A BRIEF HISTORY of the INDIAN PEOPLES £Oniion HENRY FROWDE Oxford University Press Warehouse Amen Corner, E.C
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-WIJI ,i) \ f3& H ^^ A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES £oniion HENRY FROWDE Oxford University Press Warehouse Amen Corner, E.C. (Heir 2)orR MACiMILLAN & CO., 112 FOURTH AVENUE l'r,-,,.,re,l for Mr Wlllliuii UiK,.„ Huiit.Ts IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA opiyg^ -E^ss^nrrizT^^f^nrE^T^^x A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES By sir WILLIAM WILSON H.UNTER, K.C.S.L, CLE. M.A. OxoN., LL.D. Cambridge TWENTIETH EDITION REVISED. EIGHTIETH THOUSAND OXFORD : AT THE CLARENDON PRESS : 1893. Oxford HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY ^ >^' ^6 ^ PREFACE In this book I try to exhibit the growth of t\^e Indian peoples, to show what part they have played in the world's progress, and what sufferings they have endured from other nations. Short Indian histories, as written by Englishmen, usually dismiss the first two thousand years of their narrative in a few pages, and start by disclosing India as a conquered country. This plan is not good, either for Europeans in India or for the Indians themselves ; nor does it accord with the facts. As long as Indian history is presented to the Indian youth as nothing but a dreary record of disunion and subjection, our Anglo-Indian Schools can scarcely become the nurseries of a self-respecting nation. I have there- fore tried to put together, from original sources, a brief narrative of what I believe to be the true history of the peoples of India. These sources have been carefully examined in my larger works. This little book merely states, without discussing, the results arrived at by the labour of thirty years. I have tried to show how an early gifted race, ethnically akin to our own, welded the primitive forest tribes into settled communities. How the nobler stock, set free from the severer struggle for life by the bounty of the Indian soil, created a language, a literature and a religion, of rare stateliness and beauty. How the very absence of that strenuous striving with nature, which is so necessary a discipline for nations, unfitted them for the "rcat conflicts which await all races. How, 6 PREFACE. among the most intellectual class, the domestic and contemplative aspects of life overpowered the practical and the political. How Hinduism, while sufficing to organize the Indian communities into social and re- ligious confederacies, failed to knit them together into a coherent nation. India was destined, by her position, to receive the human overflow from the ancient breeding-grounds of Central Asia. Waves of conquest from the north were as inevitable in early times as are the tidal waves from the ocean at the present day. But such conquests, although rapid, were seldom enduring ; and although widespread, were never complete. The religious and social organization of Hinduism never succumbed. The greatest of India's conquerors, the Mughals, were being liemmed in by Hindu confederacies before their supremacy had lasted if centuries. So far as can now be estimated, the advance of the British alone saved the Delhi Empire from dismemberment by three Hindu military powers, the Marathas, Rajputs, and Sikhs. The British Rule has endured, because it is wielded in the joint interest of the Indian races. But while these thoughts have long been present in my mind, I have not obtruded them on my pages. For I hope that this little book will reach the hands of many who look on history as a record of events, rather than as a compendium of philosophy. The greatest service which an Indian historian can at present render to India, is to state the facts accurately and in such a way that they will be read. If my story is found to combine truth with simplicity, it will have attained all that I aimed at. If it teaches young Englishmen and young Natives of India to think more kindly of each other, I shall esteem myself richly rewarded. PREFACE TO THE TWENTIETH EDITION I AM grateful to my critics in many countries for the reception which they have given to this book. It has been translated into five languages, including a literal rendering in Burmese, and a poetical version in Urdu. The English issue alone has reached its seventy -eighth thousandth copy, and from i8(S6 onwards to last year the Calcutta University prescribed the work as a text- book for its Entrance Examination. The present edition incorporates suggestions kindly forwarded to me by Directors of Public Instruction, and other educa- tional authorities in India. To Mr. Griffith, formerly Director of Public Instruction in the North-Western Provinces, and to Professor A. A. Macdonell, Deputy Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, I am specially indebted for a revision of the earlier chapters. The whole proof- sheets have been