Unless they coincide with clearly defined physical boundaries – as is the case, for instance, with Australia – the borders of a cultural area can rarely be established with ease and accuracy. To some extent the problem lies with the highly subjective and often purely emotional criteria by which a civilization is defined. Thus, for example, as these lines are written, many nations would place themselves within a larger community which they call the “free world,” while no attempt is made to define what freedom may mean to human beings with a cultural background different from their own. If there is a “free world” then, presumably, there must exist, in the minds of those who use the term, another world, “not free,” and the differentiation is contingent on an emotionally charged interpretation of the ill-defined term of “freedom.” It is a well-known rule of logic that classifications made on the basis of a single attribute are artificial and of limited use. So there must be a cluster of attributes by which a human group is defined, and these must be specific and essential, if they are to serve a useful purpose. Yet what is essential to one observer is not to another. Some would opt for language, others for race, religion, or shared destiny in the past or the present. It is also quite common to find that individuals tend to identify their own community by criteria which may be different from those used for the same purpose by outsiders.

In the 540s there appeared on the Chinese horizon a people previously barely known which, within a few years, not only changed the balance of power in Mongolia – the traditional basis of great, nomad empires – but also introduced into the scene of Inner Asian and world history an ethnic and linguistic entity which in earlier times could not be identified or isolated from other groups showing the same cultural characteristics. It bore the name Türk, an appellation left in legacy to most later peoples speaking a Turkic-language. It stands to reason that the Türks of Mongolia were not the products of spontaneous generation and that one must, by necessity, reckon with other Turks living there or elsewhere in centuries preceding the foundation of the empire bearing their name. Yet, such considerations notwithstanding, it should not be lost from sight that the Türks are the first people to whom we can attribute with certainty a Turkic text written in a Turkic language, and that their name – so widely used ever since their rise to power – cannot be traced with absolute certainty before the sixth century A.D.

Early mentions of Türks

It could be that the first mention of the name Türk was made in the middle of the first century A.D. Pomponius Mela (I,116) refers to the Turcae in the forests north of the Azov Sea, and Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (VI, 19) gives a list of peoples living in the same area among whom figure the Tyrcae.

The second of the great nomad empires of Mongolia lasted from 744 to 840, and its capital was Karabalghasun on the High Orkhon River. For some years before its foundation, the Uighur leader, known to the Chinese as Ku-li p'ei-lo, had been consolidating the power of his own clan, the Yaghlakar, among the various Uighur tribes; and in 742, he led a coalition of Uighur, Karluk and Basmil forces in a successful attempt to drive the last important ruler of the Eastern Türks from the Mongolian steppes. This set the scene for further expansion of Ku-li p'ei-lo's power, and the Chinese historian tersely remarks that in 744 “he attacked and defeated the Basmil and took upon himself the title of Kutlugh bilgä Kö1 kaghan.” Shortly after this, the Karluk also became victims of the Uighur kaghan, and an easterly group of them was brought under subjection.

The empire's founder died in 747 and leadership devolved upon his son, Bilgä köl kaghan, called Mo-yen-ch'o in the Chinese sources. He was a brutal and ambitious man who carried forward his father's achievements by strengthening the monarchy and extending his people's domination over the Karluk and Basmil. He also added a further dimension to the historical importance of the Uighurs by ordering his eldest son to render to the great neighbouring T'ang empire in China invaluable military service against the An Lu-shan rebellion (755–63) which, despite its failure to overthrow the T'ang, dealt the dynasty a blow so heavy that it never fully recovered.

The Chinese written tradition traces the beginnings of the Hsiung-nu back to times immemorial. It is reported that the Hsiung-nu had been known in remote antiquity under a number of different names such as Hun-chu, Hsien-yün, Jung, Ti, etc. In modern times even the name Kuei-fang of the Shang period is added to the list. From a strictly historical point of view, however, all these identifications must remain conjectural in status. The present state of our historical knowledge does not permit us to give any reliable account of the Hsiung-nu much beyond the 3rd century B.C.; and the only other name with which the Hsiung-nu can be safely identified in early Chinese sources is Hu. In other words, the Hsiung-nu made their earliest formal appearance on the stage of Inner Asian history when Chinese history was just about to turn a new page – at the end of the Warring States period.

Interestingly enough, from early Chinese sources we know how China defended herself against the Hsiung-nu before we actually encounter the Hsiung-nu's armed incursions into China. In the late Warring States period three major states, Ch'in, Chao, and Yen, were all southern neighbors of the Hsiung-nu, and each as a defense against the nomads built a wall along its northern border. Of the three, Ch'in was the first to do so, probably no later than in 324 B.C.; but its entire walled defense system - in Lung-hsi (Kansu), Pei-ti (parts of Kansu and Ninghsia), and the Shang Commandery (parts of Shensi and Suiyuan) – was not completed until around 270 B.C. Next came the northern border wall of Chao, stretching from Yün-chung (in Suiyuan) through Yen-men to Tai (both in Shansi), which was built around 300.

The rich grasslands and abundant rivers of the Ponto-Caspian steppes, a continuation of the great Inner Asian plains, constituted a natural gravitation-point for the nomad migrating or ejected from the Asian hinterland. Given these favorable conditions, the long-distance nomadism common to Inner Asia tended to be muted and not infrequently transformed into a semi-nomadic system with increasing emphasis on permanent winter camps. Urban life and the practice of agriculture and other settled pursuits were more in evidence amongst the nomads here. A nomadic life-style, as we know from the Khazar and Hungarian models, became more and more the perquisite of the aristocracy, a badge of social distinction. Those tribal groupings that adopted the semi-nomadic model tended to be more stable and better able to withstand the vagaries of steppe life.

In times of turbulence the tribal and ethnic composition of these steppes became a richly hued mosaic, the colors and textures of which are only partially reflected in our sources. The latter largely stem from and were written in the languages of the surrounding sedentary societies. They are frequently incomplete, on occasion ill-informed and universally tend to view the nomad through the prisms of their own cultures.

The Ponto-Caspian steppes after Attila

The movement of the Huns toward Europe undoubtedly introduced new ethnic elements into the Ponto-Caspian steppes. These included Turkic speakers who later became the dominant ethno-linguistic grouping in this region. We have, however, scraps of evidence that appear to indicate that Turkic nomads were present here even before the Huns crossed the Volga.

It has been suggested, with some justice, that a limes system separating steppe from sown, barbarian from cultivated, urban society, spanned Eurasia. This system of fortifications and natural barriers, however, was not impenetrable. When the societies sheltered by these walls were strong, incursions from the nomadic world beyond were repulsed or contained. When their defences proved inadequate, sedentary societies either had to tame the “barbarian” by converting him to their culture or be completely transformed themselves. Western Central Asia, an Eastern Iranian area increasingly coming under the cultural influence of neighboring, kindred Sassanid Iran before the advent of Islam and the recipient of cultural currents emanating from the Mediterranean, India and China, was one of those zones through which the steppe-dweller could enter sedentary society. Conversely, its mercantile urban centers also served as a gateway through which the cultural and material achievements of settled society could penetrate the steppe. In the period under discussion, Western Central Asia, having recently accommodated itself to the political and cultural buffetings administered to it by expanding Arab power, was about to enter into another period of intense and intimate contact with the nomadic, Turkic societies to its north and north-east. In this instance, it would serve as the transmission zone for the cultural fruits of one nomadic society to another. Its role in this process was not passive, for the Islamic culture which entered the steppe zone had been influenced and reworked by the Eastern Iranians.

The areal extent and diversity of the natural landscapes of Inner Asia impel a survey of the geographic background of this region to concentrate on the environmental characteristics which seem to contribute most to an understanding of the even greater complexities of the human use of these lands. To this end, attention will be focused initially on five general geographic features of Inner Asia: its size; the effects of distance from maritime influences on movement and climate; the problems of its rivers; geographic diversity and uniformity; and, the limited capabilities for areally extensive crop agriculture. This will be followed by a discussion of the major environmental components of the natural zones of Inner Asia.

General geographic characteristics

The Inner Asian region occupies an immense area in the interior and northerly reaches of the Eurasian land mass and encompasses a territory of more than eight million square miles or about one-seventh of the land area of the world. The east–west dimensions of this region extend some 6,000 miles, which is slightly more than twice as long as the maximum north–south axis. These distances are comparable to those traversed by only a few of the most adventurous maritime vessels in the European “Age of Discovery.” Within Inner Asia, however, the pre-eminent means of long-distance communication has been overland movement inasmuch as no region on earth is as landlocked by the absence of feasible maritime alternatives. The major movements of peoples, cultural innovations, and goods has been on Inner Asian land routes far removed from the Pacific, the ice-covered Arctic and the Indian Ocean.

The political fragmentation of China in the 10th century A.D. and most of her history under the Sung dynasty (960–1234) was coeval with the emergence of states on her borders which were founded by non-Chinese peoples but largely patterned on Chinese models. Of these peoples the Kitans and the Jurchen are of special importance because they both succeeded in extending their domination over large parts of Northern China. In this respect they were the precursors of the Mongols whose final subjugation of the entire Chinese territory in the 13th century was made possible, or at least easier, because they were no longer faced with a unified China but by a Sung China which had been severely weakened by the Kitan and Jurchen conquests on her northern border. Another factor of general historical interest is that both for the Liao state of the Kitans and the Chin state of the Jurchen we have detailed dynastic histories written in Chinese. Unlike earlier invaders who settled for a while on Chinese soil such as Hsiung-nu, Hsien-pi and other tribal groups whose history is known only through Chinese eyes, we have for the 10th to 13th centuries historical sources which provide a very full documentation on states founded by non-Chinese peoples. The multi-state system of those centuries can therefore be studied not only from the Chinese angle but also from the Kitan and Jurchen viewpoints as well. For the first time in Inner Asian history we have in that period a wealth of information on “barbarian” peoples and their history that can be paralleled with the purely Chinese (and therefore necessarily China-centred) sources.

THE SETTING

The vast northern plain of the Ganges-Jumna River system stretches from the banks of the Jumna River south-east to the edges of Bengal. To the North are the foothills and behind them the great barrier of Himalayan mountains. The southern borders of this plain are marked by another range of hills that merge into the Vindhya mountain chain, the line of demarcation between northern India and the Deccan plateau of the South. Within this geographic area evolved the Hindu-Buddhist civilization, beginning in the second millennium before Christ. After the conquest of northern India by Islamic armies, it also became the hub of Indo-Muslim civilization. This vast plain repeatedly provided the population and productivity needed to build and sustain major kingdoms and empires.

The population of the Gangetic basin reflects its history. Hindus live throughout the plains and foothills. Their society possessed a complex caste system encompassing all of the traditional varnas along with innumerable divisions of specific castes and sub-castes. Hindus predominated with 86 per cent of the population, while the largest minority were the Muslims with 13.7 per cent. The Muslim population, however, showed distinctly different characteristics from the Islamic community of Bengal. In the North-Western Provinces they accounted for 38 per cent of the urban population. More concentrated in the cities and towns of the West, Muslims encompassed over 50 per cent of the urban dwellers in the area of Rohilkhand. Bihar held an even smaller percentage of Muslims; nevertheless, it too had a significant concentration of them in its towns and cities.

THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Professional missionaries, polemical tracts, and new rituals of conversion, were only three of the components of religious innovation in South Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Aggressive proselytism became the norm among sects and religions with new and refurbished forms of action, ranging from public debates on the meaning of scriptural sources to the use of printing to produce books, journals, and a multitude of pamphlets. Religious conflict was implicit in the competition for converts, and explicit in assassinations and riots. Sustaining religious pursuits were new organizations fashioned from the traditions of the subcontinent and modified by British culture. South Asians constructed religious societies fully equipped with elected officials, weekly meetings, annual published reports, bank accounts, sophisticated systems of fundraising, annual meetings, executive committees, subcommittees, bye-laws, and constitutions. Religious societies founded and successfully managed a number of organizations including hospitals, schools, orphanages, and relief programmes. Conflict, competition, and institution-building emerged from, and rested on, adherents to diverse ideologies made explicit in speech and writing. For many, religion became a matter of creeds that were explained, defined, and elaborated. It was an age of definition and redefinition initiated by socio-religious movements that swept the subcontinent during the years of British colonial rule.

Before turning to a discussion of the past, it is necessary to consider the concept of ‘socio-religious movements’ as used here, and its three crucial dimensions. The term ‘socio’ implies an attempt to reorder society in the areas of social behaviour, custom, structure or control.

THE SETTING

Below the Gangetic basin and to the east of the Indus plain a series of steep hills and valleys run eastwards separating the northern subcontinent from its peninsular South. This central region of hills and jungles has impeded north-south movement, acting as a cultural and political barrier. On the western coast lies the Kathiawar peninsula and the immediate mainland attached to it. Together they comprise the region of Gujarat, which is partially isolated from the rest of the subcontinent. A narrow strip of land runs north and south connecting mainland Gujarat to the coast below it and through this coastal band passes the trade routes from the Gangetic plain. To the East are the Central Provinces containing a rich agricultural tract, Chhattisgarh, surrounded by hills, separated from the Deccan and the northern plains. The river valley and delta of the Mahanadi constitute the eastern region of this transitional belt, the area of Orissa. Bordered by hills to the North-West and South-West, Orissa is the site of a regional society created from a mixture of indigenous cultures, influenced from Bengal to the North, and the Telugu region to the South. Below this chain of hills is Maharashtra, an area composed of three geographic features: the Konkin coast, the western Ghats, an escarpment beginning at the Tapti River, and the Deccan, a dry inland plateau broken by numerous hills that extend south across the Godavari River, the linguistic border between the Deccan and the Dravidian South.

The culture and social system of Gujarat, the Central Provinces, and Orissa showed affinities with northern India. These areas had castes and subcastes representing all levels of the varna system. In Gujarat the two most powerful caste clusters were the merchants and members of the ruling elites, both Hindus and Muslims. A further feature of Gujarati society was the tight, hierarchical control maintained by elders within each caste. Gujarat was the home of a Hindu majority and small minorities of Jains, Muslims, and Parsis.

THE SETTING

The first region under consideration is Bengal and its adjoining territory of Assam in the North-East. Bengal proper is a huge delta built up by the combined river systems of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Bengal and its environs are ringed by mountains in the North and East, by the bay to the South, the hills of Orissa and Chota Nagpur to the South-West, and Bihar to the West. Divided by numerous rivers and consisting of swampy land with abundant rainfall, Bengal was developed late in the history of South Asia and remained at the edge of Hindu-Buddhist civilization. Eastern Bengal, Assam, and the hill tracts bordering Burma marked the end of one major civilization and the beginning of the South-East Asia cultural sphere.

The incorporation of Bengal into the expanding culture of north India brought with it Sanskrit, Hinduism, and the caste structure. Brahman priests ascended to the foremost position in society, but never with the same degree of dominance as in the central Gangetic Plain or in south India. The Kshatriya (warrior) and Vaishya (merchant) castes were absent. Instead two smaller groups, the Kayasthas, a writer-clerk caste, and the Baidyas, once physicians and later landlords, marked the next levels below the Brahmans. Thus the mass of Bengalis were classed as Sudras or peasants; beneath them were the untouchables. Within this region Buddhism and, to a lesser degree, Jainism provided a longstanding challenge to Hinduism. In the surrounding hill tracts, the high civilization of the valleys and the delta faded away. Many of the tribes within the jungles and highlands had their own languages, deities, social structures, and tribal culture.

In the first decade of the thirteenth century, the Hindu-Buddhist world of Bengal was significantly altered by Islamic conquerors. The establishment of Muslim rule cut ties of political influence and economic support between Hinduism and the state. Over the centuries Islam also changed the socio-religious composition of Bengal through conversion.

THE SETTING

The last regional chapter of this volume examines an area defined partly by geography, but more extensively by culture and language. The northern border of the Dravidian South begins on the east coast at the southern edge of Orissa, runs roughly along the northern lines of the Godavari River as it flows through the central Deccan, dipping south-west to Goa. The remainder of peninsular India extends to the southernmost tip of the mainland. Little exists in the way of geographically defined sub-areas within this region except for the thin western coast that continues from Maharashtra to the Cape. The rest of the peninsula is comprised of the Deccan plateau as it is narrowed by the convergence of the Western and Eastern Ghats to just above the Cape.

Each cultural and linguistic subdivision of the South radiates out from a core and blends into the others without clearly defined borders. The areas of each of the four languages — Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam — roughly correspond to the four southern states of India: Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. Tamil is the oldest of the Dravidian languages with literature from the first century before Christ. The Tamil region was a second source of high culture pre-dated only by developments on the Indus and Gangetic plains. The three other Dravidian languages are considerably younger. The literature of Kannada dates from the tenth century, Telugu from the eleventh, and Malayalam from the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Each was influenced by Sanskrit and northern Brahmanical civilization, but still retained its own unique culture. A degree of unity exists between the four linguistic areas.

TRANSITIONAL MOVEMENTS WITHIN THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Within nearly a century of British rule over the South Asian subcontinent, socio-religious movements reshaped much of the social, cultural, religious, and political life of this area. Three civilizations provided models for movements of dissent and protest that sought to ‘purify’ and restructure contemporary society. New associations, techniques, and forms of group consciousness came into being during these years as religious change encountered increased politicization and competing nationalism. The historic process of internal dissent and cultural adjustment was dynamic as the traditions of the past flowed into the colonial milieu, and were increasingly altered by that environment. There was no clear point of beginning or end of the transitional movements of pre-British history, as they reached forward into the colonial milieu linking that era with what went before.

Leadership of the transitional movements followed a pattern that extended back for many centuries. Professional religious practitioners, Brahmans, and the ‘ulamā accounted for the largest percentage of leaders, but they also came from merchant, peasant, untouchable and tribal segments of society. This diversity of leadership was parallelled by support from differing social groups as was illustrated by the Namdharis, who found their adherents primarily among the non-Jats, and the Nirankaris, whose members were drawn mainly from Sikh Jats. The variation in groups to which these movements appealed also followed well-established paths. Islamic movements, with the ‘ulamā as leaders, either attempted to reach all Muslims or focused almost exclusively on the ‘ulamā class of the religiously educated. Some movements were concentrated on a specific level of society, such as those of the Christian Nadars or Satnamis; both aimed at Hindu untouchables. Similarly, Satya Mahima Dharma flourished among the lower castes and tribals of Orissa.