Dr.

Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law

University

HISTORY

Sanskritization of the Subcontinent

Submitted to - Submitted by -
Vandana Singh Tejas Misra
(Assistant Professor) Enrollment ID - 210101155
Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya BA LLB (Hons.)
National Law University I Semester, Section - B
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project would have not been possible without the kind support and help of my friends
and family. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of them. I express my deep
gratitude to my teacher for the subject Dr. Vandana Singh for giving me her exemplary
guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement throughout the project. I would like to
express my gratitude towards the members of RMLNLU for their kind support and
encouragement which helped me in the completion of this project. My thanks and
appreciations also go to my colleagues in developing the project and people who willingly
helped me out with their abilities.

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this Research Paper submitted by me to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya
National Law University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh in partial fulfillment requirement for the
award of the degree of BA. LLB. (Hons.) is a record of bona fide project work carried out by
me under the guidance of Dr. Vandana Singh. I further declare that the work reported in this
project has not been submitted, and will not be submitted either in part or in full, for the
award of any degree or diploma in this institute or any other university.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................ 4
EARLY VEDIC ERA ...................................................................................................................... 5
KURU KINGDOM AND POST-VEDIC PERIOD ......................................................................... 7
SANSKRITIZATION AND CASTE ............................................................................................. 10
SANSKRITIZATION OF SOUTHERN INDIA ........................................................................... 12
INFLUENCE IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA ........................................................................................ 14
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 17
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................... 18
 ABSTRACT

In this project I will explore the history, elements and impact of Sanskritization, both in the
Indian subcontinent and beyond. This paper will review its association with native peoples
and caste, as well as its impacts in the modern times.

INTRODUCTION

The concept of ‘Sanskritization’ was first introduced by Prof M.N. Srinivas, the famous
Indian sociologist, in the 1950s. It was originally defined as the process by which lower
castes or tribes, emulated the customs and traditions of the upper-castes, seeking upwards
social mobility. This includes vegetarianism, prohibition against beef eating, teetotalism
(abstaining from alcohol), participation in Sanskrit rituals and wearing the sacred thread.

Seen in a broader sense, it can be described as Aryanization, a process by which local Indian
traditions syncretize, become aligned to or absorbed within the mainstream Brahmanical
religion, through which the Hindu religion of the original Indo-Aryans spread throughout the
Indian Subcontinent and beyond.

Dr. Gavin Flood, in his Introduction to Hinduism, defined Sanskritization as –

“the process whereby local or regional forms of culture and religion – local deities, rituals,
literary genres – become identified with the 'great tradition' of Sanskrit literature and culture:
namely the culture and religion of orthodox, Aryan, Brahmans, which accepts the Veda as
revelation and, generally, adheres to varnasrama-dharma (caste-system).” (Flood 128)

An Aryanised society may be defined as one in which primacy is accorded to a particular

language (Sanskrit), to an authoritative priesthood (Brahmins) and to a hierarchical social
structure (caste).
 EARLY VEDIC ERA

The interaction between the early Aryan migrants and the Indus Valley agriculturalists has
always been uncertain and bound up in controversy. We cannot be sure of the relation that
the Aryans had with the Harappan culture, or the interactions they had with their religion.
What we do know is that the Aryan migrants were a relatively small pastoralist group
entering into a subcontinent that was home to the populations much larger than them, and this
was especially true in the Indus Valley, inhabited by the builders of the largest civilization of
the Ancient Era, with a developed culture, society and writing system.

Early genetic studies from the Post-IVC/Early Vedic Period shows that the people of modern-
day Pakistan and Western India had ~22% Steppe ancestry, that belonged to the Indo-Aryan
migrants, which provides evidence for the migration of the Steppe people towards the Indian
Subcontinent.1

This showcases that the Aryan migrants were a minority in the country that they were about
to expand over. Despite this, they managed to spread their culture, language and religion all
over the previous inhabitants of the Indus Valley and then subsequently throughout the entire
subcontinent.

There is also evidence that this migration was sex-selective and primarily made up of males.
This is indicated from the Y-Haplogroup of the Indian population, which is passed from
father to son. The R1a haplogroup is widespread in India, but originated somewhere in the
Steppe2, while the mtDNA (passed from the mother to her children) shows very little Steppe
admixture.3 This shows that the Aryan migrants would have had to mix in with the native
population if they were to survive and further propagate. Therefore it is likely that the word
Arya was never used in a purely ethnic sense, but as a religious and cultural identifier of a
mixed-population that used to follow the Vedic gods such as Indra, conducted sacrifices and
rituals, and followed the Aryan way of life.

Therefore, it is likely that the early Sanskritization of the people of West India happened
mainly through admixture than just cultural acculturation as happened elsewhere in India,
particularly in the East and South. The Aryan migrants would have broken out into the

1
Joseph, Tony. Early Indians. 2018. 148.
2
ibid. 146-147
3
ibid. 53.
remains of the Indus Valley Civilization, and a new population of Aryanized Harappans
would have been produced as a result of this admixture, who would then have carried their
religion, language and traditions into the heart of the subcontinent.

We can examine the oldest text that comes from this era, the Rigveda, to see the process of
Aryan acculturation taking place, in which lies the kernel of what would become the
orthodox Hindu tradition.

The Rigveda makes great mention of the dasa or the dasyu who are described as being
barbarous, of uncouth speech, of dark skin and foreign religion. At this early point the Aryans
were just migrating into the Northern Plains, and were continuously at conflict with the
native people. Hence, Indra is having described as rending the forts of the dasa just as “age
rends a garment”. However, it is also likely that the native people too, adopted the Sanskrit
religion and gained an equivalent status in Aryan society, which would be the earliest
example of Sanskritization.

In Rigvedic times, there clearly were some “non-Aryan” chiefs such as Varo Susaman,
Balbutha, Bribu, who followed the Indo-Aryan religion. They represent examples of an early
wave of acculturation.4

Some of the Vedic tribes, like the Yadavas, are thought to have been of dasa origin. The
Yadavas are the considered members of the Dakshinpath (Southern Route), but trace their
ancestry to Krishna, showcasing how the Sanskritic tradition of the Aryans, for whom the
safeguarding of their religious purity was an important aspect, could have produced deities
that would later have a pan-India appeal, becoming an engine of Sanskritization. Hence too
the clearly -dasa names of Su-dasa, a Bharata chief who scored a notable victory over ten
rival ‘kings’ in the Battle of Ten Kings described in the Rigveda, and Divo-dasa, a great king
who conducted ten grand horse-sacrifices at Varanasi, a holy place that is now called the
Dashashwamedh Ghat.5

However, the Rigveda is only a partial description of Aryan society, and provides only
limited information about their interaction with the natives of the country. Moreover, most of
the principles of mainstream Hinduism such as caste are present in the Vedas, but are
underdeveloped. It would be in the Kuru kingdom, in the first Aryan state of the Indian

4
Witzel, Micheal, Early Sanskritization. Origins and Development of the Kuru State. 2016. 9.
5
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. 42.
Subcontinent, where there would be a great synthesis of the scriptures that would create the
orthodox Hindu tradition.

KURU KINGDOM AND POST-VEDIC PERIOD

After Sudas’s victory over 10 other kings, his tribe, the Bharatas, gained ascendancy over the
rest of the tribes, and became the nucleus of the earliest recorded state in the subcontinent,
around the Doab (Ganga-Yamuna) region. They would ally with Puru and other tribes to
form the Kuru tribe. With their center of power in the Kurukshetra region, the Kurus formed
the first political center of the Vedic period, and were dominant roughly from 1200 to 800
BCE.6 The move from pastoral to urban brought with it profound changes in the socio-
economic system.

The Kuru kingdom decisively changed the religious heritage of the early Vedic period,
arranging their ritual hymns into collections called the Vedas, and developing new rituals
which gained their position in Indian civilization as the Srauta rituals, which contributed to
the so-called "classical synthesis" or "Hindu synthesis", which is why is features so strongly
in the Mahabharata and other epics. Along with the development of iron (krishna-ayas), there
was also the development of the fourfold-system of the varna, which divided society into
Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras, differing from the two-fold system of arya and
dasa as previously existed. The dominant brahmin-kshatriya elite, already thoroughly mixed
with local and aboriginal elements, stressed its superiority with regard to the Arya
commoners, the Vaishyas, as well as religious and racial “purity” over the non-Aryan Sudras.

