Looking for the Aryans by R S Sharma

Author:R S Sharma [Sharma, R S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788125053132
Publisher: Orient Blackswan Private Limited
Published: 2014-05-14T21:00:00+00:00

5 Social and Economic Aspects

Male Dominance

Male dominance is an important trait of Indo-European society. Anthropologists attribute patriarchy to the masculine qualities needed in plough agriculture and to the control of female sexuality. But since horse riding also required masculine qualities, it may equally, together with ploughing, have led to male dominance. The primacy of paternity is attested to by early Indo-European terms and laws. In Latin, the term fatherland', i.e., patria, is created from pater. The adjective patrius is derived from pater and refers exclusively to the world of the father. There is no co-relative term for 'mother', and the word matrius does not exist. This is because Roman law did not provide for any authority or possession which belonged to the mother in her own right.1 According to Roman law, the wife, the children and the slave of a Roman head of a house (paterfamilias) were equally subject to his unrestricted power (vitae nacisque potestas) and were equally outside the jurisdiction of the state.2 The Indo-European tradition of authority over the wife was strengthened by brahmanical law. Manu declares that the wife, the son and the slave are unpropertied; whatever they earn is the property of those to whom they belong.3 The ancient Indian law givers hold that a woman is never independent4 Male dominance is clearly indicated by early Avestan and Greek texts.

Traces of patriarchy known from the early texts are reflected in burial practices in Eurasia. In northern Europe in the fourth millennium BC, Corded Ware people buried males on their right side and females on their left side.5 This is also true of the cemetery at Nalchik, a north Caucasian site6 of about the fourth millennium BC. It also applies to the Tazabagyab culture south of the Aral Sea and to the Tulkhar burials7 in Tajikistan, both of which were variants of the Andronovo culture in the second millennium BC. The Tulkhar burials show rectangular hearths for males and round hearths for females.8

The sacrificial slaughter of women on the death of their husbands is indicated by some burials in the fourth millennium BC in the areas of Poland and the Baltic states, 9 in the Danube region in the third millennium BC10 and in Italy.11 Many graves in these areas contain horse remains and numerous copper objects considered typical of the Indo-Europeans.

Economic Activities

Colin Renfrew regards agriculture as a cultural marker of the Indo-Europeans. He argues that the earliest farmers lived in Anatolia in the seventh millennium BC and the Indo-European language spread to other parts of the world with the diffusion of agriculture.12 But the seventh and sixth millennia BC show several other centres of agriculture including Iraq, Iran and Pakistani Baluchistan. In fact, the cognate terms for animals and the earliest texts (the Ṛg Veda, the Avesta and Homer's works), show that stock breeding was far more important among the Indo-Europeans than agriculture which may have contributed to animal husbandry. The ancient texts also consider stock breeding to be more important The Ṛg Veda is full of references to cattle raids and booty and wealth in cattle.

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