Dasyu means "slave" in Sanskrit.
The Vedas, the oldest Hindu holy writings, used this term for non-Aryan peoples.
The phrases Aryan and Dasyu are a "we" and "them" opposition—in essence, the authors of the Vedas referred to themselves as Aryans and the "outsiders" as Dasyus.
Although it is impossible to know if these designations relate to a specific group of people or to all people, one idea suggests that the Aryans were people who moved from outside of India, and the Dasyus were the indigenous inhabitants of northern India.
The Dasyus lived in walled towns, some of which were destroyed by the deity Indra, according to the Vedas.
Some readers have interpreted this picture as the Aryans destroying the towns of the Indus Valley, although such dramatic victories are rare in history.
Other Vedic hymns depict the Dasyus as dark-skinned and noseless, which is often interpreted as flat-nosed.
Some have linked the Dasyus to the Dravidian language speakers who today inhabit in southern India, claiming that they have some of the same traits.
According to this theory, when Indo-Aryan language speakers—in other words, the Aryans—came into India from the north, the Dravidian language speakers would have been progressively driven to the south.
One piece of linguistic evidence for this comes from contemporary Pakistan, where a tiny number of people speak Brahui, a Dravidian language family member.
This Brahui-speaking group is completely surrounded by Indo-Aryan speakers, and the most straightforward explanation for this oddity is that these Brahui speakers are an isolated linguistic remnant from a previous period.
These hypotheses are fascinating, but reading the Vedas as an objective historical record, or even supposing that any of their allusions match to events beyond the holy realm to which they were the key, is foolish.
You may also want to read more about Hinduism here.
Be sure to check out my writings on religion here.
