The Subcontinent Is Invaded - 1
By Syed Osman Sher
Mississauga, Canada
Migration of human population from one region to the other forms an important aspect of the history of human society. Early humans migrated due to many factors, such as climate change, inadequate food supply, or epidemic. Later, we see a wave of migration in the world through invasions and conquering of territories. The Indo-Pak subcontinent is no exception in this regard. It has experienced a continual inflow of alien people, and like a magic land, it has always fired the imagination of all sorts of people: wanderers, settlers, raiders, traders, conquerors, and colonizers.
At some point of time during the interglacial age, between 200,000 to 400,000 years ago, humans climbed directly over the Himalayas or crossed the Hindu Kush mountains to venture into the Subcontinent from East or Central Asia. Flakes of stones, used as tools, which are found scattered around the Soan River Valley in northern part of Pakistan, present the evidence in this regard. There seems to have been a second great wave of human migration to South Asia from East Africa or southern Europe sometimes after the final receding of the glacial ice during the Mesolithic Age, which began around 30,000 BC. Numerous microliths have been found scattered across the face of the Deccan and up into central India, and even in the Punjab. (A New History of India (Fifth Edition), Stanley Wolpert, Ch. One)
Since pre-historic times the Subcontinent has also been the object of assaults, many times more than many countries, by the invading armies. The fair part of these invasions, however, is that most of the time the invaders have made this country their permanent home. It has also seen invaders like Mahmud Ghaznavi, Timur, Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali. We will not discuss their invasions here because they were mainly fleeting and were directed towards plundering the wealth of the country. We are concerned here with invasions which resulted in conquering the land and settling down here, those which have been of far reaching consequences for the political, social, religious and ethnic landscape of the country.
The first of such invasions was that of the Aryans, an Indo-European pastoral people, who were forced to leave their homeland in Eurasian steppe probably around 3,000 BC due to some natural disasters like draught, pestilence, plague, or a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia. The Aryan irruption was enormously destructive. They stormed and conquered fortified cities and destroyed the Indus Valley Civilization. Many of the primitive habitants like the Gonds and Bheels were driven out into the forest recesses of the hills eastward, difficult of access, and to the Deccan plateau. However, despite their strategic superiority, it was not possible for the Aryans to spread over the Indian plains all at once. Their journey of conquest was slow but steady. It took them many centuries to disperse in the east to the Ganga-Jamuna plain. It became the main home of the Aryans, who called it Aryavarta. The Vedas also do not look further south of the Vindhya hills. It is through the epic Ramayana, the exploits of a deified prince Ramachandra, that we learn how very late, probably sometime in the second millennium BC, the Aryans penetrated in the south. Since they were also nature worshippers like the indigenous people a bond was created between them in the matter of religion. Their initial beliefs and codes of worship and rituals, combined with the indigenous Dravidian beliefs, later led to the evolution of Brahmani religion. The most heinous deed the Aryans, however, did was the creation of caste system whereby the indigenous population was assigned to a lower caste, and subjected to an apartheid system. Giving it the cover of religious sanctity, a handful of persons continue to perpetrate economic, social, and religious discriminations even to this day.
In the first millennium BC, the Achaemanids had risen to power in Persia (Iran). They also made India the subject of assault. Emperor Cyrus of Persia (c.558-530 BC) annexed Gandhara to the Persian Empire as a satrapy. His successor, Darius (522-486 BC), extended his sway further across the Indus. The most important impact of this relationship was the introduction of a written language in India. The Gandharan capital of Taxila subsequently gained the reputation of an intellectual center.
At the end of the third quarter of the fourth century BC, Alexander the Macedonian set out to achieve a lofty ideal. He embarked on a campaign of conquests of ekumenê or Oikoumenê, meaning, ‘the inhabited part of the world’, thus aiming at world domination. After defeating the Persian emperor Darius III and putting his capital Persepolis on fire, Alexander declared himself the successor of Darius and embarked on recovering his kingdom. Overrunning all the lands between Alexandria and Kabul River, Alexander proceeded towards India in 327 BC. After the submission of Ambhi, the ruler of Takshashila, and after defeating Porus, the ruler of the region between Jhelum and Chenab, Alexander crossed Ravi, and reached Beas beyond which was the kingdom of a great monarchy. The Greek writers refer to the king of that monarchy, whose capital was at Pataliputra (Patna), as Agrammes (Dhana Nanda), whose rule extended from the far east of India to the banks of the river Beas in the Punjab. Alexander’s army, being afraid of this mighty kingdom refused to proceed ahead. “Within reach of the world’s end, and not to reach it—this was the disappointment which Alexander suffered at the Hyphasis (Beas)…He supposed that the Ganges discharged its waters into the ocean which bounded the earth on the east.” (The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, Book Fourth, Ch. XXV& XXVII, J.W. M’Crindle). For his retreat from the western banks of the Beas, Alexander ordered to build a fleet of 1,000 ships. The return journey began in the southerly direction. Sailing down the Jhelum and Sindhu rivers, he proceeded to Babylon, where he died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar at the age of thirty-two in June 323 BC.
The ruler of the eastern part of Alexander’s empire was Seleucus. Considering himself as Alexander’s successor, he advanced towards India to recover Alexander’s lost possessions from Chandragupta Maurya, who was now the king and the founder of the Maurya Dynasty after defeating Dhana Nanda. Seleucus reached the Sindhu River in 305 BC. However, it was not easy for him to wrest the lost empire back from the new king. It was not that part of India of Alexander’s time which was divided into small principalities and satrapies and whom Alexander could conquer piecemeal. In the ensuing struggle, Seleucus, instead of receiving back the lost territories, had to cede, in a humiliating treaty, to Chandragupta, new territories west of Indus and south of Hindu Kush, which included Qandahar, Kabul, Herat, Gandhara and a part of Baluchistan on the eastern fringe of the former Persian dominion.
The Greeks had left their satraps in Central Asia, along with Greek soldiers who could not accompany Alexander on his return home. Greeks were called Yuvana or Yuna. The records of Emperor Asoka refer them as his subjects by virtue of his rule in Afghanistan. Patanjali's Mahabhashya and Manu-samhita also speak of the Greeks of Bactria and Afghanistan who had established themselves in India early in the second century BC. The satrap of Bactria, seceding from the Selucuid Empire around 250 BC, had founded the Greco Bactrian kingdoms. Its expansion into the present-day eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan from 180 BC gave rise to the Indo-Greek kingdom. It lasted up to 10 AD. Their most famous king was Menander who ruled in the middle of the second century BC. His capital was at Šakala, or modern Sialkot in the Punjab. Menander became not only the follower of Buddhism but also an ardent patron and scholar of this religion. The famous Buddhist text Milindapanha (Questions of Milinda) describes how Menander's intelligent queries on metaphysics and philosophy were answered to his satisfaction by the scholarly monk Nagasena in an assembly in which Menander was accompanied by 500 Yavana courtiers. As such, Menander has found a permanent place in the Buddhist tradition.
The Greeks were followed by the Scythians or Sakas, who were a group of nomadic people. From the Indian literary and epigraphic texts, we find information that they came to India in the late first century BC and settled around the Sindhu river valley. The Scythians lived in the plains of Jaxartes or Syr Darya in Turkestan. They were forced to leave their place and move first to Iran and then to India by the push of the Yueh-chi tribe (the later Kushans of India). They migrated south and spread over the northern part of the Subcontinent up to Bihar in the East and Sindh in the south. They defeated the Indo-Greek peoples and other local rulers, and then established their own kingdom. Rudradaman I was the most famous ruler, who ruled from 130 AD to 150 AD. He issued the Long Inscription or Parashasti (eulogistic description of achievements and geneology of rulers) first time in Sanskrit. Earlier it was composed in Prakrit.
The rule of the Scythians in the northwestern part of the Subcontinent was followed by the Parthians. They had their roots in the Seistan region of Iran. They ruled only a small portion of the northwestern India in the first century AD. They had come through the Indus River and had conquered Sindh. Their most famous king was Gondophares. It is believed that it was during his reign that St Thomas, the apostle of Jesus, arrived in India around the year 52 AD and established a number of Syrian churches in Malabar. Today the Syrian Christians in Kerala proclaim themselves as belonging to the sect that was founded by St Thomas. With missionary zeal, he went inside the country and reached the east coast at a place near Madras city, which was subsequently called Bet Thuma or House of Thomas. He started preaching from that place. Unfortunately, it was not taken kindly by the people who killed him around 70 AD at a place called Maylapur near Madras. (Continued next week)
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