Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/61

Rh aborigines less than eighteen hundred years before Christ in much the same manner as the banks of the Mississippi have been cleared of their non-Aryan tribes in modern times eighteen hundred years after Christ.

To these wars with the aborigines we have frequent allusions in the Rig-Veda, and a translation of some of these passages will give a better idea of these interminable hostilities than any account that we can give of them. The allusions are so numerous that our only difficulty is in making a selection. Thus we read:—

"Indra, who is invoked by many, and is accompanied by his fleet companions, has destroyed by his thunderbolt the Dasyus and Simyus who dwelt on earth, and then he distributed the fields to his white-complexioned friends (Aryans)." Or again: "Indra with his weapon, the thunderbolt, and in his vigour, destroyed the towns of the Dasyus, and wandered at his will. holder of the thunderbolt be thou cognizant of our hymns, and cast thy weapon against the Dasyu, and increase the vigour and the fame of the Arya."

One of the hymns of the Rig-Veda contains a curious allusion to aboriginal robbers who dwelt on the banks of four small streams called the Sipha, the Anjasi, the Kulisi, and the Virapatni. These robbers, led by Kuyava and Ayu, issued from their fastnesses and harassed the civilized Aryan villages, much in the same way as a true descendant of those aborigines, the