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(The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, Devdutt Pattanaik, a renowned writer who specialises in mythology and culture, explores how India became the cultural and spiritual meeting point between East and West.)
Trade highways that once passed through India, connecting East and West, were called by many names: Golden Road, Horse Road, Silk Road, Cotton Road, Spice Road. The Indian subcontinent is located right in the center of the world if we see Europe and America as the West and China and Japan as the East.
This subcontinent is now renamed South Asia after the world was split into nation-states, with clear borders that cannot be crossed without visas and passports. South Asia now includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, though both nations prefer to see themselves as part of Islamic West or Central Asia. Burma (Myanmar) and Tibet, even Iran, are sometimes seen as part of South Asia. The nomenclature is complicated and political.
Earlier, the Indian subcontinent referred to a single cultural zone between the East and the West. Eastern civilisations like China had centrally regulated walled cities, where cultural realities balanced natural truths. Western cultures spoke of covenants with God, the Judgement Day, and one universal truth.
In between was India, across the Indus river, the land of the Buddha and the Brahmins, where every action had a reaction, where every who ate had to be eaten, and everyone eaten had to eat: if not in this life, then in the next. This was the Indic civilization that saw life as a balance sheet of actions (karma), full of debts (paap), credit (punya) and liberation (moksha).
Here, the past is connected to the future through the present. Here, every life is connected to other lives through the food chain and pecking orders of the ecosystem. There was something before the beginning (anadi) and something after the end (ananta). This rebirth-based worldview is unique to this region, and is what can be called ‘sanatan’ or ‘dharmic’ faiths.
India’s unique ideas came from its unique geography. The Indic civilisation rose on a peninsula that was created when a piece of Africa struck the landmass Asia. This geotectonic event created a very unique geography of many river-valleys separated by many folds of mountains. Diverse communities arose in diverse ecosystems. They were all interconnected through trade routes that went along rivers, coasts and mountain passes.
The entire trapezoid landmass is crowned by mountains above and collared by seas below. So India is connected to the world by mountain passes above and sea-routes below. The mountain passes are shut in winter and open in summer. The sea routes are determined by monsoon winds that flow one way before the rains in summer and the other way after the rains in winter. Thus trade is shaped by a rhythm.
During monsoon, travel in India was impossible due to flash floods, slippery paths, dense vegetation, and disease. Before the rains, the summer made travel difficult. The ideal time was after the rains, when elephants were used to restore the highways that connected south with north and east with west.
In Hindu mythology, the highest snow-clad mountain in the north was the home of the hermit Shiva (Hara) who came down to the Ganga plains to the city of Kashi to be a householder, with the goddess of power (Shakti). They had two sons: Kartikeya, who created mountain passes with his sharp lance, and Ganesha, who created highways with marching elephants.
Vishnu (Hari) conquered the three oceans on the east, west and south with his three steps. In the ocean reclined Vishnu (Hari), on the coils of a snake. He blew the conch-shell trumpet, found in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea. Vishnu enabled the gods to churn the ocean of milk, resulting in shifting winds and currents, enabling trade from east to west, and giving birth to fortune (Shri).
An Arabic myth, from a thousand years ago, states that when the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were cast out of Eden, Adam fell on the island of Sri Lanka on Adam’s Peak while Eve fell across the sea on the port of Jeddah, that is connected to the city of Mecca. Adam crossed the Adam’s bridge to reach India. Guided by angels, he used the monsoon winds to travel to Jeddah. These winds played a key role in taking Arab traders, and their Islamic faith, eastwards to the coasts of India, and to the islands of Southeast Asia.
As per Chinese chronicles, monks from China travelled westwards beyond the Altai, Tian Shan, Pamir, and Hindu Kush mountains, crossing the Taklamakan desert, to enter the joyful land of India to obtain Buddhist knowledge. They returned through Himalayan mountain passes via Tibet and Rakhine mountains. One of the most famous among these monks, Xuanzang, was accompanied in his travels to India by a magical horse, pig and monkey – mighty creatures of Taoist myths – in the 15th century Chinese novel, ‘Journey to the West’.
As per Cambodian legends, a sage from India travelled from the coasts of India, along the monsoon winds, through the Malacca Straits, to the Mekong Delta where he met a Naga princess, whom he married. As per Sri Lankan chronicles, a merchant-prince named Vijaya from India travelled by sea to Sri Lanka and married a local Yakka princess. Before him, as per local folktales, the Buddha had made similar journeys to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Burma.
As major trading highways connecting the East and the West passed through India, the subcontinent became its benefactor, its beneficiary and its guardian. Products, produce and ideas went out of India, came into India, and moved via India from east to west and west to east. Exchange transformed India into a civilisation.
What was the significance of the Indian subcontinent’s location in the context of ancient trade routes like the Silk Road and Spice Road?
How did India’s natural landscape of river valleys and mountain folds shape the flow of trade and interaction?
What is the symbolic meaning of the churning of the ocean of milk in terms of shifting winds, ocean currents, and prosperity?
How did the movement of “products, produce and ideas” help shape India into a civilization?
(Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned mythologist who writes on art, culture and heritage.)
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