________________
MAY, 19271
THE MEANING AND ETYM LOGY OF PUJA
95
weapons and tools of copper, 10 and of horses which they brought with them from Bactria and Transoxiana, old homesteads of horse-breeding. It must also be kept in mind that the same differences may have prevailed between the Aryan invaders and the aborigines as in later times between Muhammadan invaders of Turkish or Iranian origin and the Hindus. The former were physically far superior because of their diet and the climatic conditions in which they lived
Which were the different populations of India at the time of the Aryan invasion is not known nor will it perhaps ever be. Perhaps we may hope the most from archæological investigations, bat linguistic research will possibly also not be without result. But we may suggest, with a fair amount of safety, that at the time of the invasion,11 the Ganges-Jumna. Doâb, the Ganges valley, Orissa and the Eastern Vindhyas--and perhaps also other parts of the North and East--were inhabited by Muņdå-speaking tribes, while the Southern part of the West (Sindh), the Dakhan and the extreme South were populated by Dravidians. Of their entry into India it seems dangerous to speak at a time when the new discoveries at Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, etc., are not yet sufficiently, known.13 But in view of the existence of the Brâhồi language in Balûchistân it seems highly probable that the Dravi. dians entered India from the West and first of all occupied Sindh, whence they spread through the South of Rajputâna, through Güjarât and Malwa to the Dakhan and the extreme South. If this was the case, and if the ruins at Mohenjo Daro, etc, are of Dravidian origin they would probably have entered Sindh before 3000 B.C. Unfortunately, nothing is known, so far, concerning the linguistic affinities of the Dravidian languages; that any connection could be established with the Sumerian seems quite improbable 13
Very little seems to be known concerning the religion of the Mundâ tribes proper, as they were at an early time either Dravidianized or drawn under the ban of Brahmanism. But there is no reason to think that it did not consist in a crude form of animism. We may indeed well suggest that these aborigines lived in an eternal awe of hideous and blood-thirsty demons and ghosts, whom they tried to satisfy by frequent lidations of blood and also by not unfrequent human sacrifices. The Khonds of Sambalpur, whose horrible Meriâh. sacrifice is so well known from the descriptions of Campbell and Macpherson, are, no doubt, Dravidianized Mundas.14 At this sacrifice the Khonda cut the jiving human scapegoat into slices which they buried in the fields from which they expected an abundant harvest. This is apparently a very old type of sacrifice and is, no doubt, originally connected with the myth of the Purugas ükia (Rigveda, X, 90), according to which a primordial being is cut up, and out of its remnants is produced the whole creation. 16 For, in my opinion, a myth of that description presupposes a similar rite.
10 Ayas in Rigveda sems to mean only "copper "--bron ze scarcely noems to have existed in India (cf. CHI., I, p. 614)-and has only more lately came to mean "iron," which was earlier called bydrnam ayu. There is no doubt that the Indo-Eur. word underlying Skt. ayas, Avestan ayah, Latin aes and Gothie aiz, also meant only "copper." Whether it was originally a loan-word from some Mediterranean language (cf. Ipsen, Indogermanische Forschungen, vol. XLI. p. 175) is undecided and irrelevant.
11 Personally I should feel inclined to think that this invasion took place about 2000-1800 s.c. (cf. Bulletin S.O.S., vol. IV, p. 167).
13 Of these discoveries the present writer knows only through articles in the Times, The IUustrated London News (September October 1924, February March 1926), and the article of Mr. SK. Chatterji in Moderri Review, 1924, p. 665 89., (cf. Professor 8. Lévi, J.A. 1925: I. p. 375 89.). To try, with Professor Konow (Festgabe Jacobi, p. 259 sq.), to connect those discoveries with the chronology of the Aryan invasion is apparently impossible.
13 Dr. F. O. Schrader in Zeitschrift für Indojogie u. Iraris:ik, vol. II, p. 81 q.. tries to connect the Dravidian with Finno-Ugrian laaguages; but this seems fan ifal
14 O. Russell. Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces, IUI, p. 464 89.
16 That the author of the Purusasikta thought of a real sacrifice, and not a symbolic one, is clear from verso 18: devd yad ... abadhnan purusam pafum and other pausagon. Cf. the prosout writer's work Indien (Stockholm 1926), p. 588 aq.
