Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

by Sanyal, Sanjeev

  In contrast, the path of the Southern Road has drifted over time although certain nodes remained important over long periods. During the early Iron Age, the Dakshina Path probably began near Allahabad where two navigable rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna, flowed into each other. It then went in a south-westerly direction through Chitrakoot and Panchavati (near Nashik) and eventually to Kishkindha (near Hampi, modern Karnataka). This would be the route followed by Rama during his exile.

  The Ramayana is traditionally said to be the older of the two texts, although some scholars dispute this. There are several versions of the epic, including versions that remain popular in other parts of Asia. The most prestigious and possibly oldest version, however, is the one composed in Sanskrit by the sage Valmiki. He was a former brigand as well as an outcaste—someone we would today call a Harijan or Dalit (that is, a member of the lowest castes). It is interesting that this early example of Dalit literature would come to occupy such an important place in later orthodoxy.

  Despite many differences, the various versions of the Ramayana do agree on the basic storyline: Rama is the young and popular crown prince of Ayodhya (now a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh). However, he is forced to give up his claim to the throne and is exiled for fourteen years. Along with his wife Sita and younger brother Lakshman, Rama heads south, crosses the river Ganga near modern-day Allahabad and goes to live in the forests of Central India. After several years of living peacefully in the forest, Sita is abducted by Ravana, the powerful king of Lanka. Rama and his brother set out to find her. On the way, at a place called Kishkindha, they befriend a tribe of monkeys that promises to help them. Hanuman, the strongest of the monkeys, visits Lanka and discovers that Sita is being held captive in Ravana’s palace garden. Together with the army of monkeys, Rama marches on Lanka but finds that the sea bars the way. So Rama and the monkeys build a bridge (more accurately a causeway) from Rameswaram to Lanka. A great battle ensues in which Ravana is defeated and killed, and Sita is rescued. Rama, Sita and Lakshman then return to Ayodhya and Rama regains his throne. Most versions of the story end here but some versions also tell of events after Rama’s return to Ayodhya. (This bit appears to be have been added at a much later date.)

  As one can see, the Ramayana is a journey from the Gangetic plains to the southern tip of India and on to Sri Lanka. It could be argued that the epic pre-dates geographical knowledge about South India and that the place-names were retro-fitted in later times to flow with the story. However, having visited some of the sites, I think this is unlikely. Take for instance Kishkindha, the kingdom of the monkeys. The site is across the river from the medieval ruins of Vijayanagar at Hampi. The terrain consists of strange rock-outcrops, caves with Neolithic paintings, and bands of monkeys scampering over the boulders.

  It is such an evocative landscape that it is likely that Valmiki either visited it or had heard detailed descriptions of it from merchants plying the Dakshina Path or Southern Road. There are small details that seem too much of a coincidence to be purely imaginary. The lake of Pampa, where Rama first meets Hanuman, is indeed a beautiful place with lotuses in bloom and a multitude of birds, surrounded by a ring of rocky hills. Not far away from this site is a sloth bear reserve that recalls Jambavan, Hanuman’s sloth bear friend. Archaeologists have found the remains of several Neolithic settlements in the area. It is easy to believe that this setting was once populated by a Neolithic tribe that used the monkey as a totem and gave rise to the legend.

  The same can be said of the bridge from Rameswaram to Lanka. There exists a 30-km-long chain of shoals and sand-banks that links India to the northern tip of Sri Lanka. Whether one believes that these are the remains of Rama’s bridge or the result of a geological process, it cannot be denied that this is a remarkable feature. The true scale of the bridge is best seen in a satellite or aerial photograph. Again, the composer of the epic clearly knew about it.

  Moreover, we can tell a lot about how Iron Age Indians perceived the geographical extent of their civilization from the way Ravana is depicted. He is the villain of the Ramayana but is not presented as a Mlechha (or barbarian). He is very much an insider: a learned Brahmin and a worshipper of Shiva. Whatever his failings, Ravana and his southern kingdom are categorically within the Indian civilizational milieu. Indeed, the Kanyakubja Brahmins of Vidisha claim Ravana as one of their own and still worship him! 3 The exchange of goods and ideas along the Southern Road, therefore, had linked the north and the south of India long before political unification under the Mauryans in the third century BC.

