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ItemAmbivalent engagements: The Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean world( 2017-02-01) Mukherjee, RilaThis article investigates the role played by the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean world. It argues that formulations that suggest the Bay's encounters were ambivalent and sporadic until c.1000 - when there was a trade revolution - and see it as a latecomer in the Indian Ocean world, are wrong. Examples from commerce and cultural flows reveal the Bay world as an active participant in the Indian Ocean world from early times and debunk the notion of passivity.
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ItemStudying the Asian Ocean-Sea( 2020-09-01) Mukherjee, RilaThis article urges a rethinking of South Asian cosmography to counter our notion of seascapes lying outside notions of sovereignty, territoriality and technologies of control. While seas have emerged as central to economic and political security for most of the worlds’ states, this is seen as a comparatively new phenomenon because South Asia’s territoriality has always been seen as land-based. The emphasis on the modern has resulted in a neglect of South Asia’s rich tradition of maritime expressiveness and generates a ‘maritime blindness’ affecting policy formulation, despite works on seafaring which trace diverse maritime perceptions from Pali and Sanskrit literature, sculptures, coins, paintings and epigraphy. This article claims that waterscapes were not absent in Asian ideas of territoriality, but differentiating between awareness in literary expressions of political selfhood wherein rulers saw the sea as boundary or even space of overlordship, and actual instances of ordering and controlling maritime spaces is important. By contrast, China’s example as keeper of meticulous records pertaining to maritime matters shows attempts at actively controlling maritime spaces and provides new ways of reading South Asian perceptions of the sea.