SOUTH INDIA AFTER ASHOKA
( from Glimpses of World History by
Jawaharlal Nehru)
----------------------------------------------------------------
e return to
India after our
long journeys to
China in the far East, and
Rome in the West.
The Mauryan Empire did not last long after
Ashoka’s death. Within a few years it withered away. The northern
provinces fell away, and in the south a new
power arose-the Andhra power. Ashoka’s descendants continued to rule the
vanishing empire for nearly fifty years, till they were forcibly removed by
their Commander-in-chief, a Brahman named Pushyamitra. This man made himself
king, and there is said to have been a revival of Brahminism in his time.
Buddhist monks were also persecuted to some extent. But you will find, as you
read Indian history, that the way Brahminism attacked Buddhism was much more
subtle. It did not do anything so crude as to persecute it much. Some
persecution there was, but this was probably political, and not religious. The
great Buddhist Sanghas were powerful organizations,
and many rulers afraid of their political powers; hence their attempts to
weaken them. Brahminism ultimately succeeded in almost driving out Buddhism
from the country of its birth by assimilating it to some extent and absorbing
it and trying to find a place for it in its own house.
Thus the new Brahminism was
not a mere reversion to the old state of affairs and a negation of all that
Buddhism had tried to do. The old leaders of Brahminism were much cleverer and
from of old it had been their practice to absorb and assimilate. When the
Aryans first came to India
they assimilated much of Dravidian culture and custom ,
and all through their history they have, consciously or unconsciously , acted
in this way. They did likewise with Buddhism , and
made of Buddha an avatar and a
god- one of many in the Hindu pantheon. Buddha remained a person to be worshipped and
adored by the multitude , but his special message was quietly put aside, and
Brahminism or Hinduism, with minor variations , continued the even tenor of its
ways. But this process
of brahminising Buddha was a long one, and we are
anticipating , for Buddhism was to remain in India
for many hundred years after Ashoka’s death.
We need not
trouble ourselves with the kings and dynasties
that followed each other in Magadha. About 200 years
after Ashoka’s death Magadha
ceased to be the premier state of India,
but even then it continued to be a great center of Buddhist culture.
Meanwhile , important events were
taking place both in the north and the
south. In the north there were repeated invasions by various peoples of central
Asia called Baktrians and Sakas and Scythians and Turkis and Kushans. I
think I wrote you once how
central Asia has been a breeding –ground
for hordes of people and how these people
have come out , again and again in history, and spread out all over Asia
and even over Europe. There were several such invasions
of India during
the 200 years before Christ. But you must remember that these invasions were
not just for conquest and loot. They were for land to settle down in. Most of
these Central Asian tribes were nomads, and as their numbers grew, the land
they lived in was not sufficient to support them. So they had to migrate and
seek fresh lands. An even more forceful reason for these great migrations was
the pressure from behind. One great tribe or clan would drive away others, and
these, in their turn, would be compelled to invade other countries. Thus the
people who came as invaders to India
were often themselves refugees from their own pastures. The Chinese Empire
also, whenever it was strong enough to do so, as in the days of the Hans, drove
these nomads away and thus compelled them to seek new homes.
You must
also remember that these nomadic tribes of Central Asia
did not look upon India
wholly as an enemy country. They are referred to as “barbarians”, and
undoubtedly, compared to the India
of those days, they were not as civilized. But most of them were ardent Buddhists, and
they looked up to India,
which had given birth to the Dharma.
Even in Pushyamitra’s time
there was an
invasion in the northwest by Menander of Baktria who was a pious Buddhist. Baktria was the country
just across the Indian border. It used to be part of Seleucus’s empire, but
later it became independent. Menander’s invasion was
repulsed, but he managed to keep Kabul
and Sindh.
Later came the invasion of the Sakas,
who came in great numbers and spread out all over northern and western India.
The Sakas were a great tribe of Turki
nomads. They were pushed out of their pastures by another great tribe, the Kushans. They overran Baktria and Parthia and gradually
established themselves in northern India,
more particularly in the Punjab, Rajputana and Kathiawad.
India civilized
them, and they gave up their nomadic habits.
It is interesting to observe that
these Baktrian and Turki
rulers in parts of India
did not make much difference to Indo-Aryan society. These rulers, being Buddhist , followed the Buddhist church organization, which
was itself based on the old Indo-Aryan
plan of democratic village communities. Thus India
continued to be, even under these rulers, largely a collection of
self-governing village communities or republics, under the central power.
During this period also Takshashila and Mathura continued to be great
centers of Buddhist learning, attracting students from China
and western Asia.
But
repeated invasions from the north-west and the gradual break-up of the Mauryan
state organizations had one effect. The southern India states became truer
representatives of the old Indo-Aryan system. Thus the center of Indo-Aryan
power moved south. Probably many able persons from the north migrated to the
south on account of the invasions. You will see later on that this
process was repeated 1000 years later when the Muslims invaded India.
Even now southern India
has been far less affected by foreign invasions and contacts than the north.
Most of us living in the north have grown up in a composite culture-a mixture
of Hindu and Muslim with a dash of the west. Even our language-Hindi or Urdu,
or Hindustani, call it what you like-is a composite language. But the south
is still, as you have seen yourself, predominantly Hindu and orthodox. For
many hundred of years it tried to protect and preserve the old
Aryan tradition, and in this attempt it built up a rigid society which is
amazing in its intolerance even today. Walls are dangerous companions. They may
occasionally protect from outside evil and keep out an unwelcome intruder. But
they also make you a prisoner and a slave, and you purchase your so-called purity and immunity at the cost of freedom.
And the most terrible of walls are the walls that grow up in the mind which
prevent you from discarding an evil tradition simply because it is old, and
from accepting a new thought because it is novel.
But south India did a real service by preserving through 1000 years and
more the Indo-Aryan traditions not only in religion, but in art and in
politics. If you want to see specimens of old Indian art now, you have to go to
south India. In politics, we have it from Megasthenes,
the Greek, that the popular assemblies of the south restrained the power of
kings.
Not only
the learned men but the artists and builders and artisans and craftsmen went south
when Magadha
declined. A considerable trade flourished between south India and Europe.
Pearls , ivory, gold, rice, pepper, peacocks, and even monkeys , were sent to
Babylon and Egypt and Greece , and later to Rome. Teakwood from the Malabar
coast went even earlier to Chaldaea and Babylonia.
And all this trade, or most of it , was carried in
Indian ships , manned by Dravidians. This will enable you to realize
what an advanced position south India
occupied in the ancient world. Large numbers of Roman coins have been
discovered in the south , and, as I have already told
you, there were Alexandrian colonies on the Malabar Coast and Indian colonies in Alexandria.
Soon after
Ashoka’s death the Andhra state in the south became independent. Andhra, as you
perhaps know, is a Congress province
now, along the east coast of India , north of Madras. Telugu is the language of
Andhra-desha. The Andhra power extended rapidly after
Ashoka till it spread right across the Deccan from sea to sea.
From the
south great colonizing enterprises were undertaken, but of these we shall speak
later.
I have
preferred above to the Sakas and Scythians and others
who invaded India, and settled down in the north. They became part of India,
and we in the north India are as much descended from them as from the Aryans.
In particular, the brave and fine-looking Rajputs and
the hardy people of Kathiawad are their descendants.