Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (15 page)

In the centuries that followed, a number of powerful kingdoms rose and fell in northern India—the Palas of Bengal, Harsha of Thaneshwar and so on. The city of Pataliputra slowly went into decline and was replaced by Kannauj (now a small town in Uttar Pradesh). Nonetheless, most things drifted along. Both Nalanda and Ujjain remained important centres of learning. Thinkers like Bhaskara and Varahamihira made great contributions to mathematics and astronomy. Chinese scholars continued to visit India to study Buddhism. The most prominent of these scholars was Xuan Zang who visited India in the seventh century, more than two hundred years after Fa Xian.

Like his predecessor, Xuan Zang (also spelled Hiuen-Tsang) made his way to India through Central Asia, which was then inhabited primarily by Buddhist and pagan Turks. He spent over a decade in the subcontinent during which he crisscrossed the Gangetic plains and went as far east as Assam. He even spent two years studying at Nalanda, which was then at the height of its fame.

One of the places he visited on these travels was Allahabad
(then called Prayag). This town is near one of the most sacred sites in Hinduism—the ‘Triveni Sangam’ or the Mingling of Three Rivers. Two of the rivers are obvious: the sacred Ganga and the Yamuna. However, the factor that gives this spot a special significance is that the Saraswati is also said to flow underground and join the other two at this place. In this way, a primordial memory of the vanished river is kept alive. For a Hindu, the sins of a lifetime are washed away by taking a dip in the confluence of these rivers. It is especially auspicious to do this at the time of the Kumbh Mela, which is held here every twelve years.
¹⁹
This is part of a four-year cycle by which this event is held in turn in Ujjain, Haridwar, Nasik and Allahabad. However, it is the great Kumbh Mela of Allahabad that is the largest and most prestigious. The last time this festival was hosted in Allahabad in January 2001, an estimated sixty million people participated—the largest human gathering in history.

Xuan Zang tells us that large numbers of people participated in the festival in the seventh century including the rulers of different countries and even Buddhists. Most interestingly, he describes the rituals of the sadhus (ascetics). Evidently, a large wooden column was erected in the middle of the river and the sadhus would climb it. At sunset they would hang from the column with one leg and one arm while stretching out the other leg and arm into the air. Thus would they stare into the setting sun. The wooden pole and the particular ritual are no longer around, but, considering the ash-covered sadhus who still congregate at the Kumbh Mela, the ritual seems entirely in character.
²⁰

Despite these outward signs of continuity, one does get the
feeling that the economic and cultural centre of gravity steadily shifted to the south. Even militarily, the southern kings could more than hold their own against the kingdoms of the Gangetic plains. When Xuan Zang visited India, the northern plains had been welded into an empire under Emperor Harsha, but he was roundly defeated by the Chalukya king Pulaksen II when he attempted to extend his empire into the Deccan.

The source of southern power was trade—both with the flourishing Indianized kingdoms of South East Asia as well as with the Persians and Arabs who had replaced the Romans in the west. The kingdoms of the south were aware of the importance of commerce and actively encouraged it. When necessary, they were not afraid to use military might to keep the trade routes open. The most famous examples of this are the Chola naval expeditions to South-East Asia in the eleventh century.

The Cholas were an ancient dynasty and are even mentioned in Ashokan edicts. In the ninth to the eleventh century
AD
, they created an empire that covered most of peninsular India and briefly extended to the banks of the Ganga. Unusually for an Indian empire, however, it also had a maritime empire that included Sri Lanka and the Maldives. For the most part, they also had very good relations with kingdoms of South-East Asia. Inscriptions on both sides show the existence of large merchant communities and that the kings exchanged emissaries and gifts. For instance, we have an inscription that tells us that Sri Mulan, the agent of the Srivijaya king of Sumatra, Malaya, had donated several lamp-stands to be installed at the Shiva temple in Nagapattinam.

The problem probably arose because the Cholas began to
create direct trade links with the Song empire in China. Records show that Cholas and the Chinese exchanged a number of trade delegations in the early eleventh century. Indo–Chinese trade relations were not new. We know from Chinese sources that a large Indian merchant community had long been established in Guangzhou and that there were three Hindu temples functioning there. However, Song–Chola diplomacy appears to have led to a further boom in Indo–Chinese trade.

Unfortunately, the Srivijaya kings probably felt that their role as middlemen was being threatened by such direct linkages. They reacted by tightening controls and imposing heavy taxes on ships passing through the Straits of Malacca. A contemporary Arab text tells us that the Srivijaya kings were demanding a levy of 20,000 dinars to allow a Jewish-owned ship to continue to China.
²¹
This was a serious matter and the Cholas felt that they had to react. This led to a naval raid against Srivijaya in 1017
AD
and then a more substantial expedition in 1025. These represent very rare examples of Indian military aggression outside of the subcontinent. The hostility was fortunately not long-lasting and a few decades later we find the Cholas and Srivijaya sending joint embassies to the Chinese.

I do not want to leave the reader with the impression that India’s relationship with South-East Asia was one of cultural, economic and, occasionally military, domination. Indian trade and civilization clearly had a very large impact on this part of the world, but it was a two-way flow. For instance, the university of Nalanda may have been founded by the Guptas, but its subsequent growth was partly due to the strong financial support extended by the Srivijaya kings. Moreover, South-
East Asian kingdoms like Angkor, Majapahit and Champa took the Indian input and built on it. These people were not blindly copying Indian prototypes but innovating and indigenizing.

In fact, the Indonesians independently conducted their own maritime expeditions. From the third to the sixth century
AD
, they crossed the Indian Ocean in their outriggered ships and settled in Madagascar in large numbers. Thus, the first humans in Madagascar came from distant Indonesia rather than nearby Africa. The descendants of the Indonesian settlers still form a significant proportion of the population of the island country and the Malagasy language retains the strong influence of dialects from Borneo!

It is commonly argued by scholars that ancient Indians only wrote one formal history—Kalhana’s
Rajatarangini
or River of Kings, a history of the kings of Kashmir written in the twelfth century. This is then put forward as proof that Indians did not have a sense of their history or of the continuity of their civilization. This is simply not accurate and it is important to recognize the degree to which this sense of continuity is deliberately maintained over generations. Even if one ignores works like Bana’s
Harshcharita
as being royal eulogies, there are numerous examples, such as the Vanshavali tradition of Nepal or the Burunjis of Assam, where lengthy genealogical records were meticulously maintained. There is obviously a very developed sense of historical continuity.

Kashmir’s Kalhana too saw himself as a link in a chain, and
he tells us that he read the works of eleven earlier historians as well as inspected temple inscriptions and land records. He even criticizes fellow historian Suvrata for leaving out details and making his history too concise.
²²
Most of these other works may have been lost but they all clearly existed. Moreover, Kalhana is followed by three other works that continue the chronicle down to the time of Mughal emperor Akbar. When Akbar conquered Kashmir in the sixteenth century, he was given a copy of Kalhana’s
Rajatarangini
that was translated into Persian for his benefit. A summary was then included in the
Ain-i-Akbari
, the chronicles of Akbar’s own rule, in order to link him back to the historical chain.

Kalhana’s history is not just about kings and battles but contains an interesting account of how human intervention altered the landscape of Kashmir. He tells of the minister Suyya who carried out a number of major engineering works during the reign of Avantivarman in the ninth century. We are told that landslides and soil erosion had led to a great deal of rubble and stone being deposited in the Jhelum, which was impeding the flow of the river. The rubble was dredged and embankments were built. The landscape was restructured to human use as dams created new lakes while old lakes were drained to clear the way for cultivation. It is even suggested that Suyya may have significantly altered the courses of the Jhelum and Indus rivers.
²³
It appears, therefore, that much of the beautiful ‘natural’ landscape of Kashmir may be due to thousands of years of human intervention!

