All language subtitles for The.Story.of.India.E04.Ages.of.Gold.720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits

MICHAEL WOOD: It's dawn
at the ancient Indian capital

of Patna
on the River Ganges...

once the center
of one of the great empires

of the classical world.

In the story of India, we've
reached the fourth century A.D.

It's a time of cataclysmic
change across the world:

the fall of the Roman Empire,
the barbarian invasion,

and the beginning of
the Dark Ages in the West.

Everywhere people feared
the ruin of civilization.

But here in India

a great dynasty of
warrior kings, the Guptas,

defeated the invading Huns

and brought in a brilliant era
of high culture in the arts,

literature and science...

the golden age
of classical India.

All societies in human history,
I suppose,

have imagined a golden age,

a passed time when people lived
in peace and plenty,

when the rulers were just

and when the division between
sacred time and profane time

had not yet happened.

Such ideas of course are myth,
not historical reality,

but what happened here
under the Guptas

was in a real sense
a golden age.

This is Benares, the sacred city
on the River Ganges,

where India's pasts--real and
mythic--are still celebrated.

India, of course,
is a land full of festivals.

Today happens to be
particularly auspicious:

it's the Durga Puja
for the goddess;

it's Ghandi's birthday;

and it's the next but 1 night
of the Ramlilas--

the plays of Rama.

The plays of Rama,
the Ramlilas,

are India's most famous cycle
of dramas.

They tell the legend of
the warrior king

who saved
the world from evil: Rama.

In the fifth century, as North
India faced barbarian invaders,

the legend became
a national epic--

helping the people define
what they were fighting for.

And ever since,
like King Arthur in the West,

Rama has become the once
and future king:

a symbol of valor and justice.

India's last invaders,
the British,

said that unless you knew
the story of Rama

you couldn't hope to understand
the people of India.

And the reason why
the tale has endured--

and is still so important
today,

apart from the fact
that it's a great story--

is the powerful driving idea
behind the epic:

that whoever you are,
king or commoner,

you must live a life of virtue:
dharma.

It's wonderfully smoky
and mysterious, isn't it?

Gods in glittering costume
standing among the trees

and a vast audience
all sitting round.

We're on the next
to the last day

of 31 days of performance of
the plays of the story of Rama.

The story goes back a long way,
but it reached its present form

under the Guptas
in around 400 A.D.

[Man speaking
foreign language]

The tale begins with the triumph
of the forces of evil.

The wicked demon king seizes
Sita, the faithful wife of Rama,

the exiled king of Ayodhya.

The demon king takes Sita
back to his island fortress...

[Woman singing
in foreign language]

while the distraught Rama
sets out to find her,

helped by the faithful
monkey Hanuman.

Eventually with Hanuman's help,

Rama crosses the sea and rescues
Sita after a heroic battle.

After his triumph,
Rama returns

to bring in the Golden Age
from his capital: Ayodhya.

Now the early Indian poets

were never quite sure
where Ayodhya was--

or whether it was even
a fairy tale city.

But you can go there today.

And here in today's Ayodhya

the story is still told
by pilgrim guides:

how soon after 400 A.D.

a great Gupta king found
the site of a legendary city.

[Man speaking foreign language]

It's an incredible thought,
isn't it,

that an oral tradition

can have been handed down
over so many centuries,

but that's India.

And that story marks the moment

when Rama's golden city
was fixed in this place.

Ever since, Ayodhya has been 1
of the 7 sacred cities of India

and the center of
a vast pilgrim industry.

But back in
the fifth century A.D.,

the Gupta kings were led here

by the harsh political realities
of their time.

There were good
practical reasons

for choosing this city

as the capital of
the new Indian empire.

It was much nearer than Patna
to the northwest frontier

and the passes
over the Hindu Kush--

the new theater of war against
the new enemy, the Huns,

the people who brought down
the Roman Empire.

But also, by making this city,
Ayodhya, the city of Rama,

the Guptas were also
associating their kingship

with "the perfect warrior".

Ever since, the tale has been
used against foreign invaders,

Afghans, Turks, Moguls,
and British.

But today now it has
a darker side:

in the communal tensions
of modern India,

the streets of Ayodhya have seen
bitter sectarian strife

between Hindus and Muslims,

in a conflict fanned

by the incredible popularity
of the tale in books and on TV.

It's become the focus

of nationalist
and fundamentalist dreams.

Wow, look at this.

But in reality there are as
many versions of the Rama story

as there are different
Indian histories.

This Hindu temple stands on top
of a great stupa

built by the third century
B.C. Buddhist emperor Ashoka,

on the spot where the Buddha
himself preached.

In India there's never
just 1 version of the past.

This wonderful place sums up
the layers of history of Ayodhya

that go back long before

the revival of the city
under the Guptas.

Hindu Ayodhya, the great Muslim
shrine underneath us

and below our feet,
the Buddhist history.

And it's a Buddhist visitor
to India around the year 400

who gives us a window on
the Gupta empire at its height,

extending from the Indus Valley
to the Bay of Bengal

with a population
of 75 million.

It's the foundation
of all later Indias.

And the next stage
of my journey

was to search from traces
of the Gupta world.

Thank you.

Sun-dried river, river mud,
biodegradable,

goes back to the Earth once
you've finished your drink.

The eyewitness was
a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim

called Fa-hsien.

Traveling down
the Ganges Plain,

Fa-hsien describes North India

in the time of the great
Gupta king Chandragupta II.

Fa-hsien's portrait of India
in around the year 400,

about the time of the fall
of the Roman Empire,

opens a window
onto the Gupta age

that you could never have
imagined from what survives.

It's a portrait of
a highly organized state

with a very strong
governing ethos.

In fact, a great late
classical civilization.

Fa-hsien traveled down
the Ganges Plain.

"This part is known as
the middle land," he says,

"the climate is temperate...

"the cities and towns
are the greatest in India."

"The people are numerous
and happy...

"inhabitants of the cities
are rich and prosperous,

"vie with each other

"in the practice of benevolence
and righteousness."

"The king governs
without capital punishment

"and throughout the country

"the people do not Kill
any living creature."

Now that really does sound like
a golden age, doesn't it?

A pluralist and tolerant country
where many religions thrived.

The India Fa-hsien saw
was an advanced culture

with extraordinary
artistic productions,

like the gold coins
of the Gupta kings

holding the golden bow of Rama.

Gupta artists created wonderful
sculpture--for all religions.

Some unsurpassed in any art
of the world.

The Gupta age also saw

remarkable
technological advances.

The most mysterious

is a 35-foot iron pillar
which stands today in Delhi.

And the inscription on it
dates it to about 400 A.D.,

centuries before the Chinese
developed their iron technology,

1,500 years nearly before
the Industrial Revolution.

MAN: If Chinese are considered
to be the masters of ceramic,

Indians were
the masters of metal,

there's no doubt
about that.

And particularly the metal
they were masters in was iron.

It was done by a technique known
as forge welding.

WOOD: Forge welding?

BALASUBRAMANIAM: Welding.

So what you do in this technique
is you take lumps of iron,

about 20 kilograms
in weight,

and then you place them
on top of each other

in a hot condition
and you hit with a hammer.

Due to the forging action,
you have joined the material.

So you have
constructed a pillar

which is about 6,000 kilograms
in weight.

So that is actually a very
marvelous engineering feat.

So really speaking,

this pillar should be
actually considered

as a metallurgical
wonder of the world.

WOOD: Ha hal!
Yes, yes, yeah.

BALASUBRAMANIAM: Not just India.
It belongs to humanity.

WOOD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do we know who made it,
who commissioned it?

BALASUBRAMANIAM:
Well, based upon inscription

which you see on the pillar,

we know that it was commissioned
by I Chandra.

It doesn't tell
anything more,

it just talks
about Chandra.

But we now know,

based upon analysis
of the Gupta gold coins,

that this Chandra should be
Chandragupta Vikram I.

WOOD:
"Chandra," says the column,

"his face beautiful
like the full moon...

"who won the sovereignty
of the Earth

"and left the southern ocean
perfumed

"by the breeze
of his bravery."

What is it about them
that makes them so creative?

Can you explain that
for us?

BALASUBRAMANIAM:
As a metallurgist

or at least I am quite
aware that, you know,

if you look at the kind
of metallurgical objects

which have come,

iron, iron pillar, the gold
coins--the variety of coins,

and the beautiful bronze
castings of Buddha from Mathura,

it's very clear that
the Gupta period,

that the people,
were focused on high quality.

And that was a time
when Indian civilization

actually takes
a next major leap.

WOOD: And the leap
was in all fields.

After defeating the Huns,

the Gupta kings made their court
a center of high culture,

drama and literature.

But some of the most remarkable
achievements of their age

were in science.

Just like today

the ancient Indians were
brilliant mathematicians.

Gupta scientists
pioneered the use of zero--

the foundation
of all modern mathematics.

It was a Gupta astronomer
in around 500 A.D.

who proved the Earth
went round the sun.

His name was Aryabhatta.

Aryabhatta was one of
the greatest Indian astronomer.

He came up with the concept
of PI.

That is a very significant
contribution by him.

And of course he was
in the field of astronomy

also he came out an estimate
of the circumference of Earth,

which at that time
he said it is 5,000 usenas,

that is the unit of length.

Then it turns out
that the, the present value

is very close
to that value.

WOOD: That's almost exactly
the earth's true circumference

of 24,900 miles.

All this was part
of wider speculation

about the place of
humanity in the cosmos,

a cosmos imagined by ancient
Indians in billions of years--

way beyond what anybody
came up with in the West

before the age
of radio telescopes.

And the ability to
imagine like that

has always been a mark
of Indian civilization.

Unlike the West
in the age of Galileo,

India was not traumatized
by the revelation

that the universe is infinite
and the human place in it tiny.

The ancient Indian philosophers
believed that all things,

the gods, too,

are subject to cycles
of cosmic destruction

over vast eons of time.

But Gupta scientists
also investigated

the visible universe,
as Aryabhatta explains...

just as a man in a moving boat

sees the stationary objects
on shore

move in
the opposite direction,

SO a person standing
on the equator

would see the stationary stars
move directly towards the west.

More than anybody else
in the Gupta age,

Aryabhatta gives us an idea
about the incredible breadth

of the intellectual speculation
going on here in India

at the time of
the barbarian invasions

and the fall of
the Roman Empire in the West.

And their speculations went from
contemplation of the cosmos

to the life of the mind.

Indian thinkers of the Gupta age

were especially interested
in the psychology

of human relationships
and sexual behavior.

An area that in western
Christian civilization

was for so long
associated with guilt,

in India was linked to that
age old goal of life: Dharma.

WOMAN: India has always
been a guilt-free society

as far as sex is concerned.

Obviously we are 1.2 billion
people so, you know,

there's no sex--there's no guilt
here, you know.

Sex is fun, and it's good.

Even when it's bad,
it's all right.

So...ha hal!

WOOD: Ha hal!
Yeah, yeah.

WOOD: The most famous product
of the Gupta age

is the "Kama Sutra,"

the treatise on love.

MULCHANDANI:
All of Hindu philosophy

talks of something
called the purushards.

Purushard is what
a man needs to do, right?

Which is Dharma,

the whole quality of being
a righteous human being,

you have artha which allows you
to--which is gathering wealth.

Then you have kama,
the idea of love,

and the last of these
that you need to do in life

is seek moksha,
which is liberation.

Hinduism extols
every human being

to actually explore
all these aspects of life.

WOOD: Are women intended as
readership as well as men?

Women were equal.

And the "Kama Sutra,"
too, encourages women

to seek their own levels
of satisfaction, right,

because it recognizes
a very important thing,

and this is really
the most important thing

about the "Kama Sutra,"

that it looks at relationships

as a 2-way relationship of give
and take, of mutual loving.

It's a symbiotic relationship.

WOOD:
It's very modern text.

MULCHANDANI
It's a very modern text,

it's a very modern text.

It's not,
"Oh, thank you, ma'am."

No, that doesn't work.

WOOD: In human relations,

there is always a gap
between ideal and reality.

The "Kama Sutra" was written
in the fifth century

but it was the product
of an age

where there was
freedom of thought.

And such an inquiry into love

surely is the mark of
a high civilization.

[Singing in foreign language]

From Bollywood movies

to the sublime passion
of religious poetry,

the transcendent moment of
human love--in Indian culture--

is a mirror of our relation
with the gods.

And for all our failures
to achieve the ideal,

in love, so India teaches,

we human beings are still
touched by the divine.

By the ninth century

the succession of great
North Indian kingdoms was over.

But then the mantle
of Indian civilization

was taken up
by another great dynasty:

the Cholans.

They created an empire that
would rule across southern India

and the islands
of the Indian Ocean.

Situated deep
in India's tropics,

it's the last
classical civilization

to survive in the world.

And where Rama is
the great god of the north,

the south is the domain
of Shiva--

the god who danced
the world into being.

And the Cholan capital
still stands today,

in Tamil Nadu--Tanjore.

Brilliant statesmen,
builders and artists,

the Cholans have been called
the Athenians of India.

And their imperial city
and its great royal temple

were the dream of
the most famous Cholan ruler,

Rajaraja the Great,
the king of kings.

And you can still enter
his world today.

The priests have been doing
that ritual here

every morning
for the last thousand years

since Rajaraja the Great himself
inaugurated this temple in 1010.

The tallest building in India
when it was finished,

the temple was a shrine

to the great god of the Cholan
royal family, Shiva.

The temple, though, really is
a monument to Rajaraja himself.

It's named after him,

and the inscriptions
all round the wall

extol his deeds
as king of kings,

lion of the solar race,
lord of the world.

Like all empires,
the Cholan state used violence.

They conquered
the whole of South India

and sent
their fleets to Indonesia.

The temple carries inscriptions
to 30 royal regiments.

And on its walls, even the
images of the gods are warlike.

The king himself, though,

is portrayed on a modest scale,
as a philosopher prince.

In the old palace
of the Rajas of Tanjore

there's another insight
into the Cholan age.

Here in the former royal library

is a vast store
of ancient Tamil literature--

going back to the Cholans
and beyond:

grammar, poetry
and philosophy...

many of the texts
are preserved

on fragile
palm leaf manuscripts,

which are now being
carefully restored.

And 1 fascinating and little
known aspect of their culture

is that the Cholans
also wrote their own history.

What would be a manuscript book,

a chronicle in Western Europe,

say in the 10th
and 11th century,

here in the Cholan empire
is copper plates.

This is just 1 document
from a temple treasury:

about 15 copper plates.

There's the seal of Rajendra,
the son of Rajaraja the Great,

the umbrella and the fish,
the tiger.

Weighs about 40 kilos

and there's thousands of these,
thousands of these,

most of them still kept
by individual temples.

These things were used
for recording genealogies,

royal pedigrees,
land grants but also history.

And they include the history
of how Rajaraja the Great

came to the throne.

And it's a dark story.

A tale of palace intrigue
and murder,

of whisperings in corridors
and shadowy deals.

His brother, the heir,
was assassinated.

His father died
of a broken heart.

And his mother
committed suicide--sati--

on the funeral pyre.

And then his wicked uncle
took the throne.

"But still Rajaraja
did not desire

"the burden of kingship."

But the astrologers had seen
certain marks on his body

that showed he was the god
Vishnu on Earth.

And so it was agreed

that Rajaraja should be
the next king.

Over there, please.
Just here.

Looking for a clue
to the king's personality,

I went to see the present
Raja of Tanjore

whose family lost their power
in 1947 but not their palace .

These medieval Indian kings

seems to me men of strange
contradictions:

the mix of violence and beauty,
blood and flowers.

But today's prince
just sees a real person,

living according to the kingly
ideal of dharma: virtue.

You're descended from
the great rajas of Tanjore,

your palace is
still right here,

where the Cholan kings' palace
was 1,000 years ago.

Have you ever thought
what Rajaraja was like?

Rajaraja, when we
just think about him,

our blood shoots up--
he's such a great man.

And you know, it makes
you to feel very proud

and also it makes you
feel very small--

if our ego shoots up,
it makes it come down.

WOOD: What do you think--what
kind of people do you think,

what do you think Rajaraja
was like as a person?

Have you any idea?

CHATTRAPATHY: Yes, he's
the greatest warrior

but at the same time with
the most human touch, I feel.

So he was with
the people.

So otherwise
just by command and force

he could not have built
such a huge temple

or he could not have planned

such a golden period
to his subjects.

[Yelling
in foreign language]

WOOD: In modern times, just
like the Guptas in the North,

Rajaraja's reign has come
to be seen as a golden age,

celebrated in novels,
plays, and in movies.

But Rajaraja himself
deserves better to be remembered

as a great ruler and patron

and an even more assiduous
record keeper.

Don't think for a moment
that it was the British

who brought bureaucracy
into India.

The reality of the Cholan state

is revealed in an amazing series
of records

carved on the walls
of the great temple in Tanjore.

The temple's not only

a monumental piece of
self-advertisement,

it's also a written record

of the administration
of the Cholan empire.

It even lists all the staff,

hundreds of them who were brought in
to serve the emperor's new foundation.

Craftsmen, artists, musicians,
and 400 dancing girls--

and they are listed by name,
by house number and by street

in the quarter that was
especially built for them.

For the historian,
the detail is irresistible.

For history after all
is not just about kings:

it's about ordinary people
who are usually nameless.

But not here.

Who for example was the dancer
Tirumahalam

who lived here in Rajaraja's
new royal city on South Street

on the south side
in house number 887

Where is numbering
of street?

Oh, I see! Ok.

Ah...thank you, yes, yes.

So of course,

there is a difference between
old numbering and new numbering.

Nobody's expecting the 11th century numbering
to be quite the same as it is today.

But counting the houses from
the junction of the street,

number 88, where a dancing girl
called Tirumahalam lived,

is somewhere...here.

Hello.

This is the kind of courtyard
that would have existed

in the private houses
in Cholan Tanjore.

Every one would have had its
own well and little shrines.

[Man speaking
foreign language]

WOOD:
So is this private temple?

Private temple.

So this is as old as the time
of Rajaraja the great.

Yes, 1,000 years.

This is Aman temple
or Shiva?

MAN: Ambal.
WOOD: Ambal.

So it's a little goddess
shrine, family shrine.

Isn't that
absolutely wonderful?

I think that when you look at
those documents for the dancers,

that Tirumahalam the dancer,
who lived at number 88,

lived in a place
just like this

with her little shrine
to the goddess,

a yard where she cooked

and spent a life devoted
to the service of Shiva

in the great temple
of Rajaraja.

[People singing
in foreign language]

WOOD: And the dance
has survived until today.

This style of dancing,
Bharatanatyam,

is another of the artistic
traditions of South India

that's come down to us
in an unbroken line

from the Cholan era,
a thousand years ago.

Back in Rajaraja
the Great's time,

it was a religious dance,

those girls in the temple
were dancing for God.

And the poses of the dance still
today are the 108 classic poses

that Shiva himself is said to
have danced in his cosmic dance.

Out in the Tamil countryside
you can still stumble on scenes

straight out
of the Cholan world.

This is Tiruvengadu, a center
for the arts in Rajaraja's day.

The king made
an official collection

of the hundreds of popular songs
to the god Shiva,

and these are
still sung today.

When the king first heard them,

he said they'd made his hair
stand on end.

[Man chanting
in foreign language]

The Cholan Age was also
one of the greatest periods

of Indian art,

especially in their fusion
of art and science

in bronze casting.

And this one,
perhaps the most famous.

Just come look at this,

about as close
as we can possibly be

to one of
the greatest masterpieces

in metal casting
in the world.

It shows Shiva as the herdsman.

He would have been leaning
on his bull, Nandi, here,

but the bull hasn't been found.

Fantastic details
on the fingers, isn't it?

A turban of snakes...

And what a wonderful figure
he's got, hasn't he?

Rather lovely midriff:

the girdle, the detail
of the girdle here.

And of course, the consort of
the god is always here as well--

this is Parvati, Shiva's wife,

and this is the classic image
of Cholan beauty--

South Indian beauty.

In fact, it becomes

the classic image of beauty
in India altogether.

You know, you see
any of the classic

Bollywood historical movies
and they kind of look like this.

Except the upper part
of their bodies is dressed, too.

And India being India,

near Tanjore you can still find
families of bronze casters

whose ancestors worked
for Rajaraja.

And they still make the images
in exactly the same way.

MAN: To make it flexible
we put it in the water.

[Man speaking
foreign language]

WOOD: So you don't use
a ruler?

You don't use
feet and inches.

So this is 1 face,
quarter face, quarter face.

The measurement
is by the face, yeah?

Chest.

Abdomen.

Upper leg.

Knee.

Lower leg

Foot.

The model is then made
in beeswax.

Why beeswax?

Right.

Every civilization
has its idea

about how God
should be represented,

but this Tamil version
of God as a dancer

is unique and wonderfully laden
with symbols.

The drum that beats creation
into existence,

the fire which will destroy
everything at the end,

destroying the demon
of ignorance.

Every part of the image
which Sthapathy is constructing

is loaded with meaning.

The casting of the bronze
begins with a prayer

and then the mold is slowly
heated to melt the wax inside.

[Indistinct]

WOOD: You have to do things the
way that it was always done.

You know, 21st century
and modernity,

but you still do things the way
that they were always done.

This ancient craft
is called the lost wax process:

It's easy to see why.

Then the mold is filled with
a special mix of molten bronze.

The exact composition?

The secret of the bronze master.

What a way to make the most
beautiful pieces of art.

His job is simply
to do the pouring.

He hasn't been around all day--
just came in to do the pouring.

Everybody has their own role
in the task.

The bronze is left to cool
for a day,

then the mold
can be broken.

WOOD: This art was at its height
a thousand years ago,

in the hands of masters whose
work has never been surpassed.

But today's craftsmen
still work in their line,

crafting images
in the 21st century

that go back to the deepest
layers of the Indian tradition.

[Man singing
in foreign language]

This is a particularly
precious image

because it's 1 of only 2
that survive

of the 66 bronzes that Rajaraja
the Great commissioned

for the opening of the new
temple here in Tanjore in 1010.

And from this place

that image spread out
over the whole of South India.

Even today it's synonymous with
Tamil South Indian culture.

Indeed, synonymous perhaps
with all Indian culture.

And a reminder, too, that though
we talk of golden ages,

civilization in reality is made
by the toil of generations:

of craftsmen and women,

of workers and laborers
in the fields.

There's a last story
about Rajaraja.

Hello!

How are you?

When he was young,

though he had many queens,
he lacked a son and heir.

So he prayed to the god Shiva.

The son was born
and reached manhood.

And at the end of his own life
Rajaraja made him king.

And then he came here
to give thanks.

It's an extraordinary
sort of story,

it's one of the few places
where you can actually stand

where Rajaraja the great came.

Within months Rajaraja died,

but he laid the foundations

for the Tamils to dominate South
India for nearly 300 years.

[Man chanting
in foreign language]

WOOD:
In the 11th century,

the Cholans were one of
the world's great powers,

making colonies in Java, Sumatra
and the islands of Indonesia.

But they also left
a far-reaching legacy at home...

India is still
an agricultural society today,

and the Cholans
bequeathed later generations

practical organization.

When the British came here in
the south in the 18th century

they found a remarkable network
of irrigation

and it was the Cholans
who built the Anicut dam,

at a point where 2 great streams

of the river Cavery
come together.

Extended by the British,
it's still working today.

The bed of that stream

is about 10 feet lower
than the bed of that.

The danger is that all the water

will flow away that way
towards the sea.

So what the Cholans did was
create a great damn: the Anicut.

A snaking brick structure more
than a thousand feet long,

60 feet wide, 20 feet high

that diverted the waters
of that stream of the Cavery

off into the delta

where they could irrigate
vast new areas of rice fields

and feed a booming population.

So the centuries
of medieval rule

bequeathed later generations,
and modern Indians,

one of the richest and most
productive places on earth.

In the 18th century

British administrators described
the rice fields of the south

as the most fertile lands they
ruled anywhere in the world,

giving 3 harvests a year.

