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‘PERFECTION HAS BEEN ACHIEVED,’ reads a fifth-century inscription engraved on the railing of a Buddhist stupa at Sanchi in central India. The inscription was written at the height of what is nostalgically referred to today as India’s Golden Age (320–550 CE). Also known as the Classical Age, it was a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Science flowered, trade flourished and crime was minimal. An enlightened citizenry funded free hospitals for the poor. A person’s duty or dharma was laid out in the Manu Smriti or Laws of Manu. Once duty was fulfilled, the pathway to pleasure was mapped out in texts such as the Kāmasūtra. Spiritual guidance could be found in more accessible Hindu texts such as the Purāṇas, a collection of legends and moral precepts, as well as in epic poems, namely the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa.
The foundations for this utopian age were laid by Candra Gupta I (r. 319–350 CE; referred to this way to differentiate him from the Mauryan ruler Candragupta), who ascended to the throne of Magadha in 319 CE. The origins of the Gupta dynasty, the first pan-Indian empire since the Mauryas, are obscure. What few sources there are suggest that Candra Gupta came from a rich land-owning family, married a princess from the well-connected Lichchavi tribe and became the ruler of Magadha, where Pāṭaliputra was still the capital. This marriage of convenience was marked by the issuing of coins featuring the new king and his queen, something unprecedented in the annals of Indian numismatics.
It was his son and successor Samudra Gupta (r. 350–375) who extended the empire and established the government machinery for it to thrive. Much of the information about his conquests comes from a lengthy inscription on a stone column discovered in Allahabad in the early 1800s. The inscription lists wars of conquest that extended his rule north to the Himalayan foothills and as far south as Kanchipuram in southern India, the capital of the Pallava kingdom. Demographers estimate the population of the subcontinent at the time to have been around 75 million, and one of his epithets describes him as ‘conqueror of the four quarters of the earth’, a reference to rulers in Nepal, Sri Lanka and possibly Southeast Asia who acknowledged his sovereignty. Based on coins minted during his reign, we know that Samudra Gupta saw himself as a living manifestation of the god Viṣṇu. Other coins showing him slaying a lion, warrior-like with a bow and arrow or playing a lute. Court chroniclers, usually selected for their hagiographic skills, praised his poetry and knowledge of Hindu scriptures. His support for Hinduism and his pursuit of dharma make him popular with today’s Hindu nationalists, who see him as epitomising the classical ideal of kingship. The reach of his empire is presented as proof that foreigners weren’t the only ones who could conquer India.
Samudra Gupta was succeeded by Candra Gupta Vikramaditya (r. 375–415). Like his father, he was a patron of the arts and sciences. The Buddhist university at Nalanda was founded during his reign and he supported playwrights such as Kālidāsa. Candra Gupta II, as he is often known, ruled for approximately thirty-five years and extended the kingdom’s boundaries westwards towards Sindh and the Konkan coast. He also moved his capital to Ayodhya, the legendary birthplace of the Hindu god Ram.
Candra Gupta II’s administration was far more decentralised than that of the Mauryas, with considerable powers devolved to officials at regional and local levels. Once a territory came under Gupta control, its old rulers were generally reinstated and left alone as long as they paid a tribute to emperor and swore their continued allegiance. Trade boomed, with spices, textiles, ivory, precious stones, perfumes and medicinal herbs being transported by sea to ports in Southeast Asia, the coast of East Africa and the Gulf, and over land along the interconnected branches of the Silk Road.
With trade came exchanges in the scientific sphere. Indian mathematicians were responsible for the notation of numerals from one to nine and the concept of zero – among the most signficant of India’s contributions to the world. Āryabhata (476–550) posited the theory that the Earth was a sphere that rotates on its axis, calculated the length of the day to within less than a second of its actual value and suggested that eclipses were caused by the alignment of the sun, the moon and the Earth, not by the mythological demon Rahu. He also correctly ascribed the luminosity of the moon and planets to reflected sunlight and calculated pi to four decimal places. When India joined the space race in 1975 by launching a satellite into the Earth’s orbit, it named the craft after Āryabhata. Brahmagupta (598–665), another Gupta-period mathematician, defined zero as the result of subtracting a number from itself, but the rigidities of the caste system meant that this knowledge never circulated beyond a small section of society.
THE GUPTA GAMBIT
Historians date the invention of chess to the Gupta period. Its first iteration was as a four-player war game called chaturanga, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘four limbs’ and the name of a quadripartite battle formation mentioned in the Mahābhārata. By the seventh century, chaturanga had evolved into a two-player game recognisable as today’s chess – pieces had differing levels of power based on their importance in society, and victory was achieved by eliminating the king. In the original Indian version, the bishop was an elephant and the queen a royal counsellor.
The growing power of the Brahmins was reflected in the increasing use of Sanskrit in coinage and in literature. The epitome of this linguist revival was the playwright and poet Kālidāsa, who probably lived in the late fourth century. Dubbed India’s Shakespeare, his most famous drama, Śakuntalā, was based on part of the Mahābhārata. It was translated from the Sanskrit by William Jones in the late eighteenth century, revealing to the outside world the richness of the Indian literary canon. Sanskrit became the language of scholarship wherever Indian influence spread. As the Indologist Sheldon Pollock notes: ‘There was nothing unusual about finding a Chinese traveller studying Sanskrit grammar in Sumatra in the seventh century, an intellectual from Sri Lanka writing Sanskrit literary theory in the northern Deccan in the tenth, or Khmer princes composing Sanskrit political poetry for the magnificent pillars of Mebon and Pre Rup in Angkor in the twelfth.’
The best-known text of this period is the Kāmasūtra, or Treatise on the Art of Love. Not much is known about the author, Vātsyāyana – though it has been established that his real name was Mallanaga and he lived in the late second or early third century CE, probably in Pāṭaliputra. Written while he was practising celibacy and deep meditation, the Kāmasūtra describes an idealised world where pleasure was a legitimate indulgence. Although just one out of the seven books of the Kāmasūtra details sexual positions, its eroticism captured the public’s imagination when it was first presented to the West. The British explorer Richard Burton’s 1883 translation became the most pirated book of the Victorian era.
The bulk of the Kāmasūtra is about the arts of finding a partner, maintaining a marriage, living with a courtesan, committing adultery without being discovered – though cheating on one’s partner is discouraged. Its audience was the rich urban elite, who had time and money to indulge in pleasure. In the text’s ideal world, a wealthy man would buy a home in a decent neighbourhood, preferably enclosed in a leafy garden and close to a river. His bedroom would be perfumed and his bed strewn with fresh flowers. Every morning he would apply sandalwood oil to his forehead and temples and outline his eyes with collyrium. His days would be spent teaching parrots to talk, attending cock fights and visiting inns or pleasure houses to talk about art and poetry, and to listen to singers. Later, he would light incense in his house to welcome his lover. If she had been caught in a shower of rain and smudged her make-up, he would reapply it. If her skirt was wet, he would dry her with a towel.
While the Kāmasūtra stresses the tenderness of lovemaking, the intensity of sexual acts is depicted by scratches and teeth marks on the skin. As well as describing numerous sexual positions, it lists no fewer than twenty-six ways of kissing. Homosexuality is mentioned only briefly and somewhat unenthusiastically.
Kāma was only one of the forms of conduct and knowledge necessary for pleasure. Vātsyāyana insisted that artha, the acquisition of wealth, one of the three fundamental goals of life together with dharma (religious duty), should come before pleasure. The courtly citizen was also expected to achieve religious merit in his or her old age.
THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
Indian historians look back on the Gupta age as the ‘Hindu renaissance’. Buddhism in India had peaked, though rates were still growing in parts of Kashmir and Afghanistan. An emphasis on sacrificial acts was giving way to new forms of devotion known as bhakti that emphasised an emotional attachment to and love for a personal god. The most popular gods became Brahmā, the god of creation; Viṣṇu and his ten incarnations; and Śiva, in his aspects as creator and destroyer. Known as the Trimūrti (cosmic triad), these gods are still central to Hinduism today. From the vast pantheon of Vedic deities, only one – Surya, the sun god – would find a place in the new iconography. Having honed their skills at portraying the figure of the Buddha and female figures known as yakshas, Gupta stonemasons turned their attention to sculpting what are arguably the most sublime images of Hindu gods ever produced.
The earliest surviving freestanding Hindu temples, built to demonstrate the piety of a ruler or a noble, date from the Gupta era. But it would not be until late in the first millennium that the rate of Hindu temple construction matched that of Buddhist stupas. Even today, Hindus are often most comfortable making offerings at small shrines in the courtyard of a house, under the spreading branches of a peepal tree or on the banks of sacred rivers or tanks.
Among the most dramatic examples of Gupta art is a relief on an early fifth-century rock-cut shrine at Udayagiri, near Bhopal, showing Viṣṇu as the Cosmic Boar, Varāha, rescuing the earth goddess from the serpent who tried to drown her in the cosmic ocean at the moment of creation.
Describing the cave paintings of Ajanta, the Dutch art historian Alex Jarl wrote: ‘Everything in these pictures, from the composition as a whole to the smallest pearl or flower, testifies to depth of insight coupled with the greatest technical skills.’
Despite this Hindu revival, tolerance towards other religions such as Buddhism and Jainism never waned. In 1817, a group of British soldiers hunting tigers in the northwest Deccan were led by a village boy into a horseshoe-shaped ravine. Hidden by thick undergrowth were a series of twenty-eight caves that contained some of the earliest surviving examples of Indian painting. Executed over the course of several centuries, those dating from the late fifth century are considered the finest. Illustrating episodes of the life of Buddha based on the Jātaka tales, they reflect the ample patronage enjoyed by the artists who executed them.
Much of the Gupta Empire’s reputation as India’s Golden Age is based on writings of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa-hsien (337–422), who spent six years travelling around the territories controlled by Candra Gupta II. He depicts a peaceful and prosperous society with little, if any, crime. He speaks approvingly of the numerous charitable institutions in Pāṭaliputra. The Gupta capital has an excellent hospital free to all patients, its running costs met by benevolent citizens, he observes. Vegetarianism is almost universal, and the eating of onions and garlic is frowned upon. Wine is off the menu. Unlike in China, regulations are few and no passports are needed to travel from one part of the Gupta territories to the other: ‘Those who want to go away, may go; those who want to stop, may stop.’ Justice, when dispensed, is mild, with the amputation of a hand the most severe form and carried out rarely. Criminal and civil laws are demarcated for the first time. Government interference in daily life is kept to a minimum, with citizens left to go about their business and prosper.
FA-HSIEN, A RECORD OF BUDDHIST KINGDOMS
‘No man among his subjects falls away from Dharma; there is no one who is distressed, in poverty, in misery, avaricious, or who, worthy of punishment, is over much put to torture.’
Fa-hsien’s religious prejudices come to the fore when he describes a society guided by the teachings of Buddhism. While there were numerous Buddhist monasteries in the kingdom, including two in the capital that catered to hundreds of students from around the Buddhist world, there are also signs that Buddhism was in decline. Bodh Gayā, an important place of pilgrimage where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, had been left to the jungle. Other holy places associated with the Buddha, such as Kapilavastu and Kuśinagara, were deserted aside from a few monks begging for alms from the occasional pilgrim. Fa-hsien’s writings also contain the first descriptions of untouchability in the caste system. Members of the lowest caste, he noted, had to beat a piece of wood to announce their arrival to prevent others from being ritually contaminated by them.
