1902 Encyclopedia > India > Indian History: 5. Scythic and Non-Aryan Influences
India
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INDIA - HISTORY (cont.)
5. Scythic and Non-Aryan Influences
About 126 B.C. the Tartar tribe of Su is said to have driven out the Greek dynasty from Bactria, and the Graeco-Bactrian settlements in the Punjab were overthrown by the Tue-VChi.6 The Scythian migrations towards India culminated in the empire of Kanishka, who held the fourth Buddhist council, circa 40 A.D., and practically became the royal founder of northern Buddhism. The Scythic element played an important part in the history of northern India. Under Kanishka and his successors a connexion was established with the Buddhist nations of central and eastern Asia, traces of which survived to the time of Hwen Tsang (629-645 A.D.) in the name of China-pati, about 10 miles to the west of the Beas river.7 China-pati, is said to have been the town which Kanishka appointed for the residence of his Chinese hostages. It has been suggested that the Aswamedha, or great horse sacrifice, in some of its Indian developments at any rate, was based upon Scythic ideas. "It was in effect," writes Mr Edward Thomas, " a martial challenge, which consisted in letting the victim who was to crown the imperial triumph at the year’s end go free to wander at will over the face of the earth, its sponsor being bound to follow its hoofs, and to conquer or conciliate" the chiefs through whose territories is passed. Such a prototype seems to him to shadow forth the life of the Central Asia communities of the horseman class, "among whom a steed captured in hostile forays has so frequently to be traced from camp, and surrendered or fought for at last."1
An effort has been made to trace Buddha himself to a Scythic origin. He belonged to a royal stock of Sákyas; and the Chinese records supply an intermediate link between his birthplace in Bengal and the supposed home of his race in Central Asia. It is inferred from them that a branch of the Scythian hordes who overran western Asia about 625 B.C. made its way to Patala on the Indus, the site selected by Alexander in 325 B.C. for his headquarters in that delta, and still the capital of Sind under the name of Hyderabad. One portion of these Patala Sycthians went westwards by the Persian Gulf to Assyria; another section eventually moved north-east into the Gangetic valley, and became the Sákyas of Kapilavastu, among whom Buddha was born.2His dying command, that he should be buried according to the old custom of his race, and a mound erected over his remains, is opposed to the Indo-Aryan form of obsequies by cremation; but it is essentially in accord with the Scythian mode of disposing of the dead. In the topes or funeral mounds of Buddhism is seen a reproduction of the royal Scythian tombs of which Herodotus speaks.3It is therefore argued that the Christian fathers trace back, by no accident, the Manichean doctrine to one "Scythianus," whose discipline Terebinthus took the name of Buddha.4
Whatever may be the value of this conjecture, the influence of the Scythian dynasties in northern India is an historical fact. The northern or Tobetan form of Buddhism, represented by Kanishka and his council in 40 A.D., made its way down to the plains of Hindustán, and during the next six centuries competed with the earlier Buddhism of Asoka. The Chinese pilgrim in 629-645 A.D. found both the northern or Scythic and the southern forms of Buddhism in full vigour in India. He spent fourteen months at China-pati, the town where Kanishka had kept his Chinese hostages in the Punjab; and he records the debates between the northern and southern sects of Buddhists in Oudh, Behar, Káthiáwár, and at other places. The Scythic influence in India was a dynastic as well as a religious one. The evidence of coins and the names of Indian tribes of reigning families, such as the Sákas, Huns, and Nágas, point to Scythian settlements as far south as the Central Provinces.5
Many scholars believe that the Scythians poured down upon India in such masses as to supplant the previous populations. The Kits or Játs,6 who form nearly one-half of the inhabitants of the Punjab, are identified with the Getae; their great subdivision the Dhe, with the Dahae, whom Strabo places on the shores of the Caspian. This view has received the support of most eminent investigators, from Professor H.H. Wilson to General Cunningham, the director-general of the archaeological survey.7 The existing division between the Eastern Játs and the Dhe has, indeed, been traced back to the contiguity of the Massa-getae or Great Getae8 and the Dahae, who dwelt by the side of each other in Central Asia, and who may have advanced together during the great Scythian movement towards India on the decline of the Bactrian empire. Without pressing such identifications to closely in the service of particular theories, the weight of authority is in favour of a Scythian origin for this most numerous and most industrious section of the population of the Punjab.9 A similar descent has been assigned to certain of the Rájput tribes. Colonel Tod, still the standard historian of Rájásthán, strongly insisted on this point. Some relationship between the Játs and the Rájputs, although obscure, is acknowledge; and, although the jus connubii no longer exists between them, an inscription shows that they intermarried in the 5th century A.D.10 Professor Cowell, indeed, regarded the arguments for the Scythic descent of the Rájputs as inconclusive.11 But the whole evidence now collected was not before him; and authorities of great weight have deduced alike form local investigation12 and from Sanskrit literature13 a Scythic origin for the Játs, and for some at least of the Rájput tribes. We shall see that the Scythian hordes also supplied certain of the Non-Aryan or so-called aboriginal races of India.
The Scythic settlement was not effected without a struggle. As Chandra Gupta advanced from the Gangetic valley, and rolled back the tide of Graeco-Bactrian conquest (circa 312-306 B.C), so the Indian heroes of the first century before and after Christ are native princes who stemmed the torrent of Scythian invasion. Vikramáditya, king of Ujjain, won his paramount place in Indian story by driving our the invaders. An era, the Samvot, beginning in 57 B.C. was founded in honour of his achievements. Its date14 seems at variance with his legendary victories over the Scythian Kanishka in the first century after Christ;15 but his very name suffices to commemorate his struggle against the northern hordes as Vikramáditya Sakári, or the enemy of the Scythians. His reign forms the Augustan era of Sanskrit literature; and tradition has ascribed the highest efforts of the Indian intellect during many centuries to the poets and philosophers, or nine gems, of his court. As Chandra Gupta, who freed India from the Greeks, is celebrated in the drama Mudrá-rákshasa, so Vikramáditya, the vanquisher of the Scythians, forms the central royal personage of the Hindu stage.
Vikramáditya’s achievements, however, formed no final deliverance, but merely an episode in a long struggle between the Indian dynasties and new races from the north. Another popular era, the Saka (literally the Scythian), takes its commencement in 78 A.D.,1 and is supposed to commemorate the defeat of the Scythians by a king of southern India, Saliváhana.2 During the seven centuries which followed, three powerful monarchies, the Sáhs, Guptas, and Valabhis, established themselves in northern and western India.The Sáhas of Suráshtra are traced by coins and inscriptions form 60 to 70 B.C. to after 235 A.D.3 After the Sáhs come to Guptas of Kanauj,4 in North-Western Provinces, the Middle Land (Madhyadesha) of ancient Bráhmanism. The Guptas introduced an era of their own, commencing in 319 B.C., and ruled in person or by viceroys over northern India during one hundred and fifty 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.). The ValabhÃ*s succeeded the Guptas, and ruled over Cutch, the north-western districts of Bombay5 and Málwá, from 480 to after 722 A.D.6 The Chinese pilgrim gives a full account of the court and people of Valabhi (630-640 A.D.). Buddhism was the state religion, but heretics (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 ValabhÃ*s seem to have been overthrown by the early Arab invaders of Sind in the 8th century.
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