The Problem Of Aryan Origins

Chapter Thirteen

SRI AUROBINDO'S SYMBOLIC INTERPRETATION

OF THE RIGVEDA

Authorities on the Rigveda agree that the vital difference recognized by the Aryan between himself and his enemy the non-Aryan is religio-cultural. Sri Aurobindo takes a revolutionary step beyond this consensus. With a masterly sweep of intuitive insight, linguistic expertise and exegetical logic, which can hardly be ignored, he has demonstrated all other arguable distinctions to be merely aspects of that one difference and given a wholly non-physical and supernatural explanation of the Rigveda's religio-cultural drama of collaboration and conflict.

He has a strong prima facie case. Quite reasonably he argues: "Such profound and ultimate thoughts, such systems of subtle and elaborate psychology as are found in the substance of the Upanishads, do not spring out of a previous void... The thought of the Upanishads supposes great origins anterior to itself, and these in the ordinary theory are lacking. The hypothesis, invented to fill the gap, that these ideas were borrowed by barbarous Aryan invaders from the civilized Dravidians, is a conjecture supported only by other conjectures."¹ Sri Aurobindo demands a background such as preceded the schools of intellectual philosophy in Europe. Just as the "Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries prepared the rich soil of mentality out of which sprang Pythagoras and Plato", so too does the Rigveda represent "the starting point... for the later march of thought in India".² In fact, to Sri Aurobindo, the Orphic and Eleusianian mysteries are "the failing remnants" of an early period of human development that is documented most substantially by the Rigveda, a period "when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to

1.Op. cit., pp. 3-4.

2.Ibid. p . 4.

Page 107

determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated".³

Sri Aurobindo, glancing at post-Vedic literature, observes: "Much indeed of the forms and symbols of thought which we find in the Upanishads, much of the substance of the Brahmanās supposes a period in India in which thought took the form or the veil of secret teaching such as those of the Greek mysteries."⁴ And in the Rigveda itself there are certain affirmations to justify the term "Veda" which means "Knowledge" and the title "Rishi" implying seerhood for the hymn-composer. Sri Aurobindo cites two of them: "In one of Vamadeva's hymns in the fourth Mandala (IV.3.16) the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, 'secret words' - ninyā vāchamsi - 'seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer' - kāvyāni kavaye nivachanā. The Rishi Dirghatamas speaks of the Riks, the Mantras of the Veda, as existing 'in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable in which all the gods are seated,' and he adds 'one who knows not That what shall he do with the Rik?' (I.164.39)."⁵

Sri Aurobindo refers also to the frequent appeal by the Upanishads to the Rigveda's authority for the truths they themselves announce, and he informs us that even the ancient lexicographer Yāska's Nirukta speaks of several schools of Vedic interpretation, from which it singles out as the most authentic the spiritual one holding that "the Rishis saw the truth, the true law of things, directly by an inner vision."⁶ In further support of Sri Aurobindo there is the curious fact observable right to our own day and contradicting the trend of thought which sets the Rigveda aside as a

3.Ibid., pp. 5-6.

4.Ibid., p. 4.

5.Hymns to the Mystic Fire (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1946), Foreword, p. IX.

6.Ibid., pp. I and XI.

Page 108

book of priestly rituals for a common household life at once dutiful and prosperity-seeking - the fact of a persistent popular tradition in India that, echoing the pronouncements of the old Rishis, takes this scripture as embodying mantras of an eternal Verity.

Yes, Sri Aurobindo is not indulging in a new-fangled ingenuity. But he does not stop with discerning and disclosing mystical elements in the Rigveda: he asserts that the Dāsas and Dasyus against whom the Rishis wage war are not human beings at all. This assertion of a thorough-going symbolism may sound fantastic. But it can be upheld even by choosing to meet the proponents of the current historical and naturalistic theory on their own ground with just a few sidelights from Sri Aurobindo.

No doubt, the Dāsas and Dasyus are characterized by the expressions anās and kṛiṣṇa-tvāch, which may be translated respectively "noseless" and "black-skinned" and applied to flat-nosed dark-complexioned "Dravidians" of a predominantly Proto-Australoid stock, a streak of which has always been present in India. But when we look a little closely at the Dāsa-Dasyu "tribes" we are bound to be struck by deeper possibilities. Macdonell and Keith, with no bias towards symbolism, have yet stated: "Dasyu, a word of somewhat doubtful origin, is in many passages of the Rigveda clearly applied to superhuman enemies... Dāsa, like Dasyu, sometimes denotes enemies of a demoniac character in the Rigveda."⁷ Can we be equally positive that in any passage these terms refer to human beings?

