The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade Read Online Free PDF Page B

mountains from the central Asian war tribes that had seeped into India (their relatives had gone east into Persia and become Persian). It had, as languages do, mutated, changed, and mingled with other languages: it had given birth to simplified “languages of everyday use” such as Magadhi and Pali, both so-called prakrits , or “common tongues.” 6 But, well into its mutation, the original archaic form of the language had made an unprecedented comeback. By AD 300, Sanskrit was the language of public record; by the time of Samudragupta’s conquests, Sanskrit was also the language of the court and the preferred speech of philosophers and scholars. 7 The Hindu scriptures known as the Puranas, the law codes, the epic tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata: all were written in Sanskrit.
    The keepers of Sanskrit were the brahmans , the educated Hindu upper class of Gupta society. Buddhism was alive and well in India: Buddhists were building monuments and carving caves, leaving their mark on the Indian landscape. But Sanskrit’s dominance shows that the brahmans were firmly at the top of the world, at least in northern India.
    Which goes a long way to explain why the Gupta age, inaugurated by Chandragupta and brought to its peak by Samudragupta, is so often looked back upon as a golden age and the classical period of Indian culture. Romila Thapar points out that both of these terms are suspect, implying as they do an entire structure of historical understanding. A “golden age” is when “virtually every manifestation of life reached a peak of excellence,” and a “classic period” implies a certain height from which a culture declines. To discover either in the past first requires that historians define excellence and height: Hindu chroniclers defined them as both Hindu and Sanskritic. In those terms, the Gupta age was indeed golden. 8
    In fact, the Guptas themselves were not exactly “Hindu,” since this is a name that encompasses an elaborate later system. They built Hindu temples and wrote their inscriptions in Sanskrit, but they also erected Buddhist stupas and supported Buddhist monasteries. Hinduism and Buddhism, both systems for understanding the world, were not yet enemies, and Samudragupta, content with nominal rule over his outskirts, had no pressing political need to enforce a rigid religious orthodoxy.
    But the official inscriptions of the Gupta court were Sanskrit, and Samudragupta used Hindu rituals in conquest, in victory, as tools of his royal power. It was useful to him to ally his reign with a glorious past: a learned past, an honorable past, a past of victory. Nostalgia and conservatism marked Samudragupta’s reign.
    And like so many movements of nostalgia and conservatism, his was based on a total misunderstanding of what had come before. The inscriptions of his victories are a case in point. Asoka’s conquests had pushed the Mauryan empire outwards to its greatest extent, but his campaigns had killed hundreds of thousands (particularly in the south), and once his kingdom was secure he had been overwhelmed with remorse and regret. Turning away from war and victory, he had spent the remainder of his rule pursuing virtue and righteousness. And as part of his penance, he had carved his guilt in Pillar Edicts throughout his land: “The slaughter, death and deportation of the people is extremely grievous,” he mourned, “…and weighs heavy on the mind.” 9
    Samudragupta too wanted to be a great king; he hoped to set himself in line with Asoka the conqueror, carving his own accomplishments side by side with the victories of the Mauryan emperor. But he seems to have used the pillar without understanding the faint traces of the edict already on it. Unwittingly, he set his triumphs and his boasts of victory next to Asoka’s regrets and repentance. 10
     
     
    W HEN S AMUDRAGUPTA DIED , sometime between 375 and 380, a brief struggle for the throne followed. Coins from the period show, not an