Five harvests are reaped here annually, and the palms,

pine-apples, cinnamon trees, peppers, etc., ripen three times

a year. But by the side of such beauty, steep rocks rise to

the sky, many equalling the Chimborazo in height, and there

are great tracts of arid unwatered sands. The storms are

more violent here than anywhere else, and mountain streams

descend in foaming torrents bearing devastation and ruin as

they traverse the interminable plains on their way to the

sea.--CESARE CANTÙ.

CHRONOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HINDUS

Rude nations seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions

to a remote antiquity. As a boastful and turgid vanity distinguishes

remarkably the oriental nations, they have in most instances carried

their claims extravagantly high. We are informed, in a fragment of

Chaldaic history, that there were written accounts, preserved at

Babylon, with the greatest care, comprehending a term of fifteen

myriads of years. The pretended duration of the Chinese monarchy is

still more extraordinary. A single king of Egypt was believed to have

reigned three myriads of years.

The present age of the world, according to the system of the Hindus, is

distinguished into four grand periods, denominated yugas. The first is

the Satya yuga comprehending 1,728,000 years; the second the Treta yuga

comprehending 1,296,000 years; the third the Dwapar yuga, including

864,000 years; and the fourth the Kali yuga, which will extend to

432,000 years. Of these periods, the first three are expired; and,

in the year 1817 of the Christian era, 4911 years of the last. From

the commencement, therefore, of the Satya yuga, to the year 1817, is

comprehended a space of 3,892,911 years, the antiquity to which this

people lay claim.

The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical

fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore

the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the

Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with

particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much

of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India,

cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at

the commencement of the Satya yuga, or 3,892,911 years ago, lived

Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh

Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which

had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were

two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the

other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh;

the second at Pratisht’hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties,

subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at

which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the

successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.

Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign

through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From

this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his

descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till

the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama

filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns,

therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning

to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium,

is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar

yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must,

at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of

the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes

became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There

is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only

thirty-three years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.

Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who

reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these,

twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to

the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and

were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar

race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the

house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain

by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne.

Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty,

and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of

Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of

100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man

of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by

our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos,

the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line

succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of

the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together

with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned

112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and

succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are

enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was

next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master,

and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija

was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of

the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of

the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And

with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system

of Hindu chronology.

It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a

nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense

series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted

by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own.

Where annals are real, they become circumstantial in proportion

as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the

times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the

imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we

receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times

of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented

in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have

extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at

Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is

silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till

the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our

instructors.

After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity

of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe,

the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect

which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received

indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous

historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people;

whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a

new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally

expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the

greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold;

and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time,

successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they

have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost

universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of

an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious

and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the

wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with

themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.

Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the

Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their

system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the

Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and

the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue,

the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In

the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of

man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga

one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000

years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga,

and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men

are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in

the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to

chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human

life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned,

each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though

the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns

was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in

this period for 29,793 years.[b]

If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records,

our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books

furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot

supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three

centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious

books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of

legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost

Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story

is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS

The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of

recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas,

religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem

to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much

later, come the epic poems, known under the names of _Mahabharata_ and

_Ramayana_, and the religious and social code of Manu.

Viewed from a purely historical standpoint, the Hindu literature of our

own era is not richer than that which preceded it. In fact the Puranas

constitute the only sources which can be consulted, and these consist

of collections drawn up at different periods, the most ancient of

them going no further back than the eighth century after Christ. They

are, moreover, too much interspersed with marvellous legends, and too

devoid of chronological sequence to permit of modern science deriving

much benefit from them. Practically it is only after the Mohammedan

invasions of the eleventh century, that, thanks to the Mohammedan

writers, the historical period of India begins.

To the very insufficient sources of written information just

enumerated, we have to add the accounts of travellers who visited India

during ancient times. These accounts are very few in number, since for

the period preceding Jesus Christ we possess only some extracts from

the narrative of the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who stayed at the

court of Magadha about the year 300 before our era. For the period of

more than thirteen centuries, which separates this remote epoch from

the Mohammedan invasions, we possess, besides the scanty references of

classical authors, only the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims,

Fa-Hian and Hwen Tsang, who visited India, the first in the fifth, the

second in the seventh century. Their works, especially that of the

second, undoubtedly constitute the most valuable documents which we

possess concerning India before the Mohammedan invasions.

MONUMENTAL RECORDS

The extreme inadequacy of the historical books on India gives a very

great importance to the plastic works, monuments, medals, and statues,

which the peninsula possesses. The most ancient are the columns on

which Asoka had his edicts engraved, 250 years before Christ. After

them come the bas-reliefs of the great monuments at Bharhut, Sanchi,

etc., constructed at the commencement of our era, or in the two or

three centuries which preceded it. They give interesting details

respecting the manners, customs, beliefs, and arts of the peoples who

constructed them, and show us the degree of civilisation to which these

people had attained.

Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three

centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues,

coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of

the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of

buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence

of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first

Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India.

Similarly it is the _bas-reliefs_ of the temples which can alone tell

us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs

which succeeded one another in ancient India.[d]

The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still

handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they

nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in

legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few

years search and investigation directed to these records have brought

a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established

what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from

older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their

authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are

really only beginning.

[Illustration: ANCIENT INDIAN BAS-RELIEF OF MEN AND ANIMALS]

It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions

that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki

(Doerki), and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or

Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last

relation. But Vasudeva, “having the Vasu as gods,” points by this name,

so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro

coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki’s

day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed

Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the

world-creating, world-preserving, and world-destroying god,--Brahma,

Vishnu, Siva,--the so-called _Trimurti_ in the rock temples of Ellora

and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears

according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the

images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.

At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and

gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the

northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of

the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and

of the century-long invasion still continued. A Scythian population,

united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an

earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those

regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong

to them are believed to be of non-Aryan origin, and in religion,

language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to

them. The Rajput families of the “king’s sons,” who afterwards founded

independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign

importations into the caste system and as the successors to the

Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the

north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of

such ruins that the later Saracens erected their citadels, palaces, and

mosques. These too are now nothing but magnificent remains. But we can

here treat of older conditions alone, and of those only in brief.

LEGENDS OF THE EARLY HEROES

Legends have arisen concerning the immigration of Saka princes to

Surashtra or Guzerat, and stories of an alleged liberation from

foreign rule. A celebrated hero of such legends is Vikramaditya, a

king of Ujjain in Malwa, and another, with whose birth the Saka era

was connected, is Salivahana, the opponent of the first, who is not

less renowned than he in legend, and defeated him in the struggle. But

though legend has so much to say of these two, history has little or

nothing to tell us of them.

On the western side of the Girnar rock near Junagarh, whose eastern

side bears Asoka’s inscriptions, and on whose northern side is engraved

that of one Skanda Gupta, we may read that of one Rudra Dama. It

tells of the buildings erected by this king, or great satrap, for the

protection of the country against the destructive power of the waters

of the river Palasini, and another inscription, which extols his name

in the midst of those of four others, his predecessors and successors,

is found on a pillar at Jasdan in Kathiawar or Surashtra, a part of the

present Guzerat. The names of the others are--on the one side of his,

Chashtana and Jaya Dama--and on the other side Rudra Sinha and Rudra

Sena, and the inscription belongs to the year 127 of the era of these

princes.

These kings, or great satraps, of whom we possess both inscriptions

and coins, beside many others whose names cannot here be given, have

been called Sah or Saha or Sinha kings, from a termination added to

many of their names. We should perhaps do best in accordance with a

good precedent to designate them Xatrapa (Satrap) kings, as not only

did they call themselves so, but also actually were, at least in name,

governors for the Mauryas and their successors.

The series begins with a certain Nahapana, who with one or two others

preceded Chashtana and his sons and grandsons, and ends with one Svami

Rudra Sena, the twenty-sixth mentioned. They ruled, roughly speaking,

three hundred years from the beginning of the Saka era (in which we may

safely place Chashtana) down to somewhere between 284 and 272 of our

era. In its best days (which seem to have been under Rudra Dama, as

his inscription indicates), their dominions embraced the peninsula of

Guzerat, Surashtra, and Malwa, reaching north as far as the middle of

the Indus valley and so onward to the sea.

Inscriptions and coins are certainly safe authorities for history: but

they are somewhat inadequate when, as here, little else and nothing

certain is added to them. Thus we know but little of the history of

this great western or Xatrapa kingdom, not much more than the legend

which has grown up round its first beginnings and its final overthrow

by the Gupta power.

The Sah or Xatrapa kings, so runs the legend, were overthrown by the

Guptas, who ruled between the Jumna and the Ganges. That is, they had

independent and viceregal honours, and the man who prepared their

downfall is called Kamara Gupta, and was succeeded by his son Skanda

Gupta, whose inscription we read on the north side of the Girnar

rock.--But we must begin at the beginning.

AN INSCRIPTION OF ASOKA

An inscription on the Asoka pillar at Allahabad, that of Samudra Gupta,

mentions the ancestors of his family. Sri Gupta, the “august, noble,

great king” and “splendour of the world,” was a petty lord who had

successfully raised himself to the government from the Vaisya or middle

class and, from 319, had his residence at Allahabad or in Ajodhya, and

his dominion to the east of the river.

After a reign of fifteen years he was succeeded by his son Ghatotkacha.

On the coins of the latter a reference has been found to his namesake

the son of Bhima, of the epic legend. He proudly calls himself

“Destroyer of all Kings,” and was probably really “Augmenter of the

Kingdom” westward as far as the territory of the Indus. After another

fifteen years he was in his turn succeeded by his son Chandra Gupta,

and an inscription belonging to the latter has been found in the Sanchi

Stupa at Bilsa, besides coins with his half-length portrait,--the

earliest we have belonging to these kings. His realm was subsequently

extended to Malwa and his rule was also friendly to the children of

Sakya. He must have ruled for the space of thirty years, but his son

Samudra Gupta, who is spoken of in the great inscription on the lion

pillar of Allahabad, far surpassed him in fame, power, and magnificence.

The inscription is a great historical record, one of the greatest which

we have for this period. It speaks by name of kings whom Samudra Gupta

deposed, of others whom he made tributary to himself, of the extent

and frontiers of his dominion. Since we cannot go into details we will

here only mention that he subdued almost the whole Aryavarta between

the northern and southern ranges to his immediate rule, made subject

the hill princes in the north, the Vaudheya, Madraka, and Abhira in

the Land of the Five Rivers and in Malwa, brought kings south of the

Vindhya under his protectorate and ruled over the east as far as to

the sea. In all this there is probably a good deal of boasting--the

inscription was made after his death--but it is certain that there is

also not a little that is true. He is also renowned as a ruler of high

and noble disposition, as a patron of the arts and sciences, of music

and poetry, which he himself cultivated. His coins, which have been

found in great numbers and scattered over a wide area, some bearing

the image of the lion hero and others of the king playing on the vina

(harp) confirm to some extent what the long eulogy asserts.

After a reign of some thirty years he was followed by another Chandra

Gupta, his son, who ruled for about ten years. The dominion of the

Guptas then passed to his son, “the far-famed lord of the earth,”

Kumara Gupta, who, according to the dates on coins and to tradition,

reigned twenty-three years, to about the year 130 of the era of this

line of kings. And after him came his son Skanda Gupta, with whom a

certain Buddha Gupta is also mentioned, and who was the seventh and

last king of his famous house. This is the Gupta whom we mentioned

first, and who attained to a dominion to which an inscription on

the western peninsula bears witness. After him there seems to be a

reference to one Mahendra Gupta, perhaps his co-ruler or the successor

to a part of his empire, and of one Narayana Gupta. But a monolith at

Kuhan, in the district of Gorakhpur in the northwest of India, asserts

that “in the year, or towards the end of the year 141 (_i.e._, 470 of

our era), the empire of Skanda Gupta, in whose hall a hundred kings

bowed the head in homage, the empire of the royal line of the Gupta was

taken away from those who had been so far renowned, rich above all men,

comparable to Indra, the lord of hundreds of kings.”

TRADITIONAL KINGS

Tradition tells of kings in various places in the south and north

who had declared themselves independent of the Gupta rule. It tells

of a scion of an ancient family, whose forefathers had settled in

former times on the banks of the Ganges, a certain Pandu-Sakya, who

at that time had established himself on the throne of the Mauryas at

Pataliputra (the modern Patna). But it is averred that one of Skanda

Gupta’s generals, Bhattaraka, of the family of Ballabhi or Valabhi, had

overthrown this personage in Kathiawar, _i.e._, Guzerat, and had seized

the reins of government for himself. He became the founder of a new

series of Surashtra kings, the third, which was called after him the

Valabhi dynasty. We may place the beginning of this dynasty about the

year 480 A.D.

Bearing this in mind we might now, of course, again follow the

chronicles, and relate something from that of the kings of Kashmir and

from the two of Sinhaladvipa. From the former we might tell of one

Damodhara who succeeded Turushka, then of a certain Meghavahana, a

Sreshta or Pravarasena, and his two sons, Hiranya or Toramana, until

a time came when the throne of Kashmir stood empty, and the “noble”

Harsha Vikramaditya sent one of his followers, a Brahman named Matri

Gupta who was appointed king. But we will not go through the history

of dynasties and dynastic lists, at least not when the authorities are

so uncertain. And, as to the other two, it is related in a history of

Buddhism, how after Vrishabha came a century in which sanctuaries were

built and rebuilt, how under King Tishya there arose heresy and strife

and divisions, that some short reigns then followed down to Abhayanaga

and again down to Mahasena with whom the later chronicle closes. Again

we read of more than one Meghavarna, of a Upatishya who succeeded

Mahanaman, under whom a certain Fa Hian came to Ceylon and the Buddhist

hermits lived and worked. It is sufficient to give here a brief outline

of what is important.

A number of brass tablets or copper plates have been found on the

ruined site of the ancient Valabhi (the modern Vala), records of

donations to Brahman and Buddhist monks, which give fairly authentic

information concerning the period and order of the first Surashtra or

Valabhi kings. According to these Bhatarka or Bhattaraka was succeeded

by his four sons, Dharasena, the eldest, Dronasena who was already

called Great King and was solemnly crowned as ruler of the earth,

Dhruvasena the third, and Dharapatta the youngest son. They had brought

the peninsula and a great part of the coast and the mainland as far

as Malwa under their rule, which in the case of the third certainly

lasted to the year 534. The youngest was succeeded by his son Guhasena,

who bestowed whole villages on the disciples of the Sakya and on their

cloisters, he by his son Sri Dharasena, the second of the name and

certainly not later than the end of the sixth century (595) and he

again by his son Siladitya or Dharmaditya who continued reigning on

into the seventh century. But we need not pursue the series of these

kings any further.

During the reign of a nephew of the last named, another Dhruvasena

(632-640), the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang came to India (627-645) and

to the Valabhi kingdom in the west. His account of his journey has an

astonishing amount to say of the riches of the country, of its numerous

inhabitants, of the many cloisters with thousands of monks,--some of

them Buddhist but he also speaks of others, and mentions Jain monks

whom he had seen,--and of the numbers of columns and the magnificent

stupas, etc. The kings of that time, one traveller reports, are

Xatriya, all relations of the king Siladitya of Malwa; the son-in-law

of the reigning king Siladitya at Kanyakubja (Kanauj) is called

T’u-lu-p’o-po-tu (Dhruvabhata). And here our pilgrim incidentally

describes that ruler as pious, wise, and virtuous and as so open-handed

that he redeemed his charitable gifts at double their value. He speaks

with all reverence and respect of this prince, to whose brilliant court

he went by invitation.[c]

The relations of the Indian dynasties to the successive hordes of

Scythians who poured down on northern India, are obscure. There is

abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle but the attempt to

assign dates to its chief episodes has not yet reached results which

can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya _Sakaris_, or vanquishers of

the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology. The truth

seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era,

the fortunes of the Scythian or Tatar races rose and fell from time to

time in northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats;

and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties.[e]

The latest authorities are now agreed that the great and victorious

king Vikramaditya who, as Lefmann says, “together with his battle of

Korur has hitherto wandered incessantly like a wavering and restless

shadow” from 57 B.C. to 560 A.D., may now be definitely assigned

to a reign dating from 510 to 560 A.D. in which time, at Korur, he

annihilated the Scythian army.[a]

BRAHMANIC LEARNING

Down to the time of Buddha and beyond, the Brahman schools were

still in course of completing and elaborating their sacred knowledge

(Veda), the triple science. Their later Upanishads worked up to the

Vedanta, “an end or conclusion” of the Veda. Undoubtedly the Brahmans

also learnt with and from their opponents. Their systems of mental

investigation (nyaya, mimamsa) and pious exercises (yoga) can witness

to this if to nothing else. And as the sons of Sakya taught in the

language of the people and as Asoka had his admonitions engraved on

stone tablets, so Brahmans had long before this begun to exhibit the

laws and art of their sacred language side by side with logic and

grammar.

Scholasticism, speculative inquiry, the narrow or strict sciences, in

general, have in all ages shown themselves opposed and inimical to free

artistic creation. This the Brahmans also demonstrated. For centuries

they produced no really new poetic work. With care and diligence,

unsurpassed elsewhere, they preserved and kept together the inheritance

and possessions of antiquity, and imitated them on the same lines but

produced nothing new. They needed to pass through the period of foreign

dominion in order to receive a new impulse.

Then came the comparatively brief but brilliant period of the Guptas’

rule, under which the coins are first inscribed in Sanskrit. To this

period belongs much that was formerly regarded as ancient and even

primitive, and was probably really new, but built up on an ancient

foundation. A single, but eloquent example, is the collection of the

laws of Manu in the form in which it has come down to us. A great deal

might be said on this subject. Here we will only remark that at this

time the Brahmanical spirit received a fresh impulse and flourished

anew.

At the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain were nine who are

mentioned as the pearls of his age and dominion. An old and famous

verse celebrates their names. Amongst them were Dhanvantari, the

great physician and healer, Amarasinha, the renowned philologist and

lexicographer, Varahamihira, the astronomer and architect, and some add

Kalidasa, the poet of the Sakuntala.

It was shortly after the peace of Mangalore in 1783, that Sir William

Jones became Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal and first president

of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In the “edifying letters” of the

French Jesuits he had read that there were many books in the north of

India which were called Natak, and of which the Brahmans said that

they contained a great deal of ancient history without any admixture

of fable. He became eager to gain possession of these books in order

that he might make himself acquainted with them either by means of

translations, if such existed, or by himself learning their language;

but he had no sooner come to an understanding with the Brahmans than

he learnt from them that the statements were like many others made in

those letters.

Natak, he was assured, were not histories at all, but fables, favourite

popular books, discourses in prose and verse, such as had formerly been

held, in various idioms, at the courts of the Rajahs. Jones thought

they were probably treatises on matters of morals, or learning; others

of his countrymen concluded from what they had heard that they might

perhaps deal with dancing, music, and poetry, when an intelligent

Brahman remarked that the Englishmen also possessed something of the

nature of the Natak, which were performed publicly in the cold season

(meaning dramas).

This was enough. On the question being asked as to which of these Natak

was most highly prized, the man unhesitatingly answered “Sakuntala,”

and Brahmanlike, had also a verse ready, which “unfolded,” it was

said, “all the transcendent riches of the genius of Kalidasa.” A copy

having been procured, it was literally translated into Latin with the

assistance of his Pandit Ramalocan--of course through Persian--and from

Latin into English. From this to publishing it was the work of the

first leisure moment, and a noble example of Indian genius from the

Sanskrit and Prakrit original was given to the world.

Jones’ English “Sakuntala” appeared in the year 1789, the year of

the French revolution. It would be almost impossible to describe the

enthusiasm called forth especially amongst the romantic school in

Germany, by the “maiden from abroad,” in the foreign dress on a foreign

soil, and the “ecstatic transports” over the gentle child from the

penitential groves of ancient India. And it was at the fire of this

enthusiasm that the lamp was lighted which shed its rays ever further

and deeper into the hidden recesses of the Indian spirit, the Indian

language, art, and science. And this was effected a hundred years ago

by the alluring charm of the Sakuntala.[c]

THE EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY

The history of India has been conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily,

separated into epochs by Le Bon. His classification, which is

necessarily very general, and in which the epochs are very far from

being clearly defined since they encroach upon one another or exist

side by side, embraces the following periods:

1. The Vedic period; 2. The Brahmanical period; 3. The Buddhist period;

4. The period of the revival of Brahmanism or neo-Brahmanic; 5. The

Mohammedan period; 6. The European period.

VEDIC PERIOD

The commencement of the Vedic period is about fifteen centuries earlier

than our era. It is marked by the invasion of India by the Aryans.

The Vedic period is that age of Indian history which is wholly

legendary. The little that we know concerning it is revealed solely by

religious books, known under the name of Vedas, the most important of

which, the Rig-Veda, has been called, with reason, the Bible of the

Aryans of the northwest of India.

Established at first round the Himalayas, as far as the Vindhya

Mountains, the primitive Aryans lived in the state of wandering

pastoral tribes, and it is to be supposed that their invasion must

have taken place gradually. Their most ancient books seem to have been

written about fifteen centuries before our era. In that remote age

they had no castes, they worshipped the forces of nature and erected

neither temples nor statues; to the people on whom they descended they

brought a new language and a new religion, but they did not bring them

architecture. These primitive Aryan peoples knew how to write books,

but they did not know how to build monuments of stone, and nothing

in the most ancient of their works indicates that they built either

temples or palaces.

We will not here linger over the Aryan civilisation, any more than

over the Brahmanical period which terminates it. Historical documents

properly so called are lacking for both. The epics which are

connected with the Brahmanical period are confirmed by the stories of

Megasthenes, and prove that India was then beginning to be covered with

towns, temples, and palaces; but of the monuments of this period no

remains whatever have come down to us.

THE BUDDHIST PERIOD

The epoch of the birth of Buddhism in India belongs a great deal to

legend and very little to history. We know nothing of the beginnings

of this period save what is told us in the fantastic stories of the

Buddhist books. It is only after Alexander’s invasions, and especially

when, about 250 years after Christ, Buddhism became the official

religion, that definite facts stand out and the darkness begins

to disperse. Unfortunately it soon reappears, and reigns for long

centuries.

Alexander’s invasion took place 327 years before our era. After having

completed the conquest of Persia, the Macedonian hero made up his

mind to undertake the conquest of India, that he might attain to the

sovereignty of Asia.

The division of the Punjab into small independent and rival states

must have rendered the conquest easy at the outset. Alexander made

his appearance with one hundred and twenty thousand men, of whom the

Greeks formed the kernel, while the rest of the number was made up by

Persians. He had Indian guides and an understanding with some native

chiefs, notably with the king of Taxila, a state situated on the left

bank of the Indus, and which stretched between that river and the

stream then known under the name of Hydaspes and to-day under that of

Jhelum.

Alexander marched from Bactriana on the town which now bears the

name of Kabul. Continuing his way to India, he crossed the Indus and

encountered Porus, sovereign of a state enclosed between the Hydaspes

and the Chenab: he beat him, but made him an ally by leaving him his

kingdom. Various sovereigns, notably the sovereign of Kashmir, then

sent him their submission.

After several battles against native chiefs, he marched on the Hyphasis

(the present Beas); but the army refusing to follow him farther, he

raised, on the banks of this stream, twelve commemorative altars,

intended to mark the end of the expedition. Having returned to the

banks of the Hydaspes, he constructed a fleet which descended that

stream as far as the Indus, into which it passed. Fighting continually,

Alexander arrived at Patala, at the mouth of the Indus, and then sent

his fleet, under the orders of Nearchus, along the coast into the

Persian Gulf, after which he divided his army into two corps. The one

was sent back to Persia through Caramania, under the leadership of

Craterus; the other, under his own direction, made its retreat by way

of Gedrosia. The fleet having reached the Persian Gulf, and he himself

having rejoined Craterus, the return of the expedition was celebrated

with festivities.

Regarded solely from the standpoint of conquest, it may be said that

the results of Alexander’s invasion were absolutely nil, since a few

years after his departure not a single one of the Greek garrisons he

had left behind remained in India. But this expedition, which for the

first time put Europe in communication with India, was to have indirect

consequences that were not without importance.

CHANDRA GUPTA

After the departure of Alexander, a Hindu king, Chandra Gupta, the

Sandracottus of the Greeks, son of one of the petty chiefs of the

Punjab, whom Alexander had scattered, gradually extended his empire

over the whole of the north of the peninsula, and expelled or totally

destroyed the Macedonian garrisons. He fixed the seat of his empire

at Pataliputra (the modern Patna), capital of the kingdom of Magadha.

Soon his renown became so great that, about the year 200 before our

era, Seleucus Nicator, who, since Alexander’s death, was reigning in

Syria, Babylonia, and all the provinces between the Euphrates and the

Indus, sent to his court a Greek ambassador, named Megasthenes, for

the purpose of making alliance with him. This ambassador stayed at

Pataliputra for a long time, and it is from his narrative, part of

which has been preserved, that we gain our first definite notions of

the manners and customs of the Hindus of this epoch.

But the relations between the Greeks and Hindus were not confined to

Alexander’s invasion and the embassy of Megasthenes; in default of

the accounts of historians, we now know, from coins and the ruins of

monuments, that the successors of the Græco-Bactrian empire of Seleucus

Nicator conquered the Punjab, founded several kingdoms, and penetrated

as far as Muttra. One hundred and twenty-six years before Christ an

adventurer of the name of Menander founded a kingdom reaching from the

Jumna to the mouth of the Nerbudda.

The sculptures and medals are the only relics which have come down to

us from the Greek kingdoms of India. These kingdoms disappeared just

about the beginning of our era, before the invasions of the Scythians.

These invasions had commenced in the century before Christ. A Scythian

people descended on the northwest of India and founded a kingdom

comprising Bactriana, the banks of the Indus, the Punjab, and a part

of Rajputana. This kingdom had a very ephemeral duration, since the

Scythians were probably expelled from India in the early days of our

era.

Setting aside this obscure part of the history of India, which recent

researches have revived, let us go back to Chandra Gupta and his

successors.

Chandra Gupta’s grandson was the celebrated Asoka, who reigned about

250 years before Christ. After having, according to certain Buddhist

legends, massacred the hundred sons whom his father had had by sixteen

different wives and thus prevented rivalries, he extended his empire

throughout the north of India. Its limits are marked by inscriptions

which still exist. They are to be found from Afghanistan to Bengal and

from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda. In the west Asoka’s empire touched

the Greek kingdom of Bactriana.

It is with this prince that the architectural history of India begins.

Several of the columns he caused to be erected are still standing,

and the most celebrated monuments, such as those of Bharhut, Sanchi,

and Buddha Gaya, whose bas-reliefs are so valuable for the history of

Buddhism, are contemporary with his reign or very little later. Nothing

remains of the palaces which he himself constructed, but we may suppose

that they must have been very handsome, for the pilgrim Fa-Hian, who

saw in the fifth century the ruins of the buildings and the tower

of the one belonging to him at Pataliputra, asserts that it was too

admirable to have been the work of a mortal.

It was this same Asoka who made Buddhism the official religion of

India. His religious zeal was very great, for he sent missionaries

to all kinds of places, to Ceylon, and even as far as to Ptolemy

Philadelphus in Egypt.

The dynasty called that of Maurya, of which Asoka was the most

illustrious representative, lasted about a century and a half, _i.e._,

from 312 to 178 B.C. Afterwards the empire founded by Asoka soon split

up into petty independent kingdoms under different sovereigns. The

kingdom of Magadha, however, continued to exist down to the sixteenth

century of our era; but it now included only the very confined district

corresponding to the present Behar. The Puranas give lists of the kings

of Magadha for a thousand years, but they are very unreliable.

TWELVE CENTURIES OF OBSCURITY

After Asoka, the only Hindu authorities that we have on India down to

the time of the Mohammedan invasion, besides the legendary narratives

of the Puranas, are furnished by the monuments. These, with the stories

of the Chinese pilgrims of which we have spoken, are the only sources

from which we may in some sort reconstitute the civilisation of India

during that long period.

During this night of something like twelve centuries, the important

personages whose memory the Hindu chroniclers have preserved to us

are few in number. The most celebrated is the legendary Vikramaditya,

prince of Malwa, who lived at Ujjain, near the Nerbudda. According to

the chronicles, he extended his empire over the whole of India, as far

as the southern point of the Deccan. Although his history is nothing

but a tissue of fabulous legends, he must certainly have fulfilled an

important rôle, since the Hindus date a new era, the Samvat era, from

his accession, which they suppose to have taken place 57 B.C.

Unfortunately the Hindu chronicles, according to their wont, have

paid little respect to chronology, for an attentive study of the

inscriptions and the monuments appears to prove that Vikramaditya

reigned six hundred years after the epoch indicated by the books.[18]

It is to the same hero that the Hindu legends attribute the expulsion

of the Scythians from India. These people had penetrated to the Greeks

of Bactriana two centuries before Christ, and had gradually subdued

them. One of their kings, Kanishka, a convert to Buddhism, had shortly

before our era founded an empire comprising Afghanistan, the Punjab,

and Rajputana. We know nothing of the history of the Scythians in

India, unless it be that they propagated the artistic influence of the

Greeks, as we see by some statues at Muttra.

According to the inscriptions interpreted by Cunningham, we should

probably include amongst the contemporaries of Vikramaditya [see

footnote] the Rajah Harshavardhara, who reigned from 607-648 and of

whom the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited India in 634, speaks

as one of the most powerful sovereigns of the north of India. His

capital was Kanauj, one of the most ancient cities of India, for a long

time the seat of the Gupta dynasty, and supposed to have been one of

the cradles of Aryan civilisation. Ptolemy mentions it, 140 years after

Christ, under the name of Kanogiya. The kingdom of which it was the

capital in the days of Hwen Tsang extended from Kashmir to Assam and

from Nepal to the Nerbudda.

Kanauj lies east of Agra, a few miles from the Ganges. All the

traditions agree in extolling its splendour. It filled Mahmud of Ghazni

with admiration when he attacked it in 1016 A.D. Ferishta says that

as he approached it, he saw “a city which raised its head as high as

heaven, and which, in fortifications and architecture, could justly

boast that it had no rival.”

Of this ancient capital which, if we are to believe Hwen Tsang, was

three miles in length, there remains not a stone to tell its history.

As in the case of many famous old capitals, the destruction of the

monuments anterior to the Mohammedan invasion was so complete that,

in spite of all his investigations, Cunningham could not succeed in

recovering a single relic. The oldest thing which he observed at Kanauj

is an inscription dating only from 1136 and consequently later than

the Mohammedan invasion. All the existing monuments of this town are

exclusively Mohammedan, though sometimes constructed from the débris of

ancient Hindu monuments.

Kanauj is one of those great ancient capitals whose history we

know only from vague traditions and a few inscriptions. To those

who have seen the remains of the small number which have escaped

destruction, as, for instance, Khajurao, it is impossible to ascribe

the enthusiastic descriptions of the splendour of these antique cities

solely to the writers’ imagination.

Kanauj, Khajurao, Mahoba, and many other famous towns of which the

name and the ruins are all that now survive, were the seats of mighty

empires. Of these the most celebrated were governed by kings of the

Rajput race, the only one whose dynasties still exist and which has

preserved, if not its independence, at least its institutions and

its customs. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of the history of

the Rajputs till the time when they entered into conflict with the

Mohammedans. The latter succeeded in destroying their capitals and in

thrusting them back to the steep and mountainous regions of Rajputana,

but they only obtained from them a purely nominal submission.

The whole of this period, which extends from the successors of Asoka

to the revival of Brahmanism and even to the Mohammedan invasions,

is thus almost as obscure as that which preceded it, and but for the

monuments it has left us we should know practically nothing about it.

Historical documents are equally lacking for the period of the revival

of Brahmanism, or the neo-Brahmanical period. Coins and monuments are

about the only authorities which we can consult concerning it.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[18] [“The name Vikramaditya,” says Sir W. W. Hunter in his _Brief

History of the Indian People_, p. 81, “is a title meaning ‘A Very Sun

in Prowess,’ which has been borne by several kings in Indian history.

But the Vikramaditya of the first century before Christ was the

greatest of them,--great alike as a defender of his country against the

Scythian hordes, as a patron of men of learning, and as a good ruler of

his subjects.” This will explain the confusion that has enveloped the

name. See also the previous section on “Traditional Kings.”]

[Illustration: RETINUE OF AN INDIAN PRINCE, IN THE TIME OF ALEXANDER

THE GREAT]

CHAPTER III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

The first complete picture of the state of Hindu society is afforded by

the code of laws which bears the name of Manu, and which was probably

drawn up in the ninth century before Christ. But to gain accurate

notions even of the people contemporary with the supposed Manu we must

remember that a code is never the work of a single age, some of the

earliest and rudest laws being preserved and incorporated with the

improvements of the most enlightened times. To take a familiar example,

there are many of the laws in Blackstone, the existence of which

proves a high state of refinement in the nation; but those relating to

witchcraft, and the wager of battle, afford no correspondent proof of

the continuance of barbarism down to the age in which the commentaries

were written.

