cosmos, Brahman. However, the means of achieving this
end apparently varied with the changes in the ages, or
yugas, that constitute our present epoch, kalpa. According
to Manusmriti, I,86, the chief means of enlightenment in
the first of the four ages was austerities:
In the Krita age the chief [virtue] is declared to be
[performance of] austerities, in the Treta [divine]
knowledge, in the Dvapara [the performance of]
sacrifices, in the Kali liberality alone.
215 See A. Jacob, Brahman, Ch.IX; cf. Ch.V below.
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indo-european mythology and religion
We see that the Brāhmanical sacrifices are not, like yogic
‘tapas’ and ‘jnana’, associated with the Krita Yuga or
the Treta Yuga but only with the Dvāpara Yuga. These
sacrifices, as we shall see, focus on the macrocosmic
elements of the divine manifestation rather more than on
the human microcosmic. The esoteric spiritual significance
of the Vedas does not emerge in the predominantly
liturgical Vedas so much as in the Upanishadic (Vedānta)
literature, especial y in the Yoga-based Upanishads
derived largely from the Krishna and Shukla Yajur Vedas.216
It may be mentioned here that later Āgamic texts like
the Tārapradīpa, Ch.1, state, contrary to the Manusmriti, that in the Satya (Krita) age Vaidika Upāsana [meditation]
prevailed while in the Dvāpara there were both Smriti217
and Purāna. Final y, in the Kaliyuga the Tantrika rather
than the Vaidika Dharma has come to predominate. The
Tantra Shastra was taught at the end of Dvāpara age and
the beginning of Kaliyuga. However, we may rely on the
Manusmriti rather than the Āgamic texts since we find
the primacy of Yogic worship over sacrificial maintained
also in the Rigveda and the epics themselves. RV I,84,2, for instance, declares—regarding the forms of worship
of the sages and the sacrifices offered by householders—
that Indra attended ‘eulogies’ sung by Rishis and ‘yajnas’
conducted by humans. So it is apparent that Vedic
sacrifices were necessary only for humans. In the MBh,
VII (Anushāsana Parva), 16, too, Tandi, a sage of the Krita
Yuga, is said to have “adored Shiva for 10,000 years with
the aid of yogic meditation”.
The “divine knowledge” (jnāna) mentioned in the
Manusmriti as having prevailed in the following Treta
Yuga may have been derived from the ascetic disciplines
216 See K. N. Aiyar, op.cit.
217 “Smriti” (=remembered wisdom) refers principal y to the epics and the Dharmasūtras.
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practiced in the Krita Yuga. In the Treta Yuga, Manu
himself is described in the MP as practicing tapas, or
austerities, on “Mt. Malaya”, but also as sacrificing. As
for the practice of austerities themselves, the Rāmāyana, Uttara Kanda, Sec.87, states that only the Brāhmans
practiced austerities in the Krita Yuga. In the following
Treta Yuga, Kshatriyas were born and, gaining equal
spiritual dignity with the Brāhmans, practiced austerities
alongside them, while the Vaisyas and Shūdras served
them. Then in the Dvāpara Yuga Vaisyas started to
practice austerities as wel , just as the Shūdras too began
practicing austerities in the Kali Yuga.
Dvāpara Yuga
As regards the geographical origin of Brāhmanism, the
Bhavishya Purāna, Pratisarga Parva I, maintains that the
Dvāpara Yuga was marked by the establishment of three
kingdoms, at Pratishthāna (this being related to the Aila
dynasty of Purūravas himself), Mathura (associated with
Krishna, the lunar/Aila deity)218 and Marudesh (ruled by
Shamashrupal219 of the Mlecchas,220 and comprising Iran,
Iraq, and Arabia). Marudesh clearly denotes the Hamitic
cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt which must have
started at the end of the Dvāpara age since their peak, in
the late fourth millennium B.C., coincides with the start
of the Kali Yuga, which is traditional y supposed to have
begun around 3100 B.C.221 The Dvāpara age is supposed
218 See p.32n.
219 Shamash is the Akkadian word for the sun.
220 In the Manusmriti, ‘mleccha’ is a general term for non-Āryan (see below). However, here it seems to refer particularly to the mostly Semitic Assyrians and Babylonians.
221 See p.111.
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indo-european mythology and religion
to have lasted for 864,000 years, though there is, as yet,
little evidence of the existence of enlightened mankind on
earth until the end of the Dvāpara age. The Gandharvas
and Purūravas represent the Āryan tradition marked by
fire-worship, whereas the Hamitic is marked by temple
worship and idolatry.
The fire-rituals which form the backbone of the
Brāhmanical religious practice are attested in the typical
Indo-Āryan settlement detected in the BMAC. Elaborate
fire altars are evident in the ruins of the BMAC which
correspond to the Āryan fire-sacrifices. The temples also
contain rooms with “all the necessary apparatus for the
preparation of drinks extracted from poppy, hemp and
ephedra” that may have been used for the soma-rituals.222
The BMAC may have thus been the centre of cultural
contact between the proto-Dravidian/Hurrian peoples
of Mundigak and the later Indo-Āryans. It is interesting
to note too, in this context, that the Avesta (which is
geographical y centred in eastern Iran) mentions the
Māzanian daevas as worshippers of the Indian gods.
According to Burrow, Māzana is known in Iranian sources
as the territory between the southern shore of the Caspian
Sea and the Alburz mountains.223 It may be related also to
Margiana and the Indo-Āryan culture detected there.
It must be noted that there are indeed fire-altars even
in the Harappan sites of Kalibangan, in Rajastan, and
Lothal, in Gujarat, which may be dated to around 2500
B.C. So it remains a moot question whether the BMAC
fire-altars were introduced from the north or the south,
or whether they formed part of an extensive north-south
222 See J.P. Mallory and VH. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, London: Thames and Hudson, 2008, p.262.
223 See E.Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic culture: the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.130.
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Aryan cultural continuum. Indeed the Allchins surmise
that there were probably also fire-altars in Harappa and
Mohenjo-Daro though these have been missed in the
mass-diggings conducted at these sites.224
However, it is clear that fire-worship was maintained
particularly by the Āryan branch of the Indo-Europeans.
For fire-worship is also observed among the Prussian-
Lithuanian cult of szwenta (holy fire), as well as among
the Greeks and Romans who maintained a cult of hestia
or vesta.225 Plutarch ( Numa, II) informs us that “Numa is said to hav
e built the temple of Vesta in circular form as
protection for the inextinguishable fire, copying not the
fire of the earth as being Vesta, but of the whole universe,
as centre of which the Pythagoreans believe fire to be
established, and this they call Hestia and the monad”. The
Scythians too worshipped a goddess called Tabit whose
name is probably related to the Sanskrit tapti denoting heat.
On the other hand, we must remember Herodotus’
statement that the Iranians did not worship fire original y.226
We have seen that in the Purānas, too, Purūravas, the
early Aila [Elamite?] king, is stated, in the Mbh I,75, to have obtained sacrificial fire from the “Gandharvas”, who
also taught him the constitution of the three sacred fires
of the Āryans.227 We have seen that Purūravas is stated
224 See R. and B. Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982 , p.183; cf, also D. K. Chakrabarti, “The archaeology of Hinduism”, in T. Insoll (ed.), Archaeology and World Religion, London: Routledge, 2001, p.44f.
225 See M. Sharma, Fire-Worship in Ancient India, Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 2002, p.19.
226 See Herodotus, Histories, I,132.
227 See F.E. Pargiter, op.cit., p.309. The three sacred fires of the Brāhmans are the the circular gārhapatya, representing earth and
the world of men ( SB VII,I,1), the square āhavanīya representing heaven and the world of the gods ( SB VII,2,2) and the āgnīdhrīya fire representing the air of the Mid-region ( SB VII,1,2,12).
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indo-european mythology and religion
in the Purānas to be an Aila king of Pratishthāna. The
Ailas themselves are designated as Karddameyas, which
relates them to Kardama228 and the river Karddama in
Iran, particularly in the region of Balkh, which was called
Bactra in Greek.229
The fact that the Purūravas are said to have learnt the
fire-rituals from the Gandharvas suggests that the early
Hurrians of Elam and the earliest Iranians did not worship
fire and learnt it from a later Bactrian source, since the
Gandhara culture follows the BMAC. However, even
the Gandhāras are included among the Aila [Elamite?]
dynasties in the Purānas. Herodotus (III,91) mentions
the Gandaridae as one of the Indian tribes of the seventh
satrapy of Darius I (550-486 B.C.) who can be located near
the Bactrians of the 12th satrapy. The term “Gadara”, a
form of “Gandhara”, occurs along with the term “Hindu”,230
in an inscription of King Darius of Iran.
The archaeological evidence of the early Gandharvas
may be that found in the Gandhara Grave culture of the
Swat settled from 1700-1400 B.C., which followed the
BMAC. The occupants of the BMAC may have been
related to the same family as the later Gandhara. Since
the Gandhara culture also bears the first evidence of
cremation rituals in South Asia, we may consider them to
have indeed consolidated the Vedic customs of the Indo-
Āryans. Cremation is evidenced also in the Andronovo
culture. At the same time, the neighbouring Bishkent
culture, which is contemporaneous with the Gandhara
and is related to the northern BMAC type, exhibits also
a curious quasi-Scythian custom of inhumation involving
the removal of the entrails and their replacement with
228 See p.71.
229 See
Rāmāyana VII,103,21ff.
230 “Hindu”, a form of “Sindhu”, is used to denote the people or country on the river Sindhu conquered by Darius.
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clarified butter which may have persisted among the Vedic
Indians, as is suggested by SB XII,v,2,5.231 The Gandhara culture thus may have had a northern source. The
northern and eastern branch of the original Noachidian
race may have thus been constituted of “Japhetic” tribes
that moved northwards to the Pontic-Caspian steppes and
created the Yamnaya culture there232 which is considered
the major source of the Āryan culture.
The Purūravas who adopted fire-worship from the
Gandhāras may thus represent an Elamite/Aila branch of
the proto-Āryan family, while the Gandaridae, who may
have arrived from the south-east Caspian region (since the
BMAC culture is apparently derived from the latter)233 may
be a typical y Indo-Āryan branch of the same family. It
may be noted also that the probability that the Indic Vedic
culture itself may have been developed after an original
formulation at a proto-Indo-Iranian stage is suggested by
the greater elaboration of the name of the god Tvoreshtar
amongst the Iranians—representing the older religion
of the proto-Āryans—compared to the Vedic Tvashtr.234
Indeed, many of the characteristic traits of the rituals of
ancient India derive from an Indo-Iranian period as is
attested by the similarity of the terms, yajna/yaja, soma/
haoma, mantra/manθra, nama/nəmô. Even the term
atharvan, denoting the originator of the Atharvaveda, has only an Iranian etymology âθravâ.235
231 See A. Parpola, op.cit. , p.365.
232 W. Bernard suggested that the human remains from Period I of Gandhara bore resemblances to those of Bronze Age and early Iron
Age crania of 2500 B.C.–A.D. 500 from the Caucasus and Volga region as well as from Tepe Hissar in Iran (see K.A.R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified”, p.49).
233 See J.P. Mallory and V.H. Mair, op.cit., p.262.
234 Cf. A. Jacob, “Cosmology and Ethics in the Religions of the Peoples of the Ancient Near East”, Mankind Quarterly 140, no.1 (Fall 1999), p.96.
235 The term means “priest” in Avestan (See P. Kretschmer, Kuhns 99
indo-european mythology and religion
However, it must be remembered that fire-worship
is based on a vision of the cosmic creation that formed
the basis of the solar religions of the Hamitic Sumerians
and Egyptians as wel . In the Sumerian religion too, the
chief solar god An is equated to Girra, the fire-god (in an
Assyrian exegetical text)236 and Re in Egypt is the same
as the solar force, Agni. So that it is possible that the
adoration of the solar force as divine fire may have been
an integral part of the original proto-Dravidian religion
that was shared by Semites, Japhetites, and Hamites. But
the worship of cosmic forces through fire-rituals seem
to have been characteristic of the Japhetic Indo-Āryan
stock that had migrated at a very early date northwards
to the Yamnaya and Andronovo cultures whence they
moved southwards again later, in the second millennium
B.C., towards northern Mesopotamia, Iran, and India.
The eastward movement of proto-Dravidians-Hurrians
(Ailas as well as Ikshvākus) with Elamite forms of the
Brahmanical religion may have encountered the more
northerly fire-worshipping Gandaridae tribes to form the
typical y Indian branch of the Āryan family.
Pargiter has suggested that the Dravidian
“brāhmanical” institution was also considerably
transformed by the Āryans. While the original [proto-]
Dravidian priesthood was characterised
by the practice
of yogic austerities (tapas) which gave them magical
powers, the Āryan was preoccupied with the performance
of sacrifices involving the worship of fire.237 If Pargiter
is right, it may be that the Tantric and Brāhmanical
traditions were derived from a single proto-Dravidian or
Zeitschrift 55, p.80; cf. J. Gonda, Religionen Indiens, I, p.107).
236 RA 62-52,17-8 (see A. Livingstone, op.cit. , p.74); cf. K170+Rm520rev.
( ibid., p.30ff).
237 See F.E. Pargiter, op.cit. , p.308f.
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Noachidian source238 that split into fire-worshipping and
temple-building tribes. We may, in this context, also recall
Megasthenes' account of the early Indians:
The Indians were in old times nomadic, like those
Scythians who did not till the soil, but roamed about
in their wagons, as the seasons varied, from one
part of Scythia to another, neither dwelling in towns
nor worshipping in temples;239 and that the Indians
likewise had neither towns nor temples of the gods,
but were so barbarous that they wore the skins of such
wild animals as they could kill … they subsisted also
on such wild animals as they could catch, eating the
flesh raw – before, at least, the coming of Dionysus
into India. Dionysus, however, when he came and had
conquered the people, founded cities and gave laws to
these cities, and introduced the use of wine among the
Indians, as he had done among the Greeks, and taught
them to sow the land, himself supplying seeds for the
purpose … It is also said that ... the Indians worship
the other gods and Dionysus himself in particular
with cymbals and drums, because he so taught them
… and that he instructed the Indians to let their hair
grow long in honour of the god .240
Since Dionysus is the same as the solar god of the
Mesopotamians, An, and the Egyptian Horus the Elder-
238 That the biblical Noah, a descendant of Adam’s son, Seth,
represents the wisdom of Seth is evident from the Gnostic tradition (see G.G. Stroumsa, op. cit. , p.107). Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, I, 70-71
also makes clear the association of the line of Seth with cosmological learning (see A. Annus, op.cit., p.xxvii).
239 The fact that the Scythians did not build temples or worship divine images is mentioned also by Herodotus, Histories, I,131.
240 See Arrian, Indica, VII (in R.C. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts of India, Calcutta: Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960 . p.220f.).
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