Indian historical studies

e

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

RIVERSIDE

INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

0

^^"^fO^^'f

INDIAN

HISTORICAL STUDIES

hT G. RAWLINSON, M.A.

) It

LATE SCHOLAR, EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE, THE DECCAN COLLEGE, POONA

AUTHOR OF "bACTRIA; the history OF A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE"

WJTff 7 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1913
Aii richis reserved

3)3-} 37

r.

FEB i 5 1914 '
DETBOIT, MIOH.

Truth is One,
And in all lands beneath the sun,
AVhoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.

' Ti-uth is one: the wise name it variously."

Bigveda, I, 164. 46.

PKEFACE

I HAVE to thank the editor of the Times of India for
permission to reprint the paper on Ibn Batuta and
part of that on the Chinese Pilgrims ; the managing
committee of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society for similar permission with regard to that on
Foreign Influences in the Civilization of Ancient
India ; the Archseological Department of the Govern-
ment of India for the photographs of the Indo-Greek
Buddha, the Sanchi Stupa, and the Asoka Pillar ;
and Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy for the exquisite
Prajndpdramitd — one of the most beautiful pieces of
statuary in the world. The map accompanying the
volume is the work of Mr. Bhide of the Agricultural
College, Poona, who executed his task with great care
and skill. '^

INTRODUCTION

Few people, either in England or in India, take any
real interest in Indian History. Englishmen are
repelled by the remoteness and strangeness of the
theme ; and the vast majority of Indians, up to very
recent times, have regarded the subject with indiffer-
ence. History plays no part in the traditional San-
skrit curriculum. It was left to Western scholars to
decipher the inscriptions of Asoka, and to rescue from
oblivion the caves of Ellura and the Ajanta frescoes.
Orientalists, however, have usually made the great
mistake of treating the history of prse-Mahommedan
India almost exclusively from the archaeological point
of view. Ancient Indian art is regarded as a curiosity
rather than as a triumph of artistic achievement;
and the political organization of the empire of the
Maurya or Gupta monarchs is seldom accorded the
admiration it deserves.-^ India still awaits a historian
who will not be satisfied with date and names, but
will make the early history of the country live ; who
will not content himself with recording dry facts in
their proper sequence, but will duly estimate the
artistic, literary, and political achievements of
successive dynasties.

' Indian writers err in the other direction. From a mistaken
sense of patriotism, they generally consider it their duty to praise
their country at all costs, and in so doing, invariably defeat their
ovm ends.

X INTRODUCTION

It is a lamentable fact that under the system in
vogue at most Indian Universities, the student knows
more of Julius Caesar or the battle of Marathon than
of Chandragupta or the teaching of Gautama. We
employ lecturers to instruct our pupils in western
ethics ; but we forget to encourage them to study the
admirable " sermons in stone " of their own emperor
Asoka, written as they were for the edification of the
people at large. No student should be allowed to waste
his time over Greek and Eoman history, while remain-
ing ignorant of what the Greek historians and the
Chinese travellers have to tell him of his own country
and her past. Another work which we urgently require
is a "source book" of early Indian History, containing
translations from the various authors, Greek, Chinese,
and Indian — including, of course, the inscriptions — of
all passages bearing upon early Indian History. The
passages, with explanatory notes, arranged in their
chronological order, would form an admirable text-
book for history students. From the Greek and
Latin point of view, something of the kind has been
done by McCrindle,^ while for the Mahommedan
period we have the excellent work of Elliot and
Dowson.^ The study of Indian history on the lines
I have indicated might, perhaps, do something to
arrest the appalling decay of taste which is one of the
saddest features of modern India. It might also
check, in England and America, the spread of
rubbishy ideas, propagated under the title of Oriental
philosophy, by charlatans who often cannot read a

' Ancient India as described in Classical Literature, by J. W.
McCriudle.

^ The Jlistcn-y of India an told by her own Historians, 18G7.

INTRODUCTION xi

line of Sanskrit. This nonsensical pseudo-Orientalism
has done more than anjihing else to alienate serious
people, and to deter them from studying the really
great civilization and literature of the East.

The studies which are here offered to the public
do not form in any way a continuous series. The
author has, however, attempted to give the reader a
glimpse of India in nearly every epoch of her history
by taking a leading figure of the period and attempting
an estimate of bis achievements. The study of Bud-
dhism and its founder is largely founded on Oldenberg's
great work, Buddha, scin Lchcn, seine Lclirc, und Seine
Gemeinde, of which a new edition appeared in 1906.
Warren's Buddhism in Translations (1896) gives the
original passages in an admirable fashion ; and Dr. Rhys
Davids' Vinaija Texts and Dialogues of the Buddha have
been freely used. For Asoka we have the accurate,
but not very inspiring, translation of the Edicts by
Mr. Vincent Smith, to which the author is much
indebted, though he has felt justified in making his
own translation where necessary. Those who wish
to know more about the Indo-Greek princes are
referred to the author's Bactria : the History of a
Forgotten Emfire (Probsthain, 1913). Most of us have
to depend upon the specialist as regards Chinese.
For the Chinese pilgrims the translations of Beal
(Trtibner, 1884) Watters, ^ and the early work of
.Julien, are the most generally useful. The travels
of that jovial Moor, Ibn Batuta, replete with interest
for the student of early Mahommedan India, were
first completely translated by Defremery and Sangui-
netti (4 vols., 1858), though a rare book, Lee's

' Oriental Translation Fund, xiv., iv.

xii INTRODUCTION

translation (1823), of an imperfect manuscript in the
Cambridge library, may be occasionally met with.
Much sentimental nonsense has been written about
Akbar; the student is advised to consult the ^A'&dfr
Nama of Abul Fazl and form his own opinions. It
has been partly translated by Gladwin (1783), and
Blockmann (1848). The best-written history of the
whole Mahommedan period is Keen's Short History of
Hindustan ; Colonel Malleson's Akbar, in the " Rulers
of India " series, is not very clearly arranged. The
story of Shivaji is to be found, by those unacquainted
with Marathi, in Grant Duff's History of the Mahrattas.
The writer had access to many documents now lost,
but it is a pity he adopts a consistently hostile
attitude to the great guerilla leader. On the other
hand, Justice Ranade's Rise of the Maratha Poiver
(Bombay, 1900) is disfigured by extravagant laudation
of his hero's political achievements. The story of
Robert Knox may be found in his autobiography, a
famous book in its day, which may have even inspired
the author of Robinson Crusoe. It has been recently
edited by Mr. Ryan from fresh documents discovered
in the Bodleian by the late Mr. Daniel Ferguson.
To Indian readers the account given by Knox, of
Ceylon, is of unique interest. In that island, un-
disturbed by Brahminical reaction or Mahommedan
invader, survived a Buddhist community practically
unchanged since the mission of Asoka in the third
centm-y e.g. What Knox says about the Sinhalese
trade-guilds is especially important. The story of
Ranjit Singh and of the Sikh nation may be found at
greater length in the admirable works of Sir Lepel
Griffin and in the exhaustive treatise of the late

INTRODUCTION xiii

Mr. Macauliffe. It is hoped that those brief studies
will serve to stimulate the reader to a deeper study
of a fascinating and neglected subject, of vital import-
ance to all who are concerned with the oldest and
noblest appanage of the Crown.

H. G. EAWLINSON.

Bdrwash,

Sussex, 1913.

CONTENTS

PAGB

I. Gautama Buddha 1

II. ASOKA 21

III. Indo-Greek Dynasties of the Panjab .... 39

IV. Chinese Pilgrims in India 55

V. Ten Batuta 95

VI. Akbar 103

VII. Shivaji the Maratha 119

VIII. Robert Knox 145

IX. Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Nation 169

X. Foreign Influences in the Civilization of

Ancient India 191

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Sanchi Stupa Frontispiece

From a photograph by the Archccological Surve?/ of India.

FACrNG PAGK

Gautama Buddha. From an Indo-Greek Statue ... 5

By permlsi-ion of Ihc Dircctoi-General of Archwoloffi/,

Capital of an Asoka Pillar, Sarnath 27

Fro7n a photograph h;/ the Archcological Survey of India,
PrajnSpSramita. a Mahayana Goddess from Java. . . 59

By permifnioH of Dr. A. K. Coomarafwamy.

The Taj Mahal 107

From a. photograph hy the Author.

Pratapgad Fort 125

A Dutch Fort on the Ceylon Coast 163

From a photograph by the Author,

Map : India and Central Asia . . . at end of booJc

I

GAUTAMA BUDDHA.

GAUTAj\L\ BUDDHA.

Afyei irov 'Hpti/cAciTos '6ti Travra X^P^' '^"■^ ovSiv fxivn.

The sixth century b.c. was destined to be a momen-
tous one in the history of the Aryan races. Northern
Europe, it is true, vras still plunged in darkness, and
even in Italy only remote signs of the dawning of a
new era were perceptible. But further east a general
awakening was setting in. Greece was in a state of
ferment. Greek colonists were supplanting the
Phcenicians all along the shores of the Mediterranean ;
in Hellas itself, old political institutions were break-
ing down on every hand, and old beliefs were being
rudely questioned. In Western x\sia, the great
Semitic empires of the Euphrates valley were be-
ginning to totter before the rising power of the
Iranians. In India, too, indications of an impending
revolution were not wanting. A great change had
come over the robust nomads who had poured through
the passes into the Panjab some two thousand years
previously. As they spread fm-ther to the east, they
lost a good deal of the simplicity and vigour which
had characterized them at first. The enervatiner
climate of the Ganges valley was partly responsible
for this ; contact with the aboriginal races and
absorption of their ideas had also had considerable
effect. The involved philosophical speculations of

V '^

4 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the Upanishads had succeeded the primitive nature-
worship of the Vedic hymns ; caste distinctions had
begun to draw rigid barriers between class and class.

At this crisis, probably about 568 e.g., Gautama
Buddha was born. His father was a petty chieftain
who dwelt on the borders of Nepal. His very name
(Suddhodana, Clean Eice) indicates that the ancestral
wealth of the family was derived from the fertile rice
fields on the borders of the Eohini, a little stream
which watered the lands of the tribe on its way to join
the Ganges. In all probability his clan, the Sakyas,
was not originally Aryan at all, but an offshoot of
one of those hordes of Sakas or Scythians who were
constantly finding their way into India from the
Central Asian steppes. But early India was not
discriminating. The Sakyas, like the Eajputs at a
later date, soon forgot their Scythian origin, and
became incorporated in the Hindu polity as members
of the Warrior Caste. Perhaps it was to this touch
of foreign blood that Gautama owed his peculiarly
vigorous temperament.

Gautama was an only son, born when his parents
were advanced in years and had almost despaired of
offspring. He was born in a wayside garden, since
immortalized by pious Buddhists,^ while his mother,
following the immemorial custom of the East, was on
her way to her parents' home to await her delivery.
She did not long survive his birth, and this circum-
stance made the child doubly precious in the eyes of
his widowed father. We need not here concern
ourselves with the host of legends — some exquisitely

' It was marked by a pillar erected by Asoka, and recently dis-
covered.

Gautama Buddha.

From an Indo-Greek Statue.

(By pennlssion of the Director-General of Archxolngy.)

[To face page 5.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 5

beautiful, others merely grotesque — which have grown
up round the birth and boyhood of Gautama. Some
resemble so strangely the stories related of the birth
and childhood of Jesus Christ, that we may only
suppose that they were borrowed, centuries later,
from the Nestorian Church of Southern India, or
from the semi-Christian sects of Persia and Asia
Minor. Others, such as the legend of the " Bending
of the Bow," are attached in some form or other to
every Aryan hero. All we can tell for certain is that
Gautama was brought up as an ordinary prince of the
period, and in due time was married and begot a son.
Then, at about the age of twenty-one, came the turn-
ing point of his career.

The life of a man was, according to the ancient
Hindu rule, divided into four stages. After fulfilHng
the duties of the student and the householder, he was
free, if he so desired, to abandon the world, and to
retire with his family to a forest hermitage, there to
spend his days in pious exercises. Finall}^ if he
succeeded in snapping the last links of attachment to
things of earth, the hermit might become a mendicant,
and wander forth in rags and poverty to beg his food
from door to door, unrecognized even by his kin. This
idea of a peaceful sunset following the storms and
turmoils of life has always exercised a peculiar fascin-
ation upon the Hindu mind, for in India both the
climate and the charitable disposition of the people
render the hardships of such an existence far less
trying than they would be in the West. Even in our
own days, a distinguished statesman has abandoned
fame, wealth, and ambition for the forsaken, homeless
existence of the Sanyasi.

6 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

This idea appears to have presented itself very
early to the mind of Gautama. His father, anxious
to hand on his kingdom to his only son, tried his best
to divert him from such thoughts. Elaborate pre-
cautions were taken to shield the young prince from
the sight of anything disquieting : such allurements
as the little court could offer were lavishly employed
to captivate and distract his mind. These devices,
however, had precisely the opposite effect to that
which the originators of the scheme had intended.
Gautama had long been wearied by the aimlessness
of his petty round of pleasures : instead of attracting,
they repelled and disgusted him. In the words of the
old chronicler, he realized that the " Householder's
life is full of hindrance, beset with passion ; but the
homeless life is as free as that of the bird on the
wing." An accident crystallized these vague feelings
into a definite resolve. One day, while driving
through the streets of Kapila-Vastu, his eye fell upon
a sight common enough in the East — a beggar lying
by the roadside, crii^pled and disfigured by a loath-
some disease. "Are there many like this?" he
asked of Channa, his charioteer. The reply was in
the affirmative. Gautama's mind was quickly made
up. His duty as a householder, according to Hindu
ethical standards, was fulfilled : he had a son to take
his place, and he was free to depart. He resolved to
go forth and seek some solution to the secret of all
this pain and suffering. And so, a few nights after-
wards, he bade a silent farewell to his wife and son,
and crept out of the palace. Calling the faithful
Channa, he bade him saddle the horse Kantaka, and
the pair rode out into the darkness together. Just as

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 7

dawn was breaking, he dismounted, discarded his rich
robes, cut off his long hair, and sent home his
attendant to break the news to his family. Then,
clothed in sorry rags, the erstwhile prince set forth
upon the quest. At first he attached himself to the
renowned teacher Alara, whose disciples dwelt in a
hermitage among the caves near Kajagriha. From
Alara he went in despair to Udraka, another famous
philosopher, but philosophy afforded no practical
solution to the questions he sought to answer. The
image of the dying beggar in the streets of Kapila-
Vastu still haunted him. Five of Udraka's disciples,
however, had decided to try whether by penances and
austerities they might not gain that supernatural
insight which was said to be obtained by these
methods. To these Gautama attached himself, and
for six years he practised such frightful self-torture
that his fame as an ascetic rang through the land, in
the words of the Pali commentator, " like the sound
of a great bell hung in the heavens." So exhausted
was he by the long course of penance that one day he
fainted while bathing in a stream, and would have
probably died had not a herdsman's daughter revived
him with a draught of milk. But the promised
insight never came : he was as far off from the long-
sought-for solution as ever. And now Gautama took
a characteristically bold resolve. Abandoning his
austerities, he returned to ordinary life, and deter-
mined to start afresh. At the sight of his apostasy,
his former friends turned their backs upon him, and
he was left utterly alone. But the end was nearer
than Gautama imagined. Seated that night under a
gigantic pipal tree, he began to reflect upon the events

8 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

of the past seven years : the vaunted Yoga of the
Brahmin had proved a hollow fraud ; was every
attempt to prove the Everlasting Secret doomed to
equal failure ? Had he left wife and kingdom in
pursuit of a phantom of the imagination ? All at
once, as he pondered, the long-sought revelation
dawned upon the thinker's mind. The flash of in-
tuition, which has come to the earnest seeker after
the truth in many ages and nations, which we call
Conversion, and the Indians Enlightenment or Bud-
dhi, broke suddenly upon Gautama with a final
answer to all his perplexities.

The clue to the secret of existence, as conceived
by Gautama, was, strangely enough, even then upon
the lips of the philosopher Heraclitus in the West.
" Nothing is permanent," was the fundamental tenet
of both philosophers.

" The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands ;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go,"

All is transitory, the earth beneath our feet, the
starry heaven above us, the gods, and, above all, that
ever-varying complex of emotions which men call
Personality or Soul. The cause of suffering is
ignorance. Unable to realize the impermanence of
things, men grasp at shadows — wealth, honours,
sensual satisfaction — as if they were realities. So,
too, they shun decay, death, material losses, as if
these were real disasters, and not what the Stoics
called 'A^iacpopa, things indifferent and inevitable.
Man, then, has no soul, in the sense in which the
word was generally understood both in Gautama's

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 9

days and our own. The personality is only the
concrete result of the propensities, which are modified
at every moment of our existence by some stimulus
from without. Gautama, however, did not discard
the old belief in transmigration, which had taken
such a deep hold upon the Hindu imagination ; for
transmigration provided a scheme of inevitable justice,
whereby every action, good or bad, brings its own
reward or punishment upon the doer. At death we
pass into nothingness, even as we came, "dust to
dust and ashes to ashes," according to the eternal
law of synthesis and dissolution. But, in some
mysterious way, the passions which we have generated,
the desires which we have nurtured, have acquired a
separate being, and, being liberated by the dissolution
of the personality, find for themselves a new life in
which to satiate their thirst for existence. And so
every action of ours is determining the destiny of a
future life for good or ill. Vitdi lamjJada tradimt.

The paradox of transmigration without a trans-
migrating soul was never explained satisfactorily by
Gautama. He insisted on our belief in it, but forbad,
with equal insistence, speculation upon so fruitless a
subject. Later commentators have striven to explain
the meaning by analogies from nature. If we plant
a mango in the earth, the tree which springs up is
the same, yet not the same, as the fruit which was
planted ; the flame, springing from one lighted lamp
to another, is the same yet not the same as the first
flame. "That which thou sowest thou sowest not
that body which shall be, but bare grain, it may
chance of wheat or of some other grain." And yet, so
indissolubly is the latter life involved in the former,

10 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

that Gautama himself often spoke in a loose fashion
of his former lives, or his actions in a past birth.

In this system, it will be observed, there is no
mention of God, of prayer, of remission of sin. The
inexorable creed of Gautama found no room for these
things. "As thou sowest, so shalt thou reap." Gods
there might be — Gautama offered no opinion upon a
matter so indifferent to salvation — but they, too,
though perhaps more happy, powerful, long-lived than
ourselves, are subject in the end to the same inevitable
law. Like the gods of Epicurus, they take no part in
earthl}^ things ; all our prayers and sacrifices are but

" Like a tale of little meaning, though the words be strong." *

What, then, is the end and object of life? The
end, said Gautama, is Knowledge ; for Knowledge is
Deliverance. The wise man "puts away childish
things " : he ceases to yearn for worthless, transitory
objects of desire.^ And so, after a long series of
transmitted lives, the thirst for existence is quenched ;
the oil in the lamp, to use a favourite Buddhist
metaphor, is exhausted. The blissful day dawns
when the man realizes that desire is dead within
him — that the last links binding him to earth are
snapped. This is Nirvana, "the quenching of the
thirst." A little while he lingers on, pervaded by
the rapt consciousness of final attainment ; when he
passes away, no cravings survive to call a fresh life
into being.

^ Gautama appears to imply a belief in " gods," clei or devas, but
he says nothing of " God," Detos or Ishwara. Gautama regarded
the Unknowable very much as Herbert Spencer does.

* He has no desires, and so he leaves nothing behind him to
find a fresh incarnation. The ideally wise maia has killed all desire.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 11

Buddhism has often been termed pessimistic.
Nothing could really be further from the truth.
Buddhism is essentially a cheerful religion. No
Christian description of the delights of heaven could
be more joj'ous than the outbursts of exultation over
the happiness of him who has obtained Nirvana.
Just as the sage in the great poem of Lucretius looks
down upon the world as one on a cliff gazes upon the
toilers in the raging sea below, the Buddhist saint

" Looks down on the vain world and careworn crowd
As he who stands upon a mountain-top
Watching, serene hinaself, the toilers in the plain."

Charity is essentially a Buddhist, as it is a Christian,
virtue, and Buddhism applies it, not only to suffering
humanity, struggling in the meshes of desire, but to
the animal world as well. The duty of compassion
extends to all life, and Buddhism put a stop to the
cruel sacrifices then common all over India. " Love
your enemies " is another commandment common to
Buddhist and Christian ethics. " Mine enemy has
slandered, beaten, robbed, or abused me ; whoso
dwells upon these thoughts is never free from hate.
Hatred ceases not by hate ; by love it ceases. This
is the ancient Law." " Oh, Joy ! we live in bhss,
hated, yet hating not again, healthy among the sick
of soul." " To cease from wrong-doing ; to get
virtue ; to cleanse one's own heart ; this is the creed
of all the Buddhas." Such exquisite sentiments are
found scattered broadcast among the teachings of
Gautama and his followers. Asoka fitly sums up
Buddhist ethics in the following beautiful words :
"What is the Dhamma? To eschew evil and follow
after good, to be loving, true, pure of life, and

12 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

patient, this is the Dhamma." This, then, was the
** Noble, eight-fold path," as conceived by Gautama
as he meditated beneath the Tree of Knowledge. It
was a " Middle Path," avoiding the gloomy austerities
of the ascetic. Above all, it was altruistic. Desire
was to be forgotten chiefly by allowing our thoughts
to dwell entirely upon others ; the selfish methods of
the hermit, who devotes himself exclusively to saving
his own soul only, were utterly repudiated. Altruism
is the distinguishing mark of Buddhism. It is said
that while Gautama sat beneath the Bodhi Tree, the
demons assailed him with numberless temptations ;
the subtlest was the constant prompting to enter into
Nirvana forthwith, and leave the world to take care
of itself. The temptation was real enough, though
the demons were only the phantoms of an excited
brain. But Gautama sternly put it away from him,
and, girding up his loins, went forth upon his mission
of preaching to mankind the great secret of life
which had so marvellously dawned upon him.

His first thought was to go to Benares, a spot
sanctified by immemorial tradition as the holiest
centre of Hindu faith, and to commence his career as
a teacher there. As he was laboriously toiling along
the long road from Gaya to Benares, he met a Jaina
monk, who was so struck by the " majestic light
which shone in his face," that he asked him who the
teacher could be who had conferred such bliss upon
him. " I have no teacher," replied Gautama. " Of
myself I have found Nirvana, and I go to Benares to
kindle the Lamp of Life for those that sit in the
valley of the shadow." " Are you the Jaina, the
Conqueror?" said the monk. "Yea," replied

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 13

Gautama, " I am the Jaina, for I have conquered Sin
and Death." Arrived at Benares, Gautama repaired
to the Deer Park, a pleasant spot, shaded by gigantic
trees, beneath which pilgrims were often to be found,
meditating or resting. Here he encountered his late
associates, the five ascetics. At first they welcomed
coldly the supposed apostate, but awestruck by some-
thing in his appearance which told of the great change
within, they were constrained to ofier him the kindly
acts of hospitality which are always shown to
strangers in the East — to wash his feet and set food
before him. Buddha then preached to them his first
sermon. He was no longer Gautama, he said, but
Buddha, and he showed them the true way of salva-
tion. Thus the "wheel of the Law was set rolling"
in the Deer Park at Benares. The five ascetics were
the first converts, and they were quickly followed by
a young nobleman of Benares named Yasha, and the
three brothers Kasyapa, who had been worshippers
of the Sacred Fire. The fires that really matter, said
Buddha to them, are the triple fires of lust, ignorance,
and hatred, and they must be quenched, not wor-
shipped.

Converts now began to flock in numbers to the
new creed. The conversion of Bimbisara, King of
Magadha, was a signal triumph ; more important,
from a deeper point of view, was the acquisition of
the learned and saintly Maha Kasyapa, who edited
the Buddhist Canon after the Master's death. But
Buddha made no distinctions of caste, wealth, or
fame. Among his followers were Brahmins, kings,
acrobats, barbers, courtezans, and reclaimed bandits ;
for all alike felt the winning influence of his strangely

14 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

attractive personality. Of the many affecting and
beautiful episodes of his life, none is more moving
than the story of his return to the wife and family
from whom he had silently parted so many years ago.
It is said that he was at first received coldly, as one
who had disgraced his lineage ; but the sight of his
son, standing begging-bowl in hand at the palace
gate, was too much for the old rajah, who led him
gently within and welcomed him with due honour.
Poor Yasodhara, the wife whom he had abandoned,
fell weeping at the feet of her long-lost husband ; and
Eajula, his little son, asked, *' Father, give me mine
inheritance." " My child," replied the Master, " Seek
not the wealth that perishes : the inheritance I give
to you is a seven-fold richer wealth, which I obtained
under the Bodhi Tree." Eajula was received into the
order as a novice, and many of the family followed
suit. Among them was Ananda, Buddha's cousin,
who became the Master's beloved disciple, accompany-
ing him ceaselessly from henceforth to his death.
Like Jesus Christ, Buddha is said to have formed an
inner ring of twelve disciples, his constant companions
and associates. Of these Ananda was the chief,
though he was distinguished by qualities of the heart
rather than the head. On the other hand, the signal
success of the order created a host of bitter enemies
and detractors, of whom Devadatta, another cousin
of Buddha's, was the leader. The many attempts
made to assassinate him, or to ruin his reputation
by charges of murder or immorality, failed igno-
miniously, as they deserved to.

And now began the public ministry of Buddha,
during the course of which he travelled for nearly

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 15

half a century up and down the country, from Alla-
habad to Gaya, and from Gaya to the borders of
Nepal. The sight of the little band of yellow-robed
preachers soon became a familiar one in the villages
of North-E astern India, and the kindly teacher and
his followers were eagerly welcomed. The Master,
however, often preferred to lodge in the pleasant
mango-groves outside the towns ; and thither, when
the heat of the day was over, the country folk would
resort, and listen respectfully while a homely allegory,
or folk-story, made to serve a moral pm*pose, was
expounded. Like Jesus Christ, Buddha loved to in-
struct his hearers by means of parables drawn from
the natural objects which they saw before them.
Thus a forest-fire suggested a discourse upon the
triple fire of desire. To a ploughman he remarked
that he, too, was a husbandman ; for faith was the
seed which he sowed, and mindfulness the plough-
share. "And by my ploughing the tares of delusion
are destroyed : sorrow is ended, and the blessed fruit
of Nirvana springs up." Miracles of any kind Buddha
never claimed to work. He told his disciples on more
than one occasion that the true miracle is to convert
a man by teaching : one who is merely attracted by
magic is no true beHever. On another occasion, we
read, a woman of the name of Kisagotami came to
him and implored him to restore her dead son to
life. She was told that her son would be cured, if
she brought a handful of mustard-seed from a house
where none had lost parent, husband, child, or friend.
From door to door the distracted mother went, but
alas ! in every family she found that death had done
his deadly work. And so in despair she retui'ned to

16 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the Master, wbo pointed out to her how inevitable,
how universal is the law that all which is born is
doomed to perish, and how fruitless are our strivings
against the common destiny of material things. Pity
for the afflicted was mingled with a kindly humour.
" Master," said Ananda, " how are we to behave
towards women ? " ** Look the other way, Ananda.".
" But if we can't avoid seeing them ? " " Don't speak
to them." " But if they speak to us, what are we to
do ? " " Keep a good look-out, Ananda ; keep a guard
upon your lips ! " When a certain philosopher came
to "prove him with hard questions," the Master sat
silent, apparently absorbed in meditation. He main-
tained this irritating attitude till the would - be
questioner went away in despair. Answering a re-
monstrance of Ananda as to the discourtesy of this
behaviour, he pointed out that this was the only way
to deal with such people. Nothing annoyed Buddha
more than the endless metaphysical speculation which
has been a perennial source of delight to the Hindu
mind, to the detriment of practical religion. "I am
not one of those teachers who teach an inner and an
outer doctrine," he said; "I do not teach with the
closed hand, concealing any mystery from the vulgar."
The Esoteric Buddhism of some modern pseudo-
Orientalists is a figment of the imagination.^

A life-like picture has been preserved for us by
one of the commentators of how the Master spent
the day. He arose at dawn, and out of consideration
for his servant, dressed without assistance. Then he

1 We must beware of confounding the teachings of Gautama
with the mystical speculations of the later Mahayana Buddhists.
This is a fruitful source of error.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 17

sat down and meditated till the time came to go upon
his rounds, when he donned his yellow robes, and
taking up his begging-bowl, went round the town or
village begging for alms. Perhaps some one would
ask him to come and share the family meal ; if so,
he would sit down and eat with them, and after the
meal was done, he would discourse to the assembly
upon spiritual subjects, in a manner suited to the
capacity of his audience. Then, returning home, he
would wait upon the verandah till all had finished
their repast, when he would assemble the disciples
and suggest subjects for meditation. All would then
disperse to rest and meditate. When the heat of the
day was over, the folk of the neighbouring villages
often came with presents of flowers and fruit and
suchlike humble offerings, and the Master would
preach them a sermon in a manner suitable to their
beliefs. Then the Master used to bathe and await
his disciples, who would gradually assemble when
their meditations were over. Eeligious discourse
occupied the time till the first watch of the night,
when all retired. The Master slept lightly, and
before it was light he often arose, and " calling to
his mind the folk of the world, he would consider
the aspirations they had formed in their previous
births, and think over the means by which he could
help them to attain thereto." In the rainy season,
however, this nomadic life was impossible. The part
of India where Gautama lived and taught is deluged
by storms from June to October ; heavy mists come
down from the Himalayas, and the village roads
become a quagmire. During this season the disciples
repaired to one of the numerous retreats which had

c

18 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

been presented to them, such as the bamboo-grove of
King Bimbisara or the mansion of Ambapali, where
they occupied themselves with study until the skies
cleared and the dawning of the beautiful Indian
winter called them forth once more to their work.

Time passed, and advancing years had begun to
leave their mark upon the Master. In the fifty-first
year of his ministry, a sharp attack of dysentery
warned him that the end was near. He was now
eighty, and the exposure and continued strain of half
a century of teaching had left its mark. Calling his
disciples together, he spoke to them long and earnestly
of the greatness of the task which would fall upon
them to fulfil after his decease. " My age is accom-
plished, my life is done ; leaving you, I depart, having
relied on myself alone. Be earnest, 0 mendicants,
thoughtful and pure ! Steadfast in resolve, keep
watch over your own hearts ! Whosoever shall adhere
steadfastly to the Law and the Order, shall cross the
Ocean of Life and come to the end of all sorrow."
At the close of the rainy season, Buddha set out on
his last pilgrimage. Arriving at the village of Pava,
he became the guest of a poor smith, Chunda by
name, who prepared a humble meal of boar's flesh,
rice and cakes, to greet him.^ The boar's flesh was
evidently tainted; the Master, however, unwilling to
disappoint his host, partook of the dish, excusing his
disciples from doing likewise by a tactful hint that

' There is no need to explain away the term "boar's flesh."
Gautama was not a vegetarian. Like Christ, he came " eating and
drinking." The rule that he imposed upon his disciples was that
no animal should be killed i7i their presence or es;pecially for their
benefit. That was all. Later reiiuemeuts were due to Brahminical
influence.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA 19

what was left over should be buried, as none but he
could assimilate it. When the meal was over, the
little party again took the road, but they had only
gone a short way when the Master was seized with
another violent attack of dysentery. However, he
partly recovered, and proceeded slowly to the banks
of the stream Kakuttha, where he bathed and drank,
and appeared to be somewhat better. "With his usual
thoughtfulness, he sent back a message to Chunda
by Ananda, telling him not to grieve because of the
ill effects of his hospitable action. After this the
Master journeyed a little further, but on reaching a
grove of sala trees outside the town of Kusinara, he
collapsed. Here there was a kind of rural couch or
summer-house, and here, under the shade, Ananda
spread a robe and laid his friend down to rest. It
was noted that the sala trees were all in blossom,
though the rains were over, and a peculiar kind of
glow radiated, as the disciples imagined, from the
body of their teacher. To their agitated minds it
seemed as if the air were full of spirits ; and some
of them wept, but the wiser kept silence, for they
knew that such things must be. The night wore on,
and the Master talked long and earnestly about his
approaching departure, till Ananda, overcome at the
thought of losing his friend and companion of over
forty years, went to the door of the summer-house
and burst into tears. Buddha sent a disciple to recall
him, and addressed him in words of infinite kindness
and comfort. " Enough, Ananda : do not be troubled.
How often have I not told you that all that we love
must one day leave us ? For all things that are
born must also die : and whatever comes into being

20 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

must also pass out of being. For many years,
Ananda, you have been kind and good and faithful,
very near to me by acts of love unvarying and
boundless beyond measure. Be earnest, and you
shall be free anon from the Four Evils — Individuality,
Delusion, Sensuality, and Ignorance." And turning
to the disciples, he praised Ananda's piety, faithful-
ness, and gentle disposition. A mendicant named
Subhaddha came soon after to ask certain questions
about the rival sects and their respective points of
excellence. Ananda tried to turn him away on the
plea that the Master was too ill to see any one ; but
Buddha called him in, and instead of answering his
query, preached the Law to him, and received him
as a convert into the Order. This was the last con-
version made by the Master himself. The end was
now near. Buddha said a few more earnest words
about the Order and the duties of those who were
henceforth to be responsible for its propagation,
warning them to be lamps unto themselves, and to
carry on the work. Then there was a long silence.
In the third watch of the night the Teacher suddenly
roused himself, and said with great and solemn
emphasis, " Behold now, brethren, I exhort you,
saying, Decay is inherent in all component things !
Work out your salvation with diligence ! " Saying
this, he sank into a trance, from which he slowly
passed, as dawn was breaking over the Himalayas,
"Into that utter passing-away which leaves nothing
whatsoever to return."

And so died one of the noblest and loftiest teachers
that the world has ever seen.

II

ASOKA MAURYA, BUDDHIST
EMPEROR OF INDIA,

II

ASOKA MAURYA, BUDDHIST
EMPEROR OF INDIA.

272-231 B.C.

Et roivvu &,Kpots fls (pi\ocTO(play TroXecis ris avdyKr] iTrifj.e\7]6?}vai t\
yeyopev iv tu aveipoi rcf TrapeXriXvOSri XP'^^V ^ '^"^ *''''' ^(^Tif ff Tivi
Pap0oipcf> Tt^TToi), TToppcc TTOV f/cTtij uvTi TTjs T]/xerepas eTr6^peo)s ^) Koi eiretra
yevfjfffTai, Ttepl tovtov eroi/xoi t^ \6yo> Sta/xdx^'^^^h ^^ yiyoviv t) eiprj-
fxevr) iroMnia koX (cttl koI yevT)(reTai 75, (jTUf avTT) 7; Mtvaa Tr6\f<tJS
iyKpaTT]S 76j/-^(reTat.— Plato, Rejmblic, vi. 12.

" If, then, persons of first-rate philosophical attainments either in
the countless ages that are past have been, or in some foreign clime
far beyond the times of our horizon at the present moment are, or
hereafter shall be constrained by some fate to take the charge of a
state, I am prepared to argue to the death in defence of this assertion,
that the state described has existed, does exist, yea and will exist
wherever the Muse aforesaid has become its mistress. Its realization
is no impossibility nor are our speculations impracticable."

In the autumn of 325 b.c, Alexander the Great and
the bulk of his army started to retrace their steps
from the East. The great invasion had affected
India very little. Persia the Greeks had made their
own ; India they had barely touched. It is a sig-
nificant fact that the name of Alexander never occurs
in Indian literature before the Mahommedan period.
To one man, however, the lesson conveyed by the
invasion was plain enough. A certain Chandragupta

24 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

(the name was corrupted into Sandracottus by the
Greeks) saw how easily the disunited Indian States
had been subdued by the Macedonians, and he deter-
mined to attempt a similar feat himself. An illegi-
timate son of one of the princes of Magadha, the
premier state in Eastern India, Chandragupta was
an unscrupulous adventurer. He soon found an
opportunity for putting his schemes into effect. Less
than two years after Alexander's departure came the
news of his death at Babylon, and in the panic which
ensued among the Macedonian garrisons of the Pan-
jab, Chandragupta headed a national rising which
placed the greater part of North- Western India in
his hands. He then turned his attention to his kins-
man, the unpopular monarch of Magadha, whom he
dethroned, and eventually made himself master of
the whole of the Aryavarta, the land between the
Himalayas and the Narmada. The results of his
masterly policy were seen a few years later, when
Seleucus L, King of Syria, tried to repeat Alexander's
exploits. Alexander had found it a comparatively
easy task to subdue one Indian tribe after another ;
Seleucus, to his surprise, was confronted with a vast,
homogeneous empire, and an army better organized
than his own. He was glad to come to terms with
his formidable opponent, and to give him in marriage
a princess of the Eoyal House, as a pledge of his
friendship. Chandragupta was too far-sighted to care
about the scruples of the older Hindu rulers against
marriage or intercourse with foreigners. Trade with
the West was encouraged ; and no doubt the presence
of a Greek rdni at Pataliputra tended to popularize
a taste for Western fashions among the aristocracy.

ASOKA MAURYA 25

More than one ambassador from Syria resided in
India in his reign ; and to one of them, Megas-
thenes, we owe most of onr knowledge of the great
Indian emperor. He describes him as living among
scenes of barbaric opulence ; for, like Alexander him-
self, he had adopted the elaborate ceremonial of the
Persian court. A hard, cruel man, he went in con-
stant danger of assassination ; he was forced to live
in strict seclusion, surrounded by his Amazonian
guard of gigantic Greek women, who cut down any
one venturing to approach too near.^ His rule was
strict and harsh ; mutilation, torture, and capital
punishment were inflicted, contrary to Hindu custom.
In order to meet the problem of governing an empire
far vaster than had ever been known in India before,
an elaborate Civil Service was organized, which does
credit to the political genius of its founder. The
country was divided into provinces, each with its
Viceroy reigning at the provincial capital; the ad-
ministration of the districts was conducted on the
ancient Indian system of the Pancliayat, or Board
of Five. In each district there were six of these
boards : one superintended the collection of taxes ;
another assisted them by keeping registers of the
population, — births, deaths, and other statistics.
Others, again, regulated the manufactures, trade-
guilds, and markets. Honesty on the part of the
merchants was enforced by the severest penalties,
for Indians were justly proud of their reputation for
probity in the ancient world.^ Artisans were under

' These were the origin of the " guard of Yavanis," who are a
stock feature of the Indian Drama.

2 Megasthenes says that in the vast camp of Sandracottus the
thefts were less than 200 drachmae (£3) per diem.

26 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the special protection of Government, for the Maurya
Emperors were great patrons of art. The enlightened
foreign policy of Chandragupta was responsible for
the formation of a special board for the purpose of
providing for the wants of foreign travellers and
merchants. Under the Viceroys were Commissioners
and lower officials who superintended the working of
the various boards ; in addition to them, independent
supervisors reported directly to the King upon the
administration of the provinces.

This, then, was the vast heritage to which Asoka,
grandson of Chandragupta, succeeded in 272 e.g.
His father Bindusara had died after an uneventful
reign of a quarter of a century. For eleven years
he ruled as his predecessors had done, and then an
event happened which changed the whole tenor of
his life. The kingdom of Kalinga, which lay between
the mouths of the Godaveri and Mahanadi rivers, and
roughly corresponded to the modern Vizagapatam
and Ganjam districts, had became involved in a
dispute with its overlord. The usual war of exter-
mination followed. Upwards of one hundred and
fifty thousand captives had been made, a hundred
thousand had been slain, and countless others had
perished miserably of starvation. Neither age nor
sex had been spared; even Brahmins and ascetics
had perished with the rest. Asoka was filled with
remorse at the sight of so much suff'ering. As a
young man, he must have been familiar with the
doctrines of Buddhism, for Magadha had been the
centre of Gautama's religious activities. In his
sorrow, Asoka sought consolation in the teachings
of the half-forgotten creed of his boyhood. He called

^' f--, l>

Capital of an Asoka Pillar.

Sarnath.

{Photo by the Archicologlcal Survey of India.)

[To face page 27.

ASOKA MAURYA 27

to bis court the famous doctor Upagupta, and bade
bim expound to bim the tenets of bis religion. Tbe
effect was magical ; Asoka was converted to Buddbism,
took minor orders in tbe Cburcb, and set himself,
with all tbe ardour of tbe convert, to remodel his
kingdom upon the precepts of the Dbarma. In no
country in tbe world, perhaps, except India, could
such an experiment have had any chance of success.
Tbe peculiar temperament of tbe people, together
with tbe admirable administrative system which
Asoka had inherited from bis grandfather, alone
enabled him to carry into effect his Utopian dreams.
Fortunately, tbe details of this great experiment have
not been lost in the oblivion which has swallowed up
so much of tbe early history of India ; the Emperor's
injunctions, regulations, and homilies were recorded
in edicts which were issued from time to time and
were inscribed upon rocks, or pillars erected for tbe
purpose, in various parts of tbe country. Tbe lofty
moral tone of these edicts indicates clearly enough
that India, in the third century b.c, was a highly
civilized country; it must, indeed, have compared
favourably with tbe rest of tbe world of tbe time,
for Greece was sinking fast into a state of corrupt
decadence, and Rome, in the throes of her struggle with
Carthage, bad scarcely yet emerged from barbarism.
Education, too, must have been more widely diffused
than in later ages ; for tbe presence of these inscrip-
tions, written in tbe vernacular, proves that reading
was a common accomplishment. This was probably
due to the Buddhist monks, who have always been
enthusiastic in tbe cause of learning. Burma at tbe
present day is a happy instance of this.

28 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

The first result of Asoka's conversion was the
determination to abandon warlike undertakings. In
future his conquests were to be religious ones. The
only invasions he would now countenance were to be
carried out by the yellow-robed ascetics, bound upon
the peaceful errand of converting the world. These
Asoka sent far and wide. Nothing is known of the
fate of those whom he despatched to his neighbours
the Kings of Greece, Syria, Alexandria, and Epirus ;
but one mission, at least, had a great and lasting
success. The island of Ceylon embraced the Buddhist
creed, and the King's own brother, Mahendra, was
sent to plant at Anuradhapura a slip of the sacred
Bodhi Tree at Gaya, where it may be still seen. But
we will let Asoka tell the story in his own words.
** In his Majesty's eyes, the chief conquest is that of
the Law. For the conquest thus made is full of
pleasure. Yet the pleasure produced thereby is a
small thing : for His Majesty regards as fruitful only
that which concerns the other world. And His
Majesty has issued this edict in order that his sons
and grandsons may not regard it as their duty to
undertake new wars of aggression. If, perchance,
they should become involved in war, they should take
pleasure in the exercise of patience and gentleness
towards their foes, always remembering that the only
true conquest is that of Eeligion. For that alone
avails in this world and the next. Let all joy be in
effort, for that alone brings happiness in this world
and the next."

The practical application of the principles of
Buddhism to the everyday affairs of the kingdom led
to the abolition of numerous practices, involving

ASOKA MAURYA 29

unnecessary suffering to men and beasts. The slaughter
of animals to stock the royal larders was greatly
reduced, and finally abolished altogether. " Formerly,
in the kitchens of His Majesty, many hundred thou-
sands of animals were slain for food. Now this has
been reduced to three, namely, two peacocks and one
antelope, and the antelope not invariably. Even
these three are not to be slaughtered in future."
Feasts at which animals were sacrificed were for-
bidden; and various harmless creatures, such as
monkeys, squirrels, deer, and various kinds of birds,
were protected by special ordinance. Branding,
mutilation, even fishing, were declared to be unlawful
on ceiiain days, in order that all Nature might have
fixed periods of immunity from persecution, and the
sacred festivals might not be stained with cruel
actions. " She-goats, ewes, and sows, either with
young or in milk, and their offspring up to six
months, are exempt fi'om slaughter. Forests are not
to be burnt, either in mischief or to destroy life. The
living must not be fed with the living." Asoka was
unable, apparently, to abolish entirely the severe
criminal code of his grandfather, but he modified it
in several respects. Capital punishment was still
enforced, but the criminal was granted three da^'s'
respite, during which he received earnest spiritual
instruction and consolation. On the anniversary of
the lung's coronation, there was a general remission
of sentences and release of prisoners. One humani-
tarian reform of the King's is particularly striking,
anticipating, as it does, modern ideas by so many
centuries : "Everywhere in his domains His Majesty
has established hospitals of two kinds, namely, for

30 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

men and for animals.^ Medicinal herbs also, for
men and for animals, wherever lacking, have been
imported and planted. Eoots also, and fruits, have
been imported. Wells have been dug and trees
planted on the high-roads for the refreshment of man
and beast." To one class of men Asoka devoted
special care, and that was to the aboriginal tribes
haunting the forests and mountains on the borders
of Aryan India. These poor savages had been looked
upon as something less than animals by the caste-
bound Hindus, and no doubt were treated with cruelty
and disdain. But in the royal eyes all men were
brothers, and the King especially enjoins the gentle
treatment of these outcastes. Even when found
guilty, as doubtless they often were, of robbing or
pillaging, the effects of persuasion and religious
teaching were to be tried. " Even upon the jungle-
folk in his domain His Majesty looks kindly and
seeks their conversion. They are exhorted to give
up their evil ways in order to escape punishment.
His Majesty desires that all animate beings should
enjoy security, peace of mind, joyfulness." " If you
ask," he tells his officials, " What is the King's com-
mand with regard to the unconquered tribes on the
border, or what does he desire the borderers to under-
stand, the answer is, that the King desires that they
should not be afraid of him, that they should trust
him, and should receive from his hand happiness and
not sorrow. They should grasp the fact that the
King will bear patiently with them, and that for his

' The Jains have similar respect for life. In Bombay the visitor
may see an animal hospital kept up by them — the Pinjrapole.
Hospitals were founded in Ceylon by King Duthu Gamani (161 b.c).

ASOKA MAURYA 31

sake they should follow the Law, and so profit in this
world and the next. Now is it for you to do your
part, and to make the people trust me, and realize
that the King is even as a father unto us. He loves us
as himself. We are to him as Ids own children."

The King's conception of his own duties is a high
one, and he expects a correspondingly lofty standard
on the part of his subordinates. As the true Father
of the People he is ready at any hour of the day
or night to receive petitions or to hear complaints.^
" Whether I am dining, or in the harem, or in bed,
or driving, or in the garden, the reporters are to
report to me upon the business of the people. And
if by any chance I give a verbal order to any official,
and if in carrying it out a dispute arises or fraud is
committed, I have commanded the whole matter to
be reported to me at any hour or place, for I am never
fully satisfied with my efi'orts. I must work for the
common weal ; and the way to achieve this is by
effort and despatch. For this end I toil — to discharge
ray debt to living beings, and to make a few happy
in this world and the next." " His Majesty does
not believe that glory or renown brings much profit,
unless in both the present and the future my people
obediently hearken to the Law and keep its behests.
In this way only His Majesty seeks for renown.
Whatsoever exertions His Majesty makes, they are
all for the sake of the life to come, in order that every
one may be free from the peril of vice."

* This is an essential feature of the ideal Indian King. A pretty
legend relates that Elala, a Tamil king of Ceylon, had a bell hung
over his bed ; the bell-rope hung outside, and any one who had a
grievance might pull it at any hour of the day or night. The same
story is told of the Emperor Jehangir.

32 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Asoka was exacting in the demands which he
made on his civil officers. Like the King, they were
to regard themselves as the fathers of the people, and
work for no other end : " My Commissioners are set
over many thousands of my subjects. I have granted
them a free hand in the award of punishments and
rewards, in order that they may perform their duties
in a fearless spirit, and that the nation may benefit
thereby. They will ascertain the causes of happi-
ness and discontent, and will see that the officials in
charge of religious duties exhort the people to piety,
that they may profit in this life thereafter. My
Commissioners zealously fulfil my orders ; my Over-
seers will exhort them, when necessary, to further
efforts in order to win my favour. Just as a man
who has entrusted his child to a skilled nurse feels
secure, saying to himself, ' This skilled nurse is
zealous for the care of my child's happiness ' ; even
so, my Commissioners have been appointed for the
purpose of ensuring the welfare of the nation. And
in order that they may perform their duties fearlessly,
securely, and quietly, they have been given a free
hand in the matter of punishments and awards."
** Whatever my views are, I desire them to be carried
out by certain means. Now, in my opinion the best
means to do this is by carrying out my instructions.
You have been set over many thousands of human
beings that you may win the love of good men. All
men are my children. Just as I desire prosperity
and happiness, now and hereafter, for my children,
I desire it for all men. You do not all appear fully
to have grasped this truth. Individuals here and
there have endeavoured to carry it out, but not all.

ASOKA MAUEYA 33

Take heed, then, for the principle is a sound one.
Sometimes, for instance, a man is punished or im-
prisoned unjustly, and when this happens many
others are rendered discontented. In that case you
must find out what is right. With certain disposi-
tions success is impossible, to wit, in the case of
envious, lazy, harsh, impatient, indolent persons.
Pray that you be not one of these. The secret of
the whole matter is perseverance and patience. The
indolent man is unable to rouse himself to act ; but
one should be always pressing forward. . . . For
this purpose, in accordance with the Law, I shall
send forth on circuit every five years such officers as
are of a merciful disposition and are mindful of the
sanctity of life, who know my purpose, and who are
likely to carry it out." ^ This important edict was
primarily addressed to the officials in the newly
conquered province of Kalinga ; it was, however, of
universal application, and copies were doubtless
erected in various provinces. These regulations
were not only to be set up in conspicuous places, but
to be read at certain seasons in public, " even if there
were only a single person to listen " ; by this means
it was assured that no one could suffer from petty
tyranny on the part of the officials without knowing
that a complaint addressed to the Viceroy, the Over-
seers, or to the Emperor himself, would obtain a
ready hearing.

The majority of the edicts, however, were pub-
lished for the purpose of inculcating religion among

* This admirable sermon on the duties of civil officers is as
true to-day as it was in the third century B.C. ; so little has India
changed.

D

34 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

the people. Asoka's religion is of an intensely
practical kind. It is mainly ethical, insisting upon
reverence towards parents and religious teachers,
purity, honesty, and mercy to man and beast. Of
philosophic doctrines no mention is made ; nothing,
for instance, is said of Nirvana, or the ultimate re-
lease of the soul, of rebirth or retribution. Men are
merely told that the consequence of good actions will
be happiness " in this world and the next." The
ordinary Buddhist, or Hindu for the matter of fact,
looks no further than rebirth in the Heaven of his
favourite deity, and Asoka wisely confines himself to
this. Virtue, in his opinion, brings its own reward.
One of the earliest edicts inculcates the traditional
reverence for parents and teachers, which is such a
beautiful feature of Indian life. " Honour thy father
and thy mother : establish firmly the law of mercy to
all living creatures : speak the truth. These are the
virtues which must be practised. The pupil must
respect his teachers : courtesy towards kinsmen must
be observed. This is the nature of piety from the
times of yore : this leads to length of days, and this is
bowmen must act." "Thus says His Majesty: the
Law is an excellent thing. But in what does the Law
consist? In abstinence from wickedness, in doing
good, in compassion, liberahty, patience and pui'ity in
life." " Man recognizes his good actions. ' This
and this good action I have done,' he says. But he
fails to recognize his evil actions : he never says,
' This and this evil action I have done.' Self-examina-
tion is indeed difficult : yet a man should guard
against the sins of cruelty, anger, pride, and jealousy,
knowing that these lead to sin. Eemember that the

ASOKA MAURYA 35

one course may be profitable for this world ; but the
other profits also for the next." " There is no charity
so meritorious as the charity of religion — religious
friendship, propagation of religion, kinship in reli-
gion. In this does it consist : in kindness to menials
and dependants, obedience to parents, liberality to
friends, kinsfolk, and holy men, and mercy to all
living creatures." Lastly, Asoka insists on the grand
principle of religious toleration. Himself a Buddhist,
he realizes that all creeds alike have the same great
aims in view, and are entitled to equal consideration.
The attitude of this ancient King contrasts strangely
with the narrow sectarian views of many preachers
of religion to-day. Asoka' s missionaries were im-
bued with a higher spirit. " His Majesty does reve-
rence to men of all religions, whether laymen or
ascetics, by gifts and various forms of reverence. His
Majesty, however, cares less for gifts or outward forms
of respect than for the growth of the essential
doctrines of religion. These doctrines assume
different forms in different creeds, but the essence of
them all is restraint of speech, namely, that no one
should exalt his own creed or disparage that of his
neighbour unreasonably. Disparagement should be
allowed only for sufticient reasons : all religions com-
mand our respect for one reason or another. By
acting in this manner, a man not only does a service
to the creeds of his neighbours, but he also wins
respect for his own creed; while abusing his
neighbours' beliefs, he does harm to his own. The
man who praises his own particular form of religion
and sneers at that of others, merely in order to
enhance his own, in reality inflicts upon it the most

36 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

grievous injury. Harmony in religion, then, should
be our aim, and willingness to hearken to the forms
of religious belief of others. His Majesty hopes that
all sects will hear much religious instruction and hold
sound beliefs. The members of all creeds are to be
informed that His Majesty cares less for gifts or out-
^ward forms of respect than for the growth of the
essentials of religion and the spirit of toleration."

Asoka reigned for forty years at Pataliputra. Of
the events of his long career, except the conquest of
Kalinga, the conversion of Ceylon, and the publication
of the edicts, we know little or nothing ; for no re-
liance can be placed in the grotesque monkish legends
which afterwards collected round the name of the
greatest of the Buddhist emperors. We may say, as
Gibbon said of a famous Eoman monarch, that "His
reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing
very few materials for history, which is indeed little
more than the register of the crimes, the follies, and
misfortune of mankind." After his conversion he
became a lay disciple ; four years later he took full
orders. He was a great builder. His grandfather
had made special arrangements for the protection and
encouragement of the hereditary crafts-guilds ; Asoka
taught them to work in stone. Hence his monuments
are the earliest examples of Indian art which have
survived the progress of time. The great toj^e at
Sanchi, the noble lion-pillars at Sarnath andLauriya-
Nandangarh, and the exquisitely-polished caves at
Baraber near Gaya, are all that remain now of his
extensive buildings. Centuries after his death a
Chinese pilgrim gazed upon the ruins of the Imperial
palace with awe, declaring that the gigantic stones

ASOKA MAURYA 37

with their elaborate carving were " the work of no
mortal hands." There is no reason to consider Asoka
an isolated phenomenon in early Indian history : the
rare glimpses afforded to us of Vikramaditya, Harsha,
and others, when the veil of deep obscurity which
rests on pre-Mohammedan India is for a moment
lifted, reveal to us a well-governed, prosperous land,
with an enlightened administration, and a highly
civilized population. Asoka's edicts would have been
thrown away upon an ignorant, brutal, or vicious
nation. They confirm the statements made by such
independent witnesses as Megasthenes in the third
century e.g., and Hiuen Tsiang in the seventh century
A.D., that in ancient India the standard of morality
was extraordinarily high.

One is tempted to compare Asoka with Akbar.
Both realized that government, to succeed in India,
must be of a personal nature, and based upon religious
principles. " The success of the government and the
fulfilment of the needs of the subject," writes Akbar's
biographer, " Depend upon the manner in which the
King spends his time." The words might be Asoka's
own. Nowhere is Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship
so well illustrated as in the history of India ; for it is
the history, not of institutions but of men, — the
leaders, religious and secular (and the line between
the hero as priest and king is only faintly drawn), of
the nation from age to age.

Ill

THE INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF
THE PANJAB.

Ill

THE INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF
THE PANJAB.

Bakhdhim s'riL-aui eredhvo drafsham. " Bactra the beautiful,
crowned with ha.nnevs."—Ve}ididad, i. 7.

Far away in the rolling steppes of Turkestan, many
days' journey from the frontier passes of India, lies
the ancient city of Balkh, the Bactra of the Greeks
and Bakhdhi of the ancient Persians. Bactra is
one of those places — like Byzantium, for instance,
and Alexandria — which is marked out by its geo-
graphical position to play a great part in the world's
history. It is a meeting-place of nations. The
three great trade routes of Asia, from India, from
China, and from the coasts of the Black Sea and the
Levant, converged here, and in the bazaars of Balkh,
from time immemorial, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and
the Turki nomad of the steppes, have met and
bartered their wares. Its strategic importance, too,
was very great. An army occupying Balkh menaced
China and India alike, and could levy toll on the
land-borne trade of half the continent of Asia.
Besides this, Balkh was the great frontier fortress
of the Aryan world, and on its integrity depended
the safety of not only Persia, but India, from the

42 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

incursions of the hordes of Central Asia. Long before
the coming of the Aryans, Balkh must have been
occupied by the Scythian tribes, who worshipped
there, in a shrine of immemorial antiquity, the
goddess Anahid, with her cloak of otter skins and
her starry halo.^ Then, about two thousand years
before Christ, came the Aryan invasion, sweeping
on westward into Media and Persia, and southward,
over the mountains, into Hindustan. A small body
of Iranians, as the northern Aryans came to be
called, attracted, no doubt, by the fertile Bactrian
oasis, elected to settle in the country, where they
dwelt, cut off from their kinsmen in the south by the
mountains, and from those in the west by the great
Carmanian Desert. Outnumbered by the aboriginal
populace, the Iranian knights built themselves forts
on the abrupt mountain peaks which are a feature of
the country, and thence ruled their subjects in safety.
Years went on, and the Iranian peoples of Western
Asia came to look upon the ancient city of Balkh,
with its stern walls and its venerable shrine, as one
of the most sacred cities in their land. It was cer-
tainly one of the earliest habitations of the Aryan
tribes of which we have any knowledge. Hither,
too, came the prophet Zarathustra with his kindred,
about the time when Gautama Buddha was preaching
his earliest sermons in far distant Benares (in the
reign, it is said, of the King Gustaspa), and attained
great power in the court of the Bactrian monarch.
It is even recorded in the old legends that he died
there, slain, during a Scythian rising, with all his
folk, by the altar of the sacred fire.

* Avesta Hymns in the Sacred Books of the East, ii. p. 79.

INDO-GEEEK DYNASTIES OF THE PANJAB 43

We hear little more of the city of Bactra until
Darius the Great annexed Eastern Iran to the Persian
Empire, and made it the base for the great invasion
of the Panjab which started along the ancient road
from Balkh to the Khyber Pass, and ended by annex-
ing the rich valley of the Indus, with its trade in
fine linen, spices, jewels, and gold dust. It was from
the Persians that the Indian tribes of the North-West
Frontier acquired the ancient Kharoshthi script, an
Aramaic alphabet running from right to left, which
remained in use among them for many centuries
afterwards. Again silence broods over Bactria for
many years ; we hear dim rumours of Bactrian troops
being employed by the Great King in his long wars
with the Greeks, and we know that the satrap of
Bactria, always, by virtue of his position, a Prince
of the Blood, became more and more independent as
the Persian Empire began to break up. The climax
came when Alexander, in 331 b.c, beat the Persians
in the great battle of Gaugamela. Darius fled, ac-
companied by his cousin Bessus, Governor of Bactria,
hoping to make a last stand among the mountain
fastnesses of his eastern domains. On the way,
however, he was murdered by his treacherous kins-
man, who was determined that he, if any, should
restore the fallen fortunes of Iran. But Alexander
was no ordinary leader. At first he hurried at the
heels of Bessus along the great caravan route which
skirts the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, but
hearing of rebellions among the confederates of Bessus
in Aria and Drangiana, he suddenly turned south-
wards, surprised Herat, and made his way along the
Helmand valley, determined to enter Bactria from

44 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the south. We need not follow in detail the horrors
of the march over the Hindu Kush — an enterprise
which alone i^uts Alexander on a level with Hannibal
and Napoleon — or of the final advance upon Bactria.
In 328 B.C., the weary but elated Macedonians stood
within the frowning ramparts of the famous city, the
furthest outpost of the Aryan world. They gazed
about them with amazement, noting the huge battle-
ments, the splendid temple, rich with the gifts of
the Persian monarchs, and the spacious suburbs.
They were shocked, however, at the barbarous
Scythian habit of giving the bodies of the dead to
dogs to devour. The streets, they said, were littered
with bones, and Alexander suppressed the practice.
Alexander, however, had not reached the limit of his
ambitions in the reduction of the province of Bactria.
Before him lay the rich plains of India, and thither,
after founding a huge military colony in the con-
quered province in 327, he set out. Of his adventures
in India we need not here speak at length. He
defeated the greatest of the princes of the Panjab
in a pitched battle, but thwarted by a rebellion of
his weary soldiers, was unable to carry out his scheme
of invading the Gangetic plain, which would have
anticipated by centuries the achievements of the
Moghuls. Alexander then turned to other ideas.
Marching down the Indus, in spite of desperate re-
sistance from the various tribes which barred his
way, he determined to carry into effect the plans of
his great predecessor, Darius of Persia. All along
the Indus sprang up colonies, factories, and trading
emporia, with wharves for cargo-boats and a port at
the mouth of the river. Alexander's idea, no doubt,

INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF THE PANJAB 45

was to establish a regular trade between the rich
Indus valley and the mouth of the Euphrates. The
project, like all that proceeded from the brain of the
great Macedonian, was fraught with immense and
far-reaching possibilities. While Nearchus was feel-
ing his way up the Persian Gulf, Alexander, with
the bulk of the Macedonian army, tried to find a
land route through the Mekran desert. The result of
the latter experiment was disastrous, but the main
objects of the expedition were successfully achieved.
Modern readers smile at the accounts of these old
Greek seamen, with the frights they sustained from
the tidal bore of the Indus, and the schools of whales
"blowing" in the waters of the Indian Ocean; but
the world owes almost as much to these intrepid
navigators as to their later successors, Columbus and
Vasco de Gama.

All was well in the vast empire, when suddenly
the news spread from port to port that Alexander
had died at Babylon of malarial fever (323 e.g.).
Every one was panic-stricken. Rebellions sprang
up in every province. The troops in Bactria started
marching back to the west, while in the Indus
valley, Eudamus, commander-in-chief of the Indian
Alexandria, collected all the plunder he could lay
hands on, and made his way across the Khyber Pass
with all speed. With him went the majority of the
Greeks, though a considerable body of them, probably
men who had become naturalized and had married
native wives, remained behind in the country. The
political power of Greece in the Panjab, however, was
quite at an end, chiefly owing to the schemes of that
great adventurer and leader Chandragupta Maurya

46 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

(317 B.C.). For the next ten years India was free
from Greek invasion, and under the stern rule of
Chandragupta she prospered exceedingly. " He had
freed the country from external rule," says Justin,
"but he reduced it to slavery to himself." Traces
of his organization of the land may be gathered from
the fragments of Megasthenes, and from the references
in the edicts of his grandson Asoka. Hence it is not
surprising that "when Seleucus, in 305 e.g., after
annexing Bactria to the Syrian Empire, tried to
repeat the exploits of Alexander, he found himself
grievously disappointed. Instead of attacking and
defeating the local rajas in detail, he found himself
face to face with a compact force of some 600,000
troops ! The chagrined monarch retreated in con-
fusion without risking an engagement.

We must now turn our attention once more to
the principality of Bactria. For fifty years it remained
an outlying province of Syria, enjoying a large
measure of autonomy, and profiting greatly by the
increase of trade between India and the west which
resulted from the pro-Hellenic tendencies of the
Maurya dynasty. But about 250 e.g., Diodotus, the
Bactrian satrap, determined to strike for freedom,
in imitation of a similar movement on the part of
the neighbouring nation of Parthia. The Seleucid
monarch, busy with Egypt and dissensions nearer
home, was compelled to look helplessly on ; and when
his successor, Antiochus the Great, in 209 e.g., tried
to subdue the rebels, he found the walls of Bactria
too strong to storm, and after a long and desperate
siege he acknowledged the independence of the
province and withdrew. Syria, menaced by the

INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF THE PANJAB 47

growing powers of Rome in the west and Parthia
in the north, could ill afford to destroy the chief
bulwark of her land against Scythian invasions from
beyond the Oxus.

It would have been well, indeed, had the Bac-
trian monarchs confined themselves to this role;
but the fatal temptation offered by the rich lands
of the Panjab was too strong for them. There
seems to be an irresistible impulse always driving
the inhabitants of Central Asia southwards; and
the poor quality of the great part of the Bactrian
territory made expansion a physical necessity. Be-
sides, advance to the east was rendered impossible
by the Parthians, the hated rivals of Bactria, ever
ready to harass and attack their neighbours. Lastly,
the break-up of the Maurya dynasty had thrown
India into the state of periodical anarchy which has
always invited the attention of invaders. Of the
great achievements of Demetrius, son of Euthydemus,
the hero of the great siege, we know unfortunately
very little. But our information is sufficient to show
that his chief motive was to benefit the trade of his
country by securing the trade routes to China and
the Arabian Sea. The mountain passes of Sarikol,
the coasts of Kathiawar and Kach, together with the
fertile Indus valley, fell once more into Greek hands,
and a mighty capital, called by the conqueror Euthy-
demia, after his father, rose on the site of the ancient
city of Sagala.^ Sagala was destined to be the centre
of Indo-Greek power till the final extinction of the

1 It has been identified with Sialkot, Shorkot, and Ohuniot by
different authorities ; but no really satisfactory conclusion as to its
site has been arrived at.

48 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

dynasty about a century and a half later. The
wonderful Bactrian coins which have come down to
us (almost the only memorials we possess of this far-
off remnant of Greek civilization) depict Euthydemus
as a strong, masterful man, wearing a helmet in the
shape of an elephant's head, in token, perhaps, of the
conquest of India. Unfortunately Euthydemus did
not end his days in peace ; his long absence in India
encouraged a rebellion on the part of Eucratides,
who finally deposed him, only to be murdered in his
turn by his son, who declared that his father was a
public enemy, and cast his body to the dogs.
Unfortunately, we do not know the cause of this
indictment, but the retribution which always falls upon
a nation torn by internal strife was not long in over-
taking the kingdom of Bactria. For years they had
neglected the rule of protecting the country south of
the Oxus from the Scythian hordes ; the great gar-
rison town of Furthest Alexandria, which ever since
the days of Cyrus the Great had watched over the
fords of the Jaxartes, had doubtless been denuded of
troops for the Indian wars of Euthydemus, and now
the barbarians, sweeping down through Sogdiana into
Bactria, forced the Greeks to evacuate their capital
en masse, and to retire to their new kingdom of Sagala
beyond the Khyber. Drained, as Justin says, of their
life-blood by constant fighting, they found resistance
to the invading tribes impossible ; while the Parthians,
who had not wasted their strength on ambitious pro-
jects, resisted the new-comers with complete success.
And so the Greeks settled down to their kingdom in
the Panjab, to enact the last phase in the gallant but
fruitless drama of the invasion of Alexander. For

INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF THE PAN JAB 49

the story of many of the succeeding monarchs, we
are indebted largely to the coins. These shew for
some years the brilliant workmanship of the Bactrian
coiners, and the names of the kings — Pantaleon,
Agathocles, Strato, Amyntas — and the like — remain
purely Greek. But the subjects of the kingdom of
Sagala became slowly but surely absorbed in the
native population. They also took up largely the
religion of their neighbours, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Traces of this are to be seen in the inscriptions and
emblems appearing on the coins, where we find on
the obverse the Greek inscription and type, and
on the reverse the figure of a dancing-girl, or a
Buddhist Stiqm with a Prakrit motto.

Of only one of the Indo-Greek princes can we
relate anything which may be termed definitely
personal. This is the great Menander, whose fame
has survived in the Buddhist dialogues, the Questions
of Milinda, and of whom we have just so much
information as to make us wish we knew more of
the mighty king who was probably the last independ-
ent Greek monarch in history.

Menander was born, possibly about 180 b.c, on
an island of the Indus, named Kalasi, not far from
the great town of Alexandria-on-Indus, at the junction
of the Five Rivers. Some twenty years later he
succeeded to the throne of Sagala. Early in his
reign he undertook the reconquest of the Indus valley
with its trade routes and ports, imitating the exploits
of his ancestor Demetrius, with whom he is constantly
compared by the geographers. In the Buddhist
treatise referred to above, we hear much of the
glories of the capital of the Yavana monarch. Within

E

50 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

its streets met men of every nation — the merchants
of Benares with their filmy muslins, the Greek and
Arab seamen of Alexandria and the Eed Sea ports
who had come up from Broach or Pattala, the
Seres from beyond the Great Wall with silk, jewellers
and vendors of those strange spices and unguents,
malobathrum, spikenard, cassia, pepper and the like,
which were consumed in ever-increasing quantities
with the growth of luxury in the cities of the West.
Even Pataliputra itself could hardly vie with the
magnificence of the Greek capital, with its parks
and open spaces, and its broad streets and stately
marble mansions rising to the sky, in the language
of Eastern hyperbole, "like the peaks of the snowy
Himalayas." It was probably about this time that
Menander became a convert to the creed of Gautama.
It is a strange picture — the conversion of the great
monarch of the West, the last heir to the conquests
of Alexander, to a creed so impregnated with the
mystic spirit of the East. With a vivid touch, the
author of the Questions describes how the sage
Nagasena with his monks wended his way into the
palace of the king, and how their yellow robes gleamed
among the marble pillars, "lighting up the palace
like lamps, and bringing into it a breath of the divine
breezes from the heights where the saints have their
dwelling-place."

Perhaps it was in the cause of his new faith that
Menander undertook the expedition against the king-
dom of Magadha, of which we hear faint echoes in
many scattered passages of Hindu literature. After
the break-up of the Maurya dynasty, the usurper
Pushpamitra Sunga had seized the throne, and had

INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF THE PANJAB 51

deserted the enlightened creed of Asoka for the ancient
rehgion of the Brahmins. Menander's chief object
was to imitate Asoka in bringing all Northern India
under the sway of the Buddha. The war began with a
conflict on the western borders of the Sunga monarch's
domains. Chitor and Oude successively fell, and a
curious story, related in the drama entitled the Mala-
rikagnimitra, tells how a party of Greek horsemen all
but captured the sacred horse released by Pushpamitra
to wander for the appointed time before being offered
in solemn sacrifice. The Horse Sacrifice was a solemn
rite celebrated by a successful monarch to mark the
completion of his conquests. The victim, accom-
panied by a guard, wanders for a year in the con-
quered territory, challenging any one, who desires to
dispute its owner's supremacy, to capture it. On this
occasion the guard consisted of Vasumitra, the king's
grandson, and a hundred Eajput knights. It was
only with difficulty that they beat off the sudden
charge of the Yavana troopers on the banks of the
Sindhu river.

Even the Hindu writers, indifferent as they usually
are to historical events, note with dismay the advance
of the Western army. " The Y'avanas were besieging
Saketa and Madhyamika," is an example of the im-
perfect tense given by the contemporary grammarian
Patanjali. "When the viciously valiant Yavanas,"
says the author of the Gargi Sainhita, " after reducing
Saketa, the Panchala country and Mathura, reach
the royal capital of Pataliputra, the land will fall
into chaos." Menander even reached the banks of
the Son, the river on which Patna stands, surpassing
thereby the achievements of Alexander himself, says

52 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Strabo. But farther be was not destined to go.
"The fiercely fighting Yavanas," we are told, "did
not tarry long in the Middle Land ; a terrible war
had broken out in their own land." What that war
was we cannot tell : it may have been a Saka or
Parthian invasion, or a rebellion among the Greek
princes of the Panjab. Whatever it was, Menander,
baulked of his great schemes, had to return. One
brief glimpse of him we get, this time from Plutarch,
before the curtain rings down upon the scene. Ac-
cording to a Siamese tradition, Menander, following
the example of his great prototype Asoka, took the
yellow robe and attained the rank of an arliat ; and
death found the warrior saint, says Plutarch, still
fighting against his numerous foes. As in the case
of Gautama Buddha himself, a great contest arose
over his ashes, but finally they were divided among
the rej)resentatives of the several states, and each
taking his portion, erected over it a gigantic ddgaba
in his own country. "In all the land of India,"
says the author of the Questions, " there was no such
monarch as Milinda Eaja. He acquired great riches,
and his army was powerful and well-trained."

After the death of Menander, Indo- Greek power
in the Panjab collapsed rapidly. A host of petty
princes arose, known to us only by their coins. These
were gradually superseded by native rajas, who often
restrike the coins of their predecessors ; and finally
a new enemy, in the shape of the great nomad tribe
of the Yueh-chi, appeared from beyond the Khyber.
The Yueh-chi had ousted the Sakas from Bactria,
and after overrunning that land, a clan known as the
Kushans found their way into India. The story is

INDO-GREEK DYNASTIES OF THE PANJAB 53

eloquently but silently related by the coins. The last
Greek prince, Hermseus, strikes first coins in his own
name, and then in conjunction "with the Kushan raja
Kadphises. Finally Hermreus disappears, and Kad-
phises reigns alone. Thus ended Indo-Greek rule in
the Panjab. It was the last attempt of a European
race to govern India until the fatal day, fourteen
hundred years later, when the thunder of Portuguese
guns was heard beyond the bar by the astonished
citizens of Calicut. The Greeks had exerted singu-
larly little influence upon India. Alexander, so cele-
brated in Persian literature, is unnoticed in India
books, and Menander was chiefly celebrated because
of his conversion to Buddhism. A single pillar, the
work of an Indo-Greek artist, himself a votary of
Krishna, has been unearthed in Western India, and
a few Greeks appear among the pious donors to the
Karla Caves and other Buddhist shrines. The Greek
invasions of India had left the country unaffected.

" The East bowed down before the blast
In silent, deep disdain :
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again."

IV
CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA.

IV

CHINESE PILGEIMS IN INDIA.

FA HIAN, C. 400 A.D.
HIUEN TSIANG, 629-645 A.D.

Buddhism has always been a proselytizing religion.
Gautama himself had sent his disciples far and wide
to spread the Dhamma, and the great Emperor Asoka
had visions of converting, not only India, but the
whole of the known world, to the creed which he had
embraced so enthusiastically. History is silent as to
the fate of the missionaries whom he sent to the
courts of Antiochus and Ptolemy, and to the distant
monarchs of Macedonia, Cyrene, and Epirus ; but
Ceylon still bears witness to the success of his activity
nearer home. It was reserved, however, for another
age to see the spread of Buddhism to the vast Mon-
golian nations north of the Himalayas, where it still
numbers millions of converts, though long since dead
in the land where Gautama lived and laboured.
About 165 B.C., a Scythian tribe had been forced by
pressure from behind to cross the Jaxartes, and
descend upon the fertile plains of Bactria (the terri-
tory adjacent to the modern Balkh). Balkh at that
time was in the hands of a powerful Greek dynasty,
the descendants of military colonists settled there by

58 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Alexander. The hordes, however, managed to push
them gradually southward, till they took refuge in the
Panjab, where once again they contrived to build up
a considerable kingdom. Under their great King
Menander they became for a time the foremost power
in India, and very largely embraced the Buddhist
creed; for Buddhism made a special appeal to the
casteless adventurers who from time to time swooped
down upon those fertile plains. Finally, however,
the Indo-Greeks became disorganized, and again fell
an easy prey to their former conquerors, who had fol-
lowed them across the Hindu Kush. The Yueh-chi, or
rather the Kushan clan of that great tribe, rapidly
rose to power. The Kushan Empire reached its
highest point under Kanishka, in the first century
after Christ, who ruled over the whole of India north
of the Narmada, together with the greater part of
Tibet, Afghanistan and Turkestan. Kanishka became
an enthusiastic convert to Buddhism, and it appears
probable that the teachings of the Master reached
China in his reign. When Kanishka conquered
Khotan — Eastern Turkestan — he took certain Chinese
hostages back to India, one of them being a son of
the Emperor. During their long exile in the Panjab,
these hostages were hospitably entertained at various
monasteries, and doubtless they learned from the
monks something of their religion. In any case, the
conquest of the provinces on the Chinese frontier
brought Buddhism to the very borders of the country.
Monasteries sprang up in Tibet and Khotan, and from
them, as well as from the caravans which began to
go to and fro between India and China, rumours of
the new creed must have spread northwards. China

Peajnapaeamita.

