Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
The 15 Most Beautiful Flowers In The World
The 15 Most Beautiful Flowers In The World :
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Canna
Cannas not only feature pretty blossoms, but also beautiful leaves (often likened to that of the banana plant) that come in a variety of stunning colors. Popularized in Victorian times, Cannas are popular garden plants.
Cherry Blossom
The unofficial flower of Japan, the spectacular display of blossoms that arrive in the spring are celebrated by festivals both in Japan and the U.S. The most popular colors are white and pink. They are beautiful while on the trees and remain a stunning sight even after carpeting the ground.
Colorado Columbine
Growing high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Columbine is a welcome reward for the enterprising climbers of Colorado's 14,000-foot high mountains. Picking one in the wild carries a fine ($5-$50 depending on the Ranger who catches you)!
Hydrangea
Magical snowball puffs in fall: gorgeous. The clusters of star-shaped blossoms, often found in delicate pastel hues, embody innocence. They are popular in wedding bouquets and as garden flowers.
Lily of the Valley
A delicate and fragrant sign of spring, the Lily of the Valley has inspired a number of legends. One such Christian legend explains that the tears that Mary shed at the cross turned to Lilies of the Valley, prompting the flower to sometimes be referred to as "Our Lady's Tears." Another legend tells of Lilies of the Valley springing from the blood of St. George during his battle with the dragon.
Calla Lily
While visually stunning and elegant, this beautiful flower is actually a member the poisonous species, Zantedeschia. All parts of the plant are highly toxic, with the capability to kill livestock and children if ingested.
Black Eyed Susan
The black eyed susan, a cheerful wildflower, is a perennial that serves as a beautiful back drop in any garden. The contrast of the bright gold yellow petals and dark middle makes it any easy one to spot and recognize. This official drink of the Preakness stakes horse race is named after this flower, consisting of 2 parts Bourbon whiskey, 1 part citrus vodka, 3 parts sweet & sour mix, one part orange juice and garnished with orange and a cocktail cherry
Bleeding Heart
These whimsical, almost fairy-like blossoms are a traditional favorite in shady gardens. The flowers are either red, pink or white and appear in April-June.
Blue Bells
In spring, many European woods are covered by dense carpets of this flower; these are commonly referred to as "bluebell woods". It is thought that they were named by the romantic poets of the 19th century, who felt they symbolized solitude and regret.
Lantana
These delicate flowers, with their pink and yellow petals, are butterfly magnets. The bush can grow to be quite large and the color of the petals change as the plant ages. Beware - Lantana is considered a weed by many that is quite difficult to get rid of.
Rose
Roses are one of the most romantic and wonderfully scented of flowers. The giving of roses is steeped in tradition and cultural meaning, from the yellow rose of friendship to the deep red rose of true love.
Oriental Poppy
This perennial poppy has a delicate and striking color. After flowering in the spring, their foliage dies back entirely, only to grow new leaves once again with the autumn rains. The Oriental Poppy is the flower of The Wizard of Oz.
Mussaenda erythrophylla (Ashanti Blood, Red Flag Bush, Tropical Dogwood)
These plants are native to the Old World tropics, from West Africa through the Indian sub-continent, Southeast Asia and into southern China. The beautiful red and yellow petals are a real showstopper. A favorite of not only of gardeners, but also butterflies, bees and hummingbirds.
Begonia
The first Begonia was introduced into England in 1777. Now one of the most popular flowers grown in the United States, Begonias are prized for their flowers as well as their leaves. This versatile plant can be grown either inside or out.
Ixora
Ixora flowers, also commonly called West Indian Jasmine, are often used in Hindu worship, as well as in Indian folk medicine. This plant has traditionally been associated with enhanced sexuality and the re-kindling of passion. Who wouldn't want that as a gift!
Dendrobium
Dendrobium is a large genus of tropical orchids that include over a thousand species. The sprays of flowers are so delicate and yet so perfectly formed, they appear magical.
History of Hinduism
Hinduism is a term for a wide variety of related religious traditions native to India.[1] Historically, it encompasses the development of Religion in India since the Iron Age traditions, which in turn hark back to prehistoric religions such as that of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization followed by the Iron Age Vedic religion.
Classical Hinduism emerges as a revival of Vedic traditions with the gradual decline of Buddhism in India from around the beginning of the Common Era. Hindu philosophy had six branches, evolving from about the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD, viz. Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. Monotheistic religions like Shaivism and Vaishnavism developed during this same period through the Bhakti movement.
Classical Pauranic Hinduism is established in the Middle Ages, as was Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta which reconciled the Vaishna and Shaiva sects, and gave rise to Smartism, while initiating the decline of the non-Vedantic schools of philosophy.
Hinduism under the Islamic Rulers saw the increasing prominence of the Bhakti movement, which remains influential today. The colonial period saw the emergence of various Hindu reform movements partly inspired by western culture, such as spiritism (Theosophy). The Partition of India in 1947 was along religious lines, with the Republic of India emerging with a Hindu majority.
During the 20th century, due to the Indian diaspora, Hindu minorities have formed in all continents, with the largest communities in absolute numbers in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the Republic of India, Hindu nationalism has emerged as a strong political force since the 1980s, the Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party forming the Government of India from 1999 to 2004, and its first state government in southern India in 2006.
Prehistory
Evidence of prehistoric religion in India is found in the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, showing the certain elements of Hinduism such as baths (assumed to serve a ritual purpose) and Symbols, compared to the Shiva lingam.[2][3] There were also found Swastika signs.
Many male and female figurines, the female figurines popularly dubbed "Mother Goddesses" have been found in the Indus Valley, although some have expressed doubt as to the divine character of these female figures
A seal discovered during excavation of the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site in the Indus Valley has drawn attention as a possible representation of a "yogi" or "proto-Shiva" figure.[5] This "Pashupati" (Lord of Animals, Sanskrit paśupati)[6][7] seal shows a seated figure, possibly ithyphallic, surrounded by animals.[8][9][10] Some observers describe the figure as sitting in a traditional cross-legged yoga pose with its hands resting on its knees. The discoverer of the seal, Sir John Marshall, and others have claimed that this figure is a prototype of Shiva, and have described the figure as having three faces, seated in a "yoga posture" with the knees out and feet joined.
Vedic period
Main articles: Vedism, Vedic period, and Vedic Sanskrit
Further information: Iron Age India
Vedism was the religion of the early Indians, speakers of early Old Indic dialects, ultimately deriving from God, The Brahman. Its liturgy is preserved in the three Vedic Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda and the Yajur-Veda. Of these, the Rig-Veda the oldest, a collection of hymns dated possibly as early as the 4th millennium BCE.[11] The other two add ceremonial detail for the performance of the actual sacrifice. The Atharva-Veda may also contain compositions dating to before 1000 BC. It contains material pertinent to domestic ritual and folk magic of the period. These texts, as well as the voluminous commentary on orthopraxy collected in the Brahmanas compiled during the early 1st millennium BC, were transmitted by oral tradition alone until the advent of the Pallava and Gupta period and by a combination of written and oral tradition since then.
Rigvedic religion
The geographical horizon of the Rigveda (given with river names, together with the extent of the Swat and Cemetery H) extends from the Hindu Kush and the Punjab region to the upper Gangetic plain.
The earliest text of the Vedas is the Rigveda, a collection of poetic hymns used in the sacrificial rites of Vedic priesthood. Many Rigvedic hymns concern the fire ritual (Agnihotra) and especially the offering of Soma to the gods (Somayajna). Soma is both an intoxicant and a god itself, as is the sacrificial fire, Agni. The royal horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha) is a central rite in the Yajurveda.
The gods in the Rig-Veda are mostly personified concepts, who fall into two categories: the devas – who were gods of nature – such as the weather deity Indra(who is also the King of the gods), Agni ("fire"), Usha ("dawn"), Surya ("sun") and Apas ("waters") on the one hand, and on the other hand the asuras – gods of moral concepts – such as Mitra ("contract"), Aryaman (guardian of guest, friendship and marriage), Bhaga ("share") or Varuna, the supreme Asura (or Aditya). While Rigvedic deva is variously applied to most gods, including many of the Asuras, the Devas are characterized as Younger Gods while Asuras are the Older Gods (pūrve devāḥ). In later Vedic texts, the Asuras become demons.
The Rigveda has 10 Mandalas ('books'). There is significant variation in the language and style between the family books (RV books 2–7), book 8, the "Soma Mandala" (RV 9), and the more recent books 1 and 10. The older books share many aspects of common Indo-Iranian religion, and is an important source for the reconstruction of earlier common Indo-European traditions. Especially RV 8 has striking similarity to the Avesta,[12] containing allusions to Afghan Flora and Fauna,[13] e.g. to camels (úṣṭra- = Avestan uštra). Many of the central religious terms in Vedic Sanskrit have cognates in the religious vocabulary of other Indo-European languages (deva: Latin deus; hotar: Germanic god; asura: Germanic ansuz; yajna: Greek hagios; brahman: Norse Bragi or perhaps Latin flamen etc.). Especially notable is the fact, that in the Avesta Asura (Ahura) is known as good and Deva (Daeva) as evil entity, quite the opposite of the RigVeda.
Brahmanism
Further information: Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Shrauta Sutra
Map of early Iron Age Vedic India after Witzel (1989). Location hypotheses for Vedic shakhas are shown in green.
During a period roughly spanning the 10th to 6th centuries BC, the Mahajanapadas arise from the earlier petty kingdoms of the various Rigvedic tribes, and the failing remnants of the Late Harappan culture. In this period the mantra portions of the Vedas are largely completed, and a flowering industry of Vedic priesthood organized in numerous schools (shakha) develops exegetical literature, viz. the Brahmanas. These schools also edited the Vedic mantra portions into fixed recensions, that were to be preserved purely by oral tradition over the following two millennia.
This period of dominance of priestly Brahmanic Hinduism declines with the appearance of mystical traditions (the oldest Upanishads, BAU, ChU and JUB besides the Shatapatha Brahmana) attacking the rigid ritualism available only to the elite, in favour of spiritual insight through asceticism and meditation. The rise of Buddhism at this time, according to tradition originating with Gautama Buddha, a 6th century BC prince, renouncing his status for enlightenment, is exemplary of this tendency. Politically, the Mahajanapadas declined by being absorbed into the Magadha Empire which as the Maurya Empire would encompass almost the whole subcontinent by the time of Ashoka.
Survival of Vedic ritual
Main article: Śrauta
Flow chart showing the growth of Bhagavatism
Vedism as the religious tradition of Hinduism of a priestly elite was marginalized by other traditions such as Jainism and Buddhism in the later Iron Age, but in the Middle Ages would rise to renewed prestige with the Mimamsa school, which as well as all other astika traditions of Hinduism, considered them authorless (apaurusheyatva) and eternal. A last surviving elements of Vedic Hinduism or Vedism is Śrauta tradition, following many major elements of Vedic religion and is prominent in Southern India, with communities in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, but also in some pockets of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states; the best known of these groups are the Nambudiri of Kerala, whose traditions were notably documented by Frits Staal.
Ancient India
Hinduism in the narrow sense (to the exclusion of Vedism and Iron Age Brahmanism) is the new religious mainstream arising with the decline of Buddhism in India and from about the 4th century AD.
Mauryan and Sangam period
See also: Hinduism and Buddhism, Vedanga, Dharmaśāstra, Yoga Sutras, Nyāya Sūtras, and Brahma Sutras
Further information: Sangam literature
The Mauryan period saw an early flowering of classical Sanskrit Sutra and Shastra literature and the scholarly exposition of the "circum-Vedic" fields of the Vedanga. However, during this time Buddhism was patronized by Ashoka, who ruled large parts of India, and Buddhism was also the mainstream religion until the Gupta empire period.
The Sangam literature (300 BC – 300 AD) is a mostly secular body of classical literature in the Tamil language. Nonetheless there are some works, significantly Pattupathu and Paripaatal, wherein the personal devotion to god was written in form of devotional poems. Vishnu, Shiva and Murugan were mentioned gods. These works are therefore the earliest evidences of monotheistic Bhakti traditions, preceding the large bhakti movement, which was given great attention in later times.
Gupta and Pallava period
Main articles: Pallava and Gupta Empire
Further information: Hindu philosophy, Mimamsa, and Samkhya
The Pallavas (4th to 9th centuries) were, alongside the Guptas of the North, patronizers of Sanskrit in the South of the Subcontinent. The pallava reign saw the first Sankrit inscriptions in a script called Grantha. Early Pallavas had different connections to South-East Asian countries. The Pallavas used Dravidian architecture to build some very important Hindu temples and academies in Mamallapuram, Kanchipuram and other places; their rule saw the rise of great poets, who are as famous as Kalidasa.
The Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries) saw a flowering of scholarship, the emergence of the classical schools of Hindu philosophy, and of classical Sanskrit literature in general on topics ranging from medicine, veterinary science, mathematics, to astrology and astronomy and astrophysics. The famous Aryabhata and Varahamihira belong to this age. The Gupta established a strong central government which also allowed a degree of local control. Gupta society was ordered in accordance with Hindu beliefs. This included a strict caste system, or class system. The peace and prosperity created under Gupta leadership enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavors.
The practice of dedicating temples to different deities came into vogue followed by fine artistic temple architecture and sculpture (see Vastu Shastra).
Expansion in South-East Asia
Further information: Hinduism in Southeast Asia, Indianized kingdom, and Sanskritisation
Expansion of Hinduism in Southeast Asia.
From about the 1st century, India started to strongly influence Southeast Asian countries. Trade routes linked India with southern Burma, central and southern Siam, lower Cambodia and southern Vietnam and numerous urbanized coastal settlements were established there.
For more than a thousand years, Indian Hindu/Buddhist influence was therefore the major factor that brought a certain level of cultural unity to the various countries of the region. The Pali and Sanskrit languages and the Indian script, together with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Brahmanism and Hinduism, were transmitted from direct contact as well as through sacred texts and Indian literature, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics.
From the 5th to the 13th century, South-East Asia had very powerful Indian colonial empires and became extremely active in Buddhist architectural and artistic creation. The Sri Vijaya Empire to the south and the Khmer Empire to the north competed for influence.
Langkasuka (-langkha Sanskrit for "resplendent land" -sukkha of "bliss") was a ancient Hindu kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula. The kingdom, along with Old Kedah settlement, are probably the earliest territorial footholds founded on the Malay Peninsula. According to tradition, the founding of the kingdom happened in the 2nd century; Malay legends claim that Langkasuka was founded at Kedah, and later moved to Pattani.
From the 5th-15th centuries Sri Vijayan empire, a maritime empire centered on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, had adopted Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism under a line of rulers named the Sailendras. The Empire of Sri Vijaya declined due to conflicts with the Chola rulers of India. The Majapahit Empire succeeded the Singhasari empire. It was one of the last and greatest Hindu empires in Maritime Southeast Asia.
Funan was a pre-Angkor Cambodian kingdom, located around the Mekong delta, probably established by Mon–Khmer settlers speaking an Austro-Asiatic language. According to reports by two Chinese envoys, K'ang T'ai and Chu Ying, the state was established by an Indian Brahmin named Kaundinya, who in the 1st century CE was given instruction in a dream to take a magic bow from a temple and defeat a Khmer queen, Soma. Soma, the daughter of the king of the Nagas, married Kaundinya and their lineage became the royal dynasty of Funan. The myth had the advantage of providing the legitimacy of both an Indian Brahmin and the divinity of the cobras, who at that time were held in religious regard by the inhabitants of the region.
The kingdom of Champa (or Lin-yi in Chinese records) controlled what is now south and central Vietnam from approximately 192 through 1697. The dominant religion of the Cham people was Hinduism and the culture was heavily influenced by India.
Later, from the 9th to the 13th century, the Mahayana Buddhist and Hindu Khmer Empire dominated much of the South-East Asian peninsula. Under the Khmer, more than 900 temples were built in Cambodia and in neighboring Thailand. Angkor was at the center of this development, with a temple complex and urban organization able to support around one million urban dwellers. The largest temple complex of the world , Angkor Wat , stands here; built by the king Vishnuvardhan , a king of the dynasty that believed themselves to be incarnations of Vishnu.
Middle Ages
By the 8th century, the "Hindu golden age" of the past millennium was over. The formerly rich philosophic literature tended to be reduced to scholastic quarreling and infighting between innumerable sects, notably between emerging traditions of Vaishnavism and Shaivism. Adi Shankara in the 8th century managed to reconcile the antagonistic sects and to establish Hinduism as a single, if diverse, religious tradition. The compilation of the Puranas provided a mythical backdrop for this tradition, and served as a means of acculturation of the various pre-literate tribal societies to the new religious mainstream. Various reforms of the later Middle Ages, notably the Bhakti movement, besides new Yogic schools (Jnana yoga, Karma yoga, Hatha yoga, Bhakti yoga) gave Hinduism its classical form as described by the 18th to 19th century pioneers of Indology.
Bhakti movement
Main article: Bhakti movement
See also: Tulsidas, Kabir, Mirabai, and Chaitanya
The Bhakti movement was a Hindu religious movement in which the main spiritual practice was the fostering of loving devotion to God, called bhakti. It was a movement generally devoted to worship of Shiva, Vishnu or Shakti.
The first documented bhakti movement was founded by Karaikkal-ammaiyar. She wrote poems in Tamil about her love for Shiva and probably lived around the 6th century CE. The twelve Alvars who were Vaishnavite devotees and the sixty-three Nayanars who were Shaivite devotees nurtured the incipient bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu. They constitute South India's 75 Apostles of Bhakti.
During the 12th century CE in Karnataka, the Bhakti movement took the form of the Virashaiva movement. It was inspired by Basavanna, a Hindu reformer who created the sect of Lingayats or Shiva bhaktas. During this time, a unique and native form of Kannada literature-poetry called Vachanas was born.
Advaita Vedanta
Main articles: Advaita Vedanta and Adi Shankara
The introduction of Advaita Vedanta by Adi Shankara unified the theistic sects into a common framework of Shanmata system. Shankara stressed the importance of the Vedas, introducing the concept of apaurusheyatva, and his efforts helped Hinduism regain strength and popularity. He is the main figure in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. He is the founder of the Dashanami Sampradaya of Hindu monasticism and Shanmata tradition of worship. He travelled all over India (Kerala to Kashmir and Nepal) three times over and was a major cause in the revival and integration of Sanatana Dharma. Shankara's reform essentially eclipsed all earlier schools of Hindu philosophy and became the nucleus of the medieval traditions, including Smartism and Sant Mat lineages,[17] that lead up to the current religion.
Adi Shankara, along with Madhva and Ramanuja, were instrumental in the revival of Hinduism. In their writings and debates, they provided polemics against the non-Vedantic schools of Sankhya, Vaisheshika etc. Thus, they paved the way for Vedanta to be the dominant and most widely followed tradition among the schools of Hindu philosophy.
Pauranic Hinduism
Further information: Puranas
Brahmanic Hinduism evolves out of Vedism during Iron Age India, and in turn contributes to the development of Vedantic and eventually classical Pauranic Hinduism. The transformation of Brahmanism into Pauranic Hinduism in post-Gupta India was due to a process of acculturation. The Puranas helped establish a religious mainstream among the pre-literate tribal societies undergoing acculturation. The tenets of Brahmanic Hinduism and of the Dharmashastras underwent a radical transformation at the hands of the Purana composers, resulting in the rise of a mainstream "Hinduism" that overshadowed all earlier traditions.[18]
Hindu influence in Persia and Mesopotamia This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)
Hindu and also Buddhist religious and secular learning had first reached Persia in an organised manner in the 6th century, when the Sassanid Emperor Khosrau I (531–579) deputed Borzuya the physician as his envoy, to invite Indian and Chinese scholars to the Academy of Gundishapur. Burzoe had translated the Sanskrit Panchatantra. His Pahlavi version was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Moqaffa under the title of Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai.
Under the Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad had replaced Gundishapur as the most important centre of learning in the then vast Islamic Empire, wherein the traditions as well as scholars of the latter flourished. Hindu scholars were invited to the conferences on sciences and mathematics held in Baghdad.
Muslim conquests
Further information: Muslim conquest of South Asia
Muslim rulers began to extend their rule across Hindu-Buddhist populated lands in the 8th century CE and the Abrahamic religion of Islam began to spread across the Indian-subcontinent over several centuries. Most converts were from Hinduism or Buddhism, the two dominant local religions. While all traditions of popular Hinduism continued – including the worship of popular reincarnations of the primordial Shakti – Bhakti tradition attained new prominence; Bhakti poetry of lasting greatness was composed in northern India under the rule of Muslim emperors. The humble mystic saint Kabir, who established his own order, composed devotional verses in the Bhakti spirit, but in common-man's Hindi dialect and transcending the Hindu-Muslim theocratic divide. Tulsidas, Mira Bai and Surdas composed immortal Hindu devotional poetry in Hindi-dialects in the Mughal period – it is reminiscent of the earlier Kannada and Tamil Bhakti poetry of South India.
Mughal India
Further information: Mughal period
Photograph of the Surya Temple, The most impressive and grandest ruins in Kashmir, at Marttand-Hardy Cole's Archaeological Survey of India Report 'Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir.' (1869)
After the conquest of Persia by the Mongol Empire, a regional Turko-Persio-Mongol dynasty formed. Just as eastern Mongol dynasties inter-married with locals and adopted the local religion of Buddhism and the Chinese culture, this group adopted the local religion of Islam and the Persian culture; their descendants ruled in India as Mughals.
The official State religion of the Mughal Empire was Islam, with the preference to the jurisprudence of the Hanafi Madhab (Mazhab). Hinduism remained under strain during Babur and Humanyun's reigns. Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan ruler of North India was comparatively non-repressive. Hinduism came to fore during the three year rule of Hindu king 'Hemu' during 1553-56 when he had defeated Akbar at Agra and Delhi and had taken up the reign from Delhi as a Hindu 'Vikramaditya' king after his 'Rajyabhishake' or coronation at 'Purana Quila' in Delhi. However, during Mughal history, at times, subjects had freedom to practice any religion of their choice, though Non-Muslim able-bodied adult males with income were obliged to pay the Jizya (poll-tax to be spent by the State only on protection of non-Muslims), which signified their status as Dhimmis (responsibility of the State, in regard to safety of life and property).
An 1868 photograph of the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site[19]
Akbar, the Mughal emperor Humayun's son and heir from his Sindhi queen Hameeda Banu Begum, had a broad vision of Indian and Islamic traditions. One of Emperor Akbar's most unusual ideas regarding religion was Din-i-Ilahi (Faith of God), which was an eclectic mix of Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism and Christianity. It was proclaimed the state religion until his death. These actions however met with stiff opposition from the Muslim clergy, especially the Sufi Shaykh Alf Sani Ahmad Sirhindi. Akbar's abolition of poll-tax on non-Muslims, acceptance of ideas from other religious philosophies, toleration of public worship by all religions and his interest in other faiths showed an attitude of considerable religious tolerance, which, in the minds of his orthodox Muslim opponents, were tantamount to apostasy.
Akbar's son, Jahangir, half Rajput, was also a religious moderate, his mother being Hindu. The influence of his two Hindu queens (the Maharani Maanbai and Maharani Jagat) kept religious moderation as a center-piece of state policy which was extended under his son, Emperor Shah Jahan, who was by blood 75% Rajput and less than 25% Moghul.
Religious orthodoxy would only play an important role during the reign of Shah Jahan's son and successor, Aurangzeb, a devout Sunni Muslim. Aurangzeb was comparatively less tolerant of other faiths than his predecessors had been, and his reign saw an increase in the number and importance of Islamic institutions and scholars. He led many military campaigns against the remaining non-Muslim powers of the Indian subcontinent – the Sikh states of the Punjab, the last independent Hindu Rajputs and the Maratha rebels – as also against the Shia Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan. He also virtually stamped out, from his empire, open proselytisation of Hindus and Muslims by foreign Christian Missionaries, who remained successfully active, however, in the adjoining regions: the present day Kerala, Tamilnadu and Goa.
Early Modern period
The fall of Vijayanagar Empire to Muslim rulers had marked the end of Hindu imperial assertions in the Deccan. But, taking advantage of an over-stretched Mughal Empire, Hinduism once again rose to political prestige, under the Maratha Empire, from 1707 to 1761.
Maratha Empire
Further information: Maratha Empire
The last Hindu empire of India – The Maratha Empire in 1760.
The Hindu Marathas long had lived in the Desh region around Satara, in the western portion of the Deccan plateau, where the plateau meets the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats mountains. They had resisted incursions into the region by the Muslim Mughal rulers of northern India. Under their ambitious leader Shivaji, the Maratha freed themselves from the Muslim sultans of Bijapur to the southeast and, becoming much more aggressive, began to frequently raid Mughal territory, eventually sacking the wealthy Mughal port of Surat in 1664. After substantial territorial gains, Shivaji was proclaimed 'Chhatrapati' (Emperor) in 1674; the Marathas had spread and conquered much of central India by Shivaji's death in 1680. Subsequently, under the able leadership of Brahmin prime ministers (Peshwas), who often led as generals also, Maratha Empire reached its zenith. Pune, the seat of Peshwas, flowered as a centre of Hindu learning and traditions. In 1761, the empire broke into smaller Maratha kingdoms that survived till they were eventually subdued by the British East India Company.
Early colonialism
Further information: Christianity in India and Goa Inquisition
Portuguese missionaries had reached the Malabar Coast in the late 15th century, made contact with the St Thomas Christians in Kerala and sought to introduce the Latin Rite among them. Since the priests for St Thomas Christians were served by the Eastern Christian Churches, they were following Eastern Christian practices at that time. Throughout this period, foreign missionaries also made many new converts to Christianity. This led to the formation of the Latin Catholics in Kerala.
The Goa Inquisition was the office of the Christian Inquisition acting in the Indian city of Goa and the rest of the Portuguese empire in Asia. St. Francis Xavier, in a 1545 letter to John III, requested for an Inquisition to be installed in Goa. It was installed eight years after the death of Francis Xavier in 1552. Established in 1560 and operating until 1774, this highly controversial institution was aimed primarily at Hindus and wayward new converts.
In the century from 1760 to 1860, India was once more divided into numerous petty and unstable kingdoms: the Sikh Confederacy; the "lesser Mughals" following Bahadur Shah I; the Kingdom of Mysore; Hyderabad State; the Durrani Empire; and the territories held by the British East India Company. The entire subcontinent fell under British rule (partly indirectly, via Princely states) following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
British Raj
Hindu revivalism
Main article: Hindu revivalism
Further information: Bengal Renaissance, Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, and Ramakrishna Math
1909 Prevailing Religions, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing the prevailing majority religions of the population for different districts.
During the 19th century, Hinduism developed a large number of new religious movements, partly inspired by the European Romanticism, nationalism, scientific racism and esotericism (Theosophy) popular at the time (while conversely and contemporaneously, India had a similar effect on European culture with Orientalism, "Hindoo style" architecture, reception of Buddhism in the West and similar).
These reform movements are summarized under Hindu revivalism and continue into the present.
Sahajanand Swami establishes the Swaminarayan Sampraday sect around 1800.
Brahmo Samaj is a social and religious movement founded in Kolkata in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. He was one of the first Indians to visit Europe and was influenced by western thought. He died in Bristol, England. The Brahmo Samaj movement thereafter resulted in the Brahmo religion in 1850 founded by Debendranath Tagore — better known as the father of Rabindranath Tagore.
Sri Ramakrishna and his pupil Swami Vivekananda led a reform in Hinduism in late 19th century. Their ideals and sayings have inspired numerous Indians as well as non-Indians, Hindus as well as non-Hindus. Among the prominent figures whose ideals were very much influenced by them were Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Satyendranath Bose, Megh Nad Saha, and Sister Nivedita[citation needed].
Arya Samaj ("Society of Nobles") is a Hindu reform movement in India that was founded by Swami Dayananda in 1875. He was a sannyasin (renouncer) who believed in the infallible authority of the Vedas. Dayananda advocated the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, and emphasised the ideals of brahmacharya (chastity) and sanyasa (renunciation). Dayananda claimed to be rejecting all non-Vedic beliefs altogether. Hence the Arya Samaj unequivocally condemned idolatry, animal sacrifices, ancestor worship, pilgrimages, priestcraft, offerings made in temples, the caste system, untouchability and child marriages, on the grounds that all these lacked Vedic sanction. It aimed to be a universal church based on the authority of the Vedas. Dayananda stated that he wanted 'to make the whole world Aryan', i.e. he wanted to develop missionary Hinduism based on the universality of the Vedas. To this end, the Arya Samaj started Shuddhi movement in early 20th century to bring back to Hinduism people converted to Islam and Christianity, set up schools and missionary organisations, and extended its activities outside India. It now has branches around the world and has a disproportional number of adherents among people of Indian ancestry in Suriname and the Netherlands, in comparison with India.[citation needed]
Reception in the West
Main article: Hinduism in the West
Further information: Sanskrit in the West, Esotericism in Germany and Austria, and Ramakrishna's impact
An important development during the British colonial period was the influence Hindu traditions began to form on Western thought and new religious movements. An early champion of Indian-inspired thought in the West was Arthur Schopenhauer who in the 1850s advocated ethnics based on an "Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest", as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism of the superficially this-worldly "Jewish" spirit.[20] Helena Blavatsky moved to India in 1879, and her Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, evolved into a peculiar mixture of Western occultism and Hindu mysticism over the last years of her life.
The sojourn of Vivekananda to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 had a lasting effect. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, a Hindu missionary organization still active today.
In the early 20th century, Western occultists influenced by Hinduism include Maximiani Portaz – an advocate of "Aryan Paganism" – who styled herself Savitri Devi and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Faith Movement. It was in this period, and until the 1920s, that the swastika became an ubiquitous symbol of good luck in the West before its association with the Nazi Party became dominant in the 1930s.
Hinduism-inspired elements in Theosophy were also inherited by the spin-off movements of Ariosophy and Anthroposophy and ultimately contributed to the renewed New Age boom of the 1960s to 1980s, the term New Age itself deriving from Blavatsky's 1888 The Secret Doctrine.
Contemporary Hinduism
Main articles: Contemporary Hindu movements, Hindu denominations, Contemporary Sant Mat movements, List of Hindu organisations, and Hinduism by country
As of 2007, of an estimated 944 million Hindus, 98.5% live in South Asia. Of the remaining 1.5% or 14 million, 6 million live in Southeast Asia (mostly Indonesia), 2 million in Europe, 1.8 million in North America, 1.2 million in Southern Africa.
South Asia
Modern Hinduism is the reflection of continuity and progressive changes that occurred in various traditions and institutions of Hinduism during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its main divisions are into Vaishnavism (largely influenced by Bhakti), Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism (Advaita Vedanta).
Besides these traditional denominations, movements of Hindu revivalism look to founders such as Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda (Arya Samaj), Rabindranath Tagore, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Shriram Sharma Acharya, Swami Sivananda, Swami Rama Tirtha, Narayana Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Chinmayananda, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, Pandurang Shastri Athavale (Swadhyay Movement) and others.
The Hindutva movement advocating Hindu nationalism originated in the 1920s and has remained a strong political force in India. The major party of the religious right, Bharatiya Janata Party, since its foundation in 1980 has won several elections, and after a defeat in 2004 remains the leading force of opposition against the current Congress Party government.
Southeast Asia
The resurgence of Hinduism in Indonesia is occurring in all parts of the country. In the early seventies, the Toraja people of Sulawesi were the first to be identified under the umbrella of 'Hinduism', followed by the Karo Batak of Sumatra in 1977 and the Ngaju Dayak of Kalimantan in 1980.
The growth of Hinduism has been driven also by the famous Javanese prophesies of Sabdapalon and Jayabaya. Many recent converts to Hinduism had been members of the families of Sukarno's PNI, and now support Megawati Sukarnoputri. This return to the 'religion of Majapahit' (Hinduism) is a matter of nationalist pride.
The new Hindu communities in Java tend to be concentrated around recently built temples (pura) or around archaeological temple sites (candi) which are being reclaimed as places of Hindu worship. An important new Hindu temple in eastern Java is Pura Mandaragiri Sumeru Agung, located on the slope of Mt. Semeru, Java's highest mountain. Mass conversions have also occurred in the region around Pura Agung Blambangan, another new temple, built on a site with minor archaeological remnants attributed to the kingdom of Blambangan, the last Hindu polity on Java, and Pura Loka Moksa Jayabaya (in the village of Menang near Kediri).
Neo-Hindu movements in the west
Further information: Hinduism in the West
Influential in spreading Hinduism to a western audience were A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Hare Krishna movement), Sri Aurobindo, Meher Baba, Osho, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation), Sathya Sai Baba, Mother Meera, among others.
Classical Hinduism emerges as a revival of Vedic traditions with the gradual decline of Buddhism in India from around the beginning of the Common Era. Hindu philosophy had six branches, evolving from about the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD, viz. Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. Monotheistic religions like Shaivism and Vaishnavism developed during this same period through the Bhakti movement.
Classical Pauranic Hinduism is established in the Middle Ages, as was Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta which reconciled the Vaishna and Shaiva sects, and gave rise to Smartism, while initiating the decline of the non-Vedantic schools of philosophy.
Hinduism under the Islamic Rulers saw the increasing prominence of the Bhakti movement, which remains influential today. The colonial period saw the emergence of various Hindu reform movements partly inspired by western culture, such as spiritism (Theosophy). The Partition of India in 1947 was along religious lines, with the Republic of India emerging with a Hindu majority.
During the 20th century, due to the Indian diaspora, Hindu minorities have formed in all continents, with the largest communities in absolute numbers in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the Republic of India, Hindu nationalism has emerged as a strong political force since the 1980s, the Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party forming the Government of India from 1999 to 2004, and its first state government in southern India in 2006.
Prehistory
Evidence of prehistoric religion in India is found in the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, showing the certain elements of Hinduism such as baths (assumed to serve a ritual purpose) and Symbols, compared to the Shiva lingam.[2][3] There were also found Swastika signs.
Many male and female figurines, the female figurines popularly dubbed "Mother Goddesses" have been found in the Indus Valley, although some have expressed doubt as to the divine character of these female figures
A seal discovered during excavation of the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site in the Indus Valley has drawn attention as a possible representation of a "yogi" or "proto-Shiva" figure.[5] This "Pashupati" (Lord of Animals, Sanskrit paśupati)[6][7] seal shows a seated figure, possibly ithyphallic, surrounded by animals.[8][9][10] Some observers describe the figure as sitting in a traditional cross-legged yoga pose with its hands resting on its knees. The discoverer of the seal, Sir John Marshall, and others have claimed that this figure is a prototype of Shiva, and have described the figure as having three faces, seated in a "yoga posture" with the knees out and feet joined.
Vedic period
Main articles: Vedism, Vedic period, and Vedic Sanskrit
Further information: Iron Age India
Vedism was the religion of the early Indians, speakers of early Old Indic dialects, ultimately deriving from God, The Brahman. Its liturgy is preserved in the three Vedic Samhitas: the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda and the Yajur-Veda. Of these, the Rig-Veda the oldest, a collection of hymns dated possibly as early as the 4th millennium BCE.[11] The other two add ceremonial detail for the performance of the actual sacrifice. The Atharva-Veda may also contain compositions dating to before 1000 BC. It contains material pertinent to domestic ritual and folk magic of the period. These texts, as well as the voluminous commentary on orthopraxy collected in the Brahmanas compiled during the early 1st millennium BC, were transmitted by oral tradition alone until the advent of the Pallava and Gupta period and by a combination of written and oral tradition since then.
Rigvedic religion
The geographical horizon of the Rigveda (given with river names, together with the extent of the Swat and Cemetery H) extends from the Hindu Kush and the Punjab region to the upper Gangetic plain.
The earliest text of the Vedas is the Rigveda, a collection of poetic hymns used in the sacrificial rites of Vedic priesthood. Many Rigvedic hymns concern the fire ritual (Agnihotra) and especially the offering of Soma to the gods (Somayajna). Soma is both an intoxicant and a god itself, as is the sacrificial fire, Agni. The royal horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha) is a central rite in the Yajurveda.
The gods in the Rig-Veda are mostly personified concepts, who fall into two categories: the devas – who were gods of nature – such as the weather deity Indra(who is also the King of the gods), Agni ("fire"), Usha ("dawn"), Surya ("sun") and Apas ("waters") on the one hand, and on the other hand the asuras – gods of moral concepts – such as Mitra ("contract"), Aryaman (guardian of guest, friendship and marriage), Bhaga ("share") or Varuna, the supreme Asura (or Aditya). While Rigvedic deva is variously applied to most gods, including many of the Asuras, the Devas are characterized as Younger Gods while Asuras are the Older Gods (pūrve devāḥ). In later Vedic texts, the Asuras become demons.
The Rigveda has 10 Mandalas ('books'). There is significant variation in the language and style between the family books (RV books 2–7), book 8, the "Soma Mandala" (RV 9), and the more recent books 1 and 10. The older books share many aspects of common Indo-Iranian religion, and is an important source for the reconstruction of earlier common Indo-European traditions. Especially RV 8 has striking similarity to the Avesta,[12] containing allusions to Afghan Flora and Fauna,[13] e.g. to camels (úṣṭra- = Avestan uštra). Many of the central religious terms in Vedic Sanskrit have cognates in the religious vocabulary of other Indo-European languages (deva: Latin deus; hotar: Germanic god; asura: Germanic ansuz; yajna: Greek hagios; brahman: Norse Bragi or perhaps Latin flamen etc.). Especially notable is the fact, that in the Avesta Asura (Ahura) is known as good and Deva (Daeva) as evil entity, quite the opposite of the RigVeda.
Brahmanism
Further information: Brahmana, Aranyaka, and Shrauta Sutra
Map of early Iron Age Vedic India after Witzel (1989). Location hypotheses for Vedic shakhas are shown in green.
During a period roughly spanning the 10th to 6th centuries BC, the Mahajanapadas arise from the earlier petty kingdoms of the various Rigvedic tribes, and the failing remnants of the Late Harappan culture. In this period the mantra portions of the Vedas are largely completed, and a flowering industry of Vedic priesthood organized in numerous schools (shakha) develops exegetical literature, viz. the Brahmanas. These schools also edited the Vedic mantra portions into fixed recensions, that were to be preserved purely by oral tradition over the following two millennia.
This period of dominance of priestly Brahmanic Hinduism declines with the appearance of mystical traditions (the oldest Upanishads, BAU, ChU and JUB besides the Shatapatha Brahmana) attacking the rigid ritualism available only to the elite, in favour of spiritual insight through asceticism and meditation. The rise of Buddhism at this time, according to tradition originating with Gautama Buddha, a 6th century BC prince, renouncing his status for enlightenment, is exemplary of this tendency. Politically, the Mahajanapadas declined by being absorbed into the Magadha Empire which as the Maurya Empire would encompass almost the whole subcontinent by the time of Ashoka.
Survival of Vedic ritual
Main article: Śrauta
Flow chart showing the growth of Bhagavatism
Vedism as the religious tradition of Hinduism of a priestly elite was marginalized by other traditions such as Jainism and Buddhism in the later Iron Age, but in the Middle Ages would rise to renewed prestige with the Mimamsa school, which as well as all other astika traditions of Hinduism, considered them authorless (apaurusheyatva) and eternal. A last surviving elements of Vedic Hinduism or Vedism is Śrauta tradition, following many major elements of Vedic religion and is prominent in Southern India, with communities in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, but also in some pockets of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and other states; the best known of these groups are the Nambudiri of Kerala, whose traditions were notably documented by Frits Staal.
Ancient India
Hinduism in the narrow sense (to the exclusion of Vedism and Iron Age Brahmanism) is the new religious mainstream arising with the decline of Buddhism in India and from about the 4th century AD.
Mauryan and Sangam period
See also: Hinduism and Buddhism, Vedanga, Dharmaśāstra, Yoga Sutras, Nyāya Sūtras, and Brahma Sutras
Further information: Sangam literature
The Mauryan period saw an early flowering of classical Sanskrit Sutra and Shastra literature and the scholarly exposition of the "circum-Vedic" fields of the Vedanga. However, during this time Buddhism was patronized by Ashoka, who ruled large parts of India, and Buddhism was also the mainstream religion until the Gupta empire period.
