India has a unique way of defining itself as a civilization. It acclaimed the female, nonviolence, renunciation of the material world, inner spiritual truth, and animism. Rivers, trees, or snakes can be sacred and divine presence is depicted in abstract figures such as Shiva - the man-woman, creator-destroyer. It is also the fact that India remained largely rural throughout its history, which left a legacy of tribal roots. Like China, more than two-thirds of India lives in rural villages today. It is in this village base we can find the roots of Indian values. Yet, historically, India has defined civilization differently than in China, Mesopotamia, or Egypt. This is an exploration of the character and history of India.

Empire of the Spirit

Village Life Is Basic

Unity In Diversity

To understand how India evolved these concepts of civilization, one must look at the prehistory and history. Two periods seem to be important. The first is the period of time when the Indus Valley began to develop as a major craft and trade center in the ancient world. The second is following the invastion of Axelander the Great and the emergence of a empire ruled by Chandrasgupta.

Indus Valley Rise (reading on Ancient India)

Around 4,600 years ago, at the same time as the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, great cities arose along the floodplains of the ancient Indus and Saraswati rivers in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. The people of the Indus Valley didn't build towering monuments, bury their riches along with their dead, or fight legendary and bloody battles. They didn't have a mighty army or a divine emperor. Yet they were a highly organized and stupendously successful civilization. They built some of the world's first planned cities, created one of the world's first written languages, and thrived in an area twice the size of Egypt and Mesopotamia for 700 years. The people of the Indus did not sink vast amounts of money into elaborate temples and rich tombs. The costs of these were never a factor in Indus civilization as they were to become in Mesopotamia and Egypt (and elsewhere.)

It appears that sites such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro got their start as farming villages around 3,300 B.C. Good land and a reliable food supply allowed for these villages to grow. Key to their success, however, was their location to key trading routes.

Traders from the highlands north and Afghanistan to the west brought in copper, tin, and lapis lazuli; clam and conch shells were brought in from the southern seacoast, timber from the Himalayas, semiprecious stones, silver and gold from Central Asia. The influx of goods allowed Harappans to become traders and artisans as well as farmers. Harrapa became a place of specialists and flourished as growing city. Harappan traders exported finely crafted Indus Valley products to Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia and brought back payment in precious metals and more raw materials. By 2200 B.C. Harappa had a population of 80,000 people, making it roughly as populous as the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. Over the course of 700 years, some 1,500 Indus Valley settlements were scattered over 280,000 square miles.

Towering brick cities were surrounded by massive walls with central gateways were to appear on the landscape. Yet, the walls don't seem to be oriented for defense as they were elsewhere. There is no evidence of armies or things like moats. This has led archaeologists to believe that these walls and gates were designed to control the flow of trade goods and people in and out of the cities. To get into the city, you had to pay a tax. If you produced things, you had to pay a tax to take goods out of the city. This is how a city gets revenues. It is a safe place to trade, but it is a place that must survive. The cities of the Indus appear to have supported the cost of a city through a system of taxation of goods in and out of the city.

Unlike the rulers of China, Mesopotamia and Egypt, Indus Valley rulers did not immortalize themselves with mummies or monuments. They did, however, leave behind elaborately carved stone seals, used to impress tokens or clay tabs on goods bound for markets. The seals bore images of animals, like the humped bull, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile, which were probably emblems of powerful clans. The most common image is the unicorn, a symbol that originated in the Indus Valley. Frustratingly, though, those seals carry inscriptions that no one has been able to decipher. They are distinct and appear to be symbols not unlike other writing systems that were to evolve. They are a mix of phonetic symbols and pictures without meaning at this point. The writing found in the Indus region is as early as that from Mesopotamia, once considered to be the earliest writing.

Archaeologists believe each of the large cities of the Indus may have functioned as an independent city-state, controlled by a small group of merchants, landowners, and religious leaders. Taxation, access to the city, and possibly communication with the gods was controlled. The cities seem to be devoid of evidence of a standing army. Sculptures, paintings, and texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia clearly illustrate battles between cities and pharaonic wars of conquest. But in the Indus Valley, not a single depiction of a military act, of taking prisoners, of a human killing another human has been found. It's possible these acts were illustrated on cloth or paper or some other perishable and simply did not survive. Yet none of the cities show signs of battle damage to buildings or city walls, and very few weapons have been recovered. None of the human remains excavated seem to point to violent deaths either.

Harappan burials do not show evidence of extravagantly rich burials. Wealth was not valued as a necessity in death as it was in Egypt for example. There is some genetic evidence that suggests that women were buried within family areas while men were not related to those closest to them within the cemetery. This suggests matrilineal descent was practiced. A few rich burials have been excavated but these are excepts rather than the rule.

Evidence of extensive craft specialization has been discovered. Some items may have the efforts of a single craftsman to work on one item for at least 480 working days. There appears to be a great deal of attention paid to craftmanship and trade. Evidence of trade into the Mesopotamian region and places such as Bahrain has been found. The Indus flourished in the trade environment. Yet, between 1900 and 1700 B.C., the extensive trading networks and productive farms supporting this cultural integration collapsed, and distinct local cultures emerged. Traditionally, this has been attributed to an "aryan" invasion. Yet there is no evidence of warfare from excavations. There is evidence that the Indus River shifted, flooding many settlements and disrupting agriculture. Evidence suggests that a major river running parallel and east of the Indus dried up at this time and virtually disappeared. It is likely that as these changes took place the smaller settlements that provided agricultural support for the larger cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro were abandoned thus impacting the trade capacities of these cities. At this time, newly settled cities within the Ganges River valley to the east grew to prominence. Archaeologists now believe that there was no outright invasion. The decline of the Indus cities was the result of complex factors. Overextended economic and political networks, the drying up of major rivers as well as the rise of new religious communities all contributed in some way to the creation of a new social order.'

Writing Religion

Hinduism is the religious system that tended to shape the Indian perspectives on life itself. Evidence suggests that ancient worship was away from temples and that fire and blood sacrifice were elements of worship. There was probably a gradual shift that occurred in defining Hinduism that we recognize today. Hinduism shifted over time to a worship of gods residing within temples and gods concerned with individuals. Writings were created that began to define the values and philosophies that would guide worshipers. Vishnu, an old Vedic sun god, was transformed into a savior of humankind, and Vishnu gradually emerged as one of Hinduism's two great gods. The other great god was Shiva. Shiva had origins among ancient Indus cultures and is the first Indian god identified in the archaeological record. Shiva was hailed in several myths as the supreme god, a god of death and destruction, a god who was thought to dwell in the Himalayas. He was a god of many attributes: a god of art, especially dancing, a god represented as having five heads and three eyes, and one of his representations was half-male and half-female, signifying a unity within creation.

It was between 1500 and 1200 that an illiterate, pastoral people migrated from the steppe lands of central Russia through what is now Afghanistan, through the Kyber Pass and onto the sparsely populated Indus Plain. These migrants were to be called Aryans and to be classified as Indo-Europeans, their speech having been related to all modern European languages except Basque, Finnish and Hungarian.

The Aryans had a father god of the heaven, sky and atmosphere: Dyaus Pitar (sky father). They had a male god of thunder and rain called Indra, who was a god also of that other awesome disturbance -- war. The Aryans had a god of fire they called Agni. To the Aryans, Agni was fire, and they believed that Agni hungrily devoured the animals that they sacrificed in their rituals of burning. These sacrifices were performed by priests to obtain from their gods the gifts of children, success in war, wealth, health, longevity, food, drink or anything else that contributed to their happiness. The Aryans had a story that described humanity as having been created with virtue and everlasting life. According to this story, the gods were concerned that humanity would become gods like themselves, and to guard against this the gods plotted humanity's downfall.

A complex hierarchy of classes developed that would be called caste. At the top of this hierachy were the priests and their entire families: the Brahmins. Also at the top were the warrior-aristocrats, the Kshatriyas, whose job it was to practice constantly for combat. Neither the Brahmins nor the Kshatriyas conceded superiority to the other, but they agreed that the other levels of society were below them. The first of these lower classes was the Vaishas and their families: people who tended cattle and served the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in others ways. The lowest class was the conquered, darker, non-Aryans who were servants: the Shudras. The Aryans made these four classifications a part of their mythology. The four groups, it was claimed, came from the body of the god Prajapati, the Brahmins from the god's mouth, the warriors from the god's arms, the tenders of cattle from his legs, and the Shudras from his feet.

This hierachical system was less rigid than it would be centuries later. People from different classes could dine together for example. A man from a non-Brahmin family could still become a priest and therefore a Brahmin. And although marriage within one's own class was preferred, there was no absolute restriction against marrying people from a different class. Brahmins married women from a lower caste whom they found attractive, but this was a male prerogative. A girl from a Brahmin family was allowed to marry only someone also from a Brahmin family.

Stories were written down, in what became known as the Vedas -- Veda meaning wisdom. The Vedas became wisdom literature, a literature that would be considered an infallible source of timeless, revealed truth. The most important of the Vedas was the Rig Veda, which consisted of hymns or devotional incantations of 10,562 written lines in ten books. Another Veda, the Yajur Veda, focused less on devotional incantations and more on sacrificial procedures as a means of pleasing the gods. A third Veda, the Sama Veda, was mainly concerned with the god Indra. Indra was now seen as the god that had created the cosmos, the ruler of the atmosphere, and the god of thunderbolts and rain -- Dyaus Pitar having diminished in importance. Also mentioned in the Sama Veda were other gods of the sky and atmosphere: Varuna, guardian of the cosmic order; Agni, the god of fire; and Surya, the sun. A fourth Veda, the Atharya Veda, was a collection of 730 hymns, totaling six thousand stanzas, containing prescriptions for prayer, rituals for curing diseases, expiations against evils, protection against enemies and sorcerers, and prescriptions for creating charms for love, health, prosperity, influence, and a long life.

Among the Vedas were descriptions of funeral rites that included cremation, and there were descriptions of lengthy and solemn rituals for marriage. The Vedas implied that humanity is basically good; sin among the Hindus was viewed as a force from outside oneself -- an invader. Hinduisms's Vedas saw evil as the work of demons that might take the form of a human or some other creature, which could be removed by the prayers and rituals of priests.

Hinduism eventually became more interested in probing relations between self and the universe.  They were interested in attaining religious bliss, and this new interest was expressed in writings that were to be collected into what would be called the Upanishads, a collection of as many as two hundred books written across two centuries. The Upanishads consisted of attempts to describe truth through poetry and analogy. Within the Upanishads we find writings that argue that one's fate could be altered only by learning. In the Upanishads this was expressed that rather than rejoicing in externals known through the senses, people should turn their thoughts inward in a quest for self-realization and knowledge about themselves. They claimed that material or sensual pleasure should not be ultimate goals, that what people really want lies more deeply, that God is within us and that the wise seek the joys of the infinite, the joy that comes with separating the self from the body and freeing oneself from the clutches of birth and death. There should be a search within one's self for the higher knowledge that came from personal experience. In this there is a search for the God within each of us that represents this higher knowledge.

Both the Rig Veda and the Upanishads are precursors to the other epic stories of India - namely the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Like the Upanishads, these were written by different people over time probably around 500 B.C. At about the same time, there was the philosophy of Siddartha that would change the world. From his philosophical work, Buddhism would be born. He outlined his numerous rules for attaining this personal salvation. His first rule was proper understanding, by which he meant realizing that there is nothing essentially permanent, that there is only change -- a radical departure from orthodox Hinduism.  Siddhartha had decided that human misery came with people looking for permanence where there was no permanence and with people clinging to objects of desire that were transitory. The next rule was proper attitude, by which Siddhartha meant not wanting the impossible and accepting the inevitable --  in other words self-control over one's appetites and ambitions.  He had concluded that it was not wrong to desire good food and drink, fine clothes, or sexual satisfaction but that it was eventually destructive psychologically to persist in these appetites. Siddartha's third rule was proper speech, which he believed important because words preceded actions.  His fourth rule was proper actions, Siddhartha seeing this as important in creating a righteousness about oneself that engendered serenity.  His fifth rule was to do no injury to other living things.  This included refraining from theft, lying, sexual immorality, and drinking liquors which engendered slothfulness.  Siddhartha's additional rules reinforced his first five rules and included having a proper vocation, making proper efforts, exercising proper reflection, and partaking in proper meditation.

Central to Hinduism is an epic poem, the Mahabharata. A story incorporated into the Mahabharata became known as the Bhagavad Gita (the Lord's Song), composed perhaps as early as 200 B.C.. The Bhagavad Gita became Hinduism's most popular scriptures and into modern times it would be read by many for daily reference. In the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu acquired a new incarnation: Krishna. Krishna was originally a non-Aryan god in northwestern India. In the old Mahabharata he was a secondary hero, a god who had appeared as a human. But in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna became the Supreme Deity in human form. The Bhagavad Gita is an account of the origins, course and aftermath of a great war between royalty. In the Bhagavad Gita a dialogue takes place between a prince, Arjuna, and the charioteer alongside him as the two ride into battle at the head of Arjuna's army. The charioteer is really Krishna in disguise. Arjuna sees that his opponents ahead of him are his relatives. He drops his bow and announces that he will not give the signal to begin the battle. He asks whether power is so important that he should fight his own kinsmen, and he states that the pain of killing his kinsmen would be too much, that it would be better to die than to kill just for power and its glory. Krishna is like the god of war of former times: Indira. He gives Arjuna a formula for accepting deaths in war, a Hindu version close to the claim that those who die in battle will go to paradise. He tells Arjuna that bodies are not really people, that people are souls and that when the body is killed the soul lives on, that the soul is never born and never dies. Krishna reminds Arjuna that he is a warrior and that to turn from battle is to reject his karma, in other words his duty or place in life. He states that Arjuna should make war because it is his destiny to do so. He states that it is best to fulfill one's destiny with complete detachment because detachment leads to liberation and allows one to see the irrelevance of one's work.

Eventually, another series of books became important and this was called the Law Code of Manu. These were books that combined Hinduism with law -- a sacred law much as law was among the Jews and Zoroastrians -- and laws that kings and commoners alike were obliged to follow. The Law Code of Manu drew from the Vedas, where Manu was described as the world's first king, as the father of the human race and the one who had received the god Brahma's plans. Manu, according to the Vedas, was the first who described the universe and the first who sacrificed to the gods. The Law Code of Manu included Manu's story about the creation of the universe, and it attempted to bring together, in the form of maxims, Brahma's commandments regarding ritual, custom, caste and other institutions.

The Law Code of Manu expressed the values of India's Hindu priesthood. It claimed that authoritarian rule and class privilege were best for everyone. Among Manu's commandments,  expressed in the Law Code, was that one should give no pain to any creature. Such behavior would, according to the Law Code, allow one to gather spiritual merit that stayed with one after death. Another commandment held that in childhood a female had to be subject to the authority of her father. When she married she was to be under the authority of her husband. She was to remain cheerful, clever in the management of her household affairs, careful in using utensils, economical in spending, and to do nothing independent of male authority. As a widow or in old age she was to be under the authority of her sons. According to the Law Code, if a female sought to separate herself from her father, husband or son, she made her family contemptible.

The Law Code of Manu declared that rulers were obliged to be considerate in judging and punishing their subjects. It claimed that punishment kept the world in order, that punishment properly applied kept all people happy, but applied without consideration it destroyed everything. The Law Code of Manu claimed that without punishment, inferior people would "take the place" of their superiors, that the castes would be corrupted by intermixture, that "all barriers" would fall and "men would rage against each other."

Empire and Warfare

In contrast to the earlier period, life in ancient India was marked with harsh rule and warfare about the same time as China was being unified by Qin ShiHuang. The figure who would create this empire is Chandragupta. According to tradition, Chandragupta was not born into a royal status but rose to his position with the assistance of an advisor - his adopted father Kautilya. Kautilya wrote a book entitled Arthasastra and in this book he defined a philosophy similar to that of Legalism in China where rule of law was important in governance. The book advises a king to control his subjects, especially his ministers, the spiritual leaders, Brahmins, and wealthy merchants. And to accomplish this, the king should employ an army of artful spies who would keep watch at all levels of society. But foremost is the book's advocacy of military expansion. It called on the king to wage war against other powers for preservation.

The rise of the empire of Chandragupta was aided by the impact that warfare defending against Alexander the Great had had on small city-states throughout the region. His cause was aided by a belief that strength lay in greater numbers. Chandragupta held land and for a quarter or half of what people raised he allowed people to live from the land. He exempted farmers from military service and other state obligations in return for his "rent". Chandragupta divided his empire into districts, which were administered by his closest relatives and most trusted generals. Civil servants ruled various departments such as trade, taxation, mining, roads, and irrigation canals. His  government held trade monopolies and owned slaughter-houses, gambling halls, mines, shipbuilding operations, armament factories and spinning and weaving operations. His government oversaw the standardization of weights, measures and coinage. It controlled prices and trade, including trade in liquor and prostitution. It obliged drinking places to have couches, scents, water and other amenities, and drinking places and "public houses" were not to be near each other. He employed countless spies to watch for insurrection. He used torture as a means of gaining information. Law was as strict as the Code of Hammurabi. People were executed for theft, for damaging property of the king, breaking into someone's home, evading taxes, injuring an artisan working for the state and many other crimes. Failure to meet a contract could lead to a fine if not a harsher penalty, as could incompetence in various forms of work, from washing clothes to treating the ill.

Power eventually passed to Asoka, the grandson of Chandragupta. Disturbed by the nature of society, Asoka converted to Buddhism and began to change the nature of Indian society. Asoka mixed his Buddhism with material concerns that served the Buddha's original desire to see suffering among people mitigated: Asoka had wells dug, irrigation canals and roads constructed. He had  rest houses built along roads, hospitals built, public gardens planted and medicinal herbs grown. But Asoka maintained his army, and he maintained the secret police and network of spies that he had inherited as a part of his extensive and powerful bureaucracy. Under the rule of Asoka, coexistance with neighbors became more the norm and India seemed to prosper. Asoka careful negotiated the needs to balance three religions: Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. At the same time, regions within his empire began to gain certain measures of independence and the empire gradually disintegrated.

India was subjected to a number of invastions after this point from Greeks, Central Asians, Tibetans, and ulitmately Europeans. Through this period however one thing remained central. Indian ships sailed south to Lanka and then east to Southeast Asian ports, where Indian merchants sold cotton cloth, ivory, brass wear, monkeys, parrots and elephants to Chinese merchants, who transported their goods by sea to China. From Southeast Asian ports Indian merchants acquired spices that they traded elsewhere. Trade between India and China passed also across Central Asia by camel caravan, across what would become known as the great northern silk route, China sending musk, raw and woven silk, tung oil and amber westward into India. Trade flourished with east African ports as well and into the Arabian world. Accompanying this seagoing trade, wave after wave of Indians emigrated. These colonists reached Lanka, the coast of Burma, what is now Thailand and Cambodia, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra and Borneo, and a few reached Taiwan and the Philippines.

In India, meanwhile, the increase in India's trade led to the rise of bankers and financiers, and these men of wealth gave support to monarchies and landlords short on cash. Families in banking and commerce extended their enterprises into as many urban centers as they could, in India and abroad. Trade once again was the central force shaping Indian society underlying political directions.

The Tajmahal