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India : Sanyal: It appears that most of the earth’s land mass was joined together a billion years ago in a supercontinent called Rodinia…. Rodinia broke up about 750 million years ago & various continents began to drift apart. Very little is known about this period loosely dubbed the Pre-Cambrian period; however, there is one remaining relic from that period that is still very visible – the Aravalli range. It is arguably the oldest surviving geological feature anywhere in the world. Today the range extends from Mount Ᾱbu where it still retains their its height then begins to become low hills & ridges as it moves through Mewār, Jodhpur, & Delhi, into Haryānā. In the Cambrian period the continental land masses began to reassemble &…into a new supercontinent called Pangaea which began to break up around 175 million years ago into a northern continent called Laurāsia (consisting of North America, Europe & Asia) & a southern one called Gondwānā (Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia & India). The name Gondwānā is itself derived from the Gond (q.v.) tribe of central India. About 158 million years ago, India & Madagāscar separated from Africa, & c.90 million years ago the Indian craton separated from Madagāscar &, as it drifted steadily northwards towards Asia, eruptions happened in the Western Ghats near Mumbai & created the Deccan Traps (which Shivaji would use to wear down Aurangzeb’s armies). Fifty-five-sixty million years ago the Indian craton collided with the Eurāsian plate, pushing up the Himalayas & the Tibetan plateau & continues to push into Asia. The actual of collision between the Indian & Eurāsian plates is called the Indus-Yarlung-Tsanpo Suture zone. The holy Mānsarovar Lake sits in a trough along this zone. Overlooking the lake is Mount Kailās.... Raychaudhuri: India is corrupted form of Sapta sindhavah in the Veda & Hapta Hindu in the Vendidad (earliest Zoroastrian scripture), from the river Sindhu, the most imposing feature of Āryavarta (q.v.) & the cradle of its earliest known civilisation…. It [the cradle] extended from the Himavat (which included the present Himalayas as well as the Patkai, Lushai & Chittāgong Hills in the east & the Suleiman & Kirthar ranges in the west) stretching along its north bound on the west by the hilly tableland of Iran & on the east by the Arākān ranges & the wooded valley of the Irrāwaddy, with the Great Ocean to its east & west & south. Its earliest cosmographers judged it to have been part of a larger unit called Jāmbu-dwīpa, innermost of seven concentric island-continents into which earth, was originally divided. Sri Aurobindo: No age in Asia was so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of the best & most enduring fruits as that heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no larger than a modern district. Her most wonderful activities, her most vigorous & enduring work, that which, if we had to make a choice, we should keep at the sacrifice of all else, belonged to that period; the second best came afterwards in larger, but still comparatively small, nations & kingdoms like those of the Pallavas (c.4th-9th century), Chālukyas (6th-12th century), Pāṇdyās (c.1100-1567), Cholās (c.600 years from c.600 BC), & Cherās (c.800 years from 3rd cent BC). [SABCL 15:264-65] ― In the ancient Indian collective life, there were three things: A spontaneously growing free communal units; the Dharma-idea; & the harmonising of national life by a central agency…. We had nothing of the mental ideal in politics. We had a spon¬taneous & a free growth of communities developing on their own lines. It was not so much a mental idea as an inner impulse or feeling, to express life in a particular form. Each such communal form of life – the village, the town, etc., which formed the unit of national life, was left free in its own internal management. The central authority never interfered with it…. There was not the idea of ‘interests’…each community was not fighting for its own interests; but there was rather the idea of Dharma – the function which the individual & the community have to fulfil in the larger national life. There were caste organisations not based upon a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more or less groups organised for a communal life. There were also religious communities…. Each followed its own Swadharma unhampered by the State which recognised the necessity of allowing such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to the national spirit a richer expression. Its function was not so much to legislate as to harmonise & see that everything was going on all right…. One was not at the head to put his hands over all organisations & keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organisations had its own laws which had been established for long ages. The machinery of the State also was not as mechanical as in the West; it was plastic & elastic…. This organisation we find in history perfected in the reign of Chandragupta & the Maurya dynasty. The period preceding this must have been one of great political development in India. Every department of national life, we can see, was in charge of a board or a committee with a minister at the head & each board looked after what we now would call its own department & was left free from undue interference of the central authority. The change of kings left these boards untouched & unaffected in their work. An organisation similar to that was found in the town & in the village & it was this organisation that was taken up by the Mahomedans when they came…. The king as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans…. The English in accepting this system have disfigured it considerably…. If the old organisation had lasted it would have been a successful rival of the modern form of government. You need not come back to the old forms but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms. They could not last, firstly, because there was the flagging of national energy owing to various causes. Secondly, the country was too vast & the means of communication not efficient enough to permit all national forces being concentrated on a particular point. Chandragupta could not have very easily reached the farthest end of his dominion so as to put all available national strength to a single purpose. If India had been a small country it would have been easer & with the modern means of communication I am sure it would have succeeded. [Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, A.B. Purani; 2007:292-95.] Malhotra: Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030; q.v.) set the stage for other Muslim invaders in their orgy of plunder & brutality, as Will Durant explains: “In 1186 the Ghuri, a Turkish tribe of Afghanistan invaded India, captured the city of Delhi destroyed its temples, confiscated its wealth, & settled down in its palaces to establish the Sultanate of Delhi – an alien despotism fastened upon northern India for three centuries, & checked only by assassination & revolt.” [W.D.] ― “The first of these bloody sultans, Qutb-d Din Aibak, was a normal specimen of his kind – fanatical, ferocious & merciless. His gifts as the Mohammedan historian tells us, “were bestowed by hundreds of thousands & his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands.” In one victory of this warrior (who had been purchased as a slave), “fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery, & the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.” – “Another sultan, Balban, punished rebels & brigands by casting them under the feet of elephants, or removing their skins, stuffing these with straw, & hanging them from the gates of Delhi.” – “When some Mongol inhabitants who had settled in Delhi, & had been converted to Islam, attempted a rising, Sultan Alā-ud-din (see Chitōre & Gujarat) had all the males from fifteen to thirty thousand of them slaughtered in one day.” – “Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq acquired the throne by murdering his father, became a great scholar & an elegant writer, dabbled in mathematics, physics & Greek philosophy, surpassed his predecessors in bloodshed & brutality, fed the flesh of a rebel nephew to the rebel’s wife & children, ruined the country with reckless inflation, & laid it waste with pillage & murder till the inhabitants fled to the jungle.” He killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, “there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion & his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies & a heap of corpses, while the sweepers & executioners were weaned out by their work of dragging” the victims “and putting them to death in crowds.” In order to found a new capital at Daulatābād he drove every inhabitant from Delhi & left it a desert….” – “Fīrūz Shah invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves, & died at the ripe age of eighty. – Sultan Ahmad Shah (see Ahmadābād) feasted for three days whenever the number of defenceless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand.” – “These rulers… armed with a religion militaristic in operation... [made] the public exercise of the Hindu religions illegal, & thereby driving them more deeply into the Hindu soul. Some of these thirsty despots had culture as well as ability; they patronized the arts, & engaged artists & artisans, usually of Hindu origin, to build for them magnificent mosques & tombs: some of them were scholars, & delighted in converse historians, poets & scientists.” – “The Sultans drew from the people every rupee of tribute that could be exacted by the ancient art of taxation, as well as by straight-forward robbery…” – “The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by ‘Alā-ud-din, who required his advisers to draw up ‘rules & regulations for grinding down the Hindus, & for depriving them of that wealth & property which fosters disaffection & rebellion’. Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. “No Hindu,” says a Moslem historian, “could hold up his head, & in their houses no sign of gold or silver…or of any superfluity was to be seen… Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment & chains, were all employed to enforce payment.” – “…Timur-i-lang – a Turk who had accepted Islam as an admirable weapon… feeling the need of more gold, it dawned upon him that India was still full of infidels… Mullahs learned in the Koran decided the matter by quoting an inspiring verse: Oh Prophet, make war upon infidels & unbelievers, & treat them with severity. Thereupon, Timur crossed the Indus in 1398, massacred or enslaved such of the inhabitants as could not flee from him, defeated the forces of Sultan Mahmud Tūghlak, occupied Delhi, slew a hundred thousand prisoners in cold blood, plundered the city of all the wealth that the Afghan dynasty had gathered there, & carried it off to Samarkand with multitude of women & slaves, leaving anarchy, famine & pestilence in his wake.” Sri Aurobindo: The ancient civilisation underwent indeed an eclipse & decline under the weight of a Central Asia¬tic religion & culture with which it failed to coalesce, but it survived its pressure, put its impact on it in many directions & remained to our own day alive even in decadence & capable of recovery, thus giving a proof of strength & soundness rare in the history of human cultures. And in the political field it never ceased to throw up great rulers, statesmen, soldiers, admi¬nistrators. Its political genius was not in the decadence sufficient, not coherent enough or swift in vision & action, to withstand the Pathān, Moghul & European, but it was strong to survive & await every opportunity of revival, made a bid for empire under Rāṇā Saṇga, created the great kingdom of Vijayanagaram, held its own for centuries against Islam in the hills of Rājputāna, & in its worst days still built & maintained against the whole power of the ablest of the Moghuls the kingdom of Shivaji, formed the Mahratta confederacy & the Sikh Khālsā, under¬mined the great Moghul structure & again made a last attempt at empire (see Bājirao Peshwa). On the brink of the final & almost fatal collapse in the midst of unspeakable darkness, disunion & confusion it could still produce Ranjit Singh & Nana Fadnavis & Madhoji Scindhia & oppose the inevitable march of England’s destiny. [SABCL 14:378] Malhotra: The Arabic, Turkish, & Persian invaders brought their historians to document their conquests of India as great achievements. Some of these historians ended up loving India & wrote excellent accounts of life in India, including about the Gāndhāra & Sindh regions. Their translations of Indian texts were later retranslated into European languages & hence many of the European Renaissance inputs from Islam were actually Indian contributions travelling via Islam. ― Of all these Muslim scholars, Alberuni left the most detailed accounts of India’s civilization. In the introduction to his translation of Alberuni’s famous book, Indica, the Arabic scholar Edward Sachau summarizes how India was the source of considerable Arabic culture: “The foundations of Arabic literature were laid between AD 750 & 850. It is only the tradition relating to their religion & prophet & poetry that is peculiar to the Arabs; everything else is of foreign descent… Greece, Persia, & India were taxed to help the sterility of the Arab mind. What India has contributed reached Baghdad by two different roads. Part has come directly in translations from the Sanskrit; part has travelled through Iran, having originally been translated into Persian, & farther from Persian into Arabic. In this way, e.g. the fables of Kalila & Dimna have been communicated to the Arabs, & book on medicine, probably the famous Charaka.” – “As Sindh was under the actual rule of Caliph Mansur (753-74), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, & among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahma-sādhanā to Brahmagupta (Sirhind), & his Khandkhdyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pundits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik translated them. Both works have been largely used, & have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahmagupta earlier than from Ptolemy.” – “Another influx of Hindu learning took place under the Abbasside Caliphs of Baghdad in 786-808. The ministerial family of Barmak (see Barmecide), then at the zenith of their power, had come with the ruling dynasty from Balkh, where an ancestor of theirs had been an official in the Buddhistic temple Naubehar, i.e. nava vihāra (new temple/ monastery). The name Barmak is said to be of Indian descent, meaning paramaka or pramukha (the Superior or Abbot of the vihāra).” – “Induced by family traditions, they sent scholars to India, there to study medicine & pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, & ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, & other subjects. Still in later centuries Muslim scholars sometimes travelled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwakkuf not long before Alberuni’s time…” – “Many Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus & worked them out in original compositions, commentaries & extracts. A favourite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi & many others.” Alberuni leaves no doubt as to the origin of the so-called Arabic system of numbers: “The numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs… The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct & the most natural thing to do… Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system, are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the 18th order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.” [A] ― In Islamic Spain, European scholars acknowledged India very positively, as evidenced by an important & rare 11th century book on world science commissioned by the ruler of Spain. Its author, Said al-Andalusi [S.A.], focused on India as a major centre for science, mathematics & culture. Some excerpts: “The first nation to have cultivated science is India. This is a powerful nation having a large population, & a rich kingdom. India is known for the wisdom of its people. Over many centuries, all the kings of the past have recognized the ability of the Indians in all the branches of knowledge.” – “The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness & objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologues, & useful & rare inventions.” – “To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers & of geometry. They have acquired immense information & reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) & the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science & the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds & the peculiarities of substances [chemistry].” – “Their kings are known for their good moral principles, their wise decisions, & their perfect methods of exercising authority.” – “What has reached us from the work of the Indians in music is the book… that contains the fundamentals of modes & the basics in the construction of melodies.” – “That which has reached us from the discoveries of their clear thinking & the marvels of their inventions is the (game) of chess. The Indians have, in the construction of its cells, its double numbers, its symbols & secrets, reached the forefront of knowledge. They have extracted its mysteries from supernatural forces. While the game is being played & its pieces are being manoeuvred, there appear the beauty of structure & the greatness of harmony. It demonstrates the