In the first century CE the Roman writer Pliny the Elder grumbled that India, China and Arabia drained a hundred million sesterces a year from the empire, all to pay for luxuries. He was exaggerating to make a moral point, but he was not inventing the trade. Hoards of Roman gold and silver coins found in south India show how much Roman money flowed east to pay for Indian goods such as pepper, pearls, gems and fine cotton. The centuries after the Mauryas, once dismissed as a confused interval, were a time of booming commerce and cultural mixing.
Kingdoms between empires
After the Mauryas, no single power held most of the subcontinent for five centuries. Greek kings ruled parts of the northwest; one of them, Menander, appears in a Buddhist text debating a monk. Then came the Kushans, a people from Central Asia whose empire stretched from the Oxus to the Ganges. Their greatest ruler, Kanishka, probably reigned in the early second century CE, though his dates are disputed. Kushan lands sat astride the Silk Road, and goods, ideas and artists moved through them. In the region of Gandhara, around modern Peshawar, sculptors blended Greek and Roman techniques with Indian subjects. Gandhara art is known for some of the earliest human images of the Buddha, with wavy hair and draped robes that recall Greek statues. In the Deccan, the Satavahana kings controlled routes to western ports.
In the far south, three Tamil dynasties, the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas, competed for land and ports. Muziris on the Malabar coast welcomed Roman ships that crossed the Arabian Sea on the monsoon winds. Tamil Sangam poetry, among the oldest literature in any Indian language other than Sanskrit, describes love, war, kings and the ships of foreign traders. It shows a vigorous culture with its own conventions, a reminder that Indian history is never only the story of the north.
The Guptas
The Gupta dynasty was founded around 320 CE by Chandragupta I, who ruled from Magadha, the same heartland as the Mauryas. His son Samudragupta campaigned widely. Samudragupta's conquests were celebrated in an inscription added to an old Ashokan pillar now at Allahabad, which lists kings he defeated and others who paid tribute. Under Chandragupta II, who reigned from about 375 to 415, the empire reached its height, controlling most of the north.
A visitor left a valuable outside view. Faxian, a Chinese Buddhist monk, traveled through India from about 399 to 412 to collect sacred texts. He praised the peace of the land, its light punishments and its charitable hospitals. He also reported that people called Chandalas lived apart from others and had to strike a piece of wood when entering a town so others could avoid touching them, an early record of untouchability.
Learning and the arts
Gupta rulers patronized poets and scholars. Kalidasa, the most celebrated classical Sanskrit poet and dramatist, wrote the play Shakuntala, which delighted European readers when it was translated in 1789. In mathematics and astronomy, Aryabhata, writing in 499, argued that the earth spins on its axis and gave a value of pi of about 3.1416. Buddhist monasteries flourished alongside new Hindu temples, and Nalanda, a great Buddhist monastery and center of learning in Bihar, grew with Gupta patronage in the fifth century, later drawing students from China, Korea and Southeast Asia.
A golden age?
The idea of a Gupta "golden age" was popularized by colonial and nationalist historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who wanted a classical high point to match Greece or Rome. There is something to it: the period produced lasting art, literature and science. But historians such as R. S. Sharma pointed to growing land grants to Brahmins and harsher caste lines, and argued that power was becoming fragmented and local. Women's status in law also appears to have narrowed. Whether an age was golden depends on whom you ask: the court poet or the Chandala at the town gate. The Gupta state itself weakened in the late fifth century under pressure from Hun invaders from Central Asia and the rise of regional rulers.
Worked example: Faxian at the town gate
Faxian's account is precious, but what kind of source is it? He was a devout Buddhist pilgrim, interested above all in monasteries, relics and holy sites. He spent most of his time in Buddhist communities and probably spoke with monks more than with farmers or officials. So when he praises the gentle government, we should ask what he saw and with whom he talked.
His note about the Chandalas is valuable for exactly that reason. He was not trying to criticize Indian society; he recorded the practice as a curious local custom. An observer with no stake in exposing a practice, who reports it in passing, often gives more reliable evidence than someone with an axe to grind. Combining his account with Indian legal texts, which also describe Chandalas as outcastes, lets historians date the practice with more confidence. The lesson: judge a source by asking what its author wanted, and treat incidental details as some of the most trustworthy.