Man has
completed
the work which nature had begun ; for, as we
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult.
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult.
Cambridge History of India - v1
The predomi-
nant racial character of the whole region is due to the invasion of Mongolo-
Altaic peoples from Turkestān on the one hand, and of Persian Aryans or
Irānians on the other. The Indus is the ethnographical boundary between
the Turko-Irānian and Indo-Aryan types, just as in history it has often been
the political boundary between Irān and India.
4. The Scytho-Dravidian type in Sind east of the Indus, Gujarāt, and
the western section of the peninsula as far as about longitude 76° E. , that is
to say, the Bombay Presidency or Western India generally. "The type is
clearly distinguished from the Turko-Irānian by a lower stature, a greater
length of head, a higher nasal index, a shorter nose, and a lower orbitonasal
index. '
This type, of which the Marāthās are the chief representatives, occupies
a position between the broad-headed Turko-Irānians and the long-headed
Dravidians. Its designation assumes that the foreign broad-headed element
was introduced during the period of Scythian (Çaka) rule in western India
## p. 40 (#74) ##############################################
40
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
(c. 120-380A. D). But there can be little doubt that its origin must be traced
to a period far more remote. The çakas were among those military con-
querors who broke into the Punjab after the downfall of the Maurya Empire:
and it can scarcely be supposed that the extension of their power to Wes-
tern India materially affected the race. The fact that their Scythian names,
as is shown by coins and inscriptions, became Hinduised after a few gene-
rations, is conclusive proof that they were forced to adapt themselves to
their social environment. We must therefore seek the disturbing racial in-
fluence in some earlier tribal immigration of which no other memorial now
remains. The invaders probably belonged to the broad-headed Alpine race
which inhabited the plateaus of Western Asia (Anatolia, Armenia, and
Irān)" ; and they would seem to have come into Western India, as the
Dravidians also most probably came, through Baluchistān before desiccation
had made the routes impassable for multitudes.
5. The Āryo-Dravidian or Hindustāni type in the plain of the Ganges
from about longitude 76° 30' E. to 87° E. ; that is to say, in the eastern
fringe of the Punjab, in the United Provinces, and in Bihār. "The head-
form is long, with a tendency to medium ; the complexion varies from light-
ish brown to black, the nose ranges from medium to broad, being always
broader than among the Indo-Aryans ; the stature is lower than in the latter
group, and usually below the average' (i. e. it ranges from 5' 3" to 5'5").
The Āryo-Dravidian type occupies the ancient Madhyadeça, or the
Midland Country,' extending, according to Manu (II, 12) from Vinaçana,
where the river Sarasvati loses itself in the Great Desert, to Allahābād, to-
gether with some five degrees of the country farther east. It is a mixed type
caused apparently by the Indo-Aryan colonisation of a region previously
held by a population mainly Dravidian. The Indo-Aryan type does not, as
might have been expected from analogous instances, shade by imperceptible
degrees into the Āryo-Dravidian type ; but a marked change from the for-
mer to the latter is observable about the longitude of Sirhind. It is evident,
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
To explain this abrupt transition, the theory of a second Āryan in-
vasion, which is supposed to have come into the plain of the Ganges from
the Pāmirs through Gilgit and Chitrā), was propounded by the late Dr.
Hoernle and has been generally accepted in the official publications of the
Government of India. This theory is made improbable by the physical
difficulties of the route suggested, and some of the arguments adduced in
its favour are demonstrably mistaken. There is no such break of continuity
Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, pp. 12, 17,
## p. 41 (#75) ##############################################
II)
ĀRYO-DRAVIDIANS
41
between the tribes of the Rigveda and the peoples of the later literaturę aş
it presupposes! . At the same time it seemed to be supported by the existing
distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages ; but, as will be seen (p. 44), an
equally satisfactory explanation of this distribution may be suggested.
Apart from this theory, the conclusions of ethnology are entirely in
accord with the historical indications of the literature. The ethnographical
limit is also the dividing line between the geography of the Rigveda and the
geography of the later Vedic literature. In the Rigveda Āryan communities
have scarcely advanced beyond the country of the river Sarasvati (Sirhind),
which for ever afterwards was remembered with especial veneration as
Brahmāvarta, 'the Holy Land. ' In the Brāhmaṇās the centre of religious
activity has been transferred to the adjacent country on the south-east, i. e.
the upper portion of the doāb between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the
Muttra District of the United Provinces. This was Brahmarshideça - 'the
Country of the Holy Sages. ' Here it was that the hymns of the Rigveda,
which were composed in the North-West- the country of the 'Seven Rivers'
as it is called (Rv. VIII, 24, 27), were collected and arranged ; and here it
was that the religious and social system which we call Brāhmanism assumed
its final form--a form which, in its religious aspect, is a compromise bet-
ween Āryan and more primitive Indian ideas, and, in its social aspect, the
result of the contact of different races. After Brāhman culture had thus
occupied what has in all ages been the commanding position in India, its
trend was still eastwards ; and the country of the 'Seven Rivers,' though not
altogether forgotten, occupies a place of less importance in the later
literature.
Both of the facts above mentioned - the abrupt transition from the
Indo-Aryan to the Āryo-Dravidian type, and the extension of Āryan influ-
ence from Brahmăvarta to Brahmarshideca - are best understood if we
remember the natural feature which connects the plain of the Indus with the
plain of the Ganges. This is the strait of habitable land which lies between
the desert and the mountains. Its historical significance has already been
noticed? . It is in this strait that the decisive battles, on which the fate of
India has depended, have been fought ; and here too we may suppose that
the progress of racial migrations from the north-west in prehistoric times
must have been checked. Both politically and ethnographically it forms a
natural boundary. In the age of the Rigveda the Āryans had not yet broken
through the barrier, though the Jumna is mentioned in a hymn (vii, 18, 19)
in such a way as to indicate that a battle had been won on its banks. It
was only at some later date that the country between the Upper Jumna and
Ganges and the district of Delhi were occupied. A record of this occupa-
tion has been preserved in some ancient verses quoted in the catapatha
1 See Chapters V. p. 106 and XIII.
Chapter I, pp. 20 f.
2
.
## p. 42 (#76) ##############################################
42
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5, 4, 11-14) which refer to the triumphs celebrated by
Bharata Dauhshanti after his victories on the Jumna and the Ganges, and
to the extent of his conquests. In their new home the Bharatas, who were
settled in the country of the Sarasvati in the times of the Rigveda (see III,
23, 4), were merged in the Kurus ; and their whole territory, the new
together with the old, became famous in history under the name Kuru.
kshetra — 'the Field of the Kurus. ' This was the scene of the great war of
the descendants of Bharata Dauḥshanti, and the centre from which Indo-
Āryan culture spread, first throughout Hindustān, and eventually through.
out the whole sub-continent. The epoch of Indo-Aryan tribal migration
was definitely closed. It was succeeded by the epoch of Indo-Aryan
colonisation,
6. The Mongoloid type in Burma, Assam, and the sub-Himālayan
tract which includes Bhutān, Nepāl, and the fringe of the United Provinces,
the Punjab, and Kashmir. “The head is broad ; complexion dark, with a
yellowish tinge ; hair on face scanty ; stature short or below average ; nose
fine to broad ; face characteristically flat ; eyelids often oblique. '
The term Mongoloid denotes the racial type which has been produced
by the invasion of peoples of the Southern Mongolian race from Tibet and
China. We have already seen how these peoples have from time immemo.
rial been coming down the river valleys into Burma and Northern India
(p. 35) ; and we shall learn more about them, and about the earlier inhabi-
tants with whom they intermingled, when we consider the evidence of
language (p. 44).
7. The Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali type in Bengal and Orissa.
“The head is broad ; complexion dark ; hair on face usually plentiful ; stature
medium ; nose medium, with a tendency to broad. '
This type is regarded as 'probably a blend of Dravidian and Mongo-
loid elements, with a strain of Indo-Aryan blood in the higher groups. '
The region in which it prevails lay beyond the geographical ken of the earlier
literature. It comes into view first in the later literature (the epics and
Purāņas) when it was occupied by a number of peoples among whom the
Vangas (from whom Bengal has inherited its name) and the Kalingas of
Orissa were the chief. On the north-west it is separated from the Āryo.
Dravidian area by what is now also the political dividing-line between Bihār
and Bengal. In regard to this limit, as marking the extent of Indo-Aryan
influence at an early date, ethnology and literature are fully in agreement.
In the Atharvaveda the Magadhas of the Patna and Gayā Districts, and the
Angas of the Monghyr and Bhāgalpur Districts in Southern Bihār, are men-
tioned in a manner which indicates that they were among the most distant
of known peoples (see Vedic Index, II, p. 116); while a legend in the
çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (I, 4, 1, 10 ff. ) preserves the memory of the spread of
9
9
## p. 43 (#77) ##############################################
II)
AUSTRIC LANGUAGES
43
Brāhmanism from the west into Videha, or Tirhut in Northern Bihār. The
traces of Indo-Aryan descent, which have been observed in the higher
social grades of Bengal and Orissa, must be due to colonisation at a later
date.
On the south-west the Mongolo-Dravidians are separated from the
Dravidians by the north-eastern apex of the plateau of the Deccan, where
in the Santāl Parganas and the Chotā Nāgpur Division, hills and forests
have preserved a large group of primitive tribes, some of whom continue to
speak dialects of the oldest form of language known in India.
It is here that we find the Muņdā languages, which like the Mon-
Khmer languages of Assam and Burma, are surviving representatives of the
Austric family of speech, the most widely diffused on earth. It has been
traced (from Easter Island off the coast of South America in the east to
Madagascar in the west, and from New Zealand in the south to the Punjab
in the north' (Census Report, 1911, 1, p. 324).
The Mundā languages are scattered far and wide. They are found
not only in the Santāl Parganas and Chotā Nāgpur, but also in the Mahā.
deo Hills of the Central Provinces, and in the northern districts of the
Madras Presidency; and they form the basis of a number of mixed
languages which make a chain along the Himālayan fringe from the Punjab
to Bengal.
The Mon-Khmer languages are similarly dispersed. They survive in
the Khāsi Hills of Assam, in certain hilly tracts of Upper Burma, in the
coastal regions of the Gulf of Martaban in Lower Burma, in the Nicobar
Islands, and in some parts of the Malay Peninsula.
Thus Austric languages, which still flourish in Annam and Cambodia,
remain in India and Burma as islands of speech to preserve the record of a
far distant period when Northern India (possibly Southern India also) and
Farther India belonged to the same linguistic area.
And there is some
evidence that they shared the same culture in neolithic times ; for the
'chisel-shaped, high-shouldered celts' are specially characteristic of these
regions. There can be little doubt that the Indian and Burmese tribes who
speak Austric languages are descended from the neolithic peoples who made
these celts. We may regard them as representing the earliest population con-
cerning which we possess any definite information. Other tribes may have
an equal claim to antiquity ; but they have abandoned their ancestral speech
and adopted that of their more recent and more progressive neighbours.
Their title is consequently less clear.
Invasions from the east, some of them historical, have brought into
the ancient domain of Austric speech languages belonging to two branches
of the Tibeto-Chinese family—the Tibeto-Burman and the Siamese-Chinese.
1 Chapter XXVI.
## p. 44 (#78) ##############################################
44
PEOPLES AND LAVGU AGES
(ch.
Tibeto-Burman hås occupied the western half of Burma, where it is
represented by Burmese, and the sub-Himālayan fringe of India : while
Siamese-Chinese has prevailed in the Shan States of eastern Burma.
The influence of each has, at different periods, extended to Assam, where at
the present day both have given place to Assamese, an Aryan language
closely related to Bengali.
In the same way, the Austric languages have been submerged by suc-
cessive floods of Dravidian and Indo-European from the west and north-
west. Dravidian languages, with the exception of Brāhūī, are now confined
to the peninsula south of the Vindhyas and to Ceylon ; but it is supposed
that, at the period of the Aryan invasions, they prevailed also in the north.
This inference is derived from the change which Indo-European underwent
after its introduction into India, and which can only be explained as the
result of some older disturbing element. The oldest form of Indo-Aryan,
the language of the Rigveda, is distinguished from the oldest form of Irā.
nian, the language of the Avesta, chiefly by the presence of a second series
of dental letters, the so-called cerebrals. These play an increasingly impor-
tant part in the development of Indo-Aryan in its subsequent phases. They
are foreign to Indo-European languages generally, and they are characteris-
tic of Dravidian. We may conclude, then, that the earlier forms of speech,
by which Indo-European was modified in the various stages of its progress
from the north-west were predominantly Dravidian.
At the present time Dravidian languages are stable only in the coun-
tries of the south where they have developed great literatures like Tamil,
Malayālam, Kanarese, and Telugu. In the northern borders of the Dravi.
dian sphere of influence, the spoken languages which have not been stereo-
typed by literature are, as each succeeding Report of the Census of India
shows, still continuing to retreat before the onward progress of Indo-Aryan.
The process, as it may be observed at the present day in India as elsewhere,
has been admirably described by Sir George Grierson, whose observa-
tions are most valuable as explaining generally the manner in which the
language of a more progressive civilisation tends to grow at the expense of
its less efficient rivals.
When an Āryan tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one,
it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The Āryan does not attempt to speak
it, and the necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to use a broken “pigeon' form
a
of the language of a superior civilisation. As generations pass this mixed jargon more
and more approximates to its model, and in process of time the old aboriginal language
is forgotten and dies a natural death. At the present day in ethnic borderlands, we see
this transformation still going on, and can watch it in all stages of its progress. It is
only in the south of India, where aboriginal languages are associated with a high degree
of culture, that they have held their own. The reverse process, of an Āryan tongue
being superseded by an aboriginal one never occurs. (Imp. Gaz. I, pp. 351-2 )
## p. 45 (#79) ##############################################
HI)
INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES
45
a
But the advancing type does not remain unaffected. Each stage in its
progress must always bear traces of the compromise between the new and
the old ; and, as each recently converted area tènds in its turr to carry the
change a step farther, the result is that the influence of the progressive
larguage is modified in an increasing degree. Thus is produced a series of
varieties, which through the development of their peculiar features become
in course of time distinct species differing from the original type and from
each other in accordance with their position in the series.
We are thus furnished with a satisfactory explanation of the distri-
bution of the Indo-Aryan languages. As classified by the Linguistic Survey
they radiate from a central area occupied by the Midland languages, the
chief representative of which is Western Hindi. In the north of this area lay
the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas where, according to the çatapatha
Brāhmana (II1, 2, 3, 15) speech, i. e. Brāhman speech, had its home (Vedic
Index, 1, p. 165). This is the centre from which the spread of Brāhmanism
and Brāhman culture may be traced historically. From it the language of
the Brāhman scriptures extended with the religion and became eventually
the sacred language of the whole sub-continent; from it the influencë of the
Aryan type of speech was diffused in all directions, receiving a check only
in the south where the Dravidian languages were firmly established
Immediately outside the languages of the Midland come those of the
Inner Band - Punjābi, Rājasthāni and Gujrāti on the west, Pahāri on the
north, and eastern Hindi on the east ; and beyond them the languages of
the Outer Band-Kāshmiri, Lahndā, Sindhi, and Kacchi on the west,
Marāthī on the south-west, and Bihāri, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriyā on
the east
The Indo-Aryan languages have now extended very considerably to the
south of Āryāvarta, 'the Region of the Aryans,' as defined by Manu (11, 22),
i. e. the country between the Himālayas and the Vindhyas from the Bay of
Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Orthodox Brāhmanism, as represented by
Manu, directed that all members of the ‘twice-born' social orders, Brāhmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaiçyas, should resort to this region, and enjoined that
every man of these orders should be instructed in his religious and social
duties by a Brāhman belonging to one of the peoples of Brahmarshideça
(Kurus, Matsyas, Pañchālas, and çūrasenas). These, as we have seen,
inhabited the northern portion of the Midland linguistic area. If we follow
the course of the Jumna-Ganges we shall pass from the languages of the mid-
land through those of the Inner and Outer Bands, and we shall pass from
Brahmarshideça through Kosala (Oudh), Videha (N. Bihār) and Vanga
(Bengal), which mark successive stages in the spread of Brāhmanism to the
eastern limit of Āryāvarta as they are reflected in the literature. 1
Vedic Index, II. pp. 237, 298.
>
1
## p. 46 (#80) ##############################################
46
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
It is not so easy to trace the relations between Brahmarshideça and
the earlier Aryan settlements in the land of the Seven Rivers. It is possible
that further invasions of which no record has been preserved may have
disturbed both political and linguistic conditions in the North-West. We
know nothing certain about the fate of this (region until the latter half of
the sixth century B. C. , when Gandhāra (Peshāwar in the N. W. Frontier
Province and Rāwalpindi in the Punjab) together with the province of the
Indus— 'India' properly so-called – were included in the Persian empire of
the Achaemenids.
The base from which this Persian power expanded into India was
kh), the country of the Oxus, which in the reign of Cyrus (558-
530 B. c. ) had become the eastern stronghold of Irān. From Bactria the
armies of the Achaemenids, like those of Alexander and many subsequent
conquerors, and like the invading tribes of Indo-Aryans many centuries
before, passed over the Hindu Kush and through the valley of the Kābul
river into the country of the Indus.
Speakers of the two great sections of Āryan languages, Irānians and
Indo-Aryans, were thus brought into contact ; and as a result of some such
contact, whether at this period or at some earlier date, we find a group of
mixed languages still surviving where they might be expected, in the transi.
tional zone between the Hindu Kush and the Punjab, that is to say, in the
Kábul valley, Chitrāl, and Gilgit. These Piçācha languages, as they are
called, were once more widely spread : the Greek forms of place-names, for
instance, seem to show that they prevailed in N. W. India in the fourth
century B. C. ; but at the present time they are merely an enclave in the
Irānian and Indo-Aryan domains.
They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday
use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and
which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence languages are neither Irānian nor Indo-Aryan, but are
something between both. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 356. )
The most natural explanation of these mixed languages is that they are
ancient Āryan (Vedic) dialects which have been overlaid with Irānian as the
result of later invasion. The districts in which they are spoken were
certainly colonised by the early Āryan settlers, for both the Kābul river
(Kubhā) and its tributary the Swāt (Suvāstu) are mentioned in the hymns
of the Rigveda.
The contrary view, expressed in the Imperial Gazetteer I. p. 355), viz.
that the Piçãcha languages are the result of an Aryan invasion of a region
originally Irānian, seems to be less probable. It presuposes the existence of
an early settlement of Āryan in the Pāmirs, distinct from the Aryans proper,
who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kābul,' and is thus bound
with the hypothesis of a second wave of Āryan immigration.
up
## p. 47 (#81) ##############################################
II]
SOCIAL INSTITUTION
47
Beyond the Piçãcha languages on the north, and beyond the Outer
Indo-Aryan Band on the west, Irānian forms of speech prevail. The most
important of these, so far as they are represented within the limits of the
Indian Empire, are the Pashto of Afghānistān, the name of which preserves
the memory of the Il'axtves mentioned by Herodotus, and Baloch, the main
language of Baluchistān.
The diversity of speech in the Indian Empire, like the diversity of
race, is naturally explained as the result of invasions from Western and
Further Asia. Such invasions belong to a period which was only brought
to a close by the establishment of the British dominion. The power which
has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great
system of government is essentially naval ; and since it controls the sea.
ways, it has been forced, in the interests of security, to close the land ways.
This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which
lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire, Afghānistān, Baluchistān, and
Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of
political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a
recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great
landmark which separates the present from the past.
Man has completed the work which nature had begun ; for, as we
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult. The era of tribal migration had long ago come to
an end, and had been succeeded by the era of conquest. All through history
down to the period of British rule we see one foreign power after another
breaking through the north-western gateway, and the strongest of these
winning the suzerainty over India. But the result in all cases was little
more than a change of rulers - the deposition of one dominant caste and
the substitution of another. The lives of the common people, their social
conditions and systems of local government, were barely affected by such
conquests. Indian institutions have therefore a long unbroken history
which makes their study especially valuable.
The chief distinguishing feature of Indian society at the present day
is the caste-system, the origin and growth of which may be traced from an
early period. It now divides the great majority of the inhabitants of Nor-
thern and Southern India into hundreds of self-contained social
castes and sub-castes. A man is obliged to marry outside his family, but
within the caste, and usually within the sub-caste, to which his family be-
longs. A family consists of persons 'reputed to be descended from a common
ancestor, and between whom marriage is prohibited. ' It is the exogamous
social unit. A collection of such units constitutes a sub-caste or caste.
A caste may, therefore, be defined as an endogamous group or collection of such
groups bearing a common name and having the same traditional occupation, who are
.
groups, i. e.
## p. 48 (#82) ##############################################
48
[ch.
PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
so linked together luy these and other ties, such as the tradition of a common origin and
the possession of the same tutelary deity, and the same social status, ceremonial
observances and family priests that they regard themselves, and are regarded by
others, as ſorming a single homogeneous community. (Census Report, 1911, I).
The institution is essentially Brāhmanical, and it has spread with
the spread of Brāhmanism. It either does not exist, or exists only in an
imperfect state of development, in countries where Buddhism has triumphed,
such as Burma and Ceylon. It would indeed appear to rest ultimately on
two doctrines which are distinctively Brāhmanical - the doctrine of the reli-
gious unity of the family, which is symbolised by the offerings made to
deceased ancestors, and the doctrine of sva-karma, which lays on every man
the obligation to do his duty in that state of life in which he has been
born.
The orthodox Hindu holds that the caste-system is of divine appoint-
ment and that it has existed for all time. But the sacred books themselves,
when they are studied historically, supply evidence both of its origin and
of its growth. The poets of the Rigveda know nothing of caste in the later
and stricter sense of the word ; but they recognise that there are divers
orders of men—the priests (Brahmā or Brāhmana), the nobles (Rājanya
or Kshatriya), the tillers of the soil (Viç or Vaiçya), and the servile classes
(çūdra). Between the first three and the fourth there is a great gulf fixed.
The former are conquering Aryans : the latter are subject Dasyus. The
difference between them is one of colour (varņa) : the Āryans are collec-
tively known as 'the light colour', and the Dasyus as 'the dark colour'. So
far, there was nothing peculiar in the social conditions of North-Western
India during the early Vedic period. The broad distinction between con-
querors and conquered, and the growth of social orders are indeed
universal and inevitable. But while in other countries the barriers which
man has thus set up for himself have been weakened or even entirely
swept away by the tide of progress, in India they have remained firmly
fixed. In India human institutions have received the sanction of a religion
which has been concerned more with the preservation of social order than
with the advancement of mankind.
Before the end of the period covered by the hymns of the Rigveda a
belief in the divine origin of the four orders of men was fully established ;
but there is nowhere in the Rigveda any indication of the castes into which
these orders were afterwards sub-divided! The word "colour' is still used
in its literal sense. There are as yet only two varņas, the light and the
dark. But in the next period, the period of Yajurveda and the Brāhmaṇas,
the term denotes ‘a social order' independently of any actual distinction of
1 For various views on this subject, see Chapters IV, pp. 81-3; V, pp. 111. 12 ff. :
VII! , X.
9
## p. 49 (#83) ##############################################
II]
THE CASTE SYSTEM
49
colour, and we hear for the first time of mixed varņas, the offspring of
parents belonging to different social orders.
It is to such mixed marriages that the law books (cf. Manu, x, 6 ff. )
attribute the origin of the castes (jāti) strictly so-called. To some extent
the theory is undoubtedly correct. Descent is a chief factor, but not the
only factor, involved in the formation of caste, the growth of which may still
in the twentieth century be traced in the Reports of the decennial Census.
Primitive tribes who become Hinduised, communities who are drawn
together by the same sectarian beliefs or by the same occupation, all tend to
form castes. Tribal connexion, religion, and occupation therefore combine
with descent to consolidate social groups and, at the same time, to keep
these social groups apart.
The caste-system is, as we have seen, a distinctive product of Brāh.
manism, a code which regards the family, and not the congregation, as the
religious unit. And so strong did this social system become that it has
affected all the other religions. The most probable explanation of the very
remarkable disappearance of Buddhism from the greater part of the sub-
continent, where it was once so widely extended, is that Buddhism has been
gradually absorbed into the Brāhman caste-system, which has also, though
in a less degree, influenced the followers of other faiths—Jains, Muhamma-
dans, Sikhs, and even native Christians. We must conclude, then, that the
caste-system has accompanied the spread of Brāhmanism from its first
stronghold in the country of the Upper Junna and Ganges into other regions
of Northern India and finally into Southern India ; and we must expect to
find its complete record only in Brāhman literature. Caste must naturally
be less perfectly reflected in the literature of other faiths.
Neglect of these fundamental considerations has led to much discre-
pancy among writers on the early social history of India. Students of the
Brāhman books have asserted that the caste-system existed substantially
in the time of the Yajurveda (say 1000-800 B. c. ) : students of the Buddhist
books have emphatically declared that no traces of the system in its later
sense are to be detected in the age of Buddha (c. 563=483 B. c. ). . Both
parties have forgotten that they were dealing with different regions of
Northern India, the former with the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas,
the home of Brāhmanism (the Delhi Division of the Punjab with the north-
western Divisions of the Province of Agra), the latter with Kosala and
Videha, the home of Buddhism (Oudh and N. Bihār). They have forgotten,
too, that the records, on which they depend for their statements, are utterly
distinct in character. On the one hand, the Brāhman books are permeated
with social ideas which formed the very foundation of their religion : on
the other hand, the Buddhist books regard any connexion between social
status and religion as accidental rather than essential.
>
## p. 50 (#84) ##############################################
50
[CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
B. SOURCES OF HISTORY
a
a
The caste-system is the outcome of a long process of social differentia-
tion to which the initial impulse was given by the introduction of a higher
civilisation into regions occupied by peoples in a lower stage of culture.
