Indian Antiquary Vol 62

SR No.: 032554
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1986
Total Pages: 450
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 260

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
A. THE INDUS BASIN.
The modern kingdom of Afghanistan is composite. (1) Herat belongs to Persia; culturally and, through most of its history, politically too. (2) Balkh (Bactria) in the Oxus valley connects up with Central Asia and China. (3) Kabul lies within the Indus basin, and is, like Assam, a cultural annexe of India; it was once a hive of Buddhism, and the seat of a Hindu kingdom. (4) Qandahar, the focus of Afghan power, controls the routes from Persia to India via Kabul and via Multan.
238
[DECEMBER, 1933
Baluchistan is shared by the Baloch (of Persian origin) and the Dravidian-speaking Brāhuis. Makran, as a channel of communication, has been practically out of action since the days of Alexander, but in the third millennium B.C. it was fairly well populated, and it linked 'Chalcolithic India with Mesopotamia (Fig. 8). The westward penetration of Hinduism is to this day testified by the annual pilgrimage to Hinglaj.
Under the Achæmenids the Indus valley was Persian. Alexander came to India to assert his rights as a Persian king. Seleucus ceded it to the Mauryas, and when the Mauryas collapsed, the Greeks pushed in from Bactria, to yield it in turn to Parthians and Sakas from Persia. Then from Central Asia came the Kushans, whose sway lasted longer. Their heirs, the Shāhis, hung on to Kabul and Und till the coming of Mahmud of Ghazni, who was by culture a Persian. He annexed Kabul and the Panjab, and Sind acknowledged his suzerainty. His successors lost their Persian possessions to the Seljuks, and were finally pushed off the Iranian plateau by a Turkman raid, which left them only the Panjab. Then came Muhammad Ghori, whose armies smashed through the Indus and Ganges plains to the sea.
Yet the Indus Valley was not 'de-indianized'. The distribution of cultural impacts is not, however, uniform. Four main cultural areas may be distinguished, (1) the tract north of the Salt Range, (2) the Vale of Kashmir, (3) the upper reaches of the Panjab rivers (Central Panjab), and (4) the Indus Valley below the Salt Range (W. Panjab and Sind).
1. In the amphitheatre north of the Salt Range is the densely populated district of Peshawar, which might fairly be called the 'transformer station' in the transmission of cultural currents from Western and Central Asia. Here, on the lower reaches of the Kabul river, Alexander found the city of Puşkalavati. On the eastern rim of the basin was Taxila, with its Indo-Greek city of Sirkap and its Kushan city of Sirsukh, for centuries a centre of Indian culture and of the 'Hellenistic' art of Gandhara. Not far distant at Mansehra and Shahbazgarhi, are the only two Kharosthi inscriptions of Asoka.
The Kharosthi alphabet is an adaptation of Aramaic (the script of Persian officialdom) to the requirements of Indian phonetics. Its use in India, as against the essentially Indian Brahmi, is characteristic of the Indus basin, a distribution which anticipates the latter day rivalry between Persian and Nagari scripts.
The history of the Greek tradition in this area is vividly reflected in the coinage. Already in Bactria the Greeks had been to some extent 'persianized'. As soon as they crossed the Hindu Kush, Indian scripts and Indian languages appear on their coins. The gods remain Greek, though some Greeks, we know, became Buddhists, others Hindus. The Kushāns took up the Greek tradition, and added to it a cosmopolitan galaxy of cults, Iranian, Buddhist and Hindu. On the coins and monuments of the Kushans the process of indianization' can be traced in detail. Kanishka stood forth as the Constantine of Mahāyānist Buddhism; Vasudeva, his successor, was an ardent Saiva. With the decline of the Kushans Taxila waned, and a new cycle began far away in the Ganges plain. Of the rest of the Indus basin little neetl be said.
2. Kashmir, a cultural cul de sac, developed on her own lines the tradition of Gandharan art, evolving a style of architecture which is almost Hellenic in the severity of its ornament, and quite unlike anything to be found in India, Under Muslim rule Kashmir became even