posted 20-06-2000 03:04            

Iravatham Mahadevan
Iravatham Mahadevan has been studying the
Indus writing since he put together the first script
concordance of Indian seals in 1970. He is also
known for his breakthrough decipherments of
the earliest Tamil Brahmi writing. Parpola calls
Mahadevan his most valuable critic.

Interview:
My first paper on this was read in Tokyo in 1983. Ten years later, when I went to Helsinki to
read another paper on this, fortunately the Harappan excavation team under Kenoyer's
leadership had found an ivory piece, for the first time a physical representation of this device had
been found. I saw good color photographs of the ivory object and that the holes were drilled
deeply into hemispherical vessel shows very clearly that it was meant to be a filter, a colander
type. Now the question to ask is this: Since we know that the unicorn seals were the most
popular ones, and every unicorn has this cult object before it, whatever it represents must be
part of the central religious ritual of the Harappan religion. We know of one religion whose
central religious cult was a filter, that is the soma of the Indo-Aryans.

Now this poses a very grave puzzle. We say that the Harappan civilization is pre-Aryan. Now
how come you have a soma filter centuries before the Aryans ever came in?

posted 20-06-2000 07:09            

Indian archaeologists say that gold treasure found early this month in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh could be highly significant.

The treasure belongs to the Indus Valley civilisation and may be about 5,000 years old.

[snip]

This also means that the area of the Indus civilisation is much larger than previously presumed.

[snip]

posted 20-06-2000 11:47            

I haven't read Talegeri so I can't comment but it seems we agree that this region was both the proto-Vedic and Vedic areas and all migrations occurred from here both towards the east and west.

The migration theory I am talking about is those that propose an Aryan (?) homeland in Iran or Afghanistan or central asia. There have been suggestions of the Haravati in Afghanistan being the real Saraswati and an eastward movement. Some have suggested Eastern Iran and others Bactria in Afghn. All of them are basically trying to retrace the steps back to the start of this migration. Asko Parpola suggests two major waves of migration, etc. I do not think that there is anyone proposing the Vedic civilization in Russia or Turkey. What they are proposing however is that the proto-Indo-Europeans - the theoretical ancestors of the Indians, Iranians and Europeans came from near the Caspian sea. So it seems to me that we are talking of two different events here although the esteemed debaters do not seem to make a clear distinction.

So to me it appears that there are two events that are being discussed:

1) One is a pre-Vedic migration (no one except those Indian text books is seriously considering an invasion) which 'migration' theorists believe occurred from the traditionallly thought PIE homeland near the Caspian sea. What are the indegenous theorists suggesting on this one?

2) Development of the proto-Vedic and Vedic civilizations. The latter is clearly Indo-Centric IMO and here I seem to agree more with the indegenous theorists.

posted 20-06-2000 12:45            

This site has an active thread on Aryan Migration theories and related topics. One can search by author, title or subject.

posted 20-06-2000 12:55            

K

Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 21:36:24 -0500
Reply-To: Indology
Sender: Indology
From: Edwin Bryant
Subject: Re: Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate)
In-Reply-To: <01IURY2F51QC96VWIR@rullet.LeidenUniv.nl>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Jan E.M. Houben wrote:

> the Aryan-Invasion theory in the strong sense of the term is not any more
> seriously defended by Indologists for the last so many decades (Edwin Bryant,
> am I right?).
> They are combating an outdated theory which modern scholars do not take serious
> any more. They are positively wrong in suggesting that modern Indologists are
> still defending the very theories which Max Mueller and others suggested more

You are right that no serious scholar talks of invasions anymore (although
see Allchin as late as 1993 in Possehl's "Harappan Civilization").
However, we should be aware that many people (including scholars in many
universities in India) do not have access to state-of-the-art material
such as your "Ideology and Status of Sanskrit" volume, or Erdosy, etc
(except in a few universities, and even then, maybe). Many people in India
*are* still reading Muller--he *is* still being reprinted--you can buy
him in any Indological bookstore.

Also, even though people are talking about linguistic migrations,
nowadays, and not invasions, most of the infrastructure for the idea that
these Indo-Aryans came from outside the subcontinent was put in place
decaades ago when scholars *were* talking of invasions. Hence it is easy
(and perhaps understandable) for people who have taken it upon themselves
to critique this infrastructure to utilize the same terms as are used in
such sources. Best, Edwin Bryant.

posted 21-06-2000 09:50            

A site devoted to the Sarasvati/Sindhu Civilization. There is an on-line book at this site by a Dr.Kalyanaraman and several other goodies.

K

posted 21-06-2000 09:57            

This is a site with an article written for the layman. Kenoyer (one of the authors) was born and brought up in India). Gives a layman's overview of the artifacts found at Harappa.

posted 21-06-2000 10:04            

Kaushal: Are you considering a thesis of some sort on this topic?

posted 21-06-2000 11:05            

quote:

---

There have been suggestions of the Haravati in Afghanistan being
the real Saraswati and an eastward movement.

---

posted 21-06-2000 11:52            

I have some questions, with regards to the Indus Valley Civilization. A previous post noted the presence of what appears to be a soma filter, which would link this civilization to the Aryans, however, I cannot recall the unicorn motif, which was so popular in Harrapa, being similiarly popular in later Indian civilization. Can we defintely link the Indus civilization and later Indian civilizaton.

Some scholars, have suggested recently, that there was a gap of between 2 to 5 hundred years between the end of the Harrapan and the beginning of the Aryan age. This of course suggests that there was no connection between the two, and at best these scholars are willing to concede that some elements of Harrapan culture may have lingered on after the collapse of the Indus Valley to later influence the Aryans.

We could refer to bull veneration, and the presence of the great seal with its figure reminscent of Shiva as proof of the connection, but, bull veneration was equally popular throughout the world, for example, Crete, and the figure on the seal as the look of a human archtype, present in many cultures, for example the bowl of Cernourous found near Paris, or perhaps Enkidu of Gilgamesh fame.

The question becomes, how closely can we tie together the Aryans and the Indus Valley?

With reference to some other intriguing elements, the word "Mleccha" so loved in the Vedas, is believed to not be of Sanskrit origin. It is startling similiar to the Sumerian word "Meluhha", which was the name by which the Sumerians referred ot the Harappan civilization.

posted 21-06-2000 13:35            

Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 09:54:16 +0200
Reply-To: Indology
Sender: Indology
From: IreneMaradei
Subject: Re: URL of the Indology homepage
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Here is a list of URLs on subjects relevant to what is discussed in this
list and other topics of interest (some of the URLs gleaned on the list
itself!), including of course the Indology home page.

