History is fascinating. It's fairly common knowledge in academia there are sites in East Africa derived from Buddhist use with Indic names. The article touches

History is fascinating. It's fairly common knowledge in academia there are sites in East Africa derived from Buddhist use with Indic names. The article touches on south-west subcontinental trading ports, mentioning Pattanam just north of modern Kochi in Kerala. I traveled there in 2011 (shortly after accidentally experiencing the start of the Arab Spring revolution in Tunisia!) when we were starting Kraken, and with a background in ancient Chinese history and many years in China, I was impressed to see many active cantilevered fishing structures erected in bamboo[0]: just the same as you can see today in some parts of China. There's also a theory that the monk who introduced Kung Fu in China was actually teaching an established martial art from this same region of Kerala (of course this is not entertained in China for political reasons, it makes a lot of sense). Most of Southeast Asia owes heavy cultural debts to southern Indian seafaring, as typified by the Borobodur bas-relief boat carving showing outriggers associated with southern India ("katthu-maram" = "two sticks tied together" = catamaran = technology which powered Austronesian seafaring)[1]. Incidentally, the very name China itself was asserted by a prominent historian to be possibly derived from an Indic name for a tribal confederation in Yunnan/Guizhou/Guangxi, Yelang.[2] [0] https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chinese-fishing-nets-kochi https://www.outlooktraveller.com/experiences/heritage/chines... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borobudur_ship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinas