Part 3 of ___
Although the story of Vijayanagara takes place in the southern realm of the Deccan's arid and rocky plateau, it begins here in the north,
in this flat and rich river plain, and the river that flows across it is known as the river Ganges. This river
is known locally as the Ganga, and sometimes Ma Ganga, or mother river.
It begins in an icy cave known as Gomukh, or the mouth of the cow, which yawns open at the bottom of the great glacier Gangotri high up in the Himalayas.
Since its formation 50 million years ago, the enormous weight of the Himalayan mountain chain has quite literally weighed down the land around it. To the south, the ground has been pressed down so it is now almost at sea level, and it's across this flat plain that the Ganges flows for more than two and a
half thousand kilometers, from east to
west, down to the hot mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal, where it finally empties its silty waters into the sea.
For millennia, this great waterway has sustained around a tenth of the world's
population with food, water, and fish, and has provided a highway for people and trade to pass up and down the river. On one of the main tributaries of the Ganges, a smaller river known as the
Yamuna, sits the city of Delhi. Delhi is one of the oldest cities in the world. It has been continually inhabited for more than 8,000 years. The soil on the banks of the Yamuna is rich, and so, the people here have always
flourished. It's in this region of northwestern India, during the period following the collapse of the Indus Valley
civilization, that the earliest examples of written texts were laid down in the ancient northern language of Sanskrit.
These texts began to be written around three and a half thousand years ago, and
they are known as the Vedas. Unfortunately for us, many of these early texts were written on fragile, perishable substances,
many of them on paper made of the bark of the Himalayan birch tree, using inks
made of ash. Some of these texts, remarkably, have
survived from as far back as the third or fourth centuries, but in most cases
they have been lost. The oldest of these Sanskrit texts, known as the Rigveda,
was probably transmitted orally from at least the second millennium BC,
or more than four thousand years ago. In it is contained a poetic vision of
how written language developed in this region.
When in giving names, they first set forth the beginning of language. Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love.
When the wise ones formed language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, then friends knew friendships, an auspicious mark
placed on their language.
The publication of these texts had an enormous impact. For about a thousand years after 300 BC, the language of
Sanskrit, once spoken only in the north of India, would spread to eclipse all
others, becoming the common language of art, science, religion, and poetry, much as Latin once was in Europe. It was in this period that the Vedic religion formed based on the script of
the Vedas, and from this, after a number of adaptations and evolutions, would emerge
the religion we know today as Hinduism.
Today, the lands of India are united in a single, modern nation, but it's perhaps one of the most diverse nation states on earth, and certainly the largest nation to comprise so many different cultures within its borders. The citizens of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka,
Maharashtra, and all the 28 states of modern India are as different from one another as the citizens of France, Germany, and Italy. They vary in their
traditional dress, diet, ritual observances, and in the 22 official major languages spoken across the subcontinent. South of Maharashtra in Central India, the languages belong to the Dravidian family, a body of languages found only in India, while Maharashtra's Marathi language and all the major languages of the north,
including the ancient tongue of Sanskrit, belong to the Indo-European family, of which English is also a member.
But perhaps the most marked differences from region to region are in the realm of religion. Today, the word Hinduism is applied clumsily to a whole variety of different
religious traditions that originate in India and that take the ancient texts of the Vedas as their starting point.
Many Hindus refer to their religion as Sanatana Dharma, the eternal way, or the eternal duty.
But Indian religion was never united under a central authority, and so, it gives rise to a great deal of variation. In very simple terms, Hindus generally believe in one god named Brahman, who is refracted into many different aspects, the way a beam of light refracted
through a glass prism can be shown to contain many colours. The ancient text, the Maitri Upanishad, explains this refracted conception of god, in which each living being also
contains a spark of this original, supreme power.
Now, the part of him which belongs to darkness, that is called Rudra, that part of him which belongs to obscurity, that is called Brahma. That part of him which belongs to goodness,
that is called Vishnu. He, being one, becomes three, becomes eight, becomes eleven, becomes twelve, becomes infinite,
because he thus came to be, he is the being. He moves about, having entered all beings. He has become the lord of all beings.
That is the soul within and without, yet within and without. Although this one god can manifest in many different ways, generally most
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Hindus predominantly worship one of two different manifestations; these are Shiva and Vishnu. In traditional Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic conceptions of the world, the
universe is created by god, who acts to preserve all that is good within it. He is opposed by Satan or Shaitan, who
acts to destroy and corrupt. But Hindu conceptions of the universe
are a little different. In Hinduism, Shiva is both the creator and the destroyer, a beautiful and fearsome god who represents the primal energy of the universe.
