A History of Agriculture in India v1.c25.s3: The Aryans
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c25.s3
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The Aryans
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The Aryans were tall and handsome people of fair colour. Men wore ear-ornaments and there is mention of an ornamental headdress for women, which stood up like a ‘horn’. Gold was used for bracelets, anklets, ear-rings, and neck-ornaments.
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Dress. The Vedic Aryans used the deer-skin or woollen cloth for garments. The dress usually worn consisted either of three or of two garments. Luxury manifested itself in the wearing of variegated garments or clothing adorned with gold. The hair was carefully combed and oiled. Women wore it plaited, and in some cases men wore it in coils : it was a characteristic of the Vasisthas to have it coiled on the right. Shaving was not unknown, but beards were normally worn, and on festive occasions men bore garlands.
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Food. Milk formed a considerable part of the ordinary food, being taken in its natural state or mixed with grain. Ghee or clarified butter was also much used for frying food as well as for feeding the sacrificial fire. Grain was either parched or ground into flour, and mixed with milk or butter, and made into cakes. As throughout the history of India, vegetables and fruits formed a considerable portion of the dietary. But the Vedic Indians were a nation of meat-eaters, nor need we believe, ‘that they merely ate meat on occasions of sacrifice’. Rather, as in the Homeric age, the slaughter of animals was always in some degree a sacrificial act, and one specially appropriate for the entertainment of guests. The sheep and the goat were the normal food eaten by men and offered to their gods: horse-flesh was probably eaten only at the horse-sacrifice, and not so much as ordinary food as to gain the strength and swiftness of the steed. ‘There is no inconsistency between this eating of flesh and the growing sanctity of cow, which bears already in the Rig-Veda the epithet aghnyā, not to be killed.’ If this interpretation of the term is correct, it is merely proof of the high value attached to that useful animal, the source of the milk which meant so much both for secular and sacred use to the Vedic Indian. The flesh eaten was either cooked in pots of metal or earthenware or roasted on spits.³
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³ Rapson, E.J. (Ed.), The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, pp. 88, 90
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In addition to milk, the Aryan had at least two intoxicating drinks. The first was the soma, which however, by the time of the Rig-Veda, appears almost exclusively as a sacrificial drink. Basham⁴ believes that soma was possibly bhang (Cannabis sativa), whose consumption produces vivid hallucinations and expansion of consciousness. Bhang grows wild in the submontane districts of the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh as well as in Central Asia and South Russia. It is the favourite drink of sadhus and hippies. Bhang is most likely the soma plant.
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⁴ Basham, A.L. The Wonder that was India, p. 236
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The popular drink was, however, the sura, which was distilled from barley. It was extremely intoxicating, and the priests regarded it with disapproval: in one hymn mention is made of men made arrogant by the surā reviling the gods, while another couples it with anger and dicing as the cause of sin.
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Sports. Among the amusements of the Aryans the first place must clearly be given to the chariot race, a natural form of sport among a horse-loving and chivalrous people. The second belongs to dicing. Dancing was also practised, and the dancing of maidens is several times mentioned; it seems that men also, on occasion, danced in the open air, as a metaphor alludes to the dust of the dancing feet of men.
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The Village. All the evidence points to the absence of city life among the tribes. The village probably consisted of a certain number of houses built near each other for purposes of mutual defence, surrounded by a hedge as protection against wild beasts. The pur, which is often referred to and which in later days denotes a ‘town’, was probably no more than a mere earthwork fortification which may in some cases at least have been part of the village. In certain passages, these puras are called autumnal; and by far the most probable explanation of this epithet is that it refers to the flooding of the plains by the rising of the rivers in the autumn, when the cultivators and herdsmen had to take refuge within the earthworks which at other times served as defences against human foes. In the midst of each house burned the domestic fire, which served both for practical and sacrificial uses.⁵
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⁵ Rapson, E.J. (Ed.), The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, p. 91
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All the Aryan buildings, however, appear to have been of wood, and the house seems to have been rectangular, with a thatched roof, divided into more than one room or compartment. Possibly the cattle and sheep, as well as the household, were under a single roof. This pattern of living still prevails in the Kulu Valley.
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Chaupals. The community had periodic assemblies in a meeting-hall, from which women were excluded. Here, the business of the clan was discussed, and gossip retailed. The men gambled at a game of chance played with nuts. One is reminded of chaupals in the present-day Haryana.
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Artisans. The carpenter, working with an axe or adze, and making ploughs and chariots, or the door-posts of a house, was an honoured person. His equipment included the bow-drill, the use of which is implied in the fire-making appliance with which fire was kindled. Next in importance was the worker in metal who smelted the copper ore in a furnace, using the wing of a bird in place of a bellows to fan the flame. Bronze seems to have been the only metal worked; it follows that copper must also have been used, although the word for this metal occurs only later than the Rig-Veda, as does that for tin.
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Leather-workers were certainly there. Leather was used for chariot-races, reins, whips, slings, bow-strings, cuirasses, bellows, bottles, and large containers. It was also used for making carboy-like holders for storing ghee and oil, cattle troughs, shoes and sandals, leather arm protectors for archers, harness and saddles for horses, floor spreads and drum leather.
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Potters made pots which were used for boiling milk, keeping curds and storing grains. They made pitchers for storing water and soma juice.
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Pastoralism. The Vedic Aryans were primarily pastoral. When they settled in the Punjab, they cut the jungles, and built their villages. They grazed their cattle in the jungles, and planted barley in the land close to the abadi (habitation) where it could be protected from wild animals. Like the Gujars of Jammu and Kashmir, they often travelled for long distances in search of pastures, but ultimately returned to their homes along with their cattle.
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The village maintained, on pay or on a share of produce, cowsherds, who were entrusted with the work of taking the cattle to the pasture ground in the morning and bring them back in the evening (Anguttaranikaya. I. 205; Rig-Veda, X. 10. ef). Such a practice still survives in many villages of Haryana.
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A number of hymns in the Vedas are addressed to Indra for gifts of cattle. "May we escape poverty by means of cattle" (R., X. 4. 2. 10). "Grant to us Indra wealth of barley and cattle" (R., X. 3. 13. 7). "Shedder of rain, set open these clouds, set open the cow pastures, send us liberal kine liberally" (R., I.3.3.7, 8). "Givers of horses, cows and garments" (R., V. 3. 10, 8). "Lord of wealth (Indra) visit us as of old to give us cows, horses and chariots" (R., VIII. 6.4. 10).
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The sixth Anuvaka of the eighth Mandala of the Rig-Veda relates wholly to the liberal gifts in cows, mares, camels and horses, one of which is characteristic, viz. "I have received sixty thousand horses, and tens of thousands—a score of hundreds of camels, a thousand brown mares, and ten times ten thousand cows with red patches." (R., VIII. 6.4. 22).
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The name of the sacrificial fee, dakshina, is explained as referring originally to a cow placed 'on the right hand' of the singer for his reward. The singers delight to compare their songs to Indra with the lowing of cows to their calves. At night and in the heat of the day the cows seem to have been kept in the fold; while for the rest of the day they were allowed to wander at will.
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The Aryan vocabulary is rich in names for every aspect of the herd, states Piggott, with special words for 'a cow with a strange calf', 'a cow barren after calving', 'a three-year-old ox', and so on. Red, black, dappled, and light-coloured cows are mentioned, and herds were differentiated by distinctive nicks cut in the ears. One may compare the infinite variety of Punjabi words for buffaloes. The cows were milked three times a day, and castration was practised. Oxen were used for the normal purposes of farm transport.
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Churning of milk was done with a wooden beater, twirled with a rope, now one way, now the other. This practice still continues in the rural areas of India. The churning-stick is called madhani, and the churningpot *chāti* in Punjabi.
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Cows which gave abundant milk and which could be milked with ease are prayed for, thus: "These white kine giving milk like wells" (R., VIII.⁷. 10.3). "I invoke the milk cow that is easily milked, that the handy milker may milk her" (R., I. 22. 8.26). The quality of some cows which let down their milk merely on the sight of their calf has been well observed and referred to thus: "As a cow having a copious stream of milk yields it coming into the presence of the calf" (R., IX. 4.2. 1).⁶
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⁶ Aiyer, A.K.Y.N. *Agriculture and Allied Arts in Vedic India*, pp. 42, 46
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To the Vedic Aryans, the buffalo was a new animal and they were only accustomed to cows. When they came across the buffalo in India, they called it *gauri* and *govala*, extension of the term *go* (cow).⁷
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⁷ Sharma, R.S. *Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation in Rigvedic Society*, I.C.H.R.
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As cows were the principal wealth of the Aryans, they were often stolen, and expeditions were organized for their recovery with prayers to Indra. "Recover thou our cattle, Indra; bring them back; the drum sounds repeatedly as a signal; our leaders mounted on their steeds, assemble; may our warriors be victorious" (R., VI.4.4. 31).
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Sheep and Goats. Dogs were used for guarding houses and for boar-hunting, and they got driven away from the sacrifices, but there is no direct evidence of their use in herding, which seems to have been carried out by a herdsman armed with an ox-goad. The flocks included both sheep and goats, kept for their wool as much as for their flesh. The Sanskrit word for a sheep is used by transference for wool, and no doubt sheep's wool was mainly used, but there is evidence that goat's wool was also used, presumably from such long-haired animals as those of Kashmir. The wool, when spun, was woven, probably by women, on a loom of which the names of warp, woof, and shuttle are preserved.⁸
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⁸ Piggott, S. *Prehistoric India*, pp. 267, 268
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The art of weaving was well known and there are numerous references to it in the Vedas. The fibre used was wool. Wool was woven into carpets and fabrics for garments. The use of the needle was also known, and stitched garments were presumably in use. Softness was a great attribute of the best carpets and of the fabrics for the best garments.
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Hunting. Hunting seems still to have played a considerable part in the life of the Aryans. The hunter used both bow and arrow and snares and traps. There are clear references to the capture of lions in snares, the taking of antelopes in pits, and the hunting of the boar with dogs. Birds were captured in nets stretched out on pegs. Buffaloes seem to have been shot by arrows, and occasionally a lion might be surrounded by hunters and shot to death.
Cites (2)
- Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Uposathasutta — Pāli