The time period covered in this chapter, 100 CE-600 CE, overlaps with Chapter 4 by a century. This overlap is meant to accommodate the gradual developments in Indian Buddhism in the first half of the first millennium ce. There is no clear break between the forms of Buddhism discussed in earlier chapters and the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism discussed in this chapter. The same can be said of the political developments of the period. While several new states emerged in the fourth century CE, several of the states discussed in Chapter 4 continued to wield significant power through the third century CE. In the Northwest, the Kushanas held power through the third century, while King Kharavela of the Kalinga lived in the second century, with his descendents slowly losing power over the course of the third century. The two largest empires in India between 100 and 600 ce were the Guptas (c. fourth-sixth centuries ce) of North India and the Vakatakas (c. mid third-fifth centuries ce) of the Deccan Plateau. Numerous smaller states were located in the peripheries of the Northwest, Northeast, and extreme South.
In many histories of India, the Guptas have an outsized importance that well exceeds what is actually known of them. For a variety of historical and political reasons, the Guptas have become central to modern Indian identity. First, the foundational texts of modern Hinduism, including the Puranas, Mahabharata, and Ramayana, are likely to have been transcribed and collated during this time. Thus, the “Gupta period” is often seen as the time when more ancient Vedic Brahmanism was transformed into modern Hinduism. Second, several lines of evidence, particularly inscriptions recording land donations, show that the Guptas supported nascent Hinduism. These historical developments tie directly to more modern political reasons for the importance of the Guptas in postcolonial histories. Histories of India written by British colonial officials tended to focus on the Mauryas. Colonial era histories also emphasized the Aryan or foreign origin of the Mauryas, with obvious implications for the legitimacy of British rule in Colonial India. In contrast,
Indian historians who lived during the period of Nationalist resistance to colonial rule portrayed the Gupta period as ‘golden age.’ The glorification of the Gupta period can be viewed as a reaction of Nationalist historians to Imperialist historiography. The features that were highlighted included the political unification of a large part of the subcontinent under what was presumed to be a centralized government, the production of exceptionally fine works of Sanskrit literature, significant developments in the spheres of stone
Sculpture and architecture, and a presumption that all of this was based on economic prosperity and social harmony. (Singh 2008:473)
In short, nationalist historians emphasized the Guptas, in part, to provide historical precedent for Indian self-rule.
By the 1960s and 1970s, Indian postcolonial histories of the Guptas took on a more Marxist orientation—viewing the period as characterized by a form of feudalism in which Indian peasants were tied to the land they worked while being forced to pay taxes and rent to higher status land owners (Kosambi 1965; Sharma 1980; Thapar 1966). Rather than a “golden age,” from the Marxist perspective the Gupta period was a time of political fragmentation and urban decline (Singh 2008:473). More recently, Indian historians have taken a more balanced approach to the period, seeing it more as a time in which new political, religious, economic, and artistic traditions emerged, serving as the foundation for later Indian states and empires. Thapar succinctly summarizes this line of thought by labeling the period “threshold times” (Thapar 2002:ch. 9). While there is clearly value in seeing the Gupta period as a cauldron for later developments, there is something odd about discussing the Guptas only as a step toward something else. By treating the Guptas as merely a foundation for later states and empires, the Guptas themselves are lost.
Whether understood as a golden age, feudal society, or threshold to what came later, the sources of evidence for the Gupta period consist of the same material: royal inscriptions, coins, references in Sanskrit literature, and foreign (mostly Chinese) travelers’ accounts. While listed in genealogies found in Gupta inscriptions, little is known of the first two Gupta kings. It appears that these kings ruled in portions of modern Bihar, but it is unclear if they were an independent state or subordinate to another. In 319 CE, Chandragupta I ascended the throne. Over the next sixteen to seventeen years he expanded the kingdom and established a marriage alliance with the Licchavi kingdom in northern Bihar. Chandragupta I was succeeded by Samudragupta I (c. 335/350-370 ce), though some evidence suggests that Samudragupta I usurped the throne from an intermediary king. The details of Samudragupta I’s reign come mostly from a long eulogy on the Mauryan pillar at Allahabad. Here Samudragupta I had his own biography carved above that of Ashoka, detailing his many conquests and his love for poetry and music. The peak of Gupta power was achieved under the reign of Chandragupta II (c. 376-413/415). During this time the Guptas controlled most of North India with significant influence, but not territorial control, in the peninsula. Over the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, rivals progressively challenged Gupta hegemony. After
Chandragupta II, the Gupta Empire gradually lost power and slowly contracted to its original base in Bihar.
