7

Oriental War and Peace

(2000–200 BC)

How powerful and enduring human civilizations arose in the Far East

IF AN OLYMPIC GOLD medal were to be awarded to the largest, most robust human civilization ever to have existed on the earth, there would only be one serious contender – China.

Modern China is awe-inspiring. It is home to 1.3 billion people, more than a fifth of the world’s population. It has the fastest-growing economy in the world, and can arguably take the credit for cradling more inventions and discoveries that have made a real difference to people’s lives than any other country in history. The list includes the blast furnace, paper, gunpowder, the compass and printing and competitive examinations (see pages 191, 198, 200, 203).

Most impressive of all is its age. China is as ancient as any of those early civilizations that grew up around the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, all of which have long since collapsed or been subsumed into other encroaching cultures and empires. Yet the foundations of modern China, both politically and culturally, were laid down more than 3,000 years ago. This land of fiery dragons and giant pandas (there are still a few left) is humankind’s most remarkable survivor, and, quite possibly, it is now this civilization more than any other that holds the key to the future of both mankind and the overall health of the planet earth herself (see page 292). What was it that made this great power so different and so special, and has enabled its ancient culture to survive to this day?

The rice age

By about 2000 BC, two distinct civilizations were emerging in China along the banks of its river systems, the Yellow River to the north and the enormous Yangtze, located further south (see plate 6). Roaming hunter-gathering tribes probably began cultivating crops as early as 7000 BC along the banks of the Yangtze, the greatest river system in east Asia. With its source in the glaciers of Tibet, this mighty river flows west to east, then, after twisting and turning over the course of some 4,000 miles, it finally spills its muddy load into the East China Sea.

By about 3000 BC the frequent flooding of the river and its 700 tributaries made this an ideal place for growing rice, an almost magically productive and nutritious source of food which has the best record of any crop on earth for supporting large, intensive human populations. Today India and China are the most populous human civilizations largely thanks to their early production of rice, which can under natural conditions feed more humans per hectare than any other staple agricultural crop.

Rice is highly nutritious and remarkably resistant to pests. Flooded paddy fields provide ideal habitats for water-loving creatures such as frogs and snakes that feed off insects which otherwise spoil crops. Water cover is also perfect protection from the threat of self-sowing weeds, significantly increasing the chances of a successful crop. Nutrients flow freely around the waterlogged soil of paddy fields, renewing them just as the nitrogen-rich mud revitalized lands flooded by the Nile each year, giving the ancient Egyptians their head start thousands of miles to the west (see page 108).

But growing rice is hard work. Each plant has to be sown individually and expertise in irrigation is necessary to ensure flooding at the right times of the year. Thankfully, the abundance of a suitable natural workforce in the form of water buffalo meant that people here learned early on how to harness animal power for ploughing, puddling and harrowing the fields.

The rich allure of rice didn’t go unnoticed by the people living further to the north, along China’s other river system. The Yellow River Valley wasn’t suitable for cultivating rice because the climate wasn’t wet enough. Instead, the people there had their own staple crop, in the form of millet, which they made into noodles. Although nutritious, millet seed cannot be made into leavened bread, so it never really caught on in Western civilizations, which have tended to use it as birdseed instead of eating it themselves.

How eastern fortunes were woven in silk

The Yangshao people, who lived between 5000 and 2000 BC along the Yellow River Valley, are thought to have been the first ever to have practised China’s most lucrative long-term secret – silkworm cultivation.

Silk is extraordinary stuff. It is entirely natural. It reflects the light, making it look shiny and glamorous, and above all it is amazingly strong. In fact, silk is the strongest natural fibre known to man. Insects manufacture silk as a kind of miniature binding rope to protect their larvae. Gradually, as the larvae hatch, they gnaw through the silk rope to emerge out of the cocoon as butterflies or moths. Some adult insects, such as spiders, use silk for other purposes, such as making webs for catching prey.

Legend has it that the magical properties of silk were first discovered by Leizu, wife of the Yellow Emperor, who is recorded as having reigned from 2697 to 2598 BC. While out for a walk she is supposed to have noticed something wrong with the Emperor’s mulberry trees. She found thousands of caterpillars munching their way through the leaves, causing a great deal of damage. She collected some of the cocoons from which the caterpillars came and then sat down to drink a cup of tea. While she was taking a sip a moth larva accidentally dropped into the steaming water and a fine thread started to unwind itself from around the cocoon. Leizu found she could wrap this fine, strong cord around her finger. Inspiration struck. She persuaded the Emperor to plant a whole grove of mulberry trees, following which she worked out how to harness silk by reeling it into long threads that could then be woven into shiny pieces of precious cloth.

The practice of what is now called sericulture, which is the deliberate farming of a type of caterpillar called Bombyx mori, brought enormous wealth and prosperity to China. For as long as 3,000 years Chinese farmers and tradespeople have profited by trading silk with other civilizations who marvelled at its shimmering appearance. Plastic man-made alternatives, in the form of satin, nylon and acrylic, weren’t concocted until the Second World War (see page 263).

Silk was the primary cause of the development of a series of overland trade routes that later become known as the Silk Road (see plate 6). By the time of the Roman Empire (44 BC–476 AD), silk was in huge demand by Mediterranean people. Its fine texture and semi-transparent shimmer made it one of the great luxuries of the ancient world.

The power of iron

Chinese people probably weren’t the first to discover that iron was a cheaper and more effective metal than bronze for making tools and weapons. The Hittites of central Turkey are known to have mastered the technique of smelting iron ore and were hammering on the first blacksmiths’ anvils by about 1400 BC, which is when the European and Mediterranean Iron Age is said to have begun. The iron they first used probably came from meteorites. But Chinese smiths from the region of Wu on the banks of the Yangtze were the first to work out how best to harness the iron found inside the ores of the earth’s rocks. The manufacturing techniques they developed for casting iron were so advanced that they weren’t matched in Europe for another 1,500 years.

Iron is a natural gift of the earth and almost as essential to the development of modern human civilizations as oxygen is to animal life. Iron is by far the most common metal in use now – about 95 per cent of all metals used today are based on it. Without it, modern civilization would be very different indeed. Iron and steel, its derivative, are the materials of choice for making everything from cars to ships, pipes to forks, and computer disk drives to guns and skyscrapers.

Unlike copper, though, iron is not found in a pure form. Other elements like to react with it – for example, oxygen – making compounds such as red iron oxide. To get the iron out requires effort and a little know-how, something the Chinese had attained by about 500 BC, which is when they built the world’s first blast furnace. When iron ores are heated to about 1,450º C a liquid forms. It can then be poured into moulds to make implements of any shape and size. As it cools, the metal becomes strong and rigid. The first iron implements were almost all used in agriculture. Iron ploughs were a magical technological leap forward because they could cut through the hardest of clay soils, turning huge areas of land from scrubby waste into high-yielding fields of rice. The more food, the more people could be fed. The more people, the stronger a government could become by creating well-nourished, easily supplied, permanent standing armies.

Knowledge of how to smelt iron spread rapidly. By the time of the Hàn Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), Chinese metalworking had become established on a scale not reached in the West until the eighteenth century. The Chinese government built a series of large blast furnaces in Henan Province, each one capable of producing several tonnes of iron a day.

While iron and rice were initially the preserve of the southern Chinese people, those from the silk-weaving north were determined not to be left behind. These were the people who provided the initial impetus to centralize, consolidate, conquer and combine the whole area into a single civilization. For rice, silk and iron read food, wealth and war. It is not hard to see why such deep knowledge of how to exploit the natural world to human advantage became a magnet around which a single powerful civilization eventually arose, uniting the people of the two great river valleys.

History, bones and characters

The Shang Dynasty (1766–1050 BC) was the first to leave tangible archaeological traces in its wake. Archaeologists excavating a site called Yin in the 1920s uncovered eleven royal tombs and the foundations of a palace. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade and stone artefacts were found. They show that this was a highly advanced culture with a fully developed system of writing, ritual practices and impressive armaments that helped its people conquer and rule lands for miles around. Human sacrifices were common. Many members of the Shang royal family were buried with a complete household of servants, including chariots, horses and charioteers – all thought essential for protection in the afterlife.

Defence against enemies wasn’t the only concern of these early Chinese Kings of the north. Just as important was the strongly held belief that Kings alone provided a critical link between the gods and mankind. Unlike any other rulers we have seen so far, Chinese Kings took it upon themselves to perform detailed and highly technical fortune-telling rituals.

This was done in a most bizarre and ingenious way using turtle shells or the bones of an ox. A heated rod would be pushed into the shell or bone, causing it to crack. Like a modern-day palm reader, the King would interpret the length and direction of the lines to reveal the answers to questions which were important to him and his people. When will it rain? Will we win the next battle? Will we have a bumper harvest this year? Sometimes these questions would be inscribed on the shells themselves, using a form of symbolic writing that has been easy for modern historians to decipher since it resembles modern Chinese writing so closely. This in itself is testament to how today’s China has its roots sunk deep in the past and that its culture represents by far the longest-surviving pattern of continuous civilized human behaviour.

Hundreds of thousands of oracle bones with ancient writing on them have been found in recent times. Most oracle bones have now been traced back to the tombs at Yin, where more than 20,000 were found during the excavations of the 1920s and 1930s. They form the earliest significant body of Chinese writing yet to have been discovered.

Warring states and the first great philosopher

The first thousand years of recorded Chinese history, from about 1200 to 200 BC, is a story of consolidation and conquest, largely thanks to the combined impact of rice, silk and iron. The kings of Shang, and then the Zhou, who took charge in 1046 BC following victory at the Battle of Muye, used the Yellow River as their main corridor of power (see plate 6). They claimed that their power came directly from heaven. They meant it. Their rule was symbolized by an axe, usually embellished with hungry smiles and devouring teeth.

In the end, their capital Hào (near the present-day city of Xi’an) was sacked by barbarian invaders, and in 722 BC the Zhou had to move their headquarters further east to Luoyang, in the present-day Henan Province. Central authority rapidly disintegrated and a series of smaller states, some with rulers calling themselves Kings, emerged to fill the gap. By 500 BC these states had been consolidated into seven major powers, each vying for the prize of a united China, with its promise of almost infinite supplies of food, wealth and power. Over the next 300 years it was the military struggle for supremacy between these states, known as the Warring States Period, which finally created the platform for uniting China.

During this period a number of different philosophies evolved, called the Hundred Schools of Thought. Wise men and thinkers wandered from court to court, advising kings and nobles on how they might live justly, rule wisely and advance the progress of their kingdoms. One such man was Kongzi, later known to the Western world as Confucius. Tradition says he lived from about 551 to 479 BC. His legacy lives on in societies across the Far East, from Japan and China to Korea and Vietnam.

Kongzi was a minister of justice in the state of Lu. One day, aged about fifty-five, he decided to quit his job and go on a trek around the kingdoms of northern China to preach his message of the right way to lead a virtuous life and the best way to rule a kingdom. Confucius sought a system for living that could restore unity, because he thought that the world was descending into an abyss of power struggles and military confrontations. He taught that obedience, correct behaviour and good etiquette were ways in which order in society could be restored. A good king would set a good example to his people, and good subjects were bound to obey.

What Confucius didn’t concern himself with is almost as revealing as what he actually taught. His philosophy has no place for gods, no afterlife, no discussion or consideration of a divine soul or spirit. In a way, Confucius developed the first godless theory of personal and political behaviour. Family loyalty, respect for older people and reverence for the past were his three pillars of social virtue.

A flavour of his philosophy can be captured by some of his most famous sayings. He hated war and confrontation, had a love of history and was always pragmatic: ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’ ‘Study the past as if you would define the future.’ ‘The only constant is change.’ A number of great scholarly works are attributed to Confucius, although it is far from clear whether he actually wrote any of them. For almost 2,000 years Chinese civil servants, lawyers, military officers and other officials were required to study these texts, called the Four Books and Five Classics, in order to qualify to serve the state. This emphasis on education, teaching, conformity and obedience is still a hallmark of the enduring society that is China today.

Confucius’s concern for order and peace threatened to become lost in the noise of war and battle that overran Chinese life until the year 221 BC, when the country was unified by the triumph of the state of Qin. The story of the rise of Qin (from which ‘China’ comes) is as blood-curdling as it is brutal.

The first emperor

Qin was a kingdom in the north-west corner of China, a land of horse rearing and bounty hunting (see plate 6). Selective breeding meant that larger horses were now available, allowing soldiers to ride into war on horseback, liberating them from expensive, unwieldy chariots.

The military might of the Qin was matched only by its brutality. One famous general called Bai Qi is reputed to have killed more than a million soldiers and seized more than seventy cities. In 278 BC he led the Qin army to victory against its biggest rival from the Yangtze south, the Chu. He then went on to defeat the nominal Kings of China, the Zhou, at the Battle of Changping (260 BC). After this battle he had more than 400,000 prisoners buried alive.

Civil administrators were no less harsh. One such, called Shang Yang, is credited with reforming the running of the Qin Kingdom, turning it from a disorganized tribal power into a slick, effective, military machine. With the support of the then ruler Qin Xiaogong (381–338 BC) Shang Yang was able to put into practice his belief in the absolute rule of law. For him, loyalty to the state was always superior to loyalty to the family. His reforms included stripping nobles of their lands and giving them instead to generals as prizes for victory in war. He put great emphasis on agricultural reform, so that the land could support more people and feed more soldiers. Farmers who met government quotas for supplying food were rewarded with slaves.

Shang Yang’s reforms were later codified into a book of law called The Book of Lord Shang. Qin became the strongest state amongst the Seven Kingdoms. The climax came with the rise to power of Ying Zheng as ruler of Qin. After defeating the last independent Chinese state, Qi, in 221 BC, Ying became the first emperor of all China (ruled 221–210 BC), renaming himself Qin Shi Huang after the divine rulers of Chinese mythology.

With the assistance of his prime minister Li Si, Qin Shi Huang rewired China into an awesome centralized powerhouse. Regional rulers were sacked, and in their place he appointed loyal civil governors to each of thirty-six new civil regions. Alongside them military governors were appointed, and a team of inspectors roamed the country to ensure none of them overstepped the mark. Governors were rotated every few years to prevent any one building up a regional power base. All this was an extension of what Shang Yang had implemented across the Kingdom of Qin more than a hundred years before.

In 213 BC Qin Shi Huang ordered what is called the Great Burning of Books, suppressing freedom of speech in an attempt to unify all thought and political opinion, an ancient foretaste of the Cultural Revolution that was to come more than 2,000 years later under the communist regime of Chairman Mao (see page 284). Hundreds of thousands of books were burned, many of them originating in the philosophies of the Hundred Schools of Thought. All books were banned, except for legal works promoting the supreme control of the state. Anyone found discussing illegal books was sentenced to death, along with his family. Anyone found with proscribed books within thirty days of the imperial decree was banished to the north to work as a convict building the first Great Wall of China.

A massive canal, begun in Qin Shi Huang’s father’s reign and built by a brilliant engineer called Zheng Guo, was completed in 246 BC. It unlocked opportunities for rice growing further north, and provided the state with an almost limitless supply of food with which its armies and people could gain an unassailable position of strength.

Finally, the new imperial government standardized just about everything that could make running a large centralized empire easier – from the characters used in handwriting to the length of axles for carts so they would run more smoothly in the ruts of imperial roads. Edicts, some of which survive, were inscribed on the sacred Mount Taishan in Shandong to let heaven know of the new unification of the earth under a single, all-powerful emperor.

Towards the end of his life Qin Shi Huang became obsessed with finding an elixir that would make him immortal. He eventually died during a tour of eastern China in 210 BC after swallowing mercury pills which his advisers believed would give him everlasting life. For 2,000 years no one knew where he was buried. Then, one day in 1974, some well diggers struck an unusual object buried several feet underground. What they found led to one of the most incredible archaeological discoveries of all time. It was an enormous royal tomb, some three miles across, containing a terracotta army of more than 8,000 life-size soldiers, designed to defend the Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife (see plate 6). More than 700,000 workers were involved in its construction. Each soldier is an individual, hand-crafted work of art, originally equipped with bronze spears and bows and arrows. The army is arranged in battle formation, supported by 600 clay horses and more than a hundred life-size working wooden chariots.

Although Qin’s dynasty crumbled only a few years after his death, thanks to the hatred which his life’s work had inspired, his achievement was complete. He didn’t just bring about the unification of seven warring kingdoms into the largest empire on earth, he created a top-to-bottom model for imperial administration, from the principles of its ruling culture down to the nitty-gritty plumbing needed to make it all work in practice.

Rice, silk and iron provided both the appetite for expansion and the means of conquest to create the largest and most enduring human power on earth. Supreme command over nature turned these ancient people into an ingenious and unassailably robust civilization for thousands of years to come.

India, and the reincarnation of man

The Himalayas are a vast range of Asian mountains that helped protect the hunter-gathering people living in what we now call India from the centralizing, conquering and consolidating forces of China. But their effectiveness as a barrier decreases to the north-west, where passes permit the passage of people travelling by foot, horse and chariot. Several waves of invaders came from the north. Some of them probably originated in the steppes of Central Asia, from where, having passed through Mesopotamia, they swept into the Ganges plain in northern India. Surprisingly few archaeological remains have been found so far to help piece together the early history of these invasions. Most surviving evidence is literary.

Sacred texts called the Vedas were written in a language called Sanskrit that originated in the Middle East. These texts are thought to describe life between c.1700 and 1100 BC. They paint a vivid picture of the tools brought by these early invaders in the form of horses, wheels and metal. Their verses talk of noble archers engaged in duels with rival heroes, exchanging volleys of arrows while galloping across fields of battle in horse-drawn chariots. They also describe the use of tools, which were employed to clear the jungle around the Ganges Valley. This was a good place to settle. Heavy rains made for lush vegetation, allowing the growth of rice, which could sustain armies.

A superficial reading of some of the ancient texts of India might lead to the impression that these people’s destiny was to be as violent as those of the emerging societies to the north, east and west. At the heart of the ancient Indian religion, Hinduism, is the Mahabharata, one of the most famous sacred poems ever written.

It tells the story of an epic struggle for the throne of the Kingdom of Kuru between two rival branches of a dynastic family, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The tale’s climax centres around what is purported to be the biggest and bloodiest battle in all history – the eighteen-day-long Battle of Kurukshetra, in which the Pandavas were ultimately victorious. The most sacred section, possibly added in about 550 BC, tells of a debate between the leader of the Pandavas, Arjuna, and the god Krishna, who had incarnated himself in human form to serve Arjuna as his personal charioteer. On the eve of battle Arjuna urgently seeks Krishna’s advice as to whether or not to wage war. He has a dilemma: he knows war will mean having to kill members of his own family, who were obliged to fight against him owing to previous oaths of allegiance.

In this part of the story, called the Bhagavad gita, or Gita for short, Krishna reveals the mysterious philosophy that still binds Hindu people together and defines their reverence for nature and all living things. He explains to Arjuna that despite the inevitability of war there is no need to lament those who die in battle, because the spirit of the self is indestructible. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot wet it, and wind cannot dry it, he says. This self, says Krishna, passes from one body to another, like a person taking off worn-out clothes and putting on new ones.

Towards a new deal with nature

Reincarnation is the belief at the heart of Hinduism that makes it different from other religions. Each living thing possesses an individual spirit (atman), which is part of an über-spirit (brahman), the universal force that binds together all life. The goal of all individuals is to liberate the atman, freeing it to join the brahman in eternal bliss. The destiny of the atman is to be recycled again and again in any living thing, plant, animal or human, until it reaches a sufficiently advanced state of development to attain enlightenment (moksha) and eternal liberation.

Individual spirits can be freed through the practice of meditation. In the Gita Krishna goes into exquisite detail, explaining to Arjuna precisely how an individual can free his or her spirit by stilling the mind of selfish desires, using as many as four different types of yoga.

The doctrine of reincarnation helped ancient Indian civilization come to terms with the waves of migration, invasion and violence that have sporadically plagued the south Asian subcontinent. A divisive social structure, known as the caste system, evolved as a response to the increasing complexity of Indian society as different cultures and traditions all piled on top of each other. Rather than each new culture blending in to create diversity, the Indian way of life evolved as a kind of multi-layered cake of people who preferred not to mix.

The idea probably originated in the first horse-and-chariot-borne and bronze-wielding invaders, who charged in from the north and west from about 1500 BC, bringing with them their priests, writing (Sanskrit) and a belief in many different gods, such as Indra, the god of war and thunder. Originally there were only four castes. Brahmans were priests who prayed; kshatriyas were soldiers and fought; vaisyas the farmers and artisans who worked; and finally sudras, at the lowest end of the scale, dealt with everything that was ‘unclean’.

Mixing between these classes was never encouraged; each one therefore maintained its own identity and culture. However, the idea of reincarnation gave these people some hope that, in the next life at least, there was a prospect of joining the ranks of a higher caste.

Organizing civilization into castes provided one way of dealing with generations of immigrants without causing existing cultures to feel threatened by the dilution or extinction of their own distinctive ways of life. Each time a major new culture arrives, a new caste comes into being, finding its place above or below those already there, without radical adjustments of existing customs or habits. As a result, this divisive system has preserved many ancient cultures and beliefs for longer in India than in most other parts of the world. It helps explain why Hinduism is the longest-surviving religion in all human history.

Veneration for nature, rather than violence towards it, is a distinctive characteristic of Hindu thought. The Upanishads are a collection of ancient Hindu texts, first written down in about 500 BC, designed as commentaries to help interpret the Vedas. In them, ahimsa is first mentioned. It is a vow that many Hindus take to be non-violent towards nature. Vegetarianism is part of this philosophy, and for this reason as many as 40 per cent of all Indians are vegetarian to this day – that’s about 300 million people. Those Hindus who do eat meat hardly ever eat beef, since the cow is venerated above all other animals as a gift from nature providing milk to drink, power for pulling ploughs and manure for nourishing the soil. For Hindus the sacred cow is a symbol of unselfish natural giving and its slaughter is still banned in almost all the states of India today.

This respectful, peace-loving relationship with the natural world was given a huge boost by four men who, between them, deeply influenced how Homo sapiens found out that it was possible to adapt its civilizations to live in harmony with the natural world. Two of them founded religions, the other two helped spread them around the world.

Two princes who renounced worldly goods

The first was an Indian prince called Siddhartha Gautama. He is thought to have lived from about 563 to 483 BC, and was born in Lumbini, in modern-day Nepal (see plate 7). The only historical evidence for his life comes from texts written by his followers some 400 years after his death, so some of the details may well have merged into myth over centuries of oral rendition. His mother, Queen Maya, died a few days after his birth, leaving him to be brought up by his father, Suddhodana, a king or tribal chief who had three palaces built in honour of his newborn son. His father wanted to shield Siddhartha from religious teaching and knowledge of human suffering, thinking that this would allow him to become a strong king.

But, at the age of twenty-nine, Siddhartha left his palaces to meet his subjects. His father tried to remove all signs of poverty and suffering, but to no avail. On his first outing Siddhartha saw an old man – until then he knew nothing of the trials of old age. On further expeditions he met diseased and dying people. Greatly disturbed by what he had seen, Siddhartha fled from the luxuries of his palaces to live as a monk, begging for food in the streets. He then became a hermit and, with the help of two teachers, learned how to meditate and to still his mind.

Next, Siddhartha Gautama and five companions tried to find enlightenment by the total denial of all worldly goods, including food: at one time they ate no more than a single leaf or nut a day. After collapsing in a river and nearly drowning, Siddhartha discovered what came to be known as the Middle Way – a path towards enlightenment (liberation of the atman) that could be accomplished without the need for extremes, whether of self-indulgence or self-denial. After receiving the gift of some rice pudding from a village girl, Siddhartha sat under a tree until he found the truth. After forty-nine days of meditation, aged thirty-five, he at last attained enlightenment, and from then on became known as the Buddha, meaning ‘awakened one’.

For the next forty-five years the Buddha journeyed by foot around the plain of the Ganges River, in north-east India and southern Nepal, teaching his doctrine to a wide range of people, from royalty to terrorists and beggars. After making thousands of converts, he died at about the age of eighty, perhaps of food poisoning.

Buddha’s teachings were really an extension, or popular interpretation, of many traditional Hindu beliefs. They were of enormous appeal, especially to the poor, for whom there was little hope of social or material improvement. The Buddha explained how by following his Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, these people could rid themselves of inner desires and free their spirits for eternal liberation without the involvement of any priest, king or other intermediary.

Another prince, who lived at about the same time as Gautama, also renounced his kingdom, and is said to have attained spiritual enlightenment after wandering for twelve and a half years in deep silence and meditation. This man was known as Mahavira, meaning ‘great hero’, and he became the twenty-fourth and last prophet (tirthankar) of the Jain religion.

Jain scriptures were written over a long period of time, but the most popular work was written by an Indian monk called Umaswati more than 1,800 years ago. In his Tattvartha Sutra, or Book of Reality, the main aspects of Jainism are set out, identifying its central belief that all life, both human and non-human, is sacred.

For Jains there is no justification for killing another, however provoked or threatened a person may be. They refuse all food obtained by unnecessary cruelty. Jains are vegetarians and avid supporters of animal welfare. In many Indian towns today animal shelters are run by Jain people. Root vegetables are avoided, as harvesting them destroys an entire plant, whereas fruit, such as an apple, is acceptable, as picking it will leave the tree unharmed. Non-violence, religious toleration and respect for nature are cornerstones of the Jain philosophy, which, like Hinduism and Buddhism, is concerned with liberating the individual’s soul through enlightenment accomplished through a series of codes of conduct that involve taking five vows: of non-violence to all living things (ahimsa), truthfulness (satya), non-stealing (asteya), chastity (brahmacharya) and detachment from material possessions (aparigraha).

Neither Buddhism nor Jainism would have had nearly such an impact on human history were it not for the patronage of certain rulers in the secular world. By about 500 BC, sixteen different kingdoms, known as the Mahajanapadas, divided the Indian subcontinent, from modern-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east.

Two rulers who spread the message of peace

Most of these kingdoms were consolidated into India’s first empire by Chandragupta Maurya (ruled c.320–298 BC). Unlike China, India’s itch to centralize was less to do with power struggles between kingdoms and more as a response to threats from outside, in the form of Persian and Greek armies that from about 500 BC threatened its borders, especially those in the north-west. By 303 BC Chandragupta is reputed to have had an army of some 600,000 men, with 30,000 cavalry and 9,000 elephants. But towards the end of his life he gave it all up and became a Jain monk. Eventually, it is said, he starved himself to death in a cave.

While Chandragupta established the Jain religion as the preferred philosophy of the most powerful ruling family in India, it was his grandson, Ashoka the Great (ruled 273–232 BC), who had the biggest impact of all. To begin with he was as ruthless and violent as any imperial monarch, controlling his empire through the threat of force. Indeed, Ashoka means ‘without sorrow’ in Sanskrit. But shortly after the end of one of the biggest and bloodiest wars of the time, he underwent a profound and complete conversion.

The Kalinga War (c.265–263 BC) ended with the famous Battle of Kalinga, which left more than 100,000 people dead on the battlefield. The day after the battle Ashoka walked out across the city, where, as far as his eye could see, the only sights were burned-out houses, dead horses and scattered bodies. ‘What have I done?’ he cried.

From that moment on Ashoka is said to have devoted his life and reign to non-violence. He became a devout Buddhist and over the next twenty years dedicated himself to spreading the message of this powerful religion. Prisoners were freed and given back their land. Ahimsa, the Buddhist doctrine of non-violence, was adopted throughout his domains, forbidding the unnecessary slaughter of animals. Hunting for sport was banned, branding animals was outlawed, and vegetarianism was encouraged as official policy. Ashoka built rest houses for travellers and pilgrims, universities so people could become more educated, and hospitals for people and animals alike throughout India.

As many as 84,000 monuments and monasteries (stupas and viharas) were erected for Buddhists, many of them built at places associated with the life of the Buddha. Ashoka’s most lasting legacies are probably his edicts. Dozens of sandstone pillars were erected throughout modern-day Pakistan and northern India. Written in the widely spoken language of the ordinary people, Prakrit, they popularized Ashoka’s belief in the Buddhist concept of righteousness (dharma). Their inscriptions provide details of his conversion after the Battle of Kalinga, as well as his policy of non-violence towards all living things: ‘I have made provision for two types of medical treatment. One for humans and one for animals. Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans and animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown . . . Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals.’ (Rock Edict No. 2.)

Ashoka sent missionaries to every king and court he could. He wanted everyone to know about the Buddha’s message. They travelled as far as Greece, Lebanon, Egypt, Burma and Sri Lanka. The first Egyptian Buddhist colonies in Alexandria date from this time. Ashoka promoted a new notion of kingship, in which a ruler’s legitimacy was gained not from the generosity of a divine god, but by advocating Buddhist ideals, establishing monasteries, supporting monks and promoting conflict resolution.

Following Ashoka’s reign, Buddhism spread far and wide (see plate 7). His twin children Mahindra and Sanghamitra settled in Sri Lanka, converting its rulers and people to Buddhism. By 100 AD Buddhist monks had established a foothold in China, where their teaching fused with a similar philosophy called Taoism, founded by a philosopher called Laozi, who had lived at the time of the Hundred Schools of Thought. His book, called the Tao-te-Ching, described how violence should be avoided at all costs, and how individuals should rid themselves of strong emotions and desires through stillness and meditation. (It is ironic that in an attempt to find an elixir for immortality in c.850 AD Taoist monks discovered how to make gunpowder – see page 203.)

Ashoka’s influence now looks more powerful beyond India than within it because by about 1300 AD Buddhism in India had declined into a relatively minor religion, marginalized by the resurgence of Hinduism and the onset of Islam. From China, various brands of Buddhism spread to Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. By 538 AD its message had reached the islands of Japan, and by the ninth century Borobudur, in Java, where an immense cluster of Buddhist temples remains to this day. The shrines of Angkor Wat in Cambodia were built 300 years later. Although Hindu in inspiration, they include extensive Buddhist sculptures. This religious complex, the apex of a highly religious civilization, is now buried deep in the jungle, spread across forty square miles.

The brightest modern example of a Buddhist kingship takes us back up into the Himalayas. Today the Kingdom of Bhutan, nestled high in the mountains, is home to just over 650,000 people (see plate 7). A Buddhist monk called Padmasambhava is reputed to have brought the Buddha’s teachings to Bhutan and Tibet in 747 AD. Jigme Singye Wanngchuck, fourth King of Bhutan (ruled 1972–2006), stated that Gross National Happiness (GNH) is more important to his people than Gross National Product (GNP) – putting the concerns of social welfare, environmental preservation and cultural protection above economic growth. In a unique echo of Ashoka’s edicts, the small, spiritual society of Bhutan is still today attempting to place material and spiritual well-being alongside the preservation of the natural environment.