Ikhtisar Sejarah/Bab 15
SUKU BANGSA PENUTUR BAHASA ARYA PADA ZAMAN PRASEJARAH
§ 1. Penyebaran suku bangsa penutur bahasa Arya. § 2. Kehidupan Arya Primitif. § 3. Kehidupan Harian Arya Awal.
§ 1
Mereka yang menuturkan bahasa Arya mungkin timbul di wilayah Danube dan Rusia Selatan dan menyebar dari wilayah asalnya. Kami berkata "mungkin," karena ini tak menandakan hal tertentu bahwa ini adalah pusatnya; terdapat banyak diskusi pada penekanan tersebut dan keragaman besar opini. Kami memberikan pandangan menonjol. Ketika menyebar luar, Arya memulai pembedaan dalam sejumlah bahasa turunan. Di barat dan selatan, mereka menghimpun bahasa Basque, yang kemudian banyak menyebar ke Spanyol, dan mungkin juga beragam rumpun bahasa Mediterania Hamitik.
Ras Mediterania Neolitikum, ras Iberia, tersebar sepanjang Britania Raya, Prancis, Spanyol, Afrika Utara, Italia Selatan, dan, dalam keadaan yang lebih berabad, Yunani dan Asia Kecil. Mereka mungkin sangat berkerabat dengan Mesir. Untuk membenarkantitisan Eropanya, mereka lebih kepada jenis manusia yang kecil, umumnya dengan wajah oval dan kepala panjang. Mereka mengubur para pemimpinnya dan tokoh penting dalam ruangan megalitikum—yang terbuat dari bebatuan besar—tertutup oleh galian besar bumi; dan galian bumi tersebut, yang lebih panjang ketimbang ukuran mereka, dianggap sebagai timbunan panjang. Orang-orang tersebut singgah beberapa kali di gua, dan juga mengubur beberapa jasad mereka disana; dan dari jejak tulang manusia yang terpencar, patah dan terpotong, termasuk tulang anak-anak, ini menunjukkan bahwa mereka adalah kanibal. Suku bangsa Ibrania gelap pendek (dan Basques juga jika mereka adalah ras berbeda) bergerak kembali ke barat, dan ditaklukan dan diperbudak oleh gelombang pergerakan lambat dari suku bangsa penutur bahasa Arya yang lebih tinggi dan menonjol, daatang ke selatan dan barat melalui Eroap tengah, yang bertutur seperti suku bangsa Keltik. Hanya Basque yang memberontak melawan penutur Arya. Secara bertahap, penutur bahasa Keltik membuat perjalanan mereka ke Atlantik, dan semuanya yang kini tersisa di iberia adalah campuran dengan populasi Keltik. Sejauh apa invasi Keltik yang berdampak pada penduduk irlandia adalah bahan perdebatan pada masa sekarang; Keltik mungkin merupakan kasta penakluk untuk menghimpun bahasa mereka pada sejumlah besar penduduk. Bahkan sangat diragukan jika utara Inggris lebih Arya ketimbang pra-Keltik dalam hal keturnan. Ini adalah jenis orang Wales gelap yang pendek, dan jenis tertentu warga Irlandia, yang berdarah Iberia. Portugis modern juga kebanyakan berdarah Iberia.
Kelt menuturkan sebuah bahasa, Keltik, yang juga menurunkan perbedaan dalam bahasa Gaul, Wales, Breton, Skotlandia dan Gaelik Irlandia, dan bahasa lainnya. Mereka mengubur abu pemimpin mereka dan tokoh penting dalam ruangan melingkar. Meskipun Keltik Nordik menyebar ke barat, suku bangsa Arya Nordik lainnya tertekan pada ras Mediteriania putih gelap di semenanjung Italia dan Yunani, dan mengembangkan kelompok bahasa Latin dan yunani. Suku Arya tertentu lainnya bergerak menuju Baltik dan menyeberangi Skandinavia, menuturkan ragam bahasa Arya yang menjadi Norse kuno—leluhur Swedia, Denmark, Norwegia dan Islandia—Gothik, dan Jerman Hilir dan Tinggi.
Meskipun Arya primitif kala itu menyebar dan menerobos rumpun bahasa turunan di barat, mereka juga menyebar dan menerobos ke timur. Utara Karpatia dan Laut Hitam, suku penutur Arya meningkat dan meneybar dan memakai dialek khas yang disebut Slavonia, yang menjadi cikal bakal bahasa Rusia, Serbia, Polandia, Bulgaria dan bahasa lainnya; ragam lain dari Arya menyebar ke Asia Kecil dan Persia juga terindividualisasi sebagai bahasa Armenia dan Indo-Iran, cikal bakal Sanskerta dan Persia. Dalam buku ini, kami memakai kata Arya untuk seluruh keluarga bahasa tersebut, namun istilah Indo-Eropa terkadang dipakai untuk seluruh keluarga tersebut, dan "Arya" itu sendiri terbatas pada esensi yang lebih dsempit pada penuturan Indo-Iran. Penuturan Indo-Iran ditujukan untuk membaginya menjadi sejumlah bahasa, termasuk Persia dan Sanskerta, yang menjadi bahasa suku penutur Arya tertentu yang bergerak ke timur menuju India antara 3000 dan 1000 SM dan menaklukan suku bangsa Dravida gelap yang kala itu menghuni wilayah tersebut.
§ 2
Apa jenis kehidupan yang dilakukan Arya prasejarah, Arya Nordik yang menjadi leluhur utama kebanyakan orang Eropa dan kebanyakan kolonis Amerika dan Eropa kulit putih pada masa sekarang, serta Armenia, Persia, dan Hindu kasta tinggi?
Untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, kami dapat menyerahkan sumber pengaruhan baru selain sisa dan jejak galian yang mereka miliki dalam kasus manusia Palæolitikum. Mereka memiliki bahasa. Lewat kajian yang berhati-hati terhadap rumpun bahasa Arya, diyakini ditemukan sejumlah pernyataan soal kehidupan suku bangsa Arya pada 5000 atau 4000 tahun lampau. Seluruh bahasa tersebut memiliki kemiripan umum, yang masing-masing, sebagaimana yang telah kami jelaskan, menghimpun perubahan pada sejumlah akar utama. Kala kami mendapati kata akar yang sama yang turun melalui seluruh atau sebagian besar bahasa tersebut, ini nampak disimpulkan bahwa hal yang mengakari kata harus mensignifikasikan hal yang diketahui pada leluhur umum. Sebetulnya, jika kami mendapati kata yang sama dalam bahasa mereka, itu bukanlah kasus; ini menjadi nama baru dari hal baru atau gagasan baru yang menyebar di seluruh belahan dunia sekarang ini. "Gas," contohnya adalah kata yang dibuat oleh Van Helmont, seorang kimiawan Belanda, dari sekitar tahun 1625, dan menyebar ke kebanyakan bahasa peradaban, dan "tembakau" juga merupakan kata Indian-Amerika yang menyusul pengenalan rokok yang nyaris ada dimanapun. Namun, jika kata yang sama beralih dalam sejumlah bahasa, dan jika ini mengiktui modifikasi karakteristik dari setiap bahasa, kami merasa sepakat bahwa ini berada dalam bahasa tersebut, dan bagian dari bahasa tersebut sejak permulaan, mengalami perubahan yang sama dengan kata lainnya. Contohnya, kami mengenal bahwa kata gerobak dan roba yang digerakkan dalam cara tersebut melalui rumpun bahasa Arya, dan sehingga kami dapat menyimpulkan bahwa Arya primitif, Arya Nordik yang lebih murni, memiliki gerobak, melaluinya akan menunjukkan dari ketiadaan akar umum apapun untuk pengucapan, pelek dan poros pada roda mereka bukanlah roda gerobak yang dituturkan, namun terbuat dari batang pohon yang dibentuk dengan kapal di antara ujungnya.
Gerobak primitif ditarik oleh lembu. Arya awal tak mengendarai atau menggerakkan kuda; mereka memiliki sanagt sdikit hal untuk dilakukan dengan kuda. Manusia rusa kutub adalah masyarakat kuda, namun Arya Neolitikum adalah masyarakat sapi. Mereka menyantap daging sapi, bukan kuda; dan usai sebagian besar zaman, mereka mulai memakai sapi bajak. Mereka mendapatkan kekayaan dari sapi. Mereka mengembara, melewati padang rumput, dan "mengangkut" barang-barang mereka, sebagaimana yang dilakukan oleh suku Boer di Afrika Selatan, dalam gerobak kerbau, seluruhnya pada gerobak mereka yang lebih besar ketimbang gerobak lain yang ditemukan di dunia pada saat ini. Mereka mungkin terbentang pada wilayah yang sangat luas. Mereka adalah migrator, namun bukan dalam esensi ketat dari kata "nomadik"; mereka bergerak dalam gaya yang sangat lambat ketimbang yang dilakukan suku bangsa nomadik pada masa selanjutanya yang lebih khusus. Mereka adalah orang hutan dan taman tanpa kuda. Mereka mengembangkan kehidupan migrator tanpa kehidupan "pemisahan hutan" yang lebih menetap dari zaman Neolitikum sebelumnya. Perubahan iklim menggantikan hutan menjadi padang rumput, dan kebakaran hutan tak disengaja membantu perkembangan tersebut.
Kala "Arya-Arya" awal tersebut datang ke sungai-sungai besar atau perairan terbuka, mereka membangun kapal, mula-mula meronggakan batang-batang pohon dan kemudian mengerjakan kayu ringan yang tertutupi kulit. Sebelum sejarah dimulai, terdapat beberapa lalu lintas kano Arya yang menyeberangi Selat Inggris dan Baltik, dan juga antar kepulauan Yunani. Namun Arya, sebagaimana yang terjadi pada mereka pada masa selanjutnya, mungkin bukanlah suku bangsa pertama yang mengarungi lautan.
Mereka menjelaskan jenis tempat tinggal yang dihuni oleh Arya primitif dan kehidupan rumah tangganya, sejauh sisa penebangan pohon Swiss memperkenankan kami untuk menjelaskan hal-hal tersebut. Kebanyakan rumah mereka terlalu tipis, mungkin terbuat dari gelambir dan lumpur,m yang masih ada, dan mungkin ia meninggalkannya dan pergi untuk alasan yang sangat jelas. Suku bangsa Arya mengkremasi jasad mereka, sebuah adat yang masih terjadi di India, namun pendahulu mereka, orang-orang gerobak panjang, yakni orang-orang iberia, mengkembumikan jasad mereka dalam posisi duduk. Dalam beberapa tempat pengkebumian Arya kuno (makam bundar), liangnya berisi abu dari orang yang ditinggalkan yang berbentuk seperti rumah, dan ini mewakili gubuk melingkar dengan atap jerami.
Penggembalaan Arya primitif jauh lebih penting baginya ketimbang pertaniannya. Mula-mula, ia menanam dengan bajak kayu bundar, usai ia mendapati memaakian sapi uintuk keperluan kekeringan, ia mulai benar-benar memanfaatkan lembu, mula-mula memakai olahan pohon yang layak sebagaimana alat bajaknya. Penanaman pertamanya sebelum itu nyaris datang melampaui bentuk pengadaan taman di dekat bangunan rumah alih-alih ladang. Kebanyakan lahan sukunya menduduki tanah umum sesambil menggembalakan sapi bersamaan.
Ia tak pernah memakai batu untuk membangun tembok rumah sampai masa sejarah berikutnya. Ia memakai batu untuk perapian (seperti di Glastonbury) dan terkadang sub-struktur batu. Namun, ia membuat sebuah jenis rumah batu di pusat gundukan besar tempat ia mengkebumikan jasadnya. Ia mempelajari kebiasaan tersebut dari tetangga Iberia-nya dan pendahulunya. Ini merupakan putih gelap dari budaya heliolitikum, dan bukan Arya primitif, yang bertanggung jawab atas kuil primititf seperti Stonehenge atau Carnac di Brittany.
His social life was growing. Man was now living in clans and tribal communities. These clans and communities clashed; they took each other's grazing land, they sought to rob each other; there began a new thing in human life, war. For war is not a primeval thing; it has not been in this world for more than 20,000 years. To this day very primitive peoples, such as the Australian black-fellows, do not understand war. The Palæolithic Age was an age of fights and murder, no doubt, but not of the organized collective fighting of numbers of men. But now men could talk together and group themselves under leaders, and they found a need of centres where they could come together with their cattle in time of raids and danger. They began to make camps with walls of earth and palisades, many of which are still to be traced in the history-worn contours of the European scenery. The leaders under whom men fought in war were often the same men as the sacrificial purifiers who were their early priests.
The knowledge of bronze spread late in Europe. Neolithic man had been making his slow advances age by age for 7000 or 8000 years before the metals came. By that time his social life had developed so that there were men of various occupations and men and women of different ranks in the community. There were men who worked wood and leather, potters and carvers. The women span and wove and embroidered. There were chiefs and families that were distinguished as leaderly and noble; and man varied the monotony of his herding and wandering, he consecrated undertakings and celebrated triumphs, held funeral assemblies, and distinguished the traditional seasons of the year, by feasts. His meats we have already glanced at; but somewhen between 10,000 b.c. and the broadening separation of the Aryan peoples towards 2000 or 1000 b.c., mankind discovered fermentation, and began to brew intoxicating drinks. He made these of honey, of barley, and, as the Aryan tribes spread southward, of the grape. And he got merry and drunken. Whether he first used yeast to make his bread light or to ferment his drink we do not know.
At his feasts there were individuals with a gift for "playing the fool," who did so no doubt to win the laughter of their friends, but there was also another sort of men, of great importance in their time, and still more important to the historian, certain singers of songs and stories, the bards or rhapsodists. These bards existed among all the Aryan-speaking peoples; they were a consequence of and a further factor in that development of spoken language which was the chief of all the human advances made in Neolithic times. They chanted or recited stories of the past, or stories of the living chief and his people; they told other stories that they invented; they memorized jokes and catches. They found and seized upon and improved the rhythms, rhymes, alliterations, and such-like possibilities latent in language; they probably did much to elaborate and fix grammatical forms. They were the first great artists of the ear, as the later Aurignacian rock painters were the first great artists of the eye and hand. No doubt they used much gesture; probably they learnt appropriate gestures when they learnt their songs; but the order and sweetness and power of language was their primary concern.
And they mark a new step forward in the power and range of the human mind. They sustained and developed in men's minds a sense of a greater something than themselves, the tribe, and of a life that extended back into the past. They not only recalled old hatreds and battles, they recalled old alliances and a common inheritance. The feats of dead heroes lived again. A new thought came into men's minds, the desire to be remembered. Men began to live in thought before they were born and after they were dead.
Like most human things, this bardic tradition grew first slowly and then more rapidly. By the time bronze was coming into Europe there was not an Aryan people that had not a profession and training of bards. In their hands language became as beautiful as it is ever likely to be. These bards were living books, man-histories, guardians and makers of a new and more powerful tradition in human life. Every Aryan people had its long poetical records thus handed down, its sagas (Teutonic), its epics (Greek), its vedas (Old Sanscrit). The earliest Aryan people were essentially a people of the voice. The recitation seems to have predominated even in those ceremonial and dramatic dances and that "dressing-up" which among most human races have also served for the transmission of tradition.
At that time there was no writing, and when first the art of writing crept into Europe, as we shall tell later, it must have seemed far too slow, clumsy, and lifeless a method of record for men to trouble very much about writing down these glowing and beautiful treasures of the memory. Writing was at first kept for accounts and matters of fact. The bards and rhapsodists flourished for long after the introduction of writing. They survived, indeed, in Europe as the minstrels into the Middle Ages.