Here, as before, caste was a mechanism of assimilation.7 ‘The people move from west to east
and conquer land,’ says the Satapatha Brahmana. As the Indo-Aryans moved east, away
from the Doab region and into Uttar Pradesh, Central India and into the East, they brought
with them now the settled agriculturalist life and their traditions, clearing forests and settlings
lands.8

6
Witzel, Micheal, Early Sanskritization. Origins and Development of the Kuru State. 2016. 6.
7
Thapar, R., From Lineage to State. 1984. 16-17.
8
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. 50.
They were strongly bound by tribal connections, and this provided the impetus for early state
formation, creating the 16 Mahajanpadas. Initially those at the western end in the Panjab and
the Doab tended to look down on those on the eastern frontier in Bihar and Bengal; the latter
were mleccha. However by mid-first millennium BC it would be the other way round. As
the eastern settlements grew into a network of thriving proto-states, many laid claim to
exalted ancestries and, assuming the mantle of Aryanised orthodoxy, would begin to
disparage their Punjabi cousins as vratya or ‘degenerate’.9

During this, they came into contact with a bewildering array of non-Aryan people. All were,
nevertheless, subject to varying degrees of Aryanization. Some, perhaps in recognition of
their numerical superiority in regions newly penetrated by the clans, were actually co-opted
into the castes while their cults and deities were accommodated in the growing pantheon of
what we now call Hinduism, with Hanuman and Ganesha being particular examples. Others
obstinately retained forms of speech and conduct which disqualified them from co-option
and, perhaps as a result of conquest, they were relegated to functional roles considered
menial and impure. Dasa came to denote a household slave or rural helot and dasi a female
domestic or slave-concubine. These populations (or jatis) were given positions in the caste
system, lineages were invented while they adopted the Aryan languages and sought to gain
legitimacy through the adoption of patronizing Brahmins and conducting rituals and
ceremonies. It was by the introduction of these languages by ritual and political elites, which
are emulated by large groups of people. Those that did not, or could not, became the
outcastes and lived outside of settled society, as tribals and Dalits.10

The land that was called arya-varta (Abode of the Aryans) is of great importance in
understanding what the Brahmins of the Gangetic heartland thought of the rest of the
subcontinent, and what was considered Aryanized and what wasn’t. It can be considered as a
“cultural sphere” where Brahmanical ideology and rituals predominated. In the Vashista
Dharmasutra (dated 500-300 BCE), locates the Aryavarta to the West of the Saraswati,
South of the Himalayas, North of the Vindhyas and East of the Kalakavana (most likely
around Prayaga, confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna). This means that East India – Bengal

9
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. p. 53.
10
ibid. 63.
and Odisha, and Southern India were not included in this definition, and hence were not
considered sufficiently Aryanised.11

However, only a few centuries later, in the Manusmriti (2.22), the Aryavarta is defined as
being above the Vindhyas and below the Himalayas, and stretching from the Eastern Sea to
the Western Sea, perhaps signifying the growing sphere of Brahmanical ideology, with the
successful Aryanisation of Bengal and Odisha.12

The Sanskrit language was perhaps the most important vehicle for Aryanisation. The
language, though could only be read and understood by a minute few, created the first pan-
India culture in the Sanskritic scriptures, which was adopted and emulated all over India.
Brahmins (Purohita) were invited by local rulers to provide them legitimacy, and this would
be the reason that the Brahmins are the only caste that is found all over India and have a
degree of cultural similarity.

The practice of Anuloma, or the marriage of a high-caste man to a lower-caste woman as

described in the Manusmriti, was also perhaps a process of Sanskritization.

After gaining this acceptance, they became equal to the people whose culture they had
adopted, and freely intermixed and intermarried with them. As stated in Moorjani et al.
(2013), there was a considerably open intermixing between the two populations until 100 CE,
where a shift to endogamy took place in the Gupta era. This is why all castes (despite
variation) have admixture with the native people and vice-versa.