Shiva is often depicted as a dancer, reflecting the dance of the universe as it passes from creation to destruction,
as the flowers bloom, blossom, wither, and then die, as people pass from childhood to adulthood, to old age, and then to death, all of it part of the same cycle, the same dance that goes on and on into eternity. To imagine this way of thinking, we might consider that creation and destruction
are often not opposed, but a part of the same process. A beautiful mushroom might spring out of the decay of a fallen tree.
The death of a gazelle gives life to the cheetah, and the fall of one civilization can give rise to another. But the god Vishnu, on the other hand, is the preserver. As Shiva's dance of creation and destruction rolls on, Vishnu is the one who holds things together, if only for a
time. Whenever the need arises, he appears on Earth in human form as great mythical heroes like Rama and Krishna, as this
stanza in the Bhagavad Gita shows.
Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases, I send myself forth for the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil, and for the establishment of righteousness. I come into being age after age.
So, these are some important points to remember going forward, that India at this time was home to a great variety of different sects, orders,
and religious traditions that today we might group together under the label
Hinduism, but that the people of the time would have considered to be considerably different, and between which there often
existed great hostility. As the people of India had increasing contact with the people of the wider world, in the second half of
the first millennium AD, a new religion would enter the diverse mix of Indian belief. As the people of India had increasing contact with the people of the wider world, in the second half of the first millennium AD, a new religion would enter the diverse mix of Indian belief.
That is the religion of Islam.
This new religion would bring both conquest and culture. It would form a cultural rift
that would split the Indian subcontinent in two, but that would also connect it to the great capitals of the wider world and
bring a new age of technology and advancement. Its influence would bring about a time of paradoxes, contrasts, and ironies, and chief among these is that it was the arrival of Islam that would lead to the building of perhaps the greatest Hindu
empire to ever arise on the Indian peninsula,
the empire of Vijayanagara. The history of Islam in India is long
and complex. According to traditional claims, the world's youngest major religion arrived on the shores of the
subcontinent during the life of the Prophet Muhammad,
brought by traders who arrived by sea from the Persian Gulf.
At first, this young religion must have felt very alien to the people of India.
While Hindus did not eat beef as a result of religious reverence of the cow, Muslims quite happily ate it, but were forbidden from eating pork. Hindus generally believe that god appears in multiple different forms, while Muslims believed emphatically in
one indivisible god. While Hindus believed that you could
access god by giving offerings to statues and idols, Muslims rejected any depiction of god in sculpture or painting. But while Islam arrived through trade in the south, its arrival in the north of India would be a much less peaceful affair.
In the past, the Indian subcontinent has often been depicted by historians as a kind of geographical fortress sealed off
on every side by the mountains and the sea. But when we look at the history of the region, the true picture is one of
constant movements of people in and out of its landmass, bringing with them their cultures, cuisines, architectural styles, and beliefs.
In fact, India was not a fortress at all. The sea that appears to hem the continent in on either side was
actually a busy highway connecting India to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea on one side, and Cambodia, Sri Lanka,
Indonesia, and China on the other, meaning that the port cities of India were always diverse and booming centres of trade.
This meant that Indian pepper and cinnamon even flavored the meals eaten by Roman senators, and an Indian bronze figure of the Buddha has been found in a
9th century Viking grave on the small Swedish island of Helgo. In the northwest of India, the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan were a formidable boundary, but a number of
routes like the Khyber Pass and Bolan pass cut through their rugged cliffs in the region of the Indus River Valley, and these passes were home to just as
lively traffic as the seas. These roads were so well-established that Alexander the Great was able to march his large army into the region of the Punjab in the 4th century BC, and he would be followed by many other
would-be conquerors down the ages. While the Himalayas were the most
impenetrable boundary of all, that didn't stop Indian Buddhism from spreading across them into Tibet and on to the
rest of Southeast Asia, reaching as far north as Japan.
In the first millennium AD, powerful
Hindu empires like the Pallavas,
Figure of a foreigner, found in Sarnath. This is a probable member of the West Asian Pahlava or Saka elite in the Gangetic plains during the 300 BC-184 BC period. The Pahlavas are a people mentioned in ancient Indian texts like the Manu Smriti, various Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Brihat Samhita. According to P. Carnegy, In the 4th century BCE, Vartika of Katyayana mentions the Sakah-Parthavah demonstrating an awareness of these
Saka-Parthians, probably by way of commerce.
