DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0031
INTRODUCTION.
9
a mass of literature—such as it is—bearing on the subject, that we
cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought
to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period
may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will
not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to
winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless
chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to
expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Mean-
while, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so
far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows
intelligible.
Aryans.
At some very remote period in the world's history—for reasons
stated in the Appendix I believe it to have been at about the epoch
called by the Hindus the Kali Yug, or B.C. 3101— the Aryans, a
Sanscrit-speaking people, entered India across the Upper Indus, coming
from Central Asia. For a long time they remained settled in the
Punjab, or on the banks of the Sarasvati, then a more important stream
than now, the main body, however, still remaining to the westward of
the Indus. If, however, we may trust our chronology, we find them
settled 2000 years before the Christian Era, in Ayodhya, and then in
the plenitude of their power. It was about that time apparently that
the event took place which formed the groundwork of the far more
modem poem known as the 'Ramayana.' The pure Aryans, still un-
contaminated by admixture with the blood of the natives, then seem
to have attained the height of their prosperity in India, and to have
carried their victorious arms, it may be, as far south as Ceylon. There
is, however, no reason to suppose that they at that time formed any
permanent settlements in the Deccan, but it was at all events opened
to their missionaries, and by slow degrees imbibed that amount of
Brahmanisin which eventually ]>ervaded the whole of the south.
Seven or eight hundred years after that time, or it may be about or
before B.C. 1200, took place those events which form the theme of
the more ancient epic known as the ' Mahabharata,' which opens
up an entirely new view of Indian social life. If the heroes of
that poem were Aryans at all, they were of a much less pure type
than those who composed the songs of the Vedas, or are depicted in
the verses of the 'Ramayana.' Their polyandry, their drinking bouts,
their gambling tastes, and love of fighting, mark them as a very
different race from the peaceful shepherd immigrants of the earlier
age, and point much more distinctly towards a Tartar, trans-Himalayan
origin, than to the cradle of the Aryan stock in Central Asia. As if
to mark the difference of which they themselves felt the existence,
they distinguished themselves, by name, as belonging to a Lunar race,
9
a mass of literature—such as it is—bearing on the subject, that we
cannot but hope that, when a sufficient amount of learning is brought
to bear upon it, the leading features of the history of even that period
may be recovered. In order, however, to render it available, it will
not require industry so much as a severe spirit of criticism to
winnow the few grains of useful truth out of the mass of worthless
chaff this literature contains. But it does not seem too much to
expect even this, from the severely critical spirit of the age. Mean-
while, the main facts of the case seem to be nearly as follows, in so
far as it is necessary to state them, in order to make what follows
intelligible.
Aryans.
At some very remote period in the world's history—for reasons
stated in the Appendix I believe it to have been at about the epoch
called by the Hindus the Kali Yug, or B.C. 3101— the Aryans, a
Sanscrit-speaking people, entered India across the Upper Indus, coming
from Central Asia. For a long time they remained settled in the
Punjab, or on the banks of the Sarasvati, then a more important stream
than now, the main body, however, still remaining to the westward of
the Indus. If, however, we may trust our chronology, we find them
settled 2000 years before the Christian Era, in Ayodhya, and then in
the plenitude of their power. It was about that time apparently that
the event took place which formed the groundwork of the far more
modem poem known as the 'Ramayana.' The pure Aryans, still un-
contaminated by admixture with the blood of the natives, then seem
to have attained the height of their prosperity in India, and to have
carried their victorious arms, it may be, as far south as Ceylon. There
is, however, no reason to suppose that they at that time formed any
permanent settlements in the Deccan, but it was at all events opened
to their missionaries, and by slow degrees imbibed that amount of
Brahmanisin which eventually ]>ervaded the whole of the south.
Seven or eight hundred years after that time, or it may be about or
before B.C. 1200, took place those events which form the theme of
the more ancient epic known as the ' Mahabharata,' which opens
up an entirely new view of Indian social life. If the heroes of
that poem were Aryans at all, they were of a much less pure type
than those who composed the songs of the Vedas, or are depicted in
the verses of the 'Ramayana.' Their polyandry, their drinking bouts,
their gambling tastes, and love of fighting, mark them as a very
different race from the peaceful shepherd immigrants of the earlier
age, and point much more distinctly towards a Tartar, trans-Himalayan
origin, than to the cradle of the Aryan stock in Central Asia. As if
to mark the difference of which they themselves felt the existence,
they distinguished themselves, by name, as belonging to a Lunar race,