Buddhism, in the mid-millenium BC, emerged as a challenger to the Hindu orthodoxy. This
might’ve been the stimulus for the writing down of texts, the expansion of the Kshatriya
caste, and the inclusion of non-Aryan, non-Vedic religious elements into the Vedic faith, and
maybe ultimately endogamy. It can even be said that here is where the Vedic religion ceased
to exist, instead being replaced by Brahmanism, a religious ideology that does not insist on
the worship of any one god nor the promotion of any one lifestyle. 13 Here, like before with
caste-incorporation, the Hindu orthodoxy showcases a remarkable flexibility for adapting to
local traditions in order to remain predominant, while at the same time maintaining aspects of
purity and ritual from which it derives its legitimacy.

11
Neelis, Jason. Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond
the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia. 2010. p. 194.
12
Gopal, Madan. K.S. Gautam (ed.). India through the ages. 1990. p. 70.
13
Bronkhorst, Johannes. Brahmanism: Its Place in Ancient Indian Society. 2017.
 SANSKRITIZATION AND CASTE

As stated by MN Srinivas –

“The caste system is far from a rigid system, in which the position of each component caste is
fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible, and especially in the middle regions
of the hierarchy. A caste was able, in a generation or two, to rise to a higher position in the
hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, and by sanskritizing its ritual and
pantheon. In short, it took over, as far as possible, the customs, rites, and beliefs of the
Brahmins, and adoption of the Brahminic way of life by a low caste seems to have been
frequent, though theoretically forbidden. This process has been called ‘sanskritization’ in
this book, in preference to ‘Brahminisation’, as certain Vedic rites are confined to the
Brahmins and the two other ‘twice-born’ castes.”14

As stated before, caste was a system of incorporation. As the Indo-Aryans expanded all over
North India, many of the non-arya people adopted their culture and religion, and was often
used to claim either the Brahmin and Kshatriya categories.

One example of this would be the Rajputs of Northwest India. The Rajputs, before the second
millennium AD, are almost absent from history. Some sociologists state that the original
Kshatriyas in the northwest who existed until Mauryan times in tiny kingdoms were an
extremely cultured, educated and intellectual group who were a challenge to monopoly of the
Brahmins. Ancient texts show they were not subordinate to the Brahmins in religious matters,
but were in fact a powerful class on their own. These old Kshatriyas were undermined not
only by the Brahmin priests of the time but were replaced by the rise of the new community
of illiterate mercenaries in the north-west - the Rajputs. Since the Rajputs were generally
illiterate unlike the Kshatriyas, their rise did not present a challenge to monopoly of the
Brahmins.15 Evidence can be found for this in Rajput oral tradition, which claims a grand
fire-sacrifice on Mount Abu granted to the Rajputs the status of the Kshatriya, and were
incorporated into the lineages of Rama and Krishna.16

14
Srinivas, M. N. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India. 1956. 32.
15
Farris, Sara R. Max Weber’s Theory of Personality: Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology
of Religion. 2013. 140.
16
Keay, John. India: A History. p. 202.
Anyone from the village landlord to the low-caste Shudra labourer could employ Brahmins to
retrospectively fabricate a genealogy and within a couple of generations, they would gain
acceptance as Hindu Rajputs. This process would get emulated by communities in north
India. Scholars refer to this as "Rajputisation", a process similar to Sanskritization.17

This is a process that continued on even until the 19th and 20th Century, when there were
attempts by the British government to “Aryanise” the Gond and other tribal communities,
which would make them easier to control. The Gond chiefs started doing the "caste–Hindu
practices" and frequently claimed the "Rajput, and thus kshatriya status". 18

In this way, tribal chieftains would surround themselves with the paraphernalia of
Brahmanism, and secure for themselves a history to the great Kshatriya heroes of yore, and
all the way back to the founders of the Survyavamshi and Chandravamshi dynasties, to the
god-kings Ikshvaku and Pururavas.

The Jats of rural Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, too, were Sanskritized with the help of
the Arya Samaj in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The Jats had long lived on the
peripheries of empires, as a hardy agricultural community, but had also at times served as
mercenaries in Rajput and Mughal armies, so many Jats pretended to acquire a martial ethos.
The Arya Samaj is a Hindu reformist organization, and was particularly influential in the late
19th and early 20th Century. It aimed at a revival of Hinduism as taught in the Vedas, which
included a negation of the caste-system and idol-worship.

Ramji Lal Hooda, a medical practitioner in Hissar in modern-day Haryana, got attracted to
the Samaj’s teaching and began to organize many Jat Mahasabhas for the inculcation of the
group’s ideas. These Mahasabhas (or Shuddi Sabhas) were aimed at ‘purifying’ Jats in large-
numbers and making them twice-born. Jats were told not to consume alcohol or meat,
minimizing the expenditure on weddings and ceremonies, and refraining from singing lewd
songs or watching ‘cheap’ shows during fairs, and also recommended that severe restrictions
be put on the movement of women. The Arya Samaj presented the Jats as Kshatriyas,
contrasted with colonial literature which saw them as ‘lowly Indo-Scythians, not Aryans…’,
and this Sanskritizing fiction was voraciously eaten up by the Jats themselves.19

17
Kulke, Hermann. Kings and Cults State Formation and Legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. 1993. 251.
18
Bhukya, Bhangya. Chatterji, Joya; Peabody, Norbert (eds.). "The Subordination of the Sovereigns:
Colonialism and the Gond Rajas in Central India, 1818–1948". 2013.
19
Jaffrelot, Christophe. Religion, Caste and Politics in India. 2010. p. 431.
An unsuccessful example of this would be the South Indian Vishwakarma caste, who sought
a claim to Brahmin status, though is not accepted by Brahmins outside the community. They
are a clan of craftsmen and artisans, and trace their ancestry to Vishwakarma, the God of
Architecture. They have adopted some high-caste aspects, such as wearing the sacred thread
and the Brahmanisation of their rituals, but are still not considered so. This is contrasted with
the Lingayat Community of the same region, who successfully claimed parity with the
Brahmins through Sanskritization, if not a superior position. On the other hand, the
Vishwakarma are not allowed to eat with higher-castes, and their marriage-processions are
not allowed to go through higher-caste areas.20

Srinivas was of the view that Sanskritization was not limited to the Hindu castes, and stated
that the "semi–tribal groups" including Himalayas's Pahadis, central India's Gonds and
Oraons, and western India's Bhils also underwent Sanskritization. He further suggested that,
after going through Sanskritization, such tribes would claim that they are castes and hence
Hindus.21

SANSKRITIZATION OF SOUTHERN INDIA

Before the first century BC the southern extremity of the subcontinent scarcely features in
India’s history. The Dravidian speakers are usually thought to have preceded the Indo-Aryan
migration, so in that sense they are an indigenous civilisation of India. This can be evidenced
by the fact that there are no pre-Dravidian languages in India, not even in remote tribal
pockets, therefore the languages must be a native development.

The earliest literature that comes from the South is that of the sangam (assemblages) that
were first composed in Classical Tamil in the courts of the Pandyan kingdom in Southern
Tamil Nadu. Unlike the Sanskrit classics, they were not the property of a particular caste
and served no obvious ritual purpose. According to an American sociologist, “Not only does
ancient Tamil literature furnish an accurate picture of widely disparate classes; it also
describes the social conditions of Tamil Nadu much as it was before the Aryans arrived in the

20
Ikegame, Aya. "Karnataka: Caste, dominance and social change in the 'Indian village'". 2013. In Berger,
Peter; Heidemann, Frank (eds.). The Modern Anthropology of India: Ethnography, themes, and theory.
Routledge. p. 128.
21
Bopegamage, A; Kulahalli, R. N. . “Sanskritization' and Social Change in India". 1971. p. 124.
south.”22 Even today, there are virtually no native traditional Kshatriya or Vaishya castes in
South India. 23

However, the Sangam poets were most likely aware of the cultural innovations to the North.
Buddhism had been already flourishing, and the poets were well-versed with the heroes of
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata all the way from the Doab, demonstrated possibly by
place names such as ‘Madurai’, which could be a variant of Mathura. The rulers of Madurai
themselves, the Pandyas, would themselves seek to incorporate themselves into the Sanskrit
tradition by claiming descent from Pururavas, the ancestor of the Pandavas. Like many other
South Indian kings, they would include Agastya as their family priest, a celebrated sage who
composed many hymns of the Rigveda.24

The impression given here is not of a society that was being created by the Aryans, nor a
society that was defying the rigid orthodoxies of the Ganges, but of an already developed
civilisation that was adapting and voluntarily adjusting to prestigious new values and
selectively adopting from them. This was perhaps the way in which Sanskritization of the
South took place.25

Perhaps a clear-cut example of Aryanisation can be seen in the attempts to recreate the
geography and locations as described in the Sanskrit epics, as a way of transplanting the
Gangetic holy land to the Deccan. The trail of ‘Ayodhyas’, ‘Mathuras’, ‘Kosalas’,
‘Kambojas’ and so on would stretch way far into the South, and beyond India itself, most
notably into areas of Indian influence in south-east Asia.

The Rashtrakuta rulers of Maharashtra evidently conceived their massive colossus at Ellora
as a replica of the Himalayas, hence naming it Kailash after the mountain in the north, the
abode of Shiva.26 They kept their capital at Manyakheta (Malkhed), who significance may
have lain in the fact it lies in between the two grand rivers of the South, the Godavari and
Krishna, possibly as an emulation of the Doab of the Ganga-Yamuna in the North, where the
great heroes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana had come from.27

22
Hart, George L., ‘Ancient Tamil Literature: Its Scholarly Past and Future’, in Stein, Burton (ed.), Essay
son South India. pp.41-2
23
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. 127.
24
See the Velvikudi Inscription, a copper-plate grant d.769-770 CE.
25
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. p. 128.
26
ibid. 10.
27
ibid. 205.
The Cholas went even further, when Rajendra Chola I led an expedition to the North in the
11th Century, the Tamils hauled water all the way from the Ganges back to their own country,
two thousand kilometres away, using it to fill the tanks and waterways around Thanjavur.
Rajendra Chola would then shift his capital to the newly constructed
Gangaikondacholapuram, and fill the water into its reservoir, the name meaning “The City of
the Chola who brought the Ganga.”28

INFLUENCE IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

The influence of the Sanskrit culture would extend beyond the boundaries of India, and the
paraphernalia of Brahmanism would be transplanted and emulated by many of the kings and
states in Southeast Asia.

The first links between Southeast Asia and South Asia were established through maritime
trade routes, where Vaishya traders from Odisha (Kalinga), Bengal and the Eastern Coast
would travel to the Malay Archipelago and surrounding regions, many en-route to China
(part of the maritime Silk Route).

The most widely accepted theory is that Brahmin scholars then used these established
maritime routes, and brought with them many of the Hindu religious and philosophical
traditions to spread to the elite classes of Southeast Asia. Perhaps along with them came
several Kshatriya adventurers and warriors, who exerted their military prowess over certain
areas. Not only Hinduism, but the conversion of Southeast Asia to Buddhism, also happened
by these routes. Therefore, Sanskritization is simply one part of the larger process of
‘Indianization’ that took place.

Buddhism, perhaps, provided an important impetus in the development of maritime trade. By

abolishing the caste barriers and exaggerated concern for racial purity, it might’ve
removed the shackles previously placed on their maritime voyages by the fear of being
polluted by contact with barbarians.29

28
ibid. 10.
29
Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. 1967. p. 21.
Some of the earliest inscriptions that have been found in the region are in Sanskrit, such as
the Vo Canh Inscription found in Vietnam. Sanskrit and other Indian languages have had a
great impact on the languages of these regions, with languages such as Cambodian and Thai
having a substantial Indo-Aryan derived vocabulary. In addition, alphabets from languages
spoken in Burmese, Thai, Laos and Cambodia are variations formed off of Indian ideals that
have localized to the language. Other aspects of the culture such as art, architecture,
iconography and dance forms are also surviving legacies of Indianisation. Buddhism is the
predominant religion of mainland Southeast Asia, while pockets of Hinduism survive in
places like Bali and Java. 30

HINDU-BUDDHIST STATES

Chinese records indicate the existence of petty Indian states. One such, called Tun-Sun by
the Chinese, had five hundred families from India plus a thousand Brahmins to whom
the native population gave their daughters in marriage, though its location is unknown.31
Thus, it seems, the commitment to endogamy might’ve been discarded.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, the trading empires of Srivijaya and Majapahit that grew powerful
from the trade nexus on which they sat, were examples of such Indianized Hindu-Buddhist
kingdoms. They would survive until the arrival of Islamic merchants and the rise of Muslim
Sultanates.

