All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
This is the story of humankind with a focus on travel and exploration, since humans have always been on the move. The history of humanity can’t be delinked from the geography of Earth and the geographic location of man over time. I continue with this ‘history & geography of travel’ series and in this 4th part, move from the BC-AD changeover 2000 years ago and step into the first millennium AD i.e. from 1 to 1,000 AD (and at times cover just a little bit of a few centuries beyond that). During this time humans continued to be restless, resolute, relentless and sadly at many times, ruthless.
Rome & Persia
At the start of the 1st millennium AD, the mighty Roman Empire was in an invisible decline. After the prosperous reigns of powerful emperors like Augustus, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, the nomadic barbarians from the north had started to invade the fringes of the empire, which had spread out too thin. A civil war was also starting to break out after the cruel persecution of the people who followed the new religion of Christianity. With the decline of Rome, there was a power shift to the east, when the city of Constantinople (Istanbul) was founded in 330 AD by Emperor Constantine. This would be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire, for the next 1,000 years.
At the same time in present day Iran and Iraq, with the Persian Empire sacked by Alexander in 331 BC, all was relatively quiet for many centuries with the domination of Rome from west to east. Then a tribe of horsemen called the Parthians gained control and became a nuisance for the Romans. However in 224 AD, the Parthian king was overthrown by the Sassanians, a line of kings who lived similar lives to the great kings of old Persia. The Sassanians were also empire builders and in 260 AD, Shapur-I even won a battle against the Roman emperor, Valerian. With the silk route open between Europe and the Orient, the Persians became sort of the early middle men in between, and acquired great wealth from their trade dealings. The empire finally collapsed in 637 AD when the nomadic Arabs invaded them.
India & China
In a parallel world of the Orient, far removed from Rome or Persia, there was a huge cultural barrier between neighbours India and China as well. The mighty Himalayas stood between the two great lands. By around 70 AD, the teachings of Gautama Buddha and the Buddhist religion had reached China, but there was hardly any other knowledge about the faith and the origins of it. Two Chinese monks went on their soul searching journeys to ‘find’ their faith. The first was Faxian and in 399 AD he reached the Kingdom of Khotan (south of the Taklimakan Desert in present day Xinjiang in China) and this is where he found many monks. Faxian then further trekked down to India where he visited the Buddhist monasteries on the river Ganges and may even have crossed the magnificent Ajanta Buddhist Caves in Maharashtra, which were being built around that time. He journeyed onwards into Sri Lanka on the southern tip of the sub-continent, and then Malaysia and Indonesia before heading home to China in 413 AD, thereby ending a 13 year odyssey. He came back with many religious manuscripts and gave new knowledge to the people of China. I am simply in awe of a man who decided to walk for 13 years, that too 1600 years ago in 399 AD.
The other such seeker of faith was also one of the most notable travellers and scholar from the 1st millennia AD. His name was Xuanzang. He is known as the traveller who bought the Chinese and Indian cultures in contact with each other. Xuanzang wanted to both understand and preach Buddhism and in 629 AD he left China for India seeking such knowledge (this was the time the stunning Ellora Caves were being built, very close to Ajanta). He undertook a 17 year journey from China to the various kingdoms in India. In today’s time he would probably be called a ‘bookpacker’, since on his back he carried a rack full of religious texts and books, which could have been very cumbersome, but such was his lust for knowledge and wisdom. The poor chap didn’t have Kindle back then either, but he did have a movie released on his travels in 2016 AD (very imaginatively called ‘Xuanzang’).
Both these travels were for the same reason and were brought about by the teachings of the Buddha, who himself would have undertaken shorter journeys across northern India, a thousand years before.
The Arab World
Far from the orient, again both geographically and culturally, one of the big events in human history was taking shape in Arabia around 600 AD. A man, regarded as a prophet, was preaching a new religion in which there was ‘Allah’, their God. The prophet was gathering many followers in the Arab world. His name was Muhammad (570 AD to 632 AD) and his teachings were written in their most sacred text called the Quran and his faith came to be known as Islam. The religion’s followers were called Muslims and soon, led by the caliphs (who were the prophet’s successors), Islam spread from Persia to Arabia all the way to Morocco throughout the northern coast of Africa, including Egypt. In fact in Europe, Islam even spread to southern Spain however the Arabs were defeated by the Christians in France in 732 AD (by Charles Martel, king of a people called Franks). The Byzantine Empire also remained largely Christian as it was never invaded by the Arabs.
However before Islam had been spread by the caliphs and the followers of the faith, Prophet Muhammad himself had undertaken a pilgrimage of revelation from Medina to Mecca in 628 AD and to this very day, millions of Muslims from all over the world come to Saudi Arabia to perform the same holy pilgrimage to Mecca, called the Hajj. The Hajj is one of the largest gatherings of humanity and holds followers of Islam from all around the world. Since this pilgrimage is the highest and holiest for all Muslims as it was for the Prophet, it can be said to be a very significant journey in human history. The Prophet is also said to have quoted a famous quote on travel – “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled”.
With the spread of Islam in such quick time across all of Middle East, North Africa and parts of Southern Europe, the Christians felt threatened. Their religion was largely fragmented in Western Europe with its domination only in the Byzantine Empire and Ireland. However after the defeat of the Arabs in France, in 768 AD Charles the Great (Charlemagne) became king of the Franks. He conquered large parts of Europe and was declared the Holy Roman Emperor in 800 AD by Pope Leo-III. This would set the stage for the upcoming dark period of the crusades or holy wars between the Christians and Muslims from 1,076 AD to 1,270 AD.
Other Parts of the Medieval World
This was also a time of great advancements in civilizations all across the world such as in India with the Mauryan Empire of King Ashoka (around 320-230 BC) leading the way to the Gupta Empire (320 -543 AD) and in Central America with the rise and fall of the Aztecs, Olmec and Mayan city-states and kingdoms. Besides these great civilizations, Arabia was rapidly advancing in parts, even though it didn’t come under one empire, with many retaining their nomadic lives away from the city centers. To the Far East, we had the Samurai culture in the yet ‘unfound’ island of Japan and there were many prosperous and well-established kingdoms in Africa too, but they were completely shrouded in mystery for the Europeans and Asians.
Besides we had the nomadic Slavs of Eastern Europe and Russia and ‘the fast & the furious’ Mongols, the nomads of Central Asia and China lead by Genghis Khan. They took over China which was earlier influenced by the Sui, Tang and Sung dynasties. India and nearby lands all the way to Indonesia and Cambodia continued to be under the sway of Hinduism and Buddhism as well. The kings built fabulous palaces and places of worship and there was a lot of focus on the arts, religion and architecture. As in all parts in the past, there would have been so many brave men who would have undertaken long and perilous journeys to outside their known worlds, but not many come through in books of the time.
The Crusades
As stated, this millennium belonged largely to the two dominant religions of that time and even today (along with Hinduism). The brutal crusades were fought for supremacy between the Christians and the Muslims. The Christians wanted to defend their faith in the Holy Land called Outremer (present day Israel-Palestine). It had been captured by the Seljuk Turks from present day Kazakhstan, who had taken over part of the Byzantine Empire in 11th century AD, including the Holy Land. It led to the dark history of the holy wars that lasted two centuries till 1270 AD, although the build up for it had already begun four centuries earlier when Muslims (not the Seljuk Turks) had conquered the area around Outremer.
From the European side, these years were dominated by the Knights who went on the crusades, with blessings of the Pope. However otherwise, life in Europe was very mundane, with most living in quiet villages and the rest living in extremely dirty and overcrowded towns. The central binding force of any town or village was the local Church as faith was given utmost importance. It is during this period (1347 – 1351 AD) that the Bubonic plague came from China via the Silk Route to Europe, killing as many as 25 million people in 4 years. Some even say around 75 million people died but in any case it wiped out 30%-50% of Europe’s population at that time making this the worst pandemic in human history (aptly referred to as the ‘Black Death’). This was clearly not a good time for Europe in terms of progress and prosperity, although it was to be the darkness before the dawn. The European age of science and voyages of discovery (of the Americas) was about to dawn but at this point Europe was clearly not as advanced as India, China or the Arab world. The ‘tide’ was about to turn for them.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home. Reach him at: www.facebook.com/MostTravelledIndian/ ; www.instagram.com/MostTravelled_Indian/
