CHAPTER IV. THE ARYANS IN INDIA. THIS nobler race belonged to the ARYAN or Indo-Germanic THE ARYAN stock, from which the Bráhman, the Rájput, and the English- STOCK. branches. man alike descend. Its earliest home seems to have been in Central Asia. From that common camping-ground, certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the west. One of the western offshoots founded the Persian kingdom; another built Athens and Lacedæmon, and became the Greek nation; a third went on to Italy, and reared the City on the Its Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant European colony of the same race excavated the silver-ores of prehistoric Spain; and when we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement fishing in wattle canoes, Its and working the tin mines of Cornwall. Meanwhile, other Eastern branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the primitive home in Central Asia to the east. Powerful bands found their way through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread themselves, chiefly as Bráhmans and Rájputs, over India. branches. their home. We know little regarding these noble Aryan tribes in their The early camping-ground in Central Asia. From words preserved Aryans in in the languages of their long-separated descendants in Europe primitive and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy steppes with their cattle, making long halts to rear crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals; were acquainted with iron; understood the arts of weaving and sewing; wore clothes; and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of the temperate zone, and the feeling of cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western branches of the race. Ages afterwards, when the Vedic singers in hot India prayed for long life, they asked for a hundred winters.' The forefathers of the Greek and European and Indian the Roman, of the Englishman and the Hindu, dwelt together languages in Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped the same gods. merely The languages of Europe and India, although at first sight varieties they seem wide apart, are merely different growths from the speech. G of Aryan Common origin of European and Indian religions. The Indo Aryans on the march, original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the common words of family life. The names for father, mother, brother, sister, and widow, are the same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word daughter, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from two Sanskrit roots meaning 'to draw milk;' and preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household. The ancient religions of Europe and India had a similar origin. They were to some extent made up of the sacred stories or myths which our common ancestors had learned while dwelling together in Central Asia. Several of the Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome; and to this day the Deity is adored by names derived from the same old Aryan root by Bráhmans in Calcutta, by the Protestant clergy of England, and by Catholic priests in Peru. The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Aryans on their march to the south-east, and in their new homes. The earliest songs disclose the race still to the north of the Khaibar Pass, in Kábul; the later ones bring them as far as the Ganges. Their victorious advance eastwards through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings almost step by step. One of their famous settlements lay between the two sacred rivers, the Saraswati and the Drishadvatí, supposed to be the modern Sarsutí, near Thánesar, in the Punjab, and the Ghaggar, a day's march from it. This fertile strip of land, not more than 60 miles long by 20 broad, was fondly remembered by them as their Holy Land, 'fashioned of God, and chosen by the Creator.' As their numbers increased, they pushed eastwards along the base of the Himalayas, into what they afterwards called the Land of the Sacred Singers (Brahmarshidesha). Their settlements included by degrees their new the five rivers of the Punjab, together with the other great river-system formed by the upper courses of the Jumna and the Ganges. Here the Vedic hymns were composed; and the steady supply of water led the Aryans to settle down from their old state of wandering pastoral tribes into communities of husbandmen. The Vedic poets praised the rivers which enabled them to make this great change-perhaps the most important step in the progress of a race. 'May the Indus,' they sang,' the far-famed giver of wealth, hear us; (fertilizing our) broad fields with water.' The Himálayas, through whose offshoots they had reached India, and at whose southern base and in settle ments. they long dwelt, made a lasting impression on their memory. The Vedic singer praised 'Him whose greatness the snowy ranges, and the sea, and the aerial river declare.' In all its long wanderings through India, the Aryan race never forgot its Recollecnorthern home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers; and tons of there eloquence descended from heaven among men; while northern beyond the mountain-wall lay the paradise of deities and heroes, where the kind and the brave for ever repose. their home. Veda. The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the The Rigearly Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown. The Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed from before all time,' or at least from Insufficient for its sup 1400 3001 years B.C., nearly 5000 years ago. European scholars evidence have inferred from astronomical dates that its composition posed was going on about 1400 B.C. But these dates are themselves dates, 3001 given in writings of modern origin, and might have been .C. (?), calculated backwards. We only know that the Vedic religion B.C. (?) had been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the 6th century B.C. Nevertheless, the antiquity of the Rig-Veda, although not to be expressed in figures, is abundantly established. The earlier hymns exhibit the Aryans on the northwestern frontiers of India, just starting on their long journey. Before the embassy of the Greek Megasthenes, at the end of Neverthethe 4th century B.C., they had spread at least to the verge of less of the Gangetic delta, 1500 miles distant. At the time of the quity. Periplus, the southernmost point of India was apparently a seat of their worship. A temple to the wife of Siva stood on Cape Comorin, circ. 100 A.D. great anti of the Veda. The Rig- The Brahmans declare that the Vedic hymns were directly Inspiration inspired by God. Indeed, in our own times, the young Theistic Church of Bengal, which rejects Bráhmanical teaching, was split into two sects on the question of the divine authority of the Veda. The Vedic hymns seem to have been composed by certain families of Rishis er psalmists, some of whose names are preserved. The Rig-Veda is a very old collection of 1017 of these short lyrical poems, chiefly addressed to the gods, 1017 and containing 10,580 verses. They show us the Aryans on hymns, 10,580 the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the 'black-skinned' aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is Caste not unknown. Each father of a family is the priest of his own Rig-Veda, household. The chieftain acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the sacrifice in the name of the verses. known to nor widowburning. Aryan in the Veda. people. The chief himself seems to have been elected; and his title of Vis-pati, literally 'Lord of the Settlers,' survives in the old Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiéz-patis in central Europe at this day. Women enjoyed a high position, and some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both 'rulers of the house' (dampatí); and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on their husbands' funeral-pile was unknown; and the verses in the Veda which the Bráhmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning. 'Rise, woman,' says the sacred text to the mourner; 'come to the world of life. Come to us. Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband.' The Aryan tribes in the Veda are acquainted with most of civilisation the metals. They have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and cattle-pens.' Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth-the coin (Latin, pecunia) in which payments or fines are made; and one of their words for war literally means 'a desire for cows.' They have learned to build 'ships,' perhaps large river-boats; and have seen or heard something of the sea. Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate beef; used a fermented liquor or beer, made from the soma plant; and offered the same strong meat and Spread of drink to their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastwards the Aryans through Northern India; pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock; and driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier 'black-skinned' races. They marched in whole communities from one river-valley to another; each house-father a warrior, husbandman, and priest; with his wife, and his little ones, and cattle. eastwards. The gods of the Veda. These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their gods. Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land and their poor, rude objects of worship. Indeed, this noble self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation. Their divinities-devas, literally 'The Shining Ones,' from the Sanskrit root div, 'to shine'—were the great powers of nature. They adored the Father-heaven, of the Dyaush-pitar in Sanskrit, the Dies-piter or Jupiter of Rome, the Zeus of Greece, the Low German Duus, and, through the old French god-demon, Dus-ius, probably the Deuce of English slang; together with Mother-Earth; and the Encompassing Sky, Varuna in Sanskrit, Uranus in Latin, Ouranos in Greek. 'Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter the house of clay' (the grave), says a Rig-Vedic hymn; 'have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone wrong; have mercy, Almighty, have mercy.' Indra, or the Aqueous Vapour that brings the precious rain on which plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized Influence more and more keenly the importance of the periodical rains rainy to their new life as husbandmen, he became the chief of the season on Vedic gods. "The gods do not reach unto thee, O Indra, or mytho Aryan men; thou overcomest all creatures in strength.' Agni, the logy. God of Fire (Latin, igni-s), ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number of hymns addressed to him as 'the youngest of the gods,' the lord and giver of wealth.' The Maruts are the Storm Gods, 'who make the rocks to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest.' Ushas, 'the High-born Dawn' (Greek, Eos), shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go forth to his work.' The Aswins, or 'Fleet Outriders' of the Dawn, are the first rays of sunrise, 'Lords of Lustre.' The Solar Orb himself (Súrjya), the Wind (Váyu), the Sunshine or Friendly Day (Mitra), the animating fermented juice of the Sacrificial Plant (Soma), and many others, are invoked in the Veda; in all, about thirty-three gods, who are eleven in heaven, eleven on earth, and eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air.' known in The terrible blood-drinking deities of modern Hinduism are The bloodloving scarcely known in the Veda. Buffaloes are indeed offered; deities of and one hymn points to a symbolism based on human sacrifices, Hinduism an early practice apparently extinct before the time of the scarcely Vedic singers. The great Horse-Sacrifice seems a substitution for the Veda. the flesh and blood of a man. But, as a whole, the hymns are addressed to bright, friendly gods. Rudra, who was destined to become the Siva of the Hindus, and the third person, or Destroyer, in their triad, is only the god of Roaring Tempests in the Veda. Vishnu, the second person, or Preserver, in the Hindu triad, is but slightly known as the deity of the Shining Firmament; while Brahma, the first person, or Creator, has no |