Historians have reconstructed the political history of the vedic and epic ages and philosophers have studied the metaphysical aspects of the same. In this chapter, the objective is to show the interrelationship between war making (an integral part of state formation) and the quasi-religious vedic and epic philosophy. The vedic age extends roughly from 1500 bce to 600 bce. The Rig Veda is the first of the four vedas (the other three are the Yajur , Sama and Atharva Vedas , respectively). The Rig Veda was probably composed between 1300 and 1000 bce.
There are problems involved in historicizing the society that the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata , represent, just as there are problems in historicizing Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey . While some say that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey represent the Greek Dark Age or the eighth century bce , others argue that Homer is representing multi-layered materials from different eras. Tradition ascribes the authorship of Ramayana to Valmiki, but about his background we know nothing, just as we draw a complete blank as regards the background of Vyasa, the so-called author of the Mahabharata . John Brockington writes that from an analysis of the style and subject matter, it is clear that the Ramayana is the work of a conscious artist who worked within the limits and in the spirit of a living epic tradition. The Valmiki Ramayana is an epic poem of some 50,000 lines describing in Sanskrit verse the career of Rama, the prince of Kosala in Awadh (the eastern part of north central India). The poem is divided into seven kandas (books) that chronologically chart the career of Rama. There are hundreds of manuscripts about the Ramayana ; most of them date from the sixteenth century ce, and the oldest among them goes back to 1020 ce. Brockington identii es five stages in the growth of Ramayana . Stage 1 extended from the fifth to the fourth century bce, and during that stage about <7.1 percent of the Ramayana was composed. This constitutes the Valmiki Ramayana . Stage 2 extended from the third century bce until the first century ce, a stage during which about 34.05 percent of the text was composed. During both of these stages, the Ramayana was orally transmitted. Stage 3 extended from the first to the third century ce; during that stage about 24.57 percent of the Ramayana was written down. Stage 4 extended from the fourth to the twelfth century ce, and Stage 5 started after 1200 ce. Tulsidas’ Ramayana came into existence during the last stage.
It seems that the Mahabharata was composed in Sanskrit between the fifth and the third century bce. B. A. van Nooten says that the Mahabharata represents society as it was around 1400 bce. The Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world, with more than 100,000 verses and seven to eight times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. The core of the Mahabharata is an account of the combat between the Kurus and the Pandavas for the fertile land at the conl uence of the rivers Jamuna and Ganga. The Kurus were a tribe living along the upper reaches of the Jamuna, and the Pandavas were a comparatively newly emergent clan based around Indraprastha, about sixty miles southwest of the Kuru capital, Hastinapura. With the passage of time, peripheral stories that provide a social, moral and cosmological background to the climactic battle were added. Both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata portray the actions of the warriors in a heroic and moral context. To an extent, the Mahabharata also represents, writes Nooten, a re-enactment of a moral confrontation at the cosmic level. The Mahabharata is a moral and philosophical as well as an historical tale. Occasionally, the gods interact with the humans, give them weapons, inl uence the outcome of battles, make love with the queens, and so on. The great Rig Vedic deities were all anthropomorphic in conception (idealized in human and superhuman forms). Similarly, in the Iliad , the gods in human shape interact with humanity and determine the winners and losers in battle.
The Bhagavad Gita was composed around 200 bce. Angelika Malinar and Steven J. Rosen claim that the Bhagavad Gita was composed not independently but in relation to and even for the epic Mahabharata . The Bhagavad Gita became part of the epic in the course of its own textual history.
Let us review the material context in which the vedic and epic philosophy flourished. The art of manufacturing arrowhead from stone was invented during the Neolithic era. The chalcolithic age witnessed the replacement of stone arrowheads with bronze (an alloy of nine parts copper and one part tin) and copper arrowheads, which were used for both fighting and hunting. In the Indus Valley civilization (2500–1500 bce ), combatants used arrows made of bronze and copper, and double-edged swords and socket-hole axes also appeared. Spoked wheels that transformed transportation emerged in Central Asia between 1700 and 1500 bce . The Indus Valley civilization used carts with solid wheels, and in India spoked wheels came into use around 700 bce.
Between 1000 BCE and 600 bce , the Aryans moved from north-west India and Punjab to the Ganga-Jamuna doab. The location of the Aryan homeland and the very meaning of the term “Aryan” have generated debate among scholars, and the Aryan question is yet to be resolved. Initially, scholars argued that the Aryans were Sanskrit-speaking people who entered India through the north-western passes around 1500 bce . However, a minority group claims that the Aryans were indigenous to India and identical to the people of the Indus Valley civilization. The Dravidian languages were prevalent in north India prior to Sanskrit, and this tends to support the hypothesis that a Dravidian language was the language of the Indus Valley civilization. The most recent view is that the Aryans did not represent any particular race but was instead a language group. As this particular language group moved into India and the Aryan-speaking people intermixed with local people, the Aryan language (a variation of the Indo-European language group) absorbed a large number of local Dravidian words. And instead of invasion, scholars are now more comfortable speaking of slow and gradual migration resulting in intermingling of the various communities.
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As regards the actual conduct of war during the vedic and epic eras, we have two different interpretations. U. P. Thapliyal is of the view that even in Rig Vedic times, the troops were arrayed in vyuhas (prescribed formations) before being led into war, and that the troops were adept at maneuvers such as attack, encirclement and assault. Thapliyal asserts that the Rig Veda mentions the troops being organized in formations of tens, hundreds and thousands. Thapliyal continues that on the opening day of the Mahabharata War, Yudhistira, the eldest brother of the Pandavas, favoured suci-vyuha , which was formed according to the military thinker Brihaspati’s doctrine. The suci-vyuha was an array suited to a numerically inferior army fighting a numerically superior enemy. In a somewhat similar vein, Bimal Kanti Majumdar says that a standing army emerged in India around 600 bce . Pradeep P. Barua writes that despite their stage-managed appearance, battles in ancient India were extremely bloody affairs. By contrast, a recent view put forward mostly by Western scholars asserts that ancient Indian warfare was comprised of ‘Flower Wars’. The reality probably lies somewhere between these two extreme viewpoints.
~~Hinduism and the Ethics of Warfare in South Asia -by- Kaushik Roy
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