Not understanding Isalm

Source: TW

Not understanding Isalm -Rjrasva

State level

What creative excuses our folks come up with! “Rashtrakutas of 10th cent couldn’t have known about Mohammedanism & its future effects, so they let sulla merchants infest their kingdom”.

Except for a few inconvenient facts

    1. Sindh fell 200 yrs earlier
    1. Kabul & Zabul were under constant attack
    1. Sassanid’s fell almost 260 yrs earlier.

Indeed Iran was our neighbor as far back as anyone could remember, but u won’t see a single record in text or inscription from our side noting its fall & the ramifications thereof.

Merchant failure

This even though our dhando ungles of yore were trading in all these lands. You often see our thambis kanging about Sanskrit inscriptions left by these dhandowalas in Socotra island of Yemen. Yet they didn’t see it fit to record rise of Mohammedanism & warn their countrymen of the coming storm? May be they did but we have no records? strange.

Japanese comparison

In comparative perspective, Japan which was far more isolated kept up vigilance in Kyushu after the loss of Yamato-Paekche to Silla-Tang alliance for centuries just in case they decided to invade Japan proper. Likewise Japanese knew about rise of Mongols as Japanese residents of Korea sent back reports about conquest of Korea by the Mongols. Same with Manchu conquest of Ming, there were even debates on whether Japan should respond to Ming appeals for help & aid the loyalists in restoring Ming just in case the Manchu later decided to invade Japan after completing conquest of Ming. They were of course well aware of fall of Qing in Opium wars. As early as 1818 Vasily Golovnin records the Japanese elite as being worried about rise of English power in India as they felt Japan could be next

Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey - Mikiso Hane · 2018 Potential threat of Silla contributed to the consolidation of the martial tradition by compelling the Japanese to maintain military vigilance for nearly four centuries following Silla’s destruction of

One final pt, below from Aizawa Seishisai’s 1825 text Shinron (New Theses), very influential text in decades leading up to Meiji restoration. In 1825 Mohammedanism was as alien to Japan as to Australian aborigines & Aizawa had no access to Quran or Hadiths. Read with that in mind.

The earliest Japanese bio of Peter the great was written in 1805, 63 years before Meiji restoration. This was in response to Russian expansion which was now reaching Hokkaido. The Japanese intellectuals were trying to read & find out whatever they could about Russia. Peter the great was even taken as a sort of role model for Japan, they were inspired by how he raised Russia to great power status & felt something similar needed to be done in Japan.

The shogunate demanded that the Dutch submit an annual report on developments outside of Japan. The Dutch duly obliged, providing the Tokugawa with precious information on world affairs.. In fact, the shogunate had been anticipating - The Edo Inheritance

Chinese understudied

Even today you hardly see any change, the number of serious scholars of Chinese history & thought I can count on my fingertips. You have Raghuvira & his son Lokeshchandra. The rest of the time it’s either mindless simping for HSR videos or drone shots of their cities at night. By contrast I doubt u will find a decent Hindi bio of Qin Shihuangdi who unified them under Legalism or the Qianlong emperor under whom they reached our borders & under whom they tried to conquer Nepal using a Nepal-Tibetan quarrel as excuses. This even though we know that there existed Indian travelers in Qing empire (again based on Chinese records). None of these folks took an interest in Qing policies that may affect their homeland it seems.

By contrast we have Mohan Lal Kashmiri who traveled through Central Asia a few decades later working under Brits as a spy for them, now he kept detailed records & published them as memoirs.

Exceptions

Two exceptions I know of to this seeming lack of awareness of the outside world & ramifications of events there was

    1. the Pallava monarch Rajasimha’s offer of aid to the Chinese against the Arabs & Tibetans, again this comes from Chinese records
    1. Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa requesting that the Dao de jing be translated into Sanskrit, which was done under Emperor Taizong & it was brought to India by Xuanzang - not sure what became of it, again all this is based on Chinese records.

Parsis

Finally, we know that the Parsis reached our shores as refugees quiet early on but u don’t see any records from our side on whether they were interrogated on events in Iran. Whatever we have such as vayaM pArasIkaM is from Parsi records.

Recommendations

So if u want to do anything productive my advice is

    1. stop ada bigha keshtu (caste) kanging & language kanging, no one in the outside world cares just like no one cares about which obscure tribe is fighting which other obscure tribe in the Congo
    1. stop simping for leaderji’s beard
    1. Take some interest in outside world, go open up a translation of the Book of Lord Shang for example as a start or else you will fare no better than your ancestors did.