The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.90

v1.c17.90

It is natural, at the conclusion of this survey of the more important aspects of the Vedic civilisation, to consider what date can be assigned to the main portion of the Rigveda or to the civilisation which it records. One fact of interest has been adduced from the records of treaties between the Hittites and the Kings of Mitāni of about 1400 B.C. In them occur names which a certain amount of faith may induce us to accept as denoting Indra, the two Açvins under the name Nāsatyā, one of their epithets—of unknown meaning—in the Rigveda, Mitra, and Varuṇa. It is right to add that these identifications must not be regarded as certain, though they may be correct. It has been argued by Jacobi² that these names must be derived from a tribe practising the religion revealed to us in the Rigveda, that the presence of this tribe at this date is due to a movement on their part from India, and that we have a definite date assigned at which the culture of the Rigveda existed. Unhappily the argument cannot be regarded as conclusive. It is considered by E. Meyer¹ and by Oldenberg² that the gods are proto-Irānian gods, affording a proof of what has always seemed on other grounds most probable, that the Indian and Irānian period was preceded by one in which the Indo-Irānians still undivided enjoyed a common civilisation. This is supported by the fact that the Avesta, which is doubtless a good deal later than the date in question, still recognises a great god to whom Varuṇa’s epithet *Asura* is applied, that it knows a Verethrajan who bears the chief epithet of Indra as Vṛtrahan, ‘slayer of Vṛtra,’ that it has a demon, Nāonhaithya, who may well be a pale reflex of the Nāsatyas, and that the Avestan Mithra is the Vedic Mitra. It is also possible that the gods represent a period before the separation of Indians and Irānians, though this would be less likely if it is true that the names of the Mitāni princes include true Irānian names³. But, in any case, it is to be feared that we attain no result of value for Vedic chronology.