Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (14 page)

The ship arrived in Java after ninety days at sea. In common with other Chinese pilgrims who visited India to study Buddhism, Fa Xian saw the world in largely religious terms. The only thing he has to say about Java is that its people were Hindus and not Buddhists (also not entirely accurate given the evidence of Borobodur). After staying in Java for five months, he set sail for China on a very large merchant ship.

The vessel must have been enormous since the crew alone numbered 200. Fa Xian comments that he was very comfortable on this ship. It is possible that ships of this size had private cabins. For over a month, the ship made good progress till it, too, hit a major storm. Yet again, there was panic. Fa Xian tells us that some of his fellow passengers
accused him of bringing bad luck. They had probably heard of the storm on his previous voyage and thought that this was too much of a coincidence! Luckily an influential merchant defended him and the matter was settled.

Meanwhile, the ship’s crew realized that they had been blown off-course and were lost. They had been at sea for seventy days by now and were running dangerously short on food and water. Given the desperate situation, some of the more experienced merchants decided to take control of the ship and set a new course. After sailing for yet another twelve days, the ship finally arrived on the Chinese coast. Thus ends one of the earliest accounts of a sea journey between India and China. It reminds us that Indian Ocean voyages were dangerous and that these ancient merchants ran enormous risks when they set sail for foreign lands.

When Fa Xian visited India, much of the country was under the sway of the Gupta Empire, the second of India’s great empires. The first of the Gupta emperors was Chandragupta I (320–335
AD
) who established control over the eastern Gangetic plain with his capital in Pataliputra (now Patna). However, it was his son Samudragupta who dramatically expanded the empire over his forty-year rule. He first ensured that he had control of the entire Gangetic plains. Then he led a campaign deep into southern India where he reduced the kings of the region, including the Pallavas, to tributary status. Having proved himself as the most powerful monarch in the subcontinent, he performed the Vedic ritual of the
Ashwamedha Yagna and proclaimed himself the Chakravartin or Universal Monarch.

Samudragupta’s successor Chandragupta II (also called Vikramaditya) next expanded the empire westward to include Malwa and Gujarat by defeating the Sakas (or Scythians) who had ruled this area for several generations. Many of the small kingdoms and republics of north-west India were also reduced to tributary status. Thus, the Guptas established effective sway over much of India. In North and Central India, this control was exercised directly, while in peninsular India and in the north-west it was exercised indirectly through tributaries and close allies like the Vakatakas.

There is strong evidence to suggest that the Guptas consciously modelled themselves on the Mauryans and set out to recreate the empire of their predecessors. Not only did two of their emperors share a name with Chandragupta Maurya, but the Guptas went out of their way to put their own inscriptions next to Mauryan ones. For instance, much of what we know about the conquests of Samudragupta is from inscriptions carved on an Ashokan pillar that is now housed in Allahabad fort. Similarly, Skandagupta, fifth of the Gupta emperors, placed his own inscription in the vicinity of a Mauryan edict in Girnar, Gujarat. In art and literature too we find an echo of the Gupta fascination with the Mauryas. A well known Sanskrit play of this period,
Mudrarakshasa
, is based on the story of how Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya defeated the Nandas and built their empire.

Many well-known scholars take the view that ancient Indians did not have a sense of history and that the extraordinary continuities of Indian history are somehow accidental or
unconscious. It is modern arrogance to think that ancient people were somehow incapable of comprehending their place in history. As we can see, the Gupta monarchs clearly wanted to establish a link not just with the Mauryans but back as far as the Bronze Age. This is why at least two of the Gupta emperors conducted the ‘Ashwamedha Yagna’ or Vedic Horse Sacrifice—a ritual that was considered ancient even in the fourth century
AD
. By declaring themselves as Chakravartins, the Guptas were sending the same signal as the Mauryans did through the symbol of the so-called chakra or wheel. At the same time, the Guptas wanted to create a link to the future. The rust-free Iron Pillar in Delhi is usually remembered as an example of advanced metallurgy, but it was not meant as a technological wonder. Its real purpose was to provide a permanent record for posterity. What better way to do this than to inscribe on a solid iron pillar that would never rust?
¹⁵

