India: A History. Revised and Updated (38 page)

A further argument has it that caste assumed its passive and static connotations only after the Muslim conquest, when religious discrimination and oppressive taxation conspired to remove opportunities for political participation and economic advancement. Caste membership, shorn of its influence, then became primarily a distinguishing characteristic of orthodox Indianness, or ‘Hinduism’. The notion of
karma –
whereby one’s status was determined by one’s conduct in past lives and could in subsequent lives be improved by one’s conduct in this – provided a rational explanation for the system as well as a welcome solace for those most disadvantaged by it; their prospects now depended not on the exercise of caste rights but on resignation to caste obligations. The doctrine of
karma
, first scouted in the
Upanisads
, then elaborated in Buddhist teaching, thus came, like caste, to be perceived as fundamental to Hindu orthodoxy.

Politically, according to Muslim observers, India comprised many kingdoms, each with a formidable army that included elephants and cavalry as well as infantry. According to a Baghdad adage quoted by al-Biruni, the Turks were famous for their horses, Kandahar (for some reason) for its
elephants, and India for its armies. One of India’s rulers, ‘the Balhara’, was reckoned as being amongst ‘the four great or principal kings of the world’ according to the much-travelled merchant known to us simply as Suleiman (the other great rulers were the kings of Baghdad, of Byzantium-Constantinople, and of China). Admittedly ‘the Balhara’s’ claim to be India’s king of kings was constantly under threat; but in the opinion of Suleiman, who made several trips to India during the first half of the ninth century, this did not necessarily occasion great upheaval. India had learned to contain conflict and to minimise its effects.

The Indians sometimes go to war for conquest, but the occasions are rare. I have never seen the people of one country submit to the authority of another, except in the case of that country which comes next to the country of pepper [i.e. the Malabar coast]. When a king subdues a neighbouring state, he places over it a man belonging to the family of the fallen prince who carries on the government in the name of the conqueror. The inhabitants would not suffer it to be otherwise.
¹⁰

Once again one is reminded of Megasthenes’ description of agriculturalists ‘ploughing in perfect security’ while armies did battle in the next field. Although the ploughmen may have had a stake in the outcome of the battle or may have contributed to the equipage of one of the protagonists, they were not expected to get involved. Warriors fought with warriors; the ploughman’s
dharma
was to plough.

Bearing this peculiarity in mind – and not without a deep breath – one may return to the dynastic fray as it intensified during the eighth to eleventh centuries. In the Deccan the century and a half of glorious domination by the Chalukyas of Badami came to an end around 760. Distracted if not exhausted by their endless wars in the south with the Pallavas of Kanchi, the Chalukyas had allowed one of their northern officials to accumulate considerable territory on the upper Godavari river in Berar, a region as near the dead centre of India as anywhere and now dominated by the city of Nagpur. From c735–56 the senior member of this rising family was Dantidurga and, since his function within the Chalukyas’ empire was that of
rastrakuta
or ‘head of a region’, the dynasty he founded is known as that of the Rashtrakutas.

After loyally serving the Chalukya Vikramaditya II in his Pallava wars and possibly also against the Arabs of Sind, Dantidurga took the opportunity of Vikramaditya’s death in 747 to enlarge his territories. In a modest
digvijaya
which carefully avoided the Chalukyan heartland of Karnataka,
he expanded his authority to include much of Madhya Pradesh and parts of southern Gujarat and northern Maharashtra. Additionally, according to a set of copper plates from Ellora (which place he seems to have adopted as his ceremonial capital), he assumed the title of
prithvi-vallabha. Vallabha
means ‘husband’ or ‘lover’, while
prithvi
means ‘the earth’ and is also the name of the earth goddess who was one of Lord Vishnu’s consorts. Dantidurga and his successors were therefore advancing an ambitious claim to be acknowledged as Lords of the Earth and emanations of Vishnu. Incidentally, it was also this title, abbreviated to
vallabha
, which registered with Muslim observers and reappeared in their writings as ‘the Balhara’.

Compared to the Byzantine emperors or any of the other ‘four great or principal kings of the world’, the Balhara’s rise to fame was rapid and comparatively painless. Dantidurga completed his
digvijaya
by belatedly confronting the Chalukyan king who, also belatedly, had just awoken to the danger of this rival on his northern frontier. Again it was the Rashtrakuta who triumphed, although in mysterious circumstances: ‘success seems to have been due to a stratagem, for his court poet tells us that he overthrew the Karnataka army by a mere frown of his brow, without any effort being made and without any weapons being raised or used.’ The fruits of this victory, if such it was, were proportionately modest. The Chalukyas were soon back in the field and Dantidurga would frown no more. He died prematurely in c756 ‘probably owing to the pressing requests [for his company] of the heavenly damsels’, suggests one record.
¹¹

Being childless, he was succeeded on the Rashtrakuta throne by his uncle Krishna I. Krishna it was who concluded matters with the Chalukyas. In what looks to have been a rather violent battle – and which could be that to which the merchant Suleiman would refer as involving ‘the country which comes next to the country of pepper’ – Krishna decisively disposed of his family’s erstwhile suzerains; ‘the ocean of the Chalukya army’ was well and truly ‘churned’, we are told, and from its waves arose the ‘Goddess of Royal Glory’. Badami fell and all Karnataka was added to the Rashtrakutas’ territories, while subsequent campaigns secured the submission of the Konkan coast and of the eternally hard-pressed Ganga dynasty (of the Mysore area). Additionally, in the east, one of Krishna’s sons triumphed over the Chalukyas of Vengi who were a satellite branch of the Badami family. These ‘Eastern Chalukyas’ were now wedded to the Rashtrakuta cause by a matrimonial alliance.

When Krishna I died in c773 the Rashtrakutas were undisputed masters of the entire Deccan. Further conquests could only be made at the expense of the kingdoms of the extreme south or by crossing the Vindhya hills into
the Gangetic plains. No Deccan-based dynasty had yet tried its luck in the hallowed and hotly contested
aryavarta
but under Dhruva, who in c780 ended a short and chaotic reign by his brother, the Rashtrakutas did just that. Dhruva first secured his southern flank by again rubbishing the Gangas and rattling the Pallavas. Then in c786 he forded the Narmada, a veritable Rubicon, and led his best troops north. Malwa quickly submitted. Following the Chambal river along the well-worn trail once known as the
Daksinapatha
, Dhruva crossed into the Gangetic basin and headed for Kanauj.

THE KANAUJ TRIANGLE

Centrally sited and beside the holy Ganga, Kanauj had been acknowledged as the seat of northern empire ever since Harsha’s day. By the ninth century, though, it was a capital without much of a kingdom, its ruler being generally a puppet of one or other of the two great powers that were contesting the hegemony of the north. These were the Palas from eastern India and the Gurjara-Pratiharas from western India. With the eruption onto the scene in c786 of the Rashtrakutas from the Deccan this became a three-sided contest. It would last for two centuries and, though its details are anything but clear, the evidence suggests glorious interludes during which one or other of the contestants successfully performed a
digvijaya
, laid claim to Kanauj, and grandiloquently advertised his universal paramountcy. Hence the period is sometimes called the ‘Imperial Age of Kanauj’. But the chronology is too confused for anything but a conjectural narrative, and of the temples and fortifications of Kanauj itself too little remains to inspire even a hopeful reconstruction.

More interesting than the power struggle is the very different provenance of the participants. All three are noticed by Muslim writers who understandably have least to say about the remotest, namely ‘Rahma’, ‘Rahmi’ or ‘Ruhmi’. The word may derive from Dharmapala who ruled c775–810, and certainly it seems to refer to his dynasty, that of the Palas of Bengal. The Pala country, we learn, was on the coast but stretched well inland; it produced very fine cottons and aloe wood, and the king possessed fifty thousand elephants and more troops than either of his rivals. Dharmapala was the son of Gopala, who looks to have founded the dynasty in c750. Unusually, but not uniquely since similar claims are made for one of the Pallavas and for a king of Kashmir, Gopala’s elevation is said to have been the result of a selection, if not an election, process. Perhaps already a minor king of northern Bengal, he was invited to assume sovereignty
over the whole of Vanga, or eastern Bengal, and then rapidly consolidated his rule throughout Bengal and Bihar.

