THE BEGINNINGS OF INDIAN HISTORY

BY

W. H. MORELAND, C.S.I., C.I.E.

AND

ATUL CHANDRA CHATTERJEE

G.C.I.E., K. C.S.I.

I. The Civilization of the Indus Plain

In India, as in some other countries, relics of a prehistoric stone age, or ages, have been discovered, but as yet they have not furnished any information of value to the ordinary reader. The first big fact known in the history of the country is that nearly 5,000 years ago, that is to say, before 2500 B.C., an orderly and old-established civilisation existed in the Indus plain,1 a civilisation 'closely akin but in some respects even superior to that of contemporary Mesopotamia and Egypt. Our knowledge of this fact is quite recent. Scholars had indeed guessed at something of the sort, but guesses have become facts only as the result of explorations carried out since the year 1921 at Mohenjo-daro, more than 200 miles north of the mouths of the Indus, and at Harappā, about 100 miles south-west of Lahore. The exploration of these localities is far from complete, many other possible sites remain to be examined, and no confident answer can yet be given to the questions which naturally arise regarding the origin of this civilisation, or the area over which it ex- tended. As regards its nature, the explorers at Mohenjo- daro have already found a city containing large houses of considerable height, and built on elaborate plans; an ex- tensive public bath; culverts and drains in the streets; and a wide range of small articles, comprising pottery, statuary, stone vessels, tools and utensils, ornaments and toys. The metals in use were gold and silver, copper, lead and tin; wheat and barley were grown; both cotton and wool were spun and woven; the carving of stone was far advanced, artistically as well as technically, and a very large number of what are described as tablets and seals exhibit characters which undoubtedly represent a written language.

Who were the people who enjoyed these conveniences and luxuries? Most scholars are agreed that the civilisation is not of the Aryan type, and it must therefore either be Dravidian, or belong to some race not otherwise known in India. The written characters have not yet been deciphered, and, until that task has been accomplished, much must remain obscure. Some relation undoubtedly exists with the Sumerian civilisation familiar to students of the archaeology of Mesopotamia, but different views have been advanced as to its nature. The plain man naturally hopes that the explorers have unearthed a sample of Dravidian life as it existed before the Aryans arrived, and there are in fact some indications that this hope may ultimately be justified; but the possibility cannot be ruled out that what has been discovered is an outlying branch of a culture which had its centre further west, and which did not spread far into India. Much further research is needed before this question can be answered, and all that can be said at present is that the Indus civilisation is not yet linked definitely to later ages by any precise records.

2. The Coming of the Aryans

Scientifically, the term 'Aryan,' like 'Dravidian,' is linguistic, not racial, but in popular use it has come to be applied to people who spoke an Aryan language. For the Aryans who came to India, we possess no such archaeological data as have just been described, and the nature of their life renders similar finds unlikely, for at first they did not dwell in towns, while their houses were built of wood and other perishable materials. Our knowledge of them is derived primarily from the Rigveda, the oldest Sanskrit text, and secondarily from the comparative study of the languages to which Sanskrit is allied. The facts to be obtained from these sources are meagre when compared with what we want to know, and they have fired the imagina- tions of many scholars in the West as well as in the East, so that the scanty knowledge we possess is associated with an extensive mass of conjecture, and it is not always easy to separate the two.

In essence, the Rigveda is a hymn-book, though a large one, approximating in bulk to the Iliad and the Odyssey taken together. It is a compilation of hymns written at different periods, and no precise dates can be assigned either to the compilation or to the component parts, but it is safe to say that the earlier hymns carry us back beyond 1000 B.C. The information to be gathered from such a source is naturally very unequal. It tells us much of religion, and comparatively little of other aspects of life, still less of history; and, in regard to religion, it is concerned mainly with the elaborate ritual of the sacrifices offered by kings and nobles, and throws little direct light on the actual beliefs of ordinary people. It is thus an unsatisfactory source, but it is all we have.

When Europeans came in direct contact with India, Sanskrit was at first regarded as an obscure language, not related to anything else within their knowledge. Soon, however, its obvious similarity to Greek and Latin was recognised, and towards the close of the eighteenth century Sir William Jones, a judge of the Supreme Court in Calcutta, and the founder of modern Indian scholarship, put forward the view that it is one of a large family, and that Greek and Latin, Gothic and Celtic, Sanskrit and Old Persian, must all have sprung from a common source. Working on this hypothesis, scholars have developed the idea of an Indo- European language, spoken by a group of tribes which from their original habitation gradually spread over large parts of Europe and Asia, and in the regions where they settled diverged in life and in speech under the influence of their new environment.

This main idea can be accepted with confidence, but as yet there is little certainty as to detail. We do not know philosophical speculations appear, the beginnings of the continuous effort to get beyond polytheism which is one of the most prominent characteristics of Indian thought: the idea emerges of the universe as a whole, and of its creation. by a single supreme power, superseding the earlier conception of a number of deities, more or less co-ordinate.

-What the Aryans thought about a future life is obscure, and perhaps at this period they had not thought the matter out. There is only the barest hint of anything resembling the doctrine of successive rebirths, which is so firmly established in the later literature, and there are some indications that a man's future fate was believed to depend on his conduct, but it is scarcely possible to say more than that the doctrine of individual survival was accepted.

It is natural to ask if the Aryans had anything corre- sponding to the system of caste, under which a man's social and economic status is determined by his birth. The growth of this system has been gradual, and in one of the later hymns of the Rigveda we meet the names of the four original castes familiar in the next period; but the main body of the text does not disclose the institution in a precise form. Kingship and priesthood were commonly hereditary; but fighting was the business of all tribesmen, not of a separate class, and there is nothing to suggest that weavers or other craftsmen were segregated in any way. The one clear distinction drawn in the texts is that of colour. As has been rather crudely said, the Aryan of the Rigveda was a white man, and proud of it'; he loathed his dark- skinned enemies; and his captured slaves were undoubtedly a class apart. To this extent, caste existed; but it is doubtful whether the system had developed further, and whether priestly and kingly families were as yet definitely segregated.

The Rigveda thus enables us to form some idea, however indistinct, of Aryan life; of the life of the hostile inhabitants it tells us scarcely anything. They possessed large herds of cattle, and they had some sort of refuges in which they sheltered themselves against the Aryan attacks; the word applied to these refuges means in later literature 'towns,'

but some scholars have questioned whether this meaning is applicable so early, and there is nothing to show the precise nature of these strongholds. It is clear that they were dangerous enemies in the field, though an impartial view of the fighting is not to be expected in the hymns of their opponents; and that is practically all we know about them. The view has occasionally been put forward that they were mere savages, but it seems to rest only on a too literal acceptance of the hatred and scorn expressed in the Aryan texts; and it will be negatived decisively if the Indus civilisation is proved to be Dravidian.

While, however, the relations between Aryans and Dravidians depicted in the texts were purely hostile, there must have been a certain amount of intercourse of a different type. The Aryans possessed many captured slaves, a fact which renders probable the beginnings of a population of mixed descent, while there are some hints of alliances with Dravidian forces in the wars between Aryan tribes. The language of the Rigveda contains numerous words, and some forms, which must be accepted as Dravidian; and it is probable that these were more frequent in the everyday speech of the Aryans, which according to linguistic scholars was already diverging from the written language of the learned. It is reasonable to infer then that a beginning had already been made at this period towards the fusion of cultures which undoubtedly occurred.

3. The Emergence of Hinduism

For the period following that of the Rigveda, our only sources are still the religious literature, consisting of later collections of hymns and ritual, together with explanations and commentaries on them. The dates of the texts are uncertain, but the oldest of them overlap the latest parts of the Rigveda, while the rest of the group are certainly earlier than 550 B.C.; and, when taken together, they enable us to form some idea of the developments which had occurred in the course of about four or five centuries.

The main fact disclosed by this literature is the emergence of that distinctive way of life which is most conveniently called Hinduism: the Rigveda is an Aryan text, but the later documents are the result of the gradual fusion of cultures which was apparently in a very early stage at the time the Rigveda was compiled. Hinduism is sometimes described as a religion, but when that word is used it must be understood in its older and wider sense; the present tendency is to confine 'religion' to that department of human activity which is concerned with creed and worship, but Hinduism, like Judaism, is a complete rule of life, arising from a distinctive outlook on the universe, and the term covers not merely creed and worship, but law, both public and private, and practically the whole of social and economic life.

Hinduism must be regarded as both Aryan and Dravidian, but it cannot yet be analysed into its elements. We know only a little about the Aryans, about the Dravidians we know practically nothing, and an apparently new element may be either a Dravidian contribution or an Aryan element which has escaped earlier record, or a novelty resulting from the interaction of the two cultures. Analysis must therefore wait until archaeologists have succeeded in reconstructing Dravidian civilisation as it existed before contact with the Aryans.

The locality to which the sources now refer shows a definite change. The Rigveda belongs to the watershed between the Indus and the Ganges, but now we are con- cerned with the upper Gangetic plain, the 'Middle Country' of the texts, and the Holy Land of Hinduism. Many Indian rivers are sacred, but none of them has in full measure the peculiar sacramental quality attributed to the Ganges; and while places of great sanctity are found all over the land, to the Hindu none of them carries just the same significance as the three names, Kashi, Prayag and Hardwār. At the present day many pilgrims make the long and difficult journey to the sources of the Ganges, far up in the Himalayas, but their number is trifling compared with the crowds who go to bathe at Hardwar, where the river enters the plain; at Prayag, renamed Allahabad in later times, where it is joined by the Jumna; or at Kāshi, usually known as Benares, the most sacred city of all. Kashi was not, however, the centre of the life of this period. That position was occupied by Kampila, now merely a village, lying near the Ganges, about midway between Agra and Lucknow. The scope of our authorities extends thence eastward to the border of Bengal, and westward to the Indus plain; South India remains outside it, but some 'outcast,' that is to say, un- assimilated, tribes are mentioned, whose names suggest that they lived in, or just beyond, the Vindhya country.

In this region the conditions of life were apparently more settled than in the period covered by the Rigveda. It becomes appropriate to speak of kingdoms rather than tribes; the territorial units were of larger size; city life had developed; and the power of the king over his subjects was increasing, while the lack of information regarding the councils suggests that their importance was on the wane. We meet, too, the beginnings of a local administration, an institution so conspicuous in later times, with a man at the head of each village receiving orders directly or indirectly from the king. In the family there are some signs that the position of the women was deteriorating, and the desire for sons rather than daughters becomes prominent.

It is clear that the bulk of the subjects were settled on the land, and that their chief business was raising crops; we hear of wheat and barley, rice and millets, pulses, sugar- cane and oilseeds, the main staples of the country at the present day, but as yet there is no mention of cotton. Iron and silver come into the list of metals in use, and the long array of handicrafts shows that specialisation of work had made much progress since the days of the Rigveda. It is, by comparison, an orderly and settled life, though still broken by wars between the kingdoms, and with the unassimilated tribes on their borders.

Segregation of the people into castes had advanced, though not to the point reached in later times. A caste is a social group, the membership of which is determined by birth; a child is born into a particular caste and cannot change to another. In the fully-developed system a caste presents four main characteristics. In the first place, it is endogamous, that is to say, nobody can marry outside the circle of his or her caste; and within the caste there are commonly groups known as sub-castes, which are also endogamous, so that people must marry inside their sub- caste. In the second place, a particular form of occupation is appropriate to each caste, so that a son usually follows his father's calling, as a weaver, a blacksmith, or whatever it may be; but this has never been altogether obligatory, and agriculture in particular may be practised by anyone. In the third place, each caste has an elaborate code of rules regarding food, drink, smoking and the like, which operate to restrict social intercourse between different castes. In the fourth place, there is what may almost be called a masonic element: men of the same caste are 'brethren '; they help each other in work, and enjoy themselves in common; they extend charity to brethren in distress; while a man who has been put out of caste' for some breach of rules or for conduct offensive to his brethren is practically deprived of all social amenities, has no friends, and must face the world as an isolated unit. The system is, however, by no means rigid. New castes arise from time to time; the social rules are frequently changed by agree- ment; the restrictions on occupation are increasingly elastic; and it is the limitation on marriage which has been the most stable feature of the institution.

This description applies only to modern times. In the period of which we are writing there were four main groups, the Brahman or priestly class, the Kshatriya or royal and warrior class, the Vaishya or commoner, and the Südra or servile class. Intermarriage among these groups was not yet absolutely barred, and the offspring of mixed marriages were tending to form distinct classes; while apparently some of the Sūdras were rising in rank, and becoming assimi- lated to the poorer freemen, among whom the craftsmen were being segregated from the agriculturists as being of inferior status. The position was thus developing in the direction of increased numbers of groups: the motives underlying this development are obscure, and, while it is easy to put forward conjectural theories, all that can safely be said is that, starting from the colour-bar' between Aryans and Dravidians, a tendency has in fact operated continuously in the direction of increased subdivision of classes, and increased rigidity of the distinctions between them 2. The actual starting-point may indeed lie much further back, if, as some scholars hold, there were already caste-divisions among the Dravidians before the Aryans arrived; but on this point definite evidence is wanting.

Religion remains, on the surface, polytheistic, and the deities of the Rigveda reappear, but with marked changes in emphasis. The most significant novelty is the growing primacy of Siva and Vishnu, the two deities between whom the bulk of popular worship is divided at the present day. In the Rigveda Vishnu appears as one form of the sun-god, but is accorded no special prominence in the later Vedic literature he emerges as one of the main objects of popular adoration. His position is not, however, so prominent as that of Rudra, who is hailed as 'great god,' and is given the epithet Siva, which has since become the recognised name. There are some grounds for thinking that we have here traces of a non-Aryan cult, for, according to Sir John Marshall, a representation of the 'male god' found at Mohenjo-daro is 'recognisable at once as a prototype of the historic Siva 3 . it is possible then that this early deity of the Indus plain was in course of time identified with the Aryan Rudra, and the primacy accorded to him may be the outcome of his prominence in the older popular worship.

A second important change is the increased power of the priesthood arising from the elaboration of ritual, and the development of what may be called the magical side of sacrifice. The idea had gained ground that the priest could influence, to the point of compulsion, the god to whom he offered a sacrifice, provided that he observed the accepted ritual in its minutest details; but only an expert priest could do this, and an error in ritual, whether accidental or intentional, would be fatal to success. The Brahman had thus come to stand out as indispensable to the layman, to be reverenced, and propitiated, as controlling the favour of the gods.

This, however, is not the whole story. While the priests. were developing their power over the people, they, or some of them, were carrying further the ideas already foreshadowed in the Rigveda, which, if logically interpreted, would render priests and ritual unimportant. The group of commentaries known by the name of Upanishads insist on the ultimate unity of the universe, and on an absolute reality which cannot be approached directly by human beings; the consequences of these conceptions are not fully developed, but they form the starting-point of the elaborate meta- physical discussions which characterise the literature of later times, and they mark the increasing divergence between the popular polytheistic religion and the best thought of the best minds.

Of more immediate significance was the formulation of the doctrine of successive rebirths, together with the allied doctrine of karma, a term which has no precise equivalent in English. Etymologically the word denotes 'action,' and the consequences of human action form the subject of the doctrine. On one side it approaches the principle of philo- sophic determinism, that the present is the sum of the past, and that the future depends inevitably on the present; but it departs from this principle in postulating the freedom of the individual will. What happens to a man in the present is the inevitable result of the sum total of his past actions, and as such must be accepted with resignation; but his action in the present is not predetermined by the past, for he is free to choose his course. At the moment of death, then, there is an accumulation of the consequences of past action, which determines the condition of the individual in the next birth, whether as a man or as a higher or lower animal. Rebirth may not, however, be immediate, and there may be an interval of retribution for past conduct, which in the popular speech is denoted by words usually rendered as 'heaven' and 'hell.' The succession of re- births may be long, but it is not necessarily infinite: the ideal of life is to become one with the absolute reality which is termed Brahman, when the series of rebirths comes to an end. This union, or absorption, is described by some Indian writers as ' immortality' or 'eternal life,' but it is something essentially different from the meaning which those words carry in ordinary English speech: in one case the separate individuality is lost, in the other it persists to all eternity. This ideal, that the termination of a separate existence is the greatest good, leads naturally to the position that indi- vidual existence is in itself an evil; the inference does not appear in our authorities for this period, but it must have been quickly drawn, for the pessimistic view of life lies at the root of the doctrines taught by the religious reformers of the sixth century B.C., whom we shall meet in Chapter V.

It may be said then that the main lines of Hinduism had emerged in the upper Gangetic plain by the end of the later Vedic period. There is no record of the process by which it spread over the rest of India. Some writers have pictured the activities of hosts of Brahman missionaries, preaching the new gospel successfully throughout the country, but no facts have been brought forward to justify this view, and all that can safely be said is that Hinduism extended, it may be supposed gradually, until it became the accepted way of life alike in North and in South.
Foot notes

1 Sir John Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilisation (London, 1931). The quotation is from p.

2 It is possible that a stage in this development is indicated by the sreni, an institution mentioned occasionally in the early Buddhist literature. The word is usually rendered gild (or guild), but enough is not known of the institution to justify the use of a term carrying such precise connota- tions. A sreni was a group of families following the same craft, and co-operating under the control of a president or headman; it looks like an occupational caste in the making, but more than this cannot usefully be said about it.

3  Marshall, op. cit., p. 52.