| Summary/Abstract |
The foundation and flourishing of Champa on the major marine trade route from Kanchi to Canton, or from the SE Asian isles to Canton, was part of a new historic phenomenon of the fast emergence of cultural kingdoms from tribal orders. The new paradigm was the empowerment of the dormant energy of the non-alphabetic tribes by enriching them with a writing system and thinking patterns; establishing kingdoms with a king, ministers, nobility and State functionaries; setting up palaces and temples; the rise of an intellectual class and priestly orders. Emperor Asoka sought the substitution of war drums by the drums of Dharma, bherighosa became dhammaghosa. He initiated this process of culturation by sending his son Mahendra and his daughter Sanghamitra to Srilanka by deputing his ministers to Khotan and crowning his son as the first “King of Khotan,” by planning his son Kunala to be the King of Kucha, and so on. This sowing of intellectual seeds in the immensity of the regions was the rise of a new order of a spiritual culture and secular civilisation in the whole of Asia. The theodiversity, pluralism of life styles, alongwith an organised state, economy and strategic systems of India became the dawn of a new age in the SE Asian region upto mainland China. Indian savants, princes and merchants envisioned Suvarnadvipa in their quest of affluence of life.
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