A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s2.34

v1.c8.s2.34

The best idea, however, of the great age of these hymns is vouchsafed us by a glance at the geographical and cultural conditions of the time of which they tell us. There we see above all, that the Aryan Indians, at the time when the hymns of the Ṛgveda arose, had not nearly as yet spread over the whole of India. We find them still domiciled in the river-land of the Indus (Sindhu), the present Punjab.³ From the West, over the passes of the Hindukush, Aryan tribes had penetrated into "the land of the five rivers," and in the songs of the Ṛgveda we still hear of the battles which the Aryans⁴ had to fight with the Dasyu, or the "black skin", as the swarthy aboriginal inhabitants were called. Only slowly amidst continuous fighting against the hated "non-Aryans" (anārya)—the Dasyus or Dāsas, who know no gods, no laws, and no sacrifices—do they press forward towards the East up to the Ganges. It is significant that this river, without which we can hardly imagine the India of all later periods, and which up to the present day plays such a prominent part in the poetry as well as in the popular religion of the Indians, is hardly mentioned in the Ṛgveda. Heine's lyric:—