India [antikvár]

Introduction "Swagatam"-welcome - to India, a land whosé variety and contrasts never fail to astonish the first-time visitor; a subcontinent snow-capped by the Himalayas and the ehilly mountain borders of Nepál, Tibet and China to the north; lapped on either side by the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, and caressed by the tropical waves of the Indián Ocean to the south. One-third the size of Europe, its northern borders are on the same latitude as Sicily, its southern extremity parallel with equatorial Guinea in West Africa. On this huge land mass is just about everything for the traveller: temples, architecture, carvings-a heritage of one of the world's oldest cultures-music festivals, religious ceremonies, the Carnivals of Goa, Lama dances in Ladakh, Street markets, floating fruit vendors on the Lakes of Dal and Nagin, fire-eaters, snake charmers, the bustling crowds of Delhi and Calcutta; the legacies of the British Raj - Victorian houseboats on the Lakes of Kashmir and the legendary hill stations where British officers installed their wives away from the heat and clamour of the Delhi plain. All this and more awaits the traveller in India. Apart from feasting his senses-dazzling colours like Diwali's thousand flickering lamps, the ever-present perfume of sandalwood, mangoes and jasmine, the magicai sound of the flute marking the cow-dust hour, or the silvery tinkle of ladies anklets-the visitor can indulge himself in a wide rangé of activities. He can trek in the heady uplands, bird watch in piacid lakes and rolling hills, seek tigers in the game reserves or just stretch out beneath the palms and casuarina trees on somé of the longest and emptiest beaches in the world. And at the end of the day, he can slip into a cool bed in a former Maharajah's Palace, on a houseboat, in an old imperial hunting lodge, in a beach village or evén a tented camp-these are just somé of the possibilities available to those journeying in India today. India's recorded history begins with Alexander the Great's expedition in 326 BC, and continues with a succession of dynasties or empires that laid the foundation stones of the India of today. The first of these was the Mauryan Empire under King Asoka (273-232 BC) but it was not until the era of the Guptas in the fourth century AD that Indián culture began to flourish. Schools and universities were established under the Guptas, the sciences of philosophy and astronomy flourished, and Buddhism became established as the State religion. This was the Golden Age of Indián culture. Somé 500 years later came the Cholas dynasty, whose architecture and buildings-many of which still stand today-dotted the Indián landscape as far as Ceylon and even Indonesia. At the end of the Cholas dynasty, Of white andgrey-veined marble, the Moti Masjid, or 'Pearl Mosque' left stands within the Red Fort at Delhi. Overleaf: a view of the River Jumna and Taj Mahal seenJrom one of the Golden Pavilions in the Red Fort at Agra. around the thirteenth century, the Muslim influence of Iran and Afghanistan began to be felt in India and when the Portuguese colonists arrived in the sixteenth century and backed the Hindus against the Muslims the rivalry between the two religions was at its peak, a rivalry that has spawned bloody conflict, has seen the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan and which, in more moderate form, still exists today. Akbar (1556-1605) tried in vain to unité the faiths; Jahangir and Shah Jahan kept the peace by subjugating the Muslim Princes, but Islam was not to be denied and somé of the finest shrines in the country - including the Taj Mahal-were built for the glory of Islam. In the eighteenth century it was the turn of the British to colonise India and they did so, in the words of one authority, in "one of the largest colonial structures in the history of the world". It lasted well over a hundred years, survived the brutal Indián Mutiny of 1857/8 when the British reprisals were even more savage than the "crimes" they were intended to punish, and was only brought down by the civil disobedience campaign of the legendary Gandhi immediately after the Second World War. It is a dramatic and colourful history, every page of which is etched in one way or another on the dramatic and colourful Indián landscape and way of life. Meet the Indians Like the land they inhabit, the people of India are rich in contrast. There are nearly 600 millión split between twenty or more religions; thousands of castes, speaking more than 1,600 different languages or dialecüs. Punjabis and Kashmiris in the north are regularly over six feet tall and are elegant and statuesque; in the south where skins are much darker, pygmies can be found. The extremes of wealth and poverty are alsó obvious, from the opulence óf somé princes, industrialists and commercial entrepreneurs to the poverty in which more than half the population still lives; from the comfortable houses of astronomers and engineers to the depressing huts of somé half a millión villages throughout the country that are still without electricity; there are ivory workers, goldsmiths, gemcutters, musicians and dancers, academics who can speak seven or eight languages; there are Nobel prizewinners, and there is the 60 per cent of the population which is illiterate. Within this diversity, the caste system still operates. According to one authority this system is "a belief in the impurity of social relationships or contacts with members of other castés deeply rooted in those owing allegiance to Hinduism" (who now comprise somé 80 per cent of Indians). There are four castes: the highest is the Brahmans, of whom there are somé three millión, mainly employed in the service of temples, but alsó very active in social and 7