The Incredible History of India's Geography

by Sanjeev Sanyal

  When Akbar conquered Kashmir in the sixteenth century, he was given a copy of Rajatarangini that was translated to Persian. A summary was then included in the Ain-i-Akbari, the chronicles of Akbar’s own rule, in order to link him into this historical chain.

  Kalhana’s history is not just about kings and battles; it also contains an interesting account of how human activities changed the landscape of Kashmir. He tells of the minister Suyya who carried out many major engineering works during the reign of Avantivarman in the ninth century. The landslides and soil erosion had led to a great deal of rubble and stone being deposited in the Jhelum river and this was disturbing its flow (the Kashmir floods of 2014 demonstrated the risks). This rubble was removed and embankments were built. The landscape was restructured to human use as dams created new lakes while old ones were drained to clear the way for cultivation. It is suggested that Suyya may have significantly altered the course of the Jhelum and Indus rivers. It looks like much of the ‘natural’ beauty of Kashmir may actually be due to thousands of years of human intervention!

  5

  Sinbad the Sailor

  We’re now in the part of the story when Emperor Harsha was building his empire and Xuan Zang, the second Chinese scholar we discussed, was setting off on his long pilgrimage. Around this time, there was a former merchant called Muhammad whose actions would have a great impact on the world over the years.

  By the time Prophet Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, died in 632 CE, he already controlled much of the Arabian Peninsula. Within a century, his followers created an empire that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia. In the eighth century, the arabs gained some control in Sindh by defeating Raja Dahir.

  This victory in Sindh, However, did not seem to have had much effect on the Indian heartland. The Arabs tried to expand further but they were warded off by the Rashtrakuta and the Gurjara-Pratihara kingdoms (the latter gave their name to the state of Gujarat). Arabian records from these times talk of the excellence of the Indian cavalry. The emerging Rajput military class actually seems to have made counter-attacks of its own on the Arab Peninsula and much of Afghanistan continued to be ruled by the Hindu Shahis well into the tenth century. For the first several centuries of Islam, India’s interaction with the religion was not about conquests but about trade.

  A SWORD LIKE WATER

  The Arabs had been actively trading with India even before the origin of Islam. In the early seventh century, the ports along the western coast were regularly visited by Byzantines, Persians, Yemenis, Omanis and even Ethiopians. There were merchants from the Mecca region too. Muhammad probably knew many of the merchants who visited India.

  The Cheraman Juma Masjid is said to have been established in 629 CE. That would make it India’s oldest mosque and the world’s second oldest one! It’s difficult to prove the exact date but there’s no doubt that the mosque is indeed ancient and that it was built in the early years of Islam. It stands close to the site of ancient Muzaris. Old photographs show that the building was originally built in the style of local temple architecture. Sadly, during renovations in 1984, the old structure was changed and domes and minarets were included to make it appear more ‘Islamic’. Now there is talk of changing it back to attract tourists but it will never quite be the same.

  With the creation of the Islamic empire, and with its headquarters in Baghdad, the Arabs controlled a vast trading network. Arab merchants sailed the Mediterranean, criss-crossed the Sahara in camel caravans, traded for Chinese silks in the bazaars of Central Asia and made their way down the East African coast in search of slaves. Do you remember the remarkable adventure tales of Sinbad the Sailor? Even if the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, which belong to this age, are fictional, they quite clearly convey the spirit of the era!

  The Iraqi port of Basra became the most important trading centre of the empire because of its nearness to the capital. Indian goods and merchants dominated this market so much that the Arabs spoke of Basra as ‘belonging to al-Hind’. The commodities of trade included perfumes, spices, ginger, textiles and medicinal substances. After the Arabs conquered Sindh, large numbers of slaves were also brought in from there.

  Interestingly, the most important Indian export of the period was the steel sword. Indians were famous at that time for the quality of their metal goods and the swords used by early Muslim armies were often of Indian origin. This remained true even at the time of the Christian Crusades. The famous ‘damascus Sword’ was either imported from India or was made using Indian techniques.

  A Damascus steel sword is very distinctive to look at. It has patterns in the steel (because of banding and mottling) that give it the appearance of flowing water. Such blades were famous for being tough and resistant to shattering. They could be honed to a very sharp, durable edge.

  Just as in South East Asia, there were large numbers of Indian merchants who lived along the ports of the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf as well as in inland trading towns. Similarly, Arab merchants also came in large numbers to the ports along India’s western coast. The famous Arab historian and geographer Masudi tells us that Indian kings welcomed the traders and allowed them to build their own mosques. He tells us of a particularly large settlement of ten thousand Muslims in the district of Saymur where immigrants from Oman, Basra, Siraf and Baghdad had permanently settled.

  Farther south, there were a number of Arab settlements in Kerala where the Arabs mixed with local converts. Their descendants, the Moplahs or Mappilas, form a quarter of the state’s population today. Since the 1970s, However, these people (and others from Kerala), have been going in large numbers to work in the oil-rich Arab states because of changing times.

  Meanwhile, farther north, Gujarat became home to the Parsis, followers of the Zoroastrian tradition. As discussed in Chapter 2, the origins of the Zoroastrian tradition are closely linked to the Rig Vedic people. For fifteen hundred years or more, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia. But its influence reduced greatly after the Islamic conquest of the region. Religious persecution (the punishment of people who did not follow the faith of the conquerors) was quite common. A small group of Zoroastrians therefore escaped to Gujarat in the eighth century. According to the Qissa-i-Sanjan (an epic poem that the Zoroastrians believe is an account of their early years in the Indian subcontinent) the local Hindu king allowed them to settle on his Land on the condition that they give up their arms and adopt the local language—Gujarati. They were, however, given full freedom to follow their religion.

  The descendants of these people migrated to Mumbai in the nineteenth century to repair and build ships for the British. Some of them sailed to British-controlled Hong Kong and made large profits from participating in the opium trade with China. The Parsis brought back this money and built large commercial and industrial enterprises in Mumbai. They are still one of India’s most successful business communities.

  Apart from slaves and merchants, there were several other Indian groups in the Middle East during this period, including mercenaries. A mercenary is a person who fights for money and can be hired by anyone to be on their side during a war. He has no particular loyalty to anyone or any group. According to the oral tradition of the Mohyal Brahmins of Punjab, some of their ancestors died fighting for Hussein in the Battle of Karbala, Iraq in 680 CE. This is why this particular group of Hindus, also known as Husseini Brahmins, still join Shia Muslims during the ritual mourning of Muharram every year.

  At about the same time, another group from Central India travelled west, across the Middle East, to Europe. We know them today as the Gypsies or the Roma. Language and culture have always indicated that there is a link between the Roma and India, and genetic studies have now confirmed it. We don’t know why this group left the subcontinent; it is possible that they were a group of stranded soldiers from Gurjara-Pratihara armies fighting the Turks and Arabs in Sindh. They were probably always a nomadic group and some circumstances may have made them move westwar
ds.

  In 1971, at the World Romani conference near London, the Roma adopted a blue and green flag for their nomadic nation. At the centre of the flag, they placed a wheel—the symbol of the Chakravartin. We must admit that the Roma probably have the greatest claim to this symbol now. Their wheels can truly roll in any direction!

  The exchange of goods, people and ideas was happening within the subcontinent just as it was happening with the outside world. For example, the philosopher Adi Shankaracharya, who was from Kerala in the extreme south, travelled all over the country in the eighth century. His ideas became influential within the subcontinent and beyond it. Similarly, the Shakti tradition associated with the worship of Goddess Durga and her incarnations started in the Eastern regions of Bengal and Assam. However, by the medieval period, there were fifty-two shakti-peeths or pilgrimage sites related to this tradition, which were spread across the subcontinent—from Kamakhya in Assam to hinglaj in Baluchistan, and from Jwalamukhi in Himachal Pradesh to Jaffna in Sri Lanka. There are even Shakti temples in South East Asia. The ninth-century Prambanan temple complex in Central Java, Indonesia, has a shrine dedicated to the goddess Durga slaying the demon Mahishasura. This exquisitely carved idol would not look out of place in the annual Durga puja festival in modern Kolkata!

  WATCH OUT, IT’S THE TURKS!

  In many ways, life in the subcontinent till the beginning of the eleventh century remained more or less the same as earlier times. Maritime trade continued to flourish in the southern ports, and foreign scholars came in large numbers to study in Nalanda. There had been changes in architecture, technology and style, but the cities of the subcontinent would have been quite familiar to a visitor from a thousand years earlier. However, all this was about to change.

  In the late tenth century, the Turks began to invade the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Afghanistan. In 963 CE, they captured the strategically important town of Ghazni. From there, they conquered the Hindu Shahi kingdom of Kabul and pushed them back into Punjab. The Shahis fought back for decades but on 27 November 1001, they were defeated by Mahmud of Ghazni in a battle near Peshawar. The Shahi king Jayapala was so distraught that he gave up his throne to his son and stepped on to his own funeral pyre. The Shahis continued to fight the Turks but their power had reduced considerably.

  Over the next twenty-five years, Mahmud made seventeen raids into India, many of them directed at wealthy temple towns such as Mathura and Nagarkot. His most infamous raid was against the temple of Somnath, Gujarat, in 1026 CE. It is said that this attack left over fifty thousand people dead and about twenty million dirhams worth of gold, silver and gems were taken away. The Somnath temple has since been destroyed and rebuilt many times but it is Ghazni’s raid that is still remembered most vividly.

  The Somnath temple as it stands today was built in the early 1950s. Its reconstruction was one of the first major projects started shortly after India became a republic. Standing right on the seashore, the temple is a wonderful place to watch the sun set. But something of Ghazni’s massacre still seems to linger in the air. Barely half a kilometre away is the spot where the Pandava warrior arjuna is said to have conducted the last rites of Krishna. Three rivers meet in the sea here—one of them is named Saraswati.

  The Turks were eager to gain wealth and spread their religion but there was also another important interest they had in mind—the capture of slaves. Over the next few centuries, hundreds of thousands of Indian slaves—particularly from West Punjab and Sind—were marched into Afghanistan and were then sold in the bazaars of Central Asia and the Middle east. They were unused to the extreme cold of the Afghan mountains and died in such large numbers that the range came to be known as the Hindukush or the ‘Killer of Hindus’.

  These raids and invasions were not met with a strong response as there would have been in the times of the Mauryans or the Guptas. The last great Hindu empire of North India—that of the Gurjara-Pratiharas—was reduced in power and the heart of the civilization had shifted south to the Vindhyas. The most powerful Indian kingdom of that time was that of the Cholas, who ruled in the far south and were not much concerned with what was happening in the North West.

  Meanwhile, freed from the political and cultural domination of the Gangetic plains, central India experienced a cultural and economic boom. This was the age of the remarkable Raja Bhoj, the warrior-scholar who ruled much of central India and of the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, who built the temples of Khajuraho.

  Raja Bhoj is not given much importance by historians but central India is full of stories and ballads about him. How much of these are true? It’s hard to say but one cannot deny his importance to this region. Raja Bhoj rebuilt the Somnath temple, fought against many Turkish raids and built one of the largest forts in the world at Mandu in Madhya Pradesh. But the most visible of his achievements is the huge lake that he created using an earthen dam in Bhopal, a city that is named after him. Before the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the city was best known for this body of water. It shows the skills of the medieval engineers. The lake still stands, after all these years, proving that big dams work well in the Malwa plateau unlike the Himalayas where tectonics and silt can make them risky to build.

  Farther north, the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, who once used to submit to the Gurjara-Pratiharas, carved out a small but powerful kingdom for themselves after the latter lost their powers in the tenth century. They celebrated their successes by building the famous temple of Khajuraho, which is now a UNESCO World heritage Site. The Kandariya Mahadev temple, the largest in the complex, is said to have been built after the Chandelas fended off Mahmud Ghazni himself!

  There are many striking sculptures in Khajuraho that depict lions or lion-like dragons. Many of them are shown locked in combat with a Chandela king or warrior, including female warriors. Just like the Mauryans, the Chandelas also liked to use the lion as a symbol of power. There are no tigers anywhere among the sculptures, but the Panna Tiger Reserve is just a twenty-minute drive away from Khajuraho. Was this a region dominated by lions in those times? Or did the Chandelas simply think that tigers were not symbolic of royal power?

  For a century and half after Mahmud’s raids, the Turks were mostly restricted to West Punjab. But in 1192, Muhammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan, the Rajput king of Delhi and Ajmer, in the Second Battle of Tarain (150 km from Delhi in the modern state of Haryana).

  The Turks occupied Delhi and then invaded the rest of India. By 1194, Varanasi and Kannauj were captured and ransacked. Kannauj never really recovered from this attack. Within a few years, the University of Nalanda was destroyed by Bakhtiyar Khilji. Its library was torched and most of its scholars were put to death.

  While there were many Brahmin scholars at Nalanda, most of them who were killed were probably Buddhist monks. Some of those who survived stayed on but most fled to Tibet where they continued following their traditions till the chinese takeover of the mid-twentieth century. After Nalanda, Bakhtiyar Khilji attacked and completely destroyed Vikramshila, another famous Buddhist university. Buddhism was already losing its influence in the subcontinent and these attacks led to its collapse. In 1235, Sultan Iltutmish attacked Ujjain, once the secondary capital of the Guptas and a major centre for the study of mathematics, literature, astronomy and Hindu philosophy. It was around the same time that these universities were being destroyed that the University of Oxford was being established on the other side of the planet.

  By the end of the thirteenth century, armies led by generals like Malik Kafur made raids into the deep south. This was a bloody period in Indian history—ancient cities, universities and temples were ravaged and millions were probably killed. And so ended the second cycle of urbanization that had begun in the Gangetic plains during the Iron age.

  Some sparks from the old times remained alive in the city of Vijayanagar in the far South and in the even more faraway kingdoms of South East Asia. However, India was starting on a new cycle of urbanization which was influenced a great deal by Central Asia and P
ersia. This book can’t go into all of it in detail, so we will look at the next cycle of urbanization largely through the evolution of its most prominent city—Delhi.

  MANY, MANY DELHIS

  People have been living in and around Delhi from the Stone age—tools and other objects made of stone have been found in the ridges of the Aravalli range. The Rig Vedic people would have been familiar with this region since it is in the Eastern corner of the Sapta-Sindhu. Remains from the late Harappan Age have also been found here. It could be that this was one of the places where the Harappans settled when the Saraswati dried up.

  Since this time, cities have been built, abandoned, destroyed, and rebuilt many times. Some say Delhi has been built eight times. Others say the number is sixteen. In the last 150 years alone we have seen a full cycle. After Delhi was sacked by the British in 1858, its urban population fell to a mere 1,54,417 people. Today, the National Capital Region is home to twenty million people and it is growing rapidly.

  The terms ‘Old Delhi’ and ‘New Delhi’ have meant different things at different points in time. When William Sleeman visited the city in 1836, he called Shahjehanabad what we now call ‘Old Delhi’,‘New Delhi’. To him, Old Delhi was the ruins that were scattered from Mehrauli to Purana Qila—the area that we now call New Delhi!

  As we discussed in Chapter 3, many of the events of the Mahabharata are said to have happened in the area around Delhi. Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas, was situated in Delhi along the banks of the Yamuna. Archaeological excavations inside the Purana Qila fort, under which this site was believed to have been, bear evidence of a late Iron Age settlement. The settlement seems to have been occupied till the Gupta period. There is a small museum in Purana Qila which displays photographs and artefacts from the excavations.