Coastal Shrines and Transnational Maritime Networks across India and Southeast Asia

Himanshu Prabha Ray is Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, Oxford. She was the first Chairperson of the National Monuments Authority, Ministry of Culture in New Delhi, India from 2012 to 2015, and former Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research interests include Maritime History and Archaeology of the Indian Ocean and the Archaeology of Religion in Asia. Her recent books include Decolonising Heritage in South Asia: The Global, the National and the Transnational (ed. 2019) Archaeology and Buddhism in South Asia (2018), Buddhism and Gandhara: An Archaeology of Museum Collections (ed. 2018), The Archaeology of Sacred Spaces: The Temple in Western India,2nd Century BCE to 8th Century CE (with Susan Verma Mishra, 2017), The Return of the Buddha: Ancient Symbols for a New Nation (2014) and The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, (2003).

List of Figures. Preface. 1. Introduction 2. Culture, the Written Word and the Sea, 3rd century BCE to 4th century CE 3. Maritime Cultural Landscapes and expanding networks, 4th to 7th century 4. Travelling Relics 5. From the Tamil Coast to Vietnam: The King and the Temple 6. The Coastal Shrine and Maritime Networks, 7th to 13th Century CE 7. The Buddhist ‘Cosmopolis’ Re-examined 8. Shipwrecks Sites: Connecting the Dots 9. From Religious Shrines to Monuments: National Identity to Transnational Heritage. Bibliography. Index.