Watch: How Southeast Asia was Indianised

From Sanjeev Sanyal’s The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History.

The video tells the story of a Vietnamese princess who proposed marriage to an Indian merchant under very unusual circumstances in the first century BCE. This most surprising union led to the formation of what we know as the Indo-Cambodian dynasty. To this day, the royal families of Cambodia and Vietnam claim to be the descendants of Princess Soma and the Indian merchant, Kaundinya.

In The Ocean of Churn, Sanjeev Sanyal takes us on a journey back in time to explore the history of the vast and ever-present region, the Indian Ocean. In a unique attempt, he digs into the ocean’s past, through such means as ancient inscriptions and oral histories, to unearth the stories that have quietly floated its waters for millennia. (Get your copy here.)