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History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8: Introduction.

History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8

Language
English

Contents

Introduction.

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IT is in vain, perhaps, to expect that the literature or the Arts of any other people can be so interesting to even the best educated Europeans as those of their own country. Until it is forced on their attention, few are aware how much education does to concentrate attention within a very narrow field of observation. We become familiar in the nursery with the names of the heroes of Greek and Roman history. In every school their history and their arts are taught, memorials of their greatness meet us at every turn through life, and their thoughts and aspirations become, as it were, part of ourselves. So, too, with the Middle Ages: their religion is our religion; their architecture our architecture; and their history fades so insensibly into our own, that we can draw no line of demarcation that would separate us from them. How different is the state of feeling, when from this familiar home we turn to such a country as India! Its geography is hardly taught in schools, and seldom mastered perfectly; its history is a puzzle;¹ its literature a mythic dream; its arts a quaint perplexity. But, above all, the names of its heroes and great men are so unfamiliar that, except a few of those who go to India, scarcely any ever become so acquainted with them, that they call up any memories which are either pleasing or worth dwelling upon.

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¹ The last thirty years have added greatly to the number and quality of the text-books on Indian history, and the general reader has no longer a valid excuse for ignorance of it.

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Were it not for this, there is probably no country—out of Europe at least—that would so well repay attention as India: none, where all the problems of natural science or of art are presented to us in so distinct and so pleasing a form. Nowhere does nature show herself in such grand and such luxurious features, and nowhere does humanity exist in more varied and more pleasing conditions. Side by side with the intellectual Brâhman caste, and the chivalrous Râjput, are found the wild Bhîl and the naked Gond, not antagonistic and warring one against the other, as elsewhere, but living now as they have done for thousands of years, each content with his own lot, and prepared to follow, without repining, in the footsteps of his forefathers.

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It cannot, of course, be for one moment contended that India ever reached the intellectual supremacy of Greece, or the moral greatness of Rome; but, though on a lower step of the ladder, her arts are more original and more varied, and her forms of civilisation present an ever-changing variety, such as are nowhere else to be found. What, however, really renders India so interesting as an object of study is that it is now a living entity. Greece and Rome are dead and have passed away, and we are living so completely in the midst of modern Europe, that we cannot get outside to contemplate it as a whole. But India is a complete cosmos in itself; bounded on the north by the Himâlayas, on the south by the sea, on the east by jungles inhabited by rude tribes, and only on the west having one door of communication, across the Indus, open to the outer world. Across that stream, nation after nation have poured their myriads into her coveted domain, but no reflex waves ever mixed her people with those beyond her boundaries.

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In consequence of all this, every problem of anthropology or ethnography can be studied here more easily than anywhere else; every art has its living representative, and often of the most pleasing form; every science has its illustration, and many on a scale not easily matched elsewhere. But, notwithstanding all this, in nine cases out of ten, India and Indian matters fail to interest, because they are to most people new and unfamiliar. The rudiments have not been mastered when young, and, when grown up, few men have the leisure or the inclination to set to work to learn the forms of a new world, demanding both care and study; and till this is attained, it can hardly be hoped that the arts and the architecture of India will interest many European readers to the same extent as those styles treated of in the volumes on ancient and mediæval architecture.¹

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¹ 'History of Architecture in all Countries from the Earliest Times.' By the late Jas. Fergusson, C.I.E., D.C.L., vols. i. and ii., 3rd ed. (1893). Edited by R. Phenè Spiers, F.S.A.

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Notwithstanding these drawbacks, it may still be possible to present the subject of Indian architecture in such a form as to be interesting, even if not attractive. To do this, however, the narrative form must be followed as far as is compatible with such a subject. All technical and unfamiliar names must be avoided wherever it is possible to do so, and the whole accompanied with a sufficient number of illustrations to enable its forms to be mastered without difficulty. Even if this is attended to, no one volume can tell the whole of so varied and so complex a history. Without preliminary or subsequent study it can hardly be expected that so new and so vast a subject can be grasped; but one volume may contain a complete outline of the whole, and enable any one who wishes for more information to know where to look for it, or how to appreciate it when found.

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Whether successful or not, it seems well worth while that an attempt should be made to interest the public in Indian architectural art; first, because the artist and architect will certainly acquire broader and more varied views of their art by its study than they can acquire from any other source. More than this, any one who masters the subject sufficiently to be able to understand their art in its best and highest forms, will rise from the study with a kindlier feeling towards the nations of India, and a higher — certainly a corrector— appreciation of their social status than could be obtained from their literature, or from anything that now exists in their anomalous social and political position.

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Notwithstanding all this, many may be inclined to ask, Is it worth while to master all the geographical and historical details necessary to unravel so tangled a web as this, and then try to become so familiar with their ever-varying forms as not only to be able to discriminate between the different styles, but also to follow them through all their ceaseless changes?

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My impression is that this question may fairly be answered in the affirmative. No one has a right to say that he understands the history of architecture who leaves out of his view the works of an immense portion of the human race, which has always shown itself so capable of artistic development. But, more than this, architecture in India is still a living art, practised on the principles which caused its wonderful development in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries; and there, consequently, and there alone, the student of architecture has a chance of seeing the real principles of the art in action. In Europe, at the present day, architecture is practised in a manner so anomalous and abnormal that few, if any, have hitherto been able to shake off the influence of a false system, and to see that the art of ornamental building can be based on principles of common sense; and that, when so practised, the result not only is, but must be, satisfactory. Those who have an opportunity of seeing what perfect buildings the uneducated natives of India produce, will easily understand how success may be achieved, while those who observe what failures the best educated and most talented architects in Europe frequently perpetrate, may, by a study of Indian models, easily see why this must inevitably be the result. It is only in India that the two systems can be seen practised side by side—the educated and intellectual European failing because his principles are wrong, the feeble and uneducated native as inevitably succeeding because his principles are right. The Indian builders *think* only of what they are doing, and how they can best produce the effect they desire. In the European system it is considered more essential that a building, especially in its details, should be a correct *copy* of something else, than good in itself or appropriate to its purpose: hence the difference in the result.

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In one other respect India affords a singularly favourable field to the student of architecture. In no other country of the same extent are there so many distinct nationalities, each retaining its old belief and its old feelings, and impressing these on its art. There is consequently no country where the outlines of ethnology as applied to art can be so easily perceived, or their application to the elucidation of the various problems so pre-eminently important. The mode in which the art has been practised in Europe for the last three centuries has been very confusing. In India it is clear and intelligible. No one can look at the subject without seeing its importance, and no one can study the art as practised there without recognising what the principles of the science really are.

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In addition, however, to these scientific advantages, it will undoubtedly be conceded by those who are familiar with the subject that for certain qualities the Indian buildings are unrivalled. They display an exuberance of fancy, a lavishness of labour, and an elaboration of detail to be found nowhere else. They may contain nothing so sublime as the hall at Karnak, nothing so intellectual as the Parthenon, nor so constructively grand as a mediæval cathedral; but for certain other qualities—not perhaps of the highest kind, yet very important in architectural art—the Indian buildings stand alone. They consequently fill up a great gap in our knowledge of the subject, which without them would remain a void.

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One of the greatest difficulties that exist—perhaps the greatest—in exciting an interest in Indian antiquities arises from the fact, that India has no history properly so called, before the Muhammadan invasion in the 13th century. Had India been a great united kingdom, like China, with a long line of dynasties and well-recorded dates attached to them, the task would have been comparatively easy; but nothing of the sort ever existed within her boundaries. On the contrary, so far as our knowledge extends, India has always been occupied by three or four different races of mankind, who have never amalgamated so as to become one people, and each of these races has been again subdivided into numerous tribes or small nationalities nearly, sometimes wholly, independent of each other—and, what is worse than all, not one of them ever kept a chronicle or preserved a series of dates commencing from any well-known era.¹

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¹ The following brief *résumé* of the principal events in the ancient history of India has no pretensions to being a complete or exhaustive view of the subject. It is intended only as such a popular sketch as shall enable the general reader to grasp the main features of the story to such an extent as may enable him to understand what follows. In order to make it readable, all references and all proofs of disputed facts have been here avoided. They will be found in the body of the work, where they are more appropriate. But without some such introductory notice of the political history and ethnography, the artistic history would be nearly, if not wholly unintelligible.

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The absence of any historical record is the more striking, because India possesses a written literature equal to, if not surpassing in variety and extent, that possessed by any other nation, before the adoption and use of printing. The Vedas themselves, with their Upanishads and Brâhmanas, and the commentaries on them, form a literature in themselves of vast extent, and some parts of which are as old, possibly older, than any written works that are now known to exist; and the Purânas, though comparatively modern, make up a body of doctrine mixed with mythology and tradition such as few nations can boast of. Besides this, however, are the two great epics, surpassing in extent, if not in merit, those of any ancient nation, and a drama of great beauty, written at periods extending through a long series of years. In addition to these we have treatises on law, on grammar, on astronomy, on metaphysics and mathematics, on almost every branch of mental science—a literature extending in fact to many thousand works, but in all this not one book that can be called historical. No man in ancient India, so far as is known, ever thought of recording the events of his own life, or of repeating the previous experience of others, and it was not till shortly before the Christian Era that they thought of establishing eras from which to date deeds or events.

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All this is the more curious because in Ceylon we have, in the 'Dîpawansa,' 'Mahâwansa,' and other books of a like nature, a consecutive history of that island, with dates which, with certain corrections, may be depended upon within certain limits of error, for periods extending from about B.C. 250 to the present time. At the other extremity of India, we have also in the ‘Râjataranginî’ of Kashmîr, a work of the 12th century, which Professor Wilson characterised as “the only Sanskrit composition yet discovered to which the title of History can with any propriety be applied.”¹ It hardly helps us, however, to any ancient historical data, its early chronology being only traditional and confused; but from the beginning of the 9th Christian century, its materials are of great value.²

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¹ ‘Asiatic Researches,’ vol. xv. p. 1.

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² Kalhana’s ‘Râjataranginî’ has been very carefully translated and edited with a valuable commentary and notes by Dr. A. M. Stein, 2 vols. (London, 1900).

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In India Proper, however, we have no such guides as even these, but for written history are almost wholly dependent on the Purânas. They furnish us with a list of kings’ names, with the length of their reigns, so apparently truthful that they may, within certain limits, be of use. They are only, however, of one range of dynasties—probably also sometimes contemporary—and extend only from the accession of Chandragupta—the Sandrokottos of the Greeks—about B.C. 320, to the decline of the Andhra dynasty, about the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. It seems possible we may yet find sufficient confirmation of these lists as far back as the 6th century B.C., so as to include the period marked by the life and labours of Sâkyamuni—the last Buddha—in our chronology, with tolerable certainty. All chronology before that period is as yet merely conjectural. From the period of the Gupta dynasty in the 4th century onwards, when the Purânas began to be put into their present form, in consequence of the revival of the Brahmanical religion, instead of recording contemporary events, they purposely confused them so as to maintain their pretended prophetic character, and prevent the detection of the falsehood of their claim to an antiquity equal to that of the Vedas.

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For Indian history after the 5th century we are consequently left mainly to inscriptions on monuments or on copper-plates, to coins, and to the works of foreigners for the necessary information with which the natives of the country itself have neglected to supply us. Inscriptions fortunately are more abundant in India than, perhaps, in any other country, and nearly all of them contain historical information; and, thanks to the great advances made in epigraphy during the last thirty-five years, we are now able to piece together a tolerably accurate historical outline of the course of events from the 3rd century B.C.¹ This is more especially the case for the Dekhan and the north of India; in the Tamil country so much has not yet been done, but this is more because there have been fewer labourers in the field than from want of materials. There are literally thousands of inscriptions in the south which have not been copied, and of those that have been collected only a portion have yet been translated; but they are such as to give us assurance that, when the requisite amount of labour is bestowed upon them, we shall be able to fix the chronology of the kings of the south with a degree of certainty sufficient for all ordinary purposes.²

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¹ The chronological results have been systematically arranged in that useful handbook.—Duff's ‘Chronology of India’ (London, 1899).

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² Almost the only person who had done anything in this direction till forty years ago was the late Sir Walter Elliot. Since 1872 the labours of Drs. Fleet, Bühler, Kielhorn, R. G. Bhândârkar and others have thrown a flood of light on the history of southern as well as northern India; and within the last twenty years Dr. Hultzsch's work among the Tamil inscriptions of Madras has yielded very important chronological and historical information for the south of the peninsula. The Mysore Government has also issued the great ‘Epigraphia Carnatica,’ under the direction of Mr. Lewis Rice.

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It is a far more difficult task to ascertain whether we shall ever recover the History of India before the time of the advent of Buddha. Here we certainly will find no coins or inscriptions to guide us, and no buildings to illustrate the arts, or to mark the position of cities, while all ethnographic traces have become so blurred, if not obliterated, that they serve us little as guides through the labyrinth. Yet on the other hand there is so much literature—such as it is—bearing on the subject, that we cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Meanwhile, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows intelligible.

Aryans.

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At some very remote period in the world's history the Âryas or Aryans³—a people speaking an early form of Sanskrit—

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³ We have the word in the ‘Aria’ and ‘Ariana’ of the Greek writers, applied to the country lying to the north-east of Persia adjoining Baktriana. The early Zoroastrians called their country ‘Airyanavaêjô’—the Aryâ home, and in the Behistun inscriptions it is styled ‘Ariya.’ See Lassen, ‘Indische Alterthumskunde,’ Bd. i. Ss. 5ff.

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entered India across the Upper Indus, coming from Central Asia. They were a fair complexioned people as compared with the Aborigines, and for a long time they remained settled in the Panjâb, or on the banks of the Sarasvatî, then a more important stream than now, the main body, however, still remaining to the westward of the Indus. If, however, we may trust our chronology, we find them settled 1500 to 2000 years before the Christian Era, in Ayodhyâ and then in the plenitude of their power. Naturally we look for some light on their early history in the two great Indian epics—the Râmâyana recording the exploits of Râma, King of Ayodhyâ, of the Solar race, and in much later times regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu; and the Mahâbhârata celebrating the contest between the Kurus and Pândus, of the Lunar family. Both are steeped in Brâhman doctrines, almost certainly inserted in later ages among the original legends. It thus becomes very difficult to separate what belongs to the original spirit and aim of the works from the interpolated materials. The Râmâyana is so largely allegorical and cast in the form it has reached us so long after the period to which it refers that it is doubtful whether we can draw any inference with safety from its contents, except that it relates to the spread of Aryan civilisation—which had probably then occupied most of the country north of the Vindhyan range—into southern India, and as far as Ceylon.¹ From a very early period the Aryans had, doubtless, become mixed with aboriginal races, and could not be regarded as pure at this period. But whether they formed settlements in the Dekhan or not, it was opened up to them, and by slow degrees imbibed that amount of Brahmanism which eventually pervaded the south. By b.c. 700, or thereabouts, they had begun to be tolerably well acquainted with the whole of the peninsula.

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¹ For some account of the probable spread of the Âryas southwards, see Dr. R. G. Bhândârkar's 'Early History of the Dekhan,' in *Bombay Gazetteer* (1895), vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 132ff.

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The events that form the theme of the western epic—the Mahâbhârata—may have occurred almost as early as, or even several centuries later than the times of Râma. It opens up an entirely new view of Indian social life. If the heroes of that poem were Aryans at all, they were of a much less pure type than those who composed the songs of the Vedas, or are depicted in the verses of the Râmâyana. Their polyandry, their drinking bouts, their gambling tastes, and love of fighting, mark them as a very different race from the peaceful shepherd immigrants of the earlier age, and point much more distinctly towards a Tartar, trans-Himâlayan origin, than to the cradle of the Aryan stock in Central Asia. We are tempted to ask whether the Pândavas, who conquered in the great strife, were not a confederacy of hostile tribes, headed by a band of warriors of mixed or non-Aryan descent. Their helper and counsellor, Krishnâ, is a divinity unknown to the early Aryans, and with him as an incarnation of Vishnu, the Siva, and Brahma, of modern Hindûism, take the place of the older gods. As if to mark the difference of which the warriors themselves felt the existence, they distinguished themselves, by name, as belonging to a Lunar race, distinct from, and generally antagonistic to, the Solar race, which was the proud distinction of the purer and earlier Aryan settlers in India.¹

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¹ Orientalists have expressed very varying opinions as to the historical teachings of the epics. See Weber, ‘On the Râmâyana,’ etc.

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By about B.C. 700, we again find a totally different state of affairs in India. The Aryans no longer exist as a separate nationality, and neither the Solar nor the Lunar race are the rulers of the earth. The Brâhmans have become a priestly caste, and share the power with the Kshatriyas, a race of far less purity of descent. The Vaisyas, as merchants and husbandmen, have become a power, and even the Sûdras are acknowledged as a part of the body politic; and—though not mentioned in the Scriptures—the Nâgas, or Snake people, had become an influential part of the population. They are first mentioned in the Mahâbhârata, where they play a most important part in causing the death of Parikshit, which led to the great sacrifice for the destruction of the Nâgas of Takshasilâ by Janamejaya, which practically closes the history of the time. Destroyed, however, they were not, for we find Nâga dynasties ruling in various parts of Central India and Râjputâna from the 7th century B.C., till at least the 4th century A.D.²

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² The Nâga or Kârkota dynasty of Kashmîr ruled as late as from about the beginning of the 7th till the middle of the 9th century.

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Although Buddhism was first taught probably by one belonging to the Solar race, and of Aryan blood, and though its first disciples were Brâhmans, it had as little affinity with the religion of the Vedas as Christianity had with the Pentateuch, and its fate was the same. The one religion was taught by one of Jewish extraction to the Jews; but it was ultimately rejected by them, and adopted by the Gentiles, who had no affinity of race or religion with the inhabitants of Judæa. Though meant originally, no doubt, for Aryans, the Buddhist religion was ultimately rejected by the Brâhmans, who were consequently eclipsed and superseded by it for nearly a thousand years; and we hear little of them and their religion till they rise again at the court of the great Gupta kings in the 4th century A.D., when their religion began to assume that strange shape which it now still retains in India. In its new form it is as unlike the religion of the Vedas as it is possible to conceive one religion being to another; unlike that, also, of the older portions of the Mahâbhârata; but a confused mess of local superstitions and imported myths, covering up and hiding the Vedantic and Buddhist doctrines, which may sometimes be detected as underlying it. Whatever it be, however, it was invented by and for as mixed a population as probably were ever gathered together into one country—a people whose feelings and superstitions it only too truly represents.

Dravidians.

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Although, therefore, as was hinted above, there might be no great difficulty in recovering the main incidents and leading features of the history of the Aryans, from their first entry into India till they were entirely absorbed into the mass of the population some time before the Christian Era, there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that their history would fully represent the ancient history of the country. The Dravidians are a people who, in historical times, seem to have been probably as numerous as the pure Aryans, and at the present day form one-fifth of the whole population of India. They belong, it is true, to a lower intellectual status than the Aryans, but they have preserved their nationality pure and unmixed, and, such as they were at the dawn of history, so they seem to be now.

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Their settlement in India extends to such remote pre-historic times, that we cannot feel even sure that we should regard them as immigrants, or, at least, as either conquerors or colonists on a large scale, but rather as aboriginal in the sense in which that term is usually understood. Generally it is assumed that they entered India across the Lower Indus, leaving the cognate Brahui in Baluchistân as a mark of the road by which they came, and, as the affinities of their language seem to be with the Ugrians and Northern Turanian tongues, this view seems probable.¹ But they have certainly left no trace of their migrations anywhere between the Indus and the Narbadâ, and all the facts of their history, so far as they are known, would seem to lead to an opposite conclusion. The hypothesis that would represent what we know of their history most correctly would place their original seat in the extreme south, somewhere probably not far from Madurâ or Tanjor, and thence spreading fan-like towards the north, till they met the Aryans in the northern Dekhan. The question, again, is not of much importance for our present purposes, as we do not know to what degree of civilisation they had reached anterior to the Christian Era, or when they were first able to practise the arts of civilised life with such success as to bring them within the scope of a work devoted to the history of art.¹

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¹ Dr. Caldwell, the author of the 'Dravidian Grammar,' is the greatest and most trustworthy advocate of this view.

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¹ In the 'Râmâyana' the monkey-soldiers are directed to the countries of the Andhras, Pândyas, Cholas, and Keralas, in the south, and are told they will there see the gate of the city of the Pândyas adorned with gold and jewels.

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It may be that at some future period, when we know more of the ancient arts of these Dravidians than we now do, some fresh light may be thrown on this very obscure part of history. Geographically, however, one thing seems tolerably clear. *If* the Dravidians came into India in historical times it was not from Central Asia that they migrated, but from Persia, or some southern region of the Asiatic continent.

Dasyus.

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In addition to these two great distinct and opposite nationalities, there exists in India a third, which, in pre-Buddhist times, was as numerous, perhaps even more so, than either the Aryans or the Dravidians, but of whose history we know even less than we do of the two others. Ethnologists have not agreed on a name by which to call them. I have suggested Dasyus,² a slave people, as that is the name by which the Aryans designated them when they found them there on their first entrance into India, and subjected them to their sway.³ Possibly they were partly of Mongol-Tibetan origin, and partly they may have been a mixed race allied to the Dravidians, and now represented by Gonds, Santâls, Bhîls, etc.

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² 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' pp. 244-247.

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³ 'Dasyu' probably meant 'provincial,' 'aboriginal,' and was used much as 'Gentiles,' 'Pagans,' 'Barbarians,' in early times. They are also termed Yâdvas, of which we may have a survival in the 'Jats.'

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The Dasyus, however, were not mere barbarians; for they had towns, and traces of at least a partial civilisation; they had leaders or chiefs possessed of strong fortified retreats, and they possessed treasures of gold and rich jewels.⁴ Whoever they were they seem to have been a people of less intellectual capacity, less muscular, and less united than their invaders. When the Aryans first entered India they seem to have found them occupying the whole valley of the Ganges — the whole country in fact between the Vindhya and the Himâlaya Mountains. At present they are only found in anything like purity in the mountain ranges that bound that great plain. There they are known as Bhîls, Gonds, Kandhs, Mundas, Orâons, Hos, Kols, Santâls, Nâgas, and other mountain and forest tribes. But they certainly form the lowest underlying stratum of the population over the whole of the Gangetic plain. So far as their affinities have been ascertained, they are with the trans-Himâlayan population, and it either is that they entered India through the passes of that great mountain range, or it might be more correct to say that the Tibetans are a fragment of a great population that occupied both the northern and southern slope of that great chain of hills at some very remote pre-historic time.

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⁴ Vivian de Saint Martin's 'Étude sur la Géographie et les populations primitives du Nord-ouest de l'Inde, d'après les Hymnes védiques.'

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Whoever they were, they were the people who, in remote times, were apparently the worshippers of Trees and Serpents;¹ but what interests us more in them, and makes the enquiry into their history more desirable, is that it was where the people were largely of this aboriginal stock that Buddhism seems to have been most readily adopted, and it is largely among allied races that it is still adhered to. In Ceylon, Tibet, Burma, Siam, and China—wherever a people allied to the Mongol or Tibetan family exists, there Buddhism flourished and still prevails. But in India a revival of Brahmanism abolished it.

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¹ See ‘Indian Antiquary,’ vol. iv. pp. 5f.

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Architecturally, there is no difficulty in defining the limits of the Dasyu province: wherever a square tower-like temple exists with a perpendicular base, but a curvilinear outline above, such as that shown in the woodcut (No. 1), there we may feel certain of the existence, past or present, of a people of Dasyu extraction. No one can accuse the pure Aryans of introducing this form into India, or of building temples at all, or of worshipping images of Siva or Vishnu, with which these temples are filled, and they consequently have little title to confer their name on the style. The Aryans had, however, become so impure in blood before these temples were erected, and were so mixed up with the aboriginal tribes whose superstitions had so influenced their religion and their arts that they accepted their temples with their gods. Be this as it may, one thing seems tolerably clear, that the regions occupied by the Aryans in India were conterminous with those of the Dasyus, or, in other words, that the Aryans conquered the whole of the aboriginal or native tribes who occupied the plains of northern India, and ruled over them to such an extent as materially to influence their religion and their arts, and also very materially to modify even their language. So much so, indeed, that after some four thousand years of domination we should not be surprised if we have some difficulty in recovering traces of the original population, and could probably not do so, if some fragments of the people had not sought refuge in the hills on the north and south of the great Gangetic plain, and there have remained fossilised, or at least sufficiently permanent for purposes of investigation.

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1. Hindû Temple, at Bahulârâ, near Bânkurâ.

Saisunâga Dynasty, About B.C. 650 to 318.

