The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s1.37

v1.c17.s1.37

The hostile Dāsas or Dasyus are regarded as black skinned² and noseless, doubtless a reference to flat noses, but their chief characteristic, and the one which makes them no real men, is their refusal to worship the Aryan gods, and to give gifts to the priest, the two essential duties of the true Vedic warrior. Of the princes favoured by Indra the greatest, or one of the greatest, is Atithigva or Divodāsa, ‘the servant of the heaven’, whose name has wrongly induced Hillebrandt³ to treat him as a Dāsa and to find the Dāsas among the Dahae, instead of among the aborigines of India itself. Among his foes are men with names like Karañja and Parṇaya,⁴ whose appellations seem very possibly aboriginal, and above all Çambara. That foe has forts, ninety or ninety-nine, or a hundred, and with the aid of Indra he destroys them and defeats him in his home in the mountains. Mythical these references may of course be, and clouds be meant, but it is quite as easy to see in them the real palisades of the aborigines stormed by Aryan princes, and their pursuing their enemy to the hills in which as always the defeated forces from the plains take refuge. Çambara is also defeated by Indra for the sake of Ṛjiçvan, son of Vidathin. He also lulls to slumber and to ruin Cumuri and Dhuni for the sake of Dabhīti, and this reference may not inaptly be applied to an attack on the enemy made by night when the camp was wrapped in slumber.¹ Another foe overcome by Indra is Ilibiça: his name like that of Pipru and of other of Indra's foes seems un-Aryan.