The next step in advance takes them across the frontier into India. During this stage of their migration we find them in occupation of the land of the five rivers. It is here for the first time that the Aryans come in contact with the aboriginal inhabitants of India and the struggle for possession of the country begins. The more rudimentary civilization, of course, gives way to the more advanced and vigorous. It is again in the land of the five rivers that the simple civilization and compact tribal organization take form and are pictured to us in the Rig Veda. The rich soil and flourishing communities catch the eyes and attract the desires of the neighbouring, but still primitive, cousins of these Indian Aryans. To make room for these new arrivals, not without a fight perhaps, the Indo-Aryans move forward across the rivers to the Doab of the Ganges and the Jumna. All this may be ascribed roughly to the half millennium 2000-1500 B.C.
As the Greek cousins of these Indo-Aryans did, so these latter underwent a similar course of development according to their own environment, geographical and political. In the Gangetic Doab, we find the Aryans developing more powerful communities, which, instead of becoming city-states as in Greece, led to strong monarchies ruling great tribes and vast kingdoms, particularly as the country was more open. It was in these regions that the great inter-tribal wars typified in the Mahābhārata must have taken place. At least, the incidents referred to in the great epic have their theatre here. Hence this period of history has come to be known that of the Mahābhārata. It is here for the first time that the Aryans get into touch, not only with the uncivilized aborigines who are the feature of the Punjab plains, as even the later Brihat kathā makes it clear, but also with the civilized Dravidians of India. It is here, as with the Greeks in Attica and
