In the first centuries AD, there was both trade and missionary activity by Indians to South-East Asia which resulted in the spread of Indian culture to the Malay Peninsula, Thailand, Vietnam etc. The spread of Indians to Cambodia resulted in the Khemer kingdom, who built the magnificient Hindu temples of Angkor Wat. Now here is a story which connects Korean history to India, more specifically to Ayodhya.

The origin of the historical ties can be traced back to the middle of the first century AD. According to Sam Kuk Yusa, the ancient history of Korea, Queen Huh, wife of legendary King Suro, who founded the Karak Kingdom, was born in Ayodhya.
Queen Huh was a princess of the kingdom. Her father, the king of Ayodhya, on receiving a divine revelation, sent her on a long sea voyage to the Karak kingdom in southern Korea to marry King Suro, states the lines inscribed on the plaque at the monument in Ayodhya. The clan that descended from the Ayodhya princess Huh and South Korean King Suros, today known as Kim-Hae-Kim clan, has a little over six million Huh descendants in the Republic of South Korea.[South Korea’s Ayodhya connection]

The largest number of tourists to Jammu and Kashmir are from Israel and Muslims in the Kashmir Valley even started writing boards in Hebrew to attract them. One of the reasons Israelis visit Jammu and Kashmir is to visit the graves to Jesus amd Moses (yes as in Jesus Christ and Moses from Egypt).

The main attractions in the Valley for the Israelis are two graves, believed by some to be those of Jesus Christ and Moses. A section of the local population believes Kashmiris are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Aziz Kashmiri, the author of the book Christ in Kashmir, insists that the Kashmiri people’s ancestors were one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel and that Jesus died during a visit to the Valley.[Jesus’ tomb in Kashmir?]

While there has been no proof for these graves, as well as the assertion that the ancestors of Kashmiris were from the lost tribes of Israel, there is now evidence that people of Mizoram are descendents of Menashe, one of the lost tribes of Israel.

This is a clear indication that there was a Jewish female founder effect in the Kuki community. “It is scientifically impossible to have the same genetic sequence in two populations living so far apart if they did not originate from a common stock who historically inhabited a common space,” says Maity. He also found a specific mutation in some Lusei and Kuki samples that is also present in Indian Jews.

There are also historical pointers to this claim. Zaithanchhungi, a scholar who has been studying the Mizo claim to Israeli ancestry for over 20 years, is convinced that all Mizos are descendants of the Menashe. “The Menashe were enslaved by the Assyrians and taken there [Assyria] when Jerusalem fell,” she says. “From there they migrated to the Afghanistan region. During Alexander?s invasion they were driven further on to Mongolia through the Kashmir region and Tibet plateau, and they settled in the Chhinlung region of China. They entered Mizoram about 300 years ago from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma.”[The new Jerusalem via Indian Archaeology]

It seems there were four waves of migration of Indians to rest of the world. The first was after the earthquakes which caused the drying up the river Saraswati. The second wave 1500 years later when Indian soldiers battled in Persian armies. The third wave was when the Roma or Gypsies left India.

The third wave is remembered with greater clarity. This was the Roma, or Gypsies, who left India a thousand years ago as a result of the Arab and Turkish wars. According to the Chachnama, a contemporary account of Muhammad al-Qasim’s campaigns in Sindh in 712-3, several thousand Jat warriors were captured as prisoners of war and deported to Iraq and elsewhere as slaves. A few hundred thousand women were likewise enslaved. The process of enslavement was accelerated during the campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni. Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud, informs us that 500,000 men and women were captured in Waihind alone in 1001-2. During his seventeen invasions, Mahmud Ghaznavi is estimated to have enslaved more than a million people. According to Utbi, “they were taken to Ghazna, and merchants came from different cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawarau-un-Nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them.”[The Roma and the Persistence of Memory]

Now a new genetic study shows that the Gypsies came from India and not Egypt as it was believed.

As well as looking at over 1100 samples of Romany from Europe, they studied six samples from India and found that the similarity in genetic markers supported the theory that the founder group, of perhaps under 1000 people, came from India. The idea that Romany people came from India was first proposed 200 years ago based on similarities between their language and the Indian language Sanskrit, said Kalaydjieva. But such studies were inconclusive.

“There are quite a few examples where a population adopts a language but this does not necessarily mean its biological roots belong to the same place as the larger population that speaks this language,” she said. “So from the biological point of view we have provided we have provided the best evidence so far that this is indeed a population that derives from the Indian subcontinent.” Kalaydjieva and team’s analysis of disease genetic markers supported the scientists’ previous research on male and female genetic markers. “It all points in the same direction,” she said.[Romany Gypsies came out of India]