Settlement in Early Historic Ganga Plain

by Chirantani Das | 143,447 words

This page relates “Cultural profile of Varanasi-Sarnath” as it appears in the case study regarding the settlements in the Early Historic Ganga Plain made by Chirantani Das. The study examines this process in relation to Rajagriha and Varanasi (important nodal centres of the respective Mahajanapadas named Magadha and Kashi).

Part 1 - Cultural profile of Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth

Located in the mixed topographical setting of the middle Gaṅgā plain and Vindhyan alignment, the second select urban zone of our study, Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth had a vast cultural horizon that was one of the earliest centres of human activities. Settlements in the form of seasonal camps started to grow in the Vindhyas from Epi-Palaeolithic or even Palaeolithic times dating roughly around 17000- 10000 BCE. Discovery of good number of stone and bone items point to a hunting-foraging lifestyle. From the Mesolithic times settlements of a more permanent nature with reliance on agriculture appeared in much more greater number resulting in expansion of cultural layer. The area was under continuous human occupation and an eventual urbanization in the early historic period. We have tried to take an integrated view of the interplay of various factors and circumstances involved in the growth of settlements to get a complete picture of settlement paradigm in the present context. Nodal points or urban centres’ growth is never independent of its surrounding. Therefore we brought the bigger geo–cultural region under our purview in which our core urban area is located. In the present context the geo–cultural zone comprising topographical features of both the middle Gaṅgā plain and the Vindhyas saw the growth of a rich syncretic culture, based on cultural exchange from the Mesolithic times and the process continued till Neolithic-Chalcolithic times. A sound cultural background for settlement growth was prepared.

Population factor certainly held central position because settlements were primarily active population centres. Starting from the Palaeolithic, Epi Palaeolithic times and moving towards Neolithic-Chalcolithic phase and early historic times steady increase in the number of settlement suggests not only an expansion of cultural horizon but also a great population rise. In the second layer we have tried to find out the settlement pattern meaning mutual relationship among different settlements in a cultural context. In the pre historic context settlements were rather marked by an equality of status or a heterarchical or unranked position. From this equal or unranked position some settlements made their way towards their growth as nodal points. The earlier equal ranking sites are now transformed into sites serving the nodal point in various economic ways. This transformation makes a clear distinction of rank and hierarchy among settlements. While the nodal point takes the position of the nucleus of a bigger settlement zone other settlements now form the hinterland or catchment area from where the core collects all the resources. So it was a two stage development. Differentiation and stratification in homologous, primitive societies took place over resource accessibility and control and in the second layer these stratified societies get territorially organised to give rise to early states. In the present context, our chief concern was to note how ecological, natural factors were converted in economic terms in favour of Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth’s rise as important nodal points of this belt.

Vārāṇasī’s growth as the capital and administrative head quarter of the Kāśī mahājanapada was certainly determined by its location on the banks of the Gaṅgā that offered better communication and an extra dose of security. Moreover, Vārāṇasī being the first port to receive all Deccan bound traffic and a complete political control over the agricultural and mineral resources of the Vindhyan-middle Gaṅgā zone put it in an advantageous position. Resource and territoriality crucial for settlement’s growth actually reflects the economic and political factors to the city’s growth. In Vārāṇasī’s case its economic aspect of a supreme riverine port of this whole region always remained important even when the political power was waning in the Kāśī mahājanapada. Kāśī, Kośala, Avantī, Vatsa all fell susceptible to Magadhan imperialism. But decline of political power could not harm the urban status of Vārāṇasī that the city derived from its economic rationale and partly from being a great cultural and educational centre. So though Kāśī met a political eclipse at a very early date, Vārāṇasī continued to be an urban centre much later. Culturally speaking, in the post Vedic times the whole of the middle Gaṅgā plain saw the advent of new protestant religions, Buddhism being the chief among them.

Śrāvastī, Kauśāmbī, Kapilavastu, Rājagṛha, Nālandā, Uruvela, Vārāṇasī and Sārnāth were very frequently visited by the Buddha himself and these places were projected as Buddhist strongholds. The Buddha regularly moved through this region and it formed the core Buddhist zone. In this background of an elaborate Buddhist network and favourable popular base created all over the middle Gaṅgā plain, Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth represented another important physical repository of this cultural profile. While Vārāṇasī revealed an obvious urban bias Sārnāth was the religio-cultural offshoot of the same settlement unit. It had an old culture of hermitage, probably depending upon the urban facilities of Vārāṇasī available at hand. Later it grew as an exclusive Buddhist monastic site. Sārnāth’s centrality to Buddhism was due to the fact that it was the place chosen for the Buddha’s first sermon. This sacredness made it very important to the Buddhists and brought an endless flow of lay grant and donations to finance the monastic growth. The growth of Sārnāth was one-dimensional and remained dependent on all these grants for its growth and always retained its sole character of a monastic site. To explain the settlement growth and complete cultural sequence that eventually culminated in urbanism in this sector we have tried to furnish causative factors and actual archaeological evidences together.

Emergence of this region as a composite archaeological layer became more pronounced in the succeeding Chalcolithic period. This is most clearly visible in the pottery collection. The chief pottery types found in this phase in the region were plain and painted black and red ware which is associated with a number of other types such as black and black–slipped ware, a perforated ware, buff ware etc. They sometimes came with simple designs. Potteries registered advancement in terms of variety of slips, size, shape and utility. They were mostly used for kitchen purposes and oxidisations of different types were done to bring rough or smooth texture. Inter site economic contacts became more vivid and important in the sector of lithic industry that developed in the Vindhya-Allahabad-Saryupar region.

The nearby Kaimur and the Vindhyan range range were rich repositories of ordinary and semi-precious stones and hub of stone working, exemplified by sites like Chopani Mando, Koldihwa, Mahagara. These sites were located in the Allahabad-Vārāṇasī-Sarayupar belt and were joined by many later BSW/BRW sites like Narhan, Banimilia-Bahera, Patharaha, Johargunj, Kakoria. As the number of sites increased in number the size of the industrial base also increased. The venture was aided by the riverine route accessed by these sites for their closeness to river. Stones were quarried and sent to various places from Mirzapur, located in the Vindhyas was the starting point of this traffic. Stones were brought to Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth by the Gaṅgā. From there it sometimes moved to the direction of Ghazipur. The rivers were most cleverly utilised for the transportation of stone blocks from the Chunar quarry area. At least 450 sites were found here and their operations started in the early historical times and during the Aśokan times profuse building activities began at Sārnāth for being a very important Buddhist spot. Most of the stone quarrying and stone working sites grew into small settlements and were located near some water source. Stone blocks were transported through water route by wooden rafts and were first carried to Vārāṇasī-Sārnāth and then distributed to various other places. In this whole system Gaṅgā was the main route while other streams and nalas also played a supportive role. An overall survey of numerous prehistoric sites located in the Gaṅgā-Vindhya region forming the hinterland and the cultural realm revealed a rich material culture from the Neolithic times in this region. Some of the sites showed continuous occupation from the earliest times to the historic times but in general number of sites increased in the Neolithic times as a direct result of population growth.

Makkhan Lal’s exhaustive work on population and the changing dynamics of settlements in respect to population reflect that from prehistoric to early historic times there was a constant population growth and the ensuing changes. Population even shifted to places far from water and implies the pressure of population. More and more people started to move towards burgeoning urban centres from the NBPW phase (550-400 BCE). Still, rural population was greater than urban. As settlements grew bigger in size gap between them was reduced. It is also noteworthy that prehistoric cultures at the most could retain 500 people and could not grow more.[1]

George Erdosy has also noted that until 550 BCE there was a low population density in the middle Gaṅgā plain and absence of a central place. He rather sees settlement distribution as haphazard and without a pattern. But the situation changed very soon. Within the next three centuries new territorial states emerged along with a population rise.[2] This population factor was recognised as essential for urbanization by Gordon Childe and A. Ghosh. In Ghosh’s opinion tremendous population growth creates a demand for surplus and therefore he views surplus as a social product[3] and population as a universal defining factor of the cities.

The Neolithic-Chalcolithic phase could qualify the first stage of state formation and urbanization as suggested by George Erdosy in his paper “Origin of Cities in the Ganga Plain”[4] argues that it is worthwhile to identify the point where a turn towards urbanization is taken to understand the whole process. Therefore he delineates two stages in this transformation. In the first stage for the accessibility and control of resources a tension starts in the unranked egalitarian societies and that disturbs the social fabric resulting into stratification and differentiation into the society. This was even clearly analysed by Smith. She examined that behind the apparent egalitarianism the sites had their own internal subgroups, tensions among them and a rudimentary hierarchical leadership set up. This arrangement was ever changing on the face of external challenge in the form of competition among settlements and the capacity of the leadership to face and survive on the face of those challenges. Here in case of trans-Vindhyan-middle Gaṅgā plain identification and mobilisation of resources, growth of a fair population and their distribution to sites in an economic basis i.e. they were skilfully employed to specialised professions and even a cultural contact existed among them. So the set up qualifies the first stage of Erdosy’s explanation of urbanization. It was all set to go to the next level of transformation.

At the second level these stratified early societies were organised on a territorial basis. Hence in this process resource accessibility and territoriality were central themes. In context of early historic cities George Erdosy pointed out that a number of fortified sites appeared in northern India and they were graded by their size and functions. He viewed them as integrated sites, interconnected by economic and cultural networks.[5] Taking the lead from Erdosy the point was further clarified by Nupur Dasgupta. In her opinion, a cluster of settlements might have shared the same rationale for their growth and when seen externally they qualified as a cultural unit. They are distinguished from other settlements by their monumental structural appearance and in case of the present zone Atranjikhera, Rajghat and Kauśāmbī are three most important sites.[6] All of them are capitals of some mahājanapadas and enjoyed the privilege to be the nodal points in terms of administrative headquarter.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Makkhan Lal, Archaeology of population (a study of the population change in the Ganga-Yamuna doab from 2nd millennium B.C. to the present), Varanasi, Varanasi Hindu University,1984

[2]:

G. Erdosy, City States of North India and Pakistan at the time of the Buddha in F. R. Allchin ed, The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia, Cambridge, 1995, p. 99.

[3]:

A. Ghosh, The City in Early Historic India, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, 1973, p.21

[4]:

George Erdosy, Origin of Cities in the Ganga Plain, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol.28, no.1, 1985, pp.81-109. G. Erdosy, City States of North India and Pakistan at the time of the Buddha, F. R. Allchin ed. The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 109-110.

[5]:

G. Erdosy, 1995, op.cit.pp.109-10.

[6]:

Nupur Dasgupta, Settlement Patterns: Querries and Evidence in Chittabrata Palit ed. Urbanisation in India: Past and Present, Nisith Ranjan Ray centenary Volume, Kolkata, Institute of Historical Studies, 2009, p.10.

Like what you read? Consider supporting this website: