The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Frontiers

  Geographical features are sometimes said to serve as boundaries between states. The concept of the boundary of a kingdom was different in early times from what it is today. In the absence of maps, there was also an absence of a clearly drawn cartographic line marking a boundary. Features of the landscape, such as a mountain range, forest, river, coast or desert, could act as frontier zones rather than boundary lines. Frontier zones were areas of interaction between those who lived within a jurisdiction and those outside it. A frontier was probably more often recognized through changes in language and custom. This flexibility allowed for diplomatic leeway. It also facilitated the crossing of frontiers as a normal part of travelling. Both merchants and traders travelled extensively, while metalsmiths and pastoralists had their own circuits. After the mid-first millennium AD, brahmans also became increasingly mobile, travelling from court to court in search of employment. Pilgrims journeying to sacred places probably had greater immunity to frontiers, since the purpose of their travel was regarded as uplifting or fulfilling a vow.

  Frontiers also relate to the curious phenomenon of how some languages spread, while others remain in one place. Indo-Aryan, as Sanskrit, initially had a limited elite status. The use of Sanskrit became more widespread across north India when various dynasties gave it preference over the popularly used Prakrit as their official language. It became part of the demarcation between cultures, the marga, or Sanskrit-using mainstream, and the deshi, using the regional language. Sanskrit became the language of the court, of classical literature and philosophical works, in short of the subcontinental elite. It was edged out of the court when the administration of an area used Persian or the regional languages. Regional languages, some derived from a Dravidian source and some from Indo-Aryan, remained within approximate regional boundaries even when a few became court languages. The change of language was not a matter of linguistics alone, but had to do with where the writ of authority ran and the identity of that authority.

  Geography and landscape come into focus in the area of religious belief. Places of pilgrimage – tirthas and ziarats – are scattered all over the subcontinent. Pilgrimage crosses frontiers and carries cultural idioms from one place to another. Some sites are specific to a religion and retain their prominence as long as they can count on the patronage of that religion. But many more places acquire an association with the sacred and this brings about a cluster of religious connections, sometimes in succession and at other times simultaneously. Somanatha and its vicinity in Gujarat were home to places of worship revered by Vaishnavas, Buddhists, Shaivas, Jainas and Muslims. Patterns such as this cannot be explained by simply maintaining that there was religious tolerance, as there were expressions of intolerance at some places. Evidently there were other concerns that made such places attractive. Sacred sites could also be taken over by a winning religion – thus a megalithic site was appropriated for the building of a Buddhist stupa at Amaravati, a Buddhist chaitya was converted into a Hindu temple at Chezarla, a Hindu temple was converted into a Muslim mosque at Ajmer, and there are many more examples. Possibly some sites were thought to be intrinsically sacred and therefore attracted new religions, or perhaps taking over a sacred site was a demonstration of power. Sacred groves and trees, mountains, caves in hillsides, springs and pools are part of popular worship where landscape and belief come together. When they are appropriated by the powerful and the wealthy, then the landscape has to host monuments.

  Transportation

  Both human porterage and animals were used to transport goods on land. The animal changed according to environment. The most widely used were pack-oxen, mules and asses, as well as some locally bred horses, such as those bred in later periods in western India. For specific terrain, the animal changed to elephants in forests, camels – the dromedary – in arid lands, and sheep, goats, yak and dzo in the mountains. Animal caravans moved along tracks, but ox-carts required a minimal road. Rivers could be forded with ferries and boat bridges. From the ninth century AD stone bridges with corbelled arches were introduced. The Emperor Ashoka, as early as the third century DC, took pride in building rest-houses, digging wells and planting shady trees along the highways. The transportation of goods was possible for most of the year, but was difficult during the three-month period of the monsoon rains.

  Until the nineteenth century it would seem that water transport was preferred for bulk items wherever possible and most rivers were navigable, particularly in their lower reaches. River ports were therefore important as nodal points. The confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna, for instance, was the point at which the Ganges became a waterway of significance. The major city of Kaushambi may have been closer to the confluence in the mid-first millennium BC. For short distances or river crossings the most commonly used forms of transportation were floats, rafts, coracles, dugouts, basket boats and suchlike. For heavier duty, boats built of timber were used more regularly, the local timber being not only river-worthy but, as in the case of teak, eminently suitable even for ships sailing the seas. The size of such craft varied, as did the space and accommodation on the boat and the nature of the sails. Coastal craft were sometimes elaborate dugouts or else large logs tied together, as in the famous kattamaram, or planks sewn together. Mid-ocean ships were larger and built at special shipyards. The navigation of these required a good knowledge of winds and currents – particularly if the south-west monsoon was being used – of coastal landmarks and, inevitably, of astronomy based on observing the stars. The knowledge of astronomy tended to advance during times of considerable maritime trade.

  Climate and Agriculture

  Agriculture and climatic conditions are dominated by the monsoon – the seasonal rain. The south-west monsoon moves across the Arabian Sea and over the subcontinent from June to September, and the lesser north-east monsoon blows briefly in the opposite direction from December to February, affecting mainly the north-east and the peninsula. This leads to high humidity in the north-eastern area and in Bengal, Orissa and Kerala, with heavier rains and a dense growth of plants and trees. In contrast, parts of the Deccan Plateau and Rajasthan are semi-arid regions for most of the year. The variation in climate and rainfall also contributes to regional differentiation. The high Himalaya acts as a barrier against the cold winds from central Asia, and also stops the monsoon from crossing the initial Himalayan barrier.

  It is likely that some changes in climate affected agricultural production, but mapping such changes is not always possible or even precise, given the paucity of evidence for early periods. Analyses of plant remains and soil from excavations have suggested increasing aridity in north-western India in the post-Harappan period. A change in climate has also been suggested for the mid-first millennium AD.

  Climatic conditions, together with ecological and environmental variations, account for the range of settlement patterns and domestic architecture that also influenced other architectural forms. One type of village is nucleated, with a concentration of houses surrounded by fields, and grazing grounds for livestock further away. This tends to be the pattern in some of the areas that have a generally dry or arid environment. In areas that are wetter and given to rice cultivation, such as eastern and southern India, the pattern of linear homesteads is often preferred. Houses could be constructed using bamboo beams and woven stalks and matting, or wooden posts and a mud plaster over small branches of trees, the simplest huts being round, square or rectangular. Timber infrastructures gradually replaced these in urban centres, where mud-brick was also used by the better off, while the relatively affluent used kiln-fired brick. House-plans were often rooms around a courtyard, and this remained the standard architectural form in the plains until recent times. Buildings intended to last for a long period, such as palaces and temples, were built more often in stone. Roofs also changed according to the climate of the region, from flat roofs to sloping roofs with thatch or tiles. Vaulted timber ceilings, sometimes imitated in stone, gave way to flat ceilings. Those with
a higher elevation, as in temples, took the form of a corbelled construction.

  The same preconditions of regional difference made the subcontinent one of the richest areas in floral diversity. This included a range of forests from pine and fir to tropical deciduous forests and, in some wetter places, extensive rain forests. The dry, deciduous forests of the Indus Plain were different from the dense forests of the Ganges Plain. Timber from the teak tree became famous for its durability, ebony for its colour and sandalwood for its fragrance. Drier regions hosted savannas, bush growth and coarse grasses. If there are alpine meadows in the lower Himalaya, there are sand dunes in the desert of Rajasthan and majestic rock formations in the central plateau. Many estuaries had mangrove swamps, among them those of the Indus, the Ganges and the Mahanadi, as well as the coasts of the Andaman Islands.

  Climatic conditions relate closely to agricultural production, which in turn is frequently governed by knowing the best time for sowing and harvesting: a connection which the local brahman often calculated on the basis of a lunar-solar calendar. The agricultural and lunar calendar also served for calculating the dates of festivals. The determining of time was initially connected to the twenty-seven stellar constellations, and the phases of the moon provided clues to temporal points in the lunar month. To this were later added calculations based on solar reckoning, such as the equinoxes and the solstices. Such linking of information was important to the cultivator and partially explains his dependence on those who made the calendar, quite apart from his dependence on the quality of the soil, the seed and irrigation.

  Soil quality is judged by its natural nutrients, its ability to retain water and the degree to which it facilitates ploughing. Soils vary enormously from region to region, with alluvial and black-cotton soils as well as red soils and laterite. Generalizations on agrarian history have to consider these variations. It has been rightly said that durable boots are essential to the equipment of an agrarian historian required to walk in the countryside! In many areas, better soils are closer to rivers that tend to silt over their flood plains. These are often the preferred though hazardous locations of farming communities. The more established settlements move to elevated areas. Where the richer soil tends to be found below the topsoil, or is heavy, deep ploughing is called for. This has occasioned a debate among historians as to when the iron ploughshare was first used, how extensively and with what historical consequences. The use of wooden ploughshares in many parts of the subcontinent, particularly the peninsula, makes an interesting counterpoint to this discussion.

  Given the common practice of rainfed agriculture in the north-west, wheat and barley were the preferred food crops. In drier regions, as in parts of the peninsula, a variety of millets were cultivated. Wet-rice cultivation provided the staple in larger areas of the middle Ganges Plain and eastern India, the broader valleys of the peninsula and in coastal areas. Wet-rice cultivation yields a considerably higher surplus than other cereal crops and perhaps is thus able to sustain complex societies with large numbers of people not engaged in cultivation for longer periods. The drier areas were home to cattle-breeding, with the buffalo taking precedence in wetter areas. Cultivation processes range from shifting cultivation/slash-and-burn/ swidden, known locally as jhooming, and hoe cultivation, to the use of the plough. In limited areas jhooming has destroyed primary forests and all that remain are secondary forests, growing in areas now fallow. Shifting cultivation produces enough to live on but no more. It does not always imply a shifting settlement as the shift may only be in the land under cultivation. Nevertheless, the settlements tended to be temporary, as is still the case with some shifting cultivation of north-eastern India. Clearing forests to provide permanent cultivable land and extend agriculture has been an ongoing process in the history of the subcontinent. But the Arthashastra of Kautilya, a text on political economy dating to the Mauryan and post-Mauryan period, advises rigorous state control over this activity, doubtless to keep a check on the revenue brought in by extending agriculture and possibly to prevent over-exploitation of the land. While the population was small the extent of damage was limited, but in recent centuries regular and intensive clearing has depleted the forest cover.

  Methods of irrigating fields were not uniform, being dependent on natural conditions and the control of irrigation works. Extensive farming was tied to a regular supply of water. Irrigation systems ranged from the simple to the complicated: water taken from rivers and diverted into channels for irrigation; water-lifts working on wells and rivers; wheels fitted with pots and attached to wells; Persian wheels with a gearing mechanism; small hillside channels bringing water to terraced fields; tanks; embankments with weirs to hold water in reservoirs; enclosures at catchment areas; canals and anicuts; underground conduits; and small dams. The system adopted was specific to particular environments, the acreage of land under cultivation and the person or institution that took the initiative in setting up irrigation works. The theory that the hydraulic machinery was controlled by the bureaucracy of the state, with the peasant dependent on it being subjected to the despotism of the ruler, has been quoted as characteristic of agriculture and politics in pre-modern India. Studies of agrarian history have proved this theory to be erroneous. State-controlled irrigation works, such as large reservoirs, dams or anicuts, were few and far between. The more common forms were established either through private initiatives by wealthy farmers and landowners, or through the co-operation of the community of villagers. A failed monsoon may have brought a drought, and there is mention of famines. But the constant flooding of rivers and changes in river courses were as catastrophic as earthquakes and famines. Small-scale irrigation was the attempt of the cultivator to bypass disaster.

  Population

  In the relation of human activity to the landscape, the question of the number of human beings involved remains enigmatic for the Indian past. The immense variation in environment, climate and crop patterns presents problems in projecting figures. The numbers would certainly have been much smaller than those for later times and therefore susceptible to frequent change because of epidemics, campaigns and natural catastrophes. Some surveys linking habitation to humans on the basis of excavations have been attempted but these inevitably remain tentative. Despite some approximate estimates of population in the Harappan cities, based on the size of each city, there is no consensus on the figures. The lower town at Mohenjo-daro, more densely populated than the citadel, is thought to have had a population of about 42,000, but this is regarded by some as too low a figure.

  An estimate of 181 million as the population of the subcontinent had been suggested for the late fourth century BC but this figure was obviously far too high. It had been calculated on the size of the Mauryan army, based on figures from Greek sources. These are almost certainly exaggerated since the intention was to project a formidable military strength to oppose Alexander should be have campaigned in the Ganges plain. More recent attempts, calculated on the archaeology of two districts, one in the western Ganges Plain and one in north-western Maharashtra, suggest considerably smaller numbers. These have been further calculated for the mid-first millennium BC as around 20 million. The population for the city of Kaushambi during this period has been estimated at 36,000, which makes an interesting comparison with that of Mohenjo-daro.

  Variation in population numbers would have been affected by catastrophes, some of which have been mentioned above. What has not been investigated for n history is the occurrence of disease and epidemics. It has been suggested that one of the causes for a large number of deaths at Mohenjo-daro was the prevalence of severe anaemia. The frequency of floods may well have been followed by epidemics of malaria or similar diseases. It is now being argued that the stalling of animals together with humans in the same hut, as often happens in agrarian societies, would be conducive to the spread of viruses. Urban congestion, which characterized some of the smaller towns in the declining period of the Indus civilization, is a well known cause of a variety of deva
stating diseases.

  Estimates for the early seventeenth century hover around nearly 150 million for the Mughal Empire. The first census of the British Indian administration, carried out in 1881, put the population at a little over 253 million. The argument that there was a stasis between c. 500 BC and AD 1500 would therefore not be supported by these recent views. Population growth would be closely associated with human activity and the earliest forms of this would have involved small populations, gradually increasing in number as the activities became more complex and food more readily available.

  Categories of Societies

  The Indian subcontinent has been the habitat of many societies, ranging from those with a relatively simple organization to others with more complex organizations, the range disallowing easy generalizations. Complex societies were obviously the more dominant and elbowed their way into history. Others were forced to be more reticent but they did not disappear. It is often in the interface of such differing societies that the patterns of Indian culture were forged. As the ‘living prehistory’ of India, their survival – albeit even in forms that have changed somewhat over time – and their presence in history has to be recognized.

  The understanding of early societies has been helped by anthropologists studying pre-modern societies and by those analysing pre-capitalist systems. These studies have not only attempted to explain the difference between early societies and those of the present, but have encouraged historians to ask more incisive questions about the nature of past societies. The attempt here is to understand and differentiate between some of the categories that have been focused on, as a prelude to the historical delineation of Indian society from the early past. These societies still exist in various parts of India, some quite marginally, and are part of what has been called a cultural survival. It would therefore be possible to speak of them in the present tense. But since it is their role in history under discussion here, it is more appropriate to use the past tense.