Addenda to "Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt.".

• Author: Salomon, Richard

In connection with my article, "Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt," Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991): 731-36, several relevant bibliographical items have been called to my attention by various scholars, to whom I am much indebted. The items in question are:

(1) With regard to the Prads remains the same (all are otherwise called deva), but the employment of asura with humans in the singular is always in an inimical context. It is in these books that the plural use of asura first appears, two times each with favorable gods and humans, thrice with human enemies.

(4) Only in the AV and later texts is the plural of asura found in uniform negative usage, describing either human enemies or divine beings opposed by the god Indra. This development culminates in the brahmana texts, where the asuras appear as a distinct group of destructive supernatural forces in constant conflict with the deva gods.

Based upon these textual observations, Hale draws several important conclusions. First, because in older RV asura is equally applied to gods and men, the term cannot originally have designated only certain divinities. In consequence of this, he opts for the broad translation "lord," divine or human, that has long been accepted by scholars. Second, since asura appears only in the singular in these oldest parts of the RV, it is not possible to speak of a group of asuric gods (like the visve devah) or their cult, which in Indo-Iranian times stood in opposition to the daivic gods and their cult. The development of a class of demonic asuric beings can be steadily documented in Vedic texts and must be regarded as a purely Indic phenomenon. This idea is supported by the fact that no god who is addressed as asura in the RV ever appears as an inimical adversary of devd gods in the later texts. Moreover, the Iranian materials support these views insofar as, in the Gathas, ahura is applied not only to Mazda, the highest god, but also to human beings. The opposition between Ahura Mazda and the daevas stems from Zarathustra's religious reform that took place before the oldest Iranian texts. Hence it is not possible to observe parallel developments in Iranian.

Hale advocates the following line of reasoning to explain how the particular Indic development took place. Noting that Indra, the heroic war god, is the ally of Vedic Aryans in their efforts to subjugate their non-Aryan adversaries, otherwise known as dasyu and dasa in the RV, Hale...