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Chapter 4 – A General View of the Agricultural Races of India

Before we can form an opinion about the history of Indian villages, and the value of theories propounded about them, it is desirable to glance generally at the agricultural population of India, as far as its origin is known or can be inferred with reasonable probability, from the literary, traditional, and linguistic evidence in our possession. Too much importance has probably been attributed to the Aryan immigration – in this sense at least, that it is, or used to be, regarded as furnishing the principal element in the entire population. But if one thing is more certain than another, it is that with the original “village” settlements of a large part of India, Aryans had nothing whatever to do.

The geographical features which are necessarily alluded to in speaking of the population and its movements are not difficult to keep in mind. The great Himalayan range (merging at the western end into the Hindu Kush mountains) forms a northern barrier; and the principal passes from Central Asia

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leading to India are in the north-west corner, beyond Peshawar and Kabul. Other passes into India cross the western frontier mountains (known as the Sulaiman) from Baluchistan. Quite at the other end of Upper India, at the north-east, there is another route of access to races, who certainly found their way in that direction – races of a more Tibetan character. It is generally allowed that the Aryan tribes came from the north-west passes; and by those on the west, in all probability, the Turanian (or Dravidian) races entered India. The Tibeto-Burman people of the outer Himalayan hills, and the ancient people called “Kolarian,” both came from the northeast.

Let us note also, for convenience of reference, that India, as a whole, may be divided into two great portions – one called Hindustan, or “Upper” or “Northern” India, which (going from west to east), includes the Indus Valley, the Panjab Plains, then the Ganges Valley (and Oudh), and then Bengal and Bihar, and Assam beyond. This great expanse of plain country at the foot of the Himalaya is, roughly speaking, bounded on the south by a double range of hills of great breadth and intricacy, though of nothing like the height of the Himalaya. This group of hill ranges (of many local names) we generalise (for convenience) under the name of the “Vindhyan Hills.” Through the middle of the ranges, and traversing a large part of the whole breadth of the

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continent from east to west, flows the great Narbada river in its broad and fertile valley. This “Vindhyan” and Narbada “line” separates completely (and did so in ancient times more effectually than at present), the people of the Dakhan, and Hyderabad, and the South, from any extensive immigration from “Upper” India. This great barrier, however, terminates before touching the west coast, and so leaves an open way for any tribes who came down the Indus Valley, to reach the Upper Dakhan or Bombay territory – Gujarat and the Maratha country.

These features can easily be followed on a good general map, especially one of the mountain maps in the “Statistical Atlas of India,” or in those attached to the periodical Parliamentary Blue-book on the “Moral and Material Progress of India.” They had undoubtedly a great effect in directing and controlling the movements of the tribes who came to India in ancient times – the Aryan and Dravidian, and (so-called) Kolarian races; and also, later, Turanian races, and still later Indo-Scythian (Su or Abar, the Yuechi or Kushan and Hana) tribes37, who came in historic times, but at various dates, roughly speaking,

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between the sixth century B.C. and the sixth century A.D.

For a long time it was generally supposed that the ARYAN (Sanskrit speaking) people coming from the north-west through the passes just mentioned (much as Alexander the Great did several centuries later), settled in India; and that, in the course of their advance, they met with some insignificant black and snub-nosed “aboriginal” tribes, whom they defeated and drove out, either to a refuge in the outer Himalaya, or to the hills in the centre and upper South of India. From that time the Aryan (or at least a mixed Aryan) race formed the chief or predominating element in the population throughout India.

But such an idea can no longer be entertained. The literary allusions, traditions, and a number of ethnological and local circumstances, when better understood, compel us to the conclusion that the Aryans were a limited but very superior class: that they established themselves in “Hindustan” or Upper India, only locally extending beyond it on the west, and (after some time) on the eastern side also. Their establishment was, however, so important an event that we will return to trace its history a little more in detail presently.

Southern and Western India were peopled chiefly by Turanian or Dravidian tribes (the name is from Dravira, the Sanskrit form of the local name of South India).

