Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography (12 page)

One of the best places to experience
this is Girnar hill in Junagarh, Gujarat. At the foot of the sacred hill, there is a
rock outcrop with an Ashokan edict. More than three centuries later, a Saka (i.e.
Scythian) king called Rudradaman added his own inscription next to it. The second
inscription records the
restoration of the Sudarshana reservoir.
We are told that the reservoir was originally constructed by Pushyagupta,
Chandragupta Maurya’s provincial governor, and that it was completed
during Ashoka’s time by Tushaspa, an official of possibly Greek origin.
The inscription goes on to say that the reservoir was severely damaged by a great
storm and floods in the year 72 (probably 150
AD
). This
was considered a catastrophe by the local people, but Rudradaman proudly tells us
that he had the lake restored within a short time and without resorting to forced
labour or extra taxes.

This is not the end of the story.
Another three hundred years later, the Sudarshana lake burst its banks again. There
is a third inscription on the rock that tells us that this time it was repaired by
Emperor Skandagupta of the Gupta dynasty in 455-56
AD
. If
this is not a sense of history, what is?

Girnar is remarkable not just for these
inscriptions. It is one of those places where fragments from India’s long
history sit piled up on top of each other. To experience this, climb up the hillock
behind the rock inscriptions and above the picturesque Kali shrine. On one side, you
will see Girnar hill with its multitude of ancient Hindu–Jain temples. On
the other side is Junagarh fort and town. The fort is one of the oldest in the world
and, according to legend, the upper citadel was built by Krishna’s army.
Indeed, the very name Junagarh literally means old fort. Over the centuries, Saka,
Rajput, and Muslim kings would rule over it. As we shall see, Junagarh would be the
focus of important events when India gained independence in 1947. Barely half an
hour’s drive away is Gir National Park, the last refuge of the Asiatic
lion.

With the collapse of Mauryan hegemony, the outer edges of the empire dissolved into smaller kingdoms. A rump empire continued under the Shunga dynasty. It was still a substantial realm and the northern and southern trade routes continued to flourish. The imperial court continued to maintain international diplomatic relations as evidenced by a stone pillar raised by Heliodorus, the Greek ambassador in Vidisha, a major pit-stop on the Dakshina Path. Nonetheless, the north-western parts of the subcontinent were steadily occupied by Indo-Greek kingdoms that evolved a culture based on a mix of Indian, Greek and Bactrian elements. However, climate fluctuations would again play an important role in the chain of events.

In the first century
BC
, a severe famine caused by excessive snow affected the area that we now call Mongolia.
¹
This was
an area inhabited by fierce tribes of nomads called the Xiongnu. It is uncertain exactly who these people were but they were probably forerunners of the Mongols. These tribes had been the bane of early Chinese civilization and had prompted the First Emperor to build the earliest version of the Great Wall. The great drought caused the Xiongnu to migrate into the lands of another Central Asian tribe called the Yueh-Chih. In turn, the Yueh-Chih displaced the Sakas (Scythians), the Bactrians and Parthians. One by one, these groups were forced into the subcontinent. Thus, Afghanistan and North West India saw a succession of invasions and migrations.

Of course, it was not all warfare and invasion. There were relatively peaceful periods when trade and culture flourished. Taxila remained a centre of learning and new urban centres appeared, especially under Kushan rule. Buddhist ideas made their way into Central Asia and then eventually to China. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the North West was unsettled for several centuries after the decline of the Mauryas. The heart of Indian civilization had already shifted from the Sapta-Sindhu region to the Gangetic plains during the Iron Age. Now, the action shifted to the coasts due to a boom in maritime trade. We see this all along the coast from Gujarat in the west to Kerala in the south-western tip and then all along the eastern seaboard up to Tamralipti in Bengal.

Maritime trade was not new to India. As we have seen, the Harappans traded actively with Mesopotamia. In the Iron Age, centres like Dwarka may have maintained these links. We know that by the time of the Mauryans, Tamralipti was a thriving port with links as far as Sri Lanka. We also know that the empire had diplomatic and trade links with the Greek
kingdoms of the Middle East. However, it was from the second century
BC
that we see trade with both the Graeco–Roman world and South East Asia jump an order of magnitude. A Tamil epic from this period, the
Silapaddikaram
, tells us about the story of two lovers—Kannaki, daughter of a captain, and a merchant’s son Kovalan. This how the epic describes the great port of Puhar (or Kaveripatnam):
²

Great and renowned kings envied the immense wealth of the seafaring merchants of the opulent city of Puhar

Ships and caravans from foreign lands poured in abundance rare objects and diverse merchandise

Its treasure would be untouched by the entire world, bound by the roaring seas

The literature of this period is full of references to trade. This is especially true of the
Sangam
anthologies. These collections of early Tamil poetry appear to have been put together in a series of ancient conferences. Exact dates are not available, but they probably took place between the third century
BC
and the sixth century
AD
. Madurai appears to have been the venue for most of these gatherings. However, it is said that the tradition began in an even earlier city, also called Madurai, that was built along the coast and that, like Dwarka, was swallowed by the sea.