The Āryan settlers, as represented by the sacrificial hymns of the Rigveda,
were both intellectually and materially advanced. Their language, their
religion, and their social institutions were of the Indo-European type like
those of the ancient Persians of the Avesta and the Greeks of the Homeric
poems; and th
were skilled in the arts and in the working of metals.
The prehistoric archæology of India has not attracted the attention
which it deserves, and many interesting problems connected with the earlier
cultures and their relation to the culture of the Rigveda remain to be
solved; but there is a general agreement as to the succession of cultural
strata in Northern and Southern India. The discoveries of ancient imple.
ments seem to prove that in the North the Stone Age is separated from the
Iron Age by a Copper Age ; while in the South no such transitional stage
has been observed -implements of stone are followed without a break by
implements of iron. Bronze, it appears, is not found anywhere in India
before the Iron Age. If these facts may be held to be established, we must
conclude that the chief metal of the Rigveda, ayas (Latin aes), was copper ;
and the absence of a Copper Age in Southern India would seem to indicate
that the earlier inhabitants generally were still in the Stone Age at the time
when the Āryans brought with them the use of copper. Iron was probably
not known in the age of the Rigveda; but it undoubtedly occurs in the period
immediately following when it is known to the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda
as cyama ayās or ‘black copper'. Its use was introduced by Indo-Aryan
colonisation into Southern India where the Stone Age of culture still
prevailed.
Described in its simplest terms, the earliest history of India is the
story of the struggle between two widely different types of civilisation, an
unequal contest between metal and stone. All the records for many
centuries belong to the higher type. They are exclusively Indo-Aryan.
They have been preserved in literary languages developed from the predomi.
nant spoken languages under the influence of the different phases of religion
which mark stages in the advance of Indo-Aryan culture from the North-
West. The language of the Rigveda, the oldest form of Vedic Sanskrit,
belongs to the country of the Seven Rivers. The language of the Brāhmaṇas
and of the later Vedic literature in the country of the Upper Jumna and
Ganges (Brahmarshideça) is transitional. It shades almost imperceptibly
into Classical Sanskrit, which is the literary representation of the accepted
form of educated speech of the time and region. As fixed by the rules of the
## p. 51 (#85) ##############################################
II ]
THE LITERATURES OF INDIA
51
.
grammarians it became the standard lanuguage of Brāhman culture in every
part of India ; and it is still the ordinary medium of communication between
learned men, as was Latin in the Middle Ages of Europe.
In the sixth century B. C. , after Indo-Aryan influence bad penetrated
eastwards beyond the limits of the Middle Country, there arose in Oudh
(Kosala) and Bihār (Videha and Magadha) a number of religious reactions
against the sacerdotalism and the social exclusiveness of Brāhmanism. The
two most important of these, Jainism and Buddhism, survived ; and, as they
extended from the region of their origin, they everywhere gave an impulse
to the formation of literary languages from the Prākrits or spoken dialects.
The scriptures of the Jains have been preserved in various forms of
Māgadhi, the dalect of Bihār, çaurasenī, the dialect of Muttra, and Māhā.
rāshțri, the dialect of the Marāthā country. The Buddhist canon exists in
two chief forms-in Pāli, the literary form of an Indo-Aryan Prākrit, in
Ceylon; and in Sanskrit in Nepāl. Pāli Buddhism has spread to Burma
and Siam. The Sanskrit version of the canon has, in various translations,
prevailed in Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestān, and other
countries of the Far East.
In all the large and varied literatures of the Brāhmans, Jains, and
Buddhists there is not to be found a single work which can be compared to
the Histories in which Herodotus recounts the struggle between the Greeks
and Persians, or to the Annals in which Livy traces the growth and
progress of the Roman power. But this is not because the peoples of India
had no history. We know from other sources that the ages were filled with
stirring events; but these events found no systematic record. Of the great
foreign invasions of Darius, Alexander the Great, and Seleucus no mention
is to be discoverd in any Indian work. The struggles between native princes,
the rise and fall of empires, have indeed not passed similarly into utter
oblivion. The memory is to some extent preserved in epic poems, in stories
of the sages and heroes of old, in genealogies and dynastic lists. Such in all
countries are the beginnings of history; and in ancient India its develop-
ment was not carried beyond this rudimentary stage. The explanation of
this arrested progress must be sought in a state of society which, as in
medieval Europe, tended to restrict intellectual activity to the religious
orders. Literatures controlled by Brāhmans, or by Jain and Buddhist
monks, must naturally represent systems of faith rather than nationalities.
They must deal with thought rather than with action, with ideas rather than
with events. And in fact, as sources for the history of religion and philo-
sophy, and for the growth of law and social institutions, and for the
development of those sciences which, like grammar, depend on the minute
and careful observation of facts, they stand among the literatures of the
ancient word unequalled in their fulness and their continuity. But as records
>
## p. 52 (#86) ##############################################
52
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
of political progress they are deficient. By their aid alone it would be
impossible to sketch the outline of the political history of any of the
nations of India before the Muhammadan conquest. Fortunately two other
sources of information - foreign accounts of India and the monuments of
India (especially the inscriptions and coins)-supply to some extent this
deficiency of the literatures, and furnish a chronological framework for the
history of certain periods.
The foreign authorities naturally belong to those periods in which
India was brought most closely into contact with the civilisations of Western
Asia and China. The general fact that such intercourse by land and sea
existed in very early times is undoubted, but detailed authentic records of
political relations are not found before the rise of the Persian Empire in the
sixth century B. C. , when Greek writers and the cuneiform inscriptions of
Darius enable us to trace the extension of the Persian power from Bactria,
the country of the Oxus, to N. W. India. From these sources it is clear that
the Persian dominions included Gandhāra (the Districts of Peshāwar and
Rāwal Pindi) and the Province of 'India' (the Western Punjab together
with Sind which still retains its ancient name); and it is probable that
these countries remained tributary to the King of Kings until the Persian
Empire gave place to the Macedonian.
Then come the Greek and Roman historians of Alexander the Great,
whose detailed accounts of the Indian campaign (327-325 B. C. ) throw a flood
of light on the political conditions of N. W. India, and carry our geographi-
cal knowledge eastwards beyond the Jhelum (Hydaspes), the eastern limit
of Gandhāra, to the Beās) (Hyphasis). This marks the extent of Alexander's
conquests. Far from securing the dominant position of Northern India, the
country of the upper Jumna and Ganges, these conquests failed even to
reach the country of the Sarasvati, the centre of Indo-Aryan civilisation
in the age of the Rigveda. Alexander was the conqueror of 'India' only in
the sense that for a very few years he was master of 'the country of the
Indus. ' The confusion of this geographical term with its later meaning has
been the cause of endless misconception all through the Middle Ages even
down to the present day.
The documents of the Persian and Macedonian Empires are succeeded
by those of the later Hellenic kingdoms of Syria, Bactria, and Parthia.
All these are invaluable as supplying a very remarkable deficiency in the
Indian records. They deal with a region which is barely noticed, and with
events which are completely ignored, in the Brāhman, Jain, and Buddhist
books of the period. These two sources of history are thus independent of
each other. The Greek view is mainly confined to the North-West while
the contemporary Indian literatures belong almost exclusively to the Plain
of the Ganges.
a
H
i
## p. 53 (#87) ##############################################
II ]
CHINESE RECORDS
53
After the death of Alexander other Western writers appear who
regard India from the point of view of the Maurya Empire with its capital
at Pātliputra, the modern Patna. The generation which saw Alexander
had not passed away before the kingdom of Magadha (S. Bihār) had
brought all the peoples of Northern India under its sway, and established a
great power which maintained relations with Alexander's successors in
Western Asia, Egypt, and Europe. And now for the first time the two
.
kinds of historical eviderce, the Indian and the foreign, come into direct
relations with each other. They refer to the same regions and to the same
circumstances ; and the light of Greek history is thrown on the obscurity
of Indian literature. It was the identification of the Sandrocottus of Greek
writers with the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta that established the
first fixed point in the chronology of ancient India. Our object in the
first two volumes of this History will be to show how far the progress
of research starting from this fixed point has succeeded hitherto in recover-
ing the forgotten history of India from the records of the past.
Unimpeded intercourse with the countries of the West was possible
only so long as Northern India remained united under the Maurya dynasty,
and Western Asia under the Seleucid successors of Alexander. The process
of disintegration began in Western Asia with the defection of Bactria and
Parthia about the middle of the third century, and in India probably some
thirty years later when the downfall of imperial rule was followed by a
period of anarchy and internal strife. 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.
nant racial character of the whole region is due to the invasion of Mongolo-
Altaic peoples from Turkestān on the one hand, and of Persian Aryans or
Irānians on the other. The Indus is the ethnographical boundary between
the Turko-Irānian and Indo-Aryan types, just as in history it has often been
the political boundary between Irān and India.
4. The Scytho-Dravidian type in Sind east of the Indus, Gujarāt, and
the western section of the peninsula as far as about longitude 76° E. , that is
to say, the Bombay Presidency or Western India generally. "The type is
clearly distinguished from the Turko-Irānian by a lower stature, a greater
length of head, a higher nasal index, a shorter nose, and a lower orbitonasal
index. '
This type, of which the Marāthās are the chief representatives, occupies
a position between the broad-headed Turko-Irānians and the long-headed
Dravidians. Its designation assumes that the foreign broad-headed element
was introduced during the period of Scythian (Çaka) rule in western India
## p. 40 (#74) ##############################################
40
(CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
(c. 120-380A. D). But there can be little doubt that its origin must be traced
to a period far more remote. The çakas were among those military con-
querors who broke into the Punjab after the downfall of the Maurya Empire:
and it can scarcely be supposed that the extension of their power to Wes-
tern India materially affected the race. The fact that their Scythian names,
as is shown by coins and inscriptions, became Hinduised after a few gene-
rations, is conclusive proof that they were forced to adapt themselves to
their social environment. We must therefore seek the disturbing racial in-
fluence in some earlier tribal immigration of which no other memorial now
remains. The invaders probably belonged to the broad-headed Alpine race
which inhabited the plateaus of Western Asia (Anatolia, Armenia, and
Irān)" ; and they would seem to have come into Western India, as the
Dravidians also most probably came, through Baluchistān before desiccation
had made the routes impassable for multitudes.
5. The Āryo-Dravidian or Hindustāni type in the plain of the Ganges
from about longitude 76° 30' E. to 87° E. ; that is to say, in the eastern
fringe of the Punjab, in the United Provinces, and in Bihār. "The head-
form is long, with a tendency to medium ; the complexion varies from light-
ish brown to black, the nose ranges from medium to broad, being always
broader than among the Indo-Aryans ; the stature is lower than in the latter
group, and usually below the average' (i. e. it ranges from 5' 3" to 5'5").
The Āryo-Dravidian type occupies the ancient Madhyadeça, or the
Midland Country,' extending, according to Manu (II, 12) from Vinaçana,
where the river Sarasvati loses itself in the Great Desert, to Allahābād, to-
gether with some five degrees of the country farther east. It is a mixed type
caused apparently by the Indo-Aryan colonisation of a region previously
held by a population mainly Dravidian. The Indo-Aryan type does not, as
might have been expected from analogous instances, shade by imperceptible
degrees into the Āryo-Dravidian type ; but a marked change from the for-
mer to the latter is observable about the longitude of Sirhind. It is evident,
then, that the waves of tribal migration must have been impeded at this
point, and that the Indo-Āryan influence farther east must be due rather
to warlike or peaceful penetration than to the wholesale encroachment of
multitudes.
To explain this abrupt transition, the theory of a second Āryan in-
vasion, which is supposed to have come into the plain of the Ganges from
the Pāmirs through Gilgit and Chitrā), was propounded by the late Dr.
Hoernle and has been generally accepted in the official publications of the
Government of India. This theory is made improbable by the physical
difficulties of the route suggested, and some of the arguments adduced in
its favour are demonstrably mistaken. There is no such break of continuity
Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples, pp. 12, 17,
## p. 41 (#75) ##############################################
II)
ĀRYO-DRAVIDIANS
41
between the tribes of the Rigveda and the peoples of the later literaturę aş
it presupposes! . At the same time it seemed to be supported by the existing
distribution of the Indo-Aryan languages ; but, as will be seen (p. 44), an
equally satisfactory explanation of this distribution may be suggested.
Apart from this theory, the conclusions of ethnology are entirely in
accord with the historical indications of the literature. The ethnographical
limit is also the dividing line between the geography of the Rigveda and the
geography of the later Vedic literature. In the Rigveda Āryan communities
have scarcely advanced beyond the country of the river Sarasvati (Sirhind),
which for ever afterwards was remembered with especial veneration as
Brahmāvarta, 'the Holy Land. ' In the Brāhmaṇās the centre of religious
activity has been transferred to the adjacent country on the south-east, i. e.
the upper portion of the doāb between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the
Muttra District of the United Provinces. This was Brahmarshideça - 'the
Country of the Holy Sages. ' Here it was that the hymns of the Rigveda,
which were composed in the North-West- the country of the 'Seven Rivers'
as it is called (Rv. VIII, 24, 27), were collected and arranged ; and here it
was that the religious and social system which we call Brāhmanism assumed
its final form--a form which, in its religious aspect, is a compromise bet-
ween Āryan and more primitive Indian ideas, and, in its social aspect, the
result of the contact of different races. After Brāhman culture had thus
occupied what has in all ages been the commanding position in India, its
trend was still eastwards ; and the country of the 'Seven Rivers,' though not
altogether forgotten, occupies a place of less importance in the later
literature.
Both of the facts above mentioned - the abrupt transition from the
Indo-Aryan to the Āryo-Dravidian type, and the extension of Āryan influ-
ence from Brahmăvarta to Brahmarshideca - are best understood if we
remember the natural feature which connects the plain of the Indus with the
plain of the Ganges. This is the strait of habitable land which lies between
the desert and the mountains. Its historical significance has already been
noticed? . It is in this strait that the decisive battles, on which the fate of
India has depended, have been fought ; and here too we may suppose that
the progress of racial migrations from the north-west in prehistoric times
must have been checked. Both politically and ethnographically it forms a
natural boundary. In the age of the Rigveda the Āryans had not yet broken
through the barrier, though the Jumna is mentioned in a hymn (vii, 18, 19)
in such a way as to indicate that a battle had been won on its banks. It
was only at some later date that the country between the Upper Jumna and
Ganges and the district of Delhi were occupied. A record of this occupa-
tion has been preserved in some ancient verses quoted in the catapatha
1 See Chapters V. p. 106 and XIII.
Chapter I, pp. 20 f.
2
.
## p. 42 (#76) ##############################################
42
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
Brāhmaṇa (XIII, 5, 4, 11-14) which refer to the triumphs celebrated by
Bharata Dauhshanti after his victories on the Jumna and the Ganges, and
to the extent of his conquests. In their new home the Bharatas, who were
settled in the country of the Sarasvati in the times of the Rigveda (see III,
23, 4), were merged in the Kurus ; and their whole territory, the new
together with the old, became famous in history under the name Kuru.
kshetra — 'the Field of the Kurus. ' This was the scene of the great war of
the descendants of Bharata Dauḥshanti, and the centre from which Indo-
Āryan culture spread, first throughout Hindustān, and eventually through.
out the whole sub-continent. The epoch of Indo-Aryan tribal migration
was definitely closed. It was succeeded by the epoch of Indo-Aryan
colonisation,
6. The Mongoloid type in Burma, Assam, and the sub-Himālayan
tract which includes Bhutān, Nepāl, and the fringe of the United Provinces,
the Punjab, and Kashmir. “The head is broad ; complexion dark, with a
yellowish tinge ; hair on face scanty ; stature short or below average ; nose
fine to broad ; face characteristically flat ; eyelids often oblique. '
The term Mongoloid denotes the racial type which has been produced
by the invasion of peoples of the Southern Mongolian race from Tibet and
China. We have already seen how these peoples have from time immemo.
rial been coming down the river valleys into Burma and Northern India
(p. 35) ; and we shall learn more about them, and about the earlier inhabi-
tants with whom they intermingled, when we consider the evidence of
language (p. 44).
7. The Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali type in Bengal and Orissa.
“The head is broad ; complexion dark ; hair on face usually plentiful ; stature
medium ; nose medium, with a tendency to broad. '
This type is regarded as 'probably a blend of Dravidian and Mongo-
loid elements, with a strain of Indo-Aryan blood in the higher groups. '
The region in which it prevails lay beyond the geographical ken of the earlier
literature. It comes into view first in the later literature (the epics and
Purāņas) when it was occupied by a number of peoples among whom the
Vangas (from whom Bengal has inherited its name) and the Kalingas of
Orissa were the chief. On the north-west it is separated from the Āryo.
Dravidian area by what is now also the political dividing-line between Bihār
and Bengal. In regard to this limit, as marking the extent of Indo-Aryan
influence at an early date, ethnology and literature are fully in agreement.
In the Atharvaveda the Magadhas of the Patna and Gayā Districts, and the
Angas of the Monghyr and Bhāgalpur Districts in Southern Bihār, are men-
tioned in a manner which indicates that they were among the most distant
of known peoples (see Vedic Index, II, p. 116); while a legend in the
çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (I, 4, 1, 10 ff. ) preserves the memory of the spread of
9
9
## p. 43 (#77) ##############################################
II)
AUSTRIC LANGUAGES
43
Brāhmanism from the west into Videha, or Tirhut in Northern Bihār. The
traces of Indo-Aryan descent, which have been observed in the higher
social grades of Bengal and Orissa, must be due to colonisation at a later
date.