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Leaving these, which must, for the present at least, be considered as practically pre-historic times, we tread on surer ground when we approach the period when Buddha was born, and devoted his life to solve the problem of suffering and transmigration. There seems little reason for doubting that he was born about the year 560, taught during the reign of Bimbisâra, the fifth king of the Saisunûga dynasty, and died b.c. 480,¹ at the age of eighty, in the eighth year of Ajâtasatru, the sixth king.² New sources of information regarding these times are opening out, and we may before long be able to recover a fairly authentic account of the political events of that period, and as perfect a picture of the manners and the customs of those days. It is too true, however, that those who wrote the biography of Buddha in subsequent ages so overlaid the narrative of his life with fables and absurdities, that it is now difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; but we have sculptures extending back to within three centuries of his death, at which time we may fairly assume that a purer tradition may have prevailed. From what has already occurred, we may hope to creep even further back than this, and eventually to find early illustrations which will enable us to exercise so sound a criticism on the books as to enable us to restore the life of Buddha to such an extent as to place it on a basis of credible historicity.

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¹ Dr. J. F. Fleet, in 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' 1906, pp. 984f. places the death or Nirvâna of Buddha in b.c. 482, with other connected dates in accordance with it. For our purpose the dates given are quite near enough.

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² The 'Matsya Purâna' alone inserts the reigns of Kanvâyana—nine years—and Bhûmimitra—fourteen years—between Bimbisâra and Ajâtasatru.

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Immense progress has been made during the last fifty or sixty years in investigating the origin of Buddhism, and the propagation of its doctrines in India, and in communicating the knowledge so gained to the public in Europe. More, however, remains to be done before the story is complete, and divested of all the absurdities which subsequent commentators have heaped upon it. Still, the leading events in the life of the founder of the religion are simple, and now sufficiently well ascertained for all practical purposes.¹

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¹ The most pleasing of the histories of Buddha, written wholly from a European point of view, is that of Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Paris. Of those partially native, partly European, are those of Bishop Bigandet, from the Burmese legends, and the ‘Romantic History of Buddha,’ translated from the Chinese by the Rev. S. Beal. The ‘Lalita Vistara,’ translated by Foucaux, is more modern than these, and consequently more fabulous and absurd. In more recent years a large literature has appeared on the subject. Prof. H. Oldenberg’s ‘Buddha: his Life, his Doctrine, his Order,’ translated from the German by W. Hoey (1882) supplies an able critical estimate of the teacher. Dr. H. Kern’s ‘History of Buddhism in India’ has been translated into French by G. Huet (Paris, 1901-1903); and W. W. Rockhill’s ‘Life of Buddha, and the Early History of his Order,’ 1884, are also valuable works.

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The founder of this religion was claimed by tradition as one of the last of a long line of kings, known as the Solar dynasties, who, from a period shortly subsequent to the advent of the Aryans into India, had held paramount sway in Ayodhyâ—the modern Oudh. About the 12th or 13th century B.C. they were superseded by another race of much less purely Aryan blood, known as the Lunar race, who transferred the seat of power to capitals situated in the northern parts of the Doâb. But the tradition of the royal birth of Sâkyamuni can hardly be sustained historically. He seems to have been born at Kapilavastu, at the foot of the Himâlayas, as the son of a petty chief. For twenty-nine years he is represented as enjoying the pleasures, and following the occupations, usual to the men of his rank and position; but at that age, becoming painfully impressed by the misery incident to human existence, he determined to devote the rest of his life to an attempt to alleviate it. For this purpose he forsook his parents and wife, abandoned friends and the advantages of his position, and, for the following fifty years, devoted himself steadily to the task he had set before himself. Years were spent in the meditation and mortification supposed to be necessary to fit him for his mission; the rest of his long life was devoted to wandering from city to city, teaching and preaching, and doing everything that gentle means could effect to disseminate the doctrines which he believed were to regenerate the world, and take the sting out of human misery.

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He died, or, in the phraseology of his followers, entered Nirvâna or Parinirvâna—was absorbed into nothingness—at Kusinârâ, in the eightieth year of his age, about 480 years B.C.

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With the information that has accumulated around the subject, there seems no great difficulty in surmising why the mission of Sâkyamuni was so successful as it proved to be. He was born in an age when the purity of the Aryan races, especially in eastern India, had become so deteriorated by intermixture with aborigines, and with less pure tribes coming from the north, that their power, and consequently their distinctive influence was fading away. At that time, too, the native and mixed races had acquired such a degree of civilisation as led them to claim something like equality with their Aryan masters. In such a condition of things the preacher was sure of a willing audience who ignored caste, and taught that all men, of whatever nation or degree, had an equal chance of reaching happiness, and ultimately Nirvâna, by the practice of virtue: in a word—to be delivered from the wearisome bondage of ritual or caste observances and the depressing prospect of interminable transmigration. Aboriginal or Turanian Dasyus, perhaps even more readily than the mixed Aryans, would hail him as a deliverer, and by the former the new religion was specially adopted and propagated, whilst that of the Brahman Aryans was, for a time at least, overshadowed and obscured.

