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2014
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Publié par
Date de parution
01 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789351186465
Langue
English
Abraham Eraly
THE FIRST SPRING
Culture in the Golden Age of India
Part II
Contents
About the Author
THE SCIENCES
1. Cultural Efflorescence
2. Pearls and Pebbles
3. The Veda of Health
PHILOSOPHY
1. Metaphysics of Metaphor
2. Matter-Spirit Interplay
3. Mental Asceticism
4. Illusion of Reality
5. Why Cuckoos Sing
6. Paths in the Sky
7. Wisdom at Noon
LITERATURE
1. The Crafting of Sanskrit
2. Belles-lettres
3. Courtier-Poets
4. Poets of Love and Angst
5. Poets of the People
THE ARTS
1. The Fifth Veda
2. Mansions of Gods
3. Sermons in Stone
RELIGION
1. Godless Religions
2. Be Ye Your Own Light
3. Little Vehicle, Great Vehicle
4. Senescence of Buddhism
5. Polymorphic Religion
6. Galaxy of Gods
7. Gods to Romance
8. Rising by Falling
Footnotes
LITERATURE
3. Courtier-Poets
5. Poets of the People
RELIGION
1. Godless Religions
3. Little Vehicle, Great Vehicle
4. Senescence of Buddhism
6. Galaxy of Gods
7. Gods to Romance
Notes
Incidental Data
Bibliography
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE FIRST SPRING
Part Two
ABRAHAM ERALY was born in Kerala and was educated there and in Chennai. He has taught Indian history in colleges in India and the United States, and was the editor of a current affairs magazine for several years. His works include two critically acclaimed and bestselling books on India: The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals (later published in two volumes as Emperors of the Peacock Throne , and The Mughal World ) and Gem In the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilization . His latest book, The Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate , has been recently published.
He can be contacted at abraham_eraly@yahoo.co.in
THE SCIENCES
The body is the product of food, disease is born of food, happiness and sorrow result from wholesome and unwholesome diet.
- CHARAKA
{1}
Cultural Efflorescence
Perfection has been attained, proudly proclaims the fifth-century Junagarh inscription of the reign of Emperor Skanda-Gupta. The hyperbole of this claim is pardonable, for India in the Gupta age enjoyed a very high level of material prosperity and cultural luxuriance. It was in every respect a good life for Indians then, better than it had ever been-or would be for many centuries to come. And India at this time enjoyed a high reputation among the nations of the age, and exerted considerable cultural influence over the entire Asian continent.
The critical factor that contributed to the blossoming of Indian culture in the classical age was economic. There had been a steady growth of prosperity in India for many centuries from around the middle of the first millennium BCE , initially because of the spread of agriculture and the improvement of farming practices, and subsequently due to the expansion of trade, stimulated internally by agrarian prosperity and externally by the insatiable demand for Asian luxuries and exotic goods in the Roman Empire. The expansion of trade and the consequent spread of urbanization led to the rise of a new class in India, the affluent urbanite, who looked beyond subsistence concerns and material pursuits to seek cultural gratification, and extended generous patronage to intellectuals, writers and artists. And so did the kings of the age; indeed, patronizing culture was a duty enjoined on them by Indian lawgivers.
These material and socio-political developments, so essential for culture to flourish, harmonized well with the prevailing religious ethos of India. Religion was the prime moulder of culture in all ancient civilizations, and in India this role was mainly played by Buddhism, which was the dominant religion of India during the early classical period. The classical Indian civilization was essentially a Buddhist civilization, though there is a common misconception that it was a Hindu civilization, because of the Hindu affiliation of the dominant Gupta dynasty of this period, and the near-total disappearance of Buddhism from India in the early medieval times. The rationalistic, liberal and urban ethos of Buddhism was far more conducive to innovation and creativity than the fatalistic, pietistic, and rustic ethos of the evolving Puranic Hinduism of the age. It was Buddhists who dominated nearly every field of classical culture; Hindus had supremacy only in Sanskrit literature, and even in it, the earliest prominent classical writer was a Buddhist, Asvaghosha of the first century CE .
Yet another factor that significantly contributed to the flowering of the classical Indian civilization was the vital links that India at this time had with the other great civilizations of the age, and the cross-fertilization of cultures resulting from it. India, during most of its history, even in prehistoric times, had maintained a close relationship with Central Asia and the Middle East; it had, contrary to the common view, never existed in isolation, even though its creative interaction with other civilizations ceased by around the seventh century CE , and this cultural hibernation persisted for many centuries.
The earliest Central Asian influence on India in historical times was that of Persia, which had, under the Achaemenids, extended its power into the Indus Valley in the sixth century BCE . Then came Alexander s foray into India in the fourth century BCE , followed by the establishment of the Mauryan Empire in India, which maintained a close relationship with the Seleucid Empire in Central Asia. The subsequent formation of several Indo-Central Asian kingdoms-by the Bactrian Greeks, Parthians, Sakas and Kushanas-in the early classical age, and the concurrent spread of Buddhism into the Middle East, Central Asia, China and South-east Asia, further strengthened India s trans-Asian political and cultural links. Bactria-the region between the Indus and the Amu Darya, where the civilizations of India, Persia, Greece, Rome and China melded-was at this time one of the most culturally fecund regions of the world.
And in India itself, culture flourished luxuriantly in the first half of the first millennium CE. The ardent patronage of culture by the Gupta emperors played a major role in this. Further, the relative peace and prosperity that a large part of India enjoyed under the Guptas created a congenial environment for culture to flourish. Equally important was the influence that the Guptas had on the rulers of other Indian kingdoms who, under peer pressure, took to emulating the Guptas in zealously patronizing culture. Thus, though the Gupta Empire covered only less than half the area of the subcontinent, and lasted only for a little over a century and a half, the cultural influence of the Guptas was extensive and endured for a long time.
Because of all this, and also because the peak phase of classical Indian civilization roughly coincided with the period of the Gupta Empire, the classical age is often called the Golden Age of the Guptas. But this overstates the case. The classical culture was the culmination of the developments of the preceding several centuries, not just of the Gupta age, and some of its major achievements belonged to the pre-Gupta and the post-Gupta periods. Further, a good amount of the credit for the cultural accomplishments of the classical age goes to relatively small kingdoms outside the Gupta Empire, mainly in the peninsula. There is, in fact, no evidence of direct Gupta patronage in any of the major cultural achievements of the age, and none of the great intellectuals and writers of the age, not even Kalidasa, who is thought to have been a Gupta court poet, refers to the Guptas.
THE PROGRESSIVE PHASE of Indian civilisation lasted for around a thousand years, from the middle of the fist millennium BCE to the middle of the first millennium CE . By about the seventh century, this phase was virtually over, and India then began its slow slide into the morass of the dark ages. There were hardly any significant advances in any field of knowledge or creativity in India thereafter for many centuries. Indians had by then come to believe that they had already achieved the acme of civilization, and that everything that man would ever need to know, indeed everything that could possibly be known, was already known to them-and that any further progress was inconceivable, and any innovation in the established order, beliefs and practices would be only for the worse and therefore reprehensible.
The orthodox Brahminical view was that the Vedas were the ultimate source of all valid knowledge. What is set forth in the Vedas, that alone is true, asserts Maitri Upanishad . The wise must live only according to what is stated in the Vedas. The term Vedas was at this time generally used inclusively, to cover not only scriptural literature, but also all traditional systems of knowledge-including subjects that had no direct bearing on religion, like physical sciences, medicine, and even grammar-all of which were considered sacred and therefore inviolable.
In this cultural milieu it inevitably came to be held that scriptural authority, not reason and pragmatism, should govern man in all matters, and that the test for the acceptance of any concept was not its verifiability, but its conformity with the traditional views. Every twice-born man who, relying on logic, treats with contempt the two sources of the law [Sruti: sacred texts, and Smriti: traditions] must be cast out by the virtuous, warns Manu. Innovations in theory and practice then came to be regarded as plain idiocies or as dangerous threats to the sacrosanct old order.
All this kept India shrouded in medieval darkness. However, in India, unlike in medieval Europe, there was no Inquisition or physical persecution of nonconformists. Such harsh measures were not necessary in India to enforce conformity, as centuries of relentless indoctrination had so completely sedated society that it was inconceivable that any