12 Precolonial India

The cultures that now flourish in Egypt and the Middle East bear little resemblance to those that flourished there in ancient times. Conquests by Greeks, Romans and Arabs created dislocations with the far distant past. In contrast, the Hindu culture that still flourishes in India today represents the continuation of a civilization that can trace its history back over three and a half millennia.

The history of India is, of course, even older. By 5000 BC farming was established in the Indus valley, where around 2600 BC one of the world’s first urban civilizations emerged, centered around the highly planned cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.

The emergence of Hindu culture After 1700 BC, the cities of the Indus valley went into a decline, possibly owing to an influx from the west of a nomadic people, the Aryans, who spoke an early IndoEuropean language (known as Sanskrit in its later written form). Their earliest writings, a collection of Sanskrit hymns, invocations, charms and rituals known as the Vedas, date from around 1500 BC, and mark the emergence of Hinduism. This polytheistic religion evolved a complex and highly colorful hierarchy of gods and goddesses, many of whom are still worshipped across India to this day.

The early Hindu kingdoms established by the Aryans in the Ganges basin were themselves rigidly hierarchical, with the king assuming divine status upon death. Beneath him were layer upon layer of tightly defined groups—priests (Brahmins), soldiers and nobles, farmers and artisans, and, at the bottom, bonded laborers. Over the millennia this religiously sanctioned structure became more and more rigid, and forms the basis of the hereditary caste system that still plays an important part in modern Indian society, despite the efforts of reformers to abolish it.

“His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the Warrior, his thighs the People, and from his feet the Servants were born.”

“Hymn of Man” from the Rig Veda,(c.1500 BC), an early outline of the caste system

Around 500 BC a number of new religious sects arose, notably Jainism and Buddhism. These dispensed with the colorful panoply of Hindu gods, but shared many of the core concepts of Hinduism, such as the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara), the idea that individuals suffer the consequences of their actions (karma), and the concept of dharma, variously interpreted as “law,” “way,” “duty” or “nature.”

The ebb and flow of power By and large, ancient India comprised a mosaic of small kingdoms, but there were times when one ruler or dynasty came to have power over many others. One such ruler was Chandragupta Maurya (reigned 321–297 BC), who founded the Mauryan dynasty, based in the kingdom of Magadha in western Bengal. Chandragupta conquered much of the north of the subcontinent, from Afghanistan in the west to Assam in the east, and as far south as the Deccan plateau. Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka (reigned 272–232 BC) turned his grandfather’s conquests into a centrally controlled empire, administered according to Buddhist precepts: Ashoka was particularly aware of the obligation placed upon the ruler to do the right thing.

After Ashoka, Mauryan power was gradually whittled away. It was not until the 4th century AD that another dynasty, the Guptas, built an empire to match that of Ashoka. The Guptas ushered in a golden age in the arts and sciences, but the Gupta empire fell apart in the middle of the 6th century. Parts of their empire were briefly reunited in the early 7th century by a Buddhist ruler called Harsha. After his time the influence of Buddhism in India waned, although it took more permanent root in southeast Asia, Tibet, China and Japan.

The golden age of the Guptas

The period of the Gupta empire, from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD, is regarded in India as a golden age. In literature, the ancient Sanskrit Hindu epic the Mahabharata reached its final form, while the great poet Kalidasa—who has been described as the Sanskrit Shakespeare—created new epics, together with lyrical poetry and dramas. In architecture, one of the greatest Gupta monuments is the ornate Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment, while the mysterious 7m (22 ft) Iron Pillar in Delhi—which to this day shows no sign of rust—is a remarkable metallurgical achievement. In science, the astronomer Aryabhatta proved—among other things—that the Earth revolves around the Sun and rotates on its own axis, while the astronomical and mathematical treatise known as the Surya Siddhanta contains a definition of the sine function used in trigonometry. Of greatest significance, however, was the development of the decimal number system and the use of zero, innovations that were later picked up by Muslim mathematicians, and eventually transmitted to Europe.

Muslim India India first came into contact with Islam in 711, when an Arab army invaded from Iran and occupied Sind, the region around the mouth of the Indus. Future Muslim invasions came from a different direction, from Afghanistan in the northwest, and were led by a variety of rulers of Turkish origin. Raiding began in the early 11th century, but it was not until 1206 that the Islamic sultanate of Delhi was established. This was the first and most powerful of a number of Muslim states established across northern India in the following centuries, during which period a significant minority of Indians converted to Islam. Hinduism remained in power in the south, however, where the Vijayanagar empire held sway for some 200 years until its eventual collapse in 1565.

The Turko-Afghan invader who had the most enduring impact was Babur of Kabul, who in 1526 overthrew the Delhi sultanate and established a dynasty that went on to conquer all of the subcontinent, bar the southern tip. These were the Moguls—so-called because they claimed descent from the Turkic Mongols of central Asia. The Moguls presided over a magnificent court culture, notable for its Persian-influenced poetry and delicate miniature paintings. They were also responsible for some of India’s finest buildings, from Delhi’s Red Fort to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Under Babur’s grandson Akbar the Great (reigned 1556–1605), India achieved a hitherto unsurpassed degree of unity, partly owing to his policy of encouraging capable men from the Hindu majority to participate in the administration of his empire.

Under the Emperor Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707), however, religious toleration was abandoned, to the detriment of political unity and administrative efficiency. Power across the subcontinent became increasingly localized, and internal struggles and weaknesses made India a relatively easy prey for the Europeans, who, having found a sea route to Asia, sought to exploit the continent’s vast wealth for their own advantage.

the condensed idea

One of the world’s oldest civilizations