PAST CULTURES AS the HERITAGE of the PRESENT Romila Thapar

Keynote lecture delivered at SOAS South Asia Institute/Presidency University conference on ‘Heritage and History in South Asia’, celebrating the centenary of SOAS University of London.

Monday 5 September 2016

PAST CULTURES AS THE HERITAGE OF THE PRESENT Romila Thapar

Heritage as we all know, is that which is inherited and can refer to objects, ideas or practices. It was once assumed that heritage is what has been handed down to us by our ancestors, neatly packaged, and which we pass on to our descendants, still neatly packaged. Now we know that much repackaging is done and some contents changed, but it still continues to be thought of as ancestral. This is because it has become central to identity and to its legitimation. Heritage is often associated with tradition. Whereas heritage is thought of as rather static, tradition is a more active transmission. Hence it moulds our lives more closely. Between them they are viewed as the still point of a turning world, except that this is a myth, since they too turn and are not still. We prefer to think that these have been passed down relatively unchanged. However, they mutate slowly in an evolving process that makes the mutation less discernable. But the more we seek to understand them the more we realize that each generation changes their content or their meaning, sometimes marginally but often more substantially. The unchanged label gives it a seeming continuity. More recently it has been argued that both heritage and tradition are the inter- play between what we believe existed in the past and our aspirations of the present. Exploring this inter-play, and the ideas and forms it generates, leads to the concept of heritage taking shape, or even that a part it is being invented to serve the needs of the present. Much that is thought of as ancient is often found to be recent – the claim to longevity legitimizing the invention. Historians therefore, are writing about the invention of tradition.

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Heritage and history are quite obviously inter-dependent. This is so not just in terms of history providing a chronology and context for heritage. Both these can change. Chronology changes less frequently. But the context that forms the essential historical understanding of heritage can change more dramatically. This happens when new questions are asked and historians are constantly asking new questions. Complex cultures emerge from a multiple inheritance and their inter-face is not permanent. There is also the problem of selecting items of heritage. Such choices alter the self-perception of a society. The politics that determine such selections should be evident but are often hidden. Sacred sites can be literally reshaped. Some Buddhist chaityas were converted into Hindu temples and some Hindu temples into mosques. Colonial policy had a major role in selecting the heritage of modern India. Political intervention in identifying or evaluating heritage often continues under a different guise. The political use of the past is an ancient practice, but in our times we recognize it more easily. Inheritance from the elite has a more visible presence and has tended to be kept segregated according to caste and religion. As a contrast to this were the cultures of the majority – the non-elite, that easily and happily overlapped with each other if they wanted to, and borrowed without hesitation, particularly in religious matters. This distinction and dichotomy is critical. The historical study of Indian cultures by colonial scholarship and the colonial definition of heritage, focused on elite culture. This was the subject of historical and cultural study. The rest was treated as ethnography and kept separate. Such ethnographic studies as well as literature in the regional languages, are now opening up non-elite cultures. It is not that the study of these has become politically correct but there is a realization that cultures do not exist in isolation. It is also not just a question of being aware of the totality but of observing the juxtaposition and inter-face between the many, however discrete this may be. To try and hear the dialogue between the elite and the non-elite is essential to understanding either. We now speak of history from below therefore the heritage that comes to us from the less privileged sections of society has also to be recognized. If the definition of history changes so does that of heritage. Heritage can be either tangible or intangible. The tangible being the more obvious covers a range of objects - from seals, coins, and archaeological artifacts to monuments and to cities such as Moenjo-daro, Hampi and Fatehpur Sikri. Commonly associated with these are icons and paintings now treated as art objects. These are either valued and placed in museums or vulgarized as commercial commodities. Objects associated with ideas related to science will not be mainstream heritage until

