Philippe Groslier the great French conservator and archaeologist exclaimed “They were the masters of their world. It was quite wonderful. There was peace and order, temples full of riches. Happy Brahmins full of good rice, good food, and of course some of the most magnificent temples ever built. Nothing in that part of the world would compare. Nothing! That’s quite something, n’est-ce pas? – isn’it?” “The Khmer took everything from India, from irrigation to astronomy and including Shiva and the rest of Hindu religion…And the Khmer built Angkor.”
Angkor Wat
The Buddhist migration 2000 years ago was not the first wave to leave the shores of Vedic India.
The ancient Vedic culture was well established in these parts when the Buddhists arrived, permitting an almost seamless cultural transition. Cambodia was originally called Camboja, reflecting the ancient bhoja dynasty of India. In Angkor Wat they uncovered an inscription which describes their neighbours ( Siam ) as syam or dark coloured people and the European seafarers of the 16th century referred to the sea route as the “road to syam”.
The Kingdom of Siam may well have been the Kingdom of Syam, a name for Krsna who is famously described as having a complexion which is dark ( Syam ) as a raincloud. When we consider that its most prominent Queen was named Camadevi and her Kingdom was Haribhunjaya, the victorious land of Hari, its quite reasonable to make such a suggestion. Siam as present day Thailand has some 76 provinces and nearly all are Sanskrit/Vedic names “buriram” “singburi” “lobpuri” “mahasarakham” “suphanburi” “uttaradit” “chantaburi” ”saraburi” “ratchaburi” “prachinburi” “chonburi” ect, ect, ect. Its capital is known to the natives as Krung Thep, this however is the short version, the full version is as follows ~
” The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the emerald Buddha, the impregnable city of Ayutthaya, of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous royal palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn “.
“There can be no reasonable doubt that a great Aryan wave of very pure blood passed through Manipur into Burma in pre-historic time” ~ Captain E. W. Dun, Gazetteer of Manipur
”India and Burma are bound by the golden chains of tradition, religion and culture as our traditional history begins with King Abhi Raja.” ~ U. Than Aung, former Burmese ambassador to India ~
“The civilizations of the Burmese and the Tibetans is derived from India.” ~ Horace Hayman Wilson, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University ~
“There can be no doubt that the architects who planned and built the Ananda temple were Indians. Everything in this temple from Sikhara to the basement as well as the numerous stone sculptures found in its corridors and the terra-cotta…adoring its basement and terraces, bear the indubitable stamp of Indian genius and craftsmanship…In this sense, we may take it, therefore, that the Ananda, though built in the Burmese capital, is an Indian temple.” ~ Charles Duroiselle, pioneer of Burmese Studies in France ~
Hare Krishna
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