“The Classical Age”

“THE CLASSICAL AGE” ¹

The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan of Bombay, founded and fostered by Dr. K. M. Munshi, now Governor of Uttar Pradesh, has embarked upon the splendid patriotic enterprise of getting prepared for the world a history of India by Indians. The work is to be in ten ample volumes, of comprehensive scope and impressive aspect. The writers are scholars of recognized standing in historical research, each a specialist on a period or a region. The General Editor is Dr. R. C. Majumdar, Director or the Government of India’s Board of Editors of the History of the Freedom Movement.

The volume now before us is the third of the series. The first volume stretches over the misty aeons from pre-history to the year 600 B.C. The second surveys the next nine centuries closing about 320 A.D. The present volume is concerned with the 430 years from 320 to 750 A.D. The last volume is expected to bring the story to our own times.

The title given to each volume seems intended to convey the distinctive note of the period dealt with. Thus the first and the third volumes are characterized respectively as of the Vedic and the Classical Age, the reference being obviously to the literary milieu of their times, while the other eight volumes are given names derived from the political happenings they describe–as Imperial Kanouj, Struggle for Empire, Delhi Sultanate, Maratha Supremacy and so on. Such a one-word summary of the peculiar ethos of an epoch of many hundreds of years would undoubtedly be advantageous as well as attractive if it could satisfy the tests of accuracy and adequacy. This should be easy enough if history had run according toa plan. But the forces of a people’s life flow like rain-water in a jungle, casual and capricious in the courses they take; and it is not always possible for us to identify the channels and fix neat little sign-boards by their sides. The volume before us illustrates how, from the political point of view at least, a period of history may decline to be packed into a single phrase. Not that our period was empty of political doings; not that by any means. Those four centuries were as full of the bustle of kings and the clangour of their armies as any other period. But the age defies summary characterization. Let us look into the book before proceeding further.

Its 650 large pages are divided into as many as 24 chapters. In the first three chapters, Dr. Majumdar traces the rise and ascendancy of the Guptas as an imperial power, and in the next three their decline and fall in the middle of the 6th century. While it lasted, the Gupta kingdom, was a mighty manifestation of organizing ability and political judgement in this country. The Guptas drove the savage Huns, unified the country from the Eastern to the Western frontiers of North India, fostered literature and promoted the arts of civilization. Chapters VII & VIII treat of the lesser dynasties of the North such as Kushanas and Maukharis. In Chapter IX we are brought to King Sri Harsha of Sthanesvara, celebrated among poets and men of letters as among heroes of war and administration. Skipping over Chapter X which tells us of the royal houses of Kashmir, Nepal, Bengal, Orissa and other minor principalities of the North, and the next Chapter which chronicles the fortunes of the kingly houses of the Deccan such as Kalachuris, Rashtrakutas and Gangas, we arrive in Chapter XII at the precincts of the Chalukyas, so near to our heart in this part of India. I cannot help observing at this point that it would have been more to the liking of people in our part of India if Dr. D.C. Sircar had used the word Karnataka or Kannada in place of the Anglo-Indian hybrid Kanarese. The Chalukyas of Badami (of whom Dr. Sircar writes) ruled victorious for two centuries. The most famous of them, Pulakesi II, was the foeman of Harsha on battlefields and his rival for the admiration of the historic pilgrim from China, Hiuen Tsang. His tradition of martial triumphs was kept up by his son Vikramaditya. The Chalukyas, as they were frequently at war with Harsha in the North, had to be engaged in a constant fight with the Pallavas in the South; and we are introduced to the Pallavas by Prof. R. Sathianathaier in Chapter XIII. They were a remarkable house, too, wielding power for roughly 500 years, from 300 to 800 A.D. Their capital Kanchi, visited by Hiuen Tsang, was six miles, in circumference and contained more than a hundred Buddhist monasteries. The Pallavas were patrons of Sanskrit and some of them performed the Asvamedha. We also obtain here glimpses of the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Kadambas and the Banas, each a valiant and hardy clan promoting life and civilization and Dharma in what territory it could make its own. In Chapter XIV Dr. Sircar takes us to Ceylon as it was from the day,–362 A.D.–of Sri Meghavarna, to the day,–759 A.D.,–of Sri-Sila-Meghavarna, when the island built up its intercourse with China through Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims. Here closes the general history portion of the Volume under notice. In Chapter XV Professors G. V. Devasthali, H.  D. Velankar and K. R Srinivasa Iyengar write respectively on the growth of literature in Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tamil. Prof. U. N. Ghoshal discourses in five-chapters on political and administrative organization, law, education, economic conditions and the general state of society. A chapter (XVIII) is given to religion and philosophy. Prof. Nalinaksha Dutt dealing with Buddhism, Prof. A. M. Ghatage with Jainism, Dr. Sircar with Vaishnavism, Dr. Mahadevan with Saivism and Prof. H. D. Bhattacharya with minor sects like Shaktas and Sauras. Art and Architecture and Sculpture are reviewed in a chapter by M. S. K. Saraswati and Prof. Nihar Ranjan Ray. In the last two chapters Dr. Majumdar tells us of India’s intercourse with the outside world and her colonial and cultural expansion in Cambodia, Malaya, Burma, Java, Sumatra and other regions of South-East Asia.

Altogether, we have, spread out here before us, a panorama as vast as the eye could manage without tiring, and as varied in colour and contour as to hold the eye interested. There can be no question as to the scholarly industry and the judge-like carefulness in sifting and piecing together evidence, which have gone into the work. Has the picture any mark of a mind upon it,–a glint of the eye or a quiver of the lip? If a mere reader may hazard a remark, it looks as though the writers here belong to what used to be called the scientific, as distinguished from the literary school of historians. Historical writing is to the ‘scientific’ school “the mutual conversation (as Trevelyan puts it) of scholars with one another” rather than “the means of spreading far and wide, throughout all the reading classes, a love and knowledge of history, an elevated and critical patriotism and certain qualities of mind and heart.” The antiquarian seems in our book to supersede the narrator. At every step the story has its feet held up in a tangle of meticulous debate over a point of chronology or of identity of person. The writer is having before his mind’s eye the menacing figure of a critic or a rival rather than the innocent seeker of entertainment and knowledge, awaiting the glow and warmth which the tale of the exploits of a dear old ancestor can communicate to the heart. Not that fact should go ignored or misinterpreted. Fact is certainly sacred. But so much need not be made of the outward shape of a fact that its inward meaning escapes the average reader. The conditional clause and the qualifying phrase may take up so much of space in a statement that its positive significance may in effect be reduced to nullity. Let us look at this portrait of Samudra-Gupta for a sample:

“The vast empire of Samudra-Gupta must have been the result of numerous military campaigns extending over many years. We have no specific or detailed account of them.... Nevertheless when we recall the large number of States acknowledging his authority, it is impossible not to feel profound admiration for his military genius. The total extermination of the nine States in Northern India demanded un-common daring and military skill. His southern campaign must have called forth powers of leadership and organization of the highest order.” (P. 13-14)

It will be observed that there is no word of eulogy here without its diluting counterpart. This toss-and-tumble style, beloved of the political journalist, is hardly the style suited to the drawing of a picture meant to convince and inspire. The ‘must-have-beens’ and the double negatives are fatal to the purpose of creating certitude in the reader’s mind. When the door is so ostentatiously opened for doubt, there can he no seat left for enthusiasm in the house. History, if it should serve its purpose of stirring emotion, instigating inquiry and directing thought, must first of all be exciting. Is it impossible to be both truthful and warm-hearted, both factual and moving? Are imagination and conscience necessarily enemies to each other? In reconciling them is the art of the true historian. When he is in doubt about a date or a document, or when a popular legend is at variance with a fact otherwise proved, the course for him is not to let it clog the movement of the narrative, but to assign the doubt and discussion to a footnote or an appendix and carry the story forward according to his own judgement of probabilities. The flow of the story must be swift, vivid, vibrant.

Let us take note of a perplexity of another kind, Samudra Gupta was a poet and a musician. We read that in one type of his gold coins the great emperor is represented as stated cross-legged on a couch, playing on a vina which rests on his knees. The royal figure on this unique type of coins was undoubtedly drawn from real life and testifies to his inordinate love for, and Skill in, music.” But why inordinate? The Oxford Dictionary (1952) gives the words “immoderate, excessive, intemperate, disorderly” as the meanings of “inordinate”. Is there any evidence of Samudra Gupta’s addiction to the vina having led to the neglect or damage of his duties as king or general or householder or member of society? This is an instance of imagination peeping out awkwardly at a wrong place, because of the denial of admission to it at so many places where it had a legitimate part to play.

Why is this period of India’s history,–from 320 to 750 A.D.,–called the Classical Age? In the context of Europe’s literature, the word ‘classical’ denotes standards and patterns of ancient Greek and Latin achievement; and it suggests contradistinction from the romantic. It is a question whether there is any real parallelism between India’s literary history and Greece’s or Rome’s. If a word is needed as name for the Kalidasian genre as distinguished from the Vedic and the Puranic, it will have to be of our own minting. Kalidasa has not among us the primacy of status that Homer and Virgil have among Europeans. Any Indo-European equation is bound to be precarious in this field. If the volume under review had to be translated into Sanskrit or any other Indian language, which is the word to be employed in place of ‘classical’? That will give us an idea of how very foreign the thing is to our context.

