Ashoka

Title: Ashoka – The Search for India’s Lost Emperor

Author: Charles Allen

Publisher: Abacus, 2013 (First published 2012)

ISBN: 978-0-349-12238-0

Pages: 425

Ashoka is India’s greatest monarch, ever. He unified India by integrating the numerous petty kingdoms in the post–Vedic period. Stung with remorse after a cruel battle against Kalingas, he followed the precepts of Buddhist Dharma (moral law) and renounced needless violence. His example continued to simulate great minds in conquering contemporary issues. Ahimsa (non–violence) carried forward by him helped mould the mode of protest of the Mahatma against the British. He presided over the seeding of a written script for Indian languages for the first time. The Brahmi script, in which Ashoka caused rock and pillar edicts to be written, developed into modern Indian scripts. In short, in whichever way you look towards him, the mark of nobility and greatness adorns the person of Emperor Ashoka. Curious it may seem that knowledge of this great emperor not at all existed in this country just 250 years before. Devastated by 700 years of Islamic rule, all traces of the country’s past had been obliterated in a tirade of destructive jihads. Charles Allen describes the thrilling story of tracing Ashoka and his legend through rocks, boulders and monastic remains scattered over jungle and country. It is also a tribute to those scholars in the British raj who maintained a benevolent and even admiring outlook towards the nation they were called upon to administer. The history of Ashoka was unearthed by these untiring savants who fought all odds – manmade as well as natural – to make the flower of knowledge blossom. Charles Allen is the right person to narrate this tale; in the delightful fashion of his many other books like Soldier Sahibs (reviewed earlier in this blog) and God’s Terrorists. With this book, Allen has proved that he is as responsive to Indian tastes and as enjoyable to read as William Dalrymple.

The genealogy of Mauryan kings is now taken for granted, and few of us know about the painstaking and pioneering research that went behind establishing it. Oriental scholars among the East India Company officials, the most notable among them being William Jones, who established the Asiatic Society, was behind the novel initiative that caused even ridicule among his peers. This occurred around the end of the 18^th century when all references to India’s pre-Islamic past had been obliterated by centuries of ruthless Islamic rule. The iconoclasm began in 1194, when Mohammed Bakhtiyar, a general of the slave-king Qutb-ud-din Aibak razed the great vihara at Nalanda to the ground and set the entire library on fire, after ensuring that there were no copies of the Koran in its shelves. It is said that the library had an immense collection of books that it took months to burn all books and the dark column of smoke was visible from miles afar. Buddhism, already crumbling at that time due to lack of patronage, found its coup de grace from Muslim invaders. All historical references to Buddha and the Mauryan dynasty faded from history and Ashoka’s pillar edicts ended up in Sultans’ construction projects. Matters stood idle at that for 400 years, when the intellectuals in East India Company’s employ began to wonder at the strange script that looked like ancient Greek, but totally undecipherable. Tales from epics and legends were collected and synchronized in chronology from Greek classic writers like Arrian, Strabo and others. Chandragupta was thus identified with the Greek Sandrocottus.

The story of how the script used in the inscriptions was deciphered provides an exciting account of historical secrets succumbing before ingenuity and intuition. The script, Ashokan Brahmi as it is called, looked like proto-Greek to the scholars. As several edicts were discovered from various corners of the subcontinent and copies taken, material was growing, but it took a supreme intellect to open the doors of knowledge. James Prinsep, an assayer in the Calcutta Mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal succeeded in 1837 to read the lines etched in rock – the last time anyone had done it was 2000 years in the past. Prinsep unlocked the Brahmi script, which was the precursor of most Indian scripts. The logical pathways which Prinsep traversed in his discovery are clearly detailed in the book. But one crucial error crept in. In most of the edicts, the text began with the lines devanampiya piyadassi laja’ (king Priyadarshi, beloved of the gods spake thus). Unfortunately Prinsep identified the name with that of King Devanampiya Tissa of Sri Lanka, who was converted to Buddhism by Ashoka’s mission involving his son and daughter, Mahinda and Sanghamitra. It was George Turnour, another oriental scholar stationed in Sri Lanka correctly identified Ashoka with Piyadassi, based on references from an ancient chronicle ‘Dipavamsa’. Both Prinsep and Turnour, however died young within five years of the revolutionary feat. Both were in their early forties.

