The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Mythologies were continually created or revised and these provide clues to changing beliefs. The enmity between devas and asuras is often the starting point of a myth. A gradual reversing of the values associated with these two groups can be noticed from the Avesta to the late Rig-Veda. The soma sacrifice, a key ritual, was specific only to Iran and India among the cultures of Indo-European speakers. The soma plant, although deified, was also said to grow in the north-western mountains. It is generally thought that the plant was ephedra, although this identification was contested when the fly agaric mushroom was thought to be soma. The juice of the soma plant was drunk on ritual occasions and acted as a hallucinogen. An entire book of the Rig-Veda was dedicated to soma and inevitably carries a complicated symbolism. The worship of fire was central to ritual in Iran and India although it was also more widely practised. Fire altars changed from small domestic structures, associated with a habitation, to include impressively large structures especially constructed as altars for the more elaborate rituals. Built at this time with mud bricks, none have survived, but a couple of altars built of fired bricks at the turn of the Christian era are still visible. Rituals were held on specific days and times thought to be auspicious. The patron of the sacrifice – the yajamana – was consecrated for the period of the ritual. The sacrificial ground was also initially consecrated and finally desanctified at the termination of the ritual, leaving no permanent location for acts of worship. Nor is there mention of the worship of images.

  Deities mentioned in the Rig-Veda include some that go back to Indo-Iranian origins, such as Mitra and Varuna. These gave way to Indra and Agni. Indra was the ideal hero, foremost in battle, always ready to smite demons and to destroy the settlements of the dasas, and willing to aid those who propitiated him. His help against the enemy is constantly called for. He was the god of storms and thunder and, as the rainmaker, fulfilled an important symbolic function in these societies. Agni, the god of fire, inspired some beautifully evocative hymns. The fire was the focus of multiple domestic rituals, such as the solemnizing of marriages. Thought to be the purest of the five elements, it was the appropriate intermediary between gods and men. Other gods included Surya (Sun), Savitri (a solar deity to whom the famous gayatri mantra is dedicated), Pushan and Yama, the god of death. For the rest, the cosmos was peopled by a large variety of celestial beings -Gandharvas, Maruts, Vishvadevas – and the numbers of these could be multiplied as and when desired. Hymns were also dedicated to the power residing in the sacrificial implements, especially the sacrificial altar, and to the stones used for pressing the soma plant, as well as to the plough, the weapons of war, the drum and the mortar and pestle.

  The central ritual was the yajna, sacrifice. The domestic rituals with small oblations continued to be performed, and remained intimate. Gradually the more spectacular rituals attracted patronage, as they had a public function, and only the upper castes could participate. They were also the arenas for the competition between sacred and temporal authority. It has been argued that insistence on performing rituals was more important than the dogma of belief, that orthopraxy was more elevated than orthodoxy. The ritual of sacrifice was believed to sustain the well-being of the clan and the system. Thus the devaluing of the yajna by heterodoxy in later times was a significant challenge. Domestic prosperity, requiring an increase in the herd and good crops, had to be prayed for, as well as success in skirmishes and raids. Gods were believed to grant boons and even to participate unseen in the rituals. Small oblations were restricted to the domestic sacrifice, but from time to time larger sacrifices were organized for which the clan brought substantial prestations. The public sacrifice was a solemn occasion, but it also released energies through the general conviviality that followed at its conclusion. The wealth collected by the raja through voluntary tribute and prestations from the vish was consumed in the ritual and in the distribution of gifts at the end to other rajas and to the priests.

  With the elaboration of the ritual the role of the priest assumed greater importance, hence the designation of brahman, applied to one who possessed the mysterious and magical power, brahma. It was also thought that the god, the priests and the offering passed through a moment of complete identity. The giving of gifts was believed to ensure a return of gifts in even greater amount. Sacrificial rites tended to increase the power of the priest, without whom the sacrifice could not take place, and of the raja who possessed the wealth it required. Collecting this wealth meant pressurizing the vish to part with their produce. The sacrifice assisted the kshatriya to assert greater power over the vish and the shudra. No wonder it is said that the vish is the food for the kshatriya and the kshatriya eats the vish. The later corpus refers frequently to kshatriya in place of the earlier terms such as raja and rajan. Derived from kshatra, meaning power, it points to the greater authority now associated with the chief transmuting into kingship.

  The public sacrifices were occasions when the wealth of a raja was collected and displayed via the rituals. This wealth was consumed, and whatever remained was gifted, with some even being deliberately destroyed through forms of ritual which were part of the display. The patron of the sacrifice, the yajamana, was generally a raja, and each competed with his peers in the magnificence of the occasion and the generosity of the gifts. Such competitions in the display of wealth, spurred on by those who eulogized the rajas, established the status and power of the yajamana, encouraging his belief that even more wealth would come his way. Comparisons have been made with the similar expectations of the potlatch, a ceremony characteristic of the native Americans of the north Pacific coast. The raja’s gifts to the priests enriched and empowered the brahmans. The sacrifice prevented the raja from accumulating wealth to the point where his status would be based on economic power rather than ritual sanction. Yet the former was necessary to create the type of kingship associated with the notion of a state in which the king controlled the accumulation and distribution of wealth, among other things.

  In order to accumulate the required wealth for these sacrifices, the raja would have made bigger demands on the vish, in the form of offerings and prestations, and would have needed to create a rudimentary administration for support. The point at which wealth could be accumulated and spent on a variety of adjuncts to authority marked the point at which kingship was beginning to draw on political authority, rather than ritual authority alone. However, the ritual of sacrifice as a necessary precondition to kingship could not become a permanent feature. Once kingdoms were established there were other demands on the wealth that went to support the kingdoms. At one level the questioning of the centrality of the ritual was encouraged by new perceptions of the relationship between the human and the divine. At another level the greater production of wealth in the middle Ganges Plain on the eve of urbanization, not all of which could be consumed in rituals, did allow for rajas accumulating wealth and this contributed towards a change in the requirements of society and polity. It is significant that ideas questioning the yajna were developed initially by the kshatriyas, as commented upon in the Upanishads. As patrons they were affected by a decline in the necessity of these rituals as this would have given them an edge, influencing not only religious practice and philosophical theories but also social ethics and economic viability.

  The ritual of sacrifice resulted in some interesting by-products. Mathematical knowledge was developed as a result of the calculations required for demarcating the precise locations and size of structures and objects in the large sacrificial arena. Basic geometry was used to work out the size and number of mud bricks required for building the altars. It has been suggested that the use of bricks and the calculations may have come from a Harappan tradition harking back to the construction of platforms. Rituals of the Rig-Veda did not require large-scale brick-built altars and these were introduced in the later corpus. The Harappans would have had advanced knowledge of building brick structures far more monumental than the altars. If there had been such a tradition, then the assimilatio
n of earlier ideas would have bypassed the Rig-Vedic period and surfaced later. Methods of measurement were useful in much later times when land had to be measured for assessment of taxes. A concern with numbers became important to priestly practice. Observations of lunar movements and constellations came to be used to calculate time and the calendar. The frequent sacrifice of animals led to some knowledge of animal anatomy, and, for a long time, anatomy was more advanced than physiology or pathology. Yet the physician was initially declared to be an impure person and unfit for participating in the ritual.

  The dead were either buried or cremated, the former being the earlier custom that gave way to the latter. It was, however, continued among groups of people even when cremation became the norm. The association of fire with purification may have led to the preference for cremation. (Although a practical method of disposing of the dead, for the historian this was an unhappy choice since graves, together with grave furnishings, provide excellent historical evidence, as demonstrated in the data available from the megalithic burials of the peninsula.)

  Life after death was envisaged in terms of either punishment or reward. Those to be punished went to the House of Clay. Those to be rewarded, such as heroes, went to the World of the Fathers. The later Vedic corpus has occasional hints of metempsychosis, of souls being reborn in plants, but the idea of the transmigration of souls was initially vague. Its currency in the Upanishads led it to be tied into the theory that souls were born to happiness or to sorrow, according to their conduct in their previous life. This was to evolve into the doctrine of karma, action, and samsara, rebirth, which has ever since been influential in Indian thought.

  The questioning of the centrality of sacrifice, hinted at by thoughtful brahmans was developed in depth among kshatriyas and led eventually to alternative ideas. Among these was the notion of the atman, the individual soul, seeking unity with the brahman, the universal soul – unity which could require many cycles of rebirth of the soul. An attempt to move away from the sacrificial ritual could have been liberating for the raja. It was, however, soon muted by the idea of karma and samsara. The measure of quality in the reborn life came to rest on conforming to the social codes of caste and caste hierarchies. Thus it is said that:

  Those whose conduct here has been good will quickly attain a good birth [literally, ‘womb’], the birth of a brahman, the birth of a kshatriya, the birth of a vaishya. But those whose conduct here has been evil, will quickly attain an evil birth, the birth of a dog, the birth of a hog or the birth of a Chandala.

  Chandogya Upanishad, 5.10.7, tr. S. Radhakrishnan

  The doctrine of karma came to be systematized in the broader concept of dharma – social and sacred obligations – which in conservative circles was seen as maintaining the social order, in fact the laws of varna.

  Metaphysical concepts gave rise to various explanations for the universe and its origin. One was that it grew out of a vast cosmic sacrifice and was maintained by the proper performing of sacrifices. Yet this idea was not entirely accepted, as is evident from what has been called the Creation Hymn, which doubts any certainty about the birth of the universe and even postulates creation emerging from Nothingness:

  Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.

  There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.

  Who covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?

  Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?…

  But, after all, who knows, and who can say,

  Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

  The gods themselves are later than creation,

  So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

  Rig-Veda, 10. 129, tr. A. L. Basham,

  The Wonder That Was India, p. 247

  The doubts expressed in the Creation Hymn were symptomatic of a wider spirit of inquiry. Local beliefs and customs were now being incorporated into Vedic practice. The resulting concepts were not the expression of any ‘pure tradition’, but were an amalgam from many varied sources. Some have argued that the concepts of the Upanishads and of asceticism grew not from a single, brahmanical tradition, but from the thinking of the many and varied groups that constituted Indian society at the time. This may be so. But it is perhaps more valid to look for inspirations and intentions as they emerged from the actual situations faced by various groups, with their search for answers in what they seem to have perceived as a world of almost bewildering change.

  Some changes encouraged ideas of asceticism, of people withdrawing from the community and living either as hermits or in small groups away from centres of habitation. Asceticism could have had either of two purposes: to acquire more than ordinary powers by extraordinary control over the physical body, as in yoga, and through dhyana, meditation; or to seek freedom from having to adjust to an increasingly regulated society by physically withdrawing from it, evidenced by the practice of renunciation at a young age being regarded as a distancing from Vedic ritual and from the rules of the normative texts.

  The intention was not a life-negating philosophy through an escape from social obligations, but an attempt to find an alternative style of life conforming to a philosophy and an ethic different from what had now become the conventional. The impact of this possibility is frequently imprinted on events and situations in the history of India. This is sometimes taken for an impassive spirituality, whereas in effect it assisted on occasion in giving a radical turn to Indian society, or at least to accommodating radical ideas and behaviour. Renunciation of social obligations, implicit in asceticism, encouraged a kind of counter-culture and this became an accepted strand of religious and social thought in India. Some forms of Indian asceticism, although not all, have a socio-political dimension and these cannot be marginalized as merely the wish to negate life.

  Ascetics did not invariably spend all their time isolated in forests or on the tops of mountains. Some returned to their communities and challenged the existing social and religious norms. This may have been seen as a threat. The normative texts advocated a sequence in which the life of a man was divided into four stages, called ashramas, refuges. He was first to be a student, then a householder with a family, then a renouncer withdrawn from social life and, finally, a wandering ascetic. Asceticism was placed at the end of a man’s life because his social obligation to his community had priority. Needless to say, this pattern applied largely to the upper castes, which could afford to follow it, but it remained essentially an ideal. And, even in theory, such a curriculum was intended only for men.

  Some among the ascetics and the rajas continued to seek answers to fundamental questions, as is evident from the Upanishads. How did creation come about? Through a cosmic sexual act? Through heat? Through asceticism? Is there a soul? What is the soul? What is the relation between the human soul and the universal soul? And, above all, there was the question of how one defines the Self.

  ‘Fetch me a fruit of the banyan tree.’

  ‘Here is one, sir.’

  ‘Break it.’

  ‘I have broken it, sir.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Very tiny seeds, sir.’

  ‘Break one.’

  ‘I have broken it, sir.’

  ‘Now what do you see?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘what you do not perceive is the essence and in that essence the mighty banyan tree exists. Believe me my son, in that essence is the self of all that is. That is the True, that is the Self. And you are that Self, Shvetaketu.’

  Chandogya Upanishad, 6.13, tr. A. L. Basham,

  The Wonder That Was India, p. 250

  The period from 1200 to 600 BC is popularly thought of as the Golden Age of the Vedic period. This has tended to give uncritical emphasis to one category of historical source material and its interpretation. The historical reconstruction of these centuries is full of uncertainties and lacunae. By the end of the period the corpus had been compiled. Being essentially concerned with ri
tual and belief, the most fulsome descriptions are of the societies of those who were the performers and the patrons of rituals. Reading between the lines to obtain information on other segments of these societies, or on other societies, requires analytical investigations of the corpus. Significant new evidence can also come from archaeology. Excavations of sites and particularly horizontal excavations in the Ganges Plain will help clarify the evolution of these societies. Studies that illuminate social and political institutions, as well as investigating the evolution of religious forms, provide themes of immediate historical interest.

  The question of whether ‘the Aryans’ were an indigenous people or an alien people relates to concerns of the nineteenth century. Its revival today has more to do with political intentions than with history. The historically more germane questions focus on processes of acculturation, the evolution of social forms and the emergence of varying ideologies. The answers to these questions will illumine what the texts mean when they refer to the aryas.

  The societies of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, where the substantial changes of this period took place, generated ideas and institutions that helped shape Indian society. Some resulted from the coming of the Indo-Aryan speakers and their interaction with existing cultures; others evolved through the changes referred to earlier in this chapter. We can no longer regard the early first millennium as a period of Aryan conquest that resulted in the spread of a homogeneous Aryan culture across northern India; nor can it be described as the articulation of an indigenous culture called Aryan that was untouched by anything extraneous. The historical picture points to a range of societies with varied origins attempting to establish a presence or dominance in the mosaic of cultures. The cultures change continually as cultures always do. Our literary evidence from the Vedas is from the perspective of brahmanical authors, and their perspective has to be juxtaposed where possible with other sources that have a different perspective, or with a reading of the Vedas open to the possibility of hearing other voices.