The book was given to me by Han to whom i had
confessed my illiteracy in history. I only knew how to analyze facts not the
facts themselves. I had started reading 'The Myth of the Holy Cow' by the same
author a year ago but had given it up because i have some problems with the
argument he is putting forth in the book. 'Early India' however made me realize
that i can read non-fiction and be interested in it. Thanks for that, Han.
So to the book, as usual.
It is explosive. I am going to quote the portions
which need mention especially in today's socio-political environment. In
Chapter I, ‘Introduction’ he gives us a taste of what is in store for the
reader.
Initially inspired by the ideas
of social reform, Indian historical scholarship gradually became overtly
anti-imperialist. With the radicalization of Indian politics after the
partition of Bengal in 1905 and the simultaneous growth of militant
nationalism, Indian historical writings were conditioned and influenced by
contemporary political development which sharpened the edge of the freedom
struggle. Partly in reaction to the imperialist view of India's past and partly
as a step towards the building up of national self-respect, Indian historians
made zealous efforts to refurbish the image of India's past. Hindu culture was
looked upon as the precursor of other Asian cultures; this buttressed the
theory of pan-Hinduism. The ancient period of Indian history, equated with the
Hindu period in James Mill's scheme of periodization, was regarded as one of
prosperity and general contentment. Social inequalities were glossed over and
Indian society was portrayed as a model of social harmony and peace. The age of
the Guptas came in for special praise. It was considered the golden age of
Indian history-an idea that continues to find importance in most textbooks.
He explains further that
The glorification of ancient India by
nationalist historians meant the glorification of what appeared to them as
Hindu India. In a sense, therefore, their writings seem to have been linked
with the revivalist ideas of Vivekananda, Dayananda, and others. In the 1930s
and 1940s this linkage became quite clear; nationalist historiography gave an
impetus to the ideas of V.D. Savarkar, the high priest of Hindu revivalism. He
created the concepts of Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra and have his
supporters the dangerous slogan ‘Hinduize all politics and militarize
Hindudom’. Under his inspiration K.D. Hedgewar founded the fanatically communal
and fascist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in 1925 at Nagpur.
The pernicious role of the RSS in spreading the virus of communalism in the
body politic of India can hardly be exaggerated. The assassination of Mahatma
Gandhi by the RSS-trained Godse on 30 January 1948, the demolition of the
Baburi Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 and-more recently, in March
2012—the state sponsored genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, are the unforgettable
milestones in the unfolding of the backward-looking Hindu revivalist and
fascist politics of contemporary India.
At
the historiographical level Hindu revivalism meant the acceptance of Mill’s
periodization based on the untenable premise that ancient kings up to AD 1200
subscribed to the Hindu religion. That some of the major ruling dynasties like
the Indo-Greeks, Shakas, and Kushanas were not Hindu was ignored. Indeed, even
the Mauryas were not Hindu—the greatest Maurya ruler Ashoka was a Buddhist! In
fact, ancient Indians never described themselves as ‘Hindu’. First used by the
Achaemenid Persian rulers in the sixth century BC and later by the Arabs and
others in the ethno-geographic sense, the term ‘Hindu’ stood for all those who
lived on or beyond the siver Sindhu (Indus), the inhabitants of al-Hind
(India). Foreign to early Indian literature, this name passed into Indian
nomenclature much later and gained currency during the colonial period when it
acquired a clearly religious connotation.
In the chapter ‘From Prehistory to
Civilization’ he says,
Other major sites include Rakhigarhi in
Haryana, and the coastal cities of Surkotada in Gujarat and Sutkagendor near
the Makran coast, close to the Pakistan-Iran border. Rangpur and Rojdi in the
Kathiawar peninsula in Gujarat represented the later phase of the Harappan
civilization. Despite the fact that a large number of sites associated with it
have been discovered since 1946, the culture itself is still best known by the
two cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa. Since both are now in Pakistan, the
Hindu revivalists today are busy locating the epicenter of this culture in the
elusive Sarasvati valley.
From the footnote we get to know of Sarasvati
The
Sarasvati, identified with the Ghaggar in Panjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan and
with the Hakra beyond the Indian border in Pakistan, is mentioned at several
places in the Rigveda and is reminiscent of the Harasvati in
Afghanistan. Vedic references imply the semi-mythical nature of the Sarasvati
‘as goddess and mythical river in the sky or on earth’, though at least two
later Vedic texts (Jaiminiya Brahmana and Panchavimsha Brahmana) refer
to its disappearance in the desert near vinashana and provide a basis
for the much later Puranic mythology that it flows underground up to the
confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna at Prayaga (Allahabad). The Hindu
fundamentalists, however, have been working overtime to prove that the
Sarasvati basin was the original homeland of the Aryans, whom they regard as
the authors of the Harappan civilization which they name after this river. A
VHP protagonist and an archeologist of sorts has proclaimed that the Harappan
culture was the gift of both the Indus and the Sarasvati and ‘perhaps more of
the latter’. Since he habitually thinks in terms of India versus Pakistan and
the Sarasvati versus the Indus, he unduly emphasizes that there are 700
Harappan sites on the Sarasvati as compared to 100 sites on the Indus and, on
the basis of this claim, seeks to rename the civilization…far more urban sites
appear on the Pakistani Sarasvati than on the Indian Sarasvati. But the effort
to rename the civilization of the Indus valley after the lost Vedic Sarasvati
is going on unabated so as to establish the superiority of the Sarasvati over
the Indus, and is thus adding a communal dimension to Harappan and Vedic
studies as also to the history of Panjab. All this, unmistakably reminds us of
the political abuse of archaeology in Nazi Germany where Hitler and his
National Socialist Party’s ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg, drew much inspiration
from the archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna who laid the foundations of an
ethnocentric German prehistory.
Later,
The
earliest specimen of the Harappan script was noticed in 1853 and the complete
script was recovered by 1923 from a large number of inscriptions written on a
wide range of objects, notably on the intaglio seals…Hindu chauvinists connect
the script with Sanskrit, others with Dravidian or proto-Dravidian languages
and still others with the Sumerian language. But the language of the Harappans
was probably Dravidian because Brahui, a language of this family, is still
spoken in Baluchistan and Sindh in Pakistan, besides some parts of Afghanistan,
Iran and Turkmenistan. According to a recent suggestion, however, the Harappans
also spoke the Munda language in some parts of their cultural zone.
…A majority
of Harappan terracotas represent cattle; the cow was not represented. Besides
sheep and goats, dogs, cats, humped cattle, water buffalo, and the elephants
were domesticated. The Harappans certainly ate the flesh of cattle, including
cow and ox, a fact unpalatable to modern-day Hindutva enthusiasts.
I have some issues with some of the descriptions
used by the author like in here where he says,
Harappan
craft production included some works of art. The most striking of them is a
bronze statuette of a pert and provocative ‘dancing girl’, naked but for a
necklace and a large number of bangles covering one arm.
When i saw the image of the ‘dancing girl’ for the
first time in my History textbook in Highschool and now in the book, i see no
reason to describe it as ‘pert and provocative’. What is this concept of
provocative anyway! Jha certainly needs to update his feminism.
He says again,
Numerous symbols of the phallus and female sex
organs made of stone found in Harappa indicate the prevalence of phallus
worship—a practice which, despite its condemnation in the Rigveda as being
prevalent among the non-Aryans, became a respectable form of worship in later
times; in fact, clay phalli continue to be worshipped and then dumped every
morning in some parts of the country even today…the discovery of many graves in
Harappa and other places prove beyond doubt that the Harappans generally buried
their dead in a north-south orientation, along with different types of goods.
This practice is in sharp contrast to the subsequent practice of cremation
prevalent in most parts of the country. It is a different matter that if a
communalist Hindu is told that all his ancestors did not practice cremation he
may well jump down our throat!
In the chapter ‘The Vedic Life’, Jha says,
The idea of the Aryan invasion of the urban
centres of the Harappan people leading to the final disappearance of their
culture has been enmeshed in controversy, though it has been put to various
uses by different groups of scholars and social and political activists. The
invasion theory was first clearly expounded by an eminent British archaeologist
who trained most of the first generation of post-Independence professional
Indian archaeologists, and who remained more or less unchallenged for quite
some time. But since the early 1960s this theory has come in for much
criticism. Some archaeologists—Indians in particular—have criticized the theory
with a vengeance as it were, and have vehemently denied the idea of an
invasion. They have also assigned the Aryans an Indian homeland from where they
supposedly migrated to different parts of Asia and Europe, though there is no
evidence to support this view. Guided by racist considerations, the
autochthonists have used all the weapons in their armoury to uphold the imagine
superiority of the Aryan race.
…Dayanand
Saraswati, who founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, laid stress on Aryan culture as
the root of all Indian tradition and sought the sanction of the Vedas, the
earliest extant Aryan literature, for their ideas. Several authors and
political activists subsequently propagated the idea of the Indian homeland of
the Aryans and of the domination of the world by them and in so doing they went
to ridiculous extremes. Even when the Hindu nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar
Tilak, for example, postulated in 1903 that the Aryans originally lived in the
Arctic, the RSS chief M.S. Golwalkar later located this region in modern Bihar
and Orissa. Some scholars continue to believe in pan-Aryanism and go so far as
to claim that India was the cradle of world culture…A contemporary of Dayanand
and a leader of the non-brahmana movements in Maharshtra during the Peshwa rule
who founded the Satya Shodhak Samaj in 1873, Jyotiba Phule exploited the theory
in a radical manner. He regarded the Aryans as aliens who subjugated the
indigenous people described in the Brahmanical texts as Dasas and shudras, the
real inheritors of the land. The ideas of Phule gave ideological support to
non-brahmana movements in other parts of the country and these played a
progressive role in his times, though in contemporary India these may have been
used, consciously or unconsciously, to justify frequent caste confrontation.
About Aryans and cattle, he says
…Since cattle
seem to have been tended by common herdsmen, it has been suggested that members
of the tribe collectively owned them. Moreover, those who herded their cows in
the same cowshed came to belong to the same gotra, a word which later
came to indicate descent from a common ancestor, and hence an exogamous clan
unit. The daughter was known as duhitri, milcher of the cow. The cow is
described in one or two places as not to be killed (aghnya), but this
may imply its economic importance. It was not yet held sacred, its
politicization being a recent phenomenon. Both oxen and cows were, in fact,
slaughtered for food. Beef was a delicacy offered to the guest. The Rigveda mentions
the word atithinir (cows fit for guests) and the name of the Vedic hero,
Atithigva, means literally, ‘slaying cows for guests’. A later text, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi,
even describes a guest as a cow-killer (goghna).
This passage about assimilation of non-vedic
elements throws light not only on the false claims regarding the purity of all
‘vedic’ but also on the stupidity of the argument. Unequal distribution of the spoils of war was
certainly the basic reason for the emergence of the fourfold division of
society. But the phenomenon was also linked with the long process of
acculturation between the local population and the Aryan migrants, of which
there is considerable evidence. The Rigvedic vocabulary contains nearly 4 per
cent words of the non-Aryan substrate language which was in use in a major part
of north India before the advent of the Aryans. Assimilation of the non-Vedic
elements is also borne out by the information available about some prominent
individuals mentioned in the Rigveda. In a passage of the Rigveda,
Vasishtha, who replaced Vishvamitra as the chief priest of Sudas and who later
came to be treated as the founder of a major brahmana gotra, is said to
have been born of the seed of the Vedic gods Mitra and Varuna; his mother is
not mentioned. But in the one and the same account he is said to have been
‘born of the mind of Urvashi’, born also of a jar which received the combined
semen of the two gods; and discovered ‘clad in the lightning’ in a pushkara (tank).
Garbled versions of his birth may have been invented to gloss over his
non-Vedic origin and to facilitate his adoption into the Rigvedic fold. Another
prominent sage and the founder of a gotra, Agastya, who carried the
Vedic religion to south India, was also born of a jar. Several seers like Kanva
and Angiras are described in the Rigveda as black, which may point to their
non-Vedic antecedents. Like the non-Aryan priesthood, some conquered chiefs
were also assimilated and given high status. Such Dasa chiefs as Balbhuta and
Taruksha are said to have made generous gifts to the priests; they thus earned
unstinted praise and gained in status in the Aryan social order. The Rigveda
does not throw any light on the process of assimilation of the pre-Aryan or
non-Aryan commoners into the Aryan fold. Perhaps most of the ordinary members
of the aboriginal tribes were considered to be outside the pale of Aryan life
and were reduced to the lowest position in society. Social distance between the
Aryans and the ‘dark-skinned, full-lipped, snub-nosed’ non-Aryans increased
over time. Not surprisingly they may have felt the need to retain the purity of
their blood, little realizing that much non-Aryan blood was already flowing in
their veins, just as some non-Aryan gods had wormed their way into the vedic
pantheon through syncretism.
Jha also mentions in passing instances where beef
eating was supported by later Vedic texts. For example
…All this does not mean
a total disappearance of pastoralism, which continued to remain a reasonably
prominent feature of life. This is suggested not only by the remains of cattle
bones bearing cutmarks at Hastinapur, Atranjikhera, etc., but also by the later
Vedic texts, especially the Shatapatha Brahman, which refers to
Yajnavalkya’s obdurate statement in favour of eating beef…
It is in the chapter ‘Early State Formation’ that
i got to know of a different version of Rama’s story.
According to the Dasaratha Jataka, one
of the Buddhist birth stories, Rama, whom it describes both as the brother and
husband of Sita, was the king of Kashi and not Ayodhya where his modern
devotees (Ramabhaktas) demolished a medieval mosque in 1992 leading to a
communal holocaust in the country.
In the chapter ‘The First Empire’, i got to know
that things in my history textbook were not always correct. Made a mental note
that whenever i get some children to be with i shall instruct them to question
everything in their textbooks, something i never ever did. See this here
Some scholars would have us believe that
Ashoka, moved by the untold miseries caused by the war, dramatically embraced
Buddhism. But according to one of his inscriptions, it was only after a period
of two and a half years that he became an enthusiastic supporter of the
religion of the Buddha.
On Kautilya’s philosophy,
Kautilya seems to have deliberately fostered
the rusticity of villagers to augment agricultural output so as to achieve the
maximum levels of surplus expropritation. The exploitative character of the
Maurya state is clearly demonstrated by Kautilya’s own words: ‘As for settling
a land with the four castes, the one where the lowest castes predominate is the
better because it will permit all sorts of exploitation.’
In ‘Of Invasions, Trade and Culture’, we see that
The Indo-Greek power in north-western India did
not survive for long. It succumbed to the nomadic tribes known as the Scythians
who were forced by climatic and political factors to move out from Central Asia…the
Scythians, known as the Shakas in Patanjali’s Mahabhasya and in other
early Indian sources, moved from Bactria and invaded Iran and then the Greek
kingdoms in India…The most important Shaka ruler in India was Rudradaman who
exercised control over Sindh, Kutch, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Konkan, and the
Narmada valley as well as Malwa, Kathiawar, and the western Deccan. He is
famous for repairing the Sudarshana lake which was in use for irrigation in the
semi-arid zone of Kathiawad from the time of the Mauryas. Rudradaman was the
first king to issue a long inscription in chaste Sanskrit. The first ruler to
elevate Sanskrit to the status of a court language was thus a king whose
origins can be traced to a region outside India.
In the same chapter i again had a
problem with Jha’s description of women in the following portion.
In return for her exports India imported from
the Roman empire such commodities as topaz, thin cloth, linen, antimony,
glassware, copper, tin, lead, wine, realgar, orpiment, and wheat. The Periplus
also tells us of the import of dainty damsels for purposes of concubinage
in Indian royal establishments.
It is one thing that ‘concubinage’ was something
which was usual during the time and that the women were thought of as ‘dainty
damsels’ by the people who made use of them. But it’s another thing for the
interpreter of these events to use the same language used by the oppressor. I
disagree. They were women who were brought to India so that the rulers could
sexually exploit them.
On post-Maurya period and Shudras he says,
Artisans and craftsmen were largely drawn in
the post-Maurya period from the shudras, who gained in wealth and status on
account of the progress of crafts and commerce. With the disappearance of the
Maurya state, which had regulated all economic activities, the guilds became
powerful and perhaps secured a certain measure of independence for the
artisans. But most artisans were confined to urban centres like Taxila and
Mathura in the north and coastal towns and their hinterlands in the Deccan and
the south. It is, therefore, difficult to postulate any major change in the
living conditions of the class of the shudras. Generally they continued to be
employed as hired labour and slaves. The lawgiver Manu laid down a number of
laws which adversely affected their economic position; in his view the shudras
were meant to serve the upper varnas. In cases of assault and similar
crimes the punishments prescribed for them were very harsh. According to Manu,
the very limb with which a man of a low caste hurt a member of the highest
caste was to be cut off. If, for example, a shudra insulted a twice-born with
gross invective, he would have his tongue cut off. Legally, a member of a
higher varna could marry a woman of a lower order. But Patanjali tells
us that the dasi (maid servant) and vrishali (shudra woman) were
meant for the pleasures of men of the upper classes. Most shudras seethed in
discontent at this gross discrimination. It is not unlikely that they often
turned against brahmanas and other higher castes and thus caused tension in
society. Several early Puranic passages of the late third and early fourth
century indicate that society was passing through a phase of crisis known as
the Kaliyuga when the institutions of family, private property, and the varna
system were under attack. Therefore, the lawgivers not only provided for a
number of safeguards against the outbreak of shudra hostility but also for the
protection of the Brahmanical patriarchal social institutions. They laid down
inheritance rules which deprived women of their right to property and lowered
the age of marriage, which took away their freedom to choose their husbands. As
an unmarried girl a woman had to depend on her father, as a wife on her
husband, and as a window on her son. She was, according to Manu, a seductress.
…The
presence in India of foreigners who achieved political and economic importance
posed a threat to the caste system. Brahmana orthodoxy could not dub them as
outcastes; on the contrary it had to come to terms with them, as is evident in
the Mahabharata. At one place in this text they are described as the
sons of Yayati and at another they are said to have sprung from the body of
Vasistha’s cow together with the Pahlavas. In one passage the Yavanas are
degraded as shudras and in another Indra says that they can be admitted into
the Brahmanical order if they follow the Brahmanical dharma. Mutually
contradictory though these statements may appear, they are all indicative of
efforts to assimilate them into Indian society. Shrewdly enough the lawgiver
Manu conferred the status of ‘fallen kshatriyas’ (vratya kshatriya) on
them.
Reminded me of our own times when ‘westernisation’
is detested by the right. I remember reading in ‘Why I am not a Hindu’ by
Kancha Ilaiah that this hatred of ‘westernisation’ is in fact a wolf in lamb
skin and is in fact hatred of ‘dalitisation’. Will be re-reading the book soon
so will update on that later. So in our times we have an education minister
whom we rightly call ‘Manusmriti Irnani’ because like the lawgiver she is also
particular about killing dalit students and calling them anti-national.
About gods and their statuses,
Simultaneously with
the emergence of these gods, Brahmanism was assimilating a variety of popular
cults. Animals, trees, mountains, and rivers came to acquire divine
associations. The cow tended to become an object of reverence in Brahmanical
normative texts, though it was converted into a mark of ‘Hindu’ identity
perhaps not before the colonial period. After the cow, the snake was the most
revered animal; originally it was the centre of primitive fertility rites. The
Vaikunha mountain became sacred to Vishnu, as Kailasha was to Shiva. Vaikuntha,
thought to be situated in the highest heavens, has not yet been identified;
Kailasha is generally recognized as a peak in the central Himalayas. Tree cults
were also absorbed into the Brahmanical faith. The pipal or ashvaththa
and the vata banyan) were especially sacred trees. The tulasi or
the holy basil plant was sacred to Vishnu. It is still grown in the courtyards
of traditional Hindu homes; Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, is still married
every year at a fixed date to the goddess Vrinda who is represented by this
plant. The waters of the Ganga were held sacred; in the myths the river is said
to have sprung from the foot of Vishnu and fallen to earth through the matted
locks of Shiva. Most of the above-mentioned cults had roots in primitive
popular beliefs and practices and have survived to our own day.
Quoting this
portion to make it clear to myself how the history of even traditions is
important. He continues to talk about the (holy) texts.
In spite of a gradual
shift in emphasis from ritual to devotion as the means of attaining nearness to
god, Vedic sacrifice was not entirely rejected. The people, however, were
gradually losing touch with the Vedic tradition. The religious importance
previously enjoyed by the Vedic texts now came to be attached to the Ramayana
and Mahabharata and the Puranas. The epics were bardic in origin and
secular in character. They had, therefore to be revised by the brahmanas so as
to give them a religious character. The process took several centuries and
resulted in substantial interpolations in their original kernel. The most
important interpolation was the Gita, which has been dated around the
second century BC. It contains 700 tightly woven stanzas, which provide the
first clear exposition of the basic tenets of the Vaishnava faith. No wonder
the Gita later became the basic text of the Vaishnavas. In our own times
it is talked about more often than read, its glaring contradictions and poetic
excellence and its justification of a fratricidial war being conveniently
ignored by those who tirelessly swear by it.
About Sanskrit we again get to know that
Ashvaghosha
and Bhasa wrote in an ornate style perhaps for courtly circles. From now on
Sanskrit tended to be ostentatious, simple words giving way to compounded ones.
Already a virtual monopoly of the brahmanas, Sanskrit was now gradually
becoming the language of the ruling class. Even royal inscriptions came to be
written in classical ornate style; the earliest of them in classical Sanskrit
belongs to the Shaka king Rudradaman (dated AD 150), who takes pride in his
mastery over the language. Later it came to be increasingly adopted in royal
charters. Prakrit, the language close to popular speech and used by the Maurya
and Satavahana rulers, was thus replaced by Sankrit, though in norther
Tamilnadu and adjoining areas the early Pallava rulers issued their
copper-plate charters in Prakrit during the third and fourth centuries; and the
distinct Tamil linguistic tradition was still to take its form and was not yet
in a position to become a substitute for the north Indian literary idiom……Disputes
about the stratification of the Shangam texts may remain unresolved for many
years to come. However, what is difficult to question is that compared with
classical Sanskrit literature, the early Tamil literature was closer to the
realities of life.
About the ‘Golden Age’ he says,
The social
structure was undergoing changes in the Gupta period. Pronounced varna distinctions
in various spheres of life can be seen in the contemporary writings. According
to Varahamihira, a brahmana should have a house with five rooms, a Kshatriya
with four, a vaishya with three, and a shudra with two. He adds that in each
case the length and breadth of the main room should vary in accordance with the
order of superiority. The old provision allowing for different rates of
interest for different castes continued in Gupta times. A Puranic text compiled
in Gupta times associates the four colours, white, red, yellow, and black, with
brahmana, Kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra respectively. This shows the relative
status of the four orders. The writings of the period emphasize that a brahmana
should not accept food from a shudra because it reduces his spiritual strength.
Varna distinctions were also observed in legal matters. The law books
lay down that a brahmana should be tested by a balance, a Kshatriya by fire, a
vaishya by water, and a shudra by poison. In lawsuits requiring the deposit of
sureties distinction between the twice-born and the shudras was made. Equally
discriminating were inheritance rules. A shudra son of a person belonging to a
higher caste would get the smallest share. According to the lawgiver
Brihaspati, the son of a brahmana male and a shudra female was not entitled to
any share in landed property. He also tells us that witnesses should belong to
respectable families. Other legal texts state that shudras could appear as
witnesses only on behalf of the members of their own caste. All this proves the
class bias of law and justice, which tended to become increasingly prominent in
course of time.A distinction was made between shudras and untouchables. A
shudra having sexual intercourse with a Chandala woman was to be reduced to her
position. The practice of untouchability became more widespread and severe than
in the early period. The lawgivers prescribed penance for removing the sin
arising out of touching a Chandala. Fa-hsien informs us that Chandalas entering
the gate of a city or marketplace would strike a piece of wood to give prior
notice of their arrival so that other men could avoid them. The untouchables in
general and the Chandalas in particular are described in contemporary texts in
very disparaging terms. They are associated with impurity, untruth, theft,
heterodoxy, useless quarrels, passion, wrath and greed.The varna system
does not seem to have functioned smoothly. The Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata,
which may be assigned to the Gupta period, contains at least nine verses which
stress the need of a combination of brahmanas and Kshatriyas; this may indicate
some kind of concerted opposition to them by the vaishyas and shudras. In one
of these passages the complaint is made that at one stage the vaishyas and
shudras willfully began to unite with the wives of brahmanas. The shudras seem
to have been particularly hostile to the existing social order. The Anushashana
Parva of the Mahabharata represents them as the destroyers of the
king. Another contemporary work describes them as hostile, violent, boastful,
short-tempered, untruthful, extremely greedy, ungrateful, heterodox, lazy, and
impure. All this as well as passages from the legal texts would suggest a
conflict between the shudras and the ruling classes. But references to actual
revolts by the shudras against the upper classes are not recorded in the
sources of the Gupta period.The ruling classes often used religion for
maintaining the social order based on varna. Already in the Gita,
vaishyas, shudras, and women were condemned by Krishna as people of low origin.
This view found forceful expression in several texts of the Gupta period. A
passage in the Mahabharata tells us that the shudra can achieve
salvation only through service of the twice-born and devotion to god. It is
emphasized here and in the Puranas that a shudra can obtain brahmanhood in the
next birth through good conduct. This emphasis derived from the theory of karma
(literally ‘work’ or ‘deed’) would ripen like a seed planted in the previous
season. The doctrine appealed to members of various varnas; for even a
shudra could hope to be reborn as a king in the next birth if his karmic
balance sheet proved to be favourable. In the Mrichchhakatika of
Shudraka, a bullock-cart driver refuses to kill Vasantasena precisely because
he does not want to repeat the sort of crimes which made him a slave in this
birth. Evidently such a belief did not permit the masses to blame their
miseries on human agency, and laid stress on the necessity of adhering to the
duties traditionally prescribed for the varnas to which they belonged.
This to me, looks like the classic abuser
psychology of playing the good cop and offering ‘acceptance’. Lawmakers
and writers work hand in hand when it comes to casteism like over here where we
see that
…The Mahabharata, traditionally attributed to Vyasa, was also
redacted; it was inflated from its original 24,000 verses to 100,000 verses.
There is much in common between this epic and the law books. Some of the
injunctions of Manu, for instance, occur in identical form in the Shanti
Parva of the Mahabharata which, contrary to the generally held view,
may imply that this legal text belongs to the Gupta period…The Brahmanical
world-view found in the epics, Puranas, and Dharmashastra texts is reflected in
the various versions of the Panchatantra fables which were elaborated in prose
interspersed with gnomic verses.
We get to know of ‘Hindu’ from over here where we
see that
The period of the imperial Guptas is described in most standard books
on Indian history as one of a Hindu renaissance. This is far from true. The
highest achievements of Gupta sculpture are the Buddhist images from Sarnath;
the best contemporary paintings from Ajanta have Buddhist themes. Progress in
astronomical knowledge as represented in the writings of Aryabhatta and
Varahamihira owed only in part to the indigenous tradition. One of the five
astronomical systems dealt with by Varahamihira was the Romakasiddhanta,
which evidently referred to the Roman system; another, the Paulishasiddhanta,
is explained as a recollection of the name of the classical astronomer Paul of
Alexandria. The main components of the so-called Hindu renaissance, therefore,
are the writings of Kalidasa, the composition of some of the Puranas, and the
coins and inscriptions which indicate that the Gupta kings patronized the two
Brahmanical sects, Vaishnavism and Shaivism. But the work of Kalidasa is not
indicative of an intellectual rebirth or revival of literary activity; it
merely implies a development in the literary forms and styles which were
evolving in an earlier period. The Puranas had existed much before the time of
the Guptas in the form of bardic literature; in the Gupta age some of them were
finally compiled and given their present form. Nor does the growing popularity
of Vaishnavism and Shaivism mean any religious resurgence. The basic tenets of
the two religions go back to earlier times; now in the context of emerging
feudal conditions they could attract a greater following. The use of the term
‘Hindu’ is equally erroneous. It was first used by the Persion Achaemenid
rulers in the sixth century BC and later by the Arbas in the post-Gupta period
to describe the inhabitants of Hindu (India). Ancient Indians never thought of
themselves as Hindus. The much publicized Hindu renaissance, was, in reality,
not a renaissance, much less a Hindu one
Again i felt uneasy with another detail of Jha’s
vocabulary when i read
…No extant court drama or Sanskrit poetical work
directly refers to any Gupta ruler. The only contemporary reference to them is
found in the Puranas, which contemptuously group them with petty kings
described as ‘barbarous (mlechchhapraya), impious, dishonest (or liars),
niggardly and highly irascible’…
I object to the use of ‘niggardly’. Surely, Jha
could have made a better translation. I am also curious what Sanskrit word was
translated to ‘niggardly’, because i am sure that it was something abominable
and the author assumed that the word ‘niggardly’ would best describe it, which,
of all the people Jha should know, is racist.
Moving on to more irreasonable glorification of
Gupta period we see that
Some Indian historians have been so enamoured of the
Guptas as to tirelessly speak of their rule as respresenting a golden age in
Indian history. In an emotionally surcharged multi-volume work we are told in a
vein of romatic lamentation: ‘Life was never happier.’ Yet it was during that
time that in certain parts of the country serfdom first appeared, leading
eventually to the economic bondage of the pesantry. Women became an item of
property and came to live in the perpetual tutelage of men, notwithstanding
their idealization in art and literature. Caste distinctions and caste rigidity
became sharper than ever before; law and justice showed a definite bias in
favour of the higher castes. Fa-hsien tells us that the people were generally
happy. True, the upper classes were happy and prosperous, and lived in comfort
and ease, as can be judged from contemporary art and literature, but this was
certainly not true of the lower orders. The Chinese pilgrim himself speaks of
the plight of the Chandalas. The untouchable class as a whole came to be
degraded further in the social scale. Social tensions continued. But religion
was used as an instrument for maintaining the varna-divided society. For
the upper classes all periods in history have been golden; for the masses none.
But the dystopia of the present has often led historians to look for a utopia
in the past and the Indian ruling class loses no opportunity to exploit this
nostalgic longing for a golden age to its advantage.
Like i said while i was reading the book i was
constantly going back to my highschool days when all this what is mentioned in
the book was taught to us in a different way. I couldn’t help but wonder why
our textbooks were not like this. In fact why this book was and is not a
textbook in highschool. Our education itself sides with corruption in all
forms. People who alter history to suit their casteist needs are always
accepted without questions while writers like Jha are attacked. Threatened to
be killed. So coming back to another version that all of us had learned during
that time from the textbooks, one which speaks about foreign invasions by
Muslim rulers. Let’s see what Jha has to say
Mahmud made seventeen rapacious
raids between 1001 and 1027 and plundered the temple towns of Mathura,
Thaneshwar, and Kanauj. His most famous campaign was the one he led to
Saurashtra. Here he defeated the Solanki ruler Bhimadeva (1026) and sacked the
shrine of Somanatha, often projected as one of the richest temples of the time
though a twelfth-century Sanskrit text dealing with pilgrim centres does not
single it out for special treatment. Mahmud is said to have returned with 20
million gold dinars (about 6.5 tons of gold) to his capital Ghazni and,
according to British accounts, with the wooden gates of the temple. Although
Mahmud’s attack has been much glorified in the Turko Persian accounts, it does
not occupy an important place in indigenous writings. Communalist historians
have spilt much ink on the tales of destruction carried out by him so that it
is often forgotten that he founded a library and a museum at Ghazni and
patronized such men of letters as Firdausi, the author of Shahnama, and
Al-Beruni, who wrote the most comprehensive account of India before the advent
of Europeans centuries later. The Islamic fundamentalism of Mahmud has also
been blown out of proportion. In the process his own claim of having killed
50,000 infidels and an equal number of Muslim heretics is ignored just as the
famous incident of his using Hindu troops to massacre Muslim rebels in a mosque
and Christians in a church at Zarang (Sistan) is deliberately forgotten
I do not believe that opposing violence on one
sect by citing violence of another sect is in any way helpful. But all the
deliberate exclusions have to be noted down. Mahmud of Ghazni, should just have
remained a ruler who was interested in conquests and violence. He was a fascist who loved literature,
perhaps. This is nothing out of ordinary in those times when we didn’t even
know to think of something called democracy. On Muhammad Ghori again we see
that
…When the second wave of invasions from Afghanistan in the north-east was
planned and led by Muhammad Ghori, the Indian princes patched up their
differences for a while under the leadership of Prithviraja and defeated him at
Tarain in 1191. There was, however, a reversal of fortunes in the following
year when Muhammad defeated Prithviraja at the same place and killed him,
though he has been immortalized by Chand Bardai in his long epic poem and by
numerous folk ballads, not to speak of communal historians whose favourite
pastime is to glorify all Hindu chiefs who fought against Muslim rulers.
In the same chapter called ‘Emergence of Feudal
India’ we see this:
Evidence of significant changes in the caste system is
plentiful. The vaishyas, for example, ceased to remain important as a trading
caste when trade languished, and a Puranic text tells us that in the kali
age some traders would become oilmen and winnowers of grain, others would seek
shelter with rajputras, and yet others with all varnas. The
identity of the vaishyas as a peasant caste also seems to have been blurred.
For the shudras now took their position as cultivators and the origin of the
modern peasant castes of kurmis in Bihar and kunbis in
Maharashtra may be traced back to the early medieval period. The gap between
the vaishyas and the shudras was thus reduced; Al-Beruni tells us that members
of both castes were punished by having their tongue cut off for reciting the
Vedas.The number of shudra castes swelled enormously. A post-Gupta Puranic text
mentions more than a hundred mixed castes are produced as a result of
unapproved relationships of vaishya women with members of the lower castes. An
important reason for this increase was that guilds of artisans and craftsmen,
which earlier flourished on account of brisk commercial activity, now ossified
into shudra castes. Equally important was the fact that many tribes living in
jungles and forests were conquered. Shabaras, Bhillas, Pulindas, Abhiras, and
others were thus suppressed and were absorbed into the Brahmanical order. The
brahmanas who settled in tribal areas after getting land grants brought the
backward people into their social and cultural fold peacefully and they
assigned shudra status to most of them. The shudra castes were classified as
pure (sat) and impure (asat). The latter category consisted
mostly of the untouchable castes; more than fifty of them are enumerated in the
early medieval sources. All beefeaters were now relegated to the rank of
untouchables.
About women,
In the patriarchal family structure
women were subjected to an unprecedented degree of subordination. Deprived of
the right to initiation and formal education, they were generally denied the
right to property and they themselves continued to be treated as an item of
property. The practice of the wife joining the husband on the funeral pyre (anumarana/
sahagamana/ sahamarana, sati), therefore, gained popularity, especially
among the upper classes. Although a legal commentator considered sati an
act of suicide, the Puranas propagated stories of women who burnt themselves
with their husbands and secured a place in heaven as a reward. Literary and
epigraphic evidence indicates the prevalence of sati in several parts of
northern India, though its evidence is also available from the peninsular
region. In Rajasthan, the militant Rajput kings and nobles expected a high
degree of fidelity and loyalty from their wives and servants who, therefore,
followed them in death. In Bengal, where the Rajputs were not numerous, the
practice of widow burning prevailed among the brahmanas despite the legal
injunction to the contrary. It is likely that the ideology behind sati
was used here to deprive them of their share in landed property that came to be
concentrated in the hands of mostly brahmana landlords.
About tolerance,
Although Tantricism, like bhakti,
was an important component of the medieval religions, their votaries did not
always practice tolerance. On the contrary, instances of sectarian rivalry and
violence are many in early medieval India. In Kashmir, Hsuan Tsang tells us,
the Huna chief Mihirakula, a Shaiva by faith, destroyed 1,600 Buddhist
establishments and killed thousands of Buddhist monks and lay followers;
several centuries later kings Kshemagupta (950-68) and Kalasha (1063-89) are
said to have destroyed Buddhist images and monasteries. In Tamilnadu, the
Pandyan king, who gave up Jainism to embrace Shaivism, is said to have impaled
eight thousand Jainas. In Karnataka, the followers of Jainism were a perpetual bête
noire to the followers of the anti-Brahmanical Shaivite sect of Lingayats
founded by Basava in the twelfth century. Instances of sectarian violence
between the two are well documented, though much of it may have been rooted in
the economic rivalry between them in an era of commercial revival. The
harassment of Jainas by the Lingayats became so acute later that they had to
appeal to the Vijayanagara ruler for protection. The much trumpeted ‘tolerance’
of Hinduism has, therefore, to be taken with a pinch of salt, but there is no
doubt that Tantric beliefs and practices and bhakti were shared in varying
degrees by all religions.
Sanskrit is again discussed as it changed further
during the period in this way:
Excessive attention to prosody, poetics, and
lexicography tended to make the Sanskrit language complicated, florid,
pedantic, and prolix…Sanskrit thus became the exclusive preserve of the royal
court, the feudal aristocracy, and the
elite. With its impenetrable verbosity classical Sanskrit became the language
of political power and cultural domination. It widened the chasm between
landlords and peasants and fortified the former’s ideological and cultural
hegemony over other segments of society. But the vital literary energies were
gradually channelized into regional languages. Sanskrit naturally tended to
lose its hegemonic position. Not surprisingly it came to be described as a dead
language by the mid-nineteenth-century Gujarati poet, Dalpatram Dahyani, though
around this time it also began to be ‘utilized as one of the major legitimizing
sources of Indian national identity constructed as Hindu identity.
I am planning re-read ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow’
and read more history. For a person who was studious and who strictly believed
everything her textbooks told her, i believe i have been cheated. I want to
uncheat myself and soon. And thanks Jha for this one. I would like to interview
you one day.
