Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (9 page)

There are interesting parallels with the
Chinese view of civilizational nationhood. Long before the country was united into
an empire by Qin Shi Huangdi in the third century
BC
,
there was a strongly held belief that the country had once been united under the
revered ‘Yellow Emperor’ and his four successors.
⁷
There is noarchaeological evidence to support such a grand empire but it has
been a very powerful idea throughout Chinese history. Indeed, it is embedded in the
way China views itself even today.

The notion of a civilizational nation is
not a simple one. It has meant different things to different people at different
points in time. The Partition of India in 1947, for instance, was partly due to a
fundamental divergence in views about the nature of India’s civilizational
nationhood. Still, it is important to recognize how Bronze Age ideas, honed in the
Iron Age, gave shape to the way people have viewed themselves ever since.

The epics, furthermore, suggest a shift
of political power to the eastern Gangetic plains during the Iron Age. It is more
obvious in the Ramayana as the kingdom of Ayodhya is itself in the east. In the
Mahabharata, most of the action takes place
near Delhi in the
north-west but, even here, we are told of the powerful kingdom ruled by Jarasandha
in Magadh (modern Bihar). Indeed, even Krishna was forced to shift his people from
Mathura to Gujarat because of the repeated raids of the Magadhan army. As we shall
see, the rise of Magadh would have a pivotal role in later Indian history. So, why
was Magadh so successful?

In my view it was geographical access to
three important resources—rice, trade and iron. The kingdom not only had
control over very fertile lands but was also served by a number of rivers including
the Ganga itself. Thus, it would have had the agricultural muscle to support a large
army. Moreover, the kingdom controlled the trade plying the Uttara Path between the
North West and the emerging sea-ports of Bengal. Add to this, access to iron ore
from what is now Jharkhand. In order to appreciate this conjunction of
circumstances, consider the location of the kingdom’s first capital,
Rajgir (also referred to as Rajagriha or King’s Home). Defended by hills,
it sits strategically between the fertile farmlands to the north and the mines of
the south. In short, Magadh was uniquely able to feed large armies and arm them with
iron weapons. This explains why Magadh would be at the heart of the next stage in
Indian history.

India is the only country in the world
where both lions and tigers co-exist. As discussed in
Chapter 1
, tigers evolved in
East Asia and probably entered the subcontinent around 12,000 years ago. Soon, they
had spread across the subcontinent.
They are commonly
represented in Harappan art and seals. In sharp contrast, the Harappans appear to be
ignorant of the lion! None of the main Harappan sites have thrown up any
representation of the lion. This is very odd given the obvious appeal of the animal
and its importance in later Indian culture. The tiger hunts by stealth in dense
jungle and, therefore, is more of an object of fear. In contrast, the lion with its
shaggy mane, its harem of lionesses, and its confident visibility is easily
converted into a symbol of power.

Every culture that has encountered the
lion has tended to give the animal a special status. Even in countries that have
never had a lion population, such as Britain and China, the lion has been part of
imperial symbolism. We know that lions were considered royal game in Mesopotamia in
the second millennium
BC
and only the king could hunt
them.
⁸
In ancient Egypt too, lion hunting was a royal prerogative. Amentohep III
(1391-1352
BC
) killed as many as 102 lions in the first
decade of his rule. At Beital-Wali in Lower Nubia, a tame lioness is shown near the
throne of Rameses II (1290–1224) with an inscription ‘Slayer of
his Enemies’. Five centuries later, the court records of the Assyrian king
Ashurabanipal II (884–859
BC
) recount:

The gods Nemruta and Negral, who
love my priesthood, gave me the wild animals of the plains, commanding me to
hunt. Thirty elephants I trapped and killed, 257 great wild oxen I brought down
with my weapons, attacking from my chariots, 370 lions I killed with my hunting
spears.

The lion is also represented in a
multitude of sculptures, friezes and paintings in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The
Sumerian goddess Nana, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar and the
Persian goddess Anahita are all associated with the lion and sometimes depicted
riding the lion—rather like the Hindu goddess Durga. It is obvious that
the lion was an important animal in art, culture, royal symbolism and religion in
the Middle East from a very early period. Why were the Harappans so lukewarm to an
animal with such obvious charms?

The most likely reason is that the lion
was not common in the subcontinent till after the collapse of the Harappan
civilization. This should not be surprising. Before 2000
BC
, north-west India was much wetter than it is today with higher
rainfall and the Saraswati river flowing. The lion is an animal that hunts in open
grasslands and could not penetrate the tiger-infested jungles that existed in the
region. However, the balance shifted as the climate became drier and the Saraswati
dwindled. There would have been a savannah phase when lions from Iran could have
made their way through Balochistan and then into tiger territory, which would
explain why the earliest artifact depicting a lion in the subcontinent, a golden
goblet, was found in Balochistan. As Harappan urban centers were abandoned and
populations migrated to the Gangetic plains, the lions would have taken over the
wilderness. Over time they would penetrate as far east as Bihar and northwestern
Orissa, co-existing in many places with tigers. Eastern and southern India,
nevertheless, remained the exclusive domain of the tiger.

Interestingly, the Rig Veda does mention
the animal although it accords it far less importance than the horse or the bull.
This poses the obvious problem of how the Vedic people knew of the animal if it did
not yet exist in the Sapta-Sindhu heartland. One possible explanation is that the
word for lion
(‘Singha’), at this stage of
linguistic development, was also a generic word for big cats and was loosely used
for both lions and tigers
⁹
. As we shall see, this dual use of the word is responsible for the naming of
Singapore. However, Dr Divyabhanusinh Chavra, a leading expert on the Asiatic lion,
still feels the Vedic description of a hunt suggests lions rather than tigers.
Another explanation could be that while the lion was not common in the heartland,
the Vedic people encountered it in lands to the west of the Indus (this would gel
with the lion goblet found in Baluchistan). Yet again it must be admitted that we do
not know enough about this period to be absolutely sure.

Whatever the exact circumstances of its
entry, once the lion became a familiar animal in the subcontinent, it was quickly
appropriated by Indian culture. As in the Middle East, it became the symbol of royal
power and bravery. The word for ‘throne’ in Sanskrit and many
Indian languages is ‘singhasana’ which literally means
‘seat of the lion’. Similarly, Durga, the Hindu goddess of
strength and war, is usually depicted as standing on a lion while slaying a demon.
The Mahabharata repeatedly invokes the image of a lion to convey strength and
vigour. To this day, communities that are proud of their martial tradition, such as
Rajputs and Sikhs, commonly use Singh (meaning lion) as their surname

Interestingly, the lion plays an
important role in the
Mahavamsa
, a Pali epic, that is the foundation myth
of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. According to the Mahavamsa, the Sinhalese
people are the descendants of Prince Vijaya and his followers who sailed down to Sri
Lanka in the sixth century
BC
from what is now Orissa and
West Bengal. The story tells
us that Prince Vijaya was the son
of a lion and a human princess, which is why the majority population of Sri Lanka
call themselves the Sinhala—or the lion people—and the
country’s national flag features a stylized lion holding a sword. Equally
significant is the fact that the Tamil rebels of northern Sri Lanka chose to call
themselves the ‘Tigers’. The ancient rivalry between the two big
cats remains embedded in cultural memory even as the animals themselves face
extinction.

Sadly, there are now a mere 411 Asiatic
lions left in the wild.
¹⁰
The Gir National Park in Gujarat is their last refuge. Less than two hundred
years ago, this magnificent beast could be found around Delhi and were probably
common in the Aravalli ridges south of Gurgaon. Now eight-lane highways roar though
the lion’s erstwhile lair. The last reported sighting of a lion in Iran
was in 1942. In Iraq, the magnificent Assyrian friezes are all that remain of a
beast last sighted in 1917.
¹¹

By the late Iron Age (eighth to fifth
century
BC
), we find that a number of urban clusters are
reaching scales that are comparable to the Harappan cities. Kausambi, near
today’s Allahabad, is said to have been founded after the king of
Hastinapur, a descendant of the Pandavas, who was forced by a devastating flood to
shift his capital further east. Spread over an area of 150-200 hectares, Kausambi
had a population of around 36,000 people at its height.
¹²
Other major cities like Rajagir and Sravasti were on a similar scale. These are
comparable to Mohenjodaro, the largest of the Harappan sites, which had a population
of around 40,000. It is difficult to
estimate the total
population of the subcontinent at this time but it was probably in the range of 30
million.

The late Iron Age towns were fortified
with moats and ramparts. Wood and mud-bricks were the common building material but
the Harappan technology of kiln-fired bricks had not been forgotten. Kausambi, for
instance, shows extensive use of kiln-fired bricks. The towns also have drains,
soakage pits and other urban amenities, albeit of a design that is different from
the Indus Valley era. However, the courtyard continues to be the basic prototype for
houses while streets were systematically levelled to allow wheeled traffic.

Merchant boats would have plied the
Ganga, especially between Kausambi, Kashi and Pataliputra (modern Patna). There were
ocean-going ships as well. The legend of prince Vijaya in the Mahavamsa suggests
coastal trade links along the Bay of Bengal extending from Bengal to Sri Lanka. Both
the Uttara Path and the Dakshina Path would have been busy highways, with the people
plying these trade routes carrying not just goods but also ideas, because this was
also a time of great intellectual expansion. The philosophies of the Upanishads,
Mahavira and Gautam Buddha are all products of this milieu.

The Buddha was born in Kapilavastu (on
the Indo–Nepal border) but he attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, just
south of the old Magadhan capital of Rajgir. However, he did not deliver his first
sermon in Bodh Gaya, the nearby towns and villages or even in the royal capital of
Rajgir. Instead, he headed west to Varanasi (also called Kashi). Why did he go all
the way to Varanasi to spread his message?

According to historian Vidula Jayaswal,
this was a natural
choice since Varanasi was an important place
for the exchange of both goods and ideas because it stood at the crossroads between
the Uttara Path and a highway that came down from the Himalayas and then continued
south as the Dakshina Path. In some ways, this remains true to this day as the
east–west National Highway 2 meets the north–south National
Highway 7 at Varanasi. The latter then runs all the way down to the southern tip of
India. The alignment of the modern north–south highway runs somewhat east
of the ancient trade route but it is amazing how the logic of India’s
transport system has remained the same. Even when the British built the railways in
the nineteenth century, they used Mughalsarai—just outside
Varanasi—as the nerve-centre of the railway network.

When the Buddha went there in the sixth
century
BC
, Varanasi was already a large urban settlement
built on the Ganga. The city’s name is derived from the fact that it was
built between where the Varuna and the Asi streams flow into the sacred river. The
Varuna is still a discernible stream but, sadly, the Asi has been reduced to a
polluted municipal drain.

It was in a deer park at Sarnath, just
outside the city, that the Buddha delivered his first sermon. As an important
crossroads the place was already an established hub of commercial and intellectual
activity by this time, which is precisely what attracted him to it. Tourists
visiting the Buddhist archaeological site at Sarnath often do not realize that the
spot is sacred to other religious traditions too. Just outside, the visitor will see
a large Jain temple dedicated to the eleventh ‘tirthankara’.
Similarly, the archaeological museum next door contains many idols and artifacts of
the Brahminical tradition.

The place is still sacred to the
devotees of Shiva. In fact, the name Sarnath is a short form for Saranganath
(meaning ‘Lord of the Deer’) which is another name for Shiva.
This should not be surprising as Varanasi has long been, and remains, a very
important hub for Hindus of the Shaivite tradition. It may explain why the Buddha
found a park with sacred deer at this place. Even today, there is a temple dedicated
to Saranganath, less than a kilometre from the archaeological site. It is a small
village temple that almost no tourist visits and is a peaceful place to linger
in.