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It is by no means clear how far Buddha was successful in converting the multitude to his doctrines during his lifetime. At his death, the first synod or council was held at Râjagriha, and five hundred monks of a superior order, it is said, were assembled there on that occasion,¹ and if so they must have represented a great multitude. But the accounts of this, and of a second convocation, said, by the southern Buddhists, to have been held one hundred years afterwards at Vaisâlî, are of doubtful authenticity. Indeed, the whole annals of the Saisunâga dynasty from the death of Buddha till the accession of Chandragupta, *cir.* B.C. 320, are about the least satisfactory of the time. Those of Ceylon were falsified in order to make the landing of Vijaya, the alleged first conqueror from Kalinga, coincident with the date of Buddha's death, while a period of some length elapsed between the two events.² We have annals, and we may possibly recover inscriptions³ and sculptures belonging to this period, and though it is most improbable we shall recover any architectural remains, there are possibly materials existing which, when utilised, may suffice for the purpose.

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¹ See Rockhill, 'Life of the Buddha,' p. 156; Kern's 'Histoire du Bouddhisme dans l'Inde,' tom. ii. pp. 253ff. (French trans.).

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² There is an error of about sixty years in the usual date—B.C. 543, derived from the Singhalese chronicles, which is elsewhere corrected. The revised date may not be precisely correct, but it must be approximately so.

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³ We have no very early Hindû coins; the earliest are square or oblong punch-marked pieces, which seem to date from about a century before Alexander, and supply no historical data. The late Mr. Ed. Thomas supposed a coin, bearing the name of Amoghabhûti, a Kuninda, belonged to one of the nine Nandas with whom this dynasty closed ('Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' N.S., vol. i. pp. 447ff.). It is now known that such [Figure:] coins do not belong to a date earlier than about B.C. 100. The earliest coins of historical value for India are those of the Græco-Baktrians and their contemporaries or successors on the north-west frontier.

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The kings of this dynasty seem to have been considered as of a low caste, and were not, consequently, in favour either with the Brâhman or, at that time, with the Buddhist; and no events which seem to have been thought worthy of being remembered, except the second convocation—the fact of which is doubtful—are recorded as happening in their reigns, after the death of the great Ascetic—or, at all events, of being recorded in such annals as we possess.

Maurya Dynasty, B.C. 320 to 180.

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The case was widely different with the Maurya dynasty, which was certainly one of the most brilliant, and is fortunately one of the best known, of the ancient dynasties of India. The first king was Chandragupta, the Sandrokottos of the Greeks, to whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador by Seleukos, the successor of Alexander in the western parts of his Asiatic empire. It is from his narrative—now unfortunately lost—that the Greeks acquired almost all the knowledge they possessed of India at that period.¹ The country was then divided into 120 smaller principalities, but the Maurya residing in Palibothra (Pâtaliputra)—the modern Pâtna—seems to have exercised a paramount sway over the whole. It was not, however, this king, but his grandson, the great Asoka (b.c. 262 to 225), who raised this dynasty to its highest pitch of prosperity and power. Though utterly unknown to the Greeks, we have from native sources a more complete picture of the incidents of his reign than of any ancient sovereign of India. The great event that made him famous in Buddhist history was his conversion to that faith, and the zeal he showed in propagating the doctrines of his new religion. He did, in fact, for Buddhism, what Constantine did for Christianity, and at about the same distance of time from the death of the founder of the faith. From a struggling sect he made it the religion of the State, and established it on the basis on which it lasted supreme for nearly 1000 years. In order to render his subjects familiar with the doctrines of his new faith, he caused a series of edicts embodying them to be engraved on rocks near Peshâwar, in Gujarât, in the valley of the Dûn under the Himâlayas, in Hazâra, in Katak and Ganjâm, in Mysore, and other places. He held a great convocation or council of the faithful in his capital at Pâtaliputra, and, on its dissolution, missionaries were sent to spread the religion in the Yavana country, whose capital was Alexandria, near the present city of Kâbul. Others were despatched to Kashmîr and Gandhâra; one was sent to the Himawanta—the valleys of the Himâlaya, and possibly part of Tibet; others were despatched to the Mahâratta country, and to Mysore, to Vanavâsi in Kanara, and to Aparântaka or the north Konkan. Two missionaries were sent to Suvarnabhûmi, now known as Thatun on the Sitang river, in Pegu, and, tradition says, his own son and daughter were deputed to Ceylon.² All those countries, in fact, which might be called foreign, were then sought to be converted to the faith. He also formed alliances with Antiokhos the Great, Antigonos, and with Ptolemy Philadelphos, Alexander of Epeiros, and Magas of Cyrene, for the establishment of hospitals and the protection of his co-religionists in their countries. More than all this, he built innumerable topes or stûpas and monasteries all over the country; and, though none of those now existing can positively be identified as those actually built by him, there seems no reason for doubting that the sculptured rails at Bodh-Gayâ and Bharaut, the caves at Barâbar in Bihâr, some of those at Udayagiri in Katak, and the oldest of those in the Western Ghâts were all erected or excavated during the existence of this dynasty, if not under himself. These, with inscriptions and such histories as exist, make up a mass of materials for a picture of India during this dynasty such as no other can present; and, above all, they offer a complete representation of the religious forms and beliefs of the kings and people, which render any mistake regarding them impossible.¹ It was Buddhism, but without a deified Buddha, and with Tree and Serpent worship cropping up in every unexpected corner.

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¹ For this period, *see* M'Crindle's 'Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian' (1877); the 'Invasion of India by Alexander the Great' (1896); and 'Ancient India as described in Classical Literature' (1901).

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² All these particulars, it need hardly be said, are taken from the 12th and 15th chapters of the 'Mahâwansa,' which relates the traditions of a time six centuries and more before its composition.

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¹ ^1 For fuller information about Asoka reference may be made to Edm. Hardy’s ‘König Asoka,’ and V. A. Smith’s ‘Asoka, the Buddhist Emperor of India.’

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There is certainly no dynasty in the whole range of ancient Indian history that would better repay the labour of an exhaustive investigation than that of these Maurya kings. Not only were they the first in historical times who, so far as we know, united nearly the whole of India into one great kingdom, but they were practically the first who came in contact with European civilisation and Western politics. More than even this, it is probably owing to the action of the third king of this dynasty that Buddhism, from being the religion of an obscure sect, became, at one time, the creed of so large a proportion of the human race, and influenced the belief and the moral feelings of such multitudes of men in Asia.

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It is to this dynasty, and to it only, that must be applied all those passages in classical authors which describe the internal state of India, and they are neither few nor insignificant. Though the Hindûs themselves cannot be said to have contributed much history, they have given us, in the ‘Mudrâ-Râkshasa,’² a poetical version of the causes of the revolution that placed the Mauryas on the throne. But, putting these aside, their own inscriptions supply us with a perfectly authentic contemporary account of the religious faith and feelings of the period; while the numerous bas-reliefs of the rails at Bodh-Gayâ and Bharaut afford a picture of the manners, customs, and costumes of the day, and a gauge by which we can measure their artistic status and judge how far their art was indigenous, how far influenced by foreign elements. The dates of the kings of this dynasty are also approximately known, and the whole framework of their history depends so completely on contemporary native monuments, that there need be no real uncertainty regarding any of the outlines of the picture when once the subject is fairly grasped and thoroughly handled.

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² ^2 Wilson’s ‘Hindu Drama,’ in his ‘Works,’ vol. xii. pp. 151 *et seqq.*, edition 1871.

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It is the firmest standpoint we have from which to judge of Indian civilisation and history, whether looking to the past or to the future, and it is one that gives a very high idea of the position at which the Hindûs had arrived before they came practically into contact with the civilisation of the West.

Sunga Dynasty, B.C. 180 to 70.

Kânwâyana Dynasty, B.C. 70 to 36.

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History affords us little beyond the lengths of the kings' reigns for the next two dynasties, and we are obliged to trust to the general correctness with which these are recorded in the Purânas, and by degrees we are collecting inscriptions, and we know of caves that belong to their time, so that we may hope to breathe life into what has hitherto appeared only a dry list of names. Possibly the Kânwâs had usurped the power of the Sungas, so that the two families may have been nominally contemporary during the period assigned to the latter, and that both came to an end about 40 B.C. Anyhow we know that the Andhras had risen to power on the decline of the Mauryas. These dynasties were not, however, apparently known to the Greeks, and possibly, being Buddhist, are passed over in comparative silence in the Purânas. It is thus only from their monuments that we can hope to recover their history. Up to the present time, the most important inscription discovered is that of a prince Dhanabhûti who "in the time of the Sungas" erected a gateway at the Bharaut stûpa.

Andhra Dynasty, About B.C. 170 to A.D. 220.

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The dynasty that ruled the Dekhan at least, contemporary with these Rois fainéants is — after the Mauryas — the most important of all those about this period of Indian history. To the classical authors they are known as the Andræ, in the Purânas as Andhrabrityas, and in the inscriptions as Sâtakarnis or Sâtavâhanas; but under whatever name, notwithstanding occasional periods of depression, they played a most important part in the history of India, during more than four centuries. They were a South-Indian dynasty, first mentioned in a Khandagiri inscription about B.C. 150.¹ Their capital was at Dhânyakataka, on the lower Krishnâ, close to Amarâvatî; but, at a later date, they had a second capital at Paithan on the upper Godâvarî. They ruled over Mâlwâ and the Dekhan from sea to sea, but about the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century the provinces north of the Narbadâ seem to have been conquered by Saka satraps, who were overthrown about A.D. 125, by Gautamîputra Sâtakarni, who raised the dynasty to the height of its power. The kings of this race have, however, left many and most interesting inscriptions in the western caves, and traces of their existence occur in many parts of India.

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¹ ‘Epigraphia Indica,’ vol. ii. pp. 88-89.

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Architecturally, their history begins with the gateways of the Tope at Sânchi; the southern of these was almost certainly erected during the reign of the first *Sâtakarni* about the middle of the 2nd century before our era—and the other three in the course of that century. It ends with the completion of the rail at Amarâvatî, which was probably commenced in the 1st century, and completed before the end of the 2nd.²

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