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Comment by kops | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard of ancient Indian kingdoms going beyond present day afganistan[1]. This falls quite a bit short of Egypt. On the eastern side though, Indonesia seems to have had Hindu kings[2]. I do recollect reading somewhere that at some point of time Indonesia was controlled from Kalinga but can't seem to find a reference any more. I don't think that the whole area from Afganistan till Indonesia was ever under a single king at any point of time. But I am not much of a historian so wouldn't really bet on any of this stuff.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia

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I suppose hinduism could spread that far. I mean consider this, Buddhism actually originates from India. Buddha was a Hindu Prince! And yet its all over the far east (and ironically not much in India). So i suppose Hinduism could spread that far too. (Well Islam and Christianity sure spread a lot!)

Btw, I think you are right about the whole area not being in Hindu control at one point in time. The largest Indian kngdom i remember was of Ashoka, and even that din't completely cover all of modern day India+Pakistan (he gave up war right before conquering the south-most tip because he converted to Budhism).

I think Muslims actually ruled all of the south-asian subcontinent at one time. The Mughals

No they didnt. The were not able to cover Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the southern parts of Andhra Pradesh.

On the western edge, I found some context about various books and papers linking up Hindu migrations into the Horn of Africa, particularly Egypt. Most of what I read about this was offline, so unable to provide additional dope in here.

Here is a write up listing some studies and names of books to consider:

http://amlanroychowdhury.webs.com/antiquityofegypt.htm

For far eastern links, read about inter-marriages and relationships for a period of over two millennium between Ayodhya(India) and Seoul (South Korea) [1]. A search on the Kim clan and Princess Heo Hwang-ok and the spread of Buddhist/Hindu culture right up to Japanese coastline can be inferred.

This is kind of the spread of Hinduism in South East Asia [2] before convertists of other religions (like Muslims or Christianity) emanated.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayodhya

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_Southeast_Asia

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