Day .28- JAWAHARLAL NEHRU - The Discovery of India (Continued)

Growth and Decay

During the first thousand years of the Christian era, there are many ups and downs in India, many conflicts with invading elements and internal troubles. Yet it is a period of a vigorous national life, bubbling over with energy and spreading out in all directions. Culture develops into a rich civilization flowering out in philosophy, literature, drama, art, science, and mathematics. India's economy expands, the Indian horizon widens and other countries come within its scope. Contacts grow with Iran, China, the Hellenic world, central Asia, and above all, there is a powerful urge towards the eastern seas which leads to the establishment of Indian colonies and the spread of Indian culture far beyond India's boundaries. During the middle period of this millennium, from early in the fourth to the sixth century, the Gupta Empire flourishes and becomes the patron and symbol of this widespread intellectual and artistic activity. It is called the Golden or Classical Age of India and the writings of that period, which are classics in Sans-krit literature, reveal a serenity, a quiet confidence of the people in themselves, and a glow of pride at being privileged to be alive in that high noon of civilization, and with it the urge to use their great intellectual and artistic powers to the utmost.

Yet even before that Golden Age had come to a close, signs of weakness and decay become visible. The White Huns come from the north-west in successive hordes and are repeatedly pushed back. But they come again and again and eat their way slowly into North India. For a half-century they even establish themselves as a ruling power all over the north. But then, with a great effort, the last of the great Guptas, joining up in a confederacy with Yashovarman, a ruler of Central India, drives out the Huns.

This long-drawn-out conflict weakened India politically and militarily, and probably the settlement of large numbers of these Huns all over northern India gradually produced an inner change in the people. They were absorbed as all foreign elements had so far been absorbed, but they left their impress and weakened the old ideals of the Indo-Aryan races. Old accounts of the Huns are full of their excessive cruelty and barbarous behavior which were so foreign to Indian standards of warfare and government.

In the seventh century there was a revival and renascence under Harsha, both political and cultural. Ujjayini (modern Ujjain), which had been the brilliant capital of the Guptas, again became a centre of art and culture and the seat of a powerful king-dom. But in the centuries that followed, this too weakens and fades off. In the ninth century Mihira Bhoja, of Gujarat, consolidates a unified state in North and Central India with his capital at Kanauj. There is another literary revival of which the central figure is Rajashekhara. Again, at the beginning of the eleventh century, another Bhoja stands out as a powerful and attractive figure, and Ujjayini again becomes a great capital. This Bhoja was a remarkable man who distinguished himself in many fields. He was a grammarian and a lexicographer, and interested in medicine and astronomy. He was a builder and a patron of art and literature, and was himself a poet and a writer to whom many works are attributed. His name has become a part of popular fable and legend as a symbol of greatness, learning, and generosity.

And yet for all these bright patches, an inner weakness seems to seize India, which affects not only her political status but her creative activities. There is no date for this, for the process was a slow and creeping one, and it affected north India earlier than the south. The south indeed becomes more important both politically and culturally. Perhaps this was due to the south having escaped the continuous strain of fighting waves of invaders; perhaps many of the writers and artists and master-builders migrated to the south to escape from the unsettled conditions in the north. The powerful kingdoms of the south, with their brilliant courts, must have attracted these people and given them opportunities for creative work which they lacked elsewhere.

But though the north did not dominate India, as it had often done in the past, and was split up into small states, life was still rich there and there were many centres of cultural and philosophic activity. Benares, as ever, was the heart of religious and philosophical thought, and every person who advanced a new theory or a new interpretation of an old theory, had to come there to justify himself. Kashmir was for long a great Sanskrit centre of Buddhist and Brahminical learning. The great universities flourished; of these, Nalanda, the most famous of all, was respected for its scholarship all over India. To have been to Nalanda was a hall-mark of culture. It was not easy to enter that university, for admission was restricted to those who had already attained a certain standard. It specialized in postgraduate study and attracted students from China, Japan, and Tibet, and even it is said, from Korea and Mongolia and Bokhara. Apart from religious and philosophical subjects (both Buddhist and Brahminical), secular and practical subjects were also taught. There was a school of art and a department for architecture; a medical school; an agri-cultural department; dairy farms and cattle. The intellectual life of the university is said to have been one of animated debates and discussions. The spread of Indian culture abroad was largely the work of scholars from Nalanda.

Then there was the Vikramshila university, near modern Bhagalpur in Bihar, and Vallabhi in Kathiawar. During the period of the Guptas, the Ujjayini university rose into prominence. In the south there was the Amravati university.

Yet, as the millennium approached its end, all this appears to be the afternoon of a civilization; the glow of the morning had long faded away, high noon was past. In the south there was still vitality and vigor and this lasted for some centuries more; in the Indian colonies abroad there was aggressive and full-blood-ed life right up to the middle of the next millennium. But the heart seems to petrify, its beats are slower, and gradually this petrification and decay spread to the limbs. There is no great figure in philosophy after Shankara in the eighth century, though there is a long succession of commentators and dialecticians. Even Shan-kara came from the south. The sense of curiosity and the spirit of mental adventure give place to a hard and formal logic and a sterile dialectic. Both Brahminism and Buddhism deteriorate and degraded forms of worship grow up, especially some varieties of Tantric worship and perversions of the Yoga system.

In literature,. Bhavabhuti (eighth century) is the last great figure. Many books continued to be written, but their style be-comes more and more involved and intricate; there is neither freshness of thought nor of expression. In mathematics, Bhaskara II (twelfth century) is the last great name. In art, E. B. Havell takes us rather beyond this period. He says that the form of expression was not artistically perfected until about the seventh and eighth centuries, when most of the great sculpture and painting in India was produced. From the seventh or eighth to the fourteenth century, according to him, was the great period of Indian art, corresponding to the highest development of Gothic art in Europe. He adds that it was in the sixteenth century that the creative impulse of the old Indian art began markedly to diminish. How far this judgment is correct I do not know, but I imagine that even in the field of art it was South India that carried on the old tradition for a longer period than the north.

The last of the major emigrations for colonial settlement took place from South India in the ninth century, but the Cholas in the south continued to be a great sea power till the eleventh century, when they defeated and conquered Srivijaya.

We thus see that India was drying up and losing her creative genius and vitality. The process was a slow one and lasted several centuries, beginning in the north and finally reaching the south. What were the causes of this political decline and cultural stagnation? Was this due to age alone, that seems to attack civilizations as it does individuals, or to a kind of tidal wave with its forward and backward motion? or were external causes and invasions responsible for it? Radhakrishnan says that Indian philosophy lost its vigor with the loss of political freedom. SylvainLevi writes: 'La culture sanscrite a fini avec la liberte de l'lnde; des langues nouvelles, des litteratures nouvelles ont envahi la territoire ary-enne et l'en ont chasse; elle s'est refugiee dans les colleges et y a pris un air pedantesque.'

All this is true, for the loss of political freedom lead inevitably to cultural decay. But why should political freedom be lost unless some kind of decay has preceded it ? A small country might easily be overwhelmed by superior power, but a huge, well-developed and highly civilized country like India cannot succumb to external attack unless there is internal decay, or the invader possesses a higher technique of warfare. That internal decay is clearly evident in India at the close of these thousand years.

There are repeatedly periods of decay and disruption in the life of every civilization, and there had been such periods in Indian history previously; but India had survived them and rejuvenated herself afresh, sometimes retiring into her shell for a while and emerging again with fresh vigor. There always remained a dynamic core which could renew itself with fresh contacts and develop again, something different from the past and yet intimately connected with it. Had that capacity for adaptation, that flexibility of mind which had saved India so often in the past left her now? Had her fixed beliefs and the grow-ing rigidity of her social structure made her mind also rigid? For if life ceases to grow and evolve, the evolution of thought also ceases. India had all along been a curious combination of conservatism in practice and explosive thought. Inevitably that thought affected the practice, though it did so in its own way without irreverence for the past. 'Mais si leurs yeux suivaient les mots anciens, leur intelligence y voyait des idees nouvelles. L'Inde s'est transformee a son insu.' But when thought lost its explosiveness and creative power and became a tame attendant on an outworn and meaningless practice, mumbling old phrases and fearful of everything new, then life became stagnant and tied and constrain-ed in a prison of its own making.

We have many examples of the collapse of a civilization, and perhaps the most notable of these is that of the European classical civilization which ended with the fall of Rome. Long before Rome fell to the invaders from the north, it had been on the verge of collapse from its own internal weaknesses. Its economy, once expanding, had shrunk and brought all manner of difficulties in its train. Urban industries decayed, flourishing cities grew progressively smaller and impoverished, and even fertility rapidly declined. The Emperors tried many expedients to overcome their ever-increasing difficulties. There was compulsory state regulation of merchants, craftsmen, and workers, who were tied down to particular employments. Many kinds of employment were forbidden to those outside certain groups of workers. Thus some occupations were practically converted into castes. The peasantry became serfs. But all these superficial attempts to check the decline failed and even worsened conditions; and the Roman Empire collapsed.

There was and has been no such dramatic collapse of Indian civilization, and it has shown an amazing staying power despite all that has happened; but a progressive decline is visible. It is difficult to specify in any detail what the social conditions in India were at the end of the first millennium after Christ; but it may be said with some assurance that the expanding economy of India had ended and there was a strong tendency to shrink. Probably this was the inevitable result of the growing rigidity and exclusiveness of the Indian social structure as represented chiefly by the caste system. Where Indians had gone abroad, as in south-east Asia, they were not so rigid in mind or customs or in their economy, and they had opportunities for growth and expansion. For another four or five hundred years they flourished in these colonies and displayed energy and creative vigor; but in India herself the spirit of exclusiveness sapped the creative faculty and developed a narrow, small-group, and parochial outlook. Life became cut up into set frames, where each man's job was fixed and permanent and he had little concern with others. It was the Kshatriya's business to fight in defense of the country, and others were not interested or were not even allowed to do so. The Brahmin and the Kshatriya looked down on trade and commerce. Education and opportunities of growth were withheld from the lower castes, who were taught to be submissive" to those higher up in the scale. In spite of a well-developed urban economy and industries, the structure of the state was in many ways feudal. Probably even in the technique of warfare India had fallen behind. No marked progress was possible under these conditions without changing that structure and releasing fresh sources of talent and energy. The caste system was a barrier to such a change. For all its virtues and the stability it had given to Indian society, it carried within it the seeds of destruction.

The Indian social structure (and I shall consider this more fully later) had given amazing stability to Indian civilization. It had given strength and cohesion to the group, but this came in the way of expansion and a larger cohesion. It developed crafts and skill and trade and commerce, but always within each group separately. Thus particular types of activity became hereditary and there was a tendency to avoid new types of work and activity and to confine oneself to the old groove, to restrict initiative and the spirit of innovation. It gave a measure of freedom within a certain limited sphere, but at the expense of the growth of a larger freedom and at the heavy price of keeping large numbers of people permanently at the bottom of the social ladder, deprived of the opportunities of growth. So long as that structure afforded avenues for growth and expansion, it was progressive; when it reached the limits of expansion open to it, it became stationary, unprogressive, and, later, inevitably regressive.

Because of this there was decline all along the line—intellectual, philosophical, political, in technique and methods of warfare, in knowledge of and contacts with the outside world, and there was a growth of local sentiments and feudal, small-group feeling at the expense of the larger conception of India as a whole, and a shrinking economy. Yet, as later ages were to show, there was yet vitality in the old structure and an amazing tenacity, as well as some flexibility and capacity for adaptation. Because of this it managed to survive and to profit by new contacts and waves of thought, and even progress in some ways. But that progress was always tied down to and hampered by far too many relics of the past.

C H A P T E R SIX

NEW PROBLEMS :The Arabs and the Mongols

WHILE HARSHA WAS REIGNING OVER A POWERFUL KINGDOM IN north India and Hsuan-Tsang, the Chinese scholar-pilgrim, was studying at Nalanda University, Islam was taking shape in Arabia. Islam was to come to India both as a religious and a political force and create many new problems, but it is well to remember that it took a long time before it made much difference to the Indian scene. It was nearly 600 years before it reached the heart of India and when it came to the accompaniment of political conquest, it had already changed much and its standard-bearers were different. The Arabs who, in a fine frenzy of enthusiasm and with a dynamic energy, had spread out and conquered from Spain to the borders of Mongolia carrying with them a brilliant culture, did not come to India proper. They stopped at its north-western fringe and remained there. Arab civilization gradually decayed and various Turkish tribes came into prominence in central and western Asia. It was these Turkish and Afghans from the Indian borderland who brought Islam as a political force to India.

Some dates might help to bring these facts home to us. Islam may be said to begin with the Hijrat, the departure of the Prophet Mohammed from Mecca "to Medina, in 622 A.C. Mohammed died ten years latter. Some time was spent in consolidating the position in Arabia, and then those astounding series of events took place which carried the Arabs, with the banner of Islam, right across central Asia in the east and across the whole north African continent to Spain and France in the west. In the seventh century and by the beginning of the eighth, they had spread over Iraq, Iran, and central Asia. In 712 A.C. they reached and occupied Sind in the north-west of India and stopped there. A great desert separated this area from the more fertile parts of India. In the west the Arabs crossed the narrow straits between Africa and Europe (since called the Straits of Gibraltar) and entered Spain in 711 A.C. They occupied the whole of Spain and crossed the Pyrenees into France. In 732 they were defeated and checked by Charles Martel at Tours in France.

This triumphant career of a people, whose homelands were the deserts of Arabia and who had thus far played no notable part in history, is most remarkable. They must have derived their vast energy from the dynamic and revolutionary character of their Prophet and his message of human brotherhood. And yet it is wrong to imagine that Arab civilization suddenly rose out of oblivion and took shape after the advent of Islam. There has been a tendency on the part of Islamic scholars to decry the pre-Islamic past of the Arab people and to refer to it as the period of jahiliyat, a kind of dark age of ignorance and superstition. Arab civilization, like others, had a long past, intimately connected with the development of the Semitic race, the Phoenicians, Cretans, Chaldeans, Hebrews. The Israelites became more exclusive and separated themselves from the more catholic Chaldeans and others. Between them and other Semitic races there were conflicts. Nevertheless all over the Semitic area there were contacts and interchanges and to some extent a common background. Pre-Islamic Arab civilization grew up especially in Yemen. Arabic was a highly developed language at the time of the Prophet, with a mixture of Persian and even some Indian words. Like the Phoenicians, the Arabs went far across the seas in search of trade. There was an Arab colony in south China, near Canton, in pre-Islamic days.

Nevertheless it is true that the Prophet of Islam vitalized his people and filled them with faith and enthusiasm. Considering themselves the standard-bearers of a new cause, they developed the zeal and self-confidence which sometimes fills a whole people and changes history. Their success was also undoubtedly due to the decay of the states in western and central Asia and in north Africa. North Africa was torn by internecine conflicts between rival Christian factions, leading often to bloody struggles for mastery. The Christianity that was practiced there at the time was narrow and intolerant and the contrast between this and the general toleration of the Moslem Arabs, with their message of human brotherhood, was marked. It was this that brought whole peoples, weary of Christian strife, to their side.

The culture that the Arabs carried with them to distant countries was itself continuously changing and developing. It bore the strong impress of the new ideas of Islam, and yet to call it Islamic civilization is confusing and probably incorrect. With their capital at Damascus, they soon left their simple ways of living and developed a more sophisticated culture. That period might be called one of Arab-Syrian civilization. Byzantine influences came to them, but most of all, when they moved to Baghdad, the traditions of old Iran affected them and they developed the Arab- Persian civilization which became dominant over all the vast areas they controlled. Widespread and apparently easy as the Arab conquests were, they did not go far beyond Sind in India, then or later. Was this due to the fact that India was still strong enough to resist effectively the invader? Probably so, for it is difficult to explain otherwise the lapse of several centuries before a real invasion took place. Partly it may have been due to the internal troubles of the Arabs. Sind fell away from the central authority at Baghdad and became a small independent Moslem state. But though there was no invasion, contacts between India and the Arab world grew, travelers came to and from, embassies were exchanged, Indian books, especially on mathematics and astronomy, were taken to Baghdad and were translated into Arabic. Many Indian physicians went to Baghdad. These trade and cultural relations were not confined to north India. The southern states of India also participated in them, especially the Rashtra-kutas, on the west coast of India, for purposes of trade.