A Mahayana Goddess from Java.

(Bn pennissioH of Dr. A. K. Conmaranwam}).)

\_To face page 59.

CHINESE PILGEIMS IN INDIA 59

was ripe for conversion. In spite of their earnest dis-
position, the Chinese had not succeeded in evolving a
religion of their own. A vague system of ancestor
worship, and a series of rather dreary discourses
upon ethical subjects, were all that their own teachers
had produced. Confucius, an early contemporary of
Gautama, is supposed to have prophesied that a
Sage should arise in the West. The fame of Buddha
may possibly have reached his ears.^ However this
may be. Buddhism began to attract ever-increasing
attention in China during the first three centuries of
the Christian era. Certain difficulties, however, stood
in the way : the journey from China to India was long
and dangerous ; the Indian tongue was difficult to
acquire, and Chinese was ill-adapted for rendering
abstruse and novel metaphysical terms. Such manu-
scripts as reached China were often imperfect and ill-
understood.

Certain devout Chinamen, however, determined to
overcome these obstacles. Inspired by a desire to
benefit their fellow-countrymen, these brave scholars
set out from time to time to India, in order to visit
the scenes of the Master's life on earth, to study the
language in which he taught, and to bring back
manuscripts of the Sacred Books yet unknown north
of the Himalayas. Nothing could exceed the devotion
of these old travellers, who spent years in crossing
the burning deserts and snowy mountains in fulfil-
ment of their self-imposed tasks. Some perished of
cold or thirst ; others were killed by brigands ; others
again were drowned in attempting to return to China

' The story is vague and doubtful. Capital of course was made
of it by the early Christian missionaries.

60 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

by sea. " Never," says Mr. Beal, " Did more devoted
pilgrims leave their native country to encounter the
perils of travel in foreign and distant lands; never
did disciples more ardently desire to gaze on the
sacred vestiges of their religion ; never did men
endure greater sufferings by desert, mountain, and
sea, than these simple-minded, earnest Buddhist
priests. And that such courage, religious devotion,
and power of endurance, should be exhibited by men
so sluggish, as we think, as the Chinese, is very
surprising, and may perhaps arouse some considera-
tion." The records of their travels, besides being of
the greatest intrinsic interest, are of first-rate impor-
tance to the student of medieval Indian History.
India has no history of her own, and the observations
of these ancient visitors supplement in a remarkable
way the fragmentary remains in the shape of coins,
inscriptions, and legends, which are all that have
otherwise come down to us.^ It is, of course, dis-
appointing to find that the monkish chroniclers have
taken pains to record stories about miraculous relics
of fabulous power, dragons which devoured travellers,
and grotesque legends of medieval saints, to the
exclusion of information which would be priceless to
the modern historian ; but, considered as a whole, the
interest and value of their narratives can hardly be
over-estimated.

Of the numerous pilgrims who visited India
between the fourth and seventh centuries a.d., the
most important were Fa Hian and Hiuen Tsiang. Fa

1 Besides this, the Chinese versions of the Buddhist books are
of the utmost value to scholars. Many books of which the originals
are now lost have come down to us in Chinese.

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 61

Hian is the first pilgrim who has left any record of
his adventures : Hiuen Tsiang composed an import-
ant itinerary, which is supplemented by a charming
biography written by one of his pupils, and he is
rightly regarded in China as one of the greatest of
Buddhist scholars. It must be remembered that the
Buddhism of these travellers was very different from
the simple creed taught by Gautama. Gautama
denied the existence of the soul, and found no place
for prayer or belief in God : later Buddhists, especially
those who, like Hiuen Tsiang, belonged to the Maha-
yanist school, found this austere philosophy quite
insufficient for their needs. Gautama, when be
passed away from earth, ceased to exist : Buddhists,
not unnaturally, found more consolation in wor-
shipping Maitreya, the benignant spirit destined one
day to be incarnate as Gautama's earthly successor,
who, until that time arrives, dwells in the Tushita
heaven, surrounded by the spirits of those happy
devotees who have been re-born into his presence as a
reward for their devotion to him upon earth. Philo-
sophers hke Hiuen Tsiang found no difficulty in
reconciling these mystical speculations with the
bare system of Gautama, of which they regarded
them as the natural development, just as the pious
Catholic regards his stately ritual as a legitimate
deduction from the teaching of Jesus of Galilee.

Fa Hian set out from his home in China, with five
companions, in the year 400 a.d. His main purpose
was to obtain correct and fuU copies of certain treatises
upon conduct, which form an important part of
Buddhist religious literature. After travelling for about
nine months, the pilgrims finally found themselves

62 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

at Tung Wang, a frontier fortress on the confines of
the Lop Nor desert. Assisted by the prefect of the
city, the party struck out across the sands to the
little kingdom of Cherchen. The journey was a trying
one ; for seventeen days they toiled across the barren
waste, seeing neither beast nor bird, while the path
was marked with ominous skeletons and carcases.
After resting at Cherchen for a month, they set out
along the Tarim river to a country called Wu-ki, on
the north-east corner of the Tarim Desert. Here they
met with a cold reception, probably on account of
doctrinal differences ; so, starting once more, they
skirted the Muzart mountains for a while, and then,
following the Khotan river, arrived, safe but weary,
in the hospitable kingdom of Khotan. This was in
Fa Hian's days a fertile and flourishing state ; now,
owing to some mysterious climatic change, the sands
have swept down and obliterated the whole country.
Explorers have recently unearthed lines of tree-trunks
marking the sites of what were once groves, gardens,
and orchards, and here and there they have found
remnants of the stiipas, decorated with statues in the
Indo-Greek style, at which the pilgrims must have
returned thanks for their safe arrival.

Fresh perils, however, awaited them. After a
prolonged halt, the party pushed on to Yarkand, and
then, following the Yarkand river, slowly and labori-
ously made their way across the mountains in the
direction of India. Fa Hian graphically describes
how they crossed a tributary of the Indus by a rope-
ladder under extraordinary difficulties. *' The road
was difficult and broken, with steep crags and pre-
cipices in the way. The mountain-side is simply a

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 63

stone wall standing up ten thousand feet. Looking
down, the sight is confused, and on going forward
there is no sure foothold. Below is a river called
the Sin-tu-ho.'^ In old days men bored through the
rocks to make a way, and spread outside ladders, of
which there are seven hundred steps to pass in all.
Having descended the ladders, we proceed by a hang-
ing rope-bridge and cross the river." Here, in a little
Buddhist state which they found nestling in the
northern extremity of the Swat valley, they rested
awhile, before pushing on to the great frontier city
of Peshawar. At Peshawar the party of pilgrims
began to break up. Three, disheartened by the long
journey, turned back home ; another died in a monas-
tery ; a third perished in a blizzard between Peshawar
and Jellalabad. The scene is pathetically described.
" Hiu King was unable to go further. His mouth was
covered with white froth ; and at last he addressed
Fa Hian and said, * I am beyond recovery ; do you
leave me and press on lest you all perish.' And so
he died : Fa Hian cherished him and called him by
his familiar name, but all in vain." And so, with a
single companion, the stout pilgrim at last reached
the land of his desires. His account of India as he
found it presents us with a valuable picture of the
Gupta Empire, of which we otherwise know so little.
The high-sounding inscription on the pillar at Alla-
habad affords a tantalizing glimpse into the conquests
and literary achievements of the great Samudragupta.
His son, Vikramaditya, who must have been reigning
when Fa Hian travelled through the land, was equally

' The Indus. The scene here described is not uncommon in the
wild mountains and precipitous gorges of the Swat country.

64 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

famous ; a mighty warrior and a successful statesman,
he was also a patron of the Arts. At his brilliant
court the celebrated Nine Gems of Sanskrit Literature
were assembled ; and the prince himself is said to
have been an accomplished dramatist, poet, and
musician. Of the monarch, however, Fa Hian, with a
monk's indifference to worldly things, makes no men-
tion. On the other hand, he speaks in glowing terms
of the justice, clemency, and efficiency of the govern-
ment. " The inhabitants," he says, " are prosperous
and happy. Only those who farm the royal estates
pay any portion of the produce as rent ; and they are
not bound to remain in possession longer than they
like.^ The King inflicts no corporal punishment, but
merely fines the offenders, and even those convicted
of incitement to rebellion, after repeated attempts,
are only punished with the loss of the right hand.
The Chief Ministers have fixed salaries allotted to
them. The people of the country drink no intoxicants
and kill no animals for food, except the Chandalas or
Pariahs ; and these alone eat garlic or onions. The
Pariahs live outside the walls ; if they enter the town,
they have to strike a gong with a piece of wood to
warn passers-by not to touch them.

"In this country they do not keep swine or fowls,
and do not deal in cattle ; they have no shambles or
wine-shops in their market-places. In commerce
they use cowrie-sheUs.^ The Pariahs alone hunt and
sell flesh. Down from the time of the Lord Buddha's

' Compare the similar custom among the Sinhalese, recorded
by Knox.

- Only for small change, of course. The Gupta monarchs issued
a fine and abundant coinage in gold and silver. See p. 80.

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 65

Nirvana the kings, chief men, and householders have
raised viharas for the monks, and have provided for
their support by endowing them with fields, houses,
gardens, servants, and cattle. These Church-lands
are guaranteed to them by copperplate grants, which
are handed down from reign to reign, and no one has
had the temerity to cancel them. All the resident
priests, who are allotted cells in the viharas, have beds,
mats, food, and drink supplied to them ; they pass
their time in performing acts of mercy, in reciting
the Scriptures, or in meditation. When a stranger
arrives at the monastery, the senior priests escort
him to the guest-house, carrying his robes and his
alms-bowl for him. They offer him water to wash
his feet, and oil for anointing, and prepare a special
meal for him. After he has rested awhile they ask
him his rank in the priesthood, and according to his
rank they assign him a chamber and bedding. During
the month after the Rain-rest, the pious collect a
united offering for the priesthood ; and the priests in
their turn hold a great assembly and preach the
Law. . . . When the priests have received their dues,
the householders and Brahmins present them with
aU sorts of robes and other necessaries ; and the
priests also make one another offerings. And so,
ever since the Lord Buddha passed away from the
earth, the rules of conduct of the priesthood have
been handed down without intermission."

India under the Guptas must have been a country
of almost ideal prosperity ; a king who could govern
without resorting to capital punishment must have
enjoyed unexampled power, for Asoka himself was
unable to go as far as lliis. Few things in all

66 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

history are more attractive than this peep into India's
Golden Age, where the " Law of Piety " was actually
carried into practice. At Pataliputra, again, Fa
Hian found public hospitals ^ maintained by the
local landowners, where relief was given to the sick
and destitute. Medical attendance was provided
free, together with supplies of such drugs, medical
appliances, and comforts, as might be necessary.
At Pataliputra, Fa Hian gazed with wonder on the
deserted palace of the Maurya Emperors, which he
declares to have been the work of '* no mortal
hands," but to have been constructed by the Genii
at Asoka's request ; each of them, he asserts, brought
one of the huge granite blocks, four or five paces
square, of which the walls were constructed. It is
interesting to notice how soon the great Emperor
had passed from the realm of history to that of
myth : this was partly due to his reputation as a
Buddhist saint, which quickly involved him in all
sorts of improbable monkish legends in a country
where historical facts were seldom, if ever, recorded,^
and partly to his genius for building. Stone build-
ings were practically unknown in India before
Asoka's days, and for many centuries after his death
they were the exception rather than the rule, and
hence his great palaces, stupas, monasteries and
pillars quickly began to be regarded with super-
stitious awe. In Fa Hian's time the centre of gravity
had tended to move from the ancient capital of the
Maury as in a westerly direction ; the Gupta Emperors

' In this respect, as in many other points of practical charity,
Buddhism has anticipated Christianity. See pp. 32-33 n.
" Compare the case of Charlemagne in the Middle Ages.

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 67

considered Ayodhya a more convenient place of resi-
dence, and the travellers found many of the cities
of Magadha comparatively deserted. Buddhism,
too, had begun to lose its exclusive hold, and Gaya,
the once renowned place of pilgrimage, the spot
where the Master had attained Bodhi, was a wild
and desolate jungle. Kapilavastu, the Bethlehem of
Buddhism, was in an equally forlorn condition, and
the palace where Gautama spent his boyhood was in
ruins.^ Evidently pilgrims no longer flocked to
these sacred spots as of yore. At the cave on the
hill called the Vulture's Peak, where Gautama had
often resided. Fa Hian offered flowers and incense,
and he records how the intimate contact of a place
where the Master had actually dwelt moved him to
tears. He failed in an attempt to enter the Deccan
highlands, though he appears to have gone as far as
the wonderful Ellura Caves. These too were almost
deserted; the neighbouring villagers were "heretics,"
who regarded the recluses dwelling within the cells
as possessed of supernatural powers, for a legend
had arisen that many came to visit the caves '* flying
through the air."^ Returning to Pataliputra, Fa
Hian was at last fortunate enough to acquire the
manuscripts he sought ; the task had been a difficult
one, for much of the teaching of Gautama was, in
accordance with Indian practice, preserved orally,

* In one of the ruined palaces was a picture of the Immaculate
Conception, where the Buddha, riding on a white elephant, enters
his mother's side. The reference is interesting for students of Indian
painting.

^ This faculty was especially attributed to the Arhat. Compare
the power of "levitation " ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi and his
disciples.

68 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

and not entrusted to writing. Here Fa Hian's
mission ended, and he longed to see his native
country once more. His solitary companion, the
only member left of the little band which had set out
from China nearly twelve years before, refused to go
any further. " He was captivated with the decorum
of the priests, their religious deportment, their un-
worldliness in the midst of temptation, all of which
was in sad contrast to the meagre knowledge and
unhappy condition of the Buddhist Order in China."
And so he took the robe and remained behind,
taking a vow and saying, " May I never, until I
attain Buddhahood, be re-born in a frontier land."
But Fa Hian, animated by the noble desire of bring-
ing knowledge to his fellow-countrymen, pressed on
alone. Reaching the country of Tamralii)ti at the
mouth of the Hoogly, he tarried for two more years in
a monastery there, copying manuscripts and taking
easts of images, and then took ship for Ceylon. In
that island, of course, he found Buddhism in a
flourishing condition, and at Anuradhapura he saw
the Sacred Tooth, and the branch of the Bodhi Tree
planted by Asoka's brother. Both these venerable
objects may be still inspected by the traveller ; the
Tooth is now at Kandy, but the Bo Tree flourishes
as greenly as ever in its httle shrine at the end of
the Sacred Eoad, while all around the gaunt ruins
of dagobas and palaces rise above the surrounding
jungle. In Fa Hian's days these great buildings
were in the height of their glory, their brazen roofs
shining like gold, and their pillars and walls adorned
with richly-chased silver. In one of them stood a
Buddha of pure jasper, holding in his hand a pearl

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 69

of unknown value. But the heart of the old pilgrim
was very homesick. " He had heen absent from the
home of his fathers for many years : the manners of
the people he met were strange, and the plants, trees,
towns and people were quite unlike those of old
times. His companions were some of them dead,
and lying in the distant mountain-passes, and others
had left him : to think upon the past was his only
consolation." And so he grew sadder and sadder.
One day he saw a merchant offering to the jasper
image a Chinese fan of white taffeta, and at the sight
of this reminder, he broke down and wept.

And so, hurrying to the coast. Fa Hian set out
for China. But his adventures were not yet over.
A few days out, the ship encountered a storm and
sprang a leak, and much of the cargo was thrown
overboard, including the pilgrim's begging-bowl. He
was in terror lest his precious manuscripts might
foUow suit, but his prayers were heard, and they
reached the coast of Java after ninety days at sea.
Here Fa Hian had to wait for five months before he
found a ship to take him on, and one cannot help
regretting that he tells us so little about that country.
Apparently the splendid Buddhist shrines at Boro-
budur were not yet built, for he says nothing of
them; the island, he tells us, was in the hands of
" Heretics and Brahmins." His adventures were not
yet over, however ; his second voyage was almost as
disastrous as the first, for the ship was caught in a
typhoon and blown clean out of her reckoning. The
water began to run short, — they had been seventy
days at sea, and provisions had only been taken
aboard for fifty, — and some of the sailors began to

70 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

cast suspicious eyes upon the monk, whom they
looked upon as a kind of Jonah. A plot was made
to maroon him on an adjacent reef, and that would
have been the end of our pilgrim, had not a plucky
officer, who was himself a Buddhist, and a constant
protector of Fa Hian, threatened, if they did so,
that he would hand them over to the authorities at
the first Chinese port. " I will go straight to the
King and tell him of your crime, and he, as you
know, is a Buddhist. So, if you kill this monk, you
had better kill me too." At these firm words, the
sailors desisted, and at last land was sighted. The
travellers landed, and Fa Hian slowly made his way
home. He was too pious a Buddhist to boast of his
achievements, and he declares that he only wrote his
modest narrative ** to satisfy the curiosity of numerous
inquirers."

A little over two centuries had elapsed since Fa
Hian had returned from his wanderings, when the
call came to Hiuen Tsiang, a young Buddhist priest of
the province of Ho-nan. Hiuen Tsiang, the " Master
of the Law," as he was called on account of his deep
learning, had long sought for correct copies of the
Scriptures in China; but, alas, the manuscripts
were rare and imperfect, and differed in many im-
portant points. And so the thought came to him,
" Why should not I, like Fa Hian and Chi-yen, visit
the land of India, and learn from the sages, and
worship at the places where the Lord dwelt and
taught ? " The time, however, was an unpropitious
one. The great Tai Tsung, the Emperor of China at
the time, had issued an edict against travellers visiting
India, and it was impossible to obtain the necessary

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 71

passes for the purpose of crossing the frontier.
But Hiuen Tsiang was not easily deterred from his
purpose. He travelled quietly to Kwa Chan, a fron-
tier town on the edge of the Gobi Desert, and pre-
pared to set forth. The liberality of the Governor,
who nobly destroyed an order to detain him, pre-
vented his project from being frustrated at the outset,
and the Master of the Law set out bravely. He
was much encouraged at the commencement of his
journey by meeting an old traveller, who sold him a
horse, " lean and of a red colour, with a varnished
saddle bound with iron." Now, before he started, a
clairvoyant whom he had consulted had said to him,
"Sir, you may go; the appearance of your person
as you go is that of one riding an old red horse, thin
and skinny ; the saddle is varnished, a^nd in front it
is bound with iron." The Master was accompanied
by a young man whom he had met at a temple in
Kwa Chan, and who had volunteered to accompany
him ; and the two successfully avoided the fort
guarding the ford over the Bulunghir river by cross-
ing the stream higher up. The stream was low, and
they made a rough bridge of branches and scrub.
In the desert, however, the young disciple's conduct
became so suspicious, that it was clear that he only
awaited an opportunity to murder the Master and
decamp with his property : on being detected, he
turned back home, and left his companion to pursue
his journey alone. Hiuen Tsiang plodded along
wearily. Mirages arose before his eyes, and he was
well-nigh overcome when he reached the first of the
series of forts guarding the wells on the road. Here
he narrowly escaped being shot in trying to elude the

72 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

sentry ; but he managed to persuade the officer in
charge to allow him to proceed. In the same way
he passed the second, third, and fourth posts ; the
fifth he had been warned to avoid, and this involved
a wide detour. It was a terrible journey. At the
outset his water-skin burst open, and the precious
contents were lost. For four nights and five days he
wandered, till at last the " lean red horse " collapsed,
and both lay, apparently dying, in the burning
sands. But a vision seemed to come to the pilgrim,
urging him to press on, and he roused himself for
a final effort, and lo ! behind a ridge of sand they
stumbled on a green oasis, with bubbling water and
fresh grass. Much refreshed, man and beast pushed
on to the desolate hamlet of Igu, where they found
three old Chinese priests, who wept to meet a fellow-
countryman after so many years of exile among the
Turki nomads. Here Hiuen Tsiang fell in with the
prince of a district called Kao-chang, who gave him
an enthusiastic welcome ; he proved, however, a
serious hindrance to the Master of the Law, trying
to detain him permanently, and insisting on his pay-
ing him a prolonged visit. After staying here over a
month, Hiuen Tsiang was allowed to go, and made
his way from town to town until he reached the foot
of the Thian Shan Mountains. It was on the way to
the mountains that he met a rival doctor, named
Mokshagupta, whom he vanquished in a disputation
carried out in true medieval fashion. Mokshagupta
had roused the Master's wrath by speaking of the
Yoga S'astra as heretical, as, no doubt, it would
appear in the eyes of a follower of the earlier type of
Buddhism; but in the controversy that ensued, he

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 7B

proved to be incapable of even quoting correctly from
the Sacred Books, and ultimately retired in confu-
sion. After this, the biographer naively adds, " If
Molishagupta met Hiuen Tsiang, he did not sit down,
but spoke standing, as if in a great hurry to get on."
The mountain passes were now declared to be
open, but it was early in the year, and the caravan
to which the pilgrim had attached himself suffered
terribly. Twelve of them died of cold, fell down
crevasses, or perished in avalanches. After this,
however, the journey was easier. A hospitable
Turkish Khan sent an escort to accompany him to
the Indian frontier, where he arrived in September,
630 A.D., having travelled from Tashkend to Baljih,
and from Balkh through the Bamian Pass to Kabul.
Here the traveller kept the Eain-rest, according to
the ancient Buddhist rule, after a year's perilous and
arduous travelling. When the monsoon had ended,
he set out for Kashmir, travelling through the Gan-
dhara districts, and worshipping at the numerous
shrines which had been built there in the days of
the great Kanishka. The remnants of hundreds of
these stupas and monasteries, adorned with graceful
Indo-Greek frescoes, which must have been a source
of endless joy to the pilgrim, are still strewn about
the Gandhara country ; in those days they were far
more numerous, and while still undamaged by time
and the hands of invading hordes, they were doubt-
less a beautiful and moving sight. Hiuen Tsiang
has, however, no eyes except for relics and wonders ;
of the ancient schools of Taxila, of the carved fapades
of the temples, or the beauties of Kashmir scenery, he
says not a word, and the reader becomes wearied of

74 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

relics by the peck, of miraculous skull-bones, and
authentic begging-bowls of the Buddha. One adven-
ture, however, which Hiuen Tsiang encountered is so
remarkable that it must be narrated in detail. The
story is so circumstantially told that the reader must
draw his own conclusions ; it seems to be difficult to
doubt the veracity of the Master, or question the
accuracy of the narrative.

At a certain lonely cave outside the little town of
Dipankara, not far from where Jelalabad stands now,
it was reported that a luminous vision of the Blessed
One appeared at times to pious worshippers, and
thither went the Master. After much inquiry at the
town, a little boy guided him to a lonely farmhouse,
where dwelt an old Brahmin who knew the road. As
they toiled across the barren hills, they were assailed
by dacoits, but the pilgrim's yellow robe and his
fearless demeanour abashed them, and at last they
entered a stony nullah, at the head of which the
cavern loomed, gloomy and forbidding. Tradition
said that formerly a dragon had dwelt there. But
Hiuen Tsiang entered fearlessly, and kneeling down
commenced to pray long and earnestly. Time passed,
and the pilgrim was in despair, when suddenly on
the wall appeared a great orb of light, as big as an
alms-bowl. Filled with joy, Hiuen Tsiang vowed
never to leave the spot unless the Vision were vouch-
safed, when lo ! the wondrous thing appeared.
*' Then, whilst the whole cave was brightened up
with light, the Shadow of the Blessed One, of a shin-
ing white colour, appeared on the wall, as when the
opening clouds suddenly reveal the Golden Mountain
and its excellent indications. Bright were the divine

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 75

lineaments of his face, and as the Master gazed in
awe and reverence, be knew not bow to compare the
spectacle : the body of tbe Buddba and bis robe were
of a yellowish red colour, and from his knees upwards
tbe distinguishing marks of bis person were exceed-
ingly glorious ; but below, tbe lotus throne on which
he sat was slightly obscured. On the left and right
of the shadow and somewhat behind, were visible the
shadows of the Bodhisattvas and the holy priests
surrounding them.-^ Overcome with joy, the Master
summoned six attendants to light a fire and offer
incense, but when the fire was lit the Vision faded,
to reappear in the darkness. It lasted " about half
a mealtime," and of the attendants five saw it, but
the sixth declared that he could see nothing.

Among other interesting places visited by the
traveller was the monastery where the Chinese
hostages had been detained by Kanishka (here Hiuen
Tsiang successfully exorcized the demon which had
prevented the priests from touching the temple
treasures), and the magnificent stupa at Peshawar,
from the ruins of which archaeologists have lately
extracted the wonderful ludo-Greek casket containing
the relics of Gautama.

In Kashmir Hiuen Tsiang found a hearty welcome.
This country, dedicated to the Church by Asoka and
Kanishka, had been the scene of the Great Council in

• The details of this remarkable story are most circmnstantial.
Beal brutally suggests the Vision was due to a magic lantern !
This is, of course, an anachronism. It is interesting to compare
the account of Fa Hian. " Here Buddha left his shadow. At the
distance of ten paces or so we see it distinctly, with marks and
signs perfectly bright and clear. On going nearer or further off,
we see it less and less distinctly." (Fo-Ewo-Ki, xiii.)

76 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the reign of the latter monarch, and in its numerous
monasteries were many copies of the Sacred Texts
and commentaries upon them, which could not be
found elsewhere. Here the Master settled down for
two years of study.

Early in 633 a.d., Hiuen Tsiang set out for Eastern
India, the actual scene of the life of Gautama. He
travelled in a very leisurely fashion, stopping at any
monastery where he found priests or manuscripts
likely to throw light upon obscure points of doctrine :
the hospitality which awaits the mendicant all over
the East made the life a pleasant one, and Hiuen
Tsiang's reputation, ability in dispute, and venerable
appearance gained him a ready welcome. In this
way he reached Kanauj, the capital of the great
Harsha, who was at that time the paramount sovereign
of Hindustan. Hiuen Tsiang was destined afterwards
to make the acquaintance of this monarch more fully :
for the present he stayed at the city for a few months
only. He gives us, however, a fascinating glimpse
into the life of India of the seventh century, which
may be instructively compared with what Fa Hian
says about the land as he found it two centuries before.
It is interesting to notice how little the Hindu has
really changed, in spite of the lapse of centuries and
the incursions of invading hordes. *' The towns," he
tells us, " Are walled : the streets are tortuous and
winding. The houses and the town walls are built
of mud and plaster on foundations of wood and
bamboo : the houses have balconies, which are made
of wood, with a coating of lime or mortar, and
covered with tiles." This description explains why,
except in a few exceptional cases, so little of the

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 77

buildings of early India has survived. " The people's
clothes are not cut or fashioned : they mostly aiTect
fresh white garments : they esteem little those of
mixed colour or ornamented. The men wind their
garments round their middle, then gather them under
the armpits, and let them fall across the body, hang-
ing to the right." " The Kshattriyas and Brahmins
are cleanly and wholesome in their dress, and they
live in a homely and frugal way. There are rich
merchants who deal in gold trinkets and so on. They
mostly go bare-footed ; few wear sandals. They stain
their teeth red or black ; they bind up their hair and
pierce their ears. They are very particular in their
personal cleanliness. All wash before eating: they
never use food left over from a former meal. Wooden
and stone vessels must be destroyed after use : metal
ones must be well polished and rubbed. After eating
they cleanse their mouths with a willow stick, and
wash their hands and mouths." Of the morals of the
people and the administration of justice the picture is
equally pleasing. " With respect to the ordinary
people, although they are naturally light-minded, yet
they are upright and honourable. In money matters
they are without craft, and in administering justice
they are considerate. They dread the retribution of
another state of existence, and make light of the
things of the present world. They are not deceitful
or treacherous in their conduct and are faithful to
their oaths and promises. In their rules of govern-
ment there is remarkable rectitude, while in their
behaviour there is much gentleness and sweetness.
With respect to criminals and rebels, these are few in
number, and only occasionally troublesome. When

78 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the laws are broken or the jDOwer of the ruler violated,
then the matter is clearly sifted and the offenders
punished. There is no infliction of corporal punish-
ment ; they are simply left to live and die, and are
not counted among men. When the rules of morality
or justice have been violated, or a man is dishonest or
wanting in filial love, his nose or ears are cut off and
he is expelled from the city to wander in the jungle
till he dies. For other faults besides these, a small fine
is exacted in lieu of punishment. In investigating
crimes, the rod is not used to extort proofs of guilt.
In questioning the accused, if he answers frankly, his
punishment is proportioned accordingly, but if he
obstinately denies his fault, in order to probe the
truth to the bottom, trial by ordeal is resorted to."
Hiuen Tsiang then goes on to describe the curious
ordeals to which the prisoner was subjected ; they
were neither more nor less foolish than those em-
ployed in Europe in the Middle Ages. For instance,
the accused was placed in a sack tied by a long cord
to a stone vessel, and thrown into the river. If the
man sank and the vessel floated, he was guilty ; but if
the vessel sank and the man floated, he was innocent.
The system of government and taxation in vogue
in India made a deep impression on Hiuen Tsiang ;
the executive, like the law courts, compared very
favourably with the cruel and oppressive methods of
his own countrymen. " As the administration of
the government is founded on benign principles, the
executive is simple. The families are not entered on
registers, and the people are not subjected to forced
labour. The crown-lands are divided into four parts.
The first is for carrying out the affairs of state ; the

CHINESE PILGEIMS IN INDIA 79

second, for paying the ministers and officers of the
crown ; the third, for rewarding men of genius ; the
fom:th, for giving alms to religious communities. In
this way, the taxes on the people are light, and the
services required of them are moderate. Every one
keeps his worldly goods in peace, and all till the soil
for their subsistence. Those who cultivate the royal
estates pay a sixth part of the produce as tribute.
The merchants who engage in commerce travel to and
fro in pursuit of their calling. Elvers and toll-bars
are opened for travellers on payment of a small sum.
"When the public works require it, labour is exacted
but paid for. The payment is in strict proportion to
the work done."

Of the army we learn interesting details. " The
military guard the frontiers and put down distur-
bances. They mount guard at night round the
palace. The soldiers are levied according to the
requu-ements of the service ; they are promised certain
salaries and publicly enrolled." The army was
divided into infantry, cavalry, chariots and elephants.^
The commanding officer, like the Homeric hero, rode
in a chariot drawn by four horses abreast, his body-
guard around him and a charioteer at either hand.
The elephants wore armour plate ; the infantry, like
the Greek hoplites, depended chiefly on their long
spears and large shields. The army advanced pro-
tected by a cavalry screen.

Comparatively little money circulated in the
country. Ministers were often assigned lands for
their support, and payment in kind, or by means of

1 The recognized divisions, pattakdya, as'vakdya, rathakdya, and
hastikdya.

80 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the jewels and minerals of the country, was preferred
to coin. The traders on the coast, of course, used
coins, which were issued freely by the imperial mint ;
but coinage was a foreign invention, adopted, after
Alexander, from the Bactrian Greeks and the Eoman
traders, and India is a conservative country. Even now,
in the Indian bazaars, the poorer classes purchase
theii- frugal requirements in minute quantities whose
worth is more easil}' estimated in cowries than in coin.-^
Hiuen Tsiang was struck with the immense fer-
tihty of North-Western India. Fruits of all kinds
grew in abundance, and rice and corn were plentiful.
It is quite possible that the Panjab was actually
more fertile in those days than it has been since.
The deflection of the monsoon current has, we know
from Sir Aurel Stein's explorations, changed the
once flourishing kingdom of Khotan into a sand-
swept desert. Hiuen Tsiang says nothing about
irrigation ; hence we conclude that the crops grew
naturally. The staple food at that time consisted of
milk, butter, sugar, and wheaten cakes. It is signifi-
cant to notice that animal food was no longer
prohibited ; fish, mutton, and venison, fresh or salted,
were consumed, though certain animals, such as
dogs, wolves, lions, and swine, were only eaten by
the Pariahs. Beef was forbidden, and the universal
superstition about onions and garlic made them
taboo among the respectable classes. In these regu-
lations we may detect sure signs of tlie decay of
Buddhism ; in the time of Fa Hian no animals
were slain for food. Wine, too, w'as drunk by the
Kshattriyas and Vaisyas, though not by Brahmins or

' See p. 64 n.

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 81

Buddhist monks. Caste-regulations, too, were be-
coming stricter ; promiscuous inter-marriage, and the
re-marriage of widows, were forbidden.

Of the religious sects of the time, with their bitter
contentions, their philosophical theories, and their
great monastic colleges, where learning was dissemi-
nated to all students who chose to attend, Hiuen
Tsiang speaks from experience. Buddhism, lon.-^
favoured by the Royal courts, was now beginning to
decline, and the Brahmins were striving fiercely to
regain their traditional position in the State. Bud-
dhism, too, was torn by factions ; the rival sects of
the Greater and Lesser Vehicles lost no opportunity
for attacking and reviling one another, and altogether
there were eighteen schools, each with its separate
leader. " Their contending utterances," says Hiuen
Tsiang, " Rise like the angry waves of the sea." " In
various directions," he adds, " They aim at one end.
All, according to their class, gain knowledge of the
doctrine of the Blessed One. But," he concludes
sadly, " It is so long since the Lord lived on earth, that
His doctrine is presented in a corrupt form, and so it
is understood, rightly or not, according to the intelli-
gence of the inquirer." The monasteries excited our
traveller's admiration. " They are built," he says,
*' With extraordinary skill. A three-storied tower rises
at each of the four angles, and the beams and pro-
jecting heads are carved into different shapes. The
doors, windows, and wainscots are decorated with
paintings ; ^ the cells are plain on the outside and
ornamented within. In the middle of the building
is a high, wide haU." The subjects taught in the

' Another interesting reference to early Indian painting.

G

82 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES •

curriculum were grammar, mechanics, medicine, logic,
and psychology, ^ and pupils often remained with their
teachers from their seventh to their thirtieth year.
" Then at last," we are told, " Their character is
formed and their knowledge is ripe." Learning has
always received due recognition in India, and many,
though possessed of great wealth, devoted their lives
to study. " Some," says Hiuen Tsiang, " Deeply
versed in classic lore, devote themselves to study,
and live a simple life apart from the world. Their
names spread far and wide, and rulers invite them to
court. The kings honour them on account of their
gifts, and the people extol their fame and render them
homage." As in the medieval universities of Europe,^
the merits of the student were judged by his skill
in argument. This is how Hiuen Tsiang describes
a debate as he had himself often witnessed it in the
great hall of countless colleges at Taxila, Nalanda,
and other Buddhist centres of learning. Picture the
scene — the long hall, dimly lighted with the Indian
sun ; the rows of silent, shaven monks squatting cross-
legged on the floor, their saffron robes, draped so as
to leave the left shoulder bare, lending a touch of
colour to the sombre group ; the President on his
dais ; and the eager disputants, expounding, according
to the rules of Indian logic, some abstruse text of

' The five Vidyds, S'ahda, Silpa, Chiktisa, Hctu, and Adhydtma-
Vidyd. Compare the "Trivium" and " Quadrivium " of the
medieval European University.

* " Disputations " took the place of examinations in the
medieval university. The candidate had to argue for his degree
with a professor. He was greeted, according to his merits, with
the formvda "optime, bene, or satis disputusti.^' The disputation
was not quite extinct in Oxford as late as 1834.

- CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 83

Buddhist metapbysic. " When a man's renown has
reached a high distinction, he convokes an assembly
for discussion. He judges of the talent or otherwise
of those who take part in it, and if one of the assembly
distinguishes himself by refined language, subtle in-
vestigation, deep penetration, and severe logic, he is
mounted on an elephant covered with precious orna-
ments, and conducted by a retinue of admirers to the
gate of the monastery. If, on the contrary, one of
the members breaks down in his argument, or uses
inelegant phrases, or violates a rule in logic, they
daub him with mud and cast him into a ditch."
Monastic discipline was strict. " The pursuit of
pleasure belongs to the worldly life, the pursuit of
knowledge to the religious life. To return to a secular
career after taking up religion is considered disgrace-
ful. For breaking the rules of the community the
transgressor is publicly rebuked ; for a slight fault he
is condemned to enforced silence ; for a graver fault
he is expelled. Those who are thus expelled for life
wander about the roads finding no place of refuge ;
sometimes they resume their former occupation."

In one respect the condition of India was less
satisfactory than it had been in the days of Fa Hian.
It was beset with dacoits, whom the government was
apparently unable to control. Hiuen Tsiang several
times suffered at their hands, but on the occasion
which we are about to relate, he almost lost his life.
He had set out from Kanauj for Benares by one of
the numerous passenger boats which plied at that time
along the Ganges, and they were passing through a
dense forest of asoka trees which overhung the banks
for miles on either hand. Suddenly a swarm of

84 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

pirate vessels darted out of the bushes, boarded the
ship, and towed it to the bank, where the ruffians
proceeded to strip and plunder their unfortunate
captives. Now it happened that these pirates were
worshippers of the goddess Durga, like the Thugs of
later days, and they were accustomed every autumn to
offer a human victim to that deity, in order to assure
a prosperous season. When they saw the Master of
the Law, they selected him as a worthy victim, and
in spite of the prayers of the passengers, many of
whom offered to die in his place, they seized him and
carried him off to a flowering glade hard by, where
they bound him and laid him upon an altar. The
hideous rites were about to begin, when the Master
asked for a few minutes' respite, and begged his
murderers " Not to crowd round him painfully, in
order that he might compose himself, and prepare to
depart with a calm mind." Then the Master prayed
long and earnestly to the Maitreya Buddha that he
might be re-born in the Tushita Paradise, and learn
from his blessed lips the Yoga S'astra which he was
destined not to study on earth, and the sound of the
excellent Law. Lastly, he prayed for his murderers,
and asked that when he had perfected himself in
wisdom, he might be re-born on earth in order to
instruct and convert them, and thus to give peace to
others by s]3reading the benefits of the Law." And
then, as the Master meditated, he seemed to faU into a
deep trance, and to pass into the Maitreya's presence,
*' Amid the excellently precious adornments of heaven,
with companies of angels upon every side." And now
a strange thing happened. One of the fierce sand-
storms so common in Central India suddenly broke

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 85

upon the company, filling the air with dust, and
lashing the rivers into waves. The superstitious
robbers, frightened by the omen, desisted from the
sacrifice, and gazed in an awestruck manner upon
their victim, while the passengers, seizing their
opportunity, warned them what calamities they would
bring upon themselves if they laid hands upon the
great saint from China. The brigands were so
overcome that they knelt before Hiuen Tsiang, and
one of them touched his hand by accident and
awoke him from his trance. The Master looked up
and said, " Has the hour come ? " But when he saw
what had happened, he preached to them of the sin
of robbery and impious sacrifices. *'How can you,"
he said, ** Risk the woes of ages for the sake of this
body, which is as transitory as the lightning flash
or the dew of the morning ? " The robbers restored
all the property which they had looted, threw the
instruments of their worship into the river, and
allowed the passengers to proceed on their journey.
This circumstance added greatly to the Master's fame.
We need not follow Hiuen Tsiang in his various
visits to the sacred spots associated with the life of
Gautama : he found them even more ruinous than
they had been in the time of Fa Hian : and at last he
arrived at that most holy of places in Buddhist eyes —
the Bodhi Tree at Gaya. At the sight of the tree, and
the other objects connected so intimately with the life
of the Buddha, Hiuen Tsiang was overcome with
emotion, and kneeling before the beautiful image in
the temple, reputed on account of its great loveliness
to have been carved by Maitreya himself, he prayed,
saying, "At the time when Buddha attained wisdom,

86 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

I know not liow I was, in the troubled whirl of life
and death : but now, in these latter days when men
have only images to worship, reflecting on the load of
evil which I have done, I am filled with sorrow."
Here Hiuen Tsiang met some priests who took him
to the temple of Nalanda, where the great saint Silab-
hadra dwelt. Silabhadra is said to have been warned
in a vision of the coming of a disciple from China,
and for two years Hiuen Tsiang dwelt with him,
learning of the mysteries of the Yoga S'astra, for which
he had sought so long. And here a curious thing
happened. One day Silabhadra was giving a public
lecture to Hiuen Tsiang and others, when a certain
Brahmin in the audience began to laugh and cry in a
hysterical fashion. And when they asked him why
he behaved thus, he said : *' I am a man of Eastern
India. And once I prayed to the image of Avaloki-
teswara to make me a king. But the Bodhisattwa
reproved me in a vision, saying, ' Pray not thus ;
hereafter shalt thou hear the saint Silabhadra ex-
pound the Yoga S'astra for the sake of a priest from
China : from hearing this discourse thou shalt be able
hereafter to see the Buddha, what then is the use of
wishing to be a king?' And now, behold, I have
seen the priest of China come, and the Master for his
sake expounding the law. Therefore I laugh and cry
at the wonder of it."

Hiuen Tsiang gives us a vivid picture of the
beauties of the famous Nalanda college and monastery,
which is of especial interest, as we know so little
of medieval university life in India. The Bud-
dhist monk always chose for his home a place with
pleasant and cheerful surroundings, unlike the

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 87

gloomy Indian ascetic, who haunted grave-yards and
performed repulsive penances. " The whole establish-
ment is surrounded by a brick wall. One gate opens
into the great college, from which are separated
eight other halls, standing in the centre of the quad-
rangle. The richly-carved towers and fairy-lik(3
minarets cluster like pointed hill-tops ; the upper
storeys and observatories are lost in the morning
mists. From the windows one sees the wind wreath-
ing the clouds into various shapes, and from the
soaring eaves one may observe the conjunction of the
planets. Down below, the deep, transparent ponds
bear on their surfaces the blue lotus, mingled with
Kanaka flowers, of a deep red colour ; at intervals the
Amra groves throw a grateful shade over everything.
All the outside courts, in which are the priests'
chambers, are of four stages. The stages have carved
and coloured eaves, pillars and balustrades, and the
tiled roof reflects the light in a thousand shades."
The lecture rooms were about one hundred in number,
and often the number of residents amounted to ten
thousand. Yet the students were earnest and grave,
and breaches of the rules were practically unknown.
As in _medieval monasteries in England, the neces-
saries of life — rice, butter, and milk — were supplied
by neighbouring villages.^

From Nalanda, the Master of the Law set out on
a very extended tour through India. The details do
not concern us greatly, but he appears to have gone
as far south as Amravati, where he gathered many
details about Ceylon, and thence in a north-westerly
direction through the Deccan, perhaps to Nasik, the
' Compare Fa Hian's account, Fo-Kwo-Ki, xvi.

88 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

headquarters of the Maratha King Pulikesin 11.^ He
appears to have visited the Ajanta Caves on the way.
Of the Marathas he speaks highly ; they were brave
and upright, and had defeated all who tried to pene-
trate into their fastnesses ; but the pilgrim adds that
their courage had a very ** Dutch" element about it,
men and elephants being supplied with strong drink
upon the eve of a battle. Perhaps this curious story
was invented by the soldiers of Siladitya to account
for their defeats. From Nasik the pilgrim travelled
through Broach and Kathiawar, and into Bind; he then
turned eastwards and once more reached the Nalanda
monastery. His studies were now nearly completed,
and his thoughts were turning towards home, when
an imploring message from Kumara, King of Assam,
induced him to go upon a mission to preach in that
country. Kumara had heard how a wretched
" Heretic " had nailed a paper containing *' Forty
unanswerable theses " upon the monastery gate, and
how the Master had torn it down and trampled on it,
and in a public disputation pulverized the challenger
in the presense of his followers ; the prince added,
that if the Master did not come sj)eedily, " As sure as
the sun was in heaven, he would send his elephants
to stamp Nalanda into dust." But Kumara was not
allowed to retain his acquisition long. The news
reached the ears of his overlord Siladitya, who ordered
the Chinese priest to be sent to him at once. Kumara

' The difficulty of penetrating into the Deccan was proverbial.
" The country of the Deccan," says Fa Hian, " is precipitous, and
tlie roads dangerous. Those who wish to go there have to bribe the
king, who gives them guides. These guides pass the travellers on
from one locality to another, the men of each locality alone knowing
its bypaths and passes." {Fo-Kwo-Ki., xxv.)

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 89

replied they might have his head, hut not his priest ;
but the prompt appearance of a royal envoy with the
message, " Then I trouble you for your head," in-
duced him to alter his mind without further ado.
So Kumara and Hiuen Tsiang travelled up the Ganges
with a gorgeous retinue, and Siladitya met them amid
the beating of golden drums and the blaze of torches.
The whole party marched in state to Kanauj, where
splendid rehgious ceremonies were held, lasting for
nineteen days, in which the King and his vassals rode
on elephants, escorting a golden statue of Buddha,
which had been made at great cost as an offering for
the monastery. Here Hiuen Tsiang expounded the
Mahayanist doctrines to the assembled court. Among
the audience was the King's widowed sister, for in
pre-Mahommedan days^ women in India enjoyed free-
dom and enlightenment. They received the same
education as men, and often chose their own
husbands. Sati was a voluntary act of devotion, and
was probably uncommon when the widow was not
forced to undergo the degradation later inflicted upon
her, and when she had intellectual diversions to occupy
her mind. So great did the Master's reputation
become, that no one dared to take up the challenge
which he hung to the door of the assembly room, even
though he offered his head as a recompense " To any-
one who should prove a word of his arguments to be
contrary to reason." Perhaps this reluctance was
party due to an order of the King, that if any one
spoke against his protege, his tongue should be torn
out by the roots !

This lavish patronage bestowed upon a foreigner
and a Buddhist, aroused intense jealousy in the

90 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

numerous religious sects which haunted the precincts
of the court, and more than once attempts were made
to assassinate both Siladitya and Hiuen Tsiang. The
King was attacked on one occasion by a fanatical
Brahmin, who all but stabbed him ; and the culprit
confessed to a plot among his fellow-conspirators to
set fire to the edifice in which he was watching
the ceremonies. These plots were the beginning of
the long struggle which ended in the overthrow of
Buddhism by the Brahmins. After the celebrations
at Kanauj, Hiuen Tsiang was taken to see a great
distribution of charitable gifts at Allahabad, or Pra-
yaga, as it was then called. On the sands at the
junction of the Ganges and Jumna a vast throng of
beggars, ascetics, Brahmins, sanyasis, and the like,
such as only India can produce, had assembled. For
nearly three months they were feted by the King, who
distributed among them the accumulated wealth of
five years, down to his own jewels and embroidered
robes. And so ended the strangest scene in Hiuen
Tsiang's varied adventures among the peoples of
India.

And now the pilgrim was determined to set out
for China. With the greatest difficulty he persuaded
his royal host to release him, and at last he departed,
having refused all the gifts lavished upon him except
a fur-lined cloak to enable him to face the icy cold
of the mountain-passes. He travelled leisurely to
the north of the Paujab, crossed the Pamirs, and
reached Khotan late in 644 a.d. His journey had not
been without its trials, for he had lost some books
owing to a squall while crossing the Indus, and some
more when he was attacked by brigands and an

CHINESE PILGRIMS IN INDIA 91

elephant had stampeded. But the treasures he had
brought were unparalleled in quantity and value —
caskets full of relics, wondrous statues in gold, silver,
sandal-wood and crystal ; and, above all, no less than
six hundred and fifty-seven volumes of Indian manu-
scripts. The permission to return to China was gladly
given, and the pilgrim's journey from the frontier to
the capital was a long triumphal procession. His
record was, indeed, unique ; for seventeen years he
had travelled and studied; he had faced countless
perils, in the sandy, burning deserts, on the icy and
impenetrable mountains, and among the robbers and
brigands of many countries ; he had seen the place
where the Blessed One was born, and the Bodhi Tree
where He obtained knowledge for the saving of the
world. But worldly honours and rewards meant
nothing to the Master of the Law. Retiring to a
monastery, he set himself down to translate the Sacred
Books for the benefit of his countrymen, and to lecture
to all who wished to hear upon the sciences which he
had acquired in India. It is pleasant to learn that,
ten years after his return, a deputation of Indian
monks from the Mahabodhi Temple made the toilsome
journey to China in order to visit him. In 661 a.d.,
the Master, being now sixty-five, began to feel symp-
toms which warned him that his work on earth was
approaching its end. He had finished seventy-four
works, in thirteen hundred chapters, besides many
copies of sutras, and drawings. An old malady,
originally contracted when crossing the mountains,
attacked him with increasing violence. And so, on
the thirteenth day of the tenth month of the year
664 A.D., repeating some verses in adoration of the

92 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Maitreya, lie passed peacefully away, earnestly de-
siring to be re-born in the Paradise of the Lord of
Love. Here he waits until, in the fulness of time,
the Maitreya shall again take human form, and then
Hiuen Tsiang will return to preach once more the
Law of Piety to his fellow-creatures.

Y

IBN BATUTA.

V

IBN BATUTA.

1304-1378 A.D.

" For always wandering with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known, cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments."

Of all the ancient travellers, few can boast of a record
approaching that of the jovial Moor, Ibn Batuta. His
appetite for wandering was perfectly insatiable. He
was travelling continuously for over thirty years, and
is estimated to have covered, during that period, over
seventy-five thousand miles. He explored Asia Minor,
visited Constantinople and Eussia, and journeyed far
north to investigate the phenomenon of the midnight
sun ; he sailed down the African coast to satisfy his
curiosity about Mombasa and Zanzibar ; he performed
the HaJ four times ; he made the overland journey
to India, where he won the favour of that eccentric
sovereign Mahommed Taghlak, and was appointed a
judge at Delhi ; he went from Delhi to China on an
embassy, visiting Ceylon, Java and Sumatra eii route ;
and not satisfied with this, on his return home he
undertook a long and perilous trip to Central Africa,
which anticipated by centuries the achievements of
the greatest African explorers.

96 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

And yet Ibn Batuta was no hero. His motives
were neither pious nor disinterested. He travelled
chiefly because he liked variety, excitement, and
opportunities of studying his fellow-men ; and doubt-
less, a pilgrimage to Mecca, or a journey through
Persia to India with a caravan, afforded a shrewd
student of human nature the same opportunities for
amusement and observation which similar excursions
in the Christian world would give to Ibn Batuta's
great contemporary, the genial author of the Canter-
bury Tales. The hazards of the way were less than
might be expected; though Ibn Batuta occasionally
found himself in a perilous position, he usually
appears to have travelled leisurely and comfortably,
and that wonderful freemasonry which made a Ma-
hommedan welcome from Gibraltar to Canton ensured
him a hearty reception wherever Islam prevailed.
No doubt, too, Ibn Batuta's own plausible manner,
his knowledge of men, and his marvellous stories of
the countries he had visited made him popular with
his hosts all over the world.

When Ibn Batuta started on his travels in the
year 1325 a.d., Mahommedanism was the foremost
power in the world. In two continents out of the
three then discovered, Islam held undisputed sway;
Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia and India were ruled by
Mahommedans, and the religion was spreading to
China and the Malay Peninsula. All the known
parts of Africa were under Mahommedan rulers, and
the brilliant Arab astronomers and chemists were
laying the foundations of modern science. Even
Europe for a time was seriously threatened with the
danger of being overpowered by a great Pan-Islamic

IBN BATUTA 97

incursion ; Spain and Sicily, indeed, were recaptured,
but the defeat of the Crusaders had been a serious
blow, and the Turks were already casting envious
eyes on the decrepit Byzantine Empire. Mahomme-
dan Khans ruled in Southern Eussia, and it was only
the heroic efforts of the Papacy and the Italian States
which prevented them from becoming supreme in the
Mediterranean basin.

Ibn Batuta started his travels by a journey from
Tangier to Cairo. From here he went to Palestine.
After visiting the tombs of the Patriarchs, and also
Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and various other localities of
religious interest, he accomplished the main object of
the expedition by setting out for Mecca. Among the
many places at which he stopped, one of the most
striking was Meshed- Ali, the Arabian Lourdes. Here
cripples from all over the world assembled on a
certain day, and at sunset were laid upon the tomb of
the martyr Ali. " People then, some praying, others
reciting the Kuran, and others prostrating themselves,
wait expecting their recovery. About nightfall they
all spring up cured." Our traveller did not actually
witness the " Night of the Pievival," though he knew
many trustworthy persons who had done so. From
Arabia he travelled to Persia, and visited Ispahan
and Shiraz, ultimately returning to Baghdad. Shortly
afterwards, he determined to perform the Haj again,
and this time he stayed for three years at Mecca
Prolonged sojourn at one place, however, was not to
his taste ; and very shortly afterwards we find him
on a voyage down the East Coast of Africa. He
touched at Aden, where he noticed the great water-
tanks, and also stopped at Mombasa and Zanzibar.

H

98 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

He makes many shrewd remarks about the flora and
fauna of the coast, and was much struck by the com-
mercial possibilities of the cocoa-nut palm. Among
many good stories which he narrates, one of the most
amusing relates to a certain holy Shaikh, who was
attacked by divers heretics who rejected the doctrine
of predestination. " You believe in free will," said the
Shaikh, making some passes in the air. " Very good,
move from here if you can." The wretched men
found that they were hypnotized, and had to sit, unable
to stir hand or foot, all day long in the burning sun !
In the evening the Shaikh brought them round, and
dismissed them, sadder but wiser.

From the African coast, Ibn Batuta sailed to the
Persian Gulf to watch the pearl-fisheries. He then
travelled across Arabia, paid a third visit to Mecca
(1332 A.D.), and tried to get a boat to take him to
India. Failing to do this, he crossed the Eed Sea,
travelled overland to the Nile (a most perilous enter-
prise) and worked his way upstream to Cairo. After
a brief rest, we find him travelling in the Levant,
after which he took ship across the Black Sea to
Russia, and paid a visit to the great Uzbeck Khan,
who ruled over the Mahommedan Mongols on the
Volga. Here Ibn Batuta was amazed at the short-
ness of the northern nights. It was Ramadan, and
to his surprise he had hardly time to finish the sunset
prayer before midnight; while, hurry as he might,
he was overtaken by the dawn, half-way through his
midnight devotions. Ibn Batuta was soon after en-
trusted with an errand very much to his liking. A
Greek princess, who had married a Mahommedan
Khan, was returning on a visit to her parents at

IBN BATUTA 99

Constantinople, and the gallant traveller was asked
to escort ber. At Constantinople he was well received
by the Emperor (Andronicus I.), who was interested
in the traveller's account of the sacred sites in the
Holy Land (remembered, no doubt, ''with advantages,"
by Ibn Batuta), but the sentries scowled and muttered
" Saracen ! Saracen ! " as they presented arms to
the cortege entering the gate. Ibn Batuta describes
at great length the marvellous city, a living relic of
the long - passed ancient world, with its palaces,
churches, monasteries, and works of art. He little
thought that in just over a century's time it would
be in the hands of his co-religionists. He was vexed
by the incessant ringing of the church bells, a strange
and discordant sound to the Eastern ear.

The traveller now determined to go farther afield.
It was probably easy to find in an emporium like
Byzantium merchants bound for India ; at any rate
Ibn Batuta attached himself to a caravan which was
setting out for India by the overland route via Balkh
and the Kabul Pass. He reached the Panjab in the
month of Moharram, 1333, after nearly perishing in
the defiles of the Hindu Kush. He is the first writer
to give these mountains (anciently called the Paro-
pamisus, or Hindu Caucasus), their modern name.
It means, he says, *' Hindu Slayer," and was bestowed
because very few Hindu captives, carried off by the
Mongolian raiders, ever survived the horrors of the
journey. What a wealth of unrecorded suffering lies
hidden behind this grim title ! At Delhi Ibn Batuta's
plausible tongue quite won over the Emperor Mahom-
med Taghlak, who made him a judge on a salary of
twelve thousand rupees a year, together with a

100 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

handsome inam. Here be stayed eight years, and
he tells us a good deal about India at that period.
Amongst other things he saw Yogis, who performed
the rope trick, and could raise themselves in the air,
and was so overcome by their marvels that he nearly
fainted. He hints that they mesmerized their audience
in some way. A prolonged stay in one place, however,
ill accorded with Ibn Batuta's temperament ; he was
over fifty thousand rupees in debt, and was engaged
in some extremely dangerous intrigues. He was glad,
therefore, to get an offer from the Emperor to go
upon an embassy to China, and set off in great pomp
in 1342. India was not a safe country for travellers
where the Moghul law did not run, and the journey
to Calicut was highly adventurous. Worse, however,
was to follow, for the boat containing the gifts for
the Chinese Emperor was swamped soon after start-
ing. Ibn Batuta thought it would not be prudent to
return with this tale to Delhi (where he had not left
behind the best of reputations), so he decided to start
life afresh. After a few desultory changes, he took a
boat for the Maldive Islands, where he found, as he
hoped, an untrodden field for enterprise. Here he
soon ingratiated himself, and settled down for a
year among the shady palm-groves. He married
four wives of the country, and became a judge ; but
the spirit of wandering was strong within him, and
in 1344 (divorcing his wives on the plea that they
would not stand travel) he set out for Ceylon. His
wanderings in Ceylon are a little obscure, but he tells
the usual travellers' tales about monkeys, moonstones,
and venomous leeches. The most interesting portion
of this part of the story is his visit to the famous

IBN BATUTA 101

" Footmark of our Father Adam." Ibn Batuta climbed
the mountain by the more precipitous route, and with
his usual accuracy of detail noticed the chains erected
to help pilgrims at precipitous places, and the masses
of scarlet rhododendron on the lower reaches.

From Ceylon he went to Southern India, and
stayed at Madura. After a series of adventures he
reached Chittagong, where in pursuance of his original
plan, he took a boat for China. On the way he landed
at Sumatra, and gives a very poor account of the
inhabitants. In China he found the reigning monarch
to be a descendant of Jengiz Khan. He was much
struck with the industries of the Chinese, especially
their porcelain. He also noticed their skill with the
pencil. On returning to a town previously visited,
he found the walls decorated with admirable carica-
tures of himself and his companions ! One curious
adventure happened to him in China. One day he
saw a man staring at him intently, and found him
to be a fellow countryman who had also been at
Delhi, and the meeting affected both to tears. Strange
to say, Ibn Batuta met his brother, years after, in
the heart of the Soudan. On his way home, Ibn
Batuta and his shipmates were terribly scared by an
apparition which they thought was the formidable
Roc, well known to readers of the Arabian Nights.
However, it vanished harmlessly, and was probably
a mirage. Landing at Arabia, Ibn Batuta performed
the Haj for the fourth and last time, and reached
home at the end of 1349. Here he found that his
father had died fifteen years before. In 1352 he once
more set out, this time for Central Africa, and suc-
ceeded in reaching Timbuctu, and the Niger, which

102 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

he mistook for the Nile. In 1354 he returned, con-
vinced by his travels that there was " no place like
home," after all.

Evidently a life of hardship did not hurt the old
adventurer, for he lived over twenty years more, and
died at the ripe age of seventy-three, after dictating
his memoirs to the king's secretary. No one will
quarrel with the note at the end of the Arabian
manuscript which declares that " No sensible man
can fail to see that this Shaikh is the Traveller of
our age ; and it would not exceed the truth were we
to call him ' The Traveller of Islam.' "

YI
AKBAR.

YI

AKBAE.

1556-1605 A.D.

Heresy to the Heretic, Beligion to the Orthodox,

Bid the rose-petal's dust for the heart of the ^jerf time-seller.

Abul Fazl.

Hardly anything in history affords more painful
reading than the story of the Mahommedan incur-
sions into India. A wild and brutal race of fanatics,
entirely unprovoked, makes a series of inroads into
a prosperous, civilized, and well-governed country.
Like the Spaniards in America, they burn, plunder,
and massacre, and return laden with spoil, excusing
their crimes under the cloak of religion. The stories
of the sack of Somnath, or of the five-day massacre of
the Hindus at Delhi, when Timur, not content with
slaying ten thousand prisoners in cold blood, left the
streets impassable with the heaps of corpses of un-
offending citizens, are only too typical of the events
of those cruel days. The only consolation is to be found
in the reflection that India, to some extent, merited
her fate ; wealth and ease had brought weakness and
indolence in their train, and that fatal lack of union,
the besetting sin of India from the beginning of time,
allowed her various defenders to be conquered in

106 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

detail. It was the same in the days of Alex-
ander. The invaders — though this in no way
palliates their horrid cruelties — won because they
deserved to.

With the coming of the Moghuls, however, a new
era dawns in Mahommedan history. With Babar
we seem to come upon different ground. Poet,
knight-errant, and adventurer, Babar has, for some
reason or other, hardly a trace in his nature of
the wild ancestry to which he belonged. Few men
have ever had a tithe of the adventures which were
crowded into his brief but meteoric career. Succeed-
ing at the age of twelve to the throne of Ferghana,
three years later he conquered Samarcaud, the birth-
place of Timur. Driven out of Samarcand, he was still
hardly more than a boy when he seized the kingdom
of Kabul. Not content with Kabul, he was tempted,
in 1526, to follow his predecessors in the congenial
pastime of raiding the Panjab. Beating the Mahom-
medans at Panipat in the same year, and the Piajputs
at Agra in the next, he died in 1530, under fifty,
but ruler of an empire which stretched from the
Ganges to the Oxus. His son, the brilliant, reckless
Humayun — capax imperii nisi imperasset, as the
Roman historian would have said — spent a troubled
twenty-six years in alternately beating his numerous
foes and being beaten by them. After at one time
flying through the desert for his life, he returned in
triumph, only to die from a fall on the marble steps
of his palace in 1556.

Such was the parentage of Akbar. Born while his
father was a fugitive in the wilds of Sind, he passed
a wild and adventurous childhood. Yet, though it

The Taj Mahal.
(Photo hij the Author.)

\_To face page 107.

AKBAR 107

fitted the boy for coping with the thousand and one
dangers which beset him who dared to aspire in those
days to the throne of Delhi, it did not debase or
brutalize him. Alibar was filled with the kindly
humour, the grace, the sense of the poetry of life,
which flashes out on every page of his grandfather's
memoirs, and which shines in every line of the
tombs and palaces of his graceless grandson. The
line of Babar was a race of poets; the Taj Mahal,
most glorious of shrines, is an epitome of their aspira-
tions, their achievements, and their failings. Akbar
was almost as young as his grandfather when his
career began. He was barely fourteen when the news
of his father's death reached him, but he had already
seen fighting, under the tutelage of his guardian,
Bairam Khan.

For a moment it seemed as if the Emperor's
demise must ring the death-knell of Moghul aspira-
tions in India ; the revolting Afghans, led by an able
Hindu adventurer named Hemu, swept all before
them, and it was expected that the boy-king would
soon be flying once more for his life across the deserts.
But Akbar was made of sterner stuff than this. He
and Bairam rallied their forces for a final effort ;
Bairam cut down with his own sword the officer who
had surrendered Delhi ; and this sobered the rest.
By a clever dash, the Moghuls captured the whole of
the enemy's artillery, and then advancing to the
historic field of Panipat, where India has three times
been lost and won, beat them in a well-contested
fight. Hemu, shot in the eye, was brought a prisoner
to where Akbar and his staff were standing. " Try
your sword on him," said Bairam ; and when Akbar

108 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

indignantly refused to strike a wounded man, he
despatched the wretched prisoner himself, with a
sneer at the lad's squeamishness. But Akbar was
not so docile as he appeared to be. Bairam, the
Bismarck of his age, thought that he could rule as
he liked, and treated the young Emperor with good-
humoured contempt, raising his own proteges to
power, and punishing sternly all who interfered. To
his astonishment, Akbar, collecting his adherents
under the pretence of a hunting party, declared the
great Minister deposed. Bairam, at first incredulous,
and then inclined to ridicule the idea of the possi-
bility of Akbar's getting on without him, finally lost
his temper and rebelled. But he had few friends,
and he was quickly compelled to sue for pardon at
the feet of his former pupil. Akbar, with a magna-
nimity rare in those days, freely forgave him and
sent him off to Mecca on a pilgrimage — an honour-
able form of banishment, or rather ostracism, often
imposed upon a dangerous rival. Bairam never
reached the holy place. An assassin — one of the
many victims of his days of power— stabbed him at
the port of embarkation.

And now Akbar, aged eighteen, found himself
alone, and almost immediately he began to inaugu-
rate the policy of forming a united India, which wiil
be to all time the chief glory of his name. He recog-
nized that the great curse of the country was dis-
union ; Hindu and Mahommedan were at variance,
and hardly less bitter was the strife between Shia and
Sunni, Turk, Afghan and Moghul. Above all, Akbar's
heart went out to the Rajputs ; he had heard, no
doubt, warriors who had fought under his grandfather

AKBAR 109

at Panipat, tell how the " Sons of Kings " had
charged the Moghiil guns till the blood dyed their
horses' chests ; and how Sanga Rana, their leader,
" Carried more than eighty wounds from sword or
lance ; an eye destroyed by an arrow, an arm lost in
a fight with Ibraim Lodi, and a leg smashed by a
cannon shot." Could not these people be reconciled
to the throne ? Akbar meant to try. The first step
was taken when he married the daughter of Eaja
Bihari Mai, Lord of Amber, and the second, when he
remitted for good the two taxes which pressed
heaviest of all upon Hindu pride and Hindu pockets
— the pilgrim-tax, and the jiz'ia, or commutation
money. The latter, above all, was a hated imposition,
a sign of servitude ; for the Kuran laid down that all
infidels should be put to the sword, and it was only
by favour of the conqueror that they were allowed
to redeem themselves at a price. After this, only
one Eajput state ventured to withstand the Moghul
Empire. The Rana of Chitor bade defiance to the
invader, and for months he withstood all attempts to
capture his stronghold. Finally, however, Akbar
stormed the town, after himself killing the brave com-
mandant with a lucky shot from his favourite carbine.
But the House of Udaipur, though beaten, was un-
subdued ; the survivors fled to the hills and held out
there, and to this day they boast that they alone
dishonoured their race by no union with the un-
believer. Two other expeditions followed — one to
Ahmedabad, to bring Gujarat to obedience, and one
to the refractory province of Bengal ; and Akbar
settled down to the peaceful task of reorganizing his
Empire upon the novel lines which he had initiated

110 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

already. Kasim Khan erected the fort at Agra, with
its massive battlements of red sandstone, two miles
in circumference and seventy feet in height ; and
soon afterwards the City of Victory, Fathpur Sikri,
was built by the Emperor round the dwelling of
the saint Salim Chishti, the birthplace of Prince
Salim, the beloved son whom the Kajput Princess
bore him. We have seen how Alsbar had won over
Hindu and Eajput by his just policy. He now intro-
duced the system of promotion by merit, irrespective
of caste or creed ; and Hindu officers began to hold
posts, civil and military, in great numbers. One of
these, Eaja Todar Mai, became Akbar's Wazir, and
started the great financial reforms which were ever
afterwards adopted as the basis of systems of taxa-
tion in India. The system of tax-farming, with all
its innumerable train of evils, was abolished; the
land was re-surveyed and re-assessed, and it was
arranged that the tax should be on the crop rather
than the soil, in order to minimize the hardships of
drought and famine ; money was freely advanced to
encourage agriculture ; and the evils attendant upon
the presence of a royal or official camp in a district
(even now often made an excuse for extortion by
subordinates, and in those days of immense retinues
simply ruinous to the villagers), were minimized
by strict regulations and fixed tariffs. India is a
poor country, and most of her woes are financial.
Akbar's scheme did incalculable good, in spite of the
comical charge of Badaoni, who hated all infidels
and heretics with a deadly loathing, that ** many a
good Mussalman perished beneath the pincers of
Birbal and his fellow-extortioners." Among Akbar's

AKBAR 111

humane enactments were laws against sati ^ and
child-marriage, and other social regulations, relaxing
the stern ordinances of the Shastras and the Kuran,
and making the conscience of the individual, rather
than State compulsion, the standard of right and
wrong.

But Alibar went further than this. He realized
that the chief obstacle to union was a religious one.
Religious bigotry, then as now, presented an insuper-
able bar betwixt ruler and ruled. And yet were not
all religions at heart one? Akbar had come into
contact with the Hindu religion through his Rajput
wife ; he had watched her perform her daily devotions
in the chapel of her palace, and he had discovered,
as many of us have yet to discover, that Hinduism
was neither a monstrous nor an immoral creed. The
Sufi of Persia taught a form of Pantheism which was
not very different from the Vedanta, of which, through
translations, the Court was beginning to hear a great
deal. The Sufi {'^otpol, Enlightened^) were, perhaps,
a survival of the Gnostics of early Persia, and so
were a connecting link between Mahommedan, Chris-
tian, and Buddhistic beliefs. And the similarity
between Mahommedanism and Christianity was
evident. And so Akbar assembled at Fathpur Sikri
doctors of all creeds, and tried to arrive at a common
basis upon which a universal religion might be

' The widow was to do what she wished, to be dissuaded but not
forced. Often the unfortunate woman was hurried, drugged, to the
fire by scheming relatives or priests. For the other aspect of Sati,
see Coomaraswamy's translation of the Suz-u-Guddz (London,
1912).

- I take the derivation from Keene, It is far more reasonable
than the one ordinarily given.

112 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

founded. Great was the rage of the orthodox
Mahommedans. His policy was denounced from
every pulpit, and as no one dared attack the Emperor
in person, the brunt of their wrath fell upon his
chosen friends, Faizi and Abul Fazl. ** They led His
Majesty from Islam," says Badaoni. Akbar only
laughed. Often the debates lasted till dawn, and
nothing amused the Emperor more than when some
one scored neatly off an angry Maulvi in an argu-
ment. " What will they say of this at Constanti-
nople ? " cried a champion of orthodoxy, in despair,
at the Emperor's latest heresy. " If you like Con-
stantinople so much you had better go there," retorted
Akbar, significantly. Most of all, Akbar patronized
the plucky Jesuit priest. Father Rudolfo, whose black
cassock soon became a famihar figure at Court. The
Emperor was strangely drawn by the new creed from
the West, though it is doubtful whether he would
ever have become an orthodox Christian. Certainly
lie would never have become an advocate of prosely-
tizing on its part. Akbar's aim was a different one.
He sought

" To gather here and there
From each fair plant, the blossom choicest grown,
To wreathe a crown, not only for the king,
But in due time for every Llussulman,
Brahmin and Buddhist, Christian and Parsee,
Through all the warring world of Hindustan."

Perhaps Akbar's feelings on the subject have never
been so well expressed as in the famous lines written
by Abul Fazl, and destined, it is said, to be inscribed
upon the walls of a temple in Kashmir : —

O God, in every temple I see people that seek Thee : in every
language I hear spoken, people praise Thee.

AKBAE 113

Polytheism and Islam feel after Thee : each says, Thou art One,
without a second.

If it be a Mosque, men murmur the holy prayer: if it be a
Church, they ring the bcUs from love of Thee.

Sometimes I frequent the cloister, sometimes the Mosque : but
Thee I seek from Temple to Temple.

Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy : neither
stands behind the screen of Thy Truth.

Heresy to the heretic, Oi-thodoxy to the orthodox. But the Eose-
pcial's dust belongs to the Perfume-seller's heart.

" The Kose-petal's dust to the Perfume-seller's
heart ! " Few, alas, were found to agree with
Akbar's mighty dream. The time had not come.
It has not come yet. To orthodox Mahommedans
it was abhorrent ; to the laxer sort it was made an
excuse for looseness of living. Padre Eudolpho would
have been the last to accept it ; nor would the better
class of Hindu.^ When Akbar asked Man Singh
whether he would join him in the new creed, *' Sire,"
said the young warrior, *' If loyalty means readiness
to sacrifice one's life, I trust I have given your majesty
proof of my fidelity. (He was thinking of that day
in Gujarat when he, his father, and the Emperor
were cut off in a narrow lane by the rebel cavalry,
and the three cut their way through in a glorious
charge.) But I was born a Hindu. Your Majesty
would not have me a Mahommedan. And I know no
third religion." But opposition merely strengthened
Akbar's determination, and he crushed orthodox
contumacy by declaring himself head of the Church.
Finally, he ratified this decision by himself addressing
the people in the courtyard of the great Mosque. It
is not difficult to picture the scene. In front stands

* Raja Birbal was the only Hindu of rank who joined.

I

114 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the great crowd : the bright March sun lights up the
guttering uniforms, the many-coloured turbans, the
gleaming marble canopy of the Saint. Akbar, a
simple figure in a white robe, only ornamented with
a single gigantic diamond — the Koh-i-nor, gift of the
house of Gwalior — in his aigrette, mounts the pulpit
beneath the aisle. He begins to intone the solemn
litany composed by Faizi : —

" The Lord to me the Kingdom gave,
He made me prudent, strong, and brave,
He guided me with right and ruth.
Filling my heart with love of truth,
No tongue of man can sum His state,
AUahu Akbar ! God is great." '

But as Akbar began to chant the great hymn, his
emotions overwhelmed him. He'saw, in his mind's eye,
a united India, a race untorn by religious controversy
or racial prejudice. " One fold and one shepherd."
It was too much. He faltered, stopped, broke down
utterly, and abruptly left the pulpit. The awed
crowd remained in respectful silence until the service
was taken up by a member of the courtly circle and
finished.

And so, for many happy years, life passed at the
Court of Fathpur Sikri. The country was enjoying
a period of peace and good-government unknown
since the Mahommedans first passed the Indus. To
the Emperor it was a time of unalloyed happiness.
Absorbed in his social and financial reforms, his
mechanical experiments — for Akbar, like his grand-
father, was keenly interested in such matters, and

* Keene's translation, History of Hindustan, p. 114.

AKBAR 115

had devised many improvements in firearms — his
rehgious debates, and his building schemes, his hfe
was spent in congenial and absorbing occupations.
At his side stood his Eajput kin, most loyal of friends,
Faizi and Abul Fazl, whom he loved, perhaps, better
than any one in the world, and Eaja Birbal, the
merry troubadour and brave soldier. Discussions in
the Debating Hall, we are told, often lasted till sun-
rise, and the dawn was welcomed by a choir singing
a hymn to the Sun, while the kettle-drums sounded
in the Nakkar KJiaiia — the Musicians' Balcony — over
the gateway. Then the King would take his seat on
the throne of the Hall of Audience with his nobles
round him, receiving petitions, hearing the complaints
of all, from the highest to the lowest, and welcoming
ambassadors and foreign visitors. Then, perhaps,
would follow a review, when the cavalry, the elephants,
and the artillery would defile past the Presence. The
King knew every detail of his soldiers' equipment ; he
was well aware that upon the instant readiness of
the Household Brigade depended his throne, perhaps
his life. After this followed private consultations
and audiences in the Council Chamber, and then His
J\Iajesty withdrew to his private apartments, for the
Moghuls, who were never really acclimatized to
the heat of Northern India, wisely worked late at
night and early in the morning, reserving the mid-
day for sleep. As the evening drew on, the Court
would retire to the polo-ground, where the game was
prolonged even after the dusk had set in, by means
of balls coated with phosphorescent paint ; or perhaps
bull-fights or elephant-fights were the order of the
day. When the Court moved to Agra these were

116 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

held in the moat, the ladies, in their fluttering, many-
coloured silks, peeping cautiously from the marble-
screened battlements at the scene below, or gazing
idly on the Imperial flotilla which cruised on the
waters of the silver Jumna. A favourite amusement
of Akbar's was the game of pachisi, or backgammon,
played with living pieces in the courtyard, while the
spectators sat round and watched.

