by Will Durant
Yuan Chwang, most famous of the Chinese Buddhists who visited India, tells us that Harsha proclaimed, every five years, a great festival of charity, to which he invited all officials of all religions, and all the poor and needy of the realm. At this gathering it was his custom to give away in public alms all the surplus brought into the state treasury since the last quinquennial feast. Yuan was surprised to see a great quantity of gold, silver, coins, jewelry, fine fabrics and delicate brocades piled up in an open square, surrounded by a hundred pavilions each seating a thousand persons. Three days were given to religious exercises; on the fourth day (if we-may believe the incredible pilgrim) the distribution began. Ten thousand Buddhist monks were fed, and each received a pearl, garments, flowers, perfumes, and one hundred pieces of gold. Then the Brahmans were given alms almost as abundant; then the Jains; then other sects; then all the poor and orphaned laity that had come from every quarter of the kingdom. Sometimes the distribution lasted three or four months. At the end Harsha divested himself of his costly robes and jewelry, and added them to the alms.55
The memoirs of Yuan Chwang reveal a certain theological exhilaration as the mental spirit of the age. It is a pleasant picture, and significant of India’s repute in other lands—this Chinese aristocrat leaving his comforts and perquisites in far-off Ch’ang-an, passing across half-civilized western China, through Tashkent and Samarkand (then a flourishing city), over the Himalayas into India, and then studying zealously, for three years, in the monastic university at Nalanda. His fame as a scholar and a man of rank brought him many invitations from the princes of India. When Harsha heard that Yuan was at the court of Kumara, King of Assam, he summoned Kumara to come with Yuan to Kanauj. Kumara refused, saying that Harsha could have his head, but not his guest. Harsha answered: “I trouble you for your head,” and Kumara came. Harsha was fascinated by Yuan’s learning and fine manners, and called a convocation of Buddhist notables to hear Yuan expound the Mahayana doctrine. Yuan nailed his theses to the gateway of the pavilion in which the discourse was to be held, and added a postscript in the manner of the day: “If any one here can find a single wrong argument and can refute it, I will let him cut off my head.” The discussion lasted eighteen days, but Yuan (Yuan reports) answered all objections and confounded all heretics. (Another account has it that his opponents ended the conference by setting fire to the pavilion.)56 After many adventures Yuan found his way back to Chang-an, where an enlightened emperor enshrined in a rich temple the Buddhist relics which this holy Polo had brought with him, and gave him a corps of scholars to help translate the manuscripts that he had purchased in India.57
All the glory of Harsha’s rule, however, was artificial and precarious, for it depended upon the ability and generosity of a mortal king. When he died a usurper seized the throne, and illustrated the nether side of monarchy. Chaos ensued, and continued for almost a thousand years. India, like Europe, now suffered her Middle Ages, was overrun by barbarians, was conquered, divided, and despoiled. Not until the great Akbar would she know peace and unity again.
IV. ANNALS OF RAJPUTANA
The Samurai of India—The age of chivalry—The fall of Chitor
This Dark Age was lighted up for a moment by the epic of Rajputana. Here, in the states of Mewar, Marwar, Amber, Bikaner and many others of melodious name, a people half native in origin and half descended from invading Scythians and Huns, had built a feudal civilization under the government of warlike rajas who cared more for the art of life than for the life of art. They began by acknowledging the suzerainty of the Mauryas and the Guptas; they ended by defending their independence, and all India, from the inroads of Moslem hordes. Their clans were distinguished by a military ardor and courage not usually associated with India;* if we may trust their admiring historian, Tod, every man of them was a dauntless Kshatriya, and every woman among them was a heroine. Their very name, Rajputs, meant “sons of kings”; and if sometimes they called their land Rajasthan, it was to designate it as “the home of royalty.”
All the nonsense and glamor—all the bravery, loyalty, beauty, feuds, poisons, assassinations, wars, and subjection of woman—which our traditions attach to the Age of Chivalry can be found in the annals of these plucky states. “The Rajput chieftains,” says Tod, “were imbued with all the kindred virtues of the western cavalier, and far his superior in mental attainments.”59 They had lovely women for whom they did not hesitate to die, and who thought it only a matter of courtesy to accompany their husbands to the grave by the rite of suttee. Some of these women were educated and refined; some of the rajas were poets, or scientists; and for a while a delicate genre of water-color painting flourished among them in the medieval Persian style. For four centuries they grew in wealth, until they could spend $20,000,000 on the coronation of Mewar’s king.60
It was their pride and their tragedy that they enjoyed war as the highest art of all, the only one befitting a Rajput gentleman. This military spirit enabled them to defend themselves against the Moslems with historic valor,† but it kept their little states so divided and weakened with strife that not all their bravery could preserve them in the end. Tod’s account of the fall of Chitor, one of the Rajput capitals, is as romantic as any legend of Arthur or Charlemagne; and indeed (since it is based solely upon native historians too faithful to their fatherland to be in love with truth) these marvelous Annals of Rajasthan may be as legendary as Le Morte d’Arthur or Le Chanson de Roland. In this version the Mohammedan invader, Alau-d-din, wanted not Chitor but the princess Pudmini—“a title bestowed only on the superlatively fair.” The Moslem chieftain proposed to raise the siege if the regent of Chitor would surrender the princess. Being refused, Alau-d-din agreed to withdraw if he were allowed to see Pudmini. Finally he consented to depart if he might see Pudmini in à mirror; but this too was denied him. Instead, the women of Chitor joined in defending their city; and when the Rajputs saw their wives and daughters dying beside them they fought until every man of them was dead. When Alau-d-din entered the capital he found no sign of human life within its gates; all the males had died in battle, and their wives, in the awful rite known as the Johur, had burned themselves to death.62
V. THE ZENITH OF THE SOUTH
The kingdoms of the Deccan—Vijayanagar—Krishna Raya—A medieval metropolis—Laws—Arts—Religion—Tragedy
As the Moslems advanced into India native culture receded farther and farther south; and towards the end of these Middle Ages the finest achievements of Hindu civilization were those of the Deccan. For a time the Chalyuka tribe maintained an independent kingdom reaching across central India, and achieved, under Pulakeshin II, sufficient power and glory to defeat Harsha, to attract Yuan Chwang, and to receive a respectful embassy from Khosrou II of Persia. It was in Pulakeshin’s reign and territory that the greatest of Indian paintings—the frescoes of Ajanta—were completed. Pulakeshin was overthrown by the king of the Pallavas, who for a brief period became the supreme power in central India. In the extreme south, and as early as the first century after Christ, the Pandyas established a realm comprising Madura, Tinnevelly, and parts of Travancore; they made Madura one of the finest of medieval Hindu cities, and adorned it with a gigantic temple and a thousand lesser works of architectural art. In their turn they too were overthrown, first by the Cholas, and then by the Mohammedans. The Cholas ruled the region between Madura and Madras, and thence westward to Mysore. They were of great antiquity, being mentioned in the edicts of Ashoka; but we know nothing of them until the ninth century, when they began a long career of conquest that brought them tribute from all southern India, even from Ceylon. Then their power waned, and they passed under the control of the greatest of the southern states, Vijayanagar.*
Vijayanagar—the name both of a kingdom and of its capital—is a melancholy instance of forgotten glory. In the years of its grandeur it comprised all the present native states of the lower peninsula, together with Mysore and the entire Presidency of Madras. We may judge of its power and resources by c
onsidering that King Krishna Raya led forth to battle at Talikota 703,000 foot, 32,600 horse, 551 elephants, and some hundred thousand merchants, prostitutes and other camp followers such as were then wont to accompany an army in its campaigns.63 The autocracy of the king was softened by a measure of village autonomy, and by the occasional appearance of an enlightened and human monarch on the throne. Krishna Raya, who ruled Vijayanagar in the days of Henry VIII, compares favorably with that constant lover. He led a life of justice and courtesy, gave abounding alms, tolerated all Hindu faiths, enjoyed and supported literature and the arts, forgave fallen enemies and spared their cities, and devoted himself sedulously to the chores of administration. A Portuguese missionary, Domingos Paes (1522), describes him as
the most feared and perfect king that could possibly be; cheerful of disposition, and very merry; he is one that seeks to honor foreigners, and receives them kindly. . . . He is a great ruler, and a man of much justice, but subject to sudden fits of rage. . . . He is by rank a greater lord than any, by reason of what he possesses in armies and territories; but it seems that he has in fact nothing compared to what a man like him ought to have, so gallant and perfect is he in all things.64*
The capital, founded in 1336, was probably the richest city that India had yet known. Nicolo Conti, visiting it about 1420, estimated its circumference at sixty miles; Paes pronounced it “as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight.” There were, he added, “many groves of trees within it, and many conduits of water”; for its engineers had constructed a huge dam in the Tungabadra River, and had formed a reservoir from which water was conveyed to the city by an aqueduct fifteen miles long, cut for several miles out of the solid rock. Abdu-r Razzak, who saw the city in 1443, reported it as “such that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, of any place resembling it upon the whole earth.” Paes considered it “the best-provided city in tne world, . . . Ior in this one everything abounds.” The houses, he tells us, numbered over a hundred thousand—implying a population of half a million souls. He marvels at a palace in which one room was built entirely of ivory; “it is so rich and beautiful that you would hardly find anywhere another such.”66 When Firoz Shah, Sultan of Delhi, married the daughter of Vijayanagar’s king in the latter’s capital, the road was spread for six miles with velvet, satin, cloth of gold and other costly stuffs.67 However, every traveler is a liar.
Underneath this wealth a population of serfs and laborers lived in poverty and superstition, subject to a code of laws that preserved some commercial morality by a barbarous severity. Punishment ranged from mutilation of hands or feet to casting a man to the elephants, cutting off his head, impaling him alive by a stake thrust through his belly, or hanging him on a hook under his chin until he died;68 rape as well as large-scale theft was punished in this last way. Prostitution was permitted, regulated, and turned into royal revenue. “Opposite the mint,” says Abdu-r Razzak, “is the office of the prefect of the city, to which it is said twelve thousand policemen are attached; and their pay . . . is derived from the proceeds of the brothels. The splendor of these houses, the beauty of the heart-ravishers, their blandishments and ogles, are beyond all description.”69 Women were of subject status, and were expected to kill themselves on the death of their husbands, sometimes by allowing themselves to be buried alive.70
Under the Rayas or Kings of Vijayanagar literature prospered, both in classical Sanskrit and in the Telugu dialect of the south. Krishna Raya was himself a poet, as well as a liberal patron of letters; and his poet laureate, Alasani-Peddana, is ranked among the highest of India’s singers. Painting and architecture flourished; enormous temples were built, and almost every foot of their surface was carved into statuary or bas-relief. Buddhism had lost its hold, and a form of Brahmanism that especially honored Vishnu had become the faith of the people. The cow was holy and was never killed; but many species of cattle and fowl were sacrificed to the gods, and eaten by the people. Religion was brutal, and manners were refined.
In one day all this power and luxury were destroyed. Slowly the conquering Moslems had made their way south; now the sultans of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golkonda and Bidar united their forces to reduce this last stronghold of the native Hindu kings. Their combined armies met Rama Raja’s half-million men at Talikota; the superior numbers of the attackers prevailed; Rama Raja was captured and beheaded in the sight of his followers, and these, losing courage, fled. Nearly a hundred thousand of them were slain in the retreat, until all the streams were colored with their blood. The conquering troops plundered the wealthy capital, and found the booty so abundant “that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels, effects, tents, arms, horses and slaves.”71 For five months the plunder continued: the victors slaughtered the helpless inhabitants in indiscriminate butchery, emptied the stores and shops, smashed the temples and palaces, and labored at great pains to destroy all the statuary and painting in the city; then they went through the streets with flaming torches, and set fire to all that would burn. When at last they retired, Vijayanagar was as completely ruined as if an earthquake had visited it and had left not a stone upon a stone. It was a destruction ferocious and absolute, typifying that terrible Moslem conquest of India which had begun a thousand years before, and was now complete.
VI. THE MOSLEM CONQUEST
The weakening of India—Mahmud of Ghazni—The Sultanate of Delhi—Its cultural asides—Its brutal policy—The lessson of Indian history
The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. The Hindus had allowed their strength to be wasted in internal division and war; they had adopted religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which unnerved them for the tasks of life; they had failed to organize their forces for the protection of their frontiers and their capitals, their wealth and their freedom, from the hordes of Scythians, Huns, Afghans and Turks hovering about India’s boundaries and waiting for national weakness to let them in. For four hundred years (600-1000 A.D.) India invited conquest; and at last it came.
The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 A.D.) Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 A.D.) for the mastery of Europe. But the real Moslem conquest of India did not come till the turn of the first millennium after Christ.
In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain by the name of Mahmud became sultan of the little state of Ghazni, in eastern Afghanistan. Mahmud knew that his throne was young and poor, and saw that India, across the border, was old and rich; the conclusion was obvious. Pretending a holy zeal for destroying Hindu idolatry, he swept across the frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries. Returning to Ghazni he astonished the ambassadors of foreign powers by displaying “jewels and unbored pearls and rubies shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates.”72 Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill; each spring he returned to his capital richer than before. At Mathura (on the Jumna) he took from the temple its statues of gold encrusted with precious stones, and emptied its coffers of a vast quantity of gold, silver and jewelry; he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine, judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground.73 Six years
later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni. In the end he became, perhaps, the richest king that history has ever known. Sometimes he spared the population of the ravaged cities, and took them home to be sold as slaves; but so great was the number of such captives that after some years no one could be found to offer more than a few shillings for a slave. Before every important engagement Mahmud knelt in prayer, and asked the blessing of God upon his arms. He reigned for a third of a century; and when he died, full of years and honors, Moslem historians ranked him as the greatest monarch of his time, and one of the greatest sovereigns of any age.74