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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s7: Non-Aryans, "Lower Classes" and Śūdras in Vedic Polity

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c9.s7

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Non-Aryans, "Lower Classes" and Śūdras in Vedic Polity

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The *Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa* (III, 4, 2, 13) describes the artists, craftsmen and other professional groups, many of whom belonged to the "lower classes" and perhaps not only culturally but also racially non-Āryan communities. The professional classification of the *viṣ* is to be seen in the *Puruṣamedha*. In II, 4 hypnotising and mesmerising is described as the profession of the Nāgas, the Rākṣasas are known to be skilled in the art of harlequins, and unfair war methods described as the characteristics of Piśāchas. Among the "five newly created Vedas" mentioned in the *Gopatha Brāhmaṇa* (I, 10) of the *Atharva Veda* are to be found the following names: *Sarpa* (*Nāga*)*-veda*, *Asura-veda*, *Piśācha-veda*, *Itihāsa* and *Purāṇa*.²¹ Vedic literature in some of its branches is thus the literature dealing not only with the Aryans but with the non-Aryans as well and indicates at the same time different states of cultural *rapprochement* between the two. In this context the categories, Aryan and non-Aryan, are to be understood in both linguistic and racial senses, in case it is at all permissible to speak of non-Aryan "races" as ethnological groups.

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²¹ S. V. Venkatesvara: *Indian Culture Through the Ages* Vol. I. (London 1928) 62-63.

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The folk-elements and along with them the secular and socio-economic elements of the Vedic age are represented not only by the so-called *Dāsas* (non-Aryans) and *Śūdras* but also by the *Niṣādas*, who are known to be the fifth of the *pañchajanāh* (i.e. five classes of men) of the *Rig Veda*. The *Brihaddevatā* (VII, 69) knows this fifth class. The *Yajurveda*²² also in its *Rudrādhyāya* chapter enumerates them along with *Vrātās* (nomads ?), *Takṣaṇs* (carpenters), *Rathakāras* (chariot makers), *Kulālas* (potters), *Karmāras* (blacksmiths), *Punjiṣṭhas* (fowlers), *Svanins* (dog keepers) and *Mrigayas* (hunters). It is to be noticed that certain economic groups are mentioned along with a tribal group, the *Niṣāda*. The Vedic Aryans did not leave this tribal group in splendid isolation. The performer of the *Viśvajit* (world-conquest) sacrifice was required in the *Panchavimśa Brāhmaṇa* (XVI, 6, 7), for instance, to live for three days among the *Niṣādas*. Chiefs also could be made out of *Niṣādas* by Brāhmaṇa priests by offering certain sacrifices (Kātyāyana : *Srauta Sūtra*, I, 12, and Jaimini : *Mīmāmsā Sūtra*, VI, 1, 51-52). Vedic society was not so one-sided in economic or social morphology or philosophico-religious outlook as is made out by many indologists.

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²² This material has been used in R. P. Chanda: *The Indo-Aryan Races* (Rajshahi 1919) pp. 4-6 in another context.

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This interpretation, based as it is on Yāska's *Nirukta*, Aupamanyava and Sāyana (*Rig.* I, 7, 9) is evidently wrong, says Zimmer in *Altindisches Leben* (Berlin 1879, pp. 119-120). The five *janāsah*, *jātāh*, *kritayah*, *kriṣtayah*, *mānuṣāh* etc. of the *Rig Veda* refer, according to Zimmer, to the five leading Aryan races, Yadu, Anu, Druhyu, Turvaśa and Puru. But the reference to the complex of four castes *plus* Niṣāda is not without significance, for it indicates the orientations of scholars during the period of Yāska's *Nirukta* (c 500 B.C.).

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The position of the *Vrātyas* and their assimilation to the socio-cultural institutions of the Aryans are notable instances of liberal tendencies in Vedic ideology.

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Vedic polity, Vedic thought, or Vedic culture is not the work of a generation or two but covers at least a millennium. The terms of language and categories of thought as well as the contents of categories, i.e., the meanings of terms were getting transformed from generation to generation along with the military exploits of the *viṣ* (folk) groups as well as the territorial and socio-economic expansion of the diverse races or tribes. An aspect of all these expansions was to be seen in the fusion between the colonizers (Aryans) and aboriginals (Dasyus) in the earliest period of the *Rig Veda*. Even during the epochs when *pancha janāh* referred to "five tribes or races" and not to the complex of four castes *plus* Niṣāda the friendly relations²³ are known to have been established with the Non-Aryans (both cultural and racial), among other things, through inter-marriage perhaps for military reasons.

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²³ *The Cambridge History of India* Vol. I. (1922), p. 86 (The Age of the Rig Veda by A. B. Keith). For the different strands in Vedic literature see pp. 112-113, 148-149.

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We can watch the operation of Durkheim's principle of the "division of labour" in the processes leading to the expansion of the Vedic *viṣ* (folk). The contest between the aborigines and the Aryan immigrants had to become very intimate on account of economic necessity. The Aryans were not known anywhere in ancient times to display any great taste for manual professions.²⁴ These were relegated by the Greeks and Romans to the slaves. In India also the Aryans, established in villages as they were and practising the pastoral industry as they did, were not much moved to adopt the manual professions. These had to remain in general in the hands of the aborigines or of those classes of the population whose hybrid or questionable origin placed them in the same category. It is the arts and crafts that may be said to have contributed to a great extent to the assimilation of the new comers and the old inhabitants of the soil and therefore to have led to the impact of the materialistic, folk and democratic tendencies on the general culture.

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²⁴ Sénart: *Les Castes dans l'Inde* (Paris 1927) p. 226.

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The propaganda of the Vedic Risis was laid on an extensive scale. The "societal planning" of those sacrificers and colonizers comprised conscious attempts to enrich themselves with the original inhabitants. Efforts to meet them half-way are to be seen in many of the institutions and ideas of Vedic literature from epoch to epoch and region to region. Sociologico-anthropologically the entire mass of Vedic literature may be treated as a huge and age-long series of attempts to Aryanize the Śūdra (and the non-Aryan) and Brāhmanize the Vrātya (or non-Brāhmaṇa Aryan). It is wrong to treat the Vedic texts as documents exclusively of Aryan life and thought, whether in culture or in race. The impact of Non-Aryans, "lower-classes," Śūdras and Vrātyas on Aryans, the attempts of the latter to meet the former half-way, the *rapprochements* of the Aryans and non-Aryans, the culture-contacts, race-fusions, professional "interpendence" and so forth,—all these have gone to the making of Vedic literary stuff. To ignore or overlook these non-Aryan and non-higher elements in the structure of Vedic literature is to misinterpret the urges of life operating on the personality of the men and women in question.

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Vedic polity is on the one hand the polity of *Rassenkampf*, of interracial and intra-racial conflicts. On the other hand, it is the physiognomy and morphology of race-co-operation and class-solidarity that we see in the demographic structure of Vedic society. Vedic India was a melting-pot of races and cultures, and its sociography like that of other areas has to be interpreted as by all means a hybrid.²⁵ Champions of “pure races” and “pure cultures” will be disappointed if they approach this culture with their hypothesis of race-segregation or cultural aloofness such as is generally considered to be unhistorical and sociologically undesirable by Hankins in the *Racial Basis of Civilization* (New York 1924), Gini in *Population* (Chicago 1930), and Martial in “La Race Française et la nouvelle Conception du Mot Race” (*Bevölkerungsfragen*, Munich 1936).

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²⁵ For race-mixture in India see H. Risley : *Census Report of India 1901* (Calcutta) Vol. I., Part III; B. N. Datta : “Ethnological Notes on Some of the Castes of West Bengal” (*Man in India*, Ranchi, July-December 1934 and October-December 1935), “Races of India” (*Journal of the Department of Letters*, Calcutta University, Vol. XXVI, 1935); B. S. Guha : “The Racial Affinities of the Peoples of India” (*Census of India 1931*, Delhi, Vol. I., Part III, 1935), and lecture in English available in German as “Die rassenmässige Zusammensetzung der Indo-Arier und die Rassenmischung in Indian” (*Mitteilungen der Detutschen Akademie*, Munich, 1935, No. 3).

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