India, A Brief History: Rig Ved to 1909
This page was mostly written around 1911 when conditions were Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles |
Extracted from:
Encyclopaedia of India
1911.
No further details are available about this book, except that it was sponsored in some way by the (British-run) Government of India.
NOTE: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these footnotes gone astray might like to shift them to the correct place.
Secondly, kindly ignore all references to page numbers, because they refer to the physical, printed book.
Thirdly, articles by 21st century sources have been inserted in between the text of the Encyclopaedia of India. All such inserts have been duly credited to their sources. Wherever such an insert ends the text of the Encyclopaedia of India resumes.
India: a brief history
For an orthodox Hindu the history of India begins more than three thousand years before the. Christian era with the events detailed in the great epic of the Mahabharata; but by the sober historian these can only be regarded as legends. See the article Inscriptions: section Indian, for a discussion of the scientific basis of the early history. It is needless to repeat here the analysis given in that article. The following account of the earlier period follows the main outlines of the traditional facts, corrected as far as possible by the inscriptional record; and further details will be found in the separate biographical, racial and linguistic articles, and those on the geographical areas into which India is administratively divided.
Our earliest glimpses of India disclose two races struggling for the soil, the Dravidians, a dark-skinned race of aborigines, and the Aryans, a fair-skinned people, descending from Legends. the north-western passes. Ultimately the Dravidians were driven back into the southern tableland, and the great plains of Hindustan were occupied by the Aryans, who dominated the history of India for many centuries thereafter.
Fire, first use of
Chandrima Banerjee, December 2, 2020: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, December 2, 2020: The Times of India
New evidence pushes back by 30k years 1st use of fire in India
It razed the forests they lived in, scared animals away and “changed” objects that came in contact. But the moment at which humans were able to control fire — start one, keep it going and use it — is one that evolutionary scientists identify as the one great spark of human intelligence. About 80 km from Prayagraj, in the Belan river valley, scientists have found evidence of that point in India, pushing back the first known controlled use of fire here by 30,000 years. “Before this, the first reported use of fire in the Indian subcontinent was from 18,000-20,000 years ago. Hearths were found in the same valley, considered the first direct evidence of human use of fire,” Prasanta Sanyal, co-author of the paper being published in Elsevier journal ‘Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology’, told TOI.
For this study, scientists from IISER-Kolkata looked at macrocharcoal (larger than 125 micron) from six archaeological sites in the valley — Deoghat, Koldihwa, Mahagara, Chillahia, Chopani-Mando and Main Belan. They found charcoal from buried soils, which were dated 50,000 years old. But that did not necessarily imply they were the result of human activity.
“You can get charcoal from two sources — forest fires and human-made fires. Say, there was a forest fire in the Himalayas. It could have produced this charcoal, which was transported and deposited,” said Sanyal. “But we found that the internal structure of these charcoal samples was still well-preserved, which could not have happened had they been transported.” Then, there was the topography. The paper says the “gentle slope of the Belan valley and its small catchment area make long distance transportation unlikely.”
Then, they reconstructed the climate patterns for the last 100,000 years. It turned out that the period the charcoal samples date back to was one of very high rainfall. “Besides, the vegetation was characterised by trees. Both factors are not very conducive to forest fires. You can have a natural forest fire only in dry and arid conditions,” Sanyal explained. “We concluded that the charcoal in these archaeological sites came from human use of fire.”
Which means the human brain was developed enough to control fire.“This is the time that the cognitive abilities of prehistoric humans developed. This coincided with the period when they started creating different types of tools,” Deepak Kumar Jha, lead author, told TOI. Once acquired, this knowledge — how to harness fire — was one that was transferred. “The use of fire was persistent from Middle Palaeolithic to Neolithic (from 55,000 to 3,000 years ago) … from the earlier prehistoric populations to the later farming communities,” the paper says.
This is now the 13th oldest evidence of the use of fire in the world. The oldest is from 1.6 million years ago, at Koobi Fora in Kenya. Sanyal said, “If you see China, human-controlled fire has been discovered from 400,000 years ago. Why this gap? Maybe we have not studied Indian sites enough,”.
The "Aryan Invasion"
Rebuttal
Ravi Shankar, 15th September 2019: The Indian Express
.jpg)
From: Ravi Shankar, 15th September 2019: The Indian Express
“To begin with the Kala produced Prajapati, who then produced all other Prajas.” Atharva Veda [53-10].
In the Vedic doctrine, the astral life span of a pitra, or ancestor, is 3,000 years. A nameless woman who died in Rakhigarhi, a settlement in Haryana of antiquity, and an ancestor of the Harappan civilisation, would never have guessed that she would be the centre of a debate 4,500 years later.
DNA tests showed that the deceased, whose long-forgotten name has been replaced by the number ‘14411’, did not possess the R1a1 gene—the ‘Aryan gene’ of the Bronze Age people who lived 4,000 years ago in the Central Asian ‘Pontic steppe’ situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian.
The discovery cast doubts on the colonial Aryan Migration Theory (AMT), popularly called AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory). When the earth gives up its secrets, ghosts of dead cultures rise to question the beliefs of centuries.
Simply put, AIT states that India was invaded by Aryans, a fair blue-eyed nomadic tribe from Europe in 1,500 BC who drove out the dark, snub-nosed Dravidians to South India. Subsequently, these speaking Aryans composed the Vedas.
Long suppressed by Left-leaning academia and Marxist historians who had been drafting the syllabus of the past for seven decades, Hindutva scholars are on a Swachh Bharat History Mission using classical, anthropological and archaeological evidence to refute the invasion doctrine; sometimes even wandering into the misty miasma of mythology to prove a point.
It’s a touchy subject: a former customs official established Sri Ram’s birthday as January 10, 5114 BC, around noon in Ayodhya using obscure software.
However, AIT has a single common denominator: it undermines India’s sense of unity. Archaeologist George Erdosy has used linguistic evidence derived from archaeological data to deny any evidence of “invasions by a barbaric race enjoying technological and military superiority”, though there were indications of small-scale migrations from Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent in between 3,000 and 2,000 BC—not the sort of violent conquests which is the basis of AIT.
Indic is the new buzzword in the narrative of the Indian right, a broad linguistic umbrella that brings together all Indo-Aryan and Asian languages and scripts, arithmetic and Dharmic faiths. The chronology of Indian languages also disproves AIT post the excavations in Haryana; Tamil, a proto-Dravidian language which originated during 2,500 BC, is considered the world’s oldest discovered language. The genetic map of the Lady of Rakhigarhi shows that the original inhabitants of Harappa could have been Dravidians with more South Indian traits than today’s North Indians.
DNA fuels debate
Paleontological evidence of a Harappan Indian civilisation, which traded with Central Asians around 2500 BC, too, contradicts AIT. The absence of the genetic marker in ‘14411’ proves that the Harappans beat the itinerants by a cool five centuries. Anthropologists and geneticists find no significant differences between the skeletons of Indus Valley Civilisation’s (IVC) inhabitants and the Indo-Aryans.
Cambridge University geneticist Toomas Kivisild notes that researchers of mitochondrial DNA lineages found that the deviations in the common Eurasian gene pool occurred around 50,000 years ago when migrations were rampant across Europe and Asia. There is no evidence of a significant genetic explosion since then. In the sophisticated Indus Valley cities, where oceanic trade and commerce thrived, excavators found skeletons belonging to different races such as Proto-Australoid, Alpine, Mediterranean and Mongoloid.
However, no new ‘Aryan’ skeletons have been unearthed. Rakhigarhi is the largest Indus Valley site in India, even larger than Mohenjodaro in Sindh, Pakistan, and was ‘discovered’ by British archaeologists in the 1920s. Archeological Survey of India excavations since the 1960s reveal a sophisticated extensive urban settlement that was extant 70 centuries ago. The reborn Indian existential question of identity—native or imported—has set off a furious debate on colonialism, racism and religion.
Previously, Sanjay Dixit, a bureaucrat, author and chairman of the right-wing Jaipur Dialogue think tank, had announced a prize of Rs 15 lakh to anyone who could prove the AIT or AMT, as anthropologists call it. There were no takers. Imperials play race politics
AIT is originally a British precept, which propagated the existence of a master race, which rode across the Indus River and conquered pastoral civilisations in Harappa and Mohenjodaro.
Textbooks taught generations of children that Indian civilisation is the result of the migration of Anatolian and Iranian farmers; ancestors from the steppes who spoke the patois of Indo-European languages.
Geneticist Niraj Rai, who co-authored a paper on the subject with archaeologist Vasant Shinde, says, “We analysed a lot of samples from the Indus Valley Civilisation and found that the ancestry of the entire modern-day population of India is Harappan.” The closest definition of Aryan is perhaps in the Rig Veda which mentions ‘praja arya jyotiragrah’ (Children of Arya are led by light). Considering the spiritual essence of the text, Vedic scholars interpret ‘light’ to mean ‘enlightenment’.
Colonial caste classification had relegated Dravidians as Shudras with the Aryans forming the three upper castes. However, there is no such evidence of an invasion in either Indian literature or tradition. So what is all the fuss about?
Archaeologists say Indo-Aryan migration into northern Punjab started only after the decline of the IVC around 1,900 BC probably due to climate change and flooding, and not an Aryan invasion. This was also when a second migration occurred from the Indus belt.
Company starts faith propaganda
If history is written by the victors, geography is decided by rulers. Every invader, who has intruded into other countries and established empires, has depended on the hyperbole of racial and cultural superiority.
Islamic invaders who subjugated wealthy Indian kingdoms through fire and sword called Hindus idolaters and therefore primitive. Italian Jesuit missionary Roberto de Nobili, who came to South India in 1605 and called himself a ‘Brahmin from Rome’, claimed that he had discovered the lost Yajur Veda, which later proved to be nothing but a fake text claiming that Christian practices were followed by Brahmins. The British were no different.
Though the Nawab of Bengal was defeated at Plassey by Robert Clive, the earlier years of the Company had spawned the genus of Indophile Englishmen—whites who had gone native by adopting Indian ways, studying Indian languages and culture as superior to their own. The 1857 Mutiny changed that eclectic sociography.
The British martially cracked down on Indian kings, promulgated unfair succession laws and established a governance system based on racial and religious lines. The missionaries who came after brought in rigid Victorian social values, which are unfortunately being practised by conservative Hindus even today. Lord Macaulay decided that conversion was the best means to master India. This needed collaborators; upper-caste Indians with English education. Even before the Mutiny, he had written to his father, a Protestant minister in 1836: “Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully.
The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal 30 years hence.
And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.” Thus began the distortion of Indian history. British find their German puppet
Macaulay believed that converted Brahmins—intellectuals and scholars among them—would abandon their beliefs and attract other Indians to the British Christian fold, thereby causing internecine divide among the Hindu intelligentsia.
After well over a decade pursuing his dream of religious imperialism, he discovered the perfect vessel—an impecunious German Vedic scholar named Friedrich Max Müller.
Müller was given funds by the East India Company to translate and interpret the Vedas in such a manner so that Hindus lose faith in their religion and prefer Christian virtues. Müller went on to translate the Rig Veda with Sayana’s commentary and edited the 50-volume Sacred Books of the East. In 1868, he wrote to the Duke of Argyle, acting Secretary of State for India: “The ancient religion of India is doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?”
He was convinced that Brahmo Samaj will produce an Indian form of Christianity. Müller is perhaps the first foreigner who categorised ‘Árya’ as a race.
Though a British employee, he was a staunch German nationalist who promoted the notion of the ‘Aryan race’ and ‘nation’. Hence, it is no wonder that the study of AIT was compulsory in all Nazi textbooks.
The empire gets a fright
AIT owes a debt to the geographical conflicts in Europe in the 19th century and the unification of Germany after Prussia defeated France. Even Müller had attributed German superiority to AMT and Sanskrit. After united Germany emerged as the most powerful country in Western Europe, British educationist Sir Henry Maine warned, “A nation has been born out of Sanskrit.” The Company was frightened that the unification would inspire Indians, too. Müller was in a spot. To keep his reputation as a Vedic scholar and Sanskritist in England, he came up with a novel linguistic theory which categorised religions by three languages: Aryan, Semitic, and Chinese.
As the father of racist ethnology in Asia, he proposed a binary Aryan theory about a western and an eastern race from the Caucuses. The first went West and the second to India—Group A was more powerful than Group B, which in turn was more powerful than indigenous people, “who were easy to conquer”. Colonial civil servant Sir Herbert Hope Risley who conducted the Ethnographic Survey of Bengal in 1885-91 used the width-to-height ratio of noses to classify Indians into Aryan and Dravidian races and seven castes—the prehistoric figurines of the dancing girl and the priest-king made with the lost-wax process in 2500 BC from Mohenjodaro do not have Indo-Aryan features.
But Tamil-speaking Dravidians were already living in India before 1500 BC, and hence could not have been expelled by invaders. There is no evidence of Harappans speaking Tamil. Colonial annalists had argued that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek originated from a proto-Indo-European language. However, in the 1870s neogrammarians concluded that Greek/Latin vocalism was not based on Sanskrit, and therefore were original.
No common root word is found in all three languages before 700 BC. Dravidian and other South Asian languages share many features with Indo-Aryan speech which is alien to Indo-European languages, including its closest cousin Old Iranian.
Colonialism fears Sanskrit
Sir William Jones, hailed in England as the Father of Indology, fraudulently claimed that he knew 32 languages, including Sanskrit. He set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which banned Indians on January 15, 1784.
In his study, Aryans and British India, American historian, cultural anthropologist and Arthashastra expert Thomas Trautmann exposes the dark politics of race hatred in colonial Indian scholarship. He writes: the racial theory “by century’s end had become a settled fact, that the constitutive event for Indian civilisation…was the clash between invading, fair-skinned, civilised Sanskrit-speaking Aryans and dark-skinned, barbarous aborigines”.
Müller’s letter to his wife is revealing, “It took only 200 years for us to Christianise the whole of Africa, but even after 400 years, India eludes us, I have come to realise that it is Sanskrit which has enabled India to do so. And to break it I have decided to learn Sanskrit.” The first voice Thomas Edison wanted to record publically on a gramophone record was Müller’s. At a gathering of English scholars in London, Müller played the record on stage. The audience did not understand the words, which were in Sanskrit. It was the first sloka of Rig Veda, “Agni Meele Purohitam” (Oh Agni, You who gleam in the darkness, to You we come day by day, with devotion and bearing homage.
So be of easy access to us, Agni, as a father to his son, abide with us for our well being). Ironically, Müller never visited India, and obtained all his research from manuscripts with the British East India Company in London. The majority of Western Vedic translators were not proficient in Sanskrit either; since it was not a spoken language.
Who is the Aryan
In the late 19th century, Swami Vivekananda had mocked AIT at a meeting in the Madras Presidency, laughing at white ignoramuses who want to prove that “Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes.”
The theory’s political polemics revolve around one word ‘Arya’. Rai claims that they didn’t “use the term ‘Aryan’, because the word is imaginary”. In Sanskrit, Aryan means ‘noble’ and does not denote a race; “Ahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjanasadhavah” (One who is from an aristocratic family, of gentle mien, good-natured and righteous), says Amarakosha.
In none of the 36 mentions of Arya in the Rig Veda lies a racial connotation.
The great Aurobindo defined an ‘Aryan’ as not someone of a particular race, but a person who “accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration”.
The Theosophical Society went beyond the premise and declared that the Aryans were the founders of European civilisation.
Right-wing scholars argue that most well-known Leftist historians don’t know Sanskrit, Pali or Tamil which are the main sources of historical references. They also argue that the deeply Christian Müller calculated periods according to the Biblical timetable that puts the birth of the world in 4444 BC. Hence, he calculated that the Rig Veda was written somewhere between 1,500 and 1,200 BC.
It contains numerous references to constellations and eclipses. Conclusions derived through archaeoastronomy—a field of cultural research which combines archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, statistics and probability, and history—puts the Rig Veda's composition to 4,000 BC, not to AIT-circa 2,000 BC. The new rise of Vedic India is challenging centuries of colonialism and caste laws, which subverted a national notion of one India. Interpretation and ownership is the culprit behind the schisms of today.
Is the Rig Veda an indigenous Indian work?
Is India’s past black or white?
Did Aryans migrate from India to Europe instead?
Why do most Indians have Harappan genes?
History has conflicting answers. And it is a sensitive matter. In the search for a credible understanding of the country’s ancient philosophy, sciences, art, music and languages, many government-funded projects run the risk of ‘rewriting Indian history’ by engaging obscurantists who have claimed that Ravan had 24 types of aircraft and gravitational waves should be renamed ‘Narendra Modi Waves’. Indologist Edwin Francis Bryant, professor of religions of India at Rutgers University, USA, blames the poor qualifications of AIT champions. He is of the opinion that they completely discount or dismiss all linguistic evidence of Vedic India as an indigenous nation—Sanskrit was an oral tradition which started from 1200 BCE until Panini standardised its grammar around 500 BC.
It is difficult to believe that a nomadic, pastoral tribe like the Aryans could develop a sophisticated language like Sanskrit, while no written language has been discovered as used by people of the urbanised Indus Valley.
Bryant had spent many years in India studying Sanskrit and receiving training from Indian pundits. If the Rakhigarhi belle was a genetic marker of India’s cohesive past, Sanskrit is its cultural marker with the Vedas as its manual.
True, they recommended brutally horrifying religious restrictions on the lower castes, which made it easy for the Raj to divide religion. But the Indian power structure, which was blamed as an elite edifice dominated by Brahmins in the kingdoms and empires of antiquity, has changed radically.
In spite of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s recent glorification of Brahmins, India has a Dalit President now—its second. The Prime Minister is an OBC. Most chief ministers are non-Brahmins. The argument against the Aryan Migration Theory precedes ancient divisions to prove that a cohesive national identity has a world view, too.
The Colonial Distortion
Aryan Invasion Theory is originally a British precept which propagated the existence of a master race, which rode across the Indus River and conquered pastoral civilisations in Harappa and Mohenjodaro.
Textbooks taught generations of children that Indian civilisation is the result of migration of Anatolian and Iranian farmers; ancestors from the steppes who came bearing the patois of Indo-European languages.
The colonial caste classification had relegated Dravidians as Shudras with the Aryans forming the three upper castes. In 1916, imperial evangelism propagated the thesis that South Indians were the original Indians, who were driven out by North Indian Brahmanical Aryans in pre-Vedic times.
The Distorters
Friedrich Max Müller
He was perhaps the first foreigner who categorised ‘Árya’ as a race. A British employee, Müller was a staunch German nationalist who promoted the notion of the ‘Aryan race’ and ‘nation’. It’s no wonder that the study of AIT was a must in all Nazi textbooks. To keep his reputation as a Vedic scholar and Sanskritist in England, Müller came up with a novel linguistic theory. He categorised religions by languages: Aryan, Semitic, and Chinese. He proposed a binary Aryan theory about a western and an eastern race from the Caucuses. The first went West and the second to India.
Sir Herbert Hope Risley
The colonial civil servant who conducted the Ethnographic Survey of Bengal in 1885-91 used the width-to-height ratio of noses to classify Indians into Aryan and Dravidian races and seven castes. In a study, Aryans and British India, American historian, cultural anthropologist and Arthashastra expert Thomas Trautmann talks about the dark politics of race hatred in colonial Indian. He writes: “The constitutive event for Indian civilisation… was the clash between invading, fair-skinned, civilised Sanskrit-speaking Aryans and dark-skinned, barbarous aborigines.”
Sir William Jones
Hailed in England as the Father of Indology, Sir William Jones falsely claimed that he knew 32 languages, including Sanskrit. He set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which banned Indians on January 15, 1784.
Roberto de Nobili
The Italian Jesuit missionary, who came to South India in 1605 and called himself a ‘Brahmin from Rome’, claimed that he had discovered the lost Yajur Veda, which later proved to be nothing but a fake text claiming that Christian practices were followed by Brahmins.
The Sanskrit Question
Colonial annalists argued that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek originated from a proto-Indo-European language. Accordingly, cultural migration happened as indicated by linguistic similarities. However, in the 1870s, neogrammarians concluded that Greek/Latin vocalism was not based on Sanskrit, and therefore were original. No common root word is found in all three languages before 700 BC. Dravidian and other South Asian languages share many features with Indo-Aryan that are exclusive of other Indo-European languages, including its closest relative, Old Iranian. The Urheimat Factor
Archaeologists began their search for 'Urheimat'—the original homeland of the Indo-European speakers—in the late 18th century with the help of historical linguistics, archaeology, physical anthropology and more recently DNA analysis. A section proposed that speakers migrated east and west to form the proto-communities of different branches of the same language family. However, there are many confusing hypothesis on the location of Urheimat. TEPPE HYPOTHESIS Urheimat began in the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4,000 BC ANATOLIAN HYPOTHESIS Urheimat came into being in Anatolia around 8,000 BC ARMENIAN HYPOTHESIS Locates Urheimat at the south of the Caucasus in 5,000BC-4,000BC FRINGE THEORIES Neolithic creolisation hypothesis, Paleolithic Continuity Theory, and the Out of India hypothesis Aryan Invasion Theory: A Raging Debate The British brought terms like ‘Aryans and non-Aryans’, ‘Indo-European or Indo-German’ so widely that European academics even established a new discipline in the curriculum named ‘ethnography’ Pro Another name for Indus is ‘sindhu’ meaning sea. India has a vast coastline. Calling a river a sea proves the Vedas were written by people who had never seen the sea. So, most of the Vedas were composed outside India. There were no excavated images of horses in Harappa civilisation while in the Rig Veda horses are sacred objects as befits a wandering race. This explains how a nomadic race can defeat agriculturally occupied Dravidians. Indo-Aryan migrations started around 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot and brought Indo-Aryan languages into Inner Asia. Upper castes share European traits like fair skin. The lower castes have Negroid features and are dark-skinned. Hence, the Dravidians were conquered by the Aryans. Skeletons excavated from Indus Valley sites show they were flung into burial chambers instead of given proper burials.
Anti
Rig Veda calls ‘sea’ ‘samudra’.
There is archaeological evidence of horses in Harappa. Horse teeth have been excavated in Amri on Indus and Rana Ghundai on Balochistan border dating back to 3,600 BC. Earlier layers of excavations found horse bones and saddles in coastal Gujarat dating back to 2,300 BC.
How could Aryans drive chariots through the mountains of the Hindu Kush?
Punjabi Shudras are fairer than a South Indian or a Bengali Brahmin. A genetic study in Andhra Pradesh discovered that both Brahmins and fishermen have the same ‘Dravidian’ genetic traits. No evidence of mass graves that would indicate massacres. Rakhigarhi is the largest Indus Valley site in India, even larger than Mohenjodaro in Sindh, Pakistan, and was ‘discovered’ by British archaeologists in the 1920s. Archeological Survey of India excavations since the 1960s reveal a sophisticated extensive urban settlement that was extant 70 centuries ago.