This collection of poems was almost entirely lost and forgotten by the mid-nineteenth century. Luckily, a few scholars like Swaminatha Iyer dedicated their lives to painstakingly collecting the old palm-leaf manuscripts from old temples and remote hamlets. In the process, Iyer uncovered ancient religious practices that have survived in isolated pockets in a continuous chain to this day. Still, a significant
portion of the corpus appears to have been lost, probably forever.

Sadly, much of the scholarship around Sangam literature is focused on trying to use the corpus to discern the roots of pristine Dravidian culture, unsullied by ‘Aryan’ influences from the north. This is ridiculous at many levels. First, the society described in the poems is full of trade and exchange with the rest of India as well as foreign lands. It is a world that is busily absorbing all kinds of influences and clearly revelling in it. Looking for signs of a pristine past misses the point about the people who composed the anthologies. Secondly, the composers of the
Sangam
poems clearly show strong religious and cultural links with the rest of the country. This includes knowledge of Buddhist, Brahminical and Jain traditions that are of ‘northern’ origin. Even when ‘local’ gods like Murugan (Kartik) are mentioned, they are depicted not as separate but as obviously part of the overall cultural milieu.

The point is that by the late Iron Age, the people in southern India were not just aware of the rest of Indian civilization but were comfortably a part of it. Goods and ideas were flowing along the coast as well as the Dakshina Path. For some odd reason, Indian historians see cultural influences flow only from the North to the rest of the country. The reality was of back-and-forth exchange. We see this in how the ‘northern’ Sanskrit language evolved over the centuries by absorbing words from other languages. Contrary to popular perception, Sanskrit was never a ‘pure’ language and its success was largely due to its ability from the earliest times to absorb ideas and words from Tamil, Munda and even Greek
³
. Many of the words that are generally considered as Sanskrit words used in
modern Tamil are actually ancient Tamil words that found their way into Sanskrit. We will see how such exchange continued into subsequent centuries as with the spread of Shakti worship emanating from the east or with Shankaracharya’s ideas from the far south. Of course there are significant regional variations, but these are small compared to what is shared with India’s wider civilization.

Instead of using it to split hairs over regional differences, I would say that Sangam literature is far more remarkable for the extraordinary continuities it shows us that remain alive today. For instance, one of the Sangam poems gives us a glimpse of Madurai as it was under Pandyan king Neduchelyan. We are told of the stalls near the temple selling sweetmeats, garlands of flowers and betel paan. The bazaars were full of goldsmiths, tailors, coppersmiths, flower-sellers, painters and vendors of sandalwood. It is astonishing, two thousand years later, how well this would describe a temple-town of today.

The world described above was at the heart of a mercantile network that extended from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea. The single most important factor that allowed this boom in trade was an understanding of monsoon-wind patterns, a discovery that Greek sources credit to a navigator called Hippalus. The discovery allowed merchant fleets to sail directly across the Arabian Sea rather than hug the coast. As a result, Greek, Roman, Jewish and Arab traders flocked to Indian ports even as Indian merchants made their way to the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and even down the East African
coast. We know a significant amount about these trade routes because an unknown Greek writer has left us a detailed manual called the
Periplus Maris Erythraei
.
⁴

According to the
Periplus
, the port of Berenike was a key hub in the trading network. It was located on the Red Sea coast of Egypt and had been established by the Ptolemies, the Greek dynasty that was founded in Egypt by one of Alexander’s generals. Archaeological excavations in the nineties have confirmed its location.
⁵
Goods from India landed here and were then taken overland to the Nile. Then they were transported down the Nile in boats to Alexandria. There were other routes as well. Some fleets, for instance, sailed all the way up the Red Sea to Aqaba. Goods would then have been transported by camel and donkey caravan through desert towns like Petra to Mediterranean ports like Tyre and Sidon.

There is a story that Cleopatra, when defeated by the Romans, had hoped to escape with her family to India. When Octavian attacked Egypt in 30
BC
, she sent Caesarion, her seventeen-year-old son by Julius Caesar, to Berenike with a great deal of treasure. Before she could escape, however, she was captured in Alexandria and famously committed suicide by snake-bite. Meanwhile, Caesarion had reached Berenike and could easily have escaped to India. Unfortunately, he was convinced by his tutors, almost certainly bribed, to return to Alexandria for negotiations. Octavian promptly had his cousin murdered. Cleopatra’s Alexandria, like Dwarka and old Madurai, now lies under the sea.

The
Periplus
tells us that ships sailing from Berenike to India went down the Red Sea to Yemen and then, dodging pirates, to the island of Socotra. The island had a mixed population of
Arab, Greek and Indian traders. Even the island’s name is derived from Sanskrit—Dwipa Sukhadara (Island of Bliss). This may explain why many Yemenis carry genes of Indian extract. From here, there were two major routes to India. The first made its way north to Oman and then across the Arabian Sea to Gujarat. Ships were advised to make this journey in July to take advantage of the monsoon wind.

There were many ports in Gujarat but Barygaza (modern Bharuch) appears to have been the most important. The port-town is at the estuary of the Narmada river. Treacherous shoals and currents made it difficult for ships to sail up the river. Therefore, the local king had appointed fishermen to act as pilots and to tow merchant ships to Barygaza port which was several miles upriver. The author of the
Periplus
almost certainly visited the area because he describes in great detail the impact of a ferocious bore tide in the estuary.

Imports into Barygaza are listed by the
Periplus
and include: gold, silver, brass, copper, lead, perfumes and ‘various sashes half a yard wide’. Italian and Arabian wine was also imported in large quantities. The Indian love of imported alcohol is clearly not new. Furthermore, the manual informs us that the local king ‘imported’ luxury items such as good-looking women for his harem. Exports included spikenard, ivory, onyx stone, silk and, most importantly, cotton textiles. Cotton textiles have remained a major export from this area till modern times.

The second route to India was a more southerly one that went across from Socotra to the Kerala coast. The most important port in this area was Muzaris (or Muchheri Pattanam) that is mentioned frequently in both Graeco–Roman and
Indian texts. A variety of goods were traded in Muzaris but the most important item of export by far was pepper, a spice that is native to the southern tip of India. It must have been exported in very large quantities because it was commonly available as far as Roman Britain.

For a long time historians had debated the exact location of this great port of antiquity. Excavations between 2004 and 2009 have identified it with a village called Pattanam, 30 km north of Kochi. Archaeologists have dug up a large number of Roman coins, amphorae and other artifacts in the area. It would remain a major port till it was destroyed by a big flood on the Periyar river in 1341
AD
. The main trading hub then shifted to Kochi, but the Muzaris area retained enough strategic importance for both the Portuguese and the Dutch to maintain a fort there. When I visited the site in October 2011, the fort was being excavated by the Archaeological Survey. The oldest extant structure, however, is the Kizhthali Shiva temple that is said to have been built by the Chera dynasty in the second century
BC
. The dragons carved into the steps in front of the shrine strongly reminded me of the temples of South East Asia. Has this style made its way from Kerala to Java or the other way around?

During ancient times, an overland trade route from Muzaris and other Kerala ports made its way through the Palghat Gap (a gap in the Nilgiri mountain range near Coimbatore) to inland cities like Madurai or further on to ports on the eastern coast. Some Greek and Roman products would then have been re-exported to Bengal and South East Asia.

According to another ancient Greek geographer, Strabo, around 120 ships made the year-long trip to India and back in
the first century
AD
⁶
. This probably excludes Indian merchant ships that also made the trip in reverse. We know that, for most of this period, India ran a large trade surplus with the Graeco–Roman world. This resulted in a constant one-way flow of gold and silver coins. Roman writer Pliny (23–79
AD
) wrote: ‘Not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome.’ This is corroborated by the fact that many hoards of Roman coins have been found in India. In a world where money was based on precious metals, this one-way flow of gold and silver would have been equivalent to severe monetary tightening. At one point, the drainage of gold became so serious that Roman Emperor Vespasian was forced to discourage the import of Indian luxury goods and ban the export of gold to India. Nonetheless, as a result of centuries of trade surpluses, India accumulated a large store of gold and silver. It is estimated that even today 25–30 per cent of all the gold ever mined is held privately by Indians even though the country itself has very few gold mines of its own.

Over the centuries many groups of people came to India’s western coast to trade or find refuge. Their descendants continue to live here and, in many instances, preserve ancient customs and traditions to this day. Not many people realize that India is host to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. It is believed that the earliest Jews came to India to trade in the time of King Solomon but, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70
AD
, many refugees settled in Kerala. St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have landed in Muzaris at around this time and lived amongst this community. One can visit the spot where the saint is said to
have landed. The descendants of his converts survive as the Syrian Christian community.