The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s3: The Vedic-Hindu Epochs

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s3

Language: English

The Vedic-Hindu Epochs

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The Vedic-Hindu (c. 2500-600 B.C.) institutions and ideologies, especially, those of the *Atharva* and the *Brāhmaṇas*, along with the aboriginal, *Vrātya*, pre-"Aryan," non-"Aryan" and Dravidian institutions and ideologies constituted the very socioplasmic complex, so to say, out of which in the long run the *Dharma* and *Artha* literature emerged. Thus considered, some of the passages in *Śukranīti* as of other texts of political, economic and sociological thought can be traced back to these "Aryan" or "Aryo-Dravidian" foundations of Hindu civilization.

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The political stories of the *Purāṇas*, the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa* have, among other things, the exploits of the pioneers of the period from c 2500 to 600 B.C. as their themes. The tradition of the Vedic *aśwamedha* (horse-killing) sacrifice was preserved in the *Mahābhārata* as elsewhere; and in the political ideas associated with this sacrifice the *Nīti*, *Artha*, and *Dharma* literature served but to carry forward the messages of the *Yajurveda*-*Mahābhārata* complex.⁶

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⁶ A. B. Keith: Chs. IV-V. (Rig Veda, etc) in the *Cambridge History of India* Vol. I. (1922); P.-E. Dumont: *L'Asvamedha* (Paris 1927), pp. ii, 2-4, 376. For the place of *aśwamedha* in the career of Empire-builders see the account of the Bhāra-Śivas etc. in K. P. Jayaswal: "The History of India" (150-350 A.C.) in the *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society* (Patna), May-June 1933. In regard to the continuity of Indian domestic and social rites and ceremonies from the most primitive times through the ages see the extensive chapter on "Vedic Ritual" in L. D. Barnett: *Antiquities of India* (London 1913).; cf. J. W. Hauer: *Der Vrātya* Vol. I. (Stuttgart 1927), pp. 223-240, 334-335 (The Vrātya as Aryan of the Non-Brahmanical Cult.).

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It is perhaps possible to detect among the authors of Vedic cycle a knowledge of the armageddon of the *Mahābhārata* between the Kurus and the Pāṇḍus, descended, as both were, from the Bhāratas.

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The date of this great battle of Kurukṣetra has been placed somewhere about 1500 B.C.⁷ On this basis the approximate relative chronology of the leading races and regions in Northern India is being indicated below together with the Vedic and the Jātaka sources of information :

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⁷ S. N. Pradhan : *Chronology of Ancient India* (Calcutta 1927), pp. 268-269. But see H. C. Ray Chaudhuri; *Political History of Ancient India* (Calcutta 1932) pp. 19-22 24-26. The dates used in the present work differ in certain respects from those in the *Cambridge History of India* Vol. I. (1922), pp. 699-703. A comprehensive account of the Kurus, Pānchālas, Matsyas, Surasenas, Chedis, Vaśas, Avantis and Usinaras is offered in B. C. Law : *Ancient Mid-Indian Tribes* Vol. I. (Calcutta 1924). See also the continuation in his *Ancient Indian Tribes* Vol. II. (London 1934). For the socio-political conditions of Northern India on the eve of the advent of Sākya the Buddha see the five chapters in N. Dutt : *Early History of the Spread of Buddhism* (London 1925), pp. 82-194.

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These pioneering races and regions are to a certain extent the races and regions of *Purāṇa*, *Mahābhārata*, and *Rāmāyaṇa* fame also. It is in and about the activities of the group-life of these regions and races, i.e., about their "social metabolism" of all forms and orders, that some of the political, economic and social institutions and ideals of the *Purāṇas* and the Epics were developed.

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The Bhāratas, the race that has given the title to the great epic, the *Mahābhārata*, were some of the heroes of the *Rig-Veda*. Some of the most prominent characters in the Epic, e.g., Sāntanu, Parīkṣit, Janamejaya, Vaśiṣṭha, Viśvāmitra and others are also Vedic, being connected with Bharata, the founder of the Bhāratas. The region Kuru or the race inhabiting the Kuru Land, which is the chief theatre of Epic activities, was likewise a Vedic region or race.

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The heroes of the epic *Rāmāyaṇa* as well as of some of the *Purāṇas* like the *Vāyu Purāṇa* were derived in name at any rate from the Rigvedic tradition. Such names as Ikṣvāku, Daśaratha, Rāma, Hariśchandra etc. were known to the authors of the Vedic cycle.

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As the *Purāṇas* and the *Mahābhārata* as well as the *Rāmāyaṇa* have plenty of passages in common with the *Nīti-śāstras*, the Vedic ancestry of some of the ideas of this *Śāstra* literature is automatically assured. The Vedic atmosphere, be it understood carefully, is not however to be seen in the whole treatises of *Dharma*, *Artha* or *Nīti* but in certain passages only. It is not to be assumed, moreover, that the famous kings of the Vedic tradition were identical with those of the non-Vedic, extra-Vedic or post-Vedic tradition, or that the Vedic stories were reproduced *in toto* in the subsequent literature.⁸

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⁸ F. E. Pargiter: *Ancient Indian Historical Tradition* (London 1922) pp. 37-43, 52-57, 325-327; E. W. Hopkins: *The Great Epic of India* (New Haven 1920), pp. 2-6, 17-22, 60-65, 368, 386; H. C. Ray Chaudhuri: *Political History of India* (Calcutta 1932) pp. 9, 16-18, 25, 49, 71-73, 81-82, 109-111. M. Winternitz: *History of Indian Literature*, Vol. I. (Calcutta 1927), pp. 317-320, 389-396, 405-407, 422-424, 470-475 (*Mahābhārata*); L. von Schröder: *Indiens Literatur und Cultur* (Leipzig 1887), pp. 34-36; See the chapters on "Atharvanic Influences" and "The Draupadi Saga" in N. N. Ghose: *Indo-Aryan Literature and Culture* (Calcutta 1934); cf. H. C. Chakladar: "Eastern India and Āryāvarta" in the *Indian Historical Quarterly* (Calcutta March 1928).

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While dealing with the Mohenjo Daro and the Vedic cultures it is interesting to observe that the importance of the *Purāṇas* in "pre-historic" archæology is being stressed in certain quarters. We are being told that the *Purāṇas* are but histories with dates and details, and record an uninterrupted account of more than six thousand years of India's distant past.⁹ The situation is not clear by any means. But the claims that are being advanced in favour of the *Purāṇas* do not fail to throw some light on the positivism of the early founders of Hindu culture.

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⁹ Report of a lecture at the Bangiya Sāhitya Pariṣat, Calcutta, on 21 September, 1935 delivered by G. S. Bose, author of *Purāṇa-Praveśa* (Calcutta 1934).

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There are various *Purāṇas* and though, in the main, they do not vary in the accounts of the past, they are characteristically different from one another. Each *Purāṇa* has its own hero and its own god to be worshipped by the masses and its own mode of religious practice to propagate. The *Skanda* is a *Śaiva Purāṇa* and its hero is Rāmachandra whose kingly qualities are almost unsurpassed even to the present day.

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In recent *Purāṇa*-scholarship Rāma and his ancestors are being treated as no mythological figures, and it is said that his date can be ascertained with accuracy from Purāṇic information. Rāma is taken to have flourished about 2124 B.C. He was an exile for fourteen years, returned to Ayodhyā with Sītā when he was forty-two, ruled for eleven years and died when he was only fifty-three. He was a great warrior, but he was a greater ruler and the brief eleven years of his reign were marked by constant progress.

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Rāmachandra once went on pilgrimage to a religious site called *Dharmāraṇya*. This *Dharmāraṇya* was a district of great antiquity. The flourishing country about *Dharmāraṇya* had been devastated many times since its foundation by Dharma early in the *Tretā Yuga*, i.e., about 3800 B.C. When Rāmachandra went to visit the place he found that it had been depopulated and devastated by an Asura raider who, as a monument of victory, had placed an iron pillar thereabout. The Asura came to be known as *Lohāsura* or the "Iron Demon."

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The interesting and apparently fantastic reconstruction of the biography of Rāma and the history of his civic and social exploits may be described in the following manner.

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Rāma is said to have re-established this ancient province and renamed it as *Satya Mandir*. He founded cities, villages and temples on ancient sites. He made a gift of numerous villages in this district to learned *Brāhmaṇas*. This grant was inscribed on a copper-plate and an account of the inscription containing names of the villages granted by Rāma to the *Brāhmaṇas* has been preserved in the *Purāṇas*. This copper-plate itself was in existence even to the time of Yudhishṭhira (1416 B.C.). Later on, this inscribed copper-plate as well as all traces of the iron pillar seemed to have been lost. Thanks to the *Purāṇas*, we are told, even at the present day it is possible to identify quite a number of the villages granted by Rāmachandra to the learned Brāhmaṇas. The modern districts of Kheri, Sitapur, Gonda, Bahraich, Rampur, Budaon and Bareilly in the United Provinces are said to present the site of *Dharmāraṇya* as reclaimed by Rāmachandra. The present towns of Sitapur, Bareilly, Gonda, Chandan, Chowky, Dudhwa, Gola and Misrikh are some of the sites mentioned in the copper-plate grant. The location of the iron pillar is not certain. Very likely it stood in the village known at the present time as Lohakham in the Rampur State. The area corresponding to *Dharmāraṇya* is full of ancient mounds. It is within this area that the Banskhera copper-plate grant of Harṣavardhana containing the name of a place Vardhamāna was discovered. The name Vardhamāna appears in the *Purāṇas*. In Rāmachandra's time and even earlier the district contained numerous sites of Sun-worship, remnants of which are still to be found. Sun-worship did not come to India from Persia. The Sun represents one of Rāma's ancestors,—named Vivaswan; and the Brāhmaṇas who used to act as priests were known as Mehi Brāhmaṇas from the name of the district Moherak which was another name of *Dharmāraṇya*.

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There is reason to believe, says this rather romantic account, that the ancient site of Set Malot in the Gonda District is the place where Rāma built his *Satya Mandir*.

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The *Purāṇas* say that the temple was of bricks. At later periods Jaina and Buddhistic shrines grew up round about the ancient Hindu temples. The *Purāṇas* also mention this. However sceptical we be in regard to the foregoing reconstruction of Rāma's biography, we may concede that a thorough excavation of the mounds and sites located in accordance with the *Purāṇic* descriptions is likely to reveal ancient Hindu relics.

Linked texts (6)

Jātaka — Pāli
Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad — Sanskrit
Mahāvaṃsa — Pāli
Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Atharvavedasaṃhitā — Atharvan & Aṅgiras, Sanskrit
Śatapathabrāhmaṇa — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit