India

by John Keay

  To a neighbouring port at about the same time, there also came the still ‘doubting’ Thomas. Traditionally on this, his second Indian mission, Thomas made more converts but ultimately paid the price of martyrdom. He was killed in Mylapore, now a suburb of Madras where the cave in which he lived, the hill on which he died, and the grave in which he was laid are named after him and still venerated.

  Thomas had landed at one of the palm-fringed ports of Kerala’s coconut coast. From converts made there, some sections of Kerala’s still thriving Syrian Christian community claim descent. Thence the apostle had proceeded overland to the east coast. A trail of Roman finds extends across the peninsula from Cranganore, otherwise the Roman port of ‘Musiris’ (near Cochin), to Arikamedu and the mouth of the Kaveri. It would seem, therefore, that Roman shipping did not usually round Cape Comorin. Kerala’s pepper and malabathrum (a kind of cinnamon) were the principal Roman imports, and for these it was unnecessary to risk the contrary winds of the Cape. But clearly some of those amphorae of Tuscan wine, some of that glass and tableware and some Yavana traders must have trundled in oxcarts through the Coimbatore gap (in the Western Ghats) and down the Kaveri. At Arikamedu and elsewhere on the east coast they were needed to sustain a no less important trade – that in the cloves and nutmeg of the Moluccan spice islands and in the gems and resins of Malaya, Burma and the eastern Himalayas.

  TRAFFIC AND SETTLEMENTS

  A pattern of east – west trade thus emerges. It is one in which the Indian ports served as entrepôts as well as termini and in which the voyage across the Arabian Sea was only one sector of a much more extensive network. Further information on this first global exchange, and on the vital role played in it by Indian shipping and Indian merchants, emerges from two very different sources: inscriptions in the great cave temples of the western Deccan, and scattered archaeological finds in south-east Asia.

  Unfortunately neither is as geographically explicit as the data available for the Bactrian and Karakoram routes to China. The archaeological finds in south-east Asia are particularly unimpressive when compared with the region’s later heritage of Indic monuments. In central Burma a town with palace and stupas based on Indian Buddhist models has been excavated and dated to the first centuries AD. In Thailand and Vietnam the odd Roman coin has been found as well as beads, gems, pottery, intaglios and metalwork of Indian provenance. Shards of Indo-Roman ceramics similar to those found at Arikamedu have also turned up in Javanese burial sites. More emphatically, bronze vessels and a carnelian lion found at Don Ta Phet in west-central Thailand are said to be Buddhist and to ‘strongly suggest that Buddhist missionaries were already active, indeed were established, in south-east Asia before the Christian era’. If account also be taken of Indian references to ocean-going ships and missionary and trading ventures to ‘Suvarnabhumi’, and of Roman notices of ‘Chryse’ and ‘Chersonese’ (all three words meaning ‘the land of gold’ and variously identified with Burma, Sumatra, or the Malay peninsula), then ‘enough evidence is now at hand … to show that south-east Asia was already part of a world trading system linking the civilisations of the Mediterranean Basin and Han China.’14

  Thanks to this trade and missionary activity, there are also the first signs of Indianised cultures in south-east Asia. Early Chinese texts have been taken to indicate the existence on the Malay peninsula of ‘petty Indian states from the second century AD’.15 One such, called Tun-Sun by the Chinese, had five hundred families from India plus a thousand brahmans to whom the native population gave their daughters in marriage. ‘Consequently many of the brahmans do not go away. They do nothing but study the sacred canon, bathe themselves with scents and flowers, and practise piety ceaselessly by day and by night.’16

  It seems that traders, rather than head down to the Malacca Strait, took a short-cut across the Malay peninsula, just as they did the Indian peninsula. Indian settlements in Malaya were presumably engaged in this transshipment activity, and it may well have been from one of these communities that Kaundinya, a brahman, continued east across the Gulf of Thailand to the mouth of the Mekong. There, again according to Chinese sources, he is said to have encountered hostility. The local queen, Liu-ye (‘Willow-Leaf’), wanted to seize his ship. But when Kaundinya fired an arrow which holed her own ship, Willow Leaf changed her mind.

  Frightened, she gave herself up, and Kaundinya took her for his wife. But, unhappy to see her naked, he folded a piece of material to make a garment through which he had her pass her head. Then he governed the country and passed power on to his descendants.17

  Thus, according to the Chinese, was founded in about 100 AD the Indic kingdom known as Funan. It would survive for five centuries, providing the impetus for other Hindu-Buddhist trading kingdoms on the Vietnamese coast (Champa, Lin-i), before becoming incorporated into the more famously ‘Hinduised’ kingdom of the Khmers of Angkor.

  For the period prior to 300 AD Funan has left few relics. A port-city excavated at Oc-eo in Long-xuyen province in the Mekong delta may date back to the second century AD and has yielded a stone statuette of Vishnu and other Hindu cult objects as well as what may have been a temple. Up the coast at Vo-canh in the Nha Trang region a stele bearing an inscription in Sanskrit may be of the third century. It refers to a ruler who has not been certainly identified; more importantly, it strongly supports the idea that writing was introduced into south-east Asia from India. These are, however, no more than clues to an Aryanising process which, though begun in the first centuries AD, would only assume the character of a cultural diaspora after India’s culture had itself become more clearly defined under the ‘golden’ Guptas.

  As for the information to be gleaned from the cave temples of the western Deccan, it not only corroborates Yavana (principally Roman) trading activities but also suggests an important link between religious foundations and commercial pioneering. Excavated and sculpted between about 100 BC and 170 AD, the earliest caves in the western Deccan number nearly a thousand. They include those of Bhaja, Karle, Nasik and some of the Ajanta and Ellora caves. Many incorporate the pillars, stupas, chaitya arches and magnificent façades which triumphantly belie their designation as ‘caves’; and most are Buddhist.

  From their numerous inscriptions, plus coins, we learn of Maharashtra’s first dynasty and, by correlation with the listings in the Puranas, a rough order of succession has been constructed for its kings. These were the Shatavahanas, or Andhras. They are said to have deprived Magadha’s Kanva dynasty of its residual authority; and more certainly, they established an extensive if loosely-knit hegemony throughout central India and the Deccan. Its prosperity may be judged not only by the cave temples but also by the magnificent Amaravati stupa, structurally and sculpturally the most elaborate in India. Commissioned mainly by mercantile interests living under the Shatavahana dispensation, it was originally located in Andhra Pradesh but was dismantled in the nineteenth century and is now divided between several museums, including the British where it rightly ranks with the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles as a most cherished possession.

  Like the reliefs on the Sanchi and Bharhut stupas, those of Amaravati depict incidents drawn from the mythology which had grown up around the life of the Buddha. Incidentally all these reliefs also provide insights into the busy social life of the period. In scenes crammed with vitality, turbaned crowds fill every panel. Musicians crouch intently over their instruments and wasp-waisted dancers sway provocatively. Above them ladies ajangle with necklaces and bangles lean from a first-floor balcony beneath the fanciful gable of a barrel-vaulted roof. Horses prance in the street, bullocks patiently haul an elaborately decorated carriage, and an elephant goes berserk. One can almost hear the hubbub, smell the dust. Laden ox-carts, and ships with sails and oars, attest the importance of trade. Masons and labourers are seen constructing the very stupa on which their work is depicted. Indeed the ubiquitous standards and fly whisks carried by those who attend on the Buddha may well belong to particular trade and craft guilds (sreni
). From literary sources we know of the social, financial and even political weight exercised by guild organisations. We also know that each had its own banner and, from the inscriptions, that these guilds were major patrons of Buddhist institutions.

  Similar organisations operated throughout the Shatavahana kingdom and it is no coincidence that Shatavahana ascendancy coincided with the boom in overseas trade with both south-east Asia and the Roman empire. The anonymous author of the Periplus actually mentions some of the Shatavahana kings, and clearly knew their port-cities well: Broach (Bharukaccha, ‘Barygaza’), he reports, had a system of pilot boats to escort ocean-going vessels into its tricky anchorage at the mouth of the Narmada, ‘where nothing can be observed with certainty’; Sopara and Kalyan (Kalliena), both near Bombay, were also major ports although the latter had lately been grabbed by the Shatavahanas’ rivals, the Shaka satraps of Gujarat; its trade was therefore ‘much hindered’. After 170 AD recession throughout the Roman world much hindered the entire Indian Ocean trade, and once again this development was faithfully reflected in the western Deccan; the excavation of cave temples abruptly ceased, not to be resumed for another two hundred years, as the Shatavahanas withdrew to the east.

