by Roshen Dalal
VEDIC CULTURE IN SOUTH INDIA
Another argument for an earlier date is in the context of the spread of Vedic culture to southern India. Some Vedic schools, such as those of Baudhayana and Apastamba, are believed to have originated in the south. The Rig Veda refers only to north-west India and it is argued that if the date were around 1200 BCE, Vedic schools could not have developed in the south in the space of a few hundred years.
MORE TIME NEEDED FOR DEVELOPMENT
It is also argued that a period of 700-odd years was grossly insufficient for the development of the entire Vedic literature. Buddhist texts presuppose the existence of even the Vedangas, hence all this complex thought must have taken a long time to develop.
DATES USING EPICS AND THE PURANAS
Certain scholars, such as the Indian historians F.E. Pargiter, A.D. Pusalker, and S.N. Pradhan, used Puranic and epic data to calculate the dates of some of the people mentioned in the Rig Veda. These texts provide accounts of a great flood that took place in the time of Manu Vaivasvata, the seventh Manu or traditional world ruler. Manu is mentioned in the Vedic Samhitas but the first account of this flood dates to the Shatapatha Brahmana. The Puranas also have accounts of the first six Manus, and state that the first Manu, Svayambhuva, lived on the banks of the river Sarasvati. The Vayu Purana suggests that there was a ruler known as Ananda, prior to the first Manu. According to this theory, pre-flood traditions are represented by the first six Manus, Manu Vaivasvata being the seventh. But after the flood, the world was repopulated through the descendants of Manu Vaivasvata.
Based on later inscriptions and other sources, Pusalker calculates the date of the Mahabharata war as 1400 BCE. According to traditional accounts, Manu Vaivasvata flourished ninety-five generations before this. Taking eighteen years as the average reign of each king, he reaches a date of 3110 BCE for Manu, close to the traditional Kali yuga date of 3102 BCE. However, according to his calculations, the Kali yuga begins after the Mahabharata war, that is, in 1400 BCE. He feels one can trace the ‘Aryan advance’ during the four yugas or ages, the Krita, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali. Puranic accounts with lists of kings do not follow the mythical time scheme for these yugas, extending to hundreds of thousands of years, otherwise given in the same texts. Instead, they provide forty generations of kings for the Krita yuga, twenty-five for the Treta yuga, and thirty for the Dvapara yuga. Sagara, Rama, and Krishna are said to be the kings that lived at the end of the Krita, Treta, and Dvapara yugas, respectively.
Of Manu Vaivasvata’s ten children, Ila, the eldest, was alternatively male and female. As a female, she married Budha or Soma and their son, Pururavas Aila, began the Chandravamshi or lunar dynasty. After analysing Puranic data and collating various accounts, Pargiter suggests the following as the names of Manu’s other sons: Ikshvaku, Nabhaga, Sharyati, Narishyanta, Pramshu, Nabhagodishtha (or Nabhanedishtha), Karusha, and Prishadhra. Various dynasties can be traced from these and from Ila’s sons after she was transformed into a man named Sudyumna. These three sons were Utkala, Gaya, and Vinatashva. All these dynasties ruled northern, central and eastern India but Pururavas, Nahusha, and Yayati soon displaced and conquered the rest. Ikshvaku was the first king of Ayodhya and ruled over Madhyadesha, initiating the Suryavamshi dynasty.
Yayati, fifth in descent from Manu Vaivasvata, is mentioned in the Rig Veda. By Pusalker’s calculations, he would have lived ninety years after Manu, around 3010 BCE. He categorizes the period of 3000–2750 BCE as the Yayati period. Nahusha, son of Ayu who was the son of Pururavas, was the father of Yayati. Yayati’s five sons in the Puranas were Yadu, Turvasha, Anu, Druhyu, and Puru who are mentioned as tribes in the Rig Veda but are not Yayati’s sons in that text. It is notable that, according to the Puranas, Ayu married Prabha, the daughter of a danava (non-arya) king, Svarbhanu.
Pusalker calls the next era the Mandhatri period, dating from 2750 to 2550 BCE. Mandhatri, an Ikshvaku king of Ayodhya, was twenty generations later than Manu. He married Bindumati, daughter of Shashabindu of the Yadavas, and had three sons: Purukutsa, Ambarisha, and Muchukunda. Mandhatri conquered the areas of the Pauravas and Kanyakubjas, and was succeeded by Purukutsa. The Druhyus too were pushed out of Rajasthan and later lived in Gandhara, named after one of their kings. The Haihayas ruled in central India, the Anavas were powerful in the Punjab.
This was followed by the Parashurama period (2550–2350 BCE). At this time, the Bhrigus or Bhargavas were in Gujarat. This was the period of Arjuna Kartavirya, Vishvamitra, Jamadagni, Parashurama, and Harishchandra. Sagara of Ayodhya and Dushyanta and Bharata of Hastinapura also belong to this period.
The Ramachandra period (2350–1950 BCE) followed. Rama flourished sixty-five generations after Manu and, according to this scheme, lived at the end of this period, around 1950 BCE. This was succeeded by the Krishna period (1950–1400 BCE) when Sudasa of the north Panchalas was important. The Panchalas, Pauravas, and Yadavas dominated the scene. The Dasharajna war described in the Rig Veda occurred three or four kings after Rama in 1900 BCE.
If Pargiter’s date for the Mahabharata war is taken, which is around 1000 BCE, these dates have to be reduced by 400 years. An interesting aspect of this scheme is that the Dasharajna is placed around 1900 BCE, which would not be far removed from other conventional views of its date. However, as Yayati is also mentioned in the Rig Veda, the Rig Vedic period would go back to around 3000 BCE, and according to traditional history, the whole of northern and central India was occupied by this time.
Pusalker thus reconstructs this early period with details that do not exist in the Vedas, but are found in later texts. The Bharata war then took place in 1400 BCE, after which the Kali yuga began. Using the Puranas to amplify Vedic texts is not a method that many agree on. However, Pargiter, Pusalker, and others find parallels between the two groups of texts, and also between the epics and the Vedas, but have different views on certain aspects.
The account of Samvarana in the Mahabharata has been equated with the battle of the ten kings in the Rig Veda, and Sudas has been identified with Sudasa of the Panchalas. Says Pargiter:
Sudas drove the Paurava king Samvarana out of Hastinapura, defeating him on the Jumna [Yamuna]. His conquests stirred up a confederacy of the neighbouring kings to resist him—Puru (Samvarana), the Yadava (Yadava king of Mathura), Shivas (Shivis who were Anavas), Druhyus (of Gandhara), Matsyas (west of Shurasena), Turvasha (the Turvasu prince apparently in Rewa) and other smaller states. Sudas defeated them in a great battle near the Parushni (Ravi), and Puru (Samvarana) took refuge in the Sindhu (Indus) for many years.
Pradhan agrees with this analysis though Pusalker points out that the Mahabharata only refers to the driving out of Samvarana from his kingdom by the king of the Panchalas, and does not contain these other details.
These equations have inherent contradictions as among the kings or tribes that took part in the battle of the ten kings are those later referred to as Yayati’s sons, who could not have been more than a thousand years later than him.
Another problem is that according to this theory, history begins around 3000 BCE, with Manu Vaivasvata repopulating the world. This has no relationship with the reality as revealed by archaeology.
Though there are discrepancies, it is to be noted that when Max Müller (1863–d. 1937), and some other early scholars were making conjectures about the date of the Rig Veda, the Harappan Civilization was unknown, and research in archaeology was limited.
OTHER DATES
There are still other views on the date, such as that put forward by Kazanas and supported by several others. According to him, the features of the Harappan civilization are found in the post–Rig Vedic texts, the Brahmanas, and the Sutras. The Brahmanas refer to and explain some Rig Vedic passages. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has long lists of teachers, indicating that considerable time had passed since the composition of the Rig Vedic hymns. In addition, the stars and planets referred to in the Mahabharata suggest a date for the core of that text of around 3000 BCE.
Research shows that the Sarasvati river flowed to the ocean before 3200 BCE, hence the Rig Veda should be assigned to circa 3800–3500 BCE.
The entire text is not considered to be of the same date. In general, mandalas 2–7 are believed to be the earliest. Michael Witzel, a noted authority on the Vedas, identifies three chronological phases of the Rig Veda:
1700–1500 BCE: Mandalas 4, 5, 6, 2
1500–1350 BCE: Middle Vedic, mandalas 3, 7, 8
1350–1200 BCE: Late Vedic, mandalas 1.1–50, 8.67–103, 10
There are other indications of the date of the text from the language used, inscriptions, texts, archaeology, and what is known about Rig Vedic and comparative cultures.
LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS FOR THE ORIGIN OF THE VEDIC PEOPLE
Linguistic analysis forms an important part of the theories of origin of the Vedic people, and of other groups in India at the time of the composition of the Rig Veda. We have already looked at some of the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian implications. But, within the Rig Veda, there are elements of non-Indo European languages, apart from the Sanskrit in which it was composed.
Suggestions for the languages that could have provided additional components include Dravidian, Proto-Munda, Proto-Burashaski, and other languages, now possibly lost. Various scholars have presumed the lost languages could belong to the Harappan Civilization or to the Bactria– Margiana Archaeological Complex of Central Asia, or some other unknown language cluster. Linguists who have analysed the text have come up with lists of non-Indo-European words. They themselves do not agree on the results of these studies, and whether these form a substratum or an adstratum of Indo-Aryan—were they included at the time of the composition of the Rig Veda, thus indicating that they were pre-existent in the region of its composition, or were they added later? The British Indologist and linguist Thomas Burrow listed twenty-five words from non-Indo-European languages in the Rig Veda while the linguist Koenraad Kuiper, a professor in New Zealand, listed 383, and the German linguist Thomas Oberlies identified 350. The noted linguist Emeneau felt that there may be a Dravidian language substratum in the Rig Veda, but actually pointed out only one word that he believed was definitely of non-Sanskrit origin. P. Thieme and H. Hock found no non-Sanskrit words. Other languages of the Indo-European group, such as Greek, are also thought to have non-Indo-European influences.
Apart from different types of words, the Rig Vedic language includes some features, for instance retroflex phenomes, which do not occur in other Indo-European languages. It has been suggested that these too are a result of the influence of local languages or of certain lost languages. Two opposing views concerning the retroflexes in the Rig Veda were whether they were borrowed from the Dravidian substratum as held by Krishnamurthy, or were innovated, as suggested by Hock.
Madhav M. Deshpande, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Michigan, brings out certain aspects of the Rig Veda. He points out that the version of the Rig Veda available to us was put together by editors. These were not the hymns in their original form. For instance, in the family books, large numbers of people from one family were the composers, separated in time by several generations, yet their hymns appear together in the same type of language. He says that Shakalya’s edition, which is the one known to us today, is believed to be based on the Mandukya of Magadha in the east, even though the Rig Veda was composed in the north-west. The entire question of retroflexes thus gains a new dimension. Retroflexes do not exist in Iranian, hence they were acquired in India. Deshpande concludes that retroflexion was the result of changes in the text through centuries of oral transmission.
The linguist Fortson brings out another aspect. He points out that even in the Rig Veda, there are words that have undergone sound changes and belong to middle Indic or Prakrit.
There are different theories on the origin of Prakrit languages. One theory is that the various Prakrits developed from Sanskrit. Another is that Sanskrit and other languages, including Prakrits, must have always coexisted. Prakrits were the oral language of the common people, and Sanskrit of the priests, kings, and nobility. A third suggestion, put forward by Krishnamurthy and others, is that the Prakrits developed through a mixture of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Dravidian being the existing language of the subcontinent at the time of the so-called Aryan migration. Several linguists, including Andree F. Sjoberg of the University of Texas, have traced Dravidian influences in the later Indo-Aryan regional languages of Marathi, Gujarati, Odia (Oriya), and Bengali. However, this could be because of later influences. It seems plausible that Sanskrit was always the language of the elite, and that different vernaculars existed alongside, from the earliest times. We will look at other languages of the region in a later section.
THE HABITAT
Vedic texts have information on rivers, mountains, places, animals, birds, trees, and plants, as well as on clans, battles, and food and clothing, apart from gods and rishis. A look at all this will help in providing a picture of Rig Vedic life and culture and provide insights on its most likely date.
The exact locations of rivers, places, and tribes are uncertain but the general region can be deduced. The majority of all mentioned can be located in the northern region, to the west of the Yamuna up to eastern Afghanistan. Some can be located in the lower hills. The clans at that time did not have territories with fixed boundaries; many of them were merging with each other, forming more clearly demarcated boundaries by the Later Vedic period. Later Vedic texts also indicate a more extensive habitat.
