The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Apart from iconoclasm and loot, another reason for Mahmud and his successors wishing to control north-western India was to capture the commerce between India and Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia. To this end, Mahmud was even willing to act contrary to some beliefs of Islam. His coins minted at Lahore sometimes carried a bilingual legend in Arabic and Sanskrit. This was the invocation at the beginning of the Qur’an, and the Sanskrit translation stated that there was only one God and Mohammad was his avatara – incarnation. This concept would have been unacceptable to Islamic orthodoxy that recognizes Mohammad only as the paigambar, messenger of Allah. Coins of his successors carried an image of Lakshmi in imitation of the coins of local rulers.

  Apparently, the raids of Mahmud did not make Indian rulers sufficiently aware of the changing politics of west Asia and central Asia. The Turks in this period were viewed as part of a historical continuum, dating back to earlier times, at most a nuisance because of their raids. Confederacies were formed, drawing largely on the Rajput rulers who had been at the receiving end of the raids. Initially, some assistance was given to the Shahiya kingdom and, later, in 1043 an attempt was made to win back some of the territories lost to Ghazni. The Punjab had become the arena of claimants contesting the Ghaznavid succession and was treated as a base for raids into the Ganges Plain. The local rulers returned to their internal squabbles and a hundred years later were lulled by the strife between Ghazni and Ghur. When the second attack came at the end of the twelfth century in the form of an invasion led by Muhammad Ghuri, for all practical purposes the kingdoms of north-west India were as unprepared as they had been for meeting the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni.

  Elsewhere in India local politics remained the primary concern. The Ganges Plain did not experience the disruption experienced by the Punjab, despite Mahmud’s attack on Kanauj. The city was soon restored and eventually came under the control of the local Gahadavala dynasty. Bihar was ruled by the Karnatak-Kshatriya dynasty, the name suggesting a southern origin. A number of officers from various parts of the peninsula had found employment in eastern India, as evident from inscriptions of the time, and some eventually founded small kingdoms. Bengal experienced a brief efflorescence under the Senas, but eventually fell prey to the Turkish armies.

  The Rajputs fought each other unceasingly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The possession of kingdoms was a precarious business and the competition for territory a perpetual activity. War became a part of the general code, aggravated by the public stance of male superiority characteristic of Rajput society. The Paramaras concentrated on their control over Malwa. The Chaulukyas/Solankis remained in Gujarat, centred on their capital at Anahilapattana. The Chandellas busied themselves in campaigns against the Paramaras and the Kalachuris, and the Chauhans attacked them in the twelfth century. The Guhilas were dominant in Mewar and southern Rajasthan. The Kachchhapaghatas ruled over Gwalior and the surrounding districts.

  The power of the Chauhans, who had occupied the Tomara kingdom in the region of Delhi, remained reasonably constant despite severe reverses on occasion. The last of the Chauhan Kings, Prithviraja III, became a romantic hero because of the manner in which he wooed and won the daughter of the King of Kanauj. A long epic poem, the Prithvirajaraso, composed by the bard Chand Bardai a few centuries later narrates among other events the incidents of this Lochinvar-type story. The ingredients of the story are those typically employed in epic narrative. We are told that the daughter of the King of Kanauj was to marry. As was customary among princesses, a svayamvara was held, where the eligible suitors were assembled at her father’s court and she was expected to choose her husband from among them. But she had set her heart on the gallant Prithviraja, who unfortunately was the enemy of her father. In order to insult Prithviraja, the King of Kanauj had not only denied him an invitation to the svayamvara, but had placed a statue of Prithviraja in the position of a doorkeeper at the entrance to his court. To the bewilderment of those present, the Princess of Kanauj rejected the assembled princes and instead placed a garland, indicating her choice, around the neck of the statue. Before the courtiers realized what had happened, Prithviraja, who had been hiding in the vicinity, rode away with the Princess and took her to his kingdom, where they were married. But they did not live happily ever after. Their happiness was marred by an invasion from the north-west – that of Muhammad Ghuri – for Prithviraja was defeated in battle and was later killed.

  The Coming of Turkish Rule

  Muhammad Ghuri entered the Indus Plain from the Gomal Pass, and was searching for a potential kingdom rather than indulging in plundering raids. By 1182 the rulers of Sind had acknowledge his suzerainty. The annexation of the upper Indus Plain and the Punjab brought revenue that could be accessed from Afghanistan.

  This campaign saw Muhammad in control of Lahore and led to visions of further conquests in India. An attack was launched on the Rajput kingdoms controlling the watershed and the western Ganges Plain, now beginning to be viewed as the frontier. The Rajputs gathered together as best they could, not forgetting internal rivalries and jealousies. Prithviraja defeated Muhammad Ghuri at the first battle at Tarain, north of Delhi, in 1191. Muhammad sent for reinforcements and, in 1192, a second battle was fought at the same place. Prithviraja was defeated and the kingdom of Delhi fell to Muhammad, who pressed on and concentrated on capturing the capitals of Rajput kingdoms with the assistance of his General, Qutub-ud-din Aibak. Another General, Muhammad Bhaktiyar Khilji, moved to the east where he defeated the Sena King of Bengal. Although Muhammad was assassinated in 1206, this did not lead to the withdrawal of Turkish interests in India. Muhammad had been determined to retain his Indian possessions and his successors had equally ambitious visions of ruling in northern India.

  There were many reasons for the success of the Ghuri armies. The earlier hit-and-run raids tended to act as irritants, rather than to reveal the political threat of what lay beyond the frontier. The intentions of the Ghuri conquest remained unclear for some time to Indian rulers and were probably viewed as a continuation of the earlier raids, rather than what they actually were, which was an assessment of the possibilities of establishing a Ghuri kingdom. The Ghuri armies on the Indian side of the border were in contact with troops and horse reinforcements across the border, their soldiers attracted by the possibilities of plunder. This did not give the impression of an ordered mobilization. The earlier rulers of what was eventually called the Delhi Sultanate and their followers, both aristocratic and others, were Afghans seeking a fortune and Turks from central Asia, some of whom had settled in Afghanistan. The armies with which they campaigned in India consisted of Turkish, Persian and Afghan soldiers, as well as mercenaries, some of whom were Indian. If the kings of Kashmir employed Turks as mercenaries, Mahmud of Ghazni had Indian soldiers and officers in his army, including one of his generals, and of whose fighting capabilities he thought well. Indian mercenaries in the Ghazni army were billeted in a special area of the capital and kept under constant training. The demand for mercenaries would have attracted soldiers from all over.

  Reinforcements of good central Asian horses provided a better livestock for the Turkish cavalry, which was used to excellent effect in pitched battles. It is thought that Indian commanders were hesitant to exploit the tactics of a cavalry to the full, putting more faith in elephants, which were at a disadvantage when pitted against swift central Asian horses. Mounted archers were more effective when using metal stirrups that allowed the rider to comfortably stand up on them, facilitating and increasing his striking power. Indian riders knew of the use of stirrups and other equestrian technology, but perhaps the deployment of cavalry was more limited. Mounted archers could also carry a heavier mail that protected against the swords resorted to by Indian soldiers in preference to other weapons such as spears and arrows. The Turks used central Asian military tactics, emphasizing swiftness and carrying light equipment that allowed greater scope for manoeuvre. Indian armies tended to fight in solid phalanxes, relying on force to c
arry them through. The Turks attempted to capture forts with a strategic advantage that were often also the hub of local administration. Indian armies were therefore forced into defensive positions. Guerrilla warfare may have been one means of harassing the incoming armies, particularly when they were on the march, but this does not appear to have been used very effectively.

  It is often said that the Ghaznavid and Ghurid soldiers regarded death in a war against infidels as martyrdom in the cause of Islam. But it is more likely that the real draw was the attraction of plunder, the likes of which they had not seen in campaigns in more arid lands. For Indian commanders, apart from plunder, battles incorporated the niceties of a sport with its own rules of play. Immortalizing the heroism of kings in battle, the poets and bards emphasized the rules of war and chivalry. To apply the chivalric code in minor campaigns may have relieved the tedium of war, but the campaigns against the Ghurids were of an entirely different nature and this may not have been realized initially. Notions of honour and devotion were often placed above expediency, and gradually the astrologically determined auspicious moment for attack took precedence over strategy and tactics. Inflated claims to valour, such as the hero who could defeat a thousand warriors simultaneously, began to enter the rhetoric of courtly literature.

  The organization of Indian armies added to their weakness. Each army had as its permanent core the standing army, but many of the soldiers were local levies or soldiers supplied by samantas where this was part of the tatter’s obligation to the suzerain. In addition mercenaries were a visible section of the armies of these times. Such a collection of soldiers had not always been trained to fight as a consolidated army. It was possibly also the dispersed character of the army that gave it a licence to plunder indiscriminately. Villagers were harassed and looted by armies on the march, particularly if the campaign coincided with the harvesting of the crop, as it often did. For peasants and merchants, war was a nightmare that disrupted the routine of earning a livelihood. Laying waste vast tracts of inhabited and cultivated land, merely because it was part of the enemy’s territory, was a proud boast attributed to Prithviraja Chauhan on defeating the Chandella ruler.

  Historians have sometimes commented, perhaps more from hindsight, on why Indian rulers did not make a conjoint effort through the centuries to defend the north-western passes. Time and again invaders came through these passes, yet little was done to prevent this, the defence of the region lying arbitrarily in the hands of local rulers. It appears the construction of a series of fortifications along the passes was not thought feasible. Perhaps the need for defence was not given priority, the area being viewed as a natural frontier. Alternatively, given the mountainous terrain, the only routes for pastoralists and caravans were through the passes and it was therefore thought better to leave them open. The local kings and chiefs who controlled the passes derived an income from this trade. There would have been familiarity too with those coming across the passes and therefore a slow recognition that sometimes friendliness had turned into hostility. The effectiveness of mountains as a frontier was also thwarted by the many occasions when the Punjab was conquered from across the borders or was involved in the politics of Afghanistan and central Asia. This closeness militated against a properly focused perspective on political developments across the borderlands and in central Asia.

  Invasions by outsiders are known in many parts of the world: the Huns attacking Rome, the Arabs invading Spain or the Spanish and Portuguese conquering Latin America. The potentialities of invasions were recognized only in hindsight. These invasions were mounted by alien peoples who were little known, if at all, to the societies they invaded. But the Turks had been a contiguous people, familiar from trade in horses and other commodities and from the Turkish mercenaries employed in some Indian armies. However, the historical scene in central Asia and west Asia had now changed, with new political ambitions after the rise of Islam. For the rulers of northern India to recognize this would have required an understanding of a wider range of politics beyond the areas enclosed by the immediate frontiers. This does not appear to have been an Indian concern. Indians who travelled to different parts of Asia on a variety of assignments wrote little about what they observed, remaining silent on the politics of other lands. It was almost as if the exterior landscape was irrelevant. Political interests therefore tended to be parochial. This marks a striking contrast to the world of the Chinese and the Arabs, both made aware of distant places through the detailed accounts of travellers and traders. The Arabs had a fascination for the geography of other lands and the Chinese were wary of happenings in their neighbourhood in central Asia.

  Alberuni, in the opening chapter of his book, suggests other reasons for this lack of recording observations concerning the wider perception of the world, which one may or may not agree with:

  The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs… They are by nature niggardly in communicating what they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste from among their own people, still more of course from any foreigner.

  E. C. Sachau (ed. and tr.), Alberuni’s India, pp. 22-3

  He has a more scathing assessment when he speaks of the ordering of knowledge:

  They are in a state of utter confusion, devoid of any logical order, and in the last instance always mixed up with silly notions of the crowd… I can only compare their mathematical and astronomical literature to a mixture of pearl shells and sour dates, or of pearls and dung, or of costly crystals and common pebbles. Both kinds of things are equal in their eyes since they cannot raise themselves to the methods of a strictly scientific deduction.

  E. C. Sachau (ed. and tr.), Alberuni’s India, p. 25

  One suspects that he might have been referring here to the impressive advances in astronomy and mathematics, of which he was deeply appreciative, coupled with the travesty of this knowledge resulting from the patronage of astrology, divination and suchlike in the royal courts.

  The Ghuri kingdom in Afghanistan did not long survive Muhammad’s death, but the Indian pan became the nucleus of a new political entity in India – the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Turkish and Afghan Sultans. Muhammad had left his Indian possessions in the care of Qutb-ud-din Aibak, who, on the death of his master, ruled the Indian provinces and founded the Mamluk or Slave Dynasty, since his career had begun as a slave. Qutb-ud-din established himself at Delhi by clearing the area of Chauhan control. He made frequent attempts to annex the neighbouring areas of Rajasthan, the importance of which was evident to him, but failed.

  A Perspective of the New Politics

  The coming of the Arabs, the Turks and the Afghans introduced further layers on the palimpsest of Indian ethnic identities. Today we speak of them as a collective entity, labelling them ‘the Muslims’, and label the hosts also collectively ‘the Hindus’. But these labels are historically inaccurate, particularly for the initial centuries of Indian contact with Islam. It is historically more accurate to use the labels and terms that were current in those times. This would also convey a different impression from our perception of them today, namely, as monolithic religious communities that were uniformly identified by a single religion. Neither of these two communities had a homogeneous culture and religion. Even if defined by religious beliefs and practices, the sense of community was diverse within each category. People were more frequently identified by caste, occupation, language, region and religious sect, than by the religious labels we use today.

  What we define as the Hindu community in religious terms actually consisted of a range of groups with clear internal identities as sects - such as Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakta or, more closely, Bhagavata, Pashupata, Kapalika and so on. The Buddhists and the Jainas were distinct even if some beliefs and practices overlapped. Hostility between the Shramanic sects and those of the Puranic religions were clear in the literature of the period, for example, in the bi
ting satire meted out to various Shramanic sects in the famous play of Krishna Mishra, the Prabodhachandrodaya. Alberuni also stated unequivocally that:

  Another circumstance which increased the already existing antagonism between Hindus and foreigners is that the so-called Shamaniyya [Shramanas] though they cordially hate the Brahmans, still are nearer akin to them than to others.

  E. C. Sachau (ed. and tr.), Alberuni’s India, p. 21

  What we today call the Muslim community was equally differentiated between the Sunnis, Shia’hs, Ismai’lis, Sufis and Bohras, not to mention the Navayats and Mappilas of south India. The hostility of the Sunni towards the Shia’h is amply demonstrated as early as Mahmud of Ghazni’s attacks on the Shia’hs. In India there were localized differences in belief and ritual, some of which continued after conversion. For well-placed individuals conversion may have been due to political ambition, but much of the large-scale conversion was through caste. A jati or part of it would convert, probably believing it to be a mechanism of social improvement. This meant some continuity of custom in marriage rules, inheritance and social ritual of the caste so convened. Such regulations were rooted in both the environment and traditional practice, so it took a while to adopt different normative rules after conversion to a new religion and even then there were reservations. Obviously there were some who converted out of a genuine conviction of belief, while others yielded to threats. But these were a smaller category. The larger numbers would have been the conversions of jatis or sections of a jati. The rhetoric of court chroniclers, of this or any other age, requires a careful historical assessment rather than a literal acceptance.