  Moreover, the link between trade and dominion was not just one of timing. ‘The prosperity ushered in by trade and the need to control the trade routes is apparent in the sites chosen by the Shatavahanas for their earliest inscriptions.’18 Inland trade routes converged on the Shatavahanas’ west coast ports from Ujjain and the Gangetic states as well as from the Shatavahanas’ capital at Paithan in the Deccan. In both cases they had to thread their way down the rocky defiles of the Western Ghats. The Shatavahanas’ earliest inscriptions are at cave sites clearly related to these passes and defiles. Not without reason did one of the earliest Shatavahana kings describe himself as daksinapatha-pati, ‘the lord of the daksinapatha (the “southern route”)’.

  The Periplus describes vast wagon trains heading down from Ujjain with the exotic produce of the Kushana domains and beyond – spikenard, saffron and costus (a medicinal root) from the Himalayas, ivory and bdellium (a resin), muslins and silks, agate and carnelian, ebony and teak. The trade may go back to Mauryan times since a fragment of an Ashokan Rock Edict has been found at the port of Sopara. But it was the Shatavahanas who were responsible for developing it. They not only controlled the trade routes but also encouraged the settlement of lands which would supply both the ports and the staging posts. It was to further this programme of settlement and strategic control that the Shatavahana dynasty, though orthodox in its adherence to Vedic sacrifice and deities, patronised and encouraged Buddhist establishments as well as making land grants to brahmans.

  Buddhism, as noted, had become identified with commerce and manufacturing. Not only did Buddhist doctrine encourage the investment of resources which would otherwise be wasted on sacrifices; it also denied caste taboos on food and travel which made trade so hazardous for the orthodox. Monastic establishments thus became foci of inland trade. Beside and below the extant cave temples it is thought that there stretched bazaars and lodging houses, stables, holding pens and joinery shops, all of course built in long-since-perished timber. The monasteries thus served the functions of caravanserais. And, though initially recipients of royal grants, they soon attracted private donations and mercantile endowments. As guild-members or as individuals, weavers, grain merchants, basket makers, leather workers, shipping agents, ivory carvers, smiths, salt merchants and a host of other craftsmen and dealers are recorded as donors in the cave temple inscriptions. Many hailed from distant parts of India; some even described themselves as Yavanas; all clearly had a vested interest in the booming commerce and so in the religious establishments which made it possible.

  The nature of Aryanisation within the subcontinent is still debated; so is that of India’s growing influence outside the subcontinent. Were Funan and all the later Indianised states in south-east Asia the result of trading links, of missionary activities, of migration, or of conquest? Should they be called ‘colonies’? Or were their Indian credentials simply the result of local elites espousing imported ideas of kingship, cultural sophistication and social differentiation? Conquests like Rome’s contemporary triumphs in Gaul and Britain can be discounted. It is much more likely that the processes responsible for the diaspora of Indian ideas in south-east Asia mirrored those at work in the western Deccan where trade, religious institutions and royal authority operated in consort to promote security, extend agrarian settlement and stimulate state-formation.

  7

  Gupta Gold

  C300–500 AD

  REDEEMED BY RUDRADAMAN

  JUST OUTSIDE the town of Junagadh in the Saurashtra peninsula of Gujarat an isolated massif rears abruptly from low-lying fields and pastures. This is Girnar, or ‘Giri-nagar’ (‘city-on-the-hill’), one of the most remarkable mountains in India,1 whose several peaks, some over a thousand metres high, are strung about with a garland of the precariously situated temples so beloved of the Jains. Throughout the year a trickle of Jain pilgrims from all over Gujarat and Rajasthan converges on Junagadh to climb the mountain and make a parikrama (meritorious circuit) of its craggy shrines.

  Their route begins along a trail of deceptive ease which, issuing from the west gate of the town, quickly leads to a bridge. Thence, by the shortest of detours, the curious may inspect Girnar’s least-visited attraction. Roughly seven metres by ten, the hump-backed mass of granite that bears Ashoka’s Major Rock Edict can hardly compare with the beetling cliffs and the airy vistas that lie ahead. Wayfaring Jains usually give it a miss. Whether bent to their staves or dangling from doolies (seats for one, suspended from a pole borne by two), they press on to the ethereal heights of their local Olympus.

  Isolated and ignored in this remote extremity of the subcontinent, the Ashoka rock, ‘converted by the aid of the iron pen … into a book’ (as James Tod put it), yet retains the capacity to stir an indologist’s dusty emotions. Its improbable location speaks volumes for the extent of ancient India’s empires, and it is vastly more impressive than the much-reduced replica which slumps, equally ignored, outside the main entrance of New Delhi’s National Museum. It is also rather more informative. On close inspection, the rain-blackened rock is found to be neatly etched not only with the ‘pin men’ script of the Ashoka Brahmi inscription but also with two much later records. Both relate to repairs carried out on an irrigation system in the vicinity of Junagadh which has long since disappeared. One is of the reign of Skanda-Gupta, last of the five great Gupta emperors, and so dates from the mid-fifth century AD; an important and colourful piece of verse, it will be noticed later. The other is earlier (150 AD) and even more informative. It tells of the history of the dam, how it was constructed by Chandragupta Maurya’s governor (hence, as noted, providing the only evidence for the first Maurya’s conquests in Gujarat), and how subsequently Ashoka’s provincial governor, evidently a Yavana, added new conduits or canals. Thanks to such improvements, more land was no doubt cleared and more settlers flocked to Junagadh, whose fine soil must have rewarded the engineers’ skills with double cropping and handsome yields.

  Sadly, though, according to this second inscription the whole irrigation system had since suffered severe storm damage. In fact it was thought to be beyond repair. Then ‘Maha-kshtrapa (‘Great Satrap’) Rudradaman’ decreed otherwise. Under the direction of his minister Suvisakha, a Pahlava (Parthian), the necessary rebuilding had been put in hand and the system was now, in 150 AD, again in operation. According to the inscription, the Great Satrap Rudradaman had done all this ‘without oppressing the people of the town or the province by exacting taxes, forced labour, donations or the like’. It had been paid for entirely out of his own treasury. Not unreasonably he claimed to be the most undemanding of rulers.

  This episode, although presented as testimony of Rudradaman’s indomitable character, may also be taken as symptomatic of his redemptive reign, both of which the inscription des
cribes in fulsome detail. For Rudradaman had inherited a kingdom which was every bit as badly in need of repair as the Junagadh dam. He was in fact one of those, probably Scythian, ‘Western Satraps’ who were offshoots of the Shaka kingdom established by Maues, Azes and Spalirises in Gandhara and the Panjab and which succeeded that of the Bactrian Greeks. In the Panjab the Shakas had subsequently been eased out by the Kushana, but in Gujarat their Western Satraps had soldiered on. Throughout the late first century AD they ruled, initially as kshtrapas (satraps) of Kushana overlords like Kanishka, then as increasingly independent maha-kshtrapas (great satraps) of Kanishka’s less illustrious successors. To their domains in Gujarat were added parts of what is now Rajasthan, while a satellite satrapy was established north of the Narmada in Malwa (now in Madhya Pradesh). Thence, from Ujjain, Malwa’s ancient capital, the Satraps had become embroiled with their richly trading Shatavahana neighbours in the western Deccan. The Periplus records the Satraps’ occupation of Broach and their blockading of Kalyan under a leader called Nahapana, while, inland, inscriptions in the cave temples of Nasik and Junnar further attest the Shaka presence in Shatavahana territory.

  It seems, however, that the Shatavahanas did not long suffer this indignity. Under the great Gautamiputra Satakarni they successfully repelled the Satraps and completely ‘uprooted’ Shaka rule in Malwa. A large hoard of Shaka coins found near Nasik, most of which had been restruck by the Shatavahana king, would seem to confirm this victory. The Satraps were forced back into Gujarat and immediately began planning their revenge. A certain Chashtana, from his coins a wily-looking strategist, was chosen to lead the Shaka forces, and duly established his own satrapal dynasty. The task of restoring the power of the Western Satraps then started in earnest and, according to the Junagadh inscription, had now, in 150 AD, been successfully completed by Chashtana’s grandson, the Great Satrap Rudradaman.