The Sangam literature (300 BC – 300 AD) is a mostly secular body of classical literature in the Tamil language. Nonetheless there are some works, significantly Pattupathu and Paripaatal, wherein the personal devotion to god was written in form of devotional poems. Vishnu, Shiva and Murugan were mentioned gods. These works are therefore the earliest evidences of monotheistic Bhakti traditions, preceding the large bhakti movement, which was given great attention in later times.
Gupta and Pallava period
Main articles: Pallava and Gupta Empire
Further information: Hindu philosophy, Mimamsa, and Samkhya
The Pallavas (4th to 9th centuries) were, alongside the Guptas of the North, patronizers of Sanskrit in the South of the Subcontinent. The pallava reign saw the first Sankrit inscriptions in a script called Grantha. Early Pallavas had different connections to South-East Asian countries. The Pallavas used Dravidian architecture to build some very important Hindu temples and academies in Mamallapuram, Kanchipuram and other places; their rule saw the rise of great poets, who are as famous as Kalidasa.
The Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries) saw a flowering of scholarship, the emergence of the classical schools of Hindu philosophy, and of classical Sanskrit literature in general on topics ranging from medicine, veterinary science, mathematics, to astrology and astronomy and astrophysics. The famous Aryabhata and Varahamihira belong to this age. The Gupta established a strong central government which also allowed a degree of local control. Gupta society was ordered in accordance with Hindu beliefs. This included a strict caste system, or class system. The peace and prosperity created under Gupta leadership enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavors.
The practice of dedicating temples to different deities came into vogue followed by fine artistic temple architecture and sculpture (see Vastu Shastra).
Expansion in South-East Asia
Further information: Hinduism in Southeast Asia, Indianized kingdom, and Sanskritisation
Expansion of Hinduism in Southeast Asia.
From about the 1st century, India started to strongly influence Southeast Asian countries. Trade routes linked India with southern Burma, central and southern Siam, lower Cambodia and southern Vietnam and numerous urbanized coastal settlements were established there.
For more than a thousand years, Indian Hindu/Buddhist influence was therefore the major factor that brought a certain level of cultural unity to the various countries of the region. The Pali and Sanskrit languages and the Indian script, together with Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, Brahmanism and Hinduism, were transmitted from direct contact as well as through sacred texts and Indian literature, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics.
From the 5th to the 13th century, South-East Asia had very powerful Indian colonial empires and became extremely active in Buddhist architectural and artistic creation. The Sri Vijaya Empire to the south and the Khmer Empire to the north competed for influence.
Langkasuka (-langkha Sanskrit for "resplendent land" -sukkha of "bliss") was a ancient Hindu kingdom located in the Malay Peninsula. The kingdom, along with Old Kedah settlement, are probably the earliest territorial footholds founded on the Malay Peninsula. According to tradition, the founding of the kingdom happened in the 2nd century; Malay legends claim that Langkasuka was founded at Kedah, and later moved to Pattani.
From the 5th-15th centuries Sri Vijayan empire, a maritime empire centered on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, had adopted Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism under a line of rulers named the Sailendras. The Empire of Sri Vijaya declined due to conflicts with the Chola rulers of India. The Majapahit Empire succeeded the Singhasari empire. It was one of the last and greatest Hindu empires in Maritime Southeast Asia.
Funan was a pre-Angkor Cambodian kingdom, located around the Mekong delta, probably established by Mon–Khmer settlers speaking an Austro-Asiatic language. According to reports by two Chinese envoys, K'ang T'ai and Chu Ying, the state was established by an Indian Brahmin named Kaundinya, who in the 1st century CE was given instruction in a dream to take a magic bow from a temple and defeat a Khmer queen, Soma. Soma, the daughter of the king of the Nagas, married Kaundinya and their lineage became the royal dynasty of Funan. The myth had the advantage of providing the legitimacy of both an Indian Brahmin and the divinity of the cobras, who at that time were held in religious regard by the inhabitants of the region.
The kingdom of Champa (or Lin-yi in Chinese records) controlled what is now south and central Vietnam from approximately 192 through 1697. The dominant religion of the Cham people was Hinduism and the culture was heavily influenced by India.
Later, from the 9th to the 13th century, the Mahayana Buddhist and Hindu Khmer Empire dominated much of the South-East Asian peninsula. Under the Khmer, more than 900 temples were built in Cambodia and in neighboring Thailand. Angkor was at the center of this development, with a temple complex and urban organization able to support around one million urban dwellers. The largest temple complex of the world , Angkor Wat , stands here; built by the king Vishnuvardhan , a king of the dynasty that believed themselves to be incarnations of Vishnu.
Middle Ages
By the 8th century, the "Hindu golden age" of the past millennium was over. The formerly rich philosophic literature tended to be reduced to scholastic quarreling and infighting between innumerable sects, notably between emerging traditions of Vaishnavism and Shaivism. Adi Shankara in the 8th century managed to reconcile the antagonistic sects and to establish Hinduism as a single, if diverse, religious tradition. The compilation of the Puranas provided a mythical backdrop for this tradition, and served as a means of acculturation of the various pre-literate tribal societies to the new religious mainstream. Various reforms of the later Middle Ages, notably the Bhakti movement, besides new Yogic schools (Jnana yoga, Karma yoga, Hatha yoga, Bhakti yoga) gave Hinduism its classical form as described by the 18th to 19th century pioneers of Indology.
Bhakti movement
Main article: Bhakti movement
See also: Tulsidas, Kabir, Mirabai, and Chaitanya
The Bhakti movement was a Hindu religious movement in which the main spiritual practice was the fostering of loving devotion to God, called bhakti. It was a movement generally devoted to worship of Shiva, Vishnu or Shakti.
The first documented bhakti movement was founded by Karaikkal-ammaiyar. She wrote poems in Tamil about her love for Shiva and probably lived around the 6th century CE. The twelve Alvars who were Vaishnavite devotees and the sixty-three Nayanars who were Shaivite devotees nurtured the incipient bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu. They constitute South India's 75 Apostles of Bhakti.
During the 12th century CE in Karnataka, the Bhakti movement took the form of the Virashaiva movement. It was inspired by Basavanna, a Hindu reformer who created the sect of Lingayats or Shiva bhaktas. During this time, a unique and native form of Kannada literature-poetry called Vachanas was born.
Advaita Vedanta
Main articles: Advaita Vedanta and Adi Shankara
The introduction of Advaita Vedanta by Adi Shankara unified the theistic sects into a common framework of Shanmata system. Shankara stressed the importance of the Vedas, introducing the concept of apaurusheyatva, and his efforts helped Hinduism regain strength and popularity. He is the main figure in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. He is the founder of the Dashanami Sampradaya of Hindu monasticism and Shanmata tradition of worship. He travelled all over India (Kerala to Kashmir and Nepal) three times over and was a major cause in the revival and integration of Sanatana Dharma. Shankara's reform essentially eclipsed all earlier schools of Hindu philosophy and became the nucleus of the medieval traditions, including Smartism and Sant Mat lineages,[17] that lead up to the current religion.
Adi Shankara, along with Madhva and Ramanuja, were instrumental in the revival of Hinduism. In their writings and debates, they provided polemics against the non-Vedantic schools of Sankhya, Vaisheshika etc. Thus, they paved the way for Vedanta to be the dominant and most widely followed tradition among the schools of Hindu philosophy.
Pauranic Hinduism
Further information: Puranas
Brahmanic Hinduism evolves out of Vedism during Iron Age India, and in turn contributes to the development of Vedantic and eventually classical Pauranic Hinduism. The transformation of Brahmanism into Pauranic Hinduism in post-Gupta India was due to a process of acculturation. The Puranas helped establish a religious mainstream among the pre-literate tribal societies undergoing acculturation. The tenets of Brahmanic Hinduism and of the Dharmashastras underwent a radical transformation at the hands of the Purana composers, resulting in the rise of a mainstream "Hinduism" that overshadowed all earlier traditions.[18]
Hindu influence in Persia and Mesopotamia This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)
Hindu and also Buddhist religious and secular learning had first reached Persia in an organised manner in the 6th century, when the Sassanid Emperor Khosrau I (531–579) deputed Borzuya the physician as his envoy, to invite Indian and Chinese scholars to the Academy of Gundishapur. Burzoe had translated the Sanskrit Panchatantra. His Pahlavi version was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Moqaffa under the title of Kalila and Dimna or The Fables of Bidpai.
Under the Abbasid caliphate, Baghdad had replaced Gundishapur as the most important centre of learning in the then vast Islamic Empire, wherein the traditions as well as scholars of the latter flourished. Hindu scholars were invited to the conferences on sciences and mathematics held in Baghdad.
Muslim conquests
Further information: Muslim conquest of South Asia
Muslim rulers began to extend their rule across Hindu-Buddhist populated lands in the 8th century CE and the Abrahamic religion of Islam began to spread across the Indian-subcontinent over several centuries. Most converts were from Hinduism or Buddhism, the two dominant local religions. While all traditions of popular Hinduism continued – including the worship of popular reincarnations of the primordial Shakti – Bhakti tradition attained new prominence; Bhakti poetry of lasting greatness was composed in northern India under the rule of Muslim emperors. The humble mystic saint Kabir, who established his own order, composed devotional verses in the Bhakti spirit, but in common-man's Hindi dialect and transcending the Hindu-Muslim theocratic divide. Tulsidas, Mira Bai and Surdas composed immortal Hindu devotional poetry in Hindi-dialects in the Mughal period – it is reminiscent of the earlier Kannada and Tamil Bhakti poetry of South India.
Mughal India
Further information: Mughal period
Photograph of the Surya Temple, The most impressive and grandest ruins in Kashmir, at Marttand-Hardy Cole's Archaeological Survey of India Report 'Illustrations of Ancient Buildings in Kashmir.' (1869)
After the conquest of Persia by the Mongol Empire, a regional Turko-Persio-Mongol dynasty formed. Just as eastern Mongol dynasties inter-married with locals and adopted the local religion of Buddhism and the Chinese culture, this group adopted the local religion of Islam and the Persian culture; their descendants ruled in India as Mughals.
The official State religion of the Mughal Empire was Islam, with the preference to the jurisprudence of the Hanafi Madhab (Mazhab). Hinduism remained under strain during Babur and Humanyun's reigns. Sher Shah Suri, the Afghan ruler of North India was comparatively non-repressive. Hinduism came to fore during the three year rule of Hindu king 'Hemu' during 1553-56 when he had defeated Akbar at Agra and Delhi and had taken up the reign from Delhi as a Hindu 'Vikramaditya' king after his 'Rajyabhishake' or coronation at 'Purana Quila' in Delhi. However, during Mughal history, at times, subjects had freedom to practice any religion of their choice, though Non-Muslim able-bodied adult males with income were obliged to pay the Jizya (poll-tax to be spent by the State only on protection of non-Muslims), which signified their status as Dhimmis (responsibility of the State, in regard to safety of life and property).
An 1868 photograph of the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site[19]
Akbar, the Mughal emperor Humayun's son and heir from his Sindhi queen Hameeda Banu Begum, had a broad vision of Indian and Islamic traditions. One of Emperor Akbar's most unusual ideas regarding religion was Din-i-Ilahi (Faith of God), which was an eclectic mix of Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism and Christianity. It was proclaimed the state religion until his death. These actions however met with stiff opposition from the Muslim clergy, especially the Sufi Shaykh Alf Sani Ahmad Sirhindi. Akbar's abolition of poll-tax on non-Muslims, acceptance of ideas from other religious philosophies, toleration of public worship by all religions and his interest in other faiths showed an attitude of considerable religious tolerance, which, in the minds of his orthodox Muslim opponents, were tantamount to apostasy.
Akbar's son, Jahangir, half Rajput, was also a religious moderate, his mother being Hindu. The influence of his two Hindu queens (the Maharani Maanbai and Maharani Jagat) kept religious moderation as a center-piece of state policy which was extended under his son, Emperor Shah Jahan, who was by blood 75% Rajput and less than 25% Moghul.
Religious orthodoxy would only play an important role during the reign of Shah Jahan's son and successor, Aurangzeb, a devout Sunni Muslim. Aurangzeb was comparatively less tolerant of other faiths than his predecessors had been, and his reign saw an increase in the number and importance of Islamic institutions and scholars. He led many military campaigns against the remaining non-Muslim powers of the Indian subcontinent – the Sikh states of the Punjab, the last independent Hindu Rajputs and the Maratha rebels – as also against the Shia Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan. He also virtually stamped out, from his empire, open proselytisation of Hindus and Muslims by foreign Christian Missionaries, who remained successfully active, however, in the adjoining regions: the present day Kerala, Tamilnadu and Goa.
Early Modern period
The fall of Vijayanagar Empire to Muslim rulers had marked the end of Hindu imperial assertions in the Deccan. But, taking advantage of an over-stretched Mughal Empire, Hinduism once again rose to political prestige, under the Maratha Empire, from 1707 to 1761.
Maratha Empire
Further information: Maratha Empire
The last Hindu empire of India – The Maratha Empire in 1760.
