> - Refer Alberuni's India of the medieval period which has a > reference to Deepavali.
Hi quite important are the travelers accounts in writing the history of a nation. some travellers I could think of in the order of their travel to india
Mr.Venketesh; Are there any accounts of travellers from India in China, Italy, etc? We've always read about Marco Polo and others but are we aware of names and adventures of any traveller from India going to these countries?
i was instantly reminded of a classmate in school when the geography teacher was teaching us about africa he was inquisitive to know if africans studied about us.
i am not sure though there must be reports of south east china by indians . vijay must be able to tell us.
Hi Mr.Venketesh; I was going through a map of the Silk Route which connected Persia, China, India, etc. I think the Silk Route would have a pathway for Indians to visit other countries. Historical references mention only CHinese and Persian explorations of Asia. We were at the center of this trade and surely we would have travelled. But to be honest i have a feeling we survived this long by simply minding our own business (not efficiently,i agree) and travelling was not our forte(example Indian cricket team till Ganguly :) ). Im not completely eliminating this(obviously there would have been a few curious souls) but im assuming we wouldn't be rampant travellers like the Chinese counterparts.
I actually think otherwise. I mean there are lots of references to Indian visits abroad (example Chozha delegation to China under Kuloththun ga 1, also Indians in Rome and the Mediterranean regions. ) . Could it be that
a) We did not have the tradition of writing things down to a large extent b) Literacy possibly was only in the hands of the forward castes and hence perhaps the people who traveled were not those who would sit down and write memoirs?
Could it be that > > a) We did not have the tradition of writing things down to a large extent > b) Literacy possibly was only in the hands of the forward castes and hence > perhaps the people who traveled were not those who would sit down and write > memoirs?
or was it something to do with the writing materiels, Arun
just take a guess on what the others could have written on. marco polo must have written on paper I guess.
... but im assuming we wouldn't be rampant travellers like the > Chinese counterparts.
I can see what you mean. but the two buddist chinese guys came to nalanda or in a religious mission but marco polo, biruni and battuta were bitten by the travel bug in the sense that they wheels on their legs. they braved pirates disease and raging seas just to see new places.
battuta over a period of almost thirty years, covered 117,000 km. These journeys extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East. venketesh
a lot about vijayanagar empire is known from the writings of medieval European travelers such as Domingo Paes, Fernao Nuniz and Niccolò Da Conti .
and while talking of battuta he was born in morroco in north africa and had travelled to lands that constitute 44 modern countries today. all this in the 14th century. i wonder how many in this group in jet age have travelled to as many? vijay what would your score be?
Mr.Venketesh; Lack of writing materials might be a factor. I was also wondering about how our Indian sailors kept logs, charts, etc. We would surely have used stars and the sun for navigation but im sure there must have been some on-ship charts for this. Kalvettus would have been too heavy to carry in ship, right? For a ntaion which boats of being civilised from 7000 B.C we sure do suck at maintaining records. Maybe we dint use paper, There were other commonly used materials like Olai-scribe. These are probably lying in some private European collection or still hidden in some underground chamber in Tanjore,Madurai, etc :) Not a bad theme for a movie, eh? Surely beats the the hell out of "National Treasure".