Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/98

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.



NOTES TO LECTURE II 87 the island. Agastya should have developed into "a culturehero, if not an Hero Eponymos, of the Brahmanic civilization in Indonesia." Near the earliest S'iva temple of Java, built in the Dieng • Plateau of Central Java and referred to in the inscription of Sanjaya, are stone images of Ganesa and Durgā, which savour of a South Indian origin. Among the Hindu remains at Prambanam, there occur a few fine statues of S'iva, Vişņu, Brahma and the Trimārti, which are held to recall the style and iconography of South Indian images of the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries. In his South India Bronges, Mr. O. C. Gangoly mentions the undoubted evidence of the actual transport of a South Indian icon of the Umā-Mahesvara type. In the island of Bali which was Javanized in the eighth and ninth centuries and consequently received its hinduization second-hand, are evidences of the transportation of direct influences from India, like the South Indian Pallava-Grantha script of which a modified form was in use (See Stutterheim, Indian Influences in Old Balinese Art, 1935, p. 13). Dr. B. Ch. Chhabra in his Expansion of Indo-Aryan Culture during Pallava Rule, p. 57. It has been held that the culture of Further India and Indonesia bears an unmistakable stamp of Pallava influence and would justify even the assumption that the Pallavas might have extended their authority over those far-off countries and built up an extensive colonial empire of which they formed the centre and the nucleus, though the Pallava records do not contain the slightest indication of such a state of affairs. 11. Connection between South India and South China : Regarding connection with South China, the Sanskrit inscription of Vocan in Champa (Annam) shows clearly that the connection with India dates as early as the second century