VII. The Response to Achaemenian Challenge
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Significant developments in Western Asia
[p.61]: While the Indo-Iranian peoples of the Panjab were in the throes of social change, consequent on the transition from the tribal to the territorial organisation, based on political stabilisation and economic consolidation, significant developments in western Asia, particularly the imperial expansion of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, were releasing new forces of unity and integration which exercised a stimulus on the events here. After the fall of the Kurus and the destruction and dispersion of the tribal communities, fighting with them or their opponents, the Panjab was a welter of amorphous masses of people out of which the new pattern of organisation was to emerge. Under the stimulus of developments in western Asia the frontier state of Gandhara rose to a creative endeavour which promised unity and stability to the people of the Panjab through a centralised organisation. Its domination expanded eastward up to the Ravi and southward up to Multan and included Kashmira and almost the whole of the Indus Valley.
Pukkusati Kingdom of Gandhāra
In the sixth century B. C. its great king Pakkusati entered into diplomatic contacts with King Bimbisara of Magadha and even made bold to declare war on King Pradyota of Avanti, on the one hand, and sent embassies to Media and Chaldea, as we learn from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (III, 2, 29, Walter Miller’s translation, Vol. I, p. 265), on the other. It is said that the Chaldeans made many trips to his kingdom and some of them were also in his employ as mercenaries. Political consolidation and diplomatic relationships also brought commercial prosperity and economic affluence resulting in the accumulation of vast wealth. Xenophon informs us that, on the eve of his war with Croesus of Lydia, the Achaemenian monarch Cyrus the Great (559-530 B. C.) thought of borrowing money from an Indian king and for that purpose sent an envoy to him with the following message :
[p.62]
- “King of India, Cyrus has sent me to you ; he says that he needs more funds. If, therefore, you will send him as much as you conveniently can, he says that, if God will give him good success, lie will try to make you think that you were well-advised in doing him this favour."
The Indian king, Xenophon states, responded favourably to the request of Cyrus and sent an embassy to his court with the sum of money he had asked. The members of the embassy not only delivered the money to the Persian monarch and assured him of further help from the Indian king, if need be, but also served him in a delicate matter of espionage by finding out the preparation of his adversaries under the command of Croesus. (Cyropaedia, VI, 2, 1-11, Miller’s translation, Vol, II, pp- 149-155).
The Indian king, referred to by Xenophon, can be no other than Pakkusati, who had organized Gandhara and western Panjab into a prosperous state with great economic potential, as I have shown in a recent study contributed to the publication of the Central Council of the Celebrations of the 25th Century of the Foundation of the Iranian Empire and the Declaration of Human Rights by Cyrus the Great to be held in Iran in October-November 1967. The king of Gandhara had launched the same plan of unification in the North-West which Bimbisara had started in Magadha in the East. The fact that he made friends with such a great king as Cyrus the Great and entered into financial dealings with him shows how rapidly he had risen in the political and economic world of that time.
But the diplomatic and financial advances of Pukkusati to Cyrus were paralleled by a firm resolve to maintain and strengthen his political authority and imperial prestige. Hence, when he found that his friend Cyrus might pose a threat to him, he did not hesitate to hurl his military power against him and give him a sharp rebuff.
Cyrus turned his attention to wards the East
After the conquest of Lydia and Asia Minor, for which, perhaps, he borrowed money from Pukkusati, Cyrus turned his attention to wards the East. He appointed Vishtaspa the satrap of Hyrcania and Parthia and annexed Drangiana, Margiana and Bactriana one by one. Then he crossed the Oxus and encamped on the Jaxartes and set up fortifications to hold the turbulent nomads in check. These movements must have made Pukkusati apprehensive of his expansionist plans leading to a rupture between
[p.63]: them. It appears that, when Cyrus was busy in the West settling the affairs of Babylonia and planning an invasion of Egypt, Pukkusati launched some move against him which compelled him to leave the charge of the Egyptian campaign to his son Cambyses and himself march to the East. According to ancient writers he thought of conquering the Indus Valley and, for that purpose, divided his army in two parts, sending one through Gedrosia and leading the other himself through the Paropanisadai and Arachosia. But the Indians gave him a warlike reception and inflicted severe reverses on him. They annihilated the army passing through Gedrosia of which only seven persons could escape alive, as Nearchus writes.
However the second wing of the army, commanded by Cyrus himself, succeeded in storming the city of Kapishi (Begram) at the confluence of the Panjshir and Ghorband rivers, as Pliny informs us (Natural History, VI, 23, 25), and overawing the Astakenoi (Hastinayana) and Assakenoi (Ashvakayana) to pay him tribute, as Arrian reports (J. W. M’Crindle, Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 183). This success led Xenophon to remark that Cyrus ruled over Bactria and India ( Cyropaedia, 1, 1, 4, Miller’s translation, Vol. I, p. 7). But Pukkusati, undaunted by the initial success of Cyrus, made the strategic move of setting the Massagetae (Mashaka) and the Derbikes (Darva) against him and assisting them with his elephant corps. Cyrus led a vast army of 12,000 cavalry, 6,00,000 infantry and numerous catapults against the Massagetae, but their queen Tomyris repulsed it with heavy losses (Hadi Hidayati, Kurush Kabir (in Persian), ch. 12, p. 241). In the heat of the encounter, when the fighting was in full swing, a soldier of the Indian elephant corps inflicted a fatal blow on the thigh of Cyrus and thus put an end to his life, as Ctesias writes (Persica, ed. Gilmore, pp. 133-5). Thus Cyrus’s design to invade and conquer India came to nought before he could do anything about it. Megasthenes rightly remarked that the Persians could not lead any expedition against India but merely approached it during Cyrus’s march against the Messagetae (M’Crindle, Megasthenes and Arrian, p. 110). Following him, Arrian also observed that, although Cyrus marched against the Scythians and showed himself the most enterprising of Asian monarchs, he did not invade India (ibid., p. 209). Pukkusati was successful in holding his own and meeting the menace of his powerful rival.
Impacts of war against Cyrus
[p.63]:The war against Cyrus left some imprints on Indian legends which were widely current in the North-West. The episode of the
[p.64]: disaster of Cyrus and the escape of only seven men of his army is, reminiscent of the survival of seven persons in the Pandava camp after the nocturnal attack of Ashvatthaman following the holocaust of the great war of Kurukshetra. Similarly the death of Cyrus, as a result of a smashing blow on his thigh, is like the end of the Kaurava chief Duryodhana by the fracture of the thigh caused by the blow of Bhima. It is well-known that the Mahabharata underwent its redactions at Takshashila in Gandhara where Vaishampayana is said to have recited it to Janamejaya. Hence it is likely that some of its episodes were identified with the memorable events of the war with Cyrus which must have passed into the realm of legends in the North-West. Popular imagination does not care much about historical sequences while giving local colouring to legendary lore according to current anecdotes.
The success of Pukkusati against such a mighty king as Cyrus demonstrated the strength of the heroic tradition reinforced by order, discipline and organization. But we have no knowledge of the successors of Pukkusati. It is also not unlikely that one of them sided with the Yautiyā insurgent Vahyazdāta against Darius the Great. Vahyazdāta tried to capture Kapishkanish and drive a wedge between the satraps of Harahvatis (Helmund Valley) and Bakhtrish (Bactriana) who were siding with Darius. But the satraps of Bakhtrish, Vivana, intercepted him and foiled his scheme by crushing him at Kapishi and Gandutava.
