The Vedic-Puranic Tribes in Chronological Perspective

 

The Vedic-Puranic Tribes in Chronological Perspective

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

The main Puranic Tribes (or Tribal Conglomerates) into which the people of the major part of North India are divided, and which make up the historical narrative in traditional history, are the Five "Lunar" Tribes and the Single "Solar" tribe:

Lunar Tribes:

Druhyu

Anu/Ānava

Pūru/Paurava - main minor subtribes are Bharata or Tṛtsu.

Yadu/Yādva/Yādava

Turvasu (Turvaśa in the Rigveda).

Solar Tribe:

Ikṣvāku (Tṛkṣi in the Rigveda).

I have already dealt with these tribes and their role in both Vedic and Puranic history in my books and blogs. In this article I will examine all the same data in (internal) chronological perspective, since this brings out every fact in sharper detail and makes the historical picture crystal clear.

We will examine the data under the following sections:

I. The Tribes in the Old Rigveda.

II. The Tribes in the Redacted Hymns.

III. The Tribes in the New Rigveda.

IV. What the Data Indicates.

 

I. The Tribes in the Old Rigveda.

1. The first point to be noted is that the Solar tribe is not found even once in the Old Rigveda: both the words Ikṣvāku and Tṛkṣi are completely absent in the Old Rigveda. Clearly, the Ikṣvakus of the east as well as the Tṛkṣi (the Ikṣvāku branch which had migrated to the northwest already in pre-Rigvedic times) were outside the horizon of the Rigvedic composers during the period of the Old Rigveda.

 

2. As for the references to the other four (i.e. other than Pūru) Lunar Tribes, they are all mentioned in the Old Rigveda, but all but one of these references to the four treat them as enemies:

Druhyu: VII.18.6,12,14.

Anu: VI.62.9;   VII.18.4,13.

Yadu-Turvaśa: VI.27.7;   VII.18.6;  19.8.

 

Before moving on, what is this single reference in the Old Rigveda which does not treat the Yadu-Turvaśa at least as direct enemies? This single reference is in VI.20.12, which refers to Indra helping these two tribes to cross the tumultuous rivers from afar. Since it has been my policy throughout my analysis to only take the "Unordered Hymns" listed by the Indologists from Oldenberg to Witzel (plus the six Hymns from Book 6 named in the Aitareya Brahmana as interpolations) as Redacted Hymns, we can simply accept this as the first of the many references in the Rigveda to this event, without any harm to the point that we are making here about the sharp difference in the references to these Tribes in the Rigveda.

But for the record, let us note that this hymn, VI.20, is a hymn which is probably an unrecognized Redacted Hymn, as already noted by me in my earlier books and articles:

VI.20.10 is the only verse in the Old Books, singled out by that master Indologist Prof. Hopkins (HOPKINS 1896a:72-73), in the "Final Note" to his path-breaking article "Prāgāthinī - I", as a verse which seems to have "interesting marks of lateness", in spite of the hymn not being a Redacted Hymn. He notes not only that Purukutsa is a king belonging to a much later period (and mentioned elsewhere only in the New Books), but that the verse contains the phrase purah śāradīh, found elsewhere only in the New Book 1; and, most significantly, the phrase pra stu- which is "a very important word in the liturgical sense; and it is one of the commonest of words in later literature", found very commonly in the Brahmanas, five times in the Atharvaveda, and also very commonly in the Avesta as fra stu-. But, in the Rigveda, outside this single reference in an Old Book, it is found 10 times only in the New Rigveda.

[It is not just this verse: the entire hymn contains other references which are not found anywhere else in the Old Rigveda but are found in the New Rigveda: verse 6 refers to Indra helping Namī Sāpya found elsewhere only in X.48.9, and verse 11 refers to Indra helping Navavāstva found elsewhere only in I.36.18 and X.49.6. The reference to Indra helping Yadu-Turvaśa to cross the tumultuous rivers from afar is likewise found elsewhere only in the Redacted Hymns (VI.45.1;  IV.30.17) and the New Rigveda (V.31.8;   I.36.18;  54.6;  174.9;   VIII.7.18)].

 

3. The sweeping nature of the above references in the Old Rigveda treating the other four Lunar Tribes as enemies becomes even more significant and conspicuous when we see that there is only one reference (out of so many references to the other Four Tribes) in the New Rigveda which treats any of them as enemies. It is in IX.61.2. And even this reference emphasizes that this enmity belongs to the period of the Old Rigveda, as it refers to Indra having defeated the Yadu-Turvaśa for Divodāsa!

 

4. In sharp contrast to all this, the Pūrus (and especially their major sub-tribe the Bharatas, also referred to in three hymns as Tṛtsus) are the Heroes, the First Person People of the Book, in the Old Rigveda:

The Bharatas are the Heroes of the Hymns in II.7.1,5;  36.2;   III.23.2;  33.11,12;   IV.25.4;   VII.8.4. They are also called Tṛtsus in VII.8.3,4,6,8;  18.7,13,15,19;  33.5,6.

The broader word Pūru (i.e. the Bharata Pūrus) everywhere in the Old Rigveda refers likewise to the Heroes of the Hymns in VI.20.10;   IV.21.10;  38.1,3;  39.2;   VII.5.3;  19.3. 

The only two references where the word Pūru is used in a hostile sense is in reference to other non-Bharata Pūru sub-tribes to the east with whom the Bharata king Sudās enters into conflicts, in VII.8.4;  18.13.

 

The picture in the Old Rigveda is therefore absolutely clear. The nature of the references to the tribes in the Old Rigveda stands out sharply from the nature of the references in the Redacted Hymns and the New Rigveda:

1. The Ikṣvākus are completely outside the Vedic horizon.

2. The other Four Lunar Tribes (the Druhyus, Anus, Yadus and Turvaśas) are enemies.

3. The Pūrus (and particularly the Bharata Pūrus) are the Heroes or the People of the Book.

 

II. The Tribes in the Redacted Hymns.

1. The references (there are three) to the other (non-Pūru) tribes cease to be hostile in the Redacted Hymns.

Two of the references, as already pointed out above, repeat the theme of Indra helping Yadu-Turvaśa to cross the tumultuous rivers from afar: VI.45.1;  IV.30.17. In fact, if we accept that VI.20 (see above) which first refers to this theme is not actually an Old Hymn but an unrecognized Redacted Hymn, then we can say the references to this theme start from the Redacted Hymns. As nothing further is directly mentioned in respect to the circumstances surrounding this historical help, it may be assumed that the repeated third-person references to this single theme in the Rigveda represent an incident which was in some (unspecified) way beneficial to the Vedic Pūrus. [Actually I.36.18 in the New Rigveda specifically tells us that they were called from afar by "us", i.e. by the Pūrus].

The third reference brings us our first reference in the Rigveda to the Tṛkṣis, and also the first of what we may call the neutral Nominal References to Tribes (i.e. references in the form of enumerations, as we would say "Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Banga…"; or in the form of geographical-sweeps, as in "from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.."):

VI.46.8 refers to the Tṛkṣis and Druhyus along with the Pūrus, where the composer sweepingly asks Indra to grant "us" the powers inherent in "all the Tribes" from one end of the Vedic horizon to the other.

Here, we see that the references to the other (non-Pūru) tribes, apart from showing a wider horizon, have shifted from a hostile attitude in the Old Rigveda to a more tolerant neutral attitude in the Redacted Hymns.  

2. Meanwhile, the references to the Pūrus (and especially their major sub-tribe the Bharatas) continue to treat them as the Heroes, the First Person People of the Book:  III.53.12,24;   VI.16.4,19.45;   VII.33.6;  96.2.

 

III. The Tribes in the New Rigveda.

1. The neutral or Nominal references to the Ikṣvāku/Tṛkṣi and the other four Lunar Tribes continue in the New Rigveda. The enumerative references among them are the following:

a) I.108.8 refers to all the Five Tribes together, the Yadus, Turvaśas in one line and the Druhyus, Anus, Pūrus in the second, and calls upon Indra and Agni to leave them and come to "us"' (i.e. to the Bharata Pūrus)..

b) VIII.10.5 refers to the other Four Tribes Druhyu, Anu, Turvaśa and Yadu, and calls upon the Aśvins to leave them and come to "us" (i.e. to the Pūrus).

c) VIII.4.1, likewise calls upon Indra, in whichever direction he may be, and whether with the Anus (in the northwest) or the Turvaśas (in the southeast), to come hither.

d) Yet another similar reference, I.47.7, only mentions one Tribe, when it calls upon the Aśvins, whether they are in the "far distance" or they are with the Turvaśas, to leave them and come to "us".

 

2. Then there are some more references (as in the Redacted Hymns) repeating the theme of Indra helping Yadu-Turvaśa to cross the tumultuous rivers from afar: I.36.18;  54.6;  174.9;   V.31.8;   VIII.7.18.

 

3. Finally, there are now the occasional friendly references to the other Lunar Tribes.

Prominent among these are the references praising the generosity of (patron kings belonging to) those tribes, or their sacrifices:

Anus in  VIII.74.4.

Yadus in VIII.1.31;  6.46,48.

Turvaśas in VIII.4.19.

Yadus-Turvaśas in VIII.9.14;  45.27;  62.10.

There is also a positive reference to the fame of the Yadus-Turvaśas in X.49.8, and another rather vague one in VIII.4.7.

There is a positive reference in V.31.4 to Anus as the manufacturers of Indra's chariot.

[As Griffith in his footnote correctly points out, "probably meaning Bhṛigus, who belonged to that tribe": the Bhṛgus, as I have shown in great detail in my books, were originally the priests of the Anus. In another verse in the Rigveda, IV.16.20, the Bhṛgus are directly referred to as the manufacturers of Indra's chariot. The contextual interchangeability of the words Anu and Bhṛgu is made clear in VII.18, where verse 14 refers to the Anus and Druhyus, and verse 6 to the Bhṛgus and Druhyus]

 

4. As already pointed out earlier, in this flood of positive or neutral references to the other Four Tribes in the New Rigveda, the only reference, IX.61.2 , treating any of them as enemies (here, specifically the Yadus-Turvaśas), clearly specifies that this hostility is not contemporary, but is a reference to the ancient period of Divodāsa of the Old Rigveda.

 

5. But, although there is a cessation of hostilities in the New Rigveda, even the most positive of the references to the other Four Tribes are essentially third person references, and (except for the enigmatic reference to Indra helping the Yadus-Turvaśas over the flooded rivers) they occur mainly in the context of sacrifices conducted by the kings of those tribes, and gifts given by them, in the conduct of those sacrifices, to the Vedic composers. On the other hand, the references to the Pūrus in the New Rigveda indicate that they are still the Heroes, the First Person People of the Book:

Agni is described as belonging to, or blazing for, the Bharatas in I.96.3;   V.11.1;  54.14. Pūrus are described in the first person in VIII.64.10 and X.4.1; and Indra is described as destroying the enemies of the Pūrus in I.59.6;  63.7;  130.7;  131.4. Agni cleanses the sins of the Pūrus in I.129.5; and, most significant of all, Indra, in X.48.5, asks the Pūrus to sacrifice to him alone, promising in return his friendship, protection and generosity, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the "covenant" between the Biblical God and the Jews (the People of the Book in the Bible).

 

IV. What the Data Proves.

To sum up, the data very graphically proves the following things in chronological perspective:

1. The Pūrus alone are the Vedic people or The People of the Book in every period of the Rigveda. The Puranas also locate the Pūrus alone in the area of the Rigveda.

2.  The "Solar" Dynasty of the Ikṣvākus, being far to the east (in eastern U.P.) and completely outside the Rigvedic geographical horizon, is not found at all in the Old Rigveda.

A branch, which migrated to the northwest in pre-Rigvedic times (as per Puranic accounts) and known as the Tṛkṣis, is first found in a nominal reference in a Redacted Hymn (VI.46.8, along with the Druhyus and the Pūrus). A Tṛkṣi king, a son of Trasadasyu, appears as a donor patron king in the New Rigveda in VIII.22.7. The word Tṛkṣi is not found either in the Old Rigveda or anywhere else in any later text.

The word Ikṣvāku itself for the first and only time appears in the New Rigveda in X.60.4, and still not as the name of a Tribe, but with the original meaning "Sun".

On the other hand, it is found six to seven times in three books or chapters of the Jaiminiya Brahmana, where it does refer to the tribe, and once in the Maitrayaniya Upanishad. Thus we see a growing acquaintance or role of the Ikṣvākus in the Vedic literature as the Vedic culture spread eastwards, in keeping with the geography detailed in the Puranas.

3. Among the other (than Pūru) "Lunar" tribes, the most distant, the Druhyu, appear only as enemies in the Old Rigveda (in VII.18.6,12,14, already only as a minor ally of the Anus in the Punjab, and after that are reduced to a nominal entity representing the distant northwest in the Redacted Hymn VI.46.8 and in the two most typical enumerative nominal hymns in the New Rigveda, I.108.8 and VIII.10.5. Again, this is in keeping with the Puranic traditions which place them already driven out northwestwards from the Punjab by the Anus in pre-Rigvedic times (with the Anu-ized remnants still found in the Old Rigveda) with the main body moving out completely from India into Central Asia and beyond.

The purpose of this article is only to place the data in its chronological perspective (in respect of the three stages of the Rigveda). For more details about the one "Solar" and five "Lunar" tribes in the Rigveda, see my earlier articles on the subject:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-iksvakus-in-rigveda.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-identity-of-enemies-of-sudas-in.html

 

The one important fact that emerges from all this is that the traditional history in the Puranas begins at a point of time far in the past in pre-Rigvedic times, and yet, at the same time, the actual Puranic data that was finally set down, and that we have at present, was compiled and completed in very late and very much post-Rigvedic times, and therefore the data in the Puranic texts, except in its very basic structure, is extremely interpolated and jumbled, and totally unreliable in reconstructing ancient history except where it fits in with the data in the Rigveda (which, as Witzel has repeatedly pointed out, and I have repeatedly quoted in my books and articles, is as trustworthy as an actual written manuscript, snapshot, or a tape-recording of the actual time of its composition, and is more reliable than the actual written history of most other ancient civilizations):

1. Firstly, the data in the Puranas gives us the very basic divisions of the different tribal conglomerates spread out over North India, and even gives us their geographical locations and the history of many of their eminent personalities — even fitting them into a larger picture of the different ancient people from all over India mythically descended from a mythical common ancestor Manu Vaivasvata.

It tells us about the emigration of the Druhyus out of India through the northwest in very early times. And it gives us the eastern location of the Ikṣvākus, but also gives us the information about the secondary branch of the Ikṣvākus (called the Tṛkṣis in the Rigveda) who migrated out into the northwest in very early times. All this data, as I have shown in my books and blogs fits in perfectly with the Rigvedic data.

This is important because the five Lunar Tribes so prominent in the Rigveda are not named even once in the subsequent Vedic literature: in the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda (except in a few verses which are actually only Rigvedic Repetitions) or in the Brahmana and Aranyaka texts. And yet, they occupy the central place in the traditional history in the Puranas which come long after, and there is agreement between the Rigveda and the Puranas on these basic details. This proves the traditional belief that there was an ancient "Ādi-Purāṇa" which contained the earliest traditional historical traditions, although it was not memorized and kept in unchanging form like the Vedic texts and was constantly updated and revised in many different versions until these versions were written down in much later times.

2. But, on the other hand, anyone trying to reconstruct the history of ancient India treating the Puranic data as base would end up in a mess because of the continuous complete updation and revision of the data over many centuries. For example, the classification of the five "Lunar Tribes" as descendants of five sons of Yayātī (named, in the Puranas, after the tribes) represents the biggest piece of misdirection (these stories are good so far as myths and stories go, but bad material for historical reconstruction): the tribes actually existed from pre-Rigvedic times, while Yayātī is a near ancestor of the Kauravas and Pāṇḍavas of the Mahabharata (around the time of which the Rigveda was given its more-or-less final canonical form) a few centuries older than the event, and is named in one of the latest hymns (X.102) in the latest Book 10 of the Rigveda, in a hymn composed by his brother Devāpi, and his assignation as the father of the Five Tribes is obviously incorrect. Likewise, the Puranic-Epic texts make the ancestral Bharata of the earliest period a grandson of Viśvāmitra (the priest of the Bharata king Sudās) through a daughter Śakuntalā! Apart from this, different sets of kings and sages are arbitrarily placed in wrong time zones, many repeatedly appear at different points of time generations apart, the stories of Gods and cosmological events are interwoven into the stories, non-contemporary persons appear as contemporaries in various stories, and many new persons with names of very late types are placed in very early times.

 

APPENDIX ON DRUHYUS:

In the case of the Druhyus, and in their case alone, the traditional histories record distinct memories of their migration to the northwest and beyond. The three tribal conglomerates are originally placed as follows: the Pūrus in the heart of north India (in the Delhi-Haryana-Western U.P area), with the Anus to their north (in the Himalayan areas of Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir), and the Druhyus to their west (in the northern half of present-day Pakistan). Traditional history then records upheavals in which wars attributed to the Druhyus (depicted somewhat like the Huns of mediaeval times) led to a united front of the other tribes; at the end of which the Anus had expanded southwards to occupy the areas, in the northern half of Pakistan, originally occupied by the Druhyus, and the Druhyus had been pushed far to the west, into Afghanistan: “the next Druhyu king Gandhāra retired to the northwest and gave his name to the Gandhāra country” (PARGITER 1962:262). 

All the scholars who have translated or studied the traditional historical literature have noted the significance of the Puranic traditions which relate that, several generations later (i.e. gradually, in the course of time), the Druhyus slowly migrated to the north from this area (i.e. from Afghanistan), and established settlements in the northern areas:

“Indian tradition distinctly asserts that there was an Aila outflow of the Druhyus through the northwest into the countries beyond, where they founded various kingdoms” (PARGITER 1962:298).

“Five Purāṇas add that Pracetas’ descendants spread out into the mleccha countries to the north beyond India and founded kingdoms there” (BHARGAVA 1956/1971:99).

“After a time, being overpopulated, the Druhyus crossed the borders of India and founded many principalities in the Mleccha territories in the north, and probably carried the Aryan culture beyond the frontiers of India” (MAJUMDAR 1951/1996:283).

 

[This will probably be my last blog, and is being uploaded only because I had started it more than a month ago and left it pending incomplete till now].

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

BHARGAVA 1956/1971: India in the Vedic Age: A History of Aryan Expansion in India. Upper India Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. Lucknow, 1956.

MAJUMDAR ed.1951/1996: The Vedic Age. General Editor Majumdar R.C. The History and Culture of the Indian People. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Mumbai, 1951.

PARGITER 1962: Ancient Indian Historical Tradition. Pargiter F.E. Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi-Varanasi-Patna, 1962.