Macdonell and Keith opine: "this may be regarded as certain in those passages where the Dasyu is opposed to the Aryan who defeats him with the aid of the gods."⁸ But surely the merely helping role of the deities cannot confer incontrovertible humanness on the human Aryan's foe. If a Dāsa or Dasyu is a demon-enemy, he is hostile both to the gods of the Aryan and to the worshipper who is favoured by them. It

7.The Vedic Index, I, pp. 347, 356.

8.Ibid., p. 347.

Page 109

can make little difference to the enemy's character whether the gods fight him directly in the inner occult world or through the aid they give to the soul of the worshipper fighting him there.

And the lack of difference is suggested sharply when even Dāsas or Dasyus mentioned by name and thus individualized as if they were brute physical facts are fought in a manner least expected. B.K. Ghosh informs us: "Dāsa princes like Sambara, Dhuni, Chumuri, Pipru and Varchin have been actually mentioned by the Rigvedic poets, but it is significant that, as a rule, Indra himself has been made to combat them on his own initiative and not in course of rendering routine assistance to Aryan chiefs."⁹ Thus the most human-seeming Dāsas are, in the majority of cases, opposed principally not to human beings. We therefore cannot be certain that they are human enemies and, if we cannot be certain for them, how can we be so elsewhere?

Macdonell and Keith themselves show us the highly ambiguous aspect of these Dāsas. We hear from them of a group composed of Chumuri, his friend Dhuni and, along with them, Śushna, Pipru and Śambara who in one passage is realistically called son of Kulitara.¹⁰ Ilibisa and Varchin are two other chiefs mentioned.¹¹ Of the former company our authors affirm: "It is impossible to say whether real men or demons are meant."¹² About Pipru they declare: "Mentioned as possessing forts, he is called a Dāsa as well as an Asura... It is uncertain whether he was a demon, according to Roth's view, which is favoured by the use of the word Asura, or a human foe, as Ludwig, Oldenberg and Hille-brandt believe."¹³ On the word "Asura" we may quote Pusalker: "It is indeed difficult to identify the Asuras with any of the ancient peoples. Sten Konow thinks them to be

9. "Language and Literature", The Vedic Age, pp. 346-47.

10.Op. cit., I, p. 262, II, p. 355.

11.Ibid., I, p. 358.

12.Ibid., p. 262.

13.Ibid., p. 532.

Page 110

nonhuman."¹⁴ Now, the word "Asura" which strongly suggests demonhood is also associated with Varchin.¹⁵ And the association of Pipru the Asura with all the others who are his likes casts on them too the Asuric hue. So the very individuals who are specifically named - including the son of Kulitara - emerge from the Vedic Index as devoid of definite human concreteness and loom as superhuman.

We may add that being the son of anybody confers no necessary humanness, the realistic touch notwithstanding: metaphorical or mystic language easily admits such a description. Are not the gods of the Rigveda, besides being given individual names like Indra, termed the sons of Aditī, the "undivided" Mother, the Goddess of Infinity?

This question brings up a most momentous point. As Sri Aurobindo remarks, the Dasyus (or Dānavas) are born from Ditī (or Danu) in contrast to the gods who are born from Aditī.¹⁶ Ditī is the Mother, the Goddess, of division and finitude. Thus the Dasyus belong, on the opposite side, to the same universe of discourse as the gods, though they are the enemies not only of the gods but also of these gods' followers, the Aryan seers.

Here an extremely thought-provoking text may be brought forward in our support. Mookerji, who in common with modern historians never doubts the human character of the Dāsa-Dasyus in some passages, goes into the details of their conflict with the Aryans and in the course of his account quotes a passage, with a brief introducing remark: "The Aryan prayer to Indra in x, 22, 8 sums up the situation thus: 'We are surrounded on all sides by Dasyu tribes. They do not perform sacrifices; they do not believe in anything; their rites are different, they are not men! O destroyer of foes! kill them. Destroy the Dāsa race!"¹⁷

The passage, mentioning both the Dasyu tribes and the

14."Aryan Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, p.250

15.The Vedic Index, II, p. 246.

16.The Secret of the Veda, p. 224.

17.Ancient India (Allahabad, 1955), p. 56.

Page 111

Dāsa race, puts forth a sweeping definition of them in terms of the non-human. It has the statement: "they are not men." And the identical expression - amānuṣa - occurs also in the passage just preceding Mookerji's and there (x, 22, 7) it is applied to a particular individual Dāsa who has a specific name: Śushna. Indra is addressed as: "You who destroyed the non-man Śushna!"

Surely, if not only Dāsa-Dasyus in general but also concretely named leaders among them can be described straightforwardly as being not men, their alleged human character is exceedingly suspect. Of course, one may plead that the Rishi, intending to spotlight cruelty as well as non-conformity, has indulged in a bit of exaggeration and really means nothing more than "inhuman". The excuse is not very convincing and, to say the least, amānuṣa wraps all the Dāsas and Dasyus in ambiguity to the nth degree.

The Rigvedic foe called Pani shares essentially the same ambiguity. In fact, in two passages the Panis appear as Dāsas¹⁸ and in one as Dasyus.¹⁹ We learn from the Vedic Index: "In some passages the Panis definitely appear as mythological figures, demons who withhold the cows or waters of heaven... It is difficult to be certain who a Pani was. It is, however, hardly necessary to do more than regard the Panis generally as non-worshippers of the gods favoured by the singers; the term is wide enough to cover either the aborigines or hostile Aryan tribes as well as demons."²⁰

This remark of Macdonell and Keith is very enlightening. It puts the Panis at the same time vis-à-vis the gods and away from racial distinctions. If in some passages they definitely are demons and if in all passages they are best characterized as non-worshippers of the Rigvedic gods and if in any passage they may even be Aryan tribes turned non-worshippers, there can be no pointer anywhere to their being racially

typified as Dravidians, and their universally religious context

18.The Vedic Index, I, p. 472.

19.Ibid., p.471.

20.Ibid., pp. 471, 472.

Page 112

prompts us to extend everywhere the demonhood about which we are definite in several places.

And what holds for the Panis holds equally for the Dāsas and Dasyus wherever they come in. And this not only because the Panis themselves are called Dāsas and Dasyus but also because the latter, besides being unmistakably supernatural in several places, are equally set by the Rigveda in a religious context²¹ - that is to say, considered "non-worshippers of the gods favoured by the singers". Hence it is absurd to explain anās, which occurs in one passage of the Rigveda (V. 29,10), as showing the Dāsas and Dasyus to be Proto-Australoid Dravidians with flat noses that qualify them to be dubbed "noseless". Similarly absurd it is to regard kṛiṣṇa-tvāch, which at most occurs twice (1.130,8 and probably IX.41,1), as describing them further as a race by their black skins, and to take the words Dāsa varna. "Dāsa colour", as pointing to the physical complexion of the Dāsas in contrast to the Arya varna which is sukra or sveta, "white".

We have to understand anās along with that other word in the same verse, mridhra-vāk, which Macdonell and Keith translate "of hostile speech", while noting that it has been rendered "of stammering, or unintelligible speech".²² Sri Aurobindo gives the right context for both this word and anās in a comparison of religious or spiritual qualities and defects, and makes them yield their natural significance.²³ The Aryan is the sacrificer to the gods; the gods receive, uphold, impel his sacrifice. The Dasyu or Pani is the opposite of the Aryan as well as of the gods. The Aryan in the sacrifice finds the divine word. The Dasyus, the Panis, are the haters and destroyers of the word, brahma-dvisah, spoilers of speech, mridhra-vāchasah. They have no force of the divine breath or no mouth to speak the mantra, they are anāsah.

21.Ibid., pp. 347, 356-57.

22.Ibid., p. 348.

23.Op. cit., p. 226.

Page 113

Macdonell and Keith, though thinking "noseless" quite possible, are far from pooh-poohing a different meaning. They are prepard for it by another break-up of the Sanskrit word than a-nās. They write: "The sense of this word is not absolutely certain: the Pada text and Sayana both take it to mean 'without face' (an-as)."²⁴ And they add the footnote: "This sense allows of two interpretations: 'misfeatured,' which seems that of Roth, St. Petersburg Dictionary, s v., and Grassmann, Worterbuch; or 'speechless' (that is, unable to speak the language of the Aryans), which is that of Bollensen, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 41, 496."

