War and Peace Among Peoples

We have watched single clans live by their herds, under their leaders, around their fires. But the Vedic land was wide, and it held many peoples, many clans. And wherever many peoples meet, two things always happen: they clash, and they mingle. Let us look honestly at both.

First, the clashing, for the hymns do not hide it. Clans raided one another. Most often the prize was cattle, the wealth we have already met. But peoples also fought over the rivers and the good grazing land, for water and grass were life itself in that world.

There were larger battles too, remembered long in song. The most famous of all is a great clash the hymns call the Battle of the Ten Kings, where ten peoples banded together against one clan and its leader — and were turned back. War was real in the Vedic world, and the people felt its fear and its cost.

This is why so many hymns call on Indra, the storm-king and mighty warrior. Before a battle, the people prayed to him for courage and for victory. They asked the strong god to stand at the front of their line. Fear is old, and so is the prayer for strength against it.

But now turn the picture over, for this is the larger truth. Most of the time, the peoples were not at war. They lived side by side. They traded goods along the rivers. They married across the clans, so that bloodlines mixed. They borrowed each other's words and ways and gods, and slowly, over the long years, many peoples blended into one broad stream.^[1]

And here is the most beautiful thing of all. The very same Veda that asks the gods for victory in battle also holds some of the oldest prayers for peace that anyone on earth has ever spoken. They are not prayers for one clan to win. They are prayers for people to be of one heart.

In these hymns the seers ask that people gather together, that they speak together, that their minds think as one. They pray that hearts be made of a single accord, so that all may live in harmony, like friends sharing one meal. After all the talk of cattle-raids and battles, this is what the Vedic spirit reaches for in the end: not conquest, but concord.^[2]

One more thing, before we close. You may be wondering how this society was ordered within — how its people were grouped and ranked. That is a large and tender question, and it deserves its own careful telling. We will take it up gently in the next chapter, where the hymn of the Cosmic Person first names the orders of society. For now, hold only this: the Vedic world both fought and befriended, and prayed, at its best, to be one.