मालतिः ती f. 1 A kind of jasmine (with fragrant white flowers); तन्मन्ये क्वचिदङ्ग भृङ्गतरुणेनास्वादिता मालती G. M.; जालकैर्मालतीनाम् Me.1; Ki.1.2. -2 A flower of this jasmine; शिरसि बकुलमालां मालतीभिः समेताम् Ṛs.2.24. -3 A bud, blossom (in general). -4 A virgin, young woman. -5 Night. -6 Moonlight. -Comp. -क्षारकः, तीरजम् borax. -पत्रिका the shell of a nutmeg. -फलम् nutmeg. -माधवम् N. of a celebrated drama by Bhavabhūti. -माला 1 a garland of jasmine flowers. -2 a kind of metre.
A word of doubtful meaning found in the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad.It is rendered ‘tongs’ by Max Muller and Bǒhtlingk in their translations. The St. Petersburg Dictionary explains it as ‘ a vessel in which coals are extinguished,’ and Monier-Williams as ‘ an instrument for extinguishing coals.’ The smaller St. Petersburg Dictionary renders the word ‘ coal-shovel or tongs.’ Cf. Ulmukāva- ksayana.
Neither Atri himself nor the Atris can claim any historical reality, beyond the fact that Mandala V. of the Rigveda is attributed, no doubt correctly, to the family of the Atris. The Atris as a family probably stood in close relations with the Priyamedhas and Kanvas, perhaps also with the Gotamas and Kāksīvatas. The mention of both the Parusnī and the Yamunā in one hymn of the fifth Mandala seems to justify the presumption that the family was spread over a wide extent of territory.
From the literal translation (‘after-story’) the meaning of ‘ supplementary narrative ’ seems to follow. In two of its three occurrences in the śatapatha Brāhmana this sense is hardly felt, the expression being used to indicate a subsequent portion of the book itself. But in the third passage it is distinguished from the Itihāsa (‘ story ’) proper, and there must mean ‘ supplementary narrative.’ Cf Anuvyākhyāna.
The framework of the door of a house appears to be denoted by the plural of this word in the Rigveda (though in all passages there it is used only by synecdoche of the doors of the sky), and in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā. Zimmer compares the Latin antae, to which the word etymologically corresponds.
Mentioned in a Vamśa or Genealogy of the Kānva recension of the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad as a pupil of Alambl-putra. In the Mādhyandina recension the relation is reversed, for there he is teacher of Álambī-putra and pupil of Jāyantī-putra.
As a kind of literature, is repeatedlymentioned along with Purāna in the later texts of the Vedic period. The earliest reference to both occurs in the late fifteenth book of the Atharvaveda. Itihāsa then appears in the Satapatha Brāhmana, the Jaiminīya, Brhadāranyaka, and Chāndogya Upanisads. In the latter it is expressly declared with Purāna to make up the fifth Veda, while the Sāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra makes the Itihāsa a Veda and the Purāna a Veda. The Itihāsa-veda and the Purāna-veda appear also in the Gopatha Brāhmana, while the śatapatha identifies the Itihāsa as well as the Purāna with the Veda. In one passage Anvākhyāna and Itihāsa are distinguished as different classes of works, but the exact point of distinction is obscure; probably the former was supplementary. The Taittirīya Áranyaka mentions Itihāsas and Purānas in the plural. There is nothing to show in the older literature what dis¬tinction there was, if any, between Itihāsa and Purāna; and the late literature, which has been elaborately examined by Sieg, yields no consistent result. Geldner has conjectured that there existed a single work, the Itihāsa-purāna, a collection. of the old legends of all sorts, heroic, cosmogonic, genealogical; but though a work called Itihāsa, and another called Purāna, were probably known to Patañjali, the inaccuracy of Geldner’s view is proved by the fact that Yāska shows no sign of having known any such work. To him the Itihāsa may be a part of the Mantra literature itself, Aitihāsikas being merely people who interpret the Rigveda by seeing in it legends where others see myths. The fact, however, that the use of the compound form is rare, and that Yāska regularly has Itihāsa, not Itihāsa-purāna, is against the theory of there ever having been one work. The relation of Itihāsa to Akhyāna is also uncertain. Sieg considers that the words Itihāsa and Purāna referred to the great body of mythology, legendary history, and cosmogonic legend available to the Vedic poets, and roughly classed as a fifth Veda, though not definitely and finally fixed. Thus, Anvākhyānas, Anuvyākhyānas, and Vyākhyānas could arise, and separate Ákhyānas could still exist outside the cycle, while an Akhyāna could also be a part of the Itihāsa-purāna. He also suggests that the word Akhyāna has special reference to the form of the narrative. Oldenberg, following Windisch, and followed by Geldner, Sieg, and others, has found in the Akhyāna form a mixture of prose and verse, alternating as the narrative was concerned with the mere accessory parts of the tale, or with the chief points, at which the poetic form was naturally produced to correspond with the stress of the emotion. This theory has been severely criticized by Hertel and von Schroeder. These scholars, in accordance with older suggestions of Max Muller and Levi, see in the so-called Ákhyāna hymns of the Rigveda, in which Oldenberg finds actual specimens of the supposed literary genus, though the prose has been lost, actual remains of ritual dramas. Elsewhere it has been suggested that the hymns in question are merely literary dialogues.
Occurs once in the Rigveda in the plural, when a king is said to devour his Ibhyas as the fire the forest; and twice in the Chāndogya Upanisad, in one passage as the first member of a compound, and in the other as either a proper name or an adjective. Roth, Ludwig, and Zimmer interpret the word as ‘ retainers in the Rigveda, but in the Chāndogya Upanisad Roth thinks it means ‘rich.’ Pischel and Geldner® accept the sense in all passages. Bǒhtlingk in his translation oi the Chāndogya treats the word as simply a proper name, ‘ Ibhya’s village * (ibhya-grāma) and ‘ Ibhya.’
The Brāhmanas of the northern parts are referred to in the śatapatha Brāhmana as engaging, with Svaidāyana Saunaka as their spokesman, in a dispute with the Kurupañcāla Brāhmana Uddālaka Aruni, and as vanquishing him. Their relation to the Kurupañcālas appears also from the fact that in the same Brāhmana reference is made to the speech of the north being similar to that of the Kurupañcālas. The speech of the Northerners was also celebrated for purity; hence Brāhmanas used to go to the north for purposes of study, according to the Kausītaki Brāhmana, while in the Buddhist texts the school of Taksaśilā (in Gandhāra) is famous as a resort of students. Possibly, too, Sanskrit was specially developed in Kaśmīr, as suggested by Franke. See also Kuru.
Uddālaka, son of Aruna, is one of the most prominent teachers of the Vedic period. He was a Brāhmana of the Kurupañcālas, according to the śatapatha Brāhmana. This statement is confirmed by the fact that he was teacher of Proti Kausurubindi of Kauśāmbī, and that his son Svetaketu is found disputing among the Pañcālas. He was a pupil of Aruna, his father, as well as of Patañcala Kāpya, of Madra, while he was the teacher of the famous Yājñavalkya Vājasaneya and of Kausītaki, although the former is represented elsewhere as having silenced him. He overcame in argument Prācīnayogya śauceya, and apparently also Bhadrasena Ajāta- śatrava, though the text here seems to read the name as Arani. He was a Gautama, and is often alluded to as such. As an authority on questions of ritual and philosophy, he is repeatedly referred to by his patronymic name Aruni in the śatapatha Brāhmana, the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad, the Chāndogya Upanisad, and occasionally in the Aitareya, the Kausītaki, and the Sadvimśa Brāhmanas, as well as the Kausītaki Upanisad. In the Maitrāyanī Samhitā he is not mentioned, according to Geldner, but only his father Aruna; his name does not occur, according to Weber, in the Pañca¬vimśa Brāhmana, but in the Kāthaka Samhitā he is, as Aruni, known as a contemporary of Divodāsa Bhaimaseni, and in the Jaiminīya Upanisad Brāhmana he is mentioned as serving Vāsistha Caikitāneya. In the Taittirīya tradition he seldom appears. There is an allusion in the Taittirīya Samhitā to Kusurubinda Auddālaki, and according to the Taittirīya Brāhmana, Naciketas was a son of Vājaśravasa Gautama, who is made out to be Uddālaka by Sāyana. But the episode of Naciketas, being somewhat unreal, cannot be regarded as of historical value in proving relationship. Aruna is known to the Taittirīya Samhitā. A real son of Uddālaka was the famous śvetaketu, who is expressly reported by Apastamba to have been in his time an Avara or later authority, a statement of importance for the date of Aruni.
Denotes both in the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda a ‘dependent,’ just as later in the Epic the subordination of the Vaiśya to the two superior castes is expressed by the verb upa-sthā, ‘stand under,’ support.’ The word also appears, with the same sense, in the form of Sti, but only in the Rigveda. The exact nature of the dependence connoted by the term is quite uncertain. Zimmer conjectures that the *dependents ’ were the members of defeated Aryan tribes who became clients of the king, as among the Greeks, Romans, and Germans, the term possibly including persons who had lost their freedom through dicing. The evidence of the Athar¬vaveda shows that among the Upastis were included the chariot-makers (ratha-kāra), the smiths (taksan), and the charioteers (sūta), and troop-leaders (grāma-nī), while the Rigveda passages negative the possibility of the subjects ’ (s&‘) being the whole people. It is therefore fair to assume that they were the clients proper of the king, not servile, but attached in a special relation to him as opposed to the ordinary population. They may well have included among them not only the classes suggested by Zimmer, but also higher elements, such as refugees from other clans, as well as ambitious men who sought advancement in the royal service. Indeed, the Sūta and the Grāmanī were, as such, officers of the king’s house¬holdkingmakers, not themselves kings, as they are described in the Atharvaveda. The use of the word in the Taittirīya Samhitā, the Taittirīya Brāhmana, and the Kāthaka, is purely metaphorical, as well as in the one passage of the Rigveda in which it occurs. In the Paippalāda recension of the Atharvaveda,Vaiśya, Sūdra, and Arya are referred to as Upastis, perhaps in the general sense of ‘subject.’
Having incisors in both jaws,’ is an expression employed to distinguish, among domestic animals, the horse,the ass, etc., from the goat, the sheep, and cattle. The distinction occurs in a late hymn of the Rigveda, and is several times alluded to in the later Samhitās and the Brāhmanas. In one passage of the Taittirīya Samhitā man is classed with the horse as ubhciyā-dant. The opposite is anyato-dant, * having incisors in one jaw only,’ a term regularly applied to cattle, the eight incisors of which are, in fact, limited to the lower jaw. The ass is styled ubhayā-dant in the Atharvaveda. In one passage of the Atharvaveda, however, the epithet is applied to a ram ; but the sense here is that a marvel occurs, just as in the Rigveda a ram destroys a lioness. Bloomfield suggests in the Atharvaveda passage another reading which would mean ‘ horse.’ A parallel division of animals is that of the Taittirīya and Vājasaneyi Samhitās into * whole-hoofed ’ (eka-śapha) and ‘ small ’ (ksudra). Zimmer seeks to show from the Greek άμψώδοντα and the Latin ambidens that the Indo-European was familiar with the division of the five sacrificial animals into the two classes of man and horse on the one hand, and cattle, sheep, and goats on the other. But this supposition is not necessary.
Is with Ksetra the regular expression, from the Rigveda onwards, denoting a piece of ‘ploughland’ (άρουρα). Fertile (apnasvatī) fields are spoken of as well as waste fields (ārtanā). Intensive cultivation by means of irrigation is clearly referred to both in the Rigveda and in the Atharvaveda, while allusion is also made to the use of manure. The fields (iksetra) were carefully measured according to the Rigveda. This fact points clearly to individual ownership in land for the plough, a conclusion supported by the reference of Apālā, in a hymn of the Rigveda, to her father's field (urvarā), which is put on the same level as his head of hair as a personal possession. Consistent with this are the epithets ‘winning fields ’ (urvarā-sā, urvarā-jit, ksetra-sā), while ‘ lord of fields ’ used of a god is presumably a transfer of a human epithet (urvarā-pati). Moreover, fields are spoken of in the same connexion as children, and the conquest of fields (ksetrāni sam-ji) is often referred to in the Samhitās. Very probably, as suggested by Pischel, the ploughland was bounded by grass land (perhaps denoted by Khila, Khilya) which in all likelihood would be joint property on the analogy of property elsewhere. There is no trace in Vedic literature of communal property in the sense of ownership by a community of any sort, nor is there mention of communal cultivation. Individual property in land seems also presumed later on. In the Chāndogya Upanisad the things given as examples of wealth include fields and houses («ūyatanāni). The Greek evidence also points to individual ownership. The precise nature of the ownership is of course not determined by the expression ‘ individual ownership.’ The legal relationship of the head of a family and its members is nowhere explained, and can only be conjectured (see Pitr). Very often a family may have lived together with undivided shares in the land. The rules about the inheritance of landed property do not occur before the Sūtras. In the Satapatha Brāhmana the giving of land as a fee to priests is mentioned, but with reproof: land was no doubt even then a very special kind of property, not lightly to be given away or parted with. On the relation of the owners of land to the king and others see Grāma; on its cultivation see Krsi.
‘ bear,’ is found only once in the Rigveda, and seldom later, the animal having evidently been scarce in the regions occupied by the Vedic Indians. Not more frequent is the use of the word in the plural to denote the ‘ seven bears,’ later called the ‘seven Rsis,’ the constellation of the ‘ Great Bear’ (άρκτος, ursd).
‘debt,’ is repeatedly mentioned from the Rigveda onwards, having apparently been a normal condition among the Vedic Indians. Reference is often made to debts contracted at dicing. To pay off a debt was called rnam sam-nī, Allusion is made to debt contracted without intention of payment. The result of non-payment of a debt might be very serious: the dicer might fall into slavery. Debtors, like other male¬factors, such as thieves, were frequently bound by their creditors to posts (dru-pada),β presumably as a means of putting pressure on them or their friends to pay up the debt. The amount of interest payable is impossible to make out. In one passage of the Rigveda and Atharvaveda an eighth (sapha) and a sixteenth (kalā) are mentioned as paid, but it is quite uncertain whether interest or an instalment of the principal is meant. Presumably the interest would be paid in kind. How far a debt was a heritable interest or obligation does not appear. The Kauśika Sūtra regards three hymns of the Atharvaveda9 as applicable to the occasion of the payment of a debt after the creditor’s decease. For the payment of a debt by a relation of the debtor the evidence is still less clear. Zimmer11 thinks that payments of debt were made in the presence of witnesses who could be appealed to in case of dispute. This conclusion is, however, very uncertain, resting solely on a vague verse in the Atharvaveda.
‘Season,’ is a term repeatedly mentioned from the Rigveda onwards. Three seasons of the year are often alluded to, but the names are not usually specified. In one passage of the Rigveda spring (vasanta), summer (grīsma), and autumn (sarad) are given. The Rigveda knows also the rainy season (prā-vrs) and the winter (hitnā, hemanta). A more usual division (not found in the Rigveda is into five seasons,vasanta, grīsma, varsā, sarad, hemanta-śiśira; but occasionally the five are otherwise divided, varsā-śarad being made one season. Sometimes six seasons are reckoned, hemanta and śiśira being divided, so that the six seasons can be made parallel to the twelve months of the year. A still more artificial arrangement makes the seasons seven, possibly by reckoning the intercalary month as a season, as Weber and Zimmer hold, or more probably because of the predilection for the number seven, as Roth suggests. Occasionally the word rtu is applied to the months. The last season, according to the Satapatha Brāhmana, is hemanta. The growth of the division of the seasons from three to five is rightly explained by Zimmer as indicating the advance of the Vedic Indians towards the east. It is not Rigvedic, but dominates the later Samhitās. Traces of an earlier division of the year into winter and summer do not appear clearly in the Rigveda, where the appropriate words himā and samā are merely general appellations of the year, and where śarad is commoner than either as a designation of the year, because it denotes the harvest, a time of overwhelming importance to a young agricultural people. The division of the year in one passage of the Atharvaveda into two periods of six months is merely formal, and in no way an indication of old tradition.
Is regarded by Ludwig in a very obscure passage of the Rigveda as the name of a singer beside Ksatra, Manasa, and Yajata. The commentator Sāyana also interprets the word as a proper name. Roth, however, considers it to be an adjective meaning ‘ truthful.' Translation of the Rigveda,
In the Atharvaveda mention is made of the Kālakāñjas as being in the sky. Both Roth and Zimmer hold that some constellation is meant. But as the defeat of the Kālakāñjas is one of Indra’s exploits, it is doubtful whether any stress can be laid on that interpretation of the passage in the Atharvaveda. Whitney suggests that the three stars of Orion are meant, Bloomfield that the galaxy or the stars in general are intended.
The name Kāśi denotes (in the plural1) the people of Kāśi (Benares), and Kāśya, the king of Kāśi. The Satapatha Brāhmana tells of Dhrtarāstra, king of Kāśi, who was defeated by Satānīka Sātrājita, with the result that the Kāśis, down to the time of the Brāhmana, gave up the kindling of the sacred fire. Sātrājita was a Bharata. We hear also of Ajātaśatru as a king of Kāśi; and no doubt Bhadrasena Ajātaśatrava, a contemporary of Uddālaka, was also a king of Kāśi. The Kāśis and Videhas were closely connected, as was natural in view of their geographical position. The compound name Kāśi-Videha occurs in the Kausītaki Upanisad; in the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad Gārgī describes Ajātaśatru as either a Kāśi or a Videha king. The Sāñkhāyana Srauta Sūtra mentions one Purohita as acting for the kings of Kāśi, Kosala, and Videha; and the Baudhāyana śrauta Sūtra mentions Kāśi and Videha in close proximity. Weber,8 indeed, throws out the suggestion that the Kāśis and the Videhas together con¬stitute the Uśīnaras, whose name is very rare in Vedic literature. As Kosala and Videha were in close connexion, Kāśi and Kosala are found combined in the compound name Kāśi- Kauśalyas of the Gopatha Brāhmana. Though Kāśi is a late word, it is quite possible that the town is older, as the river Varanāvatī referred to in the Athar¬vaveda may be connected with the later Vārānasī (Benares).It is significant that while the Kāśis, Kosalas, and Videhas were united, any relations which the Kuru-Pañcala peoples may have had with them were hostile. It is a fair conclusion that between these two great groups of peoples there did exist some political conflict as well as probably a difference of culture in some degree. The śatapatha Brāhmana,11 in the story of the advance of Aryan civilization over Kosala and Videha, preserves a clear tradition of this time, and a piece of evidence that in the Kuru-Pañcāla country lay the real centre of the Brāhmana culture (see also Kuru-Pañcāla). That the Kosala-Videhas were originally settlers of older date than the Kuru-Pañcālas is reasonably obvious from their geographical position, but the true Brāhmana culture appears to have been brought to them from the Kuru-Pañcala country. It is very probable that the East was less Aryan than the West, and that it was less completely reduced under Brahmin spiritual supremacy, as the movement of Buddhism was Eastern, and the Buddhist texts reveal a position in which the Ksatriyas rank above Brāhmanas. With this agrees the fact that the later Vedic texts display towards the people of Magadha a marked antipathy, which may be reasonably explained by that people’s lack of orthodoxy, and which may perhaps be traced as far back as the Vājasaneyi Samhitā. It is, of course, possible that the Kosala-Videhas and Kāśis actually were merely offshoots of the tribes later known as the Kuru-Pañcālas, and that they by reason of distance and less complete subjugation of the aborigines lost their Brahminical culture. This hypothesis, however, appears less likely, though it might be supported by a literal inter-pretation of the legend of the Aryan migration in the śatapatha Brāhmana.
The Kurus appear as by far the most important people in the Brāhmana literature. There is clear evidence that it was in the country of the Kurus, or the allied Kuru- Pañcālas, that the great Brāhmanas were composed. The Kurus are comparatively seldom mentioned alone, their name being usually coupled with that of the Pañcālas on account of the intimate connexion of the two peoples. The Kuru-Pañcālas are often expressly referred to as a united nation. In the land of the Kuru-Pañcālas speech is said to have its particular home ; the mode of sacrifice among the Kuru-Pañcālas is proclaimed to be the best ; the Kuru-Pañcāla kings perform the Rājasūya or royal sacrifice ; their princes march forth on raids in the dewy season, and return in the hot season Later on the Kuru-Pañcāla Brahmins are famous in the Upanisads. Weber and Grierson have sought to find traces in Vedic literature of a breach between the two tribes, the latter scholar seeing therein a confirmation of the theory that the Kurus belonged to the later stream of immigrants into India, who were specially Brahminical, as opposed to the Pañcālas, who were anti-Brahminical. In support of this view, Weber refers to the story in the Kāthaka Samhitā of a dispute between Vaka Dālbhya and Dhrtarāstra Vaicitravīrya, the former being held to be by origin a Pañcāla, while the latter is held to be a Kuru. But there is no trace of a quarrel between Kurus and Pañcālas in the passage in question, which merely preserves the record of a dispute on a ritual matter between a priest and a prince: the same passage refers to the Naimisīya sacrifice among the Kuru-Pañcālas, and emphasizes the close connexion of the two peoples. Secondly, Weber conjectures in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā that Subhadrikā of Kāmpīla was the chief queen of the king of a tribe living in the neighbour¬hood of the clan, for whose king the horse sacrifice described in the Samhitā was performed. But the interpretation of this passage by Weber is open to grave doubt ; and in the Kānva recension of the Samhitā a passage used at the Rājasūya shows that the Kuru-Pañcālas had actually one king. More¬over, there is the evidence of the Satapatha Brāhmana that the old name of the Pañcālas was Krivi. This word looks very like a variant of Kuru, and Zimmer plausibly conjectures that the Kurus and Krivis formed the Vaikarna of the Rigveda, especially as both peoples are found about the Sindhu and the Asikni.The Kurus alone are chiefly mentioned in connexion with the locality which they occupied, Kuruksetra. We are told, however, of a domestic priest (Purohita) in the service of both the Kurus and the Srñjayas, who must therefore at one time have been closely connected. In the Chāndogya Upanisad reference is made to the Kurus being saved by a mare (aśvā), and to some disaster which befel them owing to a hailstorm. In the Sūtras, again, a ceremony (Vājapeya) of the Kurus is mentioned. There also a curse, which was pronounced on them and led to their being driven from Kuruksetra, is alluded to. This possibly adumbrates the misfortunes of the Kauravas in the epic tradition. In the Rigveda the Kurus do not appear under that name as a people. But mention is made of a prince, Kuruśravana (‘ Glory of the Kurus ^, and of a Pākasthāman Kaurayāna. In the Atharvaveda there occurs as a king of the Kurus Pariksit, whose son, Janamejaya, is mentioned in the śata¬patha Brāhmana as one of the great performers of the horse sacrifice.It is a probable conjecture of Oldenberg’s that the Kuru people, as known later, included some of the tribes referred to by other names in the Rigveda. Kuruśravana, shown by his name to be connected with the Kurus, is in the Rigveda called Trāsadasyava, * descendant of Trasadasyu,’ who is well known as a king of the Pūrus. Moreover, it is likely that the Trtsu- Bharatas, who appear in the Rigveda as enemies of the Pūrus, later coalesced with them to form the Kuru people. Since the Bharatas appear so prominently in the Brāhmana texts as a great people of the past, while the later literature ignores them in its list of nations, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they became merged in some other tribe. Moreover, there is evidence that the Bharatas occupied the territory in which the Kurus were later found. Two of them are spoken of in a hymn of the Rigveda as having kindled fire on the Drsadvatī, the Apayā, and the Sarasvatī—that is to say, in the sacred places of the later Kuruksetra. Similarly, the goddess Bhāratī (‘ belonging to the Bharatas ’) is constantly mentioned in the Aprī (‘ propitiatory ’) hymns together with Sarasvatī. Again, according to the śatapatha Brāhmana, one Bharata king was victorious over the Kāśis, and another made offerings to Gañgā and Yamunā, while raids of the Bharatas against the Satvants are mentioned in the Aitareya Brāhmana. Nor is it without importance that the Bharatas appear as a variant for the Kuru-Pañcālas in a passage of the Vājasaneyi Samhitā, and that in the list of the great performers of the horse sacrifice the names of one Kuru and two Bharata princes are given without any mention of the people over which they ruled, while in other cases that information is specifically given.The territory of the Kuru-Pañcālas is declared in the Aitareya Brāhmana to be the middle country (Madhyadeśa). A group of the Kuru people still remained further north—the Uttara Kurus beyond the Himālaya. It appears from a passage of the śatapatha Brāhmana that the speech of the Northerners— that is, presumably, the Northern Kurus—and of the Kuru- Pañcālas was similar, and regarded as specially pure. There seems little doubt that the Brahminical culture was developed in the country of the Kuru-Pañcālas, and that it spread thence east, south, and west. Traces of this are seen in the Vrātya Stomas (sacrifices for the admission of non - Brahminical Aryans) of the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana, and in the fact that in the śāñkhāyana Áranyaka it is unusual for a Brahmin to dwell in the territory of Magadha. The repeated mention of Kuru- Pañcāla Brahmins is another indication of their missionary activity. The geographical position of the Kuru-Pañcālas renders it probable that they were later immigrants into India than the Kosala-Videha or the Kāśis, who must have been pushed into their more eastward territories by a new wave of Aryan settlers from the west. But there is no evidence in Vedic literature to show in what relation of time the immigration of the latter peoples stood to that of their neighbours on the west. It has, however, been conjectured, mainly on the ground of later linguistic phenomena, which have no cogency for the Vedic period, that the Kurus were later immigrants, who, coming by a new route, thrust themselves between the original Aryan tribes which were already in occupation of the country from east to west. Cf. also Krtvan. For other Kuru princes see Kauravya.
As the origin of caste, the relation of the castes, intermarriage, and cognate matters may most conveniently be discussed under Varna, this article will be confined to determining, as far as possible, the real character of the class called Ksatriyas, or collectively Ksatra. The evidence of the Jātakas points to the word Khattiya denoting the members of the old Aryan nobility who had led the tribes to conquest, as well as those families of the aborigines who had managed to maintain their princely status in spite of the conquest. In the epic also the term Ksatriya seems to include these persons, but it has probably a wider signification than Khattiya, and would cover all the royal military vassals and feudal chiefs, expressing, in fact, pretty much the same as the barones of early English history. Neither in the Jātakas nor in the epic is the term co-extensive with all warriors; the army contains many besides the Ksatriyas, who are the leaders or officers, rather than the rank and file.In the later Samhitās and the Brāhmanas the Ksatriya stands as a definite member of the social body, distinct from the priest, the subject people, and the slaves, Brāhmana, Vaiśya, and Sūdra. It is significant that Rājanya is a variant to Ksatriya, and an earlier one. Hence it is reasonable to suppose that the Ksatriya and Rājanya are both of similar origin, being princely or connected with royalty. Moreover, the early use of Ksatriya in the Rigveda is exclusively con-nected with royal authority or divine authority. It is impossible to say exactly what persons would be in¬cluded in the term Ksatriya. That it covered the royal house and the various branches of the royal family may be regarded as certain. It, no doubt, also included the nobles and their families: this would explain the occasional opposition of Rājanya and Ksatriya, as in the Aitareya Brāhmana,8 where a Rājanya asks a Ksatriya for a place for sacrifice (deυa-yajana). Thus, when strictly applied, Ksatriya would have a wider denotation than Rājanya. As a rule, however, the two expressions are identical, and both are used as evidence in what follows. That Ksatriya ever included the mere fighting man has not been proved: in the Rigveda9 and later10 others than Ksatriyas regularly fought; but possibly if the nobles had retinues as the kings had, Ksatriya would embrace those retainers who had military functions. The term did not apply to all members of the royal entourage; for example, the Grāmanī was usually a Vaiśya. The connexion of the Ksatriyas with the Brahmins was very close. The prosperity of the two is repeatedly asserted to be indissolubly associated, especially in the relation of king (Rājan) and domestic priest (Purohita). Sometimes there was feud between Ksatriya and Brahmin. His management of the sacrifice then gave the Brahmin power to ruin the Ksatriya by embroiling him with the people or with other Ksatriyas. Towards the common people, on the other hand, the Ksa¬triya stood in a relation of well-nigh unquestioned superiority. There are, however, references to occasional feuds between the people and the nobles, in which no doubt the inferior numbers of the latter were compensated by their superior arms and prowess. In the Aitareya Brāhmana the Vaiśya is described as tributary to another (anyasya bali-krt), to be devoured by another (anyasyādya), and to be oppressed at will (yathākāma-jyeya). Probably these epithets apply most strictly to the relation of the king and his people, but the passage shows that the people were greatly at the mercy of the nobles. No doubt the king granted to them the right, which may have been hereditary, to be supported by the common people, whose feudal superiors they thus became. In return for these privileges the Kṣatriyas had probably duties of protection to perform, as well as some judicial functions, to judge from an obscure passage of the Kāthaka Samhitā. The main duty of the Ksatriya in the small states of the Vedic period was readiness for war. The bow is thus his special attribute, just as the goad is that of the agriculturist; for the bow is the main weapon of the Veda. Whether the Ksatriyas paid much attention to mental occupations is uncertain. In the latest stratum of the Brāhmana literature there are references to learned princes like Janaka of Videha, who is said to have become a Brahmin (brahmā), apparently in the sense that he had the full knowledge which a Brahmin possessed. Other learned Ksatriyas of this period were Pravāhana Jaivali, Aśvapati Kaikeya, and Ajātaśatru Garbe, Grierson, and others believe they are justified in holding the view that the Ksatriyas developed a special philosophy of their own as opposed to Brahminism, which appears later as Bhakti, or Faith. On the other hand, there is clear evidence that the opinion of Ksatriyas on such topics were held in little respect, and it must be remembered that to attribute wisdom to a king was a delicate and effective piece of flattery. There are earlier references to royal sages (rājan- yarsi) but it is very doubtful if much stress can be laid on them, and none can be laid on the later tradition of Sāyana. Again, the Nirukta gives a tradition relating how Devāpi, a king’s son, became the Purohita of his younger brother Samtanu; but it is very doubtful if the story can really be traced with Sieg in the Rigveda itself. In any case, the stories refer only to a few selected Ksatriyas of high rank, while there is no evidence that the average Ksatriya was concerned with intellectual pursuits. Nor is there any reference to Ksatriyas engaging in agriculture or in trade or commerce. It may be assumed that the duties of administration and war were adequate to absorb his atten¬tion. On the other hand, we do hear of a Rājanya as a lute player and singer at the Aśvamedha or horse sacrifice. Of the training and education of a Ksatriya we have no record; presumably, as in fact if not in theory later on, he was mainly instructed in the art of war, the science of the bow, and the rudimentary administrative functions which would devolve on him. At this early state of the development of the nobility which appears to be represented in the Rigveda, it was probably not unusual or impossible for a Vaiśya to become a Ksatriya; at least, this assumption best explains the phrase ‘claiming falsely a Ksatriya’s rank ’ (ksatriyam mithuyā dhārayantam). The king and the Ksatriyas must have stood in a particularly close relation. The former being the Ksatriya par excellence, it is to him rather than to the ordinary Ksatriya that we must refer passages like that in the Satapatha Brāhmana, where it is said that the Ksatriya, with the consent of the clansmen, gives a settlement to a man : clearly a parallel to the rule found among many peoples that the chief, but only with the consent of the people, can make a grant of unoccupied land. In the same Brāhmana it is said that a Ksatriya consecrates a Ksatriya, a clear reference, as the commentator explains, to the practice of the old king consecrating the prince (kumāra) who is to succeed him ; and again, the Ksatriya and the Purohita are regarded as alone complete in contrast with other people, the parallel with the Purohita here suggesting that the Ksatriya par excellence is meant. On the other hand, the king is sometimes con¬trasted with the Rājanya. The Sūtra literature contains elaborate rules for the education and occupations of Ksatriyas, but their contents cannot always be traced in the Brāhmana literature, and their value is questionable.
(* son of Plati ’) is referred to in the Rigveda, two hymns of which he clearly claims to have composed, and which are attributed to him in the Sarvānukramanī and the Aitareya Brahmana. In the Atharvaveda he appears with Asita and Kaśyapa as a half-mythical magician.
Is used in the singular, or oftener in the plural, to denote the ‘ house ’of the Vedic Indian. Dama or Dam has the same sense, while Pastyā and Harmya denote more especially the home with its surroundings, the family settle¬ment. The house held not only the family, which might be of considerable size, but also the cattle and the sheep at night. It was composed of several rooms, as the use of the plural indicates, and it could be securely shut up. The door (Dvār, Dvāra) is often referred to, and from it the house is called Durona. In every house the fire was kept burning. Very little is known of the structure of the house. Presum¬ably stone was not used, and houses were, as in Megasthenes’ time, built of wood. The hymns of the Atharvaveda give some information about the construction of a house, but the details are extremely obscure, for most of the expressions used do not recur in any context in which their sense is clear. According to Zimmer, four pillars (Upamit) were set up on a good site, and against them beams were leant at an angle as props (Pratimit). The upright pillars were connected by cross beams (Parimit) resting upon them. The roof was formed of ribs of bamboo cane (vamśa), a ridge called Visūvant, and a net (Aksu), which may mean a thatch’ed covering over the bamboo ribs. The walls were filled up with grass in bundles (palada), and the whole structure was held together with ties of various sorts (nahana, prānāha, samdamśa, parisvañjalya).13 In connexion with the house, mention is made of four terms which, though primarily sacrificial in meaning, seem to designate parts of the building: Havirdhāna, ‘oblation-holder’; Agniśāla, ‘ fire¬place Patnīnām Sadana, wives’ room ’; and Sadas, ‘ sitting room.’ Slings or hanging vessels (Sikya) are also mentioned. Reedwork (ita) is spoken of, no doubt as part of the finishing of the walls of the house. The sides are called Paksa. The door with its framework was named Atā.
The primitive sense of this word, which occurs frequently from the Rigveda onwards, appears to have been village.’ The Vedic Indians must have dwelt in villages which were scattered over the country, some close together, some far apart, and were connected by roads.The village is regularly contrasted with the forest (
‘Four-monthly,’ denotes the festival of the Vedic ritual held at the beginning of the three seasons of four months each, into which the Vedic year was artificially divided. It is clear that the sacrifices commenced with the beginning of each season, and it is certain that the first of them, the Vaiśvadeva, coincided with the Phālgunī full moon, the second, the Varuna-praghāsas, with the AsadhI full moon, and the third, the Sāka-medha, with the Kārttikī full moon. There were, however, two alternative datings: the festivals could also be held in the Caitri, the Srāvanī, and Agrahāyanī (Mārgaśīrsī) full moons, or in the Vaiśākhī, Bhādrapadī, and Pausī full moons. Neither of the later datings is found in a Brāhmana text, but each may well have been known early, since the Taittirīya Samhitā and the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana both recognize the full moon in the month Caitra as an alternative to the full moon in the month Phālguna, for the beginning of the year. Jacobi considers that the commencement of the year with the full moon in the asterism Phālgunī, which is supported by other evidence, indicates that the year at one time began with the winter solstice with the moon in Phālgunī, corresponding to the summer solstice when the sun was in Phālgunī. These astronomical conditions, he believes, existed in the time of the Rigveda, and prevailed in the fourth millennium B.C. The alternative dates would then indicate periods when the winter solstice coincided with the Caitrī or the Vaiśākhī full moon. But Oldenberg and Thibaut seem clearly right in holding that the coincidence of Phālgunī with the beginning of spring, which is certain, is fatal to this view, and that there is no difficulty in regarding this date as consistent with the date of the winter solstice in the new moon of Māgha, which is given by the Kausītaki Brāhmana, and which forms the basis of the calculations of the Jyotisa. The full moon in Phālguna would be placed about one month and a half after the winter solstice, or, say, in the first week of February, which date, according to Thibaut, may reasonably be deemed to mark the beginning of a new season in India about 800 B.C. At the same time it must be remembered that the date was necessarily artificial, inasmuch as the year was divided into three seasons, each of four months, and the Indian year does not in fact consist of three equal seasons. The variations of the other datings would then not be unnatural if any school wished to defer its spring festival, the Vaiśvadeva, to the time when spring had really manifested itself. See also Samvatsara.
Is used once in the Rigveda, and not rarely later, to denote the covering of a wagon or the thatch of a house, or something analogous to these. Weber thinks that in one passage of the Atharvaveda the word designates a constella¬tion, and Whitney, who does not decide whether that interpre¬tation is necessary, suggests that the constellation 7, ξ, η, 7r Aquarii may be meant, since the next verse mentions Vicrtau, which is the constellation λ and v Scorpionis, and is not far from Aquarius. See also Chardis.
Besides meaning * man’ as an individual, with a tendency to the collective sense, commonly denotes a * people ’ or tribe ’ in the Rigveda and later. Thus, the five tribes ’(Panca Janāh or Janāsah) are frequently referred to, and in one hymn of the Rigveda the people of Yadu ’ (yādva jana) and the Yadus (yādvāh) are synonymous. Again, the king (rājan) is described as protector (gopā) of the people (janasya),’and there are other references to king and Jana. The people of the Bharatas (bhārata jana) is also mentioned ; there is no ground to assume with Hopkins that Jana in this case means a clan or horde (Grāma), as distinguished from a people. It is difficult to say exactly how a people was divided. Zimmer argues from a passage in the Rigveda that a people was divided into cantons (Viś), cantons into joint families or clans, or village communities (Grāma, Vrjana), and these again into single families. He thinks that the four divisions are reflected in the passage in question by Jana, Viś, Janman, and Putrālj, or sons, and argues that each village community was originally founded on relationship. But it is very doubtful whether this precise division of the people can be pressed. The division of the Jana into several Viś may be regarded as probable, for it is supported by the evidence of another passage of the Rigveda, which mentions the Viś as a unit of the fighting men, and thus shows that, as in Homeric times and in ancient Germany, relationship was deemed a good principle of military arrangement. But the subdivision of the Viś into several Gramas is very doubtful. Zimmer admits that neither Grāma nor Vrjana11 has the special sense of a subdivision of the Viś when used for war, for both words only denote generally an armed host. He finds other designations of the village host in Vrā12 and in Vrāja,13 but it is sufficient to say that the former passage is of extremely doubtful import,14 and that the latter has no reference to war at all. It is therefore impossible to state in what exact relation the Grāma in Vedic times stood to the Viś or to the family (Kula or Gotra). The confusion is increased by the vagueness of the sense of both Grāma and Viś. If the latter be regarded as a local division, then no doubt the Grāma must have been a part of a district; but if a Viś was a unit of relationship, then a Grāma may have contained families of different Viśes, or may have sometimes coincided with a Viś, or have contained only a part of a Viś. But in any case the original state of affairs must have been greatly modified by the rise of the system of caste, and the substitu¬tion of a hierarchical for a political point of view. The elements of the people were represented by the family—either as an individual family inhabiting one home (Kula), and con¬sisting often, no doubt, of a joint family of brothers, or as a patriarchal family of sons who still lived with their father—and by the clan, the later Gotra, which included all those who claimed a common ancestor. The Gotra may be regarded as roughly corresponding to the Latin gens and the Greek yevos, and possibly the Viś may be the equivalent of the curia and φprjτpη, and the Jana of the tribus and φυXov or φv\η.i These three divisions may also be seen in the Viś, Zantu, and Daqyu of the Iranian world, where the use of Viś suggests that in the Indian Viś a relationship based on blood rather than locality is meant—and perhaps even in the vicus, pagus, and ciυitas of the old German polity described in the Germania of Tacitus. The family in some form appears as the third element of the Jana in a passage of the Rigveda, where the house {grha) is contrasted with the Jana and the Viś. Possibly, too, another passage contrasts the adhvam, or family sacrifice, with that of the Jana or Viś, rather than, as Zimmer thinks, the village with the two larger units. But it is significant of the particu¬larism of the Vedic Indians that while the king maintained a fire which might be regarded as the sacred fire of the tribe, there is no sure trace of any intermediate cult between that of the king and that of the individual householder. The real elements in the state are the Gotra and the Jana, just as ultimately the gens and tribtis, the γei>oç and ψv\ov, are alone important. It may be that Viś sometimes represents in the older texts what later was known as the Gotra. See Viś. This appears clearly when the constitution of society in the Brāhmana period is considered. The tribe or people still exists, and is presupposed, but the division into Viś disappears. The real division is now the separate castes (Varna), but the numerous sections into which each of them is divided appear to be based in part on the ancient Gotra.
These words appear to denote ‘wife,’ usually applying to her in relation to her husband (Pati). The more general sense of ‘woman ’ is doubtful; for when Usas is called a fair Janī, ‘wife ’ may be meant, and the other passage cited for this sense by Delbriick, which refers to the begetting of children, seems to demand the sense of ‘wives.’ Since the words usually appear in the plural, it is possible they may refer not to ‘wives’ proper, but to Hetairai. This is, how¬ever, rendered unlikely because the Rigveda uses the phrase patyur janitvam, denoting ‘wifehood to a husband,’ as well as the expression janayo na patnlh,β ‘like wives (who are) mistresses,’ besides containing passages in which the word has reference to marriage. The singular occurs in the dialogue of Yama and Yamī.
Is a rare word denoting ‘ son-in-law * in the Rigveda, where also occurs the word Vijāmātr, denoting an ‘unsatisfactory son-in-law,’ as one who does not pay a sufficient price, or one who, having other defects, must purchase a bride. Friendly relations between son-in-law and father-in-law are referred to in the Rigveda.
A word which appears originally to have meant ‘ related in blood,’ is not rarely used as an epithet of ‘ sister ’ (Svasr), and sometimes even denotes ‘ sister ’ itself, the emphasis being on the blood-relationship. So it appears in a passage of the Atharvaveda, where ‘ brotherless sisters’ (abhrātara iva jāmayah) are referred to. The word is similarly used in the dispute occurring in the Aitareya Brāhmana as to the precedence of Rākā, or of the wives of the gods, in a certain rite. One party is there described as holding that the sister should be preferred (jāmyai vai pūrva-peyam)—apparently at a ceremonial family meal—to the wife, presumably as being of one blood with the husband, while the wife is not (being anyo- daryā, ‘of another womb’). In the neuter the word means ‘ relationship,’ like jāmi-tva, which also occurs in the Rigveda.
The ‘ imprecation by a sister ’ or ‘ relation,’ is mentioned in the Atharvaveda, showing that family disputes were not rare. This is also indicated by the word Bhrātrvya, which, while properly meaning ‘father’s brother’s son,’ regularly denotes simply ‘enemy.’
Regularly denotes ‘ wife,’ and, as opposed to Patnī, wife as an object of marital affection, the source of the continuance of the race. So it is used of the wife of the gambler, and of the wife of the Brāhmana in the Rigveda ; it is also frequently combined with Pati, ‘husband,’ both there and in the later literature. Patnī, on the other hand, is used to denote the wife as partner in the sacrifice ; when no share in it is assigned to her, she is called Jāyā.6 The distinction is, of course, merely relative; hence one text7 calls Manu’s wife Jāyā, another8 Patnī. Later on Jāyā is superseded by Dāra.
(masc.), A word which originally seems to have meant ‘acquaintance,’ denotes in the Rigveda and later a ‘relation,’ apparently one who was connected by blood on the father’s side, though the passages do not necessarily require the limitation. But this sense follows naturally enough from the patriarchal basis of Vedic society.
Is the regular term for ‘ bed ’ or ‘ couch ’ from the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda onwards. One made of Udumbara wood is mentioned in the Taittirīya Brāhmana. The violation of the bed of a Guru, or teacher, is already mentioned in the Chāndogya Upanisad, while the adjective talpya, ‘born in the nuptial couch,’ denotes ‘legitimate’ in the śatapatha Brāhmana.
Is mentioned in a Dānastuti, or ‘ Praise of Gifts,’ in the Rigveda as having, along with Parśu, bestowed gifts on the singer. In the śāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra this statement is represented by a tale that the Kanva Vatsa obtained a gift from Tirindira Pāraśavya, Tirindira and Parśu being in this version thus treated as one and the same man. Ludwig sees in the Rigvedic passage a proof that the Yadus had gained a victory over Tirindira, and gave a part of the booty to the singers; but there is no proof whatever of the correctness of this interpretation, which Zimmer shows to be most unlikely. Yadu princes must be meant by Tirindira and Parśu, though Weber thinks that the singers were Yadus, not the princes. The latter he holds to have been Iranian (cf. TLpiβaζos, and see Parśu), and he thinks that in this there is evidence of continual close relations between India and Iran. This is perfectly possible, but the evidence for it is rather slight.
Is the name of a seer mentioned in the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana as having pleased Indra by two Sāmans (Chants) of his composition. Indra in return appears to have given him the oblation of the Pārāvatas on the Yamunā.
Occurs in the Rigveda, once in the singular and several times in the plural, as a proper name. The Trtsus were clearly helpers of Sudās in the great battle against the ten kings, Simyu, the Turvaśa, the Druhyu, Kavasa, the Pūru, the Anu, Bheda, Sambara, the two Vaikarnas, and perhaps the Yadu, who led with them as allies the Matsyas, Pakthas, Bhalānas, Alinas, Visānins, Sivas, Ajas, Sigrus, and perhaps Yaksus. The defeat of the ten kings is celebrated in one hymn of the Rigveda, and is evidently alluded to in two others. The great battle took place on the Parusnī, but there was also a fight on the Yamunā with Bheda, the Ajas, Sigrus, and Yaksus. As the Yamunā and the Parusnī represent opposite ends of the territory of the Trtsus (for we cannot with Hopkins safely identify the streams), it is difficult to see exactly how the ten kings could be confederated, but it should be noted that the references to the ten kings occur in the two later hymns, and not in the hymn describing the battle itself; besides, absolute numerical accuracy cannot be insisted upon.It is difficult exactly to determine the character of the Trtsus, especially in their relation to the Bharatas, who under Visvamitra’s guidance are represented as prospering and as advancing to the Vipāś and Sutudrī. Roth ingeniously brought this into connexion with the defeat of his enemies by Sudās, which is celebrated in the seventh book of the Rigveda—a book attributed to the Vasistha family—and thought that there was a reference in one verse to the defeat of the Bharatas by Sudās. But it seems certain that the verse is mistranslated, and that the Bharatas are really represented as victors with Sudās. Ludwig accordingly identifies the Trtsus and the Bharatas. Oldenberg, after accepting this view at first, later expressed the opinion that the Trtsus were the priests of the Bharata people, and therefore identical with the Vasisthas. This view is supported by the fact that in one passage the Trtsus are clearly described as wearing their hair in the peculiar manner affected by the Vasisthas, and would in that passage thus seem to represent the Vasisthas. But Geldner has suggested with great probability that Trtsu, who is once mentioned in the singular, means the Trtsu king—that is, Sudās. This explanation alone justifies the description of the Bharatas as Trtsūnām viśah, ‘ subjects of the Trtsus,’ meaning the Trtsu Gotra or family, for the people could not be said to be subjects of a body of priests. The Vasisthas might be called Trtsus because of their close con¬nexion with the royal house of that people. The reverse process is also quite possible, but is rendered improbable by the fact that the Pratrdah are referred to as receiving Vasistha. This name of the Trtsu dynasty is probably older than its connexion with Vasistha in the time of Sudās, a conclusion supported by the name of Pratardana, who is mentioned later as a descendant of Divodāsa, an ancestor of Sudās. The Trtsu dynasty could therefore hardly have been referred to as Vasisthas. For the further history of the dynasty and its relation with Vasistha and Viśvāmitra, see Sudās. If the Trtsus and their subjects, the Bharatas, were in the Rigvedic period at war with the tribes on either side of the territory between the Parusnī and the Yamunā, it is clear that later on they coalesced with the Pūrus and probably others of those tribes to form the Kuru people. Already in the Rigveda the Trtsus are allied with the Srñjayas, and in the śatapatha Brāhmana one Purohita serves both Kurus and Srñjayas. Hillebrandt considers that the Trtsus cannot be identified with the Bharatas, but that Sudās and the Bharatas represent an invading body, which, however, became allied with the Trtsus and the Vasistha priests. He also thinks that the Rigveda reveals a time when Divodāsa, the grandfather or ancestor of Sudās, was living in Arachosia, on the Sarasvatī, and warring against the Panis, whom he identifies with the Parnians. But this conjecture cannot be regarded as probable. In the Sarasvatī it is not necessary to see any other river than the later Sarasvatī, in the middle country, which flowed within the boundaries of the Trtsus: it is also significant that there are references to contests between Turvaśa Yadu and Atithigva or Divodāsa. Thus there is no reason to doubt that Divodāsa and the Bharatas were in the middle country, and not in Iran.
Son of Purukutsa, is mentioned in the Rigveda as king of the Pūrus. He was born to Purukutsa by his wife, Purukutsānī, at a time of great distress; this, according to Sāyana, refers to Purukutsa’s captivity: possibly his death is really meant. Trasadasyu was also a descendant of Giriksit and Purukutsa was a descendant of Durgaha. The genealogy, therefore, appears to be: Durgaha, Giriksit, Purukutsa, Trasadasyu. Trasadasyu was the ancestor of Tpksi, and, according to Ludwig, had a son Hiranin. Trasadasyu’s chronological position is determined by the fact that his father, Purukutsa, was a contemporary of Sudās, either as an opponent or as a friend. That Purukutsa was an enemy of Sudās is more probable, because the latter’s predecessor, Divodāsa, was apparently at enmity with the Pūrus, and in the battle of the ten kings Pūrus were ranged against Sudās and the Trtsus. Trasadasyu himself seems to have been an energetic king. His people, the Pūrus, were settled on the Sarasvatī, which was, no doubt, the stream in the middle country, that locality according well with the later union of the Pūrus with the Kuru people, who inhabited that country. This union is exemplified in the person of Kuruśravana, who is called Trāsadasyava, ‘ descendant of Trasadasyu,’ in the Rigveda, whose father was Mitrātithi, and whose son was Upamaśravas. The relation of Mitrātithi to Trksi does not appear. Another descendant of Trasadasyu was Tryaruna Traivrsna, who is simply called Trasadasyu in a hymn of the Rigveda. He was not only a 4 descendant of Trivrsan,’ but, according to the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana, he was also Traidhātva, descendant of Tridhātu.’ The order of these two predecessors of Tryaruna cannot be determined in any way from Vedic literature. According to the later tradition, a prince named Tridhanvan preceded Tryaruna in the succession. Vedic tradition further fails to show in what precise relation Trasadasyu stood to Trivrsan or Tryaruna.
Is in Vedic literature the name of a sage mentioned as a teacher in the Taittirīya Upanisad. There is no trace of the later legend by which he becomes the victim of Vasistha’s curse and the object of Viśvāmitra’s solicitude, being eventually fixed in the sky as a constellation. The confusion of the chronology in the tales of Triśañku is a good example of the worthlessness of the supposed epic tradition.
‘Tooth,’ is frequently mentioned from the Rigveda onwards. Cleansing (dhāv) the teeth was an ordinary act, especially in preparation for a sacrifice, and accompanied bathing, shaving of the hair and beard (keśa-śmaśru), and the cutting of the nails. A hymn of the Atharvaveda celebrates the appearance of the first two teeth of a child, though its exact interpretation is doubtful. In the Aitareya Brāhmana there is a reference to a child’s first teeth falling out. The word seems in the Rigveda once to denote an elephant’s tusk. Whether dentistry was practised is doubtful. The occurrence in the Aitareya Aranyaka of Hiranya-dant, ‘gold-toothed,’ as the name of a man, is perhaps significant, especially as it is certain that the stopping of teeth with gold was known at Rome as early as the legislation of the Twelve Tables.
Appears twice in the Rigveda as the name of a hero, but nothing can be made out regarding him or his relation to Vetasu, who is mentioned in one passage along with him.
Denotes in the Atharvaveda and the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana the period of life between 90 and 100 years which the Rigveda calls the daśama yuga, ‘ the tenth stage of life.’ Longevity seems not to have been rare among the Vedic Indians, for the desire to live a ‘hundred autumns’ (śaradal} śatam) is constantly expressed. Dīrghatamas is said to have lived ioo years, and Mahidāsa Aitareya is credited with 116. Onesikritos reported that they sometimes lived 130 years, a statement with which corresponds the wish expressed in the Jātaka for a life of 120 years. Probably the number was always rather imaginary than real, but the com¬parative brevity of modern life in India9 may be accounted for by the cumulative effect of fever, which is hardly known to the Rigveda. See Takman.
In the Rigveda denotes a ‘wooer.’ It is applied to the relative, probably brother-in-law, who takes the place of the husband at the funeral rite, and who, as in the Hebraic levirate, is to beget a child by the brother’s wife if there is no son. Hillebrandt and Lanman consider that the word originally meant only ‘wooer,’ and applied to the king who, after the chief queen had lain beside the dead victim in the Purusamedha or ‘ human sacrifice,’ claimed her again; but this view is hardly plausible. The term is also applied to the god Pūsan as the wooer of his mother, apparently Sūryā
‘Sky.’ The world as a whole is regarded as divided into the three domains of ‘earth/ ‘air’ or ‘atmosphere,’ and ‘heaven’ or ‘sky’ (div) or alternatively into ‘heaven and earth’ (dyāvā-prthivī), which two are then considered as comprising the universe, the atmosphere being included in the sky. Lightning, wind, and rain belong to the atmosphere, solar and The shape of the earth is compared with a wheel in the Rigveda, and is expressly called * circular ’ (pari-mandala) in the Satapatha Brāhmana. When earth is conjoined with heaven, the two are conceived as great bowls (camvā) turned towards each other. In the Aitareya Aranyaka the two are regarded as halves of an egg. The distance of heaven from the earth is given by the Atharvaveda as a thousand days’ journey for the sun-bird, by the Aitareya Brāhmana as a thousand days’ journey for a horse, while the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana whimsically estimates the distance as equivalent to a thousand cows standing one on the top of the other.According to Zimmer, the Vedic poets conceived the atmosphere to be above the earth in its upper division only, but below it in its lower stratum. The evidence, however, for the latter assumption is quite insufficient. The theory of the Aitareya Brāhmana is that the sun merely reverses its bright side at night, turning its light on the stars and the moon while it retraverses its course to the east; and it has been shown that this is probably the doctrine of the Rigveda also. See also Sūrya and Candramās. For the Vedic knowledge of the planets, see Graha. There is no geographical division of the earth in Vedic literature. The Jaiminīya Upanisad Brāhmana states that the centre of the earth is a span north of the Plaksa Prāsravanā, and that the centre of the sky is the constellation of the seven Esis, the Great Bear. For the quarters, see Diś.
Appears in the list of sciences in the Chāndogya Upanisad, where Sankara explains it as utpāta- jñāna, apparently the knowledge of portents.’ The St. Peters¬burg Dictionary suggests that the word is here used adjectivally, and this view is followed by Little and by Bohtlingk in his translation.
Is, according to Sāyana, the name of a prince in the Rigveda. This is probably correct, though the word may also be interpreted as denoting 'glorification*; but it is not clear what relation existed between Dyotana and the other persons mentioned in the same passage, Vetasu, Daśoni, Tūtuji, and Tugra.
Are the regular words, the latter in the Rigveda, and both later, for ‘ law ’ or ‘ custom.’ But there is very little evidence in the early literature as to the administration of justice or the code of law followed. On the other hand, the Dharma Sūtras contain full particulars.Criminal Law.—The crimes recognized in Vedic literature vary greatly in importance, while there is no distinction adopted in principle between real crimes and what now are regarded as fanciful bodily defects or infringements of merely conventional practices. The crimes enumerated include the slaying of an embryo (
Is a word of obscure origin and derivation. The Indian interpreters already show a great divergence of opinion as to its primary meaning. The śatapatha Brāhmana resolves it into na-ksatra (‘ no power ’), explaining it by a legend. The Nirukta refers it to the root naks, ‘obtain/ following the Taittirīya Brāhmana. Aufrecht and Weber derived it from nakta-tra, ‘ guardian of night/ and more recently the derivation from nak-ksatra, ‘ having rule over night/ seems to be gaining acceptance. The generic meaning of the word therefore seems to be ‘star/ The Naksatras as Stars in the Rigveda and Later.—The sense of star ’ appears to be adequate for all or nearly all the passages in which Naksatra occurs in the Rigveda. The same sense occurs in the later Samhitās also : the sun and the Naksatras are mentioned together, or the sun, the moon, and the Naksatras, or the moon and the Naksatras, or the Naksatras alone; but there is no necessity to attribute to the word the sense of lunar mansion ’ in these passages. On the other hand, the names of at least three of the Naksatras in the later sense occur in the Rigveda. Tisya, however, does not seem to be mentioned as a lunar mansion. With Aghās (plur.) and Arjunī (dual) the case is different: it seems probable that they are the later lunar mansions called Maghās (plur.) and Phālgunī (dual). The names appear to have been deliberately changed in the Rigveda, and it must be remembered that the hymn in which they occur, the wedding hymn of Sūryā, has no claim to great age. Ludwig and Zimmer have seen other references to the Naksatras as 27 in the Rigveda, but these seem most improbable. Nor do the adjectives revatī (£ rich ’) and punarvasīi (‘ bringing wealth again’) in another hymn appear to refer to the Naksatras. The Naksatras as Lunar Mansions.—In several passages of the later Samhitās the connexion of the moon and the Naksatras is conceived of as a marriage union. Thus in the Kāthaka and Taittirīya Samhitās it is expressly stated that Soma was wedded to the mansions, but dwelt only with Rohinī; the others being angry, he had ultimately to undertake to live with them all equally. Weber hence deduced that the Naksatras were regarded as of equal extent, but this is to press the texts unduly, except in the sense of approximate equality. The number of the mansions is not stated as 27 in the story told in the two Samhitās: the Taittīriya has, and the Kāthaka no number; but 27 appears as their number in the list which is found in the Taittirīya Samhitā and elsewhere. The number 28 is much less well attested: in one passage of the Taittirīya Brāhmana Abhijit is practically marked as a new comer, though in a later book, in the Maitrāyanī Samhitā, and in the Atharvaveda list,27 it has found acceptance. It is perfectly possible that 28 is the earlier number, and that Abhijit dropped out because it was faint, or too far north, or because 27 was a more mystic (3x3x3) number: it is significant that the Chinese Sieou and the Arabic Manāzil are 28 in number.28 Weber, however, believes that 27 is the older number in India. The meaning of the number is easily explained when it is remembered that a periodic month occupies something between 27 and 28 days, more nearly the former number. Such a month is in fact recognized in the Lātyāyana and Nidāna Sūtras as consisting of 27 days, 12 months making a year of 324 days, a Naksatra year, or with an intercalary month, a year of 351 days. The Nidāna Sūtra makes an attempt to introduce the Naksatra reckoning into the civil or solar (sāvana) year of 360 days, for it holds that the sun spends 13J• days in each Naksatra (13^x27 = 360). But the month of 27 or 28 days plays no part in the chronological calculations of the Veda. The Names of the Naksatras.—In addition to the two mentioned in the Rigveda, the earlier Atharvaveda gives the names of Jyesthaghnī (the later Jyesthā) and Vicrtau, which are mentioned as in close connexion, and of Revatīs (plural) and Kyttikās. With reference to possible times for the ceremony of the Agnyādhāna, or Maying of the sacred fires/ the Kāthaka Samhitā, the Maitrāyanī Samhitā, and the Taittirīya Brāhmana mention the Naksatras called Krttikās, Rohinī, Phalgunyas, Hasta; the latter Brāhmana adds Punar- vasū, and in an additional remark excludes Pūrve Phālgunī in favour of Uttare Phālgunī. The śatapatha Brāhmana adds Mrgaśīrsa and Citrā as possibilities. On the other hand, Punarvasū is recommended by all authorities as suitable for the Punarādheya, 'relaying of the sacred fires,’ which takes place if the first fire has failed to effect the aim of its existence, the prosperity of the sacrificer. The Kāthaka Samhitā, however, allows Anurādhās also. In the ceremony of the Agnicayana, or 'piling of the fire- altar,’ the bricks are assumed to be equal in number to the Naksatras. The bricks number 756, and they are equated to 27 Naksatras multiplied by 27 secondary Naksatras, reckoned as 720 (instead of 729), with the addition of 36 days, the length of an intercalary month. Nothing can be usefully derived from this piece of priestly nonsense. But in connexion with this ceremony the Yajurveda Samhitās enumerate the 27, The Taittirīya Brāhmana has a list of the Naksatras which agrees generally with the list of the Samhitās. It runs as follows: Kyttikās, Rohinī, Invakās, Bāhū (dual), Tisya, Aśleṣās, Maghās, Pūrve Phālgunī, Uttare Phālgunī, Hasta, Citrā, Nistyā, Viśākhe, Anūrādhās, Rohinī, Mūlabarhanī, Pūrvā Asādhās', Uttarā Asādhās, Sronā, Sravisthās, Satabhisaj, Pūrve Prosthapadās, Uttare Prosthapadās, Revatī, Aśvayujau, Apabharanīs. In a later book, however, the list grows to 28, and the full moon is inserted after number 14, and the new moon after number, as an attempt to bring the Naksatra (lunar) month into accordance with the Sāvana (solar) month of 30 days. The names in this second list are as in the Samhitās with the following exceptions. The seven stars of the Krttikās are named as Ambā, Dulā, Nitatnī, Abhrayantī, Meghayantī, Varsayantī, Cupunīkā, names found also in the Taittirīya and Kāthaka Samhitās. Beside Mrgaśīrsa, Invakās are also mentioned. Then come Ardrā, Punarvasū, Tisya, Aśresās, Maghās (beside which Anaghās, Agadās, and Arun- dhatīs are also mentioned), Phalgunyas (but elsewhere in the dual, Phalgunyau), Phalgunyas, Hasta, Citrā, Nistyā, Viśākhe, Anūrādhās, Jyesthā, Mūla, Asādhās, Asā(jhās, Abhijit, śronā, Sravisthās, Satabhisaj, Prosthapadās, Prosthapadās, Revatī, Aśvayujau, Bharanyas, but also Apabharanīs. Abhijit, which occurs also in an earlier part of the Brāhmana, is perhaps interpolated. But Weber’s argument that Abhijit is out of place in this list because Brāhmana is here mentioned as the 28th Naksatra, loses some force from the fact (of course unknown to him) that the list in the Maitrāyanī Samhitā contains 28 Naksatras, including Abhijit, and adds Brāhmana at the end as another. In another passage the Taittirīya Brāhmana divides the Naksatras into two sets, the Deva Naksatras and the Yama Naksatras, being 1-14 and 15-27 (with the omission of Abhijit) respectively. This division corresponds with one in the third book of the Brāhmana60 where the days of the light half of the month and those of the dark half are equated with the Naksatras. The Brāhmana treats the former series as south, the latter as north; but this has no relation to facts, and can only be regarded as a ritual absurdity. The late nineteenth book of the Atharvaveda contains a list of the Naksatras, including Abhijit. The names here (masc.), Viśākhe, Anurādhā, Jyesthā, Mūla, Pūrvā Asādhās, Uttarā Asādhās, Abhijit, śravana, śravisthās, śatabhisaj, Dvayā Prosthapadā, Revatī, Aśvayujau, Bharanyas. The Position of the Naksatras.—There is nothing definite in Vedic literature regarding the position of most of the Naksatras, but the later astronomy precisely locates all of them, and its statements agree on the whole satisfactorily with what is said in the earlier texts, though Weber was inclined to doubt this. The determinations adopted below are due to Whitney in his notes on the Sūrya Siddhānta. 1.Krttikās are unquestionably η Tauri, etc., the Pleiades. The names of the seven stars forming this constellation, and given above from Yajurveda texts, include three --------abhrayantī, forming clouds meghayantī, ‘making cloudy’; varsayantī, ‘causing rain’—which clearly refer to the rainy Pleiades. The word krttikā possibly means ‘web/ from the root krt, spin.’ 2. Rohinī, ‘ ruddy,’ is the name of the conspicuously reddish star, a Tauri or Aldebaran, and denotes the group of the Hyades, <* θ y 8 e Tauri. Its identification seems absolutely assured by the legend of Prajāpati in the Aitareya Brāhmana. He is there represented as pursuing his daughter with incestuous intention, and as having been shot with an arrow (Isu Trikāndā, ‘ the belt of Orion ’) by the huntsman ’ (Mrgavyādha, Sirius ’). Prajāpati is clearly Orion (Mrgaśiras being the name of the little group of stars in Orion’s head). 3.Mrgaśīrsa or Mrgaśiras, also called Invakā or Invagā, seems to be the faint stars λ, φ,1 φ2 Orionis. They are called Andhakā, * blind,’ in the śāntikalpa of the Atharvaveda, probably because of their dimness. 4.Ardrā, ‘ moist,’ is the name of the brilliant star, α Orionis. But the names by which it is styled, in the plural as Árdrās in the śāñkhāyana Grhya Sūtra and the Naksatrakalpa, and in the dual as Bāhú, in the Taittirīya Brāhmana, point to a constellation of two or more stars, and it may be noted that the corresponding Chinese Sieou includes the seven brilliant stars composing the shoulders, the belt, and the knees of Orion. 5. Punarvasu, the two that give wealth again,’ denotes the two stars, a and β Geminorum, on the heads of Castor and Pollux. The name is no doubt connected with the beneficent character of the Aśvins, who correspond to the Dioscuri. 6.Tisya or Pusya includes the somewhat faint group in the body of the Crab, 7, δ, and θ Cancri. The singular is rather curious, as primarily one star would seem to have been meant, and none of the group is at all prominent. 7. Aśresās or Aślesās, which in some texts is certainly to be read Aśresās or Aślesas, denotes δ, e, η, p, σ, and perhaps also ζ, Hydrse. The word means ‘embracer,’ a name which admirably fits the constellation. 8. Maghās, the ‘bounties,’ are the Sickle, or α, γ, ζ, μ, e Leonis. The variants Anaghā, the ‘ sinless one,’ etc.,clearly refer to the auspicious influence of the constellation. 9. 10. Phālgunī, Phalgunyau, Phalgū, Phalg-unīs, Phal- gunyas, is really a double constellation, divided into Pūrve, ‘ former,’ and Uttare, ‘latter.’ The former is δ and θ Leonis, the latter β and Leonis. According to Weber, the word denotes, like Arjunī, the variant of the Rigveda, a ‘ bright- coloured ’ constellation. 11. Hasta, ‘hand,’ is made up of the five conspicuous stars (δ> Ί, e, a, β) in Corvus, a number which the word itself suggests. According to Geldner, the ‘ five bulls ’ of the Rigveda are this constellation. 12. Citrā, ‘bright,’ is the beautiful star, a Virginis. It is mentioned in a legend of Indra in the Taittirīya Brāhmana, and in that of the ‘ two divine dogs ’ (divyau śvānau) in the śatapatha Brāhmana. 13. Svāti or Nistyā is later clearly the brilliant star Arcturus or a Bootis, its place in the north being assured by the notice in the śāntikalpa, where it is said to be ‘ ever traversing the northern way ’ (nityam uttara-mārgagam). The Taittirīya Brāhmana, however, constructs an asterismal Prajāpati, giving him Citrā (α Virginis) for head, Hasta (Corvus) for hand, the Viśākhe (α and β Librae) for thighs, and the Anurādhās (β, δ, and 7r Scorpionis) for standing place, with Nistyā for heart. But Arcturus, being 30° out, spoils this figure, while, on the other hand, the Arabic and Chinese systems have respectively, instead of Arcturus, Virginis and κ Virginis, which would well fit into the Prajāpati figure. But in spite of the force of this argument of Weber’s, Whitney is not certain that Nistyā here must mean a star in Virgo, pointing out that the name Nistyā, ‘outcast,’ suggests the separation of this Naksatra from the others in question. 14.Viśākhe is the couple of stars a and β Librae. This mansion is later called Rādhā according to the Amarakośa, and it is curious that in the Atharvaveda the expression rādho Viśākhe, the Viśākhe are prosperity,’ should occur. But probably Rādhā is merely an invention due to the name of the next Naksatra, Anurādhā, wrongly conceived as meaning that which is after or follows Rādhā.’ 15. Anūrādhās or Anurādhā, propitious,’ is β, δ, and tγ (perhaps also p) Scorpionis. 16. Rohinī, ‘ ruddy ’; Jyesthaghnī, * slaying the eldest ’; or Jyesthā, ‘eldest,’ is the name of the constellation σ, α, and τ Scorpionis, of which the central star, a, is the brilliant reddish Antares (or Cor Scorpionis).
17.Vicrtau, ‘ the two releasers ’; Mūla, ‘ root or Mūla- barhanī, ‘ uprooting,’ denote primarily λ and v at the extremity of the tail of the Scorpion, but including also the nine or eleven stars from e to v.
18.19. Asādhās (‘ unconquered ’), distinguished as Pūrvās, ‘ former,’ and Uttarās, ‘ latter,’ are really two constellations, of which the former is composed of γ, δ, e, and η Sagittarii, or of 8 and e only, and the latter of θ, σ, t, and ξ Sagittarii, or of two, σ and ζ, only. It is probable that originally only four stars forming a square were meant as included in the whole constellation —viz., σ and f, with 8 and e.
20. Abhijit is the brilliant star a Lyrse with its two companions e and ζ. Its location in 6o° north latitude is completely discordant with the position of the corresponding Arabian and Chinese asterisms. This fact is considered by Oldenberg to support the view that it was a later addition to the system; its occurrence, however, as early as the Maitrāyanī Samhitā, which he does not note, somewhat invalidates that view. In the Taittirīya Brāhmana Abhijit is said to be ‘over Asādhās, under śronā,’ which Weber held to refer to its position in space, inferring thence that its Vedic position corresponded to that of the Arab Manāzil and the Chinese Sieou—viz., a, β Capricorni. But Whitney argues effectively that the words ‘ over ’ and ‘ under ’ really refer to the place of Abhijit in the list, ‘ after ’ Asādhās and ‘ before ’ Sronā.
21. Sronā, ‘lame,’ or Sravana, ‘ ear,’ denotes the bright star a Aquilai with β below and 7 above it. Weber very need- lessly thinks that the name Sravana suggested two ears and the head between. It is quite out of correspondence with the Manāzil and the Sieou, and is clearly an Indian invention.
22. śravisthās, ‘ most famous,’ or later Dhanisthās, ‘most wealthy,’ is the diamond-shaped group, α, β, δ, and 7, in the Dolphin, perhaps also ζ in the same constellation. Like the preceding Naksatra, it is out of harmony with the Manāzil and Sieou. 23. Satabhisaj or śatabhisa, ‘having a hundred physicians,’ seems to be λ Aquarii with the others around it vaguely conceived as numbering a hundred.
24. 25. Prostha-padās (fem. plur.), ‘ feet of a stool,’ or later Bhadra-padās,100 ‘auspicious feet,’ a double asterism forming a square, the former (pūrva) consisting of a and β Pegasi, the latter (uttara) of γ Pegasi and a Andromedse.
26. Revatī, ‘ wealthy,’ denotes a large number of stars (later 32), of which ζ Piscium, close upon the ecliptic where it was crossed by the equator of about 570 a.d., is given as the southernmost. 27. Aśva-yujau, ‘the two horse-harnessers,’ denotes the stars β and ζ Arietis. Aśvinyau101 and Aśvinī102 are later names. 28. Apabharanīs, Bharanīs, or Bharanyas, ‘ the bearers,’ is the name of the small triangle in the northern part of the Ram known as Musca or 35, 39, and 41 Arietis. The Naksatras and the Months.—In the Brāhmanas the Naksatra names are regularly used to denote dates. This is done in two ways. The name, if not already a feminine, may be turned into a feminine and compounded with pūrna-māsa, ‘the full moon,’ as in Tisyā-pūrnamāsa, ‘the full moon in the Naksatra Tisya.’103 Much more often, however, it is turned into a derivative adjective, used with paurnamāsī, ‘the full moon (night)/ or with amāvāsyā, ‘the new moon (night)/ as in Phālgunī paurnamāsl, ‘the full-moon night in the Naksatra Phālgunī’;104 or, as is usual in the Sūtras, the Naksatra adjective alone is used to denote the full-moon night. The month itself is called by a name derived105 from that of a Naksatra, but only Phālguna,106 Caitra,107 Vaiśākha,108 Taisya,109 Māgha110 occur in the Brāhmanas, the complete list later being Phālguna, Caitra, Vaiśākha, Jyaistha, Asādha, Srāvana, Prausthapada, Aśvayuja, Kārttika, Mārgaśīrsa, Taisya, Māgha. Strictly speaking, these should be lunar months, but the use of a lunar year was clearly very restricted: we have seen that as early as the Taittirīya Brāhmana there was a tendency to equate lunar months with the twelve months of thirty days which made up the solar year (see Māsa). The Naksatras and Chronology.—(i) An endeavour has been made to ascertain from the names of the months the period at which the systematic employment of those names was intro¬duced. Sir William Jones111 refers to this possibility, and Bentley, by the gratuitous assumption that śrāvana always marked the summer solstice, concluded that the names of the months did not date before b.c. Ii8I. Weber112 considered that there was a possibility of fixing a date by this means, but Whitney113 has convincingly shown that it is an impossible feat, and Thibaut114 concurs in this view. Twelve became fixed as the number of the months because of the desire, evident in the Brāhmanas, somehow or other to harmonize lunar with solar time; but the selection of twelve Naksatras out of twenty-seven as connected with the night of full moon can have no chronological significance, because full moon at no period occurred in those twelve only, but has at all periods occurred in every one of the twenty-seven at regularly recurrent intervals. (2) All the lists of the Naksatras begin with Krttikās. It is only fair to suppose that there was some special reason for this fact. Now the later list of the Naksatras begins with Aśvinī, and it was unquestionably rearranged because at the time of its adoption the vernal equinox coincided with the star ζ Piscium on the border of Revatī and Aśvinī, say in the course of the sixth century A.D. Weber has therefore accepted the view that the Krttikās were chosen for a similar reason, and the date at which that Naksatra coincided with the vernal equinox has been estimated at some period in the third millennium B.C. A very grave objection to this view is its assumption that the sun, and not the moon, was then regarded as connected with the Naksatras; and both Thibaut and Oldenberg have pronounced decidedly against the idea of connecting the equinox with the Krttikās. Jacobi has contended that in the Rigveda the commencement of the rains and the summer solstice mark the beginning of the new year and the end of the old, and that further the new year began with the summer solstice in Phālgunī.121 He has also referred to the distinction of the two sets of Deva and Yama Naksatras in the Taittirīya Brāhmana as supporting his view of the connexion of the sun and the Naksatras. But this view is far from satisfactory: the Rigveda passages cannot yield the sense required except by translating the word dvādaśa123 as 4 the twelfth (month) * instead of consisting of twelve parts,’ that is, ‘year/ the accepted interpretation; and the division of the Naksatras is not at all satisfactorily explained by a supposed connexion with the sun. It may further be mentioned that even if the Naksatra of Krttikās be deemed to have been chosen because of its coincidence with the vernal equinox, both Whitney and Thibaut are pre¬pared to regard it as no more than a careless variant of the date given by the Jyotisa, which puts the winter solstice in Māgha. (3) The winter solstice in Māgha is assured by a Brāhmana text, for the Kausītaki Brāhmana12® expressly places it in the new moon of Māgha (māghasyāmāυāsyāyām). It is not very important whether we take this with the commentators as the new moon in the middle of a month commencing with the day after full moon in Taisa, or, which is much more likely, as the new moon beginning the month and preceding full moon in Māgha. The datum gives a certain possibility of fixing an epoch in the following way. If the end of Revatī marked the vernal equinox at one period, then the precession of the equinoxes would enable us to calculate at what point of time the vernal equinox was in a position corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha, when the solstitial colure cut the ecliptic at the beginning of Sravisthās. This would be, on the strict theory, in the third quarter of Bharanī, 6f asterisms removed from Sravisthās, and the difference between that and the beginning of Aśvinī = if asterisms = 23 (27 asterisms being = 360°). Taking, the starting-point at 499 a.d., the assured period of Varāha Mihira, Jones arrived at the date B.C. 1181 for the vernal equinox corresponding to the winter solstice in Māgha—that is, on the basis of ι° = 72 years as the precession. Pratt arrived at precisely the same date, taking the same rate of precession and adopting as his basis the ascertained position in the Siddhantas of the junction star of Maghā, a Leonis or Regulus. Davis and Colebrooke arrived at a different date, B.C. 1391, by taking as the basis of their calculation the junction star of Citrā, which happens to be of uncertain position, varying as much as 30 in the different textbooks. But though the twelfth century has received a certain currency as the epoch of the observation in the Jyotisa, it is of very doubtful value. As Whitney points out, it is impossible to say that the earlier asterisms coincided in position with the later asterisms of 13J0 extent each. They were not chosen as equal divisions, but as groups of stars which stood in conjunction with the moon; and the result of subsequently making them strictly equal divisions was to throw the principal stars of the later groups altogether out of their asterisms. Nor can we say that the star ζ Piscium early formed the eastern boundary of Revatī; it may possibly not even have been in that asterism at all, for it is far remote from the Chinese and Arabic asterisms corresponding to Revatī. Added to all this, and to the uncertainty of the starting-point— 582 a.d., 560 a.d., or 491 a.d. being variants —is the fact that the place of the equinox is not a matter accurately determin¬able by mere observation, and that the Hindu astronomers of the Vedic period cannot be deemed to have been very accurate observers, since they made no precise determination of the number of days of the year, which even in the Jyotisa they do not determine more precisely than as 366 days, and even the Sūrya Siddhānta136 does not know the precession of the equinoxes. It is therefore only fair to allow a thousand years for possible errors,137 and the only probable conclusion to be drawn from the datum of the Kausītaki Brāhmana is that it was recording an observation which must have been made some centuries B.C., in itself a result quite in harmony with the probable date of the Brāhmana literature,138 say B.C. 800-600. (4) Another chronological argument has been derived from the fact that there is a considerable amount of evidence for Phālguna having been regarded as the beginning of the year, since the full moon in Phālgunī is often described as the ‘ mouth (mukham) of the year.’139 Jacobi140 considers that this was due to the fact that the year was reckoned from the winter solstice, which would coincide with the month of Phālguna about B.C. 4000. Oldenberg and Thibaut, on the other hand, maintain that the choice of Phālguna as the ‘ mouth ’ of the year was due to its being the first month of spring. This view is favoured by the fact that there is distinct evidence of the correspondence of Phālguna and the beginning of spring : as we have seen above in the Kausītaki Brāhmana, the new moon in Māgha is placed at the winter solstice, which puts the full moon of Phālgunī at a month and a half after the winter solstice, or in the first week of February, a date not in itself improbable for about B.C. 800, and corresponding with the February 7 of the veris initium in the Roman Calendar. This fact accords with the only natural division of the year into three periods of four months, as the rainy season lasts from June 7-10 to October 7-10, and it is certain that the second set of four months dates from the beginning of the rains (see Cāturmāsya). Tilak, on the other hand, holds that the winter solstice coincided with Māghī full moon at the time of the Taittirīya Samhitā (b.c. 2350), and had coincided with Phālgunī and Caitrī in early periods—viz., B.C. 4000-2500, and B.C. 6000¬4000. (5) The passages of the Taittirīya Samhitā and the Pañca¬vimśa Brāhmana, which treat the full moon in Phālguna as the beginning of the year, give as an alternative the full moon in Caitra. Probably the latter month was chosen so as to secure that the initial day should fall well within the season of spring, and was not, as Jacobi believes, a relic of a period when the winter solstice corresponded with Caitra. Another alternative is the Ekāstakā, interpreted by the commentators as the eighth day after the full moon in Maghās, a time which might, as being the last quarter of the waning half of the old year, well be considered as representing the end of the year. A fourth alternative is the fourth day before full moon; the full moon meant must be that of Caitra, as Álekhana quoted by Ápastamba held, not of Māgha, as Asmarathya, Laugāksi and the Mīmāmsists believed, and as Tilak believes. (6) Others, again, according to the Grhya ritual, began the year with the month Mārgaśīrsa, as is shown by its other name Agrahāyana (‘ belonging to the commencement of the year ’). Jacobi and Tilak think that this one denoted the autumn equinox in Mrgaśiras, corresponding to the winter solstice in Phālgunī. But, as Thibaut shows clearly, it was selected as the beginning of a year that was taken to commence with autumn, just as some took the spring to commence with Caitra instead of Phālguna. (7) Jacobi has also argued, with the support of Buhler, from the terms given for the beginning of Vedic study in the Grhya Sūtras, on the principle that study commenced with the rains (as in the Buddhist vassā) which mark the summer solstice. He concludes that if Bhādrapada appears as the date of commencing study in some texts, it was fixed thus because at one time Prosthapadās (the early name of Bhadra- padās) coincided with the summer solstice, this having been the case when the winter solstice was in Phālguna. But Whitney155 has pointed out that this argument is utterly illegitimate; we cannot say that there was any necessary connexion between the rains and learning—a month like Srāvana might be preferred because of its connexion with the word Sravana, 4 ear ’—and in view of the precession of the equinoxes, we must assume that Bhādrapada was kept because of its traditional coincidence with the beginning of the rains after it had ceased actually so to coincide. the other astronomical phenomena; the discovery of a series of 27 lunar mansions by them would therefore be rather surprising. On the other hand, the nature of such an operation is not very complicated ; it consists merely in selecting a star or a star group with which the moon is in conjunction. It is thus impossible a priori to deny that the Vedic Indians could have invented for themselves a lunar Zodiac. But the question is complicated by the fact that there exist two similar sets of 28 stars or star groups in Arabia and in China, the Manāzil and the Sieou. The use of the Manāzil in Arabia is consistent and effective ; the calendar is regulated by them, and the position of the asterisms corresponds best with the positions required for a lunar Zodiac. The Indians might therefore have borrowed the system from Arabia, but that is a mere possibility, because the evidence for the existence of the Manāzil is long posterior to that for the existence of the Naksatras, while again the Mazzaroth or Mazzaloth of the Old Testament may really be the lunar mansions. That the Arabian system is borrowed from India, as Burgess held, is, on the other hand, not at all probable. Biot, the eminent Chinese scholar, in a series of papers published by him between. 1839 and 1861, attempted to prove the derivation of the Naksatra from the Chinese Sieou. The latter he did not regard as being in origin lunar mansions at all. He thought that they were equatorial stars used, as in modern astronomy, as a standard to which planets or other stars observed in the neighbourhood can be referred; they were, as regards twenty-four of them, selected about B.C. 2357 on account of their proximity to the equator, and of their having the same right ascension as certain circumpolar stars which had attracted the attention of Chinese observers. Four more were added in B.C. IIOO in order to mark the equinoxes and solstices of the period. He held that the list of stars commenced with Mao (= Krttikās), which was at the vernal equinox in B.C. 2357. Weber, in an elaborate essay of i860, disputed this theory, and endeavoured to show that the Chinese literary evidence for the Sieou was late, dating not even from before the third century B.C. The last point does not appear to be correct, but his objections against the basis of Biot’s theory were rein¬forced by Whitney, who insisted that Biot’s supposition of the Sieou’s not having been ultimately derived from a system of lunar mansions, was untenable. This is admitted by the latest defender of the hypothesis of borrowing from China, Lśopold de Saussure, , but his arguments in favour of a Chinese origin for the Indian lunar mansions have been refuted by Oldenberg, who has also pointed out that the series does not begin with Mao ( = Krttikās). There remains only the possibility that a common source for all the three sets—Naksatra, Manāzil, and Sieou—may be found in Babylonia. Hommel has endeavoured to show that recent research has established in Babylonia the existence of a lunar zodiac of twenty-four members headed by the Pleiades ( = Krttikās); but Thibaut’s researches are not favourable to this claim. On the other hand, Weber, Whitney, Zimmer, and Oldenberg all incline to the view that in Babylonia is to be found the origin of the system, and this must for the present be regarded as the most probable view, for there are other traces of Babylonian influence in Vedic literature, such as the legend of the flood, perhaps the Adityas, and possibly the word Manā.
(‘Nearest in descent ’) Mānava (‘ descendant of Manu ’) is famous in the later Samhitās and the Brāhmanas for the way in which he was treated when his father Manu divided his property among his sons, or they divided it: Nābhānedistha was left out, but was solaced by obtaining, through his father’s advice, cows from the Añgirases, a feat which is regarded in the Sāñkhāyana Srauta Sūtra as on a level with the exploits of other seers who celebrated their patrons in hymns, and as giving rise to the hymn, Rigveda Nābhānedistha’s hymn is repeatedly mentioned in the Brāhmanas, but beyond its authorship nothing is recorded of him. In the Samhitā itself he seems to be spoken of as a poet in one passage, which is, however, of quite uncertain meaning. Nābhānedistha is etymologically connected in all probability with Nabānazdista in the Avesta, which refers to the Fravasi of the paoiryδ-tkaesha and the Fravasi of the Nabānazdista. Lassen saw in the legend a reminiscence of an Indo-Iranian split; but Roth showed conclusively that this was impossible, and that Nābhānedistha meant simply ‘nearest in birth,’and Weber admits that the connexion of the words is not one of borrowing on either side, but that in the Avesta it has kept its original sense of ‘ nearest relation,’ while in the Rigveda it has become a proper name.
‘Name,’ is a common word from the Rigveda onwards. The Grhya Sūtras give elaborate rules for the formation of the names of children, but more important is the distinction between the secret (guhya) and the ordinary name, though the rules as to the secret name are not at all consistent. The secret name is already recognized in the Rigveda, and is referred to in the Brāhmanas, one secret name, that of Arjuna for Indra, being given in the Satapatha Brāhmana. It is to be noted that the rule as to giving the designation of a Naksatra (lunar asterism) as the secret name or otherwise is not illustrated by a single recorded name of a teacher in the Brāhmanas. The śatapatha Brāhmana several times mentions the adoption of a second name with a view to securing success, and also refers to the adoption of another name for purposes of distinction. In actual practice two names are usually found in the Brāhmanas, the second being a patronymic or a metronymic, as in Kaksīvant Auśija (if the story of the slave woman Uśij as his mother is correct), or Brhaduktha Vāmneya, ‘ son of Vāmnī,’ though the relationship may, of course, be not direct parentage, but more remote descent. Three names are less common—for example, Kūśāmba Svāyava Lātavya, ‘ son of Svāyu, of the Lātavya (son of Latu) family,’ or Devataras Syāvasāyana Kāśyapa, where the patronymic and the Gotra name are both found. In other cases the names probably have a local reference—e.g., Kauśāmbeya and Gāñgya. Fre¬quently the patronymic only is given, as Bhārgava, Maudgalya, etc., or two patronymics are used. The simple name is often used for the patronymic—e.g., Trasadasyu. In a few cases the name of the wife is formed from the husband’s name, as Uśīnarānī, Purukutsānī, Mudgalānī.
‘Woman,’ occurs in the Rigveda and later. The word seems in the Rigveda to have a distinct reference to a woman as a wife, because it occurs in several passages with distinct reference to matrimonial relations, and in the later Vedic literature, where it is not common, it sometimes has that sense. Delbruck, however, thinks that it does not indicate marital relations, but merely the woman as the sexual complement of the man.
Means in the Rigveda and later an outsider or stranger. Hence the constellation usually known as Svāti (see Naksatra) is named Nistyā in the Taittirīya Brāhmana, because it occupies a position markedly away from the ecliptic.
The foot-fetter ’ of a horse in five passages, two in the Rigveda, and one each in the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad, the Chāndogya Upanisad, and the śāñkhāyana Aranyaka. Elsewhere its uses are metaphorical. According to Roth,® the literal sense is ‘foot-fastening’ (pad being = pad, ‘foot,’ and bīśa, written visa in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā, being connected with the Latin viηcire, ‘bind’). Pischel[2] objects that the sense of * foot-fastening’ involves the absurdity, in the Upanisad passages, of a fine horse from the Sindhu (Indus) being spoken of as tearing up the peg to which it is fastened. He suggests instead the meaning of ‘ hobble,’ which must be right.8
Under these words denoting primarily, as the evidence collected in the St. Petersburg Dictionary shows, ‘ lord ’ and ‘ lady,’ and so * husband ’ and * wife,’ it is convenient to consider the marital relations of the Vedic community. Child Marriage.—Marriage in the early Vedic texts appears essentially as a union of two persons of full development. This is shown by the numerous references to unmarried girls who grow old in the house of their fathers (amā-jur), and who adorn themselves in desire of marriage, as well as to the paraphernalia of spells and potions used in the Atharvavedic tradition to compel the love of man or woman respectively, while even the Rigveda itself seems to present us with a spell by which a lover seeks to send all the household to sleep when he visits his beloved. Child wives first occur regularly in the Sūtra period, though it is still uncertain to what extent the rule of marriage before puberty there obtained. The marriage ritual also quite clearly presumes that the marriage is a real and not a nominal one: an essential feature is the taking of the bride to her husband’s home, and the ensuing cohabitation. Limitations on Marriage.—It is difficult to say with certainty within what limits marriage was allowed. The dialogue of Yama and Yam! in the Rigveda seems clearly to point to a prohibition of the marriage of brother and sister. It can hardly be said, as Weber thinks, to point to a practice that was once in use and later became antiquated. In the Gobhila Grhya Sūtra and the Dharma Sūtras are found prohibitions against marriage in the Gotra (‘ family ’) or within six degrees on the mother’s or father’s side, but in the śatapatha Brāh-mana marriage is allowed in the third or fourth generation, the former being allowed, according to Harisvamin, by the Kanvas, and the second by the Saurāstras, while the Dāksi- nātyas allowed marriage with the daughter of the mother’s brother or the son of the father’s sister, but presumably not with the daughter of the mother’s sister or the son of the father’s brother. The prohibition of marriage within the Gotra cannot then have existed, though naturally marriages outside the Gotra were frequent. Similarity of caste was also not an essential to marriage, as hypergamy was permitted even by the Dharma Sūtras, so that a Brāhmana could marry wives of any lower caste, a Ksatriya wives of the two lowest castes as well as of his own caste, a Vaiśya a Sūdrā as well as a Vaiśyā, although the Sūdrā marriages were later disapproved in toto. Instances of such intermarriage are common in the Epic, and are viewed as normal in the Brhaddevatā. It was considered proper that the younger brothers and sisters should not anticipate their elders by marrying before them. The later Samhitās and Brāhmanas present a series of names expressive of such anticipation, censuring as sinful those who bear them. These terms are the pari-vividāna, or perhaps agre-dadhus, the man who, though a younger brother, marries before his elder brother, the latter being then called the parivitta; the agre-didhisu, the man who weds a younger daughter while her elder sister is still unmarried; and the Didhisū-pati, who is the husband of the latter. The passages do not explicitly say that the exact order of birth must always be followed, but the mention of the terms shows that the order was often broken. Widow Remarriage. The remarriage of a widow was apparently permitted. This seems originally to have taken the form of the marriage of the widow to the brother or other nearest kinsman of the dead man in order to produce children. At any rate, the ceremony is apparently alluded to in a funeral hymn of the Rigveda ; for the alternative explanation, which sees in the verse a reference to the ritual of the Purusamedha (‘human sacrifice’), although accepted by Hillebrandt and Delbruck, is not at all probable, while the ordinary view is supported by the Sūtra evidence. Moreover, another passage of the Rigveda clearly refers to the marriage of the widow and the husband’s brother {devr), which constitutes what the Indians later knew as Niyoga. This custom was probably not followed except in cases where no son was already born. This custom was hardly remarriage in the strict sense, since the brother might—so far as appears—be already married himself. In the Atharvaveda, a verse refers to a charm which would secure the reunion, in the next world, of a wife and her second husband. Though, as Delbruck thinks, this very possibly refers to a case in which the first husband was still alive, but was impotent or had lost caste (patita), still it is certain that the later Dharma Sūtras began to recognize ordinary remarriage in case of the death of the first husband Pischel finds some evidence in the Rigveda to the effect that a woman could remarry if her husband disappeared and could not be found or heard of. Polygamy. A Vedic Indian could have more than one wife. This is proved clearly by many passages in the Rigveda; Manu, according to the Maitrāyanī Samhitā, had ten wives ; and the Satapatha Brāhmana explains polygamy by a characteristic legend. Moreover, the king regularly has four wives attributed to him, the Mahisī, the Parivrktī, the Vāvātā, and the Pālāgalī. The Mahisī appears to be the chief wife, being the first, one married according to the śata¬patha Brāhmana. The Parivrktī, ‘ the neglected,’ is explained by Weber and Pischel as one that has had no son. The Vāvātā is ‘the favourite,’ while the Pālāgalī is, according to Weber, the daughter of the last of the court officials. The names are curious, and not very intelligible, but the evidence points to the wife first wedded alone being a wife in the fullest sense. This view is supported by the fact emphasized by Delbruck, that in the sacrifice the Patnī is usually mentioned in the singular, apparent exceptions being due to some mythological reason. Zimmer is of opinion that polygamy is dying out in the Rigvedic period, monogamy being developed from pologamy; Weber, however, thinks that polygamy is secondary, a view that is supported by more recent anthropology. Polyandry.—On the other hand, polyandry is not Vedic. There is no passage containing any clear reference to such a custom. The most that can be said is that in the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda verses are occasionally found in which husbands are mentioned in relation to a single wife. It is difficult to be certain of the correct explanation of each separate instance of this mode of expression; but even if Weber’s view, that the plural is here used majestatis causa, is not accepted, Delbruck’s explanation by mythology is probably right. In other passages the plural is simply generic. Marital Relations.—Despite polygamy, however, there is ample evidence that the marriage tie was not, as Weber has suggested, lightly regarded as far as the fidelity of the wife was concerned. There is, however, little trace of the husband’s being expected to be faithful as a matter of morality. Several passages, indeed, forbid, with reference to ritual abstinence, intercourse with the strī of another. This may imply that adultery on the husband’s part was otherwise regarded as venial. But as the word strī includes all the ‘womenfolk,’ daughters and slaves, as well as wife, the conclusion can hardly be drawn that intercourse with another man’s ‘wife’ was normally regarded with indifference. The curious ritual of the Varunapraghāsās, in which the wife of the sacrificer is questioned as to her lovers, is shown by Delbruck to be a part of a rite meant to expiate unchastity on the part of a wife, not as a normal question for a sacrificer to put to his own wife. Again, Yājñavalkya’s doctrine in the Satapatha Brāhmana, which seems to assert that no one cares if a wife is unchaste (parah-pumsā) or not, really means that no one cares if the wife is away from the men who are sacrificing, as the wives of the gods are apart from them during the particular rite in question. Monogamy is also evidently approved, so that some higher idea of morality was in course of formation. On the other hand, no Vedic text gives us the rule well known to other Indo-Germanic peoples that the adulterer taken in the act can be killed with impunity, though the later legal literature has traces of this rule. There is also abundant evidence that the standard of ordinary sexual morality was not high. Hetairai. In the Rigveda there are many references to illegitimate love and to the abandonment of the offspring of such unions,ββ especially in the case of a protege of Indra, often mentioned as the parāvrkta or parāvrj. The ‘son of a maiden ’ (kumārī-putra) is already spoken of in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā. Such a person appears with a metronymic in the Upanisad period: this custom may be the origin of metro- nymics such as those which make up a great part of the lists of teachers (Vamśas) of the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad. The Vājasaneyi Samhitā refers to illicit unions of śūdra and Arya, both male and female, besides giving in its list of victims at the Purusamedha, or ‘human sacrifice,’ several whose designations apparently mean ‘ courtesan (atītvarī) and ‘ procuress of abortion ’ (
‘Descendant of Pariksit,’ is the patronymic of Janamejaya in the Aitareya Brāhmana and the śatapatha Brāhmana. The Pāriksitīyas appear in the śatapatha Brāhmana and the śāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra as performers of the horse sacrifice. In a Gāthā there cited they are called Pāri- ksitas. Apparently they were the brothers of Janamejaya, named Ugrasena, Bhīmasena, and Srutasena. In the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad the question whither they have gone is made the subject of a philosophical discussion. It is clear that the family had passed away before the time of the Upanisad, and it is also clear that there had been some serious scandal mingled with their greatness which they had, in the opinion of the Brahmins, atoned for by their horse sacrifice with its boundless gifts to the priests. Weber sees in this the germ of the Epic stories which are recorded in the Mahābhārata. The verses relating to Pariksit in the Atharvaveda are called Pāriksityah in the Brāhmanas.
Means the verses (rcas) in the ninth Mandala of the Rigveda ‘relating to Soma Pavamāna’ (‘purifying itself’). The name is found in the Atharvaveda1 and later, possibly even in one hymn of the Rigveda itself.
(‘Relating to father and son’), used with Sam- pradāna (‘handing over’) means the ceremony by which a father, when about to die, bequeathes his bodily and mental powers to his son. It is described in the Kausītaki Upanisad.
Beside Tatāmaha, denotes from the Atharvaveda onwards the ‘paternal grandfather,’ apparently as a ‘father in a higher sense.’ The great-grandfather is Prapitāmaha and Pratatāmaha. It is significant that there are no corresponding Vedic words for maternal grandparents, and that the words used in the latter language, such as Mātāmaha, are imitations of the terms for paternal relations. In one passage of the Rigveda Delbruck suggests that make pitre means ‘ grandfather,’ a sense which would well suit the napātam, ‘grandson,’ following, but the sense of the whole passage is uncertain. We learn very little from the texts of the position of grandparents. No doubt they were entitled to marks of respect similar to those shown to parents, as the epic expressly testifies. A grandfather might easily be the head of the family, or be living with his eldest son, after he ceased to be able to control the family.The grandmother (Pitāmahī) is not mentioned in the extant Vedic literature.
Occurs in the list of sciences given in the Chāndogya Upanisad. Apparently it is to be taken as the science relating to the cult of the Manes, as explained by Sankara in his commentary. As it is in that list followed by Rāśi, the St. Petersburg Dictionary is inclined to take Pitrya Rāśi as one expression, but in what exact sense does not appear.
(‘Introductory verse to be recited’) is the technical term for the address to a god inviting him to partake of the offering; it was followed by the Yājyā, which accompanied the actual oblation. Such addresses are not unknown, but are rare, according to Oldenberg in the Rigveda; subsequently they are regular, the word itself occurring in the later Samhitās and the Brāhmarias.
(‘Placed in front,’ ‘appointed’) is the name of a priest in the Rigveda and later. The office of Purohita is called Purohiti and Purodhā. It is clear that the primary function of the Purohita was that of ‘ domestic priest ’ of a king, or perhaps a great noble; his quite exceptional position is shown by the fact that only one Purohita seems ever to be mentioned in Vedic literature. Examples of Purohitas in the Rigveda are Viśvāmitra or Vasiçtha in the service of the Bharata king,.Sudās. of the Trtsu family; the Purohita of Kuruśravana ; and Devāpi, the Purohita of Santanu. The Purohita was in all religious matters the alter ego of the king. In the ritual it is laid down that a king must have a Purohita, else the gods will not accept his offerings. He ensures the king's safety and victory in battle by his prayers ; he procures the fall of rain for the crops j he is the flaming fire that guards the kingdom. Divodāsa in trouble is rescued by Bharadvāja; and King Tryaruna Traidhātva Aikçvāka reproaches his Purohita, Vj?śa Jāna, when his car runs over a Brahmin boy and kills him. The close relation of king and Purohita is illustrated by the case of Klltsa Aurava, who slew his Purohita, UpagfU Sauśravasa, for disloyalty in serving Indra, to whom Kutsa was hostile. Other disputes between kings and priests who officiated for them are those of Janam- ejaya and the Kaśyapas, and of Viśvantara and the śyā- parnas ;lβ and between Asamāti and the Gaupāyanas. In some cases one Purohita served more than one king; for example, Devabhāg a Srautarṣa was the Purohita of the Xufus and the Sfñjayas at the same time, and Jala Jātū- karnya was the Purohita of the kings of Kāśi, Videha, and Kosala. There is no certain proof that the office of Purohita was hereditary in a family, though it probably was so. At any rate, it seems clear from the relations of the Purohita with King Kuruśravana, and with his son Upamaśravas, that a king would keep on the Purohita of his father. Zimmer thinks that the king might act as his own Purohita, as shown by the case of King Viśvantara, who sacrificed without the help of the śyāparṇas, and that a Purohita need not be a priest, as shown by the case of Devāpi and śantanu. But neither opinion seems to be justified. It is not said that Viśvantara sacrificed without priests, while Devāpi is not regarded as a king until the Nirukta, and there is no reason to suppose that Yāska's view expressed in that work is correct. According to Geldner, the Purohita from the beginning acted as the Brahman priest in the sacrificial ritual, being there the general superintendent of the sacrifice. In favour of this view, he cites the fact that Vasiṣtha is mentioned both as Purohita and as Brahman: at the sacrifice of Sunahśepa he served as Brahman, but he was the Purohita of Sudās; Bṛhaspati is called the Purohita and the Brahman of the gods; and the Vasisthas who are Purohitas are also the Brahmans at the sacrifice. It is thus clear that the Brahman was often the Purohita; and it was natural that this should be the case when once the Brahman’s place became, as it did in the later ritual, the most important position at the sacrifice. But the Brahman can hardly be said to have held this place in the earlier ritual; Oldenberg seems to be right in holding that the Purohita was originally the Hotr priest, the singer par excellence, when he took any part at all in the ritual of the great sacrifices with the Rtvijs. So Devāpi seems clearly to have been a Hotr; Agni is at once Purohita and Hotr; and the two divine Hotṛs ’ referred to in the Apr! litanies are also called the ‘two Purohitas.’ Later, no doubt, when the priestly activity ceased to centre in the song, the Purohita, with his skill in magic, became the Brahman, who also required magic to undo the errors of the sacrifice. There is little doubt that in the original growth of the priest¬hood the Purohita played a considerable part. In historical times he represented the real power of the kingship, and may safely be deemed to have exercised great influence in all public affairs, such as the administration of justice and the king’s conduct of business. But it is not at all probable that the Purohita represents, as Roth and Zimmer thought, the source which gave rise to caste. The priestly clcss is already in existence in the Rigveda (see Varṣa).
Is the name of one of the victims at the Puruṣa- medha (‘human sacrifice’) in the Yajurveda. The name also occurs in the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad as that of a despised race of men, together with the Cāndāla. The Maitrāyaηī Samhitā has the variant Puklaka or Pulkaka, clearly the same as Pulkasa, of which Paulkasa is a derivative form, showing that a caste is meant (cf Kaulāla, Pauñji§tha). In the accepted theory the Pulkasa is the son of a Niṣāda or śūdra by a Kṣatriya woman, but this is merely speculative; the Paulkasa may either have been a functional caste, or, as Fick5 believes, an aboriginal clan living by catching wild beasts, and only occasionally reduced to menial tasks.
Is found with Ugra and Sūta-grāmanī in the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad, clearly denoting an officer of police. The sense must be that of the humbler ‘servants’ of the king rather than ‘ magistrates,’ as Max Muller, in his translation, takes it. In the Kāthaka Samhitā and the Sāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra the word means, according to the St. Petersburg Dictionary, the next heir, who is responsible for the debts of a dead man.
is mentioned in one hymn of the Rigveda, along with Tarukça and Ppthuśravas, as a giver of gifts to the singer. He is called a Dāsa, but Roth was inclined to amend the text so as to say that the singer received a hundred Dāsas from Balbūtha. Zimmer’s suggestion that he may have been the son of an aboriginal mother, or perhaps an aboriginal himself, seems probable.4 If this was the case, it would be a clear piece of evidence for the establishment of friendly relations between the Aryans and the Dāsas.
Is mentioned twice in the Rigveda, being in the first passage connected with the Paṇis, and in the second with the Pārāvatas and the Paṇis. According to the St. Petersburg Dictionary, the word is the name of a demon, but is in the second passage used as an appellative, perhaps meaning ‘sorcerer.’ Hillebrandt6 thinks that a people is meant locating them in Arachosia or Drangiana with the Pārāvatas and the Paṇis, and comparing Βαρσα,ίντης, satrap of Arachosia and Drangiana in the time of Darius. But this theory is not probable.
