Afonso de Albuquerque, during the Portuguese conquest of Malacca writes to his king that he seized a map from a Javanese pilot near Malacca. The map had details of areas almost till Antarctica(1000 km south of Tasmania) and even parts of Americas.
This begs one to pose a much bigger question. What do we know of the sea exploits of these thalassocracies, especially Srivijaya, Mataram and Majapahit, and the Indians, Chinese and Japanese. Clearly, their achievements are not mean -
Srivijaya invaded Zanzibar and populated Madagascar, Maldives is as good as a part of India, Chandravasi is the name for the Papuan Bird of Paradise in Indonesian. There are hints, but do we have information?
There are hints that the earliest Portuguese maps copied directly from Indian Ocean Area maps and even their their copying was imperfect.
What happened to the existing maps? Destroyed or left to rot to ensure that Portuguese monopoly on seas stays so!! Wonder how much such information is destroyed by these Abrahamics and on what and all subjects.
Very rare specimens exist but are generally out of reach.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the original map in Portuguese hands was lost in a shipwreck and all the Portuguese king got was a partial and imperfect copy of the original.
So, what do the Javanese know? Almost till Papua and Australia.
Wow!! As like in Africa, a local ship guided the Portuguese in Indonesia. And even the Portuguese ships had local guides.
By the way, did the local ship saw a window and scooted away, leaving the Portuguese to their own devices in a horror show?
Another question would be, how much did the Javanese know. Varthema writes around 1505, they have four to five stars besides the Pole Star for navigation.
There are two important bits of information in this 1. There are sea faring people even in Australia or some island in that area 2. The day is no more than four hours and is the coldest place known to mankind - this climate is almost 1000 km south of Tasmania.
Someone writes a century after Varthema of the Southern Cross,
All this makes one wonder what information the Javanese and Sumatrans had over Australia, and how much of it is permanently lost.
A few points more. You are prohibited to travel farther ahead. Add the legend of Nyai Roro Kidul to this as well.
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When the Rani of Jhansi realized that the fort is about to fall, there was absolute silence for some time. The outer corridor has already fallen while the Rani was holed up in the inner fort. One fine day, the main gates opened and bust out of it, the Rani in person with an escort of 500 mercenaries and the royal treasury on a state elephant amidst.
They charged directly into the cannons, destroying them and breaking away. She didn't jump out of a window in the night. She crashed through the main gate in pomp. The British took some time to realize what happened and the hunt started.
By then, the troops split the treasury and scattered(to join back again at a rendezvous). A considerable number of them weren't able to reach the rendezvous and the most prominent amongst them was a heavily injured Moropant Tambe, the Rani's father.
One geopolitical mess which no one bothers to look into, is North Myanmar. There is a near clean demarcation between Tai, Burmese and Chin. You can ignore Chin - even till 1900, they were primitive tribes. Real deal here is the Shan and their allied Kachin.
Now, if you expand the scope out of Myanmar, you will see that there are historically two Tai nodes - one in the West, including Tai Ahom and their parent state Mongkwang, and one in the East centred around Thailand. The eastern node is not our concern.
While the border between Ahom Kingdom and Mongkwang is loosely defined and there were clashes between the both some times(Mongkwang is not actually the parent state of Tai Ahom but it was the political successor of Mong Mao, the parent state for Ahoms), the relations were
So, was reading some book over Sangam Era history. Some important points. While I am not happy with the quality of scholarship, the book, however, reveals some interesting insights. 1. The earliest kingdom Tamils know is that of Nagas. Nagas ruled from Puhar and they were conquered by Cholas. The story is exactly identical to Pallava conquest of Chutu Naga Vaijayanti. This means that Tamils had no concept of a kingdom before 200-250 AD.
2. The historic trajectory is divided into two sets of tribes - the first wave is just tribes which mainstreamed themselves like the Vedar, Kurumbar and others. They just had raw valour unlike the next wave including Malavar, Kosar and others who were sophisticated militarily. In fact, Malavar is assumed to be first ones who used horses in the Tamil country.
3. There is not much clarity on the origin of tribes: They can be local, nomadic and pastoral, or they can be remnants of armies which marched from the North. For instance, around 250-300 AD or so, we start hearing of Kongans - is that a variant of the word Ganga, indicating Ganga armies?
People think as if Vasco Da Gama did a great thing by discovering a sea route to India. It's not so. He didn't do anything actually. Bartolomeu Dias already crossed the Cape of Good Hope and confirmed that the coast turns North East from there. He would oversee building of
Vasco da Gama's ships and would accompany him at least till Cape Verde. And da Gama, after a bout of piracy and clueless what to do, came across an Indian merchant in Mombassa who took him to Calicut. These European "explorers" didn't understand the concept of longitude and
when da Gama saw the ease with which Indians crossed the ocean, he simply threw his equipment away and replaced it with that of Indian. By the way, in 1511, these people came across a Majapahit map. Cape of Good Hope was already in that!!
Let me bite the bullet then. Anyone, feel free to pick the topic.
Kurwai: Kurwai troops led by it's crown prince Izzat Khan was a part of Holkar troop. He either rebelled on field or defected - Abdali felicitated him.
He died of injuries soon after and on the other hand, Holkar invaded Kurwai and severely chastised it's ruling line.
Punjab:
Here, Marathas were completely out of picture and the subsequent decades ended up as running fights between Afghans and the kingdoms supporting them in India, and the Sikhs.
The 600s Tang campaigns which genocided Agni and imposed Chinese rule on the Tarim Basin were the decisive blow for Indic influence and culture in Tarim Basin. The implication of it was not actually lost on the locals.
Led by Khotan, a kind of pacificst Buddhism was dominant in the area(its military power broken, and with Tibet and Arabs breathing down it's neck, there is only that much they can do).
A few centuries after the Chinese advances, an Uyghur Khan was asked why doesn't he convert to Buddhism. He replied, Buddhism teaches compassion and a king can never afford to be compassionate. His successors converted to Islam.