The Hindus (118 page)

Perhaps we can ride into that future on the glorious horse that graces the jacket of this book. It is an example of the contribution of a foreign culture to Hinduism, since composite animals of this type come from Persia and entered India with the Mughals, and an example of the intersection of court and village, as the image traveled from the Mughal court in Delhi to a village in the state of Orissa, the source of this contemporary example. It is an image of women, almost certainly painted by a man. Depicting the god Krishna as the rider on the horse makes the Muslim image a Hindu image, and the rider on the horse is an enduring Hindu metaphor for the mind controlling the senses, in this case harnessing the sexual addiction excited by naked women. This multivocal masterpiece is, like Hinduism, a collage made of individual pieces that fit together to make something far more wonderful than any of them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is both from and for my students, who inspired me to write it, contributed many thoughts to it, responded incisively to draft after draft that I taught in classes for years and years, asked me questions I couldn’t answer, plied me with books and articles I would otherwise have missed, and constituted the ideal audience for it. A few of my students and ex-students also helped me more specifically, and I want to thank them (in alphabetical order) for their ideas: Manan Ahmed on the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals; Aditya Behl on Sufis; Brian Collins on the
Mahabharata;
Will Elison on the British; Amanda Huffer on contemporary India and America; Rajeev Kinra on the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals; Ajay Rao on South India; and Arshia Sattar on the
Ramayana.
Others did more extensive work on this book: Jeremy Morse foraged for elusive facts and texts and disciplined the computer when it acted up; Laura Desmond read early drafts of the whole text, talked over each chapter with me, made revolutionizing comments, and provided the background for the chapter on the
shastras
; and Blake Wentworth drew the rabbit on the moon (in the preface), hunted down obscure texts and illustrations, read several drafts of the chapter on bhakti, and taught me a great deal about South India. I am also grateful to Gurcharan Das and to Donna Wulff and her class at Brown University, for their detailed and candid responses to an early draft, and to Mike O’Flaherty for his fastidious proofreading.

Special thanks go to Scott Moyers for his canny advice about the book in its earliest stages; to Lorraine Daston for reading chapter after chapter and responding, as always, with brilliant ideas that would not have occurred to me in a thousand years; to Mike Murphy for the week at Big Sur in which I pulled it all together; to Vanessa Mobley, my patient and supportive editor at Penguin; and Nicole Hughes, who shepherded me, and the book, through the production labyrinth with tact and skill; to Emma Sweeney, my feisty and energizing agent; and to Richard Rosengarten, dean of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, for his unflagging interest and encouragement, his faith in me, and his generosity in providing time for me to write and funds for me to pay my student assistants and my special Indological editor, Katherine Eirene Ulrich.

Katherine Ulrich read several long, long drafts, catching many howlers as well as stylistic tics, pinpointing obscurities, suggesting books and articles, challenging unsupported assumptions, and sustaining me with no-nonsense, appreciative, and often hilarious comments. To cap it all, she gave me the image of the composite horse that appears on the jacket of this book, not just finding it but buying it and carrying it back from India for me. This book is dedicated to her and to William Dalrymple, who stood by me at the lecture in London in 2003 when someone threw an egg at me and who then threw down a gauntlet in his subsequent article about the need to tell the history of Hinduism in a new way. I am grateful to him not only for his encouragement but for the example that he sets in his own work, writing about the history of India in a way that brings it alive to readers of all backgrounds and raises the important issues that give such writing its life and meaning.

