THE DISCOVERY OF INDIA ,CHAPTER -5

CHAPTER FIVE 

THROUGH THE AGES 
Nationalism and Imperialism under the Guptas 



THE MAURYA EMPIRE FADED AWAY AND GAVE PLACE TO THE SUNGA 

dynasty, which ruled over a much smaller area. In the south 
great states were rising, and in the north the Bactrians, or Indo- 
Greeks, were spreading out from Kabul to the Punjab. Under 
Menander they threatened Pataliputra itself but were defeated 
and repelled. Menander himself succumbed to the spirit and atmos- 
phere of India and became a Buddhist, a famous one, known 
as King Milinda, popular in Buddhist legend and regarded 
almost as a saint. From the fusion of Indian and Greek cultures 
rose the Graeco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, the region covering 
Afghanistan and the frontier. 

There is a granite pillar called the Heliodorus column, dating 
from the first century B.C., at Besnagar, near Sanchi in Central 
India, bearing an inscription in Sanskrit. This gives us a glimpse 
of the process of Indianization of the Greeks who had come to 
the frontier, and their absorption of Indian culture. The in- 
scription has been translated thus: 'This Garuda column of 
Vasudeva (Vishnu), the God of gods, was erected by Heliodorus, 
a worshipper of Vishnu, the son of Dion, and an inhabitant of 
Taxila, who came as Greek ambassador from the great King 
Antialcidas to King Kashiputra Bhagabhadra, the saviour, then 
reigning in the fourteenth year of his kingship.' 

'Three immortal precepts, when practised well, lead to heaven 
— self-restraint, self-sacrifice (charity), conscientiousness.' 

In Central Asia the Shakas or Scythians (Seistan=Shakasthan) 
had established themselves in the Oxus Valley. The Yueh Chih, 
coming from further east, drove them out and pushed them into 
North India. These Shakas became converts to Buddhism and 
Hinduism. Among the Yueh Chih, one of the clans, the Kushans, 
established their supremacy and then extended their sway over 
Northern India. They defeated the Shakas and pushed them still 
further south, the Shakas going to Kathiawad and the Deccan. 
The Kushans thereupon established an extensive and durable 
empire over the whole of North India and a great part of Cen- 



tral Asia. Some of them became converts to the Hindu faith, 
but most of them became Buddhists, and their most famous 
king, Kanishka, is also one of the heroes of Buddhist legend, 
which records his great deeds and public works. Buddhist though 
he was, it appears that the state religion was a mixed affair to 
which even Zoroastrianism had contributed. This borderland 
state, called the Kushan Empire, with its seat near modern 
Peshawar, and the old university of Taxila near by, became the 
meeting place of men from many nations. There the Indians 
met the Scythians, the Yueh Chih, the Iranians, the Bactrian 
Greeks, the Turks, and the Chinese, and the various cultures 
reacted on each other. A vigorous school of sculpture and paint- 
ing arose as a result of their interactions. It was during this 
period that, historically, the first contacts took place between 
China and India, and a Chinese embassy came to India in 64 
A.C. Minor but very welcome gifts of China to India at that time 
were the peach and the pear trees. Right on the borders of the 
Gobi Desert, at Turfan and Kucha, rose fascinating amalgams 
of Indian, Chinese, and Iranian cultures. 

During the Kushan period a great schism divided Buddhism 
into two sections — the Mahayana and the Hinayana — and con- 
troversy raged between them and, as has been India's way, the 
issue was put to debate in great assemblies, to which representa- 
tives came from all over the country. Kashmir was situated near 
the centre of the empire and was full of this debate and of 
cultural activities. One name stands out in this controversy, that 
of Nagarjuna, who lived in the first century A.C. He was a tower- 
ing personality, great in Buddhist scholarship and Indian philo- 
sophy, and it was largely because of him that Mahayana trium- 
phed in India. It was the Mahayana doctrine that spread to 
China, while Ceylon and Burma adhered to Hinayana. 

The Kushans had Indianized themselves and had become 
patrons of Indian culture; yet an undercurrent of nationalist 
reistance to their rule continued, and when, later, fresh tribes 
poured into India, this nationalist and anti-foreign movement 
took shape at the beginning of the fourth century A.C. Another 
great ruler, also named Chandragupta, drove out the new 
intruders and established a powerful and widespread empire. 

Thus began the age of the imperial Guptas in 320 A.C. which 
produced a remarkable succession of great rulers, successful in 
war and in the arts of peace. Repeated invasions had produced 
a strong anti-foreign feeling and the old Brahmin-Kshatriya 
element in the country was forced to think in terms of defence 
both of their homeland and their culture. The foreign elements 
which had been absorbed were accepted, but all new-comers met 
with a vigorous resitance, and an attempt was made to build 

137 



up a homogenous state based on old Brahminic ideals. But the 
old self-assurance was going and these ideals began to develop a 
rigidity which was foreign to their nature. India seemed to draw 
into her shell, both physically and mentally. 

Yet that shell was deep enough and wide enough. Previously, 
in the ages since the Aryans had come down to what they called 
Aryavarta or Bharatvarsha, the problem that faced India was to 
produce a synthesis between this new race and culture and the 
old race and civilization of the land. To that the mind of India 
devoted itself and it produced an enduring solution built on the 
strong foundations of a joint Indo-Aryan culture. Other foreign 
elements came and were absorbed. They made little difference. 
Though India had many contacts with other countries through 
trade and otherwise, essentially she was absorbed in herself and 
paid little attention to what happened elsewhere. But now 
periodic invasion by strange peoples with strange customs had 
shaken her up and she could no longer ignore these eruptions, 
which not only broke up her political structure but endangered 
her cultural ideals and social structure also. The reaction was 
essentially a nationalist one, with the strength as well as the 
narrowness of nationalism. That mixture of religion and philo- 
sophy, history and tradition, custom and social structure, which 
in its wide fold included almost every aspect of the life of India, 
and which might be called Brahminism or (to use a later word) 
Hinduism, became the symbol of nationalism. It was indeed a 
national religion, with its appeal to all those deep instincts, 
racial and cultural, which form the basis everywhere of nation- 
alism to-day. Buddhism, child of Indian thought, had its nation- 
alist background also. India was to it the holy land where 
Buddha had lived and preached and died, where famous scholars 
and saints had spread the faith. But Buddhism was essentially 
international, a world religion, and as it developed and spread 
it became increasingly so. Thus it was natural for the old Brah- 
minic faith to become the symbol again and again of nationalist 
revivals. 

That faith and philosophy were tolerant and chivalrous to the 
various religions and racial elements in India, and they still 
continued to absorb them into their wide-flung structure, but 
they became increasingly aggressive to the outsider and sought 
to protect themselves against his impact. In doing so, the spirit 
of nationalism they had roused often took on the semblance of 
imperialism as it frequently dees when it grows in strength. 
The age of the Guptas, enlightened, vigorous, highly cultured, 
and full of vitality as it was, rapidly developed these imperia- 
listic tendencies. One of its great rulers, Samudragupta, has been 
called the Indian Napoleon. From a literary and artistic point of 

138 



view it was a brilliant. period. 

From early in the fourth century onwards for about a hundred 
and fifty years the Guptas ruled over a powerful and prosperous 
state in the north. For almost another century and a half their 
successors continued but they were on the defensive now and 
the empire shrank and became smaller and smaller. New inva- 
ders from Central Asia were pouring into India and attacking 
them. These were the White Huns, as they are called, who 
ravaged the land, as under Attila they were ravaging Europe. 
Their barbarous behaviour and fiendish cruelty at last roused 
the people, and a united attack by a confederacy under Yasho- 
varman was made on them. The Hun power was broken and 
their chief, Mihiragula, was made a prisoner. But the descen- 
dant of the Guptas, Baladitya, in accordance with his country's 
customs, treated him with generosity and allowed him to leave 
India. Mihiragula responded to this treatment by returning 
later and making a treacherous attack on his benefactor. 

But the Hun rule in Northern India was of brief duration — 
about half a century. Many of them remained, however, in the 
country as petty chiefs giving trouble occasionally and being 
absorbed into the sea of Indian humanity. Some of these chiefs 
became aggressive early in the seventh century A.C. They were 
crushed by the King of Kanauj, Harshavardhana, who thereafter 
built up a powerful state right across Northern and Central 
India. He was an ardent Buddhist but his Buddhism was of the 
Mahayana variety which was akin in many ways to Hinduism. 
He encouraged both Buddhism and Hinduism. It was in his 
time that the famous Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (or Yuan 
Chwang) came to India (in 629 A.C.). Harshavardhana was a 
poet and dramatist and he gathered round his court many artists 
and poets, making his capital Ujjayini, a famous centre of cul- 
tural activities. Harsha died in 648 A.C., just about the time 
when Islam was emerging from the deserts of Arabia, to spread 
out rapidly across Africa and Asia. 

South India 

In South India for more than 1,000 years after the Maurya 
Empire had shrunk and finally ceased to be, great states flouri- 
shed. The Andhras had defeated the Shakas and were later the 
contemporaries of the Kushans; then came the Chalukyan Em- 
pire in the west to be followed by the Rashtrakutas. Further 
south were the Pallavas who were mainly responsible for the 
colonizing expeditions from India. Later came the Chola Empire 
which spread right across the peninsula and conquered Ceylon 
and Southern Burma. The last great Chola ruler, Rajendra, 



died in 1044 A.C. 

Southern India was especially noted for its fine products and 
its trade by sea. They were sea-powers and their ships carried 
merchandise to distant countries. Colonies of Greeks lived there 
and Roman coins have also been found. The Chalukyan king- 
dom exchanged ambassadors with the Sassanid rulers of Persia. 

The repeated invasions of North India did not affect the 
South directly. Indirectly they led to many people from the north 
migrating to the south and these included builders and craftsmen 
and artisans. The south thus became a centre of the old artistic 
traditions while the north was more affected by new currents 
which the invaders brought with them. This process was acce- 
lerated in later centuries and the south became the stronghold of 
Hindu orthodoxy. 

Peaceful Development and Methods of Warfare 

A brief account of repeated "invasions and of empire succeeding 
empire is likely to convey a very wrong idea of what was taking 
place in India. It must be remembered that the period dealt 
with covers 1,000 years or more and the country enjoyed long 
stretches of peaceful and orderly government. 

The Mauryas, the Kushans, the Guptas, and, in the south, 
the Andhras, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and others, each lasted 
for two or three hundred years — longer, as a rule, than the 
British Empire has so far lasted in India. Nearly all these were 
indigenous dynasties and even those, like the Kushans, who 
came from across the northern border, soon adapted themselves 
to this country and its cultural traditions and functioned as 
Indian rulers with their roots in India. There were frontier 
forays and occasional conflicts between adjoining states, but the 
general conditions of the country was one of peaceful govern- 
ment, and the rulers took especial pride in encouraging artistic 
and cultural activities. These activities crossed state boundaries, 
for the cultural and literary background was the same through- 
out India. Every religious or philosophic controversy imme- 
diately spread and was debated all over the north and south. 

Even when there was war between two states, or there was 
an internal political revolution, there was relatively little inter- 
ference with the activities of the mass of the people. Records have 
been found of agreements between the warring rulers and the 
heads of village self-governing communities, promising not to 
injure the harvests in any way and to give compensation for any 
injury unintentionally caused to the land. This could not apply, 
of course, to invading armies from abroad, nor probably could 
it apply to any real struggle for power. 

140 



The old Indo-Aryan theory of warfare strictly laid down that 
no illegitimate methods were to be employed and a war for a 
righteous cause must be righteously conducted. How far the 
practice fitted in with the theory is another matter. The use of 
poisoned arrows was forbidden, so also concealed weapons, or 
the killing of those who were asleep or who came as fugitives or 
suppliants. It was declared that there should be no destruction 
of fine buildings. But this view was already undergoing a change 
in Chanakya's time and he approves of more destructive and 
deceptive methods, if these are considered essential for the defeat 
of the enemy. 

It is interesting to note that Chanakya in his Arthashastra, 
in discussing weapons of warfare, mentions machines which can 
destroy a hundred persons at one time and also some kind of 
explosives. He also refers to trench warfare. What all this meant 
it is not possible to say now. Probably the reference is to some 
traditional stories of magical exploits. There is no ground for 
thinking that gunpowder is meant. 

India has had many distressful periods in the course of her 
long history, when she was ravaged by fire and sword or by 
famine, and internal order collapsed. Yet a broad survey of this 
history appears to indicate that she had a far more peaceful and 
orderly existence for long periods of time at a stretch than Europe 
has had. And this applies also to the centuries following the 
Turkish and Afghan invasions, right up to the time when the 
Moghul Empire was breaking up. The notion that the Pax Britan- 
nica brought peace and order for the first time to India is 
one of the most extraordinary of delusions. It is true that when 
British rule was established in India the country was at her lowest 
ebb and there was a break-up of the political and economic 
structure. That indeed was one of the reasons why that rule was 
established. 

India's Urge to Freedom 

The East bowed low before the blast 

In patient, deep disdain; 
She let the legions thunder past, 
And plunged in thought again. 

So says the poet and his lines are often quoted. It is true that 
the east, or at any rate that part of it which is called India, has 
been enamoured of thinking, often of thinking about matters 
which to those who consider themselves practical men seem 
absurd and pointless. She has always honoured thought and the 
men of thought, the highbrows, and has refused to consider the 



men of the sword or the possessors of money as superior to them. 
Even in her days of degradation, she has clung to thought and 
found some comfort in it. 

But it is not true that India has ever bowed patiently before 
the blast or been indifferent to the passage of foreign legions. 
Always she has resisted them, often successfully, sometimes un- 
successfully, and even when she failed for the time being, she 
has remembered and prepared herself for the next attempt. Her 
method has been two-fold: to fight them and drive them out, 
and to absorb those who could not be driven away. She resisted, 
with considerable success, Alexander's legions, and immediately 
after his death drove out the Greek garrisons in the north. Later 
she absorbed the Indo-Greeks and the Indo-Scythians and 
ultimately again established a national hegemony. She fought 
the Huns for generations and drove them out; such as remained 
being absorbed. When the Arabs came they stopped near the 
Indus. The Turks and Afghans spread further only gradually. 
It took them several centuries to establish themselves firmly on 
the throne of Delhi. It was a continuous, long drawn-out conflict 
and, while this struggle was going on, the other process of absorp- 
tion and Indianization was also at work, ending in the invaders 
becoming as much Indian as anyone else. Akbar became the great 
representative of the old Indian ideal of a synthesis of differing 
elements and their fusion into a common nationality. He indentified 
himself with India, and India took to him although he was a 
newcomer; because of this he built well and laid the foundations 
of a splendid empire. So long as his successors kept in line with 
this policy and with the genius of the nation, their empire endured. 
When they broke away and opposed the whole drift of national 
development, they weakened and their empire went to pieces. 
New movements arose, narrow in outlook but representing a resur- 
gent nationalism, and though they were not strong enough to 
build permanently, they were capable of destroying the empire 
of the Moghuls. They were successful for a time, but they looked 
too much to the past and thought in terms of reviving it. They 
did not realize that much had happened which they could not 
ignore or pass by, that the past can never take the place of the 
present, that even that present in the India of their day was one 
of stagnation and decay. It had lost touch with the changing 
world and left India far behind. They did not appreciate that 
a new and vital world was arising in the west, based on a new 
outlook and on new techniques, and a new power, the British, 
represented that new world of which they were so ignorant. The 
British triumphed, but hardly had they established themselves in 
the north when the great mutiny broke out and developed with 
a war of independence, and nearly put an end to British rule. 



The urge to freedom, to independence, has always been there, and 
the refusal to submit to alien domination. 

Progress Versus Security 

We have been an exclusive people, proud of our past and of our 
heritage and trying to build walls and barriers to preserve it. 
Yet in spite of our race-consciousness and the growing rigidity 
of caste, we have, like others who take such pride in the purity 
of their racial stock, developed into a strange mixture of races 
— Aryan, Dravidian, Turanian, Semitic, and Mongolian. The 
Aryans came here in repeated waves and mixed with the Dra- 
vidians; they were followed in the course of thousands of years 
by successive waves of other migratory peoples and tribes: the 
Medians, Iranians, Greeks, Bactrians, Parthians, Shakas or 
Scythians, Kushans or the Yueh Chih, Turks, Turco-Mongols, 
and others who came in large or small groups and found a home 
in India. 'Fierce and warlike tribes,' says Dodwell in his 'India,' 
'again and again, invaded its (India's) northern plains, over- 
threw its princes, captured and laid waste its cities, set up new 
states and built new capitals of their own and then vanished into 
the great tide of humanity, leaving to their descendants nothing 
but a swiftly diluted strain of alien blood and a few shreds of alien 
custom that were soon transformed into something cognate with 
their overmastering surroundings.' 

To what were these overmastering surroundings due? Partly 
to the influence of geography and climate, to the very air of India. 
But much more so, surely, to some powerful impulse, some 
tremendous urge, or idea of the significance of life, that was 
impressed upon the subconscious mind of India when she was 
fresh and young at the very dawn of her history. That impress 
was strong enough to persist and to affect all those who came 
into contact with her, and thus to absorb them into her fold, 
howsoever they differed. Was this impulse, this idea, the vital 
spark that lighted up the civilization that grew up in this country 
and, in varying degrees, continued to influence its people through 
historical ages? 

It seems absurd and presumptuous to talk of an impulse, or 
an idea of life, underlying the growth of Indian civilization. 
Even the life of an individual draws sustenance from a hundred 
sources; much more complicated is the life of a nation or of a 
civilization. There are myriad ideas that float about like flotsam 
and jetsam on the surface of India, and many of them are 
mutually antagonistic. It is easy to pick out any group of them 
to justify a particular thesis; equally easy to choose another group 
to demolish it. This is, to some extent, possible everywhere; in 

143 



an old and big country like India, with so much of the dead cling- 
ing on to the living, it is peculiarly easy. There is also obvious 
danger in simple classifications of very complex phenomena. 
There are very seldom sharp contrasts in the evolution of practice 
and thought; each thought runs into another, and even ideas 
keeping their outer form change their inner contents; or they 
frequently lag behind a changing world and become a drag 
upon it. 

We have been changing continually throughout the ages and 
at no period were we the same as in the one preceding it. To-day, 
racially and culturally, we are very different from what we 
were; and all around me, in India as elsewhere, I see change march- 
ing ahead with a giant's stride. Yet I cannot get over the fact 
that Indian and Chinese civilizations have shown an extraordi- 
nary staying power and adaptability and, in spite of many chan- 
ges and crises, have succeeded, for an enormous span of years, 
in preserving their basic identity. They could not have done so 
unless they were in harmony with life and nature. Whatever it 
was that kept them to a large extent to their ancient moorings, 
whether it was good or bad or a mixture of the two, it was a thing 
of power or it could not have survived for so long. Possibly it ex- 
hausted its utility long ago and has been a drag and a hindrance 
ever since, or it may be that the accretions of later ages have 
smothered the good in it and only the empty shell of the fossil 
remains. 

There is perhaps a certain conflict always between the idea 
of progress and that of security and stability. The two do not 
fit in, the former wants change, the latter a safe unchanging 
haven and a continuation of things as they are. The idea of 
progress is modern and relatively new even in the west; the 
ancient and mediaeval civilizations thought far more in terms 
of a golden past and of subsequent decay. In India also the past 
has always been glorified. The civilization that was built up here 
was essentially based on stability and security, and from this 
point of view it was far more successful than any that arose in 
the west. The social structure, based on the caste system and 
joint families, served this purpose and was successful in providing 
social security for the group and a kind of insurance for the 
individual who by reason of age, infirmity, or any other incapacity, 
was unable to provide for himself. Such an arrangement, while 
favouring the weak, hinders; to some extent, the strong. It 
encourages the average type at the cost of the abnormal, the bad 
or the gifted. It levels up or down and individualism has less play 
in it. It is interesting to note that while Indian philosophy is 
highly individualistic and deals almost entirely with the individual's 
growth to some kind of inner perfection, the Indian social structure 

144 



was communal and paid attention to groups only. The individual 
was allowed perfect freedom to think and believe what he liked, 
but he had to conform strictly to social and communal usage. 
With all this conformity there was a great deal of flexibility 
also in the group as a whole and there was no law or social rule 
that could not change by custom. Also new groups could have 
their own customs, beliefs, and practices and yet be considered 
members of the larger social group. It was this flexibility and 
adaptability that helped in the absorption of foreign elements. 
Behind it all were some basic ethical doctrines and a philosophic 
approach to life and a tolerance of other people's ways. 

So long as stability and security were the chief ends in view, 
this structure functioned more or less successfully, and even 
when economic changes undermined it, there was a process of 
adaptation and it continued. The real challenge to it came from 
the new dynamic conception of social progress which could not 
be fitted into the old static ideas. It is this conception that is 
uprooting old-established systems in the east as it has done in 
the west. In the west while progress is still the dominant note, 
there is a growing demand for security. In India the very lack 
of security has forced people out of their old ruts and made them 
think in terms of a progress that will give more security. 

In ancient and mediaeval India, however, there was no such 
challenge of progress. But the necessity for change and con- 
tinuous adaptation was recognized and hence grew a passion 
for synthesis. It was a synthesis not only of the various elements 
that came into India but also an attempt at a synthesis between 
the outer and inner life of the individual, between man and 
nature. There were no such wide gaps and cleavages as seem to 
exist to-day. This common cultural background created India 
and gave it an impress of unity in spite of its diversity. At the 
root of the political structure was the self-governing village system, 
which endured at the base while kings came and went. Fresh 
migrations from outside and invaders merely ruffled the surface 
of this structure without touching those roots. The power of the 
state, however despotic in appearance, was curbed in a hundred 
ways by customary and constitutional restraints, and no ruler 
could easily interfere with the rights and privileges of the village 
community. These customary rights and privileges ensured a 
measure of freedom both for the community and the individual. 

Among the people of India to-day none are more typically 
Indian or prouder of Indian culture and tradition than the 
Rajputs. Their heroic deeds in the past have become a living 
part of that very tradition. Yet many of the Rajputs are said to 
be descended from the Indo-Scythians, and some even from the 
Huns who came to India. There is no sturdier or finer peasant 
in India than the Jat, wedded to the soil and brooking no 

145 



interference with his land. He also has a Scythian origin. And 
so too the Kathi, the tall, handsome peasant of Kathiawad. The 
racial origins of some of our people can be traced back with a 
certain definiteness, of others it is not possible to do so. But 
whatever the origin might have been, all of them have become 
distinctively Indian, participating jointly with others in India's 
culture and looking back on her past traditions as their own. 

It would seem that every outside element that has come to 
India and been absorbed by India, has given something to India 
and taken much from her; it has contributed to its own and to 
India's strength. But where it has kept apart, or been unable to 
become a sharer and participant in India's life, and her rich 
and diverse culture, it has had no lasting influence, and has 
ultimately faded away, sometimes injuring itself and India in 
the process. 

India and Iran 

Among the many peoples and races who have come in contact 
with and influenced India's life and culture, the oldest and most 
persistent have been the Iranians. Indeed the relationship pre- 
cedes even the beginnings of Indo-Aryan civilization, for it was 
out of some common stock, that the Indo-Aryans and the ancient 
Iranians diverged and took their different ways. Racially con- 
nected, their old religions and languages also had a common 
background. The Vedic religion had much in common with 
Zoroastrianism, and Vedic Sanskrit and the old Pahlavi, the 
language of the Avesta, closely resemble each other. Classical 
Sanskrit and Persian developed separately but many of their 
root-words were common, as some are common to all the Aryan 
languages. The two languages, and even more so their art and 
culture, were influenced by their respective environments. Persian 
art appears to be intimately connected with the soil and scenery 
of Iran, and to that probably is due the persistence of Iran's artistic 
tradition. So also the Indo-Aryan artistic tradition and ideals 
grew out of the snow-covered mountains, rich forests, and great 
rivers of north India. 

Iran, like India, was strong enough in her cultural founda- 
tions to influence even her invaders and often to absorb them. 
The Arabs, who conquered Iran in the seventh century A.A., 
soon succumbed to this influence and, in place of their simple 
desert ways, adopted the sophisticated culture of Iran. The 
Persian language, like French in Europe, became the language 
of cultured people across wide stretches of Asia. Iranian art and 
culture spread from Constantinople in the west right up to the 
edge of the Gobi Desert. 

In India this Iranian influence was continuous, and during 



the Afghan and Moghul periods in India, Persian was the court 
language of the country. This lasted right up to the beginning 
of the British period. All the modern Indian languages are full 
of Persian words. This was natural enough for the languages 
descended from the Sanskrit, and more especially for Hindus- 
tani, which itself is a mixed product, but even the Dravidian 
languages of the south have been influenced by Persian. India 
has produced in the past some brilliant poets in the Persian 
language, and even to-day there are many fine scholars of Per- 
sian, both Hindu and Moslem. 

There seems to be little doubt that the Indus Valley civiliza- 
tion had some contacts with the contemporaneous civilizations 
of Iran and Mesopotamia. There is a striking similarity between 
some of the designs and seals. There is also some evidence to 
show that there were contacts between Iran and India in the 
pre-Achaemian period. India is mentioned in the Avesta and 
there is also some kind of a description of north India in it. In the 
Rig Veda there are references to Persia — the Persians were called 
'Parshavas' and later 'Parasikas,' from which the modern word 
'Parsi' is derived. The Parthians were referred to as 'Parthavas.' 
Iran and north India were thus traditionally interested in each 
other from the most ancient times, prior to the Achaemian dynasty. 
With Cyrus the Great, king of kings, we have record of further 
contacts. Cyrus reached the borderlands of India, probably Kabul 
and Baluchistan. In the sixth century B.C. the Persian Empire 
under Darius stretched right up to north-west India, including 
Sind and probably part of western Punjab. That period is some- 
times referred to as the Zoroastrian period of Indian history and 
its influence must have been widespread. Sun worship was 
encouraged. 

The Indian province of Darius was the richest in his empire 
and the most populous. Sind then must have been very different 
from the desiccated desert land of recent times. Herodotus tells 
us of the wealth and density of the Indian population and of 
the tribute paid to Darius: 'The population of the Indians is 
by far the greatest of all the people that we know; and they paid 
tribute proportionately larger than all the rest — (the sum of) 
360 talents of gold dust' (equivalent to over a million pounds 
sterling). Herodotus also mentions the Indian contingent in the 
Persian armies consisting of infantry, cavalry, and chariots. 
Later, elephants are mentioned. 

From a period prior to the seventh century B.C., and for ages 
afterwards, there is some evidence of relations between Persia 
and India through trade, especially early commerce between 
India and Babylon, which it is believed, was largely via the 
Persian Gulf.* From the sixth century onwards direct contacts 

*Prof. A. V. Willaims Jackson, in 'The Cambridge History of India,' Vol I, p. 329. 



grew through the campaigns of Cyrus and Darius. After Alex- 
ander's conquest Iran was for many centuries under Greek rule. 
Contacts with India continued and Ashoka's buildings, it is said, 
were influenced by the architecture of Persepolis. The Graeco- 
Buddhist art that developed in north-west India and Afghanis- 
tan has also the touch of Iran. During the Gupta period in India, 
in the fourth and fifth centuries A.C., which is noted for its artistic 
and cultural activities, contacts with Iran continued. 

The borderland areas of Kabul, Kandahar, and Seistan, which 
were often politically parts of India, were the meeting place of 
Indians and Iranians. In later Parthian times they were called 
'White India.' Referring to these areas, the French savant, James 
Darmesteler, says: 'Hindu civilization prevailed in those parts, 
which in fact in the two centuries before and after Christ were 
known as White India, and remained more Indian than Iranian 
till the Mussulman conquest.' 

In the north, trade and travellers came overland to India. 
South India depended more on the sea and sea-borne trade con- 
nected it with other countries. There is record of an exchange 
of ambassadors between a southern kingdom and the Persia of 
the Sassanids. 

The Turkish, Afghan, and Moghul conquests of India resulted 
in a rapid development of India's contacts with central and 
western Asia. In the fifteenth century (just about the time of 
the European Renaissance') the Timurid Renaissance was flower- 
ing in Samarkand and Bokhara, powerfully influenced by Iran. 
Babar, himself a prince of the Timurid line, came out of this 
milieu and established himself on the throne of Delhi. That was 
early in the sixteenth century when Iran was having, under the 
Safavis, a brilliant artistic revival — a period known as the golden 
age of Persian art. It was to the Safavi king that Babar's son, 
Humayun, went for refuge, and it was with his help that he 
came back to India. The Moghul rulers of India kept up the 
closest of contacts with Iran and there was a stream of scholars 
and artists coming over the frontier to seek fame and fortune 
at the brilliant court of the Great Moghul. 

A new architecture developed in India, a combination of 
Indian ideals and Persian inspiration, and Delhi and Agra were 
covered with noble and beautiful bui'ldings. Of the most famous 
of these, the Taj Mahal, M. Grousset, the French savant, said 
that it is 'the soul of Iran incarnate in the body of India.' 

Few people have been more closely related in origin and 
throughout history than the people of India and the people of 
Iran. Unfortunately the last memory we have of this long, inti- 
mate and honourable association is that of Nadir Shah's inva- 
sion, a brief but terrible visitation two hundred years ago. 



Then came the British and they barred all the doors and 
stopped all the routes that connected us with our neighbours 
in Asia. New routes were opened across the seas which brought 
us nearer to Europe, and more particularly England, but there 
were to be no further contacts overland between India and Iran 
and central Asia and China till, in the present age, the develop- 
ment of the airways made us renew the old companionship. 
This sudden isolation from the rest of Asia has been one of the 
most remarkable and unfortunate consequences of British rule 
in India.* 

There has, however, been one continuing bond, not with Iran 
of modern times but with old Iran. Thirteen hundred years ago, 
when Islam came to Iran, some hundreds or thousands of the 
followers of the old Zoroastrian faith migrated to India. They 
found a welcome here and settled down on the western coast, 
following their faith and customs without being interferred with 
and without interfering with others. It is remarkable how the 
Parsis, as they have been called, have quietly and unostenta- 
tiously fitted into India, made it their home, and yet kept quite 
apart as a small community, tenaciously holding on to their 
old customs. Intermarriage outside the fold of the community 
was not allowed and there have been very few instances of it. 
This in itself did not occasion any surprise in India, as it was 
usual here for people to marry within their own caste. Their 
growth in numbers has been very slow and even now their total 
number is about one hundred thousand. They have prospered 
in business and many of them are the leaders of industry in 
India. They have had practically no contacts with Iran and are 
completely Indian, and yet they hold on to their old traditions 
and the memories of their ancient homeland. 

In Iran there has recently been a strong tendency to look 
back to the old civilization of pre-Islamic days. This has nothing 
to do with religion; it is cultural and nationalistic, seeking and 
taking pride in the long and persistent cultural tradition of Iran. 

World developments and common interests are forcing Asiatic 
countries to look at each other again. The period of European 
domination is passed over as a bad dream and memories of long 
ago remind them of old friendships and common adventures. 

*Prof. E. J. Rapson writes : ' The power which has succeeded in welding all the subordinate 
ruling powers into one great system of government is essentially naval; and since it controls 
the sea-ways, it has been forced in the interests of security, to close the land-ways. This has 
been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which lie on the frontiers of the 
Indian Empire — Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Burma. Political isolation has thus follow- 
ed as a necessary consequence of political unity. But it must be remembered that this political 
isolation is a recent and an entirely novelfeature in the history of India. It is the great land- 
mark which separates the present from the past. ' ('The Cambridge History of India, ' Vol. 
I, p. 52.) 



There can be no doubt that in the near future India will draw 
closer to Iran, as she is doing to China. 

Two months ago the leader of an Iranian Cultural Mission 
to India said in the city of Allahadabad. 'The Iranians and 
Indians are like two brothers, who, according to a Persian legend, 
had got separated from each other, one going east and the other 
to the west. Their families had forgotten all about each other 
and the only thing that remained in common between them 
were the snatches of a few old tunes which they still played on 
their flutes. It was through these tunes that, after a lapse of 
centuries, the two families recognized each other and were reunited. 
So also we come to India to play on our flutes our age-old songs, 
so thai, hearing them, our Indian cousins may recognize us as 
their own and become reunited with their Iranian cousins.' 

India and Greece 

Ancient Greece is supposed to be the fountain-head of European 
civilization and much has been written about the fundamental 
difference between the Orient and the Occident. I do not under- 
stand this; a great deal of it seems to me to be vague and 
unscientific, without much basis in fact. Till recently many 
European thinkers imagined that everything that was worth- 
while had its origin in Greece or Rome. Sir Henry Maine has 
said somewhere that except the blind forces of nature, nothing 
moves in this world which is not originally Greek. European 
classical scholars, deeply learned in Greek and Latin lore, knew 
very little about India and China. Yet Professor E. R. Dodds 
emphasizes the 'Oriental background against which Greek cul- 
ture ro e, and from which it was never completely isolated save 
in the minds of classical scholars.' 

Scholarship in Europe was necessarily limited for a long time 
to Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and the picture of the world that 
grew out of it was of the Mediterranean world. The basic idea 
was not essentially different from that of the old Romans, though 
inevitably many changes and adaptations had to be made to it. 
That idea not only governed the conceptions of history and 
geopolitics and the development of culture and civilization, but 
also came in the way of scientific progress. Plato and Aristotle 
dominated the mind. Even when some knowledge of what the 
peoples of Asia had done in the past soaked into the European 
mind, it was not willingly accepted. There was an unconscious 
resistance to it, an attempt to fit it somehow into the previous 
picture. If scholars believed so, much more so did the unread 
crowd believe in some essential difference between the east and 
the west. The industrialization of Europe and the consequent 



material progress impressed this difference still further on the 
popular mind, and by an odd process of rationalization ancient 
Greece became the father or mother of modern Europe and 
America. Additional knowledge of the past of the world shook 
these conclusions in the minds of a few thinkers, but so far as 
the mass of the people were concerned, intellectuals and non- 
intellectuals, the centuries-old ideas continued, phantoms float- 
ing about in the upper layer of their consciousness and fading 
away into the landscape they had fashioned for themselves. 

I do not understand the use of the words Orient and Occi- 
dent, except in the sense that Europe and America are highly 
industrialized and Asia is backward in this respect. This indus- 
trialization is something new in the world's history, and it has 
changed and continues to change the world more than anything 
else has done. There is no organic connection between Hellenic 
civilization and modern European and American civilization. 
The modern notion that the really important thing is to be 
comfortable is entirely foreign to the ideas underlying Greek 
or any other ancient literature. Greeks and Indians and Chinese 
and Iranians were always seeking a religion and a philosophy 
of life which affected all their activities and which were intended 
to produce an equilibrium and a sense of harmony. This ideal 
emerges in every aspect of life — in literature, art, and institu- 
tions — and it produces a sense of proportion and completeness. 
Probably these impressions are not wholly justified and the 
actual conditions of life may have been very different. But even 
so, it is important to remember how far removed are modern 
Europe and America from the whole approach and outlook of 
the Greeks, whom they praise so much in their leisure moments, 
and with whom they seek some distant contacts, in order to 
satisfy some inner yearning of their hearts, or find some oasis 
in the harsh and fiery deserts of modern existence. 

Every country and people in the East and the West has had 
an individuality, a message, and has attempted to solve life's 
problems each in its own way. Greece is something definite, 
superb in its own way; so is India, so is China, so is Iran. Ancient 
India and ancient Greece were different from each other and 
yet they were akin, just as ancient India and ancient China had 
kinship in thought, in spite of great differences. They all had 
the same broad, tolerant, pagan outlook, joy in life and in the 
surprising beauty and infinite variety of nature, love of art, and 
the wisdom that comes from the accumulated experience of 
an old race. Each of them developed in accordance with 
its racial genius, influenced by its natural environment, and 
emphasized some one aspect of life more than others. This em- 
phasis varied. The Greeks, as a race, may have lived more in 



the present and found joy and harmony in the beauty they saw 
around them or which they themselves created. The Indians 
found this joy and harmony also in the present, but, at the same 
time, their eyes were turned towards deeper knowledge and their 
minds trafficked with strange questions. The Chinese, fully 
aware of these questions and their mystery, in their wisdom 
avoided entanglement with them. In their different ways each 
tried to express the fullness and beauty of life. History has shown 
that India and China had stronger foundations and greater 
staying power; they have thus far survived, though they have 
been badly shaken and have greatly deteriorated, and the future 
is obscure. 

Old Greece, for all its brilliance, had a short life; it did not 
survive except in its splendid achievements, its influence on succeed- 
ing cultures, and the memory of that short bright day of abundant 
life. Perhaps because it was too much engrossed in the present, 
it became the past. 

India is far nearer in spirit and outlook to the old Greece than 
the nations of Europe are to-day, although they call themselves 
children of the Hellenic spirit. We are apt to forget this because 
we have inherited fixed concepts which prevent reasoned thought. 
India, it is said, is religious, philosophical, speculative, metaphysical, 
unconcerned with this world, and lost in dreams of the beyond 
and the hereafter. So we are told, and perhaps those who tell us 
so would like India to remain plunged in thought and entangled 
in speculation, so that they might possess this world and the fullness 
thereof, unhindred by these thinkers, and take their joy of it. Yes, 
India has been all this but also much more than this. She has 
known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion 
and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that 
comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and 
over again she has renewed her childhood and youth and age. 
The tremendous inertia of age and size have weighed her down, 
degrading custom and evil practice have eaten into her, many a 
parasite has clung to her and sucked her blood, but behind all 
this lie the strength of ages and the sub-conscious wisdom of an 
ancient race. For we are very old, and trackless centuries whisper 
in our ears; yet we have known how to regain our youth again and 
again, though the memory and dreams of those past ages endure 
with us. 

It is not some secret doctrine or esoteric knowledge that has 
kept India vital and going through these long ages, but a tender 
humanity, a varied and tolerant culture, and a deep under- 
standing of life and its mysterious ways. Her abundant vitality 
flows out from age to age in her magnificent literature and art, 
though we have only a small part of this with us and much lies 

152 



hidden still or has been destroyed by nature or man's vandalism. 
The Trimurti, in the Elephanta caves, might well be the many- 
faced statue of India herself, powerful, with compelling eyes, 
full of deep knowledge and understanding, looking down upon 
us. The Ajanta frescoes are full of a tenderness and love ofbeauty 
and life, and yet always with a suspicion of something deeper, 
something beyond. 

Geographically and climatically Greece is different from India. 
There are no real rivers there, no forests, no big trees, which 
abound in India. The sea with its immensity and changing 
moods affected the Greeks far more than it did the Indians, 
except perhaps those who lived near India's coastline. India's 
life was more continental, of vast plains and huge mountains, 
of mighty rivers and great forests. There were some mountains 
in Greece also, and the Greeks chose Olympus as the abode of 
the gods, just as the Indians placed their gods and even their 
sages on the Himalayan heights. Both developed a mythology 
which was indivisibly mixed up with history, and it was not 
possible to separate fact from fiction. The old Greeks are said 
to have been neither pleasure-seekers nor ascetics; they did not 
avoid pleasure as something evil and immoral, nor did they go 
out deliberately to amuse themselves as modern people are apt 
to do. Without the inhibitions which afflict so many of us, they 
took life in their stride, applying themselves wholly to whatever 
they did, and thus somehow they appear to have been more 
alive than we are. Some such impression one gathers of life in 
India also from our old literature. There was an ascetic aspect 
of life in India, as there was later in Greece, but it was confined 
to a limited number of people and did not affect life generally. 
That aspect was to grow more important under the influence 
of Jainism and Buddhism, but even so it did not change materi- 
ally the background of life. 

Life was accepted as it was and lived fully both in India and 
Greece; nevertheless, there was a belief in the supremacy of some 
kind of inner life. This led to curiosity and speculation, but the 
spirit of inquiry was not so much directed towards objective 
experience as to logical reasoning fixed on certain concepts 
which were accepted as obviously true. That indeed was the 
general attitude everywhere before the advent of the scientific 
method. Probably this speculation was confined to a small 
number of intellectuals, yet even the ordinary citizens were 
influenced by it and discussed philosophical problems, as they 
did everything else, in their public meeting places. Life was 
communal, as it is even now in India, especially in the rural 
areas, where people meet in the market place, in the enclosure 
of the temple or mosque, at the well-head, or at the panchayat 

153 



ghar or common assembly house, where such exists, to discuss 
the news of the day and their common needs. Thus public 
opinion was formed and found expression. There was plenty 
of leisure for these discussions. 

And yet Hellenism has among its many splendid achieve- 
ments one that is even more unique than others, the early beginn- 
ings of experimental science. This was developed far more in 
the Hellenic world of Alexandria than in Greece itself, and the 
two centuries from 330 to 130 B.C. stand out in the record of 
scientific development and mechanical invention. There is nothing 
to compare with this in India, or, for the matter of that, anywhere 
else till science again took a big stride from the seventeenth century 
onwards. Even Rome for all its empire and the Pax Romana over 
a considerable area, its close contacts with Hellenic civilization, its 
opportunities to draw upon the learning and experiences of many 
peoples, made no significant contribution to science, invention, 
or mechanical development. After the collapse of classical civiliza- 
tion in Europe it was the Arabs who kept the flame of scientific 
knowledge alight through the Middle Ages. 

This burst of scientific activity and invention in Alexandria 
was no doubt the social product of the time, called forth by the 
needs of a growing society and of seafaring, just as the advance in 
arithmetic and algebraic methods, the use of the zero sign and 
the place-value system in India were also due to social needs, 
advancing trade and more complex organization. But it is doubtful 
how far the scientific spirit was present in the old Greeks as a 
whole and their life must have followed traditional patterns, 
based on their old philosophic approach seeking an integration 
and harmony in man and with nature. It is that approach which 
is common to old Greece and India. In Greece, as in India, the 
year was divided up by popular festivals which heralded the 
changing seasons and kept man in tune with nature's moods. We 
have still these festivals in India for spring and harvest-time and 
deepavali, the festival of light at the end of autumn, and the holi 
carnival in early summer, and celebrations of the heroes of epic 
tradition. There is still singing and dancing at some of these 
festivals, folk-songs and folk-dances like the rasa-lila, the dance of 
Krishna with the gopis (cowherdesses). 

There is no seclusion of women in ancient India except to 
some extent among royalty and the nobility. Probably there was 
more segregation of the sexes in Greece than in India then. Women 
of note and learning are frequently mentioned in the old Indian 
books, and often they took part in public debates. Marriage, in 
Greece, was apparently wholly a contractual affair; but in India 
it has always been considered a sacramental union, though other 
forms are mentioned. 



Greek women were apparently especially welcome in India. 
Often the maids-in-waiting at royal courts mentioned in the 
old plays are Greek. Among the noted imports from Greece into 
India at the port of Barygaza (Broach in Western India) were, 
it is said, 'singing boys and pretty maidens.' Megasthenes des- 
cribing the life of the Maurya king Chandragupta, tells us: 'the 
king's food was prepared by women who also served him with 
wine which is much used by all Indians.' Some of the wine 
certainly came from Grecian lands or colonies, for an old Tamil- 
poet refers to 'the cool and fragrant wine brought by the Yavanas 
(Ionians or Greeks) in their good ships.' A Greek account relates 
that the king of Pataliputra (probably Ashoka's father, Bindusara) 
wrote to Antiochus asking him to buy and send him sweet wine, 
dried figs, and a Sophist philosopher. Antiochus replied: 'We 
shall send you the figs and wine, but in Greece the laws forbid a 
Sophist to be sold.' 

It is clear from Greek literature that homosexual relations 
were not looked upon with disfavour. Indeed there was a romantic 
approval of them. Possibly this was due to the segregation of the 
sexes in youth. A similar attitude is found in Iran, and Persian 
literature is full of such references. It appears to have become an 
established literary form and convention to represent the beloved 
as a male companion. There is no such thing in Sanskrit literature 
and homosexuality was evidently neither approved nor at all 
common in India. 

Greece and India were in contact with each other from the 
earliest recorded times, and in a later period there were close 
contacts between India and Hellenized western Asia. The great 
astronomical observatory at Ujjayini (now Ujjain) in central 
India was linked with Alexandria in Egypt. During this long 
period of contact there must have been many exchanges in the 
world of thought and culture between these two ancient civili- 
zations. There is a tradition recorded in some Greek book that 
learned Indians visited Socrates and put questions to him. 
Pythagoras was particularly influenced by Indian philosophy 
and Professor H. G. Rawlinson remarks that 'almost all the 
theories, religious, philosophical, and mathematical, taught by 
the Pythagorians were known in India in the sixth century B.C.' 
A European classical scholar, Urwick, has based his interpreta- 
tion of the 'Republic' of Plato upon Indian thought.* Gnosti- 
cism is supposed to be a definite attempt to fuse together Greek 
Platonic and Indian elements. The philosopher, Apollonius of 
Tyana probably visited the university of Taxila in north-west 
India about the beginning of the Christian era. 

*Zimmern in his 'The Green Commonwealth 1 refers to Urwick's book. 'The Message of 
Plato' (1920). I have not seen this book. 



The famous traveller and scholar, Alberuni, a Persian born in 
Khorasan in Central Asia, came to India in the eleventh cen- 
tury A.C. He had already studied Greek philosophy which was 
popular in the early days of Islam in Baghdad. In India he took 
the trouble to learn Sanskrit in order to study Indian philo- 
sophy. He was struck by many common features and he has 
compared the two in his book on India. He refers to Sanskrit 
books dealing with Greek astronomy and Roman astronomy. 

Though inevitably influencing each other Greek and Indian 
civilizations were each strong enough to hold their own and 
develop on their distinctive lines. In recent years there has been 
a reaction from the old tendency to ascribe everything to Greece 
and Rome, and Asia's, and especially India's role has been 
emphasized. 'Considered broadly,' says Professor Tarn, 'what 
the Asiatic took from Greek was usually externals only, matters 
of form; he rarely took the substance — civic institutions may 
have been an exception — and never spirit. For in matters of 
spirit Asia was quite confident that she could outstay the Greeks, 
and she did.' Again: 'Indian civilization was strong enough to 
hold its own against Greek civilization, but except in the religi- 
ous sphere, was seemingly not strong enough to influence it as 
Babylonia did; nevertheless, we may find reason for thinking 
that in certain respects India was the dominant partner.' 'Ex- 
cept for the Buddha statue the history of India would in all 
essentials have been precisely what it has been had the Greeks 
never existed.' 

It is an interesting thought that image worship came to India 
from Greece. The Vedic religion was opposed to all forms of 
idol and image worship. There were not even any temples for 
the gods. There probably were some traces of image worship 
in the older faiths in India, though this was certainly not widely 
prevalent. Early Buddhism was strongly opposed to it and there 
was a special prohibition against the making of images and 
statues of the Buddha. But Greek artistic influence in Afghani- 
stan and round about the frontier was strong and gradually it 
had its way. Even so, no statues of the Buddha were made to 
begin with, but Apollo — rlike staues of the Bodhisattvas (sup- 
posed to be the previous incarnations of the Buddha) appeared. 
These were followed by statues and images of the Buddha 
himself. This encouraged image-worship in some forms of 
Hinduism though not in the Vedic religion which continued 
to be free of it. The word for an image or statue in Persian and 
in Hindustani still is But (like put) derived from Buddha. 

The human mind appears to have a passion for finding out 
some kind of unity in life, in nature and the universe. That 
desire, whether it is justified or not, must fulfil some essential 



need of the mind. The old philosophers were ever seeking this, 
and even modern scientists are impelled by this urge. All our 
schemes and planning, our ideas of education and social and 
political organization, have at their back the search for unity 
and harmony. 

We are told now by some able thinkers and philosophers that 
this basic conception is false and there is no such thing as order or 
unity in this accidental universe. That may be so, but there can 
be little doubt that even this mistaken belief, if such it was, and 
the search for unity in India, Greece, and elsewhere, yielded positive 
results and produced a harmony, a balance, and a richness in life. 

The Old Indian Theatre 

The discovery by Europe of the old Indian drama led imme- 
diately to suggestions that it had its origin in, or had been greatly 
influenced by, Greek drama. There was some plausibility in the 
theory, for till then no other ancient drama had been known to 
exist, and after Alexander's raid Hellenized states were esta- 
blished on the frontiers of India. These states continued to function 
for several centuries and Greek theatrical representations must 
have been known there. This question was closely scrutinized and 
debated by European scholars throughout the nineteenth century. 
It is now generally admitted that the Indian theatre was entirely 
independent in its origins, in the ideas which governed it, and 
in its development. Its earliest beginnings can be traced back to the 
hymns and dialogues of the Rig Veda which have a certain dra- 
matic character. There are references to Nataka or the drama 
in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It began to take shape 
in the song and music and dances of the Krishna legends. Panini, 
the great grammarian of the sixth or seventh century B.C., men- 
tions some dramatic forms. 

A treatise on the Art of the Theatre — the Natya-Shftstra — is 
said to date from the third century A.C. but this was evidently 
based or previous books on the subject. Such a book could only 
be written when the dramatic art was fully developed and pub- 
lic representations were common. A considerable literature must 
have preceded it, and behind it must lie many centuries of 
gradual progress. Recently an ancient playhouse, dating from 
the second century B.C., has been unearthed in the Ramgarh 
Hills in Chota Nagpur. It is significant that this playhouse fits 
in with the general description of theatres given in the Natya- 
Shastra. 

It is now believed that the regular Sanskrit drama was fully 
established by the third century B.C., though some scholars take 
the date back to the fifth century. In the plays that we have, 



mention is often made of earlier authors and plays which have 
not so far been found. One such lost author was Bhasa, highly 
praised by many subsequent dramatists. Early in this century 
a bunch of thirteen of his plays was discovered. Probably the 
earliest Sanskrit plays so far discovered, are those of Ashvaghosa, 
who lived just before or after the beginning of the Christian 
era. These are really fragments only of manuscripts on palm 
leaves, and they were discovered, strangely enough, at Turfan 
on the borders of the Gobi desert. Ashvaghosa was a pious 
Buddhist and wrote also the Buddha Charita, a life of the Buddha, 
which was well known and had long been popular in India 
and China and Tibet. The Chinese translation, made in a past 
age, was by an Indian scholar. 

These discoveries have given a new perspective to the history 
of the old Indian drama and it may be that further discoveries 
and finds will throw more light on this fascinating development 
of Indian culture. For, as Sylvain Levi has written in his 'Le 
Theatre Indien': 'Le theatre est la plus haute expression de la 
civilisation qui l'enfante. Qu'il traduise ou qu'il interprete la 
vie reelle, il est tenu de la resumer sous une forme frappante, 
ddgagee des accessoires insignificants, generalisee dans un symbole. 
L'originalite de l'Inde s'est exprimee tout entire dans son art 
dramatique; elle y a combine et condense ses dogmes, ses doct- 
rines, ses institutions ' 

Europe first learned of the old Indian drama from Sir Wil- 
liam Jones's translation of Kalidasa's 'Shakuntala', published 
in 1789. Something in the nature of a commotion was created 
among European intellectuals by this discovery and several edi- 
tions of the book followed. Translations also appeared (made 
from Sir William Jones's translation) in German, French, Danish, 
and Italian. Goethe was powerfully impressed and he paid a 
magnificent tribute to 'Shakuntala'. The idea of giving a pro- 
logue to Faust is said to have originated from Kalidasa's pro- 
logue, which was in accordance with the usual tradition of the 
Sanskrit drama.* 

* There is a tendency on the part of Indian writers, to which 1 have also partly succumbed, to 
give selected extracts and quotations from the writings qf European scholars in praise of old 
Indian literature and philosophy. It would be equally easy, and indeed much easier, to give 
other extracts giving an exactly opposite viewpoint. The discovery by the European scho- 
lars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of Indian thought and philosophy led to an 
outburst of admiration and enthusiasm. There was a feeling that these filled a need, some- 
thing that European culture had been unable to do. Then there was a reaction away from 
this attitude and criticism and scepticism grew. This was caused by a feeling that the philo- 
sophy was formless and diffuse and a dislike of the rigid caste structure of Indian society. 
Both these reactions in favour and against, were based on very incomplete knowledge of old 
Indian literature. Goethe himself moved from one opinion to the other, and while he acknow- 
ledged the tremendous stimulus of Indian thought on western civilization, he refused to submit 
to its far reaching influence. This dual and conflicting approach has been characteristic of 



Kalidasa is acknowledged to be the greatest poet and dra- 
matist of Sanskrit literature. 'Le nom de Kalidasa,' says Professor 
Sylvain Levi, 'domine la po6sie indienne et la resume brillam- 
ment. Le drame, l'epopee savante. l'elegie attestent aujourd'hui 
encore la puissance et la souplesse de ce magnifique g6nie; seul 
entre les disciples de Sarasvati (the goddess of learning and 
the arts), il a eu le bonheur de produire un chef doe'uvre 
vraiment classique, oil l'lnde s'admire et ou l'humanitd se re- 
connait. Les applaudissements qui saluferent la naissance de 
Gakuntala k Ujjayini ont apr£s de long siecles delate d'un 
bout du monde a l'autre, quand William Jones l'eut revels k 
l'Occident. Kalidasa a marque sa place dans cette pleiade 
entincelante ou chaque nom resume une periode de l'esprit 
humain. La serie de ces noms forme l'histoire, ou plutot elle 
est l'histoire meme.' 

KalidSsa wrote other plays also and some long poems. His 
date is uncertain but very probably he lived towards the end 
of the fourth century A.c. at Ujjayini during the reign of 
Ghandragupta II, Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. Tradi- 
tion says that he was one of the nine gems of the court, and there 
is no doubt that his genius was appreciated and he met with 
full recognition during his life. He was among the fortunate whom 
life treated as a cherished son and who experienced its beauty 
and tenderness more than its harsh and rough edges. His 
writings betray this love of life and a passion for nature's beauty. 

One of Kalidasa's long poems is the Meghaduta, the Cloud 
Messenger. A lover, made captive and separated from his beloved, 
asks a cloud, during the rainy season, to carry his message of 
desperate longing to her. To this poem and to Kalidasa, the 
American scholar, Ryder, has paid a splendid tribute. He refers 
to the two parts of the poem and says: 'The former half is a 
description of external nature, yet interwoven with human feel- 
ing; the latter half is a picture of a human heart, yet the picture 
is framed in natural beauty. So exquisitely is the thing done that 
none can say which half is superior. Of those who read this 
perfect poem in the original text, some are moved by the one, 
some by the other. Kalidasa understood in the fifth century 
what Europe did not learn until the nineteenth, and even now 
comprehends only imperfectly, that the world was not made for 
man, that man reaches his full stature only as he realizes the 
dignity and worth of life that is not human. That Kalidasa seized 

the European mind in regard to India. In recent years that great European and typical 
product of the best European culture, Romain Rolland, made a more synthetic and very 
friendly approach to the basic foundations of Indian tought: For him East and West 

represented different phases of the eternal struggle of the human soul. On this subject — 
Western reaction to Indian thought — Mr. Alex Aronson, of Santiniketan University, has 

written with learning and ability. 



this truth is a magnificent tribute to his intellectual power, a 
quality quite as necessary to great poetry as perfection of form. 
Poetical fluency is not rare; intellectual grasp is not very un- 
common; but the combination of the two has not been found 
perhaps more than a dozen times since the world began. Be- 
cause he possessed this harmonious combination, Kalidasa ranks 
not with Anacreon and Horace and Shelley, but with Sophocles, 
Virgil, and Milton.' 

Probably long before Kalidasa, another famous play was pro- 
duced — Shudraka's 'Mrichhkatika' or the Clay Cart, a tender 
rather artificial play, and yet with a reality which moves us and 
gives us a glimpse into the mind and civilization of the day. 

About 400 A.C., also during the reign of Chandragupta II, 
yet another notable play was produced, Vishaka-datta's 'Mudra- 
Rakshasa' or the signet ring. This is a purely political play with 
no love motive or story from mythology. It deals with the times 
of Chandragupta Maurya, and his chief minister, Chanakya, 
the author of the ArthashSstra, is the hero. In some ways it is a 
remarkably topical play to-day. 

Harsha, the king, who established a new empire early in the 
seventh century A.C., was also a playwright and we have three 
plays written by him. About 700 A.C. there lived Bhavabhuti, 
another shining star in Sanskrit literature. He does not yield 
himself easily to translation for his beauty is chiefly of language, 
but he is very popular in India, and only Kalidasa has prece- 
dence over him. Wilson, who used to be professor of Sanskrit 
at Oxford University, has said of these two: 'It is impossible to 
conceive language so beautifully musical, or so magnificently 
grand, as that of the verses of Bhavabhuti and Kalidasa.' 

The stream of Sanskrit drama continued to flow for centuries, 
but after Murari, early in the ninth century, there is a marked 
delcine in the quality. That decline, and a progressive decay 
were becoming visible also in other forms of life's activities. It 
has been suggested that this decline of the drama may be partly 
due to the lack of royal patronage during the Indo-Afghan and 
Moghul periods and the Islamic disapproval of the drama as an 
art-form, chiefly because of its intimate association with the 
national religion. For this literary drama, apart from the popu- 
lar aspects which continued, was highbrow and sophisticated and 
dependent on aristocratic patronage. But there is little substance 
in this argument though it is possible that political changes 
at the top had some indirect effect. As a matter of fact the 
decline of the Sanskrit drama was obvious long before those 
political changes took place. And even those changes were con- 
fined for some centuries to north India, and if this drama had any 
vitality left it could have continued its creative career in the south. 



The record of the Indo-Afghan, Turkish, and Moghul rulers, 
apart from some brief puritanical periods, is one of definite 
encouragement of Indian culture, occasionally with variations 
and additions to it. Indian music was adopted as a whole and 
with enthusiasm by the Moslem Courts and the nobility and 
some of its greatest masters have been Moslems. Literature and 
poetry were also encouraged and among the noted poets in 
Hindi are Moslems. Ibrahim Adil Shah, the ruler of Bijapur, 
wrote a treatise in Hindi on Indian music. 

Both Indian poetry and music were full of references to the 
Hindu gods and goddesses and yet they were accepted and the 
old allegories and metaphors continued. It might be said that 
except in regard to actual image-making no attempt was made by 
Moslem rulers, apart from a few exceptions, to suppress any art-form. 

The Sanskrit drama declined because much in India was 
declining in those days and the creative spirit was lessening. It 
declined long before the Afghans and Turks established them- 
selves on the throne of Delhi. Subsequently Sanskrit had to com- 
pete to some extent as the learned language of the nobility with 
Persian. But one obvious reason appears to have been the ever- 
widening gap between the language of the Sanskrit drama and 
the languages of day-to-day life. By 1000 A.C. the popular spoken 
languages, out of which our modern languages have grown, 
were beginning to take literary forms. 

Yet, in spite of all this, it is astonishing how the Sanskrit 
drama continued to be produced right through the medieval 
period and up to recent times. In 1892 appeared a Sanskrit 
adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' Manu- 
scripts of old plays are continually being discovered. A list of 
these prepared by Professor Sylvain Levi in 1890 contained 377 
plays by 189 authors. A more recent list contains 650 plays. 

The language of the old plays (of Kalidasa and others) is 
mixed — Sanskrit and one or more Prakrits, that is, popular 
variations of Sanskrit. In the same play educated people speak 
in Sanskrit and ordinary uneducated folk, usually women, 
though there are exceptions, in Prakrit. The poetical and lyrical 
passages, which abound, are in Sanskrit. This mixture probably 
brought the plays nearer to the average audience- It was a com- 
promise between the literary language and the demands of a 
popular art. 

Yet, essentially, the old drama represents an aristocratic art 
meant for sophisticated audiences, usually royal courts and 
the like. Sylvain L6vi compares it, in some ways, to French 
tragedy, which was cut off from the crowd by the choice of its 
subjects and, turning away from real life, created a conventional 
society. 



But apart from this high-class literary theatre, there has always 
been a popular theatre based on stories from Indian mythology 
and the epics, themes well known to the audience, and concerned 
more with display than with any dramatic element. This was in 
the language of the people in each particular area and was 
therefore confined to that area. Sanskrit plays, on the other hand, 
being in the all-India language of the educated, had an all-India 
vogue. 

These Sanskrit plays were undoubtedly meant for acting and 
elaborate stage-directions are given, and rules for seating the 
audience. Unlike the practice in ancient Greece, actresses took 
part in the presentation. In both Greek and Sanskrit there is a 
sensitive awareness of nature and a feeling of being a part of 
that nature. There is a strong lyric element and poetry seems 
to be an integral part of life, full of meaning and significance. 
It was frequently recited. Reading the Greek drama one comes 
across many customs and ways of thought and life which sud- 
denly remind- one of old Indian customs. Nevertheless Greek 
drama is essentially different from the Sanskrit. 

The essential basis of the Greek drama is tragedy, the prob- 
lem of evil. Why does man suffer? Why is there evil in the 
world? The enigma of religion, of God. What a pitiful thing 
is man, child of a day, with his blind and aimless strivings 
against all-powerful fate — 'The Law that abides and changes 
not, ages long....' Man must learn by suffering and, if he is 
fortunate, he will rise above his striving: 

Happy be, on the weary sea 
Who hath fled, the tempest and won the haven. 

Happy whoso has risen, free, 
Above his striving. For strangely graven 

Is the art of life that one and another 

In gold and power may outpass his brother. 

And men in their millions float and flow. 
And seethe with a million hopes as leaven; 

And they win their Will, or they miss their Will, 
And the hopes are dead or are pined for still; 

But whoever can know, 

As the long days go, 
That to Live is happy, hath found his Heaven! 

Man learns by suffering, he learns how to face life, but he learns 
also that the ultimate mystery remains and he cannot find an 
answer to his questions or solve the riddle of good and evil. 

There be many shapes of mystery; 
And many things God brings to be, 
Past hope or fear. 

162 



And the end men looked for cometh not, 
And a path is there where no man thought.* 

There is nothing comparable to the power and majesty of 
Greek tragedy in Sanskrit. Indeed there is no tragedy at all for 
a tragic ending was not permitted. No such fundamental ques- 
tions are discussed for the commonly held patterns of religious 
faith were accepted by the dramatists. Among these were the 
doctrines of rebirth and cause and effect. Accident or evil with- 
out cause was ruled out, for what happens now is the necessary 
result of some previous happening in a former life. There is no 
intervention of blind forces against which man has to fight, 
though his struggles are of no avail. The philosophers and the 
thinkers were not satisfied by these simple explanations and they 
were continually going behind them in their search for final 
causes and fuller explanations. But life was generally governed 
by these beliefs and the dramatists did not challenge them. The 
plays and Sanskrit poetry in general were in full accord with 
the Indian spirit and there are few traces of any rebellion 
against it. 

The rules laid down for dramatic writing were strict and it 
was not easy to break them. Yet there is no meek submission to 
fate; the hero is always a man of courage who faces all hazards. 
'The ignorant rely on Providence', says Chanakya contemptuously 
in the 'Mudra-Rakshasa,' they look to the stars for help instead 
of relying on themselves. Some artificiality creeps in: the hero is 
always the hero, the villain almost always acts villainously; 
there are few intermediate shades. 

Yet there are powerful dramatic situations and moving scenes 

and a background of life which seems like a picture in a dream, 

real and yet unreal, all woven together by a poet's fancy in 

magnificent language. It almost seems, though it may not have 

been so, that life in India was more peaceful, more stable then; 

as if it had discovered its roots and found answer to its questions. 

t flows along serenely and even strong winds and passing storms 

ruffle its surface only. There is nothing like the fierce tempests 

f Greek tragedy. But it is very human and there is an aesthetic 

armony and a logical unity about it. The Nataka, the Indian 

rama, says Sylvain L6vi, still remains the happiest invention 

f the Indian genius. 

Professor A. Berriedale Keithf says also that 'The Sanskrit 

• These two quotations are from Professor Gilbert Murray's translations from Euripides. 

first one is from 'The Bacchae,' and the second from 'Alcestis.' 
t/ have frequently consulted Sylvain Livi's 'he Theatre Indien' (Paris, 1890), and A. 
'"'ale Keith's, 'Sanskrit Drama' (Oxford, 1924), and some quotations have been taken 
these two books. 



drama may legitimately be regarded as the highest product of 
Indian poetry, and as summing up in itself the final conception 
of literary art achieved by the very self-conscious creators of 
Indian literature... .The Brahmin, in fact, much abused as he 
has been in this as in other matters, was the source of the 
intellectual distinction of India. As he produced Indian philo 
sophy, so by another effort of his intellect he evolved the subtle 
and effective form of the drama.' 

An English translation of Shudraka's 'Mrichhkatika' was 
staged in New York in 1924. Mr. Joseph Wood Krutch, the 
dramatic critic of the Nation, wrote of it as follows: 'Here, if 
anywhere, the spectator will be able to see a genuine example 
of that pure art theatre of which theorists talk, and here, too 
he will be led to meditate upon that real wisdom of the East 
which lies not in esoteric doctrine but in a tenderness far deepe 
and truer than that of the traditional Christianity which has been 
so thoroughly corrupted by the hard righteousness of Hebraism.. . 
A play wholly artificial yet profoundly moving because it is not 
realistic but real. ... Whoever the author may have been, and 
whether he lived in the fourth century or the eighth, he 
was a man gcod and wise with the goodness and wisdom which 
come not from the lips or the smoothly flowing pen of the moralist 
but from the heart. An exquisite sympathy with the fresh beauty 
of youth and love tempered his serenity, and he was old enough 
to understand that a light-hearted story of ingenious complication 
could be made the vehicle of tender humanity and confident 

goodness Such a play can be produced only by a civilization 

which has reached stability; when a civilization has thought 
its way through all the problems it faces, it must come to rest 
upon something calm and naive like this. Macbeth and Othello 
however great and stirring they might be, are barbarous heroes 
because the passionate tumult of Shakespeare is the tumult pro 
duced by the conflict between a newly awakened sensibility and 
a series of ethical concept? inherited from the savage age. The 
realistic drama of our own time is a product of a like confusion 
but when problems are settled, and when passions are reconciled 
with the decisions of an intellect, then form alone remains. . . 
Nowhere in our European past do we find, this side the classics, 
a work more completely civilized.' 

Vitality and Persistence of Sanskrit 

Sanskrit is a language amazingly rich, efflorescent, full of luxu 
riant growth of all kinds, and yet precise and strictly keepin 
within the framework of grammar which Panini laid down tw 
thousand six hundred years ago. It spread out, added to its 

164 



richness, became fuller and more ornate, but always it stuck to 
its original roots. 

In the years of the decline of Sanskrit literature, it lost some 
of its power and simplicity of style and became involved in highly 
complex forms and elaborate similes and metaphors. The gram- 
matical rule which enable words to be joined together, became 
in the hands of the epigones a mere device to show off their 
cleverness by combining whole strings of words running into 
many lines. 

Sir William Jones observed as long ago as 1784: 'The Sanskrit 
language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; 
more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and 
more exquisitely refined than either: yet bearing to both of them 
a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms 
of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; 
so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without 
believing them to have sprung from some common source which 

perhaps no longer exists '- 

William Jones was followed by many other European scholars, 
English, French, German, and others, who studied Sanskrit and 
laid the foundations of a new science — comparative philology. 
German scholarship forged ahead in this new domain and it is 
to these German scholars of the nineteenth century that the grea- 
test credit must go for research in Sanskrit. Practically every 
German university had a Sanskrit department, with one or two 
professors in charge of it. 

Indian scholarship, which was considerable, was of the old 
style, uncritical and seldom acquainted with foreign classical 
languages, except Arabic and Persian. A new type of scholarship 
arose in India under European inspiration, and many Indians 
went to Europe (usually to Germany) to train themselves in the 
new methods of research and critical and comparative study. 
These Indians had an advantage over the Europeans, and yet 
there was a disadvantage also. The disadvantage was due to 
certain preconceived notions, inherited beliefs and tradition, 
which came in the way of dispassionate criticism. The advantage, 
and it was great, was the capacity to enter into the spirit of the 
writing, to picture the environment in which it grew and thus to 
be more in tune with it. 

A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and 
philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and 
a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies 
that have moulded them. Words change their meanings from 
age to age and old ideas transform themselves into new, often 
keeping their old attire. It is difficult to capture the meaning, 
much less the spirit, of an old word or phrase. Some kind of a 
romantic and poetical approach is necessary if we are to have 



a glimpse into that old meaning and into the minds of those who 
used the language in former days. The richer and more abundant 
the language, the greater the difficulty. Sanskrit, like other classical 
languages, is full of words which have not only poetic beauty 
but a deep significance, a host of associated ideas, which cannot 
be translated into a language foreign in spirit and outlook. 
Even its grammar, its philosophy, have a strong poetic content; 
one of its old dictionaries is in poetic form. 

It is no easy matter, even for those of us who have studied 
Sanskrit, to enter into the spirit of this ancient tongue and to 
live again in its world of long ago. Yet we may do so to a small 
extent, for we are the inheritors of old traditions and that old 
world still clings to our fancies. Our modern languages in India 
are children of Sanskrit, and to it owe most of their vocabularly 
and their forms of expression. Many rich and significant words 
in Sanskrit poetry and philosophy, untranslatable in foreign 
languages, are still living parts of our popular languages. And 
Sanskrit itself, though long dead as a language of the people, 
has still an astonishing vitality. But for foreigners, however 
learned, the difficulties become greater. Unfortunately, scholars 
and learned men are seldom poets, and it is the scholar poet 
who is required to interpret a language. From these scholars we 
usually get, as M. Barth has pointed out, 'traductions infidfeles 
& force d'etre litterales.' 

So while the study of comparative philology has progressed 
and much research work has been done in Sanskrit, it is rather 
barren and sterile from the point of view of a poetic and romantic 
approach to this language. There is hardly any translation in 
English or any other foreign language from the Sanskrit which 
can be called worthy of or just to the original. Both Indians and 
foreigners have failed in this work for different reasons. That is 
a great pity and the world misses something that is full of beauty 
and imagination and deep thinking, something that is not merely 
the heritage of India but should be the heritage of the human 
race. 

The hard discipline, reverent approach, and insight of the 
English translation of the Authorized Version of the Bible, not 
only produced a noble book, but gave to the English language 
strength and dignity. Generations of European scholars and 
poets have laboured lovingly over Greek and Latin classics and 
produced fine translations In various European languages. And 
so even common folk can >hare to some extent in those cultures 
and, in their drab lives, have glimpses of truth and loveliness. 
Unfortunately, this work has yet to be done with the Sanskrit 
classics. When it will be done, or whether it will be done at all, 
I do not know. Our scholars grow in numbers and grow in scho- 
larship, and we have our poets too, but between the two there is 

166 



a wide and ever-growing gap. Our creative tendencies are turned 
in a different direction, and the many demands that the world 
of to-day makes upon us hardly give us time for the leisured study 
of the classics. Especially in India we have to look another way 
and makeup for long lost time; we have been too much immersed 
in the classics in the past, and because we lost our own creative 
instincts we ceased to be inspired even by those classics which we 
claimed to cherish so much. Translations, I suppose, from the 
Indian classics will continue to appear, and scholars will see to 
it that the Sanskrit words and names are properly spelt and have 
all the necessary -diacritical marks, and that there are plenty of 
notes and explanations and comparisons. There will be everything, 
in fact, literally and conscientiously rendered, only the living 
spirit will be missing. What was a thing of life and joy, so lovely 
and musical and full of imaginative daring, will become old and 
flat and stale, with neither youth nor beauty, but with only the 
dust of the scholar's study and the smell of midnight oil. 

For how long Sanskrit has been a dead language, in the sense 
of not being popularly spoken, I do not know. Even in the days 
of Kalidasa it was not the people's language, though it was the 
language of educated people throughout India. So it continued 
for centuries, and even spread to the Indian colonies in south-east 
Asia and central Asia. There are records of regular Sanskrit 
recitations, and possibly plays also, in Cambodia in the seventh 
century A.C. Sanskrit is still used for some ceremonial purposes 
in Thailand (Siam). In India the vitality of Sanskirt has been 
amazing. When the Afghan rulers had established themselves on 
the throne of Delhi, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
Persian became the court language over the greater part of India 
and, gradually, many educated people took to it in preference to 
Sanskrit. The popular languages also grew and developed literary 
forms. Yet in spite of all this Sanskrit continued, though it dec- 
lined in quality. Speaking at the Oriental Conference held in 
1937 at Trivandrum, over which he presided, Dr. F. F. Thomas 
pointed out what a great unifying force Sanskrit had been in India 
and how widespread its use still was. He actually suggested that 
a simple form of Sanskrit, a kind of basic Sanskrit, should be 
encouraged as a common all-India language to-day! He quoted, 
agreeing with him, what Max Miiller had said previously: 'Such 
is the marvellous continuity between the past and the present in 
India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious 
reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still 
the only language spoken over the whole extent of that vast 

country Even at the present moment, after a century of 

English rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more 
widely understood in India than Latin was in Europe at the 
time of Dante.' 



I have no idea of the number of people who understood Latin 
in the Europe of Dante's time; nor do I know how many under- 
stand Sanskrit in India to-day; but the number of these latter 
is still large, especially in the south. Simple spoken Sanskrit is 
not very difficult to follow for those who know well any of the 
present-day Indo-Aryan languages — Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, 
Gujrati, etc. Even present-day Urdu, itself wholly an Indo-Aryan 
language, probably contains 80 per cent words derived from 
Sanskrit. It is often difficult to say whether a word has come 
from Persian or Sanskrit, as the root words in both these 
languages are alike. Curiously enough, the Dravidian languages 
of the south, though entirely different in origin, have borrowed 
and adopted such masses of words from the Sanskrit that nearly 
half their vocabulary is very nearly allied to Sanskrit. 

Books in Sanskrit on a variety of subjects, including dramatic 
works, continued to be written throughout the medieval period 
and right up to modern times. Indeed, such books still appear 
from time to time, and so do Sanskrit magazines. The standard 
is not high and they do not add anything of value to Sanskrit 
literature. But the surprising thing is that this hold of Sanskrit 
should continue in this way throughout this long period. Some- 
times public gatherings are still addressed in Sanskrit, though 
naturally the audiences are more or less select. 

This continuing use of Sanskrit has undoubtedly prevented 
the normal growth of the modern Indian languages. The edu- 
cated intellectuals looked upon them as vulgar tongues not 
suited to any creative or learned work, which was written in 
Sanskrit, or later not infrequently in Persian. In spite of this 
handicap the great provincial languages gradually took shape 
in the course of centuries, developed literary forms, and built 
up their literatures. 

It is interesting to note that in modern Thailand when the 
need arose for new technical, scientific, and governmental terms, 
many of these were adapted from Sanskrit. 

The ancient Indians attached a great deal of importance to 
sound, and hence their writing, poetry or prose, had a rhythmic 
and musical quality. Special efforts were made to ensure the 
correct enunciation of words and elaborate rules were laid down 
for this purpose. This became all the more necessary as, in the 
old days, teaching was oral, and whole books were committed 
to memory and thus handed down from generation to genera- 
tion. The significance attached to the sound of words led to 
attempts to co-ordinate the sense with the sound, resulting some- 
times in delightful combinations, and at other times in crude 
and artificial mixtures. E. H. Johnstone has written about this: 
'The classical poets of India have a sensitiveness to variations of 
sound, to which the literature of other countries afford few 



parallels, and their delicate combinations are a source of never- 
failing joy. Some of them, however, are inclined to attempt to 
match the sense with the sound in a way that is decidedly lack- 
ing in subtlety, and they have perpetrated real atrocities in the 
manufacture of verses with a limited number of consonants or 
even only one.'* 

Recitations from the Vedas, even in the present day, are done 
according to the precise rules for enunciation laid down in 
ancient times. 

The modern Indian languages descended from the Sanskrit, 
and therefore called Indo-Aryan languages, are: Hindi-Urdu, 
Bengali, Marathi, Gujrati, Oriya, Assamese, Rajasthani (a vari- 
ation of Hindi), Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, and Kashmiri. 
The Dravidian languages are: Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, and 
Malayalam. These fifteen languages cover the whole of India, 
and of these, Hindi, with its variation Urdu, is far the most wide- 
spread and is understood even where it is not spoken. Apart from 
these, there are only some dialects and some undeveloped 
languages spoken, in very limited areas, by some backward hill 
and forest tribes. The oft-repeated story of Ind'a having five 
hundred or more languages is a fiction of the mind of the philo- 
logist and the census commissioner who notes down every variation 
in dialect and every petty hill-tongue on the Assam-Bengal frontier 
with Burma as a separate language, although sometimes it is 
spoken only by a few hundred or a few thousand persons. Most 
of these so-cailed hundreds of languages are confined to this 
eastern frontier of India and to the eastern border tracts of 
Burma. According to the method adopted by census commis- 
sioners, Europe has hundreds of languages and Germany was, 
I think, listed as having about sixty. 

The real language question in India has nothing to do with 
this variety. It is practically confined to Hindi-Urdu, one lan- 
guage with two literary forms and two scripts. As spoken there is 
hardly any difference; as written, especially in literary style, the 
gap widens. Attempts have been, and are being, made to lessen 
this gap and develop a common form, which is usually styled 
Hindustani. This is developing into a common language under- 
stood all over India. 

Pashto, one of the Indo-Aryan languages derived from Sans- 
krit, is the popular language in the North West Frontier Province 
as well as in Afghanistan. It has been influenced, more than any 
of our other languages, by Persian. This frontier area has in the 
past produced a succession of brilliant thinkers, scholars, and 
grammarians in Sanskrit. 

The language of Ceylon is Singhalese. This is also an Indc- 

*From E. H. Johnstone's translation of 'Asvaghosa's Buddhaearita' (Lahore, 1936). 

169 



Aryan language derived directly from Sanskrit. The Singhalese 
people have not only got their religion, Buddhism, from India, 
but are racially and linguistically akin to Indians. 

Sanskrit, it is now well recognized, is allied to the European 
classical and modern languages. Even the Slavonic languages 
have many common forms and roots with Sanskrit. The nearest 
approach to Sanskrit in Europe is made by the Lithuanian 
language. 

Buddhist Philosophy 

Buddha, it is said, used the popular language of the area he lived 
in, which was a Prakrit, a derivative of Sanskrit. He must have 
known Sanskrit, of course, but he preferred to speak in the popular 
tongue so as to reach the people. From this Prakrit developed 
the Pali language of the early Buddhist scriptures. Buddha's 
dialogues and other accounts and discussions were recorded in 
Pali long after his death, and these form the basis of Buddhism 
in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, where the Hinayana form of 
Buddhism prevails. 

Some hundreds of years after Buddha there was a revival of 
Sanskrit in India, and Buddhist scholars wrote their philo- 
sophical and other works in Sanskrit. Ashvaghosha's writings 
and plays (the earliest plays we have), which are meant to be 
propaganda for Buddhism, are in Sanskrit. These Sanskrit writ- 
ings of Buddhist scholars in India went to China, Japan, Tibet, 
and Central Asia, where the Mahayana form of Buddhism pre- 
vailed. 

The age which gave birth to the Buddha had been one of 
tremendous mental ferment and philosophic inquiry in India. 
And not in India only for that was the age ofLao-tze and Confucius, 
of Zoroaster and Pythagoras. In India it gave rise to materialism 
as well as to the Bhagavad Gita, to Buddhism and Jainism, and to 
many other currents of thought which were subsequently to consoli- 
date themselves in the various systems of Indian philosophy. 
There were different strata of thought, one leading to another, 
and sometimes overlapping each other. 

Different schools of philosophy developed side by side with 
Buddhism, and Buddhism itself had schisms leading to the forma- 
tion of different schools of thought. The philosophic spirit gradually 
declined giving place to scholasticism and polemical controversy. 

Buddha had repeatedly warned his people against learned 
controversy over metaphysical problems. 'Whereof one cannot 
speak thereof one must be silent,' he is reported to have said. 
Truth was to be found in life itself and not in argument about 
matters outside the scope of life and therefore beyond the ken 
of the human intellect. He emphasized the ethical aspects of life 



and evidently felt that these suffered and were neglected because 
of a preoccupation with metaphysical subtleties. Early Buddhism 
reflected to some extent this philosophic and rational spirit of the 
Buddha, and its inquiries were based on experience. In the world 
of experience the concept of pure being could not be grasped and 
was therefore put aside; so also the idea of a creator God, which 
was a presumption not capable of logical proof. Nevertheless the 
experience remained and was real enough in a sense; what could 
this be except a mere flux of becoming, ever changing into some- 
thing else? So these intermediate degrees of reality were recognized 
and further inquiry proceeded on these lines on a psychological basis. 
Buddha, rebel as he was, hardly cut himself off from the ancient 
faith of the land. Mrs. Rhys Davids says that 'Gautama was born 

and brought up and lived and died as a Hindu There was not 

much in the metaphysics and principles of Gautama which can- 
not be found in one or other of the orthodox systems, and a great 
deal of his morality could be matched from earlier or later Hindu 
books. Such originality as Gautama possessed lay in the way in 
which he adapted, enlarged, ennobled, and systematized that 
which had already been well said by others; in the way in which 
he carried out to their logical conclusion principles of equity and 
justice already acknowledged by some of the most prominent 
Hindu thinkers. The difference between him and other teachers 
lay chiefly in his deep earnestness and in his broad public spirit 
of philanthropy.'* 

Yet Buddha had sown the seeds of revolt against the conven- 
tional practice of the religion of his day. It was not his theory or 
philosophy that was objected to — for every conceivable philosophy 
could be advocated within the fold of orthodox belief so long as 
it remained a theory — but the interference with the social life and 
organization of the people. The old system was free and flexible 
in thought, allowing for every variety of opinion, but in practice 
it was rigid, and non-conformity with practice was not approved. 
So, inevitably, Buddhism tended to break away from the old faith, 
and, after Buddha's death, the breach widened. 

With the decline of early Buddhism, the Mahayana form deve- 
loped, the older form being known as the Hinayana. It was in this 
Mahayana that Buddha was made into a god and devotion to him 
as a personal god developed. The Buddha image also appeared 
from the Grecian north-west. About the same time there was a 
revival of Brahminism in India and of Sanskrit scholarship. 

Between the Hinayana and the Mahayana there was bitter 
controversy and the debate and opposition to each other has 
continued throughout subsequent history. The HinSyana countries 

*This quotation, as well as much else, is taken from Sir S. Radhakrishnan" s 'Indian Philo- 
sophy {George Allen and Unwin, London, 1940). 

171 



(Ceylon, Burma, Siam) even now rather look down upon the 
Buddhism that prevails in China and Japan, and I suppose this 
feeling is reciprocated. 

While the Hinayana adhered, in some measure, to the ancient 
purity of doctrine and circumscribed it in a Pali Canon, the 
Mahayana spread out in every direction, tolerating almost every- 
thing and adapting itself to each country's distinctinve outlook. 
In India it began to approach the popular religion; in each of the 
other countries — China and Japan and Tibet — it had a separate 
development. Some of the greatest of the early Buddhist thinkers 
moved away from the agnostic attitude which Buddha had taken 
up in regard to the existence of the soul and rejected it completely. 

Among a galaxy of men of remarkable intellect, Nagarjuna 
stands out as one of the greatest minds that India has produced. 
He lived during Kanishka's reign, about the beginning of the 
Christian era, and he was chiefly responsible for formulating the 
Mahayana doctrines. The power and daring of his thought are 
remarkable and he is not afraid of arriving at conclusions which 
to most people must have appeared as scandalous and shocking. 
With a ruthless logic he pursues his argument till it leads him to 
deny even what he believed in. Thought cannot know itself and 
cannot go outside itself or know another. There is no God apart 
from the universe, and no universe apart from God, and both are 
epually appearances. 

And so he goes on till there is nothing left, no distinction be- 
tween truth and error, no possibility of understanding or mis- 
understanding anything, for how can anyone misunderstand the 
unreal? Nothing is real. The world has only a phenomenal exist- 
ence; it is just an ideal system of qualities and relations, in which 
we believe but which we cannot intelligibly explain. Yet behind 
all this experience he hints at something — the Absolute — which 
is beyond the capacity of our thinking, for in the very process of 
thought it becomes something relative.* 

This absolute is often referred to in Buddhist philosophy as 
Shunyata or nothingness (Shunya is the word for the zero mark) 

^Professor Th. Stcherbatsky of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., in his book ' The 
Conception of Buddhist Nirvana' (Leningrad, 1927) suggests that Nagarjuna should be placed 
'among the great philosophers of humanity.' He refers to his 'wonderful style' which never 
ceases to be interesting, bold, baffling, sometimes seemingly arrogant. He compares Nagar- 
juna's views with those of Bradley and Hegel: 'Very remarkable are then the coincidences 
between Nagarjuna's negativism and the condemnation by Mr. Bradley of almost every 
conception of the everyday world: things and qualities, relations, space and time, change, 
causation, motion, the self From the Indian standpoint Bradley can be characterised as a 
genuine Madhyamika. But above all these parallelisms we may perhaps find a still greater 
family likeness between the dialectical method of Hegel and Nagarjuna's dialectics ' 

Stcherbatsky points out certain resemblances between some of the Buddhist schools of 
philosophy and the outlook of modern science, especially the conception of the final condition 
of the universe according to the law of entropy. He gives an interesting story. When the 

172 



yet it is something very different from our conception of vacancy 
or nothingness.* In our world of experience we have to call it 
nothingness for there is no other word for it, but in terms of meta- 
physical reality it means something transcendent and immanent 
in all things. 

Says a famous Buddhist scholar: 'It is on account of Shunyata 
that everything becomes possible, without it nothing in the world 
is possible.' 

All this shows where metaphysics leads to and how wise was 
Buddha's warning against such speculations. Yet the human 
mind refuses to imprison itself and continues to reach out for 
that fruit of knowledge which it well knows is beyond reach. 
Metaphysics developed in Buddhist philosophy but the method 
was based on a psychological approach. Again, it is surprising 
to find the insight into the psychological states of the mind. The 
subconscious self of modern psychology is clearly envisaged and 
discussed. An extraordinary passage in one of the old books has been 
pointed out to me. This reminds one in a way of the Oedipus 
Complex theory, though the approach is wholly different. | 

Four definite schools of philosophy developed in Buddhism, 
two of these belonged to the Hinayana branch, and two to the 
Mahayana. All these Buddhist systems of philosophy have their 
origin in the Upanishads, but they do not accept the authority 
of the Vedas. It is this denial of the Vedas that distinguishes them 
from the so-called Hindu systems of philosophy which developed 
about the same time. These latter, while accepting the Vedas 
generally and, in a sense, paying formal obeisance to them, do 
not consider them as infallible, and indeed go their own way without 
much regard for them. As the Vedas and the Upanishads spoke 

educational authorities of newly founded republic of Burials in Transbaikalia in the U.S.S.R. 
started an anti-religious propaganda, they emphasized that modern science takes a materia- 
listic view of the universe. The Buddhist monks of that republic, who were Mahayanists, 
retorted in a pamphlet, pointing out that materialism was not unknown to them and that, 
in fact, one of their schools had developed a materialistic theory. 

* Professor Stcherbatsky who is an authority on the subject, having personally examined the 
original texts in various languages, including Tibetan, says that 'shunyata' is relativity. 
Everything being relative and interdependent has no absoluteness by itself. Hence it is 'shunya. ' 
On the other hand, there is something entirely beyond the phenomenal world, but comprising 
it, which might be considered the absolute. This cannot be conceived or described in terms 
of the finite and phenomenal world and hence it is referred to as 'tathata' or thatness, suchness. 
This absolute has also been called 'shunyata'. 

f This occurs in Vasubandhu's' Abhidharmakosa' , which was written in the early fifth century 
A.C., collecting previous views and traditions. The original in Sanskrit has been lost. But 
Chinese and Tibetan translations exist. The Chinese translation is by the famous Chinese 
pilgrim to India, Hsuan Tsang. From this Chinese translation a French translation has been 
made (Paris-Louvain, 1926). My colleague and companion in detention, Acharya Narendra 
Dev, has been translating this book from the French into Hindi and English, and he 
pointed out this passage to me. It is in the third chapter. 

173 



with many voices, it was always possible for subsequent thinkers 
to emphasize one aspect rather than another, and to build their 
system on this foundation. 

Professor Radhakrishnan thus describes the logical movement of 
Buddhist thought as it found expression in the four schools. It 
begins with a dualistic metaphysics looking upon knowledge as 
a direct awareness of objects. In the next stage ideas are made 
the media through which reality is apprehended, thus raising a 
screen between mind and things. These two stages represent the 
Hinayana schools. The Mahayana schools went further and 
abolished the things behind the images and reduced all experience 
to a series of ideas in their mind. The ideas of relativity and the 
sub-conscious self come in. In the last stage — this was Nagarjuna's 
Madhyamika philospohy or the middle way — mind itself is 
dissolved into mere ideas, leaving us with loose units of ideas and 
perceptions about which we can say nothing definite. 

Thus we arrive finally at airy nothing, or something that is 
so difficult to grasp for our finite minds that it cannot be described 
or defined. The most we can say is that it is some kind of conscious- 
ness — vijyana as it is called. 

In spite of this conclusion arrived at by psychological and 
metaphysical analysis which ultimately reduces the conception of 
the invisible world or the absolute to pure consciousness, and thus 
to nothing, so far as we can use or comprehend words, it is 
emphasized that ethical relations have a definite value in our finite 
world. So in our lives and in our human relations we have to con- 
form to ethics and live the good life. To that life and to this pheno- 
menal world we can and should apply reason and knowledge and 
experience. The infinite, or whatever it may be called, lies some- 
where in the beyond and to it therefore these cannot be applied. 

Effect of Buddhism on Hinduism 

What was the effect of Buddha's teachings on the old Aryan reli- 
gion and the popular beliefs that prevailed in India? There can 
be no doubt that they produced powerful and permanent effects 
on many aspects of religious and national life. Buddha may not 
have thought of himself as the founder of a new religion; probably 
he looked upon himself as a reformer only. But his dynamic perso- 
nality and his forceful messages attacking many social and religious 
practices inevitably led to conflict with the entrenched priesthood. 
He did not claim to be an uprooter of the existing social order or 
economic system; he accepted their basic premises and only at- 
tacked the evils that had grown under them. Nevertheless he 
functioned, to some extent, as a social revolutionary and it was 
because of this that he angered the Brahmin class who were inter- 
ested in the continuance of the existing social practices. There is 

174 



nothing in Buddha's teachings that cannot be reconciled with 
the wide-flung range of Hindu thought. But when Brahmin supre- 
macy was attacked it was a different matter. 

It is interesting to note that Buddhism first took root in 
Magadha, that part of northern India where Brahminism was 
weak. It spread gradually west and north and many Brahmins 
also joined it. To begin with, it was essentially a Kshatriya move- 
ment but with a popular appeal. Probably it was due to the 
Brahmins, who later joined it, that it developed more along philo- 
sophical and metaphysical lines. It may have been due also chiefly 
to the Brahmin Buddhists that the Mahayana form developed; 
for, in some ways, and notably in its catholic variety, this was more 
akin to the varied form of the existing Aryan faith. 

Buddhism influenced Indian life in a hundred ways, as it was 
bound to, for it must be remembered that it was a living, dynamic, 
and widespread religion in India for over a thousand years. Even in 
the long years of its decline in India, and when later it practically 
ceased to count as a separate religion here, much of it remained 
as a part of the Hindu faith and in national ways of life and thought. 
Even though the religion as such was ultimately rejected by the 
people, the ineffaceable imprint of it remained and powerfully 
influenced the development of the race. This permanent effect 
had little to do with dogma or philosophic theory or religious 
belief. It was the ethical and social and practical idealism of Buddha 
and his religion that influenced our people and left their imperish- 
able marks upon them, even as the ethical ideals of Christianity 
affected Europe though it may not pay much attention to its dogmas, 
and as Islam's human, social, and practical approach influenced 
many people who were not attracted by its religious forms and 
beliefs. 

The Aryan faith in India was essentially a national religion 
restricted to the land, and the social caste structure it was deve- 
loping emphasized this aspect of it. There were no missionary 
enterprises, no proselytization, no looking outside the frontiers 
of India. Within India it proceeded on its own unobtrusive and 
subconscious way and absorbed new-comers and old, often 
forming new castes out of them. This attitude to the outside world 
was natural for those days, for communications were difficult 
and the need for foreign contacts hardly arose. There were no doubt 
such contacts for trade and other purposes but they made no 
difference to India's life and ways. The ocean of Indian life was a 
self-contained one, big and diverse enough to allow full play for 
its many currents, self-conscious and absorbed in itself, caring 
little for what happened beyond its boundaries. In the very heart 
of this ocean burst forth a new spring, pouring out a fountain of 
fresh and limpid water, which ruffled the old surface and over- 
flowed, not caring at all for those old boundaries and barriers 



that man and nature had erected. In this fountain of Buddha's 
teaching the appeal was to the nation but it was also to more than 
the nation. It was a universal call for the good life and it recognized 
no barriers of class or caste or nation. 

This was a novel approach for the India of his day. Ashoka was 
the first person to act upon it in a big way with his embassies to, 
and missionary activities in, foreign countries. India thus began 
to develop an awareness of the world, and probably it was largely 
this that led, in the early centuries of the Christian era, to vast 
colonial enterprises. These expeditions across the seas were orga- 
nized by Hindu rulers and they carried the Brahminical system and 
Aryan culture with them. This was an extraordinary development 
for a self-contained faith and culture which were gradually build- 
ing up a mutually exclusive caste system. Only a powerful urge 
and something changing their basic outlook could have brought 
this about. That urge may have been due to many reasons, and 
most of all to trade and the needs of an expanding society, but the 
change of outlook was partly due to Buddhism and the foreign 
contacts it had brought about. Hinduism was dynamic enough and full 
of an overflowing energy at the time but it had previously not paid 
much attention to foreign countries. One of the effects of the 
universalism of the new faith was to encourage this dynamic energy 
to flow out to distant countries. 

Much of the ritualism and ceremonial associated with the Vedic, 
as well as more popular forms of religion, disappeared, particularly 
animal sacrifices. The idea of non-violence, already present in 
the Vedas and Upanishads, were emphasized by Buddhism and 
and even more so by Jainism. There was a new respect for life and 
a kindness to animals. And always behind all this was the endea- 
vour to lead the good life, the higher life. 

Buddha had denied the moral value of austere asceticism. But 
the whole effect of his teaching was one of pessimism towards life. 
This was especially the Hinayana view and even more so that of 
Jainism. There was an emphasis on other-worldliness, a desire 
for liberation, of freedom from the burdens of the world. Sexual 
continence was encouraged and vegetarianism increased. All these 
ideas were present in India before the Buddha but the emphasis 
was different. The emphasis of the old Aryan ideal was on a full 
and all-rounded life. The student stage was one of continence and 
discipline, the householder participated fully in life's activities and 
took sex as part of them. Then came a gradual withdrawal and a 
greater concentration on public service and individual improve- 
ment. Only the last stage of life, when old age had come, was that 
ofsanyasa or full withdrawal from life's normal work and attachments. 

Previously small groups of ascetically inclined people lived in 
forest settlements, usually attracting students. With the coming 
of Buddhism huge monasteries and nunneries grew up every- 

176 



where and there was a regular flow of population towards them. 
The very name of the province of Bihar to-day is derived from 
Vihara, monastery, which indicates how full that huge area must 
have been of monasteries. Such monasteries were educational 
establishments also or were connected with schools and some- 
times with universities. 

Not only India but the whole of Central Asia had large numbers 
of huge Buddhist monasteries. There was a famous one in Balkh, 
accommodating 1,000 monks, of which we have many records. 
This was called Nava-vihara, the new monastery, which was 
Persianized into Naubahar. 

Why was it that Buddhism resulted in the growth of other- 
worldliness in India far more than in some other countries where 
it has flourished for long periods — in China, Japan and Burma? 
I do not know, but I imagine that the national background of 
each country was strong enough to mould the religion according 
to its shape. China, for instance, had the powerful traditions derived 
from Confucius and Lao-tze and other philosophers. Then again, 
China and Japan adopted the Mahayana form of Buddhism which 
was less pessimistic in its approach than the Hinayana. India was 
also influenced by Jainism which was the most otherworldly and 
life-negating of all these doctrines and philosophies. 

Yet another very curious effect of Buddhism in India and on 
its social structure appears to have been one that was entirely 
opposed to its whole outlook. This was in relation to caste, which 
it did not approve of though it accepted its original basis. The 
caste system in the time of the Buddha was flexible and had not 
developed the rigidity of later periods. More importance was 
attached to capacity, character, and occupation, than to birth. 
Buddha himself often uses the term Brahmin as equivalent to an 
able, earnest, and disciplined person. There is a famous story in 
the Chhandogya Upanishad which shows us how caste and sex 
relations were viewed then. 

This is the story of Satyakama whose mother was Jabala. 
Satyakama wanted to become a student of the sage Gautama 
(not the Buddha) and, as he was leaving his home, he asked his 
mother: 'Of what gotra (family or clan) am I?' His mother said 
to him: 'I do not know, my child, of what family thou art. In 
my youth when I had to move about much as a servant (waiting 
on the guests in my father's house), I conceived thee. I do not 
know of what family thou art. I was Jabala by name, thou art 
Satyakama. Say that thou art Satyakama Jabala (that is, Satya- 
kama, the son of Jabala).' 

Satyakama then went to Gautama and the sage asked him 
about his family. He replied in the words of his mother. There- 
upon the teacher said: 'No one but a true Brahmin would thus 
speak out. Go and fetch fuel, friend. I shall initiate you. You have 

177 



not swerved from the truth.* 

Probably at the time of the Buddha the Brahmins were the only 
more or less rigid caste. The Kshatriyas or the ruling class were 
proud of their group and family traditions but, as a class, their 
doors were open for the incorporation of individuals or families 
who became rulers. For the rest most people were Vaishyas, the 
agriculturists, an honoured calling. There were other occupational 
castes also. The so-called caste-less people, the untouchables, 
appear to have been very few, probably some forest folk and some 
whose occupation was the disposal of dead bodies, etc. 

The emphasis of Jainism and Buddhism on non-violence led to 
the tilling of the soil being considered a lowly occupation, for it 
often resulted in the destruction of animal life. This occupation, 
which had been the pride of the Indo-Aryans, went down in the 
scale of values in some parts of the country, in spite of its funda- 
mental importance, and those who actually tilled the land des- 
cended in the social scale. 

Thus Buddhism, which was a revolt against priestcraft and 
ritualism and against the degradation of any human being and 
his deprivation of the opportunities of growth and leading a 
higher life, unconsciously led to the degradation of vast numbers 
of tillers of the soil. It would be wrong to make Buddhism respon- 
sible for this, for it had no such effect elsewhere. There was some- 
thing inherent in the caste system which took it in this direction. 
Jainism pushed it along that way because of its passionate attach- 
ment to non-violence — Buddhism also inadvertently helped in 
the process. 

How did Hinduism Absorb Buddhism in India? 

Eight or nine years ago, when I was in Paris, Andre Malraux 
put me a strange question at the very beginning of our conversa- 
tion. What was it, he asked me, that enabled Hinduism, to push 
away organized Buddhism from India, without any major con- 
flict, over a thousand years ago? How did Hinduism succeed in 
absorbing, as it were, a great and widespread popular religion, 
without the usual wars of religion which disfigure the history 
of so many countires? What inner vitality or strength did Hinduism 
possess then which enabled it to perform this remarkable feat? 
And did India possess this inner vitality and strength to-day? If 
so, then her freedom and greatness were assured. 

The question was perhaps typical of a French intellectual who 
was also a man of action. And yet few persons in Europe or America 
would trouble themselves over such matters; they would be much 
too full of the problems of to-day. Those present-day world prob- 
lems filled and troubled Malraux also, and with his powerful and 
analytical mind he sought light wherever he could find it in the 

178 



past or in the present — in thought, speech, writing, or, best of all, 
in action, in the game of life and death. 

For Malraux the question was obviously not just an academic 
one. He was full of it and he burst out with it as soon as we met. 
It was a question after my own heart, or rather the kind of ques- 
tion that my own mind was frequently framing. But I had no 
satisfactory answer to it for him or for myself. There are answers 
and explanations enough, but they seem to miss the core of the 
problem. 

It is clear that there was no widespread or violent extermina- 
tion of Buddhism in India. Occasionally there were local troubles 
or conflicts between a Hindu ruler and the Buddhist Sangha, or 
organization of monks, which had grown powerful. These had 
usually a political origin and they did not make any essential 
difference. It must also be remembered that Hinduism was at 
no time wholly displaced by Buddhism. Even when Buddhism 
was at its height in India, Hinduism was widely prevalent. 
Buddhism died a natural death in India, or rather it was a 
fading out and a transformation into something else. 'India,' 
says Keith, 'has a strange genius for converting what it borrows 
and assimilating it.' If that is true of borrowings from abroad or 
from alien sources, still more is it applicable to something that 
came out of its own mind and thought. Buddhism was not only 
entirely a product of India; its philosophy was in line with pre- 
vious Indian thought and the philosophy of the Vedanta (the 
Upanishads). The Upanishads had even ridiculed priestcraft and 
ritualism and minimised the importance of caste. 

Brahminism and Buddhism acted and reacted on each other, 
and in spite of their dialectical conflicts or because of them, 
approached nearer to each other, both in the realm of philosophy 
and that of popular belief. The Mahayana especially approached 
the Brahminical system and forms. It was prepared to compromise 
with almost anything, so long as its ethical background remained. 
Brahminism made of Buddha an avatar, a God. So did Buddhism. 
The Mahayana doctrine spread rapidly but it lost in quality and 
distinctiveness what it gained in extent. The monasteries became 
rich, centres of vested interests, and their discipline became lax;. 
Magic and superstition crept into the popular forms of worship. 
There was a progressive degeneration of Buddhism in India after 
the first millenium of its existence. Mrs. Rhys Davids points out 
its diseased state during that period: 'under the overpowering 
influence of these sickly imaginations the moral teachings of 
Gautama have been almost hid from view. The theories grew and 
flourished, each new step, each new hypothesis demanded an- 
other; until the whole sky was filled with forgeries of the brain, 
and the nobler and simpler lessons of the founder of the religion 
were smothered beneath the glittering mass of metaphysical 

179 



subtleties.'* 

This description might well apply to many of the 'sickly imagin- 
ings' and 'forgeries of the brain' which were afflicting Brahminism 
and its offshoots at that time. 

Buddhism had started at a time of social and spiritual revival 
and reform in India. It infused the breath of new life in the people, 
it tapped new sources of popular strength and released new talent 
and capacity for leadership. Under the imperial patronage of 
Ashoka it spread rapidly and became the dominant religion of 
India. It spread also to other countries and there was a constant 
stream of learned Buddhist scholars going abroad from India and 
coming to India. This stream continued for many centuries. When 
the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien came to India in the fifth century 
A.C., a thousand years after Buddha, he saw that Buddhism was 
flourishing in its parent country. In the seventh century A.C. the 
still more famous pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (or Yuan-Chwang) came 
to India and witnessed signs of decay, although even then it was 
strong in some areas. Quite a large number of Buddhist scholars 
and monks gradually drifted from India to China. 

Meanwhile there had been a revival of Brahminism and a 
great cultural renaissance under the Imperial Guptas in the fourth 
and fifth centuries A.C. This was not anti-Buddhist in any way 
but it certainly increased the importance and power of Brahmin- 
ism, and it was also a reaction against the otherworldliness of 
Buddhism. The later Guptas contended for long against Hun 
invasions and, though they drove them off ultimately, the country 
was weakened and a process of decay set in. There were several 
bright periods subsequently and many remarkable men arose. 
But both Brahminism and Buddhism deteriorated and degrading 
practices grew up in them. It became difficult to distinguish the 
two. If Brahminism absorbed Buddhism, this process changed 
Brahminism also in many ways. 

In the eighth century Shankaracharya, one of the greatest of 
India's philosophers, started religious orders or maths for Hindu 
sanyasins or monks. This was an adoption of the old Buddhist 
practice of the sangha. Previously there had been no such orga- 
nizations of sanyasins in Brahminism, although small groups of 
them existed. 

Some degraded forms of Buddhism continued in East Bengal 
and in Sind in the north-west. Otherwise Buddhism gradually 
vanished from India as a widespread religion. 

The Indian Philosophical Approach 

Though one thought leads to another, each usually related to 
life's changing texture, and a logical movement of the human 

*S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, ' Allen & Unwin, London, 1927. 
180 



mind is sometimes discrenible, yet thoughts overlap and the new 
and the old run side by side, irreconcilable and often contra- 
dicting each other. Even an individual's mind is a bundle of 
contradictions and it is difficult to recocnile his action one with 
another. A people, comprising all stages of cultural development, 
represent in themselves and in their thoughts, beliefs, and activities,, 
different ages of the past leading up to the present. Probably their 
activities may conform more to the social and cultural pattern 
of the present day, or else they would be stranded and isolated from 
life's moving stream, but behind these activities lie primitive 
beliefs and unreasoned convictions. It is astonishing to find in 
countries industrially advanced, where every person automatically 
uses or takes advantage of the latest modern discovery or device, 
beliefs and set ideas which reason denies and intelligence cannot 
accept. A politician may of course succeed in his business without 
being a shining example of reason or intelligence. A lawyer may 
be a brilliant advocate and jurist and yet be singularly ignorant 
of other matters. Even a scientist, that typical representative of 
the modern age, often forgets the method and outlook of science 
when he goes out of his study or laboratory. 

This is so even in regard to the problems that affect our daily 
lives in their material aspects. In philosophy and metaphysics 
the problems are more remote, less transient and less connected 
with our day's routine. For most of us they are entirely beyond 
our grasp unless we undergo a rigid discipline and training of 
the mind. And yet all of us have some kind of philosophy of life, 
conscious or unconscious, if not thought out then inherited or 
accepted from others and considered as self-evident. Or we may 
seek refuge from the perils of thought in faith in some religious 
creed or dogma, or in national destiny, or in a vague and com- 
forting humanitarianism. Often all these and others are present 
together, though with little to connect them, and we develop split 
personalities, each functioning in its separate compartment. 

Probably there was more unity and harmony in the human 
personality in the old days, though this was at a lower level than 
to-day except for certain individuals who were obviously of a very 
high type. During this long age of transition, through which huma- 
nity has been passing, we have managed to break up that unity, 
but have not so far succeeded in finding another. We cling still to 
the ways of dogmatic religion, adhere to outworn practices and 
beliefs, and yet talk and presume to live in terms of the scientific 
method. Perhaps science has been too narrow in its approach to 
life and has ignored many vital aspects of it, and hence it could 
not provide a suitable basis for a new unity and harmony. Perhaps 
it is gradually broadening this basis now, and we shall achieve a 
new harmony for the human personality on a much higher level 
than the previous one. But the problem is a more difficult and 

181 



complex one now, for it has grown beyond the limits of the human 
personality. It was perhaps easier to develop some kind of a har- 
monious personality in the restricted spheres of ancient and 
medieval times. In that little world of town and village, with fixed 
concepts of social organization and behaviour, the individual and 
the group lived their self-contained lives, protected, as a rule, 
from outer storms. To-day the sphere of even the individual has 
grown world-wide, and different concepts of social organization 
conflict with each other and behind them are different philosophies 
of life. A strong wind arising somewhere creates a cyclone in one 
place and an anti-cyclone in another. So if harmony is to be 
achieved by the individual, it has to be supported by some kind 
of social harmony throughout the world. 