Alexander Cunningham, the first director of the newly constituted Archeological Survey of India amassed legendary status by his efforts at reconstructing the Mauryan past. The travelogues of Fa Hsien and Hsuen Tsang, two Chinese travelers who came here in the 5^th and 7^th centuries respectively, came out during this period. In a result that is nothing short of astonishing, archeologists were able to pinpoint the locations of ancient cities and monasteries described in the Chinese works, based solely on the directions given in those books. Cunningham silenced the skeptics who still refused to accept that the creator of all those rock and pillar edicts and rock inscriptions was Ashoka, clinging on to the argument that King Piyadassi, mentioned in the epigraphs might not be Ashoka. But countless references in ancient religious texts like the Mahavamsa, Raja Tarangini and Ashokavadana confirmed the point. To cap it all, at Girnar and Maski, an inscription was found in which the name ‘Ashoka’ found mention. The flame lighted up by English scholars was soon taken up by Indians themselves and savants like Ramakrishna Bhandarkar contributed a great deal.

Charles Allen describes a lot of books that helped in writing the chronicle of Ashoka after 2000 years since his time. Such fine introduction would go a great deal in familiarizing serious readers to delve deeper into the story. To mention a few crucial works include Legend of King Ashoka by Eugene Burnouf, Taranatha’s History of Buddhism in India by Vasili Vasiliev, Great Tang Records of the Western Regions by Hsuen Tsang and A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms by Fa Hsien. We learn with enthusiasm that the Chinese monks mention Ashoka by the name Wuyou Wang, which means ‘the king not feeling sorrow’ in Chinese, which is the exact translation of the Prakrit original, Ashoka (without shoka). Also, we note Ashoka’s reluctance to mention the Kalinga war in rock edicts situated in the erstwhile Kalinga state (modern Orissa). Both in the Dhauli and Jaugada edicts, three edicts (11 to 13) dealing with the war, are missing. Probably the emperor wanted to spare the emotions of the vanquished people, as many edicts were commissioned within a few years of the war. We also note with pride the priorities of a monarch who valued his subjects much.

The author portrays Bakhtiyar’s devastating raid and arson at Nalanda in 1194 in heart-breaking detail. He quotes from Minkaj-ud-din’s Tabakat-i-Nasiri that, “the greater number of the inhabitants of that place were Brahmans…and they were all slain. There were a great number of books there; and when all these books came under the observation of the Mussalmans, they summoned a number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the import of these books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed…When that victory was effected, Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar returned with great booty and came to the presence of the beneficent Sultan Kutb-ud-din Ibak and received great honour and distinction” (p.4).

The book is very interestingly written and a page turner. It is endowed with an excellent collection of plates illustrating the edicts, sculptural works and digging sites as it were found in the 19^th century. A comprehensive index provides cross references. Those who want to have a books with a little more depth may turn toward Romila Thapar’s Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, reviewed earlier in this blog.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Collapse

Title: Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Author: Jared Diamond

Publisher: Penguin, 2011 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 978-0-241-95868-1

Pages: 539

Jared Diamond needs no introduction to readers of all genres other than comics. His Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the only five books that have been rated 5-Star in this blog. Being a professor of geography and with extensive travels over various continents on which to draw knowledge from, Diamond’s works are immensely attractive to readers. Comprehensiveness is the byword for his books, as his researches go deep into the past and with a convincing array of arguments. The same is true of this book too, in which the fates of some societies that had collapsed due to environmental factors and still some others who managed to hold on to their habitat to enter modernity. Not content with simply describing the downfall, he analyses the test cases and comes up with a general theory of how the crash took place, how it is applicable to other ancient societies and also to modern ones. Very few scholars would be able to gather generalized ideas and still fewer who would successfully correlate their predictions with actual results. Damage to the environment inflicted by a society does not go long unpunished and when the setback comes, the society may crumble in its own ruins. This fact is expressed with many illustrative examples, like that of Easter Island, Pacific islands like Pitcairn and Henderson, Old Norse societies in Greenland, Anasazi Indians of southwest US, and the Mayas of Central America. We note with astonishment that the author’s five-point list of factors which causes collapse is equally applicable to all of them. Then we realize with a shudder that these criteria apply to our modern societies too and that the failure of all of those past societies should serve as a lesson to our politicians and policy makers. Diamond lists out a slew of measures that could be co-opted to tide over the crisis and ends with cautious optimism at the society’s will to adapt and to exist for a long time to come which we may bequeath to our children.

Diamond identifies five common factors affecting any society in its existence on a particular stretch of land. These are the society’s impact on its environment, climatic change caused by natural reasons, cultural or religious attitudes ingrained by the people, friendly trade relations with other human groups and hostile interactions with still other societies. In all the examples given in the book, these causes act singly or in multiples, on the inhabitants. In the several examples illustrated in the text that of Central American Mayas and old Greenland Norse societies attract our attention due to the size of the territory and hard evidence for the assertions. The first part of the book is devoted to collapse of societies and that of Greenland should serve as an example for the whole world. When the Vikings colonized that distant North Atlantic Island in the 10^th century, the climate was very mild, being in a warm phase of periodic cycles. The Norse Vikings adopted their established lifestyle of daily farming with cows, sheep and pigs. Quickly, they understood that the style was ill-suited to Greenland. The little patches of green were gobbled up by the livestock and the harsh winter precluded any opportunity for leaving the cattle grazing in the meadows. They have to be kept indoors during the winter months, and the hay to be used as fodder had to be farmed in summer. The equilibrium was very sharp edged. A small nudge was enough to tip the balance. A longer winter or a wet summer was sufficient to create problems like inadequate hay to feed the cattle. Timber and iron were deficient in Greenland, but they couldn’t be traded with the mother country due to the long ship travels. Items having large value and small volume, like luxury and religious artifacts grabbed a large proportion of trade. Coupled with these harrowing problems was the arrival of Inuits, a people with technology appropriate to the coldness of the land. But the Vikings were newly converted to Christianity and shared the zeal of converts. Inuit hunting methods could’ve been imitated or essential commodities could’ve been traded with them. The Norse did nothing of the kind, and was gradually wiped out of this story. Even today, it is not clearly established as to how exactly the early wave of colonization petered out on the icy Greenland terrain.

Side by side with failed communities stand a few who had succeeded in maintaining a sustainable and flourishing economy as a result of identifying problems in incipient state and taking corrective action in an effective way. Japan is one such example which faced many of the environmental troubles faced by failed societies at one stage of their history. Logging of Woodland for monumental construction denuded much of Tokugawa Japan’s forests, but the Shogunate quickly reversed the policy and actively encouraged preservation. Today, 74% of Japan’s land area is covered by forests, which is quite high in a First World country. We read about genuine measures in the Dominican Republic where the preservation of forests and natural reserves was once entrusted to the armed forces, rather than a civilian ministry like environment or agriculture.

Diamond’s review of modern societies in the third part of the book is a painfully long survey of environmental issues afflicting China and Australia in particular. The extensive treatment is unappealing and causes drudgery. Even though the subject peoples are separated by half the globe, the symptoms are the same – soil erosion, loss of forest cover, loss of soil nutrients, unavailability of water, salinization and such. While making the study of modern societies, the author discusses about the caste-based society of India and remarks approvingly that castes showed a laudable method of sustainable harvesting of resources, as these people are commended to be anxious to preserve the resources to their offspring who was sure to take up the vocation of their parents in a rigid caste-based society. Such praise for a system that is notorious for the inhuman discrimination practiced against the weak is surely misplaced. This is like praising a brutally dictatorial regime for its quick decision making, but ignoring all the other horrific manifestations.

Many of the test cases selected for analysis is highly local and don’t constitute a representative case of the issue under study. Easter Island, the islands of Pitcairn and Henderson and the Anasazi Indians of the U.S south west were isolated societies effecting a very marginal presence on the flow of history. Then, how can we generalize the lessons learnt from these examples? What Diamond intended was to draw conclusions that apply equally to societies transcending time, race or geography. Two of the fundamental factors forming the author’s five-point evaluation scheme consist of interactions with neighboring communities which can be friendly or hostile. In all the above cases, such contacts died out mostly due to geographical isolation. By the same token, this argument is not valid for old world civilizations or, even to modern societies which are engaged in intense communications with their peers. Also, the long first chapter on Montana and its environmental problems make uninteresting reading. Maybe that was relevant or appealing to Americans residing on the west of the country. But does it impact an ounce of relevance to the rest of the book or to other modern societies? Conflicting opinions may be voiced in response to such a question.

The book gives interesting ideas about how to determine the culinary preferences of ancient societies by analysis of remains of bones in abandoned kitchen middens. It may surprise us when Diamond explains how to determine the botany of a past landscape. This is achieved by examination of pollen from lake sediments. When the scientist takes a vertical piece of sediment, it provides him with data of centuries of plant abundance in the area. Such exciting feats of estimation of seemingly impossible events allure young people to choose a carrier in science. One other aspect discernible throughout the narrative is the cyclic nature of warming and cooling on global scales. Periodically, it heated up or cooled down. This may create doubts on reader’s minds about the veracity of the assertion that the global warming affecting us today is anthropogenic, even though Diamond declares that it is indeed so.

Even though the author is genuinely committed to the environment, and ending the exploitation of Third world natural resources by first world corporations, his loud-mouthed appreciations of some of them, like Chevron may hinder the books acceptance among some sections of the public.

Diamond ends the book in a positive note in which he expresses confidence at the society’s capability to learn from the past and make amends. This optimism imparts great value to the work. After all, if we are surely going to be doomed even after heroic feats of self-preservation, who will care to go the extra mile for corrective action? We undertake a venture only if there is a chance – however slight – of winning. The book is endowed with a long section of suggested reading, which is encyclopedic in content and a fine index. A good set of monochrome plates add visual detail to the arguments.               

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

A Home in Tibet

Title: A Home in Tibet

Author: Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Publisher: Penguin – Viking, 2013 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08693-1

Pages: 303

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa is an ethnic Tibetan who studied in India and now lives in the U.S. She is a poet and this book is her first full length volume. Her mother left Tibet in 1959 when China invaded and reached India. Tsering was born in India, but she grew up hearing and cherishing her mother’s fond memories of her childhood in Tibet. After her mother’s demise in a road accident, the author located her extended family in Dhompa, Eastern Tibet. This book is the poetic narrative of her travels to her motherland, where she had become sufficiently foreign as to bypass all inhibitions traditionally commanded from native women. She returned to the U.S after the visit and tells the world of the sights, people, animals and Buddhism of Tibet.

The respect and devotion Tibetans express towards lamas, their spiritual masters and advisers, is a recurring theme of the book. The lamas help the common people in their hour of need, by offering astrological recommendations, clearing the laity’s doubts on every issue and even offering medicines and healing tips, when they are too sick to be cured by native Tibetan medicine. People adore them and the more higher they go in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the level of adoration is akin to divinity. When fur caps and other leather articles became fashion in Tibet, it only took a single admonishment from the Dalai Lama for people to give up the habit. Lamas’ status in society may be compared to that of Brahmins in India, but the title is not hereditary as in India. Traditional governments jealously guarded their organization. The five grave offenses defined are matricide, patricide, murder of a holy man, causing hurt to good men, and creating discord between lamas. And the punishment? To gouge out the offender’s eye, to cut his throat, to cut off his hands, to toss him from a high cliff, or to throw him into deep water. People used to encase revered lamas’ finger nails in pendants and wear on their necks. Even with all this adulation, we doubt whether they gave anything to the society in return. Tibetan society was ignorant and illiterate which naturally suited the lamas’ purpose. They didn’t venture to teach their disciples or to offer any of the civic amenities which were in their power to perform. One of the indirect advantages of Chinese occupation is the curtailment of lamas’ privileges. When people get to know things, lamas will find their own natural place. However, Tsering Wangmo does not raise any point against the status of them, rather, she acknowledges them as the Tibetans’ spiritual guides.

The author’s emotional attachment to her late mother is touching. After escaping from Tibet soon after China’s invasion in 1959, Tsering’s mother wandered for three years under great duress, to find a way out of her subjugated country to Nepal and then to India. Being tied up in a marriage that occurred rather early in her adulthood, she didn’t get on well with her husband, who didn’t obtain a place in the mother or the daughter’s hearts. The author calls her father “her mother’s husband”. So complete is the estrangement that the daughter looked forward only to her mother for love, support, guidance and companionship. Descriptions of the duo’s train journeys in which the daughter’s anguished wait for her mother’s return to the train is very moving. And the mother left her only child after she died in vehicle collision. Tsering found herself alone in the world. She reached out to her extended family in Tibet where numerous cousins warmly welcomed her to their fold. There is no separate word in the Tibetan language for cousins, other than brother or sister. The love that existed between the author and her mother is sure to haunt the reader for some time to come.

Hatred towards the Chinese – to their occupation of Tibet, their administration, its leaders and the large scale changes that is being wrought on the land – is clearly evident throughout the text. No wonder the Chinese refused to grand her visa later, when she tried to visit her homeland again. The 1959 invasion was brutal, most of the older generation carries the scars on their bodies and souls, of the inhuman misery meted out to the defenseless Tibetans by the streams of incoming Chinese soldiers. Many were killed, tortured and imprisoned for long prison terms. They incarcerated the lamas as well, in a bid to prevent a rebel leadership from taking place by the efforts of these educated men and also to obliterate Tibetan culture. After the 1980s, the conditions slightly improved. China now adorns Tibet to make her look good to tourists. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a time of hell to Tibet – but that was true for China as well. Immense improvements in infrastructure has been brought to Tibet by the Chinese. Tibetans were generally lazy and lived an unsanitary way of life. Many of them didn’t even wash themselves for months together, as the author notes! They are naturally prone to violence as many nomads carry knives in their person and not much reluctant to plunge it upon an opponent. This observation contrasts with Tsering’s assertion at a different place that Buddhism and its doctrine of non-violence is holding its people from forming an effective force to fight the Chinese.

The book is rich with fine diction and lyrical text that carries the narrative to the reaches of poetry. Tsering Wangmo’s command of the English language and vocabulary is amazing. Her choice of words and usage is scholarly. She has been downright successful in bringing out the joys of meeting one’s relatives in a country that was home to her ancestors, but from which she has been banned entry. Also, the anguish and impotent rage that characterizes a nation in captivity is so heart-touchingly illustrated.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

An Indian Odyssey

Title: An Indian Odyssey

Author: Martin Buckley

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2008 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-091-79525-2

Pages: 355

Another book on India based on travels in the country by an Englishman and carefully crafted so as not to ruffle any preconceptions about the country in Europe. It encapsulates the author’s travels in India and Sri Lanka in 1982, and a quarter century later, in 2007 and unified through the subtle trend of Ramayana, India’s great epic. Buckley visits the sites mentioned in Ramayana and weaves his storyline through the lives of contemporary people. The author also tries his hand at a secular translation of the Ramayana which is a good attempt, but may offend some hardliners. Martin Buckley is a journalist and works for television. He had stayed and worked in India for many years. In his dabbles with spirituality, Buckley stays in ashrams and narrates realistically about mystic experiences.

             

Buckley’s narrative never transcends the predictable trajectory familiar to the readers of travelogues penned by Europeans. Abject poverty, lack of hygiene, insufficient water supply, pot holed roads crisscrossed by dangerous over speeding vehicles, venal priests and cut-throat traders, bedbug-infested hotel rooms with peeling plaster, overcrowding in all social functions – the list is endless. It seems that whenever the author ventures out at night, there will be a power cut. On no less than three occasions the occurrence of a power cut is mentioned. The book is a catalogue of the ills of Indian society. Of course, Buckley begins with a caveat that his deposition is bound to ruffle some sensitive feathers, but the readers have to wade through twenty paragraphs of the author’s terrible experiences in order to get at a single paragraph about the object under consideration. Absence of a well-charted itinerary reduces the content to the level of spontaneous rambling rather than a scholarly attempt at deciphering the meaning of it all – as displayed in so elegant and endearing a style as William Dalrymple’s. Even Mark Tully, a colleague of the author touches the skin of India’s soul in his book ‘No Full Stops in India’, reviewed earlier in this blog. This book pales in comparison to those works because of its lack of structure, absence of cohesion in ideas and lack of empathy on the author’s part. You need to think in the same wavelength as your subject in order to bring out a clear analysis of his character. This the author has done only for his spiritual colleagues.

The book essentially being a travelogue of the author’s journeys in India and Sri Lanka, the thread of Ramayana seems to be a clever choice to provide a unifying thread of the seemingly unrelated legs of the journey. Buckley travels the length and breadth of Lanka in search of places and monuments even remotely connected to the epic’s storyline. This rush takes him to LTTE and Sri Lankan army – controlled territories, with attendant problems of securing entry. As the island nation was reeling under a civil war, the marks of destruction and pillage he observes on the way provides a moot reminder of the senselessness of it all. As he rightly observes, the Sinhalese resented Tamil dominance of the bureaucracy and academia, owing to the head start accorded to Tamils in the north of the country, which was famed for its Jaffna University and many illustrious colleges and schools. Tamils were subjected to discrimination and assault. They retaliated, banding together in groups, the LTTE under Prabhakaran the most notorious of them. Civil war raged ahead in full steam and the LTTE was crushed. In the end, the Tamils suffered a double whammy. Not only they were decimated militarily, but those institutions which ensured their primacy in a competitive world, the universities and colleges, were also smashed up and reduced to ruins. Tamils seem to have gone back to the time when their illiterate ancestors were brought to the island, by the British to toil on the newly established tea estates which Sinhalese shunned. They have to start from the scratch again.

A characteristic observation Buckley makes is the venality of Brahmin priests who lord over Hindu temples. All their acts of piety could be bought – for a few rupees. Irrespective of the magnificence and heritage of the temples they officiate upon, a carefully planted cash offering opened all doors. In some places like Varanasi, they actually shamelessly ask the devotees to pay a fixed amount of money, while in others like Rameshwarem, they invariably expect something in return for the favors. Buckley was ordered out of the Rameshwarem temple on account of the fact that he was a non-Hindu one evening, but the very next morning, he manages to make a guided tour of the entire temple, in the company of a paid Brahmin guide. The crass avarice of the Hindu priestly class is displayed in the same vigour by their brothers in Sri Lankan temples too.

Whatever may be the allegations about the book, it faithfully reproduces the profound impact India’s ancient religions with its fallible godheads exerts on its modern adherents. Buckley observes a real, living religion that has thoroughly disseminated its belief system so as to make it accessible to even the lowliest person in the social hierarchy. In fact, when the elites were prevented by compulsion or doubt in pursuing their part of the burden, it was the common people who continued to keep the banner aloft. The sheer faith and fatalism of the devotees amuse and strikes the author with wonder. The assimilating spirit of Hinduism is observed and commended upon.

The content and lay out of the volume is impressive, but it lacks any mention of the author. Perhaps the publishers need to look into this. The book is eminently readable, as any book on India invariably is. That is the mystery and charm of our mother India.

The condescending tone while comparing religious violence in India with Europe is misplaced and not born out on fact. The demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya in 1992 is fancifully compared to the probable destruction of a Macedonian mosque in modern Greece to make way for a temple of Odysseus and the author wonders whether such a thing is imaginable in modern Europe. Unfortunately, not only is it imaginable, but has repeated in gory details many times over the past century. Greece itself witnessed the brutal destruction of several mosques and killing of several hundreds of Muslims in the aftermath of its war against Turkey in the 1920s. Then there is Hitler who killed millions in the name of a flawed political philosophy. And just a few years back, in fact, after the author had returned from his first visit to India, Serbia witnessed genocide and ethnic cleansing not witnessed in the scale of its brutality. Aren’t they countries in modern Europe? Many of Buckley’s descriptions are in bad taste. His disclosure of the sexual escapades with his fellow tourists and workers don’t illuminate or make the text any more interesting. The narration just sticks out like a sore thumb.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star