It has also been
commonly
assumed that the eastern branches of
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides.
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides.
Cambridge History of India - v1
These conditions made possible the
series of foreign invasions from c. 200 B. . . onwards, which disturbed the.
North-West during many centuries and severed that region from the ancient
civilisation of the Plain of the Ganges. The political isolation of India
was completed by the Scythian conquest of Bactria, c. 135 B. C. , and by the
long struggle between Rome and Parthia which began in 53 B. C. After the
Maurya Empire, intercourse tended more and more to be restricted to
commerce by land and sea ; and for the West, India became more and;
more the land of mystery and fabulous wealth. Down to the last quarter
of the eighteenth century nearly all that was known of, its ancient i history
was derived from the early Greek and Latin writers. j ! ule : L'i ID:0 011
Of all the factors whieh contributed to the severance of relations with
the West, the extinction of Hellenic civilisation in Bactria was by far the
most important. But while the fate of Bactria closed the western outlook, )
it prepared the way for communication with the Far East ; and it is to;
Chinese authorities that we must turn for the most trustworthy information:
concerning the events which determined the history of N. W. India during
the following centuries,: The Scythian (çaka) invaders of Bactria were
succeeded by the Yueh-chi ; and when, in the first century A. D. , the predo-')
minant tribe of the Yueh-chi, the Kushānas, extended their dominion in
## p. 54 (#88) ##############################################
54
[ OH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Turkestān and Bactria to N. W. India, the Kushāņa empire formed a
connecting link between China and India and provided the means of
an intercourse which was fruitful in results. Buddhism was introduced
into China and the other countries of the Far East; and, as the explora-
tions of recent years have shown, an Indian culture, Indian languages, and
the Indian alphabets were established in Chinese Turkestān. The most
illuminating accounts of India from the end of the fourth to the end of
the seventh century are the records of Chinese Buddhists who made the
long and toilsome pilgrimage to the scenes of their Master's life and
labours.
The remaining source of historical information-the inscribed
monuments and coins-is the most productive of all. The inscriptions are
public or private records engraved in most cases on stone or on copper
plates ; and they are found in great numbers throughout the sub-continent
and in Ceylon. The earliest are the edicts of Açoka incised on rocks or
pillars situated on the frontiers and at important centres of the Maurya
empire when at the height of its power in the middle of the third century
B. O. Others commemorate the deposit of Buddhist relics. Others celebrate
the victories of princes, the extent of their conquests, the glories of the
founder of the dynasty and of his successors on the throne. Others again
place on record the endowments of temples or grants of land. In short,
there is scarcely any conceivable topic of public or private interest which
is not represented. The inscriptions supply most valuable evidence as to
the political, social, and economic conditions of the period and the country
to which they belong. They testify on the one hand to the restless activity
of a military caste, and on the other to the stability of institutions, which
were, as a rule, unaffected by military conquest. One conqueror follows
another, but the administration of each individual state remains uncharged
either under the same prince or under some other member of his family,
and the charters of monasteries are renewed as a matter of course by
each new overlord.
Coins also have preserved the names and titles of kings who have left
no other record ; and by their aid it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the
dynastic lists and to determine the chronology and the geographical extent
of ruling powers. But it is only when coin-legends appear as the result
of Greek influence in the North-West that this source of history becomes
available. The earlier indigenous coinage was little more than a system of
weights of silver or copper stamped with the marks of the monetary
authorities. The first Indian king whose name occurs on a coin is Sophytes
(Saubhūti), a contemporary of Alexander the Great. The legend of his
coins is in Greek. After his date no inscribed coins are found for more
than a hundred years. During this interval Greek rule in N. W. India had
1
1
## p. 55 (#89) ##############################################
II]
INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS
55
ceased. It was resumed about the beginning of the second century by
Alexander's Bactrian successors, who issued in their Indian dominions a
bilingual coinage with Greek legends on the obverse and a translation of
these in an Indian dialect and an Indian alphabet on the reverse.
The fashion of a bilingual coinage thus instituted was continued by
the Scythian and Parthian invaders from Irān in the early part of the first
century B. C. ; and these bilingual coins have supplied the clue to the
interpretation of the ancient alphabets, and have enabled scholars during
the last three generations to bring to light the long-hidden secrets of the
inscriptions and to retrace the outlines of forgotten history.
Both of the alphabets, now usually known as Brāhmi and Kharoshthi,
are of Semitic origin; that is to say, they are derived ultimately from the
same source as the European alphabets. They were introduced into India
at different periods, and probably by different routes. Brāhmi is found
throughout the sub-continent and in Ceylon. The home of Kharoshțhī is
in the North-West ; and whenever it is found elsewhere it has been imported.
Brāhmi has been traced back to the Phoenician type of writing
represented by the inscription in which Mesha, king of Moab (c. 850 B. C. ),
records his successful revolt against the kingdom of Israel. It was probably
brought into India through Mesopotamia, as a result of the early commerce
by sea between Babylon and the ports of Western India. It is the parent
of all the modern Indian alphabets.
Kharoshthi is derived from the Aramaic script, which was introduced
into India in the sixth century B. C. , when the North-West was under Persian
rule, and when Aramaic was used as a common means of communication for
the purposes of government throughout the Persian empire. That originally
the Aramaic language and alphabet pure and simple were thus imported
into Gandhāra, as Bühler conjectured in 1895 (W. Z. K. M. , IX, p. 49), has been
proved recently by Sir John Marshall's discovery of an Aramaic inscription
at Taxila'. When the first Kharoshțhi inscriptions appear in the third century
B. C. , the alphabet has been adapted to express the additional sounds required
by an Indian language ; but, unlike Brāhmi which has been more highly
elaborated, it still bears evident traces of its Semitic origin both in its
direction from right to left and in its imperfect representation of the vowels
In the third century A. D. Kharoshțhi appears more fully developed in
Chinese Turkestān where its existence must be attributed to the Kushāņa
empire. In this region, as in India, it was eventually superseded by Brāhmi.
The decipherment of the inscriptions and coins, and the determination
of the eras in which many of them are dated, have introduced into the
obscurity of early Indian history a degree of chronological order which could
not have been conceived at the time when the study of Sanskrit began in
1. A. Cowley, J. R. A, S. , 1915, p. 346.
## p. 56 (#90) ##############################################
56
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Europe. The bare fact that India possessed ancient classical literatures like
those of Greece and Rome can scarcely be said to have been known to the
Western World before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. At various
intervals during more than a hundred years previously a few isolated
students chiefly missionaries, those pioneers of learning, had indeed pub-
lished accounts of Sanskrit literature and Sanskrit grammar; but it was only
when a practical need made itself felt, and the serious attention of the
administrators of the East India Company's possessions was directed to the
importance of studying Sanskrit, that the investigation by Europeans of the
ancient languages and literatures of India began in earnest. To meet the
requirements of the law-courts the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, had
ordered a digest to be prepared by pandits from the authoritative Sanskrit
law-books ; but when the work was finished no one could be found able to
trarslate it into English. It was therefore necessary to have it translated
first into Persian, and from the Persian an English version was made and
published by Halhed in 1776. The object-lesson was not lost. Sanskrit
was evidently of practical utility; and the East India Company adopted, and
never afterwards neglected to pursue, the enlightened policy of promoting
the study of the ancient languages and literatures in which the traditions of
its subjets were enshrined. It remained for Sir William Jones, Judge of the
High Court at Calcutta, to place this study on a firm basis by the establish-
ment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
The inauguration of the study of India's past history came at a fortu-
nate moment ; for it is precisely to the last quarter of the eighteenth century
that we may trace the growth of the modern scientific spirit of investiga-
tion, which may be defined as the recognition of the fact that no object and
no idea stands alone by itself as an isolated phenomenon. All objects and
all ideas form Jinks in a series ; and therefore it follows that nowhere,
whether in the realm of nature or in the sphere of human activity, can the
present be understood without reference to the past. The first manifestation
of this new spirit of enquiry, which was soon to transform all learning, was
seen in the study of language. The first Western students of the ancient
languages of India were statesmen and scholars who had been educated in
the classical literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. They were impressed
by the fact, which must indeed be apparent to everyone who opens a
Sanskrit grammar, that Sanskrit, both in its vocabulary and in its inflex-
ions, presents a striking similarity to Greek and Latin. This observation
immediately raised the question : How is this similarity to be explained ?
The true answer was suggested by Sir William Jones, whom that sagacious
observer, Dr Johnson, recognised as “one of the most enlightened of the
sons of men? . ' In 1786, Sir William Jones wrote :
1. G. Birbeck Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, p. 363.
## p. 57 (#91) ##############################################
II ]
THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT
57
>
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure ;
more perfect than the Greek, more copoius than the Latin, and more exquisitely re-
fined than either ; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of
verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by acci-
dent; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing
them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick
and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the
Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
These observations contain the germs of the science of Comparative
Philology. The conception of a family of languages, in which all the indi-
vidual languages and dialects are related as descendants from a common
ancestor, suggested the application to language of the historical and com-
parative method of investigation. The results have been as remarkable as
they were unexpected. In the first place, the historical method has shown
that living languages grow and change in accordance with certain definite
laws, while the comparative study of the lines of development which may be
traced historically in the different Indo-European languages has confirmed
Sir William Jones' hypothesis that they are all derived from some common
source,' which, though it no longer exists, may be restored hypothetically.
In the second place, since words preserve the record both of material objects
and of ideas, a study of vocabularies enables us to gain some knowledge of
the state of civilisation, the social institutions, and the religious beliefs
of the speakers of the different languages before the period of literary
records. Some indication of the light which Comparative Philology thus
throws on the history of the Āryan invaders of India is given in the follow-
ing Chapter
## p. 58 (#92) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
THE ĀRYANS
Throughout the greater part of Europe and of Asia as far as India
there exist now, or can be shown to have existed in past time, a great
number of languages, the forms and sounds of which when scientifically
examined are seen to have a common origin. The languages in question are
generally known to scholars under the name of the Indo-Germanic, or Indo-
European languages. The name Indo-European seems to have been invent-
ed by Dr Thomas Young, the well-known physicist and Egyptologist. The
first occurrence known of the word is in an article by him in The Quarterly
Review for 1813. Examination of the article, however, shows that Dr Young
meant by Indo-European something quite different from its ordinarily
accepted signification. For under the term he included not only the langu-
ages now known as Indo-European, but also Basque, Finnish, and Semitic
languages. The name Indo-Germanic, which was used by the German
philologist Klaproth as early as 1823, but the inventor of which is unknown,
is an attempt to indicate the family by the furthest east and west members
of the chain extending from India to the Atlantic ocean. The main langu-
ages of the family had been indicated in a famous address to the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, delivered by the President Sir William Jones in 17861.
He had the insight to observe that the sacred language of India (Sanskrit),
the language of Persia, the languages of Greece and Rome, the languages of
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, were all closely connected. To Sir William
Jones, as Chief Justice of Bengal, law was his profession and the compari-
son of languages only an amusement. But this epoch-making address laid
the foundations of Comparative Philology on which Bopp in his Comparative
Grammar built the first superstructure. But the study of this family of
languages has from the begining been beset with a suitable fallacy. There
has been throughout an almost constant confusion between the languages
and the persons who spoke them. It is hardly necessary to point out that
1. See Chapter II, p. 57.
58
## p. 59 (#93) ##############################################
III)
THE WIROS
59
a
in many parts of the world the speaker of a particular language at a given
time was not by lineal descent the representative of its speakers at an earlier
period. In the Island of Britain many persons of Welsh blood, many persons
of Irish Celtic and Scottish Celtic origin speak English. It is many centu- .
ries since it was observed that Normans and English who had settled in
Ireland had learned to speak the Irish language and had become more Irish
than the Irish themselves. It is well known that by descent the Bulgarians
are of Asiatic origin, and of an entirely different stock from the Slavs, a
branch of whose language is now their mother tongue. It is therefore clear
that it is impossible, without historical evidence, to be certain that the
language spoken by any particular people was the language of their ancestors
at a remote period. The name Indo-Germanic therefore suffers from the
ambiguity that it characterises not only languages but also peoples. As has
been suggested elsewhere, it would be well to abandon both the term Indo-
European and the term Indo-Germanic and adopt some entirely colourless
word which would indicate only the speakers of such languages. A
convenient term for the speakers of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic
languages would be the Wiros, this being the word for 'men' in the great
majority of the languages in question.
The advantage of such a term is clear, since all we know regarding the
physical characteristics of the first people who spoke languages of this nature
is that they were a white race. We cannot tell whether these Wiros were
long-headed or short-headed, tall or of little stature, brunette or fair. It
has been customary to imagine them as having something of the characteris-
tics which Tacitus describes as belonging to the German of the end of the
first century A. D. But all the evidence adduced in support of this is really
imaginary. What, therefore, can we say that we know of this early people ?
From words preserved in their languages, particularly in languages far sepa-
rated, and in circumstances where there is little likelihood of borrowing
from the one language to the other, we may gather something as to the
animals and the plants they knew, and perhaps a very little as to their indus-
tries. The close similarity between the various languages spoken by them
would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely cir.
cumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations
in common. Since the study of prehistoric man developed, many views
have been held as to the geographical position of this early community. Such
a confined area must have been separated from the outer world either by
great waters or by mountains. There are however, so far as we know, no
rivers in the western half of the Old World which at any period have pre-
sented an impassable barrier to man. In the evidence for the early history
of the speakers of these Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages there
is nothing which would lead us to suppose that they lived upon an island.
>
>
## p. 60 (#94) ##############################################
60
[CH.
THE ARYANS
9
9
B. C.
.
a
Indeed, it is very doubtful whether they possessed a word for the sea at all.
For the word mare which in Latin means 'the sea,' has its nearest relatives
in other languages amongst words which mean ‘moor' or 'swamp'. That
the climate in which they lived belonged to the temperate zone is shown by
the nature of the trees which a comparison of their languages Jeads us to
believe they knew. To their habitat we may assign, with considerble cer-
tainty, the oak, the beech, the willow, and some coniferous trees. The birch
seems to have been known to them and possibly the lime, less certainly the
elm. The fruits they knew are more uncertain than the forest trees. Many
species of fruit trees familiar to us have flourished in Europe since la te
geological times ; but at all periods men have been anxious to improve the
quality of their fruit, and in all probability the commoner cultivated forms
became known in northern and north-western Europe only as introduced by
the Romans in the period of their conquests beginning with the first century
Cherries have grown in the West from a very early period, but the
name itself supports the statement that the cultivated kind was introduced
by the great Lucullus in the first half of the first century B. c. from Cerasus
in Asia Minor, an area to which the Western world owes much of its fruit
and flowering shrubs. The ancient kings of Persia encouraged their satraps
to introduce new fruit trees and better kinds into the districts which they
ruled. There still exists a late copy of an early inscription in Greek in which
the King of Persia gives praise to one of his governors for his beneficent
action in this respect.
