Man first inhabited the Indian sub-continent in deep pre-history. Evidence of Stone Age living comes from Rawalpindi in Pakistan of rudimentary stone artifacts. Basic tools and cave art has also been found in various locations.
Man turned to civilisation based on agriculture in the Indus Valley, with early farming settlements from the 8th millennium BC. By 5000BC we find mud-brick houses, barley and wheat cultivation and grazing of animals.
Long distance trade is also in evidence, and the making of pottery and terracotta figurines, usually of bare-breasted females, suggesting Mother Goddess cults with a distinct Hindu style.
HARAPPAN CULTURE
By the 3rd millennium BC a great civilisation flourished in the Indus Valley based on the cities of Harappa in the Punjab and Mohenjo-Daro in lower Indus Valley.
Containing workmen’s quarters and granaries, they supported a vast agricultural village community with drainage and irrigation systems, yet these cities had no magnificent royal palaces, hinting that the people were not ruled by leaders in a way understood in the west. Rather, a monastic system seemed to rule, headed by priests.
One answer to this is geography. In the western cradles of civilisation, the land was harsh, prone to flooding, agriculture having to be claimed. The Indians lived in lush regions, the only problem for agriculture being land clearance, cocooned for millenia from the rest of the world by forests, mountains and ocean.
Flourishing in the Harappan Civilisation, they lived much closer to the on-going cycles of nature, creating an on-going cyclic mode of civilisation, evolving into Hinduism and retaining the nature based elements of tribal religions without Ego-based, omnipotent gods.
ARYAN INCURSIONS
This isolation couldn’t last, with evidence of trade with Mesopotamia from the 3rd millennium BC. By 1500BC, the Harappan civilisation had vanished. This was due to the migration of hunters – Aryans – from Iran from 1500BC onwards.
They brought with them Sanskrit, related to Latin, so were part of the Indo-European migrations. Bringing horse and chariot, they adopted farming and began expansion into the Indus Valley proper about 1050BC, moving east to the Ganges and south into the Deccan by 800BC.
Setting up kingdoms, a distinct Indian culture re-emerged by about 600BC, suggesting that whilst the Aryans had succeeded in taking power, endemic Indian culture rose up to conquer the intellect.
This is hinted at by two epic poems of the period, the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The former includes the Bhagavad-Gita and stories of war between two peoples. The latter is the story of Rama, 7th incarnation of Vishnu.
In the poems we find the creator-god, Indra, son of a god and a woman. He rides a golden chariot brought by the Aryans and speaks of dark-skinned ‘dasas’ living in buried cities, thought to refer to the destruction of the Harappans.
Indra has a victory over the snake-god, related to fertility and the Mother Goddess. By the end of the texts Indra loses godly status, subverted by priests, arguing endemic intellectual victory over the warlike Aryans.
INDIAN CULTURE
The Indian culture which emerged was grounded in the caste system, where place in society is decided by birth. There are 5 main castes: the untouchables, who only perform menial tasks; the servants; the farmers and traders; the nobles and warriors; and the Brahmans, or priestly caste.
In many ways India has remained unchanged since such myths and social status were decided. This is because something about Indian culture pulls at the psyche, over-powering first the Aryans and a vast majority of visitors since.
And the answer is found in the Vedas, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Ancient indeed, they are written in layers, denoting stages of Hindu thought. The most modern layer are the Upanishads which record the insights of the great sages.
Older are the Brahmanas, which include the meaning of sacrifice and the old Vedic religion from which Hinduism formed. Even older are the Samhitas, known today as the Rig Veda, speaking poetically of the ancient gods.
And what we have in these layers of sacred texts is the story of the evolution of a religion from primeval, tribal times, worshipping nature. Hinduism thus gives us a unique line back to the birth of religion, touching nature and our instinctual drives prior to civilisation.
HINDUISM
Hinduism itself can be seen in many forms. Worshipped as a religion, it has some 40,000 gods, headed by Brahma. Yet intellectually, these gods are simply symbolic aspects of nature and behaviour.
The Hindu lives in the material world, but realizes it is merely an illusion with a greater reality behind it. This reality imposes Karma, or moral behaviour, upon the person. He does good through Yoga, which can be practiced from good behaviour, to learning, to meditation.
The Hindu world is cyclical, with everything going back to a beginning. This is best known through Samsara, or ‘wheel of rebirth’, where the person is reincarnated after death, his place dependent upon his behaviour.
BUDDHISM
From about 600BC there was a reaction against Hinduism. This came with Buddha, a rich prince who walked out on his riches upon understanding suffering. For years he wandered, finally gaining enlightenment.
In his Four Noble Truths he disclosed the problem of the world being one of suffering because of our desires. And in his Eightfold Path, he offered a way of life to rise above this in order to become enlightened ourselves.
In some ways a restatement of some of the aspects of Hinduism, Buddha’s system was, however, free of the cultural ties imposed by the former religion. It became so popular, it spread throughout the east.
EARLY POWER STRUGGLES
By 600BC some 16 political spheres existed in India, known as Mahajanapadas, or great realms. Based along the Indus Valley and River Ganges, some were monarchies, others republics, but were based on Hinduism or, to a lesser extent, Buddhism.
By the 5th century BC they had amalgamated into four. However, Magadha was rising along the Ganges, a new power with its capital of Pataliputra, or Patna. Rather than a subjugating force, it became a centre because of its command of the Ganges, civilised India brought into a co-operative alliance well in time for Alexander’s incursions.
In 325BC Chandragupta Maurya seized the throne, consolidating his position by annexing the Indus Valley and taking Afghanistan, creating the Mauryan Empire. By 232BC his grandson, Asoka, had taken all India, adopting Buddhism and moving away from militarism to bring about a Victory of Righteousness concerned with the spiritual and material wealth of his subjects.
Based on an Agrarian society, his grandfather’s minister, Kautilya, had produced manuals of statecraft, the Aithasastra, and Asoka built on them with ethical teachings inscribed on pillars throughout India. But with his death in 232BC the impetus couldn’t be maintained, the Mauryan Empire finished by 185 BC.
A period of anarchy followed, with traders moving out of India as far as the Roman Empire. Unity came with the Guptas around Patna with Chandra Gupta I about 320AD, the dynasty extending rule from the Sind and Punjab, east to Bengal by 415AD. Weakened by the Huns in the 5th century, the Guptas were usurped by the Buddhist ruler, Harsha, in 590AD. Anarchy returned by 647AD, not stabilizing until the 13th century. But prior to anarchy, India had its ‘classical’ period.
THE CLASSICAL PERIOD
Predominantly Hindu, this period saw the final flowering of poetry in Hindu text, and in architecture, Hindus borrowed from the Buddhist cave temples, rock-cut shrines and richly decorated and complex temples.
Hindu temples proliferated, based around the mandala, or schematic representations of the universe based on a centre of consciousness with concentric rings coming from the centre. Covered with reliefs and carvings, they would be sculpted out of rock with huge towers rising to the sky.
Throughout the period of anarchy following this flowering of Hindu civilization, castes and feudal principalities emerged, many still in place at the time of the British Raj, but in the north, Indian society was to change from the 8th century onwards with Arab incursions bringing Islam.
ISLAM AND SIKHISM
Restricted to the lower Indus Valley until the 11th century, Islam moved over the north of India during the 13th century, centred on the capital, Delhi, first built in the 6th century, but forming the Delhi Sultanate which lasted to 1526.
Reaching its height under Muhammad ibn Tughluq, he ruled over 20 provinces, including Bengal and parts of the Deccan, but the Mongol, Tamerlane, razed Delhi in 1398.
India was soon to realize a new religion. Ascetic in nature, they believed true knowledge can only come through intuition. It was to have a marked effect on the son of a Punjabi accountant called Nanak.
Born in 1469, he went in search of inspiration, troubled by the caste system and other Hindu concepts. He became the first of the ten gurus of Sikhism, who went through the Punjab.
Believing in an immortal creator who was never incarnate in human form, they degraded the cycle of rebirth and demanded equality for all, religious observances carried out in centres called a ‘gurdwara.’
BEFORE THE EUROPEAN
Other than the rise of Sikhism, the final phase of Indian history prior to the British Raj began in 1526 when Babur, a descendant of Tamerlane, swept into India from Afghanistan, destroying the Delhi Sultanate, establishing the Mogul, or Mughal, Empire. The greatest of the emperors was Akbar, taking the throne at 13 in 1555.
He extended Mogul rule throughout Bengal, Kashmir and the northern Deccan, professionalising the army and creating a state bureauocracy. A patron of art and learning, he also began reforms to assist peasant farmers.
Shah Jahan is also remembered for his building programme, a merging of Muslim/Hindu architecture including the rebuilding of Delhi with the Red Fort palace and mosque, and his mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.
However, from the late 17th century rival court factions fought for power whilst regional governors took local power. The Empire became more draconian in response, persecuting Hindus, causing a resurgence of Hindu power in western India.
By 1674 they had their own kingdom, moving into the Deccan. On the verge of destroying the Mogul Empire, in 1761 they failed to take Delhi, both the Maratha kingdom and Mogul Empire weakened at the point of European empire building. In 1803 Delhi fell to the British East India Company. Soon, the subjugation of India would be complete.
© Anthony North, September 2007
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