Indian History

Image Source: Wikipedia An ancient rishi (sage), Jamadagni was the father of Parashurama (Rama with the axe), the sixth Avatar (“Descent”) or Incarnation of Vishnu. Once Jamadagni was robbed by the wicked King Kartavirya, the most famous of the Haihaya kings. As a result, Parashurama killed Kartavirya. Jamadagni was in turn killed by the sons of Kartavirya. This enraged Parashurama who exterminated all the males of the Kshatriya caste with the axe given to him by Shiva twenty-one times in succession. Some accounts say that Jamadagni was killed by Kartavirya himself. Jamadagni’s wife was Renuka who is known for her wifely fidelity.

In India polygamy has existed since recorded history. Though the general populace of India in the time of Rig Veda were monogamous, polygamy was prevalent in the ruling class. Added to this, brahmans and others sections who can afford polygamy also had more than one wife.  From the frequent references of polygamous marriages in the ancient Indian literature and legal texts we can safely say that polygamy was not an unknown affair in the social life of ancient Indians.  However, some legal texts discouraged polygamy. Dharma Sutra of Apastamba disallows a married man from marrying for the second time if his wife is of good character and has borne him sons. Kautilya’s  Arthashastra says that in case of a man opting for second marriage, the first wife must be  compensated.

The recent anti-corruption agitation in India has brought the issue of corruption to the forefront of conscious attention. People may be ruing that today’s India has become a hotbed of corruption. However, it is not that India in ancient times was free from the influence of the hydra-headed evil of corruption. What distinguishes today’s India from ancient one, when it comes to corruption, is that while ancient people were able to keep corruption at bay, modern India is finding helpless in rooting out corruption from public life. Corruption thrives on human weakness. It is as old as the human race and has as many facets as human nature itself. There are references to the judicial corruption in ancient India. To check this, high standards for judges were set. A judge has to be gentle, learned, religious and impartial. He should not show any sign of anger. It was suggested that till the settlement of the cases, no private meetings between the judges and litigants should be allow

In Harappan civilization, trading activities were in a state of flourish.   That the Harappan traders had contact with Mesopotamia can be gauged from the fact that a number of Harappan seals and objects have been found in Sumer. According to experts, the land of Melukha, which finds mention in Sumerian documents, is, in fact, the land of Harappan civilization. Lothal, Surkotda and Balakot in Indus civilization were some of the important coastal towns from where the Harappan products might have found their way to Mesopotamia. From Mesopotamia precious metals and raw materials were exported to Indus civilization. If you take discovery of the Indus seals in Mesopotamian civilization, we can safely come to the conclusion that traders from India actually resided in Mesopotamia. It seems that cotton was the main article of export to Mesopotamia.

Mattavilasa Prahasana (the Sport of Drunkards) was written by the versatile Pallava ruler and scholar Mahendravikramavarman  or Mahendravarman I, a contemporary of Harsha. Set in the Pallava capital of Kanchipuram, this little farce treats of a drunken Shaivite ascetic named Kapali or Satysoma, who loses the skull which he uses as begging bowl and accuses a Buddhist monk Nagasena of stealing it. After a drawn -out argument involving satirical dialogue, in which other dissolute mendicants of various persuasions and both sexes are involved, it is found that the skull has been stolen by a dog. Replete with Rabelaisian humour, this short one-act play in Sanskrit throws a flood of light on the life of the 7 th century India.

Asvaghosha was a great Buddhist Scholar who was a contemporary of the great Kushan ruler Knishka. Asvaghosha has been described as “poet, musician, preacher, moralist, philosopher, playwright, tale-teller… an inventor in all these arts…he recalls Milton, Goethe, Kant and Voltaire.” Asvaghosha is the author of the famous Buddhist tract, Vajrasuchi (Diamond needle). Buddhacharita, the earliest surviving classical Sanskrit work written in verse, is also ascribed to him. Ashvaghosha was part of the fourth Buddhist Council. 

Earlier of the two great Sanskrit epics of India, the Mahabharata (other being the Ramayana ) is written earlier than the other. Considered to be the longest single poem in the world literature, the epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa , though it incorporated many episodes in the later centuries. As the poem stands today, it contains about 90, 000 stanzas, most of them of thirty two syllables. The central story of the Mahabharata concerns a great civil war fought among cousins and brothers for the succession of the throne of the Kuru Kingdom, in the region of the modern delhi, then known as Kurukshetra.

Women, in Indus Valley Civilization also known as Harappan Civilization, wore far more elaborate hairstyles than their men folk. They used to take special care of their hair. Some of the women had a plait tied with a bow at the end. The discovery of the statue of dancing girl from Mohenjadaro attests to the pony tail, so common at the present day. The men in the Harappan civilization were used to different styles of hair dressing. They used to part hair in the middle and tied it with a bullet. Sometimes the hair was gathered up in a bun or coiled in a ring on top of the head. The crawling child depicted on a clay figure from Mohenjadaro show that curly hair was also in vogue. Men used to trim their beards and shaved the upper lips. There are traces of completely shaven faces with a small beard on the chin. Short beards were preferable.

Established in 5th century AD, Nalanda was a famous university of ancient India. During the rule of Harsha, the fame of university reached far and wide. Under the Pala ruler Dharampal , the glory of the university reached its zenith. The renowned Chinese traveler Hiuen-Tsang who came to India during the rule of Harshvardhan and studied at Nalanda, has mentioned the Nalanda university in glowing terms. From his accounts it can be said that the university was a great centre of education and was famous even in far-off countries. According to Hiuen-Tsang , the number of students at the university was ten thousand and the faculty consisted of great minds drawn from different parts of India. Separate buildings were used for the study of the students. Some buildings had the sitting capacity of ten thousand students . The library of the university was very big and consisted of three buildings, one of them nine storied. Admission to Nalanda university was a tough affair. The rules of th

Samudragupta, was greatest ruler of the Gupta dynasty. He was son and successor of Chadragupta I. He succeeded to the throne in c. 350 AD. He ruled for about 25 years. A skillful military leader and administrator as well as a patron of learning, Samudragupta is called Indian Napolean . His court poet Harishena composed an eloquent eulogy of him which is contained in the Allahabad pillar inscription (API). Samudragupta is credited to have uprooted Nagasena, Achyuta and Ganapatinaga, (identified with the rulers of Padmavati, Ahichchhatra and Mathura respectively). He is said to have captured the prince of the Kota family (Bulandshahr region) and besieged the city of ‘Pushpa’(probably Kanyakubja). Apart from these conquests, Samudragupta brought under his control a large number of kings and vassals. According to eminent historian K. P. Jaiswal, Samudragupta forced Rudrasena I of the Vakatava dynasty to cede his North Indian possession to the Gupta Empire. To commemorate this vict

An astonishingly beautiful place, the Swat valley in Pakistan, the ancient seat of Gandhara civilization, is no longer the popular tourist destination as it used to be before the Taliban seized the valley in 2006 and effective power in 2006. Since then, area has become synonymous with violence. It all started with the defacing of a 23-foot high statue of the Buddha by Fazlullah’s militants on October 8, 2007 on the pretext that Islam permits no graven images. This 7th century seated Buddha is carved in a rock in the lap of a mountain in Jehandabad village in the region. During the rule of great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka , Buddhism became a force to reckon with in the Swat valley. The region is full of Budhist stupas, monasteries, pottery and coins. The world famed Gandhara art flourished under the Buddhist Kushan dynasty. Today Batkara Stupa in the Swat Valley is in a state of disarray due to the neglect of the authorities concerned. Beautifully situated in the serene ambience of

Written in Pali language in the fifth century AD, the Sri Lankan Chronicle Mahavamsa is mainly a history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Composed by Mahanama Thera , the Buddhist Chronicle also gives reliable information on political history of India. Mahavamsa has also great literary merit. It contains several passages of immense beauty. The passage describing the capture of Vijitanagara , the capital of the Tamil invader Elara , by the Sinhalese national hero, King Dutthagamani (161-137 BC) with aid of his favourite elephant, Kandula . is indeed one of the jewels in the crown. Mahavamsatika or Vamsatthapakasini , a commentary on Mahavamsa , was composed in the 10th century AD.

