Wanted A Synthesis Of Ancient Indian History

Wanted a Synthesis

of Ancient Indian History

(Principal, V. R. College, Nellore)

Of the achievements of historical scholarship during the last one century, nothing is more noteworthy than the reconstruction of the story of India's past. That which was completely shrouded in myth and legend has been brought to light; and with the help of Archaeology, Epigraphy, Numismatics and Literature–Indian and foreign–a connected account of the history of the country for a period of four thousand years has been made possible. From the days when advanced civilisation and culture flourished at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley (about 3000 B. C.) down to 1200 A. D. when the Turkish and Afghan armies swept over the country, the successive phases of history can now be recounted in broad outline with a fair degree of accuracy. There are of course numerous gaps to be filled and many dark spaces to be illumined. But the activities of the numerous scholars–mainly Indian–devoted to original research and investigation give the hope that, within a generation, it will be possible to have as full a history of our country as that of Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East.

The work, however, that has been so far done requires to be synthesised; for it is not yet utilised by writers with a view to bring out prominently the central and dominant features in the development of the country and the evolution of its history. Historians of the type of Mommsen, Bury and Flinders Petrie have not yet considered it worth their while to direct their efforts to the history of our land. Books like those written by Vincent Smith and Raichaudari deal only with the dry facts of political history. The writings of scholars like Jayaswal throw light on some special aspects of the subject or on particular phases of civilisation. All this is like the preliminary work of the explorer in relation to the work of the geographer whose business is to co-ordinate the results of exploration and discover, with reference to any particular part of the world, the relation existing between man and his environment. It is work of this sort that is now necessary in the field of Indian history.

The task of the historian consists not merely in the assembling of facts arranged in chronological order, but in their interpretation with a view to explain the nature of their sequence and the vital factors that guided the motives and actions of persons responsible for the events. Changes, as all are aware, are brought about not by any extra-human time-spirit but by conscious forces swaying men and women, and especially the leaders who are looked up to as guides by the people in mass. It is such a study of changes that has now to be taken up by the historians of our country.

The failure, so far, to accomplish this task has resulted in students not gaining a correct impression or having before their mind's eye a general picture of the history of India. It has also led many to think that there is not anything inspiring or ennobling in that history. There are many who believe that while a striving after the ideal of freedom and beauty is the dominant note of the history of Greece, and the attempt at bringing together under one system of law and order people belonging to different countries and races is the moving force behind the history of Rome, there is not discoverable any such tendency to give meaning to the events in the history of Ancient India. And the consequence of this belief is that even among Indians the study of the history of India occupies a place much below that occupied by the study of the history of Greece, Rome and England.

This result is all the more deplorable because the attempt at synthesis and co-ordination made by some historians is entirely from the political standpoint–which is not the right standpoint in relation to Ancient Indian history. Because the Indians are at present subject to foreign supremacy and were also occasionally subject to the rule of foreign dynasties in what is generally known as the Muslim Period–although all Muslims were not foreigners–and because this foreign domination was the outcome of the preceding political disintegration and warfare among rival kingdoms, it has been laid down by many historians widely read that this was the vital feature of Indian history in ancient times and that this history is merely a story of successive hordes of foreigners invading and subduing the land, of the setting up of numerous States and the never-ending rivalry and warfare among them. The enormous space given to dynastic wars in the existing books on the subject lends colour to this view.

But this is a false reading and an incorrect understanding of the history of our country, and it is so for two reasons. In the first place, it exaggerates the number and importance of the so-called foreign invasions and internal wars. In the second place, it misses what is really the vital element in the history of our country, viz., the unbroken continuity and the vigour of its cultural, religious and social system. The latter is the correct standpoint from which one has to look at the subject. Then alone is it possible for one to understand wherein consists the true genius of the people of this country and their inherent strength, and in what respect they differ from the other great nations of the Ancient World,–the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians and the Romans. If, unlike these peoples, India is still living, it is because of the uniqueness of her culture, religion and social organisation. A synthetic view of Indian history should take this as its central theme and group round it all other phases of the nation's activities. It is this that gave life to the India of the past and that has left permanent marks behind it.

