Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.209

c8.209

Possibly the Dāsas were an advance guard of mixed Indo-Aryan peoples who came to India at the time when the Kassites appeared in Babylonia (c. 1750 B.C.). This can be linked up with the archaeological hypothesis which assumes either a continuous movement or two main movements of peoples from Northern Persia towards India and places the first movement fairly soon after 2000 B.C.¹ Since the Dāsas shared language and some other elements of culture with the Rg Vedic people the latter followed a policy of conciliation towards them and easily assimilated into their fold such Dāsa chiefs as Divodāsa, Balbūtha and Tarukṣa. It is because of this that the Dāsas appear as frequent allies of the Āryans in their inter-tribal conflicts. Thus it would appear that the name dāsa in the sense of slave was derived not from the non-Āryan inhabitants of India but from a people allied to the Indo-Āryans. The people who were lauded in Iran were condemned in India probably because as an earlier wave of Indo-Āryans they stood in the way of the later wave of the same people. In the later period of the Rg Veda the term dāsa may have been employed indiscriminately not only to cover the survivors of the original Indo-European dāsas but also pre-Āryan peoples such as Dasyus and Rakṣasas and also such sections of the Āryans as were impoverished or reduced to subjection on account of internal conflicts within their ranks.