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(Study Material) Indian History: THE GUPTA AGE (ECONOMY & LITERATURE)

Indian History: THE GUPTA AGE (ECONOMY & LITERATURE)

GUPTA ECONOMY

1. Trade reached its peak during the Gupta period. The annexation of the territory of the Satraps brought areas of exceptional wealth and fertility into the ordit of the empire. The State gathered abundant revenues in the form of custom duties at the numerous ports on the western coast like Broach Sopara, Cambay and a multitude center where most of the trade routes converged. The city of Jjjain is even now regarded as one of the seven sacred Hindu cities, slightly lower than that of Benaras in sanctity. The favoured position of the city made a succession of rulers embellish the city with various religious establishments.

2. Guilds continued to be the nodal points of commercial activity. They were almost autonomous in their internal organization. The government respected their laws. The laws governing the guilds were made by a corporation of guilds in which each guild had a member. The corporation elected a body of advisers who functioned as its functionaries. Some industrial guilds like that of the silk weavers had their own separate corporations. It is also interesting to observe that the Buddhist Sangha was rich enough to participate in commercial activities. At places the Sangha acted as the banker and lent money on interest. This was in addition to their returns from land. They too took one sixth of the produce just as the State.

The rate of interest varied. Very high rates of interest were no longer charged for overseas trade showing that there was increased confidence in that form of trade. Generally the rate was 20 per cent as against 240 of the earlier period. This lowering of the interest rate also reveals abundance of goods and conquest decrease in rate of profit.

3. Textiles of various kinds were manufactured. The domestic market was considerable. They had also markets in foreign countries. Silk muslim calico, Linen, wool and cotton were produced in great quantities. Western Indian was known for silk weaving. By the end of the Gupta period there was an eclipse of this industry. Possibly the in creasing use of the central Asian route and the sea-routeut China might have caused this eclipse.

However, ivory work remained at its peak and did stone-cutting and carving. In metal-work copper the chief items of production were those of copper, iron and lead. Bronze also began to be used. The pearl-fishers of western India reaped huge profits in foreign markets. A great variety of precious stones like jasper, agate quartz and lapis-lazuli were exported. Pottery indeed remained the most important part of industrial production although the earlier elegant black polished were was no longer produced.

For carrying goods pack animals and ox-drawn carts were used. In certain areas elephants were used for transport. The Ganges, Yamuna, Narbada, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri were the maij waterways.

There was some change in the items of trade as compared to the preceding period. Chinese silk was imported in great quantities. So was ivory from Ethiopia. The import of horses from Arabia. Iran and Bactria increased during this period.

Regarding over-seas trade ships regularly crossed to Arabian Sea the Indian Ocean and the China Seas. Indian trade contacts with East Africa were continued.
It is strange to observe that in the period when commercial activity was at its apex the law-makers declared travel by sea a taboo and a great sin. Ritual purity became an obsession with both brahmins and upper castes. It was held that travel to distant lands would lead to contamination with the mlechhas (impure and non-caste people). Thapar observes that this ban had an indirect advantage to the Brahmin in the sense that it curbed the economic power of trading community.
4. It is generally held that the peoples standard of living was very high. The prosperous urban dwellers lived in comfort and ease. Indeed there was a wide variation in the pattern of living. Out-castes were made to live on the out skirts of towns. Also there was no change in the standard of living of villagers as known from the accounts of foreign travelers.

The daily life of a comfortably well-off citizen in towns is described in the Kamasutra. The citizen led a gentle existence devoted to various refinements of life. in social gatherings poetic recitations and compositions were heard. Music was another necessary accomplishment particularly the Playing of veena. The sophisticated townee has to be trained in the art of love and for this purpose the Kamasutra and other books of the same kind were written. It is also said that the courtesan was a normal feature of urban life. According to the Kamasutra the occupation of a courtesan was very demanding profession. "She was often called upon to be a cultured companion like the geisha of Japan or the haetaere of Greec".

GUPTA LITERATURE

Out knowledge of the development of Sanskrit literature in the early centuries A.D. is based on writings from the Gupta period. However, tradition associates the work of Ashvaghosha and out-standing writer and play Wright, one of the founders of Buddhist Sanskrit literature and a major philosopher- with the reign of Kanishak (the early second century AD).

Many of his works remain unknown, but fragments of the following poems in Sanskrit have been preserved:

Buddhacharita ("A life of the Buddha") Saundarananda (Sundari and Nanda) and the drama shariputraprakarana. (A drama dealing with Shariputra's Conversion to Buddhism). In ancient India these works of Ashvaghosha had enjoyed wide popularity and the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing who visited India in the seventh century wrote that the "poem" so gladdened the heart of the reader that he never tired of repeating it over and over again.

Although the Buddhacharita and the Shariputraprakarana treated only Buddhist themes and propagated the teaching of the Buddha they possessed artistic qualities. Ashvaghosha adheres to the epic tradition and his characters lives are filled with drama and rich emotional experience.

In his plays Ashvaghosha lays the foundation of ancient Indian drama which was to come into its own in the works of such writers as Bhasa, Kalidasa and Shudraka. Thirteen plays are attribute to Bhasa but it is as yet difficult to establish which of these early were written by this remarkable dramatist. Bahsa also made use of the epic tradition, although his plays were constructed strictly according to the laws of classical drama. Some modern scholars maintain, and with ample justification, that a number of the plays attributed to Bhasa are the most ancient moderls of Indian tragedy. This was, there is not doubt a bold innovation on the part of Bhasa who thus defined established artistic canon. This trend in ancient Indian drama was developed by the Shudraka, author of the play Mrichhakatiak (The title Clay Cart), which tells of the ardent love of an impoverished merchant for a courtsan.

Possibly the greatest in ancient Indian literature is the work of Kalidasa, (late fourth-early fifth century), poet and dramatist, whose wrirtings represent an illustrious page in the history of world culture. Translations of Kalidasa's works penetrated to the West at the end of the eighteenth century and were well received.
There is good reason to believe that Kalidasa was native of Mandasor in Malwa. It is, therefore, argued that he was brought up in close touch with the court of Ujjain, an active center of commercial and economic activity in western India. Kalidasa's early descriptive poems, the Ritussamhara and the Meghaduta probably belong to the reign of Chandragupta-II, and his dramas to that of Kumaragupta.

It appears that Kalidasa was a prolific writer but as year scholars have only discovered three plays : Shankuntala, Malavikagnimitra, Vikramorvashi (Urvashi won by Valour), the poem Meghadutta (the Cloud Messenger) and two epic poems : the Kumarasambhava (the Birth of Kumara) and Raghuvansha (Raghu's Line)
The core of all Kalidasa writings is man and his emotions, his wordly concerns, his joys and sorrows, His work represents a significant step forward in comparison with the writings of Ashavaghosha who depicted in idealized image of the Buddha and his faithfull disciples. Many of Kalidasa's heroes are kings: the poet not only extolled their exploits, but he also condemned their ignoble deeds. Some of Kalidasa's works bear witness to the growth of the epic poem, the so-called mahakavya. Both in his plays and poems Nature and Man's emotions are distinguished by their lyric quality and humanism. Without swerving from earlier traditions Kalidasa stood out as an innovator in many respects.

Also, the very fact that tragic themes do not figure with the exception of Mrichcha Katika by Shudrak shows that the higher strata of society primarily sought entertainment.

In ancient India considerable advances were also made by the theator. In the Gupta age special treatises concerning dramatic art started to appear, which provided detailed expositions of the aims of the theratre and theatrical entertainments, the various genres used in thetheatre etc.

When ancient Indian plays first made their way to Europe, many scholars wrote that the Indian theatre owed its roots to ancient Greece. However it has since emerged beyond doubt that the theatre in India came into being quite independently. More over Indian the atrical tradition goes further back than that of ancient Greece and is much richer as far as theory is concerned.

In the Gupta age the earliest of the Puranas were compiled. These collections of legends about gods, kings and heroes that embody the mythological and cosmological ideas of ancient Indians were compiled over a very long period and subjected to far-reaching editing and modification.

Some of the Dharmashastras such as the Laws of Yajnavalkya (third century AD) or the laws of Narada (fourth and fifth centuries AD) also date from the early centuries AD. Worthy of note among the landmarks of Sankrit literature is the Panchatan to (third and fourth centuries AD) a collection of tales and pafables which is very popular both in India and beyond its borders. In the early Middle Ages translations of this work appeared in Pehlevi, Syriac and Arabic. In the Middle East the collection was known as all the influence of the Panchatantra on both Eastern and Western literature was considerable.

It was also in the Gupta period that the first works of literature from Southern India written in Tamil appeard. One of the most famous these early works in Tamil was the Kural a collection of parables. The compilation of which is traditional ascribed to a representative of the farmers' caste, Triuvalluvar.The Kumar was undoubtedly based on material derived from folklore and already in ancient times won enormous popularity. In the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. Collections of Lyrical poems in Tamil also appeared. The literature of other south Indian appear later in the early Middle Ages.

In the end it may be noted that both Sanskrit poetry and prose were greatly encouraged through royal patronage. However it was literature of the elites since Sanskrit was known only to them but not to the people. The Sanskrit plays of this period show that the characters of high social status speak Sanskrit: whereas those of lower status and women speak Prakrit. This particular feature throws light on the status of Sanskrit and Prakrit in society.