On the Jumna we hear at the end of the period of the Salvas, under king
Yaugandhari, probably in close touch with the Kuru-Pañchāla people.
Yaugandhari, probably in close touch with the Kuru-Pañchāla people.
Cambridge History of India - v1
preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908, pp.
14 sq.
J. R. A. S. , 1909, pp. 1095-1100. Cf. Keith, ibid. 1100. 6.
Sayce, ibid. p. 1107, denies this.
Festgruss an Roth, pp. 68 sq. =Indian Antiquary, vol. XXIII, pp. 154 sq.
Cf. Rigveda Samhitä, vol. IV? , pp. vii sq.
3
>
1
3
4
5
## p. 100 (#134) ############################################
100
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
of the Rigveda, 1000-800 B. C. , and the Chhandas, covering the older and
more primitive Vedic hymns, 1200-1000 B. c. The exact demarcation did not
claim, save as regards the latest period, any special exactitude, and was
indeed somewhat arbitrary. But the fact remains that definitely later than
the Rigveda we find the other Samhitās, of which an account is given below,
and the prose Brāhmaṇa texts, which contain comments on and explanations
of the Samhitās, whose existence they presuppose. It is impossible to deny
that this mass of work must have taken time to produce, especially when we
realise that what has survived is probably a small fraction as compared with
what has been lost. Now in the Brāhmaṇas we find only the most rudimen-
tary elements of the characteristic features of all Indian literature after
Buddhism, the belief in metempsychosis, pessimism, and the search for
deliverance. The distance between the Brāhmaṇa texts with their insistence
on the ritual, and their matter-of-fact and indeed sordid view of the rewards
of action in this world, and the later doctrine of the uselessness of all
mundane effort, is bridged by the Araṇyakas and the Upanishads which
recognise transmigration, if not pessimism, which definitely strive to examine
the real meaning of being, and are no longer content with the explanation of
sacrifices and idle legends. It is unreasonable to deny that these texts must
antedate the rise of Buddhism, which, in part at least, is a legitimate
development of the doctrines of the Upanishads. Now the death of Buddha
falls in all probability somewhere within the second decade of the fifth cen-
tury before Christ? : the older Upanishads can therefore be dated as on the
whole not later than 550 B. C. From that basis we must reckon backwards,
taking such periods as seem reasonable ; and, in the absence of any means
of estimating these periods, we cannot have more than a conjectural
chronology. But it is not likely that the Brāhmaṇa period began later than
800 B. C. , and the oldest hymns of the Rigveda, such as those to Ushas, may
have been composed as early as 1200 B. c. To carry the date further back is
impossible on the evidence at present available, and a lower date would be
necessary if we are to accept the view that the Avesta is really a product of
the sixth century B. C. , as has been argued on grounds of some though not
decisive weight ; for the coincidence in language between the Avesta and the
Rigveda is so striking as to indicate that the two languages cannot have
been long separated before they arrived at their present condition.
The argument from literature and religion is supported also by the
argument from civilisation. The second period, that of the Samhitās, shows
the development of the primitive Vedic community into something more
nearly akin w the Hinduism which, as we learn from the Greek records,
existed at the time of the invasion of Alexander and the immediately succeed-
ing years. But we are still a long way from the full development of the
1 Fleet, J. R. A. S. , 1912, p. 240, thinks 483 B. C. is the most probable date.
>
## p. 101 (#135) ############################################
IV)
DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILISATION
101
system as shown to us in the Arthaçāstra, that remarkable record of Indian
polity which is described in Chapter XIX. The language also of the Vedic
literature is definitely anterior, though not necessarily mush anterior, to
the classical speech as prescribed in the epoch-making work of Pāṇini :
even the Sūtras, which are undoubtedly later than the Brāhamaņas, show
a freedom which is hardly conceivable after the period of the full influence
of Pāņini? ; and Pāņini is dated with much plausibility not later than
300 B. ca.
1Bühler Sacred Books of the East, vol. II", p. XLV, relies on this argument to
assign Āpastamba's Sütras to a date not later than the third cent. B. C. , and suggests
that they may be 150 or 200 years earlier.
2S40 Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, pp. 21-5.
## p. 102 (#136) ############################################
CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD OF THE LATER SAMHITĀS, THE BRĀH.
MANAS, THE ĀRANYAKAS, AND THE UPANISHADS
DEFINITELY later than that depicted in the Rigveda is the civilisation
presented by the later Samhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, the Araṇyakas, and the
Upanishads. It is on the whole probable that the total time embraced in
this period is not longer, perhaps it is even shorter, than that covered by the
earlier and later strata of the Rigveda ; and there are hymns in the tenth
book of the Rigveda which are really contemporaneous with the later
Samhitās, just as those Samhitās have here and there preserved work of a
much earlier epoch. But the distinction between the main body of the
Rigveda and the rest of the Vedic literature is clear and undeniable. Nor is
it open to much doubt that the redaction of the Samhitā of the Rigveda into
what, in substance as cpposed to verbal form, was its present shape took
place before the other Samhitās were compiled. Of these Samhitās the
Sāmaveda, the collection of chants for the Sāman singers, is so dependent on
the Rigveda for its contents, that it is negligible for purposes of history. On
the other hand, the Samhitās of the Yajurveda, the collection of the
formulae and prayers of the Adhvaryu priest, to whose lot fell the actual
performance of the sacrificial acts, are of the highest historical importance.
They represent two main schools, the Black and the White, the name of the
letter being due, according to tradition, to the fact that, whereas the texts of
the Black Yajurveda contain verse or prose formuiae and the prose expla-
nations and comments combined into one whole, the text of the latter
distinguishes between the verse and prose formulae wliich it collects in the
Samhitā, and the prose explanations which it includes in a Brāhmana. Of
the Black Yajurveda three complete texts exist, those of the Taittiriya, the
Kāțhaka, and the Maitrāyaṇi schools, while considerable fragments of
a Kapishthala Samhitā closely allied to the Kāthaka also exist. In the case
of the Taittiriya there is a Brāhmaṇa which is a supplementary work,
dealing with matter not taken up in the Samhitā. The White school has
the Vājasaneya Samhit, and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the latter being one
>
102
## p. 103 (#137) ############################################
V]
THE EARLIEST PROSE
103
>
of the most important works in the whole Vedic literature. Finally, there
is the Samhitā of the Atharva veda, which is technically reckoned as apper-
taining to the Brāhman, the priest who in the later state of the ritual
superintends the whole of the sacrifice, and which is a curious repository
of most mingled matter, for the most part spells of every kind, but con-
taining also theosophical hymns of considerable importance.
The conjunction of the prose explanation with the formulae does not
prove the later composition of both the prose and the formulae, and there
is no ground for attributing the two strata to the same date. On the other
hand, the prose of the Yajurveda Samhitās is amongst the earliest Vedic
prose. Possibly somewhat earlier may be that of the Pañchavimça, Brāhmaṇa,
which is the Brāhmaṇa of the Sāmaveda, and which, despite the extraordi-
nary technicality of its details, is yet not without importance for the history
of the civilisation of the period. The Brāhmaṇas of the Rigveda are proba-
bly slightly later in date, the order being unquestionably the earlier part
(books 1-v) of the Aitareya, and the younger the Kaushitaki or Çārkhāyana.
When the Atharvaveda, which long was not recognised as fully entitled to
claim rank as a Veda proper, came within the circle of the Vedas, it was
considered desirable to provide it with a Brāhmaṇa, the Gopatha, but this
strange work is in part a cento from other texts, including the Çatapatha
Brāhmaṇa, and appears to be later than the Kauçika and Vaitāna Sūtras
attached to the Atharvaveda : its value then for this period is negligible.
Special portions from the Brāhmaṇas are given the title of Āraṇyaka,
'forest books', apparently because their contents were so secret that they
had to be studied in the depths of the forests, away from possibility of over-
hearing by others than students. The extant texts which bear this name are
the Aitareya, the Kaushitaki, and the Taittirīya, which are appendages to
the Brāhmaṇas bearing those names. All three are somewhat heterogeneous
in composition, the Aitareya being the most definitely theosophical, while
the Taittiriya is the least. Still more important are the Upanishads, so
called because they were imparted to pupils in secret session, the term
denoting the sitting cf the pupil before the teacher. Each of the three
Āraṇyakas contains an Upanishad of corresponding name. More valuable
however are the two great Upanishads, the Bțihadāraṇyaka, which is
attached to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa , forming part of its fourteenth and
last book in one recension and the seventeenth book in the other, and the
Chhāndogya Upanishad attached to the Sāmaveda ; these two are in
all probability the oldest of the Upanishads. To the Sāmaveda also belongs,
the Jaiminiya Brāhmaṇa, one book of which, the Jaiminiya Upanishad
Brāhmaṇa, is really an Araṇyaka, and like other Āraṇyakas, contains in
itself an Upanishad, the brief but interesting Kena Upanishad. The
1 See Keith, Aitareya Āranyaka, pp. 172, 173.
## p. 104 (#138) ############################################
104
(CH.
LATER SAMUITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
number of treatises styled Upanishad is very large ; but, with the possible
exception of the Kāțhaka, which expands a legend found in the Taittiriya
Brāhmaṇa dealing with the nature of the soul, none of them other than
those enumerated can claim to be older than Buddhism ; and the facts
which they contain cannot therefore prudently be used in sketching the life
of the period under review. Similarly, the Sūtras, which are text-books
either giving in the form of very brief rules directions for the performance
of the sacrifice in its various forms (the Çrauta Sūtras dealing with the
great rites at which a number of priests were employed, the Gșihya Sūtras
with the domestic sacrifices and other duties performed by the householder),
or enunciating customary law and practice (the Dharma Sūtras), cannot
safely be relied upon as presenting a picture of this period. They are
however of much indirect value ; for they throw light upon practices which
are alluded to in the Brāhmaṇas in terms capable of more than one in-
terpretation ; and here and there they preserve verses, far older than the
works themselves, which contain historie facts of value.
We have seen that, in the period of Rigveda, the centre of the
civilisation was tending to be localised in the land between the Sarasvati
and the Dșishadvati, but that, though this was the home of the Bharatas,
other tribes including the famous five tribes dwelt in the Punjab, which had
in all probability been the earlier home of the Indians. In the Brāhmaņa
period, as the period under review may conveniently be called, the
localisation of civilisation in the more eastern country is definitely achieved
and the centre of the life of the day is Kurukshetra, bounded by Khāņdava
on the south, Tūrghna on the north, Parīņah on the west. In contrast with
the frequent mention of the eastern lands the Punjab recedes in importance ;
and its later name, Pañchanada, 'land of the five streams', is not found
until the epic period. The tribes of the west receive disapproval both in
the Çatapatha and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa a
geographical passage ascribes to the Middle Country, the later Madhyadeça,
the Kurus and Pañchāls with the Vaças and the Uçinaras, to the south the
Satvants, and to the north beyond the Himālaya the Uttara-Kurus and the
Uttara-Madras. On the other hand, while the west recedes in importance
the regions east of the Kulu-Pañchāla country come into prominence,
especially Kosala, corresponding roughly to the modern Oudh, Videha,
the modern Tirhut or N. Bihār, and Magadha, the modern S. Bihār.
Still further east was the country of the Angas, the Modern E. Bihār.
In the south we hear of outcast tribes in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,
probably tribes who were not fully Brāhmanised : their names are given
as the Andhras, who appear as a great kingdom in the centuries immediate.
ly before and after the Christian era, Pundras, Mūtibas, Pulindas, and
Çabaras, the last named being now a tribe living on the Madras frontier near
## p. 105 (#139) ############################################
V
EXTENSION OF ĀRYAN CIVILISATION
105
Orissa and showing, -in its language, trace of its Mundā origin. In the
south also was Naishadha.
It does not seem likely that Āryan civilisation had yet over stepped
the Vindhya, which is not mentioned by name in the Vedic texts, though the
Kaushitaki Upanishad refers to the northern and southern mountains, the
Jatter of which must be the Vindhya. At the same time geographical
knowledge of the north is wider : the Atharvaveda knows not only of the
Mūjavants and the Gandhāris, but also of the Mahāvșishas, and the name
of a place in the Mahāvſisha, country, Raikva parņa, is preserved in the
Chhāndogya Upanishad. Yāska in the Nirukta, a text of about 500 B. C.
explaining with illustrations certain selected Vedic words, tells us that the
speech of the Kambojas differed in certain respects from the ordinary Indian
speech, referring doubtless to the tribes living north-west of the Indus who
bore that name. Vidarbha, the modern Berār, is mentioned, but only in the
late Jaiminīya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa, though a Bhīma of Vidarbha occurs
in a late passage of the Aitareya.
In addition to a wider geographical outlook, the Brāhmaṇa period is
marked by the knowledge of towns and definte localities. There are fairly
clear references to Āsandivant, the Kuru capital, Kāmpīla, the capital of
Pañchāla in Madhyadeça, to Kauçāmbi, and to Kāçī, the capital of the
Kācīs on the river Varaṇāvatī, whence in later times Benares derives its name.
So we hear in this period for the first time of the Vinaçaņa, the place of
the disappearance of the Sarasvati in the desert, and Plaksha Prāsravaņa
the place forty-four days' journey distant, where the river reappears and
which, in the version of the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa, is but a span
from the centre of the universe. These are clear signs both of more develop-
ed city life and of more settled habits.
Corresponding with the change in geographical conditions is a still
greater change in the grouping of the tribes. The Bharatas, who are the
heroes of the third and the seventh books of the Rigveda, no longer occupy
the main position, and we find in their place, in the land which we know
they once held, the Kurus, and close to the Kurus the allied Pañchālas.
As we have seen already, there is little doubt that the Kurus were new
comers with whom the Bharatas amalgamated, and the Kurus thus rein-
forced included in their numbers the Pūrus. The mention of the Uttara-
Kurus as resident beyond the Himālaya is sufficiently accounted for if we
suppose that a branch of this tribe had settled in Kashmir, just as another
branch seems to have settled on the Indus and the Chenāb. The Pañchālas,
too, seem to have been a composite tribe, as the name which is clearly derived
from pancha, 'five,' shows. According to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa the older
name for the Pañchālas was Krivi; and we may at least believe that the
Krivis who with the Kurus appear to have constituted the two Vaikarņa
## p. 106 (#140) ############################################
106
[cu.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRAHMĀŅAS, ETC.
tribes of the Rigveda were a part of the Pañchāla nation'. The same
Brāhmaṇa suggests, if it does not prove, that the Turvaças were another ele-
ment of the people; and the disappearance from history at this period of
the Anus and Druhyus may indicate that they also were merged in the
new confederation. With the Kurus and Pañchālas must be ranked the
Vaças and Uçīnaras, two minor tribes who occupied the middle
Country, and the Sșiñjayas, whose close connexion with the Kurus is proved
beyond doubt by the fact that at one time they had a Purohita in common,
showing that, for the time at least, they must have been acting under the
leadership of one king.
In the texts the Kuru-Pañchālas pass as the models of good form : the
sacrifices are perfectly performed in their country : speech is best spoken
there and, as it seems, among the northern Kurus; and the Kaushitaki
Brāhmaṇa tells of people going to the north for the sake of its pure speech.
The Kuru-Pañchāla kings are the example for other kings: they perform the
Rājasūya, the sacrifice of the royal consecration: they march forth in the
dewy season for their raids and return in the hot season. Their Brāhmaṇs
are famous in the literature of the Upanishads for their knowledge; and the
Samhitās and Brāhmaṇas which are preserved seem, without exception,
to have taken definite form among the Kuru-Pañchālas, even when, as
in the case of the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa, they recognise the existence of
the activities of the kings and priests of Kosala-Videha. It is significant
of the state of affairs that in the Samhitās and allied texts of the Yajurvedas
where the ceremony of the Rājasūya is described, the king is presented
to the people with the declaration, "This is your king, 0 Kurus,' with
variants of 'O Pañchalas' and 'O Kuru-Pañchālas. '
In the Sanskrit epic the Kurus and Pañchālas are conceived as
being at enmity; and it is natural to enquire whether this tradition goes back
to the Vedic period. The reply, however, juust be in negative, for the
evidence adduced in favour of the theory is of the weakest possible
character. In the Kāthaka Samhitā there is an obscure ritual dispute
between a certain priest, Vaka, son of Dalbha, who is believed to have been
a Pañchāla and Dhțitarāshtra Vaicitravīrya, who is assumed to have been
a Kuru king. But apart from the fact that a mere dispute on a point of ritual
between a Pañchāla priest and a Kuru king could not prove any hostility
between the two peoples, there is no ground for supposing that this
· Dhțitarāshțra, was any one else than the king of the Kāçis who bears the
same name and who was defeated by the Bharata prince, Sātrājita Çatānika,
and in the very same passage of the Kāțhaka allusion is made to the union
1 See also Chapter IV, p. 75.
. For this view see Weber, Indische Studien, vol. I, pp. 184, 205, 206 ; vol. III,
p. 470 ; Grierson, J. R. A. S. , 1908, pp. 602-7, 837. 44, 1143. Arguments against are given
by Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1908 pp, 831. 6, 1138. 42.
## p. 107 (#141) ############################################
V]
KURUS AND PANCHĀLAS
107
2
of the Kuru-Pañchālas. A second argument of some human interest is
derived from the clever suggestion of Weber that in the revolting ceremony
of the horse-sacrifice, one of the great kingly sacrifices by which the Indian
king proclaimed his claim to imperial sway, the queen of the Kurus is
compelled to lie beside the victim, since otherwise Subhadrikā, the wife of
the king of Kāmpila, the capital of Pañchāla, would take her place. If this
were the case there would be convincing proof of an ancient rivalry which
might well end in the bitter conflicts of the epic ; but, unhappily, the
interpretation is almost certainly incorrcet. With the absence of evidence of
opposition between the Kurus, assumed to have been specially Brāhmaṇical,
and the Pañchālas, disappears any support for the theoryl, based on the
phenomena of the later distribution of dialects in India, that the Kurus
were a fresh stream of immigrants into India who came via Chitrāl and Gilgit
and forced themselves as a wedge between the Āryan tribes already dwell-
ing in the land. The theory proceeds to assume that, coming with few
or no women, they intermingled with the Dravidian population with great
completeness and produced the Aryo-Dravidian physical type. If these
things were so, the fact was not at any rate known by the age which pro-
duced the Samhitās and the Brāhmaṇas.
Though the Bharatas disappear in this period as a tribe, the fame of
the Bharata kings had not been lost : in a passage in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa
which describes the famous men who sacrificed with the horse-sacrifice, we hear
of the Bharata Dauḥshanti, whom the nymph Çakuntalā bore at Nāda pit,
and who defeated the king of the Satvants and won victories on the Ganges
and Jumna, showing that the Bharatas, as in the Rigveda, were performing
their great deeds on the eastern as well as on the western side of the king-
dom. Another king, Sātrājit Çatānika, as we have seen, defeated the king
of the Kāçis. We hear too of a descendant of Divodāsa, Pratardana, whose
name is of value as tending to show that the Tșitsus were the family of
the royal house of the Bharatas : according to the Kaushitaki Upanishad he
met his death in battle. It is possible that with him perished the direct
Tritsu line : at any rate, the first king who bears the Kuru name,
Kuruçavaņa, is a descendant of Trasadasyu, the greatest of the Pūru kings.
But of Kuruçravana and of his father Mitrātithi, and his son Upamaçravas
we know practically nothing and the first great Kuru king is one mentioned
in the Atharvaveda, Parikshit, in whose reign the hymn tells us the kingdom
of the Kurus flourished exceedingly. His grandson and great-grandson
according to tradition were the Prātisutvana and Pratīpa whose names are
mentioned in the Atharvaveda. A later descendant of his was the famous
Janamejaya, whose horse-sacrifice is celebrated in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa
and who had in his entourage the priests Indrota Daivāpi Çaunaka and Tura
:
a
i See Chapters II, pp. 40-1, 44, and IV, p. 98, note 1.
>
## p. 108 (#142) ############################################
108
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
Kāvasheya. His brothers Ugrasena, Bhimasena, and Crutasena by the same
sacrifice purified themselves of the crime of Brāhman-slaying. But the
history of the Kurus was not apparently, at the end of the period, un-
chequered: there is an obscure reference to their being saved by a mare,
perhap3 a reference to the prowess of their charioteers or cavalry
in battle; but the same text, the Chhāndogya Upanishad, alludes to a
hailstorm or perhaps a shower of locusts afflicting them, and a prediction is
preserved in an old Sūtra telling that they would be driven from Kurukshetra.
It is in accord with these hints that the Bșihadāraṇyaka Upanishad sets as a
question for discussion the problem what has become of the descendants of
Parikshit: the dynasty must have passed away in some great disaster. From
the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa we gather that the capital of Janamejaya was
Asandīvant, the city of the throne, and that at Mashņāra a Kuru kiig won
a victory, and Tura Kāvasheya, a priest of the Bharatas, sacrificed at
Kāroti.
Of the Panchālas apart from the Kurus we hear comparatively little :
they had however kings like Kraivya and Coņa Sātrāsāha, father of Koka,
who performed the horse-sacrifice and thus claimed imperial power. Dur-
mukha, who was taught the royal consecration by Brihaduktha and con-
quered the whole earth, and the more real Pravāhaņa Jaivali who appears
as philosopher king in the Upanishads, and who at least must have been
willing to take part in the disputes of the Brāhmans at his court. Pañchāla
towns were Kāmpila, Kaucāmbi, and Parivakrā or Paricakrā, the scene of
Kraivya's exploits.
The Uttara-Kurus seem already in the time of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa
to have won a somewhat mythical reputation, for when Atyarāti Jānamtapi,
who was not a king, proposed to conquer them as well as the rest of the
world, he was dissuaded by his priest Vasishtha Satyahavya, and for his rash.
ness was defeated by Amitrata pana Çushmiņa, the king of Çibis, a tribe
no doubt identical with the Çivas of the Rigveda and belonging to the
north-west. The Uttara-Madras must have lived near them in Kashmir ;
and the Madras of whom we hear in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad were,
in the Buddhist epoch, settled between the Chenāb and the Rāvi. In the
Middle Country with the Kuru-Pañchālas were the Vaças and Uçīnaras
who seem to have been of no importance. With them in the Kaushitaki
Upanishad are coupled the Matsyas, and we hear of one great Matsya king,
Dhvasan Dvaitavana, who performed the horse-sacrifice and who probably
ruled in or about Jaipur or Alwar, where lake Dvaitavana must be placed.
On the Jumna we hear at the end of the period of the Salvas, under king
Yaugandhari, probably in close touch with the Kuru-Pañchāla people.
1 See Jacob, J. R. A. S. , 1911, p. 510.
## p. 109 (#143) ############################################
V]
PEOPLES OF THE PERIOD
109
:
>
The Sțiñjayas also stood in this period in close relationship to the
Kurus, and like the Kurus the Spiñjayas seem to have suffered disaster at
some period. The Vaitahavyas, the Atharvaveda relates, offended the
priestly family of the Bhộigus and came to ruin : his tradition is confirmed
by the notices of disasters in the Kāțhaka and Taittiriya Samhitās. Of their
history we have one definite glimpse : they rose against their king, Dush-
țarītu Paumsāyana, despite the ten generations of his royal descent, and.
expelled him with his Sthapati, ‘minister', Chākra Revottaras Pāțava ; but
the latter afterwards succeeded in restoring his master to power, despite the
opposition of Balhika Prātipiya, whose patronymic reminds us of the Pratīpa
who was a descendant of the Kuru king Parikshit, showing that the Kuru
princes were probably anxious enough to use domestic strife as a means of
securing a hold over a neighbouring kingdom. Perhaps in the long run the
ruin of the Vaitahavyas took the shape of absorption in the Kuru realm.
On the other hand, the defeats of the Satvants on the south by the Kurus were
doubtless nothing more than mere raids.
Further east of the Kuru-Pañchāla realm lay the territories of Kosala
and Videha, which were, however, not allied in any so close a manner as the
Kurus and the Pañchālas. Para, son of Atņāra, their greatest king who
celebrated the horse-sacrifice, is however spoken of as a king of Videha as
well as a king of Kosala, showing that the kingdoms were sometimes united
under one sovereign. A well-known legend in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa
recognise:: that Videha received Vedic civilisation later than Kosala, for it
tells how Māthava the Videgha, whose name shows the older form of the
word Videha, passed from the Sarasvati, the seat of Vedic culture, to the
land of Videha, crossing the Sadānirā; this perennial stream, as its name
denotes, formed the boundary of Kosala on the east and, with some plausi.
bility, has been identified with the modern Gandak, which rising in Nepal
joins the Ganges near Patna. Kāçī and Videha are also connected in the
Kaushitaki Upanishad ; and a late text preserves the record that Jala Jātū.
karnya was the Purohita of the Kosalas, Videhas, and Kācis at one time,
proving a temporary league. Of other kings we hear of the Kosalan Hiran.
yanābha, of the Videhan Nami Sāpya, and beyond all of Janaka of Videha,
whose fame leads him to play the part of the father of Sitā, the heroine of
the Rāmāyaṇa, the second of India's great epics. Janaka appears himself as
a king ever anxious to seek for the wisdom of the Brāhmans ; and among
his contemporaries are mentioned the great Yājñavalkya, and Cvetaketu.
His contemporary was Ajātaçatru of Kāçī, whom one account indeed refers
to as of Kāçī or Videha, and it is a natural suggestion that in this name we
have a chronological fact of value. It is suggested that in this Ajātaçatru
we have the Ajātasattu of the Buddhist texts, who was a contenaporary of
## p. 110 (#144) ############################################
110
(CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
were
the Buddha and who therefore reigned in the sixth century B. c. But the
suggestion is not a happy one. In the Buddhist text Ajātasattu never appears
as king of any other place than Magadha, and the name is merely an
epithet, 'he who has no foe,' which could be applied to any king, though it
may well be that the Ajātasattu of Magadha gladly borrowed an epithet
which a king of Kāçi had made famous. Other kings of Kāçi were Dhrita-
rāshtra, whose defeat by a Bharata has been mentioned above, and
Bhadrasena, a descendant of Ajātaçatru.
It is very noticeable that the relations of Kāçi and the Bharatas seem
to have been those of war; and there is evidence of some aversion existing
between the Kosala-Videhas and the Kāçis on the one hand and the Kuru-
Pañchālas on the other. It is clear enough that the Brāhmanical tradition
came to the Kosala-Videhas from the Kuru-Pañchāla country; but the
question remains whether the Āryan tribes, who occupied Oudh and Tirhut,
a branch of the Kuru-Pañchālas or men who originally settled
in the Kuru-Pañchāla country or on its borders and were pushed eastwards
by the pressure of the Kuru-Pañchālas. The evidence is not sufficient to
pronounce any opinion on either view, and, as we have seen, still less to
show that the Kurus were distinct from the Pañchālas as a different branch
of the Āryan invaders of India.
Much more definitely still beyond the pale were the people of
Magadha, which serves with Anga in the Atharvaveda as a symbol of a
distant land. The man of Magadha is dedicated, in the account of the
symbolic human sacrifice given in the Yajurveda, to ‘loud noise', suggesting
that the Magadha country must have been the seat of minstrelsy, an idea
supported by the fact that in later literature a man of Magadha is the desig-
nation of a minstrel. If, as has been suggested, the Kikațas of the Rigveda
were really located in Magadha, the dislike of the country goes back to the
Rigveda itself. The cause must probably have been the imperfect Brāh-
manisation of the land and the predominace of aboriginal blood, which
later in history rendered Magadha the headquarters of Buddhism. It is
significant that the Buddhist texts show a subordination of the Brāhman to
the Kshatriya class which has no parallel in the orthodox literature. It is
clear however that Brāhmans sometimes lived there, but that their doing so
was a ground for surprise.
The man of Magadha is brought into close connexion with the Vrātya
in a mystical hymn in the Atharva veda which celebrates the Vrātya as a
type of the supreme power in the universe. A more connected account of
the Vrātya is found in the Pañchavimaça Brāhmaṇa of the Sāmaveda and
a
1
1
1 See Hoernle Osteology, p. 106. For arguments against, see Keith, Z. D. M. G. ,
vol. LXII, pp. 138. 9.
## p. 111 (#145) ############################################
V]
SOCIAL CHANGES
111
the Sūtras of that Veda? . It is clear that, as their name suggests, they were
persons regarded as outcasts; and ceremonies are described intended to
secure them admission into the Brāhmanical fold. The description of the
Vrātyas well suits nomad tribes; they are declared not to practise agricul-
ture, to go about in rough wagons, to wear turbans, to carry goods and a
peculiar kind of bow, while their garments are of a special kind. Their sense
of justice was not that of the Brāhmans, and their speech, though it seems
Āryan, was apparently Prākritic in form, as is suggested by the significant
remark that they called what was easy of utterance hard to speak ; for the
Prākrits differ from Sanskrit essentially in their efforts to avoid harsh conso-
nantal combinations. Where they were located is not certain; for their habits
would agree well enough with nomads in the west, but the little information
which we have seems fairly enough to lead to the conclusion that some at
least of the Vrātyas were considered to be dwellers in Magadha.
There is little to be said of other tribes. The Vidarbhas are known
through one of their kings who received certain knowledge from the mythi-
cal sages Parvata and Nārada, and through a special kind of dog found in
their country. The list of kings who performed the horse-sacrifice includes
the Çvikna king, Rishabha Yājñatura. Mention has been made above of
,
the Pārāvatas, who were found on the Jumna ; and the Kekayas with their
prince Açvapati, and the Balhikas were located in the far north. The
temptation to transform the name of the latter into a sign of Irānian influ-
ence must be withstood, as it rests on no sure basis and we have seen
Balhika as part of the name of a Kuru prince. An early Sūtra refers to
Çaphāla, the kingdom of Rituparna. The Andhras, and other tribes men-
tioned by the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa as outcasts, were probably still Dravidian
in blood and speech, though Mundā speaking tribes may have been mingled
with them as the name Çabara suggests. The Angas, too may have been
comparatively little affected by the influence of the Āryan culture. It has
been conjectured that in Magadha the wave of Āryan civilisation met with
another wave of invasion from the east; but tempting as the suggestion is,
it cannot be supported by anything in the Vedic literature. 2
As was to be expected, society was far from unchanged in this period
of active Aryan expansion. As we have seen, there is good reason to believe
that in the period of the Rigveda the priesthood and the nobility were here-
ditary. This view receives support from the fact that similar class distinc-
tions are to be found in other Indo-European communities, such as the
patrician gentes in Rome, the Eupatridae of Athens, the nobles of early
1 Charpentier, V. 0 J. , vol. XXV, pp. 355 sq. , sees in the Vrātyas the precursors
of Civaites of to-day. But see Keith, J. R. A S. , 1913, pp. 155 sq.
2 See Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1908, p. 852. Oldenberg, Buddha), p. 10, thinks that
the Añga, Magadha, Kāci, Kosala, and Videha tribes were earlier Aryan immigrants.
## p. 112 (#146) ############################################
112
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC. [CH.
Germany, the earls of the Anglo-Saxons, and the still closer parallel of the
Irānian classes of Athravas and Rathaesthas, 'priests' and 'warriors. It
may even be that these distinctions are earlier than the severance of the
Indo-Irānians, if not as old as the union of the Aryan peoples. But in this
period there comes into existence a new factor, the introduction of divisions
among the ordinary freemen, the Vaiçyas, and the development of a large
and complicated system of caste which converts the simple distinction of
Vaiçya and Çūdra into an ever-increasing number of endogamous hereditary
groups practising one occupation or at least restricted to a small number of
occupations. This result was certainly far from being reached in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, but the tendency of social or racial distinctions to harden
into castes is already apparent. In this development there must have been
two main influences : the force of occupation is later revealed clearly enough
in the Pāli texts, and another interesting case is supplied by the Brāhmaṇas
themselves. In the Taittiriya Brāhmaṇa the Rathakāras, ‘chariot makers,'
appear as a special class along with the Vaiçyas ; and in this special position
we can see how the chariot makers, the type of skilled workers in the
Rigveda, have, through their devotion to a mechanical art, lost status as
compared with the ordinary freeman. The influence of the aborigines must
also have been very strong, as intermarriage proceeded. To be born of a
female Çūdrā was a disgrace with which Kavasha and Vatsa were taunted
by their priestly contemporaries : contact with the aborigines seems to have
raised questions of purity of blood very like those which at present agitate
the Southern States of the United States or the white people in South Africa.
In the Rigveda, restrictions on intermarriage seem to have been of the
simplest kind, confined to rules such as those prohibiting marriage of
brother and sister or father and daughter. In the Sūtrās the rules are still
not quite rigid ; but they insist that there shall be no marriage with agnates
or cognates, and they require that a man must either marry in his own caste,
or if he marries out of his caste, it must be into a lower caste. But while
some authorities so lay down this rule as to allow the Brāhman to marry
into the next two lower castes, the Kshatriya and the Vaiçya, and the
Kshatriya to marry into the Vaiçya caste, others also permit marriage with
Çūdrās, and therefore allow a Vaiçya to marry into that caste.
As might be expected, the Brāhmaṇa period presents us with a stage
intermediate between the rules of the Sūtras and the laxity of the Rigveda.
The rule as to marriage within the circle of the cognates and agnates seems,
by the time of the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa, to have extended only to the prohi-
bition of marriage with relations of the third or, according to others, of the
fourth degree. Similarly in the Brāhmaṇas, while we have no reason to
doubt that priesthood and nobility were hereditary, these castes seem to have
been free to intermarry with the lower castes including the Çūdra, as the
## p. 113 (#147) ############################################
V ]
THE FOUR GREAT CLASSES
113
>
cases of Vatsa and Kavasha cited above indicated. The marriage of a
Brāhman with the daughter of a king is attested by the case of Sukanyā, the
daughter of Çaryāta, who married the seer Chyavana.
The question how far change of caste was possible raises difficult
problems. The evidence of any change is scanty in the extreme. The most
that can be said is that it does not seem to have been, impossible. Thus in
the Rigveda, as we have seen, Viçvāmitra is a priest, the Purohita of
the king Sudās, but in the Pañchavimça and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas he is
treated as of royal descent, of the family of the Jahnus. The Pañchavimça
Brāhmaņa also speaks of certain persons as royal seers, and the later
tradition, preserved in the Anukramaņi or 'index' to the composers of the
Rigveda, ascribe hymns to such royal seers, in some cases at least without
any real foundation. Yāska, in one instance, represents a prince, Devāpi,
as sacrificing for his brother Çamtanu, the king ; but here we can see from
the passage of the Rigveda on which his narrative is based that he has no
warrant for this theory. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa a king, Tiçvantara
sacrifices without his priests, the Cyāparņas; but the case has no cogency,
for the mention of other priests in the context suggests the natural
inference that he used one or other of these groups. Some kings are
mentioned in the Panchaviņça Brāhmaṇa and elsewhere as having been
great sacrificers ; but this may mean no more than that they were the patrons
of the sacrifice, the normal part of the king. We, come nearer to contact
with fact in the concurrent stories of the Upanishads which show kings like
Janaka of Videha, Açvapati king of the Kekayas in the Punjab, Ajātaçatru
of Kāçi and Pravāhaņa Jaivali of Panchāla disputing with and instructing
Brāhmans in the lore of the brahman, the unity which is the reality of the
world. Very possibly this attribution is mainly due to considerations of the
advantage of conciliating the kings who were the patrons of the new
philosophy ; but, in any case, there is no reason to deny that kings could
and did take interest in intellectual movements, and we cannot from such
facts infer that there was any possibility of interchange of caste : we cannot
say that, if a king became a seer, as the Jaiminīya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa
asserts in one case, it really meant that he was regarded as ceasing to
belong to the kingly caste, any more than we can say that, if a priest became
king, as was not unknown later at least, he thereby suffered any loss of his
priestly position. One case of interest remains, that of Satyakāma Jābāla
who was accepted as a pupil by a distinguished priest because he showed
promise, although all he could tell of his ancestry was that he was the son of
a slave girl ; but, evidently, his father might have been a Brāhman, and the
case is only of value as negativing the idea of any natural rigidity of
institutions in the Vedic age. The history of later India shows how rigid
distinctions might be in theory but how ingeniously they might in practice be
a
## p. 114 (#148) ############################################
114
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHM AŅAS, ETC.
evaded in the individual case. What is more significant, perhaps, is that
there is no instance recorded in the Vedic texts of a Vaiçya rising to the rank
of priest or a prince: the two upper hereditary classes might to some degree
permit close relations, but they seem to have regarded the commoner as
definitely beneath them.
