The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  To begin with, the raja was primarily a military leader. His skill lay in protecting the settlement and winning booty, both essential to his status. He received voluntary gifts and prestations in kind, for which the term bali came to be used – an extension of its meaning as an offering to the gods. There was no regular tax that he could claim, nor had he any rights over the land. He was entitled to a portion of the booty from successful cattle-raids after the bhaga, shares, had been sorted out, and he would obviously claim a larger one. Mention is also made of shulka, literally the value or worth of an item. In later times, after the establishing of states, all three terms were used for various taxes.

  When the functions of the priest became distinctive, and the raja claimed greater authority, he emerged as the patron of the sacrifice. There was now both a competition and an interweaving of the authority of the raja, the one who wielded power, and that of the brahman, the one who legitimized this power through ritual – a competition in which the brahman eventually emerged as the one with the highest ritual status. A later legend tells us that not only did the gods elect a raja to lead them to victory, but that he was also endowed with distinctive attributes. Similarly, mortal rajas were invested with attributes of divinity. Special sacrifices were evolved to enable the priests, regarded as the intermediaries between men and gods, to bestow this divinity. This empowered the priest and was the beginning of the interdependence of temporal and sacral power, sometimes involving a contestation over status. The Mahabharata, unlike the Vedic corpus, depicts a situation where the concerns and status of the kshatriyas are primary. Not surprisingly there was now a tendency for the office of the raja to become hereditary and primogeniture began to be favoured. The occasional and shallow genealogies of the chiefs of clans in the Rig-Veda gave way to genealogies of greater depth, to legitimize rajas through lineage – irrespective of whether the genealogies were actual or fictive. The status of the assemblies also underwent a consequential change: the sabha could act as an advisory body to the raja, but he was the final authority. The larger assemblies gradually declined. These were pointers to the coming of kingship.

  The raja was the pivot in a rudimentary administrative system. Chiefship began to be associated with territory, incorporating the families settled in the villages, the wider clans and the still larger unit of the tribe. These constituted the janapada – literally the place where the tribe places its foot – significantly named after the ruling clan. This could be either a single clan, such as the Kekeyas, Madras, Kurus and Kosalas, or a confederacy such as that of the Panchalas. A more complex confederacy involved the coming together of the Kurus and the Panchalas. The purohita or chief priest, who combined the function of priest, astrologer and adviser, and the senani or military commander are among those more frequently mentioned as assisting the raja. Later, a more elaborate group surrounded the raja, including the charioteer, the treasurer, the steward and the superintendent of dicing. The last is not surprising, considering the love of gambling among both royalty and commoners. But the throwing of dice may have been linked to lots, involving wealth or access to grazing lands and fields, in the absence of effective rights to the ownership of land, illustrated, for example, in the Mahabharata.

  Some ceremonies were originally intended to establish the status of the chief, but were gradually made more elaborate until they eventually became a necessity for the raja claiming the status of a king. Once the chief had been initiated and his legal status established, he was eligible to perform the year-long rajasuya, or consecration, investing him with divinity brought from the gods by the magic power of the priests. The ritual involved rites of purification and symbolic rebirth. Towards the end of this ritual the raja was required to make an offering to the twelve ratnins, jewels, in return for their loyalty. Some of these were members of his household and others were craftsmen and specialists. The inclusion of the latter underlined the growing importance of specialization in daily life. After some years the consecration ceremony was followed by sacrifices, intended to assist in his rejuvenation.

  Perhaps the best known of the spectacular sacrifices was the ashvamedha, or horse sacrifice, not unknown to other cultures such as those of the Romans and the Celts. Starting as a rather simple ritual, it incorporated more elaborate ones, as is evident from the description in the later corpus. References to large numbers of rajas having performed the ashvamedha provide us with lists of possible rajas, together with a brief ancestry, where some may have been historical. After due ceremonies, a raja released a special horse to wander at will, accompanied by a substantial bodyguard. The raja claimed the territory over which it wandered. This sacrifice was theoretically permitted only to those who were powerful and could support such a claim, but in effect it was to become a ritual of kingship. Many minor chiefs performed the sacrifice and doubtless some manipulated the wandering of the horse to save face. These sacrifices were conducted on a vast scale, with many priests and sacrificial animals, and a variety of objects used, in the ceremony. On the return of the horse, the second part of the ritual focused on rites of fertility that involved the sacrificed horse and the chief wife of the raja. Such rituals reinforced the special status of raja and brahman. When the claim to status explicitly incorporated political and economic power not necessarily based on kinship connections, then it initiated the notion of kingship and the incipient state.

  Incipient Caste

  Some of the clans were given the status of aryas, but there were also other respected rajas, such as Puru, whose are ambiguous. He is described as mridhravac, not speaking the language correctly, and later as being of asura rakshasa, demon, descent. Even where a dasa ancestry is mentioned the ambiguity remains; for example in the presence of what were called dasi-putra brahmans, whose mothers were of the dasa community. They are referred to in the later sections of the Vedas, by which time some mixing of communities had occurred. They were initially reviled, but, on demonstrating their power as priests, were respected. This would have been an avenue for various local rituals to be assimilated into Vedic worship, which is thought to have been the case with many of the rituals described in the Atharvaveda. If ritual specialists were accorded high status, then others from the existing societies would also have been adjusted into the social hierarchy. The Nishada, for example, were of a different culture but were associated with some Vedic rituals.

  The Vedas subsequent to the Rig-Veda (barring one late hymn in the latter) mention the four varnas: brahman, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra. This is not a division of the two – the arya varna and the dasa varna of the Rig-Veda – into four, since the basis of the four is different. The first three have an occupational function as priests, as warriors and aristocrats, and as the providers of wealth through herding, agriculture and exchange. Occupations and marriage regulations were among the factors identifying these categories. The latter are also apparent from references to gotra, the literal meaning of which was a cowpen although it was later used to segregate groups for identification relating to permitted marriage circles and, in later times, property rights.

  The inclusion of the fourth category, the shudra, reflected a substantial change. Kinship connections and lineage rank had initially determined who controlled labour and who laboured, the division sometimes taking the form of senior lineages demarcated from cadet lines or lesser lineages. Economic relations were therefore embedded in kinship relations and age groups. Where stratification had come to be recognized, chiefly families demarcated themselves from others and claimed a particular lineage. This changed to a householding system where the family of the lesser clansman became the unit of labour. The further change was introducing non-kin labour. Some who were unrelated through kinship were inducted as labour. This assumes a shift towards agriculture and increased social demarcation. Permanency was given to this change through establishing a group whose function was to labour for others. This was a radical departure from the earlier system. The term dasa, which in the Rig-Veda was used to designate the other
person of a different culture, was now used to mean the one who laboured for others. This was also the function of the shudra, who began to provide labour for occupations ranging across the agrarian and craft specializations and other less attractive jobs.

  Social divisions became sharper and degrees of labour became part of the assessment of social rank. Whereas the vaishya is described as tributary to another, to be eaten by another, to be oppressed at will, the shudra is said to be the servant of another, to be removed at will, to be slain at will. The expansion of agriculture and the emergence of craftsmen required greater specialization, as well as occupations that further encouraged separate categories of craftsmen, cultivators and labourers. Each of these was said to be of low status and treated as a separate jati.

  Jati comes from the root meaning ‘birth’, and is a status acquired through birth. Jati had a different origin and function from varna and was not just a subdivision of the latter. The creation of varnas appears to be associated with ritual status, a status denied to the shudra who was debarred from participating in all rituals. Whereas the three higher varnas were said to be strict about marrying within regulated circles, the shudra varna described in the normative texts was characterized as originating in an indiscriminate marriage between castes, creating mixed castes – a category abhorrent to those insisting on the theoretical purity of descent. This sets them apart and they were often labelled as jatis. This was an attempt to explain a low category of mixed castes and can hardly be taken literally. Once they had been recognized as categories, both varnas and jatis were required to observe specific marriage regulations and rules regarding access to occupation, social hierarchy and hereditary status. Marriage had to be regulated within marriage circles, an essential requirement for the continuation of caste society. It was also a method of controlling the exchange of women and thus keeping women subordinated.

  By the mid-first millennium this status was reiterated in the theory that the first three varnas are dvija, twice-born – the second birth being initiation into the ritual status – whereas the shudra has only a single birth. This was also tied to the notion of grading the purity of the statuses, theoretically according to occupation. Thus, the brahman was the purest and the shudra the least pure. Subsequently, a fifth category came to be added, that of the untouchable (now referred to as Dalit), and this was regarded as maximally polluting. A system that combined status by birth, determined by access to resources, social status and occupation, with notions of ritual purity and pollution was doubtless thought to be virtually infallible as a mechanism of social control.

  The question posed earlier in Chapter 2 becomes relevant here: in the transition from clan status to varna status – a transition familiar to Indian history – did varna status precede jati status as has been generally argued? Or is it possible to suggest an alternative system where, if clans were the earlier forms of social organization, they were first transmuted into jatis, with jatis retaining some features of clan organization such as observing the rules of which circles a jati could marry into? Such jatis would be the result of people being conquered, subordinated or encroached upon by caste society already observing varna distinctions. Was there then a re-allocation of statuses? Whereas a few were incorporated into brahman, kshatriya and vaishya status, were the large residual groups given shudra status? Varna would be necessary as a ritual status in the hierarchy of caste society. Shudras, because they were excluded from participating in most Vedic ritual, would have had their own rituals and worshipped their own gods. Vedic rituals would remain the religion of the elite.

  This division of society made it easier in later centuries to induct new cultures and groups of people. New groups took on the characteristics of a separate caste and were slotted into the caste hierarchy, their position being dependent on their occupation and social origins, and on the reason for the induction. Such groups could be migrants as were pastoralists and traders, or could be clans of cultivators, or invaders who came and settled, such as the Hunas, or even those scattered in various regions such as the forest-dwellers and other groups on the margins of settled society. This was in some ways a form of conversion.

  The brahmans were not slow to realize the significance of these social divisions and the authority which could be invested in the foremost caste. They claimed the highest position in the ranking of ritual purity, thereby insisting that they alone could bestow the divinity essential to kingship, and give religious sanction to varna divisions. A frequently quoted hymn from the Rig-Veda, although a later addition, provides a mythical sanction to the origin of the castes:

  When the gods made a sacrifice with the Man as their victim…

  When they divided the Man, into how many parts did they divide him?

  What was his mouth, what were his arms, what were his thighs and his feet called?

  The brahman was his mouth, of his arms were made the warrior.

  His thighs became the vaishya, of his feet the shudra was born.

  With Sacrifice the gods sacrificed to Sacrifice, these were the first of the sacred laws.

  These mighty beings reached the sky, where are the eternal spirits, the gods.

  Rig-Veda, 10.90, tr. A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, p. 241

  The continuance of caste was secured by its being made hereditary, linked to occupation, with a taboo on commensality (eating together), and the defining of marriage circles leading to elaborate rules of endogamy (marriage within certain groups) and exogamy (marriage outside certain groups). The basis of caste as a form of social control, and its continuance, depended on the ritual observance of the fourfold division and an insistence on the hierarchy that it imposed. Eventually, jati relationships and adjustments acquired considerable relevance for the day-to-day working of Indian society, and for a wide range of religious groups, even if some hesitated to admit to this. Varna status was the concern of the twice-born Hindus, but jati was basic to the larger society. The division of society into four varnas was not uniformly observed in every part of the subcontinent. With caste becoming hereditary, and the close connection between occupation and jati, there was an automatic check on individuals moving up in the hierarchy of castes. Vertical mobility was possible to the jati as a whole, but depended upon the entire group acting as one and changing both its location and its work. An individual could express his protest by joining a sect which disavowed caste, or at least questioned its assumptions, many of which evolved from the fifth century BC onwards.

  Sacrifice as Ritual and as a Form of Social Exchange

  Despite the fact that the Harappans had used a script, writing did not develop in this period, hence the premium on oral memory and instruction. There is a delightfully humorous hymn in the Rig-Veda describing frogs croaking at the onset of the rainy season, echoing each other’s voices, an activity that is compared to pupils repeating lessons after the teacher or ritual recitations of brahmans. However, the method of memorizing was not simple and was fine-tuned to the point of making the composition almost unalterable. By the mid-first millennium the institution of the brahmacharin was well established. The student was expected to live with a teacher in the latter’s hermitage for a number of years. The good student was expected to shun urban life when cities became an attraction. Education was in theory open to the twice-born, although the curriculum of formal education was useful largely to brahmans. Arithmetic, grammar and prosody were included as subjects of study. Some of the Rig-Vedic hymns incorporated the recitation of dialogues, thus constituting the rudiments of a dramatic form.

  There were no legal institutions at this stage. Custom was law and the arbiters were the chief or the king and the priest, perhaps advised by elders of the community. Varieties of theft, particularly cattle-stealing, were the commonest crimes. Punishment for homicide was based on wergeld, and the usual payment for killing a man was a hundred cows. Capital punishment was a later idea. Trial by ordeal was normal, and among the ordeals was one where the accused had to prove his innocenc
e by placing his tongue on a heated metal axe-head. Rules of inheritance came to be formulated gradually, doubtless when changing notions of what constituted property became problematic. Increasingly, caste considerations carried more weight, with lighter punishments for higher castes.

  The Harappans seem to have looked upon certain objects as sacred, and some were perhaps associated with fertility, such as female figurines, the bull, the Horned Deity and trees like the pipal (ficus religiosa). These reappear in later worship. The dasas in the Rig-Veda are castigated for not observing the proper rituals and instead practising a fertility cult. The more abstract brahman systems of belief, founded on the Vedas, appealed to a limited few and, whereas their impact can be seen in subsequent philosophies, most people preferred more accessible forms of religion and worship. A hierarchy emerged in the categories of rituals. Those that were lavish required a considerable expenditure of wealth, but others were pared down to essentials. The number of priests grew with the expansion of the ritual, requiring that they be sorted out according to function. The Vedic corpus reflects the archetypal religion of those who called themselves aryas, and which, although it contributed to facets of latter-day Hinduism, was nevertheless distinct. But inevitably some belief and practice would have been transmuted because of the proximity of those with other religious practices. Possibly the rituals, particularly those of the major sacrifices, were more closely observed once the corpus came to be compiled.