The Indus Language-Appendix

1. dAsa and dasyu of the Rigveda

The RV refers to some groups of people called dAsa and dasyu. Based on the racial interpretation of some stanzas of the RV containing these words, the British ethnologists, have abused the glorious aspects of the Indian antiquities beyond their competence. They saw nothing but wars between the Aryans and non-Aryans in the early history of India. Some attributes of the dAsas and dasyus are the following: not sacrificing, devoid of rites, addicted to strange vows, god-hating, having forts and clans, of black skin, of hostile speech, anAs and s'is'na-devAs, although they are also said to be immensely rich, and their forts are said to be s'Arada. (Vedic Index: Macdonell-Keith). These are the actual attributes quoted from the RV, but these compilers have dubbed them, over and above, from their own vocabulary, even ‘superhuman’, ‘aborigines’, ‘opposed to Aryans’, ‘of Dravidian type’, and ‘in civilization not equal to the Aryan invaders’.

Trautmann (Aryans and British India, pp. 206-216), though himself of the view that the Aryans had come from outside and driven out the native Dravidians, has rightly and reasonably refuted these extravagant remarks. Although these facts have never been scientifically proved, being the glorious drawback of the social science researches, they have been carried on as the sabda-pramANa of the NaiyAyikas. As the early British administrators of India abused the Brahmins on every corner, these Sanskritists have abused dAsas and dasyus with various ethnological ill-names.

The Vedic dasyu is immediately cognate with the Av. dahyu ‘land, landscape’ and its ‘owner’. In the Sanskrit translation, it is rendered by grAma. Its Persian equivalents are deh ‘land’ and dih ‘village’, dehAt in pl., meaning ‘the countryside’.

Drawing our inspiration from pl. dehAt, we may believe that dAsas and dasyus were not ‘aborigines’, ‘superhuman’, ‘non-Aryans’ and ‘Dravidians’ as supposed by the British ethnologists, but simply the ‘villagers’ of the rural background as distinguished from the city-dwellers. Because they lived in villages, which include forests and mountains, they were black-skinned (kRSNa-tvac) due to working in heat of the sun, of hostile speech (mRdhra-vAc) due to speaking rustic dialects as opposed to the polished speech of the city-dwellers. In this respect, the Prakrit of the inscriptions of As'oka and that of the dramas are comparable, not to speak of the dialogues in Sanskrit.

They were phallus-worshippers (s'is'na-devAs) as even now the countryside is more inclined towards s'aivism, while the city-dwellers worshiped Agni and other gods. They were anAs the meaning of which will be explained just later. Whatever has been told against them points to the difference between the rural and urban culture of the prehistoric society. Being agriculturists, some of them would have accumulated immense wealth, while the deprived among them would have resorted to robbery, as even now there are many outlawed groups of criminals sheltering in the countryside.

There is nothing which could prompt anybody to dub them aborigines, Dravidians or uncivilized in the ethnological terms.

But it is worthwhile to think how these two words acquired bad connotations. We may go to the history of these words.

We have established a link between the Vedic and the Indus language through its various stages. At the Vedic stage these dAsa and dasyu are fossilised vocables, used substantively. At an earlier stage they would have been adjective, which can be understood as to their real significance only through their phrase form at the agglutinative stage and clause form at the isolating Indus stage.

On the basis of the Av. dahyu, we can say that the Vedic -s- represents the Indus voiceless -H-. The long vowel in dAsas represents the "open" a of Indus. Then the clauses da ha and da hyu could have meant: (they) labour or work in the heat of the sun (da = pain, ha = sky). As a phrase they would have signified: working in the hot sun. In other words, they were the hard-working labourers of the countryside. It is here that some degeneration in meaning would have started. Just as s'U-dra `running for the welfare of others’ degenerated into the fourth class of Hindu order, and dari-dra `a runner’ became a niggard, dAsa and dasyu suffered similar shift in meaning. Neither dAsas or dasyus nor s'Udras were aborigines. They were only the outlawed and servile Aryan groups respectively.

After the natural catastrophe in the Indus valley and by the emergence of the inflexional Indus, much water had flown under the bridge and the memory of the hardworking rustic and outlawed villagers degenerated into a class of kRSNa-tvac, anAs and mRdhra-vAc robbers endowed with all bad qualities known to the Vedic ethnologists.

Even s'ambara, said to be a chief of these outlawed groups, may figure here, who used to harass the city-dwellers. Though a proper name, it would have started as an adjective ‘an abductor’ (of cattle).

Now the word anAs may be taken up. In the body of the Indus texts we come across to a clause NA Sa (as far as identified by me), occurring 32 times, twice even alone. The syllable Na has more than one meaning. Being the basis of the Vedic verb an ‘to breathe’, life is one of its confirmed meanings. Another meaning ‘knowledge’ may be relevant in the present context. On the basis of the prehistoric clause NASa, anAs may be dissolved as a-nAs, where nAs may be fossilised form of (Na = knowledge + Sa = wise) the two clauses: know! (and) see! But to confirm the meaning of these clauses, we just come to anAs itself and interpret it as ‘ignorant and unwise’, as these are the appellations of the people not following the right path.

Thus NASa may be rightly supposed to mean: Know! (and) See! These are two admonitions at one stretch. The knowledge comes from within and the wisdom comes (from without) by seeing. Perhaps the vocable nAs (knowledge-and-wisdom) could be preserved only as anAs (deprived of knowledge and wisdom, ignorant and unwise). SAyaNa, followed by Roth, was much near the intended meaning.

Finally, it may be briefly said about s'Arada, qualifying ‘forts’, that it refers to ‘hiding’ places in case of retaliation from the citizens. Basically it is not different from s'araNa (refuge), a late vocable. Though s'arad does not mean ‘refuge’, s'arman is cognate with it and may point to its having such meaning. Thus s'Arada may mean ‘safe’, ‘sheltering’, etc.

2. DraviDa

Though the word draviDa or drAviDa has been current in India for a long time, it has acquired a derogatory sense in the recent ethnology, specially in relation to the racially Aryan concept of the west. Really, it has no ethnological connotation. As a geographical region it relates to south India. But when the people are considered, even the Maharashtrans and Gujratis are included, specially the Brahmins living there. It is however true that Maharashtra and Gujarat cannot be reckoned as the Dravida country.

The word DraviDa or DrAviDa has no etymology. It may be taken to be an agglutinative formation: dra +vi + da. The central -vi- is also replaced by -mi-, and the name Tamil has actually come from dra-mi-da. Then it appears that dra- is the basic element. It was extended by -mida for one region and by -vida for the other. Later this distinction was lost and the word Dravida became more common.

Though dra occurs in a passage in the AV (11,7,3), its meaning is not known. But da = heat + ra = fire making dra may refer to the ‘hot sun’, and the following -mida or -vida may stand for a ‘region’. Thus dra-mi (vi) -da seems to mean ‘the country of the hot sun’. Later it began to refer to the people inhabiting that region.

Though of a similar derivation, Ki-rA-ta is free from any such controversy. The word kirAta occurs since the VS (30,16), and Manu has put them in the category of the drAviDas, but it is free from a strictly racial controversy. They have never remained concentrated to a region due to their wandering habit, which is confirmed from the central syllable -ra-. In Prakrit, it is cilAa, but it is difficult to identify them with some modern group with identical name.

3. The numerals from 1 to 4

The IE numerals from 5 to 10 have their origin from the syllabic order of the Mahesvarasutras. But the numerals between 1 and 4 have originated otherwise.

Perhaps ‘one’ is the prehistoric combination of a (ayam) and i (idam) = ai (this one). In Sanskrit it was extended by -ka (eka) and Av. by -va (eva). In the western dialects, it was extended by -n (Eng. one, Germ. ein, Fr. un, etc.) with ablaut.

We may like to see ‘two’ in some eternal pair beginning with the sound d-, and what immediately comes before our imagination is dos ‘arm’ and dvar ‘door’ (having two leaves or panels). Perhaps dos was a clause *do sa at the isolating stage of Indus, meaning ‘protects the body’, and do- expanding as *dva is not an unusual thing. Perhaps this expanded dva- may have taken the possessive suffix -ra, dva-ra literally meaning ‘having arms’, referring to the panels of the door. It was later reduced to dvar. Thus dva came to stand for ‘two’.

The word tri for the numeral ‘three’ seems to have been deduced from the compounds beginning with tri- of obscure meaning, out of which the Vedic trita is the oldest and copiously used. Its being the name of a god is vague. Due to accent on the last syllable, it is also reduced to tRta in the (AV. 6,113,1.3.). Many good and bad qualities are associated with it. Originally it had no connection with ‘three’.

As Sayana connects traitana with a dAsa (RV 1,158,5), trita must have come through the clause and phrase stages of Indus. The syllable ta has a dozen of meanings, out of which ‘warrior, thief, wicked man’ points to some ‘injurious’ action. The meaning ‘to rob, take away’ may be assigned to it. The combination of ta (jewel) and ra (gold) in tri may connect it with ‘wealth’. Then trita may mean ‘a robber of wealth’.Only thus traitana can be connected with a dAsa according to Sayana or ‘a superhuman being’ according to Roth.

That is to say, tri originally means ‘wealthy’, not ‘three’. Its association with ‘three’ in meaning is the result of various compounds, the last member being triads like loka, bhuvana (world), guNa (quality), etc.

We can now imagine the original home of the Indoeuropeans or Aryans, because tri is intimately connected with Vedic situations.

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BOOKS ON DECIPHERMENT

REVIEW OF OTHER ATTEMPTS OF DECIPHERMENT

THE SOCIETY REFLECTING IN THE INDUS SCRIPTS

THE CONCEPT OF SARASVATI

THE BASIS OF THE VEDIC MYTHOLOGY

A HISTORY REWRITTEN