“classical” and the “folk” have been engaged in a dialectic, each influencing
the other.
The “Indo-European” influence
There has been considerable discussion in recent years as to the sources of
the culture and religion that eventually comes to be known as “Vedic.” There
are basically two points of view: the traditional view is that there was a
migration of “Indo-Europeans” that influenced the Indian subcontinent (as
well as Iran and other cultures); the other is that much of that culture is, in
fact, indigenous to India.
The traditional hypothesis, based on the comparisons of languages and
religions, is that there were migrations of nomadic pastoral peoples that
occurred, starting around 2000 BCE, which eventually affected the Indian
subcontinent. These peoples, usually called “Indo-European” were thought
to have been a widely spread and loosely connected confederation of tribes
wandering the steppe lands of Eurasia. That some of those migrated west
is suggested by their apparent influence on the culture and language of the
Nordic, Germanic, Greek, and Slavic regions. Others, known as Indo-Iranian,
were thought to have moved south and east across Afghanistan and to
have influenced both Iranian and Indian cultures. These tribes are believed
to have had several features in common; they had little sense of the sacrality
or creativity of the earth; rather as pastoral nomads, the sky served as the
model for the community’s sense of direction. Their deities were gods of
the sky, virtually all of them male inasmuch as the tribes were patrilineal. At
night, the community centered around the fire that served as the focal point
of ritual, and the agency, or messenger, by which peoples could have access
to the gods. Fire could also transform and served as the center for sacrificial
libations, most commonly of a sap known in ancient Iran as hoamaand in
India as soma. The communities were believed to have practiced cremation
of the dead.
In addition, Georges Dumezil, a French scholar, influenced by Durkheim,
hypothesized that the Indo-Europeans were organized into a tripartite social
order: those who did the teaching and priestly tasks were thought to be
at one level; at another were those who filled positions associated with tribal
leadership, warfare, and protection; at yet another level, were those who
were the maintainers or “fecundators” of society who performed the
necessary work of daily life.^13 These social roles, Dumezil further maintained,
led these communities to infer a cosmic order which was similarly tripartite:
a supra-atmospheric level of the cosmos in which “high gods,” roughly
homologous to the role of priestly/teaching functionaries, presided (e.g.,
20 Sources of Indian Religion