In the first part of the last century the view was generally accepted among scholars that the main current of Indian culture towards the East had been Buddhistic. It seemed sure Hindu religion, as deriving from the Vedic or brahmanical one, was not a missionary religion and was not exported from India. It was easy in order to support this opinion to quote from Manu or from the other later sources in the literature of the Darmasastras prohibiting sea voyage for brahmins. But in fact, this opinion was wrong. Since the second part of the last century a lot of brahmanical remains and Sanskrit Hindu inscriptions were recorded in South-East Asia and Indonesia. Even literal Vedic quotations appear in Indo-Chinese and Indonesian documents. The only problem which remained till recently was how to reconcile the prohibition of exportation of Vedic lore beyond the seas with the fact of this very exportation, and by whom the Vedic, Brahmanical and Hindu religions were brought and established in South-East Asia?

This last problem is now going to be solved, thanks to Tamil research and to Sanskrit research in Tamil Nad, as well as in the S.-E. Asia itself. At first Tamil research had not been considered as very important in this matter because, in S.-E. Asia, Sanskrit inscriptions referring only to Sanskrit literature are much more numerous than the Tamil ones which also are ordinarily of later dates. So, it seemed the main influence from India towards the East Was from Northern India. Tamilians themselves called Sanskrit vadamoḷi 'Northern language'. But that does not mean they have not used it. On the contrary, if we draw a complete enquiry into the culture of Tamil Nad as it was all along the centuries, We observe Tamil pulavar not only have produced Tamil masterpieces of poetry and learning, but also have contributed much in Sanskrit to Literature and Philosophy. We have just to refer to the names of such great philosophers of world fame as Sankaracarya or Ramanuja, or to authors like Dandin who were ubhayakavi.

Moreover we must observe when Tamilians wrote in Sankrit they were not always nearly following a Northern tradition. Very often they simply used Sanskrit as a language of general communication in order to more widely propagate ideas from their own tradition. Ramanuja, for example, gave a scholastic Sanskrit garment to the theology of Nammalvar who inspired him.

Let us now consider the most ancient of the Sanskrit inscriptions of Indo-China which was found at Vocanh near the eastern coast of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, in Vietnam. According to palaeographical evidence it belongs to the second or third century A.D. The shape of the characters does not clearly indicate if the writing was introduced from South India rather than from any other part of India.