The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  The Nandas are sometimes described as the first dynasty with imperial ambitions, a statement hinted at in the Puranas. They inherited the large kingdom of Magadha and extended it to yet more distant frontiers. To this purpose they built up a vast army, although the estimates by Greek writers are almost certainly exaggerated – 20,000 cavalry, 200,000 infantry, 2,000 chariots and 3,000 elephants being the least of the numbers quoted. These figures were intended to suggest a formidable opposition to the Greek army under Alexander, leading to Greek soldiers refusing to campaign further. But the Nandas never had the opportunity to use their army against the Greeks, since Alexander turned back while in southern Punjab and followed the Indus to its delta.

  Another factor assisting the consolidation of the kingdom was that taxes were given importance as revenue. The methodical collection of taxes by regularly appointed officials became a part of the administrative system. The treasury was doubtless kept replenished, the wealth of the Nandas being proverbial. The Nandas also built canals and carried out irrigation projects even as far as Kalinga (Orissa). The possibility of an imperial structure based on an essentially agrarian economy began to germinate in the Indian mind. The Nanda attempt was cut short by Chandragupta Maurya, the young adventurer who usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BC. It was under the Mauryas, therefore, that the imperial idea found expression.

  North-west India and Alexander

  Meanwhile, the scene shifts back to north-western India, which, during the sixth century BC, had been part of the Achaemenid Empire. A little before 530 BC, Cyrus, the Achaemenid Emperor of Persia, crossed the Hindu Rush mountains and received tribute from the people of Kamboja and Gandhara. Gandhara and Hindush/Sindhu are mentioned as satrapies or provinces in Achaemenid inscriptions. Historically, this was to be a region with changing suzerainties, shifting between north India and Afghanistan and Iran.

  Herodotus mentions that Gandhara was the twentieth satrapy, counted among the most populous and wealthy in the Achaemenid Empire. Indian provinces provided mercenaries for the Persian armies fighting against the Greeks in the fifth century BC. Herodotus describes them as dressed in cotton clothes and armed with reed bows, spears and arrows of cane tipped with iron. Ktesias, a Greek physician living at the Achaemcnid court in the early half of the fifth century BC, left a description of north-western India, much of which is fanciful writing, such as his description of what was believed to be the tiger:

  In each jaw it has three rows of teeth and at the tip of its tail it is armed with stings by which it defends itself in close fight and which it discharges against distant foes, just like an arrow shot by an archer.

  Quoted in Pausanius, IX.21: J. W. McCrindle,

  Ancient India as Described in Classical Literature, p. 210

  Among the more famous cities of Gandhara and the north-west was Takshashila, or Taxila, as the Greeks called it. It rapidly became a cosmopolitan centre where Indian and Iranian learning mingled, to which was later added knowledge from the Hellenistic Greeks. Orthodox brahmans treated this region as impure, since Vedic rituals were no longer regularly performed. That Iranian and Vedic ideas and rituals had once been close seems not to have been remembered. Nevertheless, the mixing of Iranian and Indian forms was felt in various spheres of Indian life: Persian sigloi-type coins were copied in India; perhaps the idea of rock inscriptions used so effectively by the Emperor Ashoka in the third century BC was inspired by the rock inscriptions of the Persian King Darius; the script used widely in north-western India, kharoshthi, was derived from Aramaic, current in the Achaemenid Empire. Achaemenid control over some western parts of central Asia, as well as over Gandhara, brought the two areas under a single suzerainty, a connection which was to be repeated by various dynasties in subsequent centuries. Achaemenid ascendancy in north-western India ended with the conquest of the empire by Alexander of Macedon in c. 330 BC. Soon after this, north-west India was also to face Alexander’s armies.

  In 327 BC Alexander, continuing his march across the empire of Darius, entered the Indian provinces. The Greek campaign in north-western India lasted for about two years. It made little lasting impression historically or politically on India, and not even a mention of Alexander is to be found in early Indian sources. Alexander came to India in order to reach the easternmost parts of Darius’s empire. He also wished to solve the ‘problem of Ocean’, the limits of which were a puzzle to Greek geographers. And, not unnaturally, he wanted to add what was already being described as the fabulous country of India to his list of conquests. The campaigns took him across the five rivers of the Punjab, at the last of which his soldiers refused to go further. Reports of the strength of the Nanda army may have been the cause. He then decided to follow the Indus to its delta, and from there return to Babylon, sending a part of his army by sea via the Persian Gulf and the remainder by land along the coast. The latter was a disastrous enterprise, since it was an exceptionally inhospitable coast. The campaign had involved some hard-fought battles, such as the now famous Battle of the Hydaspes against Poros (Puru), the King of the Jhelum region; the subduing of innumerable polities, both kingdoms and what the Greeks called ‘autonomous cities’, probably the gana-sanghas; the wounding of Alexander by the Malloi, and his revenge; and the extreme hardships of the army travelling down the Indus and along the coast of Makran. Alexander left governors to rule his Indian conquests, but his death, following so close on his departure, caused a state of confusion in which his governors soon left India to seek their fortunes in west Asia.

  A significant outcome of Alexander’s campaign, that was neither political nor military, was that he had with him literate Greeks who recorded their impressions of India, such as the accounts of his Admiral Nearchus and of Onesicritus. These are vignettes of how the Greeks saw northern India. They sometimes provide a corrective to the fantasies in other Greek accounts, although even in these the imagination of the authors is not always curbed. Customs and practices of the north-west were not identical with those of the Ganges Plain. This forms an interesting point of contrast, indicating that the genesis of regional cultures varied, rather than growing uniformly out of a single, homogeneous culture. Furthermore, invasions often open routes of communication and points of exchange, even if inadvertently. The proximity of the post-Alexander Hellenistic kingdoms, some founded by the generals of Alexander, was not insignificant to Mauryan politics and commerce. Frequent references to ‘autonomous cities’ in the Indus Plain indicate the continuing presence of a variety of gana-sanghas in this region. These polities survived and had not yet been affected by the imperialism of Magadha, unlike the eastern gana-sanghas that seem to have succumbed to Magadhan power.

  The Greek accounts remain a curious mixture of fact and fable, as much a comment on the Greek view of the world as an attempt to describe Indians. Greater familiarity with India in the ensuing centuries corrected some of their more incredible stories, but the attraction of the exotic could not be suppressed. The play on fantasies and marvels is of interest for what they perceived of India, but it also contributed to imprinting the idea of India with the mythical and the extraordinary in the mind of Europe over the centuries. Nearchus, Alexander’s admiral, accurately describes the clothes worn by Indians:

  The dress worn by the Indians is made of cotton produced on trees. But this cotton is either of a brighter white colour than any found anywhere else, or the darkness of the Indian complexion makes their apparel look so much whiter. They wear an undergarment of cotton which reaches below the knee halfway down to the ankles and an upper garment which they throw partly over their shoulders and partly twist in folds round their head. The Indians also wear earrings of ivory, but only the very wealthy do this. They use parasols as a screen from the heat. They wear shoes made of white leather and these are elaborately trimmed, while the soles are variegated, and made of great thickness, to make the wearer seem so much taller.

  Nearchus, quoted in Arrian’s Indica, 16; J. W. McCrindle,

  Ancient India as Describ
ed by Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 219

  But the bizarre was always present and is repeatedly mentioned even in later accounts:

  there are men said to be ten feet tall and six feet wide some of whom have no nose but only two orifices above the mouth through which they breathe. Some were brought to the court who had no mouths… they dwell near the source of the Ganges and subsist on perfumes and the savour of roasted flesh. Some had ears reaching down to their feet and they could sleep in them. And then there were ants that dug up gold and left it on the surface so it could be picked up.

  Strabo, Geography, 15.1.57; J. W. McCrindle,

  Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian, pp. 74-5

  One of the most enduring images was that of Alexander in conversation with Indian sophists, one of whom is said to have accompanied him to Babylon. The subjects of discussion would of course have been embroidered upon with every rendering of the story. This image was seminal to the view that Indian ideas entered the Hellenistic and Mediterranean world subsequent to Alexander and contributed to various schools of thought that did not necessarily conform to established views in the European tradition. Some schools of agnosticism sought ancestry from the east. Neo-Platonism, claiming similar origins, survived for many centuries almost as a substratum philosophy in Europe.

  Indians, on the other hand, did not say much about the Greeks, and what they did say varies. The term used for them in Sanskrit was Yavana, a back-formation from Prakrit yona, most likely derived from yauna – a rendering of Ionia that is mentioned in Achaemenid inscriptions. Yavana became a generic term for people coming from the west and was used as recently as the last century. Some later brahmanical texts were bitterly uncomplimentary and hateful about the Yavanas, perhaps because of a lingering memory of Alexander’s hostility to the brahmans during his campaign, or perhaps because the Yavana rulers of the later period tended to be patrons of sects that did not conform to Brahmanism. Buddhist texts, however, were curious about the dual division of Yona society – the masters and the slaves – and saw this as an alternative to caste stratification.

  Early Trade

  Alexander established a number of Greek settlements in the Punjab, none of which survived as towns. It is probable that the Greek settlers moved into neighbouring towns, becoming part of a floating Greek population in the north-west. The movement of the Greek army across western Asia and Iran to India reinforced or opened up routes between north-western India via Afghanistan to Iran, and from there to the eastern Mediterranean. This was to accelerate east-west trade, and no doubt the small Greek population in India and west Asia played a part in this. As often happens, where there has been an exchange of goods there soon follows an exchange of ideas, and this was to become evident in the subsequent period in styles of art, in medicine and in astronomy. Earlier sources had mentioned the presence of people thought to be Indians scattered here and there in west Asia, but now the presence became more focused.

  Routes going south into the Indian peninsula were introducing a new area to northern trade. The presence of the Northern Black Polished Ware as far south as Alagankulam, together with the distribution of punch-marked coins, would suggest at least the start of communication with the peninsula. Ujjain, Vidisha and Tripuri were to be linked to Pratishthana in the Deccan. The main trade routes, however, were along the Ganges River itself, going from Rajagriha as far as Kaushambi, and then via Ujjain to Bhrigukachchha/Bharuch on the Narmada Estuary, which was to grow into a major port for overseas trade with the west. Another route from Kaushambi, up the doab, went across the Punjab to Taxila, the outlet for the overland western trade. Shravasti in the middle Ganges Plain was also a point for exchange.

  Goods continued to be transported in ox-carts and on pack animals, but the use of river routes allowed extensive transport by boats. Vaishali, Rajghat, Pataligrama and Champa are mentioned as important river ports.The texts begin to refer more frequently to coastal ports, such as Tamluk in the Ganges Delta and Bhrigukachchha in western India. The port of Sopara (in the vicinity of Mumbai), which became important in the Mauryan period, had its beginnings a little earlier. The fastest mode of travel for the individual traveller was of course riding a horse, but for greater comfort a light horse-drawn carriage was doubtless preferred.

  The appearance of towns made some changes in the landscape. More striking was the varied orientation towards towns in the texts, depending on authorship and world-view. From many perspectives the growth of towns marked a departure. A demarcation between urban and rural, although not sharp at this point, was nevertheless a beginning. Ramparts and fortifications, even if initially unimpressive, symbolize a demarcation. What was earlier a demarcation between the settlement and the forest now takes on a further dimension, with the settlement including the urban. The village had consisted of people often connected through kinship or occupation, but the townspeople tended increasingly to come from varying and unconnected backgrounds. The structures and buildings associated with towns required organized labour on a scale not familiar to village requirements, and this would have been one aspect of a substantial social change.

  The town was viewed as much larger than the village. The size of Ayodhya, for instance, as given in the Ramayana, is exaggeratedly larger than the sizes obtained from archaeology for urban settlements in the Ganges Plain. Kaushambi, among the larger cities, is thought to have had a population of about 36,000 and covered an area of between 150 to 200 hectares. Most large cities such as Rajagriha, Ahichhatra and Shravasti covered a similar area. The texts were not concerned with giving a precise size, but with conveying the sense of an immensely bigger settlement than the earlier and familiar village. The area covered by the town included houses with gardens, although larger groves and orchards were on the periphery.

  Much of the long-distance trade was restricted to luxury articles, the more commonly produced goods finding local markets. Goods were carried by various groups of people – pastoralists, itinerant craftsmen and more regular traders. Some activities associated with towns were to evolve into new professions that became prominent in the subsequent period. From the ranks of the wealthy, landowning householders – the gahapatis – there were to emerge the setthis, who became entrepreneurs of trade and financiers.

  The introduction of coined metallic money facilitated exchange, introducing a qualitative difference in trading activities. Silver punch-marked coins became widespread legal tender, although copper punch-marked coins and cast copper coins also had some currency. The quantity of coins suggests the availability of silver, some of which was mined in Rajasthan. It is unclear who issued the coins, since the punch-marked coins generally carry only symbols. It is thought that they may have been issued by organizations involved in exchange since a few carry the legend negama, thought to be linked to nigama, connected to market activities. The minting of coins would have been another urban professional activity. The standard coin was the pana and the range of greater and lesser units would have been refined with usage.

  Coins mark a radical departure in exchange relations. They provide a uniform means of exchange and accounting, and can bring about an increase in the range of goods, all valued within a single system. This facilitates long-distance trade, as well as connections between merchants. Investment bringing an interest becomes part of the financier’s profession because coins can be accumulated and treated as capital. This also makes forward speculation financially viable. Another innovation linked to a monetary system was usury, but whether it was common and what the rates of interest may have been are not known for this early period. Brahmanical sources were initially opposed to usury, probably because it was central to the new profession of financiers who were urban-based and generally supporters of the heterodox sects. But the Buddha is said to have endorsed investment, presumably on interest, when he is reported to have said:

  Whoso is virtuous and intelligent.

  Shines like a fire that blazes on the hill.

  To him amassing weal
th like roving bee

  Its honey gathering [and hurting naught],

  Riches mount up as ant-heap growing high.

  When the good layman wealth has so amassed

  Able is he to benefit his clan.

  In portions four let him divide that wealth,

  So binds he to himself life’s friendly things.

  One portion let him spend and taste the fruit.

  His business to conduct let him take two.

  And portion four let him reserve and hoard;

  So there’ll be wherewithal in times of need.

  Digha Nikaya, Ill. 188, tr. T. W. Rhys Davids,

  Dialogues of the Buddha, Ill, pp. 179-80

  The need to evolve a script may have been influenced by the use of the Aramaic script in Achaemenid Persia, spreading through Achaemenid administration and trade. A script assists both administrative and commercial activities. The inscriptions of Ashoka, dating to the third century BC, are the earliest examples of writing (other than the Harappan script), and seem to assume some familiarity with a script. The script may therefore go back at least a few generations. Although Panini refers to a script in his famous grammar of Sanskrit, the Ashtadhyayi, composed in the fifth century BC, this could have been the Iranian Aramaic which was familiar to the literati of the north-west. The date of potsherds excavated from fifth century BC levels at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, with graffiti in brahmi, would make this the earliest evidence of brahmi, but the find remains controversial. Isolated examples would require more supporting evidence before the date can be accepted.