The classical civilization of India developed from the earlier Vedic civilization, and the Vedic civilization was the creation of the Aryans, an invading people, whose first arrival in the subcontinent is probably to be dated about 1500 B.C.

Perhaps some 200 years after this estimated date there began to come into being a collection of religious hymns which were eventually organized as the Rigveda, the final redaction of which probably antedates 1000 B.C. Our know­ledge of the Aryans in India during this earliest period is based primarily on this work.

From the Rigveda emerges a fairly clear picture of the situation at that time. A series of related tribes, settled mainly in the Panjab and adjacent regions, speaking a common language, sharing a common religion, and de­signating themselves by the name arya-, are represented as being in a state of permanent conflict with a hostile group of peoples known variously as Dasa or Dasyu.

From the frequent references to these conflicts it emerges that their result was the complete victory of the Aryans. During the period represented by the later Samhitas and the Brahmana texts the Aryans are seen to have ex­tended their territory, principally in the direction of the east, down the Ganga valley and references to conflicts with the Dasa are rare. Other terms, e.g. mleccha- and nisada- are used as designations of non-Aryan tribes, while the word Dasa becomes the usual word for ‘slave’.

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On the other hand the term arya- is opposed not only to the external barbarian, but also to the lowest of the four castes, the Sudra. In the latter context the word arya- nature lly ac­quires the meaning ‘noble, honourable’, and the word continues in use in both senses down to the classical period. North India is referred to as Aryavarta, ‘the country where the Aryans live’, or, in Pali, as ariyam ayatanam.

The Jaina texts have frequent references to the distinction between Arya and Mleccha. In Tamil literature the kings of north India are referred to as Aryan kings. On the other hand the ethical use of the word is illustrated by the Buddhist ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ (ariyam atthangikam maggam) where the word has no ethnic significance.

The Aryans, whose presence in north-western India is documented by the Rigveda, had reached the territory they then occupied through a migration, or rather, a succession of migrations, from outside the Indian subcontinent. The final stage of this migration cannot have been very far removed from the be­ginning of the composition of the Rigveda, but, at the same time, a sufficient period of time must have elapsed for any clear recollection of it to have disappeared, since the hymns contain no certain references to such an event.

The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document, and it can­not yet be traced archaeologically, but it is nevertheless firmly established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology. The Indo-European languages, of which Sanskrit in its Vedic form is one of the oldest members, originated in Europe, and the only possible way by which a language belong­ing to this family could be carried all the way to India was a migration of the people speaking it. The general outline of this process can be elucidated to some extent on the basis of the mutual relationship of the languages concerned.

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Apart from its belonging to the Indo-European family in general, Sanskrit, or Old Indo-Aryan, is more closely and specifically related to the Iranian group of languages, of which the oldest representatives are Old Persian and Avesta.

The relationship is in fact so close that these two peoples, who both designated themselves as Aryans, must, at some earlier time, have constituted a single nation or people, speaking, with due allowance for dialectal diver­gence, the same language. This earlier Aryan language, commonly referred to as Primitive Indo-Iranian, is the source from which the later Iranian and lndo- Aryan languages are derived. In the period preceding the Aryan invasion of India, they were settled, in all probability, in the Central Asian regions border­ing the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and the Aral and Caspian seas.

From this base, sections of them may be presumed to have pushed up into the highlands of Afghanistan, and then to have descended from this base into the plains of the Panjab. In the opposite direction other Aryan tribes from the same region moved westwards into Iran, where they first appear in Assyrian records in the middle of the ninth century B.C.

The beginning of their occupation of Iran is commonly put not earlier than 1000 B.C, which is considerably later than the Aryan migrations into India if the above-mentioned estimated dates are correct. The Iranians retained a memory of their original home, under the name of airyanam vaejo (Eran Vej), and the region continued to be occupied by them down to the time of the Turkish invasions.