History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s13: Immigrations.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s13
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Immigrations.
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From the above brief sketch of ancient Indian history it may be gathered that it is doubtful whether we shall ever be able to clothe with solid flesh the skeleton of history which is all we possess anterior to the advent of Buddha. It is also possible that pious frauds may have so confused the sequence of events between his death and the rise of the Mauryas, that there will be great difficulty in restoring that period to anything like completeness. But for the thousand years that elapsed between "the revenge of Chanakya" and the fall of Valabhî the materials are ample, and when sufficient industry is applied to their elucidation there is little doubt that the whole may be made clear and intelligible. It does not fall within the scope of this work to attempt such a task; but it is necessary to endeavour to make its outlines clear, as, without this being done, what follows will be utterly unintelligible; while, at the same time, one of the principal objects of this work is to point out how the architecture, which is one important branch of the evidence and the best aid we can have to the teaching of history, may be brought to bear on the subject.
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No direct evidence, however, derived only from events that occurred in India itself, would suffice to make the phenomena of her history clear, without taking into account the successive migrations of tribes and peoples who, in all ages, so far as we know, poured across the Indus from the westward to occupy her fertile plains.
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As mentioned above, the great master fact that explains almost all we know of the ancient history of India is our knowledge that two thousand years or more before the birth of Christ a Sanskrit-speaking nation migrated from the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes. They crossed the Indus in such numbers as to impress their civilisation and their language on the whole of the north of India, and this to such an extent as practically to obliterate, as far as history is concerned, the original inhabitants of the valley of the Ganges, whoever they may have been. At the time when this migration took place the power and civilisation of Central Asia were concentrated on the lower Euphrates, and the Babylonian empire never seems to have extended across the Karmanian desert to the eastward. The road, consequently, between Baktria and India was open, and nations might pass and re-pass between the two countries without fear of interruption from any other people.
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If any of the ancient dynasties of Babylonia extended their power towards the East, it was along the coast of Gedrosia, and not in a north-easterly direction. It is, indeed, by no means improbable, as hinted above, that the origin of the Dravidians may be found among some of the Turanian peoples who occupied southern and eastern Persia in ancient times, and who may, either by sea or land, have passed to the western shores of India. Till, however, further information is available, this is mere speculation, though probably in the direction in which truth may hereafter be found.
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When the seat of power was moved northward to Nineveh, the Assyrians seem to have occupied the country eastward of the Caspian in sufficient force to prevent any further migration. At least, after—say b.c. 1000—we have no further trace of any Aryan tribe crossing the Indus going eastward, and it seems mainly to have been a consequence of this cutting off of the supply of fresh blood that the purity of their race in India was so far weakened as to admit of the Buddhist reform taking root, and being adopted to the extent it afterwards attained.
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During the period of the Akhæmenian sway (b.c. 558-334) the Persians certainly occupied the countries about the Oxus in sufficient strength to prevent any movement of the peoples. So essentially indeed had Baktria and Sogdiana become parts of the Persian empire, that Alexander was obliged to turn aside from his direct route to conquer them, as well as the rest of the kingdom of Darius, before advancing on India.
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Whether it were founded for that purpose or not, the little Greek kingdom of Baktria was sufficiently powerful, while it lasted, to keep the barbarians in check; but when, about or after b.c. 160, the Yue-chi and other cognate tribes invaded Sogdiana—driving out the Sakas, who next invaded Baktria, and finally, about half a century later, the Yue-chi conquered the whole of Baktria,¹ they opened a new chapter in the history of India, the effects of which are felt to the present day.
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¹ See Vivien de St Martin's ‘Les Huns blancs,’ Paris, 1849; Franke, ‘Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntniss der Türkvölker und skythen Centralasien’ in ‘Abhandlungen der könig. preussischen Academie der Wissenschaften,’ 1904—summarised in ‘Indian Antiquary,’ vol. xxxv. (1906), pp. 33-47; ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ 1907, p. 676.
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It is not yet quite clear how soon after the destruction of the Baktrian kingdom these Turanian tribes conquered Kâbul, and occupied the country between that city and the Indus. Certain it is, however, that they were firmly seated on the banks of that river before the Christian Era, and under the great king Kanishka of the Kushana tribe had become an Indian power of very considerable importance. The date of this king is, unfortunately, one of those puzzles that still remain to be finally solved. It has been held that he was the founder of the Saka Era, a.d. 78, and that his reign must be placed in the last quarter of the 1st century of our era.² But this era is only employed generally in the south and east; and it now seems almost certain that Kanishka's reign began in b.c. 58—the epoch of what was once known as the ‘Mâlava era,’ and later as the ‘Vikrama Samvat,’ the reckoning in common use in northern India.³
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² Fergusson, in ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ N.S. xii. pp. 259-285; Oldenberg in ‘Indian Antiquary,’ vol. x. pp. 213-227.