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Even the great Northern Indian plain was not occupied, or brought under cultivation for the first time, by the Aryans. There were besides the “barbarian” enemies mentioned in early literature38 other (more advanced) tribes who most probably preceded the Aryans, and perhaps were nearly contemporaneous with them in the time of their settlement. These were also almost certainly of Turanian or Dravidian origin, the same as those of the west and south. Their language was different from that of the Aryans, and so remains all over the south country where its dialects (Tamil, Telugu, etc.) have only been moderately affected by the Sanskrit terms or grammatical forms afterwards introduced by the Brahmans. In Northern India, however, the Dravidian was gradually overborne – as a distinct element – by the Aryan and other later coming races (of whom we shall say a word presently). Such early Turanians as were in Upper India, therefore, became fused with these other races so that no trace of a separate language has survived. There are good reasons for believing that the earliest Turanian or Dravidian races originally came from the west frontier – perhaps by the Bolan and other western passes – while the Aryans came from the further north-west. One part (perhaps the chief bulk) of the Dravidian tribes then

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went down the Indus valley and across Gujarat to the west coast districts, and thence spread over the Dakhan and Madras. Perhaps some of them went by sea from the Indus mouth to the west coast. Whether the Dravidians who went into Upper India, and so became cut off from intercourse with those below the Vindhyan line of hills, came at the same time, only that they kept to Northern India and struck due east instead of going south, can only be a matter of speculation. But while the latter in time merged into the general Hindu population as above stated, the Southern Dravidians never were disturbed by any extensive immigration in after times, and so multiplied, and retained a distinctive character, though they accepted Hindu caste and religious teaching from Brahmans, who with their love of ascetic, hermit life, soon began to make their way south. Only the tribes in the west of India (upper part of Bombay) became much “Aryanised “; at least we conclude so, because the language of the west country was influenced by the speech of the Aryan tribes who penetrated by the Indus route; and the western languages (Marathi and Gujarati) became distinct both from those of the south and those of Upper India. But these early Dravidians of prehistoric times were not the only representatives of the stock in India. Besides the first races, who were serpent worshippers39 (at least many tribes were), other races of the same

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stock, but of other branches perhaps, continued to come to Upper, and even Eastern Central India (in later times); and showed themselves possessed of a strongly organised system of government, which has been likened to the “feudal” system of Europe40.

Besides the Dravidian races, another less numerous series, with a different language called (not very happily) Kolarian, had in very early times come to India, as I have said, from the north-eastern corner; and some who are called Tibeto-Burman – confined, however, to Assam and to the districts along the outer slopes of the Himalaya.

Naturally, there are a number of small local tribes, now in a very backward condition, who are generally spoken of as “aboriginal,” and whose classification is uncertain. And the earlier Dravidians and Kolarians became mixed up together in some localities in a perplexing manner. The Dravidians, regarded as forming the general population of

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Southern India, have been slowly changed in the course of ages by climate and locality, and by accepting caste and the Hindu religion and customs. So that we do not expect to find their village and other customs actually primitive, but only showing some marks of their origin. But there are places in Chota Nagpur, Orissa, and elsewhere, where some Dravidian tribes have retained their original customs. From these we can find out what was in all probability the earliest form of village. And we have traces both of an earlier village and of a later and much more organised form, which latter we naturally attribute to the latest rather than to the earliest Turanian immigrants.

It is only reasonable to believe that the Dravidians in Northern India had very much the same kind of villages. So that the ruling and superior Aryans when they came to Northern India found, at least in parts of the Panjab and in the more fertile regions of the Ganges valley, cultivation already established. There is every reason to believe that even the earliest Dravidians were agriculturists by nature; and certainly the later, but still ancient, tribes knew how to form well ordered villages and to allot lands, and how to make forts and buildings and to prepare reservoirs or tanks for irrigation41.

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Now let us very briefly notice what happened when the Aryans began to spread over the plains of India, leaving behind them some of their families and allies in the north-west hills – e.g., in Kashmir, and the country north of Peshawar – only to mention fairly familiar names.

When the Aryan tribes appeared in the plains of Upper India, the earliest Vedic hymns give us some idea of their movement. And later literature carries on, so to speak, the story of their establishment. One part of the tribes is represented as occupying the Indus valley. Another and larger part made its way across the Panjab towards the south-east to the Jamna river and the Ganges plain; they extended thence eastward, coming at last as far as the mouths of the Hughli river and to Assam. These indications are confirmed in various ways42. The two sections so separated had a different history and development. The former – largely composed of a tribe “Yadava” (sons of Yadu) can be traced spreading southwards beyond the Indus valley (and adjacent parts of the West Panjab) till they reached Gujarat (North Bombay) and the Maratha country. The latter group – probably much the larger – dominated the whole of the Doab and the Ganges plain; they were

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separated by the dry Panjab plains from the Indus valley tribes (and from such as extended thence into the West Panjab), and were cut off from peninsular India, to the south and west, by the ranges of the Vindhyan hill series and the Narbada valley already mentioned. It was the northern or Ganges valley Aryans who, in time, developed the law, custom, caste, as well as the modified religious system and the schools of philosophy, which we call “Hindu43.” These ideas gradually spread (in after times) to the west and south of India – i.e., to the Bombay “Dakhan” and to Madras, by the agency of Brahman missionaries. An Aryan (Yadava) tribe, in a very early stage of development, came to the upper west, as has been stated; but into the upper part of Madras (Telingana) and the region farther south, Aryans never came, .except in small numbers – Brahmans as teachers, and advisers to kings and princes, and soldiers of fortune seeking the command of armies, or posts of state.

Even in Northern India and the Indus valley the Aryan tribes (who were always engaged in wars which must have been a constant drain on their numerical strength) could not have formed a very large immigrant population. All the circumstances of their history indicate that they constituted a

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limited and superior element, a ruling or dominant class, establishing kingdoms and providing territorial chiefs with their armies. They advanced, fully as much by alliances and the voluntary submission of the inhabitants, as by conquest. When the Aryans established their kingdoms in the Ganges valley, their armies and people generally (with the increase that certainly took place by the rapid growth of mixed and dependent races) could not have been maintained without a steady supply of grain, and without aid in building and other arts. This aid was, we must conclude, largely given by non-Aryan tribes. To be sure the Aryan races, or others originally associated with them, were not themselves ignorant of agriculture. Even in the hymns of the Rigveda, allusion is made to the measurement of fields, to corn and other agricultural produce; and the importance of the plough is sometimes recognised. And so it is in later literature. But agriculture was never esteemed by any, and was positively abhorred (as it is to this day) by the chief Aryan tribes – Brahmans and Warriors (Kshatriya). The “Vagya” – originally the bulk of Aryan “common people,” and which Manu represents as the third caste, became to some extent an agricultural class44, and seem to have

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separated into two parts – one taking to trade, the other to cultivation. The poorer and non-combatant families would almost inevitably take to village cultivation in the course of time. It is impossible, however, on an examination of the existing agricultural castes (whether of tenants or owners) to trace the Aryan Vaisya as having at any time formed any large element in the agricultural population.

It remains, then, briefly to note what became of the Aryan rulers, whose wars the great epic (the “Mahabharata”) tells us of; and what other races come to Upper India. All we can gather is that the old Kshatriya kingdoms, one by one, disappeared,

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and that for a long period great parts of the Ganges valley were desolate; while in other parts, humbler mixed, or earlier non-Aryan races, resumed possession of the soil, and even produced chiefs and princes. Here and there, no doubt, Brahmanical and Buddhist kings continued to reign.

Meanwhile we have information that for a considerable period – say from 160 B.C. to 100 A.D., and again later on – there was a great disturbance of the Saka or “Indo-Scythian” and Yuchi or “Kushan” races beyond the west and north-west frontiers, and a consequent move forward (first of one, then of the other), which brought new elements into Indian

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life in the north-west. We have to take account of the invasion of races who furnished the original materials of what are now the Jats, Gujars, and other similar tribes45. In process of time these tribes obtained settlements – especially in the plains of the Panjab and adjacent parts of the N.W. Provinces – we can easily trace the area over which Jats, the prominent “community”-formers of the Panjab46, and the Gujars, extended. At the same time, in place of the ruling “Hindu” race of the Kshatriya, we see the uprising of several notable tribes known as “Rajput,” probably largely of Scythian or other foreign origin, and some of them descended from the old Aryan stock, but at most only semi-Aryan47. Some “Rajput”

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clans are traceable to an origin in Gujarat and Upper Western India, and others perhaps further north. It is certain that although the rule of Hindu or Buddhist kings never entirely ceased over Northern India, the local wars and foreign incursions gradually drove the Brahmanic or “Hindu” tribes towards the less fertile, but also more defensible, country of Rajputana, Malwa48, and Bundelkhand – the tract roughly indicated as the country between the Jamna river and the Narbada. The first raids of the Moslem armies in mediaeval times accentuated this tendency of the “Hindus” to congregate in this country. Doubtless during the whole of this period, the Jat and Gujar settlements in the Panjab (and adjacent districts in the N.W. Provinces) were able to expand and to change considerably under the influence of the climate and of intermarriage. But when the Pathan emperors had established their rule, they began to employ and to encourage the “Rajput” chiefs, who were now thoroughly “Hindu.” These often formed clans with a quasi-feudal order of organisation (wherever they were in sufficient numbers) and soon began to issue from Ajmer, Mewar, and the rest of Rajputana, and

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to re-possess the domains once ruled by Aryan princes in Oudh and the Ganges valley. This they did, sometimes under direct encouragement from the Moslem emperors, and often by mere adventure, in parts which had been left uninhabited, or were in the hands of tribes like the Bhar49. The important feature about the village communities in the N.W. Provinces and Oudh is this – that a very large number of them are Rajput villages, and they are almost, if not quite, invariably the result of this reflex movement, and rarely, if ever, are older than medieval times, i.e., from the date of the Pathan sovereigns of Delhi onwards. There are no traces of any certainly ancient Aryan village communities; and very few of clans or families having an ancient traditional connection with their present location, or said (with any probability) to be descended from the old Aryan races.

In the Panjab (and in the parts of the N.W. Provinces more closely adjacent thereto) we have also some Rajput communities of a somewhat different origin50; but the great feature is the prevalence

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of Jat, and (to a lesser degree) Gujar, villages. And, generally speaking, at the present day the tribal constitution of agrarian society is more prominent in the Panjab than it is elsewhere. There are a number of other clans or castes of various names who have also joint-villages; but they are either partly Jat or partly Rajput in origin, and may safely be classified with one or the other51. On the north-west frontier again there are settlements of tribes of quite special character. They are now (since some centuries) Moslem. These latter are very interesting, because we often possess almost complete information, not only about the whole tribe, but about the clans and sub-clans and ultimate divisions into which they are formed, and how they divided the land on which they settled (p. 24). And they retain various grades of chiefs who still exercise authority. But these settled at dates which (at the earliest) do not go back beyond five or six hundred years. They seem to have been, in their not very covetable territory (Peshawar, Hazara, Bannu, Kohat, Dera-Ismail Khan), left undisturbed by the greater sovereigns of the north, and probably professed a more or less nominal subjection to them. Whatever may be the reason, these tribes had not adopted a monarchical rule of their own; and their “Khans,” “Maliks,” and other chiefs but rarely attempted to claim any extensive power or to attain large estates as local landlords.

Footnotes

37. Their history is well traced in the Archaeol. Reports for North India, Vol. I I., for instance, They gave rise (however indirectly and by mixture of race) to the local tribes in Upper India, known as Bala, Ahir, Ghakar, Jat (or Jat), Mer, and Gujar (Gurjar). Many of their leading families, too, became known as “Rajput.”

38. And who (considering the countries known to the writers of the Vedic hymns) must have been rude people in the north-western hills and the Northern Panjab.

39. Indicated by the names in literature – Ahi, Naga, etc.

40. We know that there was an ancient serpent (and sun) worshipping race in Kashmir; that the people of Taxila, in Alexander’s time, were snake worshippers, and certainly not Aryans, It is possible that the known invasions about the time of Darius Hystaspes (sixth century B.C.) brought new Turanian tribes to North India. A Turanian royal family appears about that time to have succeeded to the earlier Aryan dynasty of the Magadha kingdom (E. Bengal). From them are derived the Andhra, who at one time dominated the upper part of the peninsula, and also the Naga or Snake Kings of Eastern Central India. These later invasions were of clans probably identical in race with the earliest Dravidians (“snakes” or Ahi) of epic times.

41. It is worth while noting that “tank” is not the English word, giving the idea of a great vessel of iron plates bolted together, but means a partly natural, partly artificial, reservoir, and is derived from a native (Dravidian) word of something the same sound.

42. For example by traditions, local remains, existence of linguistic traces, and a number of other coincident circumstances.

43. I may take it for granted that the reader is aware how the Hindu deities of the books called “Purana” are entirely different from those that are found in the ancient Aryan Vedic Hymns.

44. I need only say that the four castes – Brahman, Warrior (Kshatriya), commonalty or Vaisya, and the added fourth caste or Sudra, meaning mixed races, or strangers admitted into the Hindu pale – are rather terms of classification than actual caste names. Even Brahmans have to be described by a great number of local names; and instead of the “Vaisya,” we have a multitude of castes claiming respectable rank, though not of the warrior or priestly grade. The Sudra represent all the converted races. The whole of the Hindu castes in South India (other than Brahmans) rank therefore as Sudra. In a valuable paper (Dec., 1898) in the (Columbia) Political Science Quarterly, Mr. E. Washburn Hopkins, of Yale University, has recently given a number of references to Sanskrit literature bearing on villages and agriculture. He thinks I have allowed (in my “Ind. Vill. Comm.”) too little of an agricultural character to the original Vaisya. But my remarks were directed against the popular notion that the Vaisya were an extensive and special caste who introduced agriculture into India. Some part of the common people of the Aryan group, it may be accepted, took to agriculture; but it can only have been a limited number. There is nothing whatever to shake my conviction that when the Aryans came it was as a superior, ruling element; that they found Dravidian (and Kolarian) tribes established; and that these tribes (or some of them) possessed irrigation “tanks,” and had settled, organised villages. There is no kind of evidence that Aryans introduced agriculture, or that they invented any new village organisation. The whole mass of villages (as far as they are ancient) in the peninsula are of non-Aryan origin, since no considerable bodies of Aryans ever settled at all in those countries. And in Upper India, there is no indication that the mass of local agriculturists were connected with the Vaisya, or more than partly Aryan at all. For when the superior Aryans ceased to rule throughout the great part of the Ganges valley, the country was re-occupied by Bhar, Pasi, Cheru, and other agricultural tribes, who were certainly non-Aryan; whether any of them had been recognised by the Brahman classifiers as Sudra is another matter. I will only add that I have never suggested that “India owes agriculture and every settled principle of land tenure” to the Dravidian races (Art. quoted, p. 677); but I am glad to take the opportunity of acknowledging that a sentence on p. 190 (“ Ind. Vill. Comm.”) is misleading. I meant only that non-Aryan races had established villages for agricultural life before the Aryans, and that the latter furnished the element of “overlordship” and manorial growth. This is not inconsistent with allowing that the lower ranks of Aryans, and especially the families of mixed blood, practised agriculture.

45. I state this generally; it is not meant that there were no other invasions which brought other tribes; or that we can be positive which tribe came in at which period. We know historically of one period of invasions in the time of Darius Hystaspes (sixth century B.C.); and the period spoken of in the text, which involved the loss of Greek rule in Upper India, the arrival of the kings known as the “Satraps,” and then their displacement by the Kushan kings Kadphises, and (later) Kanishka, had the greatest importance of any.

46. I may mention that in 1881 – I have not the later figures at hand – Jats formed 195 per mille of the entire population of the Panjab. Gujars are also very numerous. Both extended as far as Rajputana.

47. We feel sure of this on many grounds; but especially because a large number were grouped by the Brahmans (who directed religious and social life) into four great tribes or families called “Agnikula.” These were said to have descended each from an ancestor who was miraculously born out of the sacrificial fire on Mt. Abu near Ajmer. This means that their origin was unknown (or not wished to be stated), but that they became Hindus by adoption, or at least espoused the cause of the Brahmans and their religion. We have no trace of the Rajput clans before the fifth century A.D.; indeed I might almost say before the eighth century.

48. Malwa is the country in Central India of which Ujjian was the well-known Hindu capital.

49. The traditional evidence, borne out by the facts of the case, appears in “Ind. Vill. Comm.,” pp. 121–9 and 309 ff. Sometimes the Rajputs appear in clans, but without a monarchical constitution; in other cases single chiefs with a small following established “baronies” and small separate kingdoms in which there was no opportunity for a “feudal” distribution of territory.

50. The Panjab Rajputs are largely clans (Bhatti, etc.) descended (though probably in a much mixed race) from the original Yadava tribes of the Indus valley and neighbourhood. In the parts of the Panjab close to the N.W.P., some Rajputs are found of the same clans as those in the N.W.P,

51. i.e., referred to one or other of the northern invasions: such are the Ghakar, Awan, Arain, etc.

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