Fwd: THE ARYAN QUESTION REVISITED : Romila Thapar

[Guest guest]

aryavart , " vajradhari " <vajradhari> wrote:

Transcript of lecture delivered on 11th October 1999,

at the Academic Staff College, JNU

 

 

 

Let me begin by saying the obvious, that the Aryan question is the

probably most complex, complicated question in the Indian history.

And it requires very considerable expertise in handling both the

sources of the questions that arise. The expertise consists of

knowing something about at least four different fields first of all

archaeology, because a lot of the remains, of almost all the

cultures, comes to us from excavations and there is the continual

attempt to try and identify such cultures with the Aryans. And when I

say this I mean that it is not enough simply to say that you pick up

a list of items from excavated sites and say that the Rigveda has

some items, therefore … they are identical cultures. When I talk

about archaeology I am also talking about the way in which the total

society functions and how these elements are integrated.

 

The second area of expertise is linguistics and here I would like to

emphasize, very strongly, that it is not enough merely to know

Sanskrit to be able to say that you can handle the questions that

come up in the interpretation of the Vedic texts. There is now, since

the last thirty years, there has developed a huge body of information

which comes from a discipline called linguistics. Those in this

discipline do comparative studies of different language structures.

Now I am deliberately saying language structures and not language

because the old fashioned philosophy was one that compared languages

and if 2 words sounded similar, like you have aspa in old Iranian and

you have asva in Sanskrit it was immediately said, oh there must be a

connection but today if that connection does not hold you have to

analyse the entire structure of the language, what is the grammar,

what is the morphology, its form, what are its phonetics, phonology

and various other aspects. So it is in fact a very detailed

examination of the language involved. It is also necessary to know

how one analyses texts. There was a time, there are still historians

who will say, but it says so, Rigveda says such and such and one of

the examples that I will be dealing with is a very famous example

of 'Krishna Tvac - black skin - the Rigveda says so. Now it is not

enough to just take that expression and say it means 'black skin'

because there is a whole cultural context in which that expression is

used and it is that cultural context which the historian also has to

analyse in addition to the actual words that are occurring in the

text.

 

The historical context, this relates to a whole series of

questions, how society is defined in the past - agro pastoral,

agrarian, urban… What is the meaning of these terms? What is the

interaction between ecological, social, economic, cultural, religious

forms? These are all aspects of a historical problem and when you are

studying a total problem like the so-called the Aryan question you

have to go into the interaction of all these different aspects. Is

there a difference between a cattle rearing society and a society

which carries out overseas trade? And these are fundamental questions

in historical analyses. You cannot avoid them. You cannot just say

there is reference to cattle in the Rigveda and cattle are depicted

on the Indus seals therefore there is a similarity. It is the

function. The function, both the actual function, the ritual

function, the role that cattle play in a particular society in terms

of its economy, its rituals and so on.

 

And the fourth discipline which I think is important though not

every historian would agree with me on this is social anthropology.

The reason why I include social anthropology is because it gives us

some direction in using a comparative analysis. What do I mean by

this? What I mean is that anthropology, social anthropology, and I

would underline social anthropology, I am not referring to physical

anthropology or any of the other things - measuring skulls and colour

of hair and eyes and so on, no, social anthropology. How do societies

function? The purpose is that the social anthropologists analyses a

past society and comes up with an explanation as to how it behaves,

how it relates to various things like environment and other societies

and so on. Can the historians use the question that the

anthropologist has asked and apply those questions to his data and

see what answers he gets? Now please note I am not saying that the

historian should take the model of that society from anthropology and

apply to his historical data. What I am saying is that the kind of

questions which the social anthropologists ask of their data, some of

these questions can be quite helpful when historians ask the same

questions of their historical data.

 

Let me in passing mention one very interesting comparison of this

sort. There is cattle-keeping tribe in Sudan called the Nuer, on whom

a very famous anthropologist called Evans Pritchard has done a great

deal of work, very detailed work. And there is a fascinating book by

Bruce Lincoln who compares the evidence of the Rigveda, and also of

the Avesta, the Iranian text and the findings about the way the Nuer

society functions and argues that there are also cattle-keeping

societies. Therefore we can use the insights of the anthropologists

to help us understand how historically Rgvedic society may also have

functioned, not totally, not entirely, but there may be some clues

and therefore we should look for these clues. This is something of

course, an aspect which has been emphasized particularly with

relevance to India where in the early days it used to be

called 'living pre-history' . This is what D.D. Kosambi at one point

referred to. That is if you go into the Indian countryside you can

actually see survivals of cultural and social forms that might have

existed earlier. Mind you this is getting more and more difficult now

with the kind of rapid changes that are taking place. But

nevertheless what he is trying to suggest is the historian should

keep his eyes open and wherever he sees societies that seem to

suggest something he has read in his earlier sources then he should

ask the kind of questions that would be useful to analyse in the

sources. These days of course it has become very fashionable under

the rubric of a new discipline called ethno-archaeology where you

actually go out and study early societies like tribal societies and

so on and try and explain archaeological data on the basis of these

studies.

 

Now given the complexity, given the fact that you really have to

know about these disciplines and understand the inter relationships

between these disciplines, I am always amazed and surprised that so

many people, totally untrained in any of these disciplines rush to

make statements about the Aryans. Whether it is the media,

newspapers, popular books, whatever it may be everybody imagines that

they are experts on the Aryans. And you get an absolutes mass of

total nonsense that comes on. And now a days of course the problem is

that internet is getting full of all these. And so those students who

think that they can bypass library reading by surfing the internet

very often have a rude shock because they reproduce a lot of this

garbage and then discover their teacher telling them they are getting

failure grades because it does not hold. So do remember that when

some sizzling stories appear in the newspapers about how somebody has

solved the problem about who Aryans were, ask yourself the question

what is the evidence that is being used and how is it being used.

These are fundamental questions which we as a society tend not to ask

and I am sorry that the Indian middle class is becoming more and more

gullible as far as history is concerned. In the old days when I was a

child, when I was much younger, I do remember people asking the

question, somebody says that they have solved this historical problem

but where is the evidence? What is the logic of the argument? But

today it is the case of the newspapers or the Sunday glossy magazine

that tells you that so and so has deciphered the Indus script and

everybody says 'ho gaya' - it's been deciphered. Nobody asks the

question what is the evidence for this decipherment? So do remember

that it is a question, I shall also be talking about in a moment,

which is politically highly charged. Remember that in all situations

of nationalism, whether it be anti colonial secular nationalism or

whether it be religious nationalism, the issue of origins and

identities becomes a very major issue. Many a battle is fought over

the question of origins and identities. So it is politically charged,

it is sensational on the media and therefore the chances for serious

scholarship to push through and say, no, wait, there is a different

way of looking becomes increasingly difficult unless all of you as

teachers of history go back to the question, the fundamental

question, each time -- what is the theory based on and what is the

logic of the argument.

 

Now I propose to discuss the question in four different phases or

stages. First I will talk a little bit about what we call the

historiography of the question. Remember of course with all major

historical questions the way in which the historians have handled a

subject and data and how this handling has changed from time to time

is a very fundamental question. So I will first talk little bit about

the historiography of the subject, I will then talk about the

archaeological background, then a little bit about the linguistic

background and finally end up with an attempt at some kind of

reconstruction. Now, the historiography of the Aryan question goes

back to the nineteenth century. The term Aryan as it is used in

English with a capital 'A' was invented in the nineteenth century. It

was invented by European scholars who then proceeded to project Aryan

as both a language and a race. I will come to that in a moment. The

term Aryan itself is derived from 2 sources. There is a very famous

ancient text from Iran, the Avesta, which is linked to the religion

of Zoroaster, what is known these days and practised virtually only

by the Parsis. The Avesta which was probably written at approximately

the same time as the Rigveda uses the term 'airiya' for describing

the authors of the text. The authors refer to themselves as 'airiya'

from which of course later on you get Iran. And the Rigveda uses the

term Arya. So taking both these terms into consideration it was

decided that this new language and these new people were to be called

Aryan. Now the nineteenth century scholars, this includes people like

Max Muller were fully aware that language and race are different

things and yet frequently they confused languages with the race and

equated them. And that is where in many ways the problem arises. They

talked about an Aryan race on the basis of people speaking the same

languages. Strictly speaking they should be speaking not about the

Aryans but about the Aryan speaking people. But since this is an

awkward phrase to use it got cut down to the Aryans. It ceased to be

just a language label and became a label for a racial entity as well.

The difference between language and race is enormous. The two cannot

be equated. Why? Because language is cultural. It is a functional

construct deliberately forged by a society for communication and

articulation. When a society wishes to communicate within itself or

with other societies it invents language. When it wishes to express

something it invents language. So it is a deliberate cultural

construct-- that is why a particular language has different forms and

it varies from one social group to another. And when a person starts

speaking in a language you can generally tell if you are familiar

with the language which social group that person comes from. Race on

the other hand is physical, biological descent. It has got nothing to

do with social construction. So language and race are in fact totally

separate distinct features and the two cannot be equated. But right

through the nineteenth century with reference to the Aryans the two

were equated and right through the twentieth century in the popular

mind in India they continue to be equated. So please keep this in

mind that you cannot talk about an Aryan race. Similarly you cannot

talk about a Dravidian race because once again the notion Dravidian

race is based on language group, the Dravidian language group and it

is incorrect to equate the two. Nor can you talk about a Munda race.

These are all language labels and you have to be very careful to keep

them as such. The implication of this is also that you cannot equate

a language with an archaeological culture in the absence of a script.

If you are excavating and there is no script available you cannot say

this culture that I am excavating is Aryan or Dravidian or whatever

it may be. This becomes an impossibility because Aryan is a language

label and you can only call archaeological culture Aryan because

strictly speaking if you find some evidence of the use of that

language.

 

Now the historiography then moves from the term Aryan, the use of

the term both for language and race, to the writings of Max Mueller

who uses the concept of the Aryan race as developed in Europe. There

are many detailed histories of this which I would not go into here

because that simply complicates the question even further. He uses

the concept of the Aryan race here and applies it to Vedic India. Max

Mueller argues therefore, that the Aryan races originate in Central

Asia. One branch comes to Iran, then continues to India another

branch goes to Europe. Now let me see if I can reach out to the map.

The Aryans that…. This was the area. Some people say more towards the

eastern side some say towards between Aral sea and the Caspian sea …

but this is generally the area where the Indo-European speaking

people are first found, that is the mother language from which all

other languages evolve which I would discuss later on.

 

Max Muller argued then that from Central Asia one branch came to

Iran and that branch split and the Indo Aryans came to Afghanistan

into northern India. So we are really talking about a large chunk of

Central Asia, Western Asia, Europe. Now this is the point I would

like to emphasize. When we are talking about this question we cannot

restrict our discussion only to what is happening in the sub-

continent. We have to take into consideration what is happening in

present day Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia. In fact, even

further, as we shall see Turkey and Iraq and Mesopotamian centres are

also involved. This is only to suggest once again how complicated the

question is. It is even geographically not limited. Now Max Muller

then says that there was this branch that came down into Iran and

then after a white split off and one section moves into northern

India. The Indian branch conquered the indigenous people and imposed

on them its language, Sanskrit, and its civilization called the Aryan

civilization. Max Muller's theory was that the foundation of European

civilization and Indian civilization were from the same group of

people they were related. What was the reaction to this theory? Max

Muller is propounding these theories in the second half of the

nineteenth century in various books. First of all there is the

reaction of Indian historians who accept the theory and argue that

this is relevant to the beginnings of Indian history. They also

accept the theory of the Dravidian race on the basis of Dravidian

languages and suggest that the people that were conquered were

probably Dravidian speaking and they, as the popular theory has it,

were pushed to the South where they settled down eventually and

became the major group. Now what is interesting about this theory

both from the British side and the Indian side is that whereas for

colonial historians it was useful because they could argue that

Indian has had a whole history of invasions from the west bringing in

civilization. On the Indian nationalist side it could be argued that

the upper caste Indian who has always been regarded as " the " Indian,

that was the creator of the Indian civilization is Aryan and is

related in fact to the coloniser, to the British. And there is one

statement which I am very fond of quoting. I quote it in everything

that I write, which is Keshab Chandra Sen talking about the coming of

the British to India being the coming together of 'parted cousins'

which in a sense gives you an idea of part of the reason why there is

the interest in this theory. Remember of course, to be very cynical--

all historians when they put out theories have an axe to grind and

have a political message. So always ask yourself, what is the

political message of this historian that you might be reading.

 

Apart from this, this was one theory that had a very widespread

popular appeal. All kinds of groups, all over the country picked up

this theory and built their political ideologies on the basis of

this. Let me give you two extreme examples of the way in which the

theory was used. First of all in the later part of the 19th century

there was a very famous person called Jyotiba Phule in

Maharashtra ,who accepted Max Muller's theory and went on to argue

that therefore, the inheritors of the land in India are the lower

castes because they are the real, original Indians and the upper

caste, particularly the brahmins are the Aryans that came as alien

invaders. The Brahmins were aliens, they were oppressive and they

imposed their rule.

 

So this becomes an ammunition in the hands of an ideology which is

arguing for caste confrontation and saying that the Dalits and the

tribals are the indigenous peoples, not the upper caste people. He

uses a lot of mythology very interestingly. In fact it is quite

fascinating. He uses for example the myth of Parasurama, who

destroyed the kshatriyas twenty one times. And he says, there you see

this is the clear example of Brahminical destruction of the

indigenous Indians. This is now being woven into what is sometimes

called the dalit version of the theory. Those of who you might have

read Kancha Ilaiah's book Why I am not a Hindu will find it plays an

important part in that. Of course the weakness of the theory is that

it avoids the discussion of how and why the lower caste became

subservient. It is very easy to say X came in and conquered Y and

therefore Y became subservient. It is much more difficult to try and

explain the process by which Y became subservient. Now at the other

extreme, giving a totally different interpretation to the theory, is

the Hindutva version. First developed by people like Savarkar and

Golwalkar and interestingly it very closely follows the theory that

was put forward by the theosophists, particularly by a person called

Col. Alcott who was a British theosophist and played an important

part in the Theosophical movement.

 

To begin with, the theory of invasion was half-heartedly accepted

but slowly it began to be discarded until finally by the 1930s, more

exactly the late 1930s, it was vehemently denied. The argument was

therefore that there was no invasion. Therefore, all Aryans are

indigenous. Secondly all Hindus are Aryans ipso facto, therefore, all

Hindus are indigenous and have not come from outside. Sanskrit is the

earliest of the human languages and originates in India and the Aryan

culture went from India to West Asia, to Europe. So India is the

cradle of the world civilization. In this theory the further argument

was, that all Hindus are indigenous, but the aliens or the foreigners

are the Muslims and the Christians. In fact Savarkar also adds

communists for good measure. But anyway, mainly it is the Muslims and

the Christians who are described as aliens. And why are they alien?

Because India is neither their Pitribhumi nor their Punyabhumi. It is

neither the land of their ancestors, nor is it the land of their

religion, the assumption being that all Muslims and all Christians

are in origin people who came at some stage from outside India to

India and certainly both Islam and Christianity had their origins in

West Asia and not in India. The logic of this kind of thinking and it

is the logic that we now facing in some of the recent statements that

are being made about the Aryans, is that all Aryans are indigenous

and all Hindus are Aryans, it is also that all major cultures have to

be defined as Aryan. If Aryan is at the root of Indian civilization

everything has to be taken back to the Aryan. Therefore, the Harappan

culture, which most scholars have assumed to be pre-Vedic, has to be

called Aryan. Therefore, the attempt today among some people to argue

that the Indus civilization should be called Indus-Saraswati

civilization and that it should be seen as representing

archaeologically the Rigveda i.e. both the Rigveda and the Harappan

cities represent identical cultures. Now what we have in these two

extreme versions, and these are examples of the way in which the

theory is used, there are many other versions in between. In one

version caste is the criterion of difference, in the other, the

Hindutva version, religion is the criterion of difference. So there

is a kind of shift of emphasis and the shift of emphasis is

determined by the politics of ideology, of looking at this history.

 

Throughout the 20th Century there have been attempts against the

attempts of the nationalist historians who accepted this theory, and

there have been other attempts to prove that the Aryans were

indigenous to India. In the early part of the century the locations

were Punjab, Multan, Kashmir, Himalayas. Now of course it is a

problem because all the areas that were earlier located as the

homeland of the Aryans are all in Pakistan. So the problem is how to

retrieve them and bring them into India, which is a very difficult

problem, but it is something i.e. being sought. The argument is

largely based on the theory that the Rigveda does not mention

migration and that if they had come from elsewhere we should find

fragments of Rigvedic hymns in Iran and Afghanistan as well. That the

focus of the ritual is the cult of soma, which is supposedly found on

the mountain called Mujavant and this is in the Hindukush and

therefore it is on the Indian side. The more recent attempts, i.e.

since 1947, argue that there was no invasion because the Aryans are

all indigenoustake the Rgveda in date back to the fifth millennium

BC, 4500 BC, making it prior to the Harappan culture, even earlier

than the Harappan culture. And the homeland is said to be in India,

and therefore the Indus civilization should be called the Indus

Sarasvati because the Sarasvati part of it is on the Indian side of

the border. If the Rgveda then predates the Harappan civilization or

is of the same date as the Harappan civilization, there is

an " unbroken " continuity from the Indus Civilization to the present

and that continuity is articulated if expressed in the existence of

Hindu Culture so we're back to that. These attempts that have been

made so far do not correlate all the evidence. There is a tendency to

take even just the archaeology or just to read the particular vedic

text, usually the Rig Veda. They are generally unaware of the recent

studies that have been carried out on the linguistics of Vedic

Sanskrit, and they still argue merely from reading the texts. Nor is

there an attempt to understand what is meant by interpreting an

archaeological site. They are still people who simply go on talking

about " this is mentioned in the Rig Veda, this is found in such and

such an excavation, there it is the same culture. " Nor is there any

understanding of the way societies function, that is the least of it.

Right, now let me turn, so much for the historiography of it. Do you

have any questions on this?

 

[questions] …

 

Alright, now let's look at the archaeological evidence. Let me

repeat once again that when we look at the archaeological evidence,

we must try and understand the parameters of the Harappan system, how

did it function as a system. It's not enough merely to look at

individual objects. You must try and understand the totality.

 

There is a considerable difference in the early Harappan cultures

leading upto the establishment of the urban centres. The earlier

sites are in Baluchistan, places like the most famous site which is

Mehrgarh, going back to about the 7th millenium, which is an

extremely important site because it moves from being an agro-pastoral

site to an agricultural site to then imbibing - some of the sites in

the neighbourhood start imbibing some of the characteristics of

Harappan urbanization. So one can see a continuity of change from a

village site to the beginnings of urban centres. Now that is

Baluchistan. Does everybody know where Baluchistan is ? We then move

a little bit to the northwest - this area - which has sites like

Rahman Dheri, slowly creeping up towards the urban centres the

earliest urban centres which were present in Harappa and Mohenjo

Daro. So really the action is taking place in this area and it's a

fairly integrated, consolidated area where this is happening. What is

now being argued is that along the Hakra river, which partly flows

between the Ghaggar river … parallel to the Sutlej, parallel to the

Indus, into the Rann of Kutch, its called the Hakra. The upper part

of which is the Ghaggar and it is this which is sometimes equated

with the Saraswati. It is now being argued that there were a number

of sites in an area of Cholistan which is at the border of India and

Pakistan on the Hakra. And that these indicate that the Saraswati

valley was as important as the Indus valley and therefore the

civilization should be called the Indus-Saraswati Civilization. If

we're not careful by the time we finish with all this argumentation

it'll become just the Saraswati Civilization - Indus will be dropped.

 

But the point of course is that it is not the number of sites that

matter, it is the nature of the sites. Are these sites conducive to

urbanization? That is yet to be seen. At the moment they don't give

that picture. The early Harappan sites of the Cholistan area are

largely what are called camp sites. Nomadic, temporary. And it is

only in the mature Harappan phase, when urbanization has already

taken place in the Indus valley that there is a big increase in the

number . And soon after the mature Harappan phase there is a

desertion of these sites towards the Indo-Gangetic watershed. So the

picture that emerges, if one looks at it carefully, not in terms of

numbers but in terms of the nature of sites is one which would

suggest that there really isn't a challenge as yet to the

urbanization of the Indus valley-- to urbanization taking place

earlier in the Indus valley rather than in the Hakra valley.

 

Now there is another complication, which is a linguistic

complication. I won't go into the details just yet, I'll touch on

those later. The Avesta which is the text of the Zoroastrians written

in old Iranian, which is the language which is cognate with, parallel

to, close to, related to, Vedic Sanskrit, refers to three place

names - Harahwati, Harayu, Haptahindu. Now the old Iranian changes

Vedic " s " into " h " , consistently. Whatever begins with an " s " in

Vedic Sanskrit, changes into an " h " in old Iranian. So Harahwati is

in fact Saraswati and the Avesta describes it as a river in the

Helmand area of Afghanistan. … The Harayu is therefore the Sarayu,

also a river in Afghanistan. Haptahindu is Saptasindhu and it is said

in the Avesta that the Aryans, the Aireyas, migrated eastwards to

various lands and they list 16 and the last of these is the

Haptahindu, Saptasindhu. So the complication is that when we say the

Rig Veda is referring to the Saraswati, and the Indus-Sarasvati

civilization, - it challenges the whole basis of the location of the

Harappan civilization. In fact, we have these developments taking

place in Baluchistan and the Northwest and then later on in Gujarat

and Saurashtra there is again the evolution from village settlements

into urban centres and the urbanization is Harappan urbanization.

 

Now the other interesting thing is that the difference between the

Rig Veda and the Harappan is that the Harappan civilization or the

Harappan contacts, more than civilization cover a very much wider

area than is even thought of in the Rig Veda. Harappa, Harappan

merchants have trading relations - … Harappan seals have been found

in Oman near the copper belt, so it seems that Harappan traders,

manufacturers, producers of copper mined the copper in Oman and then

carried it to Mesopotamia. Similarly, lapis lazuli has been found in

Mesopotamia and it occurs all along this route to its place of origin

which is in northern Afghanistan. So the Harappan traders are not

only controlling a vast amount of territory, or lets say the Harappan

trading culture is spread over a vast amount of territory whereas the

Rig Veda is only concerned with the Punjab and Rajasthan. The

Harappan cities occur in far flung areas and Harappan traders have

contact with many other parts of West Asia. These extended areas are

not referred to in the Rig Veda. In fact the geography of the Rig

Veda is fairly restricted. Once again let me repeat what I said

earlier-- that in order to understand this question you must realize

that it covers a huge geography - contacts, communication, inter-

relations, exchanges are not restricted to India, they cover a vast

area of West Asia and Central Asia as well.

 

 

 

The characteristic features of the Indus Civilization are that first

of all it has an agrarian base. It is basically an agrarian

civilization with facilities for storing grain. It is essentially

urban with huge structures - brick platforms and buildings - and this

would have required very elaborate arrangements for controlling the

making of these and controlling labour, the construction of these

huge platforms and the monuments. There is a clear demarcation

between the citadel area and the residential area and there is in

each Harappan city the gathering of resources and centres of craft

production which would involve supervisors, managers, craftsmen.

Crafts production being of beads, of copper, of ivory of various

other things. The organization of such urban centres would have

required sophisticated political control with very considerable

supervision. It is essentially a copper-bronze technology. And the

use of metal is fairly limited. There is a script - the famous

Harappan script on the seals, which at the moment is undeciphered, in

spite of various attempts to read it in various ways, it is still

undeciphered. It could be connected with the people just to the west

of the Indus valley - the proto-Elamite in Iran. It could be

connected to the Mesopotamians, it might also have been used in the

Oxus valley where the mining of lapis lazuli was done and Harappan

sites were found. In other words what I'm trying to suggest is that

the Harappan trader was probably multi-lingual, at least at the

superficial level of using language for trade. And therefore when we

talk of THE language, we have to be a little careful not to get

carried away by the idea that there was just the one dominant

language that was being used. Certainly there would have been the one

dominant language within all the cities, but there would have been a

familiarity with other languages around. And then there are all the

other things you are familiar with - the religion is largely a

fertility cult.

 

The decline of the cities, both environmental and economic - the

important thing to remember about the decline of the cities is that

the CITIES decline, the Harappan system does not necessarily

disappear. The Harappan system as such gets disrupted because the

cities declined. So the question one has to ask is what happened in

the countryside. The cities are slowly getting poorer and poorer, the

squatters are moving in, they are falling apart, etc. What is

happening in the countryside, what's happening in the villages. And

this is where post-Harappan archaeology becomes important.

 

We find that there is a fair amount of activity on what is called

the Indo-Iranian borderland the areas, the frontier zone between what

would today be Pakistan Afghanistan, Iran. There is also an immense

variation in the sites that you find in northern India. In the

Punjab, for instance the post-Harappan situation is typified by the

Cemetery H cultures which are new and different but are limited to

the Punjab. In Cholistan there is a migration towards the Indo-

Gangetic watershed. In Afghanistan in the Gomal valley there is the

site of Gumla and Kot Diji which experiences a certain amount of

destruction and fire. Not a massive destruction, but some

destruction. In the Swat valley there are the sites of the Gandhara

grave culture, and in the Bolan valley near the site of Mehrgarh is

the site of Pirak which also suggests association with the Indo-

Iranian borderlands. Now what is interesting about all these sites is

that they do indicate the coming in of two new features in the second

millennium, not earlier, but in the second millennium, there is the

presence of the horse, there is the presence of iron, of iron

technology, which is different from the Harappan which was copper-

bronze, and the sites are all located in the valleys and passes along

the northwest and the borderlands. So there is a multiplicity of

groups of people settled along the frontiers. There isn't a single

entry point into India, it is dispersed. And then when we come

further into the Indo-Gangetic watershed, there is again, with the

Painted Grey ware sites the presence of the horse and of iron

technology. The horse therefore becomes a very important piece of

evidence in connection with the arrival of Indo-Aryan speaking

people.

 

So much for the archaeological background, let's turn to the

linguistic evidence. First of all the reconstruction of Indo-Aryan.

May be I should use the board here. Indo aryan, Old iranian simply to

distinguish it from middle Iranian and new Iranian the same way as

Indo aryan is distinguished from middle Indo aryan and new Indo

Aryan. In between these two is Luristani which is spoken by a small

group of people tucked away in Afghanistan and it is a combination of

Old Iranian and Indo Aryan. Then you have proto Indo Aryan, which I

will explain in a minute, and proto Iranian. Now these two, proto

Indo European and Indo European are reconstructed languages, i.e.,

that they don't actually exist in records, there are no records of

these languages, but that they are reconstructed from the

distribution of Indo-European languages, and it's not just these two,

you move further afield and there are languages in Europe like Greek,

the Baltic region going all the way to the Celtic languages of

Ireland, all of which are related to the Indo-European. So proto Indo

European and Indo-European are reconstructed from a comparative study

of all these languages. But the closely related ones, the ones that

are really absolutely parallel are proto Indo Aryan for which the

evidence is very limited and comes from Mesopotamia and later on,

proto Aryan, Old Iranian and Indo Aryan. It is thought that Indo

Aryan and Old Iranian developed out of proto Indo Iranian because of

the closeness of the two languages. Now it is argued that Indo Aryan

arrived in the midst of an area that was speaking other languages,

possibly proto Dravidian, and Austo Asiatic, i.e. Mundari and so on.

In other words there is a spread of a variety of languages in

northern India prior to the emergence of Indo Aryan. That is an

important fact. Indo-aryan and proto Dravidian are distinctively

different languages. One is inflectional, Indo-Aryan, and the other

is agglutinative. In Central Asia, it is thought that you had the

origins of the Indo-European speakers. The earliest records of any

Indo European language occur in Turkey and Mesopotamia and date to

the second millennium BC. Now this is fairly late, this is post-

Harappan in Indian terms. There are tablets from the site of Kultepe

which have a few words which can be read as Indo-Aryan. They are not

clearly Indo Aryan, but with a little bit of effort they can be read

as Indo-Aryan.

 

The more direct evidence comes from Northern Syria where there is a

treaty between the Hittites and the Mitannis, two groups of people,

and in the course of this treaty they call to witness the gods of

Hittites - Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya. They are actually written

as Mitrashil, Uruvanshil, Indurah, Nashatyana. But they have been

used as versions of what later became Mitra, Varuna, Indra and

Nasatya. So that is one little bit of evidence of fleeting Indo-Aryan

presence in Mesopotamia and Syria. There is also a tract on training

of horses where a few passages have survived. Unfortunately in all

these cases no full text has survived. There is just the occasional

word and there are words used which can be again converted into Indo-

Aryan which it is believed was spoken by those who trade horses. And

similarly there are one or two other instances, very slight evidence,

of the Indo-Aryans connected with horses dating to the second

millenium, generally the middle of the second millenium BC, no

earlier.

 

These Indo-Aryans, fragments of Indo-Aryans, survives for a few

centuries, three or four centuries and then disappear. The languages

of the area go back to being Akkadian and later on Semitic. Indo-

Aryan does not survive or proto Indo-Aryan does not survive in this

region. They did not then, whoever these proto Indo-Aryan speakers

were, they did not replace the original language. There is also no

evidence of hostility between the speakers of Indo-Aryan and the

local people there.

 

 

 

Who were these proto Indo-Aryans? The problem is that they suddenly

appear in north Mesopotamia, I mean the treaty I have been talking

about, the tablets that have been found in north Syria, and the

border of Syria and Turkey. There is absolutely no link between that

area, Iran, or India. So the theory that was once put forward that

the Mitanni-Hittite treaty was signed by Indo -Aryans who went all

the way across there and conquered Syria and Mesopotamia, does not

hold. There is absolutely not much evidence of connection between

these two areas or for that matter a connection between Syria and the

area of north eastern Iran. So it is thought that before proto

Iranian split into old Iranian and Indo Aryan that the group of

people probably from the Caspian Sea region went around following a

trading route and established themselves in that area and were just

swallowed up by the local culture. They were unable to establish

themselves as a separate culture.

 

Let me turn to something which is much more comprehensible now --the

links between India and Iran, the links between the Rgveda and the

Avesta. The Avesta consists of two sections, the gatha section which

is the earlier section, and the Yashta and Vendidad which are the

later sections. It is now dated to about 1400 BC and could therefore

be a contemporary text with the Rgveda. The languages are cognates

and there is much similarity in syntax and vocabulary. Those who I

have referred to as the Airia and the Arya are the ones who speak

these languages. They are grammatically very close and the sounds,

the phonetic closeness is also very apparent. For example, I

mentioned that the H and the S are interchangeable, so in the Avesta

you have references to the Airia and the Daha which is the Dasa, and

Dahyu which is the Dasyu. They are not mentioned as being black

skinned. They are simply mentioned as being people in the

neighbourhood. You have the hotar in the Avesta, you have the hotr

and the hotar in fact in the Rgveda. You also have zautar because the

z and h are interchangeable. So the Vedic hiranya becomes the Iranian

zaranya and the atharavan of the Avesta is the atharvan of the Veda,

the Mithra of the Avesta is the Mitra of the veda. And so on. The

Yima of the Avesta is the Yama of the Veda. It is very close. The

Avesta does describe an Aryan homeland which it calls the arya nama

veho, the way from which the aryas came or the way along which the

aryas came. It describes the migration of people from the Oxus river

to northeastern Iran, south western Afghanistan, the borderlands, to

the regions that I mentioned earlier, Harahavati, Harayu, ultimately

ending up in Hapta Hindu. So there is a clear geographical migration.

