The Aryan nomads who trekked over the Hindu Kush mountains and settled on the plains of northern India during the second millennium BC were given to musing about the origins of the universe. An ancient hymn of theirs about the creation posed some thoughtful questions; There was neither nonexistence nor existence then. There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? . . . There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. . . . Darkness was hidden by darkness. . . . Whence was [the universe! produced? Whence is this creation?. . . The one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows — or perhaps he does not know.
People who could so eloquently ponder the riddle of how the universe was born — and philosophically admit that even their supreme deity might not know the answer — were obviously a sophisticated breed of invader.
They were, it is true, a race of warriors. Far from conquering through barbarity, however, they awed and overwhelmed the indigenous tribes by the sophisticated efficiency of their battle skills — especially their employment of fast, light, spokewheeled chariots, never seen before in this part of the world. It is also true that for centuries after arriving in India they built neither cities nor national political structures; instead, they enjoyed a pastoral life and developed an elaborate system of spiritual ideas that would suffuse the character of the subcontinent and reverberate throughout the world for thousands of years to come. And although they at first had no writing, they demonstrated impressive intellectual powers by producing and preserving, through the spoken word alone, a stunningly rich body of poetry that served as a repository for their religious ideas. Moreover, these illiterate immigrants introduced the language, Sanskrit, in which the unique culture of India would be embodied.
They called themselves Aryas, which meant "noble of birth and race." These proud, tall, fair-skinned people, with their great herds of lowing cattle and high-spirited chestnut horses, their flocks of sheep and goats and packs of yapping, frisking dogs, had migrated from their ancestral homeland on the Eurasian Steppes to the Iranian plateau sometime around 2000 BC. (Others of the same stock, all speakers of languages derived from the same Indo-European roots, had moved from the Steppes into Europe, where their descendants became the Creeks, Celts, Latins, and Teutons.) Erom Iran some of the Aryans moved westward, melding their culture, at times violently, with old civilizations of the Middle East. Concurrently, those who later would be known as Indo-Aryans gradually wended their way east through the passes of the Hindu Kush.
They came in tribal groups of varying sizes over a period of hundreds of years.
During the second millennium BC, bellicose Indo-Aryan tribes pushed southward through the passes of the Hindu Kush range to occupy land along the upper Indus River and its tributaries. These invaders were bound together by a powerful religious tradition, summed up in cycles of sacred verses known as Vedas; in time Vedic culture spread southeast along the Ganges River. In China, meanwhile, the various clans of the Yellow River region were dominated by the Shang, a proud line who offered human lives in tribute to their ancestors. The dynasty occupied several capitals during its tenure, among them Anyang, where a wealth of finely wrought bronzes and inscribed bone oracles was later uncovered. Around 1100 BC, the Shang gave way to the Zhou, who extended the scope of Chinese civilization southward to include much of the Yangtze River valley.
At night on the trail, dressed in wool and hides to protect themselves against the high-country cold, eating beef and drinkinga beerlike beverage called sura around their fires, they must have talked of the land they left behind and the prospects that lay before them. As they emerged from the foothills into the fertile valleys of the Indus River and its tributaries — a region they called Sapta Sindhu, or "the land of seven rivers" — they probably thanked the nature gods they worshiped for their good fortune. Here was a land to be cherished, spacious and flat, well-watered and ripe with promise, a bountiful land where they could graze their herds, plant crops, and build villages.
This inviting territory was not vacant, however. Others were already living there, including a dark-skinned people — possibly the Dravidians, who in later eras would be found primarily in southern India. In some instances, groups of the newcomers used force to dominate the local populations. But they also mixed with those populations, culturally and racially. The Indo-Aryan language, Sanskrit, would come to incorporate many words and pronunciations traceable to Dravidian tongues. Aryan spiritual concepts would blend with beliefs of the earlier inhabitants to evolve into the multicreed religion and way of life called Hinduism. And, in spite of Aryan racial intolerance, which relegated many of the indigenous people to the lower rungs of a rigid class ladder, intermarriage over the centuries would erase the pure Aryan strain.
Other peoples would bring their own exotic cultural ingredients to the subcontinent at a later point. Each in its turn would be absorbed by the unique society the Aryans helped to create, but none would actually change it. By the time the Aryans had been there for a thousand years or so, the basic elements that make
Up the world of Hindu India were in place, and they would remain, in every fundamental respect, immutable thereafter.
The bow ruins the enemy's pleasure; with the bow let us conquer all the corners of the world. . . . Once shot, fly far away, arrow, sharpened with prayer. Go straight to our foes, and do not leave a single one of them there. — from the Rig Veda
At the same time that the venturesome Aryans were expanding and consolidating their domain in northern India, a strikingly different but equally enduring culture was taking shape some 2,000 miles to the northeast, in China. On the north China plain, along the banks of the Yellow River, the outlines of a distinctively Chinese civilization were becoming clear. During this era the land and society that would comprise the core of China were first controlled by a line of rulers known as the Shang dynasty and later by a different people, called the Zhou. But in spite of the change in power, China remained basically the same; an organized land of farming villages and walled towns, inhabited by people who worshiped their ancestors, made human sacrifices, developed an elaborate writing system, and created beautiful works of art in bronze and jade. Already the Chinese were self-contained, tightly governed, intellectually and artistically sophisticated — characteristics by which they would be recognized throughout subsequent ages.
The Aryans who settled in northwest India were organized in tribes, each headed by a chieftain and a priest. An Aryan man's principal allegiance was to his tribe, and he was called on regularly to demonstrate his loyalty in battles, both with other Aryan tribes and with bands of non-Aryans. (A common source of friction between tribes was cattle stealing, which the Aryans practiced frequently and with zest.) Despite their undeniable taste for combat, however, the Aryans' most extraordinary legacy was not military but spiritual.
From their early years in India onward they produced a steady flow of religious poems, or hymns, which were passed on orally from one generation to the next. Although this remarkable sacred literature would not be written down until many centuries later, it remained true to its original wording, because the priests who had been charged with preserving the hymns made certain that no changes crept in. The verses were strictly metered and easily committed to memory. In their schools, Aryan children would sit for hours echoing hymns back to the priests line for line, sounding — according to one mildly irreverent poem — like nothing so much as a chorus of croaking frogs.
The verses were practically the only source of information that the Indo-Aryans would leave behind about themselves, since they built no temples or monuments, left no artwork, no grave goods, no written records or seals. They later collected the verses in anthologies known as Vedas, or "books of knowledge," which would in time give their name to the entire period of Aryan domination in ancient India — the Vedic age.
Of these books, the only one to contain historical information is the oldest and richest, the Rig Veda. Between 1500 and 900 BC, Aryan poets collected and corn-posed its 1,028 hymns, which were intended to be sung at sacrificial rites. Despite their sacred purpose and formal poetic style, the Rig Veda hymns give a frequently lively and sometimes vividly detailed account of the Aryans and their way of life.
As numerous references in the Rig Veda indicate, the land was the center of the Aryans' universe, especially because it provided pasturage for their herds of sheep, goats, horses, and cattle. An Aryan landsman measured his worth by the size of his cattle herd, identified by distinctive nicks cut in the animals' ears. In the absence of a monetary system, the cow was the standard unit of trade. Sanskrit was rich in special words denoting the individual characteristics of different cattle — a "cow with a strange calf," for instance, and "a cow barren after calving." In their prayers, Aryans asked for "the cow that is easily milked." They also beseeched their gods for "wealth in cows, sheep, chariots, and well-nourished and strong women."
An Aryan cattleman's animals played a key part in his life. His cows were milked three times daily. Fresh milk and ghee — butter clarified of milk solids, which would spoil too quickly in the heat — were a prominent part of the Aryans' diet. They also consumed beef, mutton and goat meat, cucumbers, oil that had been pressed from sesame seeds, fruit, including bananas, and cakes made from their chief grain, barley. And they discovered in India a food plant of truly exciting properties: sugar cane. The western world would not know sugar until the fourth century BC, when Alexander the Great's soldiers would return from India to Greece marveling over a "miraculous reed" that yielded honey without the help of bees.
The Aryans cooked in earthenware and metal pots; they used special caldrons for important feasts. One hymn sensuously celebrated "the trial-fork of the
Thisbronzefigurineofamandrivingachariot — accompanied by his dog, which stands on the shaft — is thought to be the product of an Indian civilization that reached maturity long before the Aryan invasion. Probably made around 1500 BC at Daimabad in central India, the work reflects the cultural influence of the sophisticated Ha-rappans, who lived in cities along the Indus River. Although the Harappans fell into decline about 1800, the skills they cultivated survived in villages such as Daimabad and formed an important legacy for Aryan India.
Flesh-cooking caldron, the vessels out of which the broth is poured, the warming pots, the covers of the dishes." In addition to milk, the Aryans drank sura, which was probably brewed from barley. It was strong enough to merit censure for "leading people to crime and godlessness." Sura was intended for everyday consumption. The Aryans reserved for their religious ceremonies a more potent, hallucinogenic concoction called soma, which was made from the juice of a plant-— or perhaps a fungus — blended with milk or with a grain paste.
They worked the fields with ox-drawn plows in a temperate climate that provided them with two crops a year. They cut the grain with a knife or sickle and then probably threshed it with flails and winnowed it by tossing it into. a breeze that would blow the chaff away. Their bulky wooden plows were pulled by teams of two to eight oxen. The accepted wisdom was that only an eight-ox plow was capable of working an entire day, and that a two-ox team was good for only a quarter of a day's work. They apparently practiced some form of irrigation, probably by channeling river water into the fields, and they seemed to understand the concept of soil erosion, as evidenced by a Rig Veda reference to rivers as "corroders of their banks, like armies destructive of their foes."
They were huntsmen as well as farmers; dogs were used in boar hunting, though not in herding. Aryan hunters used snares as well as arrows to bag their prey. They captured boars and lions in snares and antelopes in pits; they trapped birds in nets stretched between pegs. Although they did not use iron until about 1000 BC, from the beginning their bronze tools and weapons were superior to those of the region's natives. Aryan dwellings were probably rectangular wooden structures with thatched roofs and several small rooms. The central hearth, where household religious rites were performed, was the focal point.
The Aryan society was strongly patriarchal. In the household, the father was in undisputed command. Men of the warrior class usually had several wives, sons were regarded as more desirable than daughters, and wives by custom were held to stricter standards of morality and fidelity than were their husbands.
But women were allowed a great deal of freedom in the choice of a mate. Although some marriages were arranged, the wonder and power of love was a recurrent motif in Vedic hymns, and Aryan girls probably were able to pick their own husbands. An Aryan wedding began with a feast at the bride's house. Bride and groom pledged themselves to each other by joining hands and walking around a ceremonial fire; then they departed for their new home in a special cart or chariot. Widows were permitted to remarry, and women were free to attend social affairs — the Rig Veda describes "fair ladies flocking to festive gatherings." Women also were active in religious affairs. The girls attended Vedic schools just as the boys did. Females composed several Vedic hymns and even became sages.
This was a society of people who liked to dress well; their religious books included a phrase that meant "well clad." The basic outfit consisted of a "lower garment" and another worn loosely over it; both were commonly made of either wool or deerskin. Both sexes wore gold jewelry on their ears, necks, or arms, and women sometimes decked themselves out in gold-embroidered gowns and ornamental headdresses. Women carefully combed and oiled their hair, which they arranged in long braids. Although the practice of shaving was known, men generally wore beards and moustaches.
Aryans also seem to have had a gift for enjoying themselves. They liked music and dancing, had a taste for alcoholic drink, derived enormous pleasure from chariot races, and had a weakness for gambling. Apparently, both men and women danced — whether together or separately is not known — and a typical musical ensemble included drums, flutes, cymbals, and at least two kinds of stringed instruments, one resembling a lute and the other more like a lyre or harp.
Chariot races were particularly suited to the boisterous Aryan style. The contestants thundered to a marker on a course, careered around it, and roared back to the starting point, where the winner collected his prize. Aryans may have bet on the races, but their favorite game of chance involved rolling nuts toward a depression in the ground. The object of the game is not clear, but there is no doubt that money in some form changed hands. One of the most poignant of the Rig Veda hymns is a classic bettor's lament, a timeless tale of addiction ending in the perennial vow to reform; The gambler goes to the meeting hall, asking himself "Will I win?" and trembling with hope. But the dice cross him and counter his desire. . . . The dice goad like hooks and prick like whips; they enslave, deceive, and torment. They are coated with honey. . . . The deserted wife of the gambler grieves, and the mother grieves for her son who wanders anywhere, nowhere. . . . This is what the noble Savitr
The racehorse has come to the slaughter, pondering with his heart turned to the gods. The goat, his kin, is led in front. . . . Co happily to the mares who long for you. Co happily to fame and heaven; go happily to the first orders and truths, go happily to the gods, go happily to your flight. — from the Rig Veda
Shows me: "Play no longer with the dice, but till your field, enjoy what you possess. . . . Let someone else fall into the trap of the brown dice."
Savitr was only one of a remarkable assemblage of gods that Aryans viewed as magnified, heroic, and immortal versions of themselves. The thirty-three gods in the Vedic pantheon fall into three broad and sometimes overlapping categories: Celestial gods were rulers of the heavens and sky. Atmospheric divinities were responsible for storms and wind and the mysteries of weather. Terrestrial gods were in charge of fire and harvests and other earthly phenomena. Taken together, the gods, including a few
Goddesses, were nature given human form, with no fixed hierarchy or seniority— a sort of democracy of the divine.
In seeking favors from their gods — a bountiful harvest, a successful cattle drive, a happy marriage — Aryans believed that the deities, like humankind, expected to receive something in return. Therefore, in exchange for godly dispensations, they sacrificed to the accompaniment of prayerful chants and hymns. The sacrificial ceremonies were supervised by priests who apparently were remunerated by the supplicant with cattle or with gold. Sometimes the price was steep; One passage mentions a fee of 1,000 cows. Fire played a significant part in sacred rites, as did offerings of soma, the gods' favorite beverage. At least one allusion in the Rig Veda indicates that, in addition, human sacrifice might have been practiced at one time.
But animals, generally killed with one stroke of an ax that severed the head, were the primary sacrifice. A special ritual called the horse sacrifice was particularly significant. A white stallion was released to wander freely for a year while a detachment of warriors followed behind. All the land roamed by the horse was claimed by the king. Rival chieftains could either accept the king's claim or fight. Finally, when claims to territory had been settled, the stallion was sacrificed. First, its feet were fettered and it was lowered onto its side on a cloth. The Rig Veda vividly describes what happened next: "The ax cuts through the thirty-four ribs of the racehorse who is the companion of the gods." A priest dedicated portions of the butchered animal to various deities.
The most frequently summoned god was Indra, an earthy, tawny-bearded being whose appetites were as great as his prowess. Indra was "he without whom people do not conquer, he whom they call on for help when they are fighting, who shakes the unshakable." Like Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, Indra carried a thunderbolt in his hand. Perhaps because he was beseeched with such regularity, the ever-victorious god appears to have had a more recognizably human personality than other deities: He ate, drank, and lived with tremendous gusto. And of course he lived forever; "The circling years, which wear away all else, to thee bring no
The human-shaped figure above and the harpoon blade at right were among the copper implements mysteriously stashed away in hoards across a broad area of northern India during the second millennium BC. Although many of the items were weapons, they were apparently intended for ceremonial use only. The blade, for example, would have been impractical for hunting. Perhaps such objects were tokens dedicated to the gods.
Decay; thou bloomest on in youthful force while countless ages run their course."
Varuna, lord of justice and king of universal order, differed from most other gods in his relatively stern temper. Most divinities in the generally optimistic Aryan religion were good-natured and high-spirited; Varuna was more of a scolding taskmaster.
When an Aryan died, the corpse was either buried or cremated. Though cremation eventually predominated, a funeral rite described in an early hymn depicts a burial at which the priest asks the earth to be gentle with the departed, to "wrap him up as a mother wraps a son in the edge of her skirt." Death was the province of the god Yama, who permitted the good to cross a bridge that led them to a blissful paradise where joy and light were everlasting. The Aryans viewed heaven as a realm where earthly pleasures — food and drink, music and friends — could be enjoyed eternally. They perceived hell as a kind of bottomless darkness, an abyss where "evil, false, and untruthful men" ended up, though its specific terrors, if any, were not cataloged.
In their prayers as in everything else, the Aryans dwelled in the present; they were a practical people more concerned with the business of living than with the uncertainties that lay beyond the grave. Their hymns are often pleas for good health and long life, victory and contentment. But their belief in heaven and hell was a recognition that their destiny was to some degree determined by the way they conducted themselves on earth. Some forms of behavior were clearly regarded as sinful or immoral — witchcraft and excessive drinking, for example, and, despite its popularity, gambling. Adultery, incest, and abortion were also noted with disapproval in the Vedas. A virtuous Aryan was honest, faithful to the gods, courageous, and generous. The man who is truly generous gives to the beggar who approaches him thin and in search of food. He puts himself at the service of the man who calls to him from the road, one hymn asserts. That man is no friend who does not give of his own nourishment to his friend. . . . The man who eats alone brings troubles upon himself alone.
The chieftains of the tribes reigned in some splendor, but certain restraints were imposed on their power. An Aryan king customarily bequeathed his throne to his eldest son, but in extenuating circumstances the people of a tribe were allowed to select another member of the king's family, or a person of nobility, as their leader. The regal privileges could include the use of a palace, such as the royal residence with a thousand pillars and a thousand gates described in the Rig Veda, which probably exaggerates. Without a doubt, a king received tribute from both his conquered foes and his loyal subjects. Gifts to the monarch, apparently presented at regular intervals, may have been a form of de facto taxation.
