Strands of Early Asian Civilizations

The pattern underlying early Asian civilizations entails three strands. The first involves the origin and flowering of the indigenous states. Two can be identified: The earlier was centered in the Indus Basin and flourished during the fourth millennium B.C.E., before the cities were abandoned and the focus of Indian civilization moved to the Ganges (Ganga) and Yamuna Valleys. The later, and most durable began in catchments of the two great rivers of China, the Chang and the Huang. Here there was a twin development of agriculture, with rice dominating the balmier south and millet the colder north. Again cultural complexity developed in tandem in both areas, as did the early states, Xia and Shang in the central plains of the Huang River and Changjiang in the land bordering the Chang. The second strand involved the development of what might be termed “secondary civilizations” in areas that came under the influence of China, India, or both. While Chinese influence was strongly felt in Korea and Japan, the impact of Buddhism cannot be discounted. To the south, the states of the maritime Silk Road developed from indigenous chiefdoms, retaining their autonomy but prospering through the enriching influence of India and China. The same cross-fertilization of ideas between local inhabitants and foreign traders may be identified on the Silk Road itself.
The third and most complex contributor to the pattern of Asian civilization lies in the regions where east met west through the expansion of the Greek and Persian Empires and the intrusion of Sakas or Scythians, Kushans, and Hephthalite Huns. This region, centering on modern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and the basins of the Syr Dar’ya and Amu Dar’ya Rivers, is one of the most interesting areas, because of the variety of peoples, religions, languages, and cultures that came and went, each contributing and at the same time adapting to the ways of other societies.
Today Asia teems with humanity. Its billions of people speak thousands of languages. Its contribution to the development of the human species outweighs that of any other part of the globe: the domestication of rice, the largest mortuary complexes, two of the world’s great religions, massive temples, cast iron, paper, silk, writing, universities, totalitarian states, the crossbow, outstanding works of art—the list is endless. The development of Asian civilizations from their first foundations is a key to understanding Asia today.

The Silk Road and the Rise and Fall of Cultures

The Silk Road itself was a labyrinth of trackways that began with the Gansu corridor in western China. It then skirted north and south of the arid Tarim Basin, before reaching the crossroads that lay in the valleys of the Syr Dar’ya and Amu Dar’ya Rivers as they flowed north to the Aral Sea. Here it was possible to strike south into Afghanistan and India or to continue in a westerly direction, south of the Caspian Sea, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
This route was an ancient one, followed, it seems, by early farmers trekking east, who founded settlements in the Tarim oases during the third millennium B.C.E. There, in the dry wastes, are 4,000-year-old cemeteries containing the remains of fair-skinned people with European features, interred with woven plaid textiles, sprigs of ephedra (a hallucinatory plant), and trousers and boots. Their descendants in all probability spoke Tocharian, an Indo-European language. It was along this route that knowledge of bronze working and the chariot reached China.
The Silk Road was a conduit for the arrival of Buddhist teachings in China and ultimately Korea and Japan. At Mogao, east of the Taklamakan Desert, are some of the finest Buddhist shrines anywhere. The Chinese Han dynasty’s establishment of peaceful conditions in the second century B.C.E., always problematical where steppe horsemen might intervene, promoted the development of states along the eastern stepping stones of the Silk Road. When the archaeologist-explorers Sven Hedin and Sir Aurel Stein reached the deserts of far western China a century ago, they encountered the remains of walled cities, roads, even ancient vineyards. Letters and royal orders on wood and leather have survived, in an Indian script dating to the third century C.E. These illuminate the kingdoms of Shan-shan, Sogdiana, and Hotan and their oasis cities at Niya, Endere, Panjikent, and Lou-lan.
The crossroads of Asia, where the routes south into India bisect the Silk Road south of the Aral Sea, have seen the rise and fall of many civilizations. Under the rule of Cyrus the Great (ruled c. 585–c. 529 B.C.E.), the Achaemenid empire of Persia expanded east, incorporating the Indus Valley as its 20th province during the reign of Darius the Great in the early fifth century B.C.E. Achaemenid rule came to an end with the defeat of Darius III at the hands of Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela (modern Iraq) in 331 B.C.E., setting in motion the beginning of the Greek control of this region. Under Seleucus Nicator (356–281 B.C.E.), one of Alexander’s generals and ruler of the former Persian Empire, Greek influence was profoundly felt through the foundation of cities, the construction of temples, and the minting of coins bearing the images of many Bactrian Greek kings. At Ay Khanum in Afghanistan and Sirkap in Pakistan are cities that match their contemporaries in Greece itself.
This powerful wave of Hellenistic influence can be seen in the Gandharan art style as well as in theaters and mausoleums, for example, at Ay Khanum. However, the Seleucid empire was on the wane by the mid-second century B.C.E., and from its remnants arose the Parthians in the region southeast of the Caspian Sea. They briefly held sway over the great center of Merv (modern Mary in Turkmenistan), reaching down into the Indus Valley. The Kushans, however, were to exert a major influence in this area. Moving west from China, these initially nomadic groups settled south of the Aral Sea by the end of the second century B.C.E., and under a line of potent rulers beginning with Kujula Kadphises, they came to rule a large empire south into India, with a capital at Purusapura (modern Peshawar). King Kanishka, who took the title devaputra, or son of god, showed a deep interest in Hinduism. By 200 C.E., Persian power resurfaced with the Sasanid dynasty under Ardashir I (224–241). Sassanian control of the strategic Merv Oasis and this central part of the Silk Road provided a welcome element of stability. By the third century C.E., a Christian monastery was founded at Merv.
From the fifth century C.E., however, the Sassanians came under mounting pressure from the Hephthalite Huns to the east, a people of shadowy origins, whose prowess as mounted cavalrymen and archers was feared. After the defeat and death of their king, Firuz, in 484, the Sassanians paid tribute in coinage to the Hephthalites, largely to keep the peace on their eastern frontier, until the reign of Khosrow I in the mid-sixth century C.E. Hephthalite territory at this juncture included Tokharistan and much of Afghanistan. They conquered Sogdiana in 509 and extended their authority as far east as Urumqi in northwest China. By 520, they controlled this area and in India came up against the western frontiers of the Gupta empire under King Bhuhagupta. Under their own king, Toramana, the Hephthalites seized the Punjab, Kashmir, and Rajputana; Toramana’s successor, Mihirakula, established his capital at Sakala (modern Sialkot in Pakistan). He was a devotee of Siva, and this was a period of devastation for the venerable Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan and India, many of which were sacked and destroyed. The last Hephthalite king, Yudhishthira, ruled until about 670, when he was replaced by the Turkish dynasty known as the Shahi.

Other Ancient States in Early Asia

The development of powerful states in China and India during the first millennium B.C.E. had a potent effect on the cultures with which they came into contact. Many new states mushroomed in the wake of international trade relations, wars of undisguised imperial conquest, or exposure to new ideas and ideologies. To the northeast, the Han policy of imperial expansion during the second century B.C.E. saw the establishment of the commandery or province, of Lelang in northern Korea. This imposition of an alien regime in the midst of already sophisticated societies was, at least in part, a stimulus for the rise of four Korean states—Koguryo, Shilla, Paekche, and Kaya. By the fourth century C.E., the Chinese had withdrawn from their foothold in the Korean Peninsula, and the rulers of these states fought among themselves. In the seventh century, the rulers of Shilla allied themselves with the Chinese Tang emperor to vanquish all rivals and to establish the first pan-Korean state, Unified Shilla.
Across the Tsushima Strait in Japan, the adoption of sophisticated techniques for rice cultivation on the Han model, together with the construction of irrigation works, underpinned emerging statelets concentrated in Kyushu and the margins of the Inland Sea. The rulers built for themselves gigantic mounded tombs, the largest of which reached a length of nearly half a kilometer. The Nihongi, an indigenous historical record completed in the early eighth century C.E., names a sequence of emperors and empresses, together with their capitals, temples, and palaces. Tracing these sites and opening them by excavation have yielded a rich harvest of new information. The Nara plain, east of modern Osaka, was a focus for the early Japanese state, with royal tombs and the remains of great cities at Fujiwara and Heijo, which were built along the lines of the Chinese capital of Chang’an. In 1961, a vital discovery revealed that mokkan, written records on wooden slips, survived at Heijo in considerable quantities.
These illuminated the detailed workings of aristocratic households and court functionaries. Linked with the excavations in royal palaces and Buddhist temples, the features of the early Nara state of the eighth century have emerged clearly defined from oblivion. With the end of the Han dynasty in the early third century, China was divided into three states. The southern kingdom of Wu had no access to the lucrative Silk Road that linked China with the West, and the emperor sent emissaries south to seek a possible maritime link with the worlds of India and Rome. To their considerable surprise, the emissaries encountered a state that they named Funan, located on the delta of the Mekong River in modern Vietnam and Cambodia. Their report, which has survived, described a palace and walled settlements, a system of taxation and laws, written records, and the presence of craft specialists. Rice was cultivated, and there was vigorous trade.
Once again, archaeology has verified these written accounts. Air photography before the Second World War revealed the outline of moated and walled cities on the flat delta landscape, linked by canals that radiated, straight as arrows, between the centers. At ground level, the French archaeologist Louis Malleret in 1944 excavated the city of Oc Eo and traced the outlines of brick temple foundations, jewelry workshops, and house foundations. Dating this city was facilitated by the discovery of coins minted by Roman emperors of the second century C.E. Since the end of the war in Vietnam in 1975, research has raced ahead. Many more sites have been identified, and the inscriptions, written in Sanskrit and employing the Indian Brahmi script, record the presence of kings and queens who took Indian names and founded temples dedicated to Indian gods. Wooden statues of the Buddha have survived in the delta mud. Funan was one of many small mercantile states that prospered by participating in a great trade network now known as the maritime Silk Road. A two-way trade with the Indian subcontinent saw gold and spices heading west, while bronzes, glass and carnelian ornaments, and novel ideas entered Southeast Asia. Along the coast of Vietnam, temples dedicated to Siva and other Hindu gods, as well as Sanskrit texts, document the rise of the Cham states. Chams spoke an Austronesian language, unlike their neighbors in Southeast Asia, and they dominated this coastal tract with its restricted river floodplains until the march to the south by the Vietnamese that ended in the 18th century. The rich soil of Java sustained kingdoms that were responsible for Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument known, dating to the ninth century, while the demand in the west for cloves and nutmegs saw the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia prosper.
The broad floodplain of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand witnessed the rise of a state known from its inscriptions, in the Mon language, as Dvaravati. Here are large, moated centers dominated by temples dedicated to the Buddha, which rose at the same time as the Funan state to the south. Small states developed along the coast of peninsular Thailand and Malaysia, as goods were transshipped from the Gulf of Siam to the ports on the Andaman Sea. One major trading state, known as Srivijaya, arose at Palembang on the island of Sumatra. To the west, the Pyu civilization of the dry zone in modern Myanmar (Burma) bequeathed great cities at Halin, Beikthano, and Sri Ksetra. On the Arakan coast, the part of Southeast Asia most exposed to trade with India, there are reports of visits by the Buddha himself, and cities were founded at Dhanyawadi and Vesali, complete with palaces and temples. Local origins are common to all these states that burgeoned along the maritime Silk Road. Explorations into their prehistoric ancestry reveal growing cultural complexity, as chiefs rose up and took advantage of the new opportunities afforded by international trade. Indian influence is seen in the Sanskrit and Pali languages, the Brahmi script, and Hindu gods. Beneath the surface of the Pyu, Dvaravati, Funan, and Cham civilizations lies a strong local culture. These cultures continued well into the second millennium C.E. In Cambodia the civilization of Angkor grew into a major regional power. Pagan was the center of the Burmese civilization. The Chams continued to flourish until the predatory Vietnamese began their march south.

Indigenous Asian Civilizations

In at least two instances it is possible to recognize an indigenous development of an Asian civilization with minimal outside influence. The origins of the Indus Valley civilization can be traced to increasing social complexity in the basin of this river and the surrounding uplands to the north and west, linked with growing maritime and overland trade with the contemporary civilizations of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Here are all the classic hallmarks of an early state system: huge walled cities with elite precincts dividing the priests and aristocrats from the rest of the urban population; regular streets, granaries, craft workshops, and domestic houses; and, most intriguing perhaps to the visitor, an efficient system of latrines and drains. A written script was used by at least 3300 B.C.E., but the failure of modern scholars to read the brief texts means that the administrative and ruling system remains conjectural. Several large cities dominated, particularly Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, but there were many smaller centers, villages, and hamlets.
The end of this civilization is dated to the first half of the second millennium B.C.E., but the reasons for the decline are not yet clearly defined. Some scholars have turned for explanation to the Rig-Veda, sacred ritual hymns, which survived through oral tradition in India until first transcribed in the 14th century C.E. For millennia Hindu priests have intoned these hymns during religious ceremonies incorporating the soma ritual. This ritual involved taking the juice from the soma plant, the identity of which remains unknown. Some was then offered to the gods; the rest was imbibed by the priests. The gods worshiped include the principal Hindu deities in their early manifestations: Foremost are Agni, the god of fire; Surya, the Sun god; Rudra, god of storms; and Indra and Vishnu, the gods of war. The Rig-Veda survives in Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, and its early manifestation was once seen as evidence of warriors arriving in the Indus Valley from the northwest, warriors who destroyed the cities of the Indus. Few now hold to this view for lack of archaeological evidence. Indeed some scholars have even suggested that the Rig-Veda in essence originated in the Indus cities and actually describes events that occurred in them. In any case the Indus civilization did not survive in a recognizable form beyond the first centuries of the second millennium B.C.E. The center of gravity in India then moved to the Ganges (Ganga)-Jamuna Basin, where a series of small competing states, known as janapadas, arose. The elimination and absorption of the weak led to the formation of larger states, and ultimately by the same process, the Mauryan state arose to form the first Indian empire in the fourth century B.C.E.
The second independent development of a civilization took place in China from about 2000 B.C.E. For many years, the central focus for the early Chinese state lay in the middle reaches of the Huang (Yellow) River Valley. Early Chinese histories described the states of Xia and Shang, including the names of capitals, dynasties, and kings. Archaeological research has validated these semimythical states, identified cities, recovered early written records, and opened the burials of elite leaders. Even after nearly a century of such research, new discoveries are still crowding in. Thus a new Shang capital was found as recently as 1999 at Huanbai. Excavations have also revealed the antecedents of the first states, which reach back to the period of early farming, and extending through the increasingly complex societies of the loess land bordering the Huang River. Long-range contact with the West was manifested by the beginnings of bronze casting and the adoption of the chariot.
Of even greater significance, there is compelling new evidence for a parallel development to the south, in the lands bordering the mighty Chang (Yangtze) River. Here
rice replaced millet as the subsistence base of states known as the Changjiang civilization. Already by 4000 B.C.E., walled settlements like Chengtoushan were established.
The Liangzhu culture (3200 to 2000 B.C.E.) of the lower Chang River Valley presents the picture of a complex society, whose leaders were interred in opulent tombs with fine jade grave goods. The most spectacular finds are from Sanxingdui in the Sichuan Basin, a huge walled city and likely capital of the regional state of the Shu people during the second millennium B.C.E. The bronze, ivory, gold, and jade offerings recovered from two sacrificial pits reveal a society no less complex than its contemporary at Anyang, the capital of the Shang state in the Huang Valley to the north.
In north China, the Shang dynasty was replaced in 1045 B.C.E. by the Zhou rulers. The Western Zhou kings controlled a considerable area. However, their policy of sending royal relatives to rule over newly conquered regions in due course weakened the center, as regional lords assumed their own power bases and formed their own states. In addition, the states known to the Chinese as Shu and Chu continued to flourish in the Chang Valley independent of the Zhou. This policy, with the transition to the Eastern Zhou period in 770 B.C.E., led to the weakening of the royal house; as rival states entered into increasingly bellicose relationships, the state of Qin emerged as the dominant force. By 221 B.C.E., the first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, had vanquished his last rivals. His dynasty, however, was short lived, being succeeded by the Western and then the Eastern Han. This period of empire, which ended in 220 C.E., saw the establishment of an enduring Chinese state that exercised considerable influence on its borders.

Signs Of a Civilization

Great temples, roads, canals, and reservoirs, together with tombs and writing, are the hardware of civilization. The software lies in a social system that can be discerned through the translation of writing and the inferences drawn from the archaeological record. The central operating system of a state lies in the ruling elite. This usually takes the form of a hereditary dynasty in which the ruler, who, in Japan and Korea, was frequently a woman, often assumed godlike qualities linked with an ability to communicate with the ancestors and spirit world. Administration involved an upper class of relatives of the ruling dynasty, a bureaucracy of centrally appointed officials, or both. Power was concentrated in the capital, often located in an urban center that incorporated a palace, state temples, and quarters for specialists. Tight control over the military helped ensure the rulers’ continuance in power, but in many early states, there was a perennial problem of scale, manifested in centrifugal tendencies.
The farther from the center, the greater the temptation to seek independence. One of the recurrent issues confronting the rulers of early states in Asia was the success of the harvest. Whether rice, millet, wheat, or barley, the surplus generated by the field workers was vital to the well-being of all. There is much evidence of central concern for predictable harvests, manifested in state irrigation works, deployment of increasingly efficient agricultural tools, and infrastructure for transportation. Essentially, agricultural and other surpluses were taxed and used to sustain the administrative system. In many instances this taxation encouraged a system of currency that took various forms: cowry shells and cast imitations thereof, measures of gold and silver, and coins that in India owed much to Greek prototypes.