Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c47.s1.8
Indische Paläographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c47.s1.8
- Language
- German
c47.s1.8.1
§ 18. So far, it may be observed, there is nothing in the above more or less hypothetical social organisation of this branch of the people conventionally called Āryan which materially differs from what is known to have prevailed amongst the others branches of whom the early history is on record. It was after the Vedic tribes had debouched upon the plains of north-western India that their social system assumed its unique and special features. Here, two new factors awaited them, each being insufficient by itself to determine the future course of their civilisation, though the combination of the two led to that result. The immigrants came into contact, in the first place, with a race far below them in physical and social characteristics; and they found themselves, in the second, in the presence of a vast and fertile expanse of country over which the inferiority of their opponents allowed them to spread freely. Whatever may have been the difficulties in dealing with the Dasyus which were at first experienced by the Āryas, the superiority of the latter ultimately asserted itself in an incontestable manner, and those who resisted them were either reduced to subjection on their native soil, or rolled back before the advance of the new-comers. That the Āryas failed to take advantage of their opportunities to establish themselves upon a national basis appears to be ascribable to the fact that, except in race, they were any thing but a homogeneous body.
c47.s1.8.2
Tribe was constantly at war with tribe, and in their slow onward progress there had been no signs of combined general effort. It is true that after they had been some time in the plains larger aggregates were occasionally formed by military Chiefs, but they were unstable and perpetually being dispersed and re-formed in the vicissitudes of tribal contests. The stable element, then, in the colonisation, was not supplied by the Court and its army, but by the village. This community seems to have been an institution of very early date amongst the Vedic tribes, and was established upon a clan, or even a family, basis, cemented by the possession of a definite tract of pasture or arable land. The opportunity for forming detached and independent settlements of this kind was favourable. Land was plentiful, and whilst the supply of menial labour was provided by the Dasyus retained in subjection upon the soil of which they had been dispossessed, the danger of reprisal by the rest was removed as the more adventurous bodies of the Āryas extended their frontier further and further into the interior. The necessity of combination for mutual defence against the alien waned therefore into insignificance.
c47.s1.8.3
The tie of tribe, never very strong or well defined, would naturally be subordinated to that of territorial ownership, especially if the smaller unit were founded on blood-relationship and settled communal interests, and there was no common end which made an urgent appeal for collective action. In these circumstances, the dispersal of the original Vedic communities far and wide under new and more prosperous economic conditions tended towards the development of a parochial separatism, which possibly the presence of large bodies of alien helots may have helped to divert from wider political conceptions. The village community being left, on this hypothesis, to itself, organised its members on lines suggested by its requirements, which multiplied, of course, in proportion to the increased resources afforded by a settled life. At the head of the social scale stood, as now, the possessor of land and beeves; at the foot, the stunted and swarthy alien. Between these extremes room had to be found for the increasing number of handicraftsmen, as well as for the hybrid progeny of the Ārya by Dasyu women. What with the absorbing interests of this bucolic microcosm, and the absence of any specially powerful motive for political combination into larger units, the gap between the masses and the military dominant class tended to widen, and the fortunes of the ruling houses became a matter of comparatively little importance to the village. There remained, however, the tie of race.
c47.s1.8.4
Whatever may have been the strength of this in pre-Vedic times, it became very prominent, as has been stated in the Introduction, when the Āryas came into collision with the Dasyus. The one term used collectively of the whole of the former community is the "colour" of the Ārya as contrasted with that of their foes. In the invocations, until, that is, a period is reached when bodies of other and non-Vedic Āryas appeared upon the scene, this characteristic is made practically equivalent to worship. The worship, in turn, was that of the Family, originally expanded on special occasions to the sacrifice offered under the auspices of the Chieftain for his tribe. The latter ceremony may easily have waned without affecting the essential daily rites of the household, to which, indeed, the dispersal of the tribe and the constant presence of the Dasyu helots at the gate might be assumed to lend additional value. Nor, again, would the expansion and re-formations of the Āryan community tend to diminish the influence of the professional, or Brāhmanic, ministry. This had probably grown into a closed body before the dispersal, but it was attached in the first instance to the person of the Chieftain, and obviously could not be otherwise than dependent upon those on whose behalf the priestly offices were undertaken. The Brāhman, then, was bound to follow the fortunes of the rest of the community, and scatter as they did.
c47.s1.8.5
They, in turn, could not well dispense with the services he alone was competent to render. The language of the invocations had become obsolete, but texts from them were an essential part of every ceremony, and had passed, it would seem, into the stage of spells, potent only in the mouths of those who had professionally learnt them, a class which had taken care to prevent others from participating in that advantage. The value of this qualification increased, naturally, as the various bodies of those who placed their faith in it receded further from their traditional race-unity. There were other conditions, too, favourable to the growth of sacerdotal influence, and to the transfer of the attention of the hieratic order from the fluctuating fortunes of the military aristocracy, (by whom, moreover, its exclusive and privileged character was by no means uncontested,) to the more amenable medium of the incoherent democracy of the village, where the circumstances were evidently open to organisation.