The History of Dayak: A definitive and foundational volume that serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding Borneo and the Dayak in their full complexity, across multiple dimensions. Exceptional.
Borneo as Varuna-dvipa and the Traces of Hindu-Indian Colonialism
Kalimantan, known as Borneo in the era of European influence, and referred to as Varuna-dvipa during the period of early Indic engagement, is the third-largest island in the world, after Greenland and New Guinea. It preserves within its vast expanse multiple layers of deep and varied history. The influence of ancient Indian civilization has shaped its identity for millennia.
read The History of Dayak (19): The Land That Does Not Let Go
In Hindu-Indian literary sources, the island appears under the name Varuna-dvipa. The term derives from Sanskrit, combining “Varuna,” the Vedic deity of the waters, the oceans, and the guardian of cosmic order, with “dvipa,” meaning island. The designation is not merely geographic. It reflects a distinctly Hindu cosmological perspective on Borneo. The island was understood as a fertile maritime realm encircled by abundant rivers and functioning as a strategic commercial hub in Southeast Asia.
Verification of this claim rests upon credible primary and secondary sources. Although not all major Vedic or Purāṇic texts mention the island explicitly, textual, archaeological, and etymological evidence from the fourth century CE through tenth-century Chinese records strengthens the plausibility of this designation. The name became integrated into the broader network of Indian colonies and spheres of influence in the region.
Hindu-Indian influence in Borneo began around the fourth century CE, when seafarers and merchants from the Indian subcontinent, particularly from regions corresponding to present-day Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, arrived along the island’s northern coasts. They navigated maritime routes through the Strait of Malacca. Covering approximately 743,000 square kilometers, Borneo today comprises Kalimantan in Indonesia, Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia, as well as Brunei Darussalam. In antiquity, the island became a crucial waypoint in the trade of spices, camphor, and gold.
In Hindu cosmology, the world was conceived as consisting of seven principal *dvipa*. Among them was *Jambudvipa*, representing India, and *Varuna-dvipa*, associated with the watery realm. While Purāṇic texts such as the Vishnu Purana emphasize largely mythological continents, localized adaptations in Old Javanese texts and Indian navigational records suggest a historical process of conceptual mapping. Borneo was incorporated into this cosmographic schema as the Island of Varuna. It symbolized both natural abundance and the maritime perils believed to fall under the deity’s guardianship.
A review of the supporting sources reveals substantial consistency, notwithstanding variations in terminology. R.C. Majumdar’s seminal work, Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far East, Vol. II: Suvarnadvipa from 1937 situates Borneo within the broader concept of Suvarnadvipa, or the Island of Gold, a term broadly applied to Southeast Asia and encompassing subsidiary islands such as Varuna-dvipa. Majumdar cites classical texts including the Arthashastra and the geographical accounts of Ptolemy, both of which describe routes to Yavadvipa, or Java, and neighboring islands. Borneo appears within these trade networks as a source of camphor, a substance associated with Hindu ritual practice. Although Majumdar’s emphasis is political and economic, his analysis provides essential context for understanding the processes of cultural colonialism through which the name Varuna-dvipa emerged as a localized adaptation.
An article published in 2018 by Modern Ghana explicitly connects the etymology of Borneo with the Sanskrit váruṇa, which evolved into Baruna in Malay-Indonesian usage. The term is interpreted in some readings as connoting belonging or territorial identity. The article references the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, suggesting that the eastward journeys of Rama in search of Sita symbolically extended to islands associated with Varuna. Corroboration through broader historiographical inquiry indicates that Chinese records from 977 CE describe Po-ni, identified with Brunei, as a prosperous Hindu polity. This account is consistent with the characterization of Varuna-dvipa as a wealthy maritime island.
The website Hindu Wisdom directly asserts that Borneo was known as Varuna Dvipa within the context of the Indianization of Southeast Asia. In this interpretive framework, the Philippines is identified as Panyupayana, and other regions are shown to have adopted Sanskrit nomenclature. This terminology traces back, in part, to compilations such as the Brihat Samhita by Varahamihira, which describes eastern islands characterized by large river systems and dense tropical forests, features consistent with Borneo’s geography.
Although some of these sources carry apologetic or cultural-nationalist overtones, their claims align in significant respects with modern archaeological findings. Taken together, the textual, linguistic, and material evidence supports the conclusion that Borneo’s identification as Varuna-dvipa reflects not merely mythic imagination but a historical process of Indic cosmological integration and sustained maritime engagement in early Southeast Asia.
(More to come)
