India
(
Ἰνδία). India is the middle one of the three great
land-masses that jut southward from the mainland of Asia. In shape it is somewhat like a
lozenge or diamond, with land-boundaries to the north and water-boundaries to the south. The
northern half is wedged in between the Himalayan and the Sulaiman ranges, which thus form
respectively its northeastern and northwestern frontiers; while the southern half, tapering to
a point at Cape Comorin, projects into the Indian Ocean, and is washed by the Arabian Sea on
the southwest and by the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. Its area is nigh 1,500,000 square
miles—that is, nearly one-half (about 5/12) that of the United States, or almost
equal to that of all Europe less Russia.
In respect of physical configuration, India may be divided into three very distinct parts:
the Himalayan region; the river plains of the Indus and Ganges, or the Indo-Gangetic plain;
and Peninsular India. The last is a triangular plateau which forms the southern half of the
“lozenge.” The Himalaya shuts off India from Central Asia by an almost
impassable barrier on the north. The Indus, flowing northwest, drains the back of the western
half of the range; then, turning a right angle to the left, it breaks through the mountains,
and receiving the affluents which with it drain the Punjab (Persian,
Panj-āb, “Five-river” land) flows in a general
southwesterly direction to the Arabian Sea. The Ganges, with its feeders, drains the southern
slopes of the range and flows in a general southeasterly direction into the Bay of Bengal. The
watershed between the drainage basins of the Indus and the Ganges is scarce a thousand feet
above sea-level, and the slope on each side is imperceptible. The
“basins,” therefore, form one practically continuous
“plain.” This Indo-Gangetic plain is a vast alluvial formation, made by
deposits of rich silt brought down by the rivers, and has accordingly been the principal scene
of Indic civilization.
The home of the earliest and most primitive Indic civilization, as indicated by the
geographical allusions of the Vedas, was the Punjab, the region of the middle Indus and its
tributaries. Later, the scene shifts to the southeast, to the valley of the Ganges and its
most important affluent, the Jumna. This is the “Middle Country”
(Sanskrit, madhya-des/a), the fertile region in which occur
the chief events of the great Epic period and of the rise and bloom of Buddhism.
For the country above defined as India, there is no comprehensive name in the oldest native
literature. Later books call it
Jambu-dvīpa, “Land of the
Rose-apple;” and the great Gangetic region is named “The
Bhāratan” (Sanskrit, bhArata), or also
Arya-Avarta, “Home of the Aryans.” The
French take their name for Germany—Allemagne —from that of the region of
the tribe—the Alemanni—nearest themselves, and then extend it to the whole
country. Similarly the Greeks. Their names for India—
ἡ
Ἰνδία, ἡ Ἰνδική—apply properly only to the westernmost part of
India, the region of the Indus. In Sanskrit, sindhu-s (the
Hindu-sh of the ancient Persians) means “stream,” and then
“
The Stream,” that is, “The Indus,
ὁ Ἰνδός” (
incolis Sindus appellatus, says
Pliny ), and finally also “The region on the Indus.”
Subjoined are the names of the tributaries of the Indus in order from west to
east—first the Sanskrit form, then the Greek, and then the modern
name:
The Asiknī was known later as the Chandrabhāgā, a name to the
Macedonian ears so ominously like
Σανδαρο-φάγος
(“Xander-devourer”), that Alexander changed it to
Ἀκεσίνης (“The Healing”), with a bright play on its older
name Asiknī.
Σανδαροφάγος ὑπὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου ποταμὸς
μετωνομάσθη καὶ ἐκλήθη Ἀκεσίνης, says Hesychius.
The names of the Ganges and its greatest tributary, the Jumna, are easily recognized in
their ancient forms—
Γάγγης and
Διάμουνα; Sanskrit,
Gangā and
Yamunā. The mountain names
Ἠμωδό-ς (Strabo, 689) and
Haemodes (
Mela, i.
81) correspond closely to the vernacular form of the Sanskrit
Haimavata-s, synonymous with
Hima-vant, “The
Snow-y” range, and with
Hima-ālaya, “Abode of
Snow.” The Hindu, in telling the points of the compass, faces the east. The Sanskrit
name for Peninsular India, south of the Vindhya Mountains (
τὸ
Οὐίνδιον ὄρος) is, accordingly,
Dakshinā-patha,
“Region to the right (
δεξιά) or the
south,”
Δαχιναβάδης of the Periplus ( 50), our
Dekkan.
