Lecture 4—Iran, India, and Inner Asia to 200 AD

Iran: The area from the Caspian Sea and the Jaxartes River to the Indus Valley to the Arabian Sea and Gulf to the Tigris-Euphrates region to the Caucasus Mountains. It was a strategic location for trade.

The Elamites: The Elamites were a non-Semitic people who dwelled Southeast of Mesopotamia from 2700 BC to their destruction by Assyria in 630 BC.

The Iranians: Aryans who settled on the Iranian plateau around 1100 BC. They were horse-breeders and herders from the Eurasian steppes. They settled on the western and southwestern fringes of Iran, becoming known as the Medes and the Persians. The Medes helped to crush Assyria, then fell to the Persian Achaemenid dynasty.

Iranian Religion: Similar to the Vedic Aryan faith of India, giving allegiance to Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord of Heaven.

Zoroaster and Zoroastrianism: Somewhere between 1100 to 900 BC, the prophet Zoroaster brought about changes in Iranian religion with his composition of the Gathas, now part of the Avesta, the sacred scripture of Zorastrianism. Zoroaster, like the Hebrew prophets who came after him, urged moral reform in a time of social change and disturbance. He dismissed all the lesser gods as demons and urged worship of Ahura Mazda alone. He warned of a future reckoning to come. By the 4th century BC, his ideas dominated Iranian religion, though it tended to be syncretized by later religious leaders, creating pantheons of 'angels' (rehabilitated old gods) in service of Ahura Mazda. It survives today as the religion of the Parsiis, having been mostly wiped out by Islam in the 7th-8th century AD.

The First Iranian (Persian) Empire (550-330 BC)

Cyrus the Great (559-530 BC): Cyrus conquered the Medes, Assyria, Asia Minor, then the Neo-Babylonians, Syria, and the eastern Mediterranean coast. He allowed the exiled Jewish leadership to return to Palestine to rebuild the Temple. He also conquered the Eastern steppes. His empire was fundamentally a tribal confederation, as he preferred to recruit local elites to serve him and govern his conquests.

Later Monarchs: His successors Cambyses (530-522 BC)Le and Darius I (522-486 BC) brought the empire to its height, finishing off eastern conquests, capturing Egypt and Thrace and consolidating Asia Minor under his rule. However, Darius I's attempt to conquer Athens in retaliation for the Ionian revolt (499-4 BC) failed. After the defeat of Xerxes by the Greeks, the empire went down hill in a welter of bad kings, civil war, and repeated defeat by Greeks. Alexander the Great finally finished it off.

The Achaemenid State: Their empire was very stable, especially under the early kings (Shahansha, "King of Kings" was their title). They were priest-kings, chosen by the Gods in theory, but tolerant of other cultures and practices. They built a powerful army and borrowed the best practices of other nations. Over time, their rule moved from a tribal confederation to a sophisticated state with a system of satrapies appointed by the Shahansha from local leadership, a noble class, professional armies, and fixed-yield taxes for each satrapy. Their highway system supported an efficient mail and message service.

Achaemenid Economy: The Achaemenids replaced the barter economy with the use of money, first developed in the Kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor. This made commerce much easier. Wages were regulated and monetary values for goods were set by the government. Most men were farmers, but the government helped to build canal and irrigation systems. Life was about as good as it got in the Iron Age under Achaemenid rule.

First Indian Empire (321-185 BC)

Political Background: In the 7th-4th century BC, strong regional states, especially in the Ganges plain, arose in India.

Chandragupta Maurya (321-297 BC): He built the first major empire in India. Alexander the Great's invasion of India broke up the states of northwestern India; Chandragupta stepped into the breach, seizing power in the vaccum created when Alexander left. His son Bindusara then pushed south, seizing the Deccan, the great central plain of India.

Ashoka Maurya, Champion of Buddhism (272-232 BC): He conquered most of the rest of India except for the far south. However, the bloodshed of the Kalinga war along the eastern coast of central India sickened him. He converted to Buddhism, striving to follow the eight-fold path, abandoning conquest and trying to spread Buddhism. He tried to replace his warmongering with righteousness. He appointed "dharma officials" to study local conditions and foster just government. However, the sheer size of his empire outraced the ability of him or anyone else to administer the whole thing, and under his successors it collapsed. Ashoka was remembered, however, as a symbol of enlightened rule.