Aryans Knew Little Beyond India
The only country outside of India that the Indo-Aryans seem to have known was Tibet as far east as Lake Manasa-sarovara. To the west they knew only a narrow fringe along the farther bank of the Indus and along the Kabul River. Toward the east they seem to have heard only of the river Lohita (Brahmaputra). The stories about Prag- jyotisa are conflicting. The center of the early state of that name was probably not in Assam, as generally believed, but somewhere in the upper Panjab, the Himalayas, or Tibet. It appears to have been a powerul empire extending from the Cinas and Yavanas on the west to or beyond the Kiratas on the east. Its center probably changed to Assam in the post-epic period. To the south the only country outside of India proper which was known to epic Aryans was Ceylon .
To eliminate some enticing theories about the Aryans' extensive geographical knowledge outside of India, we may state that Bahlika was not Balkh, Cma not China, Roman not Roman.
The Aryans had more than enough to occupy themselves in trying to conquer northern India. They were not greatly disturbed by events outside of that vast subcontinent until some foreign tribe actually reached its borders.
DNA analysis at Rakhigarhi remains challenges the theory
Sep 7, 2019: The Times of India
A newly published archaeological study based on DNA analysis of skeletal remains at the Rakhigarhi site in Haryana has claimed that inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) were a distinct indigenous people and challenges the theory of an “Aryan invasion” ending Harappan culture.
The study says IVC people were a south Asian group of indigenous people whose continuity of existence is traced back to before 7000 BC. The study, which is based on the genome sample obtained from one individual whose skeleton was extracted, suggests no noticeable migration of people and claims to have dismantled the Aryan theory.
“This breakthrough research completely sets aside the Aryan migration-invasion theory. The skeleton remains found in the upper part of the Citadel area of Mohenjo Daro belonged to those who died due to floods and were not massacred by Aryans as hypothesised by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. The Aryan invasion theory is based on very flimsy grounds,” said Vasant Shinde, former vice-chancellor of Deccan College, and one of the authors of the study.
The team of 28 researchers was led by Vasant Shinde of Deccan College of Pune and included Vageesh Narasimhan and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and Niraj Rai of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences among others.
The findings also lay bare the noteworthy progress Indian culture had already made at the time, putting it on a par with the 2000 BC Mesopotamian civilisation. Among its key findings, the study suggests that farming was indigenous to India, contradicting an earlier belief that it was brought to the region through migrations from Iran, and, most significantly, that Harappan genes are present in varying quantities in all south Asians.
The study argues that the DNA analysis shows that the people at Rakhigarhi, and the individual whose skeleton was examined, are from a population that is the largest source of ancestry for south Asians. “The Iranian-related ancestry in IVC derives from a lineage leading to early Iranian farmers, herders, and hunter gatherers before their ancestors separated, contradicting the hypothesis that the shared ancestry between early Iranians and south Asians reflects a large-scale spread of western Iranian farmers east,” the study says, arguing that this contradicts significant migrations during the IVC period.
The study explains the spread of Indo-European languages to likely later migrations. “...a natural route for Indo-European languages to have spread into south Asia is from eastern Europe via central Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE, a chain of transmission that did occur as has been documented in detail with ancient DNA. The fact that Steppe pastoralist ancestry in south Asia matches that in Bronze Age eastern Europe provides additional evidence for this theory, as it elegantly explains the shared distinctive features of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages.” The mature IVC was spread over northwest India between 2600-1900 BCE. Speaking to TOI, Dr Niraj Rai of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, who conducted the genetic research on the Rakhigarhi skeletons, defended the extrapolation of data on the basis of one genome sample.
“One sample means a billion people. That is the power of genetics. We have conclusive data and evidence to prove that there was no Aryan invasion. Also, there is conclusive evidence that shows farming was indigenous to India,” he said.
Rai also said that excavations found evidence that indigenous people migrated from the north to south India between 1800 BC and 1600 BC, likely following the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation by factors like drying up of the Saraswati basin.
This was nearly 100 years before Arabians and central Asian Steppe population arrived in India. “Since the first batch of migration to the south took place before the arrival of the Steppe population, the population in north India had a greater affinity to the Steppe people than the ones who migrated to the south,” he said.
The 28-member team of experts who collaborated on the study also said hunter-gatherers in south Asia had an independent origin and were authors of the settled way of life in this part of the world.
Copper-Bronze Age
Copper-studded chariots in UP’s Baghpat/ 2000-1800 BC
Sandeep Rai, ‘Bronze Age chariots’ found, claims ASI, June 6, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sandeep Rai, ‘Bronze Age chariots’ found, claims ASI, June 6, 2018: The Times of India
From: Sandeep Rai, ‘Bronze Age chariots’ found, claims ASI, June 6, 2018: The Times of India
The Archaeological Survey of India has stumbled upon the remains of what it said were three “chariots” that date back to 2000-1800 BC, during the Bronze Age. It is billing the find as the first physical evidence that such vehicles existed during that period in India.
The remains of the “chariots”, decorated with copper motifs, were found during excavations at Sinauli village in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district. The findings have been traced to the Copper-Bronze Age and will provide new insights into the culture and civilisation of that period, the ASI said.
The ASI team, which has been excavating the archaeologically rich site for the past three months, unveiled its findings on Monday.
“The discovery of a chariot puts us on a par with other ancient civilisations such as Mesopotamia and Greece, where chariots were extensively used. It seems a warrior class thrived in this region during that period,” said S K Manjul, who is co-director of the excavations and of ASI’s Institute of Archaeology in Delhi.
‘Indian civilisation on a par with Mesopotamia’s’
There was no mention of the remains of any horses being found, leaving open the possibility of the “chariots” having been powered by oxen. Figurines of such “oxen chariots” have been found in the past. The latest finds, however, are full-sized chariots, not miniatures.
The excavations, which began in March, have also unearthed eight burial sites and several artefacts, including three coffins, antenna swords, daggers, combs, and ornaments, among others.
The three “chariots” found in burial pits indicate the possibility of “royal burials” while other findings confirm the population of a warrior class here, officials said. Manjul called the findings “path-breaking” also because of the copper-plated anthropomorphic figures – having horns and peepal-leafed crowns – found on the coffins, which indicated the possibility of “royal burials”. “For the first time in the entire subcontinent, we have found this kind of a coffin. The cover is highly decorated with eight anthropomorphic figures. The sides of the coffins are also decorated with floral motifs,” Manjul said.
Coffins were discovered in past excavations in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira (Gujarat), but never with copper decorations, he added.
The findings also shed light on the noteworthy progress Indian civilisation had made at the time, bringing it at par with 2000 BC Mesopotamia, he claimed. “We are now certain that when in 2000 BC the Mesopotamians were using chariots, swords and helmets in wars, we also had similar things,” Manjul said. The swords, daggers, shields and a helmet confirmed the existence of a warrior population, and the discovery of earthen and copper pots, semi-precious and steatite beads, combs and a copper mirror from the burial pits point towards “sophisticated” craftsmanship and lifestyle, he said.
“It is confirmed that they were a warrior class. The swords have copper-covered hilts and a medial ridge making it strong enough for warfare,” the archaeologist said. The current site lies 120 metres from an earlier one in the village, excavated in 2005, where 116 burials were found. Manjul asserted that the chariots and coffins did not belong to the Harappan civilisation.
The Rig-Veda
The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this primitive folk-song is unknown. The Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed " from before all time," or at least 3001 years B.C. - nearly 5000 years ago. European scholars have inferred from astronomical dates that its composition was going on about 1400 B.C. But these dates are themselves given in writings of later origin, and might have been calculated backwards. We only know that the Vedic religion had been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the 6th century B. C. Nevertheless, the antiquity of the Rig-Veda, although not to be expressed in figures, is abundantly established. The earlier hymns exhibit the Aryans on the north-western frontiers of India just starting on their long journey. They show us the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the " black-skinned " aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the people. The chief himself seems to have been elected. Women enjoyed a high position, and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both " rulers of the house " (dampati), and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their husbands' funeral-pile was unknown, and the verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice have the very opposite meaning.
The Aryan tribes in the Veda are acquainted with most of the metals. They have blacksmiths, coppersmiths and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and " cattle-pens." Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth, the coin (Lat. pecunia) in which payments of fines are made; and one of their words for war literally means " a desire for cows." They have learned to build " ships," perhaps large river-boats, and seem to have heard something of the sea. Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef, used a fermented liquor or beer made from the soma plant, and offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastwards through northern India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier " black-skinned " races. They marched in whole communities from one river-valley to another, each house-father a warrior, husbandman and priest, with his wife and his little ones, and cattle.
About the beginning of the 6th century B.C. the settled country between the Himalaya mountains and the Nerbudda river was divided into sixteen independent states, some monarchies and some tribal republics, the most important of which were the four monarchies of Kosala, Magadha, the Vamsas and Avanti. Kosala, the modern kingdom of Oudh, appears to have been the premier state of India in 600 B.C. Later the supremacy was reft from it by the kingdom of Magadha, the modern Behar (q.v.). South of Kosala lay the kingdom of the Vamsas, and south of that again the kingdom of Avanti. In the north-west was Gandhara, on the banks of the Indus, in the neighbourhood of Peshawar. The history of these early states is only a confused record of war and intermarriages, and is still semi-mythical. The list of the sixteen states ignores everything north of the Himalayas, south of the Vindhyas, and east of the Ganges where it turns south.
The principal cities of India at this date were Ayodhya, the capital of Kosala at the time of the Ramayana, though it after wards gave place to Sravasti, which was one of the Capital cities. six great cities of India in the time of Buddha: archaeologists differ as to its position. Baranasi, the modern Benares, had in the time of Megasthenes a circuit of 25 m. Kosambi, the capital of the Vamsas, lay on the Jumna, 230 m. from Benares. Rajagriha (Rajgir), the capital of Magadha, was built by Bimbisara, the contemporary of Buddha. Roruka, the capital of Sovira, was an important centre of the coasting trade. Saketa was sometime the capital of Kosala. Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain, was the capital of Avanti. None of these great cities has as yet been properly excavated.
In those early days the Aryan tribes were divided into four social grades on a basis of colour: the Kshatriyas or nobles, who claimed descent from the early leaders; the Brahmans or sacrificing priests; the Vaisyas, the peasantry; and last of all the Sudras, the hewers of wood and drawers of water, of non-Aryan descent. Even below these there were low tribes and trades, aboriginal tribes and slaves. In later documents mention is made of eighteen gilds of work-people, whose names are nowhere given, but they probably included workers in wood, workers in metal, workers in stone, weavers, leather-workers, potters, ivory-workers, dyers, fisher-folk, butchers, hunters, cooks, barbers, flowersellers, sailors, basket-makers and painters.
It is supposed that sea-going merchants, mostly Dravidians, and not Aryans, availing themselves of the monsoons, traded in the 7th century B.C. from the south-west ports of India to Babylon, and that there they became acquainted with a Semitic alphabet, which they brought back with them, and from which all the alphabets now used in India, Burma, Siam and Ceylon have been gradually evolved. For the early inscriptional remains, see Inscriptions: India. The earliest written records in India, however, are Buddhist. The earliest written books are in Pali and Buddhist Sanskrit.
The earliest non-Indian accounts of India
Herodotus: c. 440 BC
[AAKAR PATEL | So who is an Indian? The answer, my friend, is on your thaali |Sunday, 01 July 2018| The Times of India]
The first reference to us as a nation came in a book written [c. 440 BC]. On page 187 of his work ‘The Histories’, Herodotus begins his inquiry of Indians (‘Indon’ in Greek) many centuries before we called our land India. A diligent fellow who reported first hand where he could Herodotus’s facts are broadly accurate. India is “the most populous nation in the known world”.
He says that we are the easternmost nation — “they dwell nearest to the sun” — but we can forgive him this ignorance of geography. Even Alexander the Great, who rode into Punjab a century after Herodotus and was tutored by Aristotle himself, knew nothing of the existence of China and Japan.
Herodotus also reports that India has giant ants — “larger than foxes but smaller than dogs” — that are trained to dig up gold. [Parvez Dewan: Some believe that this refers to gold extracted from the rivers of the Ladakh-Gilgit Baltistan area.] Astonishingly, this claim is repeated by Duryodhan in the Mahabharata’s Sabha Parva, chapter 51. Of our physiques, Herodotus writes: “The Thracians (Bulgarians) are the most powerful people in the world, except, of course, the Indians.” He adds: “And if they were of one mind, it is my belief that their match could not be found anywhere, and that they would very far surpass all other nations.” And Herodotus then says something crucial: “There are many Indian nations, none speaking the same language. ”
The Buddhist Period
The systems called Jainism (see Jains) and Buddhism (q.v.) had their roots in prehistoric philosophies, but were founded respectively by Vardhamana Mahavira and Gotama Buddha, both of whom were preaching in Magadha during the reign of Bimbisara (c. 520 B.C.).
During the next two hundred years Buddhism spread over northern India, perhaps receiving a new impulse from the Greek kingdoms in the Punjab. About the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Asoka, the king of Magadha or Behar, who reigned from 264 B.C. to 227 B.C., became a zealous convert to Buddhism. He is said to have supported 64,000 Buddhist priests; he founded many religious houses, and his kingdom is called the Land of the Monasteries (Vihara or Behar) to this day. He did for Buddhism what Constantine effected for Christianity; he organized it on the basis of a state religion. This he accomplished by five means - by a council to settle the faith, by edicts promulgating its principles, by a state department to watch over its purity, by missionaries to spread its doctrines, and by an authoritative collection of its sacred books.
In 246 B.C. Asoka is said 1 to have convened at Pataliputra (Patna) the third Buddhist council of one thousand elders (the tradition that he actually convened it rests on no actual evidence that we possess). Evil men, taking on them the yellow robe of the order, had given forth their own opinions as the teaching of Buddha. Such heresies were now corrected; and the Buddhism of southern Asia practically dates from Asoka's council. In a number of edicts, both before and after the synod, he published throughout India the grand principles of the faith. Such edicts are still found graven deep upon pillars, in caves and on rocks, from the Yusafzai valley beyond Peshawar on the north-western frontier, through the heart of Hindustan, to Kathiawar and Mysore on the south and Orissa in the east.
Tradition states that Asoka set up 64,000 memorial columns; and the thirty-five inscriptions extant in our own day show how widely these royal sermons were spread over India. In the year of the council, the king also founded a state department to watch over the purity and to direct the spread of the faith. A minister of justice and religion (Dharma Mahamatra) directed its operations; and, one of its first duties being to proselytize, he was specially charged with the welfare of the aborigines among whom its missionaries were sent. Asoka did not think it enough to convert the inferior races without looking after their material interests. Wells were to be dug and trees planted along the roads; a system of medical aid was established throughout his kingdom and the conquered provinces, as far as Ceylon, for both man and beast. Officers were appointed to watch over domestic life and public morality, and to promote instruction among the women as well as the youth.
Below: The Encyclopaedia resumes
Asoka
Asoka recognized proselytism by peaceful means as a state duty. The rock inscriptions record how he sent forth missionaries " to the utmost limits of the barbarian countries," to "intermingle among all unbelievers" for the spread of religion. They shall mix equally with Brahmans and beggars, with the 1 The historicity of this convention, not now usually admitted by scholars, is maintained by Bishop Copleston of Calcutta in his I Buddhism, Primitive and Present (1908).
Early states, Social life
Dreaded and the despised, both within the kingdom " and in foreign countries, teaching better things." Conversion is to be effected by persuasion, not by the sword. This character of a proselytizing faith which wins its victories by peaceful means has remained a prominent feature of Buddhism to the present day. Asoka, however, not only took measures to spread the religion; he also endeavoured to secure its orthodoxy. He collected the body of doctrine into an authoritative version, in the Magadhi language or dialect of his central kingdom in Behar a version which for two thousand years has formed the canon (pitakas) of the southern Buddhists. the fourth and last of the great councils was held in Kashmir under the Kushan king Kanishka (see below). This council, which consisted of five hundred members, compiled three commentaries on the Buddhist faith. These commentaries supplied in part materials for the Tibetan or northern canon, drawn up at a subsequent period. The northern canon, or, as the Chinese proudly call it, the " greater vehicle of the law," includes many later corruptions or developments of the Indian faith as originally embodied by Asoka in the " lesser vehicle," or canon of the southern Buddhists.
The Kanishka commentaries were written in the Sanskrit language, perhaps because the Kashmir and northern priests who formed his council belonged to isolated Aryan colonies, which had been little influenced by the growth of the Indian vernacular dialects. In this way Kanishka and his Kashmir council became in some degree to the northern or Tibetan Buddhists what Asoka and his council had been to the Buddhists of Ceylon and the south.' Buddhism never ousted Brahmanism from any large part of India. The two systems co-existed as popular religions during more than a thousand years (250 B.C. to about A.D. Buddhism 800) and modern Hinduism is the joint product of and Brahma both. Certain kings and certain eras were intense' manism. g intensely Buddhistic; but the continuous existence of Brahmanism is abundantly proved from the time of Alexander (327 B.C.) downwards.
The historians who chronicled his march, and the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who succeeded them (300 B.C.) in their literary labours, bear witness to the predominance of the old faith in the period immediately preceding Asoka. Inscriptions, local legends, Sanskrit literature, and the drama disclose the survival of Brahman influence during the next six centuries (250 B.C. - A.D. 400). From A.D. 400 we have the evidence of the Chinese pilgrims, who toiled through Central Asia into India as the birthplace of their faith. Fa-Hien entered India from Afghanistan, and journeyed down the whole Gangetic valley to the Bay of Bengal in A.D. 399-4 1 3. He found Brahman priests equally honoured with Buddhist monks, and temples to the Indian gods side by side with the religious houses of his own faith. Hstian Tsang also travelled to India from China by the Central Asia route, and has left a fuller record of the state of the two religions in the 7th century. His journey extended from A.D. 629 to 645, and everywhere throughout India he found the two faiths eagerly competing for the suffrages of the people. By that time, indeed, Brahmanism was beginning to assert itself at the expense of the other religion.
The monuments of the great Buddhist monarchs, Asoka and Kanishka, confronted him from the time he neared the Punjab frontier; but so also did the temples of Siva and his " dread " queen Bhima. Throughout north-western India he found Buddhist convents and monks surrounded by " swarms of heretics." The political power was also divided, although Buddhist sovereigns predominated. A Buddhist monarch ruled over ten kingdoms in Afghanistan. At Peshawar the great monastery built by Kanishka was deserted, but the populace remained faithful. In Kashmir king and people were devout Buddhists, under the teaching of five hundred monasteries and five thousand monks. In the country identified with Jaipur, on the other hand, the inhabitants were devoted to heresy and war. 1 In 1909 the excavation of a ruined stupa near Peshawar disclosed a casket, with an inscription of Kanishka, and containing fragments of bones believed to be those of Buddha himself.
During the next few centuries Brahmanism gradually became the ruling religion. There are legends of persecutions instigated by Brahman reformers, such as Kumarila Bhatta and Sankar-Acharjya. But the downfall of Buddhism 'De cline seems to have resulted from natural decay, and from h ismdd- new movements of religious thought, rather than from any general suppression by the sword. Its extinction is contemporaneous with the rise of Hinduism, and belongs to a subsequent part of this sketch. In the r Ith century, only outlying states, such as Kashmir and Orissa, remained faithful; and before the Mahommedans fairly came upon the scene Buddhism as a popular faith had disappeared from India. During the last ten centuries Buddhism has been a banished religion from its native home. But it has won greater triumphs in its exile than it could ever have achieved in the land of its birth. It has created a literature and a religion for more than a third of the human race, and has profoundly affected the beliefs of the rest.
Five hundred millions of men, or 35% of the inhabitants of the world, still follow the teaching of Buddha. Afghanistan, Nepal, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan, the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, Burma, Ceylon and India at one time marked the magnificent circumference of its conquests. Its shrines and monasteries stretched in a continuous line from the Caspian to the Pacific, and still extend from the confines of the Russian empire to the equatorial archipelago. During twenty-four centuries Buddhism has encountered and outlived a series of powerful rivals. At this day it forms one of the three great religions of the world, and is more numerously followed than either Christianity or Islam. In India its influence has survived its separate existence: it supplied a basis upon which Brahmanism finally developed from the creed of a caste into the religion of the people. The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste; in the gentleness and charity to all men, which takes the place of a poor-law in India, and gives a high significance to the half satirical epithet of the " mild " Hindu.
Hindu Period
The external history of India may be considered to begin with the Greek invasion in 327 B.C. Some indirect trade between India and the Levant seems to have existed from very ancient times. Homer was acquainted with tin and other articles of Indian merchandise by their Sanskrit names; and a long list has been made of Indian products mentioned in the Bible. In the time of Darius (see Persia) the valley of the Indus was a Persian satrapy. But the first Greek historian who speaks clearly of India was Hecataeus of Miletus (549-486 B.C.); the knowledge of Herodotus (450 B.C.) ended at the Indus; and Ctesias, the physician (401 B.C.), brought back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of India, its dyes and fabrics, its monkeys and parrots. India to the east of the Indus was first made known in Europe by the historians' and men of science who accompanied Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Their narratives, although now lost, are condensed in Strabo, Pliny and Arrian. Soon afterwards Megasthenes, as Greek ambassador resident at a court in Bengal (306-298 B.C.), had opportunities for the closest observation. The knowledge of the Greeks and Romans concerning India practically dates from his researches, 300 B.C.
Alexander the Great entered India early in 327 B.C. Crossing the lofty Khawak and Kaoshan passes of the Hindu Kush, he advanced by Alexandria, a city previously founded in the Koh-i-Daman, and Nicaea, another city to the west of Jalalabad, on the road from Kabul to India. Thence he turned eastwards through the Kunar valley and Bajour, and crossed the Gouraios (Panjkora) river. Here he laid siege to Mount Aornos, which is identified march. by some authorities with the modern Mahaban, though this identification was rejected by Dr Stein after an exhaustive survey of Mount Mahaban in 1904. Alexander crossed the Indus at Ohind, 16 m. above Attock, receiving there the submission of the great city of Taxila, which is now represented by miles of ruins near the modern Rawalpindi. Crossing the Hydaspes (Jhelum) he defeated Porus in a great battle, and crossing the Acesines (Chenab) near the foot of the hills and the Hydraotes (Ravi), reached the Hyphasis (Beas). Here he was obliged by the temper of his army to retrace his steps, and retreat to the Jhelum, whence he sailed down the river to its confluence with the Indus, and thence to Patala, probably the modern Hyderabad. From Patala the admiral Nearchos was to sail round the coast to the Euphrates, while Alexander himself marched through the wilds of Gedrosia, or modern Makran. Ultimately, after suffering agonies of thirst in the desert, the army made its way back to the coast at the modern harbour of Pasin, whence the return. to Susa in Persia was comparatively easy.
During his two years' campaign in the Punjab and Sind, Alexander captured no province, but he made alliances, founded cities and planted garrisons. He had transferred much territory to chiefs and confederacies devoted to his cause; every petty court had its Greek faction; and the detachments which he left behind at various positions, from the Afghan frontier to the Beas, and from near the base of the Himalaya to the Sind delta, were visible pledges of his return. At Taxila (DehriShahan) and Nicaea (Mong) in the northern Punjab, at Alexandria (Uchch) in the southern Punjab, at Patala (Hyderabad) in Sind, and at other points along his route, he established military settlements of Greeks or allies. A large body of his troops remained in Bactria; and, in the partition of the empire which followed Alexander's death in 323 B.C., Bactria and India eventually fell to Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy (see Seleucid).
Meanwhile a new power had arisen in India. Among the Indian adventurers who thronged Alexander's camp in the Punjab, each with his plot for winning a kingdom or crushing a rival, Chandragupta Maurya, an exile from the Gangetic valley, seems to have played a somewhat ignominious part. He tried to tempt the wearied Greeks on the banks of the Beas with schemes of conquest in the rich south-eastern provinces; but, having personally offended their leader, he had to fly the camp (326 B.C.). In the confused years which followed, he managed with the aid of plundering bands to form a kingdom on the ruins of the Nanda dynasty in Magadha or Behar (321 B.C.).
He seized the capital, Pataliputra, the modern Patna, established himself firmly in the Gangetic valley, and compelled the north-western principalities, Greeks and natives alike, to acknowledge his suzerainty. While, therefore, Seleucus was winning his way to the Syrian monarchy during the eleven years which followed Alexander's death, Chandragupta was building up an empire in northern India. Seleucus reigned in Syria from 312 to 280 B.C., Chandragupta in the Gangetic valley from 321 to 296 B.C. In 312 B.C. the power of both had been consolidated, and the two new sovereignties were brought face to face. In that year Seleucus, 'having recovered Babylon, proceeded to re-establish his authority in Bactria (q.v.) and the Punjab. In the latter province he found the Greek influence decayed.
Alexander had left behind a mixed force of Greeks and Indians at Taxila. No sooner was he gone than the Indians rose and slew the Greek governor; the Macedonians massacred the Indians; a new governor, sent by Alexander, murdered the friendly Punjab prince, Porus, and was himself driven out of the country by the advance of Chandragupta from the Gangetic valley. Seleucus, after a war with Chandragupta, determined to ally himself with the new power in India rather than to oppose it. In return for five hundred elephants, he ceded the Greek settlements in the Punjab and the Kabul valley, gave his daughter to Chandragupta in marriage, and stationed an ambassador, Megasthenes, at the Gangetic court (302 B.C.). Chandragupta became familiar to the Greeks as Sandrocottus, king of the Prasii; his capital, Pataliputra was called by them Palimbothra. On the other hand, the names of Greeks and kings of Grecian dynasties appear in the rock inscriptions, under Indian forms.
Previous to the time of Megasthenes the Greek idea of India was a very vague one. Their historians spoke of two classes of Indians - certain mountainous tribes who dwelt in northern Afghanistan under the Caucasus or Hindu Kush, and a maritime race living on the coast of Baluchistan. Of the India of modern geography lying beyond the Indus they practically knew nothing. It was this India to the east of the Indus that Megasthenes opened up to the western world. He describes the classification of the people, dividing them, however, into seven castes instead of four, namely, philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds, artisans, soldiers, inspectors and the counsellors of the king. The philosophers were the Brahmans, and the prescribed stages of their life are indicated. Megasthenes draws a distinction between the Brahmans (Bpaxµ.aves) and the Sarmanae (Iap,u6.pat), from which some scholars have inferred that the Buddhist Sarmanas were a recognized class fifty years before the council of Asoka. But the Sarmanae also include Brahmans in the first and third stages of their life as students and forest recluses. The inspectors or sixth class of Megasthenes have been identified with Asoka's Mahamatra and his Buddhist inspectors of morals.
The Greek ambassador observed with admiration the absence of slavery in India, the chastity of the women, and the courage of the men. In valour they excelled all other Asiatics; they required no locks to their doors; above all, no Indian was ever known to tell a lie. Sober and industrious, good farmers and skilful artisans, they scarcely ever had recourse to a lawsuit, and lived peaceably under their native chiefs. The kingly government is portrayed almost as described in Manu, with its hereditary castes of councillors and soldiers.
Megasthenes mentions that India was divided into one hundred and eighteen kingdoms; some of which, such as that of the Prasii under Chandragupta, exercised suzerain powers. The village system is well described, each little rural unit seeming to be an independent republic. Megasthenes remarked the exemption of the husbandmen (Vaisyas) from war and public services, and enumerates the dyes, fibres, fabrics and products (animal, vegetable and mineral) of India. Husbandry depended on the periodical rains; and forecasts of the weather, with a view to " make adequate provision against a coming deficiency," formed a special duty of the Brahmans. " The philosopher who errs in his predictions observes silence for the rest of his life." Before the year 300 B.C. two powerful monarchies had thus begun to act upon the Brahmanism of northern India, from the east and from the west. On the east, in the Gangetic valley, Chandragupta (320-296 B.C.) firmly consolidated the dynasty which during the next century produced Asoka (264-228 or 227 B.C.), and established Buddhism throughout India. On the west, the Seleucids diffused Greek influences, and sent forth Graeco-Bactrian expeditions to the Punjab. Antiochus Theos (grandson of Seleucus Nicator) and Asoka (grandson of Chandragupta), who ruled these two monarchies in the 3rd century B.C., made a treaty with each other (256). In the next century Eucratides, king of Bactria, conquered as far as Alexander's royal city of Patala, and possibly sent expeditions into Cutch and Gujarat, 181-161 B.C. Of the Graeco-Indian monarchs, Menander advanced farthest into north-western India, and his coins are found from Kabul, near which he probably had his capital, as far as 1Vluttra on the Jumna.' The Buddhist dynasty of Chandragupta profoundly modified the religion of northern India from the east; the Seleucid empire, with its Bactrian and later offshoots, deeply influenced the science and art of Hindustan from the west.
Brahman astronomy owed much to the Greeks, and what the Buddhists were to the architecture of northern India, that the Greeks were to its sculpture. Greek faces and profiles constantly occur in ancient Buddhist statuary, and enrich almost all the larger museums in India. The purest specimens have been found in the Northwest frontier province (the ancient Gandhara) and the Punjab, where the Greeks settled in greatest force. As we proceed eastward from the Punjab, the Greek type begins to fade. Purity of outline gives place to lusciousness of form. In the 1 In 1909 an inscription in Brahmi characters was discovered near Bhilsa in Central India recording the name of a Greek, Heliodorus. He describes himself as a worshipper of Bhagavata (= Vishnu), and states that he had come from Taxila in the name of the great king Antialcidas, who is known from his coins to have lived c. 170 B.C.
Ch an dragupta Maurya. Greek influence art. female figures, the artists trust more and more to swelling breasts and towering chignons, and load the neck with constantly accumulating jewels. Nevertheless, the Grecian type of countenance long survived in Indian art. It is entirely unlike the present coarse conventional ideal of sculptured beauty, and may even be traced in the delicate profiles on the so-called sun temple at Kanarak, built in the 12th century A.D. on the remote Orissa shore.
Chandragupta (q.v.) was one of the greatest of Indian kings. The dominions that he had won back from the Greeks he administered with equal power. He maintained an army of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 horsemen, 36,000 men with the elephants, and 24,000 men with the chariots, which was controlled by an elaborate waroffice system. The account given of his reign by Megasthenes makes him better known to us than any other Indian monarch down to the time of Akbar. In 297 B.C. he was succeeded by his son, Bindusara, who is supposed to have extended his dominions down to Madras. In 272 B.C. he in turn was succeeded by Asoka, the Buddhist emperor, the religious side of whose reign has already been described. Asoka's empire included the greater part of Afghanistan, a large part of Baluchistan, Sind, Kashmir, Nepal, Bengal to the mouths of the Ganges, and peninsular India down to the Palar river. After Asoka the Mauryas dwindled away, and the last of them, Brihadratha, was treacherously assassinated in 184 B.C. by his commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra Sunga, who founded the Sunga dynasty.
During the 2nd century B.C. north-western India was invaded and partially conquered by Antiochus III. the Great, Demetrius ( q.v.), Eucratides (q.v.) and Menander (q.v.). With the last of these Pushyamitra Sunga waged successful war, driving him from the Gangetic valley and confining him to his conquests in the west. Pushyamitra nomads from Central Asia (see Saka), the Pahlavas, whose name is supposed to be a corruption of " Parthiva " (i.e. Parthians of Persia), and the Yavanas (Ionians), i.e. foreigners from the old Indo-Greek kingdoms of the north west frontier, all of whom had been driven southwards by the Yue-chi. Their rulers, of whom the first to be mentioned is Bhumaka, of the Kshaharata family, took the Persian title of satrap (Kshatrapa). They were hated by the Hindus as barbarians who disregarded the caste system and despised the holy law, and for centuries an intermittent struggle continued between the satraps and the Andhras, with varying fortune. Finally, however, about A.D. 236, the Andhra dynasty, after an existence of some 460 years, came to an end, under circumstances of which no record remains, and their place in western India was taken by the Kshaharata satraps, until the last of them was overthrown by Chandragupta Vikramaditya at the close of the 4th century.
Meanwhile, the Yue-chi had themselves crossed the Hindu Kush to the invasion of north-western India (see YuE-Cm). They were originally divided into five tribes, which were united under the rule of Kadphises I. 1 (? A.D. 45-85), the founder of 1 This is the conventional European form of the name. For other forms see YuE-Cm.
the Kushan dynasty, who conquered the Kabul valley, annihilating what remained there of the Greek dominion, and swept away the petty Indo - Greek and IndoParthian principalities on the Indus. His successors completed the conquest of north-western India from the delta of the Indus eastwards probably as far as Benares. 2 A 2.3 One effect of the Yue-chi conquests was to open up a channel of commerce with the Roman empire by the northern trade routes; and the Indian embassy which, according to Dion. Cassius (ix. 58), visited Trajan after his arrival at Rome in A.D. 99, was probably 2 sent by Kadphises II. (Ooemokadphises) to announce his conquest of north-western India. The most celebrated of the Kushan kings, however, was Kanishka, whose date is still a matter of controversy. 3 From his capital at Purushapura (Peshawar) he not only maintained his hold on north-western India, but conquered Kashmir, attacked Pataliputra, carried on a successful war with the Parthians, and led an army across the appalling passes of the Taghdumbash Pamir to the conquest of Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan. It is not, however, as a conqueror that Kanishka mainly lives on in tradition, but as a Buddhist monarch, second in reputation only to Asoka, and as the convener of the celebrated council of Kashmir already mentioned.
The dynasties of the Andhras in the centre and south and of the Kushans in the north came to an end almost at the same time (c. A.D. 236-225 respectively). The history of India during the remainder of the 3rd century is all but a blank, a confused record of meaningless names and disconnected events; and it is not until the opening of the 4th century that the veil is lifted, with the rise to supreme power in Magadha (A.D. 320) of Chandragupta I., the founder of the Gupta dynasty and empire (see Gupta), the most extensive since the days of Asoka. He was succeeded by Chandragupta II. Vikramaditya, whose court and administration are described by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien, and who is supposed to have been the original of the mythical king Vikramaditya, who figures largely in Indian legends. The later Guptas were overwhelmed (c. 470) by the White Huns, or Ephthalites, who after breaking the power of Persia and assailing the Kushan kingdom of Kabul, had poured into India, conquered Sind, and established their rule as far south as the Nerbudda.
The dominion of the Huns in India, as elsewhere, was a mere organization for brigandage on an imperial scale and it did not long survive. It was shaken (c. 528) by the defeat, at the hands of tributary princes goaded to desperation, of Mihiragula, the most powerful and bloodthirsty of its rulers - the " Attila of India." It collapsed with the overthrow of the central power of the White Huns on the Oxus (c. 565) by the Turks. Though, however, this stopped the incursions of Asiatic hordes from the north-west, and India was to remain almost exempt from foreign invasion for some 500 years, the Ephthalite conquest added new and permanent elements to the Indian population. After the fall of the central power, the scattered Hunnish settlers, like so many before them, became rapidly Hinduized, and are probably the ancestors of some of the most famous Rajput clans.4 The last native monarch, prior to the Mahommedan conquest,' to establish and maintain paramount power in the north was Harsha, or Harshavardhana (also known as Siladitya), for whose reign (606-648) full and trustworthy materials exist in the book of travels written by the Chinese pilgrim Hstian Tsang and the Harsha-charita (Deeds of Harsha) composed by Bana, a Brahman who lived at the royal court. Harsha was the younger son of the raja of Thanesar, and gained his first experience of campaigning while still a boy in the successful wars 2 V. A. Smith, Early "list. of India, p. 238.
Smith, op. cit. pp. 239, &c., says that he probably succeeded Kadphises II. about A.D. 120. Dr Fleet dates the beginning of Kanishka's reign 58 B.C. (see Inscriptions: Indian). Mr Vincent Smith (Imp. Gaz. of India, The Indian Empire, ed. 1908, vol. ii. p. 289, note) dissents from this view, which is also held by Dr Otto Franke of Berlin, stating that Dr Stein's discoveries in Chinese Turkestan " strongly confirm the view " held by himself.
4 See V. A. Smith, op. cit. pp. 297, &c. war. These tribes were the Sakas, a horde of pastoral P established his own paramountcy over northern India; but his reign is mainly memorable as marking the beginning of the Brahmanical reaction against Buddhism, a reaction which Pushyamitra is said to have forwarded not only by the peaceful revival of Hindu rites but by a savage persecution of the Buddhist monks. The Sunga dynasty, after lasting 112 years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which lasted 45 years, i.e. until about 27 B.C., when it was overthrown by an unknown king of the Andhra dynasty of the Satavahanas, whose power, originating in the deltas of the Godavari and Kistna rivers, by A.D. 200 had spread across India to Nasik and gradually pushed its way northwards.
About A.D. loo there appeared in the west three foreign tribes from the north, who conquered the native population and established themselves in Malwa, Gujarat and Kathia waged by his father and brother against the Huns on the northwestern frontier. After the treacherous murder of his brother by Sasanka, king of Central Bengal, he was confirmed as raja, though still very young, by the nobles of Thanesar in 606, though it would appear that his effective rule did not begin till six years later.' His first care was to revenge his brother's death, and though it seems that Sasanka escaped destruction for a while (he was still ruling in 619), Harsha's experience of warfare encouraged him to make preparations for bringing all India under his sway. By the end of five and a half years he had actually conquered the north-western regions and also, probably, part of Bengal. After this he reigned for 342 years, devoting most of his energy to perfecting the administration of his vast dominions, which he did with such wisdom and liberality as to earn the commendation of Hsiian Tsang. In his campaigns he was almost uniformly successful; but in his attempt to conquer the Deccan he was repulsed (620) by the Chalukya king, Pulikesin II., who successfully prevented him from forcing the passes of the Nerbudda. Towards the end of his reign Harsha's empire embraced the whole basin of the Ganges from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda, including Nepa1, 2 besides Malwa, Gujarat and Surashtra (Kathiawar); while even Assam (Kamarupa) was tributary to him.
The empire, however, died with its founder. His benevolent despotism had healed the wounds inflicted by the barbarian invaders, and given to his subjects a false feeling of security. For he left no heir to carry on his work; his death " loosened the bonds which restrained the disruptive forces always ready to operate in India, and allowed them to produce their normal result, a medley of petty states, with ever-varying boundaries, and engaged in unceasing internecine war." 3 In the Deccan the middle of the 6th century saw the rise of the Chalukya dynasty, founded by Pulikesin I. about A.D. 550.
The most famous monarch of this line was Pulikesin II., who repelled the inroads of Harsha (A.D. 620), and whose court was visited by Hsiian Tsang (A.D. 640); but in A.D. 642 he was defeated by the Pallavas of Conjeeveram, and though his son Vikramaditya I. restored the fallen fortunes of his family, the Chalukyas were finally superseded by the Rashtrakutas about A.D. 750. The Kailas temple at Ellora was built in the reign of Krishna I. (c. A.D. 760). The last of the Rashtrakutas was overthrown in A.D. 973 by Taila II., a scion of the old Chalukya stock, who founded a second dynasty known as the Chalukyas of Kalyani, which lasted like its predecessor for about two centuries and a quarter. About A.D. 'coo the Chalukya kingdom suffered severely from the invasion of the Chola king, Rajaraja the Great. Vikramanka, the hero of Bilhana's historical poem, came to the throne in A.D. 1076 and reigned for fifty years. After his death the Chalukya power declined. During the 12th and 13th centuries a family called Hoysala attained considerable prominence in the Mysore country, but they were overthrown by Malik Kafur in A.D. 1310. The Yadava kings of Deogiri were descendants of feudatory nobles of the Chalukya kingdom, but they, like the Hoysalas, were overthrown by Malik Kafur, and Ramachandra, the last of the line, was the last independent Hindu sovereign of the Deccan.
According to ancient tradition the kingdoms of the south were three - Pandya, Chola and Chera. Pandya occupied the The extremity of the peninsula, south of Pudukottai, Kingdoms Chola extended northwards to Nellore, and Chera of the lay to the west, including Malabar, and is identified South. with the Kerala of Asoka. All three kingdoms were occupied by races speaking Dravidian languages. The authentic history of the south does not begin until the 9th and 10th centuries A.D., though the kingdoms are known to have existed in Asoka's time. The most ancient mention of the name Pandya occurs in the 4th century B.C., and in Asoka's time the kingdom was inde 1 His era, however, is dated from 606.
2 So V. A. Smith, op. cit. p. 324, who on this point differs from Sylvain Levi and Ettinghausen. For Harsha's reign see Smith, op. cit. xiii. 311-331. pendent, but no early records survive, the inscriptions of the dynasty being of late date, while the long lists of kings in Tamil literature are untrustworthy. During the early centuries of the Christian era the Pandya and Chera pTandya kingdoms traded with Rome. The most ancient Kingdom. Pandya king to whom a definite date can be ascribed is Rajasimha (c. A.D. 920). Records begin towards the end of the 12th century, and the dynasty can be traced from then till the middle of the 16th century. The most conspicuous event in its history was the invasion by the Sinhalese armies of Parakramabahu, king of Ceylon (c. A.D. 1175). The early records of the Chera kingdom are still more meagre; and the authentic list of the rajas of Travancore does not begin till A.D..1335, and the rajas of Cochin two centuries later.
The Chola kingdom, like the Pandya, is mentioned by the Sanskrit grammarian Katyayana in the 4th century B.C., and was recognized by Asoka as independent. The dynastic history of the Cholas begins about A.D. 860, The Chola and is known from then until its decline in the middle Kingdom. of the 13th century. During those four centuries their history is I t intertwined with that of the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and other minor dynasties. In A.D. 640 the Chola country was visited by Hsiian Tsang, but the country at that time was desolate, and the dynasty of small importance. In A.D. 985 Rajaraja the Great came to the throne, and after a reign of twenty-seven years died the paramount ruler of southern India. He conquered and annexed the island of Ceylon, and was succeeded by four equally vigorous members of the dynasty; but after the time of Vikrama (A.D. 1120) the Chola power gradually declined, and was practically extinguished by Malik Kafur.
The name of the Pallavas appears to be identical with that of the Pahlavas, a foreign tribe, frequently mentioned in inscriptions and Sanskrit literature. It is supposed, therefore, that the Pallavas came from the north, and gradually worked their way down to Malabar and the Coromandel coast. When first heard of in the znd century A.D. they are a ruling race. The Pallavas appear, like the Mahrattas in later times, to have imposed tribute on the territorial governments of the country. The first Pallava king about whom anything substantial is known was Sivaskanda-varman (c. A.D. 150), whose capital was Kanchi (Conjeeveram), his power extending into the Telugu country as far as the Kistna river. Two centuries later Samudragupta conquered eleven kings of the south, of whom three were Pallavas.
It appears that in the 4th century three Pallava chiefs were established at Kanchi, Vengi and Palakkada, the latter two being subordinate to the first, and that Pallava rule extended from the Godavari on the north to the Southern Vellaru river on the south, and stretched across Mysore from sea to sea. About A.D. 609 Pulikesin II., the Chalukya king, defeated Mahendra-Varman, a Pallava chief, and drove him to take refuge behind the walls of Kanchi. About A.D. 620 a prince named Vishnuvardhana founded the Eastern Chalukya line in the province of Vengi, which was taken from the Pallavas. Hsiian Tsang visited Kanchi, the Pallava capital, in the year A.D. 640; the country was, according to his account, l000 m. in circumference, and the capital was a large city 5 or 6 m. in circumference. In A.D. 642 the Pallavas defeated in turn Pulikesin II. The conflict became perennial, and when the Rashtrakutas supplanted the Chalukyas in the middle of the 8th century, they took up the old quarrel with the Pallavas. Towards the end of the 10th century the Pallava power, which had lasted for ten centuries, was destroyed by the Chola monarch, Rajaraja the Great. Pallava nobles existed to the end of the 17th century, and the raja of Pudukottai claims descent from the ancient royal family.
Maiaommedan Period. At the time that Buddhism was being crushed out of India. by the Brahmanic reaction, a new faith was being born in Arabia, destined to supply a youthful fanaticism which should.
The Deccan
The Pallava Confederacy. sweep the country from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from the western to the eastern sea. Mahomet, the founder of Islam, died at Medina in A.D. 632, while the Chinese pilgrim HuUan Tsang was still on his travels. The first Mahommedan invasion of India is placed in 664, only thirty-two years after the death of the prophet. The Punjab is said to have been ravaged on this occasion with no permanent results. The first Mahommedan conquest was the outlying province of Sind. In 711, or seventy-nine years after the death of Mahomet, an Arab army under Mahommed b. Kasim invaded and conquered the Hindus of Sind in the name of Walid I., caliph of Damascus, of the Omayyad line. In the same year Roderic, the last of the Goths, fell before the victorious Saracens in Spain. But in India the bravery of the Rajputs and the devotion of the Brahmans seem to have afforded a stronger national bulwark than existed in western Europe. In 750 the Hindus rose in rebellion and drove out the Mussulman tyrant, and the land had rest for one hundred and fifty years.
The Mediæval Climate Anomaly
AD 1100-1300
Jhimli Mukherjeepandey, Dec 16, 2019: Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey Times of India
Two major floods caused by monsoon pattern anomalies, which inundated large parts of the subcontinent approximately 800 and 700 years ago, might have wiped out powerful dynasties across what is now known as India. Startling evidence of this has been unearthed by a group of geology experts from IIT Kharagpur.
The group’s findings, published in Elsevier, a reputable Dutch journal specialising in scientific, technical and medical content, has stunned historians and archaeologists.
The findings are based on years of study of oxygen isotopes on ancient stalagmites of Meghalaya’s Wah Shikar caves. Oxygen isotopes are pointers to the traces that are left behind by precipitation or rainfall over a time-period, called time slide by scientists.
The stalagmites are thousands of years old but the group studied the history of precipitation for a little over 900 years — between 1100AD and 2012AD — considering the fact that three major climatic events took place in the subcontinent during this phase.
The three major climatic changes that took place during this time are: Medieval Climate Anomaly that took place between 1100AD-1300AD; the Little Ice Age that is roughly between 1300AD-1750AD; and the current warm period between 1750AD to the present. The two major floods that have been indicated by the geologists occurred roughly around 1210AD and 1320AD respectively, going by the intensity of precipitation marks on the stalagmites.
“It rained heavily for months, inundating large parts of what we know as India today. The floods were so high and severe that they not only wiped out dynasties, killing common people and forcing them to leave their homes and turn into nomads in search of high ground but also ruined the agrarian economy of the era,” said Anil Gupta, the group’s lead scientist.
Among the dynasties that were finished around this time were Sena in Bengal, Solanki in the west, and Paramar, Yadav and Pandyan in the south.
The stalagmites were drilled at an interval of every half millimetre, following a process of dating where every half millimetre stands for two years of real time experience of the rock. “The two floods were never recorded in history and hence the uniqueness of the finding,” Gupta told TOI.
The group has also indicated that the floods might have occurred in China as well, and might have been the cause of the downfall of the Ming dynasty there.
Historian Arun Bandyopadhyay, too, sounded excited. He felt that such geological study of Indian history was necessary for a long time. In the past, similar climatological study of famines were done in the European context.
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni
The next Mahommedan invasion of India is associated with the name of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Mahmud was the eldest son of Sabuktagin, surnamed Nasr-ud-din, in origin a Turkish slave, who had established his rule over the greater part of modern Afghanistan and Khorassan, with Ghazni as his capital. In 977 Sabuktagin is said to have defeated Jaipal, the Hindu raja of Lahore, and to have rendered the Punjab tributary. But his son Mahmud was the first of the great Mussulman conquerors whose names still ring through Asia. Mahmud succeeded to the throne in 997. During his reign of thirty-three years he extended the limits of his father's kingdom from Persia on the east to the Ganges on the west; and it is related that he led his armies into the plains of India no fewer than seventeen times. In looi he defeated Raja Jaipal a second time, and took him prisoner. But Anandpal, son of Jaipal, raised again the standard of national independence, and gathered an army of Rajput allies from the farthest corners of Hindustan. The decisive battle was fought in the valley of Peshawar.
Mahmud won the day by the aid of his Turkish horsemen, and thenceforth the Punjab has been a Mahommedan province, except during the brief period of Sikh supremacy. The most famous of Mahmud's invasions of India was that undertaken in1025-1026against Gujarat. The goal of this expedition was the temple dedicated to Siva at Somnath, around which so many legends have gathered. It is reported that Mahmud marched through Ajmere to avoid the desert of Sind; that he found the Hindus gathered on the neck of the peninsula of Somnath in defence of their holy city; that the battle lasted for two days; that in the end the Rajput warriors fled to their boats, while the Brahman priests retired into the inmost shrine; that Mahmud, introduced into this shrine, rejected all entreaties by the Brahmans to spare their idol, and all offers of ransom; that he smote the image with his club, and forthwith a fountain of precious stones gushed out. Until the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the club of Mahmud and the wood gates of Somnath were preserved at the tomb of the great conqueror near Ghazni. The club has now disappeared, and the gates brought back to India by Lord Ellenborough are recognized to be a clumsy forgery. To Mahommedans Mahmud is known, not only as a champion of the faith, but as a munificent patron of literature. The dynasty that he founded was not long-lived. Fourteen of his descendants occupied his throne within little more than a century, but none of them achieved greatness. A blood-feud arose between them and a line of Afghan princes who had established themselves among the mountains of Ghor. In 1155 Bahram, the last of the Ghaznivide Turks, was overthrown by Ala-ud-din of Ghor, and the wealthy and populous city of Ghazni was razed to the ground. But even the Ghoride conqueror spared the tomb of Mahmud.
Mahommed Ghori
Khusru, the son of Bahram, fled to Lahore, and there established the first Mahommedan dynasty within India. It speedily ended with his son, also called Khusru, whom Mahommed Ghori, the relentless enemy of the Ghaznivide house, carried away into captivity in 1186. The Afghans of Ghor thus rose to power on the downfall of the Turks of Ghazni. The founder of the family is said to have been Izzud-din al Husain, whose son Ala-ud-din destroyed Ghazni, as already mentioned. Ala-ud-din had two nephews, Ghiyas-ud-din and Muiz-ud-din, the latter of whom, also called Shahab-ud-din by Mussulman chroniclers, and generally known in history as Mahommed Ghori, is the second of the great Mahommedan conquerors of India. In 1175 he took Multan and Uchch; in 1186 Lahore fell into his hands; in 1191 he was repulsed before Delhi, but soon afterwards he redeemed this disaster. Hindustan proper was at that period divided between the two Rajput kingdoms of Kanauj and Delhi. Mahommed Ghori achieved his object by playing off the rival kings against each other. By 1193 he had extended his conquests as far east as Benares, and the defeated Rajputs migrated in a body to the hills and deserts now known as Rajputana. In 1199 one of his lieutenants, named Bakhtiyar, advanced into Bengal, and expelled by an audacious stratagem the last Hindu raja of Nadia. The entire northern plain, from the Indus to the Brahmaputra, thus lay under the Mahommedan yoke. But Mahommed Ghori never settled permanently in India. His favourite residence is said to have been the old capital of Ghazni, while he governed his Indian conquests through the agency of a favourite slave, Kutb-ud-din. Mahommed Ghori died in 1206, being assassinated by some Ghakkar tribesmen while sleeping in his tent by the bank of the Indus; on his death both Ghor and Ghazni drop out of history, and Delhi first appears as the Mahommedan capital of India.
The slave dynasty
On the death of Mahommed Ghori, Kutb-ud-din [Qutb--] at once laid aside the title of viceroy, and proclaimed himself sultan of Delhi. He was the founder of what is known as the slave dynasty, which lasted for nearly a century (1206-1288). The name of Kutb is preserved in the minar, or pillar of victory, which still stands amid the ruins of ancient Delhi, towering high above all later structures. Kutb himself is said to have been successful as a general and an administrator, but none of his successors has left a mark in history.
Khilji
In 1294 Ala-ud-din Khilji, the third of the great Mahommedan conquerors of India, raised himself to the throne of Delhi by the treacherous assassination of his uncle Feroz II.
Ala who had himself supplanted the last of the slave dynasty. Ala-ud-din had already won military re nown by his expeditions into the yet unsubdued south. He had plundered the temples at Bhilsa in central India, which are admired to the present day as the most interesting examples of Buddhist architecture in the country. At the head of a small ban of horsemen, he had ridden as far south as Deogiri (Daulatabad) in the Deccan (q.v.), and plundered the Yadava capital. When once established as sultan, he planned more extensive schemes of conquest. One army was sent to Gujarat under Alaf Khan, who conquered and expelled the last Rajput king of Anhalwar or Patan. Another army, led by the sultan in person, marched into the heart of Rajputana, and stormed the rock-fortress of Chitor, where the Rajputs had taken refuge with their women and children. A third army, commanded by Malik Kafur, a Hindu renegade and favourite of Ala-ud-din, penetrated to the extreme south of the peninsula, scattering the unwarlike Dravidian races, and stripping every Hindu temple of its accumulations of gold and jewels. To this day the name of Malik Kafur is remembered in the remote district of Madura, in association with irresistible fate and every form of sacrilege.
Ala-ud-din died in 1316, having subjected to Islam the Deccan and Gujarat. Three successors followed him upon the throne, but their united reigns extended over only five years. In 1321 a successful revolt was headed by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak, governor of the Punjab, who is said to have been of Turkish origin.
Tughlaq
The ck dynasty lasted for about seventy years, until it was swept away by the invasion of Timur, the fourth Mahommedan conqueror of India, in 1398. Tughlak's son and successor, Mahommed b. Tughlak, who reigned from 1325 to 1351, is described by Elphinstone as " one of the most accomplished princes and one of the most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature." He wasted the treasure accumulated by Ala-ud-din in purchasing the retirement of the Mogul hordes, who had already made their appearance in the Punjab. When the internal circulation failed, he issued a forced currency of copper, which is said to have deranged the whole commerce of the country. At one time he raised an army for the invasion of Persia. At another he actually despatched an expedition against China, which perished miserably in the Himalayan passes. When Hindustan was thus suffering from his misgovernment, he conceived the project of transferring the seat of empire to the Deccan, and compelled the inhabitants of Delhi to remove a distance of 700 m. to Deogiri or Daulatabad.
And yet during the reign of this sultan both the Tughlak dynasty and the city of Delhi are said to have attained their utmost growth. Mahommed was succeeded by his cousin Feroz, who likewise was not content without a new capital, which he placed a few miles north of Delhi, and called after his own name. He was a kind-hearted and popular, but weak, ruler. Meanwhile the remote provinces of the empire began to throw off their allegiance to the sultans of Delhi. The independence of the Afghan kings - of Bengal is generally dated from 1336, when Mahommed Tughlak was yet on the throne. The commencement of the reign of Ala-ud-din, the founder of the Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan, is assigned to 1347. Zafar Khan, the first of the Ahmedabad kings, acted as an independent ruler from the time of his first appointment as governor of Gujarat in 1391. These and other revolts prepared the way for the fourth great invasion of India under Timur (Tamerlane).
Accordingly, when Timur invaded India in 1398, he encountered but little organized resistance. Mahmud, the last of the Tughlak dynasty, being defeated in a battle out. side the walls of Delhi, fled into Gujarat. The city was sacked and the inhabitants massacred by the victorious Moguls. But the invasion of Timur left no permanent impress upon the history of India, except in so far as its memory fired the imagination of Baber, the founder of the Mogul dynasty. The details of the fighting and of the atrocities may be found related in cold blood by Timur himself in the Malfuzat-i-Timuri, which has been translated in Elliot's History of India as told by its own Historians, vol. iii. Timur marched back to Samarkand as he had come, by way of Kabul, and Mahmud Tughlak ventured to return to his desolate capital. He was succeeded by what is known as the Sayyid dynasty, which held Delhi and a few miles of surrounding country for about forty years. The Sayyids were in their turn expelled by Bahlol, an Afghan of the Lodi tribe, whose successors removed the seat of government to Agra, which thus for the first time became the imperial city. In 1526 Baber, the fifth in descent from Timur, and also the fifth Mahommedan conqueror, invaded India at the instigation of the governor of the Punjab, won the victory of Panipat over Ibrahim, the last of the Lodi dynasty, and founded the Mogul empire, which lasted, at least in name, until 1857.
Vijayanagar and the Deccan
Indpaedia has along series of articles on Vijayanagar, beginning with Vijayanagar: Introduction to 'A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE'
In southern India at this time authentic history begins with the Hindu empire of Vijayanagar, which exercised an ill-defined sovereignty over the entire south from the 14th to the 16th century. The empire of Vijayanagar represents the last stand made by the national faith in India against conquering Islam. For at least two centuries its sway over the south was undisputed, and its rajas waged wars and concluded treaties of peace with the sultans of the Deccan on equal terms.
The earliest of the Mahommedan dynasties in the Deccan was that founded by Ala-ud-din in 1347, which has received the name of the Bahmani dynasty. The capital was first at Gulbarga, and was afterwards removed to Bidar, both which places still possess magnificent palaces and mosques in ruins. Towards the close of the 14th century the Bahmani empire fell to pieces, and five independent kingdoms divided the Deccan among them. These were - (1) the Adil Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Bijapur, founded in 1490 by a Turk; (2) the Kutb Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Golconda, founded in 1512 by a Turkoman adventurer; (3) the Nizam Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Ahmednagar, founded in 1490 by a Brahman renegade; (4) the Imad Shahi dynasty of Berar, with its capital at Ellichpur, founded in 1484 also by a Hindu from Vijayanagar; (5) the Barid Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Bidar, founded about 1492 by one who is variously described as a Turk and a Georgian slave. It is, of course, impossible here to trace in detail the history of these several dynasties. In 1565 they combined against the Hindu raja of Vijayanagar, who was defeated and slain in the decisive battle of Talikota. But, though the city was sacked and the supremacy of Vijayanagar for ever destroyed, the Mahommedan victors did not themselves advance far into the south.
The Naiks or feudatories of Vijayanagar everywhere asserted their independence. From them are descended the well-known Palegars of the south, and also the present raja of Mysore. One of the blood-royal of Vijayanagar fled to Chandragiri, and founded a line which exercised a prerogative of its former sovereignty by granting the site of Madras to the English in 1639. Another scion claiming the same high descent lingers to the present day near the ruins of Vijayanagar, and is known as the raja of Anagundi, a feudatory of the nizam of Hyderabad. Despite frequent internal strife, the sultans of the Deccan retained their independence until conquered by the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb in the latter half of the 17th century. To complete this sketch of India at the time of Baber's invasion it remains to say that an independent Mahommedan dynasty reigned at Ahmedabad in Gujarat for nearly two centuries (from 1391 to 1573), until conquered by Akbar; and that Bengal was similarly independent, under a line of Afghan kings, with Gaur for their capital, from 1336 to 1573.
The Mughals
When, therefore, Baber invaded India in 1525, the greater part of the country was Mahommedan, but it did not recognize the authority of the Afghan sultan of the Lodi dynasty, who resided at Agra, and also ruled the historical The ast l D nast capital of Delhi. After having won the battle of Panipat (1526) Baber was no more acknowledged as emperor of India than his ancestor Timur had been. Baber, however, unlike Timur, had resolved to settle in the plains of Hindustan, and carve out for himself a new empire with the help of his Mogul followers. His first task was to repel an attack by the Rajputs of Chitor, who seem to have attempted to reestablish at this time a Hindu empire. The battle was fought at Sikri near Agra, and is memorable for the vow made by the easy-living Baber that he would never again touch wine. Baber was again victorious, but died shortly afterwards in 1530. He was succeeded by his son Humayun, who is chiefly known as being the father of Akbar. In Humayun's reign the subject Afghans rose in revolt under Sher Shah, a native of Bengal, who for a short time established his authority over all Hindustan. Humayun was driven as an exile into Persia; and, while he was flying through the desert of Sind, his son Akbar was born to him in the petty fortress of Umarkot. But Sher Shah was killed at the storming of the rock-fortress of Kalinjar, and Humayun, after many vicissitudes, succeeded in re-establishing his authority at Lahore and Delhi.
Humayun died by an accident in 1556, leaving but a circumscribed kingdom, surrounded on every side by active foes, to his son Akbar, then a boy of only fourteen years. Akbar the Great, the real founder of the Mogul empire as it existed for two centuries, was the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England. He was born in 1542, and his reign lasted from 1556 to 1605. When his father died he was absent in the Punjab, fighting the revolted Afghans, under the guardianship of Bairam Khan, a native of Badakshan, whose military skill largely contributed to recover the throne for the Mogul line. For the first seven years of his reign Akbar was perpetually engaged in warfare.
His first task was to establish his authority in the Punjab, and in the country around Delhi and Agra. In 1567 he stormed the Rajput stronghold of Chitor, and co nquered Ajmere. In 1570 he obtained possession of Oudh and Gwalior, In 1572 he marched in person into Gujarat, defeated r the last of the independent sultans of Ahmedabad, and formed the province into a Mogul viceroyalty or subah. In the same year his generals drove out the Afghans from Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to Hindustan. Akbar was then the undisputed ruler of a larger portion of India than had ever before acknowledged the sway of one man. But he continued to extend his conquests throughout his lifetime. In 1578 Orissa was annexed to Bengal by his Hindu general Todar Mall, who forthwith organized a revenue survey of the whole province. Kabul submitted in 1581, Kashmir in 1587, Sind in 1592, and Kandahar in 1594. At last he turned his arms against the Mahommedan kings of the Deccan, and wrested from them Berar; but the permanent conquest of the south was reserved for Aurangzeb.
If the history of Akbar were confined to this long list of conquests, his name would on their account alone find a high place among those which mankind delights to remember. But it is as a civil administrator that his reputation is cherished in India to the present day. With regard to the land revenue, the essence of his procedure was to fix the amount which the cultivators should pay at one-third of the gross produce, leaving it to their option to pay in money or in kind. The total land revenue received by Akbar amounted to about 161 millions sterling. Comparing the area of his empire with the corresponding area now under the British, it has been calculated that Akbar, three hundred years ago, obtained 152 millions where they obtain only 131 millions - an amount representing not more than one-half the purchasing power of Akbar's 151 millions.
The distinction between khalsa land, or the imperial demesne, and jagir lands, granted revenue free or at quit rent in reward for services, also dates from the time of Akbar. As regards his military system, Akbar invented a sort of feudal organization, by which every tributary raja took his place by the side of his own Mogul nobles. In theory it was an aristocracy based only upon military command; but practically it accomplished the object at which it aimed by incorporating the hereditary chiefships of Rajputana among the mushroom creations of a Mahommedan despotism. Mussulmans and Hindus were alike known only as mansabdars or commanders of so many horse, the highest title being that of amir, of which the plural is umrah or omrah. The third and last of Akbar's characteristic measures were those connected with religious innovation, about which it is difficult to speak with precision. The necessity of conciliating the proud warriors of Rajputana had taught him toleration from his earliest days. His favourite wife was a Rajput princess, and another wife is said to have been a Christian. Out of four hundred and fifteen of his mansabdars whose names are recorded, as many as fifty-one were Hindus. Starting from the broad ground of general toleration, Akbar was gradually led on by the stimulus of cosmopolitan discussion to question the truth of his inherited faith. The counsels of his friend Abul Fazl, coinciding with that sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of despotic power, led him at last to promulgate a new state religion, based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all known creeds. In this strange faith Akbar himself was the prophet, or rather the head of the church. Every morning he worshipped the sun in public, as being the representative of the divine soul that animates the universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude.
Akbar died in 1605, in his sixty-third year. He lies buried beneath a plain slab in the magnificent mausoleum which he had reared at Sikandra, near his capital of Agra. As his name is still cherished in India, so his tomb is still honoured, being covered by a cloth presented by Lord Northbrook when viceroy in 1873.
The reign of Jahangir, his son, extended from 1605 to 1627. It is chiefly remarkable for the influence exercised over the emperor by his favourite wife, surnamed Nur Jahan. The currency was struck in her name, and in her hands centred all the intrigues that made up the work of administration. She lies buried by the side of her husband at Lahore, whither the seat of government had been moved by Jahangir, just as Akbar had previously transferred it from Delhi to Agra. It was in the reign of Jahangir that the English first established themselves at Surat, and also sent their first embassy to the Mogul court.
Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan, who had rebelled against his father, as Jahangir had rebelled against Akbar. Shah Jahan's reign is generally regarded as the period when the Mogul empire attained its greatest magnificence, though not its greatest extent of territory. He founded the existing city of Delhi, which is still known to its Mahommedan inhabitants as Shahjahanabad. At Delhi also he erected the celebrated peacock throne; but his favourite place of residence was Agra, where his name will ever be associated with the marvel of Indian architecture, the Taj Mahal. That most chaste and most ornamental of buildings was erected by Shah Jahan as the mausoleum of his favourite wife Mumtaz Mahal, and he himself lies by her side (see Agra). Shah Jahan had four sons, whose fratricidal wars for the succession during their father's lifetime it would be tedious to dwell upon. Suffice it to say that Aurangzeb, by mingled treachery and violence, supplanted or overthrew his brothers and proclaimed himself emperor in 1658, while Shah Jahan was yet alive.
Aurangzeb's long reign, from 1658 to 1707, may be regarded as representing both the culminating point of Mogul power and the beginning of its decay. Unattractive as his character was, it contained at least some elements of greatness. None of his successors on the throne was any thing higher than a debauchee or a puppet. He was the first to conquer the independent sultans of the Deccan, and to extend his authority to the extreme south. But even during his lifetime two new Hindu nationalities were being formed in the Mahrattas and the Sikhs; while immediately after his death the nawabs of. the Deccan, of Oudh, and of Bengal raised themselves to practical independence. Aurangzeb had indeed enlarged the empire, but he had not strengthened its foundations. During the reign of his father Shah Jahan he had been viceroy of the Deccan or rather of the northern portion only, which had been annexed to the Mogul empire since the reign of Akbar. His early ambition was to conquer the Mahommedan kings of Bijapur and Golconda, who, since the downfall of Vijayanagar, had been practically supreme over the south.
Sivaji
This object was not accomplished without many tedious campaigns, in which Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta confederacy, first comes upon the scene. In name Sivaji was a feudatory of the house of Bijapur, on whose behalf he held the rock-forts of his native Ghats; but in fact he found his opportunity in playing off the Mahommedan powers against one another, and in rivalling Aurangzeb himself in the art of treachery. In 1680 Sivaji died, and his son and successor, Sambhaji, was betrayed to Aurangzeb and put to death. The rising Mahratta power was thus for a time checked, and the Mogul armies were set free to operate in the eastern Deccan. In 1686 the city of Bijapur was taken by Aurangzeb in person, and in the following year Golconda also fell. No independent power then remained in the south, though the numerous local chieftains, known as palegars and naiks, never formally submitted to the Mogul empire.
During the early years of his reign Aurangzeb had fixed his capital at Delhi, while he kept his dethroned father, Shah Jahan, in close confinement at Agra. In 1682 he set out with his army on his victorious march into the Deccan, and from that time until his death in 1707 he never again returned to Delhi. In this camp life Aurangzeb may be taken as representative of one aspect of the Mogul rule, which has been picturesquely described by European travellers of that day. They agree in depicting the emperor as a peripatetic sovereign, and the empire as held together by its military highways no less than by the strength of its armies. The Grand Trunk road running across the north of the peninsula, is generally attributed to the Afghan usurper, Sher Shah. The other roads branching out southward from Agra, to Surat and Burhanpur and Golconda, were [[[Early European Settlements]] undoubtedly the work of Mogul times. Each of these roads was laid out with avenues of trees, with wells of water, and with frequent sardis or rest-houses. Constant communication between the capital and remote cities was maintained by a system of foot-runners, whose aggregate speed is said to have surpassed that of a horse. Commerce was conducted by means of a caste of bullock-drivers, whose occupation in India is hardly yet extinct.
1707 onwards
On the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the decline of the Mogul empire set in with extraordinary rapidity. Ten emperors after Aurangzeb are enumerated in the chronicles, but none of them has left any mark on history. His son and successor was Bahadur Shah, who reigned only five years. Then followed in order three sons of Bahadur Shah, whose united reigns occupy only five years more. In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia, the sixth and last of the great Mahommedan conquerors of India, swept like a whirlwind over Hindustan, and sacked the imperial city of Delhi. Thenceforth the Great Mogul became a mere name, though the hereditary succession continued unbroken down to the time of the Mutiny. Real power had passed into the hands of Mahommedan courtiers and Mahratta generals, both of whom were then carving for themselves kingdoms out of the dismembered empire, until at last British authority placed itself supreme over all. From the time of Aurangzeb no Mussulman, however powerful, dared to assume the title of sultan or emperor, with the single exception of Tippoo's brief paroxysm of madness. The name of nawab, corrupted by Europeans into " nabob," appears to be an invention of the Moguls to express delegated authority, and as such it is the highest title conferred upon Mahommedans at the present day, as maharaja is the highest title conferred upon Hindus. At first nawabs were only found in important cities, such as Surat and Dacca, with the special function of administering civil justice; criminal justice was in the hands of the kotwdl.
The corresponding officials at that time in a large tract of country were the subandar and the faujdar. But the title of subandar, or viceroy, gradually dropped into desuetude, as the paramount power was shaken off, and nawab became a territorial title with some distinguishing adjunct. During the troubled period of intrigue and assassination that followed on the death of Aurangzeb, two Mahommedan foreigners rose to high position as courtiers and generals, and succeeded in transmitting their power to their sons. The one was Chin Kulich Khan, also called Asaf Jah, and still more commonly Nizam-ul-Mulk, who was of Turkoman origin, and belonged to the Sunni sect.
His independence at Hyderabad in the Deccan dates from 1712. The other was Saadat Ali Khan, a Persian, and therefore a Shiah, who was appointed subandar or nawab of Oudh about 1720. Thenceforth these two important provinces paid no more tribute to Delhi, though their hereditary rulers continued to seek formal recognition from the emperor on their succession. The Mahrattas were in possession of the entire west and great part of the centre of the peninsula; while the rich and unwarlike province of Bengal, though governed by an hereditary line of nawabs founded by Murshid Kuli Khan in 1704, still continued to pour its wealth into the imperial treasury. The central authority never recovered from the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1 739, who carried off plunder variously estimated at from 8 to 30 millions sterling. The Mahrattas closed round Delhi from the south, and the Afghans from the west. The victory of Panipat, won by Ahmad Shah Durani over the united Mahratta confederacy in 1761, gave the Mahommedans one more chance of rule. But Ahmad Shah had no ambition to found a dynasty of his own, nor were the British in Bengal yet ready for territorial conquest.
Shah Alam, the lineal heir of the Mogul line, was thus permitted to ascend the throne of Delhi, where he lived during the great part of a long life as a puppet in the hands of Mahadji Sindhia. He was succeeded by Akbar II., who lived similarly under the shadow of British protection. Last of all came Bahadur Shah, who atoned for his association with the mutineers in 1857 by banish ment to Burma. Thus ended the Mogul line, after a history which covers three hundred and thirty years. Mahommedan rule remodelled the revenue system, and has left behind fifty millions of Mussulmans in British India.
Early European Settlements
Early European Settlements. Mahommedan invaders have always entered India from the north-west. Her new conquerors approached from the sea and from the south. From the time of Alexander to that of Vasco da Gama, Europe had enjoyed little direct intercourse with the East. An occasional traveller brought back stories of powerful kingdoms and of untold wealth; but the passage by sea was unthought of, and by land many wide deserts and warlike tribes lay between. Commerce, indeed, never ceased entirely, being carried on chiefly by the Italian cities on the Mediterranean, which traded to the ports of the Levant. But to the Europeans of the i 5th century India was practically an unknown land, which powerfully attracted the imagination of spirits stimulated by the Renaissance and ardent for discovery. In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail under the Spanish flag to seek India beyond the Atlantic, bearing with him a letter to the great khan of Tartary. The expedition under Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon five years later, and, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, cast anchor off the city of Calicut on the 10th of May 1498, after a prolonged voyage of nearly eleven months. From the first da Gama encountered hostility from the " Moors," or rather Arabs, who monopolized the sea-borne trade; but he seems to have found favour with the zamorin, or Hindu raja of Malabar. It may be worth while to recall the contemporary condition of India at that epoch. An Afghan of the Lodi dynasty was on the throne of Delhi, and another Afghan king was ruling over Bengal. Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Gulbarga, Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Ellichpur in the Deccan were each the capital of an independent Mahommedan kingdom; while the Hindu raja of Vijayanagar was recognized as paramount over the entire south. Neither Mogul nor Mahratta had yet appeared above the political horizon.
After staying nearly six months on the Malabar coast, da Gama returned to Europe by the same route as he had come; bearing with him the following letter from the zamorin ports= to the king of Portugal: " Vasco da Gama, a noble- geese man of your household, has visited my kingdom and expedz has given me great pleasure. In my kingdom there is tions. abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones. What I seek from thy country is gold, silver, coral, and scarlet." The arrival of da Gama at Lisbon was celebrated with national rejoicings scarcely less enthusiastic than had greeted the return of Columbus. If the West Indies belonged to Spain by priority of discovery, Portugal might claim the East Indies by the same right. Territorial ambition combined with the spirit of proselytism and with the greed of commerce to fill all Portuguese minds with the dream of a mighty Oriental empire.
The early Portuguese discoverers were not traders or private adventurers, but admirals with a royal commission to conquer territory and promote the spread of Christianity. A second expedition, consisting of thirteen ships and twelve hundred soldiers, under the command of Cabral, was despatched in 150o. " The sum of his instructions was to begin with preaching, and, if that failed, to proceed to the sharp determination of the sword." On his outward voyage Cabral was driven by stress of weather to the coast of Brazil. Ultimately he reached Calicut, and established factories both there and at Cochin, in the face of active hostility from the natives. In 1502 the king of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting him " lord of the navigation, conquest, and trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India." In that year Vasco da Gama sailed again to the East, with a fleet numbering twenty vessels. He formed an alliance with the rajas of Cochin and Cannanore against the zamorin of Calicut, and bombarded the latter in his palace. In 1503 the great Alfonso d'Albuquerque is first heard of, as in command of one of three expeditions from Portugal. In 1505 a large fleet of twenty sail and fifteen hundred men was Decline of Mogul Empire. End of Mogul line. ] sent under Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese viceroy of India. In 1509 Albuquerque succeeded as governor, and widely extended the area of Portuguese influence. Having failed in an attack upon Calicut, he seized Goa, which from 1530 became the capital of Portuguese India. Then, sailing round Ceylon, he captured Malacca, the key of the navigation of the Indian archipelago, and opened a trade with Siam and the Spice Islands (Moluccas). Lastly, he sailed back westwards, and, after penetrating into the Red Sea, and building a fortress at Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, returned to Goa only to die in 1515. In 1524 Vasco da Gama came out to the East for the third time, and he too died at Cochin.
For exactly a century, from 1500 to 1600, the Portuguese enjoyed a monopoly of Oriental trade. Their three objects were conquest, commerce and conversion, and for all three their position on the Malabar coast strip was remarkably well adapted. Shut off by the line of Decline of the the Ghats from Mahommedan India of that day, they Portu- were able to dominate the petty chiefs of Malabar, guese. who welcomed maritime commerce, and allowed religious freedom in their domains. Their trade relations with Vijayanagar were very close, when that great empire was at the height of its power; but in 1564 Vijayanagar went down before the five Mahommedan states of southern India on the field of Talikota, and with its fall began the decline of Portugal. During the whole of the 16th century the Portuguese disputed with the Mahommedans the supremacy of the Indian seas, and the antagonism between Christianity and Islam became gradually more intense, until the Portuguese power assumed a purely religious aspect. In 1560 the Inquisition with all its horrors was introduced into Goa. But Portugal was too small a country to keep up the struggle for long. The drain of men told upon her vitality, their quality deteriorated, and their bigotry and intolerance raised even a fiercer opposition to them within the bounds of India; and as the Dutch and British came into prominence the Portuguese gradually faded away. In 1603 and 1639 the Dutch blockaded Goa; during the first half of the 17th century they routed the Portuguese everywhere in India, Ceylon and Java. Similarly in 1611 the British defeated them off Cambay and in 1615 won a great victory at Swally. After the middle of the 17th century the Asiatic trade of Portugal practically disappeared, and now only Goa, Daman and Diu are left to her as relics of her former greatness.
The Dutch were the first European nation to break through the Portuguese monopoly. During the 16th century Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam became the great emporia Dutch whence Indian produce, imported by the Portuguese,. was distributed to Germany and even to England. meats At first the Dutch, following in the track of the English, attempted to find their way to India by sailing round the north coasts of Europe and Asia. William Barents is honourably known as the leader of three of these arctic expeditions, in the last of which he perished. The first Dutchman to double the Cape of Good Hope was Cornelius Houtman, who reached Sumatra and Bantam in 1596. Forthwith private companies for trade with the East were formed in many parts of the United Provinces, but in 1602 they were all amalgamated by the statesgeneral into " The United East India Company of the Netherlands." Within a few years the Dutch had established factories on the continent of India, in Ceylon, in Sumatra, on the Persian Gulf and on the Red Sea, besides having obtained exclusive possession of the Moluccas.
In 1618 they laid the foundation of the city of Batavia in Java, to be the seat of the supreme government of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies. At about the same time they discovered the coast of Australia, and in North America founded the city of New Amsterdam or Manhattan, now New York. During the 17th century the Dutch maritime power was the first in the world. The massacre of Amboyna in 1623 led the English East India Company to retire from the Eastern seas to the continent of India, and thus, though indirectly, contributed to the foundation of the British Indian empire. The long naval wars and bloody battles between the English and the Dutch within the narrow seas were not terminated until William of Orange united the two crowns in 1689. In the far East the Dutch ruled without a rival, and gradually expelled the Portuguese from almost all their territorial possessions. In 1635 they occupied Formosa; in 1641 they took Malacca, a blow from which the Portuguese never recovered; in 1652 they founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, as a half-way station to the East; in 1658 they captured Jaffna, the last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon; by 1664 they had wrested from the Portuguese all their earlier settlements on the pepper-bearing coast of Malabar.
The rapid and signal downfall of the Dutch colonial empire is to be explained by its short-sighted commercial policy. It was deliberately based upon a monopoly of the trade in spices, and remained from first to last destitute Decline of the true imperial spirit. Like the Phoenicians of of the P P Dutch. old, the Dutch stopped short of no acts of cruelty towards their rivals in commerce; but, unlike the Phoenicians, they failed to introduce a respect for their own higher civilization among the natives with whom they came in contact. The knell of Dutch supremacy was sounded by Clive, when in 1758 he attacked the Dutch at Chinsura both by land and water, and forced them to an ignominious capitulation. In the great French war from 1781 to 1811 England wrested from Holland every one of her colonies, though Java was restored in 1816 and Sumatra in exchange for Malacca in 1824. At the present time the Dutch flag flies nowhere on the mainland of India, though the quaint houses and regular canals at Chinsura, Negapatam, Jaffna, and many petty ports on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts remind the traveller of familiar scenes in the Netherlands.
The earliest English attempts to reach the East were the expeditions under John Cabot in 1497 and 1498. Their objective was not so much India as Japan (Cipangu), of which they only knew vaguely as a land of spices and silks, British and which they hoped to reach by sailing westward. t o s. They failed, but discovered Newfoundland, and sailed along the coast of America from Labrador to Virginia. In 1553 the ill-fated Sir Hugh Willoughby attempted to force a passage along the north of Europe and Asia. Sir Hugh himself perished miserably, but his second in command, Chancellor, reached a harbour on the White Sea, now Archangel. Thence he penetrated by land to the court of the grand-duke of Moscow, and laid the foundation of the Russia Company for carrying on the overland trade with India through Persia, Bokhara and Moscow. Many subsequent attempts were made at the North-West Passage from 1576 to 1616, which have left on our modern maps the imperishable names of Frobisher, Davis, Hudson and Baffin. Meanwhile, in 1577, Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe, and on his way home had touched at Ternate, one of the Moluccas, the king of which island agreed to supply the English nation with all the cloves it produced. The first Englishman who actually visited India was Thomas Stephens in 1579. He had been educated at Winchester, and became rector of the Jesuits' College in Goa. His letters to his father are said to have roused great enthusiasm in England to trade directly with India. In 1583 four English merchants, Ralph Fitch, John Newbery, William Leedes and James Story, went out to India overland as mercantile adventurers. The jealous Portuguese threw them into prison at Ormuz, and again at Goa. At length Story settled down as a shopkeeper at Goa, Leedes entered the service of the Great Mogul, Newbery died on his way home overland, and Fitch, after a lengthened peregrination in Bengal, Pegu, Siam and other parts of the East Indies, returned to England.
The defeat of the " Invincible Armada " in 1588, at which time the crowns of Spain and Portugal were united, gave a fresh stimulus to maritime enterprise in England; and the successful voyage of Cornelius Houtman in East 1596 showed the way round the Cape of Good Hoe lnd,a 59 Y P P Company. into waters hitherto monopolized by the Portuguese.
The " Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies " was founded by Queen Elizabeth Rivalry the British and the Portuguese. The latter, un- with Portugal. willingly linked to the dying power of Spain, were already decadent, and on the 10th of January 1615 a great Portuguese armada, consisting of six great galleons, three smaller ships, two galleys and sixty rowed barges, was defeated for the second time in Swally roads by Captain Nicholas Downton, in command of four British vessels. In 1618 the English opened trade between Surat and Jask in the Persian Gulf, and in 1620 gained a victory over the Portuguese fleet there. Early in 1622 the English fleet gained a second decisive victory, and captured Ormuz, the pearl of the Portuguese possessions in Asia. From this date onwards India and the Persian Gulf lay open to the English as far as Portugal was concerned, and before Portugal broke loose from Spain in 1640 her supremacy in Asiatic seas was hopelessly lost. In 1642 she partially and in 1654 finally accepted the situation, and opened all her Eastern possessions to English trade.
The struggle with the young and growing power of Holland was destined to be a much more serious affair than that with the exhausted power of Portugal. The Dutch had just emerged victorious from the struggle with Spain, and were pulsing with national life. In 1602 the Dutch routed the Portuguese near Bantam, and opened the road to the Spice Islands. In 1603 they threatened Goa, in 1619 they fixed their capital at Batavia, in 1638 they drove the Portuguese from Ceylon and in 1641 from Malacca. When Portugal emerged in 1640 from her sixty years' captivity to Spain, she found that her power in the Eastern seas had passed to the Dutch, and thenceforward the struggle lay between the Dutch and the English. The Dutch were already too strongly entrenched in the Indian archipelago for English competition to avail there, and the intense rivalry between the two nations led to the tragedy of Amboyna in 1623, when Governor Van Speult put to torture and death nine Englishmen on a charge of conspiring to take the Dutch forts. This outrage was not avenged until the time of Cromwell (1654), and in the meantime the English abandoned the struggle for the Spice Islands, and turned their attention entirely to the mainland of India. In 1616 the Dutch began to compete with the English at Surat, and their piracies against native vessels led to the Mogul governor seizing English warehouses; but soon the native authorities learnt to discriminate between the different European nations, and the unscrupulous methods of the Dutch cast them into disfavour.
In 1611 Captain Hippon in the seventh separate voyage essayed a landing at Pulicat, but was driven off by the Dutch, who were already settled there, and sailed farther up the coast to Pettapoli, where he founded the first madras English settlement in the Bay of Bengal, which ments. finally perished through pestilence in 1687. Captain Hippon, however, also touched at Masulipatam, the chief seaport of the kings of Golconda. In 1628 the Dutch won over the native governor there, and the English were compelled to retreat to Armagon, where they built the first English fort in India. In 1639 Francis Day, the chief at Armagon, founded Madras, building Fort St George (1640), and transferring thither the chief factory from Masulipatam. Here the English obtained their first grant of Indian soil, apart from the plots on which their factories were built. In 1653 Madras was raised to an independent presidency, and in 1658 all the settlements in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast were made subordinate to Fort St George.
In 1633 eight Englishmen from Masulipatam, under Ralph Cartwright, sailed northward to Harishpur near Cuttack on the mouth of the Mahanadi, and entered into negotiations to trade with the governor of Orissa; and' in June Bengal 1633 Cartwright founded a factory at Balasore, which settle- 33 g Y ? meats. proved very unhealthy. In 1651 the English reached Hugli, which was at that time the chief port of Bengal; about that year Gabriel Boughton, a surgeon, obtained from the Mogul viceroy permission for the English to trade in Bengal. In 1657 Hugli became the head agency in Bengal, with Balasore and Cossimbazar in the Gangetic delta and Patna in Behar under its control. In that year the name of Job Charnock, the future founder of Calcutta, appeared in the lowest grade of the staff.
The company had long fixed an eye on Bombay. Its position half way down the Indian seaboard gave it both strategic and commercial importance, while it lay beyond the _ authority of the Moguls, and so could be fortified fioqnuof without offending them. In 1626 the company Bombay. joined with the Dutch under Van Speult in attacking Bombay, but could not retain possession. In 1661 Charles II. received Bombay from Portugal as part of the Infanta Catherine's dowry, but effective possession was not taken until 1665, and in 1668 Charles handed the island over to the company. At first the loss of life, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate, was appalling; but in spite of that fact it gradually prospered, until it reached its present position as the second port and city of India. In 1670 Gerald Aungier fortified the island, and so became the true founder of its prosperity. In 1674 a treaty was entered into with Sivaji. In 1682 Sir Josiah Child at home and Sir John Child in India formed a combination, which recognized that in the struggle between the Mogul and the Mahrattas the English must meet force with force; and in 1687 Bombay supplanted Surat as the chief seat of the English in India.
In 1664 Shaista Khan, the brother of the empress Nur Jahan, became viceroy of Bengal, and though a strong and just ruler from the native point of view, was not favourable The to the foreign traders. In 1677 the president of found- Madras had to warn him that unless his exactions ing of ceased, the company would be obliged to withdraw Calcutta. from Bengal. In 1679 the English obtained from the Mogul emperor a firman exempting them from dues everywhere except at Surat; but Shaista Khan refused to recognize the document, and on the 14th of January 1686 the court of directors resolved to have recourse to arms to effect what they could not obtain by treaty. This was the first formal repudiation of the doctrine of unarmed traffic laid down by Sir Thomas Roe in 1616. An expedition was despatched to India consisting of six companies of infantry and ten ships under Captain Nicholson. Two of the ships with 308 soldiers arrived at the Hugli river in the autumn of 1686. At this time Job Charnock was the chief of the Bengal council, and, owing to an affray with the Mogul troops at Hugli on the 28th of October 1686, he embarked the company's goods and servants on board light vessels and dropped down the on the 31st of December 1600, and the first expedition of four ships under James Lancaster left Torbay towards the end of April 1601, and reached Achin in Sumatra on the 5th of June 16.02, returning with a cargo of spices.
Between 1600 and 1612 there were twelve separate voyages, but in the latter year a joint-stock system began involving continual communication with the Indies. At first the trade was mainly with the Indian archipelago, but soon the English began to feel their way towards the mainland of India itself. In r608 Captain Hawkins visited Jahangir at Agra, and obtained permission to build a factory at Surat, which was subsequently revoked, and in 1609 some English merchants obtained an unstable footing at Surat. Wherever the English went they were met by the hostility of the Portuguese; and on the 29th of November 1612 the Portuguese admiral with four ships attempted to capture the English vessels under Captain Best at Swally, off the mouth of the Tapti river; but the Portuguese were severely defeated, to the great astonishment of the natives, and that action formed the beginning of British maritime supremacy in Indian seas. The first fruits of the victory were the foundation of a factory at Surat and at other places round the Gulf of Cambay and in the interior. From the imperial firman of December 1612 dates the British settlement on the mainland of India. At this point begins the Indian history of the company, for the domestic history of which see East India Company.
The ten years that elapsed between the battle of Swally in 1612 and the British capture of Ormuz in 1622 sufficed to decide the issue in the struggle for supremacy between Rivalry with the Dutch. river to Sutanati, the site of the modern Calcutta. At this place, about 70 m. from the sea and' accessible at high tide to heavily armed ships, the stream had scooped for itself a long deep pool, now Calcutta harbour, while the position was well chosen to make a stand against the Bengal viceroy. On the 20th of December 1686 Charnock first settled at Calcutta, but in the following February Shaista Khan despatched an army against him, and he was forced to drop farther down the river to Hijili. In June Charnock was obliged to make an honourable capitulation, and returned to Ulubaria, 16 m. below Calcutta, thence moving in September to Calcutta for the second time. On the 8th of November 1688 Captain Heath arrived with orders from England, and took away Charnock against his will; but after peace was restored between the Mogul emperor and the company in February 1690, Charnock returned to Calcutta for the third and last time on the 24th of August of that year. It was thus by his courage and persistence that the modern capital of India was eventually founded. As the result of the war with the Mogul empire, which lasted from 1686 to 1690, the company perceived that a land war was beyond their strength, but their sea-power could obtain them terms by blockading the customs ports and threatening the pilgrim route to Mecca. From this time onwards they saw that they could no longer trust to defenceless factories. During this first period of their dealings with India the aims of the British were purely those of traders, without any aspirations to military power or territorial aggrandizement; but in the period that followed, the gradual decay of the Mogul empire from within, and the consequent anarchy, forced the English to take up arms in their own defence, and triumphing over one enemy after another they found themselves at last in the place of the Moguls.
India under the Company
The political history of the British in India begins in the 18th century with the French wars in the Carnatic. The British at Fort St George and the French at Pondicherry for many years traded side by side without either active rivalry or territorial ambition. The British, especially, appear to have been submissive to the native powers at Madras no less than in Bengal. They paid their annual rent of 1200 pagodas (say £50o) to the deputies of the Mogul empire when Aurangzeb annexed the south, and on two several occasions bought off a besieging army with a heavy bribe. On the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the whole of southern India became practically independent of Delhi. In the Deccan proper, the Nizam-ul-Mulk founded an independent dynasty, with Hyderabad for its capital, which exercised a nominal sovereignty over the entire south. The Carnatic, or the lowland tract between the central plateau and the eastern sea, was ruled by a deputy of the nizam, known as the nawab of Arcot, who in his turn asserted claims to hereditary sovereignty. Farther south, Trichinopoly was the capital of a Hindu raja, and Tanjore formed another Hindu kingdom under a degenerate descendant of the line of Sivaji. Inland, Mysore was gradually growing into a third Hindu state, while everywhere local chieftains, called palegars or naihs, were in semi-independent possession of citadels or hill-forts.
In that condition of affairs the flame of war was kindled between the British and the French in Europe in 1745. Dupleix French was at that time governor of Pondicherry and Clive and was a young writer at Madras. A British fleet first British appeared on the Coromandel coast, but Dupleix by wars. a judicious present induced the nawab of Arcot to interpose and prevent hostilities. In 1746 a French squadron arrived, under the command of La Bourdonnais. Madras surrendered almost without a blow, and the only settlement left to the British was Fort St David, a few miles south of Pondicherry, where Clive and a few other fugitives sought shelter. The nawab, faithful to his policy of impartiality, marched with 10,000 men to drive the French out of Madras, but he was signally defeated by a French force of only four hundred men and two guns. In 1748 a British fleet arrived under Admiral Boscawen and attempted the siege of Pondicherry, while a land force co-operated under Major Stringer Lawrence, whose name afterwards became associated with that of Clive. The French successfully repulsed all attacks, and at last peace was restored by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which gave back Madras to the British (1748).
