Upon the eventual subjugation of the indigenous peoples of India, the Aryans instituted the Varna class structure (sometimes referred to as the caste system). The Varna structure (Varna literally means color) divided the population of India into four major classes. The highest class was that of the Brahmins, Aryans who were regarded as the priestly class. The second class was the Ksatriyas, Aryans regarded as warriors. The third class was the Vaisyas, the shepherds and merchants. The Vaisyas were generally of mixed Aryan/Harappan heritage, the offspring of an interbreeding that had occurred during the centuries of battle and conquest. The fourth class was the Sudra, or slaves. This class was primarily composed of the dark indigenous inhabitants of India—the Dravidians. The Varna structure was affirmed by Aryan religion in the form of a simple creation legend that supposedly explained the origins of the four classes from a primeval cosmic father, Purusha. An Aryan hymn in the Rg Veda explained, “The Brahmin was his mouth, of his arms came the Ksatriyas, his thighs became the Vaisyas, and of his feet the Sudras were born.” 23
Laws based on the Varna structure appear in an early Aryan text known as the Laws of Manu. According to these laws the Sudras had been created solely to serve the other classes. If they did not please or satisfy the wishes and demands of the higher classes, they were “to be expelled or slain at will.” The Laws of Manu declared, “A Sudra who tries to make money or to better his lot in life is distressing to the Brahmin priests … It is better to do one’s own class duty badly than to do another’s well.” (This same Aryan belief in blindly fulfilling the duty of one’s own class also justified all aggression and battles for the Aryan Ksatriya warriors, as so clearly explained in the Bhagavad Gita.) Along with the various laws against “confusion of class,” i.e., social or sexual mixing between the classes, the Laws of Manu even provided information on the exact amount of interest that each class was to pay if they borrowed any material goods or money: Brahmins 24%, Ksatriyas 36%, Vaisyas 48%, Sudras 60%. So much for later claims in Europe that usurious interest rates on money lending was a Semitic idea that was unnatural to the Aryan mind.24
The laws of Manu also declared: “Of [all] creatures the animate are said to be the best, of animate being those who live on their wits, of those who live on their wits men, and among men Brahmans are best … The very birth of a Brahman is an eternal form of dharma; born for the sake of dharma he is conformed to becoming Brahman. When a Brahman is born he is born superior to the whole Earth, he is the lord of all creatures, and he has to guard the treasury of dharma. Everything that exists throughout the world is the private property of the Brahman. By the high excellence of his birth he is entitled to everything. What he enjoys, what he wears, and what he gives away are his own private property, and it is through the mercy of the Brahman that others enjoy [anything at all] (Manu, I. 96–101).”
The second stage cultural racism of the Varna structure was further embedded in the Aryan Vedic religion in the form of beliefs about reincarnation. There is some evidence suggesting that the concept of reincarnation had existed among the people of the earlier Harappan civilization. The concept is not mentioned in the earliest Aryan writings. When it does appear as an integral aspect of the Aryan Brahman and later Hindu religious tenets, the idea of a “pie in the sky” class mobility is inherent within it. According to Brahmanic and Hindu texts, if the Sudras lived their lives fulfilling their proper class duty, i.e serving the other classes obediently, they might find their reward in a future incarnation—being born lighter and thus in a higher class.25
The vast body of records from ancient India that refer to those who would not accept the Aryan invasion and domination as bloodthirsty demons and vampires, and then using both religion and laws to support an ongoing second stage of economic racism by the Aryans, are probably the earliest written accounts of a conscious and tangible use of the various stages of cultural racism to support economic racism.
