Indian Antiquary Vol 42

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

Page 83

MARCH, 1913.)
THE MYTH OF THE ARYAN INVASION OF INDIA
79
India must have been open to the slow advance of family or tribal migration. The previous inhabitants of the fertile valley of the Five Rivers politely retreated before the advancing " Aryana," so that the purity of the “Aryan type" might not be polluted ; and when the "Aryans" had moved into the Punjab, an obliging Providence ordered that the north-western frontier of India should be "closed to the slow advance of family or tribal migration." Granting that all these miracles took place four thousand years ago, does subsequent history help us to believe that this Aryan type has remained anpolluted in the Punjab Innamerable races have poured into India through the north-west in historic times. Persians, European Greeks, Bactrians, Scythians, Huns, Afghans, Tartars, and Moguls, have all invaded India and settled in larger or smaller numbers in the Punjab, and been absorbed in its " Aryan" population. It requires great scientific hardihood to maintain that the nasal index of the Punjabi has remained unaffected by this age-long welter of races.
Apart from the measurement of noses, the only other source of information regarding the " Aryans" of India is the mantras of the Vedas of the Hindus. These mantras were composed by Rishis belonging to tribes who called themselves Arya, and who called certain other tribes Dasyu or Dâsa. In later days Årya meant " noble," and Dâsa meant "a slave," but it is not possible to find out with certainty what these words meant originally. The Arya and the Dåsa fought with each other frequently; but as frequently Dâsa tribes were auxiliaries of Årya tribes in fights among themselves. None of these conflicts are incidents of a war of invasion. The Aryas do not speak of themselves as invaders gradually driving the aborigines before them, and wresting their land from them. There is no trace of the inveterate habit of people settling in a new land, that of importing into the land of their adoption geographical and personal names from their far-off original homes. In the Vedic hymns there is not even the slightest reference to or memory of any land outside India which the ancestors of the Aryas inhabited, nu hint of the route through which they came to India, no phrase reminiscent of any foreign connection. Nor is there anything to indicate that they were gradually or suddenly moving hordes; the Aryas of the Vedio mantras speak of themselves as people living in the Indns-Ganges valley, leading a settled life in towns and villages, plonghing the soil and tending their numerous herds of cattle. Their kings, petty chiefs, lords of towns, and heads of villages, their village assemblies, political and religious, their irrigation canals and their roads, their threshing-floors and water-troughs for cattle, all indicate that the Aryas lived in an organised society in the Vedic times. Nor were the Dasyus savages. It is true the Aryans do not refer to them in complimentary terms; but even from the contemptuous references to the Dasyus in the hymns of their Aryan enemies, we can easily infer that they were not savages, but lived like the Aryans in towns and villages. They owned many castles built of wood like the castles of the Aryas. Their chariots, horses, and cattle proved a standing temptation to the Aryas to attempt to raid them. Thas all the available evidence shows that the Dasyus were not savages, but at least as civilised as the Aryas. There is nothing in the mantras froni wbich the physical characteristics of the Aryus or the Dasyus can be inferred. There is a solitary word (anāsa) used in reference to the Dasya, which has been variously interpreted as "mouthless," or "faceless," or "nobeless," and some scholars believe that this refers to the nose of the Dravidian, " thick and broad," and the formula expressing its proportionate dimensions, higher than in any known race, except the Negro." There are also references to the "black"colour of the Dasyu; but, in some passages, this certainly refers not to the human enemies of the Aryas but to demons whom they dreaded, and, in others, it is not easy to decide whether the word is used metaphorically or literally. To construct theories of racial characteristics on the shifting foundations of solitary phrases of very doubtful import, and in the total absence of any other evidence, is speculation rop mad.
The only certain difference between the Arya and the Dasyu, frequently referred to in the mantras, is one of cult. Whatever the etymological meaning of the word Arya may Imperial Ganottoor of India, I. p. 802.
. Haddon, The Study of Man, p. 104,