Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/43

Rh Anga and were particularly keen about keeping the Sudra women in Aryan villages. Looking to what has been stated of Anga we may only provisionally hold that Vanga, which lay still farther off to the south-east, was only inhabited in those days by people other than the Aryans. We get in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa of a much later date that the holy sacrificial fire travelled as far east as Videgha (Videha) in Mithilā. It is, therefore, pretty certain that the Aryans did not even then come in any real contact with the Vangas of Bengal. We notice in the Atharva Veda that the Kirāta people of the Himalayan region were the neighbours of the Aryans and the Kirāta women supplied such roots and herbs as were used for charms and for medicine; such a peaceful relation with the south-eastern border tribes is not indicated in any Sūkta. In the Aitareya Āraṇyaka the Vanga tribe finds only a bare mention in conjunction with the Magadha people. Some early references relating to the people of Magadha, of Anga and of other neighbouring barbarian tracts in such a fashion, that they were beasts or snakes, have been misinterpreted by some scholars. We cannot forget the fact that almost all the tribes were known by the totem names of their clans or tribes; it is therefore strongly suspected that when the Aryans knew the totem names of different tribes, they had some intimate knowledge of them. When the tribes are not made identical with the names of birds and snakes, quite another interpretation has to be given. In the history of the conquest of the rude aboriginal tribes, we get one and the same mythical account all over the world: the rude tribes in their mountain fastnesses and forest tracts are represented as giants or dwarfs with mysterious powers, or they are imagined to possess power of transforming themselves into beasts or birds. The Ṛṣis were no doubt of superior