In India, far more so than elsewhere, the old concept of social 
organization and the philosophy of life underlying it, have per- 
sisted, to some extent, to the present day. They could not have 
done so unless they had some virtue which stabilized society and 
made it conform to life's conditions. And they would not have 
failed ultimately and become a drag and a hindrance, divorced 
from life, if the evil in them had not overcome that virtue. But, 
in any event, they cannot be considered to-day as isolated pheno- 
mena; they must be viewed in that world context and made to 
harmonize with it. 

'In India,' says Havell, 'religion is hardly a dogma, but a working 
hypothesis of human conduct, adapted to different stages of 
spiritual development and different conditions of life. A dogma 
might continue to be believed in, isolated from life, but a working 
hypothesis of human conduct must work and conform to life, or 
it obstructs life. The very raison d'etre of such a hypothesis is its 
workableness, its conformity to life, and its capacity to adapt itself 
to changing conditions. So long as it can do so it serves its purpose 
and performs its allotted function. When it goes off at a tangent 
from the curve of life, loses contact with social needs, and the 
distance between it and life grows, it loses all its vitality and 
significance. 

Metaphysical theories and speculations deal not with the ever- 
changing stuff of life but with the permanent reality behind it, 
if such exists. Hence they have a certain permanence which is 
not affected by external changes. But, inevitably, they are the 
products of the environment in which they grow and of the state 
of development of the human minds that conceived them. If their 
influence spreads they affect the general philosophy of life of a 
people. In India, philosophy, though in its higher reaches confined 
to the elect, has been more pervasive than elsewhere and has had 
a strong influence in moulding the national outlook and in deve- 
loping a certain distinctive attitude of mind. 

Buddhist philosophy played an important part in this process 

182 



and, during the medieval period, Islam left its impress upon the 
national outlook, directly as well as indirectly, through the evolu- 
tion of new sects which sought to bridge the gap between Hinduism 
and the Islamic social and religious structure. But, in the main, 
the dominating influence has been that of the six systems of Indian 
philosophy, or darshanas, as they are called. Some of these systems 
were themselves greatly affected by Buddhist thought. All of 
them are considered orthodox and yet they vary in their approach 
and their conclusions, though they have many common ideas. 
There is polytheism, and theism with a personal God, and pure 
monism, and a system which ignores God altogether and bases itself 
on a theory of evolution. There is both idealism and realism. 
The various facets of the complex and inclusive Indian mind are 
shown in their unity and diversity. Max Miiller drew attention 
to both these factors: ' . . . the more have I become impressed 
with the truth... that there is behind the variety of the six systems 
a common fund of what may be called national and popular 
philosophy., .from which each thinker was allowed to draw for 
his own purposes.' 

There is a common presumption in all of them: that the uni- 
verse is orderly and functions according to law, that there is a 
mighty rhythm about it. Some such presumption becomes necessary, 
for otherwise there could hardly be any system to explain it. 
Though the law of causality, of cause and effect, functions, yet 
there is a measure of freedom to the individual to shape his own 
destiny. There is belief in rebirth and an emphasis on unselfish 
love and disinterested activity. Logic and reason are relied upon 
and used effectively for argument, but it is recognised that often 
intuition is greater than either. The general argument proceeds 
on a rational basis, in so far as reason can be applied to matters 
often outside its scope. Professor Keith has pointed out that 'The 
systems are indeed orthodox and admit the authority of the sacred 
scriptures, but they attack the problems of existence with human 
means, and scripture serves for all practical purposes but to lend 
sanctity to results which are achieved not only without its aid, but 
often in very dubious harmony with its tenets.' 

The Six Systems of Philosophy 

The early beginnings of the Indian systems of philosophy take 
us back to the pre-Buddhist era. They develop gradually, the 
Brahminical systems side by side with the Buddhist, often criti- 
cizing each other, often borrowing from one another. Before the 
beginning of the Christian era, six Brahminical systems had taken 
shape and crystallized themselves, out of the welter of many such 
systems. Each one of them represents an independent approach, 
a separate argument, and yet they were not isolated from each 

183 



other but rather parts of a larger plan. 

The six systems are known as: (1) Nyaya, (2) Vaishesika, (3) 
Samkhya, (4) Toga, (5) MimUmsa, and (6) Vedanta. 

The Nyaya method is analytic and logical. In fact Nyaya means 
logic or the science of right reasoning. It is similar in many ways 
to Aristotle's syllogisms, though there are also fundamental dif- 
ferences between the two. The principles underlying Nyaya 
logic were accepted by all the other systems, and, as a kind of 
mental discipline, Nyaya has been taught throughout the ancient 
and medieval periods and up to to-day in India's schools and 
universities. Modern education in India has discarded it, but 
wherever Sanskrit is taught in the old way, Nyaya is still an essen- 
tial part of the curriculum. It was not only considered an indispens- 
able preparation for the study of philosophy, but a necessary mental 
training for every educated person. It has had at least as important 
a place in the old scheme of Indian education as Aristotle's logic 
has had in European education. 

The method was, of course, very different from the modern 
scientific method of objective investigation. Nevertheless, it was 
critical and scientific in its own way, and, instead of relying on 
faith, tried to examine the objects of knowledge critically and to 
proceed step by step by methods of logical proof. There was some 
faith behind it, certain presumptions which were not capable of 
logical treatment. Having accepted some hypotheses the system 
was built up on those foundations. It was presumed that there is 
a rhythm and unity in life and nature. There was belief in a 
personal God, in individual souls, and an atomic universe. The 
individual was neither the soul alone nor the body, but the product 
of their union. Reality was supposed to be a complex of souls 
and nature. 

The Vaishesika system resembles the Nyaya in many ways. It 
emphasizes the separateness of individual selves and objects, and 
develops the atomic theory of the universe. The principle of 
dharma, the moral law, is said to govern the universe, and round 
this the whole system revolves. The hypothesis of a God is not 
clearly admitted. Between the Nyaya and Vaisheshika systems 
and early Buddhist philosophy there are many points of contact. 
On the whole they adopt a realistic approach. 

The Samkhya system, which Kapila (c. seventh century B.C.) is 
said to have shaped out of many early and pre-Buddhist currents 
of thought, is remarkable. According to Richard Garbe: 'In 
Kapila's doctrine, for the first time in the history of the world, the 
complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full 
confidence in its own powers, were exhibited.' 

The Samkhya became a well-co-ordinated system after the rise 
of Buddhism. The theory is a purely philosophical and meta- 
physical conception arising out of the mind of man and having 

184 



little to do with objective observation. Indeed, such observation 
was not possible in matters beyond its reach. Like Buddhism, 
Samkhya proceeded along rationalistic lines of inquiry and met 
the challenge of Buddhism on the latter's own ground of reasoned 
argument without support of authority. Because of this rationalistic 
approach, God had to be ruled out. In SSmkhya thus there is 
neither a personal God nor an impersonal one, neither mono- 
theism nor monism. Its approach was atheistic and it undermined 
the foundations of a supernatural religion. There is no creation 
of the universe by a god, but rather a constant evolution, the 
product of interaction between spirit, or rather spirits, and matter, 
though that matter itself is of the nature of energy. This evolution 
is a continuous process. 

The Samkhya is called dvaita, or a dualistic philosophy, because 
it builds its structure on two primary causes: prakriti, or an ever- 
active and changing nature or energy, and purusha, the spirit which 
does not change. There is an infinite number ofpurushas or souls, 
or something in the nature of consciousness. Under the influence 
of purusha, which itself is inactive, prakriti evolves and leads to 
the world of continuous becoming. Causality is accepted, but it 
is said that the effect really exists hidden in the cause. Cause and 
effect become the undeveloped and developed states of one and 
the same thing. From our practical point of view, however, cause 
and effect are different and distinct, but basically there is an iden- 
tity between them. And so the argument goes on, showing how 
from the unmanifested prakriti or energy, through the influence 
of purusha or consciousness, and the principle of causality, nature 
with its immense complexity and variety of elements has developed 
and is ever changing and developing. Between the lowest and the 
highest in the universe there is a continuity and a unity. The 
whole conception is metaphysical, and the argument, based on 
certain hypotheses, is long, intricate, and reasoned. 

The Toga system of Patanjali is essentially a method for the 
discipline of the body and the mind leading up to psychic and 
spiritual training. Patanjali not only crystallized this old system 
but also wrote a famous commentary on Panini's Sanskrit gram- 
mar. This commentary, called the 'Mahabhashya' is as much of 
a classic as Panini's work. Professor Stcherbatsky, of Leningrad, 
has written that 'the ideal scientific wrok for India is the grammar 
of Panini with the Mahabhashya of Patanjali.'* 

Yoga is a word well known now in Europe and America, though 
little understood, and it is associated with quaint practices, more 
especially with sitting Buddha-like and gazing on one's navel or 

* It is not established that Patanjali, the grammarian, was the same person as Patanjali, the 
author of the 'Toga Sutras.' The grammarian's date is definitely known — second century 
B.C. Some people are of opinion that the author of the 'Toga Sutras' was a different person 
and lived two or three hundred years later. 

185 



the tip of one's nose.* Some people learning odd tricks of the 
body presume to become authorities on the subject in the West, 
and impress and exploit the credulous and the seekers after the 
sensational. The system is much more than these devices and is 
based on the psychological conception that by proper training of 
the mind certain higher levels of consciousness can be 
reached. It is meant to be a method for finding out things for 
oneself rather than a preconceived metaphysical theory of reality 
or of the universe. It is thus experimental and the most suitable 
conditions for carrying out the experiment are pointed out. As 
such a method it can be adopted and used by any system of philo- 
sophy, whatever its theoretical approach may be. Thus the adherents 
of the atheistic Samkhya philosophy may use this method. Bud- 
dhism developed its own forms of Yoga training, partly similar, 
pardy different. The theoretical parts of Patanjali's Yoga system 
are therefore of relatively small importance; it is the method that 
counts. Belief in God is no integral part of the system, but it is 
suggested that such belief in a personal God, and devotion to him, 
helps in concentrating the mind and thus serves a practical purpose. 
The later stages of Yoga are supposed to lead to some kind of 
intuitive insight or to a condition of ecstasy, such as the mystics 
speak of. Whether this is some kind of higher mental state, open- 
ing the door to further knowledge, or is merely a kind of self- 
hypnosis, I do not know. Even if the former is possible, the latter 
fcertainly also happens, and it is well-known that unregulated 
Yoga has sometimes led to unfortunate consequences so far as the 
mind of the person is concerned. 

But before these final stages of meditation and contemplation 
are reached, there is the discipline of the body and mind to be 
practised. The body should be fit and healthy, supple and graceful, 
hard and strong. A number of bodily exercises are prescribed, as 
also ways of breathing, in order to have some control over it and 
normally to take deep and long breaths. 'Exercises' is the wrong 
word, for they involve no strenuous movement. They are rather 
postures — asanas as they are called — and, properly done, they 
relax and tone up the body and do not tire it at all. This old and 
typical Indian method of preserving bodily fitness is rather re- 
markable when one compares it with the more usual methods 
involving rushing about, jerks, hops, and jumps which leave one 
panting, out of breath, and tired out. These other methods have 
also been common enough in India, as have wrestling, swimming, 
riding, fencing, archery, Indian clubs, something in the nature 
ofju-jitsu, and many other pastimes and games. But the old asana 
method is perhaps more typical of India and seems to fit in with 
the spirit of her philosophy. There is a poise in it and an unruffled 

* The word 'Toga' means union. Possibly it is derived from the same root as the English 
word 'yoke'— joining. 

186 



calm even while it exercises the body. Strength and fitness are 
gained without any waste of energy or disturbance of the mind. 
And because of this the asanas are suited to any age and some of 
them can be performed even by the old. 

There are a large number of these asanas. For many years now 
I have practised a few simple selected ones, whenever I have had 
the chance, and I have no doubt that I have profited greatly by 
them, living as I often did in environments unfavourable to the 
mind and body. These and some breathing exercises are the extent 
of my practice of the physical exercises of the Yoga system. I have 
not gone beyond the elementary stages of the body, and my 
mind continues to be an unruly member, misbehaving far too 
often. 

The discipline of the body, which includes eating and drinking 
the right things and avoiding the wrong ones, is to be accompanied 
by what the Yoga system describes as ethical preparation. This 
includes non-violence, truthfulness, continence, etc. Non-violence 
or ahimsa is something much more than abstention from physical 
violence. It is an avoidance of malice and hatred. 

All this is supposed to lead to a control of the senses; then comes 
contemplation and meditation, and finally intense concentration, 
which should lead to various kinds of intuition. 

Vivekananda, one of the greatest of the modern exponents of 
Yoga and the Vedanta, has laid repeated stress on the experi- 
mental character of Yoga and on basing it on reason. 'No one 
of these Yogas gives up reason, no one asks you to be hood- winked 
or to deliver your reason into the hands of priests of any type 

whatsoever Each one of them tells you to cling to your reason, 

to hold fast to it.' Though the spirit of Yoga and the Vedanta 
may be akin to the spirit of science, it is true that they deal with 
different media, and hence vital differences creep in. According 
to the Yoga, the spirit is not limited to the intelligence, and also 
'thought is action, and only action can make thought of any value.' 
Inspiration and intuition are recognized but may they not lead 
to deception? Vivekananda answers that inspiration must not 
contradict reason: 'What we call inspiration is the development 
of reason. The way to intuition is through reason... .No genuine 
inspiration ever contradicts reason. Where it does it is no inspira- 
tion.' Also 'inspiration must be for the good of one and all; and 
not for name or fame or personal gain. It should always be for the 
good of the world, and perfectly unselfish.' 

Again, 'Experience is the only source of knowledge.' The same 
methods of investigation which we apply to the sciences and to 
exterior knowledge should be applied to religion. 'If a religion 
is destroyed by such investigation it was nothing but a useless 
and unworthy superstition; the sooner it disappeared the better.' 
'Why religions should claim that they are not bound to abide 

187 



by the standpoint of reason no one knows... .For it is better that 
mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly 
believe in two hundred million gods on the authority of anybody. . .. 
Perhaps there are prophets, who have passed the limits of sense 
and obtained a glimpse of the beyond. We shall believe it only 
when we can do the same ourselves; not before.' It is said that 
reason is not strong enough, that often it makes mistakes. If reason 
is weak why should a body of priests be considered any better 
guides? 'I will abide by my reason,' continues Vivekananda, 
'because with all its weakness there is some chance of my getting 
at truth through it... .We should therefore follow reason, and 
also sympathise with those who do not come to any sort of belief, 
following reason.' 'In the study of this Raja Yoga no faith or belief 
is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself.'* 
Vivekananda's unceasing stress on reason and his refusal to 
take anything on trust derived from his passionate belief in the 
freedom of the mind and also because he had seen the evils of 
authority in his own country: 'for I was born in a country where 
they have gone to the extreme of authority.' He interpreted — 
and he had the right to interpret — the old Yoga systems and the 
Ved5nta accordingly. But, however much experiment and reason 
may be at the back of them, they deal with regions which are 
beyond the reach or even the understanding of the average man — 
a realm of psychical and psychological experiences entirely dif- 
ferent from the world we know and are used to. Those experi- 
ments and experiences have certainly not been confined to India, 
and there is abundant evidence of them in the records of Christian 
mystics, Persian Sufis, and others. It is extraordinary how these 
experiences resemble each other, demonstrating, as Romain 
Rolland says, 'the universality and perennial occurrence of the 
great facts of religious experience, their close resemblance under 
the diverse costumes of race and time, attesting to the persistent 
unity of the human spirit — or rather, for it goes deeper than the 
spirit, which is itself obliged to delve for it — to the identity of the 
materials constituting humanity.' 

Yoga, then, is an experimental system of probing into the 
psychical background of the individual and thus developing cer- 
tain perceptions and control of the mind. How far this can be 
utilised to advantage by modern psychology, I do not know; 
but some attempt to do so seems worth while. Aurobindo Ghose 
has defined Yoga as follows: 'All Raj a- Yoga depends on this 
perception and experience — that our inner elements, combina- 
tions, functions, forces, can be separated or dissolved, can be 
newly combined and set to novel and formerly impossible uses, 

* Most of the extracts from Vivekananda's writings have been taken from Romain Rolland's 
'Life of Vivekananda. ' 

188 



or can be transformed and resolved into a new general synthesis 
by fixed internal processes.' 

The next system of philosophy is known as the Mimamsa. This 
is ritualistic and tends towards polytheism. Modern popular 
Hinduism as well as Hindu Law have been largely influenced by 
this system and its rules which lay down the dharma or the scheme 
of right living as conceived by it. It might be noted that the poly- 
theism of the Hindus is of a curious variety, for the devas, the shin- 
ing ones or gods, for all their special powers are supposed to be of 
a lower order of creation than man. Both the Hindus and Buddhists 
believe that human birth is the highest stage that the Being has 
reached on the road to self-realization. Even the devas can only 
achieve this freedom and realization through human birth. This 
conception is evidently far removed from normal polytheism. 
Buddhists say that only man can attain the supreme consummation 
of Buddhahood. 

Sixthly and lastly in this series comes the Vedanta system, which, 
arising out of the Upanishads, developed and took many shapes 
and forms, but was always based on a monistic philosophy of the 
universe. The purusha and prakriti of the Samkhya are not consi- 
dered as independent substances but as modifications of a single 
reality — the absolute. On the foundation of the early Vedanta, 
Shankara (or Shankaracharya) built a system which is called the 
Advaita Vedanta or non-dualist Vedanta. It is this philosophy which 
represents the dominant philosophic outlook of Hinduism to-day. 

It is based on pure monism, the only ultimate reality in the 
metaphysical sense being the Atman, the Absolute Soul. That is 
the subject, all else is objective. How that Absolute Soul pervades 
everything, how the one appears as the many, and yet retains its 
wholeness, for the Absolute is indivisible and cannot be divided, 
all this cannot be accounted for by the processes of logical reason- 
ing, for our minds are limited by the finite world. The Upanishad 
had described this Atman, if this can be called a description thus: 
'Whole is that, whole (too) is this; from whole, whole cometh; 
take whole from whole, (yet) whole remains.' 

Shankara builds a subtle and intricate theory of knowledge and 
proceeding from certain assumptions, step by step, by logical argu- 
ment, leads up to the complete system of advaitism or non- 
dualism. The individual soul is not a separate entity but that 
Absolute Soul itself though limited in some ways. It is compared 
to the space enclosed in a jar, the Atman being universal space. 
For practical purposes they may be treated as distinct from one 
another but this distinction is apparent only, not real. Freedom 
consists in realizing this unity, this oneness of the individual with 
the Absolute Soul. 

The phenomenal world we see about us thus becomes a mere 
reflection of that reality, or a shadow cast by it on the empirical 

189 



plane. It has been called Mayi, which has been mistranslated as 
'illusion.' But it is not non-existence. It is an intermediate form 
between Being and non-Being. It is a kind of relative existence, 
and so perhaps the conception of relativity brings us nearer to 
the meaning of May&. What is good and evil then in this world? 
Are they also mere reflections and shadows with no substance? 
Whatever they may be in the ultimate analysis in this empirical 
world of ours there is a validity and importance in these ethical 
distinctions. They are relevant where individuals function as such. 

These finite individuals cannot imagine the infinite without 
limiting it; they can only form limited and objective conceptions 
of it. Yet even these finite forms and concepts rest ultimately in 
the infinite and Absolute. Hence the form of religion becomes a 
relative affair and each individual has liberty to form such con- 
ceptions as he is capable of. 

Shankara accepted the Brahminical organization of social life 
on the caste basis, as representing the collective experience and 
wisdom of the race. But he held that any person belonging to any 
caste could attain the highest knowledge. 

There is about Shankara's attitude and philosophy a sense of 
world negation and withdrawal from the normal activities of the 
world in search for that freedom of the self which was to him the 
final goal for every person. There is also a continual insistence 
on self-sacrifice and detachment. 

And yet Shankara was a man ofamazing energy and vast activity. 
He was no escapist retiring into his shell or into a corner of the 
forest, seeking his own individual perfection and oblivious of 
what happened to others. Born in Malabar in the far south of India, 
he travelled incessantly all over India, meeting innumerable people, 
arguing, debating, reasoning, convincing, and filling them with 
a part of his own passion and tremendous vitality. He was evi- 
dently a man who was intensely conscious of his mission, a man 
who looked upon the whole of India from Cape Comorin to the 
Himalayas as his field of action and as something that held to- 
gether culturally and was infused by the same spirit, though this 
might take many external forms. He strove hard to synthesize 
the diverse currents that were troubling the mind of India of his 
day and to build a unity of outlook out of that diversity. In a 
brief life of thirty-two years he did the work of many long lives and 
left such an impress of his powerful mind and rich personality 
on India that it is very evident to-day. He was a curious mixture 
of a philosopher and a scholar, an agnostic and a mystic, a poet 
and a saint, and in addition to all this, a practical reformer and an 
able organizer. He built up, for the first time within the Brahminical 
fold, ten religious orders and of these four are very much alive 
to-day. He established four great maths or monasteries, locating 
them far from each other, almost at the fojir corners of India. 

190 



One of these was in the south at Sringeri in Mysore, another at 
Puri on the east coast, the third at Dvaraka in Kathiawad on the 
west coast, and the fourth at Badrinath in the heart of the Hima- 
layas. At the age of thirty-two this Brahmin from the tropical 
south died at Kedarnath in the upper snow-covered reaches of 
the Himalayas. 

There is a significance about these long journeys of Shankara 
throughout this vast land at a time when travel was difficult and 
the means of transport very slow and primitive. The very concep- 
tion of these journeys, and his meeting kindred souls everywhere 
and speaking to them in Sanskrit, the common language of the 
learned throughout India, brings out the essential unity of India 
even in those far-off days. Such journeys could not have been 
uncommon then or earlier, people went to and fro in spite of 
political divisions, new books travelled, and every new thought or 
fresh theory spread rapidly over the entire country and became 
the subject of interested talk and often of heated debate. There 
was not only a common intellectual and cultural life among the 
educated people, but vast numbers of common folk were conti- 
nually travelling to the numerous places of pilgrimage, spread 
out all over the land and famous from epic times. 

All this going to and fro and meeting people from different 
parts of the country must have intensified the conception of a 
common land and a common culture. This travelling was not 
confined to the upper castes; among the pilgrims were men and 
women of all castes and classes. Whatever the religious signi- 
ficance of these pilgrimages in the minds of the people might have 
been, they were looked upon also, as they are to-day, as holiday- 
time and opportunities for merry-making and seeing different 
parts of the country. Every place of pilgrimage contained a cross- 
section of the people of India in all their great variety of custom, 
dress, and language, and yet very conscious of their common 
features and the bonds that held them together and brought all 
of them to meet in one place. Even the difference of language 
between the north and the south did not prove a formidable barrier 
to this intercourse. 

All this was so then and Shankara was doubtless fully aware 
of it. It would seem that Shankara wanted to add to this sense 
of national unity and common consciousness. He functioned on 
the intellectual, philosophical and religious plane and tried to 
bring about a greater unity of thought all over the country. He 
functioned also on the popular plane in many ways, destroying 
many a dogma and opening the door of his philosophic sanctuary 
to every one who was capable of entering it. By locating his four 
great monasteries in the north, south, east, and west, he evidently 
wanted to encourage the conception of a culturally united India. 
These four places had been previously places of pilgrimage from 

191 



all parts of the country, and now became more so. 

How well the ancient Indians chose their sacred places of 
pilgrimage! Almost always they are lovely spots with beautiful 
natural surroundings. There is the icy cave of Amaranath in 
Kashmir, and there is the temple of the Virgin Goddess right at 
the southern tip of India at Rameshwaram, near Cape Comorin. 
There is Benares, of course, and Hardwar, nestling at the foot of 
the Himalayas, where the Ganges flows out of its tortuous moun- 
tain valleys into the plains below, and Prayaga (or Allahabad) 
where the Ganges meets the Jumna, and Mathura and Brindaban 
by the Jumna, round which the Krishna legends cluster, and Budh 
Gaya where Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, and 
so many places in the south. Many of the old temples, especially 
in the south, contain famous sculptures and other artistic remains. 
A visit to many of the places of pilgrimage thus gives an insight 
into old Indian art. 

Shankara is said to have helped in putting an end to Buddhism 
in India as a widespread religion, and that thereafter Brahminism 
absorbed it in a fraternal embrace. But Buddhism had shrunk in 
India even before Shankara's time. Some of Shankara's Brahmin 
opponents called him a disguised Buddhist. It is true that Bud- 
dhism influenced him considerably. 

India and China 

It was through Buddhism that China and India came near to each 
other and developed many contacts. Whether there were any 
such contacts before Ashoka's reign we do not know; probably 
there was some sea-borne trade, for silk used to come from China. 
Yet there must have been overland contacts and migrations of 
peoples in far earlier periods, for Mongoloid features are common 
in the eastern border areas of India. In Nepal these are very marked. 
In Assam (Kamarupa of old) and Bengal they are often evident. 
Historically speaking, however, Ashoka's missionaries blazed the 
trail and, as Buddhism spread in China, there began that long 
succession of pilgrims and scholars who journeyed between India 
and China for 1,000 years. They travelled overland across the 
Gobi Desert and the plains and mountains of Central Asia and 
over the Himalayas — a long, hard journey full of peril. Many 
Indians and Chinese perished on the way, and one account says 
that as many as 90 per cent of these pilgrims perished. Many 
having managed to reach the end of their journey did not return 
and settled in the land of their adoption. There was another route 
also, not much safer, though probably shorter: this was by sea 
via Indo-China, Java, and Sumatra, Malaya and the Nicobar 
Islands. This was also frequently used, and sometimes a pilgrim 
travelled overland and returned by sea. Buddhism and Indian 



192 



culture had spread all over Central Asia and in parts of Indo- 
nesia, and there were large numbers of monasteries and study 
centres dotted all over these vast areas. Travellers from India 
or China thus found a welcome and shelter along these routes 
by land and sea. Sometimes scholars from China would break 
journey for a few months at some Indian colony in Indonesia in 
order to learn Sanskrit before they came to India. 

The first record of an Indian scholar's visit to China is that of 
Kashyapa Matanga who reached China in 67 A.D. in the reign 
of the Emperor Ming Ti and probably at his invitation. He settled 
down at Lo Yang by the Lo river. Dharmaraksha accompanied 
him and, in later years, among the noted scholars who went 
were Buddhabhadra, Jinabhadra, Kumarajiva, Paramartha, 
Jinagupta, and Bodhidharma. Each one of these took a group of 
monks or disciples with him. It is said that at one time (sixth 
century A.C.) there were more than 3,000 Indian Buddhist monks 
and 10,000 Indian families in the Lo Yang province alone. 

