DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

4. 1J TWO ARYAN WAVES 83
The community of names and cults was particularly strong
between Iranians and Indo-Aryans. People who live by similar means of
production tend to develop similar observances in primitive times; but
common names mean some contact. Cremation seems first to be found
on a fairly large scale agiong the Aryans. The rite could not have gained
sanction, if known at all, before the age of metals. Cremation purged
the body of its corruptible dross, just as the ore was reduced by fire
to its essential pure metal. As the fire was sacred, in fact the leading
Vedic god and the chief object of veneration among Iranians, letting
it touch the unclean corpse meant a revolutionary change in primitive
thought. The Iranians ultimately preferred decarnation by carrion-eating
birds and beasts; yet the Iranian corpse-tower dakhma originally meant
‘ the place of burning’ India shows the same custom of corpse-exposure
among supposed Aryans, down to about the 10th century A. D. Cremation
was originally reserved for the fire-priests, or chiefs, to be slowly adopted
by people lower in the scale. The bones and ashes left after the flesh had
been removed were given a second ceremonial funeral in India, being
at one time buried in urns or cists. Later custom demanded their
scattering in a sacred river.
All this shows that the Aryans differed considerably among
themselves. However the historical movements of the subgroup that
affects India can be traced with fair certainty, in two great waves of
pastoral tribesmen originating in the Khorezm region. The first started
about the beginning .of the 2nd millennium B. c., the second towards the
end. The Iranian Var of king Yima (Indian Yama, later god of death),
the mythical region of happiness where heat, cold, hunger, death could
not penetrate (Yasna 9.4-5), has been identified by excavations (which
yield the exact dimensions recorded in the sacred books) as sublimated
from a stone enclosure within which the cattle were left free, while the
people lived in rooms in the walls. This must also have been the
prototype of the Augean stables cleansed by Herakles. Just why the
emigrations began is not clear, for there is no evidence of any great
internal catastrophe. Perhaps steady increase of population sufficed
as cause. Some of these pastoral nomads went from Khorezm as conquerors
to the Russian steppes. Others rounded the Caspian into Asia Minor.