  The Mahabharata is 100,000 verses long and said to the longest composition in the world. According to tradition, it was composed by the sage Vyas but it appears to have been expanded over the centuries. We know that a shorter version of the epic was definitely in existence by the fifth century BC but it probably reached its current form centuries later. It is the story of the bitter rivalry between cousins—the five Pandav brothers and the Kauravs—for control over the kingdom of Hasthinapur. They initially agree to divide the kingdom and the Pandavs build a new capital called Indraprastha. The new capital was so beautiful that the Kauravs were filled with envy. They challenged the Pandavs to a game of dice that is fixed by their maternal uncle Shakuni. The Pandavs gamble away their kingdom and are exiled for thirteen years. During this time the Pandavs wander across India. However, when they return after thirteen years, the Kauravs refuse to return the kingdom.

  The dispute culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra in which virtually all the kingdoms of India are said to have taken sides. Krishna, leader of the Yadav clan and king of Dwarka, sided with the Pandavs and played an important role. The Pandavs win the war but at great cost. The Kauravs and their allies are almost all annihilated. The last act of the battle takes place away from the main battlefield. Bhim, strongest of the Pandav brothers, kills Duryodhan, the leader of the Kauravs, in single combat on the banks of the Saraswati. By now it would have dwindled to a shadow of its former self—perhaps no more than a rain-fed seasonal river.

  Many of the places mentioned in the Mahabharata are located around Delhi. For instance, Gurgaon, now a modern boom-town full of gleaming office-towers and shopping-malls, was a village that belonged to Dronacharya, the teacher who trained the cousins in martial arts. The name Gurgaon literally means the ‘Village of the Teacher’. The Pandav capital of Indraprastha is said to be located under the Purana Qila in Delhi. Similarly, the site of Hastinapur is identified with a site near modern Meerut. The battlefield of Kurukshetra is nearby, in the state of Haryana. Farther afield, we have the cities of Mathura and Kashi (or Varanasi) which remain very sacred cities for Hindus.

  Some of the Iron Age sites have been excavated, starting in the 1950s and have thrown up remains of ancient settlements. For instance, there is a strong traditional belief that Indraprastha was located on the same site as the sixteenth-century Purana Qila (or Old Fort) in the middle of modern Delhi. The site even had a village called Indrapat till the nineteenth century. Excavation between 1954 and 1971 found that there was indeed a major settlement here that dates at least to the fourth century BC. Pottery shards suggest there may be an older Iron Age settlement somewhere close by. Sadly, the exploratory excavation of Mahabharata sites of the fifties and sixties was not properly followed up in later decades.

  One of the more intriguing Mahabharata-related sites is that of Dwarka in the westernmost tip of Gujarat. It said to have been founded by Krishna as his capital after he led his people from Mathura to Gujarat. Thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra battle, the city is said to have been devoured by the sea. Underwater surveys near the temple-town of Dwarka and the nearby island of Bet Dwarka have come up with stone anchors, a sunken jetty and elaborate walls suggesting the existence of an ancient port in the area. Although I am not entirely convinced by all of the claims made about the site, it is yet another reminder of how the forces of nature have directed the course of history 4 .

  All this does not confirm the event
s of the Mahabharata, but it strongly suggests that the composers of the epic were talking about real places. Such findings are not unique to India. Till the nineteenth century, the places mentioned in Homer’s Iliad were considered to be mythical. However, Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations in the late nineteenth century showed that Troy and many of the places mentioned in the Greek epics were real places. Similarly, Chinese legends about the ancient Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BC) have now been confirmed by modern archaeology. Inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze artifacts confirm much of what is mentioned in the ancient texts. Of course, there are gaps between thearchaeological findings and the information in the texts 5 , but this is only to be expected after such a long lapse of time.

  As mentioned earlier, the Mahabharata largely has an East–West orientation unlike the North–South orientation of the Ramayana. Most of the action takes place around Delhi and the Gangetic plains but the eastern and western extremes of the subcontinent also play an important role in the unfolding events. The Kauravs’ mother Gandhari is from the kingdom of Gandhar which is now eastern Afghanistan. Her devious brother Shakuni instigates his nephews against the Pandavs, fixes the game of dice and ultimately causes the war.

  On the other geographical extreme, India’s North East finds mention for the first time. Arjuna, the most dashing of the Pandav brothers, makes his way to remote Manipur during his years of exile. There he meets the warrior-princess Chitrangada. They fall in love and marry, albeit on the condition that Chitrangada would not have to follow Arjuna back to the Gangetic plains. Their son eventually becomes the king of Manipur and would participate in the Kurukshetra battle.

  The people of the tiny Bishnupriya community that still lives in Manipur and neighbouring states trace their origins to the Mahabharata. They speak a language that is related to Assamese and has many Tibeto–Burman words, but still preserves several features of archaic Prakrit. Does the Chitrangada legend preserve the memory of an ancient migration into this area? The Bishnupriyas were a powerful clan in Manipur till the nineteenth century when a Burmese invasion scattered them. They now live in a few villages in Assam and Manipur, and there is a danger that their language and unique culture will get lost within a generation or two. 6

  Since the Kurukshetra battle is said to have involved all the tribes and kingdoms of India, the Mahabharata gives us long lists of kingdoms, clans and cities. Many of them were probably added to the text in later times. Nonetheless, it gives an idea of the Indian world view during the Iron Age. The name Mahabharata is itself interesting as it can be read to mean ‘Greater India’. This would make sense for an epic that claims to tell the story involving all the clans of the subcontinent. The text itself explains the name in terms of a primordial Emperor Bharata who is said to have conquered the whole country (but plays no important role in the central plot). The epic is therefore told as a history of the Bharata people. Since there is no independent evidence of an all-conquering Emperor Bharata, one wonders if this is an echo of the powerful Bharata tribe mentioned in the Rig Veda. Did Sudas’s victory against the ten tribes create a dream of civilizational nationhood that gets echoed over the millennia?

  There are interesting parallels with the Chinese view of civilizational nationhood. Long before the country was united into an empire by Qin Shi Huangdi in the third century BC, there was a strongly held belief that the country had once been united under the revered ‘Yellow Emperor’ and his four successors. 7 There is noarchaeological evidence to support such a grand empire but it has been a very powerful idea throughout Chinese history. Indeed, it is embedded in the way China views itself even today.

  The notion of a civilizational nation is not a simple one. It has meant different things to different people at different points in time. The Partition of India in 1947, for instance, was partly due to a fundamental divergence in views about the nature of India’s civilizational nationhood. Still, it is important to recognize how Bronze Age ideas, honed in the Iron Age, gave shape to the way people have viewed themselves ever since.

  The epics, furthermore, suggest a shift of political power to the eastern Gangetic plains during the Iron Age. It is more obvious in the Ramayana as the kingdom of Ayodhya is itself in the east. In the Mahabharata, most of the action takes place near Delhi in the north-west but, even here, we are told of the powerful kingdom ruled by Jarasandha in Magadh (modern Bihar). Indeed, even Krishna was forced to shift his people from Mathura to Gujarat because of the repeated raids of the Magadhan army. As we shall see, the rise of Magadh would have a pivotal role in later Indian history. So, why was Magadh so successful?

  In my view it was geographical access to three important resources—rice, trade and iron. The kingdom not only had control over very fertile lands but was also served by a number of rivers including the Ganga itself. Thus, it would have had the agricultural muscle to support a large army. Moreover, the kingdom controlled the trade plying the Uttara Path between the North West and the emerging sea-ports of Bengal. Add to this, access to iron ore from what is now Jharkhand. In order to appreciate this conjunction of circumstances, consider the location of the kingdom’s first capital, Rajgir (also referred to as Rajagriha or King’s Home). Defended by hills, it sits strategically between the fertile farmlands to the north and the mines of the south. In short, Magadh was uniquely able to feed large armies and arm them with iron weapons. This explains why Magadh would be at the heart of the next stage in Indian history.