These Indian scholars who went to China not only carried 
many Sanskrit manuscripts with them, which they translated 
into Chinese, but some of them also wrote original books in the 
Chinese language. They made quite a considerable contribution 
to Chinese literature, including poetry. Kumarajiva who went 
to China in 401 A.C., was a prolific writer and as many as forty- 
seven different books written by him have come down to us. His 
Chinese style is supposed to be very good. He translated the life 
of the great Indian scholar Nagarjuna into Chinese. Jinagupta 
went to China in the second half of the sixty century A.C. He 
translated thirty-seven original Sanskrit works into Chinese. 
His great knowledge was so much admired that an emperor of the 
T'ang dynasty became his disciple. 

There was two-way traffic between India and China and 
many Chinese scholars came here. Among the best known who 
have left records of their journeys are Fa Hien (or Fa Hsien), 
Sung Yun, Hsuan-Tsang (or Chwen Chuang), and I-Tsing (or 
Yi-Tsing). Fa Hien came to India in the fifth century; he was 
a disciple of Kumarajiva in China. There is an interesting account 
of what Kumarajiva told him on the eve of his departure for India, 
when he went to take leave of his teacher. Kumarajiva charged 
him not to spend all his time in gathering religious knowledge 
only but to study in some detail the life and habits of the people 
of India, so that China might understand them and their country 
as a whole. Fa Hien studied at Pataliputra university. 

The most famous of the Chinese travellers to India was Hsuan- 
Tsang who came in the seventh century when the great T'ang 
dynasty flourished in China and Harshavardhana ruled over 
an empire in North India. Hsuan-Tsang came overland across 
the Gobi Desert and passing Turfan and Kucha, Taskhand and 

193 



Samarkand, Balkh, Khotan and Yarkand, crossed the Himalayas 
into India. He tells us of his many adventures, of the perils he 
overcame, of the Buddhist rulers and monasteries in Central Asia, 
and of the Turks there who were ardent Buddhists. In India he 
travelled all over the country, greatly honoured and respected 
everywhere, making accurate observations of places and peoples, 
and noting down some delightful and some fantastic stories that he 
heard. Many years he spent at the great Nalanda University, 
not far from Pataliputra, which was famous for its many-sided 
learning and attracted students from far corners of the country. 
It is said that as many as 10,000 students and monks were in 
residence there. Hsuan-Tsang took the degree of Master of the 
Law there and finally became vice-principal of the university. 

Hsuan-Tsang's book the Si-Yu-Ki or the Record of the 
Western Kingdom (meaning India), makes fascinating reading. 
Coming from a highly civilized and sophisticated country, at a 
time when China's capital Si-an-fu was a centre of art and 
learning, his comments on and descriptions of conditions in 
India are valuable. He tells us of the system of education which 
began early and proceeded by stages to the university where the 
five branches of knowledge taught were: (1) Grammar, (2) 
Science of Arts and Crafts, (3) Medicine, (4) Logic, and (5) 
Philosophy. He was particularly struck by the love of learning 
of the Indian people. Some kind of primary education was 
fairly widespread as all the monks and priests were teachers, 
Of the people he says: '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 are not 
deceitful or treacherous in their conduct, and are faithful in 
their oaths and promises. In their rules of government there is 
remarkable rectitude, whilst in their behaviour there is much 
gentleness and sweetness. With respect to criminals or rebels, 
these are few in number, and only occasionally troublesome.' 
He says further: As the administration of the government is 

founded on benign principles, the executive is simple People 

are not subject to forced labour... .In this way taxes on people 

are light The merchants who engage in commerce come 

and go in carrying out their transactions.' 

Hsuan-Tsang returned the way he came, via Central Asia, 
carrying a large number of manuscripts with him. From his 
account one gathers a vivid impression of the wide sway of 
Buddhism in Khorasan, Iraq, Mosul, and right up to the frontiers 
of Syria. And yet this was a time when Buddhism was in decay 
there and Islam, already beginning in Arabia, was soon to spread 
out over all these lands. About the Iranian people, Hsuan-Tsang 
makes an interesting observation: they 'care not for learning, 

194 



but give themselves entirely to works of art. All they make the 
neighbouring countries value very much.' 

Iran then, as before and after, concentrated on adding to the 
beauty and grace of life, and its influence spread far in Asia. 
Of the strange little kingdom of Turfan, on the edge of the 
Gobi Desert, Hsuan-Tsang tells us, and we have learned more 
about it in recent years from the work of archaeologists. Here 
many cultures came and mixed and coalesced, producing a rich 
combination which drew its inspiration from China and India 
and Persia and even Hellenic sources. The language was Indo- 
European, derived from India and Iran, and resembling in some 
ways the Celtic languages of Europe; the religion came from 
India; the ways of life were Chinese; many of the artistic wares 
they had were from Iran. The statues and frescoes of the Buddhas 
and gods and goddesses, beautifully made, have often Indian 
draperies and Grecian headdresses. These goddesses, says Monsieur 
Grousset, represent 'the happiest combination of Hindu supple- 
ness, Hellenic eloquence, and Chinese charm.' 

Hsuan-Tsang went back to his homeland, welcomed by his 
Emperor and his people, and settled down to write his book 
and translate the many manuscripts he had brought. When he 
had started on his journey, many years earlier, there is a story 
that the Emperor T'ang mixed a handful of dust in a drink and 
offered this to him, saying: 'You would do well to drink this cup, 
for are we not told that a handful of one's country's soil is worth 
more than ten thousand pounds of foreign gold?' 

Hsuan-Tsang's visit to India and the great respect in which 
he was held both in China and India led to the establishment 
of political contacts between the rulers of the two countries. 
Harshavardhana of Kanauj and the T'ang Emperor exchanged 
embassies. Hsuan-Tsang himself remained in touch with India, 
exchanging letters with friends there and receiving manuscripts. 
Two interesting letters, originally written in Sanskrit, have been 
preserved in China. One of these was written in 654 A.C. by an 
Indian Buddhist scholar, Sthavira Prajnadeva, to Hsuan-Tsang. 
After greeting and news about common friends and their literary 
work, he proceeds to say: 'We are sending you a pair of white 
cloths to show that we are not forgetful. The road is long, so do 
not mind the smallness of the present. We wish you may accept 
it. As regards the Sutras and Shastras which you may require 
please send us a list. We will copy them and send them to you.' 
Hsuan-Tsang in his reply says: 'I learnt from an ambassador 
who recently came back from India that the great teacher Shila- 
bhadra was no mor e. Th is news overwhelmed me with grief 

that knew no bounds Among the Sutras and Shastras that 

I, Hsuan-Tsang, had brought with me I have already translated 
the Yogacharyabhumi-Shastra and other works, in all thirty 

195 



volumes. I should humbly let you know that while crossing the 
Indus I had lost a load of sacred texts. I now send you a list of the 
texts annexed to this letter. I request you to send them to me if 
you get the chance. I am sending some small articles as presents. 
Please accept them.'* 

Hsuan-Tsang has told us much of Nalanda university, and 
there are other accounts of it also. Yet when I went, some years 
ago, and saw the excavated ruins of Nalanda I was amazed at 
their extent and the huge scale on which it was planned. Only 
a part of it has so far been uncovered, and over the rest there 
are inhabited localities, but even this part consisted of huge 
courts surrounded by stately buildings in stone. 

Soon after Hsuan-Tsang's death in China, yet another famous 
Chinese pilgrim made the journey to India — I-tsing (or Yi-tsing). 
He started in 671 A.C., and it took him nearly two years to reach 
the Indian port of Tamralipti, at the mouth of the Hooghly. 
For he came by sea and stopped for many months at Shribhoga 
(modern Palembang in Sumatra) to study Sanskrit. This journey 
of his by sea has a certain significance, for it is probable that 
there were disturbed conditions in Central Asia then and political 
changes were taking place. Many of the friendly Buddhist mona- 
steries that dotted the land route may have ceased to exist.. It is 
also likely that the sea route was more convenient with the growth 
of Indian colonies in Indonesia, and constant trade and other 
contacts between India and these countries. It appears from his 
and other accounts that there was at that time regular navigation 
between Persia (Iran), India, Malaya, Sumatra, and China. 
I-tsing sailed in a Persian ship from Kwangtung, and went first 
to Sumatra. 

I-tsing also studied at Nalanda university for a long time and 
carried back with him several hundred Sanskrit texts. He was 
chiefly interested in the fine points of Buddhist ritual and cere- 
monial and has written in detail about them. But he tells us 
much also about customs, clothes, and food. Wheat was the 
staple diet in North India, as now, and rice in the south and the 
east. Meat was sometimes eaten, but this was rare. (I-tsing pro- 
bably tells us more about the Buddhist monks than about others). 
Ghee (clarified butter), oil, milk, and cream were found every- 
where, and cakes and fruits were abundant. I-tsing noted the 
importance that Indians have always attached to a certain cere- 
monial purity. 'Now the first and chief difference between India 
of the five regions and other nations is the peculiar distinction 
between purity and impurity.' Also: 'To preserve what has been 
left from the meal, as is done in China, is not at all in accordance 
with Indian rules.' 

I-tsing refers to India generally as the West (Si-fang), but he 

*Quoted in 'India and China' by Dr. P. C. Bagchi (Calcutta, 1944). 
196 



tells us that it was known as Aryadesha - ' the Aryadesha'; 'arya' 
means noble, 'desha' region — the noble region, a name for the 
west. It is so called because men of noble character appear there 
successively, and people all praise the land by that name. It is 
also called Madhyadesha, i.e., the middle land, for it is the centre 
of a hundred myriads of countries. The people are all familiar with 
this name. The northern tribes (Hu or Mongols or Turks) alone 
call the Noble Land 'Hindu' (Hsin-tu), but this is not at all a 
common name; it is only a vernacular name, and has no special 
significance. The people of India do not know this designation, 
and the most suitable name for India is the 'Noble Land.' 

I-tsing's reference to 'Hindu' is interesting. He goes on to say: 
'Some say that Indu means the moon, and the Chinese name for 
India, i.e., Indu (Yin-tu), is derived from it. Although it might 
mean this, it is nevertheless not the common name. As for the 
Indian name for the Great Chou (China), i.e., Cheena, it is 
a name and has no special meaning.' He also mentions the Sanskrit 
names for Korea and other countries. 

For all his admiration for India and many things Indian, 
I-tsing made it clear that he gave first place to his native land, 
China. India might be the 'noble region,' but China was the 
'divine land.' 'The people of the five parts of India are proud 
of their own purity and excellence. But high refinement, lite- 
rary elegance, propriety, moderation, ceremonies of welcoming 
and parting, the delicious taste of food, and the richness of benevo- 
lence and righteousness are found in China only, and no other 
country can excel her.' 'In the healing arts of acupuncture and 
cautery and the skill of feeling the pulse, China has never been 
superseded by any part of India; the medicament for prolonging 
life is only found in China. .. .From the character of men and 
the quality of things China is called the "divine land". Is there 
anyone in the five parts of India who does not admire China?' 

The word used in the old Sanskrit for the Chinese Emperor 
is deva-putra, which is an exact translation of 'Son of Heaven'. 

I-tsing, himself a fine scholar in Sanskrit, praises the language 
and says it is respected in far countries in the north and south. 
... 'How much more then should people of the divine land 
(China), as well as the celestial store house (India), teach the real 
rules of the language!'* 

Sanskrit scholarship must have been fairly widespread in China. 
It is interesting to find that some Chinese scholars tried to introduce 
Sanskrit phonetics into the Chinese language. A well-known 
example of this is that of the monk Shon Wen, who lived at the 
time of the T'ang dynasty. He tried to develop an alphabetical 
system along these lines in Chinese. 

* These extracts have been taken from J. Takakusu's translation of I-Tsing's: A record 
of the Buddhist Religions as practised in India and Malay Archipelago ' (Oxford, 1896). 

197 



With the decay of Buddhism in India this Indo-Chinese com- 
merce of scholars practically ceased, though pilgrims from China 
occasionally came to visit the holy places of Buddhism in India. 
During the political revolutions from the eleventh century A.C. 
onwards, crowds of Buddhist monks, carrying bundles of manus- 
cripts, went to Nepal or crossed the Himalayas, into Tibet. A 
considerable part of old Indian literature thus and previously, 
found its way to China and Tibet and in recent years it has been 
discovered afresh there in the original or more frequently, in 
translations. Many Indian classics have been preserved in Chinese 
and Tibetan translations relating not only to Buddhism but also 
to Brahminism, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, etc. There 
are supposed to be 8,000 such works in the Sung-pao collection 
in China. Tibet is full of them. There used to be frequent co- 
operation between Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan scholars. A 
notable instance of this co-operation, still extant, is a Sanskrit- 
Tibetan-Chinese dictionary of Buddhist technical terms. This 
dates from the ninth or tenth century AC. and is named the 
' M ahavyutpatti.' 

Among the most ancient printed books discovered in China, 
dating from the eighth century A.C., are books in Sanskrit. These 
were printed from wooden blocks. In the tenth century the 
Imperial Printing Commission was organized in China and as a 
result of this, and right up to the Sung era, the art of printing 
developed rapidly. It is surprising and difficult to account for 
that, in spite of the close contacts between Indian and Chinese 
scholars and their exchanges ofbooks and manuscripts for hundreds 
of years, there is no evidence whatever of the printing of books 
in India during that period. Block printing went to Tibet from 
China at some early period and, I believe, it is still practised there. 
Chinese printing was introduced into Europe during the Mongol 
or Yuan dynasty (1260-1368). First known in Germany, it spread 
to other countries during the fifteenth century. 

Even during the Indo-Afghan and Mughal periods in India 
there was occasional diplomatic intercourse between India and 
China. Mohammed bin Tughlak, Sultan of Delhi (1326-51) sent 
the famous Arab traveller, Ibn Batuta, as ambassador to the 
Chinese court. Bengal had at that time shaken off the suzerainty 
of Delhi and became an independent sultanate. In the middle 
of the fourteenth century the Chinese court sent two ambassadors, 
Hu-Shien and Fin-Shien, to the Bengal Sultan. This led to a 
succession of ambassadors being sent from Bengal to China during 
Sultan Ghias-ud Din's reign. This was the period of the Ming 
Emperors in China. One of the later embassies, sent in 1414 by 
Saif-ud Din, carried valuable presents, among them a live giraffe. 
How a giraffe managed to reach India is a mystery: probably it 
it came as a gift from Africa and was sent on to the Ming Emperor 

198 



as a rarity which would be appreciated. It was indeed greatiy 
appreciated in China where a giraffe is considered an auspicious 
symbol by the followers of Confucius. There is no doubt that the 
animal was a giraffe for, apart from a long account of it, there is 
also a Chinese picture of it on silk. The court artist, who made 
this picture, has written a long account in praise of it and of the 
good fortune that flows from it. 'The ministers and the people 
all gathered to gaze at it and their joy knows no end.' 

Trade between India and China, which had flourished during 
the Buddhist period, was continued throughout the Indo-Afghan 
and Mughal periods, and there was a continuous exchange of 
commodities. The trade went overland across the northern 
Himalayan passes and along the old caravan routes of central Asia. 
There was also a considerable sea-borne trade, via the islands 
of south-east Asia, chiefly to south Indian ports. 

During these thousand years and more of intercourse between 
India and China, each country learned something from the 
other, not only in the regions of thought and philosophy, but 
also in the arts and sciences of life. Probably China was more 
influenced by India than India by China, which is a pity, for 
India could well have received, with profit to herself, some of 
the sound commonsense of the Chinese, and with its aid checked 
her own extravagant fancies. China took much from India but 
she was always strong and self-confident enough to take it in her 
own way and fit it in somewhere in her own texture of life.* Even 
Buddhism and its intricate philosophy became tinged with the 
doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tze. The somewhat pessimistic 
oudook of Buddhist philosophy could not change or suppress the 
love of life and gaiety of the Chinese. There is an old Chinese 
proverb which says: 'If the government gets hold of you, they'll 
flog you to death; if the Buddhists get hold of you, they'll starve 
you to death!' 

A famous Chinese novel of the sixteenth century — 'Monkey' 
by Wu Ch'en-en (translated into English by Arthur Waley) — 
deals with the mythical and fantastic adventures of Hsuan-Tsang 
on his way to India. The book ends with a dedication to India: 
T dedicate this work to Buddha's pure land. May it repay the 
kindness of patron and preceptor, may it mitigate the sufferings 
of the lost and damned ' 

After being cut off from each other for many centuries, India 
and China were brought by some strange fate under the influence 
of the British East India Company. India had to endure this for 
long; in China the contact was brief, but even so it brought opium 
and war. 

And now the wheel of fate has turned full circle and again 

'Professor Hu Shih, the leader of the new Chinese renaissance movement, has written on 
the past 'Indianization of China. ' 

199 



India and China look towards each other and past memories 
crowd in their minds; again pilgrims of a new kind cross or fly 
over the mountains that separate them, bringing their messages 
of cheer and goodwill and creating fresh bonds of a friendship 
that will endure. 

Indian Colonies and Culture in South-East Asia 

To know and understand India one has to travel far in time 
and space, to forget for a while her present condition with all 
its misery and narrowness and horror, and to have glimpses of 
what she was and what she did. 'To know my country', wrote 
Rabindranath Tagore, 'one has to travel to that age, when she 
realized her soul and thus transcended her physical boundaries, 
when she revealed htr being in a radiant magnanimity which 
illumined the eastern horizon, making her recognized as their 
own by those in alien shores who were awakened into a surprise 
of life; and not now when she has withdrawn herself into a narrow 
barrier of obscurity, into a miserly pride of exclusiveness, into a 
poverty of mind that dumbly revolves around itself in an unmeaning 
repetition of a past that has lost its light and has no message for 
the pilgrims of the future.' 

One has not only to go back in time but to travel, in mind 
if not in body, to various countries of Asia, where India spread 
out in many ways, leaving immortal testimony of her spirit, her 
power, and her love of beauty. How few of us know of these 
great achievements of our past, how few realize that if India 
was great in thought and philosophy, she was equally great in 
action. The history that men and women from India made far 
from their homeland has still to be written. Most westerners still 
imagine that ancient history is largely concerned with the Medite- 
rranean countries, and medieval and modern history is dominated 
by the quarrelsome little continent of Europe. And still they make 
plans for the future as if Europe only counted and the rest could 
be fitted in anywhere. 

Sir Charles Eliot has written that 'Scant justice is done to 
India's position in the world by those European histories which 
recount the exploits of her invaders and leave the impression 
that her own people were a feeble dreamy folk, sundered from 
the rest of mankind by their seas and mountain frontiers. Such 
a picture takes no account of the intellectual conquests of the 
Hindus. Even their political conquests were not contemptible, 
and are remarkable for the distance, if not the extent, of the 
territories occupied. . . .But such military or commercial inva- 
sions are insignificant compared with the spread of Indian 
thought."* 

•Eliot: 'Hinduism and Buddhism', Vol /., p. xii. 
200 



Eliot was probably unaware, when he wrote, of many recent 
discoveries in south-east Asia, which have revolutionized the 
conception of India's and Asia's past. The knowledge of those 
discoveries would have strengthened his argument and shown 
that Indian activities abroad, even apart from the spread of 
her thought, were very far from being insignificant. I remember 
when I first read, about fifteen years ago, some kind of a detailed 
account of the history of South-East Asia, how amazed I was 
and how excited I became. New panoramas opened out before 
me, new perspectives of history, new conceptions of India's past, 
and I had to adjust all my thinking and previous notions to them. 
Champa, Cambodia and Angkor, Srivijaya and Majapahit suddenly 
rose out of the void, took living shape, vibrant with that instinctive 
feeling which makes the past touch the present. 

Of Sailendra, the mighty man of war and conquest and other 
achievements, Dr. H. G. Quaritch Wales has written: 'This great 
conqueror, whose achievements can only be compared with those 
of the greatest soldiers known to western history, and whose fame 
in his time sounded from Persia to China, in a decade or two 
built up a vast maritime empire which endured for five centuries, 
and made possible the marvellous flowering of Indian art and 
culture in Java and Cambodia. Yet in our encyclopaedias and 
histories... one will search in vain for a reference to this far-flung 

empire or to its noble founder The very fact of such an empire 

ever having existed is scarcely known, except by a handful of 
Oriental scholars.'* The military exploits of these early Indian 
colonists are important as throwing light on certain aspects of 
the Indian character and genius which have hitherto not been 
appreciated. But far more important is the rich civilization they 
built up in their colonies and settlements and which endured 
for over a thousand years. 

During the past quarter of a century a great deal of light has 
been thrown on the history of this widespread area in south-east 
Asia, which is sometimes referred to as Greater India. There are 
many gaps still, many contradictions, and scholars continue to 
put forward their rival theories, but the general outline is clear 
enough, and sometimes there is an abundance of detail. There 
is no lack of material, for there are references in Indian books, 
and accounts of Arab travellers and, mcst important of all, Chinese 
historical accounts. There are also many old inscriptions, coper- 
plates, etc., and in Java and Bali there is a rich literature based on 
Indian sources, and often paraphrasing Indian epics and myths. 
Greek and Latin sources have also supplied some information. But, 
above all, there are the magnificent ruins of ancient monuments, 
especially at Angkor and Borobudurf. 

*In 'Towards Angkor', Harrap, 19S7. 

\ Reference might be made to Dr. R. C. Majumdar's 'Ancient Indian Colonies in the Far 

201 



From the first century of the Christian era onwards wave after 
wave of Indian colonists spread east and south-east reaching 
Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Siam, Cambodia, 
and Indo-China. Some of them managed to reach Formosa, the 
Philippine Islands and Celebes. Even as far as Madagascar the 
current language is Indonesian with a mixture of Sanskrit words. 
It must have taken them several hundred years to spread out in 
this way, and possibly all of these places were not reached directly 
from India but from some intermediate settlement. There appear 
to have been four principal waves of colonization from the first 
century A.C. to about 900 A.C., and in between there must have 
been a stream of people going eastwards. But the most remarkable 
feature of these ventures was that they were evidently organized 
by the state. Widely scattered colonies were started almost 
simultaneously and almost always the settlements were situated 
on strategic points and on important trade routes. The names that 
were given to these settlements were old Indian names. Thus 
Cambodia, as it is known now, was called Kamboja, which was 
a well-known town in ancient India, in Gandhara or the Kabul 
valley. This itself indicates roughly the period of this colonization, 
for at that time Gandhara (Afghanistan) must have been an 
important part of Aryan India. 

What led to these extraordinary expeditions across perilous 
seas and what was the tremendous urge behind them? They 
could not have been thought of or organized unless they had 
been preceded for many generations or centuries by individuals 
or small groups intent on trade. In the most ancient Sanskrit 
books there are vague references to these countries of the east. 
It is not always easy to identify the names given in them but 
sometimes there is no difficulty. Java is clearly from 'Yavadvipa' 
or the Island of Millet. Even to-day Java means barley or millet 
in India. The other names given in the old books are also usually 
associated with minerals, metals, or some industrial or agricultural 
product. This nomenclature itself makes one think of trade. 

Dr. R. C. Majumdar has pointed out that 'If literature can 
be regarded as a fair reflex of the popular mind, trade and com- 
merce must have been a supreme passion in India in the centuries 
immediately preceding and following the Christian era.' All this 
indicates an expanding economy and a constant search for distant 
markets. 

This trade gradually increased in the third and second centuries 
B.C. and then these adventurous traders and merchants may have 
been followed by missionaries, for this was just the period after 
Ashoka. The old stories in Sanskrit contain many accounts of 
perilous sea voyages and of shipwrecks. Both Greek and Arab 

East' (Calcutta, 1927), and his 'Svarnadvipa' (Calcutta, 1937). Also to the publications 
of the Greater India Society (Calcutta). 

202 



accounts show that there was regular maritime intercourse between 
India and the Far East at least as early as the first century A.C. 
The Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian Islands lay on the direct 
trade route between China and India, Persia, Arabia, and the 
Mediterranean. Apart from their geographical importance these 
countries contained valuable minerals, metals, spices, and timber. 
Malaya was then, as now, famous for its tin mines. Probably the 
earliest voyages were along the east coast of India-Kalinga (Orissa), 
Bengal, Burma and then down the Malay Peninsula. Later the 
direct sea routes from east and south India were developed. It 
was along this sea route that many Chinese pilgrims came to India. 
Fa Hsien in the fifth century passed Java and complains that 
there were many heretics then, meaning people following the 
Brahminical faith and not Buddhism. 

It is clear that shipbuilding was a well-developed and flourish- 
ing industry in ancient India. We have some details and particu- 
lars of the ships built in those days. Many Indian ports are 
mentioned. South Indian (Andhra) coins of the second and third 
centuries A.C. bear the device of a two-masted ship. The Ajanta 
Frescoes depict the conquest of Ceylon and ships carrying ele- 
phants are shown. 

The huge states and empires that developed from the original 
Indian settlements were essentially naval powers interested in 
trade and, therefore, in the control of the sea-routes. They came 
into conflict with each other on the seas, and at least once one of 
them challenged the Chola State of South India. But the Cholas 
were also strong on the seas and they sent a naval expedition which 
subdued for a while the Sailendra Empire. 

There is an interesting Tamil inscription of 1088 A.C. which 
refers to a 'Corporation of the Fifteen Hundred.' This was 
apparently a union of traders who were described in it as 'brave 
men, born to wander over many countries ever since the begin- 
ning of the Krita age, penetrating the regions of the six con- 
tinents by land and water routes, and dealing in various articles 
such as horses, elephants, precious stones, perfumes, and drugs, 
either wholesale or in retail.' 

This was the background of the early colonizing ventures of 
the Indian people. Trade and adventure and the urge for ex- 
pansion drew them to these eastern lands which were compre- 
hensively described in old Sanskrit books as the Svarnabhumi, 
the Land of Gold or as Svarnadvipa, the Island of Gold. The 
very name had a lure about it. The early colonists settled down, 
more followed and thus a peaceful penetration went on. There 
was a fusion of the Indians with the races they found there, and 
also the evolution of a mixed culture. It was only then, probably, 
that the political element came from India, some Kshatriya princes, 
cadets of the noble families, in search of adventure and dominion. 



203 



It is suggested, from a similarity of names, that many of these 
people who came were from the wide-spread Malva tribe in 
India — hence the Malay race which has played such an important 
part in the whole of Indonesia. A part of central India is still 
known as Malwa. The early colonists are supposed to have gone 
from Kalinga on the east coast (Orissa) but it was the Hindu 
Pallava Kingdom of the south that made an organized effort at 
colonization. The Sailendra dynasty, which became so famous 
in south-east Asia, is believed to have come from Orissa. At that 
time Orissa was a stronghold of Buddhism but the ruling dynasty 
was Brahminical. 

