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The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17: Chapter IV. The Age of the Rigveda

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17

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Chapter IV. The Age of the Rigveda

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THE earliest documents which throw light upon the history of India are the hymns of the Rigveda. In the text which has come down to us this *saṃhitā* or 'collection' consists of 1017 hymns divided into ten books of unequal size. The motive of those to whom the collection is due must apparently have been the desire to preserve the body of religious tradition current among the priests; and, early as was the redaction, there are clear signs that already part of the material had ceased to be fully understood by those who made use of it in their worship. The artificial character of the arrangement is clearly indicated by the fact that the first and tenth books have precisely the same number of hymns, 191 each. The collection seems however to have been some time in the making. The nucleus is formed by books II–VII, each of which is attributed to a different priestly family. To this were prefixed the groups of hymns by other families which form the second part (51–191) of book I; and still later were added the first part of book I and book VIII attributed to the family of Kaṇva. Book IX was then formed by taking out from the collections of hymns which made up the first eight books the hymns addressed to Soma Pavamāna, 'the clearly flowing Soma'; and to these nine books was added a tenth, containing, besides hymns of the same hieratic stamp as those of the older books, a certain number of a different type, cosmogonic and philosophical poems, spells and incantations, verses intended for the rites of wedding and burial and other miscellaneous matters. The tenth book also displays, both in metrical form and linguistic details, signs of more recent origin than the bulk of the collection; and the author of one set of hymns (X, 20–26) has emphasised his dependence on earlier tradition by prefixing to his own group the opening words of the first hymn of the first book.

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There is abundant proof that, before the collections were finally united into the form in which the Rigveda has come down to us, minor additions were made; and, as it is perfectly possible that in book x old material was incorporated as well as newer work, efforts have been made to penetrate beyond the comparatively rough distinction between the first nine and the tenth books, and to assign the hymns to five different periods, representing stages in the history of Vedic India, and marked by variations in religious belief and social custom¹. But so far these efforts can scarcely be regarded as successful. The certain criteria of age supplied by the language, the metres, or the subject-matter of the Rigveda are not sufficient to justify so elaborate a chronological arrangement of its hymns. The results produced by the most elaborate and systematic attempts to apply the methods of the higher criticism to the Rigveda have hitherto failed to meet with general acceptance.

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¹ Especially by Arnold whose results are summed up in his *Vedic Metre* (Cambridge, 1905). For criticism, see *J.R.A.S.*, 1906, pp. 484–90, 716–22; 1912, pp. 726–9.

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The mass of the collection is very considerable, approximating to the same amount of material as that contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, but the light thrown by the hymns on social and political conditions in India is disappointingly meagre. By far the greater part of the Rigveda consists of invocations of the many gods of the Vedic pantheon, and scarcely more than forty hymns are found which are not directly addressed to these deities or some object to which divine character is, for the time at least, attributed. These hymns contain much miscellaneous information regarding Vedic life and thought; and other notices may be derived from the main body of the collection, though deductions from allusions are always difficult and open to suspicion. Some names of tribes, places, and princes, as well as of singers, are known to us through their mention in the *dānastutis* or ‘praises of liberality’ which are appended to hymns, mainly in the first and tenth books, and in which the poet praises his patron for his generosity towards him. But the *dānastutis* are unquestionably late, and it is significant that some of the most striking occur in a small collection of eleven hymns, called the Vālakhilyas, which are included in the Saṃhitā of the Rigveda, but which tradition recognises as forming no true part of that collection.

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From these materials conclusions can be drawn only with much caution. It is easy to frame and support by plausible evidence various hypotheses, to which the only effective objection is that other hypotheses are equally legitimate, and that the facts are too imperfect to allow of conclusions being drawn. It is, however, certain that the Rigveda offers no assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Indians entered India. The geographical area recognised in the Saṁhitā is large, but it is, so far as we learn, occupied by tribes which collectively are called Āryan, and which wage war with dark-skinned enemies known as Dāsas. If, as may be the case, the Āryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvatī river, south of the modern Ambāla¹. Only thus, it seems, can we explain the fact of the prominence in the hymns of the strife of the elements, the stress laid on the phenomena of thunder and lightning and the bursting forth of the rain from the clouds: the Punjab proper has now, and probably had also in antiquity, but little share in these things; for there in the rainy season gentle showers alone fall. Nor in its vast plain do we find the mountains which form so large a part of the poetic imagining of the Vedic Indian. On the other hand, it is perhaps to the Punjab with its glorious phenomena of dawn, that we must look for the origin of the hymns to Ushas, the goddess Dawn, while the concept of the laws of Varuṇa, the highest moral and cosmic ideal attained by the poets, may more easily have been achieved amid the regularity of the seasonal phenomena of the country of the five rivers.

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¹ See Hopkins, *J.A.O.S.*, vol. XIX, pp. 19-28; Pischel and Geldner, *Vedische Studien*, vol. II, p. 218; vol. III, p. 152; *Vedic Index*, vol. I, p. 468. The older view, that the hymns were composed in the Punjab itself, was adopted by Max Müller, Weber, and Muir among others.

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Of the names in the Rigveda those of the rivers alone permit of easy and certain identification. The Āryan occupation of Afghānistān is proved by the mention of the Kubhā (Kābul), the Suvāstu (Swāt) with its 'fair dwellings,' the Krumu (Kurram) and Gomatī (Gumal). But far more important were the settlements on the Sindhu (Indus), the river *par excellence* from which India has derived its name. The Indus was the natural outlet to the sea for the Āryan tribes, but in the period of the Rigveda there is no clear sign that they had yet reached the ocean. No passage even renders it probable that sea navigation was known. Fishing is all but ignored, a fact natural enough to people used to the rivers of the Punjab and East Kābulistān, which are poor in fish. The word *samudra*, which in later times undoubtedly means 'ocean,' occurs not rarely; but where the application is terrestrial, there seems no strong reason to believe that it means more than the stream of the Indus in its lower course, after it has received the waters of the Punjab and has become so broad that a boat in the middle cannot be discerned from the bank. Even nowadays the natives call the river the sea of Sind.

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The five streams which give the Punjab its name and which after uniting flow into the Indus are all mentioned in the Rigveda: the Vitastā is the modern Jhelum, the Asiknī the Chenāb, the Parushṇī, later called Irāvatī, 'the refreshing,' the modern Rāvī, the Vipāç the Beās, and the Çutudrī the Sutlej. But of these only the Parushṇī plays a considerable part in the history of the time, for it was on this river that the famous battle of the ten kings, the most important contest of Vedic times, was fought. Far more important was the Sarasvatī, which we can with little hesitation identify with the modern Sarsūtī or Saraswatī, a river midway between the Sutlej and the Jumna¹. It is possible that in the period of the Rigveda that river was of greater importance than it was in the following period when it was known to bury itself in the sands, and that its waters may have flowed to the Indus; but, however that may be, it is mentioned in one passage together with the Dṛishadvatī, probably the Chautang, which with it in later times formed the boundaries of the sacred land known as Brahmāvarta. With these two streams is mentioned the Āpayā, probably a river near Thānesar². In this region too may be placed the lake Çaryaṇāvant³, and the place Pastyāvant, near the modern Patiāla.

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¹ ^1 Roth, *St Petersburg Dictionary*, *s.v.*, and Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 5–10, identify the Sarasvatī in many passages with the Indus; Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, vol. I, pp. 99 sq.; vol. III, pp. 372–8, thinks it is in a few places the Arghandāb.

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² ^2 The identification of the ancient rivers of Brahmāvarta must always remain somewhat uncertain. At the present day it is difficult to trace their courses, partly because the streams are apt to disappear in the sand, and partly because they have to a great extent been absorbed in the canal-systems constructed during the periods of Muhammadan and British rule.

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³ ^3 Identified however with the Wular Sea in Kashmīr by Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, vol. I, pp. 126 sq.

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Further east the Āryans had reached the Jumna, which is thrice named, and the Ganges, which is once directly mentioned, once alluded to in the territorial title of a prince.

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To the north we find that the Himavant or Himālaya mountains were well known to the Rigveda, and one peak, that of Mūjavant, is referred to as the source of the Soma, the intoxicating drink which formed the most important offering in the religious practice of the time. The name is lost in modern times, but probably the peak was one of those on the south-west of the valley of Kashmīr. On the south, on the other hand, the Vindhya hills are unknown, and no mention is made of the Narbadā river, so that it may fairly be inferred that the Āryan tribes had not yet begun their advance towards the south.

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With the conclusions as to the home of the Āryan tribes extracted from geographical names the other available evidence well accords. The tiger, a native of the swampy jungles of Bengal, is not mentioned in the Rigveda, which gives the place of honour among wild beasts to the lion, then doubtless common in the vast deserts to the east of the lower Sutlej and the Indus and even now to be found in the wooded country to the south of Gujarāt. Rice, whose natural habitat is the south-east in the regular monsoon area and which is well known in the latter Saṃhitās, is never mentioned in the Rigveda. The elephant, whose home is now in the lowland jungle at the foot of the Himālaya from the longitude of Cawnpore eastwards, appears in the Rigveda as the wild beast (*mriga*) with a hand (*hastin*), while in the later texts it is commonly known as *hastin* only, a sign that the novelty of the animal had worn away. The mountains from which the Soma was brought appear, too, to have been nearer in this period than at a later date when the real plant seems to have been more and more difficult to obtain, and when substitutes of various kinds were permitted.

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When we pass to the notices of tribes in the Rigveda, we leave comparative certainty for confusion and hypothesis. The one great historical event which reveals itself in the fragmentary allusions of the Saṃhitā is the contest known as the battle of the ten kings. The most probable version of that conflict is that it was a contest between the Bharatas, settled in the country later known as Brahmāvarta, and the tribes of the north-west. The Bharata king was Sudās, of the Tṛitsu family, and his domestic priest who celebrates, according to the tradition, the victory in three hymns (vii, 18; 33; 83) was Vasishṭha¹. This sage had superseded in that high office his predecessor Viçvāmitra, under whose guidance the Bharatas appear to have fought successfully against enemies on the Vipāç and Çutudrī; and in revenge, as it seems, Viçvāmitra had led against the Bharatas ten allied tribes, only to meet with destruction in the waters of the Parushṇī. Of the ten tribes five are of little note, the Alinas, perhaps from the north-east of Kāfiristān, the Pakthas, whose name recalls the Afghān Pakhthūn, the Bhalanases, possibly connected with the Bolān Pass, the Çivas from near the Indus, and the Vishāṇins. Better known in the Rigveda are the other five, the Anus who dwelt on Parushṇī and whose priests were perhaps the famous family of the Bhṛigus, the Druhyus who were closely associated with them, the Turvaças and Yadus, two allied tribes, and the Pūrus, dwellers on either side of the Sarasvatī, and therefore probably close neighbours of the Bharatas. These tribes are probably the five tribes which are referred to on several occasions in the Rigveda and which seem to have formed a loose alliance. Sudās's victory at the Parushṇī, in which the Anu and Druhyu kings fell, does not appear to have resulted in any attempt at conquest of the territory of the allied tribes. He seems at once to have been compelled to return to the east of his kingdom to meet the attacks of a king Bheda, under whom three tribes, the Ajas, Çigrus, and Yakshus, were united, and to have defeated his new assailants with great slaughter on the Jumna. It is probable enough that the attack on the eastern boundaries of the territory of the Bharatas was not unconnected with the onslaught of the five tribes and their still more northern and western allies; but the curious names of the Ajas, 'goats,' and the Çigrus, 'horse-radishes,' may be a sign that the tribes which bore them were totemistic non-Āryans.

