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ORIGIN OF BRAIIMIN GOTRAS
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the three-peaked headdress as on the sacrifice scal could be called trisanku, and as the figure is between heaven and carth (probably a god descending for the sacrifice), we have here one posssible source of the Visvamitra-Trisanku myth.
For the first identification of the later cemetery at Harappa as Aryan, cf. V. Gordon Childe, "New Light On The Most Ancient East" (London 1935, 223-4); R.E.M. Wheeler 'Ancient India' no. 3,1947,81 ff, gives a discussion of the archacological evidence for Aryan conquest and occupation at Harappa ; for the ponderous incompetence of Marshall's and Mackay's cxcavation of Mohenjo-Daro ibid.p.144.
IRANIAN PARALLELS
10. There is no doubt that Indo-Aryan society as reorganized with Brahminism opened up the swampy lands of the Gangetic basin, so that caste was an essential feature of more efficient means of production, the development of fixed settlements, and the state. The word brahman for the priesthood is not to be found outside India; and whercas exogamous patriarchal gentes within the tribe or community are known to have existed among Latin and Greek societics after the Aryan invasion of those respective territories, we have no general example of fire-priesthood as the exclusive prerogative of a hereditary caste, though occasionally a gens has the rights of chief priesthood for some particular cult. There is, however, a rudimentary caste system and a fire-priest caste among a neighbouring Aryan people, the Iranians; this case has to be considered in detail.
Our sources of knowledge for the Iranians are the fragmentary Avestan and Pahlavi religious texts, plus the reports of Greek travellers and historians. The first group of documents is lacunary, of late redaction as shown by the reference to the followers of a heretic Gaotema (Yt. xiii. 16, now identified with the Buddha and not Nodhas Gotama), and in addition bears the stamp of à thorough religious reform, that of Zoroaster, which succeeded with the Achacmenids in the 6th century B.C. Comparison with the Rgveda is difficult. Greek notices supply foreign travellers' accounts far superior to anything comparable for that period in India, but are occasionally hostile and sometimes
*I follow: for Avestan sources, James Darmsteter's translation in the Sacred Books of The East, vols.4 and 23 (Oxford 1805). For the general background, Mancckjcc Nusservanji Dhalla's 'History of Zoroastrianism' (New York 1938) seemed to be competent ; for most of the contested points, Herzfeld's discussion in his "Zoroster And His World' (2 vols. Princeton, 1947) seems quite reliable, with a few possible exceptions such as the identification of soma with the vinc. p.551., Herodotos is cited from the familiar translation by Rawlinson, with the abbreviation Her. Other abbrevations: Vd, Vendidad, Yt. = Yast.
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