The Problem Of Aryan Origins

Preface to the First Edition

This little book started to take shape in response to a suggestion by my friend Arabinda Basu who has a mind which - in Shelley's phrase - has grown "bright, gazing at many truths". The suggestion was that I contribute a paper to a Russian conference which was due to be held some time in October 1977.

There was no definite information except that the original home of the group of related tribes going by the name "Aryan" was the subject, with a special focus on the "Aryan imigration into India". As I had been interested in problems of ancient history, I thought it was a good opportunity to present an Indian point of view which I considered the most legitimate and pertinent in the field.

My paper began to grow as I warmed up to the complex theme of Aryan origins. "The fascination of what's difficult", à la Yeats, drew me onward all the more, since I was putting forth ideas of an unconventional order elaborating a few conclusions of Sri Aurobindo's, arrived at from several sides.

It is supposed to be the rule for a preface to give a précis of the book. I have already added, to the discussion covered by thirteen chapters and an appendix in two parts, an analytic review of them. This should serve as a detailed summary, a topical guide from page to page. What I may give now is a brief quotation from Sri Aurobindo which does not occur in the body of the book but which may be regarded as a flashing hint of the thesis to be unfolded.

There was a rejoinder by Sri Aurobindo published in the Madras daily, The Hindu, of August 27, 1914 to a misunderstanding of the very first article of his series, The Secret of the Veda, commencing in his own periodical, the Arya, where he had written of the background of the Upanishads' Brahmavada (Doctrine of Brahman, the Vedantic philosophy as opposed to the ritualism attributed by many later Vedantins to the Rigveda). In the course of that rejoinder he explained:

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"My point was that such knowledge, when it expressed a developed philosophy and psychology, stood in need of historical explanation. If we accept the European idea of an evolving knowledge in humanity, - and it is on that basis that my argument proceeded, - we must find the source of the Brahmavada either in an extraneous origin such as a previous Dravidian culture, - a theory which I cannot admit, since I regard the so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one homogeneous race, - or in a previous development, of which the records have either been lost or are to be found in the Veda itself... As to the origins of the Vedic religion, that is a question which cannot be solved at present for lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other words that humanity was not prepared by a progressive spiritual experience for the Revelation."

Surely, what this implies is: (1) an essentially spiritual expression everywhere in the Rigveda in symbolic terms mostly connected with the conditions of the time; (2) a presence of Dravido-Aryanism or Aryo-Dravidianism prac-tically native to our subcontinent and perhaps even having a lost common linguistic background in antiquity, instead of an Aryan invasion of a Dravidian country in not too distant an epoch; and (3) a remote past to this racially undivided though multi-featured phenomenon of spirituality in ancient India itself, whose final source cannot be satisfactorily traced. The last point leaves the pre-Rigvedic religious history in the dark but does not necessarily exclude the faint glimmer of some ultimate habitat from the haze of a semi-mythical memory in the spiritual consciousness which was symbolically expressive.

The direction in which the possible clues seem to point will be our answer to the question of the Dravido-Aryans' homeland farthest in time. The answer to the other question - namely, whether the Rishis of the Rigveda were immigrants a mere three thousand five hundred years ago, as generally believed - will be an emphatic "No", and here a host of arguments archaeological, literary and linguistic can

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be mustered. In giving this answer a lot of ground has been traversed in order to set the several insights and inferences of a versatile genius, both intellectual and spiritual, like Sri Aurobindo, within whatever framework of technical scholarship one could supply in addition to his own masterly working out of several aspects of his vision.

By the time my exposition was ready I learned that no paper could be submitted to the Russian conference unless the writer was one of the invitees. Besides, it had grown beyond any permissible definition of a paper, and the desire to make it as sound as possible took it past the month of October. When it had reached a presentable stage, Arabinda Basu succeeded in firing the imagination of the Sri Ma-Sri Aurobindo Milan Kendra of Calcutta. That enterprizing group of disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother took up the publication of my adventurous attempt. And it is thanks to the liberal offer of funds without any fanfare by Mr. Tarapada Majumdar and to the leadership of that rare combination of sympathetic understanding, organizational ability and executive drive, Mr. Ajit Roychowdhury, that The Problem of Aryan Origins has solved the problem of moving from its origins in its author's mind towards its destination, the general public of thoughtful readers.

Grateful acknowledgements are owed to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust for permission to quote from Sri Aurobindo's works and to the Archaeological Survey of India for letting me use a photograph of two Harappān Seals. The sources of the helpful quotations from various historical writers are duly mentioned in the footnotes as well as in the Bibliography.

February 21, 1980

K.D.S.

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

It is a matter of some satisfaction that a second edition can be hazarded of a book which flew in the face of historical orthodoxy on several counts.

A dogma which seems to be fast fading among a number of archaeologists is that Aryan invaders had a prominent hand in destroying the Harrappā Culture of the ancient Indus Valley. But the dogma that the Aryans of the Rigveda came into this Valley from outside India around the middle of the second millennium B.C. still dies hard. And naturally then the "heresy" that the Rigvedics preceded the Harappā Culture is too difficult to entertain. As difficult also appears the contention that there are not two prominent races in India - the Aryans and the Dravidians - but only one internally diversified race which we may call "Dravidaryan" and whose original common tongue developed into Sanskrit and Tamil, a pair of languages disclosing on a penetrating scrutiny more affinities than common linguistics can suspect. Finally, there is the general view of the Rigveda as the record of a fight between Aryan Rishis and devilish-seeming non-Aryans who were dubbed Dāsa-Dasyus. Here nobody thinks of asking: "If the Rigvedics did not destroy the Harrappā Culture, what enemies did they fight - enemies credited by them with an array of 'forts' (purah)?" None answering to the Rigvedics' account are to be found between the end of the Harrappā Culture in c. 1500 B.C. and the postulated Aryan advent. Nor, if we make the Rigveda anterior to the Harrappā Culture, do we have evidence of a confrontation of fortified Dāsa-Dasyus by Rishi-led fighters. A spiritual and symbolic interpretation of the Rigvedic hymns such as Sri Aurobindo has worked out in detail seemes to be necessary: it would see the "forts" as centres of demoniac opposition in occult planes to the Rishis' inner psychological progress, their Yogic adventure.

How vehement the stand can be against putting the Harrappā Culture posterior to the Rigveda may be judged

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from the reaction of a German Indologist to a preview leaflet sent by Mr. Sita Ram Goel, the publisher of my second book in the historical field, Karpāsa in Prehistoric India: A Chronological and Cultural Clue. The scholar had already placed an order for the book, obviously taking it to be a story of the development and use of cotton in early times. Now realising what its main thesis was, he wrote back to cancel his order, saying; "It is the most nonsensical book I have ever known." The publisher sent him a complimentary copy when the book came out, with a covering note that its author would be most interested to have his brief torn to pieces by an expert. There has been no response up till now.

I have been asked by my patron - now Mr. Sita Ram Goel in place of Mr.Tarapada Majumdar of the first edition - to make whatever revision and enlargement of The Problem I thought fit. I cannot thank enough so generous and open-minded a helper, ever ready to encourage adventurous spirits to whatever lengths their new visions may logically lead them. I have changed some sentences and inserted a few passages directly relevant to my theme while avoiding repetition here of the ground variously covered by Karpāsa. Five Supplements have been appended, a very substantial addition valiantly welcomed by my new publishers, Aditya Prakashan.

The penultimate, the shortest, touches on some probable implications of the recent maritime excavations at Dwaraka, the legendary town of Sri Krshna. The third Supplement meets on several fronts the latest revival - under a somewhat different aspect - of Wheeler's sensational vision of Rig-vedic barbarians on the rampage. The second deals with a number of problems arising from my venture to break a lance with the Finnish scholar Asko Parpola apropos of whether the Harrappā Culture knew the horse or not. The last and longest is a detailed analysis of Parpola's latest and most systematic treatment, on both archaeological and literary grounds, of the whole Indo-Aryan problem - his highly original concept of who the Rigvedics as well as their

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enemies, the Dāsa-Dasyus, might be and where, how and when their conflict could take place. Here my chronology has been forced by many factors to go further back into the past than I had once thought necessary. The first Supplement reproduces a slashing criticism of my book along with a riposte to it by me. Encountering an all-round fault-finder is always a healthy experience for an author. It helps him strengthen his points wherever possible and see the overall situation in a sharper light. Of course, if any of the attempted hits are valid he will do well to drop the vulnerable parts and assess whether their absence will mortally damage his position or still leave its centre intact. On careful consideration I have found myself far from having suffered a knock-out. Hence my assent to the generous suggestion to reprint the book and keep its challenge to historical orthodoxy ringing in the public's ear.

August 30, 1991

K.D.S.

Chapter One

THE PROBLEM: ITS INDIAN IMPLICATIONS - THE HISTORICAL QUESTIONS INVOLVED

In India the problem of Aryan origins has not only a bearing on the remote past. It has also a relevance to the immediate present. Ever since Western historians pronounced, and the historians of our country concurred, that a Dravidian India had been invaded by the Aryans of the Rigveda in the second millennium B.C., there has been a ferment of antagonism, time and again, between the North and the South.

The Northerners, figuring in their own eyes as Aryan conquerors, have occasionally felt a general superiority to the Southerners who have come to be designated Dravidians. The people of the South have often resented those of the North as being, historically, intruders upon their indigenous rights. An unhealthy movement has arisen in Tamil lands, sometimes erupting in violent strength and otherwise flowing as a subtle pervasive undercurrent which tends to make for a touchy and suspicious relationship between the two parts of our subcontinent, in spite of a broad unifying sense of nationhood.

It is of considerable importance in India to ascertain whether the so-called Aryans of the Rigveda are outsiders whose home a little earlier was, as historians variously hold, either the Baltic region, Austria-Hungary, the Ukraine, Turkestān or some other location beyond our frontiers.

But, of course, the fact that the idea of extra-Indian origins of Aryanism has been a pernicious force amongst us and that its demolition would lead to greater harmony and co-operative creativity in India must not prejudice us as historians. We have to be calm and clear in our approach to the problem even while realizing that we cannot afford to be lax about a matter that keenly affects our collective future.

In the field of history we have to face four crucial questions here:

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(1)Is there any genuine evidence of what almost every history book at present takes for granted, namely, an Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C.?

(2)Do the Mitanni documents of an Aryan character from Boghaz-keui, dated c. 1360 B.C. but with a background of Aryan rulership on the Upper Euphrates from c. 1500 B.C. - documents comprising a treaty by a Maryanni king of the Mitanni peoples with a Hittite king and Kikkuli's fragmentary handbook on horse-breeding – suggest an archaic Indo-Irānian dialect, which was not yet fully characterized either as Indo-Aryan or as Irānian and which would seem to be derived from the language of communities originally living outside India and later separating to become Irānians and Indo-Aryans in approximately the middle of the second millennium B.C.?

(3)Linguistically, does the Rigveda, along with the Zara-thustrian Gāthās of Irān, which were composed undeniably in a sister form of speech, date no earlier than c. 1000 B.C. although the cultural contents of it must have needed some preceding time in India for development - a period which at its earliest could not go beyond c. 1500 B.C.?

(4)Was the Harappā Culture of the Indus Valley, which ran for at least a thousand years and whose end has been dated to the middle of the second millennium B.C.,¹ basically non-Aryan, anterior to the oldest Aryan document in India, the Rigveda, and given its finishing stroke by hostile Rigvedic tribes, who hailed from beyond India's north-west and who came to reflect in their scripture the story of their

1. D.P. Agrawal has suggested, from an analysis of radio-carbon (C 14) readings, the bracket 2300-1750 B.C., (Science, Washington, 28 February 1964, pp. 950-52). Sir Mortimer Wheeler has cogently argued against the lowered upper limit (Foreword to S.S. Rao's Lothal and the Indus Civilization, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1973, pp. vi-vii), and H.D. Sankalia after a detailed review of all aspects has urged that Wheeler's "old bracket of 2500-1500 B .C. for the overall duration of the Indus Valley Civilization be restored and provisions for dating it still further backwards be made" (Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan, Deccan College , Poona, 1974, p. 283. col. 2).

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fight with and conquest of this civilization?

We shall deal with these questions not always in the above order. Significant side-issues, which are not mentioned, will also arise. A natural sequence, with some deferred considerations as well as a harking back whenever necessary, will be followed so as to make the treatment as living and comprehensive as possible within a moderate compass.

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Chapter Two

The Supposed Aryan Invasion

The first question has to be considered under two heads: archaeological and literary.

In an article of 1966, "The Decline of the Harappans", G.R. Dales, director of archaeological fieldwork in South Asia, particularly in West Pakistan, for a good number of years, wrote in connection with the topic of an Aryan invasion of India: "The Aryans... have not yet been identified archæologically."¹ Even a diehard defender like Sir Mortimer Wheeler of the Aryan-invasion hypothesis and of the theory that the Rigvedic Aryans destroyed the Harappā Culture had to state: "It is best to admit that no proto-Aryan material culture has yet been identified in India."² This statement was made in 1959. In 1970, following up some cool-headed remarks on the copper-hoards unearthed in the Gangetic basin and hastily ascribed to Aryan invaders, Wheeler refers to some other ascriptions: "...certain Iron Age cairn-burials in northern Baluchistan have been regarded in some sense as 'Aryan'. A series of Moghul Ghundai produced a distinctive tripod jar, a bracelet, bells, rings, and arrowheads, all of bronze, of types characteristic of 'Sialk B' in Persia and attributable to the period before and after 1000 B.C. The association of these groups with early bearers of the Aryan tongue is without warrant. If a word of warning is appropriate, it is on the desirability of avoiding an excessively Aryan 'preoccupation'."³ The sense of negative results is still strong.

Perhaps the most favoured candidate in the public's eye for the preoccupation against which we are cautioned has

1.Scientific American, New York, May 1966, p. 95.

2.Early India and Pakistan (Bombay, 1959), p. 126.

3.In the revised part dealing with prehistoric India in the Third Edition (1970) of The Oxford History of India by the Late Vincent A. Smith, edited by Percival Spear. p. 34.

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been the Painted Grey Ware - PGW for short - found at a large number of sites in the Gangetic Valley. Presently it is considered datable even close to c. 1500 B.C. at Bhagwan-pura in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana rather than to c. 800 B.C. as elsewhere before. The Bhagwanpura PGW material is mixed with Late Harappān remains, but the issue relating to this mixture we shall touch upon at another place. At the moment we are concerned with the fact that, although the pronouncements of Dales and Wheeler are not belied by any characteristic find here, a certain blurring suggestion which has long lingered may seem strengthened. When PGW was first reported in 1954-55 at several spots linked traditionally with the Mahābhārata War as well as in the locale where the Rigvedic Aryans had lived, it was put substantially in line with the ceramic of the Shahi Tump cemetery in South Balūchistān which archæologists had assigned to about the middle of the second millennium B.C., just the time postulated for the Aryan dispersal eastward. Shahi Tump could therefore be pictured as a side-track milestone on the way of invading Aryans, with their PGW culture, to India. But a few years later H.D. Sankalia came out with the authoritative information not only that the PGW of Shahi Tump was quite different in purpose, shape, design and consistency from the type in India but also that the two types were chronologically wide apart.⁴

Subsequent stratified excavations at Bampur in Sistan and at Tepe Yahya in South Irān have helped to set right what in the absence of proper excavation could not hitherto be ascertained at Shahi Tump: namely, the exact relation between PGW there and the Harappā Culture whose relics were seen on the surface as well as below. This PGW, which used to be regarded as later, is now declared to be earlier.

4. Op. cit. (see fn. 1), p. 403, col. 2 and p. 323, col. 2. The comparative study was done at first hand from the Safdarjung collection at New Delhi. The chronology derives from Richard H. Meadow et. al., "Problems in the Culture History of Baluchistan and South-eastern Iran" (cyclostyled copy).

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Sankalia tells us that the Harappā Culture is placed in the second half of the third millennium B.C. and the Shahi Tump Culture in the first half of the same millennium. Hence a gap of well over a thousand years separates and disconnects Shahi Tump's PGW from the most ancient specimens of such a ceramic in India. No sign exists that the bearers of the latter arrived from abroad.

Wheeler's warning is anticipated by implication when Bridget and Raymond Allchin, referring to "archæological evidence... both in Iran and India and Pakistan", confess: "indeed it almost always lacks any clear hallmarks to establish its originators as Indo-Europeans."⁵ Still they venture to press a case for them in more than one form. It looks its strongest in relation to certain signs which they consider typical of Aryan presence: copper pins with spiral loops, animal-headed pins, shaft-hole axes and adzes. They point to the upper levels of Mohenjo-dāro where was found "the copper shaft-hole axe-adze, whose Iranian parallels date from c. 1800 to 1600 B.C." They also note that the Irānian examples "compare with those from Maikop and Tsarakaya in South Russia" of about the same date. Again, we learn: "A bronze animal-headed pin found at Harappā near the surface in area J suggests connexions with western Iran and the Caucasus between 1500 and 2000 B.C." These discoveries are taken as testimony to "the proximity of foreign barbarians": Aryan invaders. But the authors soon land themselves in self-contradiction. They inform us about Mohenjodāro: "The bronze pin with spiral loop, found by Mackay at a depth of 18.4 feet in the DK area, must indicate an earlier importation, and so too may the animal-headed pin discovered in the same part of the site." We may supplement the information with Stuart Piggott's news: "...at Mohenjodāro a... clay model was found at a low level,

5. The Birth of Indian Civilization: India and Pakistan before 500 B.C. (A Pelican Original, Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 145. In the citations that follow, the pages involved are 145-47, 106 and 140.

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which... seems to represent a form of shaft-hole axe..."⁶ Hence the late finds are shown up as absolutely inconclusive for the Allchin thesis. They could be importations as well. Even a greater number of them could be such, since these objects were more abundantly manufactured between 2000 and 1500 B.C.

Our refutation is strengthened by what the Allchins record of South Afghānistān's ancient site Mundigak. Copper pins with spiral loops appear in its late period IV, but "related types are reported already in II, while shaft-hole axes and adzes are already present in III. 6". The earlier periods are assuredly pre-Harappān, for, according to the Allchins, period IV itself is only "in its later phase... contemporary with the Harappān period" which starts in c. 2500 B.C. or, if we credit the Allchins' chronology, 2250 B.C. Thus in India's neighbourhood no less than in her own Indus Valley the time of Maikop and Tsarakaya as well as of late Irānian sites is left far behind for the signs presumed to be of newly arrived Aryan invaders. The signs precede them by a substantial number of centuries.

Walter Fairservis, Jr. meets with no better success in the claim for Aryanism he staked on behalf of a people about whom he wrote at some length in 1971.⁷ Their remains at Swat (West Pākistān) were first reported by C.S. Antonini in 1963 and afterwards in the Gandhāra plain by A.H. Dani in 1967. As all the sites were cemeteries, Dani coined the label "Gandhara Grave Culture". The Swat material starts in "the first quarter of the second millennium B.C.", while the Gandhāran dates from "the late second millennium", and both continue down to the sixth or fifth century B.C. Fairservis comments:

"The Gandhara Grave Culture is a good candidate for a representative of the 'Aryans.' Horses, horse furniture, contacts with Inner Asia [Tepe Hissar II B], suggestion of

6.Prehistoric India (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth 1960), p. 198.

7.The Roots of Ancient India: The Archæology of Early Indian Civilization (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1971), pp. 354-58.

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high capability in metallurgy, etc., plus the chronology, and indeed the direction given in the ancient literary accounts, make such candidacy viable. However, it is a candidacy only, since the archæological work in this important region is only just coming into its own in Dani's capable hands.

"The literary evidence, as B.B. Lal among others has shown, is there. The Rig-veda, the earliest account, tells of the coming of new people to the north-west; the Mahabharata stories record the movement to the middle Ganges Valley; the Ramayana is the final episode, which sees Bengal, Orissa, and Ceylon within the geographical bounds of the Vedic tradition however defined. Broadly reviewed, the literary trail is a good one."

Fairservis, it is clear, leans heavily on "the literary evidence". Archaeologically, he does not feel any too confident. A link with Inner Asia does not mean much. According to Fairservis himself, phases 4 and 5 of the first period of Mundigak in South Afghānistān, considerably pre-dating the second millennium B.C., and also the Quetta wares of Central Balūchistān, belonging again to an early epoch, have pottery equivalents in the early Hissar culture.⁸ These equivalents are not seen to raise any Aryan issue. In fact, it is only the presence of the horse, over and above that of the cow, which can create the presumption of Aryanism for the Gandhāra Grave Culture. But the horse should hardly come as the sign of an Aryan invasion from outside India unless one could prove the utter absence of this animal in the Indian subcontinent before the period into which the Gandhāra Grave Culture fits. As the invasion is posited at c. 1500 B.C., the question reduces itself most directly to whether the Harappā Culture which ended at this date knew the domesticated horse.

From the very beginning a sheer negative answer was impossible. A.D. Pusalker spoke of the model of an animal, found in an early stratum of Mohenjo-dāro, which E.J.H.

8. Ibid., p.127

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Mackay had taken as the representation of a horse.⁹ Sankalia marked in the very first phase at the Harappān site Lothal in Saurashtra a terracotta figurine of an equine with a thick short unmistakably horselike tail and with the whole head very much like that of equus caballus.¹⁰ S.S. Rao referred to the terracotta model of a horse discovered at Rangpur as well and mentioned, too, "a painted potsherd from Rojdi depicting a human figure leading a horse".¹¹ So there was always ground to cast doubt on the invaders' role allotted to the Gandhāra Grave Culture. But now the controversy is set entirely at rest by the excavations carried out in 1965, 1967 and 1968 under J.P. Joshi at Harappān Surkotada in Kutch.¹² For, among the animals "which were either domesticated or were in the process of domestication", the excavators discovered not only the "ass (Equus onager indicus)" but also the "horse (Equus caballus Linn.)". Joshi writes: "The Harappans of Surkotada knew Equus right from the time of their arrival at Surkotada." He also tells us: "A lot of equine bones right from earlier to top levels have been recovered. A majority of them are phalanges and teeth." Thus the possession of horses by the Gandhāra Grave Culture cannot distinguish the people of it uniquely as Aryan invaders. They might easily be Indian borderlanders on the move.

The historical implication of horse-knowledge by Indians in the Harappān age is a point we shall take up elsewhere. Our immediate task is to expose the inadequacy of Fairservis's brief. And what renders his invasion-idea particularly inapplicable here is the overall impression the archæo-

9."The Indus Valley Civilization", The Vedic Age, edited by R.C. Majumdar and A.D. Pusalker (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1952), p. 194.

10.Indian Archaeology Today (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1962), p. 61.

11.Op. cit. (see fn. 1), pp. 89, 124.

12."Exploration in Kutch and Excavation at Surkotada and New Light on Harappān Migration", Journal of the Oriental Institute (M.S. University of Baroda), Vol. XII, Sept-Dec. 1972, Nos. 1-2, pp. 135-138, 136.

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logical evidence gives as compared to the literary one as he understands it. The latter, to his mind, depicts the Aryan invasion as a martial push into India; the former provides a different picture:

"It was probably not an invasion of hordes of Central Asian nomads who in great and overwhelming waves swept from the steppes to the Doab. It is more likely that Indo-European-speaking pastoral tribes of a variety of traditions and probably of a diversity of ethnic background gradually infiltrated the fertile plain from Peshawar to the Punjab. This pattern of movement is more characteristic of pastoral peoples than the great migration historians are prone to dramatize. As pastoralists they may have established traditional seasonal routes but at least initially were unlikely to settle in large permanent sedentary settlements. Thus their traces archæologically are less likely to be in terms of habitation and more likely to be necropoli or even isolated monuments."

Surely, if this is all that we can surmise on archaeological grounds, the Gandhāra Grave Culture may, again, be of borderland Indians peacefully passing. One has to look entirely to the literary account to prove it a genuine invader. But does this account really help Fairservis's claim? Here the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana have no true bearing: they have nothing to do with a movement into India from outside. We have to attend solely to the Rigveda, "the earliest account", in which Fairservis and his sources see "the coming of new people to the north-west" as foreign conquerors.

What precisely is the literary situation? How do careful and meticulous scholars read it? The very proponents of the invasion-hypothesis cannot deny that the Rigveda supplies no clue to any migration. Thus E.J. Rapson, speaking of the Aryans in the period of this scripture, admits: "Their oldest literature supplies no certain indication that they still retained the recollection of their former home; and we may reasonably conclude therefore that the invasion which

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brought them into India took place at a date considerably earlier...."¹³ Thus, on Rapson's authority, we cannot base on the hymns the story of Rigvedic Aryans hailing from another country and invading the Indus Valley.

The Cambridge History of India, from which we have quoted Rapson, has further to say through A.B. Keith: "It is certain... that the Rigveda offers no assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Aryans entered India... If, as may be the case, the Aryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvatī river, south of the modern Ambālā".¹⁴ Thus, according to Keith, there is in the Rigveda not only a total omission of pointers to a movement into India from abroad but also a marked sign that whatever story its composers tell is from a position as of inlanders and not invaders.

S.K. Chatterji, another supporter of the invasion-theory, has to concede: "There is no indication from the Rigveda that the Aryans were conscious of entering a new country when they came to India."¹⁵ Chatterji proffers the explanation that the Aryans were unconscious because the non-Aryan peoples they found in India were not different from those they had known in Eastern Irān, whence they are supposed to have migrated after a halt there in their journey from farther afield. The excuse is patently inadequate. Even if the non-Aryan peoples inside India were like those outside whom the invaders may have known, the country entered is not thereby rendered such that the invading tribes would never refer to it as a new land reached from another country.

B.K. Ghosh remarks: "It really cannot be proved that the Vedic Aryans retained any memory of their extra-Indian

13."Peoples and Languages", The Cambridge History of India, edited by E.J. Rapson, 1922, p. 43.

14."The Age of the Rigveda", ibid., p. 79.

15."Race-movements and Prehistoric Culture", The Vedic Age, p. 157.

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associations, except perhaps a camouflaged reminiscence of their sojourn in Irān."¹⁶ The concluding phrase refers to the names Rasā, Sarasvatī and Bahlīka, which Ghosh takes to be Irānian ones Indianised and applied to two Indian rivers and one Indian province.¹⁷ But surely ancient Irānian and Indian Sanskrit were allied languages and several common terms are to be expected. Besides, Irān and India were close neighbours and some linguistic borrowing either way would not be surprising. What is indeed surprising is that in spite of linguistic affinities and neighbourly nearness the express signs of connection with Irān should be as good as nil in India's oldest literature - except perhaps for the tribes Prithu-Parśu (Parthians-Persians rather than "those with large ribs" or "those with broad axes"?). On the hypothesis of a sojourn in Irān the absence of such signs would need a lot of explaining. In fact the absence is so striking that Ghosh, in order to bolster up his hypothesis, has to suppose in addition that the Vedic Aryans deliberately maintained silence about an original Indo-Irānian home outside both India and Iran because a religious and cultural incompatibility had developed between them and the Irānians.¹⁸ But surely no incompatibility could have been present in that home, for else there would have been no sojourn later in Irān with those who afterwards were known as Irānians? Why then an absolute reticence about this home which was extra-Irānian no less than extra-Indian? And why that reticence and not even any word deserving to be alleged as "perhaps a camouflaged reminiscence" of this home when such reminiscence is hypothetised of a sojourn considered to be worth forgetting? Again, is not the reticence in strange contrast to the Irānians' tradition of an ancient Aryan home, Airiyānam vaējo {Erānvēj of the later texts)? The supposed incompatibility between them and the Indians during the latter's "sojourn" in Irān did not prevent the former from

16."The Aryan Problem", ibid., p. 204.

17."Indo-Irānian Relations", ibid., p. 219.

18.Ibid.

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recollecting their cradle-land. How then could it breed absolute reticence in the other party? On all counts Ghosh's excuse is illogical. Unlike the Irānians with their origin outside Irān, the Vedic Aryans for all practical purposes could have had no extra-Indian home.

To the two voices from India we may add a pair of Pākistani proponents of the invasion-hypothesis. A.H. Dani observes: "On the question of the Aryans, there is as yet no conclusive evidence as to either the time of their advent or the road by which they did it."¹⁹ F. Khan has the same thing to say in other words.²⁰ Ambiguity and uncertainty prevail.

A.L. Basham, who too believes in an invasion, is honest enough to confess: "Direct testimony to the assumed fact is lacking, and no tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India." Yet he makes an effort to make good the gap by means of what he designates "historical geography".²¹ He tells us: "The study of the geographical data in the hymns... throws a certain amount of light on the course of the Indo-Aryan migration.... In fact, the accepted belief in the Indo-Aryan immigration from Central Asia depends largely on the interpretation of the geographical allusions in the Rigveda and Yajurveda.... The amount of geographical knowledge implied in the literature is considerable. Such knowledge in those ancient days could have been acquired only by actual travelling."²²

The argument seems queer. Just because actual travel alone could provide such geographical information as the hymns contain, why must we postulate that the Aryans came from Central Asia? Individual travellers could surely bring names of places abroad. These travellers might themselves be Indian Aryans moving out from India and returning with the information. Also, the places abroad could well belong

19.Archæology of Pakistan, V, 1970-71, p. 109.

20.Pakistan Archæology, No. 2, 1965, pp. 39-40.

21.In the revised part dealing with ancient India in The Oxford History of India (1970), from which we have already quoted Wheeler, p. 53.

22.Ibid.

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to other Aryan settlements in contact with the Rigvedic. An interchange of knowledge could occur. In any case a collective immigration from Central Asia is not needed for whatever geographical sense of foreign locales is there. And actually how many Central-Asian names do we have?

Basham does not mention a single one. The example he gives of "a display" of "geographical information" is "the hymn 'In Praise of the Rivers (Nādi-stuti)' in the tenth book (x. 75)", and from this hymn he quotes the fifth stanza which lists "ten streams, small and great", all within India itself and, strangely enough, "in order from east to west", as Basham himself notes,²³ instead of the opposite which we should expect of people who are claimed to have travelled from west to east. When we consider all the rivers listed, we have only a pointer to Afghānistān with the Kubhā (Kabul), Krumu (Kurram), Gomatī (Gomal) and Suvāstu (Swat), suggesting, as R.K. Mookerjee says, "the Indian occupation of Afghanistan in those days".²⁴ The sole index to Central Asia is the naming of the river Rasā in stanza 6. Rasā has been phonetically equated to the Iraniān Ranhā, the river Jaxartes. It is difficult to understand how this reference or any other allusion of a similar sort could illuminate the course of the Indo-Aryan advent from a foreign region. Small contacts with a few foreign parts would be the utmost we might infer.

When the Rigveda and the Yajurveda are compared for their geographical data, we may notice a greater acquaintance with Central and Eastern India in the latter, showing perhaps the shift of the seat of Vedic Civilization more inland. But such a shift would be a matter of internal history and could have no bearing on the question of the Rigvedics hailing in 1500 B.C. from beyond the Afghānistān-Punjāb complex.

The complete want of any hint in the Rigveda of an Aryan

23.Ibid.

24.Hindu Civilization (Bhavan's Book University, Bombay, 1957), Part I, p. 84.

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immigration or invasion cannot be evaded by an appeal to "historical geography". Neither can we plead that this want is isolated and accidental. Basham himself looks outside the Rigveda when he indicates that "no tradition " of a transfrontier home survives in India. Not only the religious books after the Rigveda but also those portions of the Purānas which purport to transmit either legendary or historical information are absolutely silent. "According to tradition al history as recorded in the Purānas," says Pusalker, "India itself is the home of the Aryans, and it was from here that they expanded in different directions to various countries of the world, spreading the Aryan culture."²⁵

Mookerji reports the Purānic pointers a little more elaborately and links them to some Rigvedic signposts, one of which we have already seen from Basham's own account:

"Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aryan invasion of India from north-west and outside of India, nor of any advance of the Aryans from the west to east. On the other hand, it speaks of an Aila outflow, the expansion of the Druhyus through the north-west into the countries beyond. Accordingly, Rigveda X, 75, mentions rivers in their order from the east to the north-west, beginning with the Ganges, in accordance with the course of Aila expansion and its outflow beyond the north-west. Similarly, in the Rigvedic account of the Battle of the Ten Kings against Sūdas who was an Aila king of north Pāñchāla... he is described as pushing his conquest westwards into the Punjāb. This is also in keeping with the view that the bulk of the Rigveda was composed in the Upper Ganges-Jumna doab and plain. The Rigveda holds the Sarasvati especially sacred, and also knows the Sarayu, the river of Oudh."²⁶

In justification of the last statement, which echoes the view of Keith, Mookerji elsewhere explains: "A part of the

25."Cultural Interrelation between India and the Outside World before Asoka", The Cultural Heritage of India (The Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1958), I, p. 144.

26.Op. dr., I, pp. 182-3.

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Rigveda, the hymns to Ushas, recalls the splendours of dawn in the Punjāb, but a larger part refers to the strife of the elements, thunder and lightning, rain bursting from the clouds and mountains, which are not seen in the Punjāb, but in the region called Brahmāvarta watered by the Sarasvati, the Drshadvati and the Apaya, where the bulk of the Rigveda must have been composed."²⁷

Literary evidence, on which the invasion-theory relies for the notion of a Rigvedic-Aryan entry into India, is one-voiced in its "No". Of course, we need not subscribe to the sweepingness of the Purānic assertion that Aryanism went everywhere from India. Some "outflow" could and must have occurred, but India may not have been the sole habitat of the Aryans. They may have existed spread out in a long belt of which India was one sector. Yet the very fact that tradition al history visualized India as the ur-heimat, cradle-land, of the Aryans is highly meaningful in connection with the Rigvedics.

The conclusion provoked in their context by all these testimonies of archaeologists, historians and literary reporters appears to be unequivocal. To all intents and purposes the Rigvedics were autochthones in India, part of a diverse population going back to a hoary antiquity. This antiquity not only prevented them from making any direct allusion to a source beyond their frontier: it even stood in the way of any explicit expression that though they could not pinpoint their source they had the impression of its having been somewhere abroad.

S. Srikanta Sastri has rightly observed: "Migrating races look back to the land of their origin for centuries. The Parsis of India remember their origin after eight hundred years. The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians remembered their respective lands of origin even though they had forgotten their location."²⁸ About the Parsis we may add that their memory extends backwards actually for more than

27.Ibid. pp. 84-5

28."Appendix" to "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age, p 216

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thirteen hundreds years, for, as P.P. Balsara says, "from the facts available till today we can conclude that the Parsis of Iran began coming to India for permanent residence from the year 639 at different places and at different periods, and that their first permanent settlement in India was at Sanjan on the west coast in 716...."²⁹ We may also hark back to the Airiyānam vaējo recollected by the ancestors of the Parsis, the ancient Irānians - quite in contrast to their fellow-Aryans across the border. We cannot help agreeing with Sastri's inference: "The Vedic Aryans, if at all they came from outside,...must have lived in the Sapta-Sindhu [the region of the seven rivers in the ancient Punjāb] so many centuries before the Vedic period that they had lost all memory of an original home."³⁰

29.Highlights of Parsi History (Bombay, 1969), p. 29.

30.Loc. cit.

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Chapter Three

THE INVASION-THEORY AND THE ALLEGED

ARYAN-DRAVIDIAN DIFFERENCE

The conclusion at which we have arrived is exactly that of Sri Aurobindo who was a multi-linguist and a cultural exponent, besides being a political guide, a philosophical thinker, a literary critic, a poet on a grand scale and a master of integral spirituality.

As far back as 1914, after mentioning how the old conceptions of the recent emergence of civilized man from the mere savage had been shaken by our increasing knowledge of remarkable civilizations many thousands of years ago, he wrote:

"If the Vedic Indians do not get the benefit of this revised knowledge, it is due to the survival of the theory with which European erudition started, that they belonged to the so-called Aryan race and were on the same level of culture with the early Aryan Greeks, Celts, Germans as they are represented to us in the Homeric poems, the old Norse Sagas and the Roman accounts of the ancient Gaul and Teuton. Hence has arisen the theory that these Aryan races were northern barbarians who broke in from the colder climes on the rich civilizations of Mediterranean Europe and Dravidian India.

"But the indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of any such invasion. The distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference. The language of the hymns clearly points to a particular worship or spiritual culture as the distinguishing sign of the Aryans, - a worship of Light and of the powers of Light and a self-discipline based on the culture of the Truth' and the aspiration to Immortality, - Ritam and Amritam. There is no reliable indication of any racial difference.

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It is always possible that the bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India may have been the descendants of a new race from more northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions; but there is nothing in the Veda, as there is nothing in the present ethnological features of the country, to prove that this descent took place near to the time of the Vedic hymns or was the slow penetration of a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilised Dravidian peninsula."¹

Here is a challenging proclamation waving a red rag in front of scholars who swear by categories like "Indo-European" and "Dravidian" as radical distinctions rendering it impossible for the Aryans to be essentially one people with the majority of the other inhabitants of India, and who also deem it impossible for the Aryans to have existed in any appreciable form in this country prior to about 1500 B.C. But these scholars go too far in both respects. At least their second "impossible" seems now to be fast fading. They overlook the most recent study of skeletonic materials from Harappān sites - sites which, according to them, are anterior in date to the "Aryan" civilization.

Wheeler, assessing the exhaustive report published in 1960 on the Harappā skeletons² observes apropos of the two main classes in which they are grouped: "Without emphasis, Class A is compared with the 'Proto-Australoid', 'Caucasic' or 'Eurafrican' of earlier writers, whilst Class A₁, which is of a slighter build, recalls the conventional 'Mediterranean', 'Indo-European' or 'Caspian'."³ Reporting on the human bones from Harappā's Area G, Wheeler writes of "a tightly packed mass of human skulls (some round-headed, but mostly long-headed of A₁ type)."⁴ The term "Indo-Euro-

1.The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971), PP- 23-4.

2.Bulletin of the Anthropological Survey of India, Vol. 9, No. 2, July 1960, Memorandum No. 9, "Human Skeletal Remains from Harappā".

3. The Indus Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 68.

4. Ibid.

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pean" as applicable to a part of the Harappān population is an eye-opener.

Equally startling is Sankalia's summing up of the findings of two "sets of scholars" at a Harappān site in Saurāshtra, Lothal: "...both sets seem to think that three main types of races lived at Lothal. ...the first would stand for proto-Nordic and Alpine-Armenoid types. Sarkar farther compared the groups one and two with those of Sialk and Hissar in Iran, and thought that Group I of Lothal viz. dolichocephalic with a mean [index] of 75.11 was Aryan."⁵

Pertinent here is a piece of information passed on by S.K. Chatterji while discussing the Aryan movements in the second millennium B.C. and the supposed migration into India: "The Aryan speakers... are believed to have represented a cultural union of two distinct racial stocks, the tall, blonde, long-headed, straight-nosed Nordics, and the comparatively short and dark and short-headed Alpines..."⁶ Both these "racial types" are clearly attested at Lothal before the supposed migration.

Again, pertinent and equally illuminating is Wheeler's general observation: "Indeed, the anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappā remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable from Harappān times to the present day."⁷ What the anthropologists are said to remark is extremely notable. It suggests that the supposed Aryan invasion of c. 1500 B.C. has brought about no distinct changes in physical characters in the regions involved: the Punjāb and Saurāshtra. The Aryans are no more and no less prominent there now than in Harappān times. It is as though there were no invasion by the Aryans at all to make any difference.

And then, looking at the uniform Aryan culture of both

5.Op. cit., p. 378, col. 2.

6.'The Basic Unity underlying the Diversity of Culture", Interrelations of Culture (UNESCO, Paris, 1951), p. 170.

7.Op. cit. p. 72

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the Punjāb and Saurāshtra today in spite of non-uniform physical traits marked in the population by anthropologists, we begin to find the very division into Aryan and non-Aryan in India, from the racial viewpoint, arbitrary and meaningless. Wheeler's seeing, in one anthropological group, the "Indo-European" type and the "Mediterranean", under which the "Dravidian" is usually put, is itself a help to this finding.

Perhaps the best scientific statement that can be framed on the subject would be like S.S. Sarkar's in 1958,⁸ indicating at the same time the large-scale variety of detail and the overall homogeneity of type. He begins: "It may be useful to remind ourselves of what one of the foremost authorities has said in regard to India. S.L. Washburn, in his essay, 'Thinking about Race', has said that the area where the greatest mixing has occurred and which is hardest to classify should be the most central one, that is India." After clarifying "that brachycephaly [short-headedness] in India does not show a sweeping distribution", he concludes: "It appears... that India is a predominantly dolichocephalic [long-leaded] country, and as [L.H. Dudley] Buxton has pointed out, three peoples are associated with this form of head: (1) the aboriginal peoples of India, (2) the Dravidians, as represented by the Tamils, Telugus, etc. of South India, and (3) the Caucasians or the Indo-Aryans. The first, however, contain a high percentage of hyperdolichocephalic heads and deserve to be treated separately."

Sarkar explains his final anthropological stand of 1958: (1) the aboriginal peoples are the Veddids derived from the Veddas of Ceylon, (2) the Dravidian type has evolved, as Sir Arthur Keith held, from the Veddids as a result of environmental stimuli, (3) both the Veddids and the Indo-Aryans have been much modified by mutual contact, and (4) the present-day Dravidian-speakers of South India have an

8. "Race and Race Movements in India", The Cultural Heritage of India (1958), I. In what follows, the matter from pp. 17,19,22 and 26 has been telescoped.

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Aryan ancestry no less than a Veddid and therefore show a bimodal (two-peaked) curve of cephalic index - one at 67-70 and the other at 72-75. Sarkar accepts the current Aryan invasion theory and hence refers to the South-Indian speakers of Dravidian today - that is, those who would be "post-invasion" peninsular Tamils, Telugus, etc. But, if we proceed without that theory, the picture along his line would be of an ancient Indian population with two fundamental strains, a major Indo-Aryan strain and a minor Veddid, with the Dravidians a joint evolute of Veddid and Indo-Aryan mixture leaning towards the Indo-Aryan long-headedness rather than the Veddid sort which is infused with a good deal of hyperdolichocephaly.

We learn from a review by Sankalia of a later writing of Sarkar that he altered his own old position about the Dravi-dians of antiquity and agreed with archaeologists like All-chin and Sankalia himself. Sarkar thought that waves after waves of immigrants from Western Asia had sought refuge in peninsular India and enriched by their contact the earlier inhabitants like the "Australoids" (=Veddids): thus alone would he account for the peculiar objects which could not be had by trade but were cultural borrowings, and for the mixture of developed with primitive physical features in the few well-preserved prehistoric skeletons.⁹

Although not denying several immigrant waves, we may yet refrain from explaining the "Mediterranean" aspects of those skeletons entirely in terms of these waves. According to Sankalia, culturally the earliest skeletons so far found are from Langhnaj, in north Gujarat.¹⁰ But what are his own words about them? He writes: "These show on the one hand many Veddid or Australoid traits, on the other hand Medi-terranid or those found among the Natufians, a culturally similar people from Palestine. Both these peoples, besides

9.Review of Sarkar's Ancient Races of the Deccan (Munshiram Manoharlal,New Delhi, 1973) in the Times of India Weekly (Bombay, December16, 1974).

10.Ibid.

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using microliths, wore ornaments of dentalium shell beads. While noting these affinities, one must remember the difference in dates as well as the great distance in space between the two. The Langhnaj skeletons are at least a few thousand years younger than those of the Natufian caves." The Langhnaj skeletons date to "around 2000 B.C."¹¹ The Natufians flourished in the seventh millennium B.C.⁵² It is impossible to believe that the Natufian people and culture immigrated into Gujarat and created the Langhnaj "Mediterranids"-cum-"Veddids" ethnologically and culturally. Another anomaly is at Tekkolakota (Mysore) at about the same date. A people with a developed culture from Western Asia is said to have colonized the region but adopted the existing primitive house-model current there, a model which unlike the rest of the cultural material - pottery, stone tools, lithic blades - has no analogue in Western Asia.¹³ It is unlikely that a fairly sophisticated culture from abroad should reproduce no sign at all of its own dwelling-style anywhere. It is much more probable that an indigenous people, habituated to live in a certain type of house, should continue in its own tradition al dwelling-style in spite of acquiring new cultural traits by a stimulus from abroad.

As between Sarkar's old and new stands, the sole alteration required is the acceptance of some extra-Indian influxes and infusions. The Dravidians could still be essentially an internal evolution, to which ethnological shades of an evolution comparable to it in general outside our subcontinent were added. Since "there is no finality or definiteness about their origin even today" and "the problem still remains as unsolved as it was decades ago",¹⁴ we should refrain from

11.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974 ed.), p. 257 ,col. 2.

12.W.F. Albright, The Archœology of Palestine (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth, 1961), p. 61.

13.Sankalia, op.cit., 539,543-44.

14."Home of the Dravidians" (The Hindu, Madras, October 17,1977, p. 5), a review by P. Natarajan of the latest thesis on the theme, The

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scepticism about this outlook. At most, to balance it, we may propose a parity in some respects between the Indo-Aryans and the Dravidians and see the former as being in physical features nearly as affected by the latter as the other way around, so that the anthropological upshot, by and large, would be the pure and simple Pan-Indian.

Combining the perspective drawn from Sarkar with the vista opened up by the reports from Harappā and Lothal, and bringing in psychological factors alongside physical ones, we may submit that a single multi-charactered race, with an abundant linguistic and cultural diversity based on a flexible yet persistent unity of civilization, seems to have continued from prehistory to our own period.

Once more we may note that such was always the opinion of Sri Aurobindo, who saw even a common origin to Sanskrit and Tamil. In 1914 we witness him writing:

"It was my stay in Southern India which first seriously turned my thoughts to the Veda. Two observations that were forced on my mind gave a serious shock to my secondhand belief in the racial division between Northern Aryans and Southern Dravidians. The distinction had always rested for me on a difference between the physical types of Aryan and Dravidian and a more definite incompatibility between the northern Sanskritic and the southern non-Sanskirtic tongues. I knew indeed of the later theories which suppose that a single homogeneous race, Dravidian or Indo-Afghan, inhabits the Indian peninsula; but hitherto I had not attached much importance to these speculations. I could not, however, be long in Southern India without being impressed by the general recurrence of northern or 'Aryan' types in the Tamil race. Wherever I turned, I seemed to recognise with a startling distinctness, not only among the Brahmins but in all castes and classes, the old though this similarity was less widely spread, of my own

Problem of Dravidian Origins by T. Balakrishna Nayar (University of Madras, 1977).

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province Bengal. The impression I received was as if an army of all the tribes of the North had descended on the South and submerged any previous population that may have occupied it. A general impression of a Southern type survived, but it was impossible to fix it rigidly while studying the physiognomy of individuals. And in the end I could not but perceive that whatever admixtures might have taken place, whatever regional differences might have been evolved, there remains, behind all varieties, a unity of physical as well as of cultural type throughout India. For the rest, this is a conclusion to which ethnological speculation itself has an increasing tendency.

"But what then of the sharp distinction between Aryan and Dravidian races created by the philologists? It disappears. If at all an Aryan invasion is admitted, we have either to suppose that it flooded India and determined the physical type of the people, with whatever modifications, or that it was the incursion of small bands of a less civilized race who melted away into the original population. We have then to suppose that entering a vast peninsula occupied by a civilized people, builders of great cities, extensive traders, not without mental and spiritual culture, they were yet able to impose on them their own language, religion, ideas and manners. Such a miracle would be just possible if the in-vaders possessed a very highly organised language, a greater force of creative mind and a more dynamic religious form and spirit.

"And then there was always the difference of language to support the theory of a meeting of races. But here also my preconceived ideas were disturbed and confounded. For on examining the vocables of the Tamil language, in appearance so foreign to the Sanskritic form and character, I yet found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocables not only suggested the connection

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but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through the Dravidian language that I came first to perceive what seems to me the true law, origins and, as it were, the embryology of the Aryan tongues.¹⁵ I was unable to pursue my examination far enough to establish any definite conclusion, but it certainly seems to me that the original connection between the Dravidian and the Aryan tongues was far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed and the possibility suggests itself that they may even have been two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue. If so, the sole remaining evidence of an Aryan invasion of Dravidian India would be the indications to be found in the Vedic hymns...

"It did not take me long to see that the Vedic indications of racial division between Aryans and Dasyus were of a far flimsier character than I had supposed..."¹⁶

Sri Aurobindo is not alone in his non-racial reading. A.A. Macdonell and A.B. Keith admit: "The great difference between the Dasyus and the Aryans was their religion... It is significant that constant reference is made to difference in religion between Aryans and Dāsa and Dasyu."¹⁷ Pusalker positively brings the point home to us that the Rigveda supplies no anthropological or ethnic particulars and that in it the word "Arya" has a cultural, not a racial significance.¹⁸ It would be absurd to conjure up, on the basis of this word and of expressions such as "Dāsa, Dasyu", Aryan foreigners in conflict with indigenous Dravidians.

15.Sri Aurobindo projected a work dealing with a re-examination of a large part of the field of Comparative Philology and a reconstruction on a new basis which he hoped would bring us nearer to a true science of language. He called it The Origins of Aryan Speech. The draft of only one chapter was found among his manuscripts, along with a substantial number of separate linguistic notes. The draft has been appended to his book. The Secret of the Veda, pp. 551-81.

16.Op. cit., pp. 35-36.

17.The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (John Murray & Co.,London, 1912), I, pp. 347,356-7.

18.Bhāratiya Vidyā Bhavan, Bombay, January-June 1950, p. 114.

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Speaking of Dravidians, we may dwell a little on Sri Aurobindo's impression of a common source of the so-called Aryan and Dravidian tongues.¹⁹ He notes, with several illustrations, how those ancient languages, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, which we regard as related, tended to lose "even in the commonest terms... their original vocabulary and diverge from each other so that if the process had not been arrested by an early literature all obvious proof of relationship might well have disappeared". Elaborating on this contingency, Sri Aurobindo writes:

"It is only the accident of an early and continuous Sanskrit literature that enables us to establish the original unity of the Aryan tongues. If it were not for the old Sanskrit writings, if only the ordinary Sanskrit colloquial vocables had survived who could be certain of these connections? or who could confidently affiliate colloquial Bengali with its ordinary domestic terms to Latin any more certainly than Telugu or Tamil? How then are we to be sure that the dissonance of Tamil itself with the Aryan tongues is not due to an early separation and an extensive change of its vocabulary during its preliterary age? I shall be able, at a later stage of this inquiry, to afford some ground for supposing the Tamil numerals to be early Aryan vocables abandoned by Sanskrit but still traceable in the Veda or scattered and imbedded in the various Aryan tongues and the Tamil pronouns similarly the primitive Aryan denominatives of which traces still remain in the ancient tongues. I shall be able to show also that large families of words supposed to be pure Tamil are identical in the mass, though not in their units, with the Aryan family. But then we are logically driven towards this conclusion that absence of a common vocabulary for common ideas and objects is not necessarily a proof of diverse origin. Diversity of grammatical forms? But are we certain that the Tamil forms are not equally old Aryan forms, corrupted and preserved by the early deliquescence of the Tamilic dialect?

19. Op. cit., pp. 559-60. What follows is from the extant first chapter of The Origins of Aryan Speech.

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Some of them are common to the modern Aryan vernaculars, but unknown to Sanskrit, and it has even been thence concluded by some that the Aryan vernaculars were originally non-Aryan tongues linguistically overpowered by the foreign invader. But if so then into what quagmires of uncertainty do we not descend?"

Sri Aurobindo goes on pointing out various defects in "our fixed classification of language families"; but it is not his aim to prove that there is nothing fit to be really named "Dravidian". His drift is that this label and, along with it, the tab "Aryan" are misnomers when regarded as anything more than conveniences. He is prepared to consider the whole main population of India as well as its diverse speeches to be Dravidian provided we think of a homogeneous race and culture with whatever internal variations of cranio-skeletonic structure and provided we realize the illuminating linguistic role the most ancient Sanskrit, whether designated Aryan or Dravidian, is able to play.

Perhaps a remark may be apposite here on a much-noted feature of Rigvedic Sanskrit as distinguished from related "Aryan" languages, even the one closest to it, the Avestan form of Iranian. The feature is a second series of dental letters, those termed "cerebrals", which are taken as characteristic of "Dravidian" speech: t, d, n, l, s. The general opinion is that Rigvedic Sanskrit assimilated this series from an entirely different linguistic fount. But, once we get rid of the obsession of an Aryan invasion in c. 1500 B.C. and a pre-existing Dravidian India, all that is legitimate to believe is that in India the "Aryan" and "Dravidian" languages have some similar features directing us to a parallel development, during a prolonged antiquity, from a shared linguistic ancestor.

The idea of a parallel development would be put out of court if it was impossible for the cerebrals to have emerged by the internal evolution of an "Aryan" speech like Sanskrit in primitive times. A number of scholars do entertain the idea. But what appears to be the wisest word here is Sten

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Konow's, though it was set forth within the framework of the invasion-hypothesis:

"It seems to be a general rule that a people which invaded a foreign country, to some degree adopted the pronunciation of its new home, partly as a result of the influence of climate, and partly also on account of the intermixture with the old inhabitants. This has also generally been supposed to have been the case in India. Thus there has been a long discussion as to whether the Aryans have adopted the cerebral letters from the Drāvidas or have developed them independently. Good reasons have been adduced for both suppositions, and the question has not as yet been decided. The Indo-European languages do not seem to have possessed those letters. They had a series of dentals which were not, however, pronounced as pure dentals by putting the tongue between the teeth, but probably as alveolars, the tongue being pressed against the root of the upper teeth [as, for instance, in pronouncing the English -t- and -d-]. It is a well known fact that these sounds have in India partly become dentals and partly cerebrals. The cerebrals are in most cases derived from compound letters where the old dentals were preceded by an -l-. Similar changes also occur in other Indo-European languages, and it is therefore quite possible that the Indo-Aryan cerebrals have been developed quite independently. The cerebral letters, however, form an essential feature of the Dravidian phonology, and it therefore seems probable that Dravidian influence has been at work and at least given strength to a tendency which can, it is true, have taken its origin among the Aryans themselves."²⁰

We may conclude this section by referring to a remarkable group of papers recently published though written nearly fifty years ago when Sri Aurobindo was himself revising the current dichotomy of Aryan-Dravidian. It presses for a revision of several notions largely accepted so far of Rigvedic or other borrowings by Sanskrit from Dravidian. It counters

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

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most competently the pro-Dravidian bias set up in the minds of our philologists ever since Bishop Caldwell's Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages (1856, 2nd Edition 1875) gave a shock to the previous pro-Aryan bias. According to R. Swaminatha Aiyar,²¹ many of the words understood as non-Aryan turn out to be Aryan behind their Dravidian exteriors and this exterior itself can be seen as crypto-Aryan. He deals extensively with the conjugation of verbs, particularly tense and mood signs, and reserves for separate analysis basic vocabulary and nominal declension. Over a hundred Dravidian verbal forms occurring in ordinary speech are demonstrated to be derived from Indo-Aryan roots. The majority of grammatical structures in Dravidian are shown as arising from suffixed elements borrowed from Indo-Aryan. But he is careful to send us to Vedic idioms and spoken Prakrits rather than to classical Sanskrit which is a late literary development.

Aiyar seems to be on a genuine Aurobindonian tack, except that he does not envisage a common linguistic ancestry instead of being tempted by his important discoveries to argue that Dravidian "is made up of elements to be found in old Indo-Aryan and is merely a phase of Indo-Aryan".²²

21.Dravidian Theories (The Madras Law Journal Office, Madras, 1975). For a good brief review see "Linguistic Research" by S.N. Sri-ramadesikan in The Hindu (Madras), August 17, 1975, p. 15, col. 3. I have drawn on its summary for part of what follows.

22.Ibid., p. 164.

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Chapter Four

The Mitanni Documents and Rigvedic India

The indubitably cultural import of some frequent Rigvedic terms, which might superficially convey a racial shade, leads us to make light of whatever non-"Aryan" components there were in the population of the Indus Valley Civilization. A fair critical case is created for considering, on the strength of the "Aryan" component, that the Rigveda may have been anterior and not, as generally believed by West-influenced scholars, posterior to the Harappā Culture. But here the Mitanni documents with their Indo-Irānian-looking nomenclature and language come into the picture. Since there lies behind them the presence of Aryan rulers, whose first identified member dates back to c. 1480 B.C.¹ and who appear to have colonized a part of Mesopotamia at about the same time as the Aryans are said to have invaded India, a background other than India has been conjured up for the Rigveda - a background of common life abroad with the people who later became the Irānians. But here is an error which should have been laid at rest long ago

It is well known that in the treaty between the Hittite king Shubiluliuma and the Mitanni ruler Mattiwaza (= Sanskrit Mativāja, "Victorious through prayer"), son of Dusratta, the latter invokes his gods as witnesses of the treaty, in the formula: Hani mi-it-tra-as-si-il Hani u-ru-wa-na-as-si-il ilu inda-ra Hani na-sa-at-ti-ia-an-na.

Obviously, we have in this formula the Rigvedic deities Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and the Nāsatyas, an alternative name for the heavenly twins, the Aświnas. Particularly with the extant variant a-ru-na for u-ru-wa-na the Rigvedism hits the eye at once. We may also note that the determinative "god" in the plural (ilani) precedes each of the two names Mitra and Varuṇa. The purpose of this plural determinative could

1. Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 229.

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have been only to suggest that these names formed a Dvandva compound - exactly as in Rigvedic Sanskrit.

In the Mitanni Kikkuli's manual of horse-breeding the rulers of the Mitanni are said to practise chariot-racing, a favourite sport mentioned in the Rigveda, and are called maryanni which can be equated to the Rigvedic mārya meaning "a young hero." Kikkuli also uses numerals like aika, tera, panza, satta and the word vartanna for each "turning" round the course. The numerals are very near to Sanskrit, and the word for "turning" is akin to the Sanskrit vartanam.

On the face of it, Rigvedic culture appears to have sent an offshoot to Mesopotamia, in conformity with what the Purānas tell about Aryan migrations from India. Whatever differences there may be from Sanskrit seem to be due solely to the inadequacy of the Akkadian syllabary employed by the Hittites. But several scholars have taken another view.² They see in the numerals an archaic Indo-Irānian dialect pointing to a language outside India and preceding Rigvedic no less than Gāthic In support of their contention they have directed our gaze to the clay-tablets of about the same period, with Babylonian cuneiform script, discovered at El-Amarna in Egypt. These tablets list numerous dynasts ruling in Syria with names such as Artamanya, Arzawiya, Yasdata, Suttarna. We hear too of Namyawaza, Biridaswa, Swardata, Abiratta, Artadama and Artasumara. It is claimed that in these Indo-Irānian-looking names no specifically Indo-Aryan or Irānian feature is perceptible. The inference is drawn that there existed in Mesopotamia archaic Indo-Irānian speech-forms which are undoubtedly older than the oldest Avestan or Sanskrit known to us and must have their ultimate provenance beyond both Irānian and Indian territories.

Unfortunately for this inference, most of the strange appellations have been reduced to their Sanskrit counterparts:

2. E.g., B.K. Ghosh, "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age, pp. 204-05.

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Artasumara = Ritasmara, "remembering the divine law."

Artadama = Ritadhaman, "abiding in the divine law."

Abiratta = Abhiratha, "owner of a superior chariot."

Swardata = Svardata, "given by Heaven."

Biridaswa = Brihadashwa, "possessing great horses."

Namyawaza = Namya-vāja, "one who owns a glorious prize."

Suttarana = Sudharna, "very strong."³

We may without hesitation assert that hardly any of the Indo-Irānian-looking names fall outside Sanskrit to raise the presumption of a possible origin outside India for the ancestors of the Rigvedic seers.

Actually a sharp direct consideration of Kikkuli should suffice to invalidate such a presumption. Pusalker aptly remarks that "the words do not exhibit the changes which distinguish Irānian from the Indian forms, indicating that the words were borrowed either from the Indians or from their ancestors before bifurcation into Indians and Irānians."⁴ Pusalker, while not negating a possible common Indo-Irānian ancestry outside India, is at least clear in ruling out specific Irānian roots and in positing the possibility of specific Indian ones. Gordon Childe goes even further: "The numerals are distinctively Indian not Irānian; aika is identical with the Sanskrit eka, while 'one' in Zend is aeva. So the s is preserved in satta where it becomes h in Irānian (hapta) and the exact form is found, not indeed in Sanskrit, but in the Prakrits which were supposed to be post-Vedic."⁵

Coming to the most important document, the treaty, we may adduce as settling the whole issue a masterly examination of it by Paul Thieme.⁶ His article helps to link the son of

3.Selected from R.A. Jairazbhoy, Foreign Influence in Ancient India (Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963), pp. 14-15.

4."Cultural Interrelation between India and the Outside World before Asoka", The Cultural Heritage of India, I, p. 148.

5.The Aryans (London, 1926), p. 19.

6."The 'Aryan' Gods of the Mitanni Treaties", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 80, No. 4, October-December 1960, pp. 301-17.

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Dusratta (= Sanskrit Dasaratha) straight to the Rigvedic religion instead of an Indo-Irānian one from which the Rig-veda and the A vesta would be derivatives. His findings in brief are:

(1)The Avesta has no combination corresponding to the "Mitra-Varuṇa" of the Rigveda and of the Mitanni document, nor even a god Varuṇa. So we cannot reconstruct a similar Indo-Irānian or what Thieme terms Proto-Aryan form. The Avesta has "Mithra-Ahura". As the Rigveda also has "Asura" as counterpart of the Avestan "Ahura" and uses it at times together with "Mitra" (and "Varuṇa"), the Proto-Aryan combination would logically be "Mitra-Asura". The Mitanni document's combination is therefore strictly Rigvedic.

(2)The Rigvedic adjective vrtrahan which is at times applied to several gods is mostly applied to Indra to denote the enemy-smashing or victorious power he brings to the help of these gods. This word is represented by two different forms in the Avesta, one an adjective "verethragan" for the Winds and the other the name of a god "Verethragna". The Avesta's Indra is not of the Rigvedic type, he has been converted into a demon, but Verethragna who helps the other gods is his equivalent, personifying enemy-smashing or victory. So we cannot postulate for Proto-Aryan a god corresponding exactly to Indra vrtrahan. We can only postulate a god Indra and another god Vrtraghna personifying enemy-smashing or victory and finally an adjective "vrtraghna" answering to the Rigvedic and Avestan adjectives and applicable not only to the god Indra but also to other gods. The helpful vrtrahan-function predominantly though not exclusively given in the Rigveda to Indra cannot be considered as special to the Proto-Aryan Indra: it should belong to Vrtraghna himself. Hence the Indra of the Mitanni document, who comes effectively to the help of the other gods, is purely Rigvedic.

(3)The Avesta knows of just one Nāsatya (Naonhaitya). A single Nāsatya is known also to the Rigveda (IV. 3, 6).

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Once the Rigveda forms the combination "Indra-Nāsatya" (VIII. 26, 8), which can only mean "Indra and (one) Nāsatya". The Avesta too has a similar formation (Vendidad, 10, 9). But the Rigveda knows, in addition, of two Nāsatyas: most commonly its Nāsatyas are dual. So the Proto-Aryan form must be that in which the Rigveda resembles the Avesta: Proto-Aryan must have no more than one Nāsatya. And the dual Nāsatyas of the Mitanni document cannot but be altogether Rigvedic.

(4) All the gods named in this document in connection with a treaty are said in the Rigveda to protect treaties, even the two Nāsatyas though these only occasionally. Their connection with speech or verbal expression can be shown once as occurring even in the same order: Mitrā-Varuṇa, Indra-Agni, Aśvinā (= Nāsatya) (X. 125, 1bc): "I (Speech) carry ('support, nourish' or 'bear [in my womb]'?) both Mitra and Varuṇa, I [carry] Indra-Agni, I [carry] both the two Aśvinas." The combination of Agni with Indra is, of course, due to the wish to create a grammatical parallelism among the three as dual.

Thieme's conclusions enable us to assert that the rulers of the Mitanni were essentially Rigvedic in culture. We do not have to think that the Indo-Aryans developed from those who, before moving into India, lived in some extra-Indian territory with those who later became the Mitanni monarchy in Mesopotamia. What we have to think is that the Maryanni were an offshoot of Rigvedic culture - though not necessarily contemporaneous with the Rigveda - from a place where Irānian elements might mingle with Indian ones to account for certain Irānian traits as components of royal names in the miscellaneous group of Aryan peoples whom we find in Western Asia soon after 2000 B.C. - traits like "bugash" (Irānian "baga") or perhaps even "arta", though, as Keith observes, "in Mitanni script it was impossible to reproduce Rta correctly".⁷ The place in question could very

7. "The Early History of the Indo-Irānians", R.G. Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume (Poona 1917), p. 90.

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well be on the borders of India neighbouring Irān.

Thus the Boghaz-keui documents pose no hurdle to our rejection of the invasion-theory and to our proposal to date the Rigveda to an antiquity greater than that of the Harappā Culture. But then the questions would come up: "Are there any reasons to place the latter before the former? If not, what is the relation of the two? Can we regard the Harappā Culture as linked to the Rigveda and as a natural phenomenon following in its wake, a civilization which, for all the Irānian, Sumerian and so-called Dravidian ingredients seen in it, would be basically Aryan?"

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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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Chapter Six

DID THE HARAPPĀ CULTURE HAVE THE SPOKED CHARIOT-WHEEL OF THE ARYANS?

Perhaps an attempt will be made to show the posteriority of the Rigveda to the Harappā Culture by protesting: 'The Rigveda knows the spoked chariot-wheel, which is as much a sign of the Aryan as the domesticated horse. The Harappā Culture has shown only solid wheels for its carts and chariots. How will you explain this striking difference except by crediting the Harappā Culture with greater antiquity, if not also by supposing that the Rigvedics brought the spoked chariot-wheel into India in 1500 B.C. from abroad, where it is surely attested by that time?"

It is true that so far only solid wheels have been in evidence in Harappān toy-vehicles, but can we really affirm that spoked ones are not indicated anywhere? Actually a positive answer should be considered overwhelming. About the writing on the Harappān stamp-seals, Walter Fairservis, Jr., remarks: "It appears to be hieroglyphic or ideographic in form. Human, animal and floral figurines are readily recognizable, multiple dashes probably represent numbers, while such objects as wheels, bows and arrows, and trees very likely represent themselves - it would seem that they are not phonetic symbols."¹ Now, if we look at the wheels in the illustrations provided by Fairservis we find them clearly with six spokes.²

These wheels are fairly frequent in Harappā itself (e.g. Seals Nos. 2029, 2119, 2160, 3309). They occur on as many as nine seals recovered from a part (DK area) of the lower

1.'The Ancient East", Natural History (New York), November 1958,pp. 506-07.

2.Ibid., p. 505. See the plate we have reproduced, showing two seals.The present writer argued for spoked chariot-wheels as far back as 1963 inthe same article in which he made out a case for the domesticated horse.See fn . 1 of chapter 5 for the reference.

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city of Mohenjo-Dāro.³ They are seen on three seals from Kalibangan.⁴ They are still more frequent on weapons than on seals.⁵ Kalibangan has yielded also two potsherds inscribed with them.⁶ And now from Surkotada comes not only a seal from the lowest layer with a six-spoked wheel traced on it⁷ but also a pottery-fragment painted with the same sign.⁸

Pusalker, referring to the Harappān wheel-sign, says that, like the swastika, it is a symbol of the sun.⁹ Doubtless, in antiquity the circle was a sun-symbol: thus the Egyptian hieroglyphs had a circle, with a circlet within it, as a solar emblem whose sound-value was Ra or Re.¹⁰ But nowhere in the world either before 2500 B.C. or in the early Harappān period - that is, before the first few centuries of the second millennium B. C. when the spoked wheels appeared in Asia Minor - do we have in any writing except of the Indus Valley Civilization the sign of the circle with inner spokes. Outside the Indus Valley the earliest such sign is in the Mycenaean syllabary as set forth by Michael Ventris and John Chad-wick, the now-famous Linear B. script.¹¹ There is a four-spoked circle, denoting the ka-sound. The language is Indo-European, an archaic Greek spoken in the 14th century B.C. when people were already acquainted with the spoked chariot-wheel. And it is here that we get a confirmation of our thesis that in c. 2500 B.C. the Harappān spoked-wheel

3.E.J.H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro (New Delhi ,1937), Vol. II , Pis. LXXXIII and LXXXIV.

4.B.B. Lal, Has the Indus Script been deciphered? An Assessment of Two Latest Claims (Paper read at the 26th International Congress of Orientalists, Paris, 16-22 July), p. 8.

5.Mackay, op. cit., PI. CXXVI, and M.S. Vats, Excavations at Harappā (Delhi, 1941), PI. CXXIII.

6.Lai. op. cit., p.8

7.J.P. Joshi, op. cit., PI. VII facing p. 121.

8.Sankalia, op. cit., p. 363, Fig. 95.

9."The Indus Valley Civilization", The Vedic Age, p. 189.

10.P.E. Cleator, Lost Languages (Mentor, New York, 1959), p. 51.

11.Ibid., p. 155, Fig. 11.

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sign points to a chariot like those that came into vogue in Asia Minor about 1700 B.C. For, in the first place, the Linear B script has many ideograms and some of them "are clearly pictorial (as in the case of Men, Tripods, Chariots)"¹² The pictorial ideogram of the chariot shows a four-spoked wheel.¹³ In the second place, even outside the script, we have representations of chariots ridden by Mycenaean warriors, and again we are faced with the same wheel.¹⁴ There is perfect justification for us to argue from the Harappān wheel-sign to a Harappān chariot running on wheels with six spokes.

Actually it seems we do not have to wait on a proof from Mycenae. Our spoked wheels do not invariably occur in isolated suggestiveness: they are also found in association with a sign that should make it perfectly evident that these representations are the wheels of a chariot. We get a most enlightening observation from the Finnish scholars who have tried to read Proto-Dravidian in the Indus script but, like everyone else attempting decipherment so far, unsuccessfully, as may be gathered from the penetrating criticisms of B.B. Lai and other savants, who have basically invalidated their linguistic assumptions, arguments and methods.¹⁵ They bring into prominence Seal No. 3357 where a man's figure is

12.Ibid., p. 156.

13.Ibid., p. 157, Fig. 12, col. 4, 2nd & 3rd Ideograms from below.

14.Piggott, Prehistoric India, p. 275, Fig. 13, 3rd picture.

15.For the enlightening observation see Decipherment of the Proto-Dravidian Inscriptions of the Indus Civilization by Asko Parpola, Seppo Koskenniemi, Simo Parpola, Pentti Aalto, (The Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Special Publication No. 1, Copenhagen, 1969), p. 24.

For the penetrating criticisms see Lai's article "Indus Script: Inconsistencies in Claims of Decipherment", The Hindusthan Times., New Delhi, April 6,1969, p. 14, and the articles of Romila Thapar and P.B. Pandit in the same newspaper, March 30, 1969, pp. l-m.

Even T. Burrow, on whose researches in Dravidian linguistics the Finnish scholars substantially depend, has made discouraging comments on their procedures and conclusions: see his "Dravidian and the Decipherment of the Indus Script", Antiquity, Vol. XLVIII, 1969, pp. 274-78.

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shown standing with one foot on one spoked wheel and the other on a similar circle.¹⁶ Apropos of the attachment of the two wheels to the feet of the man and not to his hands, as in the case of bow-and-arrow signs, the scholars declare that this fact makes it clear what the spoked-wheel sign depicts: "a '(cart-) wheel'." They add: "We have made this identification while realising full well that the spoked-wheeled war chariot was a later invention of the Aryans."

If the decipherers had not been obsessed with the notion that Aryanism in India was post-Harappān, they would have drawn the correct conclusion that a Seal like No. 3357 proves the war-chariot with spoked wheels to be an earlier invention of the Aryans, and the Harappā Culture to be their inheritor in spite of whatever Dravidianism it may have developed. To propose, as the Finnish scholars do in their second publication (1969, pp. 6, 20-21, 42-43), that the wheels are those of a potter using both his legs to turn them is surely an excessive flight of imagination. Besides, it does not do away with their spoked aspect. This aspect is indeed the central point, and its application to a chariot-wheel is the most natural, especially in a sign-arrangement like the one before us.

S.R. Rao seems fully aware of the significance of the sign

16. G.R. Hunter, The Script of Harappā and Mohenjo-daro (Kegan Paul, London, 1934), PI. XXXII, No. H 106.

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under discussion. He remarks in connection with an important Harappān site in Saurāshtra: "Relevant to the subject of chariots is the graffito on the potsherd from Lothal wherein a figure is seen standing on two wheels resembling the Assyrian chariot-drivers painted on pottery. Attention may be drawn here to the fact that hubbed terracotta wheels painted in red with diagonal lines suggesting spokes are also encountered at Lothal."¹⁷ We may remind ourselves that "the Assyrian chariot-drivers" hail from a period when spoked wheels were a common property.

The varied mass of evidence we have marshalled is enough to counterbalance a curious notion expressed by Fairservis in a recent writing. Unlike those who read a sun-symbol, he still holds that the sign in question is a wheel, but he says: "Though it appears to be a spoked wheel, a closer examination of the actual depiction on the seals indicates that it is not. The 'spokes' are usually simply depicted by mere crossing lines, and these conform with the kind of wooden supports for solid wheels seen on Sindi carts to this day."¹⁸ The notion seems to have been thought necessary just because spoked wheels are deemed anachronistic in Harappān times, which are taken to be prior to the spoked-wheel Aryan charioteers of c. 1500 B.C.

Even apart from our evidence, Fairservis gets no encouragement either from concrete practice or archaeology. Does any Sindi cart have the exact arrangement of three intercrossing lines we witness here? Fairservis's formula - "the kind of wooden supports" - is quite vague. And a scrutiny still closer than his examination will lay bare the fact that we do not have on the seals a flat solid wheel with "supports" superposed on its surface: there is an outer rim in relief to which the "spokes" - also in relief - are fixed, a rim such as no solid wheel can have, and empty space can be distinguished between the spokes and under the rim. Besides,

17.Lothal and the Indus Civilization, p. 124

18.Excavations at Allahdino, III (Papers of Allahdino Expedition, New York. 1977), p. 89.

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"supports" can be conceived only if separate sections are joined to make a solid wheel. Where is the slightest indication of such sections in our sign? Further, in ancient times, solid wheels were made in two ways. A couple of half-discs were dowelled together against the hub," in which case there were no visible "supports". Or else the wheels "were made with two or three segments fastened with transverse struts and strengthened with a swelling around the hub."²⁰ Transverse struts can form no such pattern as our sign exhibits. On the other hand, wherever in the ancient world spoked wheels are shown, they correspond very accurately with the depiction before us. Egyptian, late Hittite and Assyrian examples have even the same number of spokes²¹ as on the Harappān seals, weapons and potsherds. Fairservis's idea can safely be brushed aside.

To the doubt whether the Harappā Culture had sufficiently sophisticated metal tools for the manufacture of the spoked wheel, the answer is unequivocal. The impression of primitiveness produced by some Harappān weapons needs to be emphatically qualified. A.L. Basham writes: "In one respect the Harappā people were technically in advance of their contemporaries - they had devised a saw with undulating teeth, which allowed the dust to escape freely from the cut, and much simplified the carpenter's task. From this we may assume that they had particular skill in carpentry."²² Then there is the twisted copper or bronze drill discovered by Rao at Lothal. Sankalia records the find and comments: "Its occurrence at so early a date is of great moment in the history of civilization."²³

The primitiveness of Harappān weaponry must be attributed to self-imposed limitations, the innate conservatism

19.Piggott, op. cit., p. 274.

20.Encyclopaedia Britannica (1974), Vol. 19, p. 520, col. 2.

21.Piggott, op. cit., p. 275, Fig. 31, picture 2; p. 277.

22.The Wonder that was India (The Grove Press Inc., New York, 1961), _P. 21.

23.Indian Archaeology Today, p. 61.

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which most scholars have noted. To quote Stuart Piggott: "The dead hand of conservatism, in design rather than technique, lies heavy on all the Harappā products. Complex technical processes were known, well understood, and admirably organized for production, but the output suffered from standardization and an almost puritanical utilitarianism."²⁴ The Harappāns' metallurgy was advanced enough to turn out complex works whenever they wanted them.

This point about the state of metallurgy is important, as it keeps the Harappān wheel-representation distinct from a certain solitary depiction, which is still earlier, tentatively dated to about 4000 B.C. Piggott has discussed the Tell Halaf painted pot where a human figure stands by a circular object divided by cross-lines. Piggott finds it difficult to accept this representation as that of a wheeled vehicle because the metallurgy of Tell Halaf times is known to have been hesitant and experimental, not at all equipped with tools of a standard demanded for the production of a spoked wheel.²⁵ Besides, there is no supporting evidence for any sort of wheeled vehicle in c. 4000 B.C. According to Gordon Childe, the earliest vehicles on wheels in Mesopotamia, which he considers the earliest in history, date to a little before 3500 B.C.²⁶ And they are without the least trace of spokes. Even as late as the Royal Tombs of Ur (c. 2500 B.C.) the Mesopotamian wheels are solid.

The Harappā Culture's spoked wheels have no precedent in Western Asia nor anything contemporary there to compare with them. With Western Asia ruled out, there can exist outside India no source for them. If they had a source it could only be a previous culture within India. A culture, developed enough and yet simpler on the whole than the Indus Valley Civilization, could make the right explanatory background if we knew that it had the spoked wheel together with the horse-chariot - and still more if we knew that it

24.Prehistoric India, p. 200.

25.Ibid. pp. 273-4.

26."The First Wagons and Carts from the Tigris to the Severn", Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 17(3), pp. 177-94.

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flourished in the very region where this civilization is located. The Rigvedic Culture of Sapta-Sindhu, the seven-rivered Indus territory, as well as of the Sarasvati Valley has all the necessary qualifications.

And when we learn from Macdonell and Keith that in the Rigvedic chariot "sometimes a solid wheel was used",²⁷ we get a link between India's oldest scripture and the clay-model carts and chariots of the Indus Valley Civilization, in addition to a link between it and that civilization's wheel-figurines on stamp-seals, weapons and potsherds. Thus a Rigveda prior to 2500 B.C. can account for all we know of Harappān wheels.

A critic may ask: "How is it that only in the pre-Harappān India of the Rigveda and nowhere else in the same antiquity spokes are to be seen? Also, how is it that even in Harappān times they are confined to India?" The answer is simple. Spokes were adopted at different times by different peoples and countries. O. Schrader has expressly pointed out agreement in the names of the following portions of the wagon in the Indo-European languages: wheel, axle, nave, linch-pin, pole and yoke. The agreement is set over against the near-disagreement about the felloe (the outer rim attached to the spokes) and the total disagreement about the spokes.²⁸ Schrader, referring to the terms in common, notes: "In this collection, it will be observed, there is no equation for the spoke of the wheel." Thus it is not unnatural for both the Rigveda and the Harappā Culture to have the spoked wheel exclusively in their respective epochs - with nothing like it in the rest of the world.

Not only is it unnecessary to date the Rigveda after the Harappā Culture in the context of the wheel with spokes. It is also more in the fitness of things to regard it as pre-Harappān in that context.

27.The Vedic Index, II , p. 201.

28.Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan People, translated by Frank Byron Jevons (Charles Griffin and Co., London, 1890; Oxford Publishers, Delhi, 1972), p. 339.

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Chapter Seven

PRE-HarappāN ARYANISM AND THE RIGVEDA

How well a pre-Harappān Rigveda, in an all-round context and not merely in that of the spoked wheel, fits into the historical picture of India's remote antiquity can be noted if we revolve a question which Sankalia put to the present writer in a letter of 21 March 1963. I had sent him the typescript of the first draft of my book, The Harappā Culture and the Rigveda, which has now been considerably enlarged but is still unpublished. He wrote to me a very appreciative letter of some length, in the course of which he observed:

"Like a clever lawyer you have shown how the archaeologists have very little evidence that the Harappā Culture is non-Vedic... When you say that the Harappā Civilization belongs to the later phase of the Vedic Culture, that is, the Atharva Veda, etc., it is also understandable.

"But we have got to show that there are traces of Vedic Aryans of a still earlier date to be found in India and they must go back to at least two thousand to four thousand B.C., if not even earlier, and these must be found from Sind and the Punjab, though Baluchistan has given evidence of a pottery which may go back to 3500 B.C. From nowhere have traces of such an early culture been found and that, I think, will be regarded as a weak point of your theory."

Between 1963 and today, archaeology has taken many strides and Sankalia's criticisms can be answered from his own later writings. But before we quote the later Sankalia against the earlier we may draw attention to three things.

First, when we say that Vedic Aryan traces from a pre-Harappān period have not been found in the provinces where we should expect them we must mean traces that are absolutely clear-cut. It is true that something which would inevitably fix a culture as Vedic Aryan has not been discovered in the times and places mentioned by Sankalia in that letter. But can we affirm that such traces have met the

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archaeologist's spade even for the second millennium B.C. during which most historians visualize the Vedic Aryans as invading India and settling down in the Punjāb and Sind?

We have already cited negative replies from Dales and from the very champion himself of the Aryan-invasion hypothesis: Wheeler. We may join to their statements Pusalker's comment on the claims staked for several potteries that they belong to the supposed Vedic Aryan invaders: "There is... no positive evidence to connect the Vedic Aryans with the excavated Cultures subsequent to those of the Indus Valley. .. So far archaeological excavation has yielded nothing of the nature of sacrificial implements or other ritual paraphernalia that can definitely be called Aryan and associated with the Vedic Aryans, though it must be admitted that the Painted Grey Ware culture has been found at all excavated sites connected with the Bhārata War."¹ In Pusalker's mind the terminal admission does not weigh sufficiently against his generalization. Neither, apparently, does any other equivalence with tradition al history proposed by the original excavators of PGW. In fact, all the "equivalences" have been reduced to near-nullity by K.N. Sastri.² And we have already demonstrated that archaeologically there is nothing to render the PGW-people an arrival from abroad. In the face of negative results for every post-Harappān pottery, do we require absolutely clear-cut signs of Vedic Aryanism in a far greater antiquity than 1500 B.C.?

Secondly, certain signs which would be indecisive round about the middle of the second millennium B.C., would have an almost decisive force prior to 2500 B.C., the most likely starting-point of the Harappā Culture in a recognizable form. We have characterized, in accord with all authorities, the Aryans as the first domesticators of the horse. But, if a culture of c. 1500-1300 B.C. is proved to have

1.Editors' Preface, The Cultural Heritage of India (Calcutta, 1958), I, P- xlvi.

2.New Lights on the Indus Civilization, with an Introduction by R.K. Mookerji (Atma Ram & Sons, Delhi, 1957), pp. 110-17.

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known the domesticated horse, it cannot automatically become Aryan in our eyes. As late as that time we may believe the use of this animal to have spread outside the sphere of Aryanism. However, if a culture considerably older than 1500 B.C. can be taken to have known that animal, the odds are heavy that it was Aryan.

Among the animal finds in Phase I of Rānā Ghundāī in North Balūchistān which must be dated before 3000 B.C., "four teeth... have been identified as belonging to the domesticated horse." Thus H. Peake and H.J. Fleure report.³ Piggott has the same news to convey.⁴ Frederick Zeuner has tried to discredit it by suggesting the hemione or onager (half-ass) as RG I's horse-seeming animal.⁵ But he muddles his argument by proposing the hemione also for some other animal bones recovered at the site and considered to be an ass's.⁶ He overlooks the fact that the teeth ascribed to the horse were originally found not to go structurally with the "ass"-finds. Hence both cannot be identified as the hemione's. There is no reason to doubt the presence of equus caballus at RG I.

Nor does Zeuner himself strike us as being any too confident about the non-caballine nature of those four teeth. In a general summary of his views on horse-finds all over the ancient world, he gives the benefit of the doubt to the horselike representation on a vase from Khafaje near Baghdad, belonging to the Jamdat Nasr period, approximately 3000 B.C.⁷ Then he remarks: "The bones from Rānā Ghundāī I are dated even earlier, but domestication cannot be proved."⁸ This means that the RG teeth are - or at least may be - of a horse, even though an undomesticated one.

3.Times and Places (Oxford, 1956), p. 228.

4.Op. cit., p. 121.

5.A History of Domesticated Animals (Hutchinson of London, 1963),p. 332.

6.Ibid.

7.Ibid., pp. 317,337.

8.Ibid., p. 337.

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However, the reservation here is itself indirectly offset by Zeuner's very next sentence: "It is possible, and for theoretical reasons probable, that the original domestication of the horse had taken place by this time..." We may further bear in mind that RG I provides evidence of animal-domestication apart from the horse-finds: Piggott lists, among the animal finds, domestic sheep (Ovis vignei).⁹ Even Sankalia, who is erroneously led away by Zeuner to be wholly negative where Zeuner himself is merely ambiguous on the whole, speaks twice of "the bones of domesticated animals" at RG I.¹⁰ It would be rather odd if Zeuner were to allow the horse yet dub him wild in the midst of all other animals that had undergone domestication.

And Piggott indicates that the testimony of RG I does not lack continuation. He says about a find at a site in the Zhob Valley related to RG: "one clay figurine from Periano Ghundai seems to represent a horse and is interesting in connection with the find of horses' teeth in RG I at the type site."¹¹ This figurine he assigns to the RG III phase which for him begins some centuries before 2500 B.C. and is pre-Harappān even at its end.

According to Sankalia, the figurine has been reported from the earlier of the two phases ("Zhob Cult" and "In-cinerary Pot Burial") which Fairservis has marked as late

Periano Ghundai.¹² For some unexplained reason Sankalia questions its inclusion in the earlier phase, but his diffidence does not substantially affect the antiquity of this terracotta. For, even the later phase does not come after the Harappā Culture, while by Fairservis's rating the earlier is contemporary only with one phase - obviously a very initial one - of the Harappā Culture.¹³ Most probably the figurine precedes

9. Piggott, op. cit. p. 121.

10.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974), p. 325, col. 2.

11.Op. cit, p. 126.

12.Op, cit., p. 324, col. 2.

13.The Roots of Ancient India, p. 148.

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the Harappā Culture, but otherwise too it is, at the latest, only a little after 2500 B.C.

Lastly, there is the verdict of Fairservis several years ago on the materials from a site pretty close to RG: Kili Gul Mohammad, which starts as early as 3500 B.C. if not earlier. Here equine remains - subsequently suspect without real cause on account of the Zeuner-inspired onager-obsession -were found scattered through all levels and were labelled by Fairservis, on the strength of a figurine, as those of the true horse.¹⁴ And we may quote apropos of this figurine as well as the one from Periano Ghundāī the phrase of none else than Zeuner: "clay figurines usually represent domestic types."¹⁵

From all these observations our inference has to be that, archaeologically, Aryanism may with reason be assumed to have existed next door to the provinces mentioned by Sankalia, in the very period he specifies.

Here a further point draws our attention. In India herself the situation is not as if the horse-knowing RG Culture remained simply a neighbour. Piggott has traced the Harappā Culture's varied relationship with RG, particularly in the matter of pottery. A special type - the so-named "offering-stand" - joins up with RG II, while decoration - design on a deep red lustrous slip - connects with the RG III phase at Periano Ghundāī and other sites; even the characteristic "stamp-seals" of the Harappā Culture have only two specimens in Balūchistān and both belong to areas of RG culture, one being from Dabar Kot whose upper layers formed actually a Harappān occupation and the other probably from Periano Ghundāī.¹⁶

With all this relationship with RG we may certainly expect horse-knowledge and horse-use to be spread over the Indus-region even before 2500 B.C. And what clinches our expectation is that we can go still further than close neighbourly interchange. We have evidence that the culture of RG was

14.Letter from Sankalia dated 1.11.1962.

15.Op. cit., p. 325.

16.Op. cit., pp. 192-93; 193; 128; 185.

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actually established in the Indus-region precedent to the typical Indus Valley Civilization.

Piggott writes: "... the small amount of material available from the recent (1946) excavations at Harappā shows that the first town on that site overlies a settlement of people using pottery which appears to belong to the North Balūchistān group, in that phase of development seen in the IIIc phase at Rānā Ghundāī."¹⁷ D.H. Gordon, who designates the RG and related pottery as Loralai ware, writes that from - 32 feet at Mohenjo-dāro, which gives almost the earliest period of the city, sherds of polychrome ware were recovered, having a series of ovals with a vertical line down the center of each, a motif so far found only in the bichrome Loralai III ware at Sur Jungal.¹⁸ So we have at the two most important sites in the Indus-region before and during 2500 B.C. a culture which knew the domesticated horse.

The Aryans, typified by this animal, must have been in pre-Harappān antiquity in the Indus-region. Even when Sankalia commented on the first draft of my book, the same conclusion could have been drawn. In an article of 1964 he has himself spoken of "Rānā Ghundāī IIIc Culture found under the debris of Harappan and the low level (- 32 feet) Mohenjo-dāro".¹⁹

But Sankalia, in his article, emphasizes the exceptional nature - in chronological terms - of the above finds along with the traces of the Harappān Civilization itself in Western India and the Punjāb. His emphasis does not vitiate the general trend of our conclusion, namely, pre-Harappān Aryanism in the Punjāb and Western India; yet, in 1964, the paucity of pre-Harappān Aryan material justifies his somewhat cautious final stand vis-à-vis a thesis like mine. Logically, the Harappā Culture could be aligned to Vedism;

17.Ibid. 142

18.The Prehistoric Background of Indian Culture (Tripathi Ltd. Bombay, 1958), p. 59.

19.'tradition al Indian Chronology and C-14 Dates of Excavated Sites", Indian Prehistory, 1964, p. 222.

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archaeologically, an Aryan background to it could be posited so far as the domesticated horse might be its differentia-, what was lacking was a substantial framework within which could be set in a broad manner a rich developed phenomenon like the Rigveda as the antecedent of the Indus Valley Civilization.

However, the picture of 1964 has radically changed now and, in addition, the most recent discoveries carry us, technically speaking, beyond "culture" to "civilization". In 1967 Sankalia himself, after referring in general to the cultural efflorescence of the Indus Valley, has the remarks:

"Though this was the most extensive civilization which India knew, it was not the first. It is now known that it was preceded by a civilization born under Iranian influence which flourished in Sind, Punjāb and Rajasthan, particularly in the valleys of the Vedic Sarasvati and Drishadvati (former Bikaner State). Who the authors of this earlier urban civilization were we do not know, just as we do not know who their mighty successors were.

"From the excavations in Sind (Kot Diji and Amri) and Northern Rajasthan (Kalibangan) we know that the pre-Indus people knew town-planning, had fortification walls, used a pale red pottery, occasionally beautifully painted, and made use of lithic blades for all household purposes as well as for cutting stocks of grain. In many respects this culture shows greater affinities with the Baluchi and Iranian cultures [than does the Indus Valley Civilization]."²⁰

Some significant features to be added from Sankalia himself writing elsewhere are: "exquisite figure sculpture in the round",²¹ "metal tools/weapons",²² "the use of the plough" and "sowing two types of grain" in the same field,²³ "wheeled transport (as documented by cart frames and

20."Cultural Divisions of India", Science Today (A Times of India Publication; Bombay, 1967), pp. 11-12.

21.Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974), p. 33l.

22.Ibid., p. 345.

23.Ibid., p. 347.

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wheels)",²⁴ "long distant trade (lapis lazuli beads...)".²⁵

Sankalia speculates: "Probably other aspects of the civilization as writing and such ancillary things as sanitation, weights and measures might have been known and would be revealed, when a pre-Harappān settlement, such as Kot Diji, Amri or Gumla or Kalibangan is more fully excavated than hitherto. Kot Diji with its 17 feet of deposits offers excellent prospects."²⁶ Here a footnote of Sankalia's adds: "A pre-Harappān backed-drain with two courses has been found at Kalibangan..."

Mention of Gumla, which is north of Rawalpindi and just below the Gomal Pass, shows the vast extension of our knowledge of pre-Harappān sites after Sankalia first wrote of them. His latest statement in print lists further discoveries - not only "two in Sind" and "one in Rajasthan" but also "one in Balūchistān, two in North West Frontier."²⁷

Thus a more appropriate background on a large scale to the Harappā Culture is created, into which a preceding Vedic one can be fitted. If a Vedic Culture preceded the Harappā Culture, a wide-spread pre-Harappān civilization is exactly what we should expect. Admittedly, nothing Vedic in a direct form has yet been unearthed. But it is worth marking that Sankalia writes of a single pervading civilization, in spite of whatever local variations are inevitably there. This makes the pre-Harappān background still more appropriate for our thesis. And what constitutes the crowning touch is the implication in Sankalia's words: "greater affinities with the Baluchi and Iranian cultures." Our minds immediately hark back to the pre-Harappān pottery, at both Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro, pointing to RG IIIc of North Balūchistān. And naturally we ask: "Do pre-Harappān Kot Diji, Amri and Kalibangan, the three major sites, have the same pointers?"

24.Ibid., p. 358.

25.Ibid.

26.Ibid., p. 331.

27.Ibid.

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Wheeler finds the "Kot Dijian" pottery decorated "sometimes with pendant loops recalling occasional examples from Amri IB-IIB and from the pre-Indus layers at Harappā".²⁸ Beneath the Harappān citadel at Kalibangan, Wheeler notes "the remains of an earlier fortified area with a non-Harappān ceramic having some general resemblance to the non-Harappān pottery of Harappā, Kot Diji and Amri".²⁹ The mention of Harappá's "pre-Indus layers" and of its "non-Harappān pottery" cannot help suggesting North Balūchistān's RG HI culture for the main sites of the pre-Harappān civilization. And Sankalia's own pronouncement in a letter of March 19, 1968, leaves us in hardly any uncertainty. He declares RG HI comparable to Amri I, Kot Diji I, Kalibangan I and Harappān I, and adds: "Thus there is no doubt that there is a uniformity of culture which is pre-Harappān."

With his typical caution Sankalia goes on to remark about the potteries involved: "Whether they should be called Aryan or not it is difficult to say." But here we have to consider not only the general significant point that, if the involved ceramics can be linked on to an ancient culture that had the domesticated horse, the pre-Harappān civilization must, until proved to the contrary, be pronounced "Aryan". We have to consider also the fact, even more significant, that RG Hie should be the bond between quite a number of towns of this civilization. And, as if to charge the label "Aryan" with the most momentous content possible, we have Sankalia's statement that the civilization in question "flourished.. .particularly in the valley of the Vedic Sarasvati and Drishadvati", the regions which many scholars regard as the main seat of the Rigveda's composition.

To employ the rubric "Vedic Aryan" here seems not illegitimate in general and, on the strength of it, we may qualify Sankalia's phrase "born under Iranian influence". But that influence need not be denied altogether. So the

28.The Indus Civilization (1968 Edition), p. 21.

29.Ibid., p. 23.

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validly supposed Vedism of the pre-Harappān Civilization calls for some qualification. This converse readjustment spells no essential loss for our case. All we require is that the Pre-Harappān Civilization should permit us to derive one important line of its ancestry from the Rigveda. Aryanism, at the same time Vedic and non-Vedic, should suffice us - and all that has been excavated appears to leave ample room for it.

The hypothesis of such Aryanism in a fairly remote antiquity and therefore of Rigvedism in still more ancient times would be in consonance with Sri Aurobindo's insight into all matters Rigvedic. He has written: "The text of the Veda which we possess has remained uncorrupted for over two thousand years. It dates, so far as we know, from that great period of Indian intellectual activity, contemporaneous with the Greek efflorescence, but earlier in its beginnings, which founded the culture and civilization recorded in the classical literature of the land. We cannot say to how much earlier a date our text may be carried. But there are certain considerations which justify us in supposing for it an almost enormous antiquity."³⁰

Sri Aurobindo, bearing in mind "the invariable fixity of Vedic thought when taken in conjunction with its depth, richness and subtlety", remarks: "...we may reasonably argue that such a fixed form and substance would not easily be possible in the beginnings of thought and psychological experience or even during their early progress and unfolding. We may therefore surmise that our Sanhita represents the close of a period, not its commencement, nor even some of its successive stages. It is even possible that its most ancient hymns are a comparatively modern development or version of a more ancient lyric evangel couched in the freer and more pliable forms of a still earlier human speech..."³¹

To the word "ancient" Sri Aurobindo gives the foot-note: "The Veda itself speaks constantly of 'ancient' and 'modern'

30.Op. cit., p. 15.

31.Ibid., p. 10.

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Rishis (pūrvebhih...nūtanaih), the former remote enough to be regarded as a kind of demigods, the first founders of knowledge."

What the actual age of the Rigveda in relation to the Harappā Culture could be is anybody's guess, but, if the preHarappān Civilization with its mixed Aryanism is certainly older than 2500 B.C., the Rigveda cannot be later than 3000 B.C. and may be granted an anterior background of at least 500 years. This would carry Vedic Aryanism in North-west India and in its immediate neighbourhoods to c. 3500 B.C.

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Chapter Eight

The Long Belt of Ancient Aryanism

If, as even scholars believing in an Aryan invasion of India round about 1500 B.C. admit, the Rigveda supplies no sign of an entry into the Indian subcontinent from anywhere -and if the Rigveda is to be dated to c. 3500-3000 B.C. - and if the Rigveda itself appears to be a work of Rishis considering themselves "modern" in comparison to the first seer-singers - then surely there is, for all practical objectives, no sense in talking of any other original home of the Rigvedic Aryans than North-west India and thereabouts in the later half of the fourth millennium B.C.

But would we be justified, on the strength of this conclusion, to make the sweeping assertion that these regions were the Aryan cradle-land and that the Aryan presence elsewhere in the ancient world was due to one or more streams of colonization from those regions?

The Maryanni of the Upper Euphrates, emerging into history in c. 1460 B.C., certainly appear to stem from a Rigvedic source. So also do the ruling aristocrats among the Kassites who set up by 1741 B.C. a dynasty in Babylon which lasted for 576 years: they bore names with components recalling Rigvedic deities - Suriash (sun-god, cf. Sanskrit Sūrya), Indas (cf. Sanskrit Indra), Maruttash (cf. Sanskrit Marutah, storm-gods), and are said to have had even the word Shimalia (Himalaya) meaning "queen of the mountains". In a subsequent section we shall touch on the precise provenance of these colonizing adventurers and their exact relation to the Rigveda. But it is obvious that they are very much later than this scripture as dated by us. And in the meantime - from the fourth millennium B.C. onward into the third and second - there was, as attested by the enormous post-Rigvedic literature, a passage out of the Indus Valley and an exploration of various parts of India eastward and southward. Can we claim a like spread-out of Aryanism

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from India in that period to parts of the outside world?

Our answer has to be: No - for several reasons. Both the long-headed Nordic skull and the short-headed Alpine, which are usually associated with the people whom historians recognize as Aryans in the second millennium B.C., are found not only in the skeletons of the Harappā Culture but also in pre-Harappān times in places beyond the Indian border. We have already had a part hint of this in a passage from Sankalia. Now we may state from Piggott that the short-headed "so-called Alpine type" of skull is "represented at Sialk (in Irān) as a small proportion of the population during periods II, III and IV...in the third and fourth millennia B.C."¹ In the fourth millennium both in Hissar I and II, a site of North Irān, we discover, according to S.S. Sarkar, the long-headed Aryan type of skull in a neolithic culture.²

Then there is the interrelation of pottery-styles. Archaeologists - e.g. Piggott³ - have found that pottery-styles in prehistoric times link in diverse ways Turkestān's Anau with Sialk, Rānā Ghundāī with Anau, Sialk with Rānā Ghundāī. Piggott has also noted about Hissar and RG: "The animals depicted on the pots of the two regions - North Persia and North Balūchistān - differ, presumably in response to the fauna and the differing types of domesticated beast in the two cultures, but apart from this the similarities are so striking that we can claim Hissar I and RG II as parallel developments within the Red-ware area."⁴ The Aryanism of Sialk and Hissar by skull-character reflect on RG as well as on Anau; the Aryanism of RG by horse-knowledge colours Anau, Sialk and Hissar. All these sites constitute an interrelated many-aspected Aryanism.

We should join to them Mundigak in South Afghānistān, about whose pottery Fairservis, Jr., has the general statement: "

1.Prehistoric India, p. 147.

2."Race and Race Movements in India", The Cultural Heritage of India (1958), I, p. 20.

3.Op. cit., pp. 58, 65 , 75.

4.Ibid., pp. 129-30.

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...the Mundigak sequence is closely paralleled in northern Balūchistān - so much so, in fact, that one can say that they are essentially of one and the same tradition ."⁵ Bridget and Raymond Allchin inform us about the early phase of Mundigak I: "Some characteristic painted designs are similar to those of Kili Ghul Mohammad II [north Balūchistān] and Anjira I [upper south Balūchistān]."⁶ The succeeding phase of M I, says Fairservis, adds to the KGM ware "the jars and cups and design repertoire, including black and red polychrome painting familiar in Quetta [central Balūchistān] as the Kechi Beg wares, and which in turn have their equivalents in the early Hissar Culture of north-eastern Irān."⁷

One more step in the scheme of interrelated Aryanism can be taken and it is the one most pertinent to our context. Anau and Sialk no less than RG are sites where bones of the domesticated horse are said to have been found in very early times. At Shah Tepe on the shore of the Caspian Sea in Irān's extreme north-west, a little to the south-west of Anau, similar remains in more or less the same period have been claimed. But a challenge to all these Aryan pointers has first to be met. Zeuner concerns himself with criticizing them and establishing that what have been unearthed are signs merely of hemiones or onagers - that is, of half-asses - and not of the true horse, much less the domesticated one.

He affirms that at Anau the equine of level Ib, described as Equus caballus pumpelli after the name (Pumpelly) of the chief excavator, may be a domesticated animal since it is found amidst other animals clearly domesticated, but it is not a horse at all. He tells us that Lundholm "using the first phalange, a bone of which sufficient specimens for a comparison were available", has conclusively shown that the Anau equine was a hemione.⁸ We may grant Lundholm's contention about the first phalange, but surely this was not

5.The Roots of Ancient India, p. 134.

6.The Birth of Indian Civilization, p. 104.

7.Op. cit., p. 127.

8.Op. cit., p. 316.

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the only bone present. And that some of the other bones at a period like Ib should be of the small primitive tarpan or else Przewalski horse is extremely likely because of what Zeuner himself says about Anau's position on the edge of the plains of Turkestān, near Askabad at the foot of the mountains of Northern Irān: "This position is significant, since the lowlands of north-western Asia were almost certainly populated by wild horses. It is conceivable that domestication may have begun in such an area."⁹

Further, Zeuner states about Mesopotamia: "With the introduction of the horse into Mesopotamia, early in the second millennium B.C., the onager disappears from the list of animals in the service of man."¹⁰ Hence we may legitimately argue that with wild horses available for domestication at Anau it is hardly possible that the hemione should be preferred as a domesticated animal. At least the hemione would never exclude the horse.

Lastly, the total equation of the Anau equine with the onager may be controverted by a reductio ad absurdum with the help of the recent opinion on the equines from the ancient Indus Valley.¹¹ Lately some bones were found in Area G., Harappā, which are said to belong not to the period proper of the Harappā Culture (c. 2500-1500 B.C.) but to the post-Harappā civilization. The earlier find by Sewell and Guha (1931) at Mohenjo-dāro is also reported to have been from an upper level. So one does not know whether it too is part of the Indus Valley Civilization. But from the scientific account "it is evident that the Equid skeletal remains from Area G., Harappā, belong to the true horse, E. caballus Linn., and not to the onager group; they resemble the modern 'country-bred' horses of India". The writer goes on to include among "the skeletal remains of the true horse" those from an upper level of Mohenjo-dāro. But

9. Ibid., pp. 315-16.

10.Ibid., pp. 371, 373.

11.Proceedings of the First All-India Congress of Zoology (Calcutta, 1959), part 2, Scientific Papers, pp. 1-14.

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then what shall we make of Zeuner's pronouncement: "... the few bones found at Mohenjo-Dāro, which Sewell (1931) compared with the Anau horse, are likely to belong to the Indian onagers"?¹² Dealing with the Mohenjo-dāro equine, Zeuner has turned its declared resemblance to the Anau equine into a weapon of attack. But the weapon is now seen to be a boomerang.

For, if the Mohenjo-dāro equine, like that from Area G., Harappā, is Equus caballus, the Anau bones, in spite of the first phalange, must be promoted and be labelled as cabal-line at least in part.

All in all, along various possible lines, whether with Zeuner's own help or otherwise, the case of the domesticated Anau horse (c. 4000 B.C.) - Lundholm notwithstanding - proves very sound indeed.

The case for the Sialk find from Level II is even more sound. This find comprises two molars assigned by Vaufrey to the Pumpelly horse. Zeuner dismisses briefly the equines concerned: "These equines, being identified with the Anau form, have now to be regarded as half-asses also."¹³ Here Zeuner should stand doubly shamed. For, not only does the light from Mohenjo-dāro's Pumpelly horse apply but there is also no first phalange, as at Anau, to suggest the half-ass. No reason exists to doubt Vaufrey's view.

Now for Shah Tepe. The single fragment of a long spongy bone which is all that Amschler took for a domesticated horse's from the lowest and oldest level is found by Lundholm on investigation to be a portion of a human femur. Lundholm may be right. But what about the next level? It has yielded eleven bones which seem to be a horse's. Zeuner's first remark is: "The investigator again assigns the remains to E. c. pumpelli, the Anau 'horse'. This alone might be regarded as sufficient to assign the Shah Tepe form to the half-asses..."¹⁴ We may turn round and retort on the

12.Op. cit., p. 371.

13.Ibid., p. 316.

14.Ibid.

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basis of what we have already shown: "This alone might be regarded as sufficient to give a caballine status to the Shah Tepe form."

Zeuner's additional observation runs: "Level II is recent enough for horse to be present in any case, nevertheless the material could well belong to a hemione form. The jaw contains only teeth that have been ground down to the roots, and the pelvis is assigned to a horse because of its size only. It must be stated, therefore, that there is no evidence for the true horse at Shah Tepe."¹⁵

To the remark - "Level II is recent enough for horse to be present in any case" - let us adjoin an introductory phrase of Zeuner's: "Shah Tepe on the shore of the Caspian Sea, i.e. north of the mountains, where wild horses are likely to have occurred." And then let us ask: "If the size of the pelvis favours a horse, why think of a hemione form?" Even an earlier dating than the 2500-1500 B.C. which Zeuner, after Arne the excavator, gives to Level II would not help to suit the size of the pelvis to a half-ass rather than a horse. And, granted the fact that at the place wild horses are likely to have occurred, the half-ass would be put all the more out of court in spite of the date being earlier. Who would go in for the hemione or onager when the horse is at hand - an animal of greater docility and superior strength? To imitate Zeuner: "It must be stated, therefore, that all the available evidence is for the horse at Shah Tepe."

So a belt of Aryanism can be posited for a number of reasons, covering North-west India, North Balūchistān, South Afghānistān, Northern Irān, Turkestān right up to the Caspian Sea.

Over and above Sialk in Northern Irān, the belt of Aryanism can include some other sites on the basis of information Zeuner himself supplies.¹⁶ There is Susa in ancient Elam, where between Levels I and II, which means the beginning of the third millennium B.C., an engraving on a bone depicts in a diagrammatic form a rider on an equine that, unlike an

15.Ibid.

16.Ibid., p. 317.

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ass, has short ears and, unlike an onager, an untasselled tail and is consequently a horse, as Amschler long ago pointed out. There is also the Khafaje vase, to which we have already referred, from Mesopotamia. All the three animals pictured as drawing a cart have horse-like tails lacking the tuft which signalizes the onager. The manes are rather upright like an onager's, but wild horses too have such manes and recent domestication of them could keep the uprightness for some generations. Besides, a domesticated onager does not necessarily show a more upright mane than a horse's. A picture in Zeuner, the War Panel of the Standard of Ur (c. 2500 B.C.), sets forth onagers drawing chariots.¹⁷ The mane in the first register here is no more upright than that of an Egyptian chariot-drawing horse whose picture from the Tomb of Chaemhet of the 18th dynasty (c. 1500 B.C.) is reproduced by Zeuner.¹⁸

Here we may mark an omission in. Zeuner's account. When referring to Susa, he forgets the bone-engraving of an equine without a rider. R. Ghirshman gives a reproduction of it with the title: "Przewalski horse carved in bone."" The animal carved may be a tarpan for all we know or a cross, but its mane is just the sort which inclines Zeuner to "discard the Khafaje vase as an early representation of an onager". If the engraving comes from the same period as the equine with a rider, the horse is likely to be a domesticated one.

From north of Kish in Mesopotamia comes an ideogram of the horse on a tablet. It is called "the ass of the mountains". Langdon dates it prior to 3500 B.C., which is too early in Zeuner's opinion.²⁰ Childe ascribes it to Jamdat Nasr times (c. 3000 B.C.).²¹ "The horse," says Zeuner, "is further mentioned in a Babylonian liturgy of the third millen-

17.Ibid., p. 272, Fig. 14: 6.

18.Ibid., p. 321, Fig. 12: 13.

19.Irān (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth, 1954), p. 35, Fig. 8.

20.Op. cit, p. 317.

21.New Lights on the Most Ancient East (Routledge, London. 1934), p. 161.

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nium."²² Although, as he tells us, the domesticated horse did not play an important part in the economy of the Mesopo-tamian people so far back, there can be no doubt that it was known to them, as Hermes contends and Zeuner grudgingly grants.²³ Piggott points to the provenance of "the ass of the mountains" when he says that it was no native of Mesopotamia and must have hailed from the hilly tracts of Persia and from Turkestān.²⁴

However, Turkestān, Highland Persia, Balūchistān and the vicinity of the Caspian Sea are not the only homes of the domesticated horse. There is the Ukraine in South-east Europe. Zeuner himself has written of the Tripolye Culture and its several phases: "According to Passek, [Tripolye] A is as early as 3000-2700 B.C.: B-C, dating from 2700-2000 B.C.; C₂, the final...from 2000-1700 B.C. Childe, however, placed the beginning at about 2100 B.C. and allowed the Tripolye to continue until 1400 B.C. Should Passek be right, the Tripolye complex would be the earliest to be considered in connection with horse-domestication. Should... the shorter chronology be correct eastern Europe would not have had the domesticated horse earlier than western Asia."²⁵ More recently E.D. Philips has said apropos of the chronology c. 3000-1700 B.C.: "... the earlier date is rather hypothetical but is supported by recent C 14 tests... The bones of horses occur at all levels, and the tame horses of this culture are probably the earliest in history."²⁶

We have seen that horse-domestication is older elsewhere than it can be at Tripolye, though the evidence may not be equally abundant. But c. 3000 B.C. is old enough and the presence of the Aryans must be accepted in the Ukraine at

22.Op. cit., p. 317.

23.Ibid.

24.Op. cit., p. 158.

25.Op. cit., p. 324.

26."The Nomad Peoples of the Steppes". The Dawn of Civilization, edited by Stuart Piggott (Thames & Hudson , London, 2nd Impression ,1961), p. 318, col. 1.

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This map identifies a belt of ancient Aryanism which would go back in time to c. 4000 B.C. and would have a fairly developed individuality in c. 3500-3000 B.C. Its most advanced centre would be constituted by the Rigvedic Civilization in North-west India. Its principal sites outside this region would be Kili Ghul Mohammad and Rānā Ghundāī in North Baluchistan, Anjira in upper South Baluchistan, Mundigak in South Afghanistan, Anau in Russian Turkestan, Shah Tepe, Hissar and Sialk in Irān, and Tripolye in the Ukraine.

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that date, with possible sprinklings here and there between South-east Europe and the westernmost of the sites we have listed in Asia.

Tripolye completes at one far end our vision of the lengthy belt of the most ancient Aryanism whose other end is in North-west India and its immediate environs. The latter end, on the testimony of the full blaze of civilization which we observe in the Rigveda, would seem to be the most advanced part of this extensive area.

We cannot consider the Rigvedic part as the original centre of Aryanism. No ground exists, on available evidence, to take it to be the sole seat of Aryan settlement in the age we have attributed to it, namely, 3500 to 3000 B.C. - just as on the other hand no ground exists to give the Rigvedics an extra-Indian origin in any calculable past.

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Chapter Nine

Pointers Towards Ultimate Aryan Origins

What lies in remotest time behind the belt that we have sketched is difficult to surmise. Was there in farthest prehistory a point from which a diffusion took place to form this belt? We have already noticed the Irānian Aryans' tradition of an ancient home, Airiyānam vaējo. E. Herzfeld believes that the Avesta locates it distinctly in "the vast plains of the Oxus and the Jaxartes".¹ But, even if he proves right, the region from which those Aryans who became the Irānians derived need not have been the ultimate home of all the Aryans. The absence of any suggestion of it in the oldest Aryan document, the Rigveda, should rule it out. True, the locality indicated by Herzfeld is very suitable for horse-domestication, so much so that Zeuner opines that "the original centre of the domestication of the horse might briefly be circumscribed as Turkestān",² though, with his scepticism about horse-finds at places like Anau and Shah Tepe, he is careful to make the reservation: "This view is, however, not based on archaeological evidence, but on biological considerations." Whatever the suitability of Turkestān, other areas could also serve well, yet actually none of these areas is necessarily the final origin. Horse-domestication could easily have been a phase of Aryan history, prior to which there might have been Aryans without the domesticated horse. Where such Aryans lived is still a mystery.

Aryanism may not have been confined to the belt we have traced. Our belt is what we can conceive of at present. A larger view emerges from a letter of Sri Aurobindo which ended with a glimmer of some future plans of his. One of them he words thus: "I hope also to lead up to the recovery of the sense of the ancient spiritual conceptions of which old symbol and myth give us the indications and which I believe

1.Irān in the Ancient East (Oxford University Press, 1941), p. 190.

2.Op. cit., p. 315.

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to have been at one time a common culture covering a great part of the globe with India perhaps as a centre."³

However, even in the epoch to which Sri Aurobindo directs us, when Aryanism occupied a wider space, we cannot regard India as its pristine foyer. If we are to proceed from what we may term indirect Rigvedic hints of a past far removed from any immediate background in time, we arrive at a notion somewhat sympathetic to Tilak's theory of an Arctic home shadowed forth in the Veda. Sri Aurobindo is positive that the Veda was composed in India, but face to face with its repeated imagery of the dawn he is led at the same time to a symbolic interpretation and an Arctic allusion. After demonstrating from a variety of typical examples how pervading is the image of the Cow of Light and how inevitably it points to a psychological sense for the Veda, he poses a few questions, gives his answer and returns to them with a new understanding.

"Why suppose a symbol where there is only an image? Why invite the difficulty of a double figure in which 'cow' means light of dawn and light of dawn is the symbol of an inner illumination? Why not take it that the Rishis were praying not for spiritual illumination, but for daylight?

"The objections are manifold and some of them overwhelming. If we assume that the Vedic hymns were composed in India and the dawn is the Indian dawn and the night the brief Indian night of ten or twelve hours, we have to start with the concession that the Vedic Rishis were savages overpowered by a terror of the darkness which they peopled with goblins, ignorant of the natural law of the succession of night and day, - which is yet beautifully hymned in many of the Suktas, - and believed that it was only by their prayers and sacrifices that the Sun rose in the heavens and the Dawn emerged from the embrace of her sister Night. Yet they speak of the undeviating rule of the action of the Gods, and

3. "Interpretation of the Veda" - a letter published in The Hindu (Madras), August 27,1914. See The Secret of the Veda, pp. 544-48, for the full text.

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of Dawn following always the path of the eternal Law or Truth! We have to suppose that when the Rishi gives vent to the joyous cry 'We have crossed over to the other shore of this darkness!', it was only the normal awakening to the daily sunrise that he thus eagerly hymned. We have to suppose that the Vedic peoples sat down to the sacrifice at dawn and prayed for the light when it had already come. And if we accept all these improbabilities, we are met by the clear statement that it was only after they had sat for nine or for ten months that the lost light and the lost sun were recovered by the Angirasa Rishis. And what are we to make of the constant assertion of the discovery of the Light by the Fathers; - 'Our fathers found out the hidden light, by the truth in their thoughts they brought to birth the Dawn', gūḷhaṁ jyotih pitaro anvavindan, satyamantrā ajanayan usāsam (VII. 76.4)? If we found such a verse in any collection of poems in any literature, we would at once give it a psychological or a spiritual sense; there is no just reason for a different treatment of the Veda.

"If, however, we are to give a naturalistic explanation and no other to the Vedic hymns, it is quite clear that the Vedic Dawn and Night cannot be the Night and Dawn of India; it is only in the Arctic regions that the attitude of the Rishis towards these natural circumstances and the statements about the Angirasas become at all intelligible. But though it is extremely probable that the memories of the Arctic home enter into the external sense of the Veda, the Arctic theory does not exclude an inner sense behind the ancient images drawn from Nature nor does it dispense with the necessity for a more coherent and straightforward explanation of the hymns to the Dawn."⁴

The Arctic allusion is implied in another passage too of Sri Aurobindo's on a Dawn-hymn:

"Thus the Dawns come with a constant alternation, thrice ten - the mystic number of our mentality - making the

4. Op. cit. pp. 122-123.

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month, till some day there shall break out upon us the wondrous experience of our forefathers in a long bygone age of humanity when the dawns succeeded each other without the intervention of any night, when they came to the Sun as to a lover and circled round him, not returning again and again in his front as a precursor of his periodical visitations. That shall be when the supramental consciousness shines out fulfilled in the mentality and we shall possess the year-long day enjoyed by the gods on the summit of the eternal mountain. Then shall be the dawning of the 'best' or highest, most glorious Dawn, when 'driving away the Enemy guardian of the Truth, born in the Truth, full of the bliss, uttering the highest truths, fulfilled in all boons she brings the birth and manifestation of the godheads' (I.113.12). Meanwhile each dawn comes as the first of a long succession that shall follow and pursues the path and goal of those that have already gone forward; each in her coming impels the life upwards and awakens in us 'someone who was dead' (I.113.8)."⁵

We may continue with another relevant passage. Sri Aurobindo writes of "the great work accomplished by the Angirasa Rishis" as being the "conquest of Swar" which is the solar world of truth and immortality. This conquest is "the aim of the sacrifice" which those Rishis carried on as Navagwas and Dashagwas, literally meaning "nine-cowed" and "ten-cowed", - "each cow representing collectively the thirty Dawns which constitute one month of the sacrificial year". Sri Aurobindo follows up with the reflections:

"But what is meant by the figure of the months? for it now becomes clear that it is a figure, a parable; the year is symbolic, the months are symbolic. It is in the revolution of the year that the recovery of the lost Sun and the lost cows is effected, for we have the explicit statement in X.62.2, rtenābhindan parivatsare valam, 'by the truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke Vala', or as Sayana interprets it, 'by sacrifice lasting for a year'. This passage certainly goes

5. Ibid. pp. 430-31.

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far to support the Arctic theory, for it speaks of a yearly and not a daily return of the Sun. But we are not concerned with the external figure, nor does its validity in any way affect our own theory; for it may very well be that the striking Arctic experience of the long night, the annual sunrise and the continuous dawns was made by the Mystics the figure of the spiritual night and its difficult illumination. But that this idea of Time, of the months and years is used as a symbol seems to be clear from other passages of the Veda, notably from Gritsamada's hymn to Brihaspati, II.24."⁶

Finally, we may cull a portion from a general comment on modern Vedic interpretations. It sends us back to a citation already made from Sri Aurobindo. There he says that, although nothing denotes any Aryan entry into India "near to the time of the Vedic hymns" or "the slow penetration of a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilised Dravidian peninsula", it is always possible to think of a far distant forgotten age and of "the bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India" being "the descendants of a new race from more northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions". Our new culling reads:

"Mr. Tilak in his Arctic Home in the Vedas has accepted the general conclusions of European scholarship, but by a fresh examination of the Vedic Dawn, the figure of the Vedic cows and the astronomical data of the hymns, has established at least a strong probability that the Aryan races descended originally from the Arctic regions in the glacial period. Mr. T. Paramasiva Aiyar [in The Riks] by a still bolder departure has attempted to prove that the whole of the Rig-veda is a figurative representation of our planet after its long-continued glacial death in the same period of terrestrial evolution. It is difficult to accept in their mass Mr. Aiyar's reasonings and conclusion, but he has at least thrown a new light on the great Vedic mythus of Ahi Vritra and the release of the seven rivers. His interpretation is far

6. Ibid., p. 170. The short phrases quoted before this passage come from pp. 170 and 168.

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more consistent and probable than the current theory which is not borne out by the language of the hymns. Taken in conjunction with Mr. Tilak's work it may serve as the starting-point for a new external interpretation of the old Scripture which will explain much that is now inexplicable and recreate for us the physical origins if not the actual physical environment of the old Aryan world."⁷

Evidently, according to Sri Aurobindo, if a naturalistic interpretation were accepted as colouring the symbolic, there would be two shades to it, either separate or commingled - one reflecting elements of the actually present Aryan life, such as cows, horses, chariots, weapons, treasures, fields, rivers, mountains, the other answering to impressions inherited from an antiquity which by its far-awayness has grown one with the projections of a mythic imagination and with the mysterious splendours of inner spiritual experience. What Sri Aurobindo has called "memories of the Arctic home" belong to the second shade crossed here and there by superimposed tinges from the first, as when the Vedic Dawn with its backdrop of Arctic tones is invoked to establish for the sacrificers a state of bliss full not only of cows (symbolizing light) but also of horses (symbolizing vital force),⁸ the latter animal not likely to have been a part of a polar scenario.

Arctic memories as discerned by Sri Aurobindo - that is, vague visions of a nature fused with supernature, "the wondrous experience of our forefathers in a long bygone age of humanity" - such are the sole probable clues we can catch from the world of pristine Aryanism towards solving the problem of Aryan origins.

Perhaps the Avesta too - in the teeth of all Western scholarship - may be taken to provide supporting clues. Beliefs like Herzfeld's arise from those references where the name Airiyānam vaējo occurs with a determinative clause. Thus Zarathustra is said to have worshipped "in the Airi-

7.Ibid., pp . 28-9.

8.Ibid., p. 121.

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yānam vaējo of the good (river) Daitya" (Yashts 5.104; 9.25; 17.45) and his patron King Vishtaspa is also shown as having worshipped "in sight" of the same river (Yashts 5.112; 9.29; 17.61). But the much earlier Yima (= Jamshed) is a ruler in an Airiyānam vaējo with no determinative clause and at the same time he is stated to have extended thrice the land "towards the south in the direction of the sun" (Vidēvdāt 2.10, 14, 18). Here, as the Parsi scholar Hormazdyer K. Mirza suggests, there seems to be a reference to a migration of the Irānian people southwards to the region where Zarathustra and Vishtaspa worshipped.⁹ An earlier more northward homeland seems to be hinted at. Tilak too has a similar understanding of the Avesta on the basis of the assertion (Vidēvdāt 2) that in Airiyānam vaējo there were ten months of severe winter and two of summer as well as on the statement that the sun, the moon and the stars appeared to rise and set once (in a year).

However, nothing conclusive can be affirmed and whatever "Arctic memories" there may be in the Rigveda bear no relation at all to any hypothesis of the Rigvedics coming from outside India into the Indo-Gangetic plain in the middle of the second millennium B.C.

9. "Observations on Ancient Iranian tradition", Jam-e-Jamshed (Bombay daily), June 12 and 26, 1978.

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Chapter Ten

THE RIGVEDA'S REMOTE ANTIQUITY AND THE RIGVEDIC MARYANNI OF 1360 B.C.

With the Rigveda dated by us to 3500-3000 B.C. and the Mitanni documents put by all historians at c. 1360 B.C., how shall we explain the affinity of these documents with the Rigvedic language and religion? The large time-gap between the latter and the Aryan rulership of the Mitanni people as known to history from about 1500 B.C. poses a challenge.

Within that time-gap we have the post-Rigvedic Pre-Harappān Civilization and the Harappā Culture. With the Harappā Culture in the Indus Valley, the descendants of the Rigvedics in India would be further inland to the East and South. Both the language and the religion of these descendants would show notable developments. How, then, can a band of Aryans, linguistically and religiously Rigvedic, a colonizing stream from India, appear in Mesopotamia in so late a period?

To understand the persistence of the Rigvedic language in spite of the Rigveda's having been left far behind in time and in spite of Sanskrit's having changed considerably as a result, we may consider two analogies.

How are scholars like Jackson, Hertel and Herzfeld able to bypass the undeniable archaicness of the language of the Avestan Gāthās as compared to the language of the Achaemenid inscriptions and put Zarathustra in early Achaemenid times (6th century B.C.) instead of four hundred years earlier, as most scholars do, or a few thousand years before, as do some others? Again, how, among the Indo-European languages today, Lithuanian still has archaic speech-forms very close to the basic idiom reconstructed by Comparative Philology for the original Indo-European tongue? Jackson and company urge that the Gāthic language could be a dialect of the Old Persian which the Achaemenid inscriptions display. And the archaicness of Lithuanian can

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be attributed to one or more of the following causes: a language can remain archaic when those who use it are unprogressive or if they dwell in a locality where no fusion takes place with races speaking other languages or else if they develop a highly refined technique for preserving and employing archaic forms.¹

Now, we can look upon the Maryanni's speech-forms not only as a dialectal mode of the Sanskrit of the time but also as a variety of Rigvedic Sanskrit lingering in a pocket of Aryanism isolated on the outskirts of India where the inhabitants were semi-Iranian and bore Indo-Iranian-looking names. Up to the period when the inhabitants started moving westward - some time before 1500 B.C. - this pocket may have had a long but

uneventful life in a mountainous corner, affording the language little chance to change and progress, while in India proper the language underwent modification, even in a period long before 1500 B.C., and became post-Rigvedic Sanskrit.

Our hypothesis, legitimate in itself, gains further concreteness when we glance at the Indo-Iranian areas between the Hindu Kush and the Punjāb in our own times - that is to say, the districts about the rivers Kābul and Swat, referred to in the Rigveda as Kubhā and Suvāstu. Here a group of mixed tongues called the Piśācha languages are spoken. About them the Imperial Gazetteer of India has said: "They possess an extraordinary archaic character. Words are still in every-day use which are almost identical with the forms they assumed in Vedic hymns... In their essence these languages are neither Iranian nor Indo-Aryan, but are something between both."² The Maryanni could have come from the very localities where the Piśācha languages flourish.

Thus, linguistically, the Aryan rulers of the Mitanni could be an offshoot of Rigvedic Aryanism without forcing us to date the composition of the Rigveda to their epoch. But we

1.S. Srikanta Sastri's "Appendix" to "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age, pp. 216-17.

2.Vol. I, p. 356 (Oxford, 1907).

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have also to explain in the context of that epoch their religious affinity to the Rigveda. Here the pertinent query is: "How much later than the Rigveda's fourfold god-group -Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, Nāsatyā - of Mattiwaza's treaty which is more or less of the same time as Kikkuli's handbook, continue in India?"

As the story of Śunaśepa testifies, the vogue of Varuṇa certainly persisted down to the Aitāreya Brāhmaṇa (VII.3). R.K. Mookerji informs us that among the deities mentioned by Kautilya's Arthaśāstra (XIV. 3) as popularly worshipped were: Aditī, Saraswatī, Savitā, Agnī, Soma and vājayanta (Indra),³ Rigvedic godheads all these - and the Arthaśāstra at its earliest is considered to be Mauryan and hence very much post-Rigvedic. Strabo (born c. 63 B.C.), in his Geography (XV. 718), cites a writer who, referring evidently to the time (c. 300 B.C.) of Megasthenes - the Greek ambassador to the court of the Indian king whom the Greeks named "Sandrocottus" - tells us that the Indians worshipped Zeus Ombrios, "Zeus of the Rain-storms", who can only be Indra. On the coins of the Kushāņas (early centuries A.D.) we get representations of "Mithro" (Avestan Mithra, Rigvedic Mitra) as well as of "Horon" (Sanskrit Varuṇa).⁴ In Gupta times we have evidence of worship of both Indra and Varuṇa.⁵ On the face of it, it is perfectly possible for the Maryanni to have derived from a stock of Rigvedic Aryanism in a very much post-Rigvedic age - especially if we look at them as hailing from a pocket on India's outskirts.

What such a pocket can do in the matter of religious tradition may be seen from a case of our own times: the Kalash-Kafirs. Up to at least 1960 they were a small tribe close by the Afghānistān border, numbering fewer than 2000 people and still living according to the traditions of one of the oldest cultures-in Central Asia. Isolated from other Kafir

3.Chandragupta Maury a and His Times (University of Madras, 1943), p. 314.

4.R.K. Mookerji, Ancient India (Allahabad, 1956), p. 247.

5.R.K. Mookerji, The Gupta Empire (Bombay, 1947), p. 137.

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tribes who had been compelled to embrace Islam, they had gods "linked to the old Indian pantheon".⁶ Under the one supreme Creator the local deities - "dewalog" - were several, and one of them was " Varin,... the Indian deity Varuṇa, not only in name but also in the function as the guardian of truth and right, and the punisher of evil".⁷ We may remind ourselves that in Mattiwaza's treaty Varuṇa and the other gods are called as witnesses just because he and they had a similar function. Perhaps the Maryanni streamed out towards Mesopotamia from the same Indian outpost as occupied by the Kalash-Kafirs?

What can be stated about the Maryanni, both linguistically and religiously, may apply also to the princes of the Kassites. Significantly, it is only in the post-Rigvedic literature that we get some Indian clues to them, clues that seem to be an argument for a colonizing venture from India to the West.

There is the tribe of the Keśis mentioned in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (XI. 8.4.6). Pusalker has the note: "[D.R.] Bhandarkar identifies the Keśis with the Kassis or Kassites" (Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Culture, p. 3).⁸ Moti Chandra links the Kassites with the Kāśyas, the founders of Kāśī, the region of Banāras first mentioned in the Paippalada version of the Atharvaveda and next referred to in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. He suggests: "Some idea of their migration may be gained from the enchainment of names extending from the Caspian Sea, Kaswin, Kāśyapur (Multan) to Kāshmir, in which their name has survived."⁹

It is possible that an offshoot of the Kāśyas from the region of Kāśyapur or Kāshmir moved into the Irānian hills - the historical location of the Kassites. The date of this movement may be guessed from the fact that though they

6.Peter Snoy, "The Last Pagans of the Hindu Kush", Natural History, November 1959, p. 526.

7.Ibid.

8."Aryan Settlements in India", The Vedic Age, p. 262, Reference 38.

9.The Illustrated Weekly of India, February 16, 1964, p. 17, col. I.

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emerge into history after 1800 B.C. they appear in Elamite texts as early as the time of Pazur-Inshushinak, contemporary of Naram-Sin of the Semitic Dynasty of Akkad founded by Sargon I,¹⁰ According to the recent revised chronology the reign of Naram-Sin would be in the twenty-fourth century B.C. The Kassites thus may be thought of as leaving the trans-Indus country before 2300 B.C.

We may think of the Maryanni too as moving westward in the same antiquity. And then the resemblance of some of their gods to the members of the Rigvedic pantheon would not look so much of a problem as when we situate the Mitanni documents against a Maryanni beginning on the Upper Euphrates in about 1500 B.C. Like the Kassites they may have remained unimportant in their new home until much later than the twenty-third century B.C. and continued there the semi-Rigvedic cult brought then from the purlieus of North-west India through the hills of Irān.

This is rendered all the more probable because the age of Naram-Sin appears to evince contact even with other Indo-Europeans than the Kassites. According to B. Hrozny, an ancient text whose historical value is not quite certain tells us that among the kings whom Naram-Sin fought there was the king of Amurru, Khuvaruvash, a name of Hittite and therefore Indo-European character.¹¹ Hrozny goes to the extent of remarking: "Naram-Sin had also to defend his empire against the attack of the Unman-Manda, 'troops of peoples' which came from the North, and in which then, as later, are to be seen in the front line Indo-European, Aryan peoples. One of these peoples may have been the later Aryans of Khurri-Mitanni."¹²

Lastly, what shall we say about the Hittites themselves, whose language Hrozny has identified as Indo-European and a king of whom struck the Mitanni treaty with Mattiwaza? Their first presence is attested in c. 1950 B.C. (or a little

10.E. Ghirshman, Iran, pp. 65, 53.

11.Encyclopaedia Britannica (1960), II, p. 607, col. I.

12.Ibid.

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later) as conquerors of commercial Assyrian colonies in Cappadocia (Anatolia, Asia Minor). The period suggests that they might be adventurers broadly from the same quarter as the Maryanni and the Kassites. Some religious and linguistic facts are also worth pondering. Although they practically merged with the "Asianic" peoples around them and fused foreign gods with their religion, the aruna (Varuṇa) of the Maryanni appears to be connected with the Hittite arunas (sea) and the latter to anticipate by its mythical associations the Greek Ouranos whose name, in turn, is almost identical with uruwana, the alternative to aruna.¹³ We may add that arunas (sea) brings to mind also the Rigvedic phrase for the celestial upper waters, the great ocean: maho arnas. Again, the Hittite innar (strength) can be taken as affined to the name "Indra".¹⁴ The designation the Hit-tites gave themselves - "Hatti" - from that of the land as known to the indigenous population before their arrival¹⁵ seems to show that it fitted their own ends. "Hatti" equates phonetically to "Khatti" (which becomes "Kheta" in Egyptian inscriptions) because of the laryngeal nature of the opening H, and "Khatti" can be aligned to the Pali "Khattiyo" for the Sanskrit "Kshatriya", meaning "warrior".¹⁶ Thus the chronological suggestion could be correct.

13.Cf. Jairazbhoy, op. cit., p. 16, incorporating, among other researches, those of Sommer, Kretschmer and Guterbock.

14.B.K. Ghosh, "Indo-Iranian Relations". The Vedic Age, p. 224, n. 23.

15.Roux, Ancient Iraq, pp. 209-10.

16.D.D. Kosambi, The Civilization and Culture of Ancient India (London, 1965), p. 77.

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Chapter Eleven

THE LINGUISTIC ARGUMENT ABOUT

THE RIGVEDA'S DATE

A linguistic argument apart from the Boghaz-keui documents is also in the field. Perhaps the best statement of it is in the words of B.K. Ghosh. "The language of the Rigveda," he writes in one place, "is certainly no more different from that of the Avestan Gāthās than is Old English from Old High German, and therefore they must be assigned to approximately the same age: and the relation between the language of the Gāthās and that of Old Persian inscriptions of the sixth century B.C. cannot be better visualised than by comparing the former with Gothic and the latter with Old High German. Now, if the inscriptions of the Achaemenid emperors of Irān were composed in Old High German, what would be the date assigned to Ulfila's Bible? Surely something like 1000 B.C. This then would be the approximate date of the Gāthās of the Avesta - with which the Rigveda in its present form must have been more or less contemporaneous."¹ Ghosh goes on to say that the development of the Rigvedic Culture must have taken some time anterior to about 1000 B.C., but the utmost early limit he can envisage is about 1500 B.C.

He arrives at the same conclusion by another route elsewhere: "Under normal circumstances, the age of a language can be approximately determined if a definite date can be ascribed to any point in its known history. From a knowledge of modern English alone, a student of language can easily hazard the statement that Chaucer could not have lived as early as A.D. 1000. For he knows not only that the language is continually changing, but also its approximate rate of change. The language of Bernard Shaw is evidently not that of Byron, and Byron's language differs distinctly

1. "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age,

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from that of Samuel Johnson. The rate of change revealed by a comparison of the idioms emanating from the pens of these three writers does suggest an approximate date for Shakespeare's English, and the latter, in its turn, an approximate date for Chaucer's... It is now generally admitted by all that Pānini lived about 400 B.C., and the language described by Pānini is known to us in every detail: it is essentially a literary language from which the author tried to exclude extreme Vedisms, on the one hand, and vulgar bhāsā-forxm, on the other. Now, the difference between Pānini's language and the language of the Rg-Veda is certainly not greater than that between, say, the forms of English used by Chaucer and Bernard Shaw. The conclusion is justified therefore that, whatever the date of the contents of the Rg-Veda, its language can by no means be dated much earlier than 1000 B.C."² As for those "contents", Ghosh is prepared to trace their growth from c. 1500 B.C.

Ghosh's argument, in both its forms, is purely analogical, at the best presumptive and not in the least determinative. There is no genuine proof that the language of the Achaemenid emperors took the same time to develop from that of the Gāthās as Old High German from the language of Ulfila's Gothic Bible. Nor, because the amount of linguistic change between the Rigveda and Pānini is not greater than that between Chaucer and Bernard Shaw, can we mechanically extrapolate to the former the 600 years of the latter. "Languages," says the philologist Simeon Potter, "change at different speeds, and English has certainly changed more quickly than, say, Lithuanian or Icelandic."³ A more striking remark comes from J. Duchesne-Guillemin: "...We know that two neighbouring languages can evolve at different rates: Danish, for instance, developed much more rapidly

2."The Origin of the Indo-Aryans", The Cultural Heritage of India (1958). I, pp. 136-7.

3."The Language Gap", The Times Literary Supplement (London), April 23, 1964, p. 342, col. 3.

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than German, or even Swedish."⁴ So, even if Pānini is dated as by several scholars to 400 B.C. instead of 700 B.C. as by R.G. Bhandarkar,⁵ or still earlier, Ghosh's 1000 B.C. for the Rigveda's composition is hardly legitimate.

Interestingly enough, we have an actual instance where the Chaucer-analogy brings in quite a different time-relationship. There is the Linear B. script which we have mentioned before. Its Greek, dated c. 1400 B.C., is said by Cleator to bear "about as much resemblance to the familiar classical version [c. 550-300 B.C.] of the language as does Chaucerian English to that of the present day".⁶ Not merely 600 years but nearly 900 are now involved.

On the development of languages M. Winternitz uttered the last word years ago: "As regards the kinship of the languages, it is quite impossible to state definite chronological limits within which languages change. Some languages change very rapidly, others remain more or less unaltered for a long period. It is true that hieratic languages, like those of the Vedic hymns and the Avesta, can remain unaltered much longer than spoken languages."⁷

Winternitz refers to A.C. Woolner as rightly commenting on Max Müller's supposition of 1200 B.C. for the Rigveda's beginning: "As far as any philological estimates go, 2000 B.C. remains quite as possible as 1200 B.C. for the earliest mantra."⁸ Winternitz himself, not on linguistic but on other grounds which ignore linguistic estimates like Ghosh's, takes the Rigveda back to 2500 B.C. Linguistic grounds cannot bar even a greater antiquity. Winternitz warns us only

4.Religion of Ancient Iran, English tr. by K.M. JamaspAsa (Bombay,1973), p. 100.

5.Cited by B.C. Law in "North India in the Sixth Century B.C.", The Age of Imperial Unity, edited by R.C. Majumdar and A.D. Pusalker (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1954), p. 2.

6.Lost Languages, p. 158.

7.History of Indian Literature, English tr. by Mrs. S. Ketkar (Calcutta, 1927), I , p. 308.

8.Proceedings and Transactions of the Oriental Conference, I. pp. xvii ff; II, p. 20 ff.

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against thinking with some Indian scholars that languages can stay unchanged as much as to allow figures like 25000 B.C. for the Rigveda in the form in which we have it.⁹ The same holds for the Avesta in its extant version.

Indeed, the development of languages has many features difficult to explain on a superficial glance. We have alluded to the amazing archaisms persisting in Lithuanian today after thousands of years of the language's existence. Special conditions have kept it close to the most primitive Indo-European speech one can reconstruct. Ghosh himself adverts, in a particular context, to its archaicness. He tells us that it looks the oldest at present in the Aryan family of languages despite its being "definitely of later origin than Hittite or Tocharian".¹⁰ Here is a comparative problem which, according to him, has no sure solution and what he essays as an explanation is frankly confessed by him to be "a hypothesis pure and simple and nothing more". Appreciating the numerous complexities in the general language situation, one could regard the dating of the Rigveda or the Avesta to c. 1000 B.C. or even 1500 B.C. as also "a hypothesis pure and simple and nothing more".

Evidently, the linguistic argument a la Ghosh has no weight with certain scholars we have already listed: on the one hand, those who place Zarathustra, author of the Gāthās, in early Achaemenid times, the sixth century B.C. and, on the other, the majority of Parsi savants who choose 2500 B.C. at the earliest and especially some among them who vote for a still earlier date than 5000 or 6000 B.C. in agreement with Xanthos of Lydia (fifth century B.C.), Herodotus and other Greek contemporaries of the Achaemenid emperors.

A.S. Altekar seems to side with Ghosh about the Avesta's chronology and yet differs toto caelo about the Rigveda's, which he starts at 2700 B.C. He points out that the linguistic resemblance between the Rigveda and the Avesta may have

9. Op. cit., p. 310.

10. "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age, p. 207.

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come about because the former's "language and vocabulary... were to some extent assimilated to those of the later times", a linguistic assimilation which "is suggested by the Pauranic tradition when it declares that the principal Vedic Sakhas arose primarily on account of differences of reading".¹¹ Altekar may not be justified in refusing to the Avesta an adaptation similar to the Rigveda's, but his theory about the Indian scripture has a plausibility which we may support from that phrase of Sri Aurobindo's about the present Rigvedic collection: "It is even possible that its most ancient hymns are a comparatively modern development or version of a more ancient lyric evangel couched in the freer and more pliable forms of a still earlier human speech."¹²

Thus, even if Ghosh's linguistic argument were valid, the Rigveda could have its origin in hoary antiquity. On various counts, the assigning of a mere 1500 B.C. to the Rigveda's "contents" is absolutely arbitrary.

11.Indian Culture, VI , p. 281. The Siikhas-reference is to Vāyu Purāna,61 , 59.

12.The Secret of the Veda, p. 10.

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Chapter Twelve

WHEELER ON THE Harappā CULTURE'S DESTRUCTION BY RIGVEDIC ARYANS

Some last words on two topics remain to be said in order to round off our treatment of the problem of Aryan origins. One of them is Wheeler's suggestion that whatever other causes there may have been for the decline of the Harappā Culture the coup de grâce was given to it by the Aryan composers of the Rigveda when they invaded India in the middle of the second millennium B.C.¹ What weight does this suggestion carry?

Wheeler points to the sprawling groups of earth-covered skeletons - seventeen definitely and perhaps thirty-eight in all - encumbering the latest stratum of Mohenjo-dāro. To him these are the vestiges of a final massacre at a time not distant from the period considered likely for Aryan-speaking peoples from beyond India's North-west to have invaded the Land of the Seven Rivers, the Punjāb and its neighbouring regions. Wheeler insists that the older hymns of the Rigveda reflect the invasion and he reminds us that the invasion constantly assumes the form of an onslaught, under the leadership of the god Indra, upon the walled cities of the aborigines, which are called purah, "ramparts", "forts", "strongholds". According to Wheeler, these purah correspond to the massive fortifications which the Indus Valley Civilization is now known to have employed, and Indra is titled purandara, "fort-destroyer", in respect of them. His clinching argument is that if we reject this view we have to assume that in the short interval which can, at the most, have intervened between the end of the Harappā Culture and the Aryan invasion some unidentified yet formidable civilization arose in the same region and presented an extensive fortified front to the invaders. As we have no evidence of any such civilization and as it is hardly credible that it

1. The Indus Civilization (1968 Ed.), pp. 131-32.

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should have arisen, Wheeler thinks it incumbent on us to suppose that the Harappāns of the Indus Valley in their decadence fell before the advancing Aryans in the manner the Rigvedic hymns proclaim.

The very first flaw in Wheeler's picture is his assumption of a large-scale massacre at Mohenjo-dāro. Aware of it, he tries to cover up its central part by saying: "The absence of skeletons (so far) from the citadel must imply that the raiders, whoever they were, occupied and cleared this commanding position for their own momentary use."² This is indeed a poor fight put up against the conclusion of Dales: "There is no destruction level covering the latest period of the city, no sign of extensive burning, no bodies of warriors clad in armour and surrounded by the weapons of war. The citadel, the only fortified part of the city, yielded no evidence of a final defence."³

We may add that not the slightest sign exists of any occupation, however momentary, of any sector of the city and, if the most important sector - the one prepared with fortification to resist attack - does not give the least trace of a final defence, it is pointless to talk of the citadel having been cleared of skeletons for a temporary purpose. An attack mounted by invading Aryans would have left a different story.

Even granting a massacre rather than the result of a natural disaster like an earthquake, we have to look at it as a small sporadic affair. Wheeler himself admits a possible alternative to his invasion-idea: "It may be that some hill-tribe fell upon the enfeebled city and put it to the sword."⁴ But there is no sign of the whole city having been slaughtered. Dales's proposal of a localized passing razzia by a neighbouring hill-tribe is more credible. Or there may have been a clash between a few people within the town itself. "It

2.Ibid., p. 131.

3."The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-dāro", Expedition, Expedition, No.3,1964, p. 37.

4.Op. cit., p. 131.

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is also plausible," as S.S. Sarkar says, "that the dead were the raiders themselves who were covered with earth by the local people after they were killed."⁵ Instead of a defeat of the Mohenjo-dārians, there may have been a small-scale victory of theirs. In any case, nothing calls in the least for so grandiose an event as an Aryan invasion.

A very relevant issue here is: how is it that Harappā, which is in the Punjāb and therefore more directly than Sind's Mohenjo-dāro in the path of Aryans supposedly invading from India's North-west, shows no "massacre" at all? Does it even show any special decline in material prosperity before its abandonment as does Mohenjo-dāro? Aryan invaders, pressing into the country from the North-west, would affect this northern site foremost. Both the morale and the material state of the site should manifest a decline greater than any in the South. They certainly fail to do so. Why a twin capital city like Harappā was ultimately abandoned is still a mystery. But an attack of any kind has to be completely ruled out - and this in spite of the fact that, unlike Mohenjo-dāro which Wheeler considers, as having been attacked, it was partly occupied for a short time after its end. Here a paradox seems to be at play but is soon resolved when we learn, in Sankalia's words, that "no less than 7 feet of debris intervened"⁶ between the deposits of the Harappāns proper and those of the people who briefly occupied the site later. The brief occupation came after an appreciable interval of time. Hence we cannot speak of it as the sequel of any attack on the town.

Surely, if the Aryans cannot be charged with having destroyed a place like Harappā, they must be exonerated from responsibility for Mohenjo-dāro's sprawling group of skeletons.

In Sind itself we are not faced with so macabre a scene elsewhere. At Chanhu-dāro, some 60 miles south of

5.Ancient Races of Baluchistan, Punjab and Sind (Bookland Private Ltd., Calcutta, 1964), p. 13.

6.Op. cit., p. 393, col. 2.

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Mohenjo-dāro, the Harappān remains are overlaid by relics of another culture about which Wheeler writes: "Where these intruders came from is not yet known. Their arrival would appear to have been separated from the departure of the Harappāns by no long interval of time."⁷ Here, again, direct confrontation is absent and there is not the smallest trail of fighting. The Harappāns had already left some time before the new people appeared.

Even if these new people and the culture that set itself up on Harappā's ruins be dubbed "Aryan", they cannot - by Wheeler's criterion - be the Rigvedics since they neither stormed their predecessors out of the sites nor indeed did they have a hand in ousting in any way the earlier occupants.

There was the discovery in 1976 that at Bhagwanpura in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana the people of Painted Grey Ware - supposed by some popularizers of history to be Aryan invaders - were the immediate successors of the Harappāns. But the discovery provides no evidence of a conflict. Actually we have an overlap and fusion between the two cultures, a continuity of pottery types, painted designs and terracotta figurines. The damage to the site was due to floods and not war: twice there was an inundation, the first when the late Harappāns alone were present, the second when the PGW people were living peacefully alongside them.⁸

The only site of the Harappāns where their level has been found destroyed is at Gumla in the Gomal Valley which lies immediately east of South Afghānistān's historic site, Mun-digak. Sankalia, reviewing the work of Ahmad Hassan Dani of the University of Peshawar, reports:

"Excavations at Gumla have yielded a long cultural sequence in which the Harappān culture comes fourth from the bottom... And... there is positive evidence... that this Harappān culture was destroyed by fire and a fight in which

7.Op. cit., p.58

8."New Light on Aryan Migration", The Indian Express, April 8, 1976, p. 10.

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sling balls and terracotta missiles were also used.

"Interestingly the site seems to have been only temporarily occupied, because no substantial structures were seen, except innumerable grave pits, some of which contain cremated human and animal bones...

"This is the first time that the practice of sacrificing the animals and burying them with the cremation of the human body has been recorded.

"Among the antiquities there were many red and black terracotta bangles with five different sections, terracotta female figures, three of animals - one being that of a saddled horse, tiny saucers, clay bells and flesh rubber.

"Curiously, except the terracotta horse, all other objects occur [also] in Period IV."⁹

At the end of his account Sankalia stresses as "significant" "the cremation graves which contain terracotta figurines as well as bones of horses."

What exactly Sankalia has in mind here is not apparent. Perhaps he is hinting that these destroyers of the Harappān level at Gumla were invading Aryans? Cremation and the domesticated horse are two of the signs of the Aryans who composed the Rigveda. And a hymn of theirs (X.16) speaks of sacrificing an animal with the dead man. But the animal is a goat, not a horse. And in the Rigvedic practice the animal was always burned, never buried. Again, the Rigveda attests human burial as well as cremation.¹⁰ So everything is not on a par between its composers and the Grave People of Gumla.

But, over and above the differences, there is the fact which Sankalia calls curious - that the Grave People and the Harappāns had a host of antiquities in common. In the context of these objects, they seem to have differed only in the matter of the horse. However, as the horse is now recognized as a part of Harappān life, even if not every

9. Prehistory and Protohistory of India and Pakistan (1974 Ed.). pp. 329-31.

10. Macdonell and Keith, The Vedic Index. I. p. 8.

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where very prominent, we cannot take it as a specific mark of the non-Harappān in the culture of the Grave People. The only non-Harappān and Aryan feature appears to be the custom of cremation. But is it characteristic of the Rig-vedics alone and is it really non-Harappān in all places?

Cremation of some sort is witnessed in a site that is both non-Harappān and non-Rigvedic. With regard to Periano Ghundāī in North Balūchistān Sankalia writes: "... it is evident that the occupants buried the cremated remains of the dead in tall urns, right in the house."¹¹ About Harappān Lothal he says: "...it is speculated that cremation was also practised."¹² And, what is most pertinent to our purpose, we hear from him about one type of grave at Harappān Kali-bangan, where "the grave-pit... curiously contained no skeletal material": "Is it because there was the custom of cremation-cum-burial, so that the body was burnt, and later only the ash and a few bones were buried in the urn, or even these were not kept but thrown in the river or sea, as some people do today? After this was written I read a very interesting paper, 'Harappān Cemetery at Kalibangan: A Demographic Survey' by A.K. Sharma, who comes to similar conclusions."¹³ Hence cremation in the true sense cannot be considered altogether foreign to the Harappā Culture.

How then shall we affirm either that the Grave People of Gumla were exclusively Rigvedic or that they were at any rate non-Harappān? The most likely conclusion, in view of those shared antiquities is: these people were a type of Harappāns that was rather uncommon. In fact, it is possible to talk of two kinds of Harappāns besides those bearing the name proper. In level III of Gumla, which, according to Dani, the Harappāns destroyed, the excavator has unearthed the images of a Serpent Goddess and of a Horned Deity.¹⁴ Now the Horned Deity, is a famous characteristic of the

11.Op. cit., p. 324, col. 2.

12.Ibid., p. 375, col. 1.

13.Ibid., p. 354, col. 2.

14.Ibid., p. 330, col. 1.

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Harappā Culture. Another characteristic is a species of snake-cult. "From a faience tablet showing a seated deity with a worshipper on either side and a hooded cobra over the head," observes Pusalker, "it appears that some form of Naga-worship was practised."¹⁵ Hence, at Gumla III, we have an occupation which can be labelled as proto-Harappān mixed with pre-Harappān, a "transitional phase" such as Sankalia finds in the "junction layers" at Kot Diji.¹⁶ May we not legitimately postulate, by virtue of several traits, the label "semi-Harappān" for the destroyers of Period IV?

It is to be noted that Sankalia does not commit himself, though his manner of expression may be somewhat suggestive. He is wise in remaining uncommitted - in accord with the conclusion of the advice, already quoted by us, which Wheeler himself has offered in a cautious mood apropos of the hunt for invading Aryanism in post-Harappān cultures: "If a word of warning is appropriate, it is on the desirability of avoiding an excessively Aryan 'preoccupation'."

Ironically, this word of warning can be made most applicable to the situation Wheeler regarded as archaeologically his strongest point. So far we have accepted that he is right at least in showing us at Mohenjo-dāro a fight-scene, however small we may consider it, at the end of this city. But quite a surprise meets us from one of the most prominent archaeologists in India, who is yet a believer like Wheeler in Aryans entering the country around the middle of the second millennium B.C. B.B. Lal begins his contradiction of the Wheelerian view of Mohenjo-dāro thus: "In the first place, the skeletons do not all belong to one and the same occupation level, which should also be the latest marking the end of the Indus settlement."¹⁷ Lal cuts the very ground from under Wheeler.

Besides, the paper by the physical anthropologist K.A.R.

15."The Indus Valley Civilization", The Vedic Age, p. 189.

16.Op. cit., p. 330, 2. and p. 352, col. 1.

17."The Indus Civilization", A Cultural History of India, edited by A.L. Basham (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), p. 19.

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Kennedy, 'Trauma and Disease in the Ancient Harappāns", as summed up by Lai in the 1986 publication Frontiers of the Indus Civilization¹⁸ informs us that as a result of his examination of these skeletons in detail he has come to the conclusion that the persons concerned died owing to some waterborne diseases and malaria rather than at the hands of an enemy. So the massacre-theory, the only one even distantly likely to suggest a possible Aryan invasion, fizzles out completely.

Clearly, all that we know of the termination of the Indus Valley Civilization fails to tally with the story read in the Rigveda of purah, in the sense of fortifications, repeatedly laid low by Aryan invaders in c. 1500 B.C. And there is no other formidable civilization in the wake of the Harappā Culture to meet the demands of this story. So, if the story is true, the Rigveda and, with it, any Aryan invasion cannot be dated to the middle of the second millennium B.C. The Rigveda must precede the Harappā Culture. If it is a part of the pre-Harappān Civilization that has been unearthed, the story read in it of destructive attacks on fortified cities is still not borne out. Actually, archaeology indicates the destruction of some pre-Harappān sites by the Harappā Culture. The immediate predecessors of the latter have to be the successors of the Rigvedics, who then have to come chronologically more or less where we have placed them.

In the role of invaders and destroyers, which they have been allotted, they would be confronted by some yet more ancient culture - pre-3500 B.C. - of which we have been ignorant hitherto. However, when we remember that the Rigveda's hymns yield no evidence of entry into India from abroad in any measurable past, we are left only with a tale of warfare which, for lack of archaeological support or of confirmation from an independent outside source, hangs in mid-air.

And the archaeologically negated tale of warfare is not the

18. Introduction, p., XIII, col. 2.

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sole foundation of sand for Wheeler's historical edifice. Sandy also is his very equation of the Rigvedic purah with the Harappān forts.

Wheeler believes that the authors of the Vedic Index (I, pp. 356, 539) ruled that the purah had been "merely places of refuge against attack, ramparts of hardened earth with palisades and a ditch", because Macdonell and Keith wrote before the walled Harappān towns were excavated.^18a He forgets that they proceeded on the actual indications in the hymns which did not warrant conjuring up any such towns. He forgets also that in the period of the Vedic Index (1912), the extensive area and massive fortification of ancient Pataliputra were known from the notes left by Megasthenes in c. 300 B.C. as well as from the Pali texts and that Macdonell and Keith (I, p. 539) rejected the hypothesis of Pischel and Geldner that the Rigveda's forts resembled this old capital of "Sandrocottus" on the Ganges. Sandrocottus's capital could very well be compared with Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro, as indeed done by Piggott in 1950.¹⁹ It is not because Macdonell and Keith were ignorant of anything like Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro that they ruled as they did about the forts of the Rigveda.

We may add that sixteen years after the Vedic Index was published, during which time the huge defensive palisades of ancient Pataliputra had been laid out to view by the archaeologist Spooner, Macdonell in his History of Sanskrit Literature could still write of these forts: "There is nothing to show that they were inhabited, much less that the pur ever meant a town or city as it did in later times."²⁰ Even Apte, writing in 1952 in full sight of the elaborately excavated Harappān cities, reaffirmed that "the so-called strongholds or forts" had been earth-work structures, with a protective barrier which "could be easily erected like the stockades made by

18a. Op. cit., p. 132.

19.Op. cit., p. 287.

20.Op. cit., p. 158.

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primitive tribes all over the world".²¹ Wheeler's verdict is absolutely unfounded.

Indeed it is difficult for any reader of the Rigveda with true insight to mistake the nature of its "fortified cities". The strongholds of the enemies are often referred to as those of Vala whom modern scholars would be inclined to take for a Dravidian chief. Thus we find the verses in Sri Aurobindo's translation:²²

"O lord of the thunderbolt [Indra], thou didst uncover the hole of Vala of the cows [valasya gomatah]" (I.11.5).

"So in thy ecstasy of the Soma thou didst break open, O hero (Indra), the pen of the Cow and the Horse, like a city" (VIII.32.5).

"That is the work to be done for the most divine of the gods; the firm places were cast down, the fortified places were made weak; up Brihaspati drove the cows,... he broke Vala..." (II.24.3).

There is the repeated indication here that what the Rig-vedics were after were pens of cows and horses, especially those of the former and that it is the pen that is "like a city The "firm places", the "fortified places", are a number of pens. Such walled cities as the Harappāns possessed are quite foreign to the cattle-minded and horse-desiring Rig-vedics in a seemingly pre-urban age - whatever the ultimate interpretation, whether symbolic or naturalistic, we may give to their bovines and equids.

Perhaps we shall be told that it is possible to see the purah in another light from the Rigveda's own text. About the forts, there are expressions like prithivī ("broad"), urvī ("wide"), āyasī (commonly rendered "made of iron") or śatabhujī("with a hundred walls") and, as such, are variously numbered ninety, ninety-nine and a hundred. But, even if we make a non-symbolic approach to the Rigveda, we should not allow ourselves to be misled by these descriptions. An element of hyperbole may very well be supposed.

21."Social and Economic Conditions", The Vedic Age, pp. 398-99.

22.Op. cit., pp. 137 , 140, 148.

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Most scholars translate the word anās, which the Rigvedics use for their enemies, by "noseless". Surely, no Indian, however flat his proboscis, can literally be considered as utterly lacking the olfactory organ. Hence the expression "a hundred walls" may be understood to indicate with poetic licence several rings of defences: each ring might have been only a hedge of thorns or row of stakes. "Broad" and "wide" are after all relative terms: a pen holding fifty cows or horses would deserve such an adjective as compared to one holding fifteen. And āyasī is obviously a figure of speech for the strongest structure within the Rishis' experience, no matter how primitive its character. But if we are driven to regard all these terms in an absolutely literal sense, the "hundred walls" and the "walls of iron" would mean fortifications of a magnitude that would go far beyond ancient Pataliputra itself and even throw all the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization into the shade.

For, Wheeler, in arguing his case, has slurred over many details of the real picture. Although he would like Rigvedic terms to fit the Harappā Culture, yet at one point he is himself constrained to say: "Sometimes strongholds are referred to metaphorically as 'of metal' (āyasī)."²³ Piggott, taking stock of all the Harappān settlements of both the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, sums up that, with such sites as Sutkāgen-dor "excepted", "these settlements... do not seem to have been laid out for defence, and at the capital cities [Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro] the defences of the citadels alone have been proved to exist..."²⁴ Even Sutkāgen-dor-which, by the way, is nowhere near the heart of the Indus Valley Civilization but at the farthest western end of Southern Balūchistān near the Makran coast, where the alleged invasion by Rigvedic Aryans is never thought to have reached - even this site has only the citadel and not the whole town massively defended. The town itself, lying below the citadel to the north and east, is, to use Wheeler's own

23.Op. cit., pp. 131-2.

24.Op. cit., p. 138.

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words, "apparently unfenced".²⁵ Merely on the strength of a few well-fortified citadels are we indiscriminately to equate Harappān settlements to forts with a "hundred walls" or of "iron", forts numbering ninety-nine or a hundred on several occasions?

There is a clear dilemma. If the phrases of the Rigveda are understood in the total context of the picture the book gives of the times, the purah cannot be compared to the populous, elaborate, highly organized cities that were inhabited by the Harappāns at their most important sites. If they are understood in a limited context with complete literalness, the Harappān towns even at their greatest do not at all come up to the purah. Either way the fort-argument breaks down.

How then are we to estimate the view that the Rigveda is an epic of invasion and attack? Evidently, in that role it cannot be fitted into the middle of the second millennium B.C. Can it be so considered in any age? Archaeology and history appear to have no answer. What is the alternative?

Already we have quoted, apropos of the Rigvedic Dawn, Sri Aurobindo's appeal for an esoteric interpretation. Such a reading, while not completely excluding naturalistic echoes, is essentially symbolic, a testament of inner spiritual adventure and conquest. A glance at it should give a finishing touch not only to our treatment of Wheeler's suggestion but also to our whole enquiry whose starting-point was the Rigveda.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

Since Piggott's time Kalibangan in Rajasthan and Surkotada in Kutch have been found to have had walls around the lower town as well as around the citadel. But in an overall view these sites are still exceptions, and even they cannot match a literal sense of those Rigvedic terms that are high-pitched in regard to the purah.

25. Op. cit., p.60.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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APPENDICES

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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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Appendix II

THE TERM ARMAKA IN THE RIGVEDA

T. Burrow made quite an impression by publishing his paper, "On the Significance of the Terms arma- armaka- in Early Sanskrit Literature".¹⁶ Passing beyond the common dictionary-definitions he fixes the original sense: "the element arma at the end means a ruined site or settlement."¹⁷ He finds several instances in Pānini and several in the old Vedic writings. The very first instance he locates in the Rigveda itself, and from it he deduces that most of the ruined sites or settlements were the cities of the Harappā Culture. His deduction is based on the theory that the Rigveda recounts the story of the Aryans invading India in c. 1500 and being liable to destroy the Harappān cities. We have made a fairly comprehensive attempt to reduce this theory to ruins. So, however right Burrow's linguistics may be, those cities need not be involved. But, even assuming that we have not succeeded in destroying this theory, could we accept Burrow's general contention that from the Rigveda onwards arma and armaka denote material ruins?

Whatever may be the case with post-Rigvedic literature, we may submit that the Rigveda hardly supports Burrow. Actually, it has just a single reference. "In the Rigveda," says Burrow, "the word armaka- occurs once, in 1,133, 3."¹⁸ And even this solitary instance comes wrapped in most enigmatic language.

The verse concerned reads in Burrow's translation: "Strike

16.Journal of Indian History, Vol. XLI, Part I, April 1963, No. 121, pp. 159-68. How impressive Burrow has been may be gauged from the value attached to his paper in a discussion of the "Aryan invasions" by Bridget and Raymond Allchin in The Birth of Indian Civilization (1968), p. 155.

17.Ibid., p. 159. Burrow gives as his authority V.S. Agrawala, India as Known to Pānini (Lucknow, 1953), pp. 66-7.

18.Ibid., p. 164.

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down, O Maghavan, the host of sorceresses in the ruined city of Vailasthānaka, in the ruined city of Mahāvailastha."¹⁹ Burrow adds: "The name Vailasthāna occurs also in the first verse of the same hymn."²⁰ And this verse he renders: "I purify both heaven and earth with truth, I burn up the mighty evil spirits that are opposed to Indra, in the place where the enemies, having been overpowered and slain, lay shattered around Vailasthāna."²¹

First of all, it is improper to talk of a "city", strictly speaking, in the Rigvedic age. Burrow's plea is that nothing short of a city like Harappā or Mohenjo-dāro would merit the extensive references in later Vedic writings to ruined sites or settlements and that a small unimportant item like a village (grama) will not do.²² This plea cannot hold for the Rigveda which lacks the precise word nagara (city)- and whose pur is so described as to fit no definable historic city. Along Burrow's line of thought, the appropriate thing to say would be that a Rigvedic ruin, though not a city, must yet be a large important area. And then what exactly it would be we have to surmise from the name "Mahāvailastha" which connotes: "Great Vailastha". All hangs upon the sense of "vaila".

Burrow tells us that it "appears to be a non-Aryan element" which "may be derived from the language of the original inhabitants, though there is no means of guessing at its meaning".²³ Surely he is here rather off the mark. "Vila" or "bila" is a Sanskrit noun and the adjective from it is "vaila" or "baila". The sense relates to a "hole, cave, tunnel". So "Mahāvailastha" should stand for "Great-holed-place". And it is the ruined site of such a locality that the hymn mentions. Unquestionably, there seems to be some mystery about it.

19.Ibid.

20.Ibid., p. 165.

21.Ibid.

22.Ibid., pp. 159-60.

23.Ibid., p. 165.

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The only way to bring illumination is to remember a Rigvedic passage we have already quoted in our eleventh chapter. It is all the more relevant because it addresses the same god who is addressed in Burrow's quotation as "Ma-ghavan" - namely, Indra. We read: "O Lord of the thunderbolt, thou didst uncover the hole of Vala of the cows" (I. 11, 5). The "Great-holed-place" belonged to Vala, and obviously he hid cows in it. Such an inference is confirmed by another verse from the Rigveda which also we have cited before: "So in the ecstasy of the Soma thou didst break open, O hero, the pen of the Cow and the Horse, like a city" (VIII. 32, 5). Here again Indra is apostrophised. And here we have not only a clear index to the Rigvedic content of an expression like pur which is commonly translated "city": we have in addition a clear index to the nature of the Rigvedic "hole". Mahāvailastha is the large pen within which Vala enclosed the cows which the Rigvedics were seeking to set free.

Who was Vala and what were these cows? We need not enter into the details of the Aurobindonian symbolic interpretation. Suffice it to say that the very materials presented by Burrow carry an aura of eerie strangeness which removes the ruined site from any earthly habitation whether Harappān or another. Apropos of the two verses quoted, Burrow writes:

"The Rigvedic poem... shows that after their destruction these abandoned sites were looked upon with a high degree of superstitious awe, and that in particular they were considered the haunt of evil spirits and demons hostile to the Aryans and to the Aryan gods. Evidently it was considered necessary, from time to time, to exorcise these evil spirits by rites performed within or beside the ruined sites themselves, and such a ceremony is the occasion of this hymn."²⁴

With the "host of sorceresses" and the "mighty evil spirits" we are undoubtedly, as Burrow admits, in the realm

24. Ibid.

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of the occult, the supernatural. The sole ambiguous point is: Who were the overpowered and slain enemies lying shattered around the ruined site? Burrow regards them as human beings. But as soon as we ask who the followers of Vala, the hider of cows in the Great-holed-place, are, the idea of human beings starts fading. "The Dasyus who withhold or steal the cows," says Sri Aurobindo, "are called the Panis, a word which seems originally to have meant doers, dealers or traffickers; but this significance is sometimes coloured by its further sense of 'misers'. Their chief is Vala..."²⁵ We may recall what Macdonell and Keith observes "In some passages the Panis definitely appear as mythological figures, demons who withhold the cows or waters of heaven..."²⁶ As withholders of heavenly waters they have Vritra for chief. Indra is named both Vritrahan, "Vritra-slayer", and Valahan, "Vala-slayer". Nor is Indra the only slayer of Vala and Vritra: the other gods have the same role, particularly Brihaspati. And in hymn VI. 73 we have a passage which is strongly reminiscent of Burrow's first verse. In Sri Aurobindo's version it reads: "Brihaspati who for man the voyager has fashioned that other world in the calling of the gods, slaying the Vritra-forces breaks open the cities, conquering foes and overpowering unfriends in his battles. Brihaspati conquers for him the treasures, great pens this god wins full of the kine, seeking the conquest of the world of Swar, unassailable; Brihaspati slays the Foe by the hymns of illumination (arkaih)."²⁷ Side by side with Burrow's "enemies... overpowered and slain", we may note Brihaspati who, "overpowering unfriends", "slays the foes". Again we may put "Mahāvailastha" along with "great pens... full of the kine".

The inimical Panis who lie shattered around Vailasthāna seem to be of the same company as the evil spirits and demons: both are non-human. And the kine appear to be

25.The Secret of the Veda, p. 134.

26.The Vedic Index, I, p. 471.

27.Op. cit., p. 139.

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symbolic, as it is difficult to think of them in any other way when they are associated with "the conquest of the world of Swar", which is the Sun-world, and with "the hymn of illumination", the Mantra which is the Word of spiritual knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out several passages where the cow-symbolism is undeniable. Quoting from a hymn to Usha, the Dawn-Goddess, he writes: "She creates light for all the world and opens out the darkness as the pen of the Cow, where we have without any possibility of mistake the cow as the symbol of light (I. 92. 4)."²⁸ After giving some other instances he winds up: "Finally, as if to remove the veil of the image entirely, the Veda itself tells us that the herds are a figure for the rays of the Light, 'her happy rays come into sight like the cows released into movement' -prati bhadrā adrksata gavāṁ sargā na rasmayah (IV. 52. 5). And we have the still more conclusive verse (VII. 79. 2), 'Thy cows (rays) remove the darkness and extend the Light', sam te gāvas tama ā vartayanti, jyotir yacchanti."²⁹ Here Sri Aurobindo follows up with the footnote: "It cannot of course be disputed that gauh means light in the Veda e.g. when it is said that Vritra is slain gavā, by light, there is no question of the cow; the question is of the use of the double sense and of the cow as a symbol."

Burrow's citations, probed below the surface, lose the "slant" he invests them with. The odds certainly are that the Rigveda's armaka is not only non-Harappān but also non-material and therefore unconnected with any physical invasion or battle.

Nor need we rest with heavy odds in our favour. To make our contention dead-sure we have merely to look at what Burrow has not cited from the hymn. Take verses 5 and 6, in Ralph T.H. Griffith's well-known translation:

"O Indra, crush and bray to bits the fearful fiery-weaponed fiend:

28.Ibid., p. 120.

29.Ibid., p. 121.

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"Strike every demon to the ground...

"Most Mighty mid the Mighty Ones thou speedest with strong bolts of death.

"Not slaying men, unconquered Hero! with the brave, O Hero, with the thrice-seven brave."³⁰

Griffith's general footnote reads: "This hymn is a prayer for the destruction of witches, goblins, and evil spirits of various sorts." And on the phrase, "Not slaying men", he comments: "that is destroying evil spirits only."

To peruse the hymn as a whole is to realize that human beings do not at all figure in it and that Burrow's interpretation is utterly gratuitous.³¹

30.The Hymns of the Rgveda, Vol. I, p. 185.

31.For interest's sake we may give Griffith's rendering of the two verses cited by Burrow:

"With sacrifice I purge both earth and heaven: I burn up the great she-fiends who serve not Indra.

"Where throttled by thy hand the foes were slaughtered, and in the pit of death lay pierced and mangled.

"Do thou, O Maghavan, beat off these sorceresses' daring strength.

"Cast them within the narrow pit, within the deep and narrow pit."

Griffith has not tried to probe the precise sense of the word "vaila", but he has rightly caught the suggestion of a "hole" with the word "pit" and he has brought out both its constriction and its extensive character. He has not attended to any implication of "ruins", but even if he had he would not have thought in terms of a "ruined city" which has no relevance in the context. In case there had been some such expression he would still have never taken it as a reference to a past human habitation. "Evil spirits only" were clearly the subject of the hymn to his mind.

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Analytic Review of the Chapters

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Index

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SUPPLEMENTS

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SUPPLEMENT I

A Criticism and a Reply

With acknowledgements to the Academy Journal

"Administrator" Vol. XXVI, No 1, (January-March) Spring 1981, pp. 189-217

A SPOKE IN THE WHEEL"*

A review by Anthony J.C. de Sa

Prepared as a paper for a Russian Conference on 'Aryan Immigration into India', but withheld on technical grounds, K.D. Sethna's The Problem of Aryan Origins makes interesting, though not particularly scholarly, reading.

What follows is a review of sorts interspersed with my personal comments which may be taken for what they are worth. I am quite conscious of the fact that this piece represents the opinions of a novice on the researches of an experienced academician and it is always so much easier to criticize. I realise also that in most cases I hark back to the traditional theories, but this is not because I am wedded to the classical school or am allergic to anything novel, but chiefly due to the reason that I see no rationale in replacing an existing theory, however poor it may seem, by one in which a greater number of inconsistencies surface. It is in this light that my criticism is to be read.

The commonly held view is that the Indus Civilization, which flourished during 2400-1700 B.C., was essentially a Dravidian one. It was urban, and seems to have grown from the skilful utilization of the fertile river valleys. Its Dravidian and urban nature were the characteristic ingredients of its

* The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna. (S.S. Publishers, 52 Aurobindo Sarani, Calcutta-5, 1980, Rs. 35)

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progress in our researches about the Aryans and their culture then surely we will have to identify a more localised 'original home'.

*

The author quotes Sri Aurobindo at length to prove that the principal difference between the Aryans and the Dravidians was cultural and not racial. This is really contradictory to his own assumption that the Dravidian culture is not essentially, but only superficially, different from the Aryan. But even if this little inconsistency is overlooked, Sri Aurobindo's views cannot be of much use to Sethna. There is no doubt that today, as was two thousand years ago, racial differentiation is a myth, and the whole idea of a 'pure' race is farcical and vicious not only in India which has seen a vast amount of racial-intermixture, but also in predominantly 'white' Europe. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that in the dawn of human civilization, when communities were tribal-based and demographically microscopic, language and culture coincided with race; Sethna sidetracks even this by facilely suggesting that Dravidian tongues are actually Aryan, in spite of universal opinion and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

At another stage in the book the author quotes Lokmanya Tilak appreciatively, even though the freedom-fighter believed solidly in the invasion-theory and also went to the extent of maintaining, mainly through astrological predictions and astronomical observations in the Rgvedic slokas, that the Aryans came from the Arctic. This appreciation of Tilak can hardly be understood. Perhaps, and here I hazard a guess, it is because Tilak, like Swami Dayanand Saraswati, was such a staunch proponent of Aryan excellence; and Shri Sethna, in spite of his bending over backwards trying to point out that his theory will eliminate Southern grievances against the North, seems to show in several places, if one reads between the lines, that what really incenses him is that

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the acceptance of the extra-Indian origins of the Aryans also entails the acceptance of the fact that:

(a)the Dravidian civilization of the Indus was at a far advanced stage, and the early Aryans comparatively 'barbaric';

(b)that modern Indian culture is far more Dravidian in its basis than has traditionally been conceded.

Right through Shri Sethna's book one notices a pro-Aryan bias; a constant, if subtle, whittling at hypotheses which substantiate these views which 'belittle' Aryan glory. I mention this only as an aside, because, as pointed out earlier, the creation or rebuttal of theories on the grounds of emotionalism is abhorrent to students of history, and so, in all fairness, what has been denied to the author ought not to be used against him either.

Far graver is Shri Sethna's undue dependence on the opinions of Sri Aurobindo and to a lesser extent, on those of Lokmanya Tilak, citing them on occasion as sole authorities. These may add colour to his statement but quite definitely detract from its authenticity. Aurobindoji and Tilakji were intellectuals and patriots of the highest order and may have been scholars in their limited academic fields, but their works do not really bear rigid scrutiny on points of historical methodology. The author has been editor since 1949 of Mother India published from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and the book under review was published by a follower of Sri Aurobindo. Whether because of this or otherwise, I cannot tell, but Sethna is very obviously a devotee of Sri Aurobindo - and where adulation begins, scholarship ends. The Problem... is not free of this malaise.

*

Most of the author's archaeological thrust is on the basis of the skeletal remains of what is alleged to be a horse. Now knowledge and domestication of the horse is a hallmark of Aryan civilization. In fact some of the oldest words in Sanskrit

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relating to the horse, riding, and equine equipage (including the spoked-wheel chariot) are common to Lithuanian, Latin and Greek, suggesting that these constituted an essential factor in the original and ancient Aryan way of life. It does not follow automatically that non-Aryan cultures were ignorant of the horse - it was known to the Semites for one - but its absence would indicate a definite non-Aryan character. Thus, the fact that the Indus Civilization was a horseless one was a trenchant argument in favour of its being Dravidian, or at least non-Aryan.

The author feels that he has destroyed the very basis of this conclusion by identifying some bones found in Shah Tepe (on the Caspian coast) as those of a horse. He makes much of this find, going into the intricacies of biological classification to emphasise the point that the bones do not belong to the hemione, onager or ass, but to the true horse. So flimsy is this argument that we can dispense with it on four straightforward counts:

(a)Biochemists of international renown, far more qualified than Sethna, maintain that the bones are not equine;

(b)Even granted for argument's sake, that the bones are equine, it is not as though masses of them have been found scattered all over the place. Also Shah Tepe is on the Caspian Coast, an ancient area far removed from the Indus Valley, and so surely some skeletal remains of the horse ought to be found there:

(c)If, as the author claims, a handful of similar bones have been unearthed from a pile in the environs of Mohenjo-dāro, then can it not be likely that they belong to the beasts of the invading Aryan tribes? Surely, in the armed conflicts that ensued several horses would inevitably have perished, and these carcasses would leave behind bones! This supposition is further supported by Sethna's own claim that these bones were found in a pile of others, indicating a mass grave:

(d)Given the fact that the Indus people have depicted on

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their thousands of seals almost every creature known to them (from earthworms to rhinocerii), is it conceivable that they would omit to portray the horse, were it known to and domesticated by them, as Sethna claims? I don't think we can accept such a far-fetched assumption as feasible.

Similar is the case with the spoked-wheel chariot. This too is seen as a distinguishing feature of an Aryan civilization, and traditional Historians have held the Indus Valley Civilization to be non-Aryan because of its marked absence in the 'digs', either in actual, model or graphic form. The solid wheel had been invented and put to varied and skilful-use, but the light spoked-wheel had not been developed by the Dravidians. Again, probably due to their ignorance of the horse or an alternative fleet-footed animal, the nearest the Indus people came to a chariot was a bullock-cart. It was, perhaps, due to this drawback that they were so effectively vanquished by the comparatively more martial Aryans. Though implements, artifacts, models and toys have been found in profuse abundance, the spoked-wheel and the horse-drawn chariot are conspicuously missing. Yet Shri Sethna would have it (on the basis of 13 seals out of thousands, and some weapons and one or two potsherds) that the spoked-wheel was invented by the Indus people (who were nothing but a "later stage of Rgvedic evolution"!). On the seals in question what really appears is a circle with three cross-lines in it. This symbol, which Sethna so confidently takes to be a wheel, is more correctly interpreted, as in Sumerian and Egyptian writing, to be a star, the sun or a divinity. A substantiating factor is that these symbols are not uniformly circular, but sometimes oval-shaped and even pointed at the extremities. Could these be taken to represent a wheel?

On a solitary seal is a matchstick figure of a man with a

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'spoked wheel' at the end of each leg - or so the author tells us and even draws out a diagram. He presumes this to be a stylistic representation of a horse-drawn spoke-wheeled chariot. A Finnish research team holds that it is actually a potter turning two wheels of trade with his legs. Even if this is dismissed, as Sethna does it as an excessive flight of fancy, the glaring issue remains: the seal in question is a damaged one, with only a single 'wheel' visible. This is critical, as Shri I. Mahadevan expresses the opinion that at the end of the other leg could very well be not a wheel but quite a different symbol, giving the value 'Lord of the sun and...' whatever the other symbol connotes. What troubles one is that Shri Sethna quite neglects to warn the reader (a) about the irregular shape of his so-called spoked-wheels, and (b) about the broken condition of the "all-important" seal. This is a very serious lapse indeed as the author builds up his most devastating argument on this very point.

Quite apart from all this, should we concede all that Shri Sethna contends (which is a bit too much) it can still be postulated that depicted on this seal is a picture of the 'enemy'. In fact, this may be supported by two arguments:

(a)It only appears on one seal, whereas all other themes recur, and so it probably belongs to the later period of Indus civilization, possibly just before the overpowering of the city in which this particular seal was manufactured;

(b)The picture is hardly accurate with no hint at all of a chariot - only a man travelling on two 'wheels': this confusion is likely to have occurred if the sight (as would the sight of an enemy on a strange and fearful contraption) was fleeting, swift and awe-inspiring. If it was an object of great familiarity it would have been more accurately and detailedly depicted - also, at least some clay models and toys would have survived.

Surely, it is not so much the Finnish researchers (who may well be wrong), but Shri Sethna who launches on a flight of excessive fancy!

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And now we come to Aryan scripture, the most potent and fruitful area of research, strangely cold-shouldered by Shri Sethna. The author seems to be in confusion as to the nature of composition and the mode of authorship of the Rgveda. All along he presumes that a select band of Rishis applied themselves to the task of composition. This, in my opinion, is doing a grave injustice to the oldest Indian scripture. While the later Vedas, consisting largely of mantras and sacrificial incantations, could perhaps be the deliberate product of priests and pandits, the major portions of the Rgveda were surely the spontaneous outpourings of a virile and nomadic people, lovers of nature and a way of life unhindered by urban constraints. Of course, their formal arrangement must have obviously been done by a few sages who very likely modified the metre and rhyme in the process (as later Brahmins quite certainly doctored some of the contents), but this does not detract from their popular origins.

Again, Shri Sethna contends that Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aryan invasion of India from the north-west and outside of India, nor of any advance of the Aryan from west to east, and proffers in this regard the verse (Rgveda X, 75) which mentions rivers in their order from the east to the north-west beginning with the Gangā. He also cites references of Sudas, an Aila King, who is described as pushing his conquest westwards into the Punjāb. I cannot emphasise too much that we must never forget that the Rgveda was composed over centuries and by different sets of persons and compiled in its 'unchangeable' form even later. The verse cited was obviously composed when the focus of settlement was in the Gangā-Yamunā doab, and it was natural for the rivers to be enumerated beginning with the closest. It is also significant that rivers further east are not mentioned in this verse. As to the Aila expansion, I see no difficulty in accepting it without complications, for surely the mere fact that the Aryans entered from the north-west and west does not mean that they established an empire whilst doing it. Complex social organization, in fact, came much later, and

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the Aila kingdom could well have then been established and expanded in any direction.

I admit that at this stage it is my opinion against the author's. There is the fact that I could substantiate my views by quoting from Max Müller and others of his ilk, but that would be neither here nor there, as still it would be Sethna's views against Müller's conception. So I would rather let this issue remain to be seen in linkage with the battery of linguistic arguments, quite well worked out already, and none the less valid merely because they are traditional: from those relating to the retroflexive dentals to those concerning Vedic geography, which can be so used as to arraign and seriously contradict Shri Sethna's theories single-handedly. But since the present book prefers to deal with them summarily, I too will pass them over - reluctantly. Suffice it to say that even when the author does wish to poke holes in them his objections are so minor and irrelevant as to be totally ineffective beyond raising some very superficial doubts.

In this connection I would very much like to refer the reader to Mahadevan's attempts at breaking the Indus . script. His theory is not only coherent, but allows an inter- pretation of the seals which is corroborated by a remarkable consistency - and so cannot be off-handedly dismissed -, while also conforming broadly with views expressed by leading Indologists about the general differences between the Aryan and Dravidian tongues and cultures. Mahadevan's methodology is published in Ancient Cities of the Indus (Ed. Gregory L. Possehl. Vikas, 1979), but unfortunately his interpretations yet await publication. The views held by Sethna are as revolutionary as Mahadevan's are brilliant, but one finds a greater overall consistency in the latter's thesis as compared to the somewhat sketchy nature of the former's arguments - and it is because of this that I prefer the framework accepted by Mahadevan.

