Tribes in Ancient India c29.2

c29.2

The Niṣādas are referred to for the first time in the later *Saṃhitās* and the *Brāhmaṇas*.¹ The word Niṣāda ‘seems to denote not so much a particular tribe, but to be the general term for the non-Aryan tribes who were not under Aryan control, as the Śūdras were . . .’ (*Vedic Index*, Vol. I, p. 453). This is supported by the evidence supplied by Aupamānyava² who distinguishes the Niṣādas from the other four varṇas or ‘colours’ (castes). The word Niṣada (Niṣāda) of the *Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā* (XVI, 27) is explained by the commentator Mahīdhara to mean a Bhīl or Bhilla, a tribe that still exists in the hills of Central India and the Vindhyan tracts. Macdonell and Keith point out that ‘a village of the Niṣādas is mentioned in the *Lāṭyāyana Śrauta Sūtra* (VIII, 2, 8), and a Niṣāda Sthapati, a leader of some kind of craft, is referred to in the *Kātyāyana Śrauta Sūtra* (I, I, 12; Weber, *Indische Studien*, 10, 13) and in a *Brāhmaṇa* cited by the scholiast on that passage’.³ According to Weber,⁴ the Niṣādas were settled aborigines. In the opinion of the authors of the *Vedic Index*, this view is supported ‘by the fact that the ritual of the Viśvajit Sacrifice (*Kauṣītaki B.*, XXV, 15; *Lāṭ. Ś.S.*, VIII, 2, 8; *Pañ. B.*, XVI, 6, 8, etc.) requires a temporary residence with the Niṣādas; for the Niṣādas who would permit an Aryan to reside temporarily amongst them must have been partially amenable to Aryan influence. But the name might easily be applied to the whole body of aborigines outside the Aryan organisation’ (*Vedic Index*, Vol. I, p. 454).⁵ The Law-giver, Manu, however, explains the origin of the Niṣādas as ‘the offspring of a Brāhmaṇa father and a Śūdra mother’.⁶ In his chapter on Mixed Castes, Manu says that the son of a Niṣāda by a Śūdra female becomes a Pulkasa by caste, but the son of a Śūdra by a Niṣāda female is declared to be a Kukkuṭaka.⁷ The social duty enjoined on the Niṣādas was to kill and provide fish for consumption by the people.¹ According to the Pāli texts as well, they were wild hunters and fishermen.² That they were a tribe ‘of rude culture or aboriginal stock’ (A.I.H.T., p. 290) and outside the Aryan organisation is also attested by the Rāmāyaṇa story of Guha, king of the Niṣādas who are described as a wild band.³