India Through the Ages Part 4

Briefly, it was at once an age of keen speculation and rapid crystallisation almost unequalled in the history of any nation. Nor have we to found this estimate of it solely by inference from the literature which it has left behind it. We have other evidence on which to draw. True, the earliest foreign notice of India is that of Hekataios of Miletus, who wrote about B.C. 520, but he seems only to have been aware of its existence. The next is that of some inscriptions of the Persian king, Darius, which may be dated about B.C. 486, while Ktesias of Knidos, who collected travellers' tales about the East, wrote a little later. But Alexander's Indian campaign, which began in the year B.C. 327, brought many Western eyes to wonder at what they saw, and from this time Greece practically gives us the chronology of Hindustan.

Of what these Western eyes saw we gain glimpses in the few fragments of the works of Megasthenes which have withstood the destruction of time. Living, as he did, in the fourth century B.C. as Amba.s.sador at the court of Paliputra, he gives us a picture of the times well worth reading, with a few extracts from which this chapter may well conclude.

"The inhabitants, having abundant means of subsistence, exceed, in consequence, the ordinary stature, and are distinguished by their proud bearing. They are also found to be well skilled in the arts, as might be expected of men who inhale a pure air and drink the very finest water ... they almost always gather in two harvests annually; and even should one of the sowings prove more or less abortive, they are always sure of the other crop. It is accordingly affirmed that famine has never visited India, and that there has never been any general scarcity in the supply of nourishing food.... But, further, there are usages observed by the Indians which contribute to prevent the occurrence of famine among them; for whereas amongst other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil, and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste, among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a cla.s.s that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighbourhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, since the combatants allow them to remain quite unmolested. Neither do they ravage a land with fire nor cut down its trees.... The Indians do not raise monuments to the dead, but consider the virtues which men have displayed in life and the songs in which their praises are celebrated, sufficient to preserve their memory.... All the Indians are free, and not one of them is a slave. The Indians do not even use aliens as slaves, and much less one of their own countrymen.... They live frugally and observe very good order. Theft is of very rare occurrence. The simplicity of their laws and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom appeal to law. They have no suits about pledges or deposits, nor do they require either seals or witnesses, but make their deposits and confide in each other. They neither put out money at usury or know how to borrow.... Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem.... In contrast to the general simplicity of their style, they love finery and ornaments. Their robes are worked in gold, adorned with precious stones, and they wear flowered garments of the finest muslin. Attendants walking behind hold umbrellas over them; for they have a high regard for beauty, and avail themselves of every device to improve their looks....

"Of the great officers of state, some have charge of the market, others of the city, others of the soldiers, while some superintend the ca.n.a.ls and measure the land, some collect the taxes, and some construct roads and set up pillars to show the by-roads and the distances....

"Those who have charge of the city are divided into six bodies of five each. The first body looks after industrial art. The second attends to the entertainments of strangers, taking care of them, well or ill, and, in the event of their dying, burying them and forwarding their property to their relatives. The third enquires of births and deaths, so that these among both high and low may not escape the cognisance of Government. The fourth deals with trade and commerce, and has charge of weights and measures. The fifth supervises the sale of manufactured articles which are sold by public notice, and the sixth collects the t.i.the on such articles. There is, beside the city magistrates, a third body, which directs military affairs. One division of this has charge of the infantry, another of the cavalry, a third of the war chariots, a fourth of the elephants; while one division is appointed to co-operate with the admiral of the fleet and another with the superintendent of the bullock trains used for transporting the munitions of war."

So much for the East before it was gripped by the West. With a full-blown War Office, and a statistical registration of births and deaths, it appears to have gone far on the course of our civilisation.

Concerning the "Brahmanes," as the old writers term the Brahmans, Megasthenes says of them that they live in groves, and

"spend their time in listening to sermons, discourses, and in imparting knowledge to such as will listen to them. The hearer is not allowed to speak, or even to cough, and much less to spit, and if he offends in any of these ways, he is cast out from their society that very day, as being a man who is wanting in self-restraint. Death is with them a very frequent subject of discourse. They regard this life as, so to speak, the time when the child within the womb matures, and death as the birth into a new and happy life. They go about naked, saying that G.o.d has given the body as sufficient covering for the soul."

One may still hear this teaching given in the mango groves, or in the shade of a banyan tree, throughout this India of the twentieth century.

And it still satisfies the hearers.

THE SESU-NaGA (and Other) KINGS

B.C. 620 TO B.C. 327

We stand now on the threshold of actual history. Before us lie two thousand five hundred years; and behind us? Who can say? From the far distance come the reverberating thunders of the Mahabharata, still filling the ear with stories of myth and miracle. But the days of these are over. Henceforward, we are to listen to nothing save facts, to believe nothing to which our ordinary everyday experience cannot give its a.s.sent.

Who, then, were these Sesu-naga kings of whom we read in the lists of dead dynasties given in the Puranas--those curious histories of the whole cosmogony of this world and the next, some of which can now be fairly proved to have existed in the very first centuries of our era, and with them an accredited claim to h.o.a.r antiquity?

How came these kings by their name Ses, or Shesh-naga? A name which indubitably points to their connection with the sacred snake, or "nag."

Were they of Scythic origin? Nothing more likely. Certain it is that Scythic hordes invaded India from the north-east, both during and after the age of the Epics. It is conjectured, also, that they met in conflict with the Aryan invaders from the north-west on the wide, Gangetic plains, possibly close to the junction of the Sone River with the Ganges.

Here, at any rate, lay the ancient kingdom of Magadha, the kingdom of these Ses-naga kings.

There were ten of these kings, and of the first four, we, as yet, know nothing. But almost every year sees fresh inscriptions deciphered, new coins discovered, and therefore it is not unlikely that some day these mere dry-as-dust names, Sesu-naga, Sakavarna, Kshema-dharman, and Kshattru-jas, may live again as personalities. At present we must be content with imagining them in their palace at Raja-griha, or "The kings abode surrounded by mountains."

It has a curiously distinguished, dignified sound, this description.

One can imagine these Ses-naga princes, their Scythian faces, flat, oblique-eyed, yet aquiline, showing keen under the golden-hooded snake standing uraeus-like over their low foreheads, riding up the steep, wide steps leading to their high-perched palaces, on their milk-white steeds; these latter, no doubt, be-bowed with blue ribbons and bedyed with pink feet and tail, after the fashion of processional horses in India even nowadays. Riding up proudly, kings, indeed, of their world, holders of untold wealth in priceless gems and gold--gold, unminted, almost valueless, jewels recklessly strung, like pebbles on a string.

This legend, indeed, of countless uncounted gold, of fair women, and almost weird, rough luxury, lingers still around the very name of Snake-King, and holds its own in the folk-lore of India.

In these days the kingdom of Magadha--so far as we can judge, a Scythic princ.i.p.ality--was just entering the lists against that still more ancient Aryan kingdom of Kosala, of which we read in the Ramayana. But there were other princ.i.p.alities in the settled country which lay between the extreme north-west of the Punjab and Ujjain, or Malwa. Sixteen such states are enumerated in various literary--chiefly religious--works, which were probably compiled in the fifth century B.C.; but these, again, are mere dry-as-dust names.

The first breath of real life comes with Bimbi-sara, the fifth Sesu-naga king. He, we know, conquered and annexed the princ.i.p.ality of Anga and built the city of New Rajagriha, which lies at the base of the hill below the old fort. But something there is in his reign which grips attention more than conquests or buildings. During it, and under his rule, the founders of two great religions gave to the world their solutions of the problem of life. In all probability both Mahavira and Gautama Buddha were born in Bimbi-sara's days; certain it is that he must have heard the first teachings of Jainism and Buddhism preached at his palace doors. He is supposed to have reigned for nearly five and twenty years, and then to have retired into private life, leaving his favourite son, Ajata-sutru, as regent.

And here tragedy sets in; tragedy in which Buddhist tradition avers that Deva-datta, the Great Teacher's first cousin and bitterest enemy, was prime mover. For one of the many crimes imputed to this arch-schismatic by the orthodox, is that he instigated Ajatasutru to put his father to death.

Whether this be true or not, certain it is that Bimbi-sara was murdered, and by his son's orders; for in one of the earliest Buddhist ma.n.u.scripts extant there is an account of the guilty son's confession to the Blessed One (_i.e_., Buddha) in these words: "Sin overcame me, Lord, weak, and foolish, and wrong that I am, in that for the sake of sovranty I put to death my father, that righteous man, that righteous king."

If, as tradition has it, that death was compa.s.sed by slow starvation, the prompt absolution which Buddha is said to have given the royal sinner for this act of atrocity becomes all the more remarkable. His sole comment to the brethren after Ajata-sutru had departed appears to have been: "This king was deeply affected, he was touched in heart. If he had not put his father to death, then, even as he sate here, the clear eye of truth would have been his."

Apart from this parricidal act, the motive for which he gives with such calm brutality, Ajata-sutru seems to have been a strong, capable king. He had instantly to face war with Kosala, the murdered man's wife--who, it is said, died of grief--being sister to the king of that country. Round this war, long and b.l.o.o.d.y, legend has woven many incidents. At one time Magadha, at another Kosala, seems to have come uppermost. Ajata-sutru himself was once carried a prisoner in chains to his opponent's capital; but in the end, when peace came, Kosala had given one of its princesses in marriage to the King of Magadha, and had become absorbed in that empire.

But this was not enough for ambitious Ajata-sutru. He now turned his attention to the rich lands north of the Ganges, and carried his victorious arms to the very foot of holy Himalaya.

In the course of this war he built a watch-fort at a village called Patali, on the banks of the Ganges, where in after years he founded a city which, under the name of Pataliputra (the Palibothra of Greek writers), became eventually the capital, not only of Magadha, but of India--India, that is, as it was known in these early days.

Patali is the Sanskrit for the bignonia, or trumpet-flower; we may add, therefore, to our mental picture of the remaining four Ses-naga kings, that they lived in Trumpet-flower City.

For the rest, these two great monarchs, Bimbi-sara and Ajata-sutru, must have been near, if not actual contemporaries of Darius, King of Persia, who founded an Indian satrapy in the Indus valley. This he was able to do, in consequence of the information collected by Skylax of Karyanda, during his memorable voyage by river from the Upper Punjab to the sea near Karachi, thus demonstrating the practicability of a pa.s.sage by water to Persia. All record of this voyage is, unfortunately, lost; but the result of it was the addition to the Persian Empire of so rich a province, that it paid in gold-dust tribute to the treasury, fully one-third of the total revenue from the whole twenty satrapies; that is to say, about one million sterling, which in those days was, of course, an absolutely enormous sum.

There is not much more to tell of Ajata-sutru; and yet, reading between the lines of the few facts we actually know of him, the man's character shows distinct. Ambitious, not exactly unscrupulous, but uncontrolled. A man who, having murdered his father, could weep over his own act, and seek to obliterate the blood-stain on his hands by confessions and pious acts. When Buddha died, an eighth portion of his bones was claimed by Ajata-sutru, who erected at Rajgriha a magnificent tope or mound over the sacred relics.

But, if tradition is to be believed, he handed down the curse of his great crime to his son, his grandson, and his great grandson; for the Ceylon chronicle a.s.serts, that each of these in turn were parricides.

It is--to use a colloquialism--a tall order; but a.s.sertion or denial are alike unproven.

If it be true, there is some relief in finding that the last of these criminal kings--Maha-nundin by name--was ousted from his throne and killed by his prime minister, one Maha-padma-Nanda, who is said, also, to have been the murdered man's illegitimate son by a Sudra, or low-caste woman.

Whether this latter be true or not, certain it is that about the year B.C. 361, or thereabouts, the reign of the Ses-naga kings ends abruptly. The dream-vision of the steps of old Rajgriha with Scythian princelings--parricidal princelings--riding up to their palaces on processional horses, or living luxuriously in Trumpet-flower city, vanishes, and something quite as dream-like takes its place.

For in the oldest chronicles we are told that there were but two generations in the next, or Nanda dynasty--viz.: Maha-padma and his eight sons--yet we are asked to believe that they reigned for one hundred and fifty-nine years!

In truth, these nine Nandas seem in many ways mythical, and yet the very confusion and contradictions which surround their history point to some underlying reason for the palpable distortion of plain fact.

They are said to have reigned together, the father and his eight sons.

The name of only one of these is known, Suma-lya; but when Alexander the Great paused on the banks of the Beas, in the year B.C. 326, he heard that a king was then reigning at Pataliputra, by name Xandrames (so the Greek tongue reports it), who had an army of over two hundred thousand men, and who was very much disliked, because of his great wickedness and base birth. For he was said to be the son of a barber, and as such, "contemptible and utterly odious to his subjects."

This king must have belonged to the Nanda dynasty, and the story, if it does nothing else, proves that the family was really of low extraction. That it gained the throne by the a.s.sa.s.sination of a rightful king, is also certain. But revenge was at hand. The tragedy was to be recast, replayed, and in B.C. 321 Chandra-gupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, himself an illegitimate son of the first Nanda, and half-brother, so the tale runs, of the eight younger ones, was, after the usual fashion of the East, to find foundation for his own throne on the dead bodies of his relations.

But some four years ere this came to pa.s.s, while young Chandra-gupta, ambitious, discontented, was still wandering about Northern India almost nameless--for his mother was a Sudra woman--he came in personal contact with a new factor in Indian history. For in March, B.C. 326, Alexander the Great crossed the river Indus, and found himself the first Western who had ever stood on Indian soil. So, ere pa.s.sing to the events which followed on Chandra-gupta's rude seizure of the throne of Magadha, another picture claims attention. The picture of the great failure of a great conqueror.

THE ANABASIS

B.C. 326 TO B.C. 320

"Some talk of Alexander...."

Who does not know the context? Who also does not think that he knows who Alexander was, who could not, if necessary, reel off a succinct account of his character, his conquests?