If this is a later addition, i.e., two or three centuries later it

reflects the kinds of ideas that existed amongst the Iranians about

the migrations of the Iranian speaking people. There is also a

similarity of concepts in the Avesta and the Rgveda, but they are

often reversed. That is that you have the ahura in the Avesta, which

is the great god, the great light, and you have the asura in Vedic

Sanskrit which begins as the great god. Varuna is described as asura.

Then gradually, the meaning changes and it becomes the negative, it

becomes the demon. The daiva in the Avesta is the demon., Indra is a

daiva in the Avesta and is a demon. And of course we all know that in

the Rgveda he is not a demon. He is a great hero.

 

So the theory has been put forward that when the Iranian speaking

people were living in Iran there was a split and one section moved

off into Afghanistan and India and it is this section that created

the language of Indo- Aryans. So the argument is that there was a

split and a reversal. That is, everything that the Iranians believed

in, the groups that began to move away believed in the opposite. They

reversed as it were the concepts and possibly it is this reversal of

concepts, it would seem, that arrived in India. The Avesta is also

depicting a society of cattle keepers and the great honour given to

the horse, the aspa. There is a closeness then of old Iranian and

Indo Aryan, a closeness which is also expressed in the fact that the

only two Indo European speaking cultures that have the cult of the

soma plant, which is called the haoma in the Avestan, are the

Iranians and the Indians. This cult does not exist amongst other Indo

European speaking people. Therefore there is in fact a very close

link between them.

 

Now I would like to turn to talking about something which has become

very central to this discussion before I go on to the last part which

is on historical reconstruction. What has become central to this

discussion now is the whole question of the relationship between the

Harappan culture and the Rg Veda. I would like to argue that there is

a substantial difference and that this difference needs to be kept in

mind when we talk about the two cultures.

 

First of all the geographical extent of the two is very different.

The Rgveda is very much smaller in area as compared to the Indus,

both as compared to the Indus civilization in terms of the cities of

the Indus, and, as well as the contacts which the Indus traders had.

There are references to migrations. The theory that there are no

references to migrations is incorrect. There are references to

migrations and the migrations are generally in the direction of

coming from Afghanistan to the Punjab and then crossing the Punjab to

the watershed. Indra, we are told, helps the Yadu and the Turvasas to

cross swollen rivers. Now the rivers feature a great deal in the

Rgveda. Because it is a mountainous terrain, therefore any amount of

migrating that people do would be along river valleys and the rivers

are very important. There is to the best of my knowledge mention of

only one mountain, the Mujavant mountain, where the soma plant grows.

 

The names of the rivers also migrate, and this is an important

point. The Harahvati becomes Sarasvati, quite a distance away from

Afghanistan to Punjab. The Harayu becomes Sarayu from Afghanistan to

UP and the Gomati from Afghanistan again to UP. So there is the

migration of names of rivers. Now this is not unusual. Names

ofplaces, rivers, and mountains frequently migrate. What is

interesting is the direction in which they migrate and the

consistency with which, at least in these three samples, they are

moving from the north west from the borderlands towards, the

watershed and the Ganges valley. We are told that the Bharata tribe,

for example, migrates from the Ravi to the Beas, this is in the

Punjab, and later on, the Srauta Sutra of Baudhayana refers to the

Parasus and the Aratta who stayed behind and others who moved east

into the middle Ganges valley and the places equivalent such as Kasi,

Videhas, the Kuru Pancala and so on. In fact, when one looks for

them, there are evidence of migration. The question really is what

kind of migration and I would like to suggest that it was not in fact

a massive migration, it was not an invasion because there is very

little evidence for invasions, as I will try and suggest.

 

You did not have thousand upon thousands of people coming from the

Khyber pass and settling down in the Punjab. You had multiple points,

as I had tried to show from the Swat valley all the way down to the

Quetta valley and you had small groups of people who come in and

settle. I am rather attracted by the idea of what one scholar,

Anthony has called a leap frogging migration, i.e., A moves to X , a

section of A moves a little further down to Y, a section of B moves

still further to Z. and these are small groups moving. They are

interrelated up to a point, they are not related. They are moving

some distances, they are moving in different directions. So the idea

is not that there is a huge displacement of people and culture but a

kind of slow trickling in of people bringing in new technology, new

ideas.

 

 

 

The Rgveda then is a pre-urban Chalcolethic culture it does not speak

of any urban centres. It certainly does not speak of any settlements

which have the characteristics of Harappan cities. For example there

is no reference to citadel areas and residential areas, there is no

reference to massive brick platforms on the top of which monuments

are built. There is no reference to drainage systems or to streets or

to granaries or warehouses or to a public bath or to a sophisticated

exchange system or weights and measures on a graduated scale which

was known as and described. To me these are the essential

characteristics or Harappan urbanization and all these

characteristics are absent in the Rgveda. You may have people

saying 'Oh' but there were coins in the Rgveda and they mention the

word 'niska'. Now niska can be a coin as was in the later period but

during this period judging by the descriptions it was simply a little

decorative piece in precious metal. These essential characteristics

that I have mentioned non of these are referred to or described in

the Rgveda. The people of the Rgveda are then agro-pastoralists with

small scale village societies essentially indulging in cattle raids

and predatory raids.

 

 

 

If you read the hymns the plea to the gods Indra, Agni, whosoever it

is, is help us go and attack this 'dasa' village or this 'dasapura',

help us get the cattle of the 'dasa'. It is always the cattle that

they are wanting. There is no question of help us go into battle and

take over a whole territory. It is limited to small areas of attack.

They are mobile pastoralists and the cattle raids and the predatory

raids are surrogate for warfare. There are in fact no great battles

or campaigns. Even the famous battle of ten kings is over the change

that is taking place that is being brought into function over the

river waters of the Ravi. It is not as if there is huge encampment on

a plain and the two armies have got together and are fighting each

other. None of that. It is something i.e. very much localized and

controlled.

 

Wealth, as far as Rgveda is concerned, is computed in horses and

cows. You only have to read the 'danastuti' hymns to realize how

strong this notion is of may I be gifted ten thousand horses and

sixty thousand heads of cattle. Exaggerated figures, wildly

exaggerated figures. Nobody had ten thousand horses to give to begin

with. But this is what is wealth. The centrality of the cow in words

like 'gavisti' , the desire for cows which is also used for skirmish

or a raid or 'gopati' as the head of a clan. The cow is also used as

an item in barter and human life is calculated in terms of cows.

Given this migration becomes extremely important because of the need

to be continuously searching for two things - good pastures, access

to water for the animals. We often forget we keep on talking about

how water is important for irrigation for cultivators, but water is

equally important for pastoralists, because animals need to have

access to water and the shifting river courses in the Punjab

obviously would create problems. You have a river like the Sutlej

which is constantly changing its shape and size. So what are the

pastoralists on the banks of the Sutlej to do. They have to be moving

all the time. Once they are moving ,they are looking for good

pastures, and if somebody else is over there, there is a fight and

they throw them out. And the prayers are frequently for rain for this

is in fact a semi-arid region. Possibly even the migration eastwards

was for better pastures.

