ARYAN INVASION OF INDIA

 

The earliest known civilization in India was that of the Harappans, who established well organized cities in the valley of the Indus River in the third millennium BCE. By about 2000 BCE, the civilization was beginning to fade, probably because of climatic changes, which brought about shifts in the rivers and widespread flooding. By sheer coincidence, as the Harappans were weakening, a group of invaders appeared from the steppes of the Caucasus. The Aryans were mostly nomadic-herding sheep, horses, and cattle-and, like most nomadic peoples, more warlike than the agricultural inhabitants of northern India. Both by migration and by force of arms, they dominated the area of the upper Indus valley and over time spread eastward down the Ganges.

The Aryans take their name from the word in their Sanskrit language meaning “noble.” The Aryans themselves are identified as a language group, not a racial one. The fact that their area of origin made them lighter-skinned than the people they conquered has nothing to do with the language they spoke, so equating “Aryan” with “white” is incorrect; this nineteenth-century concept was reinforced by some twentieth-century racists. However, the original Aryans instituted a practice that called for separation of their peoples from the conquered. Their society was based on four basic classes that are the basis of the caste system that dominates India to this day: priests, warriors, merchants/artisans, and laborers. This class division did not include the conquered peoples of India, who became “outcast[e]s,” or the “untouchables” of modern India.

The Aryans ultimately settled down to an agricultural way of life, but their early years in India resulted in the perpetuation of their herding ways. The plains of northern India provided good grazing land, and their herds of horses and cattle grew. Cattle became the most valuable of commodities, possibly foreshadowing the sacredness of cattle in the Hindu faith. The Aryans’ famous horsemanship was a major reason for their military successes, as the Harappans had neither cavalry nor chariots. A military society built around the upper-class warriors was reflected in the rowdiness of the Aryans, who celebrated life with drinking, horse racing, and gambling; the last was a national obsession.

The greatest legacy of the Aryans is the religious works passed down originally through the priesthood. The Vedas are a collection of religious rituals handed down through oral tradition and finally committed to writing when that skill was introduced about 700 BCE. The ceremonies practiced and the gods worshipped through the Vedas laid the groundwork for the introduction of the Hindu faith, the dominant religion of India for some 2,000 years.

Though they were conquerors of northern India early in the second millennium BCE and of the northeastern plains and Ganges River valley between 1000 and 500 BCE, the Aryans became the dominant inhabitants of India as they settled into agricultural pursuits. This less mobile pastime bred, as it almost always does, a less martial society, but the Indians managed to remain fairly isolated from later conquerors. Alexander the Great spent two years fighting and negotiating in northwestern India, installing a Greek administration in some areas. After his death, however, Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the bureaucracy and established an Indian empire. Not until the Islamic invasion of India in the 800s CE did outside forces have much luck in penetrating the subcontinent.

All that being said, there has been strong debate starting in the 1990s about the entire story. Some modern scholars argue that there was no serious migration into India between 4500-800 BCE, and the whole thing is a nineteenth-century construct based on misreading the Vedas. The latest interpretation is as follows: “Rig Veda verses belie the old chronology (VI.51.14-15 mentions the winter solstice occurs when the sun rises in Revati nakshatra, only possible at 6000 BCE, long before the alleged invasion). Carbon dating confirms horses in Gujarat at 2400 BCE, contradicting [the old] model [claiming that] Aryans must have brought them. NASA satellite photos prove [that the] Sarasvati River basin is real, not a myth. Fire altars excavated at Kali Bangan in Rajasthan support existence of Rig Veda culture at 2700 BCE. Kunal, a new site in Haryana, shows use of writing and silver craft in pre-Harappan India, 6-7000 BCE.” (Hinduism Today) The latest evidence does, indeed, seem strong, although critics counter that the claims are Hindu revisionism attempting to discredit European influence in India since the 1500s.

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MAURYAN EMPIRE

 

After the decline of the Harappan civilization in India, little or no organized political system existed until the arrival of Alexander the Great. Though northwestern India was considered a part of Alexander’s empire, after his death the struggling inheritors of his lands could not pay attention to the distant reaches of India. The consolidation that had taken place gave an opportunity to a regional Indian prince, Chandragupta, to fill the power vacuum left by Alexander’s death. He came to power in 323B.C.E. and cleared the northwest regions of India of Greek troops. One of Alexander’s successors, Seleucus, reinvaded India in 305 B.C.E., but could not defeat Chandragupta’s forces. Seleucus agreed to cede the Indian lands Alexander had conquered in return for 500 war elephants. This action confirmed Chandragupta’s power and extended the reach of his control.

