A History of Sanskrit Literature

by Arthur Anthony Macdonell

It is interesting to note that the Rigveda refers to a rich and powerful prince called Ikshvāku. In the epic this name recurs as that of a mighty king who ruled to the east of the Ganges in the city of Ayodhyā (Oudh) and was the founder of the Solar race.

It is clear from what has been said that the Vedic Aryans were split up into numerous tribes, which, though conscious of their unity in race, language, and religion, had no political cohesion. They occasionally formed coalitions, it is true, but were just as often at war with one another. The tribe, in fact, was the political unit, organised much in the same way as the Afghans are at the present day, or the Germans were in the time of Tacitus. The tribe (jana) consisted of a number of settlements (viç), which again were formed of an aggregate of villages (grāma). The fighting organisation of the tribe appears to have been based on these divisions. The houses forming the village seem to have been built entirely of wood, as they still were in the time of Megasthenes. In the midst of each house the domestic fire burnt. For protection against foes or inundations, fortified enclosures (called pur) were made on eminences. They consisted of earthworks strengthened with a stockade, or occasionally with stone. There is nothing to show that they were inhabited, much less that pur ever meant a town or city, as it did in later times.

The basis of Vedic society being the patriarchal family, the government of the tribe was naturally monarchical. The king (rāja) was often hereditary. Thus several successive members of the same family are mentioned as rulers of the Tṛitsus and of the Pūrus. Occasionally, however, the king was elected by the districts (viç) of the tribe; but whether the choice was then limited to members of the royal race, or was extended to certain noble families, does not appear. In times of peace the main duty of the king was to ensure the protection of his people. In return they rendered him obedience, and supplied him with voluntary gifts—not fixed taxes—for his maintenance. His power was by no means absolute, being limited by the will of the people expressed in the tribal assembly (samiti). As to the constitution and functions of the latter, we have unfortunately little or no information. In war, the king of course held the chief command. On important occasions, such as the eve of a battle, it was also his duty to offer sacrifice on behalf of his tribe, either performing the rites himself, or employing a priest to do so.

Every tribe doubtless possessed a family of singers who attended the king, praising his deeds as well as composing hymns to accompany the sacrifice in honour of the gods. Depending on the liberality of their patrons, these poets naturally did not neglect to lay stress on the efficacy of their invocations, and on the importance of rewarding them well for their services. The priest whom a king appointed to officiate for him was called a purohita or domestic chaplain. Vasishṭha occupied that position in the employ of King Sudās; and in one of his hymns (vii. 33) he does not fail to point out that the victory of the Tṛitsus was due to his prayers. The panegyrics on liberal patrons contain manifest exaggerations, partly, no doubt, intended to act as an incentive to other princes. Nevertheless, the gifts in gold, cows, horses, chariots, and garments bestowed by kings on their chief priests must often have been considerable, especially after important victories. Under the later Brahmanic hierarchy liberality to the priestly caste became a duty, while the amount of the sacrificial fee was fixed for each particular rite.

The employment of Purohitas by kings as their substitutes in the performance of sacrificial functions is to be regarded as the beginning and the oldest form of the priesthood in India. It became the starting-point of the historically unique hierarchical order in which the sacerdotal caste occupied the supreme position in society, and the State was completely merged in the Church. Such, indeed, was the ideal of the Catholic Church in the West during the Middle Ages, but it never became an accomplished fact in Europe, as it did in India. No sooner had the priesthood become hereditary than the development of a caste system began, which has had no parallel in any other country. But during the period represented by Sudās and Vasishṭha, in which the older portion of the Rigveda was composed, the priesthood was not yet hereditary, still less had the warrior and sacerdotal classes became transformed into castes among the Aryan tribes settled in the Panjāb. This is confirmed by the fact that in the epic age the inhabitants of Madhyadeça or Mid-land, where the Brahmanic caste system grew up, regarded the people of the north-west as semi-barbarians.

In the simple social organisation of the Vedic tribes of this region, where occupations were but little differentiated, every man was a soldier as well a civilian, much as among the Afghans of to-day. As they moved farther to the east, society became more complex, and vocations tended to become hereditary. The population being now spread over wider tracts of territory, the necessity arose for something in the nature of a standing army to repel sudden attacks or quell risings of the subject aborigines. The nucleus would have been supplied by the families of the chiefs of lesser tribes which had amalgamated under some military leader. The agricultural and industrial part of the population were thus left to follow their pursuits without interruption. Meanwhile the religious ceremonial was increasing in complexity; its success was growing more dependent on correct performance, while the preservation of the ancient hymns was becoming more urgent. The priests had, therefore, to devote all their time and energies to the carrying out of their religious duties and the handing down of the sacred tradition in their families.

Owing to these causes, the three main classes of Aryan society became more and more separated. But how were they transformed into castes or social strata divided from one another by the impassable barriers of heredity and the prohibition of intermarrying or eating together? This rigid mutual exclusiveness must have started, in the first instance, from the treatment of the conquered aborigines, who, on accepting the Aryan belief, were suffered to form a part of the Aryan polity in the capacity of a servile class. The gulf between the two races need not have been wider than that which at the present day, in the United States, divides the whites from the negroes. When the latter are described as men of “colour,” the identical term is used which, in India, came to mean “caste.” Having become hereditary, the sacerdotal class succeeded in securing a position of sanctity and inviolability which raised them above the rest of the Aryans as the latter were raised above the Dāsas. When their supremacy was established, they proceeded to organise the remaining classes in the state on similar lines of exclusiveness. To the time when the system of the three Aryan castes, with the Çūdras added as a fourth, already existed in its fundamental principles, belong the greater part of the independent portions of the Yajurveda, a considerable part of the Atharva-veda (most of books viii. to xiii.), but of the Rigveda, besides the one (x. 90) which distinctly refers to the four castes by name, only a few of the latest hymns of the first, eighth, and tenth books. The word brāhmaṇa, the regular name for “man of the first caste,” is still rare in the Rigveda, occurring only eight times, while brahman, which simply means sage or officiating priest, is found forty-six times.

We may now pass on to sketch rapidly the social conditions which prevailed in the period of the Rigveda. The family, in which such relationships as a wife’s brother and a husband’s brother or sister had special names, was clearly the foundation of society. The father was at its head as “lord of the house” (gṛihapati). Permission to marry a daughter was asked from him by the suitor through the mediation of an intimate friend. The wedding was celebrated in the house of the bride’s parents, whither the bridegroom, his relatives, and friends came in procession. Here they were entertained with the flesh of cows slain in honour of the occasion. Here, too, the bridegroom took the bride’s hand and led her round the nuptial fire. The Atharva-veda adds that he set down a stone on the ground, asking the bride to step upon it for the obtainment of offspring. On the conclusion of the wedding festivities, the bride, anointed and in festal array, mounted with her husband a car adorned with red flowers and drawn by two white bulls. On this she was conducted in procession to her new home. The main features of this nuptial ceremony of 3000 years ago still survive in India.

Though the wife, like the children, was subject to the will of her husband, she occupied a position of greater honour in the age of the Rigveda than in that of the Brāhmaṇas, for she participated with her husband in the offering of sacrifice. She was mistress of the house (gṛihapatnī), sharing the control not only of servants and slaves, but also of the unmarried brothers and sisters of her husband. From the Yajurveda we learn that it was customary for sons and daughters to marry in the order of their age, but the Rigveda more than once speaks of girls who remained unmarried and grew old in their father’s house. As the family could only be continued in the male line, abundance of sons is constantly prayed for, along with wealth in cattle and land, and the newly wedded husband hopes that his bride may become a mother of heroes. Lack of sons was placed on the same level as poverty, and adoption was regarded as a mere makeshift. No desire for the birth of daughters is ever expressed in the Rigveda; their birth is deprecated in the Atharva-veda, and the Yajurveda speaks of girls being exposed when born. Fathers, even in the earliest Vedic times, would doubtless have sympathised with the sentiment of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, that “to have a daughter is a misery.” This prejudice survives in India to the present day with unabated force.

That the standard of morality was comparatively high may be inferred from the fact that adultery and rape were counted among the most serious offences, and illegitimate births were concealed.