Stage one Stage two Neo-bhakti Muslim responses to coloniality Inter-religious relations: conciliation and confrontation Pre-independence India Recommendedreading
The Indian subcontinent, from its earliest millennia, has been something of a crossroads of cultures and religions. Ideas and peoples have migrated outward, influencing Southeast Asia, China,Japan, and, in the last two centuries especially, virtually every continent.
That is a story we shall explore in the final chapter. It is also apparent that many peoples and ideas came into the subcontinent in various ways becoming part of the enormously diverse landscape. Prior to the coming of any European groups, for example, there were at least a score of influences with “foreign” origins. These included a number of dynasties in the late urban period, such as the Kusanas, Sakas, and Bactrian Greeks. It included merchants, warriors, and saints of Persian, Arabic, or Afghan origin.In this chapter, we explore something of the “European” impact on India and the subcontinent’s response to it.
In the classical period, there is considerable evidence of Roman and Greek contacts and/or influence. While the Phoenicians may have been the first to sail to ports of India in the tenth century bce, it was after the discovery of the trade winds in the first century bce that maritime contact increased. Greek and Roman coins of the period were left in the ports of South India where “foreign” merchants were called yavandsf The Greek influences on the northern portions of the subcontinent were mediated through the Persian empire at first, and then through the eastern satrapies of the Greek empire. The Bactrian Greeks became one of the mediators of this influence. As observed earlier, among the results of this influence were the flourishing of new forms of anthropomorphized iconography, an increasingly sacralized notion of kingship, even a theology that helped shape the ideas of the Buddha in the Kusanas’ court and perhaps of the brahmanical deities patronized in the subsequent “vaidika” courts.