The Mauryan State: Centralized, standardized and efficient in communications, civil and military organization, tax collection, and information gathering. The fundamental unit was the village, headed by a local headman and council. Villages grouped into districts, districts into provinces with royal governors or native rulers. (Possibly copied from the Achaemenids). The King ran the empire with the aid of an advisory council; land and trade were taxed.

The Mauryan Legacy: They left a legacy of international trade contact, exposure to foreign ideas, good communications, honest government, and literacy. It was also an era in which cities flourished.

Consolidation of Indian Civilization (200 BC to 300 AD)

Political: India fragmented into many small states, many under foreign domination.

Economic: The Mauryan trade roads survived, facilitating commerce, though most people still lived by agriculture. Chinese and Roman demand for India's goods made it a crossroads of world trade. Guilds and the use of money flourished.

High Culture: Buddhism heavily influenced Indian art in this period. It is a time known for highly realistic but fluid depiction of the human form and animals. The Gandharian school of art combined Hellenistic naturalism with the Indian tradtion of Buddha images. In literature, the Mahabharata and Ramayana took on their final forms in a time of high Sanskrit writing.

Religion and Society:

Hindu Tradition: Modern Hinduism emerges during this time: the consolidation of the caste system, Brahman ascendancy, the high culture of Sanskrit-based learning, the increasing dominance of theistic devotionalism (cults of Vishnu and Shiva especially), and the intellectual reconcilliation of these developments with older traditions from the Upanishadic age.

Buddhism: The Buddhists flourished in this time, but popular practice of Buddhism increasingly came in line with the practices of the various Hindu cults and became harder to distinguish. This was the time of the rise of the Mahayana ("Greater Vehicle") Buddhist teachings, which de-emphasized the ideas of samsara and personal nirvana in favor of building a pantheon of Buddhas and Boddhisatvas (enlightened ones who turned back from Nirvana to help bring others to enlightenment) who offered what was essentially salvation to those unable to follow monastic levels of discipline. Religious practice became devotional. This devotional lifestyle of Buddhism is most strongly emphasized by the Pure Land schools and has greatly contributed to the success of Mahayana in East Asia, where spiritual elements traditionally relied upon chanting of a Buddha's name, of mantras or dharanis; reading of Mahayana Sutras and mysticism. (The older school of Buddhism became known as Therevada Buddhism, "the Way of the Elders")

Greek and Asian Dynasties

The Selucids: One of the successor dynasties of Alexander the Great was the Selucids, descended from General Seleucus. They ruled most of the old Persian/Achaemenid realm from 312 to 246 BC and portions of it until 125 BC. New cities were founded as a focus for control and the fusion of Hellenistic and Indian / Iranian culture flowered from them. Some non-Greek elites became Hellenized. Over time, however, the Seleucids gradually lost control of their own mercenaries which ruled their lands. Zoroastrianism declined and cults focusing on personal salvation flourished.

Indo-Greeks: In 246 BC, Bactria's Greek Satrap revolted successfully against the Seleucids. Until about 130 BC, they built up a central asian empire, which was then wiped out by steppe nomads. Their kingdom spread both Buddhism and Greek culture

Steppe Peoples:

Steppe Invasions: This period of Indian and Iranian history is dominated by an influx of invaders from the Steppe; horse nomad warriors.

Parthians: The Parthians moved down from the Steppe around 247 BC, overruning Parthia, a region southeast of the Caspian sea. Under Mithradates I (171-138 BC), they became a major regional power, controlling Mesopotamia, Iran and adjacent areas. From their destruction of Consul Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC until their fall in 233 AD, they were the main counterbalance to Roman power.

Sakas (Scythians) and Kushans: Around 130 BC, Scythian tribes from the steppe poured south, overruning the Indo-Greek kingdom of Bactra and north-eastern Iran. Some pushed into Northern India; later, around the first century AD, the Kushans pushed down into India, forming a strong state controlling Northern India, Bactria and some other central asian territories. It's greatest ruler, Kanishka ruled in the second century AD; he was a major patron of Buddhism. In the first to third century AD, it facilitated the spread of Buddhism to China. In the end, however, it was squeezed out between the Sassanids in Iran and the Gupta dynasty in India in the third to fourth centuries.