The Hindu Marathas long had lived in the Desh region around Satara, in the western portion of the Deccan plateau, where the plateau meets the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats mountains. They had resisted incursions into the region by the Muslim Mughal rulers of northern India. Under their ambitious leader Shivaji, the Maratha freed themselves from the Muslim sultans of Bijapur to the southeast and, becoming much more aggressive, began to frequently raid Mughal territory, eventually sacking the wealthy Mughal port of Surat in 1664. After substantial territorial gains, Shivaji was proclaimed 'Chhatrapati' (Emperor) in 1674; the Marathas had spread and conquered much of central India by Shivaji's death in 1680. Subsequently, under the able leadership of Brahmin prime ministers (Peshwas), who often led as generals also, Maratha Empire reached its zenith. Pune, the seat of Peshwas, flowered as a centre of Hindu learning and traditions. In 1761, the empire broke into smaller Maratha kingdoms that survived till they were eventually subdued by the British East India Company.
Early colonialism
Further information: Christianity in India and Goa Inquisition
Portuguese missionaries had reached the Malabar Coast in the late 15th century, made contact with the St Thomas Christians in Kerala and sought to introduce the Latin Rite among them. Since the priests for St Thomas Christians were served by the Eastern Christian Churches, they were following Eastern Christian practices at that time. Throughout this period, foreign missionaries also made many new converts to Christianity. This led to the formation of the Latin Catholics in Kerala.
The Goa Inquisition was the office of the Christian Inquisition acting in the Indian city of Goa and the rest of the Portuguese empire in Asia. St. Francis Xavier, in a 1545 letter to John III, requested for an Inquisition to be installed in Goa. It was installed eight years after the death of Francis Xavier in 1552. Established in 1560 and operating until 1774, this highly controversial institution was aimed primarily at Hindus and wayward new converts.
In the century from 1760 to 1860, India was once more divided into numerous petty and unstable kingdoms: the Sikh Confederacy; the "lesser Mughals" following Bahadur Shah I; the Kingdom of Mysore; Hyderabad State; the Durrani Empire; and the territories held by the British East India Company. The entire subcontinent fell under British rule (partly indirectly, via Princely states) following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
British Raj
Hindu revivalism
Main article: Hindu revivalism
Further information: Bengal Renaissance, Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, and Ramakrishna Math
1909 Prevailing Religions, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing the prevailing majority religions of the population for different districts.
During the 19th century, Hinduism developed a large number of new religious movements, partly inspired by the European Romanticism, nationalism, scientific racism and esotericism (Theosophy) popular at the time (while conversely and contemporaneously, India had a similar effect on European culture with Orientalism, "Hindoo style" architecture, reception of Buddhism in the West and similar).
These reform movements are summarized under Hindu revivalism and continue into the present.
Sahajanand Swami establishes the Swaminarayan Sampraday sect around 1800.
Brahmo Samaj is a social and religious movement founded in Kolkata in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. He was one of the first Indians to visit Europe and was influenced by western thought. He died in Bristol, England. The Brahmo Samaj movement thereafter resulted in the Brahmo religion in 1850 founded by Debendranath Tagore — better known as the father of Rabindranath Tagore.
Sri Ramakrishna and his pupil Swami Vivekananda led a reform in Hinduism in late 19th century. Their ideals and sayings have inspired numerous Indians as well as non-Indians, Hindus as well as non-Hindus. Among the prominent figures whose ideals were very much influenced by them were Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Satyendranath Bose, Megh Nad Saha, and Sister Nivedita[citation needed].
Arya Samaj ("Society of Nobles") is a Hindu reform movement in India that was founded by Swami Dayananda in 1875. He was a sannyasin (renouncer) who believed in the infallible authority of the Vedas. Dayananda advocated the doctrine of karma and reincarnation, and emphasised the ideals of brahmacharya (chastity) and sanyasa (renunciation). Dayananda claimed to be rejecting all non-Vedic beliefs altogether. Hence the Arya Samaj unequivocally condemned idolatry, animal sacrifices, ancestor worship, pilgrimages, priestcraft, offerings made in temples, the caste system, untouchability and child marriages, on the grounds that all these lacked Vedic sanction. It aimed to be a universal church based on the authority of the Vedas. Dayananda stated that he wanted 'to make the whole world Aryan', i.e. he wanted to develop missionary Hinduism based on the universality of the Vedas. To this end, the Arya Samaj started Shuddhi movement in early 20th century to bring back to Hinduism people converted to Islam and Christianity, set up schools and missionary organisations, and extended its activities outside India. It now has branches around the world and has a disproportional number of adherents among people of Indian ancestry in Suriname and the Netherlands, in comparison with India.[citation needed]
Reception in the West
Main article: Hinduism in the West
Further information: Sanskrit in the West, Esotericism in Germany and Austria, and Ramakrishna's impact
An important development during the British colonial period was the influence Hindu traditions began to form on Western thought and new religious movements. An early champion of Indian-inspired thought in the West was Arthur Schopenhauer who in the 1850s advocated ethnics based on an "Aryan-Vedic theme of spiritual self-conquest", as opposed to the ignorant drive toward earthly utopianism of the superficially this-worldly "Jewish" spirit.[20] Helena Blavatsky moved to India in 1879, and her Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, evolved into a peculiar mixture of Western occultism and Hindu mysticism over the last years of her life.
The sojourn of Vivekananda to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 had a lasting effect. Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission, a Hindu missionary organization still active today.
In the early 20th century, Western occultists influenced by Hinduism include Maximiani Portaz – an advocate of "Aryan Paganism" – who styled herself Savitri Devi and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Faith Movement. It was in this period, and until the 1920s, that the swastika became an ubiquitous symbol of good luck in the West before its association with the Nazi Party became dominant in the 1930s.
Hinduism-inspired elements in Theosophy were also inherited by the spin-off movements of Ariosophy and Anthroposophy and ultimately contributed to the renewed New Age boom of the 1960s to 1980s, the term New Age itself deriving from Blavatsky's 1888 The Secret Doctrine.
Contemporary Hinduism
Main articles: Contemporary Hindu movements, Hindu denominations, Contemporary Sant Mat movements, List of Hindu organisations, and Hinduism by country
As of 2007, of an estimated 944 million Hindus, 98.5% live in South Asia. Of the remaining 1.5% or 14 million, 6 million live in Southeast Asia (mostly Indonesia), 2 million in Europe, 1.8 million in North America, 1.2 million in Southern Africa.
South Asia
Modern Hinduism is the reflection of continuity and progressive changes that occurred in various traditions and institutions of Hinduism during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its main divisions are into Vaishnavism (largely influenced by Bhakti), Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism (Advaita Vedanta).
Besides these traditional denominations, movements of Hindu revivalism look to founders such as Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda (Arya Samaj), Rabindranath Tagore, Ramana Maharshi, Aurobindo, Shriram Sharma Acharya, Swami Sivananda, Swami Rama Tirtha, Narayana Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Chinmayananda, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, Pandurang Shastri Athavale (Swadhyay Movement) and others.
The Hindutva movement advocating Hindu nationalism originated in the 1920s and has remained a strong political force in India. The major party of the religious right, Bharatiya Janata Party, since its foundation in 1980 has won several elections, and after a defeat in 2004 remains the leading force of opposition against the current Congress Party government.
Southeast Asia
The resurgence of Hinduism in Indonesia is occurring in all parts of the country. In the early seventies, the Toraja people of Sulawesi were the first to be identified under the umbrella of 'Hinduism', followed by the Karo Batak of Sumatra in 1977 and the Ngaju Dayak of Kalimantan in 1980.
The growth of Hinduism has been driven also by the famous Javanese prophesies of Sabdapalon and Jayabaya. Many recent converts to Hinduism had been members of the families of Sukarno's PNI, and now support Megawati Sukarnoputri. This return to the 'religion of Majapahit' (Hinduism) is a matter of nationalist pride.
The new Hindu communities in Java tend to be concentrated around recently built temples (pura) or around archaeological temple sites (candi) which are being reclaimed as places of Hindu worship. An important new Hindu temple in eastern Java is Pura Mandaragiri Sumeru Agung, located on the slope of Mt. Semeru, Java's highest mountain. Mass conversions have also occurred in the region around Pura Agung Blambangan, another new temple, built on a site with minor archaeological remnants attributed to the kingdom of Blambangan, the last Hindu polity on Java, and Pura Loka Moksa Jayabaya (in the village of Menang near Kediri).
Neo-Hindu movements in the west
Further information: Hinduism in the West
Influential in spreading Hinduism to a western audience were A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (Hare Krishna movement), Sri Aurobindo, Meher Baba, Osho, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation), Sathya Sai Baba, Mother Meera, among others.
HISTORY OF THE MOGHUL EMPIRE
HISTORY OF THE MOGHUL EMPIRE
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Babur in Kabul: AD 1504-1525
Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he is one among many impoverished princes, all descended from Timur, who fight among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captures Samarkand itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieves this he is only fourteen.
What distinguishes Babur from other brawling princes is that he is a keen oberver of life and keeps a diary. In it he vividly describes his triumphs and sorrows, whether riding out with friends at night to attack a walled village or mooning around for unrequited love of a beautiful boy.
Babur's 'throneless times', as he later describes these early years, come to an end in 1504 when he captures Kabul. Here, at the age of twenty-one, he is able to establish a settled court and to enjoy the delights of gardening, art and architecture in the Timurid tradition of his family.
With a powerful new Persian dynasty to the west (under Ismail I) and an aggressive Uzbek presence to the north (under Shaibani Khan), Babur's Kabul becomes the main surviving centre of the Timurid tradition. But these same pressures mean that his only chance of expanding is eastwards - into India.
Babur feels that he has an inherited claim upon northern India, deriving from Timur's capture of Delhi in 1398, and he makes several profitable raids through the mountain passes into the Punjab. But his first serious expedition is launched in October 1525.
Some forty years later (but not sooner than that) it is evident that Babur's descendants are a new and established dynasty in northern India. Babur thinks of himself as a Turk, but he is descended from Genghis Khan as well as from Timur. The Persians refer to his dynasty as mughal, meaning Mongol. And it is as the Moghul emperors of India that they become known to history.
Babur in India: AD 1526-1530
By the early 16th century the Muslim sultans of Delhi (an Afghan dynasty known as Lodi) are much weakened by threats from rebel Muslim principalities and from a Hindu coalition of Rajput rulers. When Babur leads an army through the mountain passes, from his stronghold at Kabul, he at first meets little opposition in the plains of north India.
The decisive battle against Ibrahim, the Lodi sultan, comes on the plain of Panipat in April 1526. Babur is heavily outnumbered (with perhaps 25,000 troops in the field against 100,000 men and 1000 elephants), but his tactics win the day.
Babur digs into a prepared position, copied (he says) from the Turks - from whom the use of guns has spread to the Persians and now to Babur. As yet the Indians of Delhi have no artillery or muskets. Babur has only a few, but he uses them to great advantage. He collects 700 carts to form a barricade (a device pioneered by the Hussites of Bohemia a century earlier).
Sheltered behind the carts, Babur's gunners can go through the laborious business of firing their matchlocks - but only at an enemy charging their position. It takes Babur some days to tempt the Indians into doing this. When they do so, they succumb to slow gunfire from the front and to a hail of arrows from Babur's cavalry charging on each flank.
Victory at Panipat brings Babur the cities of Delhi and Agra, with much booty in treasure and jewels. But he faces a stronger challenge from the confederation of Rajputs who had themselves been on the verge of attacking Ibrahim Lodi.
The armies meet at Khanua in March 1527 and again, using similar tactics, Babur wins. For the next three years Babur roams around with his army, extending his territory to cover most of north India - and all the while recording in his diary his fascination with this exotic world which he has conquered.
Humayun: AD 1530-1556
Babur's control is still superficial when he dies in 1530, after just three years in India. His son Humayun keeps a tentative hold on the family's new possessions. But in 1543 he is driven west into Afghanistan by a forceful Muslim rebel, Sher Shah.
Twelve years later, renewed civil war within India gives Humayun a chance to slip back almost unopposed. One victory, at Sirhind in 1555, is enough to recover him his throne. But six months later Humayun is killed in an accidental fall down a stone staircase. His 13-year-old son Akbar, inheriting in 1556, would seem to have little chance of holding on to India. Yet it is he who establishes the mighty Moghul empire.
Akbar: AD 1556-1605
In the early years of Akbar's reign, his fragile inheritance is skilfully held together by an able chief minister, Bairam Khan. But from 1561 the 19-year-old emperor is very much his own man. An early act demonstrates that he intends to rule the two religious communities of India, Muslim and Hindu, in a new way - by consensus and cooperation, rather than alienation of the Hindu majority.
In 1562 he marries a Rajput princess, daughter of the Raja of Amber (now Jaipur). She becomes one of his senior wives and the mother of his heir, Jahangir. Her male relations in Amber join Akbar's council and merge their armies with his.
This policy is very far from conventional Muslim hostility to worshippers of idols. And Akbar carries it further, down to a level affecting every Hindu. In 1563 he abolishes a tax levied on pilgrims to Hindu shrines. In 1564 he puts an end to a much more hallowed source of revenue - the jizya, or annual tax on unbelievers which the Qur'an stipulates shall be levied in return for Muslim protection.
At the same time Akbar steadily extends the boundaries of the territory which he has inherited.
Akbar's normal way of life is to move around with a large army, holding court in a splendid camp laid out like a capital city but composed entirely of tents. His biographer, Abul Fazl, describes this royal progress as being 'for political reasons, and for subduing oppressors, under the veil of indulging in hunting'.
A great deal of hunting does occur (a favourite version uses trained cheetahs to pursue deer) while the underlying political purpose - of warfare, treaties, marriages - is carried on.
Warfare brings its own booty. Signing a treaty with Akbar, or presenting a wife to his harem (his collection eventually numbers about 300 - see Harems), involves a contribution to the exchequer. As his realm increases, so does his revenue. And Akbar proves himself an inspired adminstrator.