manifestation of high intentions & noble deeds, as it provides various forms of warnings from enemies & points out ruses as well as ways to avoid dangers & in this, there is considerable gain & useful profit.” Sri Aurobindo: The real problem introduced by the Mussulman conquest was not that of subjection to a foreign rule & the ability to recover freedom, but the struggle between two civilisations, one ancient & indigenous, the other mediaeval & brought in from outside. That which rendered the problem insoluble was the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one militant & aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant indeed & flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline to its own principle & standing on the defence behind a barrier of social forms. There were two conceivable solutions, the rise of a greater spiritual principle & formation which could reconcile the two or a political patriotism surmounting the religious struggle & uniting the two communities. The first was impossible in that age. Akbar attempted it on the Mussulman side, but his religion was an intellectual & political rather than a spiritual creation & had never any chance of assent from the strongly religious mind of the two communities. Nanak attempted it from the Hindu side, but his religion, universal in principle, became a sect in practice. Akbar attempted also to create a common political patriotism, but this endeavour too was foredoomed to failure. An autocratic empire built on the Central Asian principle could not create the desired spirit by calling in the administrative ability of the two communities in the person of great men & princes & nobles to a common service in the creation of a united imperial India: the living assent of the people was needed & that remained passive for want of awakening political ideals & institutions. The Moghul Empire was a great & magnificent construction & an immense amount of political genius & talent was employed in its creation & maintenance. It was as splendid, powerful & beneficent &, it may be added, in spite of Aurangzeb’s fanatical zeal, infinitely more liberal & tolerant in religion than any mediaeval or contemporary European kingdom or empire & India under its rule stood high in military & political strength, economic opulence brilliance of its art & culture…. A military & administrative centralised empire could not effect India’s living political unity. And although a new life seemed about to rise in the regional peoples, the chance was cut short by the intrusion of the European nations & their seizure of the opportunity created by the failure of the Peshwas & the desperate confusion of the succeeding anarchy & decadence. ― We are still suffering from the bitter effects of the great decline which came to a head in the 18th & 19th centuries. Undoubtedly there was a period, a brief but very disastrous period of the dwindling of that great fire of life, even a moment of incipient disintegration, marked politically by the anarchy which gave European adventure its chance, inwardly by an increasing torpor of the creative spirit in religion & art, – science & philosophy & intellectual knowledge had long been dead or petrified into a mere scholastic Punditism, – all pointing to a nadir of setting energy, the evening-time from which according to the Indian cycles a new age has to start. It was that moment & the pressure of a superimposed European culture which followed it that made the reawakening necessary. [SABCL 14: 377-80; CWSA 20:4-5] Sanyal: “India is not unique in having developed a caste system. Genetics has proved that it has nothing to do with the Aryan influx & the imposition of a rigid hierarchy. Through history there have been different versions of the caste system in Japan, Iran, & even in classical Europe. Genetics also tells us that there is no real difference between groups that we now differentiate as ‘castes’ & ‘tribes’.” Sri Aurobindo: When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word, that it is for the Sanātana Dharma that they arise, it is for the world & not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world. When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand & extend herself, it is the Sanātana Dharma that shall expand & extend itself over the world. It is for the Dharma & by the Dharma that India exists. [SABCL 2:8] [Sanjeev Sanyal: Land of the Seven Rivers – A Brief history of India’s geography, 2012; H.C. Raychaudhuri: An Advanced History of India, by R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri, & Kalikinkar Datta, 3rd Ed., MacMillan India, 1973, 1974; Rajiv Malhotra: “How ‘Gāndhāra became ‘Kandahār”, Infinity Foundation, Internet, 2001; AW = Andre Wink: “The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Volume I – Early Medieval India & the Expansion of Islam 7th-11th Centuries”. Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1999. pp.144-146; WD = Will Durant: “The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage”, MJF Books, NY. 1935. pp. 459-463; A = Alberuni: Alberuni (AD 973 – 1048), a Muslim scholar, mathematician & master of Greek & Hindu system astrology, wrote twenty books. In his seminal work, “Indica” (c. 1030 AD) he wrote (“Alberuni’s India”, by Edward Sachau. Low Price Publications, New Delhi, 1993. (Reprint). First published 1910 — translated in 1880s.); SA = Said al-Andalusi: In the eleventh-century, an important manuscript titled “The Categories of Nations” was authored in Arabic by Said al-Andalusi, who was a prolific author & in the powerful position of a judge for the king in Muslim Spain. A translation & annotation of this was done S.I. Salem & Ᾱlok Kumar & published by University of Texas Press: “Science in the Medieval World”. This is the first English translation of this eleventh-century manuscript. Quotes are from Chapter V: “Science in India”]