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SHRI SAI LEELA – APRIL 1986Buddhist immigrants who brought Indian ideas and languages toJava. The other source was the native of Javanese scholars going toIndia to visit centres of learning and places of pilgrimage. To thisgroup also belonged Javanese and other seamen and traders ofSouth-east Asia who visited Indian ports and inland marts. Theyimbibed Indian ideas and on return home they must have talked ofIndian manners, customs and ways of life and influenced to goodextent the Indianization of the community in which they lived. Thereign of Dharmavamsa (991-1007) tells of one such group of scholarswho had gone to India. They brought back with them to Java manySanskrit texts including the Maha-bharata. These were translated intoold Javanese and this corpus "marks the beginning of Javaneseliterature.... perhaps the most efficient ambassadors of Indian culturewere not so much the Indian themselves, as the natives of South-eastAsia who visited India, absorbed her culture, and returned eager tospread it in their own lands and in their own way." This culture is soembedded in the life of the people of Java and the rest of Indonesiathat even today the Ramayana and the Mahabharata hava a highplace in Indonesian intellectual and social life, though Islam is theprevailing religion except in the island of Bali which is Hindu. Wehave laready noticed earlier that the first International Seminar onRamayana was held in Indonesia. Writing about the Javanese in1885 Balfour says, "They profess Mohammedanism, but still followmany Hindu customs."Traces of Indo-Sumatran culture contacts from prehistoric times arefound in the tribal names among tribes of Central Sumatra whichhave a link and ethnic affinity with Dravidian names. It is natural that27WWW.SAILEELAS.ORG