History of India starting from ambergriss of a late grandmother

The history of India which I

write starts from my history.It is not the history of geneology of dynasties

alone, but of a people ,common men and women and their practices and day

to day activities ,and a search into these activities which lead to amazing

discoveries.

How to start and where to start such a subaltern history?Being a history of

the ocean which appears constantly in my dreams I will start from

Ambergriss of Ammalu.

What is ambergriss and who is Ammalu?Ammalu was an ancestress of

mine,my mother”s grandmother”s first cousin devoted to Krishna and

remained unmarried as Krishna’s bride writing poetry on Krishna.My

cousin sister Kamaladas has written about her.Ammalu had only two

possessions in her wooden box.One was a green bottle probably of a rare
perfume (The bottle was empty)and the other was ambergriss.

How did she get ambergriss?Ambergriss is a rare ,very rare and costly item

which was traded by the Phoenicians and it is a gelatinlike secretion from

the seawhale ,solidified and usually obtained from the poles Near the Baltic

sea by deep sea traders. How did Ammalu get it ?

My mother told me,we belong to a group of people who lost our way in the

deep sea,(before Christ she said)and our ship wrecked ,and three women in

the ship were rescued by the then ruler of Malabar .As was the custom of

those days,one married the king.The other two ,whether they were sisters or

friends of the first one is not known,remained with her ,later to be married to

the royal family (to the cousins of the king) and they were called the Nalpat

(Nampat )family and the choolali family .our sheshakkar ,she

said.Sheshakkar means ,we have to observe rites when they die or when a

childbirth occur in that family(as mentioned in Veda and Upanishad

bhashyas).She had this knowledge not from any written sources.It was an

oral secret knowledge in the family.And to understand the roots ,our grand

uncle Nalapat Narayanamenon had visited choornikkara ,near Alwaye

where Nalapat family lived until Tipusultan tried to cross the choorni

river.According to Mohanachandran,the ex-ambassador of India to


Kuwait,married to the Nalapat family,in old Nalapat family records the

name is Nalapat Cherikkal and in Venad Thiruvithamkur records this term

Cherikkal (cheri)means the people and lands belonging to the King’s

side(Raajapaksha) and old Nalapat cherikkal extended from the Uliyannur

thuruth to Ambattukavu and Thottekkattukara with the river Periyar or

Choorni joining sea and the family was in charge of the trade and commerce

and protection of the king’s property.(This Nalpat and Chulali story and the

shipwreck is sung in the Thottampaattu of Pulaya community,I later learnt

from the book,Cultural history of Kerala by P.K.Gopalakrishnan.)5

Ammalu had the old inherited last piece of ambergriss with her.Or may be

she got it from one of her ancesters ,all of them wives of successive

rulers/or ruling class nobles who were in contact with the oversea traders or

Perumpadaku Mutharaya chiefs..So my history starts from a enquiry into the

sea voyage,shipwrecks,export and import items of the sea trade and the

habits of the seafaring people of the Indian peninsula.Naturally it becomes

the history of the Indian ocean as well and the practices associated with the

culture of Indian people as a whole.Someone asked me when I told this story

,Are you people from another continent since it was by shipwreck that you

reached Malabar/kerala and because you are all whiteskinned..Not

necessarily.The four maritime regions of Gujarat(kutch and Dwaraka

area),Coromandel,Bengal and Malabar had constant contact through

searoute ,in the prechristian era, and there is every chance that the ship could

have been from Dwaraka region or from Bengal,Eastern India..Ofcourse the

other possibility exists just as a speculation only.

The physical geography,geology ,climate ,wind and rainfall of India is very

peculiar and Maabaar (Malabar )as it was called by old people was always a

bridge between the east and west ,as its Arab name indicates.(Maabar means

bridge).There are two monsoons an year which comes with a regular musical

rhythmic precision and the people of India were aware of its nature from

time immemorial .No other area in the western matitime world has got this

peculiarity and no other people had the opportunity to study it over

prolonged periods .Observational experience of generations contributed to

the navigational skills of the people ..The annual reversal of winds and

rainfall and the traderoute associated with this peculiar phenomenon has to

be understood by a student of Indian history ,before he learns the

genealogies of royalties and their warfare.Because most of the wars were

fought to gain supremacy over the traderoutes.The predictability of

monsoon and the ocean currents and the arrival of Ghanjana birds (kottaran

in my native place in and around the river Nila or Bharathapuzha)before

the winds blow as the first migratory bird is described by books of

Varahamihira.6This was a custom in all coastal belts which portents the
monsoon rain,and the arrival of the first ships with it ,the time of rejoicing

for people since they have reunion with the sailors who left to distant places

in search of fortune,and also the possibility of getting huge sums of shares

for the products they had sent for sale to far off places.

South west monsoon starts from 17 th to 20th May ,at the coasts of

Lanka,and goes north to Malabar and the west coast by June ,July and

august with great intensity and then by September it weakens and by

November it withdraws completely.At that time west coast is inhospitable to

ships and people observe chathurmasya and say ,Vishnu is asleep.They do

not go out but wait for the ships rounding the Cape of Goodhope and west

Asia to come back with the bounty.They reach here by August to End of

September and leave before May.The retreat of monsoon and the

homecoming of ships gone to west ,the previous year is celebrated by

Indians in August ,September,October .It is also the beginning of a trading

season and a harvest season after the rains.Monsoon allow rapid transport

from Malabar to red sea,the middle east .Within 12 days the ship reaches

Muscat and 20 days it can reach Mocha.North east monsoon begin in

October with the westerlies gradually turn to north westerlies.In November

the north west winds of equatorial belt are called the cross monsoons.I

December the winds turn North and north east,easterly.High winds and

torrential rains ensue.In October /November cyclones along the Andhra and

orissa coasts.By December retreat of monsoon starts and die out by

March.Unsteady winds circulate anticyclonically.In October –December the

east coast is closed to foreign trade while the home trade continues.There

are no natural harbours in east coast .Nearest being Trincomalee for the

ships to take shelter.The chola kings knew the route to North and south

channels,to Burma,south china sea ,Srilanka and south east asian islands and

they are marked in the maps made by their nachodas for many

centuries.When SW Monsoon come Malabar ships take shelter in Tuticorin

.During NE monsoon coromandel ships took shelter in Madura bay.

The effect of monsoon is from the equator to the tropic of cancer (24 0

north)To the south of Equator the southeast tradewinds throughout the year

upto 28 0 S .Further south is the westerlies.The westerlies from Holland to

Java ,archipelago islands touch India.The Europeans could understand the

monsoon and the searoutes taken by Indians only after studying it closely for

3 centuries(16th to 18th century).Arab accounts show they had gained the

knowledge from Indians .Vascoda gama could never have reached the shores

of Calicut in 1498 unless piloted by Abdul bin Majid ,a Gujarati Muslim

sailor from Mombasa ,a fatal decision for India.

The south pole and the sea around it is in constant activity right from the
time the earth was formed,and this activity is in the form of winds which
cycles almost all over the globe.The map from geographic review 1942 by

A.F Spilhaus (American geographical society1)7shows this activity .If you

plot a polyhedral pseudoglobe India has the most strategic position ,and

Malabar coast especially occupied a key position in the seatrade route.All

histories of India without considering this ,is only an eyewash of successive

kings and rulers ,not of the people of India.


The first thing we have to remember is that the people of the southern

hemisphere were active seafarers.Second ,to be seafarers what are your basic

requirements?Do the Indians satisfy them?

Then the question of Phoenicians come.Who were they?Where these

mysterious people in any way related to India?

Is there any resemblance to the vedic seafarers and Phoenicians?can we

pinpoint their identity ?How ?