Indological pages
-Jambudvipa http://www.agora.stm.it/P.Magnone/indology.htm
~Indology.UK http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucgadkw/indology.html
-Academic Info Eastern Religions http://www.academicinfo.net/Eastern.html
-Alain Danielou
http://wwwusers.imaginet.fr/jcloarec/danielou/ANGLAIS/index.html
-Middle East Quarterly http://www.allenpress.com/mieq/index.html
-Indology list homepage: http://www.uclakuk/~ucgadkw/indology.html
-International Journal of Sanskrit Studies mailing list .If you want to
subscribe to the list (avg. 3 msgs per year, free of charge) mail to:
ijts-subscribe@asiatica.org subject and/or body: subscribe
You can submit papers, read abstracts, subscribe on our page
http://www.asiatica.org/

History-Aryan Invasion Theory debate
-http://www.rediff.com/news/jan/23iron.htm ( on date of iron age)
-Itihaas historical site: http://www.itihaas.com/
-History of India: http://www.historyofindia.com/ (then you choose the
period you want)
-Links to the history of India
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Harbor/8761/history/
-Aryan Invasion Theory :
http://www.stanford.edu/class/wct3b1/sjaiswal/aryanintro.html
-`The Bible of Aryan Invasions' by Prof. Uthaya Naidu at
http://dalitstan.org/journal/brahman/bibai/bibai.html (full book)
-http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/resources/Indoaryanproblem.htm an excellent
summary(and bibliographical notes) of Dr. Huben, on the state of the art in
confused evaluation of dates without archaeological evidence of movements of
people or languages and without palaeographic evidence (I mean, epigraphs)
of PIE...
-www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/1999/11/07/stories/13070671.htm Article in
"The Hindu" about Rajesh Kochhar's recent book _The Vedic People: Their
History and Geography_ (Orient Longman, 1999).
-Michael Witzel's (Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies-Harvard University)home
page:
-www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm
-Koenraad Elst home page.( Fervent "hindutva " fan. Many articles of his
against A.I.T. ) http://members.xoom.com/KoenraadElst/
-Arun Shourie's column http://www.indiaconnect.com/prevash5.htm
-Ram Swarup http://www.hindu.org/publications/ramswarup/index.html
- Anwar Shaikh http://www.hindutva.org/AnwarShaikh/

-World Association of VEdic Studies http://www.sunsar.com/waves/
- Dr. Herman Somers http://users.skynet.be/sky50779/home.htm
-American Institute of Vedic Studies http://www.vedanet.com/
-Free India (facts, anniversary, opinions): http://www.freeindia.org/
World Archaeological Congress
http://www.soton.ac.uk/jmg296/croatia/
American Friends of India http://www.americanfriends.org/
Hindu Web Universe http://www.hindunet.org/
Harappa http://www.harappa.com/
Samacar http://www.samachar.com/
Indiastar.com http://www.indiastar.com/
Stichting VADA http://www.vada.nl/

Religion-Spirituality

Links to India Information: Religion:
http://www.inpros.com/india/india222.html
The Hindu Universe: Introduction ( by the Global Hindu Electronic Network.
Guide to Hinduism, including the entire text of the Ramayana, Mahabharata
and other scriptures) http://www.hindunet.org/
World Congress of Ethnic Religions http://www.wcer.org/
HinduismToday http://www.spiritweb.org/HinduismToday/index.html
Guidance through Gita http://www.tezcat.com/bnaik/gita/guide.html
Jainism in India: http://www.bangalorenet.com/system1/vinod/
Zoroastrianism:
http://hindubooks.org/sudheer_birodkar/hindu_history/zoroastrianism.html
Mirror of India ( illustrated index of major philosphical systems and deitis
in Hinduism):
http://members.xoom.it/kundalini/kundalini-eng/
Mrs Donn's Special Selections: Daily Life Site Index ( educational site
about daily life in Greece, Egypt, Rome, India, China):
http://members.aol.com/Donnclass/indexfile.html

Books

Vedam's books( immense selection,online ordering, search facilities)
http://www.vedamsbooks.com/
India Nelines Books http://w.x4all.nl.~netlines/books.html
Findians Paradise: Latest News about books on India
http://w.netppl.fi/~findians/indiabk.html
IndiaStar Review of Books http://www.indiastar.com/
Books from India http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma/oth.820731869.html
Sarasu Books http://www.sarasu.hypermart.net/
India Internet Book Fair http://www.oscarindia.com/
India Bookhouse&Journals (based in U.S.A.) http://www.indiabookhouse.com/
India Books http://www.indiaookstore.com/
India Club (Indian publishers and distributors)
http://www.indiaclub.com/aboutus.htm.
Oxford Bookstore Gallery (in Calcutta) http://www.oxford-india.com/
Nesma Books India (on spirituality and religion)
http://www.nesmabooksindia.com/
Radiff Bookshop (India)
http://www.rediff.co.in/cqi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/therediffbookstore
Roli Books (books on India) http://rolibooks.com/
Verandah Books http://www.verandah.demon.co.uk/
Navneet Publication (children's books) http://www.navneet.com/
Asia bookhouse http://www.wespawner.com/users/ASIABOOKHOUSE/
Bombay's unique philosophy bookshop
http://www.hindunet.org/alt_hindu/1995/Jan_2/msg00047.html
India Info: Books http://indiafocus.indiainfo.com/media/books
Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html
India Books http://members.tripod.com/adaniel.books.html
Prentice Hall of India http://www.phindia.com/
Manohar Books-India http://members.tripod.com/ravindrapc/Books.html
India Search Worldwide http://hindustan.net/Culture/Books/
Search Engine for India http://search.keralanadu.com/Books_and_Periodicals/
Indian Imprint http://www.bookindia.com/
Music of India: Books (books on Indian music) OOPS! I didn't write down the
URL!
Virginia University Library
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/area-studies/SouthAsia
History, religion, philosophy, ayurveda http://www.Ipppindia.com/
Indus books (online ordering) http://www.teleport.com/~indus/
Books on Jainism http://www.ddb.com/~raphael/jain-list/resoffs.html

Tamil culture

posted 21-06-2000 16:26            

With reference to some other intriguing elements, the word "Mleccha" so loved in the Vedas, is believed to not be of Sanskrit origin. It is startlingly similiar to the Sumerian word "Meluhha", which was the name by which the Sumerians referred ot the Harappan civilization.

Rkam, you raise many interesting points. It is again a case of making assumptions. The problems is that the debate is really about these assumptions. I will try to answer as many of these points (one at a time) as time permits. Let us take the last one , since this one has a seemingly simple explanation.

Again you make the assumption that Sumerian came first chronologically. Do you have a basis for saying that ? This is not a rhetorical question, as I do not have information one way or the other. I can only quote from Rajaram (1)

quote:

---

This(the Harappan, Sumerian, Sulba sutra connection) receives additional support from the following remarkable fact discovered by KD Sethna in 1981 (2). He noted that the Sanskrit word karpaasa for cotton appears for the first time in Sutra literature; the Samhitas and the Brahmanas do not know the word and show no knowledge of cotton. Harappan sites OTOH have revealed that cotton was widely used by their inhabitants. Also, the Sumerians who traded with the Harappans, called it kapazum which is obviously a corruption of the Sanskrit karpaasa The modern indian word kapda for cloth is also related to the same word.) But what is most interesting is that kapazam was a commodity that was imported from the country of Meluhha or Melukha.

The word Melukhkha is a corruption of the S'krit word Mleccha (which becomes Malekhkha in Prakrit, the cognate word in Telugu is also very similar). And Mleccha is the word used in the Brahmanas and the early sutras for both the language and the country of the Western people, that is to the say the people we now call the Harappans.

---

IOW, Mleccha does not imply what we commonly assume today , an untouchable, it simply means a Westerner. Furthermore, one can conclude from this that the Vedic civilization predated the Harappan civilization, since if it was the other way around there should have been references to cotton in the Rig Veda. It is a case of the dog that did not bark.

