Herodotus is said to have been born around 484 BC near modern-day Bodrum, Turkey. In his book, he gives us a glimpse of what the people of the Mediterranean thought of the world of the Indian Ocean, which the ancient Greeks called the Erythraean Sea. The Persian Achaeminid empire of this period stretched from Egypt to the western bank of the Indus, and was constantly threatening the Greek city states. Since a large contingent of Indian soldiers was part of the Imperial army, Herodotus seems to have been familiar with Indians.
The Histories tells us that the Indian soldiers wore cotton clothes and carried bows and arrows made of cane and tipped with iron.7 We are also told that the Indians had horses and chariots. While this description of Indian soldiers sounds true enough, Herodotus’s knowledge of India itself is a garbled mix of fact and fiction that seems to have been picked up from different sources. He is aware that India is a large and populous country where numerous languages are spoken. He also recounts a Persian expedition that sailed down the Indus and made its way to Egypt through the Red Sea. This was probably an established trade route by this time. It seems to have been commercially important enough for Herodotus to have referred to a canal being built to connect the Red Sea to the Nile—an early Suez Canal!
Nevertheless, the Greeks seemed to believe that India was the eastern most inhabited country and that there were only oceans and deserts beyond it. The Persians probably fed them fabulous tales about the exotic East. Herodotus recounts the method by which the Indians were believed to mine gold. There was said to be a sandy desert in India inhabited by giant ants ‘in size somewhat smaller than dogs, but bigger than foxes’. When these ants burrowed their nests into the ground, they dug out sand that was rich in gold. The Indians therefore made their way into the desert on camels to collect the sand in the mid day sun. However, the ants were dangerous and one had to collect the sand quickly and escape. We are categorically told that female camels were faster than the males, and should be preferred for the operation as there is a risk that the ants may come chasing after the gold diggers. Now, this is the kind of useful information one should always remember if one wants to avoid being eaten alive by rampaging giant ants.
Herodotus seems to have been told another tall tale by the Arabs about their sources of cinnamon. The cinnamon sticks were evidently collected by giant birds that used them to build nests high up on a sheer cliff. The Arabs claimed that they left large chunks of meat at the foot of the cliffs so that birds would pick them up and take them to their nests. However, the weight of the heavy meat pieces would often cause the nests to break and fall, and the Arabs would then collect the cinnamon. Various versions of this story would be used over the next fifteen hundred years by Indian Ocean merchants to conceal their sources. A version of it would make it into the Arabian Nights as the tale of Sindbad, the roc and the valley of diamonds.
While Herodotus thought that the descriptions of giant birds and ants were plausible, his book also includes stories that he finds implausible. One of these is about a Phoenician fleet said to have sailed around Africa. The fleet set out from the Red Sea and sailed down the coast of East Africa. At this stage they may not have been in entirely unfamiliar territory as Herodotus suggests that the Phoenicians had migrated to the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean rim. In autumn they went ashore and sowed a tract of land with corn. Having replenished their food stocks with the harvest, they set sail again and in this way made it back after three years to the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar.
If true, this expedition would suggest that the ancients had gone around the Cape of Good Hope a good two thousand years before Vasco Da Gama! Herodotus, however, did not believe the story because of a minor detail—the Phoenicians insisted that when they made the turn at the bottom of Africa, the sun was to their right. Herodotus thought that this claim was just too absurd but we know that this is exactly what one should expect south of the Tropic of Capricorn. In other words, the ancient explorers may have been telling the truth!
The War Elephants
The history of ancient Greek city states is dominated by their conflicts with the Persian empire, the superpower of that time. The rivalry culminated in a large-scale Greek–Macedonian invasion led by Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great. After winning a series of battles in the Levant and conquering Egypt, Alexander’s army decisively defeated the Persians led personally by Darius III in 331 BC at Gaugamela (near modern Mosul, northern Iraq). Roman-era historian Arrian mentions a contingent of Indian cavalry that fought for the Persian cause and continued to put up fierce resistance even after Darius had fled the battlefield. Not counting the Mitanni, this is the first explicit mention of Indian soldiers fighting in Iraq and it would not be the last. It is also interesting that the Indians were participating as cavalrymen because an early version of the stirrup was invented in India around this time.8 One wonders if it was used by the Indian horsemen in this battle.
The victory at Gaugamela would have been enough to establish Alexander’s control over the Persian empire, but he dreamed of conquering the whole known world. Thus, in the winter of 327–326 BC, he led his army through Afghanistan towards India. Along the way he subdued several small kingdoms including Massaga, probably in what is now eastern Afghanistan or Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The Massagan army had 7000 Indian mercenaries who put up a fierce resistance but the royal family finally agreed to Alexander’s terms of surrender. The terms included a condition that the mercenaries would join the Macedonian invasion of India. Unfortunately, the Indians had not been consulted before the agreement and they refused to fight against their own countrymen. Alexander responded by massacring all of them.9
He next marched into the plains of Punjab where he and his local allies defeated Porus (probably relates to the Puru tribe who had lived in this area since Vedic times). Alexander wanted to keep pushing east but his troops were weary and wanted to go home. There were also rumours of a large army being mobilized by the Nandas of Magadh (roughly modern Bihar). The conqueror was forced by a near rebellion to change plans and decided to return home by sailing down the Indus on the mistaken belief that the river became the Nile in its lower reaches. In other words, the Macedonians thought that if they simply sailed down the Indus, they would end up in the Mediterranean. They seem to have reached this conclusion based on certain similarities between the flora and fauna of India and that of the upper reaches of the Nile. Arrian mentions crocodiles and a certain variety of beans, but it is quite likely that elephants added to the confusion. It is also likely that they misunderstood Herodotus’s account of the Persian expedition that sailed down the Indus and then made its way to Egypt through the Red Sea.
Whatever the real reason for the decision, Alexander’s army pillaged their way down the Indus till they arrived on the shores of the Arabian Sea in 325 BC. As already mentioned, the main channel of the river used to flow much further east of its current location and it is likely that the Macedonians reached the sea around Lakhpat in Kutchh. Having realized his mistake, Alexander sent back part of the army by sea following the old Harappan coastal route to the Persian Gulf. However, perhaps due to the lack of boats, he marched the bulk of his army through the deserts of Baluchistan and eastern Iran.
It was a very bad choice and thousands of soldiers died from hunger and thirst in the stark, barren landscape. Much of the plunder from years of campaigning had to be abandoned as most of the pack animals died. Alexander’s army arrived in Mesopotamia undefeated but decimated. Recall that the same Persian Gulf–Gujarat stretch had been frequently crossed by early humans as they populated the world but climate change had now rendered it virtually uninhabitable. The Greeks found that the only people who survived in this dry, inhospitable Makran coast were the Ichthyophagi or ‘fish-eaters’.
Alexander died soon after his return to Babylon, possibly poisoned by members of the Macedonian elite who had come to fear his increasingly erratic behaviour. His young son was later murdered an
d the generals divided up the empire among themselves. However, Alexander’s brief incursion into the Indian subcontinent had an unintended consequence. A scholar called Chanakya and his protégé Chandragupta Maurya took advantage of the political confusion caused by the invasion to carve out a power base in India’s north-west. After several attempts, they defeated the Nanda king of Magadh and created the foundations for the powerful Mauryan empire. In 305 BC, Chandragupta defeated Seleucus Nikator, the general who had taken over most of Alexander’s Asian possessions.
The treaty between Seleucus and Chandragupta handed the Indians a large chunk of territory extending over Afghanistan and Baluchistan. One of Seleucus’s daughters was also given in marriage to a Mauryan prince, perhaps Chandragupta himself or his son Bindusara. Seleucus, in return, received a gift of 500 Indian war elephants and their mahouts.
In the Battle of Ipsus, 301 BC, Seleucus used these elephants with devastating effect against rival generals and established himself as the most powerful of Alexander’s successors. Thereafter, elephants became the symbol of the Seleucid empire and Seleucus was often depicted on coins seated on elephant-drawn chariots.10 Given the importance of the animal in his war machine, he tried to ensure control over the supplies of war elephants from India. Ptolemy, the rival general who had taken control of Egypt, tried to circumvent the blockade by sourcing African elephants from the Kushites of Ethiopia. We have records of repeated expeditions sent to acquire the beasts from Ethiopia and of special boats being built to transport them. These elephants were not considered as good for combat as their Indian equivalents and the Kushites seem not to have been conversant in the art of training them for battle. Thus, the Ptolemies eventually smuggled in Indian mercenaries, probably by the Red Sea route, to train and man their war elephants.
Ashoka, the Not so Great
Chandragupta abdicated in 298 BC (or 303 BC according to another source) in favour of his son Bindusara who ruled till 273 BC. Bindusara had inherited an empire that was already very large—from Afghanistan to Bengal. He seems to have extended the realm further south till the empire covered all but the southern tip of the peninsula. For the most part, his rule seems to have been peaceful except for a few rebellions. He also seems to have maintained diplomatic and trade links with the kingdoms carved out from Alexander’s empire.
In 274 BC, Bindusara suddenly fell ill and died. The crown prince Sushima was away fending off incursions on the north-western frontiers and rushed back to the imperial capital Pataliputra, present-day Patna. However, on arrival he found that Ashoka, one of his half-brothers, had taken control of the city with the help of Greek mercenaries.11 It appears that Ashoka had Sushima killed at the eastern gates. The crown prince may have been roasted alive in the moat! This was followed by four years of a bloody civil war in which Ashoka seems to have killed all male rivals in his family. Buddhist texts mention that he killed ninety-nine half-brothers and only spared his full brother Tissa. Hundreds of loyalist officials were also killed; Ashoka is said to have personally decapitated 500 of them.12 Having consolidated his power, he was finally crowned emperor in 270 BC.
All accounts agree that Ashoka’s early rule was brutal and unpopular, and that he was known as ‘Chandashoka’ or Ashoka the Cruel. According to mainstream textbook narratives, however, Ashoka would invade Kalinga a few years later and, shocked by the death and destruction, would convert to Buddhism and become a pacifist. The reader will be surprised to discover that the popular narrative about this conversion is based on little evidence. Ashoka would invade Kalinga in 262 BC whereas we know from minor rock edicts that Ashoka had converted to Buddhism more than two years earlier. No Buddhist text links his conversion to the war and even Ashoka’s eulogists like Charles Allen agree that his conversion predated the Kalinga war. Moreover, he seems to have had links with Buddhists for a decade before his conversion. The evidence suggests that his conversion to Buddhism was more to do with the politics of succession than with any regret he felt for sufferings of war.
The Mauryans were likely to have followed Vedic court rituals (certainly many of their top officials were Brahmins) but had eclectic religious affiliations in personal life. The founder of the line, Chandragupta, seems to have had links to the Jains in old age while his son Bindusara seems to have been partial to a heterodox sect called the Ajivikas. This is not an unusual arrangement in the Dharmic (i.e. Indic) family of religions. This eclectic approach remains alive to this day and lay followers of Dharmic religions think nothing of praying at each other’s shrines. You will find many Hindus at the Golden Temple in Amritsar just as the streets of Bangkok are full of shrines dedicated to the Hindu god Brahma. The coronation of the king of Thailand is still carried out by Brahmin priests.
It is likely that when Ashoka usurped the throne, he was opposed by family members who had links to the Jains and the Ajivikas. He may have responded by reaching out to their rivals, the Buddhists, for support. The power struggle may even explain his invasion of Kalinga. The mainstream view is that Kalinga was an independent kingdom that was invaded by Ashoka but there is some reason to believe that it was either a rebellious province or a vassal that was no longer trusted.
We know that the Nandas, who preceded the Mauryas, had already conquered Kalinga and, therefore, it is likely that it became part of the Mauryan empire when Chandragupta took over the Nanda kingdom. In any case, it seems odd that a large and expansionist empire like that of the Mauryas would have tolerated an independent state so close to its capital Pataliputra and its main port at Tamralipti. In other words, Kalinga would not have been an entirely independent kingdom under Bindusara—it was either a province or a close vassal. Something obviously changed during the early years of Ashoka’s reign and my guess is that it had either sided with Ashoka’s rivals during the battle for succession or declared itself independent in the confusion.
Whatever the real reasons for attracting Ashoka’s ire, a large Mauryan army marched into Kalinga around 262 BC. The traditional view is that the two armies met on the banks of the River Daya at Dhauli near modern Bhubaneswar. It is possible that Dhauli was the site of a skirmish but recent archaeological excavations point to a place called Yuddha Meruda being the site of the main battle followed by a desperate and bloody last stand at the Kalingan capital of Tosali.13
The remains of Tosali were discovered only recently by a team of archaeologists led by Debraj Pradhan, a humble and affable man who has made some extraordinary discoveries about Odisha’s ancient past. The site is at a place called Radhanagar, a couple of hours’ drive from Cuttack. It is situated in a broad fertile plain watered by the Brahmani River and surrounded by low hills. Surveying the beautiful valley from one of the hills, one is overwhelmed by a feeling of eternity—rice fields, fish ponds, coconut palms, mango trees, and thin wisps of woodsmoke rising from village huts. Other than a few power transmission towers, the scene is perhaps close to what it would have looked to Mauryan generals planning their final assault.
The remains of the city’s earthwork defences suggest that Tosali was built in the middle of the plains; arguably a poor choice as the city’s defences would have been better served if they were wedged more closely to one of the hills. Archaeologists have only excavated a small section of the walls but have found it riddled with arrowheads; a blizzard of arrows must have been unleashed by the Mauryan army. The Kalingans never stood a chance. Ashoka’s own inscriptions tell us that 100,000 died in the war and an even larger number died from wounds and hunger. A further 150,000 were taken away as captives.
According to the official storyline, Ashoka was horrified by his own brutality and became a Buddhist and a pacifist. But, as we have seen, he was already a practising Buddhist by then, and from what we know of his early rule, he was hardly a man to be easily shocked by the sight of blood. The main evidence of his repentance comes from his own inscriptions. It is very curious, however, that this ‘regret’ is mentioned only in locations far away from Odisha (such as in Shahbazgarhi in nor
th-western Pakistan). None of the inscriptions in Odisha express any remorse; any hint of regret is deliberately left out.
The Ashokan inscriptions at Dhauli are engraved on a rock at the base of a hill. Almost all tourists drive right past it to the white-coloured modern stupa at the top of the hill. So I found myself alone with the inscriptions and the translations put up by the Archaeological Survey of India. What will strike anyone reading them is how they specifically leave out any sign of regret. The silence is deafening.
If Ashoka was genuinely remorseful, he would have surely bothered to apologize to the people whom he had wronged. Far from it, he doesn’t even offer to free the captives. Even the supposedly regretful inscriptions include a clear threat of further violence against other groups like the forest tribes who are unequivocally ‘told of the power to punish them that Devanampriya possesses in spite of his repentance, in order that they may be ashamed of their crimes and may not be killed’.14 This is no pacifist.
It is likely that Ashoka was using his inscriptions as a tool of political propaganda to counter his reputation for cruelty. As with the words of any politician, this does not mean he changed his behaviour. Moreover, many of the inscriptions are placed in locations where the average citizen or official of that time would not have been able to read them. Several historians including Nayanjot Lahiri have wondered about this. Is it possible that some of the inscriptions were really meant for later generations rather than his contemporaries?
The Buddhist text, Ashokavadana, tells us of more acts of genocide perpetrated by the emperor many years after he supposedly turned pacifist.15 These were directed particularly at followers of the Jain and Ajivika sects; by all accounts he avoided conflicts with mainstream Hindus and was respectful towards Brahmins. The Ashokavadana recounts how Ashoka once had 18,000 Ajivikas in Bengal put to death in a single episode. If true, this would be the first known instance of large-scale religious persecution in Indian history (but, sadly not the last).
The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History Page 8