By the early part of the millennium, the four varṇas had taken on new layers of complexity and society split into specialised groups, or jātis, based on occupations. Just as English names such as Baker, Smith and Potter relate to occupation, Indian surnames are generally a clue to caste – for instance, Bhat traditionally referred to a scholar, while Yadav was a cattle herder. Individuals were forced to regulate their behaviour on the basis of caste. Food could only be shared with other caste members. Sexual relations and intermarriage between castes was forbidden. Untouchables generally lived at a distance from the higher castes. Even the shadow of an Untouchable was considered to be polluting. Temple entry was banned to them, and they had separate wells.
Despite this emphasis on ritual purity, the system was not rigid and, over time, castes could move up the hierarchy by giving up customs such as eating meat or adopting more orthodox religious practices. The frequent wars that accompanied Muslim invasions of the eleventh century onwards made it possible for lower castes to upgrade their status by offering themselves as soldiers in local armies. More recently, the opening up of livelihood choices, greater mobility and the drift from villages to urban areas have meant that people are not always bound to follow their caste occupations. Today, however, the stigma of untouchability extends even to expatriate Indian communities, leading to calls for anti-caste discrimination legislation to be passed in the United Kingdom.
THE AGE OF THE INVADERS
India’s Golden Age was short-lived. During the reign of Candra Gupta’s son and successor, Kumāra Gupta (r. 415–455), a new threat emerged. As usual, it came from the mountain passes of the northwest. The Hūṇas were related to the barbarian hordes of Attila the Hun. As they moved out of the Central Asian steppes they split into two groups, one heading for the Volga River and one for the Oxus. The former invaded Eastern Europe in 375 and pushed the Goths south of the Danube River. The branch that settled on the Oxus was known as the White Huns. Early in the fifth century they captured Kabul and swept down through the Khyber Pass. Although Kumāra Gupta’s son and successor, Skanda Gupta (r. 455–467), was able to repel the first wave of attackers in 455, his death twelve years later saw the collapse of central authority. The Gupta Empire split into numerous smaller kingdoms, with some rulers switching their allegiance to the invaders rather than submit their people to Hūṇa barbarity.
Indian historians rarely dwell on the seventy-five years that the Hūṇas executed their reign of brutal repression. The invaders paid no heed to the rules of caste, defiling sacred places and not differentiating between Brahmins and Untouchables. The most ruthless of all was Mihirakula, the ‘Atilla of India’, who took morbid pleasure in rolling elephants down mountainsides. The Hūṇas had a particular dislike of Buddhism. As they conquered new territory, monks were among the first to be slaughtered, dealing a deathblow to the religion in northern India from which it never recovered. Buddhist texts assert that, as punishment for his atrocities, Mihirakula met a ghastly death – the moment of his ‘descent into Hell of unceasing torment’ marked by the day turning to night, a fierce wind and an earthquake.
Eventually, a central Indian ruler, Yaśodharman, formed a confederation that defeated Mihirakula in c. 528. Remnants of the Hūṇas were integrated into militarised warrior tribes known as the Rajputs.
Much of the rest of the sixth century is a historical blank, with a clearer picture of the various rulers competing for prominence not emerging until the middle of the seventh. Once again, the writings of a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim provide an invaluable snapshot of the era. Hsuan-tsang (c. 602–664) travelled extensively throughout northern India from 640 to 644 before returning to China with twenty horses loaded with Buddhist relics and texts. At the time, much of the north was ruled by Harṣa (r. 606–647), who came to the throne at the age of fifteen in 606. Despite possessing a relatively small army of 5000 war elephants and 20,000 cavalry, he quickly subdued his enemies, coming to rule over a swathe of territory from the Punjab border in the west to Bengal in the east. Like Aśoka, he then proclaimed his opposition to conquest and the rest of his three-decade-long reign was mostly peaceful. He dispensed alms to both Hindus and Buddhists, though in his final years favoured the latter. On his order, thousands of stupas were constructed along the Ganges, made mostly from bamboo and wood – none of which remain today. Hsuan-tsang notes Harṣa’s interest in alchemy: while at his court he met a sage named Nāgārjuna, a man so skilled in the art of compounding medicines that he produced a pill which allegedly extended his life and that of his companions by hundreds of years. When Harṣa ran out of funds to build a monastery for Nāgārjuna, one of the monks ‘scattered some drops of numinous and wonderful pharmakon over certain large stones, whereupon they all turned to gold’.
Another chronicler of Harṣa’s reign was the bohemian Banā, ‘a rakish brahman’ with an ‘ill-spent youth and varied circle of friends’. His Harṣacarita is the first authentic biography of an Indian ruler. Under Harṣa, we find Buddhist and Brahmins of every sect, ‘all diligently following their own tenets, pondering, urging objections, raising doubts and resolving them’. Banā’s description of Harṣa takes hagiography to new heights:
His eyes are not stained by the deadly poison of pride; his voice is not choked by the convulsive effects of the baneful drug of conceit; his postures do not lose their natural dignity through any sudden epileptic fit of forgetfulness caused by the heat of arrogance; his changes of feeling are not exaggerated by the fevered outbursts of ungovernable self-will; his gait is not agitated by the unnatural movements of an access of self-conceit; his voice is not rendered harsh by the words being uttered under a tetanus of hauteur which distorts his lips.
Little is known about how Harṣa died, though Hsuan-tsang records a botched assassination attempt towards the end of his reign plotted by disaffected Brahmins. His death marked the end of the last Hindu empire of note in northern India before the Islamic conquests of the eleventh century. For much of the next 500 years, India would fall back to the default position of much of its ancient past: disparate centres of power vying for dominance, with numerous minor kingdoms constantly switching allegiances depending on where they could get a better deal.
However, patterns do emerge from this messy patchwork. India divides itself more or less neatly into four main geographical and political regions: the north, stretching from the Indus River to the Gangetic Plains; the east, encompassing Bengal and Assam; the centre, comprising the agriculturally rich and geologically ancient central plateau known as the Deccan plateau; and the southern peninsula. The dominant power in each of these regions is never quite strong enough to control any of the other three for more than short periods of time. Intra-regional conflict, however, was often severe, particularly in the northern and central regions.
EMPIRES OF THE SOUTH
South India presents a more cohesive picture. Although Hinduism had its roots in the Āryanised north, much of its growth from the seventh century onwards would take place in the southern peninsula. The richest religious and devotional literature would be composed in Dravidian languages, predominantly Tamil. Some of the most sublime temple architecture, as well as bronze and stone sculpture, would be executed during this period.
The most important southern kingdoms were the Pāṇḍyas, Ceras, Pallavas and Cholas. The Pāṇḍyas were first mentioned in Greek writings in the fourth century BCE; their capital was at Madurai. The Ceras date to the first century CE and ruled over much of what is now the state of Kerala. The first empire to encompass a substantial portion of the Indian peninsula and to impact other regions of India and Southeast Asia were the Pallavas. Established in 275 CE with its capital at Kāñcī, now Kanchipuram, the Pallava kingdom at its peak stretched from the northern part of present-day Andhra Pradesh to the Kaveri River in the south. From Kāñcī, merchants and colonisers spread Hinduism into Southeast Asia. Evidence for this comes from the earliest Khmer rulers of Cambodia who, like the Pallavas, almost always bore names ending in -varman. The names of Cambodia and Khmer can be traced to a common ancestor, Kambu, who is mentioned in the Purāṇas.
