The Problem Of Aryan Origins

APPENDICES

Appendix 1. Harappa and the Rigveda's Hariyupiya

I

Harappā AND THE RIGVEDA'S Hariyūpiyā

Bridget and Raymond Allchin, although aware that quite clearly in several hymns of the Rigveda "the Dasa rulers were regarded as demons", choose to think of these hymns as referring to the first early attacks of "Indra (the Aryan people personified)" on "the fortified settlements of the Dāsas", and assert, among other things: "We hear of...a battle on the banks of the Ravi at a place named Hariyūpiyā (which Indologists are ever more confidently identifying with Harappā)."¹

Wheeler also has lent his name to the identification; but his is a somewhat reserved support when he writes: "There is a possibility, or perhaps, rather not an impossibility, that in the modern place-name may be recognized the Hari-Yupiya which is mentioned once in the Rigveda (VI. xxvii, 5) as the scene of the defeat of the Vrcivants by Abhyavartin Cāyamāna."² Wheeler elaborates upon the suggestion: "The tribe of the Vrcivants is likewise nowhere else referred to in the Rigveda, but may be connected with Varcin, who was a foe of Indra and therefore non-Aryan. Putting these possibilities together, they may be thought to indicate Harappā as the traditional scene of an Aryan victory over a non-Aryan tribe."

Wheeler admits that as the conjecture is not susceptible of proof it has no serious value, but the way he has presented it

1.The Birth of Indian Civilization, p. 155. Some of the Indologists referred to - whether positively or tentatively inclined - are: B.B. Roy in the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society (Patna), March 1928, pp. 129-130; H.C. Raychaudhuri in An Advanced History of India (London, 1946), p. 26; D.D. Kosambi in Journal, Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXVI (1950), p. 56 as well as in The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India (London, 1965), p. 79.

2.Op. cit., p. 27.

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renders it very attractive and, in spite of his disclaimer, gives more than "a little specious actuality", which he allows, to his "story of Harappā". When we add the information that the Vrichīvants are to be located near the river Paruṣṇī or Yavyāvatī, which is the modern Ravī on which Harappā stands, the case for the conjecture acquires an extra strength.

However, everything crumbles on close examination. We learn from Pusalker: "Daivavāta [Abhyāvartin], a king of the Srinjayas, is celebrated as victorious over the Turvasas and the Vrichīvants."³ Pusalker also says: "As their allies the Tritsus were in the Madhyadesa, the authors of the Vedic Index rightly suggest that the Srinjayas may well have been a good deal further east than the Indus...⁴ Turvaśas were the common enemies of the Srinjayas and Bhāratas...⁵ The Bhāratas... were settled, in the Rigvedic age, in the region between the Saraswati and Yumunā. The Bhāratas appear prominently in the Rigveda in relationship with [King] Sudās and the Tritsus...⁶ Among the tribes who were hostile to Sudas, the Druhyus, Turvasas and Anus lived between the Asiknī [Chenāb] and Parushnī.. Zimmer identifies Turvaśas and Vrichīvants, but the passages merely show that they were allies."⁷ From all this we get the picture of various attacks by Aryan kings hailing from Madhyadeśa, well to the east of the Indus, upon peoples west of the Ravi. There is a martial movement from more towards less inland India. It is from "the region between the Saraswati and Yamunā", which is east of Harappā, instead of from the north-west or at least the west of the city. The relative positions of Abhya-vartin Chāyamāna and the Vrichīvants, those allies of the Turvasas, are not in the slightest such as might fit into a tale of Indra's foes undergoing an Aryan invasion from outside India: the attack is from inside India and from a direction

3."Aryan Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, p.247.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid.

6.Ibid., p. 245.

7.Ibid., p. 247.

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opposite to the one surmised for invading Aryans.

Again, have we any reason to dub the Vrichīvants the foes of Indra? The connection with Varchin, which Wheeler proposes, is borrowed from Macdonell and Keith.⁸ But, even if it holds, have we not seen these scholars interpreting the term "Asura" as indicating a demon and noting its association with Varchin? To be connected with Varchin does not automatically create "a non-Aryan tribe". But actually the Vrichīvants, like the Turvasas and the other peoples listed in the several encounters, never figure in the Rigveda as anything except Aryan. Pusalker speaks of the Bhāratas, whose king was Sudas, as displaying "their military prowess, in the Rigvedic age,... in their successful campaigns both against the Aryans in the west and the non-Aryans in the east".⁹ In fact, even the non-Aryanism of the eastern tribes is uncertain. For, Pusalker qualifies his first statement by saying: "The Ajas, Sigrus, and Yakshus were probably the eastern people. They are generally regarded as non-Aryan."¹⁰ Be that as it may, the Vrichīvants are among names whose Aryanism is indubitable.

Even if they had been openly called foes of Indra, they would not have necessarily turned non-Aryan. Some of the epithets applied to the Dāsas and Dasyus - ayajvan, "non-sacrificing", adevayu, "not worshipping the Vedic gods", anyavrata, "follower of strange ordinances" - find their analogues in designations flung at unquestionably Aryan leaders such as the ten kings who fought against Sudas. Mookerji, listing the definitions of the so-called non-Aryan tribes, draws our attention to a number of them being "also applied to Aryans": "In Rv., vii, 83, 7 all the ten kings and their allies who were the enemies of Sudas are branded 'non-sacrificers' (ayajyavah) and in vii, 18, 16 as animdra, 'not worshipping Indra'. In another passage, vii, 104, 14-15, Rishi Vasishtha himself is condemned as 'worshipping false

8.The Vedic Index, II, pp. 246, 319, 499.

9.Op. cit., p. 243.

10. Ibid., p. 247.

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gods' (AnritadevaK)"¹¹ In animdra we observe the very label Wheeler would imply for the Vrichīvants by linking them with Varchin: "foes (or non-worshippers) of Indra".

Lastly, with the help of some vivid phrases of D.D. Kosambi's we may drive a sharp line of differentiation between the Rigvedic battle at Hariyūpiyā and any conceivable Aryan attack. Kosambi is, in general, of Wheeler's school, but his statement is both more balanced and more conducive to the correct interpretation: "Indra wiped out the remnants of the Varasikhas at Hariyūpiyā on behalf of Abhyavartin Cāyamāna, an Aryan chief. The tribe destroyed was that of the Vṛicīvats, whose front line of 130 panoplied warriors was shattered like an earthen pot by Indra on the Yavyāvatī (Ravi) river, the whole opposing army being ripped apart like 'old clothes'; the rest fled in terror. Such vigorous language describes some actual fight at Harappā, whether between two Aryan groups or between Aryans and non-Aryans."¹²

The open attitude in the final phrase about the combatants throws into the melting-pot the whole question whether the attack could be of Aryan invaders against a pre-Aryan Indus Civilization. And the emphasis on Indra's actions brings up two crucial points. One emerges on our attending to a few words of Kosambi himself a little before and a little after: "It is always difficult to separate Vedic myth from possible historic reality; rhetorical praise may or may not represent some military success on the battlefield... Later Rigvedic military feats seem historical, as they are ascribed to human beings, heroes, or kings, not to the god Indra." The implicit sense, that the Hariyūpiyā-incident is not outer history but something inner symbolised, comes out clear and sets at nought Kosambi's own contention that the vigorous language should indicate some "actual fight at Harappā".¹³ And, when we see Indra's actions in the light we have brought to

11.Hindu Civilization, I, p. 87, fn. 1.

12.The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, p. 79.

13.Ibid., pp. 79, 81.

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bear from Sri Aurobindo, the god's exclusive role makes it absolutely indisputable that here we have a drama of the spiritual life cast into material images and that the means of victory were not bows and arrows, spears and fire-brands and maces but solely Mantras.

The Rigveda's Hariyuplya is far removed in implication from the Indus Civilization's Punjāb-capital with its fortified citadel. Our single chance, by whatever leap of the imagination from a seeming similarity of name, to bring the Rig-vedics into rapport with the end of the Harappā Culture is ruined by the all-dominating part played by Wheeler's puramdara.

Besides, can Hariyūpiyā be considered with certainty a town at all? H.C. Raychaudhuri, one of the "Indologists" the Allchins have in mind, has the honest but disturbing phrase: "... Hariyūpiyā, the designation of a river or a city according to the commentators..."¹⁴ And, when he translates the passages concerned, he lets himself use a turn of speech suggestive of a river rather than a city. Not only does he say "on the Yavyāvatī": he also says "on the Hariyūpiyā".¹⁵

14. "The Early Vedic Age", An Advanced History of India p 26
15. Ibid., p. 25.

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