Political historians are generally apt to exaggerate the importance of foreign invasions and domestic wars. The only corrective to this is to draw up a list as it were of all the foreign invasions of India from the days of recorded history, to note the duration in time and mark the extent of the territory affected by each of the invasions, and the permanent results left behind them, and compare all this with a similar list as regards countries like Greece, Germany, France and Italy during a corresponding period of time. Such a comparative study will make it clear that in the long stretch of centuries between the Age of the Rig Veda (2000 B. C.) to the coming of the Afghans and the Turks (1200 A. D.) India was perhaps less subject to foreign invasions than several other famous countries in the world, and that it was only a narrow corner–the North-West and a part of the West–that was affected by them. To regard these as constituting the real history of the country will lead to as false a perspective as the view that the Gallic invasions, the Hannibalic invasions, the attacks of the Cimbri and the Teutons and the invasions of Mithradates are the central events in the history of Rome, ignoring the unification of Italy and the Mediterranean world under Roman leadership and her system of colonisation, transport, law and citizenship. It is not right to infer that, simply because more information is available or has been gathered on the subject of invasions, they are intrinsically more significant.

The same is true of domestic wars. It was after several centuries of internal strife, of feudal rebellion and civil war, that countries in Europe attained political unity; and some of them achieved that unity so late as the nineteenth century. The wars between rival kingdoms in Ancient India–taking the vast size of the land–were not proportionately more numerous or more disastrous, and there is no reason why they should be taken as forming the central feature of Ancient Indian history.

What appears to have been the main problem in Ancient India was the devising of ways and means for enabling the people of this vast country to live as members of one family. Areal community of life could not have been based in those times on allegiance to a common political head or government. Attempts made by monarchs like Chandragupta, Vikramaditya and Harsha in that direction achieved only a partial and temporary success. And it could not have been otherwise. The nature of the country, its large size and the existence of numerous physical barriers–mountains, forests and deserts–between one part and another, placed serious obstacles in the way of political unification. The absence of good and rapid means of transport was the characteristic feature of those days. Stray military expeditions over long distances might have been possible, but to hold all the country for any great length of time under one government was impracticable. Armies required for this purpose could not be marched rapidly from place to place. This accounts for the tradition that gained ground that normally the country consisted of fifty-six States. Conditions are now quite different. Science has conquered space and distance and physical barriers have ceased to be such. More powerful than the triumph of science is the modern discovery of representative government which has made possible the formation of big States based on popular consent instead of military force. It is these that have changed politics in India at the present day as in other countries, and community of life based on common political allegiance bids fair to become a permanent feature of our future history.

To the leaders of Ancient India an attempt to found an all-embracing empire based necessarily on force appeared to be an impossibility and they did not direct their efforts into that path. On the other hand, they found from experience that the existence of numerous States in the country was not an unmixed evil, although occasionally it led to wars, bringing, as all wars do, disasters, misery and suffering in their train. Most of the States in Ancient India were fairly big in size–as big as modern England, France, Germany, etc. They were not like City-States, small in extent, with few opportunities for people to have a broad outlook on life or develop a many-sided activity. In each of the Indian States there was free scope for all kinds of development. Moreover, healthy rivalry existed between State and State and monarch and monarch and this resulted in the culture of the country becoming rich, many-sided and widely distributed. The capital of every kingdom became the centre of art, literature, architecture, industry and trade. Each kingdom had its own universities, temples and places of pilgrimage. With one Government over the whole country, India could not have produced so many styles of art or so many centres of greatness. It would have been fatal to the variegated development of the creative faculty.

There was also another extenuating circumstance. Most of the foreign invasions of the country were in their results like the movements of immigrants into America, Australia and other sparsely inhabited countries of the present day. India is a country of vast extent and in ancient times population was thin. There were large areas of waste and forest land to be cleared and brought under cultivation. Peoples from Central Asia penetrated into portions of the country just as Germans, Italians, Poles and Russians poured in their thousands into the United States until the prohibition of immigration in recent years. And most of these invaders became in two or three generations completely absorbed into Indian society, embraced Indian religion and were recognised as belonging to one or other of the four castes. All this was similar to the process of Americanisation which has been transforming immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, unacquainted with free and democratic institutions, into good American citizens cherishing the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. It is this capacity to assimilate the alien populations–however savage and ferocious they might be–that characterised the civilisation of Ancient India and was the outcome of the elasticity and flexibility of her social and religious institutions.

It is hoped that Ancient Indian history will be written and studied from a correct standpoint and that there will be a proper understanding of the relative importance of the great movements of the past.