Unhappily their tradition had not the fixity of a written record. They amended and reconstructed, they had their fashions and their phases of negligence. Accordingly we have now only the very much altered and revised vestiges of that spoken literature of prehistoric times. One of the most interesting and informing of these prehistoric compositions of the Aryans survives in the Greek Iliad. An early form of Iliad was probably recited by 1000 b.c., but it was not written down until perhaps 700 or 600 b.c. Many men must have had to do with it as authors and improvers, but later Greek tradition attributed it to a blind bard named Homer, to whom also is ascribed the Odyssey, a composition of a very different spirit and outlook. To be a bard was naturally a blind man's occupation. The Slavs called all bards sliepac, which was also their word for a blind man. The original recited version of the Iliad was older than that of the Odyssey. "The Iliad as a complete poem is older than the Odyssey, though the material of the Odyssey, being largely undatable folk-lore, is older than any of the historical material in the Iliad." Both epics were probably written over and rewritten by some poet of a later date, in much the same manner that Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of Queen Victoria, in his Idylls of the King, wrote over the Morte d'Arthur (which was itself a writing over by Sir Thomas Malory, circ. 1450, of pre-existing legends), making the speeches and sentiments and the characters more in accordance with those of his own time. But the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the way of living they describe, the spirit of the acts recorded, belong to the closing centuries of the prehistoric age. These sagas, epics, and vedas do supply, in addition to archæology and philology, a third source of information about those vanished times.
Here, for example, is the concluding passage of the Iliad, describing very exactly the making of a prehistoric barrow. (We have taken here Chapman's rhymed translation, correcting certain words with the help of the prose version of Lang, Leaf, and Myers.)
"... Thus oxen, mules, in waggons straight they put,
Went forth, and an unmeasur'd pile of sylvan matter cut;
Nine days employ'd in carriage, but when the tenth morn shin'd
On wretched mortals, then they brought the bravest of his kind
Forth to be burned. Troy swam in tears. Upon the pile's most height
They laid the body, and gave fire. All day it burn'd, all night.
But when th' eleventh morn let on earth her rosy fingers shine,
The people flock'd about the pile, and first with gleaming wine
Quench'd all the flames. His brothers then, and friends, the snowy bones,
Gather'd into an urn of gold, still pouring out their moans.
Then wrapt they in soft purple veils the rich urn, digg'd a pit,
Grav'd it, built up the grave with stones, and quickly piled on it
A barrow....
... The barrow heap'd once, all the town
In Jove-nurs'd Priam's Court partook a sumptuous fun'ral feast,
And so horse-taming Hector's rites gave up his soul to rest."
There remains also an old English saga, Beowulf, made long before the English had crossed from Germany into England, which winds up with a similar burial. The preparation of a pyre is first described. It is hung round with shields and coats of mail. The body is brought and the pyre fired, and then for ten days the warriors built a mighty mound to be seen afar by the traveller on sea or land. Beowulf, which is at least a thousand years later than the Iliad, is also interesting because one of the main adventures in it is the looting of the treasures of a barrow already ancient in those days.
§ 3
The Greek epics reveal the early Greeks with no knowledge of iron, without writing, and before any Greek-founded cities existed in the land into which they had evidently come quite recently as conquerors. They were spreading southward from the Aryan region of origin. They seem to have been a fair people, newcomers in Greece, newcomers to a land that had been held hitherto by a darker people, people who are now supposed to have belonged to a dark white "aboriginal" race, a "Mediterranean" people allied to those Iberians whom the Kelts pressed westward, and to the Hamitic white people of North Africa. Let us, at the risk of a slight repetition, be perfectly clear upon one point. The Iliad does not give us the primitive neolithic life of that Aryan region of origin; it gives us that life already well on the move towards a new state of affairs. The primitive neolithic way of living, with its tame and domesticated animals, its pottery and cooking, and its patches of rude cultivation, we have sketched in Chapter XI. We have already discussed in § 4 of Chapter XIII the probability of a widespread heliolithic culture, a sort of sub-civilization, very like the Polynesian and Indonesian life of a hundred years ago, an elaboration of the earlier Neolithic stage. Between 15,000 and 6000 b.c. the neolithic way of living had spread with the forests and abundant vegetation of the Pluvial Period, over the greater part of the old world, from the Niger to the Hwang-ho and from Ireland to the south of India. Now, as the climate of great portions of the earth was swinging towards drier and more open conditions again, the primitive neolithic life was developing along two divergent directions. One was leading to a more wandering life, towards at last a constantly migratory life between summer and winter pasture, which is called Nomadism; the other, in certain sunlit river valleys, was towards a water-treasuring life of irrigation, in which men gathered into the first towns and made the first Civilization. The nature and development of civilization we shall consider more fully in the next chapter, but here we have to note that the Greeks, as the Iliad presents them, are neither simple neolithic nomads, innocent of civilization, nor are they civilized men. They are primitive nomads in an excited state, because they have just come upon civilization, and regard it as an opportunity for war and loot. So far they are exceptional and not representative. But our interest in them in this chapter is not in their distinctively Greek and predatory aspect, but in what they reveal of the ordinary northward life from which they are coming.
