The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v1.c16.s10.86

v1.c16.s10.86

THE early literary history of Bengal, to which or to parts of which references commence with comparatively late Vedic literature, is for the most part a matter for conjecture. We have seen¹ that in the period or periods during which the Vedic Saṃhitās came into existence, Bengal had not probably yet characterised itself as a political and cultural, much less as a literary, unit of the northern Aryan India. While the Vājasaneyi recension of the Yajurveda, in which the easterner Yājñavalkya plays a leading part, had its most probable origin in the east (Videha), it is curious that Magadha and Aṅga still serve to the Atharva-veda (v. 22. 14) as a symbol of a distant land, and the more eastern provinces are never mentioned. We have also seen that the extension of Vedic civilisation must have been further achieved in what is conventionally called the Brāhmaṇa period; but one of the latest of the major Brāhmaṇas, the Śatapatha, which belongs to the Vājasaneyi and which bears witness to much cultural activity in Videha, describes (XIII. 8. 5) the people of the east as hostile or demoniac (āsurya). Similarly the eastern land of Puṇḍra receives disapproval in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (VII. 18) as the home of Dasyus; and in a dubious, but probably not very complimentary, passage in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka (II. 1. 1) the composite tribe of Vaṅgāvagadha² receives mention in a list of tribes who were guilty of transgression. This tradition of the association of Vaṅga, along with Puṇḍra, with outcast tribes is preserved as late as the Bodhāyana Dharma-sūtra (I. 2. 14), which prescribes penances to those who visit these unclean lands. The imperfect Aryanisation of a greater part of what is known as Bengal is perhaps responsible for this attitude of frank dislike; and linguistic and ethonological evidences make the presence of Kol-Muṇḍā and Dravidian tribes in these regions highly probable. But it is also possible that Bengal in this period had a culture which was not only non-Aryan but also non-Vedic, presumably fostered by the hypothetical Outer Aryans of Grierson. The Midland Brahmanic culture must have taken a fairly long time to strike its root in the eastern soil; and the same causes as rendered Magadha the probable headquarters of the non-Vedic Vrātya Aryans also made it, in later history, the starting ground of at least two great non-Brahmanical religious systems.