dynasty, 60 B.C. to 235 A.D. Sena (Sah) in Northern and Western India. The Senas and Singhas, or Sátraps of Suráshtra, are traced by coins and inscriptions from 60 or 70 B.C. to after 235 A.D.1 After the Senas come the Guptas of KANAUJ,2 in the North-Western Provinces, the Middle Land of ancient Brahmanism. The Guptas introduced an era of their own, commencing in 319 A.D.; and ruled in person or by viceroys over Northern India during 150 years, as far to the south-west as Káthiáwár. The Gupta dynasty was overthrown by foreign invaders, apparently a new influx of Huns or Tartars from the north-west (450-470 A.D.). Gupta dynasty, 319-470 A.D. Valabhi dynasty, 480-722 A.D. Long struggle against Scythic invaders, 57 B.C. to 544 A.D. The Valabhís succeeded the Guptas, and ruled over Cutch, north-western Bombay,3 and Málwá, from 480 to after 722 A.D.* The Chinese pilgrim, Hiuen Tsiang, gives a full account of the court and people of Valabhí (630–640 A.D.). Buddhism was the State religion, but heretics, i.e. Bráhmans, abounded; and the Buddhists themselves were divided between the northern school of the Scythian dynasties, and the southern or Indian school of Asoka. The Valabhís seem to have been overthrown by the early Arab invaders of Sind in the 8th century. The relations of these three Indian dynasties, the Senas, Guptas, and Valabhís, to the successive hordes of Scythians, who poured down on Northern India, are obscure. There is abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle, but the efforts to affix dates to its chief episodes have not yet produced results which can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya Sakáris, or vanquishers of the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology ;, and the great battle of Korúr near Múltán, in which the Scythian hosts perished, has been shifted backwards and forwards from 78 to 544 A.D.5 The truth seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era, the fortunes of the Scythian or Tartar races rose and fell from time to time in Northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats; and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties. Their presence is popularly 1 By Mr. Newton. See Mr. E. Thomas on the Coins of the Sáh Kings, Archaol. Rep. Western India, p. 44 (1876); and Dr. J. Fergusson, Journal Roy. As. Soc., 1880. 2 Now a town of only 16,646 inhabitants in Farukhábád District, but with ruins extending over a semicircle of 4 miles in diameter. 3 Lát-desha, including the collectorates of SURAT, BROACH, Kaika, and parts of BARODA territory. The genealogy is worked out in detail by Mr. E. Thomas, ut supra, pp. 80-82. 5 78 A.D. was the popularly received date, commemorated by the Sáka era; between 524 and 544 A. D.' is suggested by Dr. Fergusson (p. 284 of Journal Roy. As. Soc., vol. xii.) in 1880. PRE-ARYANS IN INDIA. 183 attested during the century before Christ by Vikramáditya (57 B.C.?); during the 1st century after Christ, it is represented by the Kanishka family (2 B.C. to 87 A.D.); it was noted by Cosmas Indicopleustes, about 535 A.D. A recent writer on the subject1 believes that it was the white Huns who overthrew the Guptas between 465 and 470 A. D. He places the great battles of Korúr and Maushari, which freed India from the Sákas and Húnas,' between 524 and 544 A.D. But these dates still lie in the domain of inductive, indeed almost of conjectural, history. Cosmas Indicopleustes, who traded in the Red Sea about 535 A.D., speaks of the Huns as a powerful nation in Northern India in his days.2 element in While Greek and Scythic influences had thus been at work in The preNorthern India during nine centuries (327 B.C. to 544 A.D.), Aryan another (so-called indigenous) element was profoundly affecting ancient the future of the Indian people. A previous chapter has traced India. the fortunes, and sketched the present condition, of the preAryan ‘aborigines.' The Bráhmanical Aryans never accomplished a complete subjugation of these earlier races. The tribes and castes of non-Aryan origin numbered in 1872 about 18 millions in British territory; while the castes who claim a pure Aryan descent are under 16 millions. The pre-Aryans have influenced the popular dialects of every Province, and in Southern India they still give their speech to 28 millions of people. 