Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 3

Since most of our evidence on the ancient 'Aryans' comes from the texts and from the linguistic

and cultural data contained in them, it is necessary to give an outline what kind of texts we have for the early period. For India, we have the Vedas, a large collection of texts, orally composed and orally transmitted well into this millennium. Tradition has taken care to ensure, with various techniques, that the wording and even tone accents, long lost from popular speech, have been preserved perfectly, almost like a tape recording. This includes several special ways of recitation, the Padapha (word-for-word recitation) and several complicated extensions and modifications (vikti). 4 They contain mainly religious texts: hymns addressed to the gods (RV), other mantras in verse or prose (YV, SV, AV Sahits) which are used in the solemn Vedic (rauta) ritual and the ''theological'' explanations (Brhmaas and Ka YV Sahits), composed in the expository prose of the ritual, and the Mantras used therein. The Upaniads contain (along with some late RV and AV hymns) early speculation and philosophy, and the ritual is summed up in systematic form in the Stras dealing with the solemn ritual (rauta-S.), the domestic ritual (Ghya-S.) and proper rya behavior (Dharma-Stras). The traditional division of the Four Vedas into four ruti levels of Sahit, Brhmaa, rayaka and Upaniad and the ensuing Smti level (with the Stras), is somewhat misleading as far as the development of the texts are concerned. For, the Vedic texts show a clear linguistic development, just as any other living language; we can distinguish at least five clearly separate levels of Vedic (Witzel 1989): 1. gvedic (with many hymns of RV 10 as a late addition); 2. 'Mantra language' (AV, SV as far as differing from RV, YV Mantras, RV Khila); 3. Prose of the Ka Yajurveda Sahits (MS, KS/KpS, TS); 4. Brhmaa language, where the late (and mainly S.-E.) level includes the rayakas and the early Upaniads but also the early Stras such as BS; 5. Stra language which gradually gives way to Epic/Classical Sanskrit. This distinction is important as it represents, apart from a relative chronology based on quotations, the only inner-textual way to establish a dating of these texts. The Iranians have a set-up of texts quite similar to that of the Vedas (though this is little observed). However, only about a quarter of the original Avesta has been preserved after Iran became an Islamic country in the 7th c. CE. The 5 long G (with 17 individual Gs = Yasna 28-53) are the RV-like poems of Zarautra himself; the contemporaneous ritual text embedded among the Gs, the Yasna Haptah i ti, is a YV-like collection of Mantras used for fire worship. The rest of the Avestan texts is post-Zoroastrian: some sections of Y 19.9-14, Y 20-21 are like a Brhmaa passage; the Yat pick up themes of RV style praise of certain gods (Mira, Viiu, etc.), while the

Nirangistn is of rautastra style, the late Vdvdd reads like a Ghya/Dharmastra, and the Nighau list of the Nirukta has its echo in the Farhang--im. Importantly, the whole Avesta has come down to us (just like the one surviving version of the RV) in Padapha fashion, with most of the sandhis dissolved. The list of genres and of the ordering of texts indicates how close both traditions really are, even after the reforms of Zarautra. However, in spite of being geographically closer to the Mesopotamian cultures with datable historical information, the Avestan texts are as elusive to absolute dating as the Vedic ones. Mesopotamia (or early China) simply do not figure in these texts. 3. Dates An approximation to an absolute dating of Vedic texts, however, can be reached by the following considerations: 5 4 Staal 1983: I 683-6, with special reference to techniques of memorization; Staal 1986, 1989. 5 Max Mller had come to a similar chronology, but --long before the prehistory and archaeological past of S.Asia was known at all-- one based on internal evidence and some speculation, a fact he often underlined even late in his career. This is Autochthonous Aryans? (5) (1.) The gveda whose geographical horizon is limited to the Panjab and its surroundings does not yet know of iron but only of the hard metal copper/bronze (W. Rau 1974, 1983; ayas = Avest. aiiah 'copper/bronze'). Since iron is only found later on in Vedic texts (it is called, just as in Drav. *cir-umpu), the ''black metal'' (yma, ka ayas) and as makes its appearance in S. Asia only by c. 1200 or 1000 BCE, 6 the RV must be earlier than that. 7 The RV also does not know of large cities such as that of the Indus civilization but only of ruins (armaka, Falk 1981) and of small forts (pur, Rau 1976). Therefore, it must be later than the disintegration of the Indus cities in the Panjab, at c. 1900 BCE A good, possible date ad quem would be that of the Mitanni documents of N. Iraq/Syria of c. 1400 BCE that mention the gvedic gods and some other Old IA words (however, in a form slightly preceding that of the RV). 8 (2.) The Mantra language texts (AV etc.) whose geographical horizon stretches from Bactria (Balhika) to Aga (NW Bengal) mention iron for the first time and therefore should be contemporaneous or slightly rather later than 1200/1000 BCE. (3.) The YV Sahit prose texts have a narrow horizon focusing on Haryana, U.P. and the Chambal area; they and (4a.) the early Br. texts seem to overlap in geographical spread and cultural inventory with the archaeologically attested Painted Gray Ware culture, an elite pottery ware of the nobility, and may therefore be

dated after c. 1200 BCE (until c. 800 BCE). (4b.) The end of the Vedic period is marked by the spread of the Vedic culture of the confederate KuruPacla state of Haryana/U.P. (but generally, not of its people) eastwards into Bihar (B, late AB, etc.) and by a sudden widening of the geographical horizon to an area from Gandhra to Andhra (Witzel 1989). This is, again, matched by the sudden emergence of the NBP luxury ware (700-300 BCE, Kennedy 1995: 229) and the emergence of the first eastern kingdoms such as Kosala (but not yet of Magadha, that still is off limits to Brahmins). The early Upaniads precede the date of the Buddha, now considered to be around 400 BCE (Bechert 1982, 1991 sqq.), of Mahvra, and of the re-emergence of cities around 450 BCE (Erdosy 1988). In short, the period of the four Vedas seems to fall roughly between c. 1500 BCE 9 and c. 500 BCE. (For other and quite divergent dates and considerations, see below

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi