Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.32

c14.32

Even with these limitations, however, we still encounter considerable difficulties in using the text of the *Rigveda* as a source for information on material culture. In the hymns the transition from the more or less literal to the wholly metaphorical is often sudden, and frequently almost imperceptible. The physical war-chariot of an Aryan chieftain turns, with bewildering rapidity, into the noon-day sun; the roistering young cattle-raiders are suddenly the four winds of heaven. And the accident of survival of words descriptive of aspects of material culture is really dependent on their adaptability to religious metaphor and their appropriateness to the warrior aristocracy for whom the hymns were composed; chariots are described in such detail that a modern coach-builder could probably turn out a passable replica of Indra’s vehicle, but we hardly know what the Aryan house looked like.