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Many Peoples, many Songs
Before one can aspire to any understanding of the creative impulses of the inhabitants of the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh subcontinent, it is a well to know something about its vast conglomerate of peoples. India, for example, has 845 languages and dialects. This alone will convey some idea of the diversity to be apprehended. How did this diversity come about? Mention has already been made of the Indus Valley civilization during the pre-Vedic era (6000-2500 B.C.). Flourishing at the same time were the Sumerian civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates basin and the Egyptian civilization in the Nile basin. These three cultures formed what is known as the Fertile Crescent. We know that they traded with each other and that jade from Central Asia was sent from Kashgar down to Mohenjo Daro, and thence across Persia to Ur in Sumer and Memphis in Egypt. The Aryans entered the subcontinent around 2000 B.C. probably through the Malakand and Khyber Passes. They came in successive waves and by 800 B.C. had established themselves as far east as the river Brahmaputra. They brought with hem the Vedic age. This means that the great religious literature of India that started with the Rig-Veda and the predominant religion of India, Hinduism, are both foreign in origin. Hindu extremists in India today would do well to consider the fact. With the Aryans came the institution of caste. The Aryans themselves, who were the rulers and fair-skinned, became the higher castes. The indigenous inhabitants, who were dark, either became the lower castes or isolated themselves in hilly areas and forests. It is interesting that the Sanskrit word varna means both caste and colour. The Aryan expansion into south India was checked by the mountain ranges and dense forests which extended across central India. However, Aryan sages and missionaries spread into the whole of Dravida, south India, and converted the inhabitants to the Aryan way of life. These sages and missionaries, with their families, formed the nucleus of the south Indian Brahmin castes. Knowing that they were surrounded by a sea of dark, hostile Dravidians, these south Indian Brahmins have always preserved their identity more fanatically than their Brahman brothers I the north. Their situation, in fact, was analogous to that of the whites in southern Africa today. To this day the Madras Brahmins pride themselves on their exclusiveness and the fairness of their skin. The Aryan Brahmins monopolized all learning and developed a facility for coexisting with the lower castes on the basis of their own superiority. They were an elitist class who were in a position to manipulate the power of state and religion in order to maintain Brahminic ascendency. They provided the philosophers, the chief ministers, the diplomats, the high priests and, sometimes, even the generals. The breakaway or reformist movements, therefore, were mainly inspired and led by non-Brahmins. The Buddha who founded Buddhism, Mahavira who founded Jainism and Guru Nanak who founded Sikhism were all born Kshatriyas. Mahatma Gandhi was born a Vaishya. The Brahmin gods were mostly fair-skinned but one of the notable exceptions was Krishna, the Dark One, who represented a major concession by the Aryan Brahmins to their dark-skinned compatriots. He was always depicted as a charming young man with a flute, whose ethereal music melted the heart of every maiden. Krishna is a popular god in India, for, in sociological terms, he has become a bridge between the Aryan and the Dravidian cultures. In the 6th century B.C. Persia established a powerful empire and Darius annexed Sind and the western Punjab. These areas remained a part of the Persian Empire up to the time that it was overthrown by Alexander in 330 B.C. The rest of the subcontinent was divided up into kingdoms, principalities and republics. The chief kingdoms in the north were Magadha, Anga, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti; in the Deccan plateau were Andhra and Kalinga; and in the south there were the Chola, the Pandya and the Kerala kingdoms. After Alexander’s death his kingdom was parceled out among his general. It was at this time that the Mauryan Empire took back the Indian territories from the Greeks and pushed its frontier to the Hindu Kush. The Mauryans controlled a large part of subcontinent from their capital in Taxila, now in Pakistan. Nevertheless, the Chola, the Pandya and the Kerala kingdoms in the south were independent of them and the Andhra kingdom in the Deccan was probably an independent state within the empire. The kingdom of Kerala, on the south-west coast of India had, all this time, been trading with the Phoenicians and the Greeks by sea. From the time of Augustus the Romans also started trading with Kerala via Alexandria and the Red Sea. During the reign of Claudius the monsoon winds were harnessed to aid navigation and this helped the development of the international trade. The Romans came to Kerala for spices, hardwood, gold, peacocks, apes and ivory. After the second sack of Jerusalem many Jews sought refuge here and a colony settled in Cochin. There is also, in Kerala, a large community of Christians who take pride in the ancient origin of their Church and claim that it was founded by St. Thomas. With the fall of the Mauryan empire in about 180 B.C. northern India was conquered by four different peoples and each of them settled there. The Greeks from Bactria, known to Indians as the Yavanas, held sway for about fifty years; the Pallavas and Sakas from central Asia ruled for about two hundred years; and the Yue-chi under Kanishka established the Kushan empire that lasted for over a hundred and fifty years. The racial and linguistic mixture was becoming very complex but this was not, by any means, the end. The Gupta dynasty now established an empire that covered a large part of north India. From 300-500 A.D., there was a period of comparative peace and the arts flourished; the Vayu-purana was compiled during this time. The Deccan and south Indian had once more regrouped into different states. The Tamil language of south India had reached full maturity by now for in the second century Ilango Adigal had written Silappadikaram, the “Epic of the Anklet”, which is a classic of that language. The Hindu colonization of Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, and Malaya had started in the first century and this continued for a long time. The colonists were chiefly from the east coast of India and from what is now Bengal and Bangladesh. The Huns from central Asia were now threatening the whole of the civilized world. Under Attila they crossed the Rhine and were soon extracting tribute from the Roman Empire. Another horde, the White Huns, over-ran Persia and entered India. They destroyed the Gupta empire and established themselves under their rulers Toramana and Mihiragula. At the beginning of the seventh century Harsha, who had led the Indian princes in their confrontation with the Huns, united most of north India. Harsha’s plans, however, to bring the whole of the country under one rule were frustrated by the powerful Chalukyas of the Deccan, who stopped him at the Vindhya mountains. In the south the Pallavas were the paramount power and there was constant warfare between them and their neighbours, the Chalukyas. After the collapse of Harsha’s empire the map of India was very confused indeed. In the Punjab was the kingdom of Jayapala; the centre was the Prathihara empire comprising a number of Rajput clans (descendants of the Gurjaras who had invaded India after the Huns); in the east were the Palas; in the Deccan the Chalukyas were being challenged by the Rashtrakutas; to the east of the Deccan there was the Kalinga kingdom; and in the south the Pallavas had collapsed and the Cholas were back in power. While India was undergoing these long periods of disunity and political rivalry a new force had arisen in the deserts of Arabia. Islam was a strong monotheistic religion as well as a social and political philosophy. Within a short time the petty warring Arab tribes had been welded into a powerful nation. Being a daughter religion of Judaism and Christianity, Islam sanctioned the use of military force for the attainment of religious and political ends. At Qadesiyeh in 636 A.D. the Arabs destroyed the Persian Empire and a century later they entered India. They crossed the Indus and settled in Sind as their advance further eastwards was checked by the Rajputs in the Thar desert. This was not, however, India’s first contact with Islam. Arab traders had already started trade with the Malabar coast of Kerala and a number of Arabs had settled there. There was, nevertheless, one vital difference; whereas in north India the Arabs were rulers, in Kerala they were traders. It is interesting to see that or two hundred years – from the 8th to the 10th centuries – the Muslims made nor further territorial gains in India. In fact, during this time, the Indian states had the most cordial relations with the Abbassid Empire which was ruled from Baghdad. In music the cultural exchange is exemplified by the names of two ragas, Yemani and Kafi, which clearly indicate Arabic origins. In mathematics, the Arabs took their numerals from India (the Arabic word for numerals is ‘Hindsa’, meaning ‘from India’). Of course, when Europe adopted ‘Arabic’ numerals it was not realized that these were ‘Indian’ numerals. After the Turks had dominated the Abbassid empire they commenced the invasion of India. It was they who started a permanent Muslim settlement in India during the eleventh century. These Muslims were of differing racial stock – Arabs, Turks, Persians, Afghans, and Mongols. All brought with them their own contributions to the multi-coloured fabric of Indian society. Even though they were of the same religion, their cultural and political interests were often at variance. This is seen from the history of over four hundred years of Muslim power in the subcontinent prior to the Mughal invasion. Indeed the Mughals, who were Muslims of Mongol origin although of Persian culture, wrested the Indian empire from their co-religionists rather than from the Hindus. The Mughals brought most of the subcontinent under one central authority and the greatest of them, Akbar, who was a contemporary of Elizabeth I, made a genuine attempt to bring about a synthesis of Hindu and Muslim religions. Never were religions more different than Hinduism and Islam. Hinduism had evolved over the ages, Islam was a revealed religion; Hinduism was polytheistic, Islam was emphatically monotheistic; Hinduism had engendered an elaborate system of castes and sub-castes, Islam preached that all men were brothers; Hinduism saw many paths to God, Islam only one; Hinduism encouraged the making of idols, Islam was iconoclastic; Hinduism was non-prosleytizing, Islam was the opposite; Hindus venerated the cow, the Muslims it. The list can go on for pages. For over a millennium, in spite of the many invasions, Hindu society had not been challenged in this way. Islam too had never before encountered such a bewildering number of problems. Both religions had now to adjust to an entirely new situation. This adjustment found expression in many ways. The Bhagti movement, for instance, stressed the brotherhood of man irrespective of religion or social background. It combined the most attractive features of both Hinduism and Islam and produced saints like Kabir (1440-1518) who, though born a Muslim, renounced formal Islam and became the generative source of great poetry and music. Bhagti encouraged mysticism as did Sufism, which was a pantheistic type of Islam, and both relied heavily on the use of music. It was the tremendous influence of Sufi thought throughout the Islamic world that directly influenced the later Muslim monarchs in India to encourage and even foster the Hindu arts. Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to assume that there was a complete Hindu-Muslim integration in India. Integration is a fashionable concept today but not necessarily a wholly desirable objective. The subcontinent is the richer and the more fascinating for the many kinds of people that inhabit it. The wider the variety of birds in a garden the more varied the song.
From The Music of India by Reginald & Jamila Massey foreword by Ravi Shankar p-34-39)
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The Buddha
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