Beyond trade : cultural roots of India's ocean /Himanshu Prabha Ray

Introduction --
Royal power: conceptualization of maritime space --
Contextualizing Nagapattinam: Chola naval expedition against Sriwijaya --
The Indian Ocean network: an overview --
Narratives of travel and ship-wreck: maritime orientation of coastal shrines --
Multiple partners across the Indian Ocean --
From global to local: early medieval Gujarat and Konkan coast --
The sailing ship: connecting the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean --
Preserving maritime heritage: the path ahead.

The book reorients the reader from the conventional linear construct of maritime history as control of trade networks and domination to looking at the reality of constant cultural transfer and transmission within the domain of the Indian Ocean world. In doing so it shifts the spotlight on to coastal architecture and archaeology, narratives of ship-wreck and travel in literature, as well as on the central experience of trans-locality of maritime communities and the mapping and remapping of maritime conceptions of space across two millennia of history. Ideas about religious and ethnic identities often draw from prevailing notions of the past and it is here that the present and the past are inextricably linked not only to individual destinies, but more significantly to the larger meta-narratives of the nation states or as in recent years, the globalising world. An active engagement with maritime heritage of countries around the Indian Ocean littoral thus provides a viable model to deepen the knowledge of one’s own cultural legacy. The book is aimed at both the researcher and the informed reader of India’s ancient past.