Early Indians

by Tony Joseph

  5Liviu Giosan, et al., ‘Fluvial Landscapes of the Harappan Civilization’, PNAS (2012).

  6On the basis of additional evidence, Sir Robert did later exonerate Indra!

  7Translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith.

  8According to Professor Witzel, since iron appears in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent (the region first occupied by the ‘Aryan’ migrants) only around 1000 BCE, the Rigveda could have been composed as late as that.

  9According to Professor Witzel of Harvard University, retroflex consonants are a ‘cross-language family feature’ of north-western India, and are found in eastern Iranian such as Khotanese Saka and Wahi and the language isolate Burushaski, apart from the Dravidian languages. He also points out that out of the 300-odd loan words in the Rigveda, very few are Dravidian.

  10Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (Permanent Black, 2006).

  Epilogue

  Seeing History the Right Side Up

  A subjective commentary on what this book tells us – and an examination of how caste came to be.

  Over the four chapters of this book, we saw how the Indian ‘pizza’ got made, with the base or the foundation being laid about 65,000 years ago, when the Out of Africa migrants reached India. The sauce began to be made when the Zagrosian herders reached Balochistan after 7000 BCE, mixed with the First Indians, and then together went on to build the Harappan Civilization. When the civilization fell apart, the sauce spread all over the subcontinent. Then came the ‘Aryans’ after 2000 BCE, and cheese was sprinkled all over the pizza, but a lot more in the north than in the south. Around the same time arrived the major toppings which we see today in different regions in different amounts – the Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman-language speakers. And then, much later, of course, came the Greeks, the Jews, the Huns, the Sakas, the Parsis, the Syrians, the Mughals, the Portuguese, the British, the Siddis – all of whom have left small marks all over the Indian pizza.

  Like all metaphors this is a silly oversimplification, of course, but is useful to the extent that it helps correct deeply embedded and problematic misconceptions about who we are. It is commonly thought that the ‘adivasis’ or ‘original inhabitants’ or ‘tribals’, who form about 8 per cent of the population, are very distant and very different from the rest of the Indian population – a perception that has led to them being looked down upon, not just as people who have chosen to continue a particular lifestyle, but as people who are ‘not us’. Now we know this is baseless. The tribals are ‘us’.

  The tribals share much with the rest of the population genetically since they carry the ancestry of the First Indians and they ought to be seen as the foundational population of India as it is today. As we have seen, 50 to 65 per cent of whole genome ancestry of the Indian population comes from the descendant lineages of the First Indians. And there is no population group in India today that does not carry First Indian ancestry, no matter what language it speaks or where in the caste hierarchy it falls. How appropriate it is then that the most recognizable image of the Harappan Civilization is the ‘dancing girl’ (cover image) who could very well be a tribal girl. As we saw in chapters 2 and 3, First Indians were a part of that first urban revolution. (Aside: We do not know, of course, whether the girl was ‘dancing’; what we do know is that she has a powerfully attractive, insouciant stance that denotes energy and authenticity even today.)

  The disdain towards tribals and scheduled castes comes from an inbuilt belief system that ‘others’ them and now we know why this othering needs to go. This attitude also reflects in the general unconcern for our own prehistorical sites. From Jwalapuram to Bhimbetka to Dholavira, the lack of interest in and identification with these sites is almost as palpable as in the case of our western neighbour’s similar indifference to historical sites that predate the arrival of Islam in the subcontinent. We will know that we have matured and owned our past in the full sense when prehistorical sites in India start attracting enough visitors who are excited and thrilled to see what their ancestors did and how they lived.

  The second misperception that the pizza metaphor helps correct is about the origins of the common culture that we can experience today across the subcontinent. It is now possible to see that the foundational source for much of this common culture is the mighty Harappan Civilization that lasted seven centuries in its mature form and was the largest one of its time, both in terms of population and area.

  Aryavarta and Magadha

  Much of what happened in the centuries after the decline of the Harappan Civilization and the arrival of migrants from the Steppe lies in relative archaeological darkness (which is not surprising considering migrating groups of Steppe pastoralists elsewhere were not big on permanent settlements). As mentioned earlier, we do not know what routes the ‘Aryan’ migrants took, or how many groups there might have been, or for what period the migrations may have continued. But we do know from the early Vedic texts that there were conflicts between Indo-European-language-speaking groups, so multiplicity of migrations is probably a given. Linguistics and now genetics can throw a little more light on the migration process.

  According to the ‘Grierson hypothesis’ that was advanced in the 1930s by Sir George Grierson, compiler of the Linguistic Survey of India, and then built on by Franklin C. Southworth in 2005, Indo-Aryan languages can be subdivided into two sociolinguistic regions, one of them being the ‘inner’ (or North-Central) and the other being the ‘outer’ (or Southwestern-Eastern). In this division, the North-Central languages would include Hindi, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Bundeli and Pahari, while Southwestern-Eastern would include Bangla, Bihari, Oriya, Marathi and Konkani). Southworth deals with the subject in a long chapter in The Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia, and he says such a division can be accounted for ‘by assuming a long, slow influx of Central Asian herding peoples moving into the Indo-Iranian borderlands, to the Punjab and then on the one hand eastwards to the Ganga, and on the other hand, down the Indus to the Deccan and further east’.

  Adapted from Franklin C. Southworth, Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia, RoutledgeCurzon, 2005

  He points out:

  The regional division represented by the North-Central and Southwestern-Eastern languages corresponds to a longstanding historical division between Aryavarta, the land of Hindu orthodoxy, and the regions known as mleccha-desas or barbarian lands, where it was understood that non-Aryan languages were spoken, and Hindu rituals were not observed. Perhaps significantly, this distinction continued to appear in the literature even long after communications had been established between the central and peripheral areas. These two areas are geographically separated by the Vindhyan complex, a continuous chain of mountains, hills and plateaus which stretches across central India. Accounts of the branches of the Yadava clan (a branch of the ancient Indo-Aryan lineage which was reputed to have been tainted by the adoption of local customs) place these people mainly to the south or east of the Vindhyan complex.

  (‘Non-Aryan languages’ in the paragraph above do not mean non-Indo-European languages as they are understood today; they only mean languages that fall in the ‘outer’ region that were considered ‘non-Aryan’ by the Aryavarta orthodoxy.)

  The genetic evidence too suggests that there was indeed a substructure within the ‘Aryan’ populations that migrated to India, which may correspond to the linguistic substructure pointed out by Grierson and Southworth. This is what the 2018 paper ‘The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia’ says on the subject, after noting that ten out of 140 present-day Indian population groups studied had ‘significantly elevated’ Steppe ancestry:

  We found the strongest two signals [of Steppe ancestry] in Brahmin_Tiwari and Brahmin_UP and more generally there was a striking enrichment of signals in groups of traditionally priestly status which was most notable in northern India . . . The enrichment is striking as these groups are among the traditional custodians of texts written in early Sanskrit.

  A possib
le explanation is that the influx of Steppe Middle to Late Bronze ancestry into South Asia in the mid-2nd millennium created . . . groups with different proportions of Steppe ancestry, with one having relatively more Steppe ancestry having a central role in spreading early Vedic culture.

  To paraphrase this in the context of the linguistic evidence, not all groups of migrating Indo-Europeans had the same social attitudes or approaches. Some (perhaps belonging to the ‘inner groups’ to use the geographical terminology of Grierson) were highly orthodox in their social relations (and perhaps language use) and genetically mixed less with the local population, while those belonging to the ‘outer groups’ were much less rigid.

  This difference that is noticeable in linguistics and genetics is also noticeable in textual references, especially those relating to ‘Aryavarta’ and ‘mleccha-desa’. As noted in Greater Magadha, written by Johannes Bronkhorst, emeritus professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Lausanne, the grammarian Patanjali asks an interesting question and then answers it himself in his commentary Mahabhasya, written around 150 BCE: ‘Which is the land of the Aryas? It is the region to the east of where the Sarasvati disappears, west of the Kalaka forest, south of the Himalayas, and north of the Pariyatra mountains.’ The Kalaka forest is traditionally assumed to be near the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna, and the Pariyatra mountains to be the Vindhyas, since many other records mention Aryavarta as the land between the Ganga and the Yamuna.

  ‘The passage from Patanjali’s Mahabhasya occurs in virtually identical form in some other texts, viz., the Baudhyana Dharma Sutra and the Vasistha Dharma Sutra,’ writes Bronkhorst. He continues: ‘Both these texts add that, according to some, Aryavarta is the land between the Ganga and the Yamuna, which supports the idea that the Kalaka forest was indeed situated at or near the confluence of these two rivers. Olivelle . . . argues that these two Dharma Sutras are later than Patanjali. If this is correct, it supports the view that the region east of the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna was still more or less foreign territory for many Brahmins even after Patanjali.’

  Note that this definition of Aryavarta roughly corresponds with the ‘inner’ linguistic group in the North-Central region as defined by Grierson and Southworth, as opposed to the ‘outer’ linguistic group of the Southwestern-Eastern region. Remember that when Patanjali was defining the land of the ‘Aryas’, the areas to its east were already occupied by Indo-European-language speakers and, in fact, these regions were the major centre of the second urbanization of India that began around 500 BCE, much after the decline of the Harappan Civilization. The first Indian empire, that of the Mauryas (322–180 BCE), had also arisen in this region, outside of the closely defined Aryavarta. This was the region called Magadha that gave rise to both Jainism and Buddhism between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE. (Buddhism is dated to between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE and Jainsim to between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE.) Both these religions challenged the existing scriptures, sacrificial rituals and social orthodoxy.

  What accounts for the aversion that the elite of Aryavarta had for the mleccha-desas? This is how Bronkhorst sees it:

  According to the passages cited above, the region east of the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna was not considered Brahmanical territory at the time of Patanjali. This does not exclude that there were Brahmins living there. Rather, it suggests that the Brahmins living in it did not receive the esteem which they deemed themselves entitled to. In Patanjali’s Aryavarta, on the other hand, we may assume that they did receive this esteem, at least to some extent. The Brahmins’ predominant social position in this region allows us to use the expressions ‘Brahmanical society’ or ‘Vedic society’ for the period during which Vedic texts were still being composed. These expressions do not, of course, imply that all members of this society were Brahmins, even less that they were all Brahmins who performed Vedic rituals.

  The defining characteristic of Brahmanical society would have been large sacrificial rituals involving substantial gifts to the priestly class and a close and symbiotic relationship between the rulers and the Brahmins.

  According to Bronkhorst, the political history of the Ganga valley east of the Ganga–Yamuna confluence supports the idea that this region was not the ideal Brahmanical society.

  It is here that the foundations were laid for the Mauryan empire that came to cover a large part of the South Asian subcontinent. If our sources can be believed, none of the rulers involved were especially interested in the Brahmins and their ideas. The early kings of Magadha – Srenika Bimbisara and Ajatasatru – were claimed as their own by Buddhists as well as by Jainas. The Nandas, who consolidated imperial power at Pataliputra around 350 BCE, appear to have become zealous patrons of the Jainas. Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nandas, but may have had no more interest in the Brahmins than those whom he replaced. He himself is said to have converted to Jainism and died a Jaina saint. His son Bindusara patronized non-Brahmanical movements, particularly the Ajivikas. His son Asoka was interested in Buddhism; his immediate successors in Ajivikism and Jainism. It is only with the Sungas, who were Brahmins themselves, that Brahmins may have begun to occupy the place in society which they thought was rightfully theirs. This happened around 185 BCE. Forty or fifty years later, as we have seen, Patanjali the grammarian was still not ready to look upon the Ganges valley east of the confluence with the Jumna as being part of the land of the Aryas.1

  This view of Magadha did ultimately change, of course, as Bronkhorst notes. In the Manava Dharma Shastra or Manusmriti written sometime before the third century CE, Aryavarta was defined as ranging from sea to sea: ‘The land between the same mountain ranges [i.e., Himalaya and Vindhya] extending from the eastern to the western sea is what the wise call “Aryavarta” – the land of the Aryas.’ Somewhere between the composition of the Mahabhasya and the Manusmriti, the ideology of Magadha had perhaps changed enough for the elite of Aryavarta to consider it as their own. We will come back to this soon.

  The difference between the inner and outer traditions might explain why the caste system fell into place when it did – and only when it did. The theory that incoming ‘Aryans’ imposed the caste system on the population when they arrived in the subcontinent has been proved wrong by a genetic study published in 2013 titled ‘Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India’. It was co-authored by Priya Moorjani, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Lalji Singh, David Reich and others.

  The results of the study that these scientists had conducted, based on genome-wide data from seventy-three population groups in the Indian subcontinent, were stunning. The study showed that between 2200 BCE and 100 CE, there was extensive admixture between the different Indian populations with the result that almost all Indians had acquired First Indian, Harappan and Steppe ancestries, though, of course, to varying degrees. The paper says, ‘India experienced a demographic transformation several thousands of years ago, from a region in which major population mixture was common to one in which mixture even between closely related groups became rare because of a shift to endogamy [marrying within the community].’

  We have already seen how, when the Harappan Civilization began declining, as a consequence of the long drought and the arrival of new migrants, there were large-scale population movements from the north-west to both south and east, and much intermixing. So that is not surprising, even though the study reveals that the mixing was quite deep-going: ‘nearly all groups experienced major mixture in the last few thousand years, including tribal groups like Bhil, Chamar and Kallar that might be expected to be more isolated’.

  What is surprising, because it is counter-intuitive, is that the mixing came to an end sometime around 100 CE. One can imagine two separate groups who had maintained their genetic distance for a long time suddenly deciding that enough was enough and starting to mix. But it is more difficult to visualize groups that had already been mixing waking up one day and deciding to put a stop to it, and creating barri
ers to continued intermixing. The genetic study says that this is exactly what happened. It was as if around 100 CE a new ideology, which had gained ground and power, imposed on the society new social restrictions and a new way of life. It was social engineering on a scale never attempted before or after, and it succeeded wildly, going by the results of genetic research.

  The study links the sudden downing of the shutters on intermixing to the beginning of the caste system: ‘The four-class (varna) system, comprised of Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, is mentioned only in the part of the Rigveda that was likely to have been composed later. The caste (jati) system of endogamous groups having specific social or occupational roles is not mentioned in the Rigveda at all and is referred to only in texts composed centuries after the Rigveda.’

  Could the end of the Maurya empire in the closing centuries of the first millennium BCE have had anything to do with this change in ideology? Did the defeat of the Mauryas also presage the eventual disappearance of Buddhism from the subcontinent and the decline of Jainism? Could the orthodox traditions of Aryavarta – with a more rigid view of social hierarchy and opposition towards ‘varnasankalana’, or mixing between different classes or races – have defeated the more open, freewheeling, progressive and anti-ritualistic ideologies of Magadha that had posed a challenge to it?

  Did the rapid expansion of the Maurya empire into the heartland of Aryavarta between the fourth and second centuries BCE threaten the Brahmanical ideology based on sacrifices, the supremacy of Brahmins and their special relationship with rulers, and did Aryavarta strike back in response? Did they, then, over time, manage to impose their own long-held ideals of ‘purity’ and strong endogamy on the rest of society, including the Indo-European-language speakers of eastern India, who did not share those ideals, though they called themselves ‘Aryans’ too? Bronkhorst addresses some of these questions in his book.