This is the title of an article covering pp. 195-265 of Studia Orientalia, vol. 64, Helsinki, 1988. As soon as I heard of the thesis I wrote to its celebrated author, some of whose views expressed elsewhere I had already discussed. I requested an offprint. He was kind enough to post it at once. It was graciously inscribed "With best regards" and signed with his name. I thanked him for the personal touch as well as for the prompt dispatch, but while greatly appreciating his paper 1-hinted that with a different attitude to the same materials one might come to conclusions not quite the same as his. The article laid before me fascinating information of various kinds. Here is a remarkable piece of original research, a wide-sweeping scholarly synthesis of all the data appearing to bear at present on the theme. The most interesting, unexpected and significant of them are the latest archaeological findings in what Parpola terms 'Greater Iran' because the area concerned includes parts of Iran and most of the Iranian plateau.

The claim for Aryan entry in Baluchistan and Sind

Let us first, without passing any judgment, look at the picture presented by Parpola. French work and extensive Soviet excavations have brought to light in Greater Iran "a long continuous belt of many sites sharing a fairly uniform

* In finalizing this Supplement I have received very valuable help from my friend Richard Hartz, an expert Sanskritist and a keen as well as meticulous mind, from the Archives and Research Department of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.

Page 204

culture at the end of the third millennium B.C."¹ Parpola²calls it "the bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" or simply "Namazga V culture" after an important site which is representative of all the others. The people of the Namazga V phase have been conclusively proved by French archaeologists under the lead of Jean-François Jarrige to have colonized around 2000-1900 B.C. the Bolan Pass leading from Baluchistan to the Kachi plain in the southern Indus valley,³ Among the diverse traits of the Namazga V phase "the number of weapons is conspicuous and there is evidence for horse and chariots, for transport of the entire cultural complex including intrusive necropoles, and for richly furnished aristocratic burials."⁴ As a result, "there is fair unanimity," says Parpola,⁵ "that 'Greater Iran' was in the Namazga V period controlled by a seminomadic military elite." Five golden and two silvery trumpets among the finds further confirm that the ruling class was engaged in chariot warfare.⁶ "The trumpet with its far-reaching sound was indispensable in directing horse-drawn chariots during battles. It was used also in training horses."⁷ As horse-drawn chariotry is the typical sign of the Aryans, the people who from Greater Iran colonized the Bolan Pass were Aryans.

So we have the arrival of Aryans in Baluchistan around 2000-1900 B.C. This means that the Namazga V phase "flourished, in part, simultaneously with the Indus civilization, and there is evidence of some contact between the two even during the third millennium".⁸ Through the Bolan Pass these people moved further east. The site of Pirak in the Kachi plain in Pakistan "from c. 1800 B.C. testifies to the rapid diffusion of the horse and the two-humped Bactrian camel in northwest India during the first quarter of the second millennium B.C. These animals brought about a major change in the economy of the area. It is obvious that

1.P. 203. 5. Ibid.

2.Ibid. 6. P. 206.

3.P. 202. 7. Ibid.

4.P. 204. 8. P. 204.

Page 205

Sind served as a channel through which immigrants representing the Namazga V and shortly thereafter also the Namazga VI culture continued to other parts of the Indian subcontinent."⁹

Who were the Dāsas of the Rigveda?

In characterising these immigrants comes the startling originality of Parpola's picture. According to him, they are the people we know of through the Rigveda as the enemies of the Aryans: the Dāsa-Dasyus of whom the Panis are one sect. These enemies, in Parpola's exposition, are neither the pastoral Dravidian aborigines they were once thought to be with their small palisades termed 'forts' in the Rigveda, nor the urban inhabitants of the Indus Civilization whom Wheeler and some others took to be the targets of the Rigvedic Aryans who repeatedly speak of attacking mighty forts - actually, in this perspective, the fortified Harappan cities like Mohenjo-daro. Parpola¹⁰ explains:

In Old Iranian, Proto-Aryan s has become h. In old Persian an ethnic name Doha- is attested, also as a proper noun in the administrative tablets found at Persepolis; the masculine plural is used as the name of a province of the Persian empire, placed before the similarly used name of the Sakas in a Persepolis inscription of Xerxes (h 26). In the Greek sources Herodotus (1,125) is the first to mention the people called Dáoi, as a nomadic tribe of the Persians. More accurate information on them, however, is delivered by Alexander's historians. According to Q. Curtius Rufus (8,3) and Ptolemy's Geography (6,10,2), the Dahas lived on the lower course of the river Margos (modern Murghab) or in the northern steppe area of Margiana. Pomponius Mela (3,42), based on Eratosthenes, tells that the great bend of the river Oxus towards the

9. P. 206.

10. Pp. 220-21.

Page 206

northwest begins near the Dahas (iuxta Dahas), Tacitus (Ann. 11,10) places the Dahae on the northern border of Areia, mentioning the river Sindes (modern Tejend) as the border. These placements agree neatly with that of Namazga V culture of Margiana and Bactria [in greater Iran].

The Dāsas of Rigvedic nomenclature are for Parpola the Dahas, and "Sanskrit dasyu- corresponds to Old Iranian dahyu- iand, (administrative) province, district (of a province)'",¹¹ obviously turned by the Rigveda into a tribal designation.

The Panis are to Parpola¹² the Párnoi said by Strabo (11,9,2), again one of Alexander's historians, to have belonged to the Da(h)as. They are reported to have lived previously in Margiana, from where they founded the Arsacid empire of Parthia. Parpola¹³ elaborates:

The Greek form of the name, Párnos< (from Iranian *Parna-), corresponds to Sanskrit Pani-, if it is assumed to be a "Prakritic" development of the reduced grade form *Prni-. The full grade seems to be found in the name Parṇáya- attested as an enemy of the king (Divodāsa) Atithigva in R[gveda] S[aṁhitā] 1,53,8 and 10,48,8. These names may go back to the same Aryan verbal root as the name of the Dāsa king Pipru, namely pr- (present piparti, prnāti) 'to bring over, rescue, protect, excel, be able'. The ar:r variation reflects a dialectal difference within Indo-Iranian.

Parpola adds:

Some other proper names of the Dāsa chiefs are also clearly of Aryan origin, for example Varcin- 'possessed of

11.P. 222.

12.P. 223.

13.P. 224.

Page 207

(vital) power' (cf. RS varcás = Avestan varǝčah 'vital power').

Parpola concludes:

The etymologies of the names used by the Rgvedic Aryans of their enemies thus speak for their above suggested identification with the carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, and for the proposal that these were speakers of an Aryan language.

Hence, in Parpola's eyes, the ethnic identity of the Rigvedics' enemies is completely different from what it was formerly believed to be. Nor is this the only novelty he offers. But at the moment we shall not dwell on the subject. We shall just touch on his identification of the Rigvedics themselves.

The Rigvedics in the new perspective

Parpola writes: "As far as the Vedic Aryans are concerned, Sind is definitely a peripheral area, though the Vedic texts do refer to Sindhu as producing excellent horses. This fully agrees with the archaeological evidence, which is important in confirming the arrival of horsemen from the northern steppes c. 1800 B.C. ... The horsemen of Pirak constitute the earliest evidence for the use of the horse in the Indian subcontinent."¹⁴

Parpola's historical reconstruction implies "two separate early waves of Aryan speakers in Greater Iran and in India.... The Aryans of the earlier wave including the Dāsas could be called 'proto-South Aryans'. Since the Rgveda clearly states that the Dāsas did not offer Soma (<*Sauma), the main cultic drink of the Vedic and (as Haoma <*Sauma) the Zarathustrian ritual, the Aryans of the second wave

14. Pp. 238-39.

Page 208

which brought the Soma religion to Iran can be called 'Sauma Aryans'."¹⁵

Here comes the role of the Andronovo culture which "came into being in the southern Urals" and "in the course of the second millennium spread over vast areas of the Eurasian steppes". How it connects with the Sauma Aryans we can gather from two subsequent passages:¹⁶

An important hint to the origin of the Sauma Aryans and their route of advance is supplied by the fact that [in the words of Gershevitch] "there was an Iranian people, additional to the Avestan, whom the Persians knew to be devoted to Hauma. These were the Saka nomads whose name is given as Haumawarga in inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. There is at present virtual agreement among scholars ... that the territories of the Haumawarga Sakas extended from Tashkent to the Alei valley, including Ferghana as centre-piece." This is well in agreement with the hypothesis that the Sauma Aryans were Andronovo nomads.

The old hypothesis that the carriers of the Andronovo culture were ancestors of the later Iranians and Indo-Aryans is endorsed by many Soviet archaeologists. In recent years they have been arguing that the immigrants from the northern steppes were a partial cause of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization of Greater Iran, and that they represented the arrival of the Aryans associated with the Rgveda and the A vest a. Deriving the Andronovo culture from the early Timber Grave culture [which evolved around 2000 B.C. in the south Russian steppes], they stress that these two cultures cover an area full of toponyms of Aryan etymology.

We may quote a few other remarks of Parpola's to bring more precision to his chronology:¹⁷

15. P. 230.

16. P. 232.

17. P. 236.

Page 209

The Rgvedic language is connected with Old Iranian by some philological and morphological innovations, and the Rgveda also shares with the Avesta a number of identical phrases. Moreover, the Rgvedic Aryans called themselves "Aryas", as did the Avestan, Median and Old Persian speakers and at least a part of the "Iranian" speaking steppe nomads (the Ossetes of Transcaucasia). The Rgvedic Aryans, the pre-Zarathustrian Aryans and the Mitanni Aryans, therefore, should all belong to the same hypothetical first wave of Proto-Andronovo immigrants that are supposed to have submerged the late Namazga V culture; in their language the Iranian change s > h had not yet taken place.

Very recent archaeological discoveries from Margiana now enable us to view the situation from a new perspective. A huge rectangular building complex 130 x 100 m. excavated at Togolok-21 has been identified, undoubtedly correctly, as a temple "used by proto-Zoroastrians whose religious beliefs and rites became (in changed form) part of official Zoroastrianism" [in the words of Sarianidi]. The most spectacular discovery at Togolok-21 is the earliest evidence of Haoma cult. The old problem concerning the original identity of the plant called in Avesta Haoma and in the Rgveda Soma was ably reviewed in 1987 by Harry Falk, who convincingly opted for the identification with Ephedra [from the Moscow State University's Prof. N. Meir-Melikyan's examination of microscopic twigs contained in a row of vessels placed inside special brick platforms].

Parpola refers to the oath in the Mitanni document, dated to c. 1380 B.C., which mentions Vedic deities and he¹⁸ says that it "suggests that the decisive thrust of the Sauma Aryans took place in the 16th century at the latest". Such a date bringing "the Mitanni Aryans" to Mesopotamia leaves

18. P. 232.

Page 210

room for their companion tribes to reach from the direction of the Russian steppes first the Namazga V culture in Greater Iran and then the Swat valley in Afghanistan and finally India in approximate consonance with the upper limit of the time-bracket generally favoured: "Most authorities ... place the Rgveda between 1500 and 1000 B.C."¹⁹

Further precision to Parpola's vision may be brought from some other words of his:

The temple of Togolok-21 provides a most precious temporal and cultural indicator for the coming of the Sauma Aryans by testifying that their fusion with the Dāsas took place between the late Namazga V and the late Namazga VI periods. This means that their arrival more or less coincided with the beginning of the Namazga VI period around 1800 B.C. This agrees very well with the fact that the relations of Margiana and Bactria with Syria developed in the 18th century B.C., while the Proto-Indo-Aryan' dynasty of Mitanni dates at least from the 16th century B.C. The Rgvedic hymns in their turn suggest that part of the Sauma Aryans did not stop in Margiana and Bactria, but continued immediately to northwest India. Such a short stay would well account for why the cultural assemblage of the Ghalegay IV period in Swat (c. 18th to 15th centuries B.C.) resembles that of Dashly in Afghanistan, but is not identical with it.

The valley of Swat occupies a strategic position in the archaeological identification of the early Rgvedic Aryans, because they must have passed through this area. This is clearly implied by the occurrence of the name of the Kabul river and its tributaries in the Rgveda....²⁰

The Ghalegay IV-V periods in Swat are chalcolothic, except for a little iron towards the end. This tallies with the textual evidence, for references to iron are hard to find in the Rgveda, while the black metal was known to the

19.P. 198.

20.Pp. 240-41.

Page 211

Atharvaveda (11,3,7). Inhumation and cremation occur side by side, as in the Rgveda. The Vedic texts of the later period speak of an earthen vessel, into which the bones of the dead were collected after the cremation. A link from the Ghalegay V culture to the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) is supplied by the urns with perforations near the neck (resembling the eyes and the mouth of the Ghalegay V 'face-urns') in the PGW layers of Ahicchatra and of Ghalegay V type terracotta human figurines in the PGW layer of Jakheran, U.P.

Thus the archaeological evidence allows the hypothesis that Rgvedic Aryans started moving from Swat to the plains of Punjab during the latter half of the Ghalegay IV period, c. 1600-1400 B.C., and continued during the following Ghalegay V period. After this, the northwest developed in relative isolation, losing its contacts with the late Vedic culture of the plains, associated with the early PGW.²¹

A caution against Parpola's time-gauge for the Rigvedics

Now we have - minus several interesting but subordinate details, linguistic and archaeological, with which Parpola enriches his case - his broad picture of the Aryans in general and the Rigvedics in particular invading India. To make an assessment of it we shall have to bring in some further points that he makes. But before doing so let me essay one short cautionary remark.

Parpola has spoken of 'the Mitanni Aryans' along with those whom he enumerates as having called themselves 'Aryas'. But the fact is that neither in the document which is a treaty, nor in another document known as Kikkuli's manual of training chariot-horses, both of which have been found to have an affinity to the Rigvedic language and

21. P. 248.

Page 212

culture, is there, as B.B. Lal²² noted long ago, "any reference to the name of the concerned people". The Mitan-nians do not call themselves 'Aryas'.

A second fact is a strange imbalance in the very formula of the Mitannians which introduces in Rigvedic language the Rigvedic religion. The formula runs: "Mitra-Varuṇa, Indra, Nāsatyā." Compare it with the Rigvedic phrase to which Parpola,²³ without quoting it, directs us, saying that these deities "are all mentioned together in Rgveda 10,125,1". The phrase is "Mitra-Varuṇa, Indra-Agni, Aśvinā", in which "Aśvinā" is equivalent to "Nasatya". Parpola fails to note that the dvandva, the dual form, in which Agni accompanies Indra just as Varuṇa accompanies Mitra, is missing in the Mitanni formula. Evidently, Agni is not a Mitanni god whereas in the Rigveda he is the one most frequently hymned after Indra. Nor is that particular dvan-dva a freakish occurrence: it is a very prominent expression in the Rigveda. Whole hymns are devoted to Indra-Agni: e.g., 1,21 and 108; 5,86; 6,59 and 60; 7,93 and 94; 8,38 -besides the expression coming in hymns otherwise dedicated, as it does in 10,125. In view of the dissimilarity between the Mitanni formula and the Rigvedic, as well as because of the absence of the name 'Arya' for the people in both the treaty and Kikkuli's book, it may not at all be safe to take c. 1380 B.C. as a time-gauge for the Rigveda's epoch.

There is also the fact mentioned by Parpola:²⁴ "The Indo-Aryan deities ... are invoked after 104 other deities at the end of a Mitannian treaty." Obviously, the Mitannian ruler gave prime importance to those numerous non-Aryan gods and the Agni-lacking Aryan ones formed just the fag-end of

22."The IndoAryan hypothesis vis-à-vis Indian archaeology", cyclo-styled copy of the paper read at the Seminar on "Ethnic problems of the early history of the peoples of Central Asia and India in the second millennium B.C.", held at Dushanbe (USSR) from 17 to 22 October, 1977, p. 7.

23.P. 198.

24.Ibid.

Page 213

his religious commitments. This is indeed a far cry from the mentality of the Rigveda. It is as if two different widely removed epochs were involved.

Another fact of high significance is a linguistic one. Dr. Satya Swarup Mishra, Head, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, at Banaras Hindu University, writes to me about the words in the Mitanni documents: "These words were first of all taken as Indo-Iranian. Then the western scholars themselves decided that they were Old Indo-Aryan and not Indo-Iranian. But I have shown that these words show the linguistic change of a very early Middle Indo-Aryan type. The assimilation of pt [of Sanskrit sapta] to tt in satta-vartana [in Kikkuli], the change of v to b in several words are some of the important Middle-Indic features in these loan words." Surely such features set a big gap between the epoch of the Rigveda and that of the Mitanni documents. Middle-Indic is substantially distant in time from the Rigveda's Sanskrit.

An inconsistency about the horse

Before we arrive at some idea of the Rigvedic epoch I should like to dwell a little more on Parpola's account of the Namazga V people in India. Their "arrival... seems to have disrupted the political and cultural unity of the Indus valley soon after 2000 B.C. The urban system of the Harappans and the processes of city life, such as centralized government with the collection of taxes and organization of trade, ceased to function. The thousands of countryside villages, however, persisted. In peripheral regions, especially in Gujerat, mature Harappan traits, mixed with new elements, lingered longer, until 1750 B.C. The newcomers did not stop in the Harappan area, however, but pushed on further into the Deccan and towards the Gangetic valley."²⁵

Then Parpola refers to - among some other cultures - the Rajasthani chalcolithic culture of the Banas valley, c. 1800

25. P. 206.

Page 214

B.C. and the Malwa culture of Navdatoli I-II in the Deccan, dated to c. 1700-1400 B.C. These cultures "have produced bowls ('wine-cups'), channel-spouted cups and other ceramics as well as copper objects resembling those of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran. The Malwa culture evolved into the 'Jorwe culture' (c. 1400-1100 B.C.). From a Jorwe stratum at Daimabad in Maharashtra comes a cylinder seal with a horse motif. I am now inclined to think that in Rajasthan, Gujerat and the Deccan the originally Aryan-speaking nomads of Namazga V-VI derivation fairly soon adopted the local language, namely, the Proto-Dravidian, derived from the Harappan language spoken in this southern extension of the Indus civilization."²⁶

Here is Parpola's second allusion in his new article to his own theory that the Harappans spoke a proto-Dravidian language. His first allusion comes near the start of the article:²⁷

A major reason against assuming that the Harappans spoke an Indo-European language is that the horse is not represented among the many realistically depicted animals of the Harappan seals and figurines. Comprehensive bone analyses by one of the best experts, Richard Meadow, have yielded the conclusion that there is no clear osteological evidence of the horse (Equus caballus) in the Indian subcontinent prior to c. 2000 B.C. Obviously the Aryans are not likely to have been present in India in large numbers before about 2000 B.C., if the horse played a central role in their life.

In an earlier Supplement I have dealt in great detail with the bearing of Harappan evidence on the horse-question and shown that Parpola's negative conclusion omits to take into account the complexity of the case. Now I shall draw attention to some other facts.

26.Pp. 206-07.

27.P. 196.

Page 215

Lal,²⁸ after examining the full material in his search for the earliest culture in India which could qualify for Aryanism, rules out Aryanism at both the Malwa and the Banas sites. He ends his comment on the Malwa culture thus: "Lastly, the Aryan animal par excellence, viz. the horse, is conspicuous by its absence from all the Malwa sites excavated so far." On the Banas culture he has a similar remark: "the most significant animal associated with the Aryans, viz. the horse, is conspicuously absent from all the sites of the Banas Culture, either by way of its skeletal remains or even terracotta representations." Thus Parpola is inconsistent in Aryanizing these two cultures while Dravidianizing the Indus Valley Civilization for its lack of direct archaeological signs of Equus caballus during its most characteristic phase -namely, before c. 2000 B.C. The cylinder seal at Daimabad of the 'Jorwe Culture' (c. 1400-1100 B.C.) which evolved from the Malwa culture makes no odds to the observed absence of the horse from the latter and to the inconsistency Parpola has committed.

Horse-evidence from both outside and inside the Indus Valley

Richard Meadow seems to have overshot the mark in the matter of equine evidence. Lai, though unwilling to believe that the Harappa Culture knew the horse, was not so dogmatic. He²⁹ refers to an area outside the Punjab as being "known for having had its own indigenous variety of the horse." Dr. K.R. Alur, a veterinary surgeon, has some pertinent information detailing a faunal report on the excavation at Hallur, a border village in Mirekerur taluka of Dharwad district in Karnataka. His paper of 16.6.1990, Aryans and Indian History: an archaeo-zoological approach, says:

This site was excavated by Dr. M.S. Nagaraja Rao during

28.Op. cit., pp. 18 & 22.

29.Op. cit., p. 29.

Page 216

February-March 1965. Excavation of two trenches showed that the occupation of the site was during the neolithic period circa 1800 B.C. The excavator has distinguished two cultural phases.

Period I, which is designated as neolithic, has been subdivided into two phases.... The earlier phase is neolithic characterised by the hand-made pottery and a few ground stone-tools.

Phase 2 has been called neolithic-chalcolithic. It is distinguished by the occurrence of hand-made pottery, a large number of stone-tools and a new stone-blade industry with tools of copper.

Period II ... is called the early iron-age although some of the earlier elements continue. The new elements ... are the typical highly burnished black and red ware pottery with white painted variety, and iron implements.

Carbon-14 determination for the latter period showed that the iron age could be ascribed to circa 1000 B.C. and, according to the excavator, the earlier phase of the neolothic chronologically falls to circa 1800 B.C. and the second to about 1500 B.C.

After this introduction Dr. Alur reports on the faunal collection, evidently covering the dates just mentioned:

From this collection I identified the following bones of Horse:

S no. 212. Small metacarpal (splint bone).

S no. 467. Proximal extremity of small metacarpal.

S no. 497. Molar (from the middle series).

S no. 517. Second phalanx.

When I wrote this report, I least expected that it might spark off a controversy and land me in the witness box before the Indian historians' jury.... I was apprised of the gravity of the situation when I began to get letters asking me for clarification of the situation against the prevalent belief that the horse is a non-indigenous species and was

Page 217

introduced into India only by [invading] Aryans....

To make my position clear, I wrote in my article "Archaeological remains of Animals" that "whatever may be the opinion expressed by archaeologists, it cannot either deny or alter the find of a scientific fact that the horse was present at Hallur before the [presumed] period of Aryan invasion...."

The find of this fact put the Indian archaeologists and historians in a predicament in which they could not deny a scientific fact, yet could not accept it. So those on whom the responsibility lay made a reasonable approach and ordered a second excavation near the original site to avoid a probable introduction of an artifact. I examined the faunal collection of this excavation also and found the presence of some more bones of the Horse.

After some reflections on how "foreign scholars, who came to India with the advent of British rule, built up the theory of Aryan invasion on the findings of excavations conducted on the so-called migratory route, where remnants of horse and chariots were traced", Dr. Alur touches on how the Indian tradition, which knew nothing of an invasion and took the horse's presence in India to be natural from the beginning, got flouted further by "the report written by S. Sewell and B. PRasād on the faunal study from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa". This report declared "that there is no evidence of the presence of the horse in the Indus valley" though "they declared that they had recovered a few metacarpals of the domestic Ass".

Then Dr. Alur brings to light a little-known riposte to that report: "Dr. J.C. George of the M.S. University of Baroda stated that the study of the above table of comparative measurements shows beyond doubt that the metacarpals recorded by Prasad are definitely not of the domestic Ass and it is therefore possible to conclude that the smaller size horse did exist in Harappa. He further states: 'It is rather incredible that in a great civilisation like India, the horse

Page 218

alone should be conspicuous by its absence, while allied species like that of the Ass have been identified. It is equally unbelievable that the domestication of the prehistoric horse has been established in all the neighbouring countries such as Turkestan (Durest 1908) and Palestine (Garrod and Bate 1937) but not so in India.' "

A little later, Dr. Alur refers appreciatively to the opinion expressed by R.S. Panchmukhi, chairman and editor of the Diamond Jubilee Volume of the Karnataka Historical Society, to which Dr. Alur contributed an article on "Horse in the Prehistoric period in India and its Aryan Affinities". Panchmukhi, after taking Dr. Alur to have proved the horse indigenous in India, suggests that whatever remnants of horse and chariot are claimed to be pointers to an Aryan immigration into India may really be signs of an Aryan emigration from India. "India," says Panchmukhi, "has a history of migration to all its neighbouring countries, both for trade and spread of religion." Towards the end of his paper, Dr. Alur agrees that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India, some of whom migrated out of their country "to popularise their faith".

Dr. Alur has certainly provided evidence that the 'Aryans' whom Parpola brings into India in c. 1600-1400 B.C. from the Swat valley could not have introduced the horse into Hallur between c. 1800 and 1500 B.C. Even as a location, Hallur would be too far. Can we conceive as a likely candidate the first wave posited by Parpola in c. 1800 B.C. into Sind through the Bolan Pass in Central Baluchistan? Sind, again, is too distant from Hallur. The closer cultures - those of Rajasthani Banas and of Deccan Malwa (c. 1800 and c 1700-1400 B.C.) as well as others adjacent to them - which Parpola is inclined to trace to the advance and spread of this wave - are themselves not close enough to Karnataka. Besides, as we have shown on the authority of Lal, they had no equus. The Jorwe culture (c. 1400-1100 B.C.) which has a stratum at Daimabad in Maharashtra evincing a cylinder seal with a horse motif is not only

Page 219

sufficiently removed from Hallur in space but also too late in time to account for Hallur's horse-bones dating between about 1800 and 1500 B.C.

From every point of view Parpola-cwm-Meadow stand faulted by Dr. Alur's information.

Still more devastating is the report published in 1980 by the Department of Ancient History, Culture and Archaeology, University of Allahabad: History to Prehistory: Archaeology of the Vindhyas and the Ganga Valley by G.R. Sharma. Co-workers with Sharma were not only Indian archaeologists but also Dr. M.A.J. Williams and Keith Royce, who were members of the team led by Professor J. Desmond Clark of Allahabad University. The following passages from Sharma are well worth study:

The explorations in the valley of the Belan and Son have resulted in discoveries of thousands of animal fossils. From the Belan section these fossils have been obtained from four Gravels as well as from the red silt overlying Gravel II. Most of the fossils, however, have been obtained from Gravels I & II. The species include bos-nomadicus, bos-bubalis, gavialis, sus, elephas, antelope, bos-elephas, stag, deer, equus, chelonia (tortoise) and unio....³⁰

The excavations of neolithic sites of Koldihwa and Mahagara have brought to light evidence of domestication of animals and cultivation of plants. The domesticated animals include cattle, sheep, goat and horse....³¹

Mahagara and Koldihwa have yielded evidence of both wild and domesticated cattle, thus presenting an interesting picture of transition from wild variety to domesticated ones. The change in size and bone structure attest to nature's law of selection. Evidence of wild sheep/goat and equus has also been found from Cemented Gravels III and IV in the Belan valley. They are still wild at Mahadaha

30.P. 98.

31.P. 110.

Page 220

and Sarai-Nahar-Rai, the Mesolithic sites of the Ganga valley. The Neolithic Mahagara offers evidence of their domestication, suggesting a natural selection and domestication of these animals almost parallel to that of cattle. Swine is present in wild condition both at the Mesolithic lake settlements in the Ganga valley and in the Neolithic Mahagara in the Belan valley.

With the help of a number of radiocarbon dates obtained from the Belan and the Ganga valley, Stone Age Cultures from Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic have been dated. The Cemented Gravel III which has yielded the Upper Palaeolithic tools has also yielded the C-14 dates -23840 B.C. and 17765 B.C. As the earliest date is not from the lowest horizon, the Upper Palaeolithic in this area had possibly still an earlier antiquity.

For the pre-pottery Geometric Mesolithic we have two dates, one from the Belan valley and the other from the Ganga valley. The date obtained from Shari-Nahar-Rai is 8395±110 B.C., while that of Mahagara reads 8080±115 B.C. We have two dates from the Neolithic levels of Koldihwa reading 5440±240 B.C. and 4530±185 B.C.

Within the chronological framework provided by C-14 dates for terminal Upper Palaeolithic reading 17765 ±340 and for the pre-Neolithic 8080±115 and the early Neolithic levels reading 6570±210 and 5540±240 B.C., the totality of evidence furnished by these excavations and explorations ... presents a continuous story of human achievements....³²

In the face of Sharma's report, how shall we judge Parpola's contention, on the basis of Meadow, that the horse was introduced in 2000 B.C. by his 'Aryans' from outside India and therefore could not have existed in the Indus Valley Civilization?

Surely the horse of this report can never be connected

32. Pp. 111-12.

Page 221

with those argued entrants from abroad? It is far too ancient for them. Even apart from its much earlier date and its location outside the Indus Valley we can say: "Whatever may have been brought from Parpola's Greater Iran was a domesticated and not a wild animal. How shall we account for Sharma's wild equus no less than his domesticated one? Prior to the stage of domestication, there was the wild stage which particularly stamps the creature as having been native to the Indian soil. Meadow's findings are very limited and cannot suffice to rule out the theoretical possibility of equine presence in the Indus Valley Civilization."

Furthermore, if the domesticated horse specially distinguishes the Aryan, we have the Aryan in India long before Parpola's intruders from outside India and far earlier than even the Indus Valley Civilization. But such antiquity of the Aryans in an area sufficiently close to the Indus Valley would render not at all fantastic the notion of Aryanism at least colouring substantially enough the civilization flourishing in that locality in c. 2500-1500 B.C.*

Parpola's insufficient appraisal of Harappan Indo-Aryanism

Actually a valid ground for this notion - quite independently of Sharma - we may underline from an observation by Parpola himself. He³³ writes about two sites of the Mature Harappan:

The fire-altars of Kalibangan and Lothal are so far without parallels at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Indeed, it has been asked [by Raymond and Bridget Allchin]: "Fire-worship being considered a distinctly Indo-Aryan trait, do these [ritual hearths of Kalibangan] carry with them an indication of an Indo-Aryan presence even from so early a date?" This hypothesis now seems quite plausible to me, if "Indo-Aryan" here is understood to refer to carriers of

* For further horse-evidence see Appendix 2, pp. 419-420.

33. P. 238.

Page 222

the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, who had become quickly absorbed into the Indus Civilization, culturally and linguistically. It is supported further by the cylinder shape of the famous Kalibangan seal showing a Durga-like goddess of war, who is associated with the tiger. The goddess on the Kalibangan cylinder seal is said to be similar in style, especially the headdress, to one depicted on a cylinder seal from Shahdad [in Kerman on the desert of Lut in Iran, a major centre of the Bronze Age cultural tradition]. Seated lions attend to a goddess of fertility on a metal flag found at Shahdad.

While the Indo-Aryan presence in the Indus Civilization cannot be doubted, Parpola appears to play down its basic significance, as if in its cultural and linguistic milieu it hardly counted for much. Putting aside the assumption that the Harappan language was Proto-Dravidian, is there any reason to talk of this presence as having been "quickly absorbed" into that milieu? The milieu itself might have been sufficiently in tune with Indo-Aryan speech. As for cultural absorption, can we say that the presence of so fundamental, so typical a trait of Indo-Aryanism should not be regarded as a natural expression of the Harappa Culture?

H.D. Sankalia³⁴ has some words which might mitigate the positive assertion by Parpola that the fire-altars of Kalibangan and Lothal are so far without parallel at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. After writing that "such a 'fire-altar' has also been noticed by Casal at Amri", he adds: "Perhaps such fire-altars also existed at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, but were missed in mass diggings, and have only been revealed in a slow, careful excavation."

Sankalia's words strike us as quite pertinent when we realise the importance of Kalibangan. He³⁵ has observed that

34.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (Deccan College, Poona, 1947), p. 350.

35.Ibid. p. 361.

Page 223

this site was "perhaps a third capital in Rajasthan". Furthermore, not only Kalibangan but also Rakhigarhi, a site 190 kms east of Kalibangan, has revealed fire-altars. And about it O.P. Bharadwaj³⁶, on the authority of Suraj Bhan's Excavation at Mitathal and Other Explorations in the Sutlej Yamuna Divide,³⁷ writes: "Rakhigarhi ... is supposed to be the most extensive of the known Harappan sites in India and deemed worthy of being considered as a possible easternmost capital of the Harappans."

Along with the apparent parity of these sites with Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, there is the question of their date. In the query Parpola quotes from the Allchins, the general phrase - "at so early a date" - occurs in relation to Kalibangan. This would suggest a substantial antiquity on a par with that of those two sites. Bharadwaj³⁸ supplies a chronological table. Lai gives the span of Harappan Kalibangan as 2200-1700 B.C., while Thapar's figure is 2300-1750 B.C. George F. Dales³⁹ corrects the former to 2700-1900 and the latter to 2850-1950 B.C. E.K. Ralph, H.N. Michael and M. Han⁴⁰ have the corrections: 2630/2670-2060 and 2850/2870-2110 B.C. So the central Indo-Aryan nature of the feature concerned goes to the very root of the Indus Civilization. And surely such a radical element should carry us to a deeper sense than of merely 'some contact' - as Parpola posits - between the Indus Civilization and the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran. Here is not just 'contact', but a degree of intrinsicality of Indo-Aryanism. And the sense of intrinsicality is greatly deepened when we

36."Identification of Vinasana and some Consequential Observations", Svasti Sri (Felicitation Volume in honour of Dr. B. S. H. Chhabra, Delhi 1984), p. 217.

37.Kurukshetra, 1975, p. 95.

38.Op. cit., loc. cit.

39.In South Asian Archaeology, ed. Hammond Norman (London, 1973), p. 162 ff.

40.In Ancient Cities of the Indus, ed. Gregory Possehl (Delhi, 1979), pp. 339-42, Table 4.

Page 224

ponder a fact pointed out by Shashi Asthana⁴¹ in connection with Kalibangan:

... the so-called 'citadels' at Indus cities were taken to be the seats of government but B.B. Lai (1981) has now conclusively proved that at least at Kalibangan it was not at all so; it was possibly the place where collective religious ceremonies were held around the 'fire altars'. In other words, underlying the mature Indus Civilization or Harappan Culture was a great deal of social change, all of which is not easy to comprehend but without which the cities would not have emerged on the Indus plains. Social changes and cultural changes keep on interplaying variously at various levels (Gupta 1974).

Lal's proof suggests something like centrality for the 'fire altars' and imparts to the socio-cultural history of the ancient Indus cities a basic colour of Indo-Aryanism. And when such is the case, can we ignore the implication that the Indus Civilization was not unaware of what played, in Parpola's phrase, "a central role" in the life of the Aryans: the horse? Indeed ill-founded is his belief that "the Aryans are not likely to have been present in India in large numbers before about 2000 B.C."

How, then, face to face with his long discourse, stands my thesis that there is no proof archaeological or documentary of a Rigvedic invasion of India in the period usually allotted - c. 1500-1000 B.C., the upper limit of which is part of Parpola's own time-bracket c. 1600-1400 B.C.? The question basically is not whether an incursion into India, which .may be called Aryan, took place or notat that time as well as somewhat earlier, as Parpola's

41. Pre-Harappan Cultures of India and the Borderlands (Books & Books, New Delhi, 1985), p. 240. The references to Lai and Gupta are based on the following two papers respectively: (1) "Some Reflections on Structural Remains at Kalibangan", Indus Civilisation - New Perspectives (ed. A.H. Dani, Islamabad), pp. 47-54. (2) "Two Urbanizations in India: A Side Study in their Social Structure", Puratattva, no. 7), pp. 53-60.

Page 225

discourse about two waves would have it. The basic question is whether any entry in that period can be dubbed Rigvedic and whether, if the Rigvedics are anterior to the Harappa Culture, as I have tried to show, they can be termed outsiders rather than autochthones for all practical purposes? But before we examine it in some detail we may do well to ponder first Parpola's claim for the two waves flowing into India from the Bolan area and the Swat valley respectively.

Was there at all an entry into India?

Parpola⁴² prefaces his own thesis by citing C.C. Lamberg Karlovsky⁴³ who has recently pointed out the distinction between two types of archaeological evidence suggestive of culture contact on the one hand and on the other of expansion with or without preliminary culture contact. "If only a few types and numbers of artifacts characteristic of one culture are found within another distinctive culture, the contact was very limited. But if an entire cultural complex characteristic of a well defined archaeological culture is recovered from the area of another culture, it suggests foreign colonization, which usually leads to major cultural transformation in the colonized area." As conclusive proof Parpola⁴⁴ cites the discoveries of Jarrige at the Bolan Pass in Baluchistan: "Excavations carried out since 1978 at Mehrgarh VIII and at the nearby Sibri Damb brought to light cemeteries with tombs and cenotaphs, whose burial mode and grave goods were totally different from the earlier local traditions."

Now, does any conclusive proof of colonization hold for Pirak in Sind, where Parpola traces the first wave of the

42.P. 202.

43."Third millennium structure and process: From the Euphrates to the Indus and the Oxus to the Indian Ocean", Oriens Antiquus (1986), 25:3-4, 189-219.

44.P. 202.

Page 226

Aryans whom he identifies with the Dāsas? He⁴⁵ writes:

The excavated site of Pirak in the Kachi plain of Sind comprises three occupation periods: I (c. 1800-1300), II (c. 1300-1100) and III (c. 1100-900 B.C.). From periods I and II come distinctive terracotta figurines of two-humped camels and of horse-riders. The camel figurines are quite new in the Indus valley, but have very close parallels at Namazga VI sites in Margiana, where they go back to the Namazga V traditions. The horsemen of Pirak ... have bowed legs to fit them on the back of the horse, armless torsos and heads with faces ending in a bird-like beak.... The significance of the curious beaked heads ... calls for comparison with the numerous representations of an eagle-headed anthropomorphic deity (with or without wings) in the seals and other objects of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran.... Also, the violin-shaped female figurines of Pirak I-II continue the Namazga V related religious traditions of the nearby site of Sibri.

Affinities with the culture of Mehrgarh VIII and Sibri are found too at various other sites - neighbouring Nausharo in Baluchistan itself and Chanhujo-daro and Amri in Sind. "At all these sites," says Parpola,⁴⁶ "the traditions of the Indus Civilization continue without a break, but are transformed by intrusive traits. The new elements could now be recognised to be those associated with the cemeteries of Sibri and Mehrgarh VIII, whose entire cultural complex in its turn is practically identical to that of sites like Tepe Hissar III in northeastern Iran, Namazga V in southern Turkmenistan and Sapalli Tepe and Dashly in Afghanistan. Moreover, a related aristocratic burial was accidentally discovered at Quetta (Baluchistan) in 1985."

Are we entitled to argue that at Pirak we have anything more than "culture contacts"? The new elements are 'asso-

45.P. 239.

46.Pp. 202-03.

Page 227

ciated' with the cemeteries that have proved colonization at the Bolan Pass. But there are no such cemeteries at Pirak. We may remember also another phrase from Parpola⁴⁷quoted earlier: "the entire cultural complex including intrusive necropoles". Without 'intrusive necropoles' - that is, cemeteries - can we posit a substantial intrusive population colonizing Pirak? Again, the figurines of horsemen and the two-humped camel as well as of violin-shaped females show intrusive elements; but if we can indicate old contacts with the cultures of Greater Iran, they may be seen as a further phase of an already existing relationship which involves no mass immigration of a novel cultural life. Here we may draw on Parpola⁴⁸ himself: "The simple terracotta seals of Pirak mostly continue earlier local traditions, but some have close parallels at Shahr-i-Sokhta (18th century B.C.) in Seistan and at Namazga VI sites in Margiana and Bactria. The pottery of Pirak is supposed to go back to the local third millennium traditions of Baluchistan and Afghanistan; close parallels are so far known only from Ispelanji and Dabar Kot in southern Baluchistan, but affinities are seen also in Mundigak IV-V in Afghanistan and now in Sarazm in Sogdiana." What is even more suggestive of a natural new introduction from regions already in contact, rather than a result of invasion, are a couple of remarks by Parpola⁴⁹which indicate a two-way movement.

Terracotta "fire-dogs" are a novelty of the Pirak culture.... Very similar "fire-dogs" have been excavated around fireplaces at very early Iron Age sites in Fergana, such as Shurabashat.... Traffic with Central Asia was ... not in one direction only. Besides the "fire-dogs", convex copper buttons with a loop and sickle blades with deep serrations found on sites of the Yaz complex in Margiana, resemble [as Jarrige and Santoni point out] similar objects

47.P. 204.

48.P. 239.

49.P. 240.

Page 228

from Pirak "in a way that could not be fortuitous,... the examples from Pirak appear in earlier levels than those from the sites in the Murghab delta or in Fergana that are dated to the beginning of the Iron Age [c. 1300-1250 B.C.]. Moreover this period coincides with the appearance on these Central Asian sites of a hand-made ware with painted geometric patterns whose style recalls that of some vessels at Pirak, at a time when this type of pottery at Pirak is gradually being replaced by a wheel-made grey ware without decoration."

The picture we derive from Parpola is of a traffic to and fro of cultural modes - continued from a fairly long past and across sufficiently wide areas - against a common religious background of various shades. It is a picture of contacts and exchanges. Unless certain specific signs are there, none of them necessarily bespeak large-scale movements of populations. Although a colonization is indicated at the Bolan Pass, nothing beyond a diversity of contacts between Baluchistan and Sind seems proved by the appearance of certain figurines at Pirak. While violin-shaped female figurines are said to hark back to Sibri, neither of the two others are said to have parallels at either Sibri or Mehrgarh VIII. The two-humped camels have correspondences in Margiana and not near the Bolan Pass, nor are the beak-headed horse-riders traced by Parpola explicitly to Mehrgarh VIII or Sibri; they are only said in general to resemble depictions on seals and other objects of greater Iran's Bronze Age culture. We may also note that their significance lies not so much in the horse-presence as in the presence of a certain type of deity which, as Parpola⁵⁰ tells us "in many seals ... fights against snakes" and "is obviously related to the eagle which occupies so prominent a position in the other related seals, and which also fights against serpents". The focus is on this god; the horse is incidental. If the idea had been to set horse-

50. P. 239.

Page 229

riding as such in relief, a human figure would have been carved. So it seems too much to affirm, as does Parpola:⁵¹"The horsemen of Pirak constitute the earliest evidence for the use of the horse in the Indian subcontinent." It may be noted that no equine bones have been unearthed at Pirak. In Sind, in the period of Pirak I-II - c. 1800-1100 B.C. - the earliest bones of equus caballus "occur at a high level at Mohenjo-daro".⁵² Being late in time they are suspected to be intrusive to the Indus Civilization. But they are all that Sind has to show in the period concerned.

What distinguishes Pirak in its earliest phase is nothing that we can link with Mehrgarh VIII or Sibri: it is the local 'fire-dogs'. They precede in time comparable articles excavated in Greater Iran, as Parpola recounts. He⁵³ has also remarked about them: "They have been found forming a support for cooking around an ash-filled cavity in the middle of a square fireplace. This type of fireplace and the habit of cooking in vessels placed directly over the fire seem to represent an innovation in the Kachi plain." What is of further interest is that this indigenous Indian novelty brings to mind, as Parpola himself observes, "the Vedic ritual". He enumerates the "three principal fireplaces" associated with this ritual: "the square āhavanīya, into which the offerings to the gods are poured, the round gārhapatya, the inherited hearth of the family head, and the halfmoon-shaped daksin-āgni 'southern fire' which is connected above all with the forefathers of the sacrificer". Then Parpola refers to an authority on the subject: "According to Hertha Krick, the first two form a pair and represent the Rgvedic tradition...." Thus, without any relation to the culture of Mehrgarh VIII and Sibri Damb, Pirak's most individual characteristic dissociates the Rigvedic tradition from non-Indian cultural traits and from origination in a foreign milieu.

51.P. 239.

52.Sir Mortimer Wheeler, The Indus Civilization, Third Edition (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 82.

53.P. 240.

Page 230

As Parpola has Jarrige's name in his footnotes, it would seem that the latter, who established immigration in the Bolan valley, is inclined to favour the idea of immigration by the same people in the Pirak area as well. But a more judicious survey might have deterred the attractive conclusion. Here Jarrige could take a leaf out of his own book. For, in his Foreword to Shashi Asthana's Pre-Harappan Culture of India and the Borderlands⁵⁴ he has a wise word which might serve as a guide here also. He⁵⁵ writes, apropos of the difficult question of the origin of the "Quetta" culture:

The author assumes that the spread of the "Quetta" ware, directly related to the Geoksjur style of south Turkmenia, is to be linked to a migration of people from the Tedzen Delta. This idea, supported by several specialists with some sound arguments, is consistent with the explanation relating to such migration, the foundation of Shahr-i-Sokhta and the expansion of Mundigak. In fact, sherds in a truly "Geoksjurian" style are very few at Shahr-i-Sokhta or at Mundigak, in spite of their conspicuousness. At Damb Sadat, the "Geoksjur" motifs are painted on a fine whitish wheel-thrown pottery very different from the coarse, vegetal-tempered pottery of the Namazga III phase, mostly handmade. The situation is to some extent similar at Mehrgarh where we have a wide range of pots decorated with "Quetta" designs but mostly in the fine grey ware, a local production exported and imitated at Mundigak (period IV) and at Shahr-i-Sokhta (periods II-III). It seems to me that a systematic analysis of "Hilmand Civilization" and of the sites of the Quetta plateau would indicate that we are dealing with too complex and composite entities for interpreting them as the result of a migration. It is worth noting that a few aspects of Shahr-i-Sokhta in the field of burial practices, craft techniques,

54.Books & Books, New Delhi, 1985.

55.Pp. vi-vii.

Page 231

material life and ideology, can be related to earlier traditions in Baluchistan or in south Afghanistan as we know them from Mehrgarh or from Mundigak (periods I and II). Exchanges, influences and contacts between Turkmenia, eastern Iran and the Greater Indus system have no doubt played an important role in the shaping of the various cultural entities of these regions at the end of the 4th millennium but these phenomena were obviously multidirectional.

Turning to the Swat valley, we see again a situation which has no force to compel a belief in a mass immigration of whatever intrusive culture we may find in the Ghalegay IV period (c. 1600-1400 B.C.). Parpola⁵⁶ has picked out from Period IV its objects and the iconographic motifs on its painted-red pottery, which "in some cases derived from the tradition of the Indus urban civilization and in others more specifically recall the culture of Cemetery H of Harappa." The fact that, as Stacul quoted by Parpola⁵⁷ observes, "the Cemetery H culture is generally interpreted as a fusion of Indian traditions and new elements, probably from the west", does not join it with the later phase of Ghalegay IV by any descent of the latter from the Swat valley into the plains area. Indeed, there is no direct evidence of any immigration by such a descent. Parpola⁵⁸ seems to lend a Rigvedic colour to Ghalegay IV when he writes about one of its Swat locations: "At Bir-kot-ghwandai, the painted motifs of this intrusive red ware comprise the three-branched fig, known already from Mundigak IV. 1 (c. 2600 B.C.) and the horse." The presence of the horse may indicate Aryanism in the Swat region, but cannot make the Aryanism Rigvedic on the sole strength of that presence. Perhaps it may be asked: "Would an immigration from horse-knowing Swat in c. 1600-1400 B.C. make a Rigvedic invasion?" What it can

56.P. 242.

57.Ibid.

58.Ibid.

Page 232

make is an Aryan entry, but to make it Rigvedic Aryan several hurdles will have to be jumped.

No Rigvedic entry possible in c. 1600-1400 B.C.

A number of archaeological items rule out a Rigvedic entry in this period. To start with: the Togolok-21 temple is described by Parpola⁵⁹ as having "two brick-faced altars dug into the earth" and as containing "a round fireplace with a central cavity." The fire-altars at Kalibangan, in Sankalia's words,⁶⁰ "consist of shallow pits oval or rectangular in plan" and he adds: "around or near about were placed flat rectangular or circular terracotta pieces, known hitherto as 'terracotta cakes'." All these structures definitely indicate Aryanism. Yet they cannot be related to the Rigveda. Stuart Piggott⁶¹ correctly says about the Rigvedic Age: "There is no evidence that any temples were built, and the altar is nothing more elaborate than a pile of turf." Parpola⁶²himself notes in one context: "Besides the implements needed in the preparation of Soma and the sacrificial fire, the sacrificial place contained little beyond a shallow bed dug out and covered with grass for the gods to sit on." On another page he⁶³ informs us that "the brick-built fire altar ... is never mentioned in the Rgveda." In fact, even the existence of bricks - such a marked feature of the Indus Valley Civilization - cannot be traced in the Rigveda. The Rigveda, flourishing in the same locale - the valley of the Indus - has no word for 'brick': istakā occurs only in later literature.

Next we have Parpola's listing⁶⁴ of "two silvery trumpets" and, earlier, of "goblets" not only of "gold" but also of

59.Pp. 237 & 240.

60.Op. cit., p. 350, col. 2.

61.Prehistoric India (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 283.

62.P. 225.

63.P. 250.

64.P. 204.

Page 233

"silver" among the "traits" of the Namazga V culture. Even the Aryanism of people who are not said to have entered India is associated with this metal. Parpola⁶⁵ refers to Ghirshman's pointing out the rich civilization of Hissar III, ruled by a military aristocracy using bronze weapons, "some ornamented with silver", and adduces as a particularly important evidence for their Aryan identity a locally made cylinder seal of alabaster from Hissar IIIB level representing a horse-drawn two-wheeled war-chariot. "The Rigvedic Indo-Aryans," writes A.L. Basham,⁶⁶ "were ... acquainted with ... metallurgy, although they had no knowledge of iron.... Gold was familiar and made into jewellery." He⁶⁷refers bronze and copper implements to Vedic times, but is silent about silver. At another place he⁶⁸ tells us: "where the. Rigveda speaks only of gold and copper or bronze the later Vedic texts also mention tin, lead, and silver, and probably iron." A.A. Macdonell⁶⁹ makes the statement:

Among the metals, gold is most frequently mentioned in the Rigveda.... The metal which is most often referred to in the Rigveda next to gold is called ay as (Latin aes).... In most passages where it occurs the word appears to mean simply 'metal'. In the few cases where it designates a particular metal, the evidence is not very conclusive; but the inference which may be drawn as to its colour is decidedly in favour of its having been reddish, which points to bronze and not iron.... It seems quite likely that the Aryans of that period were unacquainted with silver, for its name is not mentioned in the Rigveda....

65.P. 205.

66.The revised part dealing with Ancient India in the Third Edition (1970) of The Oxford History of India by the late Vincent A. Smith, edited by Perceval Spear, p. 516.

67.Ibid.

68.Ibid.

69.A History of Sanskrit Literature (New impression, William Heinemann Ltd.. London, 1928), p. 151.

Page 234

No scholar of India's most ancient scripture breathes a word about silver. On this score the Rigveda goes out of the chronological framework within which Parpola speaks of Aryanism in India or in Greater Iran.

Here an excursus apropos of metals would be in place. I shall lead up to it via some observations of Parpola's. As we have seen, he tallies the time of the Rigveda with the Ghalegay IV-V periods. The latter's being chalcolithic except for a little iron at the end is compared to "the textual evidence" purported to be gathered from the Rigveda. Iron is said to be hard to find in this scripture and to be present in the Atharvaveda's mention of the black metal. I believe Parpola is mistaken in his reading both of the Rigveda and of the Atharvaveda. Basham's statement which we have quoted that the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans were ignorant of iron is correct. Parpola himself in his citations from the Rigveda accepts the rendering of the term āyasī by 'copper' and not by 'iron' as done at an earlier period of scholarship. Thus he⁷⁰ has "copper forts" in 1,58,8; "unattackable copper forts" in 10,101,8; and "a copper fort" in 7,95,1. According to him⁷¹ Book 7 is one of the earliest parts of the Rigveda, whereas Books 1 and 10 are the latest. 'Copper' holds for all the Rigveda in Parpola's usage. Hence this scripture in no part can be put in the Ghalegay V-VI periods, which admit "a little iron at the end." Nor can the Atharvaveda's 'black metal' be so facilely equated to 'iron'. If the Rigveda's ay as is generically 'metal' except when called 'red' to mean bronze (or copper) and if bronze is darker than copper, the Atharvaveda's śyāmāyas or 'black metal' as distinguished from its lohitāyas or 'red metal' could easily be, as D.H. Gordon⁷² opines, the darker-than-copper bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. In so late a Vedic text as the Śatapatha Brāhmana (V>4,1,2) we have three classes: ayas, lohāyasa,

70. P. 212, fn. 141.

71. P. 225.

72. The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture (Tripathi Ltd. Bombay. 1959). P. 153.

Page 235

hiranya (='gold'). Its ay as is depicted (VI, 1,3,5) as resembling gold; so it would be 'brass', an alloy of copper and zinc; while lohāyasa or 'red metal' would be 'copper'. In the earlier Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa (111,62,6,5) krsnayasa would signify the same thing as śyāmāyas. The Chhāndogya Upanishad (VI, 1,6) has the same term as well as the derivative kārsnāyasa. In the vastly composite Mahābhārata, ay as to denote iron would depend on the period in which the section concerned of the poem was composed. Terms change their meanings in different times. Thus loha, involving redness, which denoted copper in combination with ayas or even by itself, is today applied to iron exclusively. It appears in the same form in the Manusmriti (IX,321) which contains late as well as early matter and there it could point to iron. We may be sure of this metal only with loha in literature which is not appreciably ancient.

Therefore, not only does the Rigveda pass beyond the epoch Parpola chooses for it, but also much of subsequent literature can be taken to precede the Iron Age in India which seems to have its earliest phase at Pirak where in Period III, c. 1100 B.C. the use of iron, according to Parpola⁷³, begins.

More items against Parpola

The next item which excludes the Rigveda is rice. "Rice cultivation on a large scale," writes Parpola,⁷⁴ "is evidenced for the first time in the Indus valley in the post-Harappan period at Pirak in the Kachi plain, right from the beginning of period I dated to c. 1800 B.C. [In Jarrige and Santoni's words:] 'The Ganges valley, where numerous points of bone and ivory that are similar to the Pirak ones were carved, is also one of the earliest rice-growing centres.' The introduction of rice from the mid-Ganges valley to the borders of Baluchistan coincides with the strengthening of contacts

73.P. 264.

74.P. 207.

Page 236

between these regions around 2000 B.C." The implications of Parpola's pronouncement for the Harappa Culture itself are not clear. Perhaps we should concentrate on the words, 'on a large scale', for rice is already present in the Indus Civilization. It has been recognised at at least three Harappan sites: not only outside the Indus valley, at Rangpur IIA (2000-1500 B.C.) and at Lothal (c. 2200 B.C.), but also in the valley at Mohenjo-daro (c. 2500 B.C.).⁷⁵ The situation is quite negative for the Rigveda. Stuart Piggott⁷⁶ has the clear-cut assertion: "the Rigveda knows nothing of rice." San-kalia⁷⁷ has a statement of double information: "this grain was unknown to the Rigveda as well as to the Avesta" -which adds a distinct chronological aspect to the parity often underlined between these two scriptures, especially in relation to the Avestan Gāthās which are the oldest Zarathus-trian compositions and linguistically most comparable with the Rigveda. Thus the latter scripture goes beyond the Harappa Culture no less than the post-Harappan Pirak cultural phase. Later we shall calculate more precisely how far back it can go. A pre-Harappan antiquity in general applies in connection with silver as well. For, Bridget and Raymond Allchin⁷⁸ admit: "Silver [in India] makes its earliest appearance, to date, in the Indus civilization."

A few other items from the archaeological-cwm-literary angle may be taken as relevant too. Piggott's full assertion apropos of the Rigveda that it knows nothing of rice continues: "nor of the tropical animals such as the tiger"; and he adds about this animal and rice, "both of which are mentioned in the Atharvaveda", and ends with the news: "the tiger is depicted on the Harappa seals." The tiger too,

75.D.H. Grist, Rice, Fourth edition (Longmans, 1965).

76.Op. cit., p. 259.

77.Indian Archaeology Today (Ajanta Publications, Delhi, 1979), p. 109.

78.The Birth of Indian Civilization (A Pelican Original, Harmonds-worth, 1969), p. 285.

Page 237

therefore, argues for the posteriority of the Harappa Culture to the Rigveda.

Sankalia's pointer to both the Rigveda's and the Avesta's lack of knowledge of rice is in the context of the claim made by some scholars that the ceramic defined as Painted Grey Ware (PGW), in its earliest stage represented the Rigvedic Aryans. As the people of PGW were rice-eaters he cannot accept this claim. Parpola⁷⁹ leaves the question open: he refuses to enter into the polemics pro and con. But he⁸⁰ does say:

There is now considerable agreement concerning the correlation of the archaeological complex characterized by the luxury ceramic called Painted Grey Ware (PGW), and the culture of the later Vedic Aryans of the Brāhmaṇa and Sutra period.... The upper temporal limit for the PGW culture is between c. 1100 and 800 B.C. and the lower limit between c. 400 and 350 B.C. It flourished in a continuous zone stretching from the Punjab and the course of the Sarasvatī and Drsadvatī rivers to the middle Ganges region. The horse was an important animal; iron was used, although it appears to have been scarce at the early sites in the Punjab; and, in the early phase, the settlements were not cities but villages with impermanent huts as ordinary dwellings. The economy was based on cattle-raising and cultivation of rice, barley and wheat. No graves or burials have been found at any PGW site. Cremation, therefore, was perhaps the usual manner of disposing of the dead as in the Vedic culture. Many of the PGW sites figure centrally in the Mahābhārata.... The epic age thus corresponds to the late, fully urban phase of the PGW. Only very few towns are mentioned in the Brāhmaṇa texts, which therefore had been completed during the oldest phase of the PGW, before about 750 B.C. It has been unclear how exactly the PGW culture is

79.P. 198.

80.Pp. 197-98.

Page 238

linked with the cultures of Northwest India, the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia, and thus with the earliest Vedic period and its Indo-Iranian background.

It is surprising that Parpola should speak of a "late fully urban phase" and of an early phase when there were no "cities". Lal⁸¹, who first brought the PGW into prominence, emphasises the opposite as late as 1977:

As seen from the extensive excavations at the various sites in Panjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, the P.G.W. culture was essentially a rural one. Most of the settlements were small villages, there being hardly a few which could lay claim to being called 'towns'. But by no description could any of these settlements be called cities like the ones we had in the case of the Indus Civilization. There is hardly any evidence of town-planning and the houses were made of wattle-and-daub or mud, or at best mud-bricks. No house of kiln-burnt bricks has yet come to light from any of the PGW sites, though there is an indication of the knowledge of such bricks.

As late as 1979 Sankalia⁸² could write:

Now the final question is posed: could this ware belong to the Mahabharata War period? Lal and all the subsequent writers, including myself and Dr. Vibha Tripathi, think that the culture represented by the Painted Grey Ware and the things so far found with it suggest that it was at most a village culture with "advanced economy".

This conclusion goes against our assumed view of the Mahabharata War Period, when there were several states, each with a specific name, such as Kuru, Panchala, Chedi, Kekaya, Sindhu-Sauvira, Magadha, etc., each with its own capital city. So, if we regard the Painted Grey Ware

81.Op. cit., pp. 33-34.

82.Op. cit., p. 95.

Page 239

as a village culture we shall have to revise our opinion about the Mahabharata time.

However, when I was preparing this work, it occurred to me that Painted Grey Ware could very well be described as a culture which flourished in the wake of Mahabharata, after the destruction of the kings of Northern India, with their armies, in Northern India - Punjab, Northern Rajasthan, Haryana, U.P. and Bihar. Thus, the Painted Grey Ware could very well be regarded as a post-Mahabharata culture.

If PGW is 'post-Mahabharata', the war concerned might reasonably be placed around the date - c. 1400 B.C. -recently suggested by the excavations of a submerged Dwaraka which could be identified with the Dwaraka reported by tradition as having been drowned in the time of Krishna, one of the main participants in that war. Then the Rigveda, which is admitted to be quite a number of centuries earlier than this war, could never be post-Harappan, filling the period sought to be rendered plausible by Parpola's c. 1600-1400 B.C.

To dissociate PGW from any relation to a possible entry of the Rigvedics into India or even any other type of Aryans which might have come within the time-bracket which Parpola proposes, we may take a look at what J.G. Shaffer⁸³had to say in 1984 after weighing the pros and cons for the kind of picture Parpola has drawn:

If PGW represents the Indo-Aryans, then according to accepted theories, similar or antecedent types of pottery should be located west of the Ganga-Yamuna region on the Iranian plateau. B.K. Thapar (1970), has noted the absence of any PGW antecedent types of pottery any-

83. "The Indo-Aryan Invasion: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality", The People of South Asia - The Biological Anthropology of India, Pakistan and Nepal, edited by John R. Lukacs (Plenum Press, New York and London, 1984), p. 85.

Page 240

where along the route supposedly taken by the Aryans, and he has outlined the chronological problems associated with existing accounts. Chakrabarti, on the other hand, has proposed an eastern, rather than western, origin for the PGW, thereby negating the PGW-Aryan correlation.

The Painted Grey Ware culture, thus, with its traits of rice cultivation and the use of domestic pig and buffalo seems to suggest a culture distinctly eastern and not a western one as its suggested Aryan authorship would indicate. (Chakrabarti, 1968, p.353)

Recent archaeological research in Eastern Punjab (Shaffer, 1981) substantiates objections to the PGW-Aryan correlation.

J.P. Joshi's excavations (1976,1977, 1978a, 1978b, Joshi and Madhu, 1982) at Bhagwanpura, Dadheri, Nagar and Katpalon have significantly altered the perspective of the archaeological sequence in the Punjab, particularly that regarding the PGW culture. At these sites, Joshi found PGW pottery and structures associated in the same strati-graphic unit with material belonging to the indigenous protohistoric culture of this region - Siswal. Moreover, Joshi was able, for the first time, to associate substantial mud-brick architecture units with PGW, and to define overlapping ceramic attributes between the Siswal and PGW cultures. At the same time, Chakrabarti (1974, 1977) and I (Shaffer, 1983) argue for an indigenous development of iron technology within the Indian subcontinent. At present, the archaeological record indicates no cultural discontinuities separating PGW from the indigenous protohistoric culture. That is, PGW culture represents an indigenous cultural development and does not reflect any cultural intrusion from the West, that is, an Indo-Aryan invasion.

Two conclusions may be drawn from the archaeological data. First, there is no connection between PGW culture and that of the Aryans. Second, if the "Aryan" concept is to have any cultural meaning, then such a culture (PGW)

Page 241

had an indigenous South Asian origin within the protohistoric cultures of the Gangā-Yamunā region.

Of course, all this does not mean that at no period does PGW evince contact with the West. Parpola⁸⁴ writes: "A link from the Ghalegay V culture [of Swat] to the Painted Grey Ware (PGW) is supplied by the urns with perforations near the neck (resembling the eyes and the mouth of the Ghalegay V 'face-urns') in the PGW layers of Ahicchatra and of [by?] Ghalegay V type terracotta figurines in the PGW layer of Jakheran. U.P." But we cannot endorse Parpola when he goes on to say: "... Rgvedic Aryans started moving from Swat to the plains of Punjab during the latter half of the Ghalegay IV period, c. 1600-1400 B.C. and continued during the following Ghalegay V period [1400-800 B.C.⁸⁵]. After this, the northwest developed in relative isolation, losing all contacts with the Late Vedic culture of the plains, associated with the early PGW." Even in Parpola's own universe of discourse everything hangs in the air so long as we remember his admitting: "It has been unclear how exactly the PGW culture is linked with the earliest Vedic period and its Indo-Iranian background."

Nothing from archaeology appears to stand in the way of the pre-Harappan antiquity we ascribe to the Rigveda. And this antiquity seems, absolutely clinched by a couple of considerations.

Two clinching arguments

Several of the arguments we have mustered - those relating to silver, rice, tiger - may be termed e silentio. But this characteristic should in no way diminish their force. The word 'several' counteracts the weakness one may theoretically see in them. How is it that these three things which distinguish from the preceding time the immediate post-

84. P. 248.

85. P. 244.

Page 242

Harappan period in which the Rigveda is currently fitted are together absent from the Rigvedic age? Their combined non-existence prevents the argumentum e silentio from being insufficient or inconclusive.

Furthermore, as regards silver, we can go beyond the mere though significant fact of its absence. From the linguist A.C Greppin⁸⁶ we gather the following information. In the early Sanskrit texts the word rajatá which has the same root as the Greek arguros, the Latin argentum, the Armenian arcat' and the Celtic argat does not by itself denote silver as do all the other terms. It simply means 'white'. In those early texts the expression for silver is rajatám hiranyam, literally 'white gold'. The next step after Greppin is to note that the common word for 'white' in the Rigveda, the earliest Sanskrit text, is śvetá or śukrá. But rajatá does occur just once in 8,25,22. The verse concerned along with its successor reads, in Ralph T.H. Griffith:⁸⁷

From Uksanyāyana a bay, from Harāyana a white steed,

And from Susāman we obtained a harnessed car.

These two shall bring me further gain of troops of tawny-coloured steeds,

The carriers shall they be of active men of war.

In the original, we have rajatám without any noun to qualify; but the general context of the first verse and even more that of the second where steeds of tawny colour are mentioned after a reference to 'these two' make an implied white steed pair with a bay. The sense of silver is impossible with a horse, especially in the company of other horses with common colours. And if early Sanskrit knows silver only as rajatám hiranyam, the Rigveda's rajatám - whatever it may

86.Review of J.P. Mallory's book, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (Thames and Hudson, London, 1989) in the Times Literary Supplement, August 11-17, 1989, p. 881, col. 4.

87.The Hymns of the Rigveda, translated with a popular Commentary, edited by J. L. Shastri (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1973), p. 417, col. 1.

Page 243

qualify - can denote nothing else than 'white'. There cannot be the slightest suspicion of silver in the Rigveda's period. Thus by the additional force of linguistics and not exclusively by the non-mention of silver can this metal be ruled out from the ken of the Rigveda and that scripture be dated as pre-Harappan.

Here is indeed a clinching argument. Nor is it the sole one available. A clinching argument even e silentio takes shape from consideration of one particular commodity: cotton. I have elaborated the consequences of the silence here in a separate book: Karpāsa in Prehistoric India: A Chronological and Cultural Clue (Biblia Impex, Delhi, 1984). I shall not attempt to summarize its whole range but pick out two salient features which have a conclusive bearing in the present discourse.

Dealing with the Indus Civilization Lal⁸⁸ writes: "Perhaps the most remarkable agricultural achievement was the cultivation of cotton. Even Egypt did not produce it until several centuries after it was grown in the Indus valley." Mark the word 'cultivation'. At Mehrgarh on the Bolan River in Central Baluchistan Jean-François Jarrige and Richard H. Meadow⁸⁹ found hundreds of cotton seeds in a hearth belonging to Period II dating back to the fifth millennium B.C. But the discoverers⁹⁰ tell us: "The cotton seeds were so poorly preserved that Constantini has not yet been able to determine whether they came from a cultivated form of the plant." One may conjecture cultivation, but there is no actual ground for doing so and, even if we suppose cultivation, we cannot say whether it was for the plant's fibre or for its oil-rich seeds. In any case, there is no sequel either at Mehrgarh itself or in regions connected with it. In the nearly two thousand years between Mehrgarh's

88."The Indus Civilization", A Cultural History of India, edited by A. L. Basham (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), p. 17.

89."The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley", Scientific American, August 1980, p. 124, col. 3.

90.Ibid., p. 128, col. 3.

Page 244

Period II and the mature Harappa Culture in about 2500 B.C. we do not come across the veriest trace of even wild cotton in spite of extensive excavation. So we may safely credit the statement of the Allchins⁹¹ in 1968: "The earliest evidence for the cultivation of cotton comes from the Indus Civilization."

Otherwise too, merely the history of cotton-cultivation would be affected. The situation as between the Harappa Culture and the Rigveda would be the same. For, in the very Indus valley where the Harappa Culture flourished, the Rigvedics are said to have established themselves in the wake of the Harappans and yet they give not the least sign of knowing cotton. Centuries of handling cotton both for home use in clothing and for export to Sumer where, according to W.F. Leemans⁹², "an impression of it on clay has been found at Ur", had no consequence at. all for the Rigvedics. Macdonell⁹³ informs us about their dress: "Clothes were woven of sheep's wool, were often variegated and adorned with gold." Sir John Marshall's colleague, Rao Bahadur Dayaram Sahni,⁹⁴ the discoverer of the first trace of cotton at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Civilization, brings out a startling fact. Glancing at what is broadly dubbed Vedic literature "from the Rigveda down to the Sutra period" - a large span of time even by the current chronology which, as Basham⁹⁵ calculates, starts the Rigveda in c. 1500 B.C. and puts the most important Sutras between the 6th and the 2nd centuries B.C." - Sahni reports: "The Vedic literature ... contains numerous references to weavers, the art of weaving, the weaver's shuttle, wearing of clothes like turbans, shirts, etc., soiled garments and washermen. But whereas

91.Op. cit., p. 266.

92.Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1960), p. 166.

93.A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 164.

94.Archaeological Survey of India, Annual Report 1926-27, p. 55.

95.The Wonder that was India (The Grove Press Inc., New York, 1961), p. 32.

Page 245

wool (śāamulya) and silk (tārpya) are mentioned, cotton (Karpāsa) is unknown from early texts."

Actually, cotton is first spoken of in the two oldest Sutra compositions listed by Basham,⁹⁶ the Gautama and the Baudhāyana Dharma-sutras - e.g., in the former's 1.18 and the latter's 16,13,10. Between the Rigveda and these two books intervened the three other Vedas, the numerous Brāhmaṇas, Aranyakas and the early Upanishads, all of them innocent of cotton. Is it possible that, if these works came after the Indus Valley Civilization, this civilization's cotton industry would be followed by a complete blank about Karpāsa in them? Here is a colossal silence which is really thunderous! And it is not that the industry was confined to Harappan centres in the Indus valley where the Rigveda was composed. The more inland country where some of the post-Rigvedic literature was produced is also shown to have been cotton-producing or at least cotton-using. Wheeler⁹⁷ refers to a "reputed example from Lothal" - that is, in Gujerat. Sankalia⁹⁸ reports cotton at Nevasa (Ahmedabad District) and at Alamgirpur near Delhi - with the latest date c. 1000 B.C. He⁹⁹ lists also Maharashtrian Chandoli whose C-14 dates range from c. 1330 to c. 1040 B.C. Thus, during the first 500 years or so after the alleged c. 1500 B.C. for the Rigveda's beginning, archaeology attests cotton and we may rationally presume the continuation of the use of it still later. Against the proved presence of this commodity we have the utter lack of the veriest allusion to it in Indian books until we reach the Sutras. So sustained a lack, extending over varied time and space, must carry the Rigveda and its documentary progeny short of the Sutras into an antiquity beyond the post-Harappan epoch and even past the cotton-cultivating Harappa Culture.

96.Ibid., p. 113.

97.Op. cit., p. 85.

98.Letter to the author dated 16 April 1963.

99.Op. cit., p. 487, col. 1 & p. 565, col. 2.

Page 246

Horse and spoke-wheeled chariot

Logically there should be no doubt now about such antiquity and the assumption should be justified that we could legitimately wait for conclusive future evidence against all objections that might possibly be raised against it. But out of curiosity we may try to see whether certain items which meet us either in Harappan or else in post-Harappan times can be conceived of as earlier. One which is thought to be not even Harappan is the spoke-wheeled horse-drawn chariot. Can a pre-Harappan antiquity be ascribed to this invention?

In the main body of my present book, as well as in Supplement I, I have argued at some length on archaeological grounds - the several depictions of a six-spoked wheel-like form at a number of sites - that the Harappa Culture had it. Once this point is granted and some helpful hints seen for a further past, there should be no serious bar to carrying such an invention into that past to create a background. At any rate, by direct archaeological testimony, horse-domestication linked with wheeled, though as yet unspoked, vehicles is fairly ancient in human history.

Parpola¹⁰⁰ has told us, with an eye to the West: "The first strong evidence for horse domestication (possibly even riding) comes from Dereivka on the Dnieper river, a site of the Ukrainian Strednij Stog culture, which flourished about 4200-3500 B.C. Marked contrasts in wealth within cemeteries of late Strednij Stog culture indicate that society was now stratified and dominated by raiding warriors. During the following Pit Grave (Yamna) culture dated to c. 3500-2800 B.C., full-scale pastoral technology, including the domesticated horse, wheeled vehicles, stock-breeding and limited horticulture, spread now eastwards over the vast lowland steppes, which earlier were largely uninhabited." Nearer India, "osteological material proves that the wild

100. Pp. 199-200.

Page 247

horse of the Turkoman steppes was domesticated in the Gurgan plain about the beginning of the third millennium."¹⁰¹ Still more close to India, we have a small yet impressive pointer in Northern Baluchistan.

Even the severest critics of claims for early horse-finds have not been able to dispute with any force that, at Rana Ghundai (RG) I, four teeth of Equus caballus, rather than of Equus hemionus, the onager, have been found. E.J. Ross's reading domestication in them has been doubted sometimes, but as they occur in a group where three animals - the sheep (Ovis vignei), the humped ox (Bos indicus) and the ass (Equus asinus) - have been accepted as domestic there seems little reason to undomesticate Ross's Equus caballus. There are no special prohibitive circumstances against the parity proposed. But what would be the date of this animal? Shashi Asthana arrives at a neat estimate by a series of comparisons between RG, Kile Ghul Mohammad (KGM) and Mehrgarh. "Dales (1965:278-279) keeps RG I under his Phase C which is early chalcolithic. However, later he (Dales 1973: Fig. 11.1) revised the sequence and bracketed RG I with the lowest levels of KGM I. But this does not appear to be correct since, while KGM is aceramic [= lacking pottery], RG I is ceramic neolithic. In truth, RG I can be compared only with KGM II (lower levels) where crude handmade pottery has been found."¹⁰² Now we may turn to Asthana on the chronology of KGM. "Period I, representing the earliest phase of 'Pre-ceramic Neolithic', can be dated to the seventh-sixth millennium B.C. ... Period II is the ceramic neolithic phase which bears comparison with Mehrgarh IIA. It can now be safely allotted to the end of the fifth millennium B.C. Earlier, it was placed in the second half of the fourth millennium B.C."¹⁰³ So the date of RG I should be c. 4000 B.C. and the earliest Strednij Stog culture (c. 4200-3500 B.C) has hardly any edge on it. What

101.P. 205.

102.Op. cit., p. 227.

103.Ibid., p. 124

Page 248

Ross's excavation shows is a less developed way of life, but that is irrelevant to our theme.

Piggott¹⁰⁴ has a good summary: "... there were over 14 feet of deposits in RG I, consisting of soil in which no structural remains could be traced, though there were frequent layers of ash representing hearths; and the excavator suggested that intermittent but recurrent occupation of the site by semi-nomadic people with impermanent huts seemed likely. The pottery found was all unpainted (except for a single sherd roughly painted with a lozenge pattern) and had not been turned on the wheel. There were flint blades of the types we have ... encountered in South Baluchistan, but none showed any evidence of having been used as sickle-flints, and there were also two bone-points and an eyed needle.... Nomadic horse-riding herdsmen using the site as a camping-ground are suggested by the finds in RG I; an infant's skeleton was also found buried at this level."

Horse-evidence continues for the pre-Harappan period in North Baluchistan. At Periano Ghundai, which, by Piggott's chronology, comes during the last of the three phases (a, b, c) of Rana Ghundai III,¹⁰⁵ "one clay-figurine seems to represent a horse."¹⁰⁶ "Clay-figurines," says Frederick Zeuner,¹⁰⁷ "usually represent domestic types." Asthana¹⁰⁸gives the date: 2900-2800 B.C.

While we are about RG we may hark back a moment to KGM whose Period I Asthana has dated to 6000-5000 B.C. She¹⁰⁹ adds: "Significantly a small quantity of equine bones are found in Phases J to G. According to Fairservis (1956:382), they are mostly of the onager (Equus Hemio-nus)." That 'mostly' opens the field to two other members of

104.Op. cit., p. 121.

105.Ibid., p. 124.

106.Ibid., p. 126.

107.A History of Domestic Animals (Hutchinson of London, 1961) p. 332.

108.Op. cit., p. 71.

109.Ibid., p. 193.

Page 249

the same species: Equus asinus and Equus caballus. The possibility of the horse in such antiquity is surely worth attention.

Not such antiquity but a later epoch yet with absolute certainty of the presence of Equus caballus we have at Balakot I, once more in Northern Baluchistan. This site is pre-Harappan and its carbon-14 dates (MASCA-corrected) range from 4010 B.C. to 2920-2940 B.C.¹¹⁰ After listing the domestic animals (Meadow 1979:275-315), Asthana¹¹¹writes: "Wild animals are also there and they include gazelles, horses and Nilgais." Non-domestication should imply that the horse was a native of the region and not an import.

All told, we have good evidence of Equus caballus in some form or other in close proximity to the Indus Valley -and again in close proximity both to Northern Baluchistan and to Northwestern India the same animal is evidenced in Southern Afghanistan. Asthana¹¹² informs us: "The excavations at Mundigak have brought to light the remains of seven major occupational periods, of which the first four fall in the area of our study." This area is the pre-Harappan era. And about the earliest part of the sequence we have the report:¹¹³ "Domesticated animals were identified for the first time in Period I and were represented by the sheep, goat, cattle, ass, horse and dog."

So much for the evidence immediately west and northwest of the Indus Valley. Immediately east of it, we have the findings of G.R. Sharma in History to Prehistory, dealing with the Vindhyas and the Ganga Valley. As we have seen, the remains of the domesticated horse have been discovered there in the sixth and the fifth millenniums B.C., outrivalling the time of the Strednij Stog culture of the Ukraine. So to doubt the existence of the Rigvedic horse fairly prior to the

110.Ibid, p. 257

111.Ibid., p. 194.

112.Ibid., p. 83.

113.Ibid., p. 85.

Page 250

Harappa Culture is hardly reasonable. But in Neolithic Koldihwa and Mahagara we meet with no trace of chariotry whether peaceful or warlike. Not even wheeled vehicles of any kind are traceable. What about pre-Harappan Baluchistan? Is there any pointer to a chariot, better still a war-chariot, especially one drawn by horses, comparable to those spoken of in the Rigveda?

Though archaeology provides no direct evidence in the area concerned, remarkable light of a general sort is indirectly thrown on the problem from elsewhere. Its full evaluation, however, calls for our noticing that in the Rigveda chariots are not invariably mentioned as horse-drawn. Its kaleidoscopic poetry speaks of war-chariots pulled by different animals on different occasions. Thus the Dawn-goddess's "flaming chariot of lights" (5,79,2) is connected not only with "the tramp of steeds". It is connected also with cows. The Rishi exclaims (5,80,2-3): "How large is her chariot...! This is she who yokes her cows of rosy light." The second of the phrases occurs again in another hymn (1,124,11): "she yokes her host of the ruddy cows," yunkte gavāṁ aruṇānām ānīkam. The Rigveda employs too the word aja, meaning 'goat', as a chariot-pulling animal. The God Pushan, the Increaser, is given a chariot whose yoke the goats take upon them (1,138,4). At one place, in a flight of vision, we get even birds: a hymn (4,45,4) makes the horses of the chariots of the Aśvins, the Nasatyas, change into birds. So to approach the Rigveda archeologically we need first a general pointer to a war-chariot drawn by any animal in pre-Harappan times.

Piggott,¹¹⁴ seeking comparisons for the Kulli ware of South Baluchistan, says: "we find clearly defined and most important points of similarity between the Kulli Culture and the lands of Elam and Mesopotamia. The 'landscape with animals' frieze on the Kulli pots finds close stylistic parallels on pots known from Susa and Khuzistan and also from the

114. Op. cit., pp. 115-16.

Page 251

Dyala region near Baghdad, and named, from their use of a bright red paint in addition to black, 'scarlet ware'.... There is no doubt of the common feeling in composition and spirit, and to some extent in technique, in the two groups of pottery, which in Mesopotamia is accurately dated to Early Dynastic times (c. 2800 B.C.)." But Piggott goes further than emphasizing points of contact. He"⁵ speaks of direct export from Baluch Makran to Kish in Mesopotamia and to Susa in Elam as well as to Mohenjo-daro in Sind. Finally, he¹¹⁶ quotes evidence of Baluch traders settling in Sumer, "a little closed society with its own rights and customs". At the end of the passage he mentions an object about which he has said something two pages earlier: "from Susa, too, comes the scarlet pot so similar in treatment to Kulli ware."

It is this pot that we are concerned with. According to Piggott it belongs to a group of objects, painted or carved or cut, which depicts to the Baluch settlers in Mesopotamia and Elam the Indian bull or an Indian worship-scene or other glimpses of home-life treasured in the memory.

Among these depictions what exactly does the pot in question recall and eonvey? Piggott's earlier reference¹¹⁷reads: "Recent finds of 'scarlet ware' at Susa include one pot which shows a war-chariot drawn by an ox depicted in a style very close to that of the Kulli pot-painters, with the characteristic exaggerated circular rendering of the eye."

There, unmistakably, we have testimony to a war-chariot in pre-Harappan (Early Dynastic) times in Baluchistan, as unmistakably as in the scene of bull-worship on another scarlet-ware pot we have testimony to a Baluch custom of that age, affined to Indian religion then no less than in later centuries, but "a religious rite not illustrated elsewhere in Sumer."¹¹⁸

Under the conditions of Baluch life, less fitted by its

115.Ibid., p. 117.

116.Ibid., pp. 117-18.

117.Ibid., p. 116.

118.Ibid., p. 117.

Page 252

mountainousness for wheeled conveyance than the Indus valley, and under the conditions of the Rigvedic variety of animals used, this one flash of an ox-drawn war-chariot opens up a vivid vista of chariotry in that valley in a possible pre-Harappan age of the Rigveda - the Rigveda which seems to be acquainted with Baluchistan, as Parpola"⁹himself notes, through the tribe of the Bhalānasah (7,18,7), "whose name has been connected with the name of the Bolan pass (cf. Hillebrandt and Wüst quoted in Mayrhofer 1963: II, 483; Witzel 1987a: 176)." Of course, the immediate link of that chariot is with the scripture's suggestions of a chariot with yoked cows. But, against the background of the equine presence attested by Rana Ghundai I and Periano Ghundai (contemporary with Rana Ghundai IIIc), a horse-drawn war-chariot such as the Rigveda mentions again and again strikes us as an extremely probable feature of a fairly remote pre-Harappan antiquity.

The momentous pot of 'scarlet ware' is a fragment and so the illustration of it in Piggott (p. 116) does not show the kind of wheel affixed to the chariot. But, whether solid or spoked, it would not fall apart from the Rigveda. As I have said before in my book, we learn from Macdonell and Keith s Vedic Index of Names and Subjects¹²⁰ that in the Rigvedic chariot "sometimes a solid wheel was used".

Harappan fire-altars

All factors appear to be against assigning the Rigveda to a post-Harappan period. Also, we have to give legitimate value to a particular indication we have already noted of Indo-Aryanism in the Harappa Culture as a substantial element. Raymond and Bridget Allchin¹²¹ have written

119.P. 242, fn. 361.

120.John Murray & Co., London, 1912, II, p. 201.

121.The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 203.

Page 253

impressively on the distinctive fireplaces at the site of Kalibangan:

Such "ritual hearths" are reported from the beginning of the Harappan period itself. It has been suggested that they may have been fire altars, evidence of domestic, popular and civic fire-cults of the Indo-Irānians, which are described in detail in the later Vedic literature. It may then be an indication of culture contact between an early group of Indo-Aryans and the population of the still-flourishing Indus civilization.

Colin Renfrew,¹²² introducing this passage, remarks: "there is no inherent reason why the people of the Indus Valley civilization should not already have been speaking an Indo-European language...." Not realising the extensive case for Indo-Aryanism he is led to call this language "the ancestor of the Rigveda", and after quoting the passage he says: "The Allchins do not suggest that the Indus civilization itself should be regarded as Indo-European-speaking, simply that elements within it may be recognized which are later characteristic of Indo-Aryan culture, as seen in the Rigveda." But we may underline the Allchins' own phrase: "... described in detail in the later Vedic literature." Logically, then, "the later Vedic literature" could be brought chronologically into relation with the Harappa Culture so that the latter might be taken as testifying not to "'pre-Vedic' movements into the plains of India and Pakistan," as Renfrew'²³ puts it, but to post-Vedic ones: that is, to a Rigvedic progeny of sorts, both linguistically and culturally, rather than to an ancestor of the Rigveda.

Hence, all things considered, Parpola is not justified in dating the Rigveda to c. 1600-1400 B.C., and, once we put out of court a post-Harappan invasion by its people, their

122.Archaeology and Language (Jonathan Cape, London, 1987), pp. 190-91.

123.Ibid., p. 191.

Page 254

pre-Harappan status as a very ancient presence in India casts on them, for all practical ends, the colour of autochthonism.

This colour is rendered conceivable in general by two facts. Archaeology has uncovered a pre-Harappan civilization - the Hakra Complex of the Saraswati-Drishadvati region in particular. Archaeology has also discovered Mehrgarh in Baluchistan going back to the seventh millennium B.C. This has suggested, as Colin Renfrew¹²⁴ puts it, "the continuity in the Indus valley and the adjacent areas from the early neolithic through to the floruit of the Indus Valley Civilization - a point which Jarrige has recently stressed." Archaeologically there is room enough in the pre-Harappan past for the Rigvedics to be accommodated as native inhabitants to all intents and purposes. No doubt, nothing typically Rigvedic - that is, pointing to its religion in the form of sacrificial implements or ritual paraphernalia -has been unearthed from that remote past. But neither has anything of the kind been dug up from the post-Harappan age in which the Rigveda is currently placed.

A contra-argument

The only argument from the Rigveda for an extra-Indian origin of its composers is a very lame one hinted at by K.R. Norman, while reviewing Renfrew's Archaeology and Language. He¹²⁵ writes:

In support of his theory that the Indo-Aryans have been in India since a very early date, Renfrew states that there is nothing in the Rgveda which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking population were intrusive to the area (p. 182). This would imply that the Rgvedic people had been in India for so long a time prior to the time of the Rgveda that they had forgotten all about their journey there. There are, however, Rgvedic hymns thanking Indra for

124.Op. cit., p. 196.

125.Lingua 76, pp. 93-94.

Page 255

having given land "here", which implies that there was a memory of a "there".

Norman supplies no specific reference. But Parpola¹²⁶ luckily provides us with one which is quite analogous, though himself making no use of it à la Norman. From hymn 1,131 he quotes verse 4, the end of which runs: "Do, O Indra, chastise the impious (lit. non-sacrificing) mortal, O Lord of Strength! You robbed (from him) the great earth (and) the waters here, drunken (with Soma, you robbed from him) the waters here." Indra takes away the possession of the non-sacrificer in order to give it to those who observe his rites, as is evident from some succeeding phrases we may read in Griffith¹²⁷ about them: "And they have bruited far this hero-might when thou, O Strong One, in thy joy helpest thy suppliants.... One stream after another have they gained from thee...." (verse 5). So we can have no doubt of the analogousness of Parpola's quotation. But it throws into relief the irrelevance of the kind of conclusion Norman draws. If we are to be rigidly literal, the end-word 'here' would apply only to 'the waters'; it would have nothing to do with 'the great earth'. Shall we then say that 'the waters here' direct us from waters inside India to waters outside it? The proposal sounds fantastic, all the more when the implication would be, from the exclusive application of 'here' to 'the waters', that 'the great earth' was not something which served to imply any 'there', any land outside India, as if it was found only inside India and as if the Rigvedics had come from a wholly watery foreign region! But if we avoid rigid literalness and take the two quoted verses together we see that the people concerned have succeeded in gaining control of one river valley after another. In that case, were we to think of a 'there' suggested by the 'here', it would be not any place outside India but each further river valley considered from the viewpoint of

126.P. 208.

127.Op. cit., p. 91, cols. 1 & 2.

Page 256

the one already possessed. Actually, however, nothing compels us to visualize a 'there'. The implications of 'here' need be no more than the sense of a prospect immediately in front of the Rishi's eyes - the land ('great earth') stretching out before him, along with the river ('waters') running through it. To read, in any hymn thanking Indra for having given a physical expanse 'here', a pointer by means of such an expression to a 'there' beyond India is to catch at a straw.

The verse-end we have culled from Parpola has a further lesson for us: it exposes a delusive factor in the translation from the Sanskrit original which Parpola¹²⁸ himself cites: śāasas tám indra mártyam áyajyurh śavasas pate / mahīm amusnāh prthivīm ima apó mandāsana imā apāh. The twice repeated imā does not stand for 'here' at all. The correct rendering of the two phrases containing it would be in each instance: 'these waters'. This rendering indicates even more naturally than 'here' what immediately faces the Rishi's gaze, without prompting any idea of a non-Indian elsewhere.

Griffith's version,¹²⁹ unlike Parpola's choice, does justice to ima, for it speaks of 'these water-floods'. But it commits the fault of translating mahīm ... prthivīm 'this great earth', gratuitously substituting 'this' for 'the', as though there were an imam understood with prthivīm.

The Rigvedic proof of autochthonism

If we go further in Griffith's translation of the hymn, we come across a phrase appropriate to such temporal continuity as Jarrige has emphasised and Renfrew has approved for the people of the Indus Civilization with those who lived as far as the seventh millennium B.C. at Mehrgarh - a continuity applicable also in Renfrew's opinion to the Rigvedics whom, as Norman tells us, Renfrew considers

128.P. 208, fn. 120.

129.Op. cit., p. 91, col. 1.

Page 257

non-intrusive to the area. Their ancestors' presence in the subcontinent seems understood when verse 6 closes thus: "As thou, O Indra Thunder-armed, wilt, as the Strong One, slay our foe, / Listen thou to the prayer of me a later sage, hear thou a later sage's prayer."¹³⁰ The epithet 'later' (návīyasah) is apt only if this sage has been preceded by earlier ones. And in the light of it we may surmise that a certain expression in the same hymn might refer to them. Verse 4 whose last part we have culled from Parpola reads in its first part as Parpola gives¹³¹ it: "The Pūrus know this your exploit, that you, O Indra, have overpowered the autumnal forts, have overpowered them as a conqueror." Griffith¹³²has the version: "This thine heroic power men of old time have known, wherewith thou breakest down, Indra, autumnal forts, breakest them down with conquering might." A footnote by the translator to the expression 'men of old time' tells us: "I have followed Sāyana here. But pūrávah probably means the Pūrus, one of the five great Aryan tribes or clans." No doubt the direct rendering has to be 'the Pūrus', but a more general meaning is made possible by Griffith's verse 10 in 8,53, again a hymn to Indra: "For thee among mankind, among the Pūrus is this Soma shed."¹³³Griffith has a footnote to this verse: "Among the Pūrus: Among men, or among Kings named Pūrus. - Sāyana." The generality accepted from Sāyana, especially along with the subsequent 'later sage', appears to allow the traditional commentator's interpretation. In that case the Shakespearian 'dark backward and abysm of Time' for the Rigvedics would be explicitly suggested in the very hymn we have picked out from Parpola as analogous to whatever Norman has in mind.

At any rate, 'men of old time', whether or not openly allowable in 1,131,4, is a phrase in accord with repeated

130.Ibid., col. 2.

131.P. 208.

132.Op. cit., p. 91, col. 1.

133.Ibid., p. 440, col. 1.

Page 258

allusions in the Rigveda to the old-time illuminati. We may look at a few. The very first hymn, verse 2, of this scripture mentions 'ancient' and 'modern' Rishis (pūrvebhih ... nūtanaih). 4,1,13 also brings them in: "Here did our human fathers take their places, fain to fulfil the sacred Law of worship."¹³⁴ The next hymn is explicit even about the far past period: "As in the days of old our ancient Fathers, speeding the work of holy worship, Agni, / Sought pure light and devotion, singing praises ..." (verse 16).¹³⁵ Or take 7,76,4: "They were the Gods' companions at the banquet, the ancient sages true to Law Eternal. / The Fathers found the light that lay in darkness, and with effectual words begat the Morning."¹³⁶ Yes, the tradition of the Rigveda's practice of mysticism goes back to a remote era, and just because the memory of that era is persistent we must find fault with the natural implication of Renfrew's theory which Norman conveys in the words: "... the Rgvedic peoples had been in India for so long a time prior to the time of the Rgveda that they had forgotten all about their journey there." If, again and again, they harked back in memory to long-preceding initiates and their ancient epoch, it is impossible that they should forget such a radical, such a significant event as their long-ago entry into the Indian subcontinent from abroad. Nor would the thought of such an event be unaccompanied by a reminiscence of their previous habitat. In the face of this double blank - most unlikely against the background of the reiterated remembrance of an antiquity of illumined forebears - it is meaningless to talk of the occupation of India from elsewhere, least of all a specific elsewhere, by the Aryans responsible for the Rigveda.

Several of Renfrew's statements are eminently acceptable from the standpoint of this double blank, though without it they may remain more or less brilliant hypotheses worth discussing: (1) "Certainly the assumption that the Aryas

134.Ibid., p. 199, col. 2.

135.Ibid., p. 201, col. 2.

136.Ibid., p. 372, col. 2.

Page 259

were recent 'immigrants' to India, and their enemies were 'aborigines', has done much to distort our understanding of the archaeology of India and Pakistan"; (2) "We should ... consider seriously the possibility that the new religious and cultural synthesis which is represented by the Rigveda was essentially a product of the soil of India and Pakistan, and that it was not imported, ready-made, on the backs of the steeds of the Indo-Aryans"; (3) Renfrew finds "merit" in the "hypothesis that early Indo-European languages were spoken in north India with Pakistan and on the Iranian plateau at the sixth millennium B.C. ..." (pp. 195-96).

Mention of the sixth millennium B.C. must be seen to involve Mehrgarh for Renfrew as the general back-drop to the dramas of both the Indus Valley Civilization and the Rigveda in different ways proper to them. But here in one important detail we have to disagree with him. The last statement of his is linked with the hypothesis which, in Renfrew's view, would have "the merit of harmonizing symmetrically with the theory for the origin of the Indo-European languages of Europe". The hypothesis envisions the people speaking these languages spreading across Europe with the increase and spread of agriculture from Anatolia, which is regarded as the first centre of Indo-European. Renfrew¹³⁷ surmises that "the cultivation of cereal crops (six row barley, eincorn, emmer and bread wheat) preceding 6000 B.C. at Mehrgarh may be due to "some sort of wave of advance" from Anatolia to south and east like the one to north and west. Thus the people of the Indus Valley Civilization no less than the Rigvedics would be native speakers of an Indo-European language, but their ancestors at Mehrgarh, while using a related tongue, would ultimately be 'immigrants', however removed in time from them. Has Renfrew, an archaeologist by profession, any proof from his own sphere of research?

He¹³⁸ himself admits that "the transmission of farming

137.Ibid., p. 190.

138.Ibid., p. 197.

Page 260

across or along the western flanks of the Iranian plateau from some nuclear farming area to the north" is not easy to conceive. Besides, as Parpola¹³⁹ remarks, "the archaeological evidence from Mehrgarh ... points to indigenous domestication of plants and animals in Baluchistan". Norman¹⁴⁰ also sees no necessity to hold that Mehrgarh's agriculture "came originally from Anatolia" and adds: "There were certainly independent discoveries of domestication [of grain], e.g. in China...." We on our part can find no reason to posit for the Rigvedics at even such a remote remove as neolithic Mehrgarh an Anatolian or any other foreign origin. Beyond Mehrgarh we meet a void. Up to that point foreignness is ruled out for the Rigvedics.

Perhaps an objection against the high degree of antiquity implied for the Rigveda will be lodged on the grounds of a verse quoted from it by Parpola¹⁴¹ though with no intention of loading it with any chronological index. It is a verse (8,46,32) in which occurs the phrase: "a hundred (camels)." The bracketed word is quite legitimate because the context with its mention of camels more than once demands it. The objection would run: "Can you date domesticated camels to the rather early time you allot to the Rigveda?" Parpola has referred to the introduction of the Bactrian two-humped camel in c. 1800 B.C. into Sind. But Wheeler¹⁴² has listed "the scapula of a camel found at the considerable depth of 15 feet at Mohenjo-daro." This carries us almost to 2500 B.C. Piggott¹⁴³ brings the specific information: "A few camel bones of the Indian one-humped race (camelus dromedarius) have been found at Mohenjo-daro and at Harappa, and they have also been found at Andau in Turkestān and in the neolithic Tripolye Culture of South Russia, where they are likely to be approximately contemporary with the Harappa

139.P. 196.

140.Op. cit., p. 97.

141.P. 229.

142.Op. cit., p. 82.

143.Op. cit., p. 157.

Page 261

civilization." A footnote of Wheeler's takes us further back: "There is slight evidence (from Abydos and Abusir-el-Malik) that the camel may have been known to Egypt in late pre-Dynastic times."¹⁴⁴ Renfrew¹⁴⁵ refers to model carts with camels pulling them, found in Turkmenia "in what is termed the Namazga IV period, dateable from 3000 to 2600 B.C." This is also, at one extreme, "late pre-Dynastic times" -early enough to let us hypothesize it in a more ancient Rigvedic epoch and believe the Harappa Culture to be at once a derivative, a development and a deviation from the Rigveda.

A linguistic problem

Undoubtedly, a problem will be posed to us: "If you wish to place speakers of Rigvedic Sanskrit some millennia before other scholars do, then you must explain how an early date like this fits into the general pattern of development of Indo-European languages, their connections, divergences, rates of change noted by linguists going hand in hand with archaeologists."

The demand sounds as if there were a definite vision almost universally accepted, against which we are perpetrating a heresy. But at least the rates at which languages change are known to be variable. I have already dealt with the question in my chapter 11: "The Linguistic Argument about the Rigveda's Date." I have quoted Simeon Potter, J. Duchesne-Guillemin and M. Winternitz to drive home the variableness. As for other items, it should be enough in general to hark back to A.C. Greppin on whom we have drawn in the matter of silver. His review of J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth tells us at almost the beginning: "His conclusion is startling: He says that in view of the enormously contradictory evidence which we possess, it is impossible to assign a

144.Loc. cit., fn 2.

145.Op. cit., p. 201.

Page 262

particular place or time of origin for the Proto-Indo-Euro-peans; if we should insist on a precise location we would have to suppress incompatible evidence, of which we have plenty." Such being the case, we may not be too hesitant to propose both place and time other than any mostly offered so far. However, for the best effect we shall frame a rival picture to the one most favoured at the moment and keep in sight the latter's general demands.

With an acutely new situation arising from all that we have argued, years may be needed to create a full readjustment, but if a situation is unavoidable or at least has odds very much in its favour the difficult work cannot be shirked. Shaffer¹⁴⁶ has made out an impressive case which Renfrew¹⁴⁷summarizes: "The balance of the evidence, as recently usefully reviewed by Shaffer, is in favour of the presence of an Indo-European speaking population during the Harappan civilization, and not exclusively later. At the same time the strong continuities between the Harappan civilization and its antecedents, right back to the earlier neolithic, are becoming more and more evident." The words - 'not exclusively later' - have in mind the usual dating of the Rigveda as post-Harappan. So the Indo-European language which is sought to be synchronized with the Harappan civilization is bound to be akin to, if not quite identical with, Rigvedic Sanskrit. Prima facie, therefore, on purely linguistic grounds there should be no objection to dating the Rigveda as pre-Harappan, provided there are substantial reasons to do so. We have adduced several reasons worth pondering - and to their number Shaffer allows us to add one more. For, if there are 'strong continuities' linking the Harappan civilization to its antecedents, the Sanskritic language which is accepted as prevalent during it, could be assumed as one of the antecedents, a continuity of speech in this civilization from an earlier epoch which might be Rigvedic.

146.Op. cit., pp. 77-90.

147.Op. cit., p. 209.

Page 263

Taking the domesticated horse as the test of Indo-European presence, I argued in my book for a long belt of ancient Aryanism in a broad sense existing in c. 4000 B.C. with Tripolye in the Ukraine at one end simultaneously with the Rigvedic culture in North-west India, as well as in its immediate purlieus, at the other end. In between would be tracts of Russian Turkestān, Iran, Afghanistan and Baluchistan. Now I might extend the area on the west beyond Tripolye, again by the criterion of the horse. But an important fact has come to my notice which would necessitate the dating of the Rigveda beyond c. 4000 B.C.

We have shown, on the basis of the term rajatám hiranyam as the name for silver in the early Sanskrit texts, that the Rigveda's solitary use of rajatá simply as an adjective for a horse proves the existence of this scripture prior to the Silver Age. Greppin,¹⁴⁸ in the same review of Mallory which we have twice cited, states: "Silver ... was probably not worked by Indo-Europeans before the fourth millennium...." Turning to the Encyclopaedia Britannica"⁹we gather the earliest date available for this metal, supporting Greppin in general: "Silver ornaments, vessels for ceremonial services, and decorations have been found in royal tombs dating back to 4000 B.C." So the silverless Rigveda must go past this date. In my belt I have to replace it with the earliest Indian literature denoting silver by rajatám hiranyam. This, according to Monier-Williams,¹⁵⁰ is the Yajur Veda.

How far back in time should the Rigveda go? Here two facts have to be reckoned with. Greppin¹⁵¹ has noted that "the term for horse and its cognates are known throughout the Indo-European languages" and that therefore the Indo-Europeans could not have separated before the horse was known. But since the Sanskrit term rajatá is from the same

148.Loc. cit., col. 4.

149.Ed. 1977, vol. 16, p. 776, col. 2.

150.Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899), p. 863, col. 2.

151.Loc. cit.

Page 264

root as the terms for silver in all the other Indo-European languages and yet does not signify this metal, Greppin¹⁵² is forced to observe: "it would appear that the Indic people separated from the Indo-European mass before the fourth millennium." Evidently the time of the common knowledge of the horse is before this period and evidently also the non-Rigvedic tribes separated from one another after 4000 B.C.

Now we have to focus on the antecedents of the Rigveda as well as on the circumstances following it. On one side Mehrgarh looms up three millennia before 4000 B.C. On the other is the Harappa Culture nearly four thousand years after earliest Mehrgarh. But in Shaffer's context of continuities 'right back to the early neolithic', the Indo-European language present during the Harappan Civilization may have its roots in Mehrgarh. Indeed, as Jarrige and Meadow¹⁵³ inform us, there are signs of an almost direct rapport between that civilization and this site at a date subsequent to the precise neolithic stage. "Pottery and other objects from the later levels of Period VII reveal artifacts characteristic of the Indus Civilization" and, though "there is no evidence ... of an Indus-Civilization occupation at Mehrgarh itself", "the surface remains of a small mound some eight kilometers south of Mehrgarh are evidently the products of a mature phase of the Indus Civilization." The Rigveda too suggests some knowledge of the Mehrgarh locale, the Bolan river. Parpola,¹⁵⁴ as we have seen, refers to "the tribe of the Bhalanắsah (RS 7,18,7), whose name has been connected with the name of the Bolan Pass...." The information from Jarrige and Meadow lends greater credibility to the linguistic link we have thought probable of the Indus Civilization with Mehrgarh. In that case, the lack of horse-finds so far at this site and its neighbourhoods should prompt us justifiably to adopt here the criterion of language

152.Ibid.

153.Op. cit., p. 133, cols. 2 & 3.

154.P. 242, fn. 361.

Page 265

instead of equus caballus for the presence of the Indo-Europeans.

Now, if the Rigveda is taken to precede the Indus Civilization, then logically the Indo-European language whose roots would be in Mehrgarh could have all the more a relation to the essentials of Sanskrit. But Mehrgarh is not strictly the Indus Valley in which both the Harappa Culture and the Rigveda were centred. Hence it may be conceived as speaking something similar yet with a difference. What it is may be imagined in consonance with the demands of the new vision we need in place of the popular current pattern. I may offer a few ideas of an overall kind, trying to see a diversity of movements which would go to match the general results of whatever has been currently visualized as most likely in the territory within our partially modified belt of Aryanism. Of course, happenings in the direction of Europe do not directly concern us.

I would label the Indo-Europeans at Mehrgarh not as Indo-Aryan, nor even as Indo-Iranian or Proto-Aryan, but as Proto-Indo-European. And in view of the proximity of the Indus Valley I would extend Proto-Indo-European to that territory so that Baluchistan and Northwest India, if not also a part of Afghanistan, become the cradle-land of the Indo-European mass. Since "the Indic people", as we may surmise after Greppin, must have separated from this mass before 4000 B.C., I would validly reverse the situation and say that this mass separated from the Indic people and left the cradle-land before the same date.

Outside India and Baluchistan the emigrating members of the Indo-European family settled as one group in Eastern Iran and Central Asia. The tribe closest to what we classify as Indo-Aryan - namely, the one we call Iranian - and forming with it the Indo-Iranian family, settled nearest to the cradle-land. The state of its language had already developed certain features which we mark at a later period in the Avesta, features differentiating it not only from Indo-Aryan but also from Indo-Iranian (Proto-Aryan), as we can

Page 266

see from Parpola's observation:¹⁵⁵ "The principal word for 'horse' in Avestan is aspa-, already differentiated from Proto-Aryan *aśva-, which has been retained in Vedic." A marked feature departing from Indo-Aryan was the tendency of s>h - 'Sa' changing to 'Ha' such as we find completely accomplished in the Ancient Iranian 'Ahura' for the Sanskrit 'Asura', and 'Hindu' for 'Sindhu', and Avestan 'Harakhaiti' or Achaemenid 'Harahvaiti' for the name of a river in Arachosia corresponding to the Indian 'Sarasvatī'. In connection with the last instance an important historical question arises, significant for our notion of the cradle-land. O.P. Bharadwaj has recently revived it, asking which school of scholars is right - the one believing that the name 'Harakhaiti' or 'Harahvaiti' came with the Indo-Aryans entering India from the Iranian zone to turn into 'Sarasvatī' or the other holding that 'Sarasvatī' from India turned into those names on a westward journey of Aryans from India.

The decision here between the two alternatives will be crucial for the whole Indo-European family exclusive of the Indo-Aryan group. For if the Aryans who would become Irānians can be shown to have left India, the same outward passage may be asserted for all the members of the Indo-European family between whom and the Indic people there was a separation before 4000 B.C., the commencement of the Silver Age. Bharadwaj¹⁵⁶ writes:

If we are not predisposed in favour of the foreign origin of the Indian Aryans the second alternative would appear more logical. Whereas it may not be possible to establish the philological process of the change of "Ha" to "Sa" and to explain particularly its change to all the sibilants "Śa",

155.P. 199.

156."The Vedic Saraswatī", Haryana Sahitya Akademi Journal of Indological Studies, ed. by O. P. Bharadwaj (Chandigarh, 1988), Vol. II, nos. 1-2, pp. 38-39. In our quotation, only a selected number of references are given.

Page 267

From the earliest times through the ages we come across instances of this change of "Śa", "Sa" and "Sa" to "Ha", specially as we proceed from the traditional region of Madhyadesa towards the west. To take only a couple of instances, even now Sādhu is pronounced as Hadhu, Śivaji as Hibji, Sukhadeva as Hukhdeva, Daśa as Daha and Sāhukāra as Haukara in dialects of Marwar.¹⁵⁷ Going back about 25 hundred years we find the place-name spelt as Tausayana by Pānini changing to Tohana¹⁵⁸ at some later stage .... The same process operated in the evolution of , the name Śaryanā in the Rgveda¹⁵⁹ and Saryana¹⁶⁰ or Śaryāna¹⁶¹ later to Hāryanā which, like its original, earlier applied to the western parts of the present state.

In support of Bharadwaj's suggestion that the name Sarasvatī also underwent the same process in its westward journey we may add two observations. From the specialist in Sanskrit, Richard Hartz, I have the note: "Sarasvatī has every appearance of being a pure Sanskrit word derived from sr, to flow. It is formed in a regular way by adding the feminine possessive suffix vani to saras (sr receives the guna-strengthening and becomes sar before the primary suffix as). Sarasvatī could be translated 'she of the flowing movement', a natural word for a river as well as for the goddess of inspiration." On Hartz's showing, it would be linguistically arbitrary no less than unnecessary to deduce the name from that of the Arachosian river. All the more would it be so on

157.Cf. Bharadwaj, O. P., Studies in the Historical Geography of Ancient India (Delhi, 1986), pp. 176-191.

158.Agrawal, V. S., India as known to Pānini, 2nd ed. (Varanasi, 1963), p. 74.

159.Vedic Index, II, p. 364.

160.Shastri, K. D., The Ganapātha ascribed to Pānini (Kurukshetra, 1967), p. 149.

161.Ganaratnamahodadhi of Vardhamana, ed. Eggeling, Julius, reprint (Delhi, 1963), IV, p. 300 com. and no. 7, p. 338f. Alternative readings Saryana and Saryana are also available.

Page 268

our drawing from K.C. Chattopadhyaya¹⁶² the information that in India itself the Nighantu 1,12, while giving the word Sarasvatī as one of the expressions meaning 'rivers', has another word in the same list, harasvatyah, corresponding to the Iranian harakhaiti or harahvaiti. So already in a book avowedly dealing in a fairly remote past with Vedic vocables we have an Indian background to the change in the river Sarasvatī's 'Sa' to 'Ha'. There is no call to think of this river-name as coming from outside India. The movement seems to have been the other way around.

There is also a fact beyond linguistics which would show the Indo-Iranian family inhabiting the Indian subcontinent. It is the answer to the question: "What is the probable nature of the religion followed originally by the Irānians and the Indians, both of whom knew themselves as Aryans?" Richard N. Frye¹⁶³ makes the definite assertion: "It is generally accepted that the religion of the Aryans, if it can be reconstructed at all from any later texts, is best reflected in the Vedas." Consequently the original Indo-Iranian religion, of which the Rigveda is a derivative, would best be located in the very country in which was composed this scripture whose Rishis calling themselves 'modern' (nuta-naih) look back as in its first hymn (1,1,2) to preceding 'ancient' (purvebhih) seers.

Hence all the more, in the matter of the Sarasvatī, we should support Bharadwaj's reasoning. Hence too we may postulate that at a certain stage in Indo-Iranian speech in the Indian subcontinent, when Indo-Aryan had sufficiently developed from it but without altering the fundamental nature of Indo-Iranian, a group with some s>h tendency from the western side of the Sarasvatī moved out and, settling in Arachosia, conferred reminiscently on the river there the name Harakhaiti which subsequently became

162.Studies in Vedic and Indo-Iranian Religion and Literature (Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, Varanasi & Delhi, 1978), II, p. 96.

163.The Heritage of Persia (A Mentor Book, New York & Toronto, 1966), p. 45.

Page 269

Harahvaiti. Some time later, covering perhaps a good number of decades or else a few centuries, the group along with the various other tribes made its way in a northerly direction, carrying its somewhat modified Indo-Iranian to the South Russian steppes. If in the current theory we can think of Indo-Irānians moving southward from those steppes and entering far-off Iran and India, the opposite trek should be quite on the cards.

Together with speakers of allied tongues, our Indo-Irānians lived for a long time in a broad region including the valley of the Oxus and the Jaxartes as well as the steppes and probably still more northern latitudes. They adopted it as their home to all intents and purposes, the Airiydnam vaējo of which the Avesta speaks. On their western flank they came into contact with the Finno-Ugrians whose speech shows, by the form of its words, borrowings from Indo-Iranian in a fair measure while their own tongue lent only a small number of words to it.¹⁶⁴ In the course of time our group's language, without ceasing to be Indo-Iranian, went through some transformations which we regard as typical of Iranian, one of them being an extensive substitution of "Ha" for "Sa".¹⁶⁵ At this stage it had interaction, as in the current pattern of linguistic development, with a particular fellow-tribe's speech - namely, Greek, which exhibits a tendency towards the same substitution along with some closeness to Indo-Iranian forms, etc.¹⁶⁶

Afterwards a section of its speakers parted company with their neighbours and came to occupy whatever territories have a geographical validity in the list of the Videvdat (Vendīdād) 1.5-80. They constituted the most ancient Iran we know of - the Iran in which Zarathustra flourished. I write of 'a section' because the Avesta which is the scripture

164.Norman, op. cit., p. 97

165.Cf. Parpola's note 204 on p. 220 about s>h: "This change took place in early Iranian in all positions except before n and before and after stops."

166.Norman, op. cit., p. 94.

Page 270

of Zarathustrianism has two parts. The Older Avesta is that of the Gāthās, the direct compositions of Zarathustra. Owing to the extreme affinity of their language with the Sanskrit of the Rigveda, their period must be more or less the same as the Indian scripture's. They are very short in comparison to the Rigveda and their subject-matter provides no occasion to bring in any of the items whose non-mention bears on Rigvedic chronology. But their language is a sufficient chronological guide. And if the Rigveda predates c. 4000 B.C. the Gāthās must do the same.

The Younger Avesta can be dated broadly according to those non-Rigvedic items. Its ignorance of rice makes it anterior to the Harappa Culture, but it cannot go beyond the Silver Age. For verse 28 in Yast 10 tells us of Mithra "with silver helm, golden coat of mail", while verse 31 brings in horses which have "their fore-hoofs shod with gold, their hind-hoofs with silver"; and the Videvdat's VII,187 too mentions "silver". The Younger Avesta must be post-4000 B.C. So the Irānians responsible for it must have separated from the mass during the Silver Age and must be a second stream of immigration into the Iranian plateau. They are likely to have come along the same many-stepped route as their more ancient kinsfolk, so that the Videvdat's geographical suggestions would hold for both the immigrant streams from Airiyānam vaējo. There is nothing inherently improbable about two streams. Do we not hear of an entry into Greece by Indo-Europeans in about 2000 B.C. and then of a second (Dorian) intrusion about 800 years after? In Parpola's own theory we have two entries into India by the Aryans divided by three or four centuries.

We may picture our two immigrant streams to have found their terminus in the same Eastern Iran where the Irānians together with the other Indo-Europeans had halted for some time on leaving the Indian subcontinent. Frye¹⁶⁷ writes about Zarathustra: "Most scholars now agree that he lived and

167. Op. cit., p. 52.

Page 271

taught in eastern Iran." Frye¹⁶⁸ adjudges too that, linguistically, both the Gāthās and the Younger Avesta "would best fit into the area between the central deserts and the mountains of Afghanistan".

Possibly the objection will be made: "Is it not rather fanciful to make the Iranian branch come back to the very place which it had left centuries earlier?" Our answer is: "Many elements of a venture to reconstruct past movements are bound to be a little surprising when the situation is so complex that none of the theories projected can satisfactorily meet all its demands." Greppin's review of Mallory drives this point home quite effectively. Some play of imagination is unavoidable in the gaps of actual knowledge. Provided the imagination does not verge on the sheer impossible we have to respect it. Even in the most widely-held view we meet odd features, fluxes and refluxes that appear rather fantastic. Thus Norman,¹⁶⁹ alluding to "various dialects of the steppe-dwelling horse-riders", says: "I see some of the speakers of those dialects moving in waves westwards back into the area from which their ancestors had come, as well as moving to the east and the south."

A novel pattern of development of Indo-European languages seems conceivable and an ultra-ancient Sanskrit for the Rigveda can be fitted into it.

Sanskrit and Indo-European

Linguistics on a more extensive scale can come into play in this connection if we attend to the reply of the eminent linguist Dr. Satya Swarup Misra, when I put before him the question how he would rearrange the picture of Indo-European if Sanskrit were given far greater antiquity than

most Western scholars allow:

Sanskrit retains Indo-European phonology and morpho-

168.Ibid., p. 53.

169.Op. cit., p. 97.

Page 272

logy more perfectly than other languages belonging to the same group. In phonology it retains Indo-European vowel length quite perfectly in simple vowels as well as in diphthongs. In consonants it retains the contrast of voiced and voiceless, aspirates and non-aspirates more perfectly. No other Indo-European language like Greek, Latin, Hittite retains the contrast perfectly. For example, Greek confuses Indo-European voiced aspirates with voiceless aspirates (e.g. Indo-European th and dh become th in Greek). In morphology, Sanskrit retains all the eight cases of Indo-European perfectly. In all other languages there is a merger of cases. Even Greek retains only five cases out of the Indo-European eight. Similarly, there are many other points.

But in one or two points Sanskrit apparently shows a departure from Indo-European proto-speech. Indo-European a, e, o become a in Sanskrit. This reconstruction of a, e, o instead of a in Indo-European is subject to controversy. Bopp and Schleicher reconstructed a in Indo-European on the basis of Sanskrit a. Brugmann and others have reconstructed a, e, o as in Greek. This is now more or less accepted by all scholars, but there is no explanation to show how a, e, o become a in Sanskrit, which is more conservative in other sounds.

Similarly, in consonants the Indo-European palatal series are represented by sibilants in Satem languages and by velars in Centum languages. Many scholars take k of Centum to be more original than s of Satem, misunderstanding the reconstructed palatal k to be nearer to the velar k of Centum languages. But Sanskrit is the only language which shows an allophonic distribution of k and s out of the Indo-European palatal k.

Thus leaving aside the controversial items, Sanskrit is in all other respects nearer to proto-Indo-European than any other Indo-European historical language. This is a pointer to the fact that the place where Sanskrit exists or existed has a claim to be the original home of the Indo-Euro-

Page 273

peans. Greek, Hittite, Latin, etc. belong to a much later chronological stage: on the basis of linguistic change they are comparable to Middle Indo-Aryan as they show assimilation, Middle Indo-Aryan type of vowel-sandhi, syncretism, etc. in common.¹⁷⁰

The claim of Hittite as an archaic language was wrongly made by some scholars on the basis of the Laryngeal Theory and the Indo-Hittite Theory. Both have been thoroughly refuted by me in my work, The Aryan Problem - a Linguistic Approach (Munshi Ram Manoharlal, New Delhi). Besides, as I have said, Hittite has many linguistic changes. Haripriya Misra, in a paper read at the All-India Conference of Linguists in 1988, demonstrates that it is to be ranked with Middle Indo-Aryan rather than Old Indo-Aryan.

Thus Sanskrit is the most archaic Indo-European language and it also retains Indo-European flora and fauna quite appreciably. Therefore if India is accepted as the original home of the Indo-European speakers many complications of the Aryan problem will be solved.

Recently, Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V.V. Ivanov¹⁷¹ in the course of suggesting for the Indo-Europeans a homeland in southeastern Anatolia have sought to revise the consonant system of the proto-language of the Indo-Europeans. Their reconstruction shows the consonants to be closer to those of the Germanic, Armenian and Hittite daughter

170.For Greek see the two papers of Haripriya Misra: "A Comparative Study of Assimilation of Conjunct Consonants in Prakrit and Greek" (Linguistic Researches, Vol. IV, 1982, Research Journal of the Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University), pp. 35-38, and "A Comparative Study of Vowel Contraction in Greek and Middle Indo-Aryan" (Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Journal of the Indian Association of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Vol. I, Number 1-2, July 1984, January 1985, issued at Varanasi, do Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University), pp. 25-26.

171."The Early History of Indo-European Languages", Scientific American, March 1990, p. 85, cols. 2 & 3.

Page 274

languages than to Sanskrit. "This neatly reverses the classical conception that the former languages had undergone a systematic sound shift, whereas Sanskrit had faithfully conserved the original sound system." Greppin,¹⁷² reviewing the authors' book in its Russian version, remarks:

The arguments supporting this new theory, however, have found little acceptance, except from linguists who tend to chase with passion after non-traditional models. The new consonantism seems to have little effect on our present interpretation of parallel systems; instead it would appear to be a change made in a vacuum for its sake alone, without ramifications.

Eric Hamp, in a recent address in Pavia, made strong criticism of these views, and echoed some of the cautious sentiments maintained by a large number of Western linguists. As it stands, the new phonology expressed by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, and the typological arguments which support it, are finding scant acceptance.

As for the homeland proposed by the Russian authors, Greppin, with an eye to the popular theory of Marija Gimbutas about a homeland north of the Black Sea, which the Russians take to be a later passage for the Indo-Europeans into Europe, comments in the next paragraph:

But though the phonological argument is perhaps the weaker half of this book, the ideas of Gamkrelidze and Ivanov regarding the location of the Indo-Europeans have considerable charm and may receive much greater acceptance. They have, of course, been criticized. Diako-noff has asked, for instance, why if the Armenians were indigenous to the ancient homeland, they borrowed arboreal terms from the Hurrians, as they did, when their own words should have been available. He has also

172. The Times Literary Supplement, March 14, 1986, p. 278.

Page 275

questioned the economy of the new southern location, for although it resolves the problem of the great West-East movement of the Indo-Irānians, it introduces a still more extensive South-North movement for the European members of the Indo-European family.

So Misra's linguistic case in favour of our own outlook retains its force - all the more since Greppin has also the observation: "Gamkrelidze and Ivanov have virtually no hard archaeological evidence to support their claims...."

More on the horse, silver and rice

Can we lend some precision to the ultra-ancientness we envisage for Sanskrit? "Mallory notes," says Greppin,¹⁷³"that the horse was domesticated at the beginning of the fourth millennium...." In that case Greppin rightly wonders how the Indic people who shared with the other Indo-Europeans the term for horse could fail, unlike them, to have a direct term for silver, a metal which was worked also at the fourth millennium's beginning. This fact about silver casts doubt on Mallory's date for the domestication of the horse.

The chronological bearing of the Rigveda's silverlessness cannot be denied. On the other hand, the date for horse-domestication is bound to be a fluctuant quantity: archaeology cannot shut its doors to the possibility of further discoveries pointing to an earlier date. And indeed the latest information from Marija Gimbutas¹⁷⁴ in a review of Renfrew's book belies Mallory's dating. She it was who launched in 1956 the 'Kurgan hypothesis' which has been the favourite in Academe up to now. The Kurgan ('round mound') people north of the Black Sea are, in her view, the Proto-Indo-

173.Loc. cit.

174."Accounting for a Great Change", The Times Literary Supplement, June 24-30, 1988, p. 714, cols. 1-4.

Page 276

Europeans who went forth to the west, to the south and to the east. She considers their direct descendants to be the Indo-Iranians. They appeared in the middle of the fifth millennium B.C. as riders of the domesticated horse. She writes also in her review:

The agricultural people in the middle Volga-Ural region and north of the Caucasus mountains (the "Samara" and "Khvalynsk" groups), who had knowledge of the domesticated horse and horsemanship, are known at least from 5000-4500 B.C.... Recent discoveries of horse bones in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan suggest this region as a most likely locus of the domestication of the horse. The radiocarbon dates place the Volga Neolithic domesticated horse in the mid-seventh millennium B.C. The horse cult (including sacrifice) so characteristic of the Proto-Indo-European culture, is also evidenced in the same region from the fifth millennium B.C.

Thus the horse recedes into a past more remote than Mallory's beginning of the fourth millennium, and thus the Rigveda can be devoid of knowledge of silver and yet have knowledge of the horse in common with all the other Indo-European tribes.

If, along with the Iranian people, the rest of the Indo-Europeans are necessarily seen to have left the Indian subcontinent before 4000 B.C., after sharing horse-knowledge with the Indic people, the possibility of such knowledge can range back to the mid-seventh millennium, the radiocarbon date for the Volga horse. In that case, the Indo-European mass must have left the Indic people in their cradle-land in the early half of that millennium - 7000-6500 B.C. - and appeared with its horses in the Volga-Ural region. After a 1000 years or so in Airiyānam vaējo, the Iranian tribe may be pictured as returning to Eastern Iran. This would allow the Gāthās to be composed there approximately in mid-sixth millennium. Then the Rigveda

Page 277

whose Sanskrit is at the same linguistic stage as Gāthic may be around 5500 B.C.

An unexpected shaft of light seems thrown on this date by some further information from Dr. Misra which suggests an outflow of the Indo-Aryans themselves from the Indian subcontinent towards the region usually considered their homeland. We may formulate the information as follows:

Several European scholars have now worked out that the Uralic languages (also called Finno-Ugrian), such as Hungarian, etc., show many loan words from Indo-Iranian and from various stages of Indo-Aryan. On the contrary no one has shown that Indo-Aryan has any loan word from the Uralic languages. This proves that the Indo-Aryan speaking people went to the Uralic area again and again in different periods.

In a paper published in the proceedings of the Indo-Soviet Seminar held in October 1977 in Dushanbe, USSR, J. Harmatta has tried to prove some words in the Uralic languages to be loans from Indo-Iranian at eleven stages, and he has assigned some time for each stage. The earliest borrowings are in c. 5000 B.C. I have shown by linguistic analysis that these ancient loans are really Rigvedic forms. For example, Harmatta takes aj "move" as a source for many Uralic borrowings. But aj "move" is a Rigvedic root. He takes aj as Indo-Iranian. But actually the Indo-Iranian form should be az and not aj. If aj is found as a source of some Uralic loan words belonging to c. 5000 B.C., then that is the lowest limit for the date of the Rigveda, the earliest Indo-Aryan document.

To judge finally whether this whole picture is plausible we have to revert to Sharma's History to Prehistory. The Neolithic sites of Koldihwa and Mahagara which have evidenced the domesticated horse¹⁷⁵ are dated by radiocarbon

175. P. 110.

Page 278

to 6570 B.C.¹⁷⁶ With the possibility of adding 210 years¹⁷⁷ we reach 6780 B.C. and get time enough for the equus to be taken to the Volga by 6500. It would be nothing unnatural for the Rigveda to have the horse at the date we have postulated for it: c. 5500. But History to Prehistory brings in another consideration, for it has an important statement to make about rice - a statement needing to be adjusted with the fact that the Rigveda does not know this grain. Sharma¹⁷⁸ informs us that "the evidence of cultivated rice has been obtained from Neolithic Mahagara and Koldihwa" and that it has been identified as belonging to the variety oryza sativa. He says further: "This is the earliest evidence of rice cultivation so far in any part of the world." The early Neolithic, yielding oryza sativa, has given not only 6570 but also 5540 B.C., with 240 plus or minus. If subtracting 240 is open to us, we may date Mahagara's and Koldihwa's cultivated rice to 5300. The spread of it westward from the Vindhyas and the Ganga Valley might very well take time: so the Rigveda not only at its beginning in c. 5500 but also during its continuation for some centuries later could easily be ignorant of this plant.

Before we wind up our references to the archaeology of the Ganga Valley and the Vindhyas we must place beside the claim of Jarrige and Meadow for Mehrgarh, Sharma's closing passage's. After listing "a continuous story of human achievements beginning with the Epi-Palaeolithic, maturing through the Mesolithic and ultimately culminating in the new transformation that heralded the beginnings of the Neolithic with its new economy, the basis of which was provided by domestication of animals and plants, especially the cultivation of rice (oryza sativa)¹⁷⁹ Sharma's peroration runs:

176.P. 112.

177.Ibid.

178.P. 110.

179.P. 112.

Page 279

This transformation was achieved in a small compact area of 12 sq. km. in the valley of Belan and was an indigenous development. The theory of diffusion from an original centre in Western Asia holds good no longer, as in spite of the parallel development in the lithic industries and domestication of cattle, sheep/goat and plants in the same period in Western Asia, rice is conspicuous by its absence. Equally untenable is the view of diffusion from some South-East Asian source, as the evidence for cultivation of rice in all these areas is much later and the lithic tools and other components of the Vindhyan Neolithic are almost absent.

It is no longer possible to hold that India was a part of a South Eastern Asiatic source ... or to accept the view that the domesticates, particularly animals, were introduced from the Near East; nor is it possible to believe in the single origin of agriculture. Till more coherent and conclusive evidence is available from some other centres, this area of India, the Belan valley in the Vindhyas, will remain an original, primary and nuclear centre of Neolithic transformation, for the beginnings of agriculture, of rice and of domestication of animals.

The Mitanni question and the survival of archaism in Nuristan

Now we may return to linguistics. The next challenge to us is from the Mitanni documents of Boghazkoy mentioning Mitra-Varuṇa, Indra and the Nāsatyas.

Norman¹⁸⁰ gives the current solution. On their way southward from the Russian steppes, the Indo-Irānians entered Iran. Later there was a split into Indo-Aryans and Iranians, the former heading eastward for India. But before entering India from Iran There was a split among them too and one section moved westward to Anatolia and appeared

180. Op. cit.. p. 95.

Page 280

in history as the Mitanni rulers. "Since their language is so close to intra-Indian Sanskrit, it would seem unlikely that they had left the eastern branch of the Indo-Aryans ... very long before the date at which their texts are attested in Anatolia, i.e. around the middle of the second millennium B.C."

When "noting the Rigvedic nature of a part of the Mitanni treaty's invocation of gods as witnesses, we drew attention to a point overlooked by Parpola but already marked in 1922 by P. Giles in his article "The Aryans", in the Cambridge History of India:¹⁸¹ "The Mitanni had adopted the worship of certain deities who at the time of the composition of the Vedic hymns were still the most important, though to them had been added Agni, 'Fire', specially an object of priestly worship in the Vedic hierarchy." The Mitannians' omission of the extremely important Fire-god plus the absence of any reference to themselves as 'Aryans', unlike the practice of both the Irānians and the Indians, prompted me to caution Parpola against inferring from them the usual chronology for the Rigveda. In my book I have tried to show how plausible it is to think of the Mitannians as having gone to Anatolia from a pocket of ancient semi-Vedism lingering around 1500 B.C., long after the real Rigvedic epoch, in the northern outskirts of India where till late the Kalash Kafirs still retained remnants of the old cult.

Very relevant here are some passages from Parpola¹⁸²himself, in accord with our look backward from this tribe:

The tribes of Nuristan in northeastern Afghanistan have, in their isolation, kept their archaic Aryan religion and culture until the present century and have therefore been spoken of as kafirs or 'infidels' by the neighbouring Muslims. The ceremonial axes (called in Kati was'lik) used as symbols of rank by the Nuristanis at the time of the earliest European visits in 1885 have close parallels to

181.P. 73.

182.Pp. 245-46.

Page 281

the axes in ancient petroglyphs at Chilas on the upper Indus (some of these axes are carried by riders on horseback) and can be further compared to 9th century B.C. West Iranian axes. So perhaps it is not altogether farfetched to note that the wooden vessels used by the Nuristanis as measures and pitchers for clarified butter have a long spout resembling the Sialk B spouted vessels.

The Nuristani languages, too, have preserved some extremely archaic features. Best known among these is the sporadic preservation of the dental affricate c in such words as Kati duc corresponding to Sanskrit daśa and Proto-Indo-European *dékm 'ten'. The exact classification of the Nuristani languages among the Aryan branch is a controversial and still undecided issue; according to some scholars (e.g. Thomas Burrow) they form an offshoot of the Proto-Indo-Aryan group, according to others (e.g. Manfred Mayrhofer), of the Proto-Iranian; still others (e.g. Georg Morgenstierne) have considered them a distinct branch, which may represent the very earliest Aryans to have arrived in the Hindukush.

If, like the Kalash Kafirs, the Nuristanis have 'Varin' (= Varuṇa) among their deities, the balance of opinion should tilt towards Indo-Aryanism as against the Iranian religion, in which in place of the Rigvedic Asura Varuṇa there is Ahura Mazda. But whatever the final choice, the existence of people like the Kalash Kafirs and the Nuristanis, with their archaic relics in culture and language, should render plausible my alternative to the current view of the Mitannians.

Parpola and the attack on Dāsa forts

With the linguistic problem in its two challenges faced, we may come back to the mainstream of our critique.

In addition to his seeing the ethnic identity and source of the Rigvedics' enemies as completely different from what has been commonly believed and to his tracing the Rigvedics

Page 282

themselves, whom he significantly calls Sauma Aryans, to the people named Saka Haumawarga in old Achaemenid inscriptions, Parpola holds that the attacks on the forts of the Dāsas, whom the Rigveda speaks of, did not happen in India - the Indus or Gangetic Valley - but in ancient Bactria or northern Afghanistan. He¹⁸³ argues:

It is true that descendants of Dāsas seem to have survived in the upper Indus valley until later times: the Mahabhārata mentions Dāsamīya- as the name of a non-Brahmanical people living in the northwest. It is also true that in RS 8,19,36-37 the poet associates the king Trasadasyu with the river Suvāstu (= modern Swat). Even King Sudās is to be placed in the upper Indus valley: his famous victory over the ten kings took place on the river Paruṣṇī (7,18,8-9), which can be identified, with Yāska (Nirukta 9,26), with the river Irāvatī (= modern Ravi) in the Panjab; he also fought on the Yamunā (= the modern Jumna) (7,18,19).

But Trasadasyu and Sudās do not represent the earliest phase in the fight between the Aryans and the Dāsas: Trasadasyu's father, Purukutsa, king of the Pūrus, broke the seven autumnal forts of the enemy and crushed the Dāsas (RS 1,63,7; 1,174,2; 6,20,10). Sudās, again, is a descendant of Divodāsa, whose enemy, Dāsa Śambara, possessed a hundred (or ninety-nine) forts.

The references to Śambara are found in books I (7), II (4), IV (2), VI (6) and VII (2). The greatest number of hymns (5) referring to Śambara are in book VI. The descriptions of the fight between Śambara and Divodāsa are also most realistic, and apparently the oldest, in book VI. Book VI has 8 references to Dāsas in 7 hymns and 7 references to Dasyus, while book VII (whose central figure is Sudās) has 4 references to Dāsas in 4 hymns and 3 references to Dasyus. On this basis it has been suggested

183. Pp. 214-15.

Page 283

that the enmity between the Dāsas and the Aryans was at its greatest in the period represented by book VI. Now books II, VI and VIII have been shown to contain several indications that the poets lived near or west of the Hindukush.

The earlier fights, therefore, are more likely to have taken place in ancient Bactria, or northern Afghanistan, with which the Vedic Aryans clearly were familiar: the verse RS 10,75,6 enumerates as tributaries of the Indus (Sindhu), starting from the north, the rivers Tṛṣṭāmā, Susartu, Rasā, Śvetyā, Kubhā (= modern Kabul), Gomatī (= modern Gumal in Afghanistan), Mehatnu and Krumu (= modern Kurram); Rasā, Anitabhā, Kubhā, and Krumu are mentioned together with Sindhu in RS 5,53,9. The Panis are said to have lived on the far side of the Rasā [RS 10,108,1-2].

In a footnote to the last sentence Parpola, on the basis of 5,53,9, infers "that Rasā, too, was in the region of the Hindukush". But he strikes me as confusing his case not only by accepting the usual identification of the Rasā with the river Ranhā of the Avesta but also by taking that river to be meant by the geographical chapter of the Avestan Vendīdād. He urges such a meaning in spite of himself, telling us that there it is mentioned last, after Hapta Hindu. As Hapta Hindu is the same as Sapta Sindhu of the Rigveda, the river Indus with its seven-streamed system, how can the Rasā, along with the Panis on its far side, be in the region of the Hindukush? The Vendīdād's geographical list goes from north to south and its Ranhā, which is frequently identified by scholars with the river Jaxartes, the Syr Darya of the Persian inscriptions, has been a puzzle. Parpola hardly lessens the puzzle by writing in his footnote: "Considering the situation of the Iranian Parnoi... and the importance of the river [Ranhā] in the Avesta, I am inclined to think that Rasā is another name of the Amu Darya, besides (Sanskrit) Vaksu = Oxus...." But if the Rasā is the Oxus how can it be called a tributary of the Indus? Both the Oxus and the Jaxartes flow northwards in the direction of the Aral Sea.

Page 284

The Rigveda's river Rasā

Rasā, in the Rigveda, does not have one single sense. The river-list 10,75 suggests a geographical series in which the Rasā is certainly a far northern river, yet just as certainly not the farthest and northernmost nor identical with the Oxus or the Jaxartes. The geography-suggesting 5,53,9 shows it in a similar way to be only beyond the unknown Anitabha and the known Kubhā and Krumu as well as, of course, the Sindhu. But when the Panis are said in 10,108 to be on the farther side of the Rasā we are no longer in a geographical context. To meet the Panis, Saramā, the envoy of Indra, comes from 'afar' (verse 3) along a 'path' which 'leads far away to distant places', making 'her way o'er Rasā's waters' (verse 1), as Griffith's translation¹⁸⁴ has it. But the precise significance does not emerge here.

Sri Aurobindo¹⁸⁵ brings it to a focus. Saramā "descends from the supreme realm, parākāt;... she arrives at the home of the Dasyus, dasyor oko na sadanam, which they themselves describe as the reku padam alakam, the world of falsehood beyond the bound of things. The supreme world also surpasses the bound of things by exceeding or transcending it; it is reku padam, but satyam not alakam, the world of the Truth, not the world of the falsehood."

In 10,108 Rasā is a river of mystery, not a geographical entity to be pinpointed. To bear out Sri Aurobindo's expression - "beyond the bound of things" - we have only to turn to 9,41,5-6 in Griffith's version¹⁸⁶ of that hymn to Soma, where Soma is not just a plant but a god whose ecstatic

184.Op. cit, p. 620, col. 1.

185.The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971), p. 224.

186.Op. cit., p. 485, col. 1.

Page 285

powers pour plenty on the worshippers and carry them to "the bridge of bliss" from "the bridge of woe" (2 & 4). The two verses to which I am drawing attention run:

Flow on thy way, Most Active, thou: fill full the mighty heavens and earth,

As Dawn, as Sūrya with his beams.

On every side, O Soma, flow round us with thy protecting stream,

As Rasā flows around the world.

Max Müller¹⁸⁷ has noted how, for the Rigvedic Aryans, Rasā "assumed a mythical character, and became a kind of Okeanos, surrounding the extreme limits of the earth". Not realizing this, Parpola has committed an interpretative inconsistency in looking at 10,108 in purely geographical terms.

I may add that he has misunderstood the Vendīdād's Ranhā also in the same way. In the geographical north-to-south series, as its location is after Hapta-Hindu, it must lie further south. What then could this river-name evoke for the Avestan imagination? Should one think of the Indian ocean? As long ago as 1864 a scholar is reported to have suggested that "the author [of the Vendīdād] had in view the boundaries of the earth and that Ranhā means the circumambient ocean".¹⁸⁸ Thus Max Müller's insight into the Rigvedic Rasā is paralleled here in regard to Ranhā. And it is rather appropriate that two terms which seem etymo-logically related should have related 'mythical' implications for the ancient mind.

187.Ibid., p. 73, col. 1, fn.12.

188.Avesta: the Religious Books of the Parsees, from Professor Spiegel's translation of the original manuscripts, by Arthur Henry Bleeck (Hertford, 1864), p. 12, the last of the notes selected from the "Zend Account" in Bunsen's Egypt, Vol. III.

Page 286

Was the time of Trasādasyu and Sudās less warlike than that of Purukutsa and Divodāsa?

Even if we overlook Parpola's several inconsistencies, can we allow his argument? It is difficult to believe that, if TRasādasyu was the son of Purukutsa, the son, as definitely stated, battled in the upper Indus valley but the father may have fought in ancient Bactria or northern Afghanistan and his encounters represented a period when the enmity between the Aryans and the Dāsas was at its acutest. The very name of the son, meaning 'one who makes the Dasyus tremble',¹⁸⁹ seems to reflect a greater intensity of Aryan-Dāsa confrontation. As between two persons with such an immediate relationship as father and son, we cannot without weighty evidence think seriously of an earlier critical" time and a later more relaxed one.

Parpola might claim a larger gap between Divodāsa and Sudās because he calls the latter a 'descendant' of the former and not a son. However, here too the name 'Divodāsa', which Parpola renders "Dāsa of Heaven"¹⁹⁰ and most scholars "Servant of Heaven",¹⁹¹ prompts the thought of a period when at least some Dāsas could be considered either elevated or a part of Aryan society by serving it instead of warring with it - surely a more relaxed time? Besides, Sudās in one hymn (1,63,7) is made to stand in a posture similar to Trasādasyu's father Purukutsa who has been credited with breaking the enemy's seven autumnal forts:

Warring for Purukutsa thou, O Indra, Thunder-armed!

breakest down the seven castles;

Easily, for Sudās, like grass didst rend them....¹⁹²

That this 'them' is 'seven castles' of the enemy is not only

189.Parpola, p. 211.

190.P. 224.

191.E.g., Keith, op. cit., p. 82.

192.Griffith, op. cit., p. 43, col. 1.

Page 287

grammatically implied, but also proved by explicit mention in 7,18,13 which reports an incident in the Battle of the Ten Kings where Sudās, King of the Tritsus, emerges victorious with Indra's help:

Indra at once with conquering might demolished all their strong places and their seven castles.

The goods of Anu's son he gave to Trtsu....¹⁹³

The state of warfare appears to be equally acute in the two periods. Can we go further and bring Sudās into the same chronological proximity to Divodāsa as Trasadasyu to his father Purukutsa so as to render still more implausible the dissimilarities Parpola argues for between the earlier and the later sets of circumstances?

No doubt, Parpola clearly terms Sudās a descendant rather than a son of Divodāsa and his footnote 157 refers us to Macdonell and Keith's Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, 1912, Volume II, p. 454 for all proper information on Sudās. But K. Chattopadhyaya¹⁹⁴ has penetratingly corrected Parpola's authorities:

King Sudās has been called in the Rgveda Paijavana. Yaska in a Nirukta passage (11.24) ... paijavanah pijava-nasya putrah, says that Pijavana was the name of Sudās's father. King Divodāsa is also mentioned as the ancestor of Sudās. Professors Macdonell and Keith¹⁹⁵ incline towards the view that Divodāsa was the grandfather of Sudās, and Pijavana his father. Their reasons for this supposition fail to convince me. R.V. VII. 18.22 mentions Paijavana Sudās as the naptr of Devavant: Devavant seems to be used here for Divodāsa.¹⁹⁶ naptuḥ probably means "of the son", for

193.Ibid., p. 342, col. 2.

194.Op. cit., pp. 184-85.

195.Op. cit., I, p. 363, II, pp. 24 & 554.

196.Compare names like gajasāhvaya (for hastinapura) in the later literature.

Page 288

"son" is the usual meaning of the word náptr or napāt in the Rgveda. But even if the later meaning of "grandson" be put on the word, as Sāyana has done (devavato rājno naptuḥ pautrasya), how will Professors Macdonell and Keith explain the concluding verse of the hymn [25]: imam naro marutah saścatānu dívodāsam ná pitáram Sudāsah, avistánā paijavanásya ketam dunaśam ksatram ajáram duvoyú, where Divodāsa is explicitly called the father (pita) of Sudās? This passage clearly establishes that Divodāsa was the father and not the grandfather of Sudās. As regards Pijavana he may have been the same person as Divodāsa as Geldner¹⁹⁷ supposes, or may have been some remote ancestor.

Griffith's translation¹⁹⁸ of the relevant verses of 7,18 is:

22. Priest-like, with praise, I move around the altar, earning Paijavana's reward, O Agni, Two hundred cows from Devavān's descendant, two chariots from Sudās with mares to draw them.

25. Attend on him, O ye heroic Maruts, as on Sudās's father Divodāsa. Further Paijavana's desire with favour. Guard faithfully his lasting firm dominion.

To crown Chattopadhyaya's argument for Divodāsa as Sudās's father and not grandfather, I may draw attention to Parpola's own quotation¹⁹⁹ from a hymn to Sarasvatī, the river goddess (RS 6,61,1): "She donated to the worshipping Vadhryaśva (as son) the powerful Divodāsa, who paid the debt (to the ancestors)...." Griffith,²⁰⁰ in a footnote to Vadhryaśva in his translation of the passage, explains that the name is that of a celebrated Rishi to whom the River

197.Rigveda in Auswahl, 1,116.

198.Op cit., p. 343, col. 2.

199.P. 222, fn. 216

200.Op. cit., p. 223, col. 1.

Page 289

Goddess gave a son who was a 'cancellor of debts', "acquitting, by his birth, the debt which his father owed to his progenitors, the religious obligation of begetting a son who should perform the ceremonies which they require." Thus it is Divodāsa's father Vadhryaśva who is the grandfather of Sudās.

There is hardly any ground to make a world of difference between the time of Trasadasyu- Sudās and that of Puru-kutsa-Divodāsa, envisaging the fathers as struggling in a more Dāsa-infested time. The fact that Book VI has 15 references in all to the Dāsa-Dasyus while Book VII has only 7 in all makes no odds when other facts are weighed against it. On its own level this fact may be compared with the count we arrive at in terms of that arch-fighter Indra against the Aryans' enemies. Book VII has 15 hymns to Indra, addressing him either by himself or in combination with fellow-gods out of its total of 104, whereas Book VI has only 6 likewise out of its sum of 75. The proportion in the first case is a little more than one-seventh: that in the second is less than one-twelfth. Indra would appear to be a substantially less frequent, less active war-god against the Dāsa-Dasyus in Book VI than in Book VII.

Were the locales different?

The period of fiercer conflict for Purukutsa and Divodāsa than for Trasadasyu and Sudās cannot be allowed. Nor is there any pointer in the account of the earlier pair's martial adventures to a locale radically differing from the openly mentioned river Suvāstu for TRasādasyu and the rivers Paruṣṇī and Yamunā for Sudās. Factors extraneous to the report of these adventures can alone be dragged in to posit such a locale. Are any factors of that kind legitimate enough in our context?

Essentially speaking, as Parpola²⁰¹ himself admits, his

201. P. 215, fns. 158 & 159.

Page 290

grounds were prepared by Hillebrandt in 1891 and by Hoffmann in 1975. Already in 1922, A.B. Keith²⁰² questioned Hillebrandt's thesis sharply. He led on to it apropos of that particular brand of Dāsa-Dasyus designated as the Panis whether considered 'terrestrial' foes or regarded as 'celestial' ones:

The word seems beyond doubt to be connected with the root seen in the Greek pernēmi, and the sense in which it was used by the poets must have been something like 'niggard'. The demons are niggards because they withhold from the Aryan the water of the clouds: the aborigines are niggards because they refuse the gods their due, perhaps also because they do not surrender their wealth to the Aryans without a struggle. The term may also be applied to any foe as an opprobrious epithet, and there is no passage in the Saṁhitā which will not yield an adequate meaning with one or other of these uses. But it has been deemed by one high authority²⁰³ to reveal to us a closer connexion of India and Iran than has yet suggested itself: in the Dāsas Hillebrandt sees the Dahae, in the Panis the Parnians, and he locates the struggles of Divodāsa against them in Arachosia. Support for this view he finds in the record of Divodāsa's conflicts with Brisaya and the Paravatas, with whose names he compares that of the Satrap Barsentes [of Alexander's time] and the people Paruetae of Gedrosia or Aria [in the same period]. Similarly he suggests that the Srinjaya people, who were connected like Divodāsa with the Bharadvāja family, should be located in Iran, and he finds in the Sarasvatī, which formed the scene of Divodāsa's exploits, not the Indian stream but the Iranian Harahvaitī. Thus the sixth book of the Rigveda would carry us far west from the

202.The Cambridge History of India, I, edited by E.J. Rapson, 1922, pp. 86-87.

203.Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, Vol. I, pp. 94 sq.

Page 291

scenes of the third and seventh which must definitely be located in India. But the hypothesis rests on too weak a foundation to be accepted as even plausible.

Trying to reach historical truth by a matching of names that appear to have some affinity with each other is an uncertain venture. When it is not a game of the far-fetched, it is a play of assumptions and rarely of such as would command immediate credence. An acute case in point is the way Parpola seeks to connect the tribe Pani with the people Parnoi (Parnians) urged by the fact that, just as this tribe was part of the Dāsas, that people belonged to the Dahas. As we have noted before, he²⁰⁴ says:

The Greek form of the name, Párnos (from Iranian *Parna-), corresponds to Sanskrit Pani-, if it is assumed to be a "Prakritic" development of the reduced grade form *Prní-. The full grade seems to be found in the name Parṇáya- attested as an enemy of the king (Divodāsa) Atithigva in RS 1,53,8 and 10,48,8.

The phrase - "if it is assumed" - collapses the whole argument. Absolutely no reason exists to consider Sanskrit Pani as 'Prakritic' in relation to anything and as linked thereby through its supposedly suppressed original version with Parṇáya and, through it, with the Parnians outside India. Moreover, the enemy bearing the name Parṇáya is not distinguished by anything in either 1,53,8 or 10,48,8 as a Pani. All we know is that in both texts he is coupled with another enemy named Karanja. What clue can Karanja provide? He does not suggest anything Parnian; nor by linking Parṇáya with the Parnians can we shed any light on Karahja. And if we must attend to verbal echoes, there is parna, 'feather' in 4,27,4, related to the Bird that brought the god-plant Soma to earth: "The Falcon bore him from

204. P. 224.

Page 292

heaven's lofty summit as the swift car of Indra's Friend bore Bhujyu. / Then downward hither fell a flying feather of the Bird hasting forward in his journey."²⁰⁵ tradition has it that where this feather fell, there grew up the Parna Tree, Butea Frondosa, which, along with the Fig Tree, Ficus Religiosa, supplied the wood for the sacrificial vessels. Whether Parṇáya, in company with Karahja, had anything to do with that feather and with that tree is impossible to say. Griffith,²⁰⁶ in a note to 10,48,8, dubs both the enemies "apparently tree-demons". Anyway, we have nothing credible to go by for associating "Parṇáya" with the origin of "Pani".

The argument from the word 'wolf'

In connection with the origin of "Pani", Parpola has a fling of another kind at tracing it outside India in c. 2000 B.C., the time of the Namazga V culture. He²⁰⁷ refers us to 6,51,14: "Slay down the Pani, the devourer; for he is a wolf (vrka)V - and comments:

This comparison of the enemy with the dreaded predator does not seem accidental, for in RS 2,30,4 the word 'wolf occurs in the proper name of the enemy: "O Brhaspati, with (your) burning (arrow, which hits) like a stone, pierce the men of the Asura Vrkadvaras ('who runs like a wolf)." The four wolves depicted on the golden drinking bowl in the treasure of Quetta and the golden wolfs head from the temple of Altyn Tepe prove that the wolf was an animal of particular significance for the warring aristocracy of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran.

Is it a mere coincidence that the Gurgan plain, which housed important sites of this culture such as Tepe Hissar, Tureng Tepe and Shah Tepe, was in antiquity called the

205.Griffith, op. cit., p. 219, col. 2.

206.Ibid., p. 566, col. 1.

207.P. 218.

Page 293

"Wolf country"? The name Gurgān has developed from Avestan Vǝhrkāna 'wolf people', which is also the basis of Greek Hurkania. In the Old Persian inscription of Darius I at Bisutun (II,92f.), this satrapy of the Persian empire is called Varkāna.

Parpola has two footnotes about 'Vrkadvaras':

¹⁸⁰It may well be that the proper name belonging to an Aryan king, Dasyave Vrka 'Wolf for the Dasyus', has its inspiration in such names of the enemy.

¹⁸¹The latter part of the compound agrees with Avestan dvar- dvaraiti 'to run', corresponding to Sanskrit dru-dravati 'to run'; cf. Wackernagel (1918) apud Wüst 1935: 1lOf., who points out that this dialectal feature endorses the view that the second book of the Rgveda was composed in the north-west of India very close to early East Iranian languages.

The second footnote does not come to much. Parpola²⁰⁸himself has said: "The Rgvedic language is connected with Old Iranian by some phonological and morphological innovations, and the Rgveda also shares with the Avesta a number of identical phrases." Parpola²⁰⁹ has further stated that the Classical Sanskrit is descended from "the early Indo-Aryan dialect ... which is more archaic than the Rgvedic-Avestan dialect in some respects" and that while "this more conservative dialect... became mixed with the ... Rgvedic-Avestan dialect in the late portions of the Rgveda", "this parent of the classical Sanskrit had in the plains been much more subject to the influence of Dravidian...." There is nothing particularly to be wondered at if some Rigvedic words show features closer to Avestan than to post-Rigvedic Sanskrit.

As for the name Dasyave Vrka of an Aryan king, which is

208.P. 236.

209.Pp. 242-43.

Page 294

supposed to have been inspired by a name like Vrkadvaras on the opposite side, it does not occur in the Rigveda's second book but in its eighth: it occurs in hymns 3,2 and 7,1 of what are termed the eleven hymns of the Valakhilya of this book.²¹⁰ The two names would have a natural link if we did not speak of a special locale - the north-west of India -for the second book but saw the Rigveda as more or less one whole, except where totally contradictory significances of the same word - as in the case of "Asura" which we shall discuss later - denote disparate elements.

The situation concerning Vrikadvaras can be viewed in a more natural way than as a pointer to the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. When the Aryans called the Panis 'wolf, the Panis may have taken pride in being like that devourer to the Aryans and a leader of them may have defiantly adopted the name Vrikadvaras - or else the Aryans may have coined it for him. And against the destructiveness of his tribe, they pitted a similar destructive power and one of their leaders took the name Dasyave Vrika. Nothing more need be seen in the situation. No reference to the Hyrca-nians is necessary. And actually in Parpola's own context such a reference can be avoided, as he himself is honest enough to admit in a footnote:²¹¹

The name "wolf people" has been assumed to be totem-istic. But it might also be connected with the funerary rites of the Hyrcanian people: according to Greek and Latin sources, among the Hyrcanians it is the custom to let dogs (and among the Bactrians birds) devour the bodies of the deceased (cf. Plutarch's Moralia 499: Porphyry, De ab-stinentia 4,21; Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes 3,227; Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1,45 & 108). In this case there would be no connection with the Namazga V culture.

210.Griffith, op. cit., pp. 467, col. 2 and 469. col. 2.

211.P. 219, fn. 186 continued from p. 218.

Page 295

One cannot help appreciating Parpola's scholarly scruples. Another instance of his honesty that is worth marking is in the course of an elaborate and erudite argument linking the name of Divodāsa's enemy 'Śambara' with that of a "wild tribe (living in the mountains)" - "Sahara", "attested for the first time in A[itareya] B[rahmana] 7,18, where An-dhras, Pundras, Śabaras, Pulindas and Mutibas are mentioned as Dasyu peoples who live in large numbers beyond the borders".²¹² As a result of the argument, it is claimed that light is shed on several post-Rigvedic customs, practices and rituals in Eastern India, particularly Magadha. But Parpola recognizes that his own exposition of the source of the name "Śambara" is not the sole possibility. A footnote²¹³tells us: "A rivalling etymology for Śambara

In passing, we may observe a further facet to the Vrika-event in the Rigveda. The terms Parpola has quoted are not all that are there. We find in 1,42,2: "Drive, Pūsan, from our road the wolf, the wicked inauspicious wolf, / Who lies in wait to injure us."²¹⁴ In 6,13,5, Agni is addressed: "... Thou with might givest much food in cattle even to the wicked wolf when he is hungry."²¹⁵ Here there is no question of a person, but look at 7,68,8 where the Aśvins are told: "Ye lent your aid to Vrka when exhausted, and listened to Śayu's calling."²¹⁶ Śayu is referred to several times as having received help; once he is dubbed "weary" (1,116,22), at another place "ancient" (1,118,8). Paired with him Vrka is obviously a person in a plight similar to Śayu's and, though it might be the best grist to the totemistic-angled mill set to work for Hyrcania, the context scarcely conjures up a destructive Pani.

212.P. 261.

213.Ibid., fn. 511.

214.Griffith, op. cit., p. 28, cols. 1 & 2.

215.Ibid., p. 290, col. 2.

216.Ibid., p. 369, col. 1.

Page 296

Parpola on the structure of the Dāsa forts

To return to our subject: the information at our disposal has too many sides for any comfort to be found for hypotheses which are lured by similar-sounding names to ancient Bactria and northern Afghanistan. Does Parpola pass beyond playing variations on the old Hillebrandt-theme? He believes he has added greater pith to it by arguing that the forts of the Dāsa-Dasyus and the Panis were not square like those of the Indus Civilization which had obsessed Mortimer Wheeler's imagination apropos of Indra having been-designated "Fort-destroyer" in hymn after hymn. Parpola impresses on us that we are face to face with the fact that they were circular or oval and had triple walls. To him²¹⁷"the evidence for the circular and concentric structure of the Dāsa fortifications seems inescapable", and archaeological discoveries in northern Afghanistan prompt him to conclude that the Rigvedic Aryans conquered triple-walled Dāsa forts there before arriving in India.

First he²¹⁸ adverts to "a significant detail in the later Vedic myths", namely, "the threefold structure of the Asura forts, which lives forth in the Hindu myth of the Tripura or 'triple fort' of the demons destroyed by Śiva." He continues: "It is clear from S[atapatha] B[rahmana] 6,3,3,24-25 that a tripura consisted of three concentric circular walls...." It is implied that the Tripura myth, first recorded in the Brāhmaṇas, enshrines a distant recollection of three-walled forts of the Dāsas encountered by the Aryans at an earlier stage of their history. Historical events, it is suggested, have been transposed to the mythical plane and turned into a struggle of

217.P. 214.

218.Pp. 212-13.

Page 297

gods and demons - "Asuras", a word Parpola believes to have denoted originally the gods of the enemy. He points out that the Tripura belongs to the Asuras, while the gods are initially at a disadvantage because they have no forts of their own. This situation, Parpola says, reflects that of the invading Aryans who, "as could be expected of recently arrived invaders of a country, had no forts themselves."

The Tripura myth does not prove much.²¹⁹ For one thing, there is a lack of correspondence between the Tripura actually described in existing versions of the myth and the type of fortification Parpola wishes to find reflected in it. He²²⁰ quotes the version of the myth in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (1,23,1-2), where Śiva is not yet present:

"The gods and the Asuras contended for these worlds. The Asuras made these worlds as forts (purah).... They made this (earth) a copper (fort), the air one of silver, and the sky one of gold.... The gods said: 'The Asuras have made these worlds as forts, let us make counter-forts in opposition to these worlds.' - 'Be it so', (they replied). They made the sadas-shed as a counter-fort to this (earth), the firekindler priest's shed (as a counter-fort) to the air, and the havirdhāna-shed (as a counter-fort) to the sky.... The gods said: 'Let us have recourse to the upasads. By siege, verily, (people) conquer a large fort.' - 'Be it so', (they replied). With the first upasad which they performed they (i.e. the gods) repelled them (i.e. the Asuras) from this world, with the second from the air, with the third from the sky...."

Neither the forts of the Asuras nor the 'counter-forts' of the gods in this account can by any stretch of the imagination be visualized as concentric. Other versions of the myth in

219.Most of the matter from here up to the next section is contributed by Richard Hartz.

220.P. 212, fn. 143.

Page 298

literature of the later Vedic period²²¹ are similar to this one. In the Taittirīya Saṁhitā (6,2,3,1-2), Śiva in the form of Rudra makes his appearance as the divine archer who demolishes the forts with a single arrow. In these early versions, the word tripura does not occur. In most of them, as in the above quotation, even the number "three" is not explicitly mentioned. There is simply a fort corresponding to each world. Since there are three worlds, there must naturally be three forts. In some texts the Asuras are described as building a fort in each of the worlds, rather than making the worlds themselves their forts. But in either case, the forts are on different levels and cannot be concentric.

The growth of such a myth from dim memories of Dāsa forts with three concentric walls, with a shift in the meaning of the word tripura brought about by the workings of the mythopoeic imagination, is perhaps not inconceivable. But without more solid evidence this can be nothing more than a hypothesis. The myth itself hardly requires such an explanation.

Textual evidence for familiarity with a three-walled circular fort in later Vedic times comes primarily from the passage in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa referred to by Parpola.²²² Here a conflict of gods and demons (Rakshasas) is invoked to explain why the priest draws three concentric circles around the fire. The circles are said to represent a triple fort (tripura) which is "the highest form of forts". But in the myth cited to explain this ritual, it is the gods who erect the fortification to protect the sacrificial fire against the demons. This is the reverse of what would be needed for a plausible connection with Dāsa forts. Moreover, it is a peculiar type of fortification that is described: a "fiery fort"

221.E.g., Maitrāyanī Sathhita 3,8,1; Satapatha Brāhmaṇa 3,4,4,3-4. Several versions are quoted in the useful study by Wilhelm Rau, The Meaning of Pur in Vedic Literature (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munchen, 1976).

222.P. 213. The Sanskrit text and English translation of the entire passage are given by Rau, op. cit., pp. 25-26.

Page 299

(agnipurā) consisting of three rings of fire. This triple fiery protection is mentioned in two other places in the Brah-manas.²²³ Its purpose is always to ward off demons in the performance of Vedic rituals. If any such defences were used in actual warfare by the Aryans or their enemies, they were probably not permanent structures and are not likely to be identified by excavations in Afghanistan or elsewhere.

If we are to be convinced that the Aryans encountered anything of the nature of a tripura as they advanced towards India, we may reasonably demand some indication of it in the Rigveda itself. But apart from the fact that the expression tripura occurs nowhere in this scripture, is it not curious that while the Rigveda describes forts variously with terms like 'broad', 'wide' (prthvī, urvī in 1,189,2), 'made of stone' (aśmanmayi in 4,30,20), 'made of metal' (āyasī in 1,58,8; 7,15,14; 10,101,8) or, as in a quotation by Parpola,²²⁴'hundred-curved' (śatabhuji in 7,15,14; also 1,166,8) or else with the strange epithet 'autumnal' (śāradi in 1,131,4; 1,174,2; 6,20,10) and, as Macdonell²²⁵ notes, 'moving', there is no term evoking, however remotely, the idea of tripura?

This omission becomes all the more glaring if we realize the immense popularity of the number 'three' in the Rigveda. The declined forms of tri occur more than a hundred times besides almost another hundred occurrences of trih ('thrice') and tridhātu ('triple'). In addition, tri is found in compounds with about three dozen different words. This is considerably more than the compounds formed with any other number. The preoccupation with triplicity is such that it would not have been surprising for the Rishis to introduce tripuras in their hymns even if

223.Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 2,11,1; Kausitaki Brāhmaṇa 10,7,1-4. Rau (op. cit., pp. 34-35 ) quotes these two passages under the observation: "Sometimes the building of purah was deferred until war was imminent, and then, no doubt, it had to be accomplished in the shortest possible time."

224.P. 212, fn. 141.

225.Op. cit., p. 85.

Page 300

neither they nor their enemies had them in real life. If we believe that such structures were part of the material environment in which the hymns were composed, and that the hymns reflect this environment, the lack of reference to them becomes most puzzling.

The closest we get to triple defences in the Rigveda are phrases such as in an appeal to Agni: "Be thou to us a thrice-protecting friendly guard" (6,15,9). Such a phrase could have inspired the idea of a triply encircling fiery protection in the Brāhmaṇas. In the ritual described in the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa, the priest recites a mantra from the Rigveda as he draws each circle around the fire. The second mantra is 10,87,22: "O Agni, we wish to put you around (us) as a fort [puram]...." Parpola²²⁶ quotes this verse in support of his assertion that the Rigvedic Aryans never spoke of themselves as having a real fort, but instead prayed Agni to be their fort.

Prayers to various gods for some unspecified form of triple protection are not uncommon. As an example, we may quote 4,53,6 from Griffith:²²⁷ "May he vouchsafe us shelter, - Savitar the God, - for tranquil life, with triple bar against distress." The words "shelter ... with triple bar against distress" translate śárma ... trivárūtham ámhasah in the original. The preceding verse is a good example of the Rishis' obsession with the number three: "Savitar thrice surrounding with his mightiness mid-air, three regions, and the triple spheres of light, / Sets the three heavens in motion and the threefold earth, and willingly protects us with his triple law." For further examples of the prayer for triple protection, we may cull from Griffith: "O Indra, grant a happy home, a triple refuge triply strong" (6,46,9) and "Grant us a home with triple guard, Aryaman, Mitra, Varuṇa!" (8,18,21).²²⁸ Griffith has a footnote to 8,18,21: "With triple guard: or, triply defending or defended.

226.P. 212, fn. 141.

227.Op. cit., p. 233, col. 2.

228.Ibid., p. 311, col. 2; p. 408, col. 1.

Page 301

According to Sāyana, protecting from heat, cold, and wet; or three-storeyed." Light of a different kind may be shed on these passages by 5,4,8 in which Agni, after being called "dweller in three regions" (sky, mid-air, earth, symbolizing in the esoteric interpretation the mental, vital and physical levels), is invoked to "protect us with a triply-guarding shelter".²²⁹ The triple protection may be assumed to correspond to the three regions or levels of our being in which Agni dwells. But whatever these phrases may mean exactly, they do not relate to anything possessed by the enemies of the Aryans and even Parpola has not found in them any allusion to fortification.

Apart from inferences from later Vedic texts, Parpola's conviction about Dāsa forts in the Rigveda is conveyed to us as being based on a discovery of Wilhelm Rau. Parpola²³⁰states:

Many Rgvedic hymns speak of the 99 forts of Śambara, which Indra tore open, killing its inmate, Śambara, as the 100th fort (RS 4,26,3). Rau (1976: 24) has suggested that 99 may be a poetic exaggeration for three: "Whenever we hear of one individual residing at one and the same time within many purah, we must conclude that the latter were built concentrically."

The statement is hardly clear. Parpola goes further than Rau, who does not actually suggest "that 99 may be a poetic exaggeration for three", though perhaps he would not object to such an extension of his own reasoning. Rau²³¹ cites four passages in the Rigveda (1,58,8; 4,26,3; 4,27,1; 7,19,5) which, in his opinion, point to concentric fortifications designated by the word purah. The first is vague enough: "... O Agni, protect [your] singer from danger, O son of

229.Ibid.,-p. 240, col. 1.

230.P. 213, fn. 145.

231.Op. cit., p. 24.

Page 302

vigour, with copper purah! Parpola²³² does not consider the purah for which the Aryans prayed to Agni or other gods to be real forts. The "hundred copper purah" of 4,27,1, from which Agni breaks out in the form of a falcon, are obviously figurative. Griffith²³³ explains that Agni is the lightning and the fortresses the cloud. In 7,19,5, the enemies sheltered by a hundred purah are Vrtra and Namuci whom Parpola²³⁴admits to be "purely mythical beings". Thus the association of concentric forts with the Aryans' human enemies rests almost entirely on Rau's and Parpola's interpretation of 4,26,3, which speaks of the destruction of Śambara in a manner similar to the way Vrtra and Namuci are destroyed in 7,19,5.

Parpola²³⁵ quotes T. Burrow's remarks on p. 74 of the latter's review of Rau:

Professor Rau has given some evidence that in speaking of a hundred (or ninety-nine) fortifications the Vedic poets had in mind a system of concentric defences. I doubt if this was always so. The hundred forts of Śambara and like phrases represent an ancient tradition handed down through generations as part of the poets' repertoire. I think that originally the meaning is most likely to have been a hundred separate forts, which is the way it has commonly been understood, and which would be suitable in connection with the conquest of an extensive territory....

Burrow's idea of 'the poets' repertoire' and his pointer to extensiveness are surely sound? A large indefinite number is all that seems to be conveyed, as in 'ninety-nine rivers' (1,32,14), 'ninety-nine arms' (2,14,4) 'ninety-nine steeds' (4,48,5), 'ninety-nine Vrtras' (7,84,13), 'ninety-nine thou-

232.P. 212.

233.Op. cit., p. 219, col. 1.

234.P. 210.

235.P. 213, fn. 145.

Page 303

sand wagon-loads' (10,98,10). Here there can be no question of the concentric or the triple.

With a scholar's straightforwardness Parpola has presented Burrow as making "a pertinent point", but I fear he has undermined his own position so far as the Rigveda is concerned. Elsewhere²³⁶ he refers to "Divodāsa, whose enemy, Dāsa Śambara, possessed a hundred (or ninety-nine) forts". Here he seems to forget momentarily his own conviction that the number ninety-nine, when applied to forts in the Rigveda, is "a poetic exaggeration for three". Yet leaving aside inferences from later mythology, this doubtful equation, 99 = 3, as applied to the forts of Śambara in 4,26,3, is the only textual basis that has been advanced for imagining the Rigvedic Dāsas to possess three-walled fortifications.

Despite the efforts of Rau and Parpola, the physical description of the Dāsa forts in the Rigveda remains hazy. We have mentioned the term śatabhuji, which Parpola follows Rau in interpreting as "hundred-curved" in 7,15,14. Griffith²³⁷ has a different translation: "with hundred walls." Monier-Williams²³⁸ gives "hundred-fold" or "having a hundred enclosures or fortifications". The word is also applied to purah in 1,166,8. Rau²³⁹ quotes both passages. The figurative nature of the 'forts' is evident: "With hundred-curved purah, O Maruts, protect him whom you have favoured against injury, against malicious [gossip]!..." (1,166,8) - "And be for us [O Agni,] a large hundred-curved copper pur, unassailable, for the defence of men" (7,15,14). Apart from these two verses, śatabhuji does not occur anywhere else in Sanskrit literature. The related word daśabhuji which occurs in Rigveda 1,52,11 appears to mean 'tenfold', supporting Monier-Williams' rendering of śata-

236.P. 215.

237.Op. cit., p. 340, col. 2.

238.Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899), p. 1049, col. 3.

239.Op. cit., p. 25.

Page 304

bhuji as 'hundred-fold'. Griffith²⁴⁰ translates this verse: "O Indra, were this earth extended forth tenfold [Dāsabhujir],... thy conquering might, Maghavan, would be famed...." He explains: "If the earth were ten times as large and populous as it is, thy fame would extend over the whole of it." There seems to be no possibility of substituting 'ten-curved' for 'tenfold' in this context. So it is doubtful whether śatabhuji means 'hundred-curved'. This interpretation of śatabhuji in two verses is Rau's only Rigvedic basis for rejecting a square or polygonal ground-plan for a pur in favour of a curved (round or oval) one. Parpola accepts Rau's conclusion. But whether or not this is the right translation of śatabhuji, the word does not occur in connection with Dāsa forts and cannot be a reliable clue to their structure.

The argument from two forts outside India

Now we may turn to ask: "Has Parpola any practical support to offer for himself by way of archaeological testimony?" He claims to hold two trump-cards. In his picture, the Sauma Aryans, "from whichever direction they came, would have first met the Dāsas and Panis on their way in Bactria, before reaching northwest India. This location would be in agreement with the fact that the early Dāsa chief Śambara lived in a mountainous region."²⁴¹ Then Parpola draws upon the recent archaeological disclosure of "a previously unknown civilization" in Bactria, "the above-discussed Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran (the Namazga V complex)":

Hundreds of fortified villages representing this culture have been located in the oases of Bactria and Margiana, but not further west in southern Turkmenistan. Among them is Dashly-3 in northern Afghanistan, dated to c. 2000 B.C. Inside the square walls (150 m side) surrounding the

240.Op. cit., p. 35, col. 2.

241.P. 216.

Page 305

fort are buildings and, amidst them, three circular, concentric walls. Thus this so-called "temple" of Dashly-3 closely corresponds to the Vedic descriptions of the Dāsa or Asura forts. The "tripura" of Dashly-3 is not an isolated phenomenon in Bactria. The ancient traditions of the Bronze Age have continued there to Achaemenid times in the fortresses of Kutlug-Tepe and At-Tchapar dating from ca. 500 B.C.²⁴²

The second trump-card is recent archaeological exploration in Margiana. It has laid bare, as we have already seen, the Togolok-21 'temple', "a huge rectangular building complex measuring 130 x 100 m". Here Parpola²⁴³ sees a fusion of two cultures:

The Rgveda clearly shows that the cult of Soma/Haoma was introduced by the Aryan invaders, while the culture of the earlier settled Dāsas comprised, above all, forts with concentric walls. The 'temple' of Togolok-21 is a citadel fortified with three concentric walls, each provided with round corner towers and turrets. The walls of the innermost fortress, measuring 60 x 50 metres, are 4.5 metres thick. The central portal in the middle of the northern wall is flanked by two monumental pylons. This fortress continues the traditions of the earliest cultural phase in Margiana, represented by the sites of the Kelleli oasis, dated to the late Namazga V period.

We certainly have 'tripuras' here. But do they correspond to what Parpola has sought to deduce from Vedic texts? Even if we do not consider him to have failed in his effort to find implied 'tripuras' in the Rigveda, there is a basic difference from his attempted conjuration. Parpola²⁴⁴ himself realizes it when he distinguishes the Dashly-3 'temple'

242.Pp. 216-17.

243.P. 237.

244.Ibid.

Page 306

from buildings broadly comparable with it: "The Dashly-3 'temple', however, is closer to the Rgvedic description of Dāsa forts in having three concentric walls that are circular, even though the outermost wall is square." This statement emphasizes his previous one that the three circular concentric walls of the Dashly-3 'temple' are "inside the square walls surrounding the fort". Again, the three concentric walls of the Togolok-21 'temple' do not stand out on their own as would those of the conjectured Dāsa fort: they are within "a huge rectangular building complex." Nothing "square" as the general fortification or "rectangular" as the general environment can be associated with the picture of Dāsa forts Parpola would like to believe in.

About Dashly-3 it is worth noting what the authority upon whom he draws - Francfort - has said. Footnote 167 on page 216 quotes him: "The round 'temple', Dashly-3, Afghanistan ... which could equally well be a 'palace', stands in the middle of a fortified village. Hundreds of such villages occupied the delta oases of Bactria and Margiana." We have seen Parpola too referring to the teeming of the villages that are forts, but he has no reference to any other structure like the one in Dashly-3. None of the rest of the fortified villages has yielded a temple or palace with three circular concentric walls. Archaeology gives Parpola no chance to prove that a structure of this kind was characteristic of the Dāsas. Obviously, Dashly-3 was the exception and not the rule. On this showing, such Dāsa defence-style as he reads in the Rigveda is lacking in northern Afghanistan in c. 2000 B.C. One is hardly persuaded of Dashly-3 being the rule by his skipping 1500 years and offering us comparable structures at two places in the Achaemenid empire in about 500 B.C.

Can Dashly-3 and Togolok-21 belong to the Dāsas?

Moreover, to our surprise, Parpola,²⁴⁵ comparing the

245. Ibid.

Page 307

Dashly-3 'temple' of southern Bactria with "the slightly later 'temple' discovered at Dzharkutan in northern Bactria" which is "round" yet without three concentric walls, tells us (quoting Sarianidi, as footnote 316 testifies) that both of these buildings "served as temples of fire" as "is evidenced by the fire-altars and the absence of cult vessels". The last phrase alludes to the ritual libations connected with the Soma cult. But if, as Parpola²⁴⁶ says, the fire-altars of Kalibangan and Lothal "carry with them an indication of Indo-Aryan presence", here surely is the same presence? No doubt, here as there, we have a specialized ritual practice, since Agni, the Fire-God, is not combined with Soma; but despite Soma's absence Indo-Aryanism cannot be denied. A prominent aspect of a religion like the Rigveda's is witnessed. How then with regard to Dashly-3 do the Dāsas, the enemies of the Rigvedics, come in? Parpola's answer emerges when he deals with Togolok-21. Let us see whether it has any validity - and in what light Togolok-21 itself finally appears.

After mentioning the two circular temples of exclusive fire-worship, Parpola²⁴⁷ writes: "As Sarianidi has already observed, this clearly points to a difference of ritual practices within the framework of one religion, and that obviously 'the narrowly specialised temples coexisted with more universal ones, such as Togolok-21, where ritual libations and cults of fire were practised simultaneously.'" Strangely enough, at this point Parpola remarks: "It appears, then, that at Togolok-21 we witness a fusion of the sauma cult of the invading Aryans and of the earlier local cults and culture of the Dāsas, i.e. the carriers of the Namazga V related Bronze Age culture of Outer Iran." The implication is that the Dāsas were fire-worshippers. But such an implication is quite incongruous with what Parpola has said a little earlier.

246.P. 238.

247.P. 237.

Page 308

There he²⁴⁸ has distinguished, though in a very external way, the three outstanding traits of the Rigveda in its "oldest books":

Indra, the god of thunder and war and the king of the Devas, is by far the most popular deity....

Another recurrent theme is the relatively simple Soma cult. At its centre was Soma, Indra's favourite drink.... The Soma juices came from stalks of the deified Soma plant.... After mixing Soma with water and milk, it was partly drunk by the worshippers, partly offered into the mouth of the gods, the sacrificial fire.

Agni, 'Fire' (cf. Latin ignis), the divine sacrificer (hotar) and Indra's aid in destroying the enemy's forts, is next in popularity after Indra and Soma. Agni is wise and eloquent, like the human Hotar, whose duty it was to compose and recite hymns (rc-) in praise of the gods and to invite them to the Soma feast.

Parpola²⁴⁹ adds:

The Rgvedic hymns describing the battles with the inimical Dāsas refer also to their quite dissimilar religion.

Some prominent features of the Dāsas' religion are that, as in 10,22,8, the Dāsa-Dasyu is a non-performer of (Aryan) sacrifices (a-karmán), an observer of other rites (anyá-vrata) and, as in 10,105,8, a non-singer of laudatory hymns (anre).¹⁵⁰ In addition, as Parpola's quotation²⁵¹ of 8,70,11 shows, the Dasyu does not "regard the (Aryan) gods (a-deva-yu)." Those Dāsa-Dasyus known as the Panis are wealthy but ungenerous (a-rādhas), their wealth is robbed from them by Indra or by Agni and Soma and is given to the pious pressers

248.P. 225.

249.Pp. 225-26.

250.P. 226.

251.Ibid., fn. 233.

Page 309

of the Soma drink (1,83,4; 5,34,7; 6,13,7; 6,20,4; 6,33,2; 8,64,7)²⁵² The very first excerpt Parpola²" makes from the Rigveda is 7,5,3 & 6: "Through fear of you the dark peoples fled, relinquishing their possessions without battle, when, O Agni Vaisvānara, burning bright for Puru and rending the forts, you did shine.... You, Agni, drove the Dasyus from their abode, creating a wide light for the Arya." In explicit terms Agni is shown here as an Aryan god. In 3,12,6 he is joined to Indra against the Aryans' foes: "Indra and Agni, ye cast down the ninety forts which Dāsas held, / Together, with one mighty deed."²⁵⁴ In 6,16,15 and 8,39,8 Agni gets a supreme compliment for contra-Dasyu action, shared only by the sun-god Sūrya in 10,170,2: he is apostrophized as "the Dasyus' most destructive foe" and "best slayer of the Dasyus"²⁵⁵ - dasyuhántama, superlative of dasyuhán. Surely, Agni no less than Indra and Soma is evidently one of the gods whom the Dāsa-Dasyus do not 'regard'. So how could Dashly-3, a temple of Agni, have been a Dāsa-Dasyu fort? And it seems extremely odd to suggest that Togolok-21 brought together the Aryan cult of Soma and an earlier Dāsa-worship of Agni.

Furthermore, even if it did bring these together, what would be the point of spotlighting it as having been "fortified with three concentric walls"? If, as Parpola²⁵⁶ has said, "the cult of Soma/Haoma was introduced by the Aryan invaders, while the culture of the earlier settled Dāsas comprised, above all, forts with concentric walls", we have here concentric walls proving to be as much Aryan as Dāsic.

Finally, there is the glaring fact that no place with three concentric walls in ancient Bactria or Margiana has been disclosed by archaeology as having been attacked or burnt. Parpola's proposal that the destruction of Dāsa forts by the

252.Ibid.

253.P. 208.

254.Griffith, op. cit., p. 187, col. 2.

255.Ibid., p. 293, col. 1 & p. 427, col. 1.

256.P. 237.

Page 310

Rigvedics took place outside India is not archaeologically supported. Actually, he has himself a statement admitting that no evidence of the burning of Dāsa forts in Greater Iran has been unearthed. He²⁵⁷ writes: "The Vedic texts leave no doubt about the burning of Dāsa forts by the Sauma Aryans. Perhaps future excavations will discover evidence of this." These words make it clear that archaeology has not yet borne out the idea Parpola entertains that the Rigveda speaks of Sauma Aryans burning Dāsa forts. What so far has been found is simply "the 'Burnt Building' of Hissar IIIB, even if the fire is said to have been very limited."²⁵⁸ Again: "Nearby Yarim Tepe is said to have been destroyed at the same time." But where is here any pointer to the catastrophic burning of a Dāsa fort? There was merely partial damage to the 'Burnt Building'. And it is not described by Parpola as having been circular or concentric. We may even doubt whether it was a citadel of any kind. A footnote²⁵⁹says: "Schmidt interpreted the 'Burnt Building' as a citadel, but Dyson, who re-examined it, considers it a private abode of some rich merchant." Parpola is an honest historian and avoids being charged with any evidence-suppression, but now his honesty gives away his own case. With the 'Burnt Building' out, nothing remains to bring his vision to a proper focus.

A root-problem here is whether the postulate of an invasion is legitimate to account for the situation he²⁶⁰pictures: "the collapse of the Bronze Age urban civilization in southern Turkmenia and northeastern Iran." He says: "At the shift of the Namazga V and VI periods, a drastic change took place throughout this vast area: some sites were abandoned, but most of them dwindled severely in size, becoming mere villages, while artisan and commercial activities regressed." Parpola suggests an invasion and

257.P. 230.

258.Ibid.

259.Ibid., fn. 255.

260.P. 230.

Page 311

writes: "If we are to think in terms of an invasion, the advance of the steppe cultures in the second millennium B.C. provides the most likely explanation of the crisis of urbanization in southern Central Asia and north-eastern Iran." But these 'terms' are of a very dubious or hypothetical nature - in spite of the Burnt Building and nearby Yarim Tepe. Parpola²⁶¹ himself admits it when, again with his scholarly impartiality, he cites one of his sources, Biscione:

Various hypotheses have been formulated in order to explain the collapse of urbanization in Southern Turk-menia, but up to now we do not have any clear proof in favour of one of the many theories.... Sometimes the decline of urbanization in Turkmenia has been ascribed to the nomad populations close to the Andronovo culture, perhaps to be identified with the Indo-Irānians marching southwards. In fact, as Hlopina, Masson and Sarianidi clearly indicated, Andronovo-type sherds (or, in some cases, whole pots) have been found in almost all Namazga VI sites, but in layers datable to the end of this period; while the crisis, as we have seen, begins in late NMZ V. Moreover, there are no traces of violent destruction, burning and other related phenomena, generally associated by archaeologists with invasions and population shifts. Sarianidi believes that the relations among the two cultural groups have been peaceful.

Thus all the labour in favour of concentric Dāsa forts attacked by Aryans and the search for them outside India end in total failure in the sense that absolutely nothing gets recognizably outlined or identified.

When Parpola raises before us a picture of ancient Bactria or Margiana because of "the fact that the early Dāsa chief Śambara lived in a mountainous region", he cannot be taken

261. Ibid.

Page 312

seriously. Surely, parts of India also were mountainous? We gather from Macdonell:²⁶² "Mountains are constantly mentioned in the Rigveda and rivers are described as flowing from them. The Himalaya ('abode of snow') range in general is evidently meant by the 'snowy' (himavantah) mountains which are in the keeping of the Creator [10, 21,4]."

I do not think we have any reason to visualize or locate Dāsa forts in the way Parpola does.

Could the Rigvedics be called 'Sauma Aryans' and 'Saka Haumavarga'?

The next question would most naturally be a further inquiry about the forts: "What is their true character, as deduced from all the lights the Rigveda throws on them?" But we shall set. it on the side for the time being and first clear up the misapprehension Parpola creates about the Rigvedic cult. He makes considerable play with the designation "Sauma Aryans", thus focussing our attention on the Soma sacrifice. We have shown how odd it is to make Agni a god of the Dāsa-Dasyus when repeatedly we see him on the war-path against them. It is necessary to emphasize what Giles has remarked in the context of the Mitannians' invocation of gods as compared with the Rigveda's pantheon: "... Agni, 'Fire', specially an object of priestly worship in the Vedic hierarchy." The Soma cult itself is incomplete without Agni, for, as our quotation from Parpola himself has indicated, Soma "was partly drunk by the worshippers, partly offered into the mouth of the gods, the sacrificial fire." Agni and Soma are inseparable. To call the Rigvedics "Agneya Aryans" together with naming them "Sauma Aryans" is absolutely inevitable.

Indeed the Fire-cult is an organic part not only of the Rigvedics' religion, but also of the whole group to which the

262. Op. cit., p. 144.

Page 313

Rigvedics belonged. V.M. Apte²⁶³ has truly said: "The sacrificial fire is, in fact, an Indo-European institution, as the Romans and the Greeks and the Irānians also had the custom of offering gifts to the gods in fire." The author of the article on "Altars" in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics²⁶⁴ writes: "Fire-altars where offerings were burnt were special to the Indo-Germanic culture in antiquity."

Parpola's misapprehension stems from the presence of the people figuring in the Achaemenid inscriptions of the middle of the first millennium B.C. under the name of "Saka Haumavarga" and in Herodotus's Histories of almost the same time under the form "Amyrgioi Sakai". Naturally he has taken these Sakas, whom Herodotus equates with the Scythians of European writings, to be devoted to the cult of Haoma, that is Soma; and he believes that therefore the Rigvedics are ultimately connected with them. There are two mistakes here.

The information Herodotus gives about the religion of the Sakas - the wide group to which the Saka Haumavarga belong - belies Parpola's assumption about the latter. The Encyclopaedia Britannica reports from Herodotus:²⁶⁵ "The Scythians worshipped the elements but they were not a devout people and never felt the need for temples. Their deepest feelings were centered on the Great Goddess Tabiti-Hestia, the patroness of the fire and beasts...." The author adds on archaeological evidence that "she alone of all their deities figures in art". "Tahiti" is the Saka-Scythian appellation; "Hestia" (the Greek goddess of the hearth) is Herodotus's gloss for his readers. So, contrary to Parpola's understanding, the Saka Haumavarga - Irānians that they were - had their minds chiefly on Fire, rather than on the presumed Soma, in spite of the suggestive title by which the Achaemenid emperor Darius I distinguishes them from the

263."Religion and Philosophy", The Vedic Age, p. 377.

264.Edited by James Hastings, published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1925, Vol. I, pp. 333-34.

265.Edition 1977, Vol. 16, p. 440, col. 1.

Page 314

two other tribes whom he calls "Saka Tigrakhauda" -"wearers of pointed helmets" - and "Saka Paradaraya" -"dwellers beyond the sea".

The next mistake of Parpola is his failure to realise that actually in the account of Herodotus there is no suggestion of Soma anywhere. In regard to the religious sacrifices by the Sakas we have only two reports. In one (IV,62)²⁶⁶ the offering is a horse. After it is killed by strangulation with a call upon the name of the appropriate god, "no fire is lighted, there is no offering of first-fruits, and no libation". Although, during the killing, fire has no part to play, it is lit later in a particular way to cook the skinned horse. But what follows is significant. "When the meat is cooked, the sacrificer offers a portion of both flesh and entrails by throwing it on the ground in front of him". We may mark that this gesture with "first fruits" is the end of the sacrifice. It takes the place of the libation which we may expect people Said to be dedicated to Haoma-Soma to make but which Herodotus declares to have never been made.

The second report²⁶⁷ describes the ceremony in honour of the Saka war-god, the counterpart of the Greek Ares. The top of an immense heap of brushwood is levelled into a platform and "on it is planted an ancient iron sword". "Annual sacrifices of horses and other cattle are made to this sword.... Prisoners of war are also sacrificed to Ares ... one man is chosen out of every hundred, wine is poured over his head, and his throat cut over a bowl; the bowl is then carried to the platform on top of the woodpile, and the blood in it poured out over the sword."

Wine has been mentioned here. Herodotus refers to it again. "Once a year the governor of each district mixes a bowl of wine, from which every Scythian who has killed his man in battle has the right to drink. Those who have no dead enemy to their credit are not allowed to touch the wine, but

266.The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (The Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1960), pp. 260-61.

267.Ibid., pp. 261-62.

Page 315

have to sit by themselves in disgrace - the worst, indeed, which they can suffer. Any man, on the contrary, who has killed a great many enemies, has two cups and drinks from both of them at once." (IV,69)²⁶⁸

We may fancy, for all the unlikelihood, that Soma is meant by the wine; but there is no question of being 'devoted' to it in any religious sense. Perhaps the nearest we come to such a sense is when Herodotus (IV,71)²⁶⁹ tell us: "When Scythians swear an oath or make a solemn compact, they fill a large earthenware bowl with wine and drop into it a little of the blood of the two parties to the oath, having drawn it either by a prick with an awl or a slight cut with a knife; then they dip into the bowl a sword, some arrows, a battle-axe, and a javelin, and speak a number of prayers; lastly, the two contracting parties and their chief followers drink the mixture of wine and blood." Now too we really see no devotion to any drink as such. The mixture simply accompanies what we may term a religious attitude to oathswearing or compact-making. Soma is either completely missing, or else goes quite unnoticed, in the life of all the Sakas.

Instead of its use we have a strange practice with another plant. "Hemp," says Herodotus,²⁷⁰ "grows in Scythia, a plant resembling flax, but much coarser and taller. It grows wild as well as under cultivation. The Thracians make clothes from it very like linen ones." The Sakas employ it "after a burial", in "a process of cleaning their bodies in a vapour-bath". About this process the Encyclopaedia Britannica²⁷¹ has an enlightening comment: "Herodotus referred to what he termed a Scythian purificatory rite, that, he noted, consisted in inhaling the fumes of hemp seeds thrown onto hot stones: the passage was well-nigh incomprehensible until archaeology discovered that a smoking

268.Ibid., p. 262-63.

269.Ibid., p. 264.

270.Ibid., p. 265.

271.Loc. cit., p. 440, col. 2.

Page 316

outfit of this sort had been provided for each person buried at Pazyryk, making it clear that hemp fumes were inhaled for pleasure and not, as Herodotus assumed, as part of a religious observance." Yes, Herodotus has made a slip, but the Encyclopaedia overlooks one important sentence of his on the vapour-bath: "The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure."²⁷² The latest study of the Sakas, The World of the Scythians by the authority Renate Rolle, picks out this practice along with some other matters of lifestyle. The Scythians are called "smokers of cannabis".²⁷³

Nothing so far mentioned is reminiscent in the least of what may be understood by dubbing the Rigvedics "Sauma Aryans" on the religious side. On the secular side a basic difference from them is the utter absence among the Sakas of the Rigvedic custom of cremation. Burial was the rule with no exceptions and for it the dead body was specially prepared because interment took place after forty days, and, when kings died, both humans and animals were slaughtered to accompany the deceased personage.²⁷⁴ E.D. Phillips,²⁷⁵with a glance at archaeological disclosures, observes: "The embalming process is exactly as described by Herodotus." And, if we could speak of varga, in the sense of "revering" or "devoted to", as Parpola has done, and refer to an attitude of the Sakas, the term would have principally to do with burial. The Encyclopaedia²⁷⁶ says: "The Scythians venerated the graves of their ancestors, sparing neither wealth nor labour in providing vast tombs richly furnished and equipped."

272.Op. cit., p. 266.

273.Vide review by Andrew Sheratt in the Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 26-Feb. 1, 1990, p. 95, of the translation by Gayna Walls (Batsford, London, 1989).

274.The Histories, pp. 264-65.

275."The Royal Hordes of the Nomad Peoples of the Steppes", The Dawn of Civilization, ed. by Stuart Piggott (Thames and Hudson, London, 1961), p. 328, col. 2.

276.Loc. cit.. p. 440. col. 2.

Page 317

Obviously, the Sakas, no matter if any group of them was termed Haumavarga by Darius, stand poles apart from the Rigvedics except - paradoxically in the context of Parpola -for their being Agneya with Tahiti instead of Soma as their principal deity. How then shall we account for the designation "Haumavarga"? The sole clue seems to be at the end of footnote 4 on page 338 in the 1922 edition of the Cambridge History of India: "... Polyaenus, Strategemata, VII,12, refers to an expedition of Darius against the Cakas apparently north of the region of Bactria, and mentions Amorges or Omarges (i.e. Haumavarga?) as one of the Caka kings." The bracketed question-word expressed wonder at the strange-sounding Saka king-name - as if "Haumavarga" were a clear straightforward locution. Like Parpola, most scholars have been satisfied with something similar to his "devoted to Haoma". But the fact is that the meaning of the name is far from certain. As J. Duchesne-Guillemin²⁷⁷ puts it, after calling Haumavarga "an interesting name from the point of view of religion".

We are tempted to recognize in it the Avestan haoma. The second term in the compound, varga, has till now resisted etymological interpretation, but we can compare it with a word in the Saka language of Khotan, aurgā, orgā, "adoration, cult, homage". The haumavarga would then mean "the haoma revering."

Frye²⁷⁸ gives the same reading but adds: "Although the meaning of the name is uncertain, derivatives of it may survive in some Pamir languages of today." We should note that Duchesne-Guillemin is guarded even about the first component: "We are tempted...." In view of Herodotus's report on the Sakas and of the archaeological finds about them, this component cannot imply the Avestan haoma.

277.Religion of Ancient Iran, translated by K.S. JamaspAsa from the French (Bombay, 1973), p. 107.

278.Op. cit.. p. 66.

Page 318

Polyaenus's "Amorges or Omarges" appears to be the right original word, which Herodotus echoed as "Amyrgioi". The tribe of Sakas must be said to have adopted for itself in honour of a great leader his personal name to distinguish its own identity. Darius's inscriptions, faced with strange nomenclature, have tried mistakenly to assimilate it to their own language on the analogy of a personal name like hwmdt (= Haumadata, meaning "given or created by the god Haoma") which occurs twice in the Achaemenids' Elephantine papyri of the fifth century B.C. in Aramaic.²⁷⁹

Apropos of "Haumadata" we may mark that in the Achaemenid remains the presence of the haoma-cult, involving a religious drink no less than a god, is attested. Among the finds of the Persepolis Treasury were mortars and pestles for haoma, on one of which the Aramaic word hwn (= havan meaning "mortar") was written, a use corroborated by Seal 20 at Persepolis, which pictures together the fire-altar, the haoma-mortax (similar to those dug up in the ruins), a "Magian" and a winged disk dominating the scene.²⁸⁰ Here we may remind ourselves that not a sign of anything suggesting such mortars and pestles have been unearthed among the numerous relics of the Scythians.

In passing, we may observe that Aubrey de Sélincourt²⁸¹translates Herodotus's Amyrgioi Sakai "The Scythians of Amyrgium", which cannot have any hint of a people devoted to or revering Haoma as a sacred plant or as a god but would suggest either the name of a place important to a tribe as its source or else the name of a royal person to whom a tribe considers itself as belonging. The latter sense would chime with the information Polyaenus offers.

All things taken into account, Parpola's bringing the Rigvedics into rapport with the Saka Haumavarga fails culturally on every score. Besides, it would indeed be curious if the Rigvedics were Sakas and yet described

279.Duchesne-Guillemin, op. cit., p. 115 with fn. 3 & p. 128.

280.Ibid., pp. 115 & 117.

281.The Histories, p. 439.

Page 319

themselves constantly as "Aryas". Even an etymology favoured by Frye²⁸² which Parpola might have pressed into service had he known of it, has really no value. Frye writes: "The etymology of the name 'Saka' is uncertain, but Bailey proposes the meaning 'men', from a root sale, 'to be powerful, skilful' attested in the Rig Veda as an epithet of 'men'." Bailey²⁸³ offers Daha and Alemanni as examples of 'men' as a tribal name. Whatever these examples may be worth, I consulted the Sanskritist Richard Hartz on the Rigveda and received the note: "The verb śak is used in the Rigveda in much the same way as in later Sanskrit. It indicates power or capacity, usually the capacity to perform a specific action expressed by the infinitive of another verb, though in Vedic Sanskrit several other grammatical constructions are also possible. The derivatives of śak and of its collateral form sac are generally applied to gods. Thus Indra, in particular, is referred to by the epithets sakra, sacistha, sacipati, etc., all of which express his powerful nature. There is no special connection of the verb sak or any of its derivatives with the idea of manhood. Nothing in the Rigveda supports a supposition that the authors of the hymns thought of themselves or anyone else as 'Sakas'."

Moreover, apart from any other point of view, the historical perspective is distorted by Parpola. Whatever we may think of a possible antiquity for the Sakas before they emerge into history, we do not know of any movement of theirs in the time Parpola assigns to them for marching into Bactria or Margiana from the north-west in the period of Namazga V: c. 2000 B.C. The historical information is summed up by the author of the article "Scythians" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:²⁸⁴

In the 9th century B.C. the Scythian and kindred tribes were probably concentrated somewhat to the east of the

282.Op. cit., p. 65.

283.Ibid., p. 293, fn. 51.

284.Loc. cit., p. 438, col. 1.

Page 320

Altai [Central Asia], but it was not until the Chinese ruler Hsuan Wang (827-781 B.C.) decided to send an armed force to curb the fierce Hsiung-nu, who had begun to make a practice of raiding China's western boundaries, that the Scythian nomads became restless. When the Hsiung-nu were forced back from the Chinese frontier and, in retreating, dislodged the Massagetae, who occupied the grazing grounds to the north of the Oxus (Amu Darya) River, and when the latter in their turn assaulted their immediate neighbours, the Scythians, a wide-scale nomadic migration was set in motion. There is reason for thinking that the struggle for grazing land was rendered more acute by a severe drought and that this factor may well have decided the Scythians to move westward instead of remaining to fight for their traditional rights.

By the westward movement the Saka-Scythians from Central Asia reached "southern Russia where they founded an empire that survived until they were gradually overcome and supplanted by the Sarmatians during the 4th century B.C.-2nd. century B.C."²⁸⁵

All this dates to the first millennium B.C. Earlier there is a total blank. A suggestion has been made that a reference to the Sakas can be traced in the ancient Avesta. But Frye²⁸⁶has aptly remarked: "The 'pointed helmet' warriors of Yasht IX.30 of the Avesta cannot be identified safely with the Sakas, for the Sogdians too had 'pointed hats', as we learn from the Old Turkish inscription (Tonyuquq Inscription, line 46)." I may add that the Avesta (Videvdat 1.14) lists "Sughdha" (Sogdiana) among the regions Ahura Mazda ordained for the Irānians, but there is no hint about any region of the Sakas. And even the Sakas who are sought to be read into Yasht IX.30 are the Tigrakhauda and not the Haumavarga. The latter, along with the former and the one other general namesake, the Saka Paradaraya, are met with

285.Ibid.

286.Op. cit, p. 243. fn. 55.

Page 321

first in the inscriptions of Darius (521-485 B.C.). On their location at that time Parpola²⁸⁷ quotes Gershevitch's comment: "There is at present virtual agreement among scholars ... that the territories of the Haumawarga Sakas extended from Tashkent to the Alei valley, including Ferghana as centre-piece." Parpola, however, has shifted back by about 1500 years what held around 500 B.C.

At most, according to a tradition of the Scythians which Herodotus²⁸⁸ transmits but about which he says, "I merely repeat the tradition, and do not myself believe it", "the period from Targitaus, their first king, to Darius' crossing of the Hellespont to attack them, is just a thousand years." Even the c. 1500 B.C. thus reached misses Parpola's date by half a millennium. Moreover, the tradition speaks of the "origins" of the Scythians: "The first man to live in their country, which before his birth was uninhabited, was a certain Targitaus, the son of Zeus and of a daughter of the river Borysthenes". As Herodotus²⁸⁹ makes plain, he wants this to refer to the terrain which the Scythians occupied before they started moving westward. So his "origins" in c. 1500 B.C. do not place them in Gershevitch-cum-Parpola's "territories". Parpola makes the Haumavarga Sakas already settled there in c. 2000 B.C. and able to move out at that date as invaders in a south-easterly direction until they enter India through the Swat valley in about 1600-1400 B.C. How does he manage such an anachronism?

The sole ground we can see is in the passage:²⁹⁰ "The Scythian and Sarmatian tribes, who from the 8th century B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era ruled the Eurasian steppes, spoke Aryan languages (of the 'Iranian' group). Their burial tumuli (in Russian, kurgán or mogíla) and their nomadic culture can be traced back, through several successive cultures of the same type, to the above-mentioned

287.P. 232 & fn. 269.

288.Op. cit., pp. 243-44.

289.Ibid., pp. 245-46.

290.Pp. 201-2.

Page 322

Pit Grave culture (c. 3500-2800 B.C.) of the south Russian steppes. Intermediary phases were the Hut Grave culture (c. 2800-2000 B.C.) and the Timber Grave culture (c. 2000-800 B.C.), which occupied much the same region in the Volga steppes, and the Andronovo culture (c. 1700-900 B.C.), which spread from the Urals to the steppes of Kazakhstan and southern Siberia."

A comparable, essentially equalizing statement²⁹¹ is: "The Karasuk culture (c. 1300-700 B.C.) is considered a direct continuation of the Andronovo culture without any change of population and it is in turn continued by the various local cultures of the 'early nomads' (related to the Scythians and Sarmatians) like the Tagar culture of Yenisei (c. 600-100 B.C.)"

A critical look at these passages will show up their-true significance. Evidently, Parpola accepts an account such as we have drawn from the Encyclopaedia Britannica that the Scythians (Sakas) reached the Russian steppes in c. 800 B.C. But he seems to lump the Sarmatians along with them. The fact is that, as the Encyclopaedia informs us, the Sarmatians came to the same locality between the 4th and the 2nd centuries B.C. And, as we can gather from Frye,²⁹² they came from the same direction and perhaps for the same reason as the Scythians: "From the east came a new Iranian people, the Sarmatians.... We should postulate several waves of Sarmatian migration from Central Asia to South Russia, and most scholars have sought to connect events in the west with the movements of peoples on the Chinese frontiers mentioned in Chinese sources." Parpola also misses subtleties of cultural difference in the midst of broad uniformities of culture. Frye²⁹³ says:

The Sarmatians, we are told, were armed in a different manner from the Scythians. The latter were light horse-

291.P. 235.

292.Op. cit., p. 188.

293.Ibid., pp. 189-90.

Page 323

men, primarily mounted archers, while the Sarmatians were knights in armour with the long sword rather than the bow as their principal weapon. It is possible that the Sarmatians invented the stirrup, for its history cannot be traced before them. The Sarmatian burials were far simpler than the huge Scythian kurgans, and the Sarmatians seem to have become more Hellenised than the Scythians. We find an interesting feature of Sarmatian society in the use of monograms or signs, later called tamgas by the Turko-Mongols.... Sarmatian art differs from Scythian primarily in the use of polychrome techniques. Here again, polychromy is no invention of the Sarmatians, but a revival of styles and techniques which had never really died out in eastern Iran and Central Asia. The widespread animal style changes and ornament now reigns supreme, whereas in the Scythian animal style, more accurately one should say "earlier animal style", there is some naturalism present. Sarmatian art abounds in jewel-encrusted silver more than gold objects [characteristic of Scythian art]....

From the marked difference of Sarmatian burials in size as well as style from the Scythian, and from the various cultural discrepancies we learn to be wary when Parpola clamps the two tribes together and traces their burials and nomadic cultures "through successive cultures of the same type" from the "Pit Grave culture" right down to "the Andronovo culture."

As Parpola has spoken of the tumuli (kurgan) of the Scythians we may remember Frye's pointed remark about their burial mounds being "huge". What does J.P. Mallory, the latest surveyor of the Indo-European problem,²⁹⁴ have to say of the early kurgan tradition? Apropos of the "series of cultures occupying the steppe and forest-steppe of the southern Ukraine and south Russia" by "the fourth millennium

294. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (Thames and Hudson, London, 1989), p. 183.

Page 324

B.C.", he has the observation: "Settlements are few and most of the various cultures of the region are known primarily through their mortuary practice. This normally involves burial in an earthen or stone chamber, the frequent presence of ochre, and in many instances the erection of a low tumulus (Russian kurgari)." The "low" makes a striking contrast to the "huge". Then take another detail from Mallory:²⁹⁵ "Grave goods may include weapons and animal remains, especially of sheep/goat, but also of cattle and horse." Now look at Frye's reference²⁹⁶ to the Scythians' "elaborate burials, with many slain horses interred with the warrior in his kurgan..." Frye bases himself on Herodotus and adds: "archaeology has confirmed many of his stories." Sheep or goat constitute the main animal remains in the tumuli of the most ancient cultures in the region where in the first millennium B.C. the Saka Haumavarga are found. The late Scythians like these inter no animal except the horse. Again a striking contrast. Whatever may be some general resemblances among the occupants of the area concerned down the ages, it is impossible to ignore radical differences and to label as Saka Haumavarga (no matter what the term's significance) the early nomads moving in c. 2000 B.C. across territories which extended from Tashkent to the Alei valley, including Ferghana as centre-piece, supposedly on the way through the Swat valley to northwestern India.

We may justifiably assert that Parpola has perpetrated an enormous historical extrapolation for which there is no ground at all, any more than there is ground for his attempted religious and cultural identification of the Saka Haumavarga with the people of the Rigveda.

The true character of the forts

Now we come back to the forts. The question we may

295.Ibid.

296.Op. cit., p. 187.

Page 325

bring up is bound to be rather bewildering for the conventional scholar: "Can the forts spoken of by the Rigveda be considered physical?"

The term "metal" (implying either copper or bronze) and even the word "stone" should initially give us pause. The citadels of the highly developed Indus civilization itself were built merely of kiln-burnt bricks. The metaphorical imagination seems to be at play in the Rigvedic expression. And this possibility gets support from the distinction Parpola tries to make between actual Dāsa forts and metaphorical ones of the Rigvedics. He²⁹⁷ says: "The Rgvedic Aryans never speak of themselves as having a real fort, but instead pray Agni, the god of fire, to be their fort." He makes a number of quotations to bear out his point. He succeeds, but here and there we get certain matter-of-fact terms which immediately send us to the Dāsa forts and lead us to wonder whether the same language used for them may not be equally symbolic. Thus Parpola²⁹⁸ quotes 1,58,8: "O son of strength..., grant us ... impenetrable defences today! O Agni, protect (your) singer from danger, O son of vigour, with copper forts!" He has also 10,101,8 "speaking of 'unattackable copper forts'".²⁹⁹ Here, when we go to the original we find this phrase the object of krnudhvam, "make".³⁰⁰ The theme of making and granting forts and protecting with them the hymn-singers sounds as realistic as 6,20,10 cited by Parpola,³⁰¹ in which the enemy's defences are mentioned and Indra is extolled: "... he, aiding Purukutsa, has slain the Dāsa (tribes and) has rent (their) protection, the seven autumnal forts." Just as the forts of the Dāsas serve to guard them we read of the Gods employing such structures for their worshippers. Thus 1,166,8: "With castles hundredfold, O Maruts, guard ye well the men whom ye have loved from

297.P. 212.

298.Ibid., fn. 141.

299.Ibid.

300.Cf. Griffith, op. cit., p. 615, col. 1.

301.P. 211, fn. 140.

Page 326

ruin and from sin."³⁰² The same sense of forts being instruments of the deities rather than the deities themselves being forts comes in 7,16,10 addressed to Agni on behalf of his followers: "Do thou with saving help preserve them from distress, Most Youthful! with a hundred forts."³⁰³ Basically quite comparable on the opposite side is 4,30,20: "For Divodāsa, him who brought oblations, Indra overthrew / A hundred fortresses of stone."³⁰⁴

Perhaps the most disillusioning index to the metaphorical or symbolic nature of the Dāsa-defences is in Parpola's quotation³⁰⁵ of 7,19,5: "These are your shattering deeds, O wielder of the Vajra (thunder-axe), that you entered on the very same day into ninety-nine forts and that, upon entering the hundredth, you slew Vrtra as well as Namuci." I say "the most disillusioning index" because, like all Rigvedic scholars, Parpola³⁰⁶ recognizes that several Dāsas are patently non-human, demoniac figures: "Some individual Dāsas slain by Indra and mentioned by name, notably Śusna 'Drought' and Namuci 'Not letting go', seem to be purely mythical beings analogous to Indra's archenemy Vrtra, the demon who retained the waters (in the cloud) and caused drought." Now the admittedly 'mythical' Vrtra and Namuci are endowed with forts and that too in the same way as Parpola's master-example of a real Dāsa, Śambara, "one of the mightiest Dāsas" who "is said to have lived in the mountains" and about whom the Rigveda 4,26,3, as quoted by Parpola,³⁰⁷ puts in the god Indra's mouth the words: "When I favoured Divodāsa Atithigva, I (i.e. Indra), drunken (with Soma) at once tore open Śambara's ninety-nine forts and, for the sake of completion, (killed) the inmate as the hundredth." If the Rigveda puts Śambara and

302.Griffith, op. cit. p. 115, col. 2.

303.Ibid., p. 241, col. 2.

304.Ibid. p. 321, col. 1.

305.P. 211, fn. 140.

306.P. 210.

307.P. 211, fn. 140.

Page 327

his fate on a par with Vrtra and Namuci and their fate, what are we to think of Śambara's forts if not even of his very identity?

Here and there, owing to ambiguity in the English translation, the common reader may carry away the impression that the Rigveda does leave signs of earthly man-made forts. Thus Griffith's 6,45,9³⁰⁸ reads: "Lord of Strength, Caster of the Stone, destroy the firm forts built by men, / And foil their arts, unbending God!" The Sanskrit original of the translator's 'men' is janānām which has a very broad spectrum covered by the meaning 'creatures' and the basic word can refer even to the Gods collectively, as in daívyá or divya jána, the divine race.³⁰⁹ In our verse the fort-builders are not specified as humans - the creatures, the living beings are simply those whose strongholds Indra is asked to destroy and whose 'arts' he is invoked to foil: they are the enemies of the Aryans. Though no directly distinguishing epithet accompanies jánānām, the appeal to Indra for violence cannot but point to the Dāsa-Dasyus without any prejudgment of their essential nature.

It is indeed difficult to find the least reason to take the Dāsa forts as less metaphorical or symbolic than those which their combatants, the Rigvedic Aryans, get from Agni or another God; and, along with the mythologizing of the defences, does not extreme suspicion fall on Parpola's claim³¹⁰ that "most of the Dāsas and Dasyus were undoubtedly human beings encountered by the invading Aryans"?

Here comes the central problem of the Rigveda - whether a host of Indologists are right in endorsing a verdict like Parpola's:³¹¹ "The Rigvedic hymns do contain unmistakable reminiscences of the Aryan conquest and takeover of the land from its earlier inhabitants", whom the Rigveda knows

308.Op. cit., p. 310, col. 1.

309.M. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 410, col. 1.

310.P. 208.

311.Ibid.

Page 328

in general as Dāsa-Dasyus and calls (e.g. 7,5,3) "the dark peoples".³¹²

But our immediate concern is not with the broad issue of the Rigvedics' entry into India. We shall tackle it at the proper time. Now we must concentrate on the question of the historicity of the Dāsa-Dasyus.

Were any Dāsa-Dasyus human beings?

To his list of "individual Dāsas" who are "purely mythical beings" Parpola³¹³ makes an addition in a footnote: "Other such Dāsa demons are 'the loud-shouting Dāsa with six eyes and three heads', a boar (varāha) whom Trita slew with his metal-tipped inspired speech (RS 10,99,6), Urana with 99 arms and Arbuda (RS 2,14,4), and the Dāsa Vyamsa who wounded Indra and struck off both of his jaws, before Indra smashed his head with the weapon (RS 4,18,9; 1,101,2). The Dāsa dragon (ahi), from whom Indra wrests the waters (2,11,2), has a counterpart in the Avestan azis dahākō." But Parpola³¹⁴ holds on to the reality of the remaining Dāsas:

The hymns specify by name individual Aryan kings and their Dāsa or Dasyu foes, with genealogies. Thus Indra helped Divodāsa Atithigva, the king of the Trtsus, in vanquishing Dāsa Śambara, who is mentioned about twenty times in the Rgveda. Divodāsa's descendant was king Sudās, most famous for the battle of ten kings (RS 7,18 & 33 & 83). Sudās fought against Dāsas as well as Aryans: RS 7,83,1 "... Slay both the Dāsa enemies and the Aryan: protect Sudās with your aid, O Indra and Varuṇa." Similarly Indra aided Rjisvan, son of Vidathin, to conquer Dāsa Pipru, whose name occurs eleven times. Dabhiti pressed Soma for Indra and was aided by the god, who sent to sleep 30,000 Dāsas (RS 4,30,2) and bound a

312.Ibid.

313.P. 210, fn. 132.

314.Pp. 210-11.

Page 329

thousand Dasyus with cords (RS 2,13,9), so that the Dāsas Cumuri and Dhuni were overcome and their castles destroyed (RS 6,18,8). Other probably historical enemies of the Aryans who are called Dāsa and mentioned by name are Varcin, whose 100,000 warriors were slain by Indra; Drbhīka and Rudhikrā (RS 2,14,3 & 5); Anarśani and Srbinda (RS 8,32,3); Arśasāna (RS 1,130,8; 2,20,6); and Ilibiśa (RS 1,33,12). What an important role the struggles with their enemies played in the lives of the Aryans at this period is illustrated also by the names of some of their own kings: the son of Purukutsa was called Trasadasyu "one who makes the Dasyus tremble".

Except for four references by Parpola of essentially the same import, there is to my mind no possible impediment to showing the Dāsas as non-physical, non-human. In the most prominent one (7,83,1) the Dāsas are ranked with Sudās's fellow-Aryans who would seem to be physical and human and who would confer by association the same kind of existence on the Dāsas. The other three references are:³¹⁵"RS 6,25,2-3 'By these (succours) keeping (us) unhurt, O Indra, make the adversaries whom we are meeting tremble, (make) the fury of the enemy (fall).... Indra, whether it be kinsmen or strangers who have approached and injuriously assailed us, do thou enfeeble and destroy their power and vigour, and put them to flight.'"; "RS 6,33,3 'O heroic Indra, both these foes, (our) Dāsa as well as Aryan enemies, slay them...'"; "RS 10,38,3 'O much-lauded Indra, whatever ungodly person, Dāsa or Arya, designs to fight against us, let these enemies be easily subdued by us! May we destroy them in the battle!'" I shall deal with the most prominent and therefore central reference a little later. At the moment let me tackle the points Parpola makes for the historicity of several Dāsas.

The "genealogies" of the Dāsas need not physicalize them

315. Pp. 217-18, fn. 178.

Page 330

any more than Vritra, acknowledged to be non-physical, could be physicalized because of 1,32,9 naming his mother: "then humbled was the strength of Vrtra's mother: Indra hath cast his deadly bolt against her. The mother was above, above, the son was under, and like a cow beside her calf lay Danu."³¹⁶ Śambara being dubbed "the son of Kulitara", as Parpola³¹⁷ has noted from 4,30,14, should make no odds if his demonhood can be demonstrated from an undiscriminating allusion to him and to the avowed demon Śusna from Parpola's citation³¹⁸ of 6,18,8 about Indra: "He is the man who can neither fail nor go wrong, (the man) whose name is readily remembered. He (slew) Cumuri and Dhuni. Indra broke the necks of Pipru, Śambara (and) Śusna, to shatter (their) forts as to lie on the ground for ever."³¹⁹ Here not only are Śambara and Śusna coupled in parity by name, but both are credited with forts apparently similar in character. Further, by the same double token, the human-considered Dāsa Pipru gets the identical colour as Śusna. Cumuri and Dhuni, though not as directly as Śambara and Pipru, are similarly dehumanized by standing in the same general crowd of Indra's defeated enemies. Ilibisa too falls in the same category with the help of 1,33,12, the very passage Parpola presses into service for his humanness: "Then Indra broke through Ilibisa's strong castle, and Śusna with his horn he cut to pieces."³²⁰

Another context brought forward by Parpola, 2,14,3 & 5, may be taken together with some more verses (2, 4 & 6) of

316.Griffith, op. cit., p. 21, col. 1.

317.P. 210.

318.Ibid., fn. 140.

319.I learn from Richard Hartz that in 6,18,8 the Sanskrit word which is meant for Indra and translated 'man' is jana, a general term indicating, as we have already seen, 'being' - god, demon, man or any other creature. The rendering in Parpola is arbitrary and inapposite. Though there are occasions, as we shall see later, when gods are called 'men' the term used then is definite and not a generality such as jana. In Parpola's text 'the being' or 'the one' or else 'the person' would have been more correct.

320.Griffith, op. cit., p. 22, col. 1.

Page 331

the hymn³²¹ to cast the gravest doubt on the humanness of other candidates for being physical:

Ye ministers, to him who with the lightning smote, like a tree, the rain-withholding Vrtra...

Ye ministers, to him who smote Drbhika, who drove the kine forth, and discovered Vala...

Him who did Urana to death, Adhvaryus! though showing arms ninety-and-nine in number;

Who cast down headlong Arbuda and slew him, - speed ye that Indra to our offered Soma.

Ye ministers, to him who struck down Svasna and did to death Vyamsa and greedy Śusna,

And Rudhikras and Namuci and Pipru, - to him, to Indra, pour ye libation.

Ye ministers, to him who, as with thunder, demolished Śambara's hundred ancient castles;

Who cast down Varcin's sons, a hundred thousand, - to him, to Indra, offer ye the Soma.

Here is a grand roll-call of Dāsas, drawing no lines of demarcation among those whom Parpola discerns as 'mythical' - Śusna, Vyamsa, Namuci, Vrtra, Urana, Arbuda - and those whom he would regard as 'real human enemies': Drbhlka, Rudhikra, Pipru, Śambara, Varcin. There is no difference of attitude or language in relation to them all. Even some others who emerge from his footnote 140 with a real appearance - Karanja, Parṇáya, Vangrda — merge easily with 'mythical' figures in the full context of the hymn 1,53 from which he has excerpted verse 8. Griffith's translation³²² of verses 7 and 8 runs:

Thou goest on from fight to fight intrepidly, destroying castle after castle here with strength.

Thou, Indra, with thy friend who makes the foe bow

321.Ibid., p. 139, cols. 1 & 2.

322.Ibid., p. 36, col. 1.

Page 332

down, slewest from far away the guileful Namuci.

Thou hast struck down in death Karahja, Parṇáya, in Atithigva's very glorious going forth.

Unyielding, when Rjisvan compassed them with siege, thou hast destroyed the hundred forts of Vahgrda.

The 'mythical' Namuci forms one set with Karahja, Parṇáya and Vahgrda. Finally, a special dehumanizing focus may be brought about on Parpola's favourite, the 'mighty' Śambara, by the primary companionship he gets with that formidable figure of myth, Vyamsa, who, in 4,16,9, before his head was crushed, knocked both of Indra's jaws off. Griffith³²³ translates 1,101,2: "Indra, who with triumphant wrath smote Vyamsa down, and Śambara, and Pipru the unrighteous one, / Who extirpated Śusna the insatiate...." For extra measure Śusna non-physicalizes Pipru as well as Śambara.

It is a commonplace of Rigvedic studies that, if after granting the obviously demoniac character of a good number of named Dāsa-Dasyus, one still opts for the human character of many of them, one is rather at a loss how to demarcate the latter. Thus Keith,³²⁴ wanting - like most scholars - to think of contests between "the peoples who called themselves Aryas" and "the Dāsas or Dasyus as they are repeatedly called", writes: "The same terms are applied indifferently to the human enemies of the Aryans and to the fiends, and no criterion exists by which references to real foes can be distinguished in every case from allusions to demoniacal powers." "Individual Dāsas" whom Keith picks out as human examples "are Ilibica, Dhuni and Chumuri, Pipru, Varchin, and Cambara, though the last at least has been transformed by the imagination of the singers into demoniac proportions". But once a group has been proved by clear-cut terms to be of "fiends", it would appear capricious in the mere absence of such terms to plead for the rest the status of 'human enemies'.

323.Ibid., p. 64, col. 2.

324..Op. cit., p. 84.

Page 333

Parpola³²⁵ makes much play with the word "Manu" to prevent his "human" Dāsas from being tarred with the same brush as certain Dāsa names to which he attributes demon-hood:

In the Rgvedic hymns the Aryans ... are called "men" (mānuṣa-, also nar-). In RS 7,5,2-3 the "human peoples" (manusir víśah) are contrasted with the "black peoples" (ásiknir víśah), in RS 10,22,8 with "inhumans" (á-mānusa). RS 5,7,10 contrasts Dasyus and "men" (dásyūn ... nrn), while in RS 8,59,11; 8,70,11; and elsewhere the Dasyus are called "inhuman" (á-mānuṣa-). The epithet "inhuman" has sometimes been taken as a proof for the purely mythical character of these "demons", but it simply means "not belonging to us", since these enemies were not descended from the same ancestor as the Aryans, namely Manu 'man', the mythical first man and ancestor of the human race.

A footnote to "the human race" runs: "... In RS 4,26,1 Indra calls himself manu, and in RS 2,11,10 he stands as mānuṣa- against Danava, who is á-mānuṣa-.''

We do not have to go into all the details of Parpola's statement. Three points may be made. First, the 'human peoples' are set over against the 'black peoples' as if the opposite of 'human' were a condition of blackness, evil. What kind of ignorance and malignity is implied? The answer emerges from the second point: the origin of the Dāsa-Dasyus in rivalry with that of the 'human peoples' from Manu, with whom Indra identifies himself. This origin is "Danava". The term means "descended from Danu". As we saw from 1,32,9, Danu is the mother of Vritra - Vritra who, according to Parpola, is "the demon" constituting "Indra's archenemy". This demon is á-mānuṣa. Thus the latter term cannot simply signify not belonging to the Aryan

325. P. 222.

Page 334

family: it must denote "non-human" in the sense of "demoniac" no less than "inhuman" in the sense of "cruel, villainous". Thirdly, in 10,22 where "human peoples" are contrasted with "inhumans" in verse 8, verse 7 applies the very expression á-mānuṣa to Śusna whom Parpola has regarded as a mythical being, a demon, analogous to Vritra. So the Dāsa-Dasyus do get tarred with the same brush as the demons.

In addition, we may lend an ear to K. Chattopadhyaya's poser³²⁶ about the Dāsa-Dasyus: "These beings have also been called 'not divine' (a-deva) and 'not human' (á-mānusa), which shows that they were something between men and gods, i.e., they were demons."

I am afraid the whole picture of the Rigvedics conquering human Dāsas is arbitrary. What further complicates if and adds to the impression of non-physicality is that the Dāsas do not seem to be once-for-all individual characters with their lives beginning and ending in time in relation to particular Aryans, but rather vast forces recurrently taking particular forms which get dissolved by various divine powers at various periods. They appear to be repeating types of evil. In this respect Vritra whom Parpola admits to be 'mythical' is on a level with Śambara whom he endows with immense concreteness. "Over and over again," says Parpola,³²⁷ "the poets discuss Indra's exploits, especially his fight with the arch enemy called Vrtra 'obstruction', the snake-like demon of drought, who has imprisoned the waters in dark clouds." If Vritra is a drought-demon, he would be killed in season after season of dryness to get the rain. A repeated and repeatable act is suggested also by a reference like 10,152,3 in the present tense: "Drive Rāksasas and foes away, break thou in pieces Vrtra's jaws: / O Vrtra-slaying Indra, quell the foeman's wrath who threatens

326.Studies in Vedic and Indo-Iranian Religion and Literature (Bharatiya Vidya Prakasana, Varanasi, 1976), I, p. 210.

327.P. 225.

Page 335

us."³²⁸ But a hint in 1,174,2 quoted by Parpola³²⁹ makes us look beyond mere physical drought having been averted time and again by Indra: "O Immaculate One, you made the streaming waters move; to young Purukutsa you made Vrtra surrender." The "streaming waters" appear to be some occult grace of divine agencies, high heavenly beings, whom Vritra, an opponent of the gods, is obstructing. Anyway, Vritra is not associated with Purukutsa anywhere else in the Rigveda. So the other occasions of Indra's exploits must be different from this. Similarly, Śambara, who is more than once associated with Divodāsa, is not always linked with him. Several times he is mentioned in the general company of destroyed Dāsas. So here too, as with Purukutsa, there must be occasions apart from a particular Aryan like Divodāsa.

Diverse occasions for the destruction of Vritra and Śambara are evoked also by the fact that diverse gods take a hand in this act. It is not Indra alone who is honoured for the feat of slaying Vritra, even if it is ascribed to him with the greatest frequency. Thus, while in 5,40,1, we read: "Indra best Vrtra-slayer",³³⁰ Agni is addressed in 1,78,4: "Thee, best of Vrtra-slayers"³³¹ and 9,1,3 appeals to Soma: "Be thou best Vrtra-slayer";³³² 8,8,9 gives the Aśvins the title: "Best Vrtra-slayers".³³³ In 10,170,2 Sūrya is entitled "Vrtra-killing", vrtraha, as well as a slayer of Dasyus and enemies in general. Likewise, the demolition of Śambara is not attributed to Indra exclusively, though he is credited with it most often. Parpola himself³⁴ has cited 1,59,6: "Vaisvanara Agni ... slew the Dasyu, shattered the palisades, and cut down Śambara." Still another god is hailed for the same

328.Griffith, op. cit., p. 642, col. 2.

329.P. 212, fn. 140 continued from p. 211.

330.Griffith, op. cit., p. 255, col. 1.

331.Ibid. p. 50, col. 1.

332.Ibid., p. 472, col. 1.

333.Ibid., p. 399, col. 1.

334.P. 211, fn. 140.

Page 336

achievement: 2,24,2 says of Brihaspati, alias Brāhmaṇaspati - "He who with might bowed down the things that should be bowed, and in his fury rent the holds of Śambara: / Who overthrew what shook not, Brāhmaṇaspati, - he made his way within the mountain stored with wealth."³³⁵ Vishnu too, allied with Indra, is set in opposition to that mountain-Dāsa. Parpola³³⁶ quotes 7,99,5: "O Indra and Visnu, you two pierced Śambara's ninety-nine strong forts...." Surely, Vritra was slain by Indra, Agni, Soma, the Aśvins and Sūrya on separate occasions? Similarly, on distinct occasions Indra, Agni, Brihaspati and Vishnu-cwm-Indra must have pierced Śambara's citadels and slaughtered him. He looms, equally with Vritra, as a recurrent demoniac assailant to be repeatedly nullified by the divine guardians of the Aryans.

Be all this as it may, a critical eye weighing in general every aspect of the Dāsa-Dasyus is bound to find these foes of the Rigvedics lacking in historicity. Parpola,³³⁷ while mentioning scholars in his support, has been frank enough to allude to dissenting voices: Shaffer (1984) and Renfrew (1987). But in studying the Rigveda it is not sufficient to see the Dāsas dehumanized merely into Nature-powers or Nature-phenomena of an unfavourable kind, garbed as demons by a primitive poetic imagination. We should do well to catch the conjuration of a supernatural, occult, mind-obscuring world from a sloka like 2,20,7 in Griffith:³³⁸ "Indra the Vrtra-slayer, Fort-destroyer, scattered the Dāsa hosts

335.Griffith, op. cit., p. 146, col. 2.

336.P. 211, fn. 140.

337.P. 208, fn. 118.

338.Op. cit., p. 143, col. 2. Parpola (p. 208) cites a different translation: "That slayer of Vrtra, Indra, the breaker of the fort, has torn open the (castles) of Dāsas, which in their wombs hid the black people." This is speculative. There is no mention of "black people" in the original Sanskrit as given by Parpola himself (ibid., fn. 128). The text runs: sá vrtrahéndrah krsnáyonih purarhdāro dāsīr airayad vi. My Sanskritist friend Richard Hartz comments: "It is quite possible to understand an unexpressed purah, Parpola's '(castles)', as implied by the feminine plural of dasīr ('of Dāsas'), rather than supplying senah (Griffith's 'hosts') as

Page 337

who dwelt in darkness." Again from Griffith"'' we read of Brāhmaṇaspati in 2,23,3: thou hast chased away revilers and the gloom...." A similar picture of Agni we derive from Griffith's 5,14,4: "Agni shone bright when born, with light killing the Dasyus, and the dark."³⁴⁰ With these pointers by even a non-mystical translator, suggesting obscurity as the element in which the enemies of the Aryans have their existence, as the power which accompanies their activities, we cannot help intuiting symbolism in the expression - "the dark peoples" - in Parpola's quotation³⁴¹ of 7,5,3 & 6: "Through fear of you the dark peoples fled, relinquishing their possessions without battle, when, O Agni Vaisvanara, burning bright for Puru and rending the forts, you did shine.... You, Agni, drove the Dasyus from their abode, creating a wide light for the Arya." Parpola fails to see the basic antithesis intended between forces of light and those of darkness, a might of divine truth and a might of demoniac falsehood.

At least a glimmering of non-physical non-human agencies might have been caught. Griffith,³⁴² annotating his

Sāyana does, or perhaps visah, 'tribes', as in 2,11,4, 4,28,4, 6,25,2 and 10,148,2. Parpola's interpretation is supported in this respect by puro dasih in 1,103,3 and 4,32,10, and by verses such as 1,51,11, where purah is the object of the same verb vi airayat. But even so, there is no need to follow Parpola in assuming a further unexpressed word meaning 'people' in the middle of the compound krsnayonih, which he translates 'which in their wombs hid the black people'. If yoni here means 'womb', signifying the interior of a fort - Griffith takes it in another common Vedic sense of 'dwelling place' - the compound would mean 'black-wombed' as applied to the forts of the Dāsas. In this interpretation also, the blackness would appear to refer to the milieu of the Dāsas rather than to their skin-colour. So Griffith's phrase - 'who dwelt in darkness' - can be considered essentially correct."

339.Op. cit., p. 144, col. 2.

340.Ibid., p. 244, col. 1.

341.P. 208.

342.Op. cit., p. 336, col. 2, fn. 3.

Page 338

translation of the original víśa ... ásiknir (Parpola's 'dark peoples') as "dark-hued races", informs us: "according to von Roth, the spirits of darkness." Actually, as early as 1861 von Roth³⁴³ recognized that the terms Dāsa and dasyu in the Rigveda primarily meant "demon". But scholarly counsel has continued to be confused and we find Parpola paradoxically picking out just the line of argument which is the weakest - the argument from the word varna, "colour". He³⁴⁴ tells us that in 3,34,9 "the Dasyus are contrasted with the 'Aryan colour'", and adds:

This undoubtedly refers to the lighter skin of the Aryans: cf. also RS 1,100,18: "After slaying the Dasyus and the Śimyus ... let him (i.e. Indra) with his white friends (sákhibhih śvitnyébhih) win land, let him win the-sun, water...." In RS 2,12,4 Indra is spoken of as "one Who subdued the Dāsa race (lit. colour) and drove it into hiding."

But Parpola³⁴⁵ gives his case away by himself offering the footnote: "In later texts, but not yet in the Rgveda, the term varna refers to the four hierarchical classes of the society associated with different symbolic colours: the highest are the priestly Brahmins, whose colour is white, and the lowest the menial Sudras, whose colour is black." There is no reason why an analogous symbolism should not hold for the Rigveda: it is sheer dogmatism to assert that here the reference is to a physical skin-colour. Indeed, as Sri Aurobindo³⁴⁶ urges, "the later use of different colours to distinguish the four castes, white, red, yellow and black" seems to show that the idea of varna meaning "the nature or else all those of that particular nature" was "a current

343.Sanskrit Worterbuch, Vol. Ill, pp. 557-58, 604-05.

344.P. 209.

345.Ibid., fn. 129.

346.The Secret of the Veda, p. 218.

