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.
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.
Cambridge History of India - v1
; 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. They were introduced into India
at different periods, and probably by different routes. Brāhmi is found
throughout the sub-continent and in Ceylon. The home of Kharoshțhī is
in the North-West ; and whenever it is found elsewhere it has been imported.
Brāhmi has been traced back to the Phoenician type of writing
represented by the inscription in which Mesha, king of Moab (c. 850 B. C. ),
records his successful revolt against the kingdom of Israel. It was probably
brought into India through Mesopotamia, as a result of the early commerce
by sea between Babylon and the ports of Western India. It is the parent
of all the modern Indian alphabets.
Kharoshthi is derived from the Aramaic script, which was introduced
into India in the sixth century B. C. , when the North-West was under Persian
rule, and when Aramaic was used as a common means of communication for
the purposes of government throughout the Persian empire. That originally
the Aramaic language and alphabet pure and simple were thus imported
into Gandhāra, as Bühler conjectured in 1895 (W. Z. K. M. , IX, p. 49), has been
proved recently by Sir John Marshall's discovery of an Aramaic inscription
at Taxila'. When the first Kharoshțhi inscriptions appear in the third century
B. C. , the alphabet has been adapted to express the additional sounds required
by an Indian language ; but, unlike Brāhmi which has been more highly
elaborated, it still bears evident traces of its Semitic origin both in its
direction from right to left and in its imperfect representation of the vowels
In the third century A. D. Kharoshțhi appears more fully developed in
Chinese Turkestān where its existence must be attributed to the Kushāņa
empire. In this region, as in India, it was eventually superseded by Brāhmi.
The decipherment of the inscriptions and coins, and the determination
of the eras in which many of them are dated, have introduced into the
obscurity of early Indian history a degree of chronological order which could
not have been conceived at the time when the study of Sanskrit began in
1. A. Cowley, J. R. A, S. , 1915, p. 346.
## p. 56 (#90) ##############################################
56
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Europe. The bare fact that India possessed ancient classical literatures like
those of Greece and Rome can scarcely be said to have been known to the
Western World before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. At various
intervals during more than a hundred years previously a few isolated
students chiefly missionaries, those pioneers of learning, had indeed pub-
lished accounts of Sanskrit literature and Sanskrit grammar; but it was only
when a practical need made itself felt, and the serious attention of the
administrators of the East India Company's possessions was directed to the
importance of studying Sanskrit, that the investigation by Europeans of the
ancient languages and literatures of India began in earnest. To meet the
requirements of the law-courts the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, had
ordered a digest to be prepared by pandits from the authoritative Sanskrit
law-books ; but when the work was finished no one could be found able to
trarslate it into English. It was therefore necessary to have it translated
first into Persian, and from the Persian an English version was made and
published by Halhed in 1776. The object-lesson was not lost. Sanskrit
was evidently of practical utility; and the East India Company adopted, and
never afterwards neglected to pursue, the enlightened policy of promoting
the study of the ancient languages and literatures in which the traditions of
its subjets were enshrined. It remained for Sir William Jones, Judge of the
High Court at Calcutta, to place this study on a firm basis by the establish-
ment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
The inauguration of the study of India's past history came at a fortu-
nate moment ; for it is precisely to the last quarter of the eighteenth century
that we may trace the growth of the modern scientific spirit of investiga-
tion, which may be defined as the recognition of the fact that no object and
no idea stands alone by itself as an isolated phenomenon. All objects and
all ideas form Jinks in a series ; and therefore it follows that nowhere,
whether in the realm of nature or in the sphere of human activity, can the
present be understood without reference to the past. The first manifestation
of this new spirit of enquiry, which was soon to transform all learning, was
seen in the study of language. The first Western students of the ancient
languages of India were statesmen and scholars who had been educated in
the classical literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. They were impressed
by the fact, which must indeed be apparent to everyone who opens a
Sanskrit grammar, that Sanskrit, both in its vocabulary and in its inflex-
ions, presents a striking similarity to Greek and Latin. This observation
immediately raised the question : How is this similarity to be explained ?
The true answer was suggested by Sir William Jones, whom that sagacious
observer, Dr Johnson, recognised as “one of the most enlightened of the
sons of men? . ' In 1786, Sir William Jones wrote :
1. G. Birbeck Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, p. 363.
## p. 57 (#91) ##############################################
II ]
THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT
57
>
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure ;
more perfect than the Greek, more copoius than the Latin, and more exquisitely re-
fined than either ; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of
verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by acci-
dent; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing
them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick
and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the
Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
These observations contain the germs of the science of Comparative
Philology. The conception of a family of languages, in which all the indi-
vidual languages and dialects are related as descendants from a common
ancestor, suggested the application to language of the historical and com-
parative method of investigation. The results have been as remarkable as
they were unexpected. In the first place, the historical method has shown
that living languages grow and change in accordance with certain definite
laws, while the comparative study of the lines of development which may be
traced historically in the different Indo-European languages has confirmed
Sir William Jones' hypothesis that they are all derived from some common
source,' which, though it no longer exists, may be restored hypothetically.
In the second place, since words preserve the record both of material objects
and of ideas, a study of vocabularies enables us to gain some knowledge of
the state of civilisation, the social institutions, and the religious beliefs
of the speakers of the different languages before the period of literary
records. Some indication of the light which Comparative Philology thus
throws on the history of the Āryan invaders of India is given in the follow-
ing Chapter
## p. 58 (#92) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
THE ĀRYANS
Throughout the greater part of Europe and of Asia as far as India
there exist now, or can be shown to have existed in past time, a great
number of languages, the forms and sounds of which when scientifically
examined are seen to have a common origin. The languages in question are
generally known to scholars under the name of the Indo-Germanic, or Indo-
European languages. The name Indo-European seems to have been invent-
ed by Dr Thomas Young, the well-known physicist and Egyptologist. The
first occurrence known of the word is in an article by him in The Quarterly
Review for 1813. Examination of the article, however, shows that Dr Young
meant by Indo-European something quite different from its ordinarily
accepted signification. For under the term he included not only the langu-
ages now known as Indo-European, but also Basque, Finnish, and Semitic
languages. The name Indo-Germanic, which was used by the German
philologist Klaproth as early as 1823, but the inventor of which is unknown,
is an attempt to indicate the family by the furthest east and west members
of the chain extending from India to the Atlantic ocean. The main langu-
ages of the family had been indicated in a famous address to the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, delivered by the President Sir William Jones in 17861.
He had the insight to observe that the sacred language of India (Sanskrit),
the language of Persia, the languages of Greece and Rome, the languages of
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, were all closely connected. To Sir William
Jones, as Chief Justice of Bengal, law was his profession and the compari-
son of languages only an amusement. But this epoch-making address laid
the foundations of Comparative Philology on which Bopp in his Comparative
Grammar built the first superstructure. But the study of this family of
languages has from the begining been beset with a suitable fallacy. There
has been throughout an almost constant confusion between the languages
and the persons who spoke them. It is hardly necessary to point out that
1. See Chapter II, p. 57.
58
## p. 59 (#93) ##############################################
III)
THE WIROS
59
a
in many parts of the world the speaker of a particular language at a given
time was not by lineal descent the representative of its speakers at an earlier
period. In the Island of Britain many persons of Welsh blood, many persons
of Irish Celtic and Scottish Celtic origin speak English. It is many centu- .
ries since it was observed that Normans and English who had settled in
Ireland had learned to speak the Irish language and had become more Irish
than the Irish themselves. It is well known that by descent the Bulgarians
are of Asiatic origin, and of an entirely different stock from the Slavs, a
branch of whose language is now their mother tongue. It is therefore clear
that it is impossible, without historical evidence, to be certain that the
language spoken by any particular people was the language of their ancestors
at a remote period. The name Indo-Germanic therefore suffers from the
ambiguity that it characterises not only languages but also peoples. As has
been suggested elsewhere, it would be well to abandon both the term Indo-
European and the term Indo-Germanic and adopt some entirely colourless
word which would indicate only the speakers of such languages. A
convenient term for the speakers of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic
languages would be the Wiros, this being the word for 'men' in the great
majority of the languages in question.
The advantage of such a term is clear, since all we know regarding the
physical characteristics of the first people who spoke languages of this nature
is that they were a white race. We cannot tell whether these Wiros were
long-headed or short-headed, tall or of little stature, brunette or fair. It
has been customary to imagine them as having something of the characteris-
tics which Tacitus describes as belonging to the German of the end of the
first century A. D. But all the evidence adduced in support of this is really
imaginary. What, therefore, can we say that we know of this early people ?
From words preserved in their languages, particularly in languages far sepa-
rated, and in circumstances where there is little likelihood of borrowing
from the one language to the other, we may gather something as to the
animals and the plants they knew, and perhaps a very little as to their indus-
tries. The close similarity between the various languages spoken by them
would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely cir.
cumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations
in common. Since the study of prehistoric man developed, many views
have been held as to the geographical position of this early community. Such
a confined area must have been separated from the outer world either by
great waters or by mountains. There are however, so far as we know, no
rivers in the western half of the Old World which at any period have pre-
sented an impassable barrier to man. In the evidence for the early history
of the speakers of these Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages there
is nothing which would lead us to suppose that they lived upon an island.
>
>
## p. 60 (#94) ##############################################
60
[CH.
THE ARYANS
9
9
B. C.
.
a
Indeed, it is very doubtful whether they possessed a word for the sea at all.
For the word mare which in Latin means 'the sea,' has its nearest relatives
in other languages amongst words which mean ‘moor' or 'swamp'. That
the climate in which they lived belonged to the temperate zone is shown by
the nature of the trees which a comparison of their languages Jeads us to
believe they knew. To their habitat we may assign, with considerble cer-
tainty, the oak, the beech, the willow, and some coniferous trees. The birch
seems to have been known to them and possibly the lime, less certainly the
elm. The fruits they knew are more uncertain than the forest trees. Many
species of fruit trees familiar to us have flourished in Europe since la te
geological times ; but at all periods men have been anxious to improve the
quality of their fruit, and in all probability the commoner cultivated forms
became known in northern and north-western Europe only as introduced by
the Romans in the period of their conquests beginning with the first century
Cherries have grown in the West from a very early period, but the
name itself supports the statement that the cultivated kind was introduced
by the great Lucullus in the first half of the first century B. c. from Cerasus
in Asia Minor, an area to which the Western world owes much of its fruit
and flowering shrubs. The ancient kings of Persia encouraged their satraps
to introduce new fruit trees and better kinds into the districts which they
ruled. There still exists a late copy of an early inscription in Greek in which
the King of Persia gives praise to one of his governors for his beneficent
action in this respect.
These Wiros were in all probability not a nomad but a settled people.
The useful animals best known to them were the ox and cow, the sheep, the
horse, the dog, the pig, and probably some species of deer. The ass, the
camel, and the elephant were apparently unknown to them in early times ;
and the great variety of words for the goat would lead us to suppose that
this animal also was of later introduction. The argument from language,
however, is of necessity inconclusive, because all nations occasionally give
animals with which they are familiar fanciful names. The Wiros seem also
to have been familiar with corn. If so, they must in all probability have
lived for a considerable part of the year in one situation ; for the planting
of corn implies care continued over many weeks or months—care which the
more primitive tribes have not been able to exercise. Of birds, we may
gather from the languages that they knew the goose and the duck. The
most familiar bird of prey was apparently the eagle. The wolf rd bear
were known, but not the lion or the tiger.
From these data is it possible to locate the primitive habitat from which
the speakers of these languages derived their origin? It is not likely to be
India, as some of the earlier investigators assumed, for neither flora nor
fauna, as determined by their language, is characteristic of this area, though
## p. 61 (#95) ##############################################
III]
HOME OF THE WIROS
61
some forest trees like the birch are more magnificent on Kinchin junga than
in any part of the Western world. Still less probable is the district of the
Pāmirs, one of the most cheerless regions on the face of the earth. Central
Asia, which has also been contended for as their home, is not probable, even
if we admit that its conspicuous lack of water, and consequent sterility in
many areas, is of later development. If indeed these early men knew the
beech, they must have lived to the west of a line drawn from Königsberg in
Prussia to the Crimea and continued thence through Asia Minor. In the
Northern plains of Europe there is no area which will satisfactorily fulfil the
conditions. As we know it in primitive times it is a land of great forests.
No country, however, which had not much variety of geographical features
could have been the habitat of both the horse and the cow. The horse is a
native of the open plain ; the foal is able to run by its mother from the first,
and accompanies her always in her wanderings. The calf, on the other hand,
is at first feeble, unable to walk or see its way distinctly, and therefore is
hidden by its mother in a brake while she goes further afield to find suitable
pasture. Is there any part of Europe which combines pastoral and agri-
cultural country in close connexion, which has in combination hot low-lying
plains suitable for the growth of grain, and rich upland pasture suitable for
flocks and herds, and at the same time trees and birds of the character
already described ? There is apparently only one such area in Europe, the
area which is bounded on its eastern side by the Carpathians, on its south
by the Balkans, on its western side by the Austrian Alps and the Böhmer
Wald, and on the north by the Erzgebirge and the mountains which link them
up with the Carpathians. This is a fertile and well-watered land with great
corn plains in the low-lying levels of Hungary, but also possessing steppe-
like areas which make it one of the best horse-breeding areas in Europe,
while, in the uplands which surround it and run across it, as in the case of
the Bakony Wald, south-west of Buda-Pesth, and still more markedly
in Bohemia, there is high ground suitable for the pasturing of sheep. The
forests of the mountains which engirdle it supply excellent mast for the
maintenance of swine whether wild or tame. The beech which dies out fur-
ther south is found here and all the other great forest trees which have been
already mentioned. The country is large enough to maintain a very consi-
derable population which however was likely in primitive times to migrate
from it only under the stress of dire necessity, because it is so well bounded
on all sides by lofty mountains with comparatively few passes, that exit from
it even in more advanced ages has not been easy. If this area indeed were
the original habitat – and, curiously enough, though it fulfils so many of the
conditions, it seems not before to have been suggested—the spread of the
Indo-Germanic languages becomes easily intelligible. No doubt the most
inviting direction from which to issue from this land in search of new
## p. 62 (#96) ##############################################
62
[Ch.
THE ARY ANS
homes would be along the course of the Danube into Wallachia, from
which it is not difficult to pass south towards the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles.
A popular view locates the home of the Wiros in the southern steppes
of Russia, but that area, though possessing a very fertile soil, has not on the
whole the characteristics which the words common to the various Indo-
Germanic languages, and at the same time unborrowed from one to another,
postulate. It has also been commonly assumed that the eastern branches of
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides. Here we are met by a new difficulty.
The Caspian is an inland sea which is steadily becoming more shallow and
contracting in area. Even if it had been little larger than it is at present,
the way into Turkestān between it and the Aral Sea leads through the
gloomy desert of Ust Urt which, supposing it existed at the period when
migration took place, must have been impassable to primitive men moving
with their families and their flocks and herds. But there is good evidence
to show that at a period not very remote the Caspian Sea extended much
further to the north, and ended in an area of swamps and quicksands,
while at an earlier period which, perhaps, however, does not transcend that
of the migration, it spread far to the east and included within its area the
Sea of Aral and possibly much of the low-lying plains beyond. Turkestan
in primitive times would therefore not have been easily accessible by this
route. There is in fact no evidence that the ancestors of the Persians,
Afghāns, and Hindus passed through Turkestān at all. Nor is passage
through the Caucasus probable : to people wandering from Europe the
Caucasus was a remote and inhospitable region, so remote and so inhospi-
table that Aeschylus selected it as the place of torment for Prometheus and
tells us that it was a pathless wilderness. There is indeed no reason to
suppose that earlier men followed any other route than that which has been
taken by successive waves of migratory populations in historical times.
That path leads across either the Bosporus or Dardanelles, across the
plateau of Asia Minor, or long its fertile slopes on the south side of the
Black Sea. A European people which would reach Persia on foot must
strike the upper waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. The fertile country
with an alluvial soil of tremendous depth, which lies between these two
rivers, was the centre of one of the earliest and one of the most powerful
civilisations of ancient times. Migrants would there find their progress to
the south obstructed and baulked. But by passing south of Lake Van and
through the mountains which lie between it and Lake Urmia, they would
find an access to the route which travellers still follow between Tabriz and
Teherān. From there they would advance most likely along the southern
## p. 63 (#97) ##############################################
III ]
MIGRATIONS
63
end of the Caspian towards Mashhad, whence in all ages there has been a
well-frequented route to Herāt. At one time these peoples certainly extend-
ed far to the east and north, to the country then known as Bactria, now
Balkh, and carried their conquests into the famous region which lies bet-
ween the two rivers, the Amu Daria, or Oxus, and the Syr Daria.
What evidence have we of such a migration, and, if it took place, what
was its date ? In all probability the migration of peoples from the primitive
habitat, which we have located in the areas which we now call Hungary,
Austria, and Bohemia, did not take place at a very remote period. It is
indeed probable that all the facts of this migration, so far as we know them,
can be explained without postulating an earlier beginning for the migrations
than 2500 B. C. It must be remembered, however, that these migrations
were not into unpeopled areas, that before they reached the frontiers of
India, or even Mesopotamia, the Wiros must have had many hard struggles
with populations already existing, who regarded their passage as they would
that of some great cloud of destroying locusts which devoured their sub-
stance and left them to perish by starvation, or to survive in the misery of
captives to cruel conquerors. We must suppose that success could have
been achieved only by wave after wave following at no long intervals : for if
their successors delayed too long, the migrants of the first advancing wave
were likely to be cut off or absorbed. In historical times, we know that
many tribes thus passed into Asia from Europe, among them the Phrygians,
the Mysians, and Bithynians. It has been plausibly argued that the Arme-
nian stock was the first wave of the Phrygian advance, and evidence can be ·
adduced which makes it probable that still earlier waves of conquering
tribes advancing from west to east were represented by the remote ancestors
of modern Persians and modern Hindus.
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. They were introduced into India
at different periods, and probably by different routes. Brāhmi is found
throughout the sub-continent and in Ceylon. The home of Kharoshțhī is
in the North-West ; and whenever it is found elsewhere it has been imported.
Brāhmi has been traced back to the Phoenician type of writing
represented by the inscription in which Mesha, king of Moab (c. 850 B. C. ),
records his successful revolt against the kingdom of Israel. It was probably
brought into India through Mesopotamia, as a result of the early commerce
by sea between Babylon and the ports of Western India. It is the parent
of all the modern Indian alphabets.
Kharoshthi is derived from the Aramaic script, which was introduced
into India in the sixth century B. C. , when the North-West was under Persian
rule, and when Aramaic was used as a common means of communication for
the purposes of government throughout the Persian empire. That originally
the Aramaic language and alphabet pure and simple were thus imported
into Gandhāra, as Bühler conjectured in 1895 (W. Z. K. M. , IX, p. 49), has been
proved recently by Sir John Marshall's discovery of an Aramaic inscription
at Taxila'. When the first Kharoshțhi inscriptions appear in the third century
B. C. , the alphabet has been adapted to express the additional sounds required
by an Indian language ; but, unlike Brāhmi which has been more highly
elaborated, it still bears evident traces of its Semitic origin both in its
direction from right to left and in its imperfect representation of the vowels
In the third century A. D. Kharoshțhi appears more fully developed in
Chinese Turkestān where its existence must be attributed to the Kushāņa
empire. In this region, as in India, it was eventually superseded by Brāhmi.
The decipherment of the inscriptions and coins, and the determination
of the eras in which many of them are dated, have introduced into the
obscurity of early Indian history a degree of chronological order which could
not have been conceived at the time when the study of Sanskrit began in
1. A. Cowley, J. R. A, S. , 1915, p. 346.
## p. 56 (#90) ##############################################
56
(CH.
SOURCES OF HISTORY
Europe. The bare fact that India possessed ancient classical literatures like
those of Greece and Rome can scarcely be said to have been known to the
Western World before the last quarter of the eighteenth century. At various
intervals during more than a hundred years previously a few isolated
students chiefly missionaries, those pioneers of learning, had indeed pub-
lished accounts of Sanskrit literature and Sanskrit grammar; but it was only
when a practical need made itself felt, and the serious attention of the
administrators of the East India Company's possessions was directed to the
importance of studying Sanskrit, that the investigation by Europeans of the
ancient languages and literatures of India began in earnest. To meet the
requirements of the law-courts the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, had
ordered a digest to be prepared by pandits from the authoritative Sanskrit
law-books ; but when the work was finished no one could be found able to
trarslate it into English. It was therefore necessary to have it translated
first into Persian, and from the Persian an English version was made and
published by Halhed in 1776. The object-lesson was not lost. Sanskrit
was evidently of practical utility; and the East India Company adopted, and
never afterwards neglected to pursue, the enlightened policy of promoting
the study of the ancient languages and literatures in which the traditions of
its subjets were enshrined. It remained for Sir William Jones, Judge of the
High Court at Calcutta, to place this study on a firm basis by the establish-
ment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784.
The inauguration of the study of India's past history came at a fortu-
nate moment ; for it is precisely to the last quarter of the eighteenth century
that we may trace the growth of the modern scientific spirit of investiga-
tion, which may be defined as the recognition of the fact that no object and
no idea stands alone by itself as an isolated phenomenon. All objects and
all ideas form Jinks in a series ; and therefore it follows that nowhere,
whether in the realm of nature or in the sphere of human activity, can the
present be understood without reference to the past. The first manifestation
of this new spirit of enquiry, which was soon to transform all learning, was
seen in the study of language. The first Western students of the ancient
languages of India were statesmen and scholars who had been educated in
the classical literatures of ancient Greece and Rome. They were impressed
by the fact, which must indeed be apparent to everyone who opens a
Sanskrit grammar, that Sanskrit, both in its vocabulary and in its inflex-
ions, presents a striking similarity to Greek and Latin. This observation
immediately raised the question : How is this similarity to be explained ?
The true answer was suggested by Sir William Jones, whom that sagacious
observer, Dr Johnson, recognised as “one of the most enlightened of the
sons of men? . ' In 1786, Sir William Jones wrote :
1. G. Birbeck Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, II, p. 363.
## p. 57 (#91) ##############################################
II ]
THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT
57
>
The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure ;
more perfect than the Greek, more copoius than the Latin, and more exquisitely re-
fined than either ; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of
verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by acci-
dent; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing
them to have sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. There
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick
and the Celtick, though blended with a different idiom, had the same origin with the
Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.
These observations contain the germs of the science of Comparative
Philology. The conception of a family of languages, in which all the indi-
vidual languages and dialects are related as descendants from a common
ancestor, suggested the application to language of the historical and com-
parative method of investigation. The results have been as remarkable as
they were unexpected. In the first place, the historical method has shown
that living languages grow and change in accordance with certain definite
laws, while the comparative study of the lines of development which may be
traced historically in the different Indo-European languages has confirmed
Sir William Jones' hypothesis that they are all derived from some common
source,' which, though it no longer exists, may be restored hypothetically.
In the second place, since words preserve the record both of material objects
and of ideas, a study of vocabularies enables us to gain some knowledge of
the state of civilisation, the social institutions, and the religious beliefs
of the speakers of the different languages before the period of literary
records. Some indication of the light which Comparative Philology thus
throws on the history of the Āryan invaders of India is given in the follow-
ing Chapter
## p. 58 (#92) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
THE ĀRYANS
Throughout the greater part of Europe and of Asia as far as India
there exist now, or can be shown to have existed in past time, a great
number of languages, the forms and sounds of which when scientifically
examined are seen to have a common origin. The languages in question are
generally known to scholars under the name of the Indo-Germanic, or Indo-
European languages. The name Indo-European seems to have been invent-
ed by Dr Thomas Young, the well-known physicist and Egyptologist. The
first occurrence known of the word is in an article by him in The Quarterly
Review for 1813. Examination of the article, however, shows that Dr Young
meant by Indo-European something quite different from its ordinarily
accepted signification. For under the term he included not only the langu-
ages now known as Indo-European, but also Basque, Finnish, and Semitic
languages. The name Indo-Germanic, which was used by the German
philologist Klaproth as early as 1823, but the inventor of which is unknown,
is an attempt to indicate the family by the furthest east and west members
of the chain extending from India to the Atlantic ocean. The main langu-
ages of the family had been indicated in a famous address to the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, delivered by the President Sir William Jones in 17861.
He had the insight to observe that the sacred language of India (Sanskrit),
the language of Persia, the languages of Greece and Rome, the languages of
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, were all closely connected. To Sir William
Jones, as Chief Justice of Bengal, law was his profession and the compari-
son of languages only an amusement. But this epoch-making address laid
the foundations of Comparative Philology on which Bopp in his Comparative
Grammar built the first superstructure. But the study of this family of
languages has from the begining been beset with a suitable fallacy. There
has been throughout an almost constant confusion between the languages
and the persons who spoke them. It is hardly necessary to point out that
1. See Chapter II, p. 57.
58
## p. 59 (#93) ##############################################
III)
THE WIROS
59
a
in many parts of the world the speaker of a particular language at a given
time was not by lineal descent the representative of its speakers at an earlier
period. In the Island of Britain many persons of Welsh blood, many persons
of Irish Celtic and Scottish Celtic origin speak English. It is many centu- .
ries since it was observed that Normans and English who had settled in
Ireland had learned to speak the Irish language and had become more Irish
than the Irish themselves. It is well known that by descent the Bulgarians
are of Asiatic origin, and of an entirely different stock from the Slavs, a
branch of whose language is now their mother tongue. It is therefore clear
that it is impossible, without historical evidence, to be certain that the
language spoken by any particular people was the language of their ancestors
at a remote period. The name Indo-Germanic therefore suffers from the
ambiguity that it characterises not only languages but also peoples. As has
been suggested elsewhere, it would be well to abandon both the term Indo-
European and the term Indo-Germanic and adopt some entirely colourless
word which would indicate only the speakers of such languages. A
convenient term for the speakers of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic
languages would be the Wiros, this being the word for 'men' in the great
majority of the languages in question.
The advantage of such a term is clear, since all we know regarding the
physical characteristics of the first people who spoke languages of this nature
is that they were a white race. We cannot tell whether these Wiros were
long-headed or short-headed, tall or of little stature, brunette or fair. It
has been customary to imagine them as having something of the characteris-
tics which Tacitus describes as belonging to the German of the end of the
first century A. D. But all the evidence adduced in support of this is really
imaginary. What, therefore, can we say that we know of this early people ?
From words preserved in their languages, particularly in languages far sepa-
rated, and in circumstances where there is little likelihood of borrowing
from the one language to the other, we may gather something as to the
animals and the plants they knew, and perhaps a very little as to their indus-
tries. The close similarity between the various languages spoken by them
would lead us to infer that they must have lived for long in a severely cir.
cumscribed area, so that their peculiarities developed for many generations
in common. Since the study of prehistoric man developed, many views
have been held as to the geographical position of this early community. Such
a confined area must have been separated from the outer world either by
great waters or by mountains. There are however, so far as we know, no
rivers in the western half of the Old World which at any period have pre-
sented an impassable barrier to man. In the evidence for the early history
of the speakers of these Indo-European or Indo-Germanic languages there
is nothing which would lead us to suppose that they lived upon an island.
