Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

The Mauryan Empire did not last long after Ashoka’s death. Within a few years it withered away. The northern provinces fell away, and in the south a new power arose—the Andhra power. Ashoka’s descendants continued to rule the vanishing empire for nearly fifty years, till they were forcibly removed by their Commander-in-chief, a Brahman named Pushyamitra. This man made himself king, and there is said to have been a revival of Brahminism in his time. Buddhist monks were also persecuted to some extent. But you will find, as you read Indian history, that the way Brahminism attacked Buddhism was much more subtle. It did not do anything so crude as to persecute it much. Some persecution there was, but this was probably political, and not religious. The great Buddhist Sanghas were powerful organizations, and many rulers were afraid of their political powers; hence their attempts to weaken them. Brahminism ultimately succeeded in almost driving out Buddhism from the country of its birth by assimilating it to some extent and absorbing it and trying to find a place for it in its own house.

  Thus the new Brahminism was not a mere reversion to the old state of affairs and a negation of all that Buddhism had tried to do. The old leaders of Brahminism were much cleverer and from of old it had been their practice to absorb and assimilate. When the Aryans first came to India they assimilated much of Dravidian culture and custom, and all through their history they have, consciously or unconsciously, acted in this way. They did likewise with Buddhism, and made of Buddha an avatar and a god—one of many in the Hindu pantheon. Buddha remained a person to be worshipped and adored by the multitude, but his special message was quietly put aside, and Brahminism or Hinduism, with minor variations, continued the even tenor of its ways. But this process of Brahminising Buddha was a long one, and we are anticipating, for Buddhism was to remain in India for many hundred years after Ashoka’s death.

  We need not trouble ourselves with the kings and dynasties that followed each other in Magadha. About 200 years after Ashoka’s death Magadha ceased to be the premier State of India, but even then it continued to be a great centre of Buddhist culture.

  Meanwhile, important events were taking place both in the north and the south. In the north there were repeated invasions by various peoples of Central Asia called Baktrians and Sakas and Scythians and Turkis and Kushans. I think I wrote to you once how Central Asia has been a breeding-ground for hordes of people and how these people have come out, again and again in history, and spread out all over Asia and even over Europe. There were several such invasions of India during the 200 years before Christ. But you must remember that these invasions were not just for conquest and loot. They were for land to settle down in. Most of these Central Asian tribes were nomads, and as their numbers grew, the land they lived in was not sufficient to support them. So they had to migrate and seek fresh lands. An even more forceful reason for these great migrations was the pressure from behind. One great tribe or clan would drive away others, and these, in their turn, would be compelled to invade other countries. Thus the people who came as invaders to India were often themselves refugees from their own pastures. The Chinese Empire also, whenever it was strong enough to do so, as in the days of the Hans, drove these nomads away and thus compelled them to seek new homes.

  You must also remember that these nomadic tribes of Central Asia did not look upon India wholly as an enemy country. They are referred to as “barbarians”, and undoubtedly, compared to the India of those days, they were not as civilized. But most of them were ardent Buddhists, and they looked up to India, which had given birth to the Dharma.

  Even in Pushyamitra’s time there was an invasion in the northwest by Menander of Baktria who was a pious Buddhist. Baktria was the country just across the Indian border. It used to be part of Seleucus’s empire, but later it became independent. Menander’s invasion was repulsed, but he managed to keep Kabul and Sindh.

  Later came the invasion of the Sakas, who came in great numbers and spread out all over northern and western India. The Sakas were a great tribe of Turki nomads. They were pushed out of their pastures by another great tribe, the Kushans. They overran Baktria and Parthia and gradually established themselves in northern India, more particularly in the Punjab, Rajputana and Kathiawad. India civilized them, and they gave up their nomadic habits.

  It is interesting to observe that these Baktrian and Turki rulers in parts of India did not make much difference to Indo-Aryan society. These rulers, being Buddhist, followed the Buddhist church organization, which was itself based on the old Indo-Aryan plan of democratic village communities. Thus India continued to be, even under these rulers, largely a collection of self-governing village communities or republics, under the central power. During this period also Takshashila and Mathura continued to be great centres of Buddhist learning, attracting students from China and western Asia.

  But repeated invasions from the north-west and the gradual breakup of the Mauryan State organization had one effect. The southern Indian States became truer representatives of the old Indo-Aryan system. Thus the centre of Indo-Aryan power moved south. Probably many able persons from the north migrated to the south on account of the invasions. You will see later on that this process was repeated 1000 years later when the Muslims invaded India. Even now southern India has been far less affected by foreign invasions and contacts than the north. Most of us living in the north have grown up in a composite culture— a mixture of Hindu and Muslim with a dash of the West. Even our language—Hindi or Urdu, or Hindustani, call it what you like—is a composite language. But the south is still, as you have seen yourself, predominantly Hindu and orthodox. For many hundreds of years it tried to protect and preserve the old Aryan tradition, and in this attempt it built up a rigid society which is amazing in its intolerance even today. Walls are dangerous companions. They may occasionally protect from outside evil and keep out an unwelcome intruder. But they also make you a prisoner and a slave, and you purchase your so-called purity and immunity at the cost of freedom. And the most terrible of walls are the walls that grow up in the mind which prevent you from discarding an evil tradition simply because it is old, and from accepting a new thought because it is novel.

  But South India did a real service by preserving through 1000 years and more the Indo-Aryan traditions not only in religion, but in art and in politics. If you want to see specimens of old Indian art now, you have to go to South India. In politics, we have it from Megasthenes, the Greek, that the popular assemblies of the south restrained the power of kings.

  Not only the learned men but the artists and builders and artisans and craftsmen went south when Magadha declined. A considerable trade flourished between South India and Europe. Pearls, ivory, gold, rice, pepper, peacocks, and even monkeys, were sent to Babylon and Egypt and Greece, and later to Rome. Teakwood from the Malabar Coast went even earlier to Chaldaea and Babylonia. And all this trade, or most of it, was carried in Indian ships, manned by Dravidians. This will enable you to realize what an advanced position South India occupied in the ancient world. Large numbers of Roman coins have been discovered in the south, and, as I have already told you, there were Alexandrian colonies on the Malabar Coast and Indian colonies in Alexandria.

  Soon after Ashoka’s death the Andhra State in the south became independent. Andhra, as you perhaps know, is a Congress province now, along the east coast of India, north of Madras. Telugu is the language of Andhra-desha. The Andhra power extended rapidly after Ashoka till it spread right across the Deccan from sea to sea.

  From the south great colonizing enterprises were undertaken, but of these we shall speak later.

  I have referred above to the Sakas and Scythians and others who invaded India, and settled down in the north. They became part of India, and we in North India are as much descended from them as from the Aryans. In particular, the brave and fine-looking Rajputs and the hardy people of Kathiawad are their descendants.

  30

  The Borderland Empire of the Kushans

  April 11, 1932

  I have told you in my last letter of
the repeated Saka and Turki invasions of India. I have also told you of the growth of a powerful Andhra State in the south stretching from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. The Sakas were driven forward by the Kushans, and some time later these Kushans themselves appeared on the scene. In the first century before Christ they established a State on the Indian borderland, and this State grew into a great empire. This Kushan Empire extended down to Benares and the Vindhya mountains in the south, and to Kashgar and Yarkand and Khotan in the north, and the borders of Persia and Parthia in the west. Thus the whole of northern India, including the United Provinces, Punjab and Kashmir, and a good bit of Central Asia were under the Kushan rulers. This empire lasted for nearly 300 years, just about the time when the Andhra State flourished in South India. The Kushan capital at first seems to have been Kabul; later it was shifted to Peshawar, or Purushapura as it was called, and there it remained.

  This Kushan Empire is interesting in many ways. It was a Buddhist empire, and one of its famous rulers—the Emperor Kanishka—was ardently devoted to the Dharma. Near Peshawar, the capital, was Takshashila, which had for a long time been a centre of Buddhist culture. The Kushans, as I think I have told you, were Mongolians, or allied to them. From the Kushan capital there must have been a continuous coming and going to the Mongolian homelands, and Buddhist learning and Buddhist culture must have gone to China and Mongolia. In the same way, western Asia must have come into intimate touch with Buddhist thought. Western Asia had been under Greek rule since Alexander’s day, and large numbers of Greeks had brought their culture to it. This Greek Asiatic culture mingled now with Indian Buddhist culture.

  Thus China and western Asia were influenced by India. But in the same manner India was also influenced by them. The Kushan Empire sat, like a colossus astride the back of Asia, in between the Graeco-Roman world on the west, the Chinese world in the east and the Indian world in the south. It was a halfway house both between India and Rome, and India and China.

  As you might expect, this central position helped to bring about close intercourse between India and Rome. The Kushan period corresponded with the last days of the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar was alive, and the first 200 years of the Roman Empire. It is said that the Kushan Emperor sent a great embassy to Augustus Caesar. Trade flourished both by land and sea. Among the articles which were sent by India to Rome were perfumes, spices, silks, brocades, muslins, cloth of gold and precious stones. A Roman author, named Pliny, actually complained bitterly of the drain of gold from Rome to India. He said that these luxuries cost the Roman Empire one hundred million sesterces annually. This would be about a crore and a half of rupees or a million pounds sterling.

  During this period there was great debate and argument in the Buddhist monasteries and at the meetings of the Sangha. New ideas, or old ideas in novel attire, were coining from the south and the west, and the simplicity of Buddhist thought was being gradually affected. This process of change went on till it resulted in Buddhism splitting up into two sections—called the Mahayana (the Great Vehicle) and the Hinayana (Little Vehicle). And as the outlook on life and religion changed with the new interpretations and ideas, the manifestations of these ideas in art and architecture also changed. It is not easy to say how these changes were brought about. Perhaps there were two main influences which both tended to deflect Buddhist thought in the same direction: Brahminic and Hellenic.

  Buddhism was, I have told you several times, a revolt against caste and priestcraft and ritualism. Gautama did not approve of image-worship. He did not claim to be a god to be worshipped. He was the Enlightened One, the Buddha. In accordance with this ideology, Buddha was not represented in images, and the architecture of those days avoided all images. But the Brahmans wanted to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Buddhism and were always trying to introduce Hindu ideas and symbolism into Buddhist thought; and the craftsmen from the Graeco-Roman world were also used to making images of the gods. Thus gradually images crept into the Buddhist shrines. To begin with they were not of the Buddha but of the Bodhi-Sattvas, who, in Buddhist tradition, are said to be previous incarnations of Buddha. The process continued till Buddha himself was depicted in images and worshipped.

  India at the Time of the Kushan Empire

  The Mahayana school of Buddhism approved of these changes. It was nearer to the Brahman way of thinking. The Kushan emperors accepted the Mahayana school and helped it to spread. But they were by no means intolerant of the Hinayana school, or even of other religions. Kanishka is said to have encouraged Zoroastrianism also.

  It is interesting to read of the great debates that used to take place between the learned about the relative merits of Mahayana and Hinayana. Huge gatherings of the Sangha used to be held for this purpose. Kanishka held a general assembly of the Sangha in Kashmir. The debates and the controversy on this question lasted many hundreds of years. Mahayana triumphed in northern India, Hinayana in the south, till both of them, in India, were absorbed by Hinduism. Today the Mahayana form of Buddhism exists in China, Japan and Tibet; the Hinayana exists in Ceylon and Burma.

  The art of a people is a true mirror of their minds, and so, as the simplicity of early Buddhist thought gave place to elaborate symbolism, even so Indian art became more and more elaborate and ornate. In particular, the Mahayana sculpture of the north-west, in Gandhara, was full of elaboration of statuary and ornament. Even the Hinayana architecture could not keep itself wholly untouched by this new phase, and it lost gradually the restraint and simplicity of its earlier style and took to rich carving and symbolism. There are a few monuments of this period with us still. The most interesting are some of the beautiful frescoes at Ajanta.

  We shall now bid good-bye to the Kushans. But remember this. Like the Sakas and other Turki peoples, the Kushans hardly came to India or ruled over India as aliens governing a conquered country. The bond of religion tied them to India and her people, but besides this they adopted the principles of government of the Aryan people in India. And because they fitted in with the Aryan system to a large extent, they succeeded in ruling northern India for nearly 300 years.

  31

  Jesus and Christianity

  April 12, 1932

  The Kushan Empire in the north-west of India and the Han dynasty in China have carried us beyond an important landmark in history, and we must go back to it. So far we have been dealing with dates BC— before Christ. Now we are in the Christian Era—AC, or AD. The era, as its name implies, dates from Christ, from the supposed date of birth of Christ. As a matter of fact, it is probable that Christ was born four years before this date, but that makes little difference. It is customary to refer to dates after Christ as AD—Anno Domini—in the year of the Lord. There is no harm in following this widespread practice, but it seems to me more scientific to use the letters AC—after Christ—for these dates just as we have been using BC I propose to do so.

  The story of Christ or Jesus, as his name was, is given in the New Testament of the Bible, and you know something about it. In these accounts given in the Gospels little is said about his youth. He was born at Nazareth, he preached in Galilee, and he came to Jerusalem when he was over thirty. Soon after he was tried and sentenced by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. It is not clear what Jesus did or where he went before he started his preaching. All over Central Asia, in Kashmir and Ladakh and Tibet and even farther north, there is still a strong belief that Jesus or Isa travelled about there. Some people believe that he visited India also. It is not possible to say anything with certainty, and indeed most authorities who have studied the life of Jesus do not believe that Jesus came to India or Central Asia. But there is nothing inherently improbable in his having done so. In those days the great universities of India, specially Takshashila in the north-west, attracted earnest students from distant countries, and Jesus might well have come there in quest of knowledge. In many respects the teaching of Jesus is so similar to Gautama’s teaching that it seems highly probable that he was fully acquainted with
it. But Buddhism was sufficiently known in other countries, and Jesus could well have known of it without coming to India.

  Religions, as every schoolgirl knows, have led to conflict and bitter struggles. But it is interesting to watch the beginnings of the world-religions and to compare them. There is so much that is similar in their outlook and their teaching that one wonders why people should be foolish enough to quarrel about details and unessentials. But the early teachings are added to and distorted till it is difficult to recognize them; and the place of the teacher is taken by narrow-minded and intolerant bigots. Often enough religion has served as a handmaiden to politics and imperialism. It was the old Roman policy to cultivate superstition for the benefit, or rather for the exploitation, of the masses, for it was easier to keep down the people if they were superstitious. The Roman aristocrats would consent to dabble in high philosophy, but what was good for them was not good or safe for the masses. Machiavelli, a famous Italian of a later day, who has written a book on politics, states that religion is necessary for government, and that it may be the duty of a ruler to support a religion which he believes to be false. Even in recent times we have had innumerable instances of imperialism advancing under the cloak of religion. It is not surprising that Karl Marx wrote that “Religion is the opium of the masses”.

  Jesus was a Jew, and the Jews were and are a peculiar and strangely persevering people. After a brief period of glory in the days of David and Solomon they fell on evil days. Even this glory was on a small scale, but it was magnified in their imaginations till it became a kind of Golden Age of the past, which would come again at the appointed time when the Jews would become great and powerful. They spread out all over the Roman Empire and elsewhere, but held together, firm in the belief that their day of glory was coming and that a messiah would usher this in. It is one of the wonders of history how the Jews, without a home or a refuge, harassed and persecuted beyond measure, and often done to death, have preserved their identity and held together for over 2000 years.