Page 339

notion among the ancient Aryans". Sri Aurobindo³⁴⁷ asks us to mark that in verses 4-6 of the very hymn (3,34), where the "Aryan colour" (ārya varna) occurs, Indra acts as the increaser of the bright-coloured thoughts of his adorers. Sri Aurobindo points out:

... the shining hue of these thoughts, śukram varnam āsām, is evidently the same as that śukra or śveta Aryan hue which is mentioned in verse 9. Indra carries forward or increases the "colour" of these thoughts beyond the opposition of the Panis, pra varnam atiracchukram; in doing so he slays the Dasyus and protects or fosters and increases the Aryan "colour", hatvī dasyūn pra āryam varnam āvat.

Both the Aryan and the Dāsa colours are psychological, but the Rigvedic language symbolizes them in physical terminology.

What the Rigveda really is

This terminology should not misguide us. 'Veda' means knowledge, from vid 'to know'. The knowledge supposed from the earliest days to be contained in this scripture was not information about the history, society and religious beliefs and practices of the times, the things modern scholarship has primarily sought in the Veda. The authors of the Upanishads, who were much closer to the age and mentality of the Rigveda than we, appealed to its authority for their deepest spiritual insights. The Rigvedic poets themselves make clear their preoccupation with unseen realities. The expression satyaśrutah kavayah, "truth-hearing seers" (5,57,8; 5,58,8; 6,49,6), suggests how the Rishis viewed their own function. Though the phrase is applied to gods rather than to men, it indicates the Vedic idea of the Kavi or Rishi,

347. Ibid., pp. 220-21.

Page 340

inspired sage or seer, as one who had access to a knowledge received through faculties not possessed by ordinary mortals.

The important place in the Rigveda of a conception of supranormal insight as the source of the special powers of the Rishi has begun to be recognized by recent scholarship. J. Gonda³⁴⁸ writes:

In all times and among many peoples there have ... been men, who were aware of the reality of "visions" and intuitions, of inspirations and sudden thoughts and ideas, men who understood that besides the purely sensuous impression a thought, a flash of intuition, in short knowledge, may come to the human mind, as it were spontaneously, at least without any conscious activity of the organ of sensory perception and which leaves an impression of great reality; men who know that the "doors of the mind may be opened" (RV. 9,10,6). Often also the source of this knowledge is divine. The god Agni, the guest among men and his guru, is explicitly called a dhārā rtasya (RV. 1,67,7), i.e. "stream or 'fountain' of transcendental truth", the inventor of brilliant speech (2,9,4 sukrasya vacaso manotā), who brings the light of the vibrations of inspiration (3,10,5 vipam jyotīmsi bibhrat). He opens the thoughts of the poets (4,11,2), his are the origins of the special gifts of the seers (4,11,3), and in 6,9 we find an elaborate description of the relation between the god -who is the light of the world as well as the internal light illumining poets and sages - and the poet who by devout concentration upon the god experiences the inspiration as an ecstasy.

The Rigvedic hymns seem, on the surface, to be largely concerned with mundane objects hardly worthy of such intricate poems claiming a divine inspiration and invested by

348. The Vision of the Vedic Poets (Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1963), pp. 17-18.

Page 341

later tradition with immense sanctity. But, the Rishis themselves describe their utterances as "secret words", ninya vacāmsi (4,3,16). In the same verse, nivacanā kavaye kavyani is translated by Sri Aurobindo³⁴⁹ "seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer". Rigveda 1,164,39 speaks of the Riks as existing "in a supreme imperishable ether in which all the gods are seated" and asks, "one who knows not That, what shall he do with the Rik?" These hints at hidden meanings not accessible to all suggest the possibility that the hymns contain a mystical doctrine expressed in a cryptic language of symbols. The ancient Mysteries, to which we may suppose the Rishis to have belonged, had an outer or exoteric side and an inner or esoteric one. The superficial sense of the hymns veiled the true and inner meaning from the uninitiated while revealing it to the initiates.³⁵⁰ According to Rigveda 10,71,4, he who knows only the outward sense is as one who "seeing sees not, hearing hears not".

Those who have found an esoteric dimension in the Rigveda have not wilfully read mystical ideas into texts which have a straightforward and satisfactory sense without such interpretations. In fact, the exoteric rendering by itself often runs into insoluble problems. Thus Griffith,³⁵¹ in introducing Parasāra's hymns to Agni (1,65-73), admits: "They are generally difficult, and not seldom unintelligible." Similarly, he has a footnote at the beginning of hymn 4,58:³⁵² "It is, as Professor Wilson observes, 'a good specimen of Vaidik vagueness, and mystification, and of the straits to which commentators are put to extract an intelligible meaning from the text.'" No doubt, the difficulty of some of the hymns is due in part to their archaic language.

349.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971), p. 5.

350.This theory was developed in detail by Sri Aurobindo in The Secret of the Veda.

351.Op. cit., p. 44, col. 2.

352.Ibid., p. 235, col. 2.

Page 342

But to a great extent the bewilderment of translators and commentators has resulted from a failure to grasp the luminous thread of mystic significance, often couched in symbols, which underlies the apparent jumble of words and images. What Professor Wilson termed 'mystification' is revealed, once the right clue is found, as true mysticism of the highest order.³⁵³

Undoubtedly, in the Rigveda, a religious ritual is present with the sacrificial fire, Agni, in which clarified butter is poured and with an exhilarating drink, Soma, containing ephedra, as it now seems proved. But this fire stands for a godlike force invoked to break out from some wonderful secrecy. Agni in the Rigveda, says Sri Aurobindo,³⁵⁴ "is the divine power that builds up the worlds, a power which acts always with a perfect knowledge, for it is jātavedas, knower of all births, viśvāni vayunāni vidvān, - it knows all manifestations or phenomena or it possesses all forms of the divine wisdom. Moreover it is repeatedly said [e.g. 4,1,1] that the gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfilment through which they do their work in him. It is this work which is symbolised by the sacrifice." Even a translation by a scholar without any penchant for the esoteric cannot help sounding a note beyond mere ritualistic or naturalistic suggestions. Thus Griffith³⁵⁵ renders 1,31,7: "For glory, Agni, day by day, thou liftest up the mortal man to highest immortality...." Again,³⁵⁶ take his version of 3,1,5-6, also about Agni: "Spreading with radiant limbs throughout the region, purging his power with wise purifications, / Robing himself in light, the life of waters, he spreads abroad his high and perfect glories. / He sought heaven's Mighty Ones, the

353.Rigveda 4,58, on which Wilson passed the comment quoted above, is a good example of a hymn where only the mystical interpretation is convincing. See Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, pp. 97-101.

354.Ibid., p. 61.

355.Op. cit., p. 19, col. 2.

356.Ibid., p. 159, cols. 1-2.

Page 343

unconsuming, the unimpaired, not clothed and yet not naked. / Then they, ancient and young, who dwell together, Seven sounding Rivers, as one germ received him."

Like Agni, who is not only the ritualistic fire, Soma is a god as well as a plant. The unearthliness of it is hinted at even by the account of it as if it were a plant of the earth. As the reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement (May 5,1969, p. 561, cols. 3-8) of Gordon Wasson's monumental study, Soma, the Divine Mushroom of Immortality, noted, "It was golden-red in appearance, grew on high mountains, its stalks were crushed to extract the intoxicating juice, but there is no reference to roots or leaves, blossom or seed." This lack is puzzling for an earthly plant. The growing on high mountains is extremely suggestive too - and when we find in the Rigveda 10,34,1, Soma described as coming especially from the mountain named Mujavant, the suggestion acquires extra concreteness, for no mountain of that name has ever been identified. Zimmer³⁵⁷ tried to equate it with one of the lower hills in the southwest of Kashmir, but, as Hille-brandt³⁵⁸ has asserted, the equation is wanting in evidence. We may conjecture a connection with a people designated Mujavants in the Atharvaveda (5,22) and the Yajurveda's Taittirīya Saṁhitā (1,8,6,2) and considered as dwelling far away and typefying distant folk. Such a connection can only convey a vague remoteness for the provenance of Soma. In fact, the original sense of remoteness went beyond a mystic mountain. The intoxicating or rather enrapturing plant was visioned as brought by a Falcon from beyond the earth: "The Falcon went to heaven and brought the Soma to the Thunderer [= Indra]" (8,89,8) - "Down from the heavens the Falcon brought thee hitherward" (9,86,4).³⁵⁹

The esoteric significance of the plant is flashed out even when the nature of the "sieve" purifying it - pavitra, as the

357.Altindisches Leben (Berlin, 1879), p. 29.

358.Vedische Mythologie, I (Breslau, 1891), p. 65.

359.Griffith, op. cit., p. 462, col. 1; p. 508, col. 2.

Page 344

Rigveda terms it - is spoken of. No doubt, the "material" is said to be made of a ram's or sheep's wool (9,75,4). But we have to weigh Sri Aurobindo's gloss:³⁶⁰ "The strainer in which the Soma is purified is made of the fleece of the ewe. Indra is the Ram [1,10,2; 1,51,1; 1,52,1; 8,2,40; 8,86,12]: the Ewe must therefore be an energy of Indra, probably the divinised sense-mind, indriyam." In 1,51,1 we hear of "the Ram whom many men invoke" and in 1,52,1 "the Ram who finds the light of heaven".³⁶¹ Its "energy" is a rapturous one which is to be released in human psychology through a change in the sense-mind. For, as Sri Aurobindo writes,³⁶²"delight is the raison d'etre of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of the physical consciousness. But in that consciousness - often figured [in the Rigveda] as adri, the hill, stone or dense substance - divine light and divine delight are both of them concealed and confined and have to be released or extracted." Hence "the mystic Soma-plant symbolises that element behind all sense-activities and their enjoyments which yields the divine essence." By getting into touch with this essence by an inner process of spiritual aspiration and realisation, the Soma-sacrifice bears fruit. As 9,83,2 envisions it, the Soma-sacrifice has to rise to Dyau or Heaven, "the pure mental principle not subjected to the reactions of the nerves and the body. In the seat of Heaven ... the thoughts and emotions [symbolized by the threads of the Soma-strainer] become pure rays of true perception and happy psychical vibration.... Instead of being contracted and quivering things defending themselves from pain and excess of the shocks of experience, they stand out free, strong and bright [socanto asya tantavo vyasthiran], happily extended to receive and turn into divine ecstasy all possible contact of universal existence. Therefore it is divaspade, in the seat of Heaven, that the Soma-strainer [pavitra] is

360.The Secret of the Veda, p. 541, fn. 2.

361.Griffith, op. cit., p. 33, col. 1; p. 34, col. 2.

362.The Secret of the Veda, p. 249.

Page 345

spread out to receive the Soma."³⁶³

Indeed, the Rigveda, in 10,85,3 & 4, breaks its exoteric veil in no hesitating terms:³⁶⁴

One thinks, when they have brayed the plant, that he hath drunk the Soma's juice;

Of him whom Brahmans truly know as Soma no one tastes.

Soma, secured by sheltering rules, guarded by hymns in Brhati,³⁶⁵

Thou standest listening to the stones: none tastes of thee who dwells on earth.

The etymology of "Dāsa" and "Pani"

Figures of the outer life of the time - cows, horses, rivers, hills, clans, ramparts, weapons, wealth, gold, etc. - are employed in the Rigveda to symbolize experiences of an occult and mystic kind. Powers of Light and Truth are invoked, and often depicted as fighting against Powers of Darkness and Falsehood. Hence the allusion which Parpola³⁶⁶ observes in places to "the dark peoples" (7,5,3), "the black skin" (1,130,8; 9,41,1), "the black people" (2,20,8). Since the Dāsas are to him earlier Aryans in India he does not adhere to the once-popular idea of dark aboriginals and offers the explanation of a "racial mixture" such as "was to happen to Vedic Aryans also".³⁶⁷ This does not avoid the supposition of a pre-Aryan Dravidian or Proto-Australoid folk in the subcontinent to mix with. The esoteric view of the Rigveda has no ethnic implication: it simply posits supernatural deniers and destroyers of the inner and upward progress of spiritual initiates. To Sri Aurobindo, the Rig-

363.Ibid., p. 345.

364.Griffith, op. cit., p. 593, col. 2.

365.That is, by hymns in that metre.

366.Pp. 208, 209, 210.

367.P. 218.

Page 346

vedic term Dāsa has nothing to do with the Dahas of Iran. Nor does it normally have the "sense of submission and service (Dāsa, servant, from das to work)": its sense is "destruction and injury (Dāsa, dasyu, an enemy, plunderer, from das to divide, hurt, injure)".³⁶⁸

The specific Dāsa-Dasyu known as Pani has for Sri Aurobindo no relationship to the Parnians of the classical authors, though we may be sure that as a master of Greek and Latin he was well acquainted with them. His own view is not complicated at all. It is straightforward:³⁶⁹ "The word pani means dealer, trafficker, from pan (also pan, cf. Tamil pan, Greek ponos, labour)...." A footnote to pan reads: "Sāyana takes pan in Veda - to praise, but in one place he admits the sense of vyavahāra, dealing. Action seems to me to be its sense in most passages. From pan in the sense of action we have the earlier names of the organs of action, pani, hand, foot or hoof, Lat. penis, cf. also pāyu." As a trafficker the Pani is found by Sri Aurobindo to have treasures and yet to be arādhas "because his wealth gives no prosperity or felicity to man or himself, - the Pani is the miser of existence".³⁷⁰ As such, he is rightly characterized by Keith as "a niggard" in the passage we have quoted; and, whether linguistically correct or not, the psychological connection with the root of the Greek pernēmi does not seem far-fetched.

What is most in accord with Sri Aurobindo from the linguistic as well as the semantic standpoint is A.D. Pusalker's remark:³⁷¹ "The words Panik or Vanik, Panya and Vipani, found in Sanskrit, suggest that the Panis were merchants par excellence of the Rigvedic age", even though "greedy like the wolf, niggardly, of cruel speech".³⁷² But

368.The Secret of the Veda, p. 230.

369.Ibid., p. 225.

370.Ibid., p. 226.

371.The Vedic Age, edited by R.C. Majumdar and A.D. Pusalker (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1952), p. 249.

372.Ibid., p. 248.

Page 347

Pusalker is as distant as Parpola from the Aurobindonian vision of total symbolism and mysticism in the Rigveda. While at one with Sri Aurobindo that both Dāsa and Dasyu derive from "the same root das, 'lay waste' or 'waste away'", he³⁷³ holds that in several passages the enemies of the Rigvedics are of "a demonic character" but in many they are "human foes".

Here a gloss from Sri Aurobindo would be apt - a gloss which refers to several important terms of the Rigvedic symbology, the cows of light, the heavenly waters, the world of the solar illumination called Swar. And all these terms come in apropos of the Panis who are constantly spoken of in the Rigveda as Dasyus or Dāsas. Sri Aurobindo briefly sets right their real nature by putting them in relation to the powers which the Rigveda often names the brood of Vritra, forces derived from Indra's arch-enemy whom Parpola has discerned to be a demon for the Rigvedics. Sri Aurobindo says:³⁷⁴

We may take as the master-clue to the general character of these Dasyus the Rik V.14.4, "Agni born shone out slaying the Dasyus, the darkness by the Light; he found the Cows, the Waters, Swar," agnir jāto arocata, ghnan dasyün jyotiṣā tamah, avindad ga apah svah. There are two great divisions of the Dasyus, the Panis who intercept both the cows and the waters but are especially associated with the refusal of the cows, the Vritras who intercept the waters and the light, but are especially associated with the withholding of the waters; all Dasyus without exception stand in the way of the ascent to Swar and oppose the acquisition of the wealth by the Aryan seers. The refusal of the light is their opposition to the vision of Swar, svardṛś, and the vision of the sun, to the supreme vision of knowledge, upamā ketuh (V.34.9); the refusal of the waters is their opposition to the abundant movement of

373.Ibid., p. 249.

374.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 216-17.

Page 348

Swar, svarvatīr apah, the movement or streaming of the Truth, rtasya preṣā, rtasya dhārāh; the opposition to the wealth-acquisition is their refusal of the abundant substance of Swar, vasu, dhana, vāja, hiranya, that great wealth which is found in the sun and in the waters, apsu surye mahad dhanam (VIII.68.9). Still since the whole struggle is between the Light and the Darkness, the Truth and the Falsehood, the divine Māyā and the undivine, all the Dasyus alike are here identified with the Darkness, and it is by the birth and shining of Agni that the Light is created with which he slays the Dasyus and the Darkness. The historical interpretation will not do at all here, though the naturalistic may pass if we isolate the passage and suppose the lighting of the sacrificial fire to be the cause of the daily sunrise; but we have to judge from a comparative study of the Veda and not on the strength of isolated passages.

The term anắsah

Here a couple of points may be taken up to round off the theme in hand. A term of which, unlike many scholars of an earlier generation, Parpola has got the right hang, throws light at the same time on the non-racial denotation of the Dasyus and on their non-human character. Parpola is naturally interested in the former aspect. He writes:³⁷⁵ "The expression anắsah, which is known from RS 5,29,10 alone, has been segmented a-nasah 'noseless', and used as evidence for the Dasyus' having belonged to a flat-nosed Negroid or Mongoloid race. However, there is now a wide agreement on the analysis an-asắh 'mouthless', which is likely to mean 'speechless', either in the meaning 'silent' or 'unable to speak (the Aryan language)'." Parpola continues:³⁷⁶"Nevertheless it seems that the Aryans and the Dāsas, Dasyus and Panis understood each other's language. The

375.P. 219.

376.Pp. 219-20.

Page 349

Rgveda repeatedly refers to the enemy's reviling of Indra. A recurrent epithet of the enemy is mṛdhrá-vāc- 'contemptuously or inimically speaking'."

The rejection of "noseless" suits Parpola well since the Dasyus, like the Dāsas and Panis, are to him an earlier group of invading Aryans whose language was bound to be understood by the later group. But the interpretation of mṛdhrá-vāc leaves much to be desired and it gives a wrong twist to an-ắsah. Actually, as Parpola's own footnote 189 shows, the two words are part of one and the same sentence - the first and the last in it: anaso dasyum ... mṛdhrávācah. The translation he quotes is: "You slew the speechless Dasyus with the weapon, you threw down into the bad place those who speak contemptuously." In a literal sense, "mouthless" or "speechless" or even "unable to speak (the Aryan language)" is lacking in point when evidently the same foes are "those who speak contemptuously". But all explanations lead us astray unless we take into account, as Sri Aurobindo does,³⁷⁷ an analogous phrase brahma-dvisah occurring in several hymns: e.g., 5,42,9; 8,45,23; 10,36,9; 10,160,4; 10,182,3. Griffith³⁷⁸ translates it "those who hate devotion" or "prayer-haters". This locution sets the Aryans and the Dāsas, Dasyus, Panis at opposite ends: those who sacrifice to the Gods and find the word of Devotion, the inspired Prayer, and those who are haters and destroyers of it. These latter are the spoilers of speech, mṛdhrá-vācah, those who have no mouth or breath to utter the mantra, andsah. The enemies of the Rigvedics are neither a race of non-Aryans nor a race of earlier Aryans: they are simply opponents of the spiritual inspiration connected with the Gods. They may very well be demoniac beings.

Does the Rigveda reflect an invasion?

Now a final overall objection may be met. Even if the

377.The Secret of the Veda, p. 226.

378.Op. cit., p. 257, col. 2; p. 557, col. 1.

Page 350

Rigveda recounts a struggle between the seekers of spiritual Light and the powers of Darkness, even if the cows are the illuminations received from the Sun of Truth and from the Dawn of inner revelation and are not mundane milk-givers, even if the Dāsa-Dasyus are no human plunderers but demoniac beings, and their forts metaphors for occult centres of massive resistance to the Aryans' quest of soul and God, must we be prevented from seeing behind the mystic poetry a struggle on the physical plane? Just as the Rishis took the details of the material life around them to figure forth the vicissitudes of the inner adventure, just as there were physical animals and rivers and hills and various barriers to get round or get through, should we not visualize an actual struggle between Aryans and non-Aryans, between representatives of two opposed cults, between newcomers to the land and the old inhabitants of it - in short, a conflict of invaders with whoever already held the territory? The symbolic vision, the occult experience, the infusion of concrete earthly appearances into a tale of rarefied psychological realisations - are not these an index to an historical background picture of mystics who are part of a warrior group from abroad throwing itself violently upon a hostile people pledged to another cult which in the eyes of these mystics is demoniac? That is to say: the near-certainty of the undeniably demoniac non-human Dāsa-Dasyus of the Rigveda being as much an image of outer conditions as the luminous cows, magical horses, supernatural chariots, divine waters, gigantic forts of metal or stone and other extraordinary transfigured objects - this near-certainty should indicate that there was in whatever undetermined antiquity an entry of the Rigvedics into north-western India to take over the country from its earlier occupants.

The logic of this argument is unsound, exceeding the actual premises. We have seen not only that the Rigveda is far more ancient than c. 1500 B.C., but also that it has no indication at all of its bearers hailing from outside India. So, at most, we may look at its purely symbolic spiritual warfare

Page 351

in the perspective of a martial opposition between two religious sects among a mostly homogenous population within India itself. Such an opposition no more implies an act of invasion than it implies that the Dāsa-Dasyus spoken of in the Rigvedic hymns as being fought and conquered were for the Rishis a physical reality.

The sole doubt which lingers is: "Was there an actual state of hostilities between the people to whom the Rishis ministered and a people adhering to another cult?" It must have been clear to the Rishis' own people, just as much as it is to Parpola and other scholars, that many of the Dāsa-Dasyus of the hymns were non-human - and an indiscriminate mix-up of these with others who were not openly distinguished as demons must have created at least a suspicious perplexity about the latter. Even such Dāsa-Dasyus were often if not mostly put in a past of struggle whether definitely on a demoniac plane or indefinitely on a human-seeming one. Again, those which appeared to be in the present were - whether openly or subtly - of the same kind. As the Rigveda belonged to the "Mysteries", it had an exoteric or outer side in which circumstances of the life of the common folk were suggested and ordinary material gains and benefits conjured up though hardly ever without a religious atmosphere around them and rarely without a hint in a number of places that there was an esoteric or inner aspect in the hymns. On the exoteric side what may we legitimately conclude?

We must at once rule out as unwarranted the picture of an invading campaign. What remains is a milieu in which a different religion than the Rigvedic exists in some part of the subcontinent and in this milieu there exist also individuals or collectivities who for some reason are unfriendly or ill-wishing. The hymns offer to the laity incantations against the adverse effects of the thoughts or words or actions issuing from them - incantations which also invoke concrete advantages from the gods who are felt to be behind natural phenomena. There must have been forts of some kind as

Page 352

small material stimuli to the occult figurations of defensive magnitudes we read of in the hymns as befitting superhuman powers and principalities. We have no reason to imagine any such portentous conflicts as portrayed in the hymns, just as we cannot postulate the sort of cows and horses and chariots and rivers and double or triple oceans and god-forms and goddess-shapes which the Rishis delineate in the thrilling accounts of their adventures in supra-terrestrial dimensions. A material counterpart on a much reduced scale to the contents of these accounts is all we are entitled to imagine -nothing like the state of things we could picture as pertaining to the tumultuous invasion so dear to the fancy of outward-minded researchers of the Rigveda.

The problem of Aryan enemies

Yes, we need fear no hurdle to the Aurobindonian view we have adopted face to face with the Parpola-Pusalker dichotomy of Dāsa-demons and Dāsa-humans. This dichotomy can scarcely stand; but for all its illogicality it would seem to be at an advantage in a situation which the Rigveda poses to us in its famous Battle of the Ten Kings (Dāśarajna) on the river Paruṣṇī. There one Aryan party has allied itself with the Dāsas and is fought by a wholly Aryan group. Three hymns - 7,18 & 33 & 83 - depict the encounter in none-too-clear a manner as to all its causes and vicissitudes, but its general posture is caught in the prayer of 7,83,1 as quoted by Parpola:³⁷⁹ "Slay both the Dāsa enemies and the Aryan, protect Sudās with your aid, O Indra and Varuṇa." When the Dāsas have been conceived as demon-opponents in an inner spiritual epic, a crucial problem, to which we have already alluded, arises: "Can Aryan enemies also be conceived as inner ones who are contested in a supernatural domain? If they cannot, should not their reality on the earth-plane cast a hue of the human, the physical, on their allies, the Dāsas?"

379. P. 221.

Page 353

Prior to explaining how they can be figured supernatu-rally, let us look at the way the movement of the battle is presented. The way is such as to create a prima facie case for figuring them thus. Sudās is mentioned as getting his opposers smashed by Indra or Indra-Varuṇa in the same way as the earlier fighter Purukutsa who was opposed exclusively by Dāsas, or that other Aryan hero Pūru whose clan, like the four other clans of the Aryans, has joined hands with the Dāsas. Before we elucidate Sudās's fight with the Ten Confederate Kings as well as his subsequent conflict with Dāsa tribes along the river Yamunā, we may note the parity the Rigveda shows between Indra's work for him and Indra's work for his predecessors who did not have to campaign against fellow Aryans:

Warring for Purukutsa thou, O Indra, Thunder-armed!

breakest down the seven castles;

Easily, for Sudās, like grass didst rend them, and out of

need, King, broughtest gain to Pūru. (1,63,7)³⁸⁰

An even more basic level may be seen in 7,20,2 as common to Indra's most characteristic demon-slaying act and his work for Sudās:

Waxing in greatness Indra slayeth Vrtra....

He gave Sudās wide room and space....³⁸¹

Now for the direct extended story in a series of snapshots:³⁸²

(a) What though the floods spread widely, Indra made them

shallow and easy for Sudās to traverse.

He, worthy of our praises, caused the Simyu, foe of our

hymn, to curse the rivers' fury.

380.Griffith, op. cit., p. 43, col. 1.

381.Ibid., p. 344, col. 2.

382.Ibid., pp. 341-43, 351, 375.

Page 354

Eager for spoil was Turvaśa Purodās, fain to win wealth,

like fishes urged by hunger.

The Bhrgus and the Druhyus quickly listened: friend

rescued friend mid the two distant peoples.

Together came the Pakthas, the Bhalanas, the Alinas,

the Śivas, the Visānins.

Yet to the Trtsus came the Arya's Comrade, through

love of spoil and heroes' war, to lead them.

Fools, in their folly fain to waste her waters, they parted

inexhaustible Paruṣṇī.

Lord of the Earth, he with his might repressed them:

still lay the herd and the affrighted herdsman.

As to their goal they sped to their destruction: they

sought Parusnl; e'en the swift returned not.

Indra abandoned, to Sudās the manly, the swiftly flying

foes, unmanly babblers. (7,18,5-9)

(b) Thou, thunder-armed, o'erwhelmedst in the waters

famed ancient Kavasa and then the Druhyu....

Indra at once with conquering might demolished all

their strong places and their seven castles.

The goods of Anu's son he gave to Trtsu. May we in

sacrifice conquer scornful Puru.

The Anavas and Druhyus, seeking booty, have slept,

the sixty hundred, yea, six thousand,

And six-and-sixty heroes. For the pious were all these

mighty exploits done by Indra.

These Trtsus under Indra's careful guidance came

speeding like loosed waters rushing downward.

The foemen, measuring exceeding closely, abandoned

to Sudās all their provisions.

The hero's side who drank the dressed oblation, Indra's

denier, far o'er earth he scattered.

Indra brought down the fierce destroyer's fury. He gave

them various roads, the path's Controller.

E'en with the weak he wrought this matchless exploit:

e'en with a goat he did to death a lion.

Page 355

He pared the pillar's angles with a needle. Thus to Sudās

Indra gave all provisions.

To thee have all thine enemies submitted: e'en the fierce

Bheda hast thou made thy subject.

Cast down thy sharpened thunderbolt, O Indra, on him

who harms the men who sing thy praises.

Yamunā and the Trtsus aided Indra. There he stripped

Bheda bare of all his treasures.

The Ajas and the Śigrus and the Yaksus brought in to

him as tribute heads of horses. (7,18,12-19)

(c)Indra preferred Vasisthas to the Soma pressed by the

son of Vayata, Pāśadyumna.

So, verily, with these he crossed the river, in company

with these he slaughtered Bheda.

So in the fight with the Ten Kings, Vasisthas! did Indra

help Sudās through your devotions....

Then Indra heard Vasistha as he praised him, and gave

the Trtsus ample room and freedom.

Like sticks and staves wherewith they drive the cattle,

stripped bare, the Bhāratas were found defenceless....

(7,33,2-6)

(d)Ye smote and slew his Dāsa and his Aryan enemies, and

helped Sudās with favour, Indra-Varuṇa....

With your resistless weapons, Indra-Varuṇa, ye

conquered Bheda and ye gave Sudās your aid....

The men of both the hosts invoked you in the fight,

Indra and Varuṇa, that they might win the wealth,

What time ye helped Sudās, with all the Trtsu folk,

when the Ten Kings had pressed him down in their attack....

One of you Twain destroys the Vrtras in the fight, the

Other evermore mainfains his holy Laws.... (7,83,1, 4, 6 & 9)

These numerous excerpts exemplify excellently the double-aspected

Page 356

hieratic art of the Rigveda, presenting various physical-seeming features yet fitting them subtly into a supraphysical conjuration. Thus the Pakthas have an echo even today in the Pakthuns of eastern Afghanistan, while the Bhalānas evoke even at present the region of the Bolan Pass in southern Baluchistan. But though Sudās is a fighter and conqueror, none of the tribes are laid low directly by him: it is through Indra, who "with his might repressed them", that he fights and conquers. There is also some confusion created in the verses to prevent the fight from being too physically visualized. Indra overwhelms "in the waters famed ancient Kavasa and then the Druhyu" but almost immediately afterwards structures irreconcilable with the "waters" are mentioned for the enemies: he is said to demolish "all their strong places and their seven castles". The Tritsus with their king Sudās simply enjoy and invoke Indra's aid. This is the way they in turn aid Indra. But their aiding is combined with that of the river Yamuna. Here is a mysterious combination. In fact, Yamunā itself is much of a mystery. There is a sudden switch to it from the Paruṣṇī. Griffith³⁸³ cannot help the remark at the mention of Yamunā: "But it is not easy to see how the expedition reached so far." Hymn 10,75 to the Rivers puts in verse 5 the Sutudri between the Paruṣṇī and the Yamuna.³⁸⁴ Both of the rivers concerned in Sudās's or rather Indra's two-front war appear to have symbolic significances so that the seeming facts of geography have little bearing and can only serve to complicate and amaze. The complicating and amazing movement is lent a further hue of strangeness by the extremely odd names of two of the tribes Indra strikes at across the Yamunā: Ajas (Goats) and Śigrus (Horse-radishes).

Ultimately, a clue is given to the true nature of the campaign in which Sudās is engaged. Indra and Varuṇa are not only thanked for the superhuman help received by Sudās and his people: they are also revealed in their proper roles in

383.Ibid., p. 343, col. 1, fn. 5.

384.Ibid., p. 587, col. 2.

Page 357

what has taken place. In connection with Varuṇa the maintenance of "his holy Laws" is declared, implying that in the act of his help the cause of divine justice has been served. In connection with Indra the destruction of the beings called "Vritras" is asserted. They are the brood of the arch-demon Vritra - they are enemy fiends, not enemy humans. In granting victory to Sudās in battle, Indra has fulfilled his fundamental mission: conquest over supernatural agents who, judged by Varuṇa's "holy Laws", are productive of falsehood and evil: they stand inwardly antagonistic to the Divine Light.

Aryan enemies in Sri Aurobindo's vision

With our excerpts prompting diversely a non-physical understanding of Sudās's Dāśarājna as well as of his struggle across the Yamunā, we may listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say about the inner spiritual movement visioned and practised by the Rigvedic mystics. After describing it in general, he³⁸⁵ comes to its difficulties and dangers:

And this is no easy or peaceful march; it is for long seasons a fierce and relentless battle. Constantly the Aryan man has to labour and to fight and conquer; he must be a tireless toiler and traveller and a stern warrior, he must force open and storm and sack city after city, win kingdom after kingdom, overthrow and tread down ruthlessly enemy after enemy. His whole progress is a warring of Gods and Titans, Gods and Giants, Indra and the Python, Aryan and Dasyu. Aryan adversaries even he has to face in the open field; for old friends and helpers turn into enemies; the kings of Aryan states whom he would conquer and overpass join themselves to the Dasyus and are leagued against him in supreme battle to prevent his free and utter passing on.

385. Hymns to the Mystic Fire, pp. 28-29.

Page 358

Obviously these "Aryan adversaries" noted by Sri Aurobindo are lords of higher states of being and consciousness in the inner world, beyond whom the Aryan man would go and who therefore resent his progress and join hands with the Dāsa-Dasyus, the obstructors in that occult dimension.

The idea that the lords of higher states of being and consciousness in this dimension could be designated "Aryan" can be shown to arise directly from certain expressions in the Rigveda. Sri Aurobindo³⁸⁶ has rendered in some detail parts of 5,34. Verses 6 and 7 are presented thus:

Cleaver (of the foe) in the battle-shock, firm holder of the discus (or the wheel), averse from him who gives not the Soma but increaser of the Soma-giver, terrible is Indra and the tamer of all; Aryan, he brings into utter subjection the Dāsa. He comes driving this enjoyment of the Pani, robbing him of it, and he apportions entirely to the giver for his enjoyment the wealth rich in hero-powers (lit. in men, sūnaram vasu, vīrāh and nr being often used synonymously)....

A little further on Sri Aurobindo adds: "And the last Rik [9] of the Sukta speaks of the Aryan (god or man) arriving at the highest knowledge-vision (upamām ketum aryah)...." Then, in the course of a comment, Sri Aurobindo³⁸⁷ reflects apropos of Indra: "He is himself the Aryan who brings the life of the ignorance into complete subjection to the higher life so that it yields up to it all the wealth it holds. The use of the words ārya and arya to signify the gods, not only in this but in other passages, tends to show in itself that the opposition of Arya and Dasyu is not at all a national or tribal or merely human distinction, but has a deeper significance." In another context³⁸⁸ Sri Aurobindo tells us: "To Indra, Agni

386.The Secret of the Veda, p. 218.

387.Ibid., p. 219.

388.Ibid., p. 300.

Page 359

and Sūrya among the gods is especially applied the term arya, which describes with an untranslatable compactness those who rise to the noble aspiration and who do the great labour as an offering in order to arrive at the good and the bliss." A little earlier in the same context³⁸⁹ Sri Aurobindo remarks on the opening verse of 4,48, the hymn to Vayu whom he designates "the Master of the Life Energies": "Vayu is to manifest these energies as would 'a revealer of the felicity, a doer of the Aryan work', vipo na rāyo aryah."

For good measure I may mark the expression tav arya for Mitra-Varuṇa in 7,65,2, labelling them as "these Aryans". And to provide a fuller background to the glimpse Sri Aurobindo gives us of the double fight of "the Aryan man" we may draw attention to the frequent naming of the God-Aryans as "Kings". Mitra-Varuṇa, Agni, Brihaspati, Soma, Indra (e.g., 1,22,11; 1,98,1; 2,30,9; 8,98,7; 6,19,10) - all have their kingship hailed. In one place the Ribhus are addressed: "Rejoice you with the Maruts, and with Indra, with the Kings, Gods!" (4,34,11), where, as Griffith notes,³⁹⁰"Kings" stands for "the other Gods, or the Gods in general".

Now the only question is: "Can the Aryan kings of the higher world, mentioned by Sri Aurobindo, be thought of as 'obstructors'? Do we have any Rigvedic hint of a higher bar to progress no less than a lower one?" The general answer is "Yes". In two hymns we find the broad ground for our affirmation.

In 1,170 we have Indra himself acting temporarily as an obstructor to the Rishi Agastya. It is not, however, in order to stop Agastya from reaching his goal. This goal Indra summarizes as the timeless Ultimate which can enter the human consciousness and be a source of life-movement but which vanishes when mere thinking approaches it (verse 1). Indra has come as a check to correct the attempt of this consciousness to reach that Ultimate without submitting itself to an intermediary power - the Divine Mind which

389.Ibid. p. 299.

390.Op. cit., p. 224, col. 2.

Page 360

could organize and transform that mental faculty and make it naturally participate in the Ultimate. In verse 2 Agastya appeals: "Why dost thou seek to smite us, O Indra? The Maruts are thy brothers. By them accomplish perfection; slay us not in our struggle." The Maruts are thought-energies assisting Indra but Agastya seems to have called and enlisted them to his help without submitting himself to Indra for a passage beyond. In verse 3 Indra tells Agastya that the Rishi, though his friend, does not will to give him his mind; and in verse 4 exhorts him to make ready the altar and set ablaze there Agni, the flame of divine Force that is the master of the Sacrifice of the human to the Superhuman, so that Indra and Agni may render Agastya's effort effective to experience the Immortal Reality. Verse 5 finds Agastya submissive, praying: "Do thou, O Indra, agree with the Maruts, then enjoy the offerings in the ordered method of the Truth."

In the next hymn, 1,171, verses 1 and 2 tell us that now it is the Maruts who obstruct Agastya. They have left him because the sacrifice he had prepared for them was taken up by the mighty angry Indra. But without their co-operation the Rishi cannot fully move forward. He appeals to these non-cooperating gods, devāh, to lay aside their wrath. In verses 2 and 3 he informs them that the "lord of plenitude" affirmed by him has become "creative of felicity": so, affirming them, he would wish them to be benign to him. In verse 4 he confesses that, trembling with the fear of Indra, he put far away the offerings prepared for them. To Indra also his prayer goes. In verses 5 and 6 he implores the potent Lord to let the Maruts' energies be part of his own Force and to grant Agastya a continuity of spiritual Light. By Indra's wrath being appeased and by the "right perceptions" of the Maruts upheld in that god's own forcefulness, may there be "the strong impulsion that shall break swiftly through".³⁹¹

To look in a symbolic and occult light at the Dāśarajna as

391. I have taken Sri Aurobindo's help (The Secret of the Veda, pp. 241-44 and 254-56) in reading the two hymns.

Page 361

a special kind of obstruction to the inner progress of the Aryan aspirant who seeks to halt nowhere short of the highest spiritual attainment possible is therefore hardly inapposite.

Three challenging situations

However, to favour the play of such a light in all respects we require to deal with three situations emerging from some remarks of Parpola's. Two of them stand out on the surface. Thus he writes:³⁹² "In classical Sanskrit, the word Dāsa-denotes 'slave'. This meaning is found already three times in the Rgveda [7,86,7; 8,56,2-3; 10,6,10]." If all Dāsas are non-human - demons - how can they be the Aryans' 'slaves' or 'servants'?

Again, another interconnection is brought up by Parpola:³⁹³ "The name of king Divodāsa, 'Dāsa of Heaven',... seems to imply an intimate contact with the Dāsas - perhaps through matrimonial alliance.... In fact, some hymns do specify individual Dāsa chiefs as proteges of Indra, who (unlike the enemies of the early hymns) give rich gifts to the Vedic singers: RS 8,46,32 'A hundred (camels) I, inspired poet, got at (the court of) Dāsa Balbutha Taruksa. O Vayu, these people of yours rejoice protected by Indra, rejoice protected by the gods'." We may add the name of Bribu (6,45,31-33) about whom Keith³⁹⁴ has the phrase: "Brbu, mentioned once as a most generous giver and apparently also as a Pani."

If we believe Aryans of supernatural realms to be capable of turning hostile, why cannot we imagine the reverse: supernatural Dāsa-Dasyus turning friendly and helpful? Sri Aurobindo³⁹⁵ provides a general clue. Saramā, in 10,108, comes to the cave of the Panis beyond the river Rasā to

392.P. 220.

393.P. 229.

394.Op. cit., p. 87.

395.The Secret of the Veda, p. 229.

Page 362

demand the "cows" penned there. They try to induce her to stay with them like a sister, and even have the insolence to offer Indra their friendship if he will be the keeper of their cows. Saramā refuses and, emphasizing Indra's desire to free those cows, tells them: "Depart hence, O Panis, to a better place, let the Cows ye confine go upward by the Truth, the hidden Cows whom Brihaspati finds and Soma and the pressing-stones and the illumined seers" (verses 10-11). Here is a hint to the Panis that they, instead of being overcome and oppressed, may rise to a higher plane and voluntarily let go the precious bearers of light to their true home. Their Indra-ward conversion is shown as possible by this proposal.

Sri Aurobindo³⁹⁶ follows up the sense of that possibility by writing: "We have the idea also of a voluntary yielding up of their store by the Panis in VI.53, a hymn addressed to the Sun as the Increaser Pushan. 'O Pushan, Lord of the Path, we yoke thee like a chariot for the winning of the plenitude, for the Thought.... O shining Pushan, impel to giving the Pani, even him who giveth not; soften the mind even of the Pani.... Smite the hearts of the Panis with thy goad, O seer; so make them subject to us. Smite them, O Pushan, with thy goad and desire in the heart of the Pani our delight; so make him subject to us...."

Here we have still more clearly than in 10,108 the prospect of Dāsa-Dasyus' Aryanization - a Bribu becoming a generous giver, a Balbūtha Taruksa sending rich gifts to a Rishi, the demons getting changed to Indra's proteges. Furthermore, we have here a pointer as well to the Panis beginning to serve willingly the Aryans. Pusan not only melting the Pani's heart to abandon darkness and join the Aryan's desire for divine delight but also creating the prospect of making the Pani 'subject' to the Aryan aspirant -Pusan in this extra role provides the basis for the Rigveda's occasional use of the word Dāsa to mean slave or servant.

396. Ibid.

Page 363

The name "Divodāsa" of a king for whom Indra breaks the forts of the Dāsa Śambara brings up a situation simultaneously of Dāsa-destruction and Dāsa-elevation; for the name bears for the intractable enemy the message that his nature need not be darkness nor his fate demolition: he could be a convert from Demonhood to Heavenliness, a Servant or Slave of Heaven instead of a would-be Subduer of it.

The third situation is more subtle. It looms up from those quotations by Parpola in which the word "mortal" occurs: "Do, O Indra, chastise the impious (lit. non-sacrificing) mortal [mārtyam], O Lord of Strength!" (1,131,4)³⁹⁷ - "O long-lived god, let not a godless mortal (ā-devah ... mārtyah) obtain prosperity..." (8,70,7).³⁹⁸ Both the quotations are about Dāsas. If the Dāsa is non-human, how can he be called a mortal? Moreover, if the Rishis speak, as they do, of themselves as 'mortals', it is logical to read for the Dāsas the same sense of human beings who must die one day. However, once we are prompted to see in the Rigveda a secret meaning because of certain signs of a psycho-spiritual vision and experience couched in the imagery natural to a primitive physical-minded age, we should be ready for unusual yet not illegitimate nuances in the expression. Here as in several places elsewhere Sri Aurobindo comes to the assistance of the esoteric interpreter.

In hymn 1,5, verse 10 would literally run: "Let not mortals do hurt to us, O Indra, who delightest in the mantra; be the lord of our bodies and give us to ward off the stroke." At first glance the Rishi seems to be praying for safety from the blows of human beings on his body. "But," says Sri Aurobindo,³⁹⁹ "I am inclined to think that : (martāh) here has an active rather than a passive sense; for the termination (ta) may have either force. (martah) undoubtedly means mortal in the Veda, but it is possible that it bears also

397.P. 208.

398.P. 226.

399.The Secret of the Veda, p. 501.

Page 364

the sense of slayer, smiter, deadly one, like (marta) in the Latin mors, like the transitive sense in mortal, which means either subject to death or deadly."

Along this line of understanding, we need not translate 1,31,4 with "the impious (lit. non-sacrificing) mortal" as part of it: we may render this phrase by "the impious (or non-sacrificing) dealer of death"; and the other phrase - "a godless mortal" - may be replaced by "a godless death-giver". In a free translation Sri Aurobindo's "slayer, smiter" would serve the end of removing the 'human' shade from the verses. The non-human, the demoniac, bent on destroying the Aryan's physical being, is always conceivable in such cases. The exoteric humanizing view is not compelling.

The plus and minus in Parpola's thesis

We have come to the end of our discussion of Parpola's thesis so far as it bears directly on my position in regard to the Rigveda. If I have established that the Rigveda cannot be post-Harappan and does not speak of human enemies subjugated but of gods subduing demoniac opposers in the inner spiritual life of ancient mystics, what we may take Parpola as urging on us is simply two waves of considerably post-Rigvedic Aryans entering India in the first half of the second millennium B.C. There can be no question of identifying the first wave as those whom we have hitherto termed Dāsa-Dasyus and Panis but who were really Dahas and Parnians from outside India, nor of recognizing the ancestors of the Saka Haumawarga from abroad under the name of the Rigvedic cultists of Soma. The Rigveda's problems go back to a much more remote antiquity and can have no relation to these two postulated waves. Whoever constituted the incursions argued by Parpola cannot be investigated by means of the nomenclature used in the Rigveda. Finally, they must be said to have taken place, if at all, in the midst of an Aryan presence in India which was on a substantial scale and of long standing. The qualification,

Page 365

"if at all" is necessary because a good case can be made for substantial contacts at the most rather than for an actual invasion.

Leaving aside the non-sequiturs arising from Parpola's assumption that the Rigveda tells a story of invasion and conquest towards the fag-end of the Harappa Culture, one may still doubt whether it is historical to speak of any possible first wave disrupting the political and cultural unity of the Indus Civilization by its entry into Sind and to picture, as we see Parpola doing,⁴⁰⁰ on the strength of Sudās's victory over the ten kings along the river Ravi, a fight between the supposed second wave and the Late Harappan cultures of the plains which may be said to "represent a fusion of the Indus people and the Namazga V related Dāsas and other Aryan tribes, who had come to the Indus valley from the west through the more southern passes". Are there any grounds to envisage military forces as part of the causes leading to the decline and fall of the Harappa Culture? Modern historians discern only natural causes - repeated catastrophic floods, exhaustion of available land-resources as well as the disappearance of the culture as such from surf ace-view by blending with other strains of India's population and social life. I am in no position to lay down the law in this matter. Some rearrangement of perspective may be feasible, though hardly in the sense of a coup de grace to the old civilization by any likely newcomers.

I could stop here. But a long familiarity and a natural affinity with the Rigveda's spiritual atmosphere leads me to take up for a negative comment Parpola's opinion that the god Varuṇa, one of the most important in the Rigveda and the inspirer of some of its most exalted poetry, came into its pantheon from an alien system of worship.

