Shudras in Ancient India: A Social History of the Lower Order down to circa A.D. 600 c8.211

c8.211

Had the number of the Āryans been small, they could have imposed themselves as a new ruling minority consisting of the upper classes on the conquered peoples as did the Hittites in Anatolia and the Kassites and Mitannis in Mesopotamia. But in the case of both Iran and India, the linguistic position suggests mass migrations. The Rg Vedic evidence is fatal to the hypothesis that the Āryans imposed themselves as a minority in India.² In the Vedic texts we encounter movements and settlements of numerous Āryan tribes.³ Excavations and explorations carried out since 1947¹ have produced a rich crop of theories regarding the identification of the Āryans. Several of these theories can be reconciled if we postulate successive waves of newcomers, who have left abundant traces of their material culture in the whole of northwestern India from about 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. Although the earliest, Ṛg Vedic survivals are difficult to identify, the Gāndhāra graves might herald the arrival of the first Āryans around 1800 B.C. In any case numerous Painted Grey Ware sites found in eastern Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the adjoining areas of Pakistan do suggest the mass-scale settlement of new peoples between *circa* 1000 and 500 B.C. We can count 315 PGW sites, mostly located in the Upper Gaṅgā and Sutlej basins and also in the Ghaggar valley.² Recent explorations have brought to light nearly 300 PGW sites on the banks of the Sarasvatī and Dṛṣadvatī in Haryana, and by this time the number of all such sites may have exceeded 500. Those which have been excavated show that they were inhabited for two or three centuries.