Romania Clayton

Thomas J. Clayton who visited many

countries passed through Bulgaria also. Going from Varna to Ruse and then on to

Romania

Clayton was “surprised” to discover that both Bulgaria and

Romania were “such fertile countries.” He wrote that he “never saw better

pasture lands or wheat fields” anywhere else in the world. These lands reminded

him of the prairie lands of Illinois. He was also surprised to find that there

were no farm houses like in America. The lands, he stated, were “tilled by

peasants who live in miserable little huts, or in villagesOur route lay through

a spur of the Balkan Mountains and was very picturesque very beautiful and

entertainingThe scenery of these mountains is soft and has a soothing rather

than a stirring influence upon the beholder.” The author believed that if peace

prevailed in these parts of the world, Bulgaria and Romania “will soon become

rich and prosperous.”

There are few more accounts by Americans on

Bulgaria. However, they are not much more different than those presented. Many

a time what Americans said about the Bulgarians or for that matter about other

peoples, reflected on their own personal character or how they valued American

culture and way of life. The descriptions presented by these travelers on a

variety of topics, like national character and even the history of Bulgaria are

hardly scientific or correct accounts.

Bulgarian personality

Almost all of these travelers present

nothing but clichés. They did not have the necessary expertise to carefully

analyze the Bulgarian

personality, their ethnic typicalness in terms of common

national cultural values. The frame of reference these travelers used was

founded on their perspective of American history and culture as the

repositories of values of liberty, freedom, democracy, justice, religion,

discipline, industry and progress.

Almost all of the authors sympathized with

the plight of the Bulgarian people under Ottoman domination. They all condemned

the alien system of despotism and many a time showed their preference for

republicanism. The Ottoman system did not permit the development of the

individual, the arts and crafts as well as agriculture and industry. The

authors were aware that the Ottoman state was in its stages of disintegration.

Those who visited Bulgaria before 1878 believed that the Bulgarians would

become free and those who travelled after the liberation of the country praised

the attempts of the Bulgarians to preserve their independence.

Process Mesopotamia

We must now consider more closely the

manner in which these artificial hills come to be created. Any of the mounds

which we have mentioned in the preceding paragraphs would probably serve to

illustrate the broad lines of this process: but those in Mesopotamia will

perhaps serve our purpose best, since they are uncomplicated by the presence of

large stone buildings and at the same time provide examples of some anatomical

eccentricities seldom found elsewhere. This process, then, by which in

antiquity the repeated rebuilding’s of human habitations on a single site

created a perpetually increasing elevation, is by no means difficult to

understand.

The average life of a mud brick building

today seldom exceeds the span of a single generation: and in earlier times,

military conquest or localized raiding on a smaller scale would certainly have

accounted for demolitions that are more frequent. Roofs would be burnt or

collapse and the upper parts of the walls subside, filling the rooms to about a

third of their height with brick debris. Before rebuilding, the site would

usually be systematically levelled, the stumps of the old walls being used as

foundations for the new.

Prehistoric fortresses at Mersin

Thus, after a time, the town or village

would find itself occupying the summit of a rising eminence; a situation, which

had the double advantage of being easily defensible and of affording an

expansive view of the surrounding countryside. One remembers in a connection

how the walls of the little prehistoric fortresses at Mersin in Cilicia were

lined with identical small dwellings for the garrison; and each was provided

with a pair of slit openings from which a watch could be kept on the approaches

to the mound.

What, then, an excavator is concerned with

is the stratified accumulation of archaeological remains, unconsciously created

by the activities of these early builders. By reversing the process and

examining each successive phase of occupation, from the latest (and therefore

uppermost) downwards, he obtains a chronological cross section of the mound’s history,

and can, if circumstances are favorable, reconstruct a remarkably clear picture

of the cultural and political vicissitudes through which its occupants have

passed.

However, it must be remembered that the

procedure, which he adopts, itself involves a new form of demolition. For as

the architectural remains associated with each phase of occupation are cleared,

examined and recorded, they must in turn be removed in order to attend to the

phase beneath. In a Near Eastern mound, the product of an operation of this

sort is often a deep hole in the ground and very little else that could

interest a subsequent visitor to the site of the excavation.

Museum of Pennsylvania

This road of course prolonged itself

through the Taurus passes, where the mounds are rare. However, once the

Anatolian plateau is reached, they start again and increase in size at the

approach to the great cities of Phrygia. The crossing of the Sangarius River is

marked by a colossal mound representing the remains of the old Phrygian

capital, Gordion, and a wide area around it is studded with tumuli covering the

graves of the Phrygian kings.

Excavations by the University Museum of

Pennsylvania in the side of the hill have revealed a gigantic stone gateway,

from which travelers on the Royal Road must have set out on their journey

northward. Half a mile further on, a stretch of the road itself is exposed,

where it passes between the tumuli; and its fifteen foot width of stone

pavement is still perfectly preserved.

(1) A. H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains.

(2) Published in “Iraq”,

(3) Happening to visit the excavations when

this section of the road had just been located. I found the pavement newly

cleared and, standing in the center of it, the American director, a volume of

Herodotus in his hand, from which he was declaiming the passage in praise of

the Persian couriers who carried the royal dispatches from Sardis to Susa.

Anatolia or Kurdistan

However, it is not only on great highways

of this sort that the purpose of mounds can be identified. In every major

highland valley of Anatolia or Kurdistan, there, probably at a river crossing

or road junction, is a substantial mound; the market town or administrative center

of an agricultural district, which may still be crowned by the ruined castle of

a feudal landlord—the “derebey” of Ottoman times. Scattered elsewhere over the

face of the valley are smaller mounds, which were mere villages or farmsteads.

There are mounds making obvious frontier

posts, and lines of mounds sketching in the communications, which served

military defense systems of the remote past: and there are skeins of more

recent defenses, like the fortresses of Diocletian’s Hines.1 and finally, there

are tiny, insignificant looking mounds standing no more than a few feet above

the level of the plain. In addition, sometimes these prove to be the most

important of all: for they have not been occupied for many thousands of years,

and the relics of their prehistoric occupants lie directly beneath the surface.

Fourteenth century caravanserai

As a result, the actual level of occupation

remains precisely where it was six centuries ago. Seeking a full contrast in

regional conditions, my mind turns to mediaeval Baghdad. There, in 19411 was

concerned with the repair and restoration of a magnificent fourteenth century

caravanserai in the center of the town. Inside the building, occupational

debris had accumulated until only the tops of the main arches were any longer

visible; and this had to be removed before it could again be put into use.

When the task was finished the fine

proportions of the vaulted hall became apparent; but the pavement upon which

one stood was now found to be exactly nine feet beneath the level of the street

outside, and a stairway had to be built in order to reach it.

In a town built largely of mud brick and

subjected during the past centuries to a series of appalling political and

natural disasters, the level of habitation had risen at the rate of eighteen

inches per hundred years. So here at once is a first clue to the regional

character of mound formation; two central factors which have been conducive to

their creation in the countries of the Near East.

One is the almost universal employment in

those countries of sun-dried brick as a building material; the other,

historical insecurity, coupled with the extraordinary conservatism, which makes

eastern peoples, cling tenaciously to a site once occupied by their ancestors

and obstinately return to it however often they are ejected.

Visit to Egypt

It is interesting to recollect that even

Herodotus, during his visit to Egypt, was already able to observe a

phenomen22on caused by the accumulation of occupational debris in an Egyptian

city, though his conclusion regarding its explanation was understandably at

fault. In his description of Bubastis he says—“The temple stands in the middle

of the city, and is visible on all sides as one walks round it; for as the city

has been raised up by embankment, while the temple has been left untouched in

its original condition, you look down upon it whosesoever you are.

“I In fact, as one sees today at Luxor and

elsewhere, the temples, with their massive stone walls and pillars, have mostly

survived at the original level of their foundation. while the surrounding

dwelling houses and other buildings of the city, whose mud and reed walls have

continually been demolished and renewed, rose gradually above them, leaving

them in a deep hollow, like the Forum of Trajan at Rome.

Country west of Mosul

To confirm this, it may be interesting to

quote at random the reactions of a nineteenth century traveler to the

appearance of the country west of Mosul, during a journey in the spring 1840.

Sir Henry Layard had reached the market town called Tell Afar on his way to the

Sin jar Hills, and he describes his surroundings as follows “Towards evening I

ascended the mound and visited the castle….

From the walls, I had an uninterrupted view

of a vast plain, stretching westward towards the Euphrates, and losing itself

in the hazy distance. The ruins of ancient towns and villages arose on all

sides; and as the sun went down, I counted above one hundred mounds, throwing

their dark and lengthening shadows across the plain. These were the ruins of

Assyrian civilization and prosperity. Centuries have elapsed since a settled

population dwelt in this district of Mesopotamia.

Now, not even the tent of a Bedouin could

be seen. “I Layard was of course wrong in thinking only of the Assyrian nation;

for many of the mounds he was looking at were in fact occupied as early as the

sixth millennium B.C. However, he did not exaggerate their number. During a

survey in 1937, I myself recorded the surface pottery from seventy-five mounds

in that area, and these were only a few selected sites, which I could easily

reach by car during a short three weeks reconnaissance.2

However, apart from the close concentration

of mounds in certain areas of this sort, the pattern, which they make, is often

worth observing. AH over Iraq, and for that matter in neighboring countries, a

glance at the disposal of mounds in a landscape will often reveal to one in the

lividest possible manner some aspect of historical geography, whether political

or economic.

Royal Road

The city of Erbil, for instance, (PL. I)

stands within its fortress walls on a mound whose height almost justifies its

local reputation as the “oldest city in the world”: and from its rooftops, over

the undulating plain to the Zaab river crossings.

Which led to Nineveh and the north, one

sees a line of smaller mounds, pointing the exact direction of the age old

caravan route, which the Achaemenian Persians, coming from Susa, prolonged as

far as their new capital at Sardis. They called it the Royal Road, though it

had existed for several thousand years before their time. Wherever it crossed a

wade and there was a source of water, there also, today, there is a mound; and

villages, which make convenient stopping places on the modem motoring road,

crown many of them.

Certain characteristics

Interesting as this illustration is of how

strati graphical formations can be created, this early mention of Egypt must

serve as an occasion to introduce certain reservations regarding that country,

in relation to the subject under discussion. For it should be said at once that

Egypt has certain characteristics which make it less suitable than others do

for the study of mounds.

This is perhaps partly to be attributed to

the abundant supply and general use of building stone, which greatly prolonged

the survival of Egyptian buildings. But it is also partly due to the fact that,

in the narrow valley of Upper Egypt, land is too valuable to allow large ruin

fields of brick buildings to remain derelict; and the fellahin have long since

discovered that the occupational debris with which such ruins are Hide, when

spread over their fields, makes the finest fertilizer available.

Burin any case, those who have approached

the subject of Egyptology will know that archaeology in Egypt, when it took the

form of actual excavation, has always been concerned almost exclusively with

stone temples, tombs and cemeteries. Mounds in Egypt are confined for the most

part to the Delta of the Nile; and, with so much else to attend to, their

excavation has till now been very considerably neglected.

So let us glance once again at the pattern

of countries in which mounds are everywhere found and have been more generally

excavated. From Egypt they spread northward through the Levant and westward

through Anatolia to the Balkans. Eastward they follow the curve of Breasted’s

“crescent” through the rich farmlands in the foothills of the Armenian

mountains to Iraq and Persia and so, southward of the Elburz range, to

Afghanistan and the Indus valley.

Mesopotamia

But the focal point of the whole area,

where mounds are so plentiful that they become the most characteristic feature

of the landscape, is the twin river valley of Mesopotamia which is in fact not

a valley at all but a vast province of partially irrigated alluvial desert. It

is a habit of thought to apply the name Mesopotamia to this basin of alluvium,

which represents half of modem Iraq. But it has come to be known to our own

generation that the first human settlers in this province, the ancestors of the

later Sumerians, were themselves comparative latecomers, and that the

undulating hill country of northern Iraq had a much earlier record of Neolithic

farming communities.

This may help to explain the impression,

which has grown upon one, after long periods of travel in those parts, that the

Assyrian uplands around Mosul and their westward extension through the valleys

of the Khabur and Balik rivers into North Syria must have been the most thickly

populated area of the completely ancient world. Certainly today, they are more

thickly studded with ancient mounds than any other part of the Near East.

Bulgarian Language

The majority of Americans who wrote on

Bulgaria or visited the country showed energy, curiosity, sense of wonder, and

faith in the future of Bulgaria and mankind even when they were disappointed in

some particular aspect of their travel experience. They considered knowledge,

and their travel experiences important, their individual responses and

reactions significant and worth preserving. Although they were usually

unfamiliar with the Bulgarian language, history and customs, their

comments on the Bulgarian character were generally positive.

It was difficult for the American traveler,

who knew little about the country, to come to terms with the complex cultural

milieu of Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, etc. and to resolve the difference

sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant between the Balkan mind cushioned on a

multi-layered rich past and a modern American mind formed in the New World free

from the burden of the past.  The

Bulgarians, busy with their struggle to free themselves and maintain their

independence, thought little about and did even less to attract tourists.

American tourists in Balkans

For the American tourists the Balkans were

on the periphery of their travel plans. Most of those who visited the country

went there as passers-by and caught only a glimpse of Bulgaria. Bulgaria in the

view of the American traveler was either a peasant society or a society in

transition with many Oriental traits still present.

The Bulgarians were described as simple,

natural, methodological, disciplined, and diligent. There were, of course, some

descriptions which were tendentious and even misleading. The Orthodox Church

was criticized, in part, in the belief that this would make Americans come to

the support of the American missionaries working in Bulgaria.

However, the commentaries of these pioneer

American travelers are not without merit. Through sharing their travel

experiences with their countrymen, the American travelers contributed toward

making Bulgaria known to Americans. Although most of the descriptions were brief,

they nonetheless were good enough to create an image of a country with a long

history, a relatively heroic past and a people struggling to free itself, and

modernize its country.

Archaeological monument

An alternative situation arises, when an

important building or civic lay out is encountered, of the sort which may

afterwards need to be preserved as an archaeological monument. In this case,

the excavation will merely be extended to cover as much as is required of the

stratum concerned, and if a strati graphical sounding to a greater depth is

required, it will be made elsewhere.

However, to return to the creation and

development of mounds themselves, it would be a mistake to think that the

process is always as simple and straightforward as that already described. A

wide variety of circumstances may serve to disrupt their symmetry and

complicate their stratification.

For instance, the diminishing living space

at the summit or a sudden increase in the settlement’s population may cause the

focus of occupation to move away from its original center. In order to make

this clear, we may at this point enumerate some of the principal variations of

the theme of anatomical development, which are to be found, particularly in

Mesopotamian mounds.

Orthodox sequence

As a point of departure then, let us take

the orthodox sequence of developments illustrated in the upper part of Fig. 1.

This diagram represents the habitation of a village community with a static

population. The superimposed remains of five principal occupations have

gradually created a small artificial hill: but as the site of the village rose

in level, the building space on the summit became more and more restricted by

the sloping sides of the mound.

It may well have been for this reason that

the place was eventually abandoned. In any case, after the inhabitants of the

fifth settlement had departed, the ruins of their houses were molded by the

weather to form the peak of a symmetrical tumulus. Vegetation started to grow

upon it, and soon all traces of occupation had disappeared beneath a shallow

mantle of humus soil.

The second and third diagrams in Fig. I

both illustrate cases where the focus of occupation has shifted. The former

represents a phenomenon, which we shall later have an opportunity of studying

in detail at a particular site tell Hassuna in northern Iraq, which will

provide a perfect example.

I in the diagram, after five principal

periods of occupation, a small mound has been formed in a maimed exactly

similar to that in the previous instance. However, from this point onwards,

occupation has continued, not on the summit of the mound, since that had become

inadequate, but terraced into its sloping flank and spreading over an extended

area of new ground beneath.

Anti Russian and pro German

He was surprised to see in the Eiffel

Restaurant the waiters “puffed tobacco smoke as they took the guests’ orders,

and reclined at full length on a bench in the lull of business.” He tried to

explain this by making a sarcastic comment that democracy seemed to have made

some headway since the liberation of the country. However, the author liked the

friendliness and great hospitality of the Bulgarian people he met along the

Danube.

Bigelow was anti-Russian and pro-German.

He was very critical of Russia’s policy in Bulgaria and thought that Germany

ought to have the final say in Southeastern Europe. He attempted to explain

Bulgarian politics by quoting an unnamed Bulgarian diplomat critical of Russian

policy toward his country, and hoping that not the Russian Tsar but the German

Emperor would become the “Protector of the Danube.”

James M. Buckley travelled through Bulgaria

in 1888. He believed that each traveler saw “what he took with him,” and for

this reason he thought that his experiences were worth recording because

“several views are more illuminating than one.” In his books Travels in Three

Continents: Europe, Africa, Asia he described his trip through Eastern Rumelia

and Bulgaria.

 “The

view as we rode along was wonderfully beautiful. Villages and towns are far

apart, and one might easily have fancied himself travelling through a

succession of parks connected with some ancestral estate, his only perplexity

that he saw no house or castle, and few persons.” He was impressed by the

“immense masses of granite” that surround and underlie Plovdiv. He praised the

political “independent existence” of Eastern Rumelia which gave “it much more

interest to Western travelers than would have if still a province of Turkey.”

Bulgarian Orthodox Church

He took part in a convention in Sofia of

the Bulgarian Protestants and was impressed with their work. However, like

Mutchmore, he was very critical of the Bulgarian Orthodox

Church. In his view the Bulgarian Church “was a very low form of

Christianity,” for which the principles of the Gospel were “concealed under the

mask of superstitions; no intelligible instruction is given; pomp, ceremony,

priest craft, support the religion, which exerts little influence over the

daily lives of the people, and can afford little or no comfort in their

experience of privation and toil.”

Sofia, the capital city, did not impress

him much. Were it not for the palace, one or two elaborate hotels of an Eastern

style, and the Bulgarian letters on the signs, he wrote, it would be easy to

“mistake the place for an American prairie town already endeavoring to put on

the airs of a city.” He was more impressed by the fertility of the land, the

number of rivers which flew into the Danube and with the herds of cattle and

flocks of sheep. Many Bulgarians, he wrote, were very “striking-looking men.”

However, the general aspect of the country was “not one of prosperity, and a

primitive scene was that of buffaloes drawing carts.”

State of the Matharas

The most important of them is the state of

the Matharas, who are also called Pitribhaktas. At the peak of their power they

dominated the area between the Mahanadi and the Krishna. Their contemporaries

and neighbors were the Vasisthas, the Nalas and the Manas.

The Vasisthas ruled on the borders of

Andhra m south Kalmga, the Nalas in the forest area of Mahakantara, and the

Manas in the coastal area m the north beyond the Mahanadi. Each state developed

its system of taxation, administration and military organization.

 The

Nalas, and probably the Manas, also evolved their system of coinage. Each

kingdom favored the brahmanas with land grants and even invited them from

outside, and most kings performed Vedic sacrifices not only for spiritual merit

but also for power, prestige and legitimacy.

Elements of advanced culture

In this period elements of advanced culture

were not confined to the coastal belt known as Kalmga, but appeared in the

other parts of Orissa. The find of the Nala gold coins in the tribal Bastar

area in Madhya Pradesh is significant. It presupposes an economic system in

which gold money was used in large transactions and served as medium of payment

to high functionaries. Similarly the Manas seemed to have issued copper coins,

which implies the use of metallic money even by artisans and peasants.

The various states added to their income by

forming new fiscal units in rural areas. The Matharas created a district called

Mahendrabhoga in the area of the Mahendra Mountains. They also ruled over a

district called Dantayavagubhoga, which apparently supplied ivory and no gruel

to its administrators and had thus been created in a backward area.

The Matharas made endowments called

agroharas, which consisted of land and income from villages and were meant for

supporting religious and educational activities of the brahmanas. Some

agraharas had to pay taxes although elsewhere in the, country they were tax-free.

The induction of the brahmanas through land grants in tribal, forest and red

soil areas brought new lands under cultivation and introduced better methods of

agriculture, based on improved knowledge of weather conditions.

Formerly the year was divided into three

units, each consisting of four months, and time was reckoned on the basis of

three seasons. Under the Matharas, in the middle of the fifth century began the

practice of dividing the year into twelve lunar months. This implied a detailed

idea of weather conditions, which was useful for agricultural operations.

Spread of Civilization in Eastern India

Signs of Civilization

A region is considered to be civilized if

its people know the .art of writing, have a system for collecting taxes and

maintaining order, and possess social classes and specialists for performing

priestly, administrative and producing functions. Above all a civilized society

should be able to produce enough to support not only the actual producers

consisting of artisans and peasants but also consumers who are not engaged in

production. All these elements make for civilization. But they appear in a

large part of eastern India on a recognizable scale very late. Practically no

written records are found in the greater portions of eastern Madhya.

Pradesh and the adjoining areas of Orissa,

of West Bengal, of Bangladesh and of Assam till the middle of the fourth century

A.D The period from the fourth to the seventh century is remarkable for the

diffusion of an advanced rural economy, formation of state systems and

delineation of social classes in eastern Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, eastern Bengal

and southeast Bengal, and Assam, This is indicated by the distribution of a

good number of inscriptions in these areas in Gupta times Many inscriptions

dated in the Gupta era are found in these areas.

They are generally in the form of land

grants made by feudatory princes and others for religious purposes to Buddhists

and brahmanas and also to Vaishnavite temples and Buddhist monasteries. These

beneficiaries played an important role in spreading and strengthening elements

of danced culture the process can be understood by attempting a region wise

survey.

Orissa and Eastern and Southern Madhya Pradesh

Kalinga or the coastal Orissa, south of the

Mahanadi, leapt into importance under Asoka, but a strong state was founded in

that area only m the first century B. C. Its ruler Kharavela advanced as far as

Magadha. In the first and second centuries AD the ports of Orissa carried on

brisk trade m pearls, ivory and muslin.

Excavations at Sisupalgarh, the site of

Kalinganagari which was the capital of Kharavela at a distance of 60 km from Bhubaneswar,

have yielded several Roman objects indicating trade contacts with the Roman Empire.

But the greater part of Orissa, particularly northern, Orissa, neither

experienced state formation nor witnessed much commercial activity. In the

fourth century Kosala and Mahakantara figure in the list of conquests made by

Samudragupta. They covered parts of northern and western Orissa. From .the

second half of the fourth century to the sixth century several states were

formed in Orissa, and at least five of them can be clearly identified.

Religious purposes

For a century from A D 432-33 we notice a

series of land sale documents recorded on copperplates Pundravardhanabhukti,

which covered almost the whole of north Bengal, now mostly in Bangladesh, Most

land grants indicate that land was purchased with gold coins called dinara. But

once land was given for religious purposes, the dunes did

not have to pay any tax. The land transactions show the involvement of leading

scribes, merchants, artisans landed classes, etc.’., in local administration,

which was manned by the governors appointed by the Gupta emperors.

The land sale documents not only .indicate

the existence of different’ social groups and local functionaries but also shed

valuable light on the expansion of agriculture Mostly land purchased for

religious endowments is described as fallow, uncultivated, and therefore imitated

Without doubt the effect of the grants was to bring plots of land within the

purview of cultivation and settlement.

The deltaic portion of Bengal formed by the

Brahmaputra and called Samatata was made to acknowledge the authority of

Samudragupta It covered southeast Bengal. A portion of this territory may have

been populated and important enough to attract the attention of the Gupta

conqueror.

But possibly it was not ruled by brahmamsed

princes, and consequently it neither used Sanskrit nor adopted the varna

system, as was the case in north Bengal. From about A D. 525 the area came to

have a fairly organized state covering Samatata and a portion of Vanga which

lay on the western boundary of Samatata. It issued a good number of gold coins

in the second half of the sixth century.

Dacca area

In addition to this state, m the seventh

century we come across the state of the Khadgas, literally swordsmen, in the Dacca

area. We also notice the kingdom of a brahmana feudatory

called Lokanatha and that of the Rates, both in the Comilla area all these

princes of southeast and central Bengal issued land grants in the sixth and

seventh centuries.

Like the Orissa n kings they also created

agraharas. The land charters show cultivation of Sanskrit, leading to the use

of some sophisticated meters in the second half of the seventh century. At the

same time they attest the expansion of cultivation and rural settlements. A

fiscal and administrative unit called Daudabhukti was formed in the border

areas lying between Bengal and Orissa. Danda means punishment, and bhakti enjoyment.

Apparently the unit was created for taming and punishing the tribal inhabitants

of that region. It may have promoted Sanskrit and other elements of culture in

tribal areas.