All these Indian colonies were situated between two great 
countries and two great civilizations — India and China. Some 
of them, on the Asiatic mainland, actually touched the frontiers 
of the Chinese Empire, the others were on the direct trade route 
between China and India. Thus they were influenced by both 
these countries and a mixed Indo-Chinese civilization grew up 
but such was the nature of these two cultures that there was no 
conflict between the two and mixed patterns of different shapes 
and varying contents emerged. The countries of the mainland — 
Burma, Siam, Indo-China — were more influenced by China, the 
islands and the Malay Peninsula had more of the impress of 
India. As a rule the methods of government and the general 
philosophy of life came from China, religion and art from India. 
The mainland countries depended for their trade largely on 
China and there were frequent exchanges of ambassadors. But 
even in Cambodia and in the mighty remains of Angkor the 
only artistic influence that has been so far detected came from 
India. But Indian art was flexible and adaptable and in each 
country it flowered afresh and in many new ways, always retain- 
ing that basic impress which it derived from India. Sir John 
Marshall has referred to 'the amazingly vital and flexible charac- 
ter of Indian art' and he points out how both Indian and Greek 
art had the common capacity to 'adapt themselves to suit the 
needs of every country, race, and religion with which they came 
into contact.' 

Indian art derives its basic character from certain ideals asso- 
ciated with the religious and philosophic outlook of India. As 
religion went from India to all these eastern lands, so also went 
this basic conception of art. Probably the early colonies were 
definitely Brahminical and Buddhism spread later. The two 
existed side by side as friends and mixed forms of popular worship 
grew up. This Buddhism was chiefly of the Mahayana type, 
easily adaptable, and both Brahminism and Buddhism, under 
the influence of local habits and traditions, had probably moved 
away from the purity of their original doctrines. In later years 
there were mighty conflicts between a Buddhist state and a 

204 



Brahminical state but these were essentially political and eco- 
nomic wars for control of trade and sea routes. 

The history of these Indian colonies covers a period of about 
thirteen hundred years or more, from the early beginnings in 
the first or second century A.C. to the end of the fifteenth century. 
The early centuries are vague and not much is known except that 
many small states existed. Gradually they consolidate themselves 
and by the fifth century great cities take shape. By the eighth 
century seafaring empires have arisen, partly centralized but also 
exercising a vague suzerainty over many lands. Sometimes these 
dependencies became independent and even presumed to attack 
the central power and this has led to some confusion in our under- 
standing of those periods. 

The greatest of these states was the Sailendra Empire, or the 
empire of Sri Vijaya, which became the dominant power both 
on sea and land in the whole of Malaysia by the eighth century. 
This was till recently supposed to have its origin and capital in 
Sumatra but later researches indicate that it began in the Malay 
Peninsula. At the height of its power it included Malaya, Ceylon, 
Sumatra, part of Java, Borneo, Celebes, the Philippines, and 
part of Formosa, and probably exercised suzerainty over Cam- 
bodia and Champa (Annam). It was a Buddhist Empire. 

But long before the Sailendra dynasty had established and 
consolidated this empire, powerful states had grown up in Malaya, 
Cambodia, and Java. In the northern part of the Malay Peninsula, 
near the borders of Siam, extensive ruins, says R. J. Wilkinson, 
'point to the past existence of powerful states and a high standard 
of wealth and luxury.' In Champa (Annam) there was the city 
of Pandurangam in the third century and in the fifth century 
Kamboja became a great city. A great ruler, Jayavarman, united 
the smaller states in the ninth century and built up the Cambodian 
Empire with its capital at Angkor. Cambodia was probably under 
the suzerainty of the Sailendras from time to time, but this must 
have been nominal, and it reasserted its independence in the 
ninth century. This Cambodian state lasted for nearly four 
hundred years under a succession of great rulers and great builders, 
Jayavarman, Yashovarman, Indravarman, Suryavarman. The 
capital became famous in Asia and was known as Angkor the 
Magnificent,' a city of a million inhabitants, larger and more 
splendid than the Rome of the Caesars. Near the city stood the 
vast temple of Angkor Vat. The empire of Cambodia flourished 
till the end of the thirteenth century, and the account of a Chinese 
envoy who visited it in 1297 describes the wealth and splendour 
of its capital. But suddenly it collapsed, so suddenly that some 
buildings were left unfinished. There were external attacks and 
internal troubles, but the major disaster seems to have been the 
silting up of the Mekong river, which converted the approaches 

205 



to the city into marshlands and led to its abandonment. 

Java also broke away from the Sailendra Empire in the ninth 
century, but even so the Sailendras continued as the leading 
power in Indonesia till the eleventh century, when they came 
into conflict with the Chola power of South India. The Cholas 
were victorious and held sway over large parts of Indonesia for 
over fifty years. On the withdrawal of the Cholas the Sailendras 
recovered and continued as an independent state for nearly three 
hundred years more. But it was no longer the dominant power in 
the eastern seas and in the thirteenth century began the disruption 
of its empire. Java grew at its expense as also did the Thais (Siam). 
In the second half of the fourteenth century Java completely 
conquered the Sailendra Empire of Srivijaya. 

This Javan state which now rose into prominence had a long 
history behind it. It was a Brahminical state which had conti- 
nued its attachment to the older faith in spite of the spread of 
Buddhism. It had resisted the political and economic sway of the 
Sailendra Empire of Srivijaya even when more than half of Java 
itself was occupied by the latter. It consisted of a community of 
sea faring folk intent on trade and passionately fond of building 
great structures in stone. Originally it was called the Kingdom 
of Singhasari, but in 1292 a new city, Majapahit, was founded 
and from this grew the empire of Majapahit which succeeded 
Srivijaya as the dominant power in south-east Asia. Majapahit 
insulted some Chinese envoys sent by Kublai Khan and was puni- 
shed for this by a Chinese expedition. Probably the Javanese 
learnt from the Chinese the use of gunpowder and this helped 
them finally to defeat the Sailendras. 

Majapahit was a highly centralized, expanding empire. Its 
system of taxation is said to have been very well organized and 
special attention was paid to trade and its colonies. There was 
a commerce department of government, a colonial department, 
and departments for public health, war, the interior, etc. There 
was also a supreme court of justice consisting of a number of 
judges. It is astonishing how well this imperialist state was 
organized. Its chief business was trade from India to China. 
One of its well-known rulers was the Queen Suhita. 

The war between Majapahit and Srivijaya was a very cruel 
one and though it ended in the complete victory of the former, 
it sowed the seeds of fresh conflict. From the ruins of the Sailendra 
power, allied to other elements, notably Arabs and Moslem 
converts, rose the Malaya power in Sumatra and Malacca. The 
command of the eastern seas, which had so long been held by 
South India or the Indian colonies, now passed to the Arabs. 
Malacca rose into prominence as a great centre of trade and seat 
of political power, and Islam spread over the Malay Peninsula 
and the islands. It was this new power that finally put and end to 

206 



Majapahit towards the end of the fifteenth century. But within a 
few years, in 1511, the Portuguese, under Albuquerque, came 
and took possession of Malacca. Europe had reached the Far 
East through her newly developing sea power. 

The Influence of Indian Art Abroad 

These records of ancient empires and dynasties have an interest 
for the antiquarian, but they have a large interest in the history 
of civilization and art. From the point of view of India they are 
particularly important, for it was India that functioned there and 
exhibited her vitality and genius in a variety of ways. We see her 
bubbling over with energy and spreading out far and wide, carry- 
ing not only her thought but her other ideals, her art, her trade, 
her language and literature, and her methods of government. 
She was not stagnant, or standing aloof, or isolated and cut off by 
mountain and sea. Her people crossed those high mountain 
barriers and perilous seas and built up, as M. R6n6 Grousset says, 
'a Greater India politically as little organized as Greater Greece, 
but morally equally harmonious.' As a matter of fact even the 
political organization of these Malayasian states was of a high 
order, though it was not part of the Indian political structure. 
But M. Grousset refers to the wider areas where Indian culture 
spread: 'In the high plateau of eastern Iran, in the oases of 
Serindia, in the arid wastes of Tibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, 
in the ancient civilized lands of China and Japan, in the lands of 
the primitive Mons and Khmers and other tribes in Indo-China, 
in the countries of the Malayo-Polynesians, in Indonesia and 
Malay, India left the indelible impress of her- high culture, not 
only upon religion, but also upon art and literature, in a word, 
all the higher things of spirit.'* 

Indian civilization took root especially in the countries of 
south-east Asia and the evidence for this can be found all over 
the place to-day. There were great centres of Sanskrit learning 
in Champa, Angkor, Srivijaya, Majapahit, and other places. 
The names of the rulers of the various states and empires that 
arose are purely Indian and Sanskrit. This does not mean that 
they were pure Indian, but it does mean that they were Indianized. 
State ceremonies were Indian and conducted in Sanskrit. All 
the officers of the state bear old Sanskrit titles and some of these 
titles and designations have been continued up till now, not only 
in Thailand but in the Moslem states of Malaya. The old litera- 
tures of these places in Indonesia are full of Indian myth and 
legend. The famous dances of Java and Bali derive from India. 
The little island of Bali has indeed largely maintained its old 

» 'Civilizations of the East' by Rini Grousset, Volume II, p. 276. 

207 



Indian culture down to modern times and even Hinduism has 
persisted there. The art of writing went to the Philippines from 
India. 

In Cambodia the alphabet is derived from South India and 
numerous Sanskrit words have been taken over with minor varia- 
tions. The civil and criminal law is based on the Laws of Manu, 
the ancient law-giver of India, and this has been codified, with 
variations due to Buddhist influence, in modern Cambodian 
legislation.* 

But above all else it is in the magnificent art and architecture 
of these old Indian colonies that the Indian influence is most 
marked. The original impulse was modified, adapted, and fused 
with the genius of the place and out of this fusion arose the 
monuments and wondeiful temples of Angkor and Borobudur. 
At Borobudur in Java the whole life story of Buddha is carved 
in stone. At other places bas-reliefs reproduce the legends of 
Vishnu and Rama and Krishna. Of Angkor, Mr. Osbert Sitwell 
has written: 'Let it be said immediately that Angkor, as it stands, 
ranks as chief wonder of the world to-day, one of the summits to 
which human genius has aspired in stone, infinitely more impressive, 
lovely and, as well, romantic, than anything that can be seen in 
China... .The material remains of a civilization that flashed its 
wings, of the utmost brilliance, for six centuries, and then perished 
so utterly that even his name has died from the lips of man.' 

Round the great temple of Angkor Vat is a vast area of mighty 
ruins with artificial lakes and pools, and canals and bridges over 
them, and a great gate dominated by 'a vast sculptured head, a 
lovely, smiling but enigmatic Cambodian face, though one raised 
to the power and beauty of a god.' The face with its strangely 
fascinating and disturbing smile — the Angkor smile' — is repeated 
again and again. This gate leads to the temple: 'the neighbouring 
Bayon can be said to be the most imaginative and singular in the 
world, more lovely than Angkor Vat, because more unearthly in 

its conception, a temple from a city in some other distant planet 

imbued with the same elusive beauty that often lives between the 
lines of a great poem.'f 

The inspiration for Angkor came from India but it was the 
Khmer genius that developed it, or the two fused together and 
produced this wonder. The Cambodian king who is said to have 
built this great temple is named Jayavarman VII, a typical 
Indian name. 

Dr. Quaritch Wales says that 'when the guiding hand of India 
was removed, her inspiration was not forgotten, but the Khmer 

*A. Leclire, 'Recherches sur les origines brahmaniques des lois Cambodgiennes' quoted in 
B. R. Chatterji's 'Indian Cultural Influence in Cambodia' (Calcutta, 1928). 

t These extracts have been taken from Osbert Sitwell's'Escape with Me — An Oriental 
Sketch Book' (1941). 

208 



genius was released to mould from it vast new conceptions of 
amazing vitality different from, and hence not properly to be 
compared with anything matured in a purely Indian environ- 
ment .... It is true that Khmer culture is essentially based on 
the inspiration of India, without which the Khmers at besi might 
have produced nothing greater than the barbaric splendour of 
the Central American Mayas; but it must be admitted that here, 
more than anywhere else in Greater India, this inspiration fell on 
fertile soil'* 

This leads one to think that in India itself that original inspira- 
tion gradually faded because the mind and the soil became over- 
worked and undernourished for lack of fresh currents and ideas. 
So long as India kept her mind open and gave of her riches to 
others, and received from them what she lacked, she remained 
fresh and strong and vital. But the more she withdrew into her shell, 
intent on preserving herself, uncontaminated by external influececs, 
the more she lost that inspiration and her life became increasingly 
a dull round of meaningless activities all centred in the dead past. 
Losing the art of creating beauty, her children lost even the capacity 
to recognize it. 

It is to European scholars and archaeologists that the excava- 
tions and discoveries in Java, Angkor and elsewhere in Greater 
India are due, more especially to French and Dutch scholars. 
Great cities and monuments probably still lie buried there awaiting 
discovery. Meanwhile it is said that important sites in Malaya 
containing ancient ruins have been destroyed by mining opera- 
tions or for obtaining material for building roads. The war will 
no doubt add to this destruction. 

Some years ago I had a letter from a Taai (Siamese) student 
who had come to Tagore's Santiniketan and was returning to 
Thailand. He wrote: 'I always consider myself exceptionally 
fortunate in being able to come to this great and ancient land 
of Aryavarta and to pay my humble homage at the feet of 
grandmother India in whose affectionate arms my mother country 
was so lovingly brought up and taught to appreciate and love what 
was sublime and beautiful in culture and religion.' This may not 
be typical, but it does convey some idea of the general feeling 
towards India which, though vague and overladen with much 
else, still continues in many of the countries of South-East Asia. 
Everywhere an intense and narrow nationalism has grown, looking 
to itself and distrustful of others; there is fear and hatred of 
European domination and yet a desire to emulate Europe and 
America; there is often some contempt for India because of her 
dependent condition; and yet behind all this there is a feeling of 
respect and friendship for India, for old memories endure and 
people have not forgotten that there was a time when India was 

*From 'Towards Angkor' by Dr. H. G. Quaritch Wales (Harrap, 1933). 

209 



a mother country to these and nourished them with rich fare from 
her own treasure-house. Just as Hellenism spread from Greece to 
the countries of the Mediterranean and in Western Asia, India's 
cultural influence spread to many countries and left its power- 
ful impress upon them. 

'From Persia to the Chinese Sea,' writes Sylvain L6vi, 'from 
the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from 
Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales 
and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth 
of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. 
She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that 
ignorance has refused her for a long time and to hold her place 
amongst the great nations summarising and symbolising the 
spirit of Humanity.'* 

Old Indian Art 

The amazing expansion of Indian culture and art to other coun- 
tries has led to some of the finest expressions of this art being 
found outside India. Unfortunately many of our old monuments 
and sculptures, especially in northern India, have been destroyed 
in the course of ages. 'To know Indian art in India alone,' says 
Sir John Marshall, 'is to know but half its story. To apprehend 
it to the full, we must follow it in the wake of Buddhism, to central 
Asia, China, and Japan; we must watch it assuming new forms 
and breaking into new beauties as it spreads over Tibet and Burma 
and Siam; we must gaze in awe at the unexampled grandeur of 
its creations in Cambodia and Java. In each of these countries, 
Indian art encounters a different racial genius, a different local 
environment, and under their modifying influence it takes on a 
different garb.'t 

Indian art is so intimatly associated with Indian religion and 
philosophy that it is difficult to appreciate it fully unless one 
has some knowledge of the ideals that governed the Indian mind. 
In art, as in music, there is a gulf which separates eastern from 
western conceptions. Probably the great artists and builders of 
the middle ages in Europe would have felt more in tune with 
Indian art and sculpture than modern European artists who 
derive part of their inspiration at least from the Renaissance period 
and after. For in Indian art there is always a religious urge, a 
looking beyond, such as probably inspired the builders of the 
great cathedrals of Europe. Beauty is conceived as subjective, 
not objective; it is a thing of the spirit, though it may also take 
lovely shape in form or matter. The Greeks loved beauty for its 

* Quoted in V. N. Ghosal's 'Progress of Greater Indian Research, 1917-1942' (Calcutta, 
1943). 

(From Foreword to Reginald Le May's 'Buddhist Art In Slam' {Cambridge, 1938), 

quoted by Ghosal In 'Progress of Greater Indian Research' {Calcutta, 1943). 

210 



own sake and found not onlyjoy but truth in it; the ancient Indians 
loved beauty also but always they sought to put some deeper 
significance in their work, some vision of the inner truth as they 
saw it. In the supreme examples of their creative work they extort 
admiration, even though one may not understand what they were 
aiming at or the ideas that governed them. In lesser example::, 
this lack of understanding, of not being in tune with the artist's 
mind, becomes a bar to appreciation. There is a vague feeling 
of discomfort, even of irritation, at something one cannot grasp, 
and this leads to the conclusion that the artist did not know 
his job and has failed. Sometimes there is even a feeling of 
repulsion. 

I know nothing about art, eastern or western, and am not 
competent to say anything about it. I react to it as any untutored 
layman might do. Some painting or sculpture or building fills 
me with delight, or moves me and makes me feel a strange emotion; 
or it just pleases me a little; or it does not affect me at all and I 
pass it by almost unnoticed; or it repeis me. I cannot explain 
these reactions or speak learnedly about the merits or demerits of 
works of art. The Buddha statue at Anuradhapura in Ceylon 
moved me greatly and a picture of it has been my companion for 
many years. On the other hand some famous temples in South 
India, heavy with carving and detail, disturb me and fill me with 
unease. 

Europeans, trained in the Greek tradition, at first examined 
Indian art from the Grecian point of view. They recognized 
something they knew in the Graeco -Buddhist art of Gandhara 
and the Frontier and considered other forms in India as degraded 
types of this. Gradually a new approach was made and it was 
pointed out that Indian art was something original and vital and 
in no way derived from this Graeco-Buddhist art, which was a pale 
reflection of it. This new aproach came more from the Continent 
of Europe than from England. It is curious that Indian art, and 
this applies to Sanskrit literature also, has been more appreciated 
on the Continent than in England. I have often wondered how 
far this has been conditioned by the unfortunate political relation- 
ship existing between India and England. Probably there is 
something in that, though there must be other and more basic 
causes of difference also. There are of course many Englishmen, 
artists and scholars and others, who have come near to the spirit 
and outlook of India and helped to discover our old treasures and 
interpret them to the world. There are many also to whom 
India is grateful for their warm friendship and service. Yet the 
fact remains that there is a gulf, and an ever-widening gulf, between 
Indians and Englishmen. On the Indian side this is easier to 
understand, at any rate for me, for a great deal has happened in 
recent years that has cut deep into our souls. On the other side 

211 



perhaps some similar reactions have taken place for different 
reasons; among them, anger at being put in the wrong before the 
world when, according to them, the fault was not theirs. But 
the feeling is deeper than politics and it comes out unawares, and 
most of all it seems to affect English intellectuals. The Indian, to 
them, appears to be a special manifestation of original sin and all 
his works bear this mark. A popular English author, though hardly 
representative of English thought or intelligence, has recently 
written a book which is full of a malicious hatred and disgust for 
almost everything Indian. A more eminent and representative 
English author, Mr. Osbert Sitwell says in his book 'Escape With 
Me' (1941) that 'the idea of India, despite its manifold and diverse 
marvels, continued to be repellent.' He refers also to 'that 
repulsive, greasy quality that so often mars Hindu works of art.' 

Mr. Sitwell is perfectly justified in holding those opinions 
about Indian art or India generally. I am sure he feels that way. 
I am myself repelled by much in India but I do not feel that way 
about India as a whole. Naturally, for I am an Indian and I 
cannot easily hate myself, however unworthy I may be. But it is 
not a question of opinions or views on art; it is much more a 
conscious and subconscious dislike and unfriendliness to a whole 
people. Is it true that those whom we have injured, we dislike 
and hate? 

Among the Englishmen who have appreciated Indian art and 
applied new standards of judgment to it have been Lawrence 
Binyon and E. B. Havell. Havell is particularly enthusiastic 
about the ideals of Indian art and the spirit underlying them. 
He emphasizes that a great national art affords an intimate 
revelation of national thought and character, but it is only to 
be appreciated if the ideals behind it are understood. An alien 
governing race misapprehending and depreciating those ideals 
sows the seeds of intellectual antipathy. Indian art, he says, was 
not addressed to a narrow coterie of literati. Its intention was 
to make the central ideas of religion and philosophy intelligible 
to the masses. 'That Hindu art was successful in its educa- 
tional purpose may be inferred from the fact, known to all who 
have intimate acquaintance with Indian life, that the Indian 
peasantry, though illiterate in the western sense, are among 
the most cultured of their class anywhere in the world.'* 

In art, as in Sanskrit poetry and Indian music, the artist was 
supposed to identify himself with nature in all her moods, to 
express the essential harmony .of man with nature and the uni- 
verse. That has been the keynote of all Asiatic art and it is because 
of this that there is a certain unity about the art of Asia, in spite 
of its great variety and the national differences that are so evi- 
dent. There is not much of old painting in India, except for the 

*£. B. Havell: 'The Ideals of Indian Art' {1920), p. xix. 

212 



lovely frescoes ofAjanta. Perhaps much of it has perished. It was 
in her sculpture and architecture that India stood out, just as 
China and Japan excelled in painting. 

Indian music, which is so different from European music, was 
highly developed in its own way and India stood out in this 
respect and influenced Asiatic music considerably, except for 
China and the Far East. Music thus became another link with 
Persia, Afghanistan, Arabia, Turkestan and, to some extent, in 
other areas where Arab civilization flourished, for instance, North 
Africa. Indian classical music will probably be appreciated in 
all these countries. 

An important influence in the development of art in India, 
as elsewhere in Asia, was the religious prejudice against graven 
images. The Vedas were against image worship and it was only 
at a comparatively late period in Buddhism that Buddha's person 
was represented in sculpture and painting. In the Mathura 
museum there is a huge stone figure of the Bodhisattva which is 
full of strength and power. This belongs to the Kushan period 
about the beginning of the Christian era. 

The early period of Indian art is full of a naturalism which 
may partly be due to Chinese influences. Chinese influence is 
visible at various stages of Indian art history, chiefly in the deve- 
lopment of this naturalism, just as Indian idealism went to China 
and Japan and powerfully influenced them during some of their 
great periods. 

During the Gupta period, fourth to sixth centuries A.C., the 
Golden Age of India as it is called, the caves ofAjanta were dug 
out and the frescoes painted. Bagh and Badami are also of this 
period. The Ajanta frescoes, very beautiful though they are, have, 
ever since their discovery, exercised a powerful influence on our 
present-day artists, who have turned away from life and sought 
to model their style on that ofAjanta, with unhappy results. 

Ajanta takes one back into some distant dream-like and yet 
very real world. These frescoes were painted by the Buddhist 
monks. Keep away from women, do not even look at them, for 
they are dangerous, has said their Master long ago. And yet 
we have here women in plenty, beautiful women, princesses, 
singers, dancers, seated and standing, beautifying themselves, or 
in procession. The women of Ajanta had become famous. How 
well those painter-monks must have known the world and the 
moving drama of life, how lovingly they have painted it, just as 
they have painted the Boddhisattva in his calm and other- 
worldly majesty. 

In the seventh and eighth centuries the mighty caves of Ellora 
were carved out of solid rock with the stupendous Kailasa 
temple in the centre; it is difficult to imagine how human beings 

213 



conceived this or, having conceived it, gave body and shape to 
their conception. The caves of Elephanta, with the powerful 
and subtle Trimurti, date also from this period. Also the group 
of monuments at M&mallapuram in South India. 

In the Elephanta caves there is a broken statue of Shiva 
Nataraja, Shiva dancing. Even in its mutilated condition, Havell 
says that it is a majestic conception and an embodiment of 
titanic power. 'Though the rock itself seems to vibrate with the 
rhythmic movement of the dance, the noble head bears the same 
look of serene calm and dispassion which illuminate the face of 
the Buddha.' 

There is another Shiva Nataraja in the British Museum and 
of this Epstein has written: 'Shiva dances, creating the world 
and destroying it, his large rhythms conjure up vast aeons of 
time, and his movements have a relentless magical power of 
incantation. A small group of the British Museum is the most 
tragic summing up of the death in love motive ever seen, and 
it epitomises, as no other work, the fatal element in human 
passion. Our European allegories are banal and pointless by 
comparison with these profound works, devoid of the trappings 
of symbolism, concentrating on the essential, the essentially 
plastic.'* 

There is a head of a Bodhisattva from Borobudur in Java which 
has been taken to the Glyptotek in Copenhagen. It is beautiful, 
in the sense of formal beauty, but, as Havell says, there is some- 
thing deeper in it revealing, as in a mirror, the pure soul of the 
Bodhisattva. 'It is a face which incarnates the stillness of the 
depths of the ocean; the serenity of an azure, cloudless sky; a 
beatitude beyond moral ken.' 

'Indian art in Java,' adds Havell, 'has a character of its own 
which distinguishes it from that of the continent from whence 
it came. There runs through both the same strain of deep serenity, 
but in the divine ideal of Java we lose the austere feeling which 
characterises the Hindu sculpture of Elephanta and Mamallapu- 
ram. There is more of human contentment and joy in Indo- 
Javanese art, an expression of that peaceful security which the 
Indian colonists enjoyed in their happy island home, after the 
centuries of storm and struggle which their forefathers had 
experienced on the mainland.'! 

India's Foreign Trade 

Throughout the first millennium of the Christian era, India's 
trade was widespread and Indian merchants controlled many 

* Epstein: 'Let There be Sculpture' (1942), p. 193. 
fHavell: 'The Ideals of Indian Art' (1920), p. 169. 

214 



foreign markets. It was dominant in the eastern seas and it reached 
out also to the Mediterranean. Pepper and other spices went 
from India or via India to the west, often on Indian and Chinese 
bottoms, and it is said that Alaric the Goth took away 3,000 
pounds of pepper from Rome. Roman writers bemoaned the 
fact that gold flowed from Rome to India and the east in exchange 
for various luxury articles. 

This trade was largely, in India as elsewhere at the time, one 
of give and take of materials found and developed locally. India 
was a fertile land and rich in some of the materials that other 
countries lacked, and the seas being open to her she sent these 
materials abroad. She also obtained them from the eastern islands 
and profited as a merchant carrier. But she had further advantages. 
She had been manufacturing cloth from the earliest ages, long 
before other countries did so, and a textile industry had deve- 
loped. Indian textiles went to far countries. Silk was also made 
from very early times though probably it was not nearly as good as 
Chinese silk, which began to be imported as early as the fourth 
century B.C. The Indian silk industry may have developed subse- 
quently, though it does not seem to have gone far. An important 
advance was made in the dyeing of cloth and special methods 
were discovered for the preparation of fast dyes. Among these was 
indigo, a word derived from India through Greece. It was probably 
this knowledge of dyeing that gave a great impetus to India's 
trade with foreign countries. 

Chemistry in India in the early centuries A.C. was probably 
more advanced than in other countries. I do not know much 
about it but there is a 'History of Hindu Chemistry' written by 
the doyen of Indian chemists and scientists, Sir P. C. Ray, who 
trained several generations of Indian scientists. Chemistry then 
was closely allied to alchemy and metallurgy. A famous Indian 
chemist and metallurgist was named NagSrjuna, and the simi- 
larity of the names has led some people to suggest that he was 
the same person as the great philosopher of the first century A.C. 
But this is very doubtful. 

