India, Empire and Chaos

Around the year 1000 BCE, tribes living in the Indus Valley began running from drought. They trekked eastward along the foot of the Himalayan mountains, where jungles were less dense and rivers easier to cross. They entered the plains of the Ganges Valley, and there they found these societies with a more egalitarian organization than they had, and they despised them for being different, for not having kings as autocratic as theirs and for having strange religious beliefs. By now, these migrating Hindus had iron tools and weapons, iron having spread eastward through Persia. And with their superior weaponry and self-confidence, the migrants advanced against local resistance.

With the Hindu conquests, a complex hierarchy of classes developed. At the top were the priests and their entire families: the Brahmins. Also at the top were the warrior-aristocrats, the Kshatriyas, whose job it was to practice constantly for combat. Neither the Brahmins nor the Kshatriyas conceded superiority to the other, but they agreed that the other classes were lower than they. The first of these lower classes was the Vaishyas and their families: those conquerors who tended cattle and served the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in others ways. The lowest class was the conquered, darker-skinned people who were servants for the conquerors. The servants were called Shudras. Hindus made these four classifications a part of their mythology and religion.

People from different classes could dine together. A man from a non-Brahmin family could still become a Brahmin. A Brahmin might marry a woman from a lower caste whom he found attractive, but this was a male prerogative. A girl from a Brahmin family was allowed to marry only someone also from a Brahmin family.

The conquerors sent priests as missionaries to southern India. And occasionally these missionaries felt mistreated and warrior nobles went to their rescue. But southern India remained independent of northern rule.

By around the 700s or 600s BCE, the migrations ended, and with their new successes in agriculture came an increase in population. In northern India by the Ganges River and its tributaries cities arose, cities with fortifications, moats and ramparts in response to the dangers of war. In northern India sixteen different kingdoms emerged.

Traders, merchants and landlords appeared, as did money lenders. Indians began trading with Arabia and the great empire of the Assyrians. In the 600s, India began trading with China, the Malay peninsula and the islands of what are now Indonesia and the Philippines.

Hindu Brahmins were giving instruction to local elites who had not been completely Hinduized. These elites were accustomed to deference from local people. They resisted the claims of Brahmins to higher rank and were offended by the posturing, pride and arrogance of the Brahmins. Some of them were opposed to the bloodletting of Hinduism’s animal sacrifices. Some of them thought the Brahmins too involved in ceremonial formalities and ritual and saw the Brahmin’s view of gods and salvation as strange.

The Upanishads

Going into the 700s BCE, Hinduism like other religions was subject to a widening diversity. One Hindu Brahmin had the genius to see that there were truths not yet known, and he advocated doubt and recorded his insights in a late contribution to the Hinduism sacred book, the Rig Veda. He wrote that some priests had an unwarranted certainty in belief and were blind men leading the blind.

Meanwhile, some Brahmins had little interest in ritual sacrifices and more interest in probing relations between self and the universe. They were interested in attaining religious bliss, and perhaps as early as the 700s BCE their writings were collected into what would be called the Upanishads, a collection of as many as two hundred books that were to be written across centuries.

The Upanishads consisted of attempts to describe truth through poetry and analogy. Some contributors made points drawn from observed fact, and some merely recorded their intuitions and asked the reader to accept their insights on faith. Some contributors to theUpanishads repeated beliefs already expressed in the Vedas, such as every living thing having a spirit, or soul, and spirits being able to migrate in and out of things. They wrote of death as the passing of one's spirit into other beings, and death as rebirth, with souls returning to earth within another human or some other creature – reincarnation. It was written that where a soul went depended upon how well a person had behaved in his previous life. Good actions were described as directing a soul to a higher form of life. The soul of the evil doer, it was claimed, found its way to a lower form of life.

Some contributors to the Upanishads pleaded that one's fate could be altered only by learning – like a Born Again Christian who transforms himself by acquiring a knowledge of God. In the Upanishads this was expressed in the claim that rather than rejoice in externals known through the senses, people should turn their thoughts inward in a quest for self-realization and knowledge about themselves. They claimed that material or sensual pleasure should not be ultimate goals, that what people really want lies more deeply. They claimed that God is within us and that the wise seek the joys of the infinite, the joy that comes with separating the self from the body and freeing oneself from the clutches of birth and death.

