Poor Bill Oddie!

I watched the Real Marigold Hotel episode 2 with low expectations, which it rose to meet.  Poor Bill Oddie a lifelong bird watcher and wildlife expert was driven off into the Western Ghats to watch birds. I hope he saw more than were shown on the film: a kingfisher and a coulcoul.
Watching birds is one of the great pleasures of a lazy hour in the sun. From the jetty of the Ayurveda centre shown on the film I have seen bee eaters, several types of kingfisher, coulcouls, whiskered terns, herons, egrets, three sorts of cormorant, ducks and the inevitable crows, and a dolphin, which I am assured is not a bird..
Half an hour at breakfast in he mountains yielded bulbuls, babblers, magpie robins, flower-peckers, parakeets, shrike and many others I could't identify. A short walk bagged me a hornbill. Check out the endemic species here.
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1204640@N25/pool/

All of this is, of course, in detail in my book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Looking-Muziris-Through-History-South-ebook/dp/B00KVIL8DO

for which this is a shameless puff. On my last visit things had changed a lot. There were far fewer birds, probably fallen victim to the great economic miracle of India with its development and pollution. I am sure poor Bill Oddie could have managed more than a kingfisher and a coulcoul, though.

Check out the Real Marigold Hotel

I am a sucker for any television programme about India. The current BBC offering of the second series of the Real Marigold Hotel sends "celebrities" to see if they would enjoy retirement in India. This series is set in Fort Kochi and the oldies are put up in a five-star hotel close to the Parade Ground. Who wouldn't like retirement in a five-start hotel! The real price would be a bit beyond my budget.

However, it is all good fun and it is good to see the familiar places through the eyes of a heavily-edited television lens.

Check it out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08fpbkd

The Pandayan Empire

The road East across the plain leads inevitably to the large city of Madurai, centre of trade of the great Pandyan Empire. This was the peak of the great Sangam age. The Sangam Academies of scholars were centred in Madurai and flourished between about 300 BCE and 400 CE. They laid the foundation, through great works of literature for a defined linguistic area, the Tamilkam, roughly corresponding to the whole of the South. The third Sangam, or congregation of scholars and poets was held here in around 1800 BC. The first and second Sangam ages are generally accepted as mythical, one legend telling that they were held in cities since inundated by the sea.

The Pandyan Empire

When the first Greeks came here the Pandyan Empire spread over most of the extreme tip of the peninsular. Present-day Sri Lanka was part of this kingdom, but the lands in between were still primitive and controlled by small chiefdoms. By the time of the Roman Empire the Cholas to the East and the Chera to the West had pushed the Pandaya further South. The area had always been a seething mess of small chiefdoms, sometimes allied to the main Pandyan rulers, sometimes fighting against them.  
The Chola, to the North and West, built a maritime trade. By the first century CE they were actively trading with South East Asia and Indonesia, and had a developed Navy. The great wealth which came from overseas trade helped to build a well-organised and cultured society. They declined from the end of the Sangam period until about 850 CE. One of the rock edicts of Ashoka mentions the three “crowned” dynasties of the South, the Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras.

The wealth which enabled the great Pandya city of Madurai to grow and thrive came from two directions, both East and West. Madurai, positioned in the centre of the peninsular and with access to the sea routes to the extreme South in Tuticorin and Sri Lanka and to the West via the gaps in the mountains. It may hold the record for the longest continually-inhabited city in the world.

Sangam poetry tells of the richness and sophistication of the time and is often the only historical source remaining. The Greeks and Romans knew the city well and traded here, caches of coins and records unearthed far away telling of the spices which were taken out and the wine and silks which went in the other direction. There is even evidence of Greek soldiers serving in the army of the Pandyan kings. There are good classical references to the kingdom and its trade in both Greek and Roman sources.

Nothing can be seen now of Madurai’s ancient roots. The temples came much later, but there is much in Madurai which is timeless. The market traders sit at the roadside in front of their produce. Right next to the temple the tailors trade from booths where they are packed in so tight that it is difficult to see how they can manage to move their sewing machines and the shoppers push and shove to negotiate the narrow walkways.  Just outside the city the rock-cut temple bears hundreds of years of soot from lanterns and butter lamps and the elephant gives its age-old blessing to anyone with donation. Away from the city on the surrounding hills where wild-life still proliferates, the four huge gopura dominate the low sprawl around them, just as they would have done in previous centuries, and Madurai is still a city of trade

In the Sangam age the South was divided into five areas whose boundaries are uncertain, but which seemed to be based on topographical features. Kuttenad is still recognisable today in the low, rice-growing area, Venad the present day Trivandrum region, or “Land of the Chieftans”. In the early years of this period the Ay dynasty in the South and the Ezhimalas in the North separated the Cheras who came in between.

The world outside India

The far East was experiencing its own growth of philosophy and thinking. Buddhist monks had probably reached China by this time and some of the most significant philosophers made their appearance.  Confucius (551 to 479 BCE) introduced a philosophy that combined ethics with religious traditions, a philosophy that would dominate Chinese political structure until the 20th century. At about the same time, we also see Laotze introducing a more sophisticated version of traditional nature worship called Taoism, in one of the greatest books ever written, the Tao te Ching. The Tao philosophy was to influence later Buddhism.
From 403 to 221 BCE, China was split into a number of warring states.  In 221 BCE, the Ch'in dynasty established its rule.  The Ch’in were great organisers and administrators. They began the task of building the Great Wall to keep out the invading Huns. The Ch’in were overtaken by the Han, who defeated the Hun and expanded Westwards, building new trade routes and establishing the longest and most persistent of them all, the Silk Road. This route joined sea routes as it wound its way across continents to Rome and further Westwards. Although there is little evidence of direct trade with the Chinese at this time, finds of Chinese Porcelain suggest that Chinese goods were reaching the South of India. They were certainly reaching Rome; the Emperor Augustus forbade the wearing of silk as a drain on Rome’s resources.

http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/sub90/item50.html

The connection with the East and West allowed for the free exchange of ideas and trade.  The links between South India and the Empires of the Middle East were already strong. From 2000 BCE Arab traders, who were very cagey about the origins of their goods, imported  spices, precious stones, cinnamon, ivory, pepper, ebony and sandalwood and sold them in Egypt and around the

A sturdy-looking Phonecian ship
http://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/watercraft/phoenician-ships/

Mediterranean.  The great Assyrian rulers, Assurbanipal and Tiglath Pileser 111 recorded cotton and other common articles of South Indian origin, and there were records of imports of elephants, tiger and leopard skins, spices, gingelly oil and other commodities until the fall of Assyria in 600 BCE.
King Solomon, who reigned around 1950 BCE reputedly sent his fleet to India, and the fabled port of Ophir was said to be in the South of the continent. He did receive ivory and peacock feathers from somewhere, but he is also said to have had ships filled with gold, something not found in the South, and it is unlikely that gold from another country was being traded. However, it is likely that his fleet reached India and traded there, whether in the South or the North. The seas between India and the Middle East were known by most of the empires of the ancient world, and these empires must have been familiar to the populations of South India. Trade routes hugged the coasts and eventually connected with the great overland routes carrying tea and silk from China.  Connections between the South Eastern coast and the West of the continent were hampered by the ridge of the Western Ghats, although the Palghat Gap allowed for some to-ing and fro-ing and was one of the routes goods to Madurai, the great trading town in what is now Tamil Nadu, would have taken.

Roman trade: Relief from Trajan's column

In about 302 BCE Greek ambassadors, under their leader, Megisthenes visited the Ganges plain, and there is a tradition that he reached as far South as Madurai. The city, which was the centre of the Pandyan dynasty, sent representatives to Greece and Rome and trade flourished there. He wrote a four-volume book, Indika, which has been lost in its entirety. Fragments remain and it was quoted and interpreted by later scholars such as Pliny, Strabo and Aelian. They made little of the outrageous claims Megisthenes made about the people and fauna of India, and later geographers and historians discredited his accounts. Many of his strange descriptions might be a result of language and cultural problems, although explaining these creatures could prove difficult:

"Equally absurd is the account given of the Enotokoitai, of the wild men, and of other monsters. The wild men could not be brought to Sandrakottos, for they refused to, take food and died. Their heels are in front, and the instep and toes are turned backwards. Some were brought to the court who had no mouths and were tame. They dwell near the sources of the Ganges, and subsist on the savour of roasted flesh and the perfumes of fruits and flowers, having instead of mouths orifices through which they breathe. They are distressed with things of evil smell, and hence it is with difficulty they keep their hold on life, especially in a camp. Referring to the other monstrosities, the philosophers told him of the Okupedes, a people who in running could leave the horse behind; of the Enotokoitai, who had ears reaching down to their feet, so that they could sleep in them, and were so strong that they could pull up trees and break a bowstring. Of others the Monommatoi, who have the ears of a dog, their one eye set in the middle of their forehead, the hair standing erect, and their breasts shaggy; of the Amukteres also, a people without nostrils, who devour everything, eat raw meat, and are short-lived, and die before old age supervenes. The upper part of the mouth protrudes far over the lower lip. With regard to the Hyperboreans, who live a thousand years, they give the same account"
Strabo, from Megasthenes: Indika, Trans. J. W. McCrindle

