History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c3: Preface.
History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c3
- Language
- English
Preface.
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IN these volumes it is proposed to give the history in detail of India during what may be called the Mediæval Hindu period. The history of India naturally falls into two main portions, the ancient and the modern. It is plain that the modern history of India commences from the establishment of the Slave Dynasty of Mahomedan emperors and is divisible into three periods viz. (1) the Mussalman period from about 1200 A. D. to roughly 1650 A.D. (2) the Maratha period from 1650 A.D. to 1818 A.D., the date of the fall of the Peshwas and (3) the British period from 1818 A. D. down to the present day. The ancient history of India also sub-divides itself into three main periods which may be called the Aryan period, the Aryo-Buddhistic period and the Hindu period. The Aryan period commencing from the most ancient times variously considered to go back to from 4000 to 2000 B. C. comes down to about 300 B. C. and closes with the invasion of India by Alexander. Ancient Aryan Kshatriya kingdoms then disappeared and the Sudra Maurya dynasty, of emperors was established in India, ushering in the supremacy of Buddhism under Asoka. The second period is remarkable for the alternate triumphs of Buddhism and Aryanism politically as well as religiously, and this period may, therefore, be called not Buddhistic but Aryo-Buddhistic. It extends from 300 B. C. to 600 A. D. and closes with the final and greatest triumph of Buddhism under Harsha. The third period of ancient Indian history which it is proposed to treat of in these volumes begins with the fall of Buddhism after Harsha and the rise of new Hindu (not Aryan) kingdoms in India. Hinduism, as it is to-day, was then formed and gathering strength it finally overthrew Buddhism by the aid of the revived Pūrva Mīmāmsā philosophy which re-established the supremacy of the Vedas and the Vedic sacrifices. The long prevalence, however, of the religion of non-salughter had created sentiments among the people too strong to be suppressed; and although Buddhism was extinct in India excepting Magadha, that sentiment feared its head again in the rising popularity of Jainism and Vaishnavism and in the reviving ascendancy of the Uttara Mimāmsā philosophy of the Vedanta. The first Hindu kingdoms established after the death of Harsha about 650 A. D. fell about 800 A. D. both by natural decadence which overtakes kingly dynasties after a period of about 150 to 200 years, and by other causes which will be presently discussed. About this time, however, fresh orthodox Hindu kingdoms of Rajputs arose to withstand the first onslaught of the Mahomedan religion on India under the Arabs and raised Hinduism to its climax. These kingdoms lasted from about 800 A. D. to about 1000 A. D. when they fell before the second onslaught of Mahomedanism under the Turks of Mahmud of Ghazni. He, however, retired from India excepting the Panjab and a third set of Hindu kingly dynasties ruled in India for about 200 years more and these finally fell before the third onslaught of Mahomedanism under Turks and Afgans who now settled in the country and established Mahomedan rule in India on a permanent footing. The principal Hindu period thus ranges from 600 to 1200 A. D. and it may also be called, by reference to time, the Mediæval period of Indian history. But although in Hindustan, or Northern India, the Hindu period thus closed about 1200 A. D. Hindu independent kingdoms continued to rule in the Deccan for a hundred years more and these fell before the conquering expeditions of Allauddin Khilji and his general Malik Kafur in about 1300 A. D. South India rallied again for the last time and reared a strong independent Hindu kingdom viz. that of Vijayanagar, and this kingdom, after a brilliant career of about 200 years, was finally defeated and completely destroyed by the Mahomedan powers of the Deccan at the battle of Talikot in 1561 A. D.
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The reader will now see that the history of the Mediæval Hindu period which we propose to write in these volumes falls into three sub-periods viz. first from 647 A. D. the date of Harsha's death to about 800 A. D.
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the date of the fall of the empire of the Varmās of Kanauj, second from 800 to 1000 A. D. that is the period of the supremacy of the Pratihāra emperors of Kanauj and third from 1000 A. D. to 1200 A. D. the date of the fall of the Gaharwar Rathod emperors of Kanauj. It must be mentioned here that during the whole of the Hindu period Kanauj was looked upon universally as the capital of India just as in the previous Aryo-Buddhistic period, Indian kingdoms looked up to Pātaliputra as the Urbs Prima of India. In the Deccan, these three sub-periods were distinguished by three Maratha kingly dynasties viz. the Chālukyas of Bādāmi, the Rāshtrakūtas of Malkhed and the later Chālukyas of Kalyan, brought on in the rear by the Yādavas of Devagiri from 1200 to 1300 A. D. These three sub-divisions of the Hindu period we propose to treat of in three separate volumes to which a fourth volume may be added dealing with the history of the Deccan during the fourteenth century and the history of South India down to the final fall of the Hindus of Vijayanagar in 1561 A. D. In fact our history may well be described as the history of the decline and down-fall of the Aryan empire in India, like the immortal work of Gibbon on the decline and fall of the Roman empire ending with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 A. D. We have, however, called this work of ours by the more modest name of the history of Mediæval Hindu India containing as it does the history of the several Hindu independent kingdoms which ruled in India in mediæval times. This first volume contains the history of the first set of Hindu kingdoms which ruled in India from about 650 to 800 A. D. though in particular cases like that of Kashmir it has been found advisable to bring the history down to the end of the Hindu period i. e. to 1200 A. D. We have, however, followed the example of Gibbon in one important respect and have given in Book I a detailed account of the reign of Harsha which is in a manner the basis of this history, and we have also taken a survey of the political, social and religious condition of the country in the time of that emperor, a condition which furnishes the starting point for the subsequent evolution of the Hindu people. As the reign of the Antonines was the culminating point of the Roman empire so was the reign of Harsha the culminating point of India's evolution, and curiously enough it will be found from these pages that Harsha resembled the two great Roman emperors in many and most marked points. And it is interesting to note that as reliable materials are available for giving an account of the reign of Harsha and the condition of his times, as were available to Gibbon in writing about the age of the Antonines. The records of the travels of Hiuen Tsang and the life of Harsha written by the court-poet Bāṇa, supply us with two most vivid and detailed pictures drawn by eye witnesses, which are invaluable to the historian of ancient India. It is no wonder, therefore, that we have in this volume based most of our remarks on the observations of these two writers who, it is refreshing to find, corroborate each other in the minutest details.
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The momentous question will here be naturally asked—a question to which the writer of these pages is expected to give a reply—what were the causes which led to the decline and down-fall of the Aryans in India? They had withstood successive invasions by the Greeks, the Śakas, the Kushans and the Huns. They had not only stubbornly resisted these invasions but freed India within a hundred years each time. What is it that made them unable to beat back the Arabs who permanently enslaved Sind in 712 A. D. and the Turks and the Afghans who finally subjected India to Mahomedan rule in 1000 and 1200 A. D.? What was it in the history of India from 500 A. D., when approximately the last foreign rule of the Huns was overthrown, down to about 1000 A.D. that sapped the strength of the Indian people and made their warriors fall like card-board sepoys before the Turks of the Ghaznavide Mahmud? The historian of India who has studied this period of about 500 years of Indian history is bound to throw light on the solution of this momentous question and we proceed to indicate our views succinctly in this matter.
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The first and the foremost cause of the fall of the Indo-Aryans was the complete ascendancy gained during this period by what may be called the doctrine of the divine right of kings. During the Aryan period Indian kingdoms were looked upon as belonging to the people. In Alexander's days there were even some states where there were no kings and which are described by Greek writers as republics. States and even kings were then known by the names of the peoples and not by the names of kingly families. Gradually during the Aryo-Buddhistic period, owing to the recurrence of foreign invasion and foreign rule, the people were less consulted in governmental concerns, the kingly power gradually became absolute and kingship was eventually looked upon as derived not from the people but from divine favour. It came to be believed that those who had performed severe austerities in their previous births became kings in this. During the Hindu period, therefore, kingdoms came to be known by the names of kingly families or by the names of the capitals they ruled. Instead of the Kurus and the Pāñchālas, the Madras and the Surasenas of the Aryan period we find in Hiuen Tsang, the same kingdoms called by the names of Thanesar and Kanauj, Jālandhara and Mathurā. The mass of the people ceased to care who ruled them and were in fact ready to transfer their allegiance to any new king or kingly family which was strong or fortunate enough to establish his or its power. As explained in Chapter VII Book I at length, under such view the sentiment of patriotism had no scope and in fact never develop in India. The sentiment of loyalty alone could flourish and did develop in this country. But this system of political philosophy conduced to the development of treason also along with loyalty and treason has consequently always been more in evidence in the history of India than in the history of the West. Not only, therefore, did the Indian people as a whole never fight against the Mahomedans but traitors were always found ready to serve as instruments in the hands of foreign invaders. For Hindu superstition looked equally upon foreigners as enjoying divine favour, as is illustrated by the history of Sind recorded in this volume. Where the feeling of nationality is well-developed and strong, not only is there less inclination towards treason, but the whole people offer stubborn resistance at each point in time and space to foreign conquest and make it almost impossible. The case in India during the Hindu period was exactly the reverse of this.
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The people of India were prevented by another and more important reason from offering resistance as a whole to the Mahomedans. It is our view that one of the three or more main causes of the fall of the Indo-Aryans was the prevalence of Buddhism in this country. As Gibbon has shown that the spread of Christianity was one of the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire, an impartial historian of India cannot help declaring that the prevalence of Buddhism in India operated in a similar manner. Buddhism worked to bring about this downfall of Indian kingdoms in more than one important direction. The high esteem in which Buddhism held sanyāsa and the fact that it allowed people of all castes, men and women, old and young, to flock to the fold of recluses and pass a life of idleness and begging spread among the people a sense of carelessness about their political condition and worldly prosperity, which materially impaired their capacity to offer resistance to foreign invaders. The history of the conquest of Sind as described in these pages will afford the most lamentable illustration of this tendency of Buddhism. Mediæval Hinduism indeed tried to eradicate this morbid feeling of the people towards sanyāsa, but the sentiment was now too deep-rooted in the minds of the people and as we shall have to relate in our second volume, the greatest philosopher of India Śankara had to recognise it and inculcate it as a tenet of the new doctrine he preached, although he tried to restrict Sanyāsa to Brahmins and to males only. The Hinduism of modern days does not respect this restriction and thousands of Sadhus of all castes, young and old, male and female live in temples and Mathas which have practically replaced the Sanghārāmas of the Buddhists so vividly described by Hiuen Tsang, and pass their time, not so much in devotional prayers as in an unceasing struggle to live by begging. Such a philosophy must act prejudicially on a people's capacity to resist and it is no wonder that the Indo-Aryans fell before the Mahomedans in a manner they had never done before.
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The second direction in which the prevalence of Buddhism impaired the capacity of the people to resist was the remarkable change which the practice of the principle of Ahimsā effected during the Hindu period in the food of the people. Like sanyāsa, Ahimsā too belongs to the old Aryan religion, but Buddhism so completely identified itself with that tenet that Buddhist kings in India's early history often employed their political power to prohibit animal food along with animal sacrifice in their kingdoms. Meghavāhana of Kashmir and Śilāditya of Malwa were two most renowned kings in this respect. The latter, as Hiuen Tsang relates, gave strained water even to elephants and horses "lest insects might be killed." The efforts of Emperor Harsha in this direction were more extensive and more successful and Huien Tsang records that animal slaughter and animal food ceased throughout the Five Indies. Now there can be no question that a nation which adopts and practises abstention from animal food as a high principle deteriorates in its capacity to hold its own in the struggle of nations, unless special efforts are made to keep up the fighting capacities of the people. A non-flesh-eating people cannot possess the physical stamina, the mental grip and tenacity, the restlessness, and even the ferocity so necessary for success in fighting which, unhappily throughout history, characterizes the evolution of the human race. The history of Mediæval Hindu India establishes the same fact. The Hindu kingdoms again and again gave their adhesion to the old Aryan religion of animal sacrifice and again and again the sentiment of Ahimsā asserted itself till at last Hinduism accepted abstention from animal food as one of its foremost tenets, and Hindu India finally fell before Mahomedans as we shall have to relate in our third volume. Even now the fighting portions of the people of India, viz. the Rajputs and the Sikhs, the Marathas and the Jats, not to speak of the outside Gurkhas, are flesh-eating people and these in modern Indian history have certainly proved their capacity for resistance.*
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Now we yield to none in our conviction that Ahimsā is one of the few highest principles which the Indian Aryans in their spiritual progress have evolved. As we have said in this volume, there is no example in the history of the world of a great people having given up animal food in the pursuit of a high spiritual ideal, involving the loss of so valuable a possession as political independence. The beneficial influence of Buddhism and Jainism cannot but be acknowledged in stopping animal sacrifices in this country. And if we cannot sacrifice animals to propitiate the deity, we cannot, religiously speaking, partake of animal food. The position which Jainism has taken in this respect is the only logical one and Max Muller has properly complimented Indian thinkers on their fearlessness in taking up the position at which they logically arrive. It would, therefore, be both illogical and unspiritual for us to recommend animal food much more animal sacrifices. The Vedas again do not prescribe animal sacrifices only and we can still retain our allegience to the Vedas if we make inanimate offerings to the Vedic deities in the sacrificial fire. We need not, therefore, recede from the high spiritual position at which we in our evolution have arrived. Especially, the Hindus including the Sikhs will never countenance the slaughter of cows which have been sacred to them even from Vedic times and which have become still more sacred in consequence of their association with Shri Krishna. But what we have to emphasize here is that the people of this country have as a matter of history lost their political independence, to a large extent, because of their having given up animal food in obedience to their higher spiritual aspirations. The political danger involved in this change of the food of the majority of the people was not foreseen and as we shall see in our third volume no conscious effort was made to counteract the evil resulting from the change. For, as we have said in the body of the book, we believe that even a non-flesheating people can hold their own in the struggle of nations, if they are inured to arms and lead an abstemious life. Such unfortunately ceased to be the case during the 12th and 13th centuries, and India fell an easy prey to the inroads of the more ferocious and sturdy flesh-eating peoples of the north.
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∗ Of course flesh-eating cannot supply the want of martial instinct and several flesh-eating peoples are devoid of military qualities.
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We will lastly refer to the third most important cause which impaired the power of the people of India to resist foreign conquest as a whole. The ramification of the four main castes or varṇas which also took place during the Mediaeval Hindu period contributed, in our view, very largely to weaken the power of the people for resistance. History shows that at the beginning of the Hindu period, there was not any extensive subdivision of the four main castes and these again were not water-tight compartments distinguished by the interdiction of marriage and even of food. By the operation of several causes during the Hindu period main castes began to subdivide themselves into innumerable subcastes not in consequence of any Buddhistic influence, but in spite of it, till at last about the end of the Hindu period that stupendous structure of caste, with its jealousies and its prejudices, with its rigorous restrictions on food and marriage which we see today was completed. The natural result was that the people were divided and could not and did not offer that united opposition which is necessary to successfully resist foreign attempts at conquest.
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What then is the message we have to give to our Hindu country-men through the pages of this history? It is this:— first and foremost conscious efforts must be made to develop the sentiment of nationality among the people of this country, overriding all the jealousies and differences created by provincial or linguistic separation and even by religion. Secondly, we must recognise more acutely our worldly duties and responsibilities and systematic efforts must be made, especially by those of us who do not eat flesh, to develop our physical and mental capacities for fighting. And thirdly all subcastes must be obliterated by free intercourse in food and gradually even in marriage, though of course it must be admitted that the division of the Hindu society into the four main castes or Varṇas is in-effaceable and its obliteration should not be attempted. Every religious revolution in India attempted it and failed. Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Aryanism successively tried to destroy varṇas and so did even Christianity. Each and all not only failed, but eventually succumbed to the influence of caste. Subcastes, however, have no sanction in the Hindu Śāstras and systematic efforts to obliterate them will be successful, especially because they are the growth of recent times only.
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It remains for us to add a few words with regard to the contents and the printing of this volume. It consists, as stated before, of two books, the first treating of Harsha and his times, and giving the history of India from about 600 to 650 A. D. and the second giving the history of the first set of Hindu kingdoms which ruled in the whole of
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India from about 650 to 800 A. D., though in particular cases as stated above, the history has been brought down to the end of the Hindu period. At the beginning of each chapter we have indicated the materials on which the account in that chapter is based. Following the example of Sir V. Smith’s Early History of India we have thrown all controversial matter in notes in small type. Further, Sanskrit quotations and words have been avoided as far as possible, translations being usually given. In spelling Sanskrit words, the usual rules of transliteration have been followed (except in words like Brahmin which have become thoroughly anglicised) but mistakes have often crept in such transliteration which the indulgent reader will, it is hoped, overlook. Lastly, we have thought it expedient to give in an appendix certain inscriptions in the original, which will serve as examples and which may be read with interest by those who can read and understand Sanskrit. An index and a religious map of India of the time of Hiuen Tsang have been added and will be found useful and interesting.
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POONA CITY, 1st January 1921.
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C. V. VAIDYA.
Linked texts (1)
- 玄奘 — Classical Chinese