The empire's growing number of provinces are governed by officials appointed only for a limited term, thus avoiding the emergence of regional warlords. And steps are taken to ensure that the tax on peasants varies with local circumstances, instead of a fixed proportion of their produce being automatically levied.
At the end of Akbar's reign of nearly half a century, his empire is larger than any in India since the time of Asoka. Its outer limits are Kandahar in the west, Kashmir in the north, Bengal in the east and in the south a line across the subcontinent at the level of Aurangabad. Yet this ruler who achieves so much is illiterate. An idle schoolboy, Akbar finds in later life no need for reading. He prefers to listen to the arguments before taking his decisions (perhaps a factor in his skill as a leader).
Akbar is original, quirky, wilful. His complex character is vividly suggested in the strange palace which he builds, and almost immediately abandons, at Fatehpur Sikri.
Fatehpur Sikri: AD 1571-1585
In 1571 Akbar decides to build a new palace and town at Sikri, close to the shrine of a Sufi saint who has impressed him by foretelling the birth of three sons. When two boys have duly appeared, Akbar's masons start work on what is to be called Fatehpur ('Victory') Sikri. A third boy is born in 1572.
Akbar's palace, typically, is unlike anyone else's. It resembles a small town, made up of courtyards and exotic free-standing buildings. They are built in a linear Hindu style, instead of the gentler curves of Islam. Beams and lintels and even floorboards are cut from red sandstone and are elaborately carved, much as if the material were oak rather than stone.
The palace and mosque occupy the hill top, while a sprawling town develops below. The site is only used for some fourteen years, partly because Akbar has overlooked problems of water supply. Yet this is where his many and varied interests are given practical expression.
Here Akbar employs translators to turn Hindu classics into Persian, scribes to produce a library of exquisite manuscripts, artists to illustrate them (the illiterate emperor loves to be read to and takes a keen interest in painting). Here there is a department of history under Abul Fazl; an order is sent out that anyone with personal knowledge of Babur and Humayun is to be interviewed so that valuable information is not lost.
The building most characteristic of Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri is his famous diwan-i-khas, or hall of private audience. It consists of a single very high room, furnished only with a central pillar. The top of the pillar, on which Akbar sits, is joined by four narrow bridges to a balcony running round the wall. On the balcony are those having an audience with the emperor.
If required, someone can cross one of the bridges - in a respectfully crouched position - to join Akbar in the centre. Meanwhile, on the floor below, courtiers not involved in the discussion can listen unseen.
In the diwan-i-khas Akbar deals mainly with affairs of state. To satisfy another personal interest, in comparative religion, he builds a special ibabat-khana ('house of worship'). Here he listens to arguments between Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Zorastrians, Jews and Christians. The ferocity with which they all attack each other prompts him to devise a generalized religion of his own (in which a certain aura of divinity rubs off on himself).
The Christians involved in these debates are three Jesuits who arrive from Goa in 1580. As the first Europeans at the Moghul court, they are a portent for the future.
Jahangir: AD 1605-1627
Akbar is succeeded in 1605 by his eldest and only surviving son, Jahangir. Two other sons have died of drink, and Jahangir's effectiveness as a ruler is limited by his own addiction to both alcohol and opium. But the empire is now stable enough for him to preside over it for twenty-two years without much danger of upheaval.
Instead he is able to indulge his curiosity about the natural world (which he records in a diary as vivid as that of his great-grandfather Babur) and his love of painting. Under his keen eye the imperial studio brings the Moghul miniature to a peak of perfection, maintained also during the reign of his son Shah Jahan.
Moghul miniatures: 16th - 17th century AD
When Humayun wins his way back into India, in 1555, he brings with him two Persian artists from the school of Bihzad. Humayun and the young Akbar take lessons in drawing. Professional Indian artists learn too from these Persian masters.
From this blend of traditions there emerges the very distinctive Moghul school of painting. Full-bodied and realistic compared to the more fanciful and decorative Persian school, it develops in the workshops which Akbar establishes in the 1570s at Fatehpur Sikri.
Akbar puts his artists to work illustrating the manuscripts written out by scribes for his library. New work is brought to the emperor at the end of each week. He makes his criticisms, and distributes rewards to those who meet with his approval.
Detailed scenes are what Akbar likes, showing court celebrations, gardens being laid out, cheetahs released for the hunt, forts being stormed and endless battles. The resulting images are a treasure trove of historical detail. But as paintings they are slightly busy.
Akbar's son Jahangir takes a special interest in painting, and his requirements differ from his father's. He is more likely to want an accurate depiction of a bird which has caught his interest, or a political portrait showing himself with a rival potentate. In either case the image requires clarity and conviction as well as finely detailed realism.
The artists rise superbly to this challenge. In Jahangir's reign, and that of his son Shah Jahan, the Moghul imperial studio produces work of exceptional beauty. In Shah Jahan's time even the crowded narrative scenes, so popular with Akbar, are peopled by finely observed and convincing characters.
Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb: AD 1627-1707
During the reigns of Shah Jahan and his son Aurangzeb, the policy of religious toleration introduced by Akbar is gradually abandoned. It has been largely followed by Shah Jahan's father, Jahangir - though at the very start of his reign he provides the Sikhs with their first martyr when the guru Arjan is arrested, in 1606, and dies under torture.
In 1632 Shah Jahan signals an abrupt return to a stricter interpretation of Islam when he orders that all recently built Hindu temples shall be destroyed. A Muslim tradition states that unbelievers may keep the shrines which they have when Islam arrives, but not add to their number.
Direct provocation of this kind is untypical of Shah Jahan, but it becomes standard policy during the reign of his son Aurangzeb. His determination to impose strict Islamic rule on India undoes much of what was achieved by Akbar. An attack on Rajput territories in 1679 makes enemies of the Hindu princes; the reimposition of the jizya in the same year ensures resentment among Hindu merchants and peasants.
At the same time Aurangzeb is obsessed with extending Moghul rule into the difficult terrain of southern India. He leaves the empire larger but weaker than he finds it. In his eighties he is still engaged in permanent and futile warfare to hold what he has seized.
In the decades after the death of Aurangzeb, in 1707, the Moghul empire fragments into numerous semi-independent territories - seized by local officials or landowners whose descendants become the rajas and nawabs of more recent times. Moghul emperors continue to rule in name for another century and more, but their prestige is hollow.
Real power has declined gradually and imperceptibly throughout the 17th century, ever since the expansive days of Akbar's empire. Yet it is in the 17th century that news of the wealth, splendour, architectural brilliance and dynastic violence of the Moghul dynasty first impresses the rest of the world.
Europeans become a significant presence in India for the first time during the 17th century. They take home descriptions of the ruler's fabulous wealth, causing him to become known as the Great Moghul. They have a touching tale to tell of Shah Jahan's love for his wife and of the extraordinary building, the Taj Mahal, which he provides for her tomb.
And as Shah Jahan's reign merges into Aurangzeb's, they can astonish their hearers with an oriental melodrama of a kind more often associated with Turkey, telling of how Aurangzeb kills two of his brothers and imprisons his ageing father, Shah Jahan, in the Red Fort at Agra - with the Taj Mahal in his view across the Jumna, from the marble pavilions of his castle prison.
Moghul domes: AD 1564-1674
The paintings commissioned by the Moghul emperors are superb, but it is their architecture which has most astonished the world - and in particular the white marble domes characteristic of the reign of Shah Jahan.
There is a long tradition of large Muslim domes in central Asia, going as far back as a tomb in Bukhara in the 10th century. But the Moghuls develop a style which is very much their own - allowing the dome to rise from the building in a swelling curve which somehow implies lightness, especially when the material of the dome is white marble.
The first dome of this kind surmounts the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, built between 1564 and 1573. The style is then overlooked for a while - no doubt because of Akbar's preference for Hindu architecture, as in Fatehpur Sikri - until Shah Jahan, the greatest builder of the dynasty, develops it in the 17th century with vigour and sophistication.
His first attempt in this line is also his masterpiece - a building which has become the most famous in the world, for its beauty and for the romantic story behind its creation.
Throughout his early career, much of it spent in rebellion against his father, Shah Jahan's greatest support has been his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But four years after he succeeds to the throne this much loved companion dies, in 1631, giving birth to their fourteenth child. The Taj Mahal, her tomb in Agra, is the expression of Shah Jahan's grief. Such romantic gestures are rare among monarchs (the Eleanor Crosses come to mind as another), and certainly none has ever achieved its commemorative purpose so brilliantly.
There is no known architect for the Taj. It seems probable that Shah Jahan himself takes a leading role in directing his masons - particularly since his numerous other buildings evolve within a related style.
The Taj Mahal is built between 1632 and 1643. In 1644 the emperor commissions the vast Friday Mosque for his new city in Delhi. In 1646 he begins the more intimate Pearl Mosque in the Red Fort in Agra. Meanwhile he is building a new Red Fort in Delhi, with white marble pavilions for his own lodgings above massive red sandstone walls. At Fatehpur Sikri he provides a new shrine for the Sufi saint to whom his grandfather, Akbar, was so devoted.
All these buildings contain variations on the theme of white and subtly curving domes, though none can rival Shah Jahan's first great example in the Taj.
Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan's son, does not inherit his father's passionate interest in architecture. But he commissions two admirable buildings in the same tradition. One is the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, begun in 1673; even larger than his father's Friday Mosque in Delhi, it rivals it in the beauty of its domes. The other, begun in 1662, goes to the other extreme; the tiny Pearl Mosque in the Red Fort in Delhi, begun in 1662 for Aurangzeb's private worship, is a small miracle of white marble.
It is these marble highlights which catch the eye. But the Red Forts containing the two Pearl Mosques are themselves extraordinary examples of 17th century castles.
The Moghuls after Aurangzeb: 18th century AD
When the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb is in his eighties, and the empire in disarray, an Italian living in India (Niccolao Manucci) Predicts appalling bloodshed on the old man's death, worse even than that which disfigured the start of Aurangzeb's reign. The Italian is right. In the war of succession which begins in 1707, two of Aurangzeb's sons and three of his grandsons are killed.
Violence and disruption is the pattern of the future. The first six Moghul emperors have ruled for a span of nearly 200 years. In the 58 years after Aurangzeb's death, there are eight emperors - four of whom are murdered and one deposed.
This degree of chaos has a disastrous effect on the empire built up by Akbar. The stability of Moghul India depends on the loyalty of those ruling its many regions. Some are administered on the emperor's behalf by governors, who are members of the military hierarchy. Others are ruled by princely families, who through treaty or marriage have become allies of the emperor.
In the 18th century rulers of each kind continue to profess loyalty to the Moghul emperor in Delhi, but in practice they behave with increasing independence. The empire fragments into the many small principalities whose existence will greatly help the British in India to gain control, by playing rival neighbours off against each other.
In the short term, though, there is a more immediate danger. During the 1730s a conqueror in the classic mould of Genghis Khan or Timur emerges in Persia. He seizes the Persian throne in 1736, taking the title Nadir Shah.
Later that year he captures the stronghold of Kandahar. The next major fortress on the route east, that of Kabul, is still in Moghul hands - a treasured possession since the time of Babur. Nadir Shah takes it in 1738, giving him control of the territory up to the Khyber Pass. Beyond the Khyber lies the fabulous wealth of India. Like Genghis Khan in 1221, and Timur in 1398, Nadir Shah moves on.
In December 1738 Nadir Shah crosses the Indus at Attock. Two months later he defeats the army of the Moghul emperor, Mohammed Shah. In March he enters Delhi. The conqueror has iron control over his troops and at first the city is calm. It is broken when an argument between citizens and some Persian soldiers escalates into a riot in which 900 Persians are killed. Even now Nadir Shah forbids reprisals until he has inspected the scene. But when he rides through the city, stones are thrown at him. Someone fires a musket which kills an officer close to the shah.
In reprisal he orders a massacre. The killing lasts for a day. The number of the dead is more than 30,000.
Amazingly, when the Moghul emperor begs for mercy for his people, the Persian conqueror is able to grant it. The killing stops, for the collection of Delhi's valuables to begin.
Untold wealth travels west with the Persians. The booty includes the two most spectacular possessions of the Moghul emperors - the Peacock Throne, commissioned by Shah Jahan, and the Koh-i-Nur diamond. Nadir Shah is able to send a decree home from Delhi remitting all taxes in Persia for three years. In addition to the jewels and the gold, he takes with him 1000 elephants, 100 masons and 200 carpenters. The parallel with the visit of Timur, 341 years previously, is almost exact.
Europeans in the fragmenting empire: AD 1746-1760
The raid by Nadir Shah is the greatest single disaster to have struck the Moghul empire, but a more serious long-term threat soon becomes evident. In 1746 open warfare breaks out between European nations on Indian soil, when a French force seizes Madras from the British.
In the south, where Aurangzeb spent his last years trying to impose imperial control, French and British armies now march against each other in shifting alliances with local potentates. India begins a new role as a place of importance to the European powers, and in particular to Britain. The development does not bode well for the Moghul emperors in Delhi.
Both the French and the English East India Companies, to advance their commercial interests, offer military support in dynastic struggles within powerful Indian states. Helping a candidate to the throne opens a new region of influence, a new market.
The death in 1748 of the Moghul viceroy in Hyderabad is followed by French and English assistance for rival sons of the dead ruler. Soon the two European nations are also fighting on opposite sides in a war of succession in the Carnatic (the coastal strip north and south of Madras).
The French candidate succeeds in Hyderabad, and the English favourite prevails in the Carnatic. But the most striking event in either campaign is a dramatic intervention by Robert Clive in 1751. With 200 British and 300 Indian soldiers he seizes Arcot (the capital of the Carnatic) and holds it through a seven-week siege.