References
1.Rajaram, NS, 'Politics of History', Voice of India, ND,1995
2.Sethna , KD, 'Karpaasa in Prehistoric India, A chronology and cultural clue', Voice of India, ND (then known as Biblia Impex).

posted 21-06-2000 20:18            

Hyderabad, June 21: “The Aryans wrote long poems about their kings and
heroes, about their bravery and the battles which they fought. These poems were
later collected and became the two epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharat.”

This is a passage from a textbook published by the National Council of Education
Research and Training for Class VI, written by the noted historian Romila
Thapar.The Class IX Social Studies textbook states that Aurangzeb’s empire
extended all over Bharat and Afghanistan except Kerala and northern hilly regions
of Uttar Pradesh, Nepal, Bihar and Assam.

In reality, Aurangazeb could not defeat the Hindu kingdom established by Shivaji
and could not proceed south beyond Golconda. The rest of Andhra, Tamil Nadu
and southern Karnataka were not touched by him, says D Visweswaram, former
professor of Andhra University and national general secretary of the Bharatiya
Sikshan Mandal.

“The contents in the textbooks are totally misleading,” he said.The Mandal has the
self-professed aim of promoting academic excellence through research and
discussions.

It strongly resented the “distortion of facts” in history text books published by
NCERT.The BSM has launched a campaign to counter the “distortion,” he said.
Visweswaram also appealed to academicians to raise their voice against such
distortions.

He also decried the Left campaign about the “saffronisation” of education.

posted 22-06-2000 02:10            

The problem with this paragraph is the first sentence which is an assumption. The problem with this assumption is that it is just that, a conjecture or a hypothesis. And the 'some scholars' is none other than Max Mueller himself. Max Mueller had his biases. One of them was that he was a staunch believer in the Bible and an opponent of Darwins Theory of Evolution. He believed that the Earth was created in one day in the year 4005 BCE or thereabouts. He could not conceive that an Indian civilization was older than this date. The thought did not even occur to him. Remember that the IVC was not discovered by then. So he pulled the date of 1500 BCE out of his hat working backwards from the date of the Buddha. He essentially gave 200 years for each of the Vedas. Dont ask me why, because to this day nobody can satisfactorily explain the chronology of Max Mueller. While Max Mueller'reasoning has been discredited his chronology has survived to this day .

When the discoveries of the IVC came along and they were dated prior to this date to 2600 BCE, Indologists in Europe were in a quandary. They either had to give up the whole edifice that Max Mueller had built up and concede that the Vedic civilization was older than 1500 BCE or come up with an alternate explanation. They came up with the ingenious Aryan Invasion Theory. I do not wish to go into it in detail but the entire sordid story is laid out in the posts above.

But there were several holes in this explanation and these are the 17 points that are laid out by Klostermeier. The main ones are the drying up of the Sarasvati river in 1900 BCE long before the Aryans were supposed to be there. The only problem is that the Rig makes numerous references to the Sarasvati( a river that flowed from the mountains to the sea). Why would the Vedics make reference to a river that did not exist ?

And there are other problems. The hypothesis that there was no connection between the 2 is a motivated hypothesis to create the illusion that India was always invaded from time immemorial and that no single ethnic group could claim prior territorial rights to the land.

I can go on but it is all laid out in the posts above. I have yet to see a satisfactory explanation of the anomaly of the dried up Sarasvati river.

In actuality of course the more plausible explanation always was that the Harappan and the Vedic civilization were one and the same, and this civilization for purposes of identification is now known as the Sarasvati/Sindhu civilization. Once you accept that the Rig was composed around 3000 BC and the Harappan civilization was the tail end of the Vedic civilization, it all begins to make sense.

Ashok Kumar has summarized the arguments in the previous thread very well, and in case some have missed his post, it is worth repeating (Ashok , I hope you are out there, ready to join in this discussion).
Ashok writes;
I believe AIT has too many holes. The alternative theory that Indus valley civilization was Vedic has been gaining more evidence as compared to AIT. Any new evidence typically doesn't support AIT, but either supports vedic Indus valley or is pretty neutral. Below are few of the points that I want to talk about. (There was a thread on this topic few months ago too).
1. Horses: Initial excavations of Indus Valley sites didn't show evidence for horses. AIT supporters assumed it to mean that Aryans must not be realated with Indus valley as horses were so prominent in Vedas. But later excavations found several horse remains. In a couple of instances horse bones were found in a fire altar, similar to Ashvamedha Yajna of Vedas.
1. Fire Altars:] Vedic ritual is intimately tied with fire altars. Several of these have also been found in Indus valley sites.
3. Swastika symbol: Swastika symbol, which held in esteem by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains is second only to Om symbol. Swastika is quite common in countries having Indo-European languages. Indus valley seals have been found with swastika symbols on them.
4. Paradox of a civilization without literature and another without archaeological evidence:
Vedic literature is vast. But where are the Aryan archaeological sites? Indus valley civilization shows vast archaeological remains. Where is its literature? We have a curious paradox of a huge civilization without literature and huge literature without civilization! Why this mismatch? One resolution of the paradox is that Indus valley was vedic civilization.
5. No evidence of Aryan invasion: Initial AIT proposed marauding hordes of nomadic Aryans coming and destroying an advanced urban civilization of Indus valley. But Archaeological evidence shows no signs of any cataclysmic destruction. Lower layers of cities show an advanced urban culture, while the upper layers show successive decay spanning thousand years. There was no massacre, no cataclysmic invasion but a slow decay.
6. Paradox of Indus valley sites in desert:
Initial Indus valley sites were found along Indus river. But since then a majority have been found in Haryana and Rajasthan in essentially a desert. No old civilization built its cities in a desert. A river nearby was a must. In fact these sites that don't fall along any river are many more in number than those along Indus.
Apparently satellite pictures show a dried up bed of a vast river in Thar. Its biggest span was 12 km. It is not clear whether 12 km was the full part or it includes the flood plains too. But this dried up bed was a large river.
A majority of Indus valley sites are found along this dried up bed.
6. Paradox of Sarasvati River: In Rigveda Sarasvati is paramount amongst all rivers. She is called "Naditame". Sarasvati flew from himalayas to the sea according to Rigveda. In Atharvaveda, importance of Sarasvati is declining. In Mahabharata Ganga and Yamuna become paramount. In Mahabharata there is a mention of a pilgrimage along the Sarasvati and Sarasvati is said to have dried up in the desert. There seems to be a clear transition in significance of Sarasvati. Vedic civilization had Sarasvati as the main river, while the civilization of epics is Ganga-Yamuna centered.
Sarasvati apparently dried up around 3000BC. If true this puts vedic period squarely within Indus valley period.

