The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  9 Distributive political economies and regional cultures, c. AD 700-1300 (Both the state structures and the cultural contacts became more predictable from region to region because of the widespread influence of Sanskritic cultures correlated to distributive economies in the form of grants of land. In emphasizing the emergence of regional cultures, the intention is not to present a picture of political fragmentation but to underline the reformulation of politics, society and culture in a pattern that differs from the earlier pre-Cupta period.)

  10 The assertion of regional identities, c. AD 1300-1550

  (An assertion of regional identities becomes more evident in political economies and cultures, but not to the point of preventing the establishment of a powerful suzerain state.)

  11 The Mughal state and subsequent regional kingdoms, c. AD 1550-1750

  12 British colonial rule and the Indian nationalist response

  Defining periods in history is important, but it is equally important to determine the cause of change, a question sometimes referred to as that of the transition from one period to another. Even specific changes may begin casually, but if they occur with sufficient frequency they can give a new direction to the way society functions and this encapsulates historical change. The nature of the transition therefore becomes a significant aspect of periodization. The distinction between the different periods is determined by characteristics of polity, economy, technology, society and religion that were prevalent at the time, as well as some reference to the makers of events wherever available. Inevitably, there is more information on elite groups since they were the authors and patrons. A corrective to this is sometimes available when archaeology provides evidence of the material culture of ordinary people.

  Cultural Histories of a Different Kind

  A summary of historical trends such as this should at least mention the questioning of the discipline of history by theories that focus on language, or what has been called ‘the literary turn’. Some have argued that as language is the medium of knowledge, that which comes in the form of language constitutes a text; since language is interpreted by the individual, the reading by the individual gives meaning to the text; therefore each time a text is read by a different individual it acquires a fresh meaning. Taken to its logical conclusion, this denies any generally accepted meaning of a text and is implicitly a denial of attempts at historical representation or claims to relative objectivity, since the meaning would change with each reading. However, the prevalent views are more subtle.

  Readings can be hegemonic or there can be attempts to ignore alternative readings, but readings with little or no structures of how to read a text can be self-defeating in terms of acquiring knowledge. The more acceptable historical argument would be that there is space for greater sensitivity to alternative texts and readings, and to multiple voices, but that these should observe the procedures of historical analysis. The focus on culture, beliefs and ideologies could be a necessary addition to the earlier historical emphases on politics and the economy, but it is not in itself definitive history since history requires a correlation between the reading of a text and its multi-layered historical contexts. This enables an understanding of what is directly stated in a text and, equally important, that which is implied.

  These developments have been paralleled by the continual return to theories of explanation, some of which have been explored and developed, while others have been replaced. For example, Marxism, once thought of by some as synonymous with economic determinism, can no longer be described as such, given the debates that have been generated in recent times through its many varieties – humanist, existentialist, structuralist. Theories arising from colonial readings are being replaced by more analytical studies using a wider range of data and explanation. Nationalist interpretations are also being more rigorously sieved. Paradigms, or frameworks of understanding, are reformulated and in history this change relates most closely to the question of facts and concepts. The reformulation often comes about through the contemplation of the surrounding world and the attempt to comprehend it.

  A wider interest in cultural history has led to analytical studies of texts, not just to arrive at alternative or variant readings but also to view the text as an artefact of history. This requires comparative studies of variant versions as well as placing it in its context. Priority is given to the intention of the author and of the patron if there is one. The close connection between patronage and culture, both literary and artistic, is an essential component of cultural history. This has often raised questions such as who constitutes the audience of the text and what is its intention? This in turn has made historians sensitive to particular audiences determining artistic or literary form or providing variants.

  Ascertaining the audience and the intention has been useful in attempts to locate texts that incorporate historical perceptions of the past, in what is now sometimes called the itihasa-purana tradition. Itihasa literally means ‘thus it was’ and purana refers to that which belongs to the past. This takes a variety of forms. In the early Puranas there are genealogies, some quite fanciful, gradually moving towards more realistic lists of dynastic succession. Subsequently, there are historical biographies of kings and even the occasional minister, largely hagiographic but encapsulating some aspects of historical events. And there are chronicles of regional histories, of which Kalhana’s Rajatarangini is certainly the finest example. A few chronicles of Buddhist monasteries are also seen as historical narratives. The recording of the rule of a king or the history of a dynasty in the form of inscriptions began just prior to the Christian era, becoming common in the period after the eighth century AD, and these constitute the annals of early Indian history.

  Such texts are not histories in any modern sense, but are attempts to capture the past in particular forms and to use it to legitimize the claims of the present. The narratives are set in linear time. Their writing involves the patron ordering the history, the authors formulating it, and an audience whom they seek to address and who acquiesced in the presentation. The forms are not disjointed, and they attempt to borrow from and adapt what has gone before. The itihasa-purana tradition presents a narrative of events, their explanation and an attempt at summation. These are not acceptable to modern notions of analyses and arriving at historical generalizations, but they provide insights into how the past was viewed at various points of time many centuries ago.

  Linked to the historical tradition, although not classified as such, are the many thousand inscriptions earlier used to reconstruct dynastic history and now being re-read for information on a variety of other facets of history. As texts they sometimes contain alternative statements to those of the normative literature. Those subsequent to the mid-first millennium present a meshing of the culture of the mainstream and the region. If read analytically, such evidence can provide clues to voices other than those of the authors of mainstream texts.

  A historical study is not a juxtaposition of islands or fragments of historical facets which are lined up: political, environmental, technological, economic, social, religious and other histories. A historical analysis requires recognizing the fragments, but relating them to a whole that determines what causes events, and formulating an explanation. The complexities of each of these can be fine-tuned by a more accurate attention to the reading of the text, illuminating the reading through perspectives other than the well-known, but these remain the essentials of a historical analysis.

  History is concerned with change and historical change, and, although it may not be determined, it is also not arbitrary or purposeless. The formation of varied societies in a region surfaces through historical analysis, and in this surfacing the historian points out the players and the context. Theories of explanation assist in understanding the context and such theories differ. For some, power relations may be fundamental; for others it may be the dialectic of who controls resources and labour and who labours, for still others it may be the relationship between socio-economic structure
s and the ideologies that they spawn, or the inversion of this. For a few historians it can also be the interlocking of all these.

  Theories of interpretation as presented in this chapter are not intended as inevitably sequential, although there are causal links between them. They are the articulation of particular contexts of time, place and events. They have their own histories and constitute many strands in historical thought. Since they are not merely an extension or reversal of data, but are intended to explain complex problems, they have varied existences. Some theories decline or die out. Others persist, generally in a modified form. Some surface aggressively if their function as ideologies of political mobilization is more important than their function as historical explanation. Yet others generate new theories, and these tend to extend the reach of historical analysis.

  In this book an attempt is made to anticipate a few of the themes and questions that are significant to understanding the Indian past, and to indicate the people, events and institutions that have contributed to the making of Indian society through time. But the tendency to evaluate Indian history and culture in absolute terms, and to make categorical judgements, has been avoided since such an evaluation within the space of this brief history would merely result in platitudes. In the course of tracing the evolution of certain aspects of Indian life – the environment and the economic structure, changing social relationships, the historical context of religious movements, the emergence and growth of languages, to mention but a few – identifiable patterns have emerged. These patterns have been described and interpreted along lines that appear to me to be the most convincing, given the evidence available and the logic implicit in its analysis. In a survey of this kind the aim is to present the features of the Indian past, hopefully in an intelligible manner, given the complexities of these features. As a historian, I am aware that I too am part of the historical process, and that the paradigm will shift in the future. The direction of the shift may draw on the way history is viewed in present times.

  2

  Landscapes and Peoples

  Time and Space

  Speaking metaphorically, time and space are said to be the warp and woof of history. In India the perception of time includes abstract concepts, such as cyclic time as a component of cosmology, and linear time which is born of human action. Cyclic time is a part of cosmology in various texts, such as the epic the Mahabharata, the Dharmashastra of Manu and the Vishnu Purana, and the elaboration of this cosmology probably dated to the early Christian era. The last of these texts also has a section on genealogies and dynasties, providing indications of linear time, but this was overlooked in modern studies of time concepts and Indian civilization was said to be familiar only with cyclic time.

  The imaginative vastness of cycles of time, where the great cycle – the mahayuga – extends to 4,320,000 years, provides a cosmological frame. The immensity of the span was required for calculations in astronomy. It encapsulates four lesser cycles, each smaller than the previous and declining in an orderly, arithmetical progression. The four cycles or ages are the Krita or Satya – the Age of Truth – the Treta or the third, the Dvapara or the second, and the Kali. We are now in the Kali Age, the start of which has been calculated as equivalent to 3102 BC and which is to last for 432,000 years. Apart from the decline in the number of years, the quality of life also diminishes in each cycle. It is said to be like a bull that initially stands on four legs, but with each age loses a leg and now stands on one! With the exception of the first, the names of the cycles follow the throws of dice introducing an element of chance into the concept of time, and the Kali Age has therefore been appropriately translated as the age of the losing throw.

  Linear time is circumscribed by what is viewed as the beginning and the end of time in human history. It can take the form of the shallow or deep descent of the genealogy of a clan or a dynasty: the human lifespan of a biography; or the innumerable chronicles written to assert the authority of kings and dynasties, with the multiple eras they established from the first millennium AD. Unlike the Judaeo-Christian tradition, where there is a precise beginning and a definite termination in the Day of Judgement, the Indian form has a weaker eschatology. Nevertheless, the concept of linearity as the basic approach to recording the past is unmistakable. Linear time is the immediate context for heroes and kings, and for the chronicles of institutions and states. It would seem that cyclic and linear time had variant functions and the exploration of their interface as reflected in Indian texts is still in its initial stages.

  Regions enclosing space are active players in historical events when seen from a historical and geographical perspective. Regions are not uniform nor do they emerge simultaneously. They surface in an uneven pattern, the differences being determined both by a pre-existing landscape and environment and by the shape given to it through human action. This would incorporate conditions of physical geography and be modulated by climate, soil, water resources, crops, drought and flood, as well as the impact of those technologies that alter environment and landscape.

  There are also spaces pertaining to how a geographical entity is viewed historically. Geologically the subcontinent was formed through the shifting land mass of Gondwanaland, as it has been called, and the filling in of the seas which have now become the northern plains. Once the subcontinent was formed geographically, it remained an entity for millennia. But its historical identity is dated to relatively recent times. Even within this recent identity, the names used for the historical identity referred to different concepts of space that moved from the narrower to the broader. These were, for example, the heptahindu used in the Avesta and the equivalent of the Rigvedic sapta sindhu (the Sindhu/Indus and its tributaries); hi[n]dush in Iranian Achaemenid inscriptions (referring to north-western India, the name being taken from Sindhu); the aryavarta, essentially the Ganges Plain and its fringes (although sometimes expanded to include more of northern India); hndstn, read as Hindustan, although it did not refer to the subcontinent but only to the north-west (in a Middle Persian Sasanian inscription of Shahpur I in the third century AD); and, in Arab sources, al-Hind (the land beyond the Indus).

  Cosmology describes the earth as flat and circular, with Mount Meru in its centre. Surrounding Mount Meru were the four continents or dvipas, literally islands, separated by oceans. The southern continent was Jambudvipa (literally, the island of the rose-apple tree, and also referred to by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka in his inscriptions), and within this, in the area to the south of the Himalaya, was Bharatavarsha, named after the ruler Bharata. Permutations on this scheme included projections incorporating several continents and oceans.

  Consciousness of space is also implicit in the listing of places of pilgrimage and the gradual expansion of these lists. The formulaic mention of conquered lands in the claims of those who took the title of digvijayin, conqueror of the four quarters, in the post-Gupta period also invoked space. The relationship between regions and larger entities changed as the peripheral and the unknown gradually became part of the mainstream. The latter was subject to still wider pulls: from central Asia in the north; from west Asia along the western coastal areas; and towards south-east Asia from various directions. To see the subcontinent only in terms of regions oriented to the cardinal directions may therefore not be historically apposite, however convenient this view is for handling its history.

  As part of the interest in the land-man relationship, regions are said to be either areas of attraction where human activity is evident in attempts to shape the landscape, or areas of isolation where human settlements tend to be remote and the landscape unchanging. This dichotomy should not be taken too literally. There are also areas of relative isolation that over time are incorporated into the territory of kingdoms. Forests and deserts, for example, would be areas of isolation, although forests provided many resources used by neighbouring states, such as timber, elephants, and semi-precious stones; and the use of routes across deserts led to quicker communication between surrounding regio
ns. Access was often obtained through negotiation with those who dwelt in each region.

  The Northern Mountains

  Geographically, the subcontinent has been divided into three major regions: the northern mountains, the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the peninsula. The northern mountains have been described in the past as a barrier to communication that isolates northern India from Asia. But in effect they were rarely barriers and the north-west of the subcontinent was in continuous communication with peoples and places in western and central Asia. It was almost as if such communication focused on the passes in the north-western mountains and intensified cross-cultural activities.

  The northern plain is bounded by the Hindu Kush and the Sulaiman and Kirthar Mountains to the north-west, and by the Himalaya to the north and north-east. The Hindu Kush is also a watershed, an elevated area that provides the geographical interface between the Oxus and the Indus Valleys. When seen from this perspective it ceases to be the barrier cutting off access to central Asia which it was once thought to be.

  The passes in the north-west mountains, although arid, were less snowbound than those of the higher Himalaya and therefore more frequently used. These included the Bolan, Gomal and Khyber passes. The fertile Swat Valley formed another route, as did the Hunza and Upper Indus Valley. The Khyber played an important role in the British attempt to control Afghanistan and contain the Russian presence in the nineteenth century, and has therefore been much romanticized in literature, becoming the focus of historical attention. But the Bolan may have been the more important route in the earliest period. It led to the Seistan area and the Helmand valley in Afghanistan, which in turn gave access to north-eastern Iran and central Asia. The Swat Valley attracted attention in modern histories because of its connections with the route of Alexander of Macedon.