Exploring Society I · Chapter 4 — New Beginnings: Cities and States

Imagine a busy city with planned streets, drains, markets and workshops slowly emptying until only villages are left. Then, a thousand years later, new cities rise somewhere else. That is the story of India's two urbanisations.

The First Urbanisation. In Grade 6 you studied the Harappan (Indus or Sindhu-Sarasvati) civilisation, India's first age of cities. In the early 2nd millennium BCE, that is, in the few centuries after 2000 BCE, it broke down. Some cities were abandoned; in others people stayed on but went back to a village way of life.

What disappeared. A city needs many things working together. With the Harappan breakdown, these were lost:

• Large private and public buildings, crowded streets and busy markets.
• Communities of specialists: metalsmiths, potters, builders, weavers and other craftspeople.
• A writing system and a sanitation system.
• An administration and a larger state with a ruling class at its head.

For about a thousand years there was little city life in India, though a few towns may have existed in the north, and there were important regional village cultures.

The Second Urbanisation. In the 1st millennium BCE a lively new phase of city building began in the Ganga plains, parts of the Indus basin and nearby regions, and slowly spread across the Subcontinent. Historians call it India's Second Urbanisation. It has, in a sense, continued right up to today: many of our cities trace their story back to it.

How do we know? Historians use two kinds of sources:

When both kinds of evidence agree, historians can be more confident about what happened.

Reading BCE dates. BCE years count backwards: 1900 BCE is earlier than 1200 BCE, which is earlier than 300 BCE. The '1st millennium BCE' means the thousand years from 1000 BCE to 1 BCE. So the Harappan cities declined first, and the Second Urbanisation came about a thousand years later.

Think of how families settle near each other, share a language and customs, and slowly become a community with a name and a leader. Early Indian states grew in a similar way.

Janapadas. Towards the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, people in north India formed clans, groups probably sharing a language and customs. Each clan became linked with a territory called a janapada, led by a raja (ruler). The Sanskrit word means the place where the people (jana) have set foot (pada), that is, where they have settled.

Mahajanapadas. As trade networks grew and linked the janapadas, some joined together. By the 8th or 7th century BCE there were bigger states called mahajanapadas ('great janapadas'). Ancient texts give slightly different lists, but the most common one names sixteen. They stretched from Gandhara in the northwest to Anga in the east and Ashmaka in central India near the Godavari river. Some smaller janapadas continued independently too.

The four most powerful.

Other mahajanapadas included Kuru, Panchala, Kashi, Vajji (Vrijji), Malla, Anga, Chedi, Matsya, Shurasena, Gandhara, Kamboja and Ashmaka. Some names, like Kuru and Panchala, also appear in the Mahabharata.

Why so many in the Ganga plains? Most mahajanapadas lay in or near the Ganga plains. Three likely reasons:

• The fertile plains could grow plenty of food to feed towns.
• Iron ore was available in nearby hills, giving iron tools and weapons.
• New trade networks connected the region.

An ideal kingdom. The ancient text the Arthashastra, linked with Kautilya, describes what a good kingdom should have: fortified towns, fertile land, mines, forests, pastures, water not dependent only on rain, good roads and waterways, and a productive economy. These ideas help us see what rulers of this age valued.

Note on maps. The borders of the mahajanapadas on any map are only approximate, because ancient sources do not give exact boundaries.

Picture arriving at an ancient city: a deep ditch full of water, a high mud or brick wall, and a narrow gateway where guards check every traveller and every cartload of goods. This was the entrance to many mahajanapada capitals.

Big, walled cities. Most capitals were fairly large cities protected by fortifications: strong walls called ramparts. Outside the walls ran a moat, a deep, wide ditch filled with water, as an extra defence.

Narrow gateways on purpose. Gateways through the ramparts were often built narrow. Why? So that guards could control the movement of people and goods going in and out: checking strangers, collecting tolls or taxes on goods, and closing the city quickly in danger. Excavations at Shishupalgarh (Sisupalgarh, now part of Bhubaneswar in Odisha) show such a narrowing gateway with the moat visible outside.

What filled these cities? Inside were rulers and officials, soldiers, merchants, bankers, craftspeople such as potters, smiths and weavers, and labourers. Markets sold grain, cloth, pots, metal goods and luxury items. Ruins at Rajagriha, capital of Magadha, and at Kaushambi, capital of Vatsa, give us glimpses of these large structures.

Living cities. Remarkably, many of these ancient capitals are still living cities. Places like Ujjain, Rajgir, Mathura and Varanasi are 'modern' towns that are around 2,500 years old.

A city plan. Shishupalgarh, capital of the Kalinga region, followed a strict square plan with imposing walls and broad streets. A planned layout shows a strong government able to organise large building works.

Why build such defences? The mahajanapadas sometimes fought their neighbours, and rich cities attracted raiders. Walls and moats protected the people, the treasury and the stores of grain. At the same time, the city depended on open trade, so gates had to let goods flow while still being watched.

In your school, important decisions might be discussed in a meeting of teachers or a student council instead of being made by one person alone. Some of the earliest Indian states also had councils that discussed and decided.

Assemblies in the janapadas. Each janapada had an assembly or council called a sabha or samiti, where clan matters were discussed. These words first appear in the Vedas, India's most ancient texts. Members were probably mostly clan elders. The raja was not expected to rule on his own whims: a good ruler took advice from the assemblies, as well as from his ministers and officials. Some texts even say an incompetent ruler could be removed by the assembly. Historians are careful here: such mentions are important, but they do not prove it was a fixed law, because our evidence from such early times is incomplete.

Two systems among the mahajanapadas.

What kings did. In the monarchies the raja collected taxes or revenue, kept law and order, built strong fortifications around the capital, and kept an army to defend the land or fight neighbours.

Early republics. In Vajji and its neighbour Malla, the assembly had more power. It took important decisions through discussion and voting, and it even selected the raja. Because members of the assembly chose the ruler and made major decisions, these states were not monarchies. Their way of working can be called democratic, and scholars often call them early republics, among the earliest such systems in the world.

A careful comparison with today. Modern India is a democratic republic in which all adult citizens vote. The ancient ganas were different: assembly members were a limited group, likely elders and leading families, not all the people. Still, the idea that decisions should come from discussion and choice, not one person's will, has deep roots in India.

A farmer with a wooden plough can clear only a small field; with an iron ploughshare and an iron axe, forests can be cleared and far more land farmed. Technology helped make the Second Urbanisation possible.

From bronze to iron. The Harappans had mastered copper and bronze. In the Second Urbanisation the big change was iron metallurgy, the skill of extracting and shaping iron. In several regions of India, iron-working techniques were perfected from the early 2nd millennium BCE, but it took a few centuries for iron to enter daily life. By the late 2nd millennium BCE iron tools were widespread.

Why iron mattered.

• Farming: iron tools made it possible to farm on a much bigger scale, producing surplus food to feed cities.
• Weapons: iron made swords, spears, arrowheads and shields lighter and sharper than bronze.
• Crafts: smiths became important specialists. A carved panel at the Sanchi stupa shows a smithy, with workers bringing firewood and water, stoking the fire and beating the iron.

There is some evidence of wars between neighbouring mahajanapadas, though how often or how fierce they were is impossible to tell. Wars, and sometimes alliances, led to the rise of new kingdoms and later empires.

The first coins. Growing trade made a convenient medium of exchange necessary, and coins came into use in India for the first time. The earliest were made of silver, a soft metal into which symbols could be stamped or 'punched', so they are called punch-marked coins. Later, coins of copper, gold and other metals were made. A mahajanapada usually issued its own coins, but neighbours' coins were also used, and coins soon travelled across regions and even to other parts of the world.

New ideas. This was also an age of great thinking. New schools of thought, the late Vedic, the Buddhist and the Jain, grew with their own literatures. Scholars, monks, nuns and pilgrims travelled across India spreading these teachings. Art, too, began a renewal that would flower in the age of empires.

Look around any town: there are teachers, farmers, shopkeepers, doctors, carpenters, drivers and many more. Every complex society organises itself into groups by occupation or some other basis. The question is how fairly those groups are treated.

Why groups form. As societies grow more complex, people specialise in governing, administration, religion, education, trade, town planning, farming, crafts and arts. In an ideal society these groups would complement one another and work in harmony. In practice, divisions often lead to inequality: some groups gain more wealth, power or influence. Equality is an ideal many societies have aimed for, but very few, if any, have fully achieved it.

Two categories in India. Indian society came to be organised in a two-fold system:

The word 'caste'. The English word caste comes from the Portuguese word casta, used by Portuguese travellers in the 16th century trying to understand Indian society. Some scholars use 'caste' for varnas, most for jatis, and some for the whole varna-jati system.

Flexible in early times. Texts and inscriptions show that in the early period people and communities sometimes changed occupations when circumstances demanded. A long drought might force farmers to move to a city and take up other work; some Brahmins turned to trade or even military work. The system organised society and its economy and gave it some stability.

Rigid later. Over time, however, the system became rigid. It led to inequalities and discrimination against lower jatis and against communities kept outside the system. Scholars broadly agree that it was more flexible in earlier periods and became more rigid with time, especially under British rule. You will study this in higher classes.

Not the only force. The varna-jati system has been one important mechanism in Indian society, but not the only one; many others shaped Indian life, as you will see in later chapters.

Today. The Constitution of India guarantees equality to every citizen and forbids discrimination. Thinking about how inequality arises, and how people have worked to reduce it, helps us build a fairer society.

Imagine a merchant setting out from the northwest with horses and woollen goods, travelling for months along a great road to the eastern plains, while another trader heads south across the Vindhya hills carrying cloth to exchange for gems. By the end of this age, India was criss-crossed by such routes.

Two great highways. In the 1st millennium BCE, important routes opened for trade, pilgrimage and military campaigns. Ancient texts often mention two:

Many side roads linked these highways to other regions, especially to ports on the western and eastern coasts, which were busy centres of trade.

The east. Major cities rose in eastern India too, such as Shishupalgarh, capital of the Kalinga region, with its square plan, strong walls and broad streets. It was first excavated in 1948.

The south. In the southern part of the Subcontinent, cities began to emerge from about 400 BCE, though some recent excavations suggest trade activity even earlier. Around this time three kingdoms arose: the Cholas, the Cheras and the Pandyas. Besides archaeology, the most ancient Tamil literature mentions these kingdoms and several of their kings. The south was rich in precious and semi-precious stones, gold and spices, and traded profitably with the rest of India and with kingdoms overseas. Excavations at Kodumanal, near Erode in Tamil Nadu, show workshops for shell and gemstone goods.

One connected land. By about 300 or 200 BCE, almost the whole Subcontinent, including the Northeast, had become one lively, interconnected land. Goods, people, ideas and teachings moved from region to region, and often beyond India to Central and Southeast Asia.

The end of an era. Around this time the mahajanapadas ceased to exist, making way for new developments, especially the rise of empires, which you will study in the next chapter.