Aryan Invasion Hypothesis

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Gangetic Plains Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers of BHARAT were the tallest on Earth,

Damdama hunter gatheres had a mean height of (179.1 cm /5′10.5″) for males & (173.0 cm / 5'8") for females. Mahadaha males had a mean height of (181.1 cm / 5'11.3")


DHARMA Triumph.png


Not only were they very tall yet quite muscular too and likely involved in a lot of strenuous physical activity, indicated by hypertrophy in the forearms and legs. Specifically of the anconeus & supinator muscles (although no evidence of physical trauma).


DHARMA Triumph15.png

DHARMA Triumph24.jpg


Furthermore, the SARASVATI civilization Rakhigarhi reconstructed individuals from Lee, Shinde et al 2020 were in the same ballpark too. The 17-18 yr old boy had a height of 177 cm (5 ft 10 inches) while the adult female was 5 ft 6 inches tall.


DHARMA Triumph51.png
 

dazialsoku

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Gangetic Plains Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers of BHARAT were the tallest on Earth,

Damdama hunter gatheres had a mean height of (179.1 cm /5′10.5″) for males & (173.0 cm / 5'8") for females. Mahadaha males had a mean height of (181.1 cm / 5'11.3")


View attachment 100554

Not only were they very tall yet quite muscular too and likely involved in a lot of strenuous physical activity, indicated by hypertrophy in the forearms and legs. Specifically of the anconeus & supinator muscles (although no evidence of physical trauma).


View attachment 100555
View attachment 100556

Furthermore, the SARASVATI civilization Rakhigarhi reconstructed individuals from Lee, Shinde et al 2020 were in the same ballpark too. The 17-18 yr old boy had a height of 177 cm (5 ft 10 inches) while the adult female was 5 ft 6 inches tall.


View attachment 100557
behold, the Brown Aryan martial race!!:eek1:
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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I have them saved. I recently got back from a trip and I hope to go over them now. Thank you so much, I was looking for Kazanas's papers.
Share them here after you have read them. I couldn't find time to read them myself.

S Kaznas work is celestial level always.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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SARASVATI/SARASWATI Research Center.

Demolishing the steppe Hoax, recollecting BB Lal's plea to abandon delusional aryan paradigms.


The best answer to the Steppe Sons hoax reported in The Economist, is provided by BB Lal. His lecture in 2007 is reproduced below for ready reference.
My comment: The whole thing about Steppe sons is a hoax. It is comparable to Abraham-Brahma hoax in Biblical studies and Israel history.Abraham and Brahma - Hmolpedia
http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/map-of-ancient-mesopotamia.html#gallery[pageGallery]/4/

Shrikant Talageri sent a maile to The Economist on this article::
"It is unfortunate when a reputed and respected international publication such as yours publishes politically slanted reports without knowing or verifying the facts. Your report with the politically loaded title "A new study squelches a treasured theory about Indians' origins" and subtitle "The Aryans did not come from India, they conquered it", contains many such loaded and plainly wrong statements such as "evidence has mounted against the out-of-India hypothesis" and "the Veda(s) were probably composed between 1500BC and 500BC": perhaps the very use of BC rather than the more correct BCE as used at present in historical studies shows the outdated and blinkered views of the writer.

The whole question of the origins of the Indo-european languages commenced with the discovery of the relationship between the languages of northern India and Europe (and a host of languages geographically located in between them), and all studies on the subject are based on the three disciplines of linguistics/philology, archaeology and textual analysis (especially of the RIGVEDA). Far from the "evidence against the out-of-India hypothesis" "mounting", the actual evidence from these three disciplines has increasingly confirmed the out-of-India theory and rendered the Steppe origins theory redundant. Hence all these desperate attempts by interested parties backing and promoting "genetics" as a new field to rejuvenate an old and discredited theory to try and offset the new evidence. But genetic data cannot show anything about the movements of languages, and the Indo-European question is primarily a linguistic one not one of racial origins (now cloaked as "genetic"). The oldest part of the Rigveda is now proved to be as old as 3000 BCE, and the geography of its oldest parts locates its composers in Haryana in northwestern India of that period. I append my article to this effect, not because I genuinely expect a honest appraisal of it - the tone and tenor of your above article seems to represent a political campaign, and political campaigns do not take note of opposing viewpoints - but for the record. It will be very easy from the point of view of present political predilections to ignore or dismiss it, but not from the point of view of objectivity or from the eyes of more objective scholars of the future who will take note of this political campaign and its participants".


Note the following points:
1. This is a subject, the movement of languages, which can only be studied from the point of view of the data and evidence from three academic disciplines: linguistics, archaeology and textual/inscriptional analysis (primarily of the data from the Rigveda, the Avesta and dated inscriptional evidence from West Asia). The ait and the anti-OIT schools have now completely lost the battle in these three fields, and have therefore completely abandoned them in their analyses. They merely quote outdated and now thoroughly discredited conclusions from these three fields and indulge in gobbledygook involving dna terminology and extremely selective genetic data without any logical sense. No-one will have the guts to try to disprove my dating of the Rigveda. Genetics (if properly and correctly analyzed) can tell us about movements of people in and from every area in the world to every other area, but it can tell us nothing about the movement of languages, which can only be analysed through the data in the three academic disciplines already mentioned.
2. The tone and tenor of the Economist article does not show it to be exposing a fringe crank theory: the tone and tenor is that of someone exposing a mainstream established theory.
These two factors, the abandonment of the three disciplines which are really connected with the question of Indo-european language origins, and the openly declared political campaign against the OIT (openly declared even by the "academists" who carry out these so-called genomic data analyses!) shows that the anti-OIT gangs are on the defensive and desperately so.

Unfortunately, their war is openly aided by three categories of "Hindus" (and I am not referring to leftists and pseudo-Dalit activists):

1. Casteist-racist writers from the Brahmin caste who like the ait for casteist-racist reasons.
2. "Traditionalist" Hindus who try to sabotage the Hindu side by trying to invalidate the linguistic-archaeological-textual evidence for the OIT on "traditionalist" grounds to salvage the debacle of the ait side in the linguistic-archaeological-textual debate.
3. Hindus (including both the general Hindus as well as the "committed" Hindus) who know nothing about the facts of the case (the data, evidence and arguments involved), who want to know nothing about the facts of the case, and yet who are taken in or intimidated by the present AIT campaign in the name of "genetics" and "genomics" and willing or inclined to swallow these claims without question or examination.

But then, that is the real story of BHARATA and Hindus!

SHRIKANT TALGERI

TO REVERT TO THE THEORY OF ‘ARYAN INVASION’ -- BB Lal (2007)
Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference of European Association of South Asian Archaeologists on South Asian Archaeology at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on 2–6 July 2007
Distinguished fellow delegates and other members of the audience,

I am most grateful to the organizers of this conference, in particular to the President, Professor Maurizio Tosi, not only for inviting me to participate in this Conference but also for giving me the additional honour of delivering the Inaugural Address. Indeed, I have no words to thank them adequately for their kindness. Perhaps this is the first occasion when a South Asian is being given this privileged treatment by the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists.

The conference hall is full of scholars from all parts of the world – from the United States of America on the west to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on the east. All these scholars have contributed in a number of ways to our understanding of the past of South Asia, and I salute them with all the humility that I can muster. However, I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that some amongst us have not yet been able to shake off the 19th-century biases that have blurred our vision of South Asia’s past.

As is well known, it was the renowned German scholar Max Muller who, in the 19th century, attempted for the first time to date the Vedas. Accepting that the Sutra literature was datable to the 6th century BCE, he gave a block-period of 200 years to the preceding three parts of the Vedic literature, namely the Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, he arrived at 1200 BCE as the date of the Vedas. However, when his contemporaries, like Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, objected to his ad-hocism, he toned down, and finally surrendered by saying (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979): “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.” But the great pity is that, in spite of such a candid confession by the savant himself, many of his followers continue to swear by his initial dating, viz. 1200 BCE.

The ultimate effect of this blind tenacity was that when in the 1920s the great civilization, now known variously as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, was discovered in South Asia, and was dated to the 3rd millennium BCE, it was argued that since the Vedas were no earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been Vedic. Further, since the only other major linguistic group in the region was the Dravidian, it was held that the Harappans were a Dravidian-speaking people.

Then came the master stroke. In 1946, my revered guru Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) discovered a fortification wall at Harappa and on learning that the Aryan god Indra had been referred to as puramdara (destroyer of forts) he readily pronounced his judgment (Wheeler 1947: 82): “On circumstantial evidence Indra [representing the Aryans] stands accused [of destroying the Harappan Civilization].” In further support of his thesis, he cited certain human skeletons at Mohenjo-daro, saying that these were the people massacred by the Aryan invaders. Thus was reached the peak of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.

And lo and behold! The very first one to fall in the trap of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory was none else but the guru’s disciple himself. With all the enthusiasm inherited from the guru, I started looking for the remains of some culture that may be post-Harappan but anterior to the early historical times. In my exploration of the sites associated with the Mahabharata story I came across the Painted Grey Ware Culture which fitted the bill. It antedated the Northern Black Polished Ware whose beginning went back to the 6th-7th century BCE, and overlay, with a break in between, the Ochre Colour Ware of the early 2nd millennium BCE. In my report on the excavations at Hastinapura and in a few subsequent papers I expressed the view that the Painted Grey Ware Culture represented the early Aryans in India. But the honeymoon was soon to be over. Excavations in the middle Ganga valley threw up in the pre-NBP strata a ceramic industry with the same shapes (viz. bowls and dishes) and painted designs as in the case of the PGW, the only difference being that in the former case the ware had a black or black-and-red surface-colour, which, however, was just the result of a particular method of firing. And even the associated cultural equipment was alike in the two cases. All this similarity opened my eyes and I could no longer sustain the theory of the PGW having been a representative of the early Aryans in India. (The association of this Ware with the Mahabharata story was nevertheless sustainable since that event comes at a later stage in the sequence.) I had no qualms in abandoning my then-favourite theory.

But linguists are far ahead of archaeologists in pushing the poor Aryans through the Khyber / Bolan passes into India. In doing so, they would not mind even distorting the original Sanskrit texts. A case in point is that of the well known Professor of Sanskrit at the Harvard University, Professor Witzel. He did not hesitate to mistranslate a part of the Baudhayana Srautasutra (Witzel 1995: 320-21). In 2003 I published a paper in the East and West (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-4), exposing his manipulation. Witzel’s translation of the relevant Sanskrit text was as follows:

"Aya went eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and Kasi Videha. This is the Ayava(migration).(His other people)stayed at home in the west. His people are the Gandhari, Parasu and Aratta. This is the Amavasava (group).

Whereas the correct translation is:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasu migrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta. This is the Amavasu (migration).
According to the correct translation, there was no movement of the Aryan people from anywhere in the north-west. On the other hand, the evidence indicates that it was from an intermediary point that some of the Aryan tribes went eastwards and other westwards. This would be clear from the map that follows(Fig. 1).
map

Fig. 1.
Professor Witzel and I happened to participate in a seminar organized by UMASS, Dartmouth in June 2006. When I referred, during the course of my presentation, to this wrong translation by the learned Professor, he, instead of providing evidence in support of his own stand, shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Should that be the level of an academic debate? (Anyway, he had to be told that I had the privilege of obtaining in 1943 my Master’s Degree in Sanskrit (with the Vedas included), with a First Class First, from a first class university of India, namely Allahabad.)
The year 1964 saw this theory being pushed back in the reverse gear. George F. Dales published a paper in which, after presenting a thorough analysis of the evidence, he completely lambasted the massacre theory and, in a way, rescued Indra from the charge of having been a marauder. Since then many other scholars (e.g. Danino 2006, Kenoyer 1998, Lal 2002 and 2005, Renfrew 1988, Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1999) have adduced further evidence to add successive nails on to the coffin of the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.

Unfortunately, however, the ghost of ‘Aryan Invasion’ is not buried deep enough. It is being resurrected in the form of ‘Aryan Immigration’, and in this context the Bactria-Margiana region is said to be the source. Out of the scholars who stand by this rejuvenated thesis, I shall deal here with four representative ones, namely Professors Romila Thapar and R. S. Sharma from India and Professors Asko Parpola and V. I. Sarianidi from the West.

But before the views of these four scholars are examined it seems appropriate to spell out in some detail the nature of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), even though some of the scholars present here may be familiar with it. I would also like to take this opportunity to heartily congratulate Professor Sarianidi and other archaeologists whose sustained fieldwork has placed the BMAC on the same high pedestal as occupied by other civilizations of the ancient world.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE BMAC

First, a map of the region involved is given below (Fig. 2):




map


Fig. 2. Region of Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex.


It is now proposed to discuss, though very briefly, the following features of the BMAC: (i) town-planning and monumental architecture; (ii) the ceramics; (iii) stone objects; (iv) metal objects; (v) sculptural art; (vi) seals and amulets; and finally (vii) the chronological horizon. This seemingly uncalled for exercise is being done in order to demonstrate that (a) the BMAC people were not nomads, as held by my Indian colleagues; and (b) these characteristic features of the BMAC never ever reached east of the Indus up to the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab – an area which was the homeland of the Rigvedic people, as is clear from the Nadi-stuti verses (10.75.5 and 6) of the Rigveda itself.

(I) TOWN-PLANNING AND MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE

The BMAC settlements, by and large, were well planned and contained monumental structures. This is abundantly clear, for example, from the excavated remains at Dashly-3, in Bactria, where a ‘cultic centre’ has been found located within a series of three successive fortifications. The cultic centre, circular on plan, with a diameter of 40 metres, was provided with nine square bastions on the exterior (Fig. 3).








Fig. 3. Temple at Dashly-3, Bactria.


In Margiana, excavations at Togolok-1 and Togolok-21 have yielded the remains of multi-roomed temples, of which that at the latter site is more elaborate. Covering an overall area of about 1.5 hectares, the Togolok-21 complex had in the centre a 60 x 50 m. unit enclosed by a 5-m. thick wall which was provided on its exterior with four circular towers, one at each corner, and two semicircular towers, one each abutting the exterior of the eastern and western walls. This central unit had two more enclosure walls at successive distances, which too were provided with circular towers at the corners and semicircular towers along the walls (Fig. 4).








Fig. 4. Temple at Togolok-21, Margiana.



Besides the foregoing temples, at Gonur (also in Margiana) has been brought to light a massive architectural complex of secular nature. Called variously as ‘Citadel’ or ‘Kremlin’, it measures 120 x 115 m. on plan and is enclosed by a fortification wall, having on the exterior a rectangular tower at each corner and four rectangular towers on each side. Here is the plan of the ‘Kremlin’ which incorporates within its premises the king’s palace, audience hall, administrative blocks, garrison complex, etc. (Fig. 5).









Fig. 5. ‘Citadel’ at Gonur, Margiana.(II) THE CERAMICS

Many of the BMAC settlements have yielded remains of pottery kilns, having a lower ‘fire-chamber’ and an upper ‘baking chamber’. The pot-forms include, besides others, large carafes with stretched narrow necks, vases with long slim stems and ‘tea-pots’ with spouts. The spouts themselves show a great variety, which includes ‘long tubular’ spouts, ‘bridge’ spouts and ‘trough or channel’ spouts (Fig. 6).










Fig. 6. Pottery vessels from Margiana.

Besides these distinctive spouted vessels, there is yet another category which calls for special attention. It is a basin or bowl having a frieze of small animals (sometimes humans as well) running along the rim. Also to be noted are serpents crawling up along the walls of the pot, both on the exterior as well as interior (Fig. 7). Although there is no conclusive contextual evidence to establish their ‘ritual association’, it has been surmised that these bowls may still have had such a use, primarily because the animal-cum-human frieze on the rims would render the bowls rather uncomfortable for the lips to directly drink a liquid from the bowls.












Fig. 7. Cult vessel from Togolok-1 temple.




(III) STONE OBJECTS


There is a great variety of stone objects in the BMAC: for example, beads and pendants of carnelian, lapis lazuli and turquoise, carved vessels of steatite, ‘diminutive columns’ of multicoloured stones and seals and amulets of steatite.

The illustration that follows shows a cup-on-stand and a deep inward-tapering bowl of black steatite. Both these bear etched geometrical designs on the exterior (Fig. 8).








cup
bowl


Fig. 8. Carved stone vessels from Gonur, Margiana.

The ‘diminutive columns’, also known as ‘dainty columns’ or ‘dainty pillars’, are generally less than half-metre in height, highly polished and sometimes provided with a vertical groove. While their exact use is debated, it has been suggested by certain scholars that these were used in some kind of ritual (Fig. 9).



vases



To be continued.
 

asaffronladoftherisingsun

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Continued from[]..... https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/aryan-invasion-theory.1403/post-2005357.

SARASVATI/SARASWATI Research Center.
Fig. 9. Stone ‘dainty columns’ from the temple, Togolok-21.(IV) METAL OBJECTS

The BMAC settlements, including graves, have yielded a large number of metal objects, mostly of bronze / copper but sometimes of silver and gold too. Here we illustrate two very distinctive axes. On one of these there sits a human figure at the butt-end, whereas in the other case that position is occupied by an animal (Fig. 10).

However, much more remarkable is an axe, made of silver but covered with gold lamina. The decoration showing a winged feline and heads of two eagles would appear to have had some mythological import (Fig. 11). It also seems most likely that this axe was not used for cutting wood or for a similar purpose but may have been ceremonial in nature – perhaps mounted on a specially made staff and held by a person in authority, as a mark of his position.


spacer
Fig. 10. Bronze axes.
Fig. 11. Silver ceremonial axe.

axe







(V) SCULPTURAL ART




Though we have already dealt with objects of stone and metal and with ceramics, we discuss here separately the art of sculpting in stone, metal and earthenware, since these objects throw valuable light on the artistic acumen of the BMAC people and demonstrate how very individualistic was their art-style.

Here is a stone sculpture of a seated lady from Bactria (Fig. 12). In order to bring out the contrast in the portrayal, the sculptor has chosen a blackish stone for the dress with which the major part of the body is covered, but a pinkish white one for the head and hands. Also to be noted are not only the herring-bone weave (decoration) of the garment, but also the details in depicting the hairstyle.






stone





Fig. 12. Composite stone figurine.




It is not just the human beings that attracted the attention of the BMAC artist, but the animal-world as well. And here are two objects, both from Bactria, one depicting a feline (Fig. 13) and the other a goat (Fig. 14).

Figure5.jpg




Fig. 13. Chlorite and gold leaf representation of a feline,


with semiprecious stone inlay.


The gold leaf and inlay-work in the case of the former are indeed superb and so also is the choice of coloured stones in the case of the goat, namely lapis lazuli for the horns, eyes and beard and limestone for the rest of the body.





goat





Fig. 14. Limestone goat with horns, eyes and beard in lapis lazuli.

Though termed as ‘the poor man’s medium’ of art-expression, the earthen sculptures are no less remarkable. Take for example, the following figurine from Gonur Depe necropolis in Margiana. It has a slender neck, aquiline nose, prominent eyes, arched eyebrows, receding forehead and a very distinctive headdress (Fig. 15).




terracotta


Fig. 15. Terracotta figurine from Gonur Depe necropolis.(VI) SEALS AND AMULETS


Seals and amulets are a very significant constituent of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, since the individual motifs as well as the narrative scenes depicted thereon throw valuable light on the religious beliefs and practices of the people. The seals were made of metals, such as copper / bronze and silver, while the amulets were usually of stone, mostly black steatite. These latter usually show, amongst other motifs, snakes, scorpions, eagles, two-humped (typically Bactrian) camels, felines, etc. The snake seems to be such a favourite that it is depicted on the ceramic ‘rituals bowls’ as well (already referred to). The metal seals are to be noted, besides other motifs, for geometric ones. But most spectacular are the narratives on the cylindrical seals. We propose to illustrate these later when their narratives will also be discussed.

(VII) THE CHRONOLOGICAL HORIZON–

A good deal of controversy surrounds the origin of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, namely whether it was a local development from Namazga V or it was born out of an external impetus. Be that as it may, Carbon-14 dates indicate that Period 1 at Gonur Depe may have commenced around 2100 BCE and continued up to 1900 BCE, while Period 2, which is what is known as the BMAC proper, may be ascribed to circa 2000-1700 BCE.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE VARIOUS VIEWS

In the earlier part of this Address we had stated that we shall examine the viewpoints of Professors Romila Thapar and R. S. Sharma on the one hand and of Professors Asko Parpola and Viktor Sarianidi on the other. Thus, we begin with the views of the first two scholars.

VIEWS OF ROMILA THAPAR AND R. S. SHARMA

Having failed to establish an ‘Aryan Invasion’ of India, Professor Thapar comes out (1989-91: 259-60) with a new theory, viz.: “If invasion is discarded then the mechanism of migration and occasional contacts come into sharper focus. The migrations appear to have been of pastoral cattle-breeders who are prominent in the Avesta and Rigveda”.

Following faithfully the footsteps of Thapar and amplifying her stand, Professor Sharma avers (1999: 77): “... the pastoralists who moved to the Indian borderland came from Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex or BMAC which saw the genesis of the culture of the Rigveda.”

Both Thapar and Sharma are even now labouring under the 19th century belief that the Vedic Aryans were nomads. But have they even once cast a glance at the make-up of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. As would have been absolutely clear by now, the BMAC is a fully developed civilization with all the trappings of urbanism. How can then Thapar and Sharma devalue the Bactria-Margiana people and call them ‘pastoral cattle-breeders’? Just to fit into their preconceived notion that the¡Rigvedic Aryans were ‘nomads’?

VIEWS OF ASKO PARPOLA

In his paper, ‘Margiana and the Aryan Problem’, Asko Parpola states (1993: 47): “These excavations at Mehrgarh, Sibri, Nausharo and Quetta have conclusively shown that immigrants bringing with them an entire new cultural complex have settled in Baluchistan, with close parallels in Gurgan, south Turkmenistan, Margiana and Bactria of the Namazga V-VI period.”

Whereas certain parallels between the Quetta-Sibri finds and those from the Bactria-Margiana regions are acceptable, one is really baffled by the succeeding statement of Parpola, namely: “A newly found antennae-hilted sword from Bactria paralleling those from Fatehgarh suggests that this same wave of immigrants may also have introduced the Gangetic Copper Hoards into India.” (Fig. 16).

knives


Fig. 16. Antennae-hilted swords of copper.

I am sure Parpola is aware of the fact that the Copper Hoards of the Gangetic Valley, as would be seen from the illustration that follows (Fig. 17), include many other very distinctive types, such as anthropomorphic figures, harpoons, shouldered axes, etc. which have never been found in Bactria.



copper


Fig. 17. Copper hoards from the Gangetic valley, India.



Further, the overall cultural ethos, including the distinctive pottery, of the Gangetic Copper Hoards is totally different from that of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex and that the former cannot be derived from the latter. But more strange is the argument that the occurrence of a single antennae-hilted sword in Bactria would entitle that region to be the ‘motherland’ of the Gangetic Copper Hoard people who produced these copper weapons and other associated objects in hundreds, if not thousands. If this logic is stretched further, I will not be surprised if one day Parpola comes out with the thesis that the Harappan Civilization too originated in Margiana, because in that region (at Gonur) has been found one steatite seal bearing typical Harappan inscription and motif (Fig. 18), unmindful of the fact that such seals constitute an integral part of the Harappan Civilization.

harappan seal


Fig. 18. Harappan seal from Gonur, and its impression.

If, following the footsteps of Parpola, I were to say that the find of the well known seal of the ‘Persian Gulf’ style at Lothal in Gujarat establishes that the Persian Gulf Culture (which abounds in such seals) originated in Gujarat or, again, if I said that the occurrence of a cylinder seal at Kalibangan in Rajasthan entitles Rajasthan to be the ‘motherland’ of the Mesopotamian Culture (wherein cylinder seals are found in large numbers), I am sure my learned colleagues present here would at once get me admitted to the nearest lunatic asylum.

One finds yet another amusing example of a similar kind of unbridled imagination when Parpola calls the ground-plan of the palace at Dashly-3, datable to circa 2000 BCE, “the prototype of the later Tantric mandalas / yantras”. He then goes on to add: “That the religion of the Dasas [who are mentioned in the Rigveda and whom he identifies with the Bactria-Margiana people] was an early form of Ýaktism is also suggested by the ground plan of the palace of Dashly-3 in Bactria closely agreeing with the later Tantric mandalas...”(ibid.: 52). For the sake of unambiguity, I reproduce now the drawings of the Dashly-3 Palace and the Mahakali yantra (Fig. 19), as published by Parpola himself (ibid.: 62), and leave it to the learned scholars to decide whether they too would like to accompany Parpola in crossing this 4000-year-old and 4000-kilometre-long bridge along with Parpola.






temple



Fig. 19.

Must we really indulge in such a kite-flying just to support our preconceived notions?SARIANIDI’S VIEWS

It has been claimed by certain scholars, including Sarianidi, that the BMAC people were the forebears of the Iranians and Indo-Aryans. This conclusion seems to have been drawn primarily on the following four counts: viz.

(i) fire-worship temples of BMAC;

(ii) supposed use of soma / homa in BMAC rituals;

(iii) mistaken identity of a horse’s skeleton as evidence of the asvamedha; and

(iv) cult motifs on the BMAC glyptics.

Continued from[] https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/aryan-invasion-theory.1403/post-1995560.

We shall now examine, though briefly, the evidence in respect of these four claims.

(i) Fire WorshipIt has been argued that the BMAC temples were devoted to fire-worship and that since this kind of worship constitutes the main religious base of the Zoroastrians, they and the BMAC people shared a common ancestry. This is what Sarianidi says (1993a: 679) in this context: “A building unearthed at Gonur temenos and conveniently called a fort has a cross-shaped general plan with twelve corner towers. It most closely resembles the outer contours of the indisputable fire temple at Tepe Nush-i-Jan. A difference of minor importance only consists of the fact that while the towers are round at Gonur, they are square at Tepe Nush-i-Jan” (Fig. 20). But he immediately admits the weakness of the comparison by stating: “Unfortunately, the fort (at Gonur temenos) appears to be unfinished so we do not know its inner construction, but apparently it too was a fire temple.” What is the great point in forcing such a comparison when the evidence itself so weak?

tepe


Fig. 20.

To be continued.
 

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Continued from[]..... https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/aryan-invasion-theory.1403/post-2005357.
and https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/aryan-invasion-theory.1403/post-2005358.

SARASVATI/SARASWATI Research Center :

In order to show that the Indian subcontinent was also involved in such a fire-worship, Sarianidi adds (ibid., p. 676): “An example is the fire temple in the lower town of Mohenjo-daro; its basic plan comprises a ‘courtyard encompassed by corridors’ (Dhavalikar and Atre 1989)” (Fig. 21).



fire-temple


Fig. 21. Mohenjo-daro: “Fire Temple”

In their article, Dhavalikar and Atre have gone into a series of conjectures, there being no down-to-earth evidence for actual fire worship in that complex. On the contrary, Marshall (1931, Vol. I: 202) takes this structure to have been a normal residential house. But in his desperation to bring India as well into the orbit of a Zoroastrian kind of fire worship, Sarianidi has completely lost sight of the fact that the house-complex at Mohenjo-daro belongs to the Indus Civilization of the 3rd millennium BCE whereas the BMAC is much later, dated to the 2nd millennium BCE. Thus, if at all the comparison made by Sarianidi is accepted, the direction of movement will have to be from India to Central Asia and not vice-versa!

(ii) The Soma / Homa


It has been claimed that there occurred the remains of ephedra and poppy in the temple of Togolok-21 in Margiana and since ephedra has been thought to be identical with the soma / homa of the Rigveda / Avesta, the BMAC people must have been the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians. There are two snags in this thesis. In the first place, not all experts agree that soma / homa is nothing but ephedra. But what is more important is that Harri Nyberg, a well known authority on the subject, after a thorough examination of the Toglok evidence, writes (1995: 400):

... remains of ephedras have also been reported from the temple-fortress complex of Togolok 21 in the Merv oasis (ancient Margiana – Parpola 1988; Meier-Melikyan 1990) along with the remains of poppies. ... In 1990 I received some samples from the site [forwarded by Dr. Fred Hiebert of Harvard University] , which were subjected to pollen analysis at the Department of Botany, University of Helsinki. .... The largest amount of pollen was found in the bone tube (used for imbibing liquid?) from Gonur 1, but even in this sample, which had been preserved in a comparatively sheltered position when compared with the other investigated samples, only pollen of the family Caryophyllaceae was present. No pollen from ephedras or poppies was found and even the pollen left in the samples showed clear traces of deterioration (typical in ancient pollen having been preserved in a dry environment in contact with oxygen). Our pollen analysis was carefully checked for any methodological errors, but no inaccuracies were found.

(iii) The Asvamedha

The discovery, in the cemetery area at Gonur, of the skeleton of a horse, with its head missing, has led Sarianidi to postulate that it is a case of the Asvamedha (horse sacrifice); and since the Asvamedha is a ritual mentioned in the Rigveda, he argues that the authors of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex must have been the ancestors of the Rigvedic Aryans.

Before we examine the validity of such a conclusion, let us have a look at the photograph of the skeleton, published by Sarianidi himself (Fig. 22).

bones


Fig. 22. Burial (?) of a horse in Gonur Depe.





It would be seen from the photograph that there is no clear outline of a pit in which the horse is supposed to have been regularly buried. Further, the skeleton lies hardly a few centimetres below the ground-level. Thus, there could have been many other reasons for the head to be missing, such as erosion through natural agencies or subsequent human interference.




And no less important is the fact that the skeletal remains do not conform to the manner in which the horse had to be sacrificed in the asvamedha.

There are two Suktas in the Rigveda, viz. 1.162 and 1.163, which are devoted to the Asvamedha and lay down how the horse, tied with ropes and accompanied by a goat, had to be taken to the sacrificial altar and then, after some rituals, had to be sacrificed. I quote below two of the verses, viz. 1.162.18 and 1.162.19, which are very relevant here.

“The axe penetrates the thirty-four ribs of the swift horse, the beloved of the gods, (the immolators), cut up (the horse) with skill, so that the limbs may be unperforated and recapitulating joint by joint. (18)

“There is one immolator of the radiant horse, which is Time: that are two that hold him fast: such of thy limbs as I cut up in due season. I offer them, made into balls (of meat), upon the fire.” (19)


The foregoing description makes it abundantly clear that in the case of the asvamedha the horse had to be cut up into parts, ‘recapitulating joint by joint’.

There is hardly any evidence of such a cutting up in the case of the horse’s skeleton discovered at Gonur. Then why be so imaginative as to call this skeleton as evidence of the asvamedha and thereby draw an uncalled for conclusion that the BMAC people were the ancestors of the Rigvedic Aryans ?(iv) Motifs on BMAC glyptics


The fourth argument that has been pressed into the service of the supposed BMAC = Aryan equation is that the motifs on the BMAC seals compare with certain motifs on the Syro-Hittite glyptics and since there occur on some Boghaz Qui tablets the names of Vedic deities, viz. Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Nasatya, the Boghaz Qui Aryans must be at the root of BMAC ethnic make-up. To quote Sarianidi (op.cit.: 677): “Since it is Mitanni texts that contain the oldest mention of Aryan deities, there cannot be any doubt about the connection of the Mitanni empire with the so-called Aryan problem. As the replication of Mitanni art in Bactria and Margiana is clearly not coincidental, we are justified in connecting the tribes migrating into Central Asia and the Indus Valley with the settlement process of the Aryan or Indo-Iranian tribes.”

Elsewhere Sarianidi goes into the details of these Syro-Hittite vis-a-vis Bactria-Margiana glyptic parallels. For example, he states (1993b: 12-13):



In this connection worthy of utmost attention is the impression of a cylinder seal on one of the Margianian vessels, found .... at Gonur. The central figure of a frequently repeated frieze composition is a standing nude anthropomorphic winged deity with an avian head holding two mountain goats by the legs....




Such anthropomorphic winged and avian-headed deities are represented fairly fully in the glyptics and on the seals of Bactria.... These Bactrian images find the most impressive correspondence in Syro-Hittite glyptics....

If the fact that it’s for the Mittani kingdom that the names of Aryan deities are evidenced is taken into account the importance of the Bactrian-Margianian images will become obvious in the light of solving the Aryan problem on the basis of new archaeological data.


While one has little hesitation in accepting the above-noted Syro-Hittite vis-a-vis Bactria-Margiana parallels, what indeed is the basis of connecting these motifs with the Aryan gods, viz. Indra, Maruta, Varuna and Nasatya? (cf. Fig. 23).

seal


Fig. 23. Impression of cylinder seal from Gonur-1



Does Sarianidi think that the ‘standing nude anthropomorphic winged deity with avian head’ and holding animals by their tails in each hand represents one of the above-mentioned Vedic gods– Indra, Maruta, Varuna, Nasatya?

Likewise, what precisely Aryan is there in the narrative portrayed on another cylinder seal? (Fig. 24).







Fig. 24. Cylinder seal from Togolok-21 and its impression.





Perhaps one fine morning someone might be tempted to designate the scene depicted on the next seal as “ The offering of Soma to Indra”, where Indra is the central figure seated on a chair and his devotees are offering the soma in cups, the beverage itself being stored in the jar! (Fig. 25).





FINALLY, THE MOST CRUCIAL ASPECT OF THE ISSUE
The following three maps (Figs. 26, 27 & 28), not drawn by me but published by Sarianidi himself (1993b: Figs. 2, 3 and 5) relate to the spatial distribution respectively of ‘the motif of man-bird with hit animals’, ‘the motif of acrobats jumping over bulls’, and ‘miniature columns and cult vessels with depiction of snakes and animals on the rim’.



map




Fig. 26. Spread of the motif of man-bird with hit animals.







map2




Fig. 27. Spread of the motif of acrobats jumping over bulls.







map3




Fig. 28. Spread of ‘miniature columns’ and their probable


prototypes in the Sypro-Hittite world.


A careful look at these maps would make it abundantly clear that the glyptic motifs shown on the first two maps occur from the Bactria-Margiana region on the east to the Syro-Hittite region on the west but do not travel southwards in the direction of Baluchistan. It is only the miniature columns and bowls bearing on their rim animal-and-snake motifs that find their way into Baluchistan. But in no case did any of the above-noted motifs, columns or snake-decorated bowls find their way east of the Indus up to the upper reaches of the Ganga-Yamuna doab which, as spelt out in the Nadi-stuti Sukta of the Rigveda itself (10.75.5-6), was the region occupied by the Rigvedic Aryans.

The only exceptions to the foregoing distribution-pattern are some seals / seal-impressions from Chanhu-daro and Gilund (Possehl 2004: figs. 7 and 15). Sometimes, a double-spiral-headed copper pin from Chanhu-daro (Mackay 1976, reprint, p. 195, pl. LXVIII, 9) and a two-animal-headed antimony stopper-rod, also of copper, from Harappa (Vats 1974, reprint, p. 390, pl. CXXV, 36) are also brought into the discussion. But let it be remembered that all these are only peripheral to the most characteristic and core items of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Anyway, it would be simply ridiculous to ascribe these few objects to a migration of the BMAC people (cf. Gupta 2006, under print). Have we not in the past explained the occurrence of some items of a given culture-complex in another complex by means of trade / exchange / casual gift or a similar mechanism: for example, the occurrence of Harappan seals, etched carnelian beads, etc. in Mesopotamia, Iran and even Central Asia by trade and not by migration of the Harappan population? Then why invoke the migration of the BMAC people to explain the presence of some seals / seal-impressions, etc. at stray Indian sites?

In the context of the debate whether the ¡Rigvedic people were indigenous or invaders / immigrants from outside, the evidence of two sister disciplines, namely human biology and human genetics, must also be brought into the picture.

After a thorough examination of the relevant human skeletons, Hemphill and his colleagues (1991) categorically pronounced: “As for the question of biological continuity within the Indus Valley, two discontinuities appear to exist. The first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC ... and the second occurs at some point after 800 BC.” In other words, there was no entry of a new set of people between 4500 and 800 BCE, much less of Aryan invaders / immigrants !
In recent years a great deal of genetic research has been carried out which too throws valuable light on this issue; and I quote here Sanghamitra Sahoo, et al. (2006: 843-48): “The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with the diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family.”

Scholars have already abandoned (though after much dithering) the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory. Is it not high time to rethink and shelve the newly hugged-to-the-chest ‘Bactria-Margiana Immigration’ thesis as well?

At the end, it needs to be emphasized that the purpose of this Address was not to criticize Professor X or Professor Y. Far from it. The whole emphasis has been on demonstrating how the 19th-century paradigms are still dominating our thinking, thereby producing a very blurred vision of South Asia’s past. Can’t we begin thinking afresh in this 21st century?

* * *

References :


Dales, G.F. 1964. The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro. Expedition 6(3): 36-43.

Danino, M. 2006. L’Inde et l’invasion de nulle part. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Dhavalikar, M. K. and Shubhangana Atre. 1989. The Fire Cult and Virgin Sacrifice: Some Harappan
Rituals. In J. M. Kenoyer (ed.) Old Problems and New Perspectives in the Archaeology of South Asia,
Wisconsin Archaeological Reports, Vol. 2, pp.193-205.

Gupta, S. P. 2006 (under print). Did the BMAC ever cross the Indus? Paper presented at an international conference held at Vadodara in 2005.

Hemphill, B. E. et al. 1991. Biological Adaptations and Affinities of Bronze Age Harappans. In R. H. Meadow (ed.) Harappa Excavations 1986-1990, pp. 137-82. Madison, Wisconsin: Prehistory Press.

Kenoyer, J. M. 1998. Ancient Cities of the Indus Civilization. Karachi: Oxford University Press and American Institute of Pakistan Studies.

Lal, B. B. 2002. The Sarasvati Flows On: The Continuity of Indian Culture. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.
——. 2005. The Homeland of the Aryans: Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology. New Delhi: Aryan Books International.

Ligabue, G. and S. Salvatori. 1989. Bactria: an Ancient Oasis Civilization from the Sands of Afghanistan. Venice: Erizzo.

Mackay, E. J. H. 1976, reprint. Chanhu-daro Excavations 1935-36. Delhi: Bhartiya Publishing House.

Marshall, John. 1931. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization. 3 vols. London: Arthur Probsthain.

Muller, F. Max. 1890, reprint1979. Physical Religion. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.

Nyberg, Harri. 1995. The Problem of the Aryans and the Soma: The Botanical Evidence. In G. Erdosy (ed.) The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, pp. 382-406. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Parpola, Asko. 1993. Margiana and the Aryan Problem. In IASCCA Information Bulletin, 19, pp.41-62. Nauka.

Possehl, Gregory L. et al. 2004. The Ahar-Banas Complex and the BMAC, Man and Environment, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, pp. 18-29.

Renfrew, C. 1988. Archaeology and Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sahoo, Sanghamitra,et al. 2006. A Prehistory of Indian Y Chromosomes: Evaluating Demic Diffusion Scenarios. PNAS, Vol. 103, No. 4: 843-48.

Sarianidi, V. I. 1993 a. Margiana and the Indo-Iranian World. South Asian Archaeology, Vol. II, pp.667-80.
——. 1993 b. Margiana in the Ancient Orient. In IASCCA Information Bulletin, 19, pp. 5-28. Nauka.

Sarianidi, V. I. 2002. Margush. Ancient Oriental Kingdom in the Old Delta of the Murghab River. Ashgabat.

Shaffer, Jim.G. and Diane Lichtenstein 1999.Migration. Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology. In Johannes Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande (eds.), Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Cambridge: Harvard University.

Sharma, R. S. 1999. Advent of the Aryans in India. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers.

Thapar, Romila. 1988-91. In Journal Asiatic Society of Bombay, Vol. 64-66, pp.259-60.

Vats, M. S. 1974, reprint. Excavations at Harappa. Delhi: Bhartiya Publishing House.

Wheeler, R. E. M. 1947. Harappa 1946: The Defences and Cemetery R 37. Ancient India, 3: 58-130.

Witzel, M. 1995. Rigvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities. In George Erdosy (ed.) The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, pp. 307-52. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
 

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Demolishing the Steppe Sons hoax (Part 2): R̥gveda & Sarasvati (Harappan) civilization are two faces of the same coin
This is an addendum to .... https://defenceforumindia.com/threads/aryan-invasion-theory.1403/post-2005357.

In June 2017, BB Lal made commented on an article (June 17, 2017) in The Hindu by Tony Joseph. BB Lal's comments are an effective refutation of the Steppe Sons hoax of The Economist. I reproduce BB Lal's comments below.
The Arya were indigenous: neither invaders nor immigrants -- BB Lal, Former Director General, Archaeological Survey of BHARAT :

