India: A History. Revised and Updated (129 page)

Zardari, Asif Ali, Pakistani President,
569

Zayn-ul-Abidin, 15th c Kashmiri sultan,
288

Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistani president,
544
,
567
–9,
584
,
590
–4

Zia-ur-Rahman, Bangladeshi president,
544
,
565
,
589
–90

Zorawar Singh, 19th c Dogra general,
420
–1

Bronze ‘dancing girl’ from Mohenjo-daro in Sind province, Pakistan. Although not dancing, this tiny and justly famous figurine is probably Harappan and has been dated to c.2000
BC
.

Mohenjo-daro, the ‘Mound of the Dead’. The largest of the excavated Harappan city-sites has typical brickwork, but the foreground ‘granary’ and the background ‘citadel’ are conjectural designations.

Sunrise at Dashashwamedh Ghat on the Ganga (Ganges) at Varanasi (Benares). The name of the
ghat
recalls the tenfold
aswamedha
(horse-sacrifice) of the saintly King Divodasa which so discomfited Lord Shiva.

A scene from the
Ramayana
by an early-nineteenth-century artist. The Sanskrit epic shows a growing familiarity with peninsular India, as here in ‘The Battle of [Sri] Lanka’ between Lord Rama and the demon-king Ravana.

The Ashoka column atop Feroz Shah Khalji’s fort in Delhi. Inscribed in the third century
BC
, it was transported to Delhi by a fleet of barges in the fourteenth century. The famous inscription remained undeci-phered until the 1830s.

The Lion capital from Sarnath (near Varanasi). Now the national emblem of the Republic of India, it originally capped an Ashoka column erected at the site of the Buddha’s first sermon.

The rock at Shahbazgarhi (Panjab province, Pakistan) bearing Ashoka’s Edicts. One of the Maurya emperor’s many rock-cut inscriptions, this one flanks the Karakoram route by which Buddhism spread to China.

Bactrian coins of a Bactrian Greek king of the second century
BC
, and of Kanishka, the great Kushan king of uncertain date. The history of the northwest from the third century
BC
to the third century AD has been largely reconstructed on the basis of such coins.

Bracket carved as a
yakshi
on one of the Sanchi gateways. The incorporation of fertility spirits, like the voluptuous tree-entwining yakshi,broadened Buddhism’s appeal.

Relief panel from one of the gateways to the Great Stupa at Sanchi, first century
BC
. As with most stupa iconography, this eloquent processional scene is drawn from the life of the Buddha.

Seated Buddha of the Gandhara school, second century
AD
. The treatment of costume and countenance betrays the Graeco-Roman contacts of Gandhara and other kingdoms in the northwest.