Lectures on the Ancient History of India Read online

  ~ Biographical Note ~

  Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar was the son of renowned Indologist, Sir R. G. Bhandarkar. Following in the footsteps of his illustrious father, Devadatta joined the Archaeological Survey of India and became an assistant to Henry Cousen. There he took part in painstaking surveys of the monuments of Rajputana and other areas of western India, eventually becoming an authority on ancient India.

  Devadatta’s tryst with Calcutta University and its founder, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was a long and fruitful one. He was hailed by Mukherjee as the ‘pathfinder in trackless regions of the boundless field of Indian antiquarian research’. Devadatta served as Carmichael Professor of Calcutta University, teaching Numismatics in the MA program for Ancient Indian History and Culture. His lectures during his tenure, collected and published by the University as Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics and Lectures on Ancient History of India, have remained a point of reference for generations of scholars.

  Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar died in May 1950.

  Lectures on the

  Ancient History

  of India

  On the Period From 650 to 325 BC

  D. R. Bhandarkar

  First published in 2013 by

  Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.

  7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj

  New Delhi 110002

  Edition copyright © Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2013

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-81-291-2089-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

  To

  SIR ASUTOSH MOOKERJEE, SARASVATI,

  Sastra-Vachaspati, Sambuddhagama-Chakravarti

  who, by his lofty ideals,

  far-reaching foresight, and unfailing vigilance,

  has elevated the Calcutta University to the rank

  of a teaching and research University,

  the only one of its kind in India,

  and who, by his unstinted and discriminate

  liberality and encouragement,

  has led votaries of learning to look upon him

  as the VIKRAMADITYA of the present age,

  These Lectures

  are dedicated by the Author

  in token of profound admiration and reverence.

  ~ Contents ~

  Preface

  Lecture I: ARYAN COLONISATION OF SOUTHERN INDIA AND CEYLON

  Lecture II: POLITICAL HISTORY

  Lecture III: ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY, PART I

  Lecture IV: ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY, PART II

  ~ Preface ~

  This book contains the lectures which I delivered as Carmichael Professor of the Calcutta University in February, 1918. When I came here to hold the chair, I was told that I was to deliver four lectures embodying some research work. If my lectures, I thought, were to contain nothing but new original work, they could be delivered only to a few advanced students of the Ancient Indian History and would hardly be understood by the people in general. If, on the other hand, they were to be such as would be intelligible to the latter, there was the danger of their being more popular than scholarly in character. Was it possible, I asked myself, to realise both the ends, i.e. to satisfy both the classes,—the scholars and the people? After thinking about the matter, I came to the conclusion that both the objects could be fulfilled if I selected a period and delivered my lectures on it. Perhaps the most neglected period was the one which immediately preceded the rise of the Mauryan power, although it was in some respects the most important one. This period was accordingly chosen and the lectures delivered. How far I have succeeded in interesting the specialists and the laymen in the subject-matter of these lectures I leave it to them to determine.

  The most important event of the period I have selected, viz: from 650 to 325 B.C., is the completion of the Aryan colonisation of Southern India. This has, therefore, become the theme of my first lecture. In my second, I have dealt with the political history of the period, the characteristic feature of which is the gradual evolution of Imperialism. Shortly before Buddha, the Aryanised India had been divided into sixteen tiny States, mostly kingships, which by the process of centralisation were developed into four Monarchies when Buddha was living, and these Monarchies, again, culminated into Imperialism about a century after his demise. My Third and Fourth Lectures pertain to the Administrative History, a subject which has not yet attracted as much attention of the scholars as it deserves though the materials even now at our command are enough for the purpose. The Third Lecture is divided into two parts, the first of which deals with the Literature on Hindu Polity to which we are indebted for our knowledge of this subject. This, I am afraid, is more of an esoteric than of an exoteric character, and may, therefore, prove somewhat abstruse to the general reader. The second part aims at setting forth some of the Hindu conceptions of Monarchy, and will, I hope, be read with some interest. Therein I have attempted to set forth the evidence which, if it is impartially and dispassionately considered, seems to show that there was a time in the Ancient History of India when Monarchy was not absolute and uncontrolled. We have been so much accustomed to read and hear of Monarchy in India as being always and invariably unfettered and despotic that the above conclusion is apt to appear incredible to many as it no doubt was to me for a long time. In the Fourth Lecture I have endeavoured to show that Monarchy was not the only form of political government known to India and the governments of a more or less popular character such as oligarchy, aristocracy and democracy were also nourishing side by side with it. In this lecture I have also endeavoured to give a glimpse into the rules and regulations of debate which characterised the popular assemblies of Ancient India and have pointed out that they bear a remarkably close correspondence to those followed by the modern civilised age.

  The Bengalis are a loving and lovable people, and many are the lecturers and teachers of the Calcutta University from whom I have received willing help and suggestions of various kinds. It is impossible to mention the names of them all here in this short preface. But I must mention the name of Mr. Narayan Chandra Banerji, M.A., for the invaluable assistance he rendered me in connection with my Lectures on the Administrative History before he formally became Lecturer of the University. The preparation of the Index is solely the work of my pupil Mr. N. G. Majumdar, B.A., who also helped me in revising the proofs.

  It is scarcely necessary for me to add that the subject of the Ancient Indian History and Culture is a progressive one, and with every additional study and find of new materials some of the conclusions previously drawn are likely to be modified. And, as a matter of fact, as this book is reaching its completion, I myself am aware that I now hold somewhat different views on one or two matters dealt with in these Lectures. Similarly, though no effort has been spared to ensure accuracy and fullness, I do not expect this book to be by any means free from defects. But 1 request my readers not to play the role of a cattle louse described in the well-known Sanskrit verse,* but rather to confine their attention to the good points only, if there be any, in these Lectures, and thus help to carry forward the torch of research work to illumine the dark periods of Ancient Indian History.

  An outsider like myself has only to see the affairs of the
Calcutta University and be convinced that the progress of the Ancient History of India or of Sanskrit, Pāli and Prākṛit studies is due solely to the solicitude and encouragement of one single person, and it is to this person, therefore, that this book has been dedicated. In the dedicatory page will be found his portrait, which, I may add, was inserted much against his wishes.

  D.R.B

  *The verse says that a cattle louse, through it is perched on a cow’s udder, will have her blood, not her milk.

  ~ Lecture I ~

  ARYAN COLONISATION OF SOUTHERN INDIA AND CEYLON

  I propose to open my first series of lectures as Carmichael Professor with the history of the pre-Maurya period, i.e. of the period extending from about 650 to 325 B.C. It is true that we do not know much about the political history of this period, but political history cannot be the whole history of any country. Again, it is the administrative, social, religious and ethnological history which is of much greater importance and far transcends political history in point of human interest and edification. And for the construction of this history for the period we have selected we have sufficient materials. We have works of the Sūtra period relating both to Law and Grammar. We have thus the Dharmaśāstras of Baudhāyana, Gautama, Āpastamba and so forth, and the Ashṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini and Kātyāyana’s supplementary aphorisms or vārtikas on it. Further, it was prior to the rise of the Mauryas that Buddha lived and preached. And there is a general consensus of opinion among scholars that all the earlier works of the Buddhist Pāli canon were put together in the period to which we are confining ourselves. Let us, therefore, utilise these materials and try to see how India was socially, religiously and even politically from 650 to 325 B.C.

  The principal characteristic of this period is the completion of the colonisation of Southern India and Ceylon by the Aryans; and this forms the subject of to-day’s lecture. It is worthy of note that the southern half of India was called Dakshiṇāpatha, which means ‘Road to the South’. Already in a Vedic hymn,1 although it is one of the latest, we meet with an expression dakshiṇā padā, meaning ‘with southward foot’, and used with reference to a man who is expelled to the south. This cannot of course denote the Dakshiṇāpatha or Southern India as we understand it, but rather the country lying beyond the world then inhabited by the Aryans. It was in the Brāhmaṇa period, however, that they for the first time seem to have crossed the Vindhya range which separates the south from the north half of India. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa2 e.g., a prince named Bhīma is designated Vaidarbha, ‘prince of Vidarbha’. This shows that the Aryans had come down below the Vindhyas and settled in Vidarbha or western Berars immediately to the south of this mountain range. The same Brāhmaṇa3 represents the sage Viśvāmitra to have adopted Śunaḥśepa as his son and named him Devarāta, much to the annoyance of fifty of his sons, who in consequence were cursed by their father to “live on the borders” of the province then occupied by the Aryans. The descendants of these sons of Viśvāmitra’s, the Brāhmaṇa further tells us, formed the greater bulk of the Dasyus and were variously known as Andhras, Puṇḍras, Śabaras, Pulindas and Mūtibas. Of these the Andhras, Puliṇdas and Śabaras at any rate are known from the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa and Purāṇas to have been tribes of Southern India; and though the exact provinces inhabited by them in the time of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa cannot be definitely settled, it cannot for a moment be doubted that they lived to the south of the Vindhyas and that the Aryans had already come in contact with these non-Aryan peoples.

  Let us now see what we learn from Pāṇini, the founder of the most renowned School of Grammar and who lived about 600 B.C. In his sūtras or grammatical aphorisms he shows an extensive knowledge of the ancient geography of India. Most of the countries, places and rivers mentioned by him are, of course, to be found in the Punjāb and Afghānistān. Belonging to India farther south he mentions Kachchha (IV. 2.133), Avanti (IV.1.170), Kośala (IV.1.171) and Kaliṅga (IV.1.170). But he makes no mention of any province to the south of the Narmadā except that of Aśmaka (IV.1.173). One of the oldest works of Pāli Buddhist literature, the Sutta-nipāta,4 speaks of a Brāhmaṇ guru called Bāvarin as having left the Kosala country and settled near a village on the Godhāvarī in the Assaka (Aśmaka) territory in the Dakkiṇāpatha (Dakshināpatha). The story tells us that Bāvarin sent his sixteen pupils to pay their homage to Buddha and confer with him. The route by which they proceeded northwards is also described.5 First, they went to Patiṭṭhāna of the Muḷaka6 country, then to Māhissatī, to Ujjenī, Gonaddha,7 Vedisa and Vanasahvaya; to Kosambī, Sāketa and Sāvatthi (capital of the Kosala country); to Setavya, Kapilavatthu and Kusināra; to Pāvā, Vesālī (capital of Magadha), and finally to Pāsāṇaka Chetiya where Buddha then was. The description of this route is very important in more than one ways. In the first place, it will be seen that Bāvarin’s settlement was much to the south of Patiṭṭhāna, i.e. Paiṭhaṇ in Nizam’s territory, because Patiṭṭhāna was the principal town of the Muḷaka province, to the south of which was the Aśmaka country where Bāvarin then was. Secondly, it is worthy of note that Bāvarin’s disciples went to North India straight through the Vindhyas. This disproves the theory of some scholars who hold that the Aryans were afraid of crossing the Vindhyas and went southwards to the Dekkan by an easterly detour round the mountain range.8 After leaving Patiṭṭhāna or Paiṭhaṇ we find the party reaching Māhissatī, i.e. Māhishmatī, which has been correctly identified with Māndhātā on the Narmadā on the borders of the Indore State.9 Evidently, Bāvarin’s pupils must have passed to Māhishmatī, i.e. to the other side of the Vindhyas through the Vidarbha country.

  Let us now turn to Pāṇini and the School of Grammar that he founded. We have seen that Aśmaka is the only country in the Dekkan, which he mentions. The case, however, is different with Kātyāyana who wrote aphorisms called vārtikas to explain and supplement Pāṇini and who has been assigned to the middle of the 4th century B.C. Now, to a Pāṇini’s sūtra: janapada—śabdāt kshatriyād=añ (IV. 1. 168), Kātyāyana adds a vārtika, Pāṇḍor=ḍyaṇ, from which we obtain the form Pāṇḍya.10 If this vārtika had not been made, we should have had the form not Pāṇḍya but Pāṇḍava. Again, we have a sūtra of Pāṇini, Kambojāl=luk (IV. 1. 175), which lays down that the word Kamboja denotes not only the Kamboja country or the Kamboja tribe but also the Kamboja king. But then there are other words which are exactly like Kamboja in this respect but which Pāṇini has not mentioned. Kātyāyana is, therefore, compelled to supplement the above sūtra with the vārtika, Kambojādibhyo=lug–vachanam Choḍādyartham. This means that like Kamboja the words Choḍa, Kaḍera and Kerala denote each not only the country and the tribe but also the king. It will thus be seen that Choḍa and Kerala, which are obviously countries situated in Southern India, were known to Kātyāyana, but not to Pāṇini. Of course, no sane scholar who has studied the Ashtādhyāyī will be so bold as to assert that Pāṇini was a careless or ignorant grammarian. But we have not one word, but at least three words, viz. Pāṇḍya, Choḍa and Kerala, the formation of whose forms has not been explained by Pāṇini, which any accurate and thoroughgoing grammarian would have done if they had been known to him. The only legitimate conclusion that can, therefore, be drawn is that the names of these southern countries were not known to Pāṇini, or in other words, were not known to the Aryans in the seventh century B.C., but were known to them shortly before the middle of the fourth century B.C. when Kātyāyana lived. As regards Ceylon or Tāmraparṇi as it was called in ancient days, it was certainly known to the Aryans long before the rise of the Maurya power. It has been mentioned not only by Aśoka as Tambapaṇi in his Rock Edict XIII but also as Taprobane by Megasthenes,11 who, as most of you are aware, was the ambassador sent by Seleukos Nicator of Syria to the court of Chandragupta, founder of the Maurya dynasty and grandfather of Aśoka. Contemporaneously with Megasthenes lived Kauṭilya, who in his Arthaśāstra12 speaks of pearls being found among other places in the
Tāmrapaṇi river, in Paṇḍya-kavāṭaka, and near the Mahendra mountain— all situated on the extremity of the Southern Peninsula.

  Now, the name of one of these southern kingdoms was Choḍa, which was called Chōṛa in Tamiḷ and Choḷa in Telugu. The people also were called by the same name. I cannot resist the temptation of saying that it is from this Chōṛa people that the Sanskrit word chora meaning a thief has been derived. An exactly analogous instance we have in the word Dasyu or Dāsa, which originally denoted the Dahae people of the Caspian Steppes13 but which even in the Vedic period acquired a derogatory sense and soon after signified “a robber”. If Dasyu thus originally was the name of a non-Aryan tribe and used in the sense of a robber, it is perfectly intelligible that the name of another non-Aryan people, viz. the Chōṛas, was similarly employed to express a similar meaning. And this seems to have been the case, because the Vedic terms for a thief are taskara, tāyu, stena and paripanthin, but never chora, this word being for the first time found in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka14 which is a late work. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that in Latin and Greek also, there is no word, signifying “a thief,” which correspends to chora in sound.

  The case, however, was different in regard to the name of the other people, viz. Pāṇḍya. Kātyāyana, we have seen, derives it from Pāṇḍu. This shows that the Pāṇḍyas were an Aryan tribe, and not an alien tribe like the Cholas or Choṛas. Now, a Greek writer called Pliny tells us a tradition about these Pāṇḍyas, on the authority of Megasthenes, that they were descended from Pandoea, the only daughter of the Indian Hercules, i.e., of Kṛishṇa. She went away from the country of the Śaurasenas, whose principal towns were Methora or Mathurā and Cleisobora or Kṛishṇapura, and was assigned by her father just “that portion of India which lies southward and extends to the sea.”15 It is thus clear that the Pāṇḍyas were connected with the north and were an Aryan race. The account given by Megasthenes, however, like many traditions of this nature, is to be regarded as a combination of both truth and fiction. In the first place no authority from any epic or Purāṇa is forthcoming to show that Kṛishṇa had a daughter and of the name of Pāṇḍyā. Secondly though Mathurā is connected with the infancy of Krishṇa, he lived as a ruler, not at Mathurā but at Dvārakā from where alone he could send his daughter. These are, therefore, the elements of fiction that got mixed up with the immigration of the Pāṇḍyas. What appears to be the truth is that there was a tribe called Pāndu round about Mathurā, and that when a section of them went southwards and were settled there, they were called Pāṇḍyas. This is clear, I think, from Kātyāyana’s vārtika, Pāṇḍor-ḍyaṇ, which means that the suffix ya was to be attached not to Pāṇḍu the name of the father of the Pāṇḍavas but to Pāṇḍu, which was the name of a Kshatriya tribe as well as of a country. Evidently Pāṇḍyā denotes the descendants of the Pāṇḍu tribe, and must have been so called when they migrated southwards and established themselves there.16 Nay, we have got evidence to show that there was a tribe called Pāṇḍu. Ptolemy, who wrote geography of India about A.D.150, speaks not only of the kingdom of Pandion or Pāṇḍyā but also of the country of the Pandoöuoi in the Punjāb.17 These Pandoöuoi can be no other than the people Pāṇḍu. Again, Varāhamihira, the celebrated astronomer, who flourished about the middle of the 6th century A.D., makes mention of a tribe called Pāṇḍus and places them in Madhyadeśa.18 There can, therefore, be no doubt about the existence of a people called Pāṇḍus. And as according to Varāhamihira they were somewhere in the Madhyadeśa, it is quite possible that in the time of Megasthenes they were settled round about Mathurā Megasthenes’ statement that the Pāṇḍyas of the south were connected with the Jumna and Mathurā seems to be founded on fact, because the Greek writers, Pliny and Ptolemy, tell us that the capital of the Pāṇḍyas in the south was Modoura,19 i.e., Madurā, the principal town of the district of the same name in the Madras Presidency. The fact that the Pāṇḍyas of the south called their capital Madhurā clearly shows that they came from the north from some country whose capital was Mathurā and thus gives remarkable confirmation to what Megasthenes has told us. This is quite in accordance with the practice of the colonists naming the younger towns or provinces after the older.