Dharmapala continued his father’s expansionist policies. Excepting for Sasanka’s brief and uncertain challenge in Harsha’s day, this was the first Bengali bid for control of
aryavarta
, and it began badly. But eventually, taking full advantage of the disruption caused by the first Rashtrakuta incursion, Dharmapala reached Kanauj and there held a great ceremony at which his chosen candidate was installed as a tributary king. The loan of Dharmapala’s own golden pitcher for the sacred ablutions essential to this induction neatly demonstrated his primacy. Kings from all over north India, including an unexplained ‘Yavana’ (possibly a Muslim from Sind), witnessed the event and ‘paid homage with the bending down of their quavering diadems’.
¹²

Through as many setbacks as triumphs, the Palas clung to their supremacist claims for the best part of a century. As with the Guptas, this was partly thanks to their longevity. Dharmapala reigned for forty years and Devapala, his son, seems to have lasted quite as long (c810–50). To their collection of ‘quavering diadems’ were briefly added those of the kings of Kamarupa (Assam), Utkala (an Orissan kingdom) and possibly other kings from lands as far-flung as the deep south and the extreme north-west. This, however, temporarily exhausted the Palas’ taste for earthly dominion. Although there would be a brief revival in the eleventh century, in the tenth their role was simply as a whipping boy for their rivals. ‘The Pala empire, shorn of its plume, lay tottered,’ writes an Indian historian.
¹³
Seemingly it disintegrated under a succession of rulers of a ‘pacific and religious disposition’.
¹⁴
One renounced the throne to become an ascetic, others attended to their spiritual advisers and to the welfare of the monastic establishments which still flourished in the Pala heartland of Bihar and Bengal.

For the Palas were Buddhists, indeed the last major Indian dynasty to espouse Buddhism. Their lavish endowments included the revival of Nalanda’s university and a colossal building programme at Somapura, now Paharpur in Bangladesh, where sprawling ruins and foundations, all of brick, attest ‘the largest Buddhist buildings south of the Himalayas’.
¹⁵
They also founded an important new centre of learning at Vikramashila, which was somewhere on the Ganga in Bihar. The fame of all these places travelled widely and suggests that Pala patronage was crucial to the future of Buddhism as a world religion. To the Pala kingdom came students from Sind, Kashmir, Nepal, Tibet, China, Burma, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Pala architecture probably influenced the final remodelling of Borobudur
and would be echoed in the stupas and temples of Pagan (Burma) and Prambanam (Java). Pala images, often in highly polished stone and bronze, anticipated and inspired the distinctive iconography of Tibet and Nepal. And the Mahayanist Buddhism of both these countries developed its peculiar traits and doctrines under Pala patronage.

It was a Buddhism far removed from that preached by the Enlightened One, indeed as remote from it in both time and spirit as was medieval Christianity from the New Testament. Although originally a rationalisation of the human condition and a code of ethics, both of which largely ignored the deities and rituals associated with conventional religion, Buddhism had been steadily assuming the trappings of orthodox religious practice ever since the Buddha’s death. In the Boddhisattvas it had long since acquired a pantheon whose myths and attributes rivalled those of Shiva and Vishnu; now, in their numerous Taras, or spouses, it acquired glamorous female counterparts of Parvati and Lakshmi. Indeed Buddhist icons of the Pala period are so anatomically exaggerated and so generously provided with extra heads and arms that only a trained eye would identify them as Buddhist.

In eastern India the demarcation between Buddhists and non-Buddhists was further blurred by both countenancing the efficacy of
mantras
(repetitious formulae),
yantras
(mystical designs),
mudras
(finger postures) and the numerous other practices associated with Tantricism.
Tantras
were
e
soteric texts of uncertain origin and profoundly difficult import which offered initiates the chance of communing with the divinity and assuming supernatural powers and states. The rituals and disciplines involved were complex and secret. Some mimicked the sexual imagery of myths involving the union of the deity and his
shakti
, or female counterpart. Breaking the taboos of caste, diet, dress and sexual fidelity, practitioners might enjoy both a liberating debauch and an enhanced reputation, even if magical powers eluded them.