The relations of the four great classes of castes are summed up from
the point of view of the Brāhman in a passage of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa'.
In that passage the Kshatriya is taken as the norm, and the other castes
are defined according to the relations which they bear to him.
The Brāhman is 'a receiver of gifts, a drinker of the Soma, a seeker of
food, and liable to removal at will. ' We can distinguish in this period two
classes of Brāhmans, the priests who, as Purohitas of the king or belonging
to his encourage, took part in the vast sacrifices, some of them lasting for at
least a year, which they offered for their masters, and the priests of the
village who lived a humble and more restricted existence, except when they
might be called on to serve at the sacrifice instituted by some rich noble or
merchant. In both cases the priest was, in the long run, at the mercy of the
political power of the king. To the spiritual claims of the Brāhmans, so
proudly asserted at the ceremony of the royal consecration, when the king is
announced to the people as their king but it is added that the Soma is the
king of the Brāhmans, must be opposed the practical power of the king.
The Vaiçya is described as 'tributary to another, to be lived on by
another, and to be oppressed at will. From the point of view of the
Kshatriya this indicates the fact that the exactions of the king from the
commoners of the tribe were limited only by practical considerations of
expediency: the commoner had no legal right to his landholding or
to his private property if the king decided to take them from him ;
and, if he was allowed to retain them he paid for them in tribute and in
the duty of supporting others. This refers, no doubt, to the king's
privilege of assigning to his nobles the right to receive food from the
common people, and thus of making provision for the maintenance of
the nobility who assisted him in the protection of the country, and in the
administration and the conduct of justice. By this means the nobles came
more and more to occupy the position of landholders under the king,
while the Vaiçyas approximated to the position of tenants. Moreover, the
nobles may well have received from the king, as a result of successful on-
slaughts on the aborigines, grants of conquered lands and slaves, which they
would hold in full proprietorship, subject to the political authority of the
king. Among the Vaiçya, again, distinctions were growing up: that originally
the agriculture was carried on by Aryan tillers is certain ; but in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, the position was changing gradually; and, for the peasant
1 l'edic Index, vol. II, p. 255.
## p. 115 (#149) ############################################
V]
THE ÇŪDRAS
115
working on his own fields, was being substituted the landowner cultivating
his estate by means of slaves, or the merchant carrying on his trade by the
same instrumentality, though we cannot with any certainty say how far
this process was proceeding. The industrial workers, like the chariot
makers, the smiths, the tanners, the carpenters, were sinking in estimation
and forming distinct castes of their own.
On the other hand, the Çūdra was approximating more and more to
the position to which the humbler freeman was being reduced. In the
passage referred to, he is still described as 'the servant of another, to be
expelled at will and to be slain at will’; but in the Sūtras we find that while
the Vaiçya has a wergeld of 100 cows, the Çūdra has a wergled of 10 cows ;
and, even if we assume that this is merely for the benefit of his master—which
is very doubtful- still unquestionably the growing complication of the social
scheme was abolishing the relation of simple slavery. Slaves proper there
were, as we see in Buddhist texts ; but, where whole tribes were reduced to
subjection, the tendency must have been to assign villages and their inhabi.
tants to the king and to the nobles, sometimes, perhaps, also, though in a less
degree to the commoners who at this period must still have formed the bulk
of the army. While some of the aboriginal inhabitants would thus become
slaves pure and simple, the rest would rather stand in the relationship of serfs ;
and as we have seen, there is reason to suppose that in many cases the true
Vaiçyas also were approximating to the position of tenants of the nobles.
There is an interesting parallel in the early history of England, where the
ordinary freeman gradually fell into feudal dependence on his superiors, while
the slave has gradually acquired the position of a serf, and became more
and more assimilated to the position to which the freeman had sunk.
This ambiguous position of the Çūdra is amply recognised in the Vedic
texts : on the one hand, he is emphatically regarded as being impure and
not fit to take part in the sacrifice : after consecration, in some cases, the
mere speaking to a Cúdra is absolutely forbidden. He was not allowed even
to milk the cow for the milk needed for the offering to Agni. In the
Vājasaneyi Samhitā illicit connexions between Āryan and Çüdra are severely
reprobated ; but, in other places, sin, against Ārya and Çūdra is referred to,
prayers are uttered for the glory of Arya and Çūdra, and we learn of rich
Çūdras. The Sūtras, while they emphasise many points not attested by the
Brāhmaṇa texts, such as the danger of sitting near Çūdras, their exclusion
from the study of the Veda, and the prohibition of eating food touched by
them, yet recognise that they may be merchants or indeed exercise any trade.
It seems probable enough that among the çudras themselves there
were rules of endogamy; for we may generally assume, in the absence of any.
thing to the contrary in the texts, that the Vedic Indians and the aborigines
alike married within the tribe. The Çūdras seem often to have been subju.
2
## p. 116 (#150) ############################################
116
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
gated by whole tribes, such as the Baindas, the Parņakas, the Paulka sas,
and perhaps the Chandālas, who may originally have been members of small
and degraded tribes living mainly by fishing or hunting : such tribes have
survived in the Central Provinces and near the Himālayas until the present
day, and they must have been much more numerous in the first millennium
BC. Thus from below as well as from above, from the practices of the
conquered aborigines as well as from the class prejudices of the Āryans,
may have come the impulse to the development of caste.
From the political point of view the chief characteristic of the new
order was the growth in the power of the king. We must not assume that,
even in this period, there were great kingdoms. It is true that the horse-
sacrifice as reported in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa and in the royal consecra-
tion of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, both of which passages are late, presuppose
that the kings who performed it set up claims to imperial dignity, and that
they had won the proud title of conquerors of the whole earth, which is
applied to them. But real conquest seems not to have been meant ; and,
though the evidence above given proves that there was considerable
amalgamation of tribes and the formation of larger kingdoms than those in
the period of the Rigveda, yet it is significant that even the Kuru-Pañchālas,
and still less the Kosala-Videhas, never amalgamated into single kingdoms.
We may, however, safely hold that the king now ruled in many cases a much
larger realm than the princes of the Rigveda. The hereditary character of
the monarchy is clearly apparent : in one case, that of the Sțiñjayas, we
hear expressly of a monarchy which had lasted ten generations. The term
Rājaputra, ‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya,
‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya, which
probably covers the nobles as well as the king and his family. The
importance of the kingly rank is emphasised by the elaborate rite of
the royal consecration, the Rājasūya. The king is clad in the ceremonial
garments of his rank, is formally anointed by the priest, steps on a tiger
skin to attain the power of the tiger, takes part in a mimic cattle raid,
assumes the bow and arrow, and steps as a conqueror to each of the four
quarters, an action paralleled in the coronation of the Hungarian king. A
game of dice is played in which he is made the victor. A list of kings who
were thus consecrated is given in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa: in all but details
it coincides with the list given in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of those
who performed the horse-sacrifice.
At the royal consecration the entourage of the king played an
important part. The list of Ratnins 'jewels,' given by the Taittirīya, texts,
consists of the Brāhman, i. e. the Purohita, the Rājanya, the Mahishi, the
first wife of the four allowed to the king by custom, the Vāvātā, ‘favourite
wife, the Parivșiktī, 'discarded wife,' the Sūta, “charioteer,' the Senāni,
a
## p. 117 (#151) ############################################
V]
OFFICIALS
117
‘commander of the army,' the Grāmaņi, 'village headman,' the Kshattri,
‘chamberlain,' the Samgrahītņi, 'charioteer' or 'treasurer,' the Bhāgadugha,
'collector of taxes' or 'divider of food,' and the Akshāvāpa, 'superintendent
of dicing' or thrower of dice. ' The Çata patha Brāhmaṇa has also the
‘huntsman' and the 'courier,' while the Maitrāyaṇi Samhitā adds the
Takshan, 'carpenter,' and Rathakāra, ‘chariot-maker. ' In an older list of
eight Viras, 'heroes,' given in the Panchavimça Brāhmaṇa Care found
the brother, son, Purohita, Mahishi, Sūta, Gramani, Kshattſi, and Sam-
grahitri. We are faced, in the interpretation of the names of several of
these officers, with the doubt whether we are to recognise in them merely
courtiers or public functionaries. The Sūta is according to native tra-
dition the 'charioteer' ; but it seems much more probable that he was at
once a herald and a minstrel, and to this conclusion the inviolability, which
in one passage is attributed to him, clearly points. The Grāmaņi has
already been met with as a military official in the period of the Rigveda.
Probably at this epoch a Grāmaņi was, both for civil and military purposes,
at the head of each village, owing, it may be conjectured, his position to
the king, while the Grāmaņi par excellence presided over the city or village
where the royal court was situated. It is also far from unlikely, despite
the silence of the texts, that the civil functions of the Grāmaņi were the
more important ; for the post is emphatically declared in several places
to represent the summit of the ambition of the Vaiçya. If later analogy
is to help us, we may conjecture that the Grāmaņi formed the channel
through which the royal control was exercised and the royal dues received.
It may well be then that the household officers, besides their more primitive
functions, carried out the important duties of receiving and disbursing
the revenues which the king thus obtained ; and on them must have fallen
;
the duty of seeing that the supplies, which the Vaiçyas were required to
provide for the maintenance of the king's household, were duly forthcoming.
The condition of these officers is indeed probably to be compared with
that of the household of the early English and Norman kings.
An officer, not included in the list of the Ratnins but often mention-
ed in the texts of the period, was the Sthapati ; and we learn that it was
the Sthapati of Dushtaritu who restored him to the kingdom of the Sținja-
yas after he had been expelled thence by his subjects. He may have been
a governor of part of the kingdom , but the more likely interpretation of
the term is 'chief judge,' an official who doubtless combined executive as
well as judicial functions. Later however in the Sūtras we hear of a Nishā.
da-Sthapati which may mean a governor of Nishādas,' apparently the ruler
of some outlying aboriginal tribes, who had been reduced to subjection and
placed under the royal control.
## p. 118 (#152) ############################################
118
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
Of the actual functions of the king we here little detail. He still led
in war, the Kuru-Pañchāla princes sallied forth to raid in the dewy season
and returned in the hot weather as a matter of coursebut the Senāni
appears as leader in charge under him. From the Sūtras and from a stray
reference in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, he seems to have taken a very active
part in the administration of the criminal law. There can be no doubt
that he controlled the land of the tribe. It is not, however, necessary
to ascribe to this period the conception of the r. yal ownership of all the
land, though it appears in the Greek sources from the time of Megasthenes
downwards, and is evidenced later by the law-books of the time. He
had, it is true, the right to expel a Brāhman or a Vaiçya at will,
though we do not know expressly that he could do this in the case of a
Kshatriya. But these considerations point to political superiority rather
than to ownership proper ; and we may assume that, when he gave grants
of land to his retainers, he granted not ownership but privileges such as the
right to receive dues and maintenance from the cultivators. There is a
clear distinction between this action and the conferring of ownership ; and
it
may
be doubted if the actual gift of land was approved in this epoch :
the only case of which we hear is one reported in the Çata patha and the
Aitareya Brāhmaṇas, in which the king Viçvakarman Bhauvana gave land to
the priests who sacrificed for him, but the Earth itself rebuked his auction.
