Introducing INSV Kaundinya...... Kaundinya is the first Indian mariner, who we know by name, to have crossed the seas to visit SE Asia. He married a local Naga princess and founded the kingdom of Funan, the first historically attested Indianised kingdom, in what is now Cambodia/South Vietnam. The “Gandaberunda” or two-headed bird on the sail was the royal insignia of the Kadamba kingdom who ruled the Konkan coast for centuries. Appropriate as the ship was built in Goa and inducted in Karwar. The symbol survives, via the Vijayanagar empire and Mysore kingdom, in the state symbol of Karnataka.