Talk:Greater India/Archive 2

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Archive 2

influence in western areas not mentioned and some materials to add

indianized kingdoms did exist in central asia/western asia/eastern iran as well not just in south east asia

"And this same Thursday that the said Ambassadors arrived at this great River (the Oxus) they crossed to the other side. And the same day... came in the evening to a great city which is called Tenmit (Termez) and this used to belong to India Minor, but now belongs to the empire of Samarkand, having been conquered by Tamurbec."

Termez/Uzbekistan

Balkh

Etymology The Bactrian language name of the city was βαχλο. The name of the province or country also appears in the Old Persian inscriptions (B.h.i 16; Dar Pers e.16; Nr. a.23) as Bāxtri, i.e. Bakhtri. It is written in the Avesta as Bāxδi. From this came the intermediate form Bāxli, Sanskrit Bahlīka (also Balhika) for "Bactrian", and by transposition the modern Persian Balx, i.e. Balkh, and Armenian Bahl.[6]

Buddhism Balkh town is well-known to Buddhist countries because of two great Buddhist monks of Afghanistan – Trapusa and Bahalika. There are two stupas over their relics. According to a popular legend, Buddhism was introduced in Balkh by Bhallika, disciple of Buddha, and the city derives its name from him. He was a merchant of the region and had come from Bodhgaya. In literature, Balkh has been described as Balhika, Valhika or Bahlika. First Vihara at Balkh was built for Bhallika when he returned home after becoming a Buddhist monk. Xuanzang visited Balkh in 630 when it was a flourishing centre of Hinayana Buddhism.

According to the Memoirs of Xuanzang, there were about a hundred Buddhist convents in the city or its vicinity at the time of his visit there in the 7th century. There were 3,000 monks and a large number of stupas and other religious monuments. The most remarkable stupa was the Navbahara (Sanskrit, Nav Vihara: New Monastery), which possessed a gigantic statue of Buddha. Shortly before the Arab conquest, a general misconception arised that the monastery had become a Zoroastrian fire-temple because some Arabic sources erroneously described the vihāra as a fire temple of Zoroastrianism, presumably because of its proximity to Balkh, Zoroaster's birthplace. A curious reference to this building is found in the writings of the geographer Ibn Hawqal, an Arab traveller of the 10th century, who describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending for half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque.

A Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hein, (c.400) found Hinayana practice prevalent in Shan Shan, Kucha, Kashgar, Osh, Udayana and Gandhara. Xuanzang remarked that Buddhism was widely practised by the Hunnish rulers of Balkh, who descended from Indian royal stock.[12]

A Korean monk, Huichao, noted as late as the Eighth century after the Arab invasion that the residents of Balkh practiced Buddhism and followed a Buddhist king. He noted the Arab invasion and that the king of Balkh at the time had fled to nearby Badakshan.[13]

Furthermore, we know that a number of Buddhist religious centres flourished in Khorasan. The most important was the Nawbahar (New Temple) near the town of Balkh, which evidently served as a pilgrimage centre for political leaders who came from far and wide to pay homage to it.[14]

A large number of Sanskrit medical, pharmacological toxicological texts were translated into Arabic under the patronage of Khalid, the vizier of Al-Mansur. Khalid was the son of a chief priest of a Buddhist monastery. Some of the family were killed when the Arabs captured Balkh; others including Khalid survived by converting to Islam. They were to be known as the Barmikis of Baghdad.[15]

At the time of the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century, however, Balkh had provided an outpost of resistance and a safe haven for the Persian emperor Yazdegerd III who fled there from the armies of Umar. Later, in the 9th century, during the reign of Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar, Islam became firmly rooted in the local population.

Arabs occupied Persia in 642 (during the Caliphate of Uthman, 644–656 AD). Attracted by the grandeur and wealth of Balkh, they attacked it in 645 AD. It was only in 653 when Arab commander al-Ahnaf raided the town again and compelled it to pay tribute. The Arab hold over the town, however, remained tenuous. The area was brought under Arab control only after it was reconquered by Muawiya in 663 AD. Prof. Upasak describes the effect of this conquest in these words: "The Arabs plundered the town and killed the people indiscriminately. It is said that they raided the famous Buddhist shrine of Nava-Vihara, which the Arab historians call 'Nava Bahara' and describe it as one of the magnificent places, which comprised a range of 360 cells around the high stupas'. They plundered the gems and jewels that were studded on many images and stupas and took away the wealth accumulated in the Vihara but probably did no considerable harm to other monastic buildings or to the monks residing there".

The Arab attacks had little effect on the normal ecclesiastical life in the monasteries or Balkh Buddhist population outside. Buddhism continued to flourish with their monasteries as the centres of Buddhist learning and training. Scholars, monks and pilgrims from China, India and Korea continued to visit this place.

Several revolts were made against the Arab rule in Balkh.

The Arabs' control over Balkh did not last long as it soon came under the rule of a local prince, a zealous Buddhist called Nazak (or Nizak) Tarkhan. He expelled the Arabs from his territories in 670 or 671. He is said to have not only reprimanded the Chief Priest (Barmak) of Nava-Vihara but beheaded him for embracing Islam. As per another account, when Balkh was conquered by the Arabs, the head priest of the Nava-Vihara had gone to the capital and became a Muslim. This displeased the people of the Balkh. He was deposed and his son was placed in his position.

Nazak Tarkhan is also said to have murdered not only the Chief Priest but also his sons. Only a young son was saved. He was taken by his mother to Kashmir where he was given training in medicine, astronomy and other sciences. Later they returned to Balkh. Prof. Maqbool Ahmed observes "One is tempted to think that the family originated from Kashmir, for in time of distress, they took refuge in the Valley. Whatever it be, their Kashmiri origin is undoubted and this also explains the deep interest of the Barmaks, in later years, in Kashmir, for we know they were responsible for inviting several scholars and physicians from Kashmir to the Court of Abbasids." Prof. Maqbool also refers to the descriptions of Kashmir contained in the report prepared by the envoy of Yahya bin Barmak. He surmises that the envoy could have possibly visited Kashmir during the reign of Samgramapida II (797–801). Reference has been made to sages and arts.[clarification needed]

The Arabs managed to bring Balkh under their control only in 715 AD, in spite of strong resistance offered by the Balkh people during the Umayyad period. Qutayba ibn Muslim al-Bahili, an Arab General was Governor of Khurasan and the east from 705 to 715. He established a firm hold over lands beyond the Oxus for the Arabs. He fought and killed Tarkhan Nizak in Tokharistan (Bactria) in 715. In the wake of Arab conquest, the resident monks of the Vihara were either killed or forced to abandon their faith. The Viharas were razed to the ground. Priceless treasures in the form of manuscripts in the libraries of monasteries were consigned to ashes. Presently, only the ancient wall of the town, which once encircled it, stands partially. Nava-Vihara stands in ruins, near Takhta-i-Rustam.[20]

Nava Vihara

Rise to prominence Historical accounts report it as flourishing as an important centre of Buddhism between the seventh and eleventh centuries CE. It may have been founded considerably earlier, perhaps in or after the reign of Kaniṣka, in the second century CE.[4][2][3]

The many Buddhist references in the Persian literature of the period also provide evidence of Islamic–Buddhist cultural contact. Persian poetry, for example, often used the simile for palaces that they were "as beautiful as a Nowbahar (Nava Vihāra)."[citation needed] Further, at Nava Vihāra and Bamiyan, Buddha images, particularly of Maitreya, the future Buddha, had 'moon discs' or halo iconographically represented behind or around their heads.[citation needed] This led to the poetic depiction of pure beauty as someone having "the moon-shaped face of a Buddha." Thus, 11th-century Persian poems, such as Varqe and Golshah by Ayyuqi, use the word budh with a positive connotation for "Buddha," not with its second, derogatory meaning as "idol."[citation needed] It implies the ideal of asexual beauty in both men and women.[citation needed] Such references indicate that either Buddhist monasteries and images were present in these Iranian cultural areas at least through the early Mongol period in the 13th century or, at minimum, that a strong Buddhist legacy remained for centuries among the Buddhist converts to Islam.[citation needed]

Xuanzang's report In the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, Xuanzang reports that at the time of his visit to Balkh in 630 there were about a hundred viharas and 30,000 monks, a large number of stupas and other religious monuments, and that Buddhism was flourishing in the Bactrian portion of the Western Turkic Khaganate. He also described it as having strong links with the Kingdom of Khotan in the Tarim Basin. The temple was led by Pramukha, Sanskrit for "leader, administrator", who, under the Arabized name of Barmak,[5] came to be known as the Barmakids).[3]

History under the Arabs The Umayyad Caliphate captured Balkh in 663 from the Kabul Shahis who had taken over the territory from the Western Turks. Although some Buddhists and even an abbot of Nava Vihāra converted to Islam, most Buddhists kept their faith and accepted dhimmi status as loyal non-Muslim protected subjects within an Islamic state by paying the jizya tax in lieu of the zakat tax and compulsory military service for Muslims, and the monastery remained open and functioning.[citation needed]

In 708 Nazaktar Khan, a Kabul Shahi prince, in alliance with the Tibetan Empire, recaptured Bactria from the Umayyads and established a fanatic Buddhist rule, including the beheading of the abbot who converted. In 715 Ibn Qutaybah recaptured the region for the Umayyads and Tibet switched sides to ally with him against the Kabul Shahis. In retribution for the insurrection, Qutaiba inflicted heavy damage on Nava Vihāra, resulting in many monks fleeing to Khotan and Kashmir.[citation needed]

The Barmakids, who attained great power under the Abbasid Caliphate becoming powerful viziers, are regarded as having their origin in a line of hereditary priests at Nava Vihāra who had converted to Islam.[citation needed]

An Arab author, Umar ibn al-Azraq al-Kermani, wrote a detailed account of Nava Vihāra at the beginning of the 8th century that is preserved in a later 10th-century work, the Kitab al-Buldan by Ibn al-Faqih. He described Nava Vihara in terms strikingly similar to the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site of Islam. He described that the main temple had a stone cube in the center, draped with cloth, and that devotees circumambulated it and made prostration, as is the case with the Kaaba. The stone cube referred to the platform on which a stupa stood, as was the custom in Bactrian temples. The cloth that draped it was in accordance with Persian custom of showing veneration that applied equally to Buddha statues as well as to stupas.[6]

Some Arabic sources erroneously describe the vihāra as a fire temple of Zoroastrianism, presumably because of its proximity to Balkh, Zoroaster's birthplace. In Arabic sources, the monastery's name is represented as "Naubahar". Van Bladel (p. 68) has pointed out that this version of the name can be traced to the pronunciation in the Bactrian language.[3]

The Han Chinese pilgrim Yijing visited Nava Vihāra in the 680s and reported it flourishing as a Sarvāstivādin center of study.

Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī, a Persian scholar and writer in service to the Ghaznavids, reported that around the start of the 10th century, the monasteries in Bactria, including Nava Vihāra, were still functioning and decorated with Buddhist frescoes.[citation needed]

A curious notice of this building is found in the writings of Arabian geographer Ibn Hawqal, an Arabian traveler of the 10th century.

Balkh

The Kabul Shahi dynasties[3][4] also called Shahiya[5][2] ruled the Kabul Valley (in eastern Afghanistan) and the old province of Gandhara (northern Pakistan) during the Classical Period of India[6] from the decline of the Kushan Empire[7] in the 3rd century to the early 11th century.[6] They are split into two eras: the Buddhist Turk Shahi and the later Hindu-Shahis with the change-over occurring around 870 CE.[2]

When Xuanzang visited the region early in the 7th century, the Kabul region was ruled by a Kshatriya king, who is identified as the Shahi Khingal, and whose name has been found in an inscription found in Gardez.

These Hindu kings of Kabul and Gandhara may have had links to some ruling families in neighboring Kashmir, Punjab and other areas to the east. The Shahis were rulers of predominantly Buddhist and Hindu populations and were thus patrons of numerous faiths, and various artifacts and coins from their rule have been found that display their multicultural domain. At the end period the last Shahi emperors Jayapala, Anandapala and Tirlochanpala fought the Muslim Turk Ghaznavids of Ghazna and were gradually defeated. Their remaining army were eventually exiled into northern India.

Kabul Shahi

Amīr Sūrī (Persian: امیر سوري) was the king of the Ghurid dynasty from the 9th-century to the 10th-century. He was a descendant of the Ghurid king Amir Banji, whose rule was legitimized by the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. Amir Suri is known to have fought the Saffarid ruler Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar, who managed to conquer much of Khurasan except Ghur.[2] Amir Suri was later succeeded by his son Muhammad ibn Suri. Although Amir Suri bore an Arabic title and his son had an Islamic name, they were both Buddhists[1] and were considered pagans by the surrounding Muslim people, and it was only during the reign of Muhammad's son Abu Ali ibn Muhammad that the Ghurid dynasty became an Islamic dynasty.

The Ghorids were tribal people of Ghoristan mountains, divided into numerous tribes. Among the numerous Ghorid chiefs, the Shansabani tribe had the most authority over all the other Ghorid tribes. The Shansabani were a tribe and the Ghoris were structured as a tribal society.

Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi, the famous historian of the Ghaznavid era, wrote on page 117 in his book Tarikh-i Bayhaqi: "Sultan Mas'ud left for Ghoristan and sent his learned companion with two people from Ghor as interpreters between this person and the people of that region."

Ghurid dynasty

The Barmakids (Persian: برمکیان‎ Barmakīyān; Arabic: البرامكة‎ al-Barāmikah, from the Sanskrit प्रमुख pramukha, "leader, chief administrator, registrar");[1] also spelled Barmecides, were an Iranian[2][3][4] influential family from Balkh in Bactria where they were originally hereditary Buddhist leaders (in the Nawbahar monastery),[5][6] and subsequently came to great political power under the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. Khalid, the son of Barmak became the prime minister (wazir) of Al Saffah, the first Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty. His son Yahya aided Harun Al-Rashid in capturing the throne and rose to power as the most powerful man in the Caliphate. The Barmakids were remarkable for their majesty, splendor and hospitality. They are mentioned in some stories of the Arabian Nights.