His action, and his subsequent defeat of a French and Indian force in battle, wins the throne for his candidate. It also has the effect of diminishing the prestige in Indian eyes of the French army. Until now the French have had the better of the British in India (most notably in their capture of Madras in 1746).
France and Britain remain rivals in southern India for the rest of the century. It is in the north that the balance changes significantly in Britain's favour, after a disaster of 1756. In that year the nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula, overwhelms the British settlement in Calcutta and locks some of his captives overnight in a room of the fort. The details of precisely what happened that night are obscure, but the event becomes known to the British as the Black Hole of Calcutta.
To recover Calcutta, Clive sails north from Madras in October 1756. The fort is back in British hands by January 1757. But Clive now decides to intervene further in the politics of Bengal.
He aims to place a more compliant nawab, Mir Jafar, on the throne of Bengal, and he achieves his purpose after defeating Siraj-ud-Daula at Plassey in June 1757. For the next three years Clive virtually rules the rich province of Bengal, using Mir Jafar as his political puppet. In doing so he establishes the pattern by which British control will gradually spread through India, in a patchwork of separate alliances with local rulers.
In 1760 Clive returns to England, the possessor of vast and rapidly acquired wealth. Here too he sets a pattern, this time an unmistakably bad one. He is the first of the 'nabobs', whose fortunes derive from jobbery and bribes while administering Indian affairs.
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Babur in Kabul: AD 1504-1525
Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, is one of history's more endearing conquerors. In his youth he is one among many impoverished princes, all descended from Timur, who fight among themselves for possession of some small part of the great man's fragmented empire. Babur even captures Samarkand itself on three separate occasions, each for only a few months. The first time he achieves this he is only fourteen.
What distinguishes Babur from other brawling princes is that he is a keen oberver of life and keeps a diary. In it he vividly describes his triumphs and sorrows, whether riding out with friends at night to attack a walled village or mooning around for unrequited love of a beautiful boy.
Babur's 'throneless times', as he later describes these early years, come to an end in 1504 when he captures Kabul. Here, at the age of twenty-one, he is able to establish a settled court and to enjoy the delights of gardening, art and architecture in the Timurid tradition of his family.
With a powerful new Persian dynasty to the west (under Ismail I) and an aggressive Uzbek presence to the north (under Shaibani Khan), Babur's Kabul becomes the main surviving centre of the Timurid tradition. But these same pressures mean that his only chance of expanding is eastwards - into India.
Babur feels that he has an inherited claim upon northern India, deriving from Timur's capture of Delhi in 1398, and he makes several profitable raids through the mountain passes into the Punjab. But his first serious expedition is launched in October 1525.
Some forty years later (but not sooner than that) it is evident that Babur's descendants are a new and established dynasty in northern India. Babur thinks of himself as a Turk, but he is descended from Genghis Khan as well as from Timur. The Persians refer to his dynasty as mughal, meaning Mongol. And it is as the Moghul emperors of India that they become known to history.
Babur in India: AD 1526-1530
By the early 16th century the Muslim sultans of Delhi (an Afghan dynasty known as Lodi) are much weakened by threats from rebel Muslim principalities and from a Hindu coalition of Rajput rulers. When Babur leads an army through the mountain passes, from his stronghold at Kabul, he at first meets little opposition in the plains of north India.
The decisive battle against Ibrahim, the Lodi sultan, comes on the plain of Panipat in April 1526. Babur is heavily outnumbered (with perhaps 25,000 troops in the field against 100,000 men and 1000 elephants), but his tactics win the day.
Babur digs into a prepared position, copied (he says) from the Turks - from whom the use of guns has spread to the Persians and now to Babur. As yet the Indians of Delhi have no artillery or muskets. Babur has only a few, but he uses them to great advantage. He collects 700 carts to form a barricade (a device pioneered by the Hussites of Bohemia a century earlier).
Sheltered behind the carts, Babur's gunners can go through the laborious business of firing their matchlocks - but only at an enemy charging their position. It takes Babur some days to tempt the Indians into doing this. When they do so, they succumb to slow gunfire from the front and to a hail of arrows from Babur's cavalry charging on each flank.
Victory at Panipat brings Babur the cities of Delhi and Agra, with much booty in treasure and jewels. But he faces a stronger challenge from the confederation of Rajputs who had themselves been on the verge of attacking Ibrahim Lodi.
The armies meet at Khanua in March 1527 and again, using similar tactics, Babur wins. For the next three years Babur roams around with his army, extending his territory to cover most of north India - and all the while recording in his diary his fascination with this exotic world which he has conquered.
Humayun: AD 1530-1556
Babur's control is still superficial when he dies in 1530, after just three years in India. His son Humayun keeps a tentative hold on the family's new possessions. But in 1543 he is driven west into Afghanistan by a forceful Muslim rebel, Sher Shah.
Twelve years later, renewed civil war within India gives Humayun a chance to slip back almost unopposed. One victory, at Sirhind in 1555, is enough to recover him his throne. But six months later Humayun is killed in an accidental fall down a stone staircase. His 13-year-old son Akbar, inheriting in 1556, would seem to have little chance of holding on to India. Yet it is he who establishes the mighty Moghul empire.
Akbar: AD 1556-1605
In the early years of Akbar's reign, his fragile inheritance is skilfully held together by an able chief minister, Bairam Khan. But from 1561 the 19-year-old emperor is very much his own man. An early act demonstrates that he intends to rule the two religious communities of India, Muslim and Hindu, in a new way - by consensus and cooperation, rather than alienation of the Hindu majority.
In 1562 he marries a Rajput princess, daughter of the Raja of Amber (now Jaipur). She becomes one of his senior wives and the mother of his heir, Jahangir. Her male relations in Amber join Akbar's council and merge their armies with his.
This policy is very far from conventional Muslim hostility to worshippers of idols. And Akbar carries it further, down to a level affecting every Hindu. In 1563 he abolishes a tax levied on pilgrims to Hindu shrines. In 1564 he puts an end to a much more hallowed source of revenue - the jizya, or annual tax on unbelievers which the Qur'an stipulates shall be levied in return for Muslim protection.
At the same time Akbar steadily extends the boundaries of the territory which he has inherited.
Akbar's normal way of life is to move around with a large army, holding court in a splendid camp laid out like a capital city but composed entirely of tents. His biographer, Abul Fazl, describes this royal progress as being 'for political reasons, and for subduing oppressors, under the veil of indulging in hunting'.
A great deal of hunting does occur (a favourite version uses trained cheetahs to pursue deer) while the underlying political purpose - of warfare, treaties, marriages - is carried on.
Warfare brings its own booty. Signing a treaty with Akbar, or presenting a wife to his harem (his collection eventually numbers about 300 - see Harems), involves a contribution to the exchequer. As his realm increases, so does his revenue. And Akbar proves himself an inspired adminstrator.
The empire's growing number of provinces are governed by officials appointed only for a limited term, thus avoiding the emergence of regional warlords. And steps are taken to ensure that the tax on peasants varies with local circumstances, instead of a fixed proportion of their produce being automatically levied.
At the end of Akbar's reign of nearly half a century, his empire is larger than any in India since the time of Asoka. Its outer limits are Kandahar in the west, Kashmir in the north, Bengal in the east and in the south a line across the subcontinent at the level of Aurangabad. Yet this ruler who achieves so much is illiterate. An idle schoolboy, Akbar finds in later life no need for reading. He prefers to listen to the arguments before taking his decisions (perhaps a factor in his skill as a leader).
Akbar is original, quirky, wilful. His complex character is vividly suggested in the strange palace which he builds, and almost immediately abandons, at Fatehpur Sikri.
Fatehpur Sikri: AD 1571-1585
In 1571 Akbar decides to build a new palace and town at Sikri, close to the shrine of a Sufi saint who has impressed him by foretelling the birth of three sons. When two boys have duly appeared, Akbar's masons start work on what is to be called Fatehpur ('Victory') Sikri. A third boy is born in 1572.
Akbar's palace, typically, is unlike anyone else's. It resembles a small town, made up of courtyards and exotic free-standing buildings. They are built in a linear Hindu style, instead of the gentler curves of Islam. Beams and lintels and even floorboards are cut from red sandstone and are elaborately carved, much as if the material were oak rather than stone.
The palace and mosque occupy the hill top, while a sprawling town develops below. The site is only used for some fourteen years, partly because Akbar has overlooked problems of water supply. Yet this is where his many and varied interests are given practical expression.
Here Akbar employs translators to turn Hindu classics into Persian, scribes to produce a library of exquisite manuscripts, artists to illustrate them (the illiterate emperor loves to be read to and takes a keen interest in painting). Here there is a department of history under Abul Fazl; an order is sent out that anyone with personal knowledge of Babur and Humayun is to be interviewed so that valuable information is not lost.
The building most characteristic of Akbar in Fatehpur Sikri is his famous diwan-i-khas, or hall of private audience. It consists of a single very high room, furnished only with a central pillar. The top of the pillar, on which Akbar sits, is joined by four narrow bridges to a balcony running round the wall. On the balcony are those having an audience with the emperor.
If required, someone can cross one of the bridges - in a respectfully crouched position - to join Akbar in the centre. Meanwhile, on the floor below, courtiers not involved in the discussion can listen unseen.
In the diwan-i-khas Akbar deals mainly with affairs of state. To satisfy another personal interest, in comparative religion, he builds a special ibabat-khana ('house of worship'). Here he listens to arguments between Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Zorastrians, Jews and Christians. The ferocity with which they all attack each other prompts him to devise a generalized religion of his own (in which a certain aura of divinity rubs off on himself).
The Christians involved in these debates are three Jesuits who arrive from Goa in 1580. As the first Europeans at the Moghul court, they are a portent for the future.
Jahangir: AD 1605-1627
Akbar is succeeded in 1605 by his eldest and only surviving son, Jahangir. Two other sons have died of drink, and Jahangir's effectiveness as a ruler is limited by his own addiction to both alcohol and opium. But the empire is now stable enough for him to preside over it for twenty-two years without much danger of upheaval.
Instead he is able to indulge his curiosity about the natural world (which he records in a diary as vivid as that of his great-grandfather Babur) and his love of painting. Under his keen eye the imperial studio brings the Moghul miniature to a peak of perfection, maintained also during the reign of his son Shah Jahan.
Moghul miniatures: 16th - 17th century AD
When Humayun wins his way back into India, in 1555, he brings with him two Persian artists from the school of Bihzad. Humayun and the young Akbar take lessons in drawing. Professional Indian artists learn too from these Persian masters.
From this blend of traditions there emerges the very distinctive Moghul school of painting. Full-bodied and realistic compared to the more fanciful and decorative Persian school, it develops in the workshops which Akbar establishes in the 1570s at Fatehpur Sikri.
Akbar puts his artists to work illustrating the manuscripts written out by scribes for his library. New work is brought to the emperor at the end of each week. He makes his criticisms, and distributes rewards to those who meet with his approval.
Detailed scenes are what Akbar likes, showing court celebrations, gardens being laid out, cheetahs released for the hunt, forts being stormed and endless battles. The resulting images are a treasure trove of historical detail. But as paintings they are slightly busy.
Akbar's son Jahangir takes a special interest in painting, and his requirements differ from his father's. He is more likely to want an accurate depiction of a bird which has caught his interest, or a political portrait showing himself with a rival potentate. In either case the image requires clarity and conviction as well as finely detailed realism.
The artists rise superbly to this challenge. In Jahangir's reign, and that of his son Shah Jahan, the Moghul imperial studio produces work of exceptional beauty. In Shah Jahan's time even the crowded narrative scenes, so popular with Akbar, are peopled by finely observed and convincing characters.
Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb: AD 1627-1707
During the reigns of Shah Jahan and his son Aurangzeb, the policy of religious toleration introduced by Akbar is gradually abandoned. It has been largely followed by Shah Jahan's father, Jahangir - though at the very start of his reign he provides the Sikhs with their first martyr when the guru Arjan is arrested, in 1606, and dies under torture.
In 1632 Shah Jahan signals an abrupt return to a stricter interpretation of Islam when he orders that all recently built Hindu temples shall be destroyed. A Muslim tradition states that unbelievers may keep the shrines which they have when Islam arrives, but not add to their number.
Direct provocation of this kind is untypical of Shah Jahan, but it becomes standard policy during the reign of his son Aurangzeb. His determination to impose strict Islamic rule on India undoes much of what was achieved by Akbar. An attack on Rajput territories in 1679 makes enemies of the Hindu princes; the reimposition of the jizya in the same year ensures resentment among Hindu merchants and peasants.
At the same time Aurangzeb is obsessed with extending Moghul rule into the difficult terrain of southern India. He leaves the empire larger but weaker than he finds it. In his eighties he is still engaged in permanent and futile warfare to hold what he has seized.
In the decades after the death of Aurangzeb, in 1707, the Moghul empire fragments into numerous semi-independent territories - seized by local officials or landowners whose descendants become the rajas and nawabs of more recent times. Moghul emperors continue to rule in name for another century and more, but their prestige is hollow.
Real power has declined gradually and imperceptibly throughout the 17th century, ever since the expansive days of Akbar's empire. Yet it is in the 17th century that news of the wealth, splendour, architectural brilliance and dynastic violence of the Moghul dynasty first impresses the rest of the world.
Europeans become a significant presence in India for the first time during the 17th century. They take home descriptions of the ruler's fabulous wealth, causing him to become known as the Great Moghul. They have a touching tale to tell of Shah Jahan's love for his wife and of the extraordinary building, the Taj Mahal, which he provides for her tomb.
