The History of Antiquity, Vol. 4 (of 6). Duncker Max

regular winds, so that the rivers rose fully 20 cubits above their beds, – a statement quite accurate, – and in many places the plains were changed into marshes,40 in consequence of which the Indus had sometimes taken a new channel through them.41 Since, then, the warmth of the sun was the same in India as in Arabia and Ethiopia, – for India lay far to the south, and in the most southern parts of the land the constellation of the Bear was seen no longer, and the shadows fell in the other direction, i. e. to the south, —42while in India there was more water and a moister atmosphere than in those other countries, the creatures of the water, air, and land were much larger and stronger in India than anywhere else.43 Further, as the water in the river and that which fell from heaven was tempered by the sun's heat, the growth of the roots and plants was extraordinarily vigorous. The strength of the tiger, which, according to Megasthenes, is twice the size of the lion, the docility of the elephant, the splendour of the birds, were the admiration of the Greeks. With horror they saw the whale for the first time in the Indian waters. Nearchus caused his ship to be rowed forward at double speed to contend with this peaceful monster of the deep.

      According to the statement of Megasthenes – which for the land of the Ganges is quite correct – there are two harvests in India. For the winter sowing rice and barley were used, and other kinds of fruit unknown to the Greeks; for the summer sowing, sesame, rice, and bosmoron; while during the rainy season flax and millet were planted, so that in India want and famine were unknown.44 Equally luxuriant in growth were the herbs and reeds. There was a reed there which produced honey without bees (the sugar-cane); and in Southern India cinnamon, nard, and the rest of the spices grew as well as in Arabia and Ethiopia.45 The Greeks did not know that the cinnamon is a native of India only, and that the bark came to them from that country, though it came through Arabia. The marshes of India were filled with roots, wholesome or deadly; the trees there grew to a larger size than elsewhere; some were so tall that an arrow could not be shot over them, and the leaves were as large as shields. There were other trees there of which the trunks could not be spanned by five men, and the branches, as though bent, grew downwards till they touched the earth, and then, springing up anew, formed fresh trunks, to send out other arches, so that from one tree was formed a grove, not unlike a tent supported by many poles. Fifty or even 400 horsemen could take their mid-day rest under such a tree. Nearchus even goes so far as to say that there were trees of this kind under which there was room for 10,000 men.46 There were also trees in India which produced intoxicating fruits. This description of the Indian fig tree and the statements about the shelter its branches afford are not exaggerated. By intoxicating fruits the coco and fan-palms are, no doubt, meant, from which palm-wine is made.47

      The northern, i. e. the light-coloured, Indians, or Aryas, are said by the Greeks of this period to have most closely resembled the Egyptians in the colour of their skin and their shape. They were light, delicate, and slim of body, and not so heavy as other nations. They were free from diseases, for their climate was healthy, and their land possessed good air, pure water, and wholesome fruits. The southern Indians, i. e. the non-Aryan population, who were at that time far less broken up in the Deccan by Aryan and other settlers than now, and must therefore have existed in far greater masses, were not quite so black as the Ethiopians (the negroes), and had not, like them, a snub nose and woolly hair. Strabo was of opinion that their colour was not so black owing to the moist air of India, which also caused the hair of the inhabitants to be straight.48 Of the 200 millions, at which the population of India is now estimated, more then 150 millions either spring from the Aryas or have adopted their civilisation. The number of the dark-coloured races, dwelling in the mountains and broad marshes, who have remained free from the dominion of the Aryas, the Mohammedans, and the English, and are, therefore, strangers to their civilisation, is estimated at 12 millions.

      CHAPTER II.

      THE ARYAS ON THE INDUS

      We have already examined the earliest date at which the kings who reigned in antiquity in the lower valley of Nile attempted to bring their actions into everlasting remembrance by pictures and writing. The oldest inscription preserved there dates from the period immediately preceding the erection of the great pyramids. The same impulse swayed the rulers of Babylon and Asshur, of whom we possess monuments reaching beyond the year 2000 B.C. The Hebrews also began at a very early time to record the fortunes of their progenitors and their nation. With the Indians the reverse is the case. Here neither prince nor people show the least interest in preserving the memory of their actions or fortunes. No other nation has been so late in recording their traditions, and has been content to leave them in so fragmentary a condition. For this reason, fancy is in India more lively, the treasures of poetry are more rich and inexhaustible. Thus it becomes the object of our investigation, from the remains of this poetry, and the wrecks of literature, to ascertain and reconstruct, as far as possible, the history of the Indians. From the first the want of fixed tradition precludes the attempt to establish in detail the course of the history of the Aryan states and their rulers. Our attempts are essentially limited to the discovery of the stages in the advance of the power of the Aryas in the regions where they first set foot, to the deciphering of the successive steps through which their religious views and intellectual culture were developed. And when we have thus exhumed the buried history of the Indians, we are assisted in determining its periods by the contact of the Indians with their western neighbours, the Persian kingdom, and the Greeks, and by the accounts of western writers on these events.

      The oldest evidence of the life of the Aryas, whose immigration into the region of the Indus and settlement there we have been able to fix about 2000 B.C., is given in a collection of prayers and hymns of praise, the Rigveda, i. e. "the knowledge of thanksgiving." It is a selection or collection of poems and invocations in the possession of the priestly families, of hymns and prayers arising in these families, and sung and preserved by them. In the ten books which make up this collection, the poems of the first book are ascribed to minstrels of various families; in some the minstrel is even named. "This song was made by Dirghatamas, of the race of Angiras;" "this new hymn was composed by Nodhas, a descendant of Gautama." Of the other books, each is ascribed to a single family of priests – to the Gritsamadas, Viçvamitras, Vamadevas, Atris, Bharadvajas, Vasishthas, and Kanvas. The tenth book contains isolated pieces which found no place in the earlier books; several of these pieces bear the stamp of a later origin, as they exhibit a more complicated ritual, the operation of various classes of priests, and reflections of an abstract character.49

      We see, then, that from ancient times there were among the Aryas families in possession of effectual invocations of the gods, who knew how to pronounce and sing the prayers at sacrifice, and offer the sacrifice in due form. We may gather further from the Rigveda that these families were distinguished by special symbols. The family of Vasishtha had a coil or knot of hair on the right side,50 the family of Atri had three knots, the family of Angiras five locks, while the Bhrigus shaved their hair.51 Sung for centuries in these families, in these circles of minstrels and priests, these poems were thus revised and preserved, until at length out of the possessions of these schools arose the collection which we have in the Rigveda. We find frequent mention in the poems of the invocations of ancient time, of the prayers of the fathers, and hence what is in itself probable becomes certain – that we have united in the Rigveda poems of various dates, and invocations divided in their origin by centuries.

      Though the minstrels of the poems of the Rigveda could look back on a distant past, though they could distinguish the sages of the ancient, the earlier time, and the present, and the men of old from those of the later and most recent times,52 there is yet nothing in these poems to point to an earlier home, to older habitations, or previous fortunes of the nation, unless, indeed, we ought to find an indication

40

Strabo, pp. 690, 691.

41

Aristobulus in Strabo, pp. 692, 693; cf. Curtius, 8, 30, ed. Mützell.

42

These statements, which are quite correct, are found in Megasthenes in Strabo, p. 76; Diod. 2, 35.

43

Strabo, p. 695; Diod. 2, 35.

44

Strabo, pp. 690, 693.

45

Strabo, p. 695.

46

Strabo, p. 694; Arrian, "Ind." 11.

47

Strabo, pp. 692, 693. Arrian ("Ind." 7) mentions the Sanskrit name of the umbrella palm, tala, and tells us that the shoots were eaten, which is also correct.

48

Arrian, "Ind." 6, 17; Strabo, pp. 96, 690, 696, 701, 706, 709.

49

Max Müller, "Hist. of Sanskrit Liter." p. 481 ff. Kaegi, "Rigveda," 1, 9 ff.

50

Roth, "Literatur des Veda," s. 120.

51

In the later hymns of the Rigveda, Angiras and Bhrigu are combined with other sages and minstrels of old time into a septad of saints (10, 109, 4), and designated the great saints. They are, beside Bhrigu and Angiras, Viçvamitra, Vasishtha, Kaçyapa, Atri, Agastya. The eight saints from whom the eight tribes of the Brahman priests now in existence are derived are: Jamadagni, Gautama, Bharadvaja, Viçvamitra, Vasishtha, Kaçyapa, Atri, Agastya. Jamadagni is said to have sprung from Bhrigu; Gautama and Bharadvaja from Angiras.

52

Muir, "Sanskrit texts," 3, 117 ff.; 121 ff.