History: The Golden Age and What Makes India Special

The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear

- Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” (circa 8 A.D)

The ancient classical world dawned around the 8th Century B.C., when the great Greek, Indian and Persian empires were born. Of course, human civilization as we know it had been around for thousands of years before that. The Egyptian, Mesopotamians, Indians and Chinese had very evolved, sophisticated civilizations by 2000 B.C.

But the ancient classical world as we know it was born somewhere around the 8th Century B.C and lasted more than a thousand years. It was an era of great empires and philosophers, poets and prophets. Three great Indo-European civilizations were born – the Greek, the Persian and the Indian. In Greece, Homer wrote the “Iliad”, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle contemplated the human condition and philosophy was born, and Pythagoras proposed his mathematical theorems.

In Persia, Cyrus the Great created the first world empire – a mosaic of many cultures, religions and races, wrote the first Charter of Human Rights and Universal Law, and Zoroaster founded the world’s first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, with its concept of duality – good and evil, heaven and hell. All modern-day Judeo-Christian religions have borrowed heavily from Zoroaster’s writings and teachings.

In India, the Vedas were recorded, the great epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were written, and the Buddha walked through quiet country lanes in Northern India preaching the principles of worldly renunciation and the concept of enlightenment. Ajatashatru and Chandragupta Maurya’s military campaigns created the first pan-Indian kingdoms. Ashoka the Great’s reign circa 220 B.C. ushered in India’s first “golden age”.

The ancient classical world represented one of the high points of human civilization – a time when humankind made great strides in science, philosophy, literature, poetry, music and military technology. It is a fascinating time in our evolution, and the explosion of ideas that took place then was unrivalled until the Renaissance, which came along nearly two thousand years later.

So was there ever a “golden age” of humankind as the Roman poet Ovid so beautifully writes about, or is this just romantic historical nonsense, propagated by those nostalgic for a past that never really existed? Was there ever a time when large numbers of people were at peace, prosperous and happy? Many different civilizations and countries proclaim that their own glorious past represents the “golden age” of humankind. I may be biased, but the Indian Empire of the Guptas was probably the most enlightened empire the world has ever known. Certainly, Indian history repeatedly refers to the Gupta Empire as the “golden age” of Indian civilization.

Why the Gupta Empire, you may ask (and you should). Because the Gupta Empire represented a near-ideal civilization that was strong yet compassionate, humane yet objective, traditional yet intellectually contemplative and curious. Accomplishments in art, philosophy, poetry, science, mathematics and astronomy reached new heights during the reign of the Gupta kings.

A brief run-down of the accomplishments of the Gupta Empire is warranted (to substantiate my claim). The Gupta Empire was established in 320 A.D. and lasted about three hundred years. It covered all of Northern India as well as modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. The rulers of the Gupta Empire included Chandragupta, Samudragupta and the great Vikramadiyta (who became one of India’s three greatest rulers, along with Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka, both of whom had ruled the Mauryan Empire seven hundred years earlier).

The Gupta Empire excelled in the arts, literature, music, mathematics and most importantly for the welfare of their subjects, administration. They were no slouches when it came to defending their borders either. For three hundred years, they held off and consistently beat the Saka (Scythian Huns from Central Asia), their main enemies. The Gupta Empire’s army was very well organized, and they relied on the two instruments of warfare that stopped Alexander’s Macedonian armies in their tracks six hundred years earlier – the war elephant and the powerful Indian longbow. The Indian longbow, as I have mentioned in my blog on Chandragupta Maurya, was six feet long, and fired arrows that pierced the thickest body armor. The Gupta Empire’s armies also invented the highly tensile steel bow, which was the most powerful weapon of its time. The disciplined infantry bowmen of the Indian Gupta armies beat their marauding Central Asian foes – time after time. Of course, the trained war elephants and armored cavalry also played a part in their victorious campaigns.

In the field of arts, music and mathematics, the court of the Gupta kings had the “navaratna” or nine jewels – individuals whose contributions in their areas were outstanding. In the field of astronomy and mathematics there were Aryabhatta and Varahamihira, who invented the concepts of zero, infinity and the decimal system. The trading Arabs took the decimal system to Europe, where it replaced the existing Roman numerical system. Aryabhatta also calculated Pii to the fourth decimal. In the field of astronomy, he calculated the length of the solar year and the movements of stars and the planets. Nowhere else in the world was the study of mathematics and astronomy as specialized and advanced as at the Gupta Empire’s court.

In the fields of literature and poetry, there were legendary poets such as Kalidasa who wrote the play “Shakuntala” and Dandi. The exquisite rock sculptures and paintings at Ajanta and Ellora were also part of the rich cultural heritage left to us by the Gupta Empire. These are quite simply the most sophisticated, delicate and beautiful rock paintings and carvings in the world. They are now a UNESCO World Heritage site. In my opinion, they should be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – they are that beautiful and exquisite.

The Gupta Empire’s trade with South-east Asia meant the spread of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and culture to Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and beyond. The motifs used in the construction of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia borrowed heavily from the concepts of the Gupta Empire’s artists and architects. The spread of Buddhism to Japan, China, Thailand and other countries can be directly attributed to the Gupta Empire.