The recent science of Comparative Grammar has proved that the ancestors of Hindus and
Iranians and Greeks and of the Slavic, Germanic, Italic, and Keltic races are of one stock,
called Aryan or IndoEuropean, which once had a common language and home. The Indic branch of
this stock were not the aboriginal inhabitants of India; these were the dark-skinned tribes or
Dasyus, whom the more gifted Aryan invaders, entering India from the extreme
northwest, forced constantly to retire to the east and southeast. These non-Aryan tribes are
now represented in part by the Dravidian races of the Dekkan. Of the Aryans, numerous tribes
are mentioned in the Vedic literature, among them the
Pūrus, the
Bharatas, the
Kuru-Panchālas; but the physical form
of the Indo-Gangetic plain, free as it is from mountain barriers, is not favourable to the
maintenance of tribal identity, and the floods of foreign invasion have had a similarly
unfavourable tendency.
The language of the Indic Aryans shows three principal stages of development:
1.
Old Indic or Sanskrit;
2.
Middle Indic or Prākrit; and
3.
New Indic or Bhāshā. The first is represented by the Vedic, the Epic,
and the Classical Sanskrit; the second, chiefly by the Pāli and by the
Prākrit proper, or languages respectively of the sacred books of the Southern
Buddhists and of the Jains; the third, chiefly by the nine principal Aryan tongues of modern
India, Mahratti, Bengali, etc.
Of all these, as indeed of all recorded Aryan tongues, the language of the Vedas is the
most ancient; and it has, on the whole, conserved the greatest number of antique features.
Note, for example, the retention in Sanskrit of the primitive sibilant in sU-s as compared with the cognate
ὗ-ς and English
sow; in ja/nas-as =
γένε(
ς)-
ος,
gener-is; in a/s-mi, “I am” = Lesbian
ἔμ-μι; in a/-srava-t, “it
flowed” =
ἔρρεε, for *
ἔ-σρεϝε-τ, root
sru=hρυ.
The structure of the Sanskrit forms of derivation and inflection is so transparent as to
shed much light on the corresponding forms of the allied languages. Thus it has two
equivalent endings for the passive participle, -na-s and
-ta-s; and likewise a root mah, “Be great,” with an older form, magh — facts which, considered together, furnish an easy bond of
connection for
μέγ-α,
māg-nu-s, and
māc-tu-s,
“Magnified.” In ichAmi dA-tu-m,
“I wish to give,” the infinitive is simply the accusative of a verbal
noun-stem dA-tu, of which various other case-forms occur.
Such facts make clear the nature of the Latin supines:
īre
datum, “Be going to give;”
lepida
memorātuī, “Nice for telling, nice to tell;”
redīre opsōnātu, “Come back
from marketing.” Take
quo-d and
πό-θεν by themselves, and the stem is obscure; but in the light of the Sanskrit
ka-d, Gothic
hva, English
wha-t, Ionic
κό-θεν, it is plain that
the pronominal stem began originally with the
k-sound, not with the
p.
An extensive Sanskrit literature has come down to us from the Hindus. Oldest and most
important are the four Vedas, chiefly metrical. The Rigveda is a collection of over a
thousand hymns, the most ancient of which may antedate our era by twenty centuries, and are
therefore the oldest recorded documents of Aryan antiquity. Next come the Brahmanas, in
prose, and containing, besides mystical discussions of the sacrifice and ritual, those
theosophic speculations which culminated in the doctrines of the Upanishads, and thus became
the basis of the later philosophical systems, notably of the pantheistic system of the
Vedanta. In another stream from the Vedas flow the books of ceremonial, of custom, and of
law. The legends of the Heroic Age are embodied in the vast epic called the Great Bharata
Story (
Mahā-bhārataākhyāna, or, more
briefly, the Mahā-bhārata); and also in the lesser epic called
Rāmāyana. Notable, besides, are especially the drama
(Kālidāsa's Çakuntalā) and the beast-fable
(Pancha-tantra).
The Pāli literature embraces the legends of the life and teachings of Buddha, the
books of the doctrine and order which grew therefrom, and the great collection of charming
folk-stories called the Jātaka, or tales of the anterior births of Gotama Buddha.
The early Indic Aryans of the Punjab were a sturdy, life-loving race. Their religion was a
primitive polytheism, whose deities were personifications of the phenomena of nature, such as
the wind and the sun. Thus
agnis was the element (Latin
ignis), while
Agnis was the fire-god, who bore aloft the sacrifice to
the other gods. To Hindu, as to Greek and Roman, the sky (
dyaus,
Ζεύς,
Diēs-piter) was father and
the earth was mother. As the Aryans advanced southeastward down the Ganges valley, the hot
and humid climate wrought a profound change in their character. Their religion degenerated
into a most elaborate and souldeadening ritualism. The growth of individuality and so of
great and public-spirited personalities was estopped by the rigid system of caste. The belief
in the transmigration of souls became general. And the institutions of monkish life and
asceticism developed to a degree which astonished the Greeks beyond measure, and is perhaps
without a parallel elsewhere. Religious nostrums were doubtless many in the “Middle
Country” in the sixth century b.c.; and so were the
religious teachers or saviours, each with his following greater or less. Of all the latter,
only two have left any great mark in the world's history—namely,
Nātaputta the Nigantha and the great monk Gotama.
Nātaputta was contemporary with Gotama, but somewhat older; and he was the
reformer of Jainism, or the religion of the “Conqueror”
(
Jina), which, since it still flourishes in India, may not unfairly be deemed
the oldest Aryan sect in the world. Gotama, whose death at the age of eighty may be set at
about B.C. 480, seems to be the greatest personality that India has ever produced. He taught
not only a pure and gentle and noble morality, but also that all things are transitory, are
misery, are unreal; and that the supreme goal is escape from the bonds of existence and
rebirth. His religion, vastly modified by influences of time and locality, has spread to the
Extreme Orient; and has meanwhile become displaced in India by Hinduism and the worship of
the gods Vishnu and Çiva.
The customs of the ancient Hindus may be learned with much fulness from the treatises of
household usages called
Grihya-sūtras; and, when studied in the
light of the corresponding classical or Germanic customs, will form a most important and
interesting chapter of Aryan comparative philology. Since birth, reproduction, and death are
the three great facts of human existence, the marriage and funeral customs naturally take a
prominent place in these pictures of ancient life. The joining of right hands was the most
significant feature of the nuptial ceremonies; and this was not lacking with the Romans (
dextrarum iunctio). The walking about the altar with the right side towards
it (
ἐπιδέξια), or the sunwise circumambulation, finds its
analogies among other Aryan races: compare the Roman
dextratio and the
Gaelic “walking the deasil.” The
confarreatio and
the
pellis lanata may be traced to India. At a funeral the
circumambulation was reversed, in Italy (Statius,
Theb. vi. 215) as well as on the Ganges. The above may serve as
examples of coincidences of usage. It is likely that a considerable body of these customs go
back to Aryan antiquity.
Ancient India has no history, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. If all things are
transitory, are misery—why fix the thoughts on them? The events of its past do not
show the working of noble and mighty personalities. Its loftiest souls are absorbed in
religious and philosophical speculation. The history of India is a history of thought, of
religion. The Vedas and the Epics yield us abundant and invaluable evidence concerning the
life and civilization of the times to which they belong; but for any records of events in
orderly sequence and with fixed chronology we look in vain.
Yet two great events—the appearance of Buddha and the invasion of
Alexander—are exceptions. The one was of profoundest importance to India; the
other, of great importance for our knowledge of India. Indeed, it is to foreign invaders and
pilgrims that we owe some of our most valuable knowledge about India. Darius (521- 485), on
an inscription at Persepolis, mentions the Indus region among his conquered provinces. Nearly
two centuries later, B.C. 326, Alexander the Great crossed the Indus (Arrian,
Anab. v. 4) and the Hydaspes (v. 12); and, after defeating the Indian
king Porus (v. 17), advanced to the Hyphasis. On the bank of this Indian stream the
worldconqueror was forced to turn back; and, without even entering the Gangetic plain, he set
out for Persis.
After his death (June, 323), one of his great generals, Seleucus Nicator, invaded India
again (about 305), and made a treaty with the famous Sandrokottos (or
Σανδρόκυπτος, Sanskrit
Chandra-gupta), the founder of the
Mauryan dynasty of Magadha. The Magadhan empire extended from Lower Bengal to the Indus, and
its capital was
Παλίβοθρα (Sanskrit
Pātaliputra), on the Ganges at the old confluence of the Sone. The
Pāli books call him Chandagutta the Moriya (
Μωριεύς); and there is no other ancient Hindu about whom there is so much
concurrent evidence from Indian and classical sources. (See Justin, xv. 4.) It was to his
court that Seleucus sent his friend Megasthenes as ambassador. Megasthenes was a careful
observer, and had a most unusual opportunity for observing; so that the book which he wrote
was probably the most valuable work of antiquity on India. As if to show how deplorable is
its loss, considerable excerpts from it have been preserved by Strabo, Arrian, and others.
Chandragupta's grandson Açoka (B.C. 259-222) was the greatest monarch of ancient
India. Many rock-inscriptions containing his edicts are still extant, and are of priceless
worth, as being the oldest of their kind. Some of them are especially interesting because
they mention the Greeks, for example, “Antiyoka, king of the Yonas,” and
“Antikina.” The former is Antiochus II., and the latter Antigonus
Gonatas. The Yonas or Yavanas are of course the
Ἴωνες or
Ἰάονες, that is, the Greeks. The rock-cut edicts are
found in Orissa, Gujarat, and the extreme north of the Punjab—places so wide apart
as to show that Açoka's empire embraced the whole Indo-Gangetic region. Perhaps
the most notable event of his reign was his conversion to Buddhism. He was mild and tolerant,
but zealous withal for the promotion of the faith. See Senart's “Un roi de
l'Inde,” in the
Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1, 1889.
The century from B.C. 326 to 222, accordingly— including, as it does, Alexander's
invasion and death, the reigns of Chandragupta and Açoka, and the culmination of
the Magadhan empire—is the most notable one of Indian antiquity. It includes also
the rise of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, from which Hellenic kings made repeated conquests of
parts of Western India. There followed the GraecoIndian sovereigns, chief of whom was
Menander (Pāli
Milinda), about B.C. 100. Some fifteen years later
the dynasty was overthrown by the Çakas or Scythians, and the power of the Greeks
put to an end. The greatest of the Çaka kings was Kanishka; and it is probably his
consecration in A.D. 78 that forms the starting-point of the Çaka era, which is
still in use.
The Imperial Gupta dynasty, beginning A.D. 320 and lasting till about 480, deserves mention
as bearing a national Indian character. It gave to India a respite from the inroads of the
northern barbarians and an excellent administration of government. Among regents of the sixth
century, Harsha of Ujjain, with the title Vikramāditya, is famous because of the
traditional connection of his name with that of the greatest of all Hindu poets,
Kālidāsa. In the seventh century,
Çīlāditya of Kanauj became very powerful; and it was during
his long reign that the illustrious Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Hiuen Tsiang, made his travels
in India (A.D. 629-645). The history of modern India begins with the invasion made by Mahmud
of Ghazni, A.D. 1000, and embraces the period of the Mohammedan conquerors
and that of British rule.
Bibliography.—Geography: H. F. Blanford,
Elementary Geography of India, Burma, and Ceylon (New York,
1890). The best map of ancient India is Colonel Yule's, in William Smith's
Atlas of Ancient Geography. See, also, in the
Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society for 1889 the map facing p. 527. An admirable modern atlas is
Constable's Hand Atlas of India (London, 1893). Language: W. D.
Whitney,
Sanskrit Grammar (2d ed. Boston, 1889); C. R. Lanman,
Sanskrit Reader, with Vocabulary and Notes (Boston, 1888);
Victor Henry,
Short Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (Eng. trans.
New York, 1890). Literature and Civilization: A. Kaegi,
The
Rigveda (Boston, 1886); L. von Schroeder,
Indiens Literatur und
Cultur in historischer Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1887). Religion: A. Barth,
The Religions of India (2d ed. London, 1890); H. Oldenberg,
Buddha: his Life, his Doctrine, his Order, trans. by W. Hoey
(also 2d
German ed., Berlin, 1893). Greek Knowledge of India: see, especially, W. M'Crindle's
Ancient India as described by the Classical Authors, being a series of copiously
annotated translations of all the Greek and Roman texts which relate to India. Five
volumes have appeared. I. Megasthenes, and Arrian's
Indica, i.-xvii. Vol. II.
Commerce and navigation of the Erythraean Sea, being a translation of the
Periplus and of Arrian's account of the voyage of Nearchus
(
Indica, xviii.-xliii.). Vol. III. The
Indica of Ctesias, the
Cnidian (the abridgment by Photius, and the fragments). Vol. IV. The
Geography
of Claudius Ptolemaeus (the chapters on India, etc.). V. The invasion of India by Alexander
the Great, as described by Arrian, Q. Curtius, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Justin
(London,
1893). Texts: Megasthenes's
Indica, fragments ed. by E. A. Schwanbeck
(Bonn, 1846). Also, in C. Müller's
Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum, ii. pp. 397-439
(Paris, 1848); Strabo's
Geography, xv. pp. 685-720; Arrian's
Anabasis, iv. 22 to vi.
28; and Porphyrius,
De Abstinentia, iv. 17-18.