In the later written accounts from the Aryans that entered Iran we may be observing an even more basic concept underlying all Aryan racism. Although the earliest written materials from the Aryans of Iran are as late as the Seventh Century B.C., they are thought to reflect very ancient Aryan beliefs that may have been preserved through oral recitations. Although nothing as tangibly racist as the Laws of Manu are known from this earliest literate period of Iran, the religious concepts of Zoroastrianism based on the Aryan/Iranian writings in the Zend Avesta, and the later writings in the Bundahisn and Denkart, appear to reveal a form of cultural racism that was not only justified but encouraged by Aryan/Iranian beliefs about the very structure and purpose of the universe.26
The Zend Avesta is attributed to a prophet known as Zarathustra (Zoroaster) and is generally dated to about 600 B.C. According to the Avesta, in the beginning of all time there were two gods, the God of Light, Spenta Mainyu (Ahura Mazda), who represented all that is “light, good and beautiful,” and the God of Darkness, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), who represented all that is “dark, evil and repulsive.” The Avesta states that when Ahura Mazda realized that the dark and evil Ahriman existed, he created the entire universe, Earth and stars, as a battleground on which to suppress and defeat Ahriman. It was supposedly at that time that the souls of all people came to Earth to aid Ahura Mazda battle against Ahriman. But the Aryan account goes on to tell that Ahriman then invaded the “light and perfect creation” of Ahura Mazda, “mixing and mingling his darkness” with what had been pure light, thus supposedly contaminating the Earth and the universe with darkness. According to Zoroastrianism, the presence of Ahriman’s contamination could be seen in all things dark, while the presence of Ahura Mazda existed in all things light.27
In the Bundahisn and the Denkart it is stated that those who worshipped Ahura Mazda were representatives of light and goodness, while those who did not were a “dark race,” “the people of Ahriman,” “the demons and fiends of evil.” According to Zoroastrianism, the cosmic struggle between light and darkness was taking place continually, and the souls that had not been “contaminated” by the darkness of Ahriman would eventually conquer the “dark demons.”
Another legend in the Avesta might give us a glimpse into the idea of Aryan expansionism as a “Manifest Destiny” concept of some 2500 years ago. This is the legend of the Aryan Yima, known as the “son of the sun.” Yima was said to be the first ruler of the Aryan people, personally appointed by Ahura Mazda to “rule the world.” To help him achieve this wordly rule, Ahura Mazda is said to have supplied Yima with two sacred instruments—a whip and a goad. According to the legend, when Yima felt that his people were too crowded, he “extended” the Earth by one third more than it was before. He did this three times by using the whip and the goad.28
It is also interesting to note that the First Woman in the Aryan/Iranian cosmology is Jeh, “The Demon Whore Queen,” the consort of Ahriman. Not only was Jeh blamed with contaminating the First Man with her “whoredom” but as the First Woman she was said to contaminate all women who, in turn, would defile all men. Along with this Aryan attitude towards women’s sexuality, it was also said that Jeh’s first menstruation was caused by the kiss of Ahriman when he was pleased that she had defiled the First Man. Thus women’s menstrual periods were viewed by the Aryans as having been caused by the kiss of the Aryan devil, Ahriman.29
Records of the class structure of the Iranian/Persian empire as it existed in the Sassanian Period of about 250 A.D. may reveal the remnants of a class structure similar to that of the Varna structure in India. The four Iranian classes (Pistras) consisted of the highest class, the warriors who were the second class, the farmers and cattle breeders as the third class, and the artisans and laborers were the fourth. This structure did not include a slave class such as the Sudra but the Iranian Pistras class structure is strikingly similar to that of the Varna structure of India. The fact that the Pistras structure was also accompanied by a legend of a cosmic man from whom the four classes had emerged, much as they supposed
ly had from Purusha, has caused some scholars to state that both the class structure and the legend had been adopted from India at a later period. Although the Iranian Aryans and the Aryans of India had once been members of a single cohesive group, the idea that the Pistras class structure was adopted is quite plausible. It may well have supplanted earlier class ideas that appear in the Bundahisn. This is an even more extreme class hierarchy consisting of ten species of human. The highest species was said to be represented by the First Man, Gayo Mareta, “the pale eyed seed of the Aryan lands.” The lowest species of “man” as listed in this Aryan race/class hierarchy, was the monkey.30 Aside from any argument or discussion about which Aryan class structure was the older, it is clear that a class structure based upon physical identities was a long familiar Aryan concept.
