The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  The perception of deities became more complex. Krishna, for example, regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu, was viewed as a pastoral deity, the herdsman who spent his hours with the milkmaids and particularly with his beloved Radha. This became the source of intense devotional worship, celebrated in poetry from which the erotic was not always absent. But was he also the philosopher of the Bhagavadgita, carrying the universe, carrying time, defending virtue against evil and reiterating the codes of caste and behaviour? The name Krishna literally means ‘dark’ and he has been associated with the Tamil Mayon, ‘the black one’, also a herder of cattle. A number of traditions are reflected in the various manifestations of Vishnu, which may be one of the reasons for his popularity. However, the connection between the topography of modern Vrindavan near Mathura and the life of Krishna was introduced by sects of a later period, such as the followers of Chaitanya from eastern India. Similarly, the link between the topography of present-day Ayodhya and the life of Rama was referred to in the Ayodhya Mahatmya of the mid-second millennium AD and was established through the activities of the Ramanandin sect, drawing on the possible identity of Ayodhya with Saketa.

  Minor sects and cults were not rejected out of hand by orthodoxy. Some were tolerated, while others were encouraged by priests who performed the ritual both as worship and livelihood. Local priests tended to be sympathetic to popular religion. The worship of the Sun-god Surya rose in popularity and received royal patronage in the form of magnificent temples, particularly in northern and western India – not to mention the vast complex at Konarak in Orissa. The popularity of Surya might have been due to what is believed to have been the migration into India of the Magha or Shakadvipi brahmans from across the north-western borders, perhaps reinforced by the presence of Zoroastrians in western India. But elsewhere it was a continuation of the earlier worship of the Sun. Existing deities took on fresh significance and new gods emerged. Ganesh or Ganapati, the elephant-headed god, rose further in status. In origin perhaps a totem god, he had been given a respectable parentage and described as the son of Shiva and his consort, Parvati. There was a more visible worship of the goddesses, often associated with the fertility cult.

  Puranic Hinduism, apart from the assimilation of innumerable cults and deities, also shaped strong sectarian tendencies focusing on particular schools of thought. These two trends seem to be contradictory, but the contradiction is reconciled by the attempted formal organization of belief systems and philosophies through the sects. In common with the Shramanic religions, these teachings were closely related to the historical founders of sects, such as Shankaracharya, Ramanuja, Madhva and Basavanna, and sometimes to a believed succession of teachers, suggesting historicity. The history and evolution of the sect centred on the interpretations of what was said by the founders, a common occurrence in sectarian religions. Some of the sectarian teaching was intended to undermine the Shramanic sects, but at the same time it appears there were attempts to imitate them in various ways. The strength of the sect was dependent on patronage, particularly on the donation of property that allowed it to build an institutional base. This transformation of aspects of Puranic Hinduism into sectarian religions would also have contributed to the decline of the earlier sectarian religions – Buddhism and Jainism.

  Sectarianism would have encouraged rivalry and hostility between sects. This was sometimes expressed by more than one sect claiming the same king as patron. For instance, there are contradictions between Shaiva and Jaina sources regarding whether Kumarapala, the Chaulukya King who had been a Shaiva, was actually converted to Jainism. A number of Jaina temples were attributed to his patronage; according to Jaina sources these were destroyed by his successor Ajayapala, who is described as hostile to the Jainas. Such hostilities did not, however, take on the dimensions of a holy war.

  The term pasamda that referred to any kind of sect in the Ashokan edicts now came to mean ‘heretic’, and eventually ‘fraud’. Thus the brahmans on occasion refer to the Buddhists and Jainas as heretics and the latter sometimes use the same word for the former, in both cases infused with invective. The sparring could be amusing, as in the courtly dramas of the Mattavilsa-prahasana or the Prabodhachandrodaya, but on other occasions it was ruthless.

  Sects with teachers and poets propagating bhakti began to find expression in regions north of where they had originated. They were to become a dynamic force in north India from the fourteenth century, playing much the same catalytic role as they had done in the south. This was not a proselytizing movement, but an expression of similar thoughts arising out of not dissimilar conditions. It could draw on a variety of earlier religious expression: the Shramanic sects, Vaishnava and Shaiva worship, as well as the esoteric and popular levels of the Shakta tradition. But the bhakti movement veered more towards an appeal to deity without the trappings of elaborate ritual. Some among them were almost on the edge of being puritanical protest.

  Other popular cults and sects sometimes demonstrated their protest in a more startling manner, such as the rites of the Shaiva Kalamukhas and Kapalikas or the Kaulas, or certain kinds of Tantric rituals that often were a deliberate reversal of upper-caste practice. Some of their rituals, however, were rooted in those sections of society that had hardly known the Hinduism formulated by the brahmans, and were therefore not protesting but worshipping in their own ways. The adjustment to this on the pan of the orthodox was either to exclude such groups from caste status or else, if they carried social support and patronage, to make them respectable by slowly transforming them.

  Tantrism, so-called after its compositions, the Tantras, influenced the practices of virtually every older religion, apart from upholding a belief and practice contrary to Vedic Brahmanism. Although originating earlier, it became widely practised from about the eighth century when it gradually surfaced throughout the subcontinent. In the east it had close ties with Tibetan religious expression. Some of the ritual was similar, together with the belief in the efficacy of mantras (prayers and mystical formulae), mudras (hand gestures) and mandalas (magical diagrams representing the cosmos). It was open to all castes and included women in the rituals, which identified it with non-orthodox sentiment. Goddesses were accorded great veneration, as is evident from the collection of legends in the Devi-mahatmya. The Devi, or the goddess, had an individuality of her own and was worshipped for this rather than merely as a consort of a god. The sapta-matrikas, or seven mothers, were more closely associated with male counterparts. Since goddesses could be created as and when occasion required it, there are large numbers of them.

  The commanding position accorded to goddesses was sometimes the surfacing of a substratum religion, doubtless associated with the rise of subaltern groups who could with their new status elevate the worship of the goddess. The symbols associated with the worship of a Devi often derived from forms of fertility worship, which is not unexpected. At a conceptual level, but not in terms of introducing change into social codes, the worship of the goddess challenged patriarchy. Women were permitted to establish their own ashramas, to act as priestesses and to teach. This carried forward, as it were, some of the activities of the Buddhist or Jaina nuns and some of the sentiments of the women poets from the early bhakti tradition. Tantrism was also linked with the Shakta-Shakti cult that regarded female creative energy – shakti – as essential to any action.

  Those desirous of joining a Tantric sect had to be initiated by a guru. Tantric ritual involved the ritual partaking of the five Ms – madya, alcohol, matsya, fish, mamsa, flesh, mudra, gestures, and maithuna, coition. In the final state of purification everything and everyone was equal. The ritual being what it was, secret meetings became necessary, especially when some other sects denounced its practices as being depraved. Gradually there was a bifurcation into the Left-Hand path that experimented with these practices, and the Right-Hand path that restricted itself to yoga and bhakti. Although Tantrism has often been condemned for its more extreme activities, it seems also to have been a vehicle for
opposition to the brahmanical ordering of society. Elements of social radicalism in such movements become visible when the movement is viewed in the context of the broader social norms.

  Vajrayana Buddhism had incorporated Tantric ideas and the Taras or saviouresses, spouses of the male bodhisattvas, received veneration similar to that of Shakti. Among the many magical formulae which Vajrayana Buddhism has popularized is the oft-repeated Tibetan prayer, om mane padme hun/behold the jewel is in the lotus, which is the symbolic representation of divine coitus. Buddhism had undergone many changes with the evolving of new sects and practices, but the incorporation of Tantric ideas made it less distinctive as a religion.

