Ancient Indian Historical Tradition c31.64

c31.64

Further, the most ancient kings and rishis above-mentioned, to whom hymns are attributed, were not Ailas. The kings were all Mānvas, and the rishis were connected with the Mānvas or with Daityas and Dānavas. Only one hymn is ascribed to an early Aila, viz. x, 95 to Purūravas, yet it was obviously not composed by him but by some later author, just as were x, 10 and 86. Not a single other hymn is attributed to any early Aila king until Śivi Auśīnara (x, 179) and Gāthi or Gādhi (iii, 19 to 22). The hymns therefore that are said to be the most ancient are ascribed to Mānvas and their rishis, and not to Ailas. Those Mānva kings all reigned at Ayodhyā or in the Vaiśālī realm, that is, in the eastern region, except Śāryāta who was in the west. No hymns are assigned to any one who lived in the north-west until Śivi. These facts supply ground for the declaration that the Vedas were first chanted in the eastern region¹⁰—not in the north-west. They are significant facts which must be accounted for on the current view, that the Aryans entered India from the north-west and composed the Rigvedic hymns in the Panjab country. They rather suggest that the making of hymns passed with the above described approximation of the brahmans to the Ailas; and it is probable that the Aila Viśvāmitra on becoming a brahman modified the older and perhaps cruder brahmanic character and functions; and, if so, the difference would have accentuated the hostility that Vasiṣṭha (who was a Mānva brahman) showed to his brahmanhood (p. 244). The fact that those earliest Mānva hymns appear now in Sanskrit does not disprove their non-Aila origin, for they would naturally have been Sanskritized in the course of time, as has been noticed above with regard to non-Aryan names.