VEDIC AGE

VEDIC-AGE

Vedic-age

In India, the founder or creators of the Vedic culture – which was diametrically opposed to the Harappan civilization – were Aryans, probably an immigrant people, whose first arrival in India is dated between 2000 and 1500 BC. After settling in India the Aryans composed a series of religious hymns, which were eventually compiled into a text known as Rigveda. Our knowledge of the Aryans in India during this earliest period is based primarily on this work. The great German scholar Max Muller who initially believed that Aryans belonged to a race, later detracted and declared emphatically that the term “Aryans, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language and nothing but language…..” In 1786, Sir William Jones, in his famous address to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, tried to prove a definite relation between the Vedic Sanskrit and some of the principle languages of Europe and Asia such as Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, Lithuanian, German, Persian etc. The scholars have given a common name ‘Indo-European’ to this group of languages and the people speaking them were known as the Indo-Europeans or Indo-Aryans. On this basis it has been surmised that the people who spoke the common language and shared the common home, dispersed or emigrated to various parts of the world, including India.

sindu-river

          The Aryans, whose presence in North-western India or the region of Sapta Sindhu as documented by the Rigveda, had reached the territory through a migration or a succession of migrations, from outside the subcontinent. The Aryan migration of India is recorded in no written document, and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically, although recently some advances have been achieved in this respect too, but it is nevertheless firmly established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology. The Indo-European languages of which Sanskrit in its Vedic form is one of the oldest members, originated outside India, and the only possible way by which a language belonging to this family could be carried all the way to India was the migration of the people speaking it.

Original Homeland

Kassite-Inscription

It has long been a matter of controversy as to what region the Indo-Europeans inhabited before the arrival of one or more of their branches to India. Many scholars tried to prove that the Vedic Aryans were neither foreigners nor did they migrate into India, but were the indigenous people, who regarded Sapta Sindhu as their original home. This view, though highly favoured at one time, has not many supporters now. Had India been the original home of Aryans they would have certainly tried to fully Aryanize the whole of this subcontinent before crossing the frontier barrier for some other lands. Besides, the vast disparities between the Harappan and Vedic cultures further prove that had the Aryans been the indigenous people these disparities would not have been noticed, particularly when the epicentre of both these cultures was the region of Indus. Equally fanciful are the views of some European Scholars who assign the Baltic sea region as the original Home of Aryans. Bal Gangadhar Tilak suggested the Polar Region as the original home of the Aryans. Central Asia, Central Europe, Lithuania, etc. have also been suggested as the original homeland of the Aryans. However the consensus of opinion is that the original homeland of the Aryans was somewhere in Central Asia.

          In the period preceding migration to India the Aryans were settled, in all probability, in Iran and the Central Asian regions bordering the Ixus and the Jaxartes, and the Aral and Caspian seas; and they are now known as Indo-Iranians. From this base, sections of them may be presumed to have pushed up into the highlands of Afghanistan, and then to have descended from this base into the plains of the Punjab.

          There is evidence outside India to show that in Asia Minor and other countries of Western Asia there was some activity of the Aryans. Some inscriptions of about 1350 BC found at Boghazkoiin Cilicia (Asia Minor), the capital of the ancient Hittites, mention some Aryan deities such as Indra, Varuna, Mirta and Nasatyas (Aswins). We also have information that Indo-European elements are found among the Hittites of Turkey (ancient Anatolia) around 2000 BC and the Kassite’s languages contained Indo-European terms. Some Aryan names appear in Kassite inscriptions of about 1600 BC from Iraq and in Mittani inscriptions of the fourteenth 14^th century BC from Syria. However, the earliest evidence of the Indo-European language is found in an inscription of about 2200 BC form Iraq. The clay tablets with  Babylonian cuneiform script discovered at El-Amarna in Egypt have revealed that numerous Kings with Indo Iranian names such as Artamanya, Arzawiya, Yasadata, Suttarna, etc.  were ruling in Syria about 1400 BC. Further, about 1760 BC Babylone fell into the hands of the Kassites who are known to have used the word Surias to designate the Sun. This is perhaps the oldest attested word of definitely Indo-Iranian stamp which was borrowed by the Kassites from the Indo-Iranians before they dispersed form their common home. 

  

          As regards chronology, all that we can glean from the inscriptions at Boghaz-Koj is that, about the middle of second millennium BC, Aryan tribes which worshipped Vedic gods must have already been established in North-western India for a very considerable time, as several of these tribes had migrated far back to West as early as about 1400 BC.

          The Aryan migration to India was not a single concerted action, but one covering centuries and involving many tribes. In the Rgiveda the land were the Vedic Aryans lived is called by the name of Sapta Sindhu or the ‘The land of the seven rivers’ which included the Indus or Sindhu with its principal tributaries on the west and the Sarasvati on the east. The region of Sapta Sindhu witnessed the composition of the sacred hymns which describe the early growth and development of the vedic Culture.

Rig-veda

Archaeology

Rig-vedic-period

Initially, as mentioned earlier, the dispersal of Aryan groups was based only on comparative philology. All the Aryan groups had a common language. Nam of certain animals such as goats, dogs, horses, certain plants such as pine, maple, etc. are similar in all the Indo-European languages. Similarly Aryan becomes Orja in Finnish language. A branch of ancient people of Finland and Arya = Orja in finish means slave. Similarly ‘Airya’ in the Avesta denoted ‘Arya’. However, in recent years there has been some concerted efforts at discovering Aryans archaeologically. These efforts have met with little success, although results have been quite encouraging.

map-of-vedic-period