The Wonder
that was India!
It is a long
time since I met you all in my blog. The last blog was posted in June 2024,
some five months back. But my videos on Apocalypse were running till the end of
August 2024 and it was great to connect with you all through that series. So,
it is only two months and a few days since my inactivity!
Monsoon
seasons are just getting over, with the South West monsoon having retreated by
the middle of October, and the North East monsoon starting also in the middle
of October and running till the end of that month, may be will stay active till
December end. Can you imagine these same monsoons, known as Trade winds, took ancient
Indians to far flung nations, to enrich themselves and their country? That is what
they did.[1]
Knowing the direction of the monsoon wind and the beginning and end of each these
two, meant they could manure successfully, to their advantage, these biannual
seasonal winds.
And where did
they go? In the winter winds, they sailed from the west coast of India,
Gujarat, and the southern peninsula, to the east coast of Africa to reach Ethiopia.
Thereafter they could take the northern Persian Gulf to Iran and Mesopotamia or
the southern path through Aden via Red Sea to Egypt. Then they took the summer
monsoon to return home in August. Trip one way took just 45 days at the most!
It would
surprise us Indians to know that Indian merchants had established colonies in 2300
BC in today’s Iraq, of Sumerian civilization. Etched carnelian beads from
Gujarat have been dug up from the tombs of kings of Ur – a place from where
Abraham, the father of Jews, hailed, which he left to journey over to Canaan. Items
from Indus Valley Civilization have been found here in the second millennium. Indian
spices like cinnamon, pepper, diamonds, beads, silks, have been found in Egypt
in 1213 BC, and Greek islands. To fight in the Roman arenas, they imported
tigers, leopards, panthers and even rhinoceros from India via Red Sea. Other luxury
items imported by the Roman Empire from India were, diamonds, rubies, pearls, ebony,
teak, amethysts, onyx, sandal wood, red coral, elephant tusks, tortoise shells,
Indian cotton, Chinese silk, etc. Also carved furniture, ivory mirrors, and boxes.
An Indian ivory figurine, a dancer wearing anklets was popular abroad and was found
amidst the ruins of Pompey! Tamil and Sanskrit words for many spices had become
familiar in the West. The word pepper came from Tamil pipali and ginger
from Tamil singabera.
Ship building
was a great industry within India, in Gujarat and in the south, where strong ocean-going
sturdy boats or ships were built. These could carry 1000 passengers and up to
3000 vats or amphorae, and travel via Red Sea and return. This flourishing western
trade made Pliny the Elder of the first century Rome, described India as “the
sink of the world’s precious metals,” that is, gold and silver, up to 55
million sesterces annually. Once the Roman conquest of Egypt was made by the 1st
century BC, the trade underwent a sixfold increase. Greek geographer Strabo writes
that from Ethiopia and northern most Nile, some 120 vessels sailed to and from
India every year. Rome also collected tax on the incoming trading vessels; it
was so profitable that it covered one third of the entire revenue of the Roman
Empire!
Roman coins keep
surfacing from south India in hoards! In Kottayam in Kerala, a large brass bowl
containing 8000 gold aurei, Roman coins were unearthed recently. Ancient
Tamil ports of Arikamedu, Poduke, in today’s Tamil Nadu, have yielded artifacts
from Roman, Egyptian, Italian, France, and Spain. Near these ports, Roman settlements
were found, and Roman gold coin hoards have been dug up from here.
With the fall
of Western Roman Empire in 5th century AD, the trade declined, more
so with the constant wars between Persia and Byzantium in the 6th
century AD. With this the Indian merchants shifted their focus and overseas
trade to the east, to “Suvarnabhumi,” the Land of Gold, comprising today’s Sri
Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, mainly
South-east Asia. Indian sailors, especially from the southern tip of India, sailed
every eastward monsoon, carrying beads, textiles, metal goods, and other Indian
manufactures and exchanged these with spices, gold, camphor, resin and other
raw materials from this region. By the 5th century, a direct route from
southern India through Straits of Malacca, went straight up to China. Bay of
Bengal became a single cultural and geographical area within the Indosphere,
uniting countries on both its sides.
As Indian
influence and culture spread in all these areas, Indian merchants brought with
them skilled artisans from today’s Tamil Nadu, to work in these areas, and the
gold they bought in Sumatra, Borneo, Malay peninsula and Thailand. From Bengal also
these vessels plied. At a temple site in Thailand, archaeologists have found
goldsmith’s touchstone etched in Tamil inscription in the 1st
century AD. Indian style jewelry have been found here in the 3rd
century BC itself. Suvarnabhumi was full of gold and Indian artisans took full
advantage of it, by staying there and working on these. Archaeologist have dug
out plenty of golden ornaments from this area of Mekong River delta. It was
really a land of gold! Along with trade and artisans, Indian language, art, and
architecture also got exported to South-east Asia. Sanskrit, Indian epics Mahabharata
and Ramayana spread to these places. It became a part of Indosphere.
