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An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism w Lars Fogelin 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–0–19–994821–5 (hbk.); 978–0–19–994823–9 (pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Alice, my partner in life and crime CON T EN T S Acknowledgments ix A Note on Transliteration xi 1. Introduction: The Archaeology and History of Indian Buddhism 1 2. The Material of Religion 34 3. From the Buddha to Ashoka: c. 600–200 bce 70 4. The Sangha and the Laity: c. 200 bce–200 ce 104 5. The Beginnings of Mahayana Buddhism, Buddha Images, and Monastic Isolation: c. 100–600 ce 146 6. Lay Buddhism and Religious Syncretism in the First Millennium ce 180 7. The Consolidation and Collapse of Monastic Buddhism: c. 600–1400 ce 202 8. Conclusion 225 Bibliography 235 Index 247 ( vii ) AC K NOW L ED GMEN T S This book is the product of almost twenty years of work on ancient Indian Buddhism. I began studying Buddhist archaeology as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in 1995. I continued my research while working at Albion College, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the University of Arizona. During this time my research has been greatly helped by the guidance and insights of my peers, professors, colleagues, and students. I particularly thank Dr. Carla Sinopoli for her time, advice, and encouragement. This book synthesizes, modifies, and extends on my previous publications. This book would not have been possible without the efforts of the editors and reviewers who have carefully combed through my previous book and articles, poking holes in my arguments and suggesting new avenues to consider. Small portions of this book were adapted from previous publications. For the most part, these sections are only few paragraphs. In some cases, I have adapted a few pages. These sections have all been modified or amended based upon my current understanding of Buddhism and the needs of this particular work. I would like to thank my colleagues and mentors in India. In particular, Dr. Himanshu P. Ray and Dr. Aloka Parasher-Sen have helped shape my thinking about ancient India. While conducting research in India, I received the invaluable assistance of the American Institute of Indian Studies. Without their efforts to obtain permits and facilitate introductions, my archaeological research would never have occurred. The research that informs portions of Chapter 4 of this book was greatly facilitated by the Andhra Pradesh Department of Archaeology and Museums, particularly Dr. B. Subrahmanyam and Dr. E. Sivanagi Reddy. I also thank the many students from Deccan College and Jawaharlal Nehru University who have worked with me in the field over the years. In the last two decades, my research has been supported by several organizations. The greatest assistance has come from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, who supported my dissertation fieldwork in India (Gr. 6597) and allowed me to dedicate the 2012–2013 academic year to writing this ( ix ) ( x ) Acknowledgments book through a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship (Gr. 8470). The University of Michigan, Albion College, the University of Arizona, and the American Institute of Indian Studies have also provided critical support for my research in India over the years. I also thank the Archaeological Survey of India and the Andhra Pradesh Department of Archaeology and Museums for graciously allowing me access to their collections and providing logistical support for my field research. I thank Stefan Vranka of Oxford University Press for his initial support of this project and his unflagging aid in getting it from proposal, to manuscript, to book. I thank Samantha Fladd for her help with the research that informs significant portions of Chapter 6. The manuscript benefited greatly from the suggestions of Dr. Emma Blake, Dr. Alice Ritscherle, and two anonymous reviewers. Finally, I thank Alice, for everything. A NO T E ON T R A NSL I T ER AT ION Throughout this book I phonetically transliterate Sanskrit terms rather than use the more modern system of diacritical marks that is commonly employed in Buddhist studies. This was a difficult decision. Diacritical marks undoubtedly allow for the most accurate pronunciation of Sanskrit. I chose to use phonetic transliteration for two reasons. First, archaeological sites are by convention named by their excavators. In almost all cases the names of archaeological sites are phonetically transliterated. For reasons of consistency, other Sanskrit words should be similarly transliterated. Second, I expect that many of the people reading this book will be scholars who work outside South Asia. Buddhist scholars and South Asian readers already know how to pronounce Sanskrit terms, as shown by the common practice of omitting diacriticals marks but otherwise leaving the spelling unchanged (e.g., “Asoka” rather than “Aśoka”). For the non-specialist, however, neither “Asoka” nor “Aśoka” would suggest the correct pronunciation—“Ashoka”—of the great Mauryan ruler’s name. While