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ANCIENT INDIA
Introduction to Ancient India and its Geography
Modern India today is composed of the nations of India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It has always been a land of contrasts,
physically, religiously, and linguistically, with numerous ethnic groups,
languages, cultures, and levels of sophistication. Sometimes India is
referred to as a subcontinent as the triangular landmass is resting on a
tectonic plate that has been diving beneath the main Asian landmass for
millions of years, causing the Himalaya Mountains to continually grow taller
as long ago India was part of Eastern Africa and broke off. The earliest
evidence of civilization was located in the Indus River plain, but over 1000
years later the Ganges River plain was populated, and eventually the Indus
and Ganges Rivers became known as the Father and Mother of India. Today
the Ganges is considered the holy river by Hindus. Every year with the
melting of the snow in the Himalaya Mountains, silt washes down, fertilizing
the river basins like the Nile and Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the Middle
East.
The Indus River flows southwest through the Punjab area and
empties into the Arabian Sea, in an area called Sind. The Ganges River
flows southeast into the Bay of Bengal. Seasonal monsoons also provide
needed water for agriculture and other uses. Western India is called
Rajasthan, and is dry and desert territory. Southern India is rather dry,
which is called the Deccan plateau, and on both coastal regions are high hills
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called ghats. On the Malabar Coast on the Western part of Southern India
rainfall is heavy, and this is where spices were grown, processed, and
exported for thousands of years.
Indus Valley Civilization – First Ancient Civilization in India
India’s first civilization was along the Indus River, and thus called the
Indus Valley Civilization. One of the populated cities was Harappa, thus
another name for this earliest society is also called the Harappan Civilization.
It is only recently that the world scholars have learned about this early
civilization through excavation, yet it lasted at least 1000 years. It is
thought nearly 300 cities and many more towns and villages made up this
sophisticated civilization. Seventy abandoned urban sites dot the river plain,
but the main ones were Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and Lothal. Lothal is the
only city from this ancient civilization within the borders of the modern
nation of India.1 Excavations are not complete at these numerous sites, and
as the water table is rising, they may never be located. Their writing system
has not yet been deciphered. Over 400 symbols have been identified, and
one of the latest opinions of scholars is that it may not have been a written
language, but signs of ownership. The writing or symbols have been found
on seals. After this advanced civilization ceased to exist, it was another 1200
years before another written language was uncovered that has been found
on Ashoka’s pillars (circa 200’s B.C.E.)
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The Indus River and Valleys are in Pakistan today.
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Advanced pre-planning of cities and sophisticated plumbing
It has been ascertained that this dynamic civilization preplanned the
major three cities and laid out a grid before people lived there. We know
that these people traded extensively with the Mesopotamian Civilization, and
perhaps as they saw their more casual organization of Mesopotamian towns,
they decided to plan ahead. These Indus Valley people had superb
engineers as there were the following amenities in these major cities: vast
hypocaust heating systems, intricate underground sewage removal systems
with manhole covers, piped water to each home and business, and indoor
toilets and bathtubs. At Lothal the walled water reservoir allowing ships to
come and go regardless of the tides is still there with visible water. At the
Lothal Museum is a reconstruction of what scholars believe is the busy
trading city with their warehouses, work sites, etc. Jewelry and bead
manufacturing was part of their industrial pursuits. The bricks were
standardized to build these structures, and it is apparent they had standard
weights and measures.
Religious practices
People must have lived comfortable lives, but no large palaces or
temples have been found.
Their religious practices included the worship of
a mother goddess Devi, and the local people today are continually crafting
replicas of these figures. In the later written Aryan primary source The Rig
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Veda, they refer to these ancient Indus Valley people as phallic worshipers.
Still today the avatar or god Shiva’s lingam is propitiated at many sites in
India, including one of the newest Hindu Temples at Benares University in
Varanasi. Large walled pools were also part of these early Indians’ religious
practices, and the evidence for continual use of water as a salvation ritual is
evidenced at Kali’s Temple in Calcutta, where her worshipers immerse
themselves in the water of the pool. It is believed by Hindus that immersion
at the most southern tip of India today, where the Indian Ocean, Arabia Sea,
and Sea of Bengal come together, washes away their sins.
Why the downfall of the Indus Valley Civilization
Gradually life in the Indus Valley Civilization began to deteriorate:
buildings not up to code, roads not kept up, families crowded into houses,
and then the whole civilization collapsed. Why did this occur? At first
scholars tried to explain that these people were displaced by a superior
warrior nomadic culture of Indo-Europeans called the Aryans, who entered
India from the Northwest. It was said that they enslaved their darker
skinned inhabitants, and imposed their gods and social organization on
them. Now scholars have disputed this scenario, and suggest that the
Harappan civilization had already collapsed by the time of the Aryan
invasions. So did the Indus civilization fall to a series of natural disasters?
Satellite imagery shows that the Indus River was silting up, and people were
forced to relocate. Earthquakes may have produced heavy flooding or
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changed the river channels so agriculture was disrupted. This led to
refugees who relocated to villages or tribes where territory squabbles
ensued.
Arrival of the Aryans in India and their Religious Rituals
Beginning about 1500 B.C.E. nomadic Aryans or Indo-Europeans
entered into India along the Ganges and upper Indus Rivers. Unfortunately,
our knowledge of them comes primarily from their religious writings, The
Vedas, as few material artifacts have survived, and there were definitely no
large cities like Harappa. Hinduism is the term used to categorize a complex
and diverse range of religious and philosophical practices of these Aryans
coupled with various ethnic and linguistic groups for the past several
thousand years throughout South Asia. These Vedas were supposedly
collected circa 1500-1000 B.C.E., but as there are no written manuscripts
until the 4th century B.C.E., these collections of hymns, prayers, chants, and
magical spells to the various gods and goddesses were celebrated during the
sacrifices of animals and other rituals. The most famous of these Vedas is
the Rig Veda, composed about 1500 B.C.E. by Aryan priests and poets. The
last of the Vedas contain the Upanishads, philosophical dialogues which
formed the basis of Hindu religious thought, composed circa ninth to fifth
centuries B.C.E. In the Upanishads, there was a definite turning away from
the sacrifices of earlier Vedic ritualism to inner sacrifice, to a life of
contemplation based on meditation. Ascetic practices became prominent.
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Development of Hinduism: Reincarnation, Karma, Dharma, Nirvana,
Avatars, Caste, and Sacred Writings
These texts articulated related ideas of reincarnation and karma. This
period of religious ferment culminated in the founding of two great Indian
religions in the 6th century B.C.E., Jainism and Buddhism, both of which
challenged the religious authority of the Vedas and the priesthood associated
with them.
In this period of Hinduism male gods predominated and the
hereditary priesthood of Brahmans achieved great religious power as
officiators at sacrificial ceremonies. At heart of Vedic and Hindu world view
was the world soul Brahma, and one’s individual soul or atman is a reflection
of the world soul. At the end of the Rig Veda is a passage concerning the
beginning of things: “There was not then either the nonexistent or the
existent? There was neither sky nor heavenly vault beyond it. . . In the
Upanishads, the soul is immortal, but it can be born over and over, in what
is referred to as transmigration of the atman, rebirth or reincarnation. The
material life the soul takes on whether it is a bit of algae, a tiger, or human
being, depends upon its conduct in its previous life. In tandem with this
idea of reincarnation was the class or caste system. Originally it was
comprised of three social classes, the warriors, the priests, and the
commoners. Once they reached India they made it more complex, by
adding a class of slaves, where most of the dark-skinned Dravidian speakers
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went (what scholars refer to as the original Ancient Indus Valley people).
Later the untouchable cast was added. The next change was to list the
Brahmins or priestly caste first, the warrior or aristocratic class next, the
farmers and merchants as the third caste and the slaves as the fourth caste.
Over time these caste distinctions became hereditary. Eventually, hundreds
of castes were formed, although today legally caste is outlawed, it still
exists. Over time your caste prescribed who you could associate with,
marry, and what type of job you had. Caste also limited your diet, and
sometimes required you to perform rituals of purification as often as five
times per day. In certain cases a man could marry a woman of a lower
caste, but the woman could not marry a lower caste man without disgracing
her family and defiling herself. Every caste had its customs and duties, and
the individual soul accumulated good or bad karma depending upon one’s
actions in life, and by how well or how badly one carried out their dharma or
duty. A good warrior will submit to his duty even if he does not want to
fight. If a person accumulates so much bad karma, that person may very
well be reborn as a mosquito or as a woman. Ideally the soul should aspire
to escape the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Aiming for perfect union with
Brahma, the universal soul is called nirvana. The Hindu faith produces
people with a great deal of personal integrity, patient, kind to all living
creatures and resigned to their life role. People in India have a sense of
identity with the past. By the time of Buddha, the priestly caste had
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elaborated the rules of daily living so much that Hindu culture was in some
danger of stagnating. One of the greatest virtues of Hinduism is its
toleration of other religions.
