Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c31.26

c31.26

Brahmanism then originally was not an Aila or Aryan institution. The earliest brahmans were connected with the non-Aryan peoples, and were established among them when the Ailas entered. This is corroborated by the close connexion that existed between them and the Daityas, Dānavas and asuras. It has just been pointed out as regards Uśanas-Śukra. The Dānava Śambara is represented as devoted to brahmans.¹ It is said that the Bhārgavas were purohitas to Hiraṇyakaśipu,² the original Daitya monarch,³ and that ‘Vasiṣṭha’ was his hotṛ.⁴ Further, it is often declared that Indra incurred the sin of brahmanicide by killing Vṛtra⁵ and Namuci,⁶ so that those two famous Dānavas were brahmans.⁷ The ideas, that brahmans were priests to demons, that demons themselves were brahmans, and that the chief of the gods incurred the most heinous sin by killing demons, were so grotesque, if not blasphemous, to orthodox brahmanism, that they could never have been imagined in later times, and are not, I believe, to be found in brahmanical literature. Indeed in the Rigveda Indra is often praised for slaying Vṛtra and other demons,⁸ so that these ideas must be more ancient still. In the Rigveda Uśanas (who is a figure of the distant past) was rehabilitated,⁹ and Indra’s sin of killing brahmans had become his great glory of destroying demons;¹⁰ so change had taken place before that, and tradition has preserved ideas more primitive than the hymns that speak of these matters.