Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

Author: Sanyal, Sanjeev

• Sadly, much of the scholarship around Sangam literature is focused on trying to use the corpus to discern the roots of pristine Dravidian culture, unsullied by ‘Aryan’ influences from the north.

• The point is that by the late Iron Age, the people in southern India were not just aware of the rest of Indian civilization but were comfortably a part of it.

• For some odd reason, Indian historians see cultural influences flow only from the North to the rest of the country. The reality was of back-and-forth exchange.

• Contrary to popular perception, Sanskrit was never a ‘pure’ language and its success was largely due to its ability from the earliest times to absorb ideas and words from Tamil, Munda and even Greek

• The single most important factor that allowed this boom in trade was an understanding of monsoon-wind patterns, a discovery that Greek sources credit to a navigator called Hippalus.

• Cleopatra’s Alexandria, like Dwarka and old Madurai, now lies under the sea.

• There were dozens of ports all along the coast including the great port of Tamralipti in Bengal, the cluster of ports around Chilka lake in Orissa (recently renamed Odisha), the Pallava port of Mahabalipuram and the Chola port of Nagapattinam.

• From these ports, merchant fleets set sail for Suvarnadwipa (the Island of Gold or Sumatra) and Yavadwipa (Java).

• Over the next thousand years, Funan’s legacy would evolve into the great Hindu–Buddhist kingdoms of Angkor in Cambodia and Champa in Vietnam.

• According to the Samguk Yusa,9 Princess Huh Hwang-ok of Ayodhya sailed all the way to Korea to marry King Suro in the fourth century AD.

• For instance, in the state of Orissa, the festival of Kartik Purnima still celebrates the day when Sadhaba merchants set sail for South-East Asia.

• The town, 60 km south of modern Chennai, was a thriving port under the Pallava dynasty from the seventh to the ninth century AD.

• A survey of the Orissa coast by Eric Kentley in the 1980s found that boats called ‘padua’ were still being made by sewing together planks with coir ropes.13 I am told that there are boat-builders who continue using this approach into the twenty-first century. Like the Harappan ox-cart, it is another example of how ancient technologies live on in India even as it adopts new ones.

• Fa Xian calls it the Land of the Lions—a clear reference to the mythical origins of the Sinhalese people (there were never any real lions in Sri Lanka).

• When Fa Xian visited India, much of the country was under the sway of the Gupta Empire, the second of India’s great empires.

• The first of the Gupta emperors was Chandragupta I (320–335 AD) who established control over the eastern Gangetic plain with his capital in Pataliputra (now Patna). However, it was his son Samudragupta who dramatically expanded the empire over his forty-year rule.

• There is strong evidence to suggest that the Guptas consciously modelled themselves on the Mauryans and set out to recreate the empire of their predecessors. Not only did two of their emperors share a name with Chandragupta Maurya, but the Guptas went out of their way to put their own inscriptions next to Mauryan ones.

• The rust-free Iron Pillar in Delhi is usually remembered as an example of advanced metallurgy, but it was not meant as a technological wonder. Its real purpose was to provide a permanent record for posterity.

• The Gupta emperors invested heavily in intellectual and artistic excellence. It was under their rule that the astronomer-mathematician Aryabhatta worked out that the earth was spherical and that it rotated on an axis.

• Fa Xian tells us that the people placed idols of their gods within these structures and images of the Buddha on the corners of the wagons. On the day of the festival, twenty such wagons were pulled through the city in a grand procession.

• Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra. These were constructed under the rule of the Vakatakas, close allies of the Guptas.

• Marco Polo specifically mentions this in his comments about India: ‘For I assure you that the darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow.’18

• The source of southern power was trade—both with the flourishing Indianized kingdoms of South East Asia as well as with the Persians and Arabs who had replaced the Romans in the west.

• When necessary, they were not afraid to use military might to keep the trade routes open. The most famous examples of this are the Chola naval expeditions to South-East Asia in the eleventh century.

• It is commonly argued by scholars that ancient Indians only wrote one formal history—Kalhana’s Rajatarangini or River of Kings,

• Gurjara–Pratihara kingdoms (the latter gave their name to the state of Gujarat).

• The Cheraman Juma mosque in Kerala claims to have been established in 629 AD.

• Interestingly, the most important Indian export of the period was the steel sword. The country was famous at that time for the quality of its metallurgy, and the swords used by the early Muslim armies were often of Indian origin.

• This remained true even at the time of the Christian Crusades and the famous ‘Damascus Sword’ was either imported directly from India or was made using Indian techniques.

• Farther south, there were a number of Arab settlements in Kerala where they mixed with local converts. Their descendants, called the Moplahs or Mappilas, account for a quarter of the state’s population today

• According to the oral tradition of the Mohyal Brahmins of Punjab, some of their ancestors died fighting for Hussein in the Battle of Karbala, Iraq, in 680 AD. This is why this group of Hindus, also known as Husseini Brahmins, still join Shia Muslims during the ritual mourning of Muharram every year.

• Over the next quarter-century, Mahmud would make seventeen raids into India, many of them directed at wealthy temple towns such as Mathura and Nagarkot.

• His most infamous raid was against the temple of Somnath, Gujarat, in 1026 AD.

• is often forgotten that one of their most important motivations was the capture of slaves. 12 Over the next few centuries, hundreds of thousands of Indian slaves—particularly from West Punjab and Sindh—would be marched into Afghanistan and then sold in the bazaars of Central Asia and the Middle East. Unused to the extreme cold of the Afghan mountains, they died in such large number that the range would come to be known as the Hindukush meaning ‘Killer of Hindus’.

• However, his most visible legacy is the huge lake that he created using an earthen dam in Bhopal, a city that is also named after him.

• Within a few years, the university of Nalanda was destroyed by Bakhtiyar Khilji, its library was torched and most of its scholars put to death.

• Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas, is said to have been situated in Delhi along the banks of the Yamuna.

• The nearby village of Anangpur recalls the name of Raja Anang Pal. A stream from the dam feeds a stepped

• The nearby village of Anangpur recalls the name of Raja Anang Pal.

• Thus, Shah Jehan’s seventeenth-century Red Fort was not the first to bear that name.

• The Qutub Minar complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has some of the oldest Islamic buildings in northern India. At its centre is the mosque built by Ghori’s slave-general Qutubuddin Aibak. An inscription on the east gate of the mosque tells us that it was built by demolishing twenty-seven Hindu–Jain temples.

• In order to supply the expanding city, Alauddin Khilji built a large reservoir called Hauz Khas.

• In 1526, a Turko–Mongol adventurer called Babur defeated the Sultan of Delhi in what is known as the First Battle of Panipat.

• He also rebuilt the ancient Uttara Path highway from Punjab to Bengal. Known as ‘Sadak-e-Azam’ (or Great Road), it would be a major artery of the Mughal period; the British would know it as the Grand Trunk Road and it is now part of the Golden Quadrilateral highway network.

• The rulers of Mewar did not see themselves merely as kings but explicitly as the custodians of Hindu civilization embodied in the temple of Eklingji, a manifestation of Shiva. The deity was considered the real king of Mewar and this is why its rulers did not use the title of Maharaja (which means Great King) but that of Rana (i.e. Custodian or Prime Minister).

• Given this cultural shift, Indian merchants became increasingly shore-based, while shipping passed mostly into the hands of Arabs.

• Sang Nila Utama, is said to have sought refuge in the Riau cluster of islands, just south of the Malay peninsula. One day, so the story goes, he had gone hunting on the island of Temasek where he is said to have seen a lion. So, when he built a settlement here, he named it Singapura (Sanskrit for Lion-City).

• The real experts of medieval cartography were the Chinese.

• Meanwhile, Europe was literally in the dark about the geography of Asia. The Arabs appear to have been able to enforce an information blockade over centuries.

• The Portuguese were the first European country to invest heavily into the systematic mapping of the world’s oceans.

• new expedition was prepared in 1497 under Vasco da Gama. It comprised of three ships—the flagship San Gabriel, the smaller San Rafael and the traditional caravel Barrio.6

• A new expedition was prepared in 1497 under Vasco da Gama. It comprised of three ships—the flagship San Gabriel, the smaller San Rafael and the traditional caravel Barrio.6

• The Portuguese would manage to hold on to Diu till as recently as 1961. The last of the outposts in Asia, Macau, was handed back to the Chinese in 1999.

• The Portuguese had been the first Europeans to come to this part of the world and they were the last to leave.

• At the centre of the cartographic revolution were two individuals, Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortilius, contemporaries from the Low Countries.

• He also showed Asia and America to be separate continents long before the discovery of the Bering Strait proved it to be a fact.

• The ‘Mercator Projection’ is still the most commonly used format for a world map even though it is based on a distortion that squeezes the countries near the equator and stretches those near the poles. This is why countries like Norway and Sweden look much larger than they are in reality while India and Indonesia look much smaller.

• It was with Mercator’s encouragement that Ortilius produced the first atlas in 1570 in Antwerp. The first edition of the atlas had seventy sheets and was called the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World).

• The city of Vijayanagar was established just after the devastating raids of Alauddin Khilji’s general Malik Kafur had broken down the old power structures of southern India. Around 1336, two brothers, Hukka and Bukka, appear to have rallied various defeated groups under their banner and built a fortified new city called Vijayanagar

• They tell us that the city was encircled by a series of concentric walls, perhaps as many as seven of them,

• The remains of the city can be visited at Hampi in Karnataka,

• One of the more remarkable remains is that of Ugra Narasingha—a gigantic sculpture of Lord Vishnu as half-lion and half-man

• It remains as Chandni Chowk, named after the way the full moon once reflected on a canal that ran along the middle of the road.

• the English and Dutch officials also insisted on a flag-bearer who walked in front of the party in honour of their respective companies. I suppose this is the origin of the little flags that modern-day ambassadors and dignitaries have fluttering in front of their luxury cars.

• although the Mughal emperor had revenues that exceeded the combined receipts of the Shah of Persia and the Ottoman Sultan, he could not be considered wealthy because it was all consumed by expenditure.

• Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, was executed in Delhi in 1675 for standing up for the Hindu Pandits of Kashmir. The Gurudwara Sis Gunj in Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk stands at the spot where he was beheaded.

• On the highway between Orchha and Khajuraho, there is a small but picturesque palace built on a lake by Chhatrasaal for Mastani during her younger days. Not many people know about it and visitors are likely to have it all to themselves.

• The Mughal empire may yet have survived religious bigotry, leaky public finances, Maratha guerrillas, Bundela chieftains and the Assamese navy. The foundations built up by Akbar and his immediate successors were still quite strong, but Aurangzeb committed the ultimate sin—he stayed on the throne too long. He ruled till he died at the age of ninety in 1707. As happened in the case of Ashoka and Feroze Shah Tughlaq, he was followed by a succession of weak rulers culminating in a foreign invasion.

• In peninsular India, the rivalry between the Dutch and the Portuguese had been replaced by that between the French and the English.

• knowledge of India’s interiors remained quite basic except for major trade routes. This would change with the Battle of Plassey in 1757 where the troops of the English East India Company, led by Robert Clive, decisively defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal.

• There were three villages in the area—Sutanuti, Gobindapore and Kalikata The city’s name is derived from that of the last village.

• Just off this road, in the middle of tiger-infested jungle, was a Shiva temple erected by a hermit called Chowranghi. 1 The temple no longer exists, and the place is now occupied by the Asiatic Society on Park Street.

• The hermit’s name, however, was retained as Chowringhee Road,

• After Napoleon was defeated, the Dutch wanted their colonies back. There were heated negotiations between Calcutta and Batavia (the Dutch headquarters, now Jakarta). The Dutch would eventually get back most of their possessions as per the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824, but not before Stamford Raffles had ensured that the British would retain effective control of the Straits of Malacca.

• At thirty-five, Rennell returned to England and produced the famous Bengal Atlas. He was hailed as ‘the Father of Indian Geography’.

• Now came the issue of naming Peak XV. The Tibetans already called it Chomolungma (Mother Goddess of the World). Unusually for the colonial period, the Survey of India tended to retain the local names where possible but in this case the temptation proved too great. It was named after George Everest.

• There has been a tendency in recent years by writers like William Dalrymple to present the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar as a ‘court of great brilliance’ that was in the ‘middle of remarkable cultural flowering’ and the ‘greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history’. 10 This is inaccurate. While it is true that the court did include some excellent poets like Ghalib and Zauq, by the 1850s Delhi would have felt distinctly provincial and archaic compared to Calcutta. A ‘renaissance’ is about new ideas, innovation and vigour. Ghalib’s poetry may be very good from a literary perspective but it is mostly a lament for a world that was collapsing around him. It contains no vision of the future.

• Three of them, including Mirza Mughal, were stripped naked and shot dead with a Colt revolver near the archway still called Khuni Darwaza (Gate of Blood).

• The Queen’s Proclamation was read out by Lord Canning on 1 November 1858. The choice of place is interesting since it was not read out in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras or even Delhi. Instead, it was done in Allahabad.

• It is here that Ram is said to have crossed the river and visited the sage Bharadhwaj before proceeding on his exile to the forests of central India.