This was a troublesome spot .Yet ,I went on with my quest .The following is

what I came to know.
.
The fishermen (seafarers ) of India

We have heard so much about the job distribution of India as chathurvarnya.The Brahmins,Kshathriyas and the vaisyas and the shudras.Who were the vaisyas and shudras?Actually what was their role in politics,economy,trade ,administration?
This also is a slippery ground to traverse.The role of kingmakers was in the hands of the vaisya.Kenneth Mcpherson8 takes as examples the nayaks of Ikkeri,Thanjavur,merchants of Madura,Malabar,and Thevar s of Ramnadu.The piracy of malabar merchants,the political .economic mastery because of knowledge of trade routes,cosmopolitan nature and sometimes the name soudagar raja(royal merchant)attached to them is pointed out by him.Then he says they were a diverse group,weavers,Parava(pearldivers and boatmen),smallscale commerce and shopkeepers,shipowners (including big fleets that carried ammunition to escape piracy)were among them.Others who didn’t own ship but had shares in a ship on a cooperative basis,and guilds which had agents as settlers in the worldmarkets ,kings ,princes and members of royal family who took to trade and travel .Malabar royal family was one among such groups.
Out of these expeditions by various groups emerged a specialist in seatravel known as nachoda to Europeans and Perumpidaku mutharayan to sangham age ,and to Kerala(especially cochin,calicut.)Nachoda need not be a trader ,he is a sailor,seasoned and experienced and hence knows the searoutes,markets,stars which show the way at night,monsoon wind and its course etc.A learned individual who can take quick decisions (in modern terms who is having real leadership qualities).In Malbar,Gujrat and coromandel coast such fishermen or Araya were in plenty.We find in sangam literature the father of Kovalan 9as such a respected merchant.The perumpidaku(big ship)muth (pearl)arayan(fishermen from which the term Arya was coined)was a native who had well studied the monsoon,and the sea,and very loyal to king and to the nation.Arthasasthra10 gives qualities of people employed in seatrade.Bharathamuni,Vedavyasa ,kovala,Daasa the father of Satyavathy(wife of santhanu and mother of the kurupandava race), Guha the friend of Rama are some of the famous Araya(Aryas)who had been responsible for the veda codification,codification of music,dance and drama ,for mighty kingdoms,and famous for their loyalty to kings as Guha.Even now,when the southwest monsoon retreats and the onam festival begins,the king of Kochin owners his perumpidaku mutharaya with a rope symbolic of the control of his seatrade and the sea fleets of pirots (as Europeans called)or navy.
Shipping and seafaring require s archeology,anthropology,great movements of people across trade winds,literature and living practices,folklore,practice of shipbuilding ,and astronomy .I have been into these for a long time and what is surprising is that no one has ever thought with all these ,the possibility that the mysterious Phoenicians could be the south Indian Naaga of the prehistoric era.The merchant class ,and traveler class ,mingled with the daasa, fishing folk,kings (kshathriya,and Brahmin(as Vedavyasa)and the isolation as we see in the middle ages could not have been there in such a community.It is not a story of superstition but of economic and political and social stability irrespective of political upheavals and change in kings that India had established through these class,from prehistoric times upto the entry of the Europeans in 15th century.If that is not surprising what else is ?
Inland water transport is an interesting feature in Malabar and in India in general.In no other place in the world are so many navigable rivers located in equidistant parallels (so that the Akshamsa lines are not imaginery but real ,)so that the seatrade can flourish by transport of goods to interior land and offseason transport is always busy.The foreigners were not given a glimpse of the inner quarters of the city,they were restricted to the port cities,that too through middle men..The standard coin of India in the Tamil speaking Malabar coast was the fanam and this gave the name phaneesa,as wellas the origin from the phani or a serpent dynasty .(naaga origin).
The shipbuilding in the coast of Malabar was unique.They cut a grove at the edge of a plank and another plank with appropriare shape is slided into it.They used wooden nails occasionally but never iron nails ,because hey knew it is bad for water,which can rust and reduce the longevity.The Indians knew iron ,Indian Chettys were trading in iron ,but even then they didn’t use it for shipbuilding.The Chinese,the Europeans etc were using nails but the Indians refused to use it and the Europeans actually accepted the Indian method as superior to theirs. .Europens use the word prahu for the sailing ships of east coast of India according toMc Pherson and it is only the Europeans who used that name for the shipos of India,And what I feel is it is a corrupted term for the Pidak u or padaku (big ship)in Tamil language and it was widely used in Malabar,tamil speaking parts of south India even before sangam period.The use of teak for hull was also one reason for longevity of Malabar ships (50-80 yrs)while the oak built uropean ship had a longevity of only 10-12 years.The sheathing (damaged planks replacement periodically in off seasons)increased the longevity and this made the Malabar made ships durable and economical.
Apart from the Nachoda,the ship had a tandel(head of crew)a sarhang for docking (mate)landing supervisors and gunmen .(These people belonged to the vaisya and sudra as well as the Kshthriya classes depending upon the job they specialized.
The long silence after the descriptions of the Arabs and the survival of the knowledge of shipbuilding to date,as well as star science and comparative planetology and mathematics till date among the Indians teach us the method(educational)how knowledge was aquired by long lines of generations through experience and practice,how it was transferred and retained to last for more than 6ooo years without break.
The jobs of fishing,boating,seafaring,river anvigation,constructing appropriate vessels for inland and sea trade,launching vessels,the identification of sea routes and the directions by star and planet ,and the water currents and winds ,calculation of risks involved in a particular journey and the boldness to do so ,all show the historically integral part of a material culture in the maritime zones of India and allthese jobs as well as agriculture was the territory of the vaisya /merchant class.So they played a more important role in the economy,naval defence and decision making on trade and commerce .Probably a higher place than the Teacher ,The Brahmin who remained indoors without going out ,and touching any new culture.And the kings /rulers of India were aware of this.But the real practice was that only the eldest Brahmn had that restriction,while the youngers(Appan as called in Malayalam)were free and learned a lot by constant voyages.In veda Bhujyu makes a voyage for making money.
The Indian ocean world of which India occupied a prominent part had its own sets of human natural rhythms,which dictated every natural activity.Until 15th century AD this was remarkably selfcontained.In 15th century we find China ,which was an active partner in seatrade ,suddenly stops sending its ships .Why?The next stage of crumbling of the hitherto trade relationships were anticipated by them.The moment Vas co Da Gama reached Calicut ,they withdrew from the scene,slowly.And by 18th century the boundaries of the Indian ocean world crumbled overwhelmed economically by the European merchants and soldiers who didn’t respect the subaltern history,because they didn’t understand it properly,and catered to the Lords and petty kings who were quarrelling with each other for territorial and trade supremacy. ,which they thought they will obtain if they are loyal to the foreign colonizers.

