Aryan Invasion Hypothesis

[panduranghari]

The Iranians have called themselves 'Aryans' since ancient times and continue to do so today ('Iran' = 'Land of Aryans').

Do they still call themselves 'Arians' though? It would be wonderful if they actually do that. Then Hindi- Iranians are really bhai bhai.

 

[panduranghari]

Do they still call themselves 'Arians' though? It would be wonderful if they actually do that. Then Hindi- Iranians are really bhai bhai.

RigVeda- A historical analysis

II
THE AVESTAN EVIDENCE
AS PER WESTERN SCHOLARS

The official theory about the Indo-Iranians is that they migrated into Central Asia from the West (from an original Indo-European homeland in South Russia) and then they split into two: the Iranians moving southwestwards into Iran, and the Indoaryans moving southeastwards into India.

According to another version, now generally discarded by the scholars, but which still forms the basis for off-hand remarks and assumptions, the Indo-Iranians first migrated into the Caucasus region, from where they moved southwards into western Iran. From there, they moved eastwards, with the Indoaryans separating from the Iranians somewhere in eastern Iran and continuing eastwards into India.

It will therefore be necessary to examine what exactly are the facts, and the evidence, about the early history of the Indo-Iranians, as per the general consensus among the Western scholars.

This is very important because an examination shows that there is a sharp contradiction between the facts of the case as presented, or admitted to, by the scholars, and the conclusions reached by themselves on the basis of these facts.

The Iranians are historically known in three contiguous areas: Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan. The basic question which arises, therefore, is: which of these areas was historically the earliest one?

Michael Witzel, a western scholar whose writings we will be dealing with in greater detail in an appendix to this book, refers dismissively to the theory outlined by us in our earlier book that India was the original Indo-European homeland, as the "contrary view that stresses the Indian home of the Indo-Aryans. Even Indo-Iranians, not to mention all Indo-Europeans (!) are increasingly located in South Asia whence they are held to have migrated westwards, a clearly erroneous view"¦"12

However, Witzel is compelled to admit that "it is not entirely clear where the combined Indo-Iranians lived together before they left for Iran and India, when they went on their separate ways, by what routes, and in what order".13

As we can see, in spite of admitting that the evidence does not tell him "where the combined Indo-Iranians lived together", he goes on with "before they left for Iran and India". That they did not live together in either Iran or India is to him a foregone conclusion which requires no evidence.

There is thus a natural inbuilt bias in the minds of most scholars towards a conclusion favouring a movement into Iran and India from Central Asia, which is not based on evidence but on a theory which locates the original Indo-European homeland in South Russia, making Central Asia a convenient stopping point on the way to Iran and India.

However, another scholar, P. Oktor Skjærvø, in his paper published in the same volume as Witzel's papers, gives us a summary of whatever evidence does exist on the subject. According to him: "Evidence either for the history of the Iranian tribes or their languages from the period following the separation of the Indian and Iranian tribes down to the early 1st millennium BC is sadly lacking. There are no written sources, and archaeologists are still working to fill out the picture."14

Thus, there is neither literary evidence nor archaeological evidence for Iranians before the early first millennium BC.

When literary evidence does turn up, what does it indicate?

"The earliest mention of Iranians in historical sources is, paradoxically, of those settled on the Iranian plateau, not those still in Central Asia, their ancestral homeland. 'Persians' are first mentioned in the 9th century BC Assyrian annals: on one campaign, in 835 BC, Shalmaneser (858-824 BC) is said to have received tributes from 27 kings of ParSuwaS; the Medes are mentioned under Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BC); at the battle of Halulê on the Tigris in 691 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 BC) faced an army of troops from Elam, ParsumaS, Anzan, and others; and in the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) and elsewhere numerous 'kings' of the Medes are mentioned (see also, for example, Boyce 1975-82: 5-13). "¦ There are no literary sources for Iranians in Central Asia before the Old Persian inscriptions (Darius's Bisotun inscription, 521-519 BC, ed. Schmitt) and Herodotus' Histories (ca. 470 BC). These show that by the mid-Ist millennium BC tribes called Sakas by the Persians and Scythians by the Greeks were spread throughout Central Asia, from the westernmost edges (north and northwest of the Black Sea) to its easternmost borders."15

Thus, while Witzel indicates his bias towards Central Asia as the earliest habitat of the Iranians while admitting to absence of specific data to that effect, Skjærvø indicates the same bias while admitting to specific data to the opposite effect.

The sum of the specifically datable inscriptional evidence for the presence of Iranians is therefore 835 BC in the case of Iran and 521 BC in the case of Central Asia. This may not be clinching evidence (indicating that Iranians were not present in these areas before these dates), but, such as it is, this is the evidence.

There is, however, an older source of evidence: the Avesta.

As Skjærvø puts it, "the only sources for the early (pre-Achaemenid) history of the eastern Iranian peoples are the Avesta, the Old Persian inscriptions, and Herodotus. "¦ In view of the dearth of historical sources it is of paramount importance that one should evalute the evidence of the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrians, parts at least of which antedate the Old Persian inscriptions by several centuries."16

The Avesta is the oldest valid source for the earliest history and geography of the Iranians, and Skjærvø therefore examines the "internal evidence of the Avestan texts" in respect of geographical names.

About the "earliest geographical names", he tells us: "A very few geographical names appear to be inherited from Indo-Iranian times. For instance, OPers. Haraiva-, Av. (acc.) HarOiium, and OPers. HarauvatI, Av. HaraxvaitI-, both of which in historical times are located in the area of southern Afghanistan (Herat and Kandahar), correspond to the two Vedic rivers Sarayu and SarasvatI. These correspondences are interesting, but tell us nothing about the early geography of the Indo-Iranian tribes."17

Here again we see the sharp contradiction between the facts and the conclusion: "the earliest geographical names "¦ inherited from Indo-Iranian times" indicate an area in southern Afghanistan, as per Skjærvø's own admission. However, this evidence does not accord with the Theory. Hence Skjærvø concludes that while this information is "interesting" (whatever that means), it "tells us nothing about the early geography of the Indo-Iranian tribes"!

The geography of the Avesta is also equally "interesting": "Two Young Avestan texts contain lists of countries known to their authors, YaSt 10 and VidEvdAd, Chapter 1. The two lists differ considerably in terms of composition and are therefore most probably independent of one another. Both lists contain only countries in northeastern Iran."18 Skjærvø clarifies on the same page that when he says "northeastern Iran", he means "Central Asia, Afghanistan and northeastern modem Iran".19All these places are "located to the east of the Caspian Ocean, with the possible exception of Raga".20 But, again, he clarifies later that this is only if Raga is identified with "Median RagA "¦ modem Ray south of Tehran. In the VidEvdAd, however, it is listed between the Helmand river and Caxra (assumed to be modern Carx near Ghazna in southeast Afghanistan) and is therefore most probably different from Median RagA and modern Ray."21

While Skjærvø accepts that western Iran was unknown to the early Iranians, he is deliberately silent on a crucial part of the Avestan evidence.

He deliberately omits to mention in his list of names "inherited from Indo-Iranian times" (i.e. common to the Rigveda and the Avesta) as well as in his description of the areas covered in YaSt 10 and VidEvdAd, Chapter 1, the name of a crucial area known to the Avesta: the Hapta-HAndu or the Punjab!

Skjærvø does mention the Hapta-HAndu when he details the list of names given in the VidEvdAd; but he merely translates it as "the Seven Rivers",22 pointedly avoids mentioning anywhere that this refers to the Punjab, and generally treats it as just another piece of information which is "interesting" but "tells us nothing" about anything, since it runs counter to the Theory.

But whatever the conclusions of the scholars, the facts of the case, as indicated by themselves, give us the following picture of Iranian geography:

1. Pre-Avestan Period: Punjab, southern Afghanistan.

2. Early and Late Avestan Periods: Punjab, Afghanistan, Central Asia, northeastern Iran.

3. Post-Avestan Period: Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran.

To deviate slightly from the evidence of the Western scholars, we may compare this with the following picture of Rigvedic geography derived by us in this book on the basis of the evidence in the Rigveda:

1. Pre-Rigvedic Period: Haryana and areas cast.
2. Early Rigvedic Period: Haryana and areas east, eastern and central Punjab.

3. Middle Rigvedic Period: Haryana and areas east, Punjab.

4. Late Rigvedic Period: Haryana and areas east, Punjab, southern Afghanistan.

The direction of origin and movement is clear:

1. Originally, the Vedic Aryans were in Haryana and areas to the east, while the Iranians were in Punjab and southern Afghanistan.

2. Towards the end of the Early Period of the Rigveda, the Vedic Aryans had started moving westwards and penetrating into the Punjab, entering into direct conflict with the Iranians.

3. In the Middle and Late Periods of the Rigveda, the Vedic Aryans were now together with the Iranians in the Punjab and southern Afghanistan, and the Iranians had also spread out further northwards and westwards.

To return to the Western scholars P. Oktor Skjærvø and Michael Witzel, it is not only the facts about the Avesta (as detailed by Skjærvø) which clearly indicate a movement from east to west; even the relative chronology suggested by the two scholars, extremely late though it is, and coloured as it is by their staunch belief in the Theory, clearly shows a movement from India to the west:

Skjærvø admits that the earliest evidence for the Iranians is 835 BC in the case of Iran, and 521 BC in the case of Central Asia.

In respect of the Avesta, which is the earliest source for the Iranians (and whose earliest geographical names pertain to southern Afghanistan and the Punjab), Skjærvø notes that "the most common estimates range between 10,00-600 BC".23However, he opines that "the "¦ 'early date' for the older Avesta would be the 14th-11th centuries BC, close to the middle of the second millennium "¦ the extreme 'late date' - 8th-7th centuries BC".24

In respect of the Rigveda, Witzel himself goes far beyond these dates. As he puts it: "Since the SarasvatI, which dries up progressively after the mid 2nd millennium BC (Erdosy 1989) is still described as a mighty river in the Rigveda, the earliest hymns in the latter must have been composed by C.1500 BC"25

He repeats this point in respect of a specific historical incident: the SarasvatI is "prominent in Book 7: it flows from the mountains to the sea (7.95.2) - which would put the battle of 10 kings prior to 1500 BC or so due to the now well-documented dessication of the SarasvatI (Yash Pal et al, 1984)".26

Witzel states that "the earliest hymns" in the Rigveda "must have been composed by 1500 BC". But the specific incident he quotes suggests that, by his reckoning, even very late hymns were already in existence by 1500 BC: the hymn he quotes is VII.95. According to him elsewhere, MaNDala VII is "the latest of the family books"27; even within this MaNDala, hymn 95 must, by his reckoning, be "a comparatively late hymn"28, which is how he describes hymn 96 which is a companion hymn to hymn 95.

 

[pmaitra]

I'm not interested in becoming one either and no I am not calling you a sepoy. I only pointed to similarity of argument.
Didn't know 'AIT sepoy' was such a derogatory term in your eyes. It is not in my eyes actually.
Neither there was any personal comment nor was there the use of "I" and "You" to even vaguely make it look personal. So help me find out whose post made it personal indeed.
I still don't know what was so flaming there.

Of course I do not agree with your interpretation of history, and of course I disagree with you, so that includes me in the group of people who disagree with you. Now, things typically start like that - you make a small snide comment, the other person pushes the envelope a little more, and then you yet more - and things burst into flames. So, I propose, that we cordially disagree.

Attack on Sanskrit in this context is precisely the assertion that Rigveda is not written in Sanskrit.
If not Sanskrit then in which language and where did that language come from? Please don't quote PIE because it smells cooked up and is yet to be stand on its legs as a genuine language.

So stating a fact, or to keep it neutral, what I perceive to be a fact, is an 'attack' on Sanskrit? If my claim that Rig Veda was written in pre-Sanskrit makes it an attack on Sanskrit, then me claiming that The Merchant of Venice was written in Victorian English is also an attack on Modern English. Are you expecting to win an argument on such a flimsy premise?

What is disappointing is, why the veda itself is left behind and its language is in focus?
That is probably because we don't know whether the Veda is authored by a human, by divine or if it is eternal.
So veda will not answer questions of historicity such as AIT/OIT/ and timelines etc as it is not a historical document.
Hence the language argument comes to fore with laser beam focus in these theories and used in the bigger scheme.
Now we know that Aryans are credited with writing (not necessarily equal to authoring) and preserving Vedas.
One way of taking Aryan origin outside India is to say that Vedas are not written in Sanskrit but some other language and then back peddling from Sanskrit cook a language and claim that Vedas are written in this language and found at such and such place.

For a moment, even if we accept the above, there is nothing to prove that all this happened between 1500 and 1200 BC. It is akin to building hypothesis over a hypoethesis and then saying "Hence proved!!"

Regards,
Virendra

Sorry that my omission of the content of the Rig Veda has caused you disappointment. No, there is no particular reason why it has been left out. However, if you will, we can start off with Matara and Pitara, and you would still struggle to establish your point of view, apropos the contents of Rig Veda and the subsequent Vedas.

 

[pmaitra]

Do they still call themselves 'Arians' though? It would be wonderful if they actually do that. Then Hindi- Iranians are really bhai bhai.

Do they still? Yes.

The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in native use since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/).[11][15] Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.[16][17]

Source: Iran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[civfanatic]

Do they still call themselves 'Arians' though? It would be wonderful if they actually do that. Then Hindi- Iranians are really bhai bhai.

Yes, they do. Unlike in India, the term is not controversial and is freely used to describe the Iranian people (the term 'Iranian' itself, of course, simply means 'Aryan' and is derived from the same).

 

[panduranghari]

So stating a fact, or to keep it neutral, what I perceive to be a fact, is an 'attack' on Sanskrit? If my claim that Rig Veda was written in pre-Sanskrit makes it an attack on Sanskrit, then me claiming that The Merchant of Venice was written in Victorian English is also an attack on Modern English. Are you expecting to win an argument on such a flimsy premise?

.

Michael Witzel who is a tenured professor of Sanskrit studies at a western university responds to indegenous researchers and wins arguments on worse premises. You surely cannot accuse others of the same.

link

For your weekend amusement, though the repeated insistence on
"rewriting" of Indian history is really ... boring:

See: <http://tinyurl.com/8mofml>
"US-based engineer turned historian, Dr Vepa" says it all...

Like our long time friends mathematician Rajaram, bank employees Dr.
K. and Talageri, electric engineering Prof. S. Kak, medical
technician V. Agarwal (M.Sc.), astrologers like David Fawley
("Vamedeva") etc. etc. Likewise, K. Vepa: he has a PhD of the
University of Waterloo in Engineering Sciences & applied mechanics,
studied there 1968 — 1972.

*Anybody* in the Indian orbit can turn historian overnight, at the
drop of a hat.
Preferably, after retirement...

The thing is we are all on the same side but we are not on the side of the western propagandists.

And Virendra was referring clearly to people like Witzel.

 

[panduranghari]

Yes, they do. Unlike in India, the term is not controversial and is freely used to describe the Iranian people (the term 'Iranian' itself, of course, simply means 'Aryan' and is derived from the same).

Do they still? Yes.
Source: Iran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A related myth is the one according to which "Iran" means the "land of Aryans." This myth was propagated by Max Müller, who claimed in 1862 that the term airyanem vaejah found in the Avesta is the ancestor of "Iran" and means the "Aryan expanse." This myth became so widespread that serious scholars propagate it even to this day. Suffice it to look at a dictionary.
The now ubiquitous concept of the "Aryan race" first appeared in Iran in the 1890s. Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, one of the ideologues of a particularly bigoted version of Iranian nationalism, was the first to ever refer to it in writing. Interestingly, he spelled it àriyàn (آریان), a transliteration of the French aryen. Later, Sadegh Rezazadeh Shafagh came up with àriyàyi, the term now usually used in Persian. Hasan Priniya dwelt upon Aryans and the "science of race" in the textbooks he wrote for the first cohort of children to be mass schooled by the Pahlavi state in the 1930s.

