The North-South axis and the East-West axis described in the epics are along two major trade routes. The Dakshina Path (Southern Road) made its way from the Gangetic plains through Central India to the southern tip of the peninsula while the Uttara Path (Northern Road) ran from eastern Afghanistan through Punjab and the Gangetic plains to the seaports of Bengal. These two highways have played a very important role in shaping the geographical and political history of India.
Did you know?
The British called the Uttara Path the Grand Trunk Road and rudyard Kipling described it as ‘a river of life as nowhere else exists in this world’. It survives today as National highway 1 between Delhi and Amritsar and National Highway 2 between Delhi and Kolkata. It is part of the Golden Quadrilateral network.
The Uttara Path was a busy route by the Iron Age. Since then, it has been continuously rebuilt, keeping to the original path for the most part. In contrast, the path of the Southern Road has drifted over time although certain points remained important over long periods. During the early Iron Age, the Dakshina Path probably began near Allahabad where two rivers, the Ganga and the Yamuna, flowed into each other. It then went in a south-westerly direction through Chitrakoot and Panchavati (near Nashik) and eventually to Kishkindha (near Hampi, modern Karnataka). This is the route that Rama is said to have followed during his exile.
Most scholars accept that the Ramayana is the older of the two texts. There are several versions of the epic, including versions that remain popular in other parts of Asia. The one that is most popular and possibly the oldest was composed by Sage Valmiki.
Did you know?
Sage Valmiki was once a bandit. He also belonged to one of so-called lowest castes in Hindu society—what we would today call the Dalits.
Though there are so many versions, the basic story is the same. Rama, the young and popular crown prince of Ayodhya (now a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh), is forced to give up his claim to the throne. He is exiled for fourteen years. Along with his wife, Sita, and younger brother Lakshmana, Rama heads south, crosses the Ganga near modern-day Allahabad and goes to live in the forests of central India.
After several years of living peacefully in the forest, Sita is abducted by Ravana, the powerful king of Lanka. Rama and his brother go to find her. On the way, at a place called Kishkindha, they make friends with a tribe of monkeys that promises to help them. Hanuman, the strongest of the monkeys, visits Lanka and discovers that Sita is being held captive in Ravana’s palace garden. Together with the army of monkeys, Rama marches towards Lanka but finds that he has to cross the sea to reach it. So Rama and the monkeys build a bridge from Rameswaram to Lanka. After a great battle in which Ravana is defeated and killed, Sita is rescued. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana then return to Ayodhya and Rama becomes the king. Most versions of the story end here but some others also tell of events after Rama’s return to Ayodhya. These parts appear to have been added later.
The Ramayana describes a journey from the Gangetic plains to the southern tip of India and on to Sri Lanka. Did people living in this region in those times have such extensive knowledge of the geography of South India? Could it be that the names of these places were fitted into the story later? But if one were to visit the sites described in the epic, it is not difficult to believe that Sage Valmiki actually did know about these places. For example, Kishkindha, the kingdom of the monkeys, is a site across the river from the medieval ruins of Vijayanagar at Hampi. This place has strange rock outcrops, caves with Neolithic paintings and bands of monkeys scampering across the boulders.
There are small details in Valmiki’s description that ring true even today if one were to look at the landscape. He must have either visited the place himself or heard detailed descriptions of it from merchants travelling the Dakshina Path. For example, the lake of Pampa, surrounded by a ring of rocky hills, where Rama first meets Hanuman, is still a beautiful place with lotuses in bloom and a variety of birds living in it. Not far away from this site is a sloth bear reserve—remember Jambavan, Hanuma’s sloth bear friend?
Archaeologists have found the remains of several Neolithic settlements in the area. It is possible that the setting was once home to a Neolithic tribe that used the monkey as a totem. It could be this tribe that is described as the vanaras by Valmiki.
The same can be said of the bridge from Rameswaram to Lanka. There exists a thirty-kilometre-long chain of shoals and sandbanks that links India to the northern tip of Sri Lanka. Are these remains of Rama’s bridge or the result of a geological process? Whatever you believe, you will agree that it truly is a remarkable feature! Today, we can see the true scale of the bridge through satellite or aerial photographs but Valmiki, who composed the epic, must have clearly known about its existence for him to write about it.
Ravana is the villain of the Ramayana but he is not shown as a barbarian (Mlechcha). He is portrayed as a learned Brahmin and a worshipper of Shiva. This tells us that the Iron Age Indians considered Ravana and his southern kingdom to be part of the Indian civilization. Even now, the Kanyakubja Brahmins of Vidisha claim Ravana as one of their own and worship him. The exchange of goods and ideas along the Southern Road, therefore, had linked the north and south of India long before its political unification under the Mauryans in the third century BCE.
The Mahabharata is made up of 1,00,000 verses and is said to be the longest composition in the world. Traditionally, it’s considered to have been composed by the sage Vyas but it appears to have been expanded over the centuries. We know that a shorter version of the epic was definitely in existence by the fifth century BC but it probably reached its current form centuries later.
MORE ABOUT THE MAHABHARATA
The Mahabharata is the story of the bitter rivalry for control over the kingdom of Hastinapur between the five Pandava brothers and their cousins, the hundred Kauravas. The two first agree to divide the kingdom and the Pandavas build a new capital called Indraprastha. The new capital is so beautiful that the Kauravas are filled with envy. They challenge the Pandavas to a game of dice that is fixed by their maternal uncle, Shakuni. The Pandavas gamble away the kingdom and are exiled for thirteen years. During this time, the Pandavas wander across India. However, when they return after the period of exile, the Kauravas refuse to return the kingdom.
The dispute grows and finally at the great battle of Kurukshetra, in which almost every kingdom of India is said to have taken sides, the Pandavas defeat the Kauravas. Krishna, the leader of the Yadava clan and king of Dwarka, sides with the Pandavas. The last act of the battle takes place away from the main battlefield. Bhima, the strongest of the Pandava brothers, kills Duryodhana, the leader of the Kauravas, in single combat on the banks of the Saraswati. By now, the river would have dwindled to a shadow of its former self. Perhaps no more than a rain-fed seasonal river.
Many of the places mentioned in the Mahabharata are located around Delhi. For example, Gurgaon, which is now full of tall office buildings and shopping malls, was a village that belonged to Dronacharya, the teacher who trained the Pandavas and the Kauravas in martial arts. The name Gurgaon literally means ‘village of the teacher’. The Pandava capital of Indraprastha is said to be located under the Purana Quila in Delhi. The site even had a village called Indrapat till the nineteenth century. Excavations between 1954 and 1971 found that there was a major settlement there that dates at least to the fourth century BCE. Pottery shards suggest there may be an older Iron Age settlement nearby.
Similarly, the site of Hastinapur is identified with a site close to modern Meerut. The battlefield of Kurukshetra is nearby, in the state of Haryana. A little further, we have the cities of Mathura and Kashi (Varanasi), which remain sacred places for Hindus even today.
One of the most interesting Mahabharata-related sites is that of Dwarka in the westernmost tip of Gujarat. It is said to have been founded by Krishna as his capital after he led his people from Mathura to Gujarat. Thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra battle, the city is said to
have been flooded and taken by the sea. Underwater surveys near the temple-town of Dwarka and the nearby island of Bet Dwarka have come up with stone anchors, a sunken jetty and elaborate walls suggesting the existence of an ancient port in the area. This is yet another example of how nature has directed the course of history!
None of this confirms the events of the Mahabharata historically but it strongly suggests that the composers of the epic were talking about real places. Of course, there are gaps between the archaeological findings and the information in the texts, but this is only to be expected after such a long lapse of time.
Did you know?
Till the nineteenth century, the places mentioned in the Greek epic Iliad were considered to be mythical. However, excavations have shown that Troy and many of the places mentioned in the epic were actually real! Similarly, Chinese legends about the ancient Shang dynasty (around 1600–1046 BCE) have now been confirmed by modern archaeology.
As mentioned earlier, the Mahabharata largely has an East-West axis. Most of the action takes place around Delhi and the Gangetic plains but the eastern and western extremes of the subcontinent also play an important role. Gandhari, the mother of the Kauravas, is from the kingdom of Gandhara, which is now eastern Afghanistan. It is her cunning brother, Shakuni, who turns the Kauravas against the Pandavas and fixes the game of dice, ultimately causing the war.
On the other geographical extreme, India’s north-East is mentioned for the first time in the epic. Arjuna, the most handsome of the Pandava brothers, makes his way to remote Manipur during his years of exile. There he meets the warrior-princess Chitrangada. They fall in love and marry but under the condition that Chitrangada would not have to follow Arjuna back to the Gangetic plains. Their son eventually becomes the king of Manipur and also participates in the Kurukshetra battle.
Did you know?
The people of the tiny Bishnupriya community that still lives in Manipur and neighbouring states trace their origin to the Mahabharata. They speak a language that is related to Assamese and contains Tibetan-Burman words but still preserves several features of the archaic Prakrit!
Since the Kurukshetra battle is said to have involved all the tribes and kingdoms of India, the Mahabharata gives us long lists of kingdoms, clans and cities. Many of them were probably added to the text in later times. However, these lists give us a rough idea of the Indian world view during the Iron Age. The name Mahabharata itself is interesting as it can be read to mean ‘Greater India’. This would make sense for an epic that claims to tell a story involving all the clans of the subcontinent. Also, the name makes a reference to Emperor Bharata who is said to have conquered the whole country (but he plays no important role in the Central plot). The epic is told as a history of the Bharata people. Since there is no evidence of the all-conquering Emperor Bharata, it is possible that this is an echo of the powerful Bharata tribe mentioned in the Rig Veda. Did Sudasa’s victory against the ten tribes create a dream of nationhood as we understand it today?
Let’s look at India’s neighbour China and its ideas of nationhood. Long before the country was united into an empire by Qin Shi Huangdi in the third century BCE, there was a strongly held belief that the country had once been united under the ‘Yellow Emperor’ and his four successors. There is no archaeological evidence to support such a grand empire but it has been a very powerful idea throughout Chinese history.
The notion of nationhood is not a simple one. It has meant different things to different people at different points in time. The Partition of India in 1947, for instance, was partly due to a fundamental difference in views about the nature of India’s nationhood. Still, it is important to understand how Bronze Age ideas, shaped in the Iron Age, have influenced the way people have viewed themselves since.
The epics also suggest a shift of political power to the eastern Gangetic plains during the Iron Age. It is more obvious in the Ramayana as the kingdom of Ayodhya is in the east. In the Mahabharata, most of the action takes place near Delhi in the north-west but, even here, we are told of the powerful kingdom ruled by Jarasandha in Magadh (modern Bihar). Even Krishna was forced to shift his people from Mathura to Gujarat because of the repeated raids of the Magadhan army. The rise of Magadh would play an important role later in Indian history—we’ll read more about that later.
Why was Magadh so successful? It could be because of its geographical access to three important resources—rice, trade and iron. The kingdom not only had control over very fertile lands but was also served by a number of rivers including the Ganga itself. Moreover, the kingdom controlled the trade between the Uttara Path between the North-West and the emerging seaports of Bengal. It also had access to iron ore from what is now Jharkhand. The kingdom’s first capital, rajgir (also referred to as Rajagriha or ‘king’s home’), is defended by the hills and sits strategically between the fertile farmlands to the north and the mines to the south. In short, Magadh was able to feed large armies and arm them with iron weapons.
ENTER THE LION
India is the only country in the world where lions and tigers co-exist. As mentioned in Chapter 1, tigers evolved in East Asia and probably entered the subcontinent around 12,000 years ago. Soon, they spread across the subcontinent. Tigers commonly appear in Harappan art and seals. But the lion is nowhere to be seen! None of the main Harappan sites have thrown up any images of the lion. This is very strange because we see the lion being given a lot of importance in later Indian culture.
The tiger hunts at night in the dense jungle. It’s an object of fear. The lion, on the other hand, hunts in the open. With its shaggy mane and confidence, it’s usually seen as a symbol of power. Every culture that has encountered the lion has tended to give the animal a special status. Even countries that have never had lions, such as Britain and China, have used the animal to symbolize power. In ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium BCE, only the king could hunt lions. In ancient Egypt as well, only royalty could go lion hunting. Amenhotep III (1391–52 BCE) killed as many as 102 lions in the first decade of his rule! at Beital-Wali in Lower Nubia, a tame lioness is shown near the throne of rameses II (1290–24 BCE) with the inscription ‘Slayer of his Enemies’. Five centuries later, the court records of the Assyrian King Ashurabanipal II (884–859 BCE) mention that he killed 370 lions with his spears!
The lion is also represented in many sculptures, friezes and paintings in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Sumerian goddess Nana, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar and the Persian goddess Anahita are all associated with the lion and sometimes depicted riding the lion—rather like the Hindu goddess Durga.
The lion then was an important animal in art, culture, royal symbolism and religion in the Middle East from a very early period. So why did the Harappans ignore such a glorious beast?
This was probably because the animal was not common in the subcontinent till after the collapse of the Harappan Civilization. Before 2000 BCE, north-west India was much wetter than it is today with higher rainfall. The Saraswati river would have been in full flow. The lion hunts in open grasslands. It could not have gone to the dense jungles, which were full of tigers. But when the climate became drier and the Saraswati began to dwindle, there would have been a phase when the lions from Iran could have made their way through Baluchistan. This is possibly why the earliest artefact depicting a lion in the subcontinent, a golden goblet, was found in Baluchistan.
As Harappan urban centres were abandoned and populations migrated to the Gangetic plains, the lions would have taken over the wilderness. Over time, they would travel as far east as Bihar and north-western Orissa, living in many places along with tigers. They did not make further inroads into eastern and Southern India as the forests were too thick and the climate too wet. The Rig Veda does mention the lion but it does not give it as much importance as it does the horse or the bull. How did the Vedic people know of the animal if it did not exist in the Sapta-Sindhu heartland? Could it be that the word for lion, Singha, was simply something that they used to
describe all big cats, including tigers? The dual use of the word is responsible for the naming of Singapore! More on that later. Some experts feel that the Vedic description of a hunt suggests lions rather than tigers. It’s possible that while the lion was not common in the Sapta-Sindhu region, the Vedic people may have encountered it in lands to the west of the Indus (remember the lion goblet found in Baluchistan?). However, we don’t know enough about this period to be absolutely sure.
Whichever way the lion entered the subcontinent, it quickly became a cultural symbol in the land, just as it had been in the Middle East. The word for ‘throne’ in Sanskrit is ‘singhasana’, which means ‘seat of the lion’. We’ve already seen how Durga, the Hindu goddess of strength and war, is shown riding a lion while slaying a demon. The Mahabharata repeatedly uses the image of a lion to convey strength and vigour. Even now, communities that are proud of their martial tradition, like the Rajputs and the Sikhs, commonly use Singh as their surname. Yes, Singh means lion!
The lion also plays a significant role in the Mahavamsa, a Pali epic from Sri Lanka. According to it, the Sinhalese people are the descendants of Prince Vijaya and his followers who sailed down to Sri Lanka in the sixth century BCE from what is now Orissa and West Bengal. Prince Vijaya was the son of a lion and a human princess—and this is why the Sinhalese call themselves by this name, which means ‘lion people’. The country’s national flag has a lion holding a sword.
The Incredible History of India's Geography Page 5