>
>
## p. 60 (#94) ##############################################
60
[CH.
THE ARYANS
9
9
B. C.
.
a
Indeed, it is very doubtful whether they possessed a word for the sea at all.
For the word mare which in Latin means 'the sea,' has its nearest relatives
in other languages amongst words which mean ‘moor' or 'swamp'. That
the climate in which they lived belonged to the temperate zone is shown by
the nature of the trees which a comparison of their languages Jeads us to
believe they knew. To their habitat we may assign, with considerble cer-
tainty, the oak, the beech, the willow, and some coniferous trees. The birch
seems to have been known to them and possibly the lime, less certainly the
elm. The fruits they knew are more uncertain than the forest trees. Many
species of fruit trees familiar to us have flourished in Europe since la te
geological times ; but at all periods men have been anxious to improve the
quality of their fruit, and in all probability the commoner cultivated forms
became known in northern and north-western Europe only as introduced by
the Romans in the period of their conquests beginning with the first century
Cherries have grown in the West from a very early period, but the
name itself supports the statement that the cultivated kind was introduced
by the great Lucullus in the first half of the first century B. c. from Cerasus
in Asia Minor, an area to which the Western world owes much of its fruit
and flowering shrubs. The ancient kings of Persia encouraged their satraps
to introduce new fruit trees and better kinds into the districts which they
ruled. There still exists a late copy of an early inscription in Greek in which
the King of Persia gives praise to one of his governors for his beneficent
action in this respect.
These Wiros were in all probability not a nomad but a settled people.
The useful animals best known to them were the ox and cow, the sheep, the
horse, the dog, the pig, and probably some species of deer. The ass, the
camel, and the elephant were apparently unknown to them in early times ;
and the great variety of words for the goat would lead us to suppose that
this animal also was of later introduction. The argument from language,
however, is of necessity inconclusive, because all nations occasionally give
animals with which they are familiar fanciful names. The Wiros seem also
to have been familiar with corn. If so, they must in all probability have
lived for a considerable part of the year in one situation ; for the planting
of corn implies care continued over many weeks or months—care which the
more primitive tribes have not been able to exercise. Of birds, we may
gather from the languages that they knew the goose and the duck. The
most familiar bird of prey was apparently the eagle. The wolf rd bear
were known, but not the lion or the tiger.
From these data is it possible to locate the primitive habitat from which
the speakers of these languages derived their origin? It is not likely to be
India, as some of the earlier investigators assumed, for neither flora nor
fauna, as determined by their language, is characteristic of this area, though
## p. 61 (#95) ##############################################
III]
HOME OF THE WIROS
61
some forest trees like the birch are more magnificent on Kinchin junga than
in any part of the Western world. Still less probable is the district of the
Pāmirs, one of the most cheerless regions on the face of the earth. Central
Asia, which has also been contended for as their home, is not probable, even
if we admit that its conspicuous lack of water, and consequent sterility in
many areas, is of later development. If indeed these early men knew the
beech, they must have lived to the west of a line drawn from Königsberg in
Prussia to the Crimea and continued thence through Asia Minor. In the
Northern plains of Europe there is no area which will satisfactorily fulfil the
conditions. As we know it in primitive times it is a land of great forests.
No country, however, which had not much variety of geographical features
could have been the habitat of both the horse and the cow. The horse is a
native of the open plain ; the foal is able to run by its mother from the first,
and accompanies her always in her wanderings. The calf, on the other hand,
is at first feeble, unable to walk or see its way distinctly, and therefore is
hidden by its mother in a brake while she goes further afield to find suitable
pasture. Is there any part of Europe which combines pastoral and agri-
cultural country in close connexion, which has in combination hot low-lying
plains suitable for the growth of grain, and rich upland pasture suitable for
flocks and herds, and at the same time trees and birds of the character
already described ? There is apparently only one such area in Europe, the
area which is bounded on its eastern side by the Carpathians, on its south
by the Balkans, on its western side by the Austrian Alps and the Böhmer
Wald, and on the north by the Erzgebirge and the mountains which link them
up with the Carpathians. This is a fertile and well-watered land with great
corn plains in the low-lying levels of Hungary, but also possessing steppe-
like areas which make it one of the best horse-breeding areas in Europe,
while, in the uplands which surround it and run across it, as in the case of
the Bakony Wald, south-west of Buda-Pesth, and still more markedly
in Bohemia, there is high ground suitable for the pasturing of sheep. The
forests of the mountains which engirdle it supply excellent mast for the
maintenance of swine whether wild or tame. The beech which dies out fur-
ther south is found here and all the other great forest trees which have been
already mentioned. The country is large enough to maintain a very consi-
derable population which however was likely in primitive times to migrate
from it only under the stress of dire necessity, because it is so well bounded
on all sides by lofty mountains with comparatively few passes, that exit from
it even in more advanced ages has not been easy. If this area indeed were
the original habitat – and, curiously enough, though it fulfils so many of the
conditions, it seems not before to have been suggested—the spread of the
Indo-Germanic languages becomes easily intelligible. No doubt the most
inviting direction from which to issue from this land in search of new
## p. 62 (#96) ##############################################
62
[Ch.