On the south-west the Mongolo-Dravidians are separated from the
Dravidians by the north-eastern apex of the plateau of the Deccan, where
in the Santāl Parganas and the Chotā Nāgpur Division, hills and forests
have preserved a large group of primitive tribes, some of whom continue to
speak dialects of the oldest form of language known in India.
It is here that we find the Muņdā languages, which like the Mon-
Khmer languages of Assam and Burma, are surviving representatives of the
Austric family of speech, the most widely diffused on earth. It has been
traced (from Easter Island off the coast of South America in the east to
Madagascar in the west, and from New Zealand in the south to the Punjab
in the north' (Census Report, 1911, 1, p. 324).
The Mundā languages are scattered far and wide. They are found
not only in the Santāl Parganas and Chotā Nāgpur, but also in the Mahā.
deo Hills of the Central Provinces, and in the northern districts of the
Madras Presidency; and they form the basis of a number of mixed
languages which make a chain along the Himālayan fringe from the Punjab
to Bengal.
The Mon-Khmer languages are similarly dispersed. They survive in
the Khāsi Hills of Assam, in certain hilly tracts of Upper Burma, in the
coastal regions of the Gulf of Martaban in Lower Burma, in the Nicobar
Islands, and in some parts of the Malay Peninsula.
Thus Austric languages, which still flourish in Annam and Cambodia,
remain in India and Burma as islands of speech to preserve the record of a
far distant period when Northern India (possibly Southern India also) and
Farther India belonged to the same linguistic area.
And there is some
evidence that they shared the same culture in neolithic times ; for the
'chisel-shaped, high-shouldered celts' are specially characteristic of these
regions. There can be little doubt that the Indian and Burmese tribes who
speak Austric languages are descended from the neolithic peoples who made
these celts. We may regard them as representing the earliest population con-
cerning which we possess any definite information. Other tribes may have
an equal claim to antiquity ; but they have abandoned their ancestral speech
and adopted that of their more recent and more progressive neighbours.
Their title is consequently less clear.
Invasions from the east, some of them historical, have brought into
the ancient domain of Austric speech languages belonging to two branches
of the Tibeto-Chinese family—the Tibeto-Burman and the Siamese-Chinese.
1 Chapter XXVI.
## p. 44 (#78) ##############################################
44
PEOPLES AND LAVGU AGES
(ch.
Tibeto-Burman hås occupied the western half of Burma, where it is
represented by Burmese, and the sub-Himālayan fringe of India : while
Siamese-Chinese has prevailed in the Shan States of eastern Burma.
The influence of each has, at different periods, extended to Assam, where at
the present day both have given place to Assamese, an Aryan language
closely related to Bengali.
In the same way, the Austric languages have been submerged by suc-
cessive floods of Dravidian and Indo-European from the west and north-
west. Dravidian languages, with the exception of Brāhūī, are now confined
to the peninsula south of the Vindhyas and to Ceylon ; but it is supposed
that, at the period of the Aryan invasions, they prevailed also in the north.
This inference is derived from the change which Indo-European underwent
after its introduction into India, and which can only be explained as the
result of some older disturbing element. The oldest form of Indo-Aryan,
the language of the Rigveda, is distinguished from the oldest form of Irā.
nian, the language of the Avesta, chiefly by the presence of a second series
of dental letters, the so-called cerebrals. These play an increasingly impor-
tant part in the development of Indo-Aryan in its subsequent phases. They
are foreign to Indo-European languages generally, and they are characteris-
tic of Dravidian. We may conclude, then, that the earlier forms of speech,
by which Indo-European was modified in the various stages of its progress
from the north-west were predominantly Dravidian.
At the present time Dravidian languages are stable only in the coun-
tries of the south where they have developed great literatures like Tamil,
Malayālam, Kanarese, and Telugu. In the northern borders of the Dravi.
dian sphere of influence, the spoken languages which have not been stereo-
typed by literature are, as each succeeding Report of the Census of India
shows, still continuing to retreat before the onward progress of Indo-Aryan.
The process, as it may be observed at the present day in India as elsewhere,
has been admirably described by Sir George Grierson, whose observa-
tions are most valuable as explaining generally the manner in which the
language of a more progressive civilisation tends to grow at the expense of
its less efficient rivals.
When an Āryan tongue comes into contact with an uncivilised aboriginal one,
it is invariably the latter which goes to the wall. The Āryan does not attempt to speak
it, and the necessities of intercourse compel the aborigine to use a broken “pigeon' form
a
of the language of a superior civilisation. As generations pass this mixed jargon more
and more approximates to its model, and in process of time the old aboriginal language
is forgotten and dies a natural death. At the present day in ethnic borderlands, we see
this transformation still going on, and can watch it in all stages of its progress. It is
only in the south of India, where aboriginal languages are associated with a high degree
of culture, that they have held their own. The reverse process, of an Āryan tongue
being superseded by an aboriginal one never occurs. (Imp. Gaz. I, pp. 351-2 )
## p. 45 (#79) ##############################################
HI)
INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES
45
a
But the advancing type does not remain unaffected. Each stage in its
progress must always bear traces of the compromise between the new and
the old ; and, as each recently converted area tènds in its turr to carry the
change a step farther, the result is that the influence of the progressive
larguage is modified in an increasing degree. Thus is produced a series of
varieties, which through the development of their peculiar features become
in course of time distinct species differing from the original type and from
each other in accordance with their position in the series.
We are thus furnished with a satisfactory explanation of the distri-
bution of the Indo-Aryan languages. As classified by the Linguistic Survey
they radiate from a central area occupied by the Midland languages, the
chief representative of which is Western Hindi. In the north of this area lay
the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas where, according to the çatapatha
Brāhmana (II1, 2, 3, 15) speech, i. e. Brāhman speech, had its home (Vedic
Index, 1, p. 165). This is the centre from which the spread of Brāhmanism
and Brāhman culture may be traced historically. From it the language of
the Brāhman scriptures extended with the religion and became eventually
the sacred language of the whole sub-continent; from it the influencë of the
Aryan type of speech was diffused in all directions, receiving a check only
in the south where the Dravidian languages were firmly established
Immediately outside the languages of the Midland come those of the
Inner Band - Punjābi, Rājasthāni and Gujrāti on the west, Pahāri on the
north, and eastern Hindi on the east ; and beyond them the languages of
the Outer Band-Kāshmiri, Lahndā, Sindhi, and Kacchi on the west,
Marāthī on the south-west, and Bihāri, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriyā on
the east
The Indo-Aryan languages have now extended very considerably to the
south of Āryāvarta, 'the Region of the Aryans,' as defined by Manu (11, 22),
i. e. the country between the Himālayas and the Vindhyas from the Bay of
Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Orthodox Brāhmanism, as represented by
Manu, directed that all members of the ‘twice-born' social orders, Brāhmans,
Kshatriyas, and Vaiçyas, should resort to this region, and enjoined that
every man of these orders should be instructed in his religious and social
duties by a Brāhman belonging to one of the peoples of Brahmarshideça
(Kurus, Matsyas, Pañchālas, and çūrasenas). These, as we have seen,
inhabited the northern portion of the Midland linguistic area. If we follow
the course of the Jumna-Ganges we shall pass from the languages of the mid-
land through those of the Inner and Outer Bands, and we shall pass from
Brahmarshideça through Kosala (Oudh), Videha (N. Bihār) and Vanga
(Bengal), which mark successive stages in the spread of Brāhmanism to the
eastern limit of Āryāvarta as they are reflected in the literature. 1
Vedic Index, II. pp. 237, 298.
>
1
## p. 46 (#80) ##############################################
46
[CH.
PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES
It is not so easy to trace the relations between Brahmarshideça and
the earlier Aryan settlements in the land of the Seven Rivers. It is possible
that further invasions of which no record has been preserved may have
disturbed both political and linguistic conditions in the North-West. We
know nothing certain about the fate of this (region until the latter half of
the sixth century B. C. , when Gandhāra (Peshāwar in the N. W. Frontier
Province and Rāwalpindi in the Punjab) together with the province of the
Indus— 'India' properly so-called – were included in the Persian empire of
the Achaemenids.
The base from which this Persian power expanded into India was
kh), the country of the Oxus, which in the reign of Cyrus (558-
530 B. c. ) had become the eastern stronghold of Irān. From Bactria the
armies of the Achaemenids, like those of Alexander and many subsequent
conquerors, and like the invading tribes of Indo-Aryans many centuries
before, passed over the Hindu Kush and through the valley of the Kābul
river into the country of the Indus.
Speakers of the two great sections of Āryan languages, Irānians and
Indo-Aryans, were thus brought into contact ; and as a result of some such
contact, whether at this period or at some earlier date, we find a group of
mixed languages still surviving where they might be expected, in the transi.
tional zone between the Hindu Kush and the Punjab, that is to say, in the
Kábul valley, Chitrāl, and Gilgit. These Piçācha languages, as they are
called, were once more widely spread : the Greek forms of place-names, for
instance, seem to show that they prevailed in N. W. India in the fourth
century B. C. ; but at the present time they are merely an enclave in the
Irānian and Indo-Aryan domains.
They possess an extraordinarily archaic character. Words are still in everyday
use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns, and
which now survive only in a much corrupted state in the plains of India.
In their essence languages are neither Irānian nor Indo-Aryan, but are
something between both. (Imp. Gaz. I. p. 356. )
The most natural explanation of these mixed languages is that they are
ancient Āryan (Vedic) dialects which have been overlaid with Irānian as the
result of later invasion. The districts in which they are spoken were
certainly colonised by the early Āryan settlers, for both the Kābul river
(Kubhā) and its tributary the Swāt (Suvāstu) are mentioned in the hymns
of the Rigveda.
The contrary view, expressed in the Imperial Gazetteer I. p. 355), viz.
that the Piçãcha languages are the result of an Aryan invasion of a region
originally Irānian, seems to be less probable. It presuposes the existence of
an early settlement of Āryan in the Pāmirs, distinct from the Aryans proper,
who had entered the Punjab by the valley of the Kābul,' and is thus bound
with the hypothesis of a second wave of Āryan immigration.
up
## p. 47 (#81) ##############################################
II]
SOCIAL INSTITUTION
47
Beyond the Piçãcha languages on the north, and beyond the Outer
Indo-Aryan Band on the west, Irānian forms of speech prevail. The most
important of these, so far as they are represented within the limits of the
Indian Empire, are the Pashto of Afghānistān, the name of which preserves
the memory of the Il'axtves mentioned by Herodotus, and Baloch, the main
language of Baluchistān.
The diversity of speech in the Indian Empire, like the diversity of
race, is naturally explained as the result of invasions from Western and
Further Asia. Such invasions belong to a period which was only brought
to a close by the establishment of the British dominion. The power which
has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great
system of government is essentially naval ; and since it controls the sea.
ways, it has been forced, in the interests of security, to close the land ways.
This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which
lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire, Afghānistān, Baluchistān, and
Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of
political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a
recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great
landmark which separates the present from the past.
Man has completed the work which nature had begun ; for, as we
have seen, climatic changes had for ages past been making access into India
more and more difficult. The era of tribal migration had long ago come to
an end, and had been succeeded by the era of conquest. All through history
down to the period of British rule we see one foreign power after another
breaking through the north-western gateway, and the strongest of these
winning the suzerainty over India. But the result in all cases was little
more than a change of rulers - the deposition of one dominant caste and
the substitution of another. The lives of the common people, their social
conditions and systems of local government, were barely affected by such
conquests. Indian institutions have therefore a long unbroken history
which makes their study especially valuable.
The chief distinguishing feature of Indian society at the present day
is the caste-system, the origin and growth of which may be traced from an
early period. It now divides the great majority of the inhabitants of Nor-
thern and Southern India into hundreds of self-contained social
castes and sub-castes. A man is obliged to marry outside his family, but
within the caste, and usually within the sub-caste, to which his family be-
longs. A family consists of persons 'reputed to be descended from a common
ancestor, and between whom marriage is prohibited. ' It is the exogamous
social unit. A collection of such units constitutes a sub-caste or caste.
A caste may, therefore, be defined as an endogamous group or collection of such
groups bearing a common name and having the same traditional occupation, who are
.
groups, i. e.
## p. 48 (#82) ##############################################
48
[ch.
PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
so linked together luy these and other ties, such as the tradition of a common origin and
the possession of the same tutelary deity, and the same social status, ceremonial
observances and family priests that they regard themselves, and are regarded by
others, as ſorming a single homogeneous community. (Census Report, 1911, I).
The institution is essentially Brāhmanical, and it has spread with
the spread of Brāhmanism. It either does not exist, or exists only in an
imperfect state of development, in countries where Buddhism has triumphed,
such as Burma and Ceylon. It would indeed appear to rest ultimately on
two doctrines which are distinctively Brāhmanical - the doctrine of the reli-
gious unity of the family, which is symbolised by the offerings made to
deceased ancestors, and the doctrine of sva-karma, which lays on every man
the obligation to do his duty in that state of life in which he has been
born.
The orthodox Hindu holds that the caste-system is of divine appoint-
ment and that it has existed for all time. But the sacred books themselves,
when they are studied historically, supply evidence both of its origin and
of its growth. The poets of the Rigveda know nothing of caste in the later
and stricter sense of the word ; but they recognise that there are divers
orders of men—the priests (Brahmā or Brāhmana), the nobles (Rājanya
or Kshatriya), the tillers of the soil (Viç or Vaiçya), and the servile classes
(çūdra). Between the first three and the fourth there is a great gulf fixed.
The former are conquering Aryans : the latter are subject Dasyus. The
difference between them is one of colour (varņa) : the Āryans are collec-
tively known as 'the light colour', and the Dasyus as 'the dark colour'. So
far, there was nothing peculiar in the social conditions of North-Western
India during the early Vedic period. The broad distinction between con-
querors and conquered, and the growth of social orders are indeed
universal and inevitable. But while in other countries the barriers which
man has thus set up for himself have been weakened or even entirely
swept away by the tide of progress, in India they have remained firmly
fixed. In India human institutions have received the sanction of a religion
which has been concerned more with the preservation of social order than
with the advancement of mankind.
Before the end of the period covered by the hymns of the Rigveda a
belief in the divine origin of the four orders of men was fully established ;
but there is nowhere in the Rigveda any indication of the castes into which
these orders were afterwards sub-divided! The word "colour' is still used
in its literal sense. There are as yet only two varņas, the light and the
dark. But in the next period, the period of Yajurveda and the Brāhmaṇas,
the term denotes ‘a social order' independently of any actual distinction of
1 For various views on this subject, see Chapters IV, pp. 81-3; V, pp. 111. 12 ff. :
VII! , X.
9
## p. 49 (#83) ##############################################
II]
THE CASTE SYSTEM
49
colour, and we hear for the first time of mixed varņas, the offspring of
parents belonging to different social orders.
It is to such mixed marriages that the law books (cf. Manu, x, 6 ff. )
attribute the origin of the castes (jāti) strictly so-called. To some extent
the theory is undoubtedly correct. Descent is a chief factor, but not the
only factor, involved in the formation of caste, the growth of which may still
in the twentieth century be traced in the Reports of the decennial Census.
Primitive tribes who become Hinduised, communities who are drawn
together by the same sectarian beliefs or by the same occupation, all tend to
form castes. Tribal connexion, religion, and occupation therefore combine
with descent to consolidate social groups and, at the same time, to keep
these social groups apart.
The caste-system is, as we have seen, a distinctive product of Brāh.
manism, a code which regards the family, and not the congregation, as the
religious unit. And so strong did this social system become that it has
affected all the other religions. The most probable explanation of the very
remarkable disappearance of Buddhism from the greater part of the sub-
continent, where it was once so widely extended, is that Buddhism has been
gradually absorbed into the Brāhman caste-system, which has also, though
in a less degree, influenced the followers of other faiths—Jains, Muhamma-
dans, Sikhs, and even native Christians. We must conclude, then, that the
caste-system has accompanied the spread of Brāhmanism from its first
stronghold in the country of the Upper Junna and Ganges into other regions
of Northern India and finally into Southern India ; and we must expect to
find its complete record only in Brāhman literature. Caste must naturally
be less perfectly reflected in the literature of other faiths.
Neglect of these fundamental considerations has led to much discre-
pancy among writers on the early social history of India. Students of the
Brāhman books have asserted that the caste-system existed substantially
in the time of the Yajurveda (say 1000-800 B. c. ) : students of the Buddhist
books have emphatically declared that no traces of the system in its later
sense are to be detected in the age of Buddha (c. 563=483 B. c. ). . Both
parties have forgotten that they were dealing with different regions of
Northern India, the former with the country of the Kurus and Pañchālas,
the home of Brāhmanism (the Delhi Division of the Punjab with the north-
western Divisions of the Province of Agra), the latter with Kosala and
Videha, the home of Buddhism (Oudh and N. Bihār). They have forgotten,
too, that the records, on which they depend for their statements, are utterly
distinct in character. On the one hand, the Brāhman books are permeated
with social ideas which formed the very foundation of their religion : on
the other hand, the Buddhist books regard any connexion between social
status and religion as accidental rather than essential.
>
## p. 50 (#84) ##############################################
50
[CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
B. SOURCES OF HISTORY
a
a
The caste-system is the outcome of a long process of social differentia-
tion to which the initial impulse was given by the introduction of a higher
civilisation into regions occupied by peoples in a lower stage of culture.
The Āryan settlers, as represented by the sacrificial hymns of the Rigveda,
were both intellectually and materially advanced. Their language, their
religion, and their social institutions were of the Indo-European type like
those of the ancient Persians of the Avesta and the Greeks of the Homeric
poems; and th
were skilled in the arts and in the working of metals.
The prehistoric archæology of India has not attracted the attention
which it deserves, and many interesting problems connected with the earlier
cultures and their relation to the culture of the Rigveda remain to be
solved; but there is a general agreement as to the succession of cultural
strata in Northern and Southern India. The discoveries of ancient imple.
ments seem to prove that in the North the Stone Age is separated from the
Iron Age by a Copper Age ; while in the South no such transitional stage
has been observed -implements of stone are followed without a break by
implements of iron. Bronze, it appears, is not found anywhere in India
before the Iron Age. If these facts may be held to be established, we must
conclude that the chief metal of the Rigveda, ayas (Latin aes), was copper ;
and the absence of a Copper Age in Southern India would seem to indicate
that the earlier inhabitants generally were still in the Stone Age at the time
when the Āryans brought with them the use of copper. Iron was probably
not known in the age of the Rigveda; but it undoubtedly occurs in the period
immediately following when it is known to the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda
as cyama ayās or ‘black copper'. Its use was introduced by Indo-Aryan
colonisation into Southern India where the Stone Age of culture still
prevailed.
Described in its simplest terms, the earliest history of India is the
story of the struggle between two widely different types of civilisation, an
unequal contest between metal and stone. All the records for many
centuries belong to the higher type. They are exclusively Indo-Aryan.
They have been preserved in literary languages developed from the predomi.
nant spoken languages under the influence of the different phases of religion
which mark stages in the advance of Indo-Aryan culture from the North-
West. The language of the Rigveda, the oldest form of Vedic Sanskrit,
belongs to the country of the Seven Rivers. The language of the Brāhmaṇas
and of the later Vedic literature in the country of the Upper Jumna and
Ganges (Brahmarshideça) is transitional. It shades almost imperceptibly
into Classical Sanskrit, which is the literary representation of the accepted
form of educated speech of the time and region. As fixed by the rules of the
## p. 51 (#85) ##############################################
II ]
THE LITERATURES OF INDIA
51
.
grammarians it became the standard lanuguage of Brāhman culture in every
part of India ; and it is still the ordinary medium of communication between
learned men, as was Latin in the Middle Ages of Europe.
In the sixth century B. C. , after Indo-Aryan influence bad penetrated
eastwards beyond the limits of the Middle Country, there arose in Oudh
(Kosala) and Bihār (Videha and Magadha) a number of religious reactions
against the sacerdotalism and the social exclusiveness of Brāhmanism. The
two most important of these, Jainism and Buddhism, survived ; and, as they
extended from the region of their origin, they everywhere gave an impulse
to the formation of literary languages from the Prākrits or spoken dialects.
The scriptures of the Jains have been preserved in various forms of
Māgadhi, the dalect of Bihār, çaurasenī, the dialect of Muttra, and Māhā.
rāshțri, the dialect of the Marāthā country. The Buddhist canon exists in
two chief forms-in Pāli, the literary form of an Indo-Aryan Prākrit, in
Ceylon; and in Sanskrit in Nepāl. Pāli Buddhism has spread to Burma
and Siam. The Sanskrit version of the canon has, in various translations,
prevailed in Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestān, and other
countries of the Far East.
In all the large and varied literatures of the Brāhmans, Jains, and
Buddhists there is not to be found a single work which can be compared to
the Histories in which Herodotus recounts the struggle between the Greeks
and Persians, or to the Annals in which Livy traces the growth and
progress of the Roman power. But this is not because the peoples of India
had no history. We know from other sources that the ages were filled with
stirring events; but these events found no systematic record. Of the great
foreign invasions of Darius, Alexander the Great, and Seleucus no mention
is to be discoverd in any Indian work. The struggles between native princes,
the rise and fall of empires, have indeed not passed similarly into utter
oblivion. The memory is to some extent preserved in epic poems, in stories
of the sages and heroes of old, in genealogies and dynastic lists. Such in all
countries are the beginnings of history; and in ancient India its develop-
ment was not carried beyond this rudimentary stage. The explanation of
this arrested progress must be sought in a state of society which, as in
medieval Europe, tended to restrict intellectual activity to the religious
orders. Literatures controlled by Brāhmans, or by Jain and Buddhist
monks, must naturally represent systems of faith rather than nationalities.
They must deal with thought rather than with action, with ideas rather than
with events. And in fact, as sources for the history of religion and philo-
sophy, and for the growth of law and social institutions, and for the
development of those sciences which, like grammar, depend on the minute
and careful observation of facts, they stand among the literatures of the
ancient word unequalled in their fulness and their continuity. But as records
>
## p. 52 (#86) ##############################################
52
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
of political progress they are deficient. By their aid alone it would be
impossible to sketch the outline of the political history of any of the
nations of India before the Muhammadan conquest. Fortunately two other
sources of information - foreign accounts of India and the monuments of
India (especially the inscriptions and coins)-supply to some extent this
deficiency of the literatures, and furnish a chronological framework for the
history of certain periods.
The foreign authorities naturally belong to those periods in which
India was brought most closely into contact with the civilisations of Western
Asia and China. The general fact that such intercourse by land and sea
existed in very early times is undoubted, but detailed authentic records of
political relations are not found before the rise of the Persian Empire in the
sixth century B. C. , when Greek writers and the cuneiform inscriptions of
Darius enable us to trace the extension of the Persian power from Bactria,
the country of the Oxus, to N. W. India. From these sources it is clear that
the Persian dominions included Gandhāra (the Districts of Peshāwar and
Rāwal Pindi) and the Province of 'India' (the Western Punjab together
with Sind which still retains its ancient name); and it is probable that
these countries remained tributary to the King of Kings until the Persian
Empire gave place to the Macedonian.
Then come the Greek and Roman historians of Alexander the Great,
whose detailed accounts of the Indian campaign (327-325 B. C. ) throw a flood
of light on the political conditions of N. W. India, and carry our geographi-
cal knowledge eastwards beyond the Jhelum (Hydaspes), the eastern limit
of Gandhāra, to the Beās) (Hyphasis). This marks the extent of Alexander's
conquests. Far from securing the dominant position of Northern India, the
country of the upper Jumna and Ganges, these conquests failed even to
reach the country of the Sarasvati, the centre of Indo-Aryan civilisation
in the age of the Rigveda. Alexander was the conqueror of 'India' only in
the sense that for a very few years he was master of 'the country of the
Indus. ' The confusion of this geographical term with its later meaning has
been the cause of endless misconception all through the Middle Ages even
down to the present day.
The documents of the Persian and Macedonian Empires are succeeded
by those of the later Hellenic kingdoms of Syria, Bactria, and Parthia.
All these are invaluable as supplying a very remarkable deficiency in the
Indian records. They deal with a region which is barely noticed, and with
events which are completely ignored, in the Brāhman, Jain, and Buddhist
books of the period. These two sources of history are thus independent of
each other. The Greek view is mainly confined to the North-West while
the contemporary Indian literatures belong almost exclusively to the Plain
of the Ganges.
a
H
i
## p. 53 (#87) ##############################################
II ]
CHINESE RECORDS
53
After the death of Alexander other Western writers appear who
regard India from the point of view of the Maurya Empire with its capital
at Pātliputra, the modern Patna. The generation which saw Alexander
had not passed away before the kingdom of Magadha (S. Bihār) had
brought all the peoples of Northern India under its sway, and established a
great power which maintained relations with Alexander's successors in
Western Asia, Egypt, and Europe. And now for the first time the two
.
kinds of historical eviderce, the Indian and the foreign, come into direct
relations with each other. They refer to the same regions and to the same
circumstances ; and the light of Greek history is thrown on the obscurity
of Indian literature. It was the identification of the Sandrocottus of Greek
writers with the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta that established the
first fixed point in the chronology of ancient India. Our object in the
first two volumes of this History will be to show how far the progress
of research starting from this fixed point has succeeded hitherto in recover-
ing the forgotten history of India from the records of the past.
Unimpeded intercourse with the countries of the West was possible
only so long as Northern India remained united under the Maurya dynasty,
and Western Asia under the Seleucid successors of Alexander. The process
of disintegration began in Western Asia with the defection of Bactria and
Parthia about the middle of the third century, and in India probably some
thirty years later when the downfall of imperial rule was followed by a
period of anarchy and internal strife. 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
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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.