This frequent intercourse inevitably led to Indians getting to know the new religion, Islam. Missionaries also came to spread this new faith and they were welcomed. Mosques were built. There was no objection raised either by the state or the people, nor were there any religious conflicts. It was the old tradition of India to be tolerant to all faiths and forms of worship. Thus Islam came as a religion to India several centuries before it came as a political force.

The new Arab Empire under the Ommeya Khalifas (Omme-yade Caliphs) had its seat and capital at Damascus where a splendid city grew up. But soon, about 750 A.C. the Abbasiya (Abbaside) Khalifas took the capital to Baghdad. Internal conflicts followed and Spain fell away from the central empire, but continued for long as an independent Arab state. Gradually the Baghdad Empire also weakened and split up into several states, and the Seljuk Turks came from central Asia and became politically all-powerful at Baghdad, though the Khalifa still functioned at their pleasure. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, a Turk, arose in Afghanistan, a great warrior and a brilliant captain, and he ignored and even taunted the Khalifa. But still Baghdad continued as the cultural centre of the Islamic world and even far-way Spain looked to it for inspiration. Europe was backward then in learn-ing and science and art and the amenities of life. It was Arab Spain, and especially the university of Cordoba, that kept the lamp of learning and intellectual curiosity burning throughout those dark ages of Europe and some of its light pierced the European gloom.

The Crusades beginning in 1095 A.C. went on for over a century and a half. These did not merely represent a struggle between two aggressive religions, a conflict between the Cross and the Crescent. 'The Crusades,' says Professor G. M. Trevelyan, the eminent historian, 'were the military and religious aspect of a general urge towards the east on the part of the reviving energies of Europe. The prize that Europe brought back from the Crusades was not the permanent liberation of the holy Speulchre or the potential unity of Christendom, of which the story of the Crusades was one long negation. She brought back instead the finer arts and crafts, luxury, science, and intellectual curiosity—everything that Peter the Hermit would most have despised.'

Before the last of the Crusades had ingloriously petered out, something cyclonic and cataclysmic had taken place in the heart of Asia. Chengiz (or Jenghiz) Khan had begun his devastating march westward. Born in Mongolia in 1155 A.C., he started on this great march, which was to convert central Asia into a heap of smoking ruins, in 1219. He was no youngster then. Bokhara, Samarkand, Herat, and Balkh, all great cities, each having more than a million inhabitants, were reduced to ashes. Chengiz went on to Kiev in Russia and then returned; Baghdad somehow escaped as it did not lie on his route. He died in 1227 at the age of seventy-two. His successors went further into Europe and, in 1258, Hulaku captured Baghdad and put an end to that famous centre of art and learning, where for over 500 years treasures from all parts of the world had come and accumulated. That gave a great shock to the distinctive Arab-Persian civilization in Asia, though this survived even under the Mongols; it continued especially in parts of North Africa and especially in Spain. Crowds of scholars with their books fled from Baghdad to Cairo and Spain and a renaissance of art and learning took place there. But Spain itself was slipping from the Arab grasp and Corodoba had fallen in 1236 A.C. For another two centuries and a half the kingdom of Granada continued as a bright centre of Arab culture. In 1492 A.C. Granada also fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, and Arab dominion in Spain ended. Thenceforward Cairo became the chief Arab centre, though it came under Turkish domination. The Ottoman Turks had captured Constantinople in 1453, thereby releasing those forces which gave birth to the European Renaissance.

The Mongol conquests in Asia and Europe represented some-thing new in the art of warfare. 'In scale and in quality,' says Liddell Hart, 'in surprise and in mobility, in the strategic and in the .tactical indirect approach their (the Mongols') campaigns surpass any in history.' Chengiz Khan was undoubtedly one of the greatest, if not the greatest, military leaders that the world has produced. The chivalry of Asia and Europe was matchwood before him and his brilliant successors, and it was pure chance that central and western Europe escaped conquest. From these Mongols Europe learnt new lessons in strategy and the art of warfare. The use of gunpowder also came to Europe, through these Mongols, from China.

The Mongols did not come to India. They stopped at the Indus river and pursued their conquests elsewhere. When their great empires faded away a number of smaller states rose in Asia, and then in 1369 Timur, a Turk, claiming to be a descendant of Chengiz Khan through his mother, tried to repeat the exploits of Chengiz. Samarkand, his capital, again became a seat of empire, brief-lived though this was. After Timur's death his successors were more interested in a quiet life and in cultivating the arts than in military exploits. A Timurid renaissance, as it is called, took place in central Asia and it was in this environment that Babar, a descendant of Timur, was born and grew up. Babar was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India; he was the first of the Grand Mughals. He captured Delhi in 1526.

Chengiz Khan was not a Moslem, as some people seem to imagine because of his name which is now associated with Islam. He is said to have believed in Shamaism, a religion of the sky. What this was I do not know but the word inevitably makes one think of the Arab word for Buddhists—Samani, which was derived from the Sanskrit Shravana. Debased forms of Buddhism flourished then in various parts of Asia, including Mongolia and it is probable that Chengiz grew up under their influence.

It is odd to think that the greatest military conqueror in history was probably some kind of a Buddhist [A kind of Shamanism or Shamaism still lingers in Arctic Siberia, Mongolia, and in Tanna Tuva in Soviet Central Asia. This appears to be based entirely on a belief in spirits and has apparently no connection whatever with Buddhism. Tet it may have been influenced long ago by some degraded forms of Buddhism which were gradually submerged in local-primitive superstitions. Tibet, which is patently a Buddhist country, has developed its own variety of Buddhism called Lamaism. Mongolia with its Shamanism has also the Living Buddha tradition. Thus there seem to be various gradations in northern and central Asia of Buddhism fading off into primitive beliefs]. In Central Asia, even to-day four legendary figures of great conquerors are remembered—Sikander (Alexander), Sultan Mah-mud, Chengiz Khan and Timur. To these four must be added now a fifth, another type of person, not a warrior, but a conqueror in a different realm, round whose name legend has already gathered — Lenin.

The Flowering of Arab Culture and Contacts with India

Having rapidly conquered large parts of Asia, Africa, and a bit of Europe, the Arabs turned their minds to conquests in other fields. The empire was being consolidated, many new countries had come within their ken and they were eager to find out about this world and its ways. The intellectual curiosity, the adventures in rationalist speculation, the spirit of scientific inquiry among the Arabs of the eighth and ninth centuries are very striking. Normally, in the early days of a religion based on fixed concepts and beliefs, faith is dominant and variations are not approved or encouraged. That faith had carried the Arabs far and that triumphant success itself must have deepened that faith. And yet we find them going beyond the limits of dogma and creed, dabbling with agnosticism, and turning their zeal and energy towards adventures of the mind. Arab travelers, among the greatest of their kind, go to far countries to find out what other peoples were doing and thinking, to study and understand their philosophies and sciences and ways of life, and then to develop their own thought. Scholars and books from abroad were brought to Baghdad and the Khalif al-Mansur (middle eighth century) established a re-search and translation bureau where translations were made from Greek, Syriac, Zend, Latin, and Sanskrit. Old monasteries in Syria, Asia Minor, and the Levant were ransacked for manu-scripts. The old Alexandrian schools had been closed by Christian bishops and their scholars had been driven out. Many of these exiles had drifted to Persia and elsewhere. They now found a wel-come and a safe haven in Baghdad and they brought Greek philosophy and science and mathematics with them—Plato and Aristotle, Ptolemy and Euclid. There were Nestorian and Jewish scholars and Indian physicians; philosophers and mathematicians.

All this continued and developed during the reigns of the Khalifs Harun-al-Rashid and al-Mamun (eighth and ninth centuries) and Baghdad became the biggest intellectual centre of the civilized world.

There were many contacts with India during this period and the Arabs learnt much of Indian mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. And yet, it would appear, that the initiative for all these contacts came chiefly from the Arabs and though the Arabs learned much from India, the Indians did not learn much from the Arabs.

The Indians remained aloof, wrapped up in their own conceits, and keeping as far as possible within their own shells. This was unfortunate, for the intellectual ferment of Baghdad and the Arab renaissance movement would have shaken up the Indian mind just when it was losing much of its creative vigor. In that spirit of intellectual inquiry the Indians of an older days would have found kinship in thought.

The study of Indian learning and science in Baghdad was greatly encouraged by the powerful Barmak family (the Barmecides) which gave viziers to Harun-al-Rashid. This family had probably been converted from Buddhism. During an illness of Harun-al-Rashid, a physician named Manak was sent for from India. Manak settled down in Baghdad and was appointed the head of a large hospital there. Arab writers mention six other Indian physicians living in Baghdad at the time, besides Manak. In astronomy the Arabs improved on both the Indians and the Alexandrians and two famous names stand out: A1 Khwarismi, a mathematician and astronomer of the ninth century, and the poet-astronomer Omar Khayyam of the twelfth century. In medicine, Arab physicians and surgeons were famous in Asia and Europe. Most famous of them was Ibn Sina (Avicenna) of Bokhara, who was called the Prince of Physicians. He died in 1037 A.C. One of the great Arab thinkers and philosophers was Abu Nasr Farabi.

In philosophy the influence of India does not seem to have been marked. Both for philosophy and science the Arabs looked to Greece and the old Alexandrian schools. Plato and, more especially, Aristotle exercised a powerful influence on the Arab mind and since then, and up to the present day, they have become more in Arabic commentaries than in the original versions, standard subjects for study in Islamic schools. Neo-Platonism from Alexandria also influenced the Arab mind. The materialist school of Greek Philosophy reached the Arabs and led to the rise of rationalism and materialism. The rationalists tried to interpret religious tenets and injunctions in terms of reason; the materialists almost rejected religion altogether. What is noteworthy is the full freedom of discussion allowed in Baghdad for all these rival and conflicting theories. This controversy and conflict between faith and reason spread from Baghdad all over the Arab world and reached Spain. The nature of God was discussed and it was stated that He cannot have any qualities, such as were commonly attributed to Him. These qualities were human. To call God benevolent or righteous was, it was suggested, just as pagan and degraded as to say that He has a beard.

Rationalism led to agnosticism and skepticism. Gradually with the decline of Baghdad and the growth of the Turkish power, this spirit of rationalist inquiry lessened. But in Arab Spain it still continued and one of the most famous of Arab philosophers in Spain went to the limits of ir religion. This was Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who lived in the twelfth century. He is reported to have said of the various religions of his time that they were meant for children or for fools or they could not be acted upon. Whether he actually said so or not is doubtful, but even the tradition shows the kind of man he was, and he suffered for his opinions. In many ways he was remarkable. He wrote strongly in favor of giving women a chance to play a part in public activities and held that they were fully capable of justifying themselves. He also suggested that incurables and such-like persons should be liquidated as they were a burden on society.

Spain was then far in advance of the other centres of European learning and Arab and Jewish scholars from Cordoba were greatly respected in Paris and elsewhere. These Arabs evidently had no high opinion of the other Europeans. An Arab writer named Said, of Toledo, described the Europeans living north of the Pyrenees thus: 'They are of a cold temperament and never reach maturity. They are of a great stature and of a white colour. But they lack all sharpness of wit and penetration of intellect.'

The flowering of Arab culture and civilization in western and central Asia derived its inspiration from two main sources—Arab and Iranian. The two mixed inextricably, producing a vigor of thought as well as a high standard of living conditions for the upper classes. From the Arabs came the vigor and the spirit of inquiry; from the Iranians, the graces of life, art, and luxury.

As Baghdad waned under Turkish domination, the spirit of rationalism and inquiry also declined. Chengiz Khan and the Mongols put an end to all this. A hundred years later central Asia woke up again and Samarkand and Herat became centres for painting and architecture, reviving somewhat the old traditions of Arab-Persian civilization. But there was no revival of Arab rationalism and interest in science. Islam had become a more rigid faith suited more to military conquests rather than the conquests of the mind. Its chief representatives in Asia were no longer the Arabs, but the Turks [have often used the word 'Turk' or 'Turki'. This may confuse, as 'Turk' is associated now with the people of Turkey, who are descended from the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks. Bnt there were other kinds of Turks also—Seljuks, etc. All the Turanian races of Central Asia, Chinese Turkestan, etc., may be called Turks or Turkis].  and the Mongols (later called Mughals in India), and to some extent the Afghans. These Mongols in western Asia had become Moslems; in the Far East and in the middle regions many took to Buddhism.