Descendant of a Brahman' (i.e., of a priest), is found only a few times in the Rigveda, and mostly in its latest parts. In the Atharvaveda and later it is a very common word denoting ‘priest,’ and it appears in the quadruple division of the castes in the Purusa-sūkta (‘hymn of man’) of the Rigveda. It seems certain that in the Rigveda this Brāhmaṇa, or Brahmin, is already a separate caste, differing from the warrior and agricultural castes. The texts regularly claim for them a superiority to the Kṣatriya caste, and the Brahmin is able by his spells or manipulation of the rite to embroil the people and the warriors or the different sections of the warriors. If it is necessary to. recognize, as is sometimes done, that the Brahmin does pay homage to the king at the Rājasūya, nevertheless the unusual fact is carefully explained away so as to leave the priority of the Brahmin unaffected. But it is expressly recognized that the union of the Ksatriya and the Brāhmaṇa is essential for complete prosperity. It is admitted that the king or the nobles might at times oppress the Brahmins, but it is indicated that ruin is then certain swiftly to follow. The Brahmins are gods on earth, like the gods in heaven, but this claim is hardly found in the Rigveda. In the Aitareya Brāhmana the Brahmin is said to be the ‘ recipient of gifts * (ādāyt) and the * drinker of the offering ’ (āpāyT). The other two epithets applied, āvasāyī and yathā- kāma-prayāpya, are more obscure; the former denotes either ‘ dwelling everywhere ’ or ‘ seeking food ’; the latter is usually taken as * moving at pleasure,’ but it must rather allude to the power of the king to assign a place of residence to the Brahmin. In the śatapatha Brāhmana the prerogatives of the Brah¬min are summed up as Arcā, ‘honour’; Dāna, ‘gifts’; Aj'yeyatā,‘ freedom from oppression ’; and Avadhyatā, ‘ freedom from being killed.’ On the other hand, his duties are summed up as Brāhmanya, ‘ purity of descent’; Pratirūpa-caryā, ‘devotion of the duties of his caste’; and Loka-pakti, ‘the perfecting of people ’ (by teaching). ī. Respect paid to Brahmins. The texts are full of references to the civilities to be paid to the Brahmin. He is styled bhagavant, and is provided with good food and entertain¬ment wherever he goes. Indeed, his sanctity exempts him from any close inquiry into his real claim to Brahminhood according to the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana. Gifts to Brahmins. The Dānastuti (‘Praise of gifts’) is a recognized feature of the Rigveda, and the greed of the poets for Dakṣiṇās, or sacrificial fees, is notorious. Vedic texts themselves recognize that the literature thence resulting (Nārā- śamsī) was often false to please the donors. It was, however, a rule that Brahmins should not accept what had been refused by others; this indicates a keen sense of the danger of cheapening their wares. So exclusively theirs was the right to receive gifts that the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa has to explain how Taranta and Purumīlha became able to accept gifts by composing a Rigvedic hymn. The exaggerations in the celebration of the gifts bestowed on the priests has the curious result of giving us a series of numerals of some interest (Daśan). In some passages certain gifts those of a horse or sheep are forbidden, but this rule was not, it is clear, generally observed. Immunities of Brahmins. The Brahmin claimed to be exempt from the ordinary exercise of the royal power. When a king gives all his land and what is on it to the priests, the gift does not cover the property of the Brahmin according to the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. The king censures all, but not the Brahmin, nor can he safely oppress any Brahmin other than an ignorant priest. An arbitrator (or a witness) must decide (or speak) for a Brahmin against a non-Brahmin in a legal dispute. The Brahmin’s proper food is the Soma, not Surā or Parisrut, and he is forbidden to eat certain forms of flesh. On the other hand, he alone is allowed to eat the remains of the sacrifice, for no one else is sufficiently holy to consume food which the gods have eaten. Moreover, though he cannot be a physician, he helps the physician by being beside him while he exercises his art. His wife and his cow are both sacred. 4.Legal Position of. Brahmins.—The Taittirīya Samhitā lays down a penalty of a hundred (the unit meant is unknown) for an insult to a Brahmin, and of a thousand for a blow ; but if his blood is drawn, the penalty is a spiritual one. The only real murder is the slaying of a Brahmin according to the śatapatha Brāhmana. The crime of slaying a Brahmin ranks above the sin of killing any other man, but below that of killing an embryo (bhrūna) in the Yajurveda ; the crime of slaying an embryo whose sex is uncertain is on a level with that of slaying a Brahmin. The murder of a Brahmin can be expiated only by the horse sacrifice, or by a lesser rite in the late Taittirīya Araṇyaka.The ritual slaying of a Brahmin is allowed in the later ceremonial, and hinted at in the curious legend of śunahśepa ; and a Purohita might be punished with death for treachery to his master. 5.Purity of Birth. The importance of pure descent is seeη in the stress laid on being a descendant of a Rṣi (ārseya). But, on the other hand, there are clear traces of another doctrine, which requires learning, and not physical descent, as the true criterion of Rsihood. In agreement with this is the fact that Satyakāma Jābāla was received as a pupil, though his parentage was unknown, his mother being a slave girl who had been connected with several men, and that in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa the ceremony on acceptance as a pupil required merely the name of the pupil. So Kavasa is taunted in the Rigveda Brāhmaṇas as being the son of a female slave (Dāsī), and Vatsa cleared himself of a similar imputation by a fire ordeal. Moreover, a very simple rite was adequate to remove doubts as to origin. In these circumstances it is doubtful whether much value attaches to the Pravara lists in which the ancestors of the priest were invoked at the beginning of the sacrifice by the Hotṛ and the Adhvaryu priests.66 Still, in many parts of the ritual the knowledge of two or more genera¬tions was needed, and in one ceremony ten ancestors who have drunk the Soma are required, but a literal performance of the rite is excused. Moreover, there are clear traces of ritual variations in schools, like those of the Vasisthas and the Viśvāmitras. 6. The Conduct of the Brahmin. The Brahmin was required to maintain a fair standard of excellence. He was to be kind to all and gentle, offering sacrifice and receiving gifts. Especial stress was laid on purity of speech ; thus Viśvan- tara’s excuse for excluding the Syaparnas from his retinue was their impure (apūtā) speech. Theirs was the craving for knowledge and the life of begging. False Brahmins are those who do not fulfil their duties (cf, Brahmabandhu). But the penances for breach of duty are, in the Sūtras, of a very light and unimportant character. 7. Brahminical Studies. The aim of the priest is to obtain pre-eminence in sacred knowledge (brahma-varcasam), as is stated in numerous passages of Vedic literature. Such distinction is not indeed confined to the Brahmin: the king has it also, but it is not really in a special manner appropriate to the Kṣatriya. Many ritual acts are specified as leading to Brahmavarcasa, but more stress is laid on the study of the sacred texts : the importance of such study is repeatedly insisted upon. The technical name for study is Svādhyāya : the śatapatha Brāhmana is eloquent upon its advantages, and it is asserted that the joy of the learned śrotriya, or ‘student,’ is equal to the highest joy possible. Nāka Maudgfalya held that study and the teaching of others were the true penance (tapas).7δ The object was the ‘ threefold knowledge’ (trayī vidyā), that of the Rc, Yajus, and Sāman, a student of all three Vedas being called tri-śukriya or tn-sukra, ‘thrice pure.’ Other objects of study are enumerated in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, in the Taittirīya Aranyaka, the Chāndogya Upanisad, etc. (See Itihāsa, Purāna; Gāthā, Nārāśamsī; Brahmodya; Anuśās- ana, Anuvyākhyāna, Anvākhyāna, Kalpa, Brāhmaria; Vidyā, Ksatravidyā, Devajanavidyā, Nakçatravidyā, Bhūta- vidyā, Sarpavidyā; Atharvāñgirasah, Daiva, Nidhi, Pitrya, Rāśi; Sūtra, etc.) Directions as to the exact place and time of study are given in the Taittirīya Araṇyaka and in the Sūtras. If study is carried on in the village, it is to be done silently (manasā); if outside, aloud (vācā).
Learning is expected even from persons not normally competent as teachers, such as the Carakas, who are recognized in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa as possible sources of information. Here, too, may be mentioned the cases of Brahmins learning from princes, though their absolute value is doubtful, for the priests would naturally represent their patrons as interested in their sacred science: it is thus not necessary to see in these notices any real and independent study on the part of the Kṣatriyas. Yājñavalkya learnt from Janaka, Uddālaka Aruni and two other Brahmins from Pravāhaṇa Jaivali, Drptabālāki Gārgya from Ajātaśatru, and five Brahmins under the lead of Aruṇa from Aśvapati Kaikeya. A few notices show the real educators of thought: wandering scholars went through the country and engaged in disputes and discussions in which a prize was staked by the disputants. Moreover, kings like Janaka offered rewards to the most learned of the Brahmins; Ajātaśatru was jealous of his renown, and imitated his generosity. Again, learned women are several times mentioned in the Brāhmaṇas. A special form of disputation was the Brahmodya, for which there was a regular place at the Aśvamedha (‘ horse sacrifice ’) and at the Daśarātra (‘ ten-day festival,). The reward of learning was the gaining of the title of Kavi or Vipra, ‘ sage.’ 8. The Functions of the Brahmin. The Brahmin was required not merely to practise individual culture, but also to give others the advantage of his skill, either as a teacher or as a sacrificial priest, or as a Purohita. As a teacher the Brahmin has, of course, the special duty of instructing his own son in both study and sacrificial ritual. The texts give examples of this, such as Áruṇi and Svetaketu, or mythically Varuṇa and Bhṛgu. This fact also appears from some of the names in the Vamśa Brāhmana" of the Sāmaveda and the Vamśa (list of teachers) of the śāñkhāyana Áraṇyaka. On the other hand, these Vamśas and the Vamśas of the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa show that a father often preferred to let his son study under a famous teacher. The relation of pupil and teacher is described under Brahmacarya. A teacher might take several pupils, and he was bound to teach them with all his heart and soul. He was bound to reveal everything to his pupil, at any rate to one who was staying with him for a year (saηivatsara-vāsin), an expression which shows, as was natural, that a pupil might easily change teachers. But, nevertheless, certain cases of learning kept secret and only revealed to special persons are enumerated. The exact times and modes of teaching are elaborately laid down in the Sūtras, but not in the earlier texts. As priest the Brahmin operated in all the greater sacrifices; the simple domestic {grhya) rites could normally be performed without his help, but not the more important rites {śrauta). The number varied : the ritual literature requires sixteen priests to be employed at the greatest sacrifices (see Rtvij), but other rites could be accomplished with four, five, six, seven, or ten priests. Again, the Kauçītakins had a seventeenth priest beside the usual sixteen, the Sadasya, so called because he watched the performance from the Sadas, seat.’ In one rite, the Sattra (‘sacrificial session') of the serpents, the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, adds three more to the sixteen, a second Unnetṛ, an Abhigara, and an Apagara. The later ritual places the Brahman at the head of all the priests, but this is probably not the early view (see Brahman). The sacrifice ensured, if properly performed, primarily the advantages of the sacrificer (yajamāna), but the priest shared in the profit, besides securing the Daksiṇās. Disputes between sacrificers and the priests were not rare, as in the case of Viśvantara and the śyāparṇas, or Janamejaya and the Asitamrgras and the Aiçāvīras are referred to as undesirable priests. Moreover, Viśvāmitra once held the post of Purohita to Sudās, but gave place to Vasiṣtha. The position of Purohita differed considerably from that of the ordinary priest, for the Purohita not merely might officiate at the sacrifice, but was the officiator in all the private sacrifices of his king. Hence he could, and undoubtedly sometimes did, obtain great influence over his master in matters of secular importance; and the power of the priesthood in political as opposed to domestic and religious matters, no doubt rested on the Purohita. There is no recognition in Vedic literature of the rule later prevailing by which, after spending part of his life as a Brahma- cārin, and part as a householder, the Brahmin became an ascetic (later divided into the two stages of Vānaprastha, ‘forest-dweller,’ and Samnyāsin, ‘mystic ’). Yājñavalkya's case shows that study of the Absolute might empty life of all its content for the sage, and drive him to abandon wife and family. In Buddhist times the same phenomenon is seen applying to other than Brahmins. The Buddhist texts are here confirmed in some degree by the Greek authorities. The practice bears a certain resemblance to the habit of kings, in the Epic tradition,of retiring to the forest when active life is over. From the Greek authorities it also appears what is certainly the case in the Buddhist literature that Brahmins practised the most diverse occupations. It is difficult to say how far this was true for the Vedic period. The analogy of the Druids in some respects very close suggests that the Brahmins may have been mainly confined to their professional tasks, including all the learned professions such as astronomy and so forth. This is not contradicted by any Vedic evidence ; for instance, the poet of a hymn of the Rigveda says he is a poet, his father a physician (Bhiṣaj), and his mother a grinder of corn (Upala-prakṣiṇī). This would seem to show that a Brahmin could be a doctor, while his wife would perform the ordinary household duties. So a Purohita could perhaps take the field to assist the king by prayer, as Viśvāmitra, and later on Vasiṣtha do, but this does not show that priests normally fought. Nor do they seem normally to have been agriculturists or merchants. On the other hand, they kept cattle: a Brahmacarin’s duty was to watch his master’s cattle.129 It is therefore needless to suppose that they could not, and did not, on occasion turn to agricultural or mercan¬tile pursuits, as they certainly did later. But it must be remembered that in all probability there was more purity of blood, and less pressure of life, among the Brahmins of the Vedic age than later in Buddhist times, when the Vedic sacrificial apparatus was falling into grave disrepute. It is clear that the Brahmins, whatever their defects, represented the intellectual side of Vedic life, and that the Kṣatriyas, if they played a part in that life, did so only in a secondary degree, and to a minor extent. It is natural to suppose that the Brahmins also composed ballads, the precursors of the epic; for though none such have survived, a few stanzas of this character, celebrating the generosity of patrons, have been preserved by being embedded in priestly compositions. A legend in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa shows clearly that the Brahmins regarded civilization as being spread by them only: Kosala and Videha, no doubt settled by Aryan tribes, are only rendered civilized and habitable by the influence of pious Brahmins. We need not doubt that the non-Brahminical tribes (see Vrātya) had attained intellectual as well as material civilization, but it is reasonable to assume that their civilization was inferior to that of the Brahmins, for the history of Hinduism is the conquest by the Brahmins not by arms, but by mind of the tribes Aryan and non-Aryan originally beyond the pale.
Is the name of a people of great importance in the Rigveda and the later literature. In the Rigveda they appear prominently in the third and seventh Maṇdalas in connexion with Sudās and the Tftsus, while in the sixth Maṇdala they are associated with Divodāsa. In one passage the Bharatas are, like the Tṛtsus, enemies of the Pūrus: there can be little doubt that Ludwig’s view of the identity of the Bharatas and and Tṛtsus is practically correct. More precisely Oldenberg considers that the Tṛtsus are the Vasiṣhas, the family singers of the Bharatas; while Geldner recognizes, with perhaps more probability, in the Tṛtsus the royal family of the Bharatas. That the Tṛtsus and Bharatas were enemies, as Zimmer holds, is most improbable even on geographical grounds, for the Tṛtsus in Zimmer’s view occupied the country to the east of the Paruçṇī (Ravi), and the Bharatas must therefore be regarded as coming against the Tṛtsus from the west, whereas the Rigveda recognizes two Bharata chiefs on the Sarasvatī, Ápayā, and Dpçadvatī that is, in the holy land of India, the Madhyadeśa. Hillebrandt sees in the connexion of the Tṛtsus and the Bharatas a fusion of two tribes; but this is not supported by any evidence beyond the fact that in his opinion some such theory is needed to explain Divodāsa's appearing in connexion with the Bharadvāja family, while Sudās, his son, or perhaps grandson {cf. Pijavana), is connected with the Vasiṣthas and the Viśvāmitras. In the later literature the Bharatas appear as especially famous. The śatapatha Brāhmaṇa mentions Bharata Dauh- ṣanti as a king, sacrificer of the Aśvamedha (‘ horse sacrifice ’) and śatānīka Sātrājita, as another Bharata who offered that sacrifice. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa mentions Bharata Dauh- ṣanti as receiving the kingly coronation from Dlrghatamas Māmateya, and śatānīka as being consecrated by Somaśuçman Vājaratnāyana, a priest whose name is of quite late origin. The geographical position of the Bharata people is clearly shown by the fact that the Bharata kings win victories over the Kāśis, and make offerings on the Yamunā (Jumna) and Gañgfā (Ganges). Moreover, in the formula of the king’s proclamation for the people, the variants recorded include Kuravah, Pañcālāh, Kuru-Pañcālāh,, and Bharatāh ; and the Mahābhārata consistently recognizes the royal family of the Kurus as a Bharata family. It is therefore extremely probable that Oldenberg is right in holding that the Bharatas in the times of the Brāhmaṇas were merging in the Kuru-Pañcāla people. The ritual practices of the Bharatas are repeatedly mentioned in the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and the Taittirīya Aranyaka. Already in the Rigveda there is mention made of Agni Bhārata (‘of the Bharatas’). In the Apr! hymns occurs a goddess Bhāratī, the personified divine protective power of the Bharatas : her association in the hymns with Sarasvatī reflects the connexion 'of the Bharatas with the Sarasvatī in the Rigveda. Again, in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa Agni is referred to as brāhmana Bhārata, ‘priest of the Bharatas,’ and is invited to dispose of the offering Manusvat Bharatavat, ‘like Manu,’ ‘like Bharata.’ In one or two passages Sudās or Divodāsa and, on the other hand, Purukutsa or Trasadasyu appear in a friendly relation. Possibly this points, as Oldenberg suggests, to the union of Bharatas and Pūrus with the Kurus. A Bharata is referred to in the fifth Mandala of the Rigveda who he was is uncertain.
Is the common designation of ‘ brother ’ from the Rigveda onwards. The word is also applied to a relation or close friend generally, but here the persons concerned are, it should be noted; in the Rigveda deities, who are brothers of one another or of the worshipper. Thus in the early literature the word has not really lost its precise sense. The derivation from the root bhr, ‘support,’ is probably correct, designating the brother as the support of his sister. This harmonizes with the fact that in Vedic literature the brother plays the part of protector of his sister when bereft of her father, and that maidens deprived of their brothers (ablirātr) meet an evil fate. The gradation of the relations in the home is shown by the order in the Chāndogya Upanisad, where father, mother, brother, and sister are successively mentioned. Strife between brothers is occasionally referred to.
Is found in one passage of the Atharvaveda, where, being named with brother and sister, it must be an expression of relationship. The sense appears to be ‘(father’s) brother’s son,’ ‘cousin,’ this meaning alone accounting for the sense of ‘rival,’ ‘enemy,’ found elsewhere in the Atharvaveda, and repeatedly in the other Samhitās and the Brāhmanas. In an undivided family the relations of cousins would easily develop into rivalry and enmity. The original meaning may, however, have been ‘nephew,’ as the simple etymological sense would be brother’s son ’; but this seems not to account for the later meaning so well. The Kāthaka Samhitā prescribes the telling of a falsehood to a Bhrātṛvya, who, further, is often given the epithets ‘hating’ (dυisan) and ‘evil’ (apriya, pāpman) in the later Samhitās and the Brāhmaṇas. The Atharvaveda8 also contains various spells, which aim at destroying or expelling one’s rivals.’
Is found in one passage of the Rigveda in an enumeration of gifts, where it is described as ‘ golden’ (sacā manā hiranyayā). It therefore seems to designate some ornament, or possibly a weight, and has accordingly been compared with the Greek μva (Herodotus has μvia), the Latin mina. All three words have been considered Semitic in origin, as borrowed from the Phoenicians in the case of Greece, from Carthage by way of Etruria or Sicily in the case of Rome, and from Babylon in the case of India. The identification as regards Manā is very conjectural, depending merely on the probabilities of Babylonian borrowing seen—e.g., in the legend of the flood, and in the system of the Nakṣatras. On the other hand, Manā may very well be identical with the word manā which occurs several times in the Rigveda in the sense of ‘ desire ’ (from the root man, ‘think’), and which may have in this one passage the concrete sense of‘desirable object.’ It is to be noted that in Bohtlingk’s Dictionary a single word Manā appears, to which the only senses assigned are ‘wish,’ ‘ desire,’ ‘jealousy.’
In the plural, is mentioned in the Taittirīya Aranyaka, as the utkara (‘mound of earth thrown up ’ from the excavation of the altar) of Kurukçetra. This seems to mean that the Maru deserts (the later Maru-sthala) were so called because they stood to the ‘altar,’ Kurukṣetra, in the same relation as the waste earth of the utkara to the altar at the sacrifice.
Is the regular word for ‘mother’ from the Rigveda onwards, being a formation probably developed under the influence of an onomatopoetic word tnā, used like Ambā and Nanā. The relations of wife and husband, as well as of mother and children, are treated under Pati. It remains only to add that details are given in the Sūtras of the respectful attention paid to a mother, and of the ceremonies in which she is concerned. The mother also appears interested in the fate of her children as in the story of the sale of śunahśepa for adoption by Viśvāmitra in the Aitareya Brāhmana. In the household the mother ranked after the father (see Pitp). Occasionally mātarā is used for parents,’ as are also pitarā and mātarāpitarā and mātā-pitarah.
(‘Relating to the middle’) is a term applied in the Kauṣītaki Brāhmana and the Aitareya Araṇyaka to denote the ‘ authors of the middle books’ of the Rigveda.
Denotes a 'month' a period of time repeatedly mentioned in the Rigveda and lateṛ The Characteristic days (or rather nights) of the month were those of new moon, Amā-vasya, 'home-staying (night),' and 'of the full moon,' Paurṇa-māsi. Two hymns of the Atharvveda celebrate these days respectively. A personification of the phases of the moon is seen in the four names Sinīvālī the day before new moon; Kuhū also called Guṅgū, the new moon day;Anumati, the day before full moon; and Rākā, the day of new mooṇ The importance of the new and full moon days respectively. One special day in the month, the Ekāṣṭakā, or eighth day after full moon, was importanṭ In the Pañcaviṃśa Brāhmaṇa there stated to be in the year twelve such, mentioned between the twelve days of full moon and twelve days of new moon. But one Ekāṣṭakā is referred to in the Yajurveda Saṃhitas and elsewhere as of quite special importance. This was, in the accordant opinion of most comentators, the eighth day after the full moon of Magha. It marked the end of the year, or the begining of the new year. Though the Kauṣītaki Brāmaṇa places places the winter solstice in the new moon of Māgha, the latter date probably means the new moon preceding full moon in Māgha, not the new moon following full moon; but it is perhaps possible to account adequately for the importance of the Ekāstakā as being the first Aṣṭakā after the beginning of the new year. It is not certain exactly how the month was reckoned, whether from the day after new moon to new moon—the system known as amānta, or from the day after full moon to full moon—the pūr- nimānta system, which later, at any rate, was followed in North India, while the other system prevailed in the south. Jacobi argues that the year began in the full moon of Phālguna, and that only by the full moon’s conjunction with the Nakṣatra could the month be known. Oldenberg12 points to the fact that the new moon is far more distinctively an epoch than the full moon; that the Greek, Roman, and Jewish years began with the new moon; and that the Vedic evidence is the division of the month into the former (j>ūrva) and latter (apara) halves, the first being the bright (śukla), the second the dark (krsna) period. Thibaut considers that to assume the existence of the pīirnimānta system for the Veda is unnecessary, though possible. Weber assumes that it occurs in the Kausītaki Brāhmaṇa as held by the scholiasts. But it would probably be a mistake to press that passage, or to assume that the amānta system was rigidly accepted in the Veda: it seems at least as probable that the month was vaguely regarded as beginning with the new moon day, so that new moon preceded full moon, which was in the middle, not the end or. the beginning of the month. That a month regularly had 30 days is established by the conclusive evidence of numerous passages in which the year is given 12 months and 360 days. This month is known from the earliest records, being both referred to directly and alluded to. It is the regular month of the Brāhmaṇas, and must be regarded as the month which the Vedic Indian recognized. No other month is mentioned as such in• the Brāhmaṇa literature ; it is only in the Sūtras that months of different length occur. The Sāmaveda Sūtras10 refer to (i) years with 324 days—i.e., periodic years with 12 months of 27 days each; (2) years with 351 days—i.e., periodic years with 12 months of 27 days each, plus another month of 27 days; (3) years with 354 days—i.e., 6 months of 30 days, and 6 with 29 days, in other words, lunar synodic years; (4) years with 360 days, or ordinary civil (sāvana) years; (5) years with 378 days, which, as Thibaut clearly shows, are third years, in which, after two years of 360 days each, 18 days were added to bring about correspondence between the civil year and the solar year of 366 days. But even the Sāmasūtras do not mention the year of 366 days, which is first known to the Jyotiṣa and to Garga. That the Vedic period was acquainted with the year of 354 days cannot be affirmed with certainty. Zimmer, indeed, thinks that it is proved by the fact that pregnancy is estimated at ten months, or sometimes a year. But Weber may be right in holding that the month is the periodic month of 27 days, for the period is otherwise too long if a year is taken. On the other hand, the period of ten months quite well suits the period of gestation, if birth takes place in the tenth month, so that in this sense the month of 30 days may well be meant. The year of 12 months of 30 days each being admittedly quite unscientific, Zimmer23 is strongly of opinion that it was only used with a recognition of the fact that intercalation took place, and that the year formed part of a greater complex, normally the five year Yuga or cycle. This system is well known from the Jyotiṣa: it consists of 62 months of 29£4 days each = 1,830 days (two of these months being intercalary, one in the middle and one at the end), or 61 months of 30 days, or 60 months of 30^ days, the unit being clearly a solar year of 366 days. It is not an ideal system, since the year is too long; but it is one which cannot be claimed even for the Brāhmaṇa period, during which no decision as to the true length of the year seems to have been arrived at. The references to it seen by Zimmer in the Rigveda are not even reasonably plausible, while the pañcaka yuga, cited by him from the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, occurs only in a quotation in a commentary, and has no authority for the text itself. On the other hand, there was undoubtedly some attempt to bring the year of 360 days—a synodic lunar year—roughly into connexion with reality. A Sāmasūtra27 treats it as a solar year, stating that the sun perambulates each Naxatra in days, while others again evidently interpolated 18 days every third year, in order to arrive at some equality. But Vedic literature, from the Rigveda downwards,29 teems with the assertion of the difficulty of ascertaining the month. The length is variously given as 30 days, 35 days,31 or 36 days. The last number possibly indicates an intercalation after six years (6x6 = 36, or for ritual purposes 35), but for this we have no special evidence. There are many references to the year having 12 or 13 months. The names of the months are, curiously enough, not at all ancient. The sacrificial texts of the Yajurveda give them in their clearest form where the Agnicayana, ‘building of the fire-altar,’ is described. These names are the following: (1) Madhu, (2) Mādhava (spring months, vāsantikāv rtū); (3) Sukra, (4) Suci (summer months, graismāv rtū); (5) Nabha (or Nabhas), (6) Nabhasya (rainy months, vārsikāv rtū); (7) Iṣa, (8) ūrja (autumn months, śāradāυ rtū); (9) Saha (or Sahas),35 (10) Sahasya (winter months, haimantikāυ rtū); (II) Tapa (or Tapas),35 (12) Tapasya (cool months, śaiśirāv rtū). There are similar lists in the descriptions of the Soma sacrifice and of the horse sacrifice, all of them agreeing in essentials. There are other lists of still more fanciful names, but these have no claim at all to represent actual divisions in popular use. It is doubtful if the list given above is more than a matter of priestly invention. Weber points out that Madhu and Mādhava later appear as names of spring, and that these two are mentioned in the Taittirīya Aranyaka as if actually employed; but the evidence is very inadequate to show that the other names of the months given in the list were in ordinary use. In some of these lists the intercalary month is mentioned. The name given to it in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā is Amhasas- pati, while that given in the Taittirīya and Maitrāyaṇī Sarphitās is Sarpsarpa. The Kāthaka Sarphitā gives it the name of Malimluca, which also occurs elsewhere, along with Samsarpa, in one of the lists of fanciful names. The Atharvaveda describes it as sanisrasa, ‘slipping,’ owing no doubt to its unstable condition. The other method of naming the months is from the Nakçatras. It is only beginning to be used in the Brāhmaṇas, but is found regularly in the Epic and later. The Jyotisa mentions that Māgha and Tapa were identical: this is the fair interpretation of the passage, which also involves the identifica¬tion of Madhu with Caitra, a result corresponding with the view frequently found in the Brāhmanas, that the full moon in Citrā, and not that in Phalgunī, is the beginning of the year. In the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa are found two curious expressions, yava and ayava, for the light and dark halves of the month, which is clearly considered to begin with the light half. Possibly the words are derived, as Eggling thinks, from yu, ‘ ward off,’ with reference to evil spirits. The word Parvan (‘ joint ’ = division of time) probably denotes a half of the month, perhaps already in the Rigveda. More precisely the first half, the time of the waxing light, is called pūrva-paksa, the second, that of the waning light, apara-paka. Either of these might be called a half-month (ardha-ināsa).
In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa denotes, according to Sāyaṇa's commentary, the constellation Mrgaśiras. But it seems more probable that Mṛga there really covers the whole of Orion, not merely the inconspicuous group of stars in the head of Orion that make up the Nakṣatra Mṛgaśiras, but also the star a in his shoulder, which is reckoned as Ardrā, and γ in his left shoulder. Tilak, however, makes Mṛga or Mṛgaśiras into a different group, consisting of the belt of Orion, with two stars in the knees and one in the left shoulder, which he deems to resemble a deer’s head with an arrow through it, an implausible and unlikely theory. Cf Mṛgavyādha.
‘The hunter,’ is the name of Sirius in the legend of Prajāpati’s daughter in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Prajāpati (Orion) pursues his daughter (Rohiṇī), and is shot by the archer Sirius. The transference of the legend of Prajāpati to the sky is no doubt secondary, caused by the obvious similarity of the constellation in question to the idea of an archer.
In the Rigveda frequently denotes a ‘generation’; but the expression daśame yuge applied to Dirg’hatamas in one passage must mean ‘tenth decade’ of life. There is no reference in the older Vedic texts to the five-year cycle (see Samvatsara). The quotation from the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa given in the St. Petersburg Dictionary, and by Zimmer and others, is merely a citation from a modern text in the commentary on that work. Nor do the older Vedic texts know of any series of Yugas or ages such as are usual later. In the Atharvaveda6 there are mentioned in order a hundred years, an ayuta (10,000?), and then two, three, or four Yugas: the inference from this seems to be that a Yuga means more than an ayuta, but is not very certain. Zimmer adduces a passage from the Rigveda, but the reference there, whatever it may be, is certainly not to the four ages {cf. also Triyug’a). The Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa recognizes long periods of time—e.g., one of 100,000 years. To the four ages, Kali, Dvāpara, Tretā, and Kṛta, there is no certain reference in Vedic literature, though the names occur as the designations of throws at dice (see Akça). In the Aitareya Brāhmana the names occur, but it is not clear that the ages are really meant. Haug thought that the dice were meant: this view is at least as probable as the alternative explanation, which is accepted by Weber, Roth,Wilson, Max Mūller, and Muir. Roth, indeed, believes that the verse is an inter¬polation ; but in any case it must be remembered that the passage is from a late book of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Four ages—Puṣya, Dvāpara, Khārvā, and Kṛta—are mentioned in the late Sadvimśa Brāhmaṇa, and the Dvāpara in the Gopatha Brāhmana.
Occurring in the description of the horse-sacrifice in the Rigveda and the Yajurveda Samhitās, denotes the ‘broth’ which was made from the flesh of the sacrificial animal, and was no doubt used as food. Vessels employed for holding it, Pātra and Ásecana, are mentioned. Another form of the word, found in the Taittirīya Samhitā, is Yūs, which corresponds to the Latin jus.
Occurs once in the plural in the Atharvaveda, where the Paippalāda recension reads vaghatah. Roth once conjectured raghavaḥ, 'swift,' as correct reading. Bloomfield who in his translation explains the word as 'falcons,' in his notes inclines to think Roth's conjecture likely. Ludwig suggests 'bees' as the meaning. Possibly some kind of a bird may be intended.
‘Chariot-maker,’ is mentioned in the Atharvaveda as one of those who are to be subject to the king, seeming to stand generally as an example of the industrial population. He is also referred to in the Yajurveda Samhitās and in the Brāhmaṇas: in all these passages, as well as probably in the Atharvaveda also, the Rathakāra already forms a caste. The later system4 regards the Rathakāra as the offspring of a Māhiṣya (the son of a Kṣatriya husband and a Vaiśya wife) and a Karanī (the daughter of a Vaiśya husband and a śūdra wife), but it is unreasonable^to suppose that such an origin is historically accurate. The Rathakāras must rather be deemed to have been a functional caste. Hillebrandt6 suggests that ♦.he Anu tribe formed the basis of the Rathakāra caste, referring to their worship of the Rbhus, who are, of course, the chariot- makers par excellence. But there is little ground for this view.
King,' is a term repeatedly occuring in the rigveda and the later literature. It is quite clear that the normal, though not universal form of government, in early India was that by kings, as might be expected in view of the fact that the Āryan Indian were invaders in a hostile territory : a situation which, as in the case of Ārayan invaders of Greece and German invaders of England, resulted almost necessarily in strengthening the monarchic element of the constitution. The mere patriarchal organization of society is not sufficient, as Zimmer assumes, to explain the Vedic kingship. Tenure of Monarchy.—Zimmer is of opinion that while the Vedic monarchy was sometimes hereditary, as is indeed shown by several cases where the descent can be traced,® yet in others the monarchy was elective, though it is not clear whether the selection by the people was between the members of the royal family only or extended to members of all the noble clans. It must, however, be admitted that the evidence for the elective monarchy is not strong. As Geldner argues, all the passages cited can be regarded not as choice by the cantons (Viś), but as acceptance by the subjects (viś): this seems the more prob¬able sense. Of course this is no proof that the monarchy was not sometimes elective: the practice of selecting one member of the family to the exclusion of another less well qualified is exemplified by the legend in Yāska of the Kuru brothers, Devāpi and śantanu, the value of which, as evidence of contemporary views, is not seriously affected by the legend itself being of dubious character and validity. Royal power was clearly insecure: there are several references to kings being expelled from their realms, and their efforts to recover their sovereignty, and the Atharvaveda contains spells in the interest of royalty. The King in War.—Naturally the Vedic texts, after the Rigveda, contain few notices of the warlike adventures that no doubt formed a very considerable proportion of the royal functions. But the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa contains the statement that the Kuru-Pañcāla kings, who, like the Brahmins of those tribes, stand as representatives of good form, used to make their raids in the dewy season. The word Udāja, too, with its variant Nirāja, records that kings took a share of the booty of war. The Rigveda13 has many references to Vedic wars: it is clear that the Kṣatriyas were at least as intent on fulfilling their duty of war as the Brahmins on sacrificing and their other functions. Moreover, beside offensive war, defence was a chief duty of the king: he is emphatically the ‘ protector of the tribe* (gopā janasya), or, as is said in the Rājasūya (‘royal consecration’), ‘protector of the Brahmin.’14 His Purohita was expected to use his spells and charms to secure the success of his king’s arms. The king no doubt fought in person: so Pratardana met death in war according to the Kausītaki Upanisad;16 and in the Rājasūya the king is invoked as ‘sacker of cities’ (purāψ bhettā). The King in Peace.—In return for his warlike services the king received the obedience—sometimes forced—of the people, and in particular their contributions for the maintenance of royalty. The king is regularly regarded as ‘ devouring the people,’ but this phrase must not be explained as meaning that he necessarily oppressed them. It obviously has its origin in a custom by which the king and his retinue were fed by the people’s contributions, a plan with many parallels. It is also probable that the king could assign the royal right of mainten¬ance to a Ksatriya, thus developing a nobility supported by the people. Taxation would not normally fall on Kṣatriya or Brahmin; the texts contain emphatic assertions of the exemption of the goods of the latter from the royal bounty. In the people, however, lay the strength of the king. See also Bali. In return the king performed the duties of judge. Himself immune from punishment (a-daiidya), he wields the rod of punishment (Daṇda). It is probable that criminal justice remained largely in his actual administration, for the Sūtras preserve clear traces of the personal exercise of royal criminal jurisdiction. Possibly the jurisdiction could be exercised by a royal officer, or even by a delegate, for a Rājanya is mentioned as an overseer (adhyaksa) of the punishment of a śūdra in the Kāthaka Samhitā. In civil justice it may be that the king played a much less prominent part, save as a court of final appeal, but evidence is lacking on this head. The Madhyamaśi of the Rigveda was probably not a royal, but a private judge or arbitrator. A wide criminal jurisdiction is, however, to some extent supported by the frequent mention of Varuna’s spies, for Varuṇa is the divine counterpart of the human king. Possibly such spies could be used in' war also. There is no reference in early Vedic literature to the exercise of legislative activity by the king, though later it is an essential part of his duties. Nor can we say exactly what executive functions devolved on the king. In all his acts the king was regularly advised by his Purohita ; he also had the advantage of the advice of the royal ministers and attendants (see Ratnin). The local administration was entrusted to the Grāmartī, or village chief, who may have been selected or appointed by the'king. The outward signs of the king’s rank were his palace and his brilliant dress. The King as Landowner.—The position of the king with regard to the land is somewhat obscure. The Greek notices,30 in which, unhappily, it would be dangerous to put much trust, since they were collected by observers who were probably little used to accurate investigations of such matters, and whose statements wore based on inadequate information, vary in their statements. In part they speak of rent being paid, and declare that only the king and no private person could own land, while in part they refer to the taxation of land. Hopkins is strongly of opinion that the payments made were paid for protection —i.e., in modern terminology as a tax, but that the king was recognized as the owner of all the land, while yet the individual or the joint family also owned the land. As against Baden- Powell, who asserted that the idea of the king as a landowner was later, he urges for the Vedic period that the king, as we have seen, is described as devouring the people, and that, according to the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, the Vaiśya can be devoured at will and maltreated (but, unlike the śūdra, not killed); and for the period of the legal Sūtras and śāstras he cites Bṛhaspati and Nārada as clearly recognizing the king’s overlordship, besides a passage of the Mānava Dharma Sāstra which describes the king as ‘lord of all a phrase which Būhler35 was inclined to interpret as a proof of landowning. The evidence is, however, inadequate to prove what is sought. It is not denied that gradually the king came to be vaguely con¬ceived—as the English king still is—as lord of all the land in a proprietorial sense, but it is far more probable that such an idea was only a gradual development than that it was primitive. The power of devouring the people is a political power, not a right of ownership; precisely the same feature can be traced in South Africa,3® where the chief can deprive a man arbitrarily of his land, though the land is really owned by the native. The matter is ultimately to some extent one of terminology, but the parallel cases are in favour of distinguishing between the political rights of the crown, which can be transferred by way of a grant, and the rights of ownership. Hopkins37 thinks that the gifts of land to priests, which seems to be the first sign of land transactions in the Brāhmaṇas, was an actual gift of land; it may have been so in many cases, but it may easily also have been the grant of a superiority : the Epic grants are hardly decisive one way or the other. For the relations of the king with the assembly, see Sabhā ; for his consecration, see Rājasūya. A rāja-tā, lack of a king,’ means‘anarchy.’
Is the name in the Atharvaveda and the later literature of the ceremony of the ‘royal consecration.’ The rite is described at great length in the Sūtras, but its main features are clearly outlined in the Brāhmaṇas, while the verses used in the ceremony are preserved in the Samhitās of the Yaj'urveda. Besides much mere priestly elaboration, the ritual contains traces of popular ceremonial. For example, the king is clothed in the ceremonial garments of his rank, and provided with bow and arrow as emblems of sovereignty. He is formally anointed; he performs a mimic cow raid against a relative of his; or engages in a sham fight with a Rājanya. A game of dice is played in which he is made to be the victim; he symbolically ascends the quarters of the sky as an indication of his universal rule; and steps on a tiger skin, thus gaining the strength and the pre-eminence of the tiger. A list of the consecrated kings is given in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, where the royal inauguration is called the ‘great unctioni (vtahābhiseka) connected with Indra. It corresponds generally with a list of Aśvamedhins, ‘ performers of the horse sacrifice,’ given in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the śāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra.
(lit. ‘colour’) In the Rigveda is applied to denote classes of men, the Dāsa and the Aryan Varṇa being contrasted, as other passages show, on account of colour. But this use is confined to distinguishing two colours: in this respect the Rigveda differs fundamentally from the later Samhitās and Brāhmaṇas, where the four castes (varnūh) are already fully recognized. (a) Caste in the Rigveda.—The use of the term Varṇa is not, of course, conclusive for the question whether caste existed in the Rigveda. In one sense it must be admitted to have existed: the Puruṣa-sūkta, ‘hymn of man,’ in the tenth Maṇdala clearly contemplates the division of mankind into four classes—the Brāhmaṇa, Rājanya, Vaiśya, and śūdra. But the hymn being admittedly late,6 its evidence is not cogent for the bulk of the Rigveda.' Zimmer has with great force com- batted the view that the Rigveda was produced in a society that knew the caste system. He points out that the Brāhmaṇas show us the Vedic Indians on the Indus as unbrah- minized, and not under the caste system; he argues that the Rigveda was the product of tribes living in the Indus region and the Panjab; later on a part of this people, who had wandered farther east, developed the peculiar civilization of the caste system. He adopts the arguments of Muir, derived from the study of the data of the Rigveda, viz.: that (a) the four castes appear only in the late Purusasūkta; (6) the term Varṇa, as shown above, covers the three highest castes of later times, and is only contrasted with Dāsa; (c) that Brāhmaṇa is rare in the Rigveda, Kṣatriya occurs seldom, Rājanya only in the Purusasūkta, where too, alone, Vaiśya and śūdra are found; (d) that Brahman denotes at first ‘poet,’ ‘sage,’ and then ‘ officiating priest,’ or still later a special class of priest; (e) that in some only of the passages where it occurs does Brahman denote a ‘priest by profession,’ while in others it denotes something peculiar to the individual, designating a person distinguished for genius or virtue, or specially chosen to receive divine inspiration. Brāhmaṇa, on the other hand, as Muir admits, already denotes a hereditary professional priesthood. Zimmer connects the change from the casteless system of the Rigveda to the elaborate system of the Yajurveda with the advance of the Vedic Indians to the east, comparing the Ger¬manic invasions that transformed the German tribes into monarchies closely allied with the church. The needs of a conquering people evoke the monarch; the lesser princes sink to the position of nobles ; for repelling the attacks of aborigines or of other Aryan tribes, and for quelling the revolts of the subdued population, the state requires a standing army in the shape of the armed retainers of the king, and beside the nobility of the lesser princes arises that of the king’s chief retainers, as the Thegns supplemented the Gesiths of the Anglo-Saxon monarchies. At the same time the people ceased to take part in military matters, and under climatic influences left the conduct of war to the nobility and their retainers, devoting themselves to agriculture, pastoral pursuits, and trade. But the advantage won by the nobles over the people was shared by them with the priesthood, the origin of whose power lies in the Purohitaship, as Roth first saw. Originally the prince could sacrifice for himself and the people, but the Rigveda itself shows cases, like those of Viśvāmitra and Vasiçtha illustrating forcibly the power of the Purohita, though at the same time the right of the noble to act as Purohita is seen in the case of Devāpi Arṣtisena.le The Brahmins saw their opportunity, through the Purohitaship, of gaining practical power during the confusion and difficulties of the wars of invasion, and secured it, though only after many struggles, the traces of which are seen in the Epic tradition. The Atharvaveda also preserves relics of these conflicts in its narration of the ruin of the Spñjayas because of oppressing Brahmins, and besides other hymns of the Atharvaveda, the śatarudriya litany of the Yajurveda reflects the period of storm and stress when the aboriginal population was still seething with discontent, and Rudra was worshipped as the patron god of all sorts of evil doers. This version of the development of caste has received a good deal of acceptance in it's main outlines, and it may almost be regarded as the recognized version. It has, however, always been opposed by some scholars, such as Haug, Kern, Ludwig, and more recently by Oldenberg25 and by Geldner.25 The matter may be to some extent simplified by recognizing at once that the caste system is one that has progressively developed, and that it is not legitimate to see in the Rigveda the full caste system even of the Yajurveda; but at the same time it is difficult to doubt that the system was already well on its way to general acceptance. The argument from the non- brahminical character of the Vrātyas of the Indus and Panjab loses its force when it is remembered that there is much evidence in favour of placing the composition of the bulk of the Rigveda, especially the books in which Sudās appears with Vasiṣṭha and Viśvāmitra, in the east, the later Madhyadeśa, a view supported by Pischel, Geldner, Hopkins,30 and Mac¬donell.81 Nor is it possible to maintain that Brahman in the Rigveda merely means a ‘poet or sage.’ It is admitted by Muir that in some passages it must mean a hereditary profession ; in fact, there is not a single passage in which it occurs where the sense of priest is not allowable, since the priest was of course the singer. Moreover, there are traces in the Rigveda of the threefold or fourfold division of the people into brahma, ksafram, and vitofi, or into the three classes and the servile population. Nor even in respect to the later period, any more than to the Rigveda, is the view correct that regards the Vaiśyas as not taking part in war. The Rigveda evidently knows of no restriction of war to a nobility and its retainers, but the late Atharvaveda equally classes the folk with the bala, power,’ representing the Viś as associated with the Sabhā, Samiti, and Senā, the assemblies of the people and the armed host. Zimmer explains these references as due to tradition only; but this is hardly a legitimate argument, resting, as it does, on the false assumption that only a Kṣatriya can fight. But it is (see Kçatriya) very doubtful whether Kṣatriya means anything more than a member of the nobility, though later, in the Epic, it included the retainers of the nobility, who increased in numbers with the growth of military monarchies, and though later the ordinary people did not necessarily take part in wars, an abstention that is, however, much exaggerated if it is treated as an absolute one. The Kṣatriyas were no doubt a hereditary body; monarchy was already hereditary (see Rājan), and it is admitted that the śūdras were a separate body: thus all the elements of the caste system were already in existence. The Purohita, indeed, was a person of great importance, but it is clear, as Oldenberg37 urges, that he was not the creator of the power of the priesthood, but owed his position, and the influence he could in consequence exert, to the fact that the sacrifice required for its proper performance the aid of a hereditary priest in whose possession was the traditional sacred knowledge. Nor can any argument for the non-existence of the caste system be derived from cases like that of Devāpi. For, in the first place, the Upaniṣads show kings in the exercise of the priestly functions of learning and teaching, and the Upaniṣads are certainly contemporaneous with an elaborated caste system. In the second place the Rigvedic evidence is very weak, for Devāpi, who certainly acts as Purohita, is not stated in the Rigveda to be a prince at all, though Yāska calls him a Kauravya; the hymns attributed to kings and others cannot be vindicated for them by certain evidence, though here, again, the Brāhmaṇas do not scruple to recognize Rājanyarṣis, or royal sages’; and the famous Viśvāmitra shows in the Rigveda no sign of the royal character which the Brāhmaṇas insist on fastening on him in the shape of royal descent in the line of Jahnu. (6) Caste in the later Samhitās and Brāhmanas. The relation between the later and the earlier periods of the Vedic history of caste must probably be regarded in the main as the hardening of a system already formed by the time of the Rigveda. etc. Three castes Brāhmaṇa, Rājan, śūdraare mentioned in the Atharvaveda, and two castes are repeatedly mentioned together, either Brahman and Kṣatra, or Kṣatra and Viś. 2.The Relation of the Castes. The ritual literature is full of minute differences respecting the castes. Thus, for example, the śatapatha prescribes different sizes of funeral mounds for the four castes. Different modes of address are laid down for the four castes, as ehi, approach ’; āgaccha, ‘come’; ādrava, run up ’; ādhāva, hasten up,’ which differ in degrees of politeness. The representatives of the four castes are dedicated at the Puruṣamedha (‘human sacrifice’) to different deities. The Sūtras have many similar rules. But the three upper castes in some respects differ markedly from the fourth, the śūdras. The latter are in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa declared not fit to be addressed by a Dīkṣita, consecrated person,’ and no śūdra is to milk the cow whose milk is to be used for the Agnihotra ('fire-oblation’). On the other hand, in certain passages, the śūdra is given a place in the Soma sacrifice, and in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa there are given formulas for the placing of the sacrificial fire not only for the three upper castes, but also for the Rathakāra, chariot-maker.’ Again, in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, the Brāhmaṇa is opposed as eater of the oblation to the members of the other three castes. The characteristics of the several castes are given under Brāhmaṇa, Kçatriya and Rājan, Vaiśya, śūdra: they may be briefly summed up as follows : The Viś forms the basis of the state on which the Brahman and Kṣatra rest;®3 the Brahman and Kṣatra are superior to the Viś j®4 while all three classes are superior to the śūdras. The real power of the state rested with the king and his nobles, with their retainers, who may be deemed the Kṣatriya element. Engaged in the business of the protection of the country, its administration, the decision of legal cases, and in war, the nobles subsisted, no doubt, on the revenues in kind levied from the people, the king granting to them villages (see Grāma) for their maintenance, while some of them, no doubt, had lands of their own cultivated for them by slaves or by tenants. The states were seemingly small there are no clear signs of any really large kingdoms, despite the mention of Mahārājas. The people, engaged in agriculture, pastoral pursuits, and trade (Vaṇij), paid tribute to the king and nobles for the protection afforded them. That, as Baden- Powell suggests, they were not themselves agriculturists is probably erroneous; some might be landowners on a large scale, and draw their revenues from śūdra tenants, or even Aryan tenants, but that the people as a whole were in this position is extremely unlikely. In war the people shared the conflicts of the nobles, for there was not yet any absolute separation of the functions of the several classes. The priests may be divided into two classes the Purohitas of the kings, who guided their employers by their counsel, and were in a position to acquire great influence in the state, as it is evident they actually did, and the ordinary priests who led quiet lives, except when they were engaged on some great festival of a king or a wealthy noble. The relations and functions of the castes are well summed up in a passage of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, which treats of them as opposed to the Kṣatriya. The Brāhmaṇa is a receiver of gifts (ā-dāyī), a drinker of Soma (ā-pāyī), a seeker of food (āvasāyī), and liable to removal at will (yathākāma-prayāpyaīi).n The Vaiśya is tributary to another (anyasya balikrt), to be lived on by another (anyasyādyal}), and to be oppressed at will (yathā- kāma-jyeyal}). The śūdra is the servant of another (anyasya j>resyah), to be expelled at will (kāmotthāpyah), and to be slain at pleasure {yathākāma-vadhyah). The descriptions seem calculated to show the relation of each of the castes to the Rājanya. Even the Brāhmaṇa he can control, whilst the Vaiśya is his inferior and tributary, whom he can remove without cause from his land, but who is still free, and whom he cannot maim or slay without due process. The śūdra has no rights of property or life against the noble, especially the king. The passage is a late one, and the high place of the Kṣatriya is to some extent accounted for by this fact. It is clear that in the course of time the Vaiśya fell more and more in position with the hardening of the divisions of caste. Weber shows reason for believing that the Vājapeya sacrifice, a festival of which a chariot race forms an integral part, was, as the śāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra says, once a sacrifice for a Vaiśya, as well as for a priest or king. But the king, too, had to suffer diminution of his influence at the hands of the priest: the Taittirīya texts show that the Vājapeya was originally a lesser sacrifice which, in the case of a king, was followed by the Rājasūya, or consecration of him as an overlord of lesser kings, and in that of the Brahmin by the Bṛhaspatisava, a festival celebrated on his appointment as a royal Purohita. But the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa exalts the Vājapeya, in which a priest could be the sacrificer, over the Rājasūya, from which he was excluded, and identifies it with the Bṛhaspatisava, a clear piece of juggling in the interests of the priestly pretentions. But we must not overestimate the value of such passages, or the exaltation of the Purohita in the later books of the śatapatha and Aitareya Brāhmanas as evidence of a real growth in the priestly power: these books represent the views of the priests of what their own powers should be, and to some extent were in the Madhyadeśa. Another side of the picture is presented in the Pāli literature, which, belonging to a later period than the Vedic, undoubtedly underestimates the position of the priests ; while the Epic, more nearly contemporaneous with the later Vedic period, displays, despite all priestly redaction, the temporal superiority of the nobility in clear light. Although clear distinctions were made between the different castes, there is little trace in Vedic literature of one of the leading characteristics of the later system, the impurity communicated by the touch or contact of the inferior castes, which is seen both directly in the purification rendered necessary in case of contact with a śūdra, and indirectly in the prohibition of eating in company with men of lower caste. It is true that prohibition of eating in company with others does appear, but hot in connexion with caste: its purpose is to preserve the peculiar sanctity of those who perform a certain rite or believe in a certain doctrine; for persons who eat of the same food together, according to primitive thought, acquire the same characteristics and enter into a sacramental communion. But Vedic literature does not yet show that to take food from an inferior caste was forbidden as destroying purity. Nor, of course, has the caste system developed the constitution with a head, a council, and common festivals which the modern caste has; for such an organization is not found even in the Epic or in the Pāli literature. The Vedic characteristics of caste are heredity, pursuit of a common occupation, and restriction on intermarriage. 3. Restrictions on Intermarriage. Arrian, in his Indica, probably on the authority of Megasthenes, makes the prohibi¬tion of marriage between <γevη, no doubt castes,’ a characteristic of Indian life. The evidence of Pāli literature is in favour of this view, though it shows that a king could marry whom he wished, and could make his son by that wife the heir apparent. But it equally shows that there were others who held that not the father’s but the mother’s rank determined the social standing of the son. Though Manu recognizes the possibility of marriage with the next lower caste as producing legitimate children, still he condemns the marriage of an Aryan with a woman of lower caste. The Pāraskara Gṛhya Sūtra allows the marriage of a Kṣatriya with a wife of his own caste or of the lower caste, of a Brahmin with a wife of his own caste or of the two lower classes, and of a Vaiśya with a Vaiśya wife only. But it quotes the opinion of others that all of them can marry a śūdra wife, while other authorities condemn the marriage with a śūdra wife in certain circumstances, which implies that in other cases it might be justified. The earlier literature bears out this impression: much stress is laid on descent from a Rṣi, and on purity of descent ; but there is other evidence for the view that even a Brāhmaṇa need not be of pure lineage. Kavaṣa Ailūṣa is taunted with being the son of a Dāsī, ‘slave woman,’ and Vatsa was accused of being a śūdrā’s son, but established his purity by walking unhurt through the flames of a fire ordeal. He who is learned (śiiśruvān) is said to be a Brāhmaṇa, descended from a Rṣi (1ārseya), in the Taittirīya Samhitā; and Satyakāma, son of Jabālā, was accepted as a pupil by Hāridrumata Gautama, though he could not name his father. The Kāthaka Samhitā says that knowledge is all-important, not descent. But all this merely goes to show that there was a measure of laxity in the hereditary character of caste, not that it was not based on heredity. The Yajurveda Samhitās recognize the illicit union of Árya and śūdrā, and vice versa: it is not unlikely that if illicit unions took place, legal marriage was quite possible. The Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, indeed, recognizes such a case in that of Dīrghatamas, son of the slave girl Uśij, if we may adopt the description of Uśij given in the Brhaddevatā. In a hymn of the Atharvaveda extreme claims are put forward for the Brāhmaṇa, who alone is a true husband and the real husband, even if the woman has had others, a Rājanya or a Vaiśya: a śūdra Husband is not mentioned, probably on purpose. The marriage of Brāhmaṇas with Rājanya women is illustrated by the cases of Sukanyā, daughter of king śaryāta, who married Cyavana, and of Rathaviti’s daughter, who married śyāvāśva. 4.Occupation and Caste.