The Problem Of Aryan Origins

Chapter Five

THE RIGVEDA AND THE HARAPPA CULTURE:

THEIR TRUE RELATIONSHIP

Once a strong argument for considering the Harappā Culture anterior to the Rigveda was the alleged lack of evidence in it for the domesticated horse which is a marked feature of the Rigvedic civilization no less than of all ancient Aryan communities. In 1963 the present writer publicly opposed it at some length on various grounds, a number of them in addition to those already set forth by several scholars.¹ His data left him in no doubt at all. Now he has been completely justified by the excavations of J.P. Joshi to which we have referred in our second chapter. In a review of the recent publication of the full report on Surkotada, F. Chakravarty puts the situation succintly: "One of the startling discoveries at Surkotada has been horse bones which have refuted the earlier belief that the use of the horse was unknown to the Harappans."²

A still persisting plea for greater antiquity is the absence of iron. R.C. Majumdar, taking cognizance of it, pronounces judgment thus: "The reference to iron in the Rig-Veda would have indeed been a very strong argument for relegating the Vedic civilization to a later period, but this is at best doubtful."³ Even Macdonell who was pledged to dating the Rigveda to c. 1200 B.C. and therefore well within the world's Iron Age was yet compelled to write on the Rig-veda's use of the crucial word ayas which, in one of the later

1."The Aryans, the Domesticated Horse and the Spoked Chariot-wheel", Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, Bhau Daji Special Volume, Vol. 38, pp. 44-68.

2."New Light on Harappāns", The Sunday Standard (Madras), August 25, 1974, Magazine Section, p. 1, col. 2.

3.The Pre-historic Period", An Advanced History of India, edited by R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta (Macmillan and Co., London, 1953), p. 22.

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phases of Sanskrit, definitely means "iron": "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 from its colour is decidedly in favour of its having been reddish, which points to bronze and not iron."⁴ Wheeler opts for "copper" as the particular sense of ayas.⁵ There is also the fact that, although iron was known in Western Asia by Macdonell's date for the Rigveda, no Indian site has yielded this metal in that period. Sankalia, summing up available data, concludes: "provisionally, we may fix the 6th-8th century B.C. as the date when iron was first introduced in some parts (northern) of India."⁶

Shifting our focus from physical to psychological and cultural factors, we encounter Sir John Marshall's famous dubbing of the Harappān religion fundamentally non-Aryan.⁷ Wheeler and most other scholars have accepted Marshall's verdict, but a close scrutiny of it reveals its ultimate inadequacy. There are three constituents of the Indus Valley religion which are supposed to mark the opposite pole to the religion of the Rigveda: (1) the worship of the Mother Goddess, (2) the worship of icons, (3) the worship of the Bull instead of the Cow.

Doubtless, the Rigvedic Rishis throw a host of male deities into relief. But the female ones are not only present: they are also much more than mere shadows. As Sri Aurobindo tells us, we have those five goddesses who, in his interpretation, are "five powers of the Truth-consciousness, - Mehi or Bharati, the vast Word which brings all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its

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

5.Op. cit, p. 132, fn. 1.

6.Op. cit., p. 15, col. 1.

7.Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization (London, 1967), I , pp. 110 ff.

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streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion."⁸ Then there is Usha, the Dawn-Goddess who has hymn after hymn addressed to her - she is called "daughter of heaven" and "queen of plenty" (V. 792, 6), she is the luminous precursor who makes possible the advent of Sūrya and the other divinities. Prithivī is there too, the Earth-Goddess, co-parent with Dyau, Heaven, of everything. Goddesses also are the Rivers who are sisters of Saraswati, making with her a divine septet. "They are figured," says Sri Aurobindo "as fostering cows (dhenavah), mares (aśvah), they are called sapta vānīh, the seven Words of the creative Vak - Speech, the expressive power of Aditi..."⁹ And when we come to Aditī we reach one of the greatest conceptions of the Vedic religion. For, above all goddesses and above all gods stands Aditi, the infinite Consciousness and Force, Mother of every god whom the Rigveda throws into relief and who even in that relief points back to her by being called Aditya, Aditī's son. Surely, the prominent worship of the Mother Goddess could very well develop from the Rigveda.

As for the worship of icons, we may affirm that although it may not have been a practice particularly prevalent in Vedic times it is nothing essentially at variance with the Vedic spirit. The gods and goddesses of the Rigveda are not abstract entities: they are vividly described, splendidly imaged, brought intimately home to the devoted mind. To make icons of them would hardly be an alien movement. We can go even further and see how image-worship could most naturally arise from the kind of Yoga pursued by the Rigveda. Sri Aurobindo here has some extremely pertinent

8.On the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1956), pp. 43637.

9.The Secret of the Veda, p.112

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remarks while commenting on a hymn to Agni, the Fire-God (I. 77), the first two stanzas of which run:

"How shall we give to Agni? For him what Word accepted by the Gods be spoken, for the lord of the brilliant flame? For him who in mortals, immortal, possessed of the Truth, priest of the oblation, strongest for sacrifice, creates the gods?

"He who in the sacrifice is the priest of the offering, full of peace, full of the Truth, him verily form in you by your surrend'erings; when Agni manifests for the mortals the gods, he also has perception of them and by the mind offers to them the sacrifice."¹⁰

Sri Aurobindo explains how Agni's luminous work of creating the forms of the Immortals in us is accomplished:

"This work he does as a cosmic Power labouring upon the rebellious human material even when in our ignorance we resist the heavenward impulse and, accustomed to offer our actions to the egoistic life, cannot yet or as yet will not make the divine surrender. But it is in proportion as we learn to subjugate the ego and compel it to bow down in every act to the universal Being and to serve consciously in its least movement the supreme Will, that Agni himself takes form in us. The Divine Will becomes present and conscient in a human mind and enlightens it with the divine Knowledge. Thus it is that man can be said to form by his toil the great Gods.

"The Sanskrit expression is here ā krnudhvam. The preposition gives the idea of a drawing upon oneself of something outside and the working or shaping it out in our own consciousness. Ā kr corresponds to the converse expression, ā bhū, used of the gods when they approach the mortal with the contact of Immortality and, divine form of godhead falling on form of humanity, 'become', take shape, as it were, in him. The cosmic Powers act and exist in the universe; man takes them upon himself, makes an image of

10. Ibid. p. 263

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them in his own consciousness and endows that image with the life and power that the Supreme Being has breathed into His own divine forms and world-energies."¹¹

To the last sentence Sri Aurobindo gives the footnote: "This is the true sense and theory of Hindu image-worship, which is thus a material rendering of the great Vedic symbols."

S.K. Venkateswara suggests that "the transition from verbography to iconography in Vedism may be observed in various hymns even of the Rig-Veda Saṁhitā". We may note his remark: "...in R.-V.I. 21.2 we have Indrāgni sśum-bhata narah, which Prof. Wilson translates into 'Decorate Indra and Agni with ornaments'. In R.-V.III. 4.4 nripeśas is explained by Prof. Roth as 'adorned by men' and by Prof. Wilson as 'of sensible shapes'. R.-V.II. 33.8 speaks of-Rudra as white-complexioned (śviticha), which, along with pipiśe hiranyaih (R.-V.II. 33.9) might suggest pripeśas as 'having the form of men'. Dr. Bollenson discovered a reference to images of Maruts in R.-V.V. 52.15: nu manvāna esham devān achchha- 'to the gods of these (images) (Maruts)'. Eshām in the passage seems to refer to something concrete which could be pointed to on the spot. Again in R.-V.IV. 24 we have reference to an image of Indra which was to be hired out for a rent of ten cows and which was to be returned after use. This is the earliest passage which definitely suggests the first idea of an Indra festival. It is apparently referred to in R.-V.I. 10.1: Brāhmaṇas tvā śatakrata udvam-śam iva yemire - 'Worshippers held thee aloft as it were (on) a pole.' "¹²

V.M. Apte strikes a neutral note: "Whether fetishism is to be read into a reference to an image of Indra and whether the worship of idols or images of gods was known to the Rigveda, are points on which no certain conclusions can be

11.Ibid., pp. 268-69.

12."Proto-Indian Culture", The Cultural Heritage of India (The Ramakrishna Mission, Old Edition, Calcutta 1937), III, pp. 57-8.

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reached."¹³ Thus, at the worst, there is indecision, but the Rigveda's door can never be closed on any account against the Harappā Culture's iconism.

Now for the worship of the Bull. Cows are indeed in the forefront in the Vedic hymns. Also, as Apte tells us, "the name Aghnyā ('not to be killed'), applied several times to the cow, shows that the cow was coming to be regarded as a sacred animal."¹⁴ But it would be well to remember Sri Aurobindo's words to the effect that just as Aditī, the supreme Prakriti or Nature-force, is spoken of as the Cow, the Deva or Purusha, the supreme Being or Soul, is described as Vrishabha or Vrishan, the Bull.¹⁵ Apte too notes that Indra is sometimes conceived as a bull.¹⁶ A hymn to Agni (I. 27.1) names one Tryaruna "son of the triple Bull" (trivṛṣṇa) - the triple Bull being, according to Sri Aurobindo, "Indra, lord of the three luminous realms of Swar, the Divine Mind..."¹⁷ Rishi Vamadeva, in the last hymn of the fourth Mandala, not only speaks of the four-horned Bull, the divine Purusha, whose horns may be interpreted as infinite Existence, Consciousness, Bliss and Truth, but has in addition the energetic phrase: "Triply bound the Bull roars aloud: great is the Divinity that has entered into mortals."¹⁸ In view of all this, might we not say that Bull-worship could grow from the Rigvedic religion?

In connection with Bull-worship, we may glance at the Harappān figure wearing a three-pointed (triśūla) horned head-dress and attended by animals. He seems to have been an important male deity and has been identified with the Shiva of Hindu tradition who too is "lord of animals" (paśupati) and of whom the bull is the vehicle (vāhana). Now, Shiva can be traced in the Rigveda. Hymn I. 43 1, 5, 6

13."Religion and Philosophy", The Vedic Age,

14.Ibid. p. 395.

15.Op. cit., pp. 112-13.

16.Op. cit., p. 376.

17.Op. cit., p. 414, with fn. 2.

18.Ibid. pp. 296-97.

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addresses Rudra - the terrible and destructive aspect of the tradition al Shiva - as "most bounteous", "the good, the best among the Gods", granting "health unto our steeds, well-being to our rams and ewes, to men and women, and to kine"¹⁹ Here Rudra is, as Ralph T.H. Griffith notes, "a gentle and beneficent deity",²⁰ the typical Shiva. Hymn II. 33.8 calls Rudra "fair-complexioned".²¹ Griffith annotates: "the white complexion of Śiva, the later representative of Rudra, has, therefore, as Wilson observes, its origin in the Rgveda."²² Lastly, hymn X. 92.9 has Rudra actually described as "shiva", a word which Griffith translates "auspicious".²³

Here we may touch on a point of considerable religio-philological interest. Sten Konow voices a very current notion when he writes: "It has been asserted that... the word Śiva must be explained from a Dravidian Śiva 'red'. Now the word Rudra in the Rig Veda often seems to mean 'red', and it seems probable that the conception of the god Rudra-Śiva has a tinge of Dravidian ideas. I have mentioned this word because it shows how fundamental the Dravidian influence on the Aryans can have been, not only philologically, but also on the whole method of thought."²⁴

R. Swaminatha Aiyar, in the illuminating collection of papers to which we have already referred, has a critical comment on Konow:

"... it is no doubt true that the deity Rudra is regarded as red or tawny in colour and that the word Śiva is used in the Vedas as an epithet of this deity. For tāmra 'coppery' red and aruna 'red, ruddy, of the colour of the morning sky',

19.The Hymns of the Rgveda, translated with a Popular Commentary by Ralph T.H. Griffith (The Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, Vara-nasi, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 59-60.

20.Ibid., p. 59 fn. to verse 1.

21.Ibid p. 300.

22.Ibid., fn, to verse 8.

23.Ibid., Vol. II, p. 523

24.The Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IV, p. 279.

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babhru 'deep brown, tawny', sumangala 'yellow coloured', 'very auspicious' are some of his epithets, as also Śiva and Śivatara. These last two words, however, do not mean 'red' but 'propitious' and 'highly propitious': this will be apparent from the other epithets along with which these two words occur, viz., śambhu, śankara, 'causinghappiness', mayobhu, mayaskara, 'causing pleasure, satisfaction'... Of these Śiva, śambhu and sahkara have now become Rudra's names. It is the merest accident that the Sanskrit Śiva 'beneficent' has the same sound as the Dravidian Śiva (= civa) 'red'. Have those that assert the etymological connexion between the two words been able to quote a single passage from the Vedas in which Śiva the epithet of Rudra means 'red'?"²⁵

Aiyar has kept in view not only the Rigveda but also the Taittirīya Saṁhitā (I. 5-7; IV. 5-8) and the KaushītakīBrāhmaṇa (XIX. 1-3) as well as the Pariśishṭa of the Rigveda (X, Anuvāka).²⁶ So the conclusion and question of the above passage are wide-based and strike us as legitimate.

We may support them by a further observation. As we have been told by both Venkateswara and Griffith, the Rigvedic Rudra has on occasion a white or fair complexion and, as Griffith informs us, it is by this colour that the Rigvedic Rudra exhibits one of the origins of later Hinduism's Shiva. Not by being red but by being white in hue does the tradition al Shiva distinguish himself. How, then, can the Dravidian term Śiva, signifying "red", be at all relevant as the original name of this deity?

A long time back Sri Aurobindo returned a negative answer to the problem of relevance on the basis of his own study of the Rigveda. In commenting on hymn I. 154, he wrote: "The deity of this hymn is Vishnu the all-pervading, who in the Rigveda has a close but covert connection and almost an identity with the other deity exalted in the later religion, Rudra... Vishnu's constant friendliness to man and his helping gods is shadowed by an aspect of formidable

25.Dravidian Theories, pp. 137-38, 139.

26.Ibid., pp. 138-40.

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violence, - 'like a terrible lion ranging in evil and difficult places' [I. 154.2], - which is spoken of in terms more ordinarily appropriate to Rudra. Rudra is the father of the vehemently-battling Maruts; Vishnu is hymned in the last Sukta of the fifth Mandala under the name of Evaya Marut as the source from which they sprang, that which they become, and himself identical with the unity and totality of their embattled forces."²⁷ Obviously, if Vishnu has an alter ego in Rudra, one can say of the latter, as Sri Aurobindo does: "Rudra is a fierce and violent godhead with a beneficent aspect which approaches the supreme blissful reality of Vishnu."²⁸

And Sri Aurobindo is aware of the Rigveda's own direct picturing of Rudra in tones anticipating the character of the post-Rigvedic Shiva. He refers to "a current opinion among many scholars that Shiva was a later conception borrowed from the Dravidians and represents a partial conquest of the Vedic religion by the indigenous culture it had invaded"²⁹. After labelling this conception as an error, he tells us of Rudra: "He is named the Mighty One of Heaven, but... this violent and mighty Rudra who breaks down all defective formations and groupings of outward and inward life, has also a benigner aspect. He is the supreme healer. Opposed, he destroys; called on for aid and propitiated he heals all wounds and all evil and all suffering. The force that battles is his gift, but also the final peace and joy. In these aspects of the Vedic god are all the primitive materials necessary for the evolution of the Puranic Shiva-Rudra."³⁰

In the light of what we have observed from various angles, the Harappān male god whose three-pointed horned headdress and attendance by animals lead us to recognize in him the Shiva of Hindu tradition is not in the least likely to be

27.Op. cit., p. 333.

28.Ibid.

29.Ibid.

30.Ibid., p. 334.

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non-Aryan, non-Vedic. Quite the contrary should be the case.

And in additional general support of Vedism for the Indus Valley Civilization we may refer to a fact brought home by W. Wüst.³¹ The Harappān male god has three heads, just as the tradition al Hindu Shiva is at times described (trimūkha). It has been thought that the latter's three-headedness is derived from a Harappān prototype rather than from any known Aryan model. But Wüst makes out that the three-headed deity is essentially of Indo-European origin.

We should really be not much surprised. Does not the Rigveda tend to help Wüst out? There is not only an enemy of Indra, called Viśvarupa, who is described as triśirsan, "three-headed" (X. 8.8). There is also the god Agni about whom Apte informs us: "The three-fold nature of Agni is a favourite topic with RV poets: his heads, bodies, stations, splendours and births are each three-fold. He is the earliest representative of the famous Indian trinity..."³²

To complete our picture of the element of Aryanism in the Indus Valley Civilization, there is a recent discovery which countervails an old argument of some force. We were told that in the Rigveda "Agni, or the Fire-God, received special homage" but he is a deity "of whose worship no traces are found in the early ruins of Mohenjo-Daro", and in the Harappā Culture "fire-pits were conspicuous by their absence".³³

In 1974, however, Sankalia could write that at both the Harappān sites of Lothal and Kalibangan "small shallow enclosures have been found with a vertical brick, terracotta cakes and a few bones of animals, so that the pits are regarded as 'fire-altars'."³⁴ He further remarks: "Such a fire-altar has also been noticed by Casal at [Harappān] Amri...

31."Germanien", Monatshefte fur Germannenkunde, 1940, p. 212f.

32."Religion and Philosophy", The Vedic Age, p. 373.

33.H.C. Raychaudhuri, "The Early Vedic Age", An Advanced History of India, pp. 39, 27, 24.

34.Op. cit., p. 376, col. 2.

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Perhaps such 'fire-altars' also existed at Harappā and Mohenjo-Daro, but were missed in mass digging."³⁵

These structures Sankalia, in agreement with the excavators, feels to be "truly religious", and their discovery "seems to clarify and amplify our knowledge of the Indus Civilization".³⁶ The clarification and amplification can be fully realized only when we note that fire-altars where offerings were burnt were special to the "Indo-Germanic" culture in antiquity.³⁷ They transmit to the Harappā Culture a distinctly "Aryan" colour.

35.Ibid., p. 350, col. 2.

36.Ibid., p. 351, col. 1.

37.Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1925), Vol. I, "Altars", pp. 333-34.

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