Interesting! I had missed the earlier posts, especially about Korean and Tamil (and a possible link to Bengali). Tamil apparently also has links to Japanese -- particularly in grammatical structure and some similar words. Japanese and Korean are, of course, related (although Koreans would hate to admit it; they are also racially linked, although the Koreans may be the "mother" race for Japanese, if there are such things).
There is of course the famous story of the princess from Ayodhya (Suriratna), called Heo Hwang-ok in Korea, who married King Suro of Geumgwan Gaya in the second century AD. They had 12 children, two of whom were allowed to keep their mother's surname of Heo/Huh/Hur/Her. All 264,000 South Koreans with that surname are said to be descended from her (including the founder of the LG business group). So are the Gimhae Kim clan -- who are said to be descended from the other 10 children. There are 6 million Koreans claiming descent from this iconic couple -- and hence a trace of Indian blood. Many of them come to Ayodhya every year on a "pilgrimage".
World cultures, languages, etc.
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PKBasu
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Re: World cultures, languages, etc.
Indian influence (particularly that of Sanskrit) spread very far indeed. The explorer Magellan (Magallanes in Spanish) never made it around the world (although his ship did), as he was killed on the island of Mactan in the Philippines by the island's ruler, Sri Lapu-Lapu (who was a Hindu). Magellan had succeeded in converting the Chola ruler of the neighbouring (larger) island of Cebu, Humabon, to Christianity, but Lapu-Lapu refused -- and instead defeated and killed Magellan in a battle on the shores of Mactan. There is a large rail station and area of Manila called Magallanes, and merely a street named after Lapu-Lapu. But his statue in Manila shows him wearing a dhoti/veshti.
Old Tagalog (and the other two largest languages of the Cebuano and Ilocano, both sometimes subsumed under Bisaya) were written in a script called Baybayin (derived from Brahmi, which was thought to have arrived from Bengal and Assam, although it derived from the Brahmi of the Pallava dynasty around the 6th century CE). Further east, the Maori language is now thought to be derived from Sanskrit -- as is the Hawaiian language! (see here: http://teaohou.natlib.govt.nz/journals/ ... A/c18.html). I first got a hint of this while researching the American conquest of Hawaii: the last king of Hawaii was called Kalakaua (which would translate as Black Crow in Hindi, but surely has a grander meaning after travelling across the eastern Indian and Pacific Oceans)!
Old Tagalog (and the other two largest languages of the Cebuano and Ilocano, both sometimes subsumed under Bisaya) were written in a script called Baybayin (derived from Brahmi, which was thought to have arrived from Bengal and Assam, although it derived from the Brahmi of the Pallava dynasty around the 6th century CE). Further east, the Maori language is now thought to be derived from Sanskrit -- as is the Hawaiian language! (see here: http://teaohou.natlib.govt.nz/journals/ ... A/c18.html). I first got a hint of this while researching the American conquest of Hawaii: the last king of Hawaii was called Kalakaua (which would translate as Black Crow in Hindi, but surely has a grander meaning after travelling across the eastern Indian and Pacific Oceans)!