The family is traceable back to the hereditary Buddhist administrators, Sanskrit प्रमुख Pramukha (Arabized to Barmak), of the Buddhist monastery of Nava Vihāra (Nawbahar) west of Balkh (Northern Afghanistan).[7] Historians of Islam have sometimes considered the Barmakids to have been Zoroastrian priests before converting to Islam, an erroneous view based on the fact that Balkh was known as an important centre of Zoroastrianism, or from a simple failure of early Islamic sources to distinguish Zoroastrians from Buddhists. In fact, the Barmakids descended from the chiefs, or administrators of the Buddhist monastery called Navavihāra (Skt. नवविहार) or "New Monastery", that was described by the Chinese Buddhist diarist Xuanzang in the seventh century[8][9] which may have led to the Persian and Arabic error of thinking that the term "Nowbahār" was the name of a Zoroastrian fire temple headed by the Barmakids as reported in Islamic sources. The Pramukhas converted during the Arab invasion of the Sasanian Empire.[10]

The Barmakids were highly educated, respected and influential throughout Arabia, Persia, Central Asia and the Levant. In Baghdad, the Barmakid court became a centre of patronage for the Ulema, poets, scholars alike.

Barmakids

The Kingdom of Kapisa was a state located in Kapisa, in what is now Afghanistan during the late 1st millennium CE. The name Kapisa appears to be a Sanskritized form of a name for the area in prehistory.[1] (Following its conquest in 329 BCE by Alexander the Great, the area was officially renamed Alexandria on the Caucasus.) The kingdom stretched from the Hindu Kush in the north to Bamiyan and Kandahar in the south and west, out as far as Jalalabad District in the east.[2] Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the kingdom was ruled by the Turk Shahi house.[3]

In a 7th-century Chinese chronicle, the Book of Sui, the Kingdom of Kapisa appears to be known as the Kingdom of Cao.[4] In around 600 AD, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made a pilgrimage to Kapisi, and described there the cultivation of rice and wheat, and a king of the Suli tribe. In his chronicle, he relates that in Kapisi were over 6,000 monks of a heretical sect of the Mahayana school of Buddhism.[5]

At one point, Bagram was the capital of the kingdom, though in the 7th century, the center of power of Kapisa shifted to Kabul.

Kingdom of Kapisa

Zābulistān (Persian: زابلستان) which is the Persian name of the region, literally means "the land of Zābul". The etymology of the name Zābul has been marred with speculation. The German historian Marquart, proposed the word, including its uncommon Medieval variant Jāwulistān (Persian: جابلستان) as being a variation of the Sanskrit term.[5] Others have speculated that the word zābul might be an abbreviation of zūnbīl, a supposed royal title of the region known from Arabic sources, earlier read as rutbīl, and now used to refer to a local dynasty of Zamindawar now called the Zunbils. This notion however currently stands on loose ground, and Minorsky holds that the consonant resemblance between these two words look merely fortuitous.[5] Jāguḍa (Sanskrit: जागुड), meaning saffron[6], was the Sanskrit name of the region. In the Mahabharata, the people of the region are described as a saffron cultivating people living somewhere beyond Kashmir[7]. It is also regarded as being referred to by this name in 644 CE by the Chinese traveling monk Xuanzang in the Chinese transliteration Tsau-kü-ta.[5]

The kingdoms of Kapisa-Gandhara in modern-day Afghanistan, Zabulistan and Sindh (which then held Makran) in modern-day Pakistan, all of which were culturally and politically part of India since ancient times,[6] were known as "The Frontier of Al Hind". The first clash between a ruler of an Indian kingdom and the Arabs took place in 643 AD, when Arab forces defeated Rutbil, King of Zabulistan in Sistan

Zabulistan

115.135.118.112 (talk) 12:14, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Point appreciated. The northern Indianized kingdoms need to be mentioned. But, your text cannot be used at all. Much of it is written so bad that it is difficult to make any sense of it. And, none of the text can be verified online. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 04:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

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Russia under Hindu Monasticism

The links are very tennis references to 10,000 Indian merchants in Astrakhan during 17th century. Doesn’t reflect how Russia was influenced by Hinduism Which has It’s strong own Christian orthodox monastic traditions.

Doesn’t make Sense to be here with other Countries In Indian sphere unless There Is better sources/evidence. 144.138.55.211 (talk) 16:04, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to mention it there, as then you could start adding every country with a Hindu temple: Canada, Australia, Iran, Switzerland, etc., etc. Are they all 'greater India'?

So I think I'll just remove it and add the references to the Astrakhan page. Exarchus (talk) 20:32, 6 March 2023 (UTC)