19. The Flower Republics (291 – 790 AS)
While the Saka had had no qualms in destroying holy sites during the conquest war, they didn't generally target the Vedic religion during their rule; rather, they were content with having their own belief system distinct from that of the population, even taking pride in their policy of tolerance. Varanasi was allowed to recover from the former devastation, and became once again a center of the worship of Shiva. This changed once Pramshen occupied the throne in 291 AS [157 AD].
More fond of Indian environment than his predecessors, he took as permanent capital of his empire in the newly completed Rajanagara, the City of Kings, built around a majestic imperial palace, opened in gardens, fountains and paved squares. The recent development of arches allowed the creation of monumental multi-story buildings. Massive statues of
simurgh, the griffins of Iranian tradition, loomed above the streets. It also held the largest fire temple ever built.
Pramshen wasn't content with ruling India, but rather he wanted to remake it in his image; he was a zealous Zoroastrian, and held in contempt the “demon worship” of the native Indians. He also suffered from a poorly understood pulmonary disease, which he blamed on the corruption of the land. He spent hours every day inhaling the fumes of burning flowers and spices.
Worship of the Vedic gods was banned, and many public offenders were beheaded in the square before of the great temple. Copies of the Vedas and the Upanishads were burned in the streets, a practice the scholar Vishvagita condemned by throwing himself in one of the bonfires. Rebellions started to appear in the cities of the empire, even a sort of guerrilla warfare led by Shaivist
brahmin. To learn the holy writings by heart became a common practice among the
brahmin, to preserve them from destruction.
The figure of Bhairavaputra emerged around 302 AS [168 AD] as a powerful rebel leader fighting against Pramshen's religious police. Claimed to have reappeared after many assassinations and executions, he probably wasn't an actual individual as much as a role passed among different leaders. The story also claims an exceptional martial prowess and even a miraculous birth (out of a large bonfire of Vedas in the countryside around Pataliputra).
As Pramshen's health worsened during his final years, his behavior became more erratic, alternating nights of quiet, solitary meditation with orders of slaughters and mass executions that could go on for days. A mass grave recently found near Varanasi contains over 1500 skulls, allegedly piled over a couple days. A complex of Vedic temples including the great Kashi Vishvanatha was razed to the ground [1] and purified with fire to build a massive “place of death”. A
dakhma or “tower of silence” [2] destined to Pramshen himself was raised in the center.
In 314 AS [180 AD], the emperor was found dead after one of his nights of contemplation. The rebellion against the Saka domination didn't end with his death, however; in the following ten years, a ragtag army assembled itself in the eastern provinces, and defeated the imperial garrisons in many occasions. Pramshen's successor, Mazdachashma, couldn't bring himself to repress the rebellion as violently as his uncle.
Overwhelmingly recorded by Vedic historians, the native war of restoration has long been interpreted as a heroic struggle against foreign oppressors. It should be noted, however, that most Zoroastrians in India were ethnically native people of low (or no) caste,
dalit and
shudra who had found relief in the new casteless society. The Saka could have never ruled for so long, nor Pramshen impose his faith so firmly, without their support.
Violence and unrest quickly made the administration of the empire impossible, and the power of the Saka crumbled within a generation. The rebels, however, had no coherent power structure: predictably enough, they started fighting each other as soon as the rulers were no longer a concern.
The Nanda dynasty, already mistrusted in the decades after the Melakan War, had lost all its legitimacy in the Saka invasion, between Khinnabhagya's poor management and his eventual flight to the mountains. Now the Nanda family survived as rulers of a peripheral mountain kingdom with no reasonable claim to the Indian mainland. They ruled over little more than yaks and goats. Thus, it provided a harmless source of legitimacy: the new governors pledged allegiance to the Nanda emperor in his mountain fortress, and administered the liberated cities as they wished, free from each other's interference.
In 352 AS [218 AD] the
vaishya Navjagruti, elected governor of the Gujarati port of Minnagara, called a council of scholars to develop wise laws for the region. Thus began the age of the Flower Republics.
Left: a miniature of the palace of Minnagara. Right: Perso-Indian musicians.
They were so called because wisdom and beauty were said to “bloom” forth from five great cities – Minnagara in the southwest, Puri in the southeast, Chittagong in the northeast, Purushapura in the northwest, and Varanasi in the center – over the surrounding land. Their form was based on the ancient republics of the Low Ganges. A council that included representatives of the four castes gathered in a hall called
santhagara to debate and vote on important issues. Minor centers could send emissaries to the closest great city to make requests and present gifts. A similar government would be adopted in the Dravidian state of Chola in the far south.
The most powerful of the Five was Kalinga, having a vast population and a privileged access to the trade networks of Southeast Asia; Bangla had a lesser role, though the fertile Ganges lowlands granted it the largest population, while Gujarat attempted expeditions into Arabiyya and Eastern Libya with modest success. Gandhara had to be content with the more meager land routes, and Kashi with the prestige (and pilgrimage revenues) of the holy city of Varanasi.
Between the 2nd and the 4th century, Shaivism [3] consolidated out of the Vedic beliefs as a religion in its own right. In contempt of Pramshen's book-burning, it emphasized reading and memorizing the Vedas from a young age, which created probably the most literate society that had existed until then. A common form of devotion was (and is) meditating on the frailty of existence, as represented in the rites with holy ash collected from cremation grounds.
In these centuries much of Rajanagara fell into disrepair: even the magnificent fire temple lost part of its covering. The population of the city fell to about 50,000, most of the rest having moved to Varanasi. Zoroastrian funerals were still conducted in the
dakhma, but they were often heckled and disrupted by Shaivist onlookers. Many Zoroastrians sought refuge in the east, in the fertile basin of the Iravati [Irrawaddy] river, on the delta of which they built the city of Behdin.
In atmanic [4] interpretations, Shaivism's grim focus on the inevitability of death led to an exuberance of life expressed in art, music, and poetry, supremely concretized in the late winter festival of
Maha Shivaratri, with its ecstatic dances and sexual imagery. A more cynical interpretation is that the new rulers were mostly
vaishya unconnected to the earlier ruling families, with no source of legitimacy other than their wealth (which had been crucial in supporting the efforts of rebellion), and no better way to display their wealth than by hiring artists and scholars. In fact, it took almost two centuries for the full splendor we associate to the Flower Republics to appear after Navjagruti's first council.
The four outer cities quickly drifted away from each other, each developing its distinct culture, each absorbing features and techniques from their foreign partners, whether they were the Khazar shepherds newly settled on the Iranian highlands, the Amun-worshiping fishermen of Dilmun, or the Annamite
gung of Huo China. In the middle stood the shrines of Varanasi, holding together the common identity of the Flower Republics; locked away from coasts and mountain passes, it grew rich on tolls and donations from the pilgrims, and its temples brimmed with beautifully carved gold and silver, coral and ebony, Libyan ivory and Chinese jade.
Once again, Indian states showed interest in the outer world. We'll see in a future chapter what will come from this.
[1] The Kashi Vishwanath was actually destroyed IOTL in 1669 by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, to be rebuilt about a century later after the fall of the Mughal empire.
[2] A platform used in the Zoroastrian practice to dehydrate dead bodies in the sun and expose them to carrion birds.
[3] From Sanskrit “shaiva” (“pertaining to Shiva”). Note that TTL Shaivism is not quite the same as IOTL.
[4] A philosophy of history that sees events as primarily driven by beliefs and ideologies. It’s contrasted with a brahmanic school, that is more holistic and teleological, and a prakritic school, which seeks to explain events through material causes.
In the next installment: the transformation of Europe is complete.