Hindu Civilization
The successor civilization of the Indian subcontinent, arising in the Ganges Valley after the Aryan destruction of the earlier Indus (Harappan) civilization in the late second millennium BCE
Also known as: Hindu, Hindu Civilization, Indian civilization, Indic civilization
Hindu Civilization is Quigley's analytical unit for the producing society centred on the Indian subcontinent — the successor, in his typology, of an earlier Indic (Indus/Harappan) civilization that the Aryan invaders of the late second millennium BCE destroyed (EoC 156, 207). Its core area is the Ganges Valley, and political dominance fell, in standard Quigley fashion, to increasingly peripheral dynasties: the local Maurya (c. 540–184 BCE) and Gupta (c. 320–535) dynasties of the core, then peripheral powers including the Gurjaras, the Turkic Muslim dynasties at Delhi after 1266, and finally the universal empire of the Moguls (1526–1857) (EoC 156). Quigley reads Mogul rule as the Universal Empire stage of Hindu civilization, with the British colonial period as a late Decay/Invasion configuration in which a peripheral Western power intruded on the dying civilizational form.
Origin: A Successor to Indic Civilization
Hindu civilization, in Quigley's typology, is a successor civilization. Its predecessor — Indic or Indus civilization, centred on the Harappan settlements of the Indus Valley — was destroyed in Stage 7 (Invasion) by the Aryan incursions from the northwest at the end of the second millennium BCE: "Further east the Bronze Age invaders of India, known as Aryans, destroyed the Indus civilization and instigated a period of turmoil that was Stage 7 of Indic civilization and Stage 1 of Hindu civilization" (EoC 207). The Aryan invasion thus did double duty in Quigley's framework: it closed one civilization and supplied the Mixture phase of the next. The new Hindu civilization's core area shifted east, to the Ganges Valley, where the synthesis of indigenous Dravidian and incoming Indo-European cultures produced the Vedic and post-Vedic religious and social order (EoC 156).
Instrument of Expansion: The Brahmanic-Religious Order
Quigley does not give Hindu civilization a chapter-length treatment in Evolution of Civilizations, but his analysis is consistent with treating the instrument of expansion as a religious organisation — the Brahmanic-caste system fused with the dynastic-temple state — broadly analogous in type to the Mesopotamian Sumerian priesthood but operating through a much more elaborated social-ritual system (EoC 138). The caste system, by assigning hereditary productive functions to a series of varna-jati groupings and concentrating ritual surplus in the Brahman caste, satisfied the three conditions of an instrument of expansion. It provided incentives (within a religiously legitimated framework) to refine productive techniques in agriculture, textiles (the great cotton industries), metallurgy (iron and brass), construction (the rock-cut and free-standing temple architecture), shipbuilding, and trade. It accumulated surplus through temple tribute (the daksina paid for ritual services, the temple-owned land that became, in the medieval period, vast institutional estates), caste duties, and royal patronage of the priestly order — kings legitimated their rule by their patronage of Brahmans and temples, and in return the Brahmanic order legitimated kingship. It invested that surplus in productive and infrastructural innovation, particularly in irrigation works (the great tank-and-channel irrigation systems of southern India), in temple construction (which doubled as economic infrastructure, since the temples were major employers and centres of commerce), and in scholarship (the great mathematical, astronomical, grammatical, and philosophical traditions of classical India). The expansion of Hindu civilization across the entire subcontinent — and its cultural projection into Southeast Asia between the fourth and twelfth centuries CE, the so-called "Indianisation" of the Khmer, Cham, Javanese, and Balinese polities — represents the Age of Expansion of this instrument. The Juggernaut ceremony Quigley notes in passing — "a necessary ceremony for agrarian fertility, ensured by soaking the earth with blood under the wheels of a solar car" — is the ritual that anchored this ceremonial-religious civilization (EoC 222).
The Seven Stages and the Peripheralisation Pattern
Quigley's clearest analytic statement on Hindu civilization is his application of the peripheralisation pattern to its dynastic history: "The successor Hindu civilization began to arise (late second millennium B.C.) in the Ganges Valley. The core area of this new civilization fell under the political control of the local Maurya (ca. 540-184 B.C.) and Gupta (ca. 320-535) dynasties. Then, as Hindu culture spread over the whole Indian subcontinent, political dominance shifted to peripheral powers such as the Gurjaras… [and] a series of Moslem dynasties, mostly Turkish, at Delhi (after 1266), culminating in the universal empire of the Moguls (1526-1857)" (EoC 156). This is one of his cleanest cases of the rule that the Universal Empire arises from progressively more peripheral powers. The successive Buddhist (Mauryan), Hindu (Gupta), and Muslim (Sultanate, Mogul) dynastic layers each represent a further peripheralisation of political power from the original Brahmanic-Hindu core.
Mogul Universal Empire and Western Intrusion
Quigley reads the Mogul Empire (1526–1857) as the Universal Empire stage of Hindu civilization — the political unification of the subcontinent under a single peripheral dynasty (Central Asiatic Turco-Mongol Muslims), accompanied by the characteristic Stage 5 phenomena of internal peace, brilliant high culture, and underlying stagnation of the productive system (EoC 156). The Mogul decline from the late seventeenth century onward, and the simultaneous arrival of Western (specifically British) commercial-then-political power, supplied the conditions for an unusual Stage 6/7 configuration: a civilization in early Decay was penetrated and then absorbed administratively by a still-expanding outside civilization. The British Raj (1858–1947) is, in this framework, neither a continuation of the Mogul Universal Empire nor a true new civilizational order, but a Western-administered transition phase. Independence in 1947 returned political form to subcontinental hands without resolving the underlying civilizational question.
The Crisis That Ended Each Stage
The crises that ended each stage of Hindu civilization follow Quigley's general pattern. The Mauryan-to-Gupta gap (after 184 BCE) and the Gupta collapse under Hunnish pressure (after 535 CE) represent successive Age of Conflict crises in the core area. The Muslim invasions from the eleventh century onward — culminating in the Delhi Sultanate after 1266 — represent a long secondary Conflict phase that ended only with the Mogul universal empire. The crisis that ended the Mogul Universal Empire — and arguably the civilization as a fully autonomous form — was external: the British East India Company and then Crown intrusion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which represented the impact of a fully-expanding Western civilization on a civilization in late Decay. Quigley speculates in EoC that "by that time [when Western Conflict is more advanced] the new Indian civilization or the new Chinese civilization may be in Stage 3 [Expansion] and will present greater threats to both Western and Russian civilizations" (EoC 166) — leaving the analytic possibility that a new Indian civilization may now be in formation.
Significance: A Religious Instrument in the East
Hindu civilization matters in Quigley's typology as the East-Asian-flanking case that extends the religious-instrument-of-expansion pattern beyond Mesopotamia. Together with Islamic and Mesopotamian civilizations, it shows that religious organisations can sustain producing societies through long expansion cycles even in the absence of explicitly commercial or industrial instruments. Quigley also uses it as an open analytic case: whether contemporary India is the late Decay of a single Hindu civilization stretching back three millennia, or the early Mixture of a new "Indian" civilization arising from the encounter of late-Hindu and intrusive-Western cultures, is, in his framework, a real and unresolved question (EoC 166). Treated primarily in chapter 4 of Evolution of Civilizations (in the context of the peripheralisation rule) and discussed across Tragedy and Hope in connection with twentieth-century geopolitics.
Cited in
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 156 Quigley
The successor Hindu civilization began to arise (late second millennium B.C.) in the Ganges Valley. The core area of this new civilization fell under the political control of the local Maurya (ca. 540-184 B.C.) and Gupta (ca. 320-535) dynasties.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 156 Quigley
Then, as Hindu culture spread over the whole Indian subcontinent, political dominance shifted to peripheral powers such as the Gurjaras… [and] a series of Moslem dynasties, mostly Turkish, at Delhi (after 1266), culminating in the universal empire of the Moguls (1526-1857).
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 207 Quigley
Further east the Bronze Age invaders of India, known as Aryans, destroyed the Indus civilization and instigated a period of turmoil that was Stage 7 of Indic civilization and Stage 1 of Hindu civilization.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 166 Quigley
By that time the new Indian civilization or the new Chinese civilization may be in Stage 3 and will present greater threats to both Western and Russian civilizations than either of these will present to the other.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 138 Quigley
[The instrument of expansion] can be any kind of organization, military, political, social, religious, and so forth.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 27 Quigley
Hindu civilization, centred on the Indian subcontinent, runs from the Aryan invasions through the great Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim dynastic phases into the modern colonial encounter.