Read more: Iranian Identity, the 'Aryan Race,' and Jake Gyllenhaal - Tehran Bureau | FRONTLINE | PBS

Perhaps its time for reconsideration of what really is Arya (n)?

 

[LurkerBaba]

^
Interesting. So what does "Iran" really mean ?

Edit: I went through the Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_(word)

The gentilic ēr- and ary- (in e.g. ērān/aryān) in the Middle Iranian languages of Persian and Parthian derives from Old Iranian *arya ("Arya" means noble in Sanskrit)

--

This word is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition and in Middle Iranian era (ca. 400 BCE - 700 CE) it seems "very likely" (vague) that the word ērān in Ardashir's inscription still retained the same meaning as in the Old era, i.e. denoting the people rather than the empire while the empire was properly named as ērānšahr.[1]
--

I don't know Persian

 

[panduranghari]

The thing I have deduced (uneducated guess) is Iranians are as confused about their heritage like India. As usual Europe created this rift. Mohammad Pahlevi promulgated it like Nehru. Both seem to be more interested in impressing the whites than being proud of who one is.

Iranians would be more than happy to be identified with Bharat unlike some Bakis who clearly hate themselves because their ancestors were napak Hindus.

 

[panduranghari]

^
Interesting. So what does "Iran" really mean ?

Edit: I went through the Wikipedia article

Iran (word) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gentilic ēr- and ary- (in e.g. ērān/aryān) in the Middle Iranian languages of Persian and Parthian derives from Old Iranian *arya ("Arya" means noble in Sanskrit)

--

This word is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition and in Middle Iranian era (ca. 400 BCE - 700 CE) it seems "very likely" (vague) that the word ērān in Ardashir's inscription still retained the same meaning as in the Old era, i.e. denoting the people rather than the empire while the empire was properly named as ērānšahr.[1]
--

I don't know Persian

Wikipedia should never be quoted because it is doctored to suit a western agenda. Lurker ji Lets more away from wiki as a necessary source of information.

Iran Aryan lets put this BS to rest once and for all. Or are we becoming clones of madmax muller or AIT Nazi like Witzel?

Persia, Iran, and the Persian Gulf: A Brief History of Names

Why the confusion over the names Persian and Iranian? For the last 2600 years, up to the year 1935, following a naming convention that was started by the ancient Greeks, in all Western languages today's Iran was known as "Persia", a word that was different from the word used in Persian, which was always "Iran". There are many other examples of such naming conventions in the world. Indians call their country "Bharat", Egyptians call their land "Missr", in Finland they call their country "Suomi", the Japanese call their country "Nihon", and Germans call their country "Deutschland" (2). By the same token, the language of Persia (Iran) has always been internationally known as Persian.

The naming conventions for Persia (aka Iran) changed in 1935. The suggestion for the name change from Persia to Iran is said to have come from the Persian ambassador to Germany, who was a Nazi sympathizer. In 1935 Germany was ruled by Hitler. Aryanism was equated by the Nazis as the highest level of human civilization, in an article of faith based on a vulgar Hegelian hyperbola. Apparently the Persian ambassador was persuaded by his Nazi friends that Persia would be better off as an ally of Nazi Germany. Moreover, he became convinced that the country should be called by its Persian name, Iran, in Western languages. This was to signal a new beginning and bring home to the world the new era in Iranian history, one that would emphasize the Aryan aspect of its people. The name Iran is a cognate of the old word Aryan. (check the earlier reply- the Oxford based Iranian prof. of history proved this to be BS)The Persian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent out a memo to all foreign embassies in Tehran, requesting that the country be called "Iran." Unfortunately "Iran" sounded alien to non-Iranians, and many failed to recognize its connection with the historic Persia. Some (Westerners) thought that it was perhaps one of the new countries like Kuwait or Jordan carved out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, or like "Pakistan", carved out of India. Even today many confuse Iran with Iraq.

