Afghanistan and It's Vedic Culture

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Afghan"isthan" was once center of Vedic Culture. The Indo Aryans

definitely lived in that region before migrating further either

upwards or downwards. For the Aryans Afghanistan was the land of the

Gandharvas or the celestial beings. The Gandharvas were depicted in

the Vedic scriptures as celestial beings, skillful in music, with

magical powers, and beautiful forms. In status they were not equal

to the devas, but regarded as higher beings with divine powers,

mischievous at times, but mostly friendly and reliable.

 

In ancient times, the valleys of Afghanistan must have resonated

with the sounds of many caravans crisscrossing the country. The

Indus valley people conducted their overland trade with Mesopotamia

through Afghanistan. Their caravans carried a variety of goods that

included rare and precious stones, minerals, food grains, resins,

gold, silver and bronze, incense, Pistachios and more. After the

expansion of the Vedic culture and the decline of the Indus valley

civilization Afghanistan was invaded and occupied by the Persian

army headed by Darius, the Great, (522 to 486 BC). We have little

information as to who were ruling Afghanistan at that time. Probably

it was part of an Indian kingdom from the Punjab region or was ruled

by local chieftains.

 

When Alexander marched towards India, he passed through the

mountainous territories of Afghanisthan and had to subdue many

native tribes in the region. In the course of multiple battles he

fought with them, his army was put to enormous strain and loss.

Since his army was not familiar with the territory and his soldiers

were not that skilled in mountain warfare, his army was literally

exhausted by the time they reached the Indian borders and lost much

of their motivation to fight further and march deeper into the

subcontinent. The tired and frustrated soldiers insisted Alexander

to return to their homeland. On their way back, Alexander had

problems once again in the region and had to remain cautious till

they crossed the borders of Afghanistan.

 

Alexander appointed Seleucus I as the viceroy of the Asian

territories he conquered, which comprised of a vast area that

stretched from the northwestern borders of India to most of Anatolia

and parts of Syria-Phoenicia. Selucus I was not able to maintain his

hold on the region for long. A few years after he took over the

reign, about 303 BC, Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the mighty

Mauryan Empire from eastern India waged a war with Seleucus and

defeated him.

 

As a part of the agreement, Seleucus I gave his daughter in

marriage to Chandragupta Maurya and also ceded him Afghanistan and

surrounding areas. For a few centuries from then on, Afghanistan

remained under the control of the Mauryan Empire and enjoyed some

degree of stability. During the Mauryan rule, Buddhism spread into

Afghanistan and became a dominant religion there.

 

The Mauryan emperor who made this possible was Ashoka. He was

the son of Bimbisara and the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya. During

his reign the Mauryan empire reached its zenith. (See the Map).

Perhaps under no other ruler before him or after him, so much of the

country owed allegiance to one power.

 

Ashoka had a special relation with Afghanistan. When he was

still a young prince, his father Bimbsara appointed him as the

viceroy of this region, with Taxila (Org.SK. Takshasila, currently

located in Pakistan near Rawalpindi ) as his headquarters. Taxila

was then a great religious and trade center. It was a great seat of

Vedic learning, where flourished the study of Vedic scriptures, many

arts, crafts and ancient sciences. With the emergence of Buddhism in

the region this region started attracting Buddhist scholars too.

 

Originally a cruel king, who allegedly ascended the throne after

killing nearly a hundred of his own brothers, Ashoka underwent a

life transforming experience at the height of his career. In the

course of his conquests, which were many, he waged a bitter and

bloody war against the people of Kalinga. This kingdom existed in

those days in south eastern India, comprising the present day

Orissa. The people of Kalinga were equally ferocious and stubborn

people. Hence a bloody battle ensued in which there was a huge

bloodshed on both sides and thousands of innocent people were

killed, while materially nothing much was gained. The tragedy of the

war and the ruin it brought upon so many people disturbed the

emperor severely and changed his thinking forever. From a ruthless

and ambitious ruler, he became converted to Buddhism and the ideals

of compassion and non violence it preached. With in a few years

after the war, he developed a philosophy of his own called the law

of piety or dhamma, which was a hotch potch of Buddhist philosophy,

Vedic dharma and the prevailing social and moral values of his times.

 

He spent the rest of his life in pious activities and spreading

his dhamma, which he got carved into stone inscriptions in the form

of edicts. He appointed a task force to get those edicts planted all

over India as a reminder to the people of the moral life he

cherished them to follow. Encouraged by his patronage and

protection, the Buddhist monks traveled to various parts of India

and outside also to spread the teachings of the Buddha and bring

people to the path of righteousness.

 

The Mauryan empire declined after Ashoka and for sometime

Afghanistan was left to itself. But it came into lime light once

again with the invasion of the Bactrian Greeks. They invaded the

subcontinent during the second century BC and established their

power from the Oxus river in the west upto the Punjab in the east.

Afghanistan was under their control. Not much is known about these

new rulers. But we know that in matters of religion and social life

they adopted some local practices. While some rulers turned to

Hinduism for spiritual solace, some became devout Buddhists and

patronized Buddhism.

 

Buddhism owes a great deal to the Bactrian Greeks, whose

patronage enabled Buddhism to gain firm foot holding in Central Asia

and Chinese Tukistan. The most famous of the Bactrian Greeks about

whom we have some confirmed details was King Menander. He ruled

Punjab with Sakala as his capital and he became interested in

Buddhism. The ancient Buddhist manuscript, the Milindapatha or the

Path of Milinda by Nagasena records the conversations King Menander

had with Nagasena about some aspects of Buddhism.

 

The Bactrian Greeks were soon over thrown by the invading armies

of Scythians and Parthians, followed by the Kushanas. The Kushanas

were originally Chinese in origin, and came from a nomadic tribe by

the name Yueh-chih. They reached India in a circuitous way through

Central Asia, Bactria and Afghanistan and into the plains of the

Punjab. They established a great empire that extended from the sea

of Aral in the present day Russia in the north and the Chinese

Turkmenistan in the east upto the northwestern frontiers of India

including Afghanistan.

 

Kanishka (2nd century AD) was the most famous of the Kushana

rulers. His period was marked by the rise of Mahayana Buddhism. Pali

bacame the principal language of literary experssion. And most

important of all the period witnessed the remarkable maturing of the

Gandhara school of art. The artists of this school blended both the

Indian and Greek traditions of in a very harmonious way to produce

remarkable pieces of art. It was an art that used Indian motifs but

mostly Greek techniques.

 

Foremost among the works produced by this school of art were the

statues of the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas. Many of them now adorn

the museums all over the world, while some were stolen and may be in

the private collections. We also do not know fully the fate of those

pieces that are presently lying in the Kabul Museum, and whether

they Government there destroyed them or preserved them.

 

The Kushanas were subsequently ousted by the Sassanids or

Sassanians. They ruled Persia (modern Iran) and parts of northern

Afghanistan from AD 224 to 651. Ardasir I was the founder of this

dynasty and he was succeeded by his son Shapur I, whose reign lasted

from AD 240 to AD 272. Shapur I defeated the Romans and expanded his

empire considerably. The Sassanids were fire worshippers and

followers of Zarathushtra. But they did not interfere much with way

of life in Afghanistan, for Buddhism continued to flourish in the

region. Probably after conquering the land, the Sassanids left the

governance to local rulers because of the difficulties involved and

their preoccupation with other the regions of their empire.

 

This period is significant in the history of Buddhism because

during this period the giant statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan were

carved, which were considered to be the largest stone statues in the

world, standing 177 feet tall. It is now well know that they were

destroyed recently by the government of Afghanistan as a part of its

religious zeal.

 

Buddhism continued to flourish in this region till the 5th

Century AD and declined there after. Two factors contributed to this

trend. One was the invasion of Hunas. The Hunas were a barbarian and

cruel band of vandals who perpetrated many religious atrocities

against the native people and put many Buddhists to death.

 

The second factor was the emergence of the Gupta empire. The

Guptas were staunch followers of the Vedic religion, especially

Vaishnavism, and they took upon themselves the task of reviving

Hinduism which was then in a state of decline because of the

popularity of Buddhism. Politically, however, Afghanistan continued

to retain its strategic importance, because it still facilitated a

great deal of trade along the silk route that connected Xinjiang or

the Chinese Turkistan with the Middle east.

 

With the invasion of Arabs in AD 642, for the first time

Afghanistan encountered Islam. The Arabs converted some people there

to Islam, but did not stay there for long because of the resistance

from the Persians. Islam had to wait for another 300 and odd years

to take its roots in the soil. Not much is known about the history

of Afghanistan during this period following the Arab invasion.

Probably the land was under the control of petty rulers who owed

allegiance to the Persians.

 

Then came the Ghaznavids. The Ghaznavid was a Turkish Muslim

dynasty, which captured power in AD 970 and ruled Afghanistan and

parts of Iran till AD 1087. Mahmud Gazni was the most aggressive

ruler of this dynasty and is well known in the subcontinent for the

17 so called "holy wars" he conducted against the present day

Pakistan and India. A materialist to the core who loved the best

things of life, and a lover of arts who patronized poets and

writers, his main objective was not to spread Islam, but to plunder

and loot the rich kingdoms of the subcontinent in the name of

religion. He destroyed many Hindu temples, looted the rich treasures

of the native rulers and converted some native Hindus and Buddhists

to Islam through wanton destruction and use of cruelty and force.

 

After the Ghazanivids, Afghanistan once again came under the

rule of petty rulers and plunged into anarchy. In the 12th Century

AD it was invaded by the Mongols under the leadership of Genghis

Khan (1167-1227) a ruthless, cruel and notorious ruler, who indulged

in the destruction of many cities, including Herat, Ghazni, and

Balkh. The fertile regions of Afghanistan were left follow as many

peasants either fled their homes or were killed by his cruel and

destructive soldiers.

 

Genghis Khan's invasion was one of the many in a series of

invasions by the foreign powers into Afghanistan. One name that is

worth mentioning at this juncture is Babur. Babur was the founder of

Mughal empire in the Indian subcontinent. He was a descendent of

Timur, who in turn was a descendent of Genghis Khan.

 

A petty ruler with a mighty ambition, Babur ruled parts of

Afghanistan for sometime, with Kabul as his capital, before he

decided to invade India and try his fortunes. A freebooter with a

natural instinct for leadership, he gathered a band of committed

soldiers and invaded India supposedly on invitation from some local

nobility to fight against Ibrahim Lodi, who was then the ruler of

the Delhi Sultanate. The Sultanate was already in a state of decline

and was ready to collapse any time. The two armies fought a fierce

battle on the grounds of Panipat in 1526 and Babur won because of

his superior planning, organized army and committed leadership.

After the victory, Babur decided to stay in India and consolidate

his empire through further conquests.

 

For nearly two hundred years thereafter Afghanistan remained

partly under the control of the Mughals and partly under the

Saffavids of Persia. The eastern parts owed their allegiance to the

Mughals while the western part to the Safavids. In 1747, following

the assassination of Nadirshah of Persia, Ahmed Shah Durrani (or as

he is also known Ahmed Shah Baba) established his rule as an

independent ruler supported by Pashthun tribal council. The Pasthuns

controlled Afghanisthan till the Communist regime came to power in

1978.