The Incredible History of India's Geography

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  Finally, after thirteen days, the storm cleared up. The crew beached the ship on a small island, possibly one of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The leak was found and repaired and they set sail again. But the mood remained tense because the area was full of pirates and the crew wasn’t sure about its location. In the end, However, they finally set a course for Java.

  The ship arrived in Java after ninety days at sea. Fa Xian, like other Chinese pilgrims who visited India to study Buddhism, saw the world in largely religious terms. The only thing he had to say about Java is that its people were Hindus and not Buddhists. This was not really accurate. After staying in Java for five months, he set sail for China on a very large merchant ship.

  This ship should have been enormous because the crew alone was 200 in number! Fa Xian says he was very comfortable on the ship. It’s possible that this ship had private cabins. For over a month, the ship made good progress till it, too, hit a major storm! again, there was panic. Some of his fellow passengers apparently accused Fa Xian of bringing bad luck. They’d probably heard of his previous adventures and thought this was too much of a coincidence. Luckily for Fa Xian, a rich merchant defended him and the matter was settled.

  Meanwhile, the ship’s crew realized that they had been blown off-course and had no idea where they were. They had been at sea for seventy days by now and were running short on food and water. Because of this, some of the more experienced merchants decided to take control of the ship and set a new course. After sailing for twelve more days, the ship finally arrived on the Chinese coast. And thus ended one of the earliest accounts of a sea journey between India and China. This reminds us that voyages on the Indian Ocean were quite dangerous and that these ancient merchants ran enormous risks when they travelled to foreign lands.

  KINGS ON WHEELS

  When Fa Xian visited India, much of the country was under the Gupta Empire, the second of India’s great empires. The first of the Gupta Emperors was Chandragupta I (320–335 CE) who established control over the eastern Gangetic plain with his capital in Pataliputra (now Patna). It was his son Samudragupta who dramatically expanded the empire over his forty-year rule. First, he established control over the entire Gangetic plains. Then he led a campaign deep into southern India where he defeated the kings of the region and made them submit to his rule. Having become the most powerful monarch in the subcontinent, he then performed the Vedic ritual of the Ashwamedha Yagna and proclaimed himself the Chakravartin or Universal Monarch.

  Samudragupta’s successor, Chandragupta II or Vikramaditya, expanded the empire westward to include Malwa and Gujarat by defeating the Sakas (or Scythians) who had ruled this area for many generations. Many of the small kingdoms and republics of north-west India also submitted to the Guptas.

  There is strong evidence to suggest that the Guptas consciously modelled themselves on the Mauryans and wanted to recreate the empire that once belonged to them. Not only did two of their Emperors have the same name as Chandragupta Maurya, but the Guptas also went out of their way to place their own inscriptions next to the Mauryan ones.

  Much of what we know about the conquests of Samudragupta is from the inscriptions carved on an Ashokan pillar which is now in the Allahabad fort. Similarly, Skandagupta, fifth of the Gupta Emperors, placed his own inscription near a Mauryan one in Girnar, Gujarat. In art and literature also, we see that the Guptas were fascinated with the Mauryans. A well-known Sanskrit play from this period, Mudrarakshasa, is based on the story of how Chanakya and Chandragupta defeated the Nandas and then built a mighty empire.

  Many well-known scholars think that ancient Indians did not have a sense of history and that the extraordinary continuities of Indian history are all somehow accidental or unconscious. But isn’t it arrogant to think that ancient people were incapable of understanding their place in history? As we can see, the Gupta monarchs clearly wanted to establish a link not just with the Mauryans but as far back as the Bronze Age. At least two of the Gupta Emperors conducted the Ashwamedha yagna or Vedic Horse Sacrifice—a ritual that was considered ancient even in the fourth century CE. The Guptas also declared themselves Chakravartins, just as the Mauryans did. And they, too, used the symbol of the wheel to convey this.

  Just as the Guptas wanted to create a link with the past, they also wanted to create a link to the future. The rust-free Iron Pillar in Delhi is usually seen as an example of advanced metallurgy but it wasn’t really the technology that the Guptas wanted people to marvel at. Its real purpose was to provide a permanent record of their existence. What better way to do this than to inscribe on a solid iron pillar that would never rust?

  DARK AND LOVELY

  Though the Guptas tried to emulate the Mauryans, their empire was smaller than that of the latter’s. However, their two-hundred-year-rule was an economic and cultural boom. With ports on both coasts and control over major internal Highways, the empire grew prosperous. We notice all this described in Fa Xian’s diaries. The country must have also been well governed because though he wandered around alone for many years, the Chinese scholar does not seem to have been robbed or cheated. Later foreign travellers in India in subsequent centuries, like Xuan Zang and Ibn Batuta, all had to face armed bandits.

  The Gupta Emperors paid a lot of attention to intellectual and artistic excellence. It was under their rule that the astronomer-mathematician aryabhatta worked out that the earth was spherical and that it rotated on an axis. He said the phases of the moon were due to the movement of shadows and that the planets shone through reflected light. He even worked out a remarkably accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth and of the ratio π. All this a thousand years before copernicus and Galileo!

  Emperor Kumaragupta founded Nalanda University near his capital Pataliputra. Nalanda went on to become a famous centre for Buddhist studies (although it also taught many other subjects). Further west, the Guptas established a secondary capital in Ujjain. The city became a vital trade centre in the Southern Road and also an important centre of learning for the Hindu tradition. It is said that it was here that Kalidasa, often called India’s Shakespeare, composed his famous works. Ujjain is today a small town in Madhya Pradesh and it still has many ancient temples.

  Fa Xian gives us an account of what it was like to visit these places in those times. He says that the cities of the Gangetic plains were very large and rich. When he visited Pataliputra, he observed the ruins of Ashoka’s palace that still stood in the middle of the city after six centuries. He was so impressed by the sheer scale of the stone walls, towers and doorways that he thought they could not have been built by human hands—they must surely have been the work of supernatural creatures!

  While in Pataliputra, Fa Xian observed a festival during which the people built gigantic four-wheel wagons and then built towers on them that were five storeys high. They then covered the towers in fine white linen and decorated them with canopies of embroidered silk. He says that the people placed idols of their gods within these structures and images of the Buddha on the corners of the wagons.

  On the day of the festival, twenty such wagons would be pulled through the city in a grand procession. Devotees from everywhere, ranging from the royal family to the poor, were part of the festivities. They offered prayers and flowers to the gods and lit lamps in the evening. The whole city became like a fair ground with amusements and games. On this day, the rich made generous donations to the poor and physicians even held free health clinics for them.

  Can you guess which festival this is? Hint—it’s still celebrated in modern India! It is the Rath Yatra or Chariot Festival that is still popular among Hindus in many parts of the country. The most famous one is held in honour of Lord Jagannath in Puri, Orissa. This festival seems to have survived almost unchanged since Gupta times! The only significant difference is that earlier Buddhists used to actively be part of this festival. It looks like Buddhism and Hinduism were seen to be religions that went together despite the disputes among scholars about their respectiv
e teachings. This relationship is still alive among the Dharmic religions. The Nepali Hindus, for example, pray at Buddhist shrines just as Buddhist Thais commonly pray to the Hindu god Brahma and Punjabi Hindus visit Sikh gurudwaras.

  The Kamasutra (the Treatise on Love) was written during the rule of the Guptas. It gives us a vivid picture of what life was like for the rich and the idle in those times. A lot of importance was given to personal grooming—a man is required to have an oil massage, bathe, shave, apply perfumes and clean the sweat from his armpits. After lunch, a man ought to entertain himself by teaching his parrot to talk or by attending a cock-fight or ram-fight. Then, after a nap, he should dress up and head for the salon. Evenings were to be spent with friends, in the company of courtesans. The Kamasutra also describes picnics in the same way, with great detail on how people ought to enjoy themselves and have a good time! The lives of the idle nawabs of nineteenth-century Lucknow and the Bengali zamindars of early twentieth-century Kolkata were quite similar. The Page 3 socialites in cities like Mumbai and Delhi still enjoy such a lifestyle!

  What did people and their world look like in this period? We can find out by studying the carvings and paintings in the Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra. These caves were constructed during the rule of the Vakatakas, close allies of the Guptas. The paintings may not be of ordinary people but they still reveal glimpses of courtly life and what Indians of this period idealized. One of the most striking things is that most of the people in the paintings are very dark-skinned. It looks like ancient Indians had a preference for dark skin. There is a lot of other evidence also to support this. For example, Krishna is considered to be the most handsome male in Hindu tradition and his name literally means ‘the dark one’. He became blue-skinned because of medieval artists who depicted him that way. Similarly, Draupadi, the wife of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata, is also described as being very dark.

  Even in the medieval period, dark skin seems to have been the preference among Indians. Marco Polo says in his comments about India that the darkest man was the most highly esteemed and considered better than others who were not so dark. The gods and their idols were black while the devils were shown as white as snow. You only need to look at the idol of Lord Jagannath in Puri to see what Polo meant!

  It is not clear when things changed and fair skin came to be preferred in India, but we should remember that the traditional Indian aesthetic was very different from how we see it now. Not a very good thing for those who want to sell skin-whitening creams to modern Indian consumers! Of course, it’s not only Indians who have changed their tastes over the years. Just a few generations ago, Europeans thought pale white skin was so attractive that women were willing to risk poisoning by using an arsenic-based compound to whiten their skin. Today’s Europeans risk skin cancer from too much sunbathing! Whichever way you go, you basically can’t win.

  HOLY WATER

  By the first half of the sixth century, the Gupta Empire gradually began to crumble. There were internal problems and repeated attacks by the hunas (White Huns) from the North West. Taxila, the famous centre of learning, where Chanakya had once taught, was attacked by the Hunas around 470 CE. Over the next few decades, they pushed the Gupta defences back into the Gangetic valley. Some part of the empire remained for several generations but their days of glory were gone.

  After this, a number of powerful kingdoms rose and fell in northern India—the Palas of Bengal, Harsha of Thaneshwar and so on. The city of Pataliputra slowly went into decline and was replaced by Kannauj (now a small town in Uttar Pradesh). Both Nalanda and Ujjain, However, remained important centres of learning. Thinkers like Bhaskara and Varahamihira made great contributions to mathematics and astronomy. Chinese scholars continued to visit India to study Buddhism. Xuan Zang was one such scholar who visited India in the seventh century, over two hundred years after Fa Xian.

  Like Fa Xian, Xuan Zang also made his way to India through Central Asia. He spent over a decade in the subcontinent during which he criss-crossed the Gangetic plains and went as far East as assam. He even spent two years studying at Nalanda, which was then at the height of its fame.

  One of the places Xuan Zang visited on his travels was Allahabad (then called Prayag). This town is near the Triveni Sangam or the ‘Mingling of Three rivers’, considered a very sacred site in Hinduism. Two of the rivers are obvious—the Ganga and the Yamuna. The third is supposed to be the Saraswati which is said to flow underground and join the other two at this place. Though this ancient river has vanished, people still remember it.

  For a Hindu, the sins of a lifetime are believed to be washed away by taking a dip in this confluence of rivers. It is especially auspicious to do this at the time of the Kumbh Mela which is held here every twelve years. This is part of a four-year cycle by which this event is held in turn in Ujjain, Haridwar, Nasik and Allahabad. However, it is the great Kumbh Mela of Allahabad that is the largest and most prestigious. The last time this festival was held in Allahabad in 2013, close to a hundred million people participated in it!

  Xuan Zang tells us that large numbers of people participated in the festival in the seventh century, including the rulers of different countries and even Buddhists. He also describes the rituals of sadhus or ascetics. A large wooden column was erected in the middle of the river and the sadhus would climb it. At sunset, they would hang from the column with one leg and one arm while stretching out the other leg and arm into the air. They would then stare at the setting sun. The wooden pole and the particular ritual are no longer around but there are still ash-covered sadhus who visit the Kumbh Mela.

  Though these continuities are still present, it looks like the economic and cultural centre slowly shifted to the south. Even militarily, the southern kings had become more powerful. When Xuan Zang visited India, the northern plains had come under the rule of Emperor Harsha but he was soundly defeated by the Chalukya king Pulaksen II when he tried to extend his empire into the Deccan.

  The southern kingdoms had become so powerful because of trade—with the Indianized kingdoms of South East Asia as well as with the Persians and the Arabs who had replaced the Romans in the west. The kingdoms of the south were aware of the importance of trade and actively encouraged it. They were not afraid to fight to keep the trade routes open. The most famous examples of this are the Chola naval expeditions to South East Asia in the eleventh century.

  The Cholas were an ancient dynasty and are even mentioned in the Ashokan inscriptions. In the ninth to the eleventh century CE, they created an empire that covered most of peninsular India and briefly extended to the banks of the Ganga. The empire even included Sri Lanka and the Maldives! They had very good relations with kingdoms of South East Asia. Inscriptions on both sides show that there were large merchant communities and that the kings exchanged emissaries and gifts often.

  But a problem probably arose because the Cholas began to create direct trade links with the Song empire in China. Records show that the Cholas and the Chinese exchanged a number of trade delegations in the early eleventh century. Even before this, there was trade between India and China. A large Indian merchant community had been established in Guangzhou and there were even three Hindu temples functioning there. But there appears to have been a big boom in trade once the Song empire and the Cholas had established direct links.

  The Srivijaya kings who functioned as middlemen did not like this. They started to tighten controls and imposed heavy taxes on ships passing through the Straits of Malacca. An Arab text tells us that the Srivijaya kings demanded a levy of 20,000 dinars to allow a Jewish-owned ship to continue to China! This was a serious matter and the Cholas were not amused. They conducted a naval raid against Srivijaya in 1017 CE and then a more substantial expedition in 1025. This was a rare example of Indian military aggression outside the subcontinent. It did not last long However; a few decades later, the Cholas and the Srivijayas sent joint embassies to the Chinese.

  Just as India exerted its influence on South East Asia
, there were many influences from the South East that came to the subcontinent. For example, the University of Nalanda grew the way it did because of the strong financial support it received from the Srivijaya kings. South East Asian kingdoms like Angkor, Majapahit and Champa accepted Indian influences and built on them, innovating and adapting them to their own culture. Moreover, the Indonesians independently conducted their own maritime expeditions. From the third to the sixth century CE, they crossed the Indian Ocean and settled in Madagascar in large numbers. The first inhabitants of Madagascar thus came from distant Indonesia and not nearby Africa! The descendants of those Indonesian settlers still form a significant part of the population in Madagascar and the Malay language contains strong influences of dialects from Borneo.

  A CHAIN OF HISTORY

  Many scholars say that ancient Indians wrote only one formal history—Kalhana’s Rajatarangini or river of Kings, a history of the kings of Kashmir written in the twelfth century. They say that this shows how Indians did not have a sense of their history or of the continuity of their civilization. But the lengthy records maintained by different traditions like the Vanshavali of Nepal or the Burunjis of Assam that keep track of family lineages document the great importance given to remembering the past.

  Kashmir’s Kalhana saw himself as a link in this chain. He tells us that he read the works of eleven earlier historians and inspected numerous temple inscriptions and land records. He even criticized fellow historian Suvrata for leaving out details and making his history too short! Most of the works Kalhana studied may have been lost but they all clearly existed. Kalhana’s history is followed by three other works that continue the chronicle down to the time of the Mughal emperor Akbar.