Foreign Influence in Ancient India R. A. JAIBAZBHOY ASIA PUBLISHING HOUSE BOMBAY CALCUTTA - NEW PET .HI - MADRAS LUGKNOW LONDON - NEW YOKE! 1963 by R. A. JAIRAZBHOY nsr INDIA 3PYABB3I,AI, SAJQC AT THE) TX&CBS OF DDSODXA PROBSS, ASXA aEnXBLISBXETG- D0COXTSB1, BOAdpSAlT PEEFACE CONSERVATISM is a root characteristic of ancient cultures. Once the techniques of civilization have been learned or fashioned for the first time, once an idiom has been formed by the native craftsman from the limited horizons within his purview, there follows a period of entrenchment and assimilation. If after this there should be no further impetus from outside, no further contact with a world of different values, then there is a process of hardening in which innovation gives way to repetition, and elaboration is preferred to invention. In the course of Indian history this pattern is very evident : at a a culture is it to given epoch moulded ; proceeds perpetuate itself; shows little inclination to evolution, and only allows new ideas to penetrate when, harshly or insidiously, it is imposed upon from outside. India herself has never been seized by the compelling will to bring other nations within her sway. Already in 851 A.D. Suleiman the Merchant comprehended this when he said, "Wars waged by Indian kings are not usually undertaken with a view to possess "* themselves of the adjoining dominions. And Arrian attributes a high motive for this attitude of non-aggrandisement : "A sense of justice, they say, prevents any Indian .king from attempting "2 conquest beyond the limits of India. If the Artha&astra treatise is to be regarded as a characteristic manual of beliefs of early Hindu society then Arrian's view must be considered to be rather naive for there it is stated that a king should attack his neighbours, particularly if he is the stronger and if intrigue and assassination do not succeed.8 Nevertheless the fact remains that India herself never sought to place her yoke on others outside her own limits. She has had to yield time and again to invaders from other lands, 1 E. Renaudot : Ancient accounts of India and China by two Mohammedan travellers, 1733, p. 33. * Arrian : Indica, 9, 12, Arthatfatra, Bk. VH, oh. 2, p. 265- See KAutflya's Arthatfatra, fcr. R, Shamasastry, 1915, p. 331f. For Indian ethics of war see G. T. Date : The R. DiksMtar : in Art of War in Ancient India, 1929, pp. 31-2 ; and V. War Ancient India, 1944, pp. 581 VI PREFACE and in each case (with the exception of the Muslims, and to a lesser extent the Sassanians, who had both to give and to take from her) she was the recipient rather than the donor. What she learned and took from these foreign contacts is the theme of the present book. B. A, J. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I T is a pleasant duty to record the help I have had from members of the Staff of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, and its very considerate librarians. To Professor C. J. Gadd I am grateful for the generous sharing of his extensive knowledge, and to Professor A. L. Basham for his apt criticisms and for his expression of general approval. In the initial stages I was favoured by the comments of Mr. A. H. Christie. Dr. J. F. Staal has gone out of his way to assist me, and some suggestions by Dr. A. A. Bake and Mr. N. A. Jairazbhoy have been readily incorporated. None of the above gentlemen can be held responsible for the views expressed here. Though I have not shrunk from occasional speculation, I have on the whole exercised caution and attempted to keep within the limits of the evidence. I may therefore entertain the hope that I have seldom overstated my case. More detailed researches and new discoveries will undoubtedly entail some modifications of fact and interpretation, and it is conceivable that much more could be said than has been said in this fleeting survey. But if I have brought some valuable data within easy reach of students and stimulated them to widen the vistas of historical relations then I will have accomplished one of my principal aims. No one need feel alarm that India is an amalgam of so many strains and sources. She is not alone in this, even if she has been more receptive than most. There is assuredly another side of the picture : the things and thoughts which arose spontaneously from the native soil. It would be a folly to deny their existence. But the rich diversity of India is the result of a fusion of native with foreign elements, and unless both are assessed and explained in their own right, there can be no true comprehension of the growth and progress of this ancient and fascinating land. B, A. J. CONTENTS PREFACE v ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii I THE INDUS VALLEY AND MESOPOTAMIA 1 II THE WESTERN CONNEXIONS OP THE INDO- ARYANS 11 III POST-VEDIC, PRE-PERSIAN INFLUENCES IN INDIA 30 IV INDIAN RESPONSE TO PERSIAN IMPERIALISM 38 V THE IMPACT OF GREEK CULTURE UPON INDIA 48 VI ROMAN RELATIONS WITH INDIA 110 VII PARTHO-SASSANIAN EXCHANGES WITH INDIA 148 VIII INDIA AND THE MUSLIMS PRIOR TO PERMA- NENT CONQUEST 163 INDEXES 179 "It is true that all cultures, with the exception of the Egyptian and perhaps the Chinese, have been under the tutelage of older cultural impressions : foreign elements in each of the world " appear of forms. OSWALD CHAPTER I THE INDUS VALLEY AND MESOPOTAMIA THAT the Indus civilization of the 3rd millennium B.C. has a marked individuality which sets it quite apart from its opposite in Mesopotamia no one is likely to deny. Here we are concerned only with resemblances, for these, occurring as they do at the very beginning of civilized life in the world, can scarcely be conceived of as fortuitous parallels being enacted simultaneously in two regions separated by a great distance, particularly as we have direct evidence of contact between them. Notable architectural resemblan- ces include the corbelled arch at Tell Asmar and Mohenjodaro, and the use in Sumer and the Indus of circular wells of segmental bricks, stone or baked clay lattice screens for windows, vertical 1 pottery drains and horizontal ones of baked brick. The drainage of the Indus cities was more advanced, probably because of the heavier rainfall at the time which is attested by the tropical fauna, and it was in any case sufficiently distinct, for the claim has been made that the unusual arrangement of bathrooms and drains in an Accadian building at Tell Asmar were inspired by Indian ideas.2 3 The most conspicuous difference, the irregular streets of Ur and those of Mohenjodaro planned on a fixed and regular scheme, suggest on the one hand an urban development as a result of experience and natural growth, and on the other of a preconceived idea carried out deliberately at a fixed moment in time on the basis of experience gained elsewhere. It is equally difficult to conceive that so technical a process as faience with its frits and glazes was invented simultaneously in the ancient world. Faience, as we may recall, is the thermal cementing * H. !Frankfort : "The Indus Civilization and the Near East," in Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology, 1932, p. 6. 8 Oriental Institute of Chicago. Communications, no. 16, 1933, p. 48f ; and Ancient India, I, 1946, p. 21. * L. Wooltey : in Antiquaries Journal. VII, no. 4. For lack of town-planning also at Ugarit see 0. F. A. Sohaeffer : Ugaritica, 1939, I, Figs. 14, 15. l 2 FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN ANCIENT INDIA of fine quartz grains aided by an alkali or lime, and subsequently 4 glazed with a coloured glass. In Egypt faience beads date from 6 the pre-dynastic period, and in Mesopotamia at least as early as 6 Jemdat Nasr times (c. 3000 B.C.). Modern spectrographic analysis which detects the traces of elements or impurities in faience, has established that the segmental variety of faience beads from Harappa resemble not those of Ur but those of Knossos in Crete. Since the latter have Egyptian affinities of the 18th Dynasty, the 7 Harappan beads are held to have been later objects of c. 1550 B.C., i.e., from about the date of the destruction of the civilization. It has been observed that miniature rams of faience from the Indus have their legs doubled under them in the style of the lapis rams and bulls from the Eoyal Tomb at Ur, 8 So also is it unlikely that the idea of seal engraving was hit upon independently in the three ancient river civilizations, and there are 9 at any rate indications of a migration from Mesopotamia to Egypt, together with such other features as spouted vessels and niched 10 brick architecture. That there was an exchange of seals between and the Indus is proved by the excavation of Indus Mesopotamia n seals at Tell Asmar and Agrab, at Kish, Lagash, Susa and Ur. Of these, five have inscriptions in the undeciphered Harappan cha- 12 racters, another has a circular form (which is intrusive to Meso- 13 potamia) with the same script though badly inscribed, two are of cylinder type having respectively the Indus humped bull and the 14 Indus rhinoceros as well as a fish sign, and finally there is a square type seal with a wrong-facing ox and which is inscribed 15 with a line in cuneiform characters. Another type of these same * Of. Archaeologia, LXXXV, 1936, p. 207. 5 A. Lucas : Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 3rd od., 1048, p, 56.