The confusion has been made worse by the usage of the word Farsi, which is the Persian word for Persian, just as "Deutsch" is the German word for German. To make matters worse, for marketing purposes Rumi and other Persian poets are presented by American book publishers as Sufi poets and not as Persian poets (3). It is generally known that Dante was Italian and Shakespeare was British. But most Americans know Rumi as a "Sufi poet" from somewhere in the East, as if Sufi were a nationality. As the references in a large body of European texts (Examples: texts by Schopenhauer, Nietzche, Hegel, Montesquieu, etc.) indicate, Persian civilization has been very well known in European philosophy and culture for centuries. For today's Persians (Iranians), the name "Iran" refers to a rich and historic civilization. For most non-Iranians, Iran is a country in the Middle East with a more or less Islamic identity, and with no clear connection with the historic "Persia".

 

[Virendra]

The Lost River
Michel Danino's latest article on Sarasvati, in Daily Pioneer.
The Sarasvati has a large bearing on the AIT/AMT/OIT debate.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excerpts :-

A modern myth is that satellite imagery 'rediscovered' the river in the 1970s. Actually, it only confirmed what had been known for over two centuries: As early as in 1760, a map from The Library Atlas published by Bryce, Collier & Schmitz showed the Saraswati (spelt 'Soorsuty') joining the Ghaggar ('Guggur') in Punjab; indeed, even today a small stream called 'Sarsuti' seasonally flows there. In 1778, James Rennell, a noted English geographer and cartographer, published a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire with similar details. In the early 19th century, several topographers surveyed the bed of the Ghaggar, a seasonal river that flows down from the Shivalik hills, and found it much too wide for the paltry waters it carried during monsoons; the first scholar to propose that the Ghaggar-Saraswati combine was the relic of the Vedic Saraswati was the French geographer Louis Vivien de Saint-Martin, who authored in 1855 a massive Geography of India's North-West According to the Vedic Hymns. Subsequently, nearly all Indologists, from Max Müller to Monier-Williams or Macdonell (and later Louis Renou) accepted this thesis. Geologists such as RD Oldham (1886) joined in, followed by geographers such as the Indian Shamsul Islam Siddiqi (1944) or the German Herbert Wilhelmy (1969)....

....decades of further explorations both in India and Pakistan have established that the Saraswati basin was home to about 360 sites of the Mature Harappan Phase (the urban phase that saw cities thrive, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE). This includes settlements such as Bhirrana, Rakhigarhi, Kunal or Banawali (all in Haryana), Kalibangan (Rajasthan) or Ganweriwala (Cholistan) — altogether, almost a third of all known urban Harappan sites.....

....Again, that the Ghaggar-Hakra was the Saraswati's relic was accepted by most archaeologists, including Mortimer Wheeler, Raymond Allchin (both from Britain), Gregory Possehl, JM Kenoyer (both from the US), Jean-Marie Casal (France), AH Dani (Pakistan), BB Lal, SP Gupta, VN Misra or Dilip Chakrabarti (India)....

....most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation....

The Aryan Issue :-

Despite the broad consensus, scholars such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and the late RS Sharma started questioning this identification in the 1980s. What prompted this rather late reaction? It was a new development: A study of the evolution of the pattern of Harappan settlements in the Saraswati basin now revealed that in its central part — roughly southwest Haryana, southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan — most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation.

Why was this a problem? We must remember that the Saraswati is lavishly praised both as a river and a Goddess in the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns which mainstream Indology says was composed by Indo-Aryans shortly after their migration to India around 1500 BCE. However, by that time, the Saraswati had been reduced to a minor seasonal stream: How could the said Aryans praise it as a 'mighty river', the 'best of rivers', 'mother of waters', etc? There is a chronological impossibility. Hence, the objectors asserted, the Ghaggar-Hakra was not, after all, the Saraswati extolled in the Rig Veda. While some (Rajesh Kochhar) tried to relocate the river in Afghanistan, others (Irfan Habib) decided that the Saraswati was not a particular river but "the river in the abstract, the River Goddess"; but both theses ran against the Rig Veda's own testimony that the river flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej.