It was written in the Upanishads that there are two kinds of knowledge. One kind was called lower knowledge, which was described as knowledge about the existence of God, knowledge of rituals and the knowledge that one acquires through one's senses about the material world. This lower knowledge was described as standing in the way of the other kind of knowledge: higher knowledge. This higher knowledge was described as impossible to explain, like trying to explain warmth to someone who knows only cold. Higher knowledge was described as a personal experience that touched one's soul. It was claimed that written instructions might help guide one toward acquiring this knowledge but that in this acquisition emotions had to dominate.

This view of knowledge did not acknowledge a limited ability to know so much as it did a limited ability to teach. Some contributors to the Upanishads wrote that all they could do was stimulate thinking in others that would lead these others to acquire wisdom on their own. They described this search as an adventure on behalf of the human spirit. One contributor to the Upanishads wrote:

Into blind darkness enter they who worship ignorance;
Into darkness greater than that enter they who delight in knowledge.

Additional contributions to the Upanishads made this search for higher knowledge an attempt at awareness of an underlying, universal unity. Assumptions were made about universal consciousness. Various writings described different unifying forces: Vishvkarman, the Great Soul; the god Hiranyagargha, who established the earth and sky;Brahmanaspate the Lord of Prayer, who also produced the world; and Aditi, the mother of gods.

The viewpoint in the Upanishads that everything is interconnected suggested an all encompassing god. A youth was described as asking a learned man how many gods there are. The learned man named three hundred and three. "Yes," responded the youth, "but how many are there really?" The learned man narrowed their number to thirty-three. "Yes," responded the youth, "but how many are there really?" And finally the learned man said there was only one god.

Another contributor to the Upanishads wrote that a person had to realize the god in himself before he could realize the god of the universe, and he claimed that realizing the god in oneself is recognizing oneself in all others. Another wrote of the senses as an illusion and of God as the maker of this illusion. This view held that to grasp reality and to reach one's goal of harmony with the cosmos one had to turn from the illusion of materiality to the world of mental realization.

Another writer claimed that one helped oneself understand the unity of the universe by gaining knowledge about materiality, including the origins of the universe. Another writer of this persuasion speculated that the world had begun as water, that the earth is water solidified, that every solid is basically water and that water and God are one. A third contributor to the Upanishads saw reality and God as fire.

One contributor to the Upanishads described God as mystery, and another contributor claimed that in the beginning there was nothingness, that the world was created from nothingness and would eventually return to nothingness. Another writer described God as having existed before all else. He wrote that in the beginning God was alone, that he looked around and saw nothing, and, being lonely, he divided himself into male and female, and that these two aspects of God then mated and brought into creation all living things.

The Materialists

Intellectual unrest continued in India through the 500s. A few writers in India challenged Hinduism by proclaiming that the universe was essentially inanimate and functioned other than by the magic of gods. They claimed that when a person dies he dissolves back into primary elements, that after death there is neither pain nor pleasure, that there is no afterlife or reincarnation, that soul and god are only words and that Hindu sacrifices accomplish nothing.

The materialist point of view found its way into the Upanishads, and Brahmin authorities responded by removing the offending entries, and they destroyed other materialist writings. No writings expressing the materialist point of view were to survive. They were to be known only through those who argued against them.

Hinduism in 500s BCE

During the 500s, seeking spiritual attainment through knowledge grew. Many seeking spiritual fulfillment were uninterested in metaphysical complexities. They continued to worship gods such as Indra and Agni but they also found satisfaction in devotion to gods that were parental figures, gods with whom they could have a personal relationship. In the northwest of India, people worshiped a personal god called Shiva, a god who embodied a reconciliation between the extremes of passionate eroticism and ascetic renunciation, and between frenzy and serenity. Shiva was believed to dwell in the Himalayas, to have a benevolent goddess counterpart called Pavati, and to have many brides and numerous children.

Some Hindus turned from the complexities of the Upanishads to a more simple spiritual benefit by way of good behavior, which they claimed was more important than whatever god one worshiped. This good behavior included proper eating, restrictions on drinking, keeping oneself in godly cleanliness, performing one's duties and behaving in a manner appropriate with one's class (or caste) and stage in life – all described as good for one's soul.

In the latter half of the 500s BCE more people were trying to achieve spirituality through asceticism. These were times of insecurity and misery, and a greater number of young men were giving up on the material world and searching for eternal bliss. Orthodox Brahmins felt obliged to exercise some authority in the direction of social engineering. They attempted to keep in check the loss of youthful manpower to asceticism. They tried to confine asceticism to men beyond middle age. To this end they invented four stages in life regarding duties of a Hindu: the celibate religious student; the married Hindu, including priests; the forest hermit, who was older than the students; and the elderly wandering ascetic.

New Sects Hostile to the Brahmins

In the northeast of the Asian subcontinent, Brahmins gave instruction to local, non-Aryan elites who had not been completely Hinduized. These elites were accustomed to deference from local people. They resisted the claims of Brahmins to higher rank, and they were offended by the posturing, pride and arrogance of the Brahmins. Some of them were opposed to the bloodletting of Hinduism’s animal sacrifices – the killing of animals valuable to local people. Some of them thought the Brahmins too involved in ceremonial formalities and ritual, and they saw the Hindu view of gods and salvation as strange.

A variety of men hostile toward the Brahmins tried to create followings. They denied the authority of the Vedas, and each developed a code of conduct and claimed to have found the secret of eternal bliss. Local merchants who were gaining in wealth and influence threw their support to one or another of the religious rebels in their area. Sect leaders wandered across the northeast of South Asia continent, sometimes with large bands of followers. They entered communities to engage in disputations with rival sects and orthodox Brahmins, disputations that were welcomed entertainment for local people.

The most successful of the new sects were those that attempted relief from orthodox Hinduism's failure to alleviate human suffering. One such sect was the Jains – from the Sanskrit verb ji, meaning to conquer. The Jains sought relief from suffering by conquest over one's own passions and senses. This conquest they believed, gave one purity of soul.

According to legend, the Jains were led by Nataputta Vardhamana, the son of a royal governor from the Magadha region. Nataputta Vardhamana gave up his princely status for a life of asceticism, and he became known as Mahavira (Great Souled One). Legend describes Mahavira beginning as a reformer – as not seeking to overthrow the Hindu caste system or the worship of Hindu gods but wishing to do something about the misery that he saw. Legend describes him as having sympathy not only for people but also for the animals that the Brahmins sacrificed.

Mahavira appealed to people who wanted religion without the metaphysical speculations that most people found too vague and complex. He rejected the idea of everything connected into oneness: the doctrine of the universal soul included in the Upanishads. He believed in differentiations as well as associations. He envisioned a dualistic reality, a world with both conscious and unconscious elements, a world that is both spirit and material.

Mahavira became popular among the urban middle class and women in northeastern India. Jainist legend describes his following at the time of his death as 359,000 women and 159,000 men, including full-time devotees numbering 36,000 nuns and 14,000 monks.

After Mahavira's death his followers held to the view that plants and insects, as well animals, had consciousness. It was not yet understood that life included living microorganisms and viruses, or that fleas and other insects carried diseases, and the Jains believed that the destruction of any life, including that of insects, was evil. Maintaining Hinduism's belief in reincarnation, they held that by refraining from killing they could liberate their soul from the cycle of births and deaths. Jain monks swept the path in front of them to avoid crushing insects, and they strained their water believing that this prevented them from consuming any living organisms. Lay persons were less persistent, believing that it was enough that they not intentionally kill.

Jain lay persons took the following vows: never to intentionally destroy a living thing; never to speak falsehoods; never to steal; to be faithful in marriage; to be chaste outside of marriage; to possess no more money or other things than one had set for oneself as sufficient (a practical restriction that varied with how wealthy one was); to travel no farther than the limits that one had set for oneself; to think no evil thoughts about others; to sit in meditation as often as one had planned; to spend time as a temporary monk or nun; and to support the nuns and monks with contributions.

Another movement that was an alternative to the Brahmins was initiated by Siddartha Gautama. It began as a philosophy that included the advice to be one's own light, to remake oneself rather than passively expect others to feed you enlightenment.

Buddhism's Founder, Siddartha Gautama

ddartha Gautama was born into the Sakya tribe at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains north of the Ganges Valley, in a small city, Kapilavastu, in what is today southern Nepal. He is reported to have seen his native city overrun and its people butchered. The Sakya tribe was under Aryan (Hindu) suzerainty and had retained independence in exchange for tribute paid to Aryan overlords. The Sakya tribe had aristocrats and commoners, and according to legend, Siddartha was a prince.

According to legend, Siddartha was sheltered in his youth from the ugliness and poverty around him, but when he was twenty-nine – around 534 BCE – he decided to become a wanderer. The legend created by his followers describes him as becoming a wanderer in order to learn about human existence, and it describes him as seeking spiritual satisfaction and becoming an ascetic. He abused his body by hardly eating. Failing in his quests to understand human existence and to acquire spiritual satisfaction, Siddartha began eating better, and he began devising what he believed were his own solutions to human misery.

Siddartha agreed with the view expressed in the Upanishads that the cause of human misery was humanity itself, but he was determined not to fall into what he saw as the error of those who sought salvation in philosophical speculations. He refused to question or discuss whether the cosmos is finite or infinite, whether there is life after death or other metaphysical questions, on the grounds that these sidetrack people from doing something practical about the misery of their existence.

According to legend, Siddartha became a master of the tenets and practices of other sects, and many of his disciples were recruited after hearing him debate with religious rivals in gatherings that were then popular entertainment in towns across the Ganges Valley. Siddartha preached no warnings of torments for evil deeds. Instead he preached the attaining of serenity, or nirvana, through self-discipline.

He outlined his numerous rules for attaining this personal salvation. His first rule was proper understanding, by which he meant realizing that there is nothing essentially permanent, that there is only change. Siddartha had decided that human misery came with people looking for permanence where there was no permanence and with people clinging to objects of desire that were transitory.

Siddartha's next rule was proper attitude, by which he meant not wanting the impossible and accepting the inevitable. In other words, he favored control over one's own appetites and ambitions. He had concluded that it was not wrong to desire good food and drink, fine clothes, or sexual satisfaction but that it was eventually destructive psychologically to persist in these appetites without measure. He believed that giving up hope for that which one cannot have was a means to peace of mind.

Siddartha's third rule was proper speech, which he believed important because words preceded actions. His fourth rule was proper actions, important in creating a righteousness about oneself that engendered serenity. His fifth rule was do no injury to other living things. This included refraining from theft, lying and sexual immorality. Siddartha's additional rules reinforced his first five rules and included having a proper vocation, making proper efforts, exercising proper reflection, and partaking in proper meditation.

Like Mahavira, the founder of the Jains, Siddartha rejected the authority of the Vedas and rejected animal sacrifices, and he rejected the claims of Brahmins that they were superior. Siddartha claimed that people should not expect assistance from any source other than themselves, that one could not lean on gods or other spiritual agents, that each person must work out his own salvation, that there was no escape from choice or refuge outside themselves. People, he said, should be their own lamps and their own salvation.

But Siddartha did not ask his followers to give up their Hindu gods, and Indra, Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu would be worshiped by his followers for centuries to come.

Like Mahavira, Siddartha created an order of monks, with whom he met during the rainy season for strategy sessions and teaching. The monks and nuns did not regard themselves as apart from lay followers or from the world. They saw themselves as promoters of the welfare and happiness not just of themselves but of the many.

Like Mahavira, Siddartha did not preach against the caste system, which outside his movement was widely viewed as an essential ingredient in family values and necessary for social order. But he opened his movement to all classes and eventually to females, and within his movement everyone was released from caste restrictions.

