La Na

I may be beginning to learn a bit about Thai history just as I begin to feel attracted to South America again.

Lanna is a name given a large section of the north of Thailand. Petchaboon, where I am now may mark the southern boundary of Lanna. However my guess is that it lies south of that boundary. There is a mountainous area not far north of Petchaboon which seems to mark that boundary pretty well

I see a way to make a home for myself here in Petchaboon, but do not find myself strongly attracted to the idea. I may move back to Chaing Mai before the end of the year. There I may have some more work don on my eyes and prepare for a move to .....perhaps Manizales, in Caldas Colombia.

The beginnings of Lanna  fairly well coincides with the beginning of modern Thailand. I'm not very confident of any understanding of Thai history yet, but I'll do the best I can at the moment. Lanna became influential in Siam at about the same time as Mongol-Chinese influence was on the upswing in SEA. The people of Lanna with their King Mengri were among the few to successfully resist that powerful influence.

Southeast Asia which had long been strongly Indianized became so Sinicized that has been called Indo-China.

I guess that what must Thais learn is that Mengri successfully resisted a Mongol led Chinese encroachment on the area and with two friendly kings went on to found Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and other important cities which exist today and began a culture well recognized today.

More SEA: Gunjarat

Gunjarat is not in SEA, South East Asia. It faces the Arabian sea as a state in western India. I was the seat of the Indus Valley Civilization. A Gunjar nation was probably trading with Sugar before 1000 BC.  It was probably dealing with with pre-Islamic Arabs before 500 BC. Muslims were active in the area before 11200 AD. People of Gunjar may have traded with people of SEA before did Tamil people of southeast India. People of southeast India were trading in SEA before the birth of Buddha.


Indian Muslim traders from Gunjarat were probably the source of Islam in SEA. Those sea-going traders well knew the stretch of water, between the the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, known as the straits of Malacca. Traders from Arabia, Persia, and southern Indian kingdoms used those straights to reach Kedah and Guangzhou as the Gunjar had earlier.


Keda is located at the entrance to the Straits. It lays on the Spice Route. Tamils knew Kedah as Kedaram. Very early settlers in Kedah were sea-faring Austronesians. Their descendants traded widely.


Guagzhu is the Chines area we know as Canton. It hah been called Panyu and by about 200 BC became a kingdom which included Vietnam. Beginning about the 7th century and continuing through the 12th century Arab and Persian traders were well known in Guangzhou. By around 800 AD those traders may have been known as sometimes pirates and slavers.


Trade in SEA has been important from very early times, especially sea trade. There is likely to have been trade between India and China passing through SEA and entrepots there from about 3000 BC: that's over 5000 years of ongoing interaction.


In the later days of that SEA trade I say that the Persians and Arabs followed the Indians; the Portuguese followed the Arabs; the Dutch followed the Portuguese; the English followed the Dutch. U.S. interests followed the English. All these interests pirated, cheated, and killed to maintain their positions.


Malaysians are related to Polynesians. As a sea-going people of the region they played an important part in the doings their from earliest times until now. The Malaysian peninsula forms one side of the Straits.


Sumatra, forming the other side of the Straits, is the largest SEA island entirely in Indonesia. Settlement and colonization of Sumatra was begun by Austronesians from Taiwan about 500 BC. Sumatra was known as a source of gold from early times.


Gunjarat effected SEA from ancient times. Could that effect have begun in a bronze age of about 3500 BC? Could it have reached as far as present northeast Myanmar?


What do we know of Islam in India before 1000 AD? Were pre-Islamic Arab traders actively trading between Gunjarat and the Straits of Malacca before 500 BC?


Please remember that the above only represents my best guesses of the moment. And please remember too that I look forward to hearing your guesses and speculations.

Readers of These Posts

The overwhelming number of readers of these posts are in the United States.

However, they are getting views these days from 14 other countries and occasional views from twice that many.

It is not surprising that most foreign views come from our great neighbor to the north, Canada. Thank you Canada.

I am grateful to all the people who view What Then? After Canada the most views are coming from Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

Denmark and Malaysia provide the next greatest number of reads.

Germany and India have provided loyal readers.

Viewers from France, the United Arab Republic, Austria, South Korea, Russia, and Hungary keep coming back.

Thank you. Keep coming back. Leave me a comment now and then, even if you are from a clipping service.

Agastya, Holy Sage

Agastya, respecter of things Tamil, friend of the early Rishi, carrier of the blood of gods, husband of She Who Plays, Lalita.

Ancient Indian History

Tamil history seems the most interesting, ancient, and mysterious.

However, there are mysteries in other areas of Indian history.

There is a very old story of a very great king of India. His wealthy capital city disappeared beneath the sea. The city was on the west coast of India where it was washed by the Arabian Sea. In an earlier Post I wrote of of the Nabatean Arab seamen and merchants traveling those waters and trading with peoples living on its shores when the Phoenicians were babies. However, our king may have lived before those times.

We know that the tides of the Arabian Sea flow into the Gulf of Cambay on the part of the west coast that interests us here. You may know the Gulf as the Gulf of Khamhat.

Not very long ago things were found. They were found 100 feet beneath the waves of the Gulf of Cambay. The things found are thought by modern archaeologists to be human artifacts  of some sophistication dating from  time before the Indus Valley Civilization.

The myth and the recent happenings both interest me. I hope that you  can tell me more. One doesn't have to be a marine archaeologist to find out a lot more. Certain Indians have been telling the story for over 4000 years. You don't have to go to India you can go on-line. Please tell me what you find out.

Human Rights Intelligence: Thailand

Human Rights Intelligence: The “Long-Shot” & The “Sure Thing” with the International Criminal Court & Thai Royalism Global Shield « Thai Intelligence News Study Center

Thailand is far from perfect. Still, it has beauty. There is even some thing attractive about its politics. Thailand
has kept on its feet and kept its head through two World Wars and Vietnam. I pray that the good sense and good luck of the people of all of Thailand continues. I suspect that they are in for some difficult times. Just having Indian and China competing for influence in Myanmar is a difficulty.

You can begin to learn a bit about Thai politics here.

The Bright Side of Life

I've planned to be more positive in these posts, but it seems that I have not begun just yet.


Someone mentioned 'flu season.' That got me to thinking about being lucky about not having been touched by the flu for years even though I had resisted inoculation. Thinking of luck got me to thinking of 'luck' 13. One thing led to another and I got to thinking of the 1300s.


The 1300s were not a particularly luck times for Europeans. Not that it was all bad then; Universities were being founded France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia: in Spain it was the height of Arabic civilization and Yusuf the first was Caliph of Granada; scholarship was flourishing I Catholic monasteries; St. Catherine was born in Siena. Chaucer was born around 1340, In 1321 Dante Finished The Divine Comedy


Still I imagine that the Poles did not feel lucky when the Teutonic Knights blocked their access to the Baltic Sea; nor did the Jews being persecuted in Germany. The French and the English were beginning the Hundred Year War. The citizens of the Crimean city of Koffa, I imagine, did not feel lucky as they watched warriors of a Mongol army catapult the bodies of warriors dead of the bubonic plague over their walls. 


Plague.


The People of Europe and most of the world had see plague before and They would see it again. However, this one in the 1300s has been particularly memorable. It was called the Black Death and was thought to have begun in China or India between 1330 and 1333. By 1347 it had reached Cyprus. By bout 1350 it had killed about 50,000,000 Asians and 24,000,000 Europeans. People in India and China probably feel lucky either. The 25 million individuals who died in Europe between about 1347 and 1351,when the Black Death Swept Russia, may not seem dramatic by our standards, but it was half of them.


Then, early in the 1360s, it came back. It appeared in England in 1361.


The ruled classes acted disturbed by this. In 1358 they revolted in France; in 1381 in England.


Home work: Why did the describe it as the Black Death? Do you really want to know? Did you know that today wild rodents living near people are infected with the bubonic plague? Why do we call it bubonic? Is the Black Death waiting? Are you feeling lucky.


I plan to make an effort to reflect more of the bright side of life in my posts.

Some SEA Beliefs

In most of South East Asia Buddhism might be called he state Religion. However in Viet Nam the Chinese custom of state authority moderates this influence. Chinese tradition supplies an ideology that legitimized authority over many phases of life. That means that it is justified in regulating the affairs of Buddhist monks to a greater degree than is generally accepted elsewhere. The ideology I mention is, of course, Confucianism.

Of the great religions, Brahmanism seems to be the first o take hold in maritime SEA as it was in much of the mainland realms. I was followed by Saivism and Mahayana Buddhism before the arrival of Islam. Brahmanism, without much evidence of the cast system of Hinduism, was evident in most of SEA before the 7th century and was probably several centuries earlier.

Old Javanese sources from the 11th century on mention three religions under the supervision of the central government: Saivas(worshiper of Siva), Buddhists, and Reis(court Brahmins). Important Tantric rites were performed b Buddhist monks and the court Brahmin. In Java, then and now, there were other religions and sects at a greater distnce from the larger centers of power. Saints referred to bu Saias of the time were Kusika, Garga, Mairi Kurusya, and Patnjali. Also the teacher Agastya is mentioned.

Is good to keep in mind that from at least 400 BC to 1300 AD there is nearly constant commerce with India and intermediate commerce with China.

As we well know Islam became the main religion of  maritime SEA with the major exception of the Philippines. Theravada Buddhism became the main religion of mainland SEA. Islam took pervasive hold in the area more than six centuries after the foundation of Islam in the Middle East. Te first center of power of Islam was probably at Aceh of recent tsunami fame. Islam rose in Malaca and in ll directions including Patani in southern Thailand.

201011125527 | The story of Mother India

201011125527 The story of Mother India