Abstract
The author has covered a wide canvas of subjects in this short but comprehensive coverage of the contribution of India’s ancient culture to the development of Indian civilisation. He has dedicated his book to the Drashtā Rishis who ‘guided and moulded the development of India’s time-tested civilisation’.
The first chapter sums up the defining features of the continuity of Indian civilisation over millennia. He attributes the social continuity to the three legs of varna, gotra and vamśa. Although the caste system became rigid later on, varna permitted the absorption of Harappan priests as brāhmanas, Yavanas and Sakas as kshatriyas and so on. The gotras were exogamous family clans who claimed ancestry from seven rishis which were later broken down into many other gotras named after several ancient sages, but each distinguished by its cattle wealth. The kshatriya and vaiśya families took on the gotra names of their brāhmana preceptors. Then comes the vamśa, based on family trees by which every man has a moral duty towards the spirit of his ancestors and all the departed for all time, thereby ensuring that the past remained in one’s memory.
The major socio-religious change came, says the author, with the transition from the ritual of yajňas or fire sacrifices to idol worship. Till the epic period, sacrifices were still of major importance. However, it is not as if images were not known earlier: figurines of the Mother Goddess and seals of a proto-Shiva indicate that it was very much a part of the Indus Valley Civilisation, if not with the Vedic. The author suggests that the Vedic fire sacrifices were also conducted in the Indus Valley Civilisation, while image worship spread under the influence of Buddhism and Jainism, when the images of the two preceptors were worshipped. However, I would not agree that image worship was not popular in the epic period: Ravana was a worshipper of the Shiva Linga, while the Mahabharata makes references to images of deities. The images must have been made of perishable materials. He says that image worship became popular in the Mauryan and post-Mauryan periods, especially during the Gupta Empire, but this was because images were made of stone, a non-perishable material, in the Mauryan period and thereafter. Image worship replaced the yajňas; the reason for this change, according to the author, could have been the high expenditure involved in these rituals, such as the construction of geometrically perfect altars and the massive manpower deployment. The long continuance of the yajňa, he says, was because of the simultaneous movement towards Vedanta, a philosophy of individual renunciation. There was thus a dichotomy between Vedic sacrifice, a social engagement to sustain the world process, and the search for moksha or liberation from that very goal. Finally, he sees civilisational continuity in the names of Indian places which celebrate events that occurred there thousands of years ago.
Chapter 2 is a celebration of Sanskrit as the ‘Intellectual Wonder of the Ancient World’. He calls it a language developed by the elite for the elite. This was made possible by the development of an elaborate system of grammar by Panini, who stabilised the language. Even the Arthashastra, he says, by the nature of its contents, was intended only for the governing upper classes. However, the author ignores the fact that the epics and puranas were narrated in Sanskrit and were understood by the common people. He goes on to discuss the concordance of Sanskrit with computer languages, which I am not competent to comment on. He then goes on to the commonalities between Sanskrit and Iranian and again Sanskrit and the Hurrian language of the Mittanis in the Middle East. At the end of this chapter, he gives a chronology of Sanskrit texts according to Wendy Doniger from 1500 to 1200
Chapter 3 discusses the mythology of gods and demons, a battle apparently between white and black but which often ends in shades of grey, as dubious strategies and ‘surreptitious sacrifices’ are utilised to win wars. He asks the question as to whether the decline in ethical standards was a reflection of the gradual degradation of dharma. Were they linked to the changing moral values of human history?
The next chapter follows the epic tale of King Yayati, his two wives and five sons and their dispersal over India—north of the Vindhyas. The author speculates whether the Druhyus, who were sent to the west, were the Mittanis and, in modern terms, the Yazidis. However, we know from the Rig Veda that the Druhyus were one of the 10 tribes who came from the north-west and fought Sudasa in the Battle of the Ten Kings or dāśarājñá yuddhá. Druhyu’s descendants were the Gandharas and Mlecchas. The puranas maintain the family trees of the five sons. The identity of the Mittanis and Yazidis requires a full and separate study. It is not possible to speculate.
Chapter 5 discusses the Indian concept of time: past, present and forever. Time, in Indian philosophies, is cyclical and eternal. The cosmic periods of the four yugas and mahayugas, the manavantaras (the interval between two Manus) and a kalpa (a day in the life of Brahma) constitute the Year of Brahma, consisting of 3110.4 billion earthly years. From the mind-boggling figures, the author concludes—quite rightly—that the Puranic seers were mathematical savants. The gradual decline of dharma in each yuga results in a shortening of human life. An innovation was the cyclic continuity of the transmigration of the soul, strengthening the belief in the samsara cycle. The only liberation from the continuous cycle of birth, death and rebirth is through renunciation and union with the supreme being an Advaitic philosophy. Buddhism and Jainism have their own understanding of time.
Chapter 6 traces a puranic journey from myth to history. The author takes the Vishnu Purana and analyses it book by book, narrating some stories, discarding some others. The Vishnu Purana is too vast to be summarised in a few pages. He analyses asura: Was it a negative association or attitude or an inclination towards the ‘good life’? On the other hand, the solar and lunar kings represented by Rama, Krishna and the Buddha—in chronological order—‘represent the highest benchmarks in Indian tradition’. The future end of the world through fire and flood (pralaya) is similar to several ancient civilisations, but the author sees them as targeting Buddhism, an opinion with which I do not agree.
Finally, in the last chapter, the author wonders whether India is a ‘mere geographical expression’ or a nation state. India never was, nor is, and he concludes that it is an emotional concept, an idea of togetherness. He traces the story of Agastya who took the Vedic religion to the south, establishing the first sangam, and the Siddha system of medicine. The questioning mind, the inborn scepticism—as enunciated in the Rig Vedic hymn of the non-existent creation (Nasadiya sukta)—and a firm belief in renunciation are eternal values. But there is equal space for heterodoxy, materialism, scepticism, nihilism and even atheism, as exemplified by Carvaka and the Lokāyata school of philosophy.
But the idea of India as one unit is also rooted in the stories of Rama and Krishna, the wide range of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism within a geographical region, the popular respect for renunciation, the commonality with local variations of the arts, rituals and other cultural traditions which are shared all over the country. However, within 168 pages, the author has covered several topics and presented the story of an ancient people who preserved and adapted ancient traditions and beliefs, even as they developed new ideas, while other ancient civilisations discarded or forgot their great past.