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Tinto Maps #19 - 20th of September 2024 - India

Hello everyone, and welcome once again to another Tinto Maps! Today we will be taking a look at India! Yup, a whole subcontinent… Exciting!

Let me say a foreword before I start sharing with you some beautiful maps. Some of you may wonder why we decided to make the entire Indian subcontinent in just one DD, instead of spreading it a bit. There are two reasons for that. The first is the political situation: the Sultanate of Delhi is at its zenith, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq. You will soon see that it rules over more than half of the region, approximately; so splitting that polity into several DDs would have felt weird.

The other is that we felt that a more cohesive approach made sense in this region, as it’s sooo diverse compared to others, that the way we approached it, both for its setup and content, was from the generic to the particular; therefore, we think that it will also help us more when we tackle the review of the region. Speaking of that, don’t worry much about the time available to prepare suggestions; you may already know that we have a backlog of several regions, and therefore weeks, before we hit the Indian review, so you will have plenty of time to research and prepare them. In any case, as it’s a massive task (we know it firsthand), we’ll let you know a bit in advance when we plan to start the in-depth review of it, so you have time to wrap it up.

As a final say, I just want to mention that an old acquaintance of the community, @Trin Tragula , now Design Lead in CK3, helped us to map a big chunk of it. Thanks, mate! And now, maps!

Countries:
Countries.jpg

Colored Wastelands.png

As I just mentioned, the Sultanate of Delhi is at its zenith, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, extending through the Indo-Gangetic Plain, including Bengal, and to the south, throughout the Deccan. There we have its toughest contender, Vijayanagar, a county that is a bulwark of Hinduism. Other important countries around it are Orissa and Sindh, but much smaller countries generally surround Delhi. You might wonder how it would be possible to stop Delhi from completely controlling the region, then. For this, two things are affecting its capability to achieve it. The first is the base game mechanics: ruling over so many different cultures and religions with low control will be hard. The second is a Situation that involves the Fall of the Sultanate; if Delhi wants to succeed, it will have to fight back against rebellions, which involves the potential independence of the Bengalese countries or newborn ones such as the Bahmanis, and the multiple Indian states around it, which are ready to take over it.

Dynasties:
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Locations:
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Yes, we are making some adjustments to the coloring of the mapmodes!

Provinces:
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Areas:
Areas.jpg

The bug is still there, yes… The area that is to the southwest is Malabar.

Terrain:
Climate.jpg

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Vegetation.jpg

Here we have a new type of topography: Atolls. We added it some months ago, as we worked on finishing the map of the Pacific Ocean, and it will be the last one added to the game.

Development:
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A new map mode is born! Here you have the development of India. The most developed place is Delhi, which is part of the fertile Gangetic Plain.

Harbors:
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Cultures:
Cultures.jpg

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Not an entirely new map, but a glorious one. We chose it to be the one to present how the different cultures could be present in the game for a reason.

Religions:
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India is the birthplace of numerous religions, and that needs to be reflected in the religious map. The main religion is Hinduism, but don’t be deceived by its homogeneous look, as it will be quite deep feature-wise. We also have Buddhism, which is at a low point, after some centuries of prosecutions. Mahayana is a majority in Sindh, although that's not completely exact, as an earlier form of Buddhism was practiced there; we’re also not 100% convinced about it being a majority, as some sources and accounts set the Islamization of the region to be completed under the Ghaznavids, in the 11th and 12th century, while others delay it until the 14th century - we followed the later approach, but we're very open to feedback in this specific matter. Another form of Buddhism is Theravada, which is the most practiced religion in Sailan. Some interesting minorities present in the region are Jains (yellow stripes), Nestorians (the pink stripe in Malabar, which portrays the ‘Saint Thomas Christians’), Jews (which have their own separate culture, ‘Kochini’), and several Animist confessions, of which we’ve already split Satsana Phi, the traditional religion of Tai people, and Sanamahism, the religion of Meitei people. Oh, although it’s not strictly part of the region, the light blue stripes to the north is Bön religion.

Raw Materials:
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India was for some time in the period the wealthiest region of the world, one of the main reasons being that it’s incredibly rich in very different types of resources, including some of the expensive ones. That will make for a very interesting economic gameplay.

Markets:
Markets India.png

There are several market centers in India that we think portray well the situation in 1337: Kabul (yes, it’s in Afghanistan, but it’s one for the area of Kashmir), Delhi, Khambat, Calicut, Pulicat, Varanasi, and Chittagong.

Population:
Population.jpg

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India has a big population. To be precise, around 95M pops. Delhi is the second largest country in the world in population, with 41M pops, which makes it a behemoth, with very serious governance challenges. I’m also showing this week the progress we’re making with the coloring of the population mapmode; the stripes on several locations mark that they’re overpopulated, as they have more pops living on them than the pop capacity available (something that may be reviewed, as balancing very densely populated regions such as India or China is really challenging).

And that’s all for today! We hope you enjoyed this massive Tinto Maps. Next week we will be taking a look at the Steppe. Which one, you might wonder? Well, the one ruled by the Golden Horde, from Ukraine in the west to Mongolia in the east. Cheers!
 
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I'm not too sure about the Assamese culture in northern Bengal? It does not even correspond to the region of Assam. Even more so convoluting considering the Ahom people are already represented further to the east more accurately.
1. The Ahom people are the Tai (not Thai, Tai) people that inhabited there before Assamese arrived, they speak a Tai language, and they have their own religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahom_people
2. Assamese are Indo-Aryan Hindu people from the Bengal, that later expanded towards modern Assam, and mixed with Ahom people, who ended up taking the Assamese language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assamese_people
 
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What is the terrain type in the gulf of Kutch called? Salt banks? That's super interesting, a new terrain type!
Also, why is the culture of Kutch Sindhi and not Kutchi? I'd think that distinction would be much welcome. Kutchi as a language too is somewhere inbetween Sindhi and Gujrati. Additionally, a Saurashtri culture can also be considered for Saurashtra region.
 
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Great job with India!, I have a few questions:

-Is Ibn Battuta still around working for the Dehli Sultan?
-Is the decline of Dehli gonna be rapresented with a situation or an I.O?
-Is the full name of Dehli the "Tughlaq Sultanate of Dehli"?

Also you got the market maps wrong
1. We want to make a chain of events about the travels of Ibn Battuta, so yes.
2. As I mentioned in the DD, a situation, 'The Fall of Delhi'.
3. Currently it's a simple 'Sultanate of Delhi', although we could make it dynamic.
 
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I know its tough to change the physical map, but could we have Diu as either an Island or a water-enclosed location? One of the reasons Diu was so useful (and why the Ottomans failed to capture it) is because the place was a slice of land separated from the sub-continent by water, forming an island.

Thank you :)
 
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Yes, although I quite like it for the locations it helps separating them, the rest not really especially the vegetation map which has many shades of green
I actually think it's worse, as all borders are in a darker variant of the color. In zones that had uniform colors to begin with, the problem's even worse now imo. Also, you get these 'ghost edges' everywhere, cluttering the view.
 
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Are you doing something for topo - if so I'll abandon my portion on East India.
I am planning to, but I'm on holiday for a while, so it'll take about 10 days before I make my post, so go nuts! ;)
 
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Could either Hinduism or Theravada have their map color changed? They're far too similar right now. My vote goes for Hinduism as it's also a bit tough to see the yellow stripes of Jain on it sometimes.
 
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2. Assamese are Indo-Aryan Hindu people from the Bengal, that later expanded towards modern Assam, and mixed with Ahom people, who ended up taking the Assamese language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assamese_people
I'm Bengali, I know what Assamese is. They definitely did not originate from Bengal, what? The Assamese culture was confined to the Brahmaputra valley of Northeast India - the region currently populated by "Assamese" people was actually populated by the Kochis and Rajbongshis. I do not know what book y'all are using, but it's plain wrong.
 
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I've said it before here that Nilgiris in south India shouldn't be an unsettled terrain it has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years especially by Kotas, Todas and Kurumbas with Kotas being most populous, all three had different versions of old dravidian folk religion. Even though there was only few thousand people it should not be an unsettled area it's just wrong.
 
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I actually think it's worse, as all borders are in a darker variant of the color. In zones that had uniform colors to begin with, the problem's even worse now imo. Also, you get these 'ghost edges' everywhere, cluttering the view.
Maybe, but to me helps distinguish them from afar a bit better than the previous style even if it looks uglier
 
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How exactly are you going to represent the difference between the Mahayana Buddhism practiced in India and Southeast Asia from the Chinese tradition of Mahayana Buddhism that dominates in East Asia? From what I’ve heard so far it seems like there’s plans to model the internal differences underneath a broader blanket religion, at least that’s what I can gather from what you’ve said about Shi’a Islam. (I figure Hinduism will have a similar mechanic)
We not only have a plan, but those mechanics to make for internal differentiation are already implemented in the game, as Hinduism and Buddhism are more advanced in their mechanics currently compared to Islam (although we won't talk yet in detail about any of them, I'm sorry to say). In any case, it's better to discuss it in the Tinto Maps for China, in a few weeks.
 
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1. The Ahom people are the Tai (not Thai, Tai) people that inhabited there before Assamese arrived, they speak a Tai language, and they have their own religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahom_people
2. Assamese are Indo-Aryan Hindu people from the Bengal, that later expanded towards modern Assam, and mixed with Ahom people, who ended up taking the Assamese language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assamese_people
I have to disagree with Assamese as a cultural identity existing at this time, and so will the cited sources suggest. The admixture of the incoming Ahom people from the east with the local Indo-Aryan tribes of the region gave rise to the Assamese people that we know of now. The assamese language was the commoners' language of the region and eventually replaced the Ahom language as the court language of the Ahom Kingdom.

However, the Assamese language and cultural identity did NOT develop at this time, especially not in North Bengal of all places.

1726821739740.png


People from various tribal groups such as Ahom, Chutia, Kachari, Bodo - individuals who urbanised and sanskritised over time from these tribal communities eventually started to identify as Axomiya - assamese. There were migrations from Bengal that expedited this process, but those people did not identify as Assamese until they settled in Assam.

I'd suggest putting Assamese as a significant minority in all of the Kamrupa region that will grow over time as tribal people urbanise - but there's no evidence of Assamese as a cultural identity or language originating from Bengal and migrating into Assam. Hence I truly believe the Assamese culture, as shown here is anachronistic. It developed over time in-situ over centuries. Please look into this matter, and thank you for considering our feedback - signed, a Bengali-Assamese fan of the series.
 
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Alright, a better reply wrt Bengal which I'll keep adding to as I keep posting:

COUNTRIES
I think it's better to rename Gaur to Lakhnaoti - that's what the sultanate was called, after all. Also give it upto Teliagarhi, since it was usually the border between Bengal and Bihar as I've shown below.
For Mallabhum - "Heritage Tourism: An Anthropological Journey to Bishnupur" and "History of Bishnupur-Raj" mention them owning Bankura as well as parts of Birbhum, Birbhum, Santhal Parganas, Midnapur and Purulia - so extending it to, say, Dubrajpur might be better.
Calling Oiniwar "Tirhut" might be better, since Oiniwar is the dynasty.
Dividing Laur (I guess you named it after Laurergarh?) into Garo and Khasi (or even better, 5-6 tribal nations) would be better representation of it's tribal nature.
Kamata should definitely own up to Siliguri - North Bengal didn't really completely come under Bengali control till the reign of Alauddin Hussain Shah - see MR Tarafdar's Husain Shahi Bengal (available on archive.org)
In Jharkhand, you might add the Nagvanshis owning Ranchi to Palamau:
Till the year 1585 A.D., the Nagbanshi rulers lived a life of splendid isolation in their jungle palaces, mostly undisturbed and unmolested by outsiders. The Muhammadan inroads into Jharkhand,^® which had taken place prior to that j’ear, were mainly either chastising expeditions^^ or occasional passage of troops on their way to Bengal or Orissa and back from there.^® On all such occasions, Kokrah [Ranchi] seems to have been left unmolested.
- The Nagbanshis And The Cheros

DYNASTIES
Mallabhum - It's Malla, not Mallabhum.
As above, the dynasty is Oiniwar, not Thakur.
Where did you get the Nabagram dynasty? I've never heard of it - considering Meghalaya was never a single kingdom.
Satgaon was under the governorship of Izzudin Yahya in 1337, only to be overthrown by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah in 1338.


TOPOGRAPHY
View attachment 1190045

The topography of Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand seems to be unnaturally flat.
Let's start with the east:
You've added Teliagarhi - which I loved to see - but you've not added the reason why it was important. There are three primary routes into Bengal from North India: North of the Ganges through Tirhut, having to ford multiple rivers and streams; south of the Ganges through the Rajmahal Hills, having only one proper pass guarded by Teliagarhi - or going south through thickly forested Jharkhand, and emerging near Purulia.
Roy, Yogendra P. “SIGNIFICANCE OF TELIAGARHI FORT DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 62, 2001, pp. 1069–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44155847. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.
Where's the Rajmahal Hills, then???? See below (I've marked Teliagarhi in red)
View attachment 1190048
Also, the Ganga valley has been extensively cultivated since antiquity, so it would be best if you'd extend farmlands from Delhi to say Satgaon.
VEGETATION
Now this is a tricky one.
In Jharkhand, the Rajmahal hills south of Teliagarhi were thickly forested.
The entire southern regions of the fort was jungle." Rajmahal hills was covered by a wild jungle and formed a terra incognita even in the days of Rennell's survey (1773). The revenue records in regional languages furnish names of the trees and cultivation of hilly tracts, where Akbar's regulation was not extended. 52 The manuscript gives the total area under various crops as well as the number of trees. The trees that are recorded in the document are mahua (Madhuca Indica). Sal (Shorea Robusta), Arjuna (Terminalia Arjuna), white teak (Gmeline Arbirea), Palmyrapalm (Borassus Flabellifer), Sissoo (Dalbergia Sisso). Silk Cotton tree (Salmalia malabarica), Tiril (Diosptros malanoxvion). Mango, Kookoo (Albizia lebbecck), Khirni (Manilkara hexandra) and bamboo. Due to jungle and hilly tracts, transport of heavy commercial items, such as woods through land route was a problem, the river routes were easy and practical.
Jharkhand itself was variously sparsely and thickly forested:
Following this situation Bakhtyar might have left this route and planned a surprised attack on Nadia (‘Nodia' of Minhaj) by a difficult and unpopular route through 'bar jungles' of Jharkhand.25 This route was used by Sher Shah against Humayun in 1538, when Sher Shah returned from Gaur by as well as, Mir Jumla in March 1659, while chasing Shah Shuja with the help of Bahroz Singh, a zamindar of Kharagpur.26 A 18th century document27 compiled by Browne shows that this route was good for carrying of the field artillery.
Here's where a larger problem arises. Referring to Eaton's wonderful work "The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier":
In this way the main course of the Ganges, which had formerly flowed down what is now the Bhagirathi-Hooghly channel in West Bengal, was replaced in turn by the Bhairab, the Mathabhanga, the Garai-Madhumati, the Arialkhan, and finally the present-day Padma-Meghna system. “When the distributaries in the west were active,” writes Kanangopal Bagchi, “those in the east were perhaps in their infancy, and as the rivers to the east were adolescing, those in the west became senile. The active stage of delta formation thus migrated southeastwards in time and space, leaving the rivers in the old delta, now represented by Murshidabad, Nadia and Jessore with the Goalundo Sub-Division of Faridpur, to languish or decay.”[2] As the delta’s active portion gravitated eastward, the regions in the west, which received diminishing levels of fresh water and silt, gradually become moribund. Cities and habitations along the banks of abandoned channels declined as diseases associated with stagnant waters took hold of local communities. Thus the delta as a whole experienced a gradual eastward movement of civilization as pioneers in the more ecologically active regions cut virgin forests, thereby throwing open a widening zone for field agriculture. From the fifteenth century on, writes the geographer R. K. Mukerjee, “man has carried on the work of reclamation here, fighting with the jungle, the tiger, the wild buffalo, the pig, and the crocodile, until at the present day nearly half of what was formerly an impenetrable forest has been converted into gardens of graceful palm and fields of waving rice.”
But this implies large parts of East and North-East Bengal had thick jungles, something not represented in EU4. Now, we don't have any extant records of forest cover - but what we can do is take not of major cities, take a 2-ish province area around it then make the rest various degrees of forested. But before that areas we DO have records of forest cover of.

The Sunderbans should definitely be jungles, I don't know why they aren't already.

I went from Bengala into the country of Couche (Koch), which lieth 25. dayes iourny Northwards from Tanda.2 The king is a Gentile, his name is Suckel Counse : x his countrey is great, and lieth not far from Cauchin China : for they say they haue pepper from thence. The port is called Cacchegate (Kochighatt?) (not pinpointed yet)
From thence I returned to Hugeli, which is the place where the Portugals keep in the country of Bengala which standeth in 23. degrees of Northerly latitude, and standeth a league from Satagan : they cal it Porto Piqueno.1 We went through the wildernes, because the right way was full of thieues, where we passed the countrey of Gouren, where we found but few villages, but almost all wildernes, & saw many buffes, swine & deere, grasse longer then a ma, and very many Tigers.
- Ralph Fitch
By the above we can presume that there was a region of wilderness between Koch and Satgaon-Hughli. It can be a safe bet to add various forested areas in Rangpur and Rajshahi till Jessore, though cities must be kept intact.
Sinnergan is a towne sixe leagues from Serrepore, where there is the best and finest cloth made of cotton that is in all India. The chiefe king of all these countries is called Isacan, and he is chiefe of all the other kings, and is a great friend to all Christians. The houses here, as they be in the most part of India, are very litle, and couered with strawe, and haue a fewe mats round about the wals, and the doore to keepe out the Tygers and the Foxes
Isa Khan ("Isacan") was the famous Baro-Bhuiyan chief with his capital at Katrabo, somewhat near Barisal (Bakla). By the presence of of tigers and foxes, we can also presume the existence of forests in the Sonargaon (Sinnergan)-Barisal region (Presumably both the Sundarbans south of Barisal and the uncultivated regions north of Sonargaon).

Further forested areas include parts of Mymensingh, Sylhet and North Bengal. Roughly a third to maybe even half of East Bengal's grasslands should be forested, according to Eaton's book.
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DEVELOPMENT
Mostly perfect, just increasing the development of Satgaon-Nabadwip tract, Khuna region and Barisal while reducing that of wooded areas of East Bengal as I've shown above would be great.

CULTURE
Nothing much to say for Assamese me and Marlin already haven't said, lol. Beyond that, having the Purnia region being Bengali instead of Kochi/Kamtapuri/Whatever y'all replace Assamese with would be more accurate.
AFAIK Santhalis were a majority in Santhal-Parganas i.e. Deogarh region of Jharkhand, and Bengalis were a large minority there.
Sylhet and Chatgaia should be separated from Bengali, I think, since their language and customs are distinct enough from the West Bengali heartland to warrant so.
Maybe you could even separate the culture of non-cultivated eastern Bengal (maybe Bhati as a name?) since they were somewhat distinct from cultivated east and West Bengal.
Chittagong was definitely majority Bengali (or Chatgaia) with a sizeable Arakanese population.
There should be a larger spread of Odiya minorities in Midnapore region of Bengal. Speaking of Odiya, renaming Orissan to Odiya or Oriya would be more appropriate.
Increasing the Dimasa pop in the Cachar-Barak Valley region to a sizeable minority would also be more accurate.
Finally, the region upto East Singbhum should be Bengali majority as it remained so till the British Raj.

RELIGION
Now, religion in Bengal is very tricky. Since you've said Hinduism will be internally differentiated, I'd hope the Shakti-Cults of Manasa and Chandi, on the periphery of Hinduism and straddling the border of animism are represented. In fact it is these Manasa worshipping semi-Hindu tribesmen of the woods of East Bengal along with other "Animist" non-Brahmanic religions - including those of the Kochis and Rajbongshis which form most of current Bengal's Muslim population. Were, say, a North Indian power have failed to conquer Bengal - thus fewer Sufi adventures being attracted to the region, East Bengal might've been majority Chaitanya Vaishnav or Christian or whatever. It is because Hindu and Muslim Zamindars employed these Sufi Mystics to clear the region that most of East Bengal is Muslim, since they set up Khanqahs and shrines and such as centres of community and preached a syncretic Hindu-influenced Islam that managed to convert swathes of these "Animist" tribesmen and Manasa-worshippers. Manasa too was appropriated by orthodox Hinduism.
The gist of my suggestion is that, differentiate the Devi-Shakti cultists of East Bengal, primarily tribesmen and the ancestors of majority of the population of Bengali Muslims from Vaishnav and Shaivite Hindus of West Bengal, and also add some animists to the wooded regions.
My source is, as on everything related to the rise of Islam in Bengal, Eaton's book. Furthermore, religious dynamics can be ascertained if one reads MR Tarafdar's Husain Shahi Bengal.
 
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I half expected you to miss this by a mile given how early the TM is (and I don't remember any heads up). You are either in cahoots with Pavía at this point or I am genuinely impressed :p
If there was no heads up about it from last week Tinto Maps, I definitely would've missed it. And that's why reading is important. :D
Another change, only for next week: the DD will be published at 10:00 instead of the regular 15:00, as I won’t be available in the afternoon to reply. Letting you know so there’s a proper wow-pole-run, yes. See you!
 
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I'd suggest putting Assamese as a significant minority in all of the Kamtapur region that will grow over time as tribal people urbanise - but there's no evidence of Assamese as a cultural identity or language originating from Bengal and migrating into Assam. Hence I truly believe the Assamese culture, as shown here is anachronistic. It developed over time in-situ over centuries. Please look into this matter, and thank you for considering our feedback - signed, a Bengali-Assamese fan of the series.
No, I feel representing the Rajbongshis is better than having a vague "Assamese" culture in North Bengal. Do they not deserve accurate representation?
 
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