The Pallavas were a signficant trading empire, sending Indian goods to ports in Persia, Rome, Sumatra and Malaya. They were tolerant of all faiths, with one of their kings converting from Jainism to Hinduism. Music, painting and literature were patronised. Having worked on sites such as the Ajanta caves, sculptors and painters migrated southward to meet the growing demand for Hindu art and architecture in the Tamil kingdoms. At the port city of Mahabalipuram, the dynasty’s founder, King Simhavishnu, commissioned the huge relief of the Descent of Ganga that depicts the descent of India’s holiest river from the Himalayas to the sea, while one of his successors was responsible for the Kailasānāthar temple in Kāñcī, one of the oldest Śiva temples in India.
By the ninth century, the balance of power had shifted towards the Cholas. They were first mentioned in Aśoka’s inscriptions, and their ancestors had probably occupied the region of the Kaveri delta since prehistoric times. During the Pallavas’ reign they were relegated to the status of subsidiary state. When the Pallavas were looking the other way, preoccupied with settling scores with their traditional enemies the Cālukyas, a Hindu kingdom based at Bādāmi, the Cholas made a bid for power, intervening in a Pallava succession crisis and taking control of Kāñcī, as well as Mahabalipuram.
The most celebrated Chola ruler, Rājarāja (r. 985–1014), whose name means ‘king of kings’, was an administrative genius who laid the foundation for the most stable, best administered and longest lived of all early South Indian polities.
Rājarāja has been compared to Aśoka as an illustrious empire builder who patronised the arts, was accepting of other religions and ordered the construction of some of India’s most magnificent monuments, notably the Rājarājeshvara temple in Thanjavur – its sacred architecture placing it at the centre of the Hindu universe. Consecrated in 1010 and rising 60 metres above the flat plains of Tamil Nadu, it was three to four times higher and larger than any other building in the south. Its dominical capstone weighs 80 tonnes and was probably put in place using an earth ramp. The temple was built to mark Rājarāja’s victory over the Cālukyas and dedicated to Śiva, whose massive liṇgam is the object of worship. Rājarāja donated 230 kilograms of gold and even more silver, mostly war booty, to the temple, and villagers in the surrounding area were taxed to support its maintenance. Wealthy pilgrims added to its coffers and the temple functioned like a bank, making investments and loaning funds to the same villagers it taxed. The endowments also paid the wages of 400 dancing girls and hundreds more attendants, artisans, tailors and administrators.
The UNESCO-listed Rājarājeshvara temple in Thanjavur (also known as the Brihadishwara temple) is one of the largest temples in South India. Its distinctive steep pyramidical temple tower reflects the predominant architectural style in the south.
A portrait of Rājarāja offering flowers to Lord Śiva on one of the temple’s murals is the earliest identifiable portrait of any king in Indian art. The veneration of Rājarāja as well as his reputation as a boon-dispensing leader have parallels with the cult of leadership that thrives in South India today. Sunil Khilnani draws comparisons between Rājarāja and the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu state, Jayalalitha, who successfully cultivated an image of magnanimous bounty, distributing gifts to her followers such as televisions, motorbikes and school fees for girls. When she was imprisoned for corruption in 2014, more than 150 people are believed to have died either of shock or by taking their own lives.
After vanquishing the Cālukyas, Pāṇḍyas and Ceras, Rājarāja conquered most of Sri Lanka and sacked the old capital, Anuradhapura, in 993. He then seized the Maldives, which controlled many of the trade routes with the Arab world. Following Rājarāja’s death in 1014, his son Rājendra I (r. 1014–1044) pushed the Chola realm northwards. His generals stuck mainly to the coast, where elephants were lined up in the rivers to form bridges for the infantry to cross. After subduing the Buddhist Pālas of Bengal, Rājendra’s army reached the banks of the Ganges in 1023. Great jars of its holy waters were transported southwards, where they were emptied into a massive ceremonial tank in his new capital Gaṅgaikoṇḍacoḷapuram, literally ‘the city of the Chola who conquered the Ganga’. The temple Rājendra commissioned to mark his victory still stands there, but of the city he established nothing remains.
Having subdued all the kingdoms of South India, Rājendra picked off the last remnants of the Buddhist kingdom of Mahinda V (982–1029) in Sri Lanka and made Polonnaruwa the island’s new capital. He then became the only Indian ruler to launch a navy. After a millennium of cordial relations with the states of Southeast Asia that saw trade flourish and India’s cultural influence spread, Rājendra decided to ‘add lustre to his crown’, as one historian put it, and conquered parts of Burma, Malaya and Sumatra. In 1025, Chola forces invaded the Sumatran kingdom of Srivijaya, which controlled the Malacca Straits. It was an ambitious raid. A contemporary Arab geographer reported that even the fastest ship would take more than two years to visit all the islands controlled by Rājendra’s kingdom, and described its ruler as the richest man in the world.
The Cholas would ultimately conquer fourteen ports, but the effects of the raids were transitory. There are many theories as to what prompted this uncharacteristic pattern of conquest. Suppressing piracy that was rampant in the area, breaking China’s control over lucrative trade routes or the old-fashioned lure of plunder have all been put forward as theories to explain the eastward push.
If measured by the longevity of their empire – around three centuries – and the refinement of architecture, literature and the arts, the importance of religion and the sophistication of their administration, the Cholas can be said to represent South India’s Golden Age. Hundreds of Chola temples with their majestic pyramidical towers still rise above the rice paddies of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. More than places of worship, they functioned like parallel courts, and were often designed like palaces, with high walls enclosing voluminous courtyards where religious ceremonies could take place. ‘Temples were central to the imperial projects of the upwardly mobile dynasties; every conquering monarch felt it incumbent upon him to build a temple as a way of publicising his achievement,’ notes Wendy Doniger. Private worship became public, with temples increasingly becoming not just the centres for pilgrimage and religious activity, but also meeting places and markets where devotional paraphernalia was sold.
Their immense wealth also made them prime targets for Hindu armies from the north long before plundering Muslim invaders carried their riches back to their strongholds in Afghanistan. Possibly the richest of these depositories is said to be buried in a series of vaults beneath the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum, the former seat of the royal family of Travancore and now the capital of the southern state of Kerala. Even conservative estimates put the value of gold, silver, bejewelled ornaments and coins in the vaults at more than $US700 billion – a hoard that has been accumulating since 800 CE. Years of legal wrangling over whether the Travancore royals or the Indian government were the rightful administrators of the temple kept some of the chambers sealed, as did rumours that giant cobras protected the innermost hidden chamber, known as Vault B.
The Cholas are also remembered for their school of bronze sculpture, which the art historian J.C. Harle describes as ‘the finest unsurpassed in any place or age’. The most recognisable of the bronzes show the figure of Śiva as Lord of the Dance, creating and destroying the universe posing with one knee bent in an aureole of flame as he dances, transfixed by the rhythm of the small hourglass-shaped drum held in his upper right hand.
In another sense, the figure of the dancing Śiva can also be seen as an allegory for the upheavals that were about to beset India and would make their presence felt even in the deep south. As John Keay writes:
The historian who looks for a classic example of mātsyanyāya, that ‘big-fish-eats-little-fish’ state of anarchy so dreaded in the Purāṇas, need look no further than India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Dharma’s cosmic order appeared utterly confounded and the geometry of the mandala hopelessly subverted. Lesser feudatories nibbled at greater feudatories, kingdoms swallowed kingdoms, and dynasties devoured dynasties, all with a voracious abandon that woefully disregarded the shark-like presence lurking in the Punjab.
‘The King of the Dance is all rhythm and exaltation,’ writes the French art historian René Grousset. ‘[He] wears a broad smile. He smiles at death and at life, at pain and at joy alike, or rather, if we be allowed to express it, his smile is both death and life, both joy and pain.’
That presence would change the face of India forever, and not even geography would save the kingdoms of the south.