What If: No Taboo of the Sea in Hinduism

Apparently, sea travel was considered taboo in many Hindu sects, if you believe "A History of Sea Power" by William Oliver Stevens. I found that hard to believe at first, and thought it was a misconception based on the author's early 20th century bias (think the kind of book that uses "Oriental despotism" seriously), so I looked around a bit and found out it was a real belief. A serious enough offense to possibly lose one's varna (i.e. caste), in fact.

What would Indian history be like if Kala Pani did not exist? Would India have been a major sea power? Am I overstating Kala Pani's importance, since many Indians found ways around it (Islam, repentance rituals within Hinduism, etc.)?
 
I think this is a chicken and egg thing. Religions are very flexible, and the mariners of Chola and the Hindu states of Indonesia would certainly have been surprised to hear of that strong a prohibition. So much more than "Would Hindu India have become a sea power without that rule", the question should be "Would this rule exist in any meaningful way if Hindu India had become a sea power"?

I think it would have existed in exactly the same way the prohibition of interest exists in Europe today. You know, if canon law permitted interest, could Switzerland have become a major banking hub?
 
Well I think that by the fall of the Guptas most of the regulations surrounding Kala Pani had been disregarded. It was definitely destroyed as a taboo by the Chola and Chera navies. Another such contributor was the invasion of the Hunas and Sakas. This kinda showed the Indian rulers that there were foreign kings ( who were Hindus themselves in the Sakas case) that were able to defeat the Indian kings.
 
First I've head of this. Interesting.
A quick check of wikipedia talks about ships taking vats containing ganges water with them to somehow fight the negative effects of this superstition. Pretty cool.
 
Apparently, sea travel was considered taboo in many Hindu sects, if you believe "A History of Sea Power" by William Oliver Stevens. I found that hard to believe at first, and thought it was a misconception based on the author's early 20th century bias (think the kind of book that uses "Oriental despotism" seriously), so I looked around a bit and found out it was a real belief. A serious enough offense to possibly lose one's varna (i.e. caste), in fact.

What would Indian history be like if Kala Pani did not exist? Would India have been a major sea power? Am I overstating Kala Pani's importance, since many Indians found ways around it (Islam, repentance rituals within Hinduism, etc.)?

Despite not knowing much about this, I feel qualified to have an opinion. :rolleyes:

My first thought is that since India did not exist as a single coherent entity, it's quite likely that a concept forbidding sea travel was much more prevalent inland than in coastal areas. I am pretty sure that most of the early Mughal emperors saw the sea only once in their lives (I have read this but can't remember where) and would have had more contact with Europeans and Chinese than sailors.

Of course, this is also a Hindu issue, and the rulers of Hindustan and Golkonda were Muslim for several hundred years, and during the time of global exploration. So this probably would not have had a major effect on the rulers' attitudes to sea travel. My hunch is that they just weren't interested, due to the rulers' lack of proximity to the sea. Where is the incentive to travel by seas? India was a very rich country and took up a major proportion of the silk route. Traders from Europe and China would take routes through India, so spices and tea were easy enough to get from the east, and gold and silver from the west. Add to that the fact that India was the only source of diamonds until they were discovered in South Africa and you have a large number of disincentives to travel. The inflexibility of caste may or may not have also contributed to this inertia.

If there was something that India needed that could only be found overseas or perhaps if someone like Akbar had set up a capital at a port city then things may have been different.

One last thing - a lot of sailors (from memory - 80pc - I think that's from a book called Asians in Britain) who worked on East India Company ships were Indian. So there were plenty of sailors I think.
 
The issue is the same with China I believe. People point to Taoism and the land but China supplied many strong naval states or merchant/pirates throughout history.
 
So is that why Sri Lanka is more Buddhist than Hindu?

No, I think that had to do with Sinhala and Tamil issues. The Sinhalese were just more into Buddhism.

Yup- the resurgence which laid the foundation for modern Hinduism was quite strong in South India and while the Sinhalese kept to Buddhism, the Tamil population mostly adopted the new Hindu ideas. Buddhism then became asserted as part of Sinhala identity.

With regard to the OP, the Kala Pani thing was prevalent to different extents across different cultures, different castes and different time periods. It's a feature of certain types of Hindu practice, not a blanket prohibition. Carlton's comparison to the taking of interest in Christianity is a good analogy.

I also think you're making the common mistake of thinking of India and Hinduism as something unitary. An Awadhi soldier might have reacted with horror to the idea of crossing the black water, a Malayalee merchant might not bat an eyelid. The British tended to look at Hindu practice as carried out in North India (most specifically in Bengal and the United Provinces) and in the Hindu texts used there and assume that was standard, but Hindu culture and religious practices varied wildly across India. This is most likely the intellectual background in which Stevens is writing so I'd take his attitudes with a grain of salt.
 
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Oh my gosh. So is the reason for why China and India didn't rule the world (until this century) because of inborn cultural restrictions that prevented them from effective overseas expansion?
 
Oh my gosh. So is the reason for why China and India didn't rule the world (until this century) because of inborn cultural restrictions that prevented them from effective overseas expansion?

This isn't trolling is it? If your serious in the case of both India and China they had more to worry about land powers then naval for the most part. India you never really had states except maybe in the south that could afford to focus on a navy. China was more the same with just Sinocentrism added in, China already believed it was the center of the world.
 
This isn't trolling is it? If your serious in the case of both India and China they had more to worry about land powers then naval for the most part. India you never really had states except maybe in the south that could afford to focus on a navy. China was more the same with just Sinocentrism added in, China already believed it was the center of the world.

Well, the real reason is economic. Both Chinese and Indian polities and/or individuals did engage in maritime trade and military expeditions when necessary to secure trade routes to valuable resources (usually in SE Asia in both cases). They didn't engage in long range trade to the west because there was zero economic incentive to do so- the money would come to them, initially through Arab traders and later through direct European trading expeditions.

The Europeans engaged in dangerous and high cost intercontinental trade expeditions because there was a market for Asian trade goods. Coincidentally this happened to equip them with part of the technology and institutional organisational suite that made outright imperialism possible from the late 18th C onward. Indians didn't try to round the Cape to reach Portugal because why spend the money when you can sit back and let the foreigners bring you gold.

A taboo of the Kala Pani had nothing to do with any perceived lack of Indian maritime ventures. Indian polities and individuals proved themselves perfectly willing to engage in it when the economic incentives were there.
 
Oh my gosh. So is the reason for why China and India didn't rule the world (until this century) because of inborn cultural restrictions that prevented them from effective overseas expansion?

To be fair to the OP, I don't think he was quite implying this. He was asking a sincere question about a common Orientalist misconception of Indian culture.
 
I also think you're making the common mistake of thinking of India and Hinduism as something unitary. An Awadhi soldier might have reacted with horror to the idea of crossing the black water, a Malayalee merchant might not bat an eyelid. The British tended to look at Hindu practice as carried out in North India (most specifically in Bengal and the United Provinces) and in the Hindu texts used there and assume that was standard, but Hindu culture and religious practices varied wildly across India. This is most likely the intellectual background in which Stevens is writing so I'd take his attitudes with a grain of salt.

For a while weren't the British classifying Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism as Hindu?
 
For a while weren't the British classifying Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism as Hindu?

Not that I've heard of. They sometimes tended to use the term "Hindoo" to describe people of Indian ethnicity in general, which may be what you're thinking of.

The British administrators did take an interest in Hinduism to some extent (even if it was mostly to look down their noses at it) but since they were most closely involved with the UP and Bengal they tended to assume that those regional beliefs were "standard" Hinduism.
 
Not that I've heard of. They sometimes tended to use the term "Hindoo" to describe people of Indian ethnicity in general, which may be what you're thinking of.

The British administrators did take an interest in Hinduism to some extent (even if it was mostly to look down their noses at it) but since they were most closely involved with the UP and Bengal they tended to assume that those regional beliefs were "standard" Hinduism.

Huh, I'd thought I'd read that the British at first classified everyone other than Muslims, Christians, and Jews and Hindu.
 
The religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism have many characteristics common with Hinduism and if all appear same to a foreigner, it was quite natural. Before the arrival of Muslims the Saivism and Vaishnavism were like two separate religions and their followers fought each other and also against the followers of Buddhism and Jainism. Buddhism and Jainism lost the contest and remained minor religions in India. The spread of Buddhism outside India is another story.
Saivism and Vaishnavism, both remained strong and influential. But the Muslims considered both the same and called them Hindus. In course of time the differences disappeared and "Hinduism" emerged. The concept of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva also gained acceptance as to cement the unity of Saivites and Vaishnavites. Today you cannot see separate Saivites and Vaishnavites, though there are certain sects who consider themselves more Saivite or more Vaishnavite.
 
The religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism have many characteristics common with Hinduism and if all appear same to a foreigner, it was quite natural. Before the arrival of Muslims the Saivism and Vaishnavism were like two separate religions and their followers fought each other and also against the followers of Buddhism and Jainism. Buddhism and Jainism lost the contest and remained minor religions in India. The spread of Buddhism outside India is another story.
Saivism and Vaishnavism, both remained strong and influential. But the Muslims considered both the same and called them Hindus. In course of time the differences disappeared and "Hinduism" emerged. The concept of the Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva also gained acceptance as to cement the unity of Saivites and Vaishnavites. Today you cannot see separate Saivites and Vaishnavites, though there are certain sects who consider themselves more Saivite or more Vaishnavite.

Definitely true but where the British were concerned I was always under the impression that they were quite aware of religious distinctions if only for the reason that they took those distinctions into account when determining favoured groups in local administration, martial and non martial "races" etc.
 
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