Siddartha Gautama died in 483 at the age of eighty. And according to legend, a council of five hundred Buddhist monks met at the city of Rajagriha, concerned about preserving Siddartha's teachings. They had reason for worry: diversity in belief would soon appear among Buddhists as it had among the Jains and the rest of civilized humanity.

Soon splits among the Buddhists occurred over a variety of issues. Like others, Buddhists tried to cram their thinking into group thought rather than tolerate variety of opinion about small issues. This included a split among them over whether one should drink buttermilk after dinner – no matter that Siddartha had lectured about being one's own light.

A split arose among the Buddhists as some older members wanted to limit membership in the Buddhist movement to the ascetic monks and nuns. Other Buddhists wanted a broader movement, one that included those not ready to discipline themselves or to withdraw from the normal routines of life as did the monks and nuns – a split between purists and inclusionists that would appear among other religious movements.

pic Hindu Literature: Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita

Eventually, Hindus followed the impulse that had appeared among the Sumerians: they wrote poetic stories that focused on the power of the gods. These stories were written to create ideals for people to follow. The better known of these are poems called the Ramayanaand the Mahabharata.

Ramayana translates as the Story of Rama. It is believed to have been written by a Brahmin named Valmiki, a man whose style of poetry was new and a style to be copied thereafter. It is said to have appeared between 400 and 200 BCE. The story takes place centuries earlier, when Aryans were expanding their influence over Dravidians in southern India, the Aryans engaging in missionary endeavors supported by military power and a strategy of divide and conquer. In its seven books and 24,000 verses the Ramayanapraises the heroism and virtues of Aryan warrior-princes: the Kshatriyas. The Ramayana has as its main hero a prince called Rama, whose life the Ramayana describes from birth to death. Rama and his brothers are depicted as embodying the ideals of Aryan culture: men of loyalty and honor, faithful and dutiful sons, affectionate brothers and loving husbands, men who speak the truth, who are stern, who persevere but are ready and willing to make sacrifices for the sake of virtue against the evils of greed, lust and deceit.

The Mahabharata, meaning Great India, is said to have been written by a Brahmin named Vyasa, between 400 and 100 BCE, but no one really knows. Across centuries, priestly writers and editors with different attitudes in different centuries were to add to the work, and the Mahabharata emerged three times its original size. The Mahabharata was divided into eighteen books of verses interspersed with passages of prose. It attempted to describe the period in which Aryan tribes in northern India were uniting into kingdoms and when these petty kingdoms were fighting to create empire. The work attempted to be an encyclopedia about points of morality. One of its heroes is Krishna, described as a royal personage descended from the gods – an eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu. TheMahabharata's heroes are described as yearning for power but, like the heroes of the Ramayana, devoted to truth and having a strong sense of duty and affection for their parents.

New contributions to the Mahabharata gave greater focus to the gods Vishnu and Shiva. A story incorporated into the Mahabharata became known as theBhagavad Gita (the Lord's Song), shortened by many to the Gita. The Bhagavad Gita became Hinduism's most popular scripture and into modern times it would be read by many for daily reference – a work that Mahatma Gandhi would describe as an infallible guide to conduct. In the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu acquired a new incarnation: Krishna. Krishna was originally a non-Aryan god in northwestern India. In the old Mahabharata he was a secondary hero, a god who had appeared in human form. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna became the Supreme Deity in human form.

he Gita is an account of the origins, course and aftermath of a great war between royalty. In it a dialogue takes place between a prince, Arjuna, and the charioteer alongside him as the two ride into battle at the head of Arjuna's army. The charioteer is Krishna in disguise. Arjuna sees that his opponents ahead of him are his relatives. He drops his bow and announces that he will not give the signal to begin the battle. He asks whether power is so important that he should fight his own kinsmen, and he states that the pain of killing his kinsmen would be too much for him, that it would be better for him to die than to kill just for power and its glory. Krishna is like the god of war of former times: Indira. Krishna gives Arjuna a formula for accepting deaths in war, a Hindu version close to the claim that those who die in battle will go to paradise. He tells Arjuna that bodies are not really people, that people are souls and that when the body is killed the soul lives on, that the soul is never born and never dies. According to Krishna, if one dies in battle he goes to heaven, or if he conquers he enjoys the earth. So, according to Krishna, one should go into battle with "a firm resolve." Attitude was of the utmost importance. "Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction."