Megisthenes also described the caste system of the Indians, describing seven castes and marvelling at the fact that there were no slaves. As these accounts percolated Westwards they established India as a place of mystery and strangeness. Within India itself, the Aryan culture was spreading South with the Mauryan kingdom, which had an aggressive policy of taking its superior way of life to the less- advantaged people elsewhere. In Madurai the Pandyan dynasty was jostling with the Chola and Chera for primacy in the great age of the Tamil Sangam.
 

Influences from he West.

The life of the Buddha might have been consigned to the dustbin of history as little was heard of  the localised sect in the kingdom of Maghada for two hundred years or so, but the West was spreading its influence Eastwards and routes were opening up by commerce and conquest..

The extent of the Mauryan Empire under Ashoka

The greatest upheaval in the North was the conquest of a large area by Alexander the Great, who had become King of Macedonia, leader of the Greeks, overlord of Asia Minor and Pharaoh of Egypt and 'great king' of Persia at the age of 25. In 500 BCE the Persian King, Darius, had invaded the Indus Valley but the Greeks conquered Persia and he got no further. In 326 Alexander’s armies took a large area of the North, defeating the local ruler, Porus.  By the time the European and Paurava armies faced each other across the banks of the river Jhelum in the Punjab, Alexander’s troops were weary after a long campaign and some hard-won victories in present day Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The 34,000 Macedonian infantry and 7000 Greek cavalry were aided by the Indian king Ambhi, who was Porus’s rival. Ambhi was the ruler of the neighbouring kingdom of Taxila and had offered to help Alexander on the condition that he would be given Porus’s kingdom.
The large numbers of Indian infantry and the war elephants proved a great trial to the Macedonians, but after a ferocious battle Alexander finally prevailed. His conquests spread to what is today the Punjab, spreading to Jammu and the Himalayas. He made alliances with local rulers, and when he returned to Persia, discouraged and with an exhausted and rebellious force, he left several generals to rule the provinces from his centre, Taxila, now in modern Pakistan. Although his rule was very brief the influence of Greek art and culture was long-lasting. As Macedonia broke up following Alexandra’s death, the Selucid Emperor, Nicator, ruled in his place and held the territories in India. It is possible that the reputation of the growing power of the kingdoms of the East were a further disincentive to Alexander to expand his conquests to the Ganges valleys.
While Alexander was taking territory in the West, Chandragupta  Maurya was taking the Nanda lands
round the Ganges Delta. His ambitions led him further West and he met Nicator in battle and defeated him. The resulting treaty, sealed by a marriage, gave the growing Mauryan Empire most of Alexander’s gains. Chandragupta’s statecraft and administrative talents allowed the Mauryan Empire to spread to encompass most of the Indian peninsular, the first unifying kingdom, ruled from Pataliputra, modern day Patna.

 Ashoka Major Rock Edict, Shahbazgarhi

Chandragupta secured the great Mauryan Empire before abdicating in favour of his son, Bindasura. He inherited an empire which spread from the previous Macedonaian conquests across to present day Bengal and as far South as the borders of Tamil Nadu, with the exception of the Kalinga kingdom, modern Orissa. It was Bindasura’s son, Ashoka, who famously united the whole of the Indian peninsular, apart from the Southernmost kingdoms at the very tip.
In about 260 BCE, before he became emperor, Ashoka waged a ferocious campaign against Kalinga which resulted in the death and exile of over 100,000 people. According to the popular legend, he was so sickened by the cruelty of what he had initiated that he turned against violence and embraced a doctrine very similar to Bhuddism. His many edicts, carved on huge boulders across his empire, spread his doctrine of tolerance and peace.

Ashoka was the first unifying ruler of India. There is no evidence that his great empire stretched as far as Kerala. His carved rock edicts have been found as far south as Karnataka and he was in contact with the Buddhist communities of Sri Lanka, but no evidence of his rule has emerged in Kerala so far. A single reference to the south in Edict 13, that of Kerala-putra, is taken to mean that Ashoka’s rule stretched to the beyond Karnataka, but there is no clear definition of what Kerala-putra actually meant geographically. 

   There is a suggestion that trade links with the north were well developed, so it is reasonable to assume that Ashoka’s legacy reached far into the South. Ashoka’s dates have been reliably calculated to the third century BC. He is credited with spreading the Buddhist philosophy of Dharma throughout India, although he did not seem to be too particular which religion or sect incorporated it into their own beliefs. 

