India: A History. Revised and Updated (11 page)

Like a self-denying ordinance, this stern approach deprives the historian of many a gallant hero plus whole chapters of rip-roaring narrative. More agreeably, it also diverts attention from that nagging problem of Indian history being so light on dates.

Because of the difficulty in assigning an exact chronology to the sources [i.e. the epics] it is impossible to be precise or dogmatic as to when particular changes took place … Consequently the major significance of these sources lies more in their indication of the nature of the trend of change which they delineate rather than in the precise dating of the change.
⁵

The historicity of a hero demands that his place and dates be established; no such figure graces Indian history until the Buddha illumines the scene after 500
BC
. But ‘the nature of a trend of change’ can reasonably be assigned to an entire river basin and a timespan of centuries.

The ‘trends’ which emerge from such studies are numerous and important though seldom explicit. For instance, central to both of the great epics is the question of succession. The Pandava heroes of the
Mahabharata
(Yudhisthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Draupadi, etc.), like their counterparts in the
Ramayana
(Rama, Sita and Lakshmana), are initially denied ‘kingdoms’ which would seem to be theirs by birthright and are forced into exile. Primogeniture evidently influenced succession and there are hints about the divine sanction of kingship; both of these ideas would become cardinal features of later monarchies. Yet Puranic references can be highly ambiguous about kingship as an institution, although one should not perhaps read too much in its oft-repeated adage: ‘As bad as ten slaughter houses is one oil-presser’s wheel, as bad as ten oil-pressers’ wheels is one inn sign, as bad as ten inn signs is a harlot, and as bad as ten harlots is a king.’
⁶

But it is also clear that society at the time, though now settled and familiar with agriculture, was still clan-based. Kingship was subordinate to kinship and probably amounted to no more than chieftainship-among-equals. Succession by primogeniture was thus heavily qualified; much depended on the physical and moral perfection of the candidate, on the approval of his peers, and on his successful avoidance of fortuitous mishaps and curses. Ideas of a kingship which transcended clan affiliation and of automatic succession by right of birth, though obviously important to those who reworked the original stories, would only become the norm towards
the middle of the millennium and then only among certain tribes.

As for the retreat into exile, the other central theme in both epics, this is taken to indicate the process by which clan society resolved its conflicts and at the same time encroached ever deeper into the subcontinent. Eventually population pressures on land and other resources would encourage greater social specialisation and the assertion of a central authority, two of the prerequisites of a state. But during the first centuries of the first millennium
BC
, these same pressures seem merely to have encouraged a traditional solution whereby clans segmented and split away to explore new territories.

Exile meant withdrawing from settled society not into the desert (which even renunciates seem to have shunned) but into the
aranya
, the forest. Here life was challenging though full of possibilities; numerous venerable sages and barely-clad nymphs could even make it idyllic. Something of the later antithesis between the safely settled, caste-based society of the village and the dangerously peripatetic and egalitarian society associated with the forest is already apparent. But for every agreeable sylvan experience there also lurked amongst the trees a monstrous demon or some other species of hostile primitive. These creatures, even if recognisably human, possessed no houses and subsisted as hunter-gatherers. To exiles who prided themselves on being settled agriculturalists, the nomadic ways and uncouth habits of the forest were anathema. The monsters had therefore to be exterminated, while harmless savages, like the snake-worshipping ‘Nagas’, could be enlisted as allies or tributaries, usually through marriage and through inventing acceptable pedigrees for them. In effect the relationship between the epic heroes and their forest foes mirrored the presumed pattern of Aryan ‘colonisation’ and settlement.