Furthermore, as to the age of the scriptures, Shri Sethna goes along with Sri Aurobindo's orthodox view that the Rgveda be dated around 3500 B.C. making it almost 6000

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years old which is 2000 years older than many modern scholars are willing to concede.

There are dozens of other erroneous assumptions and unwarranted presumptions which Shri Sethna makes with sweeping and unabashed inaccuracy. When criticizing the 'invasion-theory' he treats the Aryan migration as one event - something which nobody does today. In another place he asks us to "look at the uniformly Aryan culture" of India. His pièce-de-résistance is, of course, when he firmly asserts that the whole issue of Devas and Dasyus, the recurring theme in the Rgveda of Aryas versus "black-skinned, snub-nosed, phallic-worshipping" Dāsas, and the monstrous Asuras, is merely allegorical - not something which was a dramatization of events actually occurring and situations actually obtaining, but only something which went on solely in the minds of the wise Rishis of yore. Perhaps this contention is based on Sri Aurobindo's Secret of the Veda. With all due respect, I find it exceedingly naive.

One last issue remains to be dealt with, if only for the reason that in this case at least, the author makes a strong point. He indicates that Indian scriptures maintain a complete silence on the extra-subcontinental origins of the Aryans, and talk about Northern India itself as their eternal abode. While denying that there exists a complete silence, it must be conceded that the author's point is well taken - that is, provided we are willing to accept the entirely allegorical nature of the issues of war, conflict, race and worship in the Rgveda. But, for reasons pointed out earlier, this is not entirely acceptable, principally because it would be illogical to imagine a scripture of the nature of the Vedas as having no roots in reality but a product mainly of philosophical

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fantasy. It can be postulated, equally satisfactorily, and more concretely, that two related tribes - the Ahuras (Sanskrit: Asuras) and the Devas - engaged in internecine conflict in what is today Iran, the Devas getting the worse of it (though the confrontation was probably pyrrhic), resulting in their migration eastwards into the Indian subcontinent, not as one group, but as several separate tribes over a period of centuries, perhaps. While the Irānians characterized their forefathers (Ahuras) as godly (Ahura-mazda) and their hostile cousins (Devas) as demoniac (Devils), the Vedics did the exact opposite, telling of the monstrous Asuras and the Divine Devas. (Incidentally, in the Graeco-Latin Christian tradition we have the paradoxical fact of the words for God 'Deus' and 'Devil' coming from the same Aryan root!)

To come back: since our forefathers lost the 'war' it was but natural that overt reference to the issue be not directly made, and the traumatic experience of having to flee be not unnecessarily resurrected. This issue is specifically analysed rather brilliantly by Nirad Chaudhuri in his Continent of Circe. Chaudhuri may be branded (and with good reason) as unpatriotic, but his credentials as a scholar of the Aryan classics (Indian, as well as European) are stout. We have his word for it that the whole of Vedic literature is borne under by a deep and inexplicable psychological longing for something undefined. He very fascinatingly links up ritual cleanliness, worship of rivers and mountains, and the value attached to cows and horses as also a host of other characteristic Vedic customs and predilections and prejudices (skin-colour, for example) with this constant harking back to another 'cradle land', the more strong because it is repressed.

Admittedly, the acceptance of the Aryan-invasion theory does not offer a solution to every problem... but then, its rejection raises a greater number of unanswered questions

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and a multiplicity of inconsistencies - which is exactly what The Problem of Aryan Origins by Shri K.D. Sethna ends up doing. The author's style may not be either fluid or engrossing, but he deserves the congratulations of "the general public of thoughtful readers" for focusing attention on a subject of such gripping interest and historical importance; and it is on this score that his book is well worth reading.

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K. D. SETHNA'S REPLY

I am amazed at Mr. Anthony J.C. de Sa's lengthy onslaught on my book. He is quite modest in his introductory passage as to his qualifications but in the body of his article he lays about him with the confidence of an authority. Unfortunately the air of certainty is not matched by an accuracy of procedure. Almost everywhere I see an inaccurate representation of my views and an inadequate understanding of my arguments.

Thus, to begin with, he roundly attributes to me the thesis that the Rigvedics were autochthones in India - that is, indigenous inhabitants. He fails to appreciate certain fine shades. I have said that there is no indication in the Rigveda of any entry by foreigners. From this I infer that we have to take the Rigvedics as being, for all practical purposes, autochthonous. We have no definite means of determining whether they came from anywhere. Their origins from abroad, if any, are lost in antiquity. We find them where the Rigveda shows them to be. But this does not foreclose the question of ultimate origins.

With Sri Aurobindo I grant the possibility that the Rigvedics may have hailed from more northern latitudes, perhaps even the Arctic Circle if some hints in the Hymns about the dawn and the sun could be given a physical meaning and regarded not only as spiritual symbols but also as half-mythologised memories. What seems positively deducible from the Rigveda is that we cannot put the advent of its composers into India anywhere near the time of its composition nor even in any calculable historical period.

Here we are borne out by both archaeology and literature - the latter including, besides the Hymns themselves, all subsequent Indian writing This double point, to which Mr. de Sa appears to attach little importance, is made by all just-minded scholars, be they in favour or not of the invasion-hypothesis. T. Burrow is one of the latest to admit it: "The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document,

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and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically."¹

When I touch on the topic of Indian writing in my book, Mr. de Sa again is unable to focus his attention. He makes a loose reference to Pusalker and his "contention". What Pusalker really says is that the Indian tradition, especially in the Puranas, makes India itself the home of the Aryans, from where they expanded in different directions to various countries. Neither Pusalker nor I offer this statement off our own bat. We are citing Indian documents and I do so to support my own "contention" which is based on other data too. Besides, as Mr. de Sa admits, my vision is of a long extensive Aryan belt in ancient times. India to me is not the sole seat of Aryanism. No doubt, this does not answer the question of the ultimate origins. But the ultimate origins have never been established so far. It is sheer dogmatism and wishful thinking to speak of "the autochthonous Central-European habitation" of the Aryans. All we can affirm is that they have been found in Central Europe at a particular epoch of antiquity, but nobody can assert that here was their original home. Some linguistic arguments tend to point towards it, but Mr. de Sa may be interested to read what James Anderson, a philologist of note, has remarked in general apropos of such arguments: "In spite of a number of theories concerning the Indo-European homeland, varying from Asia to Scandinavia, none are satisfactory from all points of view .... Linguistic considerations alone cannot answer the question of the homeland or period of dispersion...."²

The main query relevant to my book is: Is the Harappa Culture or the Rigveda earlier in time? Here the evidence for the domesticated horse is of central importance. Mr. de Sa thinks that I credit the. Harappā Culture with the horse because of some bones found at Shah Tepe on the Caspian

1."The Early Aryans", A Cultural History of India, edited by A.L. Basham (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975), p. 21.

2.Structural Aspects of Language Change (Longman Group Ltd., London, 1973), p. 43

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coast. But why would I need to fare so far afield? Not only have the bones of equus caballus Linn, been found in the upper stratum of Mohenjo-daro but they have also been unearthed in the lower strata of Surkotada going back to at least 2000 B.C. It is impossible to hold that this Harappān site in Kutch was not in contact with the great cities in Sind and the Punjāb. Mr. de Sa refers us to the Harappān seals and reminds us that no equine has been depicted there. He drives home his point by asking us: "Given the fact that the Indus people have depicted on their thousands of seals almost every creature known to them (from earth-worms to rhinocerii), is it conceivable that they would omit to portray the horse if it was known to and domesticated by them, as Sethna claims? I don't think we can accept such a far-fetched assumption as feasible." I wonder why the writer, being so sure of himself, uses the qualifying adverb "almost". Perhaps he knows, yet does not want to tell, some facts which render his argument ineffective? If he does not, let me quote a few words from F. R. Allchin and then turn to the seals. Allchin observes: "The remains of a camel at Harappān sites are surely certain proof that the single-humped camel was domestic."³ Still, there is no representation of camelus dromedarius on any seal. Even the terracottas which represent a variety of animals show no sign of the camel. And there is another notable absence. Sir Mortimer Wheeler writes: "Nearly three-quarters of the terracottas represent cattle; normally humped bulls, althought the short-horn and the buffalo also occur. Strangely, cows are never represented."⁴ The seals too are devoid of them. Are we to believe that there were bulls without cows in the Indus Civilization? Mr. de Sa's reasoning is faulty in itself on the basis of the available evidence. And in the face of the actual horse-bones in abundance at Surkotada throughout the

3."Early Domesticated Animals in India and Pakistan", Ancient Cities of the Indus, edited by Gregory L. Possehl (Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1979), p. 240, col. 2.

4.The Indus Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 92.

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Harappan occupation - not to mention a terracotta horse-figure at Lothal as well as horse-figurines and paintings at Rangpur⁵ - it is sheer perversity, these attempts to press the seals into service of a negative conclusion.* Possibly it is not perversity but ignorance; in which case the reviewer's tone of downright criticism becomes absurd to the nth degree.

Verging on the absurd also is the attempted denial of the spoked wheel. Just because on a few seals the symbol is not circular but oval-shaped or pointed at the extremities, the critic refuses the testimony of quite a number which are clearly wheel-like. And what is the alternative he suggests? We are told: "This symbol, which Sethna so confidently takes to be a wheel, is more correctly interpreted, as in Sumerian and Egyptian writing, to be a star, the sun or a divinity." May I ask whether a star, the sun or a divinity can be sometimes circular and on a few occasions oval-shaped and even pointed at the extremities? I should imagine such a modification would suit them as little as it would a spoked wheel. Surely some other explanation of the rare oddity is required for all of them than that they are not what we take them to be? In the second place, does Sumerian or Egyptian writing actually have the same symbol? In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the sun-symbol is a circle with a circlet within it at its centre.⁶ As far as I am aware, the Sumerian syllabary does not know of such a sign as I take to be a spoked wheel. Only the Mycenaean syllabary has anything like it. And there it definitely stands for a wheel,⁷ though the number of

5.H. D. Sankalia, Indian Archaeology Today

* Postscript in 1989. There is also a terracotta figurine from a late though not surface level at Mohenjo-dāro which Mackay and Pusalker have taken to be of a horse. B.B. Lai considers the head to be a dog's. But Wheeler, who would be the last to see any Aryan trait at Mohenjo-dāro, says that the figurine "seems to represent a horse" (The Indus Civilization,

6.P. E. Cleator, Lost Languages (Mentor, New York, 1959), p. 51.

7.Ibid., p. 155, Fig. II .

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spokes are four and not six as in the Harappān script. Of course, the Harappān sign may have served as a sun-symbol in India, but without ceasing to indicate also a wheel with spokes.

I may remind Mr. de Sa that even Iravatham Mahadevan whose admirer he is and who opts for sun-symbolism does not refuse to see a distinct wheel-like sign here. He⁸ speaks of the sign as appearing "at first sight to be the 'wheel' " and he proceeds to call it "a circle with six radial lines or 'spokes' within". He further states: "... the resemblance between the sign and the wheel is so strong that we may, as a first approximation, take the sign to represent the wheel and look for parallels." The "parallels" are the Indian tradition's "Wheel of God" (Vishnuchakra), "Wheel of Law" (Dharma-chakra) and "Wheel of King" (Chakravartin). There is also the Vedic "solar wheel". What we should stress is that all these wheels of the Indian tradition are spoked. Mahadevan ultimately decides in favour of a Dravidian Sun-god who, despite all appearances, has nothing to do with a spoked wheel, because Mahadevan believes that such a wheel was not known to the Harappāns and was introduced into India by post-Harappān Aryan invaders. According to him it is these invaders and not the Harappāns who thought in terms of the spoked wheel. Why does he hold this view? "There is no evidence," he pleads, "for the spoked wheel at Harappā or Mohenjo-dāro, where all the toy-carts so far found have solid wheels." But about this fact there are two points to be made.

First, the use of solid wheels does not necessarily preclude that of spoked ones. The Rigvedic chariot is known for the latter and yet, as we learn from Macdonell and Keith,⁹ "sometimes a solid wheel was used." We may also look

8."Study of the Indus Script through Bi-lingual Parallels", Ancient Cities of the Indus, p. 264, col. 2. For my later references to Mahadevan see ibid., p. 264, col. 2 and p. 265, col. 1.

9.The Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (John Murray & Co.,London, 1912) , II , p. 201.

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around in contemporary rural India to be convinced of the co-existence of the two kinds. Secondly, to counterbalance the testimony of the toy-carts we have the wheel-like signs with spokes in the script. If they have validity, we can aver that in the making of toy-carts the solid wheel was found preferable and therefore used: its use is merely a convenience and cannot argue against the co-existence of the spoked wheel. Whether the script-signs are valid or not depends wholly on the comparative dating of the Rigveda and the Harappā Culture. If the Harappāns were post-Rigvedic, there is nothing incongruous in what I have proposed.

The greatest prop to my proposal, however, is that for which Mr. de Sa reserves his greatest scorn: my line-drawing of a seal in which a man is shown standing astraddle - with each of his feet on a spoked wheel. I am scolded for "neglecting to mention (or graphically indicate with the help of a broken line) that the seal is a damaged one (as claimed by Shri I. Mahadevan) and all the portions are not exactly as they really appear". To be honest, I did not know of any damage. I copied the design from a booklet by four Finnish scholars who in their turn had reproduced their drawing from a well-known study published in 1934 by G.R. Hunter. Mahadevan has said that only a single object like a spoked wheel is visible and he "expresses the opinion that at the end of the other leg could very well be not a wheel but quite a different symbol, giving the value 'Lord of the sun and whatever the other symbol connotes". My showing a second wheel is considered "a very serious lapse indeed as the author builds up his most devastating argument on this very point". I am sorry I cannot sit in sackcloth and ashes for what I have shown. The whole design is a markedly symmetrical one. The man is depicted with two similar arms stretched out and with his legs poised in exactly the same manner on two sides: the natural suggestion is that the identical symbol is at the end of each leg. Mr. de Sa does not quote from Mahadevan what the "different symbol" might

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be like. If its presence is apt to conjure up the value "Lord of the sun", why should we not think of a spoked wheel here also, since Mr. de Sa has already proposed that what I regard as a spoked wheel is "more correctly interpreted to be", among other things, "the sun"? But then the total effect would certainly be of a man driving a chariot of two spoked wheels rather than anything else. Moreover, my denigrator overlooks the remark I cite from S.R. Rao, in connection with the important Harappān site Lothal which he excavated: "Relevant to the subject of chariots is the graffito on the potsherd from Lothal wherein a figure is seen standing on two wheels resembling the Assyrian chariot-drivers painted on pottery."¹⁰ Hunter's reconstruction of the damaged part of the seal strikes one as absolutely justified and so should the meaning read by Rao and me.

Mr. de Sa himself has a moment of second thought. He writes at the close of his condemnation of me: "Quite apart from all this, should we concede all that Shri Sethna contends (which is a bit too much) it can still be postulated that depicted on this seal is a picture of the 'enemy'." In clearer language, what the seal is taken to depict is not a Harappān but an Aryan invader glimpsed as he rode by on his chariot of two spoked wheels. The crucial point here would be, as our critic well realises, that the depiction should belong "to the later period of the Indus Civilization". In other words, the period should synchronise with the time of the supposed Aryan invasion. This time is generally put at "about 1500 B.C."¹¹ Our seal is from the collection found at Mohenjo-dāro and Harappā. The C-14 date obtained for the latest level of Mohenjo-dāro is 1960 B.C.¹²

The general time-bracket Mr. de Sa himself gives for the Indus Civilization is: 2400-1700 B.C. This puts Harappā too

10.Lothal and the Indus Civilization (Asia Publishing House, Bombay,1973), p. 124.

11.T. Burrow in "The Early Aryans", A Cultural History of India, 20.

12.Ancient Cities of the Indus,

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out of court. Thus everywhere the "enemy" seems ruled out. Furthermore, the wheel depicted on the seal is exactly like those on seals which do not have the human outlined figure. Nine of the latter were recovered, as I have recorded in my book, from a part (DK area) of the lower city of Mohenjo-dāro.¹³ The lowest layer of Surkotada, as I have noted, has yielded a seal of the kind concerned.¹⁴ No ground at all exists for differentiating the controversial wheel-seal from the rest as non-Harappān.

Another piece of Mr. de Sa's confused thinking is related to his fling against Sri Aurobindo for "inconsistency". He attributes to Sri Aurobindo the view that "the difference between the Aryans and the Dravidians was cultural and not racial" and then goes on to comment: "This is really contradictory to his own assumption that the Dravidian culture is not essentially but only superficially different from the Aryan." What in fact Sri Aurobindo has said is apropos of the Rigveda, and it runs: "The distinction between Aryan and non-Aryan, on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference."¹⁵ But nowhere does Sri Aurobindo equate the Rigveda's "non-Aryan" with "Dravidian." On the contrary he argues that "there is nothing in the present ethnological features of the country" to prove the common theory that there was, from outside India, a penetration of "a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilized Dravidian peninsula".¹⁶ The Rigveda's "non-Aryan" - its Dasa-Dasyu - is for Sri Aurobindo not human foes of a different race but supernatural beings of a demoniac darkness opposed to the

13.E. J. H. Mackay, Further Excavations at Mohenjo-dāro (New Delhi,1937), Vol. II, PIs. LXXXIII and LXXXXIV.

14.J. P. Joshi, "Exploration in Kutch and Excavation at Surkotada and New Light on Harappān Migration", Journal of the Oriental Institute (M. S. University of Baroda), Vol. XII, Sept.-Dec. 1972)., Nos. 1-2, PI. VII facing p. 121.

15.The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971),p. 24.

16.Ibid.

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inner spiritual adventure of the Rishis: "The language of the hymns clearly points to a particular worship or spiritual culture as the distinguishing sign of the Aryan, - a worship of Light and of the powers of Light and a self-discipline based on the culture of the 'Truth' and the aspiration to Immortality, - Ritam and Amritam."

To Mr. de Sa the Rigveda is a purely naturalistic document, "the spontaneous outpourings of a virile and nomadic people", occupied with wars and booty and physical phenomena and outward ritualistic worship. If we take it to be anything else, it becomes for him "merely allegorical - not something which was a dramatization of events actually occurring and situations actually obtaining, but only something which went on solely in the minds of the wise Rishis of yore". Putting his opinion in other terms, he declares: "It would be illogical to imagine a scripture of the nature of the Vedas as having no roots in reality but being a product mainly of philosophical fantasy". He has never paused to ask why the hymns were called Veda, which means "Knowledge" and "Insight", or why its composers were known as Rishis whom the hymns themselves define as "truth-seers and truth-hearers". What about the persistent tradition that the Riks were not human inventions but discoveries of eternal words? Side by side with such interpretations as Mr. de Sa favours, there has been the living sense that, behind all the Indian literature of God-realisation and of inmost Spirit-exploration, are the Mantras, the sacred inspired revelatory utterances, going under the name of the Rigveda. If even Mr. de Sa designates the Rigveda as "Scripture", he should be able to understand that it does not lack "roots in reality" but that its reality is something deeper, truer, more lasting than the physical world while not necessarily rejecting this world as an illusion. The Rigveda does not become "a product mainly of philosophical fantasy" just by being the poetic expression of a spiritual quest conveying in terms borrowed from the external life no less than in those of super-nature its journey and labour and conquest in the

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domain of a more-than-human consciousness. To discern a secret spiritual significance through a symbolism which often seems outwardly orientated is not to be, as our critic announces, "exceedingly naive": it can be perfectly logical in the perspective of India's religious history and against the background of an Age of Mysteries which, with its double aspect of the esoteric and the exoteric, preceded in ancient times the Age of philosophical mysticism and religious metaphysics as well as devotional ritualism.

The way Sri Aurobindo has worked out his symbolic reading of the Rigveda combines the thrill of a detective story with the illumination of a profound research in Yogic psychology armed with multi-linguistic expertness. The same thoroughness cannot quite be claimed for his exposition of affinities and relationships between the so-called Indo-European and the alleged Dravidian tongues. The detailed study projected by him in this sphere was never completed and we can well understand the sceptical attitude adopted by the majority of philologists to whose opinions Mr. de Sa finds himself bowing. Still, if whatever is extant of Sri Aurobindo's writings on the subject is keenly scrutinised, the path will be thrown open to consider Tamil and Sanskrit not only far closer than Caldwell and his successors can imagine but also suggestive of a remote common ancestor. A substantial help in this direction may be drawn from a book very little recognised as yet, the recent collection of Unguis-tic surveys by R. Swaminatha Aiyar under the title Dravidian Theories.¹¹ Aiyar breaks new ground with remarkable ingenuity and vividly points in the direction almost of showing the Dravidian languages and particularly Tamil to be an ultra-Prakritic derivative of Sanskrit. Perhaps Aiyar overshoots the mark in places, but he richly deserves attention. His minute demonstrations, linked with Sri Aurobindo's penetrating insights, can go a long way towards disturbing the "views expressed by leading Indologists about the general

17. Published by the Madras Law Journal Office, Madras, 1975.

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differences between the Aryan and Dravidian tongues and cultures".

Let me now cry halt and take stock. Nothing urged by Mr. de Sa renders the hypothesis of an Aryan invasion less incredible than I have made it out to be. Neither has he succeeded in discrediting some of the "Aryan" signs he has picked out for censure from the fairly large number I have put forth to characterise the Indus Civilization. My long refutation of the supposedly non-Aryan nature of the Harappān religion he has completely bypassed. Hence his reader will have no idea how this religion could derive most easily from the Rigvedic. Even so, my central thesis appears to stand unshaken by his assaults - the thesis that the Harappa Culture is posterior to the Rigveda and that the common dichotomy of Aryan and Dravidian Indias is based on a superficial impression.

Page 178

SUPPLEMENT II

THE HORSE, THE Harappā CULTURE AND

THE RIGVEDA

Time and again the issue is raised: "If the Harappā Culture had known the horse, would not this animal have been depicted just as so many others were on the numerous seals?" Supplementary to this issue is the question whether any horse-bones have been found in the early layers of the Harappā Culture. Such a discovery would have a bearing on the problem: "Did the horse-knowing Rigveda precede that Culture in the Indus Valley?" An affirmative answer here would suggest the presence of Aryanism in the Indus Valley in the post-Rigvedic era and provide some light on the still unresolved nature of the Indus script.

Touching on all these matters, Asko Parpola, the Finnish scholar, along with the Indian scholar I Mahadevan, has recently argued for the non-Aryan character of the Harappā Culture.¹ I disputed his thesis which had included the theory of an Aryan invasion of India in c. 1500 B.C. Replying to me, he drew support from "the Aryan vocabulary associated with the rulers of the Mitanni kingdom in West Asia around 1500 B.C."² In my counter I dealt briefly with the subject along the same lines as in my book. What I wish to dwell on now is the depiction of animals and a few other themes connected with the horse.

I asked Parpola in effect: "As there are no depictions of the cow, in contrast to the pictures of the bull, which are abundant, should we conclude that Harappā and Mohenjo-dāro had only bulls? And what about that mythical animal, the unicorn, which is the most common pictorial motif on the seals? Was the unicorn a common animal of the proto-historic Indus Valley? Surely, the presence or absence of depictions cannot point unequivocally to the animals known

1."Cracking the Indus Script", Frontline (Madras), Feb. 7-20, 1987.

2.Letter to Frontline, May 2-15, 1987.

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and decide for or against Aryanism?"

Parpola's answer was: "It is true that the Harappāns depicted the male rather than the female animals on their seals. They also depicted one particular bovine (possibly the Bos primogenius) in profile as the 'unicorn', in the fashion of the ancient Mesopotamian art. There are, moreover, some mythical animals in the Harappān iconographic repertory. None of these points, however, changes the fact that the horse is conspicuously missing among the many realistically depicted animals."³ Parpola also contended that since the early Harappān phase which is securely dated to the third millennium B.C. has no sign of the horse, either by depiction or by osteological evidence, and "since the Rigveda amply testifies to the presence of the horse in the Indus Valley at the time of its composition", the Harappā Culture "cannot be considered as post-Rigvedic."⁴

May I point out that we have no clear clues to the aim of the depictions? We do not know why there was the oddity that the seals showed only male animals. Undoubtedly the undepicted cows existed along with the bulls. Again, as undoubtedly the depicted "fantasy animals" did not exist. Even the "unicorn" has at times fantastic postures foreign to Mesopotamian art. Thus on one seal we see that "two unicorn heads branch symmetrically from the base of a pipal tree".⁵ Further, the depicted male animals do not cover all the fauna known to the Harappā Culture. The scapula of a camel has been found at the considerable depth of 15 feet at Mohenjo-dāro;⁶ but no seal depicts a dromedary. Again, "nowhere is a donkey shown"⁷ and yet the bones of the domestic ass (Equus asinus) have been recovered from

3.Ibid.

4.Ibid:

5.The Indus Civilization by Sir Mortimer Wheeler (Cambridge, 1968), p. 104.

6.lbid., p. 82.

7.The Roots of Ancient India by Walter A. Fairservis, Jr. (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1971), p. 277.

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Harappā.⁸ Unless we know the "why" of the depictions we cannot make any capital out of "the fact that the horse is conspicuously missing". We cannot infer from it that the horse was unknown.

Here scholars like Parpola may urge: "The non-depicted animals have still left their bones for the archaeologist. Where are horse-bones from early Mohenjo-dāro or Harappā? Earlier than c. 2000 B.C. we have no osteological evidence of Equus caballus. With such a double blank - that is, osteological plus pictorial - how can we claim knowledge of the horse as possible in the early Harappā Culture which, according to you, was later than the Rigveda in the Indus Valley?"

A counter-question which at once springs to mind is: "Surely, c. 2000 B.C. is much before the postulated arrival of the Rigvedics in India. How could the horse be present at least 500 years before them?" Parpola, aware of this difficulty, has the remark:⁹ "As Mr. Mahadevan mentioned, the Aryans are thought to have come to India earlier. I agree with this, although I think it was a different wave altogether. An earlier wave than the Rig Vedic Aryans." When even the Rigvedic wave is a hypothesis lacking either archaeological or documentary evidence, how can we dare to bring in a fairly earlier wave? From references in the Rigveda we know that the Rishis were in India at whatever period we may deem most appropriate. What grounds have we to place in India a wave of Aryans in a period around 2000 B.C.? Have we to go in for this wave merely because the Harappā Culture has horses around that date in an apparent way? The explanation is arbitrary. It seems more natural to believe that Aryanism was at work in the Harappā Culture as one element in the midst of several at the root of it. And, looking more deeply, more logically we can perceive a basis for such a belief.

8.Prehistoric India by Stuart Piggott (A Pelican Book, Harmonds-worth, 1961), p. 157.

9."Cracking the Indus Script", p. 99, col. 1.

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Not only must the unknown "why" of the horseless depictions keep us unattracted to Parpola's novel supposition. Even the absence of horse-bones should not draw us to it. For, indeed an eye-opener is the background against which we have to view the Harappā Culture of the third millennium B.C. Stuart Piggott¹⁰ has observed: "one clay figurine from Periano Ghundai [in North Balūchistān] seems to represent a horse, and is interesting in connection with the find of horses' teeth in RG [Rānā Ghundāī] I, at the type site." He assigns this figurine to the RG III phase which he begins some centuries before 2500 B.C. and ends as still pre-Harappān. He¹¹ traces the diverse relationship between the Harappā Culture and RG, especially with pottery in mind. RG areas have also evinced that characteristic feature of the Harappā Culture: the "stamp seals".¹² What is of yet greater import than the obvious suggestion of horse-knowledge by the Harappā Culture on account of all this relationship with a horse-knowing locality is marked not only by Piggott¹³ but by other archaeologists as well. Among them is H.D. San-kalia¹⁴ who writes of "Rānā Ghundāī IIIc Culture found under the debris of Harappān and the low level (-32 feet) Mohenjodāro". So we have at the two central sites of the Harappā Culture in the Indus Valley a background of horse-knowledge and horse-use much before 2000 B.C.

Once we note this the reluctance to see the Harappā Culture as post-Rigvedic must disappear. And I may draw Parpola's attention to the curious fact that the Rigvedic testimony to the horse's presence in the Indus Valley is not at all borne out by archaeology for the post-Harappān period he assigns to the Aryans of the Rigveda. In the several excavated sites in Punjāb and Northern Haryana -

10.Prehistoric India, p. 126.

11.Ibid., pp. 192-93.

12.Ibid. pp. 128, 185.

13.Ibid., p. 142.

14."traditional Indian Chronology and C-14 dates of Excavated Sites", Indian Prehistory, 1964, p. 222.

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Bhagwanpura, Dadheri, Ropar, Kathpalon, Nagar, etc. - in the early time after 1500 B.C., when iron was not yet in use, has any sure sign of the horse been discovered? The only definite equine bones the Indus Valley has yielded around this date are from an upper level of Mohenjo-dāro and from Area G in Harappā which is likely to be just post-Harappān but has nothing to do with any possible Rigvedic presence.

I may add that the eminent archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who has always been against the idea of Aryanism in the Indus Civilization, has yet an attitude unlike Parpola's. Not only does he¹⁵ write: "One terracotta, from a late level at Mohenjo-dāro, seems to represent a horse, reminding us that the jaw-bone of a horse is also recorded from the same site, and that the horse was known at a considerably earlier period in northern Baluchistan." He¹⁶ notes as well, after referring to the bone of a camel recovered from a low level at Mohenjo-dāro: "There is no evidence of any kind for the use of the ass or mule. On the other hand the bones of a horse occur at a high level at Mohenjo-dāro, and from the earlier (doubtless pre-Harappān) layer at Rana Ghundai in northern Baluchistan both horse and ass are recorded. It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravans."

Seeing things in a wider perspective than Parpola's, Wheeler attaches hardly any importance to the lack of ass-bones or the absence of ass-representation. He considers it reasonable to surmise the use of this animal no less than of the camel and the horse. So, even if Parpola's mention of a negative result regarding osteological and pictorial evidence be correct, the vision of the whole ancient area of which the Harappā Culture formed a part could suggest to us most naturally the equine's presence in the Indus Civilization.

All in all, the problem of the horse here is much more complex than Parpola believes. Even if we ignore the ample testimony of Harappān Surkotada in deference to Parpola

15.Op. cit., p. 92.

16.Ibid., p. 82.

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who holds that the horse-bones there do not go beyond c. 2000 B.C., we do not have to arrive at a negative conclusion.

In view of such a situation, we may legitimately search for Aryan elements in the Harappā Culture and hope to crack the code of the Indus script with an approach different from Parpola's and Mahadevan's pro-Dravidianism.

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SUPPLEMENT III

"THE ARYAN QUESTION" AGAIN

1

Lately there has been a marked shift of opinion on the role of the Rigvedic Aryans in the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilization, known also as the Harappā Culture. On a TV programme from London, two eminent historians, Colin Renfrew and F. R. Allchin, dissociated themselves from the view which mainly Sir Mortimer Wheeler¹ had popularised, invoking the name of the Rigvedic Aryans' god-leader, often called puramdara, "fort-destroyer": "On circumstantial evidence Indra stands accused." Thus they have come over to the side of G. F. Dales² who, as far back as 1964, examined critically whatever evidence from excavations Wheeler had adduced. Finding it most indecisive, Dales depended on the alternative theory of floods, etc. and concluded: "The enemy of the Harappāns was Nature... Indra and the barbarian hordes are exonerated." K.M. Srivastava³ is the latest and most vociferous of the exonerators.

However, none of the defenders of Indra has taken the radical stand that the Rigvedic Aryans could not have destroyed the Harappā Culture because they did not invade India anywhere near the time when this culture can be shown to have ended. A still more radical position would be that there was no invasion at all at any historically postulable time. A negative argument in favour of it is the uncertainty of fixing the epoch of the alleged invasion. Wheeler⁴ has noted: "the middle of the [second] millennium B.C. has been suggested, without serious support..." In view of an

1.Antiquity 3.

2."The Mythical Massacre of Mohenjodāro", Expedition 3.

3."The Myth of Aryan Invasion", Frontiers of the Indus Civilization, edited with an Introduction by B.B. Lal, pp. 437-43.

4.The Indus Civilization (Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 131.

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earlier dating than 1500 B.C. for the end of the Indus civilization, proposed on the basis of new C-14 tests, Wheeler⁵ opts for a provisional bracket 2500-1700 B.C. or slightly earlier for this civilization in the Punjāb and Sind and feels no hesitation in supposing⁶ "that the Harappāns of the Indus Valley in their decadence, in or about the seventeenth century B.C., fell before the advancing Aryans..." H. Possehl,⁷ following such tests, asserts that whereas the terminal date of the Indus Civilization, at least of the Urban Phase during which the cities were fully occupied, cannot be projected below 1800 B.C. it is widely agreed that the Vedic literature from which the hypothesis of the Aryan destruction of these cities is drawn was compiled sometime between 1200 and 800 B.C. An invasion in the chronological gap of between 600 and 1000 years seems hardly reasonable to him. This implies that it could not have been much earlier than 1200 B.C. Long ago Dales, in his article, "The Decline of the Harappāns",⁸ had declared: "No one has any exact knowledge of the date when the Aryans first entered the Indus Valley area."

A very odd situation facing those who are so positive about the invasion! What makes it worse is that the honest admission by Dales after the words we have quoted above still holds true - that the supposed Aryan invaders "have not yet been identified archaeologicaliy." When on top of the complete chronological haze and this negative result, we get a "No" to the query whether any reliable documentary evidence exists of Aryan foreigners hailing from outside India, we start wondering why historians who claim to be scientific-minded persist in raising "the Aryan question" in any sense.

The obsession, however, dies hard and as late as 1987 we had one more attempt to raise it. In Lecture III of the series

5.Ibid., p. 133.

6.Ibid., p. 132.

7.Quoted in "The Myth of Aryan Invasion", p. 441, cols. 1-2.

8.Scientific American (New York 1966), p. 95

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"Religion and Society" delivered at Calcutta University by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya⁹ a spirited front is put up against the plea of Dales and Srivastava to exonerate Indra.

Chattopadhyaya mentions the views of archaeologists that floods arising from climatic and tectonic or what Wheeler terms geomorphological changes were an important cause of the decline of the Indus Civilization. He agrees, but later cites D.D. Kosambi in an attempt to prove from the Rigveda that the Aryans demolished dams to inundate Harappān cities. This whole attempt is fanciful, as can be demonstrated by a straight look at the doings of the Rigvedic demon Vritra. Chattopadhyaya¹⁰ writes: " 'Vritra' literally means the Obstructor, and is also described as ahi, literally 'serpent'." Then some Vedic texts are quoted telling what Indra did with Vritra: e.g., "He smote Vritra who encompassed the waters (vi. 20.2)" - "He slew the dragon hidden in the waters and obstructing the waters and the sky (ii.11.5)" - "When he laid open the great mountain, he let loose the torrents and slew the Danava, he set free the pent-up springs, the udder of the mountain (v. 32.1-2)" - "He releases the streams which are imprisoned cows (i.61.10), or which, like lowing cows, flow to the ocean (i.32.2)" - "He won the cows and Soma and made the seven rivers flow (i.32.12; ii.12.12)". It should be clear that Indra is winning for his worshippers some boon for their own lives, some boon of light and happiness obstructed by the demonic Vritra. Here even the "sky" is involved and a "mountain" comes into the picture and the released waters go towards some "ocean". How can such verses be twisted à la Kosambi to signify that the invading Aryans broke up dams which had been made by the pre-Aryan Harappān Civilization for its agricultural needs and that they thus ruined the agriculture of the region and the possibility of continuing city life for long, or of maintaining the urban population? Vritra the

9. "Harappan Religion and the Aryan Question" (Prakashana, Bangalore 1987), pp. 75, 76.

10. Ibid.

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demon is the enemy, not any Indus Civilization, and the freeing of the waters is for the Aryans' own benefit, whatever that may be - physical or spiritual - and bespeaks no ulterior motive of harming anybody.

If the benefit is physical, the best explanation is to postulate a nature-myth as in the days of Max Muller: we have to see here a poetic representation of the rain-god letting pent-up waters loose from imprisoning clouds. A spiritual outlook would send us to Sri Aurobindo's Secret of the Veda. By no means can we be justified in making much of a few descriptions¹¹ like RV. 4.19.4-8; 2.15.3, in which, as Kosambi points out, the so-called demon Vritra "lay like a dark snake across the slopes. The rivers were brought to a standstill (tastabhānāḥ); when the demon was struck by Indra's shattering weapon (vajra) the ground buckled, the stones rolled away like chariot wheels, the pent-up waters flowed over the demon's recumbent body". Even such verses are quite consonant with a symbolic reading such as various other verses suggest. Chattopadhyaya, in backing Kosambi's hypothesis, thinks that it joins up with the "flood theory" which is receiving increasing emphasis among a section of archaeologists, but he quite forgets that this theory ascribes the floods to natural causes and that floods occurred several times antedating the supposed Aryan advent. Apropos of Mohenjo-dāro he¹² himself writes: "At least one of the factors that contributed to the decline of this city was repeated flooding of it... It is true that the Harappāns could and did rebuild or repair the city repeatedly after the devastating floods; but that must have sapped much of their energy and vitality, and hence also caused deviation from their main preoccupations." The "flood-theory" has scarcely any room for the shattering of dams by invading barbarians. In fact it is one of the reasons why the Aryan-invasion theory as a reason for the end of the Indus Civilization is sought to be given up.

Here a word of warning is necessary to counteract Chattopadhyaya's

11.Ibid., p. 86.

12.Ibid., p. 70.

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making capital out of the actual presence of "prehistoric dams, now called Gebr-bands", which, he ¹³ claims, "are still to be found on many water-courses in the western parts of the region under consideration". And he criticises Stuart Piggott for wrong thinking about what were broken up by Indra. He insists that these were "dams (not embankments as Piggott would have it)" and then he points at "Gebr-bands". When we turn to Piggott for further information we are surprised by our discovery. He¹⁴ writes in relation to the problems of climate and population in prehistoric times:

"In his explorations in Baluchistan these problems... were, of course, much before Sir Aurel Stein's eyes, and he was able to identify a large series of artificial stone-built dams and terraces, known locally as gabarbands, clearly designed to aid the irrigation of fields... Even though the age and culture of these works are still unknown, their presence is important in indicating greater rainfall in antiquity, and it is by no means improbable that they do, in fact, date back to the prehistoric occupation of the Baluchi Hills."

Plainly, Chattopadhyaya's "western parts of the region under consideration" are not the Indus Valley with which we are concerned but the Baluchi Hills. In fact, Piggott¹⁵ is at some pains to differentiate conditions in the latter area from those in Sind. In Sind the irrigation works were connected with the river Indus whose flow would be increased in spring by "the melting of the winter snows in the Himalayas, where the river rises". Piggott goes on to say: "This would have caused an annual inundation in primitive conditions... And... it is important to remember that there are only two really fixed points in the course of the river in Sind - at Sukkur and at Kotri - where it cuts through hard limestone instead of soft soils. Between these points, where the channel

13.Ibid., p. 86.

14.Prehistoric India (A Pelican Book, Harmondsworth, 1961), pp. 69-70.

15.Ibid., p. 70.

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cannot vary its position, the Indus would under natural conditions, without man-made embankments, tend to alter its course yearly, after every successive inundation. There is indeed abundant evidence from the sites of the Harappā Culture that such alterations of course, with consequent disastrous floods, was not uncommon in ancient times." From all this we can infer that there were no Gebr-bands or man-made dams in the Sind of Mohenjo-dāro for Indra to break.

The idea of a dam becomes relevant to Sind in one sole context which can have nothing to do with the Kosambi-Chattopadhyaya conjectures. Drillings during the winter of 1964-1965 carried out jointly at Mohenjo-daro by the University of Pennsylvania and the Pakistan Government Department of Archaeology penetrated through the ground water which, standing 15 feet below the surface of the plain, had prevented earlier workers from determining the total depth of the site's human occupation. Silt deposits, such as had been found even as high as 30 feet above ground level, were discovered to exist repeatedly below the plain's surface. Altogether they spanned a vertical distance of 70 feet, lying sandwiched between the city's successive occupations. Here lies hidden a long-term story of destruction by water again and again, which covered a period of several centuries far earlier than any epoch of Aryan invasion conceivable in the second millennium B.C. And this story can be connected with a dam-phenomenon quite unrelated either to the constructive skill of the Mohenjo-darians or to the destructive ill will of any invaders.

Dales has dwelt on this phenomenon in his "Decline of the Harappāns". The multilevel accumulations of silt in the Mohenjo-dāro area as well as at smaller neighbouring sites provoked the query: "Gould major changes caused in the structure of all these places by deformation have blocked the Indus River from time to time and gradually formed a huge upstream lake submerging the human settlements?" In 1940 the Indian palaeontologist M. R. Sahni, noticing silt deposits

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perched many feet above the level of the Indus plain near the city of Hyderabad in Sind, had suggested an affirmative answer. In 1960 the field-workers sent by Pennsylvania University, examining Harappān settlements along Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast, could not help concluding that the coastline had risen considerably in the past 4000 years and the initial rise appeared to have occurred during the period of the Indus Valley Civilization itself. In 1960 the American hydrologist Robert L. Raikes was also conducting extensive surveys in Southern Balūchistān and the lower Indus Valley. His keen antiquarian interests led him to join forces with the Mohenjo-dāro expedition. And his preliminary research compelled him to revive Sahni's dam-and-lake theory. Guided by it, he was able to single out an area near Sehwan, about 90 miles downstream from Mohenjo-dāro, as the most likely seat of tectonic disturbances affecting the city.

Here the large-scale rock-faulting, accompanied by massive extrusions of mud that were aided by the pressure of accumulated underground gases, could easily have raised a natural barrier turning the upstream portion of the Indus into a slow-filling reservoir. With the spread of the rising waters small towns and villages would be submerged, the silt completely obliterating them. An empire's capital like Mohenjo-daro would undertake substantial community projects to protect itself. We actually see massive mud-brick platforms raised and faced with fire-brick to keep the level of the city above the damaging inundation. When the waters dammed up on the Indus managed to spill over, and cut away the barrier, normal life was resumed with the erection of new buildings on top of the older foundations and walls. Five times the lake seems to have intruded and withdrawn, lasting on each occasion for a number of decades, even up to 100 years. No invading Aryans can be conjured up for the natural breaking of a dam which had itself been built by natural forces and not by the Mohenjo-darians.

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2

No doubt, Chattopadhyaya is not bound down to his vision of Gebr-bands, important though it is for his general position. He has more than one string to his bow. If this vision is shown to be insufficient and needing to be replaced by Piggott's view of the Indus's altered course and by Dales's Sahni-Raikes picture of the Sehwan area, he will not feel frustrated. There is another line of defence which we have to breach.

He is in sympathy with the notion that pur and pur a in the Rgveda connoted nagara, "city", "town". He¹⁶ argues: "... the Rgveda speaks of a considerable number of cities in the Land of the Seven Seas and of the ransacking of these by Aryans under the leadership of the war-god Indra. The whole thing cannot be brushed aside as a mere figment of imagination of the Vedic poets for the simple reason that those who have never seen any city cannot refer to these: the Vedic peoples themselves could by no stretch of imagination be city-dwellers, it being overwhelmingly obvious from the internal evidence of the Rgveda that they were pastoral nomads after all. Therefore, before the discovery of Mohenjo-dāro and Harappā - soon followed by the discovery of many other cities within the Harappān cultural zone - there could at best be some speculations about these pura-s or cities and of Indra's role as purandara or the sacker of cities in the Rgveda - speculations, some specimens of which are to be found in the Vedic Index by Macdonell and Keith. With the discovery of ruined cities in the Harappā cultural zone by the archaeologists the Vedic scholars are relieved of the obligation of indulging in such speculations..." Chattopadhyaya is positive in denying to the Rigvedic Aryans any puras of their own. But R.P. Chanda who was the first in 1926 to hold Indra responsible for the destruction of Mohenjo-dāro and Harappā and who, according to Chatto-

16. Op. cit., p. 83.

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padhyaya, first brought up the subject of puras and whom Chattopadhyaya¹⁷ quotes at some length says: "In the Rgveda, Pura is much oftener connected with the enemies of the Aryas than with the Arya Rsis and warriors." Mark the comparative "oftener". So, if pur meant city or town, the Vedic peoples have to be thought of as living in at least some cities or towns of their own and not being absolutely pastoral and nomadic. Surely, here is an anomaly - and a gigantic one too. For, as Chanda writes: "In one stanza (7.15.14), an extensive (śatabhuji) Pur made of copper or iron (ayas) is referred to. In another stanza (1.58.8) prayer is offered to Agni to protect the worshipper with Purs of ayas." The Rigvedics must have been dwellers in mighty cities - essentially just like the Harappans! However, all discrepancies and historical vagaries would be avoided if the pur were no actual city like Mohenjo-daro or Harappa but a symbolic picture of inner experience - a stronghold of the soul in which spiritual light was defended or a stronghold of demon-forces of the in-world in which preternatural darkness was established.

The basic trouble with Chattopadhyaya and his ilk is that they are abysmally ignorant of Sri Aurobindo, who long ago saw that to take the Rigveda in a naturalistic or historical sense is to court disaster: on the one hand we shall commit howlers about the historical past and on the other reduce this scripture to a near-jumble, often a tale of exaggerative episodes and a string of impossible imagery. Unless an esoteric key is laid hold of, it is not of much use to us.

In addition to the fiasco about Vritra and the puras, we have an inconclusive discussion of the strange character named Pani by the Rigvedics. Chattopadhyaya¹⁸ makes a long quotation from Chanda, evidently with approval:

"It appears to me that the aboriginal town-folk with whom the Aryas came into collision in the Indus Valley were called Panis in hymns of all the books of the Rgveda. Yaska

17.Ibid., pp. 78 - 79.

18.Ibid., pp. 80-81.

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(Nirukta 6.27) in his comment on Rgveda 8.66.10 says, The Panis are merchants', and in his comment on R.V. 10.108.1 (Nirukta 11.25) he calls the Panis demons. The distinction between the human and the superhuman Pani is also recognised by Say ana, the author of the commentary on the Rgveda, and the context justifies the distinction. The word Pani is evidently derived from Pana, 'Price'. As trade finds no place in the list of professions and crafts practised by the Rigvedics, the conclusion that the much maligned Panis were the representatives of an earlier commercial civilization seems irresistible." Chanda continues: "Among the antiquities unearthed at Mohenjo-dāro are coins with picto-graphic legends that indicate the very early development of commercial life in the Indus Valley. The Panis probably represented this prehistoric civilization of the Indus Valley in its last phase when it came into contact with the invading Arya civilization."

Now let us see some of the things Sri Aurobindo¹⁹ says: "It is either an uncritical or a disingenuous method to take isolated passages and give them a particular sense which will do well enough there only while ignoring the numerous other passages in which that sense is patently inapplicable. We must take as a whole all the references in the Veda to the Panis, their wealth, their characteristics, the victory of the Gods, the seers and the Aryans over them and adopt uniformly that conclusion which arises from all the passages thus taken together. When we follow this method we find that in many of these passages the idea of the Panis as human beings is absolutely impossible and that they are powers either of physical or of spiritual darkness; in others that they cannot at all be powers of physical darkness, but may well be either human enemies of the god-seekers and sacrificers or else enemies of the spiritual Light; in yet others that they cannot be either human enemies or enemies of the physical Light, but are certainly the enemies of the spiritual

19. The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 1972). pp. 215-16.

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Light, the Truth and the Thought. From these data there can be only one conclusion, that they are always and only enemies of the spiritual Light."

The Panis, says Sri Aurobindo²⁰, are constantly spoken of as Dasyus and Dāsas, and he adds: "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 gaapah 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 Swar, svarvatīr apah, the movement or streamings 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 Maya 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

20. Ibid. pp. 215. 216-17.

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strength of isolated passages."

Another eye-opener in this context is Sri Aurobindo's statement:²¹ "It is not with physical weapons but with words that Indra fights the Panis (VI. 39.2), panīn vacobhir abhi yodhad indrah". Also in connection with another enemy of the Aryans, Vala who is the "coverer" as Vritra is the "obstructor", Indra uses no weapon. His martial achievement is related to the term brahman in the neuter gender, which, according to Macdonell,²² signifies in the Rigveda nothing more than "prayer" or "devotion". Sri Aurobindo²³ explains the term more elaborately along the same lines: "Brahman in the Veda 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." Thus the Rigveda 11.24.3 in its closing portion tells us of divine action: "...the firm places were cast down, the fortified places were made weak; up Brihaspati drove the cows (rays), by the hymn (Brāhmaṇa) he broke Vala, he concealed the darkness, he made Swar visible."²⁴ Here the story is linked with Indra no less than Brihaspati, for the Rishi addresses them jointly. And we may observe that "fortified places" which are the puras that Indra is elsewhere said to destroy are on the scene here. Even when Indra's thunderbolt (vajra) comes in (1.33.10) and his "bow" is mentioned in the same hymn, 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 (brahmabhih) thou didst cast down the Dasyu, attacking those who can think not (the Truth) by those who think (amanyamānān abhi manyamānaih)"²⁵ As I say towards the end of my book: "To ascribe to the Rigvedic Indra and to his

21.Ibid., pp. 222.

22.A History of Sanskrit Literature (William Heinemann Ltd., London 1928), p. 219.

23.Op. cit., p. 306.

24.Ibid., pp.148, 223.

25.Ibid., p.228.

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fellow-deities or even to his thinker-protégés 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 symbolisations."

3

So far as "the Aryan Question" is concerned, Chattopadhyaya's lecture is altogether on the wrong track and his invocation of "authorities" like Chanda and Kosambi does not bring him the slightest help. Srivastava is far from the Aurobindonian vision but his summing up in the matter of the Rigvedics and the Indus Civilization is not in the least, as Chattopadhyaya²⁶ puts it, "just Aryan chauvinism." It is the plain truth. Where Srivastava also errs, like Chattopadhyaya, is in thinking that an Aryan invasion of India did take place at some time in the second half of the second millennium B.C. Every piece of evidence militates against the belief - whether in connection with the end of the Indus civilization or in any other context - that the Rigvedics came from abroad as invaders of India or even that they were physically on the war-path against human Dāsas and Dasyus.

Extra inducements to this vision are three facts. One we have already touched upon - namely, that the Rigvedics ascribe mighty forts not only to their enemies but also now and then to themselves and thus spoil the picture of pastoral nomads pitted against great city-builders. The second fact is that - as my book has already stressed - the puras they speak of go far beyond anything we can find of human city-building at the time, whether Harappan or any other. They do not stop even with calling the puras prthvī ("broad") and urvī ("wide"); they proceed to designate them aśmanmayī ("made of stone"), āyasī (commonly rendered "made of

26. Op. cit., p. 89.

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iron") or śatabhujī ("with a hundred walls") and, as such, variously number them ninety, ninety-nine and a hundred. Can any fortified civilization known to our historians match these puras in magnitude, strength and multiplicity?

The third fact is a complex one with several strands. Dales has touched on some of them. He²⁷ writes: "A series of carbon-14 dates from Harappān sites along the coast of India... shows that many of these southerly towns and trading posts had continued to be occupied much later than sites in the Indus Valley. This and other bits of unexplained evidence have raised doubts concerning a fundamental hypothesis about the Harappān civilization: that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had been sacked, and the Harappan civilization liquidated or absorbed, by the Aryan invaders..." Dales himself has not gone into the details of what he mentions as "other bits of unexplained evidence". Only to one bit he refers when he²⁸ remarks: "The northern Indus cities show no evidence of a decline in material prosperity before the abandonment but quite the opposite is true of Mohenjo-dāro and other southern sites. What does this contrast signify?" The contrast pulls us entirely away from the universe of discourse relevant to the invasion theory, just as much as it disposes of the suspicion that the decline, by about 1750 B.C. or so, was inherent in the character of the civilization developed. Aryan invaders, believed to be pressing into the country from the north-west, would affect the northern sites foremost. Both the morale and the material state of these sites should manifest a decline.

Nor can we plead that they were suddenly attacked and therefore abruptly left by their inhabitants. For, there is the further bit of "unexplained evidence" confronting the exponents of Indra's city-sacking: not the northern sites but the southern Mohenjo-daro shows signs of a possible violent end. The northern capital, Harappa, is indeed occupied after its desertion but with quite a time-lag: the desertion

27.'The Decline of the Harappans" p. 93.

28.Ibid. p. 98.

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and occupation have no conceivable link, as Lal and others have amply proved. And here comes in still another bit: unlike Harappa, Mohenjo-daro has no settlement at all on its ruins, none even of a late order as at Harappa - an absolute paradox if its violent termination was caused by Aryan invaders.

If neither of the capital cities can be connected in the least with them, we should be wary of pointing to them from whatever indications of foreign entry we may feel at smaller places like Chanhu-daro. Chanhu-daro itself, we may observe, is a southern site and, before we yield it up to the Aryan-invasion hypothesis, we must take stock of the South's general contrast to the undisturbed northern towns. Besides, Chanhu-daro gives, as Dales²⁹ notes, "abundant evidence of flooding."

Everything urges us to separate the end of the Indus Civilization from any warfare by the Rigvedic Aryans and to accept Sri Aurobindo's explanation of India's oldest scripture. In the light of this explanation all features of the situation fall into their proper places and we have the temptation neither to accuse nor to exonerate Indra. For we cut ourselves off from the structure of the invasion-hypothesis at any conceivable time - a hypothesis vainly trying to survive against the overwhelming lack of both aspects of scientific historical testimony: the archaeological and the documentary.

29. Ibid. p.95.

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SUPPLEMENT IV

Probable Historical Implications of the Archaeological work at Dwaraka

Reports have been appearing at various times in Indian newspapers about the archaeological work of Dr. S.R. Rao. One of them, after touching on his past discoveries, says:¹

"His recent discovery centres around the excavations at Dwaraka, the famed city mentioned in the MahaBhārata, which interests the historian, scientist and common man alike. While Dwaraka arouses reverence in the common man, it also inspires curiosity among scientists and historians, who wish to know whether there really existed a port town... Did it really get submerged as has been mentioned in the epics? What was the cause of its submergence?...

"In the 'Mausala Parva' of the MahaBhārata, Krishna tells Arjuna that when the latter reaches Dwaraka, it will be under the sea. When he reaches there, Arjuna warns the residents to evācuate the area. As people flee, the sea rises steadily and Dwaraka is submerged...

"Digging beneath the alternate layers of sand and habitation deposits of two distinct periods, the archaeologist discovered evidence which pointed out that the first township of Dwaraka was destroyed by 1500 B.C. and the second township by about 900-1000 B.C. ...

"From the limited off and on-shore exploration the island of Bet Dwaraka shows the same degree of sophistication as an urban centre and as a port specialising in overseas trade, metal and shell working, defence architecture, etc., as has been made out in the Puranic texts..

"Rubble walls, running over a length of 25 metres and as much as 30 feet in thickness, were traceable in some cliff sections, which might have served as the peripheral boundary walls of the submerged town. The wares found in

1, The Indian Express, Magazine, January 19, 1986, p. 4, "The Sunken Treasures of Dwaraka" by Radha Venkataraman.

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stratified deposits were also found to belong to the 14th century B.C. ...

"A study of sediment and pinnacles now under the sea shows that earlier the sea-level must have been several metres lower. The rise in sea level by four to six metres, as indicated by the 'in situ' wall on the wave cut bench during the last 2,400 years provides a datum line in sea-level fluctuation. Interestingly, the submergence of the coast and port during this period is not a phenomenon confined to India. Instances of submergence in Bahrain and the Aegean islands have also been reported."

Further light is shed by a later report:

"The fourth marine archaeological expedition led by Dr. S.R. Rao and sponsored by the Union Department of Science and Technology, has claimed more discoveries connected with the legendary Dwaraka site during the underwater excavation in the Arabian Sea in April [1986]...

"Dr. Rao said... that the expedition found the remains of a temple, a stone-built jetty and perforated stone anchors. This led the expedition to conclude that Dwaraka was a major port on the west coast (deserving the appellation Dwara, meaning Gateway), and it extended up to Rupen Sandar. Hundreds of building blocks were found lying in an area of 500 x 300 metres at five to six metres water depth up to a distance of 800 metres seaward of the temple of the Sea God at the mouth of the Gomati river.

"While the temple remains were said to belong to the first century B.C. the perforated stone anchors were of much earlier age. These trapezoid three-holed anchors each weighing 150 kg recovered with great difficulty were almost identical to those found in the bronze age sites of Ugarit in Syria in the 14th-13th century B.C. ...

"According to Dr. Rao the ceramic and inscriptional evidences from Bet Dwaraka support a late second millennium date for the Dwaraka port. The votive jar of Bet Dwaraka found in the previous expedition is inscribed in the post-Harappān script. The inscription reads 'Mahakacha shah-pa'

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conveying the sense 'Lord of the sea, protect'. Epigraphists at the XII annual congress of the Epigraphical Society of India, held in February [1986] at Jabalpur examined this and hailed it as not only providing the link between the Indus and the Brahmi scripts but also throwing light on the evolution of alphabetic writing..."²

One more report may be cited, referring to the fifth marine archaeological expedition of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO):

"Accoring to Dr. B.N. Desai, Director of NIO, a wrecked ship and iron anchors were also found.

"As a major port in the 14th and 15th centuries B.C. as indicated by the jetty and perforated stone anchors, Dwaraka was really the 'gateway' of ancient India, he said...

"The protohistoric bastion of a fortification wall extant in three courses was found at a working depth of eight metres. Four perforated stone anchors weighing 74 to 260 kg of the type used in 14th and 12th centuries B.C. in Cyprus and Syria were also found. Deeper digging with airlift in consolidated single layer yielded a chert blade and shards of protohistoric pottery, Dr. Desai said.

"Dr. Desai said the second phase of structural activity was indicated by two ruined buildings, also in situ, at 4.5 metres depth. At least one of them was assignable to the early centuries of the Christian era.

"The iron anchors and wooden ribs of wrecked ships found here confirm that more than a thousand years after the first town was submerged, Dwaraka became once again a busy port. Another massive iron anchor and wooden hull of a ship suggest Dwaraka being a port of call in the medieval period also. Among important finds from the seabed excavation are five perforated stone anchors of varying sizes and a large plate of metal alloy yet to be analysed.

"The earlier excavations in Bet Dwaraka waters yielded a late Indus type seal, an inscribed jar and the stone-mould of

2. The Hindu, May 28. 1986, p. 7. "Expedition throws more light on Dwaraka site".

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a coppersmith. Lumps of resinous material found in excavation this year suggest the use of bitumen either for waterproofing wooden boats or for sealing cargo as in ancient Mesopotamia, Dr. Desai said.

'The expedition was led by Dr. S.R. Rao, archaeologist of the NIO, he added."

What Rao considers to have been found in the first place is that the Mahabharata story of the submergence of Dwaraka is correct. This submergence he dates on firm archaeological grounds to about 1400 B.C. The Mahabharata associates the submergence with the time of the traditional Krishna who took part in the Bharata War which that epic recounts. If there is no reason to doubt the historicity of Krishna and of the War in which he participated - historicity in however legend-shorn a form - they are dated to c. 1400 B.C. by the date ascertained scientifically for Dwaraka's disappearance in the sea. As Krishna and the War are posterior by quite a number of centuries to the period of the Rigveda, the Aryans of that scripture could not have flourished around 1500 B.C. They should go back to a remote antiquity, precluding thereby the possibility of the alleged Aryan invasion at the end of the Harappa Culture and creating the near-certainty of the Rigveda's being anterior to this culture which had its run in the same Indus Valley where that scripture was composed.

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SUPPLEMENT V*

A GENERAL SURVEY OF ASKO PARPOLA'S LATEST STUDY:

"The Coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the

Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Dāsas"

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.

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culture at the end of the third millennium B.C."¹ Parpola² calls 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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Parpola⁴⁷ quoted 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 Parpola⁴⁹ which 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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." Parpola⁶² himself 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.

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"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." He⁶⁷ refers 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. Shaffer⁸³ had 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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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." Asthana¹⁰⁸ gives 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.

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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), Asthana¹¹¹ writes: "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.

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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.

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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 reference¹¹⁷ reads: "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.

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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"⁹ himself 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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." Griffith¹³² has 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."¹³³ Griffith 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Renfrew¹⁴⁷ summarizes: "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.

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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"⁹ we 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 Śaryāna ¹⁶¹ 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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-

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Parpola¹⁸² himself, 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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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. Parpola²⁰⁸ himself 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.

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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.

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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 footnote²¹³ tells 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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(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.

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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.

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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. Parpola²³⁰ states:

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.

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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 Parpola²³⁴ admits 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 footnote²⁵⁹ says: "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 he²⁶⁰ pictures: "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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,²⁷⁵ with 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.

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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.

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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 Sélincourt²⁸¹ translates 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.

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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.

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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 Frye²⁸⁶ has 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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,

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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the Dasyu: he cast away the gloomy mists, the darkness".⁴⁵⁰ Also 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) ⁴⁵⁴ And 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."⁴⁷⁹ Hale⁴⁸⁰ 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.

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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.

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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 Aurobindo⁴⁸⁵ writes, marshalling several Rigvedic images:

From this idea of the oceans arose naturally the psycholo-

484.Ibid., p. 449.

485.Ibid., pp. 450-51.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Darmesteter⁴⁹² opined: "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.

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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.

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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.

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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 2.11⁵⁰² provides 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.

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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.

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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 Hale⁵⁰⁷ himself 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Aurobindo⁵²⁰ supplies 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.

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"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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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." Hale⁵⁴² observes 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.

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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.

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"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."

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