kindly revised for me by Mr. Morse Stephens, B.A,, Lecturer on Indian History to the University of Cambridge. On my own part, no pains have been spared to render this edition an improvement on its predecessors. Although compressed into a small size, it essays to em- body the latest results of Indian historical research, and of that more critical examination of the Indian Records which forms so important a feature of recent Indian 8 PREFACE. work. My endeavour has been to present the history of India in an attractive and accurate narrative, yet within a compass which will place it in reach of the ordinary English and American reader, and render it available as a text-book for English and Indian colleges or schools. The Twentieth Edition includes the principal figures arrived at by the Indian Census of 1 89 1, and brings down the chronicle of events to the expansion of the Indian Legislative Councils by the Act of Parliament in 1892. VV. W. HUNTER. Oaken Holt, Cumnor, near Oxford, 1892. ; TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE The Country ....... 17-31 Situation and size of India, 17, 18; the four regions of which it is composed, iS ; first region —the Himalayas, 18-21 ; Himalayan river system—Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Jumna, 21, 22 ; second region —river plains of India, 22, 23; work done by the rivers—the Bengal Delta, 23-26 ; crops and scenery of the northern river plains, 26, 27; third region—the southern table-land, its scenery, rivers and products, 27-30; fourth region—Burma, 30, 31 materials for reference, 31. CHAPTER II. The People ....... 32-39 the statistics in General survey of people, 32, 33 ; population British and Native India, 33-35 ; density of population, 36; scarcity of large towns, 36 ; overcrowded and under-peopled Districts, 36, 37 ; distribution of the people, 37 ; nomadic system of husbandry, in ; 37 ; rise rents, 37, 38 ; abolition of serfdom, 38 four-fold divi- sion of the people, 38, 39 ; the two chief races of pre-historic India, 39 ; materials for reference, 39. CHAPTER III. The non-Aryans ...... 40-51 The non-Aryans or 'Aborigines,' 40; as described in the Veda, 40, 41 ; the non-Aryans at the present day, 41, 42; the Andaman islanders, 42 ; hill tribes in Madras, 42, 43 ; in the Vindhya ranges, 43 ; in the Central Provinces, 44 ; leaf-wearing tribe in Orissa, 44 ; Himalayan tribes, 44, 45 ; the Santals of Lower Bengal, their system of government history, &c., 45-47; the Kandhs of Orissa, ;;; lO TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGF. their customs, human sacrifices, &c., 47-49 ; the three great non- stocks, non-Aryans, Aryan 49 ; character and future of the 50 ; materials for reference, 51. CHAPTER IV. The Aryans in India ...... 52-73 The Aryan stock, 52 ; early Aryan conquests in Europe and Asia, 52 ; the Aryans in their primitive home in Western Asia, 53 ; the common origin of European and Indian religions, 53 ; and of the Indo-European languages, 53 ; Indo-Aryans on the march, 53, 54 the Rig- Veda, 54, 55 ; Aryan civilization in Veda, 55 ; Vedic gods, 55-57; a Vedic hymn, 57; Vedic literature, 58; the Brahmanas, 58, 59; the four castes formed, 59, 60 ; establishment of Brahman supremacy, 60 ; four stages of a Brahman's life, 60, 61 ; the modern Brahmans, 61, 62 ; Brahman theology —the Hindu Trinity, 62, 63 ; Brahman philosophy, literature, astronomy, medicine, music, lawf, poetry, 63-67 ; the epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, 67-71 ; later Sanskrit epics, 71 ; the Sanskrit drama and lyric poetry, 71, 72 ; materials for reference, 73. CHAPTER V. Buddhism in India (543 b.c. to looo a.d.) . 74-84 Rise of Buddhism, 74 ; life of Gautama Buddha, 74-76 ; Buddha's doctrines, 76, 77; missionary aspects of Buddhism, 77, 78; early Buddhist councils, 78 ; Asoka's conversion to Buddhism, and its establishment as a State religion, 78, 79 ; his rock edicts, 79 Kanishka's council, 79, 80 ; rivalry of Buddhism and Brahmanism, 81 Siladitya's council 80, ; (634 a.d.), 81 ; great Buddhist monastery of Nalanda, 82; victory of Brahmanism (700 to 900 a.d.), 82; Buddhism an exiled religion from India (900 A. D.), 82, 83; the Jains the modern successors of the ancient Buddhists, 83 ; influence of Buddhism on modern Hinduism, S3, 84; materials for refer- ence, 84. CHAPTER VI. The Greeks in India (327-161 b.c.) .... 85-S9 Early Greek references to India, 85 ; Alexander the Great's campaign in the Punjab and Sind, 85-87 ; his successors, 87 Chandra Gupta's kingdom in Northern India, 87, 88 ; Megasthenes' description of India (300 B.C.), 88, 89; later Greek invasions, 89; materials for reference, 89. TABLE OF CONTENTS. II CHAPTER VII. PAGE ScYTHic Inroads (about loo B.C. to 500 A. D.) . 90-93 The Scythians in Central Asia, 90 ; Scythic kingdoms in Northern India, 90, 91 ; Scythic races still in India, 91 ; wars of Vikramaditya against the Scythians (57 B.