During the Rig Vedic period, marriage was usually monogamous, and apparently indissoluble, since no reference to divorce or the remarriage of widow occur in the Rig Veda. Polygamy was however known in the Rig Vedic period. The girls were married after they had reached puberty. Child marriage was unknown and there were unmarried girls like Gosha who lived all her life with her parents. There were no marriage restrictions, still matrimonial alliances with the Dashyus was prohibited. Among the Aryans only the marriage of father and daughter, and of brother and sister were banned. There was complete freedom both to the boy and the girl in the selection of their partner but the consent of the parents was essential.  However the scene of the Vedic period underwent a change in the time of the Smiritis. According to Manu –Smriti, the lawbook of Manu, the age of bride should be one third of that of the groom.  From the evidence, we can come safely to the conclusion that child marriage was not a

As is the case with the civilizations of the ancient world, religion must have played an important role in the lives of Harappan people. However, nothing can be said with certainty about the religious life of the people of Indus valley civilization since our information on the topic is fragmentary.  The Harappan religion was polytheistic.  On the basis of information gathered from Harappan seals, seal impressions, terracotta and metal figures, cemeteries, etc, we can come to the conclusion that worship of the Mother Goddesses was very much prevalent in the society. It is very much to the point to underline the fact that worship of Mother Goddesses came into vogue in Hinduism one thousand years after the decline of Harappan culture. Other traits of later Hinduism such as worship of Pashupati Shiva, sacred animals trees etc, were practised by the Harappan people.  Among the male gods, the most striking is a three faced horned deity seated cross legged on a throne and surrounded by four

Vardhamana Mahavira A contemporary of The Buddha, Vardhamana , known to his followers as Mahavira, was born in village Kundandagrama  near Vaishali in Bihar in a kshatriya (the warrior class) family about 540 BC. His father Siddhartha was the chief of the Jnatrikas clan and his mother Trishala was sister of Chetaka, the Licchavis king of Vaishali. Mahavira was also related to Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadha, who was married to Chellana, the daughter of Chetaka. Mahavira was married to Yashoda and had a daughter whose husband, Jamali, became the first disciple of Mahavira. Though Mahavira was educated in all branches of knowledge he shied away from materialistic life. At the age of 30, when his parents were dead, he renounced his family, became an ascetic, and proceeded in search of truth. For over twelve years, he went from one place to another and led a life of torture by subjecting his body to all kinds of hardships but it was of no avail. During this period he met another asceti

An awesome feat of engineering, the Kailash Temple or the Kailashnath Temple , dedicated to Hindu God Shiva, is the most impressive remainder of the Rashtrakuta dynasty of Deccan that held sway for more than two centuries. Under the Rashtrakutas the rock-cut architecture in India reached its zenith. Carved out of the single rock (monolithic) hewn out of Charanandri hills at Ellora under the instructions Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (756-775), the Kailashnath Temple has been described in glowing terms by Percy Brown , the noted writer on Indian architecture. He says, "The temple of Kailash at Ellora is not only the most stupendous single work of art executed in India, but as an example of rock architecture it is unrivalled…. The Kailash is an illustration of one of those occasions when men's minds, hearts and heads work in unison towards the consummation of a supreme ideal. It was under such conditions of religious and cultural stability that this grand monolith representa

The important pre-Harappan and Harappan civilization site of  Kot Diji is l ocated on the left bank of the Indus River at the foot of the Rohri Hills of Khairpur  district in the Sindh province of Pakistan .  The excavations at Kot Diji were undertaken by F. A. Khan and G.S. Ghurye of the Pakistan Department of Archaeology between 1955 and 1957. The Harappan culture at Kot Diji had typical features- a well regulated town –plan with lanes, houses with stone foundations and mud brick walls. The roofs were covered with reed mats as discovered by plastered mud impression. Storage jars, built on the mud floors, and large unbaked cooking brick-lined ovens were also found. A broken steatite seal, a few inscribed potsherds, beads of terracotta, semi-precious and etched carnelian and other beads, copper / bronze objects, bangles, arrowheads, metal tools and weapons (a blade axe, chisels and arrow heads), terracotta bull, bird and five figurines of the Mother Goddesses were also disc

Shakuntala stops to look back at Dushyanta, Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). Kalidasa, the greatest of India’s dramatists and poets, has been given the title of Indian Shakespeare by his first English translator, Sir William Jones , the first president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, founded in 1784. His Abhijnanasakuntala (Recognition of Sakuntala) won unqualified praise from Goethe . Not much is known of Kalidasa‘s life, but there is sufficient evidence to conclude that he lived at the court of Chandragupta II (c 376-415) of the Gupta dynasty. Chandragupta II was a great patron of the arts. Kalidasa wrote three dramas namely Malvikagnimitra , a comedy of harem love and intrigue ending in the marriage of Shunga king Agnimitra and princess Malvika ; Vikramorvasi (Urvasi won by valour), narrating the ancient story of love, separation and final union of the king Puruavas and the nymph Urvasi, and Abhijnanasakuntala . He was the author of two long poems Kumarasambhava (Birth