The Indo-Aryans were not originally agriculturalists. They were pastoral nomads, involved in cattle-rearing, cattle herding, breeding and capturing. A cattle raid was a common form of agression, a form of warfare. The Indo-Aryans were skilled in bronze metallurgy and weaponry and went to battle in highly effective two-wheeled chariots. Their clan structure--a patriarchal tribal structure--was an effective form for mobilization for combat.
The main themes of the lecture today are the great social and political transformations which took place in north India between 1500 and 500, B.C. These centuries correspond to the early and the late Vedic Age. During this period the Aryans moved out of the northwestern plains and into the Punjab and the Western Gangetic Valley. From the Western Gangetic Valley, about the year 1000, they shifted to the Middle and Eastern Gangetic Valley. Their society changed from tribal organization to caste organization and their polity changed from tribes ruled by elected chiefs to little kingdoms ruled for the most part by semi-divine kings--and then to larger monarchical states. Romila Thapar, an Indian historian who has written extensively on this period, calls the transition from "lineage to state." During this time the Aryans shifted their livelihood from nomad pastoralism to a combination of pastoralism and farming by 1000, and then, in the next five hundred years to agriculture and trade. This last transition is known as India's second urbanization. You remember that the Indus Valley civilization was the first urbanization. During this one thousand year period, as you might expect, Aryan culture became influenced by the cultures of the peoples whom they met in north India and we find, at the end of the period, the beginning of what we can recognize today as classical Indian culture.
Before going further, necessary to say a few words about clan organization, a segmented form of social organization. People in the same clan share a common social and political identity and believe that they have a common, founding ancestor, the person they originally descended from.
The Aryans were organized in descent groups which were patrilineages, lines of kin traced through male ancestors. Sets of patrilineages formed clans. Clans are exogomous, members of a clan cannot marry someone from the same clan. Daughters, circles on the chart which I have distributed, must marry out of the clan. In clan-based societies whom you are related to is a major political issue. Marriages are political events and the common way in which political alliances are formed
Groups of clans among the Aryans formed entities usually called tribes. It has been common in the history of the world that tribal societies develop into more complex, state forms of organization. When this happens, clans play a considerably lesser role, often disappearing all together. Modern states, for example, are not formally organized around principles of kinship. What is special with South Asian societies is that clans did not disappear, but became part of the organization of the occupational groups called castes. It is this special development that I hope to explain today.
In early Vedic society a tribe was called jana. The clans in a tribe were called vish. The leader of a lineage in a clan was a chief called a raja. You probably recognize the word raja, which came to mean king in Indian society.