Visual Culture of the Indian Ocean: India in a polycentric world

Abstract

What India produced others wanted. Others therefore wanted India. Although this by no means entirely explains India’s role in a polycentric world, it explains a great deal. It also helps us understand India as a fulcrum, at least within Indian Ocean trade. That is, the means by which India’s visual products became known and then coveted as well as the means by which India absorbed visual products from other centers of the world long before the age of call centers and other forms of outsourcing by which India engages in the present-day polycentric world.

My article for Diogenes examines four periods in India’s history that present opportunities to explore India’s role in a polycentric world as documented by visual examples. The first is the third-century BCE Maurya empire, which emerged in response to Alexander’s march toward the east. While we have some written documentation for India’s engagement with the Mediterranean, shared motifs and even the export of luxury goods beautifully fashioned from ivory document the engagement of two of the most important civilizations of the time. The second is the powerful seafaring and sea-trading Chola empire, which left its mark across Southeast Asia with the expansion of Buddhism and Hinduism, with scripts based on those of India, and with a Hindu temple of the thirteenth century, one very possibly designed and carved by Indian artists, whose remains are still to be seen in Quanzhou, China, the Zayton of Marco Polo’s writing. The third is India’s role in producing export textiles designed specifically for markets outside of India, for example, those of Southeast Asia but extending to the so-called Paisley prints and the plethora of words for textiles derived from Indian languages, e.g. Calico and Seersucker. Finally, the article examines Mughal paintings that incorporate European works and European artists, including Rembrandt, who copied Mughal paintings.