A military based society in South Asia is possible, if Buddhism places an emphasis on Physical and Mental devlopment through meditation and martial arts, discarding the the idea of a warrior caste, then the huge population from which soldiers can be drawn could run the country, they obviously be self serving but they make sure to preserve the unity of the country for the sake of legitimacy and power of a large and geographically secure area
AHC - Mauryan Empire Implement a Mandate of Heaven in India
- Thread starter Brahman
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I don't know about in around 250 BCE, but i do know that in around 100 AD Nepal did have a few Warrior Monk monasteries. Probably expand on them?
Buddhist monks raised particularly and trained particularly to be masters of the martial arts. They died out in Nepal around 500AD OTL. They were known to be fierce warriors and the Lichhavis mostly let them stay.
I do not think that would be feasible in a South Asia Spanning empire, I do think however A military based culture could have evolved in India as it would have been the only way the country could be safe from threats from steppe, Just like how Russia had a militaristic culture in order to counter the Central Asian nomads
Not calling it an invasion is just semantics, the word "invasion" is an extremely broad term and generally when a population group from outside enters, assimilates the majority of the population and has a massive genetic impact on the local region, we can safely say it was not somehow completely peaceful, to say otherwise is just wishful thinking and is a claim that itself must be proven, you can't just say "it's not an invasion until proven otherwise".
Maybe it was not a single invasion, but then we could call it "invasions", it's 100% semantics.
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I agree with this one, However there are two ways one could divide the central asian invasions, pre and post Islamic
Before central asians such as Indo Parthians or Kushans who invaded were buddhists as such became the patrons of Indian culture and saw themselves as Indians and Used Indian customs, traditions, culture and languages and allowed them selves to blend in
After Islam, The Turks who invaded all had a separate civil, legal, political, religious and cultural institutions, They all worshipped a foreign religion, spoke a foreign language and had persian based court culture, this can be said as the first divisions of society between Muslims and Non muslims, the end of this culminated in the creation of Pakistan
Well, the Kushans are a diverse group. Kanishka I was a Buddhist and in the Greco-Indian tradition of Buddhism. He however, was the only explicitly Buddhist Kushan monarch. All of the Buddha coinages derive from his reign. He however, is a patron not only of Buddhism, but of the Greco-Bactrian polytheist traditions. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the majority of the Kushan deities represented on coinage and devoted to are of these types:
1. Presumably Tocharian deities. The most famous is the Kushan royal tutelary deity, Winshu, a wind god often combined in Kushan inscription with Hermes and Hercules. This god, is postulated to be the personal god of the Kushan royal clan.
2. Greek/Hellenic deities: These are the obvious Greek gods. Most commonly of these depicted, is Zeus (also combined to Indra) and Apollo-Helios.
3. Iranic polytheist deities: This was primarily Mithra, written in Greek as Mitro on Kushan coinage. Anahita was also common as a goddess of the lake, rivers and the sea. Ahura Mazda appeared on, if if I recall, five or six coins, making it representative of less than 1% of coinages in discovered Kushan caches.
4. Hindu deities: The deities of the Subcontinent. This was in Kushan coinage primarily two deities of great importance. Namely, Shiva and Vishnu. The Kushan monarch Vasudeva I claimed to be a devotee of Shiva in his inscriptions. Subsequent Kushan monarchs, would focus upon Vishnu and the representation of other deities declined, within the Indus Valley or the Kushan southern kingdom or realm.
5. Buddhism: This is the depiction of Buddha in coinage or inscriptions, very rare outside of the reign of Kanishka I.
6. Akkado-Elamite deities: A small and obscure group. This mainly was the Great God Ishtar, the Great God Sin written as 'Mano' or 'moon' in Bactrian within the Greek script.
In other words, the Kushan did adopt much of the Aryan traditions and customs, surely. However, there is also a level of diversity that is simply inherent to the Kushan monarchy and its outlook. It though, does not mean that they were indistinguishable from the Hindu, they certainly were, prior to the reign of Kanishka II, when the Hinduization of the Kushan southern kingdom reached a watermark.
Also, the Kushan operated in whichever language they needed for the moment. Inscriptions in the central region, were made in Bactrian and Greek. In the south, within languages of the subcontinent and in the northeast in Tocharian or Greek. The one excluded was the Pahlavi tongue of the nearby Arsacid empire of Eranshahr and certainly not Avestan. Greek appears on the majority of the coinage, displaying the importance relatively of Greek at least in the majority of the Kushan empire. Even after the fall of the main Kushan empire and the Kushan kings were lords only of the Indus and nearby Mathura, the Kushan kings still made their coinage in the Greek language or the Bactrian language with a Greek script instead of a Pahalavi script.
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I don’t understand why you would use it though. And invasion implies violence. We simply cannot be sure if there was any violence at the level of calling it an organised invasion.
Respectable historians don’t say Anglo-Saxon ‘invasions’, where a very similar situation to Bronze Age India was occurring. They use migrations. Likewise across the rest of Europe. And it wasn’t a an assimilation. It was these various bands of primarily male migrants striking deals and marrying into the power structures of the area. They then diffused their language slowly from the top down. And while I agree it wasn’t completely peaceful the imagery behind the words of ‘Aryan Invasion’ is of fair skinned nomads smashing the cities of dark-skinned aboriginal inhabitants and subjugating them via caste in perpetuo. Thus it’s not about semantics, it’s about undoing many years of post-colonial myths that have left such a bad blood in the locals that they find it hard to come to terms with their history.
So yes, I can say “it’s not an invasion until proven otherwise” like many historians have been for years now. Because they simply weren’t invasions.
EDIT: Also the archaeological record shows that the de-urbanization of the last IVC cities was on its last legs by the time the Gandhara Grave Culture was formed. While I have no doubt the IVC cities fought amongst themselves via foreign mercenaries and militias towards the end of their Civilization, vast amounts of Indo-Aryans weren’t even in the continent at the time. So calling it an ‘Aryan Invasion‘ seems disingenuous when the IVC was mostly destroyed by the 4.2kya event causing irreparable damage to the monsoon cycle that watered their crops, don’t you think?
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It is true, It cannot be said as a Invasion, but a Migration and subsequent assimilation,I do think that Indus Valley Civilization had massive influence on the religion and philosophy of India
I personally think it could create a Pan-Indian Identity in the north if it survived for long, however i don't think it would be successful in the Hills and Mountains of the Himalayas in the North nor the South. Remember the Maurya's origins came from one among more than 559 ethnic groups on the subcontinent. Many ethnic groups simply won't die out and cast themselves as different, mostly in the North and South. A pan identity is always formed in empires that lost long. Despite what most people think, the Austrian Empire wasn't doomed to fail. The Habsburgs were beloved rulers for most of the populace and people gave their lives for them even though huge language and cultural barriers existed. The Besides, if the Austrian Empire survived you would have seen a more 'germanized' identity (somewhat) so it's not hard to presume the central areas gain a pan-identity but the North and South won't.
I agree on this, I do not think Mauryan can assimilate all the ethnic groups, however, I see Indian being a Cultural group, It could refer to People who speak Sanskrit and Follow some variation of Buddhism, they could create a Panindian Identity in Indo European Plains from Kabul in on end to Manipur in the other and Vindhya in the south, which could be slowly conquered like how Ashoka expanded it during the zenith and assimilated slowly
Will there be any timeline based on this? I mean reading point and counterpoint seems a bit boring without source timeline.
Well I am really bad at writing timeline, but if anybody wants to do it, go for it
Thats simply not true at all- as late as 1800, many tribes and pastoralist people in India were completely untouched by caste notions and were completely willing to fight to keep their revenue. Furthermore in the military labour market of North India it was far from difficult for low status farmers and pastoralists to adopt the language and upper caste identities of their commanding officers. Furthermore, many of the nayaka states were ruled by so called shudras. It was a matter of life and death for peasants who ruled them, and this led them to be invested in joining armies that gave them opportunities for social advancement. Caste in this sense is largely a back projection from the British interpretation of it after they had forcibly peasantised low status warrior communities and had classified everyone into castes mixed with racial science. The Ain I Akbari gives a total of four million people with military training in Akbar's domains that could be recruited, which would be a massive army dwarfing the current militaries of India or China. There was no shortage of military recruits and the majority of these would be primarily farmers who supplemented their income by signing up to armies, or the so called lower castes.
Also in response to earlier discourse on Sanskrit as a common language- with a Mauryan pod that's not going to happen. Sanskrit as a language of administration and high culture was introduced by the Iranic Indo- Scythian Rudradaman in the second century CE as an attempt to indianise his rule and was then later adopted by other Hindu rulers. With a Mauryan pod the language will be a descendant of Pali.
I think India's geography does tend towards fragmentation, and any United North India will probably be more economically and culturally linked to modern Afghanistan and central Asia, and they'd try and expand in that area first before expanding south of the Vindhyas. I think prior to the shifting of the course of the Ganga that occurred in the mughal period, much of Bengal is far too marginal to bother expanding into and literacy is so shallow in much of the populace that a single language intelligible to most people from the Thar desert to Pataliputra is pure fantasy, at least before modern mass education. One has to remember that for much of history large parts of India were heavily forested in ways that made it difficult for a centralised state to subjugate it's inhabitants.
I also think it's important to recognise the intellectual heterodoxy of India which was already well established- a tendency towards understanding and accomodation of different worldviews, religions and philosophies grounded in shared commitment to ethical action. Even if forms of Buddhism marginalised what we'd call hindusim, there's no chance of eradication and neither would the Buddhism itself be homogeneous enough to create political unity.
This Other viewpoints seem to be very interesting, however if that were the case, What was the Main reason for the lack of unification in North Indian Plains, it seemed natural that it would be unified as it would be favorable geography and Its unification will help fight against Central asian nomads,
and I do think by the medieval period when the Muslim Turks started invading, Caste was rigid and there was no reason for Shudras Or Dalits to Protest against a Muslim Invading a Hindu Kingdom or religious sites as it made no change to them, no matter who was in power, their all going to be treated pathetically regardless by the Regime, especially by Manusmriti Laws that were, if not followed Legally, were followed Socially and Marathas under the Peshwas were notorious castiest.
I Think If a Indian Based Power Conquers Afghanistan, it would inevitably conquer below Vindyas, Especially the Maharashtra and Karnataka Regions as it produced some of the greatest Of Indian Empires and Armies and it made geopolitically sense to conquer as to not be Flanked by an Invasion from South, it cannot be done by a single emperor, but can be done slowly throughout the generations
I Do think Sanskrit might become the Language of Buddhism in India as it was the language of the elites, though Pali is also an alternative
No it wasnt, it was the language of the vedas at this point and not much else, not even much of hinduism which was more oral and vernacular at this point.
High population densities support a higher density of competing petty kingdoms, hindering unification, and central Asian nomads weren't seen as the main enemy, it was usually other indians, especially in times where a fairly stable kingdom such as the Kabul Shahis controlled the gates into india.
Agreed, the Marathas were quite casty but that shouldn't be projected onto the majority of Hindu society and it should be remembered that Marathi speaking Brahmins had for a few centuries prior to the peshwas developed an unusually legalistic mimamsa viewpoint that wasn't a majority. We actually have very little to tell us how law was used in Indian society for most of history as the theoretical normative texts were rarely followed in practice even into the 18th century, where the will of armed communities and so called community common sense had a greater influence than either dharmashastras or fatwa collections for Hindus and Muslims. Hindus were fine being ruled by Muslims because the Muslims had overwhelming tactical power, presented opportunities for lower status groups to gain status and werent materially more exploitative or destructive than other hindus.
Well I agree on this, it had just become the Language of the elites, with Prakrit being the language of the masses, If Buddhism ever becomes the largest religion in India across different sections of society, Pali and Other Prakrit based languages will become dominant, but they would defiantly have a huge Sanskrit Influence
I agree with this as well, But the lack of a Single Culture in Northern Plains in India can be blamed due to many internal divisions within Hindu Society and Caste system, China and Persia also had many centers of Power, especially Persia, but they always became united due to a Single Monolithic ideology
I agree again, however, The Lower Castes were definitely never had the ability, especially during medieval times for upward social mobility
Impossible, seeing as Prakrit is not a language.
Being descended from Sanskrit, of course they would but no more than English has old German influence.
Let's not blame anything for cultural diversity, seeing as it's not a blameworthy thing. Cultural diversity is a positive thing, and Hindu society and the caste system as you put it allows groups with no common language or ethnicity to build solidarity- caste is in many ways an integrative factor as it provides for a framework wherein diverse groups can peacefully accommodate each others different practices, lifestyles and cultures without forced assimilation.
I literally don't know how to tell you that that statement is manifestly false- look at the Marathas or Rajputs who in a few centuries moved from landless cultivators and pastoralists to the very paradigms of as upper caste as it is possible to be, or for more microhistorical perspectives for the mughal and Deccan sultanate officials of so called low caste background who were flung into the halls of power. The caste hierarchy itself is sometimes overturned as the nayaka kingdoms of the south were ruled by shudras who were proud of their ancestry, as well as the fact that for hundreds of years Brahmins agreed that Parshurama had exterminated all Kshatriyas from the face of the earth and that there were in fact no true Kshatriyas left- the people calling themselves Kshatriyas were halfbreeds of Brahmins and shudras. This was one of the reasons Shivajis ritual coronation was so controversial- most Marathi Brahmins refused because of course he couldn't be crowned like a Kshatriya, they all died.
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