General Condition of India during the beginning of 12th Century

It is rightly pointed out that regionalism; instability and chaos in the political and administrative structure of India were mainly due to the land system at that time. Land was granted to military or administrative officers in lieu of their service. The king granted land and in return the recipient was required to provide the king with troops and money. There was complete autonomy in administration of their affairs.

They got the land cultivated from slaves, serfs and forced labour. Whatever, they were able to get went into their pockets. All that they were required to do was to render military service and also pay a fixed amount. The Mahasamantas and Samantas were the main story of the Government.

That made the Government weak. In the words of Arnold Hauser-“The king waged war, but did not rule; the great land owners ruled but no longer as officials and mercenaries, but as independent lords. They constituted the master class claiming for itself all the prerogatives of Government, the whole administrative machine and all important positions in the Army.”

These nobles had their and vices. They were magnanimous towards their enemies. They respected woman. They were magi generous towards bards and beggars. They were reckless in gallantry. They were so brave that they did not bother for their lives while fighting. However, they did not possess a cool and calculating spirit. They desperately fought on battle-fields and wasted their time in their harems. They were indulgent and indolent. They took pride in love-making and indulged in intrigues. Their forts were the centers of life and culture. They car vedery much for their dresses and liked ostentatious living.

They filled their harems with women from different regions and countries and they were very particular about the charms and pleasures of their harems. The nobles enjoyed the company of their women in their private apartments, retreats and swimming pools. They even visited the houses of the prostitutes. There are many books in Sanskrit which the deal with the life in taverns and brothels. Nobles could not live without women and no wonder, they carried them even when they went to the front. Hemachandra has described a military camp in these words: “

The camp, in which people slept with a longing of auspicious dreams, in which men, in whom sex passion was instantly aroused, were keeping vigils, in which their loins were fatigued by excessive sexual intercourse the their eyes were sunk by the exhaustion caused thereby, in which women caused an atmosphere of beauty by their sports, in which markets were open, in which warriors were free from the consideration of good sleeps, was pleasant like the city of the Gandharvas.” Nobles lived a life of luxury. Their halls were decorated with gold, jewels and embroideries. They collected a large number of dancers, musicians, bards, poets and dwarfs and wasted a lot of their time in their company.

Every noble had the ambition to conquer the enemies or rivals of his country. That resulted in regional rivalries and wars which crippled the moral and strength of the country. Every war brought a lot of havoc. The practice was to set fire to towns and villages and the result was that all things except stones and pebbles were consumed by fire. The earth was strewn with fleshless skeletons and broken skulls. Darkened and emaciated by heat and hunger, people looked like burnt trunks of trees and walked about with acute trouble.

Every state was a war state and all the energies and resources of the people were directed towards wars. The people were trained for warfare from the beginning and no wonder, a sort of war-mania was created among the people. Everything led to a fight or war. Common talks and jokes resulted in duals and death and there could be no political stability in such an atmosphere.

On account of their mutual jealousies, rivalries and confects, the nobles brought ruin to their groupings, alliances and struggles spread doom everywhere. The nobles robbed the temples and fleeced the people. They plundered the country. They showed utmost brutality and boorishness in their actions.

The bureaucrats were head-strong, despotic and corrupt as all the energy of the Government was centered on wars and diplomacy. The civil servants got full freedom to do whatever they pleased. Kalhan tells us that the civil servants were given to vice and behaved like demons. They cared more for acquiring wealth than for the good of the people. Kshemendra refers to the tyranny, treachery and exactions of civil servants. The people groaned under the tyranny of civil servants and they were “swallowed by the office rather than death.”

The traders and merchants behaved in a very objectionable manner. The only motive before them was profit and the acquisition of more wealth. Kalhan refers to their sandal-covered foreheads, eyelids, ear-lobes and breasts, their beadle like narrow mouths, their huge bellies and their exploitation. Kshemendra refers to the various methods adopted by them to exploit people, such as false weights and measures and balances, high rates or interest, etc.

He refers to them as the thieves of the day. They posed as religious people, listened to lectures on religion, took long baths on the occasion of eclipses and on other holy days, but gave nothing by way of charity. There are references to merchants storing cereals, cotton, salt and wood and charging high prices from their customers and also cheating them by using false weights and measures.

The condition of the poor people was simply deplorable. Their income was very little and they were exploited by everybody. It was difficult for them to make their both ends meet. The traders fleeced them and the officers got money out of them by beating them. Kshemendra tells us that the poor people slept on the bare ground and to put up with the pange of hunger. They wore out by degrees. Babbar, a poet of the 11th century A.D. tells us that the cold winds and rains of winter sent a shudder through the frail limbs of the poor.

They suffered not only from biting cold, but also from starvation. With empty bellies and sad hearts, they coiled their hands and feet and lapsed into silence. Puspadanta, another poet, tells us that the pleasure or anger of death did not mean anything to the poor because their masters were mostly harsh and cruel to them.

Maladhari Hemachandrasuri, who wrote in 1123 A.D., described the condition of the poor in these words: “I have no money with me, whereas the people are making merry. My children weep. What should I give my wife? I have nothing to offer (to the officials). My relatives are drunk with their riches; other rich men look down upon me and do not even offer me a seat. Today there is nothing, not even ghee, oil, salt, fuel, cloth in my house. The earthen pot in empty. What will happen to the family tomorrow?

The daughter is aging; the son is too young and cannot make money. The family members are ill and I have no money for medico. The housewife is angry. Many guests have come. The house is old and leaks, my wife quarrels, the king is perverse, it is not possible to live any longer in this country! May I go elsewhere? What should I do? In which sea should I sink? Should I go to the other end of this earth? What metal should I blow? Which spell or cult should I practice or which God should I adore? My enemy is still alive, my God is against me, the rich want their debts back, where should I go?”

Towards the end of the 8th century, a new religious movement was started by Rahulabhadra, a Buddhist Monk. Later on, he came to be known as Sarahapada. He was against the distinctions between the high and the low people. His view was that the depressed and the- degraded classes had as much sanctity as the privileged and high class; he advocated the cause of the poor and put emphasis on their spiritual potentiality and equality with other people.

The movement started by Sarahapada appealed to the common people. A large number of teachers and saints called Siddhas came to the forefront. Some of them were prolific writes and versatile scholars. People of all castes, creeds and professions became followers of the Siddhas. However, they were more popular with the people of the lower castes.

Siddha Sarahapada or Sarouhavajra was the founder of the Sahajayana School in Buddism. According to him, it was not necessary to renounce the world and one could lead a married should heartily dance, sing and enjoy. To quote Sarahapada, “O! Man, don’t leave the straight path and don’t take to the curved way. The enlightenment is near at hand. Don’t be taking yourself to the distant Lanka.” According to Tadakapada, “O Yogin act as you believe and do not harbour any illusion about the easy path.”

The view of Laksminakara was: “There is no need of undergoing suffering, observing fasts and performing rites or bathing or purification and other rules of society. Nor do you need to bow down before the images of God which are prepared of wood, stone or mud. But with concentration offer worship only to your body where all the Gods reside.”

The Siddhas advocated a married life which was full of enjoyment and pleasure and did not believe in the ideas of penance, austerity or renunciation. They were also opposed to religious formalities and pretensions. Their contention was that for salvation, fasting, ablutions and prayers were not necessary. Salvation was rather an inner discipline of the mind. The Siddhas did not believe in distinctions of castes and creeds.

They considered the Brahmans and Chandalas as equals. They also made no ‘distinction between the learned and the illiterate. They stood for a life devoid of all the formalities. They did not believe in the extreme restraint of senses. According to them, one could indulge in sensual pleasures without being attached to them. The Buddhist Shahajiyas exercised a deep influence on the Vaisnava Sahajiya Movement of Eastern India.

In the Karpurmanjari of Rajasekhara who flourished in the 10th century, we get an account of the Doctrines of Bhairavananda, a Saiva Ascetic. He appears drunk and says:

As for black-book and spell-they may all go to hell!

My teachers excused me from practice for trance.

With drink and with women we fare mighty well.

As on to salvation-we merrily dance.

A fiery young wench to the alter I’ve led.

Good meat I consume and I guzzle strong drink;

And it all comes as alms-with a pelt for my bed.

What better religion could anyone think?

Gods Visnu and Brahma and the others may preach

Of Salvation by trance, holy rites, and the Vedies.

“Twas Lima’s fond lover alone, that could teach

Us salvation plus brandy plus fun with the ladies.”

The followers of the Kaula cult believed in the enjoyment of meat, drink and damsels without any restraint. Somasiddhanta put emphasis on the pleasure of intercourse with women and he called that as eternal pleasure which was not alleviated by any suffering. He wore a garment of human bones and took his food in a human skull. He worshipped the God Bhairava by offering oblations of human flesh with fat, intestine and cerebrum and pouring libations of human blood, gushing from the newly-severed head. He always lived with a Kapala-woman and considered wine as the remover of the meshes of the soul.