Important Avatars in Hinduism
Hindus had and have many deities or avatars (reincarnations of
Brahma, the universal soul). Indra was the war god and god of thunder,
rather like Zeus or Thor. Varuna was the Lord of Universal Order of dharma
like Apollo. Shiva was the giver and destroyer of life. Devi or Kali was the
mother goddess. Each god had many rebirths or avatars. Varuna also
appeared as Vishnu, who was reborn as the great hero, Krishna. On the
façade of the Hindu temples were carvings of these avatars or deities with
their symbolic totem in their hand or next to them.
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There are intriguing
stories relating to these avatars, and the Indian people have massive
festivals to enjoy worshiping their gods. Shiva and Parvati were husband
and wife in one tale, and they had a young son. One day Shiva accidentally
cut off his son Ganesha’s head, and his wife became inconsolable until he
promised her he would get another head of the first person walking down
the road. As it was an elephant, Ganesha was given an elephant head.
Ganesha as remover of obstacles became one of the most popular deities
even for the Jains and Buddhists. One of the myths of the monkey-headed
god Hanuman is found in the Ramayana, where Shiva requested from
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This is still true today where Hinduism is practiced
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Hanuman a particular plant on a mountain, but forgetting which one,
Hanuman brought Shiva the whole mountain. In other episodes about
Shiva, he is called Lord of the Dance, and has multiple legs, enhancing his
ability to shine as a dancer. Parvati is also identified with the Goddess Kali,
who was the consort of Shiva. She is a powerful creator and destroyer too,
who accidently killed Shiva, and awoke to this fact as she stood on his body.
She is usually portrayed with a red tongue dripping with blood, a necklace of
skulls, and other iconography clearly distinguishing her image. Another
important avatar or deity was Saraswati, who with her multiple arms was
the originator of the written Sanskrit language, goddess of wisdom, science,
learning, knowledge, and music. Her consort was Brahma. Inside the
temples are various shrines to the individual avatars, where worshipers
leave sacrifices, flowers, milk, fruit, etc. About the only goddess or avatar
that has her own distinct temple just in her name is Kali, in Calcutta.
Hinduism is a religion you tend to be born into as you are born into a
particular caste.
Hindus response to other people’s gods is simply to find
them interesting manifestations of spirituality. Consequently, there became
as many ways to practice Hinduism as there were people in India.
Mahabharata and the Ramayana: India’s great epics
The Aryans also produced two great epics, the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana. These two can be compared to the Iliad and the Odyssey of
Homeric Greeks. Like the Iliad, the Mahabharata is a story of war. The
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Ramayana tells about the adventures of Prince Rama and his faithful wife
Sita, just as the Odyssey contains adventures of Odysseus and his faithful
wife Penelope.
Rama was also the reincarnation of Vishnu, one of the
supreme gods, so Rama is both human and divine. The Bhagavad-Gita is a
700-verse sacred scripture from the Mahabharata, where the themes of the
consequences of war and the soul’s immortality are related in what is
considered as the crowning achievement of India’s spiritual wisdom and
guide spoken by Lord Krishna to his disciple Arjuna.
Development of Jainism
The religion known as Jainism was an intermediary step between
Hinduism and Buddhism, though founded at the same time as or earlier than
Buddhism. The Jains were a group of extreme ascetics with the main tenet
being the absolute refusal to take life. They sought to achieve nirvana by
starving themselves to death. For the Jains, plants had as much life form as
animals. In practice Jains are strict vegetarians, but the Jain Priests only eat
what has fallen from a tree or bush. Their founder is said to be Mahavira or
the “Great Hero”, who was the last of twenty-four saints. Protesting against
the ritualism of Hinduism was one of the major beliefs of Jainism. Nonviolence was another basic tenet of Jains, and Mahatma Gandhi in the
twentieth century made this belief popular. Many Jains became quite
wealthy because money lending and mercantile endeavors were about the
only profession open to them without risking the direct taking of life. The
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sacredness of the cow became a practice of Indians with the arrival of the
Jain religion. Jain Priests did not wear any clothes and always carried a
ostrich fan to clear any insects or plants before they sat down. In India
today it is a honor to have a Jain priest attend your event.
