A Note on “Further India”

Abstract

To say that “Further India” is in need of further study may be to offer a pun of the utmost feebleness. The pun is justified by the extraordinary neglect of an international cultural coalescence that is unusual to the point of being unique. Romila Thapar’s widely read History of Ancient India has two pages on “Greater India.” She objects quite rightly to the phrase and consequently omits if from her index. Histories of India, ancient or modern, tend to be histories of North India, but Nilakanta Sastri’s History of South India improves even on Thapar in its lack of attention to this topic. Perhaps it does so because Sastri published a book in 1949 on South Indian Influences in the Far East. 2 K. M. Pannikar’s five pages in his brief History of India (unfortunately long out of print) are valuable and indeed aroused my own interest in the subject.3 But five pages can only indicate how much more needs to be said. The same observation can be make of John Keay’s two densely packed pages on the South Indian presence overseas.4