India, “the country of monsters” and India “the cradle of wisdom” are two frequently recurring themes that have fashioned the archetypal image of India since antiquity and that is to be found even today, though in different forms. India is in the western perception could be linked to a two headed creature incarnating at the same time - the civilized and the barbic; wisdom and gross ignorance; the beautiful and the monstrous. Actually, this classical image was established by travellers from outside -those remarkable people, who ventured to remote land in the garb of merchants, soldiers, ambassadors, conquerors, rulers, administrators, artists, writers, poets, seekers of philosophical or religious teaching or missionaries, many conveyed back impressions to their countrymen through living tales or their travel journals.
How Indian culture influenced the foreign tourist in earliest period is a matter of extensive research and great pain. In this process, at the very outset, any scholar may face acute shortage of reliable records worth the name. India has virtually no historical records worth the name. Not one Indian source exists of comparable value. For historical description of ancient Indian scenes and people; system and society, class and caste, religion and rituals, even for the identification of ruins, we have to rely either upon Chinese pilgrims. In ancient Indian literature there is only vague popular tradition with very little documentation above the level of myth and legend. We cannot reconstruct anything like a complete list of kings, sometimes whole dynasties have been forgotten. What little left is so nebulous that virtually no dates can be determined for any Indian personality till the Muslim period. It is very difficult to say over how much territory a great king actually ruled. There are no court annals in existence, with a partial exception of Kashmir and Camba (Chamba). Similarly, for great names in Indian literature, the work survives but the author’s date and identification is rarely known. With Luck, it may be possible to determine roughly the century to which the writing belonged; often it can only be said that the writers existed. Sometimes even that is also doubtful; many a work known by a particular author’s name could not possible have been written by any one person.
It perhaps unjust to maintain that ancient India had no history in general and History of Tourism in particular. The Brahmins had a long list of holy places for pilgrimage all over the country and beyond its frontiers, as far away as Baku and Egypt. Many of them remain unidentifiable as no records of travel and accurate location was even given. Is it possible that without any close linkage, the Arabs, when they were intellectually the most progressive and active people in the world, took their treaties on medicine and a good deal of their mathematics from Indian sources? Indian religious philosophy was welcomed in Japan and China without the force of Indian arms ?, even though almost no Indian visited or traded with those lands. It is remarkable that Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Ceylon owe a great deal of their cultural history of Indian influence without Indian occupation.
History is the presentation in chronological order of successive changes in the means and relation of production. It must be pieced together from passing references in text, both religious and secular, from a few drama and work of fiction purposing to describe historical events form the many references to rigging monarch and their ancestors, which have been found engraved on rocks, pillars and temple walls or incorporated as preambles to the title-deals of land grants. The early history of Indian resembles a Jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. Some parts of the picture are fairly clear; other may be reconstructed with the aid of a controlled imagination. The many gaps in the ancient history may be filled with the records and accounts of foreign travellers.
In one of the earliest known pieces of foreign writing on India—the 400 BC account by Ktesias, India emerges as a land of untold wealth, exotic landscape, unknown spices, rich brocades, brilliant jewels, inhabited by the weirdest fauna and the most curious looking people. Ktesias’s version reinforced a century later by the account of Greek envoy Megasthenes. Indika recreated India as a mythical land of marvels, the fabulous and the monstrous. The birth of India as a land of wisdom in western perception dates back to Alexander’s campaign. Scylaz of Caryanda, was the first Greek historian and geographer, who came India is the sixth century B.C. to explore the course of the Indus. Next, Nearchus, the Macedonian officer who accompanied Alexender in 326 B.C. recorded first-hand information, The accounts of Nearchus’s voyage from the historian of second century B.C. The book deals with the geography of Punjab, the wealth and population of the area besides other details of the journey to the delta of the Indus. Arrian observes that –“The Indians are in person slender and tall and of much lighter weight than other men. The animals used by the common sort of riding are camels and horses and asses, while the wealthy use elephants-----------------------. The conveyance which ranks next in honour is the chariot, the camel ranks third, while to be drawn by a single horse is considered no distinction at all”.