Despite the numerous conquests, the Gupta empire was significantly smaller than that of the Mauryas. However, it made up for this in economic and cultural vigour. The two centuries of Gupta rule coincided with the mercantile boom described earlier in this chapter. With ports on both coasts and control over major internal highways, the Gupta economy witnessed a period of exceptional prosperity. This is corroborated by Fa Xian’s diaries. Indeed, the country must have been very well governed because, in his many years of solo wanderings, the Chinese scholar does not appear to have ever been robbed or cheated. This cannot be said of foreign
travellers who visited India in subsequent centuries. Later visitors like Xuan Zang and Ibn Batuta would all have to face armed bandits. Even today, backpacking alone like Fa Xian can be unsafe for a foreigner in many parts of the country.

The Gupta emperors invested heavily in intellectual and artistic excellence. It was under their rule that the astronomer-mathematician Aryabhatta worked out that the earth was spherical and that it rotated on an axis. He argued that the phases of the moon were due to the movement of shadows and that the planets shone through reflected light. He even worked out a remarkably accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth and of the ratio Pi. All this a thousand years before Copernicus and Galileo.

Not far from his capital Pataliputra, Emperor Kumaragupta founded Nalanda University, which would go on to become a world-renowned hub for Buddhist studies. Further west, the Guptas established a secondary capital in Ujjain. The city not only became an important commercial node in the Southern Road but also an important centre of learning for the Hindu tradition. It was probably here that Kalidasa, often called India’s Shakespeare, composed his famous works. Ujjain is today a small town in Madhya Pradesh, undistinguished except for a number of ancient temples. In the fifth century
AD
, however, it was a lively hub of commercial and intellectual exchange. Late on a monsoon night, when the cool moist breeze blows, it is still possible to imagine Kalidasa composing the
Meghdoota
, the Messenger of the Clouds.

So what was it like to visit one of these cities? Fa Xian tells us that cities of the Gangetic plains were exceptionally large and prosperous.
¹⁶
When he visited Pataliputra, he saw the
ruins of Ashoka’s palace that still stood in the middle of the city after six centuries. He was so impressed by the sheer scale of the stone walls, towers and doorways that he declared that they could not have been built by human hands—they must be the work of supernatural creatures.

While in Pataliputra, he witnessed a festival where the people built gigantic four-wheel wagons and then erected towers on them that were five storeys high. They then covered the towers in fine white linen and decorated them with canopies of embroidered silk. Fa Xian tells us that the people placed idols of their gods within these structures and images of the Buddha on the corners of the wagons. On the day of the festival, twenty such wagons were pulled through the city in a grand procession. Devotees from all walks of life, ranging from the royal family to the poor, participated in the festivities. They offered prayers and flowers to the gods and lit lamps in the evening. The whole city became like a fair ground with amusements and games. We are also told that, on this day, the rich made generous donations to the poor and physicians even held free health clinics for them.

The festival described above is clearly the Rath Yatra or Chariot Festival that is still celebrated by Hindus in many parts of the country. The most famous is the one held in honour of Lord Jagannath in Puri, Orissa. From Fa Xian’s description, the festival has survived almost unchanged since Gupta times. The only significant difference is that Buddhists used to actively participate in this event. Indeed, it appears that the popular practice of Buddhism and Hinduism overlapped significantly despite doctrinal disputes between scholars, and were seen to be part of the same spectrum. This
relationship remains alive in the Indic family of religions. Nepali Hindus routinely worship at Buddhist shrines just as Buddhist Thais commonly pray to the Hindu god Brahma and Punjabi Hindus visit Sikh gurudwaras.

Not everything written in this period was about high literature, science or religion. One of the most famous books of this age is the
Kamasutra
, the Treatise on Love. It is best known for its long lists of complicated sexual positions, but it also tells us a lot about the social mores of that time. The book suggests that at least urban attitudes were surprisingly liberal. Although obviously written by a man, the
Kamasutra
is quite sensitive to the female perspective and even hints at a female readership. Most interestingly for our purposes, it paints a vivid picture of the life of a rich and idle
nagaraka
or ‘a man-about-town’.
¹⁷

The
Kamasutra
advises the nagaraka to live in a big city if possible. On getting up in the morning, the book tells us, the nagaraka should have an oil-massage, bathe, shave, apply perfumes and, most importantly, clean the sweat from his armpits (the author is quite insistent on this). After lunch, he should entertain himself by teaching his parrot to talk, or by attending a cock-fight or ram-fight. Then, after a nap, it was time to dress up and head for the salon. The
Kamasutra
tells us that the evenings would be full of music, singing and drink. By late evening, the nagaraka and his friends would withdraw to a private room, decorated with flowers, where women could rendezvous with them. The courtesans are colourfully described as ‘women who love all men equally’. They would share wines and spirits made of grapes, honey and sugarcane. The
Kamasutra
advises the men to engage the women in
‘gentle conversation and courtesies that charm the mind and the heart’. Presumably the evening did not end just in conversation.

Picnics too are described in the same way. The men would get ready early in the morning and head for the countryside on horseback accompanied by friends, servants and courtesans. They would while the day away in gambling, cock-fights and theatrical performances. In the summer, the picnickers would enjoy water-sports in specially built pools designed to keep crocodiles out (very sensible in my view; it can really spoil your day to have a limb bitten off while frolicking in the pool with the ladies).

The
Kamasutra
’s description of the lifestyle of a fourth-century man-about-town is fascinating, and finds an echo in much later periods. The lives of the idle nawabs of nineteenth-century Lucknow and the Bengali zamindars of early-twentieth-century Kolkata have been common themes in literature and film, but some of these characters would have not been out of place if they had been transported back fifteen centuries to imperial Pataliputra. Like other aspects of Indian culture, this tradition too lives on in the world of ‘Page 3’ socialites in cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

So what did all these people and their world really look like? Despite the long passage of time, we have carvings and paintings that give us a visual insight into this world in the Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra. These were constructed under the rule of the Vakatakas, close allies of the Guptas. The paintings are obviously stylized but they give us a sense of what Indians of this period idealized. One of the things that strikes me is that most of the people in the paintings
are very dark-skinned. It appears that ancient Indians had a preference for dark skin. This is supported by a lot of other evidence. For instance, the epitome of male handsomeness in the Hindu tradition is Krishna who is clearly dark. His name literally means ‘The Dark One’ (his depiction as ‘blue-skinned’ is merely a medieval artistic innovation). Similarly, the beautiful Draupadi, the common wife of the Pandava brothers in the Mahabharata, is also described as being very dark.

This preference for dark skin appears to have survived well into the medieval period. Indeed, Marco Polo specifically mentions this in his comments about India: ‘For I assure you that the darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow.’
¹⁸
One only needs to look at the idol of Lord Jagannath in Puri to see what Polo meant.

It is unclear when and why this preference switched, but it shows that the traditional Indian aesthetic was very different from how we now perceive it. This may be somewhat inconvenient to those who sell skin-whitening creams to modern Indian consumers. Of course, Indians are not the only ones subject to changing tastes. Just five generations ago, Europeans considered pale white skin so attractive that Victorian women were willing to risk poisoning by using an arsenic-based compound to whiten their skin. Today, their descendants risk skin cancer from too much sun-bathing. Basically, you cannot win.

By the first half of the sixth century, the Gupta Empire began to gradually crumble in the face of internal frictions and repeated attacks by Hunas (White Huns) from the North West. Taxila, the famous centre of learning where Chanakya had once taught, was sacked by the Hunas around 470
AD
. Over the next few decades they pushed the Gupta defences back into the Gangetic valley. A rump empire would remain for several generations, but the glory days were gone.