Articles

Where Were Medieval Indians Living?

Vostok/Oriens '2014, №3

 
The Indians in Medieval Ages retained a mythological perception of India as Jambudvipa island surrounded by the ocean and extended from the Himalayas up to the Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) or to “Rama’s bridge” (“Adam’s bridge”). They viewed this territory containing many countries, real and/or imaginable. Mythological perception of space was consistently combined with a realistic one, especially at the level of a state, a region, a group of township, a village. There was a clear distinction between the North and the South of the subcontinent, and between the southerners and the northerners, and the North was understood as a more sacral territory. Interlacing of mythological and realistic geographical knowledge was inherent to all strata of population: governing groups, merchants, villagers. The paper is based on evidences of grants and other South-Indian epigraphical sources of the 6th to 13th centuries.

Keywords: India, Middle Ages, territory, mentality, mythology, reality

Pages: С. 5–19