Hinduism and Brahmanism in India

Hinduism has more adherents than any other Indian religion. As recorded in the 2001 census, its followers number about 828 million, or 80.5% of the population. More than a religion, Hinduism is a total way of life encompassing social order, law, science, literature, and art. Incorporated within Hinduism is the body of Indo-Aryan thought and ritual, which has a tradition dating from some time between 2000 B.C. and 1000 B.C., stemming from the ancient religious books known as the Veda but altered and expanded in post-Vedic times as the Aryan invaders blended with the non-Aryan indigenous Indians. This constitutes the "higher" religion called Brahmanism. It is contrasted with a mass of belief subliterate in origin, some of it pre-Aryan, and coming from all the racial and cultural elements that have existed in the country. The latter is the "lower" religion, or popular Hinduism.

Hinduism countenances a vast range of religious beliefs, many of which are contradictory. It varies from a naïve animism to polytheism, monotheism, and even a rigorous, sophisticated intellectual monism. It has no formal creed, no standardized cult practice, and no controlling ecclesiastical organization. Its adherents usually ascribe incontrovertible authority to the Vedas, but refer to that ancient body of texts less frequently than to later literature.

To Hindu devotees of pure monism all phenomenal existence is only relatively real. Others accept simpler and more easily grasped concepts. Ideas of deity also vary. On medium and high intellectual levels Hindus usually adhere to sects or cults devoted either to the great gods Shiva (śiva) and Vishnu (viṣṇu) or to lesser deities associated with them. Vishnu may be worshiped in his incarnations (avatar, avatāra); Shiva is often worshiped in his phallic symbol (linga), with which may be associated the female sex symbol (yoni) as the emblem of his wife Pārvatī. A variation of Hinduism is the adoration of the female principle or power called Shakti (śakti), represented as a goddess, as the creative and effective energy in the universe. This type of worship a variety of Tantrism, is usually directed toward Devī ("the goddess"), wife of Shiva, and otherwise called by such names as Pārvatī, Umā, Durgā, Gaurī, Bhavānī, Kālī, and Ambikā, who is viewed as the universal mother.

On the highest intellectual level a Hindu seeks the one reality, whether conceived impersonally as the neuter Brahman or theistically as Shiva or Vishnu. Once he succeeds, he may continue to live in the world but without emotional attachment to it. He has passed beyond sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, and good and evil.

Hinduism accepts on faith the joint doctrine of rebirth and works. Every living being at the time of death is reborn in a different form, either higher or lower, whether as a human being, an animal, a heavenly being, or a hell-dweller, and from that state he or she will again be reborn, and so on endlessly. The precise form of each rebirth is determined by the balancing of the being's deeds, good and evil, in previous existences. Escape from the cycle of rebirth constitutes salvation, a state of perfect blissful consciousness, which may be gained by acquiring perfect knowledge or performing one's duty perfectly, or through the grace of the supreme deity won by pure devotion (bhakti). In theory, salvation is the goal of every human being, but is so difficult to attain that most Hindus aim only to improve their condition in the next existence.

The social structure of Hinduism is embraced in the four-tier varna, or caste, system, which arranges humankind in a hierarchy of groups. Caste is hereditary, and nontransferable. The caste system prescribes regulations concerning marriage, eating, and many other phases of life, though these restrictions have often been modified or discarded by civil law. In theory, each caste has a separate social function or occupation, but in practice this rule has never been strictly enforceable.

At the top of the caste system are the Brahmans, representing about 3.5% of the Hindu community; in traditional law they are a highly privileged group, the custodians of sacred learning, who also constitute the priesthood. At the bottom, outside the caste system, are the Dalits (the Panchama, or "fifth" category, the so-called untouchables). Between Brahmans and Dalits are three major caste groups: Kshatriyas, theoretically temporal rulers; Vaisyas, merchants or artisans; and Sudras, servants.