phonetic transliteration is less accurate and seems old-fashioned, it is the quickest and easiest way to approximate proper pronunciation for the non-specialist. Using phonetic transliteration, Sanskrit and other terms are pronounced pretty much as an English speaker would expect. The one difference is the use of the letter “h” to mark certain consonants as aspirated (e.g., “th,” “bh,” “chh,” and “dh”). With the exception of “th,” this does not cause any significant confusion. As for “th,” it is never pronounced as a fricative as in “them,” but rather as an aspirated “t” as in “stop”; “ch” and “sh” are pronounced as they are in English. There are a few instances where I do not phonetically transliterate. The first are the names of the few archaeological sites that are not phonetically transliterated. Rather than alter the name of these sites, I use the name under which they are commonly published. I also have chosen not to alter the transliterations of any scholars that I quote in the text. All quotes are as originally written, with diacriticals omitted. Finally, when referring to ( xi ) ( xii ) A Note on Transliteration Buddhist texts, I use the title of the cited translation, however transliterated by the translator. In all of these cases I have sought to preserve the intentions of the scholars I rely upon. While I may choose to use an older transliteration system to aid novice readers, I do not wish to force this decision on other scholars by altering their words. w C H A P T ER 1 Introduction The Archaeology and History of Indian Buddhism T he study of Buddhism, like the study of most major world religions, has long focused on written accounts of transcendent beliefs concerning the spiritual world at the expense of material expressions of faith in the mundane, earthly world. Temples, however beautiful, are understood as a reflection of faith, not faith itself. At some level, this perspective makes sense. Buddhists, like the adherents of most other modern world religions, explicitly champion the transcendent over the illusion of the earthly and mundane. Being part of the mundane world, Buddhist temples are merely way stations on the path toward enlightenment. To study Buddhism from a material perspective, then, necessarily imposes an alien understanding that is antithetical to what Buddhists themselves believe. Yet, this is exactly what I aim to do. At its heart, archaeology is the study of the material remains of past cultures—the empty buildings, the discarded tools, and the garbage that people leave behind. While ruins inspire a peculiar sense of melancholy in those who visit them by forcefully demonstrating the impermanence of even the greatest of human accomplishments, archaeological remains also provide a window into the worldly actions of the long dead. Though different from the transcendental ideas preserved in ancient texts, these worldly actions are no less important for understanding the history of any people or any religion. This is not say that the study of ruins should supplant the study of texts. Rather, history needs to examine the interaction between the spiritual and the material, between the transcendent ( 1 ) ( 2 ) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism and the mundane, and between faith and the practicalities of daily life. Accordingly, an archaeological history of Indian Buddhism must combine both textual scholarship and archaeological scholarship to produce a more complete understanding of the origin, development, and eventual collapse of Buddhism in the place of its birth. The standard, textually derived history of Indian Buddhism begins in fifth or sixth century bce with Siddhartha Gautama, a prince who renounced his life of privilege for the life of an ascetic (e.g., Basham 1967; Davids 1910; Lamotte 1988; Lopez 2001). After many trials, Siddhartha achieved enlightenment, seeing the path to ending the cycle of rebirth and the end of suffering. For the rest of his life, he taught this path to an increasing number of disciples. After his death, his disciples continued to promote the Buddha’s teachings and established a community of monks and nuns, known collectively as the sangha. Initially members of the sangha were wandering ascetics, living on the margins of society, begging for their food, and practicing meditation and other ascetic rites. In contrast to the ascetic practices of the sangha, the Buddhist laity began practicing pilgrimage to key sites of the Buddha’s life, and to burial tumuli—stupas—that held portions of his cremated remains. Over the centuries, and out of their desire to assist the laity on their path to enlightenment, the sangha gradually settled into monasteries and nunneries that drew the favor and financial support of the elite and non-elite Buddhist laity. According to the standard history, by the end of the first millennium bce, the sangha was becoming domesticated within monasteries, with ever escalating obligations to their lay followers. With the contact that these obligations demanded, the sangha began adopting the practices of lay Buddhism—worshiping at stupas and, by the early to mid-first millennium ce, Buddha images. Thus began a gradual degradation of the pure, ascetic tradition of forest monks in favor of scholastic Buddhism centered in monasteries. Scholastic Buddhism focused on the study of texts and the formal education of novitiates in ever-larger monasteries in the north of India. In the mid- to late first millennium ce, increasing numbers of lay followers abandoned Buddhism in favor of Hinduism, Jainism, and, eventually, Islam. Without lay support, Buddhist monasteries and pilgrimage centers were particularly vulnerable to Turks from central Asia, who invaded North India beginning in the second millennium ce. With their monasteries in ruins and their pilgrimage centers abandoned, the sangha either abandoned India for the Himalayas, China, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, or abandoned Buddhism for Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam. By the fifteenth century ce in India, Buddhism survived in a I n t r o d u c t i o n ( 3 ) few small isolated pockets and as traces in the ritual practices of other religious sects. Adding archaeology to the standard history of Indian Buddhism does not wholly change the narrative. Particularly in the latter half of the standard history, from the mid-first millennium onward, textual and archaeological evidence are in broad agreement. This shouldn’t be surprising. Beginning in the mid-first millennium ce, the quantity, quality, and diversity of historical source materials increase dramatically. With better textual sources on which to base the standard history, it is not surprising that archaeological evidence is largely in accordance with it. The same cannot be said of the first half of the standard history. When compared to what is known of the archaeological record of Indian Buddhism, much of the standard history appears to be wrong. Most important, archaeological evidence of early Buddhism indicates that from at least the third century bce—the earliest period in which substantial archaeological evidence is available—the sangha was fully domesticated. Where the standard history posits an ascetic sangha that slowly coalesced into monasteries, archaeological evidence suggests something like the opposite. From the earliest period in which archaeological evidence is available, the sangha was monastically based. Rather than developing early, it appears that the ascetic ideal only emerged in India in the mid- to late first millennium ce, and even then only a small minority of the sangha abandoned monasteries for the ascetic life of the forest. While archaeological and textual evidence about early Buddhism seemingly contradict each other, it is not my aim to simply debunk the standard, textual history of Buddhism and replace it with an archaeological history of Buddhism. The generations of textual scholars who developed the standard history were often brilliant, and the historical narrative they developed was based on real evidence. That said, the Buddhist textual sources that historians relied upon were written by a small, literate minority for specific reasons in the early to mid-first millennium ce, some five to ten centuries after the events they describe. I argue that the Buddhist textual sources used to make the standard history of early Buddhism are colored by the concerns of the sangha during the periods in which they were composed. In the mid-first millennium ce, the sangha was divided between those who desired a more contemplative life as ascetics and those who desired a scholastic life as monastics. Much of the standard history of early Buddhism is based on readings of early to mid-first millennium ce Buddhist texts written by the pro-asceticism faction of the sangha. The authors of these texts sought to delegitimize established, monastic ( 4 ) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism Buddhism by portraying the Buddha as the prototypical ascetic. By relying on these accounts, those scholars who created the standard history of early Buddhism confused later polemic for actual history. This does not mean that Buddhist texts that describe early Buddhism have no historical value. Obviously, they have immense value in illuminating the sangha’s concerns and interests at the time of their composition in the first millennium ce. But the texts also have value for understanding the early history of Buddhism. In some instances, descriptions in Buddhist texts strongly concord with what has been found archaeologically. By combining archaeological and textual sources, it is sometimes possible to separate those textual accounts that have a high degree of historical accuracy from those that are later interpolations. More so, Buddhist textual sources also illuminate a central, long-standing tension in Buddhism—the tension between the individual and the group. Relying on textual sources, many scholars have argued that this persistent tension was central to Buddhism from the very start (e.g., Carrithers 1979, 1983; Tambiah 1976, 1982). Following this insight, I argue that the strategies that different groups of Buddhists used to address and ameliorate this tension were central to the history of Buddhism in India. I do not expect anyone to be convinced of my argument based upon this short introduction. I also admit that my version of the standard history just presented ignores many significant debates among older generations of Buddhist scholars and the study of more quotidian Buddhist texts by a new generation of Buddhist scholars (e.g., Lopez 1995; Schopen 1997, 2004, 2005; Strong 1983, 2004; Trainor 1997; White 2000). That is what the rest of this book is for. Here I am laying out only the most basic contours of an archaeological history of Indian Buddhism—a history that spans almost two millennia and includes the sangha, the laity, and the ruling dynasties that both were subject to. It must also be remembered that Buddhism was always one of several religions in simultaneous practice in India. The history of Buddhism in India, then, is not simply the history of Buddhist thought, but rather the history of the Buddhist thought, Buddhists themselves, and the non-Buddhists they interacted with. While this book is primarily intended as a study of the history of Indian Buddhism, it is also intended as an exemplar for the archaeological study of religion. It might surprise a non-archaeologist to know that, until recently, archaeologists have avoided studies of religion. For the most part, religion was the explanation of last resort, with “religious” often meaning little more than “I have absolutely no idea what this thing is or what it was used for.” Its not that archaeologists have not found ancient temples and I n t r o d u c t i o n ( 5 ) religious artifacts—they are almost unavoidable. Rather, archaeologists have not known what exactly to do with them. Following the tradition of seeing religion as belief, archaeologists often did little more than identify sacred sites as sacred and religious artifacts as religious. Where possible, archaeologists have also taken the bold step of correlating known archaeological sites with sites named in historical or ethnohistorical sources. In American archaeology this is known as being the “handmaiden to history” (Hume 1964), and as most would likely guess, archaeologists don’t want to be anybody’s handmaiden. Beginning with the pioneering work of Colin Renfrew (1985) at Phylakopi sanctuary on the Island of Milos in the Aegean and John Fritz (1986; Fritz and Michell 1989) at Vijayanagara in India, archaeologist have begun to take up the challenge of studying religion (e.g., Bradley 2005; Fogelin 2007a, 2008a; Insoll 2001, 2004; Kyriakidis 2007; Shaw 2013a; Walker 1998; Whitley and Hays-Gilpin 2008). For the most part, this challenge has been addressed by borrowing recent anthropological theories that see religion as something that people do, not simply something that people think about. Religion is created and revealed in the performance of a ritual, the construction of a temple, and the attendance at a ceremony. If people practice religion, then they are likely to leave at least some material traces of their actions. Those material traces are what archaeologists can use to identify and reconstruct ancient religions. For the most part, however, most archaeological studies of religion have been synchronic—identifying religious practices in specific archaeological contexts or identifying the function of religion at a particular time. With a few exceptions (e.g., Bradley 2005; Shaw 2013a), archaeologists have not studied long-term religious change. They have not studied the ways that the material aspects of religious experience can shape and alter future iterations of that religion. In Chapter 2, I will develop the methods necessary to animate the archaeology of religion and incorporate its insights into the study of long-term religious change. DOUBTS, DISCLAIMERS, AND HESITATIONS The ways that an author defines and writes about a subject are critical to understanding the arguments an author is making. The choice of words, and the way an author uses those words, significantly frame the boundaries of debate and discussion. These choices are important, as different words, even those that nominally refer to the same thing, have different ( 6 ) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism meanings. When choosing the best terms, it is necessary to recognize that no term perfectly expresses the desired meaning, and that all terms have their own history and baggage. In writing this book, I have been forced to make several critical choices concerning what will, and will not, be covered. These choices are reflected in the language I employ and the arguments I make. Among the most important of these decisions is the geographic region I intend to address. India Throughout this work I use the term “India” to refer to mainland South Asia south of the Himalayas. This use of the term “India” has no relationship to the borders of the modern nation of India. Rather, India, as I am using it, roughly corresponds to the territories of the modern nations of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and lowland Nepal. Though I wish it were otherwise, the region I am calling India matches the borders of British colonial India. By using “India” in the way I am, I am not trying to reference colonial India, but I cannot fault anyone who is troubled by the correspondence. I am using the term “India” in the way I am simply because it is less cumbersome than consistently referring to the region as “mainland South Asia south of the Himalayas” or “the regions now called Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and portions of southern Nepal.” Without a better term, “India” is the best I’ve got. To avoid confusion, throughout the text I use “modern India” to refer to the modern Indian state and “colonial India” to refer to British India. I use “India” to refer to the region in which Buddhism originated and initially spread in the centuries immediately after the Buddha’s death. The Buddha was born and raised a small kingdom in what is now southern Nepal. The other key moments of the Buddha’s biography (enlightenment, first sermon, and death) occurred in North India. Within a few centuries after the Buddha’s death, the practice of Buddhism spread to peninsular India and present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. Later still, Buddhism was adopted in Sri Lanka, Central Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas. The spread of Buddhism beyond India is among the most important and complex topics in the history of Buddhism. Wherever Buddhism was adopted, it was partially transformed to suit the needs of its new practitioners. As such, the history of Buddhism in China is different from the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, which is different from the history of Buddhism in Cambodia. A complete account of the spread and fragmentation of Buddhism in all the nations in which I n t r o d u c t i o n ( 7 ) it is, or was, practiced would require multiple volumes. Given this complexity, I have chosen to focus only on India, the place of Buddhism’s origin, development, and initial expansion. That said, I recognize that it is impossible to completely divorce Buddhism in India from Buddhism elsewhere. Throughout this book I make frequent use of information concerning India preserved in Chinese and Sri Lankan texts. I also note when doctrinal and other developments beyond India affected the practice of Buddhism in India. Early Buddhism Another term that should be noted is my use of “early Buddhism.” As used here it is intended to be a substitute for the term “Hinayana Buddhism.” Hinayana translates as “lesser vehicle” and refers to the earliest forms of Buddhism that existed in India. This was not the term used by early Buddhists themselves; it was applied by later Mahayana (greater vehicle) Buddhists as a somewhat derisive label for those who preceded them. In some of the earlier academic literature of Buddhist studies, “Hinayana” also became a term used to describe the later forms of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka and parts of Southeast Asia. The use of “Hinayana” for these later forms of Buddhism was predicated on the idea that these forms of Buddhism, particularly those found in Sri Lanka, had undergone less change (or corruption) than the Mahayana Buddhism of Central and East Asia. Rather than Hinayana, I refer to Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian Buddhism as Theravada Buddhism, the term preferred by Theravadin Buddhists themselves. I am also skeptical that Theravada Buddhism is a better model for early Buddhism than any other form of Buddhism. There is ample reason to suspect that it has gone through as many profound changes as any other Buddhist tradition. Almost all Buddhist sects claim that their teachings represent the original words of the Buddha. From my perspective, I see no reason to privilege one a priori. For this reason—in addition to the negative connotations of Hinayana—I prefer to use the term “early Buddhism” until such time as Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism began to emerge and diverge. Early Buddhism, as I use it, dates from the time of the Buddha through the second or third centuries ce. It should be noted, however, that the terminal date is extremely fluid. The process in which Mahayana Buddhism developed is exceedingly complex and existing academic understandings of it contested (see Schopen 2000). It is likely that some Buddhist sects adopted Mahayana practices more quickly than ( 8 ) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism others. Even within individual sects some practices changed quickly, while other practices continued to follow earlier forms. Thus, the boundary between early Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism is permeable and likely indefinable. Buddhist Sangha/Buddhist Laity Throughout this book I frequently contrast the actions of “the Buddhist laity” and “the Buddhist sangha.” I use these terms for the same reason I use the term “India”: because all of the other options are worse. The primary problem with these terms is that they imply far more coherence among “the laity” and “the sangha” than likely ever existed. Neither the Buddhist laity nor the sangha were ever homogenous. The sangha, as already noted, was divided into several different, often rival, sects, and Buddhist textual sources note several failed attempts at preventing sectarian schisms. Even within individual Buddhist sects there were marked status differences between members of the sangha, with abbots and those who had been ordained the longest having the highest status. These differences were even more pronounced in regard to gender. In some accounts, the Buddha was said to have only reluctantly accepted nuns into the sangha, and only after stipulating that even the most senior nun was subordinate to the most recently ordained monk. If anything, the Buddhist laity were even more diverse than the sangha—with the same divisions in terms of status, wealth, and gender, but with additional divisions as subjects of rival kingdoms. The other problem with contrasting the actions of the Buddhist laity and the sangha is that neither were wholly separate from the other. Members of the laity, particularly older wealthier members of the laity, were often ordained late in life. Similarly, young people often became novitiates at Buddhist monasteries, gaining an education before returning to lay life. All told, the boundaries between the sangha and the laity were somewhat fluid. While it is difficult to talk about the history of Buddhism without discussing the sangha and the laity, it must always be remembered that neither group was completely coherent or completely distinct. Similar to the division between the laity and the sangha, I also often speak of the differences between lay Buddhism and monastic Buddhism. Again, these terms likely obscure significant variation within, and similarities between, the forms of Buddhism practiced by the laity and the sangha. As used here, these terms are meant to draw on recent approaches to Indian religions that differentiate the popular religion of the laity from I n t r o d u c t i o n ( 9 ) the more abstract and esoteric religion of the sangha (Fuller 1992; Lopez 1995). As stated by Lopez (1995:11), Buddhism has a vast literature dealing with what we term logic, epistemology, and ontology—works that are (depending on one’s perspective) as profound or as impenetrable, as rich or as arid, as anything produced in the West. However, like philosophical works in other cultures, Buddhist treatises are the products of a tiny, highly educated elite (largely composed of monks in the Buddhist case) and rarely touch the ground where the vast majority of Buddhists lived their lives. The standard history of Buddhism posits a gradual corruption of the more meditative and esoteric aspect of monastic Buddhism with the more vulgar practices of lay Buddhism. In subsequent chapters, I argue that something like the opposite occurred. Whether following the standard history or the revisionist history presented in this book, the arguments require an analytical division of the laity and the sangha, lay Buddhism and monastic Buddhism, if only to allow for the patterns of interaction between different Buddhists to be fruitfully examined. Colonial and Postcolonial History A massive body of literature focuses on colonialism and postcolonialism in India.1 With each year, these investigations become more nuanced and subtle, tracking the effects of colonialism and postcolonialism with increasing detail. Although my focus is not on the history of colonialism itself, it is important to examine the effects that colonialism has had on the study of Indian archaeology (Chakrabarti 1997, 2001; Lahiri 2005; Singh 2004; Thapar 2000). These effects color both the colonial and postcolonial sources that I rely on. For this reason it is necessary to approach historical sources with an understanding of the context in which they were created. Many of the historical themes I explore here are based upon one simple “fact”—Sanskrit is an Indo-European language related to Persian, Greek, Latin, and most other European languages. Further, the Rig Veda, the earliest readable text from India, is written in Sanskrit. For the British and other Europeans, this established that some ancient link existed between the European and Indian civilizations. 1. For example, see Dirks 1993, 2001; Guha and Spivak 1988; Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993; Inden 1990; see also Said 1978. ( 10 ) An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism With the recognition of the common origin of Sanskrit and European languages by Sir William Jones near the end of the eighteenth century (Jones 1824), modern European narratives of Indian history began to emerge. Thomas Trautmann (1997) provides a nuanced investigation of these narratives, arguing that colonial history emerged as a synthesis of the work of European Sanskritists and the racial science of nineteenth-century anthropology. In this synthesis, the introduction of Indo-European languages was assumed to coincide with the migration of Indo-European people from Central Asia—the Aryans—into India during the second millennium bce. Colonial historians credited the Aryans with introducing “civilization” to India.2 They were considered a race superior to the indigenous South Asians, who were forced southward as the Aryans assumed control over northern India. For colonial historians, this served to explain the modern distribution of languages and races found in British India. By the mid-nineteenth century, colonial historians discovered that the Dravidian and Munda language families of peninsular India were different from the Indo-European languages of North India (Caldwell 1856; Campbell 1816; Ellis 1816; see Trautmann 1997 for a review of the identification of the Dravidian language family). European historians postulated that the people who spoke these languages were the descendants of the people displaced by the Aryans. Thus, a linguistic divide between the North and South was explained as the product of the historical replacement and migration of different races. This racial explanation was buttressed by the observation that people in the South were dark skinned in comparison to the lighter skin of the descendents of the Aryans in the North. The one “fact” left to account for was the apparent sophistication of the Dravidian speakers of the South. This was explained by a process of “Aryanization” or “Sanskritization,” in which northern Aryans were postulated to have moved south to become the political and religious elite over the Dravidian speakers of the South (see Srinivas 1966, 1989). Just as the British employed local languages in their own colonial endeavor, 2. The recognition of pre-Aryan cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in the early twentieth century muddied this picture but did not cause significant changes to the Aryan framework promoted in colonial histories. Rather, the Aryans were credited with destroying the pre-existing civilizations of India, creating a strong break between pre-Aryan and post-Aryan civilizations. The pre-existing civilizations of India were then reduced to an interesting historical oddity, without any direct impact upon the later historical developments. More recent archaeological research (see Schaffer 1984; Kenoyer 1997) has asserted much greater continuity between the Indus Valley civilization and later historical periods, rejecting many of the assumptions of the Aryan explanation. I n t r o d u c t i o n ( 11 ) the Aryans who moved south adopted the local languages of their new homes, slowly losing their original Aryan tongue. The presence of numerous Sanskrit loan words in Dravidian languages and common religious elements between the North and the South were seen as survivals of the process of Aryanization. Over the course of two centuries of colonial scholarship, a simple story of Indian history was constructed. The origins of Indian civilization were viewed as the product of an earlier influx of colonizers, who were themselves the progenitors of the Europeans who now were in the process of re-colonizing India. Today it is almost impossible not to recognize that this historical narrative legitimized the colonial practices of the British in India (see Chakrabarti 1997, 2001; Lahiri 2000, 2005; Singh 2004; Trautmann and Sinopoli 2002; Trautmann 1997). Nevertheless, it should also be remembered that much of the colonial scholarship remains valuable to this day. That this scholarship existed within the context of British colonialism does not necessarily limit its usefulness in studying pre-colonial Indian history and archaeology. If colonial histories of India emphasized the civilizing affects of foreigners, postcolonial histories of India emphasized the indigenous development of Indian traditions. Where colonial archaeologists saw social and technological advances in India as the result of successive waves of invaders bringing new ideas to India, postcolonial archaeologists were more likely to see these advances as homegrown. This does not mean that postcolonial historians rejected the claim that Sanskrit was an Indo-European language. Rather, postcolonial historians argued that Sanskrit was adopted by Indians rather than imposed by foreign invaders. More so, simply because Indians adopted Sanskrit, it does not mean that every other advance in India was a result of foreign innovation. Where British colonial archaeologists constantly looked outside India for the origin of cultural practices, architectural and artistic traditions, and systems of governance, postcolonial archaeologists emphasized the organic development of these practices and traditions within India. Overall, I tend to follow a more postcolonial view of Indian history. While India was located at the center of trade routes that linked East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, the Near East, and the Mediterranean, India was not simply a container into which foreign ideas were poured. This is not to say that all developments in India were entirely independent. They weren’t. With trade contacts came new commodities and ideas that Indians adapted to their own use. India, particularly Northwest India, was repeatedly invaded and occupied by Central Asians. Indians benefited and borrowed from the foreigners they came into contact with, but foreigners