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Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of ‘Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire’, and the award-winning ‘Lords of the Deccan’. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha.
Thank you for this very informative piece. I am a Sri Lankan researcher, and much of the lack of modern scholarship you mention here, is same in Sri Lanka as well. There is lots more to be studied about our shared ‘medieval past’ (that is if ‘medieval’ is the right terminology). Sri Lankan scholars also unfortunately look only at the island, instead of a pan-southern Asian history. Here too there are references to ‘navies’ in the chronicles and historians take them at face value with the modern concept of Navy, thereby obscuring the real situation.