The Wonder That Was India

Title: The Wonder That Was India

Author: A L Basham

Publisher: Picador India 2004 (First published 1954)

ISBN: 978-0-330-43909-1

Pages: 517

Re-reading Basham’s masterpiece after a gap of eight years was refreshingly enjoyable. If anyone asked me to name a work written by a foreigner which details India in such glorifying words, this book would definitely be my answer. Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914-1986) was an Englishman and a renowned scholar on Indian history, who taught at the Australian National University at Canberra. He was an Indophile and died in India in 1986 while on a fellowship at the Asiatic Society in Kolkata. He was amiable teacher who didn’t display the distancing feeling of English reserve to his students. This book is also gifted with a piercingly candid foreword by Thomas R Trautmann and was published as marking the golden jubilee of its first edition in 1954.

We’d wonder at the liberal dose of praise for India in the title itself, though after reading the foreword, we’d be sober to learn that the title was embarassing for the author himself and that it was thrusted upon him by the publisher, Sidgwick & Jackson. They had presented a series of such books on various ancient civilisations under such flattering titles such as The Glory That Was Greece, The Grandeur that was Rome, The Splendour that was Egypt and The Greatness that was Babylon! Extreme Indophiles will find the epithets as a setback, because before finding the other titles in the series, it would appear to be a classical case of a westerner acknowledging the true heritage (according to them) of India! Basham’s work is not exactly a historical one, as the history indeed narrated serves only as a backdrop to the main theme of the work, which is understanding the culture, traditions, language, literature and anything Indian. This book is literally an encyclopedia of Indian heritage and is to be treated as a handbook by a student. Also, it is intended mainly for the western student. Even though a vast array of subjects are covered but to no great detail, other than being a handbook, its utility is limited.

Indian civilisation was essentially unchanging and differs in that respect with the other great civilisations like Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. Until unearthed by modern archeologists, the peasants and laymen in those places (except Greece) didn’t have any idea of the treasures they were hiding beneath the soil. In India however, the people were quite convinced of the timelessness of their culture and the thread which connects the ancient society with the ultramodern Indian society of the 21^st century is unbroken, despite the tensile stresses from millennia of foreign invasions and migrations. India was also quite different in another undesirable way as the writers and poets of yesteryears were not interested in recording history as such, and was easily prone to panegyrics. No effort at discovering its history was made until the 18^th century, when the administrators and judges of the English East India Company evinced interest and started research on the subject. Sir William Jones and Charles Wilkins may be said to be the fathers of Indian historical research. Translations of Upanishads evoked interest iN Europe and the first university chair in Sanskrit was founded at the College de France in 1814, though the first such chair in England came about only in 1832 as the Boden Professorship at Oxford.

Basham describes the Harappan culture in great detail and in a flowering language, even though without solid foundations on credible reference materials. The speculative nature of the treatment can be deduced from the diagram of a Harappan town in which the buildings are clustered together on the sides of narrow streets, not unduly different from a modern Indian town of comparable dimensions. Since the book was first published in 1954 which was not far out in time with the archeological finds about this culture, we may wonder at how the author could cite with impunity the achievements and accolades he heaps on these ancients. Though the Indus script is still unreadable, the author asserts that the development of writing at the end of the Vedic period was influenced in no small measure by Mesopotamia and Persia due to the increased commercial contacts with them. Armed with this Brahmi script, the Aryans diffused into the Gangetic plane from the banks of the Indus. The utter disregard with which the author treats the ancient Dravidians who were inhabiting the southern peninsula is curious. They were declared to be in a very primitive, ruthless, blood-thirsty and even references cannibal feasts after victory in war. In a clear attempt to glorify the Aryans, he says that the Dravidians were mellowed under the constant interchange with the Aryan north.

Basham relies too heavily on Arthashastra to obtain the political philosophy reigning in that period which does not carry the rigour associated with a serious attempt at history. Arthashastra, though it provides valuable insight into the nature of the ancient state, its period of composition is still under dispute and hence relying on its flimsy evidence to conclude facts beyond doubt is a bit straining. The organization conceptualized in the work supposedly written by Kautilya seems to be a police state with overwhelming powers assumed by the monarchy. It specifies a night-time curfew which came into effect two-and-a-half hours after sunset and which ended at the same time interval before sunrise. Crime was rampant in the countryside, where the existence of large robber bands is attested from the time of the Buddha onwards. Hsuan Tsang gives the earliest account of hereditary bandits who robbed their victims and murdered them as a religious duty, like the later thugs. Trading caravans were heavily guarded, but were nevertheless frequently plundered by highwaymen. Thus ancient India was faced with a very serious crime problem, though the evidence of most of the foreign travellers suggest that the best ancient Indian kings managed to cope with it. Crime was suppressed through the local officers and garrison commanders, who had large staffs of police and soldiers as well as secret agents who served as detectives. Watchmen kept guard through the night in city and village, and in some medieval kingdoms, special officers (duhsaadhasaadhanika) were deputed to track down and apprehend bandits (p.116).

One of the striking features of Indian culture which is unique in the world is the caste system. The term, ‘caste’ was first coined by the Portuguese in 16^th century who coined the term ‘castas’ and it stuck. Slavery was present in the form of lower castes. Slave markets were established in the Vijayanagar empire in 16^th century, but such large scale slave trading is not mentioned in ancient texts.

The author seems to exceed the limits of reasonable comparison when he asserts that the philosophy of Madhva, the 13^th century philosopher who propounded dualism (dvaita) was influenced by Christianity, as “An interesting feature of Madhva’s theology is the important part played by the wind-god Vayu, the son of Vishnu, who is his agent in the world and has some of the features of the Holy Ghost of Christian theology. The resemblances of Madhva’s system to Christianity are so striking that influence, perhaps through the Syrian Christians of Malabar, is almost certain. The sharp distinction between God and the soul, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and the status of Vayu are obvious points of similarity” (p.336).

Glowing tributes are paid to the inventor of zero, as “The debt of the western world to India in this respect cannot be overestimated. Most of the great discoveries and inventions of which Europe is so proud would have been impossible without a developed system of mathematics, and this in turn would have been impossible if Europe had been shackled by the unwieldy system of Roman numerals. The unknown man who devised the new system was from the world’s point of view, after the Buddha, the most important son of India. His achievement, though easily taken for granted, was the work of an analytical mind of the first order, and he deserves much more honour than he has so far received.” (p.498).

Nowadays we encounter people who assume undue pride on the achievements of ancient India based upon interpreted results which have no relation to the original ideas, but wholly the handiwork of these people. One such thing is mentioned in the appendix on cosmology and geography. It is stated that Brahmagupta (7^th century C.E.) gave the circumference of the earth as 5,000 yojanas and assuming a yojana to be 7.2 kilometers, the value given is surprisingly close to the true figure. Wow! How he could find out such a thing, twelve centuries ago, when the telescope and modern instruments were not even invented? When we moves to Appendix 8 on Weights and Measures, it is seen that yojana was a variable measure in ancient India. Some authorities takes a figure of 8,000 dandas for the yojana (14.4 km) whereas in the Arthashastra, it is given as 4,000 dandas which is conveniently chosen by the author for providing the conversion factor for Brahmagupta’s number!

The book is an excellent one, but should not be depended for reading the history of the land. It is a veritable treasure trove of information on the religion, social behaviour, thought and institutions. Basham gives a prominent place for the discussion on religion, which covers almost 20% of the book. He seems to be in an admiring mood most of the time, when the subject under discussion does not warranty it. The justification of the Ordeal by ploughshare wherein a suspected person is forced to lick a red-hot ploughshare, based on psychological grounds is one such example.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star