What were the Aryans in India Like?

The Aryans must have come to India five or six thousand years ago, or perhaps even more. Of course they did not all come in a bunch. Army after army, tribe after tribe, family after family, must have come for hundreds of years. Imagine them travelling in long caravans with all their household goods laden on carts or on the backs of animals. They did not come as tourists do nowadays. There was no going back for them. They came to stay, or fight and die. Most of them, as I have told you, came over the mountains of the north-west. But perhaps some came by sea also from the Persian Gulf and went in their little ships up the river Indus.

What were these Aryans like? We can find out a lot about them from the books they wrote. Some of these books, like the Vedas, are perhaps the oldest books in the world. Probably they were not written down to begin with. They were learnt by heart and recited and chanted to others. They are written in such beautiful Sanskrit that you can almost sing them. Even now it is a pleasure to hear a man with a good voice, who knows Sanskrit, recite the Vedas. The Vedas are considered very holy books by Hindus. But what does the word Vedas mean? It means knowledge. And the Vedas contained the knowledge which the wise men of those days, called rishis and munis, had gathered. They did not have railways and telegraphs and cinemas in those days. But that does not mean that they were ignorant. Some people think that the wise men of old were wiser than any today. But whether they were wiser or not, they wrote wonderful books which even today are greatly admired. This itself shows how great these men of the olden days must have been.

As I have said, these Vedas were not at first written. They were remembered and were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. They must have had wonderful memories in those days. How many of us can learn by heart whole books?

Those days when the Vedas were written are called the Vedic perod. The first Veda is the Rig Veda. It is full of hymns and songs which the old Aryans used to sing. They must have been a very light-hearted people, not morose and gloomy but full of joy and adventure. And in their joy they made beautiful songs and sang them out to the gods they worshipped.

They were very proud of themselves and their race. The very word 'Arya' meant a gentleman, a superior kind of person. And they loved freedom greatly. They were not like their descendants in India today who have little courage and hardly feel the loss of their freedom. To the Aryans of old, death was better than dishonour or slavery.

They were good fighters, and they knew something of science and a great deal of agriculture. They naturally attached great value to agriculture and so they valued also everything that helped agriculture. The great rivers gave them water, and they loved them and looked upon them as great friends and benefactors. The bull and cow helped them also very much both. in agriculture and in their daily lives, for the cow gave milk which was valued very greatly. So they specially cared for these animals and sang their praises. Long afterwards, people, forgetting the real reason for the care of the cow, started worshipping her as if that was any good to anybody.

The Aryans, being very proud of themselves, were afraid of getting mixed up with the other inhabitants of India. So they made laws and rules to prevent this mixture, so that Aryans could not marry the others. Long afterwards, this developed into the caste system, as it is called today. Now of course, it has become perfectly ridiculous. Some people are afraid of touching others or eating with others. Fortunately, this is getting less and less now.

Source: http://indiragandhi.in/en/philosophy/letters/4