The Two Invasions: Aryan and Muslim - 1
By Syed Osman Sher
Canada
From the olden times, the Indo-Pak subcontinent has become home to a variety of peoples and races, differing from one another in physical features, language, and culture more widely than the peoples of Europe. After invading this country, they have settled down here and mingled with each other indulging into inter-marriages and inter-change of faiths and customs. With the passing of many centuries, the Subcontinent has evolved a South-Asian race, very different from its neighboring countries like Iran, Arabia, Afghanistan, China, Burma, and Thailand in respect of culture, traditions, customs, language, dress, eating habits, and manners. However, it stands divided into two major communities in terms of religion: Hindus (70%) and Muslims (25%). In this article, an account of the arrival of these two foreign elements and their evolution is presented separately in two parts.
The Aryans, semi-nomadic barbarians, living in Eurasian steppe, the region between the Caspian and the Black Sea, were forced to leave their homeland around 2,000 BC due to some natural disasters like drought, pestilence, plague or a series of Mongol invasions from Central Asia. Moving in all directions with their herds of cattle and domesticated horses, they spread over a greater part of Europe in the west, and Turkey, Iran and India in the southeast. This mass dispersion of people is uniquely responsible for affecting the course of world history: it had set in motion a vast process of cultural cross-fertilization from West Europe to India.
Extremely proud of their exalted extraction, the Aryans, whose self-given name meant ‘noble’ or ‘free-born’, did not carry with them a particularly impressive culture except for their spoken language and the poetic accomplishment of their sages, as enshrined in the Vedas. They did not know the art of writing. They lived in houses made of bamboo or wood. They were toughened by their nomadic life passed among blistering sun and heavy snow and sleet. Adept in martial art and skilled in stock breeding, they knew little about the trade.
These steppe-dwellers had, by 2,500 BC, evolved only a rudimentary culture based on the domesticated horse, and horse-driven chariot. As an important engine of the Aryan's victory, the Rig Veda contains many verses in praise of their prized possession: the horse. It was a frightening novelty for the Indus people. The Aryan’s wealth was their cattle and no sanctity was attached to the cow. But the cows were highly valued and came to be treated as currency and were paid to Brahmans for performing religious services. The Aryans freely partook of beef and wine. The men were incorrigible gamblers. The god Savitar had a word of warning and compassion for the ruined: “Let the dice alone, tend thy farm. Rejoice in thy gods and be content. Here, gamester, are thy cattle and here thy wife.” The historian, RomilaThapar, wires in A History of India, Vol. I, Ch. 2, that the coming of the Aryans into India has been considered by some as a 'backward step' in terms of civilization since Northern India had to re-experience the process of evolving urban cultures from agrarian and nomadic systems.
The Aryan irruption was enormously destructive. Descending on the subcontinent, they stormed and conquered fortified cities and razed to the ground their settlements, called pur, which were surrounded by palisades and walls. The peace-loving natives, owning no weapons for defense, were unable to offer any resistance. Many of the primitive habitants like the Gonds and Bheels were driven out into the forest recesses of the hills eastward, to the Deccan plateau, and to other regions difficult of access. After destroying the Indus Valley Civilization, the Aryans made this country their permanent home.
The Aryans then found themselves in the midst of a hostile people whom the Vedic texts depicted as ubiquitous foes. The Das community formed the majority. After subduing them thoroughly, the Aryans made the word “Das” synonymous to the derogatory connotation of slave or bondsman, which has stuck even to this day. Sanskrit vocabulary became subsequently full of pejorative terms for them like Krishna-tvach (dark-skinned), anas (nose-less), mridhravach (evil-tongued), Kuyavch (evil-speaking), a-vrata(lawless), a-devayu (indifferent to the Aryan gods), a-brahman (without devotion), anyavrata (following strange ordinances), etc.
The Aryans also feared that if no action was taken, they being of noble extraction, would be assimilated with the Dasas and thus would lose their Aryan identity.
When the Aryans had begun their lives in India they were already divided into three social classes: the warriors, the priests, and the commoners, which reflected more of professions. Caste consciousness had not yet developed, as is clear from the remarks such as ‘a bard am I, my father is a leech and my mother grinds corn’. Unable to eliminate them, they planned to absorb them into the Aryan society, but only at the lowest level. The locals were thus declared a separate people, to a caste belonging to a lower birth, completely different from the new ruling nation. In this way, the Aryan political and social ascendancy was complete.
The barbarian Aryans had created a fortress of social institution, a regime of apartheid based on the most obvious mark of distinction between the Aryans and the local people: the color of skin. The equivalent word for 'covering' in their language was varna. So, the Dasas were declared to be belonging to a different varna, thus keeping the dark-skinned native population segregated from themselves. The Dasa now belonged to a new caste, to that of Sudras. Thus the tenth and final “book” of the Rig Veda (X.90), explained in the hymn, 'Sacrifice of the Cosmic Man” (Purusha-sukta) that the four varnas emerged from different parts of the original cosmic man’s anatomy: the Brahmans from the head; the Kshatriyas from the torso, the Vaishyas from the thighs; and the Sudras from the feet:
The Sudras became the scum of Vedic society. They were treated with utmost contempt, were forced to live in outlying slums, and condemned to the meanest chores. Their lives became a picture of abject misery and servility and were placed totally at the mercy of their Aryan superiors, so much so that a Brahman who killed one of them was considered to be no more culpable than if he had killed a dog. They were defined as “servants” of the twice-born Aryans and could be 'exiled at will' or 'slain at will'. The indigenous people could not participate in Vedic rituals. They were not permitted to hear or study the Vedic hymns. The later legal texts prescribed the punishment of “pouring molten lead” into the ears of a Sudra if caught secretly listening to Vedic mantras. They were, however, allowed to worship their own gods and make their separate deowala (temple).
It is understandable that in the primitive ages, the conquering nation of the Aryans, being too proud of their physical features and fair color of skin, treated the vanquished indigenous people with utter contempt. But such treatment seems paradoxical in two ways. First, it has been done by a religion, which has been syncretic, pluralistic, liberal, and absorptive in nature. The Hinduism’s basic character, “all things to all people all the time”, gives freedom to every individual to establish a personal relationship with the god he chooses, and even seek salvation in his own way. Secondly, despite the liberal nature of the Hindu religion, the institution of apartheid, which was built in the beginning with some purpose, was never dismantled. The caste system continues to be one of the chief distinguishing features of the Hindu society even today. According to E.J. Rapson, (The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. I, Chapter II), the broad distinction between conquerors and conquered is no doubt natural and universal. With the change of time, such man-made social barriers have been either weakened or done away with in other societies, but they have remained firmly ingrained in India, which means that human institutions have received the sanction of a religion which has been concerned more with the preservation of social order than with the advancement of mankind.
However, by the middle of the first millennium BC, the races had inter-mingled, and customs and beliefs totally synthesized. As the primitive men everywhere worshipped the forces of Nature, and whose faith was “animistic and totemic worship of multitudinous spirits dwelling in stones and animals, in trees and streams, in mountains and stars”, the amalgamation of their religious beliefs became easy. Since then the system of religious worship has embraced both the Aryan and non-Aryan forms.
Most of the thousands and thousands of gods of the modern-day Hindu religion come from the non-Aryan stock. Many of the doctrines, codes of worship and rituals derived from beliefs held by the non-Aryan indigenous people were incorporated in it, which eventually became the hallmark of the formless form of the Brahmanical religion, and which was given a proper name, “Hinduism”, (religion of the people of Sind/Hind) by the later arrival, the Muslim adventurers.
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