The Parthian language, also known as Arsacid Pahlavi and Pahlawānīg, is an extinct ancient Northwestern Iranian language once spoken in Parthia, a region situated in present-day northeastern Iran and Turkmenistan. Parthian was the language of state of the Arsacid Parthian Empire (248 BC – 224 AD), as well as of its eponymous branches of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, Arsacid dynasty of Iberia, and the Arsacid dynasty of Caucasian Albania.
-- Parthian language, by Wikipedia
In a 4th-century BCE, the Vartika of Kātyāyana mentions the Sakah-Parthavah, demonstrating an awareness of these Saka-Parthians, probably by way of commerce....
Pahlavas are referenced in various Puranic texts like Vayu Purana, Brahmanda Purana, Markendeya Purana, Matsya Purana, Vamana Purana etc....
The Balakanda of the Ramayana groups the Pahlavas with ...
Mahabharata attests that ...
But the Udyoga-Parva of Mahabharata groups the Pahlavas with ...
Manusmriti[20] states that the Pahlavas ...
The Buddhist drama Mudrarakshas by Visakhadutta and the Jaina works Parishishtaparvan refer to ...
The Brihat-Katha-Manjari of the Kshmendra[22] relates that ...
-- Pahlavas, by Wikipedia
the Pandyas,
Megasthenes mentions Queens of Pandyas as 'Pandaia' and locates them in the south of India extending into ocean. It consisted of 365 villages which met the needs of the royal palace each day of the year. He described the queen as daughter of Heracles...
Pandyas are also mentioned
in the inscriptions of Maurya emperor Asoka (3rd century BCE). In his inscriptions (2nd and 13th Major Rock Edict) Asoka refers to the peoples of south India – the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas and Satiyaputras....Unfortunately, we do not have rich, reliable historical sources for the Mauryas. We have only extremely tenuous information about them -- most of it about "Asoka" -- from very late Buddhist "histories", which are in large part fantasy-filled hagiographies having nothing to do with actual human events in the real world....Instead, scholars insist on the authenticity of all of the inscriptions, and also insist that they must all be ascribed to the ruler known from traditional -- very late, fantasy-filled, pious, hagiographical -- "histories", as well as from the Maski and Nittur Inscriptions, as "Asoka"....It is time for Indologists to seriously consider the recent scholarship which suggests that some of the inscriptions are spurious. ... But in any case, the positive identification of Asoka as the author of the Maski and Nittur "Minor Rock Edict" inscriptions, which are radically different from any of the highly distinctive Major Inscriptions, makes it absolutely certain that "Devanampriya Asoka" cannot after all be the author of the Major Inscriptions, which explicitly and repeatedly say they are by Devanampriya Priyadarsi 'His Majesty Priyadarsi'. ...it is most likely that "Asoka" was not in fact a Mauryan ruler. We do not really know when or where he ruled, if he existed at all; we do not actually know that Dasaratha was the grandson of a Mauryan ruler named Asoka; and so on....
Who, then, really was Devanampriya Asoka? The evidence suggests at least two possibilities. One is that he was imagined by the Kushan period Normative Buddhists on the basis of their understanding of the monumental Major Inscriptions erected by the Mauryas -- evidently by Amitrochates ~ Bindusara. "Asoka" was then projected back to the glorious Mauryan period as an ideal for good Kushan rulers to follow...
[S]ome of the events described in the Major Inscriptions, such as Devanampriya Priyadarsi's conquest of Kalinga, subsequent remorse, and turning to the Dharma, were perfect candidates for ascription to Asoka in the legends. In the absence of any historical source of any kind on Asoka dating to a period close to the events -- none of the datable Major Inscriptions mention Asoka -- it is impossible to rule out this possibility. The late Buddhist inscriptions, such as the Calcutta-Bairat Inscription, may well have been written under the same influence....
The bilingual Aramaic and Prakrit (both in Aramaic script) fragment from Kandahar known as Kandahar II or Kandahar III, which is written in an extremely odd fashion (Falk 2006: 246), has been identified as representing a portion of the "Seventh Pillar Edict" (Norman 2012: 43), but strong doubts remain about the reading of the text (Falk 2006: 246). It is also by no means exactly like the "Seventh Pillar Edict", not to speak of the peculiar presentation of text and translation. In fact, it looks like a student exercise. It is very similar to the content of the Taxila Inscription and the two Laghman Inscriptions, both of which are also highly problematic, q.v. Falk's (2006: 253) conclusion: "There is no clear evidence for an Asokan influence on this text [the Taxila Inscription]. Like the two Laghman 'edicts' this text as well could be of a rather profane nature, mentioning Asoka as king just in passing."...
The next task is for scholars to study the spurious inscriptions to see when exactly each was inscribed, and in some cases why, so as to be able to attribute the information in them to approximately correct historical periods.
-- Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter With Early Buddhism in Central Asia, by Christopher I. Beckwith
Pandyas are celebrated in the earliest available Tamil poetry. The poems refers to about twelve Pandya rulers. According to tradition, the legendary Sangams ("the Academies") were held in Madurai under the patronage of the Pandyas. Several Tamil literary works, such as Iraiyanar Agapporul, mention the legend of three separate Sangams and ascribe their patronage to the Pandyas....
The famous inscription of king Kharavela at Hathigumpha (mid-first century BCE) mentions the defeat of a confederacy of the "Tramira" countries which had been a threat to Kalinga. It also remembers the precious pearls brought to the capital as booty from the "Pandya" realm.
The Hathigumpha Inscription is the main source of information about the Jain Kalinga ruler Kharavela. His year-by-year achievements in this inscription, states Richard Salomon, "approximates the character of a pure panegyric" [text in praise of someone.].... According to Salomon, the "readings, translations, and historical interpretations" of the Hathigumpha inscription "varies widely by different scholars", and it is not possible to establish its single standard version. These interpretations have created significantly different histories of ancient India, some with phantom eras, states Salomon.
-- Hathigumpha inscription, by Wikipedia
The Pandya chiefdom was famous for its pearl fisheries and silk industry. Korkai and Alagankulam are believed to have been the exchange centres of the Pandyas. Korkai, a port at the mouth of the river Tambraparni, was linked to the famous pearl fisheries and Alagankulam was also developed as a port.
-- Pandya dynasty, by Wikipedia
The earliest datable references to the Chola are from inscriptions dated to the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka of the Maurya Empire ...
-- Chola dynasty, by Wikipedia
and the Cholas grew up in India and spread their influence right across the continent, so that Hindu gods can be found carved into temples as far afield
as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia, and the language of Sanskrit would become the language of learning and religion
right across the Asian landmass. But while these highways generated enormous opportunities in connecting India to the world outside, they also contained great dangers. Powerful enemies lived in the lands
beyond the mountains.
Some of these enemies were nomadic armies of horsemen from the wild steps of Central Asia that could reach truly
astonishing sizes. These would periodically sweep down through the Khyber Pass to raid and pillage
before disappearing back into the wilds.
But other peoples came to conquer.
Within 20 years of the death of the
Prophet Muhammad [652 CE] , Muslim armies had achieved one of the most spectacular feats of military campaigning that has ever been seen in world history. Once a small and relatively insignificant regional power, the Arabic-speaking peoples had emerged onto the world stage and immediately knocked out two ancient heavyweights; the
Byzantine and Sassanid Empires. They then followed the same course eastward as Alexander the Great, toppling empire after empire until the Arab domains stretched across three
continents, with borders touching China, Europe, and India.
To the Muslims of the time, this was clear proof of the divine nature of their prophet's revelations. But just as Alexander had found out nearly a millennium before, spectacular conquests don't simply transform overnight into a stable empire. Just like Alexander's empire, the newly
conquered Arab territories burst like a bubble and quickly broke off into
separate Muslim kingdoms stretching across the Middle East and Central Asia.
These were ruled over by sultans, a word derived from the Arabic word
‘sultah’, or power, literally meaning ‘the one who has power’. These new Muslim kingdoms now sat on the
other side of the Indus River, and for the next 300 years [ [652 CE]-952 CE?], they would not make any move to advance into India.
The Hindu kings who ruled North India[???] would eye them with suspicion, but it seems they didn't think of them any differently to any of the other peoples who had come and gone in these regions. They referred to them sometimes as Turks or Turushkas, sometimes as Tajiks, other times slightly confusedly as
Greeks, but more usually with the word ‘mleccha’, a word that means something like barbarian. To these Muslim kingdoms, the wealthy lands of the Ganges plain would have looked like an irresistible target. At this time in history, India likely had the most sophisticated economy in the
world, and unlike Alexander the Great, the Muslim sultans knew just how large and wealthy India was. From the year 1000 on,
increasingly aggressive raids began to take place, often originating from warrior kingdoms in the region of
Afghanistan.