Buddhism
spread to Sri Lanka and South-east Asia through the same route, travelling up to
China. Mauryan Emperor Ashoka with his capital in north India, Pataliputra, modern
Patna in the State of Bihar, converted to Buddhism, repenting the lives lost in
his war against Kalinga and his conquest of the region, in 250 BC. He made maximum
efforts to spread Buddhism across the world. His conversion to Buddhism was as
dramatic as the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity in
the 4th century AD. It changed the course of history. Ashoka sent his own son Mahindra and daughter,
as missionaries to the Raja of Sri Lanka with some relics. The Raja was
converted and donated a park for the monks of the Sangha to build a great monastery.
Buddhism
reached northwards to Afghanistan and Tibet and then to China. From China it spread
further eastward to Indo-China, Korea and Japan, by 6th century AD. South-east
Asia became predominantly Hindu-worshippers, but Buddhism made inroads and
today we see the population here are mainly Buddhists. What Buddhism lost in
its own place of birth, India, she made good in other places, across South -east
Asia, China, Indo-China and Japan. It is interesting to note that having driven
away Buddhism from its land of birth, riding on the wave of Hindu revival under
Shankaracharya in the 8th century AD, India is now inviting Buddhism
back, may be to reap the potential of Tourism.
The largest Hindu
temple in the world to day is not in India, but in Cambodia, the Angkor Wat, a
temple devoted to Hindu god Vishnu. The largest Buddhist complex is in Java at
Borobudur. This cultural hegemony or soft power of India over its neighbors
stayed till 12th and 13th centuries AD. This was achieved,
we must remember, not by sword, as with the spread of Islam over the world in
the 6th and 7th centuries onwards. It was not through colonialism
or imperialism as with the spread of Western powers, with the help of gunpowder
and oppression and fleecing the countries of their wealth and suppressing their
culture. It was done through peaceful means, a rich cultural exchange between regimes
and countries which were equal to each other.
India discovered
the use of numbers as we see today and the use of zero at the end, making it
possible for us to calculate in an easy manner, the decimal system. It passed
on to the Islamic Abbasid empire in Baghdad, by the Arab merchants in 8th
century AD, and spread all over the Western world. The Roman numerals being
used by the West till then was very cumbersome. The Sanskrit texts from Indian mathematicians
like Aryabhata (550 AD) were translated in Arab first and then into the
European languages.
But what
happened to all these intelligence and advance in trading methods and astronomy
and mathematics and Sanskrit texts and the influence of the south Indian
temples and so on? How did they lose their flavor? Research shows that the Mongol
invasion of the 13th century wrecked the traditional trade routes
and they began to break down. A new trade network through Central Asian land
became paramount, later to be called the Silk Roads, from China up to
Mediterranean. This is what enabled Marco Polo to travel from Venice, Italy, up
to Mongolian Emperor, Kublai khan’s regime in China in 1271 AD. Inside India,
Muslim conquests from 8th century onwards destroyed the peaceful
pursuit of art and literature and ancient wisdom. Temples were demolished and
mosques were built on them. Sanskrit lost its fame, and Persian became the
court language in Delhi. This will last well into the East India Company’s
rule, and only change into English, with the crown of England taking over the
rule in 1857 AD. Next two hundred years or so, the British did terrible damage
to the culture, drained off the wealth of India and left us as a Third World Country.
What was the reason
that we let all these foreigners to walk over us? There was no central governance
in the country. The Mughals stabilized India during their rule and the money and
wealth stayed in India, unlike during the British Raj, when money left Indian
shores to the West, oiling their Industrial revolution. When Mughal rule floundered,
the East India Company stepped in. There was no strong ruler to stop them or
galvanize the whole of India against the foreign enemy. That is why the
Constitution writers of the independent India went in for a strong unitary center,
with States forming federation.
Can we undo
the past damages and rise as one India to claim our place in the world? Can we take
back our lost position as the world’s most industrious, intelligent and manufacturing
people? Possible, if only we can unite India and not divide India.
God bless
India and Indian people.
[1] Read “The Golden Road: How
Ancient India Transformed the World, by William Dalrymple, 2024; a very
interesting read!