An outstanding ethical principle of Hinduism is ahimsa (ahiṃsā), the noninjury of living beings, which should be practiced not only toward one's fellow human being, but also toward the animal world. The cow, which holds a place of peculiar sanctity and inviolability, is to be given special protection.

The remains of the early Indus civilizations in prehistoric times, especially of the Harappa period (about 2500–1800 B.C.), offer presumptive evidence of worship of a god with some characteristics of Shiva, of a cult of the Great Mother or Earth Goddess, and of phallic worship. Certain trees appear to have been sacred, including the pipal. On some seals of the period are trees associated with female figures that may represent fertility deities.

The religious beliefs and practices of the Indo-Aryans, who are believed to have entered India in the second half of the 2d millennium B.C., are recorded in a body of texts known collectively as the Veda, meaning "knowledge." The earliest and most important Vedic book—which is also India's oldest book—is the Rig Veda (Book of Knowledge of Hymns), probably compiled before 1000 B.C. and consisting of 1,028 hymns composed by sages (rishi or ṣi) for use in the religious sacrificial ritual. Accompanying it and of almost equal antiquity are three other compilations: the Yajur-Veda, which preserves the prose formulas used in the Vedic sacrificial ritual; the Sāma-Veda, which contains the chants for the ritual; and the Atharva-Veda, which provides material for private religious use.

The Veda looks upon the universe in dualistic terms of good and evil. The gods, most of which are anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces or phenomena, are benevolent and figures of light; opposing them are demons, malevolent figures of darkness. Indra leads the gods against the demons and slays their leader, Vritra (tra), but the warfare between good and evil never ceases. The gods enforce a system of order, known as the rita (Sanskrit ta), on earth, in the atmosphere, and in heaven. The demons, living in a place of chaos and darkness beneath the earth, oppose the rita and seek to undermine it, to obstruct the will of the gods, and to destroy human beings.

The gods are strengthened in this warfare by the sacrificial fire ritual, which men celebrate through the Brahman priesthood. In return for this mortal support the gods grant favors to men—progeny, health, long life, wealth, victory over mortal enemies. Hence, great importance is attached to this ritual; it becomes ever more complicated as time passes, and eventually is esteemed as more potent than the gods themselves, who are subject to its power. The increasing complexity of the ritual and the consequent increase in the importance of the Brahmans are exhibited in texts, called Brahmanas, that are appendages to the Vedas.

Late in the Rigvedic period, however, doubt was expressed about the accepted view of cosmogony and the supremacy of the gods; even the sacrifice was subject to skepticism. New explanations were offered, some monotheistic in character, and a neuter monistic first principle was posited. These philosophically speculative attempts led to a series of texts called Upanishads, which had a remarkably stimulating effect upon the development of Indian thought.

The Upanishads investigate the nature of both the universe and the human psyche, or soul. The monistic identification of the human soul (ātman) and the universal soul or essence (brahman) is the supreme achievement of those texts, though a dualistic view also appears in them, affirming the reality of both soul (purusa) and matter (prakrti). The Upanishads are the first texts to develop the doctrine of rebirth and retribution for one's deeds (karma) in succeeding existences. They also speak of yoga as an aid to meditation.

In the period of approximately 1,000 years from the time of the older Upanishads, or roughly from around 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., the six orthodox systems of Indian philosophy, which provide the intellectual basis for Brahmanical Hinduism, were evolved and gained their classical form. They are 1) Pūrva- or Karma-Mīmāṃsā, "discussion of the first, or practical, part" of the Vedic religion; 2) Uttara-Mīmāṃsā, "discussion of the latter part" of the Vedic religion (the Vedānta); 3) Nyāya, "logical method"; 4) Vaiśeṣika, "differentiation," the philosophy of atomism; 5) Sāṃkhya, "reason" or "enumeration," an analysis of nature; and 6) Yoga, an exposition of the technique of meditation.

Jainism and Buddhism

The two great heterodox indigenous religions of India are Jainism and Buddhism. Both deny the validity of Brahmanical ritual and reject the supremacy of the Brahmans but accept as axiomatic the doctrines of karma and rebirth. Jainism teaches that salvation, or release from the cycle of rebirth, can be won only by the most rigorous asceticism and intense meditation.

Buddhism was founded in the 6th century B.C. by Siddhārtha Gautama, known by the honorific title Buddha, "the Enlightened One." Its distinctive teachings are expressed in the Four Noble Truths: 1) birth, sickness, death, and frustration are painful; 2) the pain arises from thirst or desire; 3) the cessation of pain comes from complete extinction of this desire; 4) the way to extinguish desire is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

 

Sikhism

Among the other religions originating in India, the most virile today is Sikhism. It was founded in the Punjab in the 15th century A.D. by Guru Nānak, who drew on Islam as well as native Indian tradition. Nānak abhorred idolatry and rejected the Hindu caste system. He accepted the doctrines of karma and rebirth and required exaltation of the spiritual preceptor (guru) by his disciples (sikha). Sikhism preaches monotheism, service to others, humility, self-restraint, and the mystical value of prayer.

Reformed Hinduism

In the 19th century, religious reform movements arose partly from the impact of Western ideas upon Hinduism. Foremost among these was the Brahmo (Brāhma) Samāj founded by Rām Mohan Roy. A theistic, nonidolatrous cult, the Brahmo Samāj favors social reform.

Another important 19th century movement was the Ārya Samāj, founded by a Brahman named Dayānand Sarasvatī (Dayanand Saraswati), who aimed to restore the religion and social institutions of the Vedas, to protect cows, to restore India's glorious past, and to check the advance of Islam and Christianity.

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The Problems of Modern India

Modern India's basic problem is economic. A rapidly increasing population and a food supply dependent upon the uncertainties of the annual monsoon have made it necessary to obtain foreign aid for importing grain, for breeding hardier strains of cereals, for developing industry, and for curbing population growth. 

Pressing political problems result from regional enmities caused by language differences and by religious differences, which produce conflict between orthodox Hinduism and Islam. There are also perennial international disputes between India and Pakistan over Cashmere and between India and China over border areas in the Himalaya.

Many millions of Indians still live at the lowest level of subsistence, constantly threatened by crop failure and food shortage, even famine. The farmland in many areas receives inadequate fertilization, and the people's diet is low in proteins. Certain features of the caste system limit social mobility for many people, and the efforts of the government have not yet relieved the conditions of the depressed portion of the population.

Several of India's state governments have proved so unstable that the central government has had to rule some states directly for a time. The dominance of the Indian National Congress party, under whose leadership India advanced to independence, was diminished but not broken before 1977. Meanwhile, new parties representing a great range of viewpoints had arisen.

To meet its problems, India has pursued planned economic development, increased its educational facilities, adopted programs of village improvement, and done much else to meet the country's needs. To accomplish all this, it has relied heavily on outside aid and will continue to do so for some time to come. A future of prosperity in a world where peace prevails was the ideal of Mahatma Gained, India's greatest leader in modern times, and it remains the Indian ideal today, though one difficult to realize.

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The Invaders and Ancient Culture of India

Until the 16th century most of the peoples entering India came by way of passes in the northern mountain wall. After the voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498, Europeans came by sea. Typically, invaders coming through the northwest passes would subdue a region, impose their power upon it, and introduce their own institutions. Cultural blend was the result, with the new dominating in some aspects of life and the old remaining relatively little altered in others. Then new invaders would repeat the process.

The earliest known conquerors were the Aryans, or Indo-Europeans. They are generally considered to have entered India sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., bringing with them their language, religion, and general culture, to all of which scholars today give the name "Vedic." In time their religion and way of life, modified by processes of absorption, developed into Hinduism.