• The column commemorating the Queen’s Proclamation is a short walk from Saraswati Ghat and stands neglected in an overgrown park. None of the locals seemed to know the significance of the place. This is unfortunate because the modern Indian State is the direct outcome of this Proclamation.

• The Marwari merchants of Rajasthan, for instance, were forced to leave their homes and look for opportunities in the new world. Many would make their way to Calcutta where their descendants would become very successful businessmen.

• There was a speculative boom in cotton, land and in ambitious ventures like the Back Bay Reclamation Company.

• The idea was not without its critics, but Viceroy Hardinge probably felt that this was his best chance to be remembered as the founder of a great city.

• In the early years, the workers expected to come home at the end of the indenture period, but the British decided that it was cheaper to encourage Indians to settle in the colonies. Thus, Indian women were encouraged to join their menfolk. The indentured workers faced a hard life, but the migration process was given a boost by the Great Famine of 1877. In this way, large Indian communities came to settle in faraway British colonies like Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaya, South Africa and Mauritius. The French colony of Reunion and the Dutch colony of Surinam also received substantial numbers.

• Finally in September 1948, more than a year after independence, Deputy Prime Minister Patel decided to move. The military action was named Operation Polo, supposedly because of the large number of polo grounds in Hyderabad.

• The French had five such enclaves. The largest was Pondicherry, south of Chennai and close to the ancient port of Mahabalipuram.

• The others included Chandannagar (just north of Calcutta), Yanam (on the Andhra coast), Mahe (on the Kerala coast) and Karaikal (on the Tamil coast).

• Pondicherry, renamed Puducherry, is today a Union Territory (i.e. a province directly ruled by the central government) but most Indians do not realize that it also includes the three other enclaves of Yanam, Mahé and Karaikal.

• The Portuguese held several small enclaves along the western coast. Goa was the single largest territory, but there were also Diu, Daman, Dadra, and Nagar-Haveli.

• In the east, it is defined by the McMohan Line which had been agreed upon between the Tibetans and the British as per the Simla Agreement of 1914. It was named after Sir Arthur Henry McMohan who was the chief negotiator for the British side.

• Nineteenth-century British surveyors had demarcated the border on two separate occasions, using two different natural contours.11 The first demarcation is called the Johnson Line, drawn in 1865 between Kashmir and Turkestan

• In 1899, however, the British drew a new border called the Macartney–Macdonald Line. This time, they used the Karakoram range as the natural boundary and left out Aksai Chin, possibly to create a defensible buffer against Russian expansion in the region.

• Then, as suddenly as they had come, the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew roughly to their pre-war position. We still do not know for sure why they came in and why they left.

• The most likely reason is that winter was fast approaching and supply lines through the Himalayas would have been difficult to sustain.

• In 1975, India absorbed the protectorate of Sikkim into the Union. The principality had been ruled by the Chogyal, a ruler of Bhutiya extract, who was unpopular with the ethnic Nepali majority.

• Thus it came to be that India, land of the sublime symmetry of the Taj Mahal and the organic orchestra of Palitana, is also home to some of the ugliest buildings in the world. Every major city has them—Nehru Place and Inter-State Bus Terminal in Delhi, the Indian Express Building in Mumbai and the Haryana State Secretariat in Chandigarh.

• Just as the Mahalonobis model of central planning damaged the Indian economy, the country’s urban thinking was severely damaged by Le Corbusier’s philosophy that buildings were machines for living.

• Thus, slums play an important role as ‘routers’ in the urbanization process. They absorb poor migrants from the rural hinterland and naturalize them into the urban landscape.

• The country’s old middle class was the product of the British and socialist eras. However, it is now being swamped by those climbing into the middle class from the slums and small ‘mofussil’ towns.

• When New York observes an anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there is a sombre service and speeches by leading political figures. Contrast that with how Mumbai commemorated the terrorist attacks of 26 November 2008. A day after the fourth anniversary, a flash mob of 200 young boys and girls suddenly appeared in the middle of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal, a busy train station that had witnessed one of the massacres on that night of horror. The flash mob then proceeded to dance for five minutes to a popular Bollywood number Rang de Basanti (roughly translates as ‘The Colour of Sacrifice’). Then, when the music stopped, the mob disappeared into the crowd. In any other country this would have been considered sacrilege but in India it was widely seen as appropriate. The whole episode was filmed and became an instant hit on the Internet. But, why do Indians remember a horrible event by dancing? The key to resolving the paradox is to realize that Indians view history not in political but in civilizational terms.