Palas

The Pala empire was probably founded in 750 AD. For about a hundred years, from the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 9th century, the Pala rulers dominated eastern India. The Nalanda university which had been famous all over the eastern world was revived. The Palas had close trade contacts and cultural links with South-East Asia. Early in the twelfth century, they were replaced by the Sena dynasty, which reversed the Palas’ traditional support of Buddhism and encouraged Hindu orthodoxy.

Rashtrakutas

Of the three empires, the Rashtrakuta’s lasted the longest. Not only was it the most powerful of the time, but it also acted as a bridge between north and south India. Amoghavarsha (814 AD – 880 AD) is probably the best remembered of the Rashtrakuta kings. His long reign was distinguished for its royal patronage of Jainism and the flourishing of regional literature. By the end of the tenth century, the second line of the Chalukyas brought the Rashtrakuta kingdom within their control.

Pratiharas

They are also called Gurjara-Pratiharas, probably because they originated from Gurjarata or south-western Rajasthan. The real founder of the Pratihara empire and the greatest ruler of the dynasty was Mihir Bhoja. He recovered Kanauj by about 836, and it remained the capital of the Pratiharas for almost a century. Between 915 AD and 918 AD, Kanauj was attacked by a Rashtrakuta king, who devastated the city leading to the weakening of the Pratihara empire. The empire broke up into a number of smaller kingdoms, some of which were ruled by Rajput princes. Five of the larger ones were the Chauhans of Rajasthan, Gahrwals of Kanauj, Solankis of Gujarat, Paramaras of Malwa and the Chandels of Bundelkhand.

Language, Culture and Architecture

Regional languages emerged fast. Early forms of Marathi and Gujarati were being spoken in western India and Bengali, Assamese and Oriya came up in eastern India. During this time, there arose such splendid temples as those at Khajuraho, Kanchipuram and Thanjavur. Of special note are the temples of Bhubaneshwar, Puri and Konark in Orissa. Miniature painting which flourished in Mughals began in this period.

The empire was founded by Vijayalaya , who captured Tanjore in 850 AD. The Chola power became solidly established in the reign of Rajaraja (985 AD – 1014 AD) and his son Rajendra I (1014 AD – 1044 AD). Both these kings led ambitious conquests, overrunning the Pandya and Chera countries, conquering Sri Lanka as well as crossing the Ganges and marching across Kalinga to Bengal. The successors of Rajendra I fought constantly with the later Chalukyas over Vengi. However, by the 13th century, the Chola kingdom had exhausted its resources and was on the decline. It succumbed to an attack by the Hoysalas from the west and the Pandyas from the south. Local self-government was a remarkable feature of the Cholas administration. The revenue of the Cholas came from ‘tax on land’ and ‘tax on trade’. Trade was carried on with west Asia, China and south-east Asia. The high volume of trade led to the rapid development of towns from the 11th century onwards.

Society and Culture

More important than the kings and their conquests is the cultural and artistic record of those times. The temple was the cultural and social centre, where people used to gather. The courtyard of the temple was often used as a school. Society was divided into Brahmans and non-Brahmans. Many of the temples in the south, even now, seem to resemble citadels where people can defend themselves, if attacked. Life revolved around the temple. As Brahminism came into contact with firmly entrenched beliefs in the power of fertility, the Bhakti cult emerged. Shiva was worshipped in the form of a lingam (phallic) emblem. During this period, several regional languages branched off from Sanskrit. Marathi evolved from the local Prakrit, while Tamil, Telugu and Kannada stemmed from a Dravidian root, but owed much to Sanskrit

Art and Architecture

Under the Cholas, the ‘Dravida’ style of temple architecture, exclusive to the south, attained its most magnificent form. An example is the Brihadiswara temple at Tanjore, built by Rajendra I. The Chola craftsmen excelled in making bronze figurines. The Nataraja, the dancing figure of Shiva, is considered a masterpiece.

Harsha moved his capital from Thaneshwar to Kanauj. The area under his control covered many parts of northern India, including the Punjab, eastern Rajasthan and the Ganga valley as far as Assam. But, his empire included territories of distant feudal kings too. Harsha governed his empire on the same lines a the Guptas. The kings he conquered paid him revenue and sent soldiers when he was fighting war. They accepted his sovereignty, but remained rulers over their own kingdoms. Harsha’s ambition of extending his power to the Deccan and southern India were stopped by Pulakesin II, the Chalukya king of Vatapi in northern Mysore.

Hieun Tsang noticed that at the time of Harsha, Buddhism was not as popular in all parts of India as he had thought it would be. But in eastern India, it was still popular. Nalanda university was still a famous centre of Buddhism. He also recorded the existence of a rigid caste system.

Soon after Harsha’s death, apparently without any heirs, his empire died with him. The kingdom disintegrated rapidly into small states. The succeeding period is very obscure and badly documented, but it marks the culmination of a process which had begun with the invasion of the Hunas in the last years of the Gupta empire. Meanwhile, the kingdoms of the Deccan and the south became powerful.

The Guptas were in origin probably a family of the wealthy landowners who gradually gained political control in the region of Magadha. The founder of the Gupta dynasty, Chandragupta I ascended the throne in about 320 AD. The kingdom was enlarged by his son, Samudragupta, who fought against a number of kings and annexed territories in the northern part of the sub-continent. However, his direct political control was only over the Ganges valley, as compared with the Mauryan kings.

It was during the reign of Samudragupta’s successor, Chandragupta II (also known as Vikramaditya), that the Gupta ascendancy was at it’s peak. He conducted a victorious campaign in western India against the Shakas (338 AD – 409 AD). He made a matrimonial alliance with the Vakataka dynasty, the successors to the Satavahana power, thus ensuring friendly relations to the south of his domain. Chandragupta II is also remembered for his patronage of learning and the arts

Shakuntalum, the works of Kalidasa exemplify the literary craftsmanship of this period. The Panchatantra, a collection of fables was another popular work. The Kamasutra also dates to this period. Astronomy saw spectacular progress. In AD 499, Aryabhatta calculated Pi as 3.1416 and the length of the solar year as 365.358 days. He also postulated that the Earth was a sphere rotating on it’s own axis and revolving around the Sun as well as the exact cause of eclipses.

In the Gupta administration, the governors of the provinces were more independent as compared to the Mauryans. Land taxes increased in number. Trade with the Roman empire declined after the third century AD. Indian merchants began to rely more heavily on the south-east Asian trade. Buddhism no longer received royal patronage. Jainism remained unchanged and continued to be supported by the merchant communities of western India. Christianity remained confined to the region of Malabar. In Hinduism, the image emerged as the centre of worship and encouraged Bhakti (devotional) worship rather than sacrifice.

Examples of Gupta architecture are found in the Vaishnavite Tigawa temple at Jabalpur (415 AD) and another temple at Deogarhnear Jhansi (510 AD). Bhita in Uttar Pradesh has a number of ancient Gupta temples. Some of the caves at Ajanta may be assigned to the period of the Guptas.

Chandragupta II was succeeded by Kumara Gupta, who was, in turn, succeeded by Skanda Gupta. During the reign of these last two kings, the Hunas unexpectedly invaded north-western India and the Gupta power rapidly weakened.

For three hundred years after the mid-sixth century, the Chalukyas were engaged in a long struggle for supremacy with the Pallavas. The Pandyas sometimes joined this conflict as a poor third against the Pallavas. Pulakesin II (609 AD – 642 AD), the most famous Chalukya king, was the one who defeated Harsha on the banks of the river Narmada. He also defeated the Pallava ruler Mahendravarman in 610 AD. However, in 642 AD, the Pallava king Narsimhavarman attacked. Pulakesin II and captured his capital city, Vatapi.

In the early eighth century, the Zoroastrians fled to western India from Persia to avoid persecution by the Arabs. They were given asylum by the Chalukyas, who managed to hold the Arabs back. Their descendants are members of the Parsi community.

The Chalukyas held power till the mid-eighth century, when one of their vassals overthrew them and established the Rashtrakuta dynasty. The Chalukyas, however, persisted for 200 years until the tenth century, when the Rashtrakutas grew weak. The Chalukyas then regained supremacy, only for their empire to be partitioned by the third quarter of the twelfth century, among three of their own vassals. They were the Yadavas of Devagiri (northern Deccan), Kakatiyas of Warangal (Andhra) and Hoysalas of Dwarasamudra (Mysore).

Pallavas

The one exception to the picture of conflict amongst the southern powers was the amicable relationship between the Pallavas and the Cheras of the Malabar coast. The Pallavas survived the Chalukyas for a century. But, by the ninth century, they were no longer a major power. They succumbed to a combined attack from the Pandyas and the Cholas in the ninth century. For the next 300 years, the Pallavas remained as minor feudatories of the Cholas till they finally faded out.

Pandyas
The Pandyas in Madurai had established control by the sixth century. Their territory was the southern-most and the south-eastern portion of the Indian peninsula, and roughly included the modern-day districts of Tinnevelly and Ramnad in Tamil nadu. The Pandya country was prosperous and the kings profited from trade with the Roman empire. The brahmanas enjoyed considerable influence, and the Pandya kings performed Vedic sacrifices. By the early eleventh century, the Pandyas were subjugated by the strong Cholas.

The Pallavas, the Chalukyas and their other contemporaries (the Kadambas, the Gangas etc) were great champions of Vedic sacrifices. The worship of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva was getting popular. The brahmanas therefore emerged as an important class at the expense of the peasantry. From the seventh century onwards, the cult of bhakti began to dominate. Between 300 AD and 500 AD, land grants were made to the brahmanas by the kings. Villages were granted to the warriors for acts of bravery. Society was dominated by princes and priests, with the peasantry below them.

Life: Culture, Religion, Architecture and Ruins

The Pallava kings constructed a number of stone temples in the seventh and eighth centuries. The most famous are the ones at Mahabalipuram. Cave architecture reached excellence in the Kailashnath temple at Ellora in the eighth century. The Chalukyas erected numerous temples at Aihole from about 610 AD. The work was continued in Badami and Pattadakal. For example – Papanatha temple (c. 680 AD) and Virupaksha temple (c. 740 AD).

The impressive Jain temple of Dilwara at Mt. Abu, the Buddhist shrines at Ajanta and the Buddhist and Hindu temples at Ellora, even the rock cut temples on the island of Elephanta are assigned to the Chalukyas.

From the sixth century AD onwards, there started a sharp decline in trade, which led to the decay of towns. Trade with the Roman empire ended in the third century, and silk trade with Iran and the Byzantium stopped in the middle of the sixth century. In about the sixth-seventh centuries started the formation of cultural units which later came to be known as Karnataka, Maharasthra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu etc. Overall, there were striking developments in polity, society, economy, language, script and religion.

Satavahanas

The Satavahanas (28 BC – 250 AD), also known as the Andhras, emerged as an independent power in the Deccan in the first century BC. It was founded by Simuka (65 BC – 25 BC). His son, Satakarni (25 BC – 20 AD), succeeded him. Under the Satavahanas, many Buddhist worshipping halls (Chaityas) and monasteries (Viharas) were cut out from rocks. Some famous examples are Amravati and Nagarjuna Konda. Buddhist cave temples were also cut at the now-famous sites of Ajanta and Ellora.

With the Satavahanas providing lines of communication between the north and the south, the isolation of the southern kingdoms ended. Significantly, trade and exchange of ideas increased.

Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas

South of the Deccan plateau and of the Satavahana kingdom, three dynasties emerged. These were the Cholas in the area of Tanjore; the Pandyas centred in Madurai and the Cheras along the Malabar coast. The Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas appear to have been continually at war with each other. Cultural interaction between these kingdoms and the north, exposed the rest of India to the rich Sangam literature of south. Sangams were assemblies of Tamil poets held in Madurai, probably under the royal patronage of the Pandya kings.

Religious ideas from the north, such as the worship of the Vedic gods and the doctrines of Buddhism and Jainism were known to the people of the south. Some of them followed these religions, but most people still worshipped their gods and goddesses and practiced their own religious ceremonies.

This was also the time when most of the Vedic gods passed into oblivion. Their place was taken by the trinity of gods, with Brahma as the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer. It is believed that when evil is rampant, various incarnations of Vishnu enter the world of men to save them. Krishna is one such ‘avatar’. It is also said that Shiva evolved from the Tamil god of Fertility, Murugan.

St. Thomas is said to have come to India to spread Christianity in the first century AD. It first spread among the people of the Malabar coast and in areas near present-day Madras.

The Bactrian Greeks ruled the north-west for two hundred years. They made inroads into India as far as Mathura. The most famous Indo-Greek ruler was Menander or Milinda (165 BC – 145 BC). He was converted to Buddhism by Nagarjuna. The Indo-Greeks were the first rulers to issue gold coins with coins having the name, title and portrait of the ruler. The Indo-Greeks encouraged commerce with west Asia and the mediterranean world.

The Shakas came to western India, overran Sindh and Saurashtra and finally settled down in Kathiawar and Malwa. They were often at war with the Satavahanas in the South. Their ambitions of northward expansion was checked by the Kushans.

The Kushans, displaced the Indo-Greeks and finally established themselves in the lower Indus basin and over a greater part of the Gangetic Basin. There were two successive dynasties of the Kushans. The second was that of Kanishka, who introduced in 78 AD, the Saka era, which is used by the Government of India. During his reign the fourth council was held in Kashmir and the schism in Buddhism Hinayana and Mahayana was recognised. Kanishka patronised Mahayana Buddhism and it was probably during his reign that the first ever human image of Buddha was carved out.

The Parthians occupied a small portion of north-western India in the first century. The most famous Parthian king was Gondophernes.

Under Chandragupta Maurya, the whole of northern India was united. Trade flourished, agriculture was regulated, weights and measures were standardized. Money first came into use. Taxation, sanitation and famine relief became the concerns of the State. His son and successor, Bindusara (296 BC – 273 BC), extended the kingdom further and conquered the south as far as Mysore.

His son, Ashoka (273 BC – 232 BC) won over Kalinga (265 BC) and under him, the Mauryan empire reached it’s climax. For the first time, the whole of the sub-continent, leaving out the extreme south, was under imperial control. It is said that the conquest of Orissa resulted in 100,000 dead and 150,000 prisoners, while thousands died of pestilence and hunger. Stricken by remorse, Ashoka embraced Buddhism. He propagated Buddhism in the kingdoms of the Cholas and the Pandyas in South India, and five States ruled by Greek kings. We also know that he sent missionaries to Ceylon and Suvarnabhumi (Burma) and also parts of South East Asia.

He was the first ruler to maintain direct contact with his people through various edicts, which were composed in Prakrit and written in Brahmi. They were engraved on rocks, pillar and caves, and contained his ideas on matters such as religion, Government and peoples behaviour towards one another. These edicts are in the form of 44 royal orders, which aim at moulding the general behaviour of the people. Stone masonry was introduced on a wide scale. The emblem of the Indian Republic has been adopted from the four-lion capital of one of Ashoka’s pillars.

Mauryan administration was highly centralised. The State maintained a huge standing army. Taxes were collected from various sources. The state brought new lands under cultivation and developed irrigation facilities. The famous Sudarshana lake was built. Under the Mauryans, the entire sub-continent was criss-crossed with roads. A royal highway connecting Taxila and Pataliputra was built – a road which survives to this day as the Grand Trunk road Mauryan artisans started the practice of hewing out caves from rocks for the monks to live in. The earliest examples are the Barabar hill caves near Gaya. Stupas were built throughout the empire to enshrine the relics of Buddha. Of these, the most famous are at Sanchi and Barhul.The Mauryan empire lasted a little over a century and broke up fifty years after the death of Ashoka. It was the weak successors of Ashoka who brought about its dismemberment. Slowly, the various princes of the empire began to break away and set up independent kingdoms. In 185 BC, the Mauryan king was overthrown by Pushyamitra Shunga, an ambitious Commander-in-Chief of armed forces. He started the Shunga dynasty in Magadha.

The Mauryan empire, which lasted barely two hundred years, ushered in a dream that was to survive and echo again and again in centuries to come.

But, there were rebels against ritual, sacrifice and above all, against caste. Hinduism saw it’s first rebel in Mahavira who founded Jainism and Gautama Buddha who founded Buddhism.

Buddhism disappeared from India by the 12th century AD. Perhaps the Buddha’s ideas were taken over by the great Hindu philosopher Shankaracharya in the ninth century AD, and were readapted to Hinduism, so as to make Buddhism no longer necessary. Whatever the reason, the Buddha who had preached the absence of God became a Hindu god!

The dominant philosophical outlook which the acharya created has persisted in Hinduism till today. During the next seven centuries, Ramanujacharya, Madhwacharya and Valabacharya preached Hinduism in the light of their own individual philosophical conception. They carried the torch of Hinduism through those centuries and made it continual vital force of this day. As iron implements helped clear the dense forests of the Gangetic plains, civilization expanded eastwards. The new agricultural tools and implements improved the knowledge of cultivation. Gradually, 16 larger territorial states (Mahajanapadas) were formed. Of these, Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti were powerful. They fought amongst themselves for political pre-eminence for about a hundred years.

Magadha, under the leadership of Bimbisara (542 BC – 493 BC) and Ajatshatru (493 BC – 461 BC) emerged victorious. The victory of Magadha was a victory for the monarchical system, which was now firmly established in the Ganges plain. Ajat Shatru was succeeded by Udayin (460 BC – 444 BC), whose reign saw the raising of a new capital at Pataliputra (modern day Patna). The architecture of the Magadhan empire is the first of which we have any contemporary record.

The Shishunaga dynasty, which followed in 413 BC, lasted barely half a century and gave way to the Nanda dynasty. The Nandas, who had a vast standing army are sometimes described as the first empire builders of India.

In 516 BC, the Persian emperor Darius annexed Punjab and for many years, the Indian satrap continued to pay a huge tribute to the Achaemenian king. Alexander, the king of Macedonia, crossed the Hindu Kush after subduing the Achaemenians, pursuing his dreams of a world conquest.