—The Greek authorities and the evidence of the Jātakas concur in showing it to have been the general rule that each caste was confined to its own occupations, but that the Brāhmaṇas did engage in many professions beside that of simple priest, while all castes gave members to the śramaṇas, or homeless ascetics. The Jātakas recognize the Brahmins as engaged in all sorts of occupations, as merchants, traders, agriculturists, and so forth. Matters are somewhat simpler in Vedic literature, where the Brāhmaṇas and Kṣatriyas appear as practically confined to their own professions of sacrifice and military or administrative functions. Ludwig sees in Dīrgliaśravas in the Rigveda a Brahmin reduced by indigence to acting as a merchant, as allowed even later by the Sūtra literature; but this is not certain, though it is perfectly possible. More interesting is the question how far the Ksatriyas practised the duties of priests; the evidence here is conflicting. The best known case is, of course, that of Viśvāmitra. In the Rigveda he appears merely as a priest who is attached to the court of Sudās, king of the Tftsus ; but in the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa he is called a king, a descendant of Jahnu, and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa refers to śunahśepa’s succeeding, through his adoption by Viśvāmitra, to the divine lore (daiva veda) of the Gāthins and the lordship of the Jahnus. That in fact this tradition is correct seems most improbable, but it serves at least to illustrate the existence of seers of royal origin. Such figures appear more than once in the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana, which knows the technical terms Rājanyarçi and Devarājan corresponding to the later Rājarṣi, royal sage.’ The Jaiminiya Brāhmaṇa says of one who knows a certain doctrine, ‘being a king he becomes a seer’ (rājā sann rsir bhavati), and the Jaiminiya Upanisad Brāhmana applies the term Rāj'anya to a Brāhmaṇa. Again, it is argued that Devāpi Árstiseṇa, who acted as Purohita, according to the Rigveda, for śantanu, was a prince, as Yāska says or implies he was. But this assumption seems to be only an error of Yāska’s. Since nothing in the Rigveda alludes to any relationship, it is impossible to accept Sieg’s view that the Rigveda recognizes the two as brothers, but presents the fact of a prince acting the part of Purohita as unusual and requiring explanation. The principle, however, thus accepted by Sieg as to princes in the Rigveda seems sound enough. Again, Muir has argued that Hindu tradition, as shown in Sāyaṇa, regards many hymns of the Rigveda as composed by royal personages, but he admits that in many cases the ascription is wrong; it may be added that in the case of Prthī Vainya, where the hymn ascribed to him seems to be his, it is not shown in the hymn itself that he is other than a seer; the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa calls him a king, but that is probably of no more value than the later tradition as to Viśvāmitra. The case of Viśvantara and the śyāparṇas mentioned in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa has been cited as that of a king sacrificing without priestly aid, but the interpretation iś quite uncertain, while the parallel of the Kaśyapas, Asitamrgas, and Bhūtavīras mentioned in the course of the narrative renders it highly probable that the king had other priests to carry out the sacrifice. Somewhat different are a series of other cases found in the Upaniṣads, where the Brahma doctrine is ascribed to royal persons. Thus Janaka is said in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa to have become a Brahman; Ajātaśatru taught Gārgya Bālāki Pravāhaṇa Jaivali instructed śvetaketu Áruṇeya, as well as śilaka śālāvatya and Caikitāyana Dālbhya; and Aśvapati Kaikeya taught Brahmins. It has been deduced from such passages that the Brahma doctrine was a product of the Kṣatriyas. This conclusion is, however, entirely doubtful, for kings were naturally willing to be flattered by the ascription to them of philosophic activity, and elsewhere the opinion of a Rājanya is treated with contempt. It is probably a fair deduction that the royal caste did not much concern itself with the sacred lore of the priests, though it is not unlikely that individual exceptions occurred. But that warriors became priests, that an actual change of caste took place, is quite unproved by a single genuine example. That it was impossible we cannot say, but it seems not to have taken place. To be distinguished from a caste change, as Fick points out, is the fact that a member of any caste could, in the later period at least, become a śramaṇa, as is recorded in effect of many kings in the Epic. Whether the practice is Vedic is not clear: Yāska records it of Devāpi, but this is not evidence for times much anterior to the rise of Buddhism. On the other hand, the Brahmins, or at least the Purohitas, accompanied the princes in battle, and probably, like the mediaeval clergy, were not unprepared to fight, as Vasistha and Viśvāmitra seem to have done, and as priests do even in the Epic from time to time. But a priest cannot be said to change caste by acting in this way. More generally the possibility of the occurrence of change of caste may be seen in the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa,138 where śyāparṇa Sāyakāyana is represented as speaking of his off¬spring as if they could have become the nobles, priests, and commons of the śalvas; and in the Aitareya Brāhmana,139 where Viśvantara is told that if the wrong offering were made his children would be of the three other castes. A drunken Rṣi of the Rigveda140 talks as if he could be converted into a king. On the other hand, certain kings, such as Para Átṇāra, are spoken of as performers of Sattras, ‘sacrificial sessions.’ As evidence for caste exchange all this amounts to little; later a Brahmin might become a king, while the Rṣi in the Rigveda is represented as speaking in a state of intoxication; the great kings could be called sacrificers if, for the nonce, they were consecrated (dīksita), and so temporarily became Brahmins.The hypothetical passages, too, do not help much. It would be unwise to deny the possibility of caste exchange, but it is not clearly indicated by any record. Even cases like that of Satyakāma Jābāla do not go far; for ex hypothesi that teacher did not know who his father was, and the latter could quite well have been a Brahmin. It may therefore be held that the priests and the nobles practised hereditary occupations, and that either class was a closed body into which a man must be born. These two Varṇas may thus be fairly regarded as castes. The Vaiśyas offer more difficulty, for they practised a great variety of occupations (see Vaiśya). Fick concludes that there is no exact sense in which they can be called a caste, since, in the Buddhist literature, they were divided into various groups, which themselves practised endogamy such as the gahapatis, or smaller landowners, the setthis, or large merchants and members of the various guilds, while there are clear traces in the legal textbooks of a view that Brāhmana and Kṣatriya stand opposed to all the other members of the community. But we need hardly accept this view for Vedic times, when the Vaiśya, the ordinary freeman of the tribe, formed a class or caste in all probability, which was severed by its free status from the śūdras, and which was severed by its lack of priestly or noble blood from the two higher classes in the state. It is probably legitimate to hold that any Vaiśya could marry any member of the caste, and that the later divisions within the category of Vaiśyas are growths of divisions parallel with the original process by which priest and noble had grown into separate entities. The process can be seen to-day when new tribes fall under the caste system: each class tries to elevate itself in the social scale by refusing to intermarry with inferior classes on equal terms—hypergamy is often allowed—and so those Vaiśyas who acquired wealth in trade (śreṣthin) or agriculture (the Pāli Gahapatis) would become distinct, as sub-castes, from the ordinary Vaiśyas. But it is not legitimate to regard Vaiśya as a theoretic caste; rather it is an old caste which is in process of dividing into innumerable sub-castes under influences of occupation, religion, or geographical situation. Fick denies also that the śūdras ever formed a single caste: he regards the term as covering the numerous inferior races and tribes defeated by the Aryan invaders, but originally as denoting only one special tribe. It is reasonable to suppose that śūdra was the name given by the Vedic Indians to the nations opposing them, and that these ranked as slaves beside the three castes—nobles, priests, and people—just as in the Anglo-Saxon and early German constitution beside the priests, the nobiles or eorls, and the ingenui, ordinary freemen or ceorls, there was a distinct class of slaves proper; the use of a generic expression to cover them seems natural, whatever its origin (see śūdra). In the Aryan view a marriage of śūdras could hardly be regulated by rules; any śūdra could wed another, if such a marriage could be called a marriage at all, for a slave cannot in early law be deemed to be capable of marriage proper. But what applied in the early Vedic period became no doubt less and less applicable later when many aboriginal tribes and princes must have come into the Aryan community by peaceful means, or by conquest, without loss of personal liberty, and when the term śūdra would cover many sorts of people who were not really slaves, but were freemen of a humble character occupied in such functions as supplying the numerous needs of the village, like the Caṇdālas, or tribes living under Aryan control, or independent, such as the Niṣādas. But it is also probable that the śūdras came to include men of Aryan race, and that the Vedic period saw the degradation of Aryans to a lower social status. This seems, at any rate, to have been the case with the Rathakāras. In the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa the Rathakāra is placed as a special class along with the Brāhmaṇas, Rājanyas, and Vaiśyas: this can hardly be interpreted except to mean that the Rathakāras were not included in the Aryan classes, though it is just possible that only a subdivision of the Vaiśyas is meant. There is other evidence that the Rathakāras were regarded as śūdras. But in the Atharvaveda the Rathakāras and the Karmāras appear in a position of importance in connexion with the selection of the king; these two classes are also referred to in an honourable way in the Vājasaneyi Sarphitā; in the śata¬patha Brāhmaṇa, too, the Rathakāra is mentioned as a a person of high standing. It is impossible to accept the view suggested by Fick that these classes were originally non- Aryan ; we must recognize that the Rathakāras, in early Vedic times esteemed for their skill, later became degraded because of the growth of the feeling that manual labour was not dignified. The development of this idea was a departure from the Aryan conception; it is not unnatural, however undesirable, and has a faint parallel in the class distinctions of modern Europe. Similarly, the Karmāra, the Takṣan the Carmamna, or ‘tanner,’ the weaver and others, quite dignified occupations in the Rigveda, are reckoned as śūdras in the Pāli texts. The later theory, which appears fully developed in the Dharma Sūtras, deduces the several castes other than the original four from the intermarriage of the several castes. This theory has no justification in the early Vedic literature. In some cases it is obviously wrong; for example, the Sūta is said to be a caste of this kind, whereas it is perfectly clear that if the Sūtas did form a caste, it was one ultimately due to occupation. But there is no evidence at all that the Sūtas, Grāmaηīs, and other members of occupations were real castes in the sense that they were endogamic in the early Vedic period. All that we can say is that there was a steady progress by which caste after caste was formed, occupation being an important determining feature, just as in modern times there are castes bearing names like Gopāla (cowherd ’) Kaivarta or Dhīvara ('fisherman'), and Vaṇij (‘merchant’). Fick finds in the Jātakas mention of a number of occupations whose members did not form part of any caste at all, such as the attendants on the court, the actors and dancers who went from village to village, and the wild tribes that lived in the mountains, fishermen, hunters, and so on. In Vedic times these people presumably fell under the conception of śūdra, and may have included the Parṇaka, Paulkasa, Bainda, who are mentioned with many others in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā and the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa in the list of victims at the Puruṣamedha (‘human sacrifice’). The slaves also, whom Fick includes in the same category, were certainly included in the term śūdra. 5. Origin of the Castes.—The question of the origin of the castes presents some difficulty. The ultimate cause of the extreme rigidity of the caste system, as compared with the features of any other Aryan society, must probably be sought in the sharp distinction drawn from the beginning between the Aryan and the śūdra. The contrast which the Vedic Indians felt as existing between themselves and the conquered population, and which probably rested originally on the difference of colour between the upper and the lower classes, tended to accentuate the natural distinctions of birth, occupation, and locality which normally existed among the Aryan Indians, but which among other Aryan peoples never developed into a caste system like that of India. The doctrine of hypergamy which marks the practical working of the caste system, seems clearly to point to the feeling that the Aryan could marry the śūdrā, but not the śūdra the Aryā. This distinction probably lies at the back of all other divisions: its force may be illustrated by the peculiar state of feeling as to mixed marriages, for example, in the Southern States of America and in South Africa, or even in India itself, between the new invaders from Europe and the mingled population which now peoples the country. Marriages between persons of the white and the dark race are disapproved in principle, but varying degrees of condemnation attach to (1) the marriage of a man of the white race with a woman of the dark race; (2) an informal connexion between these two; (3) a marriage between a woman of the white race and a man of the dark race; and (4) an informal connexion between these two. Each category, on the whole, is subject to more severe reprobation than the preceding one. This race element, it would seem, is what has converted social divisions into castes. There appears, then, to be a large element of truth in the theory, best represented by Risley, which explains caste in the main as a matter of blood, and which holds that the higher the caste is, the greater is the proportion of Aryan blood. The chief rival theory is undoubtedly that of Senart, which places the greatest stress on the Aryan constitution of the family. According to Senart the Aryan people practised in affairs of marriage both a rule of exogamy, and one of endogamy. A man must marry a woman of equal birth, but not one of the same gens, according to Roman law as interpreted by Senart and Kovalevsky ; and an Athenian must marry an Athenian woman, but not one of the same γez/oç. In India these rules are reproduced in the form that one must not marry within the Gotra, but not without the caste. The theory, though attractively developed, is not convincing; the Latin and Greek parallels are not even probably accurate ; and in India the rule forbidding marriage within the Gotra is one which grows in strictness as the evidence grows later in date. On the other hand, it is not necessary to deny that the development of caste may have been helped by the family traditions of some gentes, or Gotras. The Patricians of Rome for a long time declined intermarriage with the plebeians; the Athenian Eupatridai seem to have kept their yevη pure from contamination by union with lower blood; and there may well have been noble families among the Vedic Indians who intermarried only among themselves. The Germans known to Tacitus163 were divided into nobiles and ingenui, and the Anglo-Saxons into eorls and ceorls, noble and non-noble freemen.1®4 The origin of nobility need not be sought in the Vedic period proper, for it may already have existed. It may have been due to the fact that the king, whom we must regard as originally elected by the people, was as king often in close relation with, or regarded as an incarnation of, the deity;165 and that hereditary kingship would tend to increase the tradition of especially sacred blood: thus the royal family and its offshoots would be anxious to maintain the purity of their blood. In India, beside the sanctity of the king, there was the sanctity of the priest. Here we have in the family exclusiveness of king and nobles, and the similar exclusiveness of a priesthood which was not celibate, influences that make for caste, especially when accompanying the deep opposition between the general folk and the servile aborigines. Caste, once created, naturally developed in different directions. Nesfield166 was inclined to see in occupation the one ground of caste. It is hardly necessary seriously to criticize this view considered as an ultimate explanation of caste, but it is perfectly certain that gilds of workers tend to become castes. The carpenters (Tak§an), the chariot-makers (Rathakāra), the fisher¬men (Dhaivara) and others are clearly of the type of caste, and the number extends itself as time goes on. But this is not to say that caste is founded on occupation pure and simple in its first origin, or that mere difference of occupation would have produced the system of caste without the interposition of the fundamental difference between Aryan and Dāsa or śūdra blood and colour. This difference rendered increasingly important what the history of the Aryan peoples shows us to be declining, the distinction between the noble and the non-noble freemen, a distinction not of course ultimate, but one which seems to have been developed in the Aryan people before the separation of its various.branches. It is well known that the Iranian polity presents a division of classes comparable in some respects with the Indian polity. The priests (Athravas) and warriors (Rathaesthas) are unmistakably parallel, and the two lower classes seem to correspond closely to the Pāli Gahapatis, and perhaps to the śūdras. But they are certainly not castes in the Indian sense of the word. There is no probability in the view of Senart or of Risley that the names of the old classes were later superimposed artificially on a system of castes that were different from them in origin. We cannot say that the castes existed before the classes, and that the classes were borrowed by India from Iran, as Risley maintains, ignoring the early Brāhmaṇa evidence for the four Varnas, and treating the transfer as late. Nor can we say with Senart that the castes and classes are of independent origin. If there had been no Varṇa, caste might never have arisen; both colour and class occupation are needed for a plausible account of the rise of caste.
‘Speech,’ plays a great part in Vedic speculation, but only a few points are of other than mythological significance. Speech is in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa divided into four kinds —that of men, of animals, of birds (vayāψsi), and of small creeping things (ksudram sañsrpam). The discrimination or making articulate of speech is ascribed to Indra by the Saiphitās. The speech ’ of the following musical instruments — Tūṇava, Vīṇā, Dundubhi — is mentioned, and in one Samhitā also that of the axle of a chariot. The speech of the Kuru-Pañcālas was especially renowned, as well as that of the northern country, according to the Kausītaki Brāhmaṇa, so that men went there to study the language. On the other hand, barbarisms in speech were known, and were to be avoided. One division of speech referred to* is that of the divine (daivī) and the human (mānusī), of which some specimens are given, such as om, the divine counterpart of tathā, and so forth. The Brahmin is said to know both ; it seems best to regard the distinction not as between Sanskrit and Apabhramśa, as Sāyaṇa suggests, but as between the Sanskrit of the ritual and the hymns and that of ordinary life. Reference is also made to Aryan11 and to Brahmin12 speech, by which Sanskrit, as opposed to non-Aryan tongues, seems to be meant. The Vrātyas are described as speaking the language of the initiated (dlksita-vāc), though not themselves initiated (a-dīksita), but as calling that which is easy to utter (a-durukta), difficult to utter. This may mean that the non-Brahminical Indians were advancing more rapidly than the Brahminical tribes to Prākrit speech, especially if it is legitimate to connect the Vrātyas with the barbarians in speech alluded to in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa.
Is the name of a ceremony which, according to the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and later authorities, is only performed by a Brahmin or a Kṣatriya. The same Brāhmaṇa insists that this sacrifice is superior to the Rājasūya, but the consensus of other authorities assigns to it merely the place of a preliminary to the Bphaspatisava in the case of a priest, and to the Rājasūya in the case of a king, while the śatapatha is compelled to identify the Bṛhaspatisava with the Vājapeya. The essential ceremony is a chariot race in which the sacrificer is victorious. There is evidence in the śāñkhāyana śrauta Sūtra® showing that once the festival was one which any Aryan could perform. Hillebrandt, indeed, goes so far as to compare it with the Olympic games; but there is hardly much real ground for this: the rite seems to have been developed round a primitive habit of chariot racing, transformed into a ceremony which by sympathetic magic secures the success of the sacrificer. In fact Eggeling seems correct in holding that the Vājapeya was a preliminary rite performed by a Brahmin prior to his formal installation as a Purohita, or by a king prior to his consecration. The Kuru Vājapeya was specially well known.
Is an expression of somewhat doubtful significance. In many passages of the Rigveda the sense of ‘settlement’ or ‘dwelling’ is adequate and probable, since the root viś means to enter’ or ‘settle.’ In other passages, where the Viśaḥ stand in relation to a prince, the term must mean ‘subject’; so, for example, when the people of Tṛṇaskanda or of the Trtsus are mentioned. ' Again, in some passages the general sense of ‘ people ’ is adequate; as when the Rigveda speaks of the ‘Aryan people,’ or the ‘divine people,’ or the ‘ Dāsa people,’ and so on. Sometimes, however, the Viś appear in a more special sense as a subdivision of the Jana or whole people. This is, however, not common, for in most passages one or other of the senses given above is quite possible. Moreover, it is very difficult to decide whether the Viś as a subdivision of the Jana is to be considered as being a local subdivision (canton) or a blood kinship equivalent to a clan in the large sense of the word, while the relation of the Viś to the Grāma or to the Gotra is quite uncertain. In one passage of the Atharvaveda the Viśah are mentioned along with the sabandhavah or relatives, but no definite conclusion can be drawn from that fact. Nor does the analogy of the Roman curia or the Greek φpηrpη throw much light, as these institutions are themselves of obscure character, and the parallelism need not be cogent. It is, at any rate, possible that the Viś may in some cases have been no more than a Gotra or clan, or different clans may sometimes have made up a Viś, while Grāma is more definitely, perhaps, a local designation. But the Vedic evidence is quite inconclusive. Cf. Viśpati. In the later period the sense of Viś is definitely restricted in some cases to denote the third of the classes of the Vedic polity, the people or clansmen as opposed to the nobles (Kṣatra, Kṣatriya) and the priests (Brahman, Brāhmaṇa). For the position of this class, see Vaiśya.
‘Descendant of Vidadaśva,’ is the patronymic of Taranta in the Rigveda. In the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa and the Jaiminlya Brāhmaṇa the Vaidadaśvis are Taranta and Purumflha. The latter is not a Vaidadaśvi in the Rigveda, a clear sign of the worthlessness of the legends relative to these two men in the Brāhmanas.
Seem to have in the later Samhitās and the Brāhmaṇas the definite and technical sense of ‘wergeld,’ the money to be paid for killing a man as a compensation to his relatives. This view is borne out by the Sūtras of Apastamba and Baudhāyana. Both prescribe the scale of 1,000 cows for a Kṣatriya, 100 for a Vaiśya, 10 for a śūdra, and a bull over and above in each case. Apastamba leaves the destination of the payment vague, but Baudhāyana assigns it to the king. It is reasonable to suppose that the cows were intended for the relations, and the bull was a present to the king for his intervention to induce the injured relatives to abandon the demand for the life of the offender. The Apastamba Sūtra allows the same scale of wergeld for women, but the Gautama Sūtra puts them on a level with men of the śūdra caste only, except in one special case. The payment is made for the purpose of vaira-yātana or vaira-niryātana, 'requital of enmity,' 'expiation' he Rigveda preserves, also, the important notice that a man’s wergeld was a hundred (cows), for it contains the epithet śata-dāya, ‘one whose wergeld is a hundred/ No doubt the values varied, but in the case of śunaháepa the amount is a hundred (cows) in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. In the Yajurveda Samhitās śata-dāya again appears. The fixing of the price shows that already public opinion, and perhaps the royal authority, was in Rigvedic times diminishing the sphere of private revenge; on the other hand, the existence of the system shows how weak was the criminal authority of the king (cf. Dharma).
Denotes a man, not so much of the people, as of the subject class, distinct from the ruling noble (Kṣatriya) and the Brāhmaṇa, the higher strata of the Aryan community on the one side, and from the aboriginal śūdra on the other. The name is first found in the Puruṣa-sūkta (‘ hymn of man ’) in the Rigveda, and then frequently from the Atharvaveda onwards, sometimes in the form of Viśya. The Vaiśya plays singularly little part in Vedic literature, which has much to say of Kṣatriya and Brahmin. His characteristics are admirably summed up in the Aitareya Brāh¬maṇa in the adjectives anyasya bali-krt, ‘tributary to another’; anyasyādya, ‘to be lived upon by another’; and yathakāma- jyeyafr, ‘to be oppressed at will.’ He was unquestionably taxed by the king (Rājan), who no doubt assigned to his retinue the right of support by the people, so that the Kṣatriyas grew more and more to depend on the services rendered to them by the Vaiśyas. But the Vaiśya was not a slave: he could not be killed by the king or anyone else without the slayer incurring risk and the payment of a wergeld (Vaira), which even in the Brahmin books extends to 100 cows for a Vaiśya. Moreover, though the Vaiśya could be expelled by the king at pleasure, he cannot be said to have been without property in his land. Hopkins® thinks it is absurd to suppose that he could really be a landowner when he was subject to removal at will, but this is to ignore the fact that normally the king could not remove the landowner, and that kings were ultimately dependent on the people, as the tales of exiled kings show. On the other hand, Hopkins is clearly right in holding that the Vaiśya was really an agriculturist, and that Vedic society was not merely a landholding aristocracy, superimposed upon an agricultural aboriginal stock, as Baden Powell8 urged. Without ignoring the possibility that the Dravidians were agriculturists, there is no reason to deny that the Aryans were so likewise, and the goad of the plougher was the mark of a Vaiśya in life and in death. It would be absurd to suppose that the Aryan Vaiśyas 'did not engage in industry and com¬merce (cf. Paṇi, Vaṇij), but pastoral pursuits and agriculture must have been their normal occupations. In war the Vaiśyas must have formed the bulk of the force under the Kṣatriya leaders (see Kçatriya). But like the Homeric commoners, the Vaiśyas may well have done little of the serious fighting, being probably ill-provided with either body armour or offensive weapons. That the Vaiśyas were engaged in the intellectual life of the day is unlikely; nor is there any tradition, corresponding to that regarding the Kṣatriyas, of their having taken part in the evolution of the doctrine of Brahman, the great philosophic achievement of the age. The aim of the Vaiśya's ambition was, according to the Taittirīya Samhitā, to become a Grāmariī, or village headman, a post probably conferred by the king on wealthy Vaiśyas, of whom no doubt there were many. It is impossible to say if in Vedic times a Vaiśya could attain to nobility or become a Brahmin. No instance can safely be quoted in support of such a view, though such changes of status may have taken place (see Kṣatriya and Varṇa). It is denied by Fick that the Vaiśyas were ever a caste, and the denial is certainly based on good grounds if it is held that a caste means a body within which marriage is essential, and which follows a hereditary occupation (cf. Varṇa). But it would be wrong to suppose that the term Vaiśya was merely applied by theorists to the people who were not nobles or priests. It must have been an early appellation of a definite class which was separate from the other classes, and properly to be compared with them. Moreover, though there were differences among Vaiśyas, there were equally differences among Kṣatriyas and Brāhmaṇas, and it is impossible to deny the Vaiśyas’ claim to be reckoned a class or caste if the other two are such, though at the present day things are different.
In one passage of the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa clearly denotes a narrative ’ merely—viz., that of the dispute of Kadrū and Suparṇī. In other passages the word means simply ‘commentary.’ In the Brhadāranyaka Upaniṣad, used in the plural, it signifies a species of writing, apparently ‘ commentaries,’ though its exact relation to Anuvyākhyāna must remain obscure. Sieg thinks that the Vyākhyānas were forms of narrative like Anvākhyāna and Anuvyākhyāna.
Disease,' occurs several times in Vedic literature. The specific diseases are dealt with under the separate names, but the Vedic texts also mention innumerable bodily defects. The list of victims at the Puruṣamedha (‘human sacrifice’) includes a ‘dwarf’ (vāmana, kubja), a ‘bald ’ person (khalati), a ‘blind’ man (andha), a ‘deaf’ man (badhira),δ a ‘dumb’ man (;mūka),θ a ‘fat’ man (plvan), a ‘leper’ (sidhmala, kilāsa), a ‘yellow-eyed’ man (hary-aksa), a ‘tawny-eyed’ man [ping- āksa), a ‘cripple’ (pitha-sarpin), a ‘lame’ man (srāma), a ‘sleepless’ man (jāgarana), a ‘sleepy’ man (svapana), one ‘too tall’ (ati-dīrgha), one ‘too short’ (ati-hrasva), one ‘too stout’ (ati-sthūla or aty-aηisala), one ‘too thin’ (ati-krśa), one ‘too white’ (ati-śukla), one ‘too dark’ (ati-kγṣna), one ‘too bald’ (ati-kulva), and one 'too hairy' (ati-lomaśa). In the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā the man with bad nails and the man with brown teeth are mentioned along with sinners like the Didhiçūpati. The śatapatha Brāhmana mentions a white-spotted (śtikla), bald-headed man, with projecting teeth (yiklidha) and reddish-brown eyes.’ Interesting is Zimmer’s suggestion that kirmira found in the Vājasaneyi Samhitā means ‘spotty’ as an intermixture of races, but it is only a conjecture, apparently based on a supposed connexion of the word with kr, ‘mix.’ In the Vājasaneyi Samhitā and the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa various epithets are applied to women, some of which seem to denote disease, and in the Atharvaveda16 the feminine adjectives, ‘ antelope-footed ’ (rśya-padī) and ‘ bulltoothed’ (vrsa-datl), probably refer to bodily defects.
According to Roth, means ‘troop’ in the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda. Zimmer sees in the word (in the feminine form of vrā) a designation in one passage of the village host which formed part of the Viś, and was composed of relations (su-bandhu). On the other hand, Pischel thinks that in all the passages Vrā means ‘female,’ used either of animals or of women who go to the feast (Samana), or courtezans (■υiśyā, ‘of the people’)» or, metaphorically, the hymns compared with courtezans: these senses are perhaps adequate.
