Patriarchy in China and Greece

The teaching Confucius. Portrait by Wu Daozi, 685-758, Tang Dynasty

Xi Shi, who was a contemporary of Buddha, was one of the four beauties of ancient China. It seems she was so beautiful that when they looked her, the fish forgot to swim and sank and the birds forgot to flap their wings and fell to the ground. She was the concubine of King Fuchai of Wu who it seems was so smitten by her beauty that like King You of the Zhou, he forgot his dharma. King Fuchai’s kingdom was invaded and he was forced to commit suicide.
Examples of Bao Si and Xi Shi taught the Chinese that women can be dangerous and can bring down the city and the nation. Thus when the heavy handed Qin dynasty collapsed and the Han dynasty emerged in the 3rd century BCE, they made changes to differentiate themselves from the Qin. Since the Qin followed a centralized model of administration, the Han followed a decentralized model. The Han also switched from the legalistic model to a Confucian model and with that patriarchy was built into the system.
It was clear that women were trouble and had to be kept out of power. If a woman was educated, it was considered equivalent to arming the enemy. There were three obedience and four virtues a woman had to practice in the Confucian culture.

The three obediences dictate that a woman must obey her father before manage, her husband after marriage and her sons after her husband’s death.These rules originated in conventions concerning the appropriate length of a woman’s mourning period following the death of her father and husband, gradually becoming the normative code insuring women’s lifelong subordination to men.[Women in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium: Narrative Analyses and Gender Politics]

The four virtues related to the behavior of women and was adopted by families across the nation and the subordination of women was institutionalized.
What about Greece, the land of democracy and culture? It is from Greece that we get the story of Pandora, the woman who bought all the evils to humanity, thus hammering a similar point that women are a problem and have to be controlled. According to Meno, “A woman’s virtue, if you wish to know about that, may also be easily described: her duty is to order her house, and keep what is indoors, and obey her husband.”
From Greece again comes the story of Tiresias which goes like this. Once Zeus and his wife Hera have an argument on who has more pleasure during sex – man or woman. Since they could not come to an agreement, they called Tiresias who was transformed as a woman for seven years (long story). Tiresias replied, “”Of ten parts a man enjoys one only.” Once again, a good reason to control women.
Pandora was followed by Eve in the Hebrew Bible and all these stories, from the East and West, justified patriarchy. As global historians, when we examine such stories we find that patriarchy was not restricted to just one culture, but it transcended space in the ancient world.
References:

Lecture 18, 24of MMW 11 by Prof. Matthew Herbst at UCSD
Chen, Ya-chen. Women in Chinese Martial Arts Films of the New Millennium: Narrative Analyses and Gender Politics. Lexington Books, 2012.

Paul's Christianity

In his new book Paul and Jesus, Prof. James Tabor explains the important role that Paul, who never met Jesus, plays in the creation of Christianity. He argues that the fundamental tenets of Christianity as practiced by various denominations come from Paul and not Jesus himself.

The fundamental doctrinal tenets of Christianity, namely that Christ is God “born in the flesh,” that his sacrificial death atones for the sins of humankind, and that his resurrection from the dead guarantees eternal life to all who believe, can be traced back to Paul — not to Jesus. Indeed, the spiritual union with Christ through baptism, as well as the “communion” with his body and blood through the sacred meal of bread and wine, also trace back to Paul. This is the Christianity most familiar to us, with the creeds and confessions that separated it from Judaism and put it on the road to becoming a new religion.[Christianity Before Paul]

But what were the original teachings of Jesus?

What we get in the letter of James is the most direct possible link to the Jewish teachings of Jesus himself. James is quite sure that the “Judge” is standing at the door, and that the kingdom of God has drawn very near (James 5:7). He warns the rich and those who oppress the weak that very soon the judgment of God will strike. James seems to be directly echoing and affirming what he had learned and passed on from his brother Jesus. It is important to note that James did not directly quote Jesus or attribute any of these teachings to Jesus by name — even though they are teaching of Jesus.
For James the Christian message is not the person of Jesus but the message that Jesus proclaimed. James’ letter lacks a single teaching that is characteristic of the apostle Paul and it draws nothing at all from the Gospel narratives. What we have preserved in this precious document is a reflection of the original apocalyptic proclamation of Jesus: the “Gospel of the kingdom of God” with its political and social implications.[Christianity Before Paul]

Thus it looks like, it was Paul who caused the shift from Jesus’ message to Jesus the person himself.

The Yogi who met Socrates

Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825)

In the 5th century BCE, the contacts between India and Greece became sporadic. The reason for this was the defeat of the Persian army in two wars. In 490 BCE, the Persian army, which included Indian cavalry, was defeated by the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon. The Persians were also defeated in 480 BCE at the Battle of Plataea which followed the Battle of Thermopylae (remember 300?). Since the relation between the Persians and Greeks broke down, it in turn affected the Indo-Greek relations.
That said, there is evidence that Indian ascetics traveled to Greece along a trade route that went through Oxus river, Caspian Sea, Kyros river and Black Sea. These ascetics influenced Diogenes of Sinope (412 – 323 BCE) who then introduced Indian ascetic practices into Greek traditions. But much before Diogenes, there is a mention of an Indian yogi who met Socrates and had a conversation.
According to Aristoxenus, a disciple of Aristotle, this Indian met Socrates in Athens and asked him what he studying. Socrates replied that he was studying human life. The Indian at this point laughed and asked him how could he study human life without studying the divine. The quote is as follows

‘Now Aristoxenus the Musician says that this argument comes from the Indians: for a certain man of that nation fell in with Socrates at Athens, and presently asked him, what he was doing in philosophy: and when he said, that he was studying human life, the Indian laughed at him, and said that no one could comprehend things human, if he were ignorant of things divine [Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]

It is not sure if Socrates changed his mind, but his student Plato was influenced. Plato who previously argued that human and divine affairs were the same, started distinguishing between the two. According to Plato there was one kind of study concerning nature, another concerning humans and a third concerning dialectic.

‘But he maintained that we could not take a clear view of human affairs, unless the divine were previously discerned: for just as physicians, when treating any parts of the body, attend first to the state of the whole, so the man who is to take a clear view of things here on earth must first know the nature of the universe; and man, he said, was a part of the world; and good was of two kinds, our own good and that of the whole, and the good of the whole was the more important, because the other was for its sake.[Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) — Book 11]

Unfortunately, we don’t know the name of this Indian teacher and to what tradition he belongs to or any other detail.

Reference

Mcevilley, Thomas C. The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. 1st ed. Allworth Press, 2001.
Caesarea, Eusebius of. Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica, 2010.

Briefly Noted: Lincoln (2012)

It could have been made as a war movie, but it was not. The movie is about the politics behind the passing of the 13th amendment and it shows Lincoln the visionary as well as Lincoln the ruthless politician. Even though the Emancipation proclamation was passed, Lincoln knew it could be overturned after the war. He needed a law, but did not have enough votes in the House (The Senate had passed the bill). So he and his Secretary of State Seward employ the services of three lobbyists who manage to get the required votes through some unsavory means.
Even though the film is dialogue based and mostly shot indoors it makes for gripping viewing. Like the last over in Lagaan, there is tension is in the air as the votes are counted on the fateful day. Daniel Day-Lewis simply becomes Lincoln as if the photographs we had seen just came to life. His dialogue delivery is amazing, whether it is narrating a funny anecdote in the Cabinet meeting or explaining Euclid’s philosophy to telegraph operators at 4 am. It is his movie and his performance just mesmerizes you. Apparently he first did not want to act in this movie and later he turned around. It would be hard to imagine anyone else in this role.
Another interesting aspect of the movie is the debate in the House over the bill. The Democrats wonder what will be next after the 13th Amendment. Will Lincoln or the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens consider Blacks equal to Whites? Or will they go so far as to give voting rights to colored people and women?
The amount of attention paid to details is also amazing. In an interview with NPR, Tony Kushner explained how he made sure that the words used in the movie were words used during that period by consulting the Oxford English dictionary.

“My main concern was to make it playable — that it had to be language that wouldn’t get in the way either of what the actors needed to do with it, or the audience hearing it. That it rang true. And for that, 19th-century novels were an enormous help — also newspaper accounts and even transcripts of some conversations that are available. And I used the Oxford dictionary, and I checked every single word through all 10 million pages that I wrote. If any word struck me as possibly post-1865, the OED is great, because it’s a word museum. And it will tell you when every word, as far as we know, first appeared in the English language.”[Kushner’s ‘Lincoln’ Is Strange, But Also Savvy]

The sound editing team made sure that the sounds were as accurate as possible.

Since sound recording was not widely available until Edison’s phonograph was invented in the 1870s, Lincoln’s sound team got creative. After a long period of negotiations, they were able to venture into the White House with handheld recorders to capture the noise of the opening and closing of period doors and the ticking of the clock that had been in Lincoln’s office during the Civil War. Indeed, the sounds of the various clocks around the White House feature prominently in the film, perhaps to emphasize that Lincoln’s effort to pass the 13th Amendment is, in its own way, a race against the clock.[How Lincoln Recorded the Sounds of History]

Visually rich and technically perfect, this movie was quite fascinating for me because it showed a human Lincoln and not the deified version.

The King who cried Wolf

Francis Barlow's illustration of the fable, 1687 — Francis Barlow’s illustration of the fable, 1687

Aesop’s Fable of the boy who cried wolf is well known, but less known is a story from Chinese history which parallels this.
It happened during the reign of King You of the Zhou dynasty in the 8th century BCE. He had a concubine named Bao Si whom he loved more than the queen. The queen and her son were demoted and Bao Si and her son took the place. Everything looked good, except for one thing: Bao Si would not smile. This “no-laughing-matter” bothered the king and he pondered over various solutions.
The Zhou dynasty was established in the 11th century BCE and ruled by what is known as the Mandate of Heaven. According to this theory, the heaven would react based on the character of the king. If the king had bad character and did not govern properly, the heaven would send messages to correct him. The king had to govern with fairness and provide justice. In other words, he had to govern based on dharma. Confucius would be born into during the reign of this dynasty, but centuries later.
The king had around 148 vassals and they were kept happy and loyal. Once the beacon fire which is lit to summon the vassals in case of an emergency was accidentaly lit. Various armies reached the capital only to find that it was a false alarm. But Bao Si was very happy seeing the military parade. Seeing her smiley face, King You lit the beacons again and again and after a few times, the feudal lords said, “You, this is not funny!”
Then one day the real wolf showed up: the steppe people attacked and the beacons were lit again. This time the vassals ignored the king’s summons. The steppe people took over the capital in the Wei valley, killed the king and captured Bao Si. That was the end of the Western Zhou.
Is there any truth to this story? What is known is that the Western Zhou was attacked and the king was killed at this point. Regarding Bao Si, it loos like the story was made up by Chinese historians to either drum up the point that kings (or CIA directors) should not fall under the spell of women or to illustrate how a woman could cause the fall of a dynasty.
Reference

MMW 11, Lecture 14 by Prof. Matthew Herbst at UC San Diego
Tanner, Harold Miles. China: A History. Hackett Publishing, 2009.
Feng, Li. Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou 1045-771 BC. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Causes and Processes of European conquests of the Americas

The above image shows a globe made by Martin Behaim in 1492. Filled with inaccuracies, it also does not depict the Americas because Columbus had not yet gone for the conquest of paradise and Americas were not part of the Eurasian trading system. But all that changed in a span of a century as large and wealthy empires fell to the Spanish.
Following the fall of Constantinople, Europeans were forced to look for new trading paths to the East. This was essential to procure spices from India and silk from China by cutting out the middlemen. The two options they had at this point were warfare and exploration. Following the devastation inflicted by the Black Death, Europe was not in a powerful position in attacking the Muslims, though they were quite successful in expelling Muslims from the Iberian peninsula. But success on the East, where it mattered most, was almost impossible. Also, they lacked the wealth — gold and silver — for a massive war.
Thus exploration became an option of necessity and few things lined up for them. First, there were advances in building ships like the caravel which helped them navigate longer distances. Second, they gained expertise in using the astrolabe and the compass as opposed to solely relying on the stars. Third, they discovered ocean currents and trade winds which helped them move across the Atlantic. Finally, they also figured out how to mount canons on ships and that changed the nature of maritime commerce.

Pizarro meets with the Inca emperor Atahualpa, 1532

The mission to the Americas depended on various partners; it was similar to funding a startup. There were Venture Capitalists (kings and rich merchants), Business Team (explorers and exploiters like Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes and Pizzaro) and employees (or slaves and low wage earners in this case). The explorers were motivated by wealth, fame and religion. While the first two are obvious, the last one requires an explanation. Europeans saw that they had to civilize the natives of the countries they conquered and thus found lot of support from the religious authorities.
While those were the causes, the process of conquest had many components as well. The most common answer is “Guns, Germs and Steel”, but the process of the European conquest of the Americas had multiple components to it. The Americas, it is true, did not have guns or steel. They also did not use animals for fighting. They had their conflicts, but it was mostly never about conquest or exploitation, but about conquering people.The Europeans came with a much different mentality and weapons that the Americas could not win against. The task left incomplete by guns and steel, were finished off by the pathogens. The Americans were not immune to the European diseases and it decimated them. Thus the spread of small pox helped the Spanish kill more Americans than was possible using the sword.

The largest Aztec market near Tenochtitlan

A less mentioned aspect of the Spanish conquest is the help they received from the insiders. For example, Cortes had a mistress named Donna Marina who helped them in uncovering Aztec plots against the Spaniards and served as his translator. They also made alliances with the enemies of the people whom they were trying to conquer. As we saw in the lessons from Peru, some facts were conveniently left out in the European narratives. Thus with the case of the Aztecs, the Tlaxcalans and other Mesoamericans helped the Spaniards and with the Incas they were able to take advantage of a civil war. How else could few hundred Spaniards win a war in which tens of thousands of people fought?
Once the Aztec and the Inca empires were conquered, the Spaniards had to find a way to keep it under their control as a colony. The Spaniards were a few and the empires they conquered, besides being wealthy, had a large population. The way they found was to attack the ruling class, decapitate the indigenous structure and replace the ruling elites with Spaniards. As money flowed up the native tribute-paying pyramid system, it reached the hands of the Spanish elites. During their early exploration phase, they had experimented with setting up colonies, importing slaves and cultivating crops for exports in the Azores and the Canary Islands. Now they were able to implement a large scale version of those laboratory experiments and Americas for the first time started growing things for the consumption of others.
(From my assignment for A History of the World since 1300 at Princeton)
Reference

Tignor, Robert, Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, Suzanne Marchand, Gyan Prakash, and Michael Tsin. Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World: From 1000 CE to the Present (Third Edition). Third ed. W. W. Norton & Company
Lectures by Prof. Jeremy Adelman

Mexican Silver in England

In a previous post I had explained how the Spaniards ended up with a mother lode of wealth when they conquered the Americas. They were able to mine silver from places like Potosi from where silver was extracted and sent back to Spain. Between 1560 and 1685 CE, Spanish America sent between 25,000 to 35, 000 tons of silver to Spain and in the century following that the amount doubled causing an inflation in Europe. But if you analyze the English coins during that period, you see traces of Mexican silver, but not Potosi silver. Today there is an explanation.