These horsemen would ride south down the Bolan Pass and raid the lands of India. But towards the end of the 12th century, a new and more ambitious group would arrive in the region, and they would come
to stay. These were a group of Turkic peoples
known as the Ghurids. The Ghurids were a dynasty of Iranian origin, but who currently ruled over the Ghor region of present-day Afghanistan. They had long raided the northern lands
of India, riding down from the hills and burning cities, taking away loot, but in recent years they had come under Persian
influence and converted to Islam. Now one Ghurid ruler set his sights on greater riches than what could be looted and strapped to a horse. He was a man known today as Muhammad
Ghuri. Muhammad Ghuri was born in the year 1149
in the mountainous region of Ghor. Ghor had been primarily populated by
Buddhists for the last thousand years, but from the 11th century on, it became increasingly Muslim and would soon become a center of learning, home to
Muslim teachers and scholars. Muhammad Ghuri was a warlord, and he wanted not just to loot and rob North India
like his ancestors, but to conquer territory for himself and settle down there for good. When the annual monsoon ended in northern India, Muhammad Ghuri swept down the Khyber Pass. With an army powered by strong Afghan
horses and bolstered with a large contingent of slave soldiers, he quickly seized territory in the Punjab, a lush,
green land at the foot of the Himalayas. The chronicler Ferishta [Firishta], a Persian scholar who settled in India in the 16th
century, recounts this campaign in sparse terms.
Muhammad Qasim Firishta [1560-1620] completed the Gulshan-i Ibrahim, also known as the Ta'rikh-i Firishta and Ta'rikh-i Nawras-nama, in 1015/1606-1607. In it he recorded the history of early Indo-Muslim dynasties, from the time of Sebuktigin of Ghazna. Writing under the patronage of Ibrahim ’Adil Shah of Bijapur, Firishta's Ta'rikh is an assimilation of earlier histories and oral tradition. In it he draws on Barani and the Tabakat-i Akbari of Nizam al-Din Ahmad Bakshi (1001/1592-93). As a historical source, Firishta was considered by European scholars to be authoritative from the end of the 18th century when parts of his history first appeared in English translation.
Alexander Dow translated and published the Ta'rih in London in 1798 in two volumes as The History of Hindostan, from the Earliest Account of Time, to the Death of Akbar. A Persian manuscript of Firishta's Ta'rikh was edited by John Briggs and Mir Khairat ‘Ali Khan but was not published until 1247/1831-32 in Bombay under its Persian title Ta'rikh-i Firishtah. Briggs published an English translation of the work almost in its entirety in 1829 under the title History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India, which appeared in four volumes. As a historical source, Firishta's account is suspect and his references to the architecture of Delhi are probably secondhand....
Firishta is believed to have depended heavily on Barani’s Ta’rikh-i Firuz Shahi, but he seems to be unaware of ‘Afif's work. See Hardy, "Firishta," Encyclopedia of Islam 2 (1966), pp. 921-922.
-- The Architecture of Firuz Shah Tughluq, Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate, School of The Ohio State University, by William Jeffrey McKibben, B.A., M.A., 1988
In the year following, Muhammad Ghuri, having recruited his forces, marched towards Peshawar, which in a short time
was brought under subjection.
Muhammad Ghuri now returned to Ghazni, but in the next year marched towards Deebul in the province of Sind, and
overran the whole country as far as the sea coast, returning laden with rich spoil. [/quote]
In the borderlands of the Punjab, Muhammad Ghuri created a Sunni Islamic kingdom of his own which extended
east of the Indus River, and he began to expand it. He tasked his generals with taking more
territory, and in the year 1193, one of these generals, a military slave, captured the small regional capital of
Delhi.
After the return of Muhammad Ghuri, his general took the fort of Merut and the city of Delhi, and it is owing to this circumstance that foreign nations say the empire of Delhi was founded by a slave, and making Delhi the seat of his government, established himself there, and compelled all the districts around to acknowledge the faith of Islam.
In doing so, Muhammad Ghuri laid the foundation for the Muslim kingdom that for the next 300 years would rule over a
large part of India and establish Muslim culture there for good. This was the power that became known as the sultanate of Delhi.
South Asian polities, circa 1250 CE.-- Mamluk dynasty (Delhi), by Wikipedia
We know surprisingly little about what life was like for the everyday people of India, many of them Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist
while living under Islamic rule. People's experiences must have differed greatly across time and from person to
person.