2. ARRIVAL OF THE ARYANS

A little knowledge about the Aryans may help us in getting the initial ideas about the initiators of Varna dharma based on the purity paradigm.
Around 1500 BC, the Aryan tribes, who were without agriculture and caste, arrived with horses and cattle stock, in the Northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent. They moved in search of greener pastures for the cattle stock. With their cattle, it must have been an arduous and awfully slow journey. They had to move at the speed of their cattle and not at the speed of horses. The tribes came after tribes in slow successions, most probably having about two thousand members in each. All the Aryan tribes, living without agriculture, lived a separate life until they combined. However, this process took 600 years to be really effective. These largely egalitarian, casteless, meat-eating people, later created the Chaturvarna system with related notion of birth-attached purity and birth-attached impurity along with the related social and power structure. This system, with paramountcy of purity, in the due course gave rise to heinous, cruel and eternal system of untouchability which made the life a living hell for millions of people; no qualms about it. These eternal exploiters took pride in developing such an eternal system. They still take pride in it. And, occasionally the blood of the Untouchables is splattered on the earth for its cause. This makes terror to be entrenched in the victims' minds forever. We will see in the chapter related to the Karma hypothesis that, these victims, whose blood is splattered on the ground, are the culprits!!! Criminal cruelty? Hardly at all.
To begin with there was no Sanatana Dharma or any of the Vedas or any such cosmic order that could be called the Dharma. The Aryan people lived in nomadic communities worshiping the gods related to natural powers like the Indra (the war god), the Agni (the fire god), the Vayu (the air god), and the Varuna (the water god) etc. The Aryans tribes entered into low intensity wars with each other and with the natives of India. Without agriculture, the Aryan tribes depended on the meat of their cattle stock making the plundering of others' cattle an utmost necessity. The cows were in those days not reared for milk. Later, these experts in beef eating gave up the beef eating, and, degraded it to the prohibited level. They forgot their roots - amazing! Is it not!!!
They descended in the region of Sapta-Sandhav (the land of seven rivers). In the east this region was populated by the village-based communities and most probably the agriculture-based small communities of native people each ruled by a chieftain. These natives of India were later to be defined as Shudras - the lowest order in the Varna system.
The Aryans moved out of their homeland in southern Russian steppes around 1500 BC. These steppes are generally identified with the Aryan homeland because it tallies with the description of large green land of Aryans. It is the place where the horses and chariots could run freely. There are signs of outward movement of people from this region around 1500 BC. Some of them moved in the direction of Southeast, arrived in the present day Afghanistan, and settled along the banks of river Saraswati (Harhawati). These tribes separated from each other and formed two groups. Most probably, they separated after a violent quarrel, which is indicated in demonizing one's deities by the other. The Aryan groups that came to India came to be known as the Indo-Aryans. The other groups that went to Iran came to be known as the Indo-Iranians. The groups that came to India claimed Devas as their deities and Asuras as demons. The Aryan groups that went to Iran claimed, in reverse, the Asuras as their deities and the Devas as demons. These two groups went on to develop separate life styles. They lost touch with each other. However, there are four common links between them: the language they used was almost the same - old Rig Vedic Sanskrit; the thread ceremony that was performed when a boy comes of age; the fire worship; the intoxicating drink of Soma/homa. The common language and common culture indicate that they were the same at sometime.
 Among the Vedas, the Rig Veda is the oldest one and written in the old Sanskrit similar to the Sanskrit of Avesta or Indo-Iranians. The word Veda is derived from word "vidit" which means "told" or as told by God. Thus, the Vedas are the word of God and hence immutable. Another word for Vedas is "shrutis" which means "heard”. Accordingly, the Vedas were heard by the Rishis from God in the solitude of forests. The Rishis supposedly did not compose the earliest of the scriptures; they merely heard them from God and then they remembered them verbatim. This idea of “heard from above” gave Vedas the divine origin and served the dharmic cause in later times.
The period during which the Vedas were composed is roughly divided into two phases. The first phase is called the Rig Vedic period during which Rig Veda was composed. The second phase is called the later Vedic period during which other Vedas were composed. During the Rig Vedic period, the Aryans borrowed words from local language due to some interactions with local people. The Rig Vedic period is taken to be from 1500 B.C.E. to 900 B.C.E. and later Vedic period is taken to be from 900 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E. There are two main differences between these two periods. The first is that the language of Rig Vedic period is the old Sanskrit which is similar to the Sanskrit of The Avesta, the language of Indo-Iranians - the separated brothers of the Indo-Aryans. The Sanskrit used in later Vedas is different. The second important difference is the importance of agriculture in the Aryan society.
The cattle stock in Rig Vedic period was wealth of whole tribe; it was commonly owned. In Rig Vedic society, the assets were cows, not the land. The Rig Vedic Aryans were dependent on plundering, hunting and cattle rearing. When required they plundered other Aryan tribes and native people. The cows were important, and, to acquire them by force was justified, though it put one's life in grave danger. Any attack that means a danger to life can only be justified if cow meat was used as food. In those days the cow was not used for its milk. The eating of cattle was mainstay of life which is indicated by its perennial short supply and the resultant wars in Rig Vedic society. It was starvation or plunder. The word "Gavasthi" is used for going to attack to plunder others’ cattle. These attacks were lightening in nature that caught the enemy by surprise. The reason for lightening attacks was the small size of each tribe which limited the number of warriors available. There was no grading based on birth in the commune-based society. The private property institute was absent. No claim on the land could be made since the tribes kept on moving from place to place. All the cattle belonged to the whole tribe. There was one king who sometime doubled as the priest also. He was above others but had to function under the regulation of Sabha (committee) of the tribe. At that time, he did not have the divinely ordained inheritable position of the later day Brahmans and Kshatriyas.
The cattle ownership and the plunder distribution were common to whole tribe. Therefore, there was no question of division of society into different functional Varnas or castes. It was necessarily a community-based living which prevented the formation of castes. The kith and kin of the chieftain did not enjoy any special powers because whole of the tribe was made up of extended kith and kin only. The concept of gotra still had not come into existence. The Aryans tribes engaged in cattle rearing and warfare over cattle. It is futile to look for the hereditary groups having different graded occupations in the Rig Vedic society because of its commune nature.
The fire was an object of worship. It was also important for roasting the killed animals for food. Any oblation to fire went straight to sky where gods lived; it appeased them. The gods were appeased with the fumes. With every oblation, they became very happy and started dancing at the chanting of the mantras. The wrong chanting could have easily invoked the divine retribution. This fear of divine retribution has been milked for all its worth since then, and, it can only be proven by coincidences. Its statistical significance is nothing.
For worshiping, they had Indra, Varun, Agni, Vayu and other gods. These powerful gods were invoked to assure the victory in a war as well as for improving the general welfare of the tribe. The importance of war preparing ceremonies and fire's part in it was extreme - almost beyond the describable point. These extremely and crucial activities were Yagyas. The incomplete yagyas had horrible consequences because it meant insults to the powerful gods which invited their wrath or the divine retribution.
The Rig Vedic life of Aryans was a very tough life filled with poverty. It was the poverty which forced them to plunder others. Their life was tough because of the intertribal wars and the dependence on low subsistence nomadic economy. Another reason was the tough resistance faced by the Aryans from the local population. In fact, they were chased from place to place due to their defeat at the hands of local chieftains which is evident from their frequent requests for divine help from gods to be victorious in wars and plundering. The natural and forced movements from place to place prevented the Aryans from taking up a settled life. The Yagyas were of no help. The Rig Vedic people lived among Dasas, Dasyus, the noseless people, Panis, Aja, Shigru, Yaksha, Matsya, Kiril and the people who spoke bitter language. Therefore, it cannot be said that the Rig Vedic people were living in a vacuum or they came and populated the Sapta-Sandhav region. Panis were much hated people who stole the cattle of Rig Vedic people. The other great enemies were the Dasyus who had frequent wars with the Aryans at that time. The word "Dasyu" was probably a generic term used for the people who plundered the Aryans. And when they plundered others it was called a victory
The Rig Veda is full of low intensity warfare which indicates the existence of continually fighting small groups. Due to small size of tribes, no large attack on the natives was possible. There could be only low intensity warfare which meant running away after a defeat and coming back with plunder after a victory. There were low intensity wars because sustained wars required an uninterrupted supply of food which was not available to the Aryans due to lack of agriculture. After launching any attack, they had to retreat. The horses could provide them with speed but not the sustainability. Even with the discovery of iron, they could score facile victories but not the sustained one. Each tribe was small in number and unable to permanently occupy the conquered land. They still had to combine with each other to form a large group of occupiers. They still had not learned the agricultural technology from the natives and, hence unable to conquer them because of lack of sustained food supply caused by the absence of agriculture. From this, we can decipher that the agriculturist natives had a higher level of civilization. A stable life was not possible in such a state of warfare for the pastoral people. This life style was the result of neglecting agriculture by the Aryans. The people involved in agriculture generally live much better settled life with a relatively assured supply of food. They live in well-settled villages among other agriculturists avoiding the bloodshed.
Agriculture was nearly absent from the life of the Rig Vedic people for full 600 years. Agriculture, as compared to cattle rearing, is a superior occupation. In turn, the cattle rearing is superior to hunting. In pastoral economy one has a ready supply of meat but it is not as certain as in agriculture. The difference lies in the relative control over nature. In agriculture, the assured supply of surplus food comes from the relatively higher control over the nature. It gives more benefits when compared to the pastoral life. The pastoral life is barely a subsistence life with little surplus. The food available in the cattle stock economy depends on its natural growth rate. The nomadic life also necessitated movement from one place to another place in search of new pastures. The migration from place to place had inherent uncertainties attached to it. It also resulted in waging small wars with the other Aryan tribes and the natives. It also meant poverty as compared to agricultural societies. Agriculture allows one to have sufficient surplus and a well-settled relatively comfortable life avoiding hardship of moving from one place to another. It is surprising that the Aryans who were surrounded by the agriculturist communities refused to take up agriculture for an extremely long period of 600 years. The Rig Vedic Aryans were surrounded by the small village based agricultural communities. The then presence of agriculture in Sapta-Sandhav cannot be denied since it was the place of earlier urban Harappan civilization which was based on agriculture, manufacturing and trade. The Rig Vedic people supposed to have broken water dams of native people which were most probably used for agriculture. Though the Harappan civilization had declined, the agriculture had survived. It is strange that those who claim that the Vedas contain knowledge about everything had the ancestors who did not know much about agriculture. This perfect knowledge had the imperfection of ignorance about agriculture. They had to learn agriculture from the natives of India. This land taught them the agriculture. The agriculture teachers in India were set to become the impure Shudras.
The Rig Vedic people were not able to take up agriculture because of resistance from the natives. This resistance kept them on move preventing them from settling down. The other reason for not taking up agriculture might have been that the Aryans considered themselves superior to native people and refused to follow their mode of living, which they might have considered as inferior. This feeling of superiority might have been due to their fair skin. This possible mode of thinking indicates a kind of racism, and it might have provided seeds for the germs of later discriminatory and crippling Varna system. Another reason might have been that they considered agriculture an inferior occupation because manual labor rendered it below the level of people used to fight with arms - the warriors. This also indicates the seeds for development of discriminatory Varna system. There seems to be no reason for not taking up agriculture by the Rig Vedic people, which was quite beneficial as compared to the nomadic life that barely provided a sustainable life without any comforts. These comforts became available to later day Kshatriyas and Brahmans.
The shifting of Aryans from place to place indicates a strong resistance offered by local people to Aryans. Only when the small Aryan tribes combined to form big tribes then they became large enough to subdue the local kings or chieftains. After subduing the local kings or arriving at a compromise with them, the Rig Vedic people were able to take up agriculture and start living a relatively comfortable life as compared to their original professions of cattle rearing and plundering. In other words – they became civilized. The agriculture in the Vedas is known as the occupation of the defeated people, which also indicates a long drawn out low intensity warfare for the control over upper north India. It also tells that the agriculture was the technology of natives of India.
Astonishingly, the Aryans avoided the agriculture for a long period of 600 years but not more than that. And when they did that the entire polity of this subcontinent changed.
The Rig Vedic Aryans took up the agriculture with an inordinate delay of 600 years. They came to India in about 1500 B.C.E. and took up agriculture only in later Vedic period, which is taken to start from 900 B.C.E. onwards. But with taking up agriculture and forming large village-based communities one more event had to happen in the culture of Vedic Aryans. This was the demise of the Rig Vedic way of life of communes. It was the end of Rta, the cosmic order, which was the religion of the Rig Vedic people. The Rig Vedic religion emphasized on commune living, common ownership of the tribal wealth (the cattle stock) and equal distribution of tribal wealth and captured cows. In addition, it meant devotion to Vedic gods and fire mode of worship and the cosmic order Rta. Only fire worship, thread ceremony and the Rig Veda were to survive, and rest of the features and characteristics of the Rig Vedic society were confined to the dustbin of history. The transformation took placed under the aegis of newly acquired agricultural technology. Agriculture killed Rta, the religion of the Rig Vedic people. The then divine order called Rta was later to be replaced by the eternal Sanatana Dharma based on the Chaturvarna system.
The great Harappan urban civilization had already declined before the Rig Vedic people entered India. In its glorious days, it was two steps ahead of the nomadic Rig Vedic Aryan civilization. Earlier, the Harappan civilization had already passed the nomadic and agricultural stages and established itself at the next higher stage of civilization - the urban civilization. The Rig Vedic Aryans had not even come up to the next higher level of agriculture, which is clear from the absence of agricultural words from their vocabulary. The next step of developing urban centers for Vedic people was far ahead; they were backward in this sense. In terms of civilization, the Aryans were inferior people. They did not even know the agriculture.
We have already mentioned that with the introduction of agriculture in Vedic society that they learned from local people, the Rig Vedic divine order called Rta met its demise. This religion was not the same as Sanatana Dharma as at present but a cosmic or divine order it was indeed. Any confusion between Rta and Sanatana Dharma should be avoided- note.
Over a period of time especially in the later Vedic period (or the period in which the later Vedas were composed), agriculture came to acquire a prominent place in the Aryan society when they took up the superior occupation of the defeated native people. By this time, the Aryans had lost the character of a race and got intermixed with the local people through mixing of blood and alliances with the local kings with whom, the Rig Vedic people had won and lost many wars. Nevertheless they were winners, ultimately, through the diplomatic and war like means. Their region extended from Sapta-Sandhav to Ganga and Yamuna including many Janapadas and Mahajanapadas (small kingdom like territories). Because of intermixing of blood, the color of Aryan skin had changed from white to light brown and to other darker versions. The nomadic Vedic people settled on the land copying the technique of agriculture of native people. The small tribes combined and formed the big tribes. These big tribes in turn formed the small kingdoms in the upper northern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
With the political supremacy in upper north India there was a need to assimilate the original people of India into Aryan thread-based communities. The agriculture made it possible to produce more than the people’s need. The people having social and political dominance extracted the food surplus from those working on the land. The introduction of agriculture started the division of Aryan society. This division was new to the Rig Vedic people and with it, the Rig Vedic society also ended.
These backward tribal Aryans were destined to move from the lower level of nomads to the higher level of city culture. For this, they had to take up agriculture and had to start living a settled village life. The nomadic life is normally characterized by the absence of regular food surplus. Ultimately they took up the higher level of agriculture and then the city culture but in the process they classified certain people (Shudras) as inherently impure and some as inherent impure and polluting (Antyajas). It was indeed a great achievement with an obsessive insistence on purity, supremacy and sacredness of the Vedas. As we will see that for the purpose of giving divine authentication to their Varna system they rigged the most ancient and sacred of the scriptures - the Rig Veda. It was a pure sense embedded with the highest level ethics and morals.