Singapore would be founded by a prince of Srivijaya, who saw a strange beast, said to be a
lion, on a hunting expedition. There he founded the settlement of “Singa-pura”, Sanskrit for
Lion-City.

In mainland Southeast Asia, the kingdom of Funan occurs in Chinese records, supposedly
founded by a Brahmin named Kaundinya.32 It was the forerunner to the Hindu Champa
kingdom in Vietnam. The Hindus of Southern Vietnam would survive until the Dai Viet,
proponents of the Sinosphere, would invade Champa in 1471 and found the nation of
Vietnam.

30
Smith, Monica L. "Indianization" from the Indian Point of View: Trade and Cultural Contacts with Southeast
Asia in the Early First Millennium C.E.". 1999. p. 1-26.
31
Keay, John. India: A History. 2010. p. 131.
32
ibid. 131.
The Khmer kingdom of Cambodia, who would go on to build the great Angkor Wat
originally as a Shiva temple, would soon absorb Funan. Its kings, like many of those of
Funan and Champa, almost always bore names ending in ‘-varman’, just like the
Pallavas. More significantly, they claimed descent from the union of a local princess
with a certain Kambu whose descendants were known as ‘Kambujas’. The original
Kambujas, however, are mentioned in the Puranas, in the extreme northwest of India. Here
we can see kings as far as Indo-China, laying claim to the ancestry and legitimacy provided
by a Sanskrit forebear.33

Cambodia and Thailand would thus be some of the last vestiges of these kingdoms, with the
latter having perhaps the greatest degree of acculturation. The Indians Brahmins were
originally invited in the Sukothai Period (1275-1370). The kings of the country would use
Sanskrit royal ceremonies for prestige and legitimacy. This is why, the current kings of
Thailand are still referred to by the epithet “Rama”, as the original kings were worshippers of
Vishnu. The Thai would later form the Kingdom of Ayutthaya, named after the Ayodhya of
India.

CASTE

The Brahmins who ventured into these lands no doubt tried to enforce their own view of how
a society should function, whose centrepiece was the caste system. However, it seems many
compromises had to be made when in contact with native societies. As stated before, a strict
requirement of endogamy might’ve been relaxed, or rejected altogether.

Indianization resulted in the formation of kingdoms, in which native chiefs would adopt the
cult of some particular deity, and would acquire the status of a of ‘god-king’, giving the state
a sort of national religion.34

The Brahmanic families were often related to the royal family: the marriages between
Brahmans and Kshatriyas seem to have been frequent, these two castes, representing
the intellectual element and Indian culture, constituting a class separate from and
superior to the masses. We can infer that the aristocracy and the bureaucracy held the
supreme position in society, with the Brahmins in a subservient position, and with little
33
ibid.182.
34
Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. 1967. p. 44.
distinction made between Vaishyas and Shudras, and the supposed absence of the concept of
Untouchables.35

CONCLUSION

In summary, Sanskritization is the process by which people choose to identify with the great
tradition of Hindu orthodoxy, as a form of gaining prestige, honour and incorporation. It is a
form of social upliftment by which lower-castes and tribes seek upwards mobility. It takes
place by various methods and strategies, is sometimes successful and other times not, and
went beyond the confines of India to Southeast Asia as well. There were challengers, such as
Buddhism and Jainism which sought to fight back against it. Even to this day, communities
and castes across the country seek to Sanskritize, perhaps by ‘saffronizing’ themselves, gain
respect in Hindu society and move up the social ladder. We could see this as merely the
continuation of a 3500-year old tradition, the tradition of a small group of foreign migrants
that managed to envelop an entire subcontinent within its grasp.

35
ibid. 142.
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