The tempering of steel was known early in India, and Indian 
steel and iron were valued abroad, especially for warlike pur- 
poses. Many other metals were known and use.d and prepara- 
tions of metallic compounds were made for medicinal purposes. 
Distillation and calcination were well-known. The science of 
medicine was fairly well developed. Though based mainly on 
the old text books, considerable experimental progress was made 
right up to the medieval period. Anatomy and physiology were 
studied and the circulation of the blood was suggested long before 
Harvey. 

Astronomy, oldest of sciences, was a regular subject of the 
university curriculum and with it was mixed up astrology. A 

215 



very accurate calendar was worked out and this calendar is still 
in popular use. It is a solar calendar having lunar months, which 
leads to periodical adjustments. As elsewhere, the priests, or Brah- 
mins, were especially concerned with this calendar and they 
fixed the seasonal festivals as well as indicated the exact time of 
the eclipses of the sun and moon, which were also in the nature 
of festivals. They took advantage of this knowledge to encourage 
among the masses beliefs and observances, which they must have 
known to be superstitious, and thus added to their own prestige. 
A knowledge of astronomy, in its practical aspects, was of great 
help to the people who went on the seas. The ancient Indians were 
rather proud of the advances they had made in astronomical 
knowledge. They had contacts with Arab astronomy, which was 
largely based on Alexandria. 

It is difficult to say how far mechanical appliances had deve- 
loped then, but shipbuilding was a flourishing industry and 
there is frequent reference to various kinds of 'machines,' 
especially for purposes of war. This has led some enthusiastic 
and rather credulous Indians to imagine all kinds of compli- 
cated machines. It does seem, however, that India at that time 
was not behind any country in the making and use of tools and 
in the knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy. It was this that 
gave her an advantage in trade and enabled her for several cen- 
turies to control a number of foreign markets. 

Possibly she had one other advantage also — the absence of 
slave-labour, which handicapped Greek and other early civili- 
zations and came in the way of their progress. The caste system, 
with all its evils, which progressively increased, was infinitely 
better than slavery even for those lowest in the scale. Within each 
caste there was equality and a measure of freedom; each caste 
was occupational and applied itself to its own particular work. 
This led to a high degree of specialization and skill in handicrafts 
and craftsmanship. 

Mathematics in Ancient India 

Highly intellectual and given to abstract thinking as they were, 
one would expect the ancient Indians to excel in mathematics. 
Europe got its early arithmetic and algebra from the Arabs — 
hence the 'Arabic numerals' — but the Arabs themselves had 
previously taken them from India. The astonishing progress 
that the Indians had made in mathematics is now well known 
and it is recognized that the foundations of modern arithmetic 
and algebra were laid long ago in India. The clumsy method 
of using a counting frame and the use of Roman and such like 
numerals had long retarded progress when the ten Indian nume- 
rals, including the zero sign, liberated the human mind from 

216 



these restrictions and threw a flood of light on the behaviour of 
numbers. These number symbols were unique and entirely diffrent 
from all other symbols that had been in use in other countries. 
They are common enough to-day and we take them for granted, 
yet they contained the germs of revolutionary progress in them. 
It took many centuries for them to travel from India, via Baghdad, 
to the western world. 

A hundred and fifty years ago, during Napoleon's time, La 
Place wrote: 'It is India that gave us the ingenious method of 
expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol 
receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a pro- 
found and important idea which appears so simple to us now that 
we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease 
which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the 
first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the gran- 
deur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the 
genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men 
produced by antiquity.'* 

The origins of geometry, arithmetic, and algebra in India go 
back to remote periods. Probably to begin with there was some 
kind of geometrical algebra used for making figures for Vedic 
altars. Mention is made in the most ancient books of the geome- 
trical method for the transformation of a square into a rect- 
angle having a given side: ax = c. Geometrical figures are even 
now commonly used in Hindu ceremonies. Geometry made prog- 
ress in India but in this respect Greece and Alexandria went 
ahead. It was in arithmetic and algebra that India kept the lead. 
The inventor or inventors of the decimal place-value system and 
the zero mark are not known. The earliest use of the zero symbol, 
so far discovered, is in one of the scriptural books dated about 
200 B.C. It is considered probable that the place-value system 
was invented about the beginning of the Christian era. The zero, 
called shunya or nothing, was orignally a dot and later it became 
a small circle. It was considered a number like any other. Pro- 
fessor Halsted thus emphasizes the vital significance of this 
invention: 'The importance of the creation of the zero mark 
can never be exaggerated. This giving to airy nothing, not merely 
a local habitation and a name, a picture, a symbol but helpful 
power, is the characteristic of the Hindu race from whence it 
sprang. It is like coining the Nirvana into dynamos. No single 
mathematical creation has been more potent for the general on-go 
of intelligence and power.'! 

Yet another modern mathematician has grown eloquent over 
this historic event. Dantzig in his 'Number' writes: 'This long 

^Quoted in Hogben's 'Mathematics for the Million', (London, 1942). 
tG. B. Halsted: 'On the Foundation and Technique of Arithmetic', p. 20 (Chicago, 
1912), quoted in 'History of Hindu Mathematics' by B. Datta and A. TV. Singh (1935). 

217 



period of nearly five thousand years saw the rise and fall of many 
a civilization, each leaving behind it a heritage of literature, art, 
philosophy, and religion. But what was the net achievement in 
the field of reckoning, the earliest art practised by man? An 
inflexible numeration so crude as to make progress well nigh 
impossible, and a calculating device so limited in scope that even 

elementary calculations called for the services of an expert 

Man used these devices for thousands of years without making 
a single worthwhile improvement in the instrument, without 

contributing a single important idea to the system Even when 

compared with the slow growth of ideas during the dark ages, 
the history of reckoning presents a peculiar picture of desolate 
stagnation. When viewed in this light the achievements of the 
unknown Hindu, who sometime in the first centuries of our era 
discovered the principle of position, assumes the importance of 
a world event.'* 

Dantzig is puzzled at the fact that the great mathematicians 
ofGreece did not stumble on this discoyery. 'Is it that the Greeks 
had such a marked contempt for applied science, leaving even 
the instruction of their children to slaves? But if so, how is it 
that the nation that gave us geometry and carried this science 
so far did not create even a rudimentary algebra? Is it not 
equally strange that algebra, that corner-stone of modern mathe- 
matics, also originated in India, and at about the same time that 
positional numeration did?' 

The answer to this question is suggested by Professor Hog- 
ben: 'The difficulty of understanding why it should have been 
the Hindus who took this step, why it was not taken by the 
mathematicians of antiquity, why it should first have been taken 
by practical man, is only insuperable if we seek for the explana- 
tion of intellectual progress in the genius of a few gifted indivi- 
duals, instead of in the whole social framework of custom thought 
which circumscribes the greatest individual genius. What hap- 
pened in India about AJ). 100 had happened before. May be it 

is happening now in Soviet Russia To accept it (this truth) 

is to recognise that every culture contains within itself its own 
doom, unless it pays as much attention to the education of the 
mass of mankind as to the education of the exceptionally gifted 
people.'! 

We must assume then that these momentous inventions were 
not just due to the momentary illumination of an erratic genius, 
much in advance of his time, but that they were essentialy the 
product of the social milieu and that they answered some insis- 
tent demand of the times. Genius of a high order was certainly 

^Quoted in L. Hogben's 'Mathematics for the Million', {London, 1942). 
tHogben: 'Mathematics for the Million', (London, 1942), p. 285. 

218 



necessary to find this out and fulfil the demand, but if the demand 
had not been there the urge to find some way out would have 
been absent, and even if the invention had been made it would 
have been foi gotten or put aside till circumstances more propi- 
tious for its use arose. It seems clear from the early Sanskrit works 
on mathematics that the demand was there, for these books are 
full of problems of trade and social relationship involving compli- 
cated calculations. There are problems dealing with taxation, 
debt, and interest; problems of partnership, barter and exchange, 
and the calculation of the fineness of gold. Society had grown 
complex and laige numbers of people were engaged in govern- 
mental operations and in an extensive trade. It was impossible 
to carry on without simple methods of calculation. 

The adoption of zero and the decimal place-value system in 
India unbarred the gates of the mind to rapid progress in arith- 
metic and algebra. Fractions come in, and the multiplication 
and division of fractions; the rule of three is discovered and per- 
fected; squares and square-roots (together with the sign of the 
square-root, V ) J cubes and cube-roots; the minus sign; tables 
of sines; n is evaluated as 3-1416; letters of the alphabet are used 
in algebra to denote unknowns; simple and quadratic equations 
are considered; the mathematics of zero are investigated. Zero 
is defined as a — a=0;a + 0=a; a-0=a; axO = 0; 
a becomes infinity. The conception of negative quantities 
also comes in, thus: 4 = ± 2. 

These and other advances in mathematics are contained in 
books written by a succession of eminent mathematicians from 
the fifth to the twelfth century A.C. There are earlier books also 
(Baudhayana, c. eighth century B.C.; Apastamba and Katyayana, 
both c. fifth century B.C.) which deal with geometrical problems, 
especially with triangles, rectangles, and squares. But the earliest 
extant book on algebra is by the famous astronomer, Aryabhata, 
who was born in A.C. 476. He wrote this book on astronomy and 
mathematics when he was only twenty-three years old. Arya- 
bhata, who is sometimes called the inventor of algebra, must have 
relied, partly at least, on the work of his predecessors. The next 
great name in Indian mathematics is that of Bhaskara I (A.C. 522), 
and he was followd by Brahmagupta (A.C. 628), who was also 
a famous astronomer, and who stated the laws applying to shunya 
or zero and made other notable advances. There follow a succes- 
sion of mathematicians who have written on arithmetic or algebra. 
The last great name is that of Bhaskara II, who was born in A.C. 
1114. He wrote three books, on astronomy, algebra, and arithmetic. 
His book on arithmetic is known as 'Lilavati', which is an odd 
name for a treatise on mathematics, as it is the name of a woman. 
There are frequent references in the book to a young girl who is 
addressed as 'O Lilavati' and is then instructed on the problems 

219 



stated. It is believed, without any definite proof, that Lilavati 
was Bhaskara's daughter. The style of the book is clear and simple 
and suitable for young persons to understand. The book is still 
used, partly for its style, in Sanskrit schools. 

Books on mathematics continued to appear (Narayana 1150, 
Ganesha 1545), but these are mere repetitions of what had been 
done. Very little original work on mathematics was done in 
India after the twelfth century till we reach the modern age. 

In the eighth century, during the reign of the Khalif Al- 
Mansur (753-774), a number of Indian scholars went to Baghdad, 
and among the books they took with them were works on mathe- 
matics and astronomy. Probably even earlier than this, Indian 
numerals had reached Baghdad, but this was the first systematic 
approach, and Aryabhata's and other books were translated into 
Arabic. They influenced the development of mathematics and 
astronomy in the Arab world, and Indian numerals were intro- 
duced. Baghdad was then a great centre of learning and Greek 
and Jewish scholars had gathered there bringing with them 
Greek philosophy, geometry, and science. The cultural influence 
of Baghdad was felt throughout the Moslem world from central 
Asia to Spain, and a knowledge of Indian mathematics in their 
Arabic translations spread all over this vast area. The numerals 
were called by the Arabs 'figures of Hind' (or India), and the 
Arabic word for a number is 'Hindsah', meaning 'from Hind'. 

From this Arab world the new mathematics travelled to Euro- 
pean countries, probably through the Moorish universities of 
Spain, and became the foundation for European mathematics. 
There was opposition in Europe to the use of the new numbers, 
as they were considered infidel symbols, and it took several hund- 
red years before they were in common use. The earliest known use 
is in a Sicilian coin of 1134; in Britain the first use is in 1490. 

It seems clear that some knowledge of Indian mathematics, 
and especially of the place-value system of numbers, had pene- 
trated into western Asia even before the formal embassy carried 
books to Baghdad. There is an interesting passage in a com- 
plaint made by a Syrin scholar-monk who was hurt at the arrog- 
ance of some Greek scholars who looked down on Syrians. Severus 
Sebokht was his name, and he lived in a convent situated on the 
Eupharates. He writes in A.C. 662 and tries to show that the 
Syrians were in no way inferior to the Greeks. By way of illustra- 
tion he refers to the Indians: 'I will omit all discussion of the 
science of the Hindus, a people not the same as the Syrians; their 
subtle discoveries in the science of astonomy, discoveries that 
are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians; 
their computing that surpasses description. I wish only to say that 
this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who 
believe, because they speak Greek, that they have reached the 

220 



limits of science, should know of these things, they would be 
convinced that there are also others who know something.'* 

Mathematics in India inevitably makes one think of one extra- 
ordinary figure of recent times. This was Srinivasa Ramanujam. 
Born in a poor Brahmin family in south India, having no opportu- 
nities for a proper education, he became a clerk in the Madras 
Port Trust. But he was bubbling over with some irrepressible 
quality of instinctive genius and played about with numbers 
and equations in his spare time.- By a lucky chance he attracted 
the attention of a mathematician who sent some of his amateur 
work to Cambridge in England. People there were impressed 
and a scholarship was arranged for him. So he left his clerk's job 
and went to Cambridge and during a very brief period there did 
work of profound value and amazing originality. The Royal 
Society of England went rather out of their way and made him 
a Fellow, but he died two years later, probably of tuberculosis, 
at the age of thirty-three. Professor Julian Huxley has, I believe, 
referred to him somewhere as the greatest mathematician of the 
century. 

Rarr.anujam's brief life and death are symbolic of conditions 
in India. Of our millions how few get any education at all, how 
many live on the verge of starvation; of even those who get some 
education how many have nothing to look forward to but a 
clerkship in some office on a pay that is usually far less than the 
unemployment dole in England. If life opened its gates to them 
and offered them food and healthy conditions of living and edu- 
cation and opportunities of growth, how many among these 
millions would be eminent scientists, educationists, technicians, 
industrialists, writers and artists, helping to build a new India 
and a new world? 

Growth and Decay 

During the first thousand years of the Christian era, there are 
many ups and downs in India, many conflicts with invading 
elements and internal troubles. Yet it is a period of a vigorous 
national life, bubbling over with energy and spreading out in 
all directions. Culture develops into a rich civilization flowering 
out in philosophy, literature, drama, art, science, and mathematics. 
India's economy expands, the Indian horizon widens and other 
countries come within its scope. Contacts grow with Iran, China, 
the Hellenic world, central Asia, and above all, there is a powerful 
urge towards the eastern seas which leads to the establishment of 
Indian colonies and the spread of Indian culture far beyond India's 
boundaries. During the middle period of this millennium, from 

* Quoted in 'History of Hindu Mathematics' by B. Datta and A. JV. Singh (1933). / 
am indebted to this book for much information on this subject. 

221 



early in the fourth to the sixth century, the Gupta Empire flourishes 
and becomes the patron and symbol of this widespread intellectual 
and artistic activity. It is called the Golden or Classical Age of 
India and the writings of that period, which are classics in Sans- 
krit literature, reveal a serenity, a quiet confidence of the people 
in themselves, and a glow of pride at being privileged to be alive 
in that high noon of civilization, and with it the urge to use their 
great intellectual and artistic powers to the utmost. 

Yet even before that Golden Age had come to a close, signs 
of weakness and decay become visible. The White Huns come 
from the north-west in successive hordes and are repeatedly 
pushed back. But they come again and again and eat their way 
slowly into North India. For a half-century they even establish 
themselves as a ruling power all over the north. But then, with 
a great effort, the last of the great Guptas, joining up in a confe- 
deracy with Yashovarman, a ruler of Central India, drives out 
the Huns. 

This long-drawn-out conflict weakened India politically and 
militarily, and probably the settlement of large numbers of these 
Huns all over northern India gradually produced an inner change 
in the people. They were absorbed as all foreign elements had so 
far been absorbed, but they left their impress and weakened the 
old ideals of the Indo-Aryan races. Old accounts of the Huns are 
full of their excessive cruelty and barbarous behaviour which were 
so foreign to Indian standards of warfare and government. 

In the seventh century there was a revival and renascence 
under Harsha, both political and cultural. Ujjayini (modern 
Ujjain), which had been the brilliant capital of the Guptas, again 
became a centre of art and culture and the seat of a powerful king- 
dom. But in the centuries that followed, this too weakens and 
fades off. In the ninth century Mihira Bhoja, of Gujrat, conso- 
lidates a unified state in North and Central India with his capital 
at Kanauj. There is another literary revival of which the central 
figure is Rajashekhara. Again, at the beginning of the eleventh 
century, another Bhoja stands out as a powerful and attractive 
figure, and Ujjayini again becomes a great capital. This Bhoja 
was a remarkable man who distinguished himself in many fields. 
He was a grammarian and a lexicographer, and interested in 
medicine and astronomy. He was a builder and a patron of art 
and literature, and was himself a poet and a writer to whom 
many works are attributed. His name has become a part of popular 
fable and legend as a symbol of greatness, learning, and generosity. 

And yet for all these bright patches, an inner weakness seems 
to seize India, which affects not only her political status but her 
creative activities. There is no date for this, for the process was 
a slow and creeping one, and it affected north India earlier than 
the south. The south indeed becomes more important both poli- 

222 



tically and culturally. Perhaps this was due to the south having 
escaped the continuous strain of fighting waves of invaders; 
perhaps many of the writers and artists and master-builders migrat- 
ed to the south to escape from the unsettled conditions in the north. 
The powerful kingdoms of the south, with their brilliant courts, 
must have attracted these people and given them opportunities 
for creative work which they lacked elsewhere. 

But though the north did not dominate India, as it had often 
done in the past, and was split up into small states, life was still 
rich there and there were many centres of cultural and philo- 
sophic activity. Benares, as ever, was the heart of religious and philo- 
sophical thought, and every person who advanced a new theory 
or a new interpretation of an old theory, had to come there to 
justify himself. Kashmir was for long a great Sanskrit centre of 
Buddhist and Brahminical learning. The great universities 
flourished; ofthese, Nalanda, the most famous of all, was respected 
for its scholarship all over India. To have been to Nalanda was 
a hall-mark of culture. It was not easy to enter that university, 
for admission was restricted to those who had already attained a 
certain standard. It specialized in postgraduate study and attracted 
students from China, Japan, and Tibet, and even it is said, from 
Korea and Mongolia and Bokhara. Apart from religious and 
philosophical subjects (both Buddhist and Brahminical), secular 
and practical subjects were also taught. There was a school of 
art and a department for architecture; a medical school; an agri- 
cultural department; dairy farms and cattle. The intellectual life 
of the university is said to have been one of animated debates and 
discussions. The spread of Indian culture abroad was largely the 
work of scholars from Nalanda. 

Then there was the Vikramshila university, near modern 
Bhagalpur in Bihar, and Vallabhi in Kathiawar. During the 
period of the Guptas, the Ujjayini university rose into promi- 
nence. In the south there was the Amravati university. 

Yet, as the millennium approached its end, all this appears 
to be the afternoon of a civilization; the glow of the morning 
had long faded away, high noon was past. In the south there was 
still vitality and vigour and this lasted for some centuries more; 
in the Indian colonies abroad there was aggressive and full-blood- 
ed life right up to the middle of the next millennium. But the heart 
seems to petrify, its beats are slower, and gradually this petrifica- 
tion and decay spread to the limbs. There is no great figure in 
philosophy after Shankara in the eighth century, though there is 
a long succession of commentators and dialecticians. Even Shan- 
kara came from the south. The sense of curiosity and the spirit 
of mental adventure give place to a hard and formal logic and 
a sterile dialectic. Both Brahminism and Buddhism deteriorate 
and degraded forms of worship grow up, especially some varieties 

223 



of Tantric worship and perversions of the Yoga system. 

In literature,. Bhavabhuti (eighth century) is the last great 
figure. Many books continued to be written, but their style be- 
comes more and more involved and intricate; there is neither 
freshness of thought nor of expression. In mathematics, Bhaskara 
II (twelfth century) is the last great name. In art, E. B. Havell 
takes us rather beyond this period. He says that the form of 
expression was not artistically perfected until about the seventh 
and eighth centuries, when most of the great sculpture and 
painting in India was produced. From the seventh or eighth to the 
fourteenth century, according to him, was the great period of 
Indian art, corresponding to the highest development of Gothic 
art in Europe. He adds that it was in the sixteenth century that 
the creative impulse of the old Indian art began markedly to 
diminish. How far this judgment is correct I do not know, but 
I imagine that even in the field of art it was South India that 
carried on the old tradition for a longer period than the north. 
The last of the major emigrations for colonial settlement took 
place from South India in the ninth century, but the Cholas in 
the south continued to be a great sea power till the eleventh cen- 
tury, when they defeated and conquered Srivijaya. 

We thus see that India was drying up and losing her creative 
genius and vitality. The process was a slow one and lasted several 
centuries, beginning in the north and finally reaching the south. 
What were the causes of this political decline and cultural stagna- 
tion? Was this due to age alone, that seems to attack civilizations 
as it does individuals, or to a kind of tidal wave with its forward 
and backward motion? or were external causes and invasions 
responsible for it? Radhakrishnan says that Indian philosophy 
lost its vigour with the loss of political freedom. SylvainLevi writes: 
'La culture sanscrite a fini avec la liberte de l'lnde; des langues 
nouvelles, des litteratures nouvelles ont envahi la territoire ary- 
enne et Ten ont chasse; elle s'est refugiee dans les colleges et y 
a pris un air pedantesque.' 

All this is true, for the loss of political freedom lead inevit- 
ably to cultural decay. But why should political freedom be lost 
unless some kind of decay has preceded it ? A small country might 
easily be overwhelmed by superior power, but a huge, well- 
developed and highly civilized country like India cannot succumb 
to external attack unless there is internal decay, or the invader 
possesses a higher technique of warfare. That internal decay is 
clearly evident in India at the close of these thousand years. 

There are repeatedly periods of decay and disruption in the 
life of every civilization, and there had been such periods in 
Indian history previously; but India had survived them and 
rejuvenated herself afresh, sometimes retiring into her shell for 
a while and emerging again with fresh vigour. There always 

224 



remained a dynamic core which could renew itself with fresh 
contacts and develop again, something different from the past 
and yet intimately connected with it. Had that capacity for 
adaptation, that flexibility of mind which had saved India so 
often in the past left her now? Had her fixed beliefs and the grow- 
ing rigidity of her social structure made her mind also rigid? For 
if life ceases to grow and evolve, the evolution of thought also 
ceases. India had all along been a curious combination of conser- 
vatism in practice and explosive thought. Inevitably that thought 
affected the practice, though it did so in its own way without 
irreverence for the past. 'Mais si leurs yeux suivaient les mots 
anciens, leur intelligence y voyait des idees nouvelles. L'Inde s'est 
transformee a son insu.' But when thought lost its explosiveness 
and creative power and became a tame attendant on an outworn 
and meaningless practice, mumbling old phrases and fearful of 
everything new, then life became stagnant and tied and constrain- 
ed in a prison of its own making. 

We have many examples of the collapse of a civilization, and 
perhaps the most notable of these is that of the European classical 
civilization which ended with the fall of Rome. Long before Rome 
fell to the invaders from the north, it had been on the verge of 
collapse from its own internal weaknesses. Its economy, once 
expanding, had shrunk and brought all manner of difficulties 
in its train. Urban industries decayed, flourishing cities grew 
progressively smaller and impoverished, and even fertility rapidly 
declined. The Emperors tried many expedients to overcome 
their ever-increasing difficulties. There was compulsory state 
regulation of merchants, craftsmen, and workers, who were tied 
down to particular employments. Many kinds of employment 
were forbidden to those outside certain groups of workers. Thus 
some occupations were practically converted into castes. The 
peasantry became serfs. But all these superficial attempts to check 
the decline failed and even worsened conditions; and the Roman 
Empire collapsed. 

There was and has been no such dramatic collapse of Indian 
civilization, and it has shown an amazing staying power despite 
all that has happened; but a progressive decline is visible. It is 
difficult to specify in any detail what the social conditions in India 
were at the end of the first millennium after Christ; but it may 
be said with some assurance that the expanding economy of India 
had ended and there was a strong tendency to shrink. Probably 
this was the inevitable result of the growing rigidity and exclusive- 
ness of the Indian social structure as represented chiefly by the 
caste system. Where Indians had gone abroad, as in south-east 
Asia, they were not so rigid in mind or customs or in their econo- 
my, and they had opportunities for growth and expansion. For 
another four or five hundred years they flourished in these colonies 

225 



and displayed energy and creative vigour; but in India herself 
the spirit of exclusiveness sapped the creative faculty and deve- 
loped a narrow, small-group, and parochial outlook. Life became 
cut up into set frames, where each man's job was fixed and per- 
manent and he had little concern with others. It was the Kshat- 
riya's business to fight in defence of the country, and others were 
not interested or were not even allowed to do so. The Brahmin 
and the Kshatriya looked down on trade and commerce. Educa- 
tion and opportunities of growth were withheld from the lower 
castes, who were taught to be submissive" to those higher up in the 
scale. In spite of a well-developed urban economy and industries, 
the structure of the state was in many ways feudal. Probably 
even in the technique of warfare India had fallen behind. No 
marked progress was possible under these conditions without 
changing that structure and releasing fresh sources of talent and 
energy. The caste system was a barrier to such a change. For all 
its virtues and the stability it had given to Indian society, it carried 
within it the seeds of destruction. 

The Indian social structure (and I shall consider this more 
fully later) had given amazing stability to Indian civilization. 
It had given strength and cohesion to the group, but this came 
in the way of expansion and a larger cohesion. It developed 
crafts and skill and trade and commerce, but always within each 
group separately. Thus particular types of activity became here- 
ditary and there was a tendency to avoid new types of work and 
activity and to confine oneself to the old groove, to restrict initia- 
tive and the spirit of innovation. It gave a measure of freedom 
within a certain limited sphere, but at the expense of the growth 
of a larger freedom and at the heavy price ofkeeping large numbers 
of people permanently at the bottom of the social ladder, deprived 
of the opportunities of growth. So long as that structure afforded 
avenues for growth and expansion, it was progressive; when it 
reached the limits of expansion open to it, it became stationary, 
unprogressive, and, later, inevitably regressive. 

Because of this there was decline all along the line — intellectual, 
philosophical, political, in technique and methods of warfare, 
in knowledge of and contacts with the outside world, and there 
was a growth of local sentiments and feudal, small-group feeling 
at the expense of the larger conception of India as a whole, and 
a shrinking economy. Yet, as later ages were to show, there was 
yet vitality in the old structure and an amazing tenacity, as well 
as some flexibility and capacity for adaptation. Because of this 
it managed to survive and to profit by new contacts and waves 
of thought, and even progress in some ways. But that progress 
was always tied down to and hampered by far too many relics of 
the past.