At about the same time that Emperor
Harsha was consolidating his empire and Xuan Zang was setting off on his long
pilgrimage, a former merchant called Muhammad had set in motion a chain of events
that would dramatically change the political and religious landscape of Arabia and
eventually of the world. By the time Prophet Muhammad died in 632
AD
, he already controlled much of the Arabian peninsula.
However, within a century, his followers created an empire that stretched from the
Iberian peninsula to Central Asia. In the eighth century, the Arabs established a
toehold in Sindh by defeating Raja Dahir.

The Muslim conquest of Sindh, however,
did not seem to have impacted the Indian heartland. Arab attempts at further
expansion appear to have been fended off by the Rashtrakuta and the
Gurjara–Pratihara kingdoms (the latter gave their
name
to the state of Gujarat). Arab chroniclers specifically wrote about the excellent
quality of Indian cavalry. Indeed, the emerging Rajput military class appears to
have made counter-raids of its own and much of Afghanistan continued to be ruled by
the Hindu Shahis well into the tenth century. Thus, for the first several centuries
of Islam, India’s interaction with Islam was defined not by conquest but
by trade.

Arabs had been actively involved in
trade with India from pre-Islamic times. In the early seventh century, the ports
along the western coast were regularly visited by Byzantines, Persians, Yemenis,
Omanis, and even Ethiopians. There were merchants from the Mecca region too;
Muhammad would have personally known several merchants who had visited India. The
Cheraman Juma mosque in Kerala claims to have been established in 629
AD
. If true, this would not just make it India’s
oldest mosque but also the second oldest in the world!
¹
While exact dates are difficult to prove, there is no doubt that the mosque is
very old and was built in the very early years of Islam. It stands close to the site
of ancient Muzaris. Old photographs show that the building was originally an
adaptation of local temple architecture. Sadly, during renovations in 1984, the old
structure was replaced with one sprouting domes and minarets in order to conform to
a more ‘conventional’ view of Islamic architecture. It was an
inexcusable act of vandalism. Now there is talk of recreating the old structure to
attract tourists, but it is never quite the same thing.

With the creation of the Islamic empire,
with its headquarters in Baghdad, the Arabs came to control a vast trading network.
Arab merchants sailed the Mediterranean, criss-crossed the Sahara in camel caravans,
traded for Chinese silks in the bazaars of Central Asia and made their way down the
East African coast in search of slaves. This was the age of Sindbad the Sailor. Even
if the tales of the
One Thousand and One Nights
are fictional, they retain
the colourful spirit of the times.

The Iraqi port of Basra became the most
important trading hub of the empire because of its proximity to the capital. Indian
goods and merchants so dominated the trade that the Arabs spoke of Basra as
‘belonging to al-Hind’.
²
The merchandise included perfumes, spices, ginger, textiles and medicinal
substances. After the Arab conquest of Sindh, large numbers of slaves were also
brought in from the province
³
. Interestingly, the most important Indian export of the period was the steel
sword. The country was famous at that time for the quality of its metallurgy, and
the swords used by the early Muslim armies were often of Indian origin.
⁴
This remained true even at the time of the Christian Crusades and the famous
‘Damascus Sword’ was either imported directly from India or was
made using Indian techniques.

Just as in South-East Asia, there was a
large diaspora of Indian merchants along the ports of the Arabian Sea and the
Persian Gulf as well as in inland trading towns. Abu Zayd reports in the ninth
century that ‘Hindus came to Siraf and when an Arab merchant invites them
to a feast, their numbers often approach or exceed a hundred’.
⁵
Similarly, Arab merchants came in large numbers to the ports along
India’s western coast. The famous Arab historian and
geographer, Masudi tells us that Indian kings welcomed the traders and allowed them
to build their own mosques. He tells us of a particularly large settlement of ten
thousand Muslims in the district of Saymur where immigrants from Oman, Basra, Siraf
and Baghdad had permanently settled. Farther south, there were a number of Arab
settlements in Kerala where they mixed with local converts. Their descendants,
called the Moplahs or Mappilas, account for a quarter of the state’s
population today
⁶
. By a reversal of fortune, since the 1970s, they have been going in large
numbers to work in the oil-rich Arab states. Thus, the churn of people
continues.

Meanwhile, farther north, Gujarat came
to host the last remnants of the once-powerful Zoroastrian tradition. As discussed
in
Chapter 2
, the origins of this tradition are closely linked to the Rig Vedic
people. For fifteen hundred years or more, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion
of Persia. However, it went into sharp decline after the Islamic conquest. A small
group escaped persecution and sailed to Gujarat in the eighth century. According to
the
Qissa-i Sanjan
,
⁷
the local Hindu king allowed them to settle on the condition that they adopt
the local language (Gujarati) and cease to bear arms. They were otherwise allowed
full freedom in religious matters. Their descendants, known as Parsis, migrated to
Mumbai in the nineteenth century to repair and build ships for the British. Some of
them sailed to British-controlled Hong Kong and made large profits from
participating in the opium trade with China. The Parsis then ploughed the money back
into building large commercial and industrial businesses back in Mumbai.
They remain one of the country’s most successful
business communities.

In addition to slaves and merchants,
there were several other Indian groups in the Middle East during this period,
including mercenaries. According to the oral tradition of the Mohyal Brahmins of
Punjab, some of their ancestors died fighting for Hussein in the Battle of Karbala,
Iraq, in 680
AD
. This is why this group of Hindus, also
known as Husseini Brahmins, still join Shia Muslims during the ritual mourning of
Muharram every year.
⁸
Such are the complex twists and turns of human history.

At about the same time, another group
from central India travelled west, across the Middle East, to Europe. We know them
today as the Gypsies or the Roma. The link between the Roma and India has long been
debated on linguistic and cultural grounds, but genetic studies have now confirmed
it.
⁹
We do not know why this group left the subcontinent, but it is possible that
they were a group of stranded soldiers from the Gujara–Pratihara armies
fighting the Turks and Arabs in Sindh. Alternatively, they may have always been a
nomadic group that the circumstances of history caused to drift ever westwards. In
1971, at the World Romani Conference near London, the Roma adopted a blue and green
flag for their nomadic nation. At the centre of the flag, they placed a
wheel—the symbol of the Chakravartin. In some ways, the Roma have the
greatest claim to this symbol, for their wheels can truly roll in all
directions.

Of course, the exchange of goods, people
and ideas was not just with the outside world. There was a great deal of internal
exchange, with several examples of how ideas emanating
from one
part of India spread quickly across the rest of the country during this period. The
eighth-century philosopher Adi Shankaracharya, for instance, was from Kerala in the
extreme south, but he travelled all over the country. His ideas would become very
influential across the subcontinent and beyond.

Similarly, the Shakti tradition
associated with the worship of Goddess Durga and her incarnations originated in
ancient times in the eastern provinces of Bengal and Assam. However, by the medieval
period, the distribution of the fifty-two shakti-peeths
¹⁰
(i.e. pilgrimage sites related to this tradition) came to be spread across the
subcontinent—from Kamakhya in Assam to Hinglaj in Baluchistan, and from
Jwalamukhi in Himachal Pradesh to Jaffna in Sri Lanka. There are even Shakti temples
in South East Asia. The ninth-century Prambanan temple complex in central Java,
Indonesia, has a shrine dedicated to the Goddess Durga slaying the demon
Mahishasura. The exquisitely carved idol would not look out of place, twelve
centuries later, at the annual Durga Puja festival in modern Kolkata.

In many ways, life in the subcontinent
till the beginning of the eleventh century remained more or less a continuation of
earlier times. Maritime trade continued to flourish in the southern ports even as
foreign scholars continued to flock to Nalanda to study. There had been changes in
architecture, technology and style, but the cities of the subcontinent would have
been broadly familiar to a visitor from a thousand years earlier. However, the
country was about to experience a major shift.

In the late tenth century, waves of
Turkic invasions began to erode the Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms of
Afghanistan. In 963
AD
, the Turks captured the
strategically important town of Ghazni. From there they steadily ate away at the
Hindu Shahi kingdom of Kabul and pushed them into Punjab. The Shahis doggedly fought
back for decades but, on 27 November 1001, they were routed by Mahmud of Ghazni in a
battle near Peshawar. The Shahi king Jayapala was so distraught that he abdicated in
favour of his son and committed suicide by climbing on to his own funeral pyre.
¹¹
The Shahis would continue to fight the Turks, but they were now a spent
force.

Over the next quarter-century, Mahmud
would make seventeen raids into India, many of them directed at wealthy temple towns
such as Mathura and Nagarkot. His most infamous raid was against the temple of
Somnath, Gujarat, in 1026
AD
. It is said that this single
attack left over fifty thousand of its defenders dead and yielded twenty million
dirhams worth of gold, silver and gems. Although the Somnath temple would be
destroyed and rebuilt many times, it is the raid of Mahmud Ghazni that is still
remembered most vividly.

The temple that stands on the site today
was built in the early 1950s. Its symbolic importance can be gauged from the fact
that its reconstruction was one of the first major projects initiated by the Indian
Republic. Standing right on the seashore, the temple is a wonderful place to watch
the sun set even as the sound of the evening ‘arati’ drifts
across from the inner sanctum. Yet, something of the horror of that medieval
massacre seems to linger in the air. Barely half a kilometre away is the spot where
the Pandav warrior Arjun is said to have conducted the last rites of Krishna. Three
rivers meet the sea here—one of them named after the Saraswati.

The Turkish raids were no doubt inspired
partly by religious zeal and partly by the lure of plunder. However, it is often
forgotten that one of their most important motivations was the capture of slaves.
¹²
Over the next few centuries, hundreds of thousands of Indian
slaves—particularly from West Punjab and Sindh—would be marched
into Afghanistan and then sold in the bazaars of Central Asia and the Middle East.
Unused to the extreme cold of the Afghan mountains, they died in such large number
that the range would come to be known as the Hindukush meaning ‘Killer of
Hindus’.

Despite the shock of Mahmud
Ghazni’s raids, however, there was no equivalent to the Mauryan or Gupta
responses to foreign invasion. The last great Hindu empire of North
India—that of the Gujara–Pratiharas—was in steep
decline and the creative heart of Indic civilization had shifted south of the
Vindhyas. The most powerful Indian kingdom of that time, the Cholas, ruled in the
far south and would not have been concerned with the gathering clouds in the North
West. Meanwhile, freed from the political and cultural domination of the Gangetic
plains, Central India experienced a cultural and economic boom. This was the age of
the remarkable Raja Bhoj, the warrior-scholar who ruled much of Central India and of
the Chandelas of Bundelkhand who built the temples of Khajuraho.

Academic historians tend to ignore Raja
Bhoj but the oral tradition of Central India is full of stories and ballads about
him. It is difficult to ascertain the veracity of all these tales but one cannot
deny the geographical importance of this king. He rebuilt the Somnath temple,
repulsed a number of Turkish raids and constructed one of the largest forts in the
world at
Mandu in Madhya Pradesh. However, his most visible
legacy is the huge lake that he created using an earthen dam in Bhopal, a city that
is also named after him. Before the infamous industrial accident of 1984, the city
of Bhopal was best known for this body of water. It is a testimony to the skills of
the medieval engineers that the lake still exists a thousand years later. It is
proof that big dams work well in the Malwa plateau. Tectonics and silt often make
them unwise in the rest of India.

Farther north, the Chandelas of
Bundelkhand were originally feudatories of the Gujara–Pratiharas but
carved out a small but vigorous kingdom for themselves when the latter went into
decline in the tenth century. They celebrated their successes by building the famous
temples of Khajuraho, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Kandariya Mahadev temple,
the largest in the complex, is said to have been built after the Chandelas succeeded
in fending off Mahmud Ghazni himself.