My attention has been drawn to an article published by Tony Joseph in The Hindu, dated June 17, 2017, which, in essence, tries to say that The Vedic Aryans came to India from outside. I would like to apprise the readers of the reality of the situation. I have published many books on the subject, each one dealing with a specific aspect of the issue. The latest book, The Rigvedic People: Invaders?, Immigrants? Or Indigenous?, published in 2015 by Aryan Books International, New Delhi clearly explains, using evidence of archaeology, hydrology, C-14 dating and literature, why the Aryans were neither Invaders nor slow Immigrants, but were indigenous. I present here my arguments, as briefly as possible.
At the root of the trouble lies the dating of the Vedas to 1200 BCE by the German Scholar Max Muller. He did it on a very ad hoc basis and when his contemporaries, such as Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson, challenged his methodology, he surrendered by saying, “Whether the Vedas were composed in 1000 or 2000 or 3000 BC no one on earth can ever determine.” The pity is that in spite of such a candid confession by Max Muller himself many of his followers even today stick to this date, or at the most give concession to 1500 BCE.
In 1920s the Harappan Civilization was discovered and dated to the 3rd millennium BCE on the basis of the occurrence of many Indus objects in the already dated archaeological contexts in Mesopotamia. This led to the immediate conclusion that since, according to Max Muller, the Vedas were not earlier than 1200 BCE, the Harappan Civilization could not have been the creation of the Vedic people.
In 1946 Mortimer Wheeler (later knighted) excavated Harappa and discovered a fort over there. On learning that in the Vedic texts Indra has been described as puramdara i.e. ‘destroyer of forts’, he jumped to the conclusion that the Vedic Aryans, represented by Indra, invaded India and destroyed the Harappan Civilization. But, it must be stressed that there no evidence of any kind of destruction at Harappa.
In support of his Invasion thesis, however, Wheeler referred to some skeletons at Mohenjo-daro which he said represent the people massacred by the Invading Aryans. But the fact is that these skeletons had been found in different stratigraphic contexts, some in the Middle levels, some in the Late and some in the debris which accumulated after the desertion of the site. Thus, these cannot be ascribed to a single event, much less to an Aryan Invasion.
The ghost of ‘Invasion’ re-appeared in a new avatara, namely that of ‘Immigration’. Said Romila Thapar in 1991: “If invasion is discarded then the mechanism of migration and occasional contacts come into sharper focus. These migrations appear to have been of pastoral cattle breeders who are prominent in the Avesta and Rigveda.” Faithfully following her, R. S. Sharma elaborated: “The pastoralists who moved to the Indian borderland came from Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex or BMAC which saw the genesis of the culture of the Rigveda.”
These assertions of Thapar and Sharma are baseless. In the first place, the BMAC is not a product of nomads. It has fortified settlements and elaborate temple-complexes. It has yielded a very rich harvest of antiquities which include silver axes, highly ornamented human and animal figurines and excellently carved seals. But what is more important is that no element of the BMAC has ever been found east of the Indus which was the area occupied by the Vedic people. So there is no case whatsoever for the BMAC people having migrated into India.
Now, if there was no Aryan Invasion or an Aryan Immigration, were the Vedic people indigenous? To answer this question we must first find out the correct chronological horizon of the Rigveda. It refers to the river Sarasvati nearly seventy times. The river dried up before the composition of the Panchavimsa Brahmana, as this text avers. Today this dry river is identifiable with the Ghaggar in Haryana and Rajasthan. On its bank stands Kalibangan, a site of the Harappan Civilization. An Indo-Italian team, under the leadership of Robert Raikes, bore holes in the dry bed to find out its history. Raikes wrote an article in Antiquity (UK), captioning it: ‘Kalibangan: Death from Natural Causes.’ C-14 dates show that the flourishing settlement was suddenly abandoned because of the drying up of the Sarasvati around 2000 BCE. What are the implications of this discovery? Since the Sarasvati was a mighty flowing river during the Rigvedic times, the Rigveda has got to be earlier than that date. Thus, at least a 3rd millennium-BCE horizon is indicated for the Rigveda.
We now pass on to another very important statement in the Rigveda. Verses 5 and 6 of Sukta 75 of Mandala 10 enumerate all the rivers serially from the Ganga and Yamuna on the east to the Indus and its western tributaries on the west. In other words, this was the area occupied by the Rigvedic people in the 3rd millennium BCE (the minimal date arrived at for the Rigveda, referred to in the previous paragraph). Now, if a simple question is asked, ‘Which archaeological culture flourished in this very area in the 3rd millennium BCE’, the inescapable answer shall have to be, ‘The Harappan Civilization’. In other words, the Rigveda and Harappan Civilization are but two faces of the same coin.

The Harappan Civilization, which attained its maturity in the 3rd millennium BCE, had its formative stages at Kunal and Bhirrana in the Sarasvati valley itself, taking the beginning back to the 5th -6th millennium BCE. In other words, the Harappans were the ‘sons of the soil’. And since, as already established, the Harappan Civilization and the Rigveda are but two faces of the same coin, the Vedic Aryans ipso facto were indigenous. They were neither invaders nor immigrants.
The application of DNA research to the Aryan debate is nothing new. The renowned scientist Sanghamitra Sahoo and colleagues had declared: “The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with the diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward.”
This north-westward movement of the Vedic people is duly supported by both literature and archaeology. The Baudhayana Srautasutra, a later Vedic text, mentions that Amavasu, a son of Pururavas and Urvashi, migrated westwards and his progeny are the Gandharas, Persians and Arattas. Moving through these regions, a section of the Vedic people reached Turkey where a 1380-BCE inscription from Boghaz Koi refers to a treaty between the Hittite and Mitanni kings mentioning as witnesses the Vedic gods Indra, Varuna, Mitra and Nasatya. Further, there a treatise on horse-training by one Kikkuli, which uses Sanskrit terms like ekavartana, dvivaratana and trivartana, meaning thereby that the horses under training should be made to make one, two or three rounds of the prescribed course. What more evidence is needed to support a westward migration of the Vedic Aryans themselves?
Let us, therefore, analyze the facts coolly and not remain glued to the 19th century paradigms!
 

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SANSKRIT in Croatia: From SARASVATI to Hrvati

by James Cooper November, 2015


Glagojica Script
For most of the Croatian people (or as they call themselves, Hrvati) when it comes to defining their origins and tracing their ancient roots they turn towards the land of Iran and Persia. According to academia the name Hrvat comes from Hrovat which comes from the Slavic Horvat which originates from the Indo/Slavic Harvat and which is ultimately traced to Persia and the name Harahvaiti.
Harahvaiti however, is the corrupted name of Sarasvati, the great Vedic Goddess, the Mother of Sanskrit, the great river of the Rig Veda and the Goddess of learning. The Persians had a tendency to replace a Sanskrit ‘S’ with a Persian ‘H’, and so the word Haravaiti is actually Sarasvati.
This tendency can be seen in their word for ‘week’, hapta, which is in the Sanskrit sapta meaning week. Their name for the ‘Sun’,Hvar, is the Sanskrit Svar meaning the same. In the Avestan we find the seven rivers of the Aryan land are described as hapta hendu, an obvious corruption of sapta sindhu, the seven rivers of India. Finally there are the rivers of Iran, Haravaiti and Harayu which are the Vedic rivers of Sarasvati and Sarayu. And so if the name of Croat (Hrvat) comes from Harvat and this in turn comes from Harahvaiti, we must conclude that the source is Sarasvati.
Sarasvati is one of many words which are cognate with the Croatian language.
Med is a Croatian word meaning honey and this comes from the Sanskrit Madhu, a name for Krsna. The Russian Medvedev and the Croatian Medvjed both mean ‘honey eater’ a name for the bear and they both come from the Sanskrit Madhava, a name for Krsna which means ‘he who intoxicates like honey’. Below are some of the many similarities which are shared between the Sanskrit and Croatian language.

Croatia Waterfalls

Krka Waterfalls in Croatia


Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Kada​
Kada​
When​
Phena​
Pjena​
Froth​
Tamas​
Tama​
Dark​
Da​
Dar​
Gift​
Kuta​
Kuća​
House​
Sabha​
Soba​
Room​
Tada​
Tada​
Then​
Dadati​
Dan/Dati​
Give​
Matr​
Mater​
Mother​
Tata​
Tata​
Father​
Jiva​
Živ/Živa​
Alive​
Krs​
Krš​
Ruin​
According to academia, the oldest recorded name Harvat, was found in the Mittani/Hurrian documents spoken by King Tusratta some 3500 years ago. In the documents he refers to his Kingdom as Huravat Ehillaku.
We should note, however, that the King who spoke this 3,500 year old inscription was a Vedic/Hindu King, Tusratta being a corruption of Dasaratha, dasa being Sanskrit for ‘ten’ and ratha Sanskrit for ‘chariot’.
King Dasaratha, according to academia, was one of many Vedic Kings who ruled the Kingdom of Mittani. The chronology of these Mittani Kings are as follows: Kirta - Suttarna - Baratarna - Parsatatar - Saustatar - Rtadharma - Suttarna II - Artashumara - Dasaratha - Mativasa - Sattuara - Vashasatta - Sattuara II.
These names are all Sanskrit/Vedic. Suttarna is Sanskrit for ‘good son’; Dasaratha is Sanskrit for ‘ten chariots’; Parsatatar is a variation of Sanskrit Parasu, ‘he who rules with the axe’; Mativasa is Sanskrit for ‘the abode of prayer’; Ritadharma is Sanskrit for ‘the law of dharma’ and Artashumara is Sanskrit for ‘the winds of righteousness’.
It is an academic fact that the Kingdom of Mittani was ruled by Vedic Kings. Here we note that the capital of Mittani was called Vasukhani. Vasu being Sanskrit for ‘wealth’ and Khani means ‘mine’ – ‘a mine of wealth’. So if the roots of Croatian civilization are intimately connected with Iran and Persia, and in particular Mittani and the Hittites, one should take into consideration the Vedic influence behind it all.
The Croatian name for God is Bog which once again comes from the Sanskrit Bhaga, meaning Bhagavan, ‘the supreme Lord’. We see a nice example of this in the capital of Iraq, Bhagdad, Bhag being the Sanskrit Bhaga and dad coming from the Sanskrit dadati meaning ‘gift’ – ‘the gift of God’. Below are more similarities between the Sanskrit and Croatian languages.

Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Niska​
Niska​
Beads​
Znata​
Poznata/Poznati​
Know​
Kesa​
Kosa​
Hair​
Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Zara​
Žar​
Fervid​
Loka​
Luka​
Province​
Pluta​
Pluta​
Floats​
Mus​
Miš​
Mouse​
Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Gir​
Gor/Gora​
Mountain​
Bhavati​
Bivati​
Exist​
Zvana​
Zvana​
Called​
Griva​
Griva​
Mane​
Istra is a magical region of Croatia, known as Terra Magica, ‘the magic land’. Its name comes from an equally magical source known as the Illyrians, an Indo/European civilisation who populated these lands some 4000 years ago. The regions of Istra, their islands and surrounding area, all the way to north-eastern area known as Slavonia, and down the Dalmatian coast, read like a page from a Sanskrit dictionary - Rupa - Raša - Rukavac - Kršan - Sukošan - Daruvar - Kali - Duga Uvala - Duga Resa - Isa - Siverić - Nos Kalik - Kalinić - Kalinovac - Budimir - Rajakovići - Kuje - Sava - Budva - Dvigrad - Ruda - Rava - Mandal - Radovani - Loka - Bogdanov Vrh - Predloka - Radoboj - Sveta Nedelja - Sit - Štanjel - Antignana - Grisignana - Galignana - Lisignana - Dignano - Visignano - Hvar.
Spotted in isolation, they would deserve nothing more than a raised eyebrow, but seeing a number of them, and taking in consideration the similarity between the Croatian and Sanskrit languages, we can only conclude that at some time in the distant past there was a presence of Vedic India in those lands.
The island of Hvar is said to be the number one hotspot of Europe, seeing more sunshine in a year than anywhere else. Its name, Hvar, is a Persian word meaning the ‘Sun’, in the Avesta, Hvar is the name for the ‘God of the Sun’. This once again reflects the relationship between Croatia and Persia, however, it should be observed that Hvar is a corruption of the Sanskrit Svar meaning ‘Sun’ or ‘heaven’ and once again reflects the Persian tendency to turn a Sanskrit ‘S’ into a Persian ‘H’.
We can also find this Svar in the Croatian Slavic folklore, with divine personalities such as Svarog and Mater Sva. Svarog means the ‘God of the Sun’, the ‘God of heaven’ and Mater Sva is a solar Goddess known as the ‘Mother of heaven’.
Viđen is a Croatian word which means ‘to see’, originating from the Sanskrit vid meaning ‘to see’ or ‘to know’. From this Sanskrit vid we get the German wit which means ‘to know’, we also get the Latin videre which means ‘to see’, and the word video which means ‘to record’. Below is a continuation table of the many Croatian words which are cognate with Sanskrit.

Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Bhratr​
Brat​
Brother​
Dve​
Dva​
Two​
Dasa​
Deset​
Ten​
Bala​
Bijela​
White​
Tri​
Tri​
Three​
Plavate​
Plivati​
Swim​
Prastara​
Prostor​
Expanse​
Budh​
Buđenje​
Awaken​
Nabhasa​
Nebesa​
Heaven​
Priminati​
Preminuti​
Perish​
Nas​
Nos​
Nose​
The Croatian town of Bogdanov Vrh is an interesting placename, meaning the ‘gift of God’. Bog comes from the Sanskrit words Bhaga (‘God’) and dan or dana meaning ‘gift’.
Bogdan and Bogdanovic are also popular Slavic names, Bogdanovic meaning ‘son of Bogdan’.
We see the same roots in the name of the Capital of Iraq, Bhagdad.
In Sanskrit we have the word Sveta which means ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘white’. Vedas speak of the heavenly region of Svetadvipa. Dvipa (‘island’) and Sveta (‘milky’ or ‘white’), Svetadvipa means ‘an island surrounded by a milky white ocean’.
From the Sanskrit Sveta we get the Croatian first names: Sveta or Svjetlana or Sveto - all of them pertaining to ‘light’, ‘bright’ and by extension ‘pure’ or ‘saintly’.
(In many other Slavic nations we get the variations of the same word, so in Russia for example, we have Svetlana, in Czechoslovakia Svetla and in Bulgaria its Svetul.)
The Slavic tradition of Croatia also has the God Svetovid, from Sanskrit Sveta (‘light’) and vid (‘to see’). The God Svetovid is portrayed as white and bright with white hair, white beard, white clothes and white horse, all reflecting this white, bright meaning to his name, Svata-vid. Throughout Croatia we see this Sanskrit sveta in many place names such as Sveta Marija - Sveta Nedelja - Sveti Durd - Sveti Ivan - Sveti Juraj - Sveti Lovrec - Sveti Martin - Sveti Peter - Svetvinčenat.
The Croatian word for home is dom, originating from Sanskrit dam (‘house’). We see this dom in English words such as domestic and Kingdom meaning ‘of the home’ and ‘the home of the King’, and in Sanskrit we have dampati which means the ‘Lord of the house’. Below are further examples of the relationship between the Croatian and Sanskrit languages.


Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Bhrza​
Brza​
Swift​
Bhagavan​
Bogovan​
Divine​
Dvara​
Dvari​
Door​
Sus​
Suh/Suhi/Suši​
Dried​
Val​
Val​
Wave​
Rasa​
Rosa​
Dew​
Vesha​
Veš​
Clothes​
Sthanaka​
Stanica​
Station​
Pad​
Pad​
Fall​
Snusha​
Snaha​
Daughter​
Treta​
Treća​
Third​
Sveta​
Svjetla​
Light​
The coastal town of Umag may also reflect the Croatian/Iranian/Vedic relationship.

turanj tukljaca krug

Umag was originally called Magus, a name most relevant to the Iranians whose priests were known as Magi, men of magic and Magus which in Latin meant wizard. Magus was once part of Illyria which was known as a place of magic, In 11th century BC Istria was inhabited by the Histri – the Illyrian tribe after whom Istria was named. It is also known as Terra Magica, ‘the magical land’. As usual the grey academics paint a different story explaining how Magus is a Celtic word meaning fertile land and while this happens to be true, it does not necessarily apply to Umag. The Celts were intimately connected to the Persian Zoroastrians, they knew the esoteric meaning of Magi and Magus – the term Druid has the same meaning as in ‘seer’, and even the Bible mentions the Magi as a gifted seer and prophet.
A Celtic King was also known as Magus and his name did not mean ‘fertile land’, rather it described him as a man of great wisdom. The Persians and Croats were obviously intimate and so were the Druids and Magi. Magus, the original name for this coastal town now known as Umag may have meant much more than ‘fertile land’ - it may have reflected the magic of Istra and the Illyrians.
The source of these names however, is Vedic/Sanskrit, Magu (‘magician’; ‘priest of the sun’), the word that is the very source of the word Magic, just as the Vedas are the influence and knowledge behind the Zoroastrian religion.
The Croatian word for water is voda, this comes from the Sanskrit Uda or Udaka meaning the same. (From the Sanskrit Udaka we also get the Russian beverage known as Vodka which is Russian for water.) Below are more Croatian words which are cognate with Sanskrit.


Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Nipatati​
Napadati​
Attack​
Purva​
Prvo​
First​
Dina​
Dan​
Day​
Sedati​
Sjediti​
Sit​
Mrtaka​
Mrtvac​
Death/Corpse​
Parsati​
Prašiti​
Sprinkle​
Adatta​
Neudata​
Unweded​
Vartate​
Vrtjeti​
Rotate​
Patha​
Put​
Path​
In Sanskrit the word for knowledge is jnana, from jnana we get the Greek gnosis meaning knowledge, and from gnosis we get the English word knowledge - Jna-na - Gno-sis - Kno-wledge.

Istra islands in Croatia

Istra Islands in Croatia

In Croatia, on the enchanted islands of Istra, there are regions which bear this very same name, jnana. There is Grisignana - Lisignana - Galignana - Antignana - Dignano and Visignano. We find little information on these places except they are very ancient having been inhabited for over 7000 years.
Kali is an island off the coast of Istra, the name is an obvious Vedic/Hindu name, yet here it is as an island of Croatia in a land whose language is hardly distinguishable from Sanskrit. Throughout the region we also find names such as Kalinovac, Kalik and Kalinić.
Ancient port of Budava is a region which was once the main port of Istra; in Sanskrit buddhva means to awaken.
In Croatia we also find rivers which have names which are decidedly Sanskrit. The Drava river is a major river which flows from Italy and travels through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary. In ancient times it was known as the Dravus, so named by the Celts. The source of the name however is Sanskrit, Drava being Sanskrit for flowing, fluidity and stream. The Raša is a Croatian river whose name is very much related to Vedic India, Rasa being Sanskrit for water, liquid, juice, taste, elexir, nectar, essence, love. In the holy town of Vrindavan, India, the Gopis, who are great devotees of Lord Krsna, dance with the Lord and this is known famously as the rasa dance, expressing the highest rasa - the love of God.

River in Croatia

The Sava is a major river of Croatia, its name in Sanskrit means ‘water’ and ‘pouring out’. The Sava is a tributary of the river Danube which also flows throughout Croatia, Danube being named after the Vedic Goddess Devi Danu.
Stan in Croatia means place, residence, the source of this stan is the Sanskrit sthana which means province, abode, place, domain, region, state, land.
We see this sthana being used as a suffix for many countries such as Turkistan, meaning the land of the Turks and we also see it in Kurdistan - Uzbekistan - Kazikstan - Pakistan - Tajikistan - Afghanistan, ect. Below is the last table of words whose similarities show the ancient relationship between the two countries Croatia and Vedic India.

Sanskrit
Croatian
English
Nava​
Nova/Novi​
New​
Trnaka​
Trnjak​
Bush​
Purna​
Pun/Puna​
Full​
Laghu​
Lagan​
Light​
Catur​
Četri​
Four​
Muska​
Mišica​
Muscle​
Sada​
Sada​
Now​
Pus​
Pusti​
Release​
"The original name of the Indo/Iranian Goddess was Sarasvati ‘she who possesses waters’. In India she continued to be worshipped by this name which she gave to a small but very holy river in Madhyadesa (Punjab) whereas in Iran Sarasvati became, by normal sound changes Harahvati, a name preserved in the region called in Avestan Harakhvaiti and known to the Greeks as Anacosia, a region rich in rivers and lakes. Originally, Harahvaiti was the personification of the great river which flows down from the high Hara into the sea Vourukasa and is the source of the waters of the world, and just as the wandering Iranians called the great mountains near which they lived Hara, they gave Harahvaitis name to the life giving rivers and their Indian cousins did the same."
A history of Zoroastrianism - the early period
by Mary Boyce.


"The oldest actual contact, as the Zagreb linguist Radoslav Katičić has pointed out in a recent colloquy dedicated to Indo-Yugoslav relations, is to be found in the primeval religion of the Slavs, which was by origin Indian, partly through Persian intermediation. However this fact, proven by the analysis of the expressions for deities, is common to all Slavonic people ".
India and the Yugoslavs, a survey of the cultural links
by Ivan Slamnig, Department of comparative literature faculty of arts, Zagreb University.

“But it was more faithfully preserved by the Zoroastrians who migrated from India to the northwest and whose religion has been preserved to us in the Zind Avesta, though in fragments only. The Zoroastrians were a colony from northern India."
The science of language by Professor Max Muller.

End notes:
  • G.S.Rayall. Croatian and Sanskrit - Common Heritage. Publication Bureau Punjabi University, Patiala. (2006)
 

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Central GANGA Plain's oldest agricultural pollen was found in Rae Bareli district of Uttar Pradesh indicating that organised agricultural practices existed there as far as 9,000 years before present.

9K-year-old signs of farming found in Ganga plains

TNN / Mar 4, 2016, 01:34 IST


Lucknow: Central Ganga Plain's oldest agricultural pollen was found in Rae Bareli district of Uttar Pradesh indicating that organised agricultural practices existed there as far as 9,000 years back. The discovery was made by a joint team of scientists from the prestigious Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany (BSIP) and Lucknow University's department of Ancient History and Archaeology.

The pollen has been found in Lashoda Tal of Central Ganga Plains in Rae Bareli.

A team of dedicated scientists led by Anjali Trivedi of BSIP and D P Tiwari, professor of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology department of LU found the 9,000-year-old pollen which proved existence of agricultural practices in the region during the Mesolithic age.

The study revealed that the region from Rae Bareli to Unnao had climate and vegetation suitable for farming at a time when humans in most of the world were surviving on hunting and trying to find new vegetable food sources.

"It could broadly be termed the Mesolithic (middle stone age) age and the area seemed to have human habitat with organised agricultural practices," said Anjali Trivedi.

The study not only throws light on the climate, culture and human habitat it will also help in studying future climatic conditions. Moreover, it will help study palaeo lakes which include shifting of river due to tectonic activities or other reasons, she added.

Trivedi said the institute had earlier conducted a study on vegetation and climate change in the central Ganga plain from Jalesar Taal in Unnao. "This study will help in making a comparative study of the two districts," she said . The tree pollen invaded the grasslands with the increase in aquatic pollen portraying the strengthened monsoon which will help in studying future climatic condition and global warming, she said.
 

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DHARMA triumph15.JPG
DHARMA triumph115.JPG


The Rigvedic People: 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants? -- New book by BB Lal. Kazanas' links refuting Witzel and 'mass migrationists'. Author : NICHOLAS KAZANAS.

DHARMA triumph51.JPG


It is a sad commentary on the state of Itihasa of BHARATAM Janam that some retarded like Witzel continue to harp on the 'mass migration' of 'Aryans' into ancient India to explain the identity of Bharatam Janam. Unless this sonorous harping is ended, Bharatam Janam will continue to be kept in the dark about their roots.

I have posited an alternative of mleccha, meluhha as Proto-Prakrits integral to the Indian sprachbund together with the chandas reciters and Samskritam speakers. Indus script has been deciphered as metalwork catalogs rendered rebus in meluhha/mleccha using hieroglyphs. That position has to take deep roots after BB Lal succeeds in convincing the researchers -- based on the archaeological and literary evidence -- that both mleccha and 'Aryan' speakers were indigenous to the ancient geographical domain called Hindustan aasetu himachalam (from Setu of Indian Ocean to Himalayas) in which the ancestors of present-day Bharatam Janam laid the foundations for dharma-dhamma, say, from 8th millennium BCE. (I suggest this date based on the archaeological evidence of Bhirrana and https://friendsofasi.wordpress.com/writings/the-8th-millennium-bc-in-the-lost-river-valley/ The 8th Millennium BC in the ‘Lost’ River Valley -- Indian Civilization Evolved in the 8th Millennium BC in the ‘Lost’ River Valley – Dr B. R. Mani
.

I hope BB Lal's new book will set the contentious 'Aryan' problem on an evidence-based, falsifiable framework, devoid of racist or doctrinaire wild goose chase with repetitive assertions imagining an elusive urheimat of mythical (non-existent) proto-Indo-Europeans.

I say they were mleccha, meluhha who laid the roots of the Sarasvati-Sindhu (Hindu) civilization ca. 8th millennium BCE. Is this a good time-line to start the narration of Itihasa of Bharatam Janam on the Tin Road from Hanoi to Haifa traversing in caravans and seafaring merchants and traders on the Indian Ocean? Why the Tin Road? Because, bharatam janam means 'metalcaster folk'.

Kalyanaraman
Dr. S. KALYANARAMAN is a life-member of and
regular participant in the World Association of Vedic Studies. He is a)
author of a multi-lingual comparative dictionary for over 25 ancient
languages of India
BHARAT, b) author of 14-volumes on Vedic River Sarasvati,
civilization and script, c) editor of two editions of Rama Setu -- scientific,
archaeological and security aspects and d) author of Public Administration
in Asia, 2 vols. He is National President of Rameshwaram Rama Setu
Protection Movement and Director, Sarasvati Research Centre of Akhila
Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Yojana. He has a Ph.D. in Public
Administration from the Univ. of Philippines and degree in Economics and
Statistics from Annamalai University. He was a senior executive in
Karnataka Electricity Board, