Volume 1: Birth! Seven time travelers Chapter 184: The New King of Alawidu (I)
India is a paradise for humanists and a nightmare for historians.
Before the British entered here, the entire South Asian subcontinent had never been unified. India, at least before the 20th century, had always been a geographical concept rather than a country.
There are many ethnic groups here. For example, the Hindustani people, who are known as the main ethnic group in India in the 21st century, account for more than 30% of the Indian population in the 21st century. They are actually a very weak main ethnic group. But even so, within this Hindustani ethnic group, there are actually two major races and more than 40 branches...
With such a complex ethnic system, plus almost every religion you can think of and even religions you can't even think of, there are believers in India. The combination of these two large bases can derive a great variety of cultures. It is not too easy to produce academic results from such a large number of cultures. Therefore, India is a paradise for humanists.
But this place is very painful for historians.
From ancient times to the present, until the British entered here, no regime had ever been able to integrate the entire South Asian subcontinent. On the contrary, the people of this land were constantly conquered by invaders from the northwest. And then no matter how brave and good at fighting the conquerors were in the past, they would soon become weak after entering this continent and finally be conquered by new conquerors.
The history of the repeated outsiders is unclear. After entering India, they destroyed the culture of the original rulers in various ways. Moreover, no matter which ethnic group the rulers were, they did not actually achieve true centralization. The princes in various places had great independence. In addition, there was only one dominant empire in this place, and there were other regimes that opposed this empire in name or in fact... With all these things, it is really a very painful thing to explain the history of India clearly.
Specifically in the 17th century, it was the Mughal Empire that held the upper hand and dominant position in the South Asian subcontinent.
The founder of this empire was Babur, a descendant of Timur, who dominated Central Asia in the early Ming Dynasty. His conquest of India was initially forced.
This sturdy man with Mongolian Golden Family bloodline had a lifelong ideal of rebuilding the Timurid Empire in Central Asia and restoring the glory of his ancestors. But after many efforts were ruthlessly defeated by the powerful Uzbeks, he had no choice but to lead the remaining troops south to India, hoping to find a place to recover.
As a result, when he led an army of only 12,000 to launch a tentative attack on India, he unexpectedly succeeded at once - he did not expect that warm and prosperous India would be so easy to attack. If he had known this, he would not have wasted so many years in that cold and poor place in Central Asia.
From Babur to Humayun, and then to Akbar. While the three generations of emperors gradually gained a foothold in India, they also thought about fighting back to Central Asia many times. However, the reality of repeated defeats finally made them completely give up this idea. Starting from Akbar, they began to take root here wholeheartedly, and this family with Mongolian ancestry finally established a stable rule in the South Asian subcontinent. This country, because of the royal bloodline, is called the Mughal Empire (the Mongolian Empire on the Indian continent).
Among them, the most important person was Emperor Akbar.
Even from today's perspective, this great man deserves respect.
In order to quell the conflict between the Astronomican and the Hindu religions in this land, he took the lead in marrying a Hindu woman. As an Astronomican, he certainly did not eat pork. In order to respect the Hindus, he also did not eat beef. He allowed Hindus to serve as officials and join the army without any discrimination against them. In this way, the foundation for religious reconciliation was laid.
Although he was bent on religious reconciliation, he vigorously corrected the extremely backward aspects of Hindu doctrine, even if it caused a large-scale rebellion among Hindus. For example, Akbar issued orders to abolish the Sati system, in which widows burned themselves to show their loyalty to their deceased husbands. In order to save a widow who was forced to burn herself, he could ride dozens of miles overnight.
He enacted law to ban early marriage in Hinduism: before him, it was a popular practice among Hindus that girls must be married off before their menarche. He also publicly declared that a 30-year-old man should marry a girl no older than 12, and a 24-year-old man should marry a girl no older than 8... After him, Indian girls could finally get married after their menarche.
He strongly opposed the dowry system in Hinduism and strictly prohibited the husband's family from abusing or even killing the bride because the dowry was not generous enough.
In the economic and military fields, he changed the corrupt tax farming system to a fixed tax system, established a fiefdom system for professional soldiers similar to the Tang Dynasty's Fubing system, and established the Coteval system: this is the origin of the modern social police.
By 1605, when Akbar the Great died, the country's rule included today's Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, northern India, Bangladesh, etc. It was extremely vast, with a population of more than 88 million. It was the most populous country in this era except for the Ming Empire. The country had a standing army of 150,000, 5,000 war elephants, prosperous economy and trade, and the people were loyal to it. No other regime in the entire South Asian subcontinent could challenge it.
However, although the Mughal Empire seemed powerful, it also had many problems.
The biggest problem, of course, is religion.
As descendants of the Mongols who lived in Central Asia for many years and whose lifestyle was completely Turkified, the Mughal royal family believed in the Crescent Moon. The mainstream religion in India was Hinduism. In addition, there were many followers of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The previous were very smart to adopt a policy of religious tolerance: freedom of belief, and basic equality between believers and non-believers in law.
The emperor attached great importance to religious issues, and all the emperors married the daughters of local Hindu princes as their concubines. The emperor's imperial court meetings were usually attended by only four ministers: the prime minister (vizier), the finance minister (diwan), the military minister (bakhshi), and the minister of religious affairs (sadr). In the judicial system, different believers were tried and judged in their respective courts.
The second is the relationship between the Rajput princes.
In the western part of India bordering Pakistan in the 21st century, there are Rajasthan and Gujarat (the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi and the place where the current Indian Prime Minister Modi made his fortune). These two states are the main settlements of Rajputs. In the 17th century, there were many Rajput princes and many city-states under their leadership.
The Rajputs are a new ethnic group formed by the combination of foreign invaders such as the Sakas, Huns, Ceylonians, Yuezhi, Greek Macedonians, and Persians with local residents. In the Brahman caste system, the Rajputs are basically Kshatriyas (military nobles), who are tough and fearless on the battlefield. If their city-states or manors are besieged by the enemy, and they see no way to win, they will gather their wives and children in the tallest building in the area and burn them to death, and then put on red clothes and fight to the last moment.
The royal family of the Mughal Empire mainly adopted a conciliatory approach to such a fierce ethnic group. Most of the royal family members married the daughters of Rajput princes, and the emperor recruited Rajputs as his guards. On weekdays, the semi-independent status of the princes was protected as much as possible, and they did not interfere too much in their internal affairs, and there was no discrimination against their religious beliefs.
Of course, if you encounter an ambitious and foolish prince who wants to expand the power of his own country, the imperial government's attack is guaranteed to be swift and severe.
The second is the relationship with many kingdoms in the southern part of the Indian peninsula.
As mentioned above, before the British, no one had ever been able to unify the South Asian subcontinent. Whether it was the Kushan Empire or the Gupta Empire, or the Delhi Sultanate and the current Mughal Empire, their rule was generally in northern India. In the southern part of the Indian peninsula, on the Deccan Plateau, there were many independent kingdoms. They basically believed in Hinduism, and in terms of national ethnicity, they were mainly indigenous people of the Indian peninsula.
Towards these countries, the empires or dynasties of North India generally adopted the same approach as the Chinese Empire had towards backward regimes in remote areas: you nominally acknowledge that you are my vassal, and then you just come to pay symbolic tribute every year.
In 1605, Akbar, the great ruler who conquered the vast territory of the Mughal Empire and established a truly decent system for the country, died. His successor was his son Salim, known in history as Jahangir.
If we were to make an analogy with Chinese emperors, this new emperor of the Mughal Empire would probably be more similar to Emperor Huizong of Song.
This is also an emperor with great achievements in painting art. He likes to drink, especially strong liquor that has been distilled twice and soaked with a lot of opium. He likes beautiful women, but he is not a scumbag. He is willing to invest true feelings and take responsibility for every beauty. This kind of person is actually more suitable to be an artist rather than an emperor-that is, his luck is better than that of Song Huizong. At this time, the Mughal Empire was a new regime, and its national power was on the rise. There was no powerful regime or foreign race around to invade India. So in the historical plane, during his reign, India's painting art developed greatly, and the national strength was also steadily rising, and he himself had a good end.
But in this dimension, the artist Jahangir has been somewhat unhappy in recent years.
Because the Alavedu Dynasty of the Vijayanagar Kingdom in the southeast of the Indian peninsula has begun to rise in recent years, and its influence on some small kingdoms around it has been increasing. And on March 26, 1612, the three gods gathered again in the sky in the southeast of the Indian peninsula!
