Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

Regardless of the cultural unity signalled by Sanskrit, India was not nearly as successful as Rome and Persia to the west, or China to the east, in establishing a large-scale political unit that could defend its borders and secure orderly succession beyond a half-dozen generations at most. From the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD, indigenous dynasties such as the Nandas, Mauryas, Shungas, Satavahanas and Guptas rose and fell with a persistent rhythm, their capital often at Pataliputra, but with no sense of direct succession: usually these larger empires collapsed into a couple of generations of decentralised feudal melee, before the next would-be cakravārtin , ‘wheel-turner’, i.e. universal monarch, emerged. Sometimes major incursions from the north-west would get as far as Pataliputra, for example when the Yavana kings (such as Menander—Buddhism’s Milinda) swooped down from Swat, or when Kanishka, a Bactrian-speaking Iranian, founded the Kushāna empire, in the first to second centuries AD. But they never lasted any longer. [778]

All the invaders in this period—they also included Scythians ( Śaka ) speaking Iranian, and Xiongnu ( Hūṇa ) speaking Turkic—conformed to the pattern of Mongols in China or Germanic tribes in western Europe. They did not establish their own cultures, but after a first period of rapine simply adopted the existing culture and settled down as the new aristocracy, with no lasting linguistic effects. Sanskrit, and the Prakrits, were thus transmitted to new generations and new peoples. The tradition was not politically unified, though the Arthaśāstra shows that it was highly organised and self-conscious, legally and economically.

There was no apparent technical or military innovation in this period, and communications must have remained difficult, two reasons which explain why the various cities and regions retained so much independence, with the centralised power of the cakravārtin largely an unrealised dream.

The Arthaśāstra has an elaborate theory of foreign policy, implying a large number of smallish states. Most of the states were monarchies, but there were in fact also republics, ruled by councils of men of substance. The Licchavi, living in Vaiśalī north of the Ganges, are said to have had 7,707 rājās or ‘kings’, all in the tribal assembly. The Buddha himself had grown up in one such community, not far away among the Śākya of the Himalayan foothills. This tradition is said to have inspired the noticeably democratic practice of the sangha , the full community of Buddhist monks.

As for the social limitations of Indian society, it must be seen as overwhelmingly stratified, with one’s caste, and hence status, determined by birth. Sanskrit-speaking theorists, usually referring back to the Vedas, had no difficulty in justifying and rationalising flagrant inequalities—even if, from time to time, natural leaders who happened to be low-caste made themselves into kings without too much scruple over Hinduism’s taboos. The status of women was also not a matter for discussion, with the Sanskrit word satī , originally just the feminine of the adjective meaning ‘true, correct, good’, coming to be understood as best applied to a wife willingly burnt on her husband’s funeral pyre.

The real contribution of indigenous thought to subverting the rigidities of the caste system was Buddhism. This was true in both the variants that developed in this period. The earlier Hīnayāna tradition encouraged anyone to seek their own enlightenment, though they would have to give up the world as monks or nuns in order to do it. Early on, it also gave women equal, or at least comparable, status in pursuing a contemplative life. The later Mahāyāna was less austere, more a religion for everyday life. It allowed believers to develop a personal relationship with the holy figures of bodhisattvas, and its much stronger social ethic, of general compassion and altruism, was also attractive.

There does not seem to have been much religious intolerance or violence as between the different faiths. Where people felt aversion, it seems to have been more fastidious or superstitious than based on piety. In the Sanskrit dramas and romances being written at the time, a chance meeting with a monk may be viewed as a sign of bad luck to come. In this same period, the Buddhists were building up a formidable reputation for intellectual rigour as well as high-mindedness.

The Great Monastery of Nalanda ( Nālandā Mahāvihāra ), a couple of days’ walk south of Pataliputra, was the supreme monument to Buddhist learning. Aśoka founded the core monastery on the site of a favourite haunt of the Buddha in the third century BC, and all the major dynasties that flourished during its lifespan re-endowed and rebuilt it as a seat of learning: the Guptas in the fifth century, King Harsha in the seventh, the Pālas in the ninth. Besides the scriptures of the Mahayana, and the eighteen sects of the Hinayana, subjects taught included śabdavidyā (Sanskrit grammar), hetuvidyā (logic and metaphysics), cikitsavidyā (medicine), śilpasthānavidyā (literally ‘technology’, including mechanics, yin and yang, and the calendar), apparently also the Vedas, and ‘miscellaneous studies’, generally understood as secular literature. Xuan-Zang, who was enrolled as a student and later a teacher there in the seventh century, describes the institution in terms very reminiscent of a modern elite university:

The priests to the number of several thousands are men of the highest ability and talent. Their distinction is very great at the present time, and there are many hundreds whose fame has rapidly spread through distant regions…

From morning till night they engage in discussion; the old and the young mutually help one another. Those who cannot discuss questions out of the Tripiṯaka are little esteemed, and are obliged to hide themselves for shame. Learned men from different cities, on this account, who desire to acquire quickly a renown in discussion, come here in multitudes to settle their doubts, and then the streams of their wisdom spread far and wide. For this reason some persons usurp the name of Nalanda students, and in going to and fro receive honour in consequence. If men of other quarters desire to enter and take part in the discussions, the keeper of the gate proposes some hard questions; many are unable to answer and retire. One must have studied deeply both old and new books before getting admission. Those students, therefore, who come here as strangers, have to show their ability by hard discussion; those who fail compared with those who succeed are as 7 or 8 to 10. [413]

Although there was continuous production of new works, or at least commentaries on old ones, such large-scale concentrations of intellectual fire-power (like their contemporaries in Europe and the Islamic world) were profoundly conservative: they aimed at sustaining the religious and philosophical status quo, although they might defend it with new arguments. [779]

The mahāvihāras did not in the end sustain Buddhism in India. Buddhism was already losing adherents in the time of Xuan-Zang. From the tenth century it was gradually absorbed by Hinduism, as if it were just another sect, the Buddha having been imaginatively recast as an earthly manifestation of Vishnu, on a par with Hindu heroes Rama and Krishna. This closed the loophole in the caste system, and left the lower castes and untouchables con demned again to inferiority. Many of them would have provided eager listeners when Muslims began to invade, bringing news of a world where all were equal before God.

The mahāvihāras were not spared when these invaders finally overran northern India and sacked its treasures at the end of the twelfth century. Sanskrit retained its charms, but like many with this virtue it was unable to defend itself bodily against those unable to appreciate them.