THE ARY ANS
homes would be along the course of the Danube into Wallachia, from
which it is not difficult to pass south towards the Bosporus and the
Dardanelles.
A popular view locates the home of the Wiros in the southern steppes
of Russia, but that area, though possessing a very fertile soil, has not on the
whole the characteristics which the words common to the various Indo-
Germanic languages, and at the same time unborrowed from one to another,
postulate. It has also been commonly assumed that the eastern branches of
the family found their way into Asia by the north of the Black Sea and
either round the north of the Caspian or through the one pass which the
great barrier of the Caucasus provides. Here we are met by a new difficulty.
The Caspian is an inland sea which is steadily becoming more shallow and
contracting in area. Even if it had been little larger than it is at present,
the way into Turkestān between it and the Aral Sea leads through the
gloomy desert of Ust Urt which, supposing it existed at the period when
migration took place, must have been impassable to primitive men moving
with their families and their flocks and herds. But there is good evidence
to show that at a period not very remote the Caspian Sea extended much
further to the north, and ended in an area of swamps and quicksands,
while at an earlier period which, perhaps, however, does not transcend that
of the migration, it spread far to the east and included within its area the
Sea of Aral and possibly much of the low-lying plains beyond. Turkestan
in primitive times would therefore not have been easily accessible by this
route. There is in fact no evidence that the ancestors of the Persians,
Afghāns, and Hindus passed through Turkestān at all. Nor is passage
through the Caucasus probable : to people wandering from Europe the
Caucasus was a remote and inhospitable region, so remote and so inhospi-
table that Aeschylus selected it as the place of torment for Prometheus and
tells us that it was a pathless wilderness. There is indeed no reason to
suppose that earlier men followed any other route than that which has been
taken by successive waves of migratory populations in historical times.
That path leads across either the Bosporus or Dardanelles, across the
plateau of Asia Minor, or long its fertile slopes on the south side of the
Black Sea. A European people which would reach Persia on foot must
strike the upper waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. The fertile country
with an alluvial soil of tremendous depth, which lies between these two
rivers, was the centre of one of the earliest and one of the most powerful
civilisations of ancient times. Migrants would there find their progress to
the south obstructed and baulked. But by passing south of Lake Van and
through the mountains which lie between it and Lake Urmia, they would
find an access to the route which travellers still follow between Tabriz and
Teherān. From there they would advance most likely along the southern
## p. 63 (#97) ##############################################
III ]
MIGRATIONS
63
end of the Caspian towards Mashhad, whence in all ages there has been a
well-frequented route to Herāt. At one time these peoples certainly extend-
ed far to the east and north, to the country then known as Bactria, now
Balkh, and carried their conquests into the famous region which lies bet-
ween the two rivers, the Amu Daria, or Oxus, and the Syr Daria.
What evidence have we of such a migration, and, if it took place, what
was its date ? In all probability the migration of peoples from the primitive
habitat, which we have located in the areas which we now call Hungary,
Austria, and Bohemia, did not take place at a very remote period. It is
indeed probable that all the facts of this migration, so far as we know them,
can be explained without postulating an earlier beginning for the migrations
than 2500 B. C. It must be remembered, however, that these migrations
were not into unpeopled areas, that before they reached the frontiers of
India, or even Mesopotamia, the Wiros must have had many hard struggles
with populations already existing, who regarded their passage as they would
that of some great cloud of destroying locusts which devoured their sub-
stance and left them to perish by starvation, or to survive in the misery of
captives to cruel conquerors. We must suppose that success could have
been achieved only by wave after wave following at no long intervals : for if
their successors delayed too long, the migrants of the first advancing wave
were likely to be cut off or absorbed. In historical times, we know that
many tribes thus passed into Asia from Europe, among them the Phrygians,
the Mysians, and Bithynians. It has been plausibly argued that the Arme-
nian stock was the first wave of the Phrygian advance, and evidence can be ·
adduced which makes it probable that still earlier waves of conquering
tribes advancing from west to east were represented by the remote ancestors
of modern Persians and modern Hindus.