The first war with the French was merely an incident in the greater contest in Europe. The second war had its origin in Indian politics, while England and France were at peace. The easy success of the French arms had Clive. inspired Dupleix with the ambition of founding a French empire in India, under the shadow of the existing Mahommedan powers. Disputed successions at Hyderabad and at Arcot supplied his opportunity. On both thrones he placed nominees of his own, and for a short time posed as the supreme arbiter of the entire south. In boldness of conception, and in knowledge of Oriental diplomacy, Dupleix has had probably no rival. But he was no soldier, and he was destined in that sphere to encounter the " heaven-born genius " of Clive. For the British of Madras, under the instinct of self-preservation, were compelled to maintain the cause of another candidate to the throne of Arcot in opposition to the nominee of Dupleix. This candidate was Mahommed Ali, afterwards known in history as Wala-jah. The war that then ensued between the French and British, each with their native allies, has been exhaustively described in the pages of Orme. The one incident that stands out conspicuously is the capture and subsequent defence of Arcot by Clive in 1751.
This heroic feat, even more than the battle of Plassey, established the reputation of the British for valour throughout India. Shortly afterwards Clive returned to England in ill-health, but the war continued fitfully for many years. On the whole, British influence predominated in the Carnatic, and their candidate, Mahommed Ali, maintained his position at Arcot. But the French were no less supreme in the Deccan, whence they were able to take possession of the coast tract called " the Northern Circars." The final struggle was postponed until 1760, when Colonel (afterwards Sir Eyre) Coote won the decisive victory of Wandiwash over the French general Lally, and proceeded to invest Pondicherry, which was starved into capitulation in January 1761. A few months later the hillfortress of Gingee (Chenji) also surrendered. In the words of Orme, " That day terminated the long hostilities between the two rival European powers in Coromandel, and left not a single ensign of the French nation avowed by the authority of its Government in any part of India." Meanwhile the interest of history shifts with Clive to Bengal.
Black Hole of Calcutta
At the time of Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the nawab or governor of Bengal was Murshid Kuli Khan, known also as Jafar Khan. By birth a Brahman, and brought up as a slave in Persia, he united the administrative ability of a Hindu to the fanaticism of a renegade. Hitherto the capital of Bengal had been at Dacca on the eastern frontier of the empire, whence the piratical attacks of the Portuguese and of the Arakanese or Mughs could be most easily checked. Murshid Kuli Khan transferred his residence to Murshidabad, in the neighbourhood of Cossimbazar, the river port of all the Ganges trade. The British, the French and the Dutch had each factories at Cossimbazar, as well as at Dacca, Patna and Malda. But Calcutta was the headquarters of the British, Chandernagore of the French, and Chinsura of the Dutch, all three towns being situated close to each other in the lower reaches of the Hugli, where the river is navigable for large ships. Murshid Kuli Khan ruled over Bengal prosperously for twenty-one years, and left his power to a son-in-law and a grandson.
The hereditary succession was broken in 1740 by Ali Vardi Khan, who was the last of the great nawabs of Bengal. In his days the Mahratta horsemen began to ravage the country, and the British at Calcutta obtained permission to erect an earth-work, which is known to the present day as the Mahratta ditch. Ali Vardi Khan died in 1756, and was succeeded by his grandson, Suraj-ud-Dowlah, a youth of only nineteen years, whose ungovernable temper led to a rupture with the British within two months after his accession. In pursuit of one of his own family who had escaped from his vengeance, he marched upon Calcutta with a large army. Many of the British fled down the river in their ships. The remainder surrendered after a feeble resistance, and were thrown as prisoners into the " black hole " or military jail of Fort William, a room 18 ft. by 14 ft. 10 in. in size, with only two small windows barred with iron. It was the month of June, in which the tropical heat of Calcutta is most oppressive. When the door of the prison was opened in the morning, only twenty-three persons out of one hundred and forty-six were found alive.
The news of this disaster fortunately found Clive returned to Madras, where also was a squadron of king's ships under Admiral Watson. Clive and Watson promptly sailed Battle of to the mouth of the Ganges with all the troops that Plassey. g p could be got together. Calcutta was recovered with little fighting, and the nawab consented to a peace which restored to the company all their privileges, and gave them compensation for their losses of property. It is possible that matters might have ended here if a fresh cause of hostilities had not suddenly arisen. War had just been declared between the British and French in Europe, and Clive, following the traditions of his early warfare in the Carnatic, attacked and captured Chandernagore. Suraj-ud-Dowlah, exasperated by this breach of neutrality within his own dominions, took the side of the French. But Clive, again acting upon the policy he had learned from Dupleix, had provided himself with a rival candidate to the throne. Undaunted, he marched out to the battlefield of Plassey (Palasi), at the head of about 900 Europeans and 2000 sepoys, with 8 pieces of artillery. The Mahommedan army is said to have consisted of 35,000 foot, 15,000 horse and 50 pieces of cannon. But there was a traitor in the Mahommedan camp in the person of Mir Jafar, who had married a sister of the late nawab, Ali Vardi Khan. The battle was short but decisive. After a few rounds of artillery fire, Suraj-ud-Dowlah fled, and the road to Murshidabad was left open.
The battle of Plassey was fought on the 23rd of June 1757, an anniversary afterwards remembered when the mutiny was at its height in 1857. History has agreed to adopt this date as the beginning of the British empire in the East; but the immediate results of the victory were comparatively small, and several more hard-won fights were fought before even the Bengalis would admit the superiority of the British arms. For the moment, however, all opposition was at an end. Clive, again following in the steps of Dupleix, placed his nominee, Mir Jafar, upon the masnad at Murshidabad, being careful to obtain a patent of investiture from the Mogul court. Enormous sums were exacted from Mir Jafar as the price of his elevation. The company claimed io,000,000 rupees as compensation for losses; for the British, the Armenian and the Indian inhabitants of Calcutta there were demanded the sums of 5,000,000, 2,000,000 and 1,000,000 rupees; for the squadron 2,500,000 rupees, and an equal sum for the army. The members of the council received the following amounts: Mr Drake, the governor, and Colonel Clive 280,000 rupees each; and Mr Becher, Mr Watts and Major Kilpatrick 240,000 rupees each.
The whole amounted to X 2,340,000. The British, deluded by their avarice, still cherished extravagant ideas of Indian wealth; nor would they listen to the unwelcome truth. But it was found that there were no funds in the treasury to satisfy their inordinate demands, and they were obliged to be contented with one-half the stipulated sums, which, after many difficulties, were paid in specie and in jewels, with the exception of 584,905 rupees. The shares of the council were, however, paid in full. At the same time the nawab made a grant to the company of the zamindari rights over an extensive tract of country round Calcutta, now known as the district of the Twenty-four Parganas. The area of this tract was about 882 sq. m., and it paid a revenue or quit rent of about £23,000. The gross rental at first payable to the company was £53,000, but within a period of ten years it had risen to X 146,000. Originally the company possessed only the zamindari rights, i.e. revenue jurisdiction. The superior lordship, or right to receive the quit rent, remained with the nawab; but in 1759 this also was parted with by the nawab in favour of Clive, who thus became the landlord of his own masters, the company. At that time also Clive was enrolled among the nobility of the Mogul empire, with the rank of commander of 6000 foot and 5000 horse. Clive's jagir, as it was called, subsequently became a matter of inquiry in England, and on his death it passed to the company, thus merging the zamindari in the proprietary rights.
In 1758 Clive was appointed by the court of directors to be governor of all the company's settlements in Bengal. From two quarters troubles threatened, which perhaps Clive alone was capable of overcoming. On the west the shahzada or imperial prince, known afterwards as the emperor Shah Alam, with a mixed army of Afghans and Mahrattas, and supported by the nawab wazir of Oudh, was advancing his own claims to the province of Bengal. In the south the influence of the French under Lally and Bussy was overshadowing the British at Madras. But the name of Clive exercised a decisive effect in both directions. Mir Jafar was anxious to buy off the shahzada, who had already invested Patna. But Clive in person marched to the rescue, with an army of only 450 Europeans and 2500 sepoys, and the Mogul army dispersed without striking a blow. In the same year Clive despatched a force southwards under Colonel Forde, which captured Masulipatam from the French, and permanently established British influence throughout the Northern Circars, and at the court of Hyderabad. He next attacked the Dutch, the sole European nation that might yet be a formidable rival to the English. He defeated them by both land and water; and from that time their settlement at Chinsura existed only on sufferance.
Massacre y y of Patna
From 1760 to 1765, while Clive was at home, the history of the British in Bengal contains little that is creditable. Clive had left behind him no system of government, but merely the tradition that unlimited sums of money might be extracted from the natives by the mere terror of the British name. In 1761 it was found expedient and profitable to dethrone Mir Jafar, the nawab of Murshidabad, and substitute his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, in his place. On that occasion, besides private donations, the British received a grant of the three districts of Burdwan, Midnapur and Chittagong, estimated to yield a net revenue of half a million sterling. But Mir Kasim proved to possess a will of his own, and to cherish dreams of independence. He retired from Murshidabad to Monghyr, a strong position on the Ganges, which commanded the only means of communication with Upper India. There he proceeded to organize an army, drilled and equipped after European models, and to carry on intrigues with the nawab wazir of Oudh.
The company's servants claimed the privilege of carrying on private trade throughout Bengal, free from inland dues and all other imposts. The assertion of this claim caused frequent affrays between the customs'officers of the nawah and those traders who, whether falsely or not, represented that they were acting on behalf of the servants of the company. The nawab alleged that his civil authority was everywhere being set at nought. The majority of the council at Calcutta would not listen to his statements. The governor, Mr Vansittart, and Warren Hastings, then a junior member of council, attempted to effect some compromise. But the controversy had become too hot. The nawab's officers fired upon a British boat, and forthwith all Bengal was in a blaze.
A force of 2000 sepoys was cut to pieces at Patna, and about 200 Englishmen in various parts of the province fell into the hands of the Mahommedans, and were subsequently massacred. But as soon as regular warfare commenced Mir Kasim met with no more successes. His trained regiments were defeated in two pitched battles by Major Adams, at Gheria and at Udha-nala, and he himself took refuge with the nawab wazir of Oudh, who refused to deliver him up. This led to a prolongation of the war. Shah Alam, who had now succeeded his father as emperor, and Shuja-udDaula, the nawab wazir of Oudh, united their forces, and threatened Patna, which the British had recovered. A more formidable danger appeared in the British camp, in the form of the first sepoy mutiny. This was quelled by Major (afterwards Sir Hector) Munro, who ordered twenty-four of the ringleaders to be blown from guns, an old Mogul punishment. In 1764 Major Munro won the decisive battle of Buxar, which laid Oudh at the feet of the conquerors, and brought the Mogul emperor as a suppliant to the British camp. Meanwhile the council at Calcutta had twice found the opportunity they desired of selling the government of Bengal to a new nawab.
But in 1765 Clive (now Baron Clive of as governor of Bengal for the second time, to settle the entire system of relations with the native powers. Two objects stand out conspicuously in his policy. First, he sought to acquire the substance, though not the name, of territorial power, by using the authority of the Mogul emperor for so much as he wished, and for no more; and, secondly, he desired to purify the company's service by prohibiting illicit gains, and at the same time guaranteeing a reasonable remuneration from honest sources. In neither respect were the details of his plans carried out by his successors. But the beginning of the British administration of India dates from this second governorship of Clive, just as the origin of the British empire in India dates from his victory at Plassey. Clive's first step was to hurry up from Calcutta to Allahabad, and there settle in person the fate of half northern India. Oudh was given back to the nawab wazir, on condition of his paying half a million sterling towards the expenses of the war. The provinces of Allahabad and Kora, forming the lower part of the Doab, were handed over to Shah Alam himself, who in his turn granted to the company the diwani or financial administration of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, together with the Northern Circars.
A puppet nawab was still maintained at Murshidabad, who received an annual allowance of about half a million sterling; and half that amount was paid to the emperor as tribute from Bengal. Thus was constituted the dual system of government, by which the British received all the revenues and undertook to maintain an army for the defence of the frontier, while the criminal jurisdiction vested in the nawab. In Indian phraseology, the company was diwan and the nawab was nazim. As a matter of general administration, the actual collection of the revenues still remained for some years in the hands of native officials. In attempting to reorganize and purify the company's service, Clive undertook a task yet more difficult than to partition the valley of the Ganges. The officers, civil and military alike, were all tainted with the common corruption. Their legal salaries were absolutely insignificant, but they had been permitted to augment them ten and a hundredfold by means of private trade and gifts from the native powers. Despite the united resistance of the civil servants, and an actual mutiny of two hundred military officers, Clive carried through his reforms. Both private trade and the receipt of presents were absolutely prohibited for the future, while a substantial increase of pay was provided out of the monopoly of salt.
Lord Clive quitted India for the third and last time in 1767. Between that date and the arrival of Warren Hastings in 1772 nothing of importance occurred in Bengal beyond the terrible famine of 1770, which is officially reported to have swept away one-third of the inhabitants. The dual system of government, however, established by Clive, had proved a failure. Warren Hastings, a tried servant of the company, distinguished alike for intelligence, for probity and for knowledge of oriental manners, was nominated governor by the court of directors, with express instructions to carry out a predetermined series of reforms. In their own words, the court had resolved to " stand forth as diwan, and to take upon themselves, by the agency of their own servants, the entire care and administration of the revenues." In the execution of this plan, Hastings removed the exchequer from Murshidabad to Calcutta, and for the first time appointed European officers, under the now familiar title of collectors, to superintend the revenue collections and preside in the civil courts.
The urgency of foreign affairs, and subsequently internal strife at the council table, hindered Hastings from developing farther the system of civil administration, a task finally accomplished by Lord Cornwallis. Though Hastings always prided himself specially upon that reform, as well as upon the improvements he introduced into the collection of the revenues from salt and opium, his name will be remembered in history for the boldness d success of his foreign policy. From 1 2 to 1774 GoFirstvernor and P Y 77774 - he was governor of Bengal; from 1774 to 1785 he was the first titular governor-general of India, presiding over a council nominated, like himself, not by the company, but by an act of parliament, known as the Regulating Act. In his domestic policy he was greatly hampered by the opposition of Sir Philip Francis; but, so far as regards external relations with Oudh, with the Mahrattas, and with Hyder Ali, he was generally able to compel assent to his own measures. His treatment of Oudh may here be passed over as not being material to the general history of India, while the personal aspects of his rule are discussed in a separate article (see Hastings, Warren). To explain his Mahratta policy, it will be necessary to give a short retrospective sketch of the history of that people.
Sivaji the Great, as already mentioned, died in 1680, while Aurangzeb was still on the throne. The family of Sivaji produced no great names, either among those who continued to be the nominal chiefs of the Mahratta confederacy, their capital at Satara, or among M the Y? P ? g the rajas of Kolhapur and Tanjore. All real power passed into the hands of the peshwa, or Brahman minister, who founded in his turn an hereditary dynasty at Poona, dating from the beginning of the 18th century. Next rose several Mahratta generals, who, though recognizing the suzerainty of the peshwa, carved out for themselves independent kingdoms in different parts of India, sometimes far from the original home of the Mahratta race. Chief among these generals were the gaikwar in Gujarat, Sindhia and Holkar in Malwa, and the Bhonsla raja of Berar and Nagpur. At one time it seemed probable that the Mahratta confederacy would expel the Mahommedans even from northern India; but the decisive battle of Panipat, won by the Afghans in 1761, gave a respite to the Delhi empire. The Mahratta chiefs never again united heartily for a common purpose, though they still continued to be the most formidable military power in India. In especial, they dominated over the British settlement of Bombay on the western coast, which was the last of the three presidencies to feel the lust of territorial ambition. For more than a hundred years, from its acquisition in 1661 to the outbreak of the first IIahratti war in 1775, the British on the west coast possessed no territory outside the island of Bombay and their fortified factory at Surat.
The Bombay government was naturally emulous to follow the example of Madras and Bengal, and to establish its influence at the court of Poona by placing its own nominee upon the throne. The attempt took form in 1775 in the treaty of Surat, by which Raghunath Rao, one of the War. claimants to the throne of the peshwa, agreed to cede Salsette and Bassein to the British, in consideration of being himself restored to Poona. The military operations that followed are known as the first Mahratta War. Warren Hastings, who in his capacity of governor-general claimed a right of control over the decisions of the Bombay government, strongly disapproved of the treaty of Surat, but, when war once broke out, he threw the whole force of the Bengal army into the scale. One of his favourite officers, General Goddard, marched across the peninsula, and conquered the rich province of Gujarat almost without a blow. Another, Captain Popham, stormed the rockfortress of Gwalior, which was regarded as the key of Hindustan. These brilliant successes atoned for the disgrace of the convention of Wargaon in 1779, when the Mahrattas dictated terms to a Bombay force, but the war was protracted until 1782. It was then closed by the treaty of Salbai, which practically restored the status quo. Raghunath Rao, the English claimant, was set aside; Gujarat was restored, and only Salsette and some other small islands were retained by the English.
Clive's Plassey, the peerage of Ireland) arrived at Calcutta, -Under The Company by Lord Cornwallis, the first English nobleman of rank who undertook the office of governor-general. His rule lasted from 1786 to 1793, and is celebrated for two events - the introduction of the permanent settlement into Bengal and the second Mysore war. If the foundations of the system of civil administration were laid by Hastings, the superstructure was erected by Cornwallis. It was he who first entrusted criminal jurisdiction to Europeans, and established the Nizamat Sadr Adalat, or appellate court of criminal judicature, at Calcutta; and it was he who separated the functions of collector and judge. The system thus organized in Bengal was afterwards extended to Madras and Bombay, when those presidencies also acquired territorial sovereignty. But the achievement most familiarly associated with the name of Cornwallis is the permanent settlement of the land revenue of Bengal. Up to this time the revenue had been collected pretty much according to the old Mogul system. Zamindars, or government farmers, whose office always tended to become hereditary, were recognized as having a right of some sort to collect the revenue from the actual cultivators.
But no principle of assessment existed, and the amount actually realized varied greatly from year to year. Hastings had the reputation of bearing hard upon the zamindars, and was absorbed in other critical affairs of state or of war. On the whole he seems to have looked to experience, as acquired from a succession of quinquennial settlements, to furnish the standard rate of the future. Francis, on the other hand, Hastings's great rival, deserves the credit of being among the first to advocate a limitation of the state demand in perpetuity. The same view recommended itself to the authorities at home, partly because it would place their finances on a more stable basis, partly because it seemed to identify the zamindar with the more familiar landlord. Accordingly, Cornwallis took out with him in 1787 instructions to introduce a permanent settlement. The process of assessment began in 1789 and terminated in 1791. No attempt was made to measure the fields or calculate the out-turn, as had been done by Akbar, and is now done when occasion requires in the British provinces; but the amount payable was fixed by reference to what had been paid in the past. At first the settlement was called decennial, but in 1793 it was declared permanent for ever. The total assessment amounted to sikka Rs.26,800,989, or about 24 millions sterling. Though Lord Cornwallis carried the scheme into execution, all praise or blame, so far as details are concerned, must belong to Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, whose knowledge of the country was unsurpassed by that of any civilian of his time. Shore would have proceeded more cautiously than Cornwallis's preconceived idea of a proprietary body and the court of directors' haste after fixity permitted.
1790 onwards
The second Mysore War of 1790-92 is noteworthy on two accounts: Lord Cornwallis, the governor-general, led the British army in person, with a pomp and lavishness of supplies that recalled the campaigns of Aurangzeb; y and the two great native powers, the nizam of the Wa Deccan and the Mahratta confederacy, co-operated as allies of the British. In the result, Tippoo Sultan submitted when Lord Cornwallis had commenced to beleaguer his capital. He agreed to yield one-half of his dominions to be divided among the allies, and to pay three millions sterling towards the cost of the war. Those conditions he fulfilled, but ever afterwards he burned to be revenged upon his conquerors.
The period of Sir John Shore's rule as governor-general, from 1 793 to 1798, was uneventful. In 1798 Lord Mornington, better known as the marquis Wellesley, arrived in India, Wellesley. already inspired with imperial projects that were destined to change the map of the country. Mornington was the friend and favourite of Pitt, from whom he is thought to have derived the comprehensiveness of his political vision and his antipathy to the French name. From the first he laid down as his guiding principle that the British must be the one paramount power in the peninsula, and that the native princes could only retain the insignia of sovereignty by surrendering the substance of independence. The subsequent political history of India has been but the gradual development of this policy, which received its finishing touch when Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in 1877.
To frustrate the possibility of a French invasion of India, led by Napoleon in person, was the governing idea of Wellesley's foreign policy; for France at this time, and for many years later, filled the place afterwards occupied by Russia in the imagination of British statesmen. Nor was the possibility so remote as might now be thought. French regiments guarded and overawed the nizam of Hyderabad. The soldiers of Sindhia, the military head of the Mahratta confederacy, were disciplined and led by French adventurers. Tippoo Sultan carried on a secret correspondence with the French directorate, and allowed a tree of liberty to be planted in his dominions. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon afforded a convenient half-way house both for French intrigue and for the assembling of a hostile expedition. Above all, Napoleon Buonaparte was then in Egypt, dreaming of the conquests of Alexander; and no man knew in what direction he might turn his hitherto unconquered legions. Wellesley first addressed himself to the nizam, where his policy prevailed without serious opposition.
The French battalions at Hyderabad were disbanded and the nizam bound himself by treaty not to take any European into his service without the consent of the British government - a clause since inserted in every engagement entered into with native powers. Next, the whole weight of Wellesley's resources was turned against Tippoo, whom Cornwallis had defeated but not subdued. His intrigues with the French were laid bare, and he was given an opportunity of adhering to the new subsidiary system. On his refusal war was declared, and Wellesley came down in state to Madras to organize the expedition in person and watch over the course of events. One British army marched into Mysore from Madras, accompanied by a contingent from the nizam. Another advanced from the western coast. Tippoo, after offering but a feeble resistance in the field, retired into Seringapatam, and, when his capital was stormed, died fighting bravely in the breach (1799).
Since the battle of Plassey no event so greatly impressed the native imagination as the capture of Seringapatam, which won for General Harris a peerage and for Wellesley an Irish marquisate. In dealing with the territories of Tippoo, Wellesley acted with moderation. The central portion, forming the old state of Mysore, was restored to an infant representative of the Hindu rajas, whom Hyder Ali Meanwhile Warren Hastings had to deal with a more formidable enemy than the Mahratta confederacy. The reckless conduct of the Madras government had roused the hostility both of Hyder Ali of Mysore and of the nizam of the Deccan, the two strongest Mussulman powers in India, who attempted to draw the Mahrattas into an alliance against the British. The diplomacy of Hastings won over the nizam and the Mahratta raja of Nagpur, but the army of Hyder Ali fell like a thunderbolt upon the British possessions in the Carnatic. A strong detachment under Colonel Baillie was cut to pieces at Perambakam, and the Mysore cavalry ravaged the country unchecked up to the walls of Madras. For the second time the Bengal army, stimulated by the energy of Hastings, saved the honour of the British name. Sir Eyre Coote, the victor of Wandiwash, was sent by sea to relieve Madras with all the men and money available, while Colonel Pearse marched south overland to overawe the raja of Berar and the nizam. The war was hotly contested, for Sir Eyre Coote was now an old man, and the Mysore army was welldisciplined and equipped, and also skilfully handled by Hyder and his son Tippoo. Hyder died in 1782, and peace was finally concluded with Tippoo in 1784, on the basis of a mutual restitution of all conquests.
It was Warren Hastings's merit to organize the empire which Clive founded. He was governor or governor-general for thir teen years, a longer period than any of his successors.
During that time the British lost the American colonies, but in India their reputation steadily rose to its meat of highest pitch. Within a year Hastings was succeeded had dethroned, while the rest was partitioned between the nizam and the British. At about the same time the province of the Carnatic, or all that large portion of southern India ruled by the nawab of Arcot, and also the principality of Tanjore, were placed under direct British administration, thus constituting the Madras presidency almost as it has existed to the present day.
The Mahrattas had been the nominal allies of the British in both their wars with Tippoo, but they had never given active assistance, nor were they secured to the British side as the nizam now was. The Mahratta powers at this time were five in number. The recognized head of the confederacy was the peshwa of Poona, who ruled the hill country of the Western Ghats, the cradle of the Mahratta race. The fertile province of Gujarat was annually harried by the horsemen of the gaekwar of Baroda.
In central India two military leaders, Sindhia of Gwalior and Holkar of Indore, alternately held the pre-eminency. Towards the east the Bhonsla raja of Nagpur reigned from Berar to the coast of Orissa. Wellesley tried assiduously to bring these several Mahratta powers within the net of his subsidiary system. At last, in 1802, the necessities of the peshwa, who had been defeated by Holkar, and driven as a fugitive into British territory, induced him to sign the treaty of Bassein, by which he pledged himself to hold communications with no other power, European or native, and ceded territory for the maintenance of a subsidiary force. This greatly extended the British territorial influence in western India, but led directly to the second Mahratta war, for neither Sindhia nor the raja of Nagpur would tolerate this abandonment of Mahratta independence. The campaigns that followed are perhaps the most glorious in the history of the British arms in India. The general plan and the adequate provision of resources were due to the marquis Wellesley, as also the indomitable spirit that could not anticipate defeat. The armies were led by General Arthur Wellesley (afterwards duke of Wellington) and General (afterwards Lord) Lake.
Wellesley operated in the Deccan, where, in a few short months, he won the decisive victories of Assaye and Argaum. Lake's campaign in Hindustan was no less brilliant, though it has received less notice from historians. He won pitched battles at Aligarh and Laswari, and captured the cities of Delhi and Agra, thus scattering the French troops of Sindhia, and at the same time coming forward as the champion of the Mogul emperor in his hereditary capital. Before the year 1803 was out, both Sindhia and the Bhonsla raja were glad to sue for peace. Sindhia ceded all claims to the territory north of the Jumna, and left the blind old emperor Shah Alam once more under British protection. The Bhonsla raja forfeited Orissa to the English, who had already occupied it with a flying column, and Berar to the nizam, who gained a fresh addition by every act of complaisance to the British government. The freebooter, Jaswant Rao Holkar, alone remained in the field, supporting his troops by ravages through Malwa and Rajputana. The concluding years of Wellesley's rule were occupied with a series of operations against Holkar, which brought no credit to the British name. The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson through Central India (1804) recalled memories of the convention of Wargaum, and of the destruction of Colonel Baillie's force by Hyder Ali. The repulse of Lake in person at the siege of Bharatpur (Bhurtpore) (1805) is memorable as an instance of a British army in India having to turn back with its object unaccomplished.
The ambitious policy and the continuous wars of Lord Wellesley exhausted the patience of the court of directors at home. In. 1804 Lord Cornwallis was sent out as governor-general a second time, with instructions to bring about peace at any price, while Holkar was still unsubdued, and Sindhia was threatening a fresh war. But Cornwallis was now an old man and broken down in health. Travelling up to the northwest during the rainy season, he sank and died at Ghazipur, before he had been ten weeks in the country. His immediate successor was Sir George Barlow, a civil servant of the company, who, as a locum tenens, had no alternative but to carry out faithfully the orders of his employers. He is charged with being, under these orders, the only governor-general who diminished the area of British territory, and with violating engagements by abandoning the Rajput chiefs to the tender mercies of Holkar and Sindhia. During his administration also occurred the mutiny of the Madras sepoys at Vellore, which, though promptly suppressed, sent a shock of insecurity through the empire.
1807 onwards
Lord Minto, governor-general from 1807 to 1813, consolidated the conquests which Wellesley had acquired. His only military exploits were the occupation of the island of Mauritius, and the conquest of Java by an expedition which he accompanied in person. The condition of central India continued to be disturbed, but Lord Minto succeeded in preventing any violent outbreaks without himself having recourse to the sword. The company had ordered him to follow a policy of non-intervention, and he managed to obey his orders without injuring the prestige of the British name. In his time the Indian government first opened relations with a new set of foreign powers by sending embassies to the Punjab, to Afghanistan and to Persia. The ambassadors were all trained in the school of Wellesley, and formed perhaps the most illustrious trio of " politicals " that the Indian service has produced. Sir Charles Metcalfe was the envoy to the court of Ranjit Singh at Lahore; Mountstuart Elphinstone met the shah of Afghanistan at Peshawar; and Sir John Malcolm was despatched to Persia. If it cannot be said that any of these missions were fruitful in permanent results, at least they introduced the English to a new set of diplomatic relations, and widened the sphere of their influence.
The successor of Lord Minto was Lord Moira, better known as the marquis of Hastings, who governed India for the long period of nine years, from 1814 to 1823. This period was marked by two wars of the first magnitude, the campaigns against the Gurkhas of Nepal, and the third and last Mahratta War. The Gurkhas, the present ruling race in Nepal, are Hindu immigrants who claim a Rajput origin. Their sovereignty dates only from 1767, in which year they overran the valley of Katmandu, and gradually extended their power over all the hills and valleys of Nepal. Organized upon a sort of military and feudal basis, they soon became a terror to all their neighbours, marching east into Sikkim, west into Kumaon, and south into the Gangetic plains. In the last quarter their victims were British subjects, and at last it became imperatively necessary to check their advance. Sir George Barlow and Lord Minto had remonstrated in vain, and nothing was left to Lord Moira but to take up arms. The campaign of 1814 was little short of disastrous. After overcoming the natural difficulties of a malarious climate and precipitous hills, the sepoys were on several occasions fairly worsted by the unexpected bravery of the little Gurkhas, whose heavy knives or kukris dealt terrible execution. But in 1815 General Ochterlony, who commanded the army operating by way of the Sutlej, stormed one by one the hill forts which still stud the Himalayan states now under the Punjab government, and compelled the Nepal darbar to sue for peace. In the following year the same general advanced from Patna into the valley of Katmandu, and finally dictated the terms which had before been rejected, within a few miles of the capital. By the treaty of Segauli, which defines the English relations with Nepal to the present day, the Gurkhas withdrew on the one hand from Sikkim, and on the other from those lower ranges of the western Himalayas which have supplied the health-giving stations of Naini Tal, Mussoorie and Simla.
Meanwhile the condition of central India was every year becoming more unsatisfactory. Though the great Mahratta chiefs were learning to live rather as peaceful princes than as leaders of predatory bands, the example of lawlessness they had set was being followed, and bettered in the following, by a new set of freebooters, known as the Pindaris. As opposed to the Mahrattas, who were at least a nationality bound by some traditions of a united government, the Pindaris were merely irregular soldiers, corresponding most nearly to the free companies of medieval Europe. Of no common race and of no common religion, they welcomed to their ranks the outlaws and broken tribes of all India - Afghans, Mahrattas or Jats. Their headquarters were in Malwa, but their depredations were not confined to central India. In bands, sometimes numbering a few hundreds, sometimes many thousands, they rode out on their forays as far as the Coromandel coast. The most powerful of the Pindari captains, Amir Khan, had an organized army of many regiments, and several batteries of cannon. Two other leaders, known as Chitu and Karim, at one time paid a ransom to Sindhia of ioo,000. To suppress the Pindari hordes, who were supported by the sympathy, more or less open, of all the Mahratta chiefs, Lord Hastings (1817) collected the strongest British army that had been seen in India, numbering nearly 1 20,000 men, half to operate from the north, half from the south. Sindhia was overawed, and remained quiet. Amir Khan consented to disband his army, on condition of being guaranteed the possession of what is now the principality of Tonk. The remaining bodies of Pindaris were attacked in their homes, surrounded, and cut to pieces. Karim threw himself upon the mercy of the conquerors. Chitu fled to the jungles, and was killed by a tiger.
In the same year (1817) as that in which the Pindaris were crushed, and almost in the same month (November), the three great Mahratta powers at Poona, Nagpur and Indore Third ro s e against the English. The peshwa, Baji Rao, Mahratta g g P ? J War. had long been chafing under the terms imposed by the treaty of Bassein (1802), and the subsequent treaty of Poona (1817), which riveted yet closer the chains of dependence upon the paramount power. Elphinstone, then resident at his court, foresaw what was coming and ordered up a European regiment from Bombay. The next day the residency was burned down, and Kirkee was attacked by the whole army of the peshwa. The attack was bravely repulsed, and the peshwa immediately fled from his capital. Almost the same plot was enacted at Nagpur, where the honour of the British name was saved by the sepoys who defended the hill of Sitabaldi against enormous odds. The army of Holkar was defeated in the following month at the pitched battle of Mehidpur. All open resistance was now at an end. Nothing remained but to follow up the fugitives, and determine the conditions of the general pacification. In both these duties Sir John Malcolm played a prominent part. The peshwa himself surrendered, and was permitted to reside at Bithur, near Cawnpore, on a pension of £80,000 a year. His adopted son was the infamous Nana Sahib. To fill the peshwa's place to some extent at the head of the Mahratta confederacy, the lineal descendant of Sivaji was brought forth from obscurity, and placed upon the throne of Satara. The greater part of the peshwa's dominions was ultimately incorporated in the Bombay presidency, while the nucleus of the Central Provinces was formed out of territory taken from the peshwa and the raja of Nagpur. An infant was recognized as the heir of Holkar, and a second infant was proclaimed raja of Nagpur under British guardianship. At the same time the several states of Rajputana accepted the position of feudatories of the paramount power. The map of India, as thus drawn by Lord Hastings, remained substantially unchanged until the time of Lord Dalhousie. But the proudest boast of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm was, not that they had advanced the pomoerium, but that they had conferred the blessings of peace and good government upon millions who had suffered unutterable things from Mahratta and Pindari tyranny.
The marquis of Hastings was succeeded by Lord Amherst, after the interval of a few months, during which Mr Adam, a civil servant, acted as governor-general. Lord Amherst's administration lasted for five years, from 1823 to 1828. It is known in history by two prominent events, the first Burmese War and the capture of Bharatpur. For some years past the north-east frontier had been disturbed by the restlessness of the Burmese. The successors of Alompra, after having subjugated all Burma, and overrun Assam, which was then an independent kingdom, began a series of encroachments upon British territory in Bengal.
As all peaceful proposals were scornfully rejected, Lord Amherst was compelled to declare war in 1824. Little military glory could be gained by beating the Burmese, who were formidable only from the pestilential character of their country. One expedition with gunboats proceeded up the Brahmaputra into Assam; another marched by land through Chittagong into Arakan, for the Bengal sepoys refused to go by sea; a third, and the strongest, sailed from Madras direct to the mouth of the Irrawaddy. The war was protracted over two years. At last, after the loss of about 20,000 lives and an expenditure of £14,000,000, the king of Ava consented to sign the treaty of Yandabu, by which he abandoned all claim to Assam, and ceded the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which were already in the military occupation of the British. He retained all the valley of the Irrawaddy, down to the sea at Rangoon. The capture of Bharatpur in central India by Lord Combermere in 1826 wiped out the repulse which Lord Lake had received before that city in January 1805. A disputed succession necessitated British intervention. Artillery could make little impression upon the massive walls of mud, but at last a breach was effected by mining, and the city was taken by storm, thus losing its general reputation throughout India for impregnability, which had threatened to become a political danger.
The next governor-general was Lord William Bentinck, who had been governor of Madras twenty years earlier at the time of the mutiny of Vellore. His seven years' rule Bentinck. (from 1828 to 1835) is not signalized by any of those victories or extensions of territory by which chroniclers delight to measure the growth of empire. But it forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the benign process by which the hearts of a subject population are won over to venerate as well as obey their alien rulers. The modern history of the British in India, as benevolent administrators ruling the country with an eye to the good of the natives, may be said to begin with Lord William Bentinck. According to the inscription upon his statue at Calcutta, from the pen of Macaulay: " He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge." His first care on arrival in India was to restore equilibrium to the finances, which were tottering under the burden imposed upon them by the Burmese War. This he effected by reductions in permanent expenditure, amounting in the aggregate to 12 millions sterling, as well as by augmenting the revenue from land that had escaped assessment, and from the opium of Malwa. He also widened the gates by which educated natives could enter the service of the company. Some of these reforms were distasteful to the covenanted service and to the officers of the army, but Lord William was always staunchly supported by the court of directors and by the Whig ministry at home.
His two most memorable acts are the abolition of suttee and the suppression of the Thugs. At this distance of time it is difficult to realize the degree to which these suttee. two barbarous practices had corrupted the social system of the Hindus. European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorize the immolation of widows was a wilful mistranslation. But the practice had been engrained in Hindu opinion by the authority of centuries, and had acquired the sanctity of a religious rite. The emperor Akbar is said to have prohibited it by law, but the early British rulers did not dare so far to violate the religious customs of the people. In the year 1817 no fewer than seven hundred widows are said to have been burned alive in the Bengal presidency alone. To this day the most holy spots of Hindu pilgrimage are thickly dotted with little white pillars, each commemorating a suttee. In the teeth of strenuous opposition, from both Europeans and natives, Lord William carried the regulation in council on the 4th of December 1829, by which all who abetted suttee were declared guilty of " culpable homicide." The honour of suppressing Thuggism must be shared between Lord William and Captain Sleeman. Thuggism was an abnormal First Burmese War. excrescence upon Hinduism, in so far as the bands of secret assassins were sworn together by an oath based on the rites of the bloody goddess Kali. Between 1826 and 1835 as many as 1562 Thugs were apprehended indifferent parts of British India, and by the evidence of approvers the moral plague spot was gradually stamped out.
Two other historical events are connected with the administration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833 the charter of the East India Company was renewed for twenty years, but only upon the terms that it should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle freely in the country. At the same time a legal or fourth member was added to the governor-general's council, who might not be a servant of the company, and a commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first legal member of council, and the first president of the law commission. In 1830 it was found necessary to take the state of Mysore under British administration, where it continued until 1881, when it was restored to native rule; and in 1834 the frantic misrule of the raja of Coorg brought on a short and sharp war. The raja was permitted to retire to Benares, and the brave and proud inhabitants of that mountainous little territory decided to place themselves under the rule of the company; so that the only annexation effected by Lord William Bentinck was " in consideration of the unanimous wish of the people." Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord William as senior member of council. His short term of office is memor. able for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he willingly carried into execution, for giving entire liberty to the press. Public opinion in India, as well as the express wish of the court of directors at home, pointed to Metcalfe as the most fit person to carry out the policy of Bentinck, not provisionally, but as governor-general for a full term. Party exigencies, however, led to the appointment of Lord Auckland. From that date commences a new era of war and conquest, which may be said to have lasted for twenty years. All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted by force to place Shah Shuja upon the throne of Kabul, an attempt which ended in gross mismanagement and the annihilation of the British garrison in that city. The disaster in Afghanistan was quickly followed by the conquest of Sind, the two wars in the Punjab, the second Burmese War, and last of all the Mutiny.
The attention of the British government had been directed to Afghan affairs ever since the time of Sir John Shore, who feared that Zaman Shah, then holding his court at First Lahore, might follow in the path of Ahmed Shah, Afghan and overrun Hindustan. The growth of the powerful War. Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh effectually dispelled any such alarms for the future. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Mountstuart Elphinstone was sent by Lord Minto on a mission to Shah Shuja to form a defensive alliance. Before the year was out Shah Shuja had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmud Shah, was on the throne. In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the drama of British interference in Afghanistan, the usurper, Dost Mahommed Barakzai, was firmly established at Kabul. His great ambition was to recover Peshawar from the Sikhs; and when Captain Alexander Burnes arrived on a mission from Lord Auckland, with the ostensible object of opening trade, the Dost was willing to promise everything, if only he could get Peshawar. But Lord Auckland had another and more important object in view. At this time the Russians were advancing rapidly in Central Asia, and a Persian army, not without Russian support, was besieging Herat, the traditional bulwark of Afghanistan on the east. A Russian envoy was at Kabul at the same time as Burnes. The latter was unable to satisfy the demands of Dost Mahommed in the matter of Peshawar, and returned to India unsuccessful.
Lord Auckland forthwith resolved upon the hazardous plan of placing a more subservient ruler upon the throne of Kabul. Shah Shuja, now in exile at Ludhiana, was selected for the purpose. At this time both the Punjab and Sind were independent kingdoms. Sind was the less powerful of the two, and, therefore, a British army escorting Shah Shuja made its way by that route to enter Afghanistan through the Bolan Pass. Kandahar surrendered, Ghazni was taken by storm, Dost Mahommed fled across the Hindu Kush, and Shah Shuja was triumphantly led into the Bala Hissar at Kabul in August 1839. During the two years that followed Afghanistan remained in the military occupation of the British. The catastrophe occurred in November 1841, when Sir Alexander Burnes was assassinated in the city of Kabul. The troops in the cantonments were then under the command of General Elphinstone (not to be confounded with the civilian Mountstuart Elphinstone), with Sir William Macnaghten as chief political adviser. Elphinstone was an old man, unequal to the responsibilities of the position. Macnaghten was treacherously murdered at an interview with the Afghan chief, Akbar Khan, eldest son of Dost Mahommed. After lingering in their cantonments for two months, the British army set off in the depth of winter to find its way back to India through the passes.
When they started they numbered 4000 fighting men, with 12,000 camp followers. A single survivor, Dr Brydon, reached the friendly walls of Jalalabad, where General Sale was gallantly holding out. The rest perished in the defiles of Khurd Kabul and Jagdalak, either from the knives and matchlocks of the Afghans or from the effects of cold. A few prisoners, mostly women, children and officers, were considerately treated by the orders of Akbar Khan. (See Afghanistan.) Within a month after the news reached Calcutta, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord Ellenborough, whose first impulse was to be satisfied with drawing off in safety the garrisons from Kandahar and Jalalabad. But bolder counsels prevailed. General Pollock, who was marching straight through the Punjab to relieve General Sale, was ordered to penetrate to Kabul, while General Nott was only too glad not to be forbidden to retire from Kandahar through Kabul. After a good deal of fighting, the two British forces met at their common destination in September 1842. The great bazar at Kabul was blown up with gunpowder to fix a stigma upon the city; the prisoners were recovered; and all marched back to India, leaving Dost Mahommed to take undisputed possession of his throne. The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord Ellenborough, who had caused the gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni to be carried back as a memorial of " Somnath revenged." Lord Ellenborough, who loved military display, had his tastes gratified by two more wars. In 1843 the Mahommedan rulers of Sind, known as the " meers " or amirs, whose only fault was that they would not surrender their Annexa- independence, were crushed by Sir Charles Napier.
The victory of Meeanee, in which 3000 British troops defeated 20,000 Baluchis, is perhaps the most brilliant feat of arms in Indian history; but an honest excuse can scarcely be found for the annexation of the country. In the same year a disputed succession at Gwalior, fomented by feminine intrigue, resulted in an outbreak of the overgrown army which the Sindhia family had been allowed to maintain. Peace was restored by the battles of Maharajpur and Punniar, at the former of which Lord Ellenborough was present in person.
In 1844 Lord Ellenborough was recalled by the court of directors, who differed from him on many points of administration, and distrusted his erratic genius. He was succeeded by Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Hardinge, =slit Y Y () g ? who had served through the Peninsular War and had lost a hand at Ligny. It was felt on all sides that a trial of strength between the British and the Sikhs was at hand. (For the origin of the Sikh power see Punjab.) Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh kingdom in the Punjab, had faithfully fulfilled all his obligations towards the British. But on his death in 1839 no successor was left to curb the ambition of the Sikh nationality.
1845
In 1845 the khalsa, or Sikh army, numbering 60,000 men with 150 guns, crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory. Sir Hugh Gough, the commander-in-chief, together with the governor-general, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks four pitched battles were fought, at Mudki, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy; but by the last victory the Sikhs were fairly driven into and across the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the British. By the terms of peace then dictated the infant son of Ranjit, Dhuleep Singh, was recognized as raja; the Jullundur Doab, or tract between the Sutlej and the Ravi, was annexed; the Sikh army was limited to a specified number; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed to be resident at Lahore; and a British force was detailed to garrison the Punjab for a period of eight years. Lord Dalhousie succeeded Lord Hardinge, and his eight years' administration (from 1848 to 1856) was more pregnant of results than that of any governor-general since Wellesley.
Though professedly a man of peace, he was compelled to fight two wars, in the Punjab and in Burma. These both ended in large acquisitions of territory, while Nagpur, Oudh and several minor states also came under British rule. But Dalhousie's own special interest lay in the advancement of the moral and material condition of the country. The system of administration carried out in the conquered Punjab by the two Lawrences and their assistants is probably the most successful piece of difficult work ever accomplished by Englishmen. Lower Burma prospered under their rule scarcely less than the Punjab. In both cases Lord Dalhousie deserves a large share of the credit. No branch of the administration escaped his reforming hand. He founded the public works department, to pay special attention to roads and canals. He opened the Ganges canal, still the largest work of the kind in the country, and he turned the sod of the first Indian railway. He promoted steam communication with England via the Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. It is Lord Dalhousie's misfortune that these benefits are too often forgotten in the vivid recollections of the Mutiny, which avenged his policy of annexation.
Lord Dalhousie had not been six months in India before the second Sikh war broke out. Two British officers were treacherously assassinated at Multan. Unfortunately Henry Lawrence was at home on sick leave. The British army was not ready to act in the hot season, and, despite the single-handed exertions of Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Herbert) Edwardes, this outbreak of fanaticism led to a general rising. The khalsa army again came together, and more than once fought on even terms with the British. On the fatal field of Chillianwalla, which patriotism prefers to call a drawn battle, the British lost 2400 officers and men, besides four guns and the colours of three regiments. Before reinforcements could come out from England, with Sir Charles Napier as commanderin-chief, Lord Gough had restored his own reputation by the crowning victory of Gujrat, which absolutely destroyed the Sikh army. Multan had previously fallen; and the Afghan horse under Dost Mahommed, who had forgotten their hereditary antipathy to the Sikhs in their greater hatred of the British name, were chased back with ignominy to their native hills. The Punjab henceforth became a British province, supplying a virgin field for the administrative talents of Dalhousie and the two Lawrences. Raja Dhuleep Singh received an allowance of £50,000 a year, on which he retired as a country gentleman to Norfolk in England. (See Punjab.) The second Burmese war of 1852 was caused by the ill-treatment of European merchants at Rangoon, and the insolence offered to the captain of a frigate who had been sent to remonstrate. The whole valley of the Irrawaddy, from Rangoon to Prome, was occupied in a few months, and, as the king of Ava refused to treat, it was annexed, under the name of Pegu, to the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which had been acquired in 1826.
Lord Dalhousie's dealings with the feudatory states of India, though actuated by the highest motives, seem now to have proceeded upon mistaken lines. His policy of annexing each native state on the death of its ruler without natural heirs produced a general feeling of insecurity of tenure among the ,princes, and gave offence to the. people of India. This doctrine policy was reversed when India was taken over by of lapse. the crown after the Mutiny; and its reversal has led to the native princes being amongst the most loyal subjects of the British government. The first state to escheat to the British government was Satara, which had been reconstituted by Lord Hastings on the downfall of the peshwa Baji Rao in 1818. The last direct representative of Sivaji died without a male heir in 1848, and his deathbed adoption was set aside. In the same year the Rajput state of Karauli was saved by the interposition of the court of directors, who drew a fine distinction between a dependent principality and a protected ally. In 1853 Jhansi suffered the same fate as Satara. But the most conspicuous application of the doctrine of lapse was the case of Nagpur.
The last of the Bhonslas, a dynasty older the the British government itself, died without a son, natural or adopted, in 1853. That year also saw British administration extended to the Berars, or the assigned districts which the nizam of Hyderabad was induced to cede as a territorial guarantee for the subsidies which he perpetually kept in arrear. Three more distinguished names likewise passed away in 1853, though without any attendant accretion to British territory. In the extreme south the titular nawab of the Carnatic and the titular raja of Tanjore both died without heirs. Their rank and their pensions died with them, though compassionate allowances were continued to their families. In the north of India, Baji Rao, the ex-peshwa who had been dethroned in 1818, lived on till 1853 in the enjoyment of his annual pension of £80,000. His adopted son, Nana Sahib, inherited his accumulated savings, but could obtain no further recognition.
The annexation of the province of Oudh was justifiable on the ground of morals, though not on that of policy. Ever since the nawab wazir, Shuja-ud-Dowlah, received back his forfeited territories from the hands of Lord Clive in 1765, the very existence of Oudh as an independent state had depended only upon the protection of British bayonets. Thus, preserved alike from foreign invasion and from domestic rebellion, the long line of subsequent nawabs had given way to that neglect of public affairs and those private vices which naturally flow from irresponsible power. Their only redeeming virtue was steady loyalty to the British government. Warning after warning had been given to the nawabs, who had assumed the title of king since 1819, to put their house in order; but every warning was neglected, and Lord Dalhousie at last carried into effect what both the previous governors-general had threatened. In 1856, the last year of his rule, he issued orders to General (afterwards Sir James) Outram, then resident at the court of Lucknow, to assume the direct administration of Oudh, on the ground that " the British government would be guilty in the sight of God and man, if it were any longer to aid in sustaining by its countenance an administration fraught with suffering to millions." The king, Wajid Ali, bowed to irresistible force, though he ever refused to recognize the justice of his deposition. After a mission to England, by way of protest and appeal, he settled down in the pleasant suburb of Garden Reach near Calcutta, where he lived in the enjoyment of a pension of £1 20,000 a year. Oudh was thus annexed without a blow; but it may be doubted whether the one measure of Lord Dalhousie upon which he looked back himself with the clearest conscience was not the very one that most alarmed native public opinion.
Lord Dalhousie was succeeded by his friend, Lord Canning, who, at the farewell banquet in England given to him by the court of directors, uttered these prophetic words: " I wish for a peaceful term of office. But I cannot forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, no larger than a man's hand, but which, growing larger and larger, may at last threaten to burst and overwhelm us with ruin." In the following year the sepoys of the Bengal War army mutinied, and all the valley of the Ganges from Patna to Delhi rose in open rebellion.
Unrest before 1857
The various motives assigned for the Mutiny appear inadequate to the European mind. The truth seems to be that native opinion throughout India was in a ferment, predisposing men to believe the wildest stories, and to act precipitately upon their fears. The influence of panic in an Oriental population is greater than might be readily believed. In the first place, the policy of Lord Dalhousie, exactly in proportion as it had been dictated by the most honourable considerations, was utterly distasteful to the native mind. Repeated annexations, the spread of education, the appearance of the steam engine and the telegraph wire, all alike revealed a consistent determination to substitute an English for an Indian civilization. The Bengal sepoys, especially, thought that they could see into the future farther than the rest of their countrymen. Nearly all men of high caste, and many of them recruited from Oudh, they dreaded tendencies which they deemed to be denationalizing, and they knew at first hand what annexation meant. They believed it was by their prowess that the Punjab had been conquered, and all India was held quiet. The numerous dethroned princes, their heirs and their widows, were the first to take advantage of the spirit of disaffection that was abroad. They had heard of the Crimean War, and were told that Russia was the perpetual enemy of England. Owing to the silladar system, under which the native cavalry provided their own horses and accoutrements, many of the sowars were in debt, and were in favour of a change which would wipe out the existing regime and with it the moneylender.
But in addition to these general causes of unrest the condition of the native army had long given cause for uneasiness to acute observers. During the course of its history it had broken out into mutiny at recurrent intervals, the latest occasion being the winter of 1843-1844, when there were two separate mutinies in Sind and at Ferozepur. Moreover the spirit of the sepoys during the Sikh wars was unsatisfactory, and led to excessive casualties amongst the British officers and soldiers. Both General Jacob and Sir Charles Napier had prophesied that the Mutiny would take place. Sir Hugh Gough and other commanders-inchief had petitioned for the removal of India's chief arsenal from Delhi to Umballa; and Lord Dalhousie himself had protested against the reduction of the British element in the army. But all these warnings were disregarded with a blindness as great as was the incapacity that allowed the Mutiny to gather head unchecked after its first outbreak at Meerut. Moreover the outbreak was immediately provoked by an unparalleled instance of carelessness. It has recently been proved by Mr G. W. Forrest's researches in the Government of India records that the sepoys' belief that their cartridges were greased with the fat of cows and pigs had some foundation in fact. Such a gross violation of their caste prejudices would alone be sufficient to account for the outbreak that followed.
1857
Indpaedia has a long series of articles on 1857
(For the military incidents of the Mutiny see Indian Mutiny.) The Mutiny sealed the fate of the East India company, after a life of more than two and a half centuries. The Act for the Better Government of India (1858), which finally transferred the entire administration from the company to the crown, was not passed without an eloquent protest from the directors, nor without acrimonious party discussion in parliament. It enacts that India shall be governed by, and in the name of, the sovereign of England through a principal secretary of state, assisted by a council. The governor-general received the new title of viceroy. The European troops of the company, numbering about 24,000 officers and men, were amalgamated with the royal service, and the Indian navy was abolished. By the Indian Councils Act 1861 the governor-general's council and also the councils at Madras and Bombay were augmented by the addition of non-official members, either natives or Europeans, for legislative purposes only; and by another act passed in the same year high courts of judicature were constituted out of the existing supreme courts and company's courts at the presidency towns.
India under the Crown
It fell to the lot of Lord Canning both to suppress the Mutiny and to introduce the peaceful revolution that followed. As regards his execution of the former part of his duties, it is sufficient to say that he preserved his equanimity undisturbed in the darkest hours of peril, and that the strict impartiality of his conduct incurred alternate praise and blame from the fanatics on either side. The epithet then scornfully applied to him of "Clemency" Canning is now remembered only to his honour. On November 1, 1858, at a grand durbar held at Allahabad the royal proclamation was published which announced that the queen had assumed the government of India. This document, which has been called the Magna Charta of the Indian people, went on to explain the policy of political justice and religious toleration which it was her royal pleasure to pursue, and granted an amnesty to all except those who had directly taken part in the murder of British subjects. Peace was proclaimed throughout India on the 8th of July 1859; and in the following cold season Lord Canning made a viceregal progress through the upper provinces, to receive the homage of loyal princes and chiefs, and to guarantee to them the right of adoption. The suppression of the Mutiny increased the debt of India by about 40 millions sterling, and the military changes that ensued augmented the annual expenditure by about 10 millions. To grapple with this deficit, James Wilson was sent out from the treasury as financial member of council. He reorganized the customs system, imposed an income tax and licence duty and created a state paper currency. The penal code, originally drawn up by Macaulay in 1837, passed into law in 1860, together with codes of civil and criminal procedure.
Lord Canning left India in March 1862, and died before he had been a month in England. His successor, Lord Elgin, only lived till November 1863, when he too fell a victim to the excessive work of the governor-generalship, dying at the Himalayan station of Dharmsala, where he lies buried. He was succeeded by Sir John Lawrence, the saviour of the Punjab. The chief incidents of his administration were the Bhutan war and the terrible Orissa famine of 1866. Lord Mayo, who succeeded him in 1869, carried on the permanent British policy of moral and material progress with a special degree of personal energy. The Umballa durbar, at which Shere Ali was recognized as amir of Afghanistan, though in one sense the completion of what Lord Lawrence had begun, owed much of its success to the personal influence of Lord Mayo himself. The same quality, combined with sympathy and firmness, stood him in good stead in all his dealings both with native chiefs and European officials. His example of hard work stimulated all to their best. While engaged in exploring with his own eyes the furthest corners of the empire, he fell by the hand of an assassin in the convict settlement of the Andaman islands in 1872.
His successor was Lord Northbrook, whose ability showed itself chiefly in the department of finance. During the time of his administration a famine in Lower Bengal in 1874 was successfully obviated by government relief and public works, though at an enormous cost; the gaekwar of Baroda was dethroned in 1875 for misgovernment and disloyalty, while his dominions were continued to a nominated child of the family; and the prince of Wales (Edward VII.) visited the country in the cold season of 1875-1876. Lord Lytton followed Lord Northbrook in 1876. On the 1st of January 1877 Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India at a durbar of great magnificence, held on the historic "Ridge" overlooking the Mogul capital Delhi. But, while the princes and high officials of the country were flocking to this gorgeous scene, the shadow of famine was already darkening over the south of India. Both the monsoons of 1876 had failed to bring their due supply of rain, and the season of 1877 was little better.
The consequences of this prolonged drought, which extended from Cape Comorin to the Deccan, and subsequently invaded northern India, were more disastrous than any similar calamity up to that time from the introduction of British rule. Despite unparalleled importations of grain by sea and rail, despite the most strenuous exertions of the government, which incurred a total expenditure on this account of 11 millions sterling, the loss of life from actual starvation and its attendant train of diseases was lamentable. In the autumn of 1878 the affairs of Afghanistan again forced themselves into notice. Shere Ali, the amir, who had been hospitably entertained by Lord Mayo, was found to be favouring Russian intrigues. A British envoy was refused admittance to the country, while a Russian mission was received with honour. This led to a declaration of war. British armies advanced by three routes - the Khyber, the Kurram and the Bolan - and without much opposition occupied the inner entrances of the passes. Shere Ali fled to Afghan Turkestan, and there died. A treaty was entered into with his son, Yakub Khan, at Gandamak, by which the British frontier was advanced to the crests or farther sides of the passes and a British officer was admitted to reside at Kabul. Within a few months the British resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari, was treacherously attacked and massacred, together with his escort, and a second war became necessary. Yakub Khan abdicated, and was deported to India, while Kabul was occupied in force.
At this crisis of affairs a general election in England resulted in a change of government. Lord Lytton resigned with the Conservative ministry, and the marquis of Ripon was nominated as his successor in 1880. Shortly after wards a British brigade was defeated at Maiwand by the Herati army of Ayub Khan, a defeat promptly and completely retrieved by the brilliant march of General Sir Frederick Roberts from Kabul to Kandahar, and by the total rout of Ayub Khan's army on the 1st of September 1880. Abdur Rahman Khan, the eldest male representative of the stock of Dost Mahommed, was then recognized as amir of Kabul. Lord Ripon was sent out to India by the Liberal ministry of 1880 for the purpose of reversing Lord Lytton's policy in Afghanistan, and of introducing a more sympathetic system into the administration of India. The disaster at Maiwand, and the Russian advance east of the Caspian, prevented the proposed withdrawal from Quetta; but Kandahar was evacuated, Abdur Rahman was left in complete control of his country and was given an annual subsidy of twelve lakhs of rupees in 1883. In the second purpose of his administration Lord Ripon's well-meant efforts only succeeded in setting Europeans and natives against each other. His term of office was chiefly notable for the agitation against the Ilbert Bill, which proposed to subject European offenders to trial by native magistrates. The measure aroused a storm of indignation amongst the European community which finally resulted in the bill being shorn of its most objectionable features. Lord Ripon's good intentions and personal sympathy were recognized by the natives, and on leaving Bombay he received the greatest ovation ever accorded to an Indian viceroy.
After the arrival of Lord Dufferin as governor-general the incident known as the Panjdeh Scare brought Britain to the verge of war with Russia. During the preceding decades Russia had gradually advanced her power from the Caspian across the Turkoman steppes to the border of Afghanistan, and Russian intrigue was largely responsible for the second Afghan war. In February 1884 Russia annexed Merv. This action led to an arrangement in August of the same year for a joint Anglo-Russian commission to delimit the Afghan frontier. In March 1885, while the commission was at work, Lord Dufferin was entertaining the amir Abdur Rahman at a durbar at Rawalpindi. The durbar was interrupted by the news that a Russian general had attacked and routed the Afghan force holding the bridge across the river Kushk, and the incident might possibly have resulted in war between Britain and Russia but for the slight importance that Abdur Rahman attributed to what he termed a border scuffle.
The incident, however, led to military measures being taken by the government of Lord Dufferin, which had far-reaching effects on Indian finance. The total strength of the army was raised by ro,000 British and 20,000 native troops, at an annual cost of about two millions sterling; and the frontier post of Quetta, in the neighbourhood of Kandahar, was connected with the Indian railway system by a line that involved very expensive tunnelling.
The Panjdeh incident was likewise the cause of the establishment of Imperial Service troops in India. At the moment when war seemed imminent, the leading native princes made offers of pecuniary aid. These offers were Imperial declined, but it was intimated to them at a later date Servise that, if they would place a small military force in each troops. state at the disposal of the British government, to be commanded by state officers, but drilled, disciplined and armed under the supervision of British officers and on British lines, the government would undertake to find the necessary supervising officer, arms and organization. The proposal was widely accepted, and the Imperial Service troops, as they are called, amount at present to some 20,000 cavalry, infantry and transport, whose efficiency is very highly thought of. They have rendered good service in the wars on the north-west frontier, and also in China and Somaliland. Later in the same year (1885) occurred the third Burmese war. For the causes of the dispute with King Thebaw, and a description of the military operations which ensued before the country was finally pacified, see Burma.
1885
From 1885 onwards the attention of the Indian government was increasingly devoted to the north-west frontier. Between the years 1885 and 1895 there were delimited at various times by joint commissions the Russo-Afghan frontier between the Oxus and Sarakhs on the Persian frontier, the Russo-Afghan frontier from Lake Victoria to the frontier of China and the AfghanIndian frontier from the Kunar river to a point in the neighbourhood of the Nawa Kotal. To the westward, after various disagreements and two military expeditions, the territories comprising the Zhob, Barhan and Bori valleys, occupied by Pathan tribes, were in 1890 finally incorporated in the general system of the Trans-Indus protectorate. About the same time in the extreme north the post of British resident in Gilgit was re-established, and the supremacy of Kashmir over the adjoining petty chiefships of Hunza-Nagar was enforced (1891-1892). In 1893 the frontiers of Afghanistan and British India were defined by a joint agreement between the two governments, known as the Durand agreement.
There followed on the part of the British authorities, interference in Chitral, ending in an expedition in 1895 and the ejection of the local chiefs in favour of candidates amenable to British influence. A more formidable hostile combination, however, awaited the government of India. By the agreement of 1893 with the amir most of the Waziri clan and also the Afridis had been left outside the limits of the amir's influence and transferred to the British zone. Soon after that date the establishment by the British military authorities of posts within the Waziri country led to apprehension on the part of the local tribesmen. In 1895 the occupation of points within the Swat territory for the safety of the road from India to Chitral similarly roused the suspicion of the Swatis. The Waziris and Swatis successively rose in arms, in June and July 1897, and their example was followed by the Mohmands. Finally, in August the powerful Afridi tribe joined the combination and closed the Khyber Pass, which runs through their territory, and which was held by them, on conditions, in trust for the government of India. This led to the military operations known as the Tirah campaign, which proved very costly both in men and money.
Meanwhile considerable difficulties had been experienced with the Indian currency, which was on a purely silver basis. Before 1873 the fluctuations in the value of silver as The compared with gold had been comparatively small, currency. and the exchange value of the rupee was rarely less than two shillings. But after 1873, in consequence of changes in the monetary systems of France and Germany, and the increased production of silver, this stability of exchange no longer continued, and the rupee sank steadily in value, till it was worth little more than half its face value. This great shrinkage in exchange caused considerable loss to the Indian government in remitting to Europe, and entailed hardship upon Anglo-Indians who received pensions or other payments in rupees, while on the other hand it supplied an artificial stimulus to the export trade by increasing the purchasing power of gold. This advantage, however, was outweighed by the uncertainty as to what the exchange value of the rupee might be at any particular date, which imported a gambling element into commerce. Accordingly in June 1893 an act was passed closing the Indian mints to the free coinage of silver. Six years later, in 1899, the change was completed by an act making gold legal tender at the rate of I for Rs.15, or at the rate of is. 4d. per rupee, and both the government and the individual now know exactly what their obligations will be.
When Lord Curzon became viceroy in 1898, he reversed the policy on the north-west frontier which had given rise to the Tirah campaign, withdrew outlying garrisons in tribal country, substituted for them tribal militia, and created the new North-West Frontier province, for the purpose of introducing consistency of policy and firmness of control upon that disturbed border. In addition, after making careful inquiry through various commissions, he reformed the systems of education and police, laid down a comprehensive scheme of irrigation, improved the leave rules and the excessive report-writing of the civil service, encouraged the native princes by the formation of the Imperial Cadet Corps and introduced many other reforms. His term of office was also notable for the coronation durbar at Delhi in January 1903, the expedition to Lhasa in 1904, which first unveiled that forbidden city to European gaze, and the partition of Bengal in 1905. In December 1904 Lord Curzon entered upon a second term of office, which was unfortunately marred by a controversy with Lord Kitchener, the commander-in-chief, as to the position of the military member of council. Lord Curzon, finding himself at variance with the secretary of state, resigned before the end of the first year, and was succeeded by Lord Minto.
The new viceroy, who might have expected a tranquil time after the energetic reforms of his predecessor, soon found himself Lord face to face with the most serious troubles, euphemistic ally called the "unrest," that British rule has had to encounter in India since the Mutiny. For many years the educated class among the natives had been claiming for themselves a larger share in the administration, and had organized a political party under the name of the NationalCongress, which held annual meetings at Christmas in one or other of the large cities of the peninsula. This class also exercised a wide influence through the press, printed both in the vernacular languages and in English, especially among young students. There is no doubt too that the adoption of Western civilization by the Japanese and their victorious war with Russia set in motion a current through all the peoples of the East.
The occasion though not the cause of trouble arose from the partition of Bengal, which was represented by Bengali agitators as an insult to their mother country. While the first riots occurred in the Punjab and Madras, it is only in Bengal and eastern Bengal that the unrest has been bitter and continuous. This is the centre of the swadeshi movement for the boycott of English goods, of the most seditious speeches and writings and of conspiracies for the assassination of officials. At first the government attempted to quell the disaffection by means of the ordinary law, with fair success outside Bengal; but there, owing to the secret ramifications of the conspiracy, it has been found necessary to adopt special measures. Recourse has been had to a regulation of the year 1818, by which persons may be imprisoned or " deported " without reason assigned; and three acts of the legislature have been passed for dealing more directly with the prevalent classes of crime: (1) an Explosives Act, containing provisions similar to those in force in England; (2) a Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act, which can only be applied specially by proclamation; and (3) a Criminal Law Amendment Act, of which the two chief provisions are - a magisterial inquiry in private (similar to the Scotch procedure) and a trial before three judges of the High Court without a jury.
1909
While the law was thus sternly enforced, important acts of conciliation and measures of reform were carried out simultaneously. In 1907 two natives, a Hindu and a Mahommedan, were appointed to the secretary of state's council; and in 1909 another native, a Hindu barrister, was for the first time appointed, as legal member, to the council of the viceroy. Occasion was taken of the fiftieth anniversary of the assumption by the crown of the government of India to address a message (on November 2, 1908) by the king-emperor to the princes and peoples, reviewing in stately language the later development, and containing these memorable words: " From the first, the principle of representative institutions began to be gradually introduced, and the time has come when, in the judgment of my viceroy and governor-general and others of my counsellors, that principle may be prudently extended. Important classes among you, representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule, claim equality of citizenship, and a greater share in legislation and government.
The politic satisfaction of such a claim will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power. Administration will be all the more efficient if the officers who conduct it have greater opportunities of regular contact with those whom it affects and with those who influence and reflect common opinion about it." The policy here adumbrated was (at least partly) carried into effect by parliament in the Indian Councils Act 1909, which reconstituted all the legislative councils by the addition of members directly elected, and conferred upon these councils wider powers of discussion. It further authorized the addition of two members to the executive councils at Madras and Bombay, and the creation cf an executive council in Bengal and also (subject to conditions) in other provinces under a lieutenantgovernor. Regulations for bringing the act into operation were issued by the governor-general in council, with the approval of the secretary of state, in November 1909. They provided (inter alia) for a non-official majority in all of the provincial councils, but not in that of the governor-general; for an elaborate system of election of members by organized constituencies; for nomination where direct election is not appropriate; and for the separate representation of Mahommedans and other special interests. They also contain provisions authorizing the asking of supplementary questions, the moving and discussion of resolutions on any matter of public interest and the annual consideration of the contents of the budget. In brief, the legislative councils were not only enlarged, but transformed into debating bodies, with the power of criticizing the executive. The first elections took place during December 1909, with results that showed wide-spread interest and were generally accepted as satisfactory. The new council of the governor-general met in the following month.
