The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  The wider Hun dominion extended from Persia to Khotan, with a capital at Bamiyan in Afghanistan. The first Hun king of any importance in India was Toramana, who claimed conquest over northern India as far as Eran in central India. Toramana’s son Mihirakula (AD 520) conformed to the conventional image of the Hun. A Chinese pilgrim travelling in northern India at the time described him as uncouth in manner and an iconoclast, and especially hostile to Buddhism, a hostility expressed in the killing of monks and destruction of monasteries. According to the twelfth century historian, Kalhana, the hostility to Buddhism was apparently shared by the Shaiva brahmans. He comments in the Rajatarangini on the greed of the brahmans who eagerly accepted grants of land from the Hun rulers. Inscriptions from central India suggest that the Guptas were still making belated attempts to organize resistance to the Huns. Mihirakula was finally driven out of the plains and into Kashmir, where he died in about 542, after which the political impact of the Huns subsided. But the threat of the Huns continued for another century, even if it was largely ineffective. Gupta power was gradually weakening and the Huns accelerated the process of decline.

  But this was not the sole effect of the Huns. In the wake of the Hun armies came migrants from central Asia who settled in India, some continuing to be pastoralists in hill areas and others following a variety of professions. At a less visible level, the potential for the creation of an imperial structure in northern India was now demolished, because political energy was directed towards keeping back the Huns to conserve what remained of the small kingdoms. Defence was conceived in local terms with occasional combinations of the smaller kingdoms, which sometimes led to consolidation under capable protectors whose military acumen rather than concern for their royal antecedents was a deciding factor. As elsewhere, the Huns had disrupted the tenor of north Indian life. The tide of Hun invasions did not recede until the end of the sixth century, when the Turks and the Sassanian Persians attacked them in Bactria. Subsequently, the Turks attacked the Persians but retained Bactria. Northern India was later to experience the Turks at close quarters.

  Harsha

  From the decline of the Guptas until the rise of Harsha in the early seventh century four kingdoms effectively held power in northern India: the Guptas of Magadha; the Maukharis of Kanauj; the Pushyabhutis of Thanesar; and the Maitrakas of Valabhi. The Guptas of Magadha were not part of the main Gupta dynasty, but were a minor line bearing the same name. At first the Maukharis held the region of the western Ganges Plain around Kanauj, gradually ousting the Magadhan Guptas from their kingdom. Originally, they were tributary rulers who established an independent kingdom, changing their title from maharaja to maharaja-adhiraja, doubtless in imitation of the earlier Guptas. The Pushyabhutis ruled in Thanesar, north of Delhi. A marriage alliance with the Maukharis led, on the death of the last Maukhari king, to the unification of the two kingdoms, which were eventually ruled by Harsha of the Pushyabhuti family. The Maitrakas, who had held administrative office under the Guptas, ruled in Saurashtra in Gujarat and developed Valabhi, their capital, into an important centre of commerce and of learning. On the periphery of these four were a number of lesser dynasties – the Manas and the Shailodbhavas in Orissa, the Varmans in Assam and the Aulikaras, with various others, recorded in inscriptions for their grants of land. Of the four main kingdoms, the Maitrakas survived the longest, ruling until the middle of the eighth century when they were weakened by attacks from the Arabs.

  The Pushyabhuti family became influential on the accession of Prabhakaravardhana, who has been described as:

  a lion to the Huna deer, a burning fever to the king of the Indus land, a troubler of the sleep of Gujarat, a bilious plague to that scent elephant the Lord of Gandhara, a looter to the lawlessness of the Latas, an axe to the creeper of Malwa’s glory.

  Banabhatta, Harshacharita, tr. E. B. Cowell, p. 101

  Prabhakaravardhana’s desire for conquest was eventually fulfilled by his younger son, Harshavardhana, generally known as Harsha.

  Harsha began his reign in AD 606. A lively narrative of his early life comes from a biography, the Harshacharita (The Life of Harsha), written by his learned and Bohemian friend, Banabhatta. This was the first formal charita, biography, of a king and inaugurated a genre of literature that became common in the subsequent period. Despite the eulogistic style these biographies focus on some salient events, although these have to be sifted from the formulaic. They provide contemporary perceptions of what was significant in the events of a reign, and have to be understood from the historical perspective of that time, apart from being assessed by modern standards of historical writing. One immediate reason for writing a biography (as in this case) was the legitimizing of the reign of the younger brother who might have been a rival of the elder, an act that challenged the sanctity of primogeniture.

  As a contrast to the biography, the Chinese Buddhist monk Hsüan Tsang/Xuan Zhuang, who was in India during Marsha’s reign, left a much fuller account of his travels than that of the earlier Chinese monk, Fa Hsien/Fah Hian. Hsüan Tsang, originally a Confucian who became a zealous Buddhist, came from a mandarin family, hence the meticulous detail of his observations. His account is largely read as descriptive, a reading that omits the many nuances of his perceptions.

  In the course of the forty-one years that he ruled, Marsha included among his tributary rulers those of Jalandhar (in the Punjab), Kashmir, Nepal and Valabhi. Shashanka, ruling in the east, was hostile to him and Marsha was unable to extend his power into the Deccan. He suffered his one major defeat at the hands of Pulakeshin II, a Chalukya king of the western Deccan. He shifted his capital from Thanesar, in the watershed region, to Kanauj. The first was perhaps too close to the threats from the north-west, while the second was located in the rich agricultural region of the western Ganges Plain, giving him control over the plain which linked him more directly to western India, as well as to routes to the south and east. Harsha was energetic and travelled frequently to ensure familiarity with his domain, to be accessible to his subjects and to keep a closer watch on his tributary rulers.

  Despite his duties as king and administrator, Harsha is said to have written three plays, of which two are comedies in the classical style and the third has a contemplative theme influenced by Buddhist thought. There is some uncertainty whether he was the actual author or whether the plays should only be attributed to him. What is significant is that not only literary accomplishment but specific authorship had become associated with kings.

  Events towards the end of Harsha’s reign are described in Chinese sources. His contemporary, the Tang Emperor Tai Tsung, sent an embassy to his court in 643 and again in 647. On the second occasion the Chinese ambassador found that Harsha had recently died, with the throne usurped by an undeserving king. The Chinese ambassador rushed to Nepal and Assam to raise a force with which the allies of Harsha defeated the usurper, who was taken to China as a prisoner. His name is recorded on the pedestal of Tai Tsung’s tomb. The kingdom of Harsha disintegrated rapidly into small states. Some of his successors tangled with the ambitions of the Karkota dynasty ruling in Kashmir, and in the eighth century Lalitaditya attacked Yashovarman of Kanauj. Harsha realized the weakness of a cluster of small kingdoms and had conquered his neighbours to weld them into a larger structure. However, this did not survive owing to the particular political and economic conditions of the time.

  Indicators of a Changing Political Economy

  The Gupta kings took exalted imperial titles, such as maharaja-adhiraja, ‘the great king of kings’, parameshvara, ‘the supreme lord’, yet in the case of later rulers these titles were exaggerated since their claimants possessed limited political power when compared with the ‘great kings’ of earlier centuries. Such grand titles echo those of the rulers of the north-west and beyond and like them carry the flavour of divinity. The fashion for such titles extends even to those who patronized Buddhism, for example the Bhaumakara dynasty of Orissa, where the kings referred to themselves as paramopasaka,
‘the most devout lay-follower’. Statements on royal power drew increasingly on rhetoric, some going back to the sacrificial rituals of kingship in Vedic Brahmanism and some being currently invented. Among the latter were the mahadanas, the great gifts, the great gift frequently referring to those who performed the rituals and bestowed status on the ruler.

  In the Ganges Plain, under the direct control of the Guptas, the king was the focus of administration, assisted by the princes, ministers and advisers. Princes also held positions rather like viceroys of provinces. The province (desha, rashtra or bhukti) was divided into a number of districts (pradesha or vishaya), each district having its own administrative offices. But for all practical purposes local administration was distant from the centre. Decisions, whether of policy or in relation to individual situations, were generally taken locally, unless they had a specific bearing on the policy or orders of central authority. The officers in charge of the districts (ayuktaka, vishayapati) and a yet higher provincial official (with the title of kumaramatya) were the link between local administration and the centre. In some cases the office became hereditary, further underlining its local importance. Lower down in the bureaucratic hierarchy were the ashtakula-adhikaranas, members of the village assembly, mahattaras, elders of the community, and grama-adhyakshas, headmen of villages. The terms used for administrative units carried their own symbolic meaning, incorporating the notion of that which nourishes – ahara, bhoga, bhukti, etc.

  This was significantly different from the Mauryan administration. Whereas Ashoka insisted that he be kept informed of what was happening, the Guptas seemed satisfied with leaving it to the kumaramatyas and the ayuktakas. Admittedly, a taut administration is described in the Arthashastra, but this was a normative text and the evidence from inscriptions and seals suggests that the Gupta administration was more decentralized, with officials holding more than one office. Marsha’s tours were similar to those of a royal inspector since he looked into the general working of administration and tax collection, listened to complaints and made charitable donations.

  Villages were of various categories: grama, palli, hamlet; gulma, a military settlement in origin; khetaka, also a hamlet; and so on. They came under the control of rural bodies consisting of the headman and the village elders, some of whom held the office of the grama-adhyaksba or the kutumbi. In urban administration each city had a council consisting of the nagarashreshthin, the person who presided over the city corporation, the sarthavaha, the chief representative of the guild of merchants, the prathama-kulika, a representative of the artisans, and the prathama-kayastha, the chief scribe. A difference between this council and the committee described by Megasthenes and Kautilya is that the earlier government appointed the committees, whereas in the Gupta system the council consisted of local representatives, among whom commercial interests often predominated.

  If the Mauryan state was primarily concerned with collecting revenue from an existing economy, or expanding peasant agriculture through the intervention of the state, the Gupta state and its contemporaries made initial attempts at restructuring the agrarian economy. This took the form of land grants to individuals, who were expected to act as catalysts in rural areas. There was more emphasis on converting existing communities into peasants than bringing in settlers. The system developed from the notion that granting land as a support to kingship could be more efficacious than the performance of a sacrifice, and that land was appropriate as a mahadana or ‘great gift’. This investment by the king was also intended to improve the cultivation of fertile, irrigated lands and to encourage the settlement of wasteland. Peripheral areas could therefore be brought into the larger agrarian economy, and the initial grants tended not to be in the Ganges heartland but in the areas beyond. There was gradually less emphasis on the state in establishing agricultural settlements, with recipients of land grants being expected to take the initiative.

  Grants of land were made to religious and ritual specialists or to officers. This did not produce revenue for the state, but it allowed some shuffling of revenue demands at the local level and created small centres of prosperity in rural areas that, if imitated, could lead to wider improvement. If the land granted to brahmans (whether as ritual specialists or as administrators) was wasteland or forest, the grantee took on the role of a pioneer in introducing agriculture. Brahmans became proficient in supervising agrarian activities, helped by manuals on agriculture, such as the Krishiparashara, which may date to this or the subsequent period. Some normative texts forbid agriculture to the brahmans, except in dire need, but this did not prevent brahmanical expertise in agricultural activity.

  Commercial enterprise was encouraged through donations to guilds, even if the interest was to go to a religious institution, and by placing commercial entrepreneurs in city councils and in positions with a potential for investment and profit. The range of taxes coming to the state from commerce was expanded, which in turn required an expansion in the hierarchy of officials. Although the granting of land was at first marginal, by about the eighth century AD it had expanded, gradually resulting in a political economy that was recognizably different from pre-Gupta times.

  Kings who conquered neighbouring kingdoms sometimes converted the defeated kings into tributary or subordinate rulers, often referred to in modern writing as feudatories. Agreements were also negotiated with such rulers. The term samanta, originally meaning neighbour, gradually changed its meaning to a tributary ruler. This implied more defined relationships between the king and local rulers, relationships that became crucial in later times with a tussle between royal demands and the aspirations of the samantas. Where the latter were strong the king’s power weakened. But he needed the acquiescence of the samantas – the samanta-chakra or circle of samantas – to keep his prestige. Samantas were in the ambiguous position of being potential allies or enemies.

  In addition to the tributary rulers, grants of land had created other categories of intermediaries. Grants to religious beneficiaries included some to temples, monasteries and brahmans. Such grants to temples empowered the sects that managed the temples. Villages could also be given as a grant to a temple for its maintenance. This added local administration to the role of the temple, in addition to being an area of sacred space. At a time when land grants were tokens of special favour the grant to the brahman must have underlined his privileged position. The agrahara grant of rent-free land or a village that could be made to a collectivity of brahmans, the brahmadeya grant to brahmans, and grants to temples and monasteries, were exempt from tax. The brahmans were often those proficient in the Vedas, or with specialized knowledge, particularly of astrology. Gifts to brahmans were expected to ward off the evils of the present Kali Age, and recourse to astrology appears to have been more common. Even if it was not a grant in perpetuity, the descendants of the grantee tended gradually to treat the land granted as an inheritance. But the king had the power to revoke the grant, unless categorically stated to the contrary by the original grantor. However, revoking a grant carried the danger of creating a nucleus of political opposition. Many of the inscriptions contained a formulaic sentence that the preservation of a grant is more meritorious than the making of a grant.

  Grants of land began to supersede monetary donations to religious institutions. Land was more permanent, was heritable and the capital less liable to be tampered with. Such grants were more conducive to landlordism among brahman grantees, although the monasteries did not lag too far behind. Receiving revenue was easier to handle than pioneering agrarian settlements. Nevertheless, granting land was seen as accumulating merit by the donor and began to replace gifts of monetary or other wealth among Buddhists. Grants to Buddhist institutions tended to be concentrated in particular areas after the seventh century, when Buddhism was less widespread. The larger Buddhist monasteries often received villages, presumably because these were easier for monasteries to administer than the colonization of new lands. Nalanda is said to have received the revenue of a hundred, or possibly e
ven two hundred, villages.

  Another significant feature of this period was that officers were occasionally rewarded by revenue from grants of land, which were an alternative to cash salaries for military or administrative service. This is mentioned in some land-grant inscriptions from this period onwards, and also in the account of Hsüan Tsang. Such grants were fewer in number. Not all grants to brahmans were intended for religious purposes since there were many literate brahmans performing official functions. Vassalage, involving a warrior class with ties of obedience and protection, is not commonly met with.

  The granting of land and villages could weaken the authority of the king, although initially the grants were moderate and only later became frequent or extensive. Such grants distanced the owners from the control of the central authority, thus predisposing administration to be more decentralized. Those with substantial grants of land providing revenue could together accumulate sufficient power and resources to challenge the ruling dynasty. If in addition they could mobilize support from peer groups and others such as the forest chiefs, or coerce the peasants into fighting for them, they could overthrow the existing authority and establish themselves as kings, at least on the fringes of the kingdom.