Part 9 (2/2)
Thus, once more, the East saw light sooner than the West; for the first hospital in Europe only struggled into existence more than five hundred years after this one at Magadha.
But the chief glory of the Gupta empire was its patronage of the arts and sciences. Every pundit in India knows the verse which names the ”nine gems of Vikramaditya's court”; those learned men amongst whom Kalidasa, the author of ”Sakuntala” (so far as fame goes, the Shakspeare of India), stood foremost. Poets, astronomers, grammarians, physicians, helped to make up the _nawa-ratani_, as it is called, and the extraordinary literary activity of the century and a quarter (from A.D. 330 to 455), during which long period Samudra, Chandra, and his son, k.u.mara, reigned, is most remarkable. The revival of Sanskrit, the sacred language of the Brahmans, points to an upheaval of Hindu religious thought, and so does the almost endless sacred literature, which, still surviving, is referred to the golden age of the Guptas.
The Puranas in their present form, the metrical version of the Code of Manu, some of the Dharm-shastras, and, in fact, most of the cla.s.sical Sanskrit literature, belong to this period.
Architecture was also revolutionised. As Buddhism slipped from the grip of the people under pressure from the ever-growing power of the Brahmans, the very forms of its sacred buildings gave way to something which, more ornate, less self-evident, served to reflect the new and elaborate pretensions of the priesthood. Mr Cunningham gives us somewhere the seven characteristics of the Gupta style of architecture; but it is more easily summed up for the average beholder in the words ”cuc.u.mber and gourd.” These names serve well to recall the tall, curved _vimanas_, or towers, exactly like two-thirds of a cuc.u.mber stuck in the ground, and surmounted by a flat, gourd-like ”Amalika,” so called because of its resemblance to the fruit of that name.
That such buildings are interesting may be conceded, but that any one can call the collection of pickle-bottles (for that is practically the effect of them) at-let us say-Bhuvan-eshwar beautiful, pa.s.ses comprehension.
Exquisite they are in detail, perfect in the design and execution of their ornamentation, but the form of these temples leaves much to be desired. The flat blob at the top seems to crush down the vague aspirings of the cuc.u.mber, which, even if unstopped, must ere long have ended in an earthward curve again.
To return to history.
Chandra-gupta-Vikramaditya died in A.D. 413. His greatest military achievement was the overthrow of the Saka dynasty in Kathiawar, and the annexation of Malwa to the already enormous empire left him by his father. In other ways we have large choice of prowess. All the tales which linger to this day on the lips of India concerning Rajah Bikra- or Vikra-majit are at our disposal.
Of his son k.u.mara we at present know little, save that he reigned successfully for not less than forty years, keeping his kingdom intact, remaining true to its traditions.
Perhaps some day his fame also will rise from its grave, and coin or inscription may prove him true unit of the Great Trio of Gupta emperors. This much we may guess: he was his grandmother's darling, for he bears her name in masculine dress.
THE WHITE HUNS AND GOOD KING HARSHA
A.D. 450 TO A.D. 648
The name Huns has quite a familiar sound. We think of Attila; we remember the 350 pounds weight of gold which Theodosius of Byzantium paid as an annual tribute to the victorious horde which swept into Europe about the middle of the fifth century; finally, we hark back to Gibbon's description of this race of reckless reiving riders; for the Huns seem to have been born in the saddle and never to have lived out of it. This is what he says:--
”They were distinguished from the rest of the human species by their broad shoulders, flat noses and small black eyes, deeply buried in the head; and, as they were almost dest.i.tute of beards, they never enjoyed either the manly graces of youth or the venerable aspect of age.” (_En pa.s.sant_, we can but wonder what our poor Gibbon would have said to the shaven chin of to-day!) ”A fabulous origin was a.s.signed worthy of their form and manners--that the witches of Scythia, who for their foul and deadly practices had been driven from society, had united in the desert with infernal spirits, and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction.”
Again, poor Huns! We do not need such legend to know that they were utterly barbarian; that they rode like the devil, fought with bone-tipped javelins, clothed themselves in skins, and ate herbs and half-raw meat which they had first made tender by using it as their saddle! It is a sufficiently black indictment, and, though it applies only to the rolling swarm of savages which, on leaving that hive of humanity, the wide Siberian Steppe, turned westward, we have no reason to suppose that the swarm which turned eastward differed much from the type. It is true they are called the White Huns, but that is most likely because among the dark races of Hindustan, the yellow Mongolian complexion showed fair.
India had been overrun many times before, but it needs small consideration to see that this invasion must have been the worst, must have brought with it a perfect horror of havoc. Far more so than the Hun invasion in Europe. There the ultimate savage met, for the most part, with Goths and Visigoths. In India they stood between a Brahman and his salvation, between culture and comfort. For India was in these days far more civilised than Europe; its people were refined, bound hand and foot by ritual, curiously conventional in custom.
The long ages which had pa.s.sed since the Vedic times had made religion more complex, had multiplied ceremonial to such an extent that the performance of the simplest duty was hedged about by the danger of fateful commissions, and still more fateful omissions. The revival of Hinduism during the paling days of the Gupta empire had vastly increased the power of the Brahman. In brief, Puranic Hinduism--that is, religion based on the Puranas, as distinct from the Vedas--with all its hair-splitting, its overlay of ritual by ritual, was at its zenith. From birth to death a man--even the meanest man--was in the grip of innumerable petty commandments.
The very G.o.ds he wors.h.i.+pped had changed. The elemental deities of the Rig-Veda--the Winds, the Fire, the Sun, the Dawn--behind which lay ever (half recognised, wholly mysterious) the Unconditioned, the Absolute, were lost; crowded out, as it were, by the three hundred and thirty millions of Puranic G.o.dlings, which rumour says had replaced the thirty-and-three of the Vedas. And beset by an Athanasian _furore_ for faith, the Puranas had defined the undefinable. The doctrine of a Trinity seems about this era of the world's history to have been more than usually in the air, and we find it here, hard and fast, crystallised unchangeably.
Brahma the Creator, Siva the destroying Spirit, Vishn or Krishn the Saviour, the Man-G.o.d, kind to the weaknesses of humanity. The three hundred and thirty millions of little G.o.ds were contained in the Three; they were emanations, attributes, as such imaged and wors.h.i.+pped. A great change this from the singing of a hymn to Agni the Fire-G.o.d, as the victim's flesh shrivelled in the flame, and the cooling of the ashes with a libation of soma juice.
And the wors.h.i.+pping of images brought with it a veneration for temples, a reverence for a paid priesthood, with its inevitable corollary of cult and custom and ceremonial. This complexity of religion naturally showed itself in the character of the people. As Mr Dutt writes:--
”Pompous celebrations and gorgeous decorations arrested the imagination and fostered the superst.i.tions of the populace; poetry, arts, architecture, sculpture, and music lent their aid, and within a few centuries the nation's wealth was lavished on these gorgeous edifices and ceremonials which were the outward manifestations of the people's unlimited devotion and faith. Pilgrimages, which were rare or unknown in very ancient times, were organised on a stupendous scale; gifts in land and money poured in for the support of temples, and religion gradually transformed itself to a blind veneration of images and their custodians. The great towns of India were crowded with temples, and new G.o.ds and new idols found sanctuaries in stone edifices and in the hearts of ignorant wors.h.i.+ppers.”
Add to this the testimony of the literature of the period. The dramas of Kalidasa, beautiful as they are, concern themselves entirely with Love. The very descriptions of nature have reference to it, as when we read:--
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