This is one of the facts which show the comparative
simplicity
of the age of
the Rigveda as compared with the next period of Indian history.
the Rigveda as compared with the next period of Indian history.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Next in order above the grāma in the orthodox theory
was the vic or 'canton,' while a group of cantons made up the jana, 'people. '
This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece,
Italy, Germany and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the
graduated hierarchy of family or households, vis, zantu, and dahyu? . But for
Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It
is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness - so
that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a jana and at
another a grāma -- but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination
between the grāma and the viç is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian
evidence tells against the theory that the viç is removed by the grāma from
the family in the narrow sense : the more legitimate interpretation is to see
in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the
jana as parallel to the zantu, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda
the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of
aggregates of janas, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-
one janas of the two Viakaraņas who are mentioned in one passage of the
Samhitā. The viç will thus take its place beside the Irānian vis as a clan
as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the
Latin gens, and the Greek genoe. It is possible that the grāma is originally
the gens in it military aspect, but even that it is not certain, for the word
may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty
1 See Zimmer, Altindisches Leten, pp. 159, 160 ; Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung, und
Herkunft der Indogermanen, p. 143.
2 Zimmer, l. c. ; Geiger, Ostiramische Kultur, p.
## p. 82 (#116) #############################################
82
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
>
for the period of the Rigveda whether the grāma contained the whole of a
viç, or part of a viç, or parts of several viças. But amid much that is
conjectural it is clear that the viç was not a normal unit for purposes of
government, for the term viçpali, ‘lord of a vis', has not in any passage the
technical sense of 'lord of a canton. ' On the other hand, the grāma as a
unit is recognised by the use of the term grāmaņi, 'leader of a village,' an
officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both
military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or
powers.
While the sense "clan' is comparatively rare, the word viç not
unfrequently in the plural denotes 'subjects': so we hear of the viças of
Tļiņaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the viças of the Tșitsus,
the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the
sense clans' is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering
'clans' which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations
of the Bharatas and the Tșitsus, the Tșitsus being regarded as a people
opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the
Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the jana, a term which in Vedic
use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the
tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be
shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās
was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly
it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great
kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of
kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no
doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark
aboriginal population.
The question now presents itself as to the extent to which in the
period of the Rigveda the caste system had been developed. The existence of
the caste system in any form in the age of the Rigveda has been denied by
high authority, though it has been asserted of late with increasing insistence. ?
In one sense, indeed, its presence in the Rigveda cannot be disputed. In the
Purushasūkta, the four castes of the later texts, Brāhmaṇa (“priest'), Rājanya
('prince' or more broadly 'warrior'), Vaiçya ('commoner'), and Çūdra are
mentioned. But this hymn is admittedly late and can prove nothing for the
state of affairs prevailing when the bulk of the Rigveda was composed. On
the other hand, as we have seen, the distinction between the Āryan colour
(varna) and that of the aborigines is essential and forms a basis of caste.
1 sq.
Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. 12, pp. 239 sq. ; Zimmer, Altisndishes Leben,
pp. 185—203 ; Weber, Indische Studien, vol. X, pp.
2See Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, p. 146 ; Oldenberg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. LI,
pp. 267 sq.
## p. 83 (#117) #############################################
IV ]
ORIGINS OF THE CASTE SYSTEM
83
The question is thus narrowed down to the consideration of the arguments
for and against the view that in the Āryans themselves caste divisions were
appearing. On the one hand, it is argued that in the period of Vasishtha
and Viçvāmitra, when the great poetry of the Rigveda was being produced,
neither the priestly class nor the warrior class was hereditary. The warriors
of the community were the agricultural and industrial classes, and the
priesthood was not yet hereditary. It has been held that the Brāhman priest
was not necessarily the member of an hereditary class at all, that the term
could be applied as well to any person who was distinguished by genius or
virtue, or who for some reason was deemed specially receptive of the divine
inspiration. The growth of the caste system is traced on this hypothesis to
the complication of life ensuing on the further penetration of the Āryans
from the Punjab towards the east. The petty tribes found it necessary, in
order to defeat the solid forces of the aborigines, to mass themselves into
centralised kingdoms. The petty tribal princes thus lost their full royal rank,
but found employment and profit instead in becoming a standing armed force,
ready to resist sudden incursion or to crush the attempts at rebellion of the
defeated aborigines. On the other hand, the industrial and agricultural
population, relying on the protection of the warrior class, abandoned the
use of arms. Together with the growth in the size of the kingdom and the
increasing complexity of civilisation, the simple ritual of an earlier period,
when the king himself could sacrifice for his people, grew to an extent which
rendered this impracticable, while at the same time an ever increasing
importance came to be attached to the faithful and exact performance of the
rites and the preservation of the traditional formulae. The result of this
process was, it is suggested, the growth of a priesthood, of a warrior class,
and of a third class, the Vaiçya, sharply distinguished from one another and
strictly hereditary. But the comparatively late date of this development is
shown by the fact that in later times the inhabitants of the North-West, the
home of the Rigveda, were regarded as semi-barbarians by those of the
Middle Country, in which the Brāhmanical civilisation had developed itself,
on the ground that they did not follow the strict caste system.
While there is much of truth in this view, it must be admitted that
it exaggerates the freedom of the Rigveda from caste. As we have seen, the
probabilities are that the main, though not the earliest, part of the Samhitā
had its origin not in the Punjab proper but in the sacred country of later
Brāhmanism, the land known in the Samhitās of the succeeding period as
Brahmăvarta. Moreover, there is no actual proof in the Rigveda that the
priesthood was not then a closed hereditary class. The term Brāhmaṇa, ‘son
of a Brahmā,' seems, on the contrary, to show that the priesthood was
normally hereditary, and there is no instance which can be quoted of any
person who is said to be other than a priest appearing to exercise priestly
## p. 84 (#118) #############################################
84
(ca.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
functions. We are told that there is a case of a king exercising the functions
of domestic priest and sacrificing himself for his people, but the alleged case,
that of Devāpi, rests only on an assertion of a commentator on the hymn
(x, 98), in which Devāpi appears, that he was originally a king. Even, how-
ever, if this were the case, it must be remembered that even after the
complete establishment of the caste system, it was still the privilege of kings
to exercise some priestly functions, such as that of the study of the nature
of the absolute, a practice ascribed to them in the Upanishads. The
arguments regarding the warrior class rest on a misunderstanding. Even in
the latest Vedic period we have no ground to suppose that there was a
special class which reserved its energies for war alone, and that the industrial
population and the agriculturists allowed the fate of their tribe to be decided
by contest between warrior bands, but the Rigveda certainly knows of a
ruling class, the Kshatriya, and the Vedic kingship was normally hereditary,
so that we may well believe that even then there existed, though perhaps
only in embryo, a class of nobles, who are aptly named in the term of the
Purushasūkta, Rājanyas, as being 'men of kingly family. There are traces,
moreover, of the division of the tribe into the holy power (brahman), the
kingly power (kshatra), and the commonalty (viç), and, while it is true that
the caste system is only in process of development in the Rigveda, it seems
impossible to deny that much of the groundwork upon which the later
elaborate structure was based was already in existence.
So far, our sources of knowledge, if imperfect, have given us material
sufficient to sketch the main outlines of Vedic society. Unhappily, when we
turn to consider more closely the details of the political organisation proper,
the evidence becomes painfully scanty and inadequate. The tribes of the
Rigveda were certainly under kingly rule: there is no passage in the Rigveda
which suggests any other form of government, while the king under the style
"Rājan' is a frequent figure. This is only what might be expected in a com-
munity which was not merely patriarchal-a fact whence the king drew bis
occasional style of vicpati. 'Head of the vic'- but also engaged in constant
warfare against both Āryan and aboriginal foes. Moreover, the kingship was
normally hereditary: even in the scanty notices of the Rigveda we can trace
lines of succession such as that of Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and
Sudās, or Durgaha, Girikshit, Purukutsa, and Trasadasyu, or Mitrātithi,
Kuruçravaņa, and Upamaçravas. In some cases it has been argued that
election by the cantons was possible! ; but this interpretation rests only on
the improbable view that viçaḥ denotes not 'subjects' but cantons'; and the
| See Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 162 sq. ; Weber, Indische Studien, vol.
XVII, p. 189 ; Bloomfield, Sacred Books of the Eust, vol. XLII, p. 330. That sometimes
election actually took place is quite probable ; but the passages quoted do not show
this ; see Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, p. 303.
## p. 85 (#119) #############################################
IV ]
POLITICAL ORGANISATION
85
.
idea has no support in later literature. The activity of the sovereign on
which most stress is laid is his duty of protecting his subjects; and even the
Rigveda, despite its sacerdotal character, allows us to catch some glimpses
of the warlike deeds of such men as Divodāsa, Sudās, and Trasadasyu. Of
the king's functions in peace the Rigveda is silent, beyond showing that
he was expected to maintain a large body of priests to perform the sacrifices
for him and his people. From his subjects he was marked out by his
glittering apparel, his palace, and his retinue, which doubtless included the
princes of the royal house as well as mere retainers. To maintain his state
he had the tribute paid by conquered tribes and the gifts of his people,
which, once proffered freely, had doubtless become fixed payments, which
the king could exact, if denied. Doubtless, too, when lands were conquered
from the aborigires or from other Aryan tribes, large booty in land and
slaves and cattle would be meted out to the king; but the Rigveda contains
no hint that he was considered as owner of the land of the people. Nor in
that Samhitā is there any trace that the king, has developed from the
priest : if that was the case in India the distinction lies far beyond the
period of the Rigveda.
Of the entourage of the king and his servants we learn almost nothing.
The senānī, 'leader of the army,' who appears in a few hymns, may have
been a general appointed by the king to lead an expedition of too little im-
portance to require his own intervention. The grāmaņī probably led in war
a minor portion of the host and was identical with the vrājapati mentioned
elsewhere. Far more important, in the estimation at least of the composers
of the hymns, was the purohita or domestic priest, whose position represent-
ed the height of a priest's ambition. Nor, after allowing for priestly partia-
lity and exaggeration, can we deny the importance of the Purohita amongst
a people who followed the guiding in religious matters of an hereditary
priesthood. The Vedic Purohita was the forerunner of the Brāhman states-
men who from time to time in India have shown conspicuous ability in the
management of affairs ; and there is no reason to doubt that a Viçvāmitra
or a Vasishtha was a most important element of the government of the early
Vedic realm. It is clear, too, from the hymns which are attributed to the
families of these sages, that the Purohita accompanied the king to battle,
and seconded his efforts for victory by his prayers and spells. In return for
his faithful service the rewards of the Purohita were doubtless large : the
dānastutis of the Rigveda tell of the generous gifts of patrons to the poets,
and we may safely assume that the largest donations were those of kings to
the Purohitas. It is significant of the social arrangements of the time that
the gifts enumerated are all gifts of personal property ; land was evidently
not then a normal form of gift, though we may conjecture that, even at this
early period, the king might confer on a priest or other servant the right to
## p. 86 (#120) #############################################
86
[ch.
TAE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
receive some portion of the gifts in kind which were clearly no inconsider-
able part of the royal revenues.
The power of the king cannot have been in normal circumstances
arbitrary or probably very great. "There stood beside him as the mode of
expression of the will of the people the assembly, which is denoted by the
terms samiti and sabha in the Samhitā. It has been proposed by Ludwig to
see in these two terms the designations of two different forms of assembly :
the one would be the assembly of the whole people, while the other would
be an analogue of the Homeric council of elders, a select body to which
the great men of the tribe, the Maghavans, alone would go to take counsel
with the king. Zimmer? , on the other hand, sees in the samiti the popular
assembly of the tribe, in the sabhā the assembly of the village. But
neither view appears to be acceptable. There is no distinction in the texts
which would justify us in contrasting sabhā and samiti in either of the
ways suggested : rather it seems the samiti is the assembly of the people
for the business of the tribe, the sabhā particularly the place of assembly,
which served besides as a centre of social gatherings. The king's presence
in the samiti is clearly referred to ; and there seems no reason to doubt
that on great occasions the whole of the men of the tribe gathered there to
deliberate, or at least to decide, on the courses laid before them by the
great men of the tribe. But we are reduced to analogy with the Homeric
assembly for any conception of the action of the assembly; for, per haps
owing to the nature of the sources, nothing is known of its part in Vedic
life. If indeed the king was ever elected by the cantons, the election
tock place in the samiti ; but the theory that the king was ever elected has,
as has been already said, nothing to support it.
In accordance with the apparently undeveloped condition of political
organisation, we learn little of the administration of justice. That the king
exercised criminal and civil jurisdiction, assisted by assessors, is a conclusion
which must rest for its plausibility on analogy and on the later practice in
India ; for no passage in the Rigveda definitely alludes to the sovereign as
acting in either capacity. It is therefore at least probable that his functions
as judge were still confined within narrow limits. One word in the Rigveda
shows that the system of wergeld was in full force, a man being given the
epithet çatadāya, which denotes that the price of his blood was a hundred
cows. In one hymn the Paņi, whose niggardliness made him the chief object
of dislike to the greedy Vedic poets, is declared to be a man only in so far as
he has a wergeld, here called vairadeya, 'that which is to be paid in respect
of enmity. ' The crime, however, of which most is recorded in the Rigveda
is that of theft, including burglary, house-breaking, and highway robbery,
crimes which clearly must have been of frequent occurrence. The punish-
1 Rigveda, vol. III, p. 253. 2 Altindisches Leben, pp. 172-4.
>
## p. 87 (#121) #############################################
IV ]
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
87
ment of the thief seems to have rested with the person wronged : there are
clear allusions to binding the thief in stocks, presumably with a view to
induce his relatives to pay back to the aggrieved man the loss he has sus-
tained. In one passage of the Rigveda there is a probable reference to the
employment of trained men to recover stolen cattle, just as the Khojis of
the Punjab down to modern times were expert at this difficult employment.
Of death as a punishment for theft, as in later times and in other primitive
societies, curiously enough nothing appears in the Rigveda.
There is hardly any mention of other forms of crime in the Rigveda.
It appears clear that marriage of brother and sister was regarded as incest,
and apparently marriage of father and daughter was placed in the same
category of wrongful actions, as it certainly was in the later Samhitās,
where the union of Prajāpati, one aspect of the supreme god, with his
daughter is at once punished by the other gods. Prostitution was certainly
not unknown, but in other respects morality seems to have been fairly
high : there is no sufficient ground for attributing to the peoples whose
actions are reflected in the Rigveda either the exposure of the aged or
the putting away of female children.
Our knowledge of civil law is as scanty as that of criminal law. As
we have seen, land seems not to have been an article of commerce. Movable
property could change hands by gift or by sale, the latter taking the
form of barter. The Rigveda records that in the opinion of one poet not
ten cows was adequate price for an image of Indra to be used doubtless as
a fetish. The haggling of the market is once clearly referred to. The
standard of value seems to have been the cow, and no coin appears to have
been known, though the origin of currency may be seen in the frequent
references to nishkas as gifts : the nishka most probably was an ornament
in the shape of a necklace of gold or silver: at a later date the name was
transferred to a gold coin. Property doubtless passed by inheritance and
could be acquired originally by a man's own efforts in creation or discovery,
while the dowry and the price of the bride played a considerable part in early
Vedic economy, as is seen by the stress laid upon both in the Samhitā. Of
forms of contract the only one of which we know anything was the loan,
ļiņa. The Vedic Indian was an inveterate gambler, and for that among
other causes he seems always to have been ready to incur debt. The rate
of interest is unknown, a reference to payments of an eighth or a sixteenth
may be referred either to interest or instalments of principal. At any rate,
the dobtor might as a result be reduced to slavery, as we learn from an
interesting hymn (x, 34) where an unsuccessful dicer recites the fatal fascina-
tion for him of the dice and his cons
nsequent ruin and enslavement with its
results for his family. Of civil procedure we know only so much as may
be inferred from a single word, madhyamaci, which may denote one who
a
## p. 88 (#122) #############################################
88
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
intervenes between two parties as an arbitrator, though it has also been
referred to the king as surrounded by his retainers in his camp.
In war the Vedic host was held by the king; and doubtless at this time
all the men of the tribe took part in it, encouraged by the priests, who with
prayer and incantation sought to secure victory for those whom they sup-
ported. The king and the nobles, the Kshatriyas, fought from chariots of
simple construction, the warrior standing on the left hand of the charioteer
on whose skill he so largely depended. The common people fought on foot,
doubtless with little attempt at ordered fighting, if we may judge from
analogy and from the confused battles described in the later epics. The
chief weapon in honour was the bow which was drawn to the ear and not
as in Greece to the beast ; but lances, spears, swords, axes, and slingstones
seem to have been employed. The warrior, when completely equipped,
wore coat of mail and helmet, and a hand or arm guard to save his arm
from the friction of the bowstring. The arrow had a reed shaft, and the tip
was either of horn or of metal : poisoned arrows were sometimes used.
Though horse riding was probably not unknown for other purposes, no
mention is made of this use of the horse in war. Naturally enough the
banks of rivers seem to have been frequently the spots chosen for the con-
flict, as in the case of the famous battle of the ten kings.
All the evidence points to the absence of city life among the tribes.
The village probably consisted of a certain number of houses built near each
other for purposes of mutual defence, perhaps surrounded by a hedge or
other protection against wild beasts or enemies. The pur, which is often
referred to and which in later days denotes a 'town,' was, as we have seen,
probably no more than a mere earthwork fortification which may in some
cases at least have been part of the village. In certain passages these puras
are called autumnal, and by far the most probable explanation of this
epithet is that it refers to the flooding of the plains by the rising of the
rivers in the autumn, when the cultivators and herdsmen had to take refuge
within the earthworks which at other times served as defences against
human foes. Of the construction of the Vedic house we learn little, but
the bamboo seems to have been largely used for the beams which borrowed
their name from it. In the midst of each house burned the domestic fire,
which served the Indian both for practical and sacrificial uses.
Like the aborigines, the Vedic Indians were primarily pastoral : the
stress laid by the poets on the possession of cows is almost pathetic. The
name of the sacrificial fee, dakshiņā, is explained as referring originally to a
cow placed ‘on the right hand' of the singer for his reward. The singers
delight to compare their songs to Indra with the lowing of cows to their
calves. At night and in the heat of the day the cows seem to have been kept
in the fold ; while for the rest of the day they were allowed to wander at
## p. 89 (#123) #############################################
IV )
WARLIKE AND PEACEFUL AVOCATIONS
89
>
will, being thrice milked'. Bulls and oxen on the other hand regularly
served for ploughing and drawing carts, a purpose for which horses were
not much used. Second to cattle came horses, which the Indian required
both for bearing his chariot into the battle and for the horse-race, one of
his favourite sports. Other domesticated animals were sheep, goats, asses,
and dogs, the last being used for hunting, for guarding and tracking
cattle, and for keeping watch at night. On the other hand, the cat had
not been domesticated.
Agriculture was already an important part of the Vedic economy.
The practice of ploughing was certainly Indo-Irānian as the same root
(krish) occurs in the same sense in the two tongues. But it is clear that
even in the Rigveda the use of the plough was increasing in frequency.
We learn of the use of bulls to draw the plough, of the sowing of seed in
the furrows thus made, of the cutting of the corn with the sickle, the
Jaying of it in bundles on the threshing floor, and the threshing and final
sifting by winnowing. Moreover, the use of irrigation seems to be re-
cognised in the mention of channels into which water is led. On the other
hand, the nature of the grain grown is uncertain : it is called yava, which in
the later Samhitās is barley, but it is quite uncertain whether this definite
sense can be assigned to the word in the Rigvedic period.
Hunting seems still to have played a considerable part in the life of
the day. The hunter used both bow and arrow and snares and traps.
There are clear references to the capture of lions in snares, the taking of
antelopes in pits, and the hunting of the boar with dogs. Birds were
captured in nets stretched out on pegs. Possibly the use of tame elephants
to capture other elephants was known, but this is very uncertain, for there
is no clear proof that the elephant had yet been tamed at this early date,
Buffaloes seem to have been shot by arrows, and occasionally a lion might
be surrounded by hunters and shot to death.
There is some evidence that already in this period specialisation in
industry had begun. The worker in wood has clearly the place of honour,
needed as he was to produce the chariots for war and the race, and the carts
for agricultural purposes. He was carpenter, joiner, wheelwright in one; and
;
the fashioning of the chariots is a frequent source of metaphor, the poet
comparing his own skill to that of the wheelwright. Next in importance was
the worker in metal who smelted ore in the furnace, using the wing of a
bird in the place of a bellows to fan the flame. Kettles and other domestic
utensils were made of meta). It is, however, still uncertain what that metal
which is called ayas was. Copper, bronze, and iron alike may have been
meant, and we cannot be certain that the term has the same sense through-
out. Of other workers the tanner's art is alluded to not rarely; and to
1 See Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, pp. 282 sq.
## p. 90 (#124) #############################################
90
CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
women are ascrihed sewing, the plaiting of mats from grass or reeds,
and, much more frequently, the weaving of cloth. It is of importance to
note that there is no sign that those who carried on these functions were
in any way regarded as inferior members of the community, as was the
case in later times. This fact is probably to be explained by the growing
number of the servile population which must have steadily increased with
the conquest of the tribes, though we cannot conjecture the motives which
ascribed to inferior tasks which in the Rigvedic time were apparently
honourable and distinguished. Presumably even at this time the slave
population must have been utilised in assisting their masters in their various
tasks, agricultural, industrial, and pastoral; but the Rigveda unquestionably
presents us with a society which is not dependent on such labour, and in
which the ordinary tasks of life are carried out by the free men of the tribel.
This is one of the facts which show the comparative simplicity of the age of
the Rigveda as compared with the next period of Indian history.
Fishing is not directly mentioned ; and the Vedic Indian seems to
have been very little of a navigator. The use of boats, probably dug-outs,
for crossing rivers, was known, but the simplicity of their construction is
adequately shown by the fact that the paddle alone was used for their
propulsion. There is no mention of rudder or anchor, mast or sails, a fact
which incidentally negatives the theory that the Vedic Indians took any
part in ocean shipping.
Of the domestic life of the time we have a few details. The dress
usually worn consisted either of three or of two garments. These were
generally woven from the wool of sheep, though skins were also employed.
Luxury manifested itself in the wearing of variegated garments or clothing
adorned with gold. Ornaments in the shape of necklets, earrings, anklets,
and bracelets were worn by both sexes and were usually made of gold.
The hair was carefully combed and oiled. Women wore it plaited, while
in some cases men wore it in coils : it was a characteristic of the Vasishțhas
to have it coiled on the right. Shaving was not unknown, but beards were
normally worn, and on festive occasions men bore garlands. .
As was natural with a pastoral people, milk formed a considerable
part of the ordinary food, being taken in its natural state or mixed with
grain. Ghee or clarified butter was also much used. Grain was either
parched or ground into flour, and mixed with milk or butter, and made into
cakes. As throughout the history of India, vegetables and fruits formed a
considerable portion of the dietary. But the Vedic Indians, were a nation
of meat-eaters, nor need we believe that they merely ate meat on occasions
The view of Indian civilisation presented by Baden Powell (Indian Village
Community (1896) and Village Communities in India (1899), etc. ) which assumes that
the Āryans were princely conquerors of agricultural aborigines and not themselves
cultivators cannot be reconciled with the Rigveda.
a
1
## p. 91 (#125) #############################################
IV )
INDUSTRIES AND DOMESTIC LIFE
91
was
>
of sacrifice. Rather, as in the Homeric age, the slaughter of oxen
always in some degree a sacrificial act, and one specially appropriate for the
entertainment of guests, as the second name of the heroic Divodāsa
Atithigva, 'the slayer of oxen for guests, and as the practice of slaying
oxen at the wedding festival abundantly show. The ox, the sheep, and the
goat were the normal food eaten by men and offered to their gods : horse-
flesh was probably eaten only at the horse-sacrifice, and not so much as
ordinary food as with a view to gain the strength and swiftness of the
steed. There is no inconsistency between this eating of flesh and the growing
sanctity of the cow, which bears already in the Rigveda the epithet aghnya,
‘not to be killed. If this interpretation of the term is correct, it is merely
a proof of the high value attached to that useful animal, the source of the
milk which meant so much both for secular and sacred use to the Vedic
Indian. The flesh eaten was either cooked in pots of metal or earthenware
or roasted on spits.
In addition to milk, the Indians had at least two intoxicating drinks.
The first was the Soma, which however, by the time of the Rigveda,
appears almost exclusively as a sacrificial drink. It stands, however, to
reason that the extraordinary preeminence which it acquired for religious
purposes can hardly have been attained except through its original popular
character ; and it is difficult to resist the impression that the Soma was at
first a popular drink in the home whence the Vedic Indians entered India,
and that in India itself they found no plant which precisely coincided with
that whence the Soma had first been produced, and so were compelled to
resort to substitutes or to use the original plant after it had been brought
from a great distance and has thus lost its original flavour. The popular
drink was evidently the surā, which seems to have been distilled from grain.
It was clearly extremely intoxicating, and the priests regarded it with dis-
approval : in one hymn mention is made of men made arrogant by the surā
reviling the gods, while another couples it with anger and dicing as the
cause of sin.
Of the amusements of the Indian first place must clearly be given to
the chariot race, a natural form of sport among a horse-loving and
chivalrous people. The second belongs to dicing, which forms the occasion
of a lament, already referred to (v. sup. p. 87). Unhappily, the details of
the play are nowhere described, and the scattered allusions cannot be
reduced to a whole without much conjecture ; but, in one form at least,
the aim of the gambler was to throw a number which should be a multiple
of four. Dancing was also practised, and the dancing of maidens is
several times mentioned ; it seems that man also on occasion danced in
the open air, as a metaphor alludes to the dust of the dancing feet of men.
1 See Lüders, Das Würfelspiel in alten Indien ; Caland, Z. D. M. G. , rol. LXII,
pp. 123 sq. ; Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1908, pp. 823 sq.
## p. 92 (#126) #############################################
92
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
/
Music too had advanced beyond the primitive stage; and already the three
types of instrument, percussion, string, and wind, were represented by the
drums, used, among other purposes, to terrify the foe in battle, the lute,
and the flute, the last-named instrument being said to be heard in the
abode of Yama, where the holy dead dwell. The hymns themselves prove
that singing was highly esteemed.
The comparative simplicity of the life of the Vedic Indian stands
in striking contrast to the elaboration of the religious side of life by the
priests. The Rigveda does not present us with any naive outpouring of the
primitive religious consciousness, but with a state of belief which must have
been the product of much priestly effort, and the outcome of wholesale syn-
cretism. Nothing else can explain the comparative magnitude of the Vedic
pantheon, which considerably exceeds that of the Homeric poems. In the
main, the religion revealed to us is in essence simple. The objects of
the devotion of the priests were the great phenomena of nature, conceived as
alive, and usually represented in anthropomorphic shape, though not rarely
theriomorphism is referred to. The chief gods include Dyaus, the sky, who
is usually coupled with Pșithivi, the earth, and whose anthropomorphism is
faint, being in the main confined to the conception of him as father. Varuņa,
the sky-god par excellence, has superseded Dyaus as a popular figure, and
has acquired moreover a moral elevation, which places him far above the
other gods. Varuņa is the subject of the most exalted hymns of the Rig.
veda ; but it seems clear that in this period his claim to divine preeminence
was being successfully challenged by the much less ethical Indra, the god of
the thunder-storm which causes the rain to pour, when the rainy season long
hoped for comes to relieve the parched earth. Varuņa bears the epithet
Asura, which serves to show his parallelism with Ahura Mazda, the highest
of Irānian gods ; nor can there be any reason to doubt that in the Indo-
Irānian period he acquired his moral elevation and preeminence. But in
India it seems that his star paled before that of Indra, whose importance
grew with the advance of the Aryan tribes to the regions where the rain was
confined in the main to the rainy months and the terrors of the storm sup-
planted in the popular imagination the majestic splendour of the sky. With
Varuņa seems to have been bound up in the first instance the conception
of rita as first cosmic and then moral order, and with his lessening glory
these conceptions fade from Indian thought. The importance of the sun is
shown by the fact that no less than five high gods seem to be solar-Sûrya
and Savitri, who represent the quickening power of the luminary, Mitra,
whose fame in Irān is but palely reflected in India, where he is conjoined
with Varuņa and eclipsed by Varuņa’s glories, Pūshan, the representative of
the power of the sun in its effect on the growth of herds and vegetation, and
Vishņu, the personification of the swift moving sun and a god destined to
## p. 93 (#127) #############################################
IV )
DEITIES
93
become one of the two great gods of India. Çiva, his great rival in later
days, appears in the name of Rudra, seemingly in essence at this time a
storm-god, with a dark side to his character presaging his terrible aspect in
later days. Other gods are the Açvins, apparently the morning and evening
stars, who are clearly parallel to the Dioscuri, the Maruts, storm-gods and
attendants on Rudra, Vāyu and Vāta, the wind-gods, Parjanya, the god of
rain, the Waters, and the Rivers. Ushas the Dawn, deserves separate men-
tion, since she has evoked some of the most beautiful of Vedic poetry ; but
her figure seems to belong to the earliest period of Vedic hymnology; when
the Indians were still in the Punjab; and after the Rigveda sbe vanishes
swiftly from the living gods of the pantheon.
Next to Indra in importance rank Agni, 'the fire', and the Soma. To
the priest indeed there can be little doubt that these gods were of even great-
er importance than Indra, but the latter was seemingly more of a national
god, and more nearly alive in the hearts of the people. Agni has three
forms, the sun in the heaven, the lightning, and the terresria) fire ; and his
descent form his highest form is variously pictured. He seems in his growth
to have vanquished older gods, like Trita and Apām Napāt, 'the child of the
waters', who were forms of the lightning, and Mātariçvan, a form of celes-
tial fire. The Soma must have owed its original divine rank to its wonderful
intoxicating power; but priestly speculation by the end of the Rigvedic period
had succeeded in identifying the Soma and the moon, a tour de force which
can indeed be rendered less unnatural by recognising the potent effect of the
moon in the popular imagination on vegetation, but which is none the less
remarkable in the success in which it finally imposed itself on the religious
conscience. The Soma hymns are among the most mystical of the Rigveda;
and one of the legends, that of the bringing of the Soma from heaven by the
eagle, appears to be a reflection of the fall of rain to earth as a result of
the lightning which rends the cloud just when the rain begins to fall.
The creation of what may be called abstract deities is not far advanced
in the Rigveda, such deities as Çraddhā, ‘faith,' and Manyu, ‘wrath,' being
confined to a few hymns of the tenth book. On the other hand, the
specialisation of epithets in some cases results in the production of what is
practically a new figure : thus Prajāpati, an epithet of such gods as Savitri
and Soma, as 'lord of creatures' approaches the position of a creator. The
Ādityas and their mother Aditi, who may be derived from them, present
scarcely any physical features and, as we have seen, have therefore by
Oldenberg been assigned to a Semitic source ; but this hypothesis has not
yet been rendered probable in a mythology which else seems so little touched
by external influence. Personifications like Rātri, 'the night,' are mainly
poetic rather than religious.
a
## p. 94 (#128) #############################################
94
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
A characteristic of the Vedic theology is the tendency to group gods
in pairs, especially Mitra and Varuņa, a practice due in all probability to
the natural union of heaven and earth as a pair. Of larger groups there are
the Maruts, the Ādityas, and the Vasus. The last are associated vaguely
with Indra or Agni, and have practically no individual character. Finally,
priestly speculation has created the class of the Viçve devās, 'the All-gods',
who first include all the gods, and, in the second place, are regarded as a
special group invoked with others, like the Adityas and the Vasus.
Little part is played by minor deities in the Vedic theology. The
predominance of the male element is marked : the goddesses are pale
reflections of their husbands by whose names, with a feminine affix added,
they are called : the only one who has a real character is Ushas, and more
faintly Pșithivi, 'the earth,' and of rivers the sacred Sarasvati. The Ribhus
are aerial elfs, the Apsarasas water nymphs, and the Gandharvas, their
playmates, are aerial sprites. The simpler and more primitive side of
nature worship is seen in the invocation of the plants, of the mountains,
and of the trees of the forest ; but real as these beliefs may have been to
the common people, they are not the true subjects of the priests' devotion.
When speculation turned to deal with these matters, it found an utterance
such as is seen in a striking hymn to the goddess of the forest, which
exhibits much more poetical than religious feeling.
While the great gods might be conceived at times in animal form, for
example Indra or Dyaus as a bull, or the sun as a swift horse, actual
direct worship of animals is hardly found in the Rigveda. The drought
demon which prevents the rain from falling is conceived as a snake whom
Indra crushes, and we hear of the snake of the abyss ; but in striking
contrast with later India, no direct worship of the snake attributable to its
deadliness occurs. Of totemism, in the sense of the belief in an animal
ancestor and the treatment of that animal as sacred and divine, the Rigveda
shows not a trace. On the other hand, fetishism is seen in the allusion
already quoted to the use of an image of Indra against one's enemies.
Analogous to this is the sentiment which defies the pressing-stones which
expressed the Soma, the drum and the weapons of the warrior and the
sacrificial post. The chief opponents of the gods are the Asuras, a vague
group who bear a name which is the epithet of Varuņa and must originally
have had a good mearing, but which may have been degraded by being
associated with the conception of divine cunning applied for evil ends.
On a lower plane are the Rakshasas, demons conceived as in animal as
well as human shape, who seek to destroy the sacrifice and the sacrificers
alike, but whose precise nature cannot be definitely ascertained.
To the gods the Indian stood in an attitude of dependence, but of
hope. The gods are willing to grant boons if they are worshipped ; and the
## p. 95 (#129) #############################################
IV ]
SACRIFICES : PHILOSOPHY
95
overwhelming mass of the evidence shows that the ordinary Vedic sacrifice
was an offering made to win the divine favour, though thank-offerings may
well have been known'. Inextricably bound up with this conception of the
divine relation is that other which regards the gods as subject to control by
the worshipper if he but know the correct means, a motive clearly seen in
the selection of the horse as a sacrifice whereby the swift steed, the sun,
may regain strength and favour his worshippers. The higher and more
mystic view of the sacrifice as a sacrament is not found except in the quite
rudimentary form of the common meal of the priests on the sacrificial victim :
there is no proof that in thus consuming the victim the priests deemed them-
selves to be consuming their god, though doubtless they regarded the meal
as bringing them into special relation with the god who shared it with them
and so in some measure acquired the same nature as themselves. But if the
view of sacrifice was less mystic, in some aspects at least, than in the case
of the Mediterranean peoples, Vedic civilisation at this stage was spared the
horror of human sacrifice, which can be found in the Samhitā only by
implausible conjecture.
The sacrifices offered included offerings of milk, grain, and ghee, as
well as offerings of flesh and of the Soma. It is impossible to adapt the
later sacrificial theory, as it appears in the next period, to the Rigvedic texts,
and it is clear that at this time the sacrifice was less elaborate than it
became; but there is abundant proof that already the Soma sacrifice in
particular had been elaborated, and that the labour had been divided
among several priests, the chief being the Hotội who recited the hymns and
in earlier times composed them, the Adhvaryu who performed the manual
actions to the accompaniment of muttered prayers and deprecations of evil,
the Udgātņi who sung the Sāman chants, and several assistants, the number
seven being found quite frequently in the Rigveda. Naturally these elabo-
rate sacrifices could not be undertaken by any save the rich men of the tribe
and especially the king; and we must therefore picture to ourselves the
priests as maintained by the rich men, the Maghavans, 'bountiful ones,' of
the Rigveda, their number and rewards rising with the social scale of the
patron, until the height of the priest's ambition was attained, the position of
Purohita to the king. Beside all this elaborate ritual there was of course
the daily worship of the ordinary Aryan, which he no doubt in this period,
as later, conducted himself; but the Rigveda is aristocratic collection and
contains little of popular religion beyond a few incantations in the tenth
book, which carry us into the homely region of spells against rivals and to
repel diseases and noxious animals. But these are not really parts of the
main body of the Samhitā.
>
1 fee Caland and Henry, L'Agnistoma, pp. 469-90 ; Keith, J. R. A. S. 1907,
pp. 929. 49.
2 See Hillebrand. 2. D. M. G. , vol. XL, p. 708, who finds it alluded to in X, 18,
8. But see Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1907, p. 946.
## p. 96 (#130) #############################################
96
(сн.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
i
>
The late tenth book also gives us the beginnings of the philosophy of
India. The multiplicity of gods is questioned and the unity of the universe
is asserted, while attempts are made to represent the process of creation as
the evolution of being from not being, first in the shape of the waters and
then in the shape of heat. Other hymns more simply consider the process as
that of a creation by Viçvakarman, 'the all-maker,' or Hiranyagarbha, 'the
golden germ,' apparently an aspect of the sun. In yet another case the
sacrificial theory is applied, and in the Purushasūkta, the earliest authority
for caste divisions, the world is fashioned from the sacrifice of a primeval
giant whose name Purusha, 'man,' reappears in later philosophy as the
technical term for spirit. These speculations are of interest, not for their
intrinsic merit, but for the persistence with which the same conceptions
dominate the religious and philosophical systems of India.
There is little in the Rigveda that bears on the life after death. The
dead were either cremated or buried, and, if cremated, the ashes were regu-
larly buried. This suggests that burial was the older method which was
altered under the pressure of migration and perhaps the Indian climate.
The Rigveda is innocent of widow burning, though it clearly has the con-
ception which gave rise to that practice, the view that life in the next world
is a reflex of this life, and though in the next period we have clear references
to the fact that the burning of widows was not unknown. The direct
authority for the custom, which later days sought to find in the Rigveda,
owes its existence to a daring forgery of quite modern date. The exact
fate of the dead is somewhat obscure : they are conceived, at one time, as
dwelling in peace and converse with the gods of the world of Yama, the
first of the dead and king of the dead. In other passages, the gods and the
fathers are deemed to dwell in different places; while a third conception
declares that the soul departs to the waters or the plants. Beyond this last
idea there is nothing in the Rigvedic literature to suggest that the idea
of metem psychosis had presented itself to the Indian mind : the fate of
the evil after death is obscure : possibly unbelievers were consigned to an
underground darkness; but so scanty is the evidence that Roth held that
the Vedic poet believed in their annihilation. But this vagueness is charac-
teristic of the comparative indifference of the Rigveda to morals ; the gods
are indeed extolled as true, though perhaps rather as a means of securing
that they shall keep faith with their votary than as an assertion of ascer.
tained truth. Except in the case of Varuņi, the omniscient, whose spies
watch men and who knows every thought of man, the characteristics of
the gods are might and strength rather than moral goodness, or
wisdom.
1 See Wilson, J. R. A. S. , vol. XVI, pp. 201 sq. ; Fitzedward Hall, J. R. A. S. , n. 8.
vol. III, pp. 183-92 who traces it to Raghunandana (1500 A. D. ).
1
.
1
even
## p. 97 (#131) #############################################
IV]
THE VEDIC HYMN
97
a
In its metrical form the Rigveda shows traces of the distinction
between the recitative of the Hotội and the song of the Udgātřil : thus
besides hymns in simple metres, 'rhythmical series of eight syllables, three or
four times repeated, or eleven or twelve syllables four times repeated, are
found strophic effects made up of various combinations of series of eight
and twelve syllables, these being intended for Sāman singing. The verse
technique has risen beyond the state of the mere counting of syllables
which it shared as regards the use of eight and eleven syllable lines with the
Irānian versification ; but the process of fixing the quantity of each syllable,
which appears fully completed in the meters of classical Sanskrit verse, is
only in a rudimentary state, the last four or five syllables tending to assume
in the case of the eight and twelve syllable lines an iambic, in the case of
the eleven syllable lines a trochaic cadence. The poetry of the collection is
of very uneven merit : Varuņa and Ushas evoke hymns which now and then
are nearly perfect in poetic conception and expression ; but much of the
work is mechanical and stilted, being overladen with the technicalities of the
ritual : this condemnation applies most heavily to the ninth book, which,
consisting as it does of hymns addressed to the Soma in the process of its
purification for use, is arid and prosaic to a degree. In style, practically all
the hymns are simple enough, and their obscurity, which is considerable,
is due to our ignorance of the Vedic age, which renders unintelligible refe.
rences and allusions clear enough to the authors. But there is unquestion-
ably much mysticism in the later hymns and still more of that confusion of
thought and tendency to take refuge in enigmas, which is a marked feature
of all Indian speculation.
The language is of the highest interest, as it reveals to us an Indo.
European speech with a singular clarity of structure and wealth of inflection,
even if we admit that the first discoverers of its importance from the point
of view of comparative philology exaggerated in some degree these charac-
teristics. Historically it rendered comparative philology the first great
impetus, and it must for all time be one of the most important subjects of
study. But it is clearly, as preserved in the hymns, a good deal more than
a spoken tongue. It is a hieratic language which doubtless diverged consider.
ably in its wealth of variant forms from the speech of the ordinary man of
the tribe. Moreover it shows clear signs of influence by metrical necessities
which induce here and there a disregard of the rules normally strictly
observed of concord of noun and attribute. It must be remembered that it
1 See Oldenberg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. XXXVIII, pp. 439 sq. ; Prolegomena, pp. I sq
Arnold, Vedi: Metre, Cambridge, 1905.
2 Cf. Grierson in Imp. Gaz. , vol. I, pp. 357 sq. ; J. R.
was the vic or 'canton,' while a group of cantons made up the jana, 'people. '
This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece,
Italy, Germany and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the
graduated hierarchy of family or households, vis, zantu, and dahyu? . But for
Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It
is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness - so
that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a jana and at
another a grāma -- but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination
between the grāma and the viç is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian
evidence tells against the theory that the viç is removed by the grāma from
the family in the narrow sense : the more legitimate interpretation is to see
in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the
jana as parallel to the zantu, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda
the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of
aggregates of janas, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-
one janas of the two Viakaraņas who are mentioned in one passage of the
Samhitā. The viç will thus take its place beside the Irānian vis as a clan
as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the
Latin gens, and the Greek genoe. It is possible that the grāma is originally
the gens in it military aspect, but even that it is not certain, for the word
may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty
1 See Zimmer, Altindisches Leten, pp. 159, 160 ; Feist, Kultur, Ausbreitung, und
Herkunft der Indogermanen, p. 143.
2 Zimmer, l. c. ; Geiger, Ostiramische Kultur, p.
## p. 82 (#116) #############################################
82
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
>
for the period of the Rigveda whether the grāma contained the whole of a
viç, or part of a viç, or parts of several viças. But amid much that is
conjectural it is clear that the viç was not a normal unit for purposes of
government, for the term viçpali, ‘lord of a vis', has not in any passage the
technical sense of 'lord of a canton. ' On the other hand, the grāma as a
unit is recognised by the use of the term grāmaņi, 'leader of a village,' an
officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both
military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or
powers.
While the sense "clan' is comparatively rare, the word viç not
unfrequently in the plural denotes 'subjects': so we hear of the viças of
Tļiņaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the viças of the Tșitsus,
the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the
sense clans' is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering
'clans' which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations
of the Bharatas and the Tșitsus, the Tșitsus being regarded as a people
opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the
Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the jana, a term which in Vedic
use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the
tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be
shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās
was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly
it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great
kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of
kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no
doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark
aboriginal population.
The question now presents itself as to the extent to which in the
period of the Rigveda the caste system had been developed. The existence of
the caste system in any form in the age of the Rigveda has been denied by
high authority, though it has been asserted of late with increasing insistence. ?
In one sense, indeed, its presence in the Rigveda cannot be disputed. In the
Purushasūkta, the four castes of the later texts, Brāhmaṇa (“priest'), Rājanya
('prince' or more broadly 'warrior'), Vaiçya ('commoner'), and Çūdra are
mentioned. But this hymn is admittedly late and can prove nothing for the
state of affairs prevailing when the bulk of the Rigveda was composed. On
the other hand, as we have seen, the distinction between the Āryan colour
(varna) and that of the aborigines is essential and forms a basis of caste.
1 sq.
Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. 12, pp. 239 sq. ; Zimmer, Altisndishes Leben,
pp. 185—203 ; Weber, Indische Studien, vol. X, pp.
2See Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, p. 146 ; Oldenberg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. LI,
pp. 267 sq.
## p. 83 (#117) #############################################
IV ]
ORIGINS OF THE CASTE SYSTEM
83
The question is thus narrowed down to the consideration of the arguments
for and against the view that in the Āryans themselves caste divisions were
appearing. On the one hand, it is argued that in the period of Vasishtha
and Viçvāmitra, when the great poetry of the Rigveda was being produced,
neither the priestly class nor the warrior class was hereditary. The warriors
of the community were the agricultural and industrial classes, and the
priesthood was not yet hereditary. It has been held that the Brāhman priest
was not necessarily the member of an hereditary class at all, that the term
could be applied as well to any person who was distinguished by genius or
virtue, or who for some reason was deemed specially receptive of the divine
inspiration. The growth of the caste system is traced on this hypothesis to
the complication of life ensuing on the further penetration of the Āryans
from the Punjab towards the east. The petty tribes found it necessary, in
order to defeat the solid forces of the aborigines, to mass themselves into
centralised kingdoms. The petty tribal princes thus lost their full royal rank,
but found employment and profit instead in becoming a standing armed force,
ready to resist sudden incursion or to crush the attempts at rebellion of the
defeated aborigines. On the other hand, the industrial and agricultural
population, relying on the protection of the warrior class, abandoned the
use of arms. Together with the growth in the size of the kingdom and the
increasing complexity of civilisation, the simple ritual of an earlier period,
when the king himself could sacrifice for his people, grew to an extent which
rendered this impracticable, while at the same time an ever increasing
importance came to be attached to the faithful and exact performance of the
rites and the preservation of the traditional formulae. The result of this
process was, it is suggested, the growth of a priesthood, of a warrior class,
and of a third class, the Vaiçya, sharply distinguished from one another and
strictly hereditary. But the comparatively late date of this development is
shown by the fact that in later times the inhabitants of the North-West, the
home of the Rigveda, were regarded as semi-barbarians by those of the
Middle Country, in which the Brāhmanical civilisation had developed itself,
on the ground that they did not follow the strict caste system.
While there is much of truth in this view, it must be admitted that
it exaggerates the freedom of the Rigveda from caste. As we have seen, the
probabilities are that the main, though not the earliest, part of the Samhitā
had its origin not in the Punjab proper but in the sacred country of later
Brāhmanism, the land known in the Samhitās of the succeeding period as
Brahmăvarta. Moreover, there is no actual proof in the Rigveda that the
priesthood was not then a closed hereditary class. The term Brāhmaṇa, ‘son
of a Brahmā,' seems, on the contrary, to show that the priesthood was
normally hereditary, and there is no instance which can be quoted of any
person who is said to be other than a priest appearing to exercise priestly
## p. 84 (#118) #############################################
84
(ca.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
a
functions. We are told that there is a case of a king exercising the functions
of domestic priest and sacrificing himself for his people, but the alleged case,
that of Devāpi, rests only on an assertion of a commentator on the hymn
(x, 98), in which Devāpi appears, that he was originally a king. Even, how-
ever, if this were the case, it must be remembered that even after the
complete establishment of the caste system, it was still the privilege of kings
to exercise some priestly functions, such as that of the study of the nature
of the absolute, a practice ascribed to them in the Upanishads. The
arguments regarding the warrior class rest on a misunderstanding. Even in
the latest Vedic period we have no ground to suppose that there was a
special class which reserved its energies for war alone, and that the industrial
population and the agriculturists allowed the fate of their tribe to be decided
by contest between warrior bands, but the Rigveda certainly knows of a
ruling class, the Kshatriya, and the Vedic kingship was normally hereditary,
so that we may well believe that even then there existed, though perhaps
only in embryo, a class of nobles, who are aptly named in the term of the
Purushasūkta, Rājanyas, as being 'men of kingly family. There are traces,
moreover, of the division of the tribe into the holy power (brahman), the
kingly power (kshatra), and the commonalty (viç), and, while it is true that
the caste system is only in process of development in the Rigveda, it seems
impossible to deny that much of the groundwork upon which the later
elaborate structure was based was already in existence.
So far, our sources of knowledge, if imperfect, have given us material
sufficient to sketch the main outlines of Vedic society. Unhappily, when we
turn to consider more closely the details of the political organisation proper,
the evidence becomes painfully scanty and inadequate. The tribes of the
Rigveda were certainly under kingly rule: there is no passage in the Rigveda
which suggests any other form of government, while the king under the style
"Rājan' is a frequent figure. This is only what might be expected in a com-
munity which was not merely patriarchal-a fact whence the king drew bis
occasional style of vicpati. 'Head of the vic'- but also engaged in constant
warfare against both Āryan and aboriginal foes. Moreover, the kingship was
normally hereditary: even in the scanty notices of the Rigveda we can trace
lines of succession such as that of Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and
Sudās, or Durgaha, Girikshit, Purukutsa, and Trasadasyu, or Mitrātithi,
Kuruçravaņa, and Upamaçravas. In some cases it has been argued that
election by the cantons was possible! ; but this interpretation rests only on
the improbable view that viçaḥ denotes not 'subjects' but cantons'; and the
| See Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 162 sq. ; Weber, Indische Studien, vol.
XVII, p. 189 ; Bloomfield, Sacred Books of the Eust, vol. XLII, p. 330. That sometimes
election actually took place is quite probable ; but the passages quoted do not show
this ; see Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, p. 303.
## p. 85 (#119) #############################################
IV ]
POLITICAL ORGANISATION
85
.
idea has no support in later literature. The activity of the sovereign on
which most stress is laid is his duty of protecting his subjects; and even the
Rigveda, despite its sacerdotal character, allows us to catch some glimpses
of the warlike deeds of such men as Divodāsa, Sudās, and Trasadasyu. Of
the king's functions in peace the Rigveda is silent, beyond showing that
he was expected to maintain a large body of priests to perform the sacrifices
for him and his people. From his subjects he was marked out by his
glittering apparel, his palace, and his retinue, which doubtless included the
princes of the royal house as well as mere retainers. To maintain his state
he had the tribute paid by conquered tribes and the gifts of his people,
which, once proffered freely, had doubtless become fixed payments, which
the king could exact, if denied. Doubtless, too, when lands were conquered
from the aborigires or from other Aryan tribes, large booty in land and
slaves and cattle would be meted out to the king; but the Rigveda contains
no hint that he was considered as owner of the land of the people. Nor in
that Samhitā is there any trace that the king, has developed from the
priest : if that was the case in India the distinction lies far beyond the
period of the Rigveda.
Of the entourage of the king and his servants we learn almost nothing.
The senānī, 'leader of the army,' who appears in a few hymns, may have
been a general appointed by the king to lead an expedition of too little im-
portance to require his own intervention. The grāmaņī probably led in war
a minor portion of the host and was identical with the vrājapati mentioned
elsewhere. Far more important, in the estimation at least of the composers
of the hymns, was the purohita or domestic priest, whose position represent-
ed the height of a priest's ambition. Nor, after allowing for priestly partia-
lity and exaggeration, can we deny the importance of the Purohita amongst
a people who followed the guiding in religious matters of an hereditary
priesthood. The Vedic Purohita was the forerunner of the Brāhman states-
men who from time to time in India have shown conspicuous ability in the
management of affairs ; and there is no reason to doubt that a Viçvāmitra
or a Vasishtha was a most important element of the government of the early
Vedic realm. It is clear, too, from the hymns which are attributed to the
families of these sages, that the Purohita accompanied the king to battle,
and seconded his efforts for victory by his prayers and spells. In return for
his faithful service the rewards of the Purohita were doubtless large : the
dānastutis of the Rigveda tell of the generous gifts of patrons to the poets,
and we may safely assume that the largest donations were those of kings to
the Purohitas. It is significant of the social arrangements of the time that
the gifts enumerated are all gifts of personal property ; land was evidently
not then a normal form of gift, though we may conjecture that, even at this
early period, the king might confer on a priest or other servant the right to
## p. 86 (#120) #############################################
86
[ch.
TAE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
receive some portion of the gifts in kind which were clearly no inconsider-
able part of the royal revenues.
The power of the king cannot have been in normal circumstances
arbitrary or probably very great. "There stood beside him as the mode of
expression of the will of the people the assembly, which is denoted by the
terms samiti and sabha in the Samhitā. It has been proposed by Ludwig to
see in these two terms the designations of two different forms of assembly :
the one would be the assembly of the whole people, while the other would
be an analogue of the Homeric council of elders, a select body to which
the great men of the tribe, the Maghavans, alone would go to take counsel
with the king. Zimmer? , on the other hand, sees in the samiti the popular
assembly of the tribe, in the sabhā the assembly of the village. But
neither view appears to be acceptable. There is no distinction in the texts
which would justify us in contrasting sabhā and samiti in either of the
ways suggested : rather it seems the samiti is the assembly of the people
for the business of the tribe, the sabhā particularly the place of assembly,
which served besides as a centre of social gatherings. The king's presence
in the samiti is clearly referred to ; and there seems no reason to doubt
that on great occasions the whole of the men of the tribe gathered there to
deliberate, or at least to decide, on the courses laid before them by the
great men of the tribe. But we are reduced to analogy with the Homeric
assembly for any conception of the action of the assembly; for, per haps
owing to the nature of the sources, nothing is known of its part in Vedic
life. If indeed the king was ever elected by the cantons, the election
tock place in the samiti ; but the theory that the king was ever elected has,
as has been already said, nothing to support it.
In accordance with the apparently undeveloped condition of political
organisation, we learn little of the administration of justice. That the king
exercised criminal and civil jurisdiction, assisted by assessors, is a conclusion
which must rest for its plausibility on analogy and on the later practice in
India ; for no passage in the Rigveda definitely alludes to the sovereign as
acting in either capacity. It is therefore at least probable that his functions
as judge were still confined within narrow limits. One word in the Rigveda
shows that the system of wergeld was in full force, a man being given the
epithet çatadāya, which denotes that the price of his blood was a hundred
cows. In one hymn the Paņi, whose niggardliness made him the chief object
of dislike to the greedy Vedic poets, is declared to be a man only in so far as
he has a wergeld, here called vairadeya, 'that which is to be paid in respect
of enmity. ' The crime, however, of which most is recorded in the Rigveda
is that of theft, including burglary, house-breaking, and highway robbery,
crimes which clearly must have been of frequent occurrence. The punish-
1 Rigveda, vol. III, p. 253. 2 Altindisches Leben, pp. 172-4.
>
## p. 87 (#121) #############################################
IV ]
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
87
ment of the thief seems to have rested with the person wronged : there are
clear allusions to binding the thief in stocks, presumably with a view to
induce his relatives to pay back to the aggrieved man the loss he has sus-
tained. In one passage of the Rigveda there is a probable reference to the
employment of trained men to recover stolen cattle, just as the Khojis of
the Punjab down to modern times were expert at this difficult employment.
Of death as a punishment for theft, as in later times and in other primitive
societies, curiously enough nothing appears in the Rigveda.
There is hardly any mention of other forms of crime in the Rigveda.
It appears clear that marriage of brother and sister was regarded as incest,
and apparently marriage of father and daughter was placed in the same
category of wrongful actions, as it certainly was in the later Samhitās,
where the union of Prajāpati, one aspect of the supreme god, with his
daughter is at once punished by the other gods. Prostitution was certainly
not unknown, but in other respects morality seems to have been fairly
high : there is no sufficient ground for attributing to the peoples whose
actions are reflected in the Rigveda either the exposure of the aged or
the putting away of female children.
Our knowledge of civil law is as scanty as that of criminal law. As
we have seen, land seems not to have been an article of commerce. Movable
property could change hands by gift or by sale, the latter taking the
form of barter. The Rigveda records that in the opinion of one poet not
ten cows was adequate price for an image of Indra to be used doubtless as
a fetish. The haggling of the market is once clearly referred to. The
standard of value seems to have been the cow, and no coin appears to have
been known, though the origin of currency may be seen in the frequent
references to nishkas as gifts : the nishka most probably was an ornament
in the shape of a necklace of gold or silver: at a later date the name was
transferred to a gold coin. Property doubtless passed by inheritance and
could be acquired originally by a man's own efforts in creation or discovery,
while the dowry and the price of the bride played a considerable part in early
Vedic economy, as is seen by the stress laid upon both in the Samhitā. Of
forms of contract the only one of which we know anything was the loan,
ļiņa. The Vedic Indian was an inveterate gambler, and for that among
other causes he seems always to have been ready to incur debt. The rate
of interest is unknown, a reference to payments of an eighth or a sixteenth
may be referred either to interest or instalments of principal. At any rate,
the dobtor might as a result be reduced to slavery, as we learn from an
interesting hymn (x, 34) where an unsuccessful dicer recites the fatal fascina-
tion for him of the dice and his cons
nsequent ruin and enslavement with its
results for his family. Of civil procedure we know only so much as may
be inferred from a single word, madhyamaci, which may denote one who
a
## p. 88 (#122) #############################################
88
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
intervenes between two parties as an arbitrator, though it has also been
referred to the king as surrounded by his retainers in his camp.
In war the Vedic host was held by the king; and doubtless at this time
all the men of the tribe took part in it, encouraged by the priests, who with
prayer and incantation sought to secure victory for those whom they sup-
ported. The king and the nobles, the Kshatriyas, fought from chariots of
simple construction, the warrior standing on the left hand of the charioteer
on whose skill he so largely depended. The common people fought on foot,
doubtless with little attempt at ordered fighting, if we may judge from
analogy and from the confused battles described in the later epics. The
chief weapon in honour was the bow which was drawn to the ear and not
as in Greece to the beast ; but lances, spears, swords, axes, and slingstones
seem to have been employed. The warrior, when completely equipped,
wore coat of mail and helmet, and a hand or arm guard to save his arm
from the friction of the bowstring. The arrow had a reed shaft, and the tip
was either of horn or of metal : poisoned arrows were sometimes used.
Though horse riding was probably not unknown for other purposes, no
mention is made of this use of the horse in war. Naturally enough the
banks of rivers seem to have been frequently the spots chosen for the con-
flict, as in the case of the famous battle of the ten kings.
All the evidence points to the absence of city life among the tribes.
The village probably consisted of a certain number of houses built near each
other for purposes of mutual defence, perhaps surrounded by a hedge or
other protection against wild beasts or enemies. The pur, which is often
referred to and which in later days denotes a 'town,' was, as we have seen,
probably no more than a mere earthwork fortification which may in some
cases at least have been part of the village. In certain passages these puras
are called autumnal, and by far the most probable explanation of this
epithet is that it refers to the flooding of the plains by the rising of the
rivers in the autumn, when the cultivators and herdsmen had to take refuge
within the earthworks which at other times served as defences against
human foes. Of the construction of the Vedic house we learn little, but
the bamboo seems to have been largely used for the beams which borrowed
their name from it. In the midst of each house burned the domestic fire,
which served the Indian both for practical and sacrificial uses.
Like the aborigines, the Vedic Indians were primarily pastoral : the
stress laid by the poets on the possession of cows is almost pathetic. The
name of the sacrificial fee, dakshiņā, is explained as referring originally to a
cow placed ‘on the right hand' of the singer for his reward. The singers
delight to compare their songs to Indra with the lowing of cows to their
calves. At night and in the heat of the day the cows seem to have been kept
in the fold ; while for the rest of the day they were allowed to wander at
## p. 89 (#123) #############################################
IV )
WARLIKE AND PEACEFUL AVOCATIONS
89
>
will, being thrice milked'. Bulls and oxen on the other hand regularly
served for ploughing and drawing carts, a purpose for which horses were
not much used. Second to cattle came horses, which the Indian required
both for bearing his chariot into the battle and for the horse-race, one of
his favourite sports. Other domesticated animals were sheep, goats, asses,
and dogs, the last being used for hunting, for guarding and tracking
cattle, and for keeping watch at night. On the other hand, the cat had
not been domesticated.
Agriculture was already an important part of the Vedic economy.
The practice of ploughing was certainly Indo-Irānian as the same root
(krish) occurs in the same sense in the two tongues. But it is clear that
even in the Rigveda the use of the plough was increasing in frequency.
We learn of the use of bulls to draw the plough, of the sowing of seed in
the furrows thus made, of the cutting of the corn with the sickle, the
Jaying of it in bundles on the threshing floor, and the threshing and final
sifting by winnowing. Moreover, the use of irrigation seems to be re-
cognised in the mention of channels into which water is led. On the other
hand, the nature of the grain grown is uncertain : it is called yava, which in
the later Samhitās is barley, but it is quite uncertain whether this definite
sense can be assigned to the word in the Rigvedic period.
Hunting seems still to have played a considerable part in the life of
the day. The hunter used both bow and arrow and snares and traps.
There are clear references to the capture of lions in snares, the taking of
antelopes in pits, and the hunting of the boar with dogs. Birds were
captured in nets stretched out on pegs. Possibly the use of tame elephants
to capture other elephants was known, but this is very uncertain, for there
is no clear proof that the elephant had yet been tamed at this early date,
Buffaloes seem to have been shot by arrows, and occasionally a lion might
be surrounded by hunters and shot to death.
There is some evidence that already in this period specialisation in
industry had begun. The worker in wood has clearly the place of honour,
needed as he was to produce the chariots for war and the race, and the carts
for agricultural purposes. He was carpenter, joiner, wheelwright in one; and
;
the fashioning of the chariots is a frequent source of metaphor, the poet
comparing his own skill to that of the wheelwright. Next in importance was
the worker in metal who smelted ore in the furnace, using the wing of a
bird in the place of a bellows to fan the flame. Kettles and other domestic
utensils were made of meta). It is, however, still uncertain what that metal
which is called ayas was. Copper, bronze, and iron alike may have been
meant, and we cannot be certain that the term has the same sense through-
out. Of other workers the tanner's art is alluded to not rarely; and to
1 See Geldner, Vedische Studien, vol. II, pp. 282 sq.
## p. 90 (#124) #############################################
90
CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
women are ascrihed sewing, the plaiting of mats from grass or reeds,
and, much more frequently, the weaving of cloth. It is of importance to
note that there is no sign that those who carried on these functions were
in any way regarded as inferior members of the community, as was the
case in later times. This fact is probably to be explained by the growing
number of the servile population which must have steadily increased with
the conquest of the tribes, though we cannot conjecture the motives which
ascribed to inferior tasks which in the Rigvedic time were apparently
honourable and distinguished. Presumably even at this time the slave
population must have been utilised in assisting their masters in their various
tasks, agricultural, industrial, and pastoral; but the Rigveda unquestionably
presents us with a society which is not dependent on such labour, and in
which the ordinary tasks of life are carried out by the free men of the tribel.
This is one of the facts which show the comparative simplicity of the age of
the Rigveda as compared with the next period of Indian history.
Fishing is not directly mentioned ; and the Vedic Indian seems to
have been very little of a navigator. The use of boats, probably dug-outs,
for crossing rivers, was known, but the simplicity of their construction is
adequately shown by the fact that the paddle alone was used for their
propulsion. There is no mention of rudder or anchor, mast or sails, a fact
which incidentally negatives the theory that the Vedic Indians took any
part in ocean shipping.
Of the domestic life of the time we have a few details. The dress
usually worn consisted either of three or of two garments. These were
generally woven from the wool of sheep, though skins were also employed.
Luxury manifested itself in the wearing of variegated garments or clothing
adorned with gold. Ornaments in the shape of necklets, earrings, anklets,
and bracelets were worn by both sexes and were usually made of gold.
The hair was carefully combed and oiled. Women wore it plaited, while
in some cases men wore it in coils : it was a characteristic of the Vasishțhas
to have it coiled on the right. Shaving was not unknown, but beards were
normally worn, and on festive occasions men bore garlands. .
As was natural with a pastoral people, milk formed a considerable
part of the ordinary food, being taken in its natural state or mixed with
grain. Ghee or clarified butter was also much used. Grain was either
parched or ground into flour, and mixed with milk or butter, and made into
cakes. As throughout the history of India, vegetables and fruits formed a
considerable portion of the dietary. But the Vedic Indians, were a nation
of meat-eaters, nor need we believe that they merely ate meat on occasions
The view of Indian civilisation presented by Baden Powell (Indian Village
Community (1896) and Village Communities in India (1899), etc. ) which assumes that
the Āryans were princely conquerors of agricultural aborigines and not themselves
cultivators cannot be reconciled with the Rigveda.
a
1
## p. 91 (#125) #############################################
IV )
INDUSTRIES AND DOMESTIC LIFE
91
was
>
of sacrifice. Rather, as in the Homeric age, the slaughter of oxen
always in some degree a sacrificial act, and one specially appropriate for the
entertainment of guests, as the second name of the heroic Divodāsa
Atithigva, 'the slayer of oxen for guests, and as the practice of slaying
oxen at the wedding festival abundantly show. The ox, the sheep, and the
goat were the normal food eaten by men and offered to their gods : horse-
flesh was probably eaten only at the horse-sacrifice, and not so much as
ordinary food as with a view to gain the strength and swiftness of the
steed. There is no inconsistency between this eating of flesh and the growing
sanctity of the cow, which bears already in the Rigveda the epithet aghnya,
‘not to be killed. If this interpretation of the term is correct, it is merely
a proof of the high value attached to that useful animal, the source of the
milk which meant so much both for secular and sacred use to the Vedic
Indian. The flesh eaten was either cooked in pots of metal or earthenware
or roasted on spits.
In addition to milk, the Indians had at least two intoxicating drinks.
The first was the Soma, which however, by the time of the Rigveda,
appears almost exclusively as a sacrificial drink. It stands, however, to
reason that the extraordinary preeminence which it acquired for religious
purposes can hardly have been attained except through its original popular
character ; and it is difficult to resist the impression that the Soma was at
first a popular drink in the home whence the Vedic Indians entered India,
and that in India itself they found no plant which precisely coincided with
that whence the Soma had first been produced, and so were compelled to
resort to substitutes or to use the original plant after it had been brought
from a great distance and has thus lost its original flavour. The popular
drink was evidently the surā, which seems to have been distilled from grain.
It was clearly extremely intoxicating, and the priests regarded it with dis-
approval : in one hymn mention is made of men made arrogant by the surā
reviling the gods, while another couples it with anger and dicing as the
cause of sin.
Of the amusements of the Indian first place must clearly be given to
the chariot race, a natural form of sport among a horse-loving and
chivalrous people. The second belongs to dicing, which forms the occasion
of a lament, already referred to (v. sup. p. 87). Unhappily, the details of
the play are nowhere described, and the scattered allusions cannot be
reduced to a whole without much conjecture ; but, in one form at least,
the aim of the gambler was to throw a number which should be a multiple
of four. Dancing was also practised, and the dancing of maidens is
several times mentioned ; it seems that man also on occasion danced in
the open air, as a metaphor alludes to the dust of the dancing feet of men.
1 See Lüders, Das Würfelspiel in alten Indien ; Caland, Z. D. M. G. , rol. LXII,
pp. 123 sq. ; Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1908, pp. 823 sq.
## p. 92 (#126) #############################################
92
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
/
Music too had advanced beyond the primitive stage; and already the three
types of instrument, percussion, string, and wind, were represented by the
drums, used, among other purposes, to terrify the foe in battle, the lute,
and the flute, the last-named instrument being said to be heard in the
abode of Yama, where the holy dead dwell. The hymns themselves prove
that singing was highly esteemed.
The comparative simplicity of the life of the Vedic Indian stands
in striking contrast to the elaboration of the religious side of life by the
priests. The Rigveda does not present us with any naive outpouring of the
primitive religious consciousness, but with a state of belief which must have
been the product of much priestly effort, and the outcome of wholesale syn-
cretism. Nothing else can explain the comparative magnitude of the Vedic
pantheon, which considerably exceeds that of the Homeric poems. In the
main, the religion revealed to us is in essence simple. The objects of
the devotion of the priests were the great phenomena of nature, conceived as
alive, and usually represented in anthropomorphic shape, though not rarely
theriomorphism is referred to. The chief gods include Dyaus, the sky, who
is usually coupled with Pșithivi, the earth, and whose anthropomorphism is
faint, being in the main confined to the conception of him as father. Varuņa,
the sky-god par excellence, has superseded Dyaus as a popular figure, and
has acquired moreover a moral elevation, which places him far above the
other gods. Varuņa is the subject of the most exalted hymns of the Rig.
veda ; but it seems clear that in this period his claim to divine preeminence
was being successfully challenged by the much less ethical Indra, the god of
the thunder-storm which causes the rain to pour, when the rainy season long
hoped for comes to relieve the parched earth. Varuņa bears the epithet
Asura, which serves to show his parallelism with Ahura Mazda, the highest
of Irānian gods ; nor can there be any reason to doubt that in the Indo-
Irānian period he acquired his moral elevation and preeminence. But in
India it seems that his star paled before that of Indra, whose importance
grew with the advance of the Aryan tribes to the regions where the rain was
confined in the main to the rainy months and the terrors of the storm sup-
planted in the popular imagination the majestic splendour of the sky. With
Varuņa seems to have been bound up in the first instance the conception
of rita as first cosmic and then moral order, and with his lessening glory
these conceptions fade from Indian thought. The importance of the sun is
shown by the fact that no less than five high gods seem to be solar-Sûrya
and Savitri, who represent the quickening power of the luminary, Mitra,
whose fame in Irān is but palely reflected in India, where he is conjoined
with Varuņa and eclipsed by Varuņa’s glories, Pūshan, the representative of
the power of the sun in its effect on the growth of herds and vegetation, and
Vishņu, the personification of the swift moving sun and a god destined to
## p. 93 (#127) #############################################
IV )
DEITIES
93
become one of the two great gods of India. Çiva, his great rival in later
days, appears in the name of Rudra, seemingly in essence at this time a
storm-god, with a dark side to his character presaging his terrible aspect in
later days. Other gods are the Açvins, apparently the morning and evening
stars, who are clearly parallel to the Dioscuri, the Maruts, storm-gods and
attendants on Rudra, Vāyu and Vāta, the wind-gods, Parjanya, the god of
rain, the Waters, and the Rivers. Ushas the Dawn, deserves separate men-
tion, since she has evoked some of the most beautiful of Vedic poetry ; but
her figure seems to belong to the earliest period of Vedic hymnology; when
the Indians were still in the Punjab; and after the Rigveda sbe vanishes
swiftly from the living gods of the pantheon.
Next to Indra in importance rank Agni, 'the fire', and the Soma. To
the priest indeed there can be little doubt that these gods were of even great-
er importance than Indra, but the latter was seemingly more of a national
god, and more nearly alive in the hearts of the people. Agni has three
forms, the sun in the heaven, the lightning, and the terresria) fire ; and his
descent form his highest form is variously pictured. He seems in his growth
to have vanquished older gods, like Trita and Apām Napāt, 'the child of the
waters', who were forms of the lightning, and Mātariçvan, a form of celes-
tial fire. The Soma must have owed its original divine rank to its wonderful
intoxicating power; but priestly speculation by the end of the Rigvedic period
had succeeded in identifying the Soma and the moon, a tour de force which
can indeed be rendered less unnatural by recognising the potent effect of the
moon in the popular imagination on vegetation, but which is none the less
remarkable in the success in which it finally imposed itself on the religious
conscience. The Soma hymns are among the most mystical of the Rigveda;
and one of the legends, that of the bringing of the Soma from heaven by the
eagle, appears to be a reflection of the fall of rain to earth as a result of
the lightning which rends the cloud just when the rain begins to fall.
The creation of what may be called abstract deities is not far advanced
in the Rigveda, such deities as Çraddhā, ‘faith,' and Manyu, ‘wrath,' being
confined to a few hymns of the tenth book. On the other hand, the
specialisation of epithets in some cases results in the production of what is
practically a new figure : thus Prajāpati, an epithet of such gods as Savitri
and Soma, as 'lord of creatures' approaches the position of a creator. The
Ādityas and their mother Aditi, who may be derived from them, present
scarcely any physical features and, as we have seen, have therefore by
Oldenberg been assigned to a Semitic source ; but this hypothesis has not
yet been rendered probable in a mythology which else seems so little touched
by external influence. Personifications like Rātri, 'the night,' are mainly
poetic rather than religious.
a
## p. 94 (#128) #############################################
94
[CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
A characteristic of the Vedic theology is the tendency to group gods
in pairs, especially Mitra and Varuņa, a practice due in all probability to
the natural union of heaven and earth as a pair. Of larger groups there are
the Maruts, the Ādityas, and the Vasus. The last are associated vaguely
with Indra or Agni, and have practically no individual character. Finally,
priestly speculation has created the class of the Viçve devās, 'the All-gods',
who first include all the gods, and, in the second place, are regarded as a
special group invoked with others, like the Adityas and the Vasus.
Little part is played by minor deities in the Vedic theology. The
predominance of the male element is marked : the goddesses are pale
reflections of their husbands by whose names, with a feminine affix added,
they are called : the only one who has a real character is Ushas, and more
faintly Pșithivi, 'the earth,' and of rivers the sacred Sarasvati. The Ribhus
are aerial elfs, the Apsarasas water nymphs, and the Gandharvas, their
playmates, are aerial sprites. The simpler and more primitive side of
nature worship is seen in the invocation of the plants, of the mountains,
and of the trees of the forest ; but real as these beliefs may have been to
the common people, they are not the true subjects of the priests' devotion.
When speculation turned to deal with these matters, it found an utterance
such as is seen in a striking hymn to the goddess of the forest, which
exhibits much more poetical than religious feeling.
While the great gods might be conceived at times in animal form, for
example Indra or Dyaus as a bull, or the sun as a swift horse, actual
direct worship of animals is hardly found in the Rigveda. The drought
demon which prevents the rain from falling is conceived as a snake whom
Indra crushes, and we hear of the snake of the abyss ; but in striking
contrast with later India, no direct worship of the snake attributable to its
deadliness occurs. Of totemism, in the sense of the belief in an animal
ancestor and the treatment of that animal as sacred and divine, the Rigveda
shows not a trace. On the other hand, fetishism is seen in the allusion
already quoted to the use of an image of Indra against one's enemies.
Analogous to this is the sentiment which defies the pressing-stones which
expressed the Soma, the drum and the weapons of the warrior and the
sacrificial post. The chief opponents of the gods are the Asuras, a vague
group who bear a name which is the epithet of Varuņa and must originally
have had a good mearing, but which may have been degraded by being
associated with the conception of divine cunning applied for evil ends.
On a lower plane are the Rakshasas, demons conceived as in animal as
well as human shape, who seek to destroy the sacrifice and the sacrificers
alike, but whose precise nature cannot be definitely ascertained.
To the gods the Indian stood in an attitude of dependence, but of
hope. The gods are willing to grant boons if they are worshipped ; and the
## p. 95 (#129) #############################################
IV ]
SACRIFICES : PHILOSOPHY
95
overwhelming mass of the evidence shows that the ordinary Vedic sacrifice
was an offering made to win the divine favour, though thank-offerings may
well have been known'. Inextricably bound up with this conception of the
divine relation is that other which regards the gods as subject to control by
the worshipper if he but know the correct means, a motive clearly seen in
the selection of the horse as a sacrifice whereby the swift steed, the sun,
may regain strength and favour his worshippers. The higher and more
mystic view of the sacrifice as a sacrament is not found except in the quite
rudimentary form of the common meal of the priests on the sacrificial victim :
there is no proof that in thus consuming the victim the priests deemed them-
selves to be consuming their god, though doubtless they regarded the meal
as bringing them into special relation with the god who shared it with them
and so in some measure acquired the same nature as themselves. But if the
view of sacrifice was less mystic, in some aspects at least, than in the case
of the Mediterranean peoples, Vedic civilisation at this stage was spared the
horror of human sacrifice, which can be found in the Samhitā only by
implausible conjecture.
The sacrifices offered included offerings of milk, grain, and ghee, as
well as offerings of flesh and of the Soma. It is impossible to adapt the
later sacrificial theory, as it appears in the next period, to the Rigvedic texts,
and it is clear that at this time the sacrifice was less elaborate than it
became; but there is abundant proof that already the Soma sacrifice in
particular had been elaborated, and that the labour had been divided
among several priests, the chief being the Hotội who recited the hymns and
in earlier times composed them, the Adhvaryu who performed the manual
actions to the accompaniment of muttered prayers and deprecations of evil,
the Udgātņi who sung the Sāman chants, and several assistants, the number
seven being found quite frequently in the Rigveda. Naturally these elabo-
rate sacrifices could not be undertaken by any save the rich men of the tribe
and especially the king; and we must therefore picture to ourselves the
priests as maintained by the rich men, the Maghavans, 'bountiful ones,' of
the Rigveda, their number and rewards rising with the social scale of the
patron, until the height of the priest's ambition was attained, the position of
Purohita to the king. Beside all this elaborate ritual there was of course
the daily worship of the ordinary Aryan, which he no doubt in this period,
as later, conducted himself; but the Rigveda is aristocratic collection and
contains little of popular religion beyond a few incantations in the tenth
book, which carry us into the homely region of spells against rivals and to
repel diseases and noxious animals. But these are not really parts of the
main body of the Samhitā.
>
1 fee Caland and Henry, L'Agnistoma, pp. 469-90 ; Keith, J. R. A. S. 1907,
pp. 929. 49.
2 See Hillebrand. 2. D. M. G. , vol. XL, p. 708, who finds it alluded to in X, 18,
8. But see Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1907, p. 946.
## p. 96 (#130) #############################################
96
(сн.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
i
>
The late tenth book also gives us the beginnings of the philosophy of
India. The multiplicity of gods is questioned and the unity of the universe
is asserted, while attempts are made to represent the process of creation as
the evolution of being from not being, first in the shape of the waters and
then in the shape of heat. Other hymns more simply consider the process as
that of a creation by Viçvakarman, 'the all-maker,' or Hiranyagarbha, 'the
golden germ,' apparently an aspect of the sun. In yet another case the
sacrificial theory is applied, and in the Purushasūkta, the earliest authority
for caste divisions, the world is fashioned from the sacrifice of a primeval
giant whose name Purusha, 'man,' reappears in later philosophy as the
technical term for spirit. These speculations are of interest, not for their
intrinsic merit, but for the persistence with which the same conceptions
dominate the religious and philosophical systems of India.
There is little in the Rigveda that bears on the life after death. The
dead were either cremated or buried, and, if cremated, the ashes were regu-
larly buried. This suggests that burial was the older method which was
altered under the pressure of migration and perhaps the Indian climate.
The Rigveda is innocent of widow burning, though it clearly has the con-
ception which gave rise to that practice, the view that life in the next world
is a reflex of this life, and though in the next period we have clear references
to the fact that the burning of widows was not unknown. The direct
authority for the custom, which later days sought to find in the Rigveda,
owes its existence to a daring forgery of quite modern date. The exact
fate of the dead is somewhat obscure : they are conceived, at one time, as
dwelling in peace and converse with the gods of the world of Yama, the
first of the dead and king of the dead. In other passages, the gods and the
fathers are deemed to dwell in different places; while a third conception
declares that the soul departs to the waters or the plants. Beyond this last
idea there is nothing in the Rigvedic literature to suggest that the idea
of metem psychosis had presented itself to the Indian mind : the fate of
the evil after death is obscure : possibly unbelievers were consigned to an
underground darkness; but so scanty is the evidence that Roth held that
the Vedic poet believed in their annihilation. But this vagueness is charac-
teristic of the comparative indifference of the Rigveda to morals ; the gods
are indeed extolled as true, though perhaps rather as a means of securing
that they shall keep faith with their votary than as an assertion of ascer.
tained truth. Except in the case of Varuņi, the omniscient, whose spies
watch men and who knows every thought of man, the characteristics of
the gods are might and strength rather than moral goodness, or
wisdom.
1 See Wilson, J. R. A. S. , vol. XVI, pp. 201 sq. ; Fitzedward Hall, J. R. A. S. , n. 8.
vol. III, pp. 183-92 who traces it to Raghunandana (1500 A. D. ).
1
.
1
even
## p. 97 (#131) #############################################
IV]
THE VEDIC HYMN
97
a
In its metrical form the Rigveda shows traces of the distinction
between the recitative of the Hotội and the song of the Udgātřil : thus
besides hymns in simple metres, 'rhythmical series of eight syllables, three or
four times repeated, or eleven or twelve syllables four times repeated, are
found strophic effects made up of various combinations of series of eight
and twelve syllables, these being intended for Sāman singing. The verse
technique has risen beyond the state of the mere counting of syllables
which it shared as regards the use of eight and eleven syllable lines with the
Irānian versification ; but the process of fixing the quantity of each syllable,
which appears fully completed in the meters of classical Sanskrit verse, is
only in a rudimentary state, the last four or five syllables tending to assume
in the case of the eight and twelve syllable lines an iambic, in the case of
the eleven syllable lines a trochaic cadence. The poetry of the collection is
of very uneven merit : Varuņa and Ushas evoke hymns which now and then
are nearly perfect in poetic conception and expression ; but much of the
work is mechanical and stilted, being overladen with the technicalities of the
ritual : this condemnation applies most heavily to the ninth book, which,
consisting as it does of hymns addressed to the Soma in the process of its
purification for use, is arid and prosaic to a degree. In style, practically all
the hymns are simple enough, and their obscurity, which is considerable,
is due to our ignorance of the Vedic age, which renders unintelligible refe.
rences and allusions clear enough to the authors. But there is unquestion-
ably much mysticism in the later hymns and still more of that confusion of
thought and tendency to take refuge in enigmas, which is a marked feature
of all Indian speculation.
The language is of the highest interest, as it reveals to us an Indo.
European speech with a singular clarity of structure and wealth of inflection,
even if we admit that the first discoverers of its importance from the point
of view of comparative philology exaggerated in some degree these charac-
teristics. Historically it rendered comparative philology the first great
impetus, and it must for all time be one of the most important subjects of
study. But it is clearly, as preserved in the hymns, a good deal more than
a spoken tongue. It is a hieratic language which doubtless diverged consider.
ably in its wealth of variant forms from the speech of the ordinary man of
the tribe. Moreover it shows clear signs of influence by metrical necessities
which induce here and there a disregard of the rules normally strictly
observed of concord of noun and attribute. It must be remembered that it
1 See Oldenberg, Z. D. M. G. , vol. XXXVIII, pp. 439 sq. ; Prolegomena, pp. I sq
Arnold, Vedi: Metre, Cambridge, 1905.
2 Cf. Grierson in Imp. Gaz. , vol. I, pp. 357 sq. ; J. R.