Siddhartha Gautama or the Buddha and the Development of
Buddhism
As a prince of a powerful tribe, the Sakyas, who lived in the foothills of
the Himalayas (present-day Nepal), Siddhartha Gautama became the
Buddha, and thus another great religion called Buddhism began in India.
While early 20th century scholars gave his dates as 563-483 B.C.E., recent
scholarship gives 486 or 411-400 as his death dates. Raised in a very
secluded fashion by his parents, the stories relate that at the age of twentynine, Siddhartha decided to renounce his wealth and prestige to seek
enlightenment. He first went to the Brahmin sages north of the Ganges
River, but found their hairsplitting dialogues unsatisfactory. Next he turned
to an extreme form of ascetic meditation, like disciplines of Jainism, but this
left him weak and depressed. Finally, as he sat beneath a Bodhi tree
thinking about his quest for truth, he experienced a flash of understanding.
At this point Siddhartha became Buddha or the enlightened one. At Sarnath,
right outside the town of Varanasi, is a Buddhist Temple with the purported
descendant of the original Bodhi Tree still standing. Buddha then went out
into the world and began teaching others his Four Noble Truths and his
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eight-fold path to Nirvana. The primary modus operandi was for Buddha the
elimination of suffering. The First Noble Truth is that human beings suffer.
Life is suffering and everything changes and decays. The pleasures of our
senses and mind are merely traps that bind us to life and suffering. Our
ignorance of this fact is the Second Noble Truth. As the world is sorrowful,
transient, and soul-less, it is this materialistic rejection of the soul that sets
early Buddhism apart from the idealism of Brahmans and Jains. Any ill
which we can understand could therefore be cured, which is the Third Noble
Truth. The Fourth Noble Truth was the Eight-Fold path to elimination of
suffering. To follow the Eight-Fold path was to hold, practice and follow the
right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood,
right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. The difficulty came in
properly defining “right.” If you walked the Eight Fold Path without a
misstep that the goal of nirvana would be achieved, and the pain of suffering
would finally be overcome. Buddha seems to have regarded himself as a
philosopher and teacher rather than a founder of a religion. He did not
attack the Hindu gods or rituals, and he regarded the legalism of Brahmans
with indifference. Buddhism simply by-passed caste, ritual sacrifices, and
the fulfilling of one’s dharma or duty according to priestly regulations.
However, Buddha did not reject the Hindu idea of karma. For him, our
actions in life affect others. Buddha taught for forty-five years until his
death. By that time his followers in India had become a widespread order of
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monks, with vows of poverty and chastity, to pursue enlightenment
according to the teachings of Buddha. To appease and acknowledge his
mother-in-law’s financial support of his teachings, Buddha consented to
allow women to become Buddhist nuns, but they were not allowed to leave
their nunneries. Monastic Buddhism spread East and West, North and
South, in their saffron robes, teaching moderation, nonviolence, and love for
all creatures.
Two Major forms of Buddhism: Theravada and Mahayana
As Buddhism spread it originally was divided into two major forms,
Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada
Buddhism is the more ascetic Buddhism, and basically is where an individual
follows the Four Noble Truths and Eight-Fold Path by himself to achieve
Nirvana. Mahayana Buddhism criticized Theravada school for focusing on
individual perfection. Mahayana belief centers on the idea of a Buddha-elect
or Bodhisattvas, which detain their achievement of Nirvana long enough to
help others in their quest for Nirvana. Mahayana Buddhists came to believe
that Buddha was a god. This form of Buddhism took root in Nepal, Tibet,
China, and Japan, while Theravada Buddhism is the prevailing religion in
Thailand and Burma, who still theoretically regard Buddha as a man, though
they make offerings of flowers and incense to his image. It is ironic that
Buddhism is no longer an important religion in India itself.
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Mauryan Empire
The first political union in India since the destruction of the Ancient
Indus Valley Civilization large enough to be called an empire was the
Mauryan Empire. It included both the Indus and Ganges river valleys, and
was born as a defensive response to Alexander the Great’s military attacks
on India in the fourth century B.C.E. Chandragupta as the local raja with his
capital at Patna is considered the founder of this empire. He was a military
dictator, but developed a shrewd administration with an organized
bureaucracy of civil servants and spies to keep his subjects in order. To
assist him were his closest relatives and most trusted generals. His army
had a strong infantry, a cavalry component including 8000 chariots and 9000
elephants. Even if these figures are exaggerated, they attest to the state’s
remarkable size with an estimated population of fifty million by the third
century B.C.E.