New philosophies

The centuries between 500 and 300BCE were ones of great change in thinking and the development of philosophy. Hellenistic thinkers in Greece were laying down systems of ethics and government. The various Aryan tribes of North India had by this time coalesced into sixteen major states, both kingdoms and republics and there was a flowering of intellectual and religious knowledge and belief. The hierarchical structures of Hinduism, already well developed since Vedic times, were being questioned by the growth of the two major philosophies of the age, Jainism and Buddhism. 

Jain temple, Sultan Batthery

The origins of Jain philosophy can be traced to Mahavira who was a contemporary of the Buddha and the last of a line of gurus. The belief in an infinite universe where gods can exist, but without one overarching deity allowed for the conventions of the Vedas to be incorporated into the philosophy as the Jains gained political power, and the concentration on the soul gave more emphasis to the actions of the individual. Monastic traditions developed by ascetic Jains allowed the beliefs to spread across the continent, aided by a period of stability and relative prosperity. For many of the succeeding centuries the influence of the Jains pervaded many areas of South India.
Over many hundreds of years the Jain temples grew to be some of the most harmonious and beautiful of all India’s great architecture. Few remain the South, but vestiges can be seen in temples now
dedicated to Shiva, in the early rock-cut temples and in the small, abandoned temples of Wyanad, the greatest and last stronghold of the Jains in the South West.

The prohibition on harming living creatures meant that occupations for followers of the Jain religion were limited; even farmers harmed small animals when they pulled crops from the ground, so a prosperous merchant group evolved in the Jain population.  Under attack from the Budddhist principles of Ashoka and the later, severe threats from the Hindu priests, Jainism eventually declined or was assimilated into new cults. The high plateau of Wayanad in the North of Kerala became one of the last strongholds in the South and there are several beautiful ruins of temples around Sulthan Battery.

The followers of the Buddha were evangelistic and sent missionaries along the trade routes as far as China. Their message was a popular one, the belief that it is not essential to suffer to achieve spiritual progress and in individual responsibility taking hold over the early Hindu caste system.  Many relics of Buddhist temples have been found in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, especially in the area round Alleppey and Trichur. Today little remains. Buddhist shrines were turned into Hindu temples as the religion declined. Controversially the huge pilgrim temple of Sabrimala has archaeological foundations which suggest that it was once a Buddhist shrine, and some of the rites associated with the annual pilgrimage speak persuasively of Buddhist practices. Ancient statues are reclaimed from tanks and ditches where they were discarded. Possibly the most famous is the black statue which sits in a very unremarkable stupa in a field on a backwater between Alleppey and

Kollam, deep into the Kuttenad region. It has lost some of its torso and one arm, its features are crumbled, but still serene and its legs are very small. The statue probably dates from the 9th Century, and sits forlornly in a very plain, concrete structure, open to the elements and half-buried in the field. It usually has offerings and incense burning near it, and is anointed with turmeric for good fortune by the local villagers. The locals believe that the statue lost its arm when it was trampled by an elephant. The stupa was donated by the Dalai Lhama.

These relics of the old faith are unsung across the South. There is another in the Krishnapuram Palace, about 40 miles South of Alleppey. This palace houses an interesting museum and the larger 10th Century statue sits in a peaceful garden. It is one of four dug out of wells and tanks in the area and relics are still coming to light. Another sits at Buddha Junction in a grubby shrine, still visited daily by a lone resident. Those with a keen eye will see other images which might, or might not, be the Buddha in shrines and temples in the area, integrated into the Hindu pantheon, lacking the necessary serenity but still relics of the long, historical journeys of faith taken by the people of South India. The life of the Buddha might have been consigned to the dustbin of history as little was heard of it for two hundred years or so, a localised sect in the kingdom of Maghada, but the West was spreading its influence Eastwards and routes were opening up by commerce and conquest.. 

The spread of civilisations: the Indus Valley

The date of the petroglyphs in Eddekal have been given as far back as 6,000 BCE, and  links have been found, through imagery, to the Harrapan civilisation in the North which flourished between 3,000 and 1500 BCE. By 3,000 BCE the nomadic populations of the North had settled into a more agricultural way of life and trade links have been discovered between the South and the civilisations which were flourishing in the Indus Valley, in modern day Pakistan. In 1974, on an ancient trade route between Iran and India, a settlement was discovered which threw the time-line of the

development of civilisation into disarray. Mehrgah was a sophisticated settlement which dated back to about 7,000 BCE and which bore no discernible links to the civilisations which had grown up in the plains of the Middle East and which were usually credited with the beginnings of settled civilisation. Agriculture was well developed, there were craftsmen making statuettes as well as pottery and bricks, metal workers and also those in the business of healing the sick. By the time it was abandoned in about 2,600 BCE other, greater societies were beginning to emerge.
The city of Harappa was first described in the West by a British Army deserter, Charles Masson in 1828. He saw the remains of brick walls, the pattern of a city. The site suffered the ravages of railway building, and in the 1850s some objects which had been dug up during the building works were sent to General  Alexander Cunningham, head of the new Archaeological Survey. Cunningham was fascinated to see a new form of writing on some seals, a language which has still not been decoded. The society which produced these artefacts was not investigated for nearly a hundred years, in the 1920s. When it was, its sophistication was astonishing.

Dancing girl, Harrapa.
National Museum, New Delhi
 http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/

There is evidence of bath houses, domestic latrines and wells, and articles which show a high level of craftsmanship including seals of a complicated design and bearing the mysterious writing. The city of Mahendro-Daro in the same area exhibits similar layout and structure, indicating that the society was widespread. Its growth and continued prosperity was a result of trade, the links for which spread far and wide, to Central Asia, Oman and Messopotamia. The culture probably spread by boat along a lost river, the Saraswati, which possibly exited in the Ran of Kutch. There is little evidence of a ruler, or ruling class, although there is an organisation demonstrated in the grid arrangement of streets, regulations governing trade and, intriguingly, fire altars built along the lines of those seen in the South.
The major, and most controversial link with the civilisations in the North is that of language. Linguistic divisions are not ethnic divisions, although similarities amongst groups inevitably emerge. The speakers of the Dravidian language in the South of India are often seen as an ethnic group, with racial characteristics which link them to other Dravidian speakers in Pakistan and elsewhere. The existence of Balui Dravidian speakers In the North makes for a strong argument that the language was one common across all of India, perhaps originating from the Caucasus, but more likely being endemic to India. The divisions of today, country and continent, obscure the vision when the development of societies are compared. There have been theories that the Dravidian speakers, who were spread right across India, were conquered and eradicated by the Aryan invaders from central Asia. This is now generally accepted as untrue; the decline of the Harrapan

Remains of Harrapa

civilisation and rise of the migrant Aryans was probably because of a period of climatic instability. There is a myth in the ancient Mittani civilisation in Anatolia of a distant civilisation which was destroyed by Agni, the god of fire. Whatever happened, there is no evidence of widespread destruction in the remains of Harrapan and Mohendra-Daro, but rather of a slow decline. The Dravidian language persists in present day Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada. Genetic studies have shown that the population of South India has close links to the Mediterranean area, but that one tribe in Kerala, the Kadar, are related only to themselves. The Cheras described Dravidian beliefs and rituals which are still practiced by these tribes today.

It is evident that there was an active population here in very early times and there are indications of where they came from. The Human Genome Project, in its aim to map the ancestry of all human beings, has found some interesting results here. The tribal communities of Kerala originated in Africa, and have few links to other, later populations. One tribe, because of their tradition of intermarriage which has persisted over thousands of years, bear no relationship to any group, other than themselves. Small tribal groups are scattered throughout Wayanad, Pallakkad and the high ranges, preserving language and traditions which go back millennia.

Their religion and culture was well-developed and widespread. In around 1500 BCE an oral tradition of mantras and recitation grew up and resulted in the composition of the Rig Vedas. These are about a thousand hymns in praise of and in supplication to the gods, battle hymns and other, narrative sections. The Vedas have been found in places as far from India as Kurdistan. Originally they were mantras based on sounds and the meaning of sound, but as time went on they grew into a lasting mythology. They describe a bronze-using society, which dates them to before 1200 BCE when the use of iron arrived in India. The Vedas persisted in oral tradition until they were written down, in about 1400 CE. There were undoubtedly changes once they were committed to writing, but the traditions were strong, and the Vedas are still those recognisable as the oldest, recorded ritual.
The language of the later, written Vedas was Sanskrit, and again, similarities between Sanskrit and Western languages were seen to support the invasion theory. Remains of chariots and horses, unknown in India until the Aryans arrived, can be found in the Indus Valley, but how they got there over the high mountains of the Hindu Kush has never been established. However it happened, through invasion or acculturalisation through trade, the dominant culture of the Indus Valley civilisation, and its language, changed before the migration Eastwards.