Even if the whole code referred to one period, it would not show the

real state of manners. Its injunctions are drawn from the model to

which it is wished to raise the community, and its prohibitions from

the worst state of crime which it was possible to apprehend. It is

to the general spirit of the code, therefore, that we must look for

that of the age; and even then, we must soften the features before we

reach the actual condition of the people. We have adhered to the usual

phraseology in speaking of this compilation; but, though early adopted

as an unquestionable authority for the law, we should scarcely venture

to regard it as a code drawn up for the regulation of a particular

state under the sanction of a government. It seems rather to be the

work of a learned man, designed to set forth his idea of a perfect

commonwealth under Hindu institutions. On this supposition it would

show the state of society as correctly as a legal code; since it is

evident that it incorporates the existing laws, and any alterations it

may have introduced, with a view to bring them up to its preconceived

standard of perfection, must still have been drawn from the opinions

which prevailed when it was written. These considerations being

premised, we shall now give an outline of the information contained in

Manu.

DIVISION AND EMPLOYMENT OF CLASSES

The first feature that strikes us in the society described by Manu is

the division into four classes or castes (the sacerdotal, the military,

the industrial, and the servile). In these we are struck with the

prodigious elevation and sanctity of the Brahmans, and the studied

degradation of the lowest class.

The three first classes, though by no means equal, are yet admitted

into one pale: they all partake in certain sacred rites, to which

peculiar importance is attached throughout the code; and they appear to

form the whole community for whose government the laws are framed. The

fourth class and the outcasts are no further considered than as they

contribute to the advantage of the superior castes.

A Brahman is the chief of all created beings; the world and all in

it are his: through him, indeed, other mortals enjoy life; by his

imprecations he could destroy a king, with his troops, elephants,

horses, and cars; could frame other worlds and regents of worlds,

and could give being to new gods and new mortals. A Brahman is to

be treated with more respect than a king. His life and person are

protected by the severest laws in this world, and the most tremendous

denunciations for the next. He is exempt from capital punishment, even

for the most enormous crimes. His offences against other classes are

treated with remarkable lenity, while all offences against him are

punished with tenfold severity.

Yet it would seem, at first sight, as if the Brahmans, content with

gratifying their spiritual pride, had no design to profit by worldly

wealth or power. The life prescribed to them is one of laborious study,

as well as of austerity and retirement.

The first quarter of a Brahman’s life he must spend as a student;

during which time he leads a life of abstinence and humiliation. His

attention should be unremittingly directed to the Vedas, and should on

no account be wasted on worldly studies. He should treat his preceptor

with implicit obedience, and with humble respect and attachment, which

ought to be extended to his family. He must perform various servile

offices for his preceptor, and must labour for himself in bringing logs

and other materials for sacrifice, and water for oblations. He must

subsist entirely by begging from door to door.

For the second quarter of his life, he lives with his wife and family,

and discharges the ordinary duties of a Brahman. These are briefly

stated to be, reading and teaching the Vedas; sacrificing and assisting

others to sacrifice; bestowing alms, and accepting gifts.

The most honourable of these employments is teaching. It is remarkable

that, unlike other religions, where the dignity of the priesthood is

derived from their service at the temples, a Brahman is considered as

degraded by performing acts of worship or assisting at sacrifices, as

a profession. All Brahmans are strongly and repeatedly prohibited from

receiving gifts from low-born, wicked, or unworthy persons. They are

not even to take many presents from unexceptionable givers, and are

carefully to avoid making it a habit to accept of unnecessary presents.

When the regular sources fail, a Brahman may, for a mere subsistence,

glean, or beg, or cultivate, or even (in case of extreme necessity)

he may trade; but he must in no extremity enter into service; he must

not have recourse to popular conversation, must abstain from music,

singing, dancing, gaming, and generally from everything inconsistent

with gravity and composure.

He should, indeed, refrain from all sensual enjoyments, should avoid

all wealth that may impede his reading the Vedas, and should shun

all worldly honour as he would shun poison. Yet he is not to subject

himself to fasts, or other needless severities. All that is required

is, that his life should be decorous and occupied in the prescribed

studies and observances. Even his dress is laid down with minuteness;

and he may easily be figured (much as learned Brahmans are still),

quiet and demure, clean and decent, “his hair and beard clipped, his

passions subdued, his mantle white, and his body pure”; with a staff

and a copy of the Vedas in his hands, and bright golden rings in his

ears. When he has paid the three debts, by reading the scriptures,

begetting a son, and performing the regular sacrifices, he may (even in

the second portion of his life) make over all to his son, and remain in

his family house, with no employment but that of an umpire.

The third portion of a Brahman’s life he must spend as an anchorite in

the woods. Clad in bark or in the skin of a black antelope, with his

hair and nails uncut, sleeping on the bare earth, he must live “without

fire, without a mansion, wholly silent, feeding on roots and fruit.”

He must also submit to many and harsh mortifications, expose himself,

naked, to the heaviest rains, wear humid garments in winter, and in

summer stand in the midst of five fires under the burning sun. He must

carefully perform all sacrifices and oblations, and consider it his

special duty to fulfil the prescribed forms and ceremonies of religion.

In the last period of his life, the Brahman is nearly as solitary

and abstracted as during the third. But he is now released from all

forms and external observances: his business is contemplation; his

mortifications cease. His dress more nearly resembles that of ordinary

Brahmans; and his abstinence, though still great, is not so rigid

as before. He is no longer to invite suffering, but is to cultivate

equanimity and to enjoy delight in meditation on the Divinity; till, at

last, he quits the body “as a bird leaves the branch of a tree at its

pleasure.”

Thus it appears that during three-fourths of a Brahman’s life, he was

entirely secluded from the world, and during the remaining fourth,

besides having his time completely occupied by ceremonies and in

reading the Vedas, he was expressly debarred from the enjoyment of

wealth or pleasure and from the pursuit of ambition. But a little

further acquaintance with the code makes it evident that these rules

are founded on a former condition of the Brahmans; and that, although

still regarded as the model for their conduct, they had already been

encroached on by the temptations of power and riches.

The king must have a Brahman for his most confidential counsellor; and

by Brahmans is he to be instructed in policy as well as in justice

and all learning. The whole judicial authority (except that exercised

by the king in person) is in the hands of Brahmans; and, although the

perusal of the sacred writings is not withheld from the two nearest

classes, yet the sense of them is only to be obtained through the

exposition of a Brahman.

The interpretation of the laws is expressly confined to the Brahmans;

and we can perceive, from the code itself, how large a share of the

work of legislation was in the hands of that order.

THE PROPERTY OF THE BRAHMAN

The property of the sacred class is as well protected by the law as

its power. Liberality to Brahmans is made incumbent on every virtuous

man, and is the especial duty of a king. Sacrifices and oblations,

and all the ceremonies of religion, involve feasts and presents to

the Brahmans, and those gifts must always be liberal: “the organs of

sense and action, reputation in this life, happiness in the next, life

itself, children, and cattle, are all destroyed by a sacrifice offered

with trifling gifts to the priests.” Many penances may be commuted for

large fines, which all go to the sacred class. If a Brahman finds a

treasure, he keeps it all; if it is found by another person, the king

takes it, but must give one-half to the Brahmans. On failure of heirs,

the property of others escheats to the king, but that of Brahmans

is divided among their class. A learned Brahman is exempt from all

taxation, and ought, if in want, to be maintained by the king.

Stealing the gold of Brahmans incurs an extraordinary punishment, which

is to be inflicted by the king in person, and is likely, in most cases,

to be capital. Their property is protected by many other denunciations:

and for injuring their cattle, a man is to suffer amputation of half

his foot.

The military class, though far from being placed on an equality with

the Brahmans, is still treated with honour. It is indeed acknowledged

that the sacerdotal order cannot prosper without the military, or the

military without the sacerdotal; and that the prosperity of both in

this world and the next depends on their cordial union.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF AN INDIAN WARRIOR

(Based on Soluzen and Dreger)]

The military class enjoys, in a less degree, with respect to the

Vaisyas, the same inequality in criminal law that the Brahman possesses

in respect to all the other classes. The king belongs to this class,

as probably do all his ordinary ministers. The command of armies and

of military divisions, in short, the whole military profession, and in

strictness all situations of command, are also their birthright. It is

indeed very observable, that even in the code drawn up by themselves,

with the exception of interpreting the law, no interference in the

executive government is ever allowed to Brahmans.

The duties of the military class are stated to be, to defend the

people, to give alms, to sacrifice, to read the Vedas, and to shun the

allurements of sensual gratification.

The rank of Vaisyas is not high; for where a Brahman is enjoined to

show hospitality to strangers, he is directed to show benevolence

_even to a merchant_ and to give him food at the same time with his

domestics. Besides largesses, sacrifice, and reading the Vedas, the

duties of a Vaisya are to keep herds of cattle, to carry on trade, to

lend at interest, and to cultivate the land.

The practical knowledge required from a Vaisya is more general than

that of the other classes; for in addition to a knowledge of the means

of breeding cattle, and a thorough acquaintance with all commodities

and all soils, he must understand the productions and wants of other

countries, the wages of servants, the various dialects of men, and

whatever else belongs to purchase and sale.

THE DESPISED SUDRA

The duty of a Sudra is briefly stated to be to serve the other classes,

but it is more particularly explained in different places that his

chief duty is to serve the Brahmans; and it is specially permitted to

him, in case of want of subsistence and inability to procure service

from that class, to serve a Kshattriya; or if even that service cannot

be obtained, to attend on an opulent Vaisya. It is a general rule

that, in times of distress, each of the classes may subsist by the

occupations allotted to those beneath it, but must never encroach

on the employments of those above it. A Sudra has no class beneath

him; but, if other employments fail, he may subsist by handicrafts,

especially joinery and masonry, painting, and writing.

A Sudra may perform sacrifices with the omission of the holy texts; yet

it is an offence requiring expiation for a Brahman to assist him in

sacrificing. A Brahman must not read the Veda, even to himself, in the

presence of a Sudra. To teach him the law, or to instruct him in the

mode of expiating sin, sinks a Brahman into the hell called Asamvrita.

It is even forbidden to give him temporal advice. No offence is more

repeatedly or more strongly inveighed against than that of a Brahman

receiving a gift from a Sudra: it cannot even be expiated by penance,

until the gift has been restored. A Brahman, starving, may take dry

grain from a Sudra, but must never eat meat cooked by him. A Sudra is

to be fed by the leavings of his master, or by his refuse grain, and

clad in his worn-out garments.

He must amass no wealth, even if he has the power, lest he become

proud, and give pain to Brahmans.

If a Sudra use abusive language to one of a superior class, his tongue

is to be slit. If he sit on the same seat with a Brahman, he is to have

a gash made on the part offending. If he advise him about his religious

duties, hot oil is to be dropped into his mouth and ears.

These are specimens of the laws, equally ludicrous and inhuman, which

are made in favour of the other classes against the Sudras.

