Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  Europe was the driving-force of the nineteenth century. Nationalism reigned there, and industrialism spread and radiated to distant corners of the world and often took the shape of imperialism. We have seen this in our first brief survey of the century, and have followed the effects of imperialism in some detail in India and Eastern India. Before we go to Europe again for a closer look I should like you to pay a brief visit to western Asia. I have neglected this part for a long time, chiefly because I am rather ignorant of its subsequent history.

  Western Asia is very different from eastern Asia and from India. In the distant past, of course, many races and tribes came from Central Asia and the East and overran it. The Turks themselves came in this way. Before the Christian era Buddhism also spread right up to Asia Minor, but it does not appear to have taken root there. Western Asia has, during the ages, looked more towards Europe than towards Asia or the East. In a way it has been Asia’s window to Europe. Even the spread of Islam in various parts of Asia did not make much difference to the Western outlook.

  India and China and the neighbouring countries never looked at Europe in this way. They were wrapped up in Asia. Between India and China there is a vast difference, in race and outlook and culture. China has never been the slave of religion and has not had any priestly hierarchy. India has always prided herself on her religion, and her society has been priest-ridden in spite of Buddha’s attempts to rid her of this incubus. There are many other differences between India and China, and yet there is a strange unity between India and eastern and south-eastern Asia. This unity has been given by the thread of the Buddha legend which has bound these people together and woven many a common motive in art and literature and music and song.

  The Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries

  Islam brought something of western Asia into India. It was a different culture, a different outlook on life. But the western Asian outlook did not come to India direct or in its natural garb, as it might have done if the Arabs had conquered India; it came, long afterwards, through the Central Asian races who were not its fittest representatives. Nonetheless, Islam connected India with western Asia, and India thus became the meeting-place of these two great cultures. Islam also went to China, and large numbers adopted it, but it never challenged the old culture of China. In India this challenge was made because Islam was for long the religion of the ruling class. India thus became the country where the two cultures faced each other, and I have already written to you of the many efforts to find a synthesis in order to solve this difficult problem. These efforts had largely succeeded, when a new danger and a new obstruction came in the shape of the British conquest. Today both these cultures have lost their old meaning. Nationalism and industrialization have changed the world, and the ancient cultures can only survive to the extent they can fit themselves into the new economic conditions. Their hollow shells remain; their real meaning has gone. In western Asia, in the very homelands of Islam, vast changes are going on. China and the Far East are in a state of continuous upset. In India we can ourselves see what is happening.

  I have not written about western Asia for so long that I find it a little difficult to pick up the threads. You will remember my telling you of the great Arab Empire of Baghdad, and how it fell before the Turks—the Seljuq Turks they were, not the Ottomans—and how it was finally destroyed by Chengiz Khan’s Mongols. These Mongols also put an end to the Empire of Khwarizm which spread to Central Asia and included Persia. Timur the Lame came later and, after a brief day of military success and massacre, was no more. In the west, however, a new empire arose which, in spite of defeat by Timur, continued to spread. This was the Empire of the Ottoman Turks who took possession of Asia west of Persia, and of Egypt, and of a good part of south-eastern Europe. For many generations they threatened Europe, and to the religious and superstitious people of Europe, just emerging from the Middle Ages, they seemed to be a scourge of God sent to punish sinners.

  Under Ottoman rule western Asia almost disappears from history; it becomes a back-water cut off from the main current of the world’s life. For many centuries, indeed for thousands of years, it had been the highway between Europe and Asia, and innumerable caravans had crossed its cities and deserts carrying merchandise from one continent to another. But the Turks did not encourage trade, and, even if they had done so, they were powerless before a new factor. This was the development of the sea-routes between Asia and Europe. The sea became the new highway, and the ship took the place of the camel of the desert. With this change western Asia lost a great deal of its significance to the world. It lived a life apart. The opening of the Suez Canal, in the second half of the nineteenth century, made the sea-route even more important. This canal became the greatest highway between East and West, bringing the two worlds nearer each other.

  And now, in the twentieth century, another change is taking place before our very eyes; and in the old rivalry between land and sea, the land is winning and displacing the sea as the world’s chief highway. The coming of the automobile made a difference, and the aeroplane added to this vastly. The ancient trade-routes, deserted for so long, are again busy with traffic, but, instead of the leisurely camel, the automobile rushes across the desert, and overhead flies the aeroplane.

  The Ottoman Empire had joined together three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe. But long before the nineteenth century it had grown weak, and this century saw it going to pieces. From the “Scourge of God” it became the “Sick Man of Europe”. The World War of 1914-18 put an end to it, and out of its ashes arose a new Turkey, self-reliant, strong and progressive, and several other new States.

  Western Asia, I have said above, is Asia’s window to Europe. It is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, which has divided and linked together Asia and Europe and Africa. This link has been a powerful one in the past, and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean have had much in common. European civilization begins in the Mediterranean area. Old Greece or Hellas had her colonies dotted about the seaboard of the three continents; the Roman Empire spread around it; Christianity found its early home round the Mediterranean; the Arabs took their culture from the eastern coast to Sicily, and right across the southern African coasts to Spain in the west, and remained there for 700 years.

  We see thus how intimate is the connection of the Asiatic Mediterranean countries with South Europe and North Africa. Western Asia thus becomes a definite link in the past between Asia and the other two continents. But it is easy enough to find such links all over the world if we but look for them. The narrow outlook of nationalism has made us think of separate countries far more than of the oneness of the world and the common interests of different countries.

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  A Look Back

  January 19, 1933

  I have read recently two books which have pleased me greatly, and which I should have liked to share with you. They are both by a Frenchman, Rene Grousset, who is the conservator or director of the Musée Guimet in Paris. Have you been to this delightful museum of Eastern, and especially Buddhist, art? I do not remember your accompanying me. M. Grousset has written a survey of Eastern—that is, Asiatic—civilizations in four volumes, dealing separately with India, the Middle East (which means Western Asia and Persia), China, and Japan. Being interested in Art, he has dealt with his subject from the point of view of the development of various kinds of artistic activity, and he has given large numbers of beautiful pictures. It is far better and more interesting to learn history in this way than by learning about wars and battles and the intrigues of kings.

  I have read only two of M. Grousset’s volumes so far, those dealing with India and the Middle East, and they have delighted me. The pictures of fine buildings and noble statuary and wonderful frescoes and paintings have carried me far from Dehra Dun Gaol to distant countries and times long past.

  I wrote to you long ago of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa in the Indus Valley in north-west India, the ruins of the ancient civilization which flourishe
d 5000 years ago. In those far-off days when people lived and worked and played in Mohenjo Daro there were many other centres of civilization. Our information is slight; it is limited to certain ruins that have been discovered in various parts of Asia and in Egypt. Perhaps if we dig hard enough and widely enough we may find many more such ruins. But already we know of a high civilization in those days in the Nile Valley in Egypt; in Chaldea (Mesopotamia), where Susa was the capital of the State of Elam; in Persepolis in eastern Persia; in Turkestan in Central Asia; and by the Yellow River or Hoang-Ho in China.

  This was the period when copper was beginning to be used, the age of polished stone was passing. All over these wide areas from Egypt to China about the same stage of growth seems to have been reached. Indeed, it is surprising to find some proofs of a common civilization spreading right across Asia, which show that the different centres were not isolated, but were in touch with each other. Agriculture flourished and domestic animals were kept and there was some trade. The art of writing had appeared, but these old picture-writings have not yet been deciphered. Similar tools are found in widely separated areas, and the artistic products are also remarkably similar. Painted pottery, beautiful vases with all manner of designs and decorations, attract special notice. This pottery is so much in evidence that this whole period has been named the “painted pottery civilization”. There was gold and silver jewellery, also alabaster and marble vessels, and even cotton fabrics. Each of these centres of early civilization from Egypt to the Indus Valley and to China had something special to itself and carried on independently, and yet the thread of a common and a connected civilization seems to run through them.

  This was, roughly, 5000 years ago. But it is clear that such a civilization was relatively advanced, and must have taken some thousands of years to develop. In the Nile Valley and in Chaldea it can be traced back for at least another 2000 years, and probably the other centres are equally old.

  Out of this common and widespread civilization of the early Copper Age, the Mohenjo Daro period of about 3000 BC, the four great Eastern civilizations diverge and differentiate and develop separately. These four were the Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, the Indian, and the Chinese. It was during this latter period that the Great Pyramids were built in Egypt and the great Sphinx at Gizeh. Later still came the Theban period in Egypt, when the Theban Empire flourished there, about 2000 BC, and wonderful statues and frescoes were produced. This was a great period of a renaissance of art. The huge temple of Luxor was built about this time. Tutankhamen, whose name everybody seems to know without knowing anything else about him, was one of the Theban Pharaohs.

  In Chaldea powerful organized States arose in two regions, Sumer and Akkad. The famous city of Ur of the Chaldees was already producing artistic masterpieces in the days of Mohenjo Daro. After about 700 years of lordship, Ur was overthrown. The Babylonians, who were a Semitic people (that is like the Jews or Arabs) coming from Syria, became the new rulers. The city of Babylon now became the centre of a new empire to which there is frequent reference in the Bible. There was a revival of literature during this period, and epic poems were written and sung. These epic poems describing the beginning of the world and a mighty deluge are supposed to be the stories round which the earlier chapters of the Bible are written.

  Then Babylon fell, and many centuries afterwards (about 1000 BC and onwards) the Assyrians come on the scene and establish an empire with Nineveh as capital. These people were most extraordinary. They were brutal and cruel beyond measure. Their whole system of government was based on terrorism, and with massacre and destruction they built a great empire all over the Middle East. They were the imperialists of those days. And yet these people were highly cultured in some ways. An enormous library was collected at Nineveh, every department of current knowledge being represented. The library was not a paper one, I need hardly tell you, nor did it have anything like the modern book. The books of those days were on tablets. Thousands of these tablets from the old library at Nineveh are at present in the British Museum in London. Some of them are pretty ghastly; the monarch gives a vivid description of his cruelty to his enemies and how he enjoyed it.

  In India the Aryans came after the Mohenjo Daro period. No ruins or statuary of their early days have yet been discovered, but their greatest monuments are their old books—the Vedas and others—which give us an insight into the minds of these happy warriors who came down to the Indian plains. These books are full of powerful Nature-poetry; the very gods are Nature-gods. It was natural that when art developed, this love of Nature should play a great part in it. The Sanchi gates, which are situated near Bhopal, are among the earliest artistic remains discovered. They date from the early Buddhist period, and the beautiful carvings on these gates, of flowers and leaves and animal forms, tell us of the love and understanding of Nature of the artists who made them.

  And then from the north-west came Greek influence, for you will remember that after Alexander the Hellenic empires came up to the Indian frontier; and later on there was the borderland empire of the Kushans, which was also under Hellenic influence. Buddha was against image-worship. He did not call himself a god or ask to be worshipped.

  He wanted to rid society of the evils which priest-craft had brought into it; he was a reformer trying to raise the fallen and the unhappy. “I have come,” he said, in his first sermon at Isipatana or Sarnath, near Benares,

  I have come to satisfy the ignorant with wisdom . . . The perfect man is nothing unless he spends himself in benefits to living beings, unless he consoles those who are abandoned . . . My doctrine is a doctrine of pity; that is why the happy ones of the world find it hard. The way to salvation is open to all. The Brahman came forth from the womb of a woman even as the Chandala to whom he closes the way to salvation. Annihilate your passions as the elephant overturns a hut made of reeds . . . The only remedy against evil is sane reality.

  So Buddha taught the way of good conduct and the way of life. But, as is the way with foolish disciples who do not understand the inner meaning of the master, many of his followers observed the external rules of conduct that he had prescribed and did not appreciate their inner significance. Instead of following his advice they worshipped him. Still no statues of the Buddha rose, no images of him were made.

  Then came ideas from Greece and other Hellenic countries, and in these countries beautiful statues of the gods were made, and these were worshipped. In Gandhara, on the north-west of India, this influence was greatest, and the Buddha infant appeared in sculpture. Like their own little and charming god Cupid he was, or as later the infant Christ was to be—the “sacro bambino”, as the Italians call him. In this way image-worship began in Buddhism, and it developed till statues of Buddha were to be found in every Buddhist temple.

  Iranian or Persian influence also affected Indian art. The Buddha legends and the rich mythology of the Hindus provided inexhaustible material for India’s artists, and at Amaravati in the Andhradesh, in the Elephanta caves near Bombay, at Ajanta and Ellora, and many other places, you can trace these old legends and myths in stone and paint. Wonderfully worth visiting are these places, and I wish that every schoolgirl and schoolboy could visit at least some of them.

  The Indian legends travelled across the seas to Farther India. In Java, at Borobudur, there is the whole Buddha story in a series of remarkable frescoes in stone. In the ruins of Angkor Vat there are still many beautiful statues which remind us of the days 800 years ago when the city was known in Eastern Asia as “Angkor the Magnificent”. The faces of these statues are gentle and full of life, and there hovers over most of them a strange and elusive smile which has come to be known as the “Smile of Angkor”. This smile persists though the racial type changes, and it never grows monotonous.

  Art is a faithful mirror of the life and civilization of a period. When Indian civilization was full of life, it created things of beauty and the arts flourished, and its echoes reached distant countries. But, as you know, stagnation and decay set in, a
nd as the country went to pieces the arts fell with it. They lost vigour and life and became overburdened with detail, and sometimes even grotesque. The coming of the Muslims gave a shock and brought new influences which rid the degraded forms of Indian art of over-ornamentations. The old Indian ideal remained at the back, but it was dressed up simply and gracefully in the new garments from Arabia and Persia. In the past, thousands of Indian master-builders had gone from India to Central Asia. Now the architects and painters came from western Asia to India. In Persia and Central Asia an artistic renaissance had taken place; in Constantinople great architects were putting up mighty buildings. This was also the period of the early Renaissance in Italy, when a galaxy of great masters produced beautiful paintings and statues.

  Sinan was the famous Turkish architect of the day, and Babar sent for his favourite pupil, Yusuf. In Iran Bihzad was the great painter, and Akbar sent for several of his pupils and made them his Court painters. Persian influence became dominant both in architecture and painting. I have told you in a previous letter of some of the great buildings of this Indo-Muslim art of Moghal India, and you have seen many of them. The greatest triumph of this Indo-Persian art is the Taj Mahal. Many great artists helped to make it. It is said that the principal architect was a Turk or Persian named Ustad Isa, and that he was assisted by Indian architects. Some European artists, and especially an Italian, are supposed to have worked at the interior decoration. In spite of so many different masters working at it, there is no jarring or contradictory element in it. All the different influences are blended together to produce a wonderful harmony. Many people worked at the Taj, but the two influences which are predominant are the Persian and the Indian, and M. Grousset therefore calls it “the soul of Iran incarnate in the body of India”.