Of life and all its colors
Roman soldiers were at times paid in salt, and that is the root of the word salary.
At times soldiers were even paid in salt, which was the origin of the word salary and the expression “worth his salt” or “earning his salt.” In fact, the Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier.
Very interesting article in the NYT today about the origins of Labor Day:
In the late 1800s, many Americans toiled 12 hours a day, seven days a week, often in physically demanding, low-paying jobs. Children worked too, on farms and in factories and mines. Conditions were often harsh and unsafe.
It was in this context that American workers held the first Labor Day parade, marching from New York’s City Hall to a giant picnic at an uptown park on Sept. 5, 1882…
…It had started when the Pullman Palace Car Company lowered wages without lowering rents in the company town, also called Pullman. (It’s now part of Chicago.)
When angry workers complained, the owner, George Pullman, had them fired. They decided to strike, and other workers for the American Railway Union, led by the firebrand activist Eugene V. Debs, joined the action. They refused to handle Pullman cars, bringing freight and passenger traffic to a halt around Chicago. Tens of thousands of workers walked off the job, wildcat strikes broke out, and angry crowds were met with live fire from the authorities.
During the crisis, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law on June 28, 1894, declaring Labor Day a national holiday. Some historians say he was afraid of losing the support of working-class voters.
I’m currently reading a very interesting book called “Papyrus: The plant that changed the world”, and it contains one of the most amusing anecdotes I’ve come across in recent times.
This book is about the plant Papyrus, and how it has been used throughout the ages, and is quite well written, and interesting.
Usually, you think of Papyrus as the paper plant, but the ancient Egyptians used it to build their houses, and boats as well (amongst other things).
In fact, the book states that Papyrus was so important to them that they ascribed a god to the plant, and named him Hapi, but other sources say that Hapi is the god of river Nile, and maybe the confusion is caused due to the fact that he wears a crown of Papyrus on his head.
Papyrus was also used quite extensively in rope making during those times. The book contains a story about Xerxes I ordering a floating pontoon bridge to be built between Persia and Greece using which he would transport his army to conquer Greece.
This bridge is described extensively in Herodotus’ Historia, and modern historians think that the bridge was about 2 kilometers or so. There were in fact two, one for the armies to march, and one for supplies, and they were floating bridges made by a row of boats strung together by rope.
This is where Papyrus comes in because you needed a massive amount of strong rope, and they chose Flax and Papyrus rope for it.
While the bridge was still being constructed — the sea became turbulent and completely destroyed it.
This of course infuriated Xerxes, and he had all the engineers beheaded as punishment. But, that was apparently not enough because Xerxes held the engineers and the sea responsible, so he also punished the sea by sentencing it to 300 lashes, and this punishment was promptly carried out by his royal whips!
From “India: A History” by John Keay
On the coast, the Europeans came and went. From their port of Bassein the Portuguese had acquired an adjacent trickle of islands which afforded good shelter for their shipping. Amongst the coconut groves on one of the islands they had built a small fort. They called it Bon Bahia, or Bombay. In the 1660s, following an Anglo – Portuguese alliance against their Dutch rivals, the place was transferred to Charles II as part of his Portuguese wife’s dowry. Although Bombay itself was as yet of no commercial value, the English thus acquired a territorial toehold adjacent to the busy shipping lanes of the west coast.
The Maurya empire succeeded the Nanda empire and was the biggest empire in India, and under Ashoka, it was also the biggest empire in the world at the time with an area of about 5 million square kilometers.
The Maurya empire was founded by Chandragupta Maurya under his advisor and strategist Chanakya. Chanakya is said to be the king maker who installed Chandragupta to the throne. There’s a story about both of them attacking the heart of the Nanda kingdom in Pataliputra and losing that battle.
They then retreated westwards to the mountains and Chanakya saw a little boy eating a hot roti from the edges. This gave him the idea that instead of attacking the heart of the kingdom they should attack the peripheries. They then formed alliances with some kings in the mountains, and slowly overthrew the kingdom. One of these kings is said to be Porus but there is no proof on who these kings actually were. Chanakya is said to have poisoned all the kings after they were victorious and thus Chandragupta became the absolute ruler.
Chandragupta was known as Sandrokottus to the Greeks, and there are Greek accounts which state that Sandrokottus even met Alexander the Great.
Chandragupta warred with Seleucus I Nicator who was one of Alexander the Great’s generals, and it seems very likely that Chandragupta won that war because of the terms of the treaty they signed. They concluded a marital alliance in which either Chandragupta or his son Bindusara married a Seleucus’ daughter, got vast areas (modern day Punjab and most of Afghanistan) that were ruled by the Greeks, and in exchange the Greeks got 500 war elephants. These elephants proved decisive in their victory in the Battle of Ipsus. Chandragupta left his successor a kingdom from Afghanistan to Bengal but it is not clear how much of the south they conquered.
Chandragupta was followed by Bindusara, who further expanded the kingdom southwards, and Bindusara was followed by Ashoka who was to be the greatest Indian emperor controlling an area which extended to almost all of India, and maintaining peace in the kingdom and diplomatic relations with the Greeks and the Egyptians.
Ashoka’s edicts are very well known now, but he was all but forgotten till the 19th century. British historians in India were finding pillars and rocks with a similar type of language all over India, but this language was not known, and therefore it was not known whether it belonged to the same king or to many different kings using the same language. Looking at a map of where all they were finding the edicts gives a sense of their original amazement as to who was this king that ruled such a vast territory.
By PHGCOM – self-made. Reference: Burjor Avari (2007). India: The Ancient Past. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0415356156. pp. 113., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Since, the language of these edicts was unknown, it wasn’t clear to them who was behind them and what was the message. This quandary was solved by James Prinsep. He was a scholar and orientalist who worked on deciphering and translating coins, edicts, rocks and manuscripts from all over India, and he was the one who translated Prakrit which was the language spoken during the time of Ashoka, and identified the ruler referred to “Devanampriya Piyadasi” which translates to “He who is the beloved servant of the Gods and who regards everyone amiably”. This post goes into great and fascinating detail about how these discoveries were made. An excerpt:
The image below shows the extent of Ashoka’s kingdom.
By Based upon common political maps of the Mauryan Empire, created from this template: Image:Marathas.GIF, Public Domain, Link
As you can see this is almost all of India except the extreme south. In fact it is more area than is under India today. The Maurya empire quickly disintegrated after Ashoka, and till the Britishers came in there was never a ruler who consolidated India like Ashoka did.
