Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (43 page)

We have seen that the process of assimilation with various local groups continued well into the second millennium AD, and seems to have involved a kaleidoscopic succession of languages in some parts of north and central India. One of the most memorable moments, at least politically, in this long series of shifting patterns occurred about 260 BC, when Aśoka conquered the eastern kingdom of Kalinga (approximately the area of modern Orissa). This conquest was a high-water mark for imperial unity in India, one not to be exceeded for two thousand years. Aśoka wrote this of the experience all over the rest of his empire (in Magadhi, Aramaic and Greek): ‘In the eighth year of his reign, Piyadasi conquered Kalinga. 150,000 people were captured there and deported, 100,000 others were killed and almost as many perished. Since that time, pity and compassion gripped him, and he was overwhelmed by that…’

This compassion put an end to his wars of conquest, and made him turn instead to the propagation of
dhamma
(Sanskrit
dharmā
), variously translated as ‘virtue’, ‘duty’ or ‘the Law’. It is said that he stood on the hill at Dhauli, and saw the Daya river flow red with blood. Writing specifically to the Kalinga population on a rock inscription at that spot, he says, instead of recounting the campaign: ‘All men are my children. Just as, in regard to my own children, I desire that they may be provided with all kinds of welfare and happiness in this world and in the next, the same I desire also in regard to all men. But you do not understand how far my intention goes in this respect. A few among you perchance understand it but even such of you understand it partly and not fully…’

In fact, it remains obscure what, if any, linguistic effect Aśoka’s conquest had on Kalinga. It is just too long ago, and too much has happened since.

Orissa is now a mainly Aryan-speaking area (with a strong sprinkling of unrelated
ādivāsi
, i.e. ‘aboriginal’, languages): the earliest inscriptions in its language date from the tenth century AD. The language is Oriya, closely related to the Bengali spoken farther north; but little is known of its earlier history, and it has been suggested that Orissa was still non-Aryan even in the seventh century AD.
²⁵
Xuan-Zang recognised at least three distinct countries in this region:
U
ra
(the origin of the name Orissa), which he said had ‘words and language different from Central India’,
Kōnyōdha
, ‘with the same written characters as those of mid-India, but language and mode of pronunciation quite different’, and
Kalinga
, where ‘the language is light and tripping, and their pronunciation is distinct and correct. But in both particulars, that is, as to words and sounds, they are very different from mid-India.’
²⁶
This kind of evidence is just one example of what makes it so difficult to depict in any detail the language map of India in past centuries.

Sanskrit influence permeated farther south, with the cultural spread of Hinduism, eventually saturating with borrowed words three of the major non-Aryan languages, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Tamil, in the extreme south-east, was less affected linguistically, although its society was ultimately no less Hindu. And besides this gradual export of words, there had also been, in the middle of the first millennium BC, a major transplant of a whole community, with its Aryan language, to the extreme south. This accounts for the presence of Sinhala in Śri Lanka. The history of the movement of people that brought this language is not documented, but it may be reflected through legend in the epic
Ramayana
, which climaxes in a military expedition to this island.
^*
About two hundred years later, in the late third century BC, the links between Śri Lanka and the Aryan north were reinforced when Aśoka sent his son Mahinda to the island as a Buddhist missionary, so founding the Theravada school of Buddhism which has endured to this day.

The move to Śri Lanka may be seen as the beginning of Sanskrit’s spread beyond the shores of India. This seaborne expansion makes its significance far greater to the global story, for Sanskrit is the first example in history of a language travelling over a maritime network, through the establishment of trade and cultural links with peoples on the other side. In this, it can be seen as a precursor of the spread of the western European languages in the last five hundred years.

By the middle of the first millennium AD, Sanskrit was established as the hallmark of Indianised civilisation, all over South-East Asia, including the main islands of modern Malaysia and Indonesia. There is no clear record of how this came about. But one feature of the spread of Sanskrit is clear: it was not a military expansion. There was never a warlike move by Indians into Asia, even of the typical short-term Indian empires, which even in north India never seemed to last more than a very few generations.

But if we leave aside military ambition, the motives that have been suggested for the Indian successes exhaust every other possibility: refuge from imperial wars from the Mauryas and Aśoka onward, piratical raids, a spirit of adventure, the peaceful pursuit of trade, or a desire to spread sacred learning, of Buddhism certainly, and perhaps earlier even of Hinduism.
^*

Each of these has something to recommend it, and they are not mutually exclusive. It must mean something, for example, that the name for India current among Malays and Cambodians was ‘Kling’, that is Kalinga, the coastal realm in eastern India bloodily conquered by Aśoka. There, and especially in its northern region
Tāmralipta
(’copper-smeared’, modern Tamluk in West Bengal), there was a tradition of producing
sārthavāhā
or
sādhava
, ‘merchants’, who were easily confused with
sāhasikā
, ‘pirates, buccaneers’, proverbial in Sanskrit for their bravery, as well as violence. In the treasury of practical wisdom from the sixth century AD,
Pañcatantra
, it is remarked:

The popular
Jātaka
tales of previous lives of the Buddha, composed around this time, are also full of merchants who seek wealth in
Suva
abhūmi.