Dr. B. R. AMBEDKAR
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CALCUTTA
F>ul>liH<x:l lyy tKc Author
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The
13.
To
The sacred memory of my mother,
Niroda Sundari Dutt
PREFACE
For the period following the rise of Buddhism in the sixth
century B. C. Dr. Vincent A. Smith has prepared in his
Early History of India a highway, which has placed the whole
world of travellers in the field of ancient Indian history under
a deep debt of gratitude. Unfortunately, for the pre-Buddhist
period no such book has yet been published, which gives us an
outline of the political history based on a workable chronological
framework, without which no history of art, religion, or society,
however immense the materials available, can be definitely
given shape to, like flesh and blood without a skeleton. The
result is that though no other period of Indian history has attracted
the attention of so many scholars, and has such an immense
mass of literature written upon it as the Vedic period, it yet
remains one of the most bewildering periods of human history,
the breeding ground of wildest theories and fantastic calculations.
Besides, tradition as recorded in religious literature being
the principal source of history for the period in question, preju-
dices run strong among the writers on the subject, between
those who exaggerate the value of tradition and those who
cannot judge anything of ancient India except in relation to,
or by the standard of, Greek history.
The greatest stumbling-block in the way of a historian of this
period is the difficulty of harmonizing the Vedic with Pauranic
tradition regarding the order of kings and succession of events.
It has been the practice of scholars generally to accept only the
Vedic and reject the Pauranic tradition, and to declare that the
Veda "stands quite by itself, high up on an isolated peak of
remote antiquity." A notable exception is Mr. F. E. Pargiter,
who, however, goes to the other extreme by attaching too much
importance to Pauranic writings and unduly depreciating Vedic
tradition* The work so far done is only preliminary, and arduous
labours of scholars in collaboration are needed to carefully sift
and co-relate the materials obtained from both the sources. For
further light on the subject we must await the researches of
archaeology, which is still in an undeveloped condition in India.
As thanks to the excavations and researches in the Aegean
regions the Trojan war is -gradually coming within the purview
of history, it will not do to treat the stories of the Puranas and
the Epics as all purely mythical, and they must be made to yield
their contributions to the causeway connecting the dim, isolated
Vedic period with the historical Buddhist period. And the
Vedic period, too, which has so long been the scrambling ground
of philologists, anthropologists and philosophers, should cease
to be treated as beyond the jurisdiction of history.
The purpose of this book is to present within a short compass
a chronological and geographical framework for the political history
of India for the Vedic and Epic periods, together with an in-
telligible account of the Aryan conquests so far as it can be made
out of the confused mass of literature published on the subject.
I know that in the absence of archaeological evidences and of
any literature of the native Dravidians of the period the history
is bound to be highly imperfect. But, circumstanced as we are,
we cannot neglect the materials existing with which to construct
even an one-sided history, the version of the Aryan conquerors,
like that of the so-called Pathan rulers of India in the absence of
any writings of the conquered Hindus.
I take this opportunity of expressing my deep gratitude to my
senior and old teacher, Principal R. B. Ramsbotham, M. B. E.,
M, A., B. Litt, L E. S., the example of whose industrious, scholarly
life, no less than his wise directions and kind words of encourage-
ment, has always been a source of inspiration and stimulation to
me in my work. My thanks are due to Prof. B. K. Goswarai Sastri,
M. A., Ph. D., for various suggestions and valuable bits of infor-
mation.
HOOGHLY, N K- n
August, 1925 . K. u.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Aryans i
Aryan Theory Comparative Philology Comparative
Mythology Comparative Ethnology Comparative So-
ciology Is India the cradle of the Aryans India not
the original home Central Asian Theory
II. Coming of the Aryans 25
How the Aryans entered India Hoernle's Theory of
Second Invasion Hoernle's Theory supported-
Hoernle's Theory criticised Chanda's Theory Second
Invasion Theory not necessary Except in Maharastra
HI. Date of Indo-Aryan Invasions 39
Date of Panini Writing in India Divisions of Vedic
Literature Sutra Period Brahmana Period Rigvedic
Period Date of Indo-Aryan Immigrations Evidences
of the Puranas Aryans in Western Asia Pre-Aryan
Civilisation in the Punjab
IV. Expansion of the Indo-Aryans the Dasyus 66
Extent of Arya land in the Rigveda Extension during
Brahmana Period Indo-Aryan Expansion from 800
to 500 B, C Extent in the time of Alexander's inva-
sion Characteristics of Dasyu Dravidians Pre-Dravi*
dians
V. Nature of Aryan Colonisation 85
In the Punjab- In the Madhyadesha In Eastern
India In the Deccan
VI. Tribes and Kingdoms of the Rigveda ioa
Bharata Puru Krivi, Srinjaya Anu, Druhyu, Yadu,
Turvasha Matsya Chedi, Usinara Dasa Tribei
Pani Divodasa Sudas Santanu and Devapi
Vlil
Chapter Page
VII. Later Developments of Tribes and Kingdoms 1 10
Kurus-Parikshit and Janamejaya Kuru-Panchalas
Matsya Kosala-Videha Kasi Magadha Eponymous
Ancestors Anus Druhyus Turvashas Yadus Hai-
hayas-Treta Age Ikshakus and Yadavas Kuru-
Pandavas-Dwapara Age Kurus.Kali Age Avanti
Janakas of Videha Kasi-Kosala
Appendix I 129
Appendix II - 140
Index 153
CHAPTER I.
THE ARYANS.
It was a memorable moment when Sir
William Jones observed in 1786 that the Sans-
krit language, the language of Persia,
n**** the language of Greece and Rome,
the language of the Celts and Germans
were all closely connected, so much so "that
no philologer could examine them all without
believing them to have sprung from some
common source, which perhaps no longer
exists' 1 . These observations laid the foundation-
stone of Comparative Philology, which was
placed on a scientific footing by Bopp in his
Comparative Grammar about fifty years later.
At once the hypothesis arose that the ancestors
of the persons speaking these connected lan-
guages belonged to one stock which once
lived in one place and spoke one language, the
parent of this group of languages. One of the
most famous advocates of this hypothesis was
Max Muller, who in his Lectures on the Science
of Language in 1861 asserted that there was
a time "when the first ancestors of the Indians,
the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the
Slavs, the Celts, and the Germans were living
2 THE ARYANISATTON OF INDIA
together within the same enclosures, nay, under
the same roof," and that that place was Central
Asia from where "the ancestors of the Indians
and Persians started for the South, and the
leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic,
and Slavonic colonies marched towards the
shores of Europe." Since then iconoclastic
critics have appeared, and with the aid of the
sciences of Comparative Ethnology and Archaeo-
logy have tried to tear to pieces the conclusions
of Comparative Philology and to disprove the
assumption of the philologists that a relation-
ship of language implies relationship of blood.
One of the most bitter critics of the Aryan
Theory was Oppert, according to whom, "there
are Aryan languages but there is no Aryan
race/* During the fourth quarter of the last
century the pendulum continued swinging rapidly
from one extreme to the other. To-day, how-
ever, though the noise of conflict is still heard,
the dust raised by the clash of combatants has
somewhat subsided, and the atmosphere has
become sufficiently clear to enable one to take
a dispassionate view of the whole thing.
Philologists since the times of Sir William
Jones and Bopp have noticed that there is a
great affinity between the Sanskrit,
Iranian, Armenian, Slavonic, Lettic,
Greek, Latin, Celtic, and Teutonic
languages, and that this affinity is not due
THE ARYANS $
to accident, or temporary contact, or mutua
borrowing. Among the various members of
this group of languages we find words with
common roots for father, mother, brother, sister,
daughter, son, father-in-law, and some other
words denoting family relationship ; cow, horse,
dog, waggon, yoke, door, mead, copper, etc. ;
numerals up to ten and hundred ; pronouns
like ine, thou, he ; verbs like to be, eat, lick,
stay, sew ; particles like inter, pra, pari. "It
is," as Muir says, "precisely those words and
forms which are the most primitive, the most
fundamental, the most essential parts of each
language which they have in common." Again
this affinity is observed not only in simple words
but in many grammatical rules, such as declen-
sion of nouns and conjugation of verbs. Hom-
mel and Delitzsch seek to establish primitive
relations between the Aryan and Semitic lan-
guages by identifying several Semitic roots
with Aryan. But a few such words, as Taylor
observes, "are not enough to base a theory on ;
the phonetic resemblances may be accidental,
or the words may be very early loan words
due to Phoenician commerce,., But even if
these identifications be accepted, it would
not suffice, as it would be also necessary to
show an agreement of grammatical formative
elements ; and it is universally admitted
that in grammatical structure the Semitic
4 THE ARYANISATION Of INDIA
and Aryan languages differ fundamentally/ 9
Hence it is seen that no fundamental resem-
blance can be traced between any language
of this group and the other languages of the
world,such as Chinese, Arabic, Negro, Austra-
lian. From these the philologists have come
to the conclusion that the ancestors of most
of the modern European nations, the Persians,
and the Indians (non-Dravidian) at one time
must have lived together and spoken one lan-
guage from which their modern languages are
all descended. The name Aryan is often given
to this family of nations, as the ancient Persians
called themselves by that name, and the authors
of the Rigvedic hymns are believed to have
used that name to distinguish themselves from
the aborigines. But as it is not known to have
been used by the European members of the
family, the word is sometimes used in a narrow
sense to denote the Persian and Indian bran-
ches only, while words like Indo-European and
Indo-German (taking the two extreme members
of the group) have been coined to denote the
whole family.
The philological arguments alone are not
sufficient to establish the identity of races. The
well-known anthropologist Broca points out that
"races have frequently within the historic period
changed their language without having apparent-
ly changed the race or type. The Belgians, for
THE ARYANS 5
instance, speak a neo-Latin language, but of all
races who have mingled their blood with that
of the autochthones of Belgium it would be
difficult to find one which has left less trace
than the people of Rome. 5 ' Another good ins-
tance is the imposition of a neo-Latin dialect on
a vast American Indian population in more re-
cent times. Still comparative philology has some
value if its deductions are supported by other
evidences. Besides, it is generally seen that the
conquerors, if they are civilized, impose their
language on the conquered, whether it is in
Belgium or in South America. The analogy
proves our point that some bands of Aryans
migrated to Europe, and conquering and mingling
with the aboriginal peoples Aryanised them as
their brethren did the Dravidians in India. It is
hopeless to look for a pure Aryan race in the
modern world.
The philological evidences which seek to
establish the relationship between
the Indians, the Persians, and the
Europeans are supported to a
certain extent by the coincidences which are
observed in the mythologies of the Vedas, the
earliest book of the Indians, and those of the
Zend Avesta of Persia, and also, though in a
smaller degree, in the mythologies of the ancient
European nations. Scholars like Kuhn and Max
Muller have identified the Erinys of the Greeks
6 THE ARVANISATION OF INDIA
with the Saranyu of the Vedas, the Centaurs
with the Gandharvas, Helios and Sol with
Surjya, Eos with Ushas, Uranus with Varuna,
Zeus with Dyaus, Jupiter with Dyaus pitar, the
Slavonic Bogu with Bhaga, and Perkunus or
Perunu with the Vedic Parjanya. The commu-
nity of mythologies between the Indians and the
Iranians is more strongly marked. Both had in
their mythologies Yarns, Trita, Mitra, Vayu,
Sarva, Indra, Vitrahan, Nasatyas, Asura, etc.,
while both made Soma offerings in yajnas or
sacrifices, and had common names for priests as
hotri and atharvan.
There are some scholars who express doubts
about the inheritance of any common mytholo-
gical traditions by the Aryan-speaking nations
because of the fewness of resemblances and
of the discrepancies of mythologies even when
there are resemblances of names. But they do
not seem to take into account the long centuries
which separate the Rigvedic hymns from the
Greek, Latin, and Teutonic literatures from which
we draw our materials, and still more, which
separate these all from the proto-Aryan period.
Again, mythological and theological concep-
tions are apt to change under external influences
more quickly and radically than languages.
How many ancient religious traditions are to
be found in Christian Italy, Mahomedan Persia,
or Buddhist Ceylon ? We can easily imagine
THE ARYANS 7
how the mythologies of the semi-barbarous
Aryan immigrants into Europe were influenced
through contact with the aborigines on one
hand and the Phoenician culture bearers on
the other. Professor Rhys remarks in his
Hibbert Lectures "If the Aryans had attained
to the idea of so transcendent a god..... .there
would be difficulty in understanding how, as
the Dyaus of Sanskrit literature, he should
have become comparatively a lay figure, that
as Tiu he should have been superseded by
Woden and Thor among the Teutons, and that
among the Gauls his pre-eminence should at
anytime have been threatened by a Mercury.'
The difficulty, however, disappears if we
remember that considerable changes in mytho-
logy can take place among the same people
living under different physical conditions. Thus,
for instance, the Indians living in tropical
climate would welcome the clouds and naturally
give pre-eminence to the cloud god, while the
people of North Europe would favour the
sun god. The action of time and foreign
influences also in modifying the mythologies
of a people can be observed in India and Egypt,
where the great gods of the early Indo- Aryans
and Egyptians could not maintain their pre-emi-
nence and sometimes even their existence in
later times, and new gods and beliefs arose
from time to time, sometimes quite in antagonism
$ THE ARYAtflSATlON OF WDIA
to the old ones. In India Varuna and then
Indra appropriated many of the attributes
of the heaven god Dyaus, and in later times
were themselves cast into the shade by Vishnu
and Siva. The wonder is not the fewness
of mythological resemblances between the
nations of Europe and India, but that, inspite
of centuries of separation and loss of contact
before the days of Darius and Alexander, of the
great differences in physical conditions and
environments in which the different branches
lived, and of the foreign cultural influences to
which these semi-barbarous communities were
exposed, such important resemblances can still
be detected.
Ethnologists state that inspite of the inter-
mixture of races which has gone on more or less
at all times, and the tendency of individuals to
vary under the effects of climate
anc * env i ronment there has always
been a tendency to revert to the
primitive types, viz, (i) the Caucasian, with
usually a fair skin, soft, straight or wavy hair,
full grown beard, long or broad headform,
narrow face, and well-shaped nose ; (2) the
Mongolian, with yellow or reddish complexion,
coarse straight hair, scanty or no beard, broad
head, broad and flat face with high cheek-bones,
small and depressed nose, and slanting eyes; (3)
the Ethiopian or Negroid, with black complexion,
THE ARYANS
black frizzly hair, long head, broad and flat
nose, moderate beard, thick lips, large teeth, and
long forearm. The Caucasians again are gener-
ally subdivided into (a) Indo-Germans or Aryans,
(b) Semites, (c) Hamites or Berbers. Peschel
and many other ethnologists are agreed by ex-
amining the head-form, nose, hair, skin, and other
physical features of the Hindus (non-Dravidian)
that they in common with the Persians and the
Europeans belong to the Indo-Germanic group.
This hypothesis of community of blood between
the Indians and the Europeans is supported
by evidences from the Vedas and the Epics,
where the typical Aryan is described as a tall,
generally fair-complexioned person, with narrow,
prominent nose, good hair, large eyes, broad
shoulders, and slim waist, features which even
to-day are regarded in India as constituting an
ideal physique.
In Europe three different types have been
clearly distinguished (i) the Nordic or
Teutonic, tall, fair, dolichocephalic or long*
headed, (2) the Alpine or Celto-Slav, fair,
both short and tall, brachycephalic or broad-
headed, (3) the Mediterranean, short, dark,
dolichocephalic. Great acrimony is displayed in
the discussion about the relationship of each of
these types with the original Aryan stock, and is
made more bitter by the national jealousy between
the German and the French, the German
2
JO ' THE ARYANISATION OP INDIA
scholars like Posche,Penka,and Hchn generally
claiming direct descent for the Teuton from
the original stock and tracing the brachycepha-
lic Celt to Turanian or Mongolian origin, while
the Gallic scholars like Chavee, De Mortillet,
and Ujfalvy representing the primitive Aryans
as brachy cephalic and assigning African origin
to the dolichocephalic Teuton. The tendency,
however, of modern scholars, as Feist in Ger-
many and de Michelis in France, is to find a
solution to this knotty problem by assuming
that the primitive Aryans were not a pure
race, but a mixture of different types, both
dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, who in
prehistoric times were welded together into a
linguistic and cultural unity, as the present
English have been formed from Iberians, Celts,
and Teutons. Inspite of such obvious physical
differences, the Indo-Germans can be grouped
together in a single division because we recog-
nise a common racial stamp in the facial
expression, the shape of the nose, the structure
of the hair, partly also the bodily proportions,
in all of which points they agree more with
each other than with the other divisions.
From a comparative study of their social
institutions it is found that there
Cmgtritm are many customary laws and
^ t ^ Qr * social rules peculiarly common to
the Hindus and the ancient Europeans, which
tH ARYAKS (|
raises a strong supposition, irrespective of
other considerations, that they had a common
origin. "It does not appear to me a hazardous
proposition that the Indian and the ancient
European systems of enjoyment and tillage
by men grouped in village communities are in
all essential particulars identical There
is the arable mark divided into separate lots
but cultivated according to minute customary
rules binding on all. There is the waste or
common land, out of which the arable mark
has been cut, enjoyed as pasture by all the
community pro-indivisio. There is the village,
consisting of habitatons each ruled by a des-
potic pater familias. And there is constantly
a council of government to determine disputes
as to custom/' (Maine, Village Communities).
Havell also notices that 4i the description of
the old English village communities in Schles-
wig and Jutland given by a well-known historian
(J. R. Green), and the characteristics ascribed
to the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race,
correspond closely with what is known of the
early Aryan settlements in India from their
literary records and from traditional evidence."
And the resemblance becomes more striking
when we compare them "with the more ancient
Dravidian communal system of India in which
mother instead of father was the head of the
family, hunting and robbing were the principal
12 THE ARYANISATIOK OF INDIA
means of subsistence instead of agriculture and
cattle farming, and civilization more mercantile
than agricultural." According to Senart, even
in social organisation in which the Hindus with
their caste system differ most from the European
branches of the Aryan family there is a great
resemblance between the Hindu system and
those of the Greeks and the Romans in the
earlier stages of their national developments,
e.g. the gens, curia, tribe at Rome, family,
phratria in Greece, and family, gotra, caste in
India. Endogamous and hypergamous rights
were not unknown in ancient Greece and Rome,
The resemblance is greater between the Hindu
system and the ancient Iranian division of
society into four classes priests, warriors,
cultivators, and artisans especially when we
find that the rule of endogamy prevailed at
least among the highest class, the Athravans,
corresponding to the Brahmins of India.
*The offering of gifts to the gods in fire is
Indo-European, as is shown by the agreement of
the Greeks, Romans, and Indians. Indo-Euro-
pean also is that part of the marriage ritual in
which the newly wedded couple walk round the
nuptial fire, the bridegroom presenting a burnt
offering and the bride an offering of grain ; for
among the Romans also the young pair walked
round the altar from left to right before offering
bread (for) in the fire. Indo-European, too,
THE ARYANS (3
most be the practice of scattering rice or grain
(as a symbol of fertility) over the bride and
bridegroom, as prescribed in the Sutras ; for it
is widely diffused among peoples who cannot
have borrowed it. Still older is the Indian
ceremony of producing the sacrificial fire by
the friction of two pieces of wood. Similarly
the practice in the construction of the Indian
fire-altar of walling up in the lowest layer of
bricks the heads of five different victims, in-
cluding that of a man, goes back to an ancient
belief that a building can only be firmly erected
when a man or an animal is buried with its
foundations. 1 ' (Macdonell, Sanskrit literature).
If it be a fact that the ancestors of a large
section of the people of Europe, Persia, and
India at one time lived in
one Pl ace ' s Pke one language,
and possessed one culture,
the question that naturally arises is where that
original home of the Aryans was. The
orthodox Indian opinion is that India has ever
been the home of the Hindus, and that if the
Persians and the Europeans have been proved
to be related to the Hindus, presumably they
must have migrated from India. Apparently
this point of view seems to be correct because
it is in India that the earliest known Aryan
literature, the Vedas, was composed and exists,
and that the modem Hindu religion and social
te THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Vedag. Again, there are some roots, nominal
and verbal, in which the Indian language appears
to have lost the original form of the word, while
it hat been preserved in Greek and Latin, or
both. An example is the Sanskrit word tara,
a star, which seems to have been originally
stara, a form which has been preserved in the
Greek aster and astron, in the Latin astrum,
as well as in the Zend stara. Further there
exist a number of Sanskrit nouns, which must
have been derived from radicals which in their
verbal form are not discoverable even in the
Vedas. (Muir, Sanskrit Texts II.)
(4) During the Rigvedic period the Indo-
Aryans were evidently confined to the Punjab
and the Gangetic Doab, because while almost
all the rivers of North-west India and even
Afghanistan are frequently mentioned, and the
highest regard shown to the Indus and the Sara-
swati, the Rigvedic hymns are silent with regard
to any place or river name beyond the Ganges,
and eyen^ the famous Ganges is _mentioioed
? n ? e - That even the Punjab could
not be the original home of the Aryan people
is proved by the fact that during the Rigvedic
period even in that land the Indo-Aryans were
surrounded by peoples, Dasyus, Dasas, Rakhas,
with whom they had very little in common,
either in physique, language, or creed, and with
whom they were carrying on ceaseless wars
THE ARYAN1SAT10N OF INDIA 17
of extermination. The Dasyus were the natives
of the soil, whose towns and fortresses were
captured and properties seized by the aggressive
Indo- Aryans and who were gradually being
pushed away from the country. It is impro-
bable, if we assume the Aryans to be autoch-
thonous in India, that two such entirely different
types of people should have ever been living
in the same limited area and developing on
their own lines without any intermingling,
Besides, the Vedic Aryans at that time seem
not to have been very numerous, and even the
Punjab, not to speak of the other parts of India,
must have been very thinly peopled. Why
then should a large number of them emigrate
to the less hospitable lands in Persia and Europe
while vast fertile fields and pleasanter climate
remained in their own immediate neighbourhood
in the Indian Peninsula ? The expansion of
the Aryans over Eastern and Southern India
took place in comparatively recent times. The
diffusion of the Aryans from the Punjab gra-
dually but steadily towards the interior also
leads to the conclusion that they came from
the north-west.
(5). It is true that the Indian literature
does not contain any distinct reference to a
migration from a northern home. But there
are passages here and there which appear in a
way to point to the tradition of a foreign
3
; f THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
origin, (a) Expressions like Tokam pushyema
tanayam shatam himah, May we cherish a son
2nd progeny a hundred winters (Rig. 1,64.14.),
and Pashyemasharadah shatam jivema sharadah
shatam. May we see, may we live, a hundred
autumns (Rig VII. 66. 16), might be reminiscent
of the colder regions from which they had come,
where the winter conditions having prevailed
for the greater part of the year, the winter or
autumn became synonymous with the year, (b)
In Rig I. 30. 9 Indra is invoked to come from
"the ancient abode," which might mean the
ancient home of the Aryans, and connected
with this is the tradition that Indralaya or the
abode of Indra lay to the north of the Hindu-
kush, as is mentioned in the Amarakosha and
Sabdaratnavali. (c) Uttarakuru, the traditional
Elysium of the Hindus, and Meru, the abode
of their gods, lie far to the north. Why
should they locate these places outside" India
far to the north unless they had memories of
a northern home of their own ? (d) The know-
ledge of long polar days and nights, and horizon-
tal movements of stars in the polar regions,
as shown in their description of Meru and its
denizens (Tait. Brahmana III. 9. 22. I ; Mhbh.
Vanaparba ch. 163 ; Manu I, 67), has led some
scholars to point to the polar regions as the
cradle of the Aryan people, (e) Tilak points
out that in the Rigveda great prominence is
THE ARYANS 19
given to the goddes Ushas (dawn), who is
celebrated in about twenty hymns of the finest
quality, and mentioned more than three hundred
times, and that the period of dawn is divided
in the Vedic literature into several parts with
elaborate and intricate rites prescribed for
each part. All these are out of all proportion
to the short-lived and evanescent dawn of the
Indian zone, and though Tilak has not been
able to successfully establish his theory of an
Artie home of the Aryans from this and other
points, we may agree with him that the In do-
Aryans came from a land where the morning
twilight was of greater duration than in India,
(f) In Kaushitaki Brahmana VII. 6. the lan-
guage of the northern regions is said to be a
model one, which might refer to the Aryan
tongue being spoken in its purity in their ori-
ginal home in the north.
(6) In the first Fargard of the Vendidad
where Ahura Mazda, the great god of the Ira-
nians, is described as having created the different
countries, including Hapta-Hendu or the Punjab,
one after another, it is stated that Airyanavaejo,
which was created first of all, had long winters,
and that the ancestors of the Iranians started
in their migrations from that country. Thus
the Iranians, who are closely associated with
the Indo-Aryans, point not to India or Hapta-
Hendu but to Airyanavaejo, which could not
JO THE ARYAHISATION OF INDIA
have been a part of India, as their original
home.
If India be not the cradle of the Aryan race f
where is that ? The question has not yet been
satisfactorily answered. There is
the greatest diversity of opinion
among scholars, and various coun-
tries, e.g. Central Asia, North Africa (Sergi,
Zaborowski), South Russia (Benfey), North
Germany (Kossinna, Hirt), Scandinavia (Penka,
Rhys), Hungary (Giles), Eastern Europe (Fligier),
Northern Europe (Cuno), North Pole (Warren,
Tilak), Central and West Germany (Geiger),
have been contended for as the primitive habitat
of the Aryans with arguments which are more
or less shadowy and inconclusive. Of these
the Central Asian Theory was advocated by such
eminent scholars of the last century as Rhode,
Schlegel, Pott, Lassen, Jacob Grimm, Pictet, Max
Muller, Schleicher, Mommsen, Sayce, Hale, and
is even now more current and presents fewer
objections than any other. It would, therefore,
be not inappropriate to give a summary of
their main arguments here.
(i) The almost continuous extension of
the Aryan-Speaking peoples from the Brahma-
putra to the Atlantic naturally leads one to
assume that there must have been a primitive
centre of dispersion, and because of all the
Aryan dialects Sanskrit and Zend may be
THE ARYANS 21
considered to have changed the least while
Celtic in the extreme west has changed the most,
the presumption is that the lands now occupied
by Sanskrit and Zend must be the nearest to
the primitive home, (Sayce, Science of Lan-
guages II).
{2) This hypothesis is supported by the
Iranian tradition in the Zend Avesta which
says that the first creation of man took place
in Airyanavaejo, from which the Iranians spread
over more than a dozen countries before reach-
ing Persia. Now as most of these places are
situate in or about Central Asia, Airyanavaejo
or the original abode of the Iranians is believed
to have existed somewhere between the Caucasus
and the Oxus.
(3). Sayce observes that the above tradition
agrees with the finding of Comparative Philo-
logy that the early Aryan home was a cold
region, "where trees like birch and pine grew, and
where winter was familiar with its snow and ice."
(4). Here in Central Asia are found all
the physical elements which zoologists and
philologists demand for the great specialisations
in language and culture made by the primitive
Aryans before their dispersal, their numerous
population with cows and horses a vast plain
undivided by lofty mountains or deserts or
impassable forests, a temperate climate, and
abundance of food both for mpn and cattle.
& THE ARYAHISATION OF INDIA
(5) In the absence cf any common words
for sea and salt in the different Aryan languages
J it is inferred that the undivided Aryans lived
in an inland country.
(6). In later times it was Central Asia which
was the breeding place of the numerous Tartar
hordes which overflowed into Persia, India,
the Euphrates valley, and even Europe, as the
Aryans had done several milleniums ago.
(7), A Babylonian tablet of about 2100
B. C. indicates that the horse was a recent
acquisition among the ass-using folk of Babylon,
and describes it as "the ass_from the east",
or "from the mountains." "Its arrival here
is commonly referred to that irruption of fresh
peoples from Iran or beyond, who founded
the barbarian Kassite (Aryan) dynasty of
Babylon ; as there is no reason to believe that
the great plateau of Iran itself was even then
in much better condition than now to support
an indigenous pastoral civilization, it is probable
that this irruption originated further to the north-
east, and that it is to be connected, in its
significance, if not precisely in date, with the
irruption of Aryan-speaking folk into India from
the same northern reservoir, and with that west-
ward outflow of the 'tumulus folk' across the
Dneiper, which broke up the painted-ware
culture of Tripolje and penetrated through
Galacia into Bohemia, and through the Balkan
THE ARYANS 23
lands into north-west Asia Minor/* (Cambridge
Ancient History I. p. 107),
(8). E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,
1909, 1. 2, discussing the original home of the
Indo-Europeans remarks (p. 800) that the
discovery of Tocharish (a language spoken
in north-eastern Afghanistan), a language belong-
ing apparently to the centum (Western and
European ) group, overthrows all earlier
conceptions as to the distribution of the Indo-
Germans and gives weight to the hypothesis
of their Asiatic origin. 1 * (Keane and Haddon,
Man : Past and Present, p. 441)
One of the principal arguments urged
against the Central Asian theory is that the
dreary Central Asian steppes could not find
subsistence for a numerous community as the
proto-Aryans must have been before their
dispersal. To this it may be said that the
climate of Central Asia and Eastern Persia has
undergone a material change for the worse
even in historical times. Geologists like Blan-
ford and Vredenburg have proved that the
rainfall in Central Asia has fallen off greatly
in comparatively modern times making vast
areas un cultivable and practically uninhabi-
table. (Mem. Geol. Survey of India XXXI pt. 2).
Kirman is now an almost desert country with
very scanty rainfall. But Strabo in the first
century B. C. describes it as a fertile and well-
34 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
wooded country with plenty of waters and
producing everything. Sir Aurel Stein's
discoveries show how the various ancient places
in Chinese Turkestan were abandoned on
account of the progressive desiccation during
the first millenium A. D.
CHAPTER II.
COMING OF THE ARYANS.