The king's authority, though formidable, was subject to further restrictions. One limitation on his power was a high priest called the purohita. He was the ruler's most important minister, a political and spiritual adviser who conferred frequently with the king, summoned the gods on his behalf, and even accompanied him into battle. So important was this official's support that grateful monarchs often showered the purohitas with gifts such as cows, horses, gold, chariots, and female slaves.
Aryan rulers were also obliged to consult with their subjects at assemblies that were at least superficially democratic. Political bodies identified as the sabha and samiti were mentioned in the Rig Veda. The sabha probably was a council of elders or nobles, whereas the samiti was an assemblage of all heads of families. The king apparently presided over meetings of the samiti and sought the support of its members, which suggests that their support counted. The importance attached to harmony between the ruler and his subjects is reflected in a hymn exhorting the citizenry to "assemble, speak together; let your minds be all of one accord."
It is at least possible, too, that some tribes in the early Vedic period were organized on republican principles without a hereditary monarch; and toward the end of the Vedic age — the seventh and sixth centuries BC — several states were republics, with the governing authority vested in popular assemblies. In extreme circumstances an aroused public would topple a king from his royal perch. A late Vedic text tells of a King Karala, who was deposed and executed for assaulting a young woman of the brahman, or priestly, class. The outraged populace of that tribe proceeded to abolish the monarchy permanently and replace it with a republic.
In general, however, Aryan tribal kingdoms were organized on monarchical principles. Each was composed of one or more villages, usually built on rising ground and protected by fortified stone enclosures. Each village was an administrative unit probably consisting of several houses, with a single extended family living in each home. The chain of obedience apparently flowed from the family head to a village chief and then to the nobles and the king. The monarch's most important deputy besides his priest-adviser was a military commander, who in peacetime wielded civil authority. The Rig Veda also contains an intriguing reference to spies, presumably royal informers assigned to keep an eye on troublemakers.
Warfare, of course, was a king's primary and most costly business. Most wars among Aryan tribes were motivated by nothing more complicated than a desire for a neighbor's cows; the Rig Veda's term for conflict translates as "search for cattle." The elite troops — the king or warlord and his nobles — thundered into combat aboard battle chariots, shooting from their bows deadly arrows tipped with metal or poisoned horn. A bowman's wrist was protected by a leather guard, and he also wore a helmet and coat of mail. For combat in close quarters, Aryan foot soldiers depended on lances, swords, and axes. On the offensive, Aryan infantrymen marched alongside the chariots and charged just behind the vehicles. Under siege they dug in behind stone ramparts and palisades made of stakes or thorns, which their enemies attacked with fire.
In one notable conflict that occurred around the twelfth century BC, the warriors of the most powerful Aryan tribe of the time took on the soldiers of ten other tribes in an engagement known as the Battle of the Ten Kings. The battle grew out of the resentment felt by a priest who had been dismissed by Sudas, king of the mighty Bharata tribe. To gain revenge the humiliated priest organized a confederation of ten other tribes and led them against the Bharatas. King Sudas and his men, surrounded at first, managed to break free and then to outflank their foes. They carried the day and thus consolidated Bharata supremacy. (Even today, the Sanskrit name for India is Bharat.) Three of the ten kings and six thousand other warriors were said to have died in this clash.
The religious texts provide few details about the workings of law and justice in Vedic India, although the emphasis appears to have been on compensating the victims of crime. Cattle theft was a common misdeed, along with burglary, highway robbery, and cheating at dice. The family of a murdered person received a financial settlement, but the Rig Veda tells nothing about how accused murderers were tried and how those found guilty were subsequently punished. Criminals and debtors were at times bound to stakes, and a debtor worked off the obligation by laboring for the man owed.
Fire and water ordeals were sometimes used to test guilt. In one such rite the accused had to carry a red-hot metal ball in his hands, which were protected only by fig leaves, while walking slowly over a specified distance. If he dropped the ball he had to start over; if he burned his hands he was deemed guilty. A similar ordeal judged a person guilty if his hand was injured while plucking an object from boiling water.
The later phase of India's Vedic age, roughly between 1000 and 600 BC, was a time of enormous change and upheaval in almost every aspect of Aryan life. The Aryans spread east and south to the great valley of the Ganges River and beyond, clearing forests with fire, whenever necessary, to create space for their settlements. Their chronically feuding little states evolved into fewer and larger kingdoms and republics with permanent capitals and sprawling bureaucracies. (A major war between rival factions, probably fought in the tenth century BC, came to be celebrated in a long heroic poem called the Mahabharata, India's national epic and — at 100,000 couplets — the longest poem known.) The economic emphasis shifted from stock raising to agriculture; rice, which was native to eastern India, supplanted barley as the staple crop.
The population increased rapidly, and toward the end of this period, cities appeared. By the beginning of the seventh century BC, there were sixteen large Aryan states in a broad swath of territory that stretched from the upper reaches of the Canges Valley all the way across northern India and down into the Deccan, the high, dry plateau that divides the subcontinent's north from the coastal areas of the south. Aryan merchants probably traded with the southerners, largely less-advanced people, and with Mesopotamia. The fact that commerce flourished probably means that in this period the Aryans had some kind of writing, but they would leave no hard evidence of a script behind.
Of all the changes that transformed Aryan life in these years, the most dramatic was the elevation of the priesthood. Priests earlier had been advisers to the kings, but they now became, in the eyes of the people, greater than the kings — indeed, greater even than the divinities they professed to serve. This power stemmed from the increasingly complex rituals through which Aryans communicated with their gods. As the priests made sacrifices and other rites more and more complicated, they became, in essence, masters of mysteries that no other people, not even the king, were able to understand. And kings, like everyone else, deferred to them. The priests' knowledge of magic and incantations made them omnipotent in the eyes of the faithful. It was partly in reaction to the power of the priests that reclusive holy men began the spiritual quests that resulted in the enunciation of several important tenets of early Hinduism.
As priests grew more ambitious, so did kings. Notions of imperialism teased the imagination of ambitious Aryan monarchs, called rajahs: They were exhorted by
Religious commentaries to attain "preeminence and supremacy over all kings" and "paramount rule, encompassing all." Now richly robed sovereigns ascended their thrones with elaborate ceremonies in which the king set his foot on a tiger skin, symbolically acquiring the beast's power. The congresslike assemblies continued to operate, but the royal retinue expanded. In addition to his spiritual and military counselors, the king now had a staff that probably included a treasurer, a tax collector, and a royal commissioner of dicing. As might be expected, priests were exempt from taxation.
The division of society into castes became an immutable fact of life after the move into the Canges region. The caste concept sprang from the Aryans' extreme race consciousness; The very word they used for "caste" meant "color." They called the dark-skinned Indus Valley people dasas, a word that subsequently came to mean "slaves," and condemned them as heathens. The beginnings of a caste system were elucidated in a Rig Veda hymn, which proclaimed that each of the four classes stemmed from different parts of a primeval male body in descending order — the priests, or brahmans, from his mouth; the rulers and warriors, or kshatriyas, from his arms; the farmers and merchants, or vaishyas, from his thighs; and menial workers, or sudras, and slaves from his feet. The indigenous dasas were consigned to the rank of sudras.
Late in the Vedic age, strict rules solidified the social order. Membership in any of the castes was hereditary and permanent, with certain exceptions: Males in the priest and warrior classes could take lower-caste women to be their wives, but men in the lower two castes could not marry above their stations. Religious texts called Brahmanas composed during this period decreed that sudras lacked property rights, were "fit to be beaten," and could be "slain at will." The texts specified funeral mounds of differing sizes — the higher the deceased's caste, the bigger the mound. Later, occupational subcastes developed, with delicately shaded gradations among them.
A list of trades ticked off in a late Vedic text illustrates the richness that Aryan social and economic life had now achieved. The compilation includes dancer, dancing master, drummer, clown, accountant, goldsmith, engraver, potter, carpenter, bowstring maker, dog keeper, tanner, elephant keeper, butcher, rope maker, investigator, physician, stargazer, and woman who makes scented oils. Whatever the calling, the average Aryan had a yen for material things, a Vedic hymn suggests: "The (metal) smith seeks all his days a man with gold," it declares. "I am a poet, my father is a physician, and my mother a miller with grinding stones. With diverse thoughts we all strive for wealth, going after it like cattle."
Despite the materialistic urges, the most profound change in the late Vedic era was the emergence of a new religious attitude set forth in a series of teachings called the Upanishads. The literal meaning of upanishad, "to sit in front of," suggests the origin of these meditations. Disenchanted with Vedic ritual, religious thinkers began wandering the north Indian countryside around the beginning of the eighth century BC, leading hermitlike lives in quest of wisdom and truth. Eventually they each acquired disciples, who absorbed the revolutionary ideas by sitting before the teacher and repeating the doctrine in ceaseless incantation. The dialogues and thoughts of these ascetic sages were later collected in the 108 Upanishads that have survived.
Many principles that ultimately became a part of Hindu doctrine were first expressed by these remarkable holy men. The Upanishad sages speak of a single universal spirit that animates all life and is present within each individual — instead of the pantheon of nature gods described in the Rig Veda. "There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all," one passage declares. "This is the light that shines in our heart." Another dialogue compares the universal spirit to salt that has been dissolved in water, "an invisible and subtle essence" pervading the whole.
According to the Upanishads, a seeker dikovered truth not through conventional learning but through intuition and self-denial. The discipline of yoga prepared one for the search. The goal was to liberate oneself from worldly desires and concerns. The human body, the Upanishads taught, is no more than an "ill-smelling, insubstantial" amalgamation of bone and muscle and fluids that humanity must learn to transcend. This sentiment was a long way from the Rig Veda's Indra and his hearty, rollicking joie de vivre.
The Upanishads also introduced the idea of transmigration of souls, which maintained that death and rebirth were part of an endless cycle called samsara, and that one's collective deeds, or karma, determined the form that a person would assume in the next life. Even a miserable sudra could take some solace in the knowl-
Edge that through proper and dutiful behavior he could be reborn as a brahman. Sacrifices to acquisitive gods and the earthly desires that motivated such offerings were irrelevant; a believer who attained bliss rejected the sundry vanities of the material world.
The Upanishads were the climactic expression of an extraordinary era of intellectual ferment. The restless and dynamic Aryans finally appeared ready to settle down, to refinetheirculture, and to blend peaceably with their neighbors in the subcontinent. In the Upanishads, their wisest men composed an eloquent overture to what would be one of the world's great religions, Hinduism.
The Chinese culture that began to blossom during this era had grown from roots in its own soil and not, as was the case in Aryan-dominated India, those imported from elsewhere. The Shang and Zhou peoples who were dominant in China from the eighteenth to the third centuries BC had lived in that part of the world during the preceding, prehistoric age, when, according to legend, a dynasty called Xia ruled the land. The Shang and the Zhou dynasties inherited and built upon elements of economic and social life that were established during that dimly perceived period. But it was during the Shang and Zhou periods that a true Chinese civilization developed, a distinctive culture marked by institutions and ideas that ever afterward would be identified as Chinese.
Their dominion was distinguished by impressive cultural and political advances. During this period the Chinese developed a form of writing completely different from the scripts of the Middle East. It would become one of the world's two major systems of writing, and forthousandsof years the prevalent one: Until about AD 1800, more than half of all books published were in Chinese characters. The Shang and Zhou Chinese left behind no books, but they did preserve an immensely valuable written archive in the form of inscriptions on bronze vessels and on the oracle bones that they used for divination. These people made significant gains in science as well and produced a glorious body of artwork that would continue to command admiration three millennia later.
They created a centralized political structure designed to govern a widely scattered people. They also developed a world view that would abide with the Chinese for ages to come — the bel ief that theirs was the supreme civilization, to which all others were unquestionably inferior. Almost all peoples, as a matter of course, have embraced some version of this attitude. But few would make it such a controlling tenet of their relationships with other nations as did the Chinese, who for long periods would be isolated from many foreign influences that might taint the purity of their culture.
Shang political control stretched over a large expanse of north China, possibly some 40,000 square miles. Most of the Shang territory was concentrated in the flood plain of the Yellow River, centered in what is now the province of Henan.
This ornate bronze water buffalo, cast in China in the tenth century BC, held wine for ritual functions: The catlike creature perched atop the vessel swung back on a hinge so that the wine could be poured in, while the mouth of the water buffalo served as a spout. Water buffalo proved endlessly useful to the Chinese, providing them with power for hauling, meat for eating, and bones for divination.
The Zhou peoples, who conquered the Shang and became the ruling dynasty around 1100 BC, came from the Wei River valley on the western edge of the Shang domain. At various times the Zhou peoples extended their cultural and political sphere well beyond what are thought to have been the limits of Shang territory, reaching the Yangtze River valley in the south and the shore of the Yellow Sea in the northeast.
The ancient Chinese capitals were surrounded by feudal domains governed by loyal lords, whose preserves formed a buffer zone between the walled towns and the marauding tribesmen roaming the country beyond — "the people in the four directions all around." This led theShangand Zhou Chinese to think of the areas under their direct control as "the Middle Kingdom" — the center of the world and the seat of order and regularity.
Wealth flowed from the land, and from the masses of illiterate peasants who made a meager living by working it, to the elite in the towns. All the land in the Middle Kingdom was regarded as the king's property. "Everywhere under heaven," a Zhou poem declared, "is no land that is not the king's." The underclass, known as the zhong ren, cultivated millet, barley, soy, and wheat and raised pigs and chickens, probably turning over any surplus beyond their subsistence needs to the state. Prisoners of war sometimes shared the lot of the peasants, working beside them as slave laborers in the fields beyond the town walls. A peasant who refused to fight under his king's banner was liable to be enslaved, although the resulting difference in his status was apparently slight. Besides this human muscle, domesticated water buffalo were used for farm power.
Ironworking was unknown in China at the beginning of this era, and bronze was so rare that it was used only to make ritual pieces and decorative objects for the wealthy, not tools. Spades, sickles, and many other implements were made of stone. The peasants probably prepared the earth for planting with primitive scratch plows, perhaps tree branches tipped with stone.
Such tools were essential in the cultivation of rice, a grain that became more important to the Chinese economy as Zhou influence extended south into the Yangtze River basin. Rice growing depended on a large and reliable supply of water so that the diked cultivation areas, or paddies, could be flooded regularly. The Yangtze and its tributaries provided the water, and Zhou political power provided the stability needed to build and maintain extensive systems of irrigation canals that fed the paddies. Chinese farmers also produced oranges and peaches, and they grew hemp and cotton for textile fibers and tended silkworms.
The elite dressed themselves in colored silk for public outings and had cotton clothing for use at home. Peasants wore a long, undyed hemp-fiber or cotton shirtlike garment that would remain the standard garb for China's common people until modern times.
While the aristocracy in this sharply divided society lived in spacious wood-and-earth houses with gabled roofs, the peasants inhabited shallow, cellarlike pit dwellings with walls that protruded only a few feet above the ground. For protection, most of the towns were probably ringed by earthen walls as high as twenty-five feet and as thick as fifty feet. Shops and foundries where workers in stone, bone, jade, bronze, and other materials practiced their crafts clustered both inside and outside the walls.
At all levels, Chinese society was a network of extended families, or clans, bound by the cult of ancestor worship. Parents and grandparents, uncles and cousins lived together and shared whatever they had. A person's principal obligation was to respect ancestors and to produce future generations who would offer their ancestors the same reverence. In a peasant family, the man's job was working the fields, fishing, and hunting, whereas women were probably responsible for weaving, silk culture, and making rice wine or beer. Peasant girls were treated as inferiors and sometimes sold into servitude or concubinage. Rare,
The bronze marvels of the Shang dynasty, such as the elegantly masked ceremonial cooking vessel below, were made possible by an ingenious casting technique evolved by Chinese smiths. The artisan evidently began his work by fashioning a model of the vessel he intended to make. Around the model, clay was packed to form a mold. Such a cast could not be removed whole, so when the clay was firm but still pliable the mold was cut into sections and lifted off; the artisan could then embellish the segments with fine details. Next, the sections of the mold were fired and reassembled around the model, from which a thin layer had been shaved corresponding to the desired thickness of the finished object. Molten bronze was then poured into the gap between the mold and the shaved-down model. Once the metal had cooled and set, mold and model were removed, and the masterwork emerged.
Bright interludes amid the pervasive bleakness of peasant life were the semiannual festivals marking the beginning and end of the agricultural season. These were joyful celebrations that included singing and dancing competitions among children from various villages.
The king, declaring himself to be "the One Man" and "the Son of Heaven," was the supreme political, military, and religious figure in the Chinese state. He was believed to possess divine qualities and a special gift for communicating with the gods. The royal line was drawn from the dominant clan in the dynasty, the succession passing sometimes from brother to brother and on other occasions from father to son. A Shang or Zhou monarch was expected to have physical strength as well as wisdom. A king could take as many wives as he wished — a Shang ruler named Wu Ding had at least sixty-four. Disputes over succession could be taken before a council of high-ranking nobles.
From all evidence, the king attended to much of the business of his realm personally. He stood at the summit of a ruling pyramid that comprised his family, the feudal lords and their clans, and an aristocracy of gentlemen and their ladies. He himself dispensed justice, which could involve harsh penalties such as the mutilation of a nose or an ear, eye piercing, and castration. Routine affairs of state, such as tax collecting, making armaments, religious practices, and recordkeeping, were overseen by a cadre of bureaucrats, always an important element in Chinese life. The multilayered civil service included a functionary designated assistant tiger retainer, a master of bells, and an assistant runner of horses.
The feudal system inaugurated by the Shang dynasty and later expanded by the Zhou rulers allowed the kingto reward his relatives and loyalists while surrounding his
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