Like the Guptas, the origin of the Vakatakas is murky, with some scholars placing it in Andhra Pradesh and others in the Deccan (Shastri 1997). Wherever the Vakatakas originated, they first became a major dynasty in the Deccan beginning in the mid-third century GE. A later inscription by the king Harishena (c. 475-500 ge) names Vindhyasakti I as the founder of the dynasty. The Vakatakas expanded their empire across most of the Deccan under Pravarasena (c. 270-330 ge). Pravarasena is also recorded as forming a marriage alliance with the Guptas. After Pravarasena, the genealogy of the Vakatakas becomes muddled. Inscriptions and accounts in the Puranas list numerous kings, often serving at the same time. Overall, it appears that the Vakatakas bifurcated into at least two separate branches, with the dynasty eventually ending in the late fifth or early sixth century. In terms of Buddhist history, the fifth century Vakataka king Harishena is notable for his patronage of the Buddhist monasteries at Ajanta.
Between the second and sixth centuries ge, several different kingdoms controlled portions of the northwest. Until the mid-third century, the region was dominated by the Kushanas (discussed in Chapter 4). In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Guptas may have had nominal control in the Northwest, though regional rulers, particularly in the more distant margins, may have retained a large degree of autonomy. Beginning in the mid-fifth century GE, Huns from Central Asia began a series of campaigns in the Northwest. While initially repulsed by the Guptas, by the early sixth century GE, the Hun king Toramana had established an empire in Kashmir and Gandhara. While deriving from Central Asia, the Huns rapidly adopted Indian patterns of rulership, with eighth-century GE Jain accounts claiming that Toramana converted to Jainism.
Like the Mauryas before them, the Guptas, Vakatakas, and other contemporary states materially supported a wide variety of religious sects. This included both Buddhist and Jain orders, but also the developing Shaivite and Vaishnavite sects of Hinduism. Based on inscriptions, numismatics, and the Puranas, it appears that both Gupta and Vatataka kings performed Vedic sacrifices and were devotees of the nascent Hindu gods. In Chapter 6, I extensively discuss how the emergence and spread of Hinduism through Indian society helped lead to Buddhism’s gradual decline in India. For now, it is sufficient to note that Buddhism was one of many religions in simultaneous practice in India and that all of these religions were highly syncretic, combining and borrowing elements from rival religious orders.
Among the more critical developments during this period was a gradual shift in the type of donations that the royalty and other elite gave to religious orders. Where previously these gifts consisted of money, goods and, in a few instances, land (e. g., Nasik), between the second and sixth centuries ce, donations increasingly took the form of land. This was part of a larger shift in the economic organization of Indian society. For both the Guptas and the Vakatakas, control and taxation of land was the primary basis of wealth and power. Taxes were typically one sixth to one fourth of local production. While few modern scholars argue that land tenure during this period can be described as feudal, and the people working the land as serfs, there is no question that Indian kings had significant rights to levy taxes within their domain and, more important, to reassign these rights to other individuals and groups. That is, land—along with the taxes produced by the people working the land—was regularly gifted to military leaders, lesser elite, and religious orders. The full details of land tenure were complicated and varied throughout India with, for example, substantial differences between the gifting of cultivated and uncultivated land. In numerous inscriptions on temple walls and copper plates, the details of these gifts are painstakingly detailed. The inscriptions typically demarcate the land that was given, the specific taxes owed to the king that were waived, and the conditions that must be met for the recipient to keep the land. In the end, however, the gifting of land to religious orders led to a marked shift in their finances. Where previously religious orders, the Buddhist sangha included, were heavily dependent upon regular donations to keep their monasteries solvent, with the donation of land in perpetuity, religious orders became more self-sufficient. This new economic foundation allowed for a marked change in the religious doctrines of monastic Buddhism. Without the need of financial support from the bulk of the laity, the sangha was free to refashion their religion in ways that emphasized monastic seclusion.
World History