However, what should have remained a scholarly issue now turned into an ideological and often acrimonious battle: On the one hand, those who stuck to the identity between the Saraswati and the Ghaggar-Hakra concluded that the composers of the Rig Veda must have lived in the region during the third millennium BCE at the latest — but as the only settlements known of that period were Harappan ones, they often held that the Harappans were part of the Vedic people; cultural evidence such as a Harappan swastika, yogic postures, figurines in namaste and more was pressed into service to bridge the Harappan and the Vedic worlds. On the other hand, scholars who continued to swear by an Aryan immigration in the mid-second millennium BCE, and therefore a pre-Vedic Harappan civilisation, accused the former of 'chauvinism', 'jingoism' or worse, conveniently forgetting that dozens of Western scholars had, for a century-and-a-half, accepted the same location for the Saraswati river....

New Research :-

....A Lawler claimed that "the Ghaggar-Hakra was at most a modest seasonal stream... from 2500 BCE to 1900 BCE", that is, at the height of the Harappan civilisation. This ran against the notion of a mighty, or simply perennial, Saraswati flowing during mature Harappan times....

....Yamuna once flowed into the Ghaggar-Hakra, but switched eastward tens of thousands of years ago; the Sutlej also contributed to the Ghaggar system but abandoned it 10,000 years ago or earlier. But the paper remained non-committal as regards the precise time for the drying of the Ghaggar itself.....

....the Ghaggar-Hakra was active during the mature Harappan period, although not fed by glacial sources; it was a monsoon-fed river, like rivers of central or southern India: "Reliable monsoon rains were able to sustain perennial rivers earlier during the Holocene, (which) explains why Harappan settlements flourished along the entire Ghaggar-Hakra system without access to a glacier-fed river"....

....we know from a 15th century Islamic chronicle that the Sutlej and Ghaggar systems were still connected in medieval times, and therefore sands of Himalayan provenance carried by the Sutlej should be identifiable in the Ghaggar's central and lower basin....


....2012 study, directed by Indian geologist Rajiv Sinha and published in Quaternary International, which mapped palaeo-river sedimentary bodies in the subsurface by measuring their electrical resistivity (water-bearing sediments having a lower resistivity than dry ones). The study offered "the first stratigraphic evidence that a palaeochannel exists in the sub-surface alluvium in the Ghaggar valley. The fact that the major urban sites of Kalibangan and Kunal lie adjacent to the newly discovered subsurface fluvial channel body suggests that there may be a spatial relationship between the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel and Harappan site distribution"....

....A convergence of archaeological, geological and climatic studies is thus on the horizon, and we may soon be in a position to better understand the reasons for the decline of the Indus civilisation. As regards the Saraswati river, allowing for some metaphorical inflation in the Vedic hymns, nothing in the recent research contradicts the river's break-up and gradual extinction as depicted in India's ancient literature. We are thus back to the original problem: If we accept the Vedic hymns' description of a river flowing from the mountain to the sea and located between the Yamuna and the Sutlej, the Ghaggar remains the sole candidate; but as we now know, this description can only apply to the third millennium BCE or earlier, an epoch that does not fit with the conventional scenario of a second millennium Aryan migration into India. We still have to wait for the last word on India's protohistory.

The writer is the author of The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati (Penguin, 2010) and a long-time student of Indian protohistory; he is currently guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar and visiting professor at IIM Ranchi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regards,
Virendra

 

[civfanatic]

^
Interesting. So what does "Iran" really mean ?