7. Astronomical evidence:
Earth's axis precesses at a very slow rate. Zodiac is divided into twelve signs of 30 deg intervals. Indians also placed 27 Nakshatras (bright stars) along the zodiac, so the zodiac gets divided into approx. 13 deg intervals by the Nakshatras. Earth's precession rate is about 1 deg per 73 years. Therefore one Nakshatra is crossed in approximately a millenium.
Solstices and equinoxes are easy to mark by primitive means. A astronomer has to simply keep track of shadows cast at noon of a certain stick (gnomon) throughout the year. On summer solstice the shadow is shortest. On Winter solstice it is the longest. Equinoxes for the middle points of these two. Another easier way to keep track of equinoxes is to remember in which constellation Sun rose on the equinox day (i.e. which constellation of the Zodiac or which Nakshatra would be right behind the Sun). Measurements based on Stars are easier and people did depend upon them. Equinoxes became the beginnings of year in all major cultures. In North India the vernal equinox is considered new year, while in many other parts of India the New year starts from autumnal equinox.
The key point is that every 1000 years or so, the Nakshatra in which the equinox occurs changes. So earth's precession provides a clock that can measure in thousands of years, which is very convenient for ancient history.
Rigveda talks of equinox in Orion (Mrigashira Nakshatra or Sirius). It doesn't talk of equinox in Krittika (Plaedeis). Brahmanas mention equinox in Krittika Nakshatra. Mahabharata talks of Rohini-Krittika transition and mentions vernal equinox in Rohini.
Dating by present astronomical knowledge would put RigVedic age with equinox in Orion at around 4500-5000BC, Brahmanic age at 4000BC, Mahabharata at 3000BC.
Interestingly Kaliyuga is supposed to have started after Mahabharata war and conventional Kaliyuga starting date in Hindu calendar is 3102 BC. This date for Kaliyuga was mentioned by Hariswami (1st century BC) and Aryabhata (500AD).
This dating based on Astronomical evidence puts Indus valley civilization in the late vedic and Brahmanic period.
These dates were too bold for early historians, as mesopotamian, Indus valley, egypt, china etc hadn't been excavated then. Biblical timeline seemed thoroughly appropriate to early historians, but not any more.
8. Dasyus and Dasas and Aryas:
Battle of ten Kings mentioned in Rigveda is often mentioned as a battle between Aryans and local natives, where king Sudasa won against Dasyus and Dasas and Panis. But a detailed reading of the passage makes it clear that Sudasa's enemies were fellow Aryan tribes. Aryan tribes mentioned in the battle of Sudasa are Puru, Trstu, Anu, Druhyu etc. Kavasa who fought against Sudasa was a Vedic seer. It appears that Sudasa's battle of ten kings was an internecine war between Aryan clans. Still Sudasa's enemies are called Dasyus, Dasas etc. They are called of foul speech (mridhravachah), which AIT proponents take to mean "speaking foreign toungues". It could as well mean "speaking foul language" which is a common way to describe an enemy. His enemies are called "ayajnan" menaning they don't perform vedic sacrifices. It is like calling someone heretic. It doesn't necessarily imply a racial difference. They were called "Anasah", literally without a nose. AIT supporters take it to mean people with flat noses. But a flat nose is very much a nose. Why this added interpretation of "Anasah" which simply means "without nose". We often describe our enemies as without brains or without heart, but we don't mean it literally. "Without nose" could equally mean without honor. Recall that one usual punishment was to chop off noses to humiliate the offenders.
It is amusing to note that this very Aryan King Sudasa has a name that literally means "A good Dasa" (a good servant). Well then would you call Sudasa also a Dasa? There were other Aryan kings like Divo-Dasa, same reasoning with his name.
9. Vested interests of AIT proponents
AIT was not proposed in a vacuum. Original proposers' personal biases and agendas did play a role. Very few people know that MaxMuller who is considered an authority on India, and who was the one who basically proposed AIT, never even visisted India!
Even fewer people know, that MaxMuller was funded in his studies by Lord Macauley in England. The same Macauley who had such nice plans of robbing Indians of their soul and converting them into brown sahibs!
A letter written by MaxMuller to his wife in 1866 about his translation of Rigveda reads thus:
This edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent...the fate of India, and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, is, I am sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years"
Talk of hidden agendas!

posted 22-06-2000 22:33            

A short monograph on the Sarasvati/Sindhu civilization.

posted 23-06-2000 10:07            

Subject:
Re: Aryan Migration Theories etc.etc.
Date:
Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:27:08 -0400 (EDT)
From:
Edwin Bryant
To:
Kaushal Vepa

Dear Kaushal,

I am out of town and away from e-mail, hence the delay in replying. I
glanced at the web site you mention, and notice that there is an excellent
list of recommended reading material that was posted by, I think, Linda
Hess or someone on RISA. That is an excellent place to start if you are
interested in researching this vast issue. BUt you will need to have
access to scholarly journals in linguistics, since the INdo-Aryan issue is
ultimately a linguistic one, and this evidence is almost completely
neglected by the Indigenist school. My book should be out with OUP by the
end of the year. I t will contain a full biblio of all relevant material,
as well as a complete discussion of the problem. Hope this helps. Edwin

On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Kaushal Vepa wrote:

posted 24-06-2000 20:50            

In the text of a treaty, the people of Mitanni, (1)a kingdom of the upper Euphrates came to an agreement with the Hittites , one of the dominant empires in the fertile crescent , and fourteen hundred years before Christ, call upon the Gods to witness it. The astonishing fact is that the list of these Gods is entirely Indian, Indra, Mitra, Varuna and the Nasatyas. The prevailing theory of the linguistic chronology is that the Indo-Aryans migrated from Iran to India in 1300 BCE. This poses a problem. Because if these Gods are Indian, how did they show up prior to 1300 BCE as far away as the Upper Euphrates. Even assuming that the Migration from Iran to Mesopatamia, took place earlier than 1300 BCE, there is still a problem. Because Indra is not regarded as a God in the Iranian pantheon. In fact he is a featureless minor demon and anybody worth their salt would hardly invoke him to bless a peace treaty.. The only possible answer to this conundrum is that there must have been a migration much earlier from the Sarasvati/Sindhu valley, and these Mitanni were the descendants of the Westward migration of the Vedic people.

Rajaram has this to say ‘In the years since the discovery of the Hittite Mittanni treaty with its Sanskrit names, the linguistic situation has grown only murkier and bedeviled by more contradictions. For instance among the Hittite records in Anatolia has been found to be a manual on horse training written in what is virtually pure Sanskrit. Now there are more than a hundred such records …’ (2).

Then there are the Kassites who ruled in Babylon (near to present day Baghdad) for over 500 years after their overthrow of Hammurabi. The Kassites worshipped Indian deities. There is a Kassite record in 1750 BCE in which a deity named Himalaya is mentioned.. This is only possible if these people were already in India and had awareness of the Himalayas. Again the only explanation is that the Kassites migrated westward from the Sarasvati/Sindhu upon the drying up of the Sarasvati. In fact it is safe to say that there was a fairly sizable migration out of the Sarasvati Valley, lasting probably at least hundreds of years and the entire Tigris Euphrates civilization was impregnated with worship of Indian deities.

References;
1.The Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Hamlyn, London, 1968, p.311

2.Rajaram and Frawley ‘Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization’, Voice of India , 1995, p.122

posted 24-06-2000 21:43            

Mittannis and Kassites having Indo-Aryan gods does create a problem for Max Muller's date of Aryan invasion/migration into India. Rajaram and others have proposed a westward migration to explain this.

I read somewhere (can't recall where) that another way to explain this is by assuming that Indo-Aryan gods were worshipped from Syria till India and there was a sort of single cultural entity spanning this whole region. Zarathustra already mentions Devas as being worshipped in Iran where he introduced Asura (Ahura) worship. Zoroastrianism may have created the pocket of Iranian Aryans who didn't worship Devas, thus separating the Indians and Syrian/Mesopotamian Indo-Europeans (Mittannis etc.).

The conventional date for Zarathushtra is 500-600BC. But Zoroastrians themselves consider Zarathushtra to be much more ancient. Gathas of Zarathushtra are written in virtual Vedic Sanskrit like language suggesting their ancient nature too.

Westward migration is not inconsistent with one single Indo-Aryan culture spanning Syria to India. Just that the migration would have happened earlier.

There may also be some connection with Deva-Asura, Sura-Asura, Syria-Assiriya, Suryaa-Asuryaa etc.

posted 25-06-2000 06:51            

>>Why would the Vedics refer to a river that had already dried up, if indeed they came to India in 1500 BCE, as is alleged by Max Mueller, long after the Sarasvati had dried up.

Bryant makes a reasonable argument on this: ... while the Sarasvati may have been drying up by 1900 BCE, I am not aware of any evidence demonstrating that it had completely dried up by then.

You would not expect the river of its size to dry up over a short period of time.

>>Bryant:... ultimately a linguistic one ...

For the proponents of AIT this is one of their main weapons. But Talageri uses linguistics and mythology to state that though there was an aryan invasion, it was the Aryan invasion of Europe. If linguistics can be used both ways, can it be the ultimate factor?

I have only recently started to read about this and it is fascinating.

posted 25-06-2000 22:34            

Raka says Bryant makes a reasonable argument on this: ... while the Sarasvati may have been drying up by 1900 BCE, I am not aware of any evidence demonstrating that it had completely dried up by then.

First, I will enumerate some resources before returning to this question. Bear with me through the reasoning and the readers patience will be well rewarded. However, , one must understand that while one makes conclusions based on the weight of evidence, certainty is elusive, especially when we are discussing events which happened over 4000 years ago, before the time of Rameses and Moses.

Resources

1. http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/nsindex.htm

This is a fairly comprehensive resource with much valuable information of the geological and other information pertaining to the mighty Sarasvati and its tributaries the Drishadvati and the Shatudri (modern day Sutlej).. The data from Landsat images is also shown. I believe one of the Indian satellites has also extensive data on the dried up river bed. There is an extensive Bibliography.

2.Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, ‘Ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization’, Oxford University Press, 1999

‘The gradual drying up of the Sarasvati river (also known as the Ghaggar-Hakra in the central stretches) is an event documented both geologically as well as in the sacred Vedic and Brahmanic literature of ancient India. The Rig V is a compilation of sacred hymns …These hymns tell of a mighty river, the sacred Sarasvati, that flowed from the mountains to the sea ’. (unlike the Afghan river, mentioned in Iranian texts, the Haraivati, which dries up in the desert and is relatively puny)

3. N.S.Rajaram., ‘The Politics of History’, Voice of India,1995, Ch.1, ‘Evidence of geography and Metallurgy’, p.19-23. This is a fairly good discussion on this phenomenon, and refutes the contention that it dried up in a short period of time. In fact Rajaram says ‘ that there is new evidence to suggest that the upper reaches of the Sarasvati – corresponding to the RigVedic heartland – had begun to go dry as early as 3000 BCE or about a 1000 years before what we can call the Great Drought… As a combination of data from the French SPOT satellite, and the Indo-French field study now informs us: -we now know, thanks to the fieldwork of the Indo-French experition, that when protohistoric peoples (Harappan c.3000 BCE) settled in this area no large perennial river had flowed there for a long time (Francfort,1992:91)’

4. Rajaram and Frawley, ‘Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization’ , Voice of India, 1995,p.102-104

Discussion

The first point is that there is very little disagreement on the basic inference that the Sarasvati existed and that it dried up. The satellite data is pretty conclusive on this. There is debate on the causes of the drying up. One of them is tectonic movement which shifted the direction of the tributaries away from draining into the Sarasvati. Whatever, may be the causes, it is pretty unanimous that such a drying up did indeed take place. The fact is that the Rig makes copious (more than 50 ?) references to the mighty Sarasvati, in its full glory as the greatest of all rivers and providing good pasture for cattle and horses.

The second point is that it took a fairly long time to dry up perhaps over five centuries or even a millenium. On this there is less unanimity, although nobody is suggesting that it happened over time periods shorter than 2200-1900 BCE. ‘In the Mahabharata, the Sarasvati is a perennial stream but dries up in the sdesert after creating a series of lakes , and measures a distance of forty days journey by horse from its origin.’ (4).

In any event , the Vedics were very present in India when the Sarasvati was present and were also present when it began drying up. This seriously puts in question the date of 1300 BCE as the date of arrival of the Vedics into India. Another equally troubling question is , if indeed the Sarasvati was drying up or already dried up by the time the Vedics arrived in India, why would they not stop at the tributaries of the Indus the Sutudri (Sutlej), the Vipas (Beas), and the Iravati (Ravi) and instead go on further to a less promising land, to start their civilization on the banks of the dying Sarasvati.. The answer is obvious.

posted 26-06-2000 01:28            

Ashok, it is fairly important to me to answer the question of the origin of the Vedics. It is of significantly less importance (at least to me) whether they in fact fanned out of India to spread their culture, much as the later Dharmiks did to SE Asia and Indonesia.
It does seem incongruous if there was a eastward migration or a migration emanating from Iran, that Iran would be an anomaly stuck as it is between India and the Tigris/Euphrates civilization, adhering to a form of 'Vedic'heterodoxy different from the other contiguous regions of Asia.

It is possible you have the right answer, although those who belong to the linguistic school apparently have difficulty believing that such a large area could have developed along similar lines without the catalyst of extensive networking and communication.

Incidentally, you are right about the age when Zoroaster lived. 600 BCE is much too late even according to the Parsees. Xanthos of Lydia writing in about 450 BCE, (Rajaram) explicitly noted that Xoroaster lived 600 years before the Trojan war, which place him on or about 1900 BCE (again about the same time as the drying of the Sarasvati).

In any event I believe we are further along than we were at the beginning of the 20th century in our quest to understand the origins of the Vedics in India and maybe answer the question of the hypothesis of a 'cradle of civilization' (at least in the old world).

K

posted 28-06-2000 22:24            

Of course we must now all accept that the Indus Valley civilization died due to changes in the course of the Indus. I've been looking at this river on maps because of my scenario project, and it is one big, bad river: the amount it shifts around over the years even in the North is amazing.

Now my points:

In last two millenia we have ample documentation of invasions of India. Surely invasions took place in the two millenia before Christ. India was fabulously wealthy and I suspect the climate was a lot cooler because the country was heavily forested. It must have been a natural magnet for outsiders. So while Hindusim as we know it may well have developed indigenously as you say, a bunch of people who we call the Aryans could well have been among the invaders.

If India has exported Buddhism, why could we not have imported important elements of Hinduism, given the adapability of our culture?

In the good old days, people were actually in contact with each other far more than we give them credit for. I am inclined to believe that every religion/culture has influenced every other. Aside from what I am told is the linguistic evidence that Sanskrit belonged to an older language along with Greek, if you read the Illiad you will see an almost exact correspondance with the Ramayana, and of course, Greek gods and Indian gods share an uncanny correspondance.

Now, of course you can say that rather than invaders giving us the language and culture, we exported it to the west: after all, Homer wrote around 800 BC, so Indian ideas and religion which could be a great deal older would have had plenty of time to reach the rest of the world. Is there evidence for my speculation?

Last, consider Jung's theory of the universal conciousness and the current theory that many ideas develop simultaneously and independently. By this theory the Greeks could have developed gods and stories similar to India's on their own, with reinforcement going on with travel.

If I recall right, someone tested the theory that ideas develop simultaneously (wasnt this the Sheldrake thesis?) by teaching rats in London to run a maze. Then rats in New York were taught to run the same maze: they learned faster than the London rats. And, of course, in science this happens all the time.

I leave you with a thought. Hinduism says all creation is the physical manifestation of Brhama's dream. If so, regardless of race, color, creed, political belief etc., all humans and everything else are a unity.

When you have a moment, could you summarise the larger implications of your thesis? I feel you are driving at a political point, but I have not been able to give your very considerable writing the attention it deserves. So for us dum dums, how about a brief summary? Hinduism was not brought by invaders, it developed indigenously - then what?

Thanks for a stimulating discussion!

posted 29-06-2000 01:49            

At this time we do not know with any degree of certainty whether the Vedics ( i prefer to use that term to Aryans - aryan is not used as a noun in the Vedas only as an adjective, and we do not refer to people simply as the 'good')developed wholly in India or in fact migrated to other parts of the world. In a subject involving 6000 years of antiquity , certainty is elusive, all we can do is grope in the darkness, illuminated by the occasional candlelight gleaned from our ancient texts and from archaeology. The references I cited in this thread discuss the shortcomings of the various theories, but in the end one has to come to a judgement, based on analysis and reasoning.

But for those who say, the Vedics
originated somewhere (anywhere but in India)I ask how is it that there is not a single individual anywhere in these lands who can chant any part of the Veda ? I am of course excluding those who learnt the Veda in a University as part of their higher studies. I am talking about those who learnt it as part of their upbringing.In contrast, I, hardly a representative example, can chant my Sandhya and the Gayatri, reputed to be 6000 years old, with relative ease. Furthermore , why is it that only in India do we have such a huge amount of literature on the ancients. I am familiar with Greek Mythology and in fact quite fond of it, but Homer was a Johnny come lately compared to the age when the Vedas were composed. Neither Egypt nor Mesopatamia have left this abundance of living literature.

I do not have a political point to make (as yet). But there is an intense rage burning in me that I was forced to learn a history of my people, which was essentially a fraud and the elaborate effort on the part of otherwise honorable individuals who participated in executing this fraud (MaxMueller, Macaulay, Boden), and their successors today, many of them Indian who insist on perpetuating this fraud. I take some comfort in the fact that i am in distinguished company (Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Tilak, Ambedkar et al). On the contrary, the proponents of the AIT/AMT do make the point that India has been constantly invaded, invasions are really nothing new to the Indian people, and ergo there is no such thing as an original Indian or an Indic civilization

My aim at this point is simply to get at the truth. Who am I ? Who were my ancestors ? What did they really mean to convey (to me) when they brought out the prodigious output of literature in the mists of time ?. Where did they come from, if they came from anywhere. Incidentally, I have been interested in these questions all my life , but it is only now that I am able to indulge in the luxury of trying to answer them to my satisfaction.

K

posted 29-06-2000 13:27            

This is a remarkable book which packs a lot of material in about 340 pages. It is a book which is a pleasure to read and assumes little prior knowledge of ancient Indian history. The authors come from diverse backgrounds. Feuerstein is a Yoga researcher and a historian of religion. Kak is a information theorist and cryptologist who has written extensively on the decoding of the Rig Veda. Frawley is director of the American Institute of Vedic studies and an Ayurvedi specialist, who trained at the Aurobindo ashram and has also studied with Ramana Maharishi.

The book brings together recent advances in the knowledge of the ancients in India in what is an unusual compilation. The only book comparable in scope to this that I have read is that of A.L.Basham ‘The Wonder that was India’. Much new information has come to light since Basham’s book was published in 1954.

The book is divided into 2 parts, the first part concentrating on the history of the Vedic peoples and the second on their spiritual and cultural legacy. Part I makes engrossing reading, starting with the goals of the book. Many questions are posed. How did the ancients meet life’s challenges ? How did they view nature ? What trials and tribulations shaped their experiences of the world ?. In seeking to answer these questions, the authors present the evidence of the astonishing role that India played as one of the giants, if not the pre-eminent giant in these ancient urban cultures. India has one of the largest extant literatures of the ancient world. It is unfortunate that the modern average Indian pays little heed to the contents of this vast and gigantic literary tradition.

The book ties together the evidence connecting the Sarasvati/Sindhu civilization(SSC) with the Vedic people, and shows that the evolution of civilization began far earlier than most western historians admit, ca 6000 BCE, that the progress of this evolution was relatively steady and that there were no discontinuities as is hypothesized by the proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory/Aryan Migration Theory (AIT/AMT). There are chapters on the Indus Valley civilization also known as the SSC, the drying up of the Sarasvati River, the deciphering of the SSC script, the literature of the Vedas, among others.Incidentally, it is at the end of the first part of the book, in Capter 9, p.153, that the authors set forth their famous 17 arguments against the AIT/AMT. Readers can glance through these in the 2nd post in this thread on 'Questioning the AIT ...' by Klaus Klostermeier.

The second part of the book contains material that is less original. However , there is a chapter on the Astronomical aspects of the Vedic myths. It is particularly satisfying at least to this observer to note the extent to which the present day practices of the Indian Hindu have hardly changed from time immemorial.

I am confident that the reader will not want to lay down the book until he or she is done. I strongly recommend this as an addition to the library of all those who have an interest in the prehistoric era of India.

Kaushal

posted 29-06-2000 21:07            

Very well said! Like the other members of the Forum, may I extend my complete moral support to your venture in understanding our past!

Three more points to extend your investigation:

1. While you have been working very hard on your thesis, I have been working on a scenario which has its foundation: a belief by certain powers-that-be that the 21st Century will not be the American century, but the Indian century, and that the Indian model, in its ideal form, will be the model for the world, not the American model. Indian model: duty, scholarship, toleration for all, respect for all life, cultural diversity, celebration of the unity of all existance, modesty, moderation etc, etc. American model: freedom without responsibility, rights without responsibilities, setting man against man in a competition for existance, winner take all and the loser be damned, one truth and we're ready to kill you if you dont agree (be it Kosovo or tobacco), extremism in all forms, lack of respect for family, amazingly high level of discourtsey in every day life, etc etc. True the ideal Indian model has been very much tarnished: worst effect of the caste system, exploitation of the poor, etc. etc. That does not mean that the model itself should be rejected, any more than the evil of slavery in America means the best parts of the American model - democracy, respect for individual rights, etc. should be thrown away because it failed to live up to the ideal. The powers-that-be act to lay the foundation of a new world order that one day will be an Indian-model world order: setting our house right within, and setting our security situation right is all I cover, but that takes us only to the year 2010, leaving 90 years for building on these foundations.

My point: you and I, completely unknown to the other, have been working along identical lines, using different methods, and in complementary fashion. In essence, you are laying the philosphical basis for the assumption I use in my scenario for a future India-model world. So this is an example of different people in different parts of the world coming up with the same ideas at the same time.

2. Your experience of the way Indian history and civilization has been presented has obviously proved a soul-searing experience and made you into something of a revolutionary. The way Indian history and civilization was presented to me by my elders was totally different, even though they accepted the Aryan buisness in toto. I was brought up to believe that India is in fact unique, and in theory at least a far superior civilization to others. So the Arayan buisness never disturbed me in the least: just one more example, as far as I was concerned, of the superiority of our civilization that we could take the best of what others brought, adapt it to our own purpose without xenophobia, and remain convinced of our superiority without the need to ram it down everyone else's throats as Islam, Christianty, American capitalism, etc. have done. You will see from this that while I am an extreme nationalist in security matters, the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence taking place in India represent to me a betrayal of our unique contribution to the world - this is, of course, another matter.

3. I wonder if you have read Emmanual Velikovsky. He was dismissed as a crank and persecuted, but many of this theories have held up (and many have not). He believed that because of various reasons, the history of antiquity is made out to be longer than it actually is: he focused on the Jewish and Eygptian histories in the BC period, and believed that several hundred years had been added on. My point? Well, let me give you another example. After World War 2, anthropologists working in Papua-New Guinea learned of a cargo cult: a time when the gods showered manna from the heavens and no one had to work. The natives even showed the anthropologists the remains of a sky chariot: an American forces Dakota! You will no doubt know that in air drops in the good old days, upto 90% of the material used to land somewhere else. Imagine if you were an islander living in promiximity to the Stone Age, and then all of a sudden wonderful goodies - ciggerettes, chocolate, canned meat, etc. - start falling from the sky! The point here is that within one generation, within the living memory of many of the people who spoke to the anthropologists, this event was converted into a near-religious myth of ancient times!

You have given a lot of evidence for why the Vedas are very old, and they may not actually be that old. As you say, we just dont know a lot of things right now, and unless people like you enquire, we never will. I wonder why some of our internet billionaires dont spare a few hundred thousand to set up a foundation to study the issues you are bringing up. We must have a new awareness of our national conciousness, and you are on the right track. In my generation and earlier we Indians just sat around, drank tea, patted ourselves on the back for being great and unique, and went for our afternoon siestas. You are making a great effort to work this out - very American, if I may say without offence, ha ha - or as they say on BR MIlitary Forum, he he.

posted 30-06-2000 10:20            

On point one, you flatter me by comparing your own considerable work and authorship with my tentative attempts to unravel my past. Having said that the commonality that you see in our goals is a unique quality of Indians , in my opinion, and is in the best traditions of synthesizing various streams of thought going back to the ancients and continued by Shankaracharya, and more recently by Dayananda Sarasvati and Vivekananda. There is a good case to be made that the 21st century will be India’s century. After all a civilization that has outlasted its conquerers for 8 millenia, must have staying power. My personal view is that Indian civilization is still in repair mode (I am haunted by VS Naipaul’s imagery of a wounded civilization) after 2 centuries of concentrated efforts by the colonialists to destroy the vestiges of the ancients and to deny the inhabitants of the subcontinent a modicum of dignity and self-esteem. Contrary to what some may believe in BR, I do not feel that the damage done by the Muslim invader during the 6 or 7 centuries of domination compares to the damage done by 2 centuries of British rule in India (‘Unbritish rule as Dadabhai Naoroji called it). But like Sir Vidhyadhar, I am hopeful that the repair process is well under way. Human beings and civilizations are extraordinarily resilient and the Indian is no exception. I am confident that the Indian will once again occupy his rightful place in the councils of the world along with the Western European, the Chinese and other modern powers. Furthermore , as you rightly observe India brings some uniquely Indian traits to the table and you have listed them – duty, scholarship, toleration for all, celebration of diversity etc. India will synthesize once again as it has done many a time, the contributions of Islam and Christianity, to evolve a new but essentially the same Indian.

On point two , I take a different approach than you. The intensity with which I have expressed my feelings against the AIT/AMT, is precisely because some have argued that the rejection of this hypothesis automatically consigns one to an ‘anti Islam’ and ‘anti Christian ‘ posture. Such an approach is foreign to the way a Hindu thinks. In fact the word Hindu is too confining. I look upon myself as a follower of the Sanatana Dharma – the eternal path. I owe no allegiance to .any prophet or sage be he Yajnavalkya or Vyaasa. To me the Dharma of the Buddha is hardly very revolutionary, and easily fits into my essential ethos and philosophy. I am immodest enough to think that my way of thinking permeates the thinking of most Indians, and ideas of dominating another country, much less invading them to prove my superiority as a civilization and breaking the Kaaba in Mecca simply do not occur to the average Dharmik. To regain our lost heritage is not to denigrate anybody else and none need fear the Dharmik on that score. So please do not confuse the hunger and curiosity of getting to know our ancients and their contributions with some crass ‘anti-this or anti-that’ sentiment as the Marxists would have us believe. There is a lot more I can say on this, but as you can imagine, it probably deserves a book and some of the books we have reviewed in this thread address aspects of this question. But I will say this . efforts to denigrate the Dharma, and to put down the search for our roots. will no longer succeed in the guise of ‘it is against other cultures’, if they ever did.

As far as the current spate of incidents of interreligious violence, this is not within the immediate purview of this thread. But I like many of my fellow Dharmiks approach this from a certain perspective. When widely dissimilar weltanschauungs like the Dharmik religions and the Middle eastern faiths collide as they do in India, the resulting interaction is bound to be more eventful, than an afternoon of English ladies in Shimla discussing the growing of Begonias over crumpets and tea. Regardless of our abhorrence to unnecessary violence there is an inevitability to such a clash. This clash of civilizations is especially difficult to stem since India is finally free after centuries of domination . The role model of the modern Indian is the Intellectual Kshatriya (vide Bharat Rakshak) and meekness and turning the other cheek not to mention Gandhiism becomes less relevant, and it is my thesis that cultures emanating from outside of India have yet to grasp this fundamental transformation of the Indian. To cast this clash in civilizational terms is not to condone the violence of individuals and lawless elements of the society, but neither should it be an excuse to cast aspersions on all Hindus or their faith or to impute evil motives to those who like me take up the cudgels in defense of the Dharma. Our job as informed observers is to ensure that in the process, the truth does not become a casualty and to confine the violence to a war of words. I did not wish this thread to go the way of many others and slide into discussions of religious violence. If you wish to discuss the same we can take it off line.

I have not read Emmanuel Velikovsky but the name does ring a bell.I think I understand what you are getting at but I am afraid I do not see the connection. The notion that the antiquity of one’s heritage equates to superior moral conduct or to some special place at the table, would of course be rejected if not ridiculed by nations such as America. In fact Madeleine Albright did precisely that in response to Iraq’s contention that it deserved to be treated better simply because it is the inheritor of a great civilization. The popular american expression ‘what have you done for me lately’ applies here, and one must earn one’s stripes everyday and cannot rest on laurels of a bygone era, as Indians know only too well . My quest for my origins is an intensely personal one. I am not seeking any great ancestry or to claim that I am descended from Alexander the great or that I am a philosophical successor to the ancients. It is simply to answer the questions that I have posed earlier nothing more, nothing less.

Ravi, you need not feel crestfallen that the AIT never indeed took place. The Punjabis are the Vikings of India. They bring a unique and highly colorful dimension to the mosaic that is India. I would be proud to call myself a Punjabi, but alas I am not. But what I am or am not, linguistically or culturally, is not as important, than what I have revealed of myself in this thread.

K

posted 30-06-2000 18:57            

I thought for some reason you were Marathi but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, India is a land of many migrations and invasions - so all of us probabaly have some blood from somewhere else - more so the people of the North West which has seen invasions over many millenia. So Punjabis can still feel some Central Asian connection if they want to. -

The Jat family is indeed thought to be descended from a section of Scythians and are hence classified as an Indo-Scythian ethnic group in origin. And the Scythians indeed came in order to invade but later adopted Buddhism and Hinduism and melted into that 'Mother of all Melting pots' called India (America you still have a long way to go). I believe that the Churidar-pyajama (pathan suit) that is common in India today (and is very common in Punjab, Pakistan, Afghn) may have been Scythian in origin.

To add to what Kaushal said:

Kaushal makes a very important point that struck me quite hard when I was still a young history buff venturing on the fringes of this debate. That there is something very unique about Indian culture, religion and civilization that is not present anywhere else. I found it quite surprising that our supposed civilization should originate from a location where no trace of it exists at present and we are talking about a civilization which has taken a few millenia to evolve. We know the Greco-Roman civilization came from Greece and Rome, the Egyptian from Egypt, the Mesopotemian from Mesopetemia, but the Indic civilization must have evolved somewhere else when in continuity and diversity the latter outstrips the former by miles. This dichotomy was never clear to me - apart from the notion that nomadic barbarians as in the 'Aryan' race could actually be writing some of those very lucid Vedic verses and making some of the most profound philosophical observations while they were running on horseback and munching the deer they just killed and roasted. The contradiction was too obvious to even a kid like me.

My personal belief is that when false ideas become entrenched, new ideas which contradict such false notions usually come from outside the establishment. The Indian establishment consisting of mainly upper-caste Hindu elite suffering from severe inferiority complex actually liked the idea that they were also invaders to India just like their masters the Muslims and British. This idea therefore took their imagination by storm that they were also on the side of the rapists of India and the elite liked it inspite of the fact that philosophers of India like Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo have consistently spoken against it. Later on as the Marxists began taking over the Nehruvian institutions they further approved of it as they attempted to create an atmosphere of class struggle and anti-imperialist struggle surrounding caste struggle where the imperialist upper caste Aryan invaders ruthlessly suppress the native people who were then asigned to the lower castes. Thus, other than real scholarship we had everything going for the AIT and it became the status quo. The Nehruvian elite comprising the upper-caste Hindu elite liked the idea that they were also fair-skinned invaders just like the Turks and Moghals and the British. The challenge to these ideas came from outside the establishment and now that I come to think of it this seems logical given the nature of the status quo. The challengers are mostly not 'professional' historians (as our good friend Salman likes to point out) but wannabes who are not confined by set ideas. It is probably correct to accept now that they have generated a debate which can no longer be discounted as being some devious Hindu fanaticism working to delegitimize all minorities as illegitimate. The irony is that people most shouting this thesis are the ones who trumpted 'we are the Aryans who invaded from the West' proudly. So we upper-castes are still not clear in our mind whether we want to be the grand Aryan invader from the West like our oppressors - the Mughals, Turks, and the British or should we be the native people who were wronged by outsiders.

The truth is as always somewhere in between.

My emperical thesis after some more thoughts.
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posted 30-06-2000 23:17            

I dont believe it is entirely accurate to say these are the same people who supported the AIT. But it is true that many of the leftists in India come from the higher castes (Namboodiripad, Hiren Mukherjee, Jyoti Basu,Dange, Harkishen S Surjeet- i definitely regard the Sikhs as one of the upper castes or classes, Romila Thappar, Kosambi). The Nehruvians are a very small minority in India and they will slowly fade away from the scene as they follow the dynasty into the wilderness.

I do not believe we should turn this again into a caste thing. The vast majority of Indians regardless of caste never felt comfortable with the AIT, since they couldnt see anything in common with these mythical invaders from a mythical land.But they were intimidated from speaking out because of the supposed reputation of Max Mueller as a Sanskritist, a reputation that was definitely not justified. Secondly the vast majority of Indians do not know Sanskrit, and you definitely need a knowledge of Sanskrit (knowing Hindi is not enough)to repudiate these theories. Both these conditions are changing now. The number of people in India who know Sanskrit is definitely on the rise.

But the AIT ands its corollary the Aryan/Dravidian theory did the trick for the Brits though, as they encouraged the Justice Party in Madras, which was specially created as an anti-Brahmin party and was a forerunner for the plethora of DMK parties. The Indians fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Of course these sentiments(identifying with the invasions) dont mean much. The Rajputs who are supposed to be descended from the Kushans, were so completely Indianized in a couple of centuries, that they certainly did not feel much kinship with the succeeding invaders, like the Moghuls until they really did not have a choice in the matter.

K

posted 03-07-2000 14:32              

Those working on the Human Genome project discovered that race has no scientific basis. They went through genetic samples from so-called Caucasians, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Others and found they couldn't tell one from the other.

posted 03-07-2000 16:00            

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Instead of wasting time on long-winded ancient crap on the so-called AIT, its better to focus on the "out of Africa" theory and the latest on the Human Genome project.

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While your suggestion is good, I must point out that it is exactly this AIT crap that abounds the history textbooks in India. I learned about the so called AIT in my 6th grade, thanks to the (mis)informative books chalked out by the mandarins at NCERT and the Commies sitting in JNU. This AIT is also used extensively by the missionaries as "water", to incite the tribals against other Hindus, thus reaping a good "harvest of souls".

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Those working on the Human Genome project discovered that race has no scientific basis.

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The anti-AIT has been gaining more ground in the recent past including one genetic investigation which negates this farcicial theory. Didn't we have a thread on the topic a while back here in BR? Or is it just me?

posted 03-07-2000 17:49            

In a review of the book titled ‘Politics of History’, which I have posted earlier in this thread, I remarked that the study of History in Europe and Britain, especially Ancient Indian History or Pre-history as some would call it, has been tainted by racial and political considerations. The story of why and how this happened, is worth recounting, and has been done fairly thoroughly by Thomas Trautmann in a book titled ‘Aryans and British India’, published by University of California Press,1997. Trautmann is a Professor of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he teaches Indian History, among other subjects. He has also written a book on Dravidian Kinship. Trautmann was a student of AL Basham , to whom the book is dedicated.

The book is scholarly in tone and a little difficult to read, with somewhat long sentences, but that should not be a hindrance to Indians, who tend to favor long sentences. Even so, it is well worth the effort. Starting with the meaning of the word Arya and its interpretation by the Europeans , the author leads the reader through the history of this subject, to where we are today. The spectacle of a dark skinned people who were evidently civilized challenged the Victorian ideas of that age.’ Race science’ responded to this enigma of India by redefining the ‘Aryan’ concept in narrowly ‘white’ racial terms.

‘By the end of the nineteenth century , race science and Orientalism ( the study of linguistic affinity between Indo European languages) reached a deep and lasting consensus in regard to India – what Trautmann calls the racial theory of Indian civilization’. So we come to the state of affairs as it exists today. This theory holds that India’s civilization was produced by the clash and subsequent intermixture of the fair skinned Aryans, supposedly from Europe and the dark savages native to India.

While MaxMueller was the one primarily responsible for this so called racial theory of Indian civilization, he was far from being a racist himself. MaxMueller believed that ‘the same blood ran in the veins of the soldiers of Clive as in the veins of the dark Bengalese (sic). But he could not accept that the antiquity of the Vedic people stretched back in time much farther than the creationist view to which he was wedded.

I recommend this book for reading not so much for the attractiveness of these views, or lack thereof, but to get a glimpse of the manner in which a people and a society will subvert scholarship, in order to rationalize ordinary human frailties such as lust for conquest, greed, and the almost universal need to feel superior to every other race, creed, religion, ethnic etc.

Kaushal