Dating the Rigveda
Its composition and compilation
Over the last year or so, we spent considerable time exploring the origin of the Rigvedic people. We concluded that the Rigvedic Aryans were a Proto-Indo-European people; their ‘original’ homeland was the Eurasian steppes, which they shared with other Proto-Indo-European speakers. They were closely associated with the ancient Iranians: the similarities between the Rigveda and the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, indicate that the Rigvedic Aryans and the ancient Iranians, were, at some point in their past, a single people with a shared religious, social, and cultural heritage. The closeness between Old Indo-Aryan, the language of the Rigveda, and Avestan, the language of the Avesta, indicate that the two languages share a common ancestral language and that their separation could not have happened much before the composition of the Rigveda and the Avesta.
Around 3000 BCE, the Proto-Indo-Europeans began to leave the steppe region. The Indo-Iranian speakers were most likely the last to do so, and came down from the steppes around 1700 BCE, moving east and south. The Indo-Aryan speakers entered the subcontinent around 1500 BCE, migrating from the Indo-Iranian borderlands and the Saraswati area of Afghanistan to the plains of the Indus. They mingled with the local population, to spread eastwards over the next thousand years or so to the plains of the Ganga and the Yamuna.
For the discussion so far, see the earlier posts on the Rigveda HERE.
Let us now turn back to the text itself. My regular readers will find some repetition of earlier material in the discussion below—I ask them to bear with me as I attempt to build a broad picture of the Rigveda in time and space.
WHEN WAS THE RIGVEDA COMPOSED?
It is easy to imagine, that during their long journey from the steppes to the subcontinent, the Rigvedic people composed songs in praise of their gods, calling upon them for protection and help. The date of composition of these songs of praise remains a matter of contention: given the lack of material evidence, it is almost impossible to assign absolute dates either to the text or to the period over which it was composed.
It is evident from the text itself that these songs were composed by priest-poets and poet families over generations. The priest-poets drew upon a long and ancient poetic tradition shared with the ancient Iranians and the Indo-Europeans, and the songs they composed contain within them material that is far older than the hymns themselves. The Rigveda thus reflects not just its own times, but also its “ancient sources” (Jamison and Brereton, 2020, p.13) which reach far back into Indo-European prehistory.
A widespread and increasingly popular assertion is that the Rigveda dates back to 3500 BCE to the Indus civilization, or even earlier. However, there is no convincing evidence to support this assertion, but much to counter it, and it may be safely discarded. Constraints of space preclude a discussion here, but interested readers can find a brief but clear discussion by Irfan Habib in his The Indus Civilization, Note 2.2 (see Sources and Further Reading below).
The songs themselves provide some clues as to when they might have been composed. The Rigvedic poets mention several river names in their hymns, thereby indicating the geographical area they were familiar with. While difficulties remain in identifying the rivers by these names, it is clear that the rivers Harirud and the Arghandeb (in present-day Afghanistan) were known to them. The rivers Panjshir, Kabul, Swat, Kurram, and Gomal, which rise in Afghanistan and Pakistan and ultimately flow into the Indus, are also mentioned. The Rigvedic rishis mention the Indus and its five tributaries, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej, as well as rivers in the Kashmir valley and in the Punjab-Haryana region of India. The Rigveda mentions the Ganga and the Yamuna, but makes no reference to their tributaries. From this we can see that geographic region reflected in the Rigveda extends from the Hindukush mountains of Afghanistan to the Ganga-Yamuna doab, and from Kashmir to northern Sindh. (Habib, 2003, pp. 4-6).
Taking this geographical familiarity of the Rigvedic people in conjunction with their journey from the steppes, we can reasonably conclude that the hymns were composed during the period in which they migrated from the Indo-Iranian borderlands and Afghanistan to the plains of the Indus and its tributaries.
Further, the Rigveda does not mention iron, though it does speak of gold, silver, copper, and bronze. Iron appears at different times in different parts of the subcontinent, generally between 1200-1000 BCE. The songs of the Rigveda, therefore, would have to have been composed before this period. (Jamison and Brereton, 2020, p. 13).
The Atharvaveda, the Vedic collection closest to the Rigveda in age, does mention iron. Though there was clearly a gap between the closure of the Rigveda and the emergence of the Atharvaveda, this gap may not have been very large. The language of the Atharvaveda is younger than that of the Rigveda, but “hymns like those of the Atharvaveda already appear in the later Rigveda” (Jamison and Brereton, 2020, p.14). This suggests that the latest portions of the Rigveda were most likely composed towards the end of the Bronze Age (Jamison and Brereton, 2020, p.14).
The Sarvanukramani, an index to the Rigveda prepared by Katyayana probably around the middle of the 4th century BCE, lists, in sutra form, the first few words of every hymn, the number of verses, the deity to which it is attributed, and its metre. Most importantly for our purpose, the index also identifies the author of each hymn, giving both his name and patronymic (Kochhar, 2009, p.20). From this and other indices, it is seen that the poets themselves, as well as the kings and rulers they mention, cover some six generations or so.
The Rigveda’s close association with the Avesta provides further clues to its date. Though none of the Avestan texts have yet been dated with precision, linguistic comparisons with Achaemenid inscriptions and the language of the Young Avesta, the occurrence of Iranian names in Mesopotamian inscriptions, and evidence within the Avesta itself regarding its geography, have helped date the Old Avesta to between 1300 BCE and 1000 BCE. Given the similarities between the Rigveda and the Avesta, this indicates that “no part of the Rigveda itself is likely to be earlier than 1500 BCE”. (Habib, 2004, p. 73).
Putting all this evidence together, we can place the composition of the Rigvedic hymns to a period roughly between 1500-1000 BCE.
An important clue to its date came in 1906 with the discovery of the Boghazkoy archive in Turkey. Consisting of some 25,000 cuneiform tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite, this collection is the only extant written material about the Hittite civilisation, one of the most powerful empires in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE. Amongst these tablets are texts dating back to the fourteenth century BCE which show that the Mittanni rulers of north Syria spoke a language so close to that of the Rigveda that the two could not have been too far distant in time. This places the Rigveda sometime between 2000 BCE and 800 BCE, validating our conclusion above.
ITS COMPILATION
There remains the question of its compilation.
As we have seen earlier, the fundamental unit of Rigvedic society was the family or clan; this was called the vish. The clans came together to form larger alliances known as janas, each of which was headed by a rajan or king. Associated with each king was his own priest-poet/family of poets who composed new songs for every new yajna. The hymns were passed down from father to son, teacher to pupil, through several generations. Each new generation also composed its own hymns, adding them to the hymns received from earlier generations. Thus every poet-family/clan of note had its own particular collection of hymns which they “owned” as “intellectual property” (Witzel, 1997, p. 261).
It appears likely that at some point, a single group—perhaps the Bharata clan, as suggested by Michael Witzel (Witzel, 1995, p.1)—became dominant over the others. Their descendants, the Kurus, sought to create “a unified religious culture out of the patchwork of clan-based practices” (Jamison and Brereton, pp. 21). It was probably during this period, c. 1000 BCE, that the family collections were finally compiled and organised into the single, “super-collection” we know as the Rigveda (Jamison and Brereton, p. 22). This period also signalled the end of free composition.
In our next post, we will look at the structure of the Rigveda and the underlying logic, if any, for the manner in which its hymns were organised.
CONCLUSION
In summary, given the available evidence, we can say that the hymns of the Rigveda were composed during the period in which the Rigvedic Aryans migrated from the Indo-Iranian borderlands and Afghanistan to the plains of the Indus and its tributaries. This corresponds roughly to a period of five hundred years or so, from 1500 BCE to 1000 BCE. The hymns, though, draw upon and probably contain material of much greater antiquity.
Around 1000 BCE, the hymns composed and preserved by various priest-poets and their descendants were collated, organised and compiled into the collection we know today as the Rigveda. This work may have been done under the auspices of the Kurus. This period also brought to an end the free composition of new hymns.
We must, of course, bear in mind that given the complete the absence of material evidence it is impossible to assign absolute dates to the Rigveda.
As always, I find that in writing a post on the Rigveda, more questions arise in my mind than are answered. Please write in with your questions, comments, and suggestions. I love to hear from you.
And if you enjoy reading Eaten by a Fish, do share it with your friends!
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Brereton, Joel P.; and Jamison, Stephanie W. The Rigveda: A Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Habib, Irfab. The Vedic Age. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2003.
Habib, Irfan. The Indus Civilization. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2004.
Kochhar, Rajesh. The Vedic People: Their History and Geography. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2009.
Witzel, M., Early Sanskritization. Origin and Development of the Kuru State. 1995.
Witzel, M., The development of the Vedic canon and its schools: the social and political milieu. 1997.
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