From: ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu (Arun K. Gupta)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.bangladesh,soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Non-Standard Histories of India
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:04:18 GMT
Organization: Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA




The `Forgeries of Hindu Texts' would have been better titled
`Non-Standard Histories of India'.

There are at least two among many reasons for different versions
of history: namely, dubious scholarship and a strong ideological
bias.

The version given below is an uncommon one. Majumdar, in his
`Advanced History of India' slurs over the period between the
Mauryas and the imperial Guptas. In one line, he mentions an
epic (without naming it) that predicts that the caste system
will be dissolved and barbarians will rule, (??conveniently
forgetting that the Puranas typically write in the future tense??).

***

Of the period between the fall of the Mauryas and the rise of
the Guptas:

India was invaded by peoples - Saka or Scythian, Pahlava or Parthian
Yueh-chi or Kushan. On their way from Central Asia into India they
picked up Buddhism.

Quoting Benjamin Walker now:

Because of these foreign invasions: "proof of the radical change
in Hindu society that resulted from foreign domination can be
gleaned, indirectly, but conclusively enough, from the Hindu
writings.

An example may be taken from the religious heart of Hinduism during
the time of the Kushan king Kanishka. Kanishka's governor of the
province that included the sacred city of Banaras, was the notorious
Vanashpara (c. AD 100-120) whose descendents were the Banaphars of
Bundelkhand. (A dialect Banaphari in Bundelkhand goes by their name.)

According to the Puranas, Vanashpara established himself at Padmavati,
and added new conquests around Magadha to the Kushan dominions. He is
described as a great warrior, `powerful like Vishnu', of exceptional
bravery, but having the appearance of a eunuch, a portrayal  which
brings to mind Gibbon's description of Vanashpara's occidental cognates
of a later date, the Huns: `..they were almost destitute of beards,
they never enjoyed the manly graces of youth or the venerable aspect
of age.'
Vanashpara's ruthless policy is especially worthy of note, since
according to Dr. Jayaswal [Jayaswal, K.P., History of India, 150
to 350 AD, Lahore, 1933], `He made the population practically
brahminless,' and this in an area regarded as the seat and font of
Hindu orthodoxy. He persecuted the priests, abolished the kshattriya
class, and in every way depressed the brahmins and Hindu nobility,
raising to high estate various foreigners with no caste at all. He
settled the region between Bundelkhand and Bihar with the Madrakas
from Punjab, the Chakras from Gedrosia the Scythians, Pulindas and
Sakas from the northwest, and these outsiders held all the important
administrative posts.
The Yoga-Purana of the Gargi-Samhita lamenting over the activities of the
foreigners says, in the prophetic style characteristic of these writings:
`They will destroy one fourth of the total population by the sword, one
fourth will they carry with them to their own city.'

The policy of Vanashpara was followed by the later Kushan rulers and governors
elsewhere. Very often they stopped Hindu worship and imposed Buddhism. Hindu
texts, some of which may be records of eyewitnesses describe the hapless
condition of the Hindus at this time, and graphically portray the ruthless
process by which the invaders disorganized Hindu society.

Non-Aryans, mourns one text, follow the religious practices of the Aryans
and the population lose their character and are degraded. The brahmins,
kshattriyas and vaisyas are all base men; they all dress alike and follow
similar customs; they belong to heretical sects; `They strike friendship
for the sake of women.' The aliens slay brahmins, interfere with the
sacrifices and sacred ceremonies and `carry off the daughters of the hermits'
[Jayaswal]. `Indeed' complains Gunadhya [a contemporary writer], `what
crimes do the villains not commit ?'

One text goes on to name five powerful mlechchaa kings who destroy the four
castes. The Vedas become futile. Sudras rise to importance and assuming the
prerogatives of priest offer oblations to the sacred fire and behave like
brahmins. They speak to brahmins in terms of equality, and brahmins address
them as `Noble Sir'. In fact, brahmins, kshattriyas and vaisyas disappear
and the country becomes mlechchanized, i.e., mongrelized. Rites and sacrifices
cease and all men become one caste. A non-brahminical religious and social
system was ruthlessly imposed on the Hindus and concludes Jayaswal, `Hindu
life was suspended.'
....
When the Saka and Kushan era came to an end, the Hinduism of the spacious
days of the srutis and Epics was forced into the labyrinth of a defensive
brahminism whose convolutions were delineated with such care by Manu and
the law-givers.....

In brief, therefore, the barbarian domination radically altered the outlook
and faith, character and customs of the people of India. For good or ill,
the change came, as was inevitable after almost ten centuries of Greek,
barbarian, half-caste, mlechcha and sudra rule in India, in north, south
east and west. Orthodoxy itself was modified under these external stresses,
and orthodoxy, as it exists today, became largely the reactionary refuge of
an oppressed priesthood from the conditions imposed upon them by the drastic
levelling influence of barbarian rule.

The rise of the imperial Guptas saw the consummation of the marriage between
Hindu and barbarian.... At the end of the 5th century AD the Ephthalite Huns
descended into the Indian plains and established an empire that ranged over
Persia, Khotan and other remote parts of Central Asia. One legacy of this
period is the emergence of the Rajputs, descendants of the Hunnish and Gurjara
invaders, today regarded as chief custodians of Hinduism. In the Deccan and
the South, the barbarian culture culminated in the suzerainity of the Pallavas,
Chalukyas, Satavahanas, and other lesser dynastic lines.....

***

[My note: the Satavahanas, if originally invaders had to come before the
Sakas, I think. ]

***
arun gupta
ag3L@andrew.cmu.edu