Aryans in the Manu Smriti

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References to Aryans in the Manu Smriti:(numbers in the left indicate the

chapter and verse number)

 

2. 103. He who does not worship the Savitri*, standing in the morning, nor

sitting in the evening, shall be excluded from all the duties and rights of

an Aryan.

 

2.169. According to Vedas, the first birth of an Aryan is from his

natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Munga

grass**, and the third on the initiation to the performance of a Yajna.

 

2.175. Conduct worthy of an Aryan is, always delighting in truthfulness,

obedience to the sacred law, purity and keeping his speech, his arms, and

his belly under control.(contd in next verse)

 

2.176. Avoiding the acquisition of wealth and the gratification of his

desires if they are opposed to the sacred law, and even lawful acts which

may cause pain in the future or are offensive to men.

 

2.177. Not being uselessly active with his hands and feet, or with his

eyes, nor crooked in his ways, nor talking idly, nor injuring others by

deeds or even thinking of it.

 

2.178. Walking in that path of holy men which his fathers and his

grandfathers followed; while he walks in that, he will not suffer harm.

 

2.253. By protecting those who live as Aryans and by removing the

wrongdoers, kings, solely intent on guarding their subjects, reach heaven.

 

3.58. Behaviour unworthy of an Aryan, harshness, cruelty, and habitual

neglect of the prescribed duties betray in this world a man of impure

origin.

 

 

* - refers to the holy Gayatri Mantra.

** - upanayana ceremony - investing with the sacred thread.

 

P.S - Manu Smriti used to be the most authoritative of the Hindu law texts.

It is dated between (200 BCE to 200 CE)

 

 

Message: 3

Sun, 14 Jan 2001 21:54:54 -0000

" Vivekananda Centre " <vivekananda

Vivekananda on the Vedas (Part 29)

 

Parts 1 to 28 were posted earlier. This is part 29. 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 29

 

4. The True Aryan Is He Who Is Born through Prayer, the Descendant of the

Whole Universe

 

What is an Aryan? He is a man whose birth is through religion. This is a

peculiar subject, perhaps, in the USA, but the idea is that a man must be

born through religion, through prayers. (15)

 

The child whose very conception and whose death is according to the rules of

the Vedas, such is an Aryan. (16)

 

He is of the " Aryan race " who is born through prayer, and he is a non-Aryan

who is born through sensuality. (17)

 

Re [the theory of] the Accado-Sumerian racial identity of the ancient

Tamilians: this makes us proud of the blood of the great civilization which

flowered before all others - compared to whose antiquity the Aryans and the

Semites are babies....

 

As for us Vedantins and sannyasins [monks], we are proud of our

Sanskrit-speaking ancestors of the Vedas; proud of our Tamil-speaking

ancestors whose civilization is the oldest yet known; we are proud of our

Kolaran ancestors, older than either of the above - who lived and hunted in

forests; we are proud of our ancestors with flint implements - the first of

the human race; and, if evolution be true, we are proud of our animal

ancestors, for they antedated man himself. We are proud that we are the

descendants of the whole universe, sentient or insentient. Proud that we are

born, and work, and suffer - proudest still that we die when the task is

finished and enter for ever the realm where there is no more delusion. (18)

 

 

b) The Indian Aryans Sought, above All, to Master the Mind and Go Beyond

Physical Pleasures

 

1. Through Culture of the Mind and Intellect the Indian Aryans Evolved the

Upanishads

 

We find three ideas wherever the Aryans go: the village community, the

rights of women, and a joyful religion. The first is the system of village

communities...; each man was his own and owned the land. All these political

institutions of the world that we now see are the development of these

village systems; as the Aryans went to different countries and settled,

certain circumstances developed this institution, others that. (19)

 

When the Aryans reached India, they found the climate so hot that they could

not work incessantly, so they began to think; thus they became introspective

and developed religion. They discovered that there is no limit to the power

of the mind. They therefore sought to master that, and through it they

learned that there is something infinite coiled up in the frame we call man,

and that it is seeking to become kinetic. To evolve this became their chief

aim. (20)

 

The Aryans were lovers of peace, cultivators of the soil, and were quite

happy and contented if only they could rear their families undisturbed. In

such a life they had ample leisure, and therefore greater opportunity of

being thoughtful and civilized. Our King Janaka tilled the soil with his own

hands, and he was also the greatest of knowers of Truth of his time. With

us, rishis, munis, and yogis have been born from the very beginning; they

have known from the first that the world is a chimera. Plunder and fight as

you may, the enjoyment that you are seeking is only in peace; and peace, in

the renunciation of physical pleasures. Enjoyment lies, not in physical

development, but in the culture of the mind and intellect. (21)