Identification of Thataguś
[p.64]: In those moves (of Darius) Gandhara also fell to the Achaemenians and the house of Pukkusati ceased to exist some time between 518 and 515 B. C. Darius conquered the Indus Valley also as the Persepolis inscription indicates. These regions were organized in taxation units 7 and 20 of the gazetteer of Herodotus, the former called Gadara, including the Dadikai, (Darada), Aparytai (Aprita) etc., and the latter known as Hindus, encompassing the lower Indus Valley, where the Indoi (Saindhava - Sauvira) lived. It is contended that Darius also conquered the Panjab up to the Beas where Alexander’s army halted having reached the limit of the Achaemenian empire whose heir they; claimed to be (Cambridge History of India, I, p. 306). Not certain of this fact, Smith observed that this empire “perhaps included a considerable part of the Panjab east of the Indus” (Early History of India, 3rd, ed. p. 37). This view is based on the identification of Thataguś (Sattagydai of Herodotus), included in the seventh taxation unit, with the Panjab. Herzfeld holds that this word Thatagus may represent a compound, in some Iranian or Sanskrit
[p.65]: dialect, of the Indo-European word for ‘seven' with some word meaning ‘stream'. He conjectures that the word that or satta stands for hapta or sapta, but about guś he is not certain. R. G. Kent rejects this view and shows that that in Thataguś (Elamite sa-ad-da-ku-iś, Akkadian sa-at-ta-gu-u) is the same as Avestan sata or Sanskrit śata or Indo-European kmto and guś stands for gav, meaning ‘cattle', so that thataguś does not signify ‘seven rivers’ but ‘hundred cattle' (Old Persian, Grammar, Texts, Lexicon, p. 18). G. G. Cameron also observes: "I find it very difficult to reconcile Thataguś with the Panjab. Must it not rather be on the slopes of the Hindukush” (A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History Vol. VII, p. 649). A. V. Williams Jackson equates Thataguś with ‘‘either the Ghilzai territory to the south- west of Ghazni or the Hazara country further to the west and north-west” (Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 302). It appears that Thataguś represents the region of Gomati, modern Gomal, both these names signifying a land having an abundance of cattle.
An objection to the identification of Thataguś' with the Panjab is financial as pointed out by Toynbee. As he writes, “the Panjab must always have been a rich country in virtue of its agricultural and pastoral products, and, therefore, if the Herodotean Taxation District No. 7 did include even only a part of the Panjab, it is surprising that it should have been assessed at a lower figure than any other district. Moreover Thataguś, whether a rich country or a poor one, had been in rebellion in 522-21 B. C. and Darius was not the man to let off resubjugated rebels lightly in their tax assessments, as he showed by the enormous figure at which he assessed the poverty-stricken south-eastern Asagartiya, Yautiya and Machiya.” Hence he concludes that “the lowness of the assessment on the Herodotean District No. 7. could perhaps be reconciled with a location of one of its constituent cantons in the wealthy Panjab on the supposition that, if Thataguś did lie in the Panjab, it included no more than a fraction of it, e. g., the north-western corner, to the north-west of the Salt Range” (A Study of History, Vol. VII, p. 648). In fact it is strange that, if Panjab formed part of the Achaemenian empire, it was not made a separate taxation unit or satrapy, being one of the richest units of the empire.
The administrative and social changes by Darius
The substance of the above discussion is that Darius failed
[p.66]: to conquer the Panjab, except for Gandhara, inspite of his tremendous resources, obviously, because the resistance of the people was too strong for him. He had to be content with Gandhara sprawling to the west of the Indus with Pushkalavati as the main seat of power as also the lower Indus Valley comprising Sind. Though facts are not available, it seems fairly certain that the people resolutely opposed the Persian forces and kept them at bay despite tremendous odds.
Darius introduced a centralised bureaucratic administration in all his satrapies including Gandhara and Sind. It was headed by a satrap, a general and collector, all equal in rank and status, being appointed directly from the centre and responsible to the emperor. Their jurisdictions were separately specified, yet they kept watch on the activities of each other and briefed the centre about them. The satrap was doubled by a secretary who acted as a link between him and the emperor and reported his activities to him. Besides him, the inspectors, called the ‘emperor’s eyes’ ; travelled with their own armed forces throughout the empire and paid unexpected visits to the satrapies to check their affairs. Each year special missi dominici toured through the country to control the local administration. A ubiquitous network of spies closely examined every aspect of government and readily reported the affairs of the imperial secretariat. Payments of salaries were mostly made in cash. Taxation was fixed & regular, works and wages were controlled and weights and measures were standardized. Common codes of laws, based on royal decrees and replacing old customs, were administered by an efficient judiciary. A salaried army, called spâda organizedon the decimal system, replaced earlier tribal levies.