J. R. A. S. , 1909, pp. 1095-1100. Cf. Keith, ibid. 1100. 6.
Sayce, ibid. p. 1107, denies this.
Festgruss an Roth, pp. 68 sq. =Indian Antiquary, vol. XXIII, pp. 154 sq.
Cf. Rigveda Samhitä, vol. IV? , pp. vii sq.
3
>
1
3
4
5
## p. 100 (#134) ############################################
100
(CH.
THE AGE OF THE RIGVEDA
of the Rigveda, 1000-800 B. C. , and the Chhandas, covering the older and
more primitive Vedic hymns, 1200-1000 B. c. The exact demarcation did not
claim, save as regards the latest period, any special exactitude, and was
indeed somewhat arbitrary. But the fact remains that definitely later than
the Rigveda we find the other Samhitās, of which an account is given below,
and the prose Brāhmaṇa texts, which contain comments on and explanations
of the Samhitās, whose existence they presuppose. It is impossible to deny
that this mass of work must have taken time to produce, especially when we
realise that what has survived is probably a small fraction as compared with
what has been lost. Now in the Brāhmaṇas we find only the most rudimen-
tary elements of the characteristic features of all Indian literature after
Buddhism, the belief in metempsychosis, pessimism, and the search for
deliverance. The distance between the Brāhmaṇa texts with their insistence
on the ritual, and their matter-of-fact and indeed sordid view of the rewards
of action in this world, and the later doctrine of the uselessness of all
mundane effort, is bridged by the Araṇyakas and the Upanishads which
recognise transmigration, if not pessimism, which definitely strive to examine
the real meaning of being, and are no longer content with the explanation of
sacrifices and idle legends. It is unreasonable to deny that these texts must
antedate the rise of Buddhism, which, in part at least, is a legitimate
development of the doctrines of the Upanishads. Now the death of Buddha
falls in all probability somewhere within the second decade of the fifth cen-
tury before Christ? : the older Upanishads can therefore be dated as on the
whole not later than 550 B. C. From that basis we must reckon backwards,
taking such periods as seem reasonable ; and, in the absence of any means
of estimating these periods, we cannot have more than a conjectural
chronology. But it is not likely that the Brāhmaṇa period began later than
800 B. C. , and the oldest hymns of the Rigveda, such as those to Ushas, may
have been composed as early as 1200 B. c. To carry the date further back is
impossible on the evidence at present available, and a lower date would be
necessary if we are to accept the view that the Avesta is really a product of
the sixth century B. C. , as has been argued on grounds of some though not
decisive weight ; for the coincidence in language between the Avesta and the
Rigveda is so striking as to indicate that the two languages cannot have
been long separated before they arrived at their present condition.
The argument from literature and religion is supported also by the
argument from civilisation. The second period, that of the Samhitās, shows
the development of the primitive Vedic community into something more
nearly akin w the Hinduism which, as we learn from the Greek records,
existed at the time of the invasion of Alexander and the immediately succeed-
ing years. But we are still a long way from the full development of the
1 Fleet, J. R. A. S. , 1912, p. 240, thinks 483 B. C. is the most probable date.
>
## p. 101 (#135) ############################################
IV)
DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILISATION
101
system as shown to us in the Arthaçāstra, that remarkable record of Indian
polity which is described in Chapter XIX. The language also of the Vedic
literature is definitely anterior, though not necessarily mush anterior, to
the classical speech as prescribed in the epoch-making work of Pāṇini :
even the Sūtras, which are undoubtedly later than the Brāhamaņas, show
a freedom which is hardly conceivable after the period of the full influence
of Pāņini? ; and Pāņini is dated with much plausibility not later than
300 B. ca.
1Bühler Sacred Books of the East, vol. II", p. XLV, relies on this argument to
assign Āpastamba's Sütras to a date not later than the third cent. B. C. , and suggests
that they may be 150 or 200 years earlier.
2S40 Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, pp. 21-5.
## p. 102 (#136) ############################################
CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD OF THE LATER SAMHITĀS, THE BRĀH.
MANAS, THE ĀRANYAKAS, AND THE UPANISHADS
DEFINITELY later than that depicted in the Rigveda is the civilisation
presented by the later Samhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, the Araṇyakas, and the
Upanishads. It is on the whole probable that the total time embraced in
this period is not longer, perhaps it is even shorter, than that covered by the
earlier and later strata of the Rigveda ; and there are hymns in the tenth
book of the Rigveda which are really contemporaneous with the later
Samhitās, just as those Samhitās have here and there preserved work of a
much earlier epoch. But the distinction between the main body of the
Rigveda and the rest of the Vedic literature is clear and undeniable. Nor is
it open to much doubt that the redaction of the Samhitā of the Rigveda into
what, in substance as cpposed to verbal form, was its present shape took
place before the other Samhitās were compiled. Of these Samhitās the
Sāmaveda, the collection of chants for the Sāman singers, is so dependent on
the Rigveda for its contents, that it is negligible for purposes of history. On
the other hand, the Samhitās of the Yajurveda, the collection of the
formulae and prayers of the Adhvaryu priest, to whose lot fell the actual
performance of the sacrificial acts, are of the highest historical importance.
They represent two main schools, the Black and the White, the name of the
letter being due, according to tradition, to the fact that, whereas the texts of
the Black Yajurveda contain verse or prose formuiae and the prose expla-
nations and comments combined into one whole, the text of the latter
distinguishes between the verse and prose formulae wliich it collects in the
Samhitā, and the prose explanations which it includes in a Brāhmana. Of
the Black Yajurveda three complete texts exist, those of the Taittiriya, the
Kāțhaka, and the Maitrāyaṇi schools, while considerable fragments of
a Kapishthala Samhitā closely allied to the Kāthaka also exist. In the case
of the Taittiriya there is a Brāhmaṇa which is a supplementary work,
dealing with matter not taken up in the Samhitā. The White school has
the Vājasaneya Samhit, and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the latter being one
>
102
## p. 103 (#137) ############################################
V]
THE EARLIEST PROSE
103
>
of the most important works in the whole Vedic literature. Finally, there
is the Samhitā of the Atharva veda, which is technically reckoned as apper-
taining to the Brāhman, the priest who in the later state of the ritual
superintends the whole of the sacrifice, and which is a curious repository
of most mingled matter, for the most part spells of every kind, but con-
taining also theosophical hymns of considerable importance.
The conjunction of the prose explanation with the formulae does not
prove the later composition of both the prose and the formulae, and there
is no ground for attributing the two strata to the same date. On the other
hand, the prose of the Yajurveda Samhitās is amongst the earliest Vedic
prose. Possibly somewhat earlier may be that of the Pañchavimça, Brāhmaṇa,
which is the Brāhmaṇa of the Sāmaveda, and which, despite the extraordi-
nary technicality of its details, is yet not without importance for the history
of the civilisation of the period. The Brāhmaṇas of the Rigveda are proba-
bly slightly later in date, the order being unquestionably the earlier part
(books 1-v) of the Aitareya, and the younger the Kaushitaki or Çārkhāyana.
When the Atharvaveda, which long was not recognised as fully entitled to
claim rank as a Veda proper, came within the circle of the Vedas, it was
considered desirable to provide it with a Brāhmaṇa, the Gopatha, but this
strange work is in part a cento from other texts, including the Çatapatha
Brāhmaṇa, and appears to be later than the Kauçika and Vaitāna Sūtras
attached to the Atharvaveda : its value then for this period is negligible.
Special portions from the Brāhmaṇas are given the title of Āraṇyaka,
'forest books', apparently because their contents were so secret that they
had to be studied in the depths of the forests, away from possibility of over-
hearing by others than students. The extant texts which bear this name are
the Aitareya, the Kaushitaki, and the Taittirīya, which are appendages to
the Brāhmaṇas bearing those names. All three are somewhat heterogeneous
in composition, the Aitareya being the most definitely theosophical, while
the Taittiriya is the least. Still more important are the Upanishads, so
called because they were imparted to pupils in secret session, the term
denoting the sitting cf the pupil before the teacher. Each of the three
Āraṇyakas contains an Upanishad of corresponding name. More valuable
however are the two great Upanishads, the Bțihadāraṇyaka, which is
attached to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa , forming part of its fourteenth and
last book in one recension and the seventeenth book in the other, and the
Chhāndogya Upanishad attached to the Sāmaveda ; these two are in
all probability the oldest of the Upanishads. To the Sāmaveda also belongs,
the Jaiminiya Brāhmaṇa, one book of which, the Jaiminiya Upanishad
Brāhmaṇa, is really an Araṇyaka, and like other Āraṇyakas, contains in
itself an Upanishad, the brief but interesting Kena Upanishad. The
1 See Keith, Aitareya Āranyaka, pp. 172, 173.
## p. 104 (#138) ############################################
104
(CH.
LATER SAMUITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
number of treatises styled Upanishad is very large ; but, with the possible
exception of the Kāțhaka, which expands a legend found in the Taittiriya
Brāhmaṇa dealing with the nature of the soul, none of them other than
those enumerated can claim to be older than Buddhism ; and the facts
which they contain cannot therefore prudently be used in sketching the life
of the period under review. Similarly, the Sūtras, which are text-books
either giving in the form of very brief rules directions for the performance
of the sacrifice in its various forms (the Çrauta Sūtras dealing with the
great rites at which a number of priests were employed, the Gșihya Sūtras
with the domestic sacrifices and other duties performed by the householder),
or enunciating customary law and practice (the Dharma Sūtras), cannot
safely be relied upon as presenting a picture of this period. They are
however of much indirect value ; for they throw light upon practices which
are alluded to in the Brāhmaṇas in terms capable of more than one in-
terpretation ; and here and there they preserve verses, far older than the
works themselves, which contain historie facts of value.
We have seen that, in the period of Rigveda, the centre of the
civilisation was tending to be localised in the land between the Sarasvati
and the Dșishadvati, but that, though this was the home of the Bharatas,
other tribes including the famous five tribes dwelt in the Punjab, which had
in all probability been the earlier home of the Indians. In the Brāhmaņa
period, as the period under review may conveniently be called, the
localisation of civilisation in the more eastern country is definitely achieved
and the centre of the life of the day is Kurukshetra, bounded by Khāņdava
on the south, Tūrghna on the north, Parīņah on the west. In contrast with
the frequent mention of the eastern lands the Punjab recedes in importance ;
and its later name, Pañchanada, 'land of the five streams', is not found
until the epic period. The tribes of the west receive disapproval both in
the Çatapatha and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa a
geographical passage ascribes to the Middle Country, the later Madhyadeça,
the Kurus and Pañchāls with the Vaças and the Uçinaras, to the south the
Satvants, and to the north beyond the Himālaya the Uttara-Kurus and the
Uttara-Madras. On the other hand, while the west recedes in importance
the regions east of the Kulu-Pañchāla country come into prominence,
especially Kosala, corresponding roughly to the modern Oudh, Videha,
the modern Tirhut or N. Bihār, and Magadha, the modern S. Bihār.
Still further east was the country of the Angas, the Modern E. Bihār.
In the south we hear of outcast tribes in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,
probably tribes who were not fully Brāhmanised : their names are given
as the Andhras, who appear as a great kingdom in the centuries immediate.
ly before and after the Christian era, Pundras, Mūtibas, Pulindas, and
Çabaras, the last named being now a tribe living on the Madras frontier near
## p. 105 (#139) ############################################
V
EXTENSION OF ĀRYAN CIVILISATION
105
Orissa and showing, -in its language, trace of its Mundā origin. In the
south also was Naishadha.
It does not seem likely that Āryan civilisation had yet over stepped
the Vindhya, which is not mentioned by name in the Vedic texts, though the
Kaushitaki Upanishad refers to the northern and southern mountains, the
Jatter of which must be the Vindhya. At the same time geographical
knowledge of the north is wider : the Atharvaveda knows not only of the
Mūjavants and the Gandhāris, but also of the Mahāvșishas, and the name
of a place in the Mahāvſisha, country, Raikva parņa, is preserved in the
Chhāndogya Upanishad. Yāska in the Nirukta, a text of about 500 B. C.
explaining with illustrations certain selected Vedic words, tells us that the
speech of the Kambojas differed in certain respects from the ordinary Indian
speech, referring doubtless to the tribes living north-west of the Indus who
bore that name. Vidarbha, the modern Berār, is mentioned, but only in the
late Jaiminīya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa, though a Bhīma of Vidarbha occurs
in a late passage of the Aitareya.
In addition to a wider geographical outlook, the Brāhmaṇa period is
marked by the knowledge of towns and definte localities. There are fairly
clear references to Āsandivant, the Kuru capital, Kāmpīla, the capital of
Pañchāla in Madhyadeça, to Kauçāmbi, and to Kāçī, the capital of the
Kācīs on the river Varaṇāvatī, whence in later times Benares derives its name.
So we hear in this period for the first time of the Vinaçaņa, the place of
the disappearance of the Sarasvati in the desert, and Plaksha Prāsravaņa
the place forty-four days' journey distant, where the river reappears and
which, in the version of the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa, is but a span
from the centre of the universe. These are clear signs both of more develop-
ed city life and of more settled habits.
Corresponding with the change in geographical conditions is a still
greater change in the grouping of the tribes. The Bharatas, who are the
heroes of the third and the seventh books of the Rigveda, no longer occupy
the main position, and we find in their place, in the land which we know
they once held, the Kurus, and close to the Kurus the allied Pañchālas.
As we have seen already, there is little doubt that the Kurus were new
comers with whom the Bharatas amalgamated, and the Kurus thus rein-
forced included in their numbers the Pūrus. The mention of the Uttara-
Kurus as resident beyond the Himālaya is sufficiently accounted for if we
suppose that a branch of this tribe had settled in Kashmir, just as another
branch seems to have settled on the Indus and the Chenāb. The Pañchālas,
too, seem to have been a composite tribe, as the name which is clearly derived
from pancha, 'five,' shows. According to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa the older
name for the Pañchālas was Krivi; and we may at least believe that the
Krivis who with the Kurus appear to have constituted the two Vaikarņa
## p. 106 (#140) ############################################
106
[cu.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRAHMĀŅAS, ETC.
tribes of the Rigveda were a part of the Pañchāla nation'. The same
Brāhmaṇa suggests, if it does not prove, that the Turvaças were another ele-
ment of the people; and the disappearance from history at this period of
the Anus and Druhyus may indicate that they also were merged in the
new confederation. With the Kurus and Pañchālas must be ranked the
Vaças and Uçīnaras, two minor tribes who occupied the middle
Country, and the Sșiñjayas, whose close connexion with the Kurus is proved
beyond doubt by the fact that at one time they had a Purohita in common,
showing that, for the time at least, they must have been acting under the
leadership of one king.
In the texts the Kuru-Pañchālas pass as the models of good form : the
sacrifices are perfectly performed in their country : speech is best spoken
there and, as it seems, among the northern Kurus; and the Kaushitaki
Brāhmaṇa tells of people going to the north for the sake of its pure speech.
The Kuru-Pañchāla kings are the example for other kings: they perform the
Rājasūya, the sacrifice of the royal consecration: they march forth in the
dewy season for their raids and return in the hot season. Their Brāhmaṇs
are famous in the literature of the Upanishads for their knowledge; and the
Samhitās and Brāhmaṇas which are preserved seem, without exception,
to have taken definite form among the Kuru-Pañchālas, even when, as
in the case of the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa, they recognise the existence of
the activities of the kings and priests of Kosala-Videha. It is significant
of the state of affairs that in the Samhitās and allied texts of the Yajurvedas
where the ceremony of the Rājasūya is described, the king is presented
to the people with the declaration, "This is your king, 0 Kurus,' with
variants of 'O Pañchalas' and 'O Kuru-Pañchālas. '
In the Sanskrit epic the Kurus and Pañchālas are conceived as
being at enmity; and it is natural to enquire whether this tradition goes back
to the Vedic period. The reply, however, juust be in negative, for the
evidence adduced in favour of the theory is of the weakest possible
character. In the Kāthaka Samhitā there is an obscure ritual dispute
between a certain priest, Vaka, son of Dalbha, who is believed to have been
a Pañchāla and Dhțitarāshtra Vaicitravīrya, who is assumed to have been
a Kuru king. But apart from the fact that a mere dispute on a point of ritual
between a Pañchāla priest and a Kuru king could not prove any hostility
between the two peoples, there is no ground for supposing that this
· Dhțitarāshțra, was any one else than the king of the Kāçis who bears the
same name and who was defeated by the Bharata prince, Sātrājita Çatānika,
and in the very same passage of the Kāțhaka allusion is made to the union
1 See also Chapter IV, p. 75.
. For this view see Weber, Indische Studien, vol. I, pp. 184, 205, 206 ; vol. III,
p. 470 ; Grierson, J. R. A. S. , 1908, pp. 602-7, 837. 44, 1143. Arguments against are given
by Keith, J. R. A. S. , 1908 pp, 831. 6, 1138. 42.
## p. 107 (#141) ############################################
V]
KURUS AND PANCHĀLAS
107
2
of the Kuru-Pañchālas. A second argument of some human interest is
derived from the clever suggestion of Weber that in the revolting ceremony
of the horse-sacrifice, one of the great kingly sacrifices by which the Indian
king proclaimed his claim to imperial sway, the queen of the Kurus is
compelled to lie beside the victim, since otherwise Subhadrikā, the wife of
the king of Kāmpila, the capital of Pañchāla, would take her place. If this
were the case there would be convincing proof of an ancient rivalry which
might well end in the bitter conflicts of the epic ; but, unhappily, the
interpretation is almost certainly incorrcet. With the absence of evidence of
opposition between the Kurus, assumed to have been specially Brāhmaṇical,
and the Pañchālas, disappears any support for the theoryl, based on the
phenomena of the later distribution of dialects in India, that the Kurus
were a fresh stream of immigrants into India who came via Chitrāl and Gilgit
and forced themselves as a wedge between the Āryan tribes already dwell-
ing in the land. The theory proceeds to assume that, coming with few
or no women, they intermingled with the Dravidian population with great
completeness and produced the Aryo-Dravidian physical type. If these
things were so, the fact was not at any rate known by the age which pro-
duced the Samhitās and the Brāhmaṇas.
Though the Bharatas disappear in this period as a tribe, the fame of
the Bharata kings had not been lost : in a passage in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa
which describes the famous men who sacrificed with the horse-sacrifice, we hear
of the Bharata Dauḥshanti, whom the nymph Çakuntalā bore at Nāda pit,
and who defeated the king of the Satvants and won victories on the Ganges
and Jumna, showing that the Bharatas, as in the Rigveda, were performing
their great deeds on the eastern as well as on the western side of the king-
dom. Another king, Sātrājit Çatānika, as we have seen, defeated the king
of the Kāçis. We hear too of a descendant of Divodāsa, Pratardana, whose
name is of value as tending to show that the Tșitsus were the family of
the royal house of the Bharatas : according to the Kaushitaki Upanishad he
met his death in battle. It is possible that with him perished the direct
Tritsu line : at any rate, the first king who bears the Kuru name,
Kuruçavaņa, is a descendant of Trasadasyu, the greatest of the Pūru kings.
But of Kuruçravana and of his father Mitrātithi, and his son Upamaçravas
we know practically nothing and the first great Kuru king is one mentioned
in the Atharvaveda, Parikshit, in whose reign the hymn tells us the kingdom
of the Kurus flourished exceedingly. His grandson and great-grandson
according to tradition were the Prātisutvana and Pratīpa whose names are
mentioned in the Atharvaveda. A later descendant of his was the famous
Janamejaya, whose horse-sacrifice is celebrated in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa
and who had in his entourage the priests Indrota Daivāpi Çaunaka and Tura
:
a
i See Chapters II, pp. 40-1, 44, and IV, p. 98, note 1.
>
## p. 108 (#142) ############################################
108
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
Kāvasheya. His brothers Ugrasena, Bhimasena, and Crutasena by the same
sacrifice purified themselves of the crime of Brāhman-slaying. But the
history of the Kurus was not apparently, at the end of the period, un-
chequered: there is an obscure reference to their being saved by a mare,
perhap3 a reference to the prowess of their charioteers or cavalry
in battle; but the same text, the Chhāndogya Upanishad, alludes to a
hailstorm or perhaps a shower of locusts afflicting them, and a prediction is
preserved in an old Sūtra telling that they would be driven from Kurukshetra.
It is in accord with these hints that the Bșihadāraṇyaka Upanishad sets as a
question for discussion the problem what has become of the descendants of
Parikshit: the dynasty must have passed away in some great disaster. From
the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa we gather that the capital of Janamejaya was
Asandīvant, the city of the throne, and that at Mashņāra a Kuru kiig won
a victory, and Tura Kāvasheya, a priest of the Bharatas, sacrificed at
Kāroti.
Of the Panchālas apart from the Kurus we hear comparatively little :
they had however kings like Kraivya and Coņa Sātrāsāha, father of Koka,
who performed the horse-sacrifice and thus claimed imperial power. Dur-
mukha, who was taught the royal consecration by Brihaduktha and con-
quered the whole earth, and the more real Pravāhaņa Jaivali who appears
as philosopher king in the Upanishads, and who at least must have been
willing to take part in the disputes of the Brāhmans at his court. Pañchāla
towns were Kāmpila, Kaucāmbi, and Parivakrā or Paricakrā, the scene of
Kraivya's exploits.
The Uttara-Kurus seem already in the time of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa
to have won a somewhat mythical reputation, for when Atyarāti Jānamtapi,
who was not a king, proposed to conquer them as well as the rest of the
world, he was dissuaded by his priest Vasishtha Satyahavya, and for his rash.
ness was defeated by Amitrata pana Çushmiņa, the king of Çibis, a tribe
no doubt identical with the Çivas of the Rigveda and belonging to the
north-west. The Uttara-Madras must have lived near them in Kashmir ;
and the Madras of whom we hear in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad were,
in the Buddhist epoch, settled between the Chenāb and the Rāvi. In the
Middle Country with the Kuru-Pañchālas were the Vaças and Uçīnaras
who seem to have been of no importance. With them in the Kaushitaki
Upanishad are coupled the Matsyas, and we hear of one great Matsya king,
Dhvasan Dvaitavana, who performed the horse-sacrifice and who probably
ruled in or about Jaipur or Alwar, where lake Dvaitavana must be placed.
On the Jumna we hear at the end of the period of the Salvas, under king
Yaugandhari, probably in close touch with the Kuru-Pañchāla people.
1 See Jacob, J. R. A. S. , 1911, p. 510.
## p. 109 (#143) ############################################
V]
PEOPLES OF THE PERIOD
109
:
>
The Sțiñjayas also stood in this period in close relationship to the
Kurus, and like the Kurus the Spiñjayas seem to have suffered disaster at
some period. The Vaitahavyas, the Atharvaveda relates, offended the
priestly family of the Bhộigus and came to ruin : his tradition is confirmed
by the notices of disasters in the Kāțhaka and Taittiriya Samhitās. Of their
history we have one definite glimpse : they rose against their king, Dush-
țarītu Paumsāyana, despite the ten generations of his royal descent, and.
expelled him with his Sthapati, ‘minister', Chākra Revottaras Pāțava ; but
the latter afterwards succeeded in restoring his master to power, despite the
opposition of Balhika Prātipiya, whose patronymic reminds us of the Pratīpa
who was a descendant of the Kuru king Parikshit, showing that the Kuru
princes were probably anxious enough to use domestic strife as a means of
securing a hold over a neighbouring kingdom. Perhaps in the long run the
ruin of the Vaitahavyas took the shape of absorption in the Kuru realm.
On the other hand, the defeats of the Satvants on the south by the Kurus were
doubtless nothing more than mere raids.
Further east of the Kuru-Pañchāla realm lay the territories of Kosala
and Videha, which were, however, not allied in any so close a manner as the
Kurus and the Pañchālas. Para, son of Atņāra, their greatest king who
celebrated the horse-sacrifice, is however spoken of as a king of Videha as
well as a king of Kosala, showing that the kingdoms were sometimes united
under one sovereign. A well-known legend in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa
recognise:: that Videha received Vedic civilisation later than Kosala, for it
tells how Māthava the Videgha, whose name shows the older form of the
word Videha, passed from the Sarasvati, the seat of Vedic culture, to the
land of Videha, crossing the Sadānirā; this perennial stream, as its name
denotes, formed the boundary of Kosala on the east and, with some plausi.
bility, has been identified with the modern Gandak, which rising in Nepal
joins the Ganges near Patna. Kāçī and Videha are also connected in the
Kaushitaki Upanishad ; and a late text preserves the record that Jala Jātū.
karnya was the Purohita of the Kosalas, Videhas, and Kācis at one time,
proving a temporary league. Of other kings we hear of the Kosalan Hiran.
yanābha, of the Videhan Nami Sāpya, and beyond all of Janaka of Videha,
whose fame leads him to play the part of the father of Sitā, the heroine of
the Rāmāyaṇa, the second of India's great epics. Janaka appears himself as
a king ever anxious to seek for the wisdom of the Brāhmans ; and among
his contemporaries are mentioned the great Yājñavalkya, and Cvetaketu.
His contemporary was Ajātaçatru of Kāçī, whom one account indeed refers
to as of Kāçī or Videha, and it is a natural suggestion that in this name we
have a chronological fact of value. It is suggested that in this Ajātaçatru
we have the Ajātasattu of the Buddhist texts, who was a contenaporary of
## p. 110 (#144) ############################################
110
(CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
were
the Buddha and who therefore reigned in the sixth century B. c. But the
suggestion is not a happy one. In the Buddhist text Ajātasattu never appears
as king of any other place than Magadha, and the name is merely an
epithet, 'he who has no foe,' which could be applied to any king, though it
may well be that the Ajātasattu of Magadha gladly borrowed an epithet
which a king of Kāçi had made famous. Other kings of Kāçi were Dhrita-
rāshtra, whose defeat by a Bharata has been mentioned above, and
Bhadrasena, a descendant of Ajātaçatru.
It is very noticeable that the relations of Kāçi and the Bharatas seem
to have been those of war; and there is evidence of some aversion existing
between the Kosala-Videhas and the Kāçis on the one hand and the Kuru-
Pañchālas on the other. It is clear enough that the Brāhmanical tradition
came to the Kosala-Videhas from the Kuru-Pañchāla country; but the
question remains whether the Āryan tribes, who occupied Oudh and Tirhut,
a branch of the Kuru-Pañchālas or men who originally settled
in the Kuru-Pañchāla country or on its borders and were pushed eastwards
by the pressure of the Kuru-Pañchālas. The evidence is not sufficient to
pronounce any opinion on either view, and, as we have seen, still less to
show that the Kurus were distinct from the Pañchālas as a different branch
of the Āryan invaders of India.
Much more definitely still beyond the pale were the people of
Magadha, which serves with Anga in the Atharvaveda as a symbol of a
distant land. The man of Magadha is dedicated, in the account of the
symbolic human sacrifice given in the Yajurveda, to ‘loud noise', suggesting
that the Magadha country must have been the seat of minstrelsy, an idea
supported by the fact that in later literature a man of Magadha is the desig-
nation of a minstrel. If, as has been suggested, the Kikațas of the Rigveda
were really located in Magadha, the dislike of the country goes back to the
Rigveda itself. The cause must probably have been the imperfect Brāh-
manisation of the land and the predominace of aboriginal blood, which
later in history rendered Magadha the headquarters of Buddhism. It is
significant that the Buddhist texts show a subordination of the Brāhman to
the Kshatriya class which has no parallel in the orthodox literature. It is
clear however that Brāhmans sometimes lived there, but that their doing so
was a ground for surprise.
The man of Magadha is brought into close connexion with the Vrātya
in a mystical hymn in the Atharva veda which celebrates the Vrātya as a
type of the supreme power in the universe. A more connected account of
the Vrātya is found in the Pañchavimaça Brāhmaṇa of the Sāmaveda and
a
1
1
1 See Hoernle Osteology, p. 106. For arguments against, see Keith, Z. D. M. G. ,
vol. LXII, pp. 138. 9.
## p. 111 (#145) ############################################
V]
SOCIAL CHANGES
111
the Sūtras of that Veda? . It is clear that, as their name suggests, they were
persons regarded as outcasts; and ceremonies are described intended to
secure them admission into the Brāhmanical fold. The description of the
Vrātyas well suits nomad tribes; they are declared not to practise agricul-
ture, to go about in rough wagons, to wear turbans, to carry goods and a
peculiar kind of bow, while their garments are of a special kind. Their sense
of justice was not that of the Brāhmans, and their speech, though it seems
Āryan, was apparently Prākritic in form, as is suggested by the significant
remark that they called what was easy of utterance hard to speak ; for the
Prākrits differ from Sanskrit essentially in their efforts to avoid harsh conso-
nantal combinations. Where they were located is not certain; for their habits
would agree well enough with nomads in the west, but the little information
which we have seems fairly enough to lead to the conclusion that some at
least of the Vrātyas were considered to be dwellers in Magadha.
There is little to be said of other tribes. The Vidarbhas are known
through one of their kings who received certain knowledge from the mythi-
cal sages Parvata and Nārada, and through a special kind of dog found in
their country. The list of kings who performed the horse-sacrifice includes
the Çvikna king, Rishabha Yājñatura. Mention has been made above of
,
the Pārāvatas, who were found on the Jumna ; and the Kekayas with their
prince Açvapati, and the Balhikas were located in the far north. The
temptation to transform the name of the latter into a sign of Irānian influ-
ence must be withstood, as it rests on no sure basis and we have seen
Balhika as part of the name of a Kuru prince. An early Sūtra refers to
Çaphāla, the kingdom of Rituparna. The Andhras, and other tribes men-
tioned by the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa as outcasts, were probably still Dravidian
in blood and speech, though Mundā speaking tribes may have been mingled
with them as the name Çabara suggests. The Angas, too may have been
comparatively little affected by the influence of the Āryan culture. It has
been conjectured that in Magadha the wave of Āryan civilisation met with
another wave of invasion from the east; but tempting as the suggestion is,
it cannot be supported by anything in the Vedic literature. 2
As was to be expected, society was far from unchanged in this period
of active Aryan expansion. As we have seen, there is good reason to believe
that in the period of the Rigveda the priesthood and the nobility were here-
ditary. This view receives support from the fact that similar class distinc-
tions are to be found in other Indo-European communities, such as the
patrician gentes in Rome, the Eupatridae of Athens, the nobles of early
1 Charpentier, V. 0 J. , vol. XXV, pp. 355 sq. , sees in the Vrātyas the precursors
of Civaites of to-day. But see Keith, J. R. A S. , 1913, pp. 155 sq.
2 See Pargiter, J. R. A. S. , 1908, p. 852. Oldenberg, Buddha), p. 10, thinks that
the Añga, Magadha, Kāci, Kosala, and Videha tribes were earlier Aryan immigrants.
## p. 112 (#146) ############################################
112
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC. [CH.
Germany, the earls of the Anglo-Saxons, and the still closer parallel of the
Irānian classes of Athravas and Rathaesthas, 'priests' and 'warriors. It
may even be that these distinctions are earlier than the severance of the
Indo-Irānians, if not as old as the union of the Aryan peoples. But in this
period there comes into existence a new factor, the introduction of divisions
among the ordinary freemen, the Vaiçyas, and the development of a large
and complicated system of caste which converts the simple distinction of
Vaiçya and Çūdra into an ever-increasing number of endogamous hereditary
groups practising one occupation or at least restricted to a small number of
occupations. This result was certainly far from being reached in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, but the tendency of social or racial distinctions to harden
into castes is already apparent. In this development there must have been
two main influences : the force of occupation is later revealed clearly enough
in the Pāli texts, and another interesting case is supplied by the Brāhmaṇas
themselves. In the Taittiriya Brāhmaṇa the Rathakāras, ‘chariot makers,'
appear as a special class along with the Vaiçyas ; and in this special position
we can see how the chariot makers, the type of skilled workers in the
Rigveda, have, through their devotion to a mechanical art, lost status as
compared with the ordinary freeman. The influence of the aborigines must
also have been very strong, as intermarriage proceeded. To be born of a
female Çūdrā was a disgrace with which Kavasha and Vatsa were taunted
by their priestly contemporaries : contact with the aborigines seems to have
raised questions of purity of blood very like those which at present agitate
the Southern States of the United States or the white people in South Africa.
In the Rigveda, restrictions on intermarriage seem to have been of the
simplest kind, confined to rules such as those prohibiting marriage of
brother and sister or father and daughter. In the Sūtrās the rules are still
not quite rigid ; but they insist that there shall be no marriage with agnates
or cognates, and they require that a man must either marry in his own caste,
or if he marries out of his caste, it must be into a lower caste. But while
some authorities so lay down this rule as to allow the Brāhman to marry
into the next two lower castes, the Kshatriya and the Vaiçya, and the
Kshatriya to marry into the Vaiçya caste, others also permit marriage with
Çūdrās, and therefore allow a Vaiçya to marry into that caste.
As might be expected, the Brāhmaṇa period presents us with a stage
intermediate between the rules of the Sūtras and the laxity of the Rigveda.
The rule as to marriage within the circle of the cognates and agnates seems,
by the time of the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa, to have extended only to the prohi-
bition of marriage with relations of the third or, according to others, of the
fourth degree. Similarly in the Brāhmaṇas, while we have no reason to
doubt that priesthood and nobility were hereditary, these castes seem to have
been free to intermarry with the lower castes including the Çūdra, as the
## p. 113 (#147) ############################################
V ]
THE FOUR GREAT CLASSES
113
>
cases of Vatsa and Kavasha cited above indicated. The marriage of a
Brāhman with the daughter of a king is attested by the case of Sukanyā, the
daughter of Çaryāta, who married the seer Chyavana.
The question how far change of caste was possible raises difficult
problems. The evidence of any change is scanty in the extreme. The most
that can be said is that it does not seem to have been, impossible. Thus in
the Rigveda, as we have seen, Viçvāmitra is a priest, the Purohita of
the king Sudās, but in the Pañchavimça and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇas he is
treated as of royal descent, of the family of the Jahnus. The Pañchavimça
Brāhmaņa also speaks of certain persons as royal seers, and the later
tradition, preserved in the Anukramaņi or 'index' to the composers of the
Rigveda, ascribe hymns to such royal seers, in some cases at least without
any real foundation. Yāska, in one instance, represents a prince, Devāpi,
as sacrificing for his brother Çamtanu, the king ; but here we can see from
the passage of the Rigveda on which his narrative is based that he has no
warrant for this theory. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa a king, Tiçvantara
sacrifices without his priests, the Cyāparņas; but the case has no cogency,
for the mention of other priests in the context suggests the natural
inference that he used one or other of these groups. Some kings are
mentioned in the Panchaviņça Brāhmaṇa and elsewhere as having been
great sacrificers ; but this may mean no more than that they were the patrons
of the sacrifice, the normal part of the king. We, come nearer to contact
with fact in the concurrent stories of the Upanishads which show kings like
Janaka of Videha, Açvapati king of the Kekayas in the Punjab, Ajātaçatru
of Kāçi and Pravāhaņa Jaivali of Panchāla disputing with and instructing
Brāhmans in the lore of the brahman, the unity which is the reality of the
world. Very possibly this attribution is mainly due to considerations of the
advantage of conciliating the kings who were the patrons of the new
philosophy ; but, in any case, there is no reason to deny that kings could
and did take interest in intellectual movements, and we cannot from such
facts infer that there was any possibility of interchange of caste : we cannot
say that, if a king became a seer, as the Jaiminīya Upanishad Brāhmaṇa
asserts in one case, it really meant that he was regarded as ceasing to
belong to the kingly caste, any more than we can say that, if a priest became
king, as was not unknown later at least, he thereby suffered any loss of his
priestly position. One case of interest remains, that of Satyakāma Jābāla
who was accepted as a pupil by a distinguished priest because he showed
promise, although all he could tell of his ancestry was that he was the son of
a slave girl ; but, evidently, his father might have been a Brāhman, and the
case is only of value as negativing the idea of any natural rigidity of
institutions in the Vedic age. The history of later India shows how rigid
distinctions might be in theory but how ingeniously they might in practice be
a
## p. 114 (#148) ############################################
114
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHM AŅAS, ETC.
evaded in the individual case. What is more significant, perhaps, is that
there is no instance recorded in the Vedic texts of a Vaiçya rising to the rank
of priest or a prince: the two upper hereditary classes might to some degree
permit close relations, but they seem to have regarded the commoner as
definitely beneath them.
The relations of the four great classes of castes are summed up from
the point of view of the Brāhman in a passage of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa'.
In that passage the Kshatriya is taken as the norm, and the other castes
are defined according to the relations which they bear to him.
The Brāhman is 'a receiver of gifts, a drinker of the Soma, a seeker of
food, and liable to removal at will. ' We can distinguish in this period two
classes of Brāhmans, the priests who, as Purohitas of the king or belonging
to his encourage, took part in the vast sacrifices, some of them lasting for at
least a year, which they offered for their masters, and the priests of the
village who lived a humble and more restricted existence, except when they
might be called on to serve at the sacrifice instituted by some rich noble or
merchant. In both cases the priest was, in the long run, at the mercy of the
political power of the king. To the spiritual claims of the Brāhmans, so
proudly asserted at the ceremony of the royal consecration, when the king is
announced to the people as their king but it is added that the Soma is the
king of the Brāhmans, must be opposed the practical power of the king.
The Vaiçya is described as 'tributary to another, to be lived on by
another, and to be oppressed at will. From the point of view of the
Kshatriya this indicates the fact that the exactions of the king from the
commoners of the tribe were limited only by practical considerations of
expediency: the commoner had no legal right to his landholding or
to his private property if the king decided to take them from him ;
and, if he was allowed to retain them he paid for them in tribute and in
the duty of supporting others. This refers, no doubt, to the king's
privilege of assigning to his nobles the right to receive food from the
common people, and thus of making provision for the maintenance of
the nobility who assisted him in the protection of the country, and in the
administration and the conduct of justice. By this means the nobles came
more and more to occupy the position of landholders under the king,
while the Vaiçyas approximated to the position of tenants. Moreover, the
nobles may well have received from the king, as a result of successful on-
slaughts on the aborigines, grants of conquered lands and slaves, which they
would hold in full proprietorship, subject to the political authority of the
king. Among the Vaiçya, again, distinctions were growing up: that originally
the agriculture was carried on by Aryan tillers is certain ; but in the period
of the Brāhmaṇas, the position was changing gradually; and, for the peasant
1 l'edic Index, vol. II, p. 255.
## p. 115 (#149) ############################################
V]
THE ÇŪDRAS
115
working on his own fields, was being substituted the landowner cultivating
his estate by means of slaves, or the merchant carrying on his trade by the
same instrumentality, though we cannot with any certainty say how far
this process was proceeding. The industrial workers, like the chariot
makers, the smiths, the tanners, the carpenters, were sinking in estimation
and forming distinct castes of their own.
On the other hand, the Çūdra was approximating more and more to
the position to which the humbler freeman was being reduced. In the
passage referred to, he is still described as 'the servant of another, to be
expelled at will and to be slain at will’; but in the Sūtras we find that while
the Vaiçya has a wergeld of 100 cows, the Çūdra has a wergled of 10 cows ;
and, even if we assume that this is merely for the benefit of his master—which
is very doubtful- still unquestionably the growing complication of the social
scheme was abolishing the relation of simple slavery. Slaves proper there
were, as we see in Buddhist texts ; but, where whole tribes were reduced to
subjection, the tendency must have been to assign villages and their inhabi.
tants to the king and to the nobles, sometimes, perhaps, also, though in a less
degree to the commoners who at this period must still have formed the bulk
of the army. While some of the aboriginal inhabitants would thus become
slaves pure and simple, the rest would rather stand in the relationship of serfs ;
and as we have seen, there is reason to suppose that in many cases the true
Vaiçyas also were approximating to the position of tenants of the nobles.
There is an interesting parallel in the early history of England, where the
ordinary freeman gradually fell into feudal dependence on his superiors, while
the slave has gradually acquired the position of a serf, and became more
and more assimilated to the position to which the freeman had sunk.
This ambiguous position of the Çūdra is amply recognised in the Vedic
texts : on the one hand, he is emphatically regarded as being impure and
not fit to take part in the sacrifice : after consecration, in some cases, the
mere speaking to a Cúdra is absolutely forbidden. He was not allowed even
to milk the cow for the milk needed for the offering to Agni. In the
Vājasaneyi Samhitā illicit connexions between Āryan and Çüdra are severely
reprobated ; but, in other places, sin, against Ārya and Çūdra is referred to,
prayers are uttered for the glory of Arya and Çūdra, and we learn of rich
Çūdras. The Sūtras, while they emphasise many points not attested by the
Brāhmaṇa texts, such as the danger of sitting near Çūdras, their exclusion
from the study of the Veda, and the prohibition of eating food touched by
them, yet recognise that they may be merchants or indeed exercise any trade.
It seems probable enough that among the çudras themselves there
were rules of endogamy; for we may generally assume, in the absence of any.
thing to the contrary in the texts, that the Vedic Indians and the aborigines
alike married within the tribe. The Çūdras seem often to have been subju.
2
## p. 116 (#150) ############################################
116
[ch.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
gated by whole tribes, such as the Baindas, the Parņakas, the Paulka sas,
and perhaps the Chandālas, who may originally have been members of small
and degraded tribes living mainly by fishing or hunting : such tribes have
survived in the Central Provinces and near the Himālayas until the present
day, and they must have been much more numerous in the first millennium
BC. Thus from below as well as from above, from the practices of the
conquered aborigines as well as from the class prejudices of the Āryans,
may have come the impulse to the development of caste.
From the political point of view the chief characteristic of the new
order was the growth in the power of the king. We must not assume that,
even in this period, there were great kingdoms. It is true that the horse-
sacrifice as reported in the Çata patha Brāhmaṇa and in the royal consecra-
tion of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, both of which passages are late, presuppose
that the kings who performed it set up claims to imperial dignity, and that
they had won the proud title of conquerors of the whole earth, which is
applied to them. But real conquest seems not to have been meant ; and,
though the evidence above given proves that there was considerable
amalgamation of tribes and the formation of larger kingdoms than those in
the period of the Rigveda, yet it is significant that even the Kuru-Pañchālas,
and still less the Kosala-Videhas, never amalgamated into single kingdoms.
We may, however, safely hold that the king now ruled in many cases a much
larger realm than the princes of the Rigveda. The hereditary character of
the monarchy is clearly apparent : in one case, that of the Sțiñjayas, we
hear expressly of a monarchy which had lasted ten generations. The term
Rājaputra, ‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya,
‘son of a king,' is now found together with the older Rājanya, which
probably covers the nobles as well as the king and his family. The
importance of the kingly rank is emphasised by the elaborate rite of
the royal consecration, the Rājasūya. The king is clad in the ceremonial
garments of his rank, is formally anointed by the priest, steps on a tiger
skin to attain the power of the tiger, takes part in a mimic cattle raid,
assumes the bow and arrow, and steps as a conqueror to each of the four
quarters, an action paralleled in the coronation of the Hungarian king. A
game of dice is played in which he is made the victor. A list of kings who
were thus consecrated is given in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa: in all but details
it coincides with the list given in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of those
who performed the horse-sacrifice.
At the royal consecration the entourage of the king played an
important part. The list of Ratnins 'jewels,' given by the Taittirīya, texts,
consists of the Brāhman, i. e. the Purohita, the Rājanya, the Mahishi, the
first wife of the four allowed to the king by custom, the Vāvātā, ‘favourite
wife, the Parivșiktī, 'discarded wife,' the Sūta, “charioteer,' the Senāni,
a
## p. 117 (#151) ############################################
V]
OFFICIALS
117
‘commander of the army,' the Grāmaņi, 'village headman,' the Kshattri,
‘chamberlain,' the Samgrahītņi, 'charioteer' or 'treasurer,' the Bhāgadugha,
'collector of taxes' or 'divider of food,' and the Akshāvāpa, 'superintendent
of dicing' or thrower of dice. ' The Çata patha Brāhmaṇa has also the
‘huntsman' and the 'courier,' while the Maitrāyaṇi Samhitā adds the
Takshan, 'carpenter,' and Rathakāra, ‘chariot-maker. ' In an older list of
eight Viras, 'heroes,' given in the Panchavimça Brāhmaṇa Care found
the brother, son, Purohita, Mahishi, Sūta, Gramani, Kshattſi, and Sam-
grahitri. We are faced, in the interpretation of the names of several of
these officers, with the doubt whether we are to recognise in them merely
courtiers or public functionaries. The Sūta is according to native tra-
dition the 'charioteer' ; but it seems much more probable that he was at
once a herald and a minstrel, and to this conclusion the inviolability, which
in one passage is attributed to him, clearly points. The Grāmaņi has
already been met with as a military official in the period of the Rigveda.
Probably at this epoch a Grāmaņi was, both for civil and military purposes,
at the head of each village, owing, it may be conjectured, his position to
the king, while the Grāmaņi par excellence presided over the city or village
where the royal court was situated. It is also far from unlikely, despite
the silence of the texts, that the civil functions of the Grāmaņi were the
more important ; for the post is emphatically declared in several places
to represent the summit of the ambition of the Vaiçya. If later analogy
is to help us, we may conjecture that the Grāmaņi formed the channel
through which the royal control was exercised and the royal dues received.
It may well be then that the household officers, besides their more primitive
functions, carried out the important duties of receiving and disbursing
the revenues which the king thus obtained ; and on them must have fallen
;
the duty of seeing that the supplies, which the Vaiçyas were required to
provide for the maintenance of the king's household, were duly forthcoming.
The condition of these officers is indeed probably to be compared with
that of the household of the early English and Norman kings.
An officer, not included in the list of the Ratnins but often mention-
ed in the texts of the period, was the Sthapati ; and we learn that it was
the Sthapati of Dushtaritu who restored him to the kingdom of the Sținja-
yas after he had been expelled thence by his subjects. He may have been
a governor of part of the kingdom , but the more likely interpretation of
the term is 'chief judge,' an official who doubtless combined executive as
well as judicial functions. Later however in the Sūtras we hear of a Nishā.
da-Sthapati which may mean a governor of Nishādas,' apparently the ruler
of some outlying aboriginal tribes, who had been reduced to subjection and
placed under the royal control.
## p. 118 (#152) ############################################
118
[CH.
LATER SAMHITĀS, BRĀHMAŅAS, ETC.
Of the actual functions of the king we here little detail. He still led
in war, the Kuru-Pañchāla princes sallied forth to raid in the dewy season
and returned in the hot weather as a matter of coursebut the Senāni
appears as leader in charge under him. From the Sūtras and from a stray
reference in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, he seems to have taken a very active
part in the administration of the criminal law. There can be no doubt
that he controlled the land of the tribe. It is not, however, necessary
to ascribe to this period the conception of the r. yal ownership of all the
land, though it appears in the Greek sources from the time of Megasthenes
downwards, and is evidenced later by the law-books of the time. He
had, it is true, the right to expel a Brāhman or a Vaiçya at will,
though we do not know expressly that he could do this in the case of a
Kshatriya. But these considerations point to political superiority rather
than to ownership proper ; and we may assume that, when he gave grants
of land to his retainers, he granted not ownership but privileges such as the
right to receive dues and maintenance from the cultivators. There is a
clear distinction between this action and the conferring of ownership ; and
it
may
be doubted if the actual gift of land was approved in this epoch :
the only case of which we hear is one reported in the Çata patha and the
Aitareya Brāhmaṇas, in which the king Viçvakarman Bhauvana gave land to
the priests who sacrificed for him, but the Earth itself rebuked his auction.