The Atlantis and Pacific ocean has a pole to pole orientation ,and touch both south and north poles,while Indian ocean has the landmasses on the north ,great chains of mountains that separate from the climate of central Asia,and this geographic configuration ,the monsoons and the rainfall ,wind and ocean currents ,the rhythm of agricultural and maritime activity adjusted to the rain and winds,gave its supremacy over the maritime trade .There had been a wide arc stretching from S.E.Asia,China,North Australia,Madagaskar,India,coasts of Arabia ,Egypt,south and central America ,and the Mediterranean where the sailors from the Indian ocean world reached regularly ,constantly globalising their ideas,knowledge,trading goods etc.The pheonicians were only part of this great people.Not original inhabitants of the place where they are found .They were acting as the agents and middlemen of the Assyrian emperors and were Indians ,and were the loyal people possibly from the western coasts of India (Malabar/Gujarat) . Brandell 11call sea voyage the longue duree (since long term rhythm of natural and human environment can determine it and sustain it)Random political changes and natural calamities(short term rhythms)cannot hinder it.The long term major rhythms like basic social attitude,food,clothing,architecture,trade using climate ,agriculture etc determine it and these do not change even if a few individuals change in power positions.With these characteristic the Indian ocean world was a self sufficient world and the first global economy of the 18th and 19th century was due to the attraction of this system on the European colonists.East Africa did not have long navigable rivers to facilitate inland trade and sustained supply of the demanded things .Middle east and some ports in Arabia were used but there also the navigable rivers are less except the Nile and the Egypt valley .And inland traffic was by caravans and not by waterways ,and therefore the earliest navigators from the Indian ocean regions were the teachers to Arabia in Maritime trade and not vice versa.But later on,due to internal problems on the main land the supremacy went to the Arabian merchants and jews and in due course to their descendents and converts .the Christians and the muslims.They became the prominent vaisya class.As Mcfarlane12 points out it is not enough to study the component parts of the modern world economy alone to realize and understand its full impact ,but we need to explore the economical and cultural network which existed beyond Europe ,which were later integrated into a global capitalist system.The fact that the Phoenicians had rounded the cape of goodhope and reported the change in direction of the sun when they cross the tropic of Capricorn and the fact that the Greek historians called them fancy tellers is important ,because only when the Europeans in 15th century crossed the cape they knew what the pheonicians told was true and that Herodotus was wrong in mocking at them.It took more than 1600 to 1800 years to rediscover the truth ,for the Greeks /Europeans .while the Phoenicians/Indians knew all along that the Earth is globe and the travel on a sea gives you so many new experiences.The Indian ocean and its history is important for any student who really wants to know not only the history of India but also the history of the whole world.
I came to this study by enquiring the route of Ambergriss in Ammalu’s box.Not by regular classroom study.
At least 9 spheres of activity are mastered before venturing out on to the open sea,and they are
1.Mastery over monsoon and tradewinds
2.over observation of stars and comparative planetology
3.Markets for goods and their numismatics
4.Shipbuilding,maintainance at low economy for longer periods
5.Produce agricultural,cash crops and find out the rare and essential commodities for marketing and establish a regular supply of these in time by loyal network of agents all over the world
6.Inland river transport so that the cargo reaches safely the destination
7.rules ,regulations inter and intrapersonal relationships
8.Arts ,architecture,cultural and custom peculiarities etc for interaction and interest in transfer of knowledge to further the relationships.
9.Standardised weights and measures and formation of guilds
These are the minimum requirements and to have experience and expertise in them a long period is necessary .So ,the maritime and trade activities of Indians require more study than the geneology of the kings and rulers which help in identifying an era only ,not in the cultural characters of the people (the subaltern).
In modern world we know the principles of leadership,innovation and management.(Leadership for Innovation.How to organize team creativity and harvest ideas.John Adair.Kogan page India New Delhi 2007)and that innovation is the key to winning and keeping leadership in world markets.And this calls for team creativity.The commitment to a dual strategy of innovation is the challenge of improving quality ,reliability,and performance of products and services.Indian leaders who organized global trade in 7 th millennium itself had developed this by their honest dealings,weight and measures and the professionalism of finding the demand and supply and communication routes and above all keeping an organized team effort in relation to the wind and seasonal changes of their geographic area.And they had a long term perspective as we find from archeological finds.They had flexibility for innovation and acceptability of risk for such trading as shown right from Bhujyus story in Rg veda.A boss demand respect but a leader commands respect ,is a saying.Indian ancestors commands the respect of anyone who is thoughtful about such facts.The spiritual leaders of India had practical wisdom also and that made them really respectable people is my opinion.It was not just spiritualism of theoretical nature but spiritualism for the wellbeing and prosperity of entire world based on dharma,and satya and ahimsa .They took to arms to protect dharma only.

Many minds,many worlds and many histories theory

In Gargya’s samhitha we find a beautiful description of our multiverses .When Brahma ,the creator visits the Goloka where Radha and Krishna live,he is prevented to enter at the gate by Chandraanana ,a female attendant.When he tells her that he is Brahma,she asks “Brahma of which universe?”
He replies:I thought there is only one universe and I am the Brahma of it.
She said.You have been sitting within your closed universe spacetime like a fly within a fruit.You haven’t come out and seen the many universes and worlds.There are several of them ,like fruits of banyan,amlak,oudumbara,Abrus (of different sizes)and of innumerable numbers.
In Vasishtasamhitha also we find there are several universes about 1000 s of them,revolving like seeds of Abrus precatorius(gunja)without touching or colliding with each other .When Alexander heard that there are several worlds from Anaxarchus he wept.The reason was,he thought it as a matter of lamentation that he has not even conquered one.Several thousands of years after Vasishta and Gargya ,the modern astronomy is finding out that there are multiverses.And that the observers mind is also important in making the universes/multiverses/electronlike move.The theory of many minds by Albert and Lower 1988(The quantum mechanics of minds and worlds .Jeffrey A Barrett .Associate Prof of philosophy at uty of California .Irvine Oxford uty press 1999pp 184) states that every observer(drashta in Indian philosophy),every sentient physical system associated with not a single mind,but rather a series of continuous infinite minds and each evolve independent of his/her other minds.But the minds beliefs aboutits own past mental states are typically reliable.Each of the observers mind represent a different perspective or view of the physical world.But while each mind see a single determinate and consistent series of events ,the global observer ,as a collective mind has many mutually incompatable experiences.Minds are not in superposition.Since they are nonphysical.The time evolution of minds is probabilistic.Probabilities are completely objective,although they do not refer to physical events but always to sequence of states of individual minds.Each mind follow a random trajectory with probabilities given by the mental dynamics.One should eventually expect the memories of almost all of an observers minds,in the norm-sequenced measure ,to exhibit the usual quantum statistics.The many mind theory fits well with relativity.One can read off the global mental state of an observer from universal wave function and the evolution of wave function can be expressed in a covariant form ,so can the global mental dynamics.The transcendental approach(pp 198-199 ibid)is to start by supposing scientific enquiry is possible(In ,sanskrit Asthi and those who start from such assumption are called AAsthika as opposed to naasthika who start from assumption not possible ) .Our beliefs about our and others measurements results are true.If so,whenever he is in an eigenstate of making such report ,then the suggestive properties of the base theory is working and what properties the mental state of the observer must have(In Sanskrit it is called Adhikaara of the observer) and how it must evolve in a mind as they tell us what the observer will report about own experiences(swaanubhava in Sanskrit) and relation of it to others experiences.(Paraanubhava).The transcendental approach according to Barrett fully determines the auxiliary approach(pp 200 ibid).
Destruction of simple interference effects by environmental correlates is decoherence.This explains the determinate experience of the observer.,difficulty to distinguish pure states from mixtures.Process of decoherence states of the brain is the relevant observables of individual neurons ,chemical constituents and electrical potentials.They obey the classical dissipative equations of motion(being physical)Thus any quantum superposition of state of neurons will be destroyed far too quickly for us o become conscious of the quantum goings on .The decoherence applies to our own state of minds.Environment constantly changes.The property selected here,has a determinant that is changing.Therefore the property selectd as determinate also must be changed.Thus as the environment the mind also changes constantly and therefore the observers records,experiences,beliefs also has many histories.

Many histories theory was built upon Everetts many world interpretation.It has three additional crucial ingredients.
1.The notion of set of alternative course-grained histories of a quantum system
2.decoherence of histories in a set
3.Their approximate determinism near the effective classical limit
Gell-Mann and Hartles many histories approach is”In a whole thing ,no fundamental division into observer and observed.Measurements and observers cannot be fundamental notions in a theory that seeks to discuss the universe when neither existed.”
The observer or Drashta and the observed or the drishya(prapancha)are indivisible One .Jeeva and prapancha being one and the measurements of the prapancha are measurements of the observer as well.(the same maana/measures)and when nothing existed as in naasadeeya soothra tells us ,these observers and the observed were not there and hence for the state of pralaya or complete dissolution of worlds,and for Brahma no measurements possible .
All predictions in science are honestly and generally the probabilistic predictions of the true histories of particular events in the universe.The two rules for the many histories theory are
1.sets of alternative histories of universe assigned approximate probabilities
2.What these probabilities are explained in context of Heisenberg picture.

When I write the history of India ,I understand these scientific possibilities well and request my readers also to understand them.The history I write is from a different point of view and it is from my observers mind it comes.So reading my history,you also get a picture of my mind as a part of the entire prapancha /multiverses .

To quote Sankaracharya’s words
Jeevo Brahmaivanaapara.
Jeeva =Prapancha
Brahma=Satya or truth
Prapancha as we see has lot of differences due to relative observation of several minds and hence due its seeming duality is a Maaya.
But Jeeva =Brahma
And Jeeva=Prapancha
Therefore
Brahma=Prapancha
If Brahma is truth Prapancha also has to be truth and the many feeling we get in prapancha is only an illusion /maaya.
We are all one,the entire multiverse with its moving and nonmoving,living and nonliving beings is ONE and that mahaadvaitha is what I want to convey through my history.It is Indian philosophy ,in historical perspective and its intention is the happiness of entire world.Shanthi means peace .Let there be peace on earth .

Om shanthi shanthi shanthi