These early Greeks of the Iliad are sturdy fighters, but without discipline—their battles are a confusion of single combats. They have horses, but no cavalry; they use the horse, which is a comparatively recent addition to Aryan resources, to drag a rude fighting chariot into battle. The horse is still novel enough to be something of a terror in itself. For ordinary draught purposes, as in the quotation from the Iliad we have just made, oxen were employed.
The only priests of these Aryans are the keepers of shrines and sacred places. There are chiefs, who are heads of families and who also perform sacrifices, but there does not seem to be much mystery or sacramental feeling in their religion. When the Greeks go to war, these heads and elders meet in council and appoint a king, whose powers are very loosely defined. There are no laws, but only customs; and no exact standards of conduct.
The social life of the early Greeks centred about the households of these leading men. There were no doubt huts for herds and the like, and outlying farm buildings; but the hall of the chief was a comprehensive centre, to which everyone went to feast, to hear the bards, to take part in games and exercises. The primitive craftsmen were gathered there. About it were cowsheds and stabling and such-like offices. Unimportant people slept about anywhere as retainers did in the mediæval castles and as people still do in Indian households. Except for quite personal possessions, there was still an air of patriarchal communism about the tribe. The tribe, or the chief as the head of the tribe, owned the grazing lands; forest and rivers were the wild.
The Aryan civilization seems, and indeed all early communities seem, to have been without the little separate households that make up the mass of the population in western Europe or America to-day. The tribe was a big family; the nation a group of tribal families; a household often contained hundreds of people. Human society began, just as herds and droves begin among animals, by the family delaying its breaking up. Nowadays the lions in East Africa are apparently becoming social animals in this way, by the young keeping with the mother after they are fully grown, and hunting in a group. Hitherto the lion has been much more of a solitary beast. If men and women do not cling to their families nowadays as much as they did, it is because the state and the community now supply safety and help and facilities that were once only possible in the family group.
In the Hindu community of to-day these great households of the earlier stages of human society are still to be found. Mr. Bhupendranath Basu has recently described a typical Hindu household. It is an Aryan household refined and made gentle by thousands of years of civilization, but its social structure is the same as that of the households of which the Aryan epics tell.
"The joint family system," he said, "has descended to us from time immemorial, the Aryan patriarchal system of old still holding sway in India. The structure, though ancient, remains full of life. The joint family is a co-operative corporation, in which men and women have a well-defined place. At the head of the corporation is the senior member of the family, generally the eldest male member, but in his absence the senior female member often assumes control." (Cp. Penelope in the Odyssey.)
"All able-bodied members must contribute their labour and earnings, whether of personal skill or agriculture and trade, to the common stock; weaker members, widows, orphans, and destitute relations, all must be maintained and supported; sons, nephews, brothers, cousins, all must be treated equally, for any undue preference is apt to break up the family. We have no word for cousins—they are either brothers or sisters, and we do not know what are cousins two degrees removed. The children of a first cousin are your nephews and nieces, just the same as the children cf your brothers and sisters. A man can no more marry a cousin, however removed, than he can marry his own sister, except in certain parts of Madras, where a man may marry his maternal uncle's daughter. The family affections, the family ties, are always very strong, and therefore the maintenance of an equal standard among so many members is not so difficult as it may appear at first sight. Moreover, life is very simple. Until recently shoes were not in general use at home, but sandals without any leather fastenings. I have known of a well-to-do middle-class family of several brothers and cousins who had two or three pairs of leather shoes between them, these shoes being only used when they had occasion to go out, and the same practice is still followed in the case of the more expensive garments, like shawls, which last for generations, and with their age are treated with loving care, as having been used by ancestors of revered memory.
