at Benares near the junction of the Goomti and CHAPTER I. Ganges; at Patali-putra near the junction of the Sone, the Gogra, and the Ganges; and at Gour near the point where the main stream diverges into the Hooghly and Ganges.

Aryan invasion.

It may thus be assumed that ancient Hindustan was occupied by at least ten Vedic Aryan fortresses, which were destined to become the capitals of kingdoms, the emporiums of trade, and the centres of religious thought. They would appear arranged in three lines of advance, illustrating three distinct Three stages of stages of Aryan invasion, namely—the colonial, the conquering, and the imperial. During the colonial period the Vedic Aryans probably occupied the lands round Indraprastha and Hastinápur on the upper courses of the Jumna and Ganges. During the conquering period they may have advanced half way down the four important rivers which water northern Hindustan, and established a line of fortresses at Agra, Kanouj, Lucknow, and Ayodhya. During the imperial period they may have established a third line of fortified capitals at the junctions or divergence of rivers, namely-at Allahabad, Benares, Patali-putra, and Gour.28

The Aryan conquest of Hindustan must have convulsed northern India, but all memories of the struggle are buried beneath a jungle of legend. It was a fabled war of gods against demons; the invaders were Aryan devatas, the deities of fire and

28 The above description of Vedic Aryan fortresses in Hindustan is of course conjectural. Patali-putra, somewhere near the modern Patna, became the metropolis of the Gangetic empire of Magadha. Gour, at the elbow of the Ganges, may possibly have been of Turanian rather than Aryan origin. According to old Persian tradition Gour was founded by a conqueror from Kooch Behar, a territory in the neighbourhood of the opposite elbow of the river Brahmaputra.

Aryan invasion.

CHAPTER I. light, the fair-complexioned heroes from the high Legends of lands of ancient Persia. The enemies against whom they contended, and whom they drove slowly into the east and south, were the earth-born demons of ancient India; the black-skinned barbarians, who are described with all those exaggerations of hatred and distorted fancy with which cultured invaders generally regard a race of fierce aborigines. These non-Aryan races were called Dasyus, Daityas, Asuras, Rákshasas, and Nágas. They were depicted as giants, man-eaters, hobgoblins, ghosts, and serpent kings. In other words, they propitiated ghosts and serpents, and were identified with the deities they worshipped. But still there are traces amongst the non-Aryan races of widely different stages of civilization. The giant cannibals, who haunted jungles and infested villages, were probably savages of a low type; but the Nágas, or serpent-worshippers, who lived in crowded cities, and were famous for their beautiful women and exhaustless treasures, were doubtless a civilized people, living under an organized government. Indeed, if any inference can be drawn from the epic legends, it would be that prior to the Aryan conquest, the Nága Rajas were ruling powers, who had cultivated the arts of luxury to an extraordinary degree, and yet succeeded in maintaining a protracted struggle against the Aryan invaders.

Traditions of the Nágas, or serpent-worshippers.

The traditions of the Nágas are obscure in the extreme. They point, however, to the existence of an ancient Nága empire in the Dekhan, having its capital in the modern town of Nágpore; and it may be conjectured that prior to the Aryan invasion the Nága Rajas exercised an imperial power over the

greater part of the Punjab and Hindustan. Repre- CHAPTER I. sentatives of this ancient people are still living in eastern Bengal, and beyond the north-east frontier, under the names of Nágas and Nágbansis; but they are Turanians of a low type, and retain no traces of their origin beyond rude legends of their descent from some serpent ancestor, and vague memories of having immigrated from Nágpore.20 They may be ranked amongst the so-called aborigines, who have either no religion at all, or are becoming slightly Hindúized. They are the relics of an extinct nationality, and have outlived their race. But references to the ancient Nága empire abound in Hindú story. The clearance of the jungle at Indra-prastha was effected by the expulsion of the Nágas. One of the heroes of the Mahá Bhárata had an amour with the daughter of a Nága Raja.30 The Aryan conquest of Prayága, and other parts in India, are mythically described as a great sacrifice of serpents.31 Occasional references to the Nágas will also appear hereafter in Buddhist and Brahmanical legend; and to this day, traces of the Nágas are to be found in numerous sculptures of the old serpent gods, and in the nomenclature of towns and villages from Nágpore in the Dekhan, to Tanja-nagarum, the modern Tanjore, in the south-east coast of the remote Peninsula.

ship: its phallic

The serpent worship of the Nágas has formed a Serpent wor powerful stimulus to religious thought from time im- character. memorial. The serpent, with its poisoned fang, its association with the phallus, and its fabled homes in

29 Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 169, 231, etc.

30 See ante, p. 36.

31 History, vol. i., part v., Mahá Bhárata, pp. 46, 74, 141, 411, et seq.