The Gupta Empire kings were also humane and excellent administrators. They set up free hospitals for the poor across the empire. Many advances were made in the field of medicine – with doctors performing bone settings, caesarian sections and bone grafting. Many of these innovations in medicine were carried to the West by the Arabs, who traded extensively with the Gupta Empire. The major universities of the time at Taxila and Nalanda were also given grants and funding.

Last but definitely not the least, the “Kamasutra” or “Art of Love” was written and published during the reign of the Gupta kings. The Empire was known for its tolerance, open-mindedness and enlightened attitude towards sex.

The end of the Gupta Empire was part of the end of an era – the end of the classical world. Around the same time, the power of the Roman Empire was broken, as it finally succumbed to constant warfare on its borders. The Goths on the empire’s northern frontier and the Sassanid Persians on its eastern frontier battered away relentlessly, and the Roman Empire finally crumbled around the 7th century. A thousand years of history were at an end.

By the 5th century A.D., Rome had ceased to be an important city in the empire anyway, as the Goths under Alaric sacked and pillaged the city in 396 A.D. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist in everything except name by the 5th Century A.D. The Eastern Roman Empire with its capital at Byzantium (also known as Constantinople and now as Istanbul) gained prominence, since it was the gateway to rich and populous Asia.

The Romans and the Sassanid Persians were mortal enemies for four centuries, and fought each other to a standstill. By the 7th Century A.D., the Persians were finished too. There was a new power rising to the South – the Arabs. The Persians were exhausted and fatally weakened by centuries of constant warfare with the Romans, and were in no position to withstand the Arab onslaught. The great Sassanid Empire collapsed suddenly without so much as a whimper, and more than a thousand years of Persian domination of the Near East came to an end. The Persians would never again be a dominant empire-building force.

The explosive growth of two new religions, Christianity and Islam, with their radical new ideas, saw the end of the classical world in the West. The new religions were proselytizing religions – a new phenomenon, since the pagan religions of the classical world were not. The zealotry of the early Christians and Muslims meant that some of their leaders were determined to wipe out all traces of what had existed before. This was a pity. Much that was great in the ancient classical world vanished forever, never to be recovered. However, sometimes great ideas never really die – they only come back in different guises. By the 10th Century A.D., Persia had a new set of poets and writers such as Rumi and Firdausi, who extolled the old Persian ways and heroes in his epic book “Shahnameh” (“The Book of Kings”). He wrote stories of Darius and Cyrus, Shapur and Khusrau – the forgotten heroes of another time – a time when Persia was great. Christianity also incorporated many of the principles of the old “pagan” religions into their own, such as the worship of the Holy Trinity and of saints (this was a substitute for the worship of the pantheon of gods in older pagan religions).

But the “Shahnameh” and other recollections of the classical world were only faint echoes of the true glory of an epic past. The past itself died forever everywhere – except in India. Only India was and continues to remain unique. Only in India does the ancient classical world continue to live, breathe and indeed flourish. While the ruins of Persepolis, Pasargadae and Ctesiphon (in Iran) and the Parthenon and the Coliseum (in Greece and Rome) are mute testimony to the greatness of the ancient classical world, the old ways and old gods are gone forever. The goddesses Anahita and Aphrodite no longer laugh and sport in the rivers and springs of the Persian highlands and Greece. The voices of Zeus and the Greek gods have been silenced forever. Delphi is a ruin and the Eleusian mysteries of Demeter no longer reveal the profound secrets of the after-life to eager seekers. The temples of Hermes and Helios have fallen into ruin and the smoke from a thousand sacrificial fires no longer obscure the azure skies of the Mediterranean. The ancient Zoroastrian fire temples in the snow-striped Zagros Mountains in Iran are in a state of disrepair.

The remaining monuments in these countries are just tourist attractions that draw people from all over the globe, reminding them of how graceful, beautiful and interesting the classical world really was, a time when our species was young, and the world was full of interesting discoveries and inventions, waiting for us to find them.

But in India, the ancient classical world continues to co-exist with the modern. Many of the symbols and monuments of “Golden India” are gone forever, such as the magnificent palace complexes of Pataliputra and Ujjain, Kanauj and Indraprastha. But the spirit of the classical world still survives and flourishes. Take a train ride from Mumbai to Delhi on the Central Railway in winter, and on a fog-bound morning outside the town of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, you will suddenly see the “chhatra” or roof of the main Sanchi Stupa rising from behind the tree-line by the side of the tracks. The roof of the Stupa appears to float in mid-air, thanks to the heavy early morning fog. The Stupa is a marvelous complex of buildings dating back to the third century B.C. Its construction was started in the reign of Ashoka the Great – India’s greatest king. But this beautiful complex of buildings is more than just a dead monument. It is still home to hundreds of Buddhist monks who wake up with the rising sun and chant ancient Sanskrit “shlokas” (verses) in memory of the Buddha – just like they did more than two thousand years ago. It is a living testament to another time in the world.

The classical world still lives and breathes here and elsewhere in India, a link to a great and ancient past and to India’s first golden age. It is a reminder of the thoughts and ideals that shaped our modern world and thinking. Remember that, because it is what makes India special.

Happy Independence Day!!