Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s16.20

v1.c3.s16.20

It is difficult to say exactly how a people was divided. Zimmer⁶ argues from a passage in the Rigveda⁷ that a people was divided into cantons (Viś), cantons into joint families or clans, or village communities (Grāma, Vṛjana), and these again into single families. He thinks that the four divisions are reflected in the passage in question by Jana, Viś, Janman, and Putrāḥ, or sons, and argues that each village community was originally founded on relationship. But it is very doubtful whether this precise division of the people can be pressed. The division of the Jana into several Viś may be regarded as probable, for it is supported by the evidence of another passage of the Rigveda,⁸ which mentions the Viś as a unit of the fighting men, and thus shows that, as in Homeric times and in ancient Germany, relationship was deemed a good principle of military arrangement. But the subdivision of the Viś into several Grāmas is very doubtful. Zimmer⁹ admits that neither Grāma¹⁰ nor Vṛjana¹¹ has the special sense of a subdivision of the Viś when used for war, for both words only denote generally an armed host. He finds other designations of the village host in Vrā¹² and in Vrāja,¹³ but it is sufficient to say that the former passage is of extremely doubtful import,¹⁴ and that the latter has no reference to war at all. It is therefore impossible to state in what exact relation the Grāma in Vedic times stood to the Viś or to the family (Kula or Gotra). The confusion is increased by the vagueness of the sense of both Grāma and Viś. If the latter be regarded as a local division, then no doubt the Grāma must have been a part of a district; but if a Viś was a unit of relationship, then a Grāma may have contained families of different Viśes, or may have sometimes coincided with a Viś, or have contained only a part of a Viś. But in any case the original state of affairs must have been greatly modified by the rise of the system of caste, and the substitution of a hierarchical for a political point of view. The elements of the people were represented by the family—either as an individual family inhabiting one home (Kula), and consisting often, no doubt, of a joint family of brothers, or as a patriarchal family of sons who still lived with their father—and by the clan, the later Gotra, which included all those who claimed a common ancestor. The Gotra may be regarded as roughly corresponding to the Latin gens and the Greek γένος, and possibly the Viś may be the equivalent of the curia and φρήτρη, and the Jana of the tribus and φῦλον or φύλη.¹⁵ These three divisions may also be seen in the Viś, Zantu, and Daqyu of the Iranian world, where the use of Viś suggests that in the Indian Viś a relationship based on blood rather than locality is meant—and perhaps even in the vicus, pagus, and civitas of the old German polity described in the Germania¹⁶ of Tacitus. The family in some form appears as the third element of the Jana in a passage of the Rigveda,¹⁷ where the house (gṛha) is contrasted with the Jana and the Viś. Possibly, too, another passage¹⁸ contrasts the adhwara, or family sacrifice, with that of the Jana or Viś, rather than, as Zimmer¹⁹ thinks, the village with the two larger units. But it is significant of the particularism of the Vedic Indians that while the king maintained a fire which might be regarded as the sacred fire of the tribe, there is no sure trace²⁰ of any intermediate cult between that of the king and that of the individual householder. The real elements in the state are the Gotra and the Jana, just as ultimately the gens and tribus, the γένος and φῦλον, are alone important. It may that Viś sometimes represents in the older texts what later was known as the Gotra. See Viś.