Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/39
or priestly writers of the Veda are entirely preoccupied with their own interests; if we want anything like secular records of India we must look to a later time.
We do not even know exactly what a term as familiar as rāja (rēx) "King," meant in those early days. Was a Rāja a great potentate, or merely a tribal chieftain? We know that the early Vedic period was a cattle-raising age. The lowing of kine was lovely music to the ear of the Vedic poet. But there were also workers in metals, chariots, navigation of some kind, gold, jewels, and trade. This is all too vague, and to some extent introduces uncertain quantities into our estimation of Vedic religion.
At an unknown date then, as we have had to confess reluctantly, Aryan tribes or clans (viç[1]) began to migrate from the Iranian highlands to the north of the Hindu-Kush Mountains into the north-west of India, the plains of the river Indus and its tributaries, the Panjab, or the land of the five streams.[2]
- ↑ From this word is derived vaiçya, the later name of the third, or agricultural and merchant caste.
- ↑ Professor E. W. Hopkins, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xix., pp. 19-28, argues that the majority of the Vedic hymns were composed farther east than the Panjab, in the region of the modern city of Amballa, between the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar.