Tradition, Principally with Reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations

by Baron John Francis Arundell Arundell of Wardour

And this is the more confirmed when we consider that when once the hunter started on his career, he would have determined their avocation also for his posterity. At his death he would not have had herds of cattle to apportion to any one of his sons, and thus the taste for wild life, necessarily perpetuated, would be bred in the bone, as an indomitable characteristic of race, and the first hunter by choice would inevitably come to be the progenitor of generations of hunters by instinct and necessity.

The second theory depicts the opening scene of human existence as a state of conflict, which, it must be allowed, is perfectly consistent with the theory that it was one of savagery. The theory I am now combating was originally the theory of Hobbes; and I might have regarded it as now obsolete, were it not that it has cropped up quite recently in a most respectable quarter. Mr Hunter, in his charming work, “The Annals of Rural Bengal,” has a passage which, as I think, has been taken for more than it intends, though not for more than it expresses. Mr Hunter says, p. 89—

“The inquiry leads us back to that far-off time which we love to associate with patriarchal stillness. Yet the echoes of ancient life in India little resemble a Sicilian idyl or the strains of Pan’s pipe, but strike the ear rather as the cries of oppressed and wandering nations, of people in constant motion and pain. Early Indian researches, however, while they make havoc of the pastoral landscapes of Genesis and Job, have a consolation peculiarly suited to this age. They plainly tell us, that as in Europe so in Asia, the primitive state of mankind was a state of unrest; and that civilisation, despite its exactions and nervous city life, is a state of repose.”

It is plain that there is here question of restlessness rather than of violence; but grant that there was violence too, the account of Mr. Hunter when examined, so far from conflicting with, appears to me to fall exactly into, the lines I have indicated. Is not the scene, from before which Mr. Hunter lifts the curtain, the scene of that age following the dispersion (of which, p. 452, there is such distinct tradition in his pages), which is traditionally known to us as the iron age? The error, then, of Mr. Hunter is to confound the patriarchal with the iron age. It need not therefore cause surprise that in early Indian history we should hear of conflict, for it is just at the period and under the circumstances when we should consider the collision probable.

Mr. Hunter, indeed, speaks of the aboriginal races as mysterious in their origin. But from the point of view of Genesis, there seems to be no greater mystery about them than about their conquerors the Aryans. One representative, at least, of the aboriginal race, the Santals, retain to this day the most vivid traditions of the Flood and the Dispersion[33] (pp. 151, 452). Now, if there had existed any race anterior to the Santals, I think we should have heard of them. On this point we may consider Mr. Hunter’s negative testimony as conclusive, both on account of his extensive knowledge of the subject, and his evident predisposition (p. 109) to have discovered a prior race, if it had existed; and there is nothing to show that the same line of argument would not have applied to it if its existence had been demonstrated. It must be mentioned that besides their tradition of the dispersion, the Santals retain dim recollections—borne out by comparative evidence—of having travelled to their present homes from the north-east, whereas the Aryans came unmistakeably from the north-west.

Here, then, just as might have been predicted à priori, these rival currents of the dispersion met from opposite points, and ran into a cul de sac, from which, as there was no egress, there necessarily ensued a struggle for mastery.

Let us now regard the two people more closely.

“Our earliest glimpses of the human family in India, disclose two tribes of widely different origin, struggling for the mastery. In the primitive time, which lies on the horizon even of inductive history, a tall, fair-complexioned race passed the Himalaya. They came of a conquering stock. They had known the safety and the plenty which can only be enjoyed in regular communities.[34] They brought with them a store of legends and devotional strains; and chief of all they were at the time of their migration southward through Bengal, if not at their first arrival in India, imbued with that high sense of nationality, which burns in the heart of a people who believe themselves the depositary of a divine revelation. There is no record of the newcomers’ first struggle for life with the people of the land.”—Hunter’s Annals, p. 90.

Here we see the more intellectual, the more spiritual (p. 116), monotheistic (p. 115) Aryan race overpowering the black race which had earliest pre-occupied the ground, and which was already tainted with demon worship. This contrast invites further inquiry; but first let me clear up and direct the immediate drift of my argument.

If we estimate—taking the minimum or the maximum either according to the Hebrew or Septuagint version—the time it would have taken these populations, according to the slow progress of the dispersion, to have arrived at their destinations from the plain of Sennaar (Mesopotamia), the period may be equally conjectured to correspond with that which tradition marks as the commencement of the iron age, when the world was becoming overcrowded, and the increasing populations came into collision.