"The joint family remains together sometimes for several generations, until it becomes too unwieldy, when it breaks up into smaller families, and you thus see whole villages peopled by members of the same clan. I have said that the family is a co-operative society, and it may be likened to a small state, and is kept in its place by strong discipline based on love and obedience. You see nearly every day the younger members coming to the head of the family and taking the dust of his feet as a token of benediction; whenever they go on an enterprise, they take his leave and carry his blessing.... There are many bonds which bind the family together—the bonds of sympathy, of common pleasures, of common sorrows; when a death occurs, all the members go into mourning; when there is a birth or a wedding, the whole family rejoices. Then above all is the family deity, some image of Vishnu, the preserver; his place is in a separate room, generally known as the room of God, or in well-to-do families in a temple attached to the house, where the family performs its daily worship. There is a sense of personal attachment between this image of the deity and the family, for the image generally comes down from past generations, often miraculously acquired by a pious ancestor at some remote time.... With the household gods is intimately associated the family priest.... The Hindu priest is a part of the family life of his flock, between whom and himself the tie has existed for many generations. The priest is not generally a man of much learning; he knows, however, the traditions of his faith.... He is not a very heavy burden, for he is satisfied with little—a few handfuls of rice, a few home-grown bananas or vegetables, a little unrefined sugar made in the village, and sometimes a few pieces of copper are all that is needed.... A picture of our family life would be incomplete without the household servants. A female servant is known as the 'jhi,' or daughter, in Bengal—she is like the daughter of the house; she calls the master and the mistress father and mother, and the young men and women of the family brothers and sisters. She participates in the life of the family; she goes to the holy places along with her mistress, for she could not go alone, and generally she spends her life with the family of her adoption; her children are looked after by the family. The treatment of men servants is very similar. These servants, men and women, are generally people of the humbler castes, but a sense of personal attachment grows up between them and the members of the family, and as they get on in years they are affectionately called by the younger members elder brothers, uncles, aunts, etc.... In a well-to-do house there is always a resident teacher, who instructs the children of the family as well as other boys of the village; there is no expensive school building, but room is found in some veranda or shed in the courtyard for the children and their teacher, and into this school low-caste boys are freely admitted. These indigenous schools were not of a very high order, but they supplied an agency of instruction for the masses which was probably not available in many other countries....
"With Hindu life is bound up its traditional duty of hospitality. It is the duty of a householder to offer a meal to any stranger who may come before midday and ask for one; the mistress of the house does not sit down to her meal until every member is fed, and, as sometimes her food is all that is left, she does not take her meal until well after midday lest a hungry stranger should come and claim one."...
We have been tempted to quote Mr. Basu at some length, because here we do get to something like a living understanding of the type of household which has prevailed in human communities since Neolithic days, which still prevails to-day in India, China, and the Far East, but which in the west is rapidly giving ground before a state and municipal organization of education and a large-scale industrialism within which an amount of individual detachment and freedom is possible, such as these great households never knew....
But let us return now to the history preserved for us in the Aryan epics.
The Sanscrit epics tell a very similar story to that underlying the Iliad, the story of a fair, beef-eating people—only later did they become vegetarians—coming down from Persia into the plain of North India and conquering their way slowly towards the Indus. From the Indus they spread over India, but as they spread they acquired much from the dark Dravidians they conquered, and they seem to have lost their bardic tradition. The vedas, says Mr. Basu, were transmitted chiefly in the households by the women....
The oral literature of the Keltic peoples who pressed westward has not been preserved so completely as that of the Greeks or Indians; it was written down many centuries later, and so, like the barbaric, primitive English Beowulf, has lost any clear evidence of a period of migration into the lands of an antecedent people. If the pre-Aryans figure in it at all, it is as the fairy folk of the Irish stories. Ireland, most cut off of all the Keltic-speaking communities, retained to the latest date its primitive life; and the Táin, the Irish Iliad, describes a cattle-keeping life in which war chariots are still used, and war dogs also, and the heads of the slain are carried off slung round the horses' necks. The Táin is the story of a cattle raid. Here too the same social order appears as in the Iliad; the chiefs sit and feast in great halls, they build halls for themselves, there is singing and story-telling by the bards and drinking and intoxication. Priests are not very much in evidence, but there is a sort of medicine man who deals in spells and prophecy.