Aryans1

A course of lectures delivered at the University. 



2 


in old times they destroyed the pre-existing civilization, for instance, 
in Crete and Etruria. To-day anthropologists say that all the 
races of the world sse more or less mixed and that there never was a 
distinctive, pure Aryan race. The benefit of the theory of a 
conquering, civilizing Aryan race is now reserved only for Ancient 
Indian History, text-books of which teach that the Vedic culture was 
developed outside India and was imported into that country, ready 
made, by conquering invaders. But a careful study of the Vedas, such 
as is found in my Life in Ancient India in the Afre of the Mantras, 
reveals the fact that Vedic culture is so redolent of the Indian soil and 
of the Indian atmosphere that the idea of the non-Indian origin of that 
culture is absurd. So we have got to restore, to the word ‘ Arya’, its 
original meaning found in the Vedas. The Rishis of the Vedas used 
the word ‘ Arya ’ without any racial implications, but only in the sense 
of a people who followed the fire-cult as opposed to the lireless-cult. 
In the Vedic times two cults prevailed in India : (1) that followed by 
the Aryas to whom Sanskrit was the sacred tongue, the language of 
the Gods, who made offerings to the Gods through Agni, because they 
believed Agni to be the mouth of the Gods, and (2) that followed by the 
Dasyus whom the Aryas described as anagni, the fireless. Thus Arya 
was always in India a cult name, the name of a method of worship, 
whose main characteristic _was the lighting of the sacred fire. There 
were two forms of the Arya fire cult-— the Grihya and the Crania, 
the cult of one fire and the cult of three fires, the Ekagfii and Trc&^lgni, 
the simple domestic fire-rites still performed in the hoiises chiefly of 
the Bralrnanas and the gorgeous sacrifices, chiefly conducted l)y Nafas 
in ancient India up to the age of the Armageddon on the plains of 
Kuriikshetra, and now almost extinct. The Arya rites, besides being 
characterized by the mediation of the Fire-God, also re<inired the use 
of Sanskrit mantras, which were promulgated by the ancient seers 
called Rishis ; the Dasyu rites had no use for fire or for Sanskrit 
mantras or for a privileged class of expert priests. 

When did the Arya rites rise ? It is impossible to determine when 
the concept of fire as the month of tlie Gods was worked out or when 
the cult of one-fire Isegan. But it is possible to find out when the 
three-fire cult cronimenced. The Vedas and the Puranas assert tliat 
Pururavas first lighted the triple fire in Pratishthana (now Ih'ayaga or 
Allahabad); and though nianv royal dynasties rose and fell during tlie 
Age of the Rishis, we learn from Pargiter’s Sindies of tfie If'adiiionai 
History of Ancient India that more than a hundred kings of one dynasty 
in particular reigned from the time of Purura\'as ilown to the middle 
of the first millennium befcjre the Christian era. Disregarding tlie 
Paurariika claim of ineredibily long reigns for some of the kings of this 
dynasty and allowing a modest average <tf twenty-five years to each ot 
them, we reach the very probable cmulusiim tfiat tlie three-fire cult 
and the promulgation by the Rishis of the associated Vedic mantras 
on a large scale began about 3(KK) h . c , Now from the Vedic manitas 
we learn that there was intimate commercial intercourse, though tlierct 
were cult rivalries, between Southern and Northern Imlia, frmu the 
beginning of the age of the Rishis. South Indiaji articles like pearl, 
mother of pearl, scented woods, elephants, gold, the pea-fowl, etc., 
were used in the land of the Aryas (Aryavartta; ; a very cartd'ul sliidy 
of ^'hese Vedic also reveals that the languages of South and