Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 28)

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Parts 1 to 27 were posted earlier. This is part 28. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 28

 

PART I, SECTION 2: VEDIC CULTURE

 

 

Chapter 5: Vedic Culture

 

a) The Aryans, Lovers of Peace

1. The Ideal of the Aryan Was the Assimilative Base of the Vast Number of Indian Races

Three mountains stand as typical of progress - the Himalayas of the Indo-Aryan, Sinai of the Hebrew, and Olympus of the Greek civilization. (1)

The loom of the fabric of the Aryan civilization is a vast, warm, level country, interspersed with broad, navigable rivers. The cotton of this cloth is composed of highly civilized, semi-civilized, and barbarian tribes, mostly Aryan. (2)

The problem [in India] has been as it has been everywhere else - the assimilation of various races; but nowhere has it been so vast as here. (3)

We [find] a multitude surrounded by the snows of the Himalayas in the north and the heat of the south - vast plains, interminable forests through which mighty rivers roll their tides. We catch a glimpse of different races - Dravidians, Tartars and aboriginals, pouring in their quota of blood, of speech, or manners, and religions. (4)

Community of language, government and, above all, religion has been the power of fusion.

In other lands this has been attempted by force, that is, the enforcement of the culture of one race only over the rest, the result being the production of a short-lived, vigorous national life; then, dissolution.

In India, on the other hand, the attempts have been as gentle as the problem is vast; and, from the earliest times, the customs, and especially the religions, of the different elements tolerated.

When it was a small problem and force was sufficient to form a unity, the effect really was the nipping in the bud of various healthy types in the germ of all the elements except the dominant one. It was only one set of brains using the vast majority for its own good, thus losing the major portion of the possible amount of development; and thus, when the dominant type had spent itself, the apparently impregnable building tottered to its ruin, e.g. Greece, Rome, the Norman.

A common language would be a great desideratum; but the same criticism applies to it - the destruction of the vitality of the existing ones.

The only solution to be reached was the finding of a great sacred language of which all the others would be considered manifestations, and that was found in Sanskrit.

The Dravidian languages may or may not have been originally Sanskritic, but for practical purposes they are so now; and every day we see them approaching the ideal more and more, yet keeping their distinctive vital peculiarities.

[in addition], a racial background was found - the Aryas. (5)

The attempt at fusion between races and tribes of various degrees of culture: just as Sanskrit has been the linguistic solution, so the Arya is the racial solution. (6)

And at last a great nation emerges to our view - still keeping the type of the Aryan - stronger, broader, and more organized by assimilation. We find the central assimilate core giving its type and character to the whole mass, clinging on with great pride to its name of Aryan. (7)

 

2. Brushing Off the Cobwebs of the "Aryan Invasion Theory"

A gentle, yet clear brushing off of the cobwebs of the so-called Aryan theory and all its vicious corollaries is... absolutely necessary, especially for the South [of India]; and a proper self-respect created by a knowledge of the past grandeurs of the ancestors of the Aryan race - the great Tamils. (8)

[There has been] speculation whether there was a distinct, separate race called the Aryas living in Central Asia to the Baltic. [Also as to] so-called types - the "blonde" and the "brunette". [but] the races were always mixed.

Coming to practical common sense from so-called historical imagination: the Aryas in their oldest records were in the land between Turkistan and the Punjab and Northwest Tibet. (9)

The Americans, the English, the Dutch and the Portuguese got hold of the poor Africans and made them work hard while they lived; and their children of mixed birth were born in slavery and kept in that condition for a long period. From that wonderful example, the mind jumps back several thousand years and fancies that the same thing happened [in India]; and our archeologist dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryan came from - the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red-haired. Others, according to their idea, think that they were all black-haired. If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired! Of late, there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes. I should not be sorry of they had all been drowned there, theory and all.

Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryan ever came from anywhere outside of India - and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends. And the theory that the shudra castes were all non-Aryans and that they were a multitude, is equally illogical and equally irrational. It could not have been possible in those days that a few Aryans settled and lived there with a hundred thousand slaves at their command. These slaves would have eaten them up, made "chutney" of them in five minutes. The only explanation is to be found in the Mahabharata, which says that in the beginning of the Satya Yuga there was one caste, the brahmins; and then, by difference of occupation, they went on dividing themselves into different castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming Satya Yuga all the other castes will have to go back to the same condition. (10)

What your European pundits say about the Aryans' swooping down from some foreign land, snatching away the lands of the aborigines and settling in India by exterminating them, is all pure nonsense, foolish talk! Strange that our Indian scholars, too, say amen to them; and all these monstrous lies are being taught to our boys! This is very bad indeed.

I am an ignoramus myself; I do not pretend to any scholarship; but with the little that I understand, I strongly protested against these ideas at the Paris Congress [in 1901]. I have been talking with the Indian and European savants on the subject, and hope to raise many objection to this theory in detail, when time permits. And this I say to you, to our pundits, also: "You are learned men; hunt up your old books and scriptures, please, and draw your own conclusions."

Whenever Europeans find an opportunity, they exterminate the aborigines and settle down in ease and comfort on their lands; and therefore they think the Aryans must have done the same! The Westerners would be considered wretched vagabonds if they lived in their native homes, depending wholly on their own internal resources; and so they have to run wildly about the world seeking how they can feed upon the fat of the land of others by spoliation and slaughter; and therefore they conclude that the Aryans must have done the same! But where is your proof?

Guess-work? Then keep your fanciful guesses to yourselves! In what Veda, in what Sukta, do you find that the Aryans came into India from a foreign country? Where do you get the idea that they slaughtered the wild aborigines? What do you gain by talking such nonsense?... India has never [exterminated weaker races and settled on their lands for ever]. The Aryans were kind and generous; and in their hearts, which were Large and unbounded as the ocean, and in their brains, gifted with superhuman genius, all these ephemeral and apparently pleasant, but virtually beastly practices never found a place.(11)

3. The Hindus Are Aryans, Whether of Pure or Mixed Blood

According to the Hindu Shastras, the three Hindu castes - brahmana, kshatriya and vaishya, and several nations outside of India, to wit, Cheen, Hun, Darad, Pahlava, Yavana, and Khash are all Aryans.... There was a distinct, powerful nation called Cheen, living in the northeastern parts of Kashmir; and the Darads lived where are now seen the hill-tribes between India and Afghanistan. Some remnants of the ancient Cheen are yet to be found in very small numbers, and Daradisthan is yet in existence. In the Rajatarangini, the history of Kashmir, references are often made to the supremacy of the powerful Darad-raj. An ancient tribe of Hun reigned for a long period in the northwestern parts of India. The Tibetans now call themselves Huns; but this Hun is perhaps "Hune". The fact is that the Huns referred to in Manu are not the modern Tibetans; but it is quite probable that the modern Tibetans are the product of the mixture of the ancient Aryan Huns and some other Mongol tribes that came to Tibet from Central Asia. According to Prjevalski and the Duc d'Orleans, the Russian and French travelers, there are still found in some parts of Tibet tribes with faces and eyes of the Aryan type. Yavana was the name given to the Greeks.... not only the Hindus but also the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians called the Greeks by that name. By the word Pahlava is meant the ancient Parsees, speaking the Pahlavi tongue. Even now, Khash denotes the semi-civilized Aryan tribes living in mountainous regions and in the Himalayas, the word is still used in that sense. In that sense, the present Europeans are the descendants of the Khash; in other words, these Aryan tribes that were uncivilized in ancient days are all Khash.

In the opinion of modern savants, the Aryans had reddish-white complexion, black or red hair, straight noses, well-drawn eyes, etc.; and the formation of the skull varied a little according to the hair. Where the complexion is dark, there the change has come to pass owing to the mixture of the pure Aryan blood with black races. They hold that there are still some tribes to the west of the Himalayan borders who are of pure Aryan blood, and that the rest are all of mixed blood; otherwise, how could they be dark? But the European pundits ought to know by this time that, in the southern part of India, many children are born with red hair, which after two or three years turns into black, and that in the Himalayas many have red hair and blue or gray eyes.

Let the pundits fight among themselves; it is the Hindus who have all along called themselves Aryas. Whether of pure or mixed blood, the Hindus are Aryas; there it rests. If the Europeans do not like us, Aryas, because we are dark, let them take another name for themselves - what is that to us? (12)

Whatever may be the import of the philological terms Aryan and Tamilian, even taking for granted that both of these grand sub-divisions of Indian humanity came from outside the Western frontier, the dividing line has been, from the most ancient times, one of language and not of blood. Not one of the epithets expressive of contempt for the ugly physical features of the Dasyus of the Vedas would apply to the great Tamilian race; in fact, if there be a toss up for good looks between the Aryans and Tamilians, no sensible man would prognosticate the result. (13)

We stick, in spite of our Western theories, to that definition of the word Arya which we find in our sacred books, and which includes only the multitude we now call Hindus. This Aryan race, itself a mixture of the great races, Sanskrit-speaking and Tamil-speaking, applies to all Hindus alike. That the shudras have in some Smritis been excluded from this epithet means nothing, for the shudras were, and still are, only the waiting Aryas - Aryas in novitiate. (14)

to be continued.....