Once solidly in control, Chandragupta organized an efficient government machinery to oversee economic and military affairs. He kept a standing army of about one-quarter the size of his wartime conscripted army, described by a Seleucid ambassador as 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants. He also maintained a river fleet for both the Ganges and Indus, which may have protected the coastlines as well. His reserves were in the form of “guild levies,” groups of craftsmen who trained together and were called up in time of emergency. One of history’s first political manuals was written for Chandragupta by his closest adviser, Kautilya: the Arthasastra, or Manual of Politics. Like Machiavelli’s The Prince, it spelled out the necessities for a ruler to maintain power, and included extended sections on military organization, structure, and function.

Chandragupta began the Mauryan Empire, but its greatest expansions came through his successors. His son Bindasura attacked southward and brought almost all of India under his rule, excepting only the subcontinent’s southernmost tip and the island of Ceylon. Bindasura’s son Asoka (or Ashoka) accomplished the last conquests, securing the eastern coast. Under Asoka, the Mauryan Empire was not only at its political extreme, it reached cultural heights previously unknown in India. Asoka became disgusted with the destruction caused by warfare and turned to Buddhism. He mandated the establishment of a Buddhist bureaucracy to maintain honesty in government affairs. Asoka spent his wealth on the construction of monasteries and temples and the erection of inscribed stone pillars extolling his accomplishments. He sent Buddhist missionaries to Ceylon, Burma, and Java, and stretched India’s trading empire to those distant areas.

It is difficult to know for certain how strong the Mauryan hold in India was, or if the emperors were lords to vassal nobles who exercised local power. Whatever the case, the empire did not last long after Asoka’s death in 232 B.C.E. The succeeding emperors lacked the will or vision of the first three, and local revolts coupled with a return of the Seleucids in 206 B.C.E. brought the empire down.

Knight in Tournament Armour: beginning of Sixteenth Century

 

The origins of the medieval tournament are still mysterious. They were possibly derived from the Roman Ludus Trojae, in which two groups of warriors engaged in a sham battle. The word tournament, it should be noted, should properly be used only to denote such pretended combat between two groups of contestants; when two individual warriors compete, the correct word is joust.

Tournaments - public competitions among knights - were organized by kings and important feudal lords for public celebrations. The first took place in France in the ninth century, and soon afterwards the fashion spread to Germany, England and even Byzantium. The number of participants was unlimited: there could be up to 2,000, and tournaments could last for days. The first rules were set down in the ninth century by French knight Geoffroy de Preuilly. In the beginning, it seems that ordinary armour and weapons were used for both jousts and tournaments, so they could have differed very little from the real thing. It was only in the second half of the thirteenth century that armour made especially for that purpose came into general use.

Tournaments were usually held on large, flat fields in front of castles. The rectangular combat area was fenced in, and the spectators sat around it. Important personalities and the judges were usually seated on the castle’s balconies, or special stands and tents were erected for them. Individual combat came first, then fighting in pairs, and finally in groups. At a sign, the contestants, mounted on their horses, swathed in sumptuous capes and armed with so-called courtesy weapons (lances without points, swords with dull blades and blunted maces) entered the arena, while heralds announced their names. They had previously been inspected by the judges. Occasionally, real weapons were used. Combat generally ceased when one of the contestants was struck from his saddle, but could continue until one of the opponents could no longer put up any resistance. The winners were given awards by the queen or one of the high-ranking ladies, and gained enormous prestige.

Severe injuries and accidental killings were frequent, so the pope and kings often forbade tournaments, especially at times of Crusades, but they were organized in spite of the bans. To decrease the number of injuries, a longitudinal barrier separating the combatants was introduced. After 1559, when Henri II of France was killed in a tournament after being accidentally struck in the eye through his visor by an opponent’s lance, tournaments were held only in Germany, until the mid-seventeenth century. From the middle of the sixteenth century, dexterity and elegance were more appreciated than strength, and this contributed to the replacement of tournaments by attractive equestrian shows - carousels.

Cavalry forces often held competitions with some of the characteristics of tournaments: cutting down markers, snatching rings with lances, shooting from horseback at full gallop, and so on. In many countries, there are still different equestrian games with elements of medieval tournaments.