4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Media. It also includes parts of Bactria and Sogdia on the north. Meghasthenes speaks of Arianoi as one of the three peoples inhabiting the countries adjacent to India.2 The term arya also occurs in the Hittilte language in which it signifies kinsmen or friend. Some scholars also link the name of Ireland with the term arya. A word cognate to arya occurs in the German language but not in any other west Indo-European language. In Rg Vedic times the worshippers of Indra were called arya. When the Rg Veda speaks of the struggle of the Aryans with the dasas and the dasyus it does not consider the former to be indigenous and the latter to be foreigners. The struggle takes place between two cultures, one observing the vrata and the other violating it. At that stage there is no perception of India as a country or a nation, and therefore the labels of indigenous and foreigners are not suitable, indications of struggle between cultures and patterns of life appear both in the Indian subcontinent and Iran. The Gatha or the earliest portion of the Avesta shows that in Iran the struggle went on between those who followed Zoroaster and those who opposed his teachings. If the colour of the skin is regarded as a test of identity some hymns of the Rg Veda show the Aryans to be a separate community. Their enemies are described as black-skinned. The Aryans are called manusi praja, who worshipped Agni Vaisvanara and who sometimes set fire to the houses of black-skinned people (RV, VII. 5.2-3). It is stated that the Aryan god Soma killed black people (ibid., IX.41.1-2). It is also stated that he fought the raksasas who had black-skin (ibid., IX.73.5) and that he killed 50,000 krsnas or blacks. He removed the black skin of the Asura (ibid., 1.130.8). In such references the Aryans and their enemies are identified by the colour of their skin. But H.W. Bailey states that all the references to arya in the Rg Veda cannot be taken in the sense of race or caste. According to him this term is derived from the root ar which means to obtain,3 but etymological rules are framed to explain borrowed words also. The term arya means master or a person of noble birth in the Avesta, and this meaning suits several references in the Rg Veda. Therefore those leaders of the Vedic tribes who are lauded in the Rg Veda under the appellate of the arya were either prosperous or high born. Clearly in the cattle rearing society they owed their prosperity to cattle wealth which could be better accumulated and preserved by the horse-based aristocracy. Many references in both the Rg Veda and Avesta show that the Aryans were a small select social group, and not a numerous people. As a dominant social group they seem to have given their name to the wider community and the territory to which they belonged. The aryan therefore came to denote a linguistic and cultural community.