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¹ This is the view of Hopkins, *J.A.O.S.*, vol. xv, pp. 259 sq. According to the older view the Bharatas were foes of the Tṛitsus; see Muir, *Original Sanskrit Texts*, vol. i², p. 354; Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, p. 127; Bloomfield, *J.A.O.S.*, vol. xvi, pp. 41, 42. Ludwig, *Rigveda*, vol. iii, p. 172, identified the Bharatas and the Tṛitsus; Oldenberg, *Z.D.M.G.*, vol. xlii, p. 207, holds that the Tṛitsus are the Vasishṭhas, the priests of the Bharatas. But see Geldner, *Vedische Studien*, vol. ii, pp. 136 sq.

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Not less famous was the father or grandfather of Sudās, Divodāsa, 'the servant of heaven,' Atithigva, 'the slayer of kine for guests'.¹ There are records of his conflicts with the Turvaça, Yadu, and Pūru tribes; but his greatest foe was the Dāsa, Çambara, with whom he waged constant war. He had to contend also with the Paṇis, the Pārāvatas, and Bṛisaya. He seems to have been the patron of the priestly family of the Bhāradvājas, the authors of the sixth book of the Rigveda; and there is little doubt that his kingdom covered much the same area as that of Sudās, since he warred, on the one hand, against the tribes of the Punjab, and, on the other, against the Pārāvatas who are located in the period of the Brāhmaṇas on the Jumna. The Dāsas and the Paṇis were probably aboriginal foes, whom, like every Āryan prince, he had to fight.

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¹ *V. inf.*, pp. 101–2, and Chapter x, pp. 232–3.

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Though defeated in the battle with Sudās, the Pūrus were clearly a great and powerful people. Their home was round the Sarasvatī, and there is no need to interpret that name as referring to the Indus rather than to the eastern Sarasvatī. On the Indus they would have been removed somewhat widely from the Bharatas, their chief rivals, two of whose princes, Devaçravas and Devavāta, are expressly recorded in one hymn to have dwelt on the Sarasvatī, Āpayā, and Dṛishadvatī. The importance of the tribe is reflected in the fact that we possess an unusually large number of the names of its members. The earliest prince recorded seems to have been Durgaha, who was succeeded by Girikshit, neither of these being more than names. The son of Girikshit, Purukutsa, was the contemporary of Sudās, and one hymn tells in obscure phrases of the distress to which his wife was reduced by some misfortune, from which she was relieved by the birth of a son, Trasadasyu. It is not unlikely that the misfortune was the death of Purukutsa in the battle of the ten kings. The new ruler, as his name indicates, was a terror to the Dasyus or aborigines, and seems not to have distinguished himself in war with Āryan enemies. We hear of a descendant Tṛikshi, and, apparently still later in the line, of another descendant Kuruçravaṇa, son of Mitrātithi and father of Upamaçravas, whose death is deplored in a hymn of the tenth book. The name is of importance and significance, for it suggests that already in the later Rigvedic period the Pūrus had become closely united with their former rivals, the Bharatas, both tribes being merged in the Kurus, whose name, famous in the later Saṃhitās and the Brāhmaṇas as the chief bearers of the culture of the Vedic period, is not directly mentioned in the Rigveda, though it was clearly not unknown. Other princes of the Pūru line were Tryaruṇa, and Trivṛishan or Tridhātu; and later evidence enables us with fair certainty to connect with the Pūrus the princely name Ikshvāku, which occurs but once in a doubtful context in the Rigveda.

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Connected with the Kurus were the Krivis, whose name seems to be but a variant from the same root, and who appear to have been settled near the Indus and the Chenāb. Possibly we may see the allied tribes of Kurus and Krivis in the two Vaikarṇa tribes, twenty-one of whose clans shared the defeat of the five tribes by Sudās. If so, like the Pūrus the Bharatas must have in course of time become mingled with the Kurus and have merged their identity with them.

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Allied or closely connected with the Bharatas was the tribe of the Sṛiñjayas, whom we must probably locate in the neighbourhood of the Bharatas. One of their princes, Daivavāta, won a great victory over the Turvaças with their allies, the Vṛichīvants, of whom we know nothing more. Other princes of the line were Sahadeva, his son Somaka, and Prastoka, and Vītahavya. They were, like the Bharatas under Divodāsa, closely connected with the Bhāradvāja family of priests.

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No other Āryan tribe plays a great figure in the Rigveda. The Chedis, who in later times dwelt in Bundelkhand to the north of the Vindhya, and their king Kaçu are mentioned but once in a late *dānastuti*: the queen of the Uçīnaras, later a petty tribe to the north of the Kuru country, is also once alluded to. The generosity of Ṛiṇaṁchaya, king of the Ruçamas, an unknown people, has preserved his name from extinction. One interpretation adds to the enemies of Sudās the tribe of the Matsyas (‘fishes’), who in later times occupied the lands now known as Alwar, Jaipur, and Bharatpur. A raid of the Turvaças and Yadus and a conflict on the Sarayu¹ with Arṇa and Chitraratha testify to the activity of these clans, which otherwise are best known through their opposition to Divodāsa and Sudās, and which must probably have been settled in the south of the Punjab. The family of the Kaṇvas seems to have been connected as priests with the Yadus. Connected with the Turvaças was the Vṛichīvant Varaçikha, who was defeated by Abhyāvartin Chāyamāna, who himself was perhaps a Sṛiñjaya prince. More shadowy still are Nahus, Tugrya, and Vetasu in whom some have seen tribes: Nahus is probably rather a general term for neighbour, and the Tugryas and the Vetasus are families rather than tribes.

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¹ The identification of this river is uncertain; see *Vedic Index*, vol. II, p. 434.

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More important by far, it may be believed, than the intertribal warfare of the peoples who called themselves Āryan were their contests with the aborigines, the Dāsas or Dasyus as they are repeatedly called. The same terms are applied indifferently to the human enemies of the Āryans and to the fiends, and no criterion exists by which references to real foes can be distinguished in every case from allusions to demoniacal powers. The root meaning of both words is most probably merely ‘foe’; but in the Rigveda it has been specialised to refer, at least as a rule, to such human foes as were of the aboriginal race. Individual Dāsas were Ilibiça, Dhuni and Chumuri, Pipru, Varchin, and Çambara, though the last at least has been transformed by the imagination of the singers into demoniac proportions. The only peoples named which can plausibly be deemed to have been Dāsas are the Çimyus, who are mentioned among the foes of Sudās in the battle of the ten kings, and who are elsewhere classed with Dasyus, the Kīkaṭas with their leader Pramaganda, and perhaps the Ajas, Yakshus, and Çigrus. The main distinction between the Āryan and the Dāsa was clearly that of colour, and the distinction between the Āryan *varṇa*, ‘colour,’ and the black colour is unquestionably one of the main sources of the Indian caste system. The overthrow of the black skin is one of the most important exploits of the Vedic Indian. Second only to the colour distinction was the hatred of men who did not recognise the Āryan gods: the Dāsas are constantly reproached for their disbelief, their failure to sacrifice, and their impiety. Nor is there much doubt that they are the phallus worshippers who twice are referred to with disapproval in the Rigveda, for phallus worship was probably of prehistoric age in India and by the time of the Mahābhārata it had won its way into the orthodox Hindu cult. We learn, disappointingly enough, little of the characteristics of the Dāsas, but two epithets applied in one passage to the Dasyus are of importance. The first is *mṛidhravāchaḥ* which has been interpreted to refer to the nature of the aborigines’ speech; but which, as it elsewhere is applied to Āryan foes like the Pūrus, probably means no more than ‘of hostile speech.’ The other epithet, *anāsaḥ*, is more important: it doubtless means ‘noseless,’ and is a clear indication that the aborigines to which it is applied were of the Dravidian type as we know it at the present day. With this accords the fact that the Brāhūī speech still remains as an isolated remnant in Baluchistān of the Dravidian family of tongues¹. But though the main notices of the Rigveda are those of conflict against the Dāsas and the crossing of rivers to win new lands from them, it is clear that the Āryans made no attempt at wholesale extermination of the people. Many of the aborigines doubtless took refuge before the Āryan attacks in the mountains to the north or to the south of the lands occupied by the invaders, while others were enslaved. This was so normal in the case of women that, in the literature of the next period, the term Dāsī regularly denotes a female slave; but male slaves are often alluded to in the Rigveda, sometimes in large numbers, and wealth was already in part made up of ownership of slaves. The metaphorical use is seen in the name of one of the greatest of Vedic kings, Divodāsa, ‘the servant of heaven.’ In the Purushasūkta, or ‘Hymn of Purusha,’ which belongs to the latest stratum of the Rigveda, and which in mystic terms describes the creation of the four castes from a primeval giant, occurs for the first time the term Çūdra, which includes the slaves as a fourth class in the Āryan state. Probably enough this word, which has no obvious explanation, was originally the name of some prominent Dāsa tribe conquered by the Āryans.

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¹ In the *Imp. Gaz.*, vol. I, p. 382, it is suggested that the Brāhūīs who are there ethnographically classed as Turko-Irānian show the original type of Dravidian, and that the modern Dravidian type is physically due to influence by the Muṇḍā speaking peoples. The Rigvedic evidence does not favour this view. See Chapter II, pp. 42-3.

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Of the stage of civilisation attained by the aborigines we learn little or nothing. They had, it is certain, large herds of cattle, and they could when attacked take refuge in fortifications called in the Rigveda by the name *pur*, which later denotes ‘town,’ but which may well have then meant no more than an earthwork strengthened by a pallisade or possibly occasionally by stone. Stockades of this kind are often made by primitive peoples, and are so easily constructed that we can understand the repeated references in the Rigveda to the large numbers of such fortifications which were captured and destroyed by the Āryan hosts. Some Dāsas, it seems, were able to establish friendly relations with the Āryans, for a singer celebrates the generosity of Balbūtha, apparently a Dāsa; nor is it impossible, as we have seen, that the five tribes of the Punjab were not above accepting the cooperation of aboriginal tribes in their great attack on Sudās. We must therefore recognise that in the age of the Rigveda there was going on a steady process of amalgamation of the invaders and the aborigines, whether through the influence of intermarriage with slaves or through friendly and peaceful relations with powerful Dāsa tribes.

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Like the Dāsas and Dasyus in their appearance both as terrestrial and as celestial foes are the Paṇis. The word seems beyond doubt to be connected with the root seen in the Greek *pernēmi*, and the sense in which it was used by the poets must have been something like ‘niggard.’ The demons are niggards because they withhold from the Āryan the water of the clouds: the aborigines are niggards because they refuse the gods their due, perhaps also because they do not surrender their wealth to the Āryan without a struggle. The term may also be applied to any foe as an opprobrious epithet, and there is no passage in the Saṃhitā which will not yield an adequate meaning with one or other of these uses. But it has been deemed by one high authority¹ to reveal to us a closer connexion of India and Irān than has yet suggested itself: in the Dāsas Hillebrandt sees the Dahae, in the Paṇis the Parnians, and he locates the struggles of Divodāsa against them in Arachosia. Support for this view he finds in the record of Divodāsa's conflicts with Bṛisaya and the Pārāvatas, with whose names he compares that of the Satrap Barsentes and the people Paruetae of Gedrosia or Aria. Similarly he suggests that the Sṛiñjaya people, who were connected like Divodāsa with the Bhāradāja family, should be located in Irān, and he finds in the Sarasvatī, which formed the scene of Divodāsa's exploits, not the Indian stream but the Irānian Harahvaitī. Thus the sixth book of the Rigveda would carry us far west from the scenes of the third and seventh which must definitely be located in India. But the hypothesis rests on too weak a foundation to be accepted as even plausible.

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¹ Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, vol. i, pp. 94 sq.

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Other references to connexions with Irān have been seen in two names found in the Rigveda. Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna, whose victory over Varaçikha has already been recorded, bears the epithet Pārthava, and the temptation to see in him a Parthian is naturally strong. But the Rigveda knows a Pṛithī and later texts a Pṛithu, an ancient and probably mythical king, and thus we have in the Vedic speech itself an explanation of Pārthava which does not carry us to Irān. Still less convincing is the attempt to find in the word Parçu in three passages of the Rigveda a reference to Persians: Parçu occurs indeed with Tirindira as a man's name, but the two are princes of the Yadus, and not a single personality, 'Tiridates the Persian'.¹ Whatever the causes which severed Irān and India, in the earliest period, at least as recorded in the Rigveda, the relations of the two peoples seem not to have been those of direct contact.

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¹ Irānian relations are accepted by Ludwig, *Rigveda*, vol. III, pp. 196 sq.; Weber, *Episches im vedischen Ritual*, pp. 36 sq. See also Chapter XIV, pp. 321 sq.

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As little do the Rigvedic Indians appear to have been in contact with the Semitic peoples of Babylon. The term Bekanāṭa which occurs along with Paṇi in one passage has been thought to be a reference to some Babylonian word: though the Indian Bīkaner is much more plausible as its origin. Bṛibu, mentioned once as a most generous giver and apparently also as a Paṇi, has been connected by Weber² with Babylon, but without ground: more specious is the attempt to see a Babylonian origin for the word *manā* found in one passage only of the Rigveda where it is accompanied by the epithet ‘golden.’ The Greek *mina*, presumably borrowed from the Phoenicians, is a plausible parallel; but the passage can be explained without recourse to this theory¹. A Semitic origin has been claimed for the word *paraçu*, ‘axe,’ but this too is far from certain. There is nothing in the Rigvedic mythology or religion which demands derivation from a non-Āryan source, though it has been urged that the small group of the Ādityas, whose physical characteristics are very faint and whose abstract nature is marked, is derived from a Semitic civilisation². In the succeeding period the Nakshatras or lunar mansions may more probably be ascribed to a Semitic source; but in the Rigveda the Nakshatras are practically unknown, appearing as such only in the latest portions. It is therefore impossible to assume that the great Semitic civilisations had any real contact with India in the Rigvedic age.

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² *Op. cit.* pp. 28 sq.; *Indische Studien*, vol. XVII, p. 198.

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¹ For the borrowing see Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 50, 51; Weber, *Indische Studien*, vol. XVII, p. 202. Böhtlingk, *Dictionary*, *s.v.*, recognises only ‘desire’ or ‘wish’ as the sense.

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² So Oldenberg, *Religion des Veda*, p. 193; *Z.D.M.G.*, vol. L, pp. 43 sq.; but see Bloomfield, *Religion of the Veda*, pp. 133 sq.

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Scanty as is our information regarding the Vedic tribes, yet we can see clearly that the social and political organisation rested upon the patriarchal family, if we may use that term to denote that relationship was counted through the father. The Āryan marriage of this period was usually monogamic, though polygamy was not unknown probably mainly among the princely class; and in the household the husband was master, the wife mistress but dependent on and obedient to the master. The standard of female morality appears to have been fairly high, that of men as usual was less exigent. Polyandry is not shown by a single passage to have existed, and is not to be expected in a society so strongly dominated by the male as was the Vedic. Of limitations on marriage we learn practically nothing from the Rigveda, except that the wedlock of brother and sister and of father and daughter was not permitted. Child marriage, so usual in later times, was evidently unknown; and much freedom of choice seems to have existed. Women lived under the protection of their fathers during the life of the latter, and then they fell if still unmarried under the care of their brothers. Both dowries and bride-prices are recorded: the ill-favoured son-in-law might have to purchase his bride by large gifts, while other maidens could obtain husbands only through the generosity of their brothers in dowering them. A girl without a protector ran grave risk of being reduced to immorality to maintain herself, and even in cases where no such excuse existed we learn of cases of moral laxity. But the high value placed on marriage is shown in the long and striking hymn (x, 85) which accompanied the ceremonial, the essence of which was the mutual taking of each other in wedlock by the bride and bridegroom, and the conveyance of the bride from the house of her father to that of her husband¹. In this hymn the wedlock of Soma, here identified with the moon, and Sūryā, the daughter of the sun, is made the prototype and exemplar of marriage in general. Moreover, the Vedic marriage was indissoluble by human action, nor in the early period does it seem to have been contemplated that remarriage should take place in the case of a widow². To this there was the exception, which appears clearly in the burial ritual of the Rigveda, that the brother-in-law of the dead man should marry the widow, probably only in cases where the dead had left no son and it was therefore imperative that steps should be taken to secure him offspring; for the Rigveda recognises to the full the keen desire of the Vedic Indian for a child to perform his funeral rites.

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¹ For the marriage ritual, see Weber and Haas, *Indische Studien*, vol. v, pp. 177–412; Winternitz, *Das altindische Hochzeitsrituell* (1892).

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² See Delbrück, *Die indogermanischen Verwandtschaftsnamen*, pp. 553–5. Possibly remarriage was permitted in the case of a woman whose husband disappeared; see Pischel, *Vedische Studien*, vol. I, p. 27.

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The relation of child and parent was clearly as a rule one of close affection; for a father is regarded as the type of all that is good and kind. There are traces, however, that parental rights were large and vague: if the chastisement of a gambler by his father may be deemed to be legitimate exercise of parental control, this cannot be said of the cruel act of his father in blinding Rjrāçva at which the Rigveda hints. The father probably controlled in some measure at least both son and daughter as regards marriage; and the right of the father to adopt is clearly recognised by the Rigveda, though a hymn ascribed to the family of Vasiṣṭha disapproves of the practice. The son after marriage must often have lived in the house and under the control of his father, of whom his wife was expected to stand in awe. But, on the other hand, as the father advanced in years it cannot have been possible for him to maintain a control which he was physically incapable of exercising; and so we find the bride enjoined to be mistress over her step-parents, doubtless in the case when her husband, grown to manhood, had taken over the management of the household from his father's failing hands.

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The head of the family appears also to have been the owner of the property of the family; but on this point we are reduced in the main to conjecture. It is certain that the Rigveda recognises to the full individual ownership of movable things, cattle, horses, gold, ornaments, weapons, slaves, and so forth. It seems also certain that land was already owned by individuals or families: the term *kshetra*, 'field,' is unmistakably employed in this sense, and in one hymn a maiden, Apālā, places her father's cultivated field (*urvarā*) on the same level with his hair as a personal possession. Reference is also made to the measuring of fields, and to *khilya*, which appear to have been strips of land between the cultivated plots, probably used by the owners of the plots in common. The Rigveda has no conclusive evidence that the sons were supposed to have any share whatever in the land of the family, and the presumption is that it was vested in the father alone, as long as he was head of the family and exercised his full powers as head. We are left also to conjecture as to whether the various plots were held in perpetuity by the head of the family and his descendants, or whether there were periodic redistributions, and as to the conditions on which, if there were several sons, they could obtain the new allotments necessary to support themselves and their families. But there can hardly have been much difficulty in obtaining fresh land; for it is clear that population was scanty and spread over wide areas, and wealth doubtless consisted in the main in flocks and herds.

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There is no hint in the Rigveda of the size to which a family might grow and yet keep together. It is clear that there might be three generations under the same roof, and a family might thus be of considerable dimensions. But life can hardly have been long—so much stress is laid on longevity as a great boon that it must have been rare—and, even if we decline to accept the view that exposure of aged parents was normal, there must have been a tendency for the family to break up as soon as the parent died, especially if, as is probable, there was no such land hunger as to compel the sons to stay together. The sons would, however, naturally enough stay in the vicinity of one another for mutual support and assistance. The little knot of houses of the several branches of the family would together form the nucleus of the second stage in Rigvedic society, the *grāma*, 'village,' though some have derived its name originally from the sense 'horde'¹ as describing the armed force of the tribe which in war fought in the natural divisions of family and family. Next in order above the *grāma* in the orthodox theory was the *viç* or ‘canton,’ while a group of cantons made up the *jana*, ‘people.’ This scheme can be supported by apparent analogies not only from Greece, Italy, Germany, and Russia, but also from the Irānian state with the graduated hierarchy of family or households, *vīs*, *zantu*, and *dahyu*¹. But for Vedic India the fourfold gradation cannot successfully be maintained. It is not merely that the various terms are used with distressing vagueness—so that for example the Bharatas can be called at one time a *jana* and at another a *grāma*—but that the evidence for the relationship of subordination between the *grāma* and the *viç* is totally wanting. Moreover the Irānian evidence tells against the theory that the *viç* is removed by the *grāma* from the family in the narrower sense: the more legitimate interpretation is to see in the Irānian division a step further than that of the Rigveda and to set the *jana* as parallel to the *zantu*, acknowledging that in the time of the Rigveda the political organisation of the people had not extended to the creation of aggregates of *janas*, unless such an aggregate is presented to us in the twenty-one *janas* of the two Vaikarṇas who are mentioned in one passage of the Saṁhitā. The *viç* will thus take its place beside the Irānian *vīs* as a clan as opposed to family in the narrower sense, and be a real parallel to the Latin *gens*, and the Greek *genos*. It is possible that the *grāma* is originally the *gens* in its military aspect, but even that is not certain, for the word may originally have referred to locality. Nor can we say with any certainty for the period of the Rigveda whether the *grāma* contained the whole of a *viç*, or part of a *viç*, or parts of several *viças*. But amid much that is conjectural it is clear that the *viç* was not a normal unit for purposes of government, for the term *viçpati*, ‘lord of a *viç*,’ has not in any passage the technical sense of ‘lord of a canton.’ On the other hand, the *grāma* as a unit is recognised by the use of the term *grāmaṇī*, ‘leader of a village,’ an officer who appears in the Rigveda, and who was probably invested with both military and civil functions, though we have no details of his duties or powers.

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¹ See Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 159, 160; Feist, *Kultur, Ausbreitung, und Herkunft der Indogermanen*, p. 143.

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¹ Zimmer, *l.c.*; Geiger, *Ostiranische Kultur*, p. 427.

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While the sense ‘clan’ is comparatively rare, the word *viç* not unfrequently in the plural denotes ‘subjects’: so we hear of the *viças* of Tṛṇaskanda, a king elsewhere unknown, and of the *viças* of the Tṛtsus, the royal family of which Sudās was a member. In the former case the sense ‘clans’ is obviously inappropriate, while in the latter the rendering ‘clans’ which was long adopted has resulted in the confusion of the relations of the Bharatas and the Tṛitsus, the Tṛitsus being regarded as a people opposed to the Bharatas, instead of taking their place as the rulers of the Bharatas. The subjects as a whole made up the *jana*, a term which in Vedic use denotes either the individual man or the collective manhood of the tribe as a political unit. Above that unit no political organisation can be shown to have existed. The confederacy of the five tribes by whom Sudās was attacked was evidently more than a mere passing episode, but clearly it did not involve any system of political subordination, from which a great kingdom could emerge. There was however beyond that a feeling of kinship among all the tribes who called themselves Āryan, stimulated no doubt into distinct expression by their presence in the midst of the dark aboriginal population.

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The question now presents itself as to the extent to which in the period of the Rigveda the caste system had been developed. The existence of the caste system in any form in the age of the Rigveda has been denied by high authority¹, though it has been asserted of late with increasing insistence². In one sense, indeed, its presence in the Rigveda cannot be disputed. In the *Purusha-sūkta* the four castes of the later texts, Brāhmaṇa (‘priest’), Rājanya (‘prince’ or more broadly ‘warrior’), Vaiçya (‘commoner’), and Çūdra are mentioned. But this hymn is admittedly late and can prove nothing for the state of affairs prevailing when the bulk of the Rigveda was composed. On the other hand, as we have seen, the distinction between the Āryan colour (*varṇa*) and that of the aborigines is essential and forms a basis of caste. The question is thus narrowed down to the consideration of the arguments for and against the view that in the Āryans themselves caste divisions were appearing. On the one hand, it is argued that in the period of Vasishṭha and Viçvāmitra, when the great poetry of the Rigveda was being produced, neither the priestly class nor the warrior class was hereditary. The warriors of the community were the agricultural and industrial classes, and the priesthood was not yet hereditary. It has been held that the Brāhman priest was not necessarily the member of an hereditary class at all, that the term could be applied as well to any person who was distinguished by genius or virtue, or who for some reason was deemed specially receptive of the divine inspiration. The growth of the caste system is traced on this hypothesis to the complication of life ensuing on the further penetration of the Āryans from the Punjab towards the east. The petty tribes found it necessary, in order to defeat the solid forces of the aborigines, to mass themselves into centralised kingdoms. The petty tribal princes thus lost their full royal rank, but found employment and profit instead in becoming a standing armed force, ready to resist sudden incursion or to crush the attempts at rebellion of the defeated aborigines. On the other hand, the industrial and agricultural population, relying on the protection of the warrior class, abandoned the use of arms. Together with the growth in the size of the kingdom and the increasing complexity of civilisation, the simple ritual of an earlier period, when the king himself could sacrifice for his people, grew to an extent which rendered this impracticable, while at the same time an ever increasing importance came to be attached to the faithful and exact performance of the rites and the preservation of the traditional formulae. The result of this process was, it is suggested, the growth of a priesthood, of a warrior class, and of a third class, the Vaiçya, sharply distinguished from one another and strictly hereditary. But the comparatively late date of this development is shown by the fact that in later times the inhabitants of the North-West, the home of the Rigveda, were regarded as semi-barbarians by those of the Middle Country, in which the Brāhmanical civilisation had developed itself, on the ground that they did not follow the strict caste system.

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¹ Muir, *Original Sanskrit Texts*, vol. I^2, pp. 239 sq.; Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 185–203; Weber, *Indische Studien*, vol. X, pp. 1 sq.

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² See Geldner, *Vedische Studien*, vol. II, p. 146; Oldenberg, *Z.D.M.G.*, vol. LI, pp. 267 sq.