3 influence. The Vedic settlements along the five rivers of the Punjab were merely colonies or confederacies of Aryan tribes, who had pushed in among a non-Aryan population. When an Aryan Their family advanced to a new territory, it had often, as in the case lasting of the Pandava brethren, to clear the forest and drive out the aboriginal people. This double process constantly repeated itself; and as late as 1657, when the Hindu Rájá founded the present city of BAREILLY, his first work was to cut down the jungle and expel the old Katheriyas. The ancient Brahmanical kingdoms of the Middle Land (Madhya-desha), in the NorthWestern Provinces and Oudh, were surrounded by non-Aryan tribes. All the legendary advances beyond the northern centre of Aryan civilisation, narrated in the epic poets, were made into 1 Dr. J. Fergusson, Journal Roy. As. Soc., pp. 282-284, etc. (1880). 2 Topographia Christiana, lib. xi. p. 338; apud Fergusson, ut supra. 3 This latter number included both Brahmans (10,574,444) and Kshattriyas and Rajputs (5,240,495). But, as we have just seen, some of the Rájput tribes are believed to be of Scythic origin, while others have been incorporated from confessedly non-Aryan tribes (vide ante, p. 91). Such non-Aryan Rájputs more than outnumber any survivals of the Vaisyas of pure Aryan descent. PreAryan kingdoms in Northern India. The of Rawal Pindi District. The the territory of non-Aryan races. When we begin to catch historical glimpses of India, we find the countries even around the northern Aryan centre ruled by non-Aryan princes. The Nandas, whom Chandra Gupta succeeded in Behar, appear as a Súdra or non-Aryan dynasty; and according to one account, Chandra Gupta and his grandson Asoka came of the same stock.1 The Buddhist religion did much to incorporate the pre-Aryar tribes into the Indian polity. During the long struggle of the Indo-Aryans against Græco-Bactrian and Scythian inroads (62; B.C. to 544 A.D.), the Indian aboriginal races must have had an increasing importance, whether as enemies or allies. At the end of that struggle, we discover them ruling in some of the fairest tracts of Northern India. In almost every District throughout Oudh and the North-Western Provinces, ruined towns and forts are ascribed to aboriginal races who ruled at different periods, according to the local legends, between the 5th and 11th centuries A.D. When the Muhammadan conquest supplies a firmer historical footing, after 1000 A.D., non-Aryan tribes were still in possession of several of these Districts, and had only been lately ousted from others. The Statistical Survey of India has brought together many Takshaks survivals of these obscure races. It is impossible to follow that survey through each locality; the following paragraphs indicate, with the utmost brevity, a few of the results. Starting from the West, Alexander the Great found RAWAL PINDI District in the hands of the Takkas or Takshaks, from whom its Greek name of Taxila was derived. This people has been traced Sixth Cen- to a Scythian migration about the 6th century B.C.2 Their tury B.C.; settlements in the 4th century B.C. seem to have extended from the Paropamisan range in Afghánistán to deep into Northern India. Their Punjab capital, Takshásila, or Taxila, was the largest city which Alexander met with between the Indus and the Jehlam (327 B.C.). Salihávana, from whom the Sáka 1 The Mudrá-rákshasa represents Chandra Gupta as related to the last of the Nandas; the Commentator of the Vishnu Purána says he was the son of a Nanda by a low-caste woman. Prof. Dowson's Dict. Hindu Mythology, etc., p. 68 (Trübner, 1879). 327 B.C. 2 Such dates have no pretension to be anything more than intelligent conjectures based on very inadequate evidence. With regard to the Takshaks, see Colonel Tod and the authorities which he quotes, Rájástkán, vol. i. p. 53 passim, pp. 93 et seq. (Madras Reprint, 1873). 3 Where Alexander found them as the Parae-takae — pahari or Hill Takae (?). 4 Arrian. The Brahman mythologists, of course, produce an Aryan pedi gree for so important a person as King Taksha, and make him the son of Bharata and nephew of Ráma-chandra. NAGAS AND TAKSHAKS. 185 In the Takshaks; 78 A.D. 633 A.D. or Scythian era took its commencement (78 A.D.), is held by The some authorities to have been of Takshak descent.1 7th century A.D., Taki,2 perhaps derived from the same race, was the capital of the Punjab. The Scythic Takshaks, indeed, are supposed to have been the source of the great Serpent Race, 1881 a.d. the Takshakas or Nágás, who figure so prominently in Sanskrit literature and art, and whose name is still borne by the Nágá tribes of our own day. The Takkas remaining to the present time are found only in the Districts of Delhi and Karnal. They number 14,305, of whom about three-fourths have adopted the faith of Islám. The words Nágá and Takshaka in Sanskrit both mean The a 'snake,' or tailed monster. As the Takshakas have been Nágás. questionably connected with the Scythian Takkas, so the Nágás have been derived, by