The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c9.40

v1.c9.40

There are clear traces in the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas of social and religious changes in the people. The centre of Vedic culture is still, as probably in the period when the main part of the Rigveda was produced, the land of the Kurus lying between the Sutlej and the Jumna, but importance now attaches also to the kindred tribe of Pañcālas, whose name seems to signify that they were a union of five older tribes, but whose connexion in origin with the Kurus is attested by the record that they were once called Krivis.¹ The Pañcāla land stretched, eastward from Kurukṣetra, from the Merut district to Allahabad, and included the territory between the Jumna and the Ganges, called the Doab. But the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² records the advance of the Brahmanical system into Kosala and Videha, which roughly correspond with Oudh and Tirhut.³ The Atharvaveda knows iron and silver as well as the copper and gold of the Rigveda. The comparative frequence of mention of the elephant and the appearance of the tiger and the panther in the later Saṁhitās, whereas lion and wolf are conspicuous in the Rigveda, as well as the mention of rice, are clear indications of the advance of the Vedic Indians further to the east and the south. The Açvattha (*ficus religiosa*) is rare in the Rigveda, but becomes common in the Atharvaveda, which also knows the Nyagrodha (*ficus indica*). At the same time it is clear that the system of classes became more and more complicated and the divisions were drawn more and more distinctly: the Yajurveda enumerates large numbers of special classes which in some degree at least seem to have been hereditary. The admixture of the people doubtless had proceeded very far: after the Rigveda it would be difficult to find any simple consciousness of the contrast of the colours of the Aryan and the Çūdra classes as opposed as white and black. The Rigveda, it is probable, already knew of the system by which normally the princely class, the priests, and the ordinary people were distinguished, and it knew also of the slaves made from the aborigines, but it was left to this later period to introduce a much more elaborate and fixed system of division. The Çūdras must on the one hand often have become rather serfs than slaves, when large bodies of them were reduced to subjection by the invaders, while among the ordinary people hereditary functions began to supersede the variety of choice of occupation which is evidenced by the Rigveda.⁴ To these factors of differentiation must be added the result of mixture of races and rules of intermarriage: the doctrine familiar in later texts that many classes of the people were due to mixed marriages between men and women of different classes indicates that this factor must have been of considerable importance in assisting in the development of classes into castes, the process of which, however, we have to conjecture from most inadequate material. With the development of society there doubtless took place growth in prosperity and wealth, favouring the constantly increasing elaboration of the sacrifice with its resulting exaltation of the importance of the trained priesthood, without which the offerings could not successfully be carried out. But while the tribes, in several cases at least, doubtless were more closely united, and while thus the royal power became greater, there is no proof of the growth of any large kingdoms or empires,¹ nor can we say that there was much development of city life.