Early India

From the Origins to AD 1300

by Romila Thapar

Completed: January 17, 2021

• History
• 555 pages
• ISBN: 9780143029892
• Goodreads page

★★★★

I’m torn between rating it 4 or 5 stars. If someone is very interested in this topic - ancient Indian history - I would definitely highly recommend this read. I like the structure that the author applies in this book: it’s not simply a recitation of empire/kingdom one after the next, but it’s more about discussing how the societies were at each relevant point in time (and why), how they evolved in response to various pressures, and how some of the typical stereotypes may not apply if you analyze the evidence, and the lack thereof, carefully. I appreciate that she considers not just the writings, and linguistic and archaeological evidence, but also that when you look so far back in time, you have to be careful about the lack of evidence too. There are likely to be strong biases in the writings that have survived. This book is pretty much a textbook, but it is a much more enjoyable read than that. It’s a long read, full of relevant detail and evidence and discussion, but if you have the time & interest, it’s truly a pleasurable read. While there are so many takeaways from this book, one is that figuring out history (esp. early history) is messy and often unreliable - something that appears to be often forgotten in India.

Some interesting excerpts are below.

01 - Perceptions of the Past

On early twentieth century Indian historians:

Non-violence was praised as a special Indian contribution to civilization, yet at the same time the Gupta King, Samudragupta, was described as the Napoleon of India and his conquests much lauded. Nationalism was taken back to the fourth century BC with the opposition to Alexander’s campaign and the creation of the Mauryan Empire that extended over virtually the entire subcontinent. Aryan Vedic culture was viewed as the foundation of Indian civilization, its antiquity taken back to the second millennium BC. The emphases on indigenous origins of many past achievements were gradually becoming visible. There was an objection – not surprisingly – to the theory of Oriental Despotism, but an endorsement for the ancient past being a ‘Golden Age’; such an age being a prerequisite for claims to civilization. This view was an inevitable adjunct to nationalist aspirations in the early twentieth century. The Golden Age was either the entire Hindu period that was seen as unchanging and universally prosperous, or else the reign of the Gupta kings which historians, both Indian and British, had associated with positive characteristics and revival of the brahmanical religion and culture.

02 - Landscapes and Peoples

Pastoralists from central Asia intervened from time to time in the history of India, often because of disturbances in central Asia that resulted in migrations and incursions or invasions further south. Such disturbances are thought to have led indirectly to the arrival of the Indo-Aryan speakers and to the Parthians, Shakas, Kushanas, Hunas and Turks. But other pastoral groups within the subcontinent were also important, such as the cattle-keepers in the peninsula. As a component of agriculture and exchange, these filled in the spaces between peasant societies. Cattle-keepers, apart from providing dairy produce, also acted as carriers of commodities for exchange. The banjaras continued to perform this role until quite recently.

The change from a chiefdom to a kingdom, or the emergence of a state, with its attendant characteristics of the concentration of political power, rudimentary administration, revenue and other such changes, was usually accompanied by a greater reliance on peasant agriculture.

Peasant discontent was expressed most commonly in India through migrating to new lands, and only in the early second millennium AD is there evidence for what some have interpreted as revolts. In this, the situation is different from that of the Chinese peasant, given the frequency of peasant revolts in early Chinese history.

On caste:

The word [caste] as used in modern European languages comes from a root meaning ‘pure’ and reflects the application of what is termed as varna, a concept now often translated as ritual status. …
A concept used equally frequently for caste is jati. It is derived from a root meaning ‘birth’…

For a society to become a caste-based society there have to be three preconditions: the society must register social disparities; there has to be unequal access of various groups within that society to economic resources; inequalities should be legitimized through a theoretically irreversible hierarchy and the imposition of the hierarchy claim to be based on a supernatural authority.

It was not that an existing varna was invariably subdivided into jatis, but that jatis were often allotted varna statuses. This might also explain why jatis are universally recognized in India as functional social units even if their names vary from region to region, but varna statuses are not uniformly observed, barring the brahman and the untouchable.

03 - Antecedents

An example of a neolithic site:

Among the early sites is Mehrgarh near Quetta in Baluchistan, one amid a number of village sites. This is a more impressive site than many others as it provides evidence of the continuity of the settlement over a few millennia and the gradual evolution of the settlement from agriculture towards urbanization.
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The origins of Mehrgarh have been dated to c. 7000 BC. The cultivation of wheat and barley, the herding of cattle, sheep and goats, habitation in mud-brick huts with hearths, a possible granary, pit burials with personal effects, beads of turquoise and lapis, and a scatter of clay figurines are aspects of a cultural pattern that was established by the sixth millennium. By the fourth millennium wheel-thrown pottery was introduced.

On the Indus cities such as at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro:

The larger cities are approximately a hundred hectares in size and the lesser towns come close to half that size. It has been suggested that if the extensions of the city are included Mohenjo-daro could cover an area of 200 hectares.

The Mesopotamian references to the land of Meluhha and its people might have been intended for the Indus civilization, the products of this land being listed as ivory, carnelian, wood, lapis and gold, all familiar to the Indus cities.

The demarcation between town and countryside may also reflect the management of the cities. Did the control over agricultural production, labour and raw materials require that those exercising this authority be protected? Such control would have been more extensive than that based on kinship connections and clan loyalties. This is not to suggest that those inhabiting the cities were aliens, but rather that they gave expression to the kind of authority that had not existed before, and that it was the concept of this authority that may have seemed alien to rural life.

On horses:

The late arrival of the horse in India is not surprising since the horse is not an animal indigenous to India. Even on the west Asian scene, its presence is not registered until the second millennium BC. The horse was unimportant, ritually and functionally, to the Indus civilization.

On the decline of the Indus valley civilization:

The decline of the cities did not mean that the Harappan pattern of culture disappeared. Although many urban functions would have ceased, people in rural areas would have continued their activities with marginal changes.
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Continuities would therefore not be unexpected, but it is more likely that these were restricted to mythologies, rituals and concepts of tradition, since the material culture does not show continuities.

04 - Towards Chiefdoms and Kingdoms c. 1200 - 600 BC

We can no longer regard the early first millennium as a period of Aryan conquest that resulted in the spread of a homogeneous Aryan culture across northern India; nor can it be described as the articulation of an indigenous culture called Aryan that was untouched by anything extraneous. The historical picture points to a range of societies with varied origins attempting to establish a presence or dominance in the mosaic of cultures.

On the Vedic corpus:

Those that came to constitute the Vedic corpus and were contemporary with this period began as an oral tradition to be memorized with much precision, which was eventually written many centuries later. Other texts claiming to reflect the past, such as the epics – Mahabharata and Ramayana – and the Puranas, also began as oral tradition, were more informally memorized and frequently added to, and were converted to their present textual form in the early first millennium AD.

The progeny of Manu became the ancestors to many lineages. Later kings seeking aristocratic status traced themselves back to these. In some versions, Manu’s eldest son – Ikshvaku – was ancestor to the Suryavamsha or Solar line, and the youngest child – Ila – a daughter, or a hermaphrodite in some accounts, gave rise to the Chandravamsha or Lunar line.

A point of culmination is the war at Kurukshetra, described in the Mahabharata, which acts as another time-maker, after which the present cycle of time – the Kaliyuga – commences. The date for this is given in the form of a planetary configuration. It was calculated many centuries later for astronomical purposes, probably by Aryabhatta, and is equivalent to 3102 BC. There seems to have been a conflation of the date for the Kaliyuga with the date for the war, as 3102 BC would be far too early for such a war and would be in conflict with historical evidence suggesting a later date.

The story of the flood in all its details immediately brings to mind the earlier Mesopotamian legend, also borrowed by the Hebrews in the story of Noah’s Ark. In Indian sources it may have filtered down from Harappan traditions that in turn could have been derived from the Mesopotamians.

The Mahabharata brought into the story the many segments of the Lunar line and its narratives were pre-eminently stories of societies adhering to clan and lineage organization…. The Ramayana is more clearly an endorsement of monarchy and the heroes are of the Solar line.

Unlike the Puranas and the epics, which have some explanation of the past, the Vedic corpus has little of this, but is a collection of compositions contemporary with the period from the mid-second millennium to the mid-first millennium BC.

On the Indo-European language & Aryan invasion theory:

Indo-European is a reconstructed language, working back from cognate languages, and its speakers had central Asia as their original habitat. Gradually, over many centuries, they branched out and as pastoralists spread far a field in search of fresh pastures. They also worked as carriers of goods intended for exchange. Some migrated to Anatolia, others to Iran, and some among the latter, it is thought, migrated to India. In the texts composed by them, such as the Avesta in Iran and the Rig-Veda in India, they refer to themselves as airiia and arya, hence the European term, Aryan.

The theory of an Aryan invasion no longer has credence. The Rig-Veda refers to skirmishes between groups, some among those who identify themselves as aryas and some between the aryas and dasas. The more acceptable theory is that groups of Indo-Aryan speakers gradually migrated from the Indo-Iranian borderlands and Afghanistan to northern India, where they introduced the language. The impetus to migrate was a search for better pastures, for arable land and some advantage from an exchange of goods. The migrations were generally not disruptive of settlements and cultures. There is also the argument that these were dissident groups that had broken away from the speakers of Old Iranian, whose language and ideas came to be encapsulated in the Avesta. There is a significant reversal of meaning in concepts common to both the Avesta and the Rig-Veda.

On constructing a sequence of events in this period:

The sequence of events seems to have been as follows. The cities of the Indus civilization had declined by the mid-second millennium BC and the economic and administrative system slowly petered out, the emphasis shifting to rural settlements. It was probably around this period that the Indo-Aryan speakers entered the north-west of India from the Indo-Iranian borderlands, migrating in small numbers through the passes in the north-western mountains to settle in northern India. Small-scale migrations have the advantage of not being dramatically disruptive and these could have started even earlier, although the cultural differences would have been registered only after the decline of the Harappan cities. Although archaeological confirmation of textual information is not possible, there are no strikingly large settlements in the area during this period. Textual sources suggest that initial settlements were in the valleys of the north-west and the plains of the Punjab, later followed by some groups moving to the Indo-Gangetic watershed. Such continuous small-scale migrations may have followed earlier pastoral circuits. The search was for pastures and some arable land, as they were mainly a cattle-keeping people. Myths in the Avesta refer to repeated migrations from lands in Iran to the Indus area, explaining these migrations as arising from a pressure on the land through an increase in human and animal numbers. The Rig-Veda suggests the close proximity of other peoples inhabiting the area.

During this period of the early first millennium the hymns of the Rig-Veda, composed in the previous centuries, were compiled in the form known to us today. The compilation is thought to be later than the composition, which adds to the problems of dating the hymns. Central to this compilation are what have been called the ‘family books’, said to have been among the earliest hymns, attributed to those belonging to the more respected families. They were claimed as inheritance by those who also claimed descent from the eponymous ancestor said to be the author of the book.

On the Indo-Aryan language:

It would seem that sometime in the second millenium there were people in northern Syria who spoke a language that was Indo-Aryan in form, judging by what is referred to as the Hittite-Mitanni treaty of the fourteenth century BC. It is not clear how this language reached the western end of west Asia when there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence of contact between north India and these areas in this period. One possibility is that the language originated in a region from where Indo-Aryan speakers could have travelled either westwards or to the south-east. This could have been north-eastern Iran, which would explain how people speaking an Indo-European language and using horses and chariots arrived in lands to the west. What is of historical interest is that, although the treaty suggests the military success of these people, Indo-Aryan nevertheless had a precarious presence in Syria and disappeared from this region after a while. Yet in India, where it arrived through migration, its presence came to be firmly established.
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The connections between Iran and north India on the other hand are close. The language of the Avesta and Indo-Aryan were cognates, descended from the same ancestral language.
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The interchangeability between ‘h’ and ‘s’ is one of the differences, but there is a consistency in this change such as haoma, daha, hepta hindu, Ahura in Avestan, and soma, dasa, sapta sindhu, asura in Rig-Vedic Sanskrit. In terms of religious concepts the attributes of gods are often reversed. Thus Indra is demonic in the Avesta, as are the daevas (devas or gods in Sanskrit) and Ahura/asura emerges as the highest deity. This has led to the theory that originally the Old Iranian and Indo-Aryan speakers were a single group but dissensions led to their splitting up.

On the Rig-Veda and dasa & aryas:

There is both a fear of and contempt for the dasas, whose immense wealth, especially their cattle wealth, made them a source of envy and the subject of hostility. Later, the term dasa came to be used for anyone who was made subordinate or enslaved. But this change of meaning took some centuries and was therefore different from the original connotation of the word. The change in meaning would also be a pointer to the decline of pastoralism since pastoral societies have problems in controlling slaves, given the opportunities for running away when grazing animals. Arya continued to mean a person of status, often speaking an Indo-Aryan language.

On cows and vegetarianism:

Agro-pastoralism remained the main occupation of the Aryan speakers for some time. The cow was a measure of value. Many early linguistic expressions were associated with cattle. Thus gavishthi, literally ‘to search for cows’, came to mean ‘to fight’ – the obvious implication being that cattle raids and lost cattle frequently led to armed conflicts. Perhaps the cow was regarded as a totem animal and in that sense an object of veneration. The eating of beef was reserved for specific occasions, such as rituals or when welcoming a guest or a person of high status.
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Eventually it became a matter of status to refrain from eating beef and the prohibition was strengthened by various religious sanctions. Significantly, the prohibition was prevalent among the upper castes. Of the other animals the horse held pride of place. The horse was essential to movement, to speed in war, and in mythology it drew the chariots not only of men but also of the gods.

On social stratification:

This assumes a shift towards agriculture and increased social demarcation. Permanency was given to this change through establishing a group whose function was to labour for others. This was a radical departure from the earlier system. The term dasa, which in the Rig-Veda was used to designate the other person of a different culture, was now used to mean the one who laboured for others.
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Whereas the vaishya is described as tributary to another, to be eaten by another, to be oppressed at will, the shudra is said to be the servant of another, to be removed at will, to be slain at will.
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Jati comes from the root meaning ‘birth’, and is a status acquired through birth. Jati had a different origin and function from varna and was not just a subdivision of the latter. The creation of varnas appears to be associated with ritual status, a status denied to the shudra who was debarred from participating in all rituals. Whereas the three higher varnas were said to be strict about marrying within regulated circles, the shudra varna described in the normative texts was characterized as originating in anindiscriminate marriage between castes, creating mixed castes – a category abhorrent to those insisting on the theoretical purity of descent. This sets them apart and they were often labelled as jatis.
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A system that combined status by birth, determined by access to resources, social status and occupation, with notions of ritual purity and pollution was doubtless thought to be virtually infallible as a mechanism of social control.

Eventually, jati relationships and adjustments acquired considerable relevance for the day-to-day working of Indian society, and for a wide range of religious groups, even if some hesitated to admit to this. Varna status was the concern of the twice-born Hindus, but jati was basic to the larger society. The division of society into four varnas was not uniformly observed in every part of the subcontinent. With caste becoming hereditary, and the close connection between occupation and jati, there was an automatic check on individuals moving up in the hierarchy of castes. Vertical mobility was posisble to the jati as a whole, but depended on the entire group acting as one and changing both its location and its work. An individual could express his protest by joining a sect which disavowed caste, or at least questioned its assumptions, many of which evolved from the fifth century BC onwards.

On educational and legal institutions:

Education was in theory open to the twice-born, although the curriculum of formal education was useful largely to brahmans. Arithmetic, grammar and prosody were included as subjects of study.

There were no legal institutions at this stage. Custom was law and the arbiters were the chief or the king and the priest, perhaps advised by elders of the community. Varieties of theft, particularly cattle-stealing, were the commonest crimes. Punishment for homicide was based on wergeld, and the usual payment for killing a man was a hundred cows. Capital punishment was a later idea…. Increasingly, caste considerations carried more weight, with lighter punishments for higher castes.

05 - States and Cities of the Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600-300 BC

On the role of surplus production in urbanization and formation of states:

It was earlier thought that providing irrigation was the primary precondition to producing a surplus, and therefore control over irrigation was the foundation of power. This argument has now been questioned and, although irrigation is important, it is not the primary or only factor. The current debate focuses on whether iron technology was the crucial variable. Iron objects of a rudimentary kind go back to the end of the second millennium BC.

On the ‘disappearance’ of Harappan culture:

Judging by the evidence available so far, it does seem that there was neither remembrance of the city-plans of Harappan times, nor any attempt to imitate them. The structures of the Harappan citadel seem to have been incorporated into thecity centre or scattered in the city. Despite the fact that some cities were built on the banks of rivers, which were liable to be affected by floods, there is no evidence of brick foundations to safeguard the buildings. The urban requirements of the Ganges system and its city-dwellers were clearly different from those of the Indus urban centres. Possibly the mobilization of labour for the extension of agriculture took precedence over urban construction.

On gana-sanghas aka alternative cities:

The gana-sanghas were an alternative polity to the kingdoms and may represent the continuation of an earlier system. The connection between the gana-sanghas and the growth of various ideologies and belief systems, particularly Buddhist and Jaina, was due to many of these being rooted in the gana-sanghas.
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Brahmanical sources disapproved of the gana-sanghas because they did not perform the required rituals or observe the rules of varna, therefore they tend to be ignored in the Vedic corpus. Disapproval is extended to towns in general, whereas the Buddhist Canon has more empathy with urban centres, and emphasizes the centrality of the town.
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Whereas the kingdoms were concentrated in the Ganges Plain, the gana-sanghas were ranged around the periphery of these kingdoms, in the Himalayan foothills and just south of these, in north-western India, Punjab and Sind, and in central and western India. The gana-sanghas tended to occupy the less fertile, hilly areas, which may suggest that their establishment predated the transition to kingdoms, since the wooded low-lying hills would probably have been easier to clear than the marshy jungles of the plain. It is equally plausible, however, that the more independent-minded settlers of the plains, disgruntled with the increasing strength of orthodoxy in territories evolving into kingdoms, moved up towards the hills where they established communities more in keeping with egalitarian traditions, at least among the ruling clans. The rejection of Vedic orthodoxy by the gana-sanghas indicates that they may have been maintaining an older or an alternative tradition. There were also systems similar to the gana-sangha in western India, of which the Vrishnis as described in the Mahabharata would be one. Since the Buddhist texts focus on the Ganges Plain, little is said about those in western India.

This parting from Vedic orthodoxy is also apparent from at least one source, attributed to brahman authorship, which describes certain gana-sangha clans as degenerate kshatriyas and even shudras, because they have ceased to honour the brahmans or to observe Vedic ritual. Honouring the brahmans included accepting varna stratification. The gana-sanghas had only two strata – the kshatriya rajakula, ruling families, and the dasa-karmakara, the slaves and labourers. The latter were therefore non-kin labour, which was a departure from earlier clan systems where kinsfolk laboured together.

Land was owned in common by the clan, but was worked by hired labourers and slaves – the dasa-karmakara. This compound phrase makes it difficult to determine the degree to which production was dependent on the dasas, slaves, or on the karntakaras, hired labour. Most descriptions of slavery suggest domestic slavery, rather than the use of slaves in production. In the two-tier system those who worked the land did so under the control of the ruling clan, so management of labour was comparatively simple provided the cultivators did not resist the control.

Judging by descriptions of the gana-sanghas, the town functioned rather like a capital and was a familiar part of their life. The landowning clansmen lived in the town and participated in the usual urban activities. We are told of a young man of Vaishali who travelled to Taxila to be trained in medicine, a long and difficult journey, and then returned. The gana-sanghas were less opposed to individualistic and independent opinion than the kingdoms, and were more ready to tolerate unorthodox views. It was from the gana-sanghas that there came the two teachers of what were to become the most important heterodox sects: Mahavira, associated with advancing Jainism, belonged to the Jnatrika clan which was part of the Vrijji confederacy located at Vaishali, and the Buddha grew up in Kapila vastu, the town of the Shakya clan.

There was a time in the remote past when complete harmony prevailed among all created beings, men and women having no desires, as everything was provided for. Gradually a process of decay began, when needs, wants and desires became manifest. These led to the notion of ownership that resulted in the concept of the family, then led to private property, and these in turn to disputes and struggles that necessitated law and a controlling authority. Thus it was decided that, in order to avoid conflict, one person be elected to rule and maintain justice. He was to be the Great Elect (Mahasammata) and was given a fixed share in the produce of the land as a wage. The Buddhist theory attempts to explain the connections between various institutions that were current at the time – the family, private property and caste. Such a theory suited the political systems of the gana-sanghas and was different from that prevalent in the kingdoms. In the brahmanical theory of kingship, the king as the protector of the people was appointed by the gods, was the patron of the ritual of sacrifice, and was expected to uphold and maintain varna society – the varnasbrama-dharma. By contrast, the Buddhist theory attempts a rational explanation of the need for governance.

On kingdoms:

Clan loyalty weakened in the kingdoms, giving way to caste loyalties and a focus on loyalty to the king. The political expansion of the kingdoms over large areas also emaciated the strength of the popular assemblies, since distances prevented frequent meetings. The gana-sangha was based on a smaller geographical area, where it was easier to meet the requirements of a relatively more representative government. In the monarchical system the divinity of the king, with its corollary of the power of the priests and of Vedic ritual, had further reduced the centrality of the popular assemblies of early Vedic times…. [a new phenomenon was] the rise of wealthy traders. Insistence on the varna hierarchy was an attempt at retaining authority.

For the population, the grand sacrificial rituals were vast spectacles to be talked of for years. No doubt they kept the more critical minds diverted and created the appropriate awe for the king, who was depicted as an exceptional person, communicating with the gods, even if only through priests. The priests too were not ordinary mortals, since they were in effect the transmitters of divinity. Despite the earlier rivalries between the brahman and the kshatriya, the throne and the priesthood were mutually supportive.

The battle for political pre-eminence among the three kingdoms of Kashi, Kosala and Magadha, and the gana-sangha of the Vrijjis, lasted for a long period. Magadha emerged victorious as the centre of political activity in northern India, a position that it maintained for some centuries. The first important king of Magadha was Bimbisara, who realized the potentialities of a large state controlling revenue. Bimbisara became king some time in the second half of the sixth century BC.

On economic stratification:

Whereas earlier the clansmen or the junior lineages voluntarily provided wealth to the ruling clans, now wealth was being extracted from those who produced it by those who ruled and the two were not connected through kinship ties. A peasant economy was being established. The difference between the ruler and the ruled, between the cultivator and his land, between the rich and the poor was now more easily recognized. The ramifications of governing a kingdom were a contrast to the more direct functioning of the gana-sanghas.

Another trend that gained strength was that more and more land was claimed by the state, it being eventually conceded that the state had rights to all wasteland. This influenced the way in which the king was perceived. Initially, he protected his people against external aggression and his qualifications as a warrior were foremost. Subsequently, he was seen as the one who maintains law and order in what would otherwise be a kingless, chaotic society.

On the pre-eminence of Magadha:

The war with the Vrijji confederacy over the control of the river trade, which was also a con frontation between two divergent political systems, one a kingdom and the other a gana-sangha, was a lengthy affair. It lasted for many years… …
Finally, when Vassakara’s attempts to sow dissension among the Vrijjis succeeded, victory was conceded to Magadha. It was a victory for monarchy in the Ganges Plain. Bimbisara’s ambition had been fulfilled.

The Shishunaga dynasty lasted barely half a century before giving way to the usurper Mahapadma Nanda, who founded a dynasty, short-lived but significant. The Nandas were of low social status, being described as shudras, and were the first of a number of non-kshatriya dynasties. Most of the leading dynasties of northern India from now on belonged to castes other than kshatriya, until about a thousand years later when royalty started claiming kshatriya status irrespective of whether or not they were born as such. The reference to the Nandas destroying the kshatriyas could be to their incorporation of the gana-sanghas of the middle Ganges Plain into their kingdom.

The possibility of an imperial structure based on an essentially agrarian economy began to germinate in the Indian mind. The Nanda attempt was cut short by Chandragupta Maurya, the young adventurer who usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BC. It was under the Mauryas, therefore, that the imperial idea found expression.

On north-west India and Alexander:

Meanwhile, the scene shifts back to north-western India, which, during the sixth century BC, had been part of the Achaemenid Empire. A little before 530 BC, Cyrus, the Achaemenid Emperor of Persia, crossed the Hindu Rush mountains and received tribute from the people of Kamboja and Gandhara. Gandhara and Hindush/Sindhu are mentioned as satrapies or provinces in Achaemenid inscriptions.
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Herodotus mentions that Gandhara was the twentieth satrapy, counted among the most populous and wealthy in the Achaemenid Empire.

Orthodox brahmans treated this region [Taxila] as impure, since Vedic rituals were no longer regularly performed. That Iranian and Vedic ideas and rituals had once been close seems not to have been remembered.

Frequent references to ‘autonomous cities’ in the Indus Plain indicate the continuing presence of a variety of gana-sanghas in this region. These polities survived and had not yet been affected by the imperialism of Magadha, unlike the eastern gana-sanghas that seem to have succumbed to Magadhan power.

Indians, on the other hand, did not say much about the Greeks, and what they did say varies. The term used for them in Sanskrit was Yavana, a back-formation from Prakrit yona, most likely derived from yauna – a rendering of Ionia that is mentioned in Achaemenid inscriptions. Yavana became a generic term for people coming from the west and was used as recently as the last century. Some later brahmanical texts were bitterly uncomplimentary and hateful about the Yavanas, perhaps because of a lingering memory of Alexander’s hostility to the brahmans during his campaign, or perhaps because the Yavana rulers of the later period tended to be patrons of sects that did not conform to Brahmanism. Buddhist texts, however, were curious about the dual division of Yona society – the masters and the slaves – and saw this as an alternative to caste stratification.

On early trade and trading cities:

Kaushambi, among the larger cities, is thought to have had a population of about 36,000 and covered an area of between 150 to 200 hectares. Most large cities such as Rajagriha, Ahichhatra and Shravasti covered a similar area.

Brahmanical sources were initially opposed to usury, probably because it was central to the new profession of financiers who were urban-based and generally supporters of the heterodox sects. But the Buddha is said to have endorsed investment, presumably on interest…

On religions - Ajivikas, Jainism, Buddhism:

The Ajivikas were followers of a philosophy of predetermination – that destiny controlled even the most insignificant action of each human being and nothing could change this. They had a body of monks – those becoming monks believing that this was predetermined – and their occupation was asceticism. There were various other sects, some supporting atheism, such as the Charvakas whose philosophy derived from materialism and challenged the ideology of Vedic Brahmanism.

Mahavira gave shape to these ideas in the sixth century, and this led to the organization and spread of the Jaina sect which was initially called Nirgrantha. Jaina is a secondary formation from Jina, ‘the Conqueror’, which refers to Mahavira. He is said to have renounced his family at a young age to become an ascetic. For twelve years he wandered, seeking the truth, and eventually gained enlightenment. Mahavira’s teaching was confined to the Ganges Plain, though in later centuries the larger following of Jainism was in other parts of the subcontinent, particularly Karnataka and western India.
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Jaina history continued to be written, and was prolific in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries AD when Jainism was virtually hegemonic in western India.
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The purification of the soul is the goal of living, for the pure soul is released from the body and then resides in bliss. Purification is not achieved through knowledge, as some of the Upanishadic teachers taught, knowledge being a relative quality…. Each man sees only a fraction of true knowledge, which makes knowledge unreliable for salvation. The purification of the soul required living what the Jainas regarded as a balanced life, but this, as described by Mahavira, was only possible for a monk.

Trade and commerce were possible occupations and Jainism spread among the trading communities. The encouragement of frugality in Jainism became an ethic and coincided with a similar sentiment upheld in commercial activity. The Jainas specialized in conducting the exchange of manufactured goods, acting as middlemen, with a preference for financial transactions. Thus Jainism came to be associated with the spread of urban culture.

This has been called the ‘Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Law’, which was the nucleus of the Buddha’s teaching. It incorporated the Four Noble Truths: the world is full of suffering; suffering is caused by human desires; the renunciation of desire is the path to nirvana or liberation from rebirth; and this can be achieved through the Eightfold Path. The latter consisted of eight principles of action, leading to a balanced, moderate life: right views, resolves, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, recollection, and meditation, the combination of which was described as the Middle Way.

Independence from deities was also evident in Buddhist ideas about the origin of government and the state. Whereas Vedic Brahmanism invoked the gods in association with the origin of government, Buddhism described it as a process of gradual social change in which the instituting of the family and the ownership of fields led to civil strife. Such strife could only be controlled by people electing a person to govern them and to establish laws for their protection: an eminently logical way of explaining the origins of civil strife and the need for law.
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Freedom from the cycle of rebirth led to nirvana, interpreted either as bliss through enlightenment, or extinction. Thus the doctrine of karma and samsara, linking action and rebirth, was essential to the Buddhist system even if the Buddha denied the existence of the atman or soul.

The establishment of Buddhist monasteries accelerated education, since they became a source of teaching, additional to the brahmans; even more important was the fact that education was not restricted to the upper castes. Brahman monks symbolized an ideological conversion. However, initiation seemed to focus on members of the upper castes to begin with, thus ensuring that people of status were entering the monasteries.

Theravada Buddhism is predominant in Sri Lanka and some south-east Asian countries. Elsewhere, the Sarvastivada has been more influential.

Unlike Vedic Brahmanism, or the later Puranic Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism had specific historical teachers that have now come to be viewed almost as founders, had organized an order of monks and nuns and an ecclesiastical structure, were not concerned with a deity, did not perform rituals of sacrifice, emphasized the centrality of social ethics rather than caste distinctions and had a strong sense of the history of the religion with reference both to teachings and sects. The chronological focus in the case of Buddhism was provided by the date of the mahapari-nirvana – the death of the Buddha. This was calculated as the equivalent of 486/483 BC and came to be used as an era. (Recently this date has been questioned and later dates have been suggested, but there is no consensus on an alternative date.)

There was much in common between Buddhism and Jainism, Both were started by kshatriyas and were opposed to brahmanical orthodoxy. Although they did not call for the termination of the varna system, they were nevertheless opposed to it as set out in the Dharmasutras. But it took a while for them to build up a following of people other than those of the upper castes. When this did happen some of the practices underwent change. As with all historically evolved religions, the original teachings in new contexts were given new meanings, some of which contributed to changing the religion in varied ways. The readings of such histories of change requires a juxtaposition of the original teaching, together with contemporary texts as they came to be written in later times.

06 - The Emergence of Empire: Mauryan India c. 321-185 BC

The empire was founded by Chandragupta Maurya, who succeeded to the Nanda throne in c. 321 BC. He was then a young man and is thought to have been the protegfe of the brahman Kautilya, who was his guide and mentor both in acquiring a throne and in keeping it. This is suggested by a range of stories that relate his rise to power, particularly from Buddhist and Jaina texts, as well as by the play Mudrarakshasa by Vishakhadatta, which, although written many centuries later, still supports this tradition.

The Jaina tradition claims that towards the end of his life Chandragupta, by now an ardent Jaina, abdicated in favour of his son Bindusara and became an ascetic. Together with one of the better-known Jaina elders, Bhadrabahu, and other monks he went to south India, and there he ended his life by regulated slow starvation in the orthodox Jaina manner.

Bindusara succeeded in about 297 BC. To the Greeks, Bindusara was known as Amitrochates – perhaps a Greek transcription of the Sanskrit amitraghata, the destroyer of foes…. Buddhist tradition associates him with an interest in the Ajivika sect.

It was during Ashoka’s reign that the Buddhist Sangha underwent further reorganization, with the meeting of the Third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra in c. 250 BC. The Theravada sect claimed that it represented the true teaching of the Buddha, a claim that enabled it to become a dominant sect in the southern tradition and allowed it to exclude those regarded as dissidents.

The decision to send missionaries to various parts of the subcontinent and even further, and to make Buddhism an actively proselytizing religion, appears to have been taken at this Council, leading eventually to the propagation of Buddhism all over Asia by the turn of the Christian era.

The extent and influence of Mauryan power in the peninsula can be gauged from the location of Ashoka’s inscriptions, which are not found beyond southern Karnataka. Ashoka mentions the people of the south with whom he was on friendly terms – the Cholas, Pandyas, Satiyaputras and Keralaputras, as far as Tamraparni (Sri Lanka), and there is no indication that he attempted to conquer them. The resources of the far south seem not to have been so visible as they were to become later. The chiefdoms, in turn, having had or heard of the experience of Mauryan arms from earlier campaigns, probably preferred to give pledges of friendship and remain at peace.

On the political economy of the Mauryan Empire:

The administrative system was largely concerned with the efficient collection of taxes. Regarded by many as the theorist of such a system of administration, Kautilya refers at length to methods of tax collection and related problems and a control over potential sources of revenue.

Megasthenes has commented on the absence of slavery in India, but this is contradicted by Indian sources. Perhaps he had the pattern of Athenian slavery in mind and the Indian pattern differed…. Domestic slaves were a regular feature in prosperous households, where the slaves were of low-caste status, but were not untouchables or they would not have had entry into the homes of the upper castes. Slave labour was also used in the mines and by some craft associations. The conditions leading to slavery are listed in more than one text, and among them are: that a man could be a slave either by birth; by voluntarily selling himself; by being captured in war; or as a result of a judicial punishment.
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A slave in India could buy back his freedom or be voluntarily released by his master; and, if previously he had the status of an arya, he could return to this status on the completion of his term as a slave, according to the Arthashastra. Possibly the function of arya and dasa had again undergone some change. What was immutable in Indian society was not freedom or slavery, but caste. In effect, however, the condition of freedom or slavery was implicit in caste, where, in the overall scheme, the lower castes were less free than the higher, and untouchability could coincide with slavery.

The Arthashastra had a preference for the private management of irrigation. Thus, although the construction and maintenance of reservoirs, tanks and canals were regarded as part of the functions of governing, there is no ground for holding that the control of irrigation was the key to the control of the economy and therefore the prevalence of despotism.

The state employed some artisans, such as armourers and shipbuilders, and they were exempt from tax. Others who worked in state workshops, for example the spinning and weaving shops and the state mines, were liable to pay taxes.

Megasthenes speaks of Mauryan society as having seven divisions – philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsman, artisans, magistrates and councillors. These have been interpreted as castes because he states that no one is allowed to marry outside his own division or change one profession for another. Only the philosopher is permitted this privilege…. The philosophers were exempt from taxation, as corroborated by Indian sources when referring to brahmans and to monks.

Ashoka’s emphatic plea for social harmony and repeated calls for equal respect towards brahmans and shramanas would suggest that there were social tensions.

On administration:

Salaries of officials and expenditure on public works constituted a sizeable portion of public expenses, one-quarter of the total revenue being reserved for these. The figures given for the salaries of those running the administration come from a section of the text that is believed to be post-Mauryan. The hierarchy that emerges is of some interest in explaining where the emphasis lay in administration. The higher officials were extremely well paid according to this scheme and such salaries could have been a drain on the treasury. The chief minister, the purohita, and the army commander received 48,000 panas, the treasurer and the chief collector 24,000; the accountants, clerks and soldiers received 500 panas, whereas the ministers were paid 12,000; and artisans received 120 panas. The value of the pana is not indicated, nor the interval at which salaries were paid, assuming that they were paid in money…. These may not have been the actual salaries but the implicit ratios in these amounts are of interest. Thus, the ratio of the clerk’s salary to that of the chief minister or of the soldier to that of the commander of the army works out at 1: 96. The upper levels of the bureaucracy would have been extraordinarily well paid if these ratios are even reasonably correct.

Fines served as punishments in most cases. But certain crimes were considered too serious to be punished by fines alone and Ashoka, despite his propagation of non-violence, retained capital punishment.

On Ashoka’s Dhamma:

His inscriptions are therefore of two kinds. The smaller group consists of declarations of the King as a lay Buddhist, addressed to the Buddhist Sangha. These edicts describe his adherence to Buddhism and his relationship with the Sangha. Here the voice is that of a confirmed believer with some degree of intolerance of differing opinion, as for instance in a passage where he proclaims in no uncertain terms that dissident monks and nuns should be expelled from the Sangha.

Dhamma was aimed at creating an attitude of mind in which the ethical behaviour of one person towards another was primary, and was based on a recognition of the dignity of human beings.

He criticized in no uncertain terms what he described as ‘useless ceremonies and sacrifices’, held as a result of superstitious beliefs, for example those meant to ensure a safe journey or a quick recovery from an illness. These were the stock-in-trade of the lower order of priests, who depended on such ceremonies for their livelihood. Yet he has no objection to spectacles and displays conjuring up divine forms as a means of attracting an audience to create an interest in Dhamma. This was propaganda of an obvious kind.

On imperial decline:

Ashoka ruled for thirty-seven years and died in about 232 BC. Subsequently, a political decline set in and the empire began to break up.

The pattern of the break-up of the empire has its own interest in terms of the continuance of the metropolitan area and the evolving of the core regions into independent states. The Ganges Plain remained under the Mauryas, becoming the nucleus of the kingdom of their successors. The north-western areas were lost to the rising ambitions of the Bactrian Greeks, and remained vulnerable to the politics from across the borderlands. Interestingly, some of the gana-sanghas of the Punjab and Rajasthan seem to have survived and were able to reassert themselves. However, the gana-sanghas of the middle Ganges Plain had succumbed to monarchical rule. This is to some degree a commentary on the nature of the imperial administration. Other parts of the empire, erstwhile core areas, such as Gandhara, Kalinga and parts of the western Deccan, broke away into smaller states, some with occasional evidence of dynasties and others with more continuous dynastic control.

Possibly the Mauryan administration was content to cream off the revenue as and when it could, and did not restructure the economy sufficiently to provide longer-term support for an imperial system. The economic development of the core areas of the empire, such as Gandhara and Kalinga, led to the emergence of new states that coincided with the decline of the empire. It has therefore been argued that, although Mauryan control may have declined, this was nevertheless a period of local economic development.

An imperial structure requires a well-organized administration with built-in factors to ensure its continuity. The Mauryan bureaucracy was centralized, with the ruler – or king – as the key figure towards whom loyalty was directed. A change of king meant a re-alignment of loyalty or, worse, even a change of officials. The system of recruitment was arbitrary, with local governors choosing their officers, and the same pattern is likely to have been repeated throughout the hierarchy of office. This might have been avoided if some form of recruitment had been adopted to eliminate the possibility of particular social groups and local cliques monopolizing administrative control. The building of institutions requires some distancing from personal concerns and choices, with the replacement of these by social and civic concerns.

The mood of the Arthashastra is hostile to notions of representation – however limited – and the participation of larger numbers in decision-making. This can be seen in the section where various methods are suggested for sowing dissension and terminating the existence of the gana-sanghas. They are not merely to be conquered and incorporated into the kingdom, but are to be rooted out as a system.

There are multiple aspects of the Mauryan period that make it a time of great historical interest. The state controlled many activities and was sustained by systems of revenue collection. The focus therefore was on the state as an agency of control, largely through administrative functionaries concerned with assessing sources of revenue and collecting taxes. The relationship between the state and the peasant or the artisan was without effective intermediaries, other than the bureaucracy. The peasant was largely free, except where he worked on land under the control of the state, and even in the latter case a variety of tenures could apply. The state, however, appears to have taken the initiative in extending agriculture. Peasant discontent was articulated largely in the form of migration, but nevertheless the state was being advised to open up new areas to settlement. Systems of exchange were varied, but coined money played a visible role and the potentialities of commerce were beginning to be tapped. The absence of reference to varna in the edicts of Ashoka suggests that other social categories were more significant, such as family, clan and sect. Varna categories would have been observed, for instance, in the reference to brahmans, but possibly jatis were more prominent in the social landscape.

07 - Of Politics and Trade - c. 200 BC - AD 300

On the Shungas, Kharavela, and Oligarchies:

The immediate heirs of what remained of the Mauryan empire were the Shungas, a brahman family, who were officials under the Mauryas.
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Buddhist sources claim that they persecuted the Buddhists and destroyed their monasteries and places of worship.
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Nevertheless, even if some renovations were of a later date, the damage to the stupa at Sanchi and to the monastery at Kaushambi dates to Shunga times. Added emphasis is given to this from Pushyamitra having performed ashvamedhas, or horse sacrifices. This is sometimes viewed as indicating support of Vedic Brahmanism and a disapproval of the heterodox sects. The sacrifices are also linked to his having held back Yavana forays from the north-west.

Kalinga in Orissa was an independent kingdom in the mid-first century BC under Kharavela. This was an example of secondary-state formation, as it had been a core area in the Mauryan system and had been imprinted with the structure of a state through being under Mauryan administration…. Kalinga was also associated with Jaina monasteries, encouraged no doubt by the initial patronage of Kharavela.

The Rathika and Bhojaka peoples are mentioned in the Ashokan inscriptions and in later Satavahana inscriptions they refer to designations – Maharathi and Maha-bhoja – implying they were chiefs who had been given administrative functions.

On Indo-Greeks and Shakas:

Deities could be depicted iconographically or as symbols and were generally of the Shaiva or Bhagavata sects, or Buddhist, Jaina or Zoroastrian, or of the cults of Greco-Roman origin that were worshipped in the area at that time. This is another indication of the need for rulers of south Asian regions to be patrons of multiple religions.

The remains of what might be the earliest temple dedicated to Hindu worship have been located through excavations at Besnagar. It is thought to have been associated with the newly emerging Bhagavata sect, whose beliefs and practices facilitated the process of acculturation.

This demonizing of the Yavanas is curious, since they were familiar from Mauryan times. Possibly the source of irritation was that much of the patronage of these rulers went to the Buddhists and less to the brahmans, even if the newly emerging Shaiva and Bhagavata sects were also receiving patronage. But this was not die same as patronage to Vedic Brahmanism which, by the very nature of its belief and practice, would have been closed to the Yavanas and the mlechchhas, who were regarded as outside the boundaries of caste.

On Shakas, Parthians, Kushanas, and Kshatrapas:

Those who initially attacked Bactria in the late second century BC included the Parthians and the Scythians – referred to as the Pahlavas and Shakas in Indian sources -and were primarily responsible for weakening Bactrian power. Scytho-Parthian rule was established in north-western India around the Christian era.

Gradually, as their pastures began to dry up, the pastoralists made intermittent raids into Chinese territory searching not only for new pastures, but also for the wealth of those Chinese who were sedentary. The later movement of these tribes westwards can be traced back to the activities of the Chinese Emperor Shi Huang Ti, who built the Great Wall in the last half of the third century BC to defend China’s frontiers against the nomadic Hsiungnu/Xiongnu, Wu-sun and Yueh-chih. The Hsiungnu suffered famines in the first century BC, brought about by excessive snow and the continuing raids of their neighbours. This led to their migrating and displacing the Yueh-chih, which started a chain reaction of population movements in central Asia. These in turn had an impact on northern India.

The Yueh-chih were driven from the best lands and had to migrate to distant places. They split into two hordes – the Little Yueh-chih, who settled in northern Tibet, and the Great Yueh-chih, who wandered further west to the shores of the Aral Sea. Here they stopped for a while, displacing the inhabitants of the region, the Scythians, or the Shakas, as they were called in Iranian and Indian sources. The Shakas advanced into Bactria and Parthia. A Chinese visitor in about 128 BC records that the land surrounding the Aral Sea had been cleared of the Scythians, and instead he had found the Yueh-chih settled there. Parthia failed to hold back the Shakas, except for a brief period, and was overrun. The Shakas however did not pause there, but swept down into the Indus Plain, eventually becoming established in western India, with their control reaching as far as Mathura. To the west their base was in Seistan in Iran. Horsemen herders had the potential of becoming a good cavalry and this was used to advantage in campaigns.

The Shaka King Maues or Moga (c. 80 BC) established Shaka power in Gandhara. A successor, Azes, annexed the territory of the last of the Indo-Greek kings in northern India, Hippostratos. Azes is now being associated with the creation of the era of 58 BC that was to be known through the centuries as the Krita, Malava or Vikramaditya, samvat, era.

The Shakas were driven southwards by the Yueh-chih. A Chinese source records that one of their chiefs, Kujula Kadphises, united the five tribes of the Yueh-chih and led them over the northern mountains into north-western India, establishing himself in Bactria and extending his control to Kabul and Kashmir, thus initiating the Kushana kingdom. This is confirmed by Greek and Latin sources complaining of attacks on Bactria from northern nomads. Indian sources do not refer to the Kushanas as such, but references to the Tukhara, or Tushara, are thought to refer to them.

The Kushana dynasty was in the ascendant in central Asia under Kanishka, whose relationship to the earlier kings has been confirmed by the recent discovery of an inscription in Afghanistan. In this he claims that he conquered hindo/India, i.e., the better-known north-west of India, and proclaimed his conquest in all the cities as far as Champa (in the middle Ganges Plain).

The accession of Kanishka has been dated anywhere between AD 78 and 144. An era based on AD 78 has come to be called the Shaka era, but is also thought by some to be linked to the accession of Kanishka. The Kushana kingdom may have reached to the middle Ganges Plain, where Kushana inscriptions have been found. However, their most important cities were Purushapura, near modern Peshawar, and Mathura.

Given the territorial span of the contact, and the intermingling of peoples, royal patronage had to be extended to a variety of religions – Buddhism, Jainism, the Bhagavata and Shaiva sects, Zoroastrianism and the Hellenistic cults. The northern Buddhists claimed Kanishka as a royal patron, associating him with the Fourth Buddhist Council held to clarify Buddhist doctrine. This was a parallel to the claim of the Theravada Buddhists that Ashoka presided over the Third Council at Pataliputra.

If Greeks were converted to Vaishnavism or came to accept the presence of Bhagavata and Shaiva deities, Indians began to worship deities from across the borders, some of which entered the Indian pantheon, such as the goddess Ardochsho in the form of Shri. Kushana coins sometimes carried images of Zoroastrian deities.

The coming of the Kushanas had pushed the Shakas south into the region of Kutch, Kathiawar and Malwa in western India. Here they were to remain and to rule until the late fourth century AD. The rule of Rudradaman the Kshatrapa in the mid-second century stands out largely for the cultural change that he patronized. At Junagarh, in Saurashtra, a lengthy inscription – the earliest of any importance in Sanskrit – provides evidence of his activities.

On the Satavahanas:

Satakarni performed the ritual of a horse sacrifice to put a stamp on his rulership. He also claimed to have destroyed the khatiyas, often interpreted as the Khatriaioi peoples mentioned by Ptolemy, but it could also be a reference to the kshatriya ruling clans of the oligarchic polities of western and central India. The continuing presence of these polities and their resilience in the face of opposition from monarchical polities has not received the attention it deserves.

Coins struck by the Shaka satrap, Nahapana, have been found in the Nasik area, which could mean that by the first century AD the Shakas controlled this region. But the Satavahanas appear to have regained their western possessions soon after this, for the coins of Nahapana are often found overstruck by the name Gautamiputra Satakarni, who was responsible for re-establishing Satavahana power in western India. Judging by the references to ports and politics in the Periplus, the west coast was becoming a contested area, the contest being aggravated by the trade from Roman Egypt.

Vasishthiputra states that Gautamiputra had uprooted the Shakas and had destroyed the pride of the kshatriyas: that he had stopped the contamination of the four varnas, and had furthered the interests of the twice-born. In brahmanical social codes the Shakas were ranked as being of low caste, and the Yavanas as degenerate kshatriyas, the same terms being used for the Shakas, Yavanas and Parthians in a royal Satavahana inscription.

It is interesting that the Satavahanas, who boasted of having stopped the contamination of the four varnas, were nevertheless anxious to take a bride from a Shaka family. The discrepancy between theory and practice was subordinated to the primacy of political expediency. That this effort at an alliance was not entirely successful is clear from Rudradaman’s statement that he twice defeated the Satavahana king in battle, but refrained from annihilating him because of a close relationship.

08 - The Rise of the Mercantile Community - c. 200 BC - AD 300

Through all the political vicissitudes of the Shungas, Kanvas, Indo-Greeks, Shakas, Kushanas, Satavahanas, Ikshvakus, Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas there was the increasing visibility of the merchant and the artisan, although with regional variations in its presence.

To some extent the functioning of the shreni echoes that of the gana-sanghas. That the guild also intervened in the private lives of its members is clear from the regulation that, if a married woman wished to join the Buddhist Order as a nun, she had to obtain permission not only from her husband but also from the shreni to which he belonged.

The goods produced by the artisan, whether individually or through a guild, were bought by merchants – vanij, a term that survives in the modern profession of the bania.

Another aspect emerging from inscriptions is that the guild could also act as a banker, financier and trustee. Generally, however, these functions were carried out by a different category, that of merchants, the shreshthins/setthis or financiers, the designations of which continue to the present in the sethis and the chettiars.

On education, literature, and systems of knowledge:

A gradual distancing from the bhishaja, the healer or shaman, was registered by a move towards the formal study and systemization of medical knowledge. Texts written in Sanskrit generally endorsed the latter.

The shift was from knowledge based on experience alone to an inclusion of experiment and analyses, derived from practice and from formal knowledge. The Indian medical system was based on the theory of the three humours – air, bile and mucus – the correct balance of these resulting in a healthy body. The processes involved in the functioning of the body drew from the five vayus, winds, and their interaction. Medical pharmacopoeias and discussions on medical practices were composed at this time, the most famous being that of Charaka. Another study was that of Sushruta, focusing on surgery.

The texts were obviously written by those who had received a formal education. Yet brahmanical rules placed the practitioners of medicine low on the social scale, although those who wrote on medical matters pertaining to humans, horses and elephants were often accorded brahman status. Because of its study of the human body, and its utility in veterinary sciences, medical knowledge became independent of orthodoxy. This was to become an underlying contradiction in Indian society. Some professions were theoretically rated as low, but when their utility was valued socially technical treatises were written in Sanskrit which gave status to the profession.

While brahman orthodoxy maintained a distance from lower ranks it also had to come to terms with the new ruling elite, since those with political power could not be treated as outcastes. The ‘fallen kshatriya’ status was a strategic concession to the new ruling dynasties, although the qualifier vratya, degenerate or fallen, would hardly have been appreciated by those to whom it was applied. The presence in India of such people, prominent in political and economic spheres, must have challenged the theoretical structure of varna, even though the political arena and particularly kingship had earlier been relatively open, irrespective of varna status.

Categories of donors varied according to location: at Mathura there were larger numbers of Jaina women donors than Buddhist, and this pattern was different from Buddhist sites in central India.

On the intermingling of religious beliefs and practice:

The deification of the Buddha and the worship of his image, the concept of the bodhisattva and the notion of transferring merit were not part of the original tenets of Buddhist teaching, although after much debate their importance was conceded among many sects of Buddhism. The Buddha had opposed deification, yet, by the first century AD, his image was carved in stone, engraved on rock or painted, and worshipped. The bodhisattva was another new idea, defined as one who works for the good of humankind in an unselfish manner and is willing to forego nirvana until such time as his work is completed. Alternatively it was interpreted as the bodhisattva being a previous incarnation of the Buddha, working towards nirvana and accumulating merit through successive births. Such merit was intended for humanity and not just for the individual bodhisattva. Furthermore, merit could also be transferred from one person to another by a pious act in the name of the person to whom this transference was made. Thus, the wealthy could acquire merit by donating caves to the Sangha or else a stock of merit could be built up through the donations of others. The analogy with the common mercantile practice of the accumulation and transference of capital is striking.

…resulted in fresh ideas filtering into Buddhism. The original doctrine was reinterpreted, a process that led to its split into two schools – the Hinayana or the Lesser Vehicle and the Mahayana or the Greater Vehicle. This was a schism more major than the sectarian splits. Apart from the doctrinal differences, the conflicting needs of the affluent and the impoverished could not be easily accommodated.

The Theravada sect, which had its centre at Kaushambi, had collected the teachings of the Buddha into the Pali Canon. It was the oldest sect and claimed closeness to the original teaching. The Sarvastivada sect, originating at Mathura, spread northwards to Gandhara, central Asia and further. They collated material in Sanskrit, or what has come to be called hybrid Sanskrit. The Canon was also written in Gandhari Prakrit. The nuances of the earlier teaching could have been inadvertently changed in the process of translation, or by composing the text in a language different from that of the original.

According to some Buddhist traditions, the schism between the Hinayana and the Mahayana was given recognition at the Fourth Buddhist Council, held in Kashmir in the early second century AD, which is often associated with Kanishka.

The emergence of the Theravada after the Third Council held at Pataliputra, which was associated with Ashoka, may have provided the model. The more orthodox Buddhists maintained that the Hinayana preserved the original teaching of the Buddha, and that the Mahayana had incorporated new ideas not consistent with the original teaching. Eventually, there was an approximate geographical division, but with some overlap. Hinayana Buddhism found its strongholds in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and the countries of south-east Asia, whereas Mahayana Buddhism had its major following in central Asia, Tibet, China and Japan.

The Mahayana doctrine was also influenced by the formulations of some contemporary Buddhist philosophers. Among these the most outstanding was Nagarjuna, a convert to Buddhism from a brahman family of the northern Deccan. He is associated with the doctrine of the Void (Shunyata), which is sometimes read as saying that we are surrounded by emptiness and that whatever we see is an illusion. The Void however was nirvana, or the end to the cycle of rebirth, that every Buddhist was seeking.

Jainism achieved popularity, particularly among the merchant families of the cities. It too suffered a schism, the Jaina monks being divided into the Digambara, ‘Sky-clad’, the naked or orthodox sect; and the Shvetambara, ‘White-clad’ or more liberal sect. They moved from Magadha westwards, settling in Mathura, Rajasthan, Ujjain, Saurashtra and along the west coast to Sopara, at all of which places they prospered. Their presence was particularly evident in Mathura and in central India, the former being a political and commercial centre and the latter being traversed by routes. Jainism became a noticeable presence in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Another group moved to Kalinga, where they enjoyed royal patronage under Kharavela.

Moving further south, their main concentration was in Karnataka and the Tamil country. Sites such as Sittanavsal, with its beautiful mural, were monastic centres; but Shravana Belgola later developed into a considerable place of pilgrimage, with its immense statue ritually bathed at regular intervals. By and large Jainism, supported by a similar section of society as Buddhism, underwent crises much the same as those of Buddhism. However, it managed to maintain itself with more determination than Buddhism as a kind of ‘parish religion’, closely tied to the community.Hence the number of its adherents has remained small but fairly constant. Unlike Buddhism, it did not become a pan-Asian religion, possibly because its ritual observances were difficult to follow in the midst of other cultures.

At this time Vedic Brahmanism became differentiated from sects such as the Bhagavata and Shaiva – now referred to as Puranic Hinduism – and which took form towards the latter part of the period.

The wider application of the term ‘Hindu’ originated with the Arabs after the eighth century AD, when it referred to all those who lived beyond the Indus. At a later date its meaning came to include those who followed the prevailing indigenous religions of India. Differentiation from Vedic Brahmanism has required that sects be described by another label, and Puranic Hinduism has come into use. It derives from the encapsulation of the change contained in the writing of the Puranas. The composition of these began in the early centuries AD. Each Purana is a manual on the worship of a specific deity and a guide for the worshipper.

Nevertheless the notion of a trinity of gods was encouraged, with Brahma as the Creator, Vishnu as the Preserver and Shiva as the god who eventually destroys the universe. Of the three gods, Vishnu and Shiva gained a vast following, and through ensuing centuries the Vaishnavas and the Shaivas remained major sects of Hindu belief. Brahma receded into the background.

The tenth and final incarnation of Vishnu has yet to come, when Vishnu will take the form of the brahman Kalkin. He will set right the ways of the world, end oppression and reverse the attempts of those who have turned the world upside down by acting contrary to brahmanical norms, among which was the lower-caste appropriation of high status.

In Vedic Brahmanism, and to some degree in Puranic Hinduism, the arbiters of Dharma were the brahmans and their normative texts, the Dharma-shastras, justifying the ethics of varna. Buddhists and Jainas emphasized a different concept of social ethics, for example the Middle Way, that was not rooted in varna. The Gita proclaims that each man must do his duty according to the Dharma and not look towards the results of his actions.

A group of Persian Christians led by Thomas Cana migrated to Kerala, where they were given a grant of land by the local king. The first coming of Christianity to India is more likely linked to the establishing of the Syrian Christian Church.

09 - Threshold Times c. AD 300 - 700

There are at least three epochs when artistic and literary expression achieved impressive standards – the post-Mauryan and Gupta period; the Cholas; and the Mughals.

The classicism of the Gupta period is not an innovation emanating from Gupta rule but the culmination of a process that began earlier. New artistic forms were initiated during the pre-Gupta period in north India, such as those associated with Buddhism and which also found parallels in other religious sects, with the writing of texts on technical subjects and creative literature of various kinds.

The description of the Gupta period as one of classicism is relatively correct regarding the upper classes, who lived well according to descriptions in their literature and representations in their art. The more accurate, literal evidence that comes from archaeology suggests a less glowing life-style for the majority. Materially, excavated sites suggest that the average standard of living may have been higher in the preceding period. This can be firmly established only by horizontal excavations of urban sites and rural settlements, involving comparative analysis with the remains of the preceding period. The existing discrepancy between the level of material culture shown by excavations and that reflected in literature and the arts is in itself a commentary on the social context of classicism.

The kings of the south and of the Deccan were not under the suzerainty of Samudra Gupta but merely paid him homage, as did a number of the northern rulers. His conquests allowed him to annex territory in northern India as he originally intended, exacting tribute from defeated rulers whose territory he could not annex. He probably met with stronger opposition than he had anticipated. His direct political control was confined to the Ganges Plain, since the Shakas remained unconquered in western India; and his control over the north-west may have wavered.

This inscription makes a striking contrast to those of Ashoka. The Mauryan king controlled far more territory yet was modest in his claims to power. Whereas Ashoka came close to renouncing conquest, Samudra Gupta revelled in it. An interesting feature of the conquests is their variety and number, from chiefdoms to kingdoms.
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Apart from this the termination of these chiefdoms was the death-knell of the gana-sangha polity, which had held its own for a millennium as an alternative to monarchy.

Of all the Gupta kings, Chandra Gupta II, the son of Samudra Gupta, is reputed to have shown exceptional chivalrous and heroic qualities. His long reign of about forty years from c. AD 375 to 415 had a rather mysterious beginning.

This campaign led to the annexation of western India, commemorated by the issuing of special silver coins. Its significance lay not only in the western border of India being secure, but also in its giving access to the western trade since the ports were now in Gupta hands. The western Deccan, earlier held by the Satavahanas, was ruled by the Vakataka dynasty which emerged as a dominant power in the Deccan. One branch which had close relations with the Guptas was associated with Ramtek, where they built a number of temples, and the other with Vatsgulma.

Chandra Gupta II took the title of Vikramaditya/‘sun of prowess’, and has therefore been linked with the legendary king of that name, associated with a strong sense of justice. The Gupta King is remembered for his patronage of literature and the arts.

The coming of the Huns was another intervention by central Asia in the politics of northern India. The pattern followed that of the Shakas and the Kushanas, to be repeated later by the Turks, a possible difference being that for the Shakas and Kushanas it was an extension of their rule from central Asia to northern India, whereas for the Huns and Turks it was initially only an interest in acquiring loot.

A fiscal crisis is suggested when some issues of the erstwhile high-value Gupta coins, which had changed from a Roman standard to an Indian standard, were debased. By c. 460 he had managed to rally the Gupta forces, but 467 is the last known date of Skanda Gupta. After his death, the central authority of the Guptas declined at an increasing pace.
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A major blow came at the end of the fifth century when the Huns successfully broke through into northern India. Gupta power was eroded over the next fifty years, after which it gave way to a number of smaller kingdoms.

The wider Hun dominion extended from Persia to Khotan, with a capital at Bamiyan in Afghanistan. The first Hun king of any importance in India was Toramana, who claimed conquest over northern India as far as Eran in central India. Toramana’s son Mihirakula (AD 520) conformed to the conventional image of the Hun. A Chinese pilgrim travelling in northern India at the time described him as uncouth in manner and an iconoclast, and especially hostile to Buddhism, a hostility expressed in the killing of monks and destruction of monasteries. According to the twelfth century historian, Kalhana, the hostility to Buddhism was apparently shared by the Shaiva brahmans. He comments in the Rajatarangini on the greed of the brahmans who eagerly accepted grants of land from the Hun rulers.

On Harsha:

From the decline of the Guptas until the rise of Harsha in the early seventh century four kingdoms effectively held power in northern India: the Guptas of Magadha; the Maukharis of Kanauj; the Pushyabhutis of Thanesar; and the Maitrakas of Valabhi. The Guptas of Magadha were not part of the main Gupta dynasty, but were a minor line bearing the same name. At first the Maukharis held the region of the western Ganges Plain around Kanauj, gradually ousting the Magadhan Guptas from their kingdom. Originally, they were tributary rulers who established an independent kingdom, changing their title from maharaja to maharaja-adhiraja, doubtless in imitation of the earlier Guptas. The Pushyabhutis ruled in Thanesar, north of Delhi. A marriage alliance with the Maukharis led, on the death of the last Maukhari king, to the unification of the two kingdoms, which were eventually ruled by Harsha of the Pushyabhuti family. The Maitrakas, who had held administrative office under the Guptas, ruled in Saurashtra in Gujarat and developed Valabhi, their capital, into an important centre of commerce and of learning. On the periphery of these four were a number of lesser dynasties – the Manas and the Shailodbhavas in Orissa, the Varmans in Assam and the Aulikaras, with various others, recorded in inscriptions for their grants of land. Of the four main kingdoms, the Maitrakas survived the longest, ruling until the middle of the eighth century when they were weakened by attacks from the Arabs.

Harsha began his reign in AD 606. A lively narrative of his early life comes from a biography, the Harshacharita (The Life of Harsha), written by his learned and Bohemian friend, Banabhatta.

In the course of the forty-one years that he ruled, Marsha included among his tributary rulers those of Jalandhar (in the Punjab), Kashmir, Nepal and Valabhi. Shashanka, ruling in the east, was hostile to him and Marsha was unable to extend his power into the Deccan. He suffered his one major defeat at the hands of Pulakeshin II, a Chalukya king of the western Deccan.

On indicators of a changing political economy:

This was significantly different from the Mauryan administration. Whereas Ashoka insisted that he be kept informed of what was happening, the Guptas seemed satisfied with leaving it to the kumaramatyas and the ayuktakas. Admittedly, a taut administration is described in the Arthashastra, but this was a normative text and the evidence from inscriptions and seals suggests that the Gupta administration was more decentralized, with officials holding more than one office.

If the Mauryan state was primarily concerned with collecting revenue from an existing economy, or expanding peasant agriculture through the intervention of the state, the Gupta state and its contemporaries made initial attempts at restructuring the agrarian economy. This took the form of land grants to individuals, who were expected to act as catalysts in rural areas. There was more emphasis on converting existing communities into peasants than bringing in settlers. The system developed from the notion that granting land as a support to kingship could be more efficacious than the performance of a sacrifice, and that land was appropriate as a mahadana or ‘great gift’.

Although the granting of land was at first marginal, by about the eighth century AD it had expanded, gradually resulting in a political economy that was recognizably different from pre-Gupta times.

The brahmans were often those proficient in the Vedas, or with specialized knowledge, particularly of astrology. Gifts to brahmans were expected to ward off the evils of the present Kali Age, and recourse to astrology appears to have been more common. Even if it was not a grant in perpetuity, the descendants of the grantee tended gradually to treat the land granted as an inheritance.

On urban life:

The debasement of the later Gupta coinage has been interpreted as recording a fiscal crisis. If Harsha really did divide the income of the kingdom into four, as Hsüan Tsang maintained – a quarter for government expenses, another quarter for the salaries of public servants, a third quarter for the reward of intellectual attainments, and the last quarter for gifts – such a division, although idealistic in concept, may have been economically impractical.

It was earlier argued that the revival of urbanism did not take place until the twelfth century or thereabouts, but this time period has now been reduced by evidence of towns to the ninth or tenth centuries. A further problem relates to the question of whether this decline was subcontinental or restricted to certain regions. The evidence for some urban decline in the Ganges Plain has been discussed but noticeable decline in some other regions is not so apparent.

The export of spices, pepper, sandalwood, pearls, precious stones, perfumes, indigo and herbs continued, but the commodities that were imported differed from those of earlier times. There appears to have been an appreciable rise in the import of horses, coming overland from Iran and Bactria to centres in north-west India, or from Arabia by sea to the western coast. India never bred sufficient horses of quality, perhaps because of adverse climatic conditions and inappropriate pasturage, so the best livestock was always imported. This may have had consequences for the cavalry of Indian armies, eventually making it less effective in comparison with central Asian horsemen.

Indian contacts with the east African coast are thought to date to the first millennium BC, and by now this contact had developed through trade. Despite this activity, the codifiers of custom and social laws were prohibiting an upper-caste person to travel by sea, to cross the black waters. The objection to travelling to distant lands was due to the risk of contamination by the mlechchhas (those outside the boundaries of caste and therefore ritually impure); it was also difficult to observe rituals and caste rules. The ban had the additional and indirect advantage for the brahman that, if insisted upon, it could theoretically curb the economic power of the trading community. But this did not curtail the entrepreneuring spirit of Indians who wished to trade, irrespective of whether they were brahman or non-brahman. Many were Buddhists and would not have paid much attention to brahmanical rules. The Jainas, however, did not venture out in large numbers, perhaps because their rigorous religious observances discouraged travel to distant places.

On social mores:

There is a fuller treatment of slaves in the Dharma-shastras of this time than in the earlier ones, which suggests a greater use of slave labour although it still did not reach anywhere near the proportions of slave labour in some other parts of the ancient world…. The sources of slaves were the usual – prisoners-of-war, debt bondsmen and slaves born to slave women – but also include the curious category of those who have revoked their vows of renunciation. The largest number of slaves seems to have been employed in domestic work. For labour in agriculture there were other categories such as bonded labour, hired labour and those required to perform stipulated jobs as a form of vishti, forced labour or labour tax. Caste regulations prevented the untouchables from being employed in domestic work. Forced to work in a caste society, untouchables constituted a permanent reservoir of landless labour, their permanence ensured by the disabilities of their birth.

Fa Hsien/Fah Hian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who was on pilgrimage to India in the years AD 405 to 411, collecting Buddhist manuscripts and studying at Buddhist monasteries, describes people as generally happy. Yet he also writes that the untouchables had to sound a clapper in the streets of the town so that people were warned of their presence; and that if an untouchable came into close range, the upper-caste person would have to perform a ritual ablution. All this may have become normal practice by now. Hsüan Tsang states that butchers, fishermen, theatrical performers, executioners and scavengers were forced to live outside the city and their houses were marked so that they could be avoided. Yet accounts by Buddhist monks from China tend on the whole to be complimentary, perhaps because for them India was the ‘western heaven’, the holy land of the Buddha, or perhaps because they were making subconscious comparisons with other places.

A widow was expected to live in austerity, but if of the kshatriya caste should preferably immolate herself on the funeral pyre of her husband especially if he had died a hero’s death. This would make her a sati. The earliest historical evidence for this practice dates from AD 510, when it was commemorated in an inscription at Eran. Subsequently, incidents of sati increased. This coincided with the current debate on whether or not a woman, particularly a widow, could remarry.

Contrary to Fa Hsien’s statement that vegetarianism was customary in India, other sources indicate that meat was commonly eaten especially among the elite. The flesh of the ox was medically prescribed to enhance vigour. Wine, both the locally produced variety and that imported from the west, was popular as was the chewing of pan, betel leaf.

On systems of knowledge:

Formal education was available in brahman ashramas, hermitages, and in Buddhist and Jaina monasteries. In the former it would have been restricted to the upper castes. Theoretically, the period of studentship at the former lasted over many years, but it is unlikely that most would spend long periods as students. Learning was a personalized experience involving teacher and pupil. The emphasis was on memorizing texts such as parts of the Vedas, and gaining familiarity with the contents of the Dharma-shastras and subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, prose and verse composition, logic and metaphysics. But much else was included in Sanskrit learning, such as astronomy, mathematics, medicine and astrology.

Nalanda in south Bihar became the foremost Buddhist monastic and educational centre in the north, attracting students from places as distant as China and south-east Asia. This was possible because it had an income from a large number of villages granted to it for its upkeep. Excavations at Nalanda have revealed an extensive area of well-constructed monastic residences and halls of worship.

Aryabhata, in AD 499, was the first astronomer to tackle the more fundamental problems of the new studies. He calculated pi to 3.1416 and the length of the solar year to 365.3586805 days, both remarkably close to recent estimates. He believed that the earth was a sphere and rotated on its axis, and that the shadow of the earth falling on the moon caused eclipses. The explanation for the cause of eclipses was quite contentious as the orthodox theory described it as a demon swallowing the planet, a theory strongly refuted even in later times by the astronomer Lalla. Aryabhata and those who followed his line of thought are regarded as more scientific than other Indian astronomers of the time. Aryabhata’s contribution to knowledge relating to astronomy was quite remarkable and was a departure from earlier theories of Vedic astronomy. The later objection to some of these ideas, for instance, by Brahmagupta, appear to have been motivated by a wish not to displease the orthodox.

In the work of a close contemporary, Varahamihira, the growing interest in horoscopy and astrology was included in the study of astronomy and mathematics. This was an addition that Aryabhata might have questioned, since Varahamihira’s emphasis was on astrology rather than astronomy, and, although a sharp dichotomy between the two may not have been common, the emphasis did make a difference. Astrology denied the validity of Aryabhata’s theories.

Arab scholars mention that mathematical knowledge from India was more advanced than what they had retrieved from Greek sources. Numerals had been in use for some time. They were later introduced to the European world as Arabic numerals, the Arabs having borrowed them from India, as is evident from the name they used for them – Hindasa. These were to replace Roman numerals. The decimal place-value system was in regular use among Indian mathematicians, and the earliest inscription using the zero dates to the seventh century, indicating that its use was familiar. The development of what came to be called algebra was also introduced to the Arabs.

A notable feature of intellectual life had been the lively philosophical debates among various thinkers across the spectrum, from Buddhism to Brahmanism. Gradually, the debates focused on well-defined philosophical systems, of which six are generally counted…. Nyaya/Analysis, based on logic, was often used in debates with Buddhist teachers who prided themselves on their advanced knowledge and use of logic. Vaisheshika/Particular Characteristics argued that the universe was created from a number of atoms, but these were distinct from the soul, therefore there were separate universes of matter and soul. Sankhya/Enumeration, essentially atheistic, drew on what were enumerated as the twenty-five principles which gave rise to creation. The dualism between matter and soul was recognized. Sankhya philosophers supported the theory that the three qualities of virtue, passion and dullness, correctly balanced, constituted normality. This was perhaps the influence of the theory of humours current in the medical knowledge of the time. Yoga/Application maintained that a perfect control over the body and the senses was a prelude to knowledge of the ultimate reality. Anatomical knowledge was necessary to the advancement of yoga and therefore those practising yoga had to keep in touch with medical knowledge. Mimamsa/ Inquiry, developed from the view that the source of brahmanical strength, the Vedas, was being neglected, and its supporters emphasized the ultimate law of the Vedas and refuted the challenge of post-Vedk thought. Vedanta/End of the Vedas was decisive in refuting the theories of non-brahamanical schools, particularly in later centuries when it gained currency. Vedanta also claimed origin in the Vedas and posited the existence of the Absolute Soul in all things, the final purpose of existence being the union of the individual soul with the Universal Soul after physical death.

At this stage, only the last two schools were essentially metaphysical, the first four maintaining a strong link with empirical analysis. The focus on Nyaya was given prominence, in pan because it had been central to many schools of Buddhist philosophy. The debates among philosophers of logic continued from century to century. Yet in modern times Vedanta was given maximum attention, to the point of being projected as the dominant philosophical school in pre-modern India. The period of the Vedas was now sufficiently remote for them to be routinely cited as the authority derived from divine origin, as the arbiters of priestly knowledge and sanction, even if this was largely formulaic. Invoking the Vedas did not require that the text conform to Vedic knowledge, for it could also be a way of seeking legitimation.

The cycle was called a kalpa and was equivalent to 4,310,000 human years. According to the second of these theories, the cycle has fourteen manvantaras separated by lengthy intervals and at the end of each the universe is recreated and ruled by Manu (primeval man). At the moment we are in the seventh of these fourteen periods of the present cycle. Each of these is divided into 71+ mahayugas (great cycles).

The other form of reckoning is numerically neater, where the great cycle, the mahayuga, is divided into four yugas or periods of time, each again a cycle and, barring the first, named after the throw of dice – Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali. The yugas contain respectively 4,800, 3,600, 2,400 and 1,200 divine years. Their equivalence to human years requires multiplication by 360.

The world awaits the coming of Kalkin, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu who will reinstate the norms. Cyclic time was also a convenient context for the theory of rebirth.

On creative literature:

The dominance of Sanskrit, however, dates to the Gupta period and continued until about the early second millennium AD, after which the regional languages were widely used. In Turkish and Mughal times the court language was Persian. The hegemony of Sanskrit was political and cultural and enjoyed the patronage of the elite. But the local languages and cultures were not abandoned. They can be glimpsed in the use of Prakrit in various contexts, such as the elements of some inscriptions and in the languages of religious sects.

The upper castes, it is said, should avoid Prakrit because it is the language of the mlechchha and of the populace. The differentiation between high culture and popular local culture was recognized in the gradual adoption of distinctive terms for each – marga, literally the path, for the former, and deshi, literally the region, for the latter. Sanskrit also became the language of the scholastic tradition, and doubtless the patronage to brahmans and to Buddhist monasteries encouraged this.

A notable feature in the Sanskrit plays of this period is that the high-status characters speak Sanskrit, whereas those of low or ambiguous social status, and all the women, speak Prakrit. Status and gender were linked to language.

On religious formulations:

Theoretically, Buddhism was a rival to Vedic Brahmanism, but the rivalry more often took the form of confrontations with Shaivism.

Jainism moved towards support from the merchant communities of western India, and the patronage of local royalty in Karnataka and the south. In the early part of the sixth century the Second Jaina Council was held at Valabhi, and the Jaina Canon was defined substantially as it exists today. The use of Sanskrit was on the increase, since it was now the prestigious language of the elite in many areas. But it had the same effect on the religions that used it, isolating the religious teachers from a wide following. The Jainas had also evolved a series of icons. The straight-standing rather stiff figures of Mahavira and others, or the cross-legged seated figures, became the pattern for depicting Jaina teachers.

A new school of Buddhism was to emerge, Vajrayana or the Thunderbolt Vehicle, with its centre in eastern India. Vajrayana Buddhists gave female counterparts to the existing male figures of the Buddhist pantheon. These counterparts were termed Taras and regarded as Saviouresses, and were especially popular in Nepal and Tibet. On a subcontinental scale Buddhism registered a decline in some areas in about the seventh century, and Hsüan Tsang noticed such a decline at Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and some other places. He mentioned the hostility of some rulers, such as Shashanka. That Harsha was a major patron points to its still having a substantial following, but Harsha was also a patron of its rival, Shaivism.

Three important aspects of Vaishnavism and Shaivism that had their roots in the changes of this period led to a different religious ethos from that dominated either by Buddhism or Vedic Brahmanism. The image emerged as the focus of worship and this form of worship, centred on puja, superseded the Vedic sacrifice. However, an offering to the image – often food or in some cases an animal – remained a requirement of the ritual. Some would argue that puja had its closest parallel in the rituals of the Buddhists. The reduction of the emphasis on the priest compared to his role in the sacrificial ritual of Vedic Brahmanism gradually led to devotional worship – bhakti – becoming the most widespread form of the Puranic religion. Worship of a deity became the main concern of the individual, as it was through bhakti that the individual could aspire to liberation from rebirth. The Vedic religion had well-defined rituals and was exclusive to the upper castes. The Puranic religion had a far wider appeal.

Some tried to define the Four Aims of Man as Dharma (religion and the social law), Artha (economic well-being), Kama (pleasure) and Moksha (the release of the soul from rebirth) – the correct balance of the first three leading to the fourth. The description of the balance was left to those who framed the social code, but the demands of earthly life were adequately met in practice.

Indian Buddhists took missions further afield to China. By AD 379 Buddhism was an accepted religion in China, supported by the state, which swelled the following. However, it had its tribulations, since later centuries saw the persecution of Buddhists.

The granting of land to brahmans, which increased in the post-Gupta period, emphasized the pre-eminence of the brahman in society. The brahmans strengthened this position by asserting an inheritance of Vedic Brahmanism. This tended to marginalize the heterodox and those who had opposed Vedic Brahmanism with its claim to a monopoly over knowledge, a claim that had become an additional source of power. However, with the establishing of the Puranic sects yet another dimension was introduced to social and religious life, different from either Vedic Brahmanism or Shramanism.

10 - The Peninsula: Emerging Regional Kingdoms c. AD 500 - 900

On the Pallavas, Chalukyas, and Rashtrakutas:

The kingdoms of the western Deccan maintained their historical role of bridging the north and the south, facilitating the transmission of ideas between the two. But it is clear from architectural history that this was not a passive role, as the Deccan style, or Vesara, provided forms and variants among what have come to be called the Nagara, or northern style, and the Dravida, or southern style.

For 300 years after the mid-sixth century three major kingdoms were in conflict. These were the Chalukyas of Badami, the Pallavas of Kanchipuram and the Pandyas of Madurai, all seeking to control the fertile tracts. The Chalukyas first came into prominence as subordinate rulers of the Kadambas, from whom they broke away. The Chalukya base was in northern Karnataka at Vatapi/Badami and the adjacent Aihole, from where they moved northwards to annex the former kingdom of the Vakatakas, centred in the Upper Godavari.

Among the later group of Pallava rulers, Mahendra-varman I (600-630) was responsible for the growing political strength of the Pallavas…. Mahendra-varman is said to have begun life as a Jaina, but was converted to Shaivism by Appar, and the claim was that the conversion eroded the patronage to Jainism in Tamil-nadu.

This was to start a long series of Chalukya-Pallava wars, which ceased for a while on the termination of the two dynasties but started again with the rise of their successors.

On returning to Badami he [Pulakeshin II, the Chalukya ruler] conducted another successful campaign, this time against Mahendra-varman the Pallava, resulting in the Chalukya acquisition of some of the northern Pallava provinces. An inscription at Aihole recording the achievements of Pulakeshin II is among the finest literary documents in the category of archival texts.

The defeat of the Pallava was not to remain unavenged. Mahendra-varman had died, but his successor Narasimha-varman I was determined to reconquer lost territory, and this he succeeded in doing. Narasimha-varman swept into the Chalukya capital, and his occupation of the city justified his claim to the title of Vatapikonda, ‘the Conqueror of Vatapi’. Mahabalipuram was further embellished with elegant temples. The next move was to be made by the Chalukyas, but a twelve-year interregnum in the Chalukya dynasty led to a respite from war.

These were the Pandyas of Madurai, and they were not in sympathy with the Pallava cause although their enmity was less intense than that of the Chalukyas. The Pandyas had established their position in southern Tamil-nadu by the sixth century, and they were to remain in control of this region for many centuries. Their effectiveness varied according to their relations with the other powers. Despite the Pandyas harassing their northern neighbours they could never obliterate the power of the latter.

Unlike earlier traders linked to the Roman trade, the Arabs settled permanently in the coastal regions of the west and the south from about the eighth and ninth centuries. They were welcomed, given land for trading stations and left free to practise their religion, as had been the convention with Christians earlier in south India. However, they were scarcely regarded as new arrivals, for even in pre-Islamic times there had been traffic between the west coast and the Arabian peninsula.

In the seventh century, Arab armies had invaded Persia. Some Zoroastrians were converted to Islam and some preferred to migrate to India, which they did from the early eighth century. They too came to western India where they already had trading contacts, and established large settlements to the north of Mumbai, such as the one at Sanjan. Their descendants founded a community later known as Parsi, reflecting the land of their origin and their language.
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The Arabs had however occupied Sind in the eighth century and established footholds in western India, both of which encouraged their advance towards Chalukya territory in an effort to control the ports of the west coast. The Late Chalukyas managed to hold them back, thus allowing their southern neighbours time to arm themselves. The immediate danger from the Arabs passed, but the Chalukyas were faced with an even more formidable threat. Dantidurga, one of their subordinates, who was a high official in the administration, declared his independence, and by slow stages his family overthrew the Chalukyas to establish a new dynasty – the Rashtrakutas.

Dantidurga established the kingdom in about 753, and was succeeded by Krishna I whose fame is associated with the remarkable rock-cut temple at Ellora, known as the Kailasa temple. Amoghavarsha is probably the best remembered of the Rashtrakuta kings. His long reign (814-80) was militarily not brilliant although he strengthened the core area at Manyakheta. His patronage of the Jaina religion and of Shaivism provided both with considerable support.

On the political economies of the peninsula:

Dynasties tend to see-saw when they are equally matched, as in the peninsula. A relatively less obtrusive governmental system encouraged local autonomy in village and district administration, without too much interference from the capital. This autonomy did not divest the state of authority.Instead it was effective in matters of administration and collection of revenue. It was preserved to a considerable degree in Tamil-nadu, where the tradition was actively maintained for many centuries.

Ideologically, the underlining of Brahmanism and the role of the brahman helped to strengthen monarchy by investing the ruling dynasty with legitimacy, by conferring kshatriya status on the royal family in some instances and by converting existing social groups into castes, which were then slotted into a hierarchy to make them more functional. The frequency with which dynasties claimed brahma-kshatra descent reveals the close functioning of political power and brahmanical ideology in parts of the peninsula during this period. The emphasis on brahman and non-brahman status gradually became the foundational stratification in this area, drawing from the principles of varna organization to provide a framework for the juxtaposition of statuses, although it did not conform to the fourfold varna society.

On literary culture:

In the early part of this period, education was provided by Jainas and Buddhists whose teaching pervaded the urban ethos. Gradually, however, the brahmans superseded them. The Jainas had a tradition of religious literature in Sanskrit, such as the Adipurana and the Yashatilaka. They had also used Prakrit and now began to use Tamil. They developed a few centres for religious instruction, including advanced education, near Madurai and Kanchipuram, and at Shravana Belgola.
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Monasteries were the nucleus of the Buddhist educational system and were located in the region of Kanchipuram and the valleys of the Krishna and the Godavari Rivers. Buddhist centres focused on the study of the religion, particularly as there was intense controversy between Buddhist sects and those adhering to Vaishnavism and Shaivism. Considerable time was spent in debating the finer points of theology. Royal patronage, which the Buddhists now often lacked, gave an advantageous position to the others. The popularity of Jainism was also eroded to some degree in competition with Shaivism when it received less patronage. When Mahendra-varman I, the Pallava king, lost interest in Jainism and took up the cause of Shaivism the Jainas were deprived of valuable royal patronage. …
Ghatikas, colleges and centres providing brahmanical learning, were generally attached to the temples. Entry to these colleges was at first open to any ‘twice-born’ caste. Although occasionally endowed by merchants, they were viewed as brahman institutions and concerned with advanced study. Extensive royal patronage allowed the potential for political activity, in that they were centres either of loyalty to the monarchy or – when supported by disaffected members of the royal family – of political opposition. Apart from the monasteries and colleges at Kanchipuram, which acquired fame almost equalling Nalanda, there were a number of other Sanskrit colleges. In about the eighth century, the matha, an institution supported by Brahmanism and Puranic Hinduism, emerged as a parallel institution to the Buddhist and Jaina monasteries.

On philosophical and religious changes:

The brahmans settled in Tamilaham saw themselves as keepers of what they now regarded as sacrosanct Vedic tradition. The degree to which it was viewed as a contribution of the north is debatable, since sections of the Vedas had been composed or redacted at centres for Vedic study in the peninsula.
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Educated brahmans were becoming mobile and seeking new patrons since the mlechchha rulers of the north – the Shakas, Indo-Greeks, Kushanas and the Hunas – had been more supportive of Buddhism and Jainism, and of emergent Puranic religions. But the rulers of western India, the Kshatrapas, had been the first to use Sanskrit in their inscriptions, and others were patrons of brahmans.

One way of making philosophy based on the Vedic corpus more acceptable was by reducing its obscurities, thereby making it comprehensible to the educated. This was attempted by Shankaracharya, who accepted the challenge to Brahmanism from the Buddhists and the Jainas and the popular devotional sects, and attempted to meet it. Coming from Kerala, he wrote and taught probably in the eighth-ninth century, although his dates remain controversial and could be of a later period. He achieved fame for his study of the Vedic system and as the new interpreter of Vedanta philosophy. He also rekindled a greater interest in the Upanishads through his commentaries elaborating on the relation between the atman, the individual soul, and the brahman, the universal soul, realized through jnana, appropriate knowledge.

Shankara argued in favour of a Monist position where reality is seen as advaita, non-dual; and that the world we see around us is maya, illusion, for the reality lies beyond and cannot be perceived through existing human senses.
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He was opposed to unnecessary and meaningless ritual and established his own mathas, where a simplified worship was practised and a systematized Vedanta was taught. These were visualized as parallel to monasteries and are said to have been located at Badrinath in the Himalayas, Puri in Orissa, Dvarka on the western coast, and the most important at Shringeri in the south.

Vedic philosophy and practice was not the only culture that marked a presence in the south. Other groups, either anti-Vedic or non-Vedic in teaching, had also evolved and now had a presence. Apart from Jainism and Buddhism, there were Bhagavata and Pashupata sects, preaching devotion to Vishnu and Shiva respectively. Their rituals were described in the Agamas of each sect. The emphasis was on personal worship. The offerings as part of the ritual of puja were generally flowers, fruit and grain rather than the sacrifice of animals.

Although orthodox brahmans initially dismissed the devotional movement, the latter eventually proved more popular than other religious trends in the south, and this was recognized even by royal patrons. The Tamil devotional movement was deeply affected by Vaishnavism and Shaivism in the choice of deity. Some sects were hostile to Buddhism and Jainism, but were nevertheless influenced by these religions. These sects were among the early expressions of what has been called the Bhakti movement.

The devotional poetry focuses on the individual’s search for liberation from rebirth, on devotion as a path to liberation, and on a preference for avoiding violence. Love was directed to a deity. The devotional aspect was formulated in a relationship between man or woman and their deity of choice, a relationship based on love, and on the grace which the deity bestowed on the worshipper. This formulation had not been so strongly emphasized in earlier religious thought. The worshipper, recognizing a feeling of inadequacy, would declare his love for his deity who was believed to permit a reciprocal relationship.

The question still remains why the religion of the Alvars and Nayanars became so popular from the latter part of the first millennium AD. It may have been a reaction to the formalistic Sanskritic culture and religious practice introduced into elite circles, and a reluctance to be subordinated to this culture. The role of the Bhakti tradition in relation to Vedic Brahmanism was in many ways similar to that of the earlier Shramanic sects. The rituals and the claims of the brahmans to being close to the gods were unacceptable, as was the social exclusion of lower castes. But Tamil devotionalism was also ambivalent towards the Shramanic tradition and was hostile to the Shramanas. From the Vaishnava and Shaiva perspectives, Shramanic beliefs were heresy. The Generality of the deity, visualized in iconic form and housed in a temple, had become important facets of Puranic Hinduism with which the devotional movement had obvious links.

Gradually, the Jaina lay community in the peninsula was limited to Karnataka with small pockets elsewhere in the south. But the imprint of Buddhism and Jainism was evident in the Tamil devotional sects. They leaned towards rejecting the established order of society as stratified in the caste structure, but the rejection was on the ethical plane and not a prelude to a radical change of society.

On the role of the temple:

The rock-cut temples on the island of Elephanta near Bombay can claim an impressive style. But the most spectacular example is the Kailasanatha temple at Ellora, which is a transition from the rock-cut to the free-standing style on a massive scale. It was built, or rather hewn, under the patronage of a Rashtrakuta king in the eighth century. When finished, it was a free-standing temple open to the sky, wholly cut from the rock of the hillside. The plan of a free-standing temple was rigorously adhered to. The Kailasanatha temple at Ellora covered approximately the same area as the Parthenon at Athens, and was one-and-a-half times higher than the Greek structure.

11 - The Peninsula: Establishing Authorities and Structures c. AD 900 - 1300

The late first millennium AD saw a changed situation in the Indian subcontinent. Regional states, earlier seeking recognition, were now taking shape and the imprint of their identities was becoming clearer. Dynasties would change but successor kingdoms retained a relatively consistent core area. The trends that continued included some degree of political decentralization, an emphasis on extending agriculture, the induction of erstwhile marginal groups as castes, the interface between Vedic Brahmanism and the Puranic and Shamanic religions, and new cultural articulations drawing on these tendencies. Despite the appearance of similar patterns, each region retained its own strong identity. That this is not a contradiction lies in the nature of these regional forms.

The Yadavas and the Hoysalas were to last until the fourteenth century, when new arrivals in the politics of northern India, the Turkish and Afghan sultans of Delhi, intervened in the affairs of the Deccan. The intervention led to other dynasties and different political alignments. Further south, the Pandyas had superseded the Cholas as the dominant power in the Tamil country, and might have maintained this position in the subsequent century had it not been for attacks from the rulers of the Deccan. The Pandyas remained local rulers and subject to the changing politics of the region.

On the structures of an agrarian system:

Village assemblies were crucial to Chola administration. Those living in the usual peasant villages met in an assembly called the ur, whereas those from the brahmadeya villages used the superior title of sabha. Royal officials were present at the meetings of the sabha but do not appear to have played a commanding role. Their participation in village affairs was more as observers and advisers.

This inscription of how a local sabha functioned is fascinating:

An inscription from the temple wall at Uttaramerur (a brahmadeya village) gives details of how the local sabha functioned. It dates to the tenth century and reads:

There shall be thirty wards. In these thirty wards those that live in each ward shall assemble and shall select each person possessing the following qualifications for inclusion for selection by lot: He must own more than one quarter of the tax-paying land. He must live in a house built on his own site. His age must be below seventy and above thirty-five. He must know the mantras and Brahmanas [from the Vedic corpus]. Even if he owns only one-eighth of the land, his name shall be included provided he has learnt one Veda and one of the four Bhashyas. Among those possessing these qualifications only such as are well conversant with business and are virtuous shall be taken, and one who possesses honest earnings whose mind is pure and who has not been on any of the committees for the last three years shall also be chosen.
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One who has been outcaste for association with low people shall not have his name chosen until he performs the expiatory ceremonies.
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Excluding all these, names shall be written on tickets for thirty wards and each of the wards in these twelve streets shall prepare a separate covering ticket for thirty wards bundled separately. These packets shall be put into a pot.
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From this pot one ticket shall be drawn and made the arbitrator.
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The name thus read shall be put down and accepted. Similarly one man shall be chosen for each of the thirty wards.
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The great men of these three committees shall hold office for full 360 days and then retire. Anyone on a Committee found guilty of an offence shall be removed at once.

The tendency to hoard wealth was not characteristic of village life. Apart from those in markedly rich villages, most village members had little wealth to hoard. The average holding yielded enough to feed and clothe a family with little surplus. Food was simple, rice and vegetables in the main. But diet could change with caste. Brahmans, who had once eaten meat, were now generally vegetarian. A non-vegetarian diet became customary among some higher castes, and meat of all kinds was eaten by others, provided it was affordable. Housing was relatively cheap, since the climate did not call for elaborate structures…. Equally, there was much religious merit to be acquired by donations towards the building of a temple or the endowing of a matha. Wealth was used in forms that would enhance the prestige of its owners.

On towns and markets:

Inscriptions from Karnataka record customs taxes on the import of horses, on commodities made of gold, on textiles and perfume, and on produce such as black pepper, paddy, spices, betel-leaves, palm leaves, coconuts and sugar. This was produce that came from various parts of the peninsula and was more than just a regional trade.

Maritime trade with China reached an unprecedented volume during these centuries. It became a state monopoly in China, the Chinese government not wishing to lose the income from it. Sung period sources from China refer to the presence of Indian merchants in the ports of southern China. Apart from trade, the earlier lively interest among Chinese savants in Indian astrology and alchemy continued, with some startlingly exaggerated stories in Chinese texts on the transmutation of stone and metal from worthless matter to valuable items by visiting Indians!

Marco Polo Wrote:

Let me tell you next that this country does not breed horses. Hence all the annual revenue, or the greater part of it, is spent in the purchase of horses; and I will tell you how. You may take it for a fact that the merchants of Hormuz and Kais, of Dhofar and Shihr and Aden, all of which provinces produce large numbers of battle chargers and other horses, buy up the best horses and load them on ships and export them to this king and his four brother kings. Some of them are sold for as much as 500 saggi of gold, which are worth more than 100 marks of silver. And I assure you that this king buys 1,000 of them or more every year, and his brothers as many. And, by the end of the year, not a hundred of them survive. They all die through ill-usage, because they have no veterinaries and do not know how to treat them. You may take it from me that the merchants who export them do not send out any veterinaries or allow any to go, because they are only too glad for many of them to die in the king’s charge.

Marco Polo, Travels (Pelican edition), p. 137

Given the wealth and commercial ramifications of the large merchant associations, it is curious that they did not aspire to greater political power. The brahman element in these guilds was probably averse to challenging the political authority of the king, since they derived their financial capital from the land granted to them by the king, and the possibility of revoking the grant could have been a threat. Urban structures supporting the potential for an independent power-base, built on the ambitions of a range of professional organizations, seem not to have asserted greater independence. By now the concept of monarchy as the legitimate form of political authority was strongly rooted. Moreover, many guilds had overseas interests and were therefore dependent in the last resort on the military and naval strength of the Chola state.

On the temple as an institution:

There is a striking increase in the number of temples built at this time. This is unlikely to have been purely the result of a greater interest in worship. The temple would have performed other functions as well. Temples built from royal donations were not only closely connected to the court, but were also perceived almost as surrogate courts. As such, they could draw on resources from anywhere within the kingdom, for example, the Tanjavur temple which received revenue from villages in Sri Lanka.

The fiscal role of the temple became even clearer in later Chola times when both temples and merchants were the most frequent purchasers of land. As an institution, the temple became the location for many kinds of routine exchange, the focal point for many professions to whom the temple gave employment either directly or indirectly, a symbol of authority as a landlord who could intervene in the lives of rural people, a rural bank, a channel of various forms of legitimation and, not least, the focus of a particular sectarian religion. In rural areas, temples were the locations of the village assemblies and of formal education for upper-caste boys.

On caste and sect:

The system introduced the varna hierarchy into an area where it may have been new or may have become more dominant than before. Social distinctions of earlier times that drew on kinship connections were giving way to caste. Nevertheless, although caste was adopted as a form of social stratification there were adjustments of exclusion and inclusion of certain social categories that were related to regional forms and functions. The velalas, who in varna terms were often equated with shudras, were second in importance after the brahmans, but the velalas spanned a large economic range. The rest of society was gradually shuffled into a caste hierarchy.

Caste consciousness was becoming a marked feature in social relationships, but the normative varna pattern does not seem to have been dominant in practice. The main distinction in the ordering of castes appears to have been the division of society into brahmans and non-brahmans. Compared to other regions, among the non-brahmans there was little mention of kshatriyas and vaishyas, but the shudras were prominent.
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Slavery was an established category and although some slaves were used in agriculture and craft production, most were employed in domestic work. Many such persons were sold to the temple, particularly those impoverished or without an income during a famine.

On language and literature:

The exclusive use of Prakrit for inscriptions had given way to Sanskrit by the fourth century. But the change to bilingual records dates to a few centuries later. The introduction of Sanskrit into a Tamil-speaking area is illustrated in the bilingual Sanskrit-Tamil inscriptions.
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The two languages had a purpose, the content of each being significantly different. Both sections were important to the legality of the document, but the description of the land in Tamil ensured that there was no ambiguity about the location of the land and the rights of the grantee.

Bilingualism, however, became less frequent from about the fourteenth century when records were written more often in the regional language. Reiterating the difference between the language of the court and that of local administration may have led to this.
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There are eleventh-century records of endowments of land given to those who recited the hymns of the Alvars and Nayanars. This was extending patronage to Tamil.

Marathi, the language current in the western Deccan, had evolved from local Prakrits and retained closer links with Sanskrit. It received encouragement from the Yadava rulers. But its wider development grew from its becoming the language of a popular devotional movement, in some ways parallel to the Alvars and Nayanars, which soon became established in the western Deccan. This involved not only the composition of poems in Marathi but also the exposition of older religious texts, such as the Gita, in a language understood by common people.

On religion and ideologies:

Buddhism had become less visible by the end of this period in all but eastern India, with the Buddha even being incorporated into Vaishnavism as an incarnation of Vishnu, an incarnation that never caught the popular imagination. Jainism survived with a following in Karnataka and western India. In Karnataka Jaina monks received handsome endowments, enabling them to have tenants cultivate their lands and even on occasion to make donations to other monasteries. Jaina merchants were prominent donors, as were Jaina officials, some of whom were military commanders. The Yapaniya sect of Jainas was popular as it was less austere than the well-established Digambara. The Yapaniyas supported the setting up of convents for nuns and even allowed senior nuns to tutor monks. The animosity between the Shaivas and the Jainas flared up on occasion.

The decline of Buddhism and Jainism is partly linked to the popularity of religious devotionalism. The hymns of the earlier poets were collated and the immense appeal of their theism inspired fresh compositions. The more philosophical treatises traced the origin of theism to Upanishadic sources, which in a sense attempted to bring Vedic Brahmanism and devotionalism closer, even if some of the differences were irreconcilable.

The devotional movement had a form of worship and a concept of deity different from that of Vedic Brahmanism. The act of worship was open to a larger range of castes. Yet this change was almost conformist and conservative when compared with some of the more extreme sects that now had a concurrent following.
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Some among them practised unusual rites, involving the remains from cremated bodies or ritualized sexual intercourse, which were evidently designed for those for whom non-conformity and the supposed power of magic was attractive, apart from its appeal for those who treated it as a statement of social confrontation. This disregard of even minimal social obligations among them became a necessity on certain ritual occasions.

The deliberate deviation from accepted social norms was a form of protest, their extreme nonconformity providing the publicity that was desired; but these acts were also claimed as religious ritual possessing magical qualities. The Kalamukhas ate food out of a human skull, smeared their bodies with the ashes of a corpse, and were generally seen carrying a pot of wine and a club. Rumours had them behaving in strange ways and such rumours were associated with those of whom the orthodoxy disapproved. For some, nonconformity was also a genuine protest against the limitations placed on thought and knowledge by orthodoxy. The interest in magic, for instance, was not merely sensationalism, but could also result from a curiosity to experiment with objects and inquire further than was permitted by the custodians of knowledge.
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Yet for the most part, as it has been suggested, followers of these sects seem to have led a normal life, indulging in the cult rites only on certain occasions. For them, these rites were probably a catharsis.

Vedic Brahmanism, frequently enveloped in the theological discussions of philosophers, remained the religious concern of a minority – brahmans in the main, with some attention from Buddhist and Jaina scholars.
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The second and more popular trend was that of the Puranic religions, Vaishnavism and Shaivism, whose maximum appeal was through devotionalism. This drew a large number of people who were cultivators or craftsmen or in related professions. A variety of cults were assimilated from a range of sources, the assimilation being closely tied to the particular social groups observing the religion. The third trend was a scatter of cults of various kinds, some labelled as Tantric. These either continued to be observed independently or they became part of yet another set of religious beliefs and practices, formalized as the Shakta religion. This became an addition to the Puranic religions, and even influenced aspects of Buddhism.

The Lingayats differed from the devotional cult in that they did not rest content with preaching devotion to a single deity, but actively attacked religious hypocrisy. Much of their early teaching questioned Brahmanism, the theory of rebirth and the norms of caste as maintained in brahmanical thought and practice. The idea of some groups being socially polluted was unacceptable. The Lingayats laid emphasis on the need for a social conscience and encouraged certain social practices disapproved of in Dharma-shastra norms, such as late post-puberty marriages and the remarriage of widows. Although advocating a better status for women, there was nevertheless a bar on women becoming priests. Brahman landlordism was seen as exerting excessive pressure on the cultivator to pay rent to the landlord, as well as tax to the state. Not surprisingly, the Lingayats came under attack from the brahmans.
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Their more liberal social attitudes brought them the support of the lower castes. Eventually, however, the Lingayats themselves evolved into a caste.

Pandharpur became one of the centres of the devotional movement in the Deccan, attracting in a later period preachers and hymn writers such as Namadeva, Janabai, Sena and Narahari (by profession tailor, maidservant, barber and goldsmith), who composed their hymns in Marathi and gathered around them the local people. These cult centres also became the foci of pilgrimage and exchange.

Discussions on philosophy were largely the prerogative of the brahmans except in the few centres where Buddhists and Jainas joined the debates, in addition to focusing on their own philosophical schools, and in some Shaiva mathas where the non-brahman velala were prominent. Debates were held in the various mathas and colleges throughout the subcontinent, the link between them being the common language, Sanskrit. But their intellectual influence on the wider society was restricted. Unlike the early Buddhists who held open public debates in the parks close to towns, the Sanskrit discourse tended to include only recognized scholars, even if the debates and controversies involved scholars from various parts of the subcontinent. This resulted in some fine-tuned philosophical ideas among the rather exclusive groups of scholars. Shankaracharya’s ideas continued to be developed and honed, and theories of other teachers were also discussed, some of which were opposed to the ideas of Shankara. Foremost among his critics was the eleventh-century Vaishnava philosopher, Ramanuja.

Ramanuja was a Tamil brahman who spent a considerable part of his life teaching at the famous temple at Shrirangam (Thiruchirapalli), eventually being regarded as the founder of the Shri Vaishnava movement. He disagreed with Shankara’s theory that knowledge was the primary means of liberation from rebirth. According to Ramanuja, it was merely one of the means and was not nearly as effective or reliable as pure devotion, giving oneself up entirely to the deity, who was projected as loving and forgiving, as in the devotional cult.
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Ramanuja thus was an effective bridge between the devotional movements and Brahmanical theology, attempting as he did to weave together the two divergent strands.

On religious monuments:

The Deccan had temples built in what is generally referred to as the Vesara style, as in the Durga temple at Aihole or the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal. In south India the Dravida style was more common but was regionally distinctive. In Kerala, for example, temple architecture takes a form specific to Kerala, the style changing because of building in wood rather than stone and because many temples were circular in form…

12 - The Politics of Northern India c. AD 700 - 1200

On the struggle over the Northern Plains:

As a prized city, the Rashtrakutas, Pratiharas and Palas directed their military activity towards its conquest from the eighth to the tenth centuries. The struggle over Kanauj was also an attempt to revive the notion of a single kingdom having primacy, and the choice of Kanauj was a concession to its earlier importance with its strategic location for purposes of contemporary politics. However, with the rise of many powerful regional kingdoms, the significance of Kanauj decreased.

Of the latter, the Chinese now had a presence in central Asia, and their interest in the power struggles of northern India was due to many reasons. One was their erroneous assumption that their occasional diplomatic interventions in the politics of northern India meant that Indian kingdoms were willing to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor. Having intervened after the death of Harsha, they also claimed that kings of Kashmir had asked for help from China on various occasions. Another reason was that the Chinese faced a threat from the Arab presence in central Asia and this was putting pressure on the Turks, setting off a movement of peoples in central Asia, an activity about which the Chinese were always apprehensive. The Chinese were also beginning to take an interest in the Indian Ocean, and maritime routes from south China were to touch trading centres along the Bay of Bengal, being extended to south India with stopping-points for trade going further west.

The Arab presence in western India was gradually increasing. Sind, conquered in AD 712., was at the eastern extremity of the Arab expansion through Asia, Africa and Europe.
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The Rashtrakutas employed Arabs at a senior level in their administration of the coastal areas, and recognized, as did the Gujarat Chaulukya kings of a subsequent period, that as traders the Arabs had the potential of bringing in impressive profits.

The kingdoms involved in the struggle were the Rashtrakutas based in the Deccan, the Pratiharas in western India and the Palas who were their counterparts in eastern India.

Kingdoms rising in the Deccan sometimes had the choice of participating in the politics of both or either the north or the south, or playing the role of a bridge. The Satavahanas were the initial transmitters of goods and ideas from one to the other. The Vakatakas preferred to opt for a closer alliance with the north through the Guptas. The Chalukyas held back northern incursion into the Deccan and were active in the politics of the peninsula. Had the Rashtrakutas restricted their ambition to the same end, they could have built a more powerful kingdom in the Deccan. But their ambition was domination over the north and the Deccan. By the time they came to power, communication between the two was well established, and therefore the political pull on the Rashtrakutas was equally strong in both directions, which to an extent dissipated their control. Arab sources, however, describe them as the most powerful of the three.

Historians have described the Pratiharas as being of an uncertain social origin and associated with the Hunas, or else descended from the Gurjara pastoralists of Rajasthan.

The Rashtrakutas waited for their opportunity and in 916 they struck for the last time, effectively attacking Kanauj. The rivalry between the Pratiharas and the Rashtrakutas was self-destructive. The Arab traveller, Masudi, visited Kanauj in the early tenth century and wrote that the King of Kanauj was the natural enemy of the King of the Deccan, that he kept a large army and was surrounded by smaller kings always ready to go to war. A hundred years later the Pratiharas were no longer a power in northern India. A Turkish army attacked Kanauj in 1018, which virtually ended Pratihara rule. In the western Deccan, the Rashtrakutas had been supplanted by the Later Chalukyas.

The almost simultaneous decline of the three rival powers, the Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas, is not surprising. Their strengths were similar and they were dependent on well-organized armies.

Because the sources of revenue to maintain these armies were similar, excessive pressure would produce the same damaging results in each kingdom. The continued conflict over the possession of Kanauj diverted attention from the samantas, and some of these local rajas succeeded in making themselves independent. Their insubordination destroyed the possibility of a single kingdom encompassing northern India with its centre at Kanauj, while invasions from the north-west and the south also contributed to prevent the creation of such a powerful state.

On kingdoms beyond the Ganges heartland:

Some dynasties attained considerable prominence under particular rulers, for example, the much written about Chaulukya King, Kumarapala, ruling in Gujarat in the twelfth century. His minister was the renowned scholar, Hemachandra, said to have converted the King to Jainism by successfully performing the miracle of invoking the god Shiva to appear in person before the King. Kumarapala became something of a legend in Jaina scholarly circles, as did Hemachandra.

The damaras were in origin agriculturists who, using the improvements in the valley, developed its agricultural potential and began accumulating a surplus each year that enabled them to change their status to landowners. This may explain Kalhana’s advice that a king should never leave more than a year’s produce in storage with the cultivators, and that whatever is produced over and above that should be taken by the state, otherwise the cultivators would use it as a base to become powerful.

On Rajputs:

Bardic tradition holds that there were thirty-six Rajput founding clans, but the list varies from source to source. Among the Rajput clans, four claimed a special status. These four – the Pratiharas or Pariharas, the Chahamanas, more commonly called Chauhans, the Chaulukyas (distinct from the Deccan Chalukyas) also known as the Solankis, and the Paramaras or Pawars – claimed descent from a mythical figure who arose out of a sacrificial fire pit near Mt Abu in Rajasthan. The story – probably invented long after the rise of the Rajputs – maintained that the rishi Vasishtha had a kamadhenu, a cow that grants all one’s wishes, which was stolen by another sage, Vishvamitra. Vasishtha therefore made an offering to the sacrificial fire at Mt Abu whereupon a hero sprang out of the fire, then brought the cow back to Vasishtha. In gratitude Vasishtha bestowed the name Paramara (explained as ‘slayer of the enemy’) on the hero, from whom the Paramara dynasty was descended. The other clans had variations on this story. Consequently these four were said to be of the agnikula, or descended from the fire.

The four clans claiming agnikula origin dominated early Rajput activities. The kingdoms that they founded arose from the ruins of the older Pratihara kingdom. The new Pratiharas ruled in southern Rajasthan. The Chahamanas or Chauhans had their centre at Shakambari, south-east of Delhi, initially subject to the main Pratihara dynasty, but with branch lines arising later at Nadol, Ranthambhor, Jalor and Sanchor, all in Rajasthan. Chaulukya or Solanki power was concentrated in Gujarat and Kathiawar. The Paramaras established their control in Malwa with their capital at Dhar near Indore. They began by acknowledging the Rashtrakutas as suzerains, but broke away from them at the end of the tenth century and established their power during the reign of Bhoja Paramara in the next century.

On the creation of new settlements:

The transition from jana to jati or from clan to caste, as this process has sometimes been termed, is evident from early times as a recognizable process in the creation of Indian society and culture. Given the availability of a variety of sources and the detailed information they contain, such processes become more apparent during this period. An earlier distinction differentiated the grama or kshetra, the settled area, from the aranya or vana, the unknown forest peopled by rakshasas or demons.

Intended originally as a ritual death for the kshatriya wife of the kshatriya hero dying in battle, the ritual of becoming a sati was later adopted by other castes as well, and received extensive sanction, ultimately leading to the deification of the sati. Such a deified sati has been worshipped since this period at a temple in Wadhwan in Saurashtra, set in a courtyard lined with sati memorials and hero-stones.

On central Asian intervention:

Northern India experienced a brief respite from aggression from across the north-western border. The impact of the Hunas had faded when they became a respectable caste in Indian society. The thrusts of the Arabs had been held back. For some time, the campaigns and battles of northern India were internal. Endless campaigns devoured the funds and energy of each dynasty, and victories were claims to status. Breaking away from a suzerain power also necessitated a demonstration of military power to maintain independence. Contact with the world outside became more limited as the obsession with local affairs increased. Politics increasingly emerged from local happenings and were chiselled by local concerns. This pattern was disturbed in the eleventh century. Of the campaigns within the subcontinent the most serious was that of Rajendra Chola along the east coast, his armies coming as far north as the Ganges. From outside the subcontinent, Mahmud of Ghazni began his raids into north-western India. Each was oblivious of the other, which is curious, given that there was far more communication of news now than there had been before, and the raids of Mahmud lasted for over two decades.

These settlements assisted in the conversion of the Turks to Islam, although Arab power in the area declined. Conversion was initially a slow process, since the Turks had supported Buddhism and a variety of central Asian Shamanist religions. Their conversion to Islam, and to Sunni Islam in particular, coincided with their attempts to create powerful states, legitimized by the strength of Islam in west Asia. The history of politics and religion in central Asia seems to have moved between Islam as an ideology of power among the Turks, and opposition to them from others for that reason. Gradually, the Turks succeeded in making their control dominant in what were then the eastern areas of the Islamic world. Further support for Islam came from the conversion of the trading elites in the oasis towns along the western part of the Silk Route. Islam was now playing a role similar to that of Buddhism in earlier times, although Buddhism remained a substratum religion in some areas. In addition, a few Zoroastrian communities that were exiled from Iran settled in central Asia and the borders of China, their occupation undoubtedly being trade. The arrival of Jewish traders in central Asia was also recorded. They had been pre-eminent in the Mediterranean trade in the ninth century when they developed commercial connections with south India.

Among them was the kingdom ruled from Ghazni that acquired fame under Mahmud. A principality in Afghanistan, Ghazni became prominent in 977 when a Turkish nobleman annexed the trans-Indus region of the Shahiya kingdom, together with some territories adjoining central Asia. His son Mahmud decided to make Ghazni a formidable power in the politics of central Asia and in the Islamic world, especially in the world of eastern Islam. Mahmud’s ambition was to be proclaimed the champion of Islam and in this he succeeded. For him, India was the proverbially wealthy land that had always appeared rich and attractive from the barren mountains of the Hindu Kush. Raids on Hindu temples provided him with quantities of wealth and also claims to being an iconoclast. His success in these activities needs some investigation.

The politics of Afghanistan were at this time more closely allied with those of central Asia than with India, and from Mahmud’s point of view incursions into India were essentially raids to gather wealth, but of little permanent significance. This made them different from the Arab campaigns that were more evidently a prelude to settlement in India, with participation in the local economy. Indian attitudes towards the Arabs and the Turks were somewhat different. The degree of hostility and accommodation were not identical.

Apart from religious iconoclasm, the raids on Indian towns were largely for plunder aimed primarily at replenishing the Ghazni treasury. These raids were almost an annual feature. In AD 1000 he defeated Jayapala, the Shahiya King. The following year he was campaigning in Seistan, south of Ghazni. The years 1004-6 saw repeated attacks on Multan, a town of strategic importance in the middle Indus Plain, with access to Sind. Multan was also a nodal point in the lucrative trade with the Persian Gulf and with western India. The renowned Sun temple maintained by the merchants was seen by Mahmud as a repository of wealth. For Mahmud, the mosque maintained by the wealthy Shia’h Muslims of the town was also a target for desecration, since, as an ardent Sunni Muslim, he regarded Shia’hs and Ismai’lis as heretics.

In 1008 Mahmud again attacked the Punjab and returned home with a vast amount of wealth. The following year he was involved in a conflict with the ruler of Ghur (the area between Ghazni and Herat in Afghanistan). Obviously his army was both mobile and effective, or these annual offensives in different areas would not have been successful…. The destruction of temples even by Hindu rulers was not unknown, but Mahmud’s was a regulated activity and inaugurated an increase in temple destruction compared to earlier times.

Conquest was therefore sometimes imprinted by the destruction of a temple. Thus when the Rashtrakuta King, Indra III, defeated the Pratiharas in the early tenth century, a Pratihara temple at Kalpa was torn up to establish the victory. On defeating the Chaulukyas, the Paramara King of Malwa, Subhatavarma, destroyed the temples that the Chaulukyas had built for the Jainas as well as the mosque for the Arabs. Both the Jainas and the Arabs were traders of some economic consequence, hence the royal patronage.

Kalhana writes of the kings of Kashmir of this period looting temples, and one among them, Harshadeva, even appointed a special officer to supervise this activity. Kalhana uses the epithet ‘Turushka’ for him! This would suggest that the destruction of temples by Hindu rulers was known and recorded, but such acts were viewed as more characteristic of the Turushkas. Mahmud’s attacks would have been resented but may not have been an unfamiliar experience. This is demonstrated in the history of the Somanatha temple, subsequent to the raid by Mahmud.

Mahmud’s greed for gold was insatiable, so his raids were directed to major temple towns such as Mathura, Thanesar, Kanauj and finally Somanatha. The concentration of wealth at Somanatha was renowned, so it was inevitable that Mahmud would have attacked it. Added to the desire for wealth was the religious motivation, iconoclasm being a meritorious activity among some followers of Islam.

In 1026 Mahmud raided Somanatha, desecrated the temple and broke the idol. The event is described in Turko-Persian and Arab sources, some contemporary – the authors claiming to have accompanied Mahmud – and others of later times, the story being repeated continually in these histories up to the seventeenth century.

When the Sultan went to wage religious war against India, he made great efforts to capture and destroy Somnat, in the hope that the Hindus would become Muhammadans. He arrived there in the middle of… [December AD 1025). The Indians made a desperate resistance. They would go weeping and crying for help into the temple and then issue forth to battle and fight till all were killed. The number of slain exceeded 50,000. The king looked upon the idol with wonder and gave orders for the seizing of the spoil and the appropriation of the treasures. There were many idols of gold and silver and vessels set with jewels, all of which had been sent there by the greatest personages in India. The value of the things found in the temple and of the idols exceeded twenty thousand dinars.

Jaina sources describe the renovation of the temple by Kumarapala, the Chaulukya King, and the reasons for its falling into disrepair were said to be a lack of maintenance by negligent local officers and the natural decay of age.

Two centuries after the raid, in the thirteenth century, a wealthy ship-owning merchant from Hormuz in Persia, trading at Somanatha, was given permission by the Somanatha town authorities to build a mosque in the vicinity of the now renovated temple and to buy land and property for the maintenance of the mosque. He was warmly welcomed and received assistance from the Chaulukya-Vaghela administration, the local elite of thakkuras and ranakas, and the Shaiva temple priests. The latter would have been important participants in the deal since the estates of the temple were part of the transaction, together with properties from nearby temples. It would seem that Mahmud’s raid on the Somanatha temple had not left a long-lasting impression and it was soon back to business as usual between temple priests, the local Vaghela administration and visiting Persian and Arab merchants. The silence about the raid in what would be called ‘Hindu’ texts remains unbroken, and has been commented upon by modern historians. It remains an enigma as some comment would normally be expected.

Interestingly, the earliest claim that the raid resulted in something akin to a trauma for the Hindus was made not in India but in Britain, during a debate in the House of Commons in 1843, when members of the British parliament stated that Mahmud’s attack on Somanatha had created painful feelings and had been hurtful to the Hindus for nearly a thousand years. Subsequent to this, references began to be made to the Hindu trauma.

Mahmud brought back with him a scholar by the name of Al Beruni/Alberuni, perhaps the finest intellect of central Asia, who was ordered to spend ten years in India. His observations on Indian conditions, systems of knowledge, social norms and religion, discussed in his book, the Tahqiq-i-Hind, are probably the most incisive made by any visitor to India.

The philosopher Ibn Sina/Avicenna heard conversations in his family about Indian mathematics and philosophy in the early eleventh century, which stimulated his ideas in these areas.

The local rulers returned to their internal squabbles and a hundred years later were lulled by the strife between Ghazni and Ghur. When the second attack came at the end of the twelfth century in the form of an invasion led by Muhammad Ghuri, for all practical purposes the kingdoms of north-west India were as unprepared as they had been for meeting the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni.

On the coming of Turkish rule:

The Rajputs gathered together as best they could, not forgetting internal rivalries and jealousies. Prithviraja defeated Muhammad Ghuri at the first battle at Tarain, north of Delhi, in 1191. Muhammad sent for reinforcements and, in 1192, a second battle was fought at the same place. Prithviraja was defeated and the kingdom of Delhi fell to Muhammad, who pressed on and concentrated on capturing the capitals of Rajput kingdoms with the assistance of his General, Qutub-ud-din Aibak. Another General, Muhammad Bhaktiyar Khilji, moved to the east where he defeated the Sena King of Bengal. Although Muhammad was assassinated in 1206, this did not lead to the withdrawal of Turkish interests in India.

There were many reasons for the success of the Ghuri armies…. The intentions of the Ghuri conquest remained unclear for some time to Indian rulers and were probably viewed as a continuation of the earlier raids, rather than what they actually were, which was an assessment of the possibilities of establishing a Ghuri kingdom…. The earlier rulers of what was eventually called the Delhi Sultanate and their followers, both aristocratic and others, were Afghans seeking a fortune and Turks from central Asia, some of whom had settled in Afghanistan.

Reinforcements of good central Asian horses provided a better livestock for the Turkish cavalry, which was used to excellent effect in pitched battles. It is thought that Indian commanders were hesitant to exploit the tactics of a cavalry to the full, putting more faith in elephants, which were at a disadvantage when pitted against swift central Asian horses. …
The Turks used central Asian military tactics, emphasizing swiftness and carrying light equipment that allowed greater scope for manoeuvre. Indian armies tended to fight in solid phalanxes, relying on force to carry them through. The Turks attempted to capture forts with a strategic advantage that were often also the hub of local administration. Indian armies were therefore forced into defensive positions. Guerrilla warfare may have been one means of harassing the incoming armies, particularly when they were on the march, but this does not appear to have been used very effectively.

Notions of honour and devotion were often placed above expediency, and gradually the astrologically determined auspicious moment for attack took precedence over strategy and tactics. Inflated claims to valour, such as the hero who could defeat a thousand warriors simultaneously, began to enter the rhetoric of courtly literature.

Invasions by outsiders are known in many parts of the world: the Huns attacking Rome, the Arabs invading Spain or the Spanish and Portuguese conquering Latin America. The potentialities of invasions were recognized only in hindsight. These invasions were mounted by alien peoples who were little known, if at all, to the societies they invaded. But the Turks had been a contiguous people, familiar from trade in horses and other commodities and from the Turkish mercenaries employed in some Indian armies. However, the historical scene in central Asia and west Asia had now changed, with new political ambitions after the rise of Islam.
…
Indians who travelled to different parts of Asia on a variety of assignments wrote little about what they observed, remaining silent on the politics of other lands. It was almost as if the exterior landscape was irrelevant. Political interests therefore tended to be parochial. This marks a striking contrast to the world of the Chinese and the Arabs, both made aware of distant places through the detailed accounts of travellers and traders. The Arabs had a fascination for the geography of other lands and the Chinese were wary of happenings in their neighbourhood in central Asia.

Alberuni writes:

The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs… They are by nature niggardly in communicating what they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste from among their own people, still more of course from any foreigner.

E. C. Sachau (ed. and tr.), Alberuni’s India, pp. 22-3

They are in a state of utter confusion, devoid of any logical order, and in the last instance always mixed up with silly notions of the crowd… I can only compare their mathematical and astronomical literature to a mixture of pearl shells and sour dates, or of pearls and dung, or of costly crystals and common pebbles. Both kinds of things are equal in their eyes since they cannot raise themselves to the methods of a strictly scientific deduction.

E. C. Sachau (ed. and tr.), Alberuni’s India, p. 25

The Ghuri kingdom in Afghanistan did not long survive Muhammad’s death, but the Indian pan became the nucleus of a new political entity in India – the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Turkish and Afghan Sultans. Muhammad had left his Indian possessions in the care of Qutb-ud-din Aibak, who, on the death of his master, ruled the Indian provinces and founded the Mamluk or Slave Dynasty, since his career had begun as a slave. Qutb-ud-din established himself at Delhi by clearing the area of Chauhan control. He made frequent attempts to annex the neighbouring areas of Rajasthan, the importance of which was evident to him, but failed.

On a perspective of the new politics:

What we define as the Hindu community in religious terms actually consisted of a range of groups with clear internal identities as sects - such as Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakta or, more closely, Bhagavata, Pashupata, Kapalika and so on. The Buddhists and the Jainas were distinct even if some beliefs and practices overlapped. Hostility between the Shramanic sects and those of the Puranic religions were clear in the literature of the period, for example, in the biting satire meted out to various Shramanic sects in the famous play of Krishna Mishra, the Prabodhachandrodaya.

What we today call the Muslim community was equally differentiated between the Sunnis, Shia’hs, Ismai’lis, Sufis and Bohras, not to mention the Navayats and Mappilas of south India. The hostility of the Sunni towards the Shia’h is amply demonstrated as early as Mahmud of Ghazni’s attacks on the Shia’hs.

Reference to ‘Hindu’ was initially to a geographical identity and only much later did it take on a religious connotation. The clubbing together of all the castes, non-castes and sects under one label – Hindu – would have been strange to most people and even repugnant to some, since it would have made brahmans, shudras and untouchables equal members of a religious community of ‘Hindus’ who were treated on par in terms of their religious identity. This was alien to the existing religions in the subcontinent. It therefore took some time for the term ‘Hindu’ to enter current usage. Hindus did not use this name for themselves until about the fourteenth century, and then only sparingly.

The Arabs were referred to in Sanskrit inscriptions as Tajiks and differentiated from the Turks who were called Turushka, a term used for people from central Asia. The choice of Tajik is not as curious as it seems since it was used earlier to differentiate Iranians from Turks and it appears that in India it was used to differentiate the Arabs from the Turks. Whereas the Arabs/Tajiks were more acceptable, perhaps because they had settled in India as traders and had held high administrative positions in some kingdoms such as that of the Rashtrakutas, the Turushkas were less so, possibly being seen largely as mercenaries and invaders to begin with. Later, Turushka and its variants became more widely used. The Turks and Afghans were also referred to as Shakas and Yavanas, the latter name being more frequent than the former.

There was some confusion between Turushka and Kushana, and the Turkish Shahi rulers of the north-west claimed Kushana ancestry. This would suggest that they were viewed as representing a certain historical continuity and as linked to central Asia. Yavana, the term originally applied to the Greeks, was extended to mean those coming from the west and was used in this sense until recent times. The more generalized term mlechchha included a large variety of people regarded as culturally alien, and was a social marker pointing to those outside the pale of caste society. This would include kings and untouchables, irrespective of status. In a Sanskrit inscription issued by a merchant of Delhi, the Sultan was both eulogized and referred to as mlechchha. The term was clearly used as a social qualifier and did not imply disrespect or contempt.

