Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 81

MARCH, 1913.] THE MYTH OF THE ARYAN INVASION OF INDIA
77
Again we know that what are called Châturmasyas are three intercalary periods of four months each. From the formula of these Châturmâsyas given in the Satapatha Brahmana (XI. 5, 2, 10), we can arrive at the same number of years. The passage in which this formula is given is thus translated by Prof. Eggeling:
"Now, indeed, the formulas of these seasonal offerings amount to three hundred and sixty-two Brihati verses; he thereby obtains both the year and the Mahâvrata; and thus, indeed, this sacrificer also has a two-fold foundation; and he thus makes the sacrificer reach the heavenly world and establish himself therein."
80
It is a fact that the Vedic poets usually represent a day by a syllable.31 Accordingly, the number of syllables contained in 362 Brihati verses must represent 362 x 36 days contained in all the Châturmasyas so far counted. Expressed in months, they will be 362 x 36- =434 months intercalated in cycles of 2 years each. Hence the number of years will be equal to 2172 x=1086. Bat as stated in the passage, the sacrificer must have a two-fold foundation, i.e., must double the number, before he can reach the heavenly world, i.e., the era, and establish himself therein. Hence doubling the number, we have 1086 X2-2172 years. It is unnecessary to point out here that these various numbers of years in the era of the Vedic poets, though differing from each other a little, lead to the same conclusion that I have arrived at in my Gavam Ayana, "the Vedic Era," where I showed the lapse of 465 intercalary days equivalent to 465 x 4 = 1860 years. That this era of nearly 2000 years had elapsed by the time of Parikshit, the grandson of Yudhishthira, the hero of the Mahabharata war, is a point worthy of the attention of scholars.
THE MYTH OF THE ARYAN INVASION OF INDIA.1
BY P. T. SRINIVAS IYENGAR, M.A.; VIZAGAPATAM.
It is well known that most writers on modern history have not escaped the bias of their political or religious convictions, however impartial they have tried to be. In the selection of facts, in the method of marshalling them to point to a moral, Hume was as much dominated by his Tory proclivities as Macaulay was by his Whig predilections. This applies in a small measure to ancient history, too. When the theory of the great civilised Aryan race was started, German patriotism claimed the Aryans to have been originally tall, fair, and long-headed, and the direct ancestors of the modern Teutons. French patriotism insisted that the language and civilisation of the Aryans came into Europe with the Alpine race, which forms such a large element in the modern French population; while the Italian Sergi, who belongs to the Mediterranean race evolved from an African stock, credits his own race with originating the Greco-Roman civilisation, and believes that the Aryans were savages when they invaded Europe. This colouring of history by the sympathies of the historian is not an unmixed evil, for to it we owe the rehabilitation of the character of Catholic sovereigns and statesmen by Lingard, and the explosion of the myth of the Saxon extermination of the Celts in England by leaders of the pro-Celtic movement of our own days. The eye of sympathy can alone pierce through the thick veil of interested misrepresentation, and emotion must co-operate with cold reason in the recovery of historic truth. It is not in history as in physical science where passion cannot blind the eye to facts. The Dravidians, the Dasyus, the Dâsas-by whichever of these three names we may choose to designate the bulk of the people of India since historic times-have suffered from the misrepresentation of the Aryan Rishis, who composed the Vedas in the remote past, and of the ancient Indian commentators and modern European and American expounders of the sacred Scriptures of the Hindus. At the same time a mythical Aryan race has been built up out of scattered allusions in the Indian writings, and credited with the invasion of India, with the extirpation in some places, and absorption into the capacious Aryan fold in others, of the numerous tribes that occupied this vast continent. This theory appealed to the prepossessions both of those who
81 Maitrayantya Sash. I. 7, 3.
First printed from the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, July 1912, revised by the authore