Geography may explain this, she says: It was easier to ship Mexican silver eastward to Europe than to get Potosí silver across the breadth of Brazil. Instead, Potosí silver went west, from Lima to Acapulco and onward to markets in China. Scholars have known of this westward trade route before, which probably didn’t become really important until the early 17th century, says John Munro, an economist at the University of Toronto.[Mexican silver made it into English coins]

The Mystery of Prehistoric Venus Figurines

All the above pictures show what is known as “Venus figurines.” They are statuettes of women created by people who lived around 25,000 years back in Europe. The interesting thing about them is that such figurines were found from Western Europe to Ukraine and so one has to ask the academic question, “What’s the deal?.” Why did prehistoric people create such anatomically exaggerated statuettes? Obviously it meant something to them and they created and reproduced this art form many times. But why?
Prehistoric art gives us insight into the world of people who lived in caves and were ignorant about farming. Even though their life was different, they too indulged in art like creating such figurines and by painting on rock like the one seen in Chauvet caves.There are few theories about these European Venus figurines

They represent powerful fertile women and represent goddess worship in a matriarchal society.
This is stone age pornography. They were made by men to touch and fondle. (Yes, it is a theory)
These are self portraits
These are stone age dolls
They are related to fertility – either as a talisman or to give solace to women giving birth.

We don’t know which one is true. Each of these theories may reflect our thinking than the real motivation behind the figurines. Since these belong to the prehistoric period, guessing is what we can do. But as we move to India, many millenia later, we can eliminate some possibilities.

Figurines found at Inamgaon (via HD Sankalia)

In India, we don’t see figurines dating to 25,000 years Before Present. Similar looking female figurines of clay were found at Inamgaon and Nevasa near Pune dating to around 1400 – 1000 BCE. They were found buried under a house floor and probably was a goddess connected with fertility, childbirth or the welfare of children. It is the fact that they were found buried under a house that gives a clue that it was connected with an important household ritual.
Reference:

Lecture 3 by Prof. Matthew Herbst at UCSD for MMW 11
Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century. 1st ed. Prentice Hall, 2009.

Indian History Carnival – 59: Diana Eck, Asoka, Bamiyan,Harihareshvara temple, Zheng He

Asoka's inscription in Greek and Aramaic — Asoka’s inscription in Greek and Aramaic

While reading Diana Eck’s India: A Sacred Geography, Sunil Deepak has questions like why our ancient traditions are not taught in schools. He argues that we need to break out of the cultural colonization of the mind

I feel that we have a kind of cultural colonization of our minds, where we pretend that only western linear-rational way of thinking exists, and world needs to be understood exclusively according to this logic. The non-linear and apparently contradictory thinking pervades our cultures, but we pretend that it does not merit acknowledgement or understanding.
We need to break free of this cultural colonization and learn to look at our ancient myths, stories and traditions as living paradigms that influence and shape us even today

Why did Asoka write some his edicts in Aramaic? Fëanor investigates

Why Aramaic? Well, that was the main language of communication across the Near East and the erstwhile Persian empire. (Recall it had fallen less than a century earlier.) Rather unchauvinistically, the Achaemenid rules of Iran didn’t impose their own lingo on their subjects. The Greek bit is slightly more comprehensible – there were Greek-speaking peoples dotting the sundry Alexandrias set up by that maniac eponymous conqueror all the way from Greece to the Hindu Kush. According to Carratelli (the translator above) it appears that the Seleucid rulers of the area were in the process of establishing Greek as official bureaucratic language, but because it’s unlikely that Ashoka was propagandising outside his empire, he must have been aiming his bilingual texts for Greeks living within it. (Why is it unlikely?)

Judith Weingarten writes about the history of Bamiyan and the various travelers who wrote about their visits.

Visitors of an entirely different kind arrived in Bamiyan in the 19th century, adventurers and spies heading to or from British India. The antiquarian Charles Masson (actually a deserter from the British army) arrived in 1832. An early excavator of Buddhist sites, he also worked surreptitiously for the British as their ‘Agent in Cabul for communicating intelligence of the state of affairs in that quarter on a salary of Rs. 250 per annum.’ It didn’t take long for Afghan authorities to realize — correctly — that English archaeologists was just another way of saying English spies.

Indian History and Architecture blog has a post about the Harihareshvara temple and the author goes over various inscriptions found in the town.

No 82, Inscriptions of the Chalukyas of Badami – Language Sanskrit, script Early Kannada – dated Saka 616 (694-95 CE) – The purpose of the record was to register the grant of the village Kirukagamasi in Edevolal-vishaya in Vanavasi-mandala to Ishanasharma of Vatsya-gotra who was the son of Marasharma and grandson of Shrisharma, who had performed the Soma sacrifice. The donee was an adept in Vedas and Vedangas. The grant was given at the request of illustrious Aluvaraja when the king Vinayaditya was in his victorious camp at Karanjapatra in the neighborhood of Hareshpura. Given also were cultivated and uncultivated fields on the west of village Pergamasi. In the connection with the boundaries of these fields are mentioned certain villages, viz., Pulivutu near Sirigodu, Karvasurigola, Perbutu, Algire, Algola, Nittakala, Nerilgire, Kurupakere and Arakatta. The record was written by mahasandhivigrahika Sri-Ramapunyavallabha.

Calicut Heritage attended a discussion in Singapore in which the topic was if Zheng He‘s voyages were part of China’s imperialist designs?

In sum, Calicut cannot subscribe to the theory that the Zheng He fleet was out to conquer and colonise. That was not the experience of medieval Calicut, at least. They did nothing to dominate or control the ports or maritime trade routes of either Quilon or Calicut. Perhaps, as in the case of Vasco da Gama ( who thought that the ruler and people of Calicut were Christian because he mistook the temple of Devi in Puthoor for a Church of Mother Mary), the Chinese mistook the polite exchange of gifts by the Calicut ruler for a tacit recognition of Chinese sovereignty! But, proto-colonialism – sorry, we do not share the view point.

The next edition will be the 60th edition of the Carnival which completes 5 years. It should be up on the 15th of December. Please send your nominations to varnam.blog @gmail

Tamil-Brahmi in Oman

2nd century BCE potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi writing found in Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka

While we are trying to figure out if Harappans wrote in proto-Brahmi, here is a interesting story about something that was written in Tamil using Brahmi script. An Italian archaeological mission to Oman found a potsherd in 2006 in the Khor Rori area, but they could not make out what was written on it. They displayed it at a workshop in Kerala and our folks were able to read what was written on it.

The script “nantai kiran,” signifying a personal name, has two components, Dr. Rajan said. The first part “[n] antai” is an honorific suffix to the name of an elderly person. For instance, “kulantai-campan,” “antai asutan,” “korrantai” and so on found in Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions could be cited. The second component “Kiran” also stands for a personal name. More than 20 poets of the Tamil Sangam age [circa third century BCE to third century CE] have “kiran” as part of their personal names. “Thus, the broken piece of the pot carries the personal name of an important trader who commanded a high regard in the trading community,” Dr. Rajan argued. [Potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi script found in Oman]

The potsherd is dated to around the first century CE. Previously Tamil-Brahmi texts have been found in Berenike and Quseir al-Qadim in Egypt and this is the first time such text has been found in the Arabian peninsula. This discovery of the text itself is not shocking for there exists enough historical evidence for trade for Indian Ocean trade dating to that period.
While there is still controversy over how old Tamil-Brahmi is, texts have been found in various places in South India, like Adichanallur. It also has been found as far away as Thailand