‘The people move from west to east and conquer land,’ says the
Satapatha Brahmana
. By the time of the
Mahabharata
they had evidently reached the upper Ganga, for there stood Hastinapura, the story’s disputed capital. Forest exile in this geographical context could only mean that, in their eastward spread, the pioneers of Aryanisation were entering the main Gangetic basin. Decidedly different from today’s dusty chequerboard where tufts of trees survive only as shade for huddled villages, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were then a moist green wilderness of forest and swamp, a tropical
taiga
of near-Siberian extent. Here, unlike in the drier Panjab, land clearance posed a formidable challenge. The soils were heavier and the jungle thicker; even fire-breathing Agni’s work must have been quickly undone as smoke-blackened stumps burst back into leaf. On the other hand the forest was rich in resources. The exiles invariably used their sojourn in the
wilderness to re-arm with a formidable arsenal of new weapons. Though ascribed to divine provenance, these unbreakable swords, bows with un-erring arrows, and devastating missiles may more plausibly have been fashioned from the exotic timbers and minerals only to be found in the
terra incognita
beyond the then confines of the western settlements.

Although copper from Rajasthan had been used by the Harappans, the best-quality deposits lie much further east in what is now southern Bihar. Thence too came iron. Whether its use was first learned from indigenous smiths in peninsular India or whether through trade contacts with west Asia is uncertain. Likewise the revolution it eventually effected. After 500
BC
iron axes and probably ploughshares were indeed helping to solve the problem of clearing the land and working heavier soils; but until that time the ‘black metal’ seems to have been reserved almost exclusively for weapons and knives. Access to the new metallurgy may not, then, have eased the settler’s lot, but it could at least have given the exiled Pandavas a military edge – literally – over their enemies. Adopted by the other clans, iron represented a major technological advantage, comparable to the horse-drawn chariots of their
arya
ancestors and perhaps of more utility in the closer confines of the new environment.

Unfortunately, charting the eastward progress of Sanskritic but still tribal intruders was not germane to the purposes of those who retold the epics for the edification of later generations. Indeed surviving versions of the
Mahabharata
would have us believe that the Pandavas and their Kaurava rivals were not only far from primitive but that they already monopolised the resources of the subcontinent. When not in exile, they are described as living in pillared pavilions and marble halls, their interiors opulently furnished and their floors so highly polished that visitors hitched up their robes in the belief that across such glimmering expanses they must needs wade. The Kuru ‘kingdom’, centred on Hastinapura, is projected as being of vast extent and untold wealth, its armies feared throughout the subcontinent and its potential allies extending from coast to coast.

Such descriptions served solely to legitimise the grandiose ambitions of later empire-builders. (And if one may judge by the television serialisations of the 1980s, they still serve to underpin conceits about a pan-Indian prehistory of spectacular sophistication.) In reality, though, the core geography of the
Mahabharata
is limited to a small area of the Ganga-Jamuna Doab which was the maximum extent of Kuru territory. This is self-evident from an early episode in the story when, the territory having been divided, the Pandavas set out to the ends of the ‘kingdom’ to found a new capital. They choose Indraprastra, just sixty kilometres away and still so named –indeed
still fortified; its crumbling walls, although not those of the Pandavas, served the British designers of New Delhi as a suitable feature with which to terminate the vista from their own marbled halls of Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhawan).

Further detail on the Indo-Aryan
drang nach osten
may be gleaned from the archaeological evidence for the first half of the first millennium
BC
. At Hastinapura and other sites that ‘unspeakably crude’ ochre-coloured pottery which is sometimes found with the copper hoards is succeeded by a very superior painted grey ware. ‘PGW’ was evidently produced on a wheel, and was confidently decorated with geometric and floral motifs. It is found principally throughout the Ganga-Jamuna Doab and in adjacent areas of the Panjab, Rajasthan and the western Gangetic valley, a distribution which tallies nicely with the geographical context of the
Mahabharata
. Often it occurs in quantities which imply a greater population density than previously, and thus ‘it marks an assertive society, richer than its immediate predecessors’.
⁷
It was also a society which, judging by associated finds, worked the land as well as keeping both cattle and horses. Finally, the dating of this PGW also tallies well with that of the c950
BC
date for the great war. If not the pottery from which Vedic chieftains once quaffed their psychedelic
soma
, it may well have been off PGW dishes that Bhima, trencherman
par excellence
amongst the Pandavas, prodigiously fed. In short, the PGW looks to have been the distinctive pottery style of the Kuru and associated clans on the north-west fringes of the Gangetic plain.

Another pottery style known as black and red ware (BRW) seems to have been contemporary with PGW but to have had a wider and patchier distribution which included much of western and central India. This has suggested an association with the Yadava clan, a sept or segment of which is said to have migrated south from its base at Mathura (between Delhi and Agra). In the process it seems to have established an important corridor of Aryanisation to Avanti (later called Malwa), where the city of Ujjain would soon arise, and further still into Gujarat and possibly down the west coast. The Yadava dimension has to be pieced together from scattered references in the
Puranas
, since it lacks the detailed documentation provided for the Kuru by the
Mahabharata.
Nevertheless into the latter epic as the Pandavas’ mentor and guardian is worked the legend of Lord Krishna, the scion and hero of the Yadava lineage. Krishna, although used as a mouthpiece for the revered but later
Bhagavad Gita
(and although later still to become the frolicsome toddler and pastoral heart-throb so dear to Indian sentiment), is here an aloof and awesome figure whose no-nonsense approach is partly an indictment of human frailty but also stems from an
insistence on the centrality of clan loyalty and
arya
tradition. The Yadavas were evidently a conservative lot. In Gujarat as in Mathura pastoralism and dairy farming would retain their economic importance long after arable farming had become the mainstay of life and the source of surplus in the Gangetic basin. Likewise the western clans would cling to their traditional hierarchies long after their eastern cousins had adopted state formations.

Another salient of black and red ware suggests a south-east movement from Mathura along the edge of the Vindhya hills. These form the southern perimeter of the Gangetic basin whence, in Bihar, the BRW descends again into the plain. It there re-meets the painted grey ware, a parallel arm of which is discernible extending east along the skirts of the Himalayas. The impression gained is therefore that of a pincer movement, possibly dictated by the problems of clearing the dense forest and draining the swamps which blocked progress along the banks of the Ganga itself. Instead the tide of migration and acculturation seems to have worked its way round the edges, and especially round the top edge. Thus the principal chain of
janapada
, or clan territories (literally ‘clan-feet’), lay well to the north of the main river, on the banks of the Ganga’s tributaries as they flow down from what is now Nepal. In the
Satapatha Brahmana
there is even a detailed description of Agni burning a trail eastwards and eventually leapfrogging what is thought to have been the Gandak river so as to ignite the forest beyond and clear its land for settlement and tillage by the Videha clan.

This northerly route of east–west transit and trade, extending from the Panjab and the upper Indus to Bihar and the lower Ganga, now became as much the main axis of Aryanisation as it would subsequently of Buddhist proselytisation and even Magadhan imperialism. It was known as the
Uttarapatha
, the Northern Route, as distinct from the
Daksinapatha
(whence the term ‘Deccan’) or Southern Route. The latter, largely the Yadava trail from the Gangetic settlements to Avanti (Malwa) and Gujarat, would also become a much-travelled link giving access to the ports of the west coast and the riches of the as yet un-Aryanised and historically inarticulate peninsula. But it was along the
Uttarapatha
that the Aryanised territories would first begin to assume the trappings of statehood. Initially those at the western end in the Panjab and the Doab tended to look down on those on the eastern frontier in Bihar and Bengal; the latter were
mleccha
, uncouth in their
arya
speech and negligent in their sacrificial observance. By mid-first millennium
BC
it would be the other way round. As the eastern settlements grew into a network of thriving proto-states, many laid claim to exalted pedigrees and, assuming the mantle of Aryanised orthodoxy, would be happy to disparage their Panjabi cousins as
vratya
or ‘degenerate’.