Indian Indonesians are a group of people who live in
Indonesia and whose ancestors originally came from the
Indian subcontinent. Therefore this term can be regarded as a blanket term for not only Indonesian Indian proper, but also Indonesian Pakistanis, Indonesian Sinhalese etc. The total number of Indonesians of Indian origin is about 5,000 most of whom are concentrated in
Medan (
North Sumatra) and in the Javanese cities of
Jakarta,
Surabaya and
Bandung.
History
Various people from the Indian subcontinent have frequented the Indonesian
archipelago since the prehistoric era. In Bali, for example, remains of potteries from the first centuries C.E. have been recovered. In fact, the name Indonesia itself comes from the
Latin Indus "India" and
Greek nêsos "island" which literally means the ‘Indian archipelago’.
From the 4th and 5th centuries onwards, Indian cultural influences became more and more visible. The
Sanskrit language was used on inscriptions. However, since the 7th century onwards, the Indian scripts were used more and more to write down indigenous languages which by now already contained many loans not only from Sanskrit, but also various
prakrit and
Tamil.
In addition to that, indigenous Indonesians began to embrace Indian religions, in particular
Shivaism and
Buddhism. But some were followers of
Vishnuism and
Tantrism.
It is believed that various Indian people also settled in Indonesia, mixed and...
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