The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  He is the king of peace, of prosperity, of the monks and of the teaching.

  He is accomplished in extraordinary virtues, respects every sect and repairs all shrines. His armies cannot be vanquished and he protects the realm. He is descended from the family of the royal sage, Vasu.

  Adapted from Epigraphia Indica, XX, pp. 71-89,

  K. P. Jayaswal and R. D. Banerji, ‘The Hathigumpha Inscription of Kharavela’

  The attributes of royalty such as conquest, patronage and the welfare of subjects are accentuated, with royalty being emphasized in the sculptures and reliefs in the surrounding caves. Such an assertion would have been necessary if Kalinga was still supporting some chiefdoms. The Rathika and Bhojaka peoples are mentioned in the Ashokan inscriptions and in later Satavahana inscriptions they refer to designations – Maharathi and Maha-bhoja – implying they were chiefs who had been given administrative functions. Shishupalgarh, a Mauryan administrative centre, was also an exchange centre. But Kharavela did not issue coins and the use of punch-marked coins continued. It is possible that, despite the vast sums mentioned in connection with the development of the town, the Kalingan economy was not yet ready for its own coinage. Descent from Vasu refers to the Vasu who was the raja of the Chedis, believed to be the recipient of a gift from the gods – a chariot that could fly. The claim to a connection with Vasu links Kharavela to epic and Puranic genealogies, and the flying chariot would have linked him to Havana in the Ramayana. On Kharavela’s death, Kalinga relapsed into quiescence.

  Indo-Greeks and Shakas

  The end of Achaemenid rule in Iran and the death of Alexander gave rise to kingdoms ruled by Alexander’s erstwhile generals, for instance the Seleucid kingdom that was contiguous with the Mauryan. The mingling of Hellenistic Greeks and Indians in the second century BC came about through the Hellenistic kings, who ruled in the north-west as successors to those who had succeeded Alexander. Some differentiate between the Greco-Bactrians who ruled over Bactria and the Indo-Greeks who included north-west India in their domain; others refer to them as Indo-Bactrian Greeks or use Indo-Greek in a more general sense. Indian sources refer to them as Yavanas. This term makes no distinction between what some would call the Hellenic Greeks, living on the mainland of the peninsula of Greece, and the Hellenistic Greeks. The latter were those of Greek descent or of mixed descent, but broadly conforming to Greek culture and living in the eastern Mediterranean and west Asia. Hellenistic Greek culture drew on Greco-Roman culture of the eastern Mediterranean, as well as Iranian sources and some central Asian influences, and can be regarded initially as Greco-Roman colonial culture. The political ambitions of these Hellenistic kings, who ruled between the third and first centuries BC, were torn between asserting themselves in the eastern Mediterranean and intensifying their hold on the gainful trading activities in west and central Asia. Indians would have been more familiar with Hellenistic Greeks than with the Greeks of the peninsula. The term Yavana continued to be used in later times for all those who came from west Asia.

  The rulers of Bactria and of Parthia made the most of the decline of Seleucid power by breaking away from Seleucid control, acting as virtually independent kingdoms by the second century BC. At first, Bactria was the more forceful of the two. It lay between the Hindu Kush and the Oxus, a fertile region well provided with natural resources and controlling the main northern routes from Gandhara to the Black Sea, to central Asia and to the eastern Mediterranean. The Greek settlements in Bactria traced their origin to the Achaemenid period (c. fifth century BC) when the Persian kings settled Greek exiles in the region. These were reinforced by Greek artisans settling in the cities of Bactria.

  Diodotus, the governor of Bactria, rebelled against Antiochus, the Seleucid King. Antiochus was unable to suppress the revolt because his primary interest lay in the eastern Mediterranean, and consequently Diodotus achieved independent rule. Nevertheless, in 206 BC Antiochus made an alliance with Subhagasena, an obscure Indian king, largely to replenish his supply of elephants. The alliance revealed that the north-west of India was vulnerable to annexation. Demetrius, the son of Euthydemus (who had also defeated the Seleucid king), took his armies to the south-east of the Hindu Kush where he successfully acquired territory. Eventually, a Demetrius who was probably the second king of this name, came to rule a large area in southern Afghanistan, the Punjab and the Indus Valley, thus establishing Indo-Greek power in north-western India. Forays were made into the Ganges heartland, but the power base remained the north-west and possibly the Punjab. This is corroborated in an indirect manner in Patanjali’s grammar, the Mahabhashya, dating to the second century BC. In giving examples of the use of a particular grammatical form he refers to Yavana raids in the western Ganges Plain and in Rajasthan.

  The best remembered of the Indo-Greek kings was undoubtedly Menander, who, as Milinda, attained fame in the Buddhist text Milindapanha – the Questions of King Milinda – a catechismal discussion on Buddhism. Supposedly conducted by Menander and the Buddhist philosopher Naga-sena, it is claimed to have resulted in Menander’s conversion to Buddhism. This was a period when Greeks were interested in Buddhism, so such a manual would have been extremely useful to the propagation of the religion. Menander, ruling from c. 150 to 135 BC, stabilized Indo-Greek power, in addition to extending its frontiers in India. He is known to have held the Swat Valley and the Hazara district in the north-west, as well as the Punjab. His coins have been found as far north as Kabul, and to the south in the Mathura region. He is thought to have conquered territory in the Ganges Plain, but failed to retain it. He may well have attacked the Shungas in the Yamuna region, if not closer to Pataliputra itself. His popularity gave rise to a legend that various cities of the north-west vied with each other for his ashes after his cremation, then built monuments over the relics. But perhaps the Roman writer Plutarch, who narrates this story, was confusing the legend of the Buddha’s death with that of Menander.

  Following Menander, there appears to have been a regency, after which came the reign of Strato. Meanwhile, Bactria was ruled by the line of Eucrattdes, which had broken away from that of Euthydemus and from which the first Demetrius seems to have split off. The Bactrian king cast longing eyes at Gandhara and, advancing beyond Kabul, he annexed the kingdom of Taxila. But the Bactrians did not hold Taxila for long.

  The Hellenistic Greeks marked their presence by monumental buildings and by small, finely crafted objects. Excavation of the cities of Ai-Khanoum, on the confluence of the Oxus and the Kokcha, of Bactra (modern Balkh), of Antioch in Margiana and of Sirkap at Taxila, reveals a characteristic talent for urban planning. Ai-Khanoum was built on the usual city-plan, the citadel differentiated from the lower city with predictable features such as temples, theatres, buildings embellished with pillars and patterned mosaic floors, and promenades. Its location and its function as an evolved Hellenistic city indicate it was a successor to the Achaemenid presence in central Asia. Scattered throughout the area of Hellenistic activities are their coins -excellent examples of minting, with portraiture of a high aesthetic quality. Curiously, portraits on coins never became fashionable in India.

  The history of the Indo-Greeks has been reconstructed mainly on the evidence of their coins. Some of the coinage of Bactria was based on the Attic standard and comparable to the Athenian ‘owl’ coins, suggesting close ties with the eastern Mediterranean. The silver Athenian owl coin, so called because it had the head of Athena – the goddess associated with Athens -on one side, and the bird associated with her – the owl – on the other, was legal tender virtually throughout the Mediterranean. Indo-Greek coins, based on the Attic standard with legends in Greek, circulated in Bactria. Coins with a reduced weight of silver often had bilingual legends in Greek and kharoshthi or brahmi, and these circulated in the north-west of India. Coinage was therefore adjusted to region and requirement.

  Indo-Greek coins introduced innovations in Indian numismatics, such as die-striking, the use of legends, portraits of rulers, monograms
and the representation of deities. These features help in identifying coins, and some sequence of rulers can be reconstructed even where they carry identical names. Portraits did not become the norm in coinage elsewhere in India. Even where kings are depicted in some specific activity, these depictions are not portraits. The rejection of portraiture on coins is curious, considering that there are sculptures with a limited depiction of kings and literary portraiture in the form of biographies occurs in inscriptions. Deities could be depicted iconographically or as symbols and were generally of the Shaiva or Bhagavata sects, or Buddhist, Jaina or Zoroastrian, or of the cults of Greco-Roman origin that were worshipped in the area at that time. This is another indication of the need for rulers of south Asian regions to be patrons of multiple religions. The depiction of deities familiar to the local people doubtless strengthened the acceptance of this coinage in diverse places linked by trade. Such depictions help to date the rise of sects, such as the worship of Krishna Vasudeva and Balarama, both depicted on Indo-Greek coins. In the choice of motifs, those on the more widely used copper coins were generally more eclectic and specific to the region.

  The coins are symbolic of an intermingling of Hellenistic with Indian or Iranian cultures. Depictions of yakshi figures and Indian goddesses sometimes replace the Hellenistic deities, although Herakles remained popular. At Takht-i-Sangin in southern Tajikistan the Iranian fire-temple carries the imprint of Greek decoration. A striking instance of this mingling is the inscription at Besnagar in western India, on a pillar erected by a certain Heliodorus, envoy of King Antialkidas of Taxila to the King of Besnagar, perhaps one of the later Shungas. Heliodorus professes to be a follower of Vasudeva (the incarnation of Vishnu as Krishna), and obviously, though Greek, had become a Vaishnava. The remains of what might be the earliest temple dedicated to Hindu worship have been located through excavations at Besnagar. It is thought to have been associated with the newly emerging Bhagavata sect, whose beliefs and practices facilitated the process of acculturation. These trends isolated Vedic Brahmanism as a recipient of royal patronage, all the more so because it had no use for those who worshipped images.

  As a contrast to the Heliodorus inscription, the brahman author of the Yugapurana section of the Gargi Samhita was hostile to the Yavanas, who were said to behave in a brutal and inhuman manner. This demonizing of the Yavanas is curious, since they were familiar from Mauryan times. Possibly the source of irritation was that much of the patronage of these rulers went to the Buddhists and less to the brahmans, even if the newly emerging Shaiva and Bhagavata sects were also receiving patronage. But this was not die same as patronage to Vedic Brahmanism which, by the very nature of its belief and practice, would have been closed to the Yavanas and the mlechchhas, who were regarded as outside the boundaries of caste. The Bhagavata sect was open to accepting persons who came from societies without caste, such as the Hellenistic Greeks, and sometimes even allotted them a caste status. These cults flourished in the growing urban ambience, but the city was not a site conducive to the practices of Vedic Brahmanism.

  Shakas, Parthians, Kushanas and Kshatrapas

  The decline of the Greek kingdoms in the north-west coincided with an attack on Bactria itself by nomadic peoples from central Asia. From this point on the complicated migrations and movements of peoples in central Asia became a backdrop to events in northern India. Those who initially attacked Bactria in the late second century BC included the Parthians and the Scythians – referred to as the Pahlavas and Shakas in Indian sources -and were primarily responsible for weakening Bactrian power. Scytho-Parthian rule was established in north-western India around the Christian era. The Scythians inhabited the region around Lake Issykkul and the river Jaxartes in central Asia. They were attacked by the Yueh-chih/Yuezhi and forced to migrate, some going south and some west. The Yueh-chih were originally pastoralists whose herds were pastured in the plains to the west of China.

  Such nomadic pastoralists were unlikely people to found large kingdoms, but in the interaction with existing kingdoms a pattern evolved in which the nomads came to dominate sedentary societies, and this eventually gave rise to kingdoms. In the process, the pastoralists themselves underwent mutations that permitted them to emerge as competent rulers. Raids, once the normal practice among nomads to obtain livestock – sheep and horses – as well as control over grazing grounds, changed to control over and administration of resources. The origins of such a change frequently lay in the pastoralists obtaining tribute from the sedentary society in return for protection. The extraction of tribute strengthened the heads of clans among the pastoralists and they came to form an aristocracy. Pastoralists could become cultivators but more often they preferred to rule over cultivators. Because of their circuits of herding, and the possibility of using the animals to transport goods, they emerged as important to transactions involving the exchange of produce and became effective as mediators between sedentary societies. Horses were traded eastwards, while in exchange silk travelled westwards to be sold in the markets of central Asia and further.

  Although essentially pastoralists, the Shakas of central Asia acquired a sophistication that was reflected in their burial chambers. These vast graves constructed of timber have an almost architectural quality, with the variations of size and content reflecting a society conscious of social differentiation. Alongside the chiefs and the horses buried with them, grave goods consisted of weaponry, horse trappings and items of common use that were heavily decorated, often using gold. The horse was central to the activities of the Shakas, providing them with rapid mobility and enabling them to use various equestrian improvements in the shape of saddles and bridles, and the compound bow, to improve their military technology. It is thought that a primitive stirrup was also in use.

  The geography of central Asia assisted them in their role of expanding pastoralism and as intermediaries of trade. Scattered across the deserts were fertile oases, some of which became the nucleus of towns and of states, especially those settled as a result of both the earlier Achaemenid enterprise to irrigate the oases and Hellenistic encouragement to trade. The Tarim Basin was a meeting point of Indian and Chinese commerce. Dunhuang had earlier been a garrison town but gradually incorporated commercial activities. Therefore the pastoralists also had to negotiate the nature of their relations with the oases, if they wished to exert power.

  Gradually, as their pastures began to dry up, the pastoralists made intermittent raids into Chinese territory searching not only for new pastures, but also for the wealth of those Chinese who were sedentary. The later movement of these tribes westwards can be traced back to the activities of the Chinese Emperor Shi Huang Ti, who built the Great Wall in the last half of the third century BC to defend China’s frontiers against the nomadic Hsiungnu/Xiongnu, Wu-sun and Yueh-chih. The Hsiungnu suffered famines in the first century BC, brought about by excessive snow and the continuing raids of their neighbours. This led to their migrating and displacing the Yueh-chih, which started a chain reaction of population movements in central Asia. These in turn had an impact on northern India.

  The Yueh-chih were driven from the best lands and had to migrate to distant places. They split into two hordes – the Little Yueh-chih, who settled in northern Tibet, and the Great Yueh-chih, who wandered further west to the shores of the Aral Sea. Here they stopped for a while, displacing the inhabitants of the region, the Scythians, or the Shakas, as they were called in Iranian and Indian sources. The Shakas advanced into Bactria and Parthia. A Chinese visitor in about 128 BC records that the land surrounding the Aral Sea had been cleared of the Scythians, and instead he had found the Yueh-chih settled there. Parthia failed to hold back the Shakas, except for a brief period, and was overrun. The Shakas however did not pause there, but swept down into the Indus Plain, eventually becoming established in western India, with their control reaching as far as Mathura. To the west their base was in Seistan in Iran. Horsemen herders had the potential of becoming a good cavalry and this was used to advantage in
campaigns.

  The Parthians, the Shakas and the Yueh-chih arrived in India turn by turn. This maelstrom of peoples was yet another occasion when the aridity of the deserts of central Asia transmuted the history of China and India. Pastoral nomadism also acted as an avenue for the intermittent exchange of goods, some exchanged directly for profit and some as gifts. Chinese silk, for example, found its way via central Asia to India and the eastern Mediterranean, some of it moving through a series of gift exchanges in the first area and some as an item of trade in the latter area. The people who came from central Asia were familiar with the rough passage of high mountains and deserts, relieved only by intermittent oases. The passes of the north-west mountains of India may have been inhospitable in themselves, but the fertility and wealth of the Indian plains were glimpses of a richer future. The attraction of India lay not just in the fertility of the land, but also in the profits of trade from the items it produced. The nexus between Roman trade and central Asia was seen as an avenue to prosperity and the same image was taking shape in the trade between the eastern Mediterranean, as part of the Roman Empire and western India. If itinerant trade was a subsidiary activity of the pastoralists, this was gradually overtaking other activities. The pastoralists were emerging as traders and, with the backing of their herding horses, became newly converted to cavalry.

  With the entry of the Shakas on the Indian historical scene, Chinese texts referring to events in central Asia become relevant to Indian history as well, apart from Shaka coins and inscriptions. The Shaka King Maues or Moga (c. 80 BC) established Shaka power in Gandhara. A successor, Azes, annexed the territory of the last of the Indo-Greek kings in northern India, Hippostratos. Azes is now being associated with the creation of the era of 58 BC that was to be known through the centuries as the Krita, Malava or Vikramaditya, samvat, era. Possibly the era was also calculated for use in astronomy as the term krita, created, would suggest, but was given status by association with royalty. The link with Vikramditya is later, and evidently mythological, since a ruler by this name important enough to start an era is not known in the first century BC.