EARLY CIVILISATIONS OF THE NORTHWESTOf course, the method of slash-and-burn cultivation was known, and Agni,
the fire god, was praised for helping them in this endeavour. But this
method did not mean a permanent clearing of the jungle. The trees would
sprout again and the coveted ‘undivided fallow land’ could not be acquired
in this way. For this, strong axes and ploughs were required. It is not yet
known to what extent the immigrant Aryans possessed bronze and copper
which had been in common use during the Indus civilisation. However,
such metals were better suited for the making of ornaments and
arrowheads than for axes and ploughs. The extension of regular
cultivation in the Gangetic plains was therefore impossible before iron was
used on a large scale.
The Rigveda mentions iron in texts which are thought to date back to
the eleventh century BC. This correlates very well with recent
archaeological research which dates the first use of iron in northwestern
India to the same age. Earlier parts of the Rigveda contain only isolated
references to iron as the ‘neck’ of the tip of an arrow (VI, 75) and as an
axe (VI, 8). But references to iron and to the clearing of the forest with
iron axes increase in the texts of the period after 1000 BC. The last book
of the Rigveda contains a striking example: ‘The deities approached, they
carried axes; splitting the wood they came with their servants’ (X, 28).
This seems to be a clear indication of the beginning of a systematic clearing
of the jungle. But excavations in northern India have unfortunately not yet
produced tangible evidence of this use of iron. The metal seems to have
remained rather scarce and was mainly reserved for weapons; axes have
not yet been found at all.
The early period of settled agriculture of the Vedic society is generally
referred to as the Late Vedic age. Settled life produced a great deal of social
change, of intensified conflict with the indigenous population and of
internal stratification of the Aryan society itself. Trade and crafts
increased, small territorial principalities with small residencies arose, and
there was a flowering of philosophical thought. There can be no doubt that
the Indian society of the middle of the last millennium BC was
fundamentally different from that of the Early Vedic age. This Late Vedic
age was in many respects the formative phase of Indian culture.
The transition from semi-nomadic life to settled agriculture in the Late
Vedic age after 1000 BC is illustrated by the changing meaning of the term
grama, which nowadays means ‘village’ in most Indo-Aryan languages.
The German Indologist Wilhelm Rau, who has analysed Late Vedic text for
evidence of social and political change in this period has shown that the
word grama originally referred to a nomadic group, its train of vehicles
and its band of warriors. The train of vehicles obviously formed a ring or
barricade of wagons whenever the group took a rest. This would explain
why in one Brahmana text it is mentioned that ‘the two ends of the grama
came together’.^2 It is also significant that the word samgrama, which still