Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  “Kalinga was conquered by His Sacred and Gracious Majesty”, so runs an edict, “when he had been consecrated eight years.” One hundred and fifty thousand persons were thence carried away captive, one hundred thousand were there slain, and many times that number died. Directly after the annexation of the Kalingas began His Sacred Majesty’s zealous protection of the Law of Piety, his love of that Law, and his inculcation of that Law (Dharma). Thus arose his sacred Majesty’s remorse for having conquered the Kalingas, because the conquest of a country previously un-conquered involves the slaughter, death and carrying away captive of the people. That is a matter of profound sorrow and regret to His Sacred Majesty.

  The edict goes on to say that Ashoka would not tolerate any longer the slaughter or captivity of even a hundredth or thousandth part of the number killed and made captive in Kalinga.

  Moreover, should any one do him wrong, that too must be borne with by His Sacred Majesty, so far as it can possibly be borne with. Even upon the forest folk in his dominions His Sacred Majesty looks kindly and he seeks to make them think aright, for, if he did not, repentance would come upon His Sacred Majesty. For His Sacred Majesty desires that all animate beings should have security, self-control, peace of mind, and joyousness.

  Ashoka further explains that true conquest consists of the conquest of men’s hearts by the Law of Duty or Piety, and to relate that he had already won such real victories, not only in his own dominions, but in distant kingdoms.

  The Law, to which reference is made repeatedly in these edicts, was the Law of the Buddha. Ashoka became an ardent Buddhist and tried his utmost to spread the Dharma. But there was no force or compulsion. It was only by winning men’s hearts that he sought to make converts. Men of religion have seldom, very seldom, been as tolerant as Ashoka. In order to convert people to their own faith they have seldom scrupled to use force and terrorism and fraud. The whole of history is full of religious persecution and religious wars, and in the name of religion and of God perhaps more blood has been shed than in any other name. It is good therefore to remember how a great son of India, intensely religious, and the head of a powerful empire, behaved in order to convert people to his ways of thought. It is strange that anyone should be so foolish as to think that religion and faith can be thrust down a person’s throat at the point of the sword or a bayonet.

  So Ashoka, the beloved of the gods—devanampriya, as he is called in the edicts—sent his messengers and ambassadors to the kingdoms of the West in Asia, Europe and Africa. To Ceylon, you will remember, he sent his own brother Mahendra and sister Sanghamitra, and they are said to have carried a branch of the sacred peepal tree from Gaya. Do you remember the peepal tree we saw in the temple at Anuradhapura? We are told that this was the very tree which grew out of that ancient branch.

  In India Buddhism spread rapidly. And as the Dharma was for Ashoka not just the repetition of empty prayers and the performance of pujas and ceremonies, but the performance of good deeds and social uplift, all over the country public gardens and hospitals and wells and roads grew up. Special provision was made for the education of women. Four great university towns—Takshashila or Taxila in the far north, near Peshawar; Mathura, vulgarly spelt Muttra now by the English; Ujjain in Central India; and Nalanda near Patna in Bihar—attracted students not only from India, but from distant countries—from China to western Asia— and these students carried back home with them the message of Buddha’s teaching. Great monasteries grew up all over the country—Vihara they were called. There were apparently so many round about Pataliputra or Patna that the whole province came to be known as Vihara, or, as it is called now, Bihar. But, as often happens, these monasteries soon lost the inspiration of teaching and of thought, and became just places where people followed a certain routine and worship.

  Ashoka’s passion for protecting life extended to animals also. Hospitals especially meant for them were erected, and animal-sacrifice was forbidden. In both these matters he was somewhat in advance of our own time. Unhappily, animal-sacrifice still prevails to some extent, and is supposed to be an essential part of religion; and there is little provision for the treatment of animals.

  Ashoka’s example and the spread of Buddhism resulted in vegetarianism becoming popular. Till then Kshattriyas and Brahmans in India generally ate meat and used to take wines and alcoholic drinks. Both meat-eating and wine-drinking grew much less.