And as Shah Jahan's reign merges into Aurangzeb's, they can astonish their hearers with an oriental melodrama of a kind more often associated with Turkey, telling of how Aurangzeb kills two of his brothers and imprisons his ageing father, Shah Jahan, in the Red Fort at Agra - with the Taj Mahal in his view across the Jumna, from the marble pavilions of his castle prison.
Moghul domes: AD 1564-1674
The paintings commissioned by the Moghul emperors are superb, but it is their architecture which has most astonished the world - and in particular the white marble domes characteristic of the reign of Shah Jahan.
There is a long tradition of large Muslim domes in central Asia, going as far back as a tomb in Bukhara in the 10th century. But the Moghuls develop a style which is very much their own - allowing the dome to rise from the building in a swelling curve which somehow implies lightness, especially when the material of the dome is white marble.
The first dome of this kind surmounts the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, built between 1564 and 1573. The style is then overlooked for a while - no doubt because of Akbar's preference for Hindu architecture, as in Fatehpur Sikri - until Shah Jahan, the greatest builder of the dynasty, develops it in the 17th century with vigour and sophistication.
His first attempt in this line is also his masterpiece - a building which has become the most famous in the world, for its beauty and for the romantic story behind its creation.
Throughout his early career, much of it spent in rebellion against his father, Shah Jahan's greatest support has been his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But four years after he succeeds to the throne this much loved companion dies, in 1631, giving birth to their fourteenth child. The Taj Mahal, her tomb in Agra, is the expression of Shah Jahan's grief. Such romantic gestures are rare among monarchs (the Eleanor Crosses come to mind as another), and certainly none has ever achieved its commemorative purpose so brilliantly.
There is no known architect for the Taj. It seems probable that Shah Jahan himself takes a leading role in directing his masons - particularly since his numerous other buildings evolve within a related style.
The Taj Mahal is built between 1632 and 1643. In 1644 the emperor commissions the vast Friday Mosque for his new city in Delhi. In 1646 he begins the more intimate Pearl Mosque in the Red Fort in Agra. Meanwhile he is building a new Red Fort in Delhi, with white marble pavilions for his own lodgings above massive red sandstone walls. At Fatehpur Sikri he provides a new shrine for the Sufi saint to whom his grandfather, Akbar, was so devoted.
All these buildings contain variations on the theme of white and subtly curving domes, though none can rival Shah Jahan's first great example in the Taj.
Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan's son, does not inherit his father's passionate interest in architecture. But he commissions two admirable buildings in the same tradition. One is the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, begun in 1673; even larger than his father's Friday Mosque in Delhi, it rivals it in the beauty of its domes. The other, begun in 1662, goes to the other extreme; the tiny Pearl Mosque in the Red Fort in Delhi, begun in 1662 for Aurangzeb's private worship, is a small miracle of white marble.
It is these marble highlights which catch the eye. But the Red Forts containing the two Pearl Mosques are themselves extraordinary examples of 17th century castles.
The Moghuls after Aurangzeb: 18th century AD
When the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb is in his eighties, and the empire in disarray, an Italian living in India (Niccolao Manucci) Predicts appalling bloodshed on the old man's death, worse even than that which disfigured the start of Aurangzeb's reign. The Italian is right. In the war of succession which begins in 1707, two of Aurangzeb's sons and three of his grandsons are killed.
Violence and disruption is the pattern of the future. The first six Moghul emperors have ruled for a span of nearly 200 years. In the 58 years after Aurangzeb's death, there are eight emperors - four of whom are murdered and one deposed.
This degree of chaos has a disastrous effect on the empire built up by Akbar. The stability of Moghul India depends on the loyalty of those ruling its many regions. Some are administered on the emperor's behalf by governors, who are members of the military hierarchy. Others are ruled by princely families, who through treaty or marriage have become allies of the emperor.
In the 18th century rulers of each kind continue to profess loyalty to the Moghul emperor in Delhi, but in practice they behave with increasing independence. The empire fragments into the many small principalities whose existence will greatly help the British in India to gain control, by playing rival neighbours off against each other.
In the short term, though, there is a more immediate danger. During the 1730s a conqueror in the classic mould of Genghis Khan or Timur emerges in Persia. He seizes the Persian throne in 1736, taking the title Nadir Shah.
Later that year he captures the stronghold of Kandahar. The next major fortress on the route east, that of Kabul, is still in Moghul hands - a treasured possession since the time of Babur. Nadir Shah takes it in 1738, giving him control of the territory up to the Khyber Pass. Beyond the Khyber lies the fabulous wealth of India. Like Genghis Khan in 1221, and Timur in 1398, Nadir Shah moves on.
In December 1738 Nadir Shah crosses the Indus at Attock. Two months later he defeats the army of the Moghul emperor, Mohammed Shah. In March he enters Delhi. The conqueror has iron control over his troops and at first the city is calm. It is broken when an argument between citizens and some Persian soldiers escalates into a riot in which 900 Persians are killed. Even now Nadir Shah forbids reprisals until he has inspected the scene. But when he rides through the city, stones are thrown at him. Someone fires a musket which kills an officer close to the shah.
In reprisal he orders a massacre. The killing lasts for a day. The number of the dead is more than 30,000.
Amazingly, when the Moghul emperor begs for mercy for his people, the Persian conqueror is able to grant it. The killing stops, for the collection of Delhi's valuables to begin.
Untold wealth travels west with the Persians. The booty includes the two most spectacular possessions of the Moghul emperors - the Peacock Throne, commissioned by Shah Jahan, and the Koh-i-Nur diamond. Nadir Shah is able to send a decree home from Delhi remitting all taxes in Persia for three years. In addition to the jewels and the gold, he takes with him 1000 elephants, 100 masons and 200 carpenters. The parallel with the visit of Timur, 341 years previously, is almost exact.
Europeans in the fragmenting empire: AD 1746-1760
The raid by Nadir Shah is the greatest single disaster to have struck the Moghul empire, but a more serious long-term threat soon becomes evident. In 1746 open warfare breaks out between European nations on Indian soil, when a French force seizes Madras from the British.
In the south, where Aurangzeb spent his last years trying to impose imperial control, French and British armies now march against each other in shifting alliances with local potentates. India begins a new role as a place of importance to the European powers, and in particular to Britain. The development does not bode well for the Moghul emperors in Delhi.
Both the French and the English East India Companies, to advance their commercial interests, offer military support in dynastic struggles within powerful Indian states. Helping a candidate to the throne opens a new region of influence, a new market.
The death in 1748 of the Moghul viceroy in Hyderabad is followed by French and English assistance for rival sons of the dead ruler. Soon the two European nations are also fighting on opposite sides in a war of succession in the Carnatic (the coastal strip north and south of Madras).
The French candidate succeeds in Hyderabad, and the English favourite prevails in the Carnatic. But the most striking event in either campaign is a dramatic intervention by Robert Clive in 1751. With 200 British and 300 Indian soldiers he seizes Arcot (the capital of the Carnatic) and holds it through a seven-week siege.
His action, and his subsequent defeat of a French and Indian force in battle, wins the throne for his candidate. It also has the effect of diminishing the prestige in Indian eyes of the French army. Until now the French have had the better of the British in India (most notably in their capture of Madras in 1746).
France and Britain remain rivals in southern India for the rest of the century. It is in the north that the balance changes significantly in Britain's favour, after a disaster of 1756. In that year the nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula, overwhelms the British settlement in Calcutta and locks some of his captives overnight in a room of the fort. The details of precisely what happened that night are obscure, but the event becomes known to the British as the Black Hole of Calcutta.
To recover Calcutta, Clive sails north from Madras in October 1756. The fort is back in British hands by January 1757. But Clive now decides to intervene further in the politics of Bengal.
He aims to place a more compliant nawab, Mir Jafar, on the throne of Bengal, and he achieves his purpose after defeating Siraj-ud-Daula at Plassey in June 1757. For the next three years Clive virtually rules the rich province of Bengal, using Mir Jafar as his political puppet. In doing so he establishes the pattern by which British control will gradually spread through India, in a patchwork of separate alliances with local rulers.
In 1760 Clive returns to England, the possessor of vast and rapidly acquired wealth. Here too he sets a pattern, this time an unmistakably bad one. He is the first of the 'nabobs', whose fortunes derive from jobbery and bribes while administering Indian affairs.
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Red Ginger Lily
ommon name: Red Ginger Lily • Manipuri: তখেললৈ অঙাঙ্বা Takhellei angangba
Botanical name: Hedychium marginatum Family: Zingiberaceae (Ginger family)
Red Ginger Lily is a very uncommon ginger with beautiful bright red flowers. In form, the flowers look similar to those of Butterfly Ginger Lily. Flowers appear in spikes. It is found in NE India, particularly Manipur.
Medicinal uses: Decoction of rhizomes is given in bronchitis and stomach complaints.
Gold Spot Ginger Lily
Common name: Gold Spot Ginger Lily, Butterfly Lily Ginger • Manipuri: তখেললৈ হংগামপাল Takhellei hangampal
Botanical name: Hedychium coronarium var. chrysoleucum Family: Zingiberaceae (Ginger family)
This is an unusual variety of Heydychium quite popular in many places in NE India, like Manipur. This wild form was collected from northeast India, and distributed in the West by nursery owner Ganesh Mani Pradhan of Sikkim, under the name Hedychium coronarium 'Gold Spot'. As the name suggests, it has a large golden orange mark at the base of one petal. This actually a form of Butterfly Ginger Lily which is a fragrant flower. Takhellei, as it is called in Manipuri, is used in Manipur to prepare what is known as a nachom with chingonglei (flowers of Mimosa Bush. Two or three flowers of the chingonglei is inserted inside the lily and the combination of the two flowers is regarded as divine. This ornamental flower combination is usually worn behind the ear by womenfolk.
Butterfly Ginger Lily
Common name: Butterfly Ginger Lily, White Ginger Lily, Garland Flower • Hindi: Dolan champa दोलन चम्पा • Manipuri: তখেল্লৈ অঙৌবা Takhellei angouba • Marathi: Sontaka • Kannada: Suruli Sugandhi • Assamese: Pakhila phul • Marathi: Sontaka • Tamil: Chankitam, Chantikantam, Chantiramullikai • Telugu: Kichchiligadda, Vasa Vasanthi
Botanical name: Hedychium coronarium Family: Zingiberaceae (Ginger family)
Butterfly ginger lily is beautiful and fragrant flower native to East India. It is a robust, attractive plant that will reach 6 feet in containers. Leaves are lance-shaped and sharp-pointed, 8-24 in long and 2-5 in wide and arranged in 2 neat ranks that run the length of the stem. From midsummer through autumn the stalks are topped with 6-12 in long clusters of wonderfully fragrant white flowers that look like butterflies. The flowers eventually give way to showy seed pods chock full of bright red seeds. Butterfly ginger lily (takhellei) is used in Manipur to make a floral ornament known as nachom, together with Mimosa Bush flowers (chingonglei). Two or three flowers of the chingonglei are inserted inside the lily and the combination of the two flowers is regarded as divine. This ornamental flower combination is usually worn behind the ear by womenfolk. The plants are very robust and quickly grow out of the containers. They need to be divided yearly. Remove old stems after flowers have faded to promote new growth.
Trailing Lantana
Common name: Trailing lantana, Weeping lantana, Creeping lantana, {Samballei, Nongballei, Thirei} (Manipuri), Raimu niya राईमुनिया (Hindi), உன்னிச்செடி Unnichedi (Tamil), तणतणी tantani (Marathi)
Botanical name: Lantana montevidensis Family: Verbenaceae (verbena family)
Not as well known as the common lantana (Lantana camara), trailing lantana will only get 12-15" in height with a 3-6 foot spread, making it a nice groundcover. The blooms are lilac pink to purple with yellow centers, appear in flowerhead clusters that are 1 in (2.5 cm) across, from spring to fall, and are great for attracting butterflies. This tender tropical evergreen has dark green leaves with a rough hairy texture. The foliage will change to a red to purple color in the colder months. The foliage is very aromatic and can irritate the skin of some people. The trailing lantana does not seem to naturalize as readily and isn't as invasive as its cousin, common lantana. The unripe berries of Lantana species are toxic. Livestock and pets have become ill after eating the foliage.
Chinese Glory Bower
Common name: Chinese Glory Bower, Honolulu rose, Glory tree, Stickbush • Manipuri: কুথপ অঙৌবা Kuthap angouba • Tamil: மத்ராஸ மல்லீ Madras Malli
Botanical name: Clerodendrum chinense Family: Verbenaceae (verbena family)
Synonyms: Clerodendrum fragrans, Clerodendrum philippinum
Chinese glory bower is a perennial shrub up to 2.4 m tall. White or pink fragrant double flowers, 1 in across, occur in dense inflorescences. The wild form is single-flowered. The flowers are very fragrant in the evening and attract butterflies. A major weed of roadsides and gardens in towns and villages and rapidly invades pastures and plantations wherever it is planted. The leaves are large (6-10 cm long), opposite and simple with variable margins. The shrubs have a lot of lush green foliage and the flower head nestles in between the leaves, with individual flowers taking turns to bloom. Each bloom stays up to three days before withering. The flower head throws up flowers for a fortnight before another takes its place. In South India, flowering is profuse in January and February. A few late bloomers stay on, but wind up by mid-March, when they start looking like any plant with big leaves. Propagation is very easy. All you need to do is take cuttings of the stem or side branches, insert them in soil and water at regular intervals.
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