Is included in the list of victims at the Puruṣamedha (‘human sacrifice’) in the Yajurveda, where, however, no further explanation of the name is given. Fuller information is furnished by the Atharvaveda, the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, and the Sūtras, which describe at length a certain rite intended for the use of Vrātyas. According to the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, there are four different kinds of ‘outcasts’—viz., the hīna, who are merely described as ‘depressed’; those who have become outcasts for some sin (nindita); those who become outcasts at an early age, apparently by living among outcasts; and those old men who, being impotent (śama-nīcamedhra), have gone to live with outcasts. The last three categories are by no means of the same importance as the first. The motive of the fourth is hard to understand: according to Rājārām Rām- krishṇa Bhāgavat,5 they were men who had enfeebled their constitutions by undue intercourse with women in the lands of the outcasts, and returned home in a debilitated state. But this is not stated in the text. It seems probable that the really important Vrātyas were those referred to as Itlna, and that the other classes were only subsidiary. According to Rāj'ārām,® there were two categories of the first class: (a) The depressed (hīna), who were non- Aryan ; and (6) degraded Aryans (gara-gir). This, however, is a mere guess, and devoid of probability. There seems to have been but one class of Vrātyas. That they were non-Aryan is not probable, for it is expressly said7 that, though unconse¬crated, they spoke the tongue of the consecrated: they were thus apparently Aryans. This view is confirmed by the state-ment that ‘they call what is easy of utterance, difficult to utter’: probable they had already a somewhat Prakritic form of speech (cf. Vāc). The Sūtras mention their Arhants (‘saints’) and Yaudhas (‘warriors’), corresponding to the Brahminical Brāhmana and Kṣatriya. Other particulars accord with the view that they were Aryans outside the sphere of Brahmin culture. Thus they are said not to practise agriculture or commerce (an allusion to a nomadic life), nor to observe the rules of Brahmacarya—i.e., the principle regulating the Brahminic order of life. They were also allowed to become members of the Brahminical community by performance of the ritual prescribed, which would hardly be so natural in the case of non-Aryans. Some details are given of the life and dress of the Vrātyas. Their principles were opposed to those of the Brahmins: they beat those unworthy of correction. Their leader (Gṛhapati) or householder wore a turban (Uçṇīçε), carried a whip (Pratoda), a kind of bow (Jyāhroda), was :lothed in a black (krçnaśa) garment and two skins (Ajina), blxk and white (krsna-valaksa), and owned a rough wagon (Vijatha) covered with planks (phalakāstīrna). The others, subordinate to the leader, had garments with fringes of red (valūkāntāni dāmatūsām), two fringes on each, skins folded double (dvisamhitāny ajinūni), and sandals (Upānah). The leader wore also an ornament (Niçka) of silver, which Rājārām converts into a silver coinage. The Vrātyas, on becoming consecrated, were expected to hand over their goods to the priest. Many other details are given in the Sūtras (e.g., that the shoes or sandals were of variegated black hue and pointed), but these are not authenticated by the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa. The locality in which the Vrāiyas lived cannot be stated with certainty, but their nomad life suggests the western tribes beyond the Sarasvatī. But they may equally well have been in the east: this possibility is so far supported by the fact that the Sūtras make the Brahmin receiving the gift of the Vrātya's outfit an inhabitant of Mag’adha. The Atharvaveda does not help, for it treats the Vrātya in so mystical a way that he is represented as being in all the quarters. Indeed, Roth believed that it was here not a case of the Vrātya of the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa at all, but of a glorification of the Vrātya as the type of the pious vagrant or wandering religious mendicant (Parivrājaka). This view is clearly wrong, as the occurrence of the words usnīsa, vipatha, and pratoda shows. It is probable that the 15th Book of the Atharvaveda, which deals with the Vrātya, and is of a mystical character, exalts the converted Vrātya as a type of the perfect Brahmacārin, and, in so far, of the divinity.
(Hymn ‘relating to the hundred Rudras’), is the name of a section of the Yajurveda,3 which celebrates the god Rudra in his hundred aspects, enumerating his many epithets.
Is the hero of a tale told by Yāska, and often found later. He supersedes his elder brother Devāpi as king of the Kurus. When his improper deed brings on a prolonged drought in his realm, he is compelled to ask his brother to assume the kingship; Devāpi, however, refuses, but instead performs a sacrifice which produces rain. Sieg endeavours to trace this story in the Rigveda, but all that is there stated is that Devāpi Árṣtiseṇa obtained (no doubt as priest) rain for śamtanu (no doubt a king). There is no hint of relationship at all.
‘Body,’ is a word of frequent occurrence in Vedic literature. The interest of the Vedic Indians seems early to have been attracted to the consideration of questions connected with the anatomy of the body. Thus a hymn of the Atharvaveda enumerates many parts of the body with some approach to accuracy and orderly arrangement. It mentions the heels (pārsnf), the flesh (māmsa), the ankle-bones (gulphau), the fingers (angulīh), the apertures (kha), the two metatarsi (uchlakau), the tarsus (pratisthā), the two knee-caps (astliī- vantau), the two legs {janghe), the two knee-joints (jānunoh sandhī). Then comes above the two knees (jānū) the foursided (catuçtaya), pliant (śithira) trunk (kabandha). The two hips (śronī) and the two thighs (ūrū) are the props of the frame (ktisindha). Next come the breast-bone (uras), the cervical cartilages (grīvāh), the two breast pieces (stanau), the two shoulder-blades (/kaphodau), the neck-bones (skandhau), and the backbones (prstīh), the collar-bones (amsau), the arms (bāhu), the seven apertures in the head (sapta khāni śīrsani), the ears (karnau), the nostrils (nāsike), the eyes (caksanī), the mouth (mukha), the jaws (hanū), the tongue (jihvā), the brain (mas- tiska), the forehead (lalāta), the facial bone (kakātikā), the cranium (kapāla), and the structure of the jaws (cityā hanvoh). This system presents marked similarities with the later system of Caraka and Suśruta,4 which render certain the names ascribed to the several terms by Hoernle. Kaphodau, which is variously read in the manuscripts,5 is rendered ‘ collar-bone ’ by Whitney, but ‘ elbow ’ in the St. Petersburg Dictionary. Skandha in the plural regularly denotes 'neck-bones,’ or, more precisely, ‘cervical vertebrae,’ a part denoted also by usnihā in the plural. Prsii denotes not * rib,’ which is parśu, but a transverse process of a vertebra, and so the vertebra itself, there being in the truncal portion of the spinal column seventeen vertebrae and thirty-four transverse processes. The vertebrae are also denoted by kīkasā in the plural, which sometimes is limited to the upper portion of the vertebral column, sometimes to the thoracic portion of the spine. Anūka also denotes the vertebral column, or more specially the lumbar or thoracic portion of the spine; it is said in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa that there are twenty transverse processes in the lumbar spine (udara) and thirty-two in the thoracic, which gives twenty-six vertebrae, the true number (but the modern division is seven cervical, twelve thoracic, five lumbar, and two false—the sacrum and the coccyx). The vertebral column is also denoted by karūkara, which, however, is usually found in the plural denoting the transverse processes of the vertebrae, a sense expressed also by kuntāpa. Grīvā, in the plural, denotes cervical vertebrae, the number seven being given by the Satapatha Brāhmana, but usually the word simply means windpipe, or, more accurately, the cartilaginous rings under the skin. Jatru, also in the plural, denotes the cervical cartilages, or possibly the costal cartilages, which are certainly so called in the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, where their number is given as eight. Bhamsas, which occurs thrice in the Atharvaveda, seems to denote the pubic bone or arch rather than the ‘buttocks’ or ‘fundament,’ as Whitney takes it. In the śatapatha Brāhmaṇa the number of bones in the the human body is given as 360. The number of the bones of the head and trunk are given in another passage as follows: The head is threefold, consisting of skin (tvac), bone (1asthi), brain (matiska); the neck has 15 bones : 14 transverse processes (karūkara) and the strength (vīrya)—i.e., the bone of the centre regarded as one—as the 15th ; the breast has 17: 16 cervical cartilages (Jatru), and the sternum (uras) as the 17th ; the abdominal portion of the spine has 21 : 20 transverse processes (kimtāpa), and the abdominal portion (udara) as the 21st; the two sides have 27: 26 ribs (parśu), and the two sides as the 27th; the thoracic portion of the spine (anūka) has 33: 32 transverse processes, and the thoracic portion as 33rd. There are several enumerations of the parts of the body, not merely of the skeleton, in the Yajurveda Samhitās. They include the hair (lomāni), skin (tvac), flesh (māinsá), bone (1asthi), marrow (majjan), liver (yakrt), lungs (kloman), kidneys (matasne), gall (pitta), entrails (āntrāni), bowels (gudāh), spleen (ptīhan), navel (nābht), belly (udara), rectum (vanisthu), womb (yoni), penis (plāśi and śepa), face (mukha), head (śiras), tongue (jihvā), mouth (āsan), rump (pāyu), leech (vāla), eye (caksus), eyelashes (paksmāni), eyebrows (utāni), nose (was), breath (iiyāna), nose-hairs (nasyāni), ears (karnau), brows (bhrū), body or trunk (ātman), waist (upastha), hair on the face (śmaśrūni), and on the head (keśāh). Another enumeration gives śiras, mukha, keśāh, śmaśrūni, prāna (breath), caksus, śrotra (ear), jihvā, vāc (speech), manas (mind), arigulik, añgāni (limbs), bāhū, hastau (hands), karnau, ātmā, uras (sternum), prstllj, (vertebrae), udara, amsau, grīvāh, śronī, ūrū, aratnī (elbows), jānūni, nūbhi, pāyu, bhasat (fundament), āndau (testicles), pasas (membrum virile), jañghā, pad (foot), lomāni, tvac, māmsa, asthi, majjan. Another set of names includes vanisthu, purītat (pericardium), lomāni, tvac, lohita (blood), medas (fat), māmsāni, snāvāni (sinews), asthīni, majjānah, ret as (semen), pāyu, kośya (flesh near the heart), pārśvya (intercostal flesh), etc. The bones of the skeleton of the horse are enumerated in the Yajurveda Samhitās. In the Aitareya Araṇyaka the human body is regarded as made up of one hundred and one items ; there are four parts, each of twenty-five members, with the trunk as one hundred and first. In the two upper parts there are five four-jointed fingers, two kakçasī (of uncertain meaning), the arm (dos), the collar-bone (akça), and the shoulder-blade (artisa-phalaka). In the two lower portions there are five four-jointed toes, the thigh, the leg, and three articulations, according to Sāyaṇa’s commentary. The śānkhāyana Araṇyaka enumerates three bones in the head, three joints (parvāni) in the neck, the collar-bone {akṣa), three joints in the fingers, and twenty-one transverse processes in the spine (anūka).sg The Maitrāyaṇī Samhitā enumerates four constituents in the head {prāna, caksns, śrotra, vāc), but there are many variations, the number going up to twelve on one calculation. In the Taittirīya Upaniṣad an enumeration is given consisting of carma (skin), māinsa, snāvan, asthi, and majjan; the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa has lomāni, mānμa, tvac, asthi, majjan, and the Aitareya Araṇyaka couples majjānah, snāvāni, and asthīni. Other terms relating to the body are kañkūsa, perhaps a part of the ear, yoni (female organ), kaksa (armpit), Danta (tooth), nakha (nail), prapada (forepart of the foot), hallks'tia (gall).
Properly an adjective in the sense of ‘relating to śambara,’ appears in one passage of the Rigveda (iii. 47, 4) to be used as a substantive denoting ‘ the contest with śambara.’
Is the designation of the fourth caste in the Vedic state (see Varṇa). It is quite unknown in the Rigveda except in the Purusasūkta (‘hymn of man’) in the tenth Maṇdala, where in the earliest version of the origin of the castes the śūdra for the first time appears. The Rigveda, on the other hand, knows Dasyu and Dāsa, both as aborigines independent of Aryan control and as subjugated slaves: it is reasonable to reckon the śūdra of the later texts as belonging to the aborigines who had been reduced to subjection by the Aryans. Strictly speaking, the defeated aborigines must have been regarded as slaves, but it is obvious that, except on occasions when most of the men were slain, which may have occurred quite often, there must have remained too many of them to be used as slaves of individual owners. The villages of the aborigines must have continued to subsist, but under Aryan lordship and control: there may be this amount of truth in Baden Powell’s theory, which practically traced all the early cultivating villages in India to Dravidian origin. On the other hand, the term śūdra would also cover the wild hill tribes which lived by hunting and fishing, and many of which would acknowledge the superiority of their Aryan neighbours: it could, in fact, be applied to all beyond the pale of the Aryan state. This view of the śūdra suits adequately the Vedic references to his condition, which would not apply adequately to domestic slaves only. The śūdra is continually opposed to the Aryan, and the colour of the śūdra is compared with that of the Aryan, just as his ways are so contrasted. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa, in its account of the castes, declares that the śūdra is anyasya presya, ‘the servant of another’; kāmotthāpya, ‘to be expelled at will’; andyathākāmaυadhya, ‘to be slain at will.’ All these terms well enough describe the position of the serf as the result of a conquest: the epithets might have been applied to the English serf after the Norman Conquest with but slight inaccuracy, especially if his master had received a grant of jurisdiction from the Crown. The Pañcavimśa Brāh- mapa explains that even if prosperous (bahu-paśu, having many cows’) a śūdra could not be other than a servant: his business was pādāvanejya, ‘ the washing of the feet ’ of his superiors. The Mahābhārata says out and out that a śūdra has no property (a hi svam asti śūdrasya, ‘ the śūdra has nothing he can call his own’). On the other hand, just as in England the royal justice would protect the serf in life and limb,8 so it appears that the slaying of a śūdra involved a wergeld of ten cows according to both Baudhāyana and Ápastamba. It may, indeed, be held that this wergeld was only due in case of murder by another than the master, but such limitation is nowhere stated. In sacred matters the distinction between Aryan and śūdra was, of course, specially marked. The texts do not hesitate to declare that the upper castes were ‘all,’ ignoring the śūdras; the śūdra is prohibited from milking the cow for the milk required at the Agnihotra (‘oblation to Agni ’); and the śatapatha Brāhmana forbids a man who has been consecrated (1dlksita) for a sacrifice to speak to a śūdra at all for the time, though the śāṭyāyanaka seems to have relaxed this rule by confining it to cases in which the śūdra was guilty of some sin. At the sacrifice itself the śūdra could not be present in the śālā, ‘hall’; he is definitely classed in the śatapatha Brāh¬mana and the Pañcavimśa Brāhmana10 as unfit for ‘ sacrifice ’ (ayajñtya); and declared in the Kāçhaka Samhitā not to be admitted to drink Soma. At the Pravargya (introductory Soma) rite the performer is not allowed to come in contact with a śūdra, who here, as in the Kāthaka Samhitā,17 is reckoned as excluded from a share in the Soma-draught. On the other hand, the śūdra is one of the victims at the Puruṣa- medha (‘ human sacrifice ’) in the Yaj’urveda, and a fight between an Aryan and a śūdra, in which, of course, the former wins, forms a part of the Mahāvrata rite, being perhaps a precursor of the Indian drama. Other indications, however, exist, showing that it would be undesirable to ignore the real importance of the śūdra, which again reminds us of the condition of the serf, who, though legally restrained, still gradually won his way to the rank of a free man. Rich śūdras are mentioned in the early texts, just as śūdra gahapatis, ‘householders,’ occur in the Buddhist texts, and śūdra kings in the legal literature. Sin against śūdra and Aryan is mentioned; prayers for glory on behalf of śūdras, as well as of the other castes occur; and the desire to be dear to śūdra as well as to Aryan is expressed. The Sūtras also, while they emphasize as general rules points earlier not insisted on, such as their inferiority in sitting, etc., their exclusion from the study of the Vedas, the danger of contact with them or their food, still recognize that śūdras can be merchants, or even exercise any trade.Moreover, the Sūtras permit the marriage of a śūdrā woman with members of all castes. Though it was a reproach to Vatsa and to Kavaṣa that they were the sons of a śūdrā and a Dāsī respectively, still the possibility of such a reproach shows that marriages of this kind did take place. Moreover, illicit unions of Arya and śūdrā, or śūdra and Aryā, are referred to in the Samhitās of the Yajurveda. The origin of the term śūdra is quite obscure, but Zimmer points out that Ptolemy mentions tvBpoi as a people, and he thinks that the Brāhui may be meant. Without laying any stress on this identification, it is reasonable to accept the view that the term was originally the name of a large tribe opposed to the Aryan invasion. See also Niṣāda.
‘Year,’ is repeatedly mentioned from the Rigveda onwards. Its duration was, according to the concurrent evidence of the Samhitās and Brāhmaṇas, 360 days, divided into months, being, no doubt, roughly a lunar synodic year, which, however, it exceeded in length by days. As a solar year it appears only in the Nidāna Sūtra of the Sāmaveda, where the sun is stated to spend days in each of the Nakṣatras. The year being obviously out of harmony with the solar year (whether sidereal or tropical), efforts were certainly made to effect an assimilation of the natural and the accepted year. As has been seen (see Māsa), the evidence goes strongly to show that the intercalation was not an easy matter in the Brāh¬maṇa period, though there are traces of what may be re¬garded as a five-yearly or six-yearly intercalation. But there is no conclusive evidence that these periods were really observed. Zimmer,4 indeed, considers that the evidence required is afforded by the lists of the years, which are sometimes enumerated as five : Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idāvatsara, Idvatsara, and Vatsara ;δ or Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idāvat- sara, Iduvatsara, Vatsara;® or Samvatsara, Idāvatsara, Iduvat- sara, Idvatsara, Vatsara;7 or Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idāvat- sara, Anuvatsara, Udvatsara;8 or Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idāvatsara, Anuvatsara, Idvatsara.9 But it must be noted not merely that the names vary considerably, but that four only are mentioned in some places,10 in others11 three, in others12 two, and in yet others13 six. Moreover, in none of these enumera¬tions is there any reference to the names being connected with a system of intercalation. It is most probable that here we have no more that a mere series of priestly variations of Vatsara, based on the older and more genuine Saipvatsara and Parivatsara as variants of the simple Vatsara, ‘year.’ The key to the invention of the series is probably to be found in passages like that of the Pañcavimśa Brāhmaṇa, where the several Cāturmāsya ( four-monthly ’) sacrifices are equated with the different years. Particularly unjustifiable is the attempt of Zimmer to see in the two-year series a series of two years of 354 days each, with an intercalary month in the second; for the year of 354 days, as such, is not known to have existed before the Sūtra period. Zimmer ® also finds an attempt at intercalation in the famous 12 days in which the Rbhus are said to have slept in the house of Agohya. He thinks that they represent twelve days added at the winter solstice to equate the lunar year of 354 days and the solar year of 366 days ; and from the rever¬ence paid in German antiquity to the ‘ 12 nights,’ he infers that this mode of intercalation is Indo-Germanic. There can be little doubt that this view is wrong, and that the 12 days are merely the ' reflexion of the year ’ (samvatsarasya pratima) in the sense that they represent the twelve months, and have no relation to chronology at all. A reference to the use of Samvatsara alone as the fifth year of the cycle is seen by Shamasastry in the peculiar dating of certain notices in the Baudhāyana śrauta Sūtra, but this view is improbable.
Denotes primarily, it seems, ‘assembly ’ either in peace or in war, when it means an ‘ armed band.’ Its normal sense in the Atharvaveda and later is ‘war,’ ‘battle.’ Little is known of Vedic warfare, but it seems to have been simple. A body of foot soldiers with charioteers composed every army, the two going together, and the foot soldiers being often overthrown by the charioteers, who were doubtless the Kṣatriyas and their foremost retainers. Probably the foot soldiers bore little armour, and used only the bow for offence, as is suggested by the account that Herodotus gives of the Indian contingent of the army with which Xerxes invaded Greece. The nobles, on the other hand, may have had cuirass (Varman), helmet (śiprā), and hand-guard (Hastaghna) as a protection from the friction of the bowstring. On the car was the charioteer, and on his left the warrior (Sārathi, Savya§thā). Riding is never mentioned in war, and would hardly have been suited to Vedic ideas, for the warrior mainly depended on his bow, which he could not have used effectively from horse¬back. The offensive weapon (Áyudha) was practically the bow; spear and sword and axe were very seldom used. Whether there was a strict tribal organization of the host, such as is once alluded to in the Homeric poems, and is also recognized in Germany by Tacitus, is uncertain (cf. Vrāta), but in the Epic relations (Jñāti) fight together, and this rule, no doubt, applied more or less in Vedic times also. Cities were besieged and invested (upa-sad, pra-bhid), probably as a rule by blockade, since the ineffective means of assault of the time would have rendered storming difficult and expensive. Hillebrandt thinks that the pur carisnū of the Rigveda was a kind of chariot; it may—like the Trojan horse—have been an Indian anticipation of the Roman means of assaulting a town. Besides ordinary wars of defence and conquest, raids into neighbouring territory seem to have been frequent and normal, no doubt because of the booty (Udāja, Nirāja) which wai to be won, and which the king had to share with the'people. Banners (Dhvaja) were borne in war, and musical instruments (Dundubhi, Bakura) were used by the combatants.
(‘Born together’) is found once in the Rigveda, and very often later. The word must clearly mean a relative,’ and then more widely a man of the same position or rank, but the senses cannot be distinguished, so much do they merge into each other. The Sajātas of a king are|of course princes; of anordinary man, Vaiśyas; of a military man, Kṣatriyas. But there is no clear reference to caste as in the later Sajāti (‘man of the same caste’). The disputes of Sajātas were notorious.
Is the name of an ‘ assembly ’ of the Vedic Indians as well as of the ‘hall’ where they met in assembly. It is often mentioned in the Rigveda and later, but its exact character is not certain. The hall was clearly used for dicing presumably when the assembly was not transacting public business: a dicer is called sabhā-sthānu, ‘pillar of the assembly hall,’ doubtless because of his constant presence there. The hall also served, like the Homeric Xecrχη, as a meeting-place for social intercourse and general conversation about cows and so forth, possibly for debates and verbal contests. According to Ludwig, the Sabhā was an assembly not of all the people, but of the Brahmins and Maghavans (‘ rich patrons ’). This view can be supported by the expressions sabheya, ‘ worthy of the assembly,’ applied to a Brahmin,8 rayih sabhāvātt, ‘wealth fitting for the assembly,’ and so on. But Bloomfield plausibly sees in these passages a domestic use of Sabhā, which is recognized by the St. Petersburg Dictionary in several passages11 as relating to a house, not to the assembly at all. Zimmer is satisfied that the Sabhā was the meeting- place of the village council, presided over by the Grāmaṇī. But of this there is no trace whatever. Hillebrandt seems right in maintaining that the Sabhā and the Sāmiti cannot be distinguished, and that the reference to well-born (su-jāta) men being there in session is to the Aryan as opposed to the Dāsa or Sūdra, not to one class of Aryan as opposed to the other. Hillebrandt also sees in Agni ‘ of the hall ’ (sabhya) a trace of the fire used in sacrifice on behalf of the assembly when it met. Women did not go to the Sabhā, for they were, of course, excluded from political activity. For the Sabhā as a courthouse, cf. Grāmyavādin. There is not a single notice of the work done by the Sabhā.
Denotes an ‘assembly’ of the Vedic tribe. It is alreadv mentioned in the Rigveda, and often later, sometimes in connexion with Sabhā. Ludwig considers that the Samiti included all the people, primarily the viśafy, 'subjects,' but also the Mag’havans and Brahmins if they desired, though the Sabhā was their special assembly. This view is not probable, nor is that of Zimmer, that the Sabhā was the village assembly. Hillebrandt appears to be right in holding that Samiti and Sabhā are much the same, the one being the assembly, the other primarily the place of assembly. The king went to the assembly just as he went to the Sabhā. That he was elected there, as Zimmer thinks, is as uncertain as whether he was elected at all (see Rājan). But there are clear signs that concord between king and assembly were essential for his prosperity. It is reasonable to assume that the business of the assembly was general deliberation on policy of all kinds, legislation so far as the Vedic Indian cared to legislate, and judicial work (cf. Sabhāsad). But of all these occupations there is, perhaps as a result of the nature of the texts, little or no evidence directly available.The gods had a Samiti, hence called daivī, ‘divine,’ just as they had a Sabhā. The assembly disappears as an effective part of government in the Buddhist texts, the Epic, and the law-books.
‘Wild boar,’ has the appearance of being an onomato- poetic word (‘making the sound sū’)\ it is more probably a very old word going back to the Indo-European period, and cognate with the Latin su-culus (‘little pig’), being transformed in sense by popular etymology. It occurs in the Rigveda and later. It appears once in the Atharvaveda accompanied by ntrga, the combined words apparently meaning ‘ wild hog, as opposed to Varāha, ‘ boar.’
Is a common word for ‘son’ from the Rigveda onwards. The etymological sense seems to be ‘he who is borne,’ and then ‘the begotten.’ But the use of Sūnu in the Rigveda3 is predominantly in relation to the father, and only rarely in its connexion with words for mother.4 Thus a father is ‘ easy of access’ (sūpāyana) to his son (sūnu);5 but in another passage,® where the same term is applied to earth as a mother, the word used for son is Putra. No conclusion as to matriarchy can of course be drawn from the etymology. On the relation of son and father, see Pitṛ.
Is the ordinary word in poetry and prose for 'woman,' without special reference to her as a wife or as a maiden. Nārī has the same sense, but disappears in later prose, while Gnā refers only to the wives of the gods, and Yoçit, with its cognate words, denotes the young woman as ripe for marriage. In the Rigveda Strī stands opposed to Pumāms, ‘ man,’ and once to vrsan, ‘ male person not until the Atharvaveda does it mean ‘ wife ’ as opposed to Pati, ‘ husband,’ and even in the Sūtras it is sharply opposed to Jāyā. In Vedic India by far the greater part of a woman’s life was taken up in her marriage and marital relations (see Pati and Mātj?). There is no trace in the Rigveda of the seclusion of women, which was practically complete in all but the earliest Epic: the maiden may be assumed to have grown up in her father’s house, enjoying free intercourse with the youth of the village, and sharing in the work of the house. Educa¬tion was not denied to them, at any rate in certain cases, for we hear in the Upaniṣads of women who could take no unimportant part in disputations on philosophical topics. Moreover, women were taught to dance and sing, which were unmanly accomplishments. Of the exact legal position of daughters the notices are few and meagre. The Rigveda, however, shows that in the place of a father the brother was looked to for aid, and that brother- less maidens were apt to be ruined, though religious terrors were believed to await the man who took advantage of their defencelessness. Moreover, women could not take an inheritance, and were not independent persons in the eyes of the law, whether married or not. Presumably before marriage they lived on their parents or brothers, and after that on their husbands, while in the event of their husbands predeceasing them, their relatives took the property, burdened with the necessity of maintaining the wife. Their earnings would be appropriated by their nearest relative—usually father or brother —in the few cases in which unmarried women could earn anything, as in the case of courtezans.
Denotes the daughter-in-law ’ in relation primarily to her father-in-law, but also to her mother-in-law. In the latter sense the word appears in the Rigveda in the epithet su-snuṣā, ‘having a good daughter-in-law,’ used of Vṛṣākapāyī, while in the former it occurs in several passages, where the daughter- in-law’s respect for her father-in-law is mentioned, a respect which spirituous liquor alone causes to be violated. See also śvaśura and Pati.
Is the regular word from the Rigveda onwards for ‘sister.’ Like the word Bhrātr, the term sister can be applied The sister stood in a close relation to her brother. If the father was dead or feeble, the sister was dependent on her brother and on his wife, as appears from the Rigveda and the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa. Moreover, maidens without brothers were apt to find marriage difficult, and to degenerate into Hetairai;6 but it is not certain whether this was due, as Zimmer thinks, to brothers being required to arrange marriages for orphan girls, or because sonless fathers were anxious to make their daughters Putrikās, in order that they themselves, instead of the husbands, should count the daughters’ sons as their own. See also Jāmi.
(‘Oblation receptacle ’) denotes primarily the cart on which the Soma plants are conveyed to be pressed, then the shed in which these Soma vehicles were kept.
Havis is the general term for an offering to the gods, ‘oblation,’ whether of grain, or Soma, or milk, or clarified butter, etc. It is common from the Rigveda onwards.
vibrating transcendental sounds pertaining to the holy name, form, qualities and entourage, and inquiring about them (these also should be only in relationship to Viṣṇu)
