Indian migration to Southeast Asia establishes Indian culture in SE, shows new genetic study

Multiple waves of Indians migrating to South East Asia over a period of more than 1200 years and their intermingling with the locals led to the establishment of Indian culture across the region, according to a new genetic study released on Thursday.

An international team has provided detailed genetic evidence of Indian ancestry in various Southeast Asian populations in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, identifying the migration patterns of people from the Indian sub-continent to South East Asia, mainly between the 5th and 17th centuries AD.

Such a population movement may have led to the establishment of Indian culture as visible in state formation, laws, religions, arts, and literature of the region.

Ancient Sanskrit inscriptions were found throughout South East Asia and several present-day languages contain numerous Sanskrit loanwords.

Mainland Southeast Asia has a complex population history and features hundreds of indigenous languages from five different major language families.

During the first millennium of the Common Era, after trading began with the sub-continent, Indian culture influenced the establishment of early states in the region.

However, few studies have adequately explored the extent of evidence of prior mixing of South Asian genetic lineages in present-day Southeast Asian populations.

To provide a clearer picture, Piya Changmai of the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic, and colleagues analysed the genetic signatures of 119 individuals from 10 ethnic groups in Thailand.

They probed the single nucleotide polymorphisms - a specific genetic variation found in different individuals' DNA sequences that can be associated with different genetic lineages – and compared the data with previously published genetic data.

Analysing the entire data set using a variety of genetic methods, the scientists reported substantial South Asian genetic signatures (between 2-16%) in various population groups across Southeast Asia.

“We for the first time demonstrate South Asian admixture in populations from Cambodia and Vietnam, extending earlier results of detecting this ancestry component in Thailand and confirm detection of such an ancestry component in Myanmar and Singapore,” they reported in the journal PLOS Genetics.

While the genetic mixing happened nearly 400-1,600 years ago, the more frequent inter-mingling of the two distinct populations was seen 500-1,000 years before the current era. Historically, this belongs to a period after the naval expedition of Rajendra Chola in 1025 CE against the Srivijaya kingdom.

Changmai added, “Indian genetic heritage in Southeast Asian populations suggests multiple waves of migrations from India to Southeast Asia in the past, which may have been responsible for the spread of Indian culture in the region.”

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