CHAPTER II. INDIAN HISTORY—LEGEND AND REALITY
Protected by the highest mountains of the world and traversed by lovely fertile hills, India is bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean and on the other by the Himalayas, watered by a thousand streams, and great rivers, upon the banks of which the sun ripens all kinds of delicious fruits which grow of themselves.
A large population flourishes on the perpetually green, immense plains sloping down to the sea; the canals are frequented with navigators who from oldest times have received in exchange for money the wonderful natural products of the country.
Five harvests are reaped here annually, and the palms, pine-apples, cinnamon trees, peppers, etc., ripen three times a year. But by the side of such beauty, steep rocks rise to the sky, many equalling the Chimborazo in height, and there are great tracts of arid unwatered sands. The storms are more violent here than anywhere else, and mountain streams descend in foaming torrents bearing devastation and ruin as they traverse the interminable plains on their way to the sea.—Cesare Cantù.
CHRONOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HINDUS
Rude nations seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions to a remote antiquity. As a boastful and turgid vanity distinguishes remarkably the oriental nations, they have in most instances carried their claims extravagantly high. We are informed, in a fragment of Chaldaic history, that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon, with the greatest care, comprehending a term of fifteen myriads of years. The pretended duration of the Chinese monarchy is still more extraordinary. A single king of Egypt was believed to have reigned three myriads of years.
The present age of the world, according to the system of the Hindus, is distinguished into four grand periods, denominated yugas. The first is the Satya yuga comprehending 1,728,000 years; the second the Treta yuga comprehending 1,296,000 years; the third the Dwapar yuga, including 864,000 years; and the fourth the Kali yuga, which will extend to 432,000 years. Of these periods, the first three are expired; and, in the year 1817 of the Christian era, 4911 years of the last. From the commencement, therefore, of the Satya yuga, to the year 1817, is comprehended a space of 3,892,911 years, the antiquity to which this people lay claim.
The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India, cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at the commencement of the Satya yuga, or 3,892,911 years ago, lived Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh; the second at Pratisht’hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties, subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.
Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns, therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium, is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must, at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only thirty-three years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.
Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these, twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne. Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty, and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of 100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos, the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned 112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master, and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system of Hindu chronology.
It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own. Where annals are real, they become circumstantial in proportion as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our instructors.
After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe, the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people; whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold; and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time, successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.
Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue, the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000 years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga, and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned, each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in this period for 29,793 years.[b]
If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records, our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS
The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas, religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much later, come the epic poems, known under the names of Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the religious and social code of Manu.
Viewed from a purely historical standpoint, the Hindu literature of our own era is not richer than that which preceded it. In fact the Puranas constitute the only sources which can be consulted, and these consist of collections drawn up at different periods, the most ancient of them going no further back than the eighth century after Christ. They are, moreover, too much interspersed with marvellous legends, and too devoid of chronological sequence to permit of modern science deriving much benefit from them. Practically it is only after the Mohammedan invasions of the eleventh century, that, thanks to the Mohammedan writers, the historical period of India begins.
To the very insufficient sources of written information just enumerated, we have to add the accounts of travellers who visited India during ancient times. These accounts are very few in number, since for the period preceding Jesus Christ we possess only some extracts from the narrative of the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who stayed at the court of Magadha about the year 300 before our era. For the period of more than thirteen centuries, which separates this remote epoch from the Mohammedan invasions, we possess, besides the scanty references of classical authors, only the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hian and Hwen Tsang, who visited India, the first in the fifth, the second in the seventh century. Their works, especially that of the second, undoubtedly constitute the most valuable documents which we possess concerning India before the Mohammedan invasions.
MONUMENTAL RECORDS
The extreme inadequacy of the historical books on India gives a very great importance to the plastic works, monuments, medals, and statues, which the peninsula possesses. The most ancient are the columns on which Asoka had his edicts engraved, 250 years before Christ. After them come the bas-reliefs of the great monuments at Bharhut, Sanchi, etc., constructed at the commencement of our era, or in the two or three centuries which preceded it. They give interesting details respecting the manners, customs, beliefs, and arts of the peoples who constructed them, and show us the degree of civilisation to which these people had attained.
Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues, coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India. Similarly it is the bas-reliefs of the temples which can alone tell us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs which succeeded one another in ancient India.[d]
The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few years search and investigation directed to these records have brought a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are really only beginning.
Ancient Indian Bas-relief of Men and Animals
It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki (Doerki), and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last relation. But Vasudeva, “having the Vasu as gods,” points by this name, so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki’s day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the world-creating, world-preserving, and world-destroying god,—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,—the so-called Trimurti in the rock temples of Ellora and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.
At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and of the century-long invasion still continued. A Scythian population, united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong to them are believed to be of non-Aryan origin, and in religion, language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to them. The Rajput families of the “king’s sons,” who afterwards founded independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign importations into the caste system and as the successors to the Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of such ruins that the later Saracens erected their citadels, palaces, and mosques. These too are now nothing but magnificent remains. But we can here treat of older conditions alone, and of those only in brief.
LEGENDS OF THE EARLY HEROES
Legends have arisen concerning the immigration of Saka princes to Surashtra or Guzerat, and stories of an alleged liberation from foreign rule. A celebrated hero of such legends is Vikramaditya, a king of Ujjain in Malwa, and another, with whose birth the Saka era was connected, is Salivahana, the opponent of the first, who is not less renowned than he in legend, and defeated him in the struggle. But though legend has so much to say of these two, history has little or nothing to tell us of them.
On the western side of the Girnar rock near Junagarh, whose eastern side bears Asoka’s inscriptions, and on whose northern side is engraved that of one Skanda Gupta, we may read that of one Rudra Dama. It tells of the buildings erected by this king, or great satrap, for the protection of the country against the destructive power of the waters of the river Palasini, and another inscription, which extols his name in the midst of those of four others, his predecessors and successors, is found on a pillar at Jasdan in Kathiawar or Surashtra, a part of the present Guzerat. The names of the others are—on the one side of his, Chashtana and Jaya Dama—and on the other side Rudra Sinha and Rudra Sena, and the inscription belongs to the year 127 of the era of these princes.
These kings, or great satraps, of whom we possess both inscriptions and coins, beside many others whose names cannot here be given, have been called Sah or Saha or Sinha kings, from a termination added to many of their names. We should perhaps do best in accordance with a good precedent to designate them Xatrapa (Satrap) kings, as not only did they call themselves so, but also actually were, at least in name, governors for the Mauryas and their successors.
The series begins with a certain Nahapana, who with one or two others preceded Chashtana and his sons and grandsons, and ends with one Svami Rudra Sena, the twenty-sixth mentioned. They ruled, roughly speaking, three hundred years from the beginning of the Saka era (in which we may safely place Chashtana) down to somewhere between 284 and 272 of our era. In its best days (which seem to have been under Rudra Dama, as his inscription indicates), their dominions embraced the peninsula of Guzerat, Surashtra, and Malwa, reaching north as far as the middle of the Indus valley and so onward to the sea.
Inscriptions and coins are certainly safe authorities for history: but they are somewhat inadequate when, as here, little else and nothing certain is added to them. Thus we know but little of the history of this great western or Xatrapa kingdom, not much more than the legend which has grown up round its first beginnings and its final overthrow by the Gupta power.
The Sah or Xatrapa kings, so runs the legend, were overthrown by the Guptas, who ruled between the Jumna and the Ganges. That is, they had independent and viceregal honours, and the man who prepared their downfall is called Kamara Gupta, and was succeeded by his son Skanda Gupta, whose inscription we read on the north side of the Girnar rock.—But we must begin at the beginning.
AN INSCRIPTION OF ASOKA
An inscription on the Asoka pillar at Allahabad, that of Samudra Gupta, mentions the ancestors of his family. Sri Gupta, the “august, noble, great king” and “splendour of the world,” was a petty lord who had successfully raised himself to the government from the Vaisya or middle class and, from 319, had his residence at Allahabad or in Ajodhya, and his dominion to the east of the river.
After a reign of fifteen years he was succeeded by his son Ghatotkacha. On the coins of the latter a reference has been found to his namesake the son of Bhima, of the epic legend. He proudly calls himself “Destroyer of all Kings,” and was probably really “Augmenter of the Kingdom” westward as far as the territory of the Indus. After another fifteen years he was in his turn succeeded by his son Chandra Gupta, and an inscription belonging to the latter has been found in the Sanchi Stupa at Bilsa, besides coins with his half-length portrait,—the earliest we have belonging to these kings. His realm was subsequently extended to Malwa and his rule was also friendly to the children of Sakya. He must have ruled for the space of thirty years, but his son Samudra Gupta, who is spoken of in the great inscription on the lion pillar of Allahabad, far surpassed him in fame, power, and magnificence.
The inscription is a great historical record, one of the greatest which we have for this period. It speaks by name of kings whom Samudra Gupta deposed, of others whom he made tributary to himself, of the extent and frontiers of his dominion. Since we cannot go into details we will here only mention that he subdued almost the whole Aryavarta between the northern and southern ranges to his immediate rule, made subject the hill princes in the north, the Vaudheya, Madraka, and Abhira in the Land of the Five Rivers and in Malwa, brought kings south of the Vindhya under his protectorate and ruled over the east as far as to the sea. In all this there is probably a good deal of boasting—the inscription was made after his death—but it is certain that there is also not a little that is true. He is also renowned as a ruler of high and noble disposition, as a patron of the arts and sciences, of music and poetry, which he himself cultivated. His coins, which have been found in great numbers and scattered over a wide area, some bearing the image of the lion hero and others of the king playing on the vina (harp) confirm to some extent what the long eulogy asserts.
After a reign of some thirty years he was followed by another Chandra Gupta, his son, who ruled for about ten years. The dominion of the Guptas then passed to his son, “the far-famed lord of the earth,” Kumara Gupta, who, according to the dates on coins and to tradition, reigned twenty-three years, to about the year 130 of the era of this line of kings. And after him came his son Skanda Gupta, with whom a certain Buddha Gupta is also mentioned, and who was the seventh and last king of his famous house. This is the Gupta whom we mentioned first, and who attained to a dominion to which an inscription on the western peninsula bears witness. After him there seems to be a reference to one Mahendra Gupta, perhaps his co-ruler or the successor to a part of his empire, and of one Narayana Gupta. But a monolith at Kuhan, in the district of Gorakhpur in the northwest of India, asserts that “in the year, or towards the end of the year 141 (i.e., 470 of our era), the empire of Skanda Gupta, in whose hall a hundred kings bowed the head in homage, the empire of the royal line of the Gupta was taken away from those who had been so far renowned, rich above all men, comparable to Indra, the lord of hundreds of kings.”
TRADITIONAL KINGS
Tradition tells of kings in various places in the south and north who had declared themselves independent of the Gupta rule. It tells of a scion of an ancient family, whose forefathers had settled in former times on the banks of the Ganges, a certain Pandu-Sakya, who at that time had established himself on the throne of the Mauryas at Pataliputra (the modern Patna). But it is averred that one of Skanda Gupta’s generals, Bhattaraka, of the family of Ballabhi or Valabhi, had overthrown this personage in Kathiawar, i.e., Guzerat, and had seized the reins of government for himself. He became the founder of a new series of Surashtra kings, the third, which was called after him the Valabhi dynasty. We may place the beginning of this dynasty about the year 480 A.D.
Bearing this in mind we might now, of course, again follow the chronicles, and relate something from that of the kings of Kashmir and from the two of Sinhaladvipa. From the former we might tell of one Damodhara who succeeded Turushka, then of a certain Meghavahana, a Sreshta or Pravarasena, and his two sons, Hiranya or Toramana, until a time came when the throne of Kashmir stood empty, and the “noble” Harsha Vikramaditya sent one of his followers, a Brahman named Matri Gupta who was appointed king. But we will not go through the history of dynasties and dynastic lists, at least not when the authorities are so uncertain. And, as to the other two, it is related in a history of Buddhism, how after Vrishabha came a century in which sanctuaries were built and rebuilt, how under King Tishya there arose heresy and strife and divisions, that some short reigns then followed down to Abhayanaga and again down to Mahasena with whom the later chronicle closes. Again we read of more than one Meghavarna, of a Upatishya who succeeded Mahanaman, under whom a certain Fa Hian came to Ceylon and the Buddhist hermits lived and worked. It is sufficient to give here a brief outline of what is important.
A number of brass tablets or copper plates have been found on the ruined site of the ancient Valabhi (the modern Vala), records of donations to Brahman and Buddhist monks, which give fairly authentic information concerning the period and order of the first Surashtra or Valabhi kings. According to these Bhatarka or Bhattaraka was succeeded by his four sons, Dharasena, the eldest, Dronasena who was already called Great King and was solemnly crowned as ruler of the earth, Dhruvasena the third, and Dharapatta the youngest son. They had brought the peninsula and a great part of the coast and the mainland as far as Malwa under their rule, which in the case of the third certainly lasted to the year 534. The youngest was succeeded by his son Guhasena, who bestowed whole villages on the disciples of the Sakya and on their cloisters, he by his son Sri Dharasena, the second of the name and certainly not later than the end of the sixth century (595) and he again by his son Siladitya or Dharmaditya who continued reigning on into the seventh century. But we need not pursue the series of these kings any further.
During the reign of a nephew of the last named, another Dhruvasena (632-640), the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang came to India (627-645) and to the Valabhi kingdom in the west. His account of his journey has an astonishing amount to say of the riches of the country, of its numerous inhabitants, of the many cloisters with thousands of monks,—some of them Buddhist but he also speaks of others, and mentions Jain monks whom he had seen,—and of the numbers of columns and the magnificent stupas, etc. The kings of that time, one traveller reports, are Xatriya, all relations of the king Siladitya of Malwa; the son-in-law of the reigning king Siladitya at Kanyakubja (Kanauj) is called T’u-lu-p’o-po-tu (Dhruvabhata). And here our pilgrim incidentally describes that ruler as pious, wise, and virtuous and as so open-handed that he redeemed his charitable gifts at double their value. He speaks with all reverence and respect of this prince, to whose brilliant court he went by invitation.[c]
The relations of the Indian dynasties to the successive hordes of Scythians who poured down on northern India, are obscure. There is abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle but the attempt to assign dates to its chief episodes has not yet reached results which can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya Sakaris, or vanquishers of the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology. The truth seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era, the fortunes of the Scythian or Tatar races rose and fell from time to time in northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats; and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties.[e]
The latest authorities are now agreed that the great and victorious king Vikramaditya who, as Lefmann says, “together with his battle of Korur has hitherto wandered incessantly like a wavering and restless shadow” from 57 B.C. to 560 A.D., may now be definitely assigned to a reign dating from 510 to 560 A.D. in which time, at Korur, he annihilated the Scythian army.[a]
BRAHMANIC LEARNING
Down to the time of Buddha and beyond, the Brahman schools were still in course of completing and elaborating their sacred knowledge (Veda), the triple science. Their later Upanishads worked up to the Vedanta, “an end or conclusion” of the Veda. Undoubtedly the Brahmans also learnt with and from their opponents. Their systems of mental investigation (nyaya, mimamsa) and pious exercises (yoga) can witness to this if to nothing else. And as the sons of Sakya taught in the language of the people and as Asoka had his admonitions engraved on stone tablets, so Brahmans had long before this begun to exhibit the laws and art of their sacred language side by side with logic and grammar.
Scholasticism, speculative inquiry, the narrow or strict sciences, in general, have in all ages shown themselves opposed and inimical to free artistic creation. This the Brahmans also demonstrated. For centuries they produced no really new poetic work. With care and diligence, unsurpassed elsewhere, they preserved and kept together the inheritance and possessions of antiquity, and imitated them on the same lines but produced nothing new. They needed to pass through the period of foreign dominion in order to receive a new impulse.
Then came the comparatively brief but brilliant period of the Guptas’ rule, under which the coins are first inscribed in Sanskrit. To this period belongs much that was formerly regarded as ancient and even primitive, and was probably really new, but built up on an ancient foundation. A single, but eloquent example, is the collection of the laws of Manu in the form in which it has come down to us. A great deal might be said on this subject. Here we will only remark that at this time the Brahmanical spirit received a fresh impulse and flourished anew.
At the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain were nine who are mentioned as the pearls of his age and dominion. An old and famous verse celebrates their names. Amongst them were Dhanvantari, the great physician and healer, Amarasinha, the renowned philologist and lexicographer, Varahamihira, the astronomer and architect, and some add Kalidasa, the poet of the Sakuntala.
It was shortly after the peace of Mangalore in 1783, that Sir William Jones became Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal and first president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In the “edifying letters” of the French Jesuits he had read that there were many books in the north of India which were called Natak, and of which the Brahmans said that they contained a great deal of ancient history without any admixture of fable. He became eager to gain possession of these books in order that he might make himself acquainted with them either by means of translations, if such existed, or by himself learning their language; but he had no sooner come to an understanding with the Brahmans than he learnt from them that the statements were like many others made in those letters.
Natak, he was assured, were not histories at all, but fables, favourite popular books, discourses in prose and verse, such as had formerly been held, in various idioms, at the courts of the Rajahs. Jones thought they were probably treatises on matters of morals, or learning; others of his countrymen concluded from what they had heard that they might perhaps deal with dancing, music, and poetry, when an intelligent Brahman remarked that the Englishmen also possessed something of the nature of the Natak, which were performed publicly in the cold season (meaning dramas).
This was enough. On the question being asked as to which of these Natak was most highly prized, the man unhesitatingly answered “Sakuntala,” and Brahmanlike, had also a verse ready, which “unfolded,” it was said, “all the transcendent riches of the genius of Kalidasa.” A copy having been procured, it was literally translated into Latin with the assistance of his Pandit Ramalocan—of course through Persian—and from Latin into English. From this to publishing it was the work of the first leisure moment, and a noble example of Indian genius from the Sanskrit and Prakrit original was given to the world.
Jones’ English “Sakuntala” appeared in the year 1789, the year of the French revolution. It would be almost impossible to describe the enthusiasm called forth especially amongst the romantic school in Germany, by the “maiden from abroad,” in the foreign dress on a foreign soil, and the “ecstatic transports” over the gentle child from the penitential groves of ancient India. And it was at the fire of this enthusiasm that the lamp was lighted which shed its rays ever further and deeper into the hidden recesses of the Indian spirit, the Indian language, art, and science. And this was effected a hundred years ago by the alluring charm of the Sakuntala.[c]
THE EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
The history of India has been conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily, separated into epochs by Le Bon. His classification, which is necessarily very general, and in which the epochs are very far from being clearly defined since they encroach upon one another or exist side by side, embraces the following periods:
1. The Vedic period; 2. The Brahmanical period; 3. The Buddhist period; 4. The period of the revival of Brahmanism or neo-Brahmanic; 5. The Mohammedan period; 6. The European period.
VEDIC PERIOD
The commencement of the Vedic period is about fifteen centuries earlier than our era. It is marked by the invasion of India by the Aryans.
The Vedic period is that age of Indian history which is wholly legendary. The little that we know concerning it is revealed solely by religious books, known under the name of Vedas, the most important of which, the Rig-Veda, has been called, with reason, the Bible of the Aryans of the northwest of India.
Established at first round the Himalayas, as far as the Vindhya Mountains, the primitive Aryans lived in the state of wandering pastoral tribes, and it is to be supposed that their invasion must have taken place gradually. Their most ancient books seem to have been written about fifteen centuries before our era. In that remote age they had no castes, they worshipped the forces of nature and erected neither temples nor statues; to the people on whom they descended they brought a new language and a new religion, but they did not bring them architecture. These primitive Aryan peoples knew how to write books, but they did not know how to build monuments of stone, and nothing in the most ancient of their works indicates that they built either temples or palaces.
We will not here linger over the Aryan civilisation, any more than over the Brahmanical period which terminates it. Historical documents properly so called are lacking for both. The epics which are connected with the Brahmanical period are confirmed by the stories of Megasthenes, and prove that India was then beginning to be covered with towns, temples, and palaces; but of the monuments of this period no remains whatever have come down to us.
THE BUDDHIST PERIOD
The epoch of the birth of Buddhism in India belongs a great deal to legend and very little to history. We know nothing of the beginnings of this period save what is told us in the fantastic stories of the Buddhist books. It is only after Alexander’s invasions, and especially when, about 250 years after Christ, Buddhism became the official religion, that definite facts stand out and the darkness begins to disperse. Unfortunately it soon reappears, and reigns for long centuries.
Alexander’s invasion took place 327 years before our era. After having completed the conquest of Persia, the Macedonian hero made up his mind to undertake the conquest of India, that he might attain to the sovereignty of Asia.
The division of the Punjab into small independent and rival states must have rendered the conquest easy at the outset. Alexander made his appearance with one hundred and twenty thousand men, of whom the Greeks formed the kernel, while the rest of the number was made up by Persians. He had Indian guides and an understanding with some native chiefs, notably with the king of Taxila, a state situated on the left bank of the Indus, and which stretched between that river and the stream then known under the name of Hydaspes and to-day under that of Jhelum.
Alexander marched from Bactriana on the town which now bears the name of Kabul. Continuing his way to India, he crossed the Indus and encountered Porus, sovereign of a state enclosed between the Hydaspes and the Chenab: he beat him, but made him an ally by leaving him his kingdom. Various sovereigns, notably the sovereign of Kashmir, then sent him their submission.
After several battles against native chiefs, he marched on the Hyphasis (the present Beas); but the army refusing to follow him farther, he raised, on the banks of this stream, twelve commemorative altars, intended to mark the end of the expedition. Having returned to the banks of the Hydaspes, he constructed a fleet which descended that stream as far as the Indus, into which it passed. Fighting continually, Alexander arrived at Patala, at the mouth of the Indus, and then sent his fleet, under the orders of Nearchus, along the coast into the Persian Gulf, after which he divided his army into two corps. The one was sent back to Persia through Caramania, under the leadership of Craterus; the other, under his own direction, made its retreat by way of Gedrosia. The fleet having reached the Persian Gulf, and he himself having rejoined Craterus, the return of the expedition was celebrated with festivities.
Regarded solely from the standpoint of conquest, it may be said that the results of Alexander’s invasion were absolutely nil, since a few years after his departure not a single one of the Greek garrisons he had left behind remained in India. But this expedition, which for the first time put Europe in communication with India, was to have indirect consequences that were not without importance.
CHANDRA GUPTA
After the departure of Alexander, a Hindu king, Chandra Gupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, son of one of the petty chiefs of the Punjab, whom Alexander had scattered, gradually extended his empire over the whole of the north of the peninsula, and expelled or totally destroyed the Macedonian garrisons. He fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra (the modern Patna), capital of the kingdom of Magadha. Soon his renown became so great that, about the year 200 before our era, Seleucus Nicator, who, since Alexander’s death, was reigning in Syria, Babylonia, and all the provinces between the Euphrates and the Indus, sent to his court a Greek ambassador, named Megasthenes, for the purpose of making alliance with him. This ambassador stayed at Pataliputra for a long time, and it is from his narrative, part of which has been preserved, that we gain our first definite notions of the manners and customs of the Hindus of this epoch.
But the relations between the Greeks and Hindus were not confined to Alexander’s invasion and the embassy of Megasthenes; in default of the accounts of historians, we now know, from coins and the ruins of monuments, that the successors of the Græco-Bactrian empire of Seleucus Nicator conquered the Punjab, founded several kingdoms, and penetrated as far as Muttra. One hundred and twenty-six years before Christ an adventurer of the name of Menander founded a kingdom reaching from the Jumna to the mouth of the Nerbudda.
The sculptures and medals are the only relics which have come down to us from the Greek kingdoms of India. These kingdoms disappeared just about the beginning of our era, before the invasions of the Scythians. These invasions had commenced in the century before Christ. A Scythian people descended on the northwest of India and founded a kingdom comprising Bactriana, the banks of the Indus, the Punjab, and a part of Rajputana. This kingdom had a very ephemeral duration, since the Scythians were probably expelled from India in the early days of our era.
Setting aside this obscure part of the history of India, which recent researches have revived, let us go back to Chandra Gupta and his successors.
Chandra Gupta’s grandson was the celebrated Asoka, who reigned about 250 years before Christ. After having, according to certain Buddhist legends, massacred the hundred sons whom his father had had by sixteen different wives and thus prevented rivalries, he extended his empire throughout the north of India. Its limits are marked by inscriptions which still exist. They are to be found from Afghanistan to Bengal and from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda. In the west Asoka’s empire touched the Greek kingdom of Bactriana.
It is with this prince that the architectural history of India begins. Several of the columns he caused to be erected are still standing, and the most celebrated monuments, such as those of Bharhut, Sanchi, and Buddha Gaya, whose bas-reliefs are so valuable for the history of Buddhism, are contemporary with his reign or very little later. Nothing remains of the palaces which he himself constructed, but we may suppose that they must have been very handsome, for the pilgrim Fa-Hian, who saw in the fifth century the ruins of the buildings and the tower of the one belonging to him at Pataliputra, asserts that it was too admirable to have been the work of a mortal.
It was this same Asoka who made Buddhism the official religion of India. His religious zeal was very great, for he sent missionaries to all kinds of places, to Ceylon, and even as far as to Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt.
The dynasty called that of Maurya, of which Asoka was the most illustrious representative, lasted about a century and a half, i.e., from 312 to 178 B.C. Afterwards the empire founded by Asoka soon split up into petty independent kingdoms under different sovereigns. The kingdom of Magadha, however, continued to exist down to the sixteenth century of our era; but it now included only the very confined district corresponding to the present Behar. The Puranas give lists of the kings of Magadha for a thousand years, but they are very unreliable.
TWELVE CENTURIES OF OBSCURITY
After Asoka, the only Hindu authorities that we have on India down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion, besides the legendary narratives of the Puranas, are furnished by the monuments. These, with the stories of the Chinese pilgrims of which we have spoken, are the only sources from which we may in some sort reconstitute the civilisation of India during that long period.
During this night of something like twelve centuries, the important personages whose memory the Hindu chroniclers have preserved to us are few in number. The most celebrated is the legendary Vikramaditya, prince of Malwa, who lived at Ujjain, near the Nerbudda. According to the chronicles, he extended his empire over the whole of India, as far as the southern point of the Deccan. Although his history is nothing but a tissue of fabulous legends, he must certainly have fulfilled an important rôle, since the Hindus date a new era, the Samvat era, from his accession, which they suppose to have taken place 57 B.C.
Unfortunately the Hindu chronicles, according to their wont, have paid little respect to chronology, for an attentive study of the inscriptions and the monuments appears to prove that Vikramaditya reigned six hundred years after the epoch indicated by the books.[18]
It is to the same hero that the Hindu legends attribute the expulsion of the Scythians from India. These people had penetrated to the Greeks of Bactriana two centuries before Christ, and had gradually subdued them. One of their kings, Kanishka, a convert to Buddhism, had shortly before our era founded an empire comprising Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Rajputana. We know nothing of the history of the Scythians in India, unless it be that they propagated the artistic influence of the Greeks, as we see by some statues at Muttra.
According to the inscriptions interpreted by Cunningham, we should probably include amongst the contemporaries of Vikramaditya [see footnote] the Rajah Harshavardhara, who reigned from 607-648 and of whom the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited India in 634, speaks as one of the most powerful sovereigns of the north of India. His capital was Kanauj, one of the most ancient cities of India, for a long time the seat of the Gupta dynasty, and supposed to have been one of the cradles of Aryan civilisation. Ptolemy mentions it, 140 years after Christ, under the name of Kanogiya. The kingdom of which it was the capital in the days of Hwen Tsang extended from Kashmir to Assam and from Nepal to the Nerbudda.
Kanauj lies east of Agra, a few miles from the Ganges. All the traditions agree in extolling its splendour. It filled Mahmud of Ghazni with admiration when he attacked it in 1016 A.D. Ferishta says that as he approached it, he saw “a city which raised its head as high as heaven, and which, in fortifications and architecture, could justly boast that it had no rival.”
Of this ancient capital which, if we are to believe Hwen Tsang, was three miles in length, there remains not a stone to tell its history. As in the case of many famous old capitals, the destruction of the monuments anterior to the Mohammedan invasion was so complete that, in spite of all his investigations, Cunningham could not succeed in recovering a single relic. The oldest thing which he observed at Kanauj is an inscription dating only from 1136 and consequently later than the Mohammedan invasion. All the existing monuments of this town are exclusively Mohammedan, though sometimes constructed from the débris of ancient Hindu monuments.
Kanauj is one of those great ancient capitals whose history we know only from vague traditions and a few inscriptions. To those who have seen the remains of the small number which have escaped destruction, as, for instance, Khajurao, it is impossible to ascribe the enthusiastic descriptions of the splendour of these antique cities solely to the writers’ imagination.
Kanauj, Khajurao, Mahoba, and many other famous towns of which the name and the ruins are all that now survive, were the seats of mighty empires. Of these the most celebrated were governed by kings of the Rajput race, the only one whose dynasties still exist and which has preserved, if not its independence, at least its institutions and its customs. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of the history of the Rajputs till the time when they entered into conflict with the Mohammedans. The latter succeeded in destroying their capitals and in thrusting them back to the steep and mountainous regions of Rajputana, but they only obtained from them a purely nominal submission.
The whole of this period, which extends from the successors of Asoka to the revival of Brahmanism and even to the Mohammedan invasions, is thus almost as obscure as that which preceded it, and but for the monuments it has left us we should know practically nothing about it. Historical documents are equally lacking for the period of the revival of Brahmanism, or the neo-Brahmanical period. Coins and monuments are about the only authorities which we can consult concerning it.[d]
FOOTNOTES
[18] [“The name Vikramaditya,” says Sir W. W. Hunter in his Brief History of the Indian People, p. 81, “is a title meaning ‘A Very Sun in Prowess,’ which has been borne by several kings in Indian history. But the Vikramaditya of the first century before Christ was the greatest of them,—great alike as a defender of his country against the Scythian hordes, as a patron of men of learning, and as a good ruler of his subjects.” This will explain the confusion that has enveloped the name. See also the previous section on “Traditional Kings.”]
Retinue of an Indian Prince, in the Time of Alexander the Great