To trace the perception of foreign traveler about India, Indian society, kingship, role of state, cultural life, wealth and beauty, the record of Megasthenes is of a great importance. Megasthenes was the ambassador of selucus, who reside at the Mauryan court at Patliputra.(Patna) and wrote a detailed account of India, which became the standard text book on the subject for later classical writers. Unfortunately no manuscript of Megasthenes’s “Indika” has survived but many Greek and Latin Authors has made abundant use of it and from their work, it may be partially reconstructed. It is evident from a comparison of the fragments of Megasthenes with the Arthashastra that the Mauryan empire had developed a highly organized bureaucratic administration, which controlled the whole economic life of the state and that it had a very thorough secret service system, which was active among all classes from the highest minister to the submerged tenth of the town. Megasthenes much admired the emperor Chandragupta for his energetic administration of justice, which he presided over personally in open ‘Darbar’. He dwelt in great luxury in an enormous palace at Patliputra, which though built wholly of wood, was a large and fine city, surrounded by wooden wall. It was controlled by an administrative board of thirty members, who regulated in detail the whole social and economic life of the city. Description of Megasthenes shows that fortification was an important branch of ancient military architecture in India.“At the meeting of river Ganges and other is situated Palibothra, a city eight stadia in length and fifteen in breadth. It is of the shape of a parallelogram and is girded with a wooden wall, pierced with loopholes for the discharge of arrows. It has ditch in front for deference and for receiving the sewage of the city”
An important example of this military architecture is the long wall of rough-hewn stone protecting the site of the ancient Rajgraha, the capital of Bimbisara of Magadh, which probably dates back to the Buddha’s days. Another example is Sisupalgraha in Orissa, where a small section of the city wall dating from pre–Gupta times were built. It was a workmen like brick wall, set on an earthwork and probably surrounded by a moat. The Ideal ‘durga’ constructed for the protection of Patliputra was of mighty wooden wall with 570 towers and 64 gates. Though Arthashastra creates some confusion when it advises against the use of wood for fortification, owning to its liability to fire and rod, but archaeology bears out Megasthenes for the remains (of same of the gigantic timer of the wall of Mauryan Patliputra have been esclavated near the modern Patna).
Megasthenes has noted that Indian society was divided into seven craft–exclusive classes–philosophers, peasants, herdsman, craftsman and traders, soldiers, government officials and councilors. In this seven occupational classes, two were connected with the Government: the last of the seven – “those deliberate on public affairs”, while the class of overseas are superintendent or ‘Adhyakas’ of Arthashastra, which enumerates many others–the superintendent of crown land, of forests, of forest produce, of state herbs, of wastelands, of the treasury and of mines, of chief goldsmith, of comptroller of state granaries, the superintendent of commerce, of tolls and customs, of state spinning and wiving workshops, of slaughter houses, of passport and of shipping. Military requirement were cared for by the superintendents of the armoury, of cavalry, of elephants, of chariots and of footmen, all of whom seen to have been rather civil then military officials.
Though the information about sevenfold division of society may be erroneous but Megasthenes has given sufficient evidence to show that in Mauryan times class divisions were hardening. He has also described that there were no slave in India. Some Historian says that Megasthenes was wrong and slavery was prevailing as the Socio–economic system. It is remarkable that during those days Indian slavery was much milder than the form in which it had been used in the history of western civilization and thus Megasthenes may not recognized the ‘dasa’ as a slave. Arthashastra also admits that servitude is not the nature of the Aryans.
The ancient Indian kingdom was divided into provinces and these into divisions and districts; all with very variable terminology. Patliputra, the capital city of Mauryan empire too had its own council. Megasthenes has described that the city was governed by a committee of thirty members, divided into six sub–committees. The most important element is the city administration was the governor. His chief responsibilities were revenue collection and the preservation law and order by means of police, secret agents and troops, which were stationed in the cities under a captain. Megasthenes informs us that the spies did much of their work with the help of prostitutes. He also confirms that prostitutes were protected and supervised by the state and state gave more and more encouragement to the teachers and trainers of prostitutes. Megasthenes was the great admired of Mauryan administration, especially of provincial autonomy. He says that some cities of Mauryan Empire availed considerable local autonomy and they issued their own coinage too. Council existed in small towns and large villages in various part of India were vigorous.