As for kṛiṣṇa-tvach, we should note Sri Aurobindo's remark that in the very hymn (III.34) where the Arya varna is mentioned we find Indra as the increaser of the bright-coloured thoughts of his adorers: "the shining hue of these thoughts, śukram varnam āsam, is evidently the same as that śukra or sveta Aryan hue which is mentioned in verse 9", for Indra in increasing "the 'colour' of these thoughts beyond the opposition of the Panis... slays the Dasyus and protects or fosters and increases the Aryan 'colour', hatvī dasyūn pra aryam varnam āvat".²⁵ The Dāsa colour, therefore, is fundamentally psychological. And a reminiscence, according to Sri Aurobindo, of the psychological sense of colour among the ancient Aryans persisted into a later age when varna came to mean caste or class: different colours were used in that age to distinguish the four castes - white for the Brahmin, red for the Kshatriya, yellow for the Vaishya, black for the Sūdra.²⁶

And apropos of kṛiṣṇa-tvach we may see with Sri Aurobindo the Rik V.14,4 as one of the master-clues to the real character of Dasyus in general: agnir jāto arochate, ghnan dasyün jyotiṣā tamah, avindad ga apah svah - "Agni born shone out slaying the Dasyus, the darkness by the

24.Op. cit., I, p. 347.

25.Op. cit., pp. 220-21.

26.Ibid., p. 218.

Page 114

Light, he found the Cows, the Waters, Swar."²⁷ All Dasyus are here identified with the darkness, and Agni the god of fire brings about their destruction through the advent of light. The gloss which would put forward black-skinned aborigines will not do at all. We have either a symbolic account of a struggle between the Truth and the Falsehood, the Divine Power and the superhuman forces of Evil, resulting in the former's victory and the revelation of spiritual abundances and a heavenly world (Swar); or else a poetic rendering of the supplantation of night by sunrise, with the herds and rain-rivers and sky disclosed, all through the kindling of the physical sacrificial fire. The second alternative which would attribute natural phenomena, even the daily sunrise, to a little physical flame on an altar is decidedly artificial. The symbolic and spiritual interpretation immediately recommends itself.

According to Sri Aurobindo, the total situation deciding Rigvedic exegesis may be put as follows.²⁸ There are passages in which the spiritual interpretation of the Dāsas, Dasyus and Panis is the sole one possible and all others are completely excluded. There are no passages in which we lack a choice either between this interpretation and a nature-poetry or between this interpretation and the reading of human enemies. So neither that reading nor the nature-poetry is indispensable, and the spiritual interpretation which is imperative in several hymns and, unlike both of the two alternatives, is never completely excluded but remains possible in all the rest of the cases, stands out as the most logical, the single consistent and sufficient explanation when we attend to the whole Rigveda.

Against such a conclusion it is no valid objection to urge: "In later ages, groups of actual human beings were designated as Dasyus: both the Aitereya Brāhmaṇa and the Manusmriti (X, 42-44) are unequivocal on the point. Also, in the south-east of the Caspian there were the Dahai people

27.Ibid., p. 216.

28.Ibid.

Page 115

noted by the Greeks, and Daha is but the Irānian modification of Dāsa, and in Iranian the word 'dahya' was in use, meaning 'country' or 'the countryside' and perhaps serving earlier as a tribal name."

In answer we need only quote Pusalker's comments on those three tribal names in India's early literature, Rigvedic or other: Asura, Raksha, Piśācha. We have already cited him to the effect that it is very difficult to identify the Asuras with any ancient people and that Sten Konow thinks them to be non-human. As we have seen, the Vedic Index too inclines to a view like Sten Konow's. The term "Raksha", says Pusalker, "does not indicate any definite tribe; according to the authors of the Vedic Index it normally refers to demons in early Vedic literature, and is applied to human foes only metaphorically."²⁹ Thus some tribe-names do seem to go with subtle and occult agents in all early instances. Hence the fact that in subsequent ages actual peoples were called Dāsas or Dasyus should not prejudice us in any way with regard to the Rigveda. As for those Dāsas or Dasyus who are called Panis, we have no such name for an actual tribe in later ages nor, as Pusalker informs us, has the question of identifying them with any later tribe like the Parnians for instance been yet settled with any degree of certainty.³⁰

And in the Piśācha we have a case where any prejudice from subsequent times is quite impossible. For, Pusalker, immediately after mentioning the Rakshas who originally are demons and not a tribe, remarks: "The Piśāchas also likewise are not a tribe in Vedic literature though in later literature it is the designation of a tribe.³¹ Here Pusalker is in full agreement with the Vedic Index which equates them in early books like the Atharvaveda and the Taittirīya Saṁhitā to "ghouls" while accepting them as a human group at a much later date.³²

29."Aryan Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, p.250.

30.Ibid., p.249.

31.Ibid.

32.Op. cit., i,p.533.

Page 116

If, notwithstanding the post-Vedic tribe of the Piśāchas, their name at the beginning was on a par with the demon-designation "Raksha", the humanness of the post-Vedic Dāsas or Dasyus can make no odds to their supernatural character in the Rigvedic hymns.

Only one single objection is possible. Sri Aurobindo anticipates it and at once provides a pointer towards the answer:

"We may, if we like, suppose that there was a struggle between two different cults in India and that the Rishis took their images from the physical struggle between the human representatives of these cults and applied them to the spiritual conflict, just as they employed the other details of their physical life to symbolise the spiritual sacrifice, the spiritual wealth, the spiritual battle and journey. But it is perfectly certain that in the Rig-veda at least it is the spiritual conflict and victory, not the physical battle and plunder of which they are speaking."³³

A step ahead along the same lines would prompt us to say: "Human beings in the form of the Rishis - that is, as physical representatives of the cult of Light and Truth - stand self-confessed in the hymns. But both they and the Gods who are their superhuman helpers are pitted only against superhuman demoniac entities. These entities alone are taken as representatives of the cult of Darkness and Falsehood. The entire struggle is shown to be an inner occult one. No ground is given us to imagine the avowed human Rishis as struggling against another group equally human and representing opposite superhuman forces. To assume such a group would be to go beyond the specific implications of the hymns."

Even if we suppose a background struggle between two human groups, we still would be unjustified in postulating anything like an attack on the indigenous races by ethnically alien warriors from abroad. A conflict between two sections of a common Indian population is all that can be on the cards.

33. Op. cit., p. 215.

Page 117

In a review of O.C. Gangoly's South Indian Bronzes, Sri Aurobindo has some more definite words about the sections. He also touches once more on the subject of Aryan and non-Aryan, which usually implies an Aryan invasion of India. The first chapter dealing with the legendary origins of South Indian Art he calls "interesting and valuable", but adds: "...there are some startlingly confident statements against which our critical sense protests. For instance, 'it is beyond doubt that the two divisions of the country indicated by the Vindhya ranges were occupied by people essentially different in blood and temperament.' Surely the important theories which hold the whole Indian race to be Dravidian in blood or, without assigning either an 'Aryan' or 'non-Aryan' origin, believe it to be homogeneous - omitting some islander types on the southern coast and the Mongoloid races of the Himalayas - cannot be so lightly dismissed. The question is full of doubt and obscurity. The one thing that seems fairly established is that there were at least two types of culture in ancient India, the 'Aryan' occupying the Punjāb and Northern and Central India, Afghānistān, and perhaps Persia and distinguished in its cult by the symbols of the Sun, the Fire and the Soma sacrifice and the un-Aryan occupying the East, South and West, the nature of which it is quite impossible to restore from the scattered hints which are all we possess."³⁴

In the above, Sri Aurobindo does not surmise any conflict. If we surmise it, then too it need not be regarded as a contemporary background of the Rigveda's symbolic tale. It could validly be considered a past one, a physical analogue in a distant time to the Rigveda's story of the occult realms. This scripture's specific and reiterated suggestion, that the Dāsa-Dasyus are always demoniac forces of those realms and stand over against both the gods and the Aryans who worship them, precludes a contemporary confrontation with demon-inspired humans. Whatever physical confrontation

34. Views and Reviews (Sri Aurobindo Library, Madras), pp. 46-7.

Page 118

might have been must be relegated on the strength of that suggestion to a bygone phase of life far removed from the actual world of the Rishis. The sole affirmation that can be ventured for this world is of a co-existence of two cults without warlike contacts.

Sri Aurobindo's reading of the Rigveda affords no hold in any case to the theory erected on this scripture that Aryan foreigners took over by force a Dravidian North India of fortified cities.

And the non-historical nature of these much-discussed purah emerges quite clearly when we look at certain Rigvedic passages.