The proper name of a Sudra is directed to be expressive of contempt,

and the religious penance for killing him is the same as for killing a

cat, a frog, a dog, a lizard, and various other animals.

Yet, though the degraded state of a Sudra be sufficiently evident, his

precise civil condition is by no means so clear. Sudras are universally

termed the _servile_ class; and, in one place, it is declared that a

Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from a state

of servitude, “for,” it is added, “of a state which is natural to him,

by whom can he be divested?”

Yet every Sudra is not necessarily the slave of an individual; for it

has been seen that they are allowed to offer their services to whom

they please, and even to exercise trades on their own account: there is

nothing to lead to a belief that they are the slaves of the state; and,

indeed, the exemption of Sudras from the laws against emigration shows

that no perfect right to their services was deemed to exist anywhere.

Their right to property (which was denied to slaves) is admitted in

many places. Their persons are protected, even against their masters,

who can only correct them in a manner fixed by law, and equally

applicable to wives, children, pupils, and younger brothers.

That there were some Sudra slaves is indisputable; but there is every

reason to believe that men of the other classes were also liable to

fall into servitude.

The condition of Sudras, therefore, was very much better than that of

the public slaves under some ancient republics, and, indeed, than that

of the villeins of the Middle Ages, or any other servile class with

which we are acquainted.

MIXTURE OF CLASSES

Though the line between the different classes was so strongly marked,

the means taken to prevent their mixture do not seem to have been

nearly so much attended to as in after times. The law in this respect

seems rather dictated by jealousy of the honour of the women of the

higher classes than by regard for the purity of descents.

Men of the first three classes are freely indulged in the choice of

women from any inferior caste, provided they do not give them the

first place in their family. But no marriage is permitted with women

of a higher class; criminal intercourse with them is checked by the

severest penalties, and their offspring is degraded far below either

of its parents. The son of a Brahman, by a woman of the class next

below him, takes a station intermediate between his father and mother;

and the daughters of such connections, if they go on marrying Brahmans

for seven generations, restore their progeny to the original purity of

the sacerdotal class; but the son of a Sudra by a Brahman woman is a

Chandala, “the lowest of mortals,” and his intercourse with women of

the higher classes produces “a race more foul than their begetter.”

The classes do not seem to have associated at their meals even in the

time of Manu; and there is a striking contrast between the cordial

festivity recommended to Brahmans with their own class, and the

constrained hospitality with which they are directed to prepare food

after the Brahmans for a military man coming as a guest.

But there is no prohibition in the code against eating with other

classes, or partaking of food cooked by them (which is now the great

occasion for loss of caste), except in the case of Sudras; and even

then the offence is expiated by living on water gruel for seven days.

Loss of caste seems, in general, to have been incurred by crimes, or by

omitting the prescribed expiations for offences.

It is remarkable that, in the four classes, no place is assigned to

artisans: Sudras, indeed, are permitted to practise mechanic trades

during a scarcity of other employment, but it is not said to whom the

employment regularly belongs.

From some of the allotments, it would appear that the artisans were

supplied, as they are now, from the mixed classes: a circumstance which

affords ground for surmise that the division into castes took place

while arts were in too simple a state to require separate workmen for

each; and also that many generations had elapsed between that division

and the code, to allow so important a portion of the employments of the

community to be filled by classes formed subsequently to the original

distribution of the people.[c]

This distribution of the whole people into four classes only, and the

appropriation of them to four species of employment,--an arrangement

which, in the very simple state of society in which it must have

been introduced, was a great step in improvement,--must have become

productive of innumerable inconveniences, as the wants of society

multiplied. The bare necessaries of life, with a small number of

its rudest accommodations, are all it prepares to meet the desires

of man. As those desires speedily extend beyond such narrow limits,

a struggle must have early ensued between the first principles of

human nature and those of the political establishment. The different

castes were strictly commanded to marry with those only of their own

class and profession; and the mixture of the classes from the union

of the sexes was guarded against by the severest laws.[19] This was

an occurrence, however, which laws could not prevent. Irregularities

took place; children were born, who belonged to no caste, and for whom

there was no occupation. No event could befall society more calamitous

than this. Unholy and infamous, on account of that violation of the

sacred law to which they owed their unwelcome birth, those wretched

outcasts had no resource for subsistence, excepting either the bounty

of the established classes, to whom they were objects of execration and

abhorrence; or the plunder of those same classes, a course to which

they would betake themselves with all the ingenuity of necessitous, and

all the atrocity of much injured, men. When a class of this description

became numerous, they must have filled society with the greatest

disorders. In the preface of that compilation of the Hindu Laws, which

was translated by Mr. Halhed, it is stated that, after a succession

of good kings, who secured obedience to the laws, and under whom the

people enjoyed felicity, came a monarch evil and corrupt, under whom

the laws were violated, the mixture of the classes was perpetrated, and

a new and impious race were produced. The Brahmans put this wicked king

to death, and, by an effort of miraculous power, created a successor

endowed with the most excellent qualities. But the kingdom did not

prosper, by reason of the Burren Sunker, so were this impure brood

denominated; and it required the wisdom of this virtuous king to devise

a remedy. He resolved upon a classification of the mixed race, and to

assign them occupations. This, accordingly, was the commencement of

arts and manufactures. The Burren Sunker became all manner of artisans

and handicrafts; one tribe of them weavers of cloth, another artificers

in iron, and so on in other cases, till the subdivisions of the class

were exhausted, or the exigencies of the community supplied.

Thus were remedied two evils at once. The increasing wants of an

improving society were provided for; and a class of men, the pest of

the community, were converted to its service. This is another important

era in the history of Hindu society; and having reached this stage,

it does not appear that it has made, or that it is capable of making,

much further progress. Thirty-six branches of the impure class are

specified in the sacred books, of whom and of their employments it

would be tedious and useless to present the description. The highest

is that sprung from the conjunction of a Brahman with a woman of the

Kshattriya class whose duty is the teaching of military exercises. The

lowest of all is the offspring of a Sudra with a woman of the sacred

class. This tribe are denominated Chandalas, and are regarded with

great abhorrence. Their profession is to carry out corpses, to execute

criminals, and perform other offices, reckoned to the last degree

unclean and degrading. If, by the laws of Hindustan, the Sudras are

placed in a low and vile situation, the impure and mixed classes are

placed in one still more odious and degrading. Nothing can equal the

contempt and insolence to which it is the lot of the lowest among them

to see themselves exposed. They are condemned to live in a sequestered

spot by themselves, that they may not pollute the very town in which

they reside. If they meet a man of the higher castes, they must turn

out of the way, lest he should be contaminated by their presence.

“Avoid,” says the Tantra, “the touch of the Chandala, and other abject

classes. Whoever associates with them undoubtedly falls from his class;

whoever bathes or drinks in wells or pools which they have caused

to be made, must be purified by the five productions of kine.”[20]

From this outline of the classification and distribution of the

people, as extracted from the books of the Hindus, some of the most

intelligent of our British observers appeal to the present practice of

the people, which they affirm is much more conformable to the laws of

human welfare, than the institutions described in the ancient books.

Of this, the author is aware; so inconsistent with the laws of human

welfare are the institutions described in the Hindu ancient books,

that they never _could_ have been observed with any accuracy; it is,

at the same time, very evident, that the institutions described in

the ancient books are the model upon which the present frame of Hindu

society has been formed; and when we consider the powerful causes

which have operated so long to draw, or rather to force, the Hindus

from their inconvenient institutions and customs, the only source of

wonder is, that the state of society which they now exhibit should

hold so great a resemblance to that which is depicted in their books.

The President de Goguet is of opinion, that a division of the people

into tribes and hereditary professions similar to that of the Hindus

existed in the ancient Assyrian empire, and that it prevailed from

the highest antiquity over almost all Asia. Cecrops distributed into

four tribes all the inhabitants of Attica. Theseus afterwards made

them three by uniting, as it should seem, the sacerdotal class with

that of the nobles, or magistrates. They consisted then of nobles and

priests, labourers or husbandmen, and artificers; and there is no doubt

that, like the Egyptians and Indians, they were hereditary. Aristotle

expressly informs us that in Crete the people were divided by the

laws of Minos into classes after the manner of the Egyptians. We have

most remarkable proof of a division, the same as that of the Hindus,

anciently established among the Persians. In the Zendavesta, translated

by Anquetil Duperron, is the following passage: “Ormuzd said: There are

three measures (literally weights, that is, tests, rules) of conduct,

four states, and five places of dignity.--The states are: that of the

priests; that of the soldier; that of the husbandman, the source of

riches; and that of the artisan or labourer.” There are sufficient

vestiges to prove an ancient establishment of the same sort among the

Buddhists of Ceylon, and by consequence to infer it among the other

Buddhists over so large a portion of Asia.[d]

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

As Manu’s code mapped out Hindu life in fine detail, it gives

especially definite rules for the laws and the courts. Justice is to

be administered by the king in person, assisted by Brahmans and other

counsellors; or that function may be deputed to one Brahman, aided by

three assessors of the same class.

The king is entitled to five per cent. on all debts admitted by the

defendant on trial, and to ten per cent. on all denied and proved. This

fee probably went direct to the judges, who would thus be remunerated

without infringing the law against Brahmans serving for hire. A king

or judge in trying causes is carefully to observe the countenances,

gestures, and mode of speech of the parties and witnesses. He is to

attend to local usages of districts, the peculiar laws of classes and

rules of families, and the customs of traders: when not inconsistent

with the above, he is to observe the principles established by former

judges. Neither he nor his officers are to encourage litigation, though

they must show no slackness in taking up any suit regularly instituted.

A king is reckoned among the worst of criminals who receives his

revenue from his subjects without affording them due protection in

return. The king is enjoined to bear with rough language from irritated

litigants, as well as from old or sick people, who come before him. He

is also cautioned against deciding causes on his own judgment, without

consulting persons learned in the law; and is positively forbidden to

disturb any transaction that has once been settled conformably to law.

In trials he is to adhere to established practice.

_Criminal Law_

The criminal law is very rude, and this portion of the code, together

with the religious penances, leaves a more unfavourable impression of

the early Hindus than any other part of the institutes.

It is not, however, sanguinary, unless when influenced by superstition

or by the prejudice of caste; and if punishments are, in some cases,

too severe, in others they are far too lenient. Mutilation (chiefly of

the hand) is among the punishments, as in all Asiatic codes. Burning

alive is one of the inflictions on offenders against the sacerdotal

order; but it is an honourable distinction from most ancient codes that

torture is never employed either against witnesses or criminals.

The punishments, though not always in themselves severe, are often

disproportioned to the offence; and are frequently so indistinctly or

contradictorily declared as to leave the fate of an offender quite

uncertain; such are the punishments for adultery and what are called

overt acts of adulterous inclination. Among these last are included,

talking to the wife of another man at a place of pilgrimage, or in

a forest, or at the confluence of rivers; sending her flowers or

perfumes; touching her apparel or her ornaments, and sitting on the

same couch with her; yet the penalty is banishment, with such bodily

marks as may excite aversion.