There can be no doubt but that some of the very best of Sanskrit poets after Valmiki and Vyasa lived in the course of the 400 years under consideration. Kalidasa of about 450 A.D., Bhavabhuti of about 700, Harsha and Bana of about 600, Bharavi and Magha of more or less the same period, are all poets held in both high and lasting admiration; but they are not all of one type or species of excellence or of comparable standards of merit. There is nothing to bind them together as one group except the arbitrarily fixed period-ends. Kalidasa naturally has received the largest amount of space in the book; but the study is made up of cliches and colour-blotches like ‘brilliant luminary’, ‘greatest poet and dramatist’, ‘one of the best not only in Sanskrit literature, but in the literature of the world’, ‘loving sympathy with nature’, ‘genius shone with brilliance’ and so forth. Does the poetry reflect the life of the times? Was the life of the time influenced by the poetry? Does the poet give us characters with a permanent and universal appeal, characters great not only in loyalty to god Eros, but also in responding to the other and less delectable calls of life? Has the poet any definite attitude towards any problem of life or destiny? If amatory exploits and. conventional rhetoric are all the chief merit of a literature, it could hardly sustain the epithet ‘classical’. Bana and Magha at any rate would be placed by a European critic among romantics and not among classicists.

Prof. Srinivasa Iyengar’s essay on Tamil literature is a model of insightful appreciation illuminatingly expressed. Whether counted as classical or not, the heart’s outpourings of the Nayanmars and the Alvars can well be set by the side of the poetry of the Old Testament. In the chapter on religion and philosophy, we are shown that “the age of Gupta imperialism was marked by a revival of Hinduism and the decline of both Jainism and Buddhism” (p. 404). Prof. Mahadevan contributes a brief, but luminous exposition of the essentials of Saivism.

Prof. Ghoshal has characterized the age as one of “stagnation and decline in the realm of political speculation” (P 341). ‘Static’ seems a more appropriate word than ‘stagnant’. People had inherited long-established ideals of life and conduct and had come to find happiness in walking by the light of tradition and usage. Polity and law had by now settled on foundations which centuries of experience had proved durable. The economic forces in operation were all those of agriculture, and no mechanical and chemical invention had made its appearance to disturb the old economy. Even the poets had come to think it good to control their fancies and fabrications by the traditional concepts of Dharma. The only ripple on the surface of the waters was that made by the personal ambition of a king or his taste in the arts or his preference for any religious faith. But he too put himself in the hands of a spiritual preceptor who, in his turn, was an upholder of long-accepted scheme of things, so that the whims and idiosyncracies of the king too were under inhibitions. It would thus be reasonable to say that the age was one of happy status quo and cheerful conformism.

To say this is certainly not to belittle either the age or its chroniclers. We in India have for two centuries become so accustomed to the spectacle of a world in flux and ferment that we consider that to be the sign of health and well-being. Equilibrium and stability are, in our view, stagnation and disease. This notion of ours is of course an error. True progress is not continuous whirl and commotion. It has a static antecedent as well as a static consequent. Progress, when true, derives its impulsion from one of two causes: either a felt insufficiency within the body politic or the incursion of a new force into it from without. It is good for a community that these disturbances do not occur every day, to shock its nerves and strain its temper. It needs a period of settled life and quiet experience as preparation for a new move, as spring-time needs the precedency of winter. The age of the Guptas and the Challukyas, except for the military enterprises of kings, was an age of normal self-development and leisured self-enjoyment for the people,–a time given to temple and learning, poetry and music, scholarship and reflection. The community grew in quietness and calm, as plants grow in a well-protected garden.

Of this we find convincing evidence in the volume before us. The Volume is a marvellous mine of material for a history for the common man. Every page bears witness to the conscientious care and diligence which the contributors brought to their task. The project is entitled to the warm-hearted support of the country; and its promoters may well be sure of a grateful welcome for their output.

I should like to suggest, if I may, that in future volumes the maps may be larger in size; that a list be given in Devanagari type of all proper names as a guide to pronunciation; that a table of contemporaneity be added showing at a glance which great men synchronised with whom in the several parts of India; and that the chapter number be inserted in the title-line on each page for facility of reference.

The volume opens with a preface by Dr. Munshi. It is a bird’s-eye view interspersed with philosophical comment. The volume is furnished with other subsidiary matter such as bibliography, genealogical tables, index etc. With 4 maps and 105 illustrations, this volume of more than 800 pages is excellently got up with strong binding and cover. The priceof Rs. 35, however, raises the question whether this history of India by Indians is for Indians.

¹ Slightly extended version of a book-review broadcast from the Mysore Station of All India Radio on July 26, 1954.