was there another homeland from where the invasion was launched?

Originally posted by spookz
was there another homeland from where the invasion was launched?

There wasn't another homeland, the Aryans were nomads before the invasion of Dravidia.

Generally it is believed by scholars that the Dravidians maintained a large and wealthy empire 1000 years before the Aryans arrived. However, when the Aryans arrived, they were quickly pushed south to where they live today (Tamil Nadu, other Southern provinces, northern and eastern Sri Lanka)

The Aryans were an Indo-European peoples, and it's generally believed that they made their way from either ANATOLIA or from the BALTIC, whichever was the original Indo-European homeland. If I recall correctly, they were in the 2nd group of migrants from the Indo-European homeland.

Welcome to sciforums, spookz.

Originally posted by wet1
Welcome to sciforums, spookz.

thank you kind sir
:D

I recently saw in TLC channel about pyramids throughout the world - which is supposedly predates modern civilization. One of the video shown was the Madurai temple as pyramid shape and is linked to dravidian civilization. No one has dug deep into the Dravidian culture and the origin - long before the Aryan culture. I wonder if that culture dates way back to the pyramid people....

Another item I wonder is the aborigins in India. Story is that Dravidians pushed them when they invaded/ emigrated to India. Indian aborigins have similar features as Australian aborigins. I wonder where they came from and what time period.

Lots of questions and not much answers....

Originally posted by kmguru
I recently saw in TLC channel about pyramids throughout the world - which is supposedly predates modern civilization. One of the video shown was the Madurai temple as pyramid shape and is linked to dravidian civilization. No one has dug deep into the Dravidian culture and the origin - long before the Aryan culture. I wonder if that culture dates way back to the pyramid people....

Another item I wonder is the aborigins in India. Story is that Dravidians pushed them when they invaded/ emigrated to India. Indian aborigins have similar features as Australian aborigins. I wonder where they came from and what time period.

Lots of questions and not much answers....

The Dravidians are today thought to have come to the Indian subcontinent 1000 years before the Aryan arrival.

And Dravidians do still exist, in very large numbers too, and people have dug into their culture (but not so much their origin. some people believe that dravidians and indo-europeans are directly related)

As for aborigines: just curious as to if these people were completely obliterated. I can think of one major group in India that isn't Indo-European or Dravidian, and that would be the Manipuri (http://www.bishnupriya-manipuri.org/). (often called Bishnupriya Manipuri)

If I am not mistaken, I think Manipuri people have much lighter skin and are of oriental ancestry with Assam as the major source but spread out between Bangladesh, Orissa (Linkage to Lord Jaggarnath) and West Bengal. The alphabets are Bengali in origin.

No, there are still aborigins in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Central India. Yes, Dravidians are still there and are basically are the south Indians with super long names. But there is a catch. During spice trade with Europe before (Roman and Jesus times), the southern culture was exposed to Europe and middleeast. So there could be those influences including co-mingling of people.

The Proto-Saharan Homeland of the Dravidian, African, Sumerian and Elamite People (http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/pro1.html)

Tribes of India (http://www.culturopedia.com/Tribes/tribesintro.html)

Dravidians (http://www.shelterbelt.com/KJ/khdravidians.html)

The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India (http://www.geocities.com/eternalveda/aryan.html)

Update on debate (http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/)

"There is general agreement among ethnologists that the Dravidian population is a branch of the Mediterranean race, or at least a closely allied one. while the Mediterranean race is White, the Dravidians are much darker, ranging from the dark Greek and Italian complexion to black. There is also a wide range of difference in the shape of the skull, the color and texture of the hair, the color of the eyes, and the shape of the nose. These deviations can be explained with a probable interbreeding between the Dravidians and Mundas, as it is still taking place in the Chotanagpur region between the Dravidian Oraons and the neighboring Mundas.

The Dravidians entered India before the Aryans, before 2000 B.C., after passing through Mesopotamia, Iran, and Baluchistan where the Brahuis, a Dravidian race, still live. On grounds of cultural affinities such as inheritance through women, snake cults, organization of society, and structure of temples, some historians connect the Dravidians with the Elamites and Mesopotamians. The evidence of Indian skulls from the Indus Valley indicates that the Mediter-ranean stock became established in north India before the Harappab Civilisation came into existence around 2000 B.C.

Granted that the Dravidians were,originally Mediterraneans and that they passed through Mesopotamia, Iran, and Baluchistan, exactly from which Mediter-ranean region did they come?

Of particular significance is archeologist B. B. Lal's contention that the Dravidians probably came from Nubia, Upper Egypt. This theory would give them among other things their Mediterranean features and dark complexion. Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical." According to Lal, the Nubian megaliths date from around 1000 B.C. "

Now that we know where Dravidians came from....we still have the Mundas to contend with....

I guess for the last 50,000 years, people keep going there and settling down.....

Originally posted by kmguru
Now that we know where Dravidians came from....we still have the Mundas to contend with....

I guess for the last 50,000 years, people keep going there and settling down.....

Yes, I know about the existance of Dravidians in India (in quite large numbers as well, something like 23% of the population) however I was asking you if you knew of it.

As for Mundas, they are an Austro-asiatic peoples, as are the Khmer of Cambodia (and quite a few others)

"The Munda people belong to the Australoid race and speak a family of languages called the Munda family:* Korku, Santali, Mundari, Kharia, Saora, Parengi, Gutob, Bonda, and Didey.* Today they live in the Chotanagpur geo-graphical region of Eastern India though once they occupied the whole of India, that is, before the arrival of Dravidians and Aryans."

Excellent!

and on a side note, the keralites

http://www.shelterbelt.com/KJ/khmundarace.html

The languages of South India are Dravidian, which is a different linguistic group than the Indo-European languages of the North of the subcontinent. The two groups of languages have many different root words (though a number in common we might add), and above all a different grammatical structure, the Dravidian being agglutinative and the Indo-European being inflected. Dravidian languages possess a very old history of their own, which their legends, the Tamil Sangha literature, show a history in South India and Sri Lanka dating back over five thousand years.

Along with the difference of language there is a difference of skin color from north to south of India, with the southerners being darker in skin color (though northerners are hardly light in color by Western standards, with the exception of some people of the far northwest). Though a less pronounced difference than that of language it has been lumped together along with it again assuming that race and language must be the same.

The Aryan invasion theory has been used to explain both the linguistic and racial differences between the peoples of North and South India, and such differences have been put forth as "proof" of the invasion (as if no other explanation were possible). As the Aryans were made into a race, so were the Dravidians and the Aryan/Dravidian divide was turned into a racial war, the Aryan invaders versus the indigenous Dravidians of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. By this view the Vedic people promoted the superiority of their race and language and simply drove away those of different races or languages. We have already discussed how Sanskrit Aryan is never a racial term but a title of respect. Even the Dravidian kings called themselves Aryan. Nor is there anything in Vedic literature that places the Dravidians outside of the greater Vedic culture and ancestry. Hence to place Aryan against Dravidian as terms is itself a misuse of language. Be that as it may, the Aryan and Dravidian divide has also failed to prove itself.

Now it has been determined that there is no such thing scientifically speaking as Aryan and Dravidian races. The so-called Aryans and Dravidian races of India are members of the same Mediterranean branch of the Caucasian race, which prevailed in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria and is still the main group in the Mediterranean area, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Caucasian race is not simply white but also contains dark skinned types. Skin color and race is another nineteenth century idea that has been recently discarded.

Darker skin color is commonly found in peoples living in more southern regions and appears as an adjustment mechanism to hotter climates and greater sunshine. For example southern Europeans are darker in skin color than northern Europeans, though they are not a different race because of this. This suggests that the Dravidian branch of the Mediterranean race must have lived in South India for some thousands of years to make this adjustment, and the same thing could be said of the people of North India as well if we would make them originally light-skinned invaders from the north.

The issue of language is similarly more complex. It is now known that Dravidian languages, with their agglutinative patterns, share common traits and are of the same broad linguistic group as such Asian and East European languages as Finnish, Hungarian, old Bulgarian, Turkish, Mongolian and Japanese, the Finno-Ugric and Ural-Altaic branches of languages. As the common point between these groups lies in Central Asia some scholars have recently proposed that the Dravidian peoples originally came from this region.

The same linguistic speculation that led to the Aryan invasion theory has following the same logic required a "Dravidian invasion." Not only are the Dravidians like the Aryans styled invaders into India, they took the same route as the Aryans. The city-state of Elam in southwest Iran, east of Sumeria, which had a high civilization throughout the ancient period, shows an agglutinative structure like the Dravidian, as does possibly the Sumerian itself. This would place Dravidian type languages in Iran as well. Thereby the Dravidians, just like the Aryans, would have migrated (again the reason for which is not clear) from Central Asia and into Iran, with one group moving west to Mesopotamia and the other, apparently larger group, going east into India. Later the invading Aryans are said to have forced the Dravidians to move to the south of the country from their original homeland on the Indus and Sarasvati rivers. (However, we have already noted that there is no evidence of such migrations, nor of any Dravidian references to the Sarasvati like those of the Vedas.)

The Dravidian and Aryan invasion theories turns the migration of particular language/racial groups from Central Asia into a kind of panacea to explain the developments of race and language for much of humanity, particularly for India. However both invasion theories appear far too simplistic given the complex ways in which cultures, languages and races move and interact.

The Dravidian claim to be indigenous to India has, like the Aryan, been discredited by linguistic argument. Yet the argument brings the Aryans and Dravidians back into contact with each other and derives them from the same region, suggesting a long term association between them outside of India. However if we give up the invasion model such association can be better explained by contact within India which we know was an historical fact.

Certainly the present population of India - which even the ancient Greeks and Persians regarded as dark-skinned - was not produced by light-skinned people from Central Asia (whether Aryan or Dravidian). Moreover, there cannot be a Dravidian invasion changing the language but not the population of India just like the Aryan invasion, as the idea is far-fetched to happen once but to happen twice in a row in the same region and by the same route is ridiculous.

If both the Aryan and Dravidian languages of India have affinities with those of Central Asia, and to peoples of different ethnic groups (the Indo-Aryan with the lighter skinned European and the Dravidians with both light-skinned Finns and Hungarians, and Mongolian race Turks) a phenomenon is created that is too complex to be explained by mere migration alone. It takes languages across the racial boundaries that migration theories uphold and places them on par with other cultural affinities (like art or religion), which are not limited by race.

The linguistic divide between Aryan and Dravidian, as that between the Indo-European and other language groups is also now being questioned. A greater Nostratic family of languages has been proposed that includes Indo-European, Dravidian and Semitic languages and looks for a common ancestor for all three. This requires a greater degree of contact between these groups which remote Central Asia cannot afford. Moreover, there are affinities between Sanskrit and the Munda or aboriginal languages of India, as S. Kalyanaraman has noted, that indicate a long and early contact, if not common evolution, which could have only happened in India. Such Vedic scholars as Sri Aurobindo have stated that the Dravidian and Sanskritic languages have much more in common than has yet been admitted and appear to have a common ancestor.

Dravidian history does not contradict Vedic history either. It credits the invention of the Tamil language, the oldest Dravidian tongue, to the rishi Agastya, one of the most prominent sages in the Rig Veda. Dravidian kings historically have called themselves Aryans and trace their descent through Manu (who in the Matsya Purana is regarded as originally a south Indian king). Apart from language, moreover, both north and south India share a common religion and culture. Prior to Vedic Sanskrit there may have been a language that was the basis of both the Dravidian and Sanskritic languages in India.

The idea that the same culture cannot produce two different language systems may itself be questionable. It may have been the very power of Vedic culture and its sages, with their mastery of the word, that they could have produced not only Indo-European like languages but also Dravidian.

In any case the Aryan/Dravidian divide is no longer sufficient to uphold the Aryan invasion theory. It leads to a more difficult to maintain Dravidian invasion theory. The Dravidian invasion theory is just a shadow cast by the Aryan invasion theory and reveals the erroneous nature of the latter.

Other aspects of the Aryan-Dravidian divide are predicated upon the invasion theory. For example the idea that South India represents a pre-Vedic Shaivite culture as opposed to the Brahmanical culture of the north follows only from this. Otherwise we see Shaivism in the North, in Kailas, Benares and Kashmir, and Shiva as Rudra of the Vedas. What have thereby been proposed as radical cultural differences between the North and South of India are merely regional variations in the vast cultural complex of the subcontinent and its interrelated spiritual traditions.

Dravidian pride or nationalism need not depend upon the Aryan invasion theory or denigrating the culture of North India. The Dravidians have long been one of the most important peoples of India and, perhaps ironically, have been the best preservers of Vedic culture itself. The best Vedic Sanskrit, rituals and traditions can be found only in the south of India. That South India was able to do this suggests the importance and antiquity of Vedic culture to this region." david frawley (http://www.geocities.com/eternalveda/page18.html)

the battle over history (http://members.tripod.com/~ramkumaram/article2.html)

It is sad to note how intellectuals in India are quick to denigrate the extent and antiquity of their history, even when geological evidence like the Sarasvati River or archaeological evidence like the Harappan and Cambay sites are so clear.

The recent find of a submerged city in the Gulf of Cambay, perhaps as old as 7500 BC, serves to highlight the existence of southern sources for the civilisation of ancient India. The Gulf of Cambay find is only the latest in a series that includes Lothal (S.R. Rao), Dholavira (R.S. Bisht) and others in Gujarat. These discoveries have been pushing the seats of ancient Indian civilisation deeper into the southern peninsula. We should not be surprised if more such sites are discovered in South India, especially the coastal regions, for the south has always played a significant if neglected role in ancient India going back to Vedic times.

I have argued for such a coastal origin for Vedic civilisation in my recent book Rig Veda and the History of India. This is largely because of the oceanic character of Vedic symbolism in which all the main Rig Vedic Gods as well as many of the Vedic rishis have close connections with samudra or the sea. In fact, the image of the ocean pervades the whole of the Rig Veda. Unfortunately many scholars who put forth opinions on ancient India seldom bother to study the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and few know the language well enough to do so. The result is that their interpretation of Vedic literature is often erroneous, trusting out of date and inaccurate interpretations from the Nineteenth century like the idea that the Vedic people never new the sea!

Literary evidence

The Rig Veda states that "All the hymns praise Indra who is as expansive as the sea" (RV I.11.1) Agni wears the ocean as his vesture (RV VIII 102.4-6). The Sun is called the ocean (RV V.47.3). Soma is called the first ocean (RV IX.86.29). Varuna specifically is a God of the sea (RV I.161.14). These are just a few examples of out of well over a hundred references to samudra in the Rig Veda alone, including references to oceans as two, four or many (RV VI.50.13). This is obviously the poetry of a people intimately associated with the sea and not of any nomads from land-locked Central Asia or Eurasia.

Vedic seer families like the Bhrigus are descendants of Varuna, the God of the sea as the first Bhrigu is called Bhrigu Varuni — Bhrigu, the son of Varuna. The teachings of Varuna to Bhrigu are found in the Taittiriya Upanishad and Taittiriya tradition of the Yajur Veda, which has long been most popular in South India. The recent find at sea in the Gulf of Cambay is near Baroach or Bhrigu-kachchha, the famous ancient city of the very same Bhrigus.

These oceanic connections extend to other important Vedic rishis as well. In the Rig Veda, Agastya, who became the main rishi of South India, has twenty-five hymns in the first book of the Rig Veda and is mentioned in the other books as well. He is the elder brother of Vasishta who himself has the largest number of hymns in the text (about a hundred), those of the seventh book. Both rishis are said to have been born in a pot or kumbha, which may be a vessel or ship (RV VII.33.10-13). Vasishta is specifically connected to Varuna who was said to travel on a ship in the sea (RV VII.88.4-5). Both Vasishta and Agastya are descendants of Mitra and Varuna, the God of the sea.

Vishvamitra in the Rig Veda (IIII.53.16) mentions the sage Pulasti, who was regarded as the progenitor of Ravana and Kubera and whose city, Pulasti-Pura was located in ancient Sri Lanka. He is mentioned along with Jamadagni, another common Rig Vedic sage and the father of Parshurama, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, before Rama and Krishna, whose main sphere of activity was in the south of India.

Manu himself, the Vedic primal sage and king, is a flood figure and the Angirasas, the other main seer family apart from the Bhrigus, join him in his ship according to Puranic mythology. Southern peoples like the Yadus and Turvashas were said to have been glorified by Indra (RV X.49.8) and are mentioned a number of times in the Rig Veda as great Vedic peoples. So we have ample ancient literary evidence for the Vedic seer and royal families as connected with the ocean and southern regions.

The Cambay site is in the ancient delta of the now dry Sarasvati River, one branch of which flowed into the Gulf of Cambay, showing that this site was part of the greater Sarasvati region and culture, which was the main location for Harappan cities in the 3300-1900 BCE period. Such an ocean front was important for maritime trade for the inland regions to the north. In this regard, important Vedic kings like Sudas were said to receive tribute from the sea (RV I.47.6).

When the Greeks under Alexander came to India in the Fourth century BCE, the Greek writer Megasthenes in his Indika, fragments of which are recorded in several Greek writings, mentioned that the Indians (Hindus) had a record of 153 kings going back over 6400 years (showing that the Hindus were conscious of the great antiquity of their culture even then). This would yield a date that now amounts to 6700 BCE, a date that might be reflected in the Gulf of Cambay site which has been tentatively dated to 7500 BCE. So the old Vedic-Puranic king lists may not be that far off after all!

Material evidence

A few scholars, like Witzel in the United States — in spite of such massive evidence as the Sarasvati River and its intimate connection to Vedic literature — still try to separate Vedic culture from India and attribute it to a largely illiterate and nomadic culture that migrated into India from the northwest of the country in the post-Harappan period (after 1500 BCE). Ignoring all other evidence that connects the Vedic and Harappan, they point out the importance of the horse in the Rig Veda and argue that not enough evidence of horses has been found in Harappan sites to prove a Vedic connection. They fall back upon this one shot argument to ignore any other evidence to the contrary.

However, one should note that these invasionists or migrationists are even more deficient in horse evidence to prove their own theory. There is no trail of horse bones or horse encampments into ancient India from Afghanistan during the 1500-1000 BCE period that is required for their theory of Aryan intrusion. In fact, there is no solid evidence for such a movement of peoples at all in the form of camps, skeletal remains or anything else.

Those who claim that Vedic culture must have originated outside India because of its lauding of the horse are even more lacking in horse evidence. The real problem is not `no horse at Harappa' but `no horse evidence, in fact no real evidence of any kind, to prove any Aryan migration/invasion'. It has been convincingly shown that what the Rig Veda with its seventeen-ribbed horse (RV I.162.18) describes is a native Indian breed and not any Central Asian or Eurasian horse that has eighteen ribs.

The Rig Veda mentions many Indian animals like the water buffalo (Mahisha), which is said to be the main animal sacred to Soma (RV IX.96.6), which does occur commonly on Harappan seals. The humped Brahma bull (Vrisha, Vrishabha), another common Harappan depiction, is the main animal of Indra, the foremost of the Vedic Gods. Elephants are also mentioned.

Most of the animals depicted on Harappan seals are mythical, not zoological specimens anyway. Most common is a one-horned animal that is reflected in the one-horned boar or Varaha of the Mahabharata and the boar incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Many other Harappan depictions are of animals with multiple heads or half-animal/half-human figures. This is similar to the depictions in Vedic imagery which largely consist of mythical animals of this type. For example, Harappan seals portray a three-headed bull-like animal. Such an animal is described in the Rig Veda (III.56.6).

A smokescreen

The horse issue is meant as a smokescreen to avoid facing the facts of the Sarasvati River and the many new archaeological sites in India. These show no such break in the continuity of civilisation in the region as an Aryan invasion/migration requires, including the existence of fire altars and fire worship from the early Harappan period. Vedic and Puranic literature itself records the shift of the centre of culture from the Sarasvati to the Ganga at the end of the Vedic period, referring to the drying up of the river. Scholars like Witzel would have the Vedic people coming into India after the Sarasvati was already gone and yet making the river their ancestral homeland and most sacred region!

Vedic literature is the largest preserved from the ancient world, dwarfing in size anything left by other cultures like Egypt, Greece or Babylonia. The Harappan-Sarasvati urban civilisation of India was by far the largest of its time (3100-1900 BCE) in the ancient world spreading from Punjab to Kachchh. We can no longer separate this great literature and this great civilisation, particularly given that both were based on the Sarasvati River, whose authenticity as a historical river before 1900 BCE has been confirmed by numerous geological studies. This great Vedic literature requires a great urban culture to explain it, just as the great Harappan urban culture requires a literature to explain it. Both come from the same region and cannot be separated.

Finally it is sad to note how intellectuals in India are quick to denigrate the extent and antiquity of their history, even when geological evidence like the Sarasvati River or archaeological evidence like the Harappan and Cambay sites are so clear. However one may interpret these, the truth that civilisation in India was quite ancient and profound cannot be ignored. I don't think there is any other nation on earth that would be so negative if such ancient glories were found in their lands.


DAVID FRAWLEY (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/18/stories/2002061800030200.htm)

Who is DAVID FRAWLEY?

__________

Edited to add this:

Forget the question, I just
figured it out. I should have
checked the links I saved
before I asked.

I don't think there is any other nation on earth that would be so negative if such ancient glories were found in their lands.

Give them time. As more and more educated Indians are exposed to western social need for anchoring to old civilizations, they too would be looking for the same and definitely find it. There are tens of thousands of years of burried treasure in India...time would be on our side.

If the civilization do date back say 20,000 years and there was asteroid incidents, then that could introduce variables into the development of groups...

The fact that only in India we found white tigers just recently and not in vedic times, there may be other factors at play that we have not considered.

Spookz, you did a great job on your detail posts. Did you write the book?

I took the liberty of copying your post to http://groups.msn.com/IndiaWin/socialissues.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=1158

Great job.

To impute modern/medieval meanings when reading the Rigveda is a dangerous undertaking — as it is with all archaic texts, from Homer to the Bible to Confucius. Even Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 400 years ago, is not always immediately accessible to readers of modern English.

In last week's Open Page, David Frawley or, as he likes to refer to himself, Pandit Vamadeva Shastri, who makes part of his living teaching "Vedic astrology" and providing private "astrological consultations, mainly along medical or spiritual lines" (http://www.vedanet.com/consultations.htm, http://www.vedicsoftware.com/training.htm), once more tried to establish the hoary antiquity and continuity of Indian civilisation from early post-glacial times onwards. He tried to forge a link between the supposed cities at Cambay at 7500 BCE, the Indus Civilisation (2600-1900 BCE) and the Vedic texts. It is unscientific and can easily be falsified on the basis of the available evidence (and with the help of Occam's razor).

Though virtually every other sentence in last week's write-up is demonstrably wrong, not all items can be discussed here in detail, and I will have to restrict myself to the main points.

Bad philology

Frawley complains that "many scholars who put forth opinions on ancient India seldom bother to study the Vedas in the original Sanskrit and few know the language well enough to do so." However, sure as he is of his own understanding of the Rigveda (RV), this is an amateurish, naive reading of the text, to say the least. His interpretations insert later meanings into this highly archaic and highly poetical text. Frawley's `innovative' thesis of a maritime nature of Vedic culture is diametrically opposed to the commonly held opinion of historians and philologists alike, of a landlocked Rigveda, composed in the Greater Panjab.

A key point is Frawley's understanding of the word samudra as `ocean'. This translation may be natural to a modern or medieval reader, but it does not take into account the linguistic, philological and mythological investigations of the term that have been carried out at great length for some 150 years. Frawley is unaware of, or unwilling to access this discussion, from C. Lassen (1847) to H. Lueders (1951-59) and to K. Klaus. Importantly, the last survey and summary by K. Klaus (1985, 1986, 1989) was written when this scholar still was unaware of and not biased by the then intensifying discussion in India about the Sarasvati river. In the Rigveda (and later on, in the Vedic texts at large), we have to distinguish at least three different types of samudra:

1. The "confluence of rivers" from sam `together' + udra, from the old r/n stem seen in English water, Old Norse watn, Greek hudoor, Sanskrit udan-, udr- (cf. udra `water animal, otter'). Such a confluence can be that of the Panjab rivers (as seen in most passages of the RV), a large lake such as the terminal lakes in the desert, and — at least theoretically — also the ocean.
2. Indeed, it is the mythical ocean at the end of the world that is meant a few times. This idea is not unusual as even landlocked people have the idea that the world is surrounded, as in the Puranas, by an ocean. This is also seen in the Iranian hendu (Avesta, Yasna 57.29 = Skt. sindhu!) situated at the two ends of the world (Witzel 1984), on the oldest Mesopotamian map, or in the Greek circular ookeanos of Homer. — The Muni (RV 10.136.5) dwells "on the eastern and western ocean." But the RV also has four oceans (RV 9.33.6, 10.47.2), and the Atharvaveda has a `northern, upper' one (11.2.25). What might it this be in India: G. Tilak's Polar Sea, the home of his Aryans? Rather, it is the `upper', heavenly ocean at night (see below). We also find, just as in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, a mythical (salty) ocean at the time of creation, RV 10.190 1 sqq.

3. The heavenly "ocean" is seen at RV 6.58.3 with `golden boats in the sea, in the Antariksha'; it is also called a heavenly `pond' (saras) in a Yajurveda Samhita Brahmodya. Many stories in the RV take place in the night time sky, notably that of Varuna's ship, or the voyage of Bhujyu (Oettinger 1988). All of this should have been well known since Lueders (1951-59) and Kuiper (summarised in 1983).

If we try to find a real, terrestrial ocean, that is the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal, this may be possible only in a few passages, all discussed by Klaus (1986-9). Importantly, had the Rigvedic poets personally known the ocean and the long range maritime trade that Frawley desperately wants to discover, they should have mentioned, at least in passing, such typical features of the ocean as its salinity or its tides. We do not hear of it.

Further, the Rigvedic poetic diction concerning the samudra is exactly the same as that used for the rivers: swelling, spreading, growing (at snow melt in spring). Even in post-RV texts (Katha 17.17, Maitrayani 2.10.1, Vajasaneyi Samhita 17.4) it is a sweet water plant, Blyxa actandra (avakaa), that is connected with the samudra: "we cover you, Agni, with the avakaa (plant) of the samudra"!

In sum, in the personal experience of the Rigvedic poets we can find only the confluence of the Panjab rivers, the mythical or "night time" ocean, but apparently not the Arabian Sea or the very distant Bay of Bengal.

To impute modern/medieval meanings when reading the RV therefore is a dangerous undertaking — as it is with all archaic texts, from Homer to the Bible to Confucius. Even Shakespeare, who wrote a mere 400 years ago, is not always immediately accessible to readers of modern English.

Frawley's discussion represents a simplistic approach to myth and mythology. Very briefly, god Varuna is not just the lord of the ocean, as he is now, but in the RV he is, much more importantly, the chief (raajan) of the Adityas, the group gods reinforcing Law and Order (Rta, later on called Dharma). Therefore it does not matter at all that the RV sage Bhrigu supposedly is a descendent of the "sea god" Varuna, or that certain rishis like Vasistha have been born from a pot — which is a long way from a ship! Or, Manu's flood myth is widely spread, not just in Mesopotamia and the Bible, but in a large area from the African Sahel belt to Hawaii(!) and the Amazon. There is nothing typically Rigvedic about all of this.

Incidentally, he does not even get his history of Vedic S'aakhaas right: the Taittiriyas may have been South Indian at least since Gupta times, but their Samhita and Brahmana texts clearly point to their homeland in U.P. (Witzel 1987).

There also is obvious misinformation in his Open Page article, e.g. when "kings like Sudas were said to receive tribute from the sea (RV I.47.6)." The hymn does not contain any such thing; instead the Ashvin deities are asked to bring "us" riches from the samudra or heaven(!) Or, that "Harappan seals portray a three-headed bull-like animal. Such an animal is described in the Rig Veda (III.56.6)" Frawley probably meant verse 3, not 6. But, the whole hymn plays on the number `3' and there is nothing special to the bull in verse 3, with 3 heads, 3 udders(!!), and 3 (not 4!) stomachs.

Antiquity frenzy

Be that as it may, Frawley's elaborations in the last Open Page are, as is more and more commonly seen now, due to the increasing zeal to prove the hoary age and "continuity" of Indian civilisation ever since the Ice Age. In this kind of antiquity frenzy (see http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/antiquity/index.html), even a little fudging is welcome, for example in the case of the Cambay finds. It has been pointed out by competent scholars and lay persons from the very beginning that a dredged piece of wood carbondated to c. 7500 BCE, amusingly one found in an area with strong currents, does not make for proof of a contemporary "city" whose outlines are supposed to be seen on some sonar pictures. Having secured this unique piece of "evidence," Frawley connects it straightaway with the "Harappan cities in 3300-1900 BCE" — conveniently forgetting that at 3300 BCE Harappa was just a village and that planned settlement with a grid network of streets began only by 2600 BCE.

Similarly shaky is another piece of early "evidence", that of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Maurya court (c. 300 BCE). He tells us that 153 Indian kings go back to c. 6700 BCE, thus, with Frawley, right back to a date "reflected in the Gulf of Cambay site." Ancient `kings' of what? Of Neolithic villages? Secondly, all such dynastic schemes are built, in India, on the principle of putting one dynastic list before another, even if these `royal' houses reigned as contemporaries (Witzel 1990). The application of the method could still be seen in process in the Rajatarangini of Kashmir, in M.A. Stein's time, a mere hundred years ago!

Just as his philological expertise, Frawley's historical acumen is seriously lacking. Yet, he has other arrows in his quiver, "material evidence", thus "hard core" natural science. That should convince us! Alas, his use of "material evidence" suffers from the same type of shortcomings, notably, a lack of scientific background reading and from misreporting. For example, I have never advocated "to separate Vedic culture from India" but I have described (also above!) the RV as an already genuine South Asian text of the Greater Panjab, even if its Indo-Iranian antecedents lie outside the subcontinent (but so does the Greek poetry of Homer, that is outside of Greece). I also do not subscribe to a "one shot argument" (note the Wild West terminology!) about missing Indus horses, "that not enough evidence of horses has been found in Harappan sites to prove a Vedic connection..." and I do not "ignore any other evidence to the contrary." There is, instead, a host of other evidence, from the lack in the Rigveda of Harappan style big cities, large buildings, great baths, ocean going ships, long distance trade, to a completely differing spiritual world (deities, myths, rituals).

As for the ever-elusive Harappan horse, Frawley believes that the "Rig Veda with its seventeen-ribbed horse (RV I.162.18) describes ... a native Indian breed and not any Central Asian or Eurasian horse that has eighteen ribs." Again, had he read the literature or even the Open Page this year, he would have seen that the number of ribs and lumbar vertebrae is not a genetic feature but a variable trait in horses, — as duly pointed out by me here between January and April. Incidentally, this is an interesting case. Over the past two years I have watched, with some amusement, how "Vedic Harappan" enthusiasts have convinced themselves on various email lists about this "native Indian horse with 17 ribs" — without any scientific study quoted; by now, it is part and parcel of "Sarasvati folklore" and Harappan "urban myth" — but it is not found in zoological handbooks.

It also is simply not true, as Frawley alleges, that there is "no trail of horse bones or horse encampments ... during the 1500-1000 BCE period," through Afghanistan/E. Iran, of the speakers of Indo-Aryan (Vedic). What about the finds of horses and horse implements exactly on the right track down from the steppes, at Pirak in E. Baluchistan (c. 1800 BCE) and in the Gandhara Grave Culture around 1400 BCE? Even though the area between E. Iran (Khorasan) and the Panjab plains is largely archaeologically unexplored for the mid-second millennium BCE, we already have the clearly intrusive Pirak and Gandhara cultures. (Steppe influence is also seen in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex). In addition, the study of male genes (Y chromosome) is now beginning to detail the ancient movements of groups and tribes. Further, comparative linguistics is beginning to provide a layer of loan words, found both in Old Iranian and Vedic, that have been taken over from the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (2400-1600 BCE), — that is before their respective movement into Iran and the Greater Panjab (Witzel 1995, 1999).

Therefore, instead of Frawley's supposed "smokescreen" of Indologists and historians denying to accept his supposed "no such break in the continuity" between the Indus and the Vedic cultures, his (pseudo-Vedic) Harappan "fire altars", the "shift of the centre of culture from the Sarasvati to the Ganga at the end of Vedic period," all these developments have their own explanations. This would need further discussion that cannot be given here in detail (but has been supplied already a year ago in EJVS 7-3, see http://users.primushost.com/india/ejvs/issues.html, a criticism that has not been dislodged by Frawley et al.). Frawley further alleges: "Witzel would have the Vedic people coming into India after the Sarasvati was already gone and yet making the river their ancestral homeland and most sacred region!" — This is, of course, not at all what I have written: the Rigvedic homeland of the Indo-Aryans was the Greater Panjab (Witzel 1995), and only post-Rigvedic economic, social and political processes in the emerging Kuru Realm were at the root of the shift of the Vedic "centre" to the Kuruksetra area, on the eastern outskirts of the Rigvedic Panjab (see Witzel 1997, further details in a book forthcoming in India). Frawley has not studied, or indeed read, about the complex forces at work during this foundational period of Indian civilisation that set the framework for most social and religious formations to come, — often until today (Witzel, EJVS 1-4, 1995, EJVS 5-1, 1999)

Frawley's `vision'

In the end, Frawley simply repeats his Mantra (mildly contradicting his own current fascination with a southern, oceanic Rigveda) that "We can no longer separate this great literature and this great civilisation, — particularly given that both were based on the Sarasvati River" ... "Vedic literature requires a great urban culture to explain it, just as the great Harappan urban culture requires a literature to explain it." This "vision" is plainly impossible: geographically there may be a degree of overlap, but it is one set apart by centuries of intervening cultural developments; and there is comparatively little overlap as far as the nature of the material and spiritual cultures of both civilisations are involved. (No one denies that certain Indus elements, particularly on the village and folk level, continue during the Vedic period).

However, in spite of some recent creative, but not philologically informed, writing to the contrary (such as seen in G.C. Pande, ed., The Dawn of Indian Civilisation, 1999), nothing in the Vedic texts indicates the Harappan urban culture reflected in archaeology. Just because the Indus Civilisation lacks large written texts (as seen in the Near Eastern, Chinese or the Maya cultures) this does not require this gap be filled by the next best texts, those of the Veda. Instead, the archaeological, literary and linguistic facts have to be accepted, even if they are not pleasant for one's fantasies of great post-glacial cities and the cradle of world civilisation in the Gangetic basin.

Thus, there is no need to lament with D. Frawley/Pt. Vamadeva Sastri: "It is sad to note how intellectuals in India are quick to denigrate the extent and antiquity of their history... I don't think there is any other nation on earth that would be so negative if such ancient glories were found in their lands." He again overlooks another important trait in Indian civilisation, present since the Rigvedic Brahmodya type discussions, that is a consistent spirit of inquiry and debate (vivaada). No one is convinced, as the constant back and forth on this very Open Page shows, by a monolateral and monolithic "vision" of an elusive Golden Age that is now increasingly imposed on schools and universities. (MICHAEL WITZEL Harvard University)

A maritime Rigveda? (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/06/25/stories/2002062500030200.htm)

MARINE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS IN THE GULF OF CAMBAY, GUJARAT (http://www.ias-del.org/arch/cambay.htm)

Harappan-like ruins in Gulf of Cambay (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/05/20/stories/0220000u.htm)

The Lost World (http://www.hvk.org/articles/0501/118.html)

a walk through lothal (http://www.harappa.com/lothal/text.html)

"Aryan-Dravidian divide is a modern political creation with no scientific or historical support."

Science on Aryan and Dravidians

Even fifty years after independence, it is unfortunate but true that Indians continue to view themselves and their history through colonial glasses. The education system for the most part continues to be based on the Macaulayite model. This is especially so in subjects like history, which include long discredited theories like the Aryan invasion and the Aryan-Dravidian conflicts. What is the truth? Here is what science has to say.

A recently published study comparing the genetic composition of Western Eurasian and Indian populations shows that the supposed Aryan invasion of India 3000 to 4000 years ago postulated by historians in the nineteenth century, and still found in many textbooks is contradicted by genetics. In articles that appeared in the British journal Current Biology, T.R. Disotell, T. Kivisild and their coworkers observe that the "supposed Aryan invasion of India 3000 - 4000 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed." A key mitochondrial DNA of the Western Eurasian strain accounts for at most 5.2 percent in Indian populations as compared to 70 percent in Europe. This rules out a recent common origin as postulated by the 'Aryan invasion'. Any split that occurred from a common population must have taken place more than 50,000 years ago, according to the study. This is in agreement with other genetic data, showing that there were major migrations out of Africa into Southeast Asia at approximately the same time. It is worth noting that according to a widely accepted theory, humans evolved in Africa and spread into other parts of the world beginning about 100,000 years ago. This was during the last Ice Age, when much of the Northern Hemisphere was uninhabitable due to extreme cold. The Puranas also record that during an extended cold period, people from all parts of the world sought shelter in India in caves and rock shelters. This goes to explain the presence of ancient cave- and rock art at places like Bhimbetka in Central India.

Here is something really interesting. The authors of the genetic study note that this West Eurasian strain is not only insignificant, but also present in roughly the same proportions in North and South India. This means that there is no correlation between the languages of the population and their supposed Eurasian origin. The 'Aryan invasion' theory holds that ancestors of speakers of 'Aryan' languages like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and others were Eurasian invaders, whereas speakers of 'Dravidian' languages of South India were the original inhabitants of India. The genetic study contradicts this by showing both to have the same insignificant proportion of the West Eurasian DNA strain. So, according to science, there is no Aryan-Dravidian divide.

The recent decipherment of the Indus script shows that these findings are in agreement with findings from archaeology. Jha and I have read more than 2000 Harappan seals and they show that the Vedic literature already existed by 3000 BC. The literary evidence of the Rigveda also contradicts any invasion from Eurasia. Some recent attempts to place the Rigvedic land in Afghanistan are seriously misguided. The Rigveda describes an established maritime society in which references to the ocean, ships and navigation are very common. It is not easy to see how such a society could flourish in land-locked Afghanistan. All in all both science and literature shatter the notion of any Aryan invasion. It is one of the aberrations of scholarship that belongs to what Millikan called 'pathological science'. Let us next look at its history and politics.

Aryans according themselves

The first point to note is that the idea of Aryans and Dravidians as separate, even mutually hostile people is of very recent origin. It is a creation of European scholars of the colonial era, having no basis in Indian history or literature. The Amarakosha, the authoritative lexicon of the Sanskrit language (5th century AD) defines Arya as mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah. This means that an Arya is one who hails from a distinguished family, and conducts himself with decency and gentleness. According to the Rigveda the "children of Arya follow the light", meaning they seek enlightenment. It has nothing to do with race, language or nationality. (Sanskrit has no word for race.)

This fact - that the Aryan-Dravidian theory was of recent origin - was noted by Dr. Ambedkar also. As he wrote: "All the princes, whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan race or the so-called Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question that never troubled the people of India, until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line."

This is supported also by the Manusmriti, another ancient authority. It tells us that Dravidians (in the geographic sense) are also Aryans who at one time had fallen from the Aryan fold when they stopped following certain Vedic practices and rituals. (Was this the reason that Sage Agastya went south of the Vindhyas, taking Vedic knowledge with him?) The Manusmriti has been revised many times to reflect changes in society and practices. In one particular place it describes Arya Desha as: "The land bounded by the mountain of Reva (Narmada), the Eastern Sea (Bay of Bengal) and the Western Sea (Arabian Sea) is Arya Desha. This is the land where black-skinned deer roam freely." That is to say, the Manusmriti identifies Arya Desha as none other than Peninsular India, which includes Dravidians. It also tells us that the inhabitants of this country are exemplary Aryans, worthy of emulation by all.

What this means is that the terms 'Arya' and 'Aryadesha' were assigned to people and their habitat depending on their conduct and culture - and not race or language. This also means that the assignment could change depending on whether the people had lapsed from their expected standards of behavior. So at the time when this passage in the Manusmriti was composed, the people of Peninsular India were considered exemplary Aryans. And this was because of their conduct - not language or race.

'Race science': Colonial-missionary politics

The notion of Aryan and Dravidian as separate races, though a colonial European imposition continues to influence intellectual discourse in India. This is unfortunate because it rests on scientifically discredited beliefs. Writing as far back as 1939, Sir Julian Huxley, one of the great natural scientists of the century, observed: "In England and America the phrase 'Aryan race' has quite ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge, though it appears occasionally in political and propagandist literature. In Germany, the idea of the 'Aryan' race received no more scientific support than in England. Nevertheless, it found able and very persistent literary advocates who made it appear very flattering to local vanity. It therefore steadily spread, fostered by special conditions."

Huxley was referring of course to the rise of Nazism around the notion of the Aryan race. It should make one suspicious of the motives of the English, who, while denouncing racial theories in Europe, continued to classify their Indian subjects along racial lines. It was simply a politically convenient tool in their 'divide and rule' strategy. They appealed to the vanity of one group to make them feel superior to others (but still inferior to the English). They knew well that it had no scientific basis, but found it a convenient tool for use in India!

British were by no means the only colonists to indulge in such propaganda in the name of 'science'. This idea of dividing a conquered people in the name of 'race science' was a standard ploy of colonial officials and Christian missionaries. Much of the bloodletting in ethnic conflicts in Africa today is due to such mischief. Speaking of the recent Hutu-Tutsi conflicts, the French anthropologist Jean-Pierre Langellier wrote: "The idea that the Hutus and the Tutsis were physically different was first aired in the 1860s by the British explorer John Speke… The history of Rwanda [like that of much of Africa] has been distorted by Pere Blancs [White Fathers] missionaries, academics and colonial administrators. They made the Tutsis out to be a superior race, which had conquered the region and enslaved the Hutus. …Missionaries taught the Hutus that historical fallacy, which was the result of racist European concepts being applied to an African reality. At the end of the fifties, the Hutus used that discourse to react against the Tutsis."

Sound familiar? The Aryan-Dravidian conflicts are a carbon copy of the same racist divide, convert and conquer policy. Fortunately that there is enough indigenous scholarship in India to fight and refute such political charlatanism, though it did succeed in dividing the people into mutually hostile camps. This was mainly due to the patronage extended to them by the ruling authorities - first the British and then the Marxist dominated Congress. Better sense is now beginning to prevail. But to their eternal disgrace, the 'Secularist' and Marxist historians of India continue to peddle this racist nonsense. They shall live in infamy.

The basic problem with these race theories is that they are based not on any laws of nature, but man-made classifications that use externally observable features. As one scholar put it: "The race concept has no scientific basis. Given any two individuals one can regard them as belonging to the same race by taking their common genetic characteristics, or, on the contrary, as belonging to different races by emphasizing the genetic characteristic in which they differ." As an illustration, instead of choosing skin- and eye color as defining parameters, if one were to choose height and weight, one would end up with African Zulus and Scandinavians as belonging to the same race. Noting such anomalies, Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, widely regarded as the world's foremost human geneticist, observed that such external features simply indicate changes due to adaptation to the environment. He points out that the rest of the genetic makeup of the human family hardly differs at all.

There are similar misconceptions about Aryan and Dravidan languages. The idea that different languages of a 'family' branched off from a single root language - sometimes called a proto-language - can be traced to the story of the Tower of Babel found in the Bible. Biblical beliefs like the creation of the world on October 23, 4004 BC have had great influence on the interpretation of Indian history and culture by nineteenth century Europeans. The great Max Muller himself admitted this Biblical belief was the reason why he used 1500 BC as the date of the Aryan invasion. W.W. Hunter, another well-known Indologist from the same period was even more candid when he wrote: "... scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian zeal."

To take an example, Murray Emeneau, a prominent Dravidianist, wrote as recently as 1954: "At some time in the second millennium BC, probably comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of speakers of an Indo-European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes. This is our linguistic doctrine, which has been held now for more than a century and a half. There seems to be no reason to distrust the arguments for it, in spite of the traditional Hindu ignorance of any such invasion." This is a statement based on faith that has no place in science.

Cultural differences

Culturally the differences that we find between North and South Indian temples can be attributed to the historical experience of the last few centuries. The Islamic onslaught destroyed centers of learning in North India. Alberuni who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni on his campaigns in India wrote: "Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there, wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions. ... Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion of all the Muslims. This is thereason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places, which our hand cannot yet reach."

A historical fact worth noting that the last great school of Indian mathematics flourished in far away Kerala in the 14-15th century, where Madhava and his students worked on problems of Calculus and Infinite Series more than two centuries before Newton and Gregory. India before the coming of Islam had many great centers of learning. Taxila, Nalanda, Vikramashila, Sarnath and many more used to attract students from all over the world. Following the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, for the next six hundred years, not a center of learning worth the name was established. (I leave out Islamic theological centers.) It was only in the nineteenth century that universities began to reappear.

As a result, the influence of Islam has been much greater in the North than the South. This resulted in a loss of tradition and skills, which had to be more or less re-acquired beginning in the 18th century. The main influence in the north has been of the Moghul Empire, while in the south it has been that of the Vijayanagar Empire and its successors like the kingdoms of Mysore, Travancore and Tanjavur. It would be a serious error to project this back into early history - something like projecting back the Portuguese influence on Goa into the remote past.

At the same time, the differences should not be exaggerated. For instance, in Kashmir, priests are recruited from Karnataka, while temples in Nepal have priests from Kerala. The very fact that Shakaracharya established centers in all corners of India shows that he was not considered an outsider by North Indians even in those days.

All this brings us back to politics as the main contributor to the Aryan-Dravidian divide including linguistics. The originator of the Dravidian language theory was Bishop Caldwell, the author of the highly influential Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856, 1875). He placed Dravidian languages in what he called the Scythian Language Family. When another linguist (Gover) criticized Caldwell for his unsound theories about the Scythian family and Dravidian languages, it drew the following response: "It would have been well, if Mr. Gover had made himself sure of perfectly apprehending Dr. Caldwell's Scythic theory before regarding its refutation ... as not only of considerable moment from a philological point of view but of vast moral and political importance."

By 'moral and political' he obviously meant Christian missionary and British colonial interests. To the disgrace of Indian education authorities and secularist scholars, this is still the version of history taught in Indian schools.

References

The Politics of History by N.S. Rajaram (http://www.swordoftruth.com/swordoftruth/archives/byauthor/navaratnarajaram/ootadd.html) (1995), New Delhi: Voice of India. 'The Vedic Dravidians' in A Hindu View of the World by N.S. Rajaram (1998), New Delhi: Voice of India.
_ _

spookz: Very interesting stuff imo, thanks for
posting it.

If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me a little
more about Gover and Bishop Caldwell? I am
not familiar with either of them so any info
would be greatly appreciated. :)

The age of colonialism may be over, but not that of neo-colonial Captive minds in India as elsewhere in the former colonial territories. Nations struggled for and won political liberation from imperialist thralldom. But their tertiary institutions of higher learning hardly ever (with rare indigenous exceptions) displayed any compelling urge to free themselves from the restrictive, eurocentric disciplinary paradigms inherited from western universities, or to delve into their own unique native spiritual, cultural and intellectual resources that, even if not altogether annulled, were rendered more or less otiose. And it was precisely from the corridors of domestic academia that the dangerous and divisive infection of captive minds spreads to all fields of the public life of a once subject nation.

India is a prime example of a once great civilization with an Incredibly rich spiritual, literary, artistic, cultural and intellectual heritage, not to speak of production, manufacturing and medical expertise; a heritage that Indian academic and political leaders honor more in the breach than in the observance. Nationalist rhetoric and ritual genuflection, with an eye on the voting predilections of a volatile electorate, are the best the politicians seem capable of. Most worrisome of all is that the infection has affected the perceptions and self-appraisal of large sections of the Indian national collectivity itself, despite the intuitive pronouncements of great spiritual leaders of the Indian renaissance like Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda
and Sri Aurobindo.

In the highly praiseworthy cause of countering and arresting Trends inimical to India's right development as a member of a global Community of nations, I am confident that your work is of crucial importance, not only for Indian and international practitioners of Indian insights (as in Auroville), but also for the Indian social/political/national collectivity itself. I am sure you will agree that our aim should be, not to denounce everything western, as there is much of great value in western achievements, particularly in the vital fields of modern science and technology, which are today inseparably part and parcel of the global heritage of mankind. On the contrary, your goal is to counter the threat to genuine globalization posed by the tendency in certain western academic quarters to denigrate eastern traditions, and to shamelessly appropriate, using different terminology and without due acknowledgement, the work of Indian pioneers in the important field, for instance, of the psychology of consciousness, and to present such clearly dishonest efforts as original western discoveries. That is intellectually dishonest, which deserves to be exposed and dissolved in the blinding glare of broad daylight. A genuinely global community of nations can and should only proceed on the basis of honest scholarship. Unmasking self-serving dishonesty in some areas of western or eastern scholarship is a service towards expediting the irreversible evolutionary process towards a genuinely united humanity.

To give just one illuminating illustration, we might mention the Nearly universal and quite uncritical acceptance by both Indian politicians and the generality of national and international academics, of the 19th Century myth of the "Aryan invasion of Dravidian India" and of the arbitrary classification of the population into Aryan and Dravidian ethnic types. The damage inflicted on the political perceptions of the population poses a threat to the very integrity of India as a unique political and cultural entity. Witness the two most dominant political parties of Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the ANNA DMK (the 'D' standing for 'Dravida'). They swallowed hook, line and sinker the shallow, ill-researched "findings" of 19th Century European Indologists. Even India's present national anthem perpetuates the Aryan/Dravidian divide by referring to 'Dravida'. It was a wrong-headed decision to discard the original national anthem "Vande Mataram" ('Salutation to the Mother' ®¢ for the land of Bharatmata was originally conceived, not as a merely secular/geographical abstraction, but as Mother India Herself). It was the mantric potency of "Vande Mataram" that ignited the fiery beginnings (1905-1910) of the Indian aspiration for complete independence from British rule after Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal. And the man who picked it out from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's classic Bengali novel 'Anandamath' was no less a leader than Sri Aurobindo himself. To the surprise and consternation of the British Viceroy and his officials, thousand-throated cries of "Vande Mataram" rent the skies of India during the inspiring beginnings in those dramatic years of the national independence struggle.

And what of the real intentions of these 19th Century western Gentlemen still so greatly revered by several leading Indian academics? In a marvelous book "THE INVASION THAT NEVER WAS" by Michael Danino/Sujata Nahar, published by THE MOTHER'S INSTITUTE OF RESEARCH in Delhi (1996), the best known icon of 19th Century Indology Max Muller was effectively demolished in his own words; hoisted on his own petard, as it were. I quote directly from Michael Danino: "Even the celebrated Max Muller (whose research work, interestingly, was commissioned and generously paid for by the East India Company after he had been engaged by Macaulay), wrote to his wife ((ref. Friedrich Max Muller, Life and Letters, Vol.1; London: Longmans, 1902, p328): 'This edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on 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, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has Sprung from it during the last three thousand years." So? The seemingly "impartial" scholar was in truth a Macaulayite tool for the accomplishment of grandiose imperial aims.

This plan misfired largely due to the great Indian savants (not academics, mind you!). The first to dispute the Aryan myth was Dayananda Saraswati. He rejected out of hand the whole 19th Century European view of the Veda. Here Michael Danino quotes Sri Aurobindo: "Dayananda seized justly on the Veda as India's Rock of Ages. In the matter of Vedic interpretation I am convinced that whatever may be the final complete interpretation, Dayananda will be honored as the first discoverer of the right clues." (ref: Sri Aurobindo, Centenary Edition 1972, Vol. 17, p. 334). Danino continues: "By the same token, Dayananda forcefully opposed the Christian missionaries' vilification of India's ancient culture, and engaged in public debates with some of them (with maulanas too), especially in Punjab where a wave of conversions had taken place."

Danino proceeds to quote: "Dayananda's performance in public debates not only stopped further conversions, but also gave birth to a new movement, 'shuddhi' (purification) of those who had been enticed away from Hindu society ...... It sent a wave of consternation through the missionary circles and restored Hindu confidence. In days to come, the missionaries became more and more reluctant to meet Dayananda in open forums."

Writes Danino: "With Vivekananda's deep knowledge not only of Hindu scriptures but of Western history and religions, he was quick to see the gaps in the Aryan edifice." In a lecture in USA, Vivekananda remarked scornfully: "And what your European Pandits say about the Aryans swooping down from some foreign land snatching away the land of aborigines and settling in India by exterminating them is all pure nonsense, foolish talk. Strange that our Indian scholars too say 'Amen' to them.... And all these monstrous lies are being taught to our boys." (Vivekananda Complete Works, Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1963; Vol. V, p. 534-535).

Danino goes on to write that in another lecture, this time in India, Vivekananda was in a more humorous mood, but mercilessly to the point: "Our [European] archaeologist dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryans came from, the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet, others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red-haired ....... If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes.... Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryan came from anywhere outside India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends. And the theory that the Shudra caste were all non-Aryans ..... is equally illogical and equally irrational..... The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else...... And the more you go on fighting and quarrelling about all trivialities such as 'Dravidian' and 'Aryan,' and the question of Brahmins and non-Brahmins and all that, the further you are from that accumulation of energy and power which is going to make the future India." (Vivekananda Lectures from Colombo to Almora; Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1992; p. 222, 230).

Coming to Sri Aurobindo's immense contribution, Danino writes: "A systematic refutation of the Aryan invasion theory had to wait until Sri Aurobindo. In 1910, after he had worked for a decade to awaken the spirit of independence in India, and spent a year in prison, he learned that the British had finally decided to deport him under new draconian laws (they regarded him as 'the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present"); leaving Bengal he sought refuge in Pondicherry, then a French possession. There, soon afterwards, he took up his study of the Veda....While readingthe Sanskrit text, he also came to question the European scholars' view of the Veda which, 'like the majority of educated Indians,' he had so far 'passively accepted without examination.' (ref. Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, Centenary Edition, vol. 10, p. 33-34). He soon realized that 'If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest to the philologist, the anthropologist and the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge and deep religious wealth is the most imposing and baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums. Is this, then, the last word about the Veda? Or is it not rather the culmination of a long increasing and ever progressing error?'" (Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, April 1985, p 27).

Danino: "With his usual keenness of vision, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'In India we have fallen during the last few centuries into a fixed habit of unquestioning deference to authority....... We are ready to accept all European theories, the theory of an 'Aryan' colonization of a
Dravidian India, the theory of Nature-worship and henotheism of the Vedic Rishis...... as if these hazardous speculations were on a par in authority and certainty with the law of gravitation and the theory of evolution.' (ref: Ibid., p 41). 'So great is the force of attractive generalizations and widely popularized errors that all the world goes on perpetuating the blunder talking of the Indo-Aryan races, claiming or disclaiming Aryan kinship and building on that basis of falsehood the most far-reaching political, social or pseudo-scientific conclusions.'" (Sri Aurobindo, the Origins of Aryan Speech, in The Secret of the Veda, op.cit., p. 193).

"How prophetic', writes Danino, "if we consider that this was written some twenty year before the growth of Nazism with its claims to 'Aryan kinship'! In his Secret of the Veda, which started appearing from 1914, Sri Aurobindo called on his fellow countrymen not to be 'haunted by the unfortunate misconstruction of the Veda which European scholarship has imposed on the modern mind.'" (The Secret of the Veda, op. cit., p 193).

Danino continues: "Taking a straight look at the original text, with no preconception, no a priori theory, Sri Aurobindo observed, 'it did not take long to see that the Vedic indications of a racial division between Aryans and Dasyus and the identification of the latter with the indigenous Indians were of a far flimsier character than I had supposed.'" (ref: Ibid., p 36). 'This division was "a conjecture supported only by other conjectures ...... a myth of the philologists". (ref: Ibid., p 40). "Sri Aurobindo added. 'The indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of such an invasion'" (ref: Ibid., p. 24). "Above
all, he wanted the Indians to develop their own independent judgment: 'A time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third rank and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes, we shall ..... question many established philological myths; the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedgeinto the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race ....(India's Rebirth, Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, 1993 , p 91-92) '".

Continues Danino: "Some eighty years later, we know that the 'wedge', driven now not only by scholars but also by politicians, has only gone absurdly deeper. Yet Sri Aurobindo's study of Tamil, which he did with the help of Subramania Bharati (the national poet of Tamil Nadu), led him to discover that the 'original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil tongues' was 'far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed' and that they were 'two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue'". (Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, op. cit., p 36). "The division between Indo-European and Dravidian languages had collapsed: 'My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.'" (ref: Ibid., p 46).

"Sri Aurobindo's study, however, led him to far more momentous results, for he recovered the long lost symbolism of the Veda, and brought to light the Rishis' extraordinary experience." These results,however, are of far greater value to living practitioners of Indian Yoga, than to academics, and recourse must be had to the major portion of Sri Aurobindo's "Secret of the Veda" for that purpose.

I make no apologies for continuing with quotes from Danina, for The good reason that they cannot be improved upon. He next writes: "The Question we should now ask is: Are our latter day historians, who still swear by Marx or Max Muller, or both, and often have a poor knowledge of Sanskrit and India's traditions, better equipped than a Swami Vivekananda or a Sri Aurobindo, with their depth of understanding and erudition, to tell us what the meaning of the Veda is and the conclusions we are to draw from it?...Yet it is not as if there were no scholars in India to agree with these great seers. We will cite here only two of these striking examples of genuine but ignored Indian scholarship.

"Some ten years after the serialization of the Sri Aurobindo's 'Secret of the Veda', R. Swaminatha Aiyar, a Tamil administrator, linguist and mathematician, carried out extensive research on the so-called Dravidian languages, but not 'without previously disposing of a large number of misconceptions and untenable theories about Dravidian languages and Dravidian culture, which have come into existence since the publication of Bishop Caldwell's 'Dravidian Grammar'. (Ref: R. Swaminatha Aiyar, Dravidian Theories (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1987). "After a thorough scrutiny of the grammar and roots of these languages, his conclusions confirmed Sri Aurobindo's own findings on the deep connection between Tamil and Sanskrit. Swaminatha Aiyar found most Dravidian verb forms of 'Indo-Aryan origin,' and that 'the basic portion of Dravidian vocabularies consists of words of Indo-Aryan origin though ..... these words have been greatly corrupted and are very difficult of recognition.' As N.S. Rajaram, also a mathematician and linguist from South India, remarks in a recent study, 'Dravidian languages are strongly inflected like Sanskrit, and cases and declensions
are also quite similar.... In some ways these so-called Dravidian languages have preserved ancient forms and usages from Sanskrit better than North Indian languages like Hindi.'" (N.S. Rajaram, The Politics of History, op. cit., p 175).

To continue with Danino. "B.R. Ambedkar is our second example. Known in India chiefly for his campaign in support of the lower castes (he himself was a Harijan) and his work on the Indian Constitution, it is often overlooked that in order to find out the truth of the European
Theories about Aryans and non-Aryans, high and low caste, he did precisely what Sri Aurobindo exhorted Indians to do: he went to the source, and studied the Veda for himself, with an open mind. His conclusions are unequivocal, though regrettably they are largely ignored by those who profess to follow his lead and who more often than not make a strident use of the very theories he sought to demolish: 'The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption that the Indo-Germanic people are the purest of the modern representatives of the original Aryan race. The theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions, and inferences based on such assumptions. The theory is a perversion of scientific investigation. It is not allowed to evolve out of facts. On the contrary, the theory is preconceived and facts are selected to prove it. It falls to the ground at every point.' (ref: B. R. Ambedkar, quoted by D.B. Thengadi in The Perspective [Sahitya Sindhu Prakashan]).

My conclusions are:

1.The Vedas do not know any such race as the Aryan race.
2.There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and it having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India.
3.There is no evidence to show that the distinction between Aryans, Dasas and Dasyus was a racial distinction.
4.The Vedas do not support the contention that the Aryans were different in colour from the Dasas and Dasyus.....If anthropometry is a science which can be depended upon to determine the race of a people..... (then its) measurements establish that the Brahmins and the Untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians, the Untouchables are also Dravidians.....' (B. R. Ambedkar, 'Writings and Speeches' [Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1986-1990], Vol. 7, p. 85 and 302-303, quoted in Koenraad Elst's Indigneous Indians, Agastya to Ambedkar, op. cit., p.410-411).

Danino completes this particular chapter of his book, thus: "Despite these remarkable protests, none listened; we Indians have long had the inexplicable habit of accepting change only if comes to us from the West. Yet in recent years, some voices have begun to be heard, both in the West and in India, asserting that the time has come to chuck out this worm-eaten theory once and for all. The cumulative evidence from all scientific branches of knowledge, especially archaeology, has become simply too overwhelming to be ignored, except for historians with dubious motives."

Voila! as the French would say. I have done my bit of 'nishkama karma' (desireless action) for your more than worthwhile cause in respect of at least the demolition of the fictitious Aryan/Dravidian divide Indian politicians and a good number of India's leading academics continue to subscribe to. There is no such thing as an "immortal bubble". This bubble too will one day burst for good and be seen no more.

You have other challenges to meet head on, by way of dissemination Of your objectives to opinion in India itself, but also among the Indian diaspora in the West, particularly in the USA. In the psychological field, as in the study of yet another speculative discipline like Indology, Ken Wilber and his undoubted intellect may be safely left to the attention of formidable Indian and non-Indian practitioners of Indian spiritual practices (these, incidentally, are not speculative, but experiential disciplines in which seekers consciously ascend and descend what Sri Aurobindo called the "ladder of consciousness"). Don Salmon, for instance, is himself a master in the same field as Wilber. But he also possesses an additional SOMETHING ELSE of one who devotedly treads the path of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Be assured that Mr. Wilber will by no means arrive at the stature of an Avatar. No barefaced plagiarist of ideas and conceptions ever did.

Warm regards and best wishes,

C. V. Devan Nair (http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_es/s_es_nair-d_minds.htm)

an outline of the pertinent points in this article would be appreciated
(having trouble deciphering it)

;)

DISCOVERY OF DRAVIDIAN AS THE COMMON SOURCE OF INDO-EUROPEAN (http://www.datanumeric.com/dravidian/page001.html)



The circumstances of the advent of Dravidian speakers in India are shrouded in mystery. There are vague linguistic and cultural ties with the Urals and with the Mediterranean area". There is also speculation that original Dravidians were a mix of Mediterraneans and Armenoids who moved towards India in the 4th millenium BC. "Along their route, these immigrants may have possibly come into an intimate, prolonged contact with the Ural-altaic speakers, thus explaining the striking affinities between Dravidian and Ural-Altaic language groups."[Encyclopædia Britannica Vol 22, Page 716 1989 Edition]

finno-ugric vs dravidian (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4737/dravid1.html)


So far the most ambitious, the most promising, and most convincing hypothesis is that of Uralian and Altaic relationship with Dravidian. Not only linguistic but anthropological, ethnographic, archeological and general historic considerations may point toward this direction. The hypothesis under the term "Scythian" was first proposed by Caldwell in 1856, and more serious attempts to support it and to develop it further were made by F.O. Schroder, T. Burrow, and K.Menges. Complete lexical evidences, plus the Keltiminar Culture (next to Aral Sea) of Khorezm points to the same important contacts between the "Ural-Altaian"and Dravidian peoples."

altaic vs dravidian (http://www2.4dcomm.com/millenia/dravdict.html)

Originally posted by EvilPoet
spookz: Very interesting stuff imo, thanks for
posting it.

If you wouldn't mind, could you tell me a little
more about Gover and Bishop Caldwell? I am
not familiar with either of them so any info
would be greatly appreciated. :)

All this brings us back to politics as the main contributor to the Aryan-Dravidian divide including linguistics. The originator of the Dravidian language theory was Bishop Caldwell, the author of the highly influential Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1856, 1875). He placed Dravidian languages in what he called the Scythian Language Family. When another linguist (Gover) criticized Caldwell for his unsound theories about the Scythian family and Dravidian languages, it drew the following response: "It would have been well, if Mr. Gover had made himself sure of perfectly apprehending Dr. Caldwell's Scythic theory before regarding its refutation ... as not only of considerable moment from a philological point of view but of vast moral and political importance."

By 'moral and political' he obviously meant Christian missionary and British colonial interests. To the disgrace of Indian education authorities and secularist scholars, this is still the version of history taught in Indian schools.



as in personal history? google turns up nothing relevant. (its the library for you)

as to their roles in colonial india..... caldwell appears to be establishing the antiquity of the dravidian languages which did not sit too well with gover and the brits who asserted the primacy of indo aryan language. the "scythian language family" refers to a connection b/w altaic (hungarian..) and dravidian languages. gover wrote a book " The Unanticipated Legacy of Robert Caldwell and the Dravidian ... ".
i would like to know what this legacy is

apologies for the paucity of info, but i too, am learning as i post

;)

Originally posted by spookz
as in personal history? google turns up
nothing relevant. (its the library for you)

Funny you should bring up the library, I have
some books that need to be returned and was
planning on going next week.

As far as paucity goes, better a paucity of info
then none at all. Thanks again spookz. :)

I Thought these excerpts might be of interest:

"For something like half their history, there are few written
records we can usefully turn to in following the Gypsies' trail.
Then once historical references do begin to accumulate, they
invariably come from outsiders, and may have been written in
ignorance, prejudice and incomprehension.
'The true history of the Gypsy race is in the study of their
language', declared one great scholar. Indubitably, the study of
Romani can reveal a great deal about the origin and evolution of
the language itself. How far that can be equated with the origin
and evolution of Romani-speakers is a more speculative matter,
and the equivalence cannot be taken for granted. None the less,
in seeking to fill the initial void, we now have to turn to
philological analysis, in order to test how far linguistic inference
can make good what history has failed to record."


"A number of the languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent
do not belong to the Indo-European family. The most important of
these are Dravidian tongues of southern and central India and Sri
Lanka (e.g. Telugu and Tamil), which are survivors from the
India into which the Aryan newcomers advanced. There have
been suggestions that Romani may have branched off from the
main Indo-Aryan migration before it entered the subcontinent.
However, Sanskrit contains lexical borrowings from Dravidian,
which once extended much further north, and few of these are
found in Romani. It follows that the separation between Romani
and other Indo-Aryan tongues occurred within Indian territory."

Source:
The Gypsies
by Angus Fraser

From Europe I follow the roads of the Roma into the orient: to Armenia and Iran where the Sassanids once ruled, and before them the Achaemenids. From here the road leads to another land where the Indus-river flows to the land where the Kushans once held sway. (From Leksa Manus's poem The Roads of the Roma)

The Romanies are a people living in Europe and elsewhere who, it is generally believed, originate from India. Most of them still speak one of the many dialects of the Romani language. In the past, many, though not all, were nomadic, travelling with their families with carts and tents, and later with caravans. They were not only nomads with cattle but did a variety of jobs. Others have been settled in the same place for centuries. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945 most governments in Europe have been trying to get the nomadic Romanies to settle down.

On many occasions I have been asked by Romanies about their early history and I have had to reply that there was nothing easily available which told the story [in full]. Now, there is.

When the Romanies first came to Europe they still preserved a vague memory of an Indian homeland. One of the outriders who came to Spain in advance of the main companies of migrants called himself Count Thomas of Sabba in India while in Italy the fact that they came from India was recorded by a local historian. In spite of this, many other theories were bandied around concerning the origin of the newcomers and even today we cannot be sure of the circumstances of the Romanies' departure from India.

In western Europe the Romanies stood out as different. All the early chroniclers drew attention to the blackness of the newcomers, at a time when there were few black faces to be seen and, as Henriette Asseo writes in the Preface, many fantastic theories were put forward. In eastern Europe no-one seems to have taken much interest in where the Romanies came from, or - if they did - no record of the discussion has survived.

My own hypothesis is that the Romany people formed outside, rather than inside, India; that Indian immigrants from various tribes intermarried and intermixed in Persia forming into a people there with the name Dom (or Rom), and that a larger number of them then moved into Europe and their descendants are the Romany Gypsies of today.

In this new/Romani edition I therefore reprint my survey of the various groups who emigrated westwards from India. The original source for my work is M.J. de Goeje's lecture in Amsterdam in 1875 the text of which is hard to find and not easy to follow when found. I have gone back to his original Arabic and Persian sources. The general reader might like to leave the rest of this introduction for later study and start with Chapter One.

The companies that arrived in Western Europe in the 14th century said they had come from Little Egypt - an area in Greece - and this became confused with Egypt itself. The migration of the Gypsies became confused with that of the Israelites.

With the Indian connection forgotten, historians and geographers strove for three centuries to reconstruct another origin. Most tried to fit the tribe into what was then considered as the history of the world contained in the first book of Moses, Genesis.

One story saw the first Gypsy as the son of Eve, from her mating with Adam after his death. The fact that such a person's offspring would not have survived the flood was conveniently ignored.

Agrippa wrote in 1530: Those people (the Gypsies) coming from a region lying between Egypt and Ethiopia, descendants of Chus, son of Ham son of Noah, still bear the mark of the curse of their progenitor.

Yet others have seen in Tubal Cain and his half-brother the ancestors of the Gypsies. As the Book of Genesis puts it (chapter iv verses 19-22): Lamech took unto him two wives and the name of the one was Adah and the name of the other Zillah. And Adah bore Jubal. He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah she also bore Tubal Cain, a instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.

Another theory which is still believed by many today is that the Romanies are descended from Abraham's children by his second wife, Keturah. She bore him six children Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbah and Shuah (Gen xxv 1,2). Their descendants later accompanied the Israelites when they left Egypt for the Old Testament says: and a mixed multitude went up also with the Children of Israel. (Exodus xii.38)

Other stories said the Romanies were descendants of a prehistoric people, or a race of Jews who later became mixed with Christian vagabonds. In the Turkish-occupied Balkans the story was told that the first Gypsy was born from a union between a brother Chen and his sister Guin, hence the Turkish name for the Romanies, Cingene.

Yet others did not believe that the Romanies existed at all as an ethnic group. They were ordinary citizens who had darkened their skin with walnut oil. Archbishop Cajanus issued an order that Gypsies must not blacken their children's faces.

It was not until around 1780 that a number of scholars discovered that the Romani language was closely related to North Indian languages such as Punjabi and Hindi. Following this discovery they naturally assumed that the Gypsies had migrated from India, and the ground for speculation was narrowed. The German Heinrich Grellman, in a much translated and widely circulated book, established that the Romanies were an ethnic group.

Early in the twentieth century the compiler of a comprehensive grammar and dictionary of the Gypsies of Wales - John Sampson - had a simple explanation for the arrival of the Romanies in Europe. This was based on a comparison of the phonetics of Romani and Indian languages. According to Sampson, a company of the caste known as Dom left India, and spent some time in Persia and the borders of the Mediterranean (the "D" is a particular d with the tongue turned upwards typical of Indian languages). The Dom settled there and are known as Dom to this day. The company then moved in to Armenia. Again some settled and these are known as Lom (or Bosha) - the initial D of their name changing to L under the influence of Armenian. The rest moved into Europe where the D became R (still with the tongue turned up!) and later a gutteral sound and these are the Rom or Romanies of Europe.

There was much discussion amongst John Sampson and his colleagues in the Gypsy Lore Society on which part of the Indian sub-continent the Romanies had occupied before leaving for the west. At times the debate was quite heated, but there was little opposition to the "Dom theory" itself.

After 1945 doubts were expressed concerning Sampson's derivation of the name Rom. Other etymologies than Indian Dom were proposed such as Ramta (wandering). Very recently Dr. Ian Hancock of Texas has shed doubt on the Dom-Lom-Rom link.

In recent years a new interpretation of all the documentation has emerged, the so-called Rajput theory, first put forward in the writings of the Latvian Romany Dr. Jan Kochanowski and the Indian linguist W. R. Rishi. Rishi describes how Prithviraj Chauhan organised a confederation of Rajput clans to fight the Muslim invader, Muhammed Ghori. In 1192 the Rajputs were defeated and, as Rishi writes: Prithviraj's defeated army split up into three groups. The third group, which called themselves Romane Chave (the sons of Rama), set off across Afghanistan towards Europe. These Rajput emigrants were joined by men and women from many other population groups that had been attached to the army, such as blacksmiths, astrologers and musicians, as well as some bear leaders and potters.

In the most up-to-date version of this viewpoint, as presented by Dr. Hancock, himself of Romany origin, the emigrants were not defeated soldiers but a victorious army. He also places the emigration some hundred years earlier. He writes that the Kshtatriyya warrior caste did not in fact fight but organised other people to fight for them. So, the rulers of India assembled troops from different ethnic groups to fight the Muslim invaders, in particular the army of Mahmud of Ghazni. In 1015 Mahmud's soldiers were defeated and retreated to the west followed by the victorious Indian troops - the early Roma - who eventually crossed over into south-eastern Europe about the year 1300.

Other theories have emerged. Ronald Lee/Derek Tipler (?) held that the Romanies formed as a nation outside India, then immigrated to India and finally emigrated from there. Robert Moreau has an unusual theory - that the Romany people emerged from a mixture of different tribes held as slaves by Tamburlaine in an internment camp near Samarkand. In Montenegro until recently people thought that their local Gypsies were the descendants of a Serbian warrior named Vuk Brankovic.

A very recent political movement, that of the so-called Egyptians of the Balkans, has a different explanation. They claim that four centuries before Christ, their ancestors emigrated from Egypt to Greece and founded a region called Little Egypt. From there they migrated to Macedonia and Kosovo. They do not speak Romani and see themselves as a different group from the Romanies who live in the same regions.

If there is any truth in this story, then we need to at least consider whether the nomadic groups which came to western Europe in the 15th century were Egyptians or Romanies. They said they came from Little Egypt and we have no record of their speech. They may have been driven back to the east by harsh legislation at the end of the century and succeeded by industrial nomads of Indian origin.


Denial of the Indian Origin

Finally a small group of sceptic academics in western Europe have returned to mediaeval ideas and reject the idea of an Indian homeland and see Gypsies as Europeans who were socially excluded. Most of them conveniently ignore the existence of both the Romani language, which in most countries is preserved as a fully fledged language with its own grammar and sound system, and the massive Romany communities in eastern Europe.

The Dutchman Wim Willems accepts at least that Gypsies exist: "The history of the persecution of persons and groups . . . labelled [as Gypsies], continuing as it does in the present, is already in itself sufficient to establish the reality of their existence beyond denial." However, he claims that at the end of the eighteenth century a widely read writer called Grellman "constructed a Gypsy identity which previously had not existed as such."

In Holland, too, Luc Lucassen suggests that the emergence as a group of the Kalderash, Lovara, Ursari and Sinti clans in the period 1400-1900 is more a result of their being labelled as being different than because they actually are different from the general population. In one of his books he looks at three groups of nomads who arrived in the Netherlands towards the end of the 19th century and claimed that they were called Gypsies (Zigeuners) by the authorities not because they were Gypsies but because they resembled nomads called Gypsies who had come to Holland in the fifteenth century. The groups were Bosnian and Piedmontese animal trainers, and the Coppersmith Kalderash. The last named visited other countries and in England contemporary scholars took the trouble to record their language which was clearly Romani.

Lucassen further claims that "English anthropologists and sociologists reject the notion that Gypsies are a separate race of people." He is referring particularly to the anthropologist Judith Okeley who worked as a site warden in Hertfordshire, England and whose early works are based on the families she met there. They seem to have intermarried considerably with native English and, as a result, were not particularly Indian looking. They also did not speak Romani but a variety of English with Romani words. On the basis of this Dr. Okeley decided that all English and Welsh Gypsies are of local origin. Their grandparents perhaps somehow had learnt Romani when during a visit to the continent of Europe they met some Indian merchants. They managed to learn this complex language which has more case endings than Latin and a subjunctive verb during these contacts. Judith Okeley writes: "It may be the case that groups of so-called 'Egyptians' were composed of largely disenfranchised and indigenous persons. In this case they may have adopted an exotic nomenclature, parts of a second secret 'language' - either a creole or pidgin which had crossed many national frontiers of Europe; and exploited certain occupations such as fortune telling and entertainment which were consistent with a magical mysterious nomenclature."

When Dr. Okeley was later confronted with dark-faced Bosnian asylum seekers in London she was not shaken in her ideas and wrote: Although Mr. X was dark his wife might have been white.

Finally, I should at least mention the French writer of the volume Tsiganes in the Que saisje series, and the linguist Paul Wexler who maintains that Romani is a European language, in spite of its large basic vocabulary of Indian origin.

The vast majority of scholars, however, adhere to the theory of the Indian origin of the Romanies. In these pages I will show how a large number of different people migrated from India westwards, through Persia and on to the shores of the Mediterranean. It was once supposed that the Romanies of Europe belonged to one group in India and moved as a unit westwards. My own belief is that the Indian immigrants from various tribes intermarried and intermixed in Persia forming into a people there, with the name Dom or Rom and that a large number of them then moved into Europe and their descendants are the Romany Gypsies of today. Donald Kenrick (http://www.domresearchcenter.com)

language (http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/language.htm)

holocaust (http://www.uwlax.edu/ereserves/cox/soc225/gypsies.htm)

interestingly enough, very little mention is made of the gypsies that still live in india.


LOHAR - Itinerant blacksmiths who used to be great warriors making their own weapons. Legend has it they originated in Chittorgarh but were defeated in the siege of that city in 1308. They then became nomadic. They are most famous for their beautiful wagons, the only Gypsy tribe today in India who still have their wagons. Many of the other tribes/castes listed below followed the Lohars on foot or with just a donkey or mule. In 1322 the first Gypsies were documented in Eastern Europe.

DOM – one of the few original Dravidian tribes of India, these people became nomadic after the invasion of the Aryans around 1,500 B.C. Although the Dom once had forts and were famous for their cavalry, they were designated as the lowest caste under the Aryans and became wandering dancers and musicians. Most of the following tribes are sub-caste of the Dom.

BAWARI - known as a nomadic, predatory tribe, the Bawari still to this day make signs on houses, gates, or alongside the road that can only be read by their own tribe informing them of conditions in the area. Many of these same signs were used by the European Gypsies up to the 1950s.

BADU - a small tribe in Kashmir who tamed and led bears. In the last century their dress was the most similar to the European Gypsies.

MEOS - famed cattle rustlers whose activities and customs closely resembled the Indian Gypsies who settled in England.

BERIA - a sub-caste of the Dom, this is the tribe whose women read palms and tell fortunes.

GOPAL - nomadic tent dwellers who earn their living as wrestlers in local fairs. Many European Romany were famous as wrestlers and their descendants today can always be found in Olympic wrestling teams.

BANSBERIA - famous in India as pole vaulters over animals in village fairs. The first bullfighters on foot in Spain were reputed to be Gypsies who also pole vaulted over charging bulls in the bullring.

KANJAR - one of the more despicable tribes of India because they prostitute their women. Their name has become synonymous for "pimp".

SANSI - closely related to the Kanjar, the Sansi were one of the most famous criminal tribes of India during the colonization by the British.

GANDHILA - one of the lowest castes of India, they are well known as itinerant sharpeners of scissors and knives, a profession followed by many European Gypsies.

BILOCH - camp followers of the Lohar who transported their supplies. They are reputed to have a Persian origin.

KIKAN - famous horse breeders whose origins can be traced back to Iran, this tribe arrived with the invading Islamic armies in the 11th century. Known for their predatory ways, they were expelled from the Lahore area in the 12th century and then joined other nomadic, criminal tribes before leaving India almost en mass with Lohars in the 14th century. The Kikans brought to India the story of Abraham. According to them, Sarah, Abraham's wife, was a Kikan. In many European countries, Gypsies are called Tsikans.

http://www.paulpolansky.nstemp.com/gypsies.htm

http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/people/lambani.htm

The largest group of Gypsies in India are the Lambadi (or Gormati) Gypsies. Other groups living there include the Tamil Nomads, the Indian Gypsies, the Kanjari, and the Baiga. Although these Gypsy groups are spread throughout India, most of them are concentrated in such areas as Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Utter Pradesh, Madras, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh. The Arhagar Gypsies also live in neighboring Pakistan.

These groups, as well as other Gypsies around the world, are linked linguistically. All of the Gypsy languages belong to the North Indo-Aryan language family. When Gypsies began traveling from India to different regions of Europe hundreds of years ago, different dialects of their language (Romany) emerged. Each dialect became classified by the region in which a particular group settled.

What Are Their Lives Like?
Most Indian Gypsies have olive skin, dark hair, and brown eyes. Many believe they are descendants of the Rajputs of medieval India. These were a people who had been expelled from their homeland by Muslim invaders. They were used as grain-carriers and weapon-makers for Muslim troops. The Rajputs wandered throughout India and beyond, as a destitute, ignored, and misunderstood people. Their only valuables were the tools used in their specialized professions. Today, their descendants, the Gypsies, are widespread throughout India. They have maintained a mystical lifestyle that keeps them somewhat socially separate from their surrounding communities.

Not only do the Indian Gypsies usually have more than one occupation, but they also use additional skills to supplement their incomes. Some specialize in making such items as broomsticks, iron tools, and needles. They may also repair tool or work with stone. Other Gypsies are Hindus who believe that one does not have to work for a living, but may gain income by "religious begging." They sing songs and wear special make-up while begging in the name of a specific deity. Acrobats, magicians, tricksters, story-tellers, fortune-tellers, and the like may also polish cattle horns or work as blacksmiths. Some groups have even developed the art of tattooing. Nevertheless, these various occupations are used only when the region's people have a need for them. A Gypsy will change occupations and activities, adapting to a changing society's needs, because they depend on the people in that society for their livelihood. A Gypsy will only settle down when he cannot adapt to the needs of the region. Some of these "settled" Gypsies now live as farmers.

While some Gypsies travel throughout the year, others travel only part of the year, returning to their home camps periodically. Some live in houses similar to those of the region, but many use their wagons or bull carts as dwelling places, and some live in mobile homes. Few travel by foot or on horseback, since they cannot afford such "luxuries."

Typically, Gypsies have very unclean living habits. Sanitation and good hygiene are rarely practiced. Indian Gypsies believe that babies are to be born "into the lap of mother earth." For this reason, a woman will have her baby while lying on a rug on the ground. Children are often poorly cared for; their hair hangs loosely and shoes are seldom worn.


i cant resist posting this link! (http://www.ubalt.edu/kulanu/gypsies.html)

this shit is really more human science that e philosophy

:)

So you thought all of your ancestors were blue eyed blonds from northern Europe, did you? Maybe you thought all Europeans were thus? Herein you will find just a smidgen of the ethnic diversity contained within these North American shores, and perhaps you will find clues to your elusive ancestor or family member.

We have more ethnic diversity from the Colonial Era than you may have realized. There were Roma, or Gypsies as they are more commonly called by non-Gypsies, in the Americas along with the very earliest settlers. There are legends of the Portuguese "dumping" Gypsies at what is now Port Royal, SC, before the English came. This may be the origin of the Melungeons (who are probably not Roma, but may be.). Roma and Irish Travellers have been discriminated against to the point that they keep to themselves. Roma, or Gypsies, are from India, migrating to, and through, Europe in the Middle Ages. We here provide a gathering place for Gypsies and Irish Travellers in all of the Americas, for those of us with known or suspected blood connections, and for the so called "Free Moors of SC." If you check the Ellis Island link below, be warned that there is no ethnic group in these records for Roma or Gypsy. None of the few thatI can identify are flagged in any way. We welcome oral tradition! We welcome submissions from all of the Americas. I here emphasize the Americas because European Roma are generally well represented on the web sites mentioned herein (e.g. Patrin web site - off site).

Some of us have known or suspected bloodlines from Gypsies (Roma), Romanichals (English Roma), and Irish Travellers. In my family, our elusive (German Roma) ancestor was stated to be an (American) "Indian," perhaps because this was thought more "acceptable." Our main line in my family is (German) Herron, and the wagon in the upper right is an English Heron family wagon. Roma and Irish Travellers generally only marry within themselves, or, outsiders are brought into the Roma or Traveller family and made a part of it. Nonetheless, for various reasons, some of us have Roma bloodlines, and we often learn of them by accident. Often these lines result from Roma who find themselves isolated by disease or accident, and merge into the Gadjo background. We would otherwise be characterized as Gadjo - non-Gypsies, and are ignorant of this part of our heritage.

Mostly because of past and present persecutions and prejudice, despite that fact that they are nearly everywhere, Roma and Travellers prefer to remain anonymous and unrecognized, except to each other. They are your unsuspected neighbors. They are an unknown proud minority. These circumstances make it difficult for those with bloodlines to obtain information on their elusive ancestors. I shall try to keep this web site useful for Roma, Travellers, and non-Roma with known or suspected bloodlines. We mention the Melungeons, for clarity, and include the SC "Free Moors," who are not Roma, but otherwise have no web home.

Roma, or Gypsies, have clear origins in India, early characterized by Europeans as possessing dark skin and black hair. A thousand years of co-existence in Europe has resulted in some integration and today Roma may be found in all sizes, and with all shades of skin and hair. The Patrin web site (off site) has excellent information primarily from a European perspective.

Irish Travellers, on the other hand, while often characterized as "Gypsy" by Gadjo (non-Gypsies), are from Ireland, and are Celts, or perhaps pre-Celt, according to their ancient lore. They tend to be very fair of complexion. Travellers Rest (off site) is an excellent starting place. Here are some pictures of a Settlement of Irish Travellers.

Melungeons are of unkown origin, but apparently may very well have been in the Southeast before the first English settlers. Linda Griggs describes them as: "olive complected, dark eyed, dark skinned people living in Appalachia," in her article, WAYFARING STRANGER. Modern genetic studies suggest kinship with the Middle East.

Free Moors & Turks. South Carolina had significant ethnic diversity during colonial times. The "Free Moors" of SC had been sold into slavery in the Middle East, brought to north America as slaves from Africa, earned their freedom, and petitioned the legislature that they not be carried off again into slavery. The "Turks" of Sumter County were either pirates, or escaped from pirates, according to General Sumter. We are here slowly accumulating source documents on these people


http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/index.html

Originally posted by spookz
this shit is really more human science
that e philosophy:)
Perhaps it is a little of both mixed together.
Dunno. I will tell you one thing this stuff is,
it's complicated. :bugeye:

I am not an archaeologist and not even am a student of History. My two post graduate degrees have nothing to do with history or archaelogy. But I have never found mental acceptance to the various theories of Aryan invasions into India right as they were drilled into from school days.
I hail from a village/town of coastal South India, once a seat of Buddhist learning (yet hardly explored).
One might dub it as gut feel on this scientific forum, but the truth remains that gut feels develop based on innumerable pieces of environmental observations gathered over time. The culture in my village is so intrinsic that it can never come through nomads, even it were a million years ago. The affinity to the soil is boundless- people would die but not leave the place. This kind of culture may never develop in nomads. One can only feel - not reason it. And if the people here were indeed settlers, why do they lack the violent killing instinct that the people of central asia possess?
One basic assumption that I never understand is why Indians have to be migrants at all- be it 5000 years or 50000 years back. A rich tropical climate, water, oceans - why could not man have moved all over the world from South India for that matter? - with the richest of mental evolution that even rustic people of this region seem to have.
As a culture that records whatever war happened- Ramayana or Mahabharata, is it possible that if ever such invasions ever happened, they would pass off without even a reference anywhere? Please be reminded that all history here is perpetuated on as folklore.
On the Aryan and Dravidian divide, is it not possible that the many differently evolved subraces separated by the mountain ranges had coexisted? For example, could the northern Rama have been helped by the southern race (that was seen as a monkey race for the difference in physical appearance) in defeating another southern subrace of Ravana?. Could such intermingling have allowed the mutual acceptance of Gods across the mountains? - Rama from north and Hanuman from south?
Remember that Rama and Ravana were both contenders at Sita's swayamvaram? And couldn't Vedas be a common source of knowledge for all the subraces? What would answer that both Rama and Krishna were dark skinned even in the North? Or was it that suras in the north fought with the asuras of the south? especially because the primary reason for killing the asuras was no more than following a different faith than Vaishnavism?
I strongly feel (again a gut) that there should be seats of independent civilization in South India which are not explored and unfortunately are not cared for either. If we have lost them, sad; but I hope some resolve on this will rewrite Indian history.
And kudos to David Frawley & spookz- you said it!

SrinivasAG

It all depends on how old the human civilization is in India. I think, Ramayan was set in Treta Yuga, which puts it about 2 million years ago. Modern science says we are only about 100,000 years old out of which civilization is only 15,000 years old. If we can find proof that civilized man existed for over 2 million years - the whole dynamics of settlement could change. The problem is over that time period, no artifacts could exist that had not been recycled.

If the undersea items were found to have re-enforced concrete or advanced materials that have been preserved, then it would be interesting.

In a tropical climate, life can go on for many thousand years, without much paradigm shift. May be it is time to start digging or diving in India....to find out exactly where the history leads to....

The easiest of parallels to be drawn between the Celtic and Vedic peoples must be that of the Druids and the Brahmins. The Druids and the Brahmins were both the priests and philosophers of their respective cultures. Both orders of priests were the wise ones of their lands, the seers and teachers, to whom warriors and kings turned for counsel and advice. They were free to wander the lands, as many of India's holy men still do, and, according to Caesar's writings, the Druids were "held with great honour by the people".

One of the most striking comparisons to be found between the Celtic and Vedic pantheon is that of a Goddess named Danu and the myths surrounding her (also known in Celtic traditions as Don, Dana and possibly also Anu or Ana). A Goddess named Danu appears both in Celtic and Vedic mythology. She features heavily in Celtic mythology as the Mother Goddess (and a river Goddess). She is one of the most ancient known of all Celtic Goddesses, from whom the hierarchy of Gods received it's name of Tuatha De Danann, "Folk of the Goddess Danu". Whereas in Vedic mythology the Goddess Danu gives birth to the seven Danvanas, the dark ones of the ocean. Surrounding the Goddess Danu in each culture's mythology is a similar tale of battle, each of which I shall briefly relate now

Some of the most auspicious places of worship for the Celtic and Vedic peoples were rivers. As already mentioned the Celtic Goddess Danu is particularly associated with rivers, she was the "divine waters" falling from heaven. From these waters the great Celtic river, once known as Danuvius, presently known as the Danube, was created. Many rivers in Europe still owe their current name to their associations with the Goddess Danu, such as the Rhone. In both Celtic and Vedic cultures offerings were often placed in rivers and those of the Celts were especially elaborate. The Celts would often offer much of their riches and treasures, sometimes approximately 25% of a tribe's economy would be given to the Gods at any one time.

In the falling of the Danu river we find a parallel to the an India Goddess and the most holy of rivers in India today, the Ganges. In Puranic mythology the Goddess Ganga's fall to earth was broken by the matted locks of Shiva (known as Rudra in the Vedas), who then released her to fall on the earth. The river which is venerated in the Rig Veda is that of the Sarasvati. Like Danu and Ganga, Sarasvati is the name of a Goddess, as well as a river. However the Sarasvati river is thought to have dried up and it is from that time the Ganges has fulfilled her river role.

The Celtic Vedic Connection: Part 1 (http://www.geocities.com/indianpaganism/celticvedic.html)


What the Indus Valley seals of the horned God suggest is that there is an undeniable connection between the horned God Pashupati and the horned God of the Celts, Cernunnos. This connection between the two is best illustrated by comparing a couple of the Indus Valley seals to the depiction of Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron (dated between 4th - 1st Century BCE).

The Horned God in Indian & Europe (http://www.geocities.com/indianpaganism/hornedgod.html)


Webster’s Dictionary gives the etymology of the word "Dravidian" as stemming from the Sanskrit term Dravida, meaning the dark-skinned people of southern India. But from whence did the term Dravida come? Is it too far-fetched to surmise that it too came from the Indo-European roots dru and vid? Did both the terms "Druid" and "Dravidian" originally refer to priests and priestesses of the Horned God and the Great Goddess whom our Indo-European ancestors encountered in the course of their migrations - to all the wise ones who worshipped in no temple, but under the oak tree? Although the Indo-Europeans originally worshipped only male sky gods, like all nomadic polytheistic religious groups they eventually absorbed the aboriginal deities into their own beliefs. In my viewpoint, the linguistic and archaeological evidence all seemed to illustrate that the Indo-Europeans, in spite of their patriarchal bias toward male sky gods, were somewhat in awe both of the power of the Goddesses they confronted in their travels and of the priests and priestesses who presided at their rituals.

So here is one parallel between the Celtic mysteries and the Hindu tradition: The Indo-Europeans, traveling in opposite directions to two vastly different areas - India and Britain - found in both those areas a widespread cult which worshipped the Great Goddess and her consort, the Horned God. The aboriginal cults held their rites in oak groves and were presided over by a group of priestesses and priests who greatly impressed the invaders with their power and thus earned for themselves a title encompassing their reverence for the oak tree and their esoteric wisdom.

The Indo-Europeans may have been patriarchal, but they were impressed enough by the religion of the people they joined to absorb it into their own. In Britain, although sects worshipping male sky gods such as Mabon, Taranis, and Mac Lir certainly existed, the deities most highly honoured were Anu or Danu, the Triple Goddess, and Herne, the Horned God. In India, the sky gods Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni and Surya gradually fell from favor and were replaced in the esteem of the general populace by the cult of Shiva and Shakti, impersonal godheads rooted in the ancient tradition of the Great Goddess and her consort, the Horned God. Even today, the god Shiva is depicted with his forehead marked with the two horns of the crescent Moon.

There were other gods and goddesses which paralleled each other. The Dravidian war god is called the Murúgan; the Celtic war goddess the Morrigan. The Triple Goddess was not the only Trinity worshipped by the pagan Celts; there was also the Triple God, illustrated by the images of Merlin at different times of his life: as the young prophet, challenging the priests of King Vortigern; as the mature man serving King Arthur; and as the aged hermit, retreating into the forests with his consort, Nimuë. In India, the Triple Goddess was worshipped in the form of Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity; Saraswati, goddess of wisdom; and Parvati, goddess of strength. The Triple God took the form of the Trinity: Brahman, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Shiva, the Destroyer.

The basic philosophy behind both religions shows a great deal of similarity as well. The most popularly-studied tracts outlining Hindu philosophy (besides the Vedas, which are actually considered pre- or proto-Hindu, and the epic poems) are the Yoga Sutras and the Upanishads. All emphasize the oneness of all life forms in the Universe with the Absolute, the Ultimate Source of all. Pagan Celtic poetry, particularly the enigmatic Song of Taliesin, also emphasizes this oneness: "I am a wind of the Sun; I am a wave of the Sea; I am the Moon and the Stars; I am the Earth and all her creatures ... "

Celtic Gods, hindu Gods (http://www.winged-horse.com/archives/Celticgo.htm)

more (http://www.yogamagik.com/yogamagik/celtic)

According to the story on clay tablets of the Sumerian Lu-dingir-ra (could be translated as 'God's man') who lived 4000 years ago, this is the answer to 'where they had come from?'

"We migrated to where we are living now thousands of years ago, but they were unable to write down from where because they did not know how to write then. Later on inquisitive scribes and the archivists in the royal palace studied the orally transmitted information in an attempt to find out about the past. Our people came to this land from a mountainous country to the northeast. But it is also said that some of them had come via sea from a land called Dilmun in the east. And the reason behind this migration is said to be the onset of an unexplained drought in their warm and rainy country. Great Enlil had some of us 'darkheads' settle here... According to the rumours and results of my research as to why we have called ourselves 'darkheads,' I found out that before our forefathers migrated here, blonde haired and blue eyed people were living next to their country. They may have adopted this name to separate themselves from their neighbours. I cannot visualize a person with blonde hair and blue eyes. And I don't think it would be nice. I haven't seen any person like that in my country."

This is what Lu-dingir-ra had written on a clay tablet

sumer (http://www.geocities.com/spenta_mainyu_2/sumer1.htm)

Large petroleum reserves were discovered in the coastal South India last week, and these are said to cater to 60% of Indian total requirement.
Wonder if petroleum deposits indicate something about life millions of years ago!?

There is a long held belief in some quarters that like water, titanium, silica, iron, gold, diamond; petroleum is part of earth's natural resources and not from animal or plant life. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen form petroleum and carbon is a natural element. There is no non-nuclear mechanism by which a life form can convert oxygen or hydrogen to carbon...

kmguru,

What about the scientific theory that petroleum comes from submerged forests, plant and animal life, after some transformations?

hi Km,
you posted:
<i>"It all depends on how old the human civilization is in India. I think, Ramayan was set in Treta Yuga, which puts it about 2 million years ago. Modern science says we are only about 100,000 years old out of which civilization is only 15,000 years old. If we can find proof that civilized man existed for over 2 million years - the whole dynamics of settlement could change. The problem is over that time period, no artifacts could exist that had not been recycled."</i>

I think finding of that Bridge is the biggest proof,isn it?oh,BTW the bridge's name is <b>Adams's Bridge</b>



bye!

Just as that bridge is under water, so is a large number of other possible sites such as Atlantis that is supposed to be between North America and Africa.

Going back 750 million years, who knows if life form starts, continues for a while and then disappears....just like specis disappear even now. It may be that the monkey people of Ramayana could be a different humanoid specis of the time too.

The only way to find out if such was the case is to survey the ocean that is close to any land and do some serious research. Unless one is looking for such items, normally it wont be noticed by anybody.

Speculated Map of Atlantis
http://www.atlantida.gr/images/xartPas.jpg

The Problem off course is what is the probability of success? And how many companies can take time to invest moeny in such a job where Success rate is Undefined.
Take for instance Charlie or Bobby today decides to invest some money anywhere,say if he is feeling that he needs to put his black money somewhere...Then only he will invest it somewhere here,because he doesnt want anything in return...but big Businesses,nope i dont think so.

I think the knowhows of Vedas,The ancient artifacts which have solid proofs behind them have potential in them to destroy the world economies...

may be someday we will come out of our cliches and do what we feel for...


thanks...

bye!

May be with time, there would be better ways to study the past, with fewer required archaeological remains... hopefully!

Yes, there is a way...by sending a camera through a singularity wormhole I think...to the past...

Another way is to create a space time bubble to move it along the 5th dimension. All you need is a nanotechnolgy based camera and propulsion unit. The 5th dimension is only a few millimeters wide.

Hmm... goes above my head!!!
:confused: :rolleyes:

Aryan invasion theory dubbed a myth

New Delhi, Nov. 23. (PTI): Former Director General (DG) of Archaeological Survey of India,
B B Lal, today dubbed the hypothesis of "Aryan Invasion of India" a myth and alleged
that it was still accepted for reasons other than historical.

"The theory that there was an Aryan invasion of India is completely wrong," Lal stressed in
a seminar here and alleged that political reasons were behind its being in textbooks.

[More... (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/10231610.htm)]

"Do the proponents of this theory expect us to believe that urban Harappans, on being sent away to South India, shed overnight their urban characteristics and took to a Stone Age way of living?, Lal asked.

Wonder if Mahabharat produced nuclear explosions that resulted people gong back to the stone age?....

The year 1996-97, the fiftieth year of Indian independence, was important in more respects than one. In that year Natwar Jha published his monograph Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals containing a complete decipherment of the Indus script along with more than a hundred deciphered readings. Shortly after its publication, I began my collaboration with Jha leading to our soon to be published book The Deciphered Indus Script. In our book, we present deciphered readings of well over five hundred texts with Vedic references and explanations. Since many of the messages are repeated on different seals, they probably cover between 1500 and 2000 seals, or about half the known corpus. We have read more that are not included in our book for reasons mainly of logistics.

The main conclusion to follow from our work is that the Harappan Civilization, of which the seals are a product, belonged to the latter part of the Vedic Age. It has close connections with Vedantic works like the Sutras and the Upanishads. The style of writing reflects the short aphorisms found in Sutra works. The imagery and symbolism are strongly Vedic. The vocabulary depends heavily on the Vedic glossary Nighantu and its commentary by Yaska known as the Nirukta. The name of Yaska is found on at least two seals ‹ possibly three. There are references to Vedic kings and sages as well place names. Of particular interest are references to Plakshagra ‹ the birthplace of the Sarasvati River, and Sapta Apah or the Land of the Seven Rivers.

This means that the Rigveda must already have been quite ancient by the time of the Harappan Civilization. Since the Harappan Civilization was known to be flourishing in the 3100 _ 1900 BC period, the Rigveda must have been in existence by 4000 BC. This now receives archaeological support following R.S. Bisht¹s investigation of the great Harappan city of Dholavira. Bisht (and other archaeologists) have concluded that the Vedic Aryans of the Sarasvati heartland were the people who created the Harappan cities and the civilization associated with it. Our deciphered readings tell us the same thing.

Message of the Indus seals

I will not present the decipherment here which both Jha and I have discussed in detail at other places. I will only note that the script is a highly complex hybrid that includes (1) an alphabetical subset; (2) a large number of composite signs; and (3) numerous pictorial symbols. The language of the Harappan texts is Vedic Sanskrit, and the script itself is heavily influenced by the rules of Sanskrit grammar and phonetics. It is clear that the later Brahmi script is a derivative of the Harappan that evolved borrowing heavily from its alphabetical subset. In fact, there exist examples of writing that combine features of both. It is therefore reasonable to call the Harappan script Old Brahmi or Proto Brahmi. Its decipherment was the result of more than twenty years of research by Jha ‹ a Vedic scholar and paleographer of considerable distinction. As previously observed, Jha and I have read close to 2000 seals; for most of these we have also found references in the Vedic literature, particularly the Nighantu and the Nirukta of Yaska. With this body of material, we are now in a position to take a broad look at what these seals have to say about the people who created them. This is particularly necessary in the light of a couple of highly publicized claims over the contents of the seals made in the last few months. One linguist (Malati Shengde) has claimed that the language of the Harappans was Akkadian, a West Asiatic language. This claim, made without being able to read the writing, is not supported by our decipherment. The language of the seals is Vedic Sanskrit, with close links to Vedantic works like the Upanishads. For instance, we have found and deciphered a seal which contains the word shadagama (shat agama) ‹ a reference to the six schools Vedantic knowledge. This shows that they must already have been in existence before 2000 BC. (Most of the seals were created in the 3100 _ 1900 BC period.)
Another recent claim by a retired archaeologist (M.V. Krishna Rao) relates to the career of Sri Rama. According to Krishna Rao, the Harappan seals tell us that Rama was born not in Ayodhya, but in the present state of Haryana. He further claims that according to his study of the seals, Rama invaded Babylon and defeated and killed the famous Babylonian ruler Hammurabi whom he equates with Ravana! This account, if true, would call for a radical revision of both Indian and Babylonian history. Hammurabi is a well-known historical figure. He is known to have died in 1750 BC of natural causes and not killed in battle. His date therefore is too late to have found mention in the Harappan seals. We have no such sensational findings to report. Our fairly extensive readings indicate that the seals contain little in the way of history. To begin with, the writings on the seals are brief, with an average length of five to six characters. This makes them unsuitable for recording historical details. Whatever historical information we do find is incidental. There are occasional references to Vedic kings like Sudasa, Yadu and Puru, and to sages like Kutsa and Paila. We find also references to ancient places like Plaksagra (birthplace of the Sarasvati river), Sapta-Apah or the Land of the Seven Rivers referred to in the Vedic literature. But such Œhistorical¹ seals are few and far between; they probably do not exceed five percent of the total. Other historical information has to be inferred from indirect messages like the one about the six schools of Vedanta mentioned earlier.

References to Rama We do find references to Rama, but they are nowhere near as dramatic as his invasion of Babylonia and the killing of Hammurabi-Ravana. Seals speak of kanta-rama or ŒBeloved Rama¹, and kanta-atma-rama or ŒBeloved Soul Rama¹. One seal in particular speaks of samatvi sa ha rama meaning ŒRama treated all with equality¹. All this finds echo in the Valmiki Ramayana as Œarya sarva samashcaiva sadaiva priyadarshanah¹, or ŒArya to whom all were equal and was dear to everyone.¹

There is also a reference to Rama performing a successful fire ritual (or launching a fire missile) which again is mentioned in the Ramayana. There is another reference to Rama¹s successful crossing of the sea which again touches on the Ramayana. Of particular interest is the presence of ŒRama¹ in at least one West Asiatic seal from pre-Sargon layer in southern Mesopotamia. We know from Zoroastrian scripture that Rama was well known in ancient West Asia. The readings suggest that this goes back to a period long before 2500 BC. What is interesting in all this is that Rama is treated as an ideal man and ruler loved by everyone; nowhere have we found anything to suggest that he was regarded as divine. All this suggests that history books are in need of major revision. The Aryan invasion stands shattered, the Proto Dravidians are found to be a myth, and the cradle of civilization ‹ assuming there was such a thing ‹ is not Mesopotamia but Vedic India. Also, a version of the story of Rama existed five thousand years ago, and known both in India and West Asia. And the Sanskrit language ‹ at least the Vedic version of it ‹ is of untold antiquity; it was certainly not brought to India by invading nomads in the second millennium.

Floods and maritime activity

To return to the seals and their contents, such Œhistorical¹ seals are exceptional. A great majority of the seals are different in character and content. Often their texts can be quite mundane. We find a reference to a craftsman by name Ravi whose products last twice as long as those made by other craftsmen (dvi-ayuh). One inscription speaks of a short-tempered mother-in-law; there is even mention of relieving fever with the help of water from a saligrama (fossil stone) ‹ a remedy still followed in many Indian households. We find numerous references to rivers (apah) and Œflows¹ (retah), suggesting the existence of an extensive system of waterways. We have texts like a madra retah (flow to the Madra country), and a vatsa retah (flow to the Vatsa country) indicating their presence. The Vedic Civilization was of course largely a maritime one, as indeed was the Harappan ‹ a fact noted by David Frawley. The seals confirm it. There is recent archaeological evidence suggesting the presence of Indian cotton in Mexico and Peru dating to 2500 BC and earlier (Rajaram and Frawley 1997), which again suggests maritime activity. As noted earlier, archaeological evidence also supports the fact that the Vedic people (and the Harappans) engaged in maritime activity. References to floods are common, and can sometimes be quite vivid. There is a particularly dramatic inscription, which speaks of workers laboring all night by fire, trying to stem the floods. The readings suggest that the floods were due to the encroachment of seawater and not necessarily the rivers. These messages should be of interest to archaeologists who have noted the damage to sites due to floods and salination. The great Harappan city of Dholavira in Gujarat is a striking example.

Vedic symbolism

While historical references are rare, and many seals contain much mundane material, a substantial number of seals have messages reflecting Vedic symbolism. This symbolism can be quite profound, and one has to dig deep into the Vedic and Vedantic literature in trying to interpret them. But once understood, it helps to explain the symbolism of the images on the seals also. This can be illustrated with the help of the famous Pashupati seal, alongside its deciphered text.

The seal contains a meditating horned deity surrounded by five animals. The animals are ‹ elephant, musk deer, buffalo, tiger and rhinoceros. These five animals are often identified with the five senses, and the five associated elements ‹ fire, water, space, wind and earth (or soil). These elements that go to make up the material universe are known in the Vedic literature as panca maha-bhutas or the Five Great Elements. The reading on the seal is ishadyatah marah. Mara is the force opposed to creation ‹ one that causes the destruction of the universe. The seal message means: Mara is controlled by Ishvara. The seated deity is of course a representation of Ishvara.

Hindu cosmology holds that both creation and destruction of the universe result from the action of the Five Great Elements. So Mara, the destructive force, is also composed of the Five Great Elements. With this background, the deciphered message ishadyatah marah allows us to interpret the symbolism of the famous Pashupati seal. It expresses the profound idea, that, in every cosmic cycle, both the creation and the destruction of the universe are caused by the action of the panca maha-bhutas (Five Great Elements) under the control of Ishvara. This remarkable interpretation was decoded and brought to my notice by Jha.

We find numerous such seals with close links to the Vedic and Vedantic literature; our book includes several such interpretations. The written messages are brief in the form known as Œsutras¹ to Sanskrit scholars. These are short formula-like aphorisms made famous by such works as Panini¹s grammar, and Patanjali¹s celebrated Yogasutra. They invariably need elaboration. An example is the message ishadyatah marah just described. The seals are products of the same cultural, and, no doubt, historical milieu. Thus they confirm the earlier findings of Sethna and this writer that the Harappan Civilization overlapped with the Sutra period. This is what Frawley and I in our book have called the ŒSutra-Harappa- Sumeria equation¹. (We have also found mathematical formulas on a few seals.) All this provides a window on the Harappan world, and calls for a complete revision of Vedic history and chronology.

Conclusion

In summary, one may say that the deciphered seals, while they may not contain much in the way of history, they do provide a clear historical context for the Harappans by establishing a firm link between Harappan archaeology and the Vedic literature. Thanks to the deciphered seals, the Harappans, who until now had been left dangling like the legendary king Trishanku, find at last a place in history ‹ in Vedic India. The Harappans were the Vedic Harappans. The Rigveda therefore must go back well into the fifth millennium. If there was a cradle of civilization, it was Vedic India, not Sumeria. This recognition is bound to bring about a revolution in our understanding of history. (N.S. Rajaram )

REFERENCES

Jha, N. (1996) Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals. Ganga-Kaveri Publishing House, Varanasi.
Jha, N. and N.S. Rajaram (To appear) The Deciphered Indus Script: Methodology, Readings, Interpretation.
Rajaram, N.S. (1996) ŒJha¹s Decipherment of the Indus Script¹, in the Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society (October-December 1996).
Rajaram, N.S. and David Frawley (1997) Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization: A Literary and Scientific Perspective, 2nd edition. Voice of India, New Delhi

Natwar Jha, a 58-year-old Vedic scholar and paleographer from West Bengal, may have found the solution to the great problem. In a slim volume of 60 pages titled Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals, Jha has provided both the key to the ancient script as well as a large number of readings. After a careful examination of his work, the American Vedic scholar Vamadeva Shastri (David Frawley) and N.S. Rajaram, both experts in the Indus civilization, believe his reading to be substantially correct. By applying Jha's methods they found they could independently read a large number of seals. The breakthrough was reported in the Indian press in November, 1997, but most scholars have yet to even hear of it, much less study Jha's book.

Is it reasonable that an unknown scholar working in a rural part of West Bengal could make such a breakthrough? At least two of the great decipherments of history--Egyptian hieroglyphics and Minoan "Linear B" script--were cracked by outside amateurs. Thomas Young, a brilliant English doctor and physicist, deciphered hieroglyphics on the famed Rosetta Stone in 1815. The Linear B script was deciphered only in 1952 by the determined amateur Michael Ventris, a British architect. Outsiders, in fact, have a decided advantage over those logically more qualified for the work, for they do not share the prejudices and misconceptions which may have taken deep root among scholars.

The first and biggest misconception corrected by Jha concerned who inhabited the Indus Valley. Most scholars believe it was a Dravidian-speaking people who were driven out of the area in 1500 bce by an invasion of Aryans from the north and west. They therefore assumed the script to be an ancient form of a Dravidian language, perhaps Tamil. All attempts to provide a Dravidian interpretation for the script have failed. But in the last ten years, a strong minority of scholars and others have challenged the Aryan Invasion theory as wrong and proposed that the people of the Indus Valley are the ancestors of people who live in India today. Accepting this point of view, Jha proceeded on the assumption the seals were in an ancient form of Sanskrit.

Jha decided to search for Vedic words on the seals. In this he was helped by an ancient work known as the Nighantu. It is a glossary of Sanskrit words compiled by the sage Yaska. Jha also found that the "Shanti Parva" of the Mahabharata (the ancient history of India) preserves an account of Yaska's search for older, "buried" glossaries--perhaps the seals--in compiling his own. From this Jha concluded that some of the seals must contain words found in Yaska's Nighantu. This conclusion was critical, for it greatly narrowed what he was looking for. The Nighantu is a late Vedic work, dealing with the words of ancillary Vedic texts. The entire Rig Veda would already have been in existence for thousands of years at the time the seals were produced.

It has long been known that there was a correspondence between the Indus script and characters in other ancient scripts of the Indian sub-continent and neighboring regions. Especially it had been demonstrated that there was some relationship between the Indus script and the most ancient forms of Brahmi, the predecessor to the Sanskrit Devanagiri script. In an amazing feat of correlation, Jha compared all of the characters from all languages and produced a concordance of similar characters and sounds. He found that letters of most of the ancient scripts were related to Indus signs.

By painstaking cross-referencing, he slowly hit upon the meaning of individual symbols, and found words from the Nighantu on the seals. After several hundred seals, he arrived at a relatively consistent system of translation that anyone can apply. Now the job is to verify and refine his work. (Prabha Bhardwaj)


to contact dr. n. jha and to order copies of vedic glossary on indus seals write: ganga kaveri publishing house, d. 35/77, jangamawadimath, varanasi 221 001 india.

summary
It is widely assumed that linguistics has provided the clinching evidence for the Aryan invasion theory (AIT) and for a non-Indian homeland of the Indo-European (IE) language family. Defenders of an "Out of India" theory (OIT) of IE expansion unwittingly confirm this impression by rejecting linguistics itself or its basic paradigms, such as the concept of IE language family. However, old linguistic props of the AIT, such as linguistic paleontology or glot_tochronology, have lost their credibility. On closer inspection, currently dominant theories turn out to be compatible with an out-of-India scenario for IE expansion. In particular, substratum data are not in conflict with an IE homeland in Haryana-Panjab. It would however be rash to claim positive linguistic proof for the OIT. As a fairly soft type of evidence, linguistic data are presently compatible with a variety of scenarios.

Conclusion
We have just looked into the pro and contra of some prima facie indications for an Out-of-India theory of IE expansion. Probably none of these can presently be considered as decisive evidence against the AIT. But at least it has been shown that the linguistic evidence does not necessitate the AIT. One after another, the classical proofs of a European origin have been discredited, usually by scholars who had no knowledge of or interest in an alternative Indian homeland theory. It is too early to say that linguistics has proven an Indian origin for the IE family. But we can assert with confidence that the oft invoked linguistic evidence for a European Urheimat and for an Aryan invasion of India is wanting. We have not come across linguistic data which are incompatible with the OIT. In the absence of a final judgment by linguistics, other approaches deserve to be taken more seriously, unhindered and uninhibited by fear of that large looming but in fact elusive "linguistic evidence for the AIT".

Linguistic aspects of the Aryan non-invasion theory - Dr. Koenraad ELST (http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/keaitlin1.htm)

Michael Witzel wrote an article titled “A Maritime Rigveda? How not to read the Ancient Texts” (The Hindu, 25 June 2002) in response to my article “Vedic Literature and the Gulf of Cambay Discovery” that had appeared in the Open Page section of the same newspaper on 18th June 2002.

Witzel still holds to the idea that the pastoral Vedic people came to India from land-locked Central Asia around 1500 BCE and that there is nothing Vedic about the urban Harappan civilization that practiced long-distance maritime trade with the Middle East. His idea is a continuation of the line of thinking by scholars over the last two hundred years that proposed an Aryan Invasion of India to explain how the Vedas came to the subcontinent.

However, since the reputed Aryan destruction of the Harappan culture has been disproved as bad archaeology, Witzel would make the Rigveda the product of migrants from Afghanistan into the Panjab around 1500 BCE, long after the Harappan era (which ended c. 1900 BCE). This means that the Vedic people didn’t even know who the mature Harappans were and at most found long abandoned cities!

Though the demise of the Aryan Invasion Theory/Destruction of Harappa was a major retreat for the idea of Aryan intrusion, it did not get Witzel to question the underlying idea itself. Witzel has taken it all in stride, forgetting how wrong the previous theory was, and still accepting most of the scholarship that came out of it as valid. He has replaced the Aryan invasion with an Aryan migration, but he often portrays this migration as potentially violent, with the Aryans using superior horses and chariots as their main means of movement and territorial expansion. So the difference between this and the old invasion scenario is largely semantic. Some scholars of the Aryan Migration Theory have gone so far to suggest that it was only a small group of people who actually migrated, perhaps only a special elite. This is another side-tracking to avoid the fact that there is no evidence for any real migrations at the time.

This theory requires that the early Rigvedic peoples had no worthwhile knowledge of the ocean or of maritime trade. It reduces them to a nomadic land-based people who had never even seen the sea. But there is a major problem confronting this theory. The Rigveda alone has more than 150 references to samudra, the common Sanskrit term for ocean, weaving it into its cosmology and the functions of almost every main God that it has. Witzel tries to explain away this problem by arguing that practically all the occurrences of the word samudra in the Rigveda refer to something other than a real terrestrial ocean. In other words he redefines samudra as something other than the sea.

Witzel’s theory also requires ignoring the Sarasvati river, clearly referred to in the Rigveda as a major, exalted river. The Sarasvati was the main river of Harappan civilization and mainly dried up around 1900 BCE, contributing significantly to the civilization’s end. Witzel has to do considerable theatrics to ignore the numerous references to Sarasvati in the Rigveda and in other Vedic texts as the oldest and most sacred river of the Vedic people, in order to ‘prove’ his theory that the Aryans arrived from Central Asia a long time after the collapse of the Harappan civilization. Witzel shows a particularly strong tendency to place everything possible in the ‘night-time sky’, and does so even with the river Sarasvati – a claim which has been criticized by Talageri [2001], available online at http://www.bharatvani.org/general_inbox/talageri/.

Outdated Philologists

Witzel suggests that I am ‘unwilling to access’ or am ‘unaware’ of numerous philological writings that investigate the meaning of Rigvedic ‘samudra’ using the principles of philology. He arrays a list of authors, whose works were published from 1800’s up to recent times, to prove his position.

It is important to read the Vedic texts directly and not change meaning of obvious terms like ocean, river or fire, particularly terms that occur frequently in the text. A philological interpretation of texts, in order to reconstruct ancient cultures, cannot ignore the common sense meaning of words. Samudra is said to mean ocean in the oldest level of Vedic interpretation we have through such texts as Brihaddevata of Shaunaka and Nighantu and Nirukta of Yaska. Nowhere do we find a statement in the Vedas like “we have just discovered the sea”. Rather the ocean is there all along as a primary symbol permeating the entire text.

A philological interpretation of texts can also not ignore information derived from other areas of scholarship – such as archaeology, genetics, anthropology, history, zoology and so on. Outdated secondary works that Witzel emphasizes more or less assumed the validity of an Aryan invasion, must be adjusted relative to the growing evidence to the contrary. As newer data emerge, and have been emerging for more than 50 years now, the paradigms that we apply to interpret the Vedic texts philologically must also change.

Regarding Witzel’s authorities C. Lassen [1847] and Heinrich Lueders [1951-1959, actually he died in 1940’s], the less said the better. These scholars lived in an age when the Aryan invasion and the subjugation of ‘black skinned, snub nosed indigenous Indians’ by ‘fair, blonde Aryans on horse chariots from land-locked Central Asia’ was taken for granted, and all data in the Rigveda and other texts was interpreted and retrofitted accordingly. In fact, Witzel himself concedes, that even his latest authority, Konrad Klaus [1989], was unaware of the Sarasvati paradigm till recently. Now, this is not something to be proud of. Does it not indicate, that Klaus et al were living in their own sequestered world of arcane, obsolete interpretations of old scholars? Of Christian Lassen, it was said as early as 1890 [Oldenberg 1890:27] that “the sagacity of philological thought is wanting in him”. Need we say more?

Witzel had stated earlier in an Internet forum that even Kuiper was totally ignorant of the Sarasvati paradigm, and of the Aryan origin controversy as such, till recently. An ignorance of current archaeological and other data, can lead to a gross misinterpretation of the texts when the principles of philology are applied to them. Witzel has seems to have fallen into the same trap. These scholars first assume that the pastoral, nomadic Aryans invaded India (the current, more politically correct terms in lieu of ‘invasion’ are ‘migration’ and ‘acculturation’) from a land-locked Central Asia. Then, they interpret textual data according to this assumption. And finally, they use the results of their own interpretations and assumptions to ‘prove’ the advent of Aryans into India around 1500 BC, and that the Rigveda is a ‘land-locked’ text. My point is that literature composed between the period of German romanticism to the years of Nazi rule in Germany should be taken with a pinch of salt, and not relied upon uncritically, excessively and dogmatically as Witzel does. But, those who want to see Central Asian pastoral nomads in the Rigveda or in other Vedic texts will certainly see them therein. In fact, Witzel even ‘discovered’ actual literary evidence for the migration of Aryans into India in a late Vedic passage, a claim that was refuted [Agarwal 2000a, see online at http://vishalagarwal.bharatvani.org/AMT.html ].

Witzel’s reference to “Kuiper 1983” is rather strange and unclear, because in his webpage at http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/EJVS-7-3.htm, he lists two publications of Kuiper for the year 1983. If Witzel means the book “Ancient Indian Cosmogony” containing a collection of Kuiper’s writings, then we cannot fathom what Witzel really wants to say. A word index at the end of the book lists only two occurrences of ‘samudra’ in the entire book. Kuiper himself says clearly in that book (p.75) that he will not summarize the view of Lueders at all. In his other publications (e.g. “The Heavenly Bucket”, 1972), Kuiper too criticizes Lueders here and there. And anyone can read the writings of Konrad Klaus himself to discern the special-pleading he indulges in to transform the ‘samudra’ to a confluence of Panjab streams or the far away heavens in the sky. Klaus himself relies excessively on the writings of old scholars (as a look at the bibliographies appended to his three publications will show), leading to erroneous conclusions.

Rigveda and Samudra: The Ocean or Just a Lucky Guess

Witzel seems to be unaware that dozens of authors have indeed said exactly what I have explained in detail on the Vedic peoples’ acquaintance with the ocean in my earlier publications [e.g. Frawley 1991, 2001b]. For instance, Witzel’s friend B.R. Sharma [1967], whose Samaveda edition is now under publication in the Harvard Oriental Series, concludes that Vedic Aryans possessed knowledge of ship-building and marine trade. Writing several decades ago, Alfred Hillebrandt had also conceded that a great many occurrences of the word ‘samudra’ in the Rigveda clearly denote the ocean [S. R. Sarma 1981]. Davane [1982] analyzes the 150 occurrences of ‘samudra’ and its related words in the Rigveda and concludes that the original and the most frequent meaning of this word in the text is ‘terrestrial ocean’. All other meanings are metaphorical/derived or are later developments, according to him. A few other references can be found cited in the Vedic Index of Keith and Macdonell. And many other publications stressing the same paradigm have come out after the Vedic Index was published in 1912.

The references mentioned by me above are merely illustrative of the voluminous literature that concludes that ‘samudra’ in Rigveda primarily means the terrestrial ocean and not a ‘pond’ or a ‘lake’ or a ‘confluence of rivers’ or an ‘atmospheric water body’, thus contradicting the literature cited by Witzel. The reader will note therefore, that Witzel tends to cite his sources selectively, showing a preference for antiquated publications in German (his mother tongue). He ignores literature that runs counter to his pet theories.

Witzel has himself conceded in his publications, that the Rigveda is primarily a document of the Puru-Bharatas, who were located more in the northern interior of India, their Sarasvati homeland. There were other Vedic tribes, mentioned in the Rigveda in the passing, and some of these tribes were more closely associated with the ocean (like the Turvashas and Yadus). I have elaborated upon this theme in my recent book “Rigveda and the History of India” [Frawley 2001b], which Witzel does not seem to have read so far. Yet the fact that the Vedic people were centered in the interior of India does not bar them from having knowledge of the sea, particularly in a region dominated by great rivers, with ease of river travel to the sea. In the Rigveda itself the Purus, the Vedic people, are said to dwell on both banks of the Sarasvati (verse 7.96.2), a river known to them to reach the sea (verse 7.95.2).

Witzel admits three meanings of samudra – mythical terrestrial oceans (imagined by the Vedic peoples before ever seeing the real ocean), confluences of rivers or terminal lakes where they drain their waters, and finally, the ‘heavenly ocean’. He leaves little or no scope for the possibility that the Rigveda actually refers to a ‘real’, and not a ‘mythical’ terrestrial ocean. Let us now examine the text of Rigveda directly.

Rigveda 1.130.5 says that “Indra has freed the floods to run their free course, like chariots, to the samudra.” A natural meaning of ‘samudra’ here would not be confluence or a terminal lake, but the ocean. Similar are the passages Rigveda 1.32.2 (“waters flowed down to the ‘samudra’”); 1.190.7 (“as rivers eddying under banks flow towards the ‘samudra’); 1.71.7 (“as the seven mighty rivers seek the ‘samudra’). Rigveda 7.33.8 says that all rivers flow into the samudra but are unable to fill it – this remark cannot apply to the lower Indus, which overflows its banks in the rainy season because of copious water supply from its tributaries.

I have listed many more such passages in my books “Gods, Sages and Kings” (1991) and “Rigveda and the History of India” (2001b). Note the Apppendix at the end of this rejoinder for this information.

I do not propose that the word ‘samudra’ in the Rigveda always means an earthly sea, as it develops the poetic image of the sea on many levels. In contrast, Witzel seems to deny that all but a few passages in the Rigveda denote something other than a real terrestrial ocean and that the term has no original foundation in a real earthly ocean. The implication of his theory is that ‘samudra’ became applied to a real earthly ocean only at a later time when the Vedic people finally contacted the sea, i.e., long after most of the Rigveda was composed. It seems to credit the Vedic people with imagining the ocean before ever seeing it!

The term samudra is a common term for ocean in Sanskrit going back to the Rigveda, the same way as agni is a common term for fire or apas is a common term for water. Yet Witzel would have us believe that samudra in the Rigveda, which is mentioned over a hundred and fifty times in the text and is frequently referred to along with ships (nava, e.g. Rigveda 1.25.7; 7.88.3), does not mean the ocean! Similarly, he claims that Varuna, who is the lord of samudra (and of waters in general) in the Rigveda, cannot be the lord of the ocean as he is in later Hindu thought, because samudra cannot mean ocean there! Witzel wants to ignore what the inheritor Sanskritic Hindu tradition has to say about its own sources. But at the same time, does not hesitate to rely on the English, Old Norse, Greek and equivalents of the word ‘samudra’ - even though these European languages are much more distant in space and time from the Rigveda.

Witzel mentions that the Vedic samudra is often the ocean of the air (antariksha) and therefore cannot be construed as a terrestrial ocean. He seems unaware of one of the most common rules of Vedic interpretation going back to the Brihaddevata of Shaunaka (and even earlier). Vedic deities have three forms relative to the three worlds of the earth, atmosphere and heaven. Agni or fire, for example, has an atmospheric form as lightning (vidyut) and a heavenly form as the sun (Surya). So too, the Vedic ocean or samudra has atmospheric and heavenly forms. One cannot use this symbolism to prove that the Vedic never saw a real terrestrial ocean more than they never saw an earthly fire!

Such a metaphor of the sky as an ocean is common among many maritime peoples. It does not disprove that they knew of the ocean but only that it was the basis of their world-view. That is why all the main Vedic Gods of Indra, Agni, Soma and Surya have oceanic symbolisms. The Vedic fire and the sun are often said to dwell in the waters, which are a universal symbolism for the Vedic people. No one would imagine the atmosphere as like the ocean, or a universe of various seas, if they had no acquaintance with the ocean. Many people image the atmosphere or heaven as an ocean. This reflects a knowledge of the ocean, not an ignorance of it. Even English words like sea can refer to a large body of water, not necessarily the ocean. This does not prove ignorance of a real ocean.

One wonders how Witzel himself would translate such common Vedic statements as 'samudrayeva sindhava' meaning 'as rivers to the sea.' Perhaps he has Vedic rivers only flowing into the atmosphere or accumulating their waters in a bottomless ‘confluence’ that never gets full, and from where the rivers do not flow any further! Or perhaps, the Vedic people thought that the Yamuna, the Sindhu and all other rivers just drained their waters in a terminal, inland lake!

Even Griffith, one of the nineteenth century colonial scholars who tried to foster this idea that samudra does not mean sea or ocean nevertheless often translates the term as ocean or sea in his version of the Rigveda. Any other rendering of the term would be cumbersome and do violence to the text in most of the occurrences.

The Rigveda (RV 7.49) speaks of the waters, the eldest of which is the ocean (samudra jyestha), mentioning waters that are heavenly, that flow, that are dug and are spontaneous, whose goal is the sea (verse 2), in which King Varuna dwells (verse 4). Clearly the Vedic people knew the difference between the earthy and heavenly waters. Note even Griffith’s translation of this short hymn.

RV VII.49
“1. Forth from the middle of the flood, the Waters – their chief the Sea -- flow cleansing, never sleeping.
Indra, the Bull, the Thunderer, dug their channels: her let those Waters, Goddesses, protect me.
2. Waters which come from heaven, or those that wander dug form the earth, or flowing free by nature,
Bright, purifying, speeding to the Ocean, here let those Waters, Goddesses, protect me.
3. Those amid whom Varuna the Sovran, he who discriminates men’s truth and falsehood –
Distilling meath, the bright, the purifying, here let those Waters, Goddesses, protect me.
4. They from whom Varuna the king, and soma, and all the Deities drink strength and vigour,
They into whom Vaisvanara Agni entered, here let those Waters, Goddesses, protect me.”

I give this translation from Griffith merely to show the general reader how the word ‘samudra’ fits the meaning ‘ocean’ naturally in most of the contexts in the Rigveda. There are other better translations available in various languages, but most of them are inaccessible to the ordinary reader.

Witzel argues that if the Vedic Aryans traded by sea, they would mention features like the tide, and the saltiness of the sea. Such arguments are rather spurious, because the Rigveda is not a manual of trade or commerce. It is a religious text intimately connected with ritual liturgy. The Rigveda doesn’t mention the salt at all, even relative to Salt range in the Panjab, in which region Witzel would put the Vedic people. However, the Rigveda does mention in a hymn to Varuna, the lord of samudra, how the rishi Vasishta was struck with thirst in the middle of the waters (RV 7.89.4), suggesting the inability to drink the salty water of the sea.

And in reality, many Rigvedic mantras do mention the waviness of the ocean (RV 4.58.1,11) and their back and forth movement experienced while in a ship on the sea. For instance, Rigveda 7.88.3 mentions this, although Witzel would again suggest that Vasistha’s vessel is riding over the crests of waves in the sky here! But even if one were to assume a celestial ocean here and in other instances (such as Bhujyu’s vessel), as does Oettinger (1988) cited by Witzel, the fact remains that such a simile would be meaningless in a culture which does not have any familiarity with oceanic waves. Oettinger bases his judgment on parallels in Yasht 5 of middle Avesta, a text that itself might have adapted the Rigvedic legend to suit its own locale.

Witzel objects to calling Vasistha as a descendant of the ‘sea god’ Varuna and says that he is born in a pot far inland. Rigveda 7.33.11 however mentions that Vasishtha is the son of Mitra and Varuna and that their seed was placed on a lotus leaf by the Visvedevas. This is a far cry from Witzel’s claim that Vasistha was born ‘far inland’.He is also born along with the rishi Agastya who is commonly associated with the ocean in all the stories about him.

The Rigveda 5.55.5 mentions that the Maruts, the storm devatas, blow over the ocean, lifting moisture and causing rain. The Rigvedic mantras mention how Soma, (the moon) stirs the ocean with the winds (Rigveda 9.84.4). This does refer to the waves and ebbing of the ocean. The swelling of the samudra has been referred to, for e.g. Rigveda 1.8.7 says that the belly of Indra swells with Soma, just as the samudra swells. Note that the word ‘Soma’ also means ‘moon’ and a play of words can be inferred here. Witzel however wants to deny it just because the rivers are also said to swell by receiving melt waters. The reader will also note that although the volume of Indian rivers fluctuates a lot from season to season, the volume of the ‘samudra’ fluctuates or ebbs (‘swells’) only because of the phenomenon of tide! Therefore, Witzel’s dismissal of mention of tides in the Rigveda is quite illogical, and based on pre-conceived dogmatic notions of a ‘land-locked Rigveda’.

Witzel argues that “the Rigvedic poetic diction concerning the samudra is exactly as that used for the rivers: swelling, spreading, growing (at snow melt in spring).” This statement is inaccurate, because actual flow data [Misra 1970:151] of the Panjab rivers shows that they carry most of their waters in the Monsoon season (July to September) – or in other words, they swell/spread/grow the most a few months after Spring.

Witzel also reasons that the Rigvedic peoples could not have known real terrestial oceans because their oceans are mythical, being located above, below, at the two ends of the world and so on. He gives parallels from other cultures to show that such a belief in mythical oceans is fairly pervasive all over the world. However, ¾ examples that he gives actually belong to peoples who lived close to the oceans – Greeks, Mesopotamians, Pauranic Indians! We might add that just because the Puranas speak also of numerous mythical mountains and rivers, it does not mean that compilers/authors of these texts were ignorant of real rivers and mountains! Similarly, if the Rigveda speaks of mythical oceans sometimes, it does not imply at all that the composers of the text were ignorant of real oceans. As for the fourth example of Avesta given by Witzel, it needs to be noted the imagery of the ‘hendu’ in that text is much less pervasive than that of ‘sindhu’ or of ‘samudra’ in the Rigveda. Hence, the two cases are not comparable at all. In short, Witzel’s examples prove the opposite of what he is trying to say, and support what I have proposed in my own article.

The rivers also obviously flow, which the Rigveda constantly refers to. The Vedic term samudra is never said to flow but rather to receive all the rivers, which is but quite natural. I quote two passages as an example –

samudram na sindhavah – Rigveda 6.36.3
samudraayeva sindhavah – Rigveda 8.44.25

Verses like Rigveda 1.56.2 and 4.55.6 say that those who seek fortune go to the ‘samudra’, the natural sense of which indicates maritime trade. Note also passages like Rigveda 1.47.6 (rayim samudraad uta vaa divaspari), wherein the devatas are asked for wealth from the heaven as well as from the ‘samudra’, which should be translated as the ‘ocean’.

Witzel says that the verse Rigveda 1.47.6 does not mention King ‘sudas’, as I have stated. This is debatable, because the first word of the verse is ‘sudase’, which I take as meaning for Sudas, following Sayanacharya. The term Sudas only appears in the Rigveda as the name of the king. Even if one were to split the word into ‘Su+dase’, following a few old German scholars like Karl F. Geldner (he died in 1929, and was therefore quite ignorant of the Harappan culture as such), whose commentary Witzel appears to have followed, the central idea of the oceans, distinct from the atmospheric heavens, being a source of riches still stays intact. Even B. R. Sharma (1967) has argued that the mantra in question does refer to maritime trade. Note also that the Vasishta, who was the purohit of Sudas in the Rigveda, speaks of a samrat or great emperor (RV VII.6.1) who receives wealth from the heavenly and earthly oceans (RV VII.6.7 aa samudraad avaraad aa parasmaad, agnir dade diva aa prthivyaah), which echoes this same verse about Sudas.

Witzel would place the Vedic people in Panjab around 1500 BC as migrants from Afghanistan, which requires that they cross the six or seven rivers of the Panjab, yet still have them regard Panjab rivers as samudra or their 'sea'. He fails to explain why the Aryan migrants would not follow the westernmost river (the Indus) all the way to its confluence with the ocean, before fording and crossing all the 6 rivers of Punjab, and then the seventh – the Sarasvati. The migrants could not have failed to note that such rivers do flow south beyond their confluence. Even Keith and Macdonell (Vedic Index, vol. II, page 432) argue that the Vedic Aryans had to know the ocean if they knew the Indus river.

Witzel ignores the great mass of oceanic symbolism that pervades the Rigveda and all of its deities. Instead he tries to emphasize some technicalities, that the Vedic plant avakaa (misnamed by him as Blyxa actandra, correct spelling of the second word being octandra) used in connection with the ocean is a sweet water plant, but is referred to by the Yajurvedic texts as “the avakaa plant of the samudra” (Madhyandina Samhita XVII.4). This simplistic argument tends to overlook the significance of avakaa in Vedic ritual under consideration. Yajurveda XVII.4 enjoins tying a bamboo shoot (darbha in other texts of the Yajurveda), a frog and avakaa to a bamboo pole by the side of the altar during a rite connected with the mahaagnichayana. According to Shatapatha Brahmana 9.1.2.20, these three represent three types of water (oceanic, terrestrial, and heavenly), a fact noted by Gonda [1985:61-62]. In the Samhita passage then, the avakaa grass might then be taken to represent the ‘oceanic waters’ quite easily. Although avakaa grows in estuarine, deltaic and marshy areas, it symbolizes waters in general [S. S. Sarma 1989:28-29]. Therefore its use in this particular rite, in conjunction with the bamboo shoot/darbha (considered a sacred grass with great purifying properties – from the heavens, so to speak) and the frog (a dweller of ponds) only reinforces the idea that it symbolizes the oceanic waters here. In fact, Kumkum Roy [1993] classifies avakaa as one of the few ‘South Indian’ plants used in Vedic rituals, which only reiterates that the ‘samudra’ in YV XVII.4 should perhaps be translated better as ‘ocean’ rather than as ‘lake’ even though the plant might grow in sweet water.

The real reason beyond his statements on samudra in the article is that the maritime nature of Vedic culture refutes his interpretation of the Rig Veda as a product of recent migrants from land-locked Central Asia. In this regard Witzel, like a fossil in time, is just carrying on nineteenth century European scholarship, ignoring the new evidence of the Sarasvati river, the many more Harappan sites and the much greater continuity for Indian civilization that has been discovered since.

Taittiriya Yajurveda and Geography

Witzel accuses me of misplacing the Taittiriya Sakha of the Yajurveda geographically. He seems to have misunderstood me. I did not place the Taittiriya Sakha only in the south, but simply noted its southern connections (that is not unique to its branch of the Vedas). The Taittiriya contains many references to Kurus, Panchalas, Kurukshetra and other northern regions as well. Clearly the Sarasvati-Drishadvati region was the central Yajurvedic land but the culture extended far beyond this and was well aware of the sea. In fact the Dharmasutra of Baudhayana, belonging to the Taittiriya Sakha, also mentions the dakshinapatha. Witzel’s own understanding of Vedic sakhas has been called into question [Agarwal 2000b, see online at http://vishalagarwal.bharatvani.org/uttamapatala.html]. In fact, Talageri [2000, see chapter 9 online at http://www.bharatvani.org/books/rig/ch9.htm] has shown that Witzel has muddled up even the basic information contained in the text of the Rigveda.

Horse, Aryans and Harappans

Witzel also dismisses the presence of horse bones in the Mature Harappan period. In his recent and earlier articles, Witzel has quoted his friend and colleague Richard Meadow’s publications selectively to ‘prove’ that it was the Aryans who first brought the horse to India. This is untrue, and horse bones have been excavated and have been identified as such by competent archaeologists, zoologists and zoo-archaeologists. None of Meadow’s publications cited by him seem to indicate that Meadow has reviewed more than a fraction of the relevant literature describing horse bones at Harappan sites.

Horse bones have been reported as early as the 5th millennium BC at Mahagara and Koldihwa [Sharif and Thapar 1992:151] in Uttar Pradesh. The C-14 dates of these sites were at first doubted, but retests have only established that the earlier dates of 5th millennium BC were correct [Chakrabarti 1999:104-105]. Coming to the Mature Harappan period, horse bones have been found at several sites such as Kuntasi [Dhavalikar 1995: 116-117], Malvan [Allchin and Joshi 1995: 95], Shikarpur [P. K. Thomas et al 1995] etc. They have also been reported conclusively at Hallur in Karnataka, at levels dated securely at 1500-1700 BC. If the Aryans were just entering Baluchistan and NWFP at that time, Karnataka becomes too south a place for horse remains to surface so early!

The sum total of the evidence has led even the conservative archaeologists such as F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin [1995: 177] to conclude the Indus valley culture knew the horse, although it was a rare animal there, and was possessed only by the elite. And nothing in the Rigveda, an elitist text itself, contradicts this. The horse has always been a rare animal in India, unattested in numerous historical sites, and absent even today in most villages. Now I hope Witzel does not say that the Allchins, P. K. Thomas, Dhavalikar etc., are all Hindu nationalists.

In addition to horse bones, terracotta figurines of horse are reported from Rakhigarhi, Lothal, Banawali and numerous other sites and many archaeologists have acknowledged this. The horse is intimately linked to the ‘spoked wheel chariot’. Although this vehicle is not attested archaeologically till as late as 3rd century BC, we now have representations of spoked wheel in terracotta from Banawali, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi etc. [LAL 2002]. It must be pointed out moreover that the excavator of Kunal reports a pottery-sherd depicting a spoked-wheel, canopied ‘chariot’ from pre-Harappan levels! And this is just the tip of the iceberg, considering that not even 5% of the Harappan sites have been excavated.

In an earlier article, Witzel had said that the horse bones were found from layers that were ‘eroded’. When Dr. Nagaswamy questioned him (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/2002/03/12/stories/2002031200190100.htm) for proof of this remark, Witzel mentioned ‘Meadow 1998’ in a follow up article. In reality, Meadow (1998) does not explicitly mention this ‘eroded layers’ theory in his article in connection with horse bones. Moreover, Meadow restricts his discussion only to supposed horse findings that are reported in the book of B. P. Sahu [1988]. Now, this book does not cover any of the recent horse remain findings that I have listed above. Sahu was obviously not aware of the publications of Dhavalikar, Thomas et al and Joshi, which appeared after 1988. Therefore, Witzel’s reference to Meadow’s papers does not amount to much, and indicates an excessive indirect reliance on old literature. This is another instance showing how Witzel misuses and distorts even the references he cites selectively, to suit his own pet theories.

In any case, we cannot expect much objectivity from Meadow himself, who has, in a foreword to a book published in 1998 [Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer], characterized literature emerging from South Asia as tainted by ‘flights of fancy’. That such prejudices can be displayed by Meadow and Witzel so brazenly in our times is quite disturbing.

Witzel mentions the discovery of horse bones at Pirak and in Swat as evidence of arrival of the Aryans around 1700 BCE. However, the excavator Jarrige [1997] himself has dismissed this possibility in his archaeological report on Pirak. The archaeological data cannot be interpreted to read an arrival or Aryans who then set a chain reaction of Aryanization of the whole of Pakistan and India. And in Swat, what we see are horse burials (besides a few other depictions on pottery) – not characteristic of Vedic culture. The horses also show signs of bit wear – indicating that they were ridden. In the Rigveda, there are very few indications that the horses were ridden, their overwhelming use is for pulling chariots. And most of these chariots belong to the gods dwelling in the heavens. So should we now question the presence of real chariots with the Vedic peoples? In any case, the evidence or Pirak etc., cited by Witzel to ‘prove’ the source of Aryanization of north India is rejected by most scholars like the archaeologist Chakrabarti [1999:201] and Indo-Europeanists like Robert Mallory, although for different reasons.

The clear absence of a trail of horse bones from Central Asia into India around the second millennium BC clearly irks Witzel because he claims that archaeologists have not examined a large area from Western Punjab to Eastern Iran for that particular time. This is a half-truth. I suggest that he should read the works of Indian (e.g. Dilip Chakrabarti) and Pakistani (e.g., Rafique Mughal) archaeologists more closely. There have been several excavations in northeastern Iran, in the Helmand valley in Afghanistan and adjoining areas in Iran, in the Oxus basin and also in Western Punjab. The gap extends largely over the tribal areas of NWFP and a few adjoining areas in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. What we find then is that the horse is not attested archaeologically even in the Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex (or in its successor cultures), which is supposedly the launching pad for horse possessing Aryans and for Iranians!

In fact, land surveys by the Pakistani archaeologist Rafique Mughal in west Panjab have indicated that no archaeological remains are found even between Ravi and Indus for the Mature Harappan period except for a cluster in the Sheikhupura district, and then there is the site of Harappa on the Ravi of course. The entire doabs between Indus and Jhelum, between Jhelum and Chenab and between Chenab and Ravi, are practically devoid of Harappan (let alone ‘Aryan’) remains, and no horse bones from the second millennium BC are reported in published literature in this entire region. The trail of horse bones clearly does not exist, although Witzel wants to imagine it. The river Ravi then, acts as a kind of divider between Mature Harappan, and extra-Harappan cultures (if we ignore a few outliers). This corresponds perhaps to the fact that even in the Rigveda, Sudas defeats his numerous enemies on the Parushni river (later called the Iravati, and then the Ravi) in the momentous Dasarajna battle.

Witzel and Sarasvati

Witzel also dismisses the Sarasvati paradigm, following Klaus and other scholars who are blissfully ignorant of the latest discoveries and researches in this area. If Witzel wants to be in a state of denial, then that is his problem. I merely suffice it to say here that western archaeologists, e.g. the Allchins, J. M. Kenoyer, Gregory Possehl, Jane MacIntosh, and most Indian/Pakistani archaeologists (Mughal, Lal, S. P. Gupta, V. N. Mishra etc.) accept the identification of the Vedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra valley which runs through Haryana, Rajasthan, and Pakistan’s desert of Cholistan. Witzel’s refusal to acknowledge the same is therefore revisionist, and a minority view, to say the least.

It is also fairly well established that the river diminished considerably in extent and almost dried up in the period 1900 – 1500 BC. It is therefore inconceivable that the Vedic Rishis, arriving around 1500 BC, would eulogize a dried up rivulet more eloquently then numerous large steams of Punjab in the vicinity. To see a criticism of a similar earlier attempt by Witzel to place the Sarasvati in the night sky, in Arachosia – anywhere but in Western India, see section III.1.b in Talageri (2001) at http://www.bharatvani.org/general_inbox/talageri/ejvs/part3.html Within India, the sole vociferous opponents of the Saraswati paradigm are hardcore communists like Irfan Habib, whose views have been countered quite effectively by B. B. Lal [2002].

The net result of Witzel’s theory is that he brings the Vedic people into the Sarasvati region (Kurukshetra) in the post-Harappan era after the Sarasvati river dried up and its many cities were already long abandoned. He fails to explain why the Vedic people would make the Sarasvati, the ‘easternmost’ Panjab river, then devoid of water, as their central and immemorial homeland, describing this river that flowed west of the Yamuna (RV 10.75.6) as a great river pure in its course from the mountains to the sea (RV 7.95.2)! In fact, even Zimmer who otherwise believed in the ‘land-locked Rigveda’ theory, conceded that an actual ocean is meant by samudra in this particular verse (Vedic Index, vol. II, p. 432) at least. Now let us try to see what Witzel’s meanings of the word ‘samudra’ make out of Rigveda 7.95.2 -

Pure in her course from mountains to the terminal lake, alone of streams Sarasvati hath listened. Or
Pure in her course from mountains to the atmospheric ocean, alone of streams Sarasvati hath listened. Or
Pure in her course from mountains to the confluence, alone of streams Sarasvati hath listened.

The reader will note that all the above translations are somewhat odd, if not outright absurd. The full force of the phrase ‘from mountains to samudra’ manifests when when take the word to mean ‘ocean’.

Urban Harappa and Rural/Pastoral Vedic Peoples

Witzel also makes much of the ‘urban’ character of the Harappan culture. Such a nomenclature is uncritical. Any settlement that is planned and has brick dwellings does not automatically become a ‘city’. Of the 2000 or so sites of the civilization, hardly a dozen could perhaps be classified as cities. In recent years, scholars like Leshnik and Possehl have actually stressed on the predominantly rural, and heavily pastoral character of the Harappan culture. Witzel’s paradigms therefore, are antiquated.

On the other hand, Witzel fails to see any urban side to the Rigveda that would connect it with a semi-urban culture like the Harappan. However, the term pur for city (a term that obviously means city in Greek thought, i.e. Pura = Polis) is common throughout the text. Both the Vedic people and their enemies have a hundred cities, i.e., several (satapura, e.g. Rigveda 6.48.8; RV 2.14.6, RV 4.27.1). The Rigvedic sage Agastya, later at least associated with the south of India and the ocean, refers to the Vedic city or pur as “wide, broad and extensive (prthvii bahulaa na urvi, 1.189.2).

Witzel argues that the non-mention of ‘great baths’ or ‘large buildings’ in the Rigveda rules out a Vedic-Harappan relationship. However, the importance of water bathing is a common Rigvedic theme. Rigvedic water hymns like Rigveda 10.9 and mantras such as Rigveda 10.75.6 (already prescribed for utterance during ablutions in the Taittiriya Aranyaka) are used for ritual bathing in temple tanks and sacred rivers even today. Such ritual bathing as found in the Rigveda is not a likely habit for nomads coming from arid regions! The reader will note that bathing tanks are not characteristic of the Harappan culture as well. Of the dozens of Harappan sites excavated, only Mohenjo-daro has a ‘Great Bath’ that might be associated with some ritual bathing. So why should the Rigveda mention ‘great baths’? Besides, in the Rigveda, there are also references to temples or structures with a thousand pillars (sahasra-sthuna – Rigveda 2.41.5) or a thousand doors (sahasra-dvara e.g. Rigveda 7.88.5), mainly with regard to Varuna, the lord of Samudra. Therefore, Witzel’s argument is spurious.

It may be mentioned here that there is a genre of secondary literature by the German scholar Wilhelm Rau and others, that denies such clear-cut urban connotations to words like the ‘pur’. An examination of this class of literature is beyond the scope of the present essay. For these brand of scholars, ‘samudra’ is anything but the ocean, ‘pur’ is just a temporary structure of straw, mud and stone, ‘ratha’ is always a chariot with two spoked wheels, and ‘sukha’ is only a good chariot axle-hole. And since chariot racing was a joyous pastime of the Vedic Aryans, the word ‘sukha’ for a ‘good axle-hole’ changed its meaning later to denote ‘happiness’ in general! Following them, Witzel cannot countenance the natural contextual interpretations of words like ‘samudra’ (now corroborated by archaeology). This explains his dig at the volume edited by G. C. Pande (1999), a monumental work encompassing the scholarship of more than two-dozen scholars specializing in various disciplines of study. In this volume, R. S. Bisht, Director of the Archaeological Survey of India, and also a Sanskritist, has written an article that quotes the Rigveda and other old Vedic texts hundreds of times to explain the points of convergence between Harappan culture and the Rigveda.

Witzel would like to relegate all these references to large buildings etc., to the realm of imagination that had no counterpart in the actual world of the Vedic people. In an internet discussion recently, he even claimed that the Vedic Aryans did not themselves possess any large pillared halls, but mentioned them in the Rigveda because they had remembered seeing them in the Helmand basin of Afghanistan while migrating to India! Whatever evidence does not agree with Witzel, he conveniently ignores under whatever pretext he can invent. This reminds one of the proverb – “Whatever be the facts, the conclusions will always be the same.”

Witzel also unnecessarily objects to the use of the word ‘king’ for the chieftains of Rigveda. However, he has himself used phrases like ‘battle of 10 kings’ for ‘dasarajna’ battle in the Rigveda in his publications (e.g. Witzel 1995). All translators of the Rigveda, including Karl Geldner (who uses the German word ‘konig’) translate ‘rajan’ as ‘king’. Witzel’s criticism is therefore partisan, and hypocritical. The Rigveda also commonly mentions a great king or emperor, samrat (RV 7.6.1, RV 7.82.2), again connected to the sea and to Varuna. It should be noted that some scholars [e.g., Ratnagar 1991] who have studied the probable political structure in the Mature Harappan Civilization have suggested a strong possibility that it was a veritable empire.

Aryan Genes – Race and Genetics

Witzel declares enthusiastically that 'the study of male genes (Y chromosome) is now beginning to detail the ancient movements of groups and tribes'. How this could prove or disprove the movement of Aryans into India is unclear. There is no 'Aryan gene', and genes do not speak themselves. In fact, the geneticists seem to be much less sure than Witzel himself on this matter. Some Y-chromosome studies clearly suggest that the 'European' populations separated from the Indian populations perhaps as early as 9000 BC. Other studies seem to indicate that north Indians are genetically closer to Europeans (where the latter are defined as all peoples west of the Indus!) than south Indians. And yet, another study indicates that the genetic distance between Indians and East Europeans is much smaller than between the latter and other Europeans - bringing into question the validity of the use of the word 'European' (from the genetic perspective). In his publications, Witzel writes openly that the Aryan elites looked like modern day Kashmiris/Afghans/Iranians [Witzel 1997:page xxii]. This is just a euphemistic way of repeating the century old paradigm of fair Aryans swooping down on dark indigenous Indians, and casting their pure genes into Dravidian wombs.

We must be wary of using genetic studies rashly to draw inferences in a manner Witzel does. Recently, even the JNU scholars Romila Thapar and Shireen Ratnagar, who otherwise support versions of the Aryan migration theory, have voiced concern at the use of genetic studies in searching Aryans. In this regard, they are correct because not long ago, racial genetics/eugenics were used in Nazi Germany with disastrous consequences. In any case, all genetic studies, whether mtDNA or Y-chromosomal, clearly indicate that Indians of all castes, religions and tribes form a genetically closely clustered population, distinct from other populations of the world. Indians do show an exchange of genes with other surrounding populations, as is natural, but we still cannot date these phenomenon precisely by genetics as of yet. In the last three thousand years of Indian history, we know that the Shakas, Hunas, Kushanas and so many other peoples from Central Asia have invaded India and have settled down in this land. Genetics cannot yet distinguish between ‘Aryan’ genes, and other ‘Central Asian genes’ such as the ‘Shaka’ gene!

Vedic and Harappan Fauna

Cattle studies, in contrast suggest an out of India migration in the relevant time frame. Humped cattle that are native to the Indian subcontinent first start appearing paintings and carvings/stone reliefs in the Middle East around 1700 BC. Strangely, this is the time around which the Aryans are supposed to have entered India from the North West. That the invading Aryans and indigenous Indian cattle moved in opposite directions at the same time would be a rather silly proposition. In addition, cattle genetic studies clearly show ingress of genes from Bos indicus, the Indian cattle, into the Middle Eastern Breeds, although the period of gene transfer is not known. On the contrary, we do not see much ingress of Central Asian cattle genes into the Indian subcontinent. So in this case at least, cattle genetics disproves Witzel’s Aryan invasion/migration/acculturation theories. For further information, see my essay at http://www.vedanet.com/myth2.htm

The Rigveda mentions many Indian animals like the water buffalo (mahisha), which is said to be the main animal sacred to Soma (Rigveda 9.96.6), which does occur commonly on Harappan seals. The humped Brahma bull (Vrisha, Vrishabha) – another common Harappan depiction, is the main animal of Indra, the foremost of the Rigvedic devatas. Elephants, decorated for procession are also mentioned. All these are native to India – not necessarily to other parts of Eurasia. Camels first find mention in later parts of Rigveda. Archaeological evidence also indicates that they started appearing in the Indian subcontinent towards the end of the Harappan culture. If the Vedic peoples were migrants from Central Asia, where the camel originated and was first domesticated, the very oldest sections of the Rigveda should have mentioned it. Earlier, it was thought that the Rigveda mentions ‘foreign’ animals such as beavers. Now archaeological evidence shows the presence of beavers in Harappan sites (e.g. Amri) and in other locations (e.g. in Kashmir valley) linked to the Harappan area, in the time frame of that culture. The beaver is extinct in India today, and is not attested since the middle of the second millennium BCE in the archaeological record. Instances can be multiplied easily to show how the flora and fauna of the Rigveda is that of India, and not of Central Asia. A detailed discussion of the topic is beyond the scope of this brief rejoinder.

Kalibangan and its ‘Sacred’ Tandoors!

The most negationist item in Witzel's thesis however, is the denial of the presence of fire altars in the Harappan sites. Practically all archaeologists now accept the presence of the fire cult in that culture, contradicting 100's of older studies that distinguished the 'non-iconic, fire worship based' cult of the Vedic Aryans from the 'iconic, mother goddess based' Harappan religion. The archaeological data on Harappan fire altars has mounted so much in recent years that even skeptics now acknowledge that the Harappans had ritual fire altars [e.g., McIntosh 2002]. Witzel then is clearly in a state of denial here, and refuses to come to terms with archaeological evidence that runs counter to his cherished Indological dogmas. Even in his publication EJVS 7.3, which Witzel refers to here so often, he has used very limited and selective data to conclude that the fire altars at Harappan sites were all tandoors!

Closing Remarks

As new and fresh evidence comes up via archaeological excavations, linguists and philologists must make efforts to study it seriously, rather than remain engrossed in their armchair, ivory tower speculations that are dependent on antiquated secondary works. The attitude displayed by Michael Witzel, a professor at the Harvard University, is not at all conducive to an objective, academic, dispassionate analysis of historical and archaeological data. It must be painful for some scholars to note that the emerging evidence from archaeology and other disciplines is shaking the world of Indology, that has been built over the last 150 years mainly on linguistic speculation based on an overemphasis on European sources.

Witzel also has a penchant for character assassination in his writings. He doesn’t simply deal with the ideas presented against his but likes to ridicule people who might find spiritual value in Vedic teachings or some deeper truth to the Vedic view of the world. That one can find a spiritual value in a tradition and still provide helpful information relative to its history is accepted relative to Christianity and other religions. The fact that Witzel demeans people with a Hindu background or belief from writing on the Vedas, is prejudice, not scholarship. I don’t believe he has ever quoted someone with a Hindu background as having any real positive contribution on ancient Indian studies at all. In fact, one can argue that someone who is aware of the deeper spiritual meaning of the Vedic symbols can add new insight to the historical or cultural implications of the text, whose prime focus was always religious.

Today there is a new Vedic scholarship that understands the Vedic connection with Indian civilization and honors Vedic spirituality. This is the Vedic scholarship of the future as we move into a new planetary age that recognizes our spiritual heritage as a species, which India as a civilization has preserved through such great teachings as the Vedas. The interested reader can perhaps read the details in my recent book “Hinduism and the Clash of Civilizations” (2000a).

reply to witzel (http://www.bharatvani.org/davidfrawley/ReplytoWitzel.html)

The “Aryan Invasion on India Theory” is relegating fast into the oblivion i.e. to a place where it always rightly belonged. The proponents of this theory could never present any single evidence or any instance citing the Aryan invasion from outside of India.

This theory is based on the false assumption that as Englishmen invaded India and prior to that the West Asians and Alexander invaded India, so it must be that some other people also would have invaded India earlier than that. Now which are those people who can be fitted best in this pseudo paradigm of the history? Obviously Aryans are most suitable as they are supposed to have arrived from North West direction and also because they are generally understood as being so-called ‘Superior Peoples’.

So this theory is able to create a false notion of the ‘Superior Peoples’ invading India from the North West direction since eternity as a ritual and that there is nothing specially wrong with this phenomenon. Thus with this theory, various brands of religious and economical expansionism automatically stand justified.

With Regards...

Problem with the so-called Aryan invasion on India Theory is that if we get impressed with it and probe further, then we find that Dravidians too attacked India at least twice from the same North Western direction.

Naturally the so-called Dravidians would have invaded against the native Australoid peoples of India. With this we have to further understand that Australoid peoples could have invaded the Apes, Elephants and Rhinos of India.

This theory creates a mockery of the understanding of the “Cradle of the World Civilizations”.

With Regards...

Originally posted by Rajesh Mishra
With this we have to further understand that Australoid peoples could have invaded the Apes, Elephants and Rhinos of India.


:D :D

Originally posted by Rajesh Mishra
This theory creates a mockery of the understanding of the “Cradle of the World Civilizations”.



Is that why we still have a Flat-Earth society that could not stand being mockeried upon? :D :D

Aryan has never been depicted as any race. Aryan was considered only as a noble virtue and never a race. At the maximum, Aryan can be a desirable practice. In fact the very thought of the Aryan Race or Aryan Nation arrived into the minds of the Neo Scientists, who were eager to search for the new vistas and utilization of science in any possible way. Incidentally they had seen more than normally expected similarities between Indians and Europeans. So in shear terms, the Race “Aryan” is a misnomer.

As the Aryans never existed before, after or during the Third Reich, so they coming to India from Europe may not have a chance. There is no supportive archeological or scriptural proof to substantiate it.

Non existent Aryans can not be forefathers of Hindus or anybody else. Hindu itself is a not any indigenous name. The people of India living at the banks of Sindhu river, were considered by the outsiders as Sindhus >> Hindus.

As Vedas highly extol the Aryan virtues, so they both seem to be intrinsically interconnected. Sanskrit is the language of Vedas, but not necessarily of all the so-called Aryans. Sanskrit was considered to be limited as only the sacred and secret language of the Priestly/Religious Peoples and Scriptures. In spite of being well read and well spread at certain times, It was never an overall people’s language. The languages of peoples at India were Brahmi, Dravida, Pali, Prakrit, Gondvi and Santhali etc at different times and places.

Things were centered around the Veda’s and all its supporters, critics and opponents were considered within its purview. Instead of any so-called Aryan or Hindu Religion, it was the Vedic Dharma.

So neither Aryan, nor Hindu, who were those people? We will have to consider the locus standi of Dravidians and their relationship with reference to the so-called Aryan Invasion on India.

With Regards...

As Vedas highly extol the Aryan virtues....

Does that mean there was a group that represented these virtues as opposed to non-Aryan virtues and differentiated as such? And if Vedas were intrinsically connected to Aryan groups, whatever happened to the non-Aryans that are out of bounds to Veda and related framework?

Was there a relationship between the local Sindhu culture and the Europeans or perhaps the Chinese through Kazakhstan, Afghanistan etc?

Just because there was no scriptural or documented information available does not mean, the culture remained isolated for thousands of years especially for the nomads!

Some people consider the so-called Aryans to be the cradle of civilization or the missing link between the African mankind and the modern civilization. They think in the terms of Aryans moving from Arctic and Europe to South Russia and then ending at India. Others think that Aryans originated at India and spread to Russia and Europe. Both may find it difficult to complete the picture as their reasoning are unable to explain the advent of Sumeru, Egyptian and Amerindians cultures. Perhaps, they may be trying to read the Indo-European languages from right to left.

It seems that of all the humanity, Africans and then the Mongols have the strongest genetics due to their originality or sustained exposure to an extreme consistent environment for large periods. They too had their cultures, but their spheres of influence although big are rather localized.

I feel that there have to be some other people (not the race), who can be traced back as to be the cradle of the civilization. These people had to be with flexible genetic qualities and better adaptability for different environments. In spite of their civilized growth, they are not supposed to do away with the right side of their brain functions. They have to be originally of the dark color, but capable of easily transgressing to the lighter colors as per the need of the changing environments. As such their colors may have to be sometimes brown or red.

In my opinion, the Dravids and similar people are that missing link. In the ancient scriptures, we find the all round Dravidian presence. The ancient Aryan people and the Gods belong to the Dravid group (with Aryan virtues), who held their sway in and around Mount Himalayas and Gangatic Plain. Many of the important Gods are Black, Blue or Red in colors along with White Gods. The Dravid people are associated with Tibet, Sindhu_Saraswati rivers and Vedas. Many of these people living in the colder zones during the ice ages, developed the fair colors, blue eyes and blonde hairs, due to the cold environment and lower amount of UV radiation existing then.

Malayali people are among Dravids in South India, then there is Malaya in SE Asia and Madagascar people are originally called Malagasi. All are far away but on similar latitudes.

There is an Elam (Nation) region in Persia with Dravid like language. Many ancient cities of Sumeru, Assyria and Middle East have Dravid like names. The Brahmi script is considered similar to the Egyptian. Scientists are still in a fix to decide which is earlier. Pulasti people were the Dravids in Sri Lanka and are in Central India. Philistines are the Pulasati or Pelset people.

Many Dravids, Gonds and Baluchis have red skin similar to Red Indians. Australoid like people are their offshoots suitable for deep forest dwellings. Also the ancients priests of the Celtic people were called Druids, it weirdly sounds like Dravids.

What can we say, when we find that the Vedic/Aryan scriptures themselves say that their ‘First Man’ of the present age at the start of the last SataYuga was a Dravidian King “Vaivaswat Manu”.

With Regards...

Rajesh:

Great post. Thank you. Seems like you have more than a passing interest towards the origin of Indian people. I wonder if it would be possible to go back in time through archeology and infer any decent theories pre-veda days, specifically between the origin of veda and written text of veda since 'sruti' was used to pass information form generation to generation with perhaps dilution in thoughts.

My speculation is that one of these days we may discover that there was an advanced technological society (call it Atlantis or whatever). When that was the case could be open for debate. One thing for sure, the planet has gone through 5 extinction level events as per scientists. May be a few survived over tens of thousands of years....

There are only four primary races, namely, Caucasian, the Mangolian, the Australians and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and the Dravidians of the south or other communities of Indian subcontinent is not a racial type. Biologically all are the same Caucasian type, only when closer to the equator the skin gets darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to get a little smaller. And these differences can not be the basis of two altogether different races. Similar differences one can observe even more distinctly among the people of pure Caucasian white race of Europe. Caucasian can be of any color ranging from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. Similarly, the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians.

Further, a recent landmark global study in population genetics by a team of internationally reputed scientists over 50 years (The History and Geography of Human Genes, by Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, Princeton University Press) reveals that the people habitated in the Indian subcontinent and nearby including Europe, all belong to one single race of Caucasion type. According to this study, there is essentially, and has been no difference racially between north Indians and the so-called Dravidian South Indians. The racial composition has remained almost the same for millennia. This study also confirms that there is no race called as an Aryan race.

Demise of Aryan Invasion/Race Theory-Part 1 (http://www.itihaas.com/ancient/contrib1.html)

Respected kmguru: Thanx.

Both Aryans and Dravids may be religious and warrior factions respectively of the same ancient 20000 -30000 years or more olden vedic system. This system was spiritually headed by Mainland India, Srilanka was it's warrior part and Atlantis at now sunken Indonesian Islands was it's materialistic and scientific extension. In those day i.e. before the withdrawal of Ice age, Sri Lanka would have been connected to India by land.

As Aryans and Dravids, both were strictly disciplined fractions of the same ancient vedic system for the common objectives, hence searching for any basic contradictions between the two may be utterly futile. And inspite of so much research by the so-called western oriented scholars, none has been conclusively found yet.

It is really very strange that inspite of so many apparent differences, the Dravids and Aryas in reality do not have much differences from within. This can be possible only due to the inherent genetic bondages that are intact since antiquity.

As India was the cradle of world civilization even before the advent of CroMagnyon man, so the question of Aryas or Dravids coming to India from outside does not arise. These people already had normal global contacts. But more than that these people migrated enmasse to outside at least at two or three occasions. Firstly they migrated after destruction of Atlantis culture. Secondly they migrated after Ram_Ravan war. Thirdly they migrated after Mahabharata war. However the first and second migrations may be contemporary to each other.

So we find Dravid and Aryans have Global presence. Apart from Iran, they had strong presence in Iraq. Some big old Iraqi/ Sumeru cities Ur, Nipur and Niniveh sound like sanskrit or some South Indian cities like SriVottuv_ur, Mangl_ur etc. Tiru_Saligram (City of Sri Vishnu) or Yerru_Shaligram has phonetically converted into Yeru_Shalam. Bahubali_ur has converted to Babylore, Babul, Babel then Babylone. Sounds like conversion of Banglore to some futuristic Banglone.

Does not the ancient Greek philosophy sounds like something emanating from the mouths of Krishna or Rishi Shukadev.

Any scientific evidences that are presented as proofs of Aryans or Dravids once or twice coming to India from outside, may really pertain to their coming back home, albeit they themselves would have lost their ancient linkages and memories of India. The ensuing wars if any shall be construed as natural outcome of old_Imperialism.

There are reasons for apprehension that ancient vedic seers were scientifically equally developed as the modern science and may be even more. They genetically improvised the White Aryan people, the Red Dravidians, the Yellow Mongols and the Dark Australoids for optimum possible efficiency management for different type of tasks. By looking into essence of Indian philosophy or their original deeds, we can easily surmise that their real intentions were for the scientific benefit of the whole humanity and not for any hegemonic designs or some petty caste politics. All that differences have been created by advent of Kaliyug, jihad, British Empire, Hitler so on and so forth.

Or these genetic changes could have been intentionally or naturally brought about by living in different climates and different regions for long times.

In nutshell Aryans may be the Vedic Warrior_Philosophers and the Dravids may be the Vedic Philosopher_Warriors, and let what ever it mean in the present context, they are practically one and same.

As the Dravidians are basically Red Like Red Indians so question arises that why they now appear to be darker in color?? Reason is simple that look out for those British’s, who still live in Deep South India. Within one year, they start looking like north Indians and within ten years they start looking like south Indians. So the clue lies in climate and it's corresponding effect with passage of time...

With Regards...

fact.

On the Aryan Invasion theory

The Indus civilization came to a peak from 2600 bce to 1900 bce. Marauding Aryans [war-like tribes from central Asia, central to an invasion theory long believed by Western Indologists] can no longer be held responsible for the destruction of the Harappan civilization. Perhaps climactic changes, environmental degradation and a steep fall in trade robbed the civilization of its affluence.

On who lived in Indus Valley

The flourishing trade, affluence, social order and a lifestyle of luxury had attracted to Indus Valley, the earliest civilization of South Asia, people from varied races and regions, even outside of the continent. Skeletons excavated indicate that the population comprised Mediterraneans, Caucasoids, Armenoids, Alpines, Australoids and Mongoloids [meaning people from as far away as China and Europe were living in Indus Valley].

On yajna fire worship

Fire altars [which figure prominently in the ancient Vedic texts] have been found in Banawali, Lothal and Kalibangan cities of the Indus Valley. They are found in houses and also in public places. In Kalibangan, a row of seven fire altars has been found in the southern half of the "Citadel," major part of the city. My chapter on religion in The Earliest Civilization of South Asia deals extensively with fire altars, built in such a way that the worshipper can sit facing the east [an important point, for the fire altars described in the Vedas all allow the worshipper to face east].

On the date of the Vedas

The river Saraswati was a major river both in the Vedas and in the Harappan civilization, flowing from the Himalayan mountains to the Bay of Bengal. [Long thought mythical, it was recently rediscovered in the deserts of Rajasthan from satellite images]. The sites at Kalibangan were ruined around 1900 bce due to the drying up of Saraswati [caused by massive climatic changes and shifts in the Earth's surface]. The Vedas must date before that. Sanskrit probably existed 2000 years before 1900 bce [putting the origin of Sanskrit before 4000 bce]. It can easily take two millenniums for a language to originate and develop to the level of versifying and compositions in meters.

PROF. B.B. LAL, F-7 HAUZ KHAS ENCLAVE, NEW DELHI 110016 INDIA. THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION OF SOUTH ASIA IS AVAILABLE FROM ARYAN BOOKS INTERNATIONAL, 4378/4B POOJA APARTMENTS, 4, ANSARI ROAD, DARYA GANJ, NEW DELHI 110002 INDIA.

fixing history (http://www.mantra.com/newsplus/aitmyth.html#A07)

Thanks spookz

Here are some items from the site too.

For example, a Rig Vedic verse observing winter solstice at Aries can be correlated to around 6500 bce.

There was no invasion at all. India's native peoples founded the Indus/Sarasvati River civilization, developed Sanskrit and wrote all her ancient texts. European dates are all wrong. Rig Veda verses belie the old chronology (VI.51.14-15 mentions the winter solstice occurs when the sun rises in Revati nakshatra, only possible at 6,000bce, long before the alleged invasion.) Carbon dating confirms horses in Gujarat at 2,400bce, contradicting old model claim Aryans must have brought them. NASA satellite photos prove Sarasvati River basin is real, not a myth. Fire altars excavated at Kali Bangan in Rajasthan support existence of Rig Veda culture at 2,700 bce. Kunal, a new site in Haryana, shows use of writing and silver craft in pre-Harappan India, 6-7,000bce.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1721/17211221.jpg

this is ridiculous. the paucity of skeletal remains within that particular period hardly supports the assertion that aryans are native to india. the uncritical acceptance of research done by those with seemingly dubious credentials is astounding.

may i add that satellite photography from nasa has proved beyond a doubt that sanskrit was the language in Indus valley civilization :rolleyes:

While it is debatable that Aryans are native to India, blonde tigers are native to India. Perhaps, the Aryans dropped in from the sky in their chariots some 42,000 years ago! We know that by then the Africans moved to many places including India. :D

http://www.growf.org/photos/aud-zoo-white-tiger-4.jpg

I miss spookz. :(

may i add that satellite photography from nasa has proved beyond a doubt that sanskrit was the language in Indus valley civilization huh?

...message too short...

I think he might be referring to the finding of the trail of, now dried up, river saraswati, mentioned in vedas.

come on, gentleman!
barring the presence of letters landscaped into the earth, spelling out...we speak sanskrit, how does one figure out the lingua franca from a satellite photo?

how do you interprete the smiley?
i am simply mocking these self proclaimed experts, and their nationalist agendas. it is a play on their farfetched claims.

the topic however, is worthy of a discussion. perhaps i shall iniate a thread in the history forum.

was there another homeland from where the invasion was launched?

During recent history we can observe the spread of English. Welsh and Native American languages have disapeered. In India today, when a Marathi person wants to speak to a Bengali person they speak in English. It would not be all that surprising if English completely replaces many of India's languages over the next two hundred years.

What clues do we have about the Arayans? We know about their religion, their caste system, and perhaps their language family. We don't know for sure that a people called Arayans introduced Indo-European language, and the Vedas and Caste Sytem to India, but it seems to be probable history.

It also seems that the same ethnic groups entry into Iran is the source of the word Iranian. The languages of Europe are considered by linguists to have separated from each other relatively recently compared to the length of time that humans have been in Europe. There is no reason to think that Indo-Europeans genocided all the pre-existing Europeans except the Basques. The Spanish Language is the Language of Mexico through Peru although the majority of the Human DNA in that region is Native American DNA. In the USA the disparity of weaponry and other factors made the genocide of Native Americans the choice of the USA's citizens. Genocide seems to have been much less common than Overlordship or cohabitation with trade.

While English may replace many Indian languages the rise of English does not mean that English people and English DNA are replacing Indian DNA. The Caste system reeks of an overlord to exploited people relationship. In Haiti today Mulato descendants of house slaves still struggle to maintain their dominance over the darker more African descendants of field slaves. I bet that a cattle herding, theiving and trading and slave taking Indo European speaking people came to dominate but not replace the farming and hunter gathering people from the Atlatic coast of Europe all the way through India.

The North Indians may have been lighter colored than the South Indians before the Arayans ever arrived. The scatterring of Non-Dravidan and Non-Indo-European languages reminds me that India's history is very complex and old. Before the Arayans entered India a Dravidan people from some unknown part of India came to dominate India and replaced a myriad of older Indian languages. We can see from Native America and other places that in the absense of extensive intermarriage, extensive trade, and overlord domination, we should expect much greater liguistic diversity. If we created magical walls separating the American people into 1000 subsectors that would not be allowed to communicate with each other, and then we wait 800 years and remove the magical walls we would find the people speaking 1000 fully separate languages each of which was derived from American English.

So why do only the Indians, Pakistanis and Iranians seem to have any historical memory of the arrival of the Indo-Europeans? I think the Indo-Eropeans were Illiterate and their arrival was only recorded when they subdued and merged with more advanced history keeping people.

The Indo-Europeans / Arayans probably subdued Europe a little earlier than they subdued North India. It may have taken hundreds of years for these people to complete each few hundred miles of invasion/ migration. During each few hundred miles of migration they may have interbred with the local people and aquired slaves. Various conflicting linguists have suggested the Ukraine, Georgia, and Khazakistan as probable sources for the Indo European Languages and therefore the Ancestors of the Arayans.

There seems to be negroid featured people in India (with flat curly hair, wide nose etc) and at the same time the adivasis of India look more like American Indians. There has been some speculation that American Indian presence in USA can date way back to 20,000 years (from cave paintings). Could the migration also be possible with the Chinese migration to India during that time.

No one seems to talk about people before Aryans or even Dravidians. It may very well be that the Indian subcontinent was populated by Chinese long before (30,000 years?) the arrival of Egyptians which created the Dravidian culture.

Of course we are still debating the origin of Aryans...

In India today, when a Marathi person wants to speak to a Bengali person they speak in English.

Not always,this is subjective really.Some do,some dont...

North Indians Migrated long time ago from Caspian see region is a Myth and its pure Bull shit.

gee...

bye!

Has anyone seen the documentary (discovery channel??) about the european mummies discovered in the deserts of China? I think they dated to 4-5 thousand years old. Could this have been a migration from europe that coincides with all this Aryan invasion of India talk? And could this migration have been caused by the great flood of the Black Sea? Or whatever sea it was. Been awhile and my memory fuzzed on name of the sea.

People have been moving around a lot for the last 80,000 years. I saw discovery channel where they put humans on American soil 40,000 years ago....so, like Rig veda says.... who knows....

I am also interested in the topic that you are discussing and appreciate the work that you have all been doing in order to investigate this more thoroughly.

I wonder sincerely where the idea of Brahm and Saraswati originated .

thank you kind sir
:D

wow...Gustav used to be so nice and moral...:eek:

There is alot of misinformation here.

First of all, there is no scientific evidence of a massive Aryan invasion from the north of India. There is, however, evidence for a steady migration from Central Asia into Northwestern India (Pakistan and neighboring Indian states such as Rajasthan and Indian Punjab). As a matter of fact, those living in this region are the direct descendants of the people of the Indus river valley civilization (starting from anywhere from 3000 to 2500 BC). There are no differences in the skull form and anatomy of the Indus River Civilization and in consequence those deemed as Aryan migrants.

It seems the Farsi language and Northern Indian language Sanskrit are related, and come from the same source. Therefore the modern people of Northwestern South Asia subcontinent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indian Rajasthan and Punjab) are related ethnically to the people of Iran.

This link should help those who are interested about this subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration

Not to offend anyone here, but i thought that "aryan" was a term used by nazi Germany to classify non Germans.

Not to offend anyone here, but i thought that "aryan" was a term used by nazi Germany to classify non Germans.

The germans simply borrowed a few ideas (http://news.iskcon.com/node/1632/2009-01-10/swastika_symbol_goodness_or_hate)