For adultery itself, it is first declared, without reserve, that the

woman is to be devoured by dogs, and the man burned on an iron bed;

yet, in the verses next following, it appears that the punishment of

adultery without aggravation is a fine of from 500 to 1000 panas.

The punishment, indeed, increases in proportion to the dignity of

the party offended against. Even a soldier committing adultery with

a Brahman woman, if she be of eminently good qualities, and properly

guarded, is to be burned alive in a fire of dry grass or reeds. These

flat contradictions can only be accounted for by supposing that the

compiler put down the laws of different periods, or those supported by

different authorities, without considering how they bore on each other.

There is no express punishment for murder. From one passage it would

appear that it (as well as arson and robbery attended with violence) is

capital, and that the slighter punishments mentioned in other places

were in cases where there was no premeditation; but, as the murder of

particular descriptions of persons is afterwards declared capital,

it remains doubtful what is the punishment for the offence in simple

cases.

Theft is punished, if small, with fine; if of greater amount, with

cutting off the hand; but if the thief be taken with the stolen goods

upon him, it is capital. Receivers of stolen goods, and persons who

harbour thieves, are liable to the same punishment as the thief. It

is remarkable that, in cases of small theft, the fine of a Brahman

offender is at least eight times as great as that of a Sudra, and

the scale varies in a similar manner and proportion between all the

classes. A king committing an offence is to pay a thousand times as

great a fine as would be exacted from an ordinary person. Robbery seems

to incur amputation of the limb principally employed. If accompanied

with violence it is capital; and all who shelter robbers, or supply

them with food or implements, are to be punished with death.

Abusive language is still more distinguished for the inequality of

punishments among the castes, but even in this branch of the law are

traces of a civilised spirit. Men reproaching their neighbours with

lameness, blindness, or any other natural infirmity, are liable to a

small fine, even if they speak the truth. Assaults, if among equals,

are punished by a fine of 100 panas for blood drawn, a larger sum for a

wound, and banishment for breaking a bone. The prodigious inequalities

into which the penalty runs between men of different classes have

already been noticed.

The offences of physicians or surgeons who injure their patients for

want of skill; breaking hedges, palisades, and earthen idols; mixing

pure with impure commodities, and other impositions on purchasers, are

all lumped up under a penalty of from 250 to 500 panas. Selling bad

grain for good, however, incurs severe corporal punishment; and, what

far more passes the limits of just distinction, a goldsmith guilty of

fraud is ordered to be cut to pieces with razors.

Some offences not noticed by other codes are punished in this one

with whimsical disregard to their relative importance; forsaking

one’s parents, son, or wife, for instance, is punished by a fine of

600 panas; and not inviting one’s next neighbour to entertainments on

certain occasions by a fine of one masha of silver.

Gamesters, public dancers, and singers, revilers of scripture, open

heretics, men who perform not the duties of their several classes, and

sellers of spirituous liquors, are to be instantly banished the town.

_Civil Law_

The laws for civil judicature are very superior to the penal code, and,

indeed, are much more rational and matured than could well be expected

of so early an age.

The law of evidence in many particulars resembles that of England:

persons having a pecuniary interest in the cause, infamous persons,

menial servants, familiar friends, with others disqualified on slighter

grounds, are in the first instance excluded from giving testimony;

but, in default of other evidence, almost every description of persons

may be examined, the judge making due allowances for the disqualifying

causes.

Two exceptions which disgrace these otherwise well-intentioned rules

have attracted more attention in Europe than the rules themselves. One

is the declaration that a giver of false evidence, for the purpose

of saving the life of a man of whatever class, who may have exposed

himself to capital punishment, shall not lose a seat in heaven; and,

though bound to perform an expiation, has, on the whole, performed a

meritorious action.

The other does not relate to judicial evidence, but pronounces that, in

courting a woman, in an affair where grass or fruit has been eaten by a

cow, and in case of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman,

it is no deadly sin to take a light oath. From these passages it has

been assumed that the Hindu law gives a direct sanction to perjury;

and to this has been ascribed the prevalence of false evidence, which

is common to men of all religions in India: yet there is more space

devoted in this code to the prohibition of false evidence than to that

of any other crime, and the offence is denounced in terms as awful

as have ever been applied to it in any European treatise either of

religion or of law.

“Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger and thirst, and deprived of

sight, shall the man who gives false evidence go with a potsherd to

beg food at the door of his enemy.”--“Headlong, in utter darkness,

shall the impious wretch tumble into hell, who, being interrogated on a

judicial inquiry answers one question falsely.”

A creditor is authorised, before complaining to the court, to recover

his property by any means in his power, resorting even to force within

certain bounds. This law still operates so strongly in some Hindu

states, that a creditor imprisons his debtor in his private house, and

even keeps him for a period without food and exposed to the sun, to

compel him to produce the money he owes. Interest varies from two per

cent. per mensem for a Brahman to five per cent. for a Sudra.

The rules regarding man and wife are full of puerilities; the most

important ones shall be stated after a short account of the laws

relating to marriage. Six forms of marriage are recognised as lawful.

Of these, four only are allowed to Brahmans, which (though differing in

minute particulars) all agree in insisting that the father shall give

away his daughter without receiving a price. The remaining two forms

are permitted to the military class alone, and are abundantly liberal

even with that limitation. One is, when a soldier carries off a woman

after a victory, and espouses her against her will; and the other, when

consummation takes place by mutual consent, without any formal ceremony

whatever. Two sorts of marriage are forbidden: when the father receives

a nuptial present; and when the woman, from intoxication, or other

cause, has been incapable of giving a real consent to the union.

A girl may be married at eight, or even earlier; and, if her father

fails to give her a husband for three years after she is marriageable

(_i.e._, capable of being a parent), she is at liberty to choose one

for herself. Men may marry women of the classes below them, but on no

account of those superior to their own. A man must not marry within

six known degrees of relationship on either side, nor with any woman

whose family name, being the same, shows her to be of the same race as

his own. The marriage of people of equal class is performed by joining

hands; but a woman of the military class, marrying a Brahman, holds an

arrow in her hand; a Vaisya woman a whip; and a Sudra, the skirt of a

mantle. The marriage of equals is most recommended, for the first wife

at least: that of a Brahman with a Sudra is discouraged; and, as a

first wife, it is positively forbidden.

Marriage is indissoluble, and the parties are bound to observe mutual

fidelity. From the few cases hereafter specified, in which the husband

may take a second wife, it may be inferred that, with those exceptions,

he must have but one wife. A man may marry again on the death of his

wife; but the marriage of widows is discouraged, if not prohibited

(except in the case of Sudras). A wife who is barren for eight years,

or she who has produced no male children in eleven, may be _superseded_

by another wife.

It appears, notwithstanding this expression, that the wife first

married retains the highest rank in the family. Drunken and immoral

wives, those who bear malice to their husbands, or are guilty of very

great extravagance, may also be superseded. A wife who leaves her

husband’s house, or neglects him for a twelvemonth, without a cause,

may be deserted altogether.

A man going abroad must leave a provision for his wife. The wife is

bound to wait for her absent husband for eight years, if he be gone on

religious duty; six, if in pursuit of knowledge or fame; and three, if

for pleasure only. The practice of allowing a man to raise up issue

to his brother, if he died without children, or even if (though still

alive) he have no hopes of progeny, is reprobated, except for Sudras,

or in case of a widow who has lost her husband before consummation.

The natural heirs of a man are the sons of his body, and their sons,

and the sons of his daughters, when appointed in default of heirs

male to raise up issue to him. The son of his wife, begotten by a

near kinsman, at some time when his own life had been despaired of,

according to the practice formerly noticed (which, though disapproved

of as heretical, would appear to be recognised when it has actually

taken place), is also entitled to inherit as a son. On the failure

of issue of the above description, an adopted son succeeds: such a

son loses all claim on the inheritance of his original father; and

is entitled to a sixth of the property of his adoptive one, even

if, subsequently to his adoption, sons of the body should be born.

On failure of the above heirs follow ten descriptions of sons, such

as never could have been thought of but by Hindus, with whom the

importance of a descendant for the purpose of performing obsequies is

superior to most considerations. Among these are included the son of a

man’s wife by an uncertain father, begotten when he himself has long

been absent, and the son of his wife of whom she was pregnant, without

his knowledge, at the time of the marriage. The illegitimate son of

his daughter by a man whom she afterwards marries, the son of a man

by a married woman who has forsaken her husband, or by a widow, are

also admitted into this class; as are, last of all, his own sons by a

Sudra wife. These and others (ten in all) are admitted, by a fiction

of the law, to be sons, though the author of the code himself speaks

contemptuously of the affiliation, even as affording the means of

efficacious obsequies.[c]

HINDU COMMERCE

The Hindus in their most ancient works of poetry are represented as

a commercial people. And it is one evidence of the prosperity and

well-being of a country, that its merchants can travel from one place

to another with perfect security to themselves and their merchandise.

But further, the regulations of society appear to have awarded a high

rank to persons who were employed in the business of commerce. In the

_Ramayana_ we are informed, that at the triumphal entry of Rama into

his capital, “all the men of distinction, together with the merchants

and chief men of the people,” went out to meet him; and the procession

is closed by the warriors, tradesmen, and artisans.

The internal commerce of India could not have been inconsiderable, as

it was in a certain degree prescribed by nature herself. For the sandy

shores of the peninsula, not producing in sufficient quantity the first

necessaries of life, and particularly rice, the importation of these

articles from the country bordering on the Ganges became absolutely

indispensable. In return for which the latter received chiefly spices;

and among other valuables, precious stones, and the fine pearls only to

be procured in the ocean which surrounds the former. Although cotton,

one of the most important materials used for clothing, is common all

over India, and manufactured with the same activity on the coasts of

the peninsula as in the land of the Ganges, yet the fabric of the two

countries differs so much in texture, that a commercial interchange of

both kinds would naturally be introduced.

_Precious Metals_

The great quantity of the precious metals, particularly gold, possessed

by India, may well excite our attention and surprise. Though it had

neither gold nor silver mines, it has always been celebrated even in

the earliest times for its riches. The _Ramayana_ frequently mentions

gold as in abundant circulation throughout the country. And the nuptial

present made to Sita, we are told, consisted of a whole measure of

gold pieces, and a vast quantity of the same precious metal in ingots.

Golden chariots, golden trappings for elephants and horses, and golden

bells, are also noticed as articles of luxury and magnificence; and it

has been already shown, in the course of our inquiries into Phœnician

commerce, that the Hindus were the only people subject to that empire

who paid their tribute in gold and not in silver. The quantity of this

metal then current in India will therefore enable us to infer, with

reason, the existence of a considerable foreign commerce and trade with

the gold countries.

Without doubt commercial transactions with India during the time of

the Romans, and for some time afterwards, were principally carried on

in ready money, which is more than once mentioned as an article of

importation. And who does not recollect the complaints of the elder

Pliny, of the vast sums annually absorbed by the commerce with India?

How, indeed, could the case have been otherwise, when a country, which

produced in superabundance every possible article, whether required for

the necessaries of life or the refinements of luxury, would of course

export a great deal, while it imported little or nothing in return;

so that the commercial balance would always be in its favour. Hence

it followed, that from the moment she possessed a foreign commerce,

India would enrich herself with the precious metals by a necessary

consequence from the very nature of things, and not by any fortuitous

concourse of circumstances.

_Coinage; Precious Stones; Weaving_

This naturally brings us to the question, whether the Hindus possessed

a regular coinage, and how far back the use of it extends. There is no

doubt that the precious metals, gold and silver, particularly gold,

were in very ancient times the established medium of exchange in India;

but this, however, will not prove it to have been coined. If we can

repose any confidence in the published translations of native works,

the use of coined money would appear to have prevailed in very remote

times; for it is expressly mentioned in the fable of Krishna.

Precious stones and pearls, both of them indigenous productions, may

be comprised among the most ancient objects of Hindu luxury, and,

therefore, of commerce; and they are even expressly recommended by

Manu, together with coral and woven stuffs, as the most important

articles on which the Vaisyas were carefully to inform themselves as

to price, etc. It would be superfluous to adduce proofs on this head

from native works; for even the oldest specimens of Hindu sculpture,

found in the rock temples, sufficiently attest it. According to the

_Periplus_, precious stones of every kind were brought from the

interior to the port of Nelkynda; among these, diamonds and rubies are

particularly noticed; and as the former is a native of India, we may

reasonably conclude that some of the mines where they are found must

have been worked at a very remote period.

The use and manufacture of ornamental works in ivory is equally ancient

throughout India. Pendants for the ear, and necklaces, both of that

material, form the ordinary decorations of the divinities of Elephanta,

as was observed to be the case even in Alexander’s time. Above all, the

art of working in ivory must have attained a high degree of perfection,

from the circumstance, that the ornamental chains above noticed seem to

have been carved out of a single piece.

According to the unanimous report both of history and tradition,

weaving is reckoned among the most important manufactures of ancient

India; a country which nature has abundantly furnished with all kinds

of raw material for the purpose, and especially cotton. We are not

informed, however, who was the inventor of the simple loom used by the

Hindus, which from its first origin does not appear to have undergone

any alteration. The variety of cloth fabrics mentioned even by the

author of the _Periplus_, as articles of commerce, is so great, that

we can hardly suppose the number to have increased afterwards. We

there read of the finest Bengal muslins; of coarse, middle, and fine

cloths, either plain or striped; of coarse and fine calicoes; of

coloured shawls and sashes; of coarse and fine purple goods, as well

as pieces of gold embroidery; of spun silk and furs from Serica. The

cotton garments of the Hindus were the first to draw the attention of

the Greeks, from the extraordinary whiteness of the cloth; and they are

described as being made and worn in the same manner as at the present

day. The accounts we find of this cloth in the prophet Ezekiel would

lead us to similar conclusions. That the “coloured cloths and rich

apparel” brought to Tyre and Babylon from distant countries were partly

of Indian manufacture will scarcely be doubted, after what has been

already said of the extent of the Phœnician and Babylonian commerce.

_Intoxicants; Spices; Perfumery_

Of strong and intoxicating liquors, ancient India was acquainted with

more than one sort; the use of them, however, was by no means general.

The _Ramayana_ distinguishes the Surs, who indulged themselves in these

liquors, from the Asurs, who abstained from them; two sects which even

at that time must have been of pretty ancient standing, as they are

noticed in the old fable about the descendants of Aditi (who are the

Surs) and Diti (who are the Asurs).

Under the head of strong liquors, wine is more than once mentioned in

the _Ramayana_. If we suppose this to mean wine made from grapes, it

must, in that case, have been imported; because, to the best of our

knowledge, they do not press the grape in India itself. It is very

doubtful, however, whether this sort of wine is to be understood in the

passages alluded to; and even admitting it to have been introduced into

the country as early as the time of the _Ramayana_, it would scarcely

be the usual drink of common soldiers, any more than it is at the

present day. It appears, indeed, much more probable that palm-wine is

intended by the expression; as this could be easily made in any part

of India, and was, moreover, in the time of the _Periplus_, imported

from Arabia, which is the reason of its being called Arabian wine.

The strong liquors, however, in most general use throughout India,

appear to have been those obtained by distillation. The _Ramayana_

mentions a beverage of this sort procured from fruits and the

sugar-cane; and in Manu we find three principal kinds distinguished,

according as the liquors in question were distilled from molasses,

bruised rice, or the Madhuca-flower. Of the last we know nothing beyond

the mere name; the two former are most likely equivalent to the arrack

and rum of modern times. The Brahmans are forbidden the use of all

three.

India is the mother country of spices; and we have already shown, in

the course of our inquiries into Phœnician commerce, that, from the

most ancient times, she supplied the whole Western world with that

article. Although in the few native works at our present disposal there

is no particular mention made of spices, yet we cannot possibly doubt

of their consumption in the country itself. This silence, however,

is merely the effect of accidental causes; for neither Manu or the

_Ramayana_ had any special occasion of alluding to the subject. But

it is quite certain that pepper was very early known to the Western

world as an article of commerce; for Theophrastus even distinguishes

several varieties of it. Together with the spice itself, the name also

of pepper seems to have migrated, probably through Persia, into the

countries of the West. There is little doubt that it came originally

from the southern parts of Malabar, from Cochin and the neighbourhood;

which was noticed for its growth of pepper by Cosmas in the sixth

century, and indeed is so at the present day.

With respect to articles of perfumery, we are enabled to speak

more decisively. These are of various kinds, partly foreign, as

frankincense, and partly indigenous, as the sandal-wood, which is

frequently mentioned in the _Ramayana_ and the _Gitagovinda_, and was

in common use throughout India as well as China.

Perfumes in general, and particularly frankincense, were from the

most ancient times not confined solely to the purposes of sacrifice;

they were also indispensable requisites in Hindu private life, and

above all on festal occasions; an example of which will be found in

the _Ramayana_, where the poet describes the solemn entry of Bharata

into his grandfather’s capital: “The inhabitants, after having watered

the streets, had sprinkled them with sand, and garnished them with

flower-pots, ranged in order, and containing fragrant plants in full

blossom. The city was adorned with garlands, and exhaled the odours of

frankincense and sweet-smelling perfumes.” The quantity of frankincense

consumed in India deserves to be particularly remarked, as it is not an

indigenous production, but imported from Arabia. Many other kinds of

perfume are mentioned in the _Periplus_ as being of native growth; we

can scarcely, therefore, doubt their having been used in very remote

antiquity.

This is not the place for enumerating in detail all the objects of

commerce mentioned in the earliest accounts of India; such, for

instance, as female slaves, destined for the replenishing of harems;

different sorts of colours, as lac and indigo; together with base and

precious metals; not forgetting the celebrated Indian steel, and many

other valuable productions. But enough has been already said for the

purpose of showing the extent of ancient Hindu commerce, considered

with reference to its principal objects.

_Commercial Routes_

The nature of the country, however, rendered the internal commerce

of India different from that of the rest of Asia, in respect of

transportation; for it was not necessary, nor indeed was it always

possible, to employ caravans, as in the extensive tracts of inner Asia.

That this mode of conveyance was nevertheless occasionally resorted to,

we learn from the beautiful episode of Nala, where Damayanti in her

flight is represented to have joined a caravan of merchants. But the

beasts of burden made use of, in this instance, are tame elephants,

which were therefore attacked in the night and dispersed by their wild

brethren of the forest; and besides, the caravan in question appears

to have belonged to some royal personage, rather than to a company

of private merchants. The greatest part of India, that is to say,

the whole of the peninsula, being traversed with rocky mountains,

would scarcely, if at all, admit of the employment of camels; and the

moderate distances between one town and another, and the general spread

of civilisation, would enable merchants to travel alone with perfect

security, while river navigation and the coasting trade afforded

unusual facilities for transporting merchandise.

The Ganges and its tributary streams were the grand commercial routes

of northern India; and mention is also made of navigation on the rivers

of the peninsula in the south. It is not improbable, indeed, that

artificial routes between the Ganges and the Indus, as we find to have

been the case in aftertimes, existed even at an earlier period. The

great high-roads across the country are not only frequently mentioned

in the _Ramayana_; but we also read of a particular class of men who

were commissioned to keep them in repair. According to Arrian, the

commercial intercourse between the eastern and western coasts was

carried on in country-built vessels; and when we consider the high

antiquity of the pearl-fisheries in the straits of Ceylon, together

with the necessary requisites thereto, we can hardly doubt that such

was also the case many hundred years before his time. It would appear,

then, that conveyance of merchandise by means of a caravan, as in

other countries of the East, continued always foreign to the practice

of India, unless the multitudes of pilgrims and penitents, that were

continually resorting to places of sanctity, may be said to have

compensated for the want of it. The almost innumerable crowds that

yearly flock to Benares, Jagannath, and elsewhere, amounting to many

hundred thousands of souls, would obviously give rise to a species

of commerce united with devotion; and markets and fairs would be a

natural, and indeed an indispensable requisite to satisfy the wants

of such throngs of people. And consequently, too, the establishments

called choultries, the erection of which was considered a religious

duty, and whose forms not unfrequently displayed all the magnificence

of native architecture, might be said to have a similar destination

with the caravanseries of other Eastern countries, without, however,

the resemblance between the two being exactly perfect.

The nature of the country and its productions, together with the

peculiar genius of the people themselves, both contributed to render

Hindu commerce of a passive rather than an active character. For

as the productions of India were always in high request with the

Western world, the Hindus would clearly have no occasion to transport

them to foreign countries themselves; they would of course expect

the inhabitants of the latter to come and fetch what they wanted.

And again, the Hindu national character has no pretensions to that

hardy spirit of adventure, which is capable of achieving the most

extraordinary undertakings. While their fables abound with prodigious

enterprise, the people themselves are content to lead a quiet and

peaceful life, with just so much activity as is requisite to guide the

plough or direct the shuttle, without running the risk of hazardous and

unnecessary adventure. Their India--their Jambu-dvipa, comprised in

their estimation the limits of the known world. Separated from the rest

of Asia by a chain of impassable mountains on the north; while on all

other sides the ocean formed a barrier, which, if their laws are silent

on the subject, yet at least their habits or their customs would not

permit them to transgress; we can find no certain proof that the Hindus

were ever mariners.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[19] The original system seems to have been very lax in this respect,

and each caste might take wives from the caste or castes below them,

as well as their own. “A Sudra woman only, must be the wife of a

Sudra; she and a Vaisya of a Vaisya; they too and a Kshattriya of a

Kshattriya; those too and a Brahmani of a Brahman.” Manu, iii. 13. And

although it was a sin for a Brahman to marry a Sudra woman, yet such

things did happen.

[20] Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, _Asiat. Research._, Vol. LIII.

