India Through the Ages Part 10

"The oleander bud Shows like the painted fingers of the fair, Red tinted on the tip and edged with ebony."

His very reflections also are tinged with the same soft note of underlying pa.s.sion:--

"Not seldom in our hours of ease, When thought is still, the sight of some fair form Or mournful fall of music breathing low Will stir strange fancies thrilling all the soul With a mysterious sadness."

And, leaving poetry alone, such knowledge as we have of social life in these days points to a certain effeminacy. In fact, there is evidence that woman played a larger part in society than she does in the India of to-day. The perennial joke against learned ladies, indeed, appears in the drama of the "Toy Cart," where the comic man says he always laughs when he "hears a woman read Sanskrit, or a man sing a song!"

Then the heroine of this drama is frankly a courtesan, an Indian Aspasia, who received her lovers in a public court furnished with books, pictures, gambling-tables, etc., and who was

"Of courteous manners and unrivalled beauty, The pride of all Ujjain."

Such, then, were the people who "felt, dreaded, and magnified" (as Gibbon says of the Goths--a far less civilised nation--in like predicament) "the numbers, the strength, the rapid motions and implacable cruelty of the Huns; who beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames and deluged with indiscriminate slaughter."

Perhaps it is as well, therefore, that history is for the most part silent concerning the horror and the havoc of the century or so of time during which the Huns ravaged India. We hear only of the greater tragedies, of Toramava the Tyrant, and his son Mihiragula, who out-Heroded his father in implacable cruelty towards the cultured, caste-bound Hindus, to whom all things were sacred. Of him it is written that his favourite amus.e.m.e.nt in Kashmir was watching elephants goaded into impa.s.sable, precipitous hill-paths, so that he might laugh like a fiend if they slipped and fell; fell with a wild shriek of terror and anger, to be dashed to pieces thousands of feet below. An unpleasing picture this! One cannot wonder at the criticism pa.s.sed on his death, when "the earth shook, thick darkness reigned, and a mighty tempest raged." It was succinct, bald, but forcible: "_He_ has now fallen into the lowest h.e.l.l, where he shall pa.s.s endless ages."

After his death, which must have occurred about the year A.D. 540, the clouds gather darkly, and we are permitted few peeps as to what was going on behind them. Certain it is that no trace of a paramount power is to be found in the scant records of the last half of the sixth century.

The beginning of the seventh, however, finds the historian in very different case. He has first and foremost the detailed account of Hiuen T'sang's travels with which to deal, and this is supplemented by the "_Harsha-charita_," or "Deeds of Harsha," written by a learned Brahman who lived at the court of the good king. That this latter book partakes more of the character of a historical romance than a steady, straightforward chronicle of events is true; but even so, the information at disposal is fuller and more precise than that which has been forthcoming hitherto, excepting, perhaps, in regard to the great Maurya kings.

Harsha, then, was younger son of a Rajah of Thaneswar, in the Punjab.

His father dying in A.D. 606, his elder brother ascended the throne, but was almost immediately most treacherously a.s.sa.s.sinated in conference by the King of Bengal; the conference apparently being for the purpose of arbitrating between the young Rajah of Thaneswar and the King of Malwa, who had murdered the former's brother-in-law for the sake of possessing his wife, and was keeping the Thaneswar princess a prisoner, with "iron fetters kissing her feet."

The a.s.sa.s.sinated king being too young to have a son, his brother Harsha was invited to take the throne. For some unknown reason he hesitated, and his formal coronation did not take place until nearly six years after he had a.s.sumed the actual responsibilities of kingship.

The story of the recovery of his widowed sister from the hands of her abductor is full of incident and romance. The rescue was but just in time, for the Princess Raj-yasri--a most attractive and learned young lady, and well versed in the Buddhistic schools, apparently--was about to commit _suttee_ amid the pathless forests, whither she had fled to escape her persecutor, when her brother, led to her retreat by the aboriginal chieftains, arrived upon the scene. The hurry was so great, that in it the a.s.sa.s.sin-lover appears to have escaped.

It will be observed by this that the family of Harsha was of the Buddhist faith. How, or why, we know not. The very name of his kingdom, Than-eswar (_S'thaneswara_, or, The Place of G.o.d), is purely Hindu; nevertheless, this, the last great King of Hindu India, professed the religion of Gautama.

In fact, in many ways his reign is a poor imitation of that of Asoka.

He did not, however, follow that king's example as a peace prophet, for he spent nearly thirty-six years out of his forty-two in b.l.o.o.d.y warfare. And in all his long career of aggression he met with but one check. He was unable to push his forces through the narrow defiles of the Deccan pa.s.ses, and had to confine himself to being Lord Paramount of the North. So his empire, though extensive, never touched that of Asoka; in truth, he did not touch that monarch in any way.

Nevertheless, his rule was excellent, and our Chinese pilgrim is loud in praise of it. Harsha did not trust to officialdom; personal supervision was his theory of government, and he was constantly on the move inspecting, punishing, rewarding. His camp must have been quaint, for in those days tents were unknown, and the "King's Palace" was built at each halting-place of boughs and reeds, and solemnly burnt after it had been used.

Like all these Eastern kings whose personalities have survived the years, he appears to have been somewhat of a genius. Besides being a most expert penman and draughtsmen, he wrote various learned books, and in his salad days produced several plays which still remain part of the literature of India. One, "The Necklace," is quite the liveliest of all Indian plays, and with appropriate songs and dances must have been rather like a Savoy comic opera. There is a legend that Harsha spent so much money on poets, actors, dancers and artists of all descriptions, that he had eventually to sell the gold and silver ornaments of the Hindu temples in order to pay for his pleasures; but this is pure legend. Following the example of Asoka, he established rest-houses for travellers, hospitals for the sick, magistrates for the regulation of morals; yet in all this, somehow, the sense of pose is never absent. Asoka's voice is still to-day a _cri du c[oe]ur_; Harsha's is--_fin de siecle_.

He could not help it. The curious religious eclecticism of the period favoured it. His family showed keenly the general tendency to self-consciousness, and it was written of his father:

"He offered daily to the Sun a bunch of red lotuses set in a pure vessel of ruby, and tinged, like his own heart, with the same hue."

Could Oscar Wilde have done more? Strange, indeed, how the cycles of culture come round and round.

It was in his later years that King Harsha became a p.r.o.nounced Buddhist. This was largely owing to the preachings and teachings of Hiuen T'sang, in honour of whom a solemn a.s.semblage was held at Kanauj in the fresh spring-time of the year A.D. 644. The scene is admirably given in Hiuen T'sang's Record, and is well worth a reading. We can imagine the king carrying in person the canopy upheld over the golden statuette of Buddha; we can see him "moving along, scattering golden blossoms, pearls and other rare gems." We catch a glimpse of the flaming monastery accidentally catching fire, to be extinguished by the mere sight of the good Harsha. The rush of the mad Hindu fanatic to slay this "favourer of Buddhists" comes as a startling incident, to be followed by the immediate exile of five hundred Brahmans for high treason.

Then we learn of the journey to Prag (Allahabad), where every five years Harsha, in accordance with ancient custom, had held a distribution of alms.[2]

[Footnote 2: This a.s.semblage, or fair, still exists, under the name of the Magh-mela.]

The description of this is even more entrancing, and we can take part in all the ceremonials of the seventy-five days during which Buddha, the Sun, and Siva were apparently worshipped indiscriminately. The proceedings were opened by a magnificent procession of feudatory princes, and ended with a forty-days' distribution of alms to all and sundry.

After this, Hiuen T'sang writes,

"the royal acc.u.mulation of five years was exhausted. Except the horses, elephants and military accoutrements ... nothing remained....

The king gave away his gems and goods, his clothing and neck-laces, ear-rings, bracelets, chaplets, neck jewels, and bright head jewel; all these he freely gave away without stint."

Was it a real gifting, we wonder, or, after duly worshipping in a borrowed second-hand suit, did Harsha return to his palace to find his wardrobe much the same as ever?

The hint of unreality in all things provokes the question.

King Harsha died in A.D. 648, shortly after his beloved Chinese pilgrim had departed for his native land. Once again it has to be written that the "withdrawal of the strong arm plunged the country into disorder."

Arjuna, his minister, seized the throne, but drew down on himself the wrath of China, and after a brief interval was carried thither as a prisoner.

Meanwhile, no one appeared to take the reins. In truth, degeneration had already set in. The people who had posed so long as a nation of culture, of refinement, who had spent their lives in applauding poetasters, who had laughed when the court wit said the commander-in-chief's nose was as long as the king's pedigree, who had been ready to worship any G.o.d if so be the ceremonial pleased their aesthetic sense, who had given free pa.s.s to their emotions in all ways, such people were not ready for action. And so once for all the clouds cover Hindu supremacy.

The next four hundred years are the Dark Ages of Indian history. Even the impressionist outlook of our case of coins is denied us. A thousand names jostle each other in commonplace confusion. In the chaos of conflicting claims, any attempt at cla.s.sification is hopeless.

CHAOS

A.D. 700 TO A.D. 1001

These, as has been said, are the Dark Ages of Hindustan. She has ever been the prey of personality, the willing victim of vitality. From the year B.C. 620, when her real history begins, until now, that history has been that of individuals who have either risen from her ranks, or appeared on her horizon; who have dominated her imagination, and left her too often at their death confused, helpless, to fall back into the bewildering anarchy of petty princedoms.

The light shines clearly for a few years, reflected by one man's keen sword, or keener eyes; and then the strong arm falls, the vision fails, and India sinks back into the Great Apathy concerning things sublunary which is ever her most salient characteristic.

And these three hundred years give us no personality striking enough to be seen through the mist which settled down like a pall over India after the death of Harsha. This death, says Mr Vincent Smith, "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."

No new thing this in the past history of India; it will be no new thing in the future, for Hindustan will always need some strong, centralising, magnetic force to hold together its innumerable atoms.

It is true that in literature some few names hover doubtfully about the eighth century, and that round the outskirts of India, in Kashmir, Nepaul, Madras, Ceylon, we hear every now and again of events which arrest the attention for a moment. The rea.s.sertion of Chinese influence along the northern borderland, though brief, was noteworthy, and in Kashmir the names of several kings and one queen stand out from the general _posse_. Amongst them that of Laladitya, who built the famous Temple of the Sun at Martand, not far from Bawun in Kashmir. A magnificent ruin this, standing out sharply against both the rising in the east and the setting in the west; set high on one of those lofty _karewas_, or tablelands, which are so marked a characteristic of Kashmir. Fringing the mighty mountains, they stretch like promontories into the rice and saffron fields, still showing by their precipitous sides the force of the mighty flood which at some time must have swept through the valley, lowering its levels, and leaving these landmarks to tell of its pa.s.sage.