Islamic civilization first came to India when Arabs entered the subcontinent by sea from the Persian Gulf at the beginning of the 8th century A.D. This incursion was followed by the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni in the 11th century, and these in turn were succeeded by invasions by other Islamic peoples, who occupied the northern part of India. The most important of the conquests was by the Mughuls, who succeeded in winning control of most of the country in the 16th century. Islamic penetration of India, however, never resulted in a fusion of Islam with Hinduism, and it was the irreconcilability of these two great faiths that ultimately led to the formation of the separate nation of Pakistan in 1947. Only the British, whose period of dominance began in the 18th century, were able to unite the country. They gave India the longest period of internal peace it had ever known.

India has one of the world's most ancient cultures. The earliest records of it are archaeological discoveries in the Indus Valley dating from the 3d millennium B.C. Unlike the cultures of early Greece and Egypt, it has survived the ravages of conquerors, although it is continually being modified. India's size and its compartmentalization by mountains and deserts prevented the political unification that would have led to cultural uniformity. But Hinduism has been marked by an amazing tolerance of varying metaphysical ideas. 

Over the ages it has not only permitted the penetration of many revolutionary religious ideas but has actually accepted most of them, even though in doing so it has harbored mutually contradictory dogmas. It is thus not a single creed but a vast assemblage of ideas and practices.

On the other hand, Hinduism established rigid rules for most of the practical aspects of life, perhaps even as early as in the time of the Indus civilization. Some ancient Hindu institutions are today subjects of social reform.

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Tribal Peoples in India

In several regions of the country there are groups of people who live outside the mainstream of Indian civilization and are classified by demographers as "tribal peoples." While they differ greatly from group to group, these tribal peoples inhabit a more restricted world in a spatial as well as an interpersonal sense than other Indians, and their cultures lack the elaboration of the great Indian civilization. However, in many places where the tribal peoples speak the common language of the area, it is hard to draw a sharp line between them and the lowest castes of the Indian population.

According to the 1991 census, the tribal peoples number nearly 68 million. This figure includes diverse groups of a few thousand or even a few hundred as well as large tribes numbering 2 or 3 million.

Tribal Peoples of Assam

Assam is the homeland of more than 2 million tribal peoples who inhabit chiefly the hilly regions of the state. Here the line between the tribal peoples and the rest of the population can be more sharply drawn than in most other parts of India. Although a few tribes practice terraced agriculture, most of them still cultivate by cutting down and burning the jungle growth and sowing seed in the ashes. Every year or so they move on to a new patch of forest. (This method is practiced also by some of the tribal groups in central India.)

The tribes of Assam speak a number of different languages, none of which were reduced to writing until Christian missionaries undertook the task in the 19th century. One large group, the Khasis, are organized in 25 small states, each with its own chief. Descent is in the female line, and women play important roles in social, economic, and religious life. A number of distinct tribes, the members of which speak Tibeto-Burmese languages and are known collectively as the Nagas, constitute the majority of the population in the Naga Hills. Formerly they were warlike, and the practice of headhunting, which was chiefly for magical purposes, has not entirely died out. Although the Nagas differ from tribe to tribe in language and also in economic, social, and religious customs, they combined in the 1950s under a single leadership to demand autonomy, and in 1963 a separate state called Nagaland was inaugurated.

Tribes of Central India

A number of other tribal peoples are scattered in a wide belt across central India. The western end of the belt is the home of the largest single group, the Bhils. Some Bhils live in small communities more or less isolated in the hills, while others are attached as watchmen, menials, or agricultural laborers to villages occupied by members of the general Hindu population. All the Bhils speak the language common to the area, or a dialectal variation of it.

Farther east, in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, the Gonds, who speak a Dravidian language, form a bloc of about 3 million tribal peoples. Another Dravidian-speaking group, the Oraon, are found on the Chota Nagpur Plateau in Bihar along with a number of Munda-speaking tribes, the most important of which are the Santal, Ho, Munda, and Kharia. Other tribal peoples, some of them at least linguistically related to the speakers of Munda languages, extend throughout the hill country of Orissa.

A prominent feature of the village life of many of these peoples is the dormitory for young people. Among the Muria, one of the Gond tribes, both sexes share a single sleeping house, and where what appears to be the original form of the institution persists, each boy and girl is paired off in a more or less permanent relationship that is rarely broken until marriage to other partners is arranged by the parents. With their own leaders and their own rules and regulations, the young people form a semi-independent society of their own. Some of the tribes, however, segregate the sexes, and have two sleeping houses, one for bachelors and one for young girls.

In the central belt the tribal peoples are concentrated in the hilly sections, while the more fertile and easily accessible plains are occupied by Hindu castes. Where the two groups have come into contact, the distinguishing features of tribal life tend to give way, and the tribal peoples maintain a distinctive way of life.

Tribes of South India

This is also the pattern in South India. In the heavily forested hills of Kerala, in Tamil Nadu, and in Andhra Pradesh are small, scattered tribal groups who speak the language of the area but live a primitive life. Their economy is based on food gathering and on the sale of forest products. The Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, who number in all about 12,000, include a small group of several hundred who live a very primitive, seminomadic life in the hills of Amrabad. Their principal diet of wild tubers and fruits is supplemented by grain, which they cultivate in small patches; they have not adopted the plow, and their implements are the digging stick, ax, bow and arrow, and knife.

The Todas, 765 in number, present another contrast to the typical South Indian way of life. They are found in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. In physical appearance and in dress, they stand out from the surrounding population, and the architectural style of their temples and dwellings is distinctive and probably archaic. Their economic and religious activities, closely interwoven, center around their herds of buffalo. They are one of several matrilineal peoples in south India and practice polyandry.

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Cultural Diversity in India

With a few exceptions (such as the Parsis, who are relative newcomers), cultural variations can be correlated only in a very general way with differences in genetic inheritance (or "race"). The different peoples coming into India from east and west at different times adapted to different social and physical environments, and their subsequent development was shaped by influences that varied greatly. In some respects, the correlation is greater between culture and language than between culture and race.

A hundred years ago cultural differences of all kinds were much greater than they are today. British rule caused changes that worked together toward increasing uniformity, and developments since independence have been in the same direction. Nevertheless, striking differences persist, and it is scarcely too much to say that a Punjabi peasant transported to a Bengal village, or to South India, would feel himself a stranger in a strange land.

Family and Marriages

In southern India, Dravidian-speaking peoples are thought to have preserved features of a way of life developed before the coming of the Indo-Aryan speakers into India. For example, large groups of people in what is now Kerala, in accordance with a custom believed to have been widespread in the south, still trace their descent in the maternal line, and the head of the household is not the father but the mother's brother, whose property is inherited by his sister's son. Throughout southern India marriage with the mother's brother's daughter is permissible or preferred, and marriage between a man and his sister's daughter occurs. 

A puberty ceremony held for girls in the south is unknown in the north. A pattern of village organization that exists in the south makes possible marriage within the village, whereas in the north the village is usually exogamous.

Villages

In some parts of India, the village settlement is a very compact unit, the houses standing close together, sometimes with adjoining walls, as in the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. In Bengal the dwellings are more scattered, interspersed with trees, gardens, and ponds. In the southwest and here and there in other parts of the south, each household is spatially separate, and it is often hard to tell from the settlement pattern to which village, a particular household belongs. In the far north, in mountainous areas, houses are apt to be strung out along the ridge of a hill. Here the main building materials are stone and wood, whereas elsewhere in the north mud or brick is used. In Bengal, houses are sometimes constructed of woven bamboo and plastered with mud. Where it is available in the south, stone is used in building.

In the sub-Himalayan districts, the cultivated area consists of steep flights of terraces with retaining walls up to 8 feet (2.4 meters) or more in height. Some of the plots are too small for plow cultivation and here hoe-culture is practiced. It is not uncommon to find peoples and their flocks and herds moving with the season, to the valleys in winter and to the hills in summer. Along, the Tibetan border, before Tibet was annexed by China, groups of traders called Bhotias, with goats, sheep, and jibus (hybrid of yak and cow) as pack animals, moved back and forth across the high passes in the summer months and wintered in the Indian plains.

Religion

Particularly at the village level, there is a great deal of regional variation with respect to religious beliefs and practices. Concepts that are undeveloped in one area are often given a central place in the religious life of another. The snake-goddess Manasa, object of a cult in Bengal, is little more than a name elsewhere. The monkey-god Hanuman (or Maruti) is the most important village deity in the Deccan. Over much of the south, an elaborate festival is held to honor the major village goddess who is believed to cause and cure such diseases as smallpox and cholera. Reverence for ancestral spirits, especially in the paternal line, and periodic offerings to ensure their welfare are a part of present-day Hindu practice, although they probably preceded Hinduism in India. Certain peoples of South India, for example the Coorgs and the Nayars, have a greatly elaborated cult of ancestor worship, and ancestral spirits who are believed to punish wrongdoing are worshiped in household shrines and regularly propitiated.

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India and the Question of Race

Since the publication of the literary critic Edward Said's groundbreaking Orientalism in 1978, scholars have tended to regard as neither neutral nor unambiguous the knowledge produced by colonial powers about their non-Western subjects. Instead, such knowledge is treated as having played a significant role in the creation of "colonial realities," or flawed representations of the facts erected to suit the needs of the governing powers. In his book Imagining India (1990), for example, the historian Ronald Inden lays out the ways in which 19th-century British colonial administrators sought to control and pacify the subcontinent's populace by "essentializing" it—that is, by identifying clear and simple characteristics or qualities that purportedly defined Indianness (or Indian nature). 

The famous caste system was one such feature that drew the attention of the colonialists and produced in them efforts to rationalize and manipulate it. So too was the archetypal "Indian mind," a more diffuse but allegedly identifiable object. In both cases a set of complex realities surrounding or making up these phenomena were reduced to basic precepts or systems designed to provide direct understanding and also give Western administrators the tools they needed to extend their authority over the population.

Early Race Theory

One key area in which politics mixed with science to create something of an artificial reality was that of race theory. Nineteenth-century anthropologists had developed the method of anthropometry, or the measurement of certain bodily features, to help them classify the various peoples of the world into an ordered evolutionary scheme. British researchers in India made extensive use of the method and established a range of supposed physical "types" corresponding, they argued, with population movements of the distant or the more recent past. Most influential of all their efforts was the division of the population into two principal groups, the lighter skinned Aryans of the north and the darker skinned Dravidians of the south. 

Based on scant historical evidence, and on dubious assumptions about the superiority of the Aryan type (because of its similarity to the European), British colonial-era scholars advanced a picture of dark-skinned indigenous "savages" being gradually infiltrated by light-skinned Aryan "nobles" to produce the current mix of racial types. Another element of their thinking was that certain peoples, among them Sikhs and Gurkhas (from Nepal), represented "martial races," groups particularly adapted to military life. These schemes, as faulty as they were, were widely accepted and persisted in one version or another well into the 20th century.

Later scholars, earnestly seeking to understand the racial composition of India's population, expanded and refined the earlier schema. Prior to the advent of DNA testing and other modern methods of population genetics in the 1970s, regional experts continued to posit the existence of such types as the proto-Australoid (the aboriginal peoples), the paleo-Mediterranean (a mix of Dravidian-speaking and other peoples), and the Caucasoid, or Indo-European (descendants of the Aryans). Also acknowledged as having contributed to the subcontinent's racial mix were Turks from the western region, Asians ("Mongoloids") from the Himalayas, Africans from across the Arabian Sea (most imported as slaves by Muslim traders), and pockets of Persians, Arabs, and Portuguese who settled along the coasts.

Contemporary Understandings

The issue confronting the modern population geneticist or physical anthropologist working in India is to make sense of the human diversity represented among the nation's peoples while striving to approach the data scientifically, free of preconceptions about past migrations or the relative social status of one group over another. Such misunderstandings only fuel further misunderstandings. Although contemporary researchers have successfully isolated a few identifying features of the South Asian population as a whole, such as a low occurrence of type-A blood (perhaps related to a high incidence of smallpox), the work is ongoing and it could be years before a detailed picture of the genetic makeup of India's population, and subpopulations, emerges.

Typically today, researchers from a variety of different disciplines either work together in a multidisciplinary project or consult each others' findings to arrive at a well-rounded picture. Thus physical anthropologists, archaeologists, Sanskritists, historians, and linguists may be found collaborating on work designed to comprehend the problem of population composition, movement, and intermixture. Because the population of South Asia at the end of the first millennium B.C. is estimated to have been as high as 100 million, and the current population is nearing 1 billion, the task facing these researchers is considerable. The earliest data indicate only that, except for a few isolated subpopulations such as the Negrito peoples of the Andaman Islands or the largely extinct Veddas of Sri Lanka (and formerly of South India), radical differentiation between racial groups is less prominent than apparent homogeneity among them. Still, much work remains to be done.

Racial Chauvinism

Despite the excellent work being done by serious scholars, there are groups inside India that have sought to rehabilitate earlier forms of racial "science" in order to further their own political goals. Primarily these groups are Hindu nationalists who proclaim themselves the descendants of the original Aryan nobles and thus the true inheritors of Indian civilization. At the same time, there are militant spokespersons for India's so-called Dravidians and underclass Dalits ("untouchables") who draw on the same or similar theories in opposing the claims of the "Aryan" supremacists. The field is a contentious one and serves to show how difficult it is to remove the "essentializing" urge from popular political discourse.

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Facts About Kandahar, Afghanistan

Kandahar is a historic city in Afghanistan, at an elevation of 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) in the warmer, southeastern part of the country, where snow rarely lies for long. It is accordingly famed for its fruits and vegetables, as well as cereals, grown on land irrigated by underground canals, or qanats. These foodstuffs are exported to the colder regions of northern Afghanistan and to Pakistan. Kandahar (Qandahar) forms with Kabul and Herat a strategic triangle, possession of which gives military control of Afghanistan; hence the region has been of commercial and political importance all through recorded history. The modern town, comprising old narrow streets and modern roads, is on the paved highway running northwestward to Herat and Iran. Kandahar has a population of 324,800 (2006 est.).

 

In Hellenistic times, Kandahar was a center of the region of Arachosia. Buddhism was early introduced there, possibly by the Indian emperor Asoka (3d century B.C.). The name of the city must be connected with the ancient kingdom of Gandhara. The actual city site has varied at different stages in its history, and the site occupied from Hellenistic times until the 18th century, 3 miles (5 km) from the present city, is now being investigated archaeologically. Islamic control replaced a native Iranian dynasty by the 9th century A.D.

In the mid-18th century, Kandahar became the center of the Durrani Afghans, who subsequently took power as kings of Afghanistan but transferred their capital to Kabul. Until the late 19th century Kandahar had a fairly disturbed history, with civil warfare between rival princes and British occupations during the Afghan wars of 1839–1842 and 1878–1880, on the latter occasion becoming briefly the center of a separate Afghan principality.

 

Lying as it does in a region ethnically strongly Pushtun (Pathan), Kandahar served as the spiritual headquarters of the Taliban during and after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As such, it played a prominent role in a revival of the Pushtu (Pashto) language and its literature. The city is, however, socially conservative and has lagged behind Kabul in educational and social progress. Kandahar, the last major Taliban stronghold, surrendered to opposition forces backed by the United States on Dec. 7, 2001.

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