The IndoAryans of the Rigvedic time,
though very little acquainted with the country
beyond the Ganges, which is
mentioned directly but once in
the whole Rigveda, are closely
associated with lands beyond the Indus on the
west The river Kubha (Greek Cophu) or ,
Kabul is mentioned several times, and even
its small tributary Suvastu (Greek Soastos)
or modern Swat. Gandhara, which lay to the
west of the Indus, was an integral part of
Rigvedic India (Rig I. 126. 7). The Aryans
had begun to enter into India at a time when
the regions between the Indus and the heart
of Persia were still fairly well-watered and
fertile. So it was possible for the early invaders
to come in large numbers and bring with them
their women and cattle over these districts.
It was an immigration en masse, and when they
entered the Punjab they made an almost clean
sweep of the native races and were able to
keep their blood comparatively pure. Hence
we find even to-day in the Punjab a people who
are fairer, taller, and with the cephalic, nasal,
and orbito-nasal indices more similar to certain
4
2$ THE ARYANISATOON OF INDIA
European races than the people of any other
part of India. It may seem strange that the
people of the Punjab, which is the gate of
India, have been able to retain for thousand s
of years their original Aryan type in spite of
being exposed to countless waves of invasion
by various races from the north and west. But
we are to remember that the climate has con-
siderably changed in Central Asia, Afghanistan,
and Beluchistan since the Aryans first invaded
India. The rainfall has greatly fallen off,
the rivers and streams have slowly dried up,
and desert claims as its own the once fertile
lands. It is now not possible for a tribal
migration across the north-western frontiers
of India. The road is practically closed except
to swiftly moving troops in comparatively
small numbers who can no doubt fight and
conquer, but cannot effect any appreciable
change in the racial characteristics of the
people of India.
According to the late Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle,
after the first stream of Aryan invaders had
settled in the Punjab a second
ban <* fr om Central Asia, find-
ing the usual route by the
Kabul valley barred, pushed their way through
Gilghit and Chitral, keeping close to the
northern mountains, and entered like a wedge
into the Midland country or Madhyadesha
COMING OF THE ARYANS 27
(which extended from the Himalayas on the
north to the Vindhyas on the south, and from
Sirhind in the Eastern Punjab on the west
to the confluence of the Ganges and the
Jumna on the east). There they split asunder
the first immigrants, and forced them outwards
in three directions, to the east, south, and
west. It was among the second group on the
Saraswati, Jumna, and Ganges that sacerdotal
rites and caste system were more fully
developed, which distinguish the classical
Brahmanic from the earlier Rigvedic culture.
Hence we find that the Punjab, though it was
the earliest Aryan settlement in India, was
in later times regarded as unholy land and the
people as barbarians. In the Mahabharata the
Punjabese are regarded as the offspring of
Pishachas or demons. On the other hand,
the land between the Saraswati and the
Drishadvati, Brahmavarta, is described as the
most sacred, the next in importance being
Brahmarshidesha which extended as far the
confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna (Manu,
II. 17-19)-
Hoernle's theory has received the weighty
support of Sir George Grierson and Sir Herbert
Risley, and bears the stamp of
official recognition of the Govern-
ment of India. Sir George Grier-
son, who as Director of the Linguistic Survey
2d THE ARYAHISATION OF INDIA
of India possesses a unique knowledge of the
languages spoken in the different parts of India,
finds on careful examination that there are
radical differences between the Western Hin-
dustani, which is spoken in its purest form in
the Gangetic Doab, in an almost pure form in
the Eastern Punjab, and in a modified form
in Oudh, Rajputana, Gujarat, and Central India,
and the dialects of the Outer Band, namely,
Kashmiri, Sindhi, Mahratta, Behari, Bengali,
Assamese, Oriya, dialects which are all more
closely related to each other than any of them
to the language of the Midland, "In fact, at
an early period of the linguistic history of India
there must have been two sets of Indo- Aryan
dialects one the language of the Midland, and
the other the group of dialects forming the
Outer Band. From this it has been argued,
and the contention is entirely borne out by the
results of the ethnological enquiries, that the
inhabitants of the Midland represent the latest
stage of Indo- Aryan immigration." Sir Herbert
Risley supports this theory as otherwise "it is
difficult to account for the marked divergence
of type that distinguishes the people of the
Eastern Punjab from the people of Western
Hindustan. If there had been no second and
distinct incursion coming in like a wedge behind
the original colonists, no such sharp contrast
would now be discernible. One type would
COMING OF THE ARYANS 29
melt into the other by imperceptible gradations,
and scientific observation and popular im-
pressions would not occur, as they do, in affirm*
ing that a marked change takes place some*
where about the longitude of Sirhind a name
which itself preserves the tradition of an ethnic
frontier. Nor is this the only point in favour
of Dr. Hoernle's hypothesis. That theory
further explains how it is that the Vedic hymns
contain no reference to the route by which the
Aryans entered India or to their earlier settle-
ments on the Indus ; and it accounts for the
antagonism between the eastern and western
sections and for the fact that the latter were
regarded as comparative barbarians by the more
cultured inhabitants of the Middle-land." (Peo-
ple of India, pp. 54-55).
Mr. C. V. Vaidya in his Epic India seems
to find in the Pandavas and their kinsmen the
later Aryan immigrants, and thinks that the
Kurukshetra war marks the victory of the new-
comers over the old. The custom of polyandry,
which is represented by Yudhisthira as "our
family custom/* seems to distinguish them from
the Kurus in whose family there was no such
practice, and accords very well with the hypo-
thesis that the later immigrants, travelling by a
very difficult route, could bring with them few
women, and so had to practise polyandry, and
also to mingle more freely with the aboriginal
30 THE ARYAN1SATION OF INDIA
population than the earlier conquerors, which
accounts for such a sudden divergence in physical
type between the people of the Punjab and
those of the Gangetic valley. The Pandava
brothers, too, had little distaste for marriage
with girls of the aboriginal races, Rakshasa or
Naga.
Hoernle's theory, however, has not passed
unchallenged. Prof. Rapson writing
in the Cambridge History of India
I (p. 45) observes, "This theory is
made improbable by the physical difficulties of
the route suggested, and some of the arguments
adduced in its favour are demonstrably mistaken.
There is no such break of continuity between
the tribes of the Rigveda and the peoples of the
later literature as it presupposes Both
of the facts mentioned above the abrupt transi-
tion from the Indo- Aryan to the Aryo-Dravidian
type, and the extension of Aryan influence from
Brahmavarta to Brahmarshidesha are best un-
derstood if we remember the natural feature
which connects the plain of the Indus with the
plain of the Ganges. This is the strait of habitable
land which lies between the desert and the
mountains. Its historical significance has al-
ready been noticed. It is in this strait that the
decisive battles, on which the fate of India has
depended, have been fought; and here too we may
suppose that the progress of racial migrations
COMING OF THE ARYANS 31
from the north-west in prehistoric times must
have been checked. Both politically and ethno-
graphically it forms a natural boundary. In the
age of the Rigveda the Aryans had not broken
through the barrier, though the Jumna is men-
tioned in a hymn (VII. 18.19) * n ^ch a way as
to indicate that a battle had been won on its
banks. It was only at some later date that the
country between the Upper Jumna and Ganges
and the district of Delhi were occupied The
epoch of Indo-Aryan tribal migration was defi-
nitely closed. It was succeeded by the epoch
of Indo-Aryan colonisation."
Prof. Chanda in his Indo-Aryan Races
tries to demolish Hoernle's theory and set
* j *n up a theory of his own. "To
Chanda s Theory. , . ,, ,. ... t
explain the peculiar position of
the mixed or intermediate Indo-Aryan lan-
guages, Grierson assumes that the population
and power of the Midland increased and its
armies and its settlers carried its language to
the Eastern Punjab, Gujarat, and Oudh. But
the Vedic, the Pali-Buddhist, and Pauranic
literatures preserve no tradition relating to
the conquest and annexation of Usinara on
the one hand, Kosala and Kasi on the other,
by the Kurus, Panchalas, Matsyas or Vasas.
According to the Aitareya Brahmana (VIII. 14)
while the kings (rajas) of the Middle country
of Usinara, Kuru, Panchala, and Vasa were
n THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
consecrated to ''kingdom'' (rajyaya), in the
eastern country (prachyam disi) the rulers
(rajas) of the eastern peoples of the Kosalas
and Videhas wpre consecrated to empire
(samrajyaya). This seems to indicate that at the
time of the composioion of this Brahmana
the rulers of the East were much more
powerful than the rulers of the Middle country.
The dynasties and clans that held sway
contemporaneously in the Middle and Outer
countries of Northern India according to the
Brahmanas and the Upanishads survived down
to about a century after Buddha. ...The tide
of conquest, when it started, started not from
the west but from the east from Magadha,"
by the Sisunagas, the Nandas, the Mauryas,
and the Guptas. "It was not, therefore, the
conquering armies of the Midland, but the
armies and settlers from Magadha and other
Outer countries that carried their languages
to Oudh and other places where mixed
languages are now spoken/' After thus
criticising the theory of Hoernle and Grierson
Chanda goes on to propound a new theory,
according to which later Aryan invaders of
the brachycephalic Celtic type finding the
greater part of Upper Hindustan in possession
of the dolichocephalic Vedic Aryans found
their way some to the lower Gangetic plain
across the tableland of Central India, and
COMING OF THE ARYANS 33
some into the Kathiwar Peninsula and the
Deccan, thus occupying the Outer countries
from Kashmir to Bengal. This theory, however,
as Barnett remarks, seems on the whole less
probable than the other. It does not account
for the predominance of long-head in the
Punjab, the change of head-form towards
broadness from the Punjab to the Gangetic
valley, and the gradual, not sharp, change in
head-form and nose-shape from the Jumna to
the lower Gangetic valley, and also for the
anthropometric diversities between the
of Kashmir, the Punjab, Sind, Gujarat,
rastra, and Bengal, though they are said *&<
belong to one race. .v
The problem of a second invasion still"
remains a puzzle. It is not unlikely that the
Second Invasion Indo ' Ar y ans did not com all at
Theory not one time and by one route only.
necessary. Some seem to find evidences in
the Rigveda of the tribes Yadu and Turvasha
coming by sea. We are told in Rig. VI. 20. 12,
"O hero (Indra), thou broughtest in safety
over the sea (samudra) Turvasha and Yadu,"
though the word samudra is interpreted by many
scholars as meaning not sea but a mass of
waters only. But it is almost impossible to
disentangle the descendants of the later immi- -
grants, if any, from those of the earlier in the
greater part of the country. In, order to
5
$4 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
find an explanation for the cultural difference
between the peoples of the Inner and Outer
Bands we have a clue in some Epic and
Pauranic traditions. The Anus, one of the
Rigvedic tribes living in the Punjab, are said to
have been divided into two branches, one the
Usinaras with their offshoots, the Yaudheyas,
Kekayas, Madrakas, Sivis, Sauviras and others,
ruling in the Punjab and Sind, and the other
the Titikshus under the sons of Bali ruling
orer Bengal, East Behar, and Orissa (Anga,
Kalinga, Pundra, Suhma). Or in other
pan conquerors of Eastern India
ly from the Punjab and not the Midland
The differences in physical type
treen the Punjab and the Eastern countries
not so unusual as to be incapable of being
explained by the ordinary effect of Dravidian
and Mongolian influences upon a thinning stream
of Aryan conquerors. In Northern India, I
agree with Risley^ tfeat the tendency towards
broad-head was the result not so much of
the immigration of brachycephalic Aryan
tribes as of the admixture of Mongolian
blood, which becomes more pronounced
as one goes farther to the east. The statement
of the late Dr. Smith, even if we do not
agree with him as regards the extraction of
the Sakyas and the Lichchhavis, seems true
that the Mongolian element played a more
COMING OF THE ARYANS 35
important part in Northern India than is
generally realised. Besides the cephalic and
nasal indices, a blue patch in the lower sacral
region of the new born, which is characteristic
of the South Mongol races (Keane and Haddon,
Man Past and Present p. 164), betrays Mon-
golian strain in many a child even among the
higher classes in the lower Gangetic valley.
The differences in language between the Midland
group and the Outer group can be easily ex-
plained it we remember that the Brahmanic
literature and institutions as distinguished from
the Rigvedic grew up in the Kuru-Panchala
country, while the people of the Punjab remained
backward or primitive. So there were two types
of culture the older of the Punjab and the
later of the Midland. It is the former type
which with the Anus spread to Eastern India
and with the Yadus to the Deccan. Later the
Midland culture began to conquer its way to
the west through Malwa, Rajputana, and Gujarat,
while on the east, in Videha, Kasi, and Oudh,
it somewhat receded before the conquering
armies of Southern and Eastern Behar.
The only case which still baffles the
anthropologists is the Mahratta people with
their broad heads. The modern
Ihhinttau pure Dravidians are long-headed,
and the Vedic Aryans too are
believed to have been long-headed, and so also
36 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
are the Pre-Dravidian Munda and Mon-Khmer
races. How then to account for the broad
head of the Mahratta ? According to Chanda
the second stream of Aryan people who
encircled the first group on three sides belonged
to the brachycephalic Celtic type. Without
going so far as to assume a ring of cognate
races belonging to one type from one end of
India to the other, we can agree with him
in the assumption that a tribe of Aryans of the
Celtic type came and settled in the Mahratta
districts only. At least this is more probable than
Risley's theory of Scytho-Dravidian origin
of the Mahratta people because it seems
unlikely that the Scythian invaders could come
through the dreary north-western frontiers,
and through the Punjab, Malwa, Gujarat to
the Mahratta country in such large numbers
as to be able to strongly influence the ethnic
characteristics of the vast Aryo-Dravidian
population already settled there ; or than Dr.
Barnett's too bold assumption (Antiquities of
India p. 32) that "the Dravidian blood vanished
in that of the old native stocks (Munda and
Mon-khmer races) in most districts, but preserved
some of its old characteristics in the
Mahratta country (traditionally Dravidian). 11
If we remember that broad-headed Aryan-
speaking peoples are to be found in Persia
and Afghanistan and that there was frequent
COMING OF THE ARYANS 37
intercourse between the Persian Gulf and the
western coasts of India even in prehistoric times,
it is not difficult to conceive of a migration
of broad-headed tribes, either Aryan of the
Celtic type, or mixed Aryan and South
Semitic, or Aryanised aborigines, from Iran
to Western India (like that of the Parsees
in historical times) at a time when the native
Dravidian population was not very dense and
when the Vedic Aryans had not extended
their influence beyond the Nerbudda. So
when the latter came and imposed their culture,
the population had already received an indelible
stamp of the brachycephalic type, which was
kept alive by the likely influx of small groups
from the Persian Gulf from time to time
in the wake of commerce and colonisation.
So instead of the name Scytho-Dravidian given
by Risley we may call the Mahratta type
Irano-Dravidian.* According to most scholars,
* "Overlooking later Mongolo-Turki encroachments, a
general survey will, I think, show that from the earliest times
the whole of this region (Irania) has formed part of the Cauca-
sic domain; that the bulk of the indigenous populations must
have belonged to the dark, round-headed Alpine type; that
these, still found in compact masses in many places, were
apparently conquered, but certainly Aryanised in speech, in
very remote prehistoric times by long-headed blond Aryans of
the Iranic and Galchic branches, who arrived in large numbers
from the contiguous Eurasian steppe, mingled generally with
the brachy aborigines, but also kept aloof in several districts,
38 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
including Grierson and Rapson, the Pishacha
languages in the north-western frontier districts
were evolved through contact between the Indo-
Aryan and Iranian languages. It is well-known
that at one time one form of Pishacha language
prevailed in the Mahratta country, which too
lends colour to the hypothesis of Iranian element
in the Mahratta blood. Again, the name Ratti-
kas ; or Rattas of the people of the country which
was in use at least as early as the time of Asoka
sounds very similar to that of the warrior class
of Iran, Rathaesthas.
where they still survive with more or less modified proto-
Aryan features Both Iranic and Galchic are thus rather
linguistic than ethnic terms, and so true is this that a philo-
logist always knows what is meant by an Iranic language,
while the anthropologist is unable to define or form any dear
conception of an Iranian, who may be either of long-headed
Nordic or round-headed Alpine type/ 1 (Keane and Haddon,
Man Past and Present pp. 541 542).
According to F. v. Luschan (The Early Inhabitants of
Asia), the primitive people of Western Asia were brachyce-
phalic and dark.
Seligman (The Physical Characters of the Arabs) has shown
that the Semites of Southern Arabia are predominantly
brachycephalic, the cephalic index ranging from 71 to 92, with
an average of about 82.
CHAPTER 1 1 L
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS.
In order to construct a workable chronology
of the Vedic period we must first ascertain
n * ^ D 'he approximate dates of the
Date of ranini. f . , . -> . . .
celebrated grammarian Pamm, and
of the adoption of writing for the expression of
the Sanskrit language. We know definitely that
Patanjali, the great commentator on Panini's
grammar, lived in the middle of the 2nd century
B. C. Between Patanjali and Katyayana, the
great critic commentator, there arose a large
number of grammarians, authors of Varttikas
and Karikas, such as Bharadvajiyas, Saunagas
and others, who have been noticed in Patan-
jali 1 s book, and hence we may reasonably put
Katyayana two centuries earlier, in the middle
of the 4th century B. C. Now that is exactly
the time assigned to Katyayana by Indian
tradition according to which he was minister to
a Nanda king.* We cannot, however, accept
* Mr. Jayaswal (Indian Antiquary XLVII p. 138) seems to
find in Katyayana's note Sakaparthivadinamupasankhyanam
on Panini II. z. 60. a reference to the Arsacidae kings of
Parthia, and so assigns Katyayana to the latter half of the
third century B.C. But if the word Saka here was used to
denote a race, Patanjali, who from his date was expected to
40 THE ARYAKISATION OF INDIA
tbe story of the Kathasaritsagara, written in the
1 2th century A. D., about the defeat of Panini
by Katyayana, except as an allegory to describe
the extremely learned and destructive criticism
of Katyayana 1 s Varttikas upon Panini's book.
Against that tradition may be set another in
the recently discovered drama Padmapravritakam
by Sudraka, which contains a character, Katya-
yana, which is evidently a caricature of the
famous grammarian, and makes him a con-
temporary not of Panini, but of a descendant of
his. That Panini was anterior to, and not a
contemporary of, Katyayana is indicated by
Patanjali's reference of Panini as a Rishi, who
"sees" (pashyati) i. e., to whom is revealed a
particular rule, as distinguished from what
others like Katyayana "say" ( bakshyati ).
Secondly, had 'they been contemporaries, Panini's
Sutras, about half of which had been attacked by
Katyayana, could not have survived the very
learned and bitter criticism of the rival, and
gained universal fame as the greatest authority
in grammar. "How could India," Goldstucker
be more acquainted with the Sakas, could not have explained
it as Sakabhoji, vegetable-eating and Bhattoji Dikshit as
Sakapriya, fond of power. If, however, the word Saka must
be made to denote a proper name, there is no necessity to
go to Persia, as Saka was quite a common pame among tbe
Vedic Indians, e. g., Sakadasa Bhaditayana of the Vamsa
Bnhmana, Sakayana of Kathaka Samhita.
DATE OF INDOARYAN INVASIONS 41
observes, "resound with the fame of a work
which was so imperfect as to contain at least
10,000 inaccuracies, omissions, and mistakes
(as pointed out by Katyayana) ? .If he had
bungled along, as he must appear to have done,
had he been a contemporary of Katyayana,
not he, but the author of the Varttikas, would
have been the inspired Rishi and the reputed
father of the Vyakarana. 1 ' This perplexity
vanishes if we assume that Panini and Katyayana
belonged to different periods, and that the
supposed mistakes or omissions were not really so,
but were due to the fact that many grammatical
forms and words and meanings of words which
were current in the time of Panini had become
obsolete or incorrect in the time of Katyayana,
and that words and grammatical forms unknown
to Panini had come into use in the time of his
critic. The omission of Panini to deal with
such peculiar words as Pandya, Chola, Kerala,
which necessitated the making of supplementary
rules by Katyayana, can only be explained by
the assumption that in Panini's time the Indo-
Aryans had not come into touch with Southern
India. Thirdly, some Karikas and Paribhashas
can be traced in the work of Patanjali which
had been written before the time of Katyayana
but certainly after that of Panini. Fourthly,there
is an indirect reference to Panini being regarded
as of distant past in Katyayana' s Varttika
6
42 THE ARYANISAT10N OF INDIA
Julyakalatvat on Panini's rule Puranaprokteshu
brahmanakalpeshu (IV. 3. 105). Under these
circumstances it is not unreasonable to place
Panini a century and a half earlier than Katya-
yana, i. e. in about 500 B. C. This date is
not irreconcilable with the reference in Panini's
book to Yavanani or Greek writing (IV. 1.49)
and to female Sramanas, probably Buddhist nuns
(II. i. 70), the Gandhara country having been
' conquered in about 516 B. C. by Darius with the
aid of Greek officers like Sky lax from Ionia and
and Caria, and Gautama Buddha having passed
away about 543 B. C. (Smith, The Oxford
History of India, p. 48). Goldstucker's argument
for referring Panini to a date before Buddha
on the strength of Nirvana vate (VIII. 2. 50)
is not conclusive because Panini either dealt
with the root meaning of the word nirvana
without caring for technical meanings, or more
probably deliberately ignored Buddhism.
"Doubtless this ( Yavanani) means Greek (Ionian)
writing, but it does not necessarily follow that
the word dates from after the invasion of
Alexander. Indeed . the probability seems to
me against this being the case. For it is
certainly remarkable that Ionian should be
the name given to the Greeks if first made
known to India through the invasion of
Alexander, whose army was certainly in no
conceivable sense Ionian/' On the other
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 43
band, we know that the Persians under Cyrus
came into touch first with the Ionian Greeks
after the fall of Croesus (546 B. C,), and that
the first Greek resistance to Darius came
from the lonians who burned Sardis about
500 B. C. "If it is borne in mind that Panini
was a native of Gandhara according to Hiuen
Tsang, a view confirmed by the references in
his grammar, it will not seem far-fetched to
consider that it was most probably from the
older tradition that the name Yavanani was
derived. 55 (Keith, Ait. Aranyaka, p. 23.).
According to Buhler writing was introduced I
into India about 800 B. C. 'The palaeo-1
m - i j- graphical evidence of the Asoka
Writing in India, r . . , , , ,
inscriptions clearly shows that
writing was no recent invention in the third
century B. C., for the most of the letters
have several, often very divergent forms,
sometimes as many as nine or ten. A consi-
derable length of time was, moreover, needed
to elaborate from the twenty-two borrowed
Semitic symbols the full Brahmi alphabet of
forty-six letters. This complete alphabet, 1
which was evidently worked out by learned
Brahmins on phonetic principles, must have
existed by 500 B. C, according to the strong
arguments adduced by Prof. Buhler. This
is the alphabet which is recognised in Panini' s
great Sanskrit grammar. 1 ' (Macdonell, Sanskrit
44 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Literature, pp. 16, 17). Again, the manner
of Asoka's address to the people direct,
the employment of local dialects in his
inscriptions, and the locations of the inscrip-
tions, all indicate a wide-spread literacy of
the people in the third century B. C.,
a thing impossible of attainment in such
a vast country as India in less than five
centuries. Further, we know that the Kharosti
script had been a product of Darius' conquest of
the Indus valley at the end of the sixth century
B. C. If by that time the Brahmi script had
not been fully developed in India the Kharosti
script must have spread widely over the country
instead of remaining confined to the Persian
province only. All these prove that writing
must have been adopted for the expression of
the Sanskrit language in the 8th century B. C.
at the latest.
Every student of the Vedic literature knows
that it is divided into two parts the earlier
part, the Sruti or revealed literar
Lit tar ture
and the Brahmanas including the
Aranyakas and the Upanishads ; and the later
part, the Smriti or literature based on tradition,
written in the form of Sutras, the most impor-
tant of which are the six Vedangas. Again
the Sruti literature falls into three clearly sun-
dered groups (i) the original Vedic hymns,
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 45
the bulk of which are to be found collected in
the Rigveda ; (2) the later compilations and
classifications of the hymns as in the three other
Vedas, and the elaborate commentaries on the
Vedic hymns to explain the mutual relation of
the sacred text and the ceremonial, especially
in connection with the great sacrifices, as in the
Brahmanas proper ; (3) the development of the
philosophical ideas as in the Aranyakas and the
Upanisbads, which generally come at the end
of the Brahmanas. From an examination of
language and thought too we find that the
Upanishads generally succeeded the Aranyakas, t
which in their turn succeeded the Brahmanas
proper. Of course a clear line of demarcation
is not possible between the period of the Brah-
manas and the period of the Aranyakas and Upa-
nishads, and there are instances of a Brahmana,
or parts of a Brahmana, being a later produc-
tion than many of the Aranyakas and Upanishads.
But these are exceptions, which do not nullify
the general three-fold divisions of the Brahmana
period.
The Sutras presuppose the existence of the
Brahmanas, whose complicated system of theo-
n j lgy an< * ceremonial they sought
Sutra renod. . Vf ,, , , .
to simplify. The dogmas and be-
liefs embodied in the Sutras and their language
which stands midway between the language
of the Brahmanas and the classical Sanskrit
46 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
prove their continuity without any break from
the Brahmana literature. Max Muller and his
followers including Macdonell and Keith fix
B, C. 600 to 200 for the Sutra period. But
the beginning must be pushed back by at least
two centuries, (i). The Sutras in their com-
position show a freedom which is hardly con-
ceivable after the period of Panini, and so a
great many of them must have been composed
and the literature standardised before 500 B. C.
(2). The Sutras in their inception were intended
to satisfy the needs of a system of oral instruc-
tion in all branches of knowledge, and in their
form point to an origin at a period when writing
was not known, i.e. before the 8th century B. C.
(3). The Sutra style had been so long estab-
lished in the country and so possessed the
minds of the literary classes that the early
Buddhist writers in the 5th century B. C. could
not get rid of it, but made a useless imitation of
this style in their books, sometimes with ludi-
crous effect. (4). Between Panini and Yaska,
the famous author of Nirukta, there must be an
interval of at least two hundred years if we
take into account the great changes in language
and the great development of grammar which
had taken place, and the considerable number
of important grammarians who had arisen during
the intervening period. On no account, there-
fore, we can put Yaska later than 700 B. C.
DATB OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 47
And Yaska's book is not certainly the earliest
work of the Sutra period. Thus the beginnings
of the Sutra period may be reasonably dated
about 800 B. C.
This date, B. C, 800, may then be taken
as marking the end of the Brahmana period,
which preceded the Sutra period.
That this is a fair estimate can be
judged from a consideration of the
relations between the philosophical doctrines
of Gautama Buddha, of the Sankhya school
and of the Upanishads (Keith, Ait. Aranyaka,
pp. 47-49). Gautama Buddha flourished in the
6th century B. C. His teachings presuppose
the Sankhya school of philosophy. "It is
I think correct to assume that these doc-
trines are descended from a Sankhya view
of existence which fell into pessimism by its
unsatisfactory dualistic metaphysics. However
open to criticism Jacobi's detailed derivation
of the doctrines of Buddhism from the Sankhya
may be, yet it is clear that it was from the
Sankhya that Buddhism derived its theory of
the soulless entity which yet goes through
transmigration" (Keith). The Sankhya doc-
trines are to a great extent criticisms on and
supplements to the Upanishad doctrines,
and show a more developed thought than the
latter. The development of Sankhya might
have begun in the 8th century B. C., and it
46 TUB ARVANISATION Of INDIA
\
* V
is therefore that we do not meet with any
but indirect mention of the Sankhya system
in the Upanishads, and that also in the latest
ones. Buddhist tradition too allows a respec-
table distance of time between Kapila, the
founder of the Sankhya system, and Gautama
Buddha. Moreover, as the beginnings of the
Sutra writing are anterior to Panini and as
the language of the Upanishads is more
archaic than even the language of the Sutras,
the end of the Brahmana period may be
believed to be about three hundred years
before Panini's time. Again, the Brahmanas,
the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads betray
not the slightest trace of any knowledge of
writing, and must, therefore, belong to a period
before 800 B. C. Some of the Upanishads
like the Maitrayaniya may be of later date,
but the bulk of them were composed before
800 B. C.
If we calculate back the length of the
Brahmana period from 800 B. C. we can arrive
at the beginning of the Brahmana period and
the end of the Mantra or hymn period. The
immense mass of Brahmana literature extant,
whioh again is only a fraction of what has been
lost, as appears from the numerous names and
quotations from Brahmanas unknown to us
occurring in works extant ; the number of stages
which are clearly perceptible in the domain of
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 49
thought spreading over the Brahmanas, the
Aranyakas and the Upanishads ; the rise of so
many different schools of thought and ritualism ;
and the endless genealogical lists of teachers
can hardly be accommodated within a space of
less than five or six hundred years. This
estimate will appear not liberal if we take into
consideration the fact that the Brahmana litera-
ture represents a period of intellectual
decadence after the creative energies of the
Indo- Aryan mind had exhausted themselves by
the end of the hymn period, and that, therefore,
the progress of thought was comparatively slow.
Besides, we know that in ritualism and phi-
losophy a people, unless subjected to strong
external influences, makes progress at a much
slower rate than in other fields of literary
activity. Again, as Winternitz justly observes,
"a written literature can develop in a shorter
time than one that is only handed down by word
of mouth, when each single text requires genera-
tions of teachers and disciples in order to be
preserved at all." So the estimate of two or
three hundred years for the Brahmana period
made by Max Muller, Keith and others does
not seem reasonable. Indeed, Max Muller
himself admits that "the chronological limits
assigned to the Sutra and Brahmana periods
will seem to most Sanskrit scholars too narrow
rather than too wide." All these considerations
7
99 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
may well lead us to find the beginning of the
Aranyaka compositions at about 1200 B. C. and
that of the Upanishad at 1000 B.C.
That the above estimate is nearer the mark
is proved by the absence of any mention of the
epoch-making Kurukshetra war, of the Pandavas,
the heroes of the Mahabharata, and of Arjuna,
except as meaning the god Indra, in the Brah-
manas, which indicates their composition, at
least of the bulk of them,before the Kurukshetra
war, which, according to the calculation of Mr.
Pargiter from Pauranic genealogical lists, took
place about the middle of the roth century
B. C. Moreover, according to the Puranas, there
is the space of 1050 years between Mahapadma
Nanda (about 400 B.C.) and Parikshit (Pargiter,
Kali Age, p. 58), and if we assume the latter to
be Pariksbitl, who is mentioned in the Atharva-
veda, Aitareya Brahmana and Satapatha Brah-
mana, instead of Parikshit II, the grandson of
Arjuna, we reach the 15th century B.C. for the
beginning of the Brahmana period. 41
* Dhritarastra of the Brahmanas was not identical with
Dhritarastra, the ancestor of the Kuru-Pandavas, the former
being a king of Kasi who was defeated by the Kurus. Simi-
larly, Parikshit and Janamejaya of the Brahmanas were the
ancestors and not descendants of the Pandavas. The identifica-
tion of the Vedic Parikshit with the son of Abhimanyu (Poli-
tical History of Ancient India) by Prof. H. C. Ray Choudhury,
which goes against the findings of Macdonell and Kp*th (Vedic
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 51
"Another and, at first sight, more promising
attempt has made to fix a date from internal
evidence. It has been argued by Jacobi on
the strength of two hymns in the Rigveda that
Index, Vol. I. p. 494) and of Pargiter( Ancient Indian Historical
Tradition, p. 114), does not seem probable. The Vishupurana
(IV. 20. i.) makes the four brothers, Janamejaya, Srutasena,
Ugrasena, Bhimasena, sons of Parikshit I and ancestors of the
Pandavas. It is always risky to attempt the identification of
kings or the fixing of their dates from an examination of their
teacher-priests' names. Identity of names does not necessari-
ly imply identity of persons. Different persons of the same
name but living in different times were often confused in later
writings. Besides, there could not be want of motives in later
times on the part of the authors belonging to rival families
and schools to associate a certain teacher-priest with a famous
king of old so as to enhance the prestige of a particular priest-
ly family or a particular school, and to ascribe the authorship
of well-known doctrines and theories to particular persons
which might shed lustre upon their descendants or disciples.
The Vamsas or genealogies of teachers, from which Prof. Ray
Choudhury draws his materials, were often composed long
after the actual composition of the books in which they are
included. The commentators never enter into any explana-
tion of these Vamsas, as doubtless they regarded them as
later and not very reliable writings. The Vamsa appended
at the close of the tenth book of Satapatha Brahmana differs
from the general Vamsa of the entire Brahmana at the dose
of the fourteenth book in not referring the work to Yajna-
valkya, but to Sandilya and Tura Kavasheya. In the Khila-
kanda of the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad Uddalaka is re-
presented as the teacher of Yajnavalkya, while in the Yajna-
valkyakanda Uddalaka is treated with as scant courtesy by
Yajnavaikya as is shown to the other Brahmanas who axe pot
5$ THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the year then began with the summer solstice,
and that at that solstice the sun was in con*
to silence by the hero of the book, and there is not the slight-
est indication that one was the pupil of the other.
An excellent instance of the confusion which arises from
the identity of names may be cited. "One Suka had a daughter
Krtvi or Kirtti, who married Anuha king of South Panchala
and was mother of king Brahmadatta. The other was Vyasa's
son, far later. It will be shown in chapter XIII that Brahma-
datta was a contemporary of the Kaurava king Pratipa, and
that his great great grandson Janamejaya was a contemporary
of Pratipa's great grandson Bhisma and of Prsata (Drupada's
father). Bhisma was of about the same age as Satyavati, the
maiden mother of Vyasa, for he was a youth when his father
married young Satyavati; hence Vyasa was younger than
Bhisma, and his son Suka was therefore at least a generation
later. From Brahmadatta's grandfather Suka down to Vyasa's
son Suka there were therefore some six generations. The
ksatriya genealogies and traditions keep the two Sukas distinct,
but the brahmanical vamsas in their attempt to construct
Vyasa's family identify the two, give Vyasa's son Suka a
daughter Kirtimati, say she was Anuha's queen and Brahma-
datta's mother, and so make Brahmadatta great grandson of
Vyasa, thus misplacing Anuha and Brahmadatta from their
true position to one some six generations later." (Pargiter, Anc,
Ind. Hist. Trad, pp 64-65). There are numerous instances to
show that persons who were widely separated in time are
brought together as contemporaries in later writings. The
Santiparva says that Bhisma learnt dharma from among others
Bhargava Chyavana, and Rama Jamadagnya, as if these three
lived in the same age. According to Pargiter, there were
several Yajnavalkyas, Jaiminis and Vaisampayanas (Ibid,
Chapter XXVII). So it is difficult to fix the chronological
position of a king from his association with the name of
a particular sage, unless there are corroborative evidences.
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 53
junction with the lunar mansion Phalguni.
Now the later astronomy shows that the lunar
mansions were, in the sixth century A* D.,
arranged so as to begin for purposes of reckoning
with that called Acvini, because at the vernal
equinox at that date the sun was in conjunction
with the star Piscium. Given this datum, the
precession of the equinoxes allows us to cal-
culate that the beginning of the year with the
summer solstice in Phalguni took place about
4000 B. C It (the argument) rests upon
two wholly improbable assumptions, first that
the hymns really assert that the year began
at the summer solstice, and, second, that the sun
was then brought into any connexion at all with
the Nakshatras, for which there is no evidence
whatever. The Nakshatras are, as their name
indicates and as all the evidence of the later
Samhitas shows,lunar mansions pure and simple"
(Cambridge History of India I, pp. 111-112).
But more definite is a notice in the Kaushitaki
Brahmana (XIX. 3), which is repeated in the
Jyotisha, that the winter solstice took place at
the new moon in Magha. Though scholars are
not all agreed in accepting the assumptions
involved (Keith, Rigveda Brahmanas Translated,
p. 49), the objections are not as strong as in the
previous case, and we may with some justification
accept the results obtained from this datum.
The results, however, vary from 1391 to 1181
54 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
B. 9 and fit in with our estimate of the Brah-
mana period. The cumulative effect of all
the above considerations is practically decisive
of a date for the beginning of the Brahmana
period about the middle of the second
millenium B. C. *
Max Muller assigns 400 years to the com-
position and compilation of the Samhitas,
R . ,. p .. "under the supposition that during
the early periods of history, the
growth of the human mind was more luxuriant
than in later times, and that the layers of thought
were framed less slowly in the primary than
in the tertiary ages of the worlcT.t This
is no doubt an underestimate, and considering
the great variety of the contents of the Rigveda,
which again is only a small remnant of a vast
*Keith (Aitareya Aranyaka, pp. 21 seq) argues from work
to work, taking the lower limit in each case "Panini, who
cannot well be dated later than 300 B. C.," "Yaska, who can
hardly be brought down lower than 550 500 B.C.," and so
on. But he does not assign any reason why these dates can
not be pushed back by two centuries. Again, he fixes the
date of the Aitareya Aranyaka as between 700 and 600 B. C,
and admits that the "upper date may perhaps be pushed
further back" (p. 50), yet he sticks to the lower date.
f That Max Muller himself regarded his chronology as
tentative is expressed in his Gifford Lectures on Physical
Religion (1890) where he says : "Whether the Vedic hymns
were composed 1000 or 1500 or aooo or 3000 years B. C. no
power on earth will ever determine,"
DATE OF INDQ- ARYAN INVASIONS 35
hymn literature most of which has been irre-
trievably lost, the perceptible changes in
language which had taken place during the
hymn period, distinguishing the earlier from
the later strata of hymns, the references in the
Rigveda itself to "sages of olden times" and
"old hymns being clothed in newer garbs,"
"hymns composed in the old way," the period
of composition alone of the Rigvedic hymns
must have extended over many centuries and
may be fixed from 2000 to 1400 B. C. One
of the reasons of Max Muller for adopting a
later date for the Rigvedic period is that be
observes a coincidence in language between
the Vedic hymns and the Avestan Gathas
similar to that between the Homeric Greek
and the Classical Greek, and he dates the Gathas
from the sixth century B. C. But the difficulty
is that there is yet no agreement among scholars
about the date of the earliest Gathas. Accord-
ing to Dr. Moulton, "the traditional date (of
Zoroaster, 660-583 B. C.) is a minimum, but
there are strong reasons for placing Zarathustra
and his Gathas some generations earlier still."
Again, the comparison between the development
of language from the Vedic hymns to the
Gathas and that from the Homeric Greek to
Classical Greek is not fair. The period in
question is the most eventful in the history of
Greece, when the rapid political and commercial
56 THE ARYAN1SATION OF INDIA
growth of the Greeks exercised a great influence
upon the development of their language, and
conditions were certainly different in India and
Persia. And even at the same time Attic Greek
was further from the primitive Hellenic language
than Doric or Aeolic. The changes of literary
Greek from the Attic days down to the present
day have been much less rapid. In any case,
it is to be feared that we attain from such a
comparison no result of value for Vedic
chronology.
"We do not hesitate to assign the composi-
tion of the bulk of the Brahmanas to the years
1400-1200 B. C., for the Samhita we require a
period of at least 500600 years with an interval
of about two hundred years between the end
of the proper Brahmana period. Thus we obtain
for the bulk of the Samhita the space from
1400-2000. If we consider the completely
authenticated antiquity of several of the sacred
books of the Chinese, such as the original
documents, of which the Shu-king or Book of
History is composed, and the antiquity of the
sacrificial songs of the. Shi-king, which all carry
us back to 17002200 B. C. it will certainly not
be surprising that we assign a similar antiquity
to the most ancient parts of the Vedas." (Haug,
The Aitareya Brahmana).
41 An estimate (i. e. of Haug) which, if we
take everything into account, is certainly not
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 57
too high, and which has the greatest claims to
probability, is that of Whitney OL St. i, 21, and
elsewhere, of 2000-1500 B. C. the first half of
the second thousand years B. C.; " (Kaegi, The
Rigveda),
"The close relationship between the language
of the Vedic Samhitas on the one hand and
Avesta and old Persian on the other does not
allow us to date the beginning of the Vedic
period back into a hoary age of many thousands,
to say nothing of millions of years B. C.
On the other hand, the facts of political,
religious and literary history require a period
of at least a thousand years and probably more
between the earliest hymns of the Rigveda,
and the latest parts of the old Upanishads and
the rise of Buddhism." (Winternitz).
When the bulk of the Rigvedic hymns were
composed the Indo- Aryans had not advanced
much beyond the Jumna, were
Inf AT TnnA
Aryan Immi- having a deadly struggle with the
gration. natives of the soil, and evidently
had not entered India very long ago. At the
same time we must allow sufficient time for the
practically thorough occupation of the Punjab,
and the loss of memories about any outside
home as is revealed in the hymns. If the bulk
of the hymns were composed between 2000*1400
B. C., we shall not be very wrong ff we believe
that the Aryans began to enter into India about
8
56 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
23<x> or 2200 B. C. JLet us see if there are any
other evidences to support this hypothesis.
Pargiter points out in his Dynasties of the
Kali Age that according to Pauranic accounts
there were 30 Paurava, 29 Ikshaku
and 37 Magadhan kings in the in-
terval between the Kurukshetra
war and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda.
"Here we have safer ground, for the number of
kings in a dynasty was a much simpler matter
and more easily remembered than figures of the
lengths of reigns and dynasties; and this infor-
mation about ten contemporary dynasties elimi-
nates peculiarities and extravagances about
single dynasties and enables us to make prudent
calculations by means of averages of all ten."
(Pargiter, Anc. Ind. Hist. Tr, p. 180). By cal-
culating backward from the date of Mahapadma
(about 400 B. c.) at the rate of 18 years for an
average reign, an average obtained by comparing
more than 20 genealogical tables of Asia and
Europe,* one arrives at the date 950 B. G. ap-
proximately for the Kurukshetra battle. More-
over, Jaina traditions represent the Tirthankara
Aristanemi as a contemporary of Krishna Vasu-
deva, and if we assume an interval of two
hundred years, which seems on general grounds
reasonable, between the Tirthankaras, Mahavira,
* 30 Andhra kings reigned for 450 years, and 20 Vijay-
nagtr kings for 950 years.
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 59,
Parsvanath, and Aristanemi, we get the tenth
century B. C. as the date of Aristanemi and so
of Krishna and of the Kurukshetra war.
"If we should seek to make an estimate of
the ages before the battle, it would be prudent
to take a smaller length for the average reign,
because only one line, that of Ayodhya, is
practically complete, while there are gaps in
the other dynasties so that there is little
scope for taking medium averages of all
the dynasties and eliminating peculiarities/'
(Pargiter, Anc. Ind. Hist. Tradition, p. 183).
In the absence of any checking means it is im-
possible to find out additions, omissions, and
overlappings. Even in historical times the men-
tion of the Andhra dynasty as succeeding the
Kanva dynasty and the inclusion of the Sakya
family and the Pradyota family in the dynasties
of Kosala and Magadha respectively in the
Puranas gave rise to not a little confusion
among the earlier investigators. So it is better
to take a lower average, say 12 years, for the
period before the Kurukshetra war. Now as the
Puranas give 93 kings to the Ikshaku dynasty
from Ikshaku the founder to Brihadbala, the
contemporary of the Kurukshetra war, the
approximate date of Ikshaku and the foundation
of the dynasty may be supposed to be about
2100 B. C. Of the princes of the Ikshaku
dynasty known to the Vedic hymn-makers are
69 THE ARYAWSATION 07 INDIA
Mandhatri, Purukutsa, Trasadasyu, Tryaruna,
etc., princes who number according to the
Puranas from the twentieth to thirtieth in
descent from the founder, and who, therefore,
may be believed to have flourished in the
igth and i8th centuries B. C. This also gives
a clue to Vedic chronology, and, if we suppose
Ikshaku to be the leader of an important, but
not necessarily the earliest, Indo-Aryan group
of settlers in India (as Cerdic or Ida in Eng-
land), a clue to the date of the coming of the
Indo- Aryans.
About the middle of the 2Oth century B. C.,
according to Dr. H. R. Hall, a
Aryans in tr ib e o f men known as the Kassites
Western Ana.
or Kossaeans with Surias (Sanskrit
Surjyas) and Maryttas (Sanskrit Marut) as their
principal gods and speaking an Aryan dialect
conquered Babylon and ruled there till the
middle of the I3th century B.C., when they were
overwhelmed by the Assyrian king Tukultini-
niv. About the same time another Aryan tribe
established themselves to the north-west in the
upper valley of the Euphrates under the name
of Mitanni. Their kings bore names like Arta-
tama, Dusratta (Sanskrit Dasaratha), etc., and
f worshipped the gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra,
Nasatyas. They remained in power till the
middle of the I4th century B.C. when they were
conquered by the Hittites. As regards the
DATE OF INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 61 '
powerful Hittites or Khatti of Asia Minor, who
for several centuries terrorised both Egypt and
Mesopotamia, it is still not certain to which race
they belonged. The suggestion has been made
that their language, which unfortunately has not
yet been deciphered, bears certain Indo-Euro-
pean characteristics. Anthropologists like Von
Luschan are inclined to connect the Hittites
with the Alpine race or the Celto-Slav peoples
of Europe. Hall points out that "the Hittite
deities are often accompanied by animals in quite
Indian fashion, and sometimes stand upon them.
...It may be that it was a feature borrowed from
Aryan religion." These Hittites, who were
either Aryans or Aryanised natives, but certain-
ly not Semites, appear for the first time in his-
tory in the 2oth century B. C., when they were
powerful enough to attack Babylon. In the
Tell-el-Amarna inscriptions we find such Aryan
names of princes as Artamanyu, Subandu, Su-
wardata, Sutarna, Jasadata and so forth, who
ruled in Palestine and Syria in the isth century
B.C., but who had not been there before the 2oth
century B. C., as we know from the Romance
ofSinehu and the inscriptions of the Middle
Kingdom of Egypt. Even after their downfall
in Mesopotamia and Syria the Aryans survived
in the east, and one of their family, the Medes,
remained long a thorn in the side of Assyria
until the overthrow of the latter and the estab-
62 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
lishment of the Medo-Persian empire in West-
ern Asia.
From the history of Egypt too we learn that
the period from the 2Oth to the i6th century
B.C was one of great turmoil and disturbances
in Western Asia, when strange peoples appeared
dislodging or conquering the old ones, and old
kingdoms tottered and fell like houses of cards.
The rapidity and violence of these irruptions,
far exceeding in extent and effect all earlier
movements of which we have any knowledge,
were probably due to the use of the horse by
the invaders both as steed and as milk-giver
to annihilate distance and commissariat diffi-
culties. The Egyptians and the Babylonians
became acquainted with the horse only after
these barbarian invasions. The picture present-
ed is similar to that which Europe witnessed
in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. on the appear-
ance of the Hun hordes and the rising of the
barbarians. The fate of Rome befell Egypt
too, and Egypt lay groaning and bleeding
under the heels of the conquering barbarians
from Asia from the i8th to the 16th century
B. C. These barbarians, the Hyksos or She-
pherds as the Egyptian historians call them,
were, so far as is known, a mixed Semitic
people from Syria who being pushed from
behind by new men, and probably mingled
with them, played a part in the history of
DATE OF 1NDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 63
Egypt almost similar to that of the Goths in
Roman history under the pressure of the Huns.
But, unlike the Romans, the Egyptians were
not yet rotten to the core, and after two centuries
of sufferings succeeded in shaking off the bar*
barian yoke and establishing the mighty New
Kingdom, which once more advanced upon
Syria and the Euphrates punishing and enslaving
their erstwhile conquerors. It is then when
the veil of darkness is lifted by the conquering
marches of the Thutmoseses that a new scene
presents itself to us in the i5th century
Aryan dynasties ruling practically over the
whole of Western Asia from the Mediterranean
to the Persian Gulf, in Mesopotamia, Syria,
Palestine, and, if we accept the Hittitesas Aryan,
in Asia Minor. But as in Egypt so in Meso-
potamia the barbarian conquerors imposed them-
selves upon a highly organised and numerous
community with a hoary civilization behind
them, and, therefore, could not long maintain
themselves against a revival of national feeling.
The Semites soon found a champion in the king
of Assyria who put an end to the Aryan rule
in Babylon. Then between the two grindstones
of Egypt and Assyria the smaller Aryan ruler-
ships in Western Asia were crushed out of
existence. Thus all Aryan trace was lost in
Syria and Mesopotamia and the Semite there
became as supreme ever.
64 THE ARYANISATION Of INDIA
Now what do all these signify ? First of
all, the names of their gods Surjya, Mitra, Indra,
Nasatya suggest a very close affinity with the
Vedic Indians and very little with the other
branches of the Aryan family. It is certain that
they separated themselves from the Indo-Aryan
branch in the time of the Rigveda when the
older gods like Dyaus, Ushas of the Indo-
European period were passing into the back-
ground and the later gods like Vishnu and
Siva had not become important. Indra is a
typical god of the Rigvedic Indians. The word
Nasatya is truly Rigvedic. So the time of the
appearance of the Kassites and the Mitannians,
i. e. the 2Oth century B. C., must fall within the
Rigvedic period. And consequently the Rigvedic
period, which is believed to have lasted for five or
six hundred years, could not have begun earlier
than 2500 B. C., and ended later than 1500
B. C. Again, we know that the split between
the Indians and the Iranians took place in the
early Vedic, if not in the pre- Vedic, period,
and that in consequence there was such bitter-
ness caused that the Iranians deliberately
changed the Vedic gods into demons. If, as
some scholars assert, the Kassites and the
Mitannians betrayed in their dialects close
relationship with the Iranians, the fact that
they still worshipped Vedic gods and had not
in their language changed s into h showed
DATE Of INDO-ARYAN INVASIONS 65
that the Indo-Iranian split had either not
occurred in the aoth or aist century B. C., or,
if it had, not much before that time.
From all these above considerations we
may infer that the Aryans began to pour
into India about the middle of
E*^1i| C Sc the third millennium B - c - The
Punjab. recent finds of the Archaeological
Department at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa
prove the existence of a civilisation in the
Punjab and Sind,which was not Aryan in charac-
teristics, but allied to the Sumerian of about
3000 B.. C. (Illustrated London News, October
1924). As it has been suggested from a compari-
son of their physical types, burial customs, and J
matriarchal systems* that the Stimerians belonged
to the Dravidian stock, it is quite reasonable
to believe that in the early part of the third
millennium B. C. the Aryans had not come and
driven away the Dravidians from the Punjab.
* Prof. Morgan in his Ancient Society and Prof. Sayce
in his Babylonians and Assyrians show that in Sumerian times
the woman was the head of the family.
CHAPTER IV
EXPANSION OF THE INDO-ARYANS
THE DASYUS.
From the geographical names mentioned
in the Rigveda we learn that the Indo- Aryans
were at that time in possession
rith^5- of P arts of Af g hani stan, the Punjab,
?eda. Kashmir, parts of Rajputana and
Sind, and had advanced as far as the Ganges.
Some twenty-five streams are mentioned, of which
the principal are the Sindhu (Indus), Vitasta
(Jhelum), Asikni (Chenab), Parushni (Ravi),
Vipasha ( Beas ), Satudru (Sutlej), Kubha
(Kabul), Suvastu (Swat), Krumu (Kurram),
Saraswati, Drishadvati, Yamuna, and Ganga.
The Himavanta or Himalayas were well-known
to the hymn-makers, but not the Vindhyas
and the Nerbudda, showing that they had not
advanced as far as these. Another evidence of
their unacqaintance with the eastern countries is
that the tiger, a characteristic animal of Eastern
India, is unknown, and that rice too is little
known. The important river Ganges is mentioned
directly but once, and probably marked the
easternmost limit of the Indo-Aryan advance.
Though some of the Vedic hymns were com-
posed on the banks of the Indus, e.g. the hymns
EXPANSION OF THE INDO-ARYANS 67
to Ushas, which, if composed in India, must
have been done in the western Punjab, where the
dawn is comparatively a glorious phenomenon,
yet the centre of Rigvedic life lay to the east, on
the banks of the Saraswati, where the bulk of
the hymns were composed, and which river was
regarded as the most sacred and superseded
in importance even the Indus.
During the period of the later Samhitas
and the Brahmanas the Indo-Aryans had spread
over the land as far as the Vin-
Eitension daring dhyas on the south, and the con-
the Brahmana J f ^ t '
Period. fines of Bengal on the east, and in
some points had penetrated into the Deccan on
the western side by way of Malwa and Gujarat.
The centre of life shifted eastward, and com-
prised the whole country between the Saraswati
and the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna,
which is called Madhyadesha or Middle Country.
While the eastern regions like Kosala (Oudh),
Kasi (Benares), and Videha (N. Behar) are
brought under Aryan influences and come into
prominence, the Punjab and the western coun-
tries correspondingly recede in importance,
and their tribes and their customs receive but
scant respect in the Brahmana literature.
(i). In the Satapatha Brahmana (1.4. 1.14- 17)
there is a curious legend of Mathava the
Videgha carrying the sacrificial fire (i.e. sacri-
ficial worship of the Brahmins) from the banks
68 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
of the Saraswati over Kosala as far as the
Sadanira (modern Gandak), and after crossing
it, laying the foundation of a settlement
which came to be known as Videha after the
name of the tribe to which Mathava belonged.
The story probably indicates how the country
as far as the Sadanira was conquered in one
sweep, how the progress was checked for a
while, and how slowly an Aryan colony, Videha,
was founded across the river.
(2). In a well-known hymn of the Atharva-
veda (V.22) takman or fever is delivered over
to the Gandharis, the Mujavants, the Angas,
and the Magadhas. The Vedic Aryans had
at that time evidently come into collision with
the non-Aryan tribes, Angas and Magadhas.
The Magadhas are associated in chapter XV of
the same book with Vratyas ( i. e. nomadic
peoples with strange languages and laws). The
Angas and the Magadhas were still resisting the
Aryans, and hence the great indignation of the
author. On the other hand, this passage shows
that the Brahmanical culture of the Indo-
Aryans of the Middle Country has already led
them to despise their more primitive brethren
of the west in the Indus valley.
(3). In the Aitareya Brahmana (VII. 18)
Viswamitra speaks of the Andhras, Pundras,
Sabayas, Pulindas, and Mutibas as living on the
borders of the Aryan settlements. Of these the
EXPANSION OF THE INDO- ARYANS 69
Andhras, Sabaras and Pulindas are known from
the Mahabharata and the Puranas to have been
tribes of the Deccan, and the Pundras are
known in historical times to have their home
in Bengal In modern times the Andhras are
the Telegu-speaking people of the Deccan, the
Sabaras are still found in a savage state on the
frontiers of Orissa, and the Pundras have
developed into the Pod caste of Bengal.
(4). In the Aitareya Aranyaka (II.i.i) the
Vangas, Vagadhas and Cheras are called birds,
i.e. non- Aryans speaking languages which were .
not intelligible to the Aryans. The Vangas
were certainly the inhabitants of Vangadesha or
Bengal, the Vagadha is either a misreading or
different reading of the word Magadha, and the
Cheras are known to be a wild tribe of the
Vindhya regions.
(5). The Kaushitaki Upanishad (VI. i.)
gives a list of the principal Aryan tribes living in
India, viz, the Usinaras, the Vasas, the Matsyas,
the Kurus, the Panchalas, the Kasis, and the
Videhas. The land of the Usinaras in the
eastern Punjab and the land of the Videhas
in North Behar marked the western and
eastern boundaries respectively of the Indo-
Aryan world of the time. The western Punjab
and the trans-Indus lands by this time had come
to be regarded as barbarian.
(6).,Vidarbha, or modern Berar, is mentioned
f& THS ARYAMISATIOM OF INDIA
in the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana (II.
440), and a Bhima, prince of Vidarbha, in the
Aitareya Brahmana (VIL 34. 9), proving that
the Aryans had during the Brahmana period
penetrated into the Deccan as far as Berar.
Thus before the close of the Brahmana
period in about 800 B. C. the whole of Northern
India as far as South Behar had been conquered,
and the Aryans had begun to penetrate into the
Deccan where at least one kingdom, that of
Vidarbha, had been established. The process
of conquest and colonisation is clearly observed
in Behar.
During the period from 800 B. C. to 500
B. C. the whole of Northern India had been
Indo-Aryan Ex- P ract i ca ^y Aryanised, though the
fuanm from 800 process was still incomplete in
* _ CAA D f*
TO wu o. v. t j le ou tiyi n g parts, Sind, Kathiwar,
Gujarat on the west, and Bengal and Kalinga
(Orissa) on the east. The Punjab had farther
fallen from orthodoxy and in the estimation
of the Brahmins. Little headway was made in
the Deccan, where, besides Vidarbha, one or
two settlements had arisen on the Godavery.
Anga and Magadha had been completely
brought within the circle of Indo-Aryan
politics and culture.
(i). Baudhayana quotes older authorities
to state that the people of Sindhu, Sauvira,
and Surastra were of mixed origin, and also
EXPANSION OF THE INDO-ARYANS 71
directs that any one travelling to the countries
of the Kalingas, Pundras, Vangas, and Arattas
(Punjab) must perform a purificatory sacrifice.
(2). In the Ramayana* Dasaratha is
advised by his priest Vasistha to invite among
others the kings of Anga, Magadha, Sindhu,
Sauvira,and Surastra to his horse sacrifice. There
are mentions in the book of Kalinga and
Vidarbha, but the knowledge shown about
the geography of the Deccan and Southern
India is very scanty, most of the area being
called Dandakaranya, which was inhabited by
Rakshasas and J^anaras, i.e. various non-Aryan
communities.
(3). Panini is acquainted with the names
of Kachchha (Cutch), Kalinga, and Asmaka
(on the Godavery), but evidently not with the
names of Pandya, Chola, Kerala, as otherwise
he could not have failed to give explanations
of the formation of such peculiar words, a
task undertaken by his commentators in later
times.
(4). For the period just before the rise
of Buddhism (i. e. the seventh century B. C.)
we know from the Nikayas, which are assigned
* It is always unsafe to refer to the epics for the geogra-
phy of the epic period, as they received considerable additions
and modifications in later times. In this respect the
Mahabharata is worse than the Ramayana, and so I abstain
from referring to it for the political geography of the period.
72 THE ARYANISATIQN OF INDIA
by scholars like Rhys Davids to a time not
much later than Gautama Buddha, that the
following were the principal nations in
India Anga, Magadha, Kasi, Kosala, Vajji,
Malla, Chedi, Vamsa, Kuru, Panchala, Machha,
Surasena, Assaka, Avanti, Gandhara, Kamboja.
Vanga and Kalinga are not mentioned, though
the latter name finds a place in the list in later
Buddhist Texts.
(5). From the Chronicles of Ceylon it is
learnt that about the time of Gautama Buddha's
birth Bejoy Sinha, a prince of Bengal, conquered
Ceylon and settled there. The Chronicles were
composed about one thousand years after the
event, and so we cannot rely much on this
tradition to show that Bengal had been
Aryanised in the 7th century B.C.
At the time of Alexander's invasion, i.e.
Extent in the time in the latter half of the 4th
of Alexander's century B.C., the Aryan influence
iHTaiion. ^ad S p rea( j over t h e w hole of
India, including the extreme south, and
Ceylon.
(i). Katyayana's explanations with regard
to the words Pandya, Chola, and Kerala,
supplementing the rules of Panini, show that
the Aryans had come into contact with these
peoples of Southern India during the time
f intervening between Panini (about SooB.C.)
and Katyayana (about 350 B.C.)
EXPANSION OF THE INDO-ARYANS 73
(2). The accounts in the Arthasastra of
Kautilya, the well-known minister of Chandra-
gupta, giving details of trade dealings in the
products of such countries as Vanga, Pundra,
Sindhu, Tamraparni (Ceylon), and the Tamil
countries of the south, show that all parts of
India were bound to each other by ties of
commercial relations and intimately known to
each other.
(3). The Aryan influence had so much
spread in Southern India that, according to
Megasthenes ( about 300 B.C.), the Pandyas
called themselves the descendants of a daughter
of the Indian Hercules or Krishna. The name
Madura or Mathura of the Pandya capital lends
colour to this tradition, as Mathura in Northern
India was connected with the Yadavas and the
early life of Krishna, who belonged to the
Yadava family.
A good deal of confusion seems to have
arisen over the words Arya and Dasyu as they
were used in the Rigveda. This
is due not a little to the fact that
the original distinction between the
two in course of time became lost and Vedic
commentators in later times attached fanciful
meanings to them. Yaska explains the word
Arya as Iswaraputra, son of God, and Sayana
explains it as one who is learned and performs,
the sacrifices, and the word Dasyu as a demon.
10
74 THE AJRYANISATION OF INDIA
In later literature Arya came to mean noble,
and Dasyu a robber. But even then the
original meaning sometimes peeps out, as in
words like Arya-dharma and Aryavarta. The
Manusmriti preserves clear traces of the word
Arya being used to denote a distinct race. Thus
in the tenth book it is said, "All who are born
outside the castes produced from the head, arm,
thigh and foot of Brahma, whether they speak
Aryan or Mlechchha languages, are known to
be Dasyus." Again, "A person begotten on a
non-Aryan woman by an Arya is an Arya in
qualities, while it is certain that a person be-
gotten on an Arya woman by a non- Aryan is a
non-Aryan." In order to find out the original
meanings of the words we should look into the
Rigveda itself instead of depending on com-'
mentators who wrote hundreds of years after
the composition of the hymns. The manner
in which the two words are used at once
suggests a contrast and distinction between two
species. Thus in Rig 1.51.8 Indra is invoked
to distinguish between the Aryas and those
who are Dasyus." In I. 103. 3 "Cast thy dart,
Thunderer, at the Dasyu, increase the Arya's
might and glory, Indra." In X.86.I9 Indra says,
"I come looking about me and distinguishing the
Dasas and the Aryas. 1 ' In 1. 100.18 Indra is said
to have destroyed the Dasyus and shared their
lands with the whites, and in II.ii.i8 "disclosed
THE DASYU 75
the light to light the Arya, and on the left
hand sank the Dasyu." In 11.11.19 the Arya
gains wealth subduing with the help of Indra
the foes, the Dasyus. In X.83.I Manyu is
invoked to help the worshippers to successfully
fight their enemies, whether Arya or Dasyu.
From these and many other passages it becomes
clear to us that the word Arya and Dasyu
originally bore different meanings from those
suggested by later commentators. In some
places, however, the terms are applied to celes-
tial foes, demons, and not mortals, but that is a
secondary meaning. Evidently the hymn-makers
were Aryas who worshipped Indra and other
gods and prayed for the destruction of their foes,
the Dasyus. That these Dasyus or Dasas were
men of a different type, with different physical
characters and institutions, is obvious from their
being described as "black-skinned/* "devoid of *
religious rites," "of different rites/' "of imperfect
speech", "noseless" or flat-nosed, "rawflesh-
eaters," etc. In Rig X,22. 8 the Rishi says, "We
live in the midst of the Dasyu tribes who do not
perform sacrifices, nor believe anything. They
have their own rites, and are not entitled to be
called 'men.' Thou Destroyer of enemies,
annihilate them and injure the Dasas.* 1 Yet
the Dasas were not savages and mean foes of
the Aryas. There are many references to their
fortresses of stone, their wealth, their powerful
n THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
tribes and kings* The combined efforts of Indra
and Agni demolish ninety fortified towns
(purah) ruled over by the Dasas (III. 12. 6). In
VIII. 40. 6 Indra is invoked to humble the
Dasa and distribute his accumulated treasure
among His worshippers. There was a Dasyu
king, Krishna, who lived on the banks of the
Jumna, and harrassed the Aryas with ten
thousand followers (VIII. 85. 1315). The
Dasas are sometimes called "mayaban", i.e. pos-
sessed of magical power or stratagem. The
Aryas were often hard-pressed and in their dis-
tress had to invoke the assistance of their gods
for victory.
Who were these Dasyus or Dasas f Hillebrandt
Dravi- seems to think the word Dasa originally
i dians. denoted the Dahae people of the Caspian
j Steppes, who gave much troubles to the Aryans
\ in Iran, and so came to signify a foe, a robber,
in which sense it is used in the Rigveda. What-
ever might have been the original meaning of
the word, it is certain that the word, except
where it is not used to denote a celestial foe,
is used in the Rigveda to denote a different race
of men, evidently natives of the soil as the
Aryans have been shown to have come to India
from outside. What race or races of men were
these Dasas ? There are strong reasons to think
that many of those whom the Aryans encountered
in the Indus and Ganges valleys wereDravidians.
THEDASVU 77
(1) Their physical characteristics, as given
in the Rigveda, namely, black skin and flat nose,
agree with those of the modern Dravidians.
(2) That the Dravidians at one time lived
in the Punjab and neighbouring countries is
inferred from the existence of a Dravidian-
speaking tribe, the Brahui, in Beluchistan, which
is the last remnant of an once prevailing Dravi-
dian population of Northern India, and not the
survival of a Dravidian colony from the distant
Deccan, "as a remote mountainous district may
be expected to retain the survivals of ancient
races while it is not likely to have been colo-
nized."
(3) The changes which the Aryan language
underwent in India even when the Aryans were
confined to Northern India betray strong Dra-
vidian influences and support the inference that
the aboriginal Dasyus and Rakhas whom the
Indo- Aryans met in the Punjab and elsewhere
were mostly of the Dravidian race. Thus the
chief point which distinguishes the Vedic lan-
guage from the Avestan and other Indo-Euro-
pean languages is the presence of a second
series of dental letters, the so-called cerebrals,
"These play an increasingly impoi;j
the development of Indo-Aryan i
phases. They are foreign
languages generally and they
of Dravidian/ 1 (Cam. Ind.
78 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
consonants are essential component elements of
a large number of primitive Dravidian roots,
and are often necessary, especially in Tamil, for
the descrimination of one ,root from another ;
whereas in most cases in Sanskrit, the use of
cerebral consonants instead of dental, es-
pecially the use of the cerebral n instead of
the dental n, is merely euphonic" (Caldwell).
Again, the presence of good many Dravidian
words in classical Sanskrit and even in Vedic
language, not to speak of modern dialects of
Northern India, is well-known. Thus the word
Matachi which occurs in the Chhandogya
Upanishad(1. 10. i.)is nothing but a Sanskritised
form of the Dravidian word midiche, meaning a
locust. And this Upanishad was composed at a
time when the Indo-Aryans had scarcely entered
the Deccan. Words like Khatta, couch or cot,
Kukkura, dog, Keyura, bracelet, Markata, monkey,
and many others have been traced to Dravidian
origin (Caldwell, Dravidian Languages, pp. 567
579). The Bengali language is indebted for a no
small portion of its vocabulary and structural
peculiarities to Drayidian languages. Thus the
commonplace words like Khoka (son), Talu
(scalp), Nola (tongue), Meye (daughter), Minmin
(glimmering), Pillei (child), and plural suffixes
guli and gula have come from Dravidian sources.
Even in Hindi, many words of Dravidian
origin can be traced, such as jhagra^^ta^ etc.
THE DASYU 79
Hence there cannot be any doubt that the Dra*
vidians once constituted the main elements
of the population of Northern India before the
Aryanisation was effected. (Bhandarkar Lec-
tures).
(4). The Dravidian influence is traceable
in religion too. The Rigvedic religion is
an almost pure Aryan religion, as a comparison
with the rites and ceremonies of the Iranians
and ancient Europeans would reveal. Of the
many innovations which the religion received
in later times the most important are beliefs
in spells and magic, phallus-worship and
snake-worship. Of these the first is a character- 1
istic of any demon-worshipping religion, and
cannot be precisely traced to Dravidian origin
alone, though we know that the religion of
the Dravidians even as late as the beginning
of the Christian era was a form of demon-
worship. But the other two can with more
precision be traced to the Dravidians in
whose religion they played a prominent part.
The Rigvedic Indians hated the phallus-worship-
pers, Sisnadevah, which evidently referred to
the Dasyus (VII. 21. 5), and their god Indra
killed the Serpent-demon Ahi (I. 103. 2).
(5). The absence of any reference in the
Rigveda to the story of the Deluge, which
is vaguely mentioned for the first time in the
Atharvaveda, and later more fully described in
80 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the Satapatha Brahmana, raises a suspicion that
it was not a part of the Indo-Aryan mythology
during the Rigvedic period. The story except
in minor details shows wonderful resemblance
to the story of the Deluge as was current
among the Sumerians and their cultural
successors, the Semites. Now the current
opinion, which is strengthened by the recent
discoveries at Mahenjo Daro and Harappa in
the Indus valley, is that the Sumerians and
the Dravidians belonged to the same stock,
and so we may believe that the Deluge story,
whether it referred to the submerging of the
continent of Lemuria or not, originally existed
with those peoples, from whom it was borrowed
by others. This belief finds support from an
examination of the details of the story in the
Sanskrit literature. The two principal elements
in the story are the mina, fish, and nira,
.water, and, curiously, both these words
are of Dravidian origin(Caldwell, pp.43>57i,573).
The word for fish, Matsya, occurs only once in
the Rigveda, though various kinds of animals,
birds and insects, are so frequently mentioned
(Macdonell, Sanskrit Literature, p. 143), while
fish played an important part in the mythology
of the Sumerians, and also in the pre-Vedic
Punjab, as evidenced by the recent discoveries
of fish representations there. Again, Satyavrata
Manu,the Indian Noah, is called in the Bhagavata
THE DASYU 4t
and other Puranas "the lord of Dravida/*
Further, in the accounts of the Deluge, as given
in the Matsya Purana, of all the rivers only the
Nerbudda, and not the more famous Ganges,
Jumna, Saraswati, or Indus, is preserved at the
Dissolution, and the mountain Malaya in the
extreme south is mentioned as the scene of
Manu's austerities and of the apparition of the
fish. (Muir, Sanskrit Texts I, pzig).
(6). The use of matronymic surname is almost
unknown among the Rigvedic sages and kings,
while patronymic is frequent, as in Purukutsa
Gairikshit, Kakshivant Ausija, Sudasa Paijavana.
But the frequent use during the Brahmana
period of matronymic surname, as in Satyakama
Jabala, Mahidasa Aitareya, Prasniputra Asuri-
vasin, Sanjiviputra, Krishna Devakiputra, along
with patronymic, as in Dhritarastra Vaichi-
travirya, Tura Kavasheya, Para Atnara, indi-
cates a growing influence upon the Aryan
society even while in the Gangetic valley of
the matriarchal Dravidian system.
From all these we may conclude that the
Dasas or Dasyus, who stubbornly, though un-
successfully, resisted the Aryan
Pre-Drtridians. i nvasions ofthe p una b an< j
Gangetic valley, were predominantly Dravidian
in culture. At the same time we must not
think that the Dravidians were the only natives
of Northern India at that time. Anthropometry
ii
82 THE ARYANBATION OF INDIA
has revealed a 'large Mongolian admixture in the
blood of the people of Eastern India and also,
to a smaller extent, of the upper Gangetic
valley. We know that immigrations from the
side of Thibet and Burma have taken place in
historical times. But then the people of North-
ern India, the descendants of Aryan conquerors
and Dravidian or Dravidianised natives, had
become so settled that no appreciable change
could have been effected in type by the new-
comers, who could not, as Risley observes,
descend much below the mountain heights
except in North-eastern Bengal and Assam.
So in order to explain the tendency towards
broad-head in Northern India we must
assume that a good percentage of the native
population of the Gangetic valley, especially near
the Himalayan ranges, at the time of the Aryan
invasions were Mongolian in blood. Side by
side with, and more important than, the Mongo-
lian element was another, which may be called
the oldest of the Indian population, the Munda-
Monkhmer race. Thurston, an authority on the
subject, says : "It is the Pre-Dravidian abori-
gines, and not the later and more cultured Dra-
vidians, who must be regarded as the primitive
existing race.... These Pre-Dravidians are differ-
entiated from the Dravidian classes by their
short stature and broad (platyrhine) noses* There
is strong ground for the belief that the Pre-
THE DASYU ft)
Dravidians are ethnically related to the Veddas
of Ceylon, the Toalas of the Celebes, the Batin
of Sumatra, and possibly the Australians."
(The Madras Presidency, pp. 124-125.) But
by the time of the coming of the Aryans they
had been conquered by the Dravidians, who
formed the ruling classes against whom the
Aryans generally fought, and had mostly be-
come Dravidianised in culture. To-day the
Gonds and the vast majority of the Pre-Dravi-
dian tribes speak Dravidian languages, which
they must have adopted before the coming of
the Aryans, while few like the Bhils speak
Aryan dialects, and fewer still like the Mundas
have retained anything like their primitive Ian-
guage. Hence it is that the main influence
upon the conquering Aryan culture is found to
be Dravidian, and not Mongolian or Munda.
There were different strata of culture among
the mixed native population, from that of the
Dravidian Dasyu chiefs, who lived in towns and
fortresses, had an advanced political system,
and in intelligence were not inferior to
the Aryans, to that of the savage tribes with
filthy habits, ugly features, nomadic life, still
not advanced beyond the hunting and fishing
stage, men who were given the names of
Nishada, Chandala, etc. by the Aryans, and were
regarded as untouchables even at a time when
the restrictions regarding marriage and food had
64 788 ARYANISATION OF INDIA
beea Very slight among the Aryan folk. They
had been as it were the Sudras of the Dravidian
society, and when the Dravidians themselves
were reduced to the position of Sudras by the
conquering Aryans the older Sudras descended
to the position of Panchamas or fifth varna.
The Pauranic description of the Nishadas as
"black like crow, very low-statured, short-armed,
/ having high cheek bones, low-topped nose, red
eyes and copper-coloured hair, living in hills
and forests/' (Padma Purana II. 27. 42-43;
Bhag. Pur. IV. 14. 44; Mhb. XII. 59. 94-97),
agrees more with what we know of the Gonds,
Bhils, Oraons, Mundas, etc. than with that of
the more cultured Dravidians. (Chanda, Indo-
Aryan Races).
CHAPTER V
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION.
From what we have already said it would
appear that the first wave of Indo- Aryan invasion
was in the nature of a tribal
In the ja . m jg rat i on f rom t h e s [fo of Af-
ghanistan, when a vast horde with their women,
children and cattle entered India, and at once
began an exterminating war with the natives
of the soil, like the Anglo-Saxons in South-
eastern Britain about three thousand years
later (the parallelism would have been more
apt bad the Britons belonged to a non-Aryan
stock). Their knowledge of harder metals and
y horse-riding, together with their superior physical
strength, gave them a great advantage over their
foes. But the latter inspite of their disadvan-
tages offered, like the Britons, a very stout,
though unavailing, resistance to the invaders,
and many Anderidas were witnessed on the
soil of the Punjab, as hinted in Rigveda IV.
16.13, where Indra is said to have killed fifty
thousand black foes, and VII. 5.3, where
fire is said to have pierced the citadel
of the enemy, when the black people came out
pellmell through consternation and distress,
leaving all their belongings. Those who escaped'
86 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the fire and sword of the invaders must have
fled to the east and south leaving a clean
country to them as far as the modern Sirhind,
where the Indus plain ends and Gangetic plain
begins. This is the first stage of the Indo-
Aryan colonisation, when, like the Anglo-
Saxons in South-eastern Britain, the invaders
made a clean sweep of their foes and received
very little admixture of native blood, as is
evident from the prevailing Indo-Aryan type
in the Punjab even in modern times. Very
few of the Rigvedic hymns can be traced to
this period.
When the bulk of the hymns were composed,
the second stage had begun. The Indo- Aryans
had been thoroughly settled in
the p un j a b an a had lost touch
with their kinsmen abroad. In
their new home different tribes had settled in
the different parts of the country, and, besides
fighting with the Dasyus, had begun to fight
among themselves for supremacy. The force of
bursting flood had abated no doubt, but was still
strong enough to impel the Indo-Aryan chieftains
towards the east and south-east conquering
fresh lands from the aborigines. The number of
conquerors, however, was not sufficient to
effectively occupy the conquered lands, and as
specially the conquerors felt the need of women
and labourers in their new settlements the
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 87
original ferocity and the ruthless policy of
extermination were to a certain extent modified.
They began to make slaves, mostly of the wives)
and children of the fallen natives. Even in !
the Rigvedic period towards its close the word
Dasa gradually came to be synonymous with
a slave, as in" the proper name Divodasa, "the
slave of heaven." In the next period the word 1
Dasi regularly denoted a female slave. Slaves,
sometimes in large numbers, are often alluded
to in the Rigveda, and to the native slaves may
be attributed the marked Dravidian influence
upon the Vedic language.
Whether it was a later immigration of
Indo-Aryans who could not on account of the
difficult route bring their womenfolk with them
and so had to marry Dravidian wives in the
Gangetic regions as is the theory of Hoernle,
supported by Grierson and Risley or, as is
more probable, it was the natural expansion
of the Indo-Aryans from the Punjab after the
tribal immigration had ceased from outside,
and was more of conquest than of colonisation,
the fact remains that in the Gangetic regions
the Indo-Aryans received a large admixture
of Dravidian blood, which accounts for the
lower stature, darker complexion, and broader
nose of the Gangetic Indian than those of the
Punjabese. In the later Rigvedic period the
original hatred of the conquerors towards the
68 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Datives bad so far abated that it was not rare
tbat treaties and alliances were made and one
or more Indo-Aryan tribes allied themselves
with Dasa chiefs against the foes of their own
race. A Dasa tribe, the Simyu, was among
the foes of the famous Sudas in the battle of
^the ten kings (VII. 18.5). A priest celebrates
the generosity of a Dasa chief, Balbutha (VIII.
46.32). In short, the scene presented by the
Rigveda is not much unlike that of the Hep-
tarchic period of English history, when the
Anglo-Saxons were no more coming from the
Baltic shores, were settled under different
tribal chiefs in different parts of the country
from which the British elements were practically
wiped out, were still encroaching upon
British lands and winning victories, like those
of Deorham and Chester, but absorbing more
and more British blood as they advanced
more and more towards the west, and not unoften
making alliances with British chiefs like
Cadwallon in their own intertribal wars. By
the end of the Rigvedic period the Indo- Aryans
had advanced as far as the Ganges and were
engaged in subjugating the country between
the Jumna and the Ganges. The principal
tribes still lived to the west of the Jumna.
But in the next period we find that the more
important of the tribes were planted in the land
between the Saraswati and the Ganges.
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 89
Thus it is seen that there was a marked
contrast between the Indo-Aryan settlement
in the Punjab and that in the Gangetic regions
as far as North Behar. While in the Punjab
it was a settlement en masse by clearing thei
country thoroughly of all non- Aryan elements,
in the Gangetic regions it was a matter of*
conquest in which the non- Aryan system was
destroyed, their fighting forces broken, and their
women and children enslaved. But even in
the latter the predominant element was Aryan.
Aryan tribes like Panchala, Vamsa, Chedi,
Kosala, Videha settled themselves as rulers and
absorbed the native population. Yet in this
process of absorption the Indo-Aryan social
system underwent a great change. It may be j
paradoxical to hear that the more contact there )
was between the Aryan and the non- Aryan the (
greater was the barrier imposed against their
mingling. In the Punjab, where the non-Aryan
element was practically wiped out, there was
no danger of the purity of Aryan blood being
affected, and so we do not find any regulations
in the Rigveda forbidding intermarriage between
an Aryan and a Dasyu, between a master and
a slave, though, of course, such intermarriages
must have been rare because of the hatred and
contempt with which the conquerors regarded
the natives. But the case became otherwise
in the Gangetic regions. There were numerous
12
90 THE ARYAKISAT10N OF INDIA
non-Aryans still in the country both as slaves
^and enemies, and if free intercourse were not
checked, the danger was the swamping of the
conquerors by the conquered. The question
was the same as that of colour in the modern
European colonies in Africa and America.
Two courses were open to the Indo-Aryan
conquerors, either to exterminate the natives
wholesale, or to Aryanise them but with a
careful eye to prevent themselves being bar-
barised in the course of their work. They
adopted the latter policy and solved their
difficulty by evolving the caste system. Already
there were three classes in the Indo-Aryan
society in the Punjab the priest, the ruler,
the cultivator and artisan. To these a fourth class,
that of the slaves or Sudras, was added, and
eventually a fifth, the Nishada, comprising the
savage peoples of the hills and forests. While
there were still free intercourses between the
first three classes, there was a barrier raised bet-
ween the first three and the fourth, not to speak
of the fifth. Thus the non-Aryans were given a
status in society and prevented from extermina-
tion, but they were not to spoil the purity of
their rulers' blood. It was all right in theory,
but it ran the risk of almost breaking down in
practice. While you allow the Aryans and the
non- Aryans to live together in society you can
not altogether prevent intercourse, say, between
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 91
file masters and the female slaves, especially
among the ordinary people. Thus the Vaisya
caste become largely affected by non- Aryan
blood, and less so were the Kshatriya* and the
Brahmin. Hence the caste system became
rigid in the Gangetic plains, which gave a new
turn to the Indo-Aryan social organisation.
The Punjabee Aryan was not so circumstanced
and so could not keep pace with the social
changes which were going on in the Madhya^
desha, and in course of time came to be regarded
as unorthodox. Again, the Brahmins becoming
more and more exclusive devoted more time to
the elaboration and development of their ritua-
lism, on which rested their claims to superiority
and power. So the rites and ceremonies became
extremely elaborate, complicated and mechanical,
and tended to make the cleavage between a Brah-
min and a layman still greater. Hence the Madhya-
desha or the Upper Gangetic regions evolved the
peculiar Brahmanical religion and social structure,
and became the model country for all ages.
The story of the conquest of Magadha,
Anga, Vanga, Pundra, Kalinga, etc. was al-
together different. There were
ntaitern n a. p Ower f u j non-Aryan communities
in these lands (which are named after them) who
are mentioned as independent in some of the
*The Vedic Kshatriya meant a member of the ruling or
princely class and not an ordinary warrior.
n ?HB ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Brahmanas. How these conquests were made
is not known to us. But this much we know that
no powerful Aryan tribe settled and absorbed
the conquered in any considerable part of these
lands. Let me again draw an analogy from Eng-
lish history. We know how the two Wales' were
conquered, how to the main Celtic population
a sprinkling of Anglo-Saxon blood was added,
how the population and the soqial structure
remained in the main Celtic. Magadha was
something like the March land where the ab-
sorption of the conquerors' blood was more
than in other parts. The non- Aryans of East-
ern India were no doubt conquered, and, so far
as their language and religion were concerned,
Aryanised, but they had not become slaves
en masse of their conquerors as in the upper
valley of the Ganges, and had not wholly lost
their old tribal and social organisations. We hear
of the same Vangas, Pundras, Kalingas, etc. in
historical times as before their conquest in the
later Vedic period. Even in language, such as
in the modern Bengali dialect, the Dravidian
traces are to be found to a greater extent than
in the languages of Upper India. In social
structure Eastern India could never adapt itself
to the models of the Madhyadesha, and hence
we find the population mainly divided between
the Brahmins and the Sudras with no inter-
mediate castes between them.
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 9J
The fact that Eastern India was imperfectly
Aryanised partly accounts for the rise of the
two great protestant religions, Jainism and
Buddhism, in that quarter about the time when
the process of conquest was still going on.
The protests against the Brahminical hierarchy
and rituals so boldly preached by Mahavira and
Gautama Buddha in Behar can easily be inter-
preted as a reaction against the imposition of
Brahminical belief and institutions upon a not
very willing people, conquered but not van-
quished. Hence it is why we find Behar
as the earliest land to accept the new creeds,
and as the last stronghold of Buddhism
before it finally disappeared from India. It is
here in Eastern India that we find the develop-
ment of the un-Vedic Tantric religion, and here
that Islam which knocked itself in vain against the
Brahminical sacerdotalism of the Madhyadesha
found the greatest number of converts.
The non- Aryan protest did not spend itself/
up only in religion and social matters. Maha-
padma Nanda rose as their champion to over-
throw the rule of the Kshatriya families in
Magadha. He was admittedly of Sudra or non-
Aryan origin, and he so terribly punished the
Aryan ruling classes that he has been described
in the Puranas as "the exterminator of the
Kshatriya race like a second Parasurama."
Certainly he did not do so in the interest of the
94 * THE ARVANISATION OF INDIA
Brahmin caste, as in that case the Brahmin writers
of the Puranas would not have poured their choi-
cest invectives upon him, and the whole period
of Nanda rule would not have been omitted
from the Calendar (Ananda era). Such was
the havoc he caused among the Kshatriya
families of the Gangetic valley that the Brah-
mins could only overthrow his family by
setting up another Sudra, Chandragupta Maurya.
For a time, of course, Chandragupta acted
under the influence of his patron Brahmin
minister, Kautilya or Chanakya, but it is very
probable that he too in his later life dissociated
himself from Brahminism and became a convert
to Jainism. And it was his grandson Asoka
who by vigorously espousing the cause of
Buddhism gave the greatest blow which Brah-
minism had yet received in India. Only four
centuries ago another strong attack against
Brahminical hierarchy and ritualism was made
by Chaitanya in Bengal. The spirit of protest
is still strong in the Bengalee blood, which
manifests itself from time to time, as in the
Brahmo Samaj Movement of only half a century
ago. But inspite of these actions and reactions
the non- Aryan in Eastern India has been slowly
and unconsciously drawn within the octopus
clutches of Brahminism, and to-day no Bengalee
would like to regard himself as any but des-
cended from the pure Aryan stock.
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 95
With regard to Northern India it may be
said with more or less truth that the Aryani-
sation was effected principally
In the Deccan. ^j^g^ conquest. But the case
seems to be entirely different in the south,
Of course there were migrations of Aryan tribes
or families from Northern India who established
themselves as conquerors over the native
population in some parts of the country. Thus
we learn from the Brahmanas that the Bhojas
ruled in Vidarbha or Berar, from the Artha-
sastra that the Bhojas once ruled over the
Dandaka or Maharastra country, and from the
Jagayyapeta inscriptions that an Ikshaku dynas-
ty governed in the Kistna District in the third
century A. D. Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar holds
that the Pandyas were emigrants from the
Muttra District. Yet on the whole the process
of Aryanisation was carried on mostly by peace-
ful means. The route from Northern India to
the Deccan across the hilly and forest regions
of Chota Nagpur and the Central Provinces
being extremely difficult, the Aryan stream
gradually thinning the more it moved from its
base in Upper India, and, above all, the Dravi-
dian community in possession of the
being too strong to be forcibly subjiy
parts of the Deccan remained pi
pendent under their own Dravidi^ idlers. B\
it cannot be said that to-day thej
% THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
is less Aryan in sentiment than other parts of
India. Who, then, brought the Aryan culture,
to the Dravidians of Southern India ?
If we may believe in the tradition as record-
ed in the Epics, the Rishis or Brahmin sages
took a most prominent part in the diffusion of
Aryan culture in the south often at considerable
risks to their lives. Thus when Rama went to
the south he found in many places the asramas
or hermitages of Brahmin sages far away from
j Aryan land and constantly harrassed by the
Rakshasas or the native non-Aryans. These
Aryan missionaries did not resort to physical
force, and went on with their work with the
utmost patience, courage and unselfishness. In
course of time some of the n on- Aryans must
have been attracted by their superior wisdom
and virtuous lives, and become their worshipful
allies. Thus, though the Rakhasas in general
were in hostile opposition to Brahminical insti-
tutions, not so was Vibhisana, brother of
Ravana, nor were the Banaras of Kiskindhya,
one of the non-Aryan tribes. Among such
missionary sages the most prominent was
Agastya, who was met by Rama in a hermitage
to the south of the Vindhyas. He became so
successful in spreading culture among the Dra-
vidians of Southern India that in later times he
came to be regarded by the Tamil people as
the founder of their language and to be
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 91
known as Tamirmuni or Tamilian sage,
(Bhandarkar Lectures).
In the Deccan, therefore, there are three
different shades of Aryan permeation. In the
first place are the Maharastra country and
Berar. They were conquered, and Indo-Aryan
ruling families, chiefly of the Yadu tribe, settled
there, imposing their tongue and creed upon
the mass of Dravidian population, who had been
already conquered by brachycephalic tribes
probably from Iran. The latter formed the upper
classes in the land, and when it was conquered
by the Indo-Aryans were entirely amal-
gamated with them. Hence we see that the
higher classes, the Brahmins and the ruling
castes, are more brachycephalic, but in other
respects, as in nose form, tallness and com-
plexion, approximate more to the people of the
Gangetic valley than the mass of the people
who approximate more to the Dravidian type.
(Risley, People of India, Appendix IV).
In the second place comes the Telegu-speak-
ing or Andhra country. This land did not long
remain under Aryan rule, but being exposed
to Aryan influences from two sides, Berar and
Kalinga, became Aryanised not only in creed
but also to a certain extent in language. The
bulk of the population is almost pure Dravidian,
but the language has about a third of its voca-
bulary derived from Aryan roots. Most of the
'3
ARYANISAT10N OF IKDIA
borrowed words relate to abstract or scientific
and religious terms, which supports the tradition
of the missionary work by Brahmin sages.
x That the contact was slight is proved by the
fact that the words relating to common-place
things and ideas are mostly Dravidian, and that
the grammatical rules are entirely different from
those of Sanskrit, and this inspite of the well-
known fact that u when an Aryan tongue comes
into contact with an uncivilized aboriginal one,
it is invariably the latter which goes to the
wall" ( Grierson ), a fact which is amply
corroborated by the cases of imperfectly Arya-
nised Bengal, Assam and Maharastra.
Still more free from Aryan influences is the
Tamil country. Even as late as the times of
the Mauryas the ordinary religion of the Tami-
lians was a form of demon-worship, and Brahmi-
nism had not made much headway among them.
The first great Aryan influence came with the
spread of Buddhism and Jainism together with
their literature from Northern India, and by the
time these two religions gave way to Hinduism
the creed of the Tamil land had been practically
Aryanised, and Brahminical institutions laid on
a solid foundation. The language, however,
has not been much influenced. It contains a
very small number of Sanskrit words, and a
Tamil composition is regarded as refined and
classical not in proportion to the amount of
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 90
Sanskrit it contains but in proportion to the
absence of Sanskrit. It is worthy of note, too,
that while in other parts of India the authors
were mostly Brahmins, most of the compositions
in classical Tamil literature were the works of
Sudras. While the Telegu-speaking peoples
might have received a sprinkling of Aryan blood,
the Tamilian non-Brahmins are almost all of
pure Dravidian origin. The Brahmins in general
still retain memories of their immigrations from
the north and have jealously guarded themselves
against contact with the natives.
There are, however, evidences that the Aryan
influences were stronger in the Deccan in the
first few centuries of the Christian era than in
modern times. Thanks to the conquest of the
Deccan by the Mauryas and the spread of
Buddhism there, a Prakrit dialect obtained wide
currency even in those parts where Dravidian
languages are spoken at the present day. Thus
Asoka's Minor Rock Edicts found in the Chi-
taldurg District, the donative inscriptions in
some Buddhist stupas in the Kistna District (150
B. C. to 200 A. D.), the Malavalli stone inscrip-
tion in the Kanarese country, and some copper-
plate grants of the Pallava kings of Kanchi, all
prove that an Indo-Aryan dialect, Prakrit, in
which these inscriptions are written was the
official language and was at least intelligible
to all classes of people in many parts of even
100 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Southern India. The instructions of Asoka
were intended for all classes of men, high and
low, and must have been couched in a language
which was generally understood. The dona-
tions mentioned in the stupa inscriptions of
Kistna concerned even such low-class people
as leather-workers. One of the Pallava char-
ters issues instructions not only to the higher
officials but to ordinary free holders and even
cowherds. Such was the Aryan influence in
Southern India at that time that Aryan proper
names were used not only by many rulers, as
thePallavas of Kanchi, but even among the
I lower classes, as in the Kistna inscriptions.
The spread of Aryan language and ideas and the
infiltration of Aryan blood had been steadily
proceeding, and there was every likelihood that
Southern India would be as much Aryanised
as Bengal or Maharastra, and that the Dravidian
culture would be completely lost except where
it was incorporated in the conquering one.
But the failure of the northerners to maintain
their political suzerainty over the south for a
considerable length of time, the rise of strong
Dravidian powers like the Andhras, the Pallavas,
the Cholas, who instead of submitting to Aryan
rule even carried their victorious arms into the
north, and, above all, the Mahomedan conquest
of Northern India which destroyed the fountain-
spring of Aryan colonisation and inspiration,
NATURE OF ARYAN COLONISATION 101
not only checked the progress of Aryanisation
but even caused the loss of some vantage
ground which had been won by the Indo-
Aryans in the south. Hence there is a greater
self-assertion of the Dravidian in modern times*
CHAPTER VI
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS OF
THE RIGVEDA,
The most important of the Rigvedic tribes
serais to he the Bharatas, who in afterages
have given the name to the whole
country, Bharatavarsha or India.
They were settled in the country between the
Saraswati and the Jumna, and fought both
against their Aryan rivals on the west and
non- Aryan foes on the east. Their princes
are found sacrificing on the Saraswati, on
the Drishadvati, on the Apaya, in the
land which afterwards became celebrated as
Kurukshetra. The victories of the Bharata
princes and the poetical fame of their Rishis
together served to acquire for the cult of
the Bharata people a kind of acknowledged
supremacy. Agni is Bharata, i.e. belonging to
the Bharatas. Bharati is the protecting deity
of the Bharatas, in connection with whom the
sacred river Saraswati is constantly mentioned.
The next in importance were the Purus,
who lived on either side of the Saraswati and
.. were neighbours and rivals of
the Bharatas. In later Rigvedic
times these two rival tribes became thoroughly
amalgamated, and under the name of Kuru,
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS OF THE RIGVED A 1 03
a name not directly mentioned in the Rigveda,
became the chief bearers of the Vedic culture
during the later Vedic period. According to
Pargiter, who follows the Epic and Pauranic
tradition, the Purus and the Bharatas were two
branches of one family who were engaged in
rivalry when some of the Rigvedic hymns
were composed. They were united under
Samvarana and his son, the famous Kuru, who
gave the name to his family and also to the
people. (Ancient Indian Historical Tradition,
p. 281).
There was a comparatively unimportant
tribe known as the Krivi, who at first might
. . - . . have lived on the Indus and the
Chenab, but later moved to the
east across the Jumna to the land which after-
wards became known as Panchala (S. P. Br.
XIII. 5.4.7). Closely connected with the Bha-
ratas was the tribe of Srinjaya, who lived in
the neighbourhood of the Bharatas, probably in
the Panchala country,i.e. the modern Rohilkhand
tract.
Among the allies of the Purus against the
Bharatas were the Anus who dwelt on the
Parushni or Ravi, and the kindred
Druhyus who lived to their west,
and the two allied tribes of Yadu
and Turvasha, who lived in the southern Punjab,
and probably further south as the traditional
04 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
home of the Yadavas in the Epics and Puranas
lay from Gujarat to Muttra.
Another people were the Matsyas whose
wealth drew upon them an attack of the Tur-
vashas (Rig VIL 18.6). The
riches of the Matsyas, especially
their wealth of cows, made them victims even
in Epic times of predatory raids by the Tri-
garttas and the Kurus. We know that in later
times the Matsyas lived in the neighbourhood
of the Surasenas of Mathura to the west, i.e.
in modern Alwar and Jaypur, and that was
probably their home even in the Rigvedic age.
Among the lesser tribes were the Alinas,
Pakthas and Bhalanases, all living in the
OfidL Utmife. fr nt * er regions. In the later Rig-
vedic period two peoples, who
played rather important parts in the Brahmana
and Epic periods, first come into notice the
Chedis who dwelt in the land between the Jumna
and the Vindbyas,and theUsinaras in the neigh-
bourhood of the Saraswati. The Chedi king
Kasu is praised in a Danastuti (VIII. 5.37-39).
He seems to be a very powerful king who
made a gift of ten rajas as slaves to his priest.
In the Pauranic tradition the Chedis are
represented as an offshoot of the Yadus, and
the Usinaras of the Anus, and there is nothing
in the Rigveda to indicate that the Chedis
or the Usinaras were a tribe and not a clan.
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS OF THE RIGVED A 105
Among the Dasa tribes were the Kikatas,
Simyus, Ajas, Yakshus, and Sigrus, who were
_ - ,. mostly inhabitants of the XJangetic
Data Tribes. in J , ^ . * ,
valley, and were contesting the
advance of the Bharatas towards the east and
south-east. Individual Dasa kings were I libisha,
Dhuni, Chumuri, Sambara, Varchin, Dribhika,
Rudbikra, Anarsani, Sribinda, etc., some of
whom later received demoniacal attributes and
became celestial foes of Indra and other gods.
A curious people were the Panis, who arej
described in the Rigveda as "greedy like the ]
PanL W lf> " " extremel y elfish," "nig-
gardly," "non-sacrificing, 11 "of
cruel speech/' "Dasyus" (VII.6.3). They
were also notorious cattle-possessors (i.e.
wealthy, cattle constituting the main wealth
and currency of the time), and cattle-lifters,
and the name is often used to denote a class
of demons who withheld the water of the
clouds like cows from the Aryans. The word
seems to live in such Sanskrit words as Panik
or Vanik (merchant), Panya (merchandise),
itfpani (shop), etc., from which we may infer
that the Panis were the merchants par excellence
in the Rigvedic age. Their patron god seems
to be Yala>_ whom Indra pierced when he
robbed the Pani of his cows (Rig 1.624 5 X.67.6).
One of their kings was Brijai ^1.45.31).
The phonetic resemblances of the words Pani
4
106 . THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
and Punic, Vala and the Phoenician god Baal,
Bribu and Baberu or Babylon, together with
their peculiar characteristics and the fact of their
being chased back towards the west (VII.6.3),
may well tempt us to identify the Panis with
the Phoenicians, who formerly lived near the
Persian Gulf and traded in the Arabian Sea
before their migration to the Mediterranean
coast.
Divodasa, "the servant of heaven," the Ati-
thigva, "the sacrificer of cows for guests,'* was
a great king of the Bharata tribe,*
who successfully fought against
the Purus, Yadus and Turvashas on one hand,
and the Dasa chief Sambara, the Panis etc. on
the other. He was the patron of the priestly
family of the Bharadvajas, the authors of the
sixth book of the Rigveda.
His descendant was the famous king Sudas,
son of Pijavana. At first Sudas' priest was Viswa-
mitra, who himself was a scion of
the Kusika family of the Bharata
tribe (Ait. Br. VIL 1718), and who led him
to victories on the Vipasha and Satudru, as
described in the third book of the Rigveda, the
whole of which is attributed to the Viswamitra
* For the identification of the Tritsus with the Bharatas
see Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 405-406, Macdonell and Keith,
Vedic Index 1^363.
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS OF THE RIGVEDA 107
family. But for some reason or other, probably
on account of the superior Brahminical know-
ledge of the Vasisthas (Kath. Br. XXXVIL 17.
117 ; S. P. Br. XII. 6. 1. 38), Sudas appointed
Vasistha in place of Viswamitra as his priest.
Hence arose the long and bitter rivalry between
the two families, and the imprecations uttered by
Viswamitra (Rig III. 53. 21 24). The Vasis-
thas in the seventh book of the Rigveda pray
for the prosperity of Sudas and celebrate his
glorious victories on the Parushni over the ten
allied tribes, the Purus, Yadus, Turvashas,
Anus, Druhyus, Alinas, Pakthas, Bhalanases,
Sivas, and Vishanins. Such was the bloody and
decisive victory that the Anu and Druhyu kings
fell in the battle, and so also probably Puru-
kutsa, the Puru king, whose wife was reduced
to great distress, from which she was afterwards
relieved by her son Trasadasyu. Sudas also
turned his victorious arms against the non- Aryan
tribes, the Ajas, Sigrus and Yakshus, who were
united under a king, Bheda, who attacked the
kingdom of Sudas from the east while probably
the latter was fighting against his Aryan foes
on the west. Sudas quickly returned and de-
feated them with great slaughter on the Jumna.
Sudas was not only a great warrior but also a
scholar, as tradition credits him with the com-
position of the hymn 133 of the tenth book.
All this while Viswamitra had not remained
146 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
idle. He was assisted in acquiring more Brah-
minical knowledge by the priestly family of
Jamadagni to whom he expresses his indebted-
ness in Rig III. 53. 1516. He then began
to accuse Vasistha of various heinous crimes,
which the latter denies on oath in Rig VII.
104. 12 1 6. Yet Viswamitra seems to have
regained ascendancy in the Bharata court.
According to the Taittiriya Samhita (Ashtaka
VII ) and the Kaushitaki Brahmana (4th
Adhaya) the sons of Sudas killed a son of
Vasistha and were destroyed by the indig-
nant father. Manu is evidently mistaken
when he charges Sudas instead of bis sons
with outrages committed upon Brahmins (VII.
41). Vasistha probably effected the destruction
of the family of Sudas with the help of the
Purus, as henceforth the Puru kings like
Trasadasyu, Trikshi, Kurusravana, Upamasravas,
etc. come into more prominence. This fact
can be traced in the confused accounts in the
Mahabharata (Adiparva, verses 3725-37) of the
Puru king Samvarana being assisted by Vasistha
in recovering his power and defeating his
enemy, the Bharata king of Panchala. Sam-
varana 's son was the famous Kuru after whom
his family and the people ruled by him came
to be known. Curiously, the names of Bharata
and Puru were merged in the name Kuru
within a few generations from Sudas and
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS OF THE RIGVEDA 109
Trasadasyu, as is found in the later Samhitas
and the Brahmanas.
A later king is Santanu for whom Devapi
performed a rain-inducing sacrifice (Rig X. 98).
The Mahabharata and the Puranas
describe Santanu as the Kuru
king of Hastinapur and the grand*
father of the Pandavas, and Devapi as his elder
brother who became an ascetic (Adiparva,
3750 ; Vishnu Purana IV.2O.7). Weber (In-
dische Studien, 1.203), however, considers that
the Santanu and Devapi of the Mahabharata
and the Puranas cannot be the Same persons
as those alluded to in the Rigveda, because
their father was Pratipa, not Rishtisena as
mentioned in the above hymn, and because
it is doubtful whether a prince who was so
near to the Mahabharata war in point of time
could have been named in a Rigvedic hymn.
There is nothing in the Rigveda to indicate that
Devapi was a prince.
CHAPTER VI I
LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF
TRIBES AND KINGDOMS.
During the period of the later Samhitas
and the Brahmanas the Bharatas and the Purus
have disappeared as separate tribes
and are found united under a
new name, Kuru. Reminiscenes,
however, of the past greatness of the Bharata
tribe are met with here and there, as in the
accounts in theSatapatha Brahmana(XIII. 5.4.11 -
12) of Bharata Dauhshanti who performed a
horse sacrifice and defeated his enemies on the
Ganges and the Jumna. The first great Kuru
king is Parikshit (a descendant of Kuru ac-
cording to Epic and Pauranic traditions), who is
mentioned in the Atharvaveda (XX. 127.7-10),
and in whose reign, it is said, the Kuru kingdom
flourished exceedingly. "Listen ye to the high
praise of the king who rules over all peoples,
the god who is above mortals, of Vaisvanara
Parikshit ! Parikshit has procured for us a
secure dwelling when he, the most excellent
one, went, to his seat. (Thus) the husband in
Kuru land, when he founds his household,
converses with his wife.
. ."What mfcyJL -bring [to thee, curds, stirred
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 111
drink or liquor ? (Thus) the wife asks her
husband in the kingdom of king Parikshit.
"Like light the ripe barley runs over beyond
the mouth (of the vessels). The people thrive
merrily in the kingdom of king Parikshit."
(Bloomfield, Atharvaveda, pp. 197-198).
A son of his was Janamejaya, whose horse
sacrifice is celebrated in the Satapatha Brah-
mana (XIII.5.4.) and Aitareya Brahmana (VIII.
21), and whose brothers Ugrasena, Bhimasena
and Srutasena by the same sacrifice purified
themselves of the sin of Brahmin killing. The
capital of Janamejaya was Asandivanta. This
Parikshit Janamejaya must not be confused
with the descendants of the Pandavas. It
seems that the main Kuru line fell into distress
after Janamejaya and remained in darkness for
several generations until a descendant of his,
the famous Pratipa, revived the power and
greatness of the family (Mhb. V. 148.5053).
Hence in most places in the Puranas the names
of the kings between Janamejaya and Pratipa
are omitted from the genealogies. From Pratipa
to the Pandavas the history of the Kurusis
unchequered.
Closely allied to the Kurus
Panchalas, a composite tribe as the
_ . According to the Sat
mana the older
Panchalas was Krivi, and accorj
(12 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
Mahabharata the Srinjayas were connected with
the royal family of North Panchala. We may,
therefore, believe that the Krivis and Srinjayas
of the early Vedic period and three other tribes,
who cannot be clearly traced, together formed
the later Panchala people. The Kuru-Panchalas
are described in the Brahmanas as the models
of good form, their kings as the greatest sacrifi-
cers, and their priestly class the most learned
in the knowledge of the Vedas. "Speech
sounds higher here among the Kuru-Panchalas."
The later Samhitas and the Brahmanas seem
mostly to have taken definite form in the land
of the Kuru-Panchalas. In the Rajsuya cere-
mony as described in the Yajurveda the king
is presented to the people as that of the Kurus
or Panchalas or Kuru-Panchalas. Of the
Panchala kings we hear of Kraivya, Sona
Satrasaha, Durmukha, a great conqueror, and
Pravahana Jaivali, a philosopher king of the
Chhandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads.
The Matsyas seem to have occupied an
important position, though within a limited space,
during the Brahmana period. One of
their kings, Dhvasan Dvaitavana per-
formed a horse sacrifice where there is the lake
Dvaitavana (S.P.Br.XIII.5.4.9). The well-known
sage, Gargya Balaki lived for sometime among
them (Kaus, Br. IV. i). Their activities, how-
ever, remained confined to alliances and rivalries
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS
with the neighbouring powers like the Kuru*
Panchalas, the Surasenas and the Chedis, and did
not operate on the wider stage of Aryavarta,
unlike those of the Kurus, Kosalas, Yadus and
others. In the Mahabharata war the Matsyas
were one of the secondary powers who led their
hosts to the assistance of the more important
combatants.
To the east of the Kuru-Panchala land lay
the realms of Kosala and Videha. A family of
princes bearing the name of
Ikshaku is known from the Rigveda
(X.6o.4), and it is likely that the ruling dynasty
of Kosala may have been descended from this
family. "In the Panchavimsa Brahmana mention
is made of Tryaruna Aiksbaka who is identical
with the Tryaruna Traivrishna of the Brihaddeva-
ta and with Tryaruna Trasadasyu in the Rigveda.
The connection of Trasadasyu with the Ikshakus
is confirmed by the fact that Purukutsa was an
Aikshaka, according to Satapatha Brahmana.
Thus the Ikshaku line was originally a line of the
Puru kings." (Vedic Index). Epic and Pauranic
traditions describe the royal dynasty of Videha as
a branch of the Ikshaku dynasty of Kosala, Nimi
the founder of the former being a son of Ikshaku.
The tradition, as recorded in the Satapatha
Brahmana, about the founding of the kingdom
of Videba by Videgha Mathava accompanied by
his priest Gotama Rahugana, appears to be more
15
||4 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
reliable, though the existence of a king by name
Nimi may be assumed from the occurrence of
the name Nami Sapya the Videhan in the Vedic
Texts. Probably Nimi was the founder not of
the kingdom but of the greatness of the king-
dom. Even without accepting the Pauranic
traditions we may find evidences in the Brah-
manas to show that the Kosalas and the Videhas
were allied tribes and that there was some
rivalry existing between the Kosala- Videhas and
the Kuru-Panchalas. Sometimes Kosala and
Videha were united under one rule, as under
Para Atnara Hairanyanabha (S.P.Br.XIII. 5.4.4).
It is said that the sage Jala Jatukarnya was
the priest of the Kosalas, Videhas and Kasis at
one time (Sankhayana Srauta Sutra XVI.29.5),
which indicates at least a temporary league.
Brahminism was not as strong in Kosala as
in the Kuru-Panchala land, as is revealed in the
verdict given by the people in favour of their
king against his priest (Jaiminiya Brahmana
III. 94-95). It appears from all these that
the Aryan tribes who occupied Oudh and
North Behar might or might not be a branch
of the Kuru-Panchalas, but it is certain that
politically and to some extent culturally there
was some difference and rivalry between the
eastern group of Kosala, Videha and Kasi,
and the western group of Kuru-Panchala,
Matsya, Surasena, etc.
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS
Some uncertainty exists with regard to the
Kasis. Pauranic tradition traces the descent
of the Kasi dynasty from the Paurava
king Nahusha, grandson of Pururavas,
and thereby connects the Kasis with the
Kuru-Panchalas. But whatever might have
been their origin, we find in the Brahmanas
and the Upanishads that the Kasis were more
allied to the Kosala-Videhas and were often
fighting against the Kura-Panchalas. Dhrita-
rastra Vaichitravirya, king of Kasi, was
defeated by the Kuru king Satanika Satrajita
with the result that the Kasis down to the
time of the Satapatha Brahmana ceased to
keep up the sacrificial fire (S. P. Br. XIII.
54.I9)-
That there is some consistency in the Pauranic
traditions can not be denied when we learn
from them that not only the Kasis
mm ]|_ J
Maga but the Aryan colonists of Magadha,
at least the royal family, belonged to the Kuru-
Panchala tribes. It is said that the first
conquest was made by Amurtarayas, a younger
son of Kusa, king of Kanyakubja or Kanouj, and
descended from Pururavas. Afterwards Vasu, a
descendant of king Kuru, conquered the country
and gave it to his eldest son, Brihadratha,
the founder of the famous Barhadratha dynasty.
In the Puranas tribal names are often
ARYANISATION OF INDIA
inserted in the genealogies under the disguise
of eponymous ancestors, and we
1^7 believe in the relationship
f *.
of such and such tribes when
their eponymous ancestors are descended from
a common father. Thus Puru, Anu, Druhyu,
Yadu, Turvasha are the eponymous ancestors
of the five allied tribes of the Rigveda. There
is nothing in the Rigveda to indicate any
blood relation between these tribes. Of these
the Anu and Druhyu, the Yadu and Turvasha
are sometimes mentioned as pairs, indicating
closer relations between the two. But for
the time being these five tribes were in con-
federacy against the powerful Bharatas.
Probably this fact accounts for the statement
in the Puranas that the five eponymous heroes
were brothers, being the sons of the mythical
king Yajati. Yajati, it is said, divided his
kingdom among his five sons, Puru receiving
the middle region, Anu north, Druhyu west,
Yadu south-west, and Turvasha south-east.
The Pauranic location of the tribes, if we put
the Purus on the Saras wati, accords well
with what we know from the Rigveda.
Of these five tribes the Purus, as we have
seen, united with the Bharatas and other tribes
and became the founders of the
famous Kuru-Panchala tribes. It is
also likely that the ruling families of Kosala,
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 117
Kasi and Magadha belonged to this stock. The
Anus were divided into two branches, Usinara
and Titikshu. The Usinaras in course of time
were subdivided into Usinara proper, Yaudheya,
Madraka, Kekaya,* Sauvira, etc., the tribes
whom we find in occupation of the Punjab and
Sind in more recent times. From Titukshu
descended after several generations the famous
king Bali, who divided his territories among
his five sons, Anga, Vanga, Kalinga,
Pundra and Suhma. Thus the Puranas under
the disguise of fables, mythical kings and
eponymous ancestors seek to connect the tribes
of the Punjab and the Aryan colonists of the
eastern countries, Anga ( E. Behar), Vanga
(E. Bengal ), Pundra ( N. Bengal), Suhma ( W.
Bengal), Kalinga (Orissa), all belonging to the
Anu stock of the Rigveda. This tradition
accords very well with the findings of Grierson
as to the near relations of the dialects of the
Punjab and the eastern provinces as distin-
guished from those of the Midland.
In the Rigveda we find the Druhyus living to
* From the Ramayana (II. 68. 19-22 ; VII. 113-114)
we learn that the Kekaya country lay between the Beas
and the Gandhara country. Asvapati, a king of Kekaya
in the Upanishad period, is a famous person, who taught
a number of well-known Brahmin scholars the principles of
the knowledge of Brahma (Chhandogya Upanishad V. ix.
4 et seq).
1 16 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the west of the Anus, i.e. in the Indus region.
The Puranas make Gandhara, an
eponymous king, a descendant of
Druhyu, showing that the Druhyus inhabited
the Gandhara land. Unlike the other tribes
the Druhyus did not seek to expand towards
the interior of India. Their way towards the
east and south-east was barred by the Anus.
Hence they sent their overflowings to the coun-
tries to the west and north-west, a fact recorded
in the Puranas which tell us that the hundred
sons of Pracheta, a later descendant of Druhyu
and Gandhara, established themselves as kings
in the Mlechchha countries to the north.
The Turvashas lived, according to Pauranic
tradition, to the south-east of the Purus. In
T . the Brahmana period they have
practically disappeared from his-
tory. The Satapatha Brahmana (XIII. 5. 4. 16)
suggests that they formed one of the elements
of the composite Panchala tribe. The Puranas
declare that the Turvashas were merged into the
Purus as their last king Marutta adopted the Puru
king Dushyanta as his . successor. Anyway, the
Turvashas were absorbed by the Kuru-Panchalas.
Unlike their old allies, the Turvashas, the
Yadus displayed a remarkable power of growth
. and expansion, and became in
the Epic age no mean rivals
of the Kurus and the Ikshakus. Out of the
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 1 19
confused accounts, different versions, wrong
arrangements and omissions of the different
Puranas one fact stands clear, viz., that the
Yadus in course of time branched off into the
Yadavas, Satvatas, Haihayas, Kukuras, Bhojas,
Andhakas, Chedis, Vrishnis and other smaller
clans. For the history of the Yadus we
have to depend entirely on the Puranas as
the names of Yadu kings except the Bhojas
are almost unknown to the Samhitas and the
Brahmanas. Of the important Yadu kingdoms
may be mentioned the Haihaya kingdom of
Mahismati or Malwa, Kukura kingdom of
Surasena or Muttra,* Vrishni kingdom of
Dwaraka in Kathiwar, Bhoja kingdom of Martti-
kavata in Rajputana, Yadava kingdom of
Vidarbha or Berar (otherwise known as the
Bhoja kingdom, the name Bhoja being often
applied to the Yadus in general), Chedi
kingdom to the south of the Jumna (till its
conquest by Vasu Chaidya the Paurava). From
Kautilya's Arthasastra we know that the
Bhojas at one time ruled in the Dandaka or
Maharasta country, probably supplanting a
small Ikshaku colony there, the remembrance
of which gave origin to the eponymous king
* The country obtained its name from Surasena, son of
Satrugna, who had conquered it from the Yadava king Lavana
of Madhtfs family. The Yadavas seem to have regained it
after Surasena's death. Mathura is a corruption of Madhupura.
120 THE ARYAN1SATION OF INDIA
Danda, a son of Ikshaku. In short, we see that
tbe Yadus prevailed over practically the whole
land from the Gulf of Cambay and the Godavery
to the Jumna.
The Haihayas were the Mahrattas of the/
Epics during the Treta age. It seems that at first/
the Pauravas attained supremacy in the
TrcU A^L Middle Countr y and that that period
of their greatness is associated in the
Puranas with such mythical kings as Pururavas,
Ayu, Nahusha and Yajati. After the death of
Yajati the Paurava kingdom was broken up
into small principalities, and the kingdom of
Oudh rose to supremacy under its kings,
Yuvanasva and his son Mandhatri. Under
Mandhatri and his sons, one of whom was
Muchukunda, the Ikshakus conquered the
country as far as the Punjab on one side
and the Nerbudda on the other. The
Haihayas, who were settled in Malwa, and
who were pressed under the heels of the
Ikshakus, soon rose against them, and taking
advantage of the weakness of Muchukunda 1 s
successors, not only cleared their country of
the enemies but, like the Mahrattas under Baji
Rao, boldly appeared in the Gangetic regions,
and fell upon the small kingdom of Kasi. They
ravaged and conquered it and made it their base
for raiding Northern India. The greatest king
of the Haihaya dynasty was Arjuna, son of
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS
Kritavirya, who is known as a Samraj and a
Chakravartin. He defeated and took prisoner a
Havana* or a Dravidian king, who had come
northward on conquest. He, like Balaji Rao,
extended his conquests from the Nerbudda
to the Himalayas overruning the kingdom of
Oudh. In his pride of power he began to oppress
the Brahmin family of Bhargava who dwelt in
the lower region of the Nerbudda. The Bhar-
gavas fled to the Gangetic Doab, and with a
view to avenge themselves on the Haihayas
entered into matrimonial alliances with the royal
families of Kanouj and Oudh. Arjuna raided
Jamadagni Bhargava' s hermitage, and in the
melee which took place both of them were
killed. Jamadagni' s son, the terrible Parasu-
rama, swore vengeance and with the assistance
of the princes of Oudh and Kanouj, both of
whom were suffering from the raids of the
Haihayas, defeated and killed many of the
Haihayas. The Haihaya power, like that of the
Mahrattas after the third battle of Panipat,
received a set-back but was not crushed. The
central power was destroyed, and on its ruins
rose five powers in five different centres
Vitihotra, Saryata, Bhoja, Avanti, Tundikera, all
of whom were collectively known as Talajanghas
* Havana is probably not a personal name but a Sans*
kritized form of the Tamil word ireivan or iraivan, 'God, king,
sovereign, lord. 9 (Pargiter, Anc.Ind.His. Tpd^fcta).
16
122 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
from the name of the grandson of Arjuna,
This confederacy of Haihaya powers gradually
recovered from the great blow inflicted by
Parasurama and again began their raids into
Northern India. The kingdom of Kanouj fell,
and Bahu, king of Oudh, was compelled to
leave his capital and take shelter in the hermi-
tage of Aurva Bhargava, where he died. The
Haihayas then attacked the eastern kingdoms
of Vaisali and Videha. But Vaisali was for-
tunate enough to have three generations of very
able princes at the time, Karandhama, Aviksit
and Marutta, who successfully repulsed the
Haihaya attacks. The Kasi kings too, who had
.been carrying on a long struggle from the
eastern portion of their territory, attained some
success, and Pratardana and his son Vatsa even
annexed the district of Kausambi, which was
thence named the Vatsa country.
Meanwhile Sagara, son of Bahu, had
reached manhood and made careful prepara-
tions to fight the Haihayas. He
defeated them, regained the throne
of Oudh, and soon established
his supremacy in Northern India. He then
invaded the territories of the Haihayas and
crushed their power so effectively that we
do not hear of them till long afterwards. He
advanced as far as Vidarbha, whose king had
to buy peace by giving his daughter in marriage
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 12J
with him. After Sagara's death Oudh failed
to maintain her suzerainty over the vast empire
built up by him, and though from time to time
kings like Dilipa, Raghu, Aja, Dasaratha went
out on conquering expeditions and achieved some
successes } yet on the whole the Oudh kings
confined themselves to their own territories.
The Yadavas of Vidarbha availing themselves
of the friendship of Oudh gradually extended
their power over a part of the Haihaya country
and over the Chedi country. Meanwhile the
Paurava realm, which had been overthrown in
Mandhatri's time,* regained its independence
and the land from the Saraswati to the Ganges
came under the rule of Paurava princes from
different centres, one of which was Hastinapur.
The Yadavas stepped into the place of the
Haihayas and established several kingdoms
in the land from the Jumna to the Gulf of
Cambay, the more important of which were
Surasena and Dwaraka.
* We find in the Ramayana (1.13.31-28) that Vasistha
advised Dasaratha, king of Ajodhya, to invite the kings of
Mithila, Kasi, Kckaya, Anga, Magadha, Sindhu, Sauvira,
Surastra, etc., but did not mention any king of the Middle
Country. This passage is cited by some scholars to prove
that there was cultural difference between the kingdoms of
the Outer Band and those of the Middle Country. But
it need not be interpreted in that way, and the meaning
becomes clear if we remember that the Kuru-Panchala
land was directly subject to the king of Oudh,
124 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
After the death of Rama, the hero of the
Ramayana, the power of Oudh began to
decline and the centre of political
KwEM&m ac tivity shifted to the Kuru-
**^ Panchala country. The Kurus
and the Pandavas were certainly the most
powerful princes of their time and their
domestic quarrels brought the whole of India
from one extremity to the other into the
vortex of blood in the Kurukshetra war.
Almost all the ruling families suffered so much
that for a long time^ after there was a spirit
of stupor in the country and the wars and
rivalries of the succeeding generations bespeak
only pettiness and weakness of the contending
parties. Kshatriya India could never recover
from the awful carnage of the Kurukshetra war.
During the following age, though the
Ikshaku and Kuru lines of kings continued to
Knruf rule in their respective realms,
Kali Age. the kingdom of the future was
Magadha^ the Prussia of Aryavarta, and detailed
dynastic tables are given in the Puranas of
these three kingdoms only, the other kingdoms
being incidentally mentioned. Shortly after
the Kurukshetra war it seems that a non-
Aryan tribe, the Nagas, established themselves
at Takshasila or Taxila and attacked the
grandson of the Pandavas, Parikshit II, who was
killed. His son Janamejaya III was a vigorous
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 125
ruler, who defeated the Nagas but failed to
annihilate their power. In the reign of Nichak-
shus, the fourth in descent from Janamejay,
Hastinapur (in the Meerut District), the Kuru
capital, was destroyed by an inundation of the
Ganges. This, together with the pressure of
the barbarians from the north-west, compelled
the Kurus to transfer their headquarters to
Kausambi (near Allahabad). One of the latest
kings was Udayana the Vatsaraj, who was a
contemporary of Gautama Buddha. He is
a favourite hero of later romance writers.
His descent from the Bharata family is attested
to by Bhasa in the Svapnavasavadatta. He
was the son-in-law and also a rival of Pradyqta,
king of Avanti. -He was at first unfriendly
to the Buddhist preachers, one of whom he
tortured in a fit of drunken jealousy by having
a sack of brown ants tied to his body. But
afterwards he repented and professed himself
a disciple of the tortured monk. The dynasty
came to an end with Kshemaka, the fourth
in descent from Udayana. Kautilya writes
in the 4th century B. C. that the Kurus
were governed by a republican constitution.
The existence of the Kurus can be traced as
late as the time of king Dharmapala of Bengal
(800 A. D.), who installed Chakrayudha on the
throne of Kanouj in consultation with the
Kurus among others.
136 THE ARYAHISATION OF INDIA
About the time of Gautama Buddha's birth the
most prominent of the kingdoms of Western India
was Avanti, the Vrishni kingdom of Dwaraka
having been ruined by fratricidal
fatth * strifes after the Kurukshetra war.
The Vrishnis, however, reappear in history as
one of the powers which arose on the ruins of
the Maurya empire in the second century B. C.,
and continued their fitful existence till at least
the time of Bana (yth century A. D.), who
mentions them in his Harshacharita. The
smaller branches of Surasena and Asmaka were
in dependent alliance with the Pradyota kings
of Avanti. Pradyota, whose father Punika
seems to be a usurper, was the most powerful
prince of his time. He pressed hard Udayana
the Vatsa king and threatened Ajatasatru, the
powerful king of Magadha, who is said to have
fortified his capital shortly after the death of
Buddha in anticipation of an attack by the
Avanti king.
The most notable figure of the age which
followed the decline of the Kuru kingdom was
Janaka, the famous king of Videha.
There were so many Janakas in
the dynasty of Videha that the
family was called Janakavamsa (Vayu Pur. 89,
33). But the most celebrated of them was the
one who is mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad as the patron of Uddalaka Aruni
LATER TRIBES AND KINGDOMS 127
and Yajnavalkya. The memories of the great-
ness of the Kurus were still fresh in men's
minds, and their fate was discussed as a subject
of controversy in the court of Mithila, the capital
of Videha. A rival of Yajnavalkya asks the
question, "whither have the Parikshitas gone ?"
to which the latter quickly replies, "Thither
where all Aswamedha-sacrificers go" (Br. Up.
III). Janaka is called a "Samrat" or one
greater than a king, and in Asvalayana Srauta
Sutra (X. 3. 14) is mentioned as a great sacri-
ficer. His court was thronged with learned
Brahmins from the western countries (i. e. the
Middle Country), whose discussions materially
contributed to the growth of the Upanishad
philosophy. "The king of the east, who has a
leaning to the culture of the west, collects the
celebrities of the west at his court much as the
intellects of Athens gathered at the court of
Macedonian princes." (Oldenberg, Buddha, p.
398). Both according to Kautilya's Arthasastra
and Nimi Jataka, the last king of Videha was
Kalara or Karala Janaka who brought destruc-
tion on himself and his family by making a las-
civious attempt on a Brahmin maiden/ 1 By
the time of Gautama Buddha (600 B. C.) the
Videhas had become a member of the well-
known Vajjian confederacy of republican states
of North Behar f of which the Lichchhavis of
Vaisali were the head.
128 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
The small kingdom of Kasi continued its
existence for several centuries after the Maha-
bharata war. often under the sway
But it seems to have asserted its independence
and for a time played a prominent part on the
stage of Northern India. Under its most
famous king Brahmadatta it carried on success-
ful war,s against the then most powerful state
of Kosala, which was compelled to acknowledge
his suzerainty. For four generations the two
kingdoms fought with varying results, but
eventually the greater resources of Kosala
wore out the power of Kasi, which was com-
pletely subjugated by Kamsa, king of Kosala.
With the decline of Vatsa and the conquest of
Kasi, Kosala became the dominant power in
Northern India, which position it retained till
the time of Prasenajit, a contemporary of Gau-
tama Buddha. The Sakyas, the people of Gau-
tama Buddha, as well as other republican tribes
of the Nepal regions, were vassals of the Kosala
king. Shortly after the death of Prasenajit
Kosala was conquered by Ajatasatru, king of
Magadha. By the time of the Nandas (400 B.C.)
the Kurus, the Ikshakus, the Avantis, the
Vajjis, the Kasis, all had been swallowed up by
the Magadhan empire.
APPENDIX I
Orthodox Indian Pundits relying on the authority of Pauranic
traditions maintain that the Vedic Aryans had ever been living in
India, which is the centre of the earth, that the other civili-
zations of the world are only offshoots of the Indian civilization,
and that the age of the Vedas must be counted by millions of
years ( Durgadas Lahiri, Prithivir Itihasha I ). All the arguments
and theories of European scholars have not been able to
undermine their beliefs, and, though unable to produce counter-
arguments of a rational character, they have remained ensconced
in the scepticism born of ignorance and false pride. When, however,
Dr. Abinas Chandra Das in his Rigvedic India entered the
lists to fight the European scholars with modern weapons instead
of simply citing the authority of the Sastras, there rose at once
a chorus of joy from the orthodox and he was acclaimed as the
champion of their cause. Because of his advocacy of the old
beliefs of the Pundits and his arguments to demolish the modern
theories regarding the origin of the Aryan folk, their primitive
home, and the date of the Rigveda, his book has caught popular
fancy and hardened the prejudices of the Pundits, For the
benefit of ordinary Indian readers I shall discuss at length his
theories and the data on which those theories are based, and
thereby indirectly deal with the orthodox school of which be is
regarded as the mouth-piece.
The principal argument of Dr. Das is that there are references
in the Rigveda to four seas, as in IX.33.6, and to seismic distur-
bances of great intensity, as in ILu.a, which prove that
THE ARYAN1SAT10N OTf IKD1A
hymns were composed at a time when the Punjab was surrounded
by seas almost on all sides, in Central Asia, Sind, Rajputana,
and the Gangetic valley, and when the earth was still passing
through the Tertiary era. It is assumed that the Punjab had
become long habitable when the Gangetic valley was still a sea.
Now geologists assume the existence of two seas side by side,
the Gangetic trough and the Indus trough, which were gradually
filled up by alluvium brought by the Ganges and the Indus
respectively. As the alluvial deposit in the Punjab generally
is of smaller thickness than in the Gangetic valley, it is suggested
that the former was older than the latter. But it is also found
that some parts of the Indus trough, as at Ludhiana, have "a
depth which is comparable with, and possibly quite as great as,
that of the much broader trough in the Gangetic region," In
other words, when the Gangetic region was a sea, the eastern
Punjab too was a sea, and the Vedic Saptasindbava (land of
the seven rivers) was a misnomer. Secondly, it has not been
calculated as to how much older even the western Punjab land
was than the Gangetic region, whether the difference in age
between the two lands was sufficient for the purpose of the
birth of lower mammalia and then of man (it is assumed by Dr.
Das that the Aryan was .autochthonous in the Punjab), and of
the gradual evolution of man from his primitive condition unaided
by any external influences to the civilized state of the Vedic age,
Le. whether the Punjab land was older than the Gangetic region
by hundreds of thousands of years. Thirdly, we know that
the Gangetic ;sea had become land in Miocene times (Bncy.
Brit XII, p. 736). So according to Dr. Das's hypothesis, the
Vedic hymns referring to the four seas and the eastern and
APPENDIX |3|
western seas must have been composed jt least in Miocene
times, if not in Oligocene and Eocene, or at least two million
years ago. Now it is a matter of dispute among geologists and
anthropologists as to whether man lived in Miocene times (Keith,
The Antiquity of Man), Even if we admit that man existed
in Miocene times, it was not man as we understand him to be,
but man in the embryonic stage, nearer to the ape than to
modern man, as is proved by the human bones so far discovered
of the pliocene and even early pleistocene periods. Even
Professor Rutot, the great champion of the theory of extreme
antiquity of man, has to assume that "Man was in a state of
stagnation throughout the ages which witnessed the rise and fall
of whole genera of other mammals," Under these circumstances
Dr, Das would have us believe that in the Punjab the Vedic
Aryans had passed through the palaeolithic and neolithic stages,
and were in the Iron age with a highly developed civilization
even in the Miocene period. Again, we are asked to believe
that the Vedic Aryans were an iron-using people in the Punjab
hundreds of thousands of years ago, and though it is admitted
that they had trade relations with other peoples near and far,
the use of iron remained confined to them and did not spread
anywhere beyond their land till only about 2000 B. C, in China
and about 1500 B, C. in Western Asia and Egypt, though the
Babylonians and the Egyptians had already far advanced in
civilization, and their ruling classes, if we agree with Dr. Das,
had been colonists from India.
Dr. Das agrees with Tilak that some of the hymns were
composed about 4500 B.C. (p 48), but states that the early hymns
were composed in Miocene times. In other words, the Rigvedic
THE ARYAmSATION OF INDIA
age cowed about 2 million years. It is of course admitted
that the hymns were not composed at the same time, and
that the composition and collection must have taken rather a
long time. Now how to measure that length of time ? Competent
scholars have come to the conclusion that the Rigvedic age
lasted for about 500 years. What is in hymns like Rig VII. 95. 2
and X. 136. 5 which demonstrates their extreme antiquity?
Are the thoughts very different, are the gods and goddesses
different, is the mode of prayer different from those of the so-
called later hymns like those composed in 4500 B.C. ? Again,
comparatively old as the hymns of the Rigveda may be, even
the earliest hymns represent thoughts, manners and customs,
which are not so different from those of the Brahmanic or
Epic period that we can separate them from the later
literatures even by thousands, not to say of hundreds of
thousands of years. Further, whatever changes might take place
in the language during the whole Rigvedic period, there are
no fundamental differences observed between the languages of any
two hymns and the whole literature inspite of stages of development
constitutes one type. Now this type is not so different from the
old Persian of the 6th or 7th century B.C. and from the classical
Sanskrit literature of the 4th century B.C. that we can believe,
whatever allowances might be made for stagnation of language, that
the Rigvedic literature was distant from these literatures by even
three thousand years. So from the linguistic and sociological
points of view the theory of Dr. Dai seferas absurd (Winternitz).
In order to prove his theory Dr. Das has had recourse to all
sorts of ingenious explanations about Dasas, Rakshas, Panis,
and the origins of western nations. One of the arguments urged
APPENDIX 133
against the Indian origin of the Aryan race is that in the Rigreda
we find a struggle going on between the Aryans and the Dasyus who
had strong cultural and physical differences, and that it is improbable
that two such distinct types of men had been living and developing
in the same land without intermingling. To this it is replied
by Dr. Das that the Dasyus and the Rakshas were not non-
Aryans, but "either Aryan nomads in a savage condition, or
Aryan dissenters from the orthodox Vedic faith." The black skin
is explained away as being used in a spiritual sense, noselessness
or ilWormed nose as indicative of imperfect speech, and so forth.
Now he admits that the Dasas and Rakshas had different gods,
different religious rites, different dialects, and different ways of
living from those of the Vedic hymn-makers, and seeks to explain
these radical differences by assuming that while one section of the
Aryan race had been highly civilized another section remained
still in a savage, nomadic state. We can realise the weight or
otherwise of this assumption if we recollect that the Vedic
Aryans had already reached a high level of civilization in Miocene
times, and for hundreds of thousands of years had been fight-
ing with their nomadic brethren without in any way improving
them, and that in a limited area like that of the Punjab. These
savage nomads then, it is said, were expelled from the country
and mingling with the Turanians in Central Asia went to settle
in Europe. As the Aryan-speaking Europeans are known to
have been not iron-using when they went to settle there, and
as the absence of any common root for the word "sea" in their
languages proves that their forefathers had no knowledge of sea,
it is assumed by Dr. Das that the nomadic Aryans in the Punjab
born of the same stock as the Vedic Aryans and in dose contact
134 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
with them for hundreds of thousands of years were still ignorant
of the use of metals, and, nomadic as they were, were ignorant
of the existence of seas which, it is stated, surrounded the
country on four sides. The assumptions and inferences area
little too bold to be accepted. To explain away the Iranian
tradition of their origin in Airyana Vaejo Dr. Das assumes that
as the Iranians had quarrelled with the Indians they were reluctant
to point to Saptasindhu as their original home. But one would
have been convinced if the name of Saptasindhu had been altoge-
ther omitted from the list of countries created by Ahura Mazda.
But the name stands there, and also the description as to how
the climate of the place, which had been at first good, was
changed.
Dr. Das holds that the Deccan peninsula had been inhabited
by the Dravidians from time immemorial, but that there being no
land connection between the Punjab and the southern continent,
they did not come into contact with the Aryans. But those autho-
rities which he has quoted to prove the existence of theGangetic
trough state that even when the Indus trough had not been filled
there was a tongue of solid land separating the two seas. Certainly
this narrow strip of land had considerably widened, if we look to
the depth of alluvial deposit on and near the Delhi Ridge, when
the Punjab became terra firma. How can he then assume the
existence of a sea entirely cutting off theVindhya regions from
the Punjab ?
Now let us examine the data which have led Dr. Das to these
astounding conclusions. The first is that in Rig VII, 95,2 the
Saraawati is said to flow from the mountains into the sea. To
explain this one need not go back to the time when Rajputant
APPENDIX t#
was A sea. It might imply either that the Saraawati met the Indus
and the united waters flowed into the sea or that the Saraswati
was an independent river flowing into the Arabian Sea. Even aft
late as the time of Alexander a large part of Lower Sind was still
under water and the Indus delta was considerably higher up than
the present position. So it is not difficult to imagine that in Rig-
Vedic times the Indus delta was still higher up and the Saraswati
was an independent river. In fact, the old bed of the Saraswati-
Sutlej (Hakra) can even now be seen for a considerable length
through the Bhawalpur state, which does not prove that "the
disappearance of the Saraswati was synchronous with that of the
Rajputana sea."
Dr. Das lays considerable stress upon the reference to four
seas, as in Rig IX. 33.6. That the four seas are more imaginary
than real is apparent from the fact that unlike the rivers and the
mountains the seas have got no names of their own in the Rigveda.
I agree with Dr. Das in holding that the Aryans while in the
Punjab were acquainted with the Arabian Sea. For one sailing
upon the vast expanse of the sea it is not unnatural to think it
limitless and surrounding the land on all the four sides. What-
ever might have been the cause, the Indians of the Epic period
regarded the world as consisting of seven islands and seven con*
centric rings of seas. Can any one at the present time try to locate
the seven seas surrounding the seven islands relying upon the old
tradition ? The Rigvedic mention of the four seas only shows the
origin of the later and more developed Pauranic tradition. The
sight of sunrise and sunset from on board a ship by the hymn*
makers, associated with the conception of four seas surrounding the
land, can well account for the description of the sun dwelling in
136 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the eastern and western seas, as in Rig X. 136.5. Moreover,
there is ample justification for modern scholars saying that the
word Samudra (sea) in the Rigveda was often figuratively used to
mean the vast, limitless expanse of the sky, and that the reference
to eastern and western seas in connection with the rising
and setting of the sun was used to mean nothing but eastern
and western sky.
*' Another evidence of the antiquity of the Rigveda and the
Aryans of Sapta-Sindhu, s> says Dr. Das, "is the reference in some
of the hymns to extensive seismic disturbances, causing upheavals
and depressions of land and frequent earthquakes of great inten-
sity. 1 ' As for instance, in Rig II. 17.5, "By his strength he
(Indra) fixed the wandering mountains ; he ordained the down-
ward course of the water." Evidently, as Dr. Das himself admits,
the wandering mountains here means clouds which were at first
made motionless and then made to pour down waters. In Rig II.
12.2, "He who fixed firm the earth that staggered ; who made the
moving mountains rest; who spread the spacious firmament; who
consolidated the heaven; he, men, is Indra. 11 Dr. Das forgets
that the meanings of many words changed from the Vedic to
the classical literature. He makes a muddle by translating
prakupitan parvatan as angry mountains, thereby thinking it
as referring to volcanic eruptions. If he had cared to consult
Sayana and other commentators he would have found that pra-
kupitan means here not angry but moving from the original mean-
ing of the root kup> to move. The allusion is as follows (cf. Maitr,
Sam* 1.10.13) "The mountains are the eldest children of Proja-
pati They had wings. They flew about and descended whenever
they liked. The earth thus tottered. Indra cut off their wings,
APPENDIX
and made fast the earth by means of them. 11 Thus by no stretch
of imagination can any of the passages quoted be made to refer to
any "extensive seismic disturbances/ 1 characteristic of the Tertiary
era.
The fourth evidence, according to Dr. Das, is that as Indra was
one of the oldest gods of the Aryans, and as the great exploits of
Indra are said to have taken place on the banks of the Saraswati,
that place must have been the primitive home of the Aryans, The
same argument with respect to the old god Zeus and his residence
on the Olympus would Ipad one to the conclusion that the Hel-
lenes were autochthonous in Greece. Besides, Indra is certainly
not one of the oldest gods of the Aryans as he can not be traced
beyond the Indo-Iranian period.
The fifth evidence is "that the total absence of the mention of
the Deluge in the Rigveda proves the period of the composition of
the hymns to be anterior to that event", and the Deluge is said to be
nothing but the raising of the Rajputana sea-bed by volcanic action
and consequent flooding of the Punjab. Dr. Das himself admits the
weakness of arguraentum ex silentio. He says that the Atharva-
veda "is admittedly a later work than the Rigveda," and also agrees
with Tilak that some of the Rig hymns were composed about
4500 B. C. So it follows from his own argument that the
Deluge or the upheaval of the Rajputana sea-bed, which is not
mentioned in the Rigveda but is in the Atharvaveda, must have
taken place sometime after 4500 B. C. Will geologists agree ?
Cannot a better explanation be found for the absence of
reference to the Deluge in the Rigveda ? The story of the
Deluge was probably borrowed from the Dravidians, and hence
its absence in the Rigveda (See ante pp. 8081).
18
THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
the copious rainCaU in the Punjab, which, as Dr. Das says,
is alluded to in the Rigveda, was, according to him, an evidence
.of a very ancient date of the Rigveda, when there were seas on
all sides of the Punjab. But it is not necessary to go back to
prehistoric times to explain more abundant rainfall in the Punjab.
When Alexander came, the Punjab as well as large parts of
Beluchistan and Eastern Persia had not become so dry and hot
(Vredenburg, Mem. Geo. Surv. Ind. XXXI, pt 2). There were
an equable climate and good forest growths sustained by copious
rainfall Without difficulty Alexander succeeded in building up
a large navy out of the trees that grew on the banks of the
Hydaspes (Jhelum), a thing which is impossible at the present
time on account of the drier climate which prevails. Then and
also at the time of Arab invasions there was dense population in the
lower Punjab and Sind, which implies that the soil had not
become so desertlike as it is at the present day.
Lastly, one of the evidences of the Indian origin of the Aryans
is "that the Soma sacrifice was admittedly the oldest sacrifice
among the Aryans and the genuine Soma plant grew nowhere
else excepting the Himalaya and Saptasindhu." First, the Soma\
sacrifice was certainly not the oldest sacrifice among the Aryans,
as no such word or sacrifice can be traced in the European
languages and mythologies. It belonged to Indo-Iranian period,
but not to Indo-European, Secondly, it is not known that the
real plant did not grow anywhere else than the Himalayas and
Saptasindhu. It is certain that the plant grew best in cold
regions like the Himalayas, and did not grow as well when the
Aryans attemped to grow it on the banks of the Indus and the
Saiaswati Hence a regular trade had to be carried on
APPENDIX |#
in Soma plant from the Himalayas, and curiously, the trade
was in the hands of the barbarians. In other words, instead
of proving the Punjab origin of the Aryans, the Soma references,
if they prove anything, only prove the contrary, as certainly
the custom of Soma sacrifice could not originate in a country
where the plant did not grow so well, and as the place where it
grew well was inhabited not by Aryans but by barbarians. Do they
not fit in more properly with the theory that the Aryans originally
lived in a cold country where Soma was an indigenous plant, and
that when they came to the Punjab they could grow only plants
of an inferior quality on the hotter Punjab soil, and had to depend
for good quality upon the Himalayan products, which were beyond
their reach, but which were brought down to them by the
barbarous hillmen ?
APPENDIX II
Mr. F. E. Pargiter rqlying on Pauranic traditions has propounded
in his learned book Ancient Indian Historical Tradition three start*
ling theories which tend to upset all the theories and inferences
of the Vedic scholars, and which, if proved, would compel a
complete rewriting of the ancient Indian history. His first theory
is that the word Aila, the patronymic of Pururavas, is the same
as the word Arya or Aryan and that the history of the growth
of the Aila family is that of the expansion of the Indo-Aryan
race. Now the first thing which passes beyond our comprehension
is that while the Vedic rishis always distinguished themselves
as Aryas why Pururavas is called the Aila (Rig X. 95.18) and
not Arya. The word Aila is never used either in the Rigveda
or in later literature as denoting a race as the word Arya did.
A more reasonable explanation of the word can be obtained
from the story of the Deluge in the Satapatha Brahmana, where
Ha, from whom the Aila or Lunar family is derived, personifies,
MS the flame denotes, the sacrificial offering made by Mann.
%ecB&&9, *e cannot agree with his views that the Aihs or
Aryans entered India through the mid-Himalayan region and
at first established themselves in Pratisthana, near Allahabad,
from whence they gradually spread towards the north-west and
eventually to Persia and Mesopotamia. There cannot be any
question about the tribal immigration of the Aryans into India
which was powerful enough to influence not only the languages
of the country but also to a great extent the ethnical type. Now
ii or wai it powible for a numerous community to come to India
APPENDIX 141
by way of the mid-Himalayas? The physical difficulties are
insuperable* Again, why should the Aryans, when they came,
choose to settle not in the upper Gangetic valley, but traversing
a long way and rounding a large part of the so-called non-Aryan
kingdom of Ajodhya or Oudh ultimately settled near Allahabad ?
Thirdly, it is inferred by Mr. Pargiter that in the time of the
Rigveda the Aryans had already spread over the greater part of
Northern India. The chief difficulty in accepting this is that
the geography of the Rigveda is confined only to the north-
western parts of India. Mr. Pargiter would not accept any
argumentum ex silentio, and cites the instance of the banyan
tree which could not have been unknown to the Indo-Aryans
but which is not mentioned in the Rigveda. Though the tree
is not mentioned by name in the Rigveda, it appears to have
been known as its characteristics are recognised. The sister
tree Asvattha occurs in the Rigveda (Vedic Index). The analogy
would have been convincing if there had been any hymn in the
Rigveda addressed to the principal trees, and the banyan not
included in the list. But that is not the case. While there are v
especial nadi-stutis 01 hymns addressed to t\veis> it u ^fflfifiu& ,
that the names of no river beyond the Ganges are mentioned.
Again, while very small rivers of the Punjab are repeatedly
mentioned the river Ganges, on which, according to Mr. Paigiter,
the Aryans were first settled, is directly mentioned only once.
The Rigveda, according to him, was composed long after the
Aryans had been settled in the Gangetic valley and even after
the king Bhagiratha with whom the name and sacredness of the
river are associated in the Puranas, And yet the hymn-makers
would not pay due respect to the river, while the river Indus,
112 THE ARVAN1SAT10N OF INDIA
which is said to be far away from the scene of Vedic life, is repeat*
edly addressed to with reverence. While even such a small river
as Suvastu or Swat or a remote district like Gandhara does not
escape notice, it is strange that such large rivers as Nerbudda
and Chambal, such a large mountain as the Vindhya, and the
homes of the famous Haihayas, who, it is said, had established
their greatness before the Rigvedic time, and who were related
to the Pauravas and connected with the hymn-making Bhargava
family, are not mentioned at all. The argumentum ex silentio
cannot be easily disposed of in this case.
One of the chief arguments of Mr. Pargiter against the theory
of the advance of the Indo- Aryans from the north-west is that "the
list of rivers in Rigveda X. 75 is in regular order from the east to
the north-westnot the order of entrance from the north-west, but
the reverse." There is nothing strange in it if we remember that
most of the hymns were composed on the eastern side of the river
Saraswati, and that, therefore, the hymn-maker commences from
the easternmost limit and traverses towards the known north-west.
"Moreover," says Mr. Pargiter, "these conclusions are entirely
supported by the evidence of language, as set out by Sir G.
Grierson," How? Mr. Pargiter makes the Kuru-Panchalas or the
inhabitants of the Middle Country, the Yadus of Western India
and the Deccan, and the Anus of Bengal and the Punjab related
to one another, all being of the stock of Pumravas. In other
.words, he goes entirely against the conclusions of Grierson about
the fundamental difference between the Midland Indo-Aryan lan-
guage occupying the Gangetic Doab and the band of Outer lan-
guages occupying Kashmir, the Punjab, Sind, the Maratha country,
Orissa, Behar, Bengal and Assam.
APPENDIX ; 143
Mr. Pargiter's second theory is that the Vedic hymns were
composed long after the Aryans had established themselves over
the greater part of India, and that Sudas of Rigvcdic fame was a
king of North Fanchala, who lived posterior to most of the kings
of Pauranic fame, as Bharata Daushyanti, Harischandra, Sagara,
Raghu, Dasaratha, Rama, Kartavirya Arjuna, Pratardana, etc.
Now, it has been shown in the previous paragraphs that the Vedic
hymns of which Sudas is a hero could not have been composed
when the Indo-Aryans had advanced beyond the Ganges and the
Vindhyas, and hence the Vedic Sudas could not have been post-
erior to kings like Sagara, Arjuna and Rama whose exploits are
mostly associated in the Puranas with Oudh, Malwa and the
Deccan. Secondly, the Vedic Sudas is distinctly called the son of
Pijavana, while the father of the Pauranic Sudas is Chyavana-
Panchajana. Mr. Pargiter says, "Panchajana appears to be a
mistake for the Vedic Pijavana." How can we believe it to be a
mistake when we know that Pijavana as the father of the Vedic
Sudas is known to Yaska, the Mahabharata, and even Manu.
Evidently, the Puranas speak of a different Sudas who is the son
of Chyavana, Thirdly, the names of about a score of tribes, both
important and unimpoitant, are mentioned in the Rigveda in con-
nection with Sudas as friends and foes, including the Turvashas
who, according to Mr, Pargiter, had long ceased to exist. Had
he been the same as the Pauranic Sudas, on no accojm^ggkl the
names of the Ikshakus, the Videhas, the
most important of the tribes of the tim<
mentioned. Of course the Yadus are m
Yadus had been split up into so many
extensive an area from the Godavery to
THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
not be the lame as the Rigvedic Yadus, just as the word Teutort i
is not used to-day to denote any political power, such as the
English, the Austrian, the Dane, each of which possesses a separate
\
entity of its own. From all these it is clear that the Pauranic
Sudas is a different person from the Vedic Sudas. Mr. Pargiter
himself warns us against hasty conclusions drawn from sameness
of name. "Sameness of name was well-known among kings and
princes, for it is expressly declared that there were a hundred
Prativindhyas, Nagas, Haihayas, Dhritarastras, Brahmadattas,
Paulas, Svetas, Kasis and Kusas, eighty Janamejayas, a thousand
Sasabindus and two hundred Bhismas and Bhimas ; also that there
were two Nalas, one king of Ajodhya and the other the hero of the
'Story of Nala'. So there were two famous Arjunas, Kartavirya
and Pandava, and a third in Rigveda I. 222, 5. The genealogical
lists in chapter XII show that other names were not uncommon,
such as Divodasa, Srnjaya and Sahadeva; and the number
of duplicates is very large." (Anc, Ind. Hist. Tr. p. 130),
Again, he points out that "there were thus two Purukutsas with
sons named Trasadasyu. Those of Ajodhya were well-known, as
even the Satapatha Brahmana shows. Those in the Rigveda were
apparently Puru kings and probably belonged to some minor dy-
nasty descended from Bharata." So why should we be led to believe
in the identity of the Vedic and Pauranic Sudases simply because
both had as their ancestors, though not immediate, Vadhryasva
and Divodasa ? The names of Mudgala and Srinjaya occur in the
Rigveda, but there is nothing to prove that they were connected
by relationship with Sudas, So it is very difficult to prove the
identity of the two Sudases on these slender bases, especially when
there are very strong arguments to the contrary. It would be far
APPENDIX 145
easier to bold that the Sudas dynasty of the Rigveda was remem-
bered in later times, and that some kings of the North Panchala
dynasty adopted the well-known names of the Vedic dynasty, and
that later writers sometimes attributed to the Panchala dynasty
some of the fects relating to the Vedic dynasty, as they did with
regard to Paijavana Saudasa and Kalmasapada Saudasa (Ibid, p.
209).
Similarly, there is no harm in believing that kings like
Pururavas, Bharata, Nahusha, Mandhatri, Ajamidha, etc.,
mentioned in the Rigveda might have been historical persons.
But we cannot associate them with the localities and dynasties
which are assigned to them in the Puranas. If they existed, they
must have reigned somewhere in the Punjab and in the early
Vedic or pre- Vedic period. Either there were kings in the
well-known dynasties who bore these names and were confused
by later writers with the earlier ones, or these names which had
become legendary in later times were put in the genealogies to
add to the glories of the dynasties by connecting them with
those famous heroes, as was often done in more modern genealogies*
"How those pedigrees have been elaborated, even at a
comparatively late date, by court poets who sought to magnify the
the ancient lineage of their lord, may sometimes be seen at a
glance. For example, in the genealogy of the Ikshakus of Kosala
the immediate predecessors of Prasenajit, the contemporary of
Buddha, are Sakya, Suddhodana, Siddhartha, and Rahula. That
is to say, the eponymous hero of Budda's clan, Buddha's father,
Buddha himself, and his son have all been incorporated in
the dynastic list of the kings of Kosala. 1 ' (Cam. Ind. Hist. L 0,306).
Even in historical times we find, for instance, one Vikramaditya
'9
M6 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
appropriating the stories of several kings of different times*
Moreover, Bloorafield in his Rigveda Repetitions (^634) warns
us against putting absolute trust on later traditions, as embodied
in books like Anukramanika, assigning such and such hymn to
such and such person, unless corroborated by internal evidences.
On the other hand, the Pauranic kings cannot all be called
mythical, the descriptions regarding some of them at least being
so realistic inspite of exaggerations.
One thing strikes me as important. It is about a century
after the Kurukshetra war that the "past" and its traditions are
dosed and the "future" begun. I agree with Mr. Pargiter that at
that time the qld traditions were collated and put in a definite form*
Formerly, perhaps, the traditions remained scattered in different
forms in the mouths of the Sutas or bards, and as the system of
writing was not in use, the genealogies often got confused, especially
with regard to the distant past, and were sometimes spurious. We
may believe that when the collection took place every effort was
made to critically examine the existing traditions. But still a good
deal of confused and false matters escaped detection and were
embodied in the collection. This collection then became
stereotyped, and was the principal source of later Epic and
Pauranic traditions. The false matters, along with the genuine,
thus obtained wide currency, and cannot be regarded as true
because of repetitions in different books, which are all inheritors
of the same stock.
The third theory of Mr. Pargiter is that the Ikshakusof
Ajodhya were a non- Aryan people and that Brahminism was first
an institution of the non-Aryans, which was adopted and modi-
fied .by the Aryans, The theory is impossible on the very face of
APPENDIX
it As regards the Ikshakus, what do the philologists, ethnologists
and tradition say ? According to Sir G. Grierson, the people of
Ajodhya stand nearer in relation to the people of the Gangetic
Doab, who, according to Mr. Pargiter, are descended of the pure
Aila stock, than the people of Behar, Bengal, Berar, the Punjab,
who are said to be descendants of the family of Pururavas.
According to Sir H. Risley, the people of Ajodhya betray less
non-Aryan characteristics than the people of eastern and southern
provinces. This is the more striking as, according to Mr,
Pargiter, the kingdom of Ajodhya was never subjugated by the
Ailas, and retained its greatness till the time of Ajatasatru and
Gautama Buddha, and even then the conquest was made not by
the pure Aryans of the Gangetic Doab but by the mixed Aryans
of Magadha. What does tradition say about the Ikshakus ?
Though Mr. Pargiter is such a vigorous champion of tradition
and seeks to build up his theory on tradition, he ignores all
traditions, Brahmin and Kshatriya, as regards the origin of the
Ikshakus. First, almost all traditions agree in making Ikshaku a
son and Pururavas a grandson of Manu, thus making them
related to each other, The only passage in the Rigveda where,
the word Ikshaku occurs indicates the relationship of Ikshaku
with the Purus, If we are to reject the common descent of the
Ikshakus and the Purus from Manu, how can we accept the
common descent of Puru, Yadu, Turvasha, Anu and Druhyu from
Yajati, who is as mythical or as historical as Vaivaswata Manu ?
Again, though tradition calls such Aryan kings as Madhu, Kamsa,
Jarasandha, etc. Danavas or non-Aryans, how many of the
Ikshaku kings are called by such names ? In the Rigveda we find
mention of many Dasyu kings and tribes, bat it is surprising that
MS THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
there should be no mention of the Ikshakus in that connection,
though hundreds of hymns were composed by the Vasisthas, who,
according to Mr. Pargiter, had been connected with them from
the beginning.
Mr. Pargiter seems to think that a vast mass of Pauranic
tradition relates to pre-Vedic history, and that the Rigveda is a
comparatively recent composition which contains many non-Aryan
ideas and institutions and even hymns disguised in Aryan garb.
The fact that those earliest Manva (non-Aryan) hymns appear
now in Sanskrit does not disprove their non-Aila origin, for
they would naturally have been Sanskritized in course of time,
as has been noticed above with regard to non-Aryan names"
(p. 313). Here, too, Mr. Pargiter ignores the almost unanimous
tradition that the Rigvedic hymns were among the earliest
creations of Brahma. With the exception of a few possibly later
hymns, it is admitted by European scholars as well as Indian
tradition that the hymns in general are of extreme antiquity, so
far as India is concerned, much earlier in point of time than the
so-called Treta age from which time the traditional history
begins. Even the solitary statement in the Puranas (Vayu 57,
3#; Bithmanda 11.29.43; Matsya 142, 4of), quoted by Mr.
Pargiter to show that the Rigveda was not one of the earliest
creations, more disproves than proves his conclusions. For it
is said there that the mantras or hymns were put together (not
composed) at the beginning of the Treta age. His attempts to
prove the comparatively recent age of the Rigveda mostly turn
on the question of the identity of the Rigvedic Sudas and the
North Panchala Sudis and of the correctness of the place assigned
to him is the genealogical tables, Unfortunately, when the pro-
APPENDIX 149
raises are more than doubtful the conclusions cannot be accepted
as true.
When it is stated that the In do- Aryans received the Brahmimcal
institution and even hymns from the conquered non-Aryans, it is
assumed that they adopted the principal religious rites also. It is
improbable that the Aryans retained their own religious rites,
but selected non-Aryan priests, and not only entrusted them with
the custody of their religion but made them the highest class in
society. So if they selected their priests from among non-Aryans it
mast be that they had accepted the creed of those people, the proper
practices of which were little known to them and which, therefore,
necessitated the services of non-Aryan priests. For the Indo-Aryans
to have received their creed and priesthood from the conquered
non- Aryans is by itself too big an assumption, especially when it is
known that the Indo- Aryan tongue and social institutions practically
ousted the non-Aryan in Northern India. Moreover, if the Indo-
Aryans had borrowed the Brahminical creed from the non-Aryans, '
the religious literature of the Indo-Aryans like the Vedas and the
Brahmanas must have contained a large percentage of non-Aryan
words and phrases. The Europeans in accepting Christianity have
absorbed a large number of Hebrew words in their literatures.*
Similarly, the Dravidians in Southern India have with the religion
borrowed a good many words of the Aryan language* The
Mahometans in India and elsewhere use good many Arabic words.
But it is strange that, though the Brahminical institution is said to
be a borrowed one and many of the hymns to have been composed
by non-Aryan priests, there are so few non-Aryan words even
in the earliest Sanskritized Brahminical literature, the Vedas,
Further, is the religion of the Rigveda so fundamentally different
150 THE ARYANISATION OF INDIA
from that of the IndoEuropeans, both in ideas and mythologies ?
'Which part of the Vedic religion can be called foreign to Aryan
genius ? Again, if the conquerors had adopted the creed of the
conquered, why are the latter called in the Rigveda "devoid of
religion," "without religion," "unsacrificing," and "godless" ? The
Vasisthas are regarded by Mr. Pargiter as the non- Aryan priests
to the Ikshaku kings, who joined the Alias when the latter had
conquered the greater par* of Northern India. "In fact, in the
Ganges- Jumna doab, the region specially occupied by the Alias, it
is not until Dusyanta's and Bharata's period that any brahman
became connected with them as priests" ( p. 310 ). And the
Vasistha family for the first time came into connection with the
Ailas in the time of Paijavana Sudas (p. 207). Now let us see
what we can learn about these Vasisthas from the Rigveda itself.
Practically the whole of the Vllth book of the Rigveda is the
composition of the Vasisthas. Though they are said to have
been connected with the Ikshaku family from the earliest times,
is it not surprising that in the whole book there is not a single
mention of the Ikshakus ? Again, if there can be traced any
difference as to creed between the so-called non-Aryan Vasistha
and Aryan Viswamitra of the time, it is that Vasistha is a special
worshipper of Varuna (Rig VII. 88), who is called his father (Rig
VIL 33.11), and Viswamitra of Agni, to whom alone about half
the number of hymns composed by the Viswamitra family are
addressed. Now if there be any god besides Dyaus in the Vedic
mythology who can claim to belong to the Indo-European period,
i.e. before the separation of the European and Indian branches
of the Aryan family, it is undoubtedly Varuna. Then though
himielfa non- Aryan, Vasistha utters bitterest imprecations against
APPENDIX 151
the Rakshas, a name which, as Mr. Pargiter knows, was given
in ._ii r~- __ y ii-ii _ i ii , -* -i -"'-- -C-^ r-_ i ^ ~~^^ f ^f~~**\*' Mn ~*^***<^>**^ f ^'**^^~>-" J
by the Indo-Aryans to non-Aryans (p. 290) and evil spirits, He
invokes Indra and Varuna to kill the Dasa enemies of Sudas. More*
over, in the hundreds of hymns addressed by the Vasistha family,
how many words and ideas are there which can be traced to non-
Aryan sources ? On the contrary, scholars like Max Muller regard
Vasistha as "the very type of the Arian Brahmin.' 1
It has been shown that at one time the Dravidians formed the
main population of Northern India before the coming of the
Aryans. If that be so, the non- Aryan Ikshakus must have been
either Dravidians or Mongolians, who might have shared lands
with the Dravidians. Now we know that Brahminism is not an
indigenous institution among either of these races, as can be seen
from the existing institutions of the survivors in the north and
south, or outside India. Of course, there were medicine men
among all savage races, but there was no Brahmin caste. If the
Brahminical institution had been a pre- Aryan one in India we
must expect to find its survival, even in a corrupt form, among one
or other of the various non- Aryan races of India. But unfortunate-
ly there is nothing of the sort, no Brahminical hierarchy, no Brah-
minical yajna or sacrifice. On the contrary, we find that the chief
enemies of the Brahminical institutions were the Dasas or Dasyus of
the Rigveda and Rakshasas of the Ramayana and the Puranas.
The chief argument of Mr. Pargiter is that the earliest Brahmin
families were all attached to non- Aryan courts, as the Vasisthas in
Ajodhya, Chyavanas in the Saryata country, the Usanas-Sukras at
the Daitya court, the Agastyas in the Deccan, and that the earliest
Aila kings had no priests, and were rather antagonistic to the
Brahmins (pp. 304-305). The first part of his argument stands
IS! THE ARYAOTSATION OF INDIA
only m the supposition that the Ikshakus and thcSaryatas were non-
Aryans, whkh has been proved to be untenable. The second part
is based on the traditional list of kings who were enemies of, and
were destroyed by, Brahmins. In this list are to be found Puru-
ravas and Nahusha, the first and third king of the Aila dynasty.
Bat ire they the only kings who were the enemies of the Brahmins?
In the list of such bad kings as given in Manu (VII. 41) we do not
come across the name of Pururavas, but we find the names of
Vena and Nimi along with Nahusha. Vena was of the race of
Airi (Harivamsa, V.), and Nimi was a son of Ikshaku, i.e. both ,
of them were, according to the classification of Mr* Pargiter, non-
Aryan. Another name is that of Sudas, who is called in Manu
the son of Pijavana, but who is really Kalmasapada Saudasa, an
Ikshaku king, who destroyed the sons of the priest Vasistha, Thus
it is seen that enmities with Brahmins were not a monopoly of the
Aila kings. Again, the Viswamitras are held to be of the Aila race,
How is it that long before the Aila kings came into connection
with Brahmin priests, which is stated to be in the time of Dusyanta,
a scion of the Aila family had become so Brahminised that he exer-
cised equal influence with their hereditary priests, the Vasisthas,
at the Ikshaku courts of Trisanku and Harischandra ?
I fully believe that Hinduism owes a large part of its substance
to Dravidian influences, and it is difficult to say whether in its
modern form it is more Dravidian than Aryan. I can concede
that some of the prevailing cults, of Phallic Siva, Radha-Krishna,
Ganesha, Naga, etc., betray strong Dravidian characteristics. But as
regards the Vedic religion one cannot believe that it is a Dravidian
creed, only modified by Aryan influences. Rather, the Vedic
institutions are Aryan in the main foundation, but absorbing more
and more Dravidian ideas and practices as the Aryans advance
more into the interior of the country. It is likely that in the
transformation of the Vedic religion into modern Hinduism the
original Aryan basis has been largely buried under non-Aryan
superstructure, but that is a different topic and has nothing to do
with Mr. Parptert hypothesis of the Dravidian origin of Vedic
Brahixunism*
INDEX
Abhimanyu, 50,
Acvini, 53,
Aeolic, 56.
Afghanistan, 16, 23, a6, 36, 66, 85.
I Africa, 20, 90.
\African, 10.
Agastya, 96, 151.
Agni, 76, 102, 150.
Ahura Mazda, 19, 134.
Aikshaka, 113,
Aila, 140, 147, 150-52.
Airyanavaejo, 19, 21, 134.
Aitareya Aranyaka, 43, 47, 54,
69.
Aitareya Brahmana, 50, 56, 68,
70, in.
Aja, 105, 107, 123.
Ajamidha, 145.
Ajatasatru, 126, 128, 147.
Alexander, 8, 42, 72, 135, 138.
Alinas, 104, 107.
Allahabad, 125, 140, 141.
Alpine, 9, 37, 38, 61.
Alwar, 104.
Amarakosha, 18.
/America, 5, 90.
\American, 5.
Amurtarayas, 115.
Ananda era, 94.
Anarsani, 105.
Anderida, 85.
Andhaka, 119.
Andhra, 59, 68, 69, 97, 100.
Anga, 34, 68, 70-2,91, 117, 123.
Anglo-Saxon, n, 85, 86, 88, 92-
Ami, 34, 35, 103, 107, 116-18,
143, 147-
Anuha, 52.
Anukramanika, 146.
Apaya, 102,
(Arab, 38, 138.
I Arabia, 38.
1 Arabian, 106, 135,
I Arabic, 4, 149.
20
Aranyaka, 44, 45, 48-50.
Aratta, 71.
Arctic, 19.
Aristanemi, 58, 59.
Arjuna, 50, 120-22, 143, See also
Kartavirya.
Armenian, 2.
Arsacidae, 39.
Artamanyu, 61.
Artatama, 60,
Arthasastra, 73,95, 119, 127.
Aruni Uddalaka, 126.
Arya, 66, 73-76, 140.
Aryan, 1-7, 9, 10-23, *5-3 2 34'
38, 57* 60-1, 64-5, 67-70,
72-4, 76-7. 79 81-4,89*
102, 105, 107,114-15,117,
124, 129-3!) 133-41) 43t
146-52.
Aryadharma, 74.
Aryavarta, 74, 113, 124.
Aryo-Dravidian, 30, 36.
Asandivanta, in.
f Asia, 58, 62, 63, 131.
\Asiatic, 23.
Asia Minor, 23, 61, 63.
Asikni, 66.
Asmaka or Assaka, 71, 72, 126.
Asoka, 38, 43, 44, 94, 99, 100.
f Assam, 82, 98, 142.
\Assamese, 28.
/Assyria, 61, 63.
lAssyrian, 60, 65,
Asura, 6.
Asurivasin, 81.
Asvalayana Srauta Sutra, 127.
Asvapati, 117.
Aswamedha, 127.
Atharvan, 12.
Atharvaveda, 50,68, 79, no, m,
137-
Athens, 127.
Atlantic, ao.
Atri, 152.
154
Attic, 56.
Aurva Bfaargava, 122.
Ausija Kakshivant, 81,
Australian, 4, 83.
Austrian, 144.
Avanti, 72, 121, 125, 126, 128.
A?esta, 5, 5S> 57.77- See also
Zend.
Avikshit, 122*
Ayodhya, 59, 123, 141, 144, 146,
147, 151. See also Oudh.
Ayu, 120.
Baal, 106.
(Baberu, 106.
< Babylon, 22, 60, 61, 63, 106.
(Babylonian, 22, 62, 65, 13*
Bahut 122.
BajiRao, 120.
Balaji Rao, 121.
Balbutha, 88.
Bali, 34, H7
Balkan, 22.
Baltic, 88.
Bana, 126.
Banara, 71, 96-
Barhadratha dynasty, 115,
Bainett, 33, 36.
Batin, 83.
Baudhayana, 70.
Beas, 66, 117.
(Behar, 34, 35, 67, 69, 70, 89,
1 93, 114, 117, 127, 142, 147.
(Behari, 28,
Bejoy Sinha, 72.
/Belgian, 4.
\Belgiura, 5*
Beluchistan, 26, 77, 138.
Benares, 67. See also Kasi.
Benfey, ,20.
Bengal, 33, 34, 67, 69, 70,72,82,
94, 98, 100, 117, 142, 147.
Bengalee, 94.
Bengali, 28, 78, 92-
Berar, 69, 70, 95, 97. "9> H7-
See also Vidarbha.
Berbers, 9.
Bhaga, 6.
Bhagavata Purana, 80, 84.
Bhagiratba, 141.
Bhalanases, 104, 107.
Bhandarkar, 79, 95, 97-
Bharadvaja, 106.
Bharadvajiyas, 39.
f Bharata, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108,
j no, 116, 125, 144, 145, 150.
(Bharata Dauhshanti, no, 143.
Bharatavarsha, 102.
Bharati, 102,
Bhargava, 52, 121, 122, 142.
Bhasa, 125.
Bhattoji Dikshit, 40.
Bhawalpur, 135.
Bheda, 107.
Bhils, 83, 84.
Bhima, 70, 144.
Bhimasena, 51, in.
Bhisma, 52, 144.
Bhoja, 95, 119, 121, 143.
Blanford, 23.
Bloomfield, in, 146.
Bogu, 6.
Bohemia, 22.
Bopp, i, 2.
Brahma, 74, 117, 148.
Brahmadatta, 52, 128, 144.
("Brahmana, 19, 31, 32, 44-51,531
54 5 6 6 7 7o 81, 92, 95,104,
108-10, 112, 114, 115, 118,
ii9) 149-
Biahmanic, 27, 35, 132.
[ Brahma nical, 68, 91.
Brahmanda Parana, 148.
Brahmaputra, 20.
Brahmarshidesha, 27, 30.
Brahmavarta, 27, 30.
Brahmi, 43, 44,
" Brahmin, 12, 43, 67, 70, 91, 92,
94,96-9, 108, in, 117, 121,
7> i47i IS 1 * IS**
Brahminical, 93, 94, 96, 98, 107,
. 108, 149, 151.
i Brahminism, 94, 981 114, 146,
| 151, 152.
Brahmo Samaj, 94.
INDEX
155
Brahui, 77. I
Bribu, 105, 106.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 51,
112, 126.
Brihadbala, 59.
Brihaddevata, 113.
Brihadratha, 115.
(Britain, 85, 86.
] British, 88.
(Briton, 85,
Broca, 4,
Buddha, 32, 42, 48, 72, 93, 106,
125-28, 145, 147. See also
Gautama,
f Buddhism, 42, 47, 57, 71, 93,
194^ 9&i 99'
Buddl
(Buddhist, 6, 42, 46, 48, 72, 99>
125.
Buhler, 43.
Burma, 82.
Cadwallon, 88.
Caldwell, 78, 80.
Cambay, Gulf of, 120, 123.
Caria, 42.
Caspian Steppes, 76.
/Caucasian, 8, 9.
\Caucasic, 37.
Caucasus, 21.
Celebes, 83.
fCelts, i, 10.
\Celtic, 2, 21, 32, 36, 37, 92.
Celto-Slav, 9, 61.
Centaurs, 6.
Central Asia, 2, 20-3, 26, 130,
J 33-
Central Provinces, 95.
Cerdic, 60,
Ceylon, 6, 72, 73, 83.
Chaitanya, 94.
Chakrayudha, 125.
Chambal, 142,
Chanakya, 94.
Chanda, 31, 32, 36, 84.
Chandala, 83.
Chandogya Upanishad, 78, na,
117.
Chandragupta, 73, 94.
Chavee, 10.
Chedi, 72, 89, 104, 113, 119, i3-
Chenab, 66, 103.
Cheras, 69.
Chester, 88.
/China, 131.
\Chinese, 4, 56.
Chitaldurg, 99.
ChitraL 26.
Chola, 41, 71, 72, zoo.
Chota Nagpur, 95.
Christian, 6.
Christian era, 79, 99.
Christianity, 149.
Chumuri, $05.
Chyavana, 52, 143, 151.
Comparative Ethnology, 2, 8,
Comparative Grammar, i.
Comparative Mythology, 5.
Comparative Philology, i,2,5 21 *
Comparative Sociology, 10.
Cophu, 25. See also Kabul and
Kubha.
Croesus, 43.
Cuno, 20,
Cutch, 71.
Cyrus, 43,
Dahae, 76.
Daitya, 151.
Danastuti, 104.
Danava, 147.
Danda, 120.
Dandaka, 95, 119.
Dandakaranya, 71.
Dane, 144.
Darius, 8, 42, 43, 44-
Das, Dr. Abinaschandra, 129-38.
Dasa or Dasyu, 16, 17, 73-7, 79>
81, 83, 86-9, 105, 132, 133,
I47> 151-
Dasaratha, 60, 123, 143.
Dasi, 87.
Dauhshanti Bharata, no, 143.
Deccan, 33, 35, 67, 69-71, 77-8,
9Si 99i i34 !4
Delhi, 31, 134.
INDEX
I&fage, 79:81, i37t 14'
De Michelis, xo,
De Mortillet, 10.
Deorham, 83,
Devakiputra Krishna, 81.
Devapi, 109,
Dharmapala, 125.
Dhvasan Dvaitavana, 112.
Dhritarastra, 50, 81, 115, 144.
Dhuni, 105.
Dilipa, 123.
Divodasa, 87, 106, 144.
Dneiper, 22.
Doab Gangetic, 16, 28, 121, 142,
147, 150.
Doric, 56.
Dravida, 81.
Dravidian, 5, 11, 34-7, 65, 76-84,
87, 92, 96-101, 121, 134, 137,
149, 151, 152.
Dribhika, 105.
Drishadvati, 27, 66, 102.
Druhyu, 103, 107, 116-18, 147.
Drupada, 52.
Durmukha, 112.
Dushyanta, 118, 150, 152.
Dvaitavana, 112. See also Dvasan.
Dwapara, 124.
Dwaraka, 123, 126.
Dyaus, 6-8, 64, 150.
/Egypt, 7, 61-3, 131."
\Egyptian, 7, 62, 63, 131.
Elysium, 18.
{England, 60.
English, 10, 11, 88, 92, 144.
Eocene, 131.
Eos, 6.
Epic, 9, 29, 34,96, 103, 104, i io f
113, 118, 120, 132, 135, 146.
Erinys, 5.
Ethiopian, ft.
Euphrates, 22, 60, 63.
Eurasian, 37.
(Europe,,*, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 17,
1 20, 22, 58, 61, 62, 133,
(European, 4, 5, 9-14, 23, 26, 79,
90, 129, i3
Feist, 10*
Fligier, 20.
fFrance, 10.
\French, 9.
Gairikshit Purukutsa, 81.
Galacia, 22.
Galchic, 37, 38,
Gallic, 10.
Gandak, 68.
(Gandhara, 25, 42, 43, 72, 117,
j 118, 142.
CGandharis, 68.
Gandharvas, 6.
Ganesha, 152.
'Ganges, 16, 25, 27, 30,' 31, 66,
67, 76, 81, 88, 92, 1 10, 123,
"5, 130, 141, 143, 150.
Gangetic, 16, 28, 30, 32, 33, 35,
81, 82,86, 87,91,94,97, 105,
120, 121, 130, 134, 141, 142,
147.
Gargya Balaki, 112.
Gauls, 7.
Gautama, 42, 47, 48, 72, 93, 125-
28, 147. See also Buddha.
Geiger, 20.
/German, i, 9,
(Germany, 10, 20.
Gifford Lectures, 54.
Giles, 20.
Gilghit, 26.
Godavery, 70, 71, 120, 143.
Goldstucker, 40, 42.
Gonds, 83, 84.
Gotama Rahugana, 113.
Goths, 63.
/Greece, i, 12, 55, 137.
\Greek, 1,2,5,6, 12,15,16, 25,
42. 43 55* 5 6 -
Green, J. R,, n.
Grierson, Sir George, 27, 31, 32,
38,87,98, 117, 142, 147.
Grimm, Jacob, 20.
Gujarat, 28, 31, 33, 35, 36, 70, 104,
Guptas, 32.
Haddon, 23, 35, 38.
Haihaya, ii9-3i X 4* 144-
INDEX
137
Hairanyanabha, 114. See also
Para Atnara,
Hakra, 135.
Hale, 20.
Hall, H. R., 60, 61.
Hamites, 9,
Hapta-Hendu, 19, See also
Sapta-Sindhava.
Harappa, 65, 80,
Harischandra, 143, 152,
Harivamsa, 152.
Harshacharita, 126.
Hastinapur, 109, 123, 125.
Haug, 56.
Havell, n.
Hebrew, 149,
Hehn, 10.
Helios, 6.
Hellenes, 137.
Heptarchic, 88.
Hercules, 73.
Hibbert Lectures, 7.
Hillebrandt, 76.
[Himalayas, 27, 66, 121, 138,
139, 141.
i Himalayan, 82, 139, 140.
Himavanta, 66.
indi, 78.
Hindus, 9, 10, 12, 13, 18,
Hinduism, 98, 152.
Hindukush, 18.
Hindustan, 28, 32.
Hindustani, 28.
Hirt, 20.
Hittites, 60, 61, 63.
Hiuen Tsang, 43.
Hoernle, A. F. R., 26, 27, 29-32,
87.
Homeric, 55.
Horn ro el, 3.
Huns, 63.
Hungary, 20.
Hydaspes, 138. See also Jhelum.
Hyksos, 62.
Iberians, 10.
Ida, 60.
Ikshaku, 58-60, 95, 113, 118-20,
124, 128, 143, 145-8, 150-2,
See also Aikshaka.
Ila, 140.
Ilibisha, 105.
India, 7-9, 11-20, 22,25-30, 32,
34-7, 4-4,57, 60, 65-7, 69-
73, 76-9, 81-2, 85, 91-100,
102, 1 1 8, 120,122,124, 126,
128, 129, 131, 138, 140-3,
148-5*.
Indian, i, 2, 4-7, 9, ii-T7 19,
39, 40, 61, 64, 73, 77 79 82,
103, 121, 129, i33-35 r 3 8
L 140* J 45 i4&i i5-
Indo-Aryan, 7, 16, 17, 19, 25,
28, 30, 31, 33, 38, 39 4* 49
57, 60, 64, 66-8, 70, 77i
78, 80, 84-91, 97, 99 i'
i t w *tj *T7 -*J--
Indo-European, 4, 12, 23, 61,
64, 77, 138, 150.
flndo-German, 4, 9, 10, 23.
\Indo-Germanic, 9, 14-
Indo-lranian, 65, 137, 138*
Indra, 6, 8, 18, 33, 50, 60, 64,
74-6, 79> 8 5, i5. !36, I37>i5 1-
Indralaya, 18.
Indus, 16, 25, 29, 30, 44, 66-8,
70, 71, 76, 80, 81, 86, 103,
118, 130, 134, 135, J 38i 141-
/Ionia, 42.
^Ionian, 42, 43.
f Iran, 22, 37, 38, 76, 97-
| Irania, 37.
i Iranian, 2, 6, 12, 15, 19, 21, 3 8
I 64, 79, 134-
[Iranic, 37, 38.
Irano-Dravidian, 37.
Islam, 93.
Iswaraputra, 73.
Italy, 6.
Jacobi, 47, 51.
Jagayyapeta, 95.
Jaimini, 52.
Jaiminiya Brahmana, 114.
Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana,
70.
156
INDEX
ainism, 93, 94* 9
amadagni, 108, 121.
amadagnya Rama, 52.
anaka, 126, 127.
anamejaya, 50-2, no-n, 124-3,
144 ' ^
arasandha, 147*
asadata, 61.
ayaswal, 39.
pur, 104.
helum, 66, 138.
I ones. Sir William, i, 2,
Jumna, 27, 31, 57, 66, 67, 76,
81, 88, 102, 103, 104, 107, 1 10,
119, 120, 123, 143, 150.
Jupiter, 6.
Jutland, ii.
Jyotisha, 53,
Kabul, 25, 26,66. See also Kubha,
Kachchha, 71.
Kaegi, S7-
Kakshivant Ausija, 81.
Kalara, 127.
Kali Age, 50, 58, 124.
Kaiinga, 34, 70-2, 9 r 9 2 97> JI 7
Kalmasapada Saudasa, 145, 152.
Kamboja, 72.
Kamsa, 128, 147.
Kanarese, 99.
Kanchi, 99, 100.
Kanouj, 115, 121, 122, 125.
Kanva, 59.
Kanyakubja, 115.
Kapila, 48.
Karala, 127.
Karandhama, 122.
Karikas, 39,41.
Kartavirya, 143, 144.
f Kashmir, 33, 66, 142.
\Kashmiri, 28.
KaAi, 3* 35 5 6 7> 69. 7
115, ii7i " I22 "
Kassite, 12, 60, 64.
Kami* 104.
Kathfcka Samhita, 40.
Kathasaritsagara, 40.
Kathiwar, 33, 70, 119.
Katyayana, 39-42, 72.
Kaurava, 52.
Kausarabi, 122, 125, 128.
Kaushitaki Brahmana, 19, 53,
108,112.
Kaushitaki Upanishad, 69.
Kautilya, 73, 94, 119, 125, 127.
Keane, 23, 35, 38.
Keith, 43, 46, 47, 49, So, 53 S4
106, 131.
Kekaya, 34, 117, 123.
Kerala, 41, 71, 72,
Kharosti, 44.
Khatti, 6 1. See also Hittite.
Kikata, 105.
Kirman, 23,
Kirtti or Krtvi, 52.
Kiskindhya, 96.
Kistna, 95, 99, 100.
Kosala, 31, 32, 59, 67, 68, 72,
89, 114-16, 128, 145.
Kossaeans, 60. See also Kassite.
Kossinna, 20.
Kraivya, 112.
Krishna, 58, 59, 73 7 6 &i, *S 2 -
Kritavirya, lai.
Krivi, 103, in, Ji2,
Krumu, 66.
Kshatriya, 91, 93, 94, 124, 147.
Kshemaka, 125.
Kubha, 25, 66. See also Kabul.
Kuhn, 5.
Kukura, 119.
Kurram, 66.
Kuru, 29, 31, 50, 69, 72, 102-4,
108-11, 113, 115, 118, 124,
125, 127, 128.
Kuru-Panchala, 35, 111-16, 118,
123, 124, 142.
Kuru-Pandavas, 50, 124,
Kurukshetra, 29, 50, 58, 59, 102,
124, 126, 146.
Kurusravana, 108.
Kusa, 115, 144.
Kusika, 106,
INDEX
Lahiri, Durgadas, 129,
Lassen, 15, 20.
Latin, 2, 6, 15, 16.
Lavana, 119.
Lemuria, So*
Lettic, 2.
Lichchhavis, 34, 127.
Ludhiana, 130.
Lunar family, 140.
Luschan, 38, 6 1.
Macdonell, 13, 43, 46, 50,80, 106.
Macedonian, 127.
Machha, 72.
Madhu, 119, 147.
Madhupura, 119.
Madhyadesha, 26, 67, 86, 91-3.
See also Midland.
Madraka, 34, 117.
Madura, 73.
Magadha, 32, 58, 59, 68-72, 9*-3>
115, 117, 123, 124, 126, 128,
147.
Magha, 53.
Mahabharata, 18, 27, 50, 69, 71,
84, 108, 109, 111-13, 128, 143
Mahapadma Nanda, 50, 58, 93.
f Maharastra, 33, 35, 95, 97 98,
< TOO, 119.
(Mahratta, 28, 35-8, 120-1, 142.
Mahavira, 58, 93.
Mahidasa Aitareya, 81.
Mahismati, 119.
Mahomedan, 6, 100, 149,
Maine, 11.
Maitrayaniy Samhita, 136.
Maitrayaniya Upanishad, 48.
Malavalli, 99.
Malaya, 81.
Malla, 72.
Malwa, 35, 36, 67, 119, 120, 143.
Mandhatri, 60, 120, 123, 145.
Mantra period, 48.
Manu, 18, 27, 80, 81, 140, 147.
Manusmriti, 74, 108, 143, 152.
Manva, 148.
Manyu, 75,
March, 92.
Marttikavata, 119.
Marut or Maryttas, 60.
Marutta, 118, 122.
Matachi, 78.
Mathava, 67, 68.
Mathura, 73,95, 104, 119.
Matsya, 31, 69, 80, 104, 112-14,
Matsya Purana, 81, 148.
Maurya, 32, 94, 98, 126.
Max Muller, i, 5, 20, 46, 49, 54,
55. IS*-
Medes, 61.
Mediterranean, 9, 63, 106.
Medo-Persian, 62.
Megasthenes, 73.
Meerut, 125.
Mercury, 7.
Meru, 1 8.
Mesopotamia, 61, 63, 140.
Midland, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34,
35, 1 1 7, 142. See also Ma-
dhyadesha.
Miocene, 130, 131, 133.
Mitanni, 60, 64.
Mithila, 123, 127.
Mitra, 6, 60, 64.
Mlechchha, 74i "8.
Mohenjo Daro, 65, 80,
Mommsen, 20.
(Mongol, 35.
^ Mongolian, 8, 10, 34, 35, 82,
( 83, 151-
Mongolo-Turki, 37.
Mon-Khmer, 36, 82.
Morgan, 65.
Moulton, 55.
Muchukunda, 120.
Mudgala, 144.
Muir, 3, 16, 81.
Mujavant, 68.
Munda, 36, 82, 83.
Mutibas, 68.
Myer, E M 23.
Naga, 30, 124, 125, 144, 152.
Nahusha, 115, 120, 145,
Nakshatras, 53.
Nala, 144*
INDEX
Kfcnda, 32, 39, 5<> S^ 93* 94. ** 8
Ifosaiyas, 6 t 60, 64.
fNegro, 4*
\Negroid, 8.
neo-Latin, 5,
Nepal, 128.
Nerbudda, 37, 66, 8x, 120, 121,
Nicbakshus, 125.
Nikayas, 71.
/Nimi, 113, 114, 152.
\Nimi Jataka, 127.
Nirukta, 46. See also Yaska.
Nishada, 83, 84, 90.
Noah, 80.
non-Aila, 148.
non-Aryan, 69, 71,74* &5 8 9'94
96, 141, 146,148-52.
non-Brahmin, 99.
non-Dravidian, 4, 9*.
Nordic, 9, 38.
Oldenberg, 106, 127.
Oligocene, 131.
Olympus, 137.
Oppert, 2.
Oraons, 84.
/Orissa, 34,69, 70, 117, 142.
\0riya, 28.
Oudh, 28,31, 32, 35, 67, 114,
120-4, 141, 143. See also
Ayodhya.
OXUS, 21.
Padmapravritakam, 40.
Padma Purana, 84.
Paijavana, 145. See also Sudas,
Paktbas, 104, 107.
Palestine, 61, 63.
PaH-Buddhist, 31.
Pallava, 99, 100.
Pancbajana, 143.
Pancbala, 31, 52, 69, 72, 89, 103,
108, 112, 114, 118, 143, 145,
148* See also Kuru-Panchala.
Pancbama, 84*
Panchavimsa Brahmana, 113.
Pandavas, 29, 50, 51, 109, in,
124, 144. See also Kuru-
Pandavas.
Pandya, 41, 71-3, 95.
Pani, 105, 106, 132.
Panik, 105.
Panini, 39-43, 46, 48, 54, 71, 72.
Panipat, 121.
Para Atnara, 81, 114.
Parasurama, 93, 121, 122.
Pargiter, F. E., 50, 52, 58, 59,
103, 121, 140-4, 146-8, I5O-2.
Paribbasbas, 41.
Parikshit, 50, 51, 110, in, 124,
127.
Parjanya, 6.
Parsees, 37.
Parsvanath, 59.
Parthia, 39.
Parushni or Ravi, 66, 103, 107.
Patanjali, 39, 40, 41.
Paula, 144.
Pauranic, 31, 34, 50, 84, 103,
104, no, 113-116, 118, 129,
135, 140, 143, 144, 146, 148.
Paurava, 58, 115, 119, 123, 142,
147-
Penka, 10, 20.
Perkunus, 6.
Persia, i, 5, 6, 13, 17, 21-3, 25,
36, 40, 56, 138, 140.
Persian, i, 2, 4, 5, 9, 13, 43, 44,
. 57, 13*-
Persian Gulf, 37, 63, 106.
Perunu, 6.
Peschel, 9.
Phalguni, 53.
/Phallic, 152.
\Phallus-worshipper, 79.
Phoenician, 3, 7, 106.
Pictet, 20.
Pijayana, 106, 143, 152.
Piscium, 53.
Pisbacha, 27, 38.
Posche, 10.
Pott, 20.
Pracheta, 118.
Pradyota, 59, 125, 126.
Prakrit, 99.
INDEX
161
Prasenajit, 128, 145*
Prasniputra, 81.
Pratardana, 122, 143.
Pratipa, 52, 109, in. .
Pratisthana, 140.
Prativindhya, 144,
Pravahana Jaivali, 112.
Pre- Aryan. 65, 151.
Pre-Drayidian, 36, 81-3.
Pre-Vedic, 64, 80, 145, 148.
Projapati, 136.
Prsata, 52.
Prussia, 124.
Pulindas, 68, 69.
Pundra, 34, 68, 69, 73, 91, 92,
117.
Punic, 1 06.
Punika, 126.
[Punjab, 16, 17,25-8, 30, 31* 33'
6, 57, 65-7, 69, 70, 71, 77, 80,
81, 85-7, 89, 90, 103, 117,
. 120, 130, 131, 133, 134 137,
I 138, 139, MI, 14*, H5, 147-
Punjabee, 91.
[Punjabese, 27, 87.
Purana, 50, 58-60, 69, 81, 84, 93,
94, 104, 109, in, 115-19, 124,
141, 143, 145, 148, 151. See
also Pauranic.
Puru, 102, 103, 106-8, no, 113,
116, 118, 144, 147. See also
Paurava.
Purukutsa, 60, 81, 107, 113, 144.
Pururavas, 115, 120, 140, 142,
MS, 147, i5*-
Radha-Krishna, 152.
Raghu, 123, 143.
Rahula, 145.
Rakhas or Rakshasas, 1 6, 30, 71,
77, 96, 132, 133, 151.
Rajasuya, 112.
Rajputana, 28, 35, 66, 119, 130,
134, i35 137-
Rama, 52, 96, 143.
Ramayana, 71, 117, 123, 124, 151
Rapson, 30, 38.
Rathaesthas, 38.
Rattikas or Rattas, 38.
Ravana, 96, 121.
Ravi, 66, 103. See also ParushnL
RayChoudhury,Prof. H. C*>$o 9 51,
Rhode, 20.
Rhys, 7, 20,
Rhys Davidas, 72.
'Rigveda, 18, 25, 30, 31,33,
45 5 1) 53-557,64, 66, 73-7,
79, 80, 85, 87-9, 102, 103,
8, 140-51-
Rigvedic, 46, 15, 16, 25, 27,
34, 35, 54, 55, 57, 64, 67, 79-
81, 86-88 102, 104, 105, 109,
129, 131, 132, 135, 142-4, 148.
Ristisena, 109,
Risley, Sir Herbert, 27, 28, 34,
36, 37, 82, 87, 97, 147.
Rohilkhund, 103.
f Roman, i, 2, 12, 63.
\Rome, i, 5, 12, 62,
Rudhikra, 105.
Russia, 20.
Rutot, 131.
Sabara, 68, 69.
Sabdaratnavali, 18,
Sadanira, 68.
Sagara, 122, 123, 143.
Sahadeva, 144.
Saka, 39, 40.
Sakabhoji, 40.
Sakadasa Bhaditayana, 40.
Sakaparthivadinam, 39.
Sakapriya, 40.
Sakya, 34, 59, 128, 145.
Sambara, 105, 106,
Samhita, 53, 54, 56, 109, no,
112, 119.
Samvarana, 103, 108,
Sandilya, 51.
Sanjiviputra, 81.
Sankhayana Srauta Sutra, 114.
Sankhya, 47, 48.
Sanskut, i, 2, 7, 13, 16, 20, 21,
39, 43. 44, 4S 7*
99, 105, Ui, 133,
162
INDEX
SanUnu, 109.
Stpta-Sindhava, 130, 134, 136,
138. See also Hapta-Hendu,
S&ranyu, 6,
Saraswati, 16, 27, 66, 67, 68, 81,
88, 102, 104, 116, 123, 134,
135. i37. I3 8 * 14*
Sam, 6,
Saryata, 121, 151, 152.
Sasabindu, 144,
Sastras, 129.
Satanika Satrajita, 115.
Satapatha Brahmana, 50, 51, 67,
80, 110-15, " 8 M * r 44
Satrughna, 119.
Satudru, 66, 106. See also Sutiej.
Satvatas, 119, 143.
Satyakama Jabala, 81.
Satyavati, 52.
Satyavrata Manu, 80.
Saudasa, 145, 152.
Saunagas, 39.
Sauvira, 34, 7o ?i "7
Sayana, 73, 136.
Sayce, 20, 21, 65,
Scandinavia, 20.
Schlegel, 14, 20.
Schleicher, 20.
Schleswig, n.
Scythian, 36.
Scytho-Dravidian, 36, 37.
Seligman, 38,
fSemites, 9, 61, 63, 8o
\Semitic, 3, 37, 43, 62.
Senart, 12.
Sergi, ^o.
Shepherds, 62. See also Hyksos.
Shu-king, 56.
Siddhartha, 145. See also Buddha
and Gautama,
Signis, 105, 107.
Simyu,88, 105.
1 33, 34, 65, 66, 70, 130,
66, 70, 71* 73>
Smehu, 6i
Sirhind, ^7, 29, 86.
Sisnadevab, 79.
Sisunagas, 32,
Siva, 8, 64, 152.
Sivas, 107.
Sivis, 34.
Skylax, 42.
fSiav, i.
\Slavonic, 2, 6.
Smith, Dr. V. A,, 34, 42.
Smriti, 44.
Soastos, 25. See alsoSuvastu.
Sol, 6.
Soma, 6, 138, 139.
Sona Satrasaha, 112,
Sramanas, 42.
Sribinda, 105.
Srinjaya, 103, 112, 144,
Srutasena, 51, in.
Sruti, 44.
Stein, Sir Aurel, 24,
Strabo, 23,
Subandu, 61.
Sudas, 81, 88, 106-8, 143-5, 148,
150^?.
Suddhodana, 145.
Sudra, 84, 90, 92-4, 99.
Sudraka, 40.
Suhma, 34, n7
Suka, 52.
Sumatra, 83.
Sumerian, 65, 80.
Surasena, 72, 104, 113, 114, 119,
123, 126.
Surastra, 70, 71, 123,
Surjya or Suria, 6, 60, 64.
Sutarna, 61.
Sutas, 146.
Sutiej, 66, 135, See also Satudru.
Sutra, 13, 40, 44, 46-9, 114, 127.
Suvastu, 25, 66, 142. See also
Swat
Suwardata, 61.
Svapnavasavadatta, 125*
Sveta, 144.
Swat, 25, 66, 142. See also Su-
vastu.
Syria, 61, 62, 63.
INDEX
163
Taittiriya Brahmana, 18,
Taittiriya Samhita, 108.
Takshasila or Taxila, 124.
Talajangha, 12 1.
/Tamil, 73. 9<5, 98, 99> m-
\Tamilian, 97-9.
Tamirmuni, 97.
Tantric, 93.
Tartar, 22.
Taylor, 3.
Teiegu, 69, 97, 99.
Teil-el-Amarna, 61.
Tertiary, 54, 130, 137.
/Teuton, 7, 10, 144.
\Teutonic, 2, 6, 9,
Thibet, 82.
Thor, 7.
Thunderer, 74.
Thurston, 82.
Thutmose, 63.
Tilak, 18, 19,20, 131, 137,
Tirthankara, 58.
Titikshu, 34, 117.
Tiu, 7.
Toalas, 83.
Tocharish, 23.
Traivrishna, 113.
Trasadasyu, 60, 107-9, 113, 144.
Treta Age, 120.
Trigarttas, 104.
Trikshi, 108.
Tripolje, 22.
. Trisanku, 152.
Trjta, 6.
Tritsu, 106.
Tryaruna, 60, 113.
Tukultininiv, 60.
Tundikera, 12 r.
Tura Kavasheya, 51* 81.
Turanian, 10, 133.
Turkestan, 24.
Turvasha, 33, 103, 104, 106, 107,
116, 1 1 8, 143, 147.
Udayana, 125, 126.
Uddalaka, 51, 126.
Ugrasena, 51, in.
Ujfalvy, 10.
[Jn-Vedic, 93.
LJpamasravas, 108.
Upanishad, 32, 44, 45, 47-51,
57, 78, 115, 117, 127,
Jranus, 6.
Jsanas-Sukra, 151.
Ushas, 6, 19, 64, 67.
Usinara, 31, 34, 69, 104, 117.
Uttarakuru, 18.
Vadhryasva, 144.
Vagadha, 69.
Vaichitravirya, 81, 115, See also
Dhritarastra.
Vaidya, C. V., 29.
Vaisali, 122, 127.
Vaisampayana, 52.
Vaisvanara, no.
Vaisya, 91.
Vaivaswata, 147.
/Vajji, 72, 128.
\Vajjian, 127.
Vala, 105, 106.
Vamsa, 72, 89.
Vamsa Brahmana, 40.
Vanga, 34, 69, 71-3, 91* 9 IJ 7
Varchin, 105.
Varttikas, 39-41.
Varuna, 6, 8, 150, 151.
Vasas, 31, 69.
Vasistha, 71, 107, 108, 133, 148,
150-2.
Vasu, 115, 119.
Vasudeva, 58.
/Vatsa, 122, 126, 128.
\Vatsaraj, 125.
[Vayu, 6.
Vayu Purana, 126, 148.
'Veda, 5, 6, 9, 13-16, 45, 56
iia, i29,j4fe^efijlso Rig
veda
INDEX
69, 70, 71, 95, "9.
, 113. See also Berar.
Videgh. Mathava, 113.
5, 67-9, 89, 113,
Vraiwtya, 145
Vindhyas, 27, 66, 67, 69, 96, 104,
134, *4* i43-
Vipasha, 66, 106. See also Beas.
Vishanins, 107.
/Vishnu, 8, 64.
\Vishnu Purana, 51, 109,
Vfewamitra, 68, 106-8, 150, 152.
yitasta,66.SeealsoJhelum.
Vitihotra, 121,
Titrahan, 6.
Vnttyas, 68.
Videnbwg, 23, 138.
Vrishni, 119, 126.
Wales, 9 2.
Warren, 10.
Weber, 109.
Whitney, 57.
Winternitz, 49, 57, 132.
Woden, 7.
Yadava, 73, 119, 123.
Yadu 33 35 97> 103, 104, 106,
107, 113, 116, 118, 119, 142-
4 147-
Yajati, 116, 120, 147.
|Yajnavalkya S i,52,i2 7 .
lYajnavalkyakanda, 51.
Yajurveda, 112.
Yakshu, 105, 107.
Yama, 6.
Yaska 46, 47, 54, 73 , 143 ,
Yaudheyas, 34, 117.
Yavanani, 42.
Yudhisthira, 29.
Yuvanasva, 120.
Zaborowski, 20.
JJarathustra or Zoroaster, 55.
Zend, 5, 16, 20, 21, See also
Avesta.
Zeus, 6, 137.
A few opinions on Prof. N, K. Dutt's
The Aryanisation of India.
EXTRACTS
Prof. E. Washburn Hopkins, Yale University, U. S. A.
"I have read with great pleasure and profit your very
admirable Aryanisation of India, a copy of which you were
good enough to send me last autumn. The chapter on
chronology is by far the best presentation of the
subject that I have seen, and your appendix on Dr. A. C.
Das's book is in itself a most valuable contribution to
sane scientific history. The whole book is in my opinion
a most excellent study and a great credit to Hindu
scholarship." (20.2.1926).
Prof, H. Jacob!, Bonn University, Germany. ''It is
very well written and gives all essential information
on the interesting and difficult problem. You state fairly
and exactly disputed points and decide them with sound
judgment. I make no doubt that your countrymen will
welcome your book as a trustworthy guide in a field of
research beset with so many difficulties." (10.10,1925),
Prof. Sten Konow, Oslo, Norway
"I have read it with the utmost interest, and I congratu-
late you on your achievement* Your views are sound
and your way of arguing scholarlike. I differ from you in
details, but I am quite convinced that your main line of
argument is unassailable." (21.1.1926).
Prof. A, Hillebrandt, Breslau University, Germany.-
"The subject has been treated by you in a manner which
will not fail to attract the attention of the reader, the more
so as no other work, as far as I know -exists that treats
this theme in its full extension/' (19,10.1925).
Prof. E. Rapson, Cambridge University, England
"The book is well written and well informed." (1.10,1925)
Dr. L D Barnett, British Museum, England
u lt seems to me a thoughtful and sensible survey of
the facts, and on several important points I am pleased to find
that your views agree with mine." (5.10.1925).
Prof. A. B. Keith, Edinburgh University, Scotland "It
is decidedly advantageous to have a statement of the issues
regarding the Aryan invasion set forth clearly and effec-
tively, and lam glad to note that you have exercised a sober
and independent judgment on the various issues. While
the theories of Dr. Das and Mr. Pargiter are doubtless unaccep-
table, it is interesting to have their defects exposed in your
Appendices, because statements left uncontradicted are apt
to mislead those who are not expert at the outset of their
studies and to lead them into false paths of investigation. 11
(*. 10. 1925).
Prof. J. Jolly, Warzburg University, Germany "Your
valuable work on the Aryanisation of India has been duly
received and it seems to be very useful, as it contains a
critical examination of all the various theories concerning
the immigration of the Aryans into India. The nature of
Aryan colonisation and of the Dravidian element of Indian
culture has been carefully analysed The political history
of the country has been traced back to the Vedas. The
copious Index shows what a large field has been
covered by your researches as contained in this volume. 1 '
(6. 10. 1925).
Prof. M. Winternitz, Prague University, Czechoslovakia
"I am greatly obliged to you for your kindness in sending
me your interesting book on the Aryanisation of India. I
agree tfith you on most points, especially in. your criticisms of
Dr. Das's Rigvedic India and of Mr. Pargiter's theories in the
Appendix. Of course, there is still much in these questions
that must remain doubtful." (20. xo. 1925)
Prof. M. Bioomfield, Johns Hopkins University, U.&A.
"Fine book.' 1
M The Minister wishes to thnk YOU for bringing to bis
> ;' ^n", -v;; fj>- tf/>r / ?"V v t > t /') ; "''i%C* ;*' '^* r
notice most interesting information on a topic about
wiiich cortiparHt^eiy very Ht'rle is known at present, fife i
ttat your book will create gret
ly i-eid even in South Africa."
H, E. Stapleton, Esq., Offg. Director of Bufcite
tion, Bengal
"...your extremely interesting and
book 'The Ary^nisation of India/ I onl^ >yish metre qf5ors,
in the pepartment woi\l<l devote their leisure to producing r
both scholarly a,nd rea,4a,bl^ books such as yours is."
(29.9.216)
Principal A- C. Wooinier, Deanqf the Un,iversky,of
the Panjab
"it seems to ma a cle&r and rr^oderatQ statement o the
main problems and a quite possible narrative." (261.4.27)
Dr. G. N- ChakraTartji, Vice-Chancellor of the University
of LucknoW;
"It bears marks of scholarship and research " (i i-9- 2 ^)
S- Stiltaq Ahmed, Esq., Vice-Chancellbr,
sity
< ( {t contains thoughtful and critical examination
of. various theories regarding th(3 immigration of the Aryans into
India. I canaqt help cqn^ratukting you upon the manner in
whiph you have, treated your subject and the schrjiairiiifc
HiflLnner in which yo^ ha?e pressed yowt>pont8 arid ^he l^abct-
manner ic \vhjch you have criticised ;the various ^h^k)ries from ^
whicn you h^ve differed. The book is exceedingly itrtis^st-.
ing and I am sure it will be Utefui tCr Schdiart ks Wffll ^
students."
Bengal-
* it fc iatisfactpry to note that the college statf made
two valuable contributions to learning. Principal
Kamsbotbam's Studies in the Land Revenue History of Bengal,
*7$9T-*? *ad Profe&sor N. K. Dutt's Aryan! sation of India
are clear evidence that scholarship can flourish in a mofussil
college as well as in Calcutta." (Report on Public Instruction
in Bengal, 192536)
Director of Public Instruction, Madras
"The Director desires to bring the book ' Aryanisation of
India' by Professor N. K, Dutt, tlughly College, to the notice
of the Principals of First Grade Arts Colleges and to state that
it is deserving of a place in the college libraries." (Dis,
No. 1052/27 dated xath March 1927).
" Director of Public Instruction, Central Provinces
"Sanctioned for use as a Prize and Library book," (Order
No. 488, Nagpur, the 24th January 1927)
Times Literary Supplement, London
" he has done to rehabilitate, so far as he can,
the orthodox theories of Aryan civilization in India, He
rejects Dr. Giles's suggestion of the Aryan hoaie in Mid-Europe
and Mr. Tjlak's theory of an Arctic home ; he will have none
of Mr, Pargiter's contention that the Aryans came into India
by the mid-Himalayan route ; he demolishes Dr. Das's
patriotic idea that the Aryans were indigenous in the Punjab,
that the Vedic period goes back twenty centuries (?)or
more before Christ and that the Dasyus were a more uncivilised
asption ot Aryans .... Mr, Dutt's most interesting
chapters deal with the Dasyus and with the nature of
Aryan civili$uion...and he distinguishes very clearly
the differences in the Aryan colonizing influence in the
Pjjpjab, in ,the M*tdhyadesa oc Central India, in Eastern
India, and in the Deccton. The book is useful , - , and -
U well -reasoned." (22,4.26;
Prof. Jarl Charpentier, University of Upsala.
In The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London,
Jan., 1927
* 'This book of Professor Dutt deals with a problem
which ever fascinates us ; partly, perhaps, because in our
inmost heart we feel convinced that it can never wholly
be solved. Let us say, at once, that Professor Dutt has
made a good start, and that his theories seem to us, as
a whole, to be quite reasonable. The present writer
himself has had reason to suggest that the date of Panini
falls about 500 B.C. ; and the much-misused Yavanani
argument proves nothing to the contrary, . .
Journal de Geneve
**.... En presentant son ouvrage. M. N. K. Dutt
rntend moms se prononcer que fournir la base chrono-
logique et geographique a 1'histoire politique de 1* Inde
aux epoques vedique et epique. Par la meme occasion il
sort de la masse litteraire assez confuse le developpement
de la conquete aryenne. II reste entendu qu'il ne le
rend que conditionnellement puisque, encore un coup,
des travaux archeologiques et Htteraires sur les anciens
Dravidiens font totalement defaut. Avec lui on suit avec
facilite la theorie aryenne. 1' invasion, sa date. 1* expan-
sion dans la peninsula hindoue. la nature de la colonisa-
tion. I'etablissement des tribus et la formation des
royaumes. * * (1 6-4-26)
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesells-
chaft, Leipzig, 1927-
"Ein flei jSiger kompilator, der sogar deutsehe
Gelehrte wie Feist, Hirt, Ed. Meyer anzufiihren wei&
und dem zugut gerechnet werden soli, da/J er vor
kritikloser Benutzung der Epen als Oeschichtsquellen
warnt, gegen Pargiter's auf den Puranas aufgefiihrtes
Hypothesengebaude angeht und seinen phantasievollen
Landsmann Abinas Chandra Das abtut, der die altesten
Rigveda Hymnen vorsintflutlicher Weise ins Miocan
verlegt (also noch vor J. G. Andersson's neuen Homo
primigenius Pekinensis). Anderwarts fehlt es freiiich an
Rritik und die neueste Mode, Sumerer und Draviden in
einen Topf zu werfen, wird frohlich mitgemacht. ..."
Hi* Statettnan, Calcutta (29-5- 1 927>~
The author ha* tried to present within a short compass a
chronological and geographical framework of the political history of
India during the Vedic and Pauranic periods and along with it an
account of the Aryan conquest. The book is in seven chapters,
and in the first one die author has intelligently discussed the com-
parative philology, mythology, ethnology and sociology of the Aryans.
Nest he has critically examined the different theories regarding the
Aryan invasion, and subsequently dealt with the nature of Aryan
colonization. Readers will find the chapter on colonization interest-
ing and the author's research regarding the tribes and kingdoms of
Rigveda beginning with Bharat and ending with Santami will appeal
to those who want a glimpse of the early history of India. The
development of tribes and kingdoms in India in later days has been
traced with skill. In the appendix the author has rather timidly con-
tradicted the theory of the old Pundits, which in recent days has
been so enthusiastically preached by Dr. Abinas Chandra Das, that
the home of the Aryans has always been in India. Scholars of the
West have always repudiated this theory, and it is not too much to
say that it has been rejected by antiquarians of all descriptions almost
unanimously. It is abundantly clear that the young author has studied
the subject thoroughly, and the book will prove to be a most valuable
addition to the antiquarian literature of India.
The Englishman, Calcutta (8-8-1927)
The book under review is a complete thesis on the history of
Aryan immigration into India, the different stages in the diffusion
of Aryan culture in the different parts of the country and the
political history of India from the Rig- Vedic times to the rise of
Buddhism. It is an attempt to construct history out of the Pauranik
materials and the author has succeeded in presenting a systematic
and connected account of the whole period based on a workable
chronological arrangement. He has also proved his ability in clipping
or demolishing other theories and in making original contributions.
The chief merit of the book is that it is suitable not only to
the most advanced scholars who may gain new light upon many
hitherto obscure points but to the ordinary students of ancient Indian
history. The attempt to harmonise Vedic tradition with Pauranik
in the matter of political history, the tracing of the Mahratta race
to Iranian origin, the finding of the dates of the Vedic kings like
Purukutsa and Trasadasyu, the observations upon the story of the
deluge and the untouchable castes, are some of the contributions to
Indian history worth reading. The author's thorough grasp of the
subject and nis refreshing style have made the book, though full of
controversial matter, very delightful reading. The chapter on chrono-
logy is particularly interesting and reveals the constructive ability of
the author. The author while dealing with such an abstruse subject
has not sacrified clarity and charm and there is no gainsaying the
fact mat it has been a valuable contribution to learning and a work
of great scholarship.