The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c16.11

v1.c16.11

Of the earliest movements of the tribes speaking Indo-Germanic languages which occupied the Irānian plateau and ultimately passed into Northern India, history has as yet nothing to say. But recent discoveries in Cappadocia seem likely to give us a clue. In the German excavations at Boghaz-köi, the ancient Pteria, have been found inscriptions, containing as it appears the names of deities which figure in the earliest Indian records, Indra, Varuṇa, and the great twin brethren the Nāsatyas. The inscriptions date from about 1400 B.C., and the names appear not in the form which they take in the historical records of ancient Persia, but are, so far as writing in a syllabary will admit, identical with the forms, admittedly more original, which they show in the hymns of the Rigveda. It is still too early to dogmatise over the results of these discoveries, which it may be hoped are only the firstfruits of a rich harvest; but the most feasible explanation of them seems to be that here, far to the west, we have stumbled upon the Āryans on the move towards the east. This is not to say that earlier waves may not long before 1400 B.C. have penetrated much further to the east, or even to India itself. All that can be gathered from these discoveries is that at this period the Mitāni, who were apparently not of this stock themselves, had adopted the worship of certain deities of this stock—deities who at the time of the composition of the Vedic Hymns were still the most important, though to them had been added Agni, ‘Fire,’ specially an object of priestly worship in the Vedic hierarchy. We have here, however, names practically in the form in which they survive in Sanskrit, and without the changes which characterise the records of the tribes of this stock, who remained in Persia. To this as yet unbroken unity the name of Āryan is given. It is borrowed from a word which appears as *Ārya*, or *Arya* in Sanskrit, *Airya* in Zend, and which means ‘of good family, noble.’ It is the epithet applied by the composers of the Vedic hymns to distinguish their own stock from that of their enemies the earlier inhabitants of India, whom they call Dāsas or Dasyus. The term, by reason of its shortness, has often been applied to all the languages of this family, in preference to ‘Indo-European’ or ‘Indo-Germanic,’ but is properly reserved for the south-eastern group which, when the phonetic changes characterising the language of the Avesta and of the old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty (520 b.c.–330 b.c.) have taken place, falls into the two branches of Irānian and Indo-Āryan. The latter term well characterises the Āryans settled in India, while Āryo-Indian conveniently designates these Āryans as distinct from the unrelated stocks—Dravidian and other—also inhabiting the Indian peninsula.