The later Iranian religion of Manicheism, based upon Zoroastrian beliefs, also pitted Ahura Mazda, as Ohrmazd, against Ahriman. Ohrmazd was said to be “pure light,” living in heaven, while Ahriman was referred to as “The Prince of Darkness,” living in the darkest depths of the earth surrounded by his dark demons.31 The eventual spread of Iranian Manicheism to Rome, and even later to other areas of Europe, had far reaching effects upon Christian concepts of a powerful God in Heaven and an almost equally powerful Devil in Hell, a devil often referred to in Christian writings as The Prince of Darkness. In consideration of this influence of Iranian/Aryan religion upon the development of Christianity we may want to examine the accounts of Magi appearing at the birth of Jesus more closely.
Perhaps influenced by Iranian Manicheism, perhaps influenced by even earlier Aryan connections, we should note that the Twelfth Century writer Helmold described pre-Christian Slavic religion holding the same duality, worshipping Byelbog as the God of Light and Good, Chernobog as the God of Dark and Evil.32 Several mythologists and psychologists have described this duality as a natural archetype, or instinctual universal, basing their conclusions almost entirely upon Indo-European cultures.
It was perhaps the tragedy of timing (although no excuse for racist attitudes or acts can or should ever serve to apologize for basic greed and inhumanity) that knowledge of the great ancient civilization of the Harappans of India, and the even earlier civilization of the Sumerians of southern Iraq, were not discovered until the early Twentieth Century. It was not until 1924 that Marshall began his excavations that revealed the astonishing information about the ancient civilization along the Indus River. Marshall’s work, and the later work of Wheeler, turned archaeologists’ beliefs about the nature of the ancient Aryans upside down. Yet even after these discoveries, some European archaeologists and historians glorified the warlike abilities of the Aryans, some even praising how fair they were to their slaves once they had conquered their lands.
The discoveries of the Sumerian culture became known at much the same time as those of the Harappans. It is now generally believed that the earliest development of written language, and the cultural and technological accomplishments of Egypt, Harappa and Akkad, were influenced by the even earlier Sumerian civilization which began to flower about 3200 B.C. Shown not to have used either an Indo-European or a Semitic language (the two major language groups of the Near East), the Sumerian people have never been racially identified. Their language has been most closely compared to the Ural-Altaic languages of central and north Asian peoples, but even this link is extremely tenuous.33
In stark contrast to these ancient civilizations to whom we owe such a great debt of gratitude for the legacy of inventions and cultural developments to which we became heir, The Germania of Tacitus records that the Teutonic/Germanic peoples of northern Europe still lived in primitive, illiterate, tribal groups some three thousand years later. According to Tacitus, the men of the Germanic tribes thought it “tame and spiritless to accumulate slowly by the sweat of his brow what can be got quickly by the loss of a little blood … When not engaged in warfare they spend a certain amount of time hunting but much more in idleness, thinking of nothing else but sleeping and eating. For the boldest and most warlike men have no regular employment, the care of home and fields being left to the women, old men and weaklings of the family. In thus dawdling away their time they show a strange inconsistency—at one and the same time loving indolence and hating peace.” 34
It was not until the Fifth Century A.D., that the Angles and some of the Saxons, both Teutonic/Germanic tribes, left their territories in Denmark and northern Germany to become the Anglo-Saxons of Britain. While the Angles and Saxons were invading the then- Celtic island of Britain, Teutonic/Germanic tribes such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Suevi, Franks, Asding Vandals and Siling Vandals were invading and conquering the areas now known as France, Italy and Spain.35 A few centuries later, the groups of Dane and Swedes known as Varangians colonized along the great rivers of Russia, eventually forming an aristocracy under King Oleg in 880 A.D.
These Teutonic/Germanic invasions and conquests in central and southern Europe and western Russia resulted in an accentuated spectrum of skin and hair color in these areas even today. Although groups such as the Visigoths or Ostrogoths no longer exist as such, it is interesting to note the social and/or economic positions of the people on the lighter end of the spectrum in the various countries of Europe and in Russia. Could it have been from these invasions that we find a type of pecking order of racism that occurs as a domino effect from the lightest to the darkest people in so many areas? Are we still infested with ancient ideas of light as good and dark as bad and archaic concepts of some cosmic class structure based upon coloring?
Summary
The need to feel proud of one’s ancestry seems to be a basic drive in all human beings. The desire to establish a claim of proud antiquity appears to run deep within the human creature. From children squabbling about their parent’s jobs or status to efforts to trace a family tree to some royal line—the desire is observable.
Early Christian writers used the assertion of primacy when challenging the religious beliefs of the pagan Romans. Drawing upon the antiquity of the Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament), at the time thought to be even older than it actually is, Tertullian claimed that Christianity was the more worthwhile religion for it was as old as “the nativity of the world itself.” St. Augustine also challenged the religious beliefs of the Greeks and the Romans by claiming that the antiquity of the Old Testament was far greater than that of Greece. One might even be tempted to consider if the very existence of Jewish people, once the Christian Church had been formed, remained as the one obstacle to an unchallenged Christian claim to the Old Testament. Is the Old Testament one piece of property that even first stage cultural racism has not made possible to fully appropriate? Can this be the underlying core of anti-Semitism? There is certainly a puzzling irony in a Christian embrace of the Ten Commandments on one hand, alongside anti-Semitic assertions of innate immoralities of Jewish people on the other.
Even in the past decade, in ideas as seemingly innocent and certainly wildly speculative as theories of space travelers implanting culture on Earth, there lingers a continuing refusal by some white people to believe that people of darker races could have been responsible for the cultural and technological developments of ancient civilizations. The originator of such theories, Von Daniken, comments upon the astronomical knowledge of the Mayan peoples of the Yucatan, saying, “it is difficult to believe that it originated from a jungle people.” And in describing some ancient artifacts from Indonesia, Von Daniken writes, “One cannot imagine savages making them.” For those who cannot imagine “jungle people” or “savages” as culturally inventive or intelligently observant, Von Daniken subtly provided an alternative answer. Not only were the culture founders of Earth supposedly from outer space but they were a rather specific type of outer space being. In a passage concerning the Incas, Von Daniken provided his sole suggestion of a physical identity for these culture-founding space travelers. “Never before had they heard of gigantic white men who came from somewhere in the
sky.” Dare we ask, had the remains of a great ancient civilization been discovered in some field outside Berlin or Amsterdam, would Von Daniken have been so willing to attribute it to ancient space travelers?
As Twentieth Century study of ancient history and early civilizations came more and more to focus on the periods of archaic and classical Greece as the foundations of western culture, over two thousand years of the cultural invention and developments of Sumerian, Egyptians, Harappans and Akkadians have been almost completely ignored in education. If discussed at all, the ancient beginnings of culture and technology are presented in somewhat of a chronological vacuum, seldom explained as the two to three thousand year old cultural and technological foundations of Greece and Rome that they had been. Our western education systems leave many people with the idea that only white people have a proud cultural heritage. One of the first steps that we must take in combatting racism is to ensure that students of all grade levels—from elementary to university—are more knowledgeable about the cultural histories that all races possess. Explaining that the earliest known cultural accomplishments of humankind were those initiated and developed by darker skinned peoples is vital in combatting racist ideas. Early education about the most ancient cultures mentioned above, as well as those of the Orient and the western hemisphere, that developed quite apart from white European influence, could make second stage cultural racism difficult if not impossible for children first formulating their views of the world. But this cannot be done until those who educate children are truly familiar with the non-European civilizations of the past.
Combatting first stage cultural racism may be more difficult. No race or ethnic group has been totally morally and ethically perfect. But more honest accounts of the aggressions of the Indo-European ruled Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, as well as of the Vikings, the Crusades, and the centuries of European “colonization” of much of the world, are vital in avoiding pretensions of a white European ethical or moral supremacy. This might also be accompanied by a more careful study of the records of the ethics and morals of pre- and non-Christian religions. The repeated emphasis on the importance of charity, compassion and honesty in the religious texts of Egypt and Sumer, as well as in the written and oral accounts of the early religious beliefs of many other cultures, may help to erase the erroneous assumption that white Europeans invented these ideals.
Merlin Stone Remembered Page 22