a note on the above (below)

"From Sind to Sunda" is a proverb I use in Luca Antara, it means spanning the known world. 'Sind' is said to have been a word for 'sea' and the origin of the name India; present day Sind is a province of Pakistan in the Indus Valley. Sunda, likewise of unknown provenance, is an old name for a kingdom in eastern Java. The drowned peninsular of Sundaland was twice the size of India in its heyday; it must indeed have seemed that around these two poles the whole world did revolve. I sometimes wonder if the now popular way of spelling Sindbad with a 'd' has a relationship with Sind ... quite possibly, since the voyages of Sindbad tell the story of the Arab - or perhaps earlier - exploration of the Indian Ocean. It is interesting also to note that the very first utopia we have a record of, written by the Greek Euhemerus circa 316 BCE, is about an imaginary voyage to uncharted islands in the Indian Ocean. From Sind to Sunda ... It is perplexing to me now where this proverb came from. I no longer know if it popped up somewhere in the reading I did in and around the writing of Luca Antara; or whether it is something I invented. But then, most of the book is like that: an inquiry into the precise status of the 'non' in non-fiction perhaps.