Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/42

20 not pursue the religion which is reflected in the Vedic mantras.

No doubt we do not meet with the name Vanga in the Veda Samhitās and the Atharvan mentions only Anga as the outermost border country lying to the south-east of the territories of the Aryas; but when we come upon this fact, that the later Vedic literature such as the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa mentions Vanga as a country held by a barbarian tribe, while the early Buddhistic literature (not likely of a date earlier than the Brāhmaṇa) is as silent as the Vedas are, it becomes difficult to attribute such a silence to ignorance. From these facts we can only make this plausible inference that Vanga and its adjacent parts were not colonized by the Aryans till the 6th century B. C. Let me discuss this important point of chronology by considering the value of the facts disclosed by the aforesaid literature.

It is evident from the manner in which the border tribes have been mentioned in the 22nd Sūkta of the 5th Book of the Atharva Veda that the Magadhas and the Angas were alien barbarous people who resided outside the pale of Aryan country but it is also clear that the countries of these barbarians were in close proximity to the land of the Ṛṣis. In this Sūkta this wish has been expressed in offering a prayer to Agni that the fever called "takman" may leave the holy land of the Aryas and may reside in such border countries as Anga and Magadha which are really the home (okaḥ) of the fever. This fever which is considered to be of malarial type has been asked in the prayer to assail the barbarians and specially their wanton fugitive women (described as Sudrās) on account of their having left the Aryan protection in Aryan homes. It is rather clear from this mention that the Ṛṣis of the Atharva Veda utilised the services of the people of Magadha and