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3 the history of science is integrated into what we generally refer to as history. Sites can also change their meaning when used for purposes that differ from their initial intention. The Jantar Mantar was a heritage site as a medieval period observatory but is now better known as the location of political demonstrations - the Hyde Park of Delhi. The intangible heritage is that of ideas. It is expressed in the life of cultures – in the performance of rituals, the observance of customary and kinship laws, social and moral values, beliefs, and orally recorded music. This brings me to the highly significant but somewhat in-between heritage, of books and inscriptions. They are tangible objects, but what we derive from them is, as it were, at second remove. It is information in the abstract to which we give a context. This introduces the centrality of language and ideas as heritage. History in a sense makes an object into heritage. We have to ask whose heritage does it symbolize and how. Is it the tangible evidence of upper caste activities or is it suggestive of the generally less tangible evidence of under-privileged social groups. The latter have little wealth or occasion to commemorate themselves with durable objects. Whereas Hinduism and Islam build temples and mosques of great grandeur, there is so little that is tangible and that survives in material form to remind us of the extensive reach of popular religious movements such as those of the Nathapanthi and Sufi sects. Yet their religious ideas swept across northern India. A further question that we have to ask is whether we can assume that what we view as heritage was also viewed as such at all times and by everyone? But heritage can undergo an uneven history of prominence or amnesia at various times. This is interestingly demonstrated in the way the perception of personalities from the past and especially rulers, changes. Let’s take the example of how Indians in the past two thousand years have looked upon the Mauryan emperor Ashoka. The memory of Ashoka has had a checkered history. In the dynastic lists given in the Puranas, composed by brahmana authors, he is just a name in the Mauryan king-list. Other brahmanical texts remain silent. But the Buddhist texts are fulsome in praising him with somewhat exaggerated stories about his conversion to and support of, Buddhism. Since there was little overt dialogue between the Brahmana and the Shramana– the Buddhist and Jaina – Ashoka remained just a name. Modern colonial scholarship initially investigated only the Brahmanical tradition on pre-modern India, so Ashoka continued to be unknown. But the link to Ashoka rose and fell in earlier times as well. His edicts explaining his thoughts on ethical values were inscribed on rock surfaces and on pillars located all over his empire, virtually the sub-continent. They were inscribed in

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4 the then used script, an early form of brahmi, and in the language of the time, Prakrit. Unfortunately, scripts have a habit of changing their forms as do languages. It would seem that after six hundred years, these edicts probably could not be read. A Gupta king ordered an inscription to be inscribed on the same pillar in the changed brahmi script, and in Sanskrit. This inscription eulogized the military conquests of Samudragupta and of his uprooting of people. These were statements endorsing a sentiment contrary to that propagated by Ashoka. Was this done deliberately? Was it countering the message of the earlier king? Or was the pillar the more important object of attraction? It was a magnificent polished sandstone pillar with a sculpted capital, placed adjacent to a stupa and therefore revered by many people. Was it seen as the appropriate object and location for a statement in praise of Samudragupta’s conquests? Could the earlier script still be read? Or, did the choice of the pillar arise, as I like to think, from a vague historical consciousness that it appeared to be important as a record of and from the past. Did the Gupta age think that engraving the new inscription on the ancient pillar would gain for them some historical legitimacy, even six hundred years later? Much later the Ashokan pillars intrigued Firuz Shah Tughlaq. But no one knew who had erected them nor could anyone read the script. Two were shifted and installed in his capital in Delhi despite the immense problems of transportation. The Mughals later were equally mystified by the pillars but attracted by the mystique. The pillar that had the two major earlier inscriptions, had also by now acquired the multiple graffiti of local rajas. This pillar was shifted to Allahabad and erected within the fort. The emperor Jahangir ordered his genealogy to be engraved in Persian and in the nastaliq script on the same pillar. As an object of heritage this pillar is perhaps historically the most impressive in India. It was used during three millennia, employing diverse scripts and languages, and stating royal attitudes towards fundamental values. In the nineteenth century the central question was as to who originally erected the pillar? The inscriptions of Ashoka were an enigma although James Prinsep had deciphered the script in 1837. The problem was identifying the ruler who referred to himself in the inscriptions as, devanampiya-piyadassi raja / the beloved of the gods – the gracious king. No king-list had any such name. But in the late nineteenth century the Ceylon Chronicles, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa were read, and they related the history of the king Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty who had taken these titles. This was confirmed in 1915 when an inscription was discovered authored by

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5 devanampiya-piyadassi raja asoka. The author of these inscriptions was Ashoka Maurya. This ended any lingering doubts. In the twentieth century when the contents of the edicts became known, Ashoka was applauded as an exemplary ruler by reputed authors such as HG Wells for his propagation of ethical values. He became an icon in the Indian national movement for independence, associated with a message of tolerance and non- violence. The wheel of law, taken from his pillar capital was placed on the Indian national flag. For Nehru he was something of an exemplar. But now again Ashoka faces the threat of exile. A century ago, a historian had argued that Ashoka’s policy of non-violence had weakened the Mauryan empire and opened it up to invasion by the Indo-Greeks, Shakas and Kushanas. Other historians demonstrated that this theory was untenable. But in today’s sabre-rattling world, some politicians have revived the argument. The Hindu Right-wing is accusing Ashoka of having weakened the sub-continental empire, by preaching non- violence to the point where it was unable to defend itself against subsequent foreign invasions. Will Ashoka again be set aside? I have tried to suggest that items of heritage be they icons or Ashokan pillars, or the ideas in the Ashokan edicts, have no permanency as heritage. They can be appropriated or banished, depending on what may be viewed as their usefulness to contemporary times. This tends to be determined by those who set the political and cultural agendas of society. Turning to a different aspect of heritage, I would like to draw attention to the varying perceptions that different groups have to the same category of heritage. My example is the attitude to relics of the dead. Although it is assumed that most Indians cremate their dead, nevertheless the rituals and relics of the dead, have been treated in a variety of ways. In pre-historic times we have evidence of bones subsequent to death being buried in urns and graves. This continues to the Indus Civilization. This was strikingly different from contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations in that there is an absence of vast, richly decorated tombs. The Harappans buried their dead in graves, basically in simple pits together with a few small objects. Physical attention to the dead was not significant to Harappan religion. Graves of any kind among items of heritage provide an immediate proximity to the past. May I digress a little and quote my experience. I took some training in field archaeology in order to understand the technical terms used in archaeological reports. I was attached to a team at the site of Kalibangan, a Harappan city in northern Rajasthan. I was initially required to excavate a grave in the cemetery area.

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After I had gone down two feet or so I began to notice some ceramic objects barely visible beneath the soil. So I dug with immense care and soon a bowl took shape. I drew it out gently, and held it in my hands. My thought was that the last time someone had held this bowl, was four thousand years ago. It’s a strange feeling to be literally so close to the past through an artifact. This can also be an aspect of heritage. But to return to relics. The subsequent culture of the Vedas advocates cremation. They mention burial but associate it often with those who were not of the Vedic culture. For the brahmana death was polluting therefore cremation was preferred to burial. Nevertheless some ashes and relics after cremation were collected and ritually immersed in rivers. Death implied rebirth, in the theory of karma and samsara. All souls are reborn unless they have achieved liberation from rebirth. One’s actions in this life determine one’s future birth. This was said to be the theodicy of Hinduism. Yet the extensive Megalithic culture contemporary with the Vedas, and well-established across central India and the peninsula, focused on the grave. This enclosed human relics and was furnished with a few assorted objects. The site of the grave was invariably impressive, marked by enormous monolithic stones. These were brought undressed from a distance, then cut and shaped, and placed in various formations. The grave for these societies was not just an object but a significant statement of belief and way of life. Grave furnishings are generally unconnected with rebirth since they are intended to ease life after death. The Buddhists cremated their dead. In special cases, the relics were kept after cremation and buried in the base of stupas. The relics were worshipped, a reversal of the brahmanical attitude. Such reversals are expected among those who consciously opposed Brahmanical orthodoxy as did the Buddhists, Jainas and a few others. They came to be called nastikas, non-believers. Yet those brahmanas who became serious ascetics and took to samnyasa, asceticism, were not cremated but buried and that too in a sitting position. They maintained a difference even in death. Among those of other castes that were memorialized were the ones who died defending the village in a local battle or more often from cattle raiders, who raided frequently in some areas. The defenders were commemorated in memorials called hero-stones. These were slabs of stone with various symbols: the sun and the moon were signs of eternity; there were some markers of the hero’s religion; he is shown being taken to heaven to live permanently among the apsaras / the celestial maidens, for such heroes do not suffer rebirth; and the memorial also depicted him in action. The more elaborate hero-stones carry an inscription giving details. Just occasionally such a hero morphs into a deity, as is thought to have happened in the

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7 case of the god Vitthala as an incarnation of Vishnu, a vastly popular deity in Maharashtra. The sati-stones of a similar form commemorate a woman having become a sati, when she immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. When satis were deified and worshipped, these stones were placed either in a temple or in its vicinity. Significantly in neither case are these objects of heritage described in the Brahmanical social codes. Later in time, in the early second millennium AD a new category of temple was quietly added to the repertoire of temple forms. This category has not been widely discussed. It was referred to as the svarga-arohana prasada – literally, the temple of the ascension to heaven. These were elaborate structures or a part of a larger temple, and some had grave chambers for relics. They were built for royalty. Was the idea perhaps adapted from the Buddhist memorials? Islam resorted to burial. But more importantly for those that could afford it, elaborately decorated tombs and mausoleums were introduced. Individuals were being extolled through commemorating their death. In the Indian context were they also touching base with the Buddhist stupas, and the ascension-to-heaven temples? These became spectacular items of heritage. Possibly their success in encapsulating dynastic history with artistic brilliance might have influenced others to build their somewhat quieter versions of the same. I am referring to the chhatris, the memorials of Rajput rulers. The memorialization of death takes many forms that mutate with historical change. Some can be celebrating the rise of lesser social groups, others announcing the arrival of new peoples. The architecture of these chhatris has received attention. However, what has not been sufficiently recognized is that they also symbolize the close relationship between Rajputs and Mughals. The memorialization of death takes many forms that mutate with historical change. Some can be celebrating the powerful in society, some the rise of lesser social groups, and others announcing the arrival of new peoples. This range of attitudes to the relics of the dead clearly indicates the many strata of social and cultural layering. The link is often to the presence of dominant groups although subordinate groups may also feature. Who belongs to which can change over time as do the cultures they patronize. A single dominant pattern is neither uniform nor eternal. Until recent times the upper levels of society were in a better position to leave markers and records of their culture. Reading between the lines has been one way of trying to ferret out the culture of those of lesser status who have left no easily recognizable records. Archaeology of settlements provides some information. Any culture is of course better understood if one can follow its interactions with the rest of society.

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Cultures change within themselves in the course of evolving, but change also comes from external factors. The imprint of ecology, or the technological innovations introducing social and economic change can be crucial to the directions taken by a society. Contact with new people is usually explained through the political dynamics of conquest that introduces some new patterns of living. The perennial question is how victors look upon the vanquished and vice versa. But far more significant to the creation of cultures are the after-math of invasions in the form of trade and migration with long-lasting defining features. An illustration of this can perhaps be seen at the turn of the Christian era in Northwest India with the coming of Greco- Bactrian Hellenistic forms that gave us Gandhara art. We think of Alexander’s campaign taking Hellenistic culture to mid- Asia. A few new forms took root and gave shape to items of local culture. But interestingly the major cultural impact of the campaign in India was that it opened up even closer contact between Achaemenid Persia and Mauryan India. This led to increased familiarity between the cultures of the two empires. The Hellenistic forms – the Greek export variety – came in the subsequent period coinciding with a greater amalgam of the Hellenistic and the local, as is demonstrated in Gandhara art with its vast spread across the area. The Buddha in sculptured form has its own story involving many facets of heritage. There was a marked aesthetic difference between the image of the Buddha as an assumed portrait in Gandhara in North-west India, as compared to Mathura in the Doab, or further south in Amaravati. The difference was only too visible and led to sharp debates among art-historians of the past century. For those who believed in the Greek miracle as the gene of all that can be called civilized, Gandhara art was the pinnacle of the Indian aesthetic. Then came the nationalist reaction that dismissed it as hybrid, and alien to the Indian aesthetic. Although not central to the debate any longer, this difference finds an echo even in some contemporary discussion. And the story does not end there. The Buddha image was sculpted again later in South-east Asia, at Borobudur in Indonesia and in Cambodia. In a different direction, it traversed Central Asia and went from Dun Huang to Lung-men in China. Such long distance travels of the idea of an icon raises problems in our contemporary world about the nationality of the icon – if icons can have nationalities. Is it Indian, Indonesian or Chinese or whatever. The question raised presumes the need to define which aspect of the icon should be attributed to which culture? In effect this is a modern problem. It is an icon of the Buddha and for many centuries has been looked upon as just that.

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Contacts between South Asia and South-east Asia and Central Asia were initiated through trade but were linked to language and religion. Diverse parts of the one traded with diverse parts of the other. This is reflected in the styles of art and architecture especially in surviving temples. Together with the traders travelled brahmanas and Buddhists as well as builders of structures in the style of their homeland. The present disjuncture was the result of colonialism. South-east Asia was divided up between the European powers that colonized the area, each reading the local culture in a different way. Earlier contacts were discontinued and the research that emerged focused on the local region. The connection between what came from where, needs to be discovered, explored and examined if the history of contacts is to be known. In the history of rediscovery some new aspects of the two termini of cultures may surface. We already have an example of the diverse versions of the Rama- katha, the story of Rama. They provide insights into both the original culture and the host culture as well as the nature of the link between them. This enables an understanding of the cultural inter-face involved in the process. North-west India in the early second millennium AD, was host to Turkish, Afghan and Persian migrants from Central and Western Asia who came with new cultural items. We tend to explain all this as the result of invasions and leave it at that. But the flip side of invasions is that they facilitate trade and migrations, although there are more peaceful ways of encouraging these activities. They inevitably introduce cultural changes. This time round it was not the style of sculpture that changed but other aspects such as adapting languages to new thoughts that came into use together with religious beliefs and practices. My reference is less to the coming of formal Islam, on which so much has been written, and more to the creative and informal side of the infusion – the Sufis and such like. Attached to their teaching was the evolution of the language that carried the exposition of their ideas. When new ideas enter the indigenous language there is an induction of new words, or else a new meaning is given to existing words. A new word for God – rab – entered the Punjabi language. Derived from Arabic it had common currency among all the religions using Punjabi. Poets and teachers of the likes of Guru Nanak, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah and others composed primarily, not in Persian or Sanskrit, but in this commonly spoken language, popularizing a new idiom. This extended to other cultural aspects, with language articulating these ideas. As a form of heritage language reflects the ideas that have shaped it, but it also mutates over time.

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Language and religion have been used in the past to create fixed structures called civilizations. West Asia was home to Arabic and Islam, South Asia to Sanskrit and Hinduism. The structures were distinct and segregated, creating their singular and unique worlds. History and heritage were conditioned by the study of civilizations. Slowly history revealed that the structures were porous and inter- dependent. Manifestations of their arts, literature, philosophy and sciences revealed that they happily took from each other. Their uniqueness lay perhaps more in how they reformulated knowledge from other civilizations and advanced it, rather than in isolated discoveries. The combination of trade and language, the exchange of goods and ideas, points to a dramatic departure from the concept of self-sufficient civilizations. Let me illustrate this with a significant item of heritage that has not been properly acknowledged. I refer to the astrolabe. This was a navigational tool central to traversing the Indian Ocean. It emerged out of the intersection of what might be called Eurasian knowledge. Mathematicians and astronomers from locations across Asia and in the eastern Mediterranean, exchanged information, calculations, the experience of experiments and everything that goes into the making of knowledge. The same category of object, central to the heritage of many cultures is therefore inscribed in the languages of the cultures that used it locally. Understanding the context of the astrolabe is one of the keys to understanding medieval history. Presumably when the importance of the history of science to history is conceded, this kind of heritage will receive greater appreciation. This is when we recognize that our concept of civilization is more complex than we have assumed. We have allotted neat compartments to civilizations but there is now some rethinking about this model. Civilization has been defined by at least three basic components – territory, language and religion. Territories were demarcated. India referred to the territory of British India. The language and religion were those of the elite – Sanskrit and Hinduism. But even these few components are problematic, leave alone the ones that I haven’t mentioned. Do civilizations have frontiers and if so where do we place them? Do we include parts of South-east Asia or of Central Asia when speaking of Indian civilization, where both the languages and the religions from India became, for a sizeable period, essential parts of the host cultures? Or should we concern ourselves with seeing these as ways of diversifying a civilization and allowing it a virtually autonomous articulation? Should civilization be viewed from the heartland as we like to do – in this instance the middle Ganges plain or North-western India or the Tamil region? But heartlands are known to shift. Cartographic boundaries enclose and isolate lands.

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But the view from the rim, the frontier zones, is always more expansive, looking both inwards as well as outwards. We rush to apply labels of indigenous and foreign to various peoples, but we don’t stop to ask whether they were seen as such in past times, or whether they also saw themselves as belonging to these categories. Did the rulers of Cambodia when they appropriated the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, think of these as alien culture? Indian religions travelled to distant places over many centuries. Why was it that Buddhism caught the fancy of those living in central and east Asia, especially at a time when it was declining in India ? The concept of civilization does raise some problems. Heritage when associated with civilization is not static. We should perhaps investigate what has been replaced or discarded in this believed-to-be-unchanging continuity. Let me conclude by leaving you with some questions that need discussion. I have tried to show that heritage and history are closely intertwined. We think heritage is permanent but it need not be. The interpretation of heritage is open to change. New ways of looking at the one, makes an impact on the other. Fuller evidence of either would inevitably alter the emphases of our perceptions. Where heritage is invented we need to know why and how. Since we select our heritage are we aware of its context and why we are selecting it? And further, the even more pertinent question, who is doing the selecting? What is the nature of the claims that are being made and the legitimacy that is being sought by recourse to both heritage and history? This might reveal an even more complex network of heritage links with history and their meaning, more complex than we are currently aware of.

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