conjecture in the absence of evidence, from the Tartar patriarch Nagas, the second son of Elkhán.3 Both the terms, Nágás and Takshakas, seem to have been loosely applied by the Sanskrit writers to a variety of non-Aryan peoples in India, whose religion was of an anti-Aryan type. We learn, for example, how the five Pándava brethren of the Mahábhárata burned out the snake-king Takshaka from his primeval Khándava forest. The Takshaks and Nágás were the tree and serpent worshippers, whose rites and objects of adoration have impressed themselves deeply on the architecture and sculptures of India. They included, in a confused manner, several different races of Scythic origin. The chief authority on Tree and Serpent Worship in India Indohas deliberately selected the term 'Scythian' for the anti-Aryan Scythic Nágás; elements, which entered so largely into the Indian religions both in ancient and in modern times.4 The Chinese records give a full account of the Nágá geography of ancient India. The Nágá kingdoms were both numerous and powerful, and Buddhism derived many of its royal converts from them. The 1 Tod, Rájásthán, vol. i. p. 95 (ed. 1873). * Taki, or Asarur, 45 miles west of Lahore. General Cunningham, Anc. Geog. of India, p. 191, and Map VI. (ed. 1871). This Taki lies, however, considerably to the south-east of the Takshásila of Alexander's expedition. 3 Tod, Rájásthán, vol. i. p. 53 (ed. 1873); a very doubtful authority. Dr. J. Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, pp. 71, 72 (India Museum, 4to, 1868). For the results of more recent local research, see Mr. Rivett-Carnac's papers in the Journal of the As. Soc., Bengal, 'The Snake Symbol in India,' 'Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks,' 'Stone Caryings at Mainpuri,' etc.; the Honourable Ráo Sáhib Vishvanáks Nárayan Mandlik's 'Serpent-Worship in Western India,' and other essays in the Bombay As. Soc. Journal; also, Reports of Archæological Survey, Western India. become the Dragonraces of China. The Ghakkars of Rawal Pindi, A. D. Chinese chroniclers, indeed, classify the Nágá princes of India into two great divisions, as Buddhists and non - Buddhists. The serpent-worship, which formed so typical a characteristic of the Indo-Scythic races, led the Chinese to confound those tribes with the objects of their adorations; and the fierce IndoScythic Nágás would almost seem to be the originals of the Dragon races of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese art. The compromises to which Buddhism submitted, with a view to winning the support of the Nágá peoples, will be referred to in the following chapter, on the Rise of Hinduism. As the Greek invaders found Ráwal Pindi District in possession of a Scythic race of Takkas in 327 B.C., so the Musalmán conqueror found it inhabited by a fierce non-Aryan race of Ghakkars thirteen hundred years later. The Ghakkars for a time imperilled the safety of Mahmud of Ghazní in 1008. Farishta describes them as savages, addicted to polyandry and 1008-1857 infanticide. The tide of Muhammadan conquest rolled on, but the Ghakkars remained in possession of their sub-Himalayan tract. In 1205 they ravaged the Punjab to the gates of Lahore; in 1206 they stabbed the Muhammadan Sultán in his tent; and in spite of conversion to Islám by the sword, it was not till 1525 that they made their submission to the Emperor Bábar in return for a grant of territory. During the next two centuries they rendered great services to the Mughal dynasty against the Afghán usurpers, and rose to high influence in the Punjab. Driven from the plains by the Sikhs in 1765 A.D., the Ghakkar chiefs maintained their independence in the Murree (Marri) Hills till 1830, when they were crushed after a bloody struggle. In 1849, Ráwal Pindi passed, with the rest of the Sikh territories, under British rule. But the Ghakkars revolted four years afterwards, and threatened Murree, the summer capital of the Punjab, as lately as 1857. The Ghakkars are now found in the Punjab Districts of Rawal Pindi, Jehlam, and Hazára. Their total number was returned at 25,789 in 1881. They are described by their British officers as a fine spirited race, gentlemen in ancestry and bearing, and clinging under all reverses to the traditions of noble blood.'* Pre The population of Ráwal Pindi District has been selected to Aryans of illustrate the long-continued presence and vitality of the preBareilly Aryan element in India. Other parts of the country must be District. For a summary of their later history, see article on RAWAL PINDI DISTRICT, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. 2 The Imperial Gazetteer of India, article RAWAL PINDI DISTRICT. |