 

The centrality of pastoralism is also seen in the many terms that

are used for cattle, cows, and the relative infrequency of terms used

for grain and for crops. Secondly, very importantly, the eating of

beef, of the flesh of the cattle is restricted to special occasions

and ritual occasions. Now this is a prime characteristic of pastoral

societies. This comes through very clearly in Evans-Pritchard's work

on the Nuer and the work of innumerable others who worked on

pastoralist societies. Herders, animal herders, do not eat their

animals indiscriminately. And they are particularly careful about

conserving the good livestock of the herd because the future of the

herd depends on it. And so the killing of the animals for food is

usually connected with ritual occasions and with very special

occasions. And this is exactly so in the Rig Veda. Wherever there are

references to the eating of beef, it is always in association either

with the yajna or with the coming of the guest or some special

occasion.

 

Furthermore pastoralists have what has been called symbiotic

relationships with agriculturalists. And the symbiotic relationship

is that frequently - and it's at two levels - one is, of course, at

the level of exchange. The pastoralists bring in their products and

the agriculturists have their products and there might be an

exchange. For instance, dairy produce may be given to the

agriculturalists, while grain is taken from the agriculturalists by

the pastoralists. But there is a much more subtle and intensive

interrelationship. For example when the crop is harvested and the

field is covered with stubble - usually six inches high after the

harvest has been cut. That's when the pastoralists come in with their

herds and the animals feed on the stubble. And the animal droppings

manure the field. To this day if you travel through Rajasthan at

particular periods, particularly in spring, you will find herds of

animals going along a circuit and the circuit is always that they

will spend one week in this village, they will eat the stubble of the

grain and manure the field and then the animal herd will move on to

the next village and do the same. And this is an unwritten convention

between the agriculturist and the pastoralist. And this is extremely

important because one can't talk about the two being separate

societies - they're integrated societies.

 

Then there is the centrality of the horse and the chariot. The horse

which is totally absent on the seals of the Harappa culture - there

are many other animals but the horse doesn't occur. The horse is

central to the Vedic texts. The horse is central both as a functional

animal - the horse draws the chariot, the chariot means speed, so if

you're carrying out a raid, the more chariots you have the quicker

you get there, you raid the particular place and you bring back the

loot much faster than if you were going by bullock cart and bringing

it back by bullock cart. That wouldn't work - the horse is necessary.

 

Secondly, the horse is ritually very important. And I don't have to

remind you here that whereas for example in the Rig Veda the

sacrifice of the horse is a fairly simple, straightforward ritual of

sacrificing a horse, what it becomes in the later vedic texts as the

Ashwamedha is another story. It is ritually extremely important. And

you don't get any reflection of this in the Harappan culture.

 

The wealth which is raided and brought back is then distributed at

the meeting of the vidatha where the vis and the rajan - the two

categories of the people that constitute the main society of the

Aryas and the Rig Veda - are gathered and therefore it is partly a

functional occasion, partly a ritual occasion. There is also no

description in the Rig Veda of large scale trade. What is interesting

is seas are mentioned, usually metaphorically, very seldom literally.

There is a mention of a boat with a hundred oars. And I've always

been mystified by this because I keep thinking to myself - where

didthey get this idea? of a boat with a hundred oars. You don't need

that kind of boat to sail down the rivers. Or you don't even need

that kind of boat to take you across the sea. The Harappans didn't

have boats with a hundred oars. This is again a fantasy because there

is nothing in the texts to explain what the technology or navigation

would be of a boat of that size, manned by that many people.

 

So let's turn then to the question of the coming of the Indo-Aryans.

The very question that is largely accepted in academic circles except

for a minority of people at the moment. And largely rejected by the

media, that seems to support the notion that the Aryans were

indigenous and didn't come from anywhere. By the Aryans please note

that I mean people who spoke Indo-Aryan.

 

Who were they? They were the speakers of a language that belongs to

the Indo-European family. They have common roots with Iran - Old

Iranian, Indo-Aryan. There are similarities in the society of both.

You have a warrior aristocracy, you have householders, you have

ritual specialists. They break away from the Iranians with some .

 

…

 

and increasing it. Now in this situation there has to be, anybody

who's raiding, is coming in and is a raider and is building his

wealth on the basis of a raid, there has to be a dependence on the

host society. They have to settle in the vicinity in order to carry

out the raids. And they need to negotiate relationships with the host

society. The negotiations may be - I'll come and bash you and take

away all your cattle. But the negotiations may also be - let's come

to some agreement, over pastoral lands, over water over agriculture,

over whatever it may be. Given the terrain of inhospitable mountains

there would be a tendency to migrate in small groups, which means

there would be a tremendous mixture of people, language and ways of

life. You're not getting a huge bunch of people coming in the

thousands. Small bunches of people means that there is much more

intermixing. Language would register constant change moving from area

to area and one has also to ask the question - did this encourage

bilingualism ? If they're speaking two different languages, if the

local language is probably Proto-Dravidian or Austro-Asiatic and

these people coming in and settling are speaking Indo-Aryan, did this

result in bilingualism, that is some people who could manage to speak

in both languages and make themselves understood.

 

What was their relationship to the sedentary agriculturalists once

they arrived in the fertile areas? One was the immediate relationship

which was to raid the local people and the Rgveda is the great text

describing a constant wish to raid and get wealth. It would seem that

the Aryas are not very successful to being with because there is this

continuous plea to the gods, pleas come and help us, please go and

kill our enemies for us, please do this and please do that. It is as

if there is a bewilderment about how they are to set about doing it.

Then gradually that changes to a much more settled relationship. We

are told in the Satapatha Brahmana that the asuras, and by this time

the term asura is being used in the negative sense, were the

cultivators and were extensively settled. So if there is a symbiotic

relationship between the cattle herder and the cultivators where the

cattle are coming and feeding off the stubble and manuring the fields

and produce is being exchanged, there would be an exchange of other

things--language, possibly inter marriage, one does not know,

rituals, three areas where usually exchange takes place. And all of

this would also encourage bilingualism. The languages begin to change

very rapidly and you would require then someone like Yaska to write

an etymological text to explain the words because the meaning of

words was becoming indistinct. And finally you have a Panini who says

that I am going to write the rules of the language so that more

changes are not introduced and the language does not go off the

rails. No, he didn't actually say that. But that is the assumption

behind an exercise of that kind. Did the existing sedentary

agriculturalists appeal to an incoming pastoral chief for protection?

This is a question I would like to pose. That you have these

sedentary groups, they are people coming in who are attacking cattle

keepers and sedentary groups. Did these sedentary agriculturalists

who couldn't protect themselves and remember now that the Harappan

system has collapsed, the cities have declined, the protection which

the Harappan system would have given to these agriculturalists is not

guaranteed. It may have existed, it may not. So what does the

sedentary agriculturalist do? Doesn't he turn to the chief of this

raiding tribe and say, please don't raid me, let's negotiate a

settlement. So what I'm trying to suggest is that the pastoral chiefs

come in at a level of dominance in terms of their relationship with

the local population. But it is not a dominance based only on

conquest. It is not a dominance based only on raids. It does include

the possibility of some other kind of negotiation. This would then

have galvanized the long term relationship between them.

 

Now why am I saying that there might have been this kind of

negotiation. One of the interesting aspects of the linguistic study

that has been done of vedic Sanskrit words is that a number of words

that relate to agricultural processes --some very common words like

langala which means plough, khala, ulukhala, so on, these are all

words that come from non Indo Aryan languages. They are either proto

Dravidian or Austro Asiatic. So clearly there is a lot of mixing at

that level for these words to come into Indo Aryan. Secondly, Indo

Aryan itself reflects features of proto Dravidian. For example, what

are called the retroflexive consonants--ta tha da dha, na. These are

not Indo European, these are proto Dravidian. They only occur in

Vedic Sanskrit. They do not occur in any other Indo European

language. That is one reason why Europeans have such problems in

pronouncing Indian words because their tongue does not go around the

retroflexive consonants. So that is another indication. The third is

that, in a number of what are called syntactic forms, grammatical

forms, morphologies, the form of the language, phonetics, the use of

this little word iti, which is very common in Sanskrit, Vedic

Sanskrit and later on in classical Sanskrit, this is a typical proto-

Dravidian form, and again it is being argued that this is what comes

into Indo_Aryan. What I am trying to suggest then is that if there is

already in the Rgveda, and this entry of non- Indo Aryan increases in

the later Vedic texts. If there is already the presence of non Indo

Aryan in Indo Aryan in the Rg Veda there must have been some kind of

negotiation other than just raiding, because, you don't get such a

deep impression of one language on another if it is simply a case of

I come in and attack you, and subordinate you and subdue you. I mean

one can compare the amount of English that has entered modern Indian

languages. It is minimal, minimal, compared to non Indo Aryan in

Vedic Sanskrit. So it does raise the question, I mean whether my

answer is right or wrong. I do not know. I would like to put it

forward as an answer. But it does raise a question that has to be

answered. How do these linguisitic forms come into Indo Aryan. And

the languages, that are current, we know proto Dravidian, Austro

Asiatic, in Baluchistan there was Brahui, in central India there is

Kuruk, Amaltuk, and further east there are various languages

connected with the Austro Asiatic group. Gradually the languages come

to be used not only in ordinary dialogue but also in ritual. This may

take centuries and remember that the hymns of the Rgveda which are

thought to have been compiled and edited around 800 BC may have begun

to be composed 500 years earlier. So we are not talking about an

overnight change. We are talking about a language change, a cultural

change, a social change that is taking place over something like 500

years which is a very long time.

 

There has been a lot said about for example words for flora and

fauna, animals particularly. Why is it that the elephant is called

not by any other generic name but is called mrga hastin, the animal

with a hand. It is because these people were unfamiliar with

elephants, and the elephant is of course is a very familiar animal

from the Harappan seals. More interesting, the Harappans adapt some

of the animals from the west Asian cultures, there is a very lovely

seal, I don't know some of you might remember it, it's reproduced in

many books. There is a man standing and there is a tiger on each side

and he's grappling with this tiger. There is an identical seal of

that kind which comes from Mesopotamia, except that the two animals

are lions, they are not tigers. Now in the Harappan evidence, there

is no depiction of the lion at all. The feline animal is always the

tiger. In the Rgveda there is no reference to the tiger, there is

only the reference to the simha as lion. And it is always, not

always, but frequently, the roar of the simha. Somebody speaks and

sounds like the roar of the lion. So there is no doubting the fact

that it is the lion and it is an interesting question why are they

unfamiliar with the tiger, if the tiger is in fact such a basic

animal, particularly to the lower Indus. If they were indigenous,

they would know it.

 

Let me turn now to the tricky question of the definition of the Arya

and the Dasa. Was there in fact a racial distinction? Remember I told

you that the argument was that the Arya race came and conquered the

local race of the dasa. What is very interesting is that the physical

differences that are mentioned all occur in the last books of the

Rgveda, not in the first books. If there was a strong physical

difference, marked physical difference, you would expect that from

the very first compositions the composers would say that these dasa

who are black skinned, thick lipped, bull jawed etc. all the

descriptions, but no, the descriptions come in the tail end in the

second half of the first book and the tenth book of the Rgveda. What

you have then if one looks for the definition of the arya varna and

the dasa varna from the Rgveda, these are groups of people that have

distinctive languages, because the dasas are spoken of as being

mrdhravac, speaking a hostile language or not speaking the language

correctly. They are also described frequently as avrata--they do not

perform the rites, the religious rites, which the aryas perform. They

are also akarman, they do not observe the customs that the aryas

observe. The difference, the importance that was given to the

difference of the skin colour was presumed because of the word varna.

Varna means colour, it also means cover. But the point is that if you

look at all the references to varna, the majority of them are not in

connection with skin colour. In fact I can't think of a single varna

reference that actually refers to skin colour, except one. in for

example the ninth book which deals with the ritual of the soma karman

where they talk about the hide turning black, the hide on which the

ritual is carried out. Most of the references are used in a symbolic

sense. You have the varna of the dawn, of the day, of the night, and

of the clouds, and there is frequent reference to the dasas as the

dark ones. They could be evil. They don't have to be necessarily

always black skinned. In the same way as the Avesta refers to the

daivas and says that they are the dark ones, the evil ones. These are

the few, very few references to physical features. One which is

frequently discussed tvacamkrisnam, which occurs only once in a very

late section of the Rgveda. And the question of course is if the skin

colour was black why isn't it mentioned more frequently and in the

earlier hymns. Why do they wait till this one reference right in the

late period.

 

Then there is a reference to something that you are quite familiar

with, anasa. And the argument in the old days used to be that it

meant, a nasa, i.e. without a nose, in other words, flat nosed. And

of course, people like Herbert Risley and various British

ethnographers went around measuring noses, the noses of Indians and

arguing that those that had broad, flat noses were non Aryans, those

that had sharp fine noses were Aryas. So the nose is very important

and it has been rather amusingly brought out in the recent book of

Thomas Trautmann , The Aryans in British India. Or you have the

frequent reference to anasa, the noseless. This has also been

interpreted by Sayana. Sayana was a very interesting person. He lived

in the 14th century and did a commentary on the vedic texts. I think

it is very important for us as historians not just to stay with Max

Muller's commentary on the Vedas but go back and look at what Sayana

says. Sayana for example,when it comes to tvacam krsna says there was

an asura called Krsna whose skin was torn apart by Indra. He does not

read it a black skinned. There isn't a single racial connotation in

any of Sayana's commentaries. So anasa, he says was an-asa which

means without a mouth, i.e. people who didn't know the language and

were therefor speechless. Alternatively there is no reference to the

Aryas being fair skinned or white skinned, the other contrast which

one would expect. Also what is interesting and this is simply my

reading, I may be incorrect on this, but I would nevertheless like to

float it. There are one or two places where the word arya is used in

a verbal sense--aryanti, they honour, and the root dasa is used again

in a verbal sense--dasati--to treat with hostility. If these words,

arya and dasa can be used not only as nouns and adjectives, but also

as verbs, it is most unlikely that the can be interpreted as races.

They have to be interpreted in a much broader sense. Furthermore, the

aryas and the dasas are not invariably enemies. There are referenes

to aryas fighting aryas. There are references to dasa chiefs who are

patrons of the aryan rtvij. Dasa chiefs like Balbutha, Turuska,

Bhrgu, Sambhara, these are all people who have rituals performed them

and give daksina presumably to the rtvij who then proceeds to praise

them. But the aryas attack the dasas for their wealth. The refrain is

always, dasyu dhanina, they are constantly praying to their gods for

wealth, rayi, vasu, dhana, ratna, hiranya. This is the obsession.

Wealth consisting of cattle, and horses, garments, clothes and gold

is thrown in for good measure. One does not know how much gold was

floating around. Probably not much. And the attack is on the

settlement of the dasas, the pura of the dasa in order to get their

cattle wealth. There is in fact interestingly, immense greed on the

part of the aryas, who seem, in comparison to the dasa, materially

quite poor, because they keep talking about how wealthy the dasas

are. So this old theory of the superior aryas who came in, invaded

and conquered these poor indigenous people, poverty stricken and

submissive, this certainly does not come from this picture.

 

What is the difference then again between the aryas and the dasas?

If the distinction is not racial, it is linguistic, social and

cultural. There is a difference, but it consists of other features.

And if this is the distinction, then the terms, Arya and Dasa would

have gradually acquired these distinctions and become intertwined

with social hierarchies. Linguistically, Indo Aryan in the midst of

other languages like proto Dravidian and Austro Asiatic begins to

suffer from the increasing influence of other languages. It's still

Indo Aryan. It clearly is a part of the Indo European family but

there are more and more incorporations of non IndoAryan. And when

these kinds of linguistic incorporations take place, as I said

earlier, the historian has to ask the question, what is the social

process that is going on and is causing this incorporation. And the

alternative question, how does IndoAryan eventually become the

dominant language? Those who speak it call themselves aryas, and who

do the aryas consist of. --the rajan, the vis, the rtvij, and the

kavi--the bards and the priests.

 

Rajans are the chiefs owning horses and chariots or at least having

access to horses and chariots. They are the raiders and the

protectors. They raid some and protect some, and their victory lies

essentially in cattle raids and skirmishes and they negotiate the

protection of local societies against other people's raids either by

the aryas or dasas. There is a certain moral righteousness that comes

through in the hymn in the killing of the dasa because he is avrata--

he is without the correct rites. But that changes of course when the

dasa chiefs start performing vedic rituals as rituals approved by the

arya and start giving gifts to the priests. The question then is does

he become aryanised as a result? If the dasa chief starts speaking a

certain amount of even faulty Indo Aryan and starts practising even

some of the rituals of the Aryas, does he come to be accepted as the

Arya? The Purus are a case in point. Very interesting. The Puru is a

major clan mentioned in the Rgveda and mentioned through four or five

generations. They are described in the Rgveda as being mrdhravaca,

not speaking correctly and in the Satapatha Brahmana they are

described as coming from asura-raksasa ancestry. Now no good arya

would have an ancestry that was asura raksasa, so the question is who

were the Purus? Were they aryas? Or were they these local dasa chiefs

who negotiated, made good, became wealthy, were accepted, in effect

became part of the aryan society. Even the laws, the customary laws,

which may not have been very strict at this time could be broken. The

first example of this of course is in again in the Brahmana

literature, the dasiputra brahmanas, who are clearly are the result

of intermarriage, and if they themselves concede that their status is

mixed, the rituals that they are performing may also have been mixed.

One has to ask that question. By the mid first millennium BC the dasa

emerges not as the enemy who is not performing the rituals and

speaking the right language but as the impoverished person. He is

servile to the aryas and as a sudra he is not permitted the arya

ritual. Now this is a very interesting difference between the

original dasa who is stigmatised because he is not performing the

ritual and the priests are ready to perform the ritual and the sudra

who is by right to perform the ritual . Obviously a big change has

taken place.

 

What then was the nature of the Rgvedic society? First of all the

Rgveda is not referring to a single society, it is referring to a

number of differentiated societies, differentiated by language,

rites, and custom. The perspective that we have is only one of them,

those that call themselves aryas. Was it already the dominant group

or is it that it is their literature that has survived, their

compositions have survived? We don't know what the others thought

about the aryas. We have no information on what the dasas thought or

what the panis thought or what the raksasas thought about these

people who called themselves aryas.

 

Interestingly, it has been argued by some people that the society of

the Rgveda was an egalitarian society. But this is something that I

disagree with. I think that internally the society of the Rgveda had

a hierarchy. The hierarchy at this stage was not deeply demarcated

but was visible and evident and functional. There was the rajan, the

chief of the clan with access to horse and chariots, who led the

raids and was the patron of the distribution of booty as is evident

from the danastuti hymns which are addressed to the rajan, to the

gods, and to the rajan for obtaining a share in the booty. Therefore

the rajan is powerful with access to resources and the status of the

rajan is reflected in the occasional attempts at small, scattered

genealogies. When you have a body of literature in which it is said

of a particular family that there was a great great grand father and

great grandfather grand father ,there was a son, and a grand son,

each one did this, did that, you know that that family is slightly

more important than another family that is simply described by one

name and one generation. So there is this social differentiation

also.

 

The vis was the clan subordinate to the rajan who herded and

cultivated. What was the relationship between the two? The later

texts, the later Vedic texts, particularly the Satapatha Brahmana

speak of them as having been very close. They are eating from the

same bowl at one point and the analogies are that the rajan is to a

vis like Indra is to Maruts or Soma is to milk. And a whole series of

other parallels of that kind.Which is why I have argued in the past,

I have asked the question that were they both part of a lineage based

society where recruitment into the clan was by birth? The senior

lineage had authority over the junior lineage and status was

dependent on rank within the lineage, and the relations of production

literally what was being produced and the way in which it was

produced was defined by kinship relationships depending on where you

were born, which group you were born in, and this very closely

embedded close knit society gradually broke down when the vis had to

start performing labour for the rajan and make presents of tribute.

This begins in a small way in the Rgveda and becomes intensified in

the later period.

 

The third category of people are the rtvij and the kavi, the

sacrificial priest and the bard. And there are a number of categories

that are mentioned in one hymn. There is mention of several

categories of priests. They do not belong to the lineage, but they do

perform rites for the rajan. And there are some rituals that can be

performed by the rajans themselves. Not all rituals require priests.

They compose eulogies on the rajans, which is another indication of

the special status that the rajan has. And they compete for patronage

from the rajan, patronage in material terms of wealth. There is

therefore a great need for social and economic adjustments, a sorting

out as it were of the internal hierarchy. So that not only are people

slotted into place but there is also space for other people to come

in. The ritual specialists are socially more flexible groups and

rituals become a form of incorporation. The later Vedic texts, again

the Brahmana texts in particular, show this process. There is a

contestation between the brahmanas and the ksatriyas. There is the

subordination of the vis to the ksatriya. The sudra emerges as non

kin labour, labour outside kinship groups and a separate category has

to be created for providing labour, the category of sudra, which

shows a different kind of society. This is not the same as Rgvedic

society, it has undergone change, and among other things there is

reference, increasingly, slowly but increasingly in post Vedic texts

to the varna theory. This is not based on racial segregation as was

earlier believed because if one is arguing that in fact racial

segregation is not the central feature, then the varnas are not items

of racial segregation. It is based, it seems to me, on three

features, one is access to resources. Who has access to resources,

who has access to wealth, whether it is cattle wealth, agricultural

wealth, or horses and chariots, or whatever it may be. The rajan who

conducts raids and gathers tributes? And indirectly, the brahmana who

collects wealth through the dana and daksina that is bestowed on

them? So that is one category, one basic requirement of varnas.

 

The second is authority and power--temporal authority for the

ksatriya, earthly authority, association with the deity for the

brahmana. The brahmana therefore emerges as a person who claims that

he can call upon the gods to bestow special divine elements on to the

ksatriya through a ritual and this bifurcation of authority into

temporal and divine or supernatural is an important matter.

 

And the third, which is very important is the deliberate distancing

of those who provide labour. This distancing, pushing aside, pushing

away and saying you are different, this is not the case in the Rgveda

but becomes the case in postvedic society. This is justified on the

basis of ritual purity and exclusion. The sudra is ritually impure,

he is excluded from participating in the rites of the upper varnas

and this is made into a permanent disability since status is by

birth. Degrees of pollution and purity are inherited. It is necessary

in order to maintain the disability of pollution and impurity in

order to have a permanent supply of labour. Now I'm not saying they

sat and worked it out in these terms, but there are certain

assumptions and presuppositions which are at work here which I am

really trying to draw out and exaggerate a little bit so that you pay

some attention to it. There are therefore multiple reasons why the

purusasukta hymn is included in the Rgveda. Because the Rgveda is not

a static document. It is encapsulating this historical change that is

taking place. The purusasukta hymn describes the sacrifice of

primeval man--his mouth was the brahmana, his arms were the ksatriya,

his thighs were the vaisya, and out of the feet came the sudra. There

is already a distinction there.

 

But let me just conclude with two brief sentences. What I tried to

suggest to you first of all is that the Aryan question is a very

complex question and I hope you are all absolutely staggered by the

complexity and reeling under all the complexities that I have pointed

out to you. So please do not take one version as " the " version.

Always question every version, including mine. The second point that

I want to emphasize is that I think as historians it is time now that

we moved away from this century and a half old obsession with who

were the Aryans, what was their origin, how do we identify them, who

has descended from them. These are irrelevant questions. These are

questions that are only important to political parties and political

ideologies. The important question is what is this data that you have

for reconstructing the early phases of Indian society and how does

one proceed to do this reconstruction. I have tried to suggest one

way in which this reconstruction can be carried out. I may be

incorrect but I would like you to look at this period now in terms of

a search for a historical reconstruction of the times.

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