Not that scholars have failed altogether to perceive a strange unreality about the purah from the historical point of view. Like Wheeler, Macdonell and Keith frankly opine about the strongholds called āyasī: "...these are probably only metaphorical."³⁵ They also write: "It is possible that the forts, which are called 'autumnal' (śaradih), may be mythical, but it is not essential, for the epithet may allude to their being resorted to in the autumn season."³⁶ Yes, it is not essential in a certain context, but for how much should this context count in view of what in a non-esoteric interpretation could be considered solely as the characteristics of the clouds? Macdonell, in his History of Sanskrit Literature, enumerates these characteristics while relating the Rigvedic Indra's doings as a thunder-god. "The clouds," says Macdonell, "are designated by various names such as cow, udder, spring, cask or pail. They are also rocks (adri), which encompass the cows set free by Indra. They are further mountains from which Indra casts down the demons dwelling upon them. They thus become fortresses (pur) of the demons, which are ninety, ninety-nine, or a hundred in number, and are variously described as 'moving', 'autumnal', 'made of iron or stone'³⁷". Where is one to draw the

35.Op. cit., I, p. 131.

36.Ibid., p. 135.

37.P. 85.

Page 119

line between forts explicitly figurative or demoniac and those appearing to permit some sort of historical interpretation yet coming with the same kind of description as the former? Expressions like āyasī and "moving" seem strikingly to hint at symbolism. And indeed we can reach a master-clue to a vision such as Sri Aurobindo's through the very phrase Wheeler has made much of, where the god Indra is addressed as puramdara, "fort-destroyer".³⁸

For, how does the Rigveda represent Indra fighting, Indra destroying forts, or making his followers do so? There is hymn VI.39, where he is pitted against the Panis. The second verse runs:...panīn vachobhir abhi yodhad indrah. Sri Aurobindo translates it: "... by the words he fought against the Panis."³⁹ And Sri Aurobindo draws our attention to the fact that "it is not with physical weapons but with words that Indra fights..."^m Indra's martial achievement is also connected with the term brahman. "Brahman in the Veda," says Sri Aurobindo, "signifies ordinarily the Vedic Word or Mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depth of the soul or being."⁴¹ What Sri Aurobindo says is but the explanatory version of the same idea as we find in Macdonell: "Brahma (neuter) in the Rigveda signifies nothing more than 'prayer' or 'devotion'."⁴² It is with religious utterance, the soul-charged sound, that Indra and the other gods operate. Thus in the closing portion of II.24,3, a part of which we have already quoted, we read of divine action: "....the firm places were cast down, the fortified places were made weak; up Brihas-pati drove the cows, by the hymn (Brāhmaṇā) he broke Vala, he concealed the darkness, he made Swar visible."⁴³ Here a spiritual Light (Swar, which stands for a luminous

38.Op. cit., 135.

39.Op. cit., p.222.

40.Ibid.

41.Ibid., p.306.

42.Op. cit., p.219.

43.The Secret of the Veda, pp. 148, 223.

Page 120

heavenly region), with its rays (gavah, which means both "cows" and "rays"), seems to be revealed, and an occult Darkness that walls-in from inner sight the divine radiances appears to be shattered by the sacred Mantra. Vala, surely, cannot be a Dravidian chief, he must be a supernatural being: it is in the fitness of things that his firm or fortified places, his strongholds, should fall to the impact of a hymn by Brihaspati who is a god and to whom, jointly with Indra, the hymn concerned is addressed. Even when Indra's "thunderbolt" comes in (1.33.10),⁴⁴ and his "bow" is mentioned,⁴⁵ we soon learn both the nature of the power his weapons really deploy and the way in which he works through his devotees: "O Indra, by the speakers of the word (brahma-bhih) thou didst cast out the Dasyu, attacking those who can think not (the Truth) by those who think, amanyamānān abhi manyamanaih^."46 To ascribe to the Rigvedic Indra and to his fellow-deities or even to his thinker-proteges physical means of slaughter at any place is to strain the text impermissibly. Whatever weapons are named are symbolic and whatever material-looking objects they demolish are equally symbolizations.

From this we see not only the lack of relation between the Indra-led Aryans and the fall that Wheeler attributes to them of the Harappān cities but also the inappropriateness of attributing to them at any time an actual invasion, attack and conquest.

Even without the symbolic interpretation of the Rigveda such a procedure on their part in c. 1500 B.C. is, as we have found, a figment of historians' fancy. With this interpretation it is an absurdity which puts totally out of court for all periods every inference based on it of Aryan origins.*

44.Ibid., pp. 148, 228.

45.Ibid., p. 227.

46.Ibid., p. 228.

* This conclusion should automatically render suspect the capital which has often been made out of the words "Hariyūpiyā" and "armaka" in the Rigveda. But to set all doubt at rest we have tried to show their true, bearings in an Appendix.

Page 121