6. History Ancient India III Flashcards
North India from around the 6th c. to the 4th c. BCE: Recapitulation
u Ruralprosperity>economicsurplus
u Urbangrowth(thoughlimited),theso-calledsecondurbanization
u Politicalconsolidation(cf.the16“greatterritories”),progressiveadventofMagadha. u Developmentoftradenetworks
u EastwardspreadoftheBrahmanicalcultureandsocialorder
u Emergenceofanewcategoryofreligiouspractitioners,theśramaṇas,fromwhichseveralreligious movements stem.
The Guptas: origins and historical sources
“Golden Age”
The Gupta dinasty (ca. 318-515 AD)
“GoldenAge”, cultural expansion across South Asia and beyond
Boom in Sanskrit literature, Hindu and Buddhist art and architecture
Importance of trade
The heyday of the guilds and bankers
The end of the Gupta dynasty
The Xiongnu or Huns/Hūṇas came to India from Central Asia through the Kyber pass around 460 and clashed with Skandagupta> disrupture of the northwestern international trade route
Gupta period as a “Golden Age”?
First found inV.Smith’s The Early History of India from 600 BC to the Muhammadan Conquest
“The golden age of the Guptas, glorious in literary, as in political, history, comprised a period of a century and a quarter (330-455 AD) and was covered by three reigns of exceptional length.”
Ø This idea was adopted by Indian nationalist historians and reiterated in later Histories of India
“The idea of Golden Age”
The feeling that the art and the Sanskrit literature of the Gupta period represent a summum never attained ever since
The prejudice that whatever is non-Hindu and not in Sanskrit is less Indian (exclusion of the Buddha, dravidian and Indo-Persian languages)
The idea that there is no artistic production of quality without royal or imperial patronage
The sentiment that the original documents, even if they stem from the conventional royal eulogy (praśasti), have to be taken literally
All these can be contested! (cf. Fussmann 2008)
Not a 200 years-long peaceful and uncontested power!
Power was contested, for instance the Parivrājakas started to give land grants, styling themselves as mahārāja in copper plates dating to just two years after the beginning of Kumāragupta’s reign in 475-476.
The Hūṇas controlled parts of northern and central India towards the end of the 5th c.
The weakened Guptas survived as attested by copper plates and coinage issued by Vainyagupta, but the centre of Gupta resurgence moved to eastern India.
Rise of a series of principalities south of the Yamunā (Aulikara, Parivrājaka, Uccakalpa)
u Emergence of the Maukharis as a major power in the Gangetic area in the 6th c.
“The overall sequence of events provides little or no place in north India for a lingering Gupta presence beyond the second decade of the sixth century.” (Willis M. 2005 “Later Gupta History: Inscriptions, Coins and Historical Ideology”)