Megasthenes was highly impressed by the pomp and luxury of the Indian king. He mentions that the palace of Chandragupta Maurya though very large and luxurious, was built of covered and gilded wood and the earliest stone building those who have survived were evidently modeled on wooden originals. We must not assume, from the complete lack of material remains that Indian building in Mauryan period or even before was mean or primitive. The Mauryan monolithic columns prove that he craftsmen of those days had a thorough mastery of working on stone and if the great cities of Mauryan times were built of wood, we must attribute this chiefly to the comparative scarceness of stone in the gangetic plain and the abundance of timber.
All ancient Indian authorities on statecraft stress the importance of a full treasury for successful government. Megasthenes give an account haw a regular system of taxation working during his period in India. Bhaga or share was the basic tax–a tax on land, which was fixed proportion of the crop. The figure generally given in the Smriti literature is one sixth, but Megasthenes gives it as one quarter. The tax was usually paid in kind and the Jatakas refer to the royal officers measuring out grains on the threshing floor for conveyance to the king’s granary. Apart from the basic tax several other taxes also fell upon the cultivator – such as fixed annual cash payment and dues for the use of water from a tank or canal owned by the king. Tax were paid on cattle and other livestock and on all kind of agricultural and daily produce. Though the Arthashastra suggests that essential goods such as grain, oil, sugar, pots and cheap textiles should be at one twentieth of their value and other goods at rates varying from one fifteenth to one fifth, but one information, which recorded in Megasthenes’s account that the revenue department was collecting ten percent sales-tax during Mauryan period, is no where mentioned in any Indian source. It was only Megasthenes who had informed that during Maruyan rule peasants would till their fields peacefully even when a battle was raging nearly. Devastation of the crops to weaken the enemy was quite legitimate according to the other books but Megasthenes says that there was a strong feeling that the lives of non-combatants should be respected, although this rule was not always kept.
Apart from the economic and political system of India, Megasthenes has also focused the Indian social life. He observes that “The Indian all live frugally, especially when in camp. They dislike a great undisciplined multitude and consequently they observe good order. Theft is a very rare occurrence……………………..They never drink wine except at sacrifices. The bevarage is a liquor composed from rice instead of barley and their food is principally a rice – pottage. The simplicity of their law and their contracts is proved by the fact that they seldom go to law. Their houses and property, they generally leave unguarded. These things indicates that they possess good, sober sense.”
By the beginning of the Christian era, Jews and Christians had started landing on the Indian shores. St Thomas a reputed to have preached Christianity in India from AD 21 to AD 52 . Around AD 68, a number of Jews apparently under the threat of Roman persecution seem to have reached the South and settled in Malabar. After the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, Jewish merchants sailed towards the Indian ocean and settled along the Malabar Coast. Pliny (AD 27 to AD 79 ) has observed that the demand in Rome for pepper and ginger from India was such that they were brought by weight, like gold and silver. Large sums were spent by the Roman empire for the purchase of oriental products.
The first important Chinese traveller in India was the Buddhist priest Fah–Hein. He started his journey by land to India in AD 399 via the south of the Gobi desert and Yarkand. During those days travelles coming from china could take numerous routes. Starting from Burma, they could cross northern Burma and reach Assam. To do so three routes could be used. From upper Burma through the Patkoi range and its passes they would cross into Brahmaputra valley and Assam, from the chindwin valley they could reach Manipur and through the Irrawadi Valley they could reach the Arrakans ; from Tibet they could cross into Sikkim through passes such as the Chorten Nyima la, Kangra la and Gora la or they could cross into Western Nepal via the Kagmara Pass. Again travellers could cross the Lipu lakh pass and they could reach Gangotri and via the Mana and Niti pass they could reach Badrinath.
Entering India through the Indus Valley Fah–Hein spent about ten years (AD 401 to AD 412) in India. He travelled all over northern India and was in Patliputra for about three years. Fah–Hein main interest was the study of Buddhism and obtaining authentic copies of Indian scriptures , which he fulfilled at Patliputra. The account of his travels gives much information about temples and monasteries and repeats many Buddhist legends, but only a few passing phrases mention social conditions and nothing at all is said about Chandragupta II , although Fah–Hein was in India for some six years of his reign and during his stay, he found this land completely at peace and prosperous beyond words. He observed that it was possible to travel from one end to the other end of the country without the need of passports.
The records of Fah–Hein shows that India had changed much since the days of Megasthenes, some seven hundred years earlier. The mild ethics of Buddhism and Jainism had gradually leaved Indian society which was now more gentle and human then in the days of the Mauryas. At this time India was perhaps the happiest and most civilized region of the world for the effete Roman Empire was nearly its destruction and China was passing through a time of trouble between the two great periods of the Hans and the Tangs.
It is said that by the time Buddha, hardy sailors had probably circumnavigated the sub–continent and perhaps made the first contact with Burma, Malaya and the islands of Indonesia. Indian literature mentions ships carrying one thousand passengers during Gupta period. The largest Indian ship known to Pliny, Who obtained some accurate information about the maritime trade of the Indian ocean measured three thousand amphorae or seventy five tons, in the 5th century Fah–Hein, who had no reason not to tell the truth in this respect travelled from Ceylon to Java in a ship carrying two hundred people, which is the largest complement of passengers and crew attested in a reliable source relating to early India He also gave us an another important information how the Indian craftsmen built a boat or ship. Normally the timbers of ancient Indian ships were not nailed but lashed together. This was done to avoid the imaginary danger of magnetic rocks. In fact, sewn or lashed timbers were more resilient than nailed one and could stand up better to the fierce storms of the monsoon period and the many coral reaps of the India Ocean.
Some eight centuries after Megasthenes Indicopleustes, a merchant who later become a Christian monk has prepared a detailed, travel account. He was in Western India and Sri Lanka from AD 535 to AD 547 and wrote Topographia Christiana. It contains valuable information on Indian trade relations with Sri Lanka and countries in touch with its Southern coasts. It reveals that Tamils were famous for their trade into pepper, pearls and beryl, which attracted travellers from east to west.
Indian History is also very thankful to an another Chinese pilgrim-Husn-Tsang, who wrote a very valuable description of India, which unlike the account of Megasthenes has survived intact, while his main purpose like that of Fah-Hein was to obtain Buddhist manuscripts and visit sacred sites. Hsuan-Tsang was less other-worldly than the earlier pilgrims and he was in close touch with Harsha, whome he much admired and who gave him an honoured place at his court. His work is therefore of much greater historical value than that of Fah-Hein.
Hsuan-Tsang was himself twice robbed by bandits in Harsha’s domains and on one river pirates, in the very heart of the empire. Hsuan-Tsang says that most probable the humanitarian ideas, encouraged by Buddhism, was the root cause of declining law and order situation. Hsuan-Tsang’s Chinese accounts of India shows that he was well aware of the four classes and many mixed classes of Indian Society. Interestingly, he observes that there are nine methods of showing outward respect: (i).by selecting words of soothing character in making request, (ii) by bowing the head to show respect, (iii) by raising the hands of and bowing, (iv) by joining the hands and bowing low, (v) by bending the knee, (vi) by a prostration, (vii) by a prostration on hand and knees, (viii) by touching the ground with the five circles and (ix) by stretching the five parts of the body on the ground.
With this brief description of traveller’s accounts I have to say that every traveller, who has written anything, has painted a picture of ‘Mona Lisa’. They have mentioned, what they observed. They were not the ‘modern political historiographers’, who created history from their preconceived notions or from thoughts, sprang from the organic unity of historical experience. It’s all depends on the spectator in which way he conceive or analyse the brightness or darkness or contrast of the picture. I have a strong belief that every historian should must admire the traveller’s eye witness account because they are the people who travel extensively and dangerously in alien society, scaled the unexplored areas, collected basic informations and on the basis of the existing ground realities depicted certain ages as the “the golden period” or as “the age of darkness”.
Reference
1. Basham, A.L. The wonder that was India-Delhi, 1967
2. Koshambi, D.D. The cultural and civilisation of Ancient India in Historical outline
3. Peter, R and Mahindra, U - Panorama of Indian culture (In 4 vols) New Delhi – 2001
4. Stein, Burton - A History of India. Oxford. Delhi. 1998.
5. Maurya, Vibha. Encoutering the Indian contemporary European image of India - New Delhi. 1999
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