RIVERS
Thirty-seven rivers are mentioned in the Rig Veda though, in some cases, there are doubts about whether the names actually refer to rivers. For some others the identification with known rivers is uncertain. The rivers mentioned are the Apaya, Amshumati, Anitabha, Arjikiya, Ashmanvati, Asikni, Asuniti, Brihadashva, Drishadvati, Ganga, Gomati, Hariyupiya, Kramu, Kubha, Mehatnu, Marudvridha, Parushni, Raka, Rasa, Sarasvati, Sarayu, Shipha, Shutudri, Shvetya, Silamavati, Sindhu, Sinivali, Susartu, Sushoma, Suvastu, Trishtama, Vibali, Vipash, Vitasta, Yamuna, Yavyavati, Urnavati.
The rivers provide the best indication of the region occupied. Many are mentioned in the Nadistuti, a Rig Vedic hymn in praise of rivers, in two verses in particular, 10.75.5–6. The rivers enumerated are the Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Shutudri, Parushni, Asikni, Marudvridha, Vitasta, Arjikiya, and Sushoma.
The rivers seem to be enumerated from east to west, and identifications are partially based on this. Many of these as well as other rivers are mentioned elswhere in the Rig Veda, sometimes in conjunction with those referred to above, or sometimes in other contexts.
Three Groups
The rivers can be classified into three groups: (1) the Parushni (Ravi), a tributary of the Indus, and those west of it; (2) the region between the Parushni and the Yamuna; and (3) the rivers east of the Yamuna. Different identifications of the rivers have been suggested by various scholars, but here the most likely identification is selected.
The Parushni and the Rivers West of It
Anitabha, Arjikiya, Asikni, Gomati, Krumu, Kubha, Marudvridha, Mehatnu, Parushni, Rasa, Sarayu, Shvetya, Silamavati, Sindhu, Sushoma, Susartu, Suvastu, Trishtama, Urnavati, Vitasta, Yavyavati (or Hariyupiya), Vibali.
Most of these rivers have been identified as tributaries of the Indus. The Indus rises in the Tibetan plateau at the confluence of the Sengge and Dar rivers, which flow from the Nganglong Kangri and Gangdise Shan mountain ranges. It crosses Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir and enters Pakistan in the Gilgit–Baltistan region, south of the Karakoram range. The Shyok river and Shigar and Gilgit streams join it here. The river gradually turns south, emerging from the hills between Peshawar and Rawalpindi. Near Nanga Parbat (mountain), it passes through immense gorges that range from 4500 m to 5200 m in depth. Near Attock, it is joined by the Kabul river, coming from Afghanistan. On the west are a number of other tributaries, including the Kunar, Swat, Kurram, Toch, Gumal, Kundar, and Zhob.
It then flows south slowly through the plai
ns of Punjab and Sindh, joining the Arabian Sea near Karachi. The Panjnad river joins it at Mithankot. It has a total length of 3180 km. The main tributaries of the Indus to the east of the river, in order from east to west, are the Satluj, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum, and the small Sohan river.
The Sindhu (Indus) itself is mentioned. There are numerous references to this river, both in the Rig Veda and in the Atharva Veda. At times, the Sapta Sindhavah, ‘the land of seven rivers’, is mentioned. It seems to be used in two ways, referring to a region with seven streams or to seven rivers. Usually, these are taken to be the Indus, its five Punjab tributaries, and the Sarasvati.
The Parushni, referred to several times in the Rig Veda, was an important river. It was the scene of King Sudas’s victory over the ten kings, and some of the kings seem to have drowned in it; in one passage, it is called a mahanadi (great stream). Yaska identified it as the Ravi (Iravati) mentioned in two other passages, and this identification is generally accepted. There is a possible reference to the river in the Atharva Veda.
The Asikni is recognized as a name of the Chenab, another major tributary of the Indus. The Vitasta has been identified with the Jhelum, a tributary of the Chenab. The name is rare in the Rig Veda, perhaps indicating that there was not much activity along its banks in Vedic times. The Marudvridha mentioned with the Asikni (Chenab) and Vitasta may be the combined waters of these, until it joins the Parushni.