The History of Hinduism and Buddhism. Charles Eliot
not with the expansion or decadence of a nation, but with great nobles who add to their estates or go bankrupt.
These features of Indian politics are illustrated by the Arthaśâstra, a manual of state-craft attributed to Câṇakya, the minister of Candragupta and sometimes called the Indian Macchiavelli. Its authenticity has been disputed but it is now generally accepted by scholars as an ancient work composed if not in the fourth century, at least some time before the Christian era. It does not, like Manu and other Brahmanic law-books, give regulations for an ideal kingdom but frankly describes the practice of kings. The form of state contemplated is a small kingdom surrounded by others like it and war is assumed to be their almost normal relation, but due to the taste or policy of kings, not to national aspirations or economic causes. Towards the Brahmans a king has certain moral obligations, towards his subjects and fellow monarchs none. It is assumed that his object is to obtain money from his subjects, conquer his neighbours, and protect himself by espionage and severe punishments against the attacks to which he is continually exposed, especially at the hands of his sons. But the author does not allow his prince a life of pleasure: he is to work hard and the first things he has to attend to are religious matters.
The difficulty of writing historical epitomes which are either accurate or readable is well known and to outline the events which have occurred in the vast area called India during the last 2500 years is a specially arduous task, for it is almost impossible to frame a narrative which follows the fortunes of the best known Hindu kingdoms and also does justice to the influence of southern India and Islam. It may be useful to tabulate the principal periods, but the table is not continuous and even when there is no gap in chronology, it often happens that only one political area is illuminated amid the general darkness and that this area is not the same for many centuries.
1. From about 500 to 200 B.C. Magadha (the modern Bihar) was the principal state and the dominions of its great king Asoka were almost the same as British India to-day.
2. In the immediately succeeding period many invaders entered from the north-west. Some were Greeks and some Iranians but the most important were the Kushans who ruled over an Empire embracing both north-western India and regions beyond it in Afghanistan and Central Asia. This Empire came to an end in the third century A.D. but the causes of its collapse are obscure.
3. The native Hindu dynasty of the Guptas began to rule in 320 A.D. Its dominions included nearly all northern India but it was destroyed by the invasions of the Huns in the fifth and sixth centuries.
4. The Hindu Emperor Harsha (606–647 A.D.) practically reconstituted the Gupta Empire but his dominions split up after his death. At the same time another Empire which extended from Gujarat to Madras was founded by Pulakeśin, a prince from the south, a region which though by no means uncivilized had hitherto played a small part in the general history of India.
5. From 650 to 1000 A.D. India was divided among numerous independent kingdoms. There was no central power but Bengal and the Deccan were more prominent than previously.
6. After 1000 A.D. the conquests of Mohammedan invaders became important and the Hindu states of northern and central India collapsed or grew weak. But the Hindus held out in Rajputana, Orissa, and above all in Vijayanagar.
7. In 1526 came the invasion of the Mughals, who founded an Empire which at its zenith (1556–1707) included all India except the extreme south. In its decadence the Marathas and Sikhs became powerful and Europeans began to intervene.
It is generally agreed that at a period which, though not fixed, was anterior to 1000 B.C.[109] a body of invaders known as Aryans and nearly akin to the ancient Iranians entered India through the north-western mountains. They found there other tribes not deficient in civilization but unable to offer any effective resistance. These tribes who retired southwards are commonly known as Dravidians[110] and possibly represent an earlier invasion of central-Asiatic tribes allied to the remote ancestors of the Turks and Mongols[111]. At the time when the earlier hymns of the Rig Veda were composed, the Aryans apparently lived in the Panjab and did not know the sea, the Vindhya mountains or the Narbudda river. They included several tribes, among whom five are specially mentioned, and we hear that a great battle was fought on the Ravi, in which a confederation of ten kings who wished to force a passage to the east was repulsed by Sudas, chief of the Tritsus. Still the south-eastern movement, across the modern United Provinces to the borders of Bengal, continued and, so far as our records go, it was in this direction rather than due south or south-west, that the Aryans chiefly advanced[112]. When the Brâhmaṇas and earlier Upanishads were composed (c. 800–600 B.C.) the principal political units were the kingdoms of the Pancâlas and Kurus in the region of Delhi. The city of Ayodhyâ (Oudh) is also credited with a very ancient but legendary history.
The real history of India begins with the life of the Buddha who lived in the sixth century B.C.[113] At that time the small states of northern India, which were apparently oligarchies or monarchies restricted by the powers of a tribal council, were in process of being absorbed by larger states which were absolute monarchies and this remained the normal form of government in both Hindu and Moslim times. Thus Kosala (or Oudh) absorbed the kingdom of Benares but was itself conquered by Magadha or Bihar, the chief city of which was Pataliputra or Patna, destined to become the capital of India. We also know that at this period and for about two centuries later the Persian Empire had two satrapies within the limits of modern India, one called "India," including the country east of the Indus and possibly part of the Panjab, and the other called Gândhâra (Peshawar) containing Takshaśilâ[114], a celebrated university. The situation of this seat of learning is important, for it was frequented by students from other districts and they must have felt there in early times Persian and afterwards Hellenistic influence. There are clear signs of Persian influence in India in the reign of Asoka. Of Magadha there is little to be said for the next century and a half, but it appears to have remained the chief state of northern India.
In 327 B.C. Alexander the Great after over-throwing the Persian Empire invaded India, where he remained only nineteen months. He probably intended to annex Sind and the Panjab permanently to his Empire but he died in 323 and in the next year Candragupta, an exiled scion of the royal house of Magadha, put an end to Macedonian authority in India and then seized the throne of his ancestors. He founded the Maurya dynasty under which Magadha expanded into an Empire comprising all India except the extreme south. Seleucus Nicator, who had inherited the Asiatic possessions of Alexander and wished to assert his authority, came into collision with Candragupta but was completely worsted and about 303 B.C. concluded a treaty by which he ceded the districts of Kabul, Herat and Kandahar. Shortly afterwards he sent as his ambassador to the court of Pataliputra a Greek named Megasthenes who resided there for a considerable time and wrote an account of the country still extant in a fragmentary form. The grandson of Candragupta was Asoka, the first ruler of all India (c. 273–231 B.C.). His Empire extended from Afghanistan almost to Madras and was governed with benevolent but somewhat grandmotherly despotism. He was an ardent Buddhist and it is mainly owing to his efforts, which are described in more detail below, that Buddhism became during some centuries the dominant faith in India. Asoka's Empire broke up soon after his death in circumstances which are not clear, for we now enter upon one of those chaotic periods which recur from time to time in Indian history and we have little certain information until the fourth century A.D. Andhra, a region including large parts of the districts now called the Northern Circars, Hyderabad and Central Provinces, was the first to revolt from the Mauryas and a dynasty of Andhra kings[115], who claimed to belong to the Śâtavâhana family, ruled until 236 A.D. over varying but often extensive territories. What remained of the Maurya throne was usurped in 184 B.C. by the Sungas who in their turn were overthrown by the Kaṇvas. These latter could not withstand the Andhras and collapsed before them about 27 B.C.
Alexander's invasion produced little direct effect, and no allusion to it has been found in Indian literature. But indirectly it had a great influence on the political, artistic and religious development of the Hindus by preparing the way for a series of later invasions from the north which brought with them a mixed culture containing Hellenic, Persian and other elements. During some centuries India, as a political region, was not delimitated on the north-western side as it is at present and numerous principalities rose and fell which included Indian territory as well as parts of Afghanistan.
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