Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas

Title: Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas

Author: Romila Thapar

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012 (First published 1961)

ISBN: 978-0-19-807724-4

Pages: 402

An exhaustive treatment of Ashoka and the Mauryan empire from one of the leading historians of the country. It is always a delight to read the work of a master. Even a cursory look at the long list of footnotes and references suffice to support the claim of erudition. And she has chosen an apt subject to apply her supreme analyzing skills. Every Indian knows about Ashoka in one form or another. Most of us have heard about him through childhood legends while some has read about his times in history. Still another set might have wondered how the national symbol of India came about in the present shape. In any case, the tradition of Ashoka transcends centuries of history and still touches the Indian psyche. Professional historians from abroad had also been mesmerized by his legend and left wonderstruck at the unique aspects which are not witnessed anywhere. Have you ever heard of a king expressing remorse at the terrible bloodshed and dislocation caused to virtuous people in a battle he had actually won? This book answers several questions in the minds of enthusiasts and provides material for further research into the old king’s story.

Thapar develops history into the nature of science. She begins with historiography, the method by which later historians make out a logical sequence of events from available data. Ashoka was a prolific issuer of edicts in the form of rocks and pillars, the remains of which still exists. Being a pragmatic ruler he employed scripts which are comprehensible locally, even when the language was Prakrit, a popular form of Sanskrit. Brahmi and Kharoshti scripts are used at many places. In the North West, which possessed a mixed population of Greeks and Persians, owing to the invasion of Alexander the Great hardly half a century earlier, the language of inscription was Greek and Aramaic. The edicts were usually a manifesto of the king as he declared it to his subjects rather than decrees. However, the historians are never certain whether Ashoka always practiced what he preached. Another source of information are the Buddhist texts compiled around the period, most notably Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa of Sri Lanka and the works of Taranatha of Tibet. India’s first ever historical text, Kalhana’s Rajatarangini composed in the 12^th century in Kashmir also contains brief mention of the ancient emperor. However the Buddhist texts follow a fixed pattern of demonizing Ashoka before his conversion to the faith and beatifying him after it. They call him Kamashoka for his lust, Chandashoka for his cruelty and Dharmashoka when he followed the Buddhist path. One thing is certain from all these tomes. Ashoka was indeed a hardy ruler during the initial stages of his reign. Fratricidal warfare is mentioned in the struggle for the throne. It is equally certain that there was no overnight conversion after the Kalinga war as is made out in popular accounts. His change was gradual and without doing away with his imperial obligations which sometimes demanded violence or coercion. The historian has an unenviable task of separating wheat from the chaff by going about carefully with a sieve on the available texts.

A lengthy discussion on the economy and polity of the Mauryan state is presented but almost all of it taken from Arthashastra. Apart from references in some edicts and quotations from Megasthenes’ Indica there is no other work to rival Kautilya’s masterpiece on statecraft. Thapar’s handling of the subject is masterly and illustrates the rudiments of many modern institutions taking shape during Ashoka’s enlightened reign. Mauryan administration and foreign policy is also commendable, the most noted success of it evident in Sri Lanka. Though it is clear that Buddhism in Lanka preceded Ashoka, it was during his reign at Magadha that he could persuade Tissa, the ruler of the island kingdom to embrace the religion through a mission by his son/brother Mahinda.

Ashoka’s rock and pillar edicts constitute an archaeological curiosity in the form of establishing literary continuity over two millennia. The script has charged but only in form. The rules of combining vowels with consonants remain the same and illustrates the umbilical cord shared by the modern Indian languages with the matriarch of them all, Sanskrit. The author painstakingly goes through each edict and brings out the significance of each and the neat pattern in which all of them mesh together. The edicts tell the story of a broadminded monarch illuminating the path of Dhamma (which may loosely be translated as righteousness in English). But Ashoka’s Dhamma is not that of Buddhism, even though he was an ardent adherent of the religion. In a path breaking initiative that was to serve as a beacon to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-linguistic conglomeration that crystallized as modern India, Ashoka propounded the path of tolerance and introduced Dhamma which he distilled out from the essence of all sects prevailing in his kingdom. He was not a puritan in the sense that he didn’t advocate impossible goals. Slaughter of animals was proscribed in the edicts, but elsewhere the king accedes to the killing of two peacocks and a deer daily in the royal kitchen, with a caveat that such practices must stop in the near future. Ashoka’s Dhamma was well suited for the socio-political transition that was going on in Magadha. Pastoral nomadism was giving way to rural agriculture and the social tensions engendered by agglomeration of people in villages and towns could only be addressed through the all-encompassing mantle of Dhamma. We may note here the word Dhamma is a Prakrit version of the Sanskrit term Dharma. Thapar skillfully assesses the geographic extent of the Mauryan Empire which reached its zenith under Ashoka by the presence of edicts. In the North West, it included Taxila and in the rugged South, we may suspect that it girdled all the provinces judging from the awe-stricken tone exhibited by Tamil inscriptions of the period.

Thapar’s assessment of the reasons behind the empire’s downfall in uncharacteristically wide off the mark and displays lack of focus and anachronistic assignment of reasons. The dynasty lasted barely 50 years after Ashoka’s death. The reasons include a highly centralized administration falling into the hands of weak rulers, foreign aggression in the form of Bactrian Greeks from the North West, resentment among Brahmins as a direct result of the state policy of patronizing Buddhism and public insurrection owing to a very high land tax of 25%. The most astonishing fact is that Thapar assumes lack of national awareness and the non-development of the idea of the superiority of the state over that of king. This is incomprehensible coming from an eminent historian of the stature of Romila Thapar. The concept of states or nation was far ahead in future and there is no way the Magadha of 200 BCE could get stimulated by post-Renaissance European concepts of the 1700s CE. The reasons cited are so broad based that if we take the historian’s argument at face value, we also have to accept the same justifications for the downfall of any reign in ancient or medieval history.    

The book is a hoard of information comprehensively collected from numerous sources. Six appendices provide immense value to the narrative and give a detailed translation of every edict issued by Ashoka. The book was originally published in 1961 and a thoughtful ‘Afterword’ summarizes and brings the reader up to date on the progress obtained in the intervening period. Maps and monochrome plates provided along with the text is highly appreciated in terms of utility. Kautilya’s Arthashastra is a priceless document in learning about the Maurya period, but controversies exist between scholars regarding the historical date of the tome. Thapar subjects this to a careful analysis in one of the appendices. What can be summarized in a nutshell is the vivid image of Ashoka as a man that is conveyed to us through the edicts and mentions in contemporary texts.

The book is thoroughly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Moon Dust

Title: Moon Dust – In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth

Author: Andrew Smith

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2006 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 978-0-7475-6369-3

Pages: 349

Landing men on the moon was perhaps the greatest scientific and technological accomplishment ever achieved by the United States. Definitely this was something that scooped unequivocal praise from anywhere around the globe. For a brief moment, the world watched with bated breath the unsure steps of two of their brothers on the lunar landscape. It was an exalted moment which comes rarest in history when the world brushed aside its inter-tribal rivalries and anxiously looked on mankind’s destiny being rewritten on the wastelands of the moon. Armstrong’s small step was a giant leap for engineering and technology for a few decades to come. Judging from the cover (which you shouldn’t!) Andrew Smith’s book purported to tell the story of this heroic project, but turned out to be nothing more than interviews and chitchats with the astronauts who were part of the team. Not all of them were lucky enough to step on the lunar surface, but still, their inputs are as valuable as any. The author is English, though he was born and brought up in California. He is a journalist and is part of many influential series of articles and programs. He now lives in England.

Landing on the moon and walking on its surface seemed to have changed the lives and careers of the astronauts who performed this enviable feat. When they returned home, they were raised by the public to dizzying levels of celebrity status which most of them were unable to cope with. Then there were the hierarchies to contend with. NASA followed a fixed pattern of sending three people in each of its six successful missions, but landing only two of them. The unfortunate third guy would be sitting on a command module orbiting the moon 64 km overhead his colleagues making exultant steps on the cratered ground. They found it irksome to reconcile themselves with the hard reality that their experience was forever doomed to pale in significance to those astronauts on whom moon dust stuck to. Frustration and disappointment followed them in their careers. Even those who stepped on the lunar surface found their aura gradually wearing thin over the years. Many of them managed to land up in glamorous assignments or lucrative business deals, but eventually became disoriented. Some of them succumbed to booze and psychedelic drugs, some others followed the path of mysticism by professing pseudo-scientific but catchy phrases like Noetic sciences. Those who veered off the path of science caused more harm to the cause by pandering to the credulity of people to believe whatever the astronauts had to say.

The author’s half-critical and humorous assessment of the space race erupted between the U.S. and the erstwhile Soviet Union brings to focus an aspect which was blurred from the realm external to the scientific point of view. Russia inaugurated the space race with launching of Sputnik in 1957. Manned flight put them far ahead when the Americans’ early starts were total failures. Then came John F Kennedy, the President who was the most over-rated of the century, with his audacious declaration that the U.S. is bent on putting a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of 1960s. NASA devised a three-stage program to achieve this objective. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions were hatched to reach the target though with disasters trailing the program like the devastating fire on Apollo 1. Finally, on July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the moon from the module Apollo 11, and Armstrong’s quip that it was ‘one small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind’ is one of the most famous quotes in the English language. The original plan was to launch successive missions till Apollo 20, but after the initial euphoria settled down, funds were hard to come by, contributed in no small measure by the debacle of America’s involvement in Vietnam, and three of the last flights were cancelled. Apollo 13 had to abort the travel midway due to an explosion in one of the oxygen cylinders. Thus a total of six successful missions produced twelve men who walked on the moon. A list of the people who landed there and the missions are as follows.

Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

Apollo 12, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean

Apollo 14, Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell

Apollo 15, David Scott and James Irwin

Apollo 16, John Young and Charles Duke

Apollo 17, Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt

The much talked about ‘Moon Hoax theory’ finds mention in the book, with a judgmental detachment that consigns it to the waste bin. And quite right too, since the hypothesis was first put forward by greedy crooks intent on publicity and circulated by shortsighted and self-important people. It is astonishing to see people deriving devious satisfaction by blindly denying one of science’s greatest achievements ever. There is a clear and logical argument put forward by Smith towards the loons postulating that the moon landing was a stage-managed photo shoot organized by NASA. We know that the Soviets lost the race to the moon and naturally, they would’ve came out with proof exposing the trick, if ever there was one. The hoax theorists usually mention Armstrong’s reticence to talk about his experience on the moon as evidence that he had not been there. This reasoning is silly and more flimsy than the senselessness of the original claim. Armstrong was an extremely reserved person loath to speak on intimate terms with anybody as the author had found out to his dismay. Smith couldn’t manage an interview with the man who took the small step!

Smith’s narrative is thoroughly off-putting because of a myopic vision and inclination to cater to the interests of American readers alone. The casual way in which he sets about interviewing his subjects and recording off-the-cuff remarks do not carry the weak central theme to any lofty heights. Such a style only helps to convey an impression that the author is more of a journalist for a Sunday edition newspaper than a serious writer of science. The book is littered with cultural icons appealing only to American youth of a previous generation in the form of music, special interest books, TV programs and authors which don’t resonate at all with an international audience. The book is plain boring on such occasions. What can you do otherwise, about terms like Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Monroe, Dean and Brando, Kerouac, On the Road, West Side Story, Jimmy Porter, John Osborne and Look Back in Anger, all appearing in the same short paragraph (p.127)? And that was just a mild example!

It took great perseverance and legendary patience on the face of frustrating odds for the astronauts to victoriously make their way to the moon and back. Similar is the fate of a reader who dares to go through this book. With endless, and also pointless interviews, the unfortunate reader is forced to plough through the uninteresting and inconsequential narrative. One gets the impression at the end that even though the author had had a good time traveling widely in America and Europe for researching the book, the audience suffered in agonizing drudgery. While at it, it may also be remarked that there does not seem to be much research behind the book anyway other than the author’s chats with his subjects and their family members.

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star

Billions and Billions

Title: Billions & Billions – Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

Author: Carl Sagan

Publisher: Random House, 1998 (First published 1997)

ISBN: 0-345-37918-7

Pages: 275

Ever the popularizer of science, Sagan’s works transcend the barrier of time that separates us from his original publications. In science, a decade is an eternity, particularly in the fast paced area of study defined by astrophysics. Naturally, it was with some wariness that I took this volume from the library shelf. But it soon delightfully proved me wrong. Sagan’s insight and intuition beat time to function as beacons of information and wisdom for many generations to come. The author was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell University. He played a leading role in the U.S. space program since its inception. As a scientist trained in both astronomy and biology, he has made seminal contributions to the study of planetary atmospheres, planetary surfaces, the history of the earth and exobiology. Recognitions and awards accrued to him are enormous in that he had received 22 honorary degrees from universities worldwide. Though he is no more, his incomparable style of writing containing clear threads of wit and reason continue to inspire young minds wherever they are responsive. This book first appeared in 1997, but this unique set of 19 essays categorized in three parts justify their right to prolonged existence through the masterly analysis of scientific ideas expressed to illuminate even difficult concepts in a way that can be appreciated by any class of readers.

One of the irritating things about some scientists is their open espousal of superstition and irrational belief. We have heard about religious rituals being followed before the launch of satellites or space vehicles, the wearing of magical charms even by noted scientists and the general drive of people to observe auspicious time for doing important things. Sagan establishes that European science was also not immune to this corrosive effect of religiosity with a good example. When Isaac Newton, generally believed to be the greatest scientist ever lived, discovered the laws of gravity, he correlated the findings with the observed pattern of planets in the solar system. It may be recalled that all planets revolve around the sun in more or less the same plane somewhat like a flat disk. Newton was wonderstruck at this discovery and asserted that god has made them so. The great scientist could not think about any way other than divine tinkering to explain the observation of flat orbital paths. Nearly a century later, other less credulous scientists of the genre of Pierre Simon de Laplace explained the fact convincingly and with the help of no other theorem than Newton’s own – on gravity! The clarification is not very abstract and goes like this. A cloud of dust and gas from which planetary systems form begins to contract due to inherent gravity because of matter in the cloud. As the particles fly inwards, it starts to rotate and there is contraction along the axis of rotation due to gravity, but along the plane of rotation, contraction is further limited by angular velocity. A simple application of the formula resulted in a lucid recounting of the phenomenon only when we determined not to call in an external, divine entity.

The detailed chapter on global warming is more of a warning in nature than actually providing any statistics for the argument. Human-induced climate change may well be true, but judging from responses to the theory from scientists themselves, it seems that the issue is far from settled once and for all. While guarding against undue skepticism which takes too long to provide a fitting response to the problem at hand, the public need to get substantial evidence for the warming effect – not only warming, but that it is caused by human effort. Sagan’s attempt falls much short of this goal. He lists out a long roll call of the grave dangers of global warming such as frequent occurrences of extremely inclement weather, rise in sea levels caused by polar ice melting and expansion of seawater due to warming and desertification of prime agricultural land. However, going by the author’s famous dictum that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof’, his own chapter is found wanting in providing convincing proof for its claims. This is particularly relevant, as the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been found goofing up the records many times in the past. The society must take this very seriously as only a cursory look at the fearful scenarios presented by the author will goad us to take handle warming in right earnest.

The book demands attention because of the sad fact that this is the author’s final work, before he succumbed to cancer. In a dispassionate way that is the envy of any writer, Sagan himself describes the slow descent to nothingness. His final chapter is continued, or culminated rather, in an epilogue by his wife and author, Anne Druyan. Sagan called for wisdom to be our legacy for future generations who are to follow in our wake. We see many philosophers and thinkers on atheistic and agnostic lines meekly submitting to expectations of divine help or prayer on their deathbeds or while they are terminally ill. No such dillydallying ever occurred in the case of Carl Sagan who stood firm in his belief that one should adhere always to the truth than one which only made us feel better for a short time.

The author was much concerned about the nuclear arms race that was an inheritance of the cold war era. We may feel that those chapters dealing with this grave issue of a previous generation as somewhat dated. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the grim reality that what the author cautions against, or what he ardently tries to open our eyes to, are issues that are relevant to humanity of all ages, till such time as the urge to violently win over our fellow brethren exists in us. While being a steadfast non-believer, the author does not fail in estimating the impact of religion and its leaders on the populace. We see in the text his enthusiastic turn of mind to go the extra mile to claim religion as a fellow traveler in the fight against environmental pollution. On matters of such grave potential as global warming caused by increased levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the hole in ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbons, the author appeals to precincts sacred to religion in a bid to enlist their support for his crusade for making the world safer, cleaner and healthier.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Soldier Sahibs

Title: Soldier Sahibs – The Men Who Made the North - West Frontier

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: Abacus, 2009 (First published 2000)

ISBN: 978-0-349-11456-9

Pages: 341

We are so used to look at the map of the Indian Subcontinent in our everyday lives that we seldom pause to reflect upon the events that made the boundaries between groups of people who loathed each other worse than they did locusts. Particularly rugged seems the terrain adjoining Afghanistan that we ought to salute the brave people who claimed the country and drew boundaries roughly in the same shape as we see today. Charles Allen tells the story of how the North – West frontier was made by subjugating the people with battles, ruses, gifts and providing them with occasions for plunder by taking them along for raids on other people. The East India Company officials who carved out the frontier tract for their company and the kingdom assumed legendary status among the natives with their acts of valour and steadfastness on the face of adversity. Though the subject matter covers only two decades in the temporal sphere, the stories are action-packed and full of anecdotes not heard before with the reading of textbooks on history. The author was born in India, where six generations of his family served under the British Raj. A writer and historian specializing in colonial and military subjects, Charles Allen is the author of several books including Tales from the Dark Continent, The Search for Shangri-La and most recently, Kipling Sahib, a biography of Rudyard Kipling in India.

The author presents the story of how the British ended up subduing the fiercely independent and war-like tribes of Afghans, Afridis and other fringe clans steeped in medieval notions of honour and blood feuds. The plot begins with the First Afghan War (1839) and goes on to the 1857 War through a brief period of consolidation of the Sikh kingdom in whose favour the British first tried to keep the frontier tribes in check. After the Pyrrhic victory in Kabul, Afghanistan was handed back to the rebels in return for nominal allegiance. The company played on the aspirations of the courtiers of Raja Dulip Singh’s court who ascended the throne as a boy upon the death of his father Maharaja Ranjit Singh who was also called the Lion of Punjab. Allen’s elaboration of the events is too transparent for the readers to fail to identify the wily tactic of ‘Divide and Rule’ which underlay all the company’s maneuvers. To conquer the Afghani Muslims, they sought the alliance of Sikh soldiers and Hindu sepoys. To quell the Sikhs who rose up in revolt during the Sikh wars, the company cleverly used the Muslim tribesmen and Hindu sepoys. And finally, when the Hindu sepoys began the Mutiny in 1857, it was the turn of the Sikhs and Muslim frontier tribesmen to act as right-hand men to the British. The seeds of discord among the three religions, though definitely not sown originally by the British were watered and nourished well by them to reap the poisoned fruit of partition nearly a century later. The author however, treats all aspects of the issue as the natural course of action suggesting itself worthwhile as seen by the alien conquerors.

Of the many soldiers who assumed administrative positions in the frontier government and eulogized by Allen, only a couple - John Nicholson and James Abbott - seems to have acquired a legacy still flourishing in folk mind. Nicholson established the company’s authority with an iron fist, giving scant regard to British law or civilized conventions. Flogging and hostage taking to punish incursions by other members of the tribe were common. Accounts of his haughtiness and vile temper spread along with tales of admiration engendered by the respect commanded by people who are feared and obeyed absolutely by others. Wildly exaggerated accounts of his system of justice compared him with none other than King Solomon of the fables. The inherent nature of Indians to worship people of authority came out in the open in the form of a sect of Nikal seynis (the cult of Nicholson) who worshipped him as an incarnation of godhead! Even today, in the regions in which he ruled, the legend he spawned has not lost its splendour. A question of irritation shot out by the people in Bannu even now is “who do you think you are? Nicholson?”. Another such figure was James Abbott who commanded immense respect from his subjects and lived among them as one of them. There were instances when Abbott parted ways with his British masters to uphold a word of honour he made to the natives. The people were really fascinated with this young soldier and his name is preserved in the appellation of Abbottabad in Hazara region of Pakistan. We now know it was the place where the terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was gunned down.

The War of Independence, or Mutiny depending on which side of the fence you are in, provided a real testing ground for the mettle of the young officers celebrated beyond measure in the book. Collecting masses of Sikhs and Pathans as mercenaries, the British marched to Delhi where the rebels had captured the Red Fort. The legend however couldn’t survive the onslaught of disciplined firepower. Within days of storming the bastion, Nicholson was shot down and found abandoned on the wayside. Medical care couldn’t bring him back to life and he breathed his last nine days later. Thus ended the life of a racist, arrogant and insubordinate officer of the Company’s army. Though Allen presents him as a hero and legend of the Pathans, what we read from the text are gruesome accounts of extra-judicial killings of native Indians at the merest whim of this deranged alien in a foreign land in which he didn’t have any moral right to govern.

This book provides the answer to the question of why authors like William Dalrymple fire up the imagination of our society and why Charles Allen, even with a better researched work, fails to do so. The subject matter of the work, namely, annexation of the North – West frontier of the East India Company’s Indian domains virtually envelops in its fold the plot of Dalrymple’s latest work, Return of a King (reviewed earlier), but the contrast cannot be more sharp. Allen sees the whole episode from a Briton’s perspective and with ethos more of a historian than a storyteller. Even though I have not read Allen’s The Search for Shangri-La, the similarity denoted by the title with the content of Dalrymple’s To Xanadu (reviewed earlier) is striking. We may pardon him for his insistence on calling the First War of Independence (1857) as only a mutiny on historical grounds, but there is no denying that in narrating the acts and heroic deeds of his protagonists, never for an instant had he cared to leaf through the mountain of discontent and dishonour the native principalities had had to endure under the conquering yoke of the company. It is true that considerable mellowing had taken place in the tone of comments on the journals of the army officials who fought in the frontier in 1840-60 repeated in the book, which may be attributed to the rise of liberalism and shunning of racism. Shorn of these feeble traces of modernity revealed occasionally in the book, Indian readers look upon the contorted countenance of soldiers of fortune descended upon a land for no more ennobling spirit than his own livelihood. Allen is dead sure of the fact that British intervention in a native state produced benevolent effects on the populace, even though such acts of aggression were often masked with subterfuge and desertion.

Allen’s book covers a geographical stretch now included in the borders of modern Pakistan. Indeed, the style of narration and bias towards the supposedly noble qualities of the tribesmen in these regions like their sense of humour, independence and abhorrence to yield to authority are glorified, which does not leave the reader in any doubt about the targeted audience of the work. At the same time, the Afghans are portrayed as a treacherous people who won’t bat an eyelid to condemn their brothers to death, if it somehow suited their purpose. Depictions of loyalty displayed by the border tribesmen are felt as nothing more than the feeling of subjection shown by a slave to his master.

The book is recommended only for those readers who won’t mind thumbing through 341 pages with not much to commend for.

Rating: 2 Star