[Illustration: THE INDIAN ARMY ON THE MARCH]

[Illustration: ANCIENT INDIAN BAS-RELIEF]

CHAPTER IV. BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAHMANISM

In the vast highlands formed by the conjunction of the great mountain

chains of Bolor-Tagh in the northwest of the Himalayas, where, not far

from the sources of the Oxus and other great rivers the tableland of

Pamir, “the roof of the world,” extends, a well-built nomadic race,

possessing the rudiments of civilisation and calling themselves the

“excellent” Aryans, in prehistoric times pastured their horses and

flocks. Shut off on the north and east by impassable mountains from

Central Asia, the country on the west and south was appointed them for

the evolution of their natural capacities. When the Aryans, following

the inborn wandering instinct of all pastoral races, left their home,

one part of them settled in the mountain districts north and west of

the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus), which in the Greek writers bore the names

of Sogdiana, Bactriana, Hyrcania, and Arachosia; another part went

farther, wandered through the southwestern passes of these mountains,

and took possession of the rich, fertile country on the banks of the

Indus (Sindh). The former, called the Iranians, or according to their

sacred language, the Zend people, evolved in time the state of culture

which their conquerors--the Medes and Persians--adopted from them. The

latter, called among the other nations of the ancient world, Indians or

Hindus, after the principal river of their land, became the creators

of that perfected system of religion, of those peculiar political and

legal forms, and of that Sanskrit literature, which we still admire in

its remains and traditions.

The aborigines, dark-skinned races, of rude customs and wild mode of

life, were partly exterminated or pushed back into the forests by

the Aryan immigrants, partly subjugated and reduced to the condition

of servitude and slavery, and in this way an impassable barrier was

erected between the two races.

The deep contempt with which the conquerors looked down upon the

conquered increased in the Indian consciousness that self-satisfied

conceit which led the Brahmans to consider all people who spoke another

language, or who were under other laws, as barbarians, called by them

Mlechcha (_i.e._, weak), with whom they must avoid all intermixture and

all social intercourse.

There is no trustworthy historical information of antiquity to throw

light on the development and gradual evolution of the culture of the

Aryans, and so until the chronicles and legends of the Buddhists

in the sixth and fifth and the records of the Greeks in the fourth

and third centuries, it can only be gathered from a few traces and

analogies. The Brahmans had not the slightest interest in records;

on the other hand they endeavoured to blot out all recollection of

earlier times and other conditions, so that the conditions and views

which developed later might appear to the people as the original ones.

So the chronological order of the accounts, derived from the national

poems and religious writings, is necessarily so very deficient and

intermittent that the more ancient periods can only be surmised.

From the years of their immigration into the district of the Indus,

which must have occurred in the third millennium before our era, until

the fifteenth century, the Aryans lived in the Land of the Five Rivers

as far as the sacred Saraswati. Divided into many tribes, they led a

settled pastoral and agricultural life under the leadership of elders,

chiefs, and kings, worshipping the sun-god Indra and the other powers

of nature with songs and sacrifices, and hardening themselves by

battle and tribal feuds. In the oldest portions of the Vedas are still

preserved some of the songs and invocations sung at the festivals of

the gods or at the sacrificial feasts of the dead.

In their gradual expansion towards the south, they may have reached

the mouth of the Indus by the fourteenth or thirteenth century, and on

the southern seacoast they may have made commercial alliances with the

Babylonians and Phœnicians. Diodorus’ account, taken from the Greek

historian Ctesias, of the journey of Queen Semiramis to the Indus, and

her battle with the “Lord of the Earth” (Stabrobates-Sthavarapatis)

seems, in spite of its fabulous exaggeration, to rest upon historical

tradition, which, combined with the report that Semiramis founded the

city of Kophen on the river Kabul tends to prove, that at this time

the country on the right bank of the Upper Indus was subject and paid

tribute to the Assyrians.[21]

A second stage of evolution is connected with the conquest of the land

of the Ganges, beginning about the fourteenth century before our era,

when an heroic period commenced full of warlike deeds, the traces of

which are retained in the oldest legends of the national epic, the

_Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_, and in the names of some tribal

princes and ruling families. We should have more accurate information

about this period of heroic activity had not the heroic poems later

undergone complete transformation under the hands of the Brahmans,

but even in their present form they still retain a core of historical

truth although more concealed and veiled than among other peoples. The

farther the Aryans went to the east, the more the forsaken home on the

Indus and its tributaries was regarded as the sacred mother country

where the Aryan race was unmixed with foreign elements and where the

sacred Sanskrit language maintained its original purity. But the

patriarchal institutions and the old nature-religion were in the course

of time so eliminated from the memory of the race that the remaining

tribes, which had not kept pace with the evolution of the people of the

Ganges, or had clung to the old forms, were excluded from the religious

communion and the legal system of the worshippers of Brahma as impure

and of low degree. Some of these tribes on the Upper Indus were under

Persian dominion and marched as far as the plains of Eleusis in the

army of Xerxes.

The national strength of the Indians seems to have been shattered

by these centuries of long-continued struggles, first against the

aboriginal population, and then after their subjugation or expulsion,

among the Aryan races themselves, the first settlers seeking to defend

the territory they had gained against later immigrants. Therefore it

was not difficult for the priests, when arms were at last laid down, to

repress the warlike portion of the population, which had been supreme

in the heroic period, but had lost its best forces and its most capable

leaders in the bloody battles, especially as the enervating climate

and the fertility of their new abode on the Ganges and Jumna were more

conducive to religious contemplation and peaceful courses than to

martial excitement and military life.

These circumstances combined with the more passive and vegetative

nature of the people, were favourable to the efforts of the Brahmans

to subjugate the whole external and internal life of the nation to

priestly dominion. They supplanted the old nature-religion by the

pantheistic emanation doctrine of Brahma as the soul of the world,

and gave the heroic Indra and his crowds of gods a subordinate place

as guardians of the world. They restricted the free development of

national power by a strict exclusive order of caste, in which they took

the foremost place; and they repressed all natural activity by endless

ceremonial and ritualistic laws, by sacrifices and purifications. They

cast a gloom over life on earth and suppressed all pleasure in life

and joyous impulse by the terrifying doctrine of rebirth and hell

punishment. They taught a gloomy asceticism full of expiations and

penances, the mortification of the flesh and all sensual pleasure by

absorption in an imaginary Divine Being as the surest way to free the

soul from the bonds of the body and to restore it to its heavenly home

from this miserable earthly life.

Moreover the Brahmans not only obtained dominion over the domain of

religion, and endowed it with its peculiar spiritualistic character,

but they tried to gain power over and regulate with their precepts the

state and law, and civil life in all its manifestations. With this

end in view, they put into effect a code of law, ostensibly coming

from Manu, which was to have authority in all Indian states and which

by dint of severe punishments, and a strict royal despotism, based

upon the power of officials and police, kept the people in a state of

obedient submission.

The Brahmans were more anxious for the Indians to lead a uniform

existence according to the precepts of the law, than for the separate

kingdoms to unite into a political whole, and form a power with strong

external relations. Therefore the Indian nation was never united by

a common alliance, but just as the different castes existed side by

side, but separated and without any common interest, so the Indian

country was broken up into a lot of smaller or greater states without

any external connection. They never formed a federal state, nor even

a confederation of states. Separated and asunder, and not seldom in

hostile relations, the different kingdoms were as distinct as the

castes, and the kingdoms themselves consisted in turn of a lot of

disunited villages and city communities only loosely connected together

for convenience of taxation and supervision.

These political and social divisions and disruptions were not

calculated to turn the attention of the Indian race to political

life, so it recoiled from the wretched régime in which gloomy tyranny

suppressed all joy in life, and watched over every spiritual activity

and sought its happiness and salvation in the realm of faith and

fantasy, in the world of imagination and dreams. It submerged itself in

the divine, it filled heaven and earth with spirits and higher beings

of every kind, and in the fascinating world of legends and stories of

saints, of fables of miracles, and myths of penitents, it forgot the

real world with its oppression of castes, its despotism of princes

and officials, and its blood-sucking system of taxation. Thus did the

Indians on the Ganges withdraw more than any other race from real

practical life, for the “realm of fantasy was their fatherland, and

heaven was their home.”

This was the line taken by Indian culture until the sixth century

before our era, and it spread over a great part of the peninsula of the

Deccan more by the Brahmanical missions and colonisation, than by force

of arms. Then Buddhism developed out of Brahmanism and became a mighty

ferment for the whole of eastern Asia. Moreover, the new doctrine

was not without its influence on the Brahmanic religious system. The

perception that the people were so much attached to the doctrine of

Buddha because it cherished the belief that a god had appeared in human

form on earth, led the Brahmans to the development of the doctrine of

incarnations. They divided the creator Brahma, who always remained an

incomprehensible idea to the popular mind, into three forms, and taught

that the most popular and beneficent form of this triune deity, Vishnu,

the vivifying, supporting spirit of nature, appeared from time to time

on earth in human form, to restore order to the disturbed arrangement

of the world and to lead back erring humanity to the right road. Rama

and Krishna, the heroes of the national epics, were represented as such

incarnations of Vishnu and the songs of the heroes were reconstructed

according to this idea. Therefore, the profound speech of Bhagavad-gita

was incorporated in the _Mahabharata_, in which the attempt to

reconcile the faith of the Buddhists with the doctrine of Brahma is

evident.

Hellenic culture then found its way to India, and it may have been

through Greek influence that many sciences and arts, such as knowledge

of the zodiac, scientific astronomy, minting, etc., were first adopted

in the land of the Ganges. The Hellenic spirit seems to have been

influential in the development of poetry and plastic arts, at least

in that of the drama and architecture. Greek culture also led to an

early introduction of Christian opinions into India; in the idea of a

personal god, which later became prominent and in the evolution of the

doctrine of Vishnu-Krishna the influence of Christian ideas is not to

be ignored.

In the Macedonian and Alexandrian period, when India came in contact

with western Asiatic and Greek culture, Indian spiritual life had come

to a standstill, the creative spirit was extinct. The speculative and

inquiring spirit had brought forward an abundance of theories and

systems, and applied them to life with astonishing consistency; and now

it was exhausted, and left to posterity the wonderful images as strict

forms and categories for the inner and outer life.

With the peculiar tenacity of the oriental nature, the Indians

have retained throughout all centuries, down to the present time,

the religious conceptions, the fantastic doctrine of the gods, the

oppressing order of caste, the strict asceticism, the faith in the

second birth, and in short all the forms and theories, which crippled

and broke the moral and productive force of the nation. However many

conquerors put their iron heel on the neck of the people, however many

storms and wars spread death and desolation over the sacred land, these

principles of Indian life survived all changes, and withstood all

oppression, persecution, and attempts at conversion.

The despotism and caste power, impregnating the Indian nature, have

imbued it with a force of endurance and passive resistance which could

not be broken by any outside power. Cunning, artifice, dissimulation,

lying, and deceit, the weapons and vices of all the weak and oppressed,

helped the Indian to bear his painful position. He bowed under dominion

without being broken in character; and as death always appeared to him

a gain, and asceticism deadened him to suffering, he always suffered

death with composure and stoicism.[b]

Having read an account of the rise of Brahmanism we may well examine

its code of morals somewhat more fully before passing on to Buddhism.

_The Vedas_

The religion taught in the Institutes is derived from the Vedas, to

which scriptures they refer in every page. There are four Vedas; but

the fourth is rejected by many of the learned Hindus, and the number

reduced to three.

The primary doctrine of the Vedas is the Unity of God. “There is in

truth,” say repeated texts, “but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the

Lord of the Universe, whose work is the universe.”