21.
122
22.
மறைமலையம் - 24
It will be surprise to many that the Aryan population of the Indian continent should be so out of all proportion small when compared to the descendants and representatives of those races which the Aryan immigrants found in possion. The same difference must have existed on a still greater scale in those earliest times and would alonse suffiee to stamp as irrational the theory of Aryan supremacy having been established by sheer conquest and force" Ibid,p.314.
To keep strictly within the information supplied by the Rig-Veda itself - Vasishtha was the bard of the Tritsu the leading and purest Aryan tribe, and Visvamitra was the bard of the Bharatas, their great enemies and one of the most powerful native tribes. He at one time had been with the Tritsu, and for whatever cause he left them -not improbably personal revenge - he played a conspicuous part in the confederacy which attempted to check the Aryan advance and increasing power. There is a hymn (53), in Book III, that of the Visvamitra family, which evidently alludes to this very thing. In the first part of the hymn it is said that when visvamitra conducted kings sudas sacrifies, Indra was gracious to him for the Rishi's sake, and a great blessing is pronounced on the king, and his war -steed and the expedition on which he starts,. Then, quite suddenly, visvamitry is made to declare in his own person, that his prayers protect of imprecation against enemies who are not named, but whom tradition so positively inentified with vasishtha and his family that the priests of this house in later times never uttered these four verses, and tried not to hearthem when spoken by other Brahmans. It is most probable that the Visavamitras resented some distinction conferred upon the vasishthas, possibly their appointment as purohitas to the Tritsu royal family and went over to theri most powerful enemies, the Purus andharatas. The Tritsu and their allies were veictorious in the ensuingstruggle known as “the war of the ten kings" and both the bards have lfet descriptions of it and of the final battle on the Parushni, in some spirited hymns, the most undoubtedly historical of the collection. At a later period the followers of Vasishtha and his descendants represent the narrowl orthodox Brahminic school, with its petty punctillousness in the matter of forms, rites observances, its intolerance in the matter of forms, rites, observances, its on tolerance of everthing in -Aryan, its rigid separatism. This school it was which stood guard through all these ages. and up to our day the champion -and possibly orginally the institutor of case who advanced and upheld all the exaggerated claims of the Brahman priesthoo, to divinity. To the rule of the world and ownership of all it holds, to supernatural compelling powers over nature and the gods themselves through sacrifice and ascetic practices. and the likd. The followers of
