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Indian Contacts With Western Lands— Medieval

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

K.A. Nilakanta Sastri
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Extract

The rise and rapid progress of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries a.d. drew the East and West much closer than any force had yet done and opened out numerous channels of intrecourse, material and spiritual. Travel and trade increased when the first shocks of war and hostility subsided, and, thanks to the writings of Arab travelers, geographers, and historians, we possess a more than usually complete record of the transactions of the age. The early Arab geographers gained from India the notion that there was a world center which they styled arin, a corruption of the name of the Indian town of Ujjayinï, where there was an astronomical observatory and on the meridian of which “the world cupola” or “summit” was supposed to be located.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 8 , Issue 32 , December 1960 , pp. 28 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. Hitti, History of the Arabs (London, I937), p. 384. I have made free use of Hitti's magnificent work, and, unless otherwise indicated, all the facts in this section are drawn from it.

2. K. A. N. Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India (Madras, I939), pp. 2I-22.

3. Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither i. 83, cited by James Hornell in The Origins and Ethnographical Significance of Indian Boat Designs, Memoirs of A.S.B., VII, 3 (I920), 202.

4. Titus, Indian Islam (London, I930), citing Goldziher and other authorities.

5. Hitti, op. cit., p. 308.

6. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, III (Cambridge, I959), I0-II, esp. n. k.

7. Hitti, p. 573-74.

8. Ibid., p. 330. "The Old Man of the Mountain" is the translation in the crusaders' chronicles of the title Shzykh-al-jabal borne by Rashid-al-Din Sinan (II92) who resided at al-MaSyad and whose henchmen struck awe and terror into the hearts of the crusaders (ibid., p. 448).

9. Ibid., p. 690.

10. Ibid., pp. 433 ff.

11. Ibid., pp. 356, 358-59.

12. Ibid., pp. 446, 448.

13. Ibid., p. 260.

14. Ibid., pp. 265-67.

15. Ibid., p. 4I7.

16. Ibid., pp. 404-5, 428.

17. Ibid., pp. 372, 458-59.

18. Ibid., pp. 377, 383.

19. K. A. N. Sastri, Foreign Notices of South India (Madras, I94I), p. 2I.

20. T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf (Oxford, I938), pp. 5I-52, 63.

21. Hitti, p. 667.

22. An old Tamil poem of the early centuries A.D. contains the legend of a Tamil dynasty of rulers having first brought the sugar cane from heaven to the earth (Purana nuru 99, I-2; 392, I9-27).

23. Hitti, p. 697.

24. For what follows I draw mainly upon my History of India (Madras, I950), Part II, "Mediaeval India."

25. H. G. Rawbinson in O'Malley, Modern India and the West (Oxford, I94I), p. 544.