13 - Northern India: Distributive Political Economies and Regional Cultures c. AD 800-1300

Grants to brahmans and to officers created holdings of land or villages where the recipients had the right to collect revenue but were not required to pay tax. The grant could either be of the revenue from the land or, more commonly over time, of both the land and its revenue. In either case the grantee appropriated the surplus produced by the peasant through rent and labour taxes. The appropriation used the rights invested in the grantee and did not preclude coercion or the threat of force. The rights and obligations of the grantee in relation to those settled on the land were listed, together with the taxes and revenues which he could collect. In effect, the landed intermediary had immediate authority over the peasant. These changes are said to have coincided with a decline in urbanism and trade during this period and up to the tenth century, reflected in the excavation of urban sites. The decrease in profitable maritime trade is said to have accelerated a decline in urban centres, together with some environmental changes that may have led to a fall in agricultural production in some areas. This marginalization of trade was accompanied by a paucity of coins. It therefore became necessary to pay officials with grants of revenue from land instead of cash, which occurred more frequently after the seventh century. The number of feudatories, that is, holders of grants of land, increased, as did the hierarchy among them since they were not all of equal status. With differential access to political power there was decentralization and a parcelling of sovereignty.

Grantees began to acquire fiscal and judicial rights that could aggravate the burden of labour, dues and demands on the peasant. There is some disagreement on whether this constituted serfdom. Villages tended to become self-sufficient and isolated from each other. There were a few instances of what have been interpreted as peasant uprisings, but the more widespread lack of these is partly attributed to the ideology of bhakti directing attention away from the impoverishment of material conditions. It is said these conditions roused little resentment because of the unflinching belief by many in the determinism of fate, reflected in part by the popularity of astrology.

Some of the more powerful intermediaries were permitted to grant land in their turn, without necessarily obtaining permission from the king, although a reference to the suzerain may have been made in the text of the grant. This is seen as an Indian parallel to sub-infeudation. Such feudatories often had their own sub-feudatories, thus building up a hierarchy. This had started in an earlier period where a Gupta king had Surashmichandra as his feudatory, who in turn had Matrivishnu as his sub-feudatory. It gradually became more frequent. The hierarchy was reflected in the titles taken by the feudatories, where the more exalted called themselves mahasamanta, mahamandaleshvara, and the lesser ones were the raja, samanta, ranaka, thakkura and so on. These titles were not an invention of this period as some go back to earlier centuries, but their connotations differed in a changed context. Thus samanta, which had earlier meant a neighbour, was now used as a general category to refer to a subordinate ruler, a chief or a grantee.

Rather than see the change as a decentralization of power, as in feudalism, it is thought better to view it as the rise of smaller states drawing on local sources of power and emerging as centres of authority.

The acceptance of caste society, largely determined by conversion to jatis, brought diverse groups into a defined system. Religious institutions also received grants and their network was parallel to that of the land assignments to the samantas. Sacred places played multiple roles. They were linked to political and economic interests with grants from royalty and the court, and where temples controlled the hinterland they could become the base for urban centres. Local cults were integrated into an overall structure of Hindu sects and the patrons of these included the ruling lineages. Temples that focused on these cults fulfilled a political as well as a religious function.

This theory has been applied in some detail to the creation of the status category of the Rajput and the Rajput state. Even where they claimed lineage links and created kinship networks, the Rajputs were not necessarily kin-related groups and may well have come from different backgrounds. They acquired political power over a defined territory and had access to economic resources through a shared control of land and trade. Their legitimation was assisted through grants of land to brahmans, temples and monasteries. Particular lineages became ruling elites through military resources and the support of other lineages. These retained power through ranked statuses such as raja, ranaka and thakkura.

There is little evidence, for instance, in the Punjab and the north-west generally, of a pattern of grants of land, and the dominant caste in the Punjab has been a trading caste: nor is there evidence for the creation of states based on systems of lineage connections. A comparative study with other areas would be revealing both for the north-west and for the granting of land as a system. If the pattern of caste hierarchy had regional variations, then the structure of service relationships, integral to the hierarchy, would also vary within the upper levels of society.

Thus if a decline in commerce characterizes a feudal society, then the resurgence of commerce would have changed some aspects of the feudal nature of society, and transregional trade might have interfered with integrative polities. Whether it is because the quantity and quality of source materials differs, it does seem that there might have been some justification for describing the earlier phase as witnessing change introduced by those in authority, but with the participation of those at the local level, whereas the later phase was characterized by the intervention of more ranks of intermediaries representing those at a local level and perhaps taking the initiative in creating a change. Whereas initially the intervention of the state led to the granting of land and a change in the economy, in the latter part of this period the initiative towards change came from the intermediaries aspiring to a higher status.

On distributive political economies:

The explanation for introducing a system of granting land could relate to the decreasing authority of the king or, alternatively, the well-matched authority of a number of tributary rajas constantly reaching for suzerainty. Brahmans received land grants because they both legitimized the many new kings and claimed that they could avert the evil consequences of events such as eclipses – which they predicted – through performing the correct rituals as an antidote. Equally important, they were the settlers and pioneers in new lands. As landed intermediaries they became wealthy, in some cases functioning as kshatriyas when they established brahma-kshatra dynasties.

The restructuring of the economy began with the increase in grants of land. New methods of expanding agriculture had to be found. The location of a land grant doubtless had to do with its intention: was it to reward brahmans; to intensify agriculture in areas already under cultivation; to clear forest land and start cultivation, converting the people of the forest into cultivators? Were there perhaps fewer people who could be forcibly settled on land or encouraged to settle, hence the resort to using grantees to enforce cultivation? Was there a growth in population but such that it was balanced by a growth in agricultural production, reducing the need for the peasant to migrate? Alternatively, was the possibility of migration prevented because the peasant was tied to the land through various controls, so that despite the burden of taxes in kind and in labour migration was not an easy solution?

Village autonomy was naturally hampered by the privileges of the grantee but the relationship varied. The village headman, often a landholder, would have mediated where possible. Designations of such persons, for example mahattaras and pattakilas, have continued to the present in the mehtas, mahtos, patels and patils, some of whom retained this function until recently. There is a reference to a thakkura of a Chauhan village having to obtain the sanction of the village assembly to raise new dues for the village temple. But this need not have been a common practice.

In most regions grants for non-religious purposes were fewer than those for religious purposes. The grant to the brahman would not have required either homage or an oath of fidelity, both required of the European vassal, since the relationship between king and brahman was complementary. Fief has a special meaning in relation to the contract between the suzerain and the vassal, involving the kind of authority delegated over a region and a possible hereditary right which is not applicable arbitrarily to any grant of land, even for services rendered. Servile labour, however much it ties a peasant and may even prevent him from migrating, is not the same as serfdom. The latter requires a contractual relationship between the peasant and the landholder, which could include the cultivation of the latter’s land. Servile labour need not always be linked to agricultural production as was serfdom.

On kings and politics:

Land grants enhanced the relations between patron and client: the brahman validated the king as a kshatriya or performed a similar act, and in return received wealth in the form of land. This carries echoes of the competition for power between the raja as chief and the brahman as priest that had accompanied the process of state formation in the early first millennium BC. With new states being created through a comparable but more complex process a millennium later, the potential of that relationship seems to have been revived. The analogy with the earlier system is, however, circumscribed. The wealth in earlier times had been movable and barely heritable, whereas now it was land and therefore immovable, permanent and heritable. There was also a competition over patronage among kings, where the most generous in granting land would be eulogized.

On urbanism in a new context:

Excavations of urban sites suggest that material culture in the Gupta period was of a lesser standard compared to the Kushana period, or that there was a desertion of some sites, although here again horizontal excavation would be more helpful in determining de-urbanization. Floods and environmental change have been given as the cause for the latter. Possible climatic changes occurred in the mid-first millennium AD, although the evidence for these is not conclusive. The Chinese Buddhist monk, Hstian Tsang, mentioned passing through some deserted towns. Impressive monuments no longer marked the old trade routes. Declining trade in certain areas could well have been a cause. Towns became deserted when trade routes changed course and the location of markets shifted. Deserted towns have to be juxtaposed with new urban centres and such juxtaposition indicates that urban decline was not registered uniformly all over the subcontinent. Furthermore, courts were not invariably held in the capital. There were times during prolonged campaigns or tours of outlying areas when a royal court could take the form of a military camp, or was on the move, creating the impression of a deserted town.

Ports and coastal towns appear to have been less affected by commercial decline, although references pick up from the ninth century. Debal in the Indus Delta, Veraval (the port for Somanatha) and Cambay in Gujarat, Thana and Sopara further south, and ports in the Ganges Delta, were mentioned. Cargoes were of goods either produced in India or brought by Indian merchants from further east. Of the items imported, silk and porcelain came from China, while China imported cotton textiles, ivory, rhinoceros horn and a variety of precious and semi-precious stones from India. The exports westwards continued to be substantially pepper and spices, and textiles. Mention of improved technologies in the production of cotton probably register its importance to commerce. Merchants from west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean settled along the west coast, participating in the Indian trade with the west, and encroaching on the eastern trade as well. Arab merchants strove to replace Indian middlemen in the trade between India, south-east Asia and China by going directly to these places. The north Indian overland trade with central Asia met with vicissitudes owing to the movements of peoples such as the Turks and Mongols.

Horse-dealers at Pehoa included brahmans who were defying the Dharma-shastra rule against brahmans living by trading in animals. Providing horses to the elite was doubtless too attractive a business proposition. The other traders involved in the commerce at Pehoa have names that seem to suggest they were non-brahmans.

Caste considerations as applied to interest rates appear to have been regularized. Where the brahman was charged 2 per cent the shudra was charged 5 per cent or more on the same capital.

An interesting overlap between the commercial professions and administration can be seen in persons from Jaina families employed at senior bureaucratic levels in western India. Literacy was at a premium in the Jaina tradition and their experienced handling of financial enterprises qualified them for service in the higher echelons of government. The Chaulukyas often had Jaina ministers, some of whom made greater contributions to the history of Gujarat than many of the rulers. Hemachandra was not only a scholar of extraordinary learning, but was also reputed to be an administrator of considerable ability.

On new social trends:

The emergence of new jatis had been a feature of caste society since its inception, but in the early agrarian communities it was probably slower since there had not been a pressure to convert non-caste groups to caste status. The restructuring of the agrarian economy in this period, the intensified mercantile activity and the dispersal of certain higher castes accelerated the process of conversion. Flexibility associated with upper-caste society did not exist for those at the lowest levels or those branded as beyond the pale of caste society. Despite some contestation of orthodox views on caste, these generally remained established among the upper castes.

Even the Buddhists and Jainas tacitly conceded associating pollution with untouchables in practice, although they otherwise argued against social distinctions determining the quality of a human being. However, other sects, such as some Tantrics and Aghoris, made a fetish of the performance of rites in cremation grounds and the breaking of caste rules, but these were not sects working towards changing the rules of social organization. Their concern was with breaking ritual taboos and orthodox rites.

On learning and literature:

Some were seen as brahmanical contestations of the Buddhist critique of Vedic thought. From this perspective there was much intellectual activity, although it may have been limited to the learned few. Of the various philosophical theories, Vedanta was gradually coming to the forefront alongside the teachings of Mimamsa and Nyaya.

Interest in astronomy was encouraged. At a scholarly level this was linked to advanced work in mathematics, which continued the studies of Aryabhatta and his successors. The study of numbers led to algebra and initiated aspects of the exact sciences. Algebra remained a significant contribution to mathematics and was a source of great interest to Arab mathematicians as had been medicine and astronomy earlier. The Arab interest in Indian sciences continued with some ideas being taken by them to Europe. Among the more brilliant mathematicians was Bhaskaracharya (not to be confused with the earlier Bhaskara), whose mathematical problems were sometimes set in unusual contexts.

The presence of scholars from others parts of Asia and the subcontinent probably encouraged a more catholic outlook in the Buddhist monasteries compared to the mathas. Such monasteries survived mainly in eastern India. Nalanda was perhaps the best known, but the attack by the Turks virtually closed it. Jaina centres of education were closer in spirit to the Buddhist than the brahmanical, and these were concentrated in Gujarat, Rajasthan and, to a more limited extent, in Karnataka. Both Buddhist and Jaina centres of learning were now using Sanskrit quite extensively. The Jainas were prolific in the writing of biographies, chronicles and narratives of kings and courts, in addition to texts on religion. Keeping track of the activities of various Jaina sects and their teachings gave some historical flavour to their narratives, as it had done earlier in the Buddhist tradition. Authors such as Hemachandra in the twelfth century, and Merutunga in the fourteenth century, contributed substantially to this genre of writing, and the Jaina tradition paralleled the concerns of the Buddhist tradition in many ways. The Dvayashraya-kavya was a fine example of sophisticated scholarship combining grammatical exegesis with some history, and the Parishishtaparvan and Prabandhachintamani drew on the prabandha or chronicle tradition.

On monuments:

The construction of temples was supervised by the sutradharas. Manuals on construction – the shilpa-shastras – were now being used where large temples were constructed. Craftsmen associated with the building profession – carpenters, masons, stonecutters, sculptors – had a low status in the social codes and were often included as mixed castes. The question then is, who wrote the manuals? If the sutradharas were formally trained in Sanskrit this would have raised the status of their otherwise technical and professional education. Or were the manuals written in conjunction with brahmans? The need for manuals became apparent when every independent dynasty declared its presence through various activities, of which building stone temples in a recognized style would have been one. To follow the established norms of temple building required the supervision of a sutradhara and a manual.

Puranic Hinduism required a location where the deity could be established permanently in an appropriate building for worship. Even though the worship was devotional and awaited the grace of the deity, an icon could be the focus for devotion and the giving of gifts. An icon was not necessary for worship, but gradually became common. The centrality of the icon further distanced Puranic Hinduism from the Vedic religion. An object of worship, even aniconic and with no recognizable form, could be converted into a deity and sometimes at a later stage replaced by an anthropomorphic deity with a human form. If required, additions were made to this form in the shape of extra physical features – such as arms, generally symbolizing the attributes of the deity.

The establishing of the Sultanate was marked at Delhi and at Ajmer by converting the existing temple into a mosque, doubtless to proclaim victory but also to appropriate sacred space.

On religious mutations:

Buddhism was a proselytizing religion and Buddhist monks and teachers had taken it to various parts of Asia. It was therefore not unexpected that monks from distant places in Asia came to Buddhist monasteries in India, attracted by the libraries of manuscripts and the potentialities of discourse.

By the end of this period, the Vaishnava, Shaiva and the Shakta-Tantric sects were dominant in northern India. Jainism was restricted to the west and Buddhism, which had been largely confined to the east, was declining. An attempt was made to assimilate the Buddha into the Vaishnava pantheon as an incarnation of Vishnu but this did not attract enthusiasm. The worship of the Buddha by non-Buddhists remained largely formal and deferential. The militaristic ethos of the Rajputs was incompatible with the emphasis on non-violence of the Shramanic religions, even though some Jainas distinguished themselves on the battlefield. Among those involved with Puranic Hinduism, the idea of non-violence was now closer to the teachings of a few bhakti sects who opposed violence for reasons largely similar to those of Mahavira and the Buddha.

Sectarianism would have encouraged rivalry and hostility between sects. This was sometimes expressed by more than one sect claiming the same king as patron. For instance, there are contradictions between Shaiva and Jaina sources regarding whether Kumarapala, the Chaulukya King who had been a Shaiva, was actually converted to Jainism. A number of Jaina temples were attributed to his patronage; according to Jaina sources these were destroyed by his successor Ajayapala, who is described as hostile to the Jainas. Such hostilities did not, however, take on the dimensions of a holy war.

Tantrism, so-called after its compositions, the Tantras, influenced the practices of virtually every older religion, apart from upholding a belief and practice contrary to Vedic Brahmanism. Although originating earlier, it became widely practised from about the eighth century when it gradually surfaced throughout the subcontinent. In the east it had close ties with Tibetan religious expression. Some of the ritual was similar, together with the belief in the efficacy of mantras (prayers and mystical formulae), mudras (hand gestures) and mandalas (magical diagrams representing the cosmos). It was open to all castes and included women in the rituals, which identified it with non-orthodox sentiment. Goddesses were accorded great veneration, as is evident from the collection of legends in the Devi-mahatmya.

Gradually there was a bifurcation into the Left-Hand path that experimented with these practices, and the Right-Hand path that restricted itself to yoga and bhakti. Although Tantrism has often been condemned for its more extreme activities, it seems also to have been a vehicle for opposition to the brahmanical ordering of society. Elements of social radicalism in such movements become visible when the movement is viewed in the context of the broader social norms.

In western India where the Jainas grew in strength, their patrons were largely from the trading community, although royal patronage, especially from the Chaulukyas, provided them with an even more established position. Although small in numbers, they were prosperous and visible. Since they were forbidden agriculture as a profession for fear of injuring small creatures of the soil (although they accepted the occasional grant of land), their forte was commerce and their profits enabled them to become patrons of culture and learning. A further stabilizing factor was that since they were literate, financially astute and proficient in management they often found high office at royal courts. In spite of the destruction of Jaina temples by kings, both Hindu and Muslim, Jainism remained resilient. Buddhism, however, was eventually to lose the status of even a minor religion. Its decline was gradual, but towards the thirteenth century became rapid. Its association with Tantric cults was confusing since much of its original ethical teaching, which had been its initial strength, was being submerged in the new ritual.
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Confrontations with the growing strength of Puranic Hinduism, and its ability to incorporate new castes, was a fresh challenge to Buddhism.

Buddhist myths explaining the origin of government related it to a contract between an elected ruler and the people and were divorced from any divine sanction. The Buddhist chakkavatti with the symbol of the wheel of law was a distant concept from the models of conquest held up to the kshatriyas and Rajputs. Patronage therefore went to the ideology of Puranic Hinduism.

But the decline of Buddhism virtually everywhere except in eastern India requires a wider explanation than just a change in the religion. Nor was the coming of Islam primarily responsible for Buddhist decline, despite the thirteenth-century Turkish attack on Nalanda. By the eighth century AD Buddhism was more prevalent in north-western India and eastern India than elsewhere. The conversion of these areas to Islam was a gradual process. The decline of Buddhism in the Ganges heartland and the peninsula occurred before the Turkish conquest.

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