Besides the aforesaid administrative system, based on the principle of centralized control and organisation, the Achaemenians settled many Greeks in the North-West who brought their own peculiar institutions and customs. These Greeks formed their cantons and colonies at Kapishi (Begram) and Nysa (Naisa Janapada) near Mount Elum where a cluster of old towns, bearing Greek names, derived from Bacchos, Lusa (Nysa), Lyocah (Lyaeus), Elye, Awan, Bimeeter (Bimeter), Bokra (Boukera) and Kerauna (Keraunos), are found. These people traced their descent from Dionysos and developed a legend that he founded the settlement after the name of his nurse Nysa when he
[p.67]: conquered the Indians. Their system of government consisted of an oligarchy of 300 persons having a president. At the time of Alexander’s invasion their President was Akouphis who, accompanied by thirty members of the oligarchy, approached him with the request to spare the city. But so jealous they were of their institutions that they turned down the request of Alexander to part with 100 of their best men and instead offered to send twice that number of their worst men Another settlement of the Greeks existed between the Indus and the Chenab, somewhere near or on the Jhelum, probably in the present district of Gundulbar, probably at old Bhera, and included the Salt Range. Their custom of examining children at the age of two months and exposing them in the event of their not conforming to the prescribed standard of physical fitness and beauty is the same as obtained in Sparta. Likewise their practice of contracting marriages on eugenic and aesthetic considerations rather than the lure of handsome dowry is essentially Spartan. Thus it looks likely that these Greeks were either an offshoot of the Spartans or were intimately allied to them so as to share their basic institutions. They must have brought with them some other customs and laws of social control and regimentation also. Their chief, Sophytes, issued silver drachmas bearing legend in Greek and showing the king in Greek dress (D. R. Bhandarkar, Ancient Indian Numismatics, pp. 30-31). Indian tradition ' remembers him and his people as Subhuta or Saubha (Mahabharata, III, 14,2; 16, 6). He and his people seem to have been posted on the easternmost frontier of the empire in view of their strong martial quality reinforced by a strictly regimented social system. But, during the period of decadence of Achaemenian rule, the-resurgence of powerful native forces compelled them to migrate eastwards and settle in the vicinity of the Kathaians between the Ravi and the Beas in eastern Panjab.
The impact of Persian administrative system and Greek institutions
The impact of Persian administrative system and Greek institutions led to the growth of a new authoritarian theory of state which found expression in the schools of Arthashastra that replaced the conservative thought implicit in the customary outlook of the Dharmashastra. This new theory centred on the idea that material resources are the basis of both spiritual and sensual happiness (artha eva pradhana iti Kautilyah. Arthamulauhi dharmakdmaviti) Arthagastra, I, 7, 6-7). Hence the Aushanasas
[p.68]: held that the science of polity and administration (dandaniti) alone was the key-science, the Bārhaspatyas thought that, besides dandaniti, economics (vārttā) is also important, the Manavas believed that trayi (Vedic lore) should also be given a due place and Kautilya insisted on the cultivation of logic and philosophy (anviksiki) as well. Bharadvaja and his followers considered religion and morality a shibboleth, put a premium on anger and indulgence and counselled a clever minister to overthrow the old dying king and usurp his throne. All these thinkers and teachers held that a strongly organized state, ruled by an able king with the assistance of a council of competent ministers according to a strict and well-defined code of laws, was the sine qua non of a stable and prosperous society. By and large they were against the inchoate and unstable oligarchies of tribal units wedded to effete customs and stagnant conventions. These ideas flourished in the schools and seminars of Takshashila under the shadow of new administrative institutions and found their clear expression in the thought of many theorists, mentioned in the Shantiparvan of the Mahabharata, and crystallized in the doctrines of Vishnugupta Chanakya or Kautilya, the most gifted teacher of Takshashila, whose Arthashastra embodies the most advanced political, economic and social philosophy of those times.
Kautilya envisaged a monolithic socio-political system with the king as its hub. The king, assisted by a large council of ministers and a secretariat of thirty-one departments, each having its president or adhyaksha, controlled the entire administrative mechanism. Below the king the samāhartṛ was the head of a unit of 3200 villages, then the sthāniya was incharge of a circle of 800 villages, next to him the dronmukha administered a division of 400 villages, under him the kharvaṭika controlled a district of 200 villages, then the sangrahaṇa was responsible for a pocket of 10 villages and lastly the gopa managed the affairs of five villages (Arthashastra, II, 35, Shamashastri’s edition, pp. 141-2).
Land was divided into three categories : (1) that which was directly worked by the Sitadhyaksha, (2) that which was settled with colonists under a highly regimented system, (3) and that which belonged to the peasant-proprietors subject to varied items of revenue.
Industry, trade, banking, guild life etc. were highly controlled. Every aspect of social or personal life was under the strict surveillance of the government. In fact the entire community was
[p.69]: directed to be a committee of public safety, a vigilance board andan information bureau. The various shrenis, choraganas (vratas and pugas), atavikas (foresters) and mlecchas (foreign contingents) etc. were welded into a unified and heirarchical military organisation (Arthashastra, VII, 14, p. 307). Thus there was no scope for oligarchical autonomy or fluidity. This whole system breathes the spirit of Achaemenian and Spartan way of thought.
Rise of new monarchical states
The new trends of thought and organisation fostered new political developments. In place of oligarchical warrior communities, mostly of tribal and rural character, new monarchical states, having centralised and bureaucratic structures, began to grow. The foremost among such states were those of Poros (Paurava), between the Jhelum and the Chenab, Ambhi, between the Indus and the Jhelum or eastern Gandhara, and Hastin, Kubhesha and Ashvajit beyond the Indus in western Gandhara. Naturally their interests clashed and their relations were strained. The growing might of Poros made them uneasy and even ready to seek foreign help to hold their own. Poros dashed up to the Ravi and stationed his nephew to the east of the Chenab and also swooped in the south to measure arms with the Malavas and the Kshudrakas, living from the confluence of the Chenab and the Ravi to that of their joint stream with the Indus, driving them into a military alliance. In the north he had diplomatic relations with the king of Abhisara, ruling over Poonch, Rajori, Chibhal and Naoshera, and exercised grim pressure on Gandhara and even hobnobbed with the Achaemenids of Iran. The secret of his might was the highly centralised and efficient civil and military organisation of his state an inkling of which is afforded by his army of 50,000 foot, about 3,000 horses, about 1,000 chariots and 130 elephants which fought with commendable discipline and cohesion under unified command with Alexander in the battle of the Jhelum. This army was obviously different from the heterogeneous levies working on tribal and territorial basis under the command of their chiefs. It can be presumed that its organization more or less followed the pattern, laid down by Kautilya, according to which 200 foot, 10 chariots, 50 horses and 10 elephants formed a squadron under the command of a padika, such ten units or 2,COO foot, 100 chariots, 500 horses and 100 elephants formed a brigade under a senapati and ten such units or 20,000 foot, 1,000 chariots, 5,000 horses and 1,000 elephants constituted a regiment under a nayaka. This view is supported
[p.70]: by the remarks of B. Breloer in his Alexander's Kampf gegen Poros, Ein Beitr’āg zur Indischen Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1933) that the strategy of Poros in the battle of the Jhelum followed the rules of the Arthashastra. The maintenance of such a big and disciplined army presupposed an efficient civil administration backed by adequate financial resources which only the developed economy of an advanced state could afford.
Some historians hold that the Achaemenians continued to maintain their hold over their Indian possessions till their defeat at the hands of Alexander in 331 B. C. This view is based on the presence of contingents of Indian soldiers in the Achaemenian army from the time of Xerxes to that of Darius III. Arrian states that, at the battle of Arbela, the Indian forces were grouped with the Bactrians and the Sogdians under the command of the satrap of Bactria, whereas those, who were called ‘mountainous Indians’, followed the satrap of Arachosia. These frontier troops were supplemented by a small force of elephants “belonging to the Indians who lived this side of the Indus”. But we should not overlook the fact that, according to Persian writers, Darius solicited the help of Poros on that occasion and he responded by sending his elephant corps which, however, reached too late to be of any use to him (Buddha Prakash, History of Poros, pp. 28-34). This shows that Darius treated Poros as an independent king.
Besides this, at that time, Gandhara was under independent rulers and the mountainous people were autonomous. When Alexander campaigned in those regions, he did not find any trace of Achaemenian rule, as the accounts of his historians show. The fact is that north-western India had shaken the yoke of the Achaemenians sometime during the reign of weak rulers from Artaxerxes to Darius III. The heroic people could bear it only so long as they were compelled to do so. But the Achaemenian interlude, though brief, was significant inasmuch as it gave a new orientation to the socio-political background of the heroic tradition in ancient Panjab.