It is not unlikely that the
misfortune
was the death of
Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings.
Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings.
Cambridge History of India - v1
A characteristic, which distinguishes the languages
of this stock in both Persia and India is the tendency to confuser and I, a
tendency which is characteristic of practically all the languages of the far
east. In India r is often found in words where the languages of the same
stock in Europe show l; 1 is also, though not so frequently, found for
g; in the Old Persian of the Achaemenid inscriptions l is found only in two
foreign words, and has otherwise been entirely replaced by r.
The dialects of Irān, the language of the earliest Gāthās (Songs) which
are attributed to Zoroaster himself, the later dialect of the other surviving
parts of the sacred literature of the ancient Persians- the Avesta --and the
inscriptions beginning with Darius I about 520 B. C. and best represented in
his time but continuing to the last Darius in 338 B. C. , are all closely related
to the oldest dialect discovered in India, which appears in the hymns of the
Rigveda. Not only single words and phrases, but even whole stanzas may
be transliterated from the dialect of India into the dialects of Irān without
change of vocabulary or construction, though the appearance of the words is
altered by the changes which time and isolation have brought about between
the dialects east and west of Afghānistān. It is curious to note that the
changes are much greater in the dialects that remain in Irān than in this old.
est recorded dialect of the migrants into India. The Irānians have disguised
their words by changing (as Greek has also done) s followed by a vowel at
the beginning of words, or between vowels in the middle of words, in to h:
thus the word for 7, the equivalent of the Latin septem, the Greek énbá is
in Sanskrit sapta, but in Irānian hapta. There are many other changes both
in vowels and in consonants. In particular it may be noted that one kind
of original g which appears in Sanskrit as j has become in the Irānian dialect
z or 8 (Greek árvos "holy,' Sanskrit yajña- 'sacrifice,' Avesta yaena), and a
corresponding aspirated sound gh which is in Sanskrit h has become identi.
fied with g in Irānian as z (Latin hiems, Greek xuov, zelu, (dvo) xulos,
Sanskrit hima- in 'Himālaya,’ Avesta zyam-). This loss of aspiration has affec-
ted also the other aspirates bh, dh, which survive in Sanskrit, while Irānian
tends in certain combinations to change original consonant-stops into spirants,
making the old name of the deity Mitra into Mithra, and from compounds
with a second element -parna the numerous proper names which we know
in Greek transliterations as Arta phernes, Tissaphernes, and the like.
It has sometimes been made an argument for deriving the origin of
these tribes from India rather than the West, that the sounds and especially
## p. 67 (#101) #############################################
III ]
IRĀNIANS AND INDIANS
67
the consonants of the language spoken have survived in greater purity in
India than in Irān or elsewhere. The argument however is not sound.
Invasions of a similar sort, though at a much greater distance from their
a
base, were made by the Spaniards in America in the sixteenth century. The
civilisation of the Spaniards was no doubt higher than that of the early
Indo-Germanic-speaking peoples who invaded India ; but in both Mexico
and Peru, if not elsewhere, they met a native population also much more
advanced in the arts than the earlier inhabitants of North-Western India
could have been. In all parts of America, except Chile, the Spaniards were
in so small a minority compared to the natives that they had to be careful
to preserve themselves in isolation, with the result that to-day, except in
Chile, where greater familiarity with the natives has produced a dialect of
Spanish words and native sounds, the local dialects are much more archaic
and much more like the Spanish of the sixteenth century than is the langu-
age spoken now in Spain. If the isolation of the English Colonies in North
America had remained as great as it was in the seventeenth century, no
doubt a much greater distinction would now exist between the English dia-
lects of North America and the English of the Mother country. Yet in
many parts of the eastern seaboard of the United States many words survive
locally which have long been extinct except in local dialects in England, and
many forms of expression survive which the modern Englishman now
regards as mainly biblical. That an isolation resembling that of the Spanish
colonies prevailed also in early India is shown by the most characteristic
feature of Indian civilisation-caste. The native word for caste, varņa,
means colour, and the first beginnings of the caste system were laid when
the fairer people who migrated into India felt the importance of preserving
their own racial characteristics by standing aloof from the dark-skinned
dāsas, or dasyus, whom they found already established in the peninsula.
That the sound changes which have been enumerated are not so very
old has been shown by the names found at Boghaz-köi. And this is not
the only evidence. To the same period as the Boghaz-köi inscriptions
belong the famous letters from Tel-el-Amarna. In these occur references
to the people of Mitāani in north-west Mesopotamia, whose princes bear
names like Artatama, Tusratta, and Suttarna, which seem unmistakably
Āryan in form. For five hundred years (c. 1746-1180 B. c. ) a mountain
tribe-the Kassites—from the neighbourhood of Media held rule over the
whole of Babylonia, and amongst these also the names of the princes and
deities seem Āryan, though the people themselves, like those of Mitāni
were of another stock. Names like Shurias 'Sun' and Marylas seem identi-
cal with the Sanskrit Sürya and Marutas (the wind-gods), while Simalia
'queen of the snow mountains' can hardly be separated from the name of
the great mountain range Himālaya and the Irānian word of snow, zima.
## p. 68 (#102) #############################################
68
( CH. III
THE ĀRYANS
>
1
To a much later period belongs the list of deities worshipped in different
temples of Assyria, which was found in the library of Assurbanipal (about
700 B. c. ), in which occurs the name Assara-Mazas, immediately preceding
the seven good angels and the seven bad spirits. The combination hardly
leaves it doubtful that we have here the chief deity of Zoroastrianism (Ahura
Mazda) with the seven Ameshaspentas and the seven bad daivas of that
religion. Into the many other problems that arise in this connexion it is
not necessary here to enter ; but it is important to observe that even so late
as this the first part of the god's name remains more like the Sanskrit Asura
than the Avestan Ahura. While modern Hinduism is the lineal descendant,
however much modified in the course of ages, of the ancient Āryan worship
which we know first in the Rigveda, the religion of the Avesta is a reform
which, like other religious reforms, has been able to get rid of the old gods
only by converting them into devils, the worship of which was probably
none the less diligent for their change of title.
There seems, in any case, to be specific evidence for the supposition
that by the fifteenth century B. c. tribes of Āryan stock held, or exercised
infiuence over, a wide area extending from northern Asia Minor over north-
west Babylonia to Media ; and there seems to be nothing to prevent us
assuming that even then, or soon after, the Āryans pushed their way still
eastwards and northwards, mainly confining themselves to the territories
south of the Oxus, but occasionally occupying lands between that river and
the Jaxartes.
1
1
1
1
## p. 69 (#103) #############################################
CHAPTER IV
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
The earliest documents which throw light upon the history of India
are the hymns of the Rigveda. In the text which has come down to us this
samh itā or 'collection' consists of 1017 hymns divided into ten books of
unequal size. The motive of those to whom the collection is due must
apparently have been the desire to preserve the body of religious tradition
current among the priests; and, early as was the redaction, there are clear
signs that already part of the material had ceased to be fully understood by
those who made use of it in their worship. The artificial character of the
arrangement is clearly indicated by the fact that the first and tenth books
have precisely the same number of hymns, 191 each. The collection seems
however to have been some time in the making. The nucleus is formed by
books 11-VII, each of which is attributed to a different priestly family. To
this were prefixed the groups of bymns by other families which form the
second part (51-191) of book 1 ; and still later were added the first part of
book i and book vill attributed to the family of Kanva. Book ix was then
formed by taking out from the collections of hymns which made up the
first eight books the hymns addressed to Soma Pavamāna, 'the clearly flow-
ing Soma'; and to these nine books was added a tenth, containing, besides
hymns of the same hieratic stamp as those of the older books, a certain
number of a different type, cosmogonic and philosophical poems, spells and
incantations, verses intended for the rites of wedding and burial and other
miscellaneous matters. The tenth book also displays, both in metrical form
and linguistic details, signs of more recent origin than the bulk of the col.
lection ; and the author of one set of hymns (x, 20-26) has emphasised his
dependence on earlier tradition by prefixing to his own group the opening
words of the first hymn of the first book.
There is abundant proof that, before the collections were finally united
into the form in which the Rigveda has come down to us, minor additions
were made ; and, as it is perfectly possible that in book x old material was
69
## p. 70 (#104) #############################################
70
( ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
incorporated as well as newer work, efforts have been made to penetrate
beyond the comparatively rough distinction between the first nine and the
tenth books, and to assign the hymns to five different periods, representing
stages in the history of Vedic India, and marked by variations in religious
belief and social custom”. But so far these efforts can scarcely be regarded
as successful. The certain criteria of age supplied by the language, the
metres, or the subject matter of the Rigveda are not sufficient to justify so
elaborate a chronological arrangement of its hymns. The results produced
by the most elaborate and systematic attempts to apply the methods of the
higher criticism to the Rigveda have hitherto failed to meet with general
acceptance.
The mass of the collection is very considerable, approximating to the
same amount of material as that contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, but
the light thrown by the hymns on social and political conditions in India is
disappointingly meagre. By far the greater part of the Rigveda consists of
invocations of the many gods of the Vedic pantheon, and scarcely more
than forty hymns are found which are not directly addressed to these deities
or some object to which divine character is, for the time at least, attributed.
These hymns contain much miscellaneous information regarding Vedic life
and thought ; and other notices may be derived from the main body of the
collection, though deductions from allusions are always difficult and open
to suspicion. Some names of tribes, places, and princes, as well as of
singers, are known to us tbrough their mention in the dānastutis or 'praises
of liberality' which are appended to hymns, mainly in the first and tenth
books, and in which the poet praises his patron for his generosity towards
him. But the dānastutis are unquestionably late, and it is significant that
some of the most striking occur in a small collection of eleven hymns, called
the Vālakhilyas, which are included in the Samhitā of the Rigveda, but
which tradition recognises as forming no true part of that collection.
From these materials conclusions can be drawn only with much cau-
tion. It is easy to frame and support by plausible evidence various hypo-
theses, to which the only effective objection is that other hypotheses are
equally legitimate, and that the facts are too imperfect to allow of conclu.
sions being drawn. It is, however, certain that the Rigveda offers no
assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Indians entered India.
The geographical area recognised in the Samhitā is large, but it is, so far as
we learn, occupied by tribes which collectively are called Āryan, and which
wage war with dark-skinned enemies known as-Dāsas. If, as may be the
case, the Aryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the
1 Especially by Arnold whose results are summed up in bis Vedic Metre (Cam.
bridge, 1905). For criticism, see J. R. A. S. , 1906, pp. 484-90, 716-22 ; 1912, pp. 726-9.
>
## p. 71 (#105) #############################################
IV ]
GEOGRAPHY
71
Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that
advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to
have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvatīriver, south
of the modern Ambāla? . Only thus, it seems, can we explain the fact of
the prominence in the hymns of the strife of the elements, the stress laid on
the phenomena of thunder and lightning and the bursting forth of the rain
from the clouds ; the Punjab proper has now, and probably had also in
antiquity, but little share in these things ; for there in the rainy season
;
gentle showers alone fall. Nor in its vast plain do we find the mountains
which form so large a part of the poetic imagining of the Vedic Indian. On
the other hand, it is perhaps to the Punjab with its glorious phenomena
of dawn, that we must look for the origin of the hymns to Ushas, the god.
dess Dawn, while the concept of the laws of Varuna, the highest moral and
cosmic ideal attained by the poets, may more easily have been achieved
amid the regularity of the seasonal phenomena of the country of the five
rivers.
Of the names in the Rigveda those of the rivers alone permit of easy
and certain indentification. The Āryan occupation of Afgbānistān is proved
by the mention of the Kubhā (Kābul), the Suvāstu (Swāt) with its 'fair
dwellings,' the Krumu (Kurram) and Gomati (Gumal). But far more
important were the settlements on the Sindhu (Indus), the river par excellence
from which India has derived its name. The Indus was the natural outlet
to the sea for the Āryan tribes, but in the period of the Rigveda there is
no clear sign that they had yet reached the ocean. No passage even renders
it probable that sea navigation was known. Fishing is all but ignored, a
fact natural enough to people used to the rivers of the Punjab and East
Kābulistān, which are poor in fish. The word samudra, which in later
times undoubtedly means 'ocean', occurs not rarely ; but where the applica-
tion is terrestrial, there seems no strong reason to believe that it means
more than the stream of the Indus in its lower course, after it has received
the waters of the Punjab and has become so broad that a boat in the
middle cannot be discerned from the bank. Even nowadays the natives
call the river the sea of Sind.
The five streams which give the Punjab its name and which after
uniting flow into the Indus are all mentioned in the Rigveda : the Vitastā is
the modern Jhelum, the Asikni the Chenāb, the Parushṇī, later called Irā.
vatī, 'the refreshing,' the modern Rāvi, the Vipāç the Beās, and the Cutudri
the Sutlej. But of these only the Parushņi plays a considerable part in the
See Hopkins, J. A. O. S. , vol. XIX, pp. 19-28 ; Pischel and Geldner, Velische
Studien, vol. II, p. 218 ; vol. JII, p. 152 ; Vedic Index, vol. I, p. 468. The older view,
that the hymns were composed in the Punjab itself, was adopted by Max Müller, Weber
and Muir among others,
9
1
.
## p. 72 (#106) #############################################
72
[ сп.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
history of the time, for it was on this river that the famous battle of the ten
kings, the most important contest of Vedic times, was fought. Far more
important was the Sarasvatī, which we can with little hesitation identify
with the modern Sarsūti or Saraswati, a river midway between the Sutlej
and the Jumna'. It is possible that in the period of the Rigveda that river
was of greater importance than it was in the following period when it was
known to bury itself in the sands, and that its waters may have flowed to
the Indus ; but, however that may be, it is mentioned in one passage to-
gether with the Dșishadvati, probably the Chautang, which with it in later
times formed the boundaries of the sacred land known as Brahmāvarta.
With these two streams is mentioned the Āpayā, probably a river near
Thānesar? . In this region too may be placed the lake çaryaņāvants, and the
place Pastyāvant, near the modern Patiāla.
Further east the Āryans had reached the Jumna, which is thrice
named, and the Ganges, which is once directly mentioned, once alluded to
in the territorial title of a prince.
To the north we find that the Himavant or Himālaya mountains were
well known to the Rigveda, and one peak, that of Mūjavant, is referred to
as the source of the Soma, the intoxicating drink which formed the most
important offering in the religious practice of the time. The name is lost in
modern times, but probably the peak was one of those on the south-west of
the valley of Kashmir. On the south, on the other hand, the Vindhya hills
are unknown, and no mention is made of the Narbadā river, so that it may
fairly be inferred that the Āryan tribes had not yet begun their advance
towards the south.
With the conclusions as to the home of the Āryan tribes extracted
from geographical names the other available evidence well accords. The
tiger, a native of the swampy jungles of Bengal, is not mentioned in the
Rigveda, which gives the place of honour among wild beasts to the lion,
then doubtless common in the vast deserts to the east of the lower Sutlej
and the Indus and even now to be found in the wooded country to the
south of Gujarāt. Rice, whose natural habitat is the south-east in the
regular monsoon area and which is well known in the latter · Samhitās, is
1 Roth, St. Petersburg Dictionary 8. 2. , and Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 5 10,
identify the Sarasvati in many passages with the Indus; Hillebrandt, Vedische Mytho-
logie, vol. I, pp. 99 sq. ; vol. III, pp. 372-8, thinks it is in a few places the Arghanbād.
2 The identification of the ancient rivers of Brahmāvarta must always remain
somewhat uncertain. At the prese at day it is difficult to trace their courses, partly
because the streams are apt to disappear in the sand, and partly because they have to a
great extent been absorbed in the canal-systems constructed during the periods of
Muhammadan and British rule.
3 Identified however with the Wular Sea in Kashmir by Hillebrandt, Vedische
Mythologie, vol. I, pp. 126 sq.
## p. 73 (#107) #############################################
I
IV)
FAUNA AND PEOPLES
73
never mentioned in the Rigveda. The elephant, whose home is now in the
lowland jungle at the foot of the Himālaya from the longitude of Cawnpore
eastwards, appears in the Rigveda as the wild beast (mọiga) with a hand
(hastin), while in the later texts it is commonly known as hastin only, a sign
that the novelty of the animal had worn away. The mountains from which
the Soma was brought appear, too, to have been nearer in this period than
at a later date when the real plant seems to have been more and more
difficult to obtain, and when substitutes of various kinds were permitted.
When we pass to the notices of tribes in the Rigveda, we leave compara-
,
tive certainty for confusion and hypothesis. The one great historical event
which reveals itself in the fragmentary allusions of the Samhitā is the contest
known as the battle of the ten kings. The most probable version of that
conflict is that it was a contest between the Bharatas, settled in the country
later known as Brahmāvarta, and the tribes of the north-west. The Bharata
king was Sudās, of the Tſitsu family, and his domestic priest who celebrates,
according to the tradition, the victory in three hymns (vir, 18 ; 33 ; 83) was
Vasishthal. This sage had superseded in that high office his predecessor
Viçvāmitra, under whose guidance the Bharatas appear to have fought
successfully against enemies on the Vipāç and çutudrï ; and in revenge, as
it seems, Viçvāmitra had led against the Bharatas ten allied tribes, only to
meet with destruction in the waters of the Parushṇī. Of the ten tribes five
are of little note, the Alinas, perhaps from the north-east of Kāfiristān, the
Pakthas, whose name recalls the Afghān Pakhthün, the Bhalanases, possibly
connected with the Bolān Pass, the çivas from near the Indus, and the
Vishāṇins. Better known in the Rigveda are the other five, the Anus who
dwelt on Parushội and whose priests were perhaps the famous family of the
Bhřigus, the Druhyus who were closely associated with them, the Turvaças
and Yadus, two allied tribes, and the Pūrus, dwellers on either side of the
Sarasvatī, and therefore probably close neighbours of the Bharatas. These
tribes are probably the five tribes which are referred to on several occasions
in the Rigveda and which seem to have formed a loose alliance. Sudās's
victory at the Parushṇī, in which the Anu and Druhyu kings fell, does not
appear to have resulted in any attempt at conquest of the territory of the
allied tribes. He seems at once to have been compelled to return to the east
of his kingdom to meet the attacks of a king Bheda, under whom three
tribes, the Ajas, cigrus, and Yakshus, were united, and to have defeated his
1 This is the view of Hopkins, J. A. O. S. , vol. XV, pp. 259 sq. According to the
older view the Bharatas were foes of the Tſitsus; see Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol.
12, p. 354 ; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 127 ; Bloomfield, J. A. O. S. , vol. XVI, pp. 41,
42. Ludwig, Rigveda, vol. III, p. 172, identified the Bharatas and the Tșitsus ; Olden.
berg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. XLII, p. 207, holds that the Tſitsus are the Vasishțhas, the
priests of the Bharatas. But see Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, pp. 136 sq.
9
## p. 74 (#108) #############################################
74
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
new assailants with great slaughter on the Jumna. It is probable enough
that the attack on the eastern boundaries of the territory of the Bharatas was
not unconnected with the onslaught of the five tribes and their still more
northern and western allies ; but the curious names of the Ajas, ‘goats,' and
the çigrus, ‘horse-radishes,' may be a sign that the tribes which bore them
were totemistic non-Aryans.
Not less famous was the father or grandfather of Sudās, Divodāsa,
'the servant of heaven,’ Atithigva, “the slayer of kine for guests? . ' There
are records of his conflicts with the Turvaça, Yadu, and Pūru tribes; but
his greatest foe was the Dāsa, çambara, with whom he waged constant war.
He had to contend also with the Paņis, the Pārāvatas, and Brisaya. He
seems to have been the patron of the priestly family of the Bhāradvājas, the
authors of the sixth book of the Rigveda ; and there is little doubt that his
kingdom covered much the same area as that of Sudās, since he warred, on
the one hand, against the tribes of the Punjab, and, on the other, against
the Pārāvatas who are located in the period of the Brāhmaṇas on the
Jumna. The Dāsas and the Paņis were probably aboriginal foes, whom,
like every Āryan prince, he had to fight.
Though defeated in the battle with Sudās, the Pūrus were clearly a
great and powerful people. Their home was round the Sarasvati, and there
is no need to interpret that name as referring to the Indus rather than to
the eastern Sarasvati. On the Indus they would have been removed some-
what widely from the Bharatas, their chief rivals, two of whose princes,
Devaçravas and Devavāta, are expressly recorded in one hymn to have
dwelt on the Sarasvati, Apayā, and Dțishadvati. The importance of the
tribe is reflected in the fact that we possess an unusually large number of
the names of its members. The earliest prince recorded seems to have been
Durgaha, who was succeeded by Girikshit, neither of these being more than
names. The son of Girikshit, Purukutsa, was the contemporary of Sudās,
and one hymn tells in obscure phrases of the distress to which his wife was
reduced by some misfortune, from which she was relieved by the birth of a
son, Trasadasyu.
It is not unlikely that the misfortune was the death of
Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings. The new ruler, as his name indi.
cates, was a terror to the Dasyus or aborigines, and seems not to have
distinguished himself in war with Āryan enemies. We hear of a descendant
Trikshi, and, apparently still later in the line, of another descendant Kuru.
çravaņa, son of Mitrātithi and father of Upamaçravas, whose death is
deplored in a hymn of the tenth book. The name is of importance and
significance, for it suggests that already in the later Rigvedic period the
Pūrus had become closely united with their former rivals, the Bharatas, both
tribes being merged in the Kurus, whose name, famous in the later Samhitās
1 V. inf. , pp. 90. 1, and Chapter X.
*
## p. 75 (#109) #############################################
IV ]
THE DĀSAS OR DASYUS
75
?
and the Brāhmaṇas as the chief bearers of the culture of the Vedic period,
is not directly mentioned in the Rigveda, though it was clearly not unknown.
Other princes of the Pūru line were Tryaruņa, and Trivſishan or Tridhātu ,
and later evidence enables us with fair certainty to connect with the Pūrus
the princely name Ikshvāku, which occurs but once in a doubtful context
in the Rigveda.
Connected with the Kurus were the Krivis, whose name seems to be
but a variant from the same root, and who appear to have been settled near
the Indus and the Chenāb. Possibly we may see the allied tribes of Kurus
and Krivis in the two Vaikarņa tribes, twenty-one of whose clans shared the
defeat of the five tribes by Sudās. If so, like the Pūrus the Bharatas must
have in course of time become mingled with the Kurus and have merged
their identity with them.
Allied or closely connected with the Bharatas was the tribe of the
Sțiñjayas, whom we must probably locate in the neighbourhood of the
Bharatas. One of their princes, Daiva vāta, won a great victory over the
Turvaças with their allies, the Vřichivants, of whom we know nothing more.
Other princes of the line were Sahadeva, his son Somaka, and Prastoka,
and Vītahavya. They were, like the Bharatas under Divodāsa, closely
connected with the Bhāradvāja family of priests.
No other Āryan tribe plays a great figure in the Rigveda. The Chedis,
who in later times dwelt in Bundelkhand to the north of the Vindhya, and
their king Kaçu are mentioned but once in a late dānastuti : the queen
of
the Uçīnaras, later a petty tribe to the north of the Kuru country, is also
once allued to. The generosity of Rinamchaya, king of the Ruçamas, an
unknown people, has preserved his name from extinction. One interpreta-
tion adds to the enemies of Sudās the tribe of the Matsyas ('fishes') who in
later times occupied the lands now known as Alwar, Jaipur, and Bharatpur.
A raid of the Turvaças and Yadus and a conflict on the Sarayul with Arna
and Chitraratha testify to the activity of these clans, which otherwise are
best known through their opposition to Divodāsa and Sudās, and which must
probably have been settled in the south of the Punjab. The family of the
Kanvas seems to have been connected as priests with the Yadus. Connected
with the Turvaças was the Vộichivant Varaçikha, who was defeated by
Abhyāvartin Chāyāmāna, who himself was perhaps a Sțiñjaya prince.
More shadowy still are Nahus, Tugrya, and Vetasu in whom some have
seen tribes : Nahus is probably rather a general term for neighbour, and
the Tugryas and the Vetasus are families rather than tribes.
More important by far, it may be believed, than the intertribal warfare
of the peoples who called themselves Āryan were their contests with the
aborigines, the Dāsas or Dasyus as they are repeatedly called. The same
1 The identification of this river is uncertain; see Vedic Index, vol. II, p. 434.
## p. 76 (#110) #############################################
7€
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
terms are applied indifferently to the human enemies of the Aryans and to
the fiends, and no criterion exists by which references to real foes can be
distinguished in every case from allusions to demoniacal powers. The root
meaning of both words is most probably merely 'foe', but in the Rigveda
it has been specialised to refer, at least as a rule, to such buman foes as were
of the aboriginal race. Individual Dāsas were Ilibiça, Dhuni and Chumuri,
Pipru, Varchin, and çambara, though the last at least has been transformed
by the imagination of the singers into demoniac proportions. The only
peoples named which can plausibly be deemed to have been Dāsas are the
Çimyus, who are mentioned among the foes of Sudās in the battle of the ten
kings, and who are elsewhere classed with Dasyus, the Kikatas with their
leader Pramaganda, and perhaps the Ajas, Yakshus, and çigrus. The main
distinction between the Āryan and the Dāsa was clearly that of colour, and
the distinction between the Āryan varņa, 'colour,' and the black colour is
unquestionably one of the main sources of the Indian caste system. The
overthrow of the black skin is one of the most important exploits of the
Vedic Indian. Second only to the colour distinction was the hatred of men
who did not recognise the Aryan gods : the Dāsas are constantly reproached
for their disbelief, their failure to sacrifice, and their impiety. Nor is there
much doubt that they are the phallus worshippers who twice are referred to
with disapproval in the Rigveda, for phallus worship was probably of
prehistoric age in India and by the time of the Mahābhārata it had won its
way
into the orthodox Hindu cult. We learn, disappointingly enough,
little of the characteristics of the Dāsas, but two epithets applied in one
passage to the Dasyus are of importance. The first is mridhravāchah which
has been interpreted to refer to the nature of the aborigines' speech ; but
which, as it elsewhere is applied to Āryan foes like the Pūrus, probably
means no more than ‘of hostile speech. The other epithet, anāsaḥ, is more
important : it doubtless means 'noseless,' and is a clear indication that the
aborigines to which it is applied were of the Dravidian type as we know it
at the present day. With this accords the fact that the Brāhūi speech still
remains as an isolated remnant in Baluchistān of the Dravidian family of
tongues? But though the main notices of the Rigveda are those of conflict
against the Dāsas and the crossing of rivers to win new lands from them,
it is clear that the Āryans made no attempt at wholesale extermination of
the people. Many of the aborigines doubtless took refuge before the Āryan
attacks in the mountains to the north or to the south of the lands occupied
by the invaders, while others were enslaved. This was so normal in the
In the Imp. Gaz. , vol. I, p. 382, it is suggested that the Brāhuis who are there
ethnographically classed as Turko-Irānian show the original type of Dravidian, and
that the modern Dravidian type is physically due to influence by the Mundā speaking
peoples. The Rigvedic evidence does not favour this view. See Chapter II, pp. 37. 8.
1
## p. 77 (#111) #############################################
IV ]
INDIA AND IRĀN
77
case of women that, in the literature of the next period, the term Dāsi
regularly denotes a female slave; but male slaves are often alluded to in the
Rigveda, sometimes in large numbers, and wealth was already in part made
up of ownership of slaves. The metaphorical use is seen in the name of
one of the greatest of Vedic kings, Divodāsa, 'the servant of heaven. '
In the Purushasūkta, or 'Hymn of Purusha,' which belongs to the latest
stratum of the Rigveda, and which in mystic terms describes the creation
of the four castes from a primeval giant, occurs for the first time the term
çūdra, which includes the slaves as a fourth class in the Āryan state. Pro-
bably enough this word, which has no obvious explanation, was originally
the name of some prominent Dāsa tribe conquered by the Āryans.
Of the stage of civilisation attained by the aborigines we learn little or
nothing. They had, it is certain, large herds of cattle, and they could when
attacked take refuge in fortifications called in the Rigveda by the name
pur, which later denotes 'town,' but which may well have then meant no
more than an earthwork strengthened by a pallisade or possibly occasionally
by stone. Stockades of this kind are often made by primitive peoples, and
are so easily constructed that we can understand the repeated references in
the Rigveda to the large numbers of such fortifications which were captured
and destroyed by the Āryan hosts. Some Dāsas, it seems, were able to
establish friendly relations with the Āryans, for a singer celebrates the
generosity of Balbūtha, apparently a Dāsa ; nor is it impossible, as we have
seen, that the five tribes of the Punjab were not above accepting the cooper-
ation of aboriginal tribes in their great attack on Sudās. We must therefore
recognise that in the age of the Rigveda there was going on a steady pro.
cess of amalgamation of the invaders and the aborigines, whether through
the influence of intermarriage with slaves or through friendly and peaceful
relations with powerful Dāsa tribes.
Like the Dāsas and Dasyus in their appearance both as terrestrial and
as celestial foes are the Paņis. The word seems beyond doubt to be con-
nected with the root seen in the Greek pernēmi, and the sense in which it
was used by the poets must have been something like ‘niggard. ' The
demons are niggards because they withhold from the Āryan the water of
the clouds ; the aborigines are niggards because they refuse the gods their
due, perhaps also because they do not surrender their wealth to the Āryan
without a struggle. The term may also be applied to any foe as an oppro-
brious epithet, and there is no passage in the Samhitā which will not yield
an adequate meaning with one or other of these uses. But it has been
deemed by one high authority to reveal to us a closer connexion of India
and Irān than has yet suggested itself : in the Dāsas Hillebrandt sees the
Dahae, in the Paņis the Parnians, and he locates the struggles of Divodāsa
1 Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, vol. I, pp. 94 sq.
## p. 78 (#112) #############################################
78
[ ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
against them in Arachosia. Support for this view he finds in the record of
Divodāsa's conflicts with Bțisaya and the Pārāvatas, with whose names he
compares that of the Satrap Barsentes and the people Paruetae of Gedrosia
or Aria. Similarly he suggests that the Sțiñjaya people, who were connec-
ted like Divodāsa with the Bhāradāja family, should be located in Irān,
and he finds in the Sarasvati, which formed the scene of Divodāsa's exploits,
not the Indian stream but the Irānian Harahvaiti. Thus the sixth book of
the Rigveda would carry us far west from the scenes of the third and
seventh which must definitely be located in India. But the hypothesis rests
on too weak a foundation to be accepted as even plausible.
Other references to connexions with Irān have been seen in two
names found in the Rigveda. Abhyāvartin Chāyamāna, whose victory
over Varaçikha has already been recorded, bears the epithet Pārthava, and
the temptation to see in him a Parthian is naturally strong. But the
Rigveda knows a Pțithi and later texts a Pțithu, an ancient and probably
mythical king, and thus we have in the Vedic speech itself an explanation
of Pārthava which does not carry us to Irān. Still less convincing is the
attempt to find in the word Parçu in three passages of the Rigveda a refer-
ence to Persians : Parçu occurs indeed with Tirindira as a man's name, but
the two are princes of the Yadus, and not a single personality, "Tiridates
the Persian? ' Whatever the causes which severed Irān and India, in the
earliest period, at least as recorded in the Rigveda, the relations of the two
peoples seem not to have been those of direct contact.
As little do the Rigvedic Indians appear to have been in contact with
the Semitic peoples of Babylon. The term Bekanāța which occurs along
with Paņi in one passage has been thought to be a reference to some Baby-
lonian word : though the Indian Bikaner is much more plausible as its
origin. Bribu, mentioned once as a most generous giver and apparently
also as a Paņi, has been connected by Weber with Babylon, but without
ground : more specious is the attempt to see a Babylonian origin for the
word manā found in one passage only of the Rigveda where it is accom-
panied by the epithet 'golden. ' The Greek mina, presumably borrowed
from the Phoenicians, is a plausible parallel ; but the passage can be ex-
plained without recourse to this theory3. A Semitic origin has been claim.
ed for the word paracu, 'axe,' but this too is far from certain. There is
nothing in the Rigvedic mythology or religion which demands derivation
from a non-Āryan source, though it has been urged that the small group of
the Adityas, whose physical characteristics are very faint and whose abstract
1 Irānian relations are accepted by Ludwig, Rigveda, vol. III, pp. 195 sq. ; Weber,
E pisches im vedischen Ritual, pp. 36 sq. See also Chapter X.
Op. cit. pp. 28 sq. ; Indische Studien, vol. XVII, p. 198.
3 For t e borrowing see Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 50, 51 ; Weber, Indische
Studien, vol. XVII, p. 202. Bohtlingk, Dictionary, 8. v. , recognises only desire' or 'wish'
as the sense.
;
## p. 79 (#113) #############################################
IV ]
FAMILY RELATIONS
79
nature is marked, is derived from a Semitic civilisation'. In the succeeding
period the Nakshatras or lunar mansions may more probably be ascribed
to a Semitic source ; but in the Rigveda the Nakshatras are practically
unknown, appearing as such only in the latest portions. It is therefore im-
possible to assume that the great Semitic civilisations had any real contact
with India in the Rigvedic age.
Scanty as is our information regarding the Vedic tribes, yet we can see
clearly that the social and political organisation rested upon the partiarchal
family, if we may use that term to denote that relationship was counted
through the father. The Āryan marriage of this period was usually
monogamic, though polygamy was not unknown probably mainly among
the princely class ; and in the household the husband was master, the wife
mistress but dependent on and obedient to the master. The standard of
female morality appears to have been fairly high, that of men as usual was
less exigent. Polyandry is not shown by a single passage to have existed,
and is not to be expected in a society so strongly dominated by the male
as was the Vedic. Of limitations on marriage we learn practically nothing
from the Rigveda, except that the wedlock of brother and sister and of
father and daughter was not permitted. Child marriage, so usual in later
times, was evidently unknown ; and much freedom of choice seems to have
existed. Women lived under the protection of their fathers during the
life of the latter, and then they fell if still unmarried under the care of their
brothers. Both dowries and bride-prices are recorded : the ill-favoured
son-in-law might have to purchase his bride by large gifts, while other
maidens could obtain husbands only through the generosity of their
brothers in dowering them. A girl without a protector ran grave risk of
being reduced to immorality to maintain herself, and even in cases where
no such excuse existed we learn of cases of moral laxity. But the high
value placed on marriage is shown in the long and striking hymn (x, 85)
which accompanied the ceremonial, the essence of which was the mutual
taking of each other in wedlock by the bride and bridegroom, and the con-
veyance
of the bride from the house of her father to that of her husband? .
In this hymn the wedlock of Soma, here identified with the moon, and Sūryā,
the daughter of the sun, is made the prototype and exemplar of marriage
in general. Moreover, the Vedic marriage was indissoluble by human
action, nor in the early period does it seem to have been contemplated
that remarriage should take place in the case of a widows. To this there
So Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 193 ; Z. D. M. G. , vol. L, pp. 43 sq. ; but
see Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, pp. 133 sq.
For the marriage ritual, sea Weber and Haas, Indische Studien, vol. v, pp.
177–412; Winternitz, Das altindische Hochzeitsrituell (1892).
See Delbrück, Die indogermamischen Verwandtschaftsnamen, pp. 553. 5. Possibly
remarriage was permitted in the case of a woman whose husband disappeared ; see
Pischel, Vedische Studien, vol. I, p. 27.
1
2
3
## p. 80 (#114) #############################################
80
[ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
ex-
>
was the exception, which appears clearly in the burial ritual of the Rigveda,
that the brother-in-law of the dead man should marry the widow, probably
only in cases where the dead had left no son and it was therefore imperative
that steps should be taken to secure him offspring ; for the Rigveda re-
cognises to the full the keen desire of the Vedic Indian for a child to per-
form his funeral rites.
The relation of child and parent was clearly as a rule one of close
affection ; for a father is regarded as the type of all that is good and kind.
There are traces, however, that parental rights were large and vague : if
the chastisement of a gambler by his father may be deemed to be legitimate
exercise of parental control, this cannot be said of the cruel act of his
father in blinding Rijrāçva at which the Rigveda hints. The father pro.
bably controlled in some measure at least both son and daughter as regards
marriage; and the right of the father to adopt is clearly recognised by
the Rigveda, though a hymn ascribed to the family of Vasishtha disappro.
ves of the practice. The son after marriage must often have lived in
the house and under the control of his father, of whom his wife was
pected to stand in awe. But, on the other hand, as the father advanced
in years it cannot have been possible for him to maintain a control which
he was physically incapable of exercising ; and so we find the bride enjoin.
ed to be mistress over her step-parents, doubtless in the case when her
husband, grown to manhood, had taken over the management of the house.
hold from his father's failing hands.
The head of the family appears also to have been the owner of the
property of the family ; but on this point we are reduced in the main to
conjecture. It is certain that the Rigveda recognises to the full individual
ownership of movable things, cattle, horses, gold, ornaments, weapons,
slaves, and so forth. It seems also certain that land was already owned by
individuals or families : the term kshetra, 'field', is unmistakably employed
in this sense, and in one hymn a maiden, Apālā, places her father's culti-
vated field (urvara) on the same level with his hair as a personal possession.
Reference is also made to the measuring of fields, and to khilya, which
appear to have been strips of land between the cultivated plots, probably
used by the owners of the plots in common. The Rigveda has no conclusive
evidence that the sons were supposed to have any share whatever in the land
of the family, and the presumption is that it was vested in the father alone,
as long as he was head of the family and exercised his full powers as head.
We are left also to conjecture as to whether the various plots were held in
perpetuity by the head of the family and his descendants, or whether there
were periodic redistributions, and as to the conditions on which, if there were
several sons, they could obtain the new allotments necessary to support
themselves and their families. But there can hardly have been much diffi.
>
1
1
1
## p. 81 (#115) #############################################
IV]
SOCIAL GROUPS
81
culty in obtaining fresh land ; for it is clear that population was scanty and
spread over wide areas, and wealth doubtless eonsisted in the main in
Alocks and herds.
There is no hint in the Rigveda of the size to which a family might
grow and yet keep together. It is clear that there might be three generations
under the same roof, and a family might thus be of considerable dimensions
But life can hardly have been long-so much stress is laid on longevity as a
great boon that it must have been rare-and, even if we decline to accept the
view that exposure of aged parents was normal, there must have been a
tendency for the family to break up as soon as the parent died, especially
if, as is probable, there was no such land hunger as to compel the sons to
stay together. The sons would, however, naturally enough stay in the vici-
nity of one another for mutual support and assistance. The little knot of
houses of the several branches of the family would together form the nucleus
of the second stage in Rigvedic society, the grāmi, ‘village, though some
have derived its name originally from the sense ‘hordel' as describing the
armed force of the tribe which in war fought in the natural divisions of
family and family. Next in order above the grāma in the orthodox theory
was the vic or 'canton,' while a group of cantons made up the jana, 'people. '
This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece,
Italy, Germany and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the
graduated hierarchy of family or households, vis, zantu, and dahyu? . But for
Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It
is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness - so
that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a jana and at
another a grāma -- but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination
between the grāma and the viç is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian
evidence tells against the theory that the viç is removed by the grāma from
the family in the narrow sense : the more legitimate interpretation is to see
in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the
jana as parallel to the zantu, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda
the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of
aggregates of janas, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-
one janas of the two Viakaraņas who are mentioned in one passage of the
Samhitā. The viç will thus take its place beside the Irānian vis as a clan
as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the
Latin gens, and the Greek genoe. It is possible that the grāma is originally
the gens in it military aspect, but even that it is not certain, for the word
may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty
1 See Zimmer, Altindisches Leten, pp. 159, 160 ; Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung, und
Herkunft der Indogermanen, p. 143.
2 Zimmer, l. c. ; Geiger, Ostiramische Kultur, p.
## p. 82 (#116) #############################################
82
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
>
for the period of the Rigveda whether the grāma contained the whole of a
viç, or part of a viç, or parts of several viças. But amid much that is
conjectural it is clear that the viç was not a normal unit for purposes of
government, for the term viçpali, ‘lord of a vis', has not in any passage the
technical sense of 'lord of a canton. ' On the other hand, the grāma as a
unit is recognised by the use of the term grāmaņi, 'leader of a village,' an
officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both
military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or
powers.
While the sense "clan' is comparatively rare, the word viç not
unfrequently in the plural denotes 'subjects': so we hear of the viças of
Tļiņaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the viças of the Tșitsus,
the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the
sense clans' is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering
'clans' which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations
of the Bharatas and the Tșitsus, the Tșitsus being regarded as a people
opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the
Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the jana, a term which in Vedic
use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the
tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be
shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās
was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly
it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great
kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of
kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no
doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark
aboriginal population.
The question now presents itself as to the extent to which in the
period of the Rigveda the caste system had been developed.
of this stock in both Persia and India is the tendency to confuser and I, a
tendency which is characteristic of practically all the languages of the far
east. In India r is often found in words where the languages of the same
stock in Europe show l; 1 is also, though not so frequently, found for
g; in the Old Persian of the Achaemenid inscriptions l is found only in two
foreign words, and has otherwise been entirely replaced by r.
The dialects of Irān, the language of the earliest Gāthās (Songs) which
are attributed to Zoroaster himself, the later dialect of the other surviving
parts of the sacred literature of the ancient Persians- the Avesta --and the
inscriptions beginning with Darius I about 520 B. C. and best represented in
his time but continuing to the last Darius in 338 B. C. , are all closely related
to the oldest dialect discovered in India, which appears in the hymns of the
Rigveda. Not only single words and phrases, but even whole stanzas may
be transliterated from the dialect of India into the dialects of Irān without
change of vocabulary or construction, though the appearance of the words is
altered by the changes which time and isolation have brought about between
the dialects east and west of Afghānistān. It is curious to note that the
changes are much greater in the dialects that remain in Irān than in this old.
est recorded dialect of the migrants into India. The Irānians have disguised
their words by changing (as Greek has also done) s followed by a vowel at
the beginning of words, or between vowels in the middle of words, in to h:
thus the word for 7, the equivalent of the Latin septem, the Greek énbá is
in Sanskrit sapta, but in Irānian hapta. There are many other changes both
in vowels and in consonants. In particular it may be noted that one kind
of original g which appears in Sanskrit as j has become in the Irānian dialect
z or 8 (Greek árvos "holy,' Sanskrit yajña- 'sacrifice,' Avesta yaena), and a
corresponding aspirated sound gh which is in Sanskrit h has become identi.
fied with g in Irānian as z (Latin hiems, Greek xuov, zelu, (dvo) xulos,
Sanskrit hima- in 'Himālaya,’ Avesta zyam-). This loss of aspiration has affec-
ted also the other aspirates bh, dh, which survive in Sanskrit, while Irānian
tends in certain combinations to change original consonant-stops into spirants,
making the old name of the deity Mitra into Mithra, and from compounds
with a second element -parna the numerous proper names which we know
in Greek transliterations as Arta phernes, Tissaphernes, and the like.
It has sometimes been made an argument for deriving the origin of
these tribes from India rather than the West, that the sounds and especially
## p. 67 (#101) #############################################
III ]
IRĀNIANS AND INDIANS
67
the consonants of the language spoken have survived in greater purity in
India than in Irān or elsewhere. The argument however is not sound.
Invasions of a similar sort, though at a much greater distance from their
a
base, were made by the Spaniards in America in the sixteenth century. The
civilisation of the Spaniards was no doubt higher than that of the early
Indo-Germanic-speaking peoples who invaded India ; but in both Mexico
and Peru, if not elsewhere, they met a native population also much more
advanced in the arts than the earlier inhabitants of North-Western India
could have been. In all parts of America, except Chile, the Spaniards were
in so small a minority compared to the natives that they had to be careful
to preserve themselves in isolation, with the result that to-day, except in
Chile, where greater familiarity with the natives has produced a dialect of
Spanish words and native sounds, the local dialects are much more archaic
and much more like the Spanish of the sixteenth century than is the langu-
age spoken now in Spain. If the isolation of the English Colonies in North
America had remained as great as it was in the seventeenth century, no
doubt a much greater distinction would now exist between the English dia-
lects of North America and the English of the Mother country. Yet in
many parts of the eastern seaboard of the United States many words survive
locally which have long been extinct except in local dialects in England, and
many forms of expression survive which the modern Englishman now
regards as mainly biblical. That an isolation resembling that of the Spanish
colonies prevailed also in early India is shown by the most characteristic
feature of Indian civilisation-caste. The native word for caste, varņa,
means colour, and the first beginnings of the caste system were laid when
the fairer people who migrated into India felt the importance of preserving
their own racial characteristics by standing aloof from the dark-skinned
dāsas, or dasyus, whom they found already established in the peninsula.
That the sound changes which have been enumerated are not so very
old has been shown by the names found at Boghaz-köi. And this is not
the only evidence. To the same period as the Boghaz-köi inscriptions
belong the famous letters from Tel-el-Amarna. In these occur references
to the people of Mitāani in north-west Mesopotamia, whose princes bear
names like Artatama, Tusratta, and Suttarna, which seem unmistakably
Āryan in form. For five hundred years (c. 1746-1180 B. c. ) a mountain
tribe-the Kassites—from the neighbourhood of Media held rule over the
whole of Babylonia, and amongst these also the names of the princes and
deities seem Āryan, though the people themselves, like those of Mitāni
were of another stock. Names like Shurias 'Sun' and Marylas seem identi-
cal with the Sanskrit Sürya and Marutas (the wind-gods), while Simalia
'queen of the snow mountains' can hardly be separated from the name of
the great mountain range Himālaya and the Irānian word of snow, zima.
## p. 68 (#102) #############################################
68
( CH. III
THE ĀRYANS
>
1
To a much later period belongs the list of deities worshipped in different
temples of Assyria, which was found in the library of Assurbanipal (about
700 B. c. ), in which occurs the name Assara-Mazas, immediately preceding
the seven good angels and the seven bad spirits. The combination hardly
leaves it doubtful that we have here the chief deity of Zoroastrianism (Ahura
Mazda) with the seven Ameshaspentas and the seven bad daivas of that
religion. Into the many other problems that arise in this connexion it is
not necessary here to enter ; but it is important to observe that even so late
as this the first part of the god's name remains more like the Sanskrit Asura
than the Avestan Ahura. While modern Hinduism is the lineal descendant,
however much modified in the course of ages, of the ancient Āryan worship
which we know first in the Rigveda, the religion of the Avesta is a reform
which, like other religious reforms, has been able to get rid of the old gods
only by converting them into devils, the worship of which was probably
none the less diligent for their change of title.
There seems, in any case, to be specific evidence for the supposition
that by the fifteenth century B. c. tribes of Āryan stock held, or exercised
infiuence over, a wide area extending from northern Asia Minor over north-
west Babylonia to Media ; and there seems to be nothing to prevent us
assuming that even then, or soon after, the Āryans pushed their way still
eastwards and northwards, mainly confining themselves to the territories
south of the Oxus, but occasionally occupying lands between that river and
the Jaxartes.
1
1
1
1
## p. 69 (#103) #############################################
CHAPTER IV
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
The earliest documents which throw light upon the history of India
are the hymns of the Rigveda. In the text which has come down to us this
samh itā or 'collection' consists of 1017 hymns divided into ten books of
unequal size. The motive of those to whom the collection is due must
apparently have been the desire to preserve the body of religious tradition
current among the priests; and, early as was the redaction, there are clear
signs that already part of the material had ceased to be fully understood by
those who made use of it in their worship. The artificial character of the
arrangement is clearly indicated by the fact that the first and tenth books
have precisely the same number of hymns, 191 each. The collection seems
however to have been some time in the making. The nucleus is formed by
books 11-VII, each of which is attributed to a different priestly family. To
this were prefixed the groups of bymns by other families which form the
second part (51-191) of book 1 ; and still later were added the first part of
book i and book vill attributed to the family of Kanva. Book ix was then
formed by taking out from the collections of hymns which made up the
first eight books the hymns addressed to Soma Pavamāna, 'the clearly flow-
ing Soma'; and to these nine books was added a tenth, containing, besides
hymns of the same hieratic stamp as those of the older books, a certain
number of a different type, cosmogonic and philosophical poems, spells and
incantations, verses intended for the rites of wedding and burial and other
miscellaneous matters. The tenth book also displays, both in metrical form
and linguistic details, signs of more recent origin than the bulk of the col.
lection ; and the author of one set of hymns (x, 20-26) has emphasised his
dependence on earlier tradition by prefixing to his own group the opening
words of the first hymn of the first book.
There is abundant proof that, before the collections were finally united
into the form in which the Rigveda has come down to us, minor additions
were made ; and, as it is perfectly possible that in book x old material was
69
## p. 70 (#104) #############################################
70
( ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
incorporated as well as newer work, efforts have been made to penetrate
beyond the comparatively rough distinction between the first nine and the
tenth books, and to assign the hymns to five different periods, representing
stages in the history of Vedic India, and marked by variations in religious
belief and social custom”. But so far these efforts can scarcely be regarded
as successful. The certain criteria of age supplied by the language, the
metres, or the subject matter of the Rigveda are not sufficient to justify so
elaborate a chronological arrangement of its hymns. The results produced
by the most elaborate and systematic attempts to apply the methods of the
higher criticism to the Rigveda have hitherto failed to meet with general
acceptance.
The mass of the collection is very considerable, approximating to the
same amount of material as that contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, but
the light thrown by the hymns on social and political conditions in India is
disappointingly meagre. By far the greater part of the Rigveda consists of
invocations of the many gods of the Vedic pantheon, and scarcely more
than forty hymns are found which are not directly addressed to these deities
or some object to which divine character is, for the time at least, attributed.
These hymns contain much miscellaneous information regarding Vedic life
and thought ; and other notices may be derived from the main body of the
collection, though deductions from allusions are always difficult and open
to suspicion. Some names of tribes, places, and princes, as well as of
singers, are known to us tbrough their mention in the dānastutis or 'praises
of liberality' which are appended to hymns, mainly in the first and tenth
books, and in which the poet praises his patron for his generosity towards
him. But the dānastutis are unquestionably late, and it is significant that
some of the most striking occur in a small collection of eleven hymns, called
the Vālakhilyas, which are included in the Samhitā of the Rigveda, but
which tradition recognises as forming no true part of that collection.
From these materials conclusions can be drawn only with much cau-
tion. It is easy to frame and support by plausible evidence various hypo-
theses, to which the only effective objection is that other hypotheses are
equally legitimate, and that the facts are too imperfect to allow of conclu.
sions being drawn. It is, however, certain that the Rigveda offers no
assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Indians entered India.
The geographical area recognised in the Samhitā is large, but it is, so far as
we learn, occupied by tribes which collectively are called Āryan, and which
wage war with dark-skinned enemies known as-Dāsas. If, as may be the
case, the Aryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the
1 Especially by Arnold whose results are summed up in bis Vedic Metre (Cam.
bridge, 1905). For criticism, see J. R. A. S. , 1906, pp. 484-90, 716-22 ; 1912, pp. 726-9.
>
## p. 71 (#105) #############################################
IV ]
GEOGRAPHY
71
Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that
advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to
have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvatīriver, south
of the modern Ambāla? . Only thus, it seems, can we explain the fact of
the prominence in the hymns of the strife of the elements, the stress laid on
the phenomena of thunder and lightning and the bursting forth of the rain
from the clouds ; the Punjab proper has now, and probably had also in
antiquity, but little share in these things ; for there in the rainy season
;
gentle showers alone fall. Nor in its vast plain do we find the mountains
which form so large a part of the poetic imagining of the Vedic Indian. On
the other hand, it is perhaps to the Punjab with its glorious phenomena
of dawn, that we must look for the origin of the hymns to Ushas, the god.
dess Dawn, while the concept of the laws of Varuna, the highest moral and
cosmic ideal attained by the poets, may more easily have been achieved
amid the regularity of the seasonal phenomena of the country of the five
rivers.
Of the names in the Rigveda those of the rivers alone permit of easy
and certain indentification. The Āryan occupation of Afgbānistān is proved
by the mention of the Kubhā (Kābul), the Suvāstu (Swāt) with its 'fair
dwellings,' the Krumu (Kurram) and Gomati (Gumal). But far more
important were the settlements on the Sindhu (Indus), the river par excellence
from which India has derived its name. The Indus was the natural outlet
to the sea for the Āryan tribes, but in the period of the Rigveda there is
no clear sign that they had yet reached the ocean. No passage even renders
it probable that sea navigation was known. Fishing is all but ignored, a
fact natural enough to people used to the rivers of the Punjab and East
Kābulistān, which are poor in fish. The word samudra, which in later
times undoubtedly means 'ocean', occurs not rarely ; but where the applica-
tion is terrestrial, there seems no strong reason to believe that it means
more than the stream of the Indus in its lower course, after it has received
the waters of the Punjab and has become so broad that a boat in the
middle cannot be discerned from the bank. Even nowadays the natives
call the river the sea of Sind.
The five streams which give the Punjab its name and which after
uniting flow into the Indus are all mentioned in the Rigveda : the Vitastā is
the modern Jhelum, the Asikni the Chenāb, the Parushṇī, later called Irā.
vatī, 'the refreshing,' the modern Rāvi, the Vipāç the Beās, and the Cutudri
the Sutlej. But of these only the Parushņi plays a considerable part in the
See Hopkins, J. A. O. S. , vol. XIX, pp. 19-28 ; Pischel and Geldner, Velische
Studien, vol. II, p. 218 ; vol. JII, p. 152 ; Vedic Index, vol. I, p. 468. The older view,
that the hymns were composed in the Punjab itself, was adopted by Max Müller, Weber
and Muir among others,
9
1
.
## p. 72 (#106) #############################################
72
[ сп.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
history of the time, for it was on this river that the famous battle of the ten
kings, the most important contest of Vedic times, was fought. Far more
important was the Sarasvatī, which we can with little hesitation identify
with the modern Sarsūti or Saraswati, a river midway between the Sutlej
and the Jumna'. It is possible that in the period of the Rigveda that river
was of greater importance than it was in the following period when it was
known to bury itself in the sands, and that its waters may have flowed to
the Indus ; but, however that may be, it is mentioned in one passage to-
gether with the Dșishadvati, probably the Chautang, which with it in later
times formed the boundaries of the sacred land known as Brahmāvarta.
With these two streams is mentioned the Āpayā, probably a river near
Thānesar? . In this region too may be placed the lake çaryaņāvants, and the
place Pastyāvant, near the modern Patiāla.
Further east the Āryans had reached the Jumna, which is thrice
named, and the Ganges, which is once directly mentioned, once alluded to
in the territorial title of a prince.
To the north we find that the Himavant or Himālaya mountains were
well known to the Rigveda, and one peak, that of Mūjavant, is referred to
as the source of the Soma, the intoxicating drink which formed the most
important offering in the religious practice of the time. The name is lost in
modern times, but probably the peak was one of those on the south-west of
the valley of Kashmir. On the south, on the other hand, the Vindhya hills
are unknown, and no mention is made of the Narbadā river, so that it may
fairly be inferred that the Āryan tribes had not yet begun their advance
towards the south.
With the conclusions as to the home of the Āryan tribes extracted
from geographical names the other available evidence well accords. The
tiger, a native of the swampy jungles of Bengal, is not mentioned in the
Rigveda, which gives the place of honour among wild beasts to the lion,
then doubtless common in the vast deserts to the east of the lower Sutlej
and the Indus and even now to be found in the wooded country to the
south of Gujarāt. Rice, whose natural habitat is the south-east in the
regular monsoon area and which is well known in the latter · Samhitās, is
1 Roth, St. Petersburg Dictionary 8. 2. , and Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 5 10,
identify the Sarasvati in many passages with the Indus; Hillebrandt, Vedische Mytho-
logie, vol. I, pp. 99 sq. ; vol. III, pp. 372-8, thinks it is in a few places the Arghanbād.
2 The identification of the ancient rivers of Brahmāvarta must always remain
somewhat uncertain. At the prese at day it is difficult to trace their courses, partly
because the streams are apt to disappear in the sand, and partly because they have to a
great extent been absorbed in the canal-systems constructed during the periods of
Muhammadan and British rule.
3 Identified however with the Wular Sea in Kashmir by Hillebrandt, Vedische
Mythologie, vol. I, pp. 126 sq.
## p. 73 (#107) #############################################
I
IV)
FAUNA AND PEOPLES
73
never mentioned in the Rigveda. The elephant, whose home is now in the
lowland jungle at the foot of the Himālaya from the longitude of Cawnpore
eastwards, appears in the Rigveda as the wild beast (mọiga) with a hand
(hastin), while in the later texts it is commonly known as hastin only, a sign
that the novelty of the animal had worn away. The mountains from which
the Soma was brought appear, too, to have been nearer in this period than
at a later date when the real plant seems to have been more and more
difficult to obtain, and when substitutes of various kinds were permitted.
When we pass to the notices of tribes in the Rigveda, we leave compara-
,
tive certainty for confusion and hypothesis. The one great historical event
which reveals itself in the fragmentary allusions of the Samhitā is the contest
known as the battle of the ten kings. The most probable version of that
conflict is that it was a contest between the Bharatas, settled in the country
later known as Brahmāvarta, and the tribes of the north-west. The Bharata
king was Sudās, of the Tſitsu family, and his domestic priest who celebrates,
according to the tradition, the victory in three hymns (vir, 18 ; 33 ; 83) was
Vasishthal. This sage had superseded in that high office his predecessor
Viçvāmitra, under whose guidance the Bharatas appear to have fought
successfully against enemies on the Vipāç and çutudrï ; and in revenge, as
it seems, Viçvāmitra had led against the Bharatas ten allied tribes, only to
meet with destruction in the waters of the Parushṇī. Of the ten tribes five
are of little note, the Alinas, perhaps from the north-east of Kāfiristān, the
Pakthas, whose name recalls the Afghān Pakhthün, the Bhalanases, possibly
connected with the Bolān Pass, the çivas from near the Indus, and the
Vishāṇins. Better known in the Rigveda are the other five, the Anus who
dwelt on Parushội and whose priests were perhaps the famous family of the
Bhřigus, the Druhyus who were closely associated with them, the Turvaças
and Yadus, two allied tribes, and the Pūrus, dwellers on either side of the
Sarasvatī, and therefore probably close neighbours of the Bharatas. These
tribes are probably the five tribes which are referred to on several occasions
in the Rigveda and which seem to have formed a loose alliance. Sudās's
victory at the Parushṇī, in which the Anu and Druhyu kings fell, does not
appear to have resulted in any attempt at conquest of the territory of the
allied tribes. He seems at once to have been compelled to return to the east
of his kingdom to meet the attacks of a king Bheda, under whom three
tribes, the Ajas, cigrus, and Yakshus, were united, and to have defeated his
1 This is the view of Hopkins, J. A. O. S. , vol. XV, pp. 259 sq. According to the
older view the Bharatas were foes of the Tſitsus; see Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol.
12, p. 354 ; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 127 ; Bloomfield, J. A. O. S. , vol. XVI, pp. 41,
42. Ludwig, Rigveda, vol. III, p. 172, identified the Bharatas and the Tșitsus ; Olden.
berg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. XLII, p. 207, holds that the Tſitsus are the Vasishțhas, the
priests of the Bharatas. But see Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, pp. 136 sq.
9
## p. 74 (#108) #############################################
74
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
new assailants with great slaughter on the Jumna. It is probable enough
that the attack on the eastern boundaries of the territory of the Bharatas was
not unconnected with the onslaught of the five tribes and their still more
northern and western allies ; but the curious names of the Ajas, ‘goats,' and
the çigrus, ‘horse-radishes,' may be a sign that the tribes which bore them
were totemistic non-Aryans.
Not less famous was the father or grandfather of Sudās, Divodāsa,
'the servant of heaven,’ Atithigva, “the slayer of kine for guests? . ' There
are records of his conflicts with the Turvaça, Yadu, and Pūru tribes; but
his greatest foe was the Dāsa, çambara, with whom he waged constant war.
He had to contend also with the Paņis, the Pārāvatas, and Brisaya. He
seems to have been the patron of the priestly family of the Bhāradvājas, the
authors of the sixth book of the Rigveda ; and there is little doubt that his
kingdom covered much the same area as that of Sudās, since he warred, on
the one hand, against the tribes of the Punjab, and, on the other, against
the Pārāvatas who are located in the period of the Brāhmaṇas on the
Jumna. The Dāsas and the Paņis were probably aboriginal foes, whom,
like every Āryan prince, he had to fight.
Though defeated in the battle with Sudās, the Pūrus were clearly a
great and powerful people. Their home was round the Sarasvati, and there
is no need to interpret that name as referring to the Indus rather than to
the eastern Sarasvati. On the Indus they would have been removed some-
what widely from the Bharatas, their chief rivals, two of whose princes,
Devaçravas and Devavāta, are expressly recorded in one hymn to have
dwelt on the Sarasvati, Apayā, and Dțishadvati. The importance of the
tribe is reflected in the fact that we possess an unusually large number of
the names of its members. The earliest prince recorded seems to have been
Durgaha, who was succeeded by Girikshit, neither of these being more than
names. The son of Girikshit, Purukutsa, was the contemporary of Sudās,
and one hymn tells in obscure phrases of the distress to which his wife was
reduced by some misfortune, from which she was relieved by the birth of a
son, Trasadasyu.
It is not unlikely that the misfortune was the death of
Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings. The new ruler, as his name indi.
cates, was a terror to the Dasyus or aborigines, and seems not to have
distinguished himself in war with Āryan enemies. We hear of a descendant
Trikshi, and, apparently still later in the line, of another descendant Kuru.
çravaņa, son of Mitrātithi and father of Upamaçravas, whose death is
deplored in a hymn of the tenth book. The name is of importance and
significance, for it suggests that already in the later Rigvedic period the
Pūrus had become closely united with their former rivals, the Bharatas, both
tribes being merged in the Kurus, whose name, famous in the later Samhitās
1 V. inf. , pp. 90. 1, and Chapter X.
*
## p. 75 (#109) #############################################
IV ]
THE DĀSAS OR DASYUS
75
?
and the Brāhmaṇas as the chief bearers of the culture of the Vedic period,
is not directly mentioned in the Rigveda, though it was clearly not unknown.
Other princes of the Pūru line were Tryaruņa, and Trivſishan or Tridhātu ,
and later evidence enables us with fair certainty to connect with the Pūrus
the princely name Ikshvāku, which occurs but once in a doubtful context
in the Rigveda.
Connected with the Kurus were the Krivis, whose name seems to be
but a variant from the same root, and who appear to have been settled near
the Indus and the Chenāb. Possibly we may see the allied tribes of Kurus
and Krivis in the two Vaikarņa tribes, twenty-one of whose clans shared the
defeat of the five tribes by Sudās. If so, like the Pūrus the Bharatas must
have in course of time become mingled with the Kurus and have merged
their identity with them.
Allied or closely connected with the Bharatas was the tribe of the
Sțiñjayas, whom we must probably locate in the neighbourhood of the
Bharatas. One of their princes, Daiva vāta, won a great victory over the
Turvaças with their allies, the Vřichivants, of whom we know nothing more.
Other princes of the line were Sahadeva, his son Somaka, and Prastoka,
and Vītahavya. They were, like the Bharatas under Divodāsa, closely
connected with the Bhāradvāja family of priests.
No other Āryan tribe plays a great figure in the Rigveda. The Chedis,
who in later times dwelt in Bundelkhand to the north of the Vindhya, and
their king Kaçu are mentioned but once in a late dānastuti : the queen
of
the Uçīnaras, later a petty tribe to the north of the Kuru country, is also
once allued to. The generosity of Rinamchaya, king of the Ruçamas, an
unknown people, has preserved his name from extinction. One interpreta-
tion adds to the enemies of Sudās the tribe of the Matsyas ('fishes') who in
later times occupied the lands now known as Alwar, Jaipur, and Bharatpur.
A raid of the Turvaças and Yadus and a conflict on the Sarayul with Arna
and Chitraratha testify to the activity of these clans, which otherwise are
best known through their opposition to Divodāsa and Sudās, and which must
probably have been settled in the south of the Punjab. The family of the
Kanvas seems to have been connected as priests with the Yadus. Connected
with the Turvaças was the Vộichivant Varaçikha, who was defeated by
Abhyāvartin Chāyāmāna, who himself was perhaps a Sțiñjaya prince.
More shadowy still are Nahus, Tugrya, and Vetasu in whom some have
seen tribes : Nahus is probably rather a general term for neighbour, and
the Tugryas and the Vetasus are families rather than tribes.
More important by far, it may be believed, than the intertribal warfare
of the peoples who called themselves Āryan were their contests with the
aborigines, the Dāsas or Dasyus as they are repeatedly called. The same
1 The identification of this river is uncertain; see Vedic Index, vol. II, p. 434.
## p. 76 (#110) #############################################
7€
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
terms are applied indifferently to the human enemies of the Aryans and to
the fiends, and no criterion exists by which references to real foes can be
distinguished in every case from allusions to demoniacal powers. The root
meaning of both words is most probably merely 'foe', but in the Rigveda
it has been specialised to refer, at least as a rule, to such buman foes as were
of the aboriginal race. Individual Dāsas were Ilibiça, Dhuni and Chumuri,
Pipru, Varchin, and çambara, though the last at least has been transformed
by the imagination of the singers into demoniac proportions. The only
peoples named which can plausibly be deemed to have been Dāsas are the
Çimyus, who are mentioned among the foes of Sudās in the battle of the ten
kings, and who are elsewhere classed with Dasyus, the Kikatas with their
leader Pramaganda, and perhaps the Ajas, Yakshus, and çigrus. The main
distinction between the Āryan and the Dāsa was clearly that of colour, and
the distinction between the Āryan varņa, 'colour,' and the black colour is
unquestionably one of the main sources of the Indian caste system. The
overthrow of the black skin is one of the most important exploits of the
Vedic Indian. Second only to the colour distinction was the hatred of men
who did not recognise the Aryan gods : the Dāsas are constantly reproached
for their disbelief, their failure to sacrifice, and their impiety. Nor is there
much doubt that they are the phallus worshippers who twice are referred to
with disapproval in the Rigveda, for phallus worship was probably of
prehistoric age in India and by the time of the Mahābhārata it had won its
way
into the orthodox Hindu cult. We learn, disappointingly enough,
little of the characteristics of the Dāsas, but two epithets applied in one
passage to the Dasyus are of importance. The first is mridhravāchah which
has been interpreted to refer to the nature of the aborigines' speech ; but
which, as it elsewhere is applied to Āryan foes like the Pūrus, probably
means no more than ‘of hostile speech. The other epithet, anāsaḥ, is more
important : it doubtless means 'noseless,' and is a clear indication that the
aborigines to which it is applied were of the Dravidian type as we know it
at the present day. With this accords the fact that the Brāhūi speech still
remains as an isolated remnant in Baluchistān of the Dravidian family of
tongues? But though the main notices of the Rigveda are those of conflict
against the Dāsas and the crossing of rivers to win new lands from them,
it is clear that the Āryans made no attempt at wholesale extermination of
the people. Many of the aborigines doubtless took refuge before the Āryan
attacks in the mountains to the north or to the south of the lands occupied
by the invaders, while others were enslaved. This was so normal in the
In the Imp. Gaz. , vol. I, p. 382, it is suggested that the Brāhuis who are there
ethnographically classed as Turko-Irānian show the original type of Dravidian, and
that the modern Dravidian type is physically due to influence by the Mundā speaking
peoples. The Rigvedic evidence does not favour this view. See Chapter II, pp. 37. 8.
1
## p. 77 (#111) #############################################
IV ]
INDIA AND IRĀN
77
case of women that, in the literature of the next period, the term Dāsi
regularly denotes a female slave; but male slaves are often alluded to in the
Rigveda, sometimes in large numbers, and wealth was already in part made
up of ownership of slaves. The metaphorical use is seen in the name of
one of the greatest of Vedic kings, Divodāsa, 'the servant of heaven. '
In the Purushasūkta, or 'Hymn of Purusha,' which belongs to the latest
stratum of the Rigveda, and which in mystic terms describes the creation
of the four castes from a primeval giant, occurs for the first time the term
çūdra, which includes the slaves as a fourth class in the Āryan state. Pro-
bably enough this word, which has no obvious explanation, was originally
the name of some prominent Dāsa tribe conquered by the Āryans.
Of the stage of civilisation attained by the aborigines we learn little or
nothing. They had, it is certain, large herds of cattle, and they could when
attacked take refuge in fortifications called in the Rigveda by the name
pur, which later denotes 'town,' but which may well have then meant no
more than an earthwork strengthened by a pallisade or possibly occasionally
by stone. Stockades of this kind are often made by primitive peoples, and
are so easily constructed that we can understand the repeated references in
the Rigveda to the large numbers of such fortifications which were captured
and destroyed by the Āryan hosts. Some Dāsas, it seems, were able to
establish friendly relations with the Āryans, for a singer celebrates the
generosity of Balbūtha, apparently a Dāsa ; nor is it impossible, as we have
seen, that the five tribes of the Punjab were not above accepting the cooper-
ation of aboriginal tribes in their great attack on Sudās. We must therefore
recognise that in the age of the Rigveda there was going on a steady pro.
cess of amalgamation of the invaders and the aborigines, whether through
the influence of intermarriage with slaves or through friendly and peaceful
relations with powerful Dāsa tribes.
Like the Dāsas and Dasyus in their appearance both as terrestrial and
as celestial foes are the Paņis. The word seems beyond doubt to be con-
nected with the root seen in the Greek pernēmi, and the sense in which it
was used by the poets must have been something like ‘niggard. ' The
demons are niggards because they withhold from the Āryan the water of
the clouds ; the aborigines are niggards because they refuse the gods their
due, perhaps also because they do not surrender their wealth to the Āryan
without a struggle. The term may also be applied to any foe as an oppro-
brious epithet, and there is no passage in the Samhitā which will not yield
an adequate meaning with one or other of these uses. But it has been
deemed by one high authority to reveal to us a closer connexion of India
and Irān than has yet suggested itself : in the Dāsas Hillebrandt sees the
Dahae, in the Paņis the Parnians, and he locates the struggles of Divodāsa
1 Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, vol. I, pp. 94 sq.
## p. 78 (#112) #############################################
78
[ ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
against them in Arachosia. Support for this view he finds in the record of
Divodāsa's conflicts with Bțisaya and the Pārāvatas, with whose names he
compares that of the Satrap Barsentes and the people Paruetae of Gedrosia
or Aria. Similarly he suggests that the Sțiñjaya people, who were connec-
ted like Divodāsa with the Bhāradāja family, should be located in Irān,
and he finds in the Sarasvati, which formed the scene of Divodāsa's exploits,
not the Indian stream but the Irānian Harahvaiti. Thus the sixth book of
the Rigveda would carry us far west from the scenes of the third and
seventh which must definitely be located in India. But the hypothesis rests
on too weak a foundation to be accepted as even plausible.
Other references to connexions with Irān have been seen in two
names found in the Rigveda. Abhyāvartin Chāyamāna, whose victory
over Varaçikha has already been recorded, bears the epithet Pārthava, and
the temptation to see in him a Parthian is naturally strong. But the
Rigveda knows a Pțithi and later texts a Pțithu, an ancient and probably
mythical king, and thus we have in the Vedic speech itself an explanation
of Pārthava which does not carry us to Irān. Still less convincing is the
attempt to find in the word Parçu in three passages of the Rigveda a refer-
ence to Persians : Parçu occurs indeed with Tirindira as a man's name, but
the two are princes of the Yadus, and not a single personality, "Tiridates
the Persian? ' Whatever the causes which severed Irān and India, in the
earliest period, at least as recorded in the Rigveda, the relations of the two
peoples seem not to have been those of direct contact.
As little do the Rigvedic Indians appear to have been in contact with
the Semitic peoples of Babylon. The term Bekanāța which occurs along
with Paņi in one passage has been thought to be a reference to some Baby-
lonian word : though the Indian Bikaner is much more plausible as its
origin. Bribu, mentioned once as a most generous giver and apparently
also as a Paņi, has been connected by Weber with Babylon, but without
ground : more specious is the attempt to see a Babylonian origin for the
word manā found in one passage only of the Rigveda where it is accom-
panied by the epithet 'golden. ' The Greek mina, presumably borrowed
from the Phoenicians, is a plausible parallel ; but the passage can be ex-
plained without recourse to this theory3. A Semitic origin has been claim.
ed for the word paracu, 'axe,' but this too is far from certain. There is
nothing in the Rigvedic mythology or religion which demands derivation
from a non-Āryan source, though it has been urged that the small group of
the Adityas, whose physical characteristics are very faint and whose abstract
1 Irānian relations are accepted by Ludwig, Rigveda, vol. III, pp. 195 sq. ; Weber,
E pisches im vedischen Ritual, pp. 36 sq. See also Chapter X.
Op. cit. pp. 28 sq. ; Indische Studien, vol. XVII, p. 198.
3 For t e borrowing see Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 50, 51 ; Weber, Indische
Studien, vol. XVII, p. 202. Bohtlingk, Dictionary, 8. v. , recognises only desire' or 'wish'
as the sense.
;
## p. 79 (#113) #############################################
IV ]
FAMILY RELATIONS
79
nature is marked, is derived from a Semitic civilisation'. In the succeeding
period the Nakshatras or lunar mansions may more probably be ascribed
to a Semitic source ; but in the Rigveda the Nakshatras are practically
unknown, appearing as such only in the latest portions. It is therefore im-
possible to assume that the great Semitic civilisations had any real contact
with India in the Rigvedic age.
Scanty as is our information regarding the Vedic tribes, yet we can see
clearly that the social and political organisation rested upon the partiarchal
family, if we may use that term to denote that relationship was counted
through the father. The Āryan marriage of this period was usually
monogamic, though polygamy was not unknown probably mainly among
the princely class ; and in the household the husband was master, the wife
mistress but dependent on and obedient to the master. The standard of
female morality appears to have been fairly high, that of men as usual was
less exigent. Polyandry is not shown by a single passage to have existed,
and is not to be expected in a society so strongly dominated by the male
as was the Vedic. Of limitations on marriage we learn practically nothing
from the Rigveda, except that the wedlock of brother and sister and of
father and daughter was not permitted. Child marriage, so usual in later
times, was evidently unknown ; and much freedom of choice seems to have
existed. Women lived under the protection of their fathers during the
life of the latter, and then they fell if still unmarried under the care of their
brothers. Both dowries and bride-prices are recorded : the ill-favoured
son-in-law might have to purchase his bride by large gifts, while other
maidens could obtain husbands only through the generosity of their
brothers in dowering them. A girl without a protector ran grave risk of
being reduced to immorality to maintain herself, and even in cases where
no such excuse existed we learn of cases of moral laxity. But the high
value placed on marriage is shown in the long and striking hymn (x, 85)
which accompanied the ceremonial, the essence of which was the mutual
taking of each other in wedlock by the bride and bridegroom, and the con-
veyance
of the bride from the house of her father to that of her husband? .
In this hymn the wedlock of Soma, here identified with the moon, and Sūryā,
the daughter of the sun, is made the prototype and exemplar of marriage
in general. Moreover, the Vedic marriage was indissoluble by human
action, nor in the early period does it seem to have been contemplated
that remarriage should take place in the case of a widows. To this there
So Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 193 ; Z. D. M. G. , vol. L, pp. 43 sq. ; but
see Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, pp. 133 sq.
For the marriage ritual, sea Weber and Haas, Indische Studien, vol. v, pp.
177–412; Winternitz, Das altindische Hochzeitsrituell (1892).
See Delbrück, Die indogermamischen Verwandtschaftsnamen, pp. 553. 5. Possibly
remarriage was permitted in the case of a woman whose husband disappeared ; see
Pischel, Vedische Studien, vol. I, p. 27.
1
2
3
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80
[ch.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
ex-
>
was the exception, which appears clearly in the burial ritual of the Rigveda,
that the brother-in-law of the dead man should marry the widow, probably
only in cases where the dead had left no son and it was therefore imperative
that steps should be taken to secure him offspring ; for the Rigveda re-
cognises to the full the keen desire of the Vedic Indian for a child to per-
form his funeral rites.
The relation of child and parent was clearly as a rule one of close
affection ; for a father is regarded as the type of all that is good and kind.
There are traces, however, that parental rights were large and vague : if
the chastisement of a gambler by his father may be deemed to be legitimate
exercise of parental control, this cannot be said of the cruel act of his
father in blinding Rijrāçva at which the Rigveda hints. The father pro.
bably controlled in some measure at least both son and daughter as regards
marriage; and the right of the father to adopt is clearly recognised by
the Rigveda, though a hymn ascribed to the family of Vasishtha disappro.
ves of the practice. The son after marriage must often have lived in
the house and under the control of his father, of whom his wife was
pected to stand in awe. But, on the other hand, as the father advanced
in years it cannot have been possible for him to maintain a control which
he was physically incapable of exercising ; and so we find the bride enjoin.
ed to be mistress over her step-parents, doubtless in the case when her
husband, grown to manhood, had taken over the management of the house.
hold from his father's failing hands.
The head of the family appears also to have been the owner of the
property of the family ; but on this point we are reduced in the main to
conjecture. It is certain that the Rigveda recognises to the full individual
ownership of movable things, cattle, horses, gold, ornaments, weapons,
slaves, and so forth. It seems also certain that land was already owned by
individuals or families : the term kshetra, 'field', is unmistakably employed
in this sense, and in one hymn a maiden, Apālā, places her father's culti-
vated field (urvara) on the same level with his hair as a personal possession.
Reference is also made to the measuring of fields, and to khilya, which
appear to have been strips of land between the cultivated plots, probably
used by the owners of the plots in common. The Rigveda has no conclusive
evidence that the sons were supposed to have any share whatever in the land
of the family, and the presumption is that it was vested in the father alone,
as long as he was head of the family and exercised his full powers as head.
We are left also to conjecture as to whether the various plots were held in
perpetuity by the head of the family and his descendants, or whether there
were periodic redistributions, and as to the conditions on which, if there were
several sons, they could obtain the new allotments necessary to support
themselves and their families. But there can hardly have been much diffi.
>
1
1
1
## p. 81 (#115) #############################################
IV]
SOCIAL GROUPS
81
culty in obtaining fresh land ; for it is clear that population was scanty and
spread over wide areas, and wealth doubtless eonsisted in the main in
Alocks and herds.
There is no hint in the Rigveda of the size to which a family might
grow and yet keep together. It is clear that there might be three generations
under the same roof, and a family might thus be of considerable dimensions
But life can hardly have been long-so much stress is laid on longevity as a
great boon that it must have been rare-and, even if we decline to accept the
view that exposure of aged parents was normal, there must have been a
tendency for the family to break up as soon as the parent died, especially
if, as is probable, there was no such land hunger as to compel the sons to
stay together. The sons would, however, naturally enough stay in the vici-
nity of one another for mutual support and assistance. The little knot of
houses of the several branches of the family would together form the nucleus
of the second stage in Rigvedic society, the grāmi, ‘village, though some
have derived its name originally from the sense ‘hordel' as describing the
armed force of the tribe which in war fought in the natural divisions of
family and family. Next in order above the grāma in the orthodox theory
was the vic or 'canton,' while a group of cantons made up the jana, 'people. '
This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece,
Italy, Germany and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the
graduated hierarchy of family or households, vis, zantu, and dahyu? . But for
Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It
is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness - so
that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a jana and at
another a grāma -- but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination
between the grāma and the viç is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian
evidence tells against the theory that the viç is removed by the grāma from
the family in the narrow sense : the more legitimate interpretation is to see
in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the
jana as parallel to the zantu, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda
the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of
aggregates of janas, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-
one janas of the two Viakaraņas who are mentioned in one passage of the
Samhitā. The viç will thus take its place beside the Irānian vis as a clan
as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the
Latin gens, and the Greek genoe. It is possible that the grāma is originally
the gens in it military aspect, but even that it is not certain, for the word
may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty
1 See Zimmer, Altindisches Leten, pp. 159, 160 ; Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung, und
Herkunft der Indogermanen, p. 143.
2 Zimmer, l. c. ; Geiger, Ostiramische Kultur, p.
## p. 82 (#116) #############################################
82
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
>
for the period of the Rigveda whether the grāma contained the whole of a
viç, or part of a viç, or parts of several viças. But amid much that is
conjectural it is clear that the viç was not a normal unit for purposes of
government, for the term viçpali, ‘lord of a vis', has not in any passage the
technical sense of 'lord of a canton. ' On the other hand, the grāma as a
unit is recognised by the use of the term grāmaņi, 'leader of a village,' an
officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both
military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or
powers.
While the sense "clan' is comparatively rare, the word viç not
unfrequently in the plural denotes 'subjects': so we hear of the viças of
Tļiņaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the viças of the Tșitsus,
the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the
sense clans' is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering
'clans' which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations
of the Bharatas and the Tșitsus, the Tșitsus being regarded as a people
opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the
Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the jana, a term which in Vedic
use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the
tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be
shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās
was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly
it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great
kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of
kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no
doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark
aboriginal population.
The question now presents itself as to the extent to which in the
period of the Rigveda the caste system had been developed.
