ANCIENT EMPIRES IN INDIA
ANCIENT EMPIRES IN INDIA
ANCIENT EMPIRES AND RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
The east not only produced the first Indian empire, it also gave rise to new religious movements, Buddhism and Jainism. Both flourished in a region which was in close contact with the Gangetic civilization of the west but had not been subjected to the slow growth of its royal institutions and courtly Brahminism. Thus, entirely new forms of organisation evolved, like the monastic order (sangha) of the Buddhists and the imperial control of trade and land revenue which provided the resources for a greater military potential than any of the Aryan kingdoms could have achieved. Rice was one of the most important resources of this region, because the eastern Gangetic basin was the largest region of India to fulfill the necessary climatic conditions. Well-organized Buddhist monasteries were initially better suited for the cultural penetration of this vast eastern region than small groups of brahmins would have been. Monasteries, of course, required more sustained support than such small groups of Brahmins, but this was no problem in this rice bowl of India. The new empire of the east, with its centre in Magadha to the south of the river Ganga, first vanquished the tribal republics in the Trans-Gandak region to the north of the Ganga and then the Aryan kingdoms of the west, showing little respect for their traditions and finally imposing a new ideology of its own. But this empire in turn succumbed to internal conflicts and the onslaught of new invaders who came from the north, where the Aryans had come from more than a millennium earlier. The new invaders arrived when ecological conditions were improving once more in northern India. They also had the benefit of finding readily available imperial patterns which they could adopt very quickly. Aryan royal institutions had taken centuries to mature in the relatively isolated Gangetic basin. In a world of closer connections and wider horizons where Hellenistic, Iranian and Indian models of governance and ritual sovereignty were known to all, a new invader could leap from the darkness of an unrecorded nomadic past to the limelight of imperial history within a relatively short period. Shakas and Kushanas swept in this way across northern India. Their short-lived imperial traditions embodied a syncretism of several available patterns of legitimation. They also adopted Hinduism, not the Vedic tradition but rather the more popular cults of Vishnu and Shiva. The waves of imperial grandeur which swept across northern India then stimulated the south. But when the first great indigenous dynasty of the south, the Shatavahanas, emerged they did not follow the syncretism of the northern empires but harked back to the tradition of the small Aryan kingdoms of the Gangetic civilisation. The great horse sacrifice was celebrated once more by a Shatavahana king, but the meaning of this ritual was now very different from that of the old flexible test of royal authority. It was now a great symbolic gesture of a mighty king whose
Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro,with the Great Bath in the front.
History map of the Indus Valley civilization
Indian Map in 1567
The east not only produced the first Indian empire, it also gave rise to new religious movements, Buddhism and Jainism. Both flourished in a region which was in close contact with the Gangetic civilization of the west but had not been subjected to the slow growth of its royal institutions and courtly Brahminism. Thus, entirely new forms of organisation evolved, like the monastic order (sangha) of the Buddhists and the imperial control of trade and land revenue which provided the resources for a greater military potential than any of the Aryan kingdoms could have achieved. Rice was one of the most important resources of this region, because the eastern Gangetic basin was the largest region of India to fulfill the necessary climatic conditions. Well-organized Buddhist monasteries were initially better suited for the cultural penetration of this vast eastern region than small groups of brahmins would have been. Monasteries, of course, required more sustained support than such small groups of Brahmins, but this was no problem in this rice bowl of India. The new empire of the east, with its centre in Magadha to the south of the river Ganga, first vanquished the tribal republics in the Trans-Gandak region to the north of the Ganga and then the Aryan kingdoms of the west, showing little respect for their traditions and finally imposing a new ideology of its own. But this empire in turn succumbed to internal conflicts and the onslaught of new invaders who came from the north, where the Aryans had come from more than a millennium earlier. The new invaders arrived when ecological conditions were improving once more in northern India. They also had the benefit of finding readily available imperial patterns which they could adopt very quickly. Aryan royal institutions had taken centuries to mature in the relatively isolated Gangetic basin. In a world of closer connections and wider horizons where Hellenistic, Iranian and Indian models of governance and ritual sovereignty were known to all, a new invader could leap from the darkness of an unrecorded nomadic past to the limelight of imperial history within a relatively short period. Shakas and Kushanas swept in this way across northern India. Their short-lived imperial traditions embodied a syncretism of several available patterns of legitimation. They also adopted Hinduism, not the Vedic tradition but rather the more popular cults of Vishnu and Shiva. The waves of imperial grandeur which swept across northern India then stimulated the south. But when the first great indigenous dynasty of the south, the Shatavahanas, emerged they did not follow the syncretism of the northern empires but harked back to the tradition of the small Aryan kingdoms of the Gangetic civilisation. The great horse sacrifice was celebrated once more by a Shatavahana king, but the meaning of this ritual was now very different from that of the old flexible test of royal authority. It was now a great symbolic gesture of a mighty king whose
Indian Map in 1567
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