Edit: I went through the Wikipedia article

Iran (word) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gentilic ēr- and ary- (in e.g. ērān/aryān) in the Middle Iranian languages of Persian and Parthian derives from Old Iranian *arya ("Arya" means noble in Sanskrit)

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This word is attested as an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions and in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition and in Middle Iranian era (ca. 400 BCE - 700 CE) it seems "very likely" (vague) that the word ērān in Ardashir's inscription still retained the same meaning as in the Old era, i.e. denoting the people rather than the empire while the empire was properly named as ērānšahr.[1]
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I don't know Persian

"Iran" does mean "Land of Aryans", but not in the sense of "Aryan" as an racial or ethnic term. The ancient Iranians used the word "Arya" the same way that the ancient Indians did, i.e. as a cultural term meaning "noble" or "high-born". It had no racial/ethnic meaning. The name "Eran/Iran" would therefore have the same meaning as "Aryavarta".

Even the ancient Greeks were aware of this term, and they used the name "Ariana" to refer to what is now eastern Iran. Here is a map by the Greek geographer Eratosthenes in the 2nd century B.C.E., which places "Ariana" as the landmass located west of India:

 

[VatsaOfBhrigus]

Theres a ----ing test that anyone can take to find out his/her lineage. ---- iran, they are not aryans to begin with, zorashtrains were but thats like billion ages ago, those you see their today are bastardized group of turk+mongol+greek+zorashtrians.

If you go sufficiently back in time , all these guys come from africa , but that does ur not mean we are africans now does it ?

If your Y-haplogroup is R2 R1a1 etc you are probably indo-aryan. If its H , L, J or something else, you not be aryan DWAG!


I am apparently R1b1* m345 I dont know how the ---- do i belong to an european group but that is the result.

 

[IBSA]

Iranians consider themselves as aryans.

As was said, Iran means the Land of Aryans.

And the Shah Reza Pahlevi, the last king of Iran, proclaimed himself as Aryamehr, that sounds like 'Light of the Aryans'.

 

[VatsaOfBhrigus]

Iranians consider themselves as aryans.

As was said, Iran means the Land of Aryans.

And the Shah Reza Pahlevi, the last king of Iran, proclaimed himself as Aryamehr, that sounds like 'Light of the Aryans'.

Just because it sounds like light of aryans does not make them aryans.

This story is between majorly two aryan tribes one of the zorashtraians who are asura worshipping tribes and the other is indo-aryan(so called) aka vedic hindus tribes under the leadership of Devas the new gods or gods of light.

It just so happens that Indra is deva, Arhiman is asura. Asura are portrayed demonic in india, and devas are portrayed demonic in iran.

SO in summation,

Zorashtrians are probably aryans (Does that make modern iranian aryans ? For that we need to ask was their a caste system where atleast some portion of iranians married among themselves ? THe answer is no, but a bunch of iranians came to india and they could be considered the last living zorashtrian persians or aryans fom asura worshipping tribes)

The same is true with india there are some strictly endogamous groups like brahmins they be aryan decendants.

Now what about the color ?

True and a valid question, those rather closer to white iranians owe that to numerous incursions from foreign forces both westerns like greek , central asians like turks , mongols and some arabics. Its as much a mixed race as is india.


Infact if I remember correctly, theres a huge ethnic tension between turkomen living there and iranians ,not to mention there is already some tension between arabs and iranians.

 

[Bhoja]

It is rather difficult to say what really happened during that period.
But it is obvious that the so called Aryans did not migrate from Iran or Persia to India

 

[VatsaOfBhrigus]

People actually did migrate from africa to iran to India.

But during that time there WAS NO IRAN OR PERSIAN CIVILIZATION. The mutation to R occurs after they enter India, after which they head back out of India into europe and asia minor.

 

[Raj30]

 

[panduranghari]

Great find my man. Very useful tool to fight the charlatans.

 

[gokussj9]

Great find my man. Very useful tool to fight the charlatans.

This bugger was the one if I remember correctly who introduced the english school system and slowly wiped
out the Gurukula system from India. There are even articles describing how these people used to pay Max Mueller
to interpret Vedas and Upanishads in a nonsensical manner so that Indians would stop believing them completely
and the social fabric would be destroyed. Max Mueller probably never visited India but he did his job just fine.