Fw: Re: Rising of the sea and other Migration myths

[Koenraad Elst]

 Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote:

> >I am slowly working on a
> >book project entitled "The Churning of the Milky Ocean."
> >The book is meant for general audiences and deals, among other things,
> >with various origin traditions linked with the Milky Ocean, which by all
> >accounts I'm aware of is located to the east.
>
> Isn't the Angkor Wat depiction of the myth a result
> of the Indianization originating from the West of Khmer empire?
> Or, Did the churning of the ocean myth reach India from the East?
>


Bernard Sergent does claim that the churning of the ocean myth (and many
other myths besides, e.g. the birth of the human race from a pumpkin,
preserved in the patriarch's name Ikshvaku/pumpkin) comes from SE Asia.
Elsewhere in the same book, Genèse de l'Inde, he also says that it has a
common origin with the Germanic myth of Aegir churning the ocean to produce
beer.  This seems to imply that the myth travelled all the way from the SE
to the NW of the Eurasian continent.  Maybe we should keep the unmentionable
invasion, but have it come from the SE rather than from the NW.

Kind regards,

Dr. K. Elst