 

The Upanishads were preached and oblations offered in hermitages near which

deer grazed. (22)

 

 

2. The Bold Intellectual Analysis of the Indian Aryans Produced Great

Contributions to Science

 

In ancient India the centers of national life were always the intellectual

and spiritual, not political. Of old, as now, political and social power

have always been subordinated to spiritual and intellectual. The outburst of

national life was round colleges of sages and spiritual teachers. We thus

find the samitis of the Panchalas, of the Kasyas (of Varanasi), the

Maithilas standing out as great centers of spiritual culture and philosophy,

even in the Upanishads. Again, these centers in turn became the focus of

political ambitions of the various divisions of the Aryans. (23)

 

There was an inquisitiveness in the race to start with, which very soon

developed into bold analysis; and though, in the first attempt, the work

turned out might be like the attempts with shaky hands of the future

master-sculptor, it very soon gave way to science, bold attempts, and

startling results.

 

Its boldness made these men search every brick of their sacrificial altars -

scan, cement, and pulverize every word of their scriptures, arrange,

rearrange, doubt, deny, or explain the ceremonies. (24)

 

Vedic anatomy was no less perfect than the Ayurvedic. There were many names

for many parts of the Organs, because they had to cut up animals for

sacrifice. (25)

 

Their boldness turned their gods inside out and assigned only a secondary

place to the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator of the universe,

their ancestral Father-in-Heaven; or threw Him altogether overboard as

useless and started a world religion without Him [buddhism], with even now

the largest following of any religion. (26)

 

The sea is described as full of ships. Sea voyage was prohibited later on,

partly because there came the fear that people might thereby become

Buddhists. (27)

 

The Vedic sacrificial altar was the origin of geometry. (28)

 

The Aryans were by nature an analytical race. In the science of mathematics

and grammar, wonderful fruits were gained, and by the analysis of the mind

the full tree was developed. (29)

 

[The boldness of the Aryans] evolved the science of geometry from the

arrangement of the bricks to build various altars and startled the world

with astronomical knowledge that arose from the attempts to time accurately

their worship and oblations. It made their contribution to the science of

mathematics the largest of any race, ancient or modern; and to their

knowledge of chemistry, or metallic compounds in medicine, their scale of

musical notes, their invention of the bow-instruments - all of great service

in the building of the modern European civilization. It led them to invent

the science of building up the child-mind through shining fables, of which

every child in every civilized country learns in a nursery or school and

carries an impress through life. (30)

 

 

3. Poetic Insight Was the Other Great Peculiarity of the Indian Aryans

 

Behind and before this analytical keenness, covering it as in a velvet

sheath, was the other great mental peculiarity of the race - poetic insight.

Its religion, its philosophy, its history, its ethics, its politics, were

all inlaid in a flowerbed of poetic imagery - the miracle of language which

was called Sanskrit, or perfected, lending itself to expressing and

manipulating them better than any other tongue. The aid of melodious numbers

was involved even to express the hard facts of mathematics.

 

This analytical power and the boldness of poetical visions which urged it

onwards are the two great internal causes in the makeup of the Hindu race.

They together formed, as it were, the keynote of the national character.

This combination is what is always making the race press onwards beyond the

senses - the secret of those speculations which are like the steel blades

the artisans used to manufacture - cutting through bars of iron, yet pliable

enough to be bent into a circle.

 

They wrought poetry in silver and gold; the symphony of jewels, the maze of

marble wonders, the music of colors, the fine fabrics which belong more to

the fairyland of dreams than to the real - have back of them thousands of

years of working of this national trait.

 

Arts and sciences, even the realities of domestic life, are covered with a

mass of poetical conceptions, which are pressing forward till the sensuous

touched the supersensuous, and the real gets the rose-hue of the unreal.

 

The earliest glimpses we have of this race show it already in possession of

this characteristic, as an instrument of some use in its hands. Many forms

of religion and society must have been left behind in the onward march

before we find the race as depicted in the scriptures, the Vedas.

 

An organized pantheon, elaborate ceremonials, divisions of society into

hereditary classes necessitated by a variety of occupations, a great many

necessaries and a good many luxuries of life are already there. (31)

 

to be continued.....

 

 

 

 

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