Indian Antiquary Vol 42

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

Page 86

82
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1913.
Even among the Aryas this cult was but superimposed on, and did not oust, pre-existing cults. It mingled with the previous totemistic cults implying the worship of animals—like the cow, the hawk, and the serpent, of trees like the ficus religiosa, of hill divinities, and river goddesses; it also mixed with innumerable religio-magical practices based on animistic beliefs, all which are abundantly referred to in the Vedic mantras, and are prepotent to-day in India. But the fire-priests, some of whom, like the Rishis, composed hymns and instituted rites, and others like the H td, the Adhvaryu, etc., assisted at the ritual, dominated the land from early times, and secared the patronage of kings. As they alone have left literary monuments, they loom large in the early history of India; bat we must not forget that the bulk of the people of India followed, and still follow, the non-Aryan "fireless" rites of the Dasyus, and the fire rite was at no age more than the semi-esoteric cult of the few. The spread of the fire calt into the lower Ganges valley and into the Deccan has been mistaken by historians for the spread of the “Aryan race." There is no evidence of a racial dislocation in India in these early days. So far as is known the bulk of the people was stationary. The story of the Ramayana has been by some interpreted to refer to an ancient invasion of Southern India by the Aryans. But how the mythical defeat of a king of Lanka by & solitary ascetic prince, exiled from his kingdom, belped by his brother and by a South Indian monkey tribe, can mean the migration of a north Indian people, passes comprehension. In all the early books there is evidence of the spread of the fire cult and the gradual increase of the power of the fire-priests, bat none of any racial drift. Even this gradaal extention of the fire cult did not mean the adoption of it by the people, such as takes place when Christianity or Islam spreads in our days, but merely meant the predominance of the Bribman and the adoption of forms of State fire-rites like the Rajastya or Agdamedha by kings for special public purposes. The fire-rite could not spread among the people, for from pretty early times the Brahmaņalone was competent to act as the fire-worshipper, and kings could be admitted to the fire-worship, even in sacrifices peculiar to kings, only after being temporarily invested with Brahmanhood, and even they could approach only the outermost of the sacrificial fires, that at the entrance to the sacrificial hall. This fire cult gradually died uut even among the Brahmans, and to-day but faint relies of it are followed in a half-hearted manner in Brâhman homes.
Bat from early days the name Arya--which originally belonged to the tribes that had adopted the fire and some on twas transferred to the higher classes of the Indian peoples, who, whatever their beliefs and religio-magical practices, acknowledged the theoretical supremacy of the fire-priest; so much so that when Gantama Siddhartha founded an order of ascetics (Bhikshus) open to Kshatriyas, in imitation of the Brahman order of Samnyadina, bis dhamma was called Ariya (Arya). When, in later times, modern Hinduism rose with its namerous castes each characterised by endogamy, and with its beliefs and practices conglomerated out of every cult that had grown in ancient India, the term Arya was extended to every clan and every tribe that could lay claim to a high social status, and could enforce that claim. And, lastly, when the theory of the "Aryan invasion" of India was promulgated by European scholars, it was seized with avidity by the "higher castes” as affording a historical basis to their pretensions of saperiority to other castes. And the result is that every member of every caste that calls itself “Aryan "believes that blue Aryan blood flows in his veins. Emotion plays a large part in the manufacture of history, and any theory that soothes the vanity at # people is straightway elevated to the rank of a fact ; go to-day a scientifio examination of the bases of the theory of a superior Aryan race is resented more in India than anywhere else in the world,
European Sanskrit scholars, who have mostly kept themselves aloof from the world's progress in the science of ethnology, still speak to-day of the "Aryan" invasion of India, and the Bu persession of the aborigines by the " Aryan,” as if it were a fact. They do not realise that, as Dr. Haddon says, “the so-called Aryan conquest was more a moral and intellectual one than pubstitution of the white man for the dark-skinned people that is, it was more social than racial." But it is regrettable that Dr. Haddon, the cautious ethnologist, the most eminent authority on the social drifts of the world, should yet give his unhesitating adhesion to Risley's theory that