The Hindus

by Wendy Doniger

  Katherine Ulrich read several long, long drafts, catching many howlers as well as stylistic tics, pinpointing obscurities, suggesting books and articles, challenging unsupported assumptions, and sustaining me with no-nonsense, appreciative, and often hilarious comments. To cap it all, she gave me the image of the composite horse that appears on the jacket of this book, not just finding it but buying it and carrying it back from India for me. This book is dedicated to her and to William Dalrymple, who stood by me at the lecture in London in 2003 when someone threw an egg at me and who then threw down a gauntlet in his subsequent article about the need to tell the history of Hinduism in a new way. I am grateful to him not only for his encouragement but for the example that he sets in his own work, writing about the history of India in a way that brings it alive to readers of all backgrounds and raises the important issues that give such writing its life and meaning.

  Truro, August 2008

  CHRONOLOGY

  BCE

  c. 50,000 Stone Age cultures arise

  c. 30,000 Bhimbetka cave paintings are made

  c. 6500 Agriculture begins

  c. 4000-3000 *Indo-European breaks up into separate

  languages

  c. 3000 Pastoral nomad societies emerge

  c. 2500 Urban societies merge along the Indus

  River

  c. 2200-2000 Harappa is at its height

  c. 2100-2000 Light-spoked chariots are invented

  c. 2000-1500 The Indus Valley civilization declines

  c. 1900 The Sarasvati River dries up

  c. 1700-1500 Horses arrive in Northwest India

  c. 1700-1500 Nomads in the Punjab compose the

  Rig Veda; horses arrive in Northwest India

  c. 1350 Hittite inscriptions speak about horses

  and gods

  c. 1200-900 The Vedic people compose the Yajur

  Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda

  c. 1100-1000 Vedic texts mention the Doab, the

  area between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers

  c. 1000 The city of Kaushambi in Vatsa is founded

  c. 950 The Mahabharata battle is said to have taken place

  c. 900 The city of Kashi (Varanasi, Benares) is founded

  c. 900 The Vedic people move down into the Ganges Valley

  c. 800-600 The Brahmanas are composed

  c. 600-500 Aranyakas are composed

  c. 500 Shrauta Sutras are composed

  c. 500 Pataliputra is founded; Vedic peoples gradually move southward

  c. 500-400 Early Upanishads are composed

  c. 483 or 410 Siddhartha Gautama, the

  Buddha, dies

  c. 468 Vardhamana Mahavira, the Jina, founder of Jainism, dies

  c. 400-100 Later Upanishads are composed

  c. 400-100 Writing is used in the Ganges Valley

  c. 327-325 Alexander the Great invades Northwest South Asia

  c. 324 Chandragupta founds the Mauryan dynasty

  c. 300 Grihya Sutras are composed

  c. 300-100 Dharma-Sutras are composed

  c. 300 Greeks and Ashoka mention Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras

  c. 265-232 Ashoka reigns

  c. 250 The Third Buddhist Council takes place at Pataliputra

  c. 185 The Mauryan dynasty ends

  c. 185 Pushyamitra founds the Shunga dynasty

  73 The Shunga dynasty ends

  c. 166 BCE-78 CE Greeks, Scythians, Bactrians, and Parthians enter India

  c. 300 BCE-300 CE The Mahabharata is composed

  c. 200 BCE-200 CE The Ramayana is composed

  CE

  c. 78-140 Kanishka reigns and encourages Buddhism

  c. 100 Cankam (“assembly”) poetry is composed

  c. 100 “Manu” composes his Dharma-shastra

  c. 150 The monuments of Bharhut and Sanchi are built

  c. 150 Rudradaman publishes the first Sanskrit inscription, at Junagadh

  c. 200 Kautilya composes the Artha-shastra

  c. 300 Vatsyayana Mallanaga composes the Kama-sutra

  320-550 The Gupta dynasty reigns from Pataliputra

  350-750 The early Puranas are composed

  c. 375 The Pallava dynasty is founded

  c. 400-477 Kalidasa writes Sanskrit plays and long poems

  405-411 Faxian visits India

  c. 450 The Harivamsha is composed

  455-467 The Huns attack North India

  c. 460-477 The Vakataka dynasty completes the

  caves at Ajanta

  c. 500-900 Nayanmar Shaiva Tamil poets live

  550-575 Kalachuris create the cave of Shiva at Elephanta

  c. 550-880 Chalukya dynasty thrives

  c. 600-930 Alvar Vaishnava Tamil poets live

  606-647 Harsha reigns at Kanauj

  630-644 Xuan Zang (Hsuan Tsang) visits India

  650-800 Early Tantras are composed

  c. 650 Arabs reach the Indus

  711-715 Arabs invade Northwest India

  750-1500 Medieval Puranas are composed

  765-773 Raja Krishna I creates the Kailasa temple to Shiva at Ellora

  c. 788-820 Shankara, nondualist philosopher, lives in Kerala

  c. 800 Manikkavacakar composes the Tiruvacakam

  c. 880-1200 The Chola Empire dominates

  South India

  900 and 1150 The Chandellas build the temples at Khajuraho

  c. 975-1025 Abhinavagupta, Shaiva philosopher, lives in Kashmir

  1001 Mahmud of Ghazni (979-1030) raids North India

  1021 Ghaznavid (Turkish) Muslim capital

  established at Lahore

  c. 1056-1137 Ramanuja, qualified Dualist philosopher, lives in Tamil country

  1192-1206 Muhammad of Ghor establishes Ghorid capital at Delhi

  c. 1200 Jayadeva lives in Bengal

  1210-1526 The Delhi Sultanate is in power

  1325-1351 Muhammad bin Tughluq reigns

  c. 1200 Early orders of Sufis arise in North India

  c. 1200 Virashaivas, including Basava, live in South India

  1238-1258 Narasimhadeva I builds the temple of Konarak

  c. 1238-1317 Madhva, dualist philosopher, lives in Karnataka

  c. 1300 Shri Vaishnavas split into Cats and Monkeys

  c. 1336-1565 Vijayanagar Empire is in its prime

  c. 1398-1448 Kabir lives

  1399 Timur, ruler of Central Asia, destroys Delhi

  1469-1539 Guru Nanak founds Sikhism in the Punjab

  1486-1533 Chaitanya lives

  1498-1597 Mirabai lives

  1526 Babur founds the Mughal Empire

  1530-1556 Humayun reigns

  1532-1623 Tulsidas lives

  1556-1605 Akbar reigns

  1600 (December 31) Queen Elizabeth I charters the

  British East India Company

  1605-1627 Jahangir reigns

  1608-1649 Tukaram lives

  1622-1673 Kshetrayya lives

  1627-1658 Shah Jahan reigns

  1658-1707 Aurangzeb reigns

  1713-1719 Farrukhsiyar reigns

  1750-1755 The Bengal Famine causes ten million deaths

  1756 The Black Hole of Calcutta causes dozens of deaths

  1757 The British East India Company defeats the Muslim rulers in Bengal

  1757 First wave of British Raj begins

  1765 Robert Clive becomes chancellor of Bengal

  1772-1833 Rammohun Roy lives; 1828 founds Brahmo Samaj

  1782-1853 Sir Charles James Napier lives

  1813 Second wave of British Raj begins

  1824-1883 Dayananda Sarasvati; 1875, founds Arya Samaj

  1857-1858 The Rebellion, formerly known as the Mutiny, takes place

  1857 Third wave of the British Raj begins

  1858 The British viceroy officially replaces Mughal

  rule (and the East India Company)

  1863-1902 Swami Vivekananda lives

  1865-1936 Rudyard Kipling lives

  1869-1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gan
dhi,

  known as Mahatma Gandhi, lives

  1861-1941 Rabindranath Tagore lives

  1875 Helena Blavatsky founds the Theosophical Society

  1893 Vivekananda attends the World’s Parliament

  of Religions in Chicago

  1897 Vivekananda founds the Vedanta movement in America

  1896-1977 A. C. Bhaktivedanta, Swami Prabhupada (founder of ISKCON), lives

  1918-2008 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (founder of Transcendental Meditation) lives

  1919 Amritsar massacre takes place

  1931-1990 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) lives

  1947 Independence; Partition

  1970- Hindus in Europe, United States, and

  Canada start building temples

  GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING

  OF WORDS IN SANSKRIT AND OTHER

  INDIAN LANGUAGES

  Sanskrit vowels are pronounced very much like Italian vowels. The aspirated consonants should be pronounced distinctly: bh as in “cab horse,” dh as in “mad house,” gh as in “dog house,” ph as in “top hat,” and th as in “goat herd.”

  Traditionally, scholars have used diacriticals to distinguish between long and short vowels and among three different forms of s in Sanskrit, as well as to mark other nice points of the orthography of Sanskrit and other Indian languages that are essential for the citation of texts. Increasingly, scholars writing for a wider audience that is blissfully ignorant of any Indian language have omitted the diacriticals and changed two of the s’s to sh’s (leaving the third an s tout court), and this book follows that practice. This may result in some confusion for readers contemplating the spellings of certain words in this book, such as the name of the gods Shiva and Vishnu, and noting that they are sometimes spelled elsewhere—in works cited in my text or bibliography—as Siva and Visnu. I hope and trust that readers will be able to deal with this conflict, and also to distinguish the Kali Age (Kali with short a and short i) from the goddess Kali (Kālī with long a and long i).

  Many words in modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit drop the final short a of the Sanskrit, so that Rama sometimes becomes Ram, Lakshmana becomes Lakshman, Hastinapura becomes Hastinapur, and Vijayanagara becomes Vijayanagar. (“Dharma” often becomes “dharam.”) As for the British distortions of words in Sanskrit and other Indian languages (Hindoo, suttee), they are often bizarre but usually recognizable.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  TEXTS

  POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS

  ABVP: Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (All-India Students’ Council)

  BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party (Peoples’ Party of India)

  RSS: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers’ Organization)

  VHP: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council)

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS IN INDIAN LANGUAGES AND NAMES OF KEY FIGURES

  Abhinavagupta: philosopher of Kashmir Shaivism, 975-1025 CE

  Aditi: “Infinity,” name of a Vedic goddess of creation, mother of the Adityas, solar gods

  Adivasis : “Original inhabitants,” indigenous inhabitants of India, tribal peoples

  Advaita: nondualism, a philosophical school, propounded by Shankara

  Agastya: a mythical sage said to have brought Sanskrit south to the Tamil land and also established Tamil there

  Agni: Vedic god of fire (ignis)

  agrahara: “taking the field,” a grant of temple land to Brahmins

  ahimsa: nonviolence, literally “a lack of the desire to harm”

  akam: word used in Tamil poetry for the interior world, the world of love

  Akbar: Mughal emperor, 1556-1605, noted for his religious pluralism

  Alvars : Tamil Vaishnava saints

  Amba: “Mother,” name of a woman in the Mahabharata who was reborn as a man; also the name of a goddess

  Ambalika: “Dear Little Mother,” name of the mother of Pandu in the Mahabharata

  Ambika: “Little Mother,” name of the mother of Dhritarashtra in the Mahabharata

  apad-dharma: the permissive religious law that prevails in time of emergency

  Apala: a woman who pressed soma in her mouth for the god Indra in the Rig Veda

  Appar: one of the first three Tamil Nayanmar saints, sixth to eighth century

  Apsarases : “Gliding in the Waters,” celestial nymphs and courtesans

  Arjuna: one of the five sons of Pandu in the Mahabharata, fathered by the god Indra

  Artha-shastra: textbook of political science

  Arya Samaj: a religious movement founded by Dayananda Sarasvati in Bengal in 1875

  Aryas : “nobles,” name by which the Vedic people referred to themselves

  Ashoka: Mauryan emperor, 265-232 BCE, author of the first surviving writing in India, edicts in stone

  ashrama: a hermitage; also a stage or way of life (there are four: chaste student, householder, forest dweller, renouncer)

  Ashvaghosha: a first century CE poet, author of a life of the Buddha

  Ashvins : “Horsemen,” twin half horse gods, sons of Saranyu and the sun

  Asuras : antigods, enemies of the gods in heaven; originally, the older gods

  Atharva Veda: the fourth Veda, largely devoted to magic spells

  atman: the self, the individual soul, identical with the world soul (atman or brahman)

  Aurangzeb : a Mughal emperor, 1658-1707 CE, noted for his chauvinism

  avatar: a “descent” of a god, particularly an incarnation of the god Vishnu

  Avesta: the sacred text of the ancient Iranians

  Ayur-veda: the Veda of long life, the science of medicine

  Babur: the first Mughal emperor, 1483-1530

  Backward Castes: one of many names for the lowest and most oppressed castes

  Bali: a demon undone by his generosity to the god Vishnu, who had become incarnate as a dwarf

  Bana: a poet in the court of Harsha, author of a biography of Harsha

  banyan: a sacred tree that puts down multiple roots

  Basava: a Brahmin who founded the Virashaiva movement, c. 1106-1167 CE

  Bhagavad Gita: a philosophical text, spoken by the god Krishna to the prince Arjuna, in the Mahabharata

  Bhagavan: a name of god, Vishnu or Shiva

  Bhagavata: a worshiper of the gods Vishnu or Shiva

  Bhagiratha: a sage who brought the Ganges down to earth from the Milky Way

  bhakta: devotee of a god

  bhakti: passionate devotion to a god who returns that love

  Bharata: younger brother of Rama; also the name of the son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta and an ancient name of India

  Bharata-varsha: the land of India

  Bhil, Bhilla: name of a tribal people

  Bhima: one of the five sons of Pandu in the Mahabharata , fathered by the god Vayu, the wind

  Bhishma: celibate son of Satyavati in the Mahabharata

  Bhrigu: a powerful sage

  Brahma: a god, responsible for the task of creation

  brahman: the divine substance of the universe

  Brahmanas : texts, from c. 800 to 600 BCE, explaining the Vedic rituals

  Brahmin: the highest of the four classes, the class from which Vedic priests must come

  Brahmo Samaj: a reform movement founded by Rammohun Roy in 1828

  bride-price: a reverse dowry, paid by the groom to the family of the bride

  Buddhification: casting a non-Buddhist as a Buddhist

  Campantar: one of the first three Tamil Nayanmar saints, sixth to eighth century

  Cankam: (from Sanskrit sangham): early Tamil literary assembly

  Chaitanya: Bengali saint, 1486-1533 CE

  Chamars : a Dalit caste, leatherworkers

  Chandalas : a Dalit caste, workers in cremation grounds

  Chandidas : a fourteenth-century CE Bengali poet

  Chandika: “The Fierce,” a name of the Goddess

  Chandra Gupta I : founder of the Gupta Empire in 324 CE

  Chandragupta Maurya: founder of
the Mauryan Empire in 324 BCE

  Charaka: author of a medical textbook

  Charioteers (Sutas): a caste of charioteers and bards

  Charvakas : Materialists, regarded as the paradigmatic heretics; also called Lokayatas

  Cheras : an ancient South Indian kingdom

  Cholas : an ancient South Indian kingdom

  Clive, Robert: governor of Bengal from 1755-1760 ; chancellor from 1765

  Cuntarar: one of the first three Tamil Nayanmar saints, sixth to eighth century

  Dadhyanch: a Vedic sage whose head was replaced with a horse head

  Daksha: a Vedic patriarch, father of Sati, who foolishly refused to invite the god Shiva to his sacrifice

  Dalit: preferred contemporary word, derived from the Marathi/Hindi word for “oppressed,” for the lowest castes, formerly known as Untouchables

  Dalitification: the process by which castes claim to be Dalits; the reverse of Sanskritization

  darshan: “seeing,” the exchange of powerful gazes between god and worshiper, or king and subject

  Dasa: “slave,” the word that the Vedic Aryas applied to their enemies

  Dasyu: another word for “slave”

  Deshification: the process by which the Sanskritic tradition absorbs local traditions

  Devaki: royal mother of Krishna

  dhamma: Pali for the Sanskrit term dharma; Buddhist law, and Ashokan law

  dharma: religious law, justice, righteousness. See also sadharana, sanatana

  dog cooker shva-paka: ancient term of opprobrium for Dalit castes

  Draupadi: wife of the five Pandava brothers, heroine of the Mahabharata, later a goddess

  Dravida: Sanskrit word for South India

  Dravidian: a language group from South India that includes Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam