Genetic evidence suggests the origins of Indian caste populations

[Singh]

@Singh - 500 years ago in Goa Brahmins were converted to Christianity by throwing beef into their wells, this was the only way Brahmins and Portuguese blood could inter mingle I.e. by Brahmins becoming Christians.

I understand your anguish at your Brahmin relatives being tortured by Portuguese. It was Brutal. My sympathies. It was obviously not my attempt to rile you up, or degrade your caste members.

==

It is obvious you have no idea about Hindu society,

I cannot claim to know everything about "Hindu Society". Neither, have I made that claim.

We have narratives and then we have evidence. I cannot ignore the latter, when it contradicts the former.

To me evidence of a Portuguese conquest is a "plausible" explanation of why some people in that region look European. However, if it makes you uncomfortable, let me put in a more delicate wording so as to not your sensibilities..

"The foreign features of some people of Western India, is most likely due to foreign intermixing."

Why did that occur ?

---

also Mr Mitra who is a deracinated Bengali communist and IamAnIdiot who is a Brahmin hater. G'night.

I think you are more mature than this.

 

[Singh]

@parijataka @Das ka das @MAYURA @Known_Unknown

I think this study by @Known_Unknown has perhaps quashed my hypothesis on how they got foreign features; it is because they are foreigners.
@MAYURA may be onto something, when he says that they are Afghans.

 

[MAYURA]

I think you are more mature than this.[/QUOTE]

I understand your anguish at your Brahmin relatives being tortured by Portuguese. It was Brutal. My sympathies. It was obviously not my attempt to rile you up, or degrade your caste members.

It was not just brahmins ( infact brahmins were only one section tortured the people feeling the brunt of atrocities were the so called lower castes) as obvious to anyone who has read something.

I cannot claim to know everything about "Hindu Society". Neither, have I made that claim.

We have narratives and then we have evidence. I cannot ignore the latter, when it contradicts the former.

To me evidence of a Portuguese conquest is a "plausible" explanation of why some people in that region look European. However, if it makes you uncomfortable, let me put in a more delicate wording so as to not your sensibilities..

"The foreign features of some people of Western India, is most likely due to foreign intermixing."

Why did that occur ?

Do the chitapavan brahmins look more european than kashmiri pandits?

when was kashmir genetically affected by europeans?


in guise of evidence, you have been writing nonsense which is worse than anything i have come across.


BTW, what is the number of chitapavan brahmins actually?


The portuguese come, leave tens of thousands of bastards and these bastards are recognized as brahmins immediately. this is your narrative.


500 years before your beloved portuguese, Al Beruni had noted that if someone visits foreign lands ( he was talking about khyber region hindus), he had to undergo penance and you are calling the chitapavan brahmins as descendants of portuguese.


this is defense forum and so i can understand that you have no idea of history and society as you use modern glasses to look at events.

 

[Singh]

@ singh

Please don't leave any space ie use @Singh instead of @ Singh
Otherwise, I wont be notified.

You are constantly harping on invasions and invasions like a mantra.


take the case of khyber pakhtunkhwa region

it was invaded by achaemenids, alexander, indo greeks, parthians, shakas, kushanas, hunas, and sasanians from 500 bc to 600 ad.

yet in 1000 ad, it was a hindu region with people worshipping cows and ganesha and shiva, speaking ancestral language of punjabi, following caste system and what not element of indian civilization.

the arab authors tell us that this was region where cows were not killed or eaten.

if the so many invasions could not change the native culture ( it is always easier to impact culture than genes as shown by british and europeans and turks of oghuz stock in modern dau turkey) , how come we call dominant sections of hindu society as invaders?

how come achaemenids, sasanians , kushanas, hunas and rest could not impact languages and religion of that area if the people are descendants of these invaders?

are you suggesting that people of that region are kushana and other central asiatic invaders' descendants but adopted language and religion of people far away from the region?

is all this not ridiculous?

people are invaders and their descendants but their culture is native.

Infact I made a similar point, a few years back.
If Aryans came from outside, then where is a similar Aryan Culture ? Indian culture is distinct and unique.

My point, however, is this that the British Narrative of Aryan Invasion, is unfounded.
However, our Indian narrative that says well Indians are indigenous is also unfounded.
We need to develop an ameliorative narrative keeping in mind new scientific evidence.

 

[MAYURA]

@parijataka @Das ka das @MAYURA @Known_Unknown

I think this study by @Known_Unknown has perhaps quashed my hypothesis on how they got foreign features; it is because they are foreigners.
@MAYURA may be onto something, when he says that they are Afghans.

I am not saying that they are afghans as afghan is not a geographical term but denotes ethnicity and language ( language is the basis of identity, culture and even genetic links in most of cases ) as afghan are iranian people.


what i am saying is that brahmins of bahlika and nagarhara region migrated to india and took shelter in chalukyan court of 11th century and because they had come from extreme north west india, it is reasonable that they would look more caucasoid.


a west bengali is more caucasoid than an east bengali, a bihari more than west bengali, a west UPian more than bihari, a punjabi more than UPian, a pakhtun more than punjabi , a chechen more than a pakhtun and a russian more than a chechen.

what does it suggest? simply that indian extreme north west region is frontier of alpine type people.



Panini was very fair skinned because he was from mountainous region of swat.

 

[MAYURA]

Please don't leave any space ie use @Singh instead of @ Singh
Otherwise, I wont be notified.



Infact I made a similar point, a few years back.
If Aryans came from outside, then where is a similar Aryan Culture ? Indian culture is distinct and unique.

My point, however, is this that the British Narrative of Aryan Invasion, is unfounded.
However, our Indian narrative that says well Indians are indigenous is also unfounded.
We need to develop an ameliorative narrative keeping in mind new scientific evidence.

My point was not on AMT but to show that after all invasions, no region on earth has preserved its pre christian era langauge and religion.

the reason was

1. strength of society

2. demographic sea in which few thousand greeks sunk without a notice.




we have reasonable estimate of population of gandhara region and it is clear that the invaders were few.

 

[Singh]

It was not just brahmins ( infact brahmins were only one section tortured the people feeling the brunt of atrocities were the so called lower castes) as obvious to anyone who has read something.


Do the chitapavan brahmins look more european than kashmiri pandits?

when was kashmir genetically affected by europeans?



in guise of evidence, you have been writing nonsense which is worse than anything i have come across.



BTW, what is the number of chitapavan brahmins actually?


The portuguese come, leave tens of thousands of bastards and these bastards are recognized as brahmins immediately. this is your narrative.


500 years before your beloved portuguese, Al Beruni had noted that if someone visits foreign lands ( he was talking about khyber region hindus), he had to undergo penance and you are calling the chitapavan brahmins as descendants of portuguese.


this is defense forum and so i can understand that you have no idea of history and society as you use modern glasses to look at events.

I understand that it was not only Brahmins who were tortured. But when we are talking only about the particular community called the KoBras, the discussion was obviously relegated to Brahmins.

If from this @parijataka infers that I am clueless about Hindu Society, and you infer that I have no understanding of the subject, then I guess from your PoVs you are both justified.

In any case, my hypothesis has been well proven quite a bit wrong. The research shows that these foreign looking individuals are indeed foreign. Please look at preceding posts.

==

However, to ask you a few questions and of @parijataka

Research shows their foreign ancestry, lack of historical records and recent migrations.

How come then were they accepted into the Brahmin fold ? How come there was intermarriage ? Why were they not treated like the Mlechchas ?

 

[MAYURA]

@Singh who asked that

However, to ask you a few questions and of @parijataka

Research shows their foreign ancestry, lack of historical records and recent migrations.

How come then were they accepted into the Brahmin fold ? How come there was intermarriage ? Why were they not treated like the Mlechchas ?

Research does show them as alpine type but this is because our areas in west pakistan had some communities like that.

they were not accepted into brahmin fold as they were brahmins of gandhara as per an indologist who is unavailable due to illness.

once he is fine, i will contact him and try to prove the migration of nagarhara brahmins to maharshtra.


please note that brahmins of gandhara region were not considered high grade as seen in Kalhana's rajatarangini.

what happened was that brahmins of gandhara migrated and were looked down upon by rest of brahmins thus making them secluded and which in turn allowed them to have " nordic" features.

but since they were brahmins, there was no problem in calling them such.


Bhavabhuti, the great sanskrit dramatist, also called bengali brahmins as lowly because of their meat eating so it was norm for brahmins from UP and Vidarbha to look down upon other brahmins.

 

[Virendra]

@Virendra,
What I could see is that the directionality of a haplogroup is shown by the diversity of that particular haplogroup. In other words, the source will have more people with that haplogroup, and the target less, and the source will show more diversity within the haplogroup (refer to the dark green colour in the figure).

Yes and have you seen the k5 light green component as well. There are no dips or spikes in its diversity across the geographic spectrum.
Which means, the migration/spread out event for this component took place more than at least 12,500.
With k5 the light green and k6 the dark green (discussed already), we cover almost the entire pool of South Asia.

Now, if we take the entire population, we will see many haplogroups, and you will see that there is some prevalence of haplogroups from different regions outside India (bright blue for example), and that also indicates presence of foreign genes, and going by the size in the foreign regions and India, we have indication that peple did come from regions that lie outside of South Asia.

Yes a very minor presence. Have you compared these components against the green ones? Here's what the paper says:

Both k5 and k6 ancestry components that dominate genetic variation in South Asia at K = 8 demonstrate much greater haplotype diversity than those that predominate in West Eurasia. (talking about blue ones)

What does it mean?
Simply put - Green ones are older than blue ones and that the green ones have been having long term local genetic evolution in South Asia before blues.

This pattern is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and/or a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia

Another thing about the blue components (from the paper):

....we see that only the k4 dark blue component is present in India and northern Pakistani populations, whereas, in contrast, the k3 light blue component dominates in southern Pakistan and Iran. (which is rather odd to happen in geographically adjacent places. Read the next line)
This patterning suggests additional complexity of gene flow between geographically adjacent populations because it would be difficult to explain the western ancestry component in Indian populations by simple and recent admixture from the Middle East.

Lastly, while the blues ones only appear in scant way at South Asia. The green ones (dominant in South Asia) are found with reasonably strong frequency even in the regions of blue components. That is - Caucasus, Central Asia Middle East and Europe.
And we know when the light green spread right? More than 12,500 years ago.

Regards,
Virendra

 

[Iamanidiot]

@Singh South India and Western India had a long history of trade & Commerce with various civilizations so sowing of wild oats was common in the heat of things

 

[pmaitra]

Yes and have you seen the k5 light green component as well. There are no dips or spikes in its diversity across the geographic spectrum.
Which means, the migration/spread out event for this component took place more than at least 12,500.
With k5 the light green and k6 the dark green (discussed already), we cover almost the entire pool of South Asia.


Yes a very minor presence. Have you compared these components against the green ones? Here's what the paper says:

What does it mean?
Simply put - Green ones are older than blue ones and that the green ones have been having long term local genetic evolution in South Asia before blues.


Another thing about the blue components (from the paper):


Lastly, while the blues ones only appear in scant way at South Asia. The green ones (dominant in South Asia) are found with reasonably strong frequency even in the regions of blue components. That is - Caucasus, Central Asia Middle East and Europe.
And we know when the light green spread right? More than 12,500 years ago.

Regards,
Virendra

I think there could be an issue with interpretation.

This is what the paper says:

Our simulations show that differences in haplotype diversity between source and recipient populations can be detected even for migration events that occurred 500 generations ago (∼12,500 years ago assuming one generation to be 25 years).

The way I see it, their simulations are good for migrations upto 12,500 years ago. I would not conclude that their simulations (based on current or recent datasets) essentially represent migrations 12,500 years ago.

Secondly, yes, that green portion is large in India, and with more intra-haplotypical diversity, it would indicate migration out of India, and by the same token, the large blue portions (two shades of blue actually) outside India and small portions in India indicates migration of Russians and Caucasians into India.

Thirdly, the Principal Component (PC) Analysis takes n-dimensional datapoints, and fixes the x-axis in the most dominant direction (1st PC), and then takes the next most dominant direction (2nd PC) that is normal to the 1st PC, and if we look at the two PCs individually, we will see that, as two examples, (1) East Asians are close to the Europeans, and (2) Caucasians are close to the Gujaratis. Of course, when we are reducing an n-dimensional dataset to two dimensions, we are expected to see such results. Such results are valuable, but not comprehensive. One reason why people do PCA, and stick to 1 or 2 dimensions is because it is easy to deduce a Normal Distribution in 1 or 2 dimensions. In 3 or more, we have the curse of dimensionality, and also, the tail of a 2+ Gaussian dominates the mode, and is still a matter of research.

Finally, I have to disagree with this conclusion:

Simply put - Green ones are older than blue ones and that the green ones have been having long term local genetic evolution in South Asia before blues.

No, it does not prove that either blue or green is any older than the other, and neither does the paper say so. The only thing we know that the dataset is reliable for conclusions for migrations dating back to 12,500 years ago, and is not haplotype specific.

Worth Mentioning:
There is one method to compute distances or similarities between multi-dimensional datapoints, without reducing it to only two components, and that is the Mahalanobis Distance, invented by Prashanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a statistician, anthropologist, and founder of ISI.

The advantage of Mahalanobis Distance is that it takes into account all the dimensions, and even if two dimensions might be most significant, the combined effect of other dimensions might actually dominate the contributions of two major dimensions, if we take two datasets and compare them.

 

[Virendra]

Secondly, the Greeks, as we call them today, are better defined as Ionians or Yavanas. I have written a long post with plenty of references to show that they were very much part of India at one point.

I said the same thing here with references - http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/...uts-panini-times-kshatriyas-2.html#post730060
But no one was ready to agree.

I did make a connection between Yavanas and Chauhans, but I also said that I do not have any solid proof.
If I had the resources, I would do a thorough research.
It provides a lead.

Consider a crime, and investigation. What the investigators see as leads, might not be admissible in court, and might not be enough to secure a conviction, but if those leads are followed, one could stumble upon some solid evidence, from which, one could actually get a conviction.

Similarly, if we followed the lead of Yavanas and Chauhans, we might (or might not) come across some solid proof that Chauhans are actually Yavanas.

With this thin a premise (the words sound similar?) I doubt you will find anything. Besides, there is nothing to find out.
Our history already places Chauhans as descendents of King 'Chahamana' from where the name is derived .. like Guhilots from Guhaditya.
There are inscriptions mentioning him in the Chauhan chronology. What more do you need?
If you still have to be looking around, go on. It would be like walking in loops.

Regards,
Virendra

 

[pmaitra]

I said the same thing here with references - http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/...uts-panini-times-kshatriyas-2.html#post730060
But no one was ready to agree.



With this thin a premise (the words sound similar?) I doubt you will find anything. Besides, there is nothing to find out.
Our history already places Chauhans as descendents of King 'Chahamana' from where the name is derived .. like Guhilots from Guhaditya.
There are inscriptions mentioning him in the Chauhan chronology. What more do you need?
If you still have to be looking around, go on. It would be like walking in loops.

Regards,
Virendra

I do not have solid proof that Chauhans and Yavanas are same, but the premise of them sounding similar is just that - Yavana and Chauhan (also spellt Chavan). There is more similarity between Yavana and Chavan/Chauhan than there is between Guhaditya and Guhilot.

 

[parijataka]

I understand your anguish at your Brahmin relatives being tortured by Portuguese. It was Brutal. My sympathies. It was obviously not my attempt to rile you up, or degrade your caste members.

==
I cannot claim to know everything about "Hindu Society". Neither, have I made that claim. We have narratives and then we have evidence. I cannot ignore the latter, when it contradicts the former.

To me evidence of a Portuguese conquest is a "plausible" explanation of why some people in that region look European. However, if it makes you uncomfortable, let me put in a more delicate wording so as to not your sensibilities..
"The foreign features of some people of Western India, is most likely due to foreign intermixing."

Why did that occur ?

---
I think you are more mature than this.

Well I was pointing out the implausibility of your statement for many reasons. The caste system discriminated not only between castes it also prohibited mising with mlecchas. As for Portuguese torture - they tortured Hindus, Muslims and even the existing Christians in Goa for not being Christian enough, because of which many people left Goa 5-600 years ago.

While inter marriage between the locals and Portuguese took place it would have resulted in increase in number of Christians and not fairer Hindus or Brahmins.

I find Known_Unknown's statement far more plausible that with the facts he provides that Chitpavan brahmins do not have a history beyond 1000 years etc and could be outsiders. Your hypothesis seems just off the top of your head and then you tried to prove it.

 

[Virendra]

I think there could be an issue with interpretation.
This is what the paper says:
Our simulations show that differences in haplotype diversity between source and recipient populations can be detected even for migration events that occurred 500 generations ago (∼12,500 years ago assuming one generation to be 25 years).

The way I see it, their simulations are good for migrations upto 12,500 years ago. I would not conclude that their simulations (based on current or recent datasets) essentially represent migrations 12,500 years ago.

I know that and have mentioned it myself as well. Not sure what you're trying to say with this. I am not debating the inward or outward migrations that might have occured more than 12,500 YBP.

Secondly, yes, that green portion is large in India, and with more intra-haplotypical diversity, it would indicate migration out of India, and by the same token, the large blue portions (two shades of blue actually) outside India and small portions in India indicates migration of Russians and Caucasians into India.

Have already said that I didn't disagree.
It does show a minor presence, if you want to highlight just that and not the principal indigenous components that form the bulk of our stock.

Thirdly, the Principal Component (PC) Analysis takes n-dimensional datapoints, and fixes the x-axis in the most dominant direction (1st PC), and then takes the next most dominant direction (2nd PC) that is normal to the 1st PC, and if we look at the two PCs individually, we will see that, as two examples, (1) East Asians are close to the Europeans, and (2) Caucasians are close to the Gujaratis. Of course, when we are reducing an n-dimensional dataset to two dimensions, we are expected to see such results. Such results are valuable, but not comprehensive. One reason why people do PCA, and stick to 1 or 2 dimensions is because it is easy to deduce a Normal Distribution in 1 or 2 dimensions. In 3 or more, we have the curse of dimensionality, and also, the tail of a 2+ Gaussian dominates the mode, and is still a matter of research.

My point was not to debate that who is close to who, but to mention who went where to lay the foundation of that "closeness".

Finally, I have to disagree with this conclusion:
Simply put - Green ones are older than blue ones and that the green ones have been having long term local genetic evolution in South Asia before blues.

No, it does not prove that either blue or green is any older than the other, and neither does the paper say so.

Ok. Lets try again. Coming from the paper:

Both k5 and k6 ancestry components (green ones, local to India) that dominate genetic variation in South Asia at K = 8 demonstrate much greater haplotype diversity than those that predominate in West Eurasia(the blue ones).
(Here it comes)This pattern is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and/or a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia.

The only thing we know that the dataset is reliable for conclusions for migrations dating back to 12,500 years ago, and is not haplotype specific.

Like I said above, that is already known and I don't know how it implies anything to the contrary of the research's conclusion. In fact the research uses the same fact about haplotypes to reach at its conclusions.
If there aren't any regional diversity differences in a haplotype, it obviously didn't migrate/spread in the last 12,500 years. For example, that would be true for the light green (k5) alleles spread across S Asia, Central Asia and West Eurasia. The lebensraum (wherever it was), exploded or shifted
more than 12,500 years ago.

I do not have solid proof that Chauhans and Yavanas are same, but the premise of them sounding similar is just that - Yavana and Chauhan (also spellt Chavan). There is more similarity between Yavana and Chavan/Chauhan than there is between Guhaditya and Guhilot.

Guhaditya is the person from whom Guhilot clan takes it name.
Chahamana is the person from whom Chauhan clan takes its name.
.. similarity like what ??

Regards,
Virendra

 

[Manas7]

Okay, lets assume that they had no intermixing with the Portugese.
Atleast you will concede that they have foreign ancestry ? How else would you explain those features ?

Those features are not unique to konkan bhrahmins .You will finds some brahmins in other parts including Odisha have hazel eyes . And its well known that brahmins are relatively fair complexioned compared to any other castes.

but i don't understand how that makes case for foreign ancestry unless ofcourse you argue that first human is from Africa.

 

[MAYURA]

I do not have solid proof that Chauhans and Yavanas are same, but the premise of them sounding similar is just that - Yavana and Chauhan (also spellt Chavan). There is more similarity between Yavana and Chavan/Chauhan than there is between Guhaditya and Guhilot.

Are you aware that christianity sounds just like krishnaniti and yeshaw like keshav.

jerusalem is another name for yadusalem and rome is nothing but sri rama's place.


I had already remarked that those proving or trying to do so are just followers of PN Oak.

yavana and chavan are inter related , so are seleucia and chalukya and how can we forget parthians resembling our Pallavas.


in earlier inscriptions, it is chahman not chavan which corrupted afterwards. if you are using corrupted words of original to trace the closeness, I can trace everything in greek history to india.

BTW, the greeks never called themselves yavanas so your hypothesis is wrong in the first place.

they called themselves hellas, the term yavana was used by indians and iranians.

 

[MAYURA]

Those features are not unique to konkan bhrahmins .You will finds some brahmins in other parts including Odisha have hazel eyes . And its well known that brahmins are relatively fair complexioned compared to any other castes.

but i don't understand how that makes case for foreign ancestry unless ofcourse you argue that first human is from Africa.

These brahmins are not of foreign ancestry as they had come from an indian area.

if i settle down in tamil nadu, i am not foreigner.

they had come from an indo aryan cultural, linguistic and religious matrix , a land which now is " foreign"

 

[MAYURA]

Guhaditya is the person from whom Guhilot clan takes it name.
Chahamana is the person from whom Chauhan clan takes its name.
.. similarity like what ??

Regards,
Virendra

virendra bhai similarity perhaps like vedic rishi garg and christian saint George and christmas and krishnamasa meaning month of krishna.

 

[pmaitra]

Guhaditya is the person from whom Guhilot clan takes it name.
Chahamana is the person from whom Chauhan clan takes its name.
.. similarity like what ??

Ok, and I still don't see how Chauhan/Chavan does not sound like Yavanas, but Guhaditya and Guhilot does.

You said my premise was "thin," then your premise is based on what? Historical records? I would like some references to that effect please.

With this thin a premise (the words sound similar?) I doubt you will find anything. Besides, there is nothing to find out.
Our history already places Chauhans as descendents of King 'Chahamana' from where the name is derived .. like Guhilots from Guhaditya.

There are inscriptions mentioning him in the Chauhan chronology. What more do you need?
If you still have to be looking around, go on. It would be like walking in loops.

I would like to know more about these inscriptions.

yavana and chavan are inter related , so are seleucia and chalukya and how can we forget parthians resembling our Pallavas.

Pahlavi is an Iranian surname, even to this day. Regarding Seleukia and Chalukya, it did strike me, but again, one needs to study more, to come to a definitive conclusion. There is no geographical continuity. Have you ever looked up the location of the Chalukya Empire?

in earlier inscriptions, it is chahman not chavan which corrupted afterwards. if you are using corrupted words of original to trace the closeness, I can trace everything in greek history to india.

Which earlier inscriptions?

BTW, the greeks never called themselves yavanas so your hypothesis is wrong in the first place.

The Greeks never called themselves Yavans? Can you say that with certainty about all Greeks? Were the Ionians part of the Greek Empire? I think I have explained this pretty well, so no point in repeating the same thing again and again. The Ionians were as much Greek, as the Spartans were.

Now write another post saying the Greeks never called themselves Spartans.

they called themselves hellas, the term yavana was used by indians and iranians.

There is a term called "Hellenic."

Are you aware that christianity sounds just like krishnaniti and yeshaw like keshav.

jerusalem is another name for yadusalem and rome is nothing but sri rama's place.

I've heard these stories - rather imaginative I must say. If you want to believe in these theories, then so be it.