About the Natha-Yogins, Puspadanta says that they had multi-coloured caps on their heads. They had large holes drilled in their ears and ivory or metal rings dangled in them. They had long wands in their hands. They had sheets of clothes of different colours hanging in their necks. They put on wooden sandals. They went from door to door, blowing horns and trumpets. Among them, the use of intoxicants like Wine, Ganja and Dhatura was common.

There was a sect of Nilapata or Blue-clothes. They always lived in embrace with women and publicly in intercourse with them. If they were asked whether they were hale and hearty, their reply was: “How can a wearer of Blue-clothes (Nilapata) be happy unless all the inmates of the world are turned into women, all the mountains are tuned into heaps of meat and all the rivers are turned into currents of wine.”

There was a laxity of morals in the Vaisnava circles. The love affairs of Radha and Krishna were described in most objectionable forms. Jayadeva described in detail the sexual love and erotic sports of Radha and Krishna in his ‘Gitagovinda’. It was maintained that love with another woman was better than love, with one’s legally-wedded wife.

The craze for sensual indulgence dominated the art. The view of Bhoja was that architects and sculptors should decorate the monuments by figures of women engaged in sexual intercourse and that of the heroes desirous of sex-play with slim damsels. U.N. Ghoshal tells us that the four thousand temples of Gujarat contained more than twenty thousand dancing girls. Alberuni tells us that income from prostitues was enough to meet the expenses of the armies of the kings. Goetz says, “The life of the courts, however, was luxurious, and this is shown in the different fashions.

Like the courts, the temples too had to be fashionable. If the Great Gods and Goddesses loomed in inaccessible holiness, the host of heavenly nymphs (Apsaras, Surasundaris) and minor deities (Gandharvas), accompying them. Could be shaped to the image of the court ladies and gentlemen. As the official religion became more superficial in the later middle ages, so did beautiful young prostitutes (Vesya-kumari) became the fashion as temple-dancers (Devadasi) and partners in secret Tantrika rituals, and so also were statues of fashionable sexy females used to adorn the walls, columns and ceilings of the temples. During the last centuries before the Muslim invasion, many of these figures were portraits (in a few cases they can even be identified), and in the last stage even frankly obscene groups were not rare.” (Five Thousand Years of Indian Art, p. 134.)

What was true of the higher classes was also true of the lower classes. It is stated that on the occasion of the Udakasevamahotsava, the people besmeared their bodies with mud and roamed about from house to house. Men, women and children drank a lot and indulged in obscene plays. The chief of the festival dressed himself as a Bhairava and roamed about on an ass. The others put on the guise of sweepers, cowherds, barbers etc., and followed him. It was believed that he who did not participate was to incur the wrath of ghosts and goblins.

On the occasion of Savarotsava held on the day of Vijayadasami, the people covered their bodies with leaves and mud like the aboriginals. They sang all kinds of dirty songs about women. Dr. R.K. Mukerjee says, “Not only did salvation, wine and sex enter into an unholy combination in the Kaula religion, but the public swing festival of the Devi (Gauri or Laksmi), which lasted for a month and was common from the tenth to the thirteenth century, became the occasion for amorous dalliances and escapades.

Like the jeweled roof terraces and the picture galleries, even the public gardens, where the religious swing festival was celebrated, served as a rendezvous for lovers, who saw their sweethearts in the swing before the image of the Goddess, with waving chowries, raised aloft, with showy rows of banners, dazzling white, and with bells, ascending and descending.” (The Culture and Art of India, p. 299).

As there had been no invasion on India for a few centuries, the people were suffering from a false sense of security. The result was that no provision was made for the defense of the country from foreign dangers. The material prosperity of the country also weekend the people. Armies were neglected and no forts were constructed for defense.

The people suffered from a false sense of pride. Alberuni tells us that “The Hindus believed that there is no country like theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.” Such an attitude was bound to result in the defeat of the Hindus.

The people of India were living in isolation from the rest of the world. They were so much contented with themselves that they did not bother about what was happening beyond their frontiers. Their ignorance of the developments outside their country placed them in a very weak position. That also created a sense of stagnation among them.

There was decay on all sides. Architecture, painting and fine arts were adversely affected. Indian society became static and caste-system became rigid. There was no re-marriage of widows. Restrictions with regard to food and drink became very rigid. The untouchables were forced to live outside the towns.

The Mathas which were formerly the seats of learning now became centers of luxury and idleness. Most of the monks lived a life of license. The Devadasi System prevailed in the temples. A large number of unmarried girls were dedicated to the service of the deity in big temples. That led to corruption and prostitution in temples. Great writes did not hesitate to write obscene books.

A minister of one of the king of Kashmir wrote a book named ‘Kuttini Matam’ or ‘Opinions of a Go-between’. Kshemendra (990-1965 A.D.) wrote a book called ‘Samaya Matrak’ or ‘The Biography of a Prostitute’. In this book “The heroine describes her adventures in every sphere of society as a courtesan, as the mistress of a noble, as a street walker, as a go-between, as a false nun, as a corrupter of the youth and a frequenter of religious places.”

The majority of the Hindus believed in eight classes of spiritual beings, viz., the Devasor Angels. Daily Danava, Gandharvas and Apsaras, Yakshas, Rakshasas, Kinaras, Nagas and Vidyadharas. The beliefs of the educated and uneducated were different. The former believed in abstract ideas and general principles while the latter were contented with derived rules, without caring for details.

Uneducated people worshipped images. “This is the cause which leads to the manufacture of idols, monuments in honour of certain much venerated persons, priests, sages, angels, destined to keep alive their memory when they are absent or dead, to create for them a lasting place of grateful veneration in the hearts of men when they die.”

Pilgrimages formed a part of Hindu religious beliefs. They were not obligatory but were considered to bring merit. In every place to which some holiness was ascribed, the Hindus constructed ponds intended for ablutions. In this, they had attained a high degree of art.

Sati was prevalent in those days. “When a Raja dies, all wives burn themselves on his pyre.” The view of Alberuni is that Sati was performed only by the Vaishyas and Sudras, especially at those times which were prized as the most suitable for a man to acquire in them, for a future repetition of life, a better form and condition than that in which he happens to have been bom and live.

Burning oneself was forbidden to Brahmanas and Kshatriyas by a special law. If they wanted to kill themselves they did so at the time of an eclipse or they hired somebody to drown them in the Ganges, keeping them under water till they were dead.

“The disposal of the dead was in one of the three ways: by fire or by floating the body into a stream, by being cast away to feed wild animals. The Brahmanas wailed aloud for their dead but not so the Buddhists.” “Regarding the return of the immortal soul (to God), the Hindus think that party it is effected by the rays of the Sun, the soul attaching itself to them, partly by the flame of the fire which raises it (to God).”

The idea of reward or punishment for the soul also prevailed among the Hindus. They believed that there were three worlds where the soul stayed. “The Hindus called the ‘World Lok’. Its division consists of the upper, lower and middle. The upper one is called ‘Svargloka’, i.e., Paradise that one in which we live is called ‘Madhyaloka’ and ‘Manushyaloka’, i.e., the world of men. In the ‘Madhyaloka’, man has to earn, in the upper to receive his reward, in the lower to receive punishment………. but in either of them there is the soul, the soul free the body.”

It is pointed out that the Indian Society on the eve of the Muslim invasion of India presented striking contrasts of chivalry and instability, heroin and anarchy, richness aphid poverty, indulgence and disillusionment and licentiousness and abnegation.

Dr. R.C. Majumdar says, “Scenes of brave resistance and heroic self-sacrifices alternate with object surrender; patriotic fervour and wild enthusiasm for national cause give place to narrow selfish interest; anxious thoughts for the safety of the motherland and enlightened view of national interest yield to personal vanity; keen sense of honour and respect for family contrasts with supreme callousness, which nothing could move-not even dishonour of women and indignities heaped upon dearest relations; heroic souls, who preferred death to dishonour, move side by side with abject renegades, who like the very feet that tred them down; wonderful spirit of cooperation involving extreme self-sacrifice for the safety of the motherland is followed by petty internal squabbles that sap the vitality and integrity of the nation at the very moment when its freedom is at stake; heroic, almost suicidal, sacrifice of thousands for saving the purity of a single temple sadly contrasts with the supreme indifference to the defilement of hundreds of sanctuaries; and even the most cherished sentiments of the honour of women and sanctity of religion are most violently outraged without provoking a national outcry.”

About the general picture of India towards the end of the tenth century. Dr. Panikkar says that the Hindu social structure was firm and was capable or resisting external pressure. Hinduism had received a new vigorous impetus with the gradual absorption of Buddhism, with new popular forms which satisfied the religious aspirations of the masses and with a philosophical background which satisfied the more intelligent minds and united the different sects into one faith. The people were prosperous.

A lot of wealth had accumulated on account of peace, commerce and colonization for a few centuries. However, the political structure was weak. There was no sense of unity. The ideal of Bharat varsh was completely forgotten. Patriotism was absent. There was no determination to resist the foreigner. There was a corrupt bureaucracy. It is only the dynastic interests that united the people and that was not enough to enable the people of India to check the Muslim invaders. The condition in the South was different. There were the National Monarchies of the Cholas, Pallavas and Pandyas. On the whole, India was not ready to meet successfully the Muslim invaders.