  In western India where the Jainas grew in strength, their patrons were largely from the trading community, although royal patronage, especially from the Chaulukyas, provided them with an even more established position. Although small in numbers, they were prosperous and visible. Since they were forbidden agriculture as a profession for fear of injuring small creatures of the soil (although they accepted the occasional grant of land), their forte was commerce and their profits enabled them to become patrons of culture and learning. A further stabilizing factor was that since they were literate, financially astute and proficient in management they often found high office at royal courts. In spite of the destruction of Jaina temples by kings, both Hindu and Muslim, Jainism remained resilient.

  Buddhism, however, was eventually to lose the status of even a minor religion. Its decline was gradual, but towards the thirteenth century became rapid. Its association with Tantric cults was confusing since much of its original ethical teaching, which had been its initial strength, was being submerged in the new ritual. The support of the Pala kings sustained Buddhism in eastern India and they doubtless used the religion as an avenue of control over trade, and in their diplomatic relations with Tibet and south-east Asia. Royal patronage kept it going in some other areas for brief periods. But the Buddhists did not always succeed in winning royal patronage. Confrontations with the growing strength of Puranic Hinduism, and its ability to incorporate new castes, was a fresh challenge to Buddhism.

  The new landholders were either brahmans or patrons of the brahmans and of Puranic Hinduism. Buddhism and Jainism ceased to play a major role in the transformation of the polity except in limited areas. Where chiefs were being converted to landholders and other members of the clan to peasants, the introduction of caste was a useful mechanism of control over the new kshatriyas and shudras. The use of caste in this process came more easily to Puranic Hinduism than to the Shramanic sects. The new kshatriyas would not have been attracted to Buddhism. Unlike the Puranic texts authored by brahmans, Buddhist and Jaina texts had no extensive genealogies of the kind on to which the new kshatriyas could latch themselves and acquire status. Buddhist myths explaining the origin of government related it to a contract between an elected ruler and the people and were divorced from any divine sanction. The Buddhist chakkavatti with the symbol of the wheel of law was a distant concept from the models of conquest held up to the kshatriyas and Rajputs. Patronage therefore went to the ideology of Puranic Hinduism.

  The Buddhist Sangha was best established in an area that had an existing, sedentary agricultural society, with a capacity to maintain the institutions, or where there was sufficient commercial activity for the community to maintain monastic centres. Even when Buddhist monasteries were given grants of revenue or land, these were more frequently villages or land already under cultivation. Monks were not supposed to pioneer agricultural change, although they did work as supervisors in various capacities relating to the income and the better functioning of the Sangha. Ideally, monks were expected to play the passive role of being recipients of alms and donations. This could have distanced, if not alienated, Buddhism from a society changing its systems. This was a contrast to brahman grantees where brahmans could be settlers and pioneers, could profitably restructure the landscape to agrarian requirements and, above all, could found dynasties.

  The major successes of Buddhism, apart from periods when they received royal patronage, were in areas of existing agrarian societies that were also developing into centres of exchange or in areas where commerce was the primary activity. The thrust of trade carried it to distant places that in turn made it attractive to those who wished to profit by this trade. This is not to deny that in all periods there were conversions to Buddhism from religious conviction. But the decline of Buddhism virtually everywhere except in eastern India requires a wider explanation than just a change in the religion. Nor was the coming of Islam primarily responsible for Buddhist decline, despite the thirteenth-century Turkish attack on Nalanda. By the eighth century AD Buddhism was more prevalent in north-western India and eastern India than elsewhere. The conversion of these areas to Islam was a gradual process. The decline of Buddhism in the Ganges heartland and the peninsula occurred before the Turkish conquest.