These Wiros were in all probability not a nomad but a settled people.
The useful animals best known to them were the ox and cow, the sheep, the
horse, the dog, the pig, and probably some species of deer. The ass, the
camel, and the elephant were apparently unknown to them in early times ;
and the great variety of words for the goat would lead us to suppose that
this animal also was of later introduction. The argument from language,
however, is of necessity inconclusive, because all nations occasionally give
animals with which they are familiar fanciful names. The Wiros seem also
to have been familiar with corn. If so, they must in all probability have
lived for a considerable part of the year in one situation ; for the planting
of corn implies care continued over many weeks or months—care which the
more primitive tribes have not been able to exercise. Of birds, we may
gather from the languages that they knew the goose and the duck. The
most familiar bird of prey was apparently the eagle. The wolf rd bear
were known, but not the lion or the tiger.
From these data is it possible to locate the primitive habitat from which
the speakers of these languages derived their origin? It is not likely to be
India, as some of the earlier investigators assumed, for neither flora nor
fauna, as determined by their language, is characteristic of this area, though
## p. 61 (#95) ##############################################
III]
HOME OF THE WIROS
61
some forest trees like the birch are more magnificent on Kinchin junga than
in any part of the Western world. Still less probable is the district of the
Pāmirs, one of the most cheerless regions on the face of the earth. Central
Asia, which has also been contended for as their home, is not probable, even
if we admit that its conspicuous lack of water, and consequent sterility in
many areas, is of later development. If indeed these early men knew the
beech, they must have lived to the west of a line drawn from Königsberg in
Prussia to the Crimea and continued thence through Asia Minor. In the
Northern plains of Europe there is no area which will satisfactorily fulfil the
conditions. As we know it in primitive times it is a land of great forests.
No country, however, which had not much variety of geographical features
could have been the habitat of both the horse and the cow. The horse is a
native of the open plain ; the foal is able to run by its mother from the first,
and accompanies her always in her wanderings. The calf, on the other hand,
is at first feeble, unable to walk or see its way distinctly, and therefore is
hidden by its mother in a brake while she goes further afield to find suitable
pasture. Is there any part of Europe which combines pastoral and agri-
cultural country in close connexion, which has in combination hot low-lying
plains suitable for the growth of grain, and rich upland pasture suitable for
flocks and herds, and at the same time trees and birds of the character
already described ? There is apparently only one such area in Europe, the
area which is bounded on its eastern side by the Carpathians, on its south
by the Balkans, on its western side by the Austrian Alps and the Böhmer
Wald, and on the north by the Erzgebirge and the mountains which link them
up with the Carpathians. This is a fertile and well-watered land with great
corn plains in the low-lying levels of Hungary, but also possessing steppe-
like areas which make it one of the best horse-breeding areas in Europe,
while, in the uplands which surround it and run across it, as in the case of
the Bakony Wald, south-west of Buda-Pesth, and still more markedly
in Bohemia, there is high ground suitable for the pasturing of sheep. The
forests of the mountains which engirdle it supply excellent mast for the
maintenance of swine whether wild or tame. The beech which dies out fur-
ther south is found here and all the other great forest trees which have been
already mentioned. The country is large enough to maintain a very consi-
derable population which however was likely in primitive times to migrate
from it only under the stress of dire necessity, because it is so well bounded
on all sides by lofty mountains with comparatively few passes, that exit from
it even in more advanced ages has not been easy. If this area indeed were
the original habitat – and, curiously enough, though it fulfils so many of the
conditions, it seems not before to have been suggested—the spread of the
Indo-Germanic languages becomes easily intelligible. No doubt the most
inviting direction from which to issue from this land in search of new
## p. 62 (#96) ##############################################
62
[Ch.
THE ARY ANS
homes would be along the course of the Danube into Wallachia, from
which it is not difficult to pass south towards the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles.
A popular view locates the home of the Wiros in the southern steppes
of Russia, but that area, though possessing a very fertile soil, has not on the
whole the characteristics which the words common to the various Indo-
Germanic languages, and at the same time unborrowed from one to another,
postulate.
It has also been commonly assumed that the eastern branches of
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides. Here we are met by a new difficulty.
The Caspian is an inland sea which is steadily becoming more shallow and
contracting in area. Even if it had been little larger than it is at present,
the way into Turkestān between it and the Aral Sea leads through the
gloomy desert of Ust Urt which, supposing it existed at the period when
migration took place, must have been impassable to primitive men moving
with their families and their flocks and herds. But there is good evidence
to show that at a period not very remote the Caspian Sea extended much
further to the north, and ended in an area of swamps and quicksands,
while at an earlier period which, perhaps, however, does not transcend that
of the migration, it spread far to the east and included within its area the
Sea of Aral and possibly much of the low-lying plains beyond. Turkestan
in primitive times would therefore not have been easily accessible by this
route. There is in fact no evidence that the ancestors of the Persians,
Afghāns, and Hindus passed through Turkestān at all. Nor is passage
through the Caucasus probable : to people wandering from Europe the
Caucasus was a remote and inhospitable region, so remote and so inhospi-
table that Aeschylus selected it as the place of torment for Prometheus and
tells us that it was a pathless wilderness. There is indeed no reason to
suppose that earlier men followed any other route than that which has been
taken by successive waves of migratory populations in historical times.
That path leads across either the Bosporus or Dardanelles, across the
plateau of Asia Minor, or long its fertile slopes on the south side of the
Black Sea. A European people which would reach Persia on foot must
strike the upper waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. The fertile country
with an alluvial soil of tremendous depth, which lies between these two
rivers, was the centre of one of the earliest and one of the most powerful
civilisations of ancient times. Migrants would there find their progress to
the south obstructed and baulked. But by passing south of Lake Van and
through the mountains which lie between it and Lake Urmia, they would
find an access to the route which travellers still follow between Tabriz and
Teherān. From there they would advance most likely along the southern
## p. 63 (#97) ##############################################
III ]
MIGRATIONS
63
end of the Caspian towards Mashhad, whence in all ages there has been a
well-frequented route to Herāt. At one time these peoples certainly extend-
ed far to the east and north, to the country then known as Bactria, now
Balkh, and carried their conquests into the famous region which lies bet-
ween the two rivers, the Amu Daria, or Oxus, and the Syr Daria.