But this state of things was too good to last.
Akbar had now been king for thirty years, and un-
interrupted peace was a thing unknown in India.
The first blow came when Birbal, like many a good
officer since, fell in a disastrous little war on the
Frontier. In 1595 Faizi died, and with the loss of
two out of three of his chosen friends Akbar was
broken-hearted. A severe famine did not mend
things ; and some incompetent blunders on the part
of Prince Murad involved the empire in a war with
the Deccan. For a time, however, the " Emperor's
Fortune " prevailed. Ahmadnagar, bravely defended
by Chand Bibi, its gallant queen, until her murder,
was stormed ; so was Asirgad, where the silly young
Raja of Khandesh had taken refuge. Returning
home, Akbar built his famous Triumphal Arch, the
Bulancl Daraivaza, beside which the Arch of Titus
shrinks into insignificance. As the traveller enters,
two inscriptions meet his eye on the walls of the
portico. The one on the left resembles in its grand
simplicity the noble words of the Behistun Rock.
" His Majesty : Lord of Lords : enthroned in Heaven :
shadow of God : Jalal-ud-din : Mahommed Akbar :
Emperor ! I conquered the Deccan and Dandesh,
which men called lihandesh, in the year of the Divine

AKBAR 117

Faith 46, which is the injri year 1010." ^ On the
right, Akbar the man, weary and disillusioned, warns us
of the transitoriness of mortal things. " Jesus said :
The world is a bridge ; pass over it, but build no house
thereon.^ Who hopes for an hour, hopes for eternity.
The world is an hour ; spend it in prayer, for what
follows is unseen." The words are prophetic, ominous
of coming trouble. Two years later came the crown-
ing blow of Akbar's life. An indulgent father, he was
cursed with dissolute and idle sons. Daniyal died of
drink ; but even more bitter was the disappointment
caused by Salim, the beloved son, the child of many
prayers, born of Akbar's union with the Eajput lady,
and destined, as his father fondly hoped, to unite in his
person Mahommedan and Hindu. But he had the
virtues of neither, the vices of both. Cruel, capricious
and dissolute, he was too fickle, or too cowardly, even
to conduct a successful campaign. He was bitterly
jealous of Abul Fazl, whom he suspected of warning
the Emperor about his evil courses, and in a fit of
passion he hired some dacoits to set on the minister
and murder him. It was a heartless act. Akbar,
though he refused to believe that his son actually
instigated the deed — he was mercifully spared this
blow — knew that he approved of it. "If he wanted
the crown, he should have taken me," he said. And
from that day he pined and sank. He saw with dis-
may that his schemes would die with him : his temper
became violent and uncertain, and he who was famed

' I.e. 1600 A.D. One of Akbar's innovations was to redate the
calendar from his accession. He renamed Khandesh " Dandesh,"
after Prince Daniyal.

- An apocryphal saying, preserved in Mahommedan tradition.

118 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

for his clemency, began to perpetrate acts as cruel
and arbitrary as those of his ancestors. He hurled a
wretched servant, whom he caught sleeping, out of a
window. He died from a fit of passion brought on by
a quarrel between the retainers of his son and grand-
son. And so, overburdened by his load, he passed
away after forty-nine years upon the throne of Delhi.
To the end he clung desperately to the hope that
Salim might reform, and his last act was to order
him to be invested with the royal robes. Dreams are
evil things for the dreamer.

VII
SHIVAJI THE MARATHA.

VII

SHIVAJI THE MAEATHA.

"When, in the distant ages, the Aryans began to push
on beyond the Panjab, southwards and eastwards, in
search of new homes, they found upon their right a
vast plateau, the approaches to which were guarded
by broad rivers, thick jungles, and steep, densely-
wooded hills. Into this wild land Aryan civilization
penetrated scantily and slowly. In the epic story of
the Eamayana we may detect a reminiscence of the
early struggles of the invaders against the aboriginal
" demons " of the forests. And all through the prs-
Mahommedan period the hardy highlanders of the
Deccan, the South Country as it was vaguely called,
retained their independence. The great Asoka was
content with sending missionaries to the Eastikas.^
They resisted the encroachments of the medieval
Hindu emperors. Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese
traveller, found it impossible to penetrate the
wild tangle of ravine and jungle which confronted
him on the borders. The Deccan has been compared

* The word '* Maratha" means the " Maha Rattas," the Great
Rattas, or Rastikas, an early tribe who once held the Deccan. The
Canarese Raddis are a remnant of the tribe. The derivation from
Maha-Rastra, the " great country," par excellence, flatters local
conceit, but is quite meaningless.

122 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

to the Scottish highlands. In some respects the
comparison is not a bad one. In both countries
the stern, barren mountain tracts, where a man
must work hard and live frugally, or starve, have
produced a hardy, active race, wiry and brave,
and inspired with an intense love of the wild hills
of their native land.

Tprjxa' aW hyaOt) KovpoTpotpoq is as true of the
Maharashtra as it was of ancient Ithaca. One
feature of the country has played an overwhelming
part in its history. The action of the fierce monsoon
rains upon the mountain ridges has carved out
numbers of bare, flat-topped peaks, easily convertible,
by means of a few bastions and curtains at the least
inaccessible points, into almost impregnable fortresses.
From immemorial times the Maratha hillmen have
made use of these natural strongholds, fleeing to
them when attacked, only to sally forth again upon
the retiring foe, and to hang upon his flanks like a
pack of hungry wolves. In the more level country
the Maratha commonly rode a pony as small and
hardy as himself. A perfect horseman, he was more
than a match over the rough ground of the Deccan,
for the heavy cavalry of Hindu or Mahommedan
invaders from the northern plains. One is reminded,
when reading of the fruitless endeavours of Aurang-
zeb to bring the Marathas to an open engagement,
of the English campaigns against Wallace and the
Bruce in Scotland. Indeed, Froissart's description
of the Scottish army applies admirably to the
Marathas. "It consisted of twenty thousand men,
bold and hardy, armed after the manner of their
country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 123

never tied up or dressed, but turned immediately
after the day's march to pasture on the heath or in
the fields. They bring no carriages -with them on
account of the mountains they have to pass, neither
do they carry with them any provisions of bread or
wine, for their habits of sobriety are such that in
time of war they will live for a long time on flesh
half-sodden without bread, and diink the river-water
without wine. . . . Under the flap of his saddle each
man carries a broad piece of metal, behind him a
little bag of oatmeal ; when they have eaten too
much of the flesh, and their stomach appears weak
and empty, they set this plate over the fire, knead
the meal with water, and when the plate is hot, put
a little of the paste upon it, and bake a thin cake like
a biscuit, which they eat to warm their stomachs.
It is, therefore, no wonder that they perform a longer
day's march than other soldiers." The Maratha
warrior, even more frugal than the Scot, often sub-
sisted for several days upon the ripe corn of the
country, which he plucked and rubbed between his
hands as he sat upon his horse.^ This, and a
draught of milk begged at the nearest village, was
enough to satisfy his wants.

The Marathas, however, were unable to resist the
great Mahommedan invasion which penetrated right
down to Cape Comorin in the early years of the
fourteenth century. The Deccan, though not in
the true sense of the word conquered, became part
of the Empire of Ala-ud-din. A few years later,
Zafar Khan, the governor, rebelled, and set up an
independent monarchy, which, following the law of
* Grant Duff, vol. i., note, p. 571 (end).

124 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

Oriental states, eventually split up into five portions,
of which by far the most important were the king-
doms of Bijapur in the south, and Ahmednagar in
the north. These two kingdoms practically divided
the Maharashtra between them. We need not follow
in detail the confused struggles which occupied the
Mahommedan kingdoms of the Deccan for the next
two centuries. In 1565 Bijapur vanquished and over-
threw the great Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar ; in
1571 she combined with Ahmednagar in a fruitless
attempt to dislodge the Portuguese. In both king-
doms the number of Mahommedans are comparatively
small. Adventurers from Abyssinia, Persia, and
Turkey certainly found their way to the capitals from
time to time, bat not in sufficient numbers to form
an army large enough to hold the country. The
Mahommedan rulers were forced to employ Hindus
very extensively, both in civil and mihtary posts ;
they were at best a small garrison, confined to the
principal towns, with here and there a Mahommedan
officer in charge of a detached post at a fort or
other strategic point. These latter, cut off from their
companions, and living a lonely life in a hostile
country, generally neglected their duties, and the
forts more often than not were in a ruinous condition,
hopelessly undermanned, and carelessly guarded.
By far the larger part of the Deccan was held in fief
by the great Maratha nobles, who, like the feudal
barons of medieval Europe, were allowed to do prac-
tically as they liked in their estates, in return for
military service. Their forces were of such magni-
tude as to render their services indispensable, and
this made them still more independent.

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 125

About 1586 a new factor was introduced into Deccan
politics ; the Kingdom of Alimednagar was reduced to
a state of anarchy by the quarrels of the Mahommedan
and Hindu factions, and the Hindu party committed
the fatal error of soliciting the help of the Moghuls
from Delhi. As is usually the case, the intruders, once
called in, were not easily got rid of; the Emperor
Akbar, perceiving the weakness of the Mahommedan
states in Southern India, conceived the idea of
annexing them. Too late the Kingdom of Alimednagar
made desperate efforts to repel the invader. The
heroic Chand Bibi,^ the widowed queen, fought hand-
to-hand in the breaches until she fell, the victim of a
particularly loathsome intrigue. After her death,
Malik Amber continued the struggle with varying
fortunes till 1626. In these wars the Maratha
nobility played a considerable part. The desertion
of Lakhoji Jadhavrao to the Moghuls in 1621 prac-
tically settled the fate of Ahmednagar ; another
Maratha chief, Shahji Bhonsle, after going over to
the Moghuls, and trying his hand at a little king-
making of his own, decided, about 1637, to leave
Ahmednagar to its fate, and to enter the service of
the still flourishing monarchy of Bijapur. Shahji
Bhonsle was an ambitious, and not over-scrupulous,
soldier of fortune. Married by his father to the
daughter of Jadhavrao, the first noble in the Deccan,
he quickly rose to prominence as a military officer.
His son, Shivaji, was born in 1627, and shared in his

' The great women of Indian History, both Mahommedan and
Hindu — Sita, Damayanti, Chand Bibi, Ahilyabai, and countless
others, down to that grand old rebel, the Rani of Jhansi — sadly
belie the traditional "down-trodden Indian woman " of the story-
books.

126 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

youth the adventures inseparable from his father's
calling. The parents do not appear to have agreed
very well ; the difference in rank between them was
a source of friction, and after the treaty of 1637
Shahji took another wife, and went off on a long
campaign in the Carnatic, leaving Jijibai and her
child by themselves in his family estate of Poona.
Here young Shivaji grew up under his mother's
influence. Most Hindu women are conservative.
Jijibai was no exception to the rule. Proud, bigoted,
and intensely religious, she brought up her son in
accordance with the most orthodox traditions. He
early learnt to regard with hatred the Mahommedans
as the enemies of his country and his gods, to
reverence the Hindu religion and the Brahmins, and
to love the romantic legends of the mythical heroes
of India, and the saints and deities of the Maharashtra.
Poona has always been a place of peculiar sanctity, a
stronghold of Brahminism, and Shivaji imbibed its
atmosphere from his very youth. What he needed
of practical training he acquired from his guardian,
Dadoji Kondadev, the administrator of Shahji's
Poona estate; he could neither read nor write, for
these were arts proper to the Brahmin, not to the
soldier; but his love of the national songs of the
land was sufficiently shown when one day he risked
his life by stealing right into his enemies' camp to
hear a recitation by a rhapsodist, of the kind that
are still popular among the Marathas. His patron
saint was the goddess Bhavani, the consort of Shiva
in her most terrific aspect ; his chaplain or spiritual
director was Eamadas, a celebrated saint and poet
of no mean order. For the most part, Shivaji had

SHIVAJI THE MAKATHA 127

been allowed from his boyhood to run wild among
the mountains which cover a large portion of his
father's estate. Here he became the close companion
of the Mavlis or highlanders of the district, who
taught the young chief to ride and shoot, and use the
sword and spear. They took him hunting and
climbing until he grew to know every nook and
cranny of the hills ; and, what was more, he gained
an almost incredible influence among the men of the
hills, who soon declared themselves ready to follow
him anywhere.

As Shivaji grew up, he could not fail to perceive
what an excellent chance was offered for a bold
adventurer to declare for independence in the Maha-
rashtra. The Bijapur Government, two hundred miles
away, cared little what happened in these barren hills,
provided that the tax-farmers sent their scanty tribute
with tolerable regularity. Their armies were busy in
the Carnatic, and the Mahommedan lords, in their
luxurious palaces, considered the poor, half-savage
Marathas scarcely worthy a thought. And so, when
Shivaji sent a messenger to say that he had captured
the hill-fort of Torna, no one greatly cared, especially
as the emissary promised that his master would pay
a far larger rent than the former holders. A few
judicious bribes settled the matter. One by one,
Singad, Purandhar, and other fortresses followed
suit. Still the authorities did nothing. At last
Shivaji grew bolder ; he seized the Governor of Kalyan
by a clever stratagem, and made himself owner of
that important district, with its fine harbours and
fertile territory. This act at last roused even
Mahommed Adil Shah, and he tried to coerce the

128 INDIAN mSTOEICAL STUDIES

young recreant by seizing his father as a hostage.
For the next four years Shivaji's actions were
hampered by fear of retaliation. He corresponded
with the Moghul Emperor, Shahjahan, at Delhi, and
threatened to call him in, which kept the Bijapur
authorities from taking active steps, till finally, in
1657, they decided to release their old ojSicer, whose
help they needed owing to fresh complications in the
Carnatic. But no sooner was his father out of danger,
than Shivaji started upon his adventures again. The
Eaja of Javli, a powerful nobleman, had resisted all
inducements to join in the rebellion, and a plot was
formed to make an end of him once and for all.^
Bodies of Mavlis were concealed in the thick jungle
on the borders of his town. Two of Shivaji's officers
then entered, pretending to have come with a message
from their master. They treacherously stabbed the
Raja in open court, and escaping in the tumult which
ensued, raised the signal for the Mavlis to issue forth
from their ambuscade. In spite of a brave resistance,
the retainers of Javli were soon cut down, and the
territory passed to Shivaji. Historians who enlarge
upon the enormity of the crime forget the temper of
the age and the necessities of the situation. The
feeling between the Mores and Shivaji was of the
bitterest kind, and he only behaved exactly as any
of his opponents would have done to him under
similar circumstances. Shivaji was naturally neither
treacherous nor cruel ; but as an outlaw bent upon
a desperate career, he carried his life in his hands.

^ Besides this, he must have been privy to Baji Shamraji's plot to
seize Shivaji in Javli territory and hand him over to Bijapur. There
is no doubt what would have happened to Shivaji in that case.

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 129

Neither Moghiil, Adil Shah, nor his own neighbours
would have shown him any mercy if they had caught
him. It was a question who should strike first.

About two miles from the scene of this tragedy
stands an abrupt, almost conical hill, since named
Pratapgad. The scenery around is wild and beautiful
in the extreme. On the east tower the huge, scarped
cliffs of the Mahableshwar range, the home of the
" Great Strong God," where the sacred Krishna sets
forth on its long journey to the Bay of Bengal. To the
west, the land slopes away down to the level plains ;
on the horizon may be dimly discerned the faint, silver
line of the distant sea. On all sides, the summit is
guarded by sheer precipices ; far below, dense masses
of tropical jungle make the country impassable to all
but the highlanders of the districts, whose little
hamlets, clustering in tiny clearings along the course
of the mountain streams, may be perceived here and
there. The position was of immense strategical
importance to Shivaji. It commanded the recently
conquered district. What was more important, it
dominated the Par Pass, the great highway between
the Deccan highlands and the fertile fields and
flourishing ports of the Konkan.^ Here Baji Shamraj
had lain in wait for Shivaji at the beginning of his
career, only failing by his own faintheartedness to
nip the great warrior's career in the bud. It was
therefore only natural that Shivaji should immediately
seize the rock and detail his famous Brahmin ofiicer,
More Tirmal Pingle, to put it in a state of defence.
The Bijapur Government, agitated by the internal

' There are now two other roads, the Kumbharli and Fitzgerald
roads.

130 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

troubles which ensued on the death of Mahommed
Adil Shah at the end of 1656, and threatened with a
fresh Moghul invasion by the young Aurangzeb, still
looked on inertly ; their armies were sufficiently
occupied in keeping order among the rich zamindars
of the Carnatic, and they heeded little what happened
in the barren mountains of the Deccan, which scarcely
repaid the cost of occupation. Shivaji no sooner
heard of the proposed expedition from Delhi, than,
with his usual adroitness, he began to make terms
with Aurangzeb. As soon, however, as the latter
was recalled by political complications nearer home,
he plundered the territory of Ahmednagar, penetrat-
ing up to the walls of the city itself. He returned
home laden with spoil, driving in front of his men
hundreds of captured horses, which he sadly needed
as cavalry remounts. A raid like this, defying openly
the cherished foe of their race, and offering unlimited
opportunities of loot, was dear to the Maratha heart,
and enormously increased Shivaji's reputation.

The next year (1659) Shivaji sent a large force to
invade the Konkan, the rich country lying between
the Ghats and the sea. The coasting ports, with
their important pilgrim - traffic to Mecca, were
threatened; the loss of the allegiance of the local
chiefs to Bijapur seemed imminent, and the Maratha
foragers penetrated right into the Kolhapur district,
almost to the borders of Bijapur itself.

At last the Government was aroused. They had,
by their incredible supineness, allowed a formidable
rebellion to grow up, which a few years earlier might
have been stamped out by a few hundred men in a
week. This time, however, they determined that no

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 131

mistake should be made. A force of twelve thousand
troops, cavalry and infantry, with rocket batteries
and mountain guns on camel-back, was despatched
under the command of an experienced Pathan officer
named Afzul Khan, who knew the Deccan well, having
held a post some years before in the neighbouring
district of Wai. Before his departure, Afzul Khan
boasted in open Durbar that he would drag the
" Mountain Eat " in chains to his sovereign's throne.
The jest was an ill-omened one. Afzul Khan was
fey, as the Scotch would have said. To make things
worse, he desecrated on his way the famous temples
of Bhavani at Tuljapur, and of Vithoba at Pand-
harpur. No Maratha would henceforth show him
mercy, least of all Shivaji, who had a brother's life
and the honour of his goddess to avenge.

Shivaji, on the news of the enemies' approach,
retreated to the new fortress at the head of the Par
Pass.^ As the Mahommedans toiled wearily along
the winding road, their commander no longer took
the same hopeful view of the situation. On both
sides the steep, jungle-clad hills rose abruptly, their
summits clothed in dense mist. At any moment the
force might find itself ambushed in a position where
superior numbers would avail little. The cold rain
disheartened and wearied the men, and no one looked
forward to the escalade of an almost impregnable
fortress, preceded, perhaps, by an arduous and
dangerous siege. On the other hand, Shivaji's
position was far from enviable. He dared not meet
his opponents in the open field, and if he were shut
up for long in his stronghold, his power over the

' Early in October, 1659.

132 INDIAN PIISTORICAL STUDIES

country would vanish as quickly as it had arisen.
The rival chiefs of the Deccan, always ready to join
the winning side, would desert him, and the work of
years would be undone. He therefore sent messengers
to his opponents, imploring them to parley. Afzul
Khan assented gladly, and despatched a Brahmin
officer of the name of Gopinathpant, with a suitable
retinue, to arrange terms of peace agreeable to both
parties. The ambassadors were hospitably received ;
and that night Shivaji secretly visited the Brahmin's
tent, and implored him to aid the cause of his country
and her gods. Blood is thicker than water. Gopinath-
pant at last consented, and it was agreed that an
interview between the leaders should be arranged.
To this Afzul Khan raised no objection ; iDrobably he
thought that he would find an opportunity to assassi-
nate or capture his foe. Himself a man of huge
stature, and skilled in the use of arms, he saw nothing
to fear in an open meeting with the insignificant
Maratha. Shivaji' s attitude was very different. The
night before the interview he spent in prayer before
the image of his goddess, and rising before dawn,
he performed with the utmost scrupulousness the
elaborate ablutions prescribed by his religion. He
dressed with great care. Beneath his long linen robe
was a coat of the finest chain-armour; in his belt
was the famous Bhavani sword, and concealed in the
palm of his left hand lay the terrible Tiger's claws,
sharp steel hooks fastened to the fingers. Kneeling
at the feet of his mother, he asked her blessing, and
then he bade his friends farewell, and committed his
little son to their care in case he feU.

The fatal morning had arrived. The Mahommedan

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 133

force had already moved to the village of Javli, the
scene of the tragedy five years before ; and now
the Khan, seated in a litter and accompanied by an
escort of fifteen hundred cavalry, advanced to the
interview. At the foot of the fort the troops halted
and dismounted, while Afzul Khan, accompanied by a
single officer, went forward along the winding path
leading to the stronghold. As he came in sight,
Shivaji, accompanied by his tried comrade Tanaji
Malusre, came down to meet him. What exactly
happened after this, we shall never know. Afzul
Khan may or may not have struck the first blow ; but
Shivaji, leaning forward as if to embrace him, thrust
the Tiger's claws into his entrails. In another
moment, his sword was knocked out of his hand and
he was cut down. His companion, who to his lasting
honour refused the generously offered quarter, had no
chance against the famous swordsmanship of the
Maratha leaders. In a moment, he, too, fell ; and
the preconcerted firing of five guns from the fortress
gave the signal for a simultaneous attack upon the
troopers and the main force at Javli. With wild
cries, the Mavlis rushed from their concealment upon
the doomed army ; the unfortunate troopers, caught
dismounted and utterly ofi* their guard, fell almost to
a man ; of the main body many surrendered, and
were treated with the utmost humanity — for Shivaji,
a true soldier whatever his detractors may say, was
always honourable in dealing with his prisoners.
Others fled into the jungle, where they were quickly
lost or devoured by the wolves and panthers of the
hills. For many days, famished soldiers wandered in
and gave themselves up.

134 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

Seldom has a battle been more decisive and more
cheaply won. At a single blow, Shivaji had utterly
destroyed a picked Mahommedan force, and had cap-
tured camels, elephants, specie and guns, to say
nothing of over four thousand valuable horses. In
order to follow up his victory, he immediately organ-
ized an expedition into the Carnatic. The strong
forts of Eangana and Panhala, in the Kolhapur
district, were taken, and the Marathas, plundering
and burning, advanced almost to the gates of Bijapur.
Unfortunately, however, on his return journey,
Shivaji allowed himself to be invested in Panhala
fort, from which, after a four months' siege, he only
escaped by a somewhat ignominious ruse. Asking
for a truce preparatory to surrender, he slipped out
under cover of night, and joined a body of troops who
were awaiting him. In the morning the Mahomme-
dans, furious at the deception, followed in hot pursuit ;
it was on this occasion that the gallant Baji Prabhu
saved his master's life at the expense of his own.
Shivaji, with the enemy at his heels, reached a
narrow pass in the Ghats ; a few miles further and
he would be safely inside the walls of Ptangana ; so,
detaching this officer with a thousand Mavlis to hold
it, he bade them not fall back until five guns were
fired from the fort. It was another Thermopylae.
For nine hours the devoted band hurled back succes-
sive relays of fresh troops who charged up the defile ; at
last, just as the long-expected signal was given, their
commander fell mortally wounded, and the heroic
little force retired slowly to the fort, bearing their
leader's body with them. They had lost three-quarters
of their number, dead or wounded, in the engagement.

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 135

For the next two years (1661-1662), the Bijapur
Government, realizmg the hopelessness of conquering
Shivaji, and undermined, as usual, by factions which
deprived them of the services of their ablest leaders,
appear to have granted him an informal truce.
Shivaji, however, was not a man to rest upon his
laurels. Having conquered the Deccan as far as Goa
in the south, he proceeded to attempt to repeat his
successes against the Moghuls in the north. He set
out against Aurangabad, whilst his fleet, a new
departure on his part, harassed the coasts, and held
up the pilgrim-ships bound for Mecca, to the intense
anger of the orthodox Aurangzeb. The Moghul
commander, Shahiste Khan, who was sent to chastise
the rebels, found he had no light task in front of him.
At the outset, his whole force was checked by the
obstinate defence of the fortress of Chakan, which
cost him nine hundred men. Then, though he occu-
pied Poona, he was unable to dislodge Shivaji from
Singad, the gigantic rock-fortress overlooking the
town. It was at this juncture that Shivaji performed
one of those picturesque feats of gallantry by which
he is remembered all over the Deccan. He and a few
picked companions entered Poona in disguise in a
wedding procession, and that night they raided the
house of the commander-in-chief. Shahiste Khan
only just escaped with his life ; he jumped out of a
window, receiving, as he did so, a sword-cut which
deprived him of one of his fingers, and his son and
many retainers were killed. Shivaji and his followers
escaped in the darkness, and hastened back to their
friends. All night long, the mortified Mahommedans
saw torches and bonfires blazing on the sides of

136 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Singad, and to make matters worse, a body of cavalry
which rode out of the city to reconnoitre next morning,
fell into an ambush and were chased ignominiously
back.

In 1665, however, the great Rajput leader, the
Raja Jayasingh of Jaypur, was sent to command
operations in the Deccan. He laid siege to Purandar,
and Shivaji, feeling that resistance was hopeless,
came to terms with him at once. Shivaji was a
prudent man; he knew his hillmen could cut up a
small, ill-led force, storm a fort, or surprise a town,
but the time had not come when the Marathas could
defy the Great Moghul to his face. Giving up twenty
of the Deccan forts, he offered to join an expedi-
tion against Bijapur, and then, having thoroughly
ingratiated himself with the Moghul authorities, he
boldly set out the following year for Delhi, to demand
of Aurangzeb his acknowledgment as a feudatory of
the empire. Shivaji, however, had reckoned without
his host. Aurangzeb, cold and suspicious, received
his overtures with indifference. To his dismay, he
found himself practically a prisoner. There is little
doubt that the Emperor intended eventually, upon
some excuse or other, to make away with him,
and then, after subduing the Deccan, to proceed to
the conquest of the hated heretics of Bijapur. He
had not forgotten Shivaji's raid upon Ahmednagar,
nor, above all, his attacks on the pilgrim-boats bound
for Mecca.

Shivaji viewed the situation with growing uneasi-
ness. He asked to be dismissed on the ground that
the climate injured the health of his followers.
Aurangzeb, while gladly allowing the latter to return

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 137

to their homes, refused permission to their leader.
Bj' a clever ruse, however, Shivaji managed at last to
escape from his implacable foe : feigning sickness, he
and his son were carried outside the town in one of
the long wicker baskets, heaped with flowers and
sweetmeats, in which it was the custom to despatch
charitable gifts to the crowds thronging the courtj'ards
of the mosques and temples. Once outside the town,
they found a swift horse awaiting them, and on this
they rode for dear life to the sacred city of Muttra.
Here the great chief was hidden by a Brahmin family,
and then, disguised as a Yogi,^ he was quickly
swallowed up in the vast crowds of pilgi'ims and
devotees who resort to the spot. Soon afterwards he
reappeared in the Deccan, to the immense joy of his
people. The gallant Tanaji had arranged the plans
for his master's escape, and no doubt the family of
Jaysiugh connived at it : for Jaysingh had guaranteed
Shivaji's safety, and a Eajput never breaks his word.
The next two years were the most peaceful in
Shavaji's life. Aurangzeb, having lost his victim,
pretended that he had voluntarily dismissed him, and
his old enemy, the King of Bijapur, actually con-
sented to pay a considerable tribute to the once
despised "Mountain Eat." These years of leisure
were spent in organizing the country on an altogether
new system, for Shivaji, like Napoleon, was a skilled
administrator when he was given time to attend to
such matters. The army was put upon a regular
footing, well-paid and organized. It was no longer

' The favourite trick of the political suspect, practised both at
the time of the Great Mutiny and to-dav. It nearly always baffles
the police.

138 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

an undisciplined band of hillmen : besides the Mavlis,
Hetkaris, the skilful marksmen of the low country,
and cavalry were enlisted. The forts received the
greatest attention. They were carefully repaired,
armed, and provisioned : each had a civil and military
officer, with elaborate instructions for the posting of
sentries, guards, and so forth. As their total number
was nearly three hundred, the task of an invading
army which ventured into this veritable wasp's nest
was not likely to be an enviable one. The people of
the lower castes, living at the foot of the fort, were
given free lands on condition that they guarded it and
supplied it with fodder and provisions. They were
taught to regard the fortress " as their mother," and
well and faithfully they performed their duties. They
alone knew the forest paths ; they watched the on-
coming foe, warned the garrison of his approach, and
harassed his flanks and rear. The civil administration
was conducted by eight great officers of state, most of
them veteran leaders of Shivaji's army : the Govern-
ment was very decentralized, and as little interference
as possible with the village officials, who governed in
accordance with the immemorial, unwritten custom
of the people, was allowed ; justice was administered
by the Panchayat, or Tribunal of Five, as it always
has been in India. Here again the jury represented
local tradition.

In matters of revenue Shivaji effected great and
lasting reforms, based upon the principles taught him
by his old tutor, and acquired ultimately from the
system of Todar Mall, the minister of Akbar. The
value of the land was not regarded as fixed; every
year the crops were assessed, two-fifths of the amount

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 139

being paid to the Government. The old system of
tax-farming, with its horrible abuses, was utterly
stamped out ; all taxes were paid direct to the royal
officer. And lastly, the feudal system of granting
lands in fief, in return for service, was abolished.
The soldiers were henceforth the servants of the
Government, and not retainers of the local chiefs ;
and so the most fruitful cause of rebellion and dis-
union was removed. No offices, civil or military,
were to be hereditary ; merit alone was to earn them.
Nor were Brahmins only employed ; Marathas and
Prabhus had their share of posts, and even the lower
orders had definite duties assigned to them. By a
mixture of castes, a check was put upon a species of
oppression even now not unknown in India.

Shivaji, however, was not left long in peace to carry
out these judicious reforms. Aurangzeb, treacherous
as ever, had given orders that he should be secretly
captured. The plot leaked out, and Shivaji at once
declared war upon his dastardly opponent. Among
the forts that had been surrendered to the Moghuls
was the great castle of Singad, the Lion's Den,
commanding the city of Poona, and at the time it
was garrisoned by a Piajput regiment, under a famous
officer named Ude Ban. Shivaji determined to re-
capture it. Thither, then, early in February, 1670,
set out a body of one thousand Mavlis from Piaigad,
under the great Tanaji and his brother Suryaji. In
order to avoid suspicion, they went by devious paths
only known to themselves, and met at a rendezvous
at the foot of the rock. It was a dark night, the
9th of February, moonless and bitterly cold. Above,
the sentries, half-asleep, were cowering over their

140 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

fires or in the corners of the ramparts, to avoid the
chill winds which hlow upon the Ghats in the winter.
Choosing the least accessible side, where forty feet of
sheer black rock towers above the hillside, Tanaji
began to ascend. This part of the stronghold was
weakly fortified and carelessly guarded, for it was
deemed unscalable — as, indeed, it was to any but a
Deccani highlander. How Tanaji climbed it in the
dark, it is impossible to surmise. The feat was one
of almost incredible difiiculty. At last, however, the
top was reached, and letting down a rope, Tanaji
hauled up and made fast a ladder. Three hundred
of the Mavlis had ascended, when a sentry took
alarm. He was shot, but too late, by an arrow ; ^
blue lights and flares showed to the garrison the
little party of stormers on the cliff-side. Seeing that
they were discovered, Tanaji ordered them to charge ;
but he fell in the onset, and the Marathas in dismay
began to retreat. At that moment, however, Suryaji
reached the summit with the reserves. Seeing what
had happened, he rallied the force by telling them
that the ladder was down, and there was no escape.
"Cowards!" he cried, "will you leave your father's
body to be tossed into a dung-pit by scavengers ? "
Stung by the taunt, the Marathas raised their war-
cry, " Har, Har, Mahadeo ! " and flung themselves
like tigers upon the foe. The brave garrison, as the
furious mass charged down upon them in the dark-
ness, fell back inch by inch, till at last they could
go no further. Many, disdaining to yield, flung
themselves over the cliff and were dashed to pieces.

* One man in every ten carried a bow and arrow, as this weapon
was useful for surprises, when a gun would give the alarm.

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 141

Eesistance grew fainter and fainter, till at last it
died out, and the Marathas fired a thatched hut to
give the signal to the anxious watchers on the walls
of Raigad. When the bleak dawn arose, a horrible
sight met the eye. The fort was a shambles. The two
commanders lay dead, with three hundred Marathas
and five hundred Rajputs, who, true to the traditions
of their splendid race, died at their posts. A few
only, too desperately wounded to move, were found
hiding and taken prisoners. It was a great achieve-
ment, but the death of his gallant comrade, who had
stood by him in a hundred perils, was a sore grief to
Shivaji. ** I have won the den and lost the Lion,"
he said.

The war followed its normal course. The forts
were re-taken, and Shivaji made his usual plunder-
ing expedition into the Konkan. Jinjera, as before,
under its stout Abyssinian governor, proved too much
for the invaders, but Surat was pillaged. The English
factory, however, resisted the attack, and the Mara-
thas withdrew on hearing of the approach of a Moghul
force. Shivaji could now put into the field a force
of forty thousand men, and in the following year he
actually dared to risk an open engagement with a
division of the Imperial Army. The result was com-
pletely successful; the Marathas, falling back, drew
on the Mahommedans until they were in disorder,
when their cavalry suddenly wheeled and delivered a
smashing charge in the most brilliant style, literally
cutting their opponents to pieces. The moral efiect
of the victory was enormous : the newly raised Maratha
cavalry learned that they were a match for their op-
ponents in the open field. Henceforth Mogbul prestige

142 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

was on the wane in the Deccan. The next two years
were devoted to a successful campaign in Bijapur,
again rent in two by faction ; and finally, in 1674,
Shivaji was crowned at Eaigad as "Padshaha of the
Hindus " — a title which he had nobly earned. The
coronation was performed by a great saint from
Benares, Gaga Bhat, on the 6th of June, and after
it was over, the new King undertook the ancient cere-
mony of " weighing himself in gold," and distributing
the sum among the poor. Among the spectators was
Mr. Oxenham, the English agent from Bombay, who
had come to negotiate a treaty with the Marathas.
At the auspicious moment, salvoes of cannon were
fired in all the forts, till from end to end of the
Sahyadri range the birth of the Maratha Empire was
proclaimed.

After his coronation, Shivaji appeared as the
protector of the Deccan from the Moghuls. They,
and not Bijapur, were his country's true foes. And
so, after making an alliance with the King of Gol-
conda, Shivaji had two grand objects in view. Firstly,
he sought to enlarge his realm by a great invasion
of the Carnatic, in the course of which he conquered
Tanjore and Yellore; and secondly, he checked Moghul
designs upon Bijapur, forcing the invaders back to
Aurangabad. In the course of these operations, the
great leader, worn out by years of toil, died of what
appeared at first to be a trifling injury, on April 5th,
1680.

In appearance, Shivaji was a typical Maratha —
short and wiry, with long arms and large feet, and
the keen eye of the hillman. He was abstemious
and frugal in his habits, and devoted to his mother,

SHIVAJI THE MARATHA 143

bis children, and bis country. Like many other
great leaders, be believed himself to be under divine
guidance ; be took no step without the advice of bis
goddess Bhavani, and he was earnestly imbued with
the sense of his mission to restore the independence
of bis people. His manner was frank, pleasing, and
soldierly ; he was adored by bis men, and not a single
case of rebellion or remissness occurred during bis
long absence in Delhi. Yet disobedience met with
the sternest rebuke, and one officer elected to die in
battle rather than incur his wrath. He demanded
implicit obedience to all orders, and only his magnetic
personality could have transformed a horde of free-
booters into a disciplined army as he did. Though
personally brave to a fault, be bad the sense not to
risk bis life unnecessarily, knowing as be did that
the cause would fall with his death. In his organizing
ability, too, be showed the qualities which go to make
a good general. It is the fashion of English writers
to depict him as an assassin and a freebooter.^ Free-
booter he certainly was, for until his forces were fit
to take the field, be could only hope to harass his
enemy by sudden raids. Assassin be was not, accord-
ing to the ethics of the day. Of the two murders
attributed to him, that of the Eaja of Javli was pro-
voked by a dastardly attempt to entrap him, which
bad led to the deepest hatred between the two families;
for there was little doubt that, bad it succeeded, Shi-
vaji would have ended his days, blinded or maimed,
in the dungeons of the Adil Shahs. The death of

' On the other hand, Justice Ranad<§'s attempt to justify his hero
at all costs is equally unfair. Shivaji was the product of his age,
and not free from its faults by any means.

144 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Afzul Khan was looked upon at the time as due to
the man's own folly, and there is reasonable ground
for believing that he met Shivaji for exactly the same
purpose himself. The murder of the Comyn by Robert
Bruce was far more unjustifiable, but it is never
brought against him. Necessity knows no law ; they
were hard and cruel times, and Shivaji only did what
his Mahommedan opponents never scrupled to do.
Against these dark deeds we must place the fact that
Shivaji never plundered shrines, even Mahommedan
ones ; he treated women and children with the utmost
courtesy; he was chivalrous and merciful to conquered
enemies, sparing the common soldier, and dismissing
the officer with gifts. "He was a great captain,"
said Aurangzeb, his bitterest foe, when he heard of
his death. ** He persisted in rebellion, plundering
caravans and troubling all men ; but he was guiltless
of the baser sins, and scrupulous of the honour of
the Muslim women and children who fell into his
hands."

VIII

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT
KNOX.

VIII

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT
KNOX.

1640-1720 A.D.
" The utmost Indian isle, Taprobane." — Milton.

The story of the invasion — for it amounts to nothing
less — of India by the crowd of hungry adventurers
who flocked to the East after Yasco de Gama doubled
the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, forms a chapter of
Indian history in itself. They were a motley crew —
Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, ^ French, and
Italians — well-nigh as diverse as could be in their
aims and character. The earliest visitors, stimulated
by the evil example of the Spaniards in the New
World, came principally to plunder. Then followed
more permanent settlers, whose aim was to establish
trading factories on the coast, and to set up per-
manent commercial relations between India and the
West. Others, again, came on individual enterprises,
attracted by love of adventure or in search of employ-
ment, to the Court of the Great Moghul, stories of
which now began to reach Europe, and to make

' The first English vessel put into Surat harbour in August,
1608 — a momentous day in the history of India.

148 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

people realize that the fabled " Wealth of Ormuz and
of Ind " was not altogether a fable after all.

The accounts of what these visitors to the East
saw and did are of singular interest to the student.
The best descriptions of a nation are not seldom
written by foreigners ; for a man often passes over as
not worth recording those details of every-day life in
his own country which are precisely what the historian
of the future regards with the greatest attention.
How many of the speeches or battle-pieces of Thucy-
dides, for instance, would we not sacrifice for a
glimpse into a meeting of the Ecclesia when Cleon
was " up," or into the theatre when an excited
audience was watching, with critical attention, the
latest drama of Euripides ? This lends a peculiar
charm to the reminiscences of Bernier, the garrulous
jottings of Manucci, or the correspondence of the
haughty Eoe, bent upon maintaining the prestige of
his country at any cost. They afford us an insight
into the state of India which all the court journals
and archives would never give us. The personage
who forms the subject of this essay, however, differs
in many ways from the ordinary type of adventurer in
the East in the seventeenth century. Robert Knox,
though he traded at the ports of Western India for
many years, has nothing to tell us of the great
Mahommedan Empire. His adventures were of a
different kind. Driven by accident to shelter in a
bay on the coast of Ceylon, he was carried off
a prisoner to the heart of the island. There, for
nearly twenty years, he lived in the little Buddhist
kingdom of Kandy, among a people utterly un-
contaminated by Western contact, keeping intact

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 149

customs imported over two thousand years before from
Northern India, which had long ago, with the extinc-
tion of Buddhism, disappeared from the land of their
birth. Knox is a plain, unimaginative sailor ; but his
narrative, written in the nervous, homely prose which
the Puritan, perhaps, owes so largely to his devotion to
the English Bible, is a fascinating story of adventure,
and remains, besides, one of the shrewdest and most
accurate accounts of the Sinhalese which we possess.
The annals of Ceylon, preserved in that naive
monkish chronicle, the Maliavamsa, have an interest
all their own in the history of the East. From im-
memorial times the island had been visited by bands
of invaders from the Indian coasts. The liamayana,
the Iliad of the Hindus, contains the earliest legend
of these incursions ; for Ravana, the Paris of the
Indian epic, had carried off the lovely Sita, bringing
upon himself and his city the vengeance which befell
the luckless prince of Troy. But the first permanent
settlement of the Aryans in Ceylon belongs to the
sixth century e.g., when a prince named Vijaya, from
Bengal, sailed with his followers from the harbour of
Tamralipti^ to found a new Salamis in the "Fair
island of Lanka-dipa." It is, perhaps, not generally
recognized that the colonizing spirit was almost as
rife in ancient India as in Greece. Ceylon, Java, and
Cambodia, still contain relics of the Hindu colonists
who settled there. Indian ships found their way to
the mouth of the Tigris and to the coast of Arabia,
perhaps to East Africa. The modern embargo against
crossing the "black water" is of recent origin, and
probably dates from the reactionary Brahminism

1 Tamluk,

150 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

•which followed upon the decay and overthrow of the
Buddhist creed.

The next great event in the history of Ceylon was
its conversion to Buddhism by the emissaries of
Asoka, about three centuries after the landing of
Vijaya, and the subsequent history of the country
deals chiefly with the deeds of the medieval Sinhalese
kings, their fights against the Tamil invaders from
the north, their piety and munificence, and the
glories of the great city of Anuradhapura with its
splendid shrines, its gigantic dafiahas, and its two
precious relics, the sacred Bodhi Tree and the Holy
Tooth. But gradually, as time went on, the Sinhalese
were driven out of Northern and Central Ceylon.
Their great capital, or what was left of it by the
plundering Tamils, fell into ruin ; the few priests
who remained at the shrines were unable to keep
them in repair with the scanty alms they received ;
and the seat of the kingdom was transferred to
Kandy, the little town which nestles in the lower
ranges of the central mountain chain of the island.
Here, protected by the impenetrable and malarious
jungles which cover the foothills with a dense mass
of vegetation, dwelt the Sinhalese kings, till their
deposition by the British in 1815. In 1517 the
Portuguese first gained a footing in the island, to be
replaced, not quite a century later, by the Dutch,
who built the great fortresses which still adorn the
ports and other points of vantage on the coast ; but
these, as Knox says, touched only the fringe of the
country, the heart of the island remaining practically
unknown to the Western world.

Bobert Knox was born in 1640. He came of an

THE ADVENTURES OP ROBERT KNOX 151

old East Anglian family — the sturdy Paritan stock

which manned the Mayjloiucr, and provided Cromwell

with his finest troopers. Knox, indeed, was a typical

Puritan — hard and grim and surly, combining an

unctuous, if sincere, piety of the psalm-singing order

with a shrewd eye for business. Not over-scrupulous

where money was to be made, he found it easy to

reconcile the teachings of the Bible with a little

African slave-trading. His redeeming feature was

the dogged English pluck which brought him through

his manifold perils unscathed. His father owned a

merchant ship — the An?ie, frigate, of 230 tons — in

which he and his son had already made a successful

voyage to Madras. In 1657 they set out again for

the East. They visited the Persian Gulf, Surat, and

Sumatra, and reached the Madras coast late in 1G59,

where, in the roads of Masulipatam, they met W'ith a

disaster. The Anne lost her mainmast in one of the

storms which herald the approach of the north-east

monsoon, and as there are no trees on the flat South

Indian shore, there was nothing for it but to take

her to the Ceylon coast. The great harbour of

Trincomali afforded ample shelter in which the ship

might be repaired; and the thick forests which cover the

shore yielded all the timber necessary for the purpose.

Here, in the Kottiyar Bay, the Anne put in a

few weeks later, and Knox and his father proceeded

to open communication with the local Sinhalese

officer. To their horror, one day, when they had

landed and were awaiting the arrival of the natives

under a large tamarind,^ they were suddenly seized

' The tree still survives, and is marked by an (incorrect) inscrip-
tion. It stands I in the little Moorish village of Muttur, near the
mouth of the Yirugal River.

152 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

and secured. At the same time a boat's crew engaged
in cutting timber was captured. The wily Sinhalese
tried to tempt the ship to approach nearer the coast,
and young Knox was sent to interview the mate for
the purpose. He pluckily advised his ship-mates to
do nothing of the sort ; warning them of the plot, he
ordered them to load their guns and to fire on any
one who approached. The Sinhalese, seeing the
impossibility of capturing the ship, desisted in their
attempts, and after waiting as long as was prudent,
,those on board hoisted sail and made off. It must
have been with heavy hearts that Knox and his
father and their sixteen companions saw their last
hope of liberty vanishing as the frigate made the
entrance and disappeared round the woody heights of
Trincomali, and their distress was augmented when
they were placed, for safety, in separate villages,
" Where we could have none to confer withal or look
upon but the horrible black faces of our heathen
enemies." And then began their long tramp to the
mountain fastnesses of the Sinhalese. For days they
marched " Through great woods, so that we walked
as in an arbour, but desolate of inhabitants." Pro-
bably the party did not follow the main road running
to Matale, along which the mail coach now travels,
but took a short cut through jungle paths known to
themselves. The prisoners were treated with the
utmost leniency and courtesy. They were fed upon
the best produce of the country — rice and herbs and
fruit — and allowed to travel at their own pace. Knox
notes, with some humour, that *' At every town
where we came they used, both old and young, in
great companies to stare at us ; it was also great

THE ADVENTUEES OF ROBERT KNOX 158

entertainment to them to observe our manner of eating
without spoons, and that we could not take the rice
up in our hands as they do, nor gaped and poured
the water into our mouths out of pots according to
the country's custom."

Arriving at the outskirts of Kandy, the prisoners
were distributed in various villages, which were
allotted for their maintenance. And so for months
their weary captivity dragged on. They had nothing
to do ; for they had been captured to satisfy a caprice
of the king, and were merely detained till he should
tire of the pastime. They were not alone ; shortly
before thirteen men of the Persia Merchant, wrecked
on the Maldives, had been brought to Kandy, and the
town was crowded, besides, with Portuguese and
Dutch deserters^ and others, none of whom were
allowed to return, or even to communicate with the
outer world. A letter roused instant suspicion, and
usually cost the bearer his life. For the King of
Kandy, aware of the fate of the lowlanders, was
determined to remain in complete isolation, and to
have no dealings with the foreigners from the West,
who, he knew, were easier to call in than to get rid
of. At first the Englishmen, deceived by their good
treatment, thought that they would quickly obtain
their liberty; and when an old Portuguese priest
warned them not to expect any such good luck,
*' They railed at him, calling him Popish dog and
Jesuitical rogue. But afterwards, to their grief, they

' There were about sixty Dutchmen alone. Even ambassadors
were not permitted to return alive. Eight wretched Frenchmen,
envoys from a fleet which was cruising round Ceylon, were stiU
prisoners when Knox escaped.

154 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

found it to be true as he told them." As time went
on the elder Knox sickened and died, heartbroken at
his hopeless lot, and racked with malaria. *' Now in
his old age, when his head was grown grey, to be a
captive to the heathen, and to leave his bones in the
eastern parts of the world, when it was his hope and
intention, if God permitted him to finish this voyage,
to spend and end the residue of his days at home with
his children in his native country, and to settle me
in the ship in his stead ; these things did break his
heart." And so he died, and Knox was left alone in
the world. How he eked out his scanty resources by
knitting caps, pedling, and gardening, is pathetically
told in his autobiography. For reading he was
reduced to great straits. His sole literature con-
sisted of *' A Practice of Piety and Mr. Eogers'
seven treatises called The Practice of Christianity ^
"These," he says, "I had read so often over that I
had them almost by heart. For my custom was
after dinner to take a book and go into the fields and
sit under a tree, reading and meditating, until
evening; excepting the day when the ague came,
for then I could scarce hold up my head." And so,
"with none but the black boy (his negro servant,
captured with the rest) and the ague for company,"
he passed sixteen weary months. The monotony,
however, was greatly relieved by the happy purchase
of a Bible, the sight of which rejoiced Knox's Puritan
heart exceedingly. It was, indeed, little less than a
miracle that an English Bible should have found its
way to that distant spot. The old man who sold it
to Knox said that he had picked it up when the
Portuguese lost Colombo, among the loot of the town.

THE ADVENTURES OP ROBERT KNOX 155

Knox was fishing when his boy brought him the news,
and he tells us how he "flung away his angle," and,
trembling with excitement, bartered the book for a
cap which he had knitted.^ " I hope the readers will
excuse me," he adds, with a touch of real pathos,
" That I hold them so long upon this single passage.
For it did so aflfect me then that I cannot lightly pass
over it, as often as I think of it, or have occasion to
mention it."

Of the condition of the country and the habits of
the people Knox has a great deal to say. The King,
Eaja Sinha II., was a capable monarch, spoilt, how-
ever, by the caprice and cruelty which is one of the
predominating features of the character of the later
Sinhalese kings. He ruled by terror ; his very
ministers were often put to death for a mere whim,
and among his immediate entom-age, none was safe
for a day. Punishments of the most barbarous
nature — impaling, trampling by elephants, and tor-
tures of a horrible kind, were common. A rebellion
which broke out in Knox's time failed, because the
leaders were too frightened to press their attack
home, when resolute action could not have failed to
succeed ; such was the awe which the monarch's per-
sonality inspired. The town of Kandy was guarded
by parties of men who watched all the passes, and
dense hedges of thorns, with narrow passages cut in
them to admit only a man at a time, protected the
roads. The King's army did not number more than
thirty thousand men, but it sufficed to repel the

' Kuox and his companions made a good deal of money by
knitting and selling the " Bed Tunis caps " worn by seamen of
that daj-.

156 INDIAN HISTOEICAL STUDIES

aggressions of the Dutch, and even to capture their
outlying forts.

These wars were disastrous to Knox and his
friends, who hoped to escape on one occasion when
the invaders came close to the village where they
were quartered. But the King quickly moved them
into the hills, forcing Knox to abandon the garden and
farm, with all the " Hogges and hennes " he had so
laboriously reared. On the whole, however, the
people were lightly and justly governed. They were
prosperous and happy, and not over-taxed, and the
tyranny of the King only affected those who came
into immediate contact with him. The policy of
laissez-faire, which distinguishes Oriental monarchies
from our over-governed, over-systematized Western
countries, left the people very much to themselves.
Disputes were settled by the ijanchayat, which decides
questions by the immemorial tradition of the district ;
crime was rare, and every man lived as he would,
according to the customs of his caste. Of the central
authority, except when called upon to take his share
in some piece of *' Royal Labour",^ — to build a dam
for a tank, a road, or a new palace for the King — he
heard very little. Though every man's life lay at
the mercy of the monarch, and men were sometimes
executed without any apparent reason save the King's
capricious fancy, this sort of tyranny affected the
people at large very little. There was no need to
toil ; the land was fertile and well-watered, and sow-
ing and reaping the rice-crops, with all those pleasant,
beautiful ceremonies and merry-making, song and
dance, which among simple peoples have grown up

^ Pt,ajd Kdrya, an old feudal custom in Ceylon.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 157

arouud these seasons, was a joy rather than a task.
For the rest, there were the rehgious festivals — the
Perahara, with its elephants and painted devil-
dancers, its fine shows and its merry-making ; the
bright moonlight nights, when the yellow-robed
priests read Bajia under the palm-trees, and ex-
pounded to their audience the stories of the births of
the Lord Buddha, and what he did in the guise of a
monkey, an elephant, a deer ; the holy-days, when
all the village, with cries of Sddhu, went to lay
flowers before the Bodhi Tree, or burn incense at the
great white Ddgaba on the hill. A curious feudal
custom prevailed on the Eoyal demesne. It was
farmed out to certain individuals, who were bound to
pay, either in kind or military service, in return for
its tenure ; but any one who chose might relinquish
his lands if he found the conditions too hard for his
liking. The little kingdom of Kandy, nestling in
its mountain fastnesses, was, in its way, better
governed than France, if not England, at the time.

linox also gives us a good deal of curious infor-
mation about the trade guilds and the crafts of the
country. The craftsmen were under the protection
of the provincial officers, or overseers appointed for
the purpose. Some who were under Eoyal patronage
lived on the King's manor, and rendered certain ser-
vices in return for their land. Others held land on
similar terms from the richly-endowed temples or
religious orders, like the goldsmith, who was allowed
half an acre in return for repairing the vessels used
in the Perahara procession, or another who received
a similar grant on condition that he re-gilt the sacred
images in shrine every year, and supplied ** A silver

158 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

ring for the festival tree." It is especially to be
remarked that " No artificers ever change their trade
from generation to generation ; but the son is the same
as was his father, and the daughter marries only to
those of the same craft. And her portion is such tools
as are of use and do belong unto the trade ; though the
father may give over and above what he pleaseth."

Of the high social status of the smiths, their in-
dependence and pretensions, Knox gives a highly
diverting account : " Next after the degree of Hon-
drews (nobles)^ may be placed Goldsmiths, Black-
smiths, Carpenters, and Painters, who are all of one
degree and quality. Heretofore they were accounted
almost equal to the inferior sort of Hondrews, and
they would eat in those artificers' houses, but after-
wards they were degraded on this sort of occasion.
It chanced some Hondrews came to a smith's shop
to have their tools mended ; when it came to be
dinner time the smith leaves work and goes in to his
house to dine, leaving the Hondrews in the shop ;
who had waited there a great while to have their
work done. Now the smith, fearing lest their hunger
might move them to be so impudent as to partake of
his dinner, clapt to his door after him. Which was
taken so heinously by those hungry people, that
they all went and declared what an affront the smith
had put upon them. Whereupon it was decreed that
all people of that rank should be deprived of the
honom* of having the Hondrews to eat in their
houses.^ . , . These smiths, nevertheless, take much

' Hdmaduru, the Kandyan equivalent for the honorific Mahdt-
maya of the low-country.

" The story, no doubt, was invented to account for the actual
status of the smiths. The point, however, is that the craft-guilds

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 159

upon them, especially those who are King's smiths,
that is, such as live in the King's towns and do his
work. They have this privilege, that each has a
parcel of towns belonging to them, whom none but
they are to work for. The ordinary work they do for
them is mending their tools, for which every man
pays to his smith a certain rate of corn in harvest
time according to antient custom. But if any has
work extraordinary, as making new tools or the like,
beside the aforesaid rate of corn, he must pay him
for it. In order to this they come in an humble
manner to the smith with a present, bringing rice,
hens, and other sorts of provisions, or a bottle of rack,
desiring him to appoint his time when they shall
come to have their work done. The smith sits very
gravely upon his stool, his anvil before him, with his
left hand towards the forge, and a little hammer in
his right. They themselves who come with their
work must blow the bellows, and when the iron is to
be beaten with the great maul, he holds it, still sitting
upon his stool, and they must hammer it themselves,
he only with his little hammer knocking it into
fashion. . . . That which makes these smiths so
stately is because the townspeople are compelled to
go to their own smith and none else. And if they
should, that smith is liable to pay damages that
should work for any in another smith's jurisdiction." ^
What a contrast this picture affords to the position
of the craftsman of to-day !

held a position only inferior to the nobles. The craftsman was an
honoured member of the community, an artist not a menial.

' See A. K. Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman (London,
1909), passim. For similar conditions in Medieval England, see
Carlyle's Past and Present,

160 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

The wise regulation which protected the guild-
craftsman from undue competition, enabled him to
enjoy the leisure which is essential to artistic pro-
duction. Of the excellence of the workmanship of
these craftsmen we may judge from Knox's de-
scription of the Royal Palace. "The Palace itself
hath many large and stately gates two-leaved ; these
gates, with their posts, excellently carved ; the iron-
work thereunto belonging, such as bolts and locks,
all rarely engraven. The windows inlaid with silver
plates and ebony. On the top of the houses of his
Palace and Treasury, stand earthen pots at each
corner; which are for ornament; or, which is a
newer fashion, something made of earth resem-
bling flowers or branches. The contrivance of his
palace is, I may say, like Woodstock Bower, with
many turnings and windings and doors." He
notes, however, that the exquisite stone-carving
of the old temples of Anuradhapura and Polon-
naruwa was now no longer executed, the art being
practically a lost one. " The pagodas or temples
01 their gods are so many that I cannot number
them. Many of them are of rare and exquisite
work, built of hewn stone, engraven with images
and figures; but by whom and when I could not
attain to know, the inhabitants themselves being
ignorant therein. But sure I am that they were
built by far more ingenious artificers than the Chin-
gulayes that are now on the land. For the Por-
tuguese in their invasions have defaced some of
them, which there is none found that hath skill
enough to repair to this day." Of one beautiful
ceremony in connection with the making of images,

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 161

mention must be made.^ " Some being devoutly dis-
posed will make the image of this god (Buddha) at
their own charge. For the making whereof they must
bountifully reward the founder. But when the eyes
are to be made, the artificer is to have a good gratifica-
tion, besides the first agreed upon reward. The eyes
being formed, it is thenceforward a god. And then,
being brought with honour from the workman's shop,
it is dedicated by solemnities and sacrifices, and
carried with great state into the shrine or little house
which is before built and prepared for it." It is a
remarkable thing that Knox says nothing of the
famous Palace of the Tooth, nor of the yet more famous
relic it contains.

Of the habit of polyandry, which undoubtedly
existed among the Kandyans, Knox says nothing,
though he remarks severely upon the laxity of the
marriage-laws of the country, which he stigmatizes,
with Puritan bluntness, as " Little better than whore-
dom." The same freedom which characterized
Kandyan life in other respects, was visible here too ;
women enjoyed a degree of liberty unknown on the
Indian continent, and divorce was easily obtained by
either party, being usually arranged by mutual con-
sent. The light-heartedness and absence of restraint
which characterized the people were also visible in
their relations to the gods. It was not unusual, says
Knox, for a man to abuse, mock, and maltreat the
image of the luckless deity, and when the "Voice of the
Devil " was heard, the phantom was usually abused
roundly: "Beef- eating slave, begone, be damned, cut

' See Coomaraswamy, op. cit., p. 75, for a more detailed account
of the ritual of this ceremony.

162 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

bis nose off, beat him a pieces ! " are specimens of the
choice epithets Knox heard used upon these occasions.
Whereupon, " The Voice always ceaseth for a while,
and seems to depart, being heard at a greater distance."
Knox declared that he heard this " Devil's Voice " in
the woods at night himself; it was shrill like the
barking of a dog, and moved rapidly through the air.
The dogs, he says, trembled and shook at the sound,
and though it was never known to do any harm,
" Either just before, or very suddenly after this voice,
the King cuts off the people." Knox says the Voice
was not heard outside the Kandy district ; as a matter
of fact, however, the lowlanders have a story of a
peculiar whistling sound (probably due to a kind of
lizard) which they attribute to an evil spirit. It is
said to be dangerous, and is much dreaded by the
villagers, who declare that it leaps upon the passer-
by and strangles him. It is invulnerable except to
a silver bullet — a potent weapon in all countries.
Knox notices that demoniac possession, as in India,
was not uncommon, the possessed person remaining
" Speechless, shaking, quaking, and dancing, and will
tread upon the fire and not be hurt ; they will also
talk idle, like distracted folk."

Knox had now been a prisoner for nearly fifteen
years. His companions had mostly resigned them-
selves to their lot. The people were courteous and
kind, food was plentiful, and many of them, support-
ing their actions, Puritan - fashion, with Scripture
texts, had taken wives of the daughters of the land.
To them, as to Tennyson's "Lotus Eaters " : —

" ]\Iost weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,"

A Dutch Fobt on the Ceylon Coast.
il'hiiUi hij the Author.)

ITo face page 163.

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 163

and they had no desire to return, even at the price
of freedom, to the horrors of the seaman's life in the
seventeenth century. But Knox had never relinquished
his hopes of escape. He refused any thoughts of
union "with a native woman, and, at the risk of his
life, even declined a tempting offer of employment at
court. It began to be evident that the only way out
of the King's dominions lay to the north, where the
roads were carelessly guarded, the attention of every
one being concentrated on the southern approaches,
where the Dutch frontier forts provided a constant
menace. Knox was now less vigilantly watched than
before. The King had tired of him. He was well
known among the people of the surrounding villages,
where he and his companions, John Loveland and
Stephen Rutland,^ often went on protracted tours,
pedling their goods. Gradually they extended these
to'urs to the lowlands, working with infinite caution
and deliberation, noting the roads and gathering the
necessary information, and always pushing further
and further ahead. Twice they were stopped. Once
they had secured the services of Knox's former " black
boy " as their guide, but Knox fell ill, and when he
recovered, the boy was no longer forthcoming. On
another occasion they were unable to proceed because
owing to a drought it was impossible to cross the
long tracts of jungle which lay on their route. The
drought lasted for four years ; the wells were all dry,
and travelling was impracticable for man or beast.

* Loveland, Knox's best friend, died in October, 1760. Rutland,
who escaped with Knox, again went to the East with him in 1681,
but was dismissed for " following his old course of drinking," and
died in Bengal. The " rack" of Ceylon was too much for him.

164 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

At last, however, the great opportunity came. It
was September 22iid, 1679, when they set out, and
slowly they descended to the plains. They passed
Koswatte, where Knox's father lay buried. They hid
in the jungle to avoid the Revenue Officers, then tour-
ing the district, and with much searching of heart
they entered the examining post at Kaluwila, where
dwelt a high official whose business it was to examine
all the traffic passing along the great north road to
the frontier. Putting on a bold face, however, they
demanded to be admitted to the great man's presence,
and explained that they had come to barter their
wares for dried deer's flesh. To their infinite relief,
he recommended them to try what they could do in
the neighbouring villages, as deer, owing to the recent
drought, were scarce. Overjoyed, they pushed on to
Anuradhapura, doubly glad to get away, as messengers
had just arrived from Kandy to warn the local officers
to be on the look-out ; for the King, in one of his
suspicious moods, had just seized certain nobles and
their families, and he was anxious that none of his
victims should escape. But these, too, had no inkling
of Knox's intentions ; and he tells us how, the night
before they left Kaluwila, he gave a farewell party,
with dancers and tom-toms, which lasted nigh until
dawn.

The next day they emerged from the jungle at
Anuradhapura, a vast grassy plain, surrounded by a
sea of dense forest interspersed with great ruined
ddgahas and the huge icewas, or lakes, constructed by
the kings of the olden time. Here again they halted,
gathering provisions for their final dash through the
wilderness to liberty. Of the two Dutch towns which

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 165

they might make for, Jaffna and Manaar, the latter
was obviously the more accessible. It was impossible,
however, to follow the great highway which joins the
Jaffna road north of Amiradhapura, for there was a
frontier post which no subject of the King of Kandy
could hope to pass. And so they determined upon a
bold course. They resolved to follow the Malwattu
Oya, the stream which issues from the Anuradhapura
lakes, knowing that it would at least take them to
the coast. The first day of their travels, however,
very nearly brought disaster, for they blundered sud-
denly upon the group of villages which borders on the
Tissa Wewa lake, and were forced to hide in a hollow
tree until nightfall. Then they crept out, and felt
their way along the forest-paths. They still heard
voices around them, for the land in the neighbour-
hood of the tanks is thickly populated, and the
Sinhalese are a wakeful folk. But to the harassed
fugitives they appeared like the sound of pursuers,
and they were relieved when a herd of elephants,
trumpeting and breaking the boughs, came between
them and their supposed foes, for no native will
venture into a jungle when elephants are about.
"These elephants," says Knox, "were a very good
guard behind us, and were, methought, like the dark-
ness that came between Israel and the Egyptians.
For the people, we knew, would not dare to go for-
ward, hearing elephants before them." And so they
cooked a scanty meal and snatched a few hours'
sleep ; but when the moon rose, they pushed on
again. A new danger arose, not only from the
animals — elephants, buffaloes, and panthers — driven
by the great drought to the river, but from the wild

166 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

men of the jungle, the Veddahs, whose rude huts
they came across from time to time. Still they pushed
on, passing, perhaps at the ancient Buddhist settle-
ment of Tantri Malai, " A world of hewn stone pillars,
standing upright, and other heaps of hewn stones,
which I suppose formerly were buildings. And in
three or four places are the ruins of bridges built of
stone, some remains of them standing yet upon stone
pillars. In many places are points built out into the
river like wharfs, all of hewn stone ; which I suppose
have been built for kings to sit upon for pleasure."
At last, their shoulders cruelly torn with the thorns,
they emerged into the Tamil country, and here they
found two Brahmins sitting under a tree. One of
these, bribed with " five shillings, a red Tunis hat,
and a knife," consented to guide them a little way,
and once more they lay down under a tree to rest.
Elephants were as plentiful as ever, and could only
be driven away by flinging firebrands at them. And
so, next day, they continued their weary march. The
jungle now grew thinner and thinner, the soil flatter
and more sandy. It was a sign, had they but known
it, that the coast was not far off. Suddenly they
saw a man ; accosting him in broken Portuguese,
they learnt that they were in Dutch territory. They
were free ! A few miles further they reached the
little outjDost of Arippu, and saw once more the surf
breaking on the beach, and heard the sound of white
men's voices. " We arrived," says Knox, " about fom*
of the clock on Saturday afternoon, October 18th,
MDCLXxix. Which day God grant us grace we may
never forget, when He was pleased to give us so
great a deliverance from such a long captivity, of

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBERT KNOX 1G7

nineteen years, six months, and odd days, bein^
taken prisoner when I was nineteen years old, and
continuing in the mountains among the heathen till
I attained to eight and thirty." A strange figure they
must have made, wild and bearded, their shoulders
cut and torn by the thorns, wearing nothing but
tattered loin-cloths and mocassins of deer-skin. Next
day they went to Manaar, where the Governor him-
self received them in his sumptuous house. " And
it seemed not a little strange," Knox tells us, " Who
had dwelt so long in straw cottages among black
heathen, to sit on chairs and eat out of china dishes
on a table." And so, after a long voyage — for pas-
sages to Europe were not easily to be had in those
days, and Knox went from Manaar to Jaffna, Colombo,
and finally Batavia — he arrived in sight of the white
cliffs of England in September, 1680. What changes
he must have found in the old country ! The great
Oliver dead, the Commonwealth long since at an end,
and the Merry Monarch reigning once more on his
father's throne !

One would have thought that Knox had now had
enough of adventure. Far from it, however, he con-
tinued his voyages to the East for the next twenty
years, nearly losing his life on one occasion at Mada-
gascar. From time to time news came to him of his
fellow-captives, some of whom escaped and found
their way to the coast, the majority, however, dying
in Ceylon. To them he addressed a letter, which,
with other interesting papers, has lately been brought
to light.^ His consolatory remarks to these unhappy

1 Found by the late Mr. Donald Fergusson in the Bodleian, and
published by IMr. Ryan (Glasgow, 1911).

168 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

exiles are not without their comic side : ** I have often
mentioned your case to the English East India Com-
pany, but without effect, therefore I advise you to
rely only upon God, Who worketh all things after the
council of His own will, and consider the difficulty of
aged persons to gitt a living as the two now in England
doe find it. I find a man in his native country
among his relations not free from troubles, many of
which I was free from while on Zelone, in so much
that I still continue a single man." Knox died in
1720, eighty years of age, and in no wise hurt by
his strangely adventurous career. He is a typical
example of those dour seamen whose dogged pluck
built up our Eastern Empire. Obstinate and avari-
cious, he still commands our respect, if not our
admiration, and his book is probably the most enter-
taining narrative of adventure in that adventurer's
El Dorado, the East Indies of the seventeenth century,
which has ever been written.

IX

EANJIT SINGH AND THE SIKH
NATION.

IX

EANJIT SINGH AND THE SIKH
NATION.

1780-1839.

To the north of the great Eajputaua Desert lies the
historic land of the Panjab, the country of the Five
Kivers. Stretching from Delhi to Peshawar, it has,
from time immemorial, stood at the gate of India.
Countless invading hordes have rested in its rich
fields on their way to the opulent Middle Country
beyond. Here the Aryan tribes themselves found
then- first home, and here the Vedic Hymns were
composed. Here Alexander built his great altars ;
and often, to this day, the ploughmen unearth coins
of the Indo-Greek or Scythian monarchs who ruled
in the land in distant ages, while ruined stiipas bear
witness to the now-forgotten religion of the Buddha,
long since, with its adherents, swallowed up in the
dead past.

The race which we now know as the Sikhs is
probably descended from various clans of the Jat or
Scythian tribes which poured into India from beyond
the Oxus in the first few centuries after Christ.
Unlike their kinsmen, the gallant Eajputs, these
quiet, rough farmers took little part in subsequent

172 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

historical events. Ready enough to fight when
molested, they possessed none of the picturesque
chivalry of the knights of Rajputana. We do not
hear of them as helping to repel the Mahommedan
invasions, though doubtless many a Sikh fought
under the banner of one or another of the Rajput
chieftains. Like other Hindu peasants, they were
quite oblivious of what went on in the great world
beyond, so long as they themselves remained un-
affected. It remained for a great religious revival
to give them, as such revivals often have, a national
consciousness.

In 1469, while the House of Lodi was maintaining
a feeble and precarious hold upon the throne of Delhi,
a boy named Nanak was born on the banks of the
Ravi near Lahore. Religious movements were in
the au'. For the last three hundred years the Vaish-
nava revival had been exciting the fervour of the
inhabitants of Southern India, and the movement
gradually spread to the centre and north. It was
the great Ramanand who first preached to the common
people, and following the example of Gautama, gave
them a religious literature in their own vernacular,
instead of in the classical language of the Brahmms.
Ramanand's disciple, Kabir, had a new problem to
face. Opposed to him was the powerful and wide-
spread creed of Islam. Was he to condemn it as false,
to urge his followers to persecution and forcible con-
version of the adherents of the rival sect? This,
however, is not the attitude of Hinduism to opposing
religions. Christianity and Islam, essentially mis-
sionary creeds, seek to stamp out and destroy their
rivals; Hinduism takes the wider view. It holds

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SIKH NATION 173

that all religions are at heart one, and it seeks to
embrace and include, rather than to extirpate. Herein
lies the vitality of Hinduism. It has absorbed the
creeds of the Dravidian of the south and the hill-
man of the north, and it provides for the spiritual
needs of the ascetic and the philosopher on the
one hand, and of the simple peasant on the other.
Such was the teaching of Kabir. ** God is One," he
said, " Whether we worship Him as Ali or as Rama.
The Hindu worships God on the eleventh day, the
Mahommedan fasts at Ramazan ; but God made all
the days and all the months. The Hindu God lives
at Benares, the Mahommedan God at Mecca ; but lo,
He Who made the world lives not in a city made by
hands.^ There is One Father of Hindu and Mussal-
man, One God in all matter : He is the Lord of all
the earth, my guardian and my priest." Kabir
died in 1420, and his spirit stirred in young Nanak.
He, too, determined to do for the people of the Land
of Rivers what Kabir had done for the tribes of the
Ganges valley, and so, putting away wife and child,
lie wandered to and fro preaching. Those who fol-
lowed him he called Sikhs or Disciples, and the feel-
ing of reverence for their first great teacher became
the nucleus round which a powerful race grew
up. He, like Kabir, believed in the exalted doctrine
which found in Hinduism and Islam two expressions
of the same truth. " There is no Hindu and no
Mussalman," was one of the earliest of his sayings : —

' " The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor
yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. . . . The hour cometh, when
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in
Truth." (St. John iv. 21 , 23.)

174 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

" Make Love thy mosque, Sincerity thy prayer-carpet, aud Justice

thy Quran ;
Modesty thy circumcision. Courtesy thy Kaaba, Truth thy guru,

Charity thy creed and prayer ;
The will of God thy rosary, and God will preserve thine honour,

0 Nanak." '■

Such was the song he uttered when the Mahom-
medan governor called upon liim to explain this
mysterious utterance. It is impossible to find words
strong enough to reprobate the insane conduct of
Aurangzeb in persecuting the followers of a saint
who wished to unite Hindu and Mahommedan in a
common creed. Had Akbar's wise policy been fol-
lowed, such advances, reciprocated by the holders of
Sufi doctrines on the other side, might have resulted
in a united India, capable of resisting all comers, and
producing a great literature and art in which the
virtues of both races were reflected. Among his own
countrymen, Nanak's efforts were devoted to preach-
ing against caste, cruelty, and superstition. All are
equal in the sight of God. It is not that which goes
into the mouth, but that which comes out of the
mouth, which defiles a man, he explained to those
Brahmins who rebuked him for cooking and eating
a deer caught by his disciples and presented to him.
Equally striking were the verses he uttered on the
subject of caste and ceremonial purification in his
sermon to the assembled pilgrims bathing at Hardwar
on the day of the great festival : —

Evil mindedness is the low-caste woman, cruelty is the butcher's
wife, a slanderous heart the sweeper woman, wrath the pariah
woman.

' Macauliffe, Sikh Religion, i. 38. Compare St. Paul's exhorta-
tions to " circumcise the heart."

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SUvH NATION 175

What availeth it to have drawn lines round thy cooking-place,
when these four sit ever with thee ?

Slake Truth, Self Restraint, and Good Acts thy lines, and the
utterance of the Name thine ablutions.

Nanak, in the nest world he is best who walkcth not in the way
of sin.'

Nanak wandered all over Hindustan, preaching
alike in Jain temples, Brahmin shrines, and Mahom-
medan mosques the Oneness of God. By his side
"went Mardana, his faithful disciple, who played the
lute while the Master sang his inspired lays. It is
even said that on one occasion he performed the Haj,
and it is told how, when he was reproached with
sleeping " with his feet towards God " {i.e. with his
feet towards Mecca), he replied, " Turn my feet in
a direction in which God is not." It is also related
that he met in his wanderings the Emperor Babar.
A Moghul force had raided the village where the
Guru was staying, and carried the Master and his
disciple before their commander. Nanak preached
his doctrine of the universal religion with his usual
fearlessness before the court, and was honoui'ably
dismissed. In 1538 he died, and a pathetic legend
is told of his end. He felt himself sinking, and bade
his disciples sing the Sohila, the beautiful funeral
hymn of the Sikhs : —

In the House where God's praise is sung, and He is meditated
on, sing the Sohila and remember the Creator.

Sing the Sohila of my fearless Lord : I am a sacrifice to the song
of joy by which everlasting comfort is obtained.

The year and the auspicious time for Marriage- are at hand
meet me, my friends : anoint me with oil like a bride.

' Macaulifie, Sikh Religion, i. 52.

2 Death is the mystic marriage of the soul with God. " The
Spirit and the bride say, Come."

176 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

Pray, my friends, that I may meet my Lord. The message
comes to every house : the invitation goeth forth every day.

Remember the voice of the Caller : Nanak, the Daicn is at hand.

The song had died away, and hearing his Hindu
and Mahommedan followers contending whether he
should be burnt or buried, he ordered them to spread
a sheet over him, and said, " Let the Hindus heap
up flowers on my right hand, and the Mahommedans
on my left. Those whose flowers are fresh in the
morning may have my body." In the morning both
heaps of flowers were bright and fresh, and when
they lifted the sheet, lo, there was nothing there.

Time went on, and the number of converts to the
Sikh religion gradually increased. From being merely
a religious sect, the " Disciples " began to assume the
proportions of a nation. Unhampered by caste, and
bound together by the ties of a common religion, they
had, like Cromwell's Ironsides, a political as well as
a religious reason for concerted action. A motive for
combining together was soon found in the need for
resistance to Mahommedan oppression. Under the
liberal rule of Akbar the Sikhs had been tolerantly
governed. Akbar's religious principles were Nanak's
own, and there was little cause for discontent. But
with the accession of Jahangir, provincial mismanage-
ment awoke the latent antipathy of Hindu and
Mahommedan, which never remains quiescent long
in India. The restless Arjun, the fifth Guru, began
his remarkable career about this time. He started
building the Golden Temple at Amritsar, and in 1604
compiled the first edition of the Adi Grantha,^ the
Bible of the Sikh nation, containing the inspired

1 Orantha, like Bible, means Book — the book, par excellence.

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SHm NATION 177

utterances of the Gurus. This venerable volume is
still preserved at Khartarpur, and on holy days it is
exposed to the gaze of the faithful. A copy was pre-
sented to Queen Victoria in 1861, and to-day Sikh regi-
ments march with the sacred book at their head.
In 1606 Arjun was put to death for joining in a rising
against the Emperor. His sandal - wood staff at
Khartarpur is still shown to pilgrims, in the hand-
some edifice built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The
Sikhs continued to give trouble to their Mahommedau
rulers under Hargovind, Arjun's son and successor ;
but the rebellion really flamed out under the dis-
astrous rule of Aurangzeb, who usurped the throne
in 1658. Aurangzeb set himself to stamp out in-
fidels wherever he found them. Among the special
objects of his animosity were the Sikhs. An Imperial
Army ravaged the Panjab, and their Guru, Teg
Bahadur, was dragged in chains to Delhi. " I see,"
he said dauntlessly to the Emperor, " A power rising
in the West, which will sweep your Empire into the
dust." His body was quartered and hung before the
city gates ; but the Sikhs never forgot his prophetic
words. They have accounted largely for Sikh loyalty
to British rule ; and they were on the lips of the
gallant Panjabi regiments before Delhi in 1857, when
at last they avenged in blood the martyrdom of their
leader. Teg Bahadur's son, Govind Singh, the last
of the Gurus, fled to the hills when his father was
taken. For years he studied and meditated, pre-
paring for his future career, and at last one day
he descended, with five disciples, into the plains,
and announced his mission. Thousands flocked to
his banner asking for baptism at his hands, and

178 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

demanded to be led against the oppressor. Those who
were thus enrolled were called the Khalsa or Elect ; ^
they received the surname of Singh or Lion, and
were soon ready to take the field against the Mahom-
medans, distracted as they were by the Maratha war.
In the long war that followed, the saints enjoyed
varying success. At first they were successful, and
then again they were driven back. In one battle^
the Guru's two eldest sons were killed ; in another,
the remaining two were captured and buried alive
by the Governor of Sirhind. The Guru himself fled
to the thick forests of Talwandi, where Nanak was
born. Here he bode his time, to issue forth, when
the moment seemed propitious, and reconquer most of
what he had lost. On the town of Sirhind, where
his children met their cruel doom, he laid a bitter
curse, and to this day it is a heap of ruins. Guru
Govind Singh fell by the assassin's dagger, in 1708.
Aurangzeb had died the year before. His successor,
Banda, carried on the campaign with vigour and
success till 1716, when he suffered a disastrous defeat
at the hands of the Moghuls. He himself was dragged
off as a prisoner to Delhi, where he was paraded
in an iron cage, wearing a crown and royal robes.
Finally, he was made to kill his own child, and was
then torn to pieces with red-hot pincers. His followers
were remorselessly hunted down, and we hear no
more of the Sikhs for many years. They were
crushed, and well-nigh exterminated.

' They were enjoined to wear five distinctive articles of dress,
the " five k's " — kes, khanda, kanga, kdra, kicch — long hair, dagger,
comb, bangle, and breeches.

2 Battle of Chamkaur, 1705.

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SHvH NATION 179

About 1760, however, we find the Sikhs once
more begmning to re-assert themselves. The Empire
of Delhi, beset by the Marathas on the south, and
the English on the east, was reduced by this time
to a mere shadow. The policy of Aurangzeb had
borne its bitter fruit. And then came the horror
of fresh invasions fi'om the north-west. First the
Persians swooped down and carried off thirty millions
of treasure from the doomed capital, with the peacock-
throne of the Moghul Emperors ; then horde after
horde of Afghans burnt, plundered, and murdered
from end to end of the country. The Sikhs, left to
themselves, recovered much of then- ancient prestige,
and gave serious trouble to the Afghans. Time after
time the Afghan general drove them back, but no
sooner had he commenced to withdraw, than they
pounced on the evacuated country, cut up outposts,
and captured isolated forts and garrisons. The chief
obstacle to their advance to a prominent position
among the nations of India was their lack of unity.
There was no central government. The land was
split up among the twelve great feudal houses, and
nothing could induce them to combine for concerted
action. Each was intensely jealous of his neighbour,
and intestine quarrels between the chiefs were not
infrequent. During this time, the national character
of the people had degenerated greatly. The exalted
teaching of the Gurus was almost forgotten, and the
Sikhs had become a race of robbers, whose only law
was the sword. The castles of the feudal chiefs were
the scenes of many a wild orgie. Drink, for aU the
prohibitions of the Grantha, was freely consumed;
and the women, fierce, capable, and unbridled in

180 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

their passions, were often the very antithesis of our
conceptions of the Hindu wife and mother.

It was at this crisis in the history of the Sikhs
that Ranjit Singh was born. His father, Mahan
Singh, was the head of the Sukarchakia clan near
Amritsar, and the boy was, almost from his birth,
brought up in the field. At the age of ten, seated on
his father's elephant, he took part in an attack on
the Manchar fort and was within an ace of being
killed. Two years later (1792) Mahan Singh died,
and left the lad to rule as best he could as turbulent
a mob of swordsmen as could well be imagined. For a
time the young prince was in the hands of his mother-
in-law, Sada Kour, head of the Kanhaya clan, and his
mother, a dissolute but able woman, surrounded by
many lovers who dictated the policy of her state.
Eanjit Singh was not, however, the type of man to
stand this sort of thing very long. Disgusted at his
mother's amours, he is said to have killed her with
his own hand, and his mother-in-law was locked up
in a fortress. In 1799 Ranjit Singh scored his first
diplomatic success. Shah Zeman, Amir of Afghan-
istan, had occupied a great part of the Panjab,
including the capital town of Lahore. In that year,
however, he was recalled by a sudden outbreak to
Afghanistan, and left so hastily that he was forced to
abandon part of his artillery. Guns in those days
were supremely valuable, and Ranjit Singh volunteered
to forward them to Kabul if he were allowed in return
to occupy Lahore. The Afghan monarch gladly
consented, and Ranjit Singh marched in and took
possession, to the wild jealousy of the neighbouring
chiefs. In 1802 he followed up this success by

RAN.JIT SINGH AND THE SHvH NATION 181

driving the Bangi chiefs out of Amritsar, and seizing
the city. Amritsar, with its Golden Temple and the
great Zam Zam^ gun, was second only in importance
to Lahore in the eyes of the Sikhs. By 1807 Pianjit
Singh had acquu-ed a kingdom in the Panjab such as
few would have dared to dream of, considering the
fierce and turbulent elements of which it was com-
posed. The Lahore, Amritsar, and Jalandhar
districts had submitted ; the Kanhaya tribe, headed
by his mother-in-law, held out for some time, and
even tried to call in the English ; but the stout old lady
was captured and her property confiscated. The rest
of the confederacy was paralyzed at the Maharaja's
swiftness. " These Kanhayas were always cowardly
dogs," said Ranjit Singh in open durbar. Stung
by the taunt, Jodh Singh defied Ranjit Singh in his
fort for many weeks, while another stronghold under
a slave girl made an equally gallant stand. But
resistance was useless, and Maharaja Eanjit Singh
soon found himself master of practically all the Sikhs
east of the Sutlej.

The great aim of the Maharaja was to unite all
the Sikhs under his sceptre, and he was determined,
about 1806, to cross the Sutlej and conquer the
Phulkian rajas, whose rapacity and misrule had
reduced the country to a state of abject misery.

* This famous gun now stands outside Lahore lluseum, and has
been immortalized by Kipling in Kim. Cast by Ahmad Shah in
1768 out of water-pots collected as jaziah from the Hindus, it was
seized by the Bangis, carried off by Charat Singh, captured by the
Mahommedans and taken to Ahmednagar, seized once more by the
Bangis, and finally captured by Ranjit Singh, who used it in all his
campaigns. For its romantic story, see Griffin and ^Massey's
Panjab Chiefs (1909), i. 479, note.

182 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Here, however, he came in conflict with the English.
The English policy had been to hold all the country
up to the Sutlej. From the Sutlej to the Khyber
they were willing, even desirous, to see Ranjit Singh's
power fully established, for he would then be a
valuable ally and form a convenient buffer against
invasions on the part of the Afghans and possibly
of the Russians or French. Further than the Sutlej,
however, Ranjit Singh could not go without en-
croaching upon English rights : the great river
formed a convenient and natural boundary. At first
the Maharaja was bitterly incensed. He even thought
of war, but fortunately the wise counsels of his great
and learned Minister Aziz-u-din prevailed. Ranjit
Singh saw that the moment he crossed the river, his
numerous enemies in the Panjab would rise and
throw off his yoke. The Afghans would swoop down
upon his country from the north, and he would meet
the fate of the Marathas and other races who had
been rash enough to try conclusions with the British.
One thing, too, he realized. No untrained troops,
however brave, could hope to stand up against
disciplined forces trained on Western lines. This had
been the secret of English success in India ; and
Ranjit Singh saw that, if he wished to be anything
more than a mere barbaric chieftain, he must
organize his regiments. It was for this reason that
he called in two distinguished officers of Napoleon's
army, Ventura and Allard, to train his forces ; while
four other Europeans, Court, Gardner, Van Court-
landt and Avitabile, occupied positions of trust in the
state. At the same time he made a treaty with the
English, engaging not to cross the Sutlej, and

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SUvH NATION 183

determined to give his attention in the future to
conquests in the south-east and north-east of the
Panjab.

And so Ranjit Singh spent the rest of his career
in campaigns against his Indian and Afghan neigh-
bours. The first object of his attack was the Mahom-
medan fortress of Multan. He was repulsed in his
first attempt in 1810, and skirmishing w'ent on in
an irregular fashion till January, 1818, when the
Maharaja determined to make a final effort to reduce
the town. Multan was invested, and the great Zam
Zam hurled her huge stone balls against the ramparts,
but all in vain.^ Behind the outer walls arose a
second wall, and storming parties failed to surmount
them. Time went on, and by June only about two
hundred of the garrison were left alive. Even then
no one suspected the state of the defenders till a
party of Akalis, a fanatical clan, suddenly made a
rush on one of the bastions and captured it. It was
then seen that the town was practically deserted, and
the Sikhs soon drove in the little garrison. The
slaughter went on, and at last only the old Com-
mandant, Muzaffar Khan, and his eight sons were
left. They stood with their backs to the wall, cutting
down all who approached within reach of their swords,
till at last the Sikhs fell back and picked them off
one by one with their muskets. And so Multan fell,
and the Maharaja returned to Lahore with two crores
of rupees' worth of plunder. Another undertaking
which had occupied much of the Maharaja's attention

> It is recorded that the great gun was fired no less than four
times ! Baber records with exultation in his memoirs that one of
his howitzers, at the battle of Agra, got ofi sis shots iu the day.

184 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

about this time was the conquest of Cashmere. lu
1811 he formed an alliance with the Afghans of Kabul
to attack the country, but the heavy Sikh troops,
unused to mountain fighting, and hampered by the
snow, did little good, and the Afghans refused them
a share of the spoils. In revenge Eanjit Singh, by a
trick, induced the commander of the important fort
of Attock, which guards the chief ford over the Indus
from the Khyber Pass, to admit his troops. The
Afghans who came to try and recapture the place
were defeated in a pitched battle. For the first time
in history the Sikhs had worsted their old rivals in
the open field, and Eanjit Singh began to reap the
reward of his careful reorganization of his forces.
Cashmere was finally annexed in 1819, the year after
the fall of Multan, and added considerable territory,
if not very much actual increase of income, to the
Maharaja's possessions. One by one the chieftains
of the Panjab were reduced, and then Eanjit Singh
determined to round off his conquests by the reduction
of Peshawar. The Maharaja was now beginning to
feel the effects of a career of incessant activity, only
relieved by fierce drinking bouts in his occasional
intervals of leisure. In 1825 he was so seriously ill
that two chiefs actually plotted to seize the Amritsar
fort, so as to have a claim on the district in the event
of the Maharaja's death. The English physician
who was called in warned Eanjit Singh that unless
he gave up drinking, the results would be serious.
The old warrior recovered, however, and spent the next
ten years in a series of not very profitable campaigns
in the Peshawar district. The Sikhs could really
make very little headway against the wild Path an

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SHvH NATION 185

tribesmen, though Peshawar itself was taten in 1835,
by one of those ruses at which Ranjit Singh was so
proficient.

Shortly before this, negotiations had been opened
between Ranjit Singh and the English, in view of
the ominous advance of the Russians through
Eastern Persia towards the borders of Afghanistan.
Ranjit Singh never loved the English, and viewed
them with suspicion and distrust.^ The great
majority of his subjects cordially shared his feelings,
and it was only the Maharaja's prudence which
restrained them from breaking the peace. As early
as 1809 the British envoy at Lahore had been
attacked by an infuriated mob, and it is said that
the steadiness of his small bodyguard first impressed
Ranjit Singh with the value of discipline, and made
him recognize the futility of a war with a nation who
had thousands of such men at its back. In this case,
however, concerted action was obviously advisable.
If Herat fell, Afghanistan would be in danger.
Already, in Lord Amherst's time, a friendly exchange
of presents between the Maharaja and the Viceroy
had taken place, and at the end of the rainy season
of 1831, a grand durbar was held at Rupar on the
Sutlej, where the two great potentates met in state.
This eastern Field of the Cloth of Gold must have
presented a superb spectacle. The flower of the Sikh
chivah-y were there — heads of houses older than the
days of Alexander — with their shining armour and

' A story is told of how a youth who had been educated in
British India was showing the Maharaja a map. " What are those
red circles ? " asked Ranjit Singh. On being told that they repre-
sented British spheres of influence, " Curse them," he is said to
have exclaimed, " It will be all red soon."

186 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

heron plumes in their helmets. Less brilliant as a
spectacle than these wild cavaliers, but more reliable
for the purposes of modern warfare, were the trained
regiments of sepoy infantry, organized by General
Ventura, and the special object of the Maharaja's
solicitude. For days the troops and their leaders
fraternized, and in the sports and tourneys Ranjit
Singh, in spite of advancing years and incipient
paralysis, displayed his superb horsemanship to the
admiration of all. The diplomatic object of the
Viceroy was to arrange with the Maharaja some plan
by which the safety of Afghanistan could be secured ;
for there was a grave risk that the Amir might seek
safety in a voluntary alliance with Russia and Persia.
In that case, it would be only a question of time
before a combined Russian, Persian, and Afghan
army appeared in the Khyber Pass. The final result
of this interview was the fatal policy of placing Shah
Shuja on the throne under the protection of British
troops — a course of action which resulted in utter
disaster and humiliation. Shah Shuja was quite un-
suited to rule the turbulent tribesmen of Afghanistan.
They detested and despised him. For years he had
been au exile in the Panjab, and his attempt to regain
the sceptre in 1831 ended in an ignominious failure.
His brother, the gallant Dost Mahommed, the hero of
the famous battle against the Sikhs outside Attock,
was, on the other hand, universally popular. But
Dost Mahommed refused to listen to the British
envoy unless he promised to procure the restoration
of Peshawar to Afghanistan, and this the English
could not do without betraying Ranjit Singh. Hence
it seemed best to the Government to depose Dost

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SUiH NATION 187

Maliommed and place upon the throne one who
would be more subservient to their wishes. Ranjit
Singh looked upon Shah Shuja with the utmost
contempt. A story is told of how, when he j5rst came
as a fugitive to Lahore with the famous Koh-i-nor in
his possession, the Maharaja bullied, threatened,
and finally starved him, in order to wring the jewel
from the poor exile. ^ To have a monarch of this kind
on the throne of Afghanistan meant revolution and
disorder, which would suit Ranjit Singh admirably.
For this reason he promised such co-operation as he
could give to the British invasion of Kabul, only
stipulating that the expedition should march through
Sind, and not through his territory. It was when
the expedition had just arrived at Kandahar that
Ranjit Singh died, on June 27th, 1839, not quite sixty
years old. He had been paralyzed for some time,
and hard drinking hastened the end.

So died the last of the great independent chiefs
of Hindustan. He had few of the milder virtues ;
a heavy drinker, dissolute in morals, unscrupulous
where an end was to be gained, he nevertheless com-
mands our unstinted admiration. He started life
as a petty chieftain ruling a few miles of barren
territory and commanding a few hundred irregular
horse. In less than half a century he had subdued
the whole of the Panjab, conquered Cashmere, and
organized a well-trained force of 30,000 disciplined
troops. A contemporary traveller describes him as
a little man, with long arms and a countenance
pitted with small-pox. He had a wrinkled face and a
scanty grey beard. Only on horseback, with his small

' Griffin, PMnjit Si/ngh (Rulers of India), 1911, p. 101.

188 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

black shield over his shoulder and his troops behind
him, did he appear the man he was. His skill and
courage as a horseman were extraordinary, in spite of
the fact that he was crippled by paralysis. He had
an overmastering passion for horses, and there is a
well-known story of how he waged a long and deadly
war with Yar Mahommed of Peshawar, in order to
force him to surrender the grey mare Laili, the
loveliest horse in Asia. She cost him *' sixty lakhs
and twelve thousand good men " ; and she lived in
a palatial stall with golden bangles round her legs.
Eanjit Singh was careless about his personal appear-
ance. He was usually dressed in a plain suit of
khaki, without jewels. But his tremendous person-
ality overawed all who came near him. He had
early in life lost one eye with small-pox. His
minister was once asked which eye it was. ** The
splendour of his face is such," replied Aziz-u-din,
" That I have never dared to looked close enough to
discover."

With the subsequent history of the Sikh race we
are not now concerned. After the death of their
grim ruler, no one could restrain them. English
prestige had suffered severely from the Afghan
fiasco of 1842, and in 1845 the Khalsa madly de-
termined on war. There could only be one end
to the struggle ; yet in the two campaigns of 1845
and 1846, thanks to the careful training of their late
ruler, the Sikhs faced a large and fully equipped
British army in the open field, and on one occasion
came very near to winning a victory. The Sikh
campaigns were undoubtedly the sternest and
hardest in the history of British India. Like the

RANJIT SINGH AND THE SIKH NATION 189

gallant nation they are, the Sikhs bore us no ill-will
for a fair beating in open battle ; eight years after
the flower of their chivalry had fallen at Gujarat, they
took the field against the mutineers at Delhi, when
all India seemed to be pitted against us.

X

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN THE
CIVILIZATION OF ANCIENT INDIA.

X

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN THE CIVILI-
ZATION OF ANCIENT INDIA.

*' Dan, also, and Javan going to and fi-o occupied in thy fairs ;
bright iron, cassia, and calamus, were in thy market." — EzEKiEn
xxvii. 19.

I

Trade between India and the West, both by land and
sea, stretches, no doubt, beyond the dawn of history.
But for a long time it was fitful and intermittent.
By land the journey was beset with perils, deserts,
mountains,^ and hostile tribes. By sea, navigation
was hindered by bad ships and want of enterprise on
the part of the sailors. It was not until the Phceni-
cians, the greatest maritime nation, perhaps, in all
history, undertook the task of exploring Eastern
waters, that anything serious was achieved in this
direction. Curiously enough, this important step
was not due to any of the powerful nations of Asia
Minor, the Egyptians, or Assyrians, but to the
enterprising action of Solomon, the ruler of the tiny
Hebrew Kingdom of Israel, some time in the twelfth
century b.c. Solomon, upon coming to the throne,
found his country in a state of almost unexampled
prosperity, and determined to make Jerusalem as

• Ibn Batuta, the Moor, who did the journey in the thirteenth
century, said that the Hindu Kush Mountains (i.e. Hindu-slaying
Mountains) were so called because so few Hindu captives survived
the journey over them.

O

194 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

magnificent as the capitals of his great neighbours.
Unable, however, to obtain in sufficient quantities
locally the gold, silver, and rare woods required for
his purpose, he requested his ally, Hiram of Tyre, to
lend him some of his skilled seamen to build a fleet
for use in Eastern waters. Making their head-
quarters the port of Ezion-Geber, the modern Akaba,
at the northern extremity of the right arm of the
Eed Sea, these sailors fitted out a number of vessels, in
which with characteristic boldness they soon passed the
Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Their final destination was
theport of Ophir, from which they brought back as much
as "four hundred and twenty talents of gold," as well as
almug-wood, ivory, apes, and peacocks. The voyage
to Ophir and back occupied a space of three years.^

There are many reasons for thinking that the
port of Ophir was somewhere on the Indian coast.^
The mention of the vast quantities of gold exported
from it, seems to favour an identification of it with
the "Barbarikon " of the Greek traders, which stood
at the mouth of the Indus. The Indus valley, in
ancient days, produced an enormous amount of gold ;
it paid Darius three hundred and sixty talents weight
of gold-dust yearly in tribute;^ and every one in
Greece had heard of the legends of the miners of
Dardistan and their fierce yellow mastiffs, which
travellers in some extraordinary fashion mistook for

* See 1 Kings ix. 26 and 2 Ohron. ix. 21.

- Perhaps, however, it was at the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
and was an entrepot visited by Indian traders, where they bartered
their goods with the Phoenicians.

^ Herod, iii. 97. A huge sum, equal to 4680 talents in Euboeic
money; about £1,300,000 sterling. The mines were quickly ex-
hausted, but gold is still extracted in small quantities.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 195

huge ants ! Again, the fleet of Solomon took three
years to sail from Ezion-Geber and back. The
voyage, then, took about eighteen months, and this
was exactly the length of the voyage of Scylax of
Caryanda from the Indus to the Gulf of Suez.^ Ivory,
apes, and peacocks would naturally come from an
Indian port; and the Hebrew word for "ape," koph,
is .suspiciously like the Sanskrit kapi.'^ The " pea-
cock," on the other hand, appears to have reached
the West from a Dravidian port, perhaps Mangalore,
the Roman Muziris, for the Hebrew word for a pea-
cock, thuki, is, apparently, derived from the Tamil tokei,
whence also the Persian tavus and the Greek Tacwg.

Many other commodities appear to have been intro-
duced by these traders and their successors, to judge
by their names. Thus the Greek mivraXov (sandal,
perhaps the "almug" of Solomon) is the Sanskrit
chandana ; ^ aiv^tov, linen, may be derived from the
" Sindhu," or Indian country,^ and may have been
brought by Hebrew traders to the West ; for we find
Sadui^ used as "fine linen" in Isaiah, and Satin is
the Arabic for a " covering." The word is also found
in Assyrian. In a similar fashion, rice was brought
to Europe by Arabian traders from Dravidian ports,

1 Herod, iv, 44.

- Egyptian hafu. The Hebrew shcn-hahbin (elephant's teeth) is
the Skt. ibha-danta, Egyptian ebu, Latin cbur. The Greek e\i<pas
is the same word with the Arabic el prefixed. eXecpas and Kacrcrirepos
(Skt. kasttra) are both found in Homer, which points to an early
(indirect) trade between Greece and India.

' For ch = 2, cf. Chandragupta, Sandracottus.

■* Like Calico (Calicut), Muslin (Mosul), etc.

^ Isaiah iii. 23. See Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 138. So,
too, cotton is karpasa in Sanskrit, karpas in Hebrew, and Kapnaaos
in Greek.

196 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

for the word rice is a shortened form of the Spanish
arroz, derived from the Arabic aniz, from which, too,
the Greek opvZa and the Latin oryza also come ; and
the Arabic word is simply a corruption of the Tamil
arisi. The rich fields of Southern India must have
borne rice-crops for immemorial ages.^

But the strangest and most interesting evidence
of intercourse between India and Judfea in the time
of Solomon is afforded to us by a Buddhist birth-
story called the MahOsada Jdtaka.^ Here we have
the story of a Yakshini, or female ghoul, who has
carried off a poor woman's child in order to devour it.
The mother claims her offspring, and the two women
are summoned to the judgment hall of the Buddha
(at that time incarnate as the wazir of the Rajah of
Benares), to have their dispute adjudicated. The
Buddha tells one woman to take the child's legs and

1 Another plant known to Europe by its Tamil name was the
jack fruit (Latin pala, Tamil pala). The dictionaries translate
pala as " plantain," but Pliny's description of the tree is conclu-
sive. " Fructum cortice emittit, lougitudine trium cubitorum."
{N. H. 12. 6.) Fancy a plantain three cubits long growing out of
the bark of a tree ! Dr. Caldwell, in his Dravidian Grammar, has
made a list of the Tamil words thus taken by traders to the West.
Hebrew ahal, " aloes," Tamil ayhil ; Kapiriov, " cinnamon " (Ctesias),
l&TD.Vikarjp'pii, ; (tyyifiepis, incMver (ginger), etc. Spices have always
been a favourite export from the East, perhaps, till tea, coffee, and
rubber took their place, the principal one. The Dutch made a for-
tune out of cinnamon. Pepper was, curiously enough, consumed in
huge quantities in Rome. Alaric demanded as part of his ransom
3000 lbs. of pepper. (Mukerji, Indian Shipping, p. 127.) The
Zamorin of Calicut wrote to the King of Portugal, when Vasco de
Gama visited him, "In my kingdom there is an abundance of
cinnamon, cloves, ginger and pepper." Most of these came from
the Dravidian ports.

^ Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, p. xiv. Cowell and
Rouse's translation, vi. 163 (Cambridge, 1907).

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 197

the other its head, and decide the matter b}' a tug-of-
war. The Yakshini consents, but the rightful mother
wiU give up all her claims rather than put the baby to
such torture. The Buddha then gives her the child.
No one, I think, can doubt that this is an Indian version
of the famous story of the Judgment of Solomon,^
nor will anybody who has studied the extraordinary
history of the migration of the Jataka Tales, be sur-
prised at this odd occurrence. There can be no
doubt that the Indians borrowed the tale from the
Jews, and not vice versa. The Jatakas were collected
from all sorts of pr?e-Buddhistic folk-legends. The
only question is whether the Indians got it direct
from Hebrew traders long before the birth of Gau-
tama, or whether it came from Babylon, whither it
had been brought by the Jews during the Captivity
(597-538 B.c.).2

After the death of Solomon, the Persian Gulf
became the chief trade route between India and Asia
Minor.^ At the mouth of the Euphrates lived the
Chaldeans, a restless, seafaring race; the prophet
Isaiah speaks of the " Chaldeans whose cry is in
their ships," — a vivid phrase, describing exactly the
bustle and turmoil of an Oriental port. About 695 b.c,
however, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, replaced them
by Phcenicians, probably in order to punish the

* 1 Kings iii. 16.

- During Gautama's lifetime. See, too, the story of the mer-
chants who took crows and peacocks to Babylon. {Baveru Jataka,
Cowell and Rouse, iii. S3.)

' For the facts about the Phcenicians and Babylonians, I am
indebted to Mr. Kennedy's article on Early Cornmercc of India
with Babylon: J.R.A.S., 1S9S, and Professor Mukerji's Indian
Shipping.

198 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Chaldeans for helping the Babylonians in a rising
against the Assyrian Empire. The advent of the
Phcenicians had the same magical effect upon the
trade of the Persian Gulf as it had formerly produced
in the Red Sea. These bold navigators soon pushed
on to India, and rounding the Indian coast, even
visited the Malay Archipelago and China. A whole
colony of Phoenician sailors sprang up in the Persian
Gulf. The Bahrein Islands were especially popular
as a port of call for vessels to take in water and pro-
visions before setting out on their long run across the
Indian Ocean, and recent excavations have revealed
remains of a large settlement there.^ Strabo says
that in his day the islands of the Persian Gulf were
dotted with Phoenician temples.^ Their less skilful
rivals, the Chaldeans, discontented at their superses-
sion, appear to have rebelled again. This time they
were banished to Gerrha, a terribly hot, barren spot,
where they had to use blocks of salt to build their
houses.^ This must have been an unwelcome change
after the humid climate of Chaldea.

Of the overland route between India and the West
we hear little before the time of Darius the Great,
probably because the journey was rendered difficult
and dangerous by the wild tribes who beset the road.
Even in the remotest days, however, such a route
must have existed ; an axehead of white Chinese jade

' The last Report of the ArchEeological Department gives details
of these. Some of the remains have been put in the Prince of
Wales's Museum, Bombay.

2 Geog. xvi. 3. 3-5.

= Strabo, Oeog. xiv. 33. This is not a traveller's tale, Ibu
Batuta, the Moorish traveller, tells the same story about the negroes
in the Sudan.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 109

was found in the second city of Troy.^ Caravans
came and went, no doubt, both from Tyi-e and from
the ports further north. In any case the route taken
must have been ultimately the same, — past the Cas-
pian Gates, and north of the Carmanian Desert to
Balkh, where the roads running to China and India
converged. Shalmaneser (80S b,c.) has representa-
tions of Indian elephants and apes^ and Bactrian
camels on his obelisk, and these animals, the
elephants at any rate, must have been imported
overland. After the defeat of Assyria by Nebuchad-
nezzar in 606 B.C., Babylon became the leading city
of Asia. In its market-places met the nations of the
world, — captive Jews, Indian traders, Egyptian ambas-
sadors, Phoenician sailors from the Far East — in short,
as Berosus says, ttoXv 7r\i]doc avdpw-ojv dXXoedvQv,
" a crowd of men of all nationalities." "We hear in one
of the Jataka Stories of the adventures of the merchants
who took the first peacock to Babylon ; on the other
hand, there appears to have been a settlement of
Babylonian traders at the frontier town of Taxila in
India, for Aristobulus of Cassandria^ found at that
city a " marriage-market " being carried on Baby-
lonian fashion, just as is described by Herodotus.*
What was the result of the contact been India and
the Semitic races ? Not very great, I think. Casual
traders do little towards the real opening up of a
country. From the Jews India learnt practically
nothing ; from the Chaldeans she may have borrowed

* The " Swastika " sign has, I believe, been found in Troy.
- For methods of trapping apes (apparently for export), see
Aelian, a2md McCrindle, p. 149.
= Apud Strabo, Gcog. xv. 62-1.
' I. 196.

200 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

part of her prsG- Alexandrian system of Astronomy ; ^
from the Babylonian merchants may have come the
idea of striking rude, punch-marked coins, and per-
haps a system of weights and measures. It is, I
think, useless to attempt to trace early Indian archi-
tecture to Babylonian or Assyrian sources. ** The
culture of Assyria, and still more of Babylonia, was
essentially literary ; we miss in it the artistic spirit
of Egypt or Greece. In Babylonia the abundance
of clay and want of stone led to the employment of
brick; the Babylonian temples are massive but
shapeless structures of crude brick, supported by
buttresses." ^ The absurd stories of Ctesias about
an Assyrian invasion of India, narrated by Justin,^
are a gross fabrication, and Semiramis is a product
of the imagination. The Semites merely prepared
the way for the momentous Iranian invasion, with
which we shall presently deal.

While thrones were rising and falling in Western
Asia, a revolution of another kind was taking place
in North-Eastern India. Gautama Buddha (568-
488 B.C.) * was formulating the doctrines which were
destined, to use the picturesque phrase of the Pali
commentator, to re-echo " like a great bell set in the
heavens" throughout the East. Gautama Buddha

^ It has been also suggested that the story of the Tortoise Incar-
nation of Vishnu is a Hindu version of the story of the Flood, which
first appears in Babylonian legend. Dr. Vogel attributes to Babylon
the practice, in India and modern Europe, of naming the days of
the week after the Sun, Moon, and five planets. This is a very
interesting explanation of a remarkable coincidence.

- Encyc. Brit., Xlth Edn., " Babylonian Art."

^ Justin, i. 1-3, etc.

' Dr. Fleet's date.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 201

is the one personality of the prae-Alexandrian period
of "whom we can really say that we knoiv something.
Was he really an Aryan, or are we to class his
remarkable creed among the " foreign influences "
which affected India during this period ? The ques-
tion is a startling one, and has never, I think, been
adequately considered. But every one must have
noticed the many striking features of Buddhism, so
utterly at variance with anything to be found else-
where in Hinduism, the stiqja, the worship of relics,
the abolition of caste as a religious factor, contempt
for penance and ceremonies, and the discouragement
of abstract metaphysics. Many of these peculiarities
may, of course, be merely the products of a powerful
and far-reaching mind, bent on religious reform ; but
relic- worship, and its concomitant the stujM, are quite
un-Indian.^ Gautama belonged to the Sakya clan :
were they an early offshoot of the Sakas, the Sacae
or Scyths, who, as we know, followed the Aryans
from time to time into India in successive waves ?
The word stiqja signifies a "barrow," or " tumulus,"
a Sanskrit name for a Scythian object. The Scythian
chieftain was buried under a tumulus of this kind,
and not, as in India, cremated. Herodotus, for
instance, tells us how the Gerrhi, a tribe on the
Borysthenes, buried their kings in huge square tombs,
over which the people raised a high mound of earth,
each vying with his neighbour to make it as tall as
possible.^ In Southern Siberia may be seen to this
day the kurgans of the primitive Scythian tribes. The
round shape of the stfijM shows that it was originally

' The Babylonians, of course, practised urn-burial.
- Herod, iv. 71.

202 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

an earthen structure,^ just as the pyramid, a kindred
type of building, must have been always constructed
of stone. And so the massive Sanchi Stupa, with its
elaborately carved stone railing, is very probably the
lineal descendant of the rude earthen mound covering
the tombs of the Scythian chieftains on the Central
Asian steppes, fenced in by a rough palisade of huge
logs, decorated with fetish-symbols to scare away the
evil spirits which might otherwise disturb the peace
of the inmate.

When the Saka tribes migrated to India, and were
received into the fold of Hinduism, a kind of compro-
mise must have been effected, in the case of notable
personages, between the rival customs of burial beneath
a barrow and cremation. The body was first cremated
and then the ashes were buried. The custom of relic-
worship — not a Hindu custom^ — led to the practice
of dividing the ashes (and other remains) of a deceased
teacher among several claimants, each of whom en-
shrined his portion under a stupa of his own. Thus
the stujja, or burial mound, became a ddgoha, or relic-
holder. The earliest record of such a division relates
to the ashes of Gautama Buddha himself.^ Eight
tribes sent delegates to claim, on the ground of kin-
dred with the deceased teacher, a share of his remains.

^ Fergusson thinks it was copied from the conical Tartar tents.
But it is difficult to account for such an imitation. And the early
stupas are more dome-shaped. Professor Eapson (Hastings' Dic-
tionary of Religion) traces it to the funeral pyre. But the resem-
blance is not very close.

- Perhaps a survival of the old barbarous rites paid to the
" Manes " of deceased ancestors by various nations, particularly
Mongolian nations. If the Scythians were Mongolian in origin,
we have another interesting piece of evidence in this custom.

^ MahdiMranibhana Sufta. S.B.E., xi. p. 131.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 203

The possession of such relics was, of course, an asset
of great material value ; the dagaba beneath which
they lay became a tlrtha, or place of pilgrimage, and
rapidly grew rich and famous.

Among the tribes claiming, as kinsmen, a right
to a portion of the ashes of Gautama, were the Vajjis
of Vaisali. They are depicted^ in early Buddhist
sculptures as wearing Scythian garb. Whether Vajji
is simply a variation of Yiie-chi, and whether the
Lichhavi clan, said to be an offshoot of the Vajji,
are to be identified with the Litsavi, a Mongolo-
Scythic tribe in Thibet, is uncertain, but probable.
Another tribe, the Gandbaras, must have originally
come from the distant North-West Frontier, where
Scythians would naturally be found. If these two
tribes were Scythian, the tribe of Gautama must
have been Scythian too. And so, perhaps, we are
justified in including Buddhism among the products
of early foreign influence in India.

In 538 B.C., Cyrus the Great took Babylon by
storm, and became Master of Western Asia — "King
of Babel, Sumer, Akkad, and the four quarters of the
world." Twenty years later, his equally great suc-
cessor, Darius, crossed the Carmanian Desert to
claim the allegiance of Eastern Iran. Darius was
a splendid organizer and financier — his abilities in
that latter direction had gained him the contemptuous
title of KoTTJ/Xoc, "The Pedlar," from the Persian
nobility, — and he was struck with the brilliant idea
of annexing the Indus Valley to his eastern posses-
sions. The scheme was carried out in a most

* Cunningham, Anc. Geog. of India, 447, Beal, in J.B.A.S.,
xiv. 39.

204 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

methodical fashion : the Panjab was occupied, and
an expedition was sent under a Greek named Scylax
of Caryanda to explore the Indus Valley and to travel
home by sea from the mouth of the river.^ The ex-
plorers accomplished their task with complete success;
they returned by the old route followed by Solomon's
trading fleet, and landed eighteen months later near
the modern port of Suez.

We know so little of the history of Persia, that
there is not much to record of the " Satrapy of India "
during the two centuries which preceded the invasion
of Alexander. That the country fully realized the
expectations of Darius is shown by the enormous
tribute which it paid to the imperial coffers. Indian
contingents fought in the Persian campaigns against
Greece. Perhaps Taxila was the capital of the pro-
vince, for Alexander's soldiers found there traces of
Persian and Babylonian customs; the people held a
marriage-market every year in their city, like the
Babylonians, and exposed their dead for the vultures
to devour instead of cremating them.^ Darius was
the first monarch to have both Greek and Indian
subjects under his rule. Of the mainland of Greece,

1 He started from an unideutified city called "Caspatyrus in
Pactyica," somewhere in the North-West Panjab. Probably Kaa-
vdrvpos is a misreading for Kaarirdirvpos (Kaspa-pura), defined by
Hecatpeus as TavSapiKT] TrdXis 'S.kvOwv uKT-fj, " A city of Gandhara on
the Scythian border." Pactyica is the land of the Pachtu or Pashtu,
the Pathans or Afghans.

" A ]\Iedian custom, borrowed from the Scythians, who gave
their dead to " dogs and birds " to devour. At Bactria, the home of
Zoroastrianism, a special breed of dogs, called ivTacpiacrrai, " En-
tombers," were kept for the purpose. The Persians buried their
dead. The tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadas, for instance, is a proof
of this.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 205

India knew nothing; the lonians of Asia Minor,
employed in the Great King's service, or traders of
the same nationality who put in at Barbarikon or
Barygaza, were the only Greeks with whom they were
acquainted. Hence we may dismiss at once any
theories about the influence of Greek literature on
India before Alexander's invasion. The Sanskrit
Yarana, 'lacwv, dates from the time when the

digamma was still in use. The Prakrit Yona, 'Iwv,
is, of course, later.^ There seems little doubt that
the Persian occupation of the Panjab made a great
impression upon India ; Persian customs and Persian
architecture were probably adopted at the courts of
some of the local rajas. One unmistakable trace
of Persian influence lasted in Western India for
many centuries after the Persian Empire had disap-
peared. This was the Kharoshthi script, introduced
by the officials of the Achsemenids, which was not
entirely replaced by the Brahmi writing till the fourth
century a.d. The Kharoshthi is undoubtedly Aramaic
in origin, reading, like other kindred scripts, from
right to left.^ The last hope of Persia perished with
the gallant young Cyrus on the field of Cunaxa

' Compare Milton's " Ionian gods of Javan's issue held." P.L., i.
508, and S.A., 715-6. Milton got the word from' Isa. Ixvi. 19,
but he mixes up Javan with Javan son of Japheth (Gen. x. 2). The
Greeks heard of India from the Persians. "Iv^oi is Hendu, the Avesta
word, and not Siudava (Skt.). Otherwise we should have "IrSoi, as
Max Miiller points out. Hecatgeus (520 B.C.) is the first to mention
India among surviving Greek writers. Some of the stories in
Herodotus— e.gr. the story of Hippocleides— have been traced to
India, through Persia. Tawney, Journal of Philology, xii. 112.

- A highly amusing article by Prof. Lacouperie, in the Baby-
lonian and Oriental Record, 1886, p. 58, ascribes this script to Cyrus
(Khusru). Unfortunately Cyrus never visited India.

206 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

(401 B.C.). After this the great Empire began to
break up. Eastern Iran became a practically inde-
pendent kingdom under the Satrap of Balkh, who was
always a member of the Eoyal family. We cease to
hear of Indian troops in the Persian army, and
probably the annual Indian tribute seldom found its
way to the Imperial coffers.

II

In 329 B.C. Alexander entered the Panjab. He
found Western India governed by a number of in-
dependent princes, controlled by no sort of central
government. In this disunited condition, they fell an
easy prey to the Macedonian forces, in spite of the
desperate resistance which was offered from time to
time by the gallant natives. Alexander marched
across the Panjab in a south-easterly direction to the
river Bias, where he was compelled to turn back.
He then retreated to the banks of the Jhilam, and
sailed down that stream to its confluence with the
Indus, and thence to the coast, subduing and organ-
izing the country as he went. The conquered lands
were put in charge of governors, native and Greek ;
elaborate arrangements were made for building a
harbour at Pattala ; Nearchus was sent to explore,
and re-opened the old Phoenician trade route between
the mouths of the Indus and Euphrates. Unfortu-
nately, these far-seeing plans came to nothing. In
323 B.C., two years after leaving India, Alexander
died. The empire collapsed like a pack of cards ; at
the same time a great national movement under
Chandragupta united all Aryan India under a single
leader, and the Macedonian governors were glad to

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 207

hurry away to the further side of the Hindu Kush
with such booty as they could lay hands on.

By 321 B.C., Macedonian power was at an end in
India ; only those settlers remained who cared to
throw in their lot with the people.^ The effect of the
great invasion was practically 7iil, unless the example
of Alexander inspired the enterprising Chandragupta
with the idea of making himself master of Northern
India.

We now come to the age of the enlightened and
powerful Maurya dynasty, which may be compared
with the age of the Antonines in Rome for wisdom,
progress and moderation, though there is a certain
spirituality a])0ut the great Asoka which is hardly
found in Marcus Aurelius himself. It was a period
of Renaissance in India : a great religious revival was
accompanied by a magnificent artistic outburst.
Shrines and palaces of stone suddenly replaced the
wood and plaster erections of earlier days ; clemency
of a type unknown in India prevailed in the govern-
ment ; free communication with the hitherto despised
" barbarian " was welcomed and encouraged. The
difference which organization could make to a
country's powers of resistance was seen when Seleucus
Nicator tried in 305 e.g. to repeat the exploits of
Alexander. The " Victorious " monarch quickly found
it prudent to come to terms with his adversary. A
friendly agreement was made, ceding a large portion
of Eastern Iran to India, and the compact was sealed

^ Quite possibly considerable Yavana colonies remained behind.
They are mentioned in Asoka's inscriptions, and probably the king
ApoUodotus, whose coins are so difficult to place, belongs to this
race, and not to the Bactrian dynasties.

208 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

by a marriage between Chandragupta and a Syrian
princess. The relations between the Mauryas and
their western neighbours was of the most cordial kind.
Chandragupta was an enthusiastic admirer of Greek
customs. Envoys from the West were in attendance
at Pataliputra, and the presence of a Greek rani must
have enhanced the philhellenic tendencies of the
court. Among the ambassadors, the most famous
was Megasthenes, the Syrian envoy to Chandragupta ;
in the reign of Bindusara he was succeeded by
Deimachus. We also hear of a Dionysius from the
court of Alexandria, who appears to have been in
residence in the reign of Asoka.^ A friendly and
often amusing correspondence between the Maurya
kings and their Syrian neighbours testifies to the
intimate character of the relations between India and
the Greek world at that time. Chandragupta sends
Seleucus some powerful Indian drugs; Bindusara
requests of Antiochus a consignment of "figs, Greek
wine, and a sophist " ; to which that monarch replies,
that while delighted to send the wine, he regrets that
it is not *'good form for Greeks to deal in sophists "
{ov vufii/xov lv"EX\r^(7i ao^iarriv TrioXeiaOai) . After his
conversion to Buddhism, Asoka's first thought is for
his friends, the Greek rulers of Syria and Alexandria.
And yet, in spite of the intimacy between India and
the West under the Mauryas, we can discern very
few actual traces of Greek influence on Indian
civilization during that period. The court of Chan-
dragupta, as described by Megasthenes, ^ was con-
ducted in Persian fashion. As in Persia, the king

> Strabo, 2, i, 9. Pliny, N.H. 17.
^ V. A. Smith, Early Histoi-y of India, ch. v.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 209

lived in strict seclusion, and observed Persian
festivals like the cmrious *' hair-washing festival "
held on the king's birthday. ^ Offences were
punished by mutilation, a Persian practice abhorred
by the Greeks. The country was split up into
provinces, like the Persian satrapies. Asoka, when
he determined to use a more lasting material than
the wood and plaster of his predecessors for
architectural purposes, set his workmen to erect
buildings and monuments of stone in the Persian
style, but adapted and Indianized in characteristic
Hindu fashion. At the same time, we may discern
traces of Scythian influence in the sculpture of the
period. The grotesque, broad-shouldered figures of
the Sanchi carvings are certainly not Aryan in type.
The same type of figure appears even in the semi-
Hellenic sculptures of the Gandhara school.

We may take it for granted that the inhabitants
of the Aryavarta at the time of the accession of
Chandragupta were akeady a highly civilized people.
No remains, alas, of the early architecture of India
have survived, owing to the fragile nature of the
materials employed, but we can see that the beauti-
fully carved and inscribed pillars of Asoka are not the
crude efforts of a primitive nation. At the same
time, their essentially Indian appearance seems to
X)rove that they are not the work of foreign artizans,
like the Gandhara sculptures. The numerous
"sermons in stone" erected by Asoka, show that

^ " A Royal Festival is held once a year on the birthday of
Xerxes. It is called Tycta in Persian. The king washes his head
and makes presents to the Persians." Herod, is. 110.

*' When the King (Chandragupta) washes his hair, they celebrate
a great festival and send him presents." Strabo, sv. 69.

P

210 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

reading was a common accomplishment, ^ otherwise
their erection all over the country would have been
pointless. For two centuries constant intercourse
with Persia, combined with the indigenous culture of
the people, had produced an advanced civilization to
which the rude Macedonian could add nothing, and
upon which even Hellenistic refinement had compara-
tively little influence. Already, when Megasthenes
arrived at Pataliputra, he found it as splendid as
Susa or Ecbatana; and it was from Susa, rid Taxila,
that foreign influence had influenced the country.
A Persian official, Tushaspa,^ carried out Asoka's
irrigation schemes in Kathiawar, doubtless on the
model of the famous Babylonian works; the great
trunk road, built from Pataliputra through Delhi to
the North-West Frontier, was suggested, no doubt,
by the Eoyal road of Darius in Persia.

A great deal has been made of the sudden intro-
duction of stone as a building material by Asoka. It
may be, of course, that he learnt from foreigners,
perhaps Greeks, to use stone instead of wood. But
it seems clear that he employed native craftsmen to
work in this material, and allowed them to treat it very
much in their own fashion. Thus any one examining

1 The common legend that writing was not practised in India
arose from the fact that most Sanskrit literakcre was transmitted
orally, and legal disputes were settled by unwritten local custom.
Strabo, xiv. 53, 67, etc. Writing was confined to secular purposes :
even in the fifth century a.d. Fa Hian had the greatest difficulty
in getting MSS. of Buddhist works. Perhaps Asoka borrowed from
Persia the idea of inscribing long records upon the surface of rocks
where they would meet the eye of the passer-by.

^ Called, however, a Yo7ia, in the Girnar Inscription. No
doubt he spoke Greek. He may have been a Greek half-breed from
Bactria.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 211

the carvings of the Sanchi Stupi will recognize that
the workmen employed were used to working in wood.
The famous "Buddhist rail" at Sanchi is built of
stone blocks elaborately hewn into the likeness of
wooden logs, and a significant inscription records
that one of the gates was the work of the "ivory
carvers of Vidisa." ^ The truth is, that stone was
not extensively used for building purposes till a much
later period. Even four centuries later, Hiuen
Tsiang regards the deserted ruins of Asoka's stone
palaces with superstitious awe, as " the work of no
mortal hands." Kanishka's great relic tower at
Peshawar was of wood, ^ and wood was used for the
fortifications of Pataliputra. The huge wooden arches
in the Karla Caves show to what use wood could be
put by Indian builders, and no doubt the vast
majority of the buildings of the time were of wood
and plaster, built on brick foundations, such as are
still popular in Western India. Asoka's more ambi-
tious schemes were partly due to religious enthusiasm,
and partly, no doubt, to the great access of wealth
which resulted from the excellent organization of his
vast empire. Persian influence may be detected in
the bell-shaped pillars and " lion-capitals " of the
Buddhist architecture of the Maurya period, but it is
so adapted and transformed that we cannot help
tracing its first introduction back for many years
before the accession of Chandragupta, to the time
when the Persian, Indian, and Central Asian races
first encountered one another in that strange meeting-
place of nations, the Panjab.

* So, too, in the Toy Cart, the Palace has a " high ivory portal."
V. A. Smith, Hist. Fine Art, s. 8.
- Beal, Buddhist Records, i. 103.

212 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

III

The "Yellow Peril" was no new thing to the
ancient world. The Assyrian Empire had been
menaced by the threats of Scythian incursions ; and
Scythians assisted at the sack of Nineveh. Cyrus
the Great fell in battle against these traditional foes
of the Aryan race, and Alexander, though compelled
to destroy Cyropolis, the fortress built by the Persian
monarch to guard the passage over the Jaxartes, re-
placed it by an even greater stronghold in the shape
of Alexandria Eschate. But the chief safeguard for
the Aryans of Western Asia was the ancient Iranian
province of Balkh or Bactria, the great buffer-state
between the Persian Empire and the peoples of the
steppes of Central Asia. Alexander had realized the
strategic importance of Balkh to his eastern posses-
sions, and had established there a large military
colony. After his death this colony had grown into
the dimensions of an important kingdom, the veterans
having freely intermarried with the Iranian and
Scythic populace. In 250 e.g. they revolted against
the Syrian Empire, and their independence was
recognized some forty years later by Antiochus the
Great. That monarch had marched against the re-
volting province and laid siege to the capital, but he
was induced to abandon his design by the plea that if
he weakened this outpost of the Greek world, the
Scythians would burst in and overrun the whole of
the West at once.^ Unfortunately, the Bactrians
did not confine themselves to the rule of guarding

* iK^ap^apoiO'fia'iO'BaL rrjv 'EWdSa d/xo\oyov/Mei'(i>s, Polyb. xi, 34,

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 213

the Oxus ; the disorders which followed upon the
break-up of the Maurya Empire, left the Panjab as
a tempting prey to an ambitious conqueror, and the
Bactrian monarchs were unable to resist the oppor-
tunity. About 190 B.C. the Bactrian king Demetrius
invaded the north-west of India, and made himself
master of a considerable portion of territory. This
he made into a sej^arate kingdom, with its capital at
Sagala,^ which he renamed Euthydemeia after his
father Euthydemus. This left Bactria proper in a
X^recarious condition. Harassed by internal dis-
sentions, and by continual quarrels with their old
rivals the Parthians, the Bactrian Greeks could ill-
afford to send the flower of their troops on distant
expeditions to the far South. As Justin says, they
were literally "drained of their life-blood. " ^ In
consequence, the Scythians at last managed to cross
the Oxus, and overrun the country. Heliodorus, the
last Greek king to reign north of the Hindu Kush,
hastily evacuated Bactria, and fled, with such of his
followers as did not care to submit to the invaders, to
find a home in the province of Sagala, which his
predecessors had established. This was about 140
B.C. Unfortunately, the Greeks were continually
quarrelling among themselves, and split up into a
number of independent principalities. Only once,
under the great Menander, did they unite for a brief
time ; and by 20 a.d. they disappeared altogether,
though little isolated Greek states probably struggled
on here and there till a much later period.^

1 Probably Sialkot.
^ Exsangues. Justin, sli. 6.

^ Thus Gautamiputra (after 130 a.d.) talks of subduing Yavanas.
(Rapson, Coins of the Andras, Section 44, Introduction.)

214 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

These Greeks had really very little Western blood
in their veins when they settled in India, and their
influence upon this country was very slight. They
issued, however, some very beautiful and remarkable
coins, one or two of which will compare with anything
produced in the ancient world. It is impossible to
explain this outburst of artistic genius in the furthest
confines of Hellenic influence. These Bactrian coins
were imitated extensively by the few Indian rulers
who showed any taste in this direction, the Ivushans,
the Guptas, and the Western Kshatrapas, especially
Nahapana, the ruler who issued the coins found in
such immense numbers near Nasik, some years ago.^
The Greek word drachma has passed into the ver-
nacular language of to-day : from it came the Prakrit
dramma and the modern ddm.^ Otherwise it appears
that the Greeks were rapidly absorbed in the native
population. The process may be traced in the coinage,
where Indian figures and inscriptions replace by
degrees the Greek types of the earlier monarchs, and
the workmanship becomes more and more debased.
The few remains we have of the Indo-Greeks seem to
show that they quickly lost all traces of their in-
dividuality, and adopted the religion, and even in
many cases the names, of their neighbours. Thus the
Karla Caves contain many inscriptions recording
donations from the *' Yavanas." These must be
Bactrian Greeks ; but they have Hindu names, and
are Buddhists. The pillar recently discovered at

» See the Journal B.B.B.A.S., vol. xsii. 224.

- The Kushans and Guptas also imitated extensively the Roman
coins which poured into India in the first and second centuries a.d.
Dinar is the Roman Denarius,

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 215

Besnagar ^ bears an inscription to the effect that it is
the work of " Heliodorus, a worshipper of Krishna,
sent by the Yona King Antialcidas." The pillar is in
the Indo-Persian style, and contains no traces of
Greek workmanship. Probably the Greek language
was only used at the court of Sagala, and among a
few of the ruling class who had not intermarried with
the natives. The Indo-Greek kingdoms reached the
height of their power under the Buddhist prince
Menander, who for a brief space carried the Greek
arms to the walls of Pataliputra. Of his court and
capital we find a delightful picture in the Buddhist
Questions of Milinda,'^ which describes them as
follows :

" There is in the country of the Yonakas a great
centre of trade, a city called Sagala. . . . Wise
architects have laid it out, and its people know of no
oppression, since all their enemies and adversaries
have been put down. Brave is its defence, with
many and strong towers and ramparts, with superb
gates and entrance archways; and with the royal
citadel in its midst, white-walled and deeply moated.
Well laid out are its streets, squares, cross-roads,
and market-places. Well displayed are the innu-
merable sorts of costly merchandise with which its
shops are filled. It is richly adorned with hundreds
of almshalls of various kinds, and splendid with
hundreds of thousands of magnificent mansions,
which rise aloft like the mountain-peaks of the

» J.R.A.S., 1909, p. 1092.

2 S.B.E. XXV, The book is so replete with detail that it must
have been written soon after the time of Menander, by one who
knew the country.

216 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

Himalayas. Its streets are filled with elephants,
horses, carriages, frequented by men of all sorts
and conditions — Brahmins, nobles, artificers, and
servants. They resound with cries of welcome to the
teachers of every creed, and the city is the resort of
the leading men of each of the differing sects." In
the unoppressive government, the white-walled acro-
polis, and the "welcome given to teachers of every
sect," ^ we may perhaps discern echoes of the old
Greek spirit ; but Menander was essentially an Indian
raja, and not a Greek ruler. A Siamese tradition
affirms that he took the yellow robe in his old age,
and died an arhat ; and Plutarch relates a story ^ to
the effect that at his funeral, as at that of Gautama
Buddha, seven nations disputed for a share of his
ashes, which they carried away and buried beneath
stiqms {fivnixua) in their own countries. As far as we
can tell at present, the Indo-Greeks exercised very
little intellectual influence upon India, though exca-
vation on the site of the ancient Sagala may modify
this view. If, however, Menander used the same
flimsy materials for his great palaces and fortresses
as his Indian contemporaries, not much remains to
be unearthed.

In the meanwhile, bodies of Sakas were beginning
to appear in the Panjab and to settle in the vicinity
of Taxila, Mathura, and other places. One isolated
tribe eventually reached Kathiawar.^ Great numbers
somewhere about this time flocked into the modern

' Cf. Acts of the Apostles xvii. 21.
" lu the tract Ectp. Gerend. p. 121.

3 The modern Jats are perhaps descendants of the famous Scythian
tribe, the Getse.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 217

Sistan (Sakastan), giving the country its modern
name. These immigrants appear to have been accom-
panied by a certain number of Parthians, but in spite
of the ingenuity of modern numismatologists, very
little can be said with certainty about these petty
chieftains. Whether there was an actual Parthian
invasion of the Panjab is unknown, and, after all,
not very important ; but coins and inscriptions show
that a powerful Saka dynasty was succeeded by a line
of monarchs bearing Parthian names, who employed
satraps to govern the more distant parts of their
realms. The Greeks, who were continually quarrel-
ling among themselves, could offer no resistance to
these new-comers. Hindu writers speak contemptu-
ously of the " Sakas, Yavanas, and Pahlavas," as a
set of barbarians with little to distinguish them.
There is little doubt that the sudden incursion of
Saka tribes was caused by pressure from the North.
After a series of obscure movements, a powerful
Mongolian tribe called the Yueh-chi had treated the
Sakas of Bactria precisely as the latter had formerly
treated the Bactrian Greeks, and thus the Sakas were
in their turn compelled to seek new homes south of
the Hindu Kush. In the meanwhile, the nomads
who now held Bactria, settled down in that fertile
country and rapidly became a powerful and civilized
nation. In their new abode they acquired a certain
amount of culture ; from the remnants of the Scythian
and Iranian peoples of Balkh they adopted a debased
form of Zoroastrianism ; while from the Greeks of
the country, or perhaps the Parthians, they took over
the Greek alphabet, and possibly a certain modicum
of the Greek language. Finally, about the first

218 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

century a.d., the Yueh-cbi began, like their predeces-
sors, to cast envious eyes upon the Panjab, and a
Yueh-chi monarch named Kadphises, belonging to the
dominant Kushan clan, quietly overran the decadent
Indo-Greek and Saka principalities in North- Western
India.-^ That the Greeks submitted without a struggle
appears from the fact that the last Greek prince,
Plermseus, issued coins in conjunction with Kadphises
until his death, when Kadphises appears alone. The
Kushans rapidly made themselves masters of Northern
India. Kanishka, their most powerful prince, must
have ruled from the Jaxartes to the mouth of the
Ganges. He appears to have sent an embassy to the
Emperor Trajan, and for the next two centuries the
trade between Eome and India reached very large
dimensions. Some idea of the extent of the commerce
between the two countries may be gathered from the
immense finds of Roman coins which have been made
from time to time in India. Five cooly loads of aurei
of the reign of Nero were found some years ago near
Cannanore, and this is by no means an isolated
instance.^ Pliny complains bitterly of the " drain "

* The invasion was no doubt quite a peaceful one ; the " Ksha-
trapas " merely acknowledged their new overlords and remained
undisturbed.

^ An immense amount of trade passed between India and the
West in the first century B.C. It was stimulated by Augustus'
suppression of piracy, and by the discovery of the monsoon by
Hippalus, c. 48 a.d. The goods were sent to Myos Hormus on the
Red Sea, and transhipped at Alexandria. Strabo saw 120 ships
leave Myos Hormus for India. The chief port was Muziris (pro-
bably Mangalore), and it was a run of only forty days from Aden
to that port in the monsoon. Indian Rajas often had Greek body-
guards, and Greek girls in their harems. The Greek janissary was
useful because he could form no plots, being ignorant of the
language of the country. Yavana hence, like Suisse in the

FOEEIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 219

caused by the shipment of Roman gold and silver to
India in return for useless and unproductive luxuries,
and anticipates the gravest results therefrom.^ Perhaps
this export of Eoman money really had something to
do with the disastrous financial paralysis which finally
overtook the Roman Empire. Similar complaints
about the absorption of money by India are not un-
known in modern times, the Kushans, having no
indigenous culture of their own, were forced, as they
became a settled nation, to borrow from their neigh-
bours. The result, as seen in their coins, is a curious
medley. From the Parthians they took over the titles
of KshatrajM, King of Kings, etc., probably because
no change in the government of the subordinate pro-
vinces was made when they conquered the country.
From the Parthians, too, they borrowed the Greek
script generally in vogue, modifying it, however, to
express certain sounds not known to the Greek tongue.
Thus P on the Kushan coins represents not r but sh ;
KOPANO KANEPKl is " Kanishka the Kushan,"
and the title P AON A NO is the Pahlava Shahan-shaJi,
l^amXevQ (daaiXsMv.^ It does not follow, of course,
that the Kushans spoke Greek because they employed
the Greek script. The Greek script is frequently

eighteenth century, comes to be used very vaguely. Nowadays it
means any Westerner, even a Mahommedan. So Boumi among the
Turks and Arabs.

^ " Minima computatione milies centena milia sestertium aunis
omnibus India et Seres peninsulaque ilia imperio nostro adimunt."
N.H. 12. 18.

- For the whole question, see Stein's Zoroastrian Deities cm Indo-
Scythian Coins. (Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. i. p. 133.)
Perhaps in this letter we have a revival of the 2a»', the Indian S',
used at one time by the Dorians. It may have survived in a remote
corner of the Greek world.

220 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

used by various rulers of the time, indifferently with
the Brahmi or Kharoshthi, to express Prakrit coin-
legends. A curious example of the confusion of
Greek and Indian ideas by these semi-barbarous
tribes is a coin of Kanishka bearing a male figure of
the moon, and inscribed SAxlHNH.^ The Goddess
NANAIA appears on many Kushan coins. She is
the Zoroastrian Anaitis, the tutelary deity of Balkh,
and it appears probable that she and many other
Zoroastrian deities,^ were imported by the Kushans
from their ancient home on the Oxus. In some
cases, no doubt, the Kushans merely continued the
local coins of the districts over which they ruled, and
it is possible that the Zoroastrian coins of the Kushans
were issued for circulation in Pahlava settlements
and satrapies. The deity on a particular coin very
often represents the religion, not of the king who
strikes it, but of the district for use in which it is
minted.

Far more important, however, was the importa-
tion by Kanishka of Greek artists from Asia Minor
to decorate the numerous shrines, monasteries, and
other buildings with which, in the first enthusiasm
of his conversion to the Buddhist creed, he covered
the district round his capital town, Peshawar. The
productions of these workmen and their Indian imi-
tators still cover the ancient country of Gandhara in
vast quantities, and their influence upon Buddhist
art was very considerable. It is a curious thing that
it was left to a Scythian, and not to the Indo-Greeks,
to introduce Hellenic art into India. Of the artistic
value of the " Gandhara School " of sculpture, very

^ B. M, Cat. sxvi. 1. - Also represented on Kushan coins.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 221

varying estimates have been formed. Many Euro-
peans, educated on Greek models, have found them
more familiar and intelligible than the purely Hindu
work of the following period, and have, in consequence
lavished upon them a quite disproportionate amount
of praise. On the other hand, the recent school of
Indian critics, which has done so much for ancient
Hindu art, condemns them as utterly worthless
attempts on the part of fifth-rate Hellenistic work-
men to represent subjects they do not in the least
comprehend. This, I think, is a little exaggerated.
No one in his senses would compare the work of
Kanishka's semi-barbarous Indo-Scythian mechanics,
or the decadent Syrian sculptors imported from
Ephesus and Pergamum, with the Elephanta bas-
reliefs, or the magnificent Mahayana Buddhist statues
of Java, or the South Indian bronzes. They are ob-
viously second-rate; they are not even up to the average
standard of the Hellenistic art of the period. They are
evidently "made to order," and show comparatively
few traces of higher artistic feeling. It is, after all,
impossible for any one to represent purely Eastern
ideas by Western methods. The result is always
lamentable.^ On the other hand, we could ill-afford
to lose these interesting, realistic, and often pretty
representatives of Indian life in the first century a.d.^
To the student of Buddhism they are a mine of
information, an entrancing record of the beliefs of
the time. We should beware of under-estimating
their value and interest. Their importance, too, in

1 Take, for instance, the atrocities of Ravi Varma, unhappily so
popular in Western India.

• See the Indo-Greek Buddha, for instance, on p. 5.

222 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

the history of Buddhist art is very great. The Greeks
first taught the Indians to represent the Master in
human form ; it is possible that they are responsible
for the introduction of sculptured representations of
the gods of the Hindu Pantheon as well. The con-
ventional Buddha of modern Buddhism originated
from the Gandhara sculptures. Buddhism has now
become very largely the religion of the Mongolian
nations, and the modern type of the Buddha has
Mongolian features ; but in the hair, the halo, and
the arrangement of the drapery, we may discern clear
traces of his Indo- Greek origin. The Gandhara
school, no doubt, influenced the Far East through
Khotan, where abundant remains of semi-Mongolian
culture, strongly tinged by Indo-Greek ideas, have
recently been discovered. The amount of Hellenistic
influence in the Gandhara sculptures varies con-
siderably. Some of the statues and bas-reliefs are
obviously the work of Greek artists ; Zeus does duty
as Kubera, Pallas Athene as an Indian attendant.
Purely Greek themes like Hercules and the Lion,
Ganymede and the Eagle, Tritons, Centaurs, and so
forth, are reproduced with no attempt at concealment.
Others, again, are much less Greek, both in type and
subject. They represent scenes from the Jataka
Stories, treated with a humorous realism which takes
us back to the older Maurya sculptures. The short,
broad-shouldered figures appearing in these sculptures
are Scythian rather than Aryan. Probably they were
the work of native craftsmen working under Greek
overseers. In the later remains of the period, we
find debased Corinthian pillars, bearing figures in the
foliage, which are Pioman rather than Greek. Some

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 223

of them are "finished" with stucco in a similar
fashion to the pillars of the Baths of Caracalla (217
A.D.).^ As we have already mentioned, there was a
considerable intercourse between Eome and India in
the first three centuries after Christ.

The most unpleasing remains of the period are
the repulsive Mathura sculptures, which probably
belong to a local Tantric cult, as Mr. Vincent Smith
supposes. The finest work of the time, on the other
hand, is found at Amravati. The Amravati bas-reliefs
show very little Greek influence, having been executed
under the orders of the Andra princes, who were not,
like the Kushans, foreigners without a culture of their
own. On the whole, the influence of Greece on the
Gandhara and kindred schools of culture has been
exaggerated; we may find a good many traces in
Kushan art of the ancient traditions of the Maurya
period, partly Indo-Persian, and partly Central Asian.
The critics who are determined to find an origin for
every striking artistic type, trace to Alexandria the
practice of executing long bas-reliefs of an anecdotal
character; in that case we must, perhajjs, look for
Greek influence, transmitted from Western India, in
the wonderful mural sculptures of Java as well as
in the Gandhara friezes.

' These pillars are ornameutal and not structural. The hiiildings
erected by Kanishka must have been of the conventional Indian
type, and to judge from the way in which they have disappeared,
must have been mostly of wood and brick. It should be mentioned,
by the way, that faint traces of Hellenistic influence before the
Kushan era may be found, notably in the coins and other remains
of Azes, and other Saka and Indo-Parthian rulers. Mention should
also be made of the wonderful vase containing the Buddha relics,
discovered in 1909, at Peshawar. It was the work of " Agesilaus,
a workman of Kanishka."— /.2?.4.S., 1909, p. 1058.

224 INDIAN HISTOKICAL STUDIES

IV

After the collapse of the Kusb an Empire, attention
reverts to Eastern India, where the great indigenous
dynasty of the Guptas arose about 300 a.d. With
the Gupta monarch s India begins once more to dis-
card foreign influence ; Buddhism, the creed of the
cosmopolitan settlers of thePanjab, is slowly replaced
by the more conservative Brahmanism ; a great
revival of Sanskrit literature takes place. In art, a
very noticeable change is observed, both in style and
subject. The short, broad-shouldered type of figure
gives place to the long-limbed, graceful forms which
are characteristic of later Hindu art. Hindu subjects
replace Buddhist ones. Did even this great conserva-
tive reaction owe anythingto Western influence? The
Guptas, while adhering strictly to national ideals,
were a singularly enlightened dynasty. They en-
couraged foreign trade, and, like the Kushans, issued
a gold coin in imitation of the Eoman aureus. Indian
philosophy began to make itself felt in the West;
Neo-platonism undoubtedly bears traces of contact
with Eastern ideas. Even Christianity borrowed
something in the course of its development from
Buddhism; relic-worship and monasticism found
their way into the Church from the East; and
Gautama Buddha, under the title of St. Josaphat, is
still, tnirabile dictu, recognized as a Christian saint.
On the other hand, the East borrowed something in
her turn from Western schools. Astronomy, which
has a ritual as well as a scientific importance in
India, was about this time very largely re-modelled

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 225

upon the lines suggested by the researches of the
Alexandrian mathematicians. Indians were quite
frank about their indebtedness to Greece in this
respect. *' The Yavanas are indeed barbarians,"
says the Gargi Samhita, " but astronomy originated
with them, and for this they must be venerated as
gods." Of the five siddhdntas, or astronomical
systems, two, the Romaka siddhdnta and the Paulisa
Siddhdnta (the latter is named after Paul of Alex-
andria, c. 387 A.D.), are manifestly Western in
origin. The word jdmitra, used by Kalidasa {Ku-
murasamhhdva, vii. 1), is the Greek cia/ierpov}
Many of the names of the planets, as well as of the
signs of the zodiac, are derived from the Greek.^
Hindu medical science, in a similar fashion, is
said to show distinct traces of Western influence,
though this may have been introduced in Kushan
times.^

We now come to a much more disputed question.
Does the Indian drama, which reached its height of
perfection under the Guptas, owe anything to Greece ?
If the Greek language was ever known to any extent
in India, it would be easy to suppose that the Indian
dramatists had read Menander and the other Greek
writers. Bat can we infer this fi'om the actual
evidence which we have ? A corrupt Greek was no
doubt spoken at the Court of Sagala by the successors
of the Bactrian Greeks, but the coins show that it

' It is the seventh place on the horoscope, by which the astrologer
predicts the happiness of married life for a person.

- Vide Dr. Vogel's article in East and West, Jan. 1912.

^ Dr Vogel finds in the works of Charaka, " said to have been
Kanishka's physician," very strong traces of a knowledge of
Hippocrates.

Q

226 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

was in a moribund condition.^ Still more corrupt, if
we may judge from the coins, was the Greek in use
at the court of the Kushans; indeed, it is doubtful
whether it was used at all, except for intercourse with
foreigners, as the language of diplomacy and com-
merce. Traders at Barygaza must have picked up a
little of the language, and so must the stonemasons
who associated with Kanishka's foreign workmen.
But this does not imply a knowledge of the literary,
written language of classical Greece. Nor can we
rely much upon the fact that Indian astronomers
and doctors were acquainted with Greek astronomy
and medicine. The knowledge was brought to India
by students who had studied abroad. In the same
way, medieval Europe owed a great deal to Arabian
astronomers and scientists, but this does not imply
that Roger Bacon or other students knew Arabic. As
a matter of fact, we know they did not.

Only one Indian play, the Toy Cart, shows any
real resemblance to a Greek comedy. Even Mr.
Vincent Smith would hesitate to find likenesses in
Shakuntala to any classical drama. Indeed, we might
very well show the futility of making too much of
such resemblances by comparing the Indian and
Elizabethan dramas.^ The Fool (Vidus'aka) certainly
plays a prominent part in the plays of Shakespeare ;
Shakuntala resembles far more closely romantic
comedies like the Winter's Tale, or the plays of

' It has even been held that the corrupt Greek inscriptions on
Kushan and other coins are survivals of a dead language, like the
Latin ones on our own coins.

" Dean Milman, in an article in the Quarterly for 1831, compared
the Indian and Spanish dramas.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 227

Beaumont and Fletcher, than any Greek drama.
Then, again, Greek plays were acted in public, open-
air theatres ; Indian and Elizabethan plays in halls
and courtyards. The small amphitheatre discovered
by Dr. Bloch at Ramgarh ^ is unique, and may be,
like the Yavanilca, or Greek curtain,^ the work of an
ingenious Greek workman in Indian employ. Indian,
like Elizabethan playwrights, show a sublime disre-
gard for the unities, and mingle prose and verse
indiscriminately. The Ndtya S'dstra of Bharata, it
is true, lays down a rule limiting the number of the
persons appearing upon the stage to five, and the
Sanskrit, like the classical drama, avoids the repre-
sentation of violent or unseemly actions. But these
conventions may very well have arisen independently.
It is possible, of course, that the author of the Ndtya
S'dstra, like the Indian writers on astronomy and
medicine, may have derived some of his rules from
Alexandria. The writer of the Toy Cart may have
witnessed or read a Greek comedy. But the ingenious
arguments of Weber and Windisch are merely clever
special pleading; there is really no reason why the
Indian drama should not have arisen, like the Greek,
from primitive religious celebrations, quite indepen-
dently of foreign influence. Mr. Vincent Smith, who
is always anxious to deprive India of the credit of all
her achievements in Art and Literature, thinks there
is sufficient evidence to warrant our believing that
Kalidasa could read, not only Menander, but Terence !
He also finds Greek influence in the typically Indian

1 Arch. Survey of India, 1903-4, p. 123.

^ No curtain was used on the Greek stage, hence this apparatus
was not imported from Greece. Dr. Rapson says Yavanikd merely
means " made of Greek (or Western) material."

228 INDIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES

sculptures of the Gupta period.^ The rhetorical
statements of writers like Clement of Alexandria and
Aelian, that there were Hindus who knew Homer
and the Greek tragedians, need not be taken seriously.
They probably arose from vague stories of the purely
fortuitous points of resemblance between the Greek
and Indian Epics.^

After 400 a.d., the Western world, in the throes
of her last struggles with the barbarian, ceased to
have commerce with the East, and India remained a
vaguely known and legendary land to Europe until
it was rediscovered by Vasco de Gama. The results
arrived at in this essay are mainly negative ; for the
duty of the historian is, I conceive, to overthrow
groundless assumptions and hasty conclusions before
building up theories of his own. I hope I may have
succeeded in showing how unjust are the theories
which attribute any lasting influence upon India to
Greece. To sum up, we may trace three distinct
currents of foreign influence in India. Firstly, the
influence of Babylon and Chaldea, which is visible
in early Indian weights and measm'es and computa-
tions of time ; secondly, Persian influence, which is
very apparent in the court of the Mauryas ; and,
thirdly, Greco-Eoman influence. This last dates
from the time of the Kushan kings only (the Mace-
donian and Bactrian Greeks exerted no influence
worth mentioning), and is to be seen in the Indo-
Greek school of sculpture found in North-Western

^ Hist. Fiiie Art, vi. 1.

- Like the supposed resemblance between the Edmdyaiia (the
story of Sita) and the Iliad (the story of Helen) of which Weber
absurdly makes so much.

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 229

India, in coinage, and in works on technical subjects,
such as astronomy and medicine. It did not affect
the Hterature. On the other hand, India influenced
the West very considerably, from the time of the
Phoenician traders to the adoption of certain Indian
philosophical ideas and religious customs by Greeks
and Christian thinkers. The latter question, how-
ever, has not yet been fully investigated : it awaits
unbiassed and patient research.^

' It would be interesting to deal with the influence of India
through Alexandria upon the early Christian Church. Monasticism
and relic- worship may have been borrowed from Buddhism. Then
we may ask whether Christ Himself owed any of His teaching to the
Essenes, and they to the Buddhists of Balkh and Persia ? Eastern
thought influenced Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism, and possibly
Origen. Saint Josaphat, Prince of India, still regarded as a saint
by the Roman Church, reached Europe from Antioch. The presence
of Indian fables in the Gesta Romanoncm, Boccaccio, and in Chaucer
is also a remarkable fact. See, for instance, Tawney's remarks in
the Journal of Philology, vol. xii. pp. 112 and 203^,

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