  ENTER THE LION

  India is the only country in the world where both lions and tigers co-exist. As discussed in Chapter 1, tigers evolved in East Asia and probably entered the subcontinent around 12,000 years ago. Soon, they had spread across the subcontinent. They are commonly represented in Harappan art and seals. In sharp contrast, the Harappans appear to be ignorant of the lion! None of the main Harappan sites have thrown up any representation of the lion. This is very odd given the obvious appeal of the animal and its importance in later Indian culture. The tiger hunts by stealth in dense jungle and, therefore, is more of an object of fear. In contrast, the lion with its shaggy mane, its harem of lionesses, and its confident visibility is easily converted into a symbol of power.

  Every culture that has encountered the lion has tended to give the animal a special status. Even in countries that have never had a lion population, such as Britain and China, the lion has been part of imperial symbolism. We know that lions were considered royal game in Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC and only the king could hunt them. 8 In ancient Egypt too, lion hunting was a royal prerogative. Amentohep III (1391-1352 BC) killed as many as 102 lions in the first decade of his rule. At Beital-Wali in Lower Nubia, a tame lioness is shown near the throne of Rameses II (1290–1224) with an inscription ‘Slayer of his Enemies’. Five centuries later, the court records of the Assyrian king Ashurabanipal II (884–859 BC) recount:

  The gods Nemruta and Negral, who love my priesthood, gave me the wild animals of the plains, commanding me to hunt. Thirty elephants I trapped and killed, 257 great wild oxen I brought down with my weapons, attacking from my chariots, 370 lions I killed with my hunting spears.

  The lion is also represented in a multitude of sculptures, friezes and paintings in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Sumerian goddess Nana, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar and the Persian goddess Anahita are all associated with the lion and sometimes depicted riding the lion—rather like the Hindu goddess Durga. It is obvious that the lion was an important animal in art, culture, royal symbolism and religion in the Middle East from a very early period. Why were the Harappans so lukewarm to an animal with such obvious charms?

  The most likely reason is that the lion was not common in the subcontinent till after the collapse of the Harappan civilization. This should not be surprising. Before 2000 BC, north-west India was much wetter than it is today with higher rainfall and the Saraswati river flowing. The lion is an animal that hunts in open grasslands and could not penetrate the tiger-infested jungles that existed in the reg
ion. However, the balance shifted as the climate became drier and the Saraswati dwindled. There would have been a savannah phase when lions from Iran could have made their way through Balochistan and then into tiger territory, which would explain why the earliest artifact depicting a lion in the subcontinent, a golden goblet, was found in Balochistan. As Harappan urban centers were abandoned and populations migrated to the Gangetic plains, the lions would have taken over the wilderness. Over time they would penetrate as far east as Bihar and northwestern Orissa, co-existing in many places with tigers. Eastern and southern India, nevertheless, remained the exclusive domain of the tiger.

  Interestingly, the Rig Veda does mention the animal although it accords it far less importance than the horse or the bull. This poses the obvious problem of how the Vedic people knew of the animal if it did not yet exist in the Sapta-Sindhu heartland. One possible explanation is that the word for lion (‘Singha’), at this stage of linguistic development, was also a generic word for big cats and was loosely used for both lions and tigers 9 . As we shall see, this dual use of the word is responsible for the naming of Singapore. However, Dr Divyabhanusinh Chavra, a leading expert on the Asiatic lion, still feels the Vedic description of a hunt suggests lions rather than tigers. Another explanation could be that while the lion was not common in the heartland, the Vedic people encountered it in lands to the west of the Indus (this would gel with the lion goblet found in Baluchistan). Yet again it must be admitted that we do not know enough about this period to be absolutely sure.