Krishna reminds Arjuna that he is a warrior and that to turn from battle is to reject his karma, in other words his duty or place in life. He makes the irrefutable argument, an argument that leaves no room for questioning one's own intentionality: that Arjuna should make war because it is his destiny to do so. He states that it is best to fulfill one's destiny with detachment because detachment leads to liberation and allows one to see the irrelevance of one's own work. To give weight to his argument, Krishna reveals to Arjuna that he is not just his charioteer, not just another military man who talks like he is divine but that he is the god Krishna – a claim that Arjuna accepts. Some readers of the Bhagavad Gitainterpret this to mean that Arjuna does not need to step from his chariot to find God and that humanity does not need to search for the divine: that God is with a person and for a person.

Arjuna expresses his support for family values, and he is a defender of tradition. He complains of lawlessness corrupting women, and when women are corrupted, he says, a mixing of caste ensues.

Krishna became the most loved of the Hindu gods, a god viewed as a teacher, a personal god much like Yahweh, a god who not only believes in war but a god of love who gives those who worshiped him a gift of grace. A loving god could be found here and there in the old Vedic hymns of the Aryans, but this new focus on a loving god and the satisfaction it brought to the people of India was a challenge to Hindu priests, for it offered salvation without the need for ritual sacrifices. In the Bhagavad Gita (1:41), Krishna says: "Give me your heart. Love me and worship me always. Bow to me only, and you will find me. This I promise."

According to Krishna, as expressed in the Gita (2:37), one could accumulate possessions and not lose blessedness so long as one remained indifferent about success and failure. One can attain salvation so long as one restrains one's passions in whatever one does. One should be fearless, steadfast generous and patient. One should be compassionate toward other creatures. One should be without greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, overweening pride, wrath or harshness in speech. And one should "study the Holy Word, austerities and uprightness." (16:1-2)

The Gita (2.22) describes the soul as shedding a worn-out body like an old worn-out garment and putting on a new body as one would a new garment. The soul is immortal and the body is subject to birth and death. The Gita extends the metaphor to reincarnation, to Karma as described in the Upanishads. Where a soul went depended upon how well a person had behaved in his previous life. Good actions in the former life led to a soul to take on a new higher form of life. The soul of the doer of evil led a soul to take the body of a lower form of life. Hinduism epic literature described what was good behavior, and in a new work, the Laws of Manu, defined more clearly what was bad

Chandragupta – Emperor and Martyr

Shortly after the passing of Alexander the Great, India's first great empire arose, ruled by Chandragupta Maurya (340-298 BCE). According to legend, Chandragupta Maurya was the son of a herdsman, and when he was a young man he met Alexander the Great. Days later, the story goes, he was awakened by a lion gently licking his body – an omen that he would become royalty.

Chandragupta's counselor and advisor was his adoptive father, Chanakya, who is said to have been learned in medicine, Hellenism and Zoroastrianism. He is said to have kept Chandragupta's youthful impulses in check and to have guided him in his kingdom's war that began in 323 and ended around 321 with Chandragupta overthrowing the Nanda dynasty that had been ruling the state of Magadha and dominating the Ganges plain.
Chanakya became Chandragupta's Prime Minister, and legend describes Chanakya (also identified as Kautilya) as the author of a book titled Arthasastra, a book that appears to have been written during the time of Chandragupta but with writings added centuries later. Arthasastra means science of property and material success, and in the book this success includes political and diplomatic strategy aimed at uniting India. It has a flavor to it similar to the Legalism that rivaled Confucianism and Taoism in China. The book advises a king to control his subjects, especially his ministers, and the Brahmins, wealthy merchants and his beautiful women. To help in this, according to the author, the king should employ an army of various artful persons as spies who keep watch at all levels of society. Arthasastra advises a king to be energetic, ever wakeful, to make himself accessible to his subjects and to guard against six enemies: anger, greed, lust, exuberance, hauteur and vanity.

Foremost is the book's advocacy of military expansion. In Arthasastra it is claimed that aggrandizement is human nature, that a power superior in strength to another power should launch a war against that power, and that war keeps a nation's blood circulation regular.
Chanakya was aware that toward the northwest, in the Indus Valley, were tribal republics and monarchies that had been weakened by war against Alexander in the mid-320s. Moreover, Alexander had demonstrated that a disciplined and strong force could conquer the region. And it appeared that an India united by a great conqueror was the best defense against a recurring foreign intrusion. Chandragupta, in accordance with the views of Chanakya, sent an army of infantry, cavalry, many chariots and elephants to the Indus Valley, extending his rule there and beyond into the Hindu Kush. The first Seleucid king, Seleucus I, a former general under Alexander, attempted to recover lands taken by Chandragupta. But in the year 305 BCE Chandragupta turned back Seleucus' drive. Seleucus was forced to settle with Chandragupta. Chandragupta then conquered northward from Magadha, into the Himalayas, and he conquered the rest of northern India.

Chandragupta as Autocrat, Sensualist and Martyr

The agricultural lands around Chandragupta's capital belonged to Chandragupta, which he "rented" for a quarter or sometimes a half of what was produced on them. And Chandragupta made those peasants working his fields exempt from service in his military or other obligations to the state.
Chandragupta divided his empire into districts, which were administered by his closest relatives and most trusted generals. Civil servants ruled various departments such as trade, taxation, mining, roads, and irrigation canals. His government held trade monopolies and owned slaughter-houses, gambling halls, mines, shipbuilding operations, armament factories and spinning and weaving operations. His government oversaw the standardization of weights, measures and coinage. It controlled prices and trade, including trade in liquor and prostitution. It obliged drinking places to have couches, scents, water and other amenities, and drinking places and "public houses" were not to be near each other.
But there was no attempt at nation building. There was no united India as there would be a united China created by the conquests by Qin's Shihuangdi – also in the early 300s BCE. Local princes and local peoples in India maintained their local identities and attitudes.
Meanwhile, Chandragupta feared revenge and assassins. Against these possibilities he had a network of spies. He expected authorities in various districts to know all comings and goings. People who were considered dangerous to his rule might disappear without a trace. He had food tasters in order to avoid being poisoned. And he never slept in the same bed two nights in succession.

Eliciting confessions by torture remained a normal method in police work. Punishment depended on class: Brahmin's were not tortured, but upon conviction of a crime they could be branded, exiled or sent to work in the mines. A Greek ethnographer, Megasthenes (350-290) described a low incidence of thievery in Chandragupta's India, and this might have been a result of the punishment for such a crime. Common people were executed for theft, for damaging property of the king, breaking into someone's home, evading taxes, injuring an artisan working for the state and many other crimes. Failure to meet a contract could lead to a fine if not a harsher penalty, as could incompetence in various forms of work, from washing clothes to treating the ill.
Toward the end of his more than twenty years of rule, Chandragupta surrounded himself with dancing girls and courtesans – women who also worked as housemaids, cooks, garland makers, shampooers and who fanned Chandragupta or held an umbrella for him. He seldom left his palace, except for an occasional festival. But he remained a man of religion and concerned about his subjects. According to legend he was converted to Jainism by a sage who had predicted a twelve-year drought.
With the drought came famine in place of the affluence that Megasthenes had described. In an effort to combat the drought, Chandragupta, in 301 BCE, abdicated in favor of one of his sons, Bindusara, and he withdrew with the Jainist sage to a religious retreat in India's southwest. There, according to legend, while appealing to God for relief from the drought, he fasted to death.

Chanakya

SUMMERRAIDERSHISTORYPARTII

Thursday, June 9, 2016

20 India, Empire and Chaos