  So ruled Ashoka for thirty-eight years, trying his utmost to promote peacefully the public good. He was always ready for public business “at all times and at all places, whether I am dining or in the ladies’ apartments, in my bedroom or in my closet, in my carriage or in my palace gardens, the official reporters should keep me constantly informed of the people’s business”. If any difficulty arose, a report was to be made to him immediately “at any hour and at any place”, for, as he says, “work I must for the commonweal”.

  Ashoka died in 226 BC. Some time before his death he became a Buddhist monk.

  We have few remains of Mauryan times. But what we have are practically the earliest so far discovered of Aryan civilization in India— for the moment we are not considering the ruins of Mohenjo Daro. In Sarnath, near Benares, you can see the beautiful Ashoka pillar with the lions on the top.

  Of the great city of Pataliputra, which was Ashoka’s capital, nothing is left. Indeed over 1500 years ago, 600 years after Ashoka, a Chinese traveller, Fa-Hien, visited the place. The city flourished then and was rich and prosperous, but even then Ashoka’s palace of stone was in ruins. Even these ruins impressed Fa-Hien, who says in his travel record that they did not appear to be human work. The palace of massive stone is gone, leaving no trace behind, but the memory of Ashoka lives over the whole continent of Asia, and his edicts still speak to us in a language we can understand and appreciate. And we can still learn much from them. This letter has grown long and may weary you. I shall finish it with a small quotation from one of Ashoka’s edicts: “All sects deserve reverence for one reason or another. By thus acting a man exalts his own sect and at the same time does service to the sects of other people.”

  25

  The World of Ashoka’s Time

  March 31, 1932

  We have seen that Ashoka sent missions and ambassadors to distant countries and that there was continuous contact and trade between India and these countries. Of course you must remember, when I talk of these contacts and of trade in those days, that it was nothing like what we have now. It is easy enough now for people and for merchandise to go by train and steamer and aeroplane. But in those days of the distant past every journey was a perilous and a lengthy one, and only the adventurous and the hardy undertook it. There can, therefore, be no comparison between trade then and now.

  What were these “distant countries” referred to by Ashoka? What was the world like during his time? We know nothing of Africa, except of Egypt and of the Mediterranean coast. We know very little of northern and central and eastern Europe, or of northern and Central Asia. Of America also we know nothing; but there are many people who think that highly developed civilizations existed in the American continents from early times. Columbus is said to have “discovered” America long after—in the fifteenth century after Christ. We know that a high civilization existed then in Peru in South America and in the surrounding countries. It is therefore quite possible that cultured people dwelt in America and formed well-organized societies in the days when India had Ashoka, in the third century before Christ. But we have no facts about them, and it is not of much use to guess. I mention them because we are all so apt to think that civilized people lived only in those parts of the world of which we have heard and read. For a long time Europeans imagined that ancient history meant only the history of Greece and of Rome and of the Jews. All the rest of the world apparently was a wilderness in those days, according to their old way of thinking. Later they discovered how limited was their knowledge, when their own scholars and archaeologists told them of China and India and other cou
ntries. So we must be on our guard, and must not think that our limited knowledge encompasses all that has taken place in this world of ours.

  Ashoka 268–226 BC

  For the present, however, we may say that the civilized ancient world of Ashoka’s day—that is, the third century before Christ—consisted principally of the Mediterranean countries of Europe and Africa; western Asia, China and India. China was probably more or less cut off then from direct contact with the western countries or even western Asia, and fantastic notions prevailed in the West about China or Cathay. India seems to have been the connecting link between the West and China.

  We have already seen that after the death of Alexander his empire was divided up by his generals. There were three principal divisions: (1) Western Asia, Persia, and Mesopotamia, under Seleucus; (2) Egypt under Ptolemy; and (3) Macedonia, under Antigonus. The first two lasted for a long time. You will remember that Seleucus was the neighbour of India and was greedy enough to want to add a bit of India to his empire. But he met more than his match in Chandragupta, who drove him back and made him give up a part of what is now Afghanistan.

  Macedonia was less fortunate. It was harried by Gauls and others from the north, and only one part of this kingdom managed to hold out against these Gauls and to remain independent. This was Pergamon in Asia Minor, where Turkey is situated today. It was a little Greek State, but for more than 100 years it became a home of Greek culture and art, and beautiful buildings grew up, and a library and museum. In a small way it was a rival to Alexandria across the sea.

  Alexandria was the capital of the Ptolemys in Egypt. It became a great city, famous in the ancient world. The glory of Athens had diminished greatly, and gradually Alexandria took its place as the cultural centre of the Greeks. Its great library and museum attracted large numbers of students from far countries, who discussed philosophy and mathematics and religion and other problems that filled the minds of the ancient world. Euclid, of whom you and every boy and girl who has been to school has heard, was a resident of Alexandria, and a contemporary of Ashoka’s.

  The Ptolemys were, as you know, Greeks, but they adopted many Egyptian ways and customs. They even took to some of the old gods of Egypt. Jupiter and Apollo and the other gods and goddesses of the old Greeks, who, like the Vedic gods in the Mahabharata, appeared so often in Homer’s epics, had to retire or change their names and appear in a different guise. Between the gods and goddesses of old Egypt—Isis and Osiris and Horus—and those of old Greece there was a mingling and an amalgamation, and new gods were put before the multitude for its worship. What did it matter to whom they bowed down and paid worship, and by what name it was known, so long as they had something to which to do puja! Of the new gods the most famous was called Serapis.

  Alexandria also was a great trading centre, and merchants from other parts of the civilized world came to it. We are told that there was a colony of Indian merchants in Alexandria. We also know that Alexandrian merchants had a settlement in South India on the Malabar coast.

  Not far from Egypt, across the Mediterranean, was Rome, already grown great, and destined to grow far greater and more powerful. And facing it, on the African coast, was Carthage, its rival and enemy. We shall have to consider their story at some length, before we can have any idea of the ancient world.

  In the East, China was growing as great as Rome in the West, and we shall have to consider this also before we can form a proper picture of the world in Ashoka’s time.

  26

  The Ch’ins and the Hans

  April 3rd, 1932

  In my letters to you last year from Naini I wrote to you something about the early days of China, of the settlements on the Hoang-Ho river, and of the early dynasties, the Hsia, the Shang or Yin, and the Chou, how the Chinese State gradually grew up and a centralized government was developed during these vast periods of time. There followed a long period then, still nominally under the Chou dynasty, when this process of centralization stopped and there was disorganization. Petty rulers of local areas became practically independent and quarrelled with each other. This unfortunate state of affairs lasted for several hundred years—everything in China seems to run into several hundred or 1000 years!—till one of these local rulers, the Duke of Ch’in, managed to drive out the ancient and effete Chou dynasty. His descendants are called the Ch’in dynasty, and it is interesting to note that the name China is derived from this Ch’in.

  The Ch’ins began their career thus in China in 255 BC. Thirteen years previously Ashoka had begun his reign in India. We are thus now dealing with the contemporaries of Ashoka in China. The first three Ch’in emperors had very short reigns. Then, in 246 BC came the fourth, who was in his own way a remarkable man. His name was Wang Cheng, but later he adopted another name—Shih Huang Ti—and he is usually known by his second name, which means “The First Emperor”. He had evidently a very high opinion of himself and his times, and was no respecter of the past. Indeed, he wanted people to forget the past and to imagine that history began with him—the great First Emperor! It mattered little that there had already been successive emperors in China for more than 2000 years. Even their memory was to be wiped out from the land. And not only the old emperors but all other famous men of the past were also to be forgotten. So the order went forth that all books giving an account of the past, especially books of history and the Confucian classics, were to be burnt and destroyed utterly. The only books excepted were books on medicine and some sciences. In his edict he said: Those who shall make use of antiquity to belittle modern times shall be put to death with their relations.”

  And he kept his word. Hundreds of scholars who tried to hide books which they loved were buried alive. A nice, kind-hearted and amiable person he must have been, the First Emperor! I remember him always, and not without some sympathy, when I hear too much praise of the past in India. Some of our people are always looking back to the past, always glorifying it and always seeking inspiration from it. If the past inspires to great deeds, by all means let us be inspired by it. But it does not seem to me to be healthy for any person or for any nation to be always looking back. As some one has said, if man was meant to go back or always to look back he would have had eyes at the back of his head. Let us study our past by all means, and admire in it whatever is worthy of admiration, but our eyes must always look in front and our steps must go ahead.

  Undoubtedly Shih Huang Ti acted in a barbarous way by having the old books and the readers of those books burnt or buried. And the result was that almost all his work ended with him. He was the First Emperor, to be followed by a second and a third, and so on till the end of time. Such was his intention. And yet of all China’s dynasties, the Ch’in was the shortest. Many of these dynasties, as I have told you, lasted hundreds and hundreds of years; one of them, the predecessor of the Ch’ins, lasted as much as 867 years. But the great Ch’ins rose and triumphed and ruled a powerful empire, and decayed and ended—all in a brief fifty years. Shih Huang Ti was to have been the first of a great line of powerful emperors, and yet three years after his death in 209 BC, his dynasty came to an end. And soon, after all, the books and the classics of Confucius were dug out of hiding, and took the same pride of place as before.

  As a ruler Shih Huang Ti was one of the most powerful that China has had. He put an end to the pretensions of the numerous local rulers, destroyed feudalism and built up a strong central government. He conquered the whole of China and even Annam. It was he who started building the Great Wall. This was an expensive job. But the Chinese apparently preferred spending money over this wall, which was to protect them from foreign enemies, to keeping a large standing army for defence. The Wall could hardly prevent a big invasion. All it did was to stop petty raids. It shows, however, that the Chinese wanted peace and, in spite of their strength, were not lovers of military glory.

  Shih Huang Ti, the First Emperor, died, and there was hardly a second of that dynasty to follow. But from his day China has always had a tradition of u
nity.

  Another dynasty then comes upon the scene—the Han dynasty. This flourished for over 400 years, and among the early rulers was a woman-empress. Sixth of the line was Wu-Ti, who was also one of China’s most powerful and famous rulers. He was emperor for over fifty years. He defeated the Tartars who were continually raiding the north. From Korea in the east right up to the Caspian Sea in the west, the Chinese Emperor was supreme, and all the tribes of Central Asia acknowledged him as their overlord. Look at the map of Asia and you will have some idea of the tremendous extent of his influence and of the power of China in the first and second centuries before Christ. We read a great deal of the greatness of Rome during this period, and one is apt to think that Rome overshadowed the world. “Mistress of the world” Rome has been called. But though Rome was great then and growing greater, China was a vaster and a more powerful empire.

  It was probably in the days of Wu-Ti that China and Rome established their contacts. Trade between the two countries took place through the Parthians, who inhabited the regions called Persia and Mesopotamia today. Later, when there was war between Rome and Parthia, this trade was interrupted, and Rome then tried direct trade by sea, and a Roman ship actually came to China. But this was in the second century after Christ. We are still in the period before the Christian era.

  Buddhism came to China during the reign of the Han dynasty. It had been heard of in China even before the Christian era, but it began to spread later when the emperor of the day is said to have seen a wonderful dream of a man 16 feet tall, with a bright halo round his head. As he saw this vision in the west, he sent messengers in this direction, and these messengers returned with an image of Buddha and Buddhist writings. With Buddhism came the influence of Indian art to China, and from China this spread to Korea, and from there to Japan.