Tribes in Ancient India c6.12

c6.12

In the *Ṛgveda* the long wool of the sheep reared by the Gandhāris is referred to by Lomaśā, the queen of King Bhāvya or Bhavayavya, who ruled on the banks of the Sindhu (Indus); she says to her husband, ‘I am covered with down like a ewe of the Gandhāris’ (*Ṛgveda*, I, pp. 126, 7; Wilson’s Trans., II, p. 78). From the facts that the verse is brought in very abruptly and that it is in a metre different from the rest of the hymn, Wilson observes that it is ‘probably a fragment of some old popular song’ (Trsl., p. 19). This would, therefore, attribute a knowledge of the Gandhāris to the Vedic Aryans in very ancient times.