And they thought the people
of the southern rice fields

among the most moral
and hard working.

And those people are still here.

Like the old agricultural caste

who supervised the irrigation
long ago under the Cholan kings.

Still maintaining the ancient
rituals in the modern world.

This where the...

you have family
festivals in here.

WOOD: Tell me about
the community.

So the job of your caste
was to maintain irrigation

in the rice paddy fields
and all this.

This was special job.

Like all their community,

they believe in killing
no living thing, even insects,

and are strictly vegetarian.

WOMAN:
This is our kitchen.

WOOD: Oh, great.

Vegetarian cooking, "the food of
Shiva" as they call it here,

is the great tradition
in the south.

WOOD: And the grinding stone.
WOMAN: The grinding stone.

WOOD: And here cooking is tied
to many important social rituals

at the family hearth,
especially for married couples.

WOOD: So it is like a test
for the new wife.

WOMAN: Yeah.

WOOD: Thank you.

Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.

So this is dahl and rice
from family fields or...

WOMAN: Yeah.

WOOD: Ah, right.

WOMAN: First starting.

WOOD: Fantastic.

Mm, it's lovely food.

And always, the women wait
for the men to finish?

WOMAN: Yah.

WOOD: This is tradition.
WOMAN: Yah.

WOOD: Oh, really?
WOMAN: Yeah.

WOOD: Husband and wife
share the same leaf?

This is what it--
one of the things that--

which is what it means
to be Tamil.

WOMAN: Yah.
WOOD: Yeah.

One of the highlights of the
year for traditional Tamil women

is the Festival of Light--
Karthigai.

Modern Indian women

and yet still bearers
of an ancient civilization.

And at the time
of the Festival of Light,

just as they did in the Middle
Ages, people go on pilgrimage.

All these people are
heading for a small town

in the south Indian plain.

The name of the place:
Tiruvannamalai.

Pilgrimage is another living
legacy of the Middle Ages.

It's one of those things

that gave Indian people
a sense of cultural identity--

long before India achieved
political unity.

A sense of India as a holy land

from the Himalayas
to the deep south.

It's all a bit like
an Indian "Canterbury Tales"

and this is just 1
of thousands of sacred sites

dotted across the south.

All through the day,
the more vigorous pilgrims

scramble up to the top
of the mountain

where a sacred fire
will be lit after dark.

Down below,
inside the giant temple,

the crowds gather and just wait,

wait for an ancient ceremony

to greet the fire
on the mountain--

a ritual a thousand years old.

And who knows?
Maybe much older.

[Indistinct]

What's going to happen
in about an hour

is that the bronze images
of the gods,

Shiva, Parvathi,
Ganesh, Chandikeshra,

will be brought out
and put on these chariots here.

Then carried round?

[Woman speaking indistinctly]

WOOD: All round courtyard?

[Cheering]

WOOD: And now everyone's waiting
for the light--

the light that will
cut through the darkness.

It's one of the oldest ideas
of humanity.

This has got to be
the only place in the world

where you can get run over
by Bronze Age priests!

There's India,
as it always does,

stirring
those ancient memories.

So the light has been lit
on the top of the hill.

They're all looking to see it.

As for the idea
of the Golden Age,

it seems to me that golden ages
can only ever exist in the past.

For they are the products
of our imaginations

and we humans after all

can only ever exist here
in the present.

So, Shanti, this is
first time you were here.

SHANTI: Yah.
WOOD: Yes. Enjoy?

SHANTI: Enjoying,
very much enjoying.

WOOD: Yes?
SHANTI: I am lucky.

WOOD: I thought we would
never see the Jyoti.

So this is auspicious.

WOOD: Yeah?
SHANTI: Yah.

WOOD: In a world where
the identities and traditions

of the ancient civilizations

have been wiped away
in a few generations,

here in India--alone--they've
kept touch with their deep past

and indeed, one might say,
with the past of all humanity.

And that part is the key
to the story of India.

[Fireworks exploding]

Next in "The Story of India:"

the clash of civilizations
that shaped our world.

The fabulous tale
of Indian Islam.

The dazzling culture
of the moguls.

And the extraordinary quest
for 1 world religion.