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While there is much of truth in this view, it must be admitted that it exaggerates the freedom of the Rigveda from caste. As we have seen, the probabilities are that the main, though not the earliest, part of the Saṁhitā had its origin not in the Punjab proper but in the sacred country of later Brāhmanism, the land known in the Saṁhitās of the succeeding period as Brahmāvarta. Moreover, there is no actual proof in the Rigveda that the priesthood was not then a closed hereditary class. The term Brāhmaṇa, ‘son of a Brahmā,’ seems, on the contrary, to show that the priesthood was normally hereditary, and there is no instance which can be quoted of any person who is said to be other than a priest appearing to exercise priestly functions. We are told that there is a case of a king exercising the functions of domestic priest and sacrificing himself for his people, but the alleged case, that of Devāpi, rests only on an assertion of a commentator on the hymn (x, 98), in which Devāpi appears, that he was originally a king. Even, however, if this were the case, it must be remembered that even after the complete establishment of the caste system, it was still the privilege of kings to exercise some priestly functions, such as that of the study of the nature of the absolute, a practice ascribed to them in the Upanishads. The arguments regarding the warrior class rest on a misunderstanding. Even in the latest Vedic period we have no ground to suppose that there was a special class which reserved its energies for war alone, and that the industrial population and the agriculturists allowed the fate of their tribe to be decided by contest between warrior bands, but the Rigveda certainly knows of a ruling class, the Kshatriya, and the Vedic kingship was normally hereditary, so that we may well believe that even then there existed, though perhaps only in embryo, a class of nobles, who are aptly named in the term of the *Purushasūkta*, Rājanyas, as being ‘men of kingly family.’ There are traces, moreover, of the division of the tribe into the holy power (*brahman*), the kingly power (*kshatra*), and the commonalty (*viç*), and, while it is true that the caste system is only in process of development in the Rigveda, it seems impossible to deny that much of the groundwork upon which the later elaborate structure was based was already in existence.

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So far, our sources of knowledge, if imperfect, have given us material sufficient to sketch the main outlines of Vedic society. Unhappily, when we turn to consider more closely the details of the political organisation proper, the evidence becomes painfully scanty and inadequate. The tribes of the Rigveda were certainly under kingly rule: there is no passage in the Rigveda which suggests any other form of government, while the king under the style ‘Rājan’ is a frequent figure. This is only what might be expected in a community which was not merely patriarchal—a fact whence the king drew his occasional style of *viçpati*, ‘Head of the *viç*’—but also engaged in constant warfare against both Āryan and aboriginal foes. Moreover, the kingship was normally hereditary: even in the scanty notices of the Rigveda we can trace lines of succession such as that of Vadhryaçva, Divodāsa, Pijavana, and Sudās, or Durgaha, Girikshit, Purukutsa, and Trasadasyu, or Mitrātithi, Kuruçravaṇa, and Upamaçravas. In some cases it has been argued that election by the cantons was possible¹; but this interpretation rests only on the improbable view that *viçaḥ* denotes not 'subjects' but 'cantons'; and the idea has no support in later literature. The activity of the sovereign on which most stress is laid is his duty of protecting his subjects; and even the Rigveda, despite its sacerdotal character, allows us to catch some glimpses of the warlike deeds of such men as Divodāsa, Sudās, and Trasadasyu. Of the king's functions in peace the Rigveda is silent, beyond showing that he was expected to maintain a large body of priests to perform the sacrifices for him and his people. From his subjects he was marked out by his glittering apparel, his palace, and his retinue, which doubtless included the princes of the royal house as well as mere retainers. To maintain his state he had the tribute paid by conquered tribes and the gifts of his people, which, once proffered freely, had doubtless become fixed payments, which the king could exact, if denied. Doubtless, too, when lands were conquered from the aborigines or from other Āryan tribes, large booty in land and slaves and cattle would be meted out to the king; but the Rigveda contains no hint that he was considered as owner of the land of the people. Nor in that Saṃhitā is there any trace that the king has developed from the priest: if that was the case in India the distinction lies far beyond the period of the Rigveda.

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¹ See Zimmer, *Altindisches Leben*, pp. 162 sq.; Weber, *Indische Studien*, vol. XVII, p. 189; Bloomfield, *Sacred Books of the East*, vol. XLII, p. 330. That sometimes election actually took place is quite probable; but the passages quoted do not show this; see Geldner, *Vedische Studien*, vol. II, p. 303.

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Of the entourage of the king and his servants we learn almost nothing. The *senānī*, 'leader of the army,' who appears in a few hymns, may have been a general appointed by the king to lead an expedition of too little importance to require his own intervention. The *grāmaṇī* probably led in war a minor portion of the host and was identical with the *vrājapati* mentioned elsewhere. Far more important, in the estimation at least of the composers of the hymns, was the *purohita* or domestic priest, whose position represented the height of a priest's ambition. Nor, after allowing for priestly partiality and exaggeration, can we deny the importance of the Purohita amongst a people who followed the guiding in religious matters of an hereditary priesthood. The Vedic Purohita was the forerunner of the Brāhman statesmen who from time to time in India have shown conspicuous ability in the management of affairs; and there is no reason to doubt that a Viçvāmitra or a Vasishṭha was a most important element of the government of the early Vedic realm. It is clear, too, from the hymns which are attributed to the families of these sages, that the Purohita accompanied the king to battle, and seconded his efforts for victory by his prayers and spells. In return for his faithful service the rewards of the Purohita were doubtless large: the *dānastutis* of the Rigveda tell of the generous gifts of patrons to the poets, and we may safely assume that the largest donations were those of kings to the Purohitas. It is significant of the social arrangements of the time that the gifts enumerated are all gifts of personal property; land was evidently not then a normal form of gift, though we may conjecture that, even at this early period, the king might confer on a priest or other servant the right to receive some portion of the gifts in kind which were clearly no inconsiderable part of the royal revenues.

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