  The coming of the Arabs, Turks and Afghans brought a new religion to India that found roots in various ways in many communities. Islam was unable to create a homogeneous, monolithic community, and in this it was conditioned by the same segmentation that earlier religions in India had experienced. Apart from the Muslim theologians, an early impact of Islam was the arrival of Muslim mystics from Persia, distinct from and sometimes disapproved of by Muslim theologians. The Sufis first settled in Sind and the Punjab, from where their teaching travelled to Gujarat, the Deccan and Bengal. The amalgamation of Indian and Islamic mysticism evolved into new schools of Sufism different from those in Persia. Sufi ideas attracted an interest in India, particularly among those inclined to mystic teachings and asceticism, since much of the symbolism was similar. Their dialogue with the bhakti movement was to the advantage of both, as they questioned orthodoxy in their explorations of the meaning of religion and of the human condition. They attracted large followings which gave them a political potential that converted their khanqahs or hospices into centres of political discussion as well.

  The period from the ninth century in the subcontinent, far from being ‘dark’, was a period of illumination as it was germane to many later institutions. The states that emerged, together with the new political economies, were characterized by a hierarchy of grants of land and accompanying landholders that set the pattern for a few centuries. At the same time, Indian traders were active in the Indian Ocean and overland through central Asia to more distant markets than in the past. They were again significant participants in Asian trade. Together with the emergence of new jatis, there was also a reshuffling of castes, often ancestral to those that were registered in subsequent centuries. Regional linguistic roots of this period were seminal to the languages now used in various regions of India. Religious cults and sects, dominating the lives of rural and urban populations at a popular level today, link themselves to the religious expression of this time. Regional cultures were finding their shape within these changes. The greater range and amount of historical evidence available from this period compared with earlier ones has allowed the reconstruction of a more complete picture.

  The most challenging and stimulating aspect of the history of this period is the interface between the emergence of regional cultures and the firming up of the contours of subcontinental cultures. The interplay of assertion and accommodation that this required led to significant new dimensions in Indian history.

  Maps

  Glossary

  acharya teacher

  adhyaksha superintendent/government official of importance

  adivasi the indigenous inhabitant – now used sometimes for the Scheduled Tribes (ST) of India

  agnikula ruling families claiming ancestry from a hero who sprang out of a sacrificial fire

  agrahara donation of land or village to brahmans, usually by royalty

  ahimsa non-violence

  Ajivika a heterodox sect of the time of the Buddha

  Alvar Vaishnava poets and composers of hymns belonging to the Tamil devotional movement

 
amatya designation of a high official

  anuloma literally, in the direction of the body hair, therefore observing the caste hierarchy even in marriages across castes

  apsara celestial woman/nymph

  aranya forest/wilderness

  artha livelihood/economy

  aryavarta the land inhabited by aryas

  ashrama hermitage/refuge; also used with reference to the four stages or ashramas of the human life-cycle – brahmacharin/studentship, grihastha/householdership, vanaprastha/initiating renunciation, samnyasa/asceticism

  ashtakula-adhikarana administrative body

  shvamedha sacrifice performed by those desirous of being accorded royal status, and by kings

  atman soul

  ayukta official designation

  banjaras generally cattle pastoralists who were also carriers of goods exchanged in trade

  banya member of a trading community

  Bhagavata associated with the worship of Vishnu

  bhakti devotion, a characteristic feature of what modern historians have called the Bhakti movement, focusing on devotion to a deity

  bhogta one who enjoys: used by extension for those who enjoyed revenue rights over certain lands

  bhukti administrative unit

  bodhisattva one who works for the welfare of the world and voluntarily postpones release from rebirth; also refers sometimes to an incarnation of the Buddha prior to his own birth in the world

  brahmacharin celibate studentship, the first of the four stages of the ideal life-cycle brahmadeya village or land donated to a brahman, who received the revenue that came from it

  brahma-kshatra the claim to an ancestry associated with both brahman and kshatriya brahman the first in rank among the four varnas of Hindu society, frequently translated as caste, but in some contexts should more correctly be translated as ritual status; the brahman was primarily a ritual specialist and also provided the structures for formal education in Sanskrit