¦ What historical forces led to the development of complex social groupings in ancient India?
¦ How, in the face of powerful forces that tended to keep India fragmented, did two great empires—the Mauryan Empire of the fourth to second centuries b. c.e. and the Gupta Empire of the fourth to sixth centuries c. e.—succeed in unifying much of India?
¦ How did a number of states in Southeast Asia become wealthy and powerful by exploiting their position on the trade routes between China and India?
In the Bhagavad-Gita (BUH-guh-vahd GEE-tuh), the
Most renowned Indian sacred text, the legendary warrior Arjuna (AHR-joo-nuh) rides out in his chariot to the open space between two armies preparing for battle. Torn between his social duty to fight for his family's claim to the throne and his conscience, which balks at the prospect of killing relatives, friends, and former teachers in the enemy camp, Arjuna slumps down in his chariot and refuses to fight. But his driver, the god Krishna (KRISH-nuh) in disguise, persuades him, in a carefully structured dialogue, both of the necessity to fulfill his duty as a warrior and of the proper frame of mind for performing these acts. In the climactic moment of the dialogue Krishna endows Arjuna with a “divine eye” and permits him to see the true appearance of God:
It was a multiform, wondrous vision, with countless mouths and eyes and celestial ornaments,
Everywhere was boundless divinity containing all astonishing things, wearing divine garlands and garments, anointed with divine perfume.
If the light of a thousand suns were to rise in the sky at once, it would be like the light of that great spirit.
Arjuna saw all the universe in its many ways and parts, standing as one in the body of the god of gods.1
In all of world literature, this is one of the most compelling attempts to depict the nature of deity. Graphic images emphasize the vastness, diversity, and multiplicity of the god, but in the end we learn that Krishna is the organizing principle behind all creation, that behind diversity and multiplicity lies a higher unity.
This is an apt metaphor for Indian civilization. The enormous variety of the Indian landscape is mirrored in the patchwork of ethnic and linguistic groups that
Occupy it, the political fragmentation that has marked most of Indian history, the elaborate hierarchy of social groups into which the Indian population is divided, and the thousands of deities who are worshiped at innumerable holy places that dot the subcontinent. Yet, in the end, one can speak of an Indian civilization united by shared views and values. The photograph shows the interior of a temple in the city of Madurai in southern India. Here the ten-day Chittarai Festival, the most important religious event of the year, celebrates the wedding of a local goddess, Minakshi, and the great Hindu god Shiva, symbolizing the reconciliation of local and national deities, southern and northern cultural practices, and male and female potentialities.
This chapter surveys the history of South and Southeast Asia from approximately 1500 b. c.e. to 1025 c. e., highlighting the evolution of defining features of Indian civilization. Considerable attention is given to Indian religious conceptions, due both to religion's profound role in shaping Indian society and the sources of information available to historians. For reasons that will be explained below, writing came late to India, and ancient Indians did not develop a historical consciousness like other peoples of antiquity and took little interest in recording specific historical events.
World History