What evidence have we of such a migration, and, if it took place, what
was its date ? In all probability the migration of peoples from the primitive
habitat, which we have located in the areas which we now call Hungary,
Austria, and Bohemia, did not take place at a very remote period. It is
indeed probable that all the facts of this migration, so far as we know them,
can be explained without postulating an earlier beginning for the migrations
than 2500 B. C. It must be remembered, however, that these migrations
were not into unpeopled areas, that before they reached the frontiers of
India, or even Mesopotamia, the Wiros must have had many hard struggles
with populations already existing, who regarded their passage as they would
that of some great cloud of destroying locusts which devoured their sub-
stance and left them to perish by starvation, or to survive in the misery of
captives to cruel conquerors. We must suppose that success could have
been achieved only by wave after wave following at no long intervals : for if
their successors delayed too long, the migrants of the first advancing wave
were likely to be cut off or absorbed. In historical times, we know that
many tribes thus passed into Asia from Europe, among them the Phrygians,
the Mysians, and Bithynians. It has been plausibly argued that the Arme-
nian stock was the first wave of the Phrygian advance, and evidence can be ·
adduced which makes it probable that still earlier waves of conquering
tribes advancing from west to east were represented by the remote ancestors
of modern Persians and modern Hindus.
If, as some scholars suppose, modern Albanian is the descendant in a
very corrupt condition of ancient Thracian, and not of ancient Illyrian, the
interrlation of the ancient branches of the Indo-Germanic family of langu-
ages can be outlined. The family is divided by a well-marked difference in
the treatment of certain k, 9, and gh sounds into two parts, one of which
keeps the k, 9, and gh sounds, though submitting them to a variety of
changes in later times, while the other part changes k and g into some kind
of sibilant sounds which are represented in the Slavonic and Irānian langu.
ages by 8 and 2, in Sanskrit by c and j. The gh sound appears as z in Zend,
the Irānian dialects confusing together g and gh, while in Sanskrit it appears
as h. The languages which present these changes are the easternmost
members of the family : Āryan (i. e. Indian and Irānian) ; Armenian ; Sla-
vonic ; and Albanian. The Albanian it is suggested has been driven west-
ward through the Pindus range into its present position within historical
times, the ancient Illyrians having in this area been swept away in the devas.
## p. 64 (#98) ##############################################
: 64
[ CH.
THE ARYANS
tation wrought by a sequence of Roman invasions, initiated in the second
century B. c. by Aemilius Paulus. The languages mentioned would thus
have started from the eastern side of the original habitat, while the tribes
which (with an admixture of the population already in possession) ultima-
tely became the Greeks, moved through Macedonia and Thessaly south-
wards, and the Latin stock, the Celts, and the Germans westwards and
northwards. It is more than likely that the ancestors of the Slavs found
their way from the original home by the ‘Moravian Gap. The exact
manner, or the exact date, at which these movements took place we cannot
tell, but there is no reason to suppose that any of them antedate at earliest
the third millennium, B. C. Nor is it likely that they took place all at once.
The same causes, though in different degrees, were operative then which
have produced movements of peoples in historical times, one of the most
pressing probably being the growth of population in a limited area, which
drove sections or whole tribes to seek sustenance for themselves, their fami-
ies, and cattle in land beyond their original boundaries, without regard to
whether these lands were already occupied by other peoples or not. The
movements of the Gauls in historical times were probably not at all unlike
those of their ancestors and kinsmen in prehistoric times.
If, as has been suggested above, the early speakers of the primitive
Indo-Germanic language occupied a limited area well defended by moun.
tains from attack, this would account for the general similarity of the langu-
ages in detail ; if, forced by the natural increase of population, they left this
habitat in great waves of migration, we can see how some languages of the
family, as for example, the Celtic and the Italic, or the Irānian and the
Indian, are more closely related to one another than they are to other mem-
bers of the family ; if, further, we assume that such a habitat for the prehis-
toric stock could be found in the lands which we call Hungary, Austria, and
Bohemia, we can explain a very large number of facts hitherto collected for
the history of their earlier movements and earlier civilisation.
Of the earliest movements of the tribes speaking Indo-Germanic lan-
guages which occupied the Irānian plateau and ultimately passed into Nor-
thern India, history has as yet nothing to say. But recent discoveries in Cap-
padocia seem likely to give us a clue. In the German excavations at Boghaz-
köi, the ancient Pteria, have been found inscriptions, containing as it appears
the names of deities which figure in the earliest Indian records, Indra,
Varuna, and the great twin brethren the Nāsatyas. The inscriptions date
from about 1400 B. C. , and the names appear not in the form which they take
in the historical records of ancient Persia, but are. so far as writing in a sylla-
bary will admit, identical with the forms, admittedly more original, which
they show in the hymns of the Rigveda. It is still too early to dogmatise
over the results of these discoveries, which it may be hoped are only the
.
1
## p. 65 (#99) ##############################################
III]
INSCRIPTIONS OF BOGH AZ-KÖI
65
>
first fruits of a rich harvest ; but the most feasible explanation of them seems
to be that here, far to the west, we have stumbled upon the Āryans on the
move towards the east. This is not to say that earlier waves may not long
bofore 1400 B. c. have penetrated much further to the east, or even to India
itself. All that can be gathered from these discoveries is that at this period
the Mitāni, who were apparently not of this stock themselves, had adopted.
the worship of certain deities of this stock-deities who at the time of the
composition of the Vedic hymns were still the most important, though to
them had been added Agni, Fire,' specially an object of priestly worship in
the Vedic hierarchy. We have here, however, names practically in the form
in which they survive in Sanskrit, and without the changes which charac-
terise the records of the tribes of this stock, who remained in Persia. To
this as yet unbroken unity the name of Āryan is given. It is borrowed
from a word which appears as Ārya, or Arya in Sanskrit, Airya in Zend,
and which means ‘of good family, noble. ' It is the epithet applied by the
composers of the Vedic hymns to distinguish their own stock from that of
their enemies the earlier inhabitants of India, whom they call Dāsas or
Dasyus. The term, by reason of its shortness, has often been applied to all
the languages of this family, in preference to 'Indo-European' or 'Indo-
Germanic, but is properly reserved for the south-eastern group which, when
the phonetic changes characterising the language of the Avesta and of the
old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty (520 B. C. -330 B. c. ) have
taken place, falls into the two branches of Irānian and Indo-Aryan. The
latter term well characterises the Āryans settled in India, while Āryo-Indian
conveniently designates these Āryans as distinct from the unrelated stocks
- Dravidian and other-also inhabiting the Indian peninsula.
As these inscriptions of Boghaz-köi show the language still one and
undivided, we obtain a limit after which the differentiation of Irānian and
Indo-Aryan must have begun. These Āryan languages have some charac-
teristics in common which distinguish them from all others; in particular
they agree in confusing together the three original vowels a, e, and 0,
whether long or short, into one sound which is written with the symbols
for a and ā. In modern India at least the short sound is pronounced with
the obscure vowel found in the English 'but,' a fact which produced the
English spelling of the Hindu words 'pundit' (pandita) and ‘suttee' (sati),
and disguised the liquor compounded of five (pañcha) ingredients under the
apparently English form of 'punch'. They agree also on the whole in the
'
case system of the noun, a system to which the Slav and Armenian
languages offer the closest approximation, and in the elaborate mood and
voice system of the verb, to which the only parallel is to be found in the
similar, though not in all respects identical, paradigms of Greek. Here the
other languages, except the Slavonic, fall far short of the elaborate and
## p. 66 (#100) #############################################
66
[CA,
THE ĀRYANS
1
.
r
intricate Āryan verb system, whether it be, as is most likely, that the other
tribes have lost a large part of their share of the common inheritance, or
whether some of the languages drifted apart, before the complete system,
seen in the Āryan and Greek verbs, had developed. Other changes may
with probability be attributed to the influence of the peoples whom they
conquered and enslaved. 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.
series of foreign invasions from c. 200 B. . . onwards, which disturbed the.
North-West during many centuries and severed that region from the ancient
civilisation of the Plain of the Ganges. The political isolation of India
was completed by the Scythian conquest of Bactria, c. 135 B. C. , and by the
long struggle between Rome and Parthia which began in 53 B. C. After the
Maurya Empire, intercourse tended more and more to be restricted to
commerce by land and sea ; and for the West, India became more and;
more the land of mystery and fabulous wealth. Down to the last quarter
of the eighteenth century nearly all that was known of, its ancient i history
was derived from the early Greek and Latin writers. j ! ule : L'i ID:0 011
Of all the factors whieh contributed to the severance of relations with
the West, the extinction of Hellenic civilisation in Bactria was by far the
most important. But while the fate of Bactria closed the western outlook, )
it prepared the way for communication with the Far East ; and it is to;
Chinese authorities that we must turn for the most trustworthy information:
concerning the events which determined the history of N. W. India during
the following centuries,: The Scythian (çaka) invaders of Bactria were
succeeded by the Yueh-chi ; and when, in the first century A. D. , the predo-')
minant tribe of the Yueh-chi, the Kushānas, extended their dominion in
## p. 54 (#88) ##############################################
54
[ OH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Turkestān and Bactria to N. W. India, the Kushāņa empire formed a
connecting link between China and India and provided the means of
an intercourse which was fruitful in results. Buddhism was introduced
into China and the other countries of the Far East; and, as the explora-
tions of recent years have shown, an Indian culture, Indian languages, and
the Indian alphabets were established in Chinese Turkestān. The most
illuminating accounts of India from the end of the fourth to the end of
the seventh century are the records of Chinese Buddhists who made the
long and toilsome pilgrimage to the scenes of their Master's life and
labours.
The remaining source of historical information-the inscribed
monuments and coins-is the most productive of all. The inscriptions are
public or private records engraved in most cases on stone or on copper
plates ; and they are found in great numbers throughout the sub-continent
and in Ceylon. The earliest are the edicts of Açoka incised on rocks or
pillars situated on the frontiers and at important centres of the Maurya
empire when at the height of its power in the middle of the third century
B. O. Others commemorate the deposit of Buddhist relics. Others celebrate
the victories of princes, the extent of their conquests, the glories of the
founder of the dynasty and of his successors on the throne. Others again
place on record the endowments of temples or grants of land. In short,
there is scarcely any conceivable topic of public or private interest which
is not represented. The inscriptions supply most valuable evidence as to
the political, social, and economic conditions of the period and the country
to which they belong. They testify on the one hand to the restless activity
of a military caste, and on the other to the stability of institutions, which
were, as a rule, unaffected by military conquest. One conqueror follows
another, but the administration of each individual state remains uncharged
either under the same prince or under some other member of his family,
and the charters of monasteries are renewed as a matter of course by
each new overlord.
Coins also have preserved the names and titles of kings who have left
no other record ; and by their aid it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the
dynastic lists and to determine the chronology and the geographical extent
of ruling powers. But it is only when coin-legends appear as the result
of Greek influence in the North-West that this source of history becomes
available. The earlier indigenous coinage was little more than a system of
weights of silver or copper stamped with the marks of the monetary
authorities. The first Indian king whose name occurs on a coin is Sophytes
(Saubhūti), a contemporary of Alexander the Great. The legend of his
coins is in Greek. After his date no inscribed coins are found for more
than a hundred years. During this interval Greek rule in N. W. India had
1
1
## p. 55 (#89) ##############################################
II]
INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS
55
ceased. It was resumed about the beginning of the second century by
Alexander's Bactrian successors, who issued in their Indian dominions a
bilingual coinage with Greek legends on the obverse and a translation of
these in an Indian dialect and an Indian alphabet on the reverse.
The fashion of a bilingual coinage thus instituted was continued by
the Scythian and Parthian invaders from Irān in the early part of the first
century B. C. ; and these bilingual coins have supplied the clue to the
interpretation of the ancient alphabets, and have enabled scholars during
the last three generations to bring to light the long-hidden secrets of the
inscriptions and to retrace the outlines of forgotten history.
Both of the alphabets, now usually known as Brāhmi and Kharoshthi,
are of Semitic origin; that is to say, they are derived ultimately from the
same source as the European alphabets. They were introduced into India
at different periods, and probably by different routes. Brāhmi is found
throughout the sub-continent and in Ceylon. The home of Kharoshțhī is
in the North-West ; and whenever it is found elsewhere it has been imported.
Brāhmi has been traced back to the Phoenician type of writing
represented by the inscription in which Mesha, king of Moab (c. 850 B. C. ),
records his successful revolt against the kingdom of Israel. It was probably
brought into India through Mesopotamia, as a result of the early commerce
by sea between Babylon and the ports of Western India. It is the parent
of all the modern Indian alphabets.
Kharoshthi is derived from the Aramaic script, which was introduced
into India in the sixth century B. C. , when the North-West was under Persian
rule, and when Aramaic was used as a common means of communication for
the purposes of government throughout the Persian empire. That originally
the Aramaic language and alphabet pure and simple were thus imported
into Gandhāra, as Bühler conjectured in 1895 (W. Z. K. M. , IX, p. 49), has been
proved recently by Sir John Marshall's discovery of an Aramaic inscription
at Taxila'. When the first Kharoshțhi inscriptions appear in the third century
B. C. , the alphabet has been adapted to express the additional sounds required
by an Indian language ; but, unlike Brāhmi which has been more highly
elaborated, it still bears evident traces of its Semitic origin both in its
direction from right to left and in its imperfect representation of the vowels
In the third century A. D. Kharoshțhi appears more fully developed in
Chinese Turkestān where its existence must be attributed to the Kushāņa
empire. In this region, as in India, it was eventually superseded by Brāhmi.
The decipherment of the inscriptions and coins, and the determination
of the eras in which many of them are dated, have introduced into the
obscurity of early Indian history a degree of chronological order which could
not have been conceived at the time when the study of Sanskrit began in
1. A. Cowley, J. R. A, S. , 1915, p. 346.
## p. 56 (#90) ##############################################
56
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Europe. The bare fact that India possessed ancient classical literatures like
those of Greece and Rome can scarcely be said to have been known to the
Western World before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. At various
intervals during more than a hundred years previously a few isolated
students chiefly missionaries, those pioneers of learning, had indeed pub-
lished accounts of Sanskrit literature and Sanskrit grammar; but it was only
when a practical need made itself felt, and the serious attention of the
administrators of the East India Company's possessions was directed to the
importance of studying Sanskrit, that the investigation by Europeans of the
ancient languages and literatures of India began in earnest. To meet the
requirements of the law-courts the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, had
ordered a digest to be prepared by pandits from the authoritative Sanskrit
law-books ; but when the work was finished no one could be found able to
trarslate it into English. It was therefore necessary to have it translated
first into Persian, and from the Persian an English version was made and
published by Halhed in 1776. The object-lesson was not lost. Sanskrit
was evidently of practical utility; and the East India Company adopted, and
never afterwards neglected to pursue, the enlightened policy of promoting
the study of the ancient languages and literatures in which the traditions of
its subjets were enshrined. It remained for Sir William Jones, Judge of the
High Court at Calcutta, to place this study on a firm basis by the establish-
ment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
The inauguration of the study of India's past history came at a fortu-
nate moment ; for it is precisely to the last quarter of the eighteenth century
that we may trace the growth of the modern scientific spirit of investiga-
tion, which may be defined as the recognition of the fact that no object and
no idea stands alone by itself as an isolated phenomenon. All objects and
all ideas form Jinks in a series ; and therefore it follows that nowhere,
whether in the realm of nature or in the sphere of human activity, can the
present be understood without reference to the past. The first manifestation
of this new spirit of enquiry, which was soon to transform all learning, was
seen in the study of language. The first Western students of the ancient
languages of India were statesmen and scholars who had been educated in
the classical literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. They were impressed
by the fact, which must indeed be apparent to everyone who opens a
Sanskrit grammar, that Sanskrit, both in its vocabulary and in its inflex-
ions, presents a striking similarity to Greek and Latin. This observation
immediately raised the question : How is this similarity to be explained ?
The true answer was suggested by Sir William Jones, whom that sagacious
observer, Dr Johnson, recognised as “one of the most enlightened of the
sons of men? . ' In 1786, Sir William Jones wrote :
1. G. Birbeck Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, p. 363.
## p. 57 (#91) ##############################################
II ]
THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT
57
>
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure ;
more perfect than the Greek, more copoius than the Latin, and more exquisitely re-
fined than either ; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of
verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by acci-
dent; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing
them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick
and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the
Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
These observations contain the germs of the science of Comparative
Philology. The conception of a family of languages, in which all the indi-
vidual languages and dialects are related as descendants from a common
ancestor, suggested the application to language of the historical and com-
parative method of investigation. The results have been as remarkable as
they were unexpected. In the first place, the historical method has shown
that living languages grow and change in accordance with certain definite
laws, while the comparative study of the lines of development which may be
traced historically in the different Indo-European languages has confirmed
Sir William Jones' hypothesis that they are all derived from some common
source,' which, though it no longer exists, may be restored hypothetically.
In the second place, since words preserve the record both of material objects
and of ideas, a study of vocabularies enables us to gain some knowledge of
the state of civilisation, the social institutions, and the religious beliefs
of the speakers of the different languages before the period of literary
records. Some indication of the light which Comparative Philology thus
throws on the history of the Āryan invaders of India is given in the follow-
ing Chapter
## p. 58 (#92) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
THE ĀRYANS
Throughout the greater part of Europe and of Asia as far as India
there exist now, or can be shown to have existed in past time, a great
number of languages, the forms and sounds of which when scientifically
examined are seen to have a common origin. The languages in question are
generally known to scholars under the name of the Indo-Germanic, or Indo-
European languages. The name Indo-European seems to have been invent-
ed by Dr Thomas Young, the well-known physicist and Egyptologist. The
first occurrence known of the word is in an article by him in The Quarterly
Review for 1813. Examination of the article, however, shows that Dr Young
meant by Indo-European something quite different from its ordinarily
accepted signification. For under the term he included not only the langu-
ages now known as Indo-European, but also Basque, Finnish, and Semitic
languages. The name Indo-Germanic, which was used by the German
philologist Klaproth as early as 1823, but the inventor of which is unknown,
is an attempt to indicate the family by the furthest east and west members
of the chain extending from India to the Atlantic ocean. The main langu-
ages of the family had been indicated in a famous address to the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, delivered by the President Sir William Jones in 17861.
He had the insight to observe that the sacred language of India (Sanskrit),
the language of Persia, the languages of Greece and Rome, the languages of
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, were all closely connected. To Sir William
Jones, as Chief Justice of Bengal, law was his profession and the compari-
son of languages only an amusement. But this epoch-making address laid
the foundations of Comparative Philology on which Bopp in his Comparative
Grammar built the first superstructure. But the study of this family of
languages has from the begining been beset with a suitable fallacy. There
has been throughout an almost constant confusion between the languages
and the persons who spoke them. It is hardly necessary to point out that
1. See Chapter II, p. 57.
58
## p. 59 (#93) ##############################################
III)
THE WIROS
59
a
in many parts of the world the speaker of a particular language at a given
time was not by lineal descent the representative of its speakers at an earlier
period. In the Island of Britain many persons of Welsh blood, many persons
of Irish Celtic and Scottish Celtic origin speak English. It is many centu- .
ries since it was observed that Normans and English who had settled in
Ireland had learned to speak the Irish language and had become more Irish
than the Irish themselves. It is well known that by descent the Bulgarians
are of Asiatic origin, and of an entirely different stock from the Slavs, a
branch of whose language is now their mother tongue. It is therefore clear
that it is impossible, without historical evidence, to be certain that the
language spoken by any particular people was the language of their ancestors
at a remote period. The name Indo-Germanic therefore suffers from the
ambiguity that it characterises not only languages but also peoples. As has
been suggested elsewhere, it would be well to abandon both the term Indo-
European and the term Indo-Germanic and adopt some entirely colourless
word which would indicate only the speakers of such languages. A
convenient term for the speakers of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic
languages would be the Wiros, this being the word for 'men' in the great
majority of the languages in question.
The advantage of such a term is clear, since all we know regarding the
physical characteristics of the first people who spoke languages of this nature
is that they were a white race. We cannot tell whether these Wiros were
long-headed or short-headed, tall or of little stature, brunette or fair. It
has been customary to imagine them as having something of the characteris-
tics which Tacitus describes as belonging to the German of the end of the
first century A. D. But all the evidence adduced in support of this is really
imaginary. What, therefore, can we say that we know of this early people ?
From words preserved in their languages, particularly in languages far sepa-
rated, and in circumstances where there is little likelihood of borrowing
from the one language to the other, we may gather something as to the
animals and the plants they knew, and perhaps a very little as to their indus-
tries. The close similarity between the various languages spoken by them
would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely cir.
cumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations
in common. Since the study of prehistoric man developed, many views
have been held as to the geographical position of this early community. Such
a confined area must have been separated from the outer world either by
great waters or by mountains. There are however, so far as we know, no
rivers in the western half of the Old World which at any period have pre-
sented an impassable barrier to man. In the evidence for the early history
of the speakers of these Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages there
is nothing which would lead us to suppose that they lived upon an island.
>
>
## p. 60 (#94) ##############################################
60
[CH.
THE ARYANS
9
9
B. C.
.
a
Indeed, it is very doubtful whether they possessed a word for the sea at all.
For the word mare which in Latin means 'the sea,' has its nearest relatives
in other languages amongst words which mean ‘moor' or 'swamp'. That
the climate in which they lived belonged to the temperate zone is shown by
the nature of the trees which a comparison of their languages Jeads us to
believe they knew. To their habitat we may assign, with considerble cer-
tainty, the oak, the beech, the willow, and some coniferous trees. The birch
seems to have been known to them and possibly the lime, less certainly the
elm. The fruits they knew are more uncertain than the forest trees. Many
species of fruit trees familiar to us have flourished in Europe since la te
geological times ; but at all periods men have been anxious to improve the
quality of their fruit, and in all probability the commoner cultivated forms
became known in northern and north-western Europe only as introduced by
the Romans in the period of their conquests beginning with the first century
Cherries have grown in the West from a very early period, but the
name itself supports the statement that the cultivated kind was introduced
by the great Lucullus in the first half of the first century B. c. from Cerasus
in Asia Minor, an area to which the Western world owes much of its fruit
and flowering shrubs. The ancient kings of Persia encouraged their satraps
to introduce new fruit trees and better kinds into the districts which they
ruled. There still exists a late copy of an early inscription in Greek in which
the King of Persia gives praise to one of his governors for his beneficent
action in this respect.
These Wiros were in all probability not a nomad but a settled people.
The useful animals best known to them were the ox and cow, the sheep, the
horse, the dog, the pig, and probably some species of deer. The ass, the
camel, and the elephant were apparently unknown to them in early times ;
and the great variety of words for the goat would lead us to suppose that
this animal also was of later introduction. The argument from language,
however, is of necessity inconclusive, because all nations occasionally give
animals with which they are familiar fanciful names. The Wiros seem also
to have been familiar with corn. If so, they must in all probability have
lived for a considerable part of the year in one situation ; for the planting
of corn implies care continued over many weeks or months—care which the
more primitive tribes have not been able to exercise. Of birds, we may
gather from the languages that they knew the goose and the duck. The
most familiar bird of prey was apparently the eagle. The wolf rd bear
were known, but not the lion or the tiger.
From these data is it possible to locate the primitive habitat from which
the speakers of these languages derived their origin? It is not likely to be
India, as some of the earlier investigators assumed, for neither flora nor
fauna, as determined by their language, is characteristic of this area, though
## p. 61 (#95) ##############################################
III]
HOME OF THE WIROS
61
some forest trees like the birch are more magnificent on Kinchin junga than
in any part of the Western world. Still less probable is the district of the
Pāmirs, one of the most cheerless regions on the face of the earth. Central
Asia, which has also been contended for as their home, is not probable, even
if we admit that its conspicuous lack of water, and consequent sterility in
many areas, is of later development. If indeed these early men knew the
beech, they must have lived to the west of a line drawn from Königsberg in
Prussia to the Crimea and continued thence through Asia Minor. In the
Northern plains of Europe there is no area which will satisfactorily fulfil the
conditions. As we know it in primitive times it is a land of great forests.
No country, however, which had not much variety of geographical features
could have been the habitat of both the horse and the cow. The horse is a
native of the open plain ; the foal is able to run by its mother from the first,
and accompanies her always in her wanderings. The calf, on the other hand,
is at first feeble, unable to walk or see its way distinctly, and therefore is
hidden by its mother in a brake while she goes further afield to find suitable
pasture. Is there any part of Europe which combines pastoral and agri-
cultural country in close connexion, which has in combination hot low-lying
plains suitable for the growth of grain, and rich upland pasture suitable for
flocks and herds, and at the same time trees and birds of the character
already described ? There is apparently only one such area in Europe, the
area which is bounded on its eastern side by the Carpathians, on its south
by the Balkans, on its western side by the Austrian Alps and the Böhmer
Wald, and on the north by the Erzgebirge and the mountains which link them
up with the Carpathians. This is a fertile and well-watered land with great
corn plains in the low-lying levels of Hungary, but also possessing steppe-
like areas which make it one of the best horse-breeding areas in Europe,
while, in the uplands which surround it and run across it, as in the case of
the Bakony Wald, south-west of Buda-Pesth, and still more markedly
in Bohemia, there is high ground suitable for the pasturing of sheep. The
forests of the mountains which engirdle it supply excellent mast for the
maintenance of swine whether wild or tame. The beech which dies out fur-
ther south is found here and all the other great forest trees which have been
already mentioned. The country is large enough to maintain a very consi-
derable population which however was likely in primitive times to migrate
from it only under the stress of dire necessity, because it is so well bounded
on all sides by lofty mountains with comparatively few passes, that exit from
it even in more advanced ages has not been easy. If this area indeed were
the original habitat – and, curiously enough, though it fulfils so many of the
conditions, it seems not before to have been suggested—the spread of the
Indo-Germanic languages becomes easily intelligible. No doubt the most
inviting direction from which to issue from this land in search of new
## p. 62 (#96) ##############################################
62
[Ch.
THE ARY ANS
homes would be along the course of the Danube into Wallachia, from
which it is not difficult to pass south towards the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles.
A popular view locates the home of the Wiros in the southern steppes
of Russia, but that area, though possessing a very fertile soil, has not on the
whole the characteristics which the words common to the various Indo-
Germanic languages, and at the same time unborrowed from one to another,
postulate.
It has also been commonly assumed that the eastern branches of
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides. Here we are met by a new difficulty.
The Caspian is an inland sea which is steadily becoming more shallow and
contracting in area. Even if it had been little larger than it is at present,
the way into Turkestān between it and the Aral Sea leads through the
gloomy desert of Ust Urt which, supposing it existed at the period when
migration took place, must have been impassable to primitive men moving
with their families and their flocks and herds. But there is good evidence
to show that at a period not very remote the Caspian Sea extended much
further to the north, and ended in an area of swamps and quicksands,
while at an earlier period which, perhaps, however, does not transcend that
of the migration, it spread far to the east and included within its area the
Sea of Aral and possibly much of the low-lying plains beyond. Turkestan
in primitive times would therefore not have been easily accessible by this
route. There is in fact no evidence that the ancestors of the Persians,
Afghāns, and Hindus passed through Turkestān at all. Nor is passage
through the Caucasus probable : to people wandering from Europe the
Caucasus was a remote and inhospitable region, so remote and so inhospi-
table that Aeschylus selected it as the place of torment for Prometheus and
tells us that it was a pathless wilderness. There is indeed no reason to
suppose that earlier men followed any other route than that which has been
taken by successive waves of migratory populations in historical times.
That path leads across either the Bosporus or Dardanelles, across the
plateau of Asia Minor, or long its fertile slopes on the south side of the
Black Sea. A European people which would reach Persia on foot must
strike the upper waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. The fertile country
with an alluvial soil of tremendous depth, which lies between these two
rivers, was the centre of one of the earliest and one of the most powerful
civilisations of ancient times. Migrants would there find their progress to
the south obstructed and baulked. But by passing south of Lake Van and
through the mountains which lie between it and Lake Urmia, they would
find an access to the route which travellers still follow between Tabriz and
Teherān. From there they would advance most likely along the southern
## p. 63 (#97) ##############################################
III ]
MIGRATIONS
63
end of the Caspian towards Mashhad, whence in all ages there has been a
well-frequented route to Herāt. At one time these peoples certainly extend-
ed far to the east and north, to the country then known as Bactria, now
Balkh, and carried their conquests into the famous region which lies bet-
ween the two rivers, the Amu Daria, or Oxus, and the Syr Daria.
