Normally, the historians in India and abroad prefer to consider only two Indian rulers with “The Great” as their suffix: Ashoka, the Great (304 BC-232 BC) and Akbar, the Great (1542-1605 AD) as if there never were other great rulers. Of course, like Alexander, the Great (356 BC-323 BC), Ashoka’s empire ranged from present day Assam in India to Baluchistan in Pakistan and Pamir Knot in Afghanistan to Tamil Nadu in India. He was the third ruler in succession of the Mauryan Dynasty. King Chandragupta was the founder of the Maurayan Dynasty in Magadha (roughly modern Bihar). He was inspired by Kautilya or Chanakya who wrote Arthshastra, the great book on ancient Indian polity. Even Akbar was the third Mughal Emperor of India who was known for his vast multi-cultural empire from present day Afghanistan to Kashmir to Bengal and entire India till Deccan above Godavari river.
After the decline of Maurya Dynasty of Magadha, King Kharavela of Aira Dynasty of Kalinga, the present day Odisha, became the most powerful king of Aira Dynasty who conquered nearly half of India! Unfortunately, even some of the celebrated historians and authorities on Ancient India like Prof. Radha Kumud Mukerjee mentioned such a great ruler in just three paragraphs where as they go gaga over Ashok, the Great. “Kharavela, coming fifty years after Ashoka, was a follower of Jainism and his services to Jainism were also comparable to those of Ashoka to Buddhism, but he took pride in
styling himself as ‘the embellisher of all temples’ and as ‘the worshipper of all religions’, as Shashi Kant, a brilliant scholar of history and a retired Special Secretary to the Uttar Pradesh Government records in his book “The Hasthigumpha Inscription of Kharavela and The Bhabru Edict of Asoka”. But for the casual mention by Dr. Jitendra B. Shah, Director of L.D. Institute of Indology, the research on Kharavela, the Great, would not have been possible for this column. Of course, historical novels are not presenting history, but one cannot suppress curiosity to read even the historical novels on
Kharavela. We come across a historical novel based on the Kalinga king’s life, “Kharavela : The Warrior Seeker”, by Biswakesh Tripathy, a retired Indian Police Service(IPS) of repute.
Researchers throw new light on the Kalinga Desh and her prominence after the death of Ashok in 236 BC. Last king of Nanda Dynasty had conquered Kalinga. Later the third king of Maurya Dynasty, Ashoka, invaded Kalinga in the eighth year of his reign. “The name of Kalinga was usually reserved for the region consisting of the Ganjam and Ganpati districts of Odisha and the Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts of Andhra,” according to Manorama Tripathy in “Odisha Review”( December 2015), the publication by the Government of Odisha. “The oldest known political lineage of Odisha is that of Kharavela, who belonged to the Mahameghavahana family of the Chedi clan. Kharavela’s famous Hathingumpha inscription is found in the Udayagiri caves in Bhubaneswar. In all fairness to the existing evidence, we must concede that no other political family is known to us from Odisha prior to the house to which Kharavela belonged.” Ashoka himself does not speak in his edicts of any war or battle fought by him against Kalinga. In the edicts of Ashoka, the terms we come across are vijita and avijita, which in their respective contexts refer to regions that were conquered and those that remained unconquered. Kalinga was an avijita where a state society had not yet evolved at the time of Ashoka’s invasion.
The Kalinga invasion led to deaths and destruction on a large scale. Such a massive human calamity seems to have been unprecedented in Indian history. According to Ashoka’s thirteenth major rock edict, 100,000 people were killed, 150,000 were carried away as prisoners and many times that number perished. This catastrophe brought about a personal transformation in Ashoka. His outlook towards society, politics and life underwent a deep change. He had embraced Buddhism two years prior to the Kalinga invasion, but the Kalinga calamity transformed Chandasoka (Ashoka, the Cruel) to Dhammasoka (Ashoka, the Religious). Ashoka was not the natural claimant of succession to be the Magadha King after his father, Mauryan King Bindusara. His father was keen for accession of his elder son, Sushima but “when Ashoka usurped the throne, he was opposed by family members who had links to the Jains and the Ajivikas” but “he may have responded by reaching out to their rivals, the Buddhists, for support. The power struggle may even explained his invasion of Kalinga” around 262 BC, according to Sanjeev Sanyal, an economist, a Rhodes Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow.
After the death of Ashoka in 236 BC, taking advantage of the situation, Kalinga rebelled and seceded under the leadership of the Chedi clan. A remarkable military leader called Kharavela, who was born in 209 BC, got associated in administration as Yuvaraja in 194 BC and his coronation as the King of Kalinga took place in 185 BC at the age of twenty-
four. Kharavela acquired a vast empire only at the age of thirty four. In his thirteenth regnal year (172 BC) when he was only 37 years old, he mysteriously vanished never to be traced. Rather his mission to take revenge by defeating the Magadha King was over. Bahasatimita, the then king of Anga and Magadha, was forced to bow at his feet. He could bring back the Kalinga Jina from Magadha.
Though Kharavela was follower of Jainism, he was not intolerant or fanatic. Nowhere does he disparage, criticize or show disrespect to other religions. Dr. Kant notes: “In fact, he takes pride in calling himself as Sava-pasamda- pujako (worshipper of all sects) and sava-devayatana- samkharakarako (embellisher of all temples); and at Savagahanam ceremony in Mathura, he worshipped the Arahamta and at the same time gave gifts to the Brahmins. This catholicity of outlook and broad liberalism was characteristic trait of nearly all successful Indian rulers. It is also a fact that all his expeditions were purely political and military campaigns and none of them was guided by any religious motive.” His ambition to conquer the whole country Bharatavarsa (Bharadavasa) and live up to the ideal of a Cakravartin (Chakravartin: an ideal universal ruler) remained unfulfilled. In the Jain tradition, Bharata, the son of Rishbhanatha, is credited with giving the country this name, while in the Brahmanical tradition Bharata, the son of Dushyant and Shakuntala immortalized in the Abhijnana-Shakuntalam of Kalidas, is also credited with it. Thus, in essence, both the Jain and Brahmanical traditions are unanimous as regards the name Bharatavarsa for the geographical entity now known as India.
Next Column: Tragic love story of Sultan and Rani Rupmati
(The writer is a Socio-political Historian. E-mail: [email protected] )