Ashoka, the major ruler of the Mauryan Empire
Ashoka, as the grandson of Chandragupta extended Mauryan rule
southward until he controlled most of the Deccan except the southernmost
tip. He was hailed as the first universal emperor of India. In his tenth year
of his reign he converted to Buddhism as he was dismayed by his soldiers
slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in the Eastern part of India
called Kalinga. Movies have been made of his pachydermal tank core
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fighting for the enlargement of his Empire. After his conversion to
Buddhism, he practiced religious toleration, and gave up using violence. He
ruled with appointed overseers of law like the Missi Dominici in
Charlemagne’s kingdom. This must have been a formidable task as the
countless number of customs, laws, and languages among all the regions of
India. To bring his people together, Ashoka built forty-foot pillars of stone,
which had carved on them his basic moral advice of generosity, truthfulness,
compassion, doing one’s dharma, and respect for parents. At the top or
capital of the pillar were three lions, which became the symbol for India.
Part of Ashoka’s humane ruling practices included building wells for farmers
and villagers, constructing 1500 miles of roads with numerous rest stops
with shade trees for travelers and merchants. Many Indians followed his
example of non-violence and became vegetarians during his reign. During
Ashoka’s reign was a great period for Buddhist buildings. The stupa became
a distinct architectural mound where each one on its top held some of
Buddha’s ashes. Supposedly, Ashoka erected 84,000 Buddhist stupas.
Centuries after Ashoka architects added embellishments to the basic design
of the Buddhist edifice which included a little square house on top where
Buddha’s spirit was supposed to pass from earth to the realm of heavenly
nirvana. Atop the house were tiers of umbrellas as the umbrella is the Hindu
symbol of sovereignty. Maybe these distinct Buddhist buildings influenced
the pagoda for China. Stupas were also carved within caves of solid rock at
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Ajanta and Ellora where some of the most beautiful sculptures can be seen
today. After Ashoka’s death his empire began to disintegrate, but his
empire provided the model of Indian unity for the future.
Ancient India’s Social Customs and Structure of Society
Indian social customs and daily life during these ancient centuries is
intriguing and varied. The family was an extended one with usually three
generations living together in an essentially patriarchal pattern except along
the Malabar Coast near the southwestern tip of India where a matriarchal
form of social organization prevailed right down to modern times. In most
of the sub-continent the oldest male possessed legal authority over the
entire family. Male superiority was expressed in a variety of ways. Women
could not serve as priests, and only the men could study the Vedas.
Generally, the men had a monopoly on education since the primary goal of
learning to read was to be able to carry on the family rituals. In high caste
families young men after have been initiated into the Hindu faith, had a
sacred thread strung from the left shoulder across the chest to under the
right arm. Beginning his vedic studies with a guru or teacher, he then went
on to higher studies in one of the major cities with his goal either as a
religious or professional person, and he could not get married until twelve
years of study. Only males could inherit property, except in the few cases
where there were no sons. Legally, women were always minors, and divorce
was prohibited although it did occur. According to the Arthasastra, a
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deserted wife could seek a divorce. Polygamy did occur but only rarely and
then mainly among higher castes, but husbands were permitted to take a
second wife if his first one was barren. Children were important to have as
security for your old age, and a famous Hindu proverb says “May you be the
mother of a hundred sons.”
According to the Hindu classic Laws of Manu,
women were subordinated first to their father, then to their husband, and
then to their sons. Perhaps the most graphic symbol of women’s subjection
to men was the ritual of sati. This occurred in the Brahman priestly caste
where the wife was required to throw herself on her dead husband’s funeral
pyre. Yet there are some signs that women played an influential role in
Indian society. The Hindu code of behavior stressed that women should be
treated with respect. Indians also appeared to be fascinated by female
sexuality, and traditions were held that women often used their sexual
powers to achieve domination over men. The famous Kama Sutra is
practically a textbook devoted to erotic sexuality. The author of the
Mahabharata complained that “fire has never too many logs, the ocean
never too many rivers, death never too many living souls, and fair-eyed
woman never too many men.” Family religious practices were individually
carried out in the homes to commemorate their ancestors. It was the oldest
male’s responsibility to conduct these rites as in Ancient China.