What evidence have we of such a migration, and, if it took place, what
was its date ? In all probability the migration of peoples from the primitive
habitat, which we have located in the areas which we now call Hungary,
Austria, and Bohemia, did not take place at a very remote period. It is
indeed probable that all the facts of this migration, so far as we know them,
can be explained without postulating an earlier beginning for the migrations
than 2500 B. C. It must be remembered, however, that these migrations
were not into unpeopled areas, that before they reached the frontiers of
India, or even Mesopotamia, the Wiros must have had many hard struggles
with populations already existing, who regarded their passage as they would
that of some great cloud of destroying locusts which devoured their sub-
stance and left them to perish by starvation, or to survive in the misery of
captives to cruel conquerors. We must suppose that success could have
been achieved only by wave after wave following at no long intervals : for if
their successors delayed too long, the migrants of the first advancing wave
were likely to be cut off or absorbed. In historical times, we know that
many tribes thus passed into Asia from Europe, among them the Phrygians,
the Mysians, and Bithynians. It has been plausibly argued that the Arme-
nian stock was the first wave of the Phrygian advance, and evidence can be ·
adduced which makes it probable that still earlier waves of conquering
tribes advancing from west to east were represented by the remote ancestors
of modern Persians and modern Hindus.
If, as some scholars suppose, modern Albanian is the descendant in a
very corrupt condition of ancient Thracian, and not of ancient Illyrian, the
interrlation of the ancient branches of the Indo-Germanic family of langu-
ages can be outlined. The family is divided by a well-marked difference in
the treatment of certain k, 9, and gh sounds into two parts, one of which
keeps the k, 9, and gh sounds, though submitting them to a variety of
changes in later times, while the other part changes k and g into some kind
of sibilant sounds which are represented in the Slavonic and Irānian langu.
ages by 8 and 2, in Sanskrit by c and j. The gh sound appears as z in Zend,
the Irānian dialects confusing together g and gh, while in Sanskrit it appears
as h. The languages which present these changes are the easternmost
members of the family : Āryan (i. e. Indian and Irānian) ; Armenian ; Sla-
vonic ; and Albanian. The Albanian it is suggested has been driven west-
ward through the Pindus range into its present position within historical
times, the ancient Illyrians having in this area been swept away in the devas.
## p. 64 (#98) ##############################################
: 64
[ CH.
THE ARYANS
tation wrought by a sequence of Roman invasions, initiated in the second
century B. c. by Aemilius Paulus. The languages mentioned would thus
have started from the eastern side of the original habitat, while the tribes
which (with an admixture of the population already in possession) ultima-
tely became the Greeks, moved through Macedonia and Thessaly south-
wards, and the Latin stock, the Celts, and the Germans westwards and
northwards. It is more than likely that the ancestors of the Slavs found
their way from the original home by the ‘Moravian Gap. The exact
manner, or the exact date, at which these movements took place we cannot
tell, but there is no reason to suppose that any of them antedate at earliest
the third millennium, B. C. Nor is it likely that they took place all at once.
The same causes, though in different degrees, were operative then which
have produced movements of peoples in historical times, one of the most
pressing probably being the growth of population in a limited area, which
drove sections or whole tribes to seek sustenance for themselves, their fami-
ies, and cattle in land beyond their original boundaries, without regard to
whether these lands were already occupied by other peoples or not. The
movements of the Gauls in historical times were probably not at all unlike
those of their ancestors and kinsmen in prehistoric times.
If, as has been suggested above, the early speakers of the primitive
Indo-Germanic language occupied a limited area well defended by moun.
tains from attack, this would account for the general similarity of the langu-
ages in detail ; if, forced by the natural increase of population, they left this
habitat in great waves of migration, we can see how some languages of the
family, as for example, the Celtic and the Italic, or the Irānian and the
Indian, are more closely related to one another than they are to other mem-
bers of the family ; if, further, we assume that such a habitat for the prehis-
toric stock could be found in the lands which we call Hungary, Austria, and
Bohemia, we can explain a very large number of facts hitherto collected for
the history of their earlier movements and earlier civilisation.
Of the earliest movements of the tribes speaking Indo-Germanic lan-
guages which occupied the Irānian plateau and ultimately passed into Nor-
thern India, history has as yet nothing to say. But recent discoveries in Cap-
padocia seem likely to give us a clue. In the German excavations at Boghaz-
köi, the ancient Pteria, have been found inscriptions, containing as it appears
the names of deities which figure in the earliest Indian records, Indra,
Varuna, and the great twin brethren the Nāsatyas. The inscriptions date
from about 1400 B. C. , and the names appear not in the form which they take
in the historical records of ancient Persia, but are. so far as writing in a sylla-
bary will admit, identical with the forms, admittedly more original, which
they show in the hymns of the Rigveda. It is still too early to dogmatise
over the results of these discoveries, which it may be hoped are only the
.
1
## p. 65 (#99) ##############################################
III]
INSCRIPTIONS OF BOGH AZ-KÖI
65
>
first fruits of a rich harvest ; but the most feasible explanation of them seems
to be that here, far to the west, we have stumbled upon the Āryans on the
move towards the east. This is not to say that earlier waves may not long
bofore 1400 B. c. have penetrated much further to the east, or even to India
itself. All that can be gathered from these discoveries is that at this period
the Mitāni, who were apparently not of this stock themselves, had adopted.
the worship of certain deities of this stock-deities who at the time of the
composition of the Vedic hymns were still the most important, though to
them had been added Agni, Fire,' specially an object of priestly worship in
the Vedic hierarchy. We have here, however, names practically in the form
in which they survive in Sanskrit, and without the changes which charac-
terise the records of the tribes of this stock, who remained in Persia. To
this as yet unbroken unity the name of Āryan is given. It is borrowed
from a word which appears as Ārya, or Arya in Sanskrit, Airya in Zend,
and which means ‘of good family, noble. ' It is the epithet applied by the
composers of the Vedic hymns to distinguish their own stock from that of
their enemies the earlier inhabitants of India, whom they call Dāsas or
Dasyus. The term, by reason of its shortness, has often been applied to all
the languages of this family, in preference to 'Indo-European' or 'Indo-
Germanic, but is properly reserved for the south-eastern group which, when
the phonetic changes characterising the language of the Avesta and of the
old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty (520 B. C. -330 B. c. ) have
taken place, falls into the two branches of Irānian and Indo-Aryan. The
latter term well characterises the Āryans settled in India, while Āryo-Indian
conveniently designates these Āryans as distinct from the unrelated stocks
- Dravidian and other-also inhabiting the Indian peninsula.
As these inscriptions of Boghaz-köi show the language still one and
undivided, we obtain a limit after which the differentiation of Irānian and
Indo-Aryan must have begun. These Āryan languages have some charac-
teristics in common which distinguish them from all others; in particular
they agree in confusing together the three original vowels a, e, and 0,
whether long or short, into one sound which is written with the symbols
for a and ā. In modern India at least the short sound is pronounced with
the obscure vowel found in the English 'but,' a fact which produced the
English spelling of the Hindu words 'pundit' (pandita) and ‘suttee' (sati),
and disguised the liquor compounded of five (pañcha) ingredients under the
apparently English form of 'punch'. They agree also on the whole in the
'
case system of the noun, a system to which the Slav and Armenian
languages offer the closest approximation, and in the elaborate mood and
voice system of the verb, to which the only parallel is to be found in the
similar, though not in all respects identical, paradigms of Greek. Here the
other languages, except the Slavonic, fall far short of the elaborate and
## p. 66 (#100) #############################################
66
[CA,
THE ĀRYANS
1
.
r
intricate Āryan verb system, whether it be, as is most likely, that the other
tribes have lost a large part of their share of the common inheritance, or
whether some of the languages drifted apart, before the complete system,
seen in the Āryan and Greek verbs, had developed. Other changes may
with probability be attributed to the influence of the peoples whom they
conquered and enslaved. 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.