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³ Fleet in ‘Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,’ 1906, pp. 979-992.
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It also appears certain that the power of these Kushan kings spread over the whole of the Panjâb, and extended as far at least as Mathurâ on the Jumnâ, before the commencement of the Christian Era. Apparently the last of them was Vâsudeva, who ruled at least till a.d. 42. Soon after him we meet with the name of a king Guduphara or Gondophernês, which appears also in the legend of the Apostle Thomas: an inscription of the 26th year of his reign is dated in the 103rd of the era, or a.d. 47¹—when his rule must have extended into the north of the Panjâb. Next there followed two (if not three) kings named Kadphises, who may have ruled till the end of the century, after which northern India was divided into separate kingdoms and tribal governments till the rise of the Guptas in the 4th century.
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¹ Grünwedel, ‘Buddhist Art in India.’ English ed. p. 84.
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Before the end of the first century another horde, known to us only from coins and inscriptions in which they call themselves Kshaharâtas or Kshatrapas, occupied the whole of the province of Gujarât; one of the first of them—Nahapâna, for whom we have dates about a.d. 119 and in 124—extended his power over part of Mâlwâ and the Nâsik district. He was overthrown by the Andhra king, Gautamîputra Sâtakarni, and deprived of the districts south of the Narbadâ. Soon after, we find another Kshatrapa, named Chashtana, ruling in Mâlwâ, and his successors founded a kingdom of their own. They date their coins and inscriptions from the Saka Era, a.d. 78, and the series extends from about 140 to 388 a.d. It thus happens that this dynasty of Kshatrapas were only finally disposed of by the rise of the Guptas.
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The whole external history of northern India, from the time of Kanishka to that of Ahmad Shâh Durâni (1761) is a narrative of a continuous succession of tribes of Skythian origin, pouring across the Upper Indus into India, each more Turanian than the one that preceded it, till the whole culminated in the Mughal conquest of India, in the 15th century, by a people as distinct in blood from the Aryans as any that exist.
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Of the older races, it seems probable that the Yavanas must be distinguished from the Turanians. They were not Greeks, though their name may be merely a mispronunciation of Ionian. The term seems to have been applied by Indian authors to any foreign race coming from the westward who did not belong to one of the acknowledged kingdoms known to them. The Kambojas seem to have been a people inhabiting the country between Kandahar and Kâbul, who, when the tide was setting eastward, joined the crowd, and sought settlements in the more fertile countries within the Indus.
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The Sakas were well known to classical authors as the Sacae, or Skythians. They were pressed on at first by the Yue-chi, and became apparently most formidable during the earlier centuries of the Christian Era.
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Another important horde were the Ephthalites or White Huns, who came into India apparently in the 5th century, and one of whose kings, named Gollas, if we may trust Cosmas Indicopleustes, was the head of a powerful state in northern India, about the year 530.¹ They, too, seem to have been conquered about the same time by the Hindûs, and, as the Sakas, if not the Hûnas,² were Buddhists, it may have been their destruction that first weakened the cause of that religion, and which led to its ultimate defeat a little more than a century afterwards.
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¹ 'Christian Topography of Cosmas,' translated by Dr. J. W. M'Crindle (Hakluyt Soc.), pp. 370-371. This Gollas seems probably the same as Mihirakula or Mihiragula.
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² We can hardly hope to discriminate among these foreign invaders between Hûnas, Turushkas, Sakas, Shâhis, Daivaputras, etc., and may regard them together as Indo-Skythians.
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During the dark age, 750 to 950, we do not know of any horde passing the Indus. The Muhammadans were probably too strong on the frontier to admit of its being done, and after that age they—and they only—conducted the various invasions which completely changed the face and character of northern India. For seven centuries they were continued, with only occasional interruptions, and at last resulted in placing the Muhammadan power supreme, practically, over the whole of India, but only to fall to pieces like a house of cards, before the touch of Western civilisation. All this, however, is written, and written so distinctly, in so many books, that it need not be recapitulated here.