Parpola on Varuṇa as an Asura

A religion of Asuras as the highest beings instead of

400. P. 242.

Page 366

Devas is posited by Parpola to be the original milieu of Varuṇa who is often hailed in the Rigveda as an Asura. Thus 5,85,5, which Parpola quotes:⁴⁰¹ "I shall well proclaim the great magic power of Varuṇa, the famous Asura." The same is said about Rudra "who in the Rgveda is called an Asura (5,42,11) or 'the great Asura of heaven' (2,1,6)...."⁴⁰² Rudra too, for Parpola, has his source in a separate cult of Asura deities, but the theme is not pursued further in the same context.

Before examining Parpola's argument it will be useful to focus the basic meaning of the term "Asura", primarily from the Rigveda's own use of it. Wash Edward Hale, an extremely competent researcher with several original turns of thought in his own field, can be drawn upon for our purpose. The shortest revealing phrase occurs in 2,27,10:

tvám víśvesām varuṇāsi rắjā

yé ca devắ asura yé ca mártāh.

Hale⁴⁰³ translates: "You, O Varuṇa, are king of all, both who are gods and who are mortals, O asura." Griffith's translation⁴⁰⁴ is: "Thou over all, O Varuṇa, art Sovran, be they Gods, Asura! or be they mortals." Evidently, being an Asura involves rulership: one is lord and master, one wields supreme power. The same implication Hale arrives at from the phrase tắ hí devắnām ásurā - "these asuras of the gods" applied to Varuṇa jointly with Mitra in 7,65,2. Griffith⁴⁰⁵ has "Asuras of Gods" and the note: "the high or ruling Gods of all the deities". Hale⁴⁰⁶ discusses the locution:

401.P. 228.

402.P. 229.

403.Asura in Early Vedic Religion (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986), p. 41. Parpola lists this book in his Bibliography, p. 269.

404.Op. cit., p. 148, col. 1.

405.Ibid., p. 367, col. 1.

406.Op. cit., p. 42.

Page 367

The genitive devắnām depends on ásura- and can therefore give us some valuable information about the meaning of the word. Of the possible functions of the genitive, the genitive of possession can be ruled out - it is unlikely that MitrāVaruṇā are considered to be "asuras possessed by the gods." This genitive may be used partitively. Thus the poet may mean that MitrāVaruṇā are asuras among the gods. But the genitive could also be used because of an implied verbal function of ásura-. Of the possibilities here the usage of the genitive to indicate that over which one rules is the only reasonable possibility.

Although Hale admits that the partitive function of the genitive is equally likely in this context, he draws support for his interpretation by taking up the phrase about Rudra in 2,1,6 - ásuro mahó divás (which Parpola has quoted as "the great Asura of heaven"). Like Griffith⁴⁰⁷ who has "the Asura of mighty heaven", Hale⁴⁰⁸ reads: "the asura of great heaven" - and comments:

This verse also has a genitive (mahó divás) dependent on ásura-. In this case the partitive genitive is impossible, and the genitive of possession makes no sense. Thus the genitive must be dependent on an implied verbal aspect of ásura-. Of the possibilities here the most common verbal usage of the genitive - the genitive of rulership - is the most reasonable. Thus Rudra is described as the ásura who rules over great heaven.

The state of being "king" or "ruler" is inseparable from asura. Hale⁴⁰⁹ thinks it justifiable to derive the Iranian ahu-, ahura-, the Indian ásura- and the Hittite haššu from the same root and in his view the Germanic *ansuz is probably also from this root. He says:V'There seems to have been an

407.Op. cit., p. 130, col. 2.

408.Op. cit., pp. 43-44.

409.Ibid., p. 36.

Page 368

Indo-European word *Hesu- from which came Avestan ahu-'Lord' and Hittite haššu 'king' and an Indo-Iranian derivative of this word, * asura-, from which Avestan ahura- and Vedic ásura- derive."

What, however, is the ultimate relationship between Asura and Deva? We shall see in the course of our survey of details that in the Rigvedic pantheon one does not cease to be a Deva by being an Asura and that the essential truth lies in an adaptation of Griffith's note to 7,65,2. With the help of Hale's genitive of rulership we may adapt it by assimilating the partitive function of the genitive which Hale admits as equally likely in this verse. The adaptation would be: "Among the deities the Asuras are those high Gods who rule over all the rest." Hale too will be found in perfect agreement with such a statement.

On the other hand, Parpola⁴¹⁰ sets in opposition the two categories in their original denotation, and posits for Varuṇa an initial role as Asura in contrast to an initial Deva-role for Indra. He argues: "Indra as well as Agni (cf. RS 7,13,1) is ... called 'Asura-killer' (asura-hán-) in the old hymns of the-Rgveda, such as RS 6,22,4.... In RS 8,96,9, Indra is invoked to scatter away 'the godless Asuras' who are without weapons." Then Parpola adds: "It is true that in the late hymns, such as RS 10,99,2, Indra, too, is called an Asura; 'but it is generally conceded that this is due to a secondary extension [as Kuiper 1979:7f explains]'." Parpola also suggests that the Asura's mark of distinction is what the Rigveda terms "Māyā". Māyā means to Parpola the "magic power" which we find attributed to Varuṇa at the same time that he is designated "Asura". Not that the possessor of this power must always be so designated. The Dāsa-Dasyus may have it under their own name, but having it would imply that they are Asuras as is proved by a number of verses. "Thus according to RS 10,73,7, Agni has slain Dāsa Namuci and taken away his magic power."⁴¹¹ Also, "RS 4,16,9 'the

410.P. 228.

411.P. 227.

Page 369

Dasyu who has magic powers but is without holy hymns has perished.'"⁴¹² Again, we note the interchangeableness of terms: "thus Pipru (Dāsa in RS 8,32,2; Asura in RS 6,18,8; 10,138,3) and Varcin (Dāsa in RS 4,30,15; 6,47,21; Asura in RS 7,99,5)."⁴¹³

In a couple of details here, Parpola may be convicted of error or else supported more directly. The god of 10,73,7 is not Agni but Indra.⁴¹⁴ To show Pipru to be an Asura as well as a Dāsa we do not need to compare two separate hymns. In 10,138,3 we read: "... the Arya found a match to meet his Dāsa foe. / Associate with Rjiśvan Indra overthrew the solid forts of Pipru, conjuring Asura."⁴¹⁵ The "Arya" may be either Indra himself or his worshipper, but the "Dāsa" is definitely Pipru who is called "Asura" at the end. What is of further interest is the adjective "conjuring". Griffith translates by it the last part of the Sanskrit "pípror ásurasya māyína...." Māyā, Parpola's "magic power", is Pipru's no less than Namuci's. We may generalize that in Parpola's picture all Dāsa-Dasyus can be termed Asuras (in the antideva connotation) and taken to possess Māyā.

Namuci is a demon to Parpola while Pipru is for him a human enemy of the Rigvedics. So the former, like whoever else is a demon à la Parpola, may be regarded as one of "the enemy gods", to use Parpola's phrase. If, as in Sri Aurobindo's reckoning, all Dāsa-Dasyus are demons, all of them are "enemy gods", or, rather, "gods who are enemies". But Sri Aurobindo surely would not think of Varuṇa as having been at one time an Asura in the sense of a demoniac super-being. Nor does it seem compelling to do so just because Varuṇa is often titled "Asura". For the title itself, as Parpola explains,⁴¹⁶ has had a strange history in Vedic literature:

412.Ibid.

413.Ibid.

414.Griffith, op. cit., p. 586.

415.Ibid., p. 637, col. 2.

416.Pp. 227-28.

Page 370

The two versions of the Atharvaveda and the oldest Yajurvedic Saṁhitās share a verse with interesting variants: the expressions "enemy" (śátru-), "Dasyu" and "Asura" alternate with each other.... Later the word ásura-almost exclusively denotes 'demons': in the myths told in the Brāhmaṇas, the Asuras contend with the 'gods' (deva) and are eventually subdued and driven out by the latter. Actually this theme is already found in the latest book of the Rgveda, cf. RS 10,53,4 and 10,157,4. In the older books of the Rgveda, the word ásura- is an epithet of many of the gods as well, but especially of such gods who possess the magic power of Māyā, the first and foremost of them being Varuṇa or Mitra-and-Varuṇa, who rule the universe, upholding the cosmic law "with the magic power of Asura" (RS 5,63,3 & 7, ásurasya Māyáyā)....

Then Parpola sketches a complex situation in connection with the Avesta, the Rigveda, the religion before the Avesta and a religion preceding even this predecessor. We shall go past it because of his avowedly hypothetical tone and because he himself¹⁷ has a footnote after the last part of his sketch: "This is a much debated point in the Vedic and Avestan religions." We shall go past also the post-Rigvedic situation and concentrate on what the Rigveda itself has to disclose about Varuṇa. Actually Parpola's main ground⁴¹⁸ is a particular hymn:

The Rgveda plainly tells us that after the defeat of the Asuras, Varuṇa was asked to join the ranks of the Devas. These words are put into Indra's mouth in RS 10,124,5: "The Asuras have now lost their magic power. If you, Varuṇa, will love me, then, O king who distinguishes the wrong from the right, come to the overlordship of my kingdom!"

417.P. 228, fn. 245.

418.P. 228.

Page 371

Defects in Parpola's main ground

A number of questions immediately arise. Parpola has found Indra to be a killer of Asuras in some "old hymns", such as 6,22. There "Asura" is a pejorative term. And when in 10,124,5 the Asuras are shown as defeated by the Devas, the former have to be understood in the same sense. However, Varuṇa is hailed as a "king", a superior being, a master-spirit characterized by his power to distinguish the wrong from the right. Can he then have been a demon? How could he ever have belonged to Asuras who are anti-divine? The picture of him seems to be of a good spirit totally misled to favour the enemies of Light. Yet simultaneously there is the unequivocal phrase about this spirit's inherent and constant ability to realise what is wrong in contrast to what is right: that is, he could never be misled. And it is because he is always a perceiver of the right that Indra can even think of Varuṇa loving him and being fit to take charge of his kingdom. The kingdom is next described: "Here is the light of heaven, here all is lovely; here there is radiance, here is air's wide region."⁴¹⁹ The description is not only to tempt Varuṇa: it is as if it reflected Varuṇa's own true being and were a domain which would be natural to it. To present Varuṇa as an Asura who is a lord of demons riddles the hymn with self-contradiction on several levels. Anything built on it would indeed be precarious.

It is all the more so when we look beyond the portion Parpola has set before us. We stand bewildered by the stark incongruity it reveals. I am following Hale's translation, because the Sanskrit directly goes with it.⁴²⁰ We at once gather that the dramatis personae of the strange scene on which Parpola focuses our attention are not just Indra and Varuṇa. Along with Varuṇa, we see Agni and Soma concerned. The hymn begins with Indra saying: "O Agni, approach this our sacrifice..." (imám no agna úpa yajnám

419.Griffith, op. cit., p. 631, col. 1, verse 6.

420.Op. cit., pp. 86-87.

Page 372

éhi...). In verse 4 Agni, after referring to "the father asura" in the previous verse, says: "... Choosing Indra I abandon the father. Agni, Soma, Varuṇa - they go (forth). The rulership has changed. Coming, I aid this (rulership)" (... índrarh vrnānáh pitáram jahāmi / agníh sómo várunas té cyavante / paryắvard rāstrtim tád avāmy ayán). Then comes the verse - the fifth - which Parpola has quoted. The next continues Indra's speech. After describing his bright and wide domain he adds: "Let us two kill Vrtra. Come forth, 0 Soma... " (hánāva vrtrám niréhi soma... ). Thus we have a picture of not only Varuna being invited to cross over from one state to another. The suggestion of the hymn is, as Hale421 puts it, "of Agni, Varuna, and Soma defecting from the camp of the asuras to that of Indra". Hale goes on to sum up: "If the hymn indeed says that, the statement is unique in the RV. No other verse we have examined (and we have seen all the verses in the RV containing ásura-) supports this idea of a hostile group of asuras which includes these three gods." Hale warns us against "accepting any theory ... which rests mainly on the interpretation of such an obscure hymn."

What amazes us is the presence of Agni and Soma. Together with Indra himself, they are the two outstanding deities of the Rigvedics whom Parpola designates "Saumya Aryans" and for whom Agni "is next in popularity after Indra and Soma".⁴²² How Soma and Agni could be conceived as belonging to an Asura cult, which is anti-Deva and anti-Aryan and from which they would need to be won over to the Deva cult, boggles our imagination. Parpola has omitted to mention them as being in tow with Varuṇa in this hymn. Their presence reduces to absurdity the drift he reads in it. The real drift escapes us. But it assuredly cannot, with Soma and Agni present, serve to prove Varuṇa having originally been absent among the Rigvedics' deities. Puzzlingly piquant in the extreme would be the attribution of an

421.Ibid., p. 92.

422.P. 225.

Page 373

Asura-origin to Agni whom Parpola has marked as "Asura-killer" in 7,13,1.

Hale makes two other points which are noteworthy. But before I relate them I may observe a curious oversight in the dramatic structure of the hymn. Parpola has told us of the background of the action in the hymn: the defeat of the Asuras. And Indra reports the loss by the Asuras of their magic power. Yet at the end he asks Soma to join him in killing Vritra. Have we not quoted Parpola speaking of "Indra's archenemy Vrtra" among those Dāsas he regards as mythological demons,⁴²³ and are not the terms "Dāsa" and "Asura" interchangeable?⁴²⁴ Does not the Rigveda refer to "the magic of the godless" in connection with Vritra (10,111,6) as well as ascribe "the charms of the enchanters" to Vritra and his allies (1,22,4)?⁴²⁵ If Vritra still remains to be killed, how can the Asuras be considered defeated and their magic powers lost? The Rigveda is often obscure and links are not always discernible in it, but such flagrant inconsistency is most exceptional.

Now for the two points we must attend to in Hale. En passant, while recounting the diverse expositions of the hymn by scholars - Segerstedt, Bergaigne, Hillebrandt, von Schroeder, von Bradke, Geldner, Oldenberg, W. Norman Brown, Liiders - he⁴²⁶ remarks: "If asura- is used in a pejorative sense for a god here, it is the only such usage of the word in the RV." Indeed, even in the later post-Rigvedic literature, where "Asura" always means "demon", no god of the Rigveda has ever any affinity with Asurahood in the demoniac connotation.

Secondly, Hale explicitly demonstrates the lateness of the hymn, which we may hold as a background to the incon-

423.P. 210.

424.P. 227.

425.Griffith, op cit. p. 622, col. 2 and p. 20, col. 2 along with the fn. to verse 4.

426.Op. cit., p. 90.

Page 374

gruousness of it as a Rigvedic document. He writes:⁴²⁷

There are several indications that this hymn is late. There are several words with semivowels that are often resolved in the older texts but must remain consonants here to fit the meter: jyòk in verse 1, sakhyắt in verse 2, paryắvart in verse 4, tvā in verse 6, jyéstham in verse 8 (which would have the diphthong e resolved into two vowels in the older texts), and divyắnām in verse 9. Against this are only a few words that show the resolution of semivowels expected in an older text: svắt in verse 2, tvam in verse 5, and sakhye in verse 9. There are also two lexical items that are typically late: prakāśá- 'light' in verse 6 and anustúbh-(name of a meter) in verse 9. These indications are sufficient to show that this hymn is as late as any in the RV.

Here the query is most natural: "If this hymn is patently an anomaly, as well as provable to be a late production, what about those using asura in a derogatory sense? How shall we deal with this situation if, as Parpola has pointed out, even some of the old hymns - e.g., 6,22,4; 7,13,1; 8,96,9 - figure the Asuras in opposition to the Devas? Could Parpola be right in presenting us with a seeming-anomaly which is yet an intrinsic part of the Rigveda's original vision?"

The linguistic evidence

Linguistically, we can only think with Macdonell⁴²⁸ of "an incipient popular etymology, which saw a negative (a-sura) in the word and led to the invention of sura, 'god', a term first found in the Upanishads". In relation to the Rigveda the Upanishads are fairly late literature and if sura is attested nowhere in the copious compositions before them it

427.Ibid., p. 88.

428.Op. cit., p. 113.

Page 375

hardly explains the shift in connotation in the earlier time. With such a plethora of the privative a in the Rigveda about the Dāsa-Dasyus - a-karmán and á-yajvan (not performing sacrifices), á-mantú (without pious thoughts), a-mānuṣa (not-man), a-deva (not-god or godless), án-uktha (not uttering praises), an-rc (not singing laudatory hymns), an-indrá (not worshipping Indra) - a-sura (not-luminous, not-god) would have been the most natural formation if sura had been in use. We can be sure that it was non-existent even during the period of the Brāhmaṇas, for Hale,⁴²⁹ dealing with the prevalence of ásura in these books proffers the information: "An etymology of ásura- is offered by the suggestion that Prajapati created asuras from his asu (M[aitrayanī] S[aṁhitā] 4.2.1)." So, linguistically, the Rigveda leaves us in the dark as to explaining the strange situation Parpola has presented. We have to probe it in another way.

The full tally of the derogatory usage is: 2,30,4; 5,40, 5 &9; 6,22,4; 7,13,1; 7,99,5; 8,96,9; 8,97,1; 10,82,5; 10,131,3; 10,157,4; 10,170,2.⁴³⁰ The number is a bare 14 out of 108 occurrences of the word asura, and the late Book 10 singly accounts for 6 of these derogatory passages. The general impression is that somehow the change of meaning even in the early books is an interpolation. K. Chattopadhyaya provides substantial reasons for this impression.

Scholars incline"to go by the old forms of the language in judging whether a hymn is early or late. Chattopadhyaya warns us against accepting this criterion blindly. As an outstanding example he⁴³¹ refers to 7,33 "which has been recognised as a late hymn (Arnold, Vedic Metre, p. 279, Oldenberg, Rgveda, textkritische und exegetischen Noten, II, p. 31) but its forms are on a par with the other hymns of the

429.Op. cit., p. 171.

430.Cf. K. Chattopadhyaya, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 19,109. Hymns 8,96 & 97 in this list correspond to Griffith's 8,85 & 86 because of his Valakhilya separation at the end of Book 8.

431.Ibid., p. 156, fn. 86.

Page 376

Seventh Mandala." He⁴³² has the broad comment: "Continuity of hieratic or bardic tradition preserves many old forms and in religious texts antique forms are generally preferred." His acute survey⁴³³ of the whole question is worth reproducing:

The chief ground for taking the Rgveda-Saṁhitā as the earliest Vedic text is the archaic character of its language as compared with much of the remaining Vedic literature. Another ground for this conclusion is the fact that a large number of verses which are in their proper contexts in the Hymns of the Rgveda are found utilised in the mantra collections of the other Vedas, from which one may infer that they were borrowed from the Rgveda-Saṁhitā. Both these grounds make the comparative antiquity of large portions of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā almost certain. But they do not entitle us to assume that the whole of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā is older than the other Vedic texts.... Scholars have always recognised that this Saṁhitā has older and later portions....

It is not true that mandalas I (or large portions of it), VIII and particularly X of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā are the only later additions. There are enough indications to show that additions were made even in "the family books", the original nucleus of the Saṁhitā. If we make a careful study of the arrangement of these "family books",... the following scheme seems to have been followed by the original redactors: -

1.the family groups were arranged according to the decreasing number of the hymns in each of these books;

2.within each family group the Agni hymns came first, then the Indra hymns and then the Visvadeva hymns (if there were any) and after them hymns to the other deities in due order; and

432.Ibid., p. 156.

433.Ibid., pp. 16-20.

Page 377

3. within each devatā sub-group, the hymns were arranged according to the diminishing number of stanzas contained in them.

... Consequently we can safely infer that wherever the general scheme has been disturbed we have reasonable grounds for suspecting interpolations.... To give an instance, the original Indra collection of the III Mandala was hymns 30-50, the first hymn (30) containing 22 verses, and the last (50) only 5; the three supplementary Indra hymns (51-53), having respectively 12, 8 and 24 verses, seem to have been added in two instalments, hymn 53 (24 verses) having been added some time after hymns 51 (12 verses) and 52 (8 verses) had been appended to the original Indra collection. There are many more such additions, in some cases of entire groups of hymns. Now these later additions are not necessarily all later compositions. They may have been added later, because they were discovered later. But some of them certainly can be compositions of later times.

Then there are six verses in the accepted text of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā, 1.99.1, VII.59.12, X.121,10, X.190.1-3, whose Pada-Patha is wanting. The only inference that we can make from this fact is that these verses did not form part of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā when Sakalya compiled its Pada-Patha. Consequently they have been added even so late as after the time of Sakalya. In this case too it is not possible to say that they were all composed after Sakalya, particularly when VII.50.12 and X. 121.10 are found in the various Yajurveda-Samhitds. But we can presume this for X.190.1-3, which bear on their very face the impression of lateness. We do not find these three cosmogonic verses, showing knowledge of the Kalpa theory, till the very late Taittirīya Āranyaka (X.1.13), a text which shows knowledge of Smrtis (1.2.1)....

I have said above that the chief ground for placing the greater portion of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā in a very early period is the archaic character of its language. But the Saṁhitā is not lacking in late linguistic features as well. It

Page 378

is well known that the word asura means "a good spirit", "a god" or "God" in the Rgveda-Saṁhitā as its cognate ahura means in the Avesta, and that in the later Vedic literature and in classical Sanskrit the word has undergone semantic deterioration, acquiring the sense of "demon".

Then Chattopadhyaya points to the cases which bear the later sense, and continues:

Consequently the hymns in which these passages occur should be assigned to the period of the later Vedic literature. Other passages that similarly show late linguistic characteristics must also be considered as of late date. But the converse of this proposition is not necessarily true. It is possible that even in later ages unbroken family traditions enabled the priestly bards to compose hymns in antique form. In fact, there are several indications to show that this actually happened. Consequently, there must be some hymns in the Rgveda-Saṁhitā which, though early in form, are actually late in date.... The different attempts that have been made so far for the detailed chronological stratification of the Rgveda-Saṁhitā by Arnold, Belvalker, Weist and others have either failed or met with only partial success, for failing, among other reasons, to recognise that poems antique in form may yet be late in date. I therefore apply the criterion of thought for determining the early and the late passages in this text.

At least in one instance in addition to 10,124 which Hale has closely analysed, we can go beyond "the criterion of thought", sound though it is in itself, to even some technical points. Hale⁴³⁴ has a short discussion of 8,96, the hymn to Indra corresponding to 8,85 in Griffith. Apropos of its verse which Parpola has quoted, the discussion starts off from the phrase ásurā adevắś which he translates "the godless asuras"

434. Op. cit., pp. 83-84.

Page 379

and Griffith⁴³⁵ "the Asuras, the godless". Hale says, striking a just balance:

This is the only place in the RV where adevá- occurs with the accent on the final syllable instead of the initial. An initial accent is normal for karmadharayas, but a final accent is normal for bahuvrihis.⁴³⁶ Thus ádeva- should mean "ungodly," and adevá- should mean "without gods." Perhaps the bahuvrihi accent is used here to make it clear that the word is a bahuvrīhi. If so, then it should definitely be translated "godless asuras" and not "asuras who are not gods".... Indications of lateness for this hymn are few. The word nīmiśla- "attached" occurs in verse 3. The presence of an l in the word suggests lateness, but one of its three other occurrences in the RV is in the Family Books. Śvasatha- "snort" in verse 7 is hapax in RV, but occurs a few times in the Brāhmaṇas. And in verse 20 the initial a of 'dhivaktắ is not to be restored in reading the verse. This is rare in the RV, but it is unclear that it indicates lateness.⁴³⁷ There are two injunctives in the hymn (isanta in verse 3 and dhāh in verse 16), so it is probably not among the very latest in the RV.

To be excluded from only "the very latest" and that, too, "probably" is enough for our purpose. Here is technical lateness sufficient to show that the bardic attempt to clothe lateness of thought in a traditional antiqueness of style may sometimes slip up a little.

Indra as Asura

All things considered, Parpola's assigning to Indra (and

435.Op. cit., p. 459, col. 1.

436.Wackernagel, Altindische Grammatik, vol. 2, part I, p. 293.

437.For a list of occurrences of a- not restored in this context see Christian Bartholamae, "Der Abhinihitasandhi im Rgveda" Studien zur indogermanische Sprachgeschichte 1 (1890): 81-116.

Page 380

Agni) the role of "'Asura-killer' ... in the old hymns" is open to criticism. Similarly vulnerable is the suggestion we get from him that Indra himself is never hailed as an Asura anywhere except in the late Book Ten by "a secondary extension" which we are supposed to consider rather irrelevant. Indeed, in the "Family Books" - 2-7 - it is uncertain whether he is ever titled an Asura unless in verse 4 of one hymn that is put in the series to Indra, namely, 3,38, he is called "Viśvarupa". Griffith's translation⁴³⁸ runs: "Even as he mounted up, they all adorned him: self-luminous he travels clothed in splendour. / That is the Bull's, the Asura's mighty figure: he, omniform [Viśvarūpa], hath reached the eternal waters." Whether or not this refers to Indra, it is certain that the noun àsūrya, a derivative of asura, applies to Indra three times in one of the "Family Books". The first is a grandiose ascription: "Even as the power of Dyaus, to thee, O Indra, all Asura sway was by the Gods entrusted..." (6,20,2).⁴³⁹ It puts Indra on a level with Varuṇa in supreme Asurahood, as we may see from 2,27,10: "Thou over all, O Varuṇa, art Sovran, be they Gods, Asura! or be they mortals."⁴⁴⁰ The second time - 6,30,2 - Griffith gives us: "Yea, mighty I esteem his Godlike nature"⁴⁴¹ - where the last two words render the original asūryàm. Again, in 6,36,1 Griffith writes: "Thou still hast been the dealer-forth of vigour, since among the Gods thou hast had power and Godhead"⁴⁴² - with a footnote to the last three words: "asūryam: Asura-hood, the nature and power of an Asura or high God."

The adjective asūryà is applied to Indra at least three times in the "Family Books". 4,16,2: "Like Uśanā, the priest a laud shall utter, a hymn to thee, the Lord Divine, who markest"⁴⁴³ - where the closing phrase translates ciki-túse asūryắya, literally "the wise or attentive asuric one". Griffith words 7,21,7: "Even the earlier Deities submitted

438.Op. cit., p. 182, col. 2. 441. Ibid., p. 303, col. 2.

439.Ibid., p. 297, col. 1. 442. Ibid., p. 305, col. 2.

440.Ibid., p. 148, col. 1. 443. Ibid., p. 209, col. 2.

Page 381

their powers to thy supreme dominion";⁴⁴⁴ here "supreme dominion" stands for asūryắya ksatrắya. Finally, 7,22,5: "I know and ne'er forget the hymns and praises of thee, the Conqueror, and thy strength immortal. / Thy name I ever utter, Self-Refulgent!"⁴⁴⁵ Griffith has spread out rather freely the Sanskrit turásya ... asūryàsya.

In Books 1 and 8 (9 being excluded as totally Soma-oriented) Indra is called Asura twice: "Thou art the King of all the Gods, O Indra: protect the men, O Asura, preserve us" (1,174,1) - "... we seek thee now, O Asura, thee most wise, craving thy bounty as our share" (8,79,6).⁴⁴⁶

There seems to be no particular difference in attitude or tone between the several Asura-ascriptions before Book 10 and those in the latter. Why are we to overlook them all, and what makes the remaining ones essentially inapplicable so as not to contradict the asura-hán role given to Indra anywhere in the other Books? The phrases in Book 10 are: "Who urged thee forward to exert thy power divine [= vắjāyāsūryắya], to valour, in the war for waters on their fields?" (10,50,3) - "Thou, Mighty Steer, hast four supre-mest natures, Asura natures that may ne'er be injured" (10,54,4) - "O Asura, disclose thou and make visible the Cow's beloved home to the bright golden Sun" (10,96,11) -"So, swiftly Asura, for exaltation, hath the great Vamraka come nigh to Indra" (10,99,12) - "As hundreds, O Immortal God [= aSūrya], have sung to thee, so hath Sumitra, yea, Durmitra praised thee here" (10,105,ll).⁴⁴⁷

Agni as Asura

Agni, the asura-han, is also intrinsically an Asura himself in the non-pejorative sense. Out of the numerous references

444.Ibid., p. 345, col. 2.

445.Ibid., p. 346, col. 1.

446.Ibid., p. 120, col. 1; p. 454, col. 1.

447.Ibid., p. 567, col. 2; p. 570, col. 1; p. 610, col. 2; p. 613, col. 2; p. 618, col. 2.

Page 382

I may cite just two as typical. From the Family Books we may cull: "Agni, be this our sacrifice eternal, with brave friends, rich in kine and sheep and horses, / Rich, Asura! in sacred food and children, in full assembly, wealth broad-based and during" (4,2,5) - "We will extol at sacrifice for ever, as men may do, Agni whom Manu kindled, / Your very skilful Asura, meet for worship, envoy between both worlds, the truthful speaker" (7,2,3).⁴⁴⁸

The mistake about Māyā

The impression we get of another mistake on Parpola's part relates to the possession of Māyā. He appears to tell us that Indra and Agni are not credited with Māyā in their own right. For he has said:⁴⁴⁹

Instead of Soma offerings and hymns- the enemy has something else: RS 4,16,9 "the Dasyu who has magic powers but is without holy hymns has perished." Māyā-'magic or illusory power', is even elsewhere associated with the Dāsas and Dasyus, and must have been an important component of their religion. Thus according to RS 10,73,7 Agni has slain Dāsa Namuci and taken away his magic power. In the end, however, Indra seems to have appropriated the enemy's magic power himself, and beaten him with his own tricks: RS 1,51,5 "With magic powers (Māyābhih) you blew away the possessors of magic powers (māyínah)..."

I am afraid there is a strange misunderstanding here. True, the god who has slain Namuchi has taken away this Dāsa's "magic power", but that does not mean that the god did not himself possess his own Māyā. In the earlier verse 5 we are told that he, "with these his magic powers assailed

448.Ibid., p. 209, col. 2; p. 334, col. 2.

449.P. 227.

Page 383

the Dasyu: he cast away the gloomy mists, the darkness".⁴⁵⁰Also true, Indra meets magic with magic, but he does so with magic belonging rightfully to him, independently of those with whom he fights. Parpola's interpretation is not faithful to the text: there is not a hint of Indra taking the enemy's Māyā and turning it upon him. His own Māyā is in action against that of the enemy, and its inherent nature is clear from other sources too - 4,30,12 says: "Thou, Indra, didst with magic power resist the overflowing stream / Who spread her waters o'er the land",⁴⁵¹ and the twenty-first verse of the same hymn runs: "The thirty thousand Dāsas he with magic power and weapons sent / To slumber, for Dabhiti's sake." Or take 8,65,1, addressed to Indra: "Lord of magic power who rules with might",⁴⁵² or else 10,147,2: "Thou with thy magic powers didst rend the conjuror Vrtra, O Blameless One, with heart that longed for fame."⁴⁵³ Here again each of the two opposed fighters has his own proper Māyā, his might of conjuring. The Aśvins too wield their Māyā: "Famed for your magic arts were ye, magicians!" (6,63,5) ⁴⁵⁴And presumably with these "arts" they succeed in "baffling the guiles [Māyā] of the malignant Dasyu" (1,117,3).⁴⁵⁵

In this context we may challenge with the help of the Aśvins the impression Parpola creates that the connection between Asurahood and Māyā-wielding is organic: that is, one who is not explicitly or implicitly titled an Asura does not employ Māyā. Unlike several gods, the Aśvins are never given the title of Asura, and yet they are "famed" as "magicians".

The Divine Māyā

Also in this context, most apt is the phrase of Sri Aurobindo we have already mentioned: "the divine Māyā and the undivine." What essentially the former is can best

450. Griffith, op. cit., p. 586, col. 1.

451.Ibid., p. 221, col. 1.

452.Ibid., p. 448, col. 2.

453. Ibid., p. 641, col. 2.

454.Ibid., p. 325, col. 1.

455.Ibid., p. 79, col. 1.

Page 384

be realized when we mark the root of the word. The root is mā-, meaning "to measure, mete out, mark off, primarily, and in the second place, "to prepare, arrange, fashion, form, build, make."⁴⁵⁶ Sri Aurobindo⁴⁵⁷ sheds profound philosophical light in this sphere:

Infinite consciousness in its infinite action can produce only infinite results; to settle upon a fixed Truth or order of truths and build a world in conformity with that which is fixed, demands a selective faculty of knowledge commissioned to shape finite appearance out of the infinite Reality.

This power was known to the Vedic seers by the name of Māyā. Māyā meant for them the power of infinite consciousness to comprehend, contain in itself and measure out, that is to say, to form - for form is delimitation -Name and Shape out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence. It is by Māyā that static truth of essential being becomes ordered truth of active being, -or, to put it in more metaphysical language, out of the supreme being in which all is all without barrier of separative consciousness emerges the phenomenal being in which all is in each and each is in all for the play of existence with existence, consciousness with consciousness, force with force, delight with delight. This play of all in each and each in all is concealed at first from us by the mental play or the illusion of Māyā which persuades each that he is in all but not all in him and that he is in all as a separated being not as a being always inseparably one with the rest of existence. Afterwards we have to emerge from this error into the supramental play or the truth of Māyā where "each" and the "all" coexist in the inseparable unity of the one truth and the multiple symbol.

456.M. Monier-Williams, op. cit., p. 804, col. 2.

457.The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1970), pp. 115-16.

Page 385

In the hands of the Dāsa-Dasyus the supernatural Māyā-power is degraded and misused. The gods have to nullify it by the exercise of their spiritual energy. To think that the Rigvedic Māyā spells merely magic is to see ill the truth of existence "known to the Vedic seers". In annotating 5,63 Sri Aurobindo calls Māyā "the creative knowledge-will of the Deva".⁴⁵⁸ The hymn is to Mitra and Varuṇa and the footnote is to verse 3, To get the full drive of this verse in the symbolic and esoteric sense we may look at it along with the verses just before and after it in Sri Aurobindo's rendering:

Emperors, you rule over this world of our becoming, Mitra and Varuṇa, in the getting of knowledge you are seers of the realm of Light; we desire from you the rain, the felicitous wealth, the immortality, and lo! the Thunderers range abroad through earth and heaven.

Emperors, strong Bulls of the abundance, Masters of earth and heaven, O Mitra and Varuṇa, universal in your workings, you approach their cry with your clouds of varied light and you rain down Heaven by the power of the knowledge of the Mighty One.

This is your knowledge, O Mitra and Varuṇa, that is lodged in heaven; it is the Sun, it is the Light; it ranges abroad as your rich and varied weapon. You hide it in heaven with the cloud and the raining. O Rain, full of the honey start forth thy streamings.

The last eight words of verse 3 - "the power of the knowledge of the Mighty One" - elucidate the Rigvedic phrase: ásurasya māyáyā. Verse 2's "knowledge" is again māyā in the original. Verse 2's "Thunderers" Sri Aurobindo⁴⁵⁹ explains as: "Maruts", deities exoterically of Winds and Storms, but esoterically representing "Life-Powers and Thought-Powers who find out the light of truth for all our activities". He adds: "the word [tanyavah] may also mean

458.The Secret of the Veda, p. 470, fn. 4.

459.Ibid., fn. 3.

Page 386

formers and builders." Verse 6 actually names the Maruts as co-operating with Mitra-Varuṇa. How natural the mystic interpretation can be we may gauge by juxtaposing Sri Aurobindo and one who has no inkling of such a standpoint. Griffith's version⁴⁶⁰ runs:

This world's imperial Kings, O Mitra-Varuṇa, ye rule in

holy synod, looking on the light.

We pray for rain, your boon, and immortality. Through

heaven and over earth the thunderers take their way.

Imperial Kings, strong, Heroes, Lords of earth and

heaven, Mitra and Varuṇa, ye ever active Ones,

Ye wait on thunder with the many-tinted clouds, and by

the Asura's magic power cause Heaven to rain.

Your magic, Mitra-Varuṇa, resteth in the heaven. The

Sun, the wondrous weapon, cometh forth as light.

Ye hide him in the sky with cloud and flood of rain, and

water-drops, Parjanya! full of sweetness flow.

With an imaginative response to the exalted language with its vivid terms and the open clue in the word "immortality" and the subsequent suggestion of a plenary Truth at enlightening world-work by the phrase "the Sun, the wondrous weapon" and of an unearthly bliss with the phrase "water-drops ... full of sweetness", it should hardly be difficult or strained to feel the subtle aura of a spiritual significance a la Sri Aurobindo around physical-seeming objects and phenomena.

To return to our theme of Māyā: the sense of divine creative knowledge-will drives home to us also from a pair of verses in another hymn (5,85,5-6) to Varuṇa as rendered by Griffith:⁴⁶¹

I will declare this mighty deed of magic, of glorious Varuṇa the Lord Immortal,

460.Op. cit., p. 272, col. 2.

461.Ibid., p. 281, col. 2.

Page 387

Who standing in the firmament hath meted the earth out

with the Sun as with a measure.

None, verily, hath ever let or hindered this the most wise

God's mighty deed of magic,

Whereby with all their flood, the lucid rivers fill not one

sea wherein they pour their waters.

Hale⁴⁶² brings to a focus two significant points in verse 5 with his translation and comment. The translation is: "I shall proclaim well this great may a of famous asuric Varuṇa, who stood in the atmosphere and measured out the earth with the sun as if with a measuring cord." The comment follows: "Here we find Varuṇa called asuric and explicitly linked to Māyā.... In addition, this Māyā seems to be thought of as creative activity."

Hale's "creative activity" echoes, without his being aware, Sri Aurobindo's note⁴⁶³ to the use of the word Māyā in this verse, which he translates by "creative wisdom". His note says: "Māyā, with a strong sense of its root-significance, to measure, form, build or plan out."

The "activity" of "creative wisdom" of the highest and ultimate kind meets us again in a hymn assigned to Indra though we can hardly determine the precise aspect under which he appears here. Actually one of the most mysteriously powerful verses of the Rigveda looms up in 3,38,7. Hale⁴⁶⁴ gives the original together with a translation:

tád in nv asya vrsabhásya dhenór

ắ nắmabhir mamire sákmyam góh

anyadanyad asuryàm vasānā

ní māyíno mamire rūpám asmin.

"This is indeed of the one (who is) a bull (and) a cow. They have measured out with names the essence of the

462.Op.cit., p. 64.

463.The Secret of the Veda, p. 532, fn. 2.

464.Op.cit., p. 62.

Page 388

cow. Putting on this after that asuric power, the māyā-possessors fitted the form on this one."

Perhaps a little more clarity or less obscurity will come if we may distinguish between dhenór and góh. Both indicate "cow" but dhenór is, more accurately, the milch-cow, while góh, by the double sense it carries of "cow" and "light", could be "light-cow". Then, with the bull alongside the milch-cow we get two original Beings. In connection with them the varied powers of the creative word are exercised to produce the many-natured manifestation. Diversely dynamic, the possessors of spiritual creativity succeed in a proper exteriorization or in conferring proper visibility on what they emanate. Evidently, vrsabha and dhenu, the Bull and the Milch-cow, are mystical symbols foreshadowing the later philosophical concepts of Pūrusa and prakrti.

An alternative translation could be: "By the names of this Bull and of the Milch-Cow they shaped that nature of the Light-Cow. Wearing different garbs of Asura-force, the Māyā-possessors shaped out form in this (Existence)."

A similar secret working by "Māyā-possessors" is flashed forth in a hymn to Soma - 9,83,3:

Māyāvino mamire asya Māyáyā

nrcáksasah pitáro gárbham á dadhuh.

Griffith⁴⁶⁵ translates: "By his high wisdom have the mighty Sages wrought: the Fathers who behold mankind laid down the germ." A deep suggestion is conveyed, but the peculiar turn of the Sanskrit gets shaded off. A more direct version could be: "The Māyā-possessors shaped (all) by his Māyā; the Fathers who behold mankind produced the embryo."

Actually, the best treatment of the passage is in Sri Aurobindo's rendering⁴⁶⁶ of it as part of his version of the whole hymn. With his insight he has caught the deeper

465.Op. cit., p. 506, col. 1.

466.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 339, 346.

Page 389

connections of the words, given the words themselves their full bearing, and in his commentary on the hymn elucidated the basic sense of the archaic language. This is how the passage comes through, with Soma as the background presence - Soma who twice by himself (9,74,7; 9,99,1) and once (6,74,1) with Rudra is termed an Asura:

The Fathers who had the forming knowledge made a form of him by that power of knowledge which is his; strong in vision they set him within as a child to be born.

Here are the relevant portions of the commentary: "The fathers are the ancient Rishis who discovered the Way of the Vedic mystics and are supposed to be still spiritually present presiding over the destinies of the race and, like the gods, working in man for his attainment to Immortality. They are the sages who received the strong divine vision ... the Truth-vision" - "the fathers who discovered the Truth, received [Soma's] creative knowledge, his Māyā, and by that ideal and ideative consciousness of the Supreme Divinity they formed an image of Him in man, they established Him in the race as a child unborn, a seed of the godhead in man, a Birth that has to be delivered out of the envelope of the human consciousness."

Whether or not we fully penetrate the significance of all these variously modulated deliverances of the ancient wisdom, the loftiness of their import is undeniable. They set the concept of Māyā and that of Asura far above mere magic, the conjuring craft, the sorcerer's skill and its practitioners the Dāsa-Dasyus who were later called Asuras. Especially striking is the association of Māyā as an activity of creative wisdom with Varuṇa who is termed Asura in the sense of one who has sovereign power. There is a total incompatibility between this Māyā-wielding Asura and those Dāsa-Dasyus. In the basic vision of the Rigveda he could never have anything to do with them or have entered it from their side.

Page 390

To seize briefly something of Varuṇa's true as well as natural place in this vision we need only quote a few verses from 8,41, which despite Griffith's non-mystical approach bring home to us divine and universal Varuṇa's Māyā-function vis-a-vis the Dāsa-Dasyus:⁴⁶⁷

The nights he hath encompassed, and stablished the

morns with magic art: visible over all is he.... (3)

He who supports the worlds of life, he who well knows the

hidden names mysterious of the morning beams,

He cherishes much wisdom, Sage, as heaven brings forth

each varied form. (5)

He wraps these regions as a robe; he contemplates the

tribes of Gods and all the works of mortal men.

Before the home of Varuṇa all the Gods follow his decree.

He is an Ocean far-removed, yet through the heaven to

him ascends the worship which these realms possess.

With his bright foot he overthrew their magic, and went

up to heaven. (7-8)

Deva and Asura

When Indra is hailed now and again as an Asura of the same high order as Varuṇa it seems idle to see him as belonging to a category of beings different from that which includes Varuṇa. Parpola⁴⁶⁸ tries to suggest an opposition between them with the help of a certain hymn. He writes:

In the hymn RS 4,42, Varuṇa says (in verse 2): "I, Varuṇa, am the sovereign; it was I who was destined to be Asura. The gods follow the advice of Varuṇa..." while (in verse 7) he admits that Indra is right in saying (verses 5-6) that he is the unparalleled god of war, insuperable in his fury created by Soma and by hymns of praise.

467.Op. cit., p. 428, cols.l & 2.

468.P. 228.

Page 391

Here simply a division of activities is intended, emphatically pictured by either party. "Asura" is not directly meant to conflict with what "Deva" would represent. Indeed, in the Rigveda, whoever is named "Asura" in one hymn gets the title "Deva" in another. And in the hymn (5,42) which Parpola has picked out in his allusion to Rudra as Asura, the very verse 11 where Rudra is titled "Asura" has the word deva adjacent to this title: námobhir devám ásuram duvasya - "adore the Asura, God, with salutations."⁴⁶⁹ What is still more curious, not only does Parpola's Rudra turn the tables on him. His Varuṇa himself, in team with his frequent companion Mitra, proves no less tricky. Hymn 8,25,4 gives us the phrase: mahắntá mitrắVáruṇa / samrắja devắv ásurā -"Great Varuṇa and Mitra, Gods, Asuras and imperial Lords."⁴⁷⁰ A dichotomy between Asuras and Gods is contrary to the fundamental spirit of the Rigveda.

Hale has been alert to this truth. Apropos of the Rudra verse (5,42,11) where he observes the terms deva and asura as not only adjacent but also in the same grammatical case and as applying simultaneously to the same being, he notes:⁴⁷¹

This verse should make one very suspicious of any theory that maintains that devas and asuras were two different divine groups in early Vedic religion. It should also make one suspicious of a theory which says that a being can be either a deva or an asura at different times depending on his actions at the time. Rudra is referred to here at one and the same time as both an asura and a deva,

Hale's general statement⁴⁷² in this connection is: "The occurrence of ásura- and devá- in apposition in one verse makes it appear impossible that these two terms could refer

469.Griffith, op. cit.. p. 258, col. 1.

470.Ibid., p. 216, col. 1.

471.Op. cit., p. 43.

472.Ibid., p. 52.

Page 392

to two different groups of deities." He continues: "The occurrence of ásura- as an epithet for ... other beings who are elsewhere called devas confirms this." Hale⁴⁷³ marks also 8,25,4 about Mitra-Varuṇa as exemplifying "again the simultaneous usage of devá- and ásura- for the same gods". He⁴⁷⁴ has in addition a third general instance: mahád devắnām asuratvám ékam - "great is the unique asuraship of the gods." His comment on this phrase, which comes in 3,55 as the fourth pāda of every verse, runs: "This refrain definitely presents problems to those who try to maintain that devas and asuras were two different groups of divine beings in the early Vedic period. It seems to mean that the lordship of all the gods is great and special (éka-)." In view of the three examples he has presented, Hale⁴⁷⁵ is convinced that originally there could never have been a pair of "mutually exclusive groups" - deva on one side and asura on the other.

To project a background of early religious dichotomy and to counterpoise in accord with it one Rigvedic deity by another is a dangerous game. Analogous to 4,42 where to Parpola Varuṇa and Indra seem counterpoised, we have 1,131 whose opening verse reads: "To Indra Dyaus the Asura hath bowed him down, to Indra mighty Earth with wide-extending tracts, to win the light, with wide-spread tracts. / All Gods of one accord have set Indra in front preeminent...."⁴⁷⁶ Would this imply a struggle for leadership between Dyaus the Asura and Indra the Deva resulting in Indra's triumph? Another hymn, 1,54, appears to equate Dyaus with Indra in verse 3: "Sing forth to lofty Dyaus a strength-bestowing song, the Bold, whose resolute mind hath independent sway. / High glory hath the Asura, compact of strength, drawn on by two Bay Steeds: a Bull, a Car is he."⁴⁷⁷ The "two Bay Steeds" are a commonplace in the Indra-context in the Rigveda. Again, Indra is generally

473.Ibid., p. 79.

474.Ibid., pp. 60-61.

475.Ibid., p. 179.

476.Griffith, op. cit., p. 91, col. 1.

477.Ibid., p. 36, col. 2.

Page 393

the Bull. But it is "lofty Dyaus" who has "high glory" and is called "the Asura". As far as we can pierce the somewhat baffling language, it is Indra himself who is now seen as the supreme Sky-deity, Dyaus. In fact, the preceding verse - 2 -has the same turn of phrase at the start and is openly about Indra, under the name Śakra, "the Mighty": "Sing hymns of praise to Śakra, Lord of power and might; laud thou and magnify Indra who heareth thee, / Who with his daring might, a Bull exceeding strong in strength, maketh him master of the heaven and earth."

What may superficially look like substitution of one god for another seems really to be a parity in which the two gods are interfused, as it were. The first part of a verse which we have already cited brings up such a picture: "Even as the power of Dyaus, to thee, O Indra, all Asura sway was by the Gods entrusted, / When thou, Impetuous! leagued with Visnu, slewest Vrtra the Dragon who enclosed the waters" (6,20,2).⁴⁷⁸ The second part, too, of the verse implies an instance of interfused parity. For, if the gods entrusted to Indra, because of his slaying Vritra, an Asuraship like the "power" which Dyaus went on holding at the same time, Vishnu, with whom he was leagued in that exploit must be taken to have received the same Asuraship.

Or see the verse (2,1,6) from which Parpola exhibits Rudra as "great Asura of heaven". In fact, it is in a hymn to Agni. Griffith's rendering is: "Rudra art thou, the Asura of mighty heaven: thou art the Maruts' host, thou art the Lord of food, / Thou goest with red winds: bliss hast thou in thine home. As Pūsan thou thyself protectest worshippers."⁴⁷⁹Hale⁴⁸⁰ has a slightly different translation of the Sanskrit tvám agne rudró ásuro mahó divás: "You, O Agni, as Rudra are the asura of great heaven...." Hale comments: "Here Agni can be called the asura of great heaven because he is identified with Rudra. This verse is typical of many verses in

478.Ibid., p. 297, col. 1.

479.Ibid., p. 130, col. 2.

480.Op. cit., p. 43.

Page 394

the RV which identify Agni with various gods." The sequel itself to the opening phrase exemplifies the multi-identification: Agni is said to be Pushan. And in verse 4 of the hymn, after some earlier verses have made him Indra, Vishnu and Brāhmaṇaspati, we find him hailed: "Agni, thou art King Varuṇa whose laws stand fast; as Mitra, Wonder-Worker, thou must be implored."⁴⁸¹ The impression we may gather of rivalry among the Rigvedic gods must be offset by a deeper and subtler comprehension, not only as regards Agni and the rest of the pantheon but also in relation to the other deities.

Indra and Varuṇa

Such a comprehension is demanded almost directly by a strange expression in hymn 4,42 in which Parpola surmises rivalry between Varuṇa and Indra. Verse 5 begins: "I Varuṇa am Indra...."⁴⁸² Varuṇa stands with Indra in himself and at the same time Indra stands outside Varuṇa, with Varuṇa acknowledging Indra's individual role as super-warrior. Indra's identity with Varuṇa emerges even in what the poet tells Indra after the colloquy between the two: "Thou art remembered as having slain the Vrtras. Thou madest flow the floods that were obstructed" (7). In verse 4 Varuṇa declares: "I made to flow the moisture-shedding waters...." An insight into the Indra-within-Varuṇa as well as the Varuṇa-within-Indra can come by a look at the linguistic roots of Varuṇa and Vritra and at the way they bring the two into relation. Sri Aurobindo writes:⁴⁸³

We have the word Varuṇa from a root [vr] which means to surround, cover or pervade. From these significances of the name there emerged before the poetic eye of the ancient mystics the images that are our nearest concrete

481.Griffith, op. cit., p. 130, col. 1.

482.Ibid., p. 228, col. 2.

483.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 447-48.

Page 395

representation of the Infinite. They saw God as a highest covering Heaven, felt divine existence like an encompassing ocean, lived in its boundless presence as in a pure and pervading ether. Varuṇa is this highest heaven, this soul-surrounding ocean, this ethereal possession and infinite pervasion.

The same root had given them an appellation for the dark Coverer, the adversary Vritra; for to obstruct and resist, screen or hedge, besiege and hem in are also some of its many kindred senses. But dark Vritra is the thick cloud and the enveloping shadow. His knowledge - for he too has a knowledge, a Māyā, - is the sense of limited being and the hiding away in subconscient Night all the rest of the rich and vast existence that should be ours, and for this negation and contrary power of creative knowledge he stands up stiffly against the Gods, - his undivine right against the divine right of God and man. Varuṇa by his wide being and ample vision rolls back these limits; surrounding us with light his possession reveals what dark Vritra's obsession had withheld and obscured.

So the "waters" of verse 4 released by Varuṇa and of verse 7 released by Indra are essentially one. Behind the explicit difference between Varuṇa and Indra we have a subtle correspondence.

Here some passages from Sri Aurobindo, part of his explication of Varuṇa's god-nature, would be apt. After referring to the three oceans envisaged by the Rigvedic seers - the upper one of a remote radiance, a lower one of deep darkness and, between them, "a third sea of ever-developing conscious being",⁴⁸⁴ our present existence - Sri Aurobindo⁴⁸⁵writes, marshalling several Rigvedic images:

From this idea of the oceans arose naturally the psycholo-

484.Ibid., p. 449.

485.Ibid., pp. 450-51.

Page 396

gical concept of the Vedic rivers. These rivers are everywhere. They are the waters which flow down from the mountain and ascend the mind ranging through and illuminating with their flow the dark subconscient secrets, of Vritra: they are the mighty ones of Heaven whom Indra brings down on the Earth; they are the streams of the Truth; they are the rain from its luminous heavens; they are the seven eternal sisters and companions; they are the divine waters who have knowledge. They descend upon the earth, they rise from the ocean, they flow to the ocean, they break out from the doors of the Panis, they ascend to the supreme seas.

Oceanic Varuṇa is the king of all these waters. "In the uprising of the rivers," it is said, "he is a brother of seven sisters, he is in their middle" (VIII.41.2). And another Rishi has sung, "In the rivers Varuṇa is seated upholding the law of his works, perfect in will for empire" (1.25.10). Vasishtha speaks with a more explicit crowding of psychological suggestions, of "the divine, pure and purifying waters, honey-pouring, in the midst of whom King Varuṇa marches looking down on the truth and the falsehood in creatures" (VII.49.3). Varuṇa too, like Indra with whom he is often associated, releases the waters; sped from his mighty hands they too, like him, become all-pervading and flow to a limitless goal. "The Son of Infinity, the wide upholder, has loosed them forth everywhere; the rivers journey to the truth of Varuṇa" (II.28.4).

Not by examining separate pieces but by taking a whole-view do we strike, from however afar, upon a key to the multifarious mysteries of the Rigveda.

Taking a cue from Sri Aurobindo's statement that Varuṇa is often associated with Indra, I may point out that the hymn of their supposed rivalry is not the only one addressed jointly to the two gods. There are several others to "Indra-Varuṇa" in which they are coupled as affined counterparts: 1,17; 4,41; 7,82-85; and 8,11 among the Vālakhilya hymns.

Page 397

In 7,82⁴⁸⁶ we have some very significant phrases. Verse 3 apostrophizes the two of them as equally supreme yet with a subtle shade of distinction which yet does not make for basic difference: "O Indra-Varuṇa, mighty and very rich! One of you is called Monarch and One Autocrat." Griffith annotates: "Varuṇa is called samrắj or universal ruler (thoroughly resplendent, according to Sāyana), and Indra svắraj, independent ruler, or according to Sāyana, self-resplendent." Verse 5 puts them on a par as the prime cause: "O Indra-Varuṇa,... ye created all these creatures of the world by your surpassing might...." Verse 3 touches on the point we made to equate the conjectured rivals in regard to the locked-up "waters": "Ye with your strength have pierced the fountains of the floods; the Sun have ye brought forward as the Lord in heaven." The Valakhilya hymn 8,11 traces the two deities to an equal antiquity as co-inspirers, thus rendering null the idea of Varuṇa entering the Rigvedic pantheon at a later date: "What ye in time of old, Indra and Varuṇa, gave Rsis - revelations, thought, and power of song, / And places which the wise made, weaving sacrifice, -these through my spirit's fervid glow have I beheld."⁴⁸⁷

Another argument of Parpola's

Finally, we come to an argument Parpola⁴⁸⁸ has offered as if to round off his thesis: "Another indication of Varuṇa's external origin is the relatively small number of hymns addressed to him, which is out of all proportion to his importance." Here a word of caution may be drawn from Sri Aurobindo's commentary⁴⁸⁹ on a hymn (1,154) to Vishnu. The theme there is really that "the importance of the Vedic gods has not to be measured by the number of hymns devoted to them or to the extent to which they are invoked

486.Griffith, op. cit., p. 374, col. 1.

487.Ibid., p. 471, col. 1

488.P. 229.

489.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 333-34.

Page 398

in the thoughts of the Rishis, but by the function which they perform." Still, we can gather that the majority of hymns being addressed to Agni and Indra is due to the fact that "the functions which they fulfill in the internal and external world were the most active, dominant and directly effective for the psychological discipline of the ancient Mystics: this alone is the reason of their predominance." Sri Aurobindo continues:

The Maruts, children of Rudra, are not divinities superior to their fierce and mighty Father; but they have many hymns addressed to them and are far more constantly mentioned in connection with other gods, because the function they fulfilled was of a constant and immediate importance in the Vedic discipline. On the other hand, Vishnu, Rudra, Brāhmaṇaspati, the Vedic originals of the later Puranic Triad, Vishnu-Shiva-Brahma, provide the conditions of the Vedic work and assist it from behind the more present and active gods, but are less close to it and in appearance less continually concerned in its daily movements.

The fewness of hymns to Varuṇa has no relation to a supposed external origin any more than to a lack of importance. But his importance is, in the economy of the Vedic work, a supporting background presence. "His godhead is the form or spiritual image of an embracing and illuminating Infinity. For this reason the physical figure of Varuṇa is much less definite than the burning Fire or the radiant Sun or the luminous Dawn."⁴⁹⁰ Nor does he grip the mind with the vividness of an Indra riding a chariot pulled by two bay horses and wielding the thunderbolt and shattering forts as well as the heads of enemies. Whether he were as old as Indra in the Rigvedic pantheon or a newcomer from an alien religion, he need not have more hymns to his name than he

490. Ibid., p. 448.

Page 399

has. Vishnu is no less important than Varuṇa; yet he has fewer hymns to his name than the latter. The occurrence of his name in the course of hymns to other gods is much less, too. Does that point to his being imported from an alien religion?

On no ground can Varuṇa be argued to be, in contrast with Indra, a deity originally un-Rigvedic.

How old is Varuṇa as a god?

Before I close I may try to see in what way we can as scholars justify the equal antiquity I have attributed to Indra and Varuṇa on the basis of the expression: "Ye, of old,..." applied jointly to them. About Indra the situation is clear. Macdonell⁴⁹¹ writes: "Indra's name is found in the Avesta as that of a demon. His distinctive Vedic epithet, vrtrahan ['Vritra-slayer'], also occurs there in the form of vere-thraghna, as a designation of the god of victory. Hence there was probably in the Indo-Iranian period a god approaching the Vedic form of the Vrtra-slaying and victorious Indra." But there is no Varuṇa in the Avesta. James Darmesteter⁴⁹²opined: "Váruṇa- was the Indic name for the supreme, moral, omniscient, sovereign, creator asura recognised by the Indo-Irānians. In Iran he was called Ahura Mazdā. But Varuṇa- already existed in Indo-Iranian times as *varana-meaning 'sky'. This is proven by Greek ouranós. It appears in Avestan as varǝna-." Hale⁴⁹³ has criticized Darmesteter: "Varuṇá- cannot be said to be Indo-Iranian for the reason he gives because it cannot be derived from *varana-." Macdonell⁴⁹⁴ surmises : "The word Varuṇa-s seems to have originally meant 'the encompassing sky' and is probably the

491.Op. cit., p. 87.

492.Ormazd et Ahriman, leurs origines et leur histoire, Bibliotheque de l'ecole des hautes etudes, 29th fascicle (F. Vieweg, Paris, 1877), pp. 67, 69.

493.Op. cit., p. 15.

494.Op. cit., p. 75.

Page 400

same word as the Greek Ouranos, though the identification presents some phonetic difficulties." Sri Aurobindo⁴⁹⁵ has noted this apparent identification as well as the Puranic notion of Varuṇa as the deity of the waters. He points out that the symbolic method of the mystics combines various ideas and images, and that Varuṇa is the King, - "not of the heavens as such, for that is Dyaushpita, nor of the heavens of light, for that is Indra, - but of the highest covering ether and all oceans. All expanses are Varuṇa's; every infinity is his property and estate." Chattopadhyaya⁴⁹⁶ comes down heavily on European scholarship:

The name Varuṇa is not found outside India. Its equation with Greek Ouranós, though accepted by philologists, must be rejected on account of two differences, the quality of the second vowel and the place of the accent. The second vowel in Váruṇa is u and it is a in ouranós. The former word is accented on the first syllable and the latter on the final syllable, though accenting it on the syllable third from the end would not have militated against the special law about the place of the accent in the Greek language. Either discrepancy would not have by itself gone against the equation but their combination makes it extremely difficult to connect Váruṇa and Ouranós.... Varuṇa appears to be a purely Indo-Aryan word, formed in the same way as karuna, taruna, dharuna, etc.

If this is so, he cannot go back to the Indo-Iranian period, cannot be as old as Indra. And Chattopadhyaya⁴⁹⁷ does not accept "the assumption that Ahura Mazda of the Avesta is the same person as the Indian Varuṇa". His reason for rejecting it is, first, that "the two deities have distinct names". Secondly, "the double dual of the devatā-dvandva Mitrā-Varuṇau and the use of the dual number for Mitra and

495.The Secret of the Veda, p. 448.

496.Op. cit., pp. 39, 90-91.

497.Ibid., p. 39.

Page 401

Varuṇa even outside compounds, or of Varuṇa alone in dual for both Mitra and Varuṇa, on account of the close association of the two deities in the Rgveda-Saṁhitā, must needs be taken as a peculiar Indian usage with no trace among any other Aryan people".

The search for any equivalence of Varuṇa and Zara-thustra's God has to proceed along correct lines if it is to be fruitful. Hale⁴⁹⁸ tells us about the name Ahura Mazda:

In Younger Avestan these two words appear together and in that order with very few exceptions. The reverse is true in the Gāthās. There ahura- and mazdā- appear together and in that order only five times (and in one of these -Y[asna] 33.11 - the two words are actually in different clauses). They appear together, but in reversed order twenty-four times. Ahura- alone is used to designate Ahura Mazdā nineteen times. Mazdā- alone appears in this usage sixty-seven times. The words ahura- and mazda-appear in the same verse but separated with ahura-coming first forty times. (In eighteen of these they are in separate sentences or clauses.) The words ahura- and mazdā- appear in the same verse separated by other words but with mazdā- coming first forty-eight times. (In nine of these the words are in separate sentences or clauses.) Thus it is quite clear that ahura- mazdā- was not a proper name of God for Zarathustra. At least one or perhaps both of these words was used as an epithet by him. Ahura- meant "lord" and mazdā- seems to have meant "wise". Thus Zarathustra could refer to God as the Lord, the Wise One, the Wise Lord, or the Lord (Who is) Wise. The name ahura- mazdā- developed only later.

All this proves that Varuṇa's antiquity cannot be found by considering him face to face with Ahura Mazda. Another angle of vision is required. We get it when we read in Yast

498. Op. cit., p. 186.

Page 402

10.113:⁴⁹⁹ "may he therefore come to our assistance, O exalted Mithra and Ahura!..." From Hale's comment we learn that the phrase in the original is mithra ahura, along with the Avestan for "exalted", occurring all as a vocative dual. He adds: "Apparently this phrase refers to Mithra and Ahura Mazdā. Ahura- occurs in the dual in the Avesta only in conjunction with mithra. This is very significant because the only occurrences of ásura- in the dual in the Vedic Saṁhitās or Brāhmaṇas are in connection with Mitrā-Varuṇā. This restriction of the dual usage of ásura-lahura- to MitraVaruṇa in the Vedas and Mithra and Ahura Mazda in the Avesta offers strong support for those who argue that Varuṇa and Ahura Mazda derive from the same Indo-Iranian god."

Again, in Yast 10.145⁵⁰⁰ we read: "(Standing) by the Barsman plant we worship Mithra and Ahura - the two exalted owners of Truth that are removed from danger...." Hale notes: "Here again the dual compound mithra ahura occurs." Yasna l.11⁵⁰¹ gives us: "I dedicate (and) carry out (the prayer) for the Ahura and Mithra - exalted, free from danger, truth-possessing - and for the sun - possessing fast horses, eye of Ahura Mazdā." Hale observes: "Here again ahura- and mithra- appear with dual endings and thus form a dvandva compound. The other phrase which calls the sun the eye of Ahura Mazda is interesting because the sun is also said to be the eye of Varuṇa (RV 1.50.6)." Derivation of Varuṇa and Ahura Mazda from the same Indo-Iranian deity gets extra support from such a comparison. Yasna 2.11⁵⁰²provides a fourth example in dual - once more in a dvandva compound of mithra and ahura. The inevitable suggestion is that the name "Varuṇa" was an inspired discovery by the Indo-Aryans for a god called "Asura" in Indo-Iranian times, so closely linked with another god called "Mitra" that they

499.Ibid., p. 187. This translation, like the others to follow, is Hale's.

500.Ibid., pp. 187-88.

501.Ibid., p. 191.

502.Ibid., p. 192.

Page 403

made as if one single being: Mitra-Asura. This makes it natural that in the Rigveda Varuṇa should be specially endowed with Asurahood by deserving through his universal presence more markedly than any other deity to be named as a mighty lord.

If the Greek Ouranos, in spite of the phonetic difficulty acknowledged by Macdonell, can still be conceived as by that scholar to bear some relation, however indirectly, to Varuṇa, then an antiquity in some seed-form may be traced beyond even the Indo-Iranian period to an Indo-European by connections which so far have remained hidden. At any rate, Varuṇa, often the supreme Asura no less than the supreme Deva in the Rigveda, cannot be put in its pantheon later in time than Indra, his fellow Asura-Deva of a status sometimes visioned as equally high by the Rigvedics.

APPENDIX 1 TO SUPPLEMENT V

To complete our survey of asuraship which was prompted by the theme of Varuṇa, we may touch upon a couple of issues which Hale meaningfully brings in but attention to which would have interfered with our line of discussion.

Is Asuraship dependent?

Hale quotes a number of phrases:⁵⁰³ "The Vasus place asuraship in you [Agni], for they enjoyed your insight..." (7,5,6) - "I am king Varuṇa. To me in the beginning they assigned the asuraships..." (4,42,4) - "O Indra, the whole asuraship like (that) of the Sky was granted to you altogether by the gods..." (6,20,2). Hale's stress⁵⁰⁴ is on "the frequent mention of the gods supporting or maintaining ... asūryàm for a particular god or supporting that god for

503.Op. cit., pp. 55, 56, 59.

504.Ibid., pp. 66-67.

Page 404

asūryàm" and his inference is: "This indicates that one was not an asura from birth or by his nature, but was made an asura by the consent and support of those who followed him."

I believe we have to take these phrases in conjunction with some others given by Hale:⁵⁰⁵ "You, O wonderful Agni,... the asuraship ascended to you..." (5,10,2) - "Since these two [Mitra-Varuṇa] attained dominion which cannot be overthrown (and) asuraship together..." (5,66,2) - "O Somarudra, maintain your asuraship..." (6,74,1) - "Fully you [Indra] became the distributor of booty when you assumed the asuraship among the gods" (6,36,1). Now no outside party comes in: asuraship is self-gained. But it is still not seen as inherent.

The inherent nature comes in with another set of phrases in Hale:⁵⁰⁶ "Even the ancient gods credit to you [Indra] powers of asuric rulership..." (7,21,7) - "Mitra (and) pure-minded Varuṇa, whose asuraship is everlasting and excellent..." (7,65,1) - "The great mother Aditī who possesses rta gave birth to these two all-knowing majestic ones [Mitra-Varuṇa] for asuraship" (8,25,3) - "They [the Maruts] were born the exalted bulls of the sky, the young men of Rudra, asuras..." (1,64,2). Here Indra's asuric power is accepted from time immemorial by the gods. Mitra-Varuṇa's is such that it will go on for all future time and depends on no one for its continuance which is inherent. Again, as Hale⁵⁰⁷himself admits after 8,25,3: "they are the ones who are destined for asuraship"; that is, from their very birth asuraship inheres in them. Rudra's virile and youthful contingent is also asuric from birth, not made so by any agency.

The Rigveda presents supernatural beings and phenomena in various aspects. The first set of phrases may be understood best as recording the helpful assent, the reinforcing

505.Ibid., pp. 54, 57, 58.

506.Ibid., pp. 61, 57, 96, 81.

507.Ibid., p. 96.

Page 405

gesture, the active co-operation extended by the gods to the highest or the most comprehensive or the most dynamic among them who possess asuraship.

Are human beings Asuras in the Rigveda?

The next issue we have to meet is the contention that in some places "asura" refers to human beings. It is analogous to the old attempt to understand the Dāsa-Dasyus in that way. Now deities, not demons, are sought to be made earthly. Hale⁵⁰⁸ translates 5,27,1: "The leader of the raid, the asura who is more excellent than (any other) patron, has given me two cows together with a wagon. Tryaruna, son of trivṛṣṇa, has distinguished himself with ten thousand, O Agni Vaiśvānara." Hale comments: "We can be quite certain that the asura in this verse is human, since he is a patron of the poet. If the second half of this verse refers to the same person as the first half - and there is no reason to doubt that it does - this asura is named Tryaruna. The name occurs one other time in the RV in a verse in which his generosity is again praised and Agni Vaiśvānara is asked to protect him. (RV 5.27.2)"

First of all, it seems unnecessary to translate sátpati in an unconventional manner - "the leader of the raid" - after I. Kuhn as Hale says in a footnote. The word may be considered as formed on the same lines as grhapati, "house-lord", and viśpati, "lord of the people". It should mean "master of being" or "lord of the good", unless it means "a good lord". But even if we accept Hale's odd translation, its exact bearing would depend on who are raided. If they are men, then Tryaruna can be human, though there is no inevitability about it since a superhuman power may be brought in to raid men in its own subtle way. If those who are raided are demons, no need arises to make the leader a man. The asura named Tryaruna could very naturally be one who exceeds

508. Op. cit., p. 48.

Page 406

humanity, siding with the rishi and securing for him what is symbolized by the two cows and the wagon: a doubly helpful spiritual light and an ample means of life's progression by the pull of its knowledge-power.

We get a clue to the real character of this asura by probing his name. By the way, his father cannot be trivṛṣṇa as Hale has put it: the correct Sanskrit, as given by Sāyana, is tri-vrsan. Now, the double occurrence of the number three in "Tryaruna Traivrsna" would appear to indicate that the name was intended to be significant. Tryaruna is translatable as "he of the triple dawn" and Trivrsan, his father, as "the triple bull". Indra is very often hailed as a bull (vrsan or vrsabha), sometimes even to excess as in 6,44,21: "Thou art the Bull of earth, the Bull of heaven, Bull of the rivers, Bull of standing waters."⁵⁰⁹ And he could most aptly be "the triple bull" in connection with the heavenly region of light termed Swar - svàr mahát, "the vast Swar" of 3,2,7, the region about which we are told: índrah suyajná usásah svar janat (2,21,4), "Indra sacrificing well brought to birth the Dawns and Swar." For, this Swar has three luminous realms, trīni rocanā (cf. 1,102,8; 2,27,9; 4,53,5, etc.) and Indra's lordship of them would give a triple aspect to his role as the Bull. Swar and the Dawns being linked, he as the triple Bull could bring about the three dawns of which the Rigveda speaks in 3,17,3 and 8,41,3. Thus to see him as the begetter of Tryaruna, lord of the triple dawn, is quite fitting. Master of a divine plane with three realms of light, he can be understood as getting reflected in the human mentality with three dawns of spiritual knowledge that lead to a surpassing of the human formula.

About the figure "ten thousand" Sri Aurobindo says:⁵¹⁰"Thousand symbolises absolute completeness, but there are ten subtle powers of the illumined mind each of which has to have its entire plenitude." We get an inkling of some significant play of the number ten in other Rigvedic decla-

509. Griffith, op. cit., p. 309, col. 2.

510. The Secret of the Veda, p. 416, fn. 3.

Page 407

rations such as 6,47,18:⁵¹¹ "Indra moves multiform by his illusions; for his Bay Steeds are yoked, ten times a hundred." Of course, Griffith's "illusions" renders the scripture's māyā, the divine power of knowledge by which "Name and Form" are created.

To catch Sri Aurobindo's mystical drift more fully we have to follow him beyond the verse Hale has quoted. Hale has said that the name Tryaruna occurs only once again in the Rigveda. This is inaccurate, for it comes not only in verse 2 of the same hymn but also in verse 3, as we may gather from Griffith:⁵¹² "So Trasadasyu served thee, God, Most Youthful, craving thy favour for the ninth time, Agni; / Tryaruna who with attentive spirit accepteth many a song from me the mighty." Just as in Hale's verse Tryaruna is to be taken as the asura of its first half, so here he is to be taken as identical with Trasadasyu of the verse's beginning. In Sri Aurobindo's reading, the three dawns constitute in Tryaruna Trasadasyu the state of a demi-god, man turned into the Indra-type. Interpreting as "the disperser of the destroyers" the name "Trasadasyu" which literally means "one who makes the Dasyus tremble", Sri Aurobindo⁵¹³ translates verse 3: "For thus has he done desiring thy grace of mind, new-given for him new-manifested, - he, the disperser of the destroyers, the lord of the triple dawn who with attentive mind gives response to the many words of my many births." Evidently, apart from other differences, the words návis-thāya navamám, which Griffith renders "Most youthful ... for the ninth time" are taken by Sri Aurobindo in related senses as both derived from náva, "new".

Then there is the expression me ... tuvijātáasya which in Griffith becomes "from me the mighty", too much of a contraction as we may realise from the occurrence of tuvijātắ in 1,2,9, where Griffith⁵¹⁴ marks the component jātá and

511.Griffith, op. cit., p. 313, vol. 1.

512.Ibid., p. 247, col. 2.

513.The Secret of the Veda, p. 417.

514.Op. cit., p. 2, col. 1.

Page 408

translates "strong by birth". Sri Aurobindo, in translating tuvi as "many" instead of "strong", accepts the traditional sense, bahu, which has the authority of the Nighantu (3,1). Thus he gives balance to the accompanying phrase girah purvír, "many words" (Griffith's "many a song") and adds point to the closing "births" by opting for the alternative "many". He has a comment relevant to the present case when in dealing with 1,2,9 elsewhere he⁵¹⁵ writes: "Tuvijātā is 'multiply born', for tuvi, meaning originally strength or force, is used like the French word 'force' in the sense of many." Referring to that earlier verse, where Mitra and Varuṇa figure, Sri Aurobindo comments: "by the birth of the gods is meant always in the Veda their manifestation; thus tuvijātā signifies 'manifested multiply', in many forms and activities." As regards verse 3 in our hymn Sri Aurobindo⁵¹⁶ sums up its drive and that of the next verse in connection with the surpassing of the human formula by means of the triple dawn effecting the Indra-type in man's mentality and creating the demi-god: "The seer of this self-fulfilment on the higher plane is born, as it were, into many realms of consciousness and from each of these there go up its words that express the impulses in it which seek a divine fulfilment. The Mind-Soul answers to these and gives assent, it supplies to the word of expression the answering word of illumination and to the Life that seeks the Truth it gives the power of intelligence that finds and holds the Truth."

Sri Aurobindo's esoteric reading has surely more precision in its attitude to the verbal interplay of suggestion than the common one which Griffith exemplifies. And the Rigveda itself provides a general background to it in verse 8 of hymn 4,42 to Indra-Varuṇa with the phrase: "Trasadasyu, a demi-god [ardhadevám], like Indra, conquering foemen."⁵¹⁷ And as if to emphasise the extraordinary cha-

515.The Secret of the Veda, p. 72.

516.Ibid., p. 417, fn. 3.

517.Griffith, op. cit., p. 229, col. 1.

Page 409

racterization, verse 9 repeats for Trasadasyu the cognomen "demi-god".

Because the demi-god images Indra in the human mentality he is described by some known epithets for Indra: "Asura" and "Satpati". Even the frequent epithet "Maghavan" ("Lord of Bounty") can be shown as implied. For, in the Sanskrit of Hale's verse we have cétistho ... maghónah which he has translated "more excellent than (any other) patron". But the word maghávan, which appears here in the ablative case, is likely to carry a superhuman connotation rather than meaning "patron". Monier-Williams⁵¹⁸ defines maghávan: "possessing or distributing gifts, bountiful, liberal, munificent (esp. said of Indra and other gods, but also of institutors of sacrifices who pay the priests and singers)." This definition may be seen as suggesting that if a patron is meant by maghávan it is by analogy from a god, particularly Indra. If we take the primary and indubitable meaning, the rendering of cétistho ... maghónah would be: "more excellent than a bountiful god" and, since Indra is maghávan foremost, the greater excellence would consist in being more Indra-like in bounty than any such god in general. Hale's translation rests on a secondary aspect which the lexicographers have posited on the assumption that the Magha-vans connected with the Rigvedic priests and singers could be other than the gods who fundamentally bear that name. To press a wholly human Maghavan on our attention in 5,27,1 is unnecessary and arbitrary.

To move towards the full spiritual significance of the hymn we must look at the fourth name coming up in it. Verses 4, 5 and 6 have "Aśvamedha", "one who gives the horse-sacrifice." We have already seen the drive of verse 3. It takes up the preceding vision of the Mind-Soul awakened to knowledge as the human-born Indra designated Tryaruna Traivrsna, figuring it as the destroyer of demons, Trasadasyu, and opening up a prospect of many inner domains.

518. Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 772, col. 2.

Page 410

These domains not only fulfil the mind's aspiration but also help the Truth-seeking Life-Soul with the reflected light of the God-Mind Indra in man's intelligence. Verse 4 in Sri Aurobindo⁵¹⁹ has the depth-revealing version: "May he who answers to me with assent give to the illumined giver of the Horse-sacrifice, by the word of illumination, possession of the goal of his journey; may he give power of intelligence to the seeker of the Truth." Keeping in view the Rigveda's symbol of asva, "horse", for vital force, Sri Aurobindo⁵²⁰supplies the explanatory note: "The Horse-sacrifice is the offering of the Life-Power with all its impulses, desires, enjoyments to the divine existence. The Life-Soul... is itself the giver of the sacrifice which it performs when by the power of Agni it attains to vision on its own plane, when it becomes, in the figure of the hymn, the illumined seer Aśvamedha."

We have gone somewhat far afield from Hale, but his superficial assessment of the situation called for our excursus.

We may glance at two other instances by Hale of his reading asura for a human being. Perhaps the most intractable-seeming is 1,126,2: "I Kaksīvān immediately received 100 gold pieces from the king who stood in need, 100 horses which were given, 100 cattle from the asura. (His) unending glory stretches to the sky."⁵²¹ To Hale, "The asura is here a king who, being in difficulties, had need of and rewarded highly the religious services of the poet Kaksīvān." Perhaps the rendering "stood in need" overdoes the drift of the original nắdhamānasya. Griffith's "beseeching"⁵²² is closer to it. Some help was required, but what kind of person asked for it? The verse preceding the one quoted explains why the poet is singing the praise of the great and powerful one (asura) concerned. Griffith has the sentence:

519.The Secret of the Veda, p. 417.

520.Ibid., fn. 4.

521.Hale, op. cit., p. 76.

522.Griffith, op. cit., p. 87, col. 1.

Page 411

"For he, unconquered King, desiring glory, hath furnished me a thousand sacrifices." Once we understand the role of "sacrifices" in the spiritual sense we shall enter into the inner mood of the Rigveda's utterances. A passage from Sri Aurobindo⁵²³ will be very apt here:

The Vedic deities are names, powers, personalities of the universal Godhead and they represent each some essential puissance of the Divine Being. They manifest the cosmos and are manifest in it. Children of Light, Sons of the Infinite, they recognise in the soul of man their brother and ally and desire to help and increase him by themselves increasing in him so as to possess his world with their light, strength and beauty. The Gods call man to a divine companionship and alliance; they attract and uplift him to their luminous fraternity, invite his aid and offer theirs against the Sons of Darkness and Division. Man in return calls the Gods to his sacrifice, offers to them his swiftnesses and his strengths, his clarities and his sweetnesses, - milk and butter of the shining Cow, distilled juices of the Plant of Joy, the Horse of the Sacrifice, the cake and the wine, the grain for the God-Mind's radiant coursers. He receives them into his being and their gifts into his life, increases them by the hymns and the wine and forms perfectly, - as a smith forges iron, says the Veda, - their great and luminous godheads.⁵²⁴

Here is a constant give-and-take, the Rishi is an ally of the gods, they increase themselves through his sacrifices and his

523.Hymns to the Mystic Fire, pp. 29-30.

524.The word "iron" translates the original ayas which popularly means this metal. Historical scholarship, however, ascertaining the time when iron first came into use, has brought about a different situation. Cf. Mortimer Wheeler: "The exact meaning of ayas in the Rigveda is uncertain. If it does not merely imply 'metal' generically it probably refers rather to copper (aes) than to iron. See A.A. Macdonell and A.B. Keith, Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (London, 1912), I, p. 31."

Page 412

hymns to them, just as he grows by giving himself to their greatness. So a divine being who wants to add to his glory in the world of manifestation by means of the Rishi's "religious services" could easily be the Asura who grants spiritual wealth in various forms in return for the worshipper's own offerings.

The word sindhu

Perhaps an objection will be made on the strength of the phrase in the opening verse that this "unconquered King" was a "dweller on the bank of Sindhu",⁵²⁵ meaning the river Indus. But the objector would overlook two points. Macdonell⁵²⁶ has the observations: "the word sindhu ('river') ... in several passages of the Rigveda has practically the sense of 'sea'." - "The air is often called a sea, as the abode of the celestial waters...." Hymn after hymn refers to what is exoterically taken to be the expanse of the atmosphere viewed by way of a metaphor as "the mighty sea of air", as Griffith⁵²⁷ renders a phrase in 10,73,3. We also read in him⁵²⁸"the sea under and the sea above us" (7,6,7) as well as "the sea of heaven" (8,26,17). Further, when Griffith⁵²⁹ translates 1,46,2 with "Sons of the Sea" for the Aśvins and annotates the phrase by "offspring of the celestial ocean, the atmosphere", what do we find in the Sanskrit original? Sindhumātarā. So, even from the non-mystical angle, the Asura could be a non-human being of the aerial Sindhu.

Sri Aurobindo⁵³⁰ drives straight to the mark we need when he writes: "The Veda speaks of two oceans, the upper and the lower waters. These are the oceans of the subconscient,

525.Griffith, op. cit., p. 87, col. 1.

526.Op. cit., pp. 143 & 68.

527.Op. cit., p. 501, col. 1.

528.Ibid., p. 337, col. 1 & p. 417, col. 2.

529.Ibid., p. 30', col. 1.

530.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 96, 97 & 98.

Page 413

dark and inexpressive, and the ocean of the superconscient, luminous and eternal expression but beyond the human mind. Vamadeva in the last hymn [58] of the fourth Mandala speaks of these two oceans.... And in the closing verse he speaks of the whole of existence being triply established, first in the seat of Agni - which we know from other Riks to be the Truth-consciousness, Agni's own home, svam da-mam, rtam brhat, - secondly, in the heart, the sea, which is evidently the same as the heart-ocean [the hrdyāt samudrāt mentioned in the fifth verse], - thirdly, in the life of man.... The sea of the superconscient is the goal of the rivers of clarity, of the honeyed wave [described in the first verse], as the sea of the subconscient in the heart within is their place of rising. This upper sea is spoken of as the Sindhu, a word which may mean either a river or ocean; but in this hymn it clearly means ocean."

Thus the objection based on the word "Sindhu" in 1,126,1 has no inevitable force of the earthly.

Some momentous problems

Now for three final examples from Hale. One of them from a hymn to Viśvakarman, I choose because of a number of problems it brings up, whose resolution is momentous both for Hale and me, if not even for Parpola. Hale⁵³¹ quotes and translates 10,82,5 and then comments on it:

Paró divắ para enắ prthivyắ

paró devébhir ásurair yád ásti

kám svid gárbham prathamám dadhra ắpo

yatra devắh samápaśyanta víśve.

"Which is beyond the sky, beyond this earth, beyond the gods (and) the asuras, indeed what embryo did the waters receive at first, where all the gods together looked on?"

531. Op. cit., p. 82.

Page 414

The comment: "The asuras here seem to be human lords. The first pāda sets up an opposition between heaven and earth and the second pāda gives a parallel opposition between the gods who rule heaven and the asuras who rule earth."

The idea of "ruling" is arbitrarily brought in. The drift is towards going past even what we may regard as ultimate entities, primeval realities like heaven and earth. The gods can figure as such, but those who rule earth as human beings can hardly be categorized thus. I am afraid Hale's translation would give us two classes of deities qualifying as ultimate or primeval. This would go against his position that there was no pair of separate gods and asuras: the gods themselves in their aspect of power were asuras. We have already quoted three verses which pointedly prove the identification, as against Parpola's doctrine of a dualism of deities. However, a straightforward consideration of the first part of Hale's verse would seem to support the dualism. What gives us pause is the second part: "... where all the gods together looked on?" If the asuras are as ultimate, as primeval as the gods, why are only the latter mentioned now? The answer should emerge on our noting that the conjunction "and" joining "the gods" to "the asuras" has been put within brackets. There is no "and" in the Sanskrit in the first half of the verse. We have only three groups introduced successively by the preposition "beyond" repeated thrice. It should be quite legitimate to take ásurair in apposition to devébhir and read "the gods, the asuras" - the second turn of expression characterizing the gods as "the mighty ones". The whole phrase - paró devébhir ásurair -would correspond in the plural form to the singular we met in connection with Rudra: námobhir devám ásuram (5,42, 11). Even the non-singular has already occurred in 8,25,4 which calls Mitra-Varuṇa devắv ásurā. Hale's "human beings" are superfluous no less than irrelevant.

Our next instance from Hale⁵³² strikes him as so clear that

532. Ibid. pp. 82-83.

Page 415

he simply comments: "The asuras again are human lords." The original runs:

yáthā devắ ásuresu

śraddhắm ugrésu cakriré

evám bhojésu yájvasv

asmắkam uditám krdhi. (10,151,3)

Hale translates: "Just as the gods created for themselves trust among the powerful asuras, so make what is spoken by us (to be trustworthy) among the generous offerers." Facing such a translation we wonder how the second part's reference to "us" and "the generous offerers" - both parties on the same human level - can correspond to the first part's relationship between gods and human lords who are beings not on the gods' level at all?

A clue to the right sense calls out to us in the adjective "powerful" before the noun "asuras" - as if the power-fulness implicit in the noun were not enough in the context to give the intended meaning. Obviously a contrast is to be understood between the devas in general and the particular beings who are termed asuras. The adjective serves to point it, implying not that the asuras are human lords but that they are gods of a special order. But in that case Hale's rendering is defective. To allow the adjective ugrésu to have its proper bearing in the sentence we need a translation like Griffith's:⁵³³"Even as the Deities maintained faith in the mighty Asuras, / So make this uttered wish of mine true for the liberal worshippers." And the exact import of the verse is clarified in Griffith's note: "Asuras: the primeval Aryan Gods, Dyaus, Varuṇa, and some others, who were venerated by Indra and other Indo-Aryan deities of a later creation." Hale's "human lords" have to be nowhere on the scene.

We reach the end of our inquiry with Hale's:⁵³⁴ "O

533.Op. cit., p. 642, col. 2.

534.Op. cit., p. 48.

Page 416

Maruts, may there be for us a powerful hero who is an asura of the people (and) a distributor, by whom we may cross the waters for a safe dwelling..." (7,56,24). The last phrase at once rings a bell drawing us beyond Hale's opinion:⁵³⁵ "The asura here is a human leader of the people." In the Rigveda, as Sri Aurobindo⁵³⁶ tells us, "man is ... described as crossing the waters over to his home in the Truth-Consciousness and the gods as carrying him over...." Next, against Hale's opinion we may pit the suggestion of the superhuman in his own translation⁵³⁷ of verse 1 of 7,6, a hymn to Agni Vaisvanara: "(I speak) forth the praise of the universal monarch, the asura, the man of the people who is to be acclaimed. I praise the deed of the one powerful as Indra. I speak praising the breaker." Comparable to the other hymn's "asura of the people" we have here "the asura, the man of the people". Even more seemingly conducive to a human asurahood than anything in the former phrase is the word "man" now; and yet Sri Aurobindo⁵³⁸ sets all doubt at rest with his enlightening remark about such a term:

Gods as men

The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They are bora above in the divine Truth as creators of the worlds and guardians of the divine law; they are born also here in the world itself and in man as cosmic and human powers of the Divine.... The antique view of the world as a psychophysical and not merely a material reality is at the root of the ancient ideas about the efficacy of the mantra and the relation of the gods to the external life of man; hence the force of prayer, worship, sacrifice.... But in man himself the gods are conscious psychological powers.... For this

535.Ibid., p. 49.

536.The Secret of the Veda, p. 83.

537.Op. cit., p. 40.

538.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 440-41.

Page 417

reason Dawn is addressed "O thou who art human and divine" and the gods constantly described as the "Men" or human powers (mānuṣāh, narāh); they are "our luminous seers", "our heroes", "our lords of plenitude". They conduct the sacrifice in their human capacity (manusvat) as well as receive it in their high divine being.

Moreover, to match the phrase "a powerful hero" in the Maruts-hymn we have not only Sri Aurobindo's mention of "our heroes" as a designation of the gods in their action in humanity: we have also Hale's translation⁵³⁹ of 3,53,7 where the term "asura" leaves not an inch of ground for any human association: "These generous Ahgirases in another form, sons of the sky, heroes of the asura, giving gifts to Viśvāmitra in the thousandfold soma pressing cross forth to long life." Hale⁵⁴⁰ reflects on the verse: "The asura is ... not named. The proximity of the phrases 'sons of the sky' and 'heroes of the asura' suggests that the asura here is the sky. Comparison with RV 10.10.2 and 10.67.2, which contain similar phrases, confirms this view. It is noteworthy that an asura can have heroes (vīrá-)." In 10,67,2 the exact phrase about the "Arigirases" is repeated. A variation occurs in 10,10,2:⁵⁴¹ "the sons of the great one, heroes of the asura, sustainers of the sky look around far and wide." Hale⁵⁴²observes about the former phrase: "Dyaus appears to be the asura" - and about the latter expression: "It is uncertain who the asura is here. Geldner is probably right in suggesting that it is Dyaus. Whitney translates 'the sons of the great asura, heroes' and interprets this to mean Varuṇa's spies, but this is unlikely." Concerning the "heroes", we realise clearly from 10,10,2 that they, especially by being "sustainers of the sky", are divine beings.

539.Op. cit., p. 44.

540.Ibid., pp. 44-45.

541.Ibid., p. 73.

542.Ibid., pp. 72-73.

Page 418

Final pointers

Sri Aurobindo⁵⁴³ has some unusual pointers in this context: "... the Angirases are not merely the deified human fathers, they are also brought before us as heavenly seers, sons of the gods, sons of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, divas putrāso asurasya vīrāh (III.53.7), an expression which, their number being seven, reminds us strongly, though perhaps only fortuitously, of the seven angels of Ahura Mazda in the kindred Iranian mythology."

What Sri Aurobindo says draws us beyond Dyaus and evokes Varuṇa who, as part of the dual Mitra-Varuṇa, links up with the Avestan Mithra-Ahura and affords us a glimmer of an Indo-Iranian deity "Asura", the word connoting "Lord" or "the Mighty One".

APPENDIX 2 TO SUPPLEMENT V

(Ref. asterisk fn., p: 222)

An addition is to be made to the horse-evidence ending on p. 222 contra Meadow and Parpola. S. P. Shukla of the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology (Kuruk-shetra University), in his article "Relics of the Protohistoric Art in Punjab and Haryana", deals with a few of the sites excavated in "the Pre-Harappan (c. 2500 B.C.), Harappan (c. 2300-1800 B.C.) and Post-Harappan (c. 1700-1000 B.C.) phases".⁵⁴⁴ He writes, in the course of his treatment of the Harappan urban phase, about one of the terracotta animal figurines from Balu:⁵⁴⁵

543.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 152-53.

544.Haryana Sahitya Akademi Journal of Indological Studies, Ed. O. P. Bharadwaj, Vol. Ill, Nos. 1-2, Spring 1988, issued in 1990 (Chandigarh), p. 266.

545.Ibid., p. 270. For the illustration see the second of the three art-paper sheets between pp. 272 and 273.

Page 419

"The animal figure, with its head, tail and legs missing, has on its back a saddle-like decoration in black stripes. It is not a humped figure (Fig. 14). The curve of the back and thickness near the tail and the saddle-like decoration on its back suggest it to be the figure of a horse."

Page 420

< Prev.

Book

Next >

ABOUT

The Problem Of Aryan Origins

From an Indian Point of View

Poems by Sri Aurobindo

Spiritual Significance of Flowers

Disciples / Seekers

Sri Aurobindo's Works

The Mother's Works

Satprem's Books

Works by Disciples / Seekers

Guidance

Let us co-create the website.