Truro, August 2008

CHRONOLOGY

c. 50,000 Stone Age cultures arise

c. 30,000 Bhimbetka cave paintings are made

c. 6500 Agriculture begins

c. 4000-3000 *Indo-European breaks up into separate

languages

c. 3000 Pastoral nomad societies emerge

c. 2500 Urban societies merge along the Indus

River

c. 2200-2000 Harappa is at its height

c. 2100-2000 Light-spoked chariots are invented

c. 2000-1500 The Indus Valley civilization declines

c. 1900 The Sarasvati River dries up

c. 1700-1500 Horses arrive in Northwest India

c. 1700-1500 Nomads in the Punjab compose the

Rig Veda;
horses arrive in Northwest India

c. 1350 Hittite inscriptions speak about horses

and gods

c. 1200-900 The Vedic people compose the
Yajur

Veda, Sama Veda,
and
Atharva Veda

c. 1100-1000 Vedic texts mention the Doab, the

area between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers

c. 1000 The city of Kaushambi in Vatsa is founded

c. 950 The
Mahabharata
battle is said to have taken place

c. 900 The city of Kashi (Varanasi, Benares) is founded

c. 900 The Vedic people move down into the Ganges Valley

c. 800-600 The Brahmanas are composed

c. 600-500 Aranyakas are composed

c. 500 Shrauta Sutras are composed

c. 500 Pataliputra is founded; Vedic peoples gradually move southward

c. 500-400 Early Upanishads are composed

c. 483 or 410 Siddhartha Gautama, the

Buddha, dies

c. 468 Vardhamana Mahavira, the Jina, founder of Jainism, dies

c. 400-100 Later Upanishads are composed

c. 400-100 Writing is used in the Ganges Valley

c. 327-325 Alexander the Great invades Northwest South Asia

c. 324 Chandragupta founds the Mauryan dynasty

c. 300
Grihya Sutras
are composed

c. 300-100
Dharma-Sutras
are composed

c. 300 Greeks and Ashoka mention Pandyas, Cholas, and Cheras

c. 265-232 Ashoka reigns

c. 250 The Third Buddhist Council takes place at Pataliputra

c. 185 The Mauryan dynasty ends

c. 185 Pushyamitra founds the Shunga dynasty

73 The Shunga dynasty ends

c. 166 BCE-78 CE Greeks, Scythians, Bactrians, and Parthians enter India

c. 300 BCE-300 CE The
Mahabharata
is composed

c. 200 BCE-200 CE The
Ramayana
is composed

 

 

c. 78-140 Kanishka reigns and encourages Buddhism

c. 100 Cankam (“assembly”) poetry is composed

c. 100 “Manu” composes his
Dharma-shastra

c. 150 The monuments of Bharhut and Sanchi are built

c. 150 Rudradaman publishes the first Sanskrit inscription, at Junagadh

c. 200 Kautilya composes the
Artha-shastra

c. 300 Vatsyayana Mallanaga composes the
Kama-sutra

320-550 The Gupta dynasty reigns from Pataliputra

350-750 The early Puranas are composed

c. 375 The Pallava dynasty is founded

c. 400-477 Kalidasa writes Sanskrit plays and long poems

405-411 Faxian visits India

c. 450 The
Harivamsha
is composed

455-467 The Huns attack North India

c. 460-477 The Vakataka dynasty completes the

caves at Ajanta

c. 500-900 Nayanmar Shaiva Tamil poets live

550-575 Kalachuris create the cave of Shiva at Elephanta

c. 550-880 Chalukya dynasty thrives

c. 600-930 Alvar Vaishnava Tamil poets live

606-647 Harsha reigns at Kanauj

630-644 Xuan Zang (Hsuan Tsang) visits India

650-800 Early Tantras are composed

c. 650 Arabs reach the Indus

711-715 Arabs invade Northwest India

750-1500 Medieval Puranas are composed

765-773 Raja Krishna I creates the Kailasa temple to Shiva at Ellora

c. 788-820 Shankara, nondualist philosopher, lives in Kerala

c. 800 Manikkavacakar composes the
Tiruvacakam

c. 880-1200 The Chola Empire dominates

South India

900 and 1150 The Chandellas build the temples at Khajuraho

c. 975-1025 Abhinavagupta, Shaiva philosopher, lives in Kashmir

1001 Mahmud of Ghazni (979-1030) raids North India

1021 Ghaznavid (Turkish) Muslim capital

established at Lahore

c. 1056-1137 Ramanuja, qualified Dualist philosopher, lives in Tamil country

1192-1206 Muhammad of Ghor establishes Ghorid capital at Delhi

c. 1200 Jayadeva lives in Bengal

1210-1526 The Delhi Sultanate is in power

1325-1351 Muhammad bin Tughluq reigns

c. 1200 Early orders of Sufis arise in North India

c. 1200 Virashaivas, including Basava, live in South India

1238-1258 Narasimhadeva I builds the temple of Konarak

c. 1238-1317 Madhva, dualist philosopher, lives in Karnataka

c. 1300 Shri Vaishnavas split into Cats and Monkeys

c. 1336-1565 Vijayanagar Empire is in its prime

c. 1398-1448 Kabir lives

1399 Timur, ruler of Central Asia, destroys Delhi

1469-1539 Guru Nanak founds Sikhism in the Punjab

1486-1533 Chaitanya lives

1498-1597 Mirabai lives

1526 Babur founds the Mughal Empire

1530-1556 Humayun reigns

1532-1623 Tulsidas lives

1556-1605 Akbar reigns

1600 (December 31) Queen Elizabeth I charters the

British East India Company

1605-1627 Jahangir reigns

1608-1649 Tukaram lives

1622-1673 Kshetrayya lives

1627-1658 Shah Jahan reigns

1658-1707 Aurangzeb reigns

1713-1719 Farrukhsiyar reigns

1750-1755 The Bengal Famine causes ten million deaths

1756 The Black Hole of Calcutta causes dozens of deaths

1757 The British East India Company defeats the Muslim rulers in Bengal

1757 First wave of British Raj begins

1765 Robert Clive becomes chancellor of Bengal

1772-1833 Rammohun Roy lives; 1828 founds Brahmo Samaj

1782-1853 Sir Charles James Napier lives

1813 Second wave of British Raj begins

1824-1883 Dayananda Sarasvati; 1875, founds Arya Samaj

1857-1858 The Rebellion, formerly known as the Mutiny, takes place

1857 Third wave of the British Raj begins

1858 The British viceroy officially replaces Mughal

rule (and the East India Company)

1863-1902 Swami Vivekananda lives

1865-1936 Rudyard Kipling lives

1869-1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,

known as Mahatma Gandhi, lives

1861-1941 Rabindranath Tagore lives

1875 Helena Blavatsky founds the Theosophical Society

1893 Vivekananda attends the World’s Parliament

of Religions in Chicago

1897 Vivekananda founds the Vedanta movement in America

1896-1977 A. C. Bhaktivedanta, Swami Prabhupada (founder of ISKCON), lives

1918-2008 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (founder of Transcendental Meditation) lives

1919 Amritsar massacre takes place

1931-1990 Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) lives

1947 Independence; Partition

1970- Hindus in Europe, United States, and

Canada start building temples

GUIDE TO PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING
OF WORDS IN SANSKRIT AND OTHER
INDIAN LANGUAGES

Sanskrit vowels are pronounced very much like Italian vowels. The aspirated consonants should be pronounced distinctly:
bh
as in “cab horse,”
dh
as in “mad house,”
gh
as in “dog house,”
ph
as in “top hat,” and
th
as in “goat herd.”

Traditionally, scholars have used diacriticals to distinguish between long and short vowels and among three different forms of
s
in Sanskrit, as well as to mark other nice points of the orthography of Sanskrit and other Indian languages that are essential for the citation of texts. Increasingly, scholars writing for a wider audience that is blissfully ignorant of any Indian language have omitted the diacriticals and changed two of the
s
’s to
sh
’s (leaving the third an
s tout court
), and this book follows that practice. This may result in some confusion for readers contemplating the spellings of certain words in this book, such as the name of the gods Shiva and Vishnu, and noting that they are sometimes spelled elsewhere—in works cited in my text or bibliography—as Siva and Visnu. I hope and trust that readers will be able to deal with this conflict, and also to distinguish the Kali Age (Kali with short
a
and short
i
) from the goddess Kali (Kālī with long
a
and long
i
).

Many words in modern Indian languages derived from Sanskrit drop the final short
a
of the Sanskrit, so that Rama sometimes becomes Ram, Lakshmana becomes Lakshman, Hastinapura becomes Hastinapur, and Vijayanagara becomes Vijayanagar. (“Dharma” often becomes “dharam.”) As for the British distortions of words in Sanskrit and other Indian languages (Hindoo, suttee), they are often bizarre but usually recognizable.

ABBREVIATIONS