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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s4: The Pluralistic Make-up of the Vedic Culture-Complex

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s4

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The Pluralistic Make-up of the Vedic Culture-Complex

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For certain purposes we may go so far as to say that there are virtually not more than two *Veda Saṁhitās*, the *Rig* and the *Atharva*. To the *Rig* belong as a matter of course the *Sāma* and the *Yajus*. This Rigvedic complex may be taken to be the embodiment, as suggested above, of the "culture-lore" in contrast with the *Atharva Saṁhitā* which embodies, say, the "folk-lore." Some of the popular, mass, democratic, and secular, worldly or materialistic elements of Vedic life and thought are by all means to be found in the Rigvedic complex. But it is in the *Atharva Saṁhitā* that we are to look for them in specialized or concentrated forms, although of course the presence of "culture-lore" in this *Saṁhitā* is not entirely to be denied. To one dealing with Hindu positivism of the Vedic period the *Atharva* is therefore bound to loom large.

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The complexity and pluralistic make-up of the Vedic literature are suggested from other angles too. It does not require too much of creative imagination to believe that the 1017 hymns collected in the *Rig Veda Saṁhitā* do not constitute all that the people of the period produced in that line. Nobody can be charged with being too suspicious if it is believed that the entire corpus of beliefs of the Vedic tribes is perhaps not to be found in that compilation. The *viṣ* (people) may be taken to have cherished other faiths and created other hymns through other *Ṛiṣis*. Some of those other beliefs are but incidentally referred to in the collection that we possess today.

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The later manuals of domestic rites speak of certain customs and beliefs that are at least as old as the *Rig Veda* and may be even older. The concept of *rita* (cosmic order, right etc.), corresponding to the Chinese *Tao*,¹¹ indicates an ideology which is opposed to the animistic theory that dominates the extant *Rig Veda Samhitā*. Another non-animistic concept is to be found in the doctrine of *tapas* (self-mortification). This is a practice which produces its results even without prayers to the gods. The concept of the Vedic sacrifices betrays likewise a strand of thought which is somewhat independent of the gods. Indeed, the gods themselves are subject to the power of sacrifices and hymns. This sort of mysticism is independent of the gods and will have to be treated as representative of some other forces without which the Vedic complex is not complete. The incidental and almost ignorable references to such beliefs¹² in the *Rig Veda* point but to the other worlds of life and thought, whose *Beziehungen* or relations to the society described in the Vedas, as Simmel or von Wiese would say, cannot be overlooked in a comprehensive treatment of Vedic institutions.

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¹¹ B. K. Sarkar : *Chinese Religion Through Hindu Eyes* (Shanghai 1916), pp. 13-15, 26.

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¹² T. W. Rhys Davids : "The Chakkavatti" in the R. G. Bhandarkar *Commemoration Volume* (Poona 1917) pp. 125-131; Przyluski : "The Three Factors of Vedic Culture" (*Indian Culture*, January 1935).

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The diverse regional values of the Vedic texts must not be overlooked. The territory is divided into four regions, North, South, East and West, in the *Atharva Veda Samhitā* (III, 27, XII, 3), the *Yajurveda Samhitā* (*Taittirīya* IV, 4, 12, 2) and the *Vājasaneyī Samhitā* (XV, 10-14). According to the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* (VIII, 14) of the *Rig Veda Samhitā* the "midland" (*madhyadeśa*) knows only of *rājyas* (lesser political organisms) whereas the East is used to *sāmrājyas* (larger statal entities, e.g., "empires"). The rulers in Eastern India are accordingly known as *Samrāṭs*. In these Eastern *Samrāṭs* of the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* one may easily see the counterparts of Janaka of Mithilā (North Bihar) who is known as *Samrāṭ* in the *Brihadāraṇyaka Upaniṣat* (IV, 1) of the *Yajurveda*. Jarāsandha of Rājagriha (South Bihar) whom the *Mahābhārata* (III, 14, 9-10) describes as the "great sovereign and master" can be regarded as another exemplar for the *Aitareya* authors.¹³

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¹³ H. Chakladar: "Contribution of Bihar to Vedic Culture" in the *Proceedings and Transactions of the Sixth All-India Oriental Conference* (Patna, December 1930) Patna 1933 pp. 507-508.

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The *Brahmachārin* of the *Atharva Veda* (XI, 5, 6) is described as a person wandering to the Eastern Ocean. The *Pūrva Samudra* (Eastern Ocean) is known to the *Rig Veda* (X, 136) too. The *nāvah samudriyāh* (*Rig*, I, 25, 7) or sea-going vessels need not be taken as referring to the Western Ocean alone but to the Eastern as well.

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Altogether, the Eastern origins of some of the earliest strands of Vedic literature seem very plausible. It cannot be reasonable to look upon North-western India and the midland as the original home of the entire Vedic institutions and ideas. Eastern India, especially Magadha and Videha, i.e. Bihar (North and South) will have to be accorded a due place in the making of the Vedic culture-complex.

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While acknowledging the debts of Aryan or Vedic culture to India it should at the same time be reasonable to suspect that the Aryanization of Magadha (Northern Bihar) and Videha (South Bihar) was skin-deep.¹⁴ The Aryans of the *Madhyadeśa* (Kuru-Pāñchāla) region could not but look upon the inhabitants of the *Prāchyadeśa*, the region to the East of the *Sadānīrā*¹⁵ (Gaṇḍaki) River as wanting in sanctity and unsuitable for the performance of sacrifices.

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¹⁴ N. Dutt: *Early History of the Spread of Buddhism* (Calcutta 1925) pp. 36-38, 81-84; H. C. Chakladar: "Eastern India and Aryavarta" in the *IHQ.*, for March 1928.

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¹⁵ Macdonell and Keith: *Vedic Index* Vol. II, (London 1912) pp. 421-422.

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The category, "Aryan", is being used in the linguistic, philological or cultural sense. The "racial," ethnological or blood pluralism of the Vedic ecology is an independent consideration and must not be taken to be identical with the heterogeneity implied in the *charaiveti* or expansion of a dominant culture in the sphere of alien cultures, as discussed in the present context. It is necessary to take note of the unscientific manner in which the category "Aryan" is very commonly taken in the ethnological or racial sense.

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In much later works like the *Manu Saṁhitā* (X, 5) Māgadha and Vaideha are to be found among the "mixed castes," and described as owing their origin to *apasāda* or low birth, e.g., the union of a higher caste woman with a relatively lower caste man. Now Māgadha literally denotes an inhabitant of Magadha and Vaideha an inhabitant of Videha. One can easily suspect, therefore, that in the tradition represented by Manu these regions of Eastern India are treated with contempt as being extra-Vedic or extra-Brāhmaṇic, perhaps semi-Vedic and semi-Brāhmaṇic. In Manu's ethnology, again, the Lichchhavis of Vesāli and the Mallas of Kusinārā are Kṣatriya-Vrātyas. Now Kṣatriya-Vrātyas are Kṣatriyas who became Vrātyas, i.e., lost the genuine Kṣatriyahood on account of neglecting to perform the initiation (*upanayana*) ceremony. In this instance, also, the suspicion is strong that these "republican" races of Eastern India, well-known in the Jātaka stories relating to Sākya the Buddha's contemporaries, are treated in the hundred-percent Vedic tradition as somewhat inferior in social status.¹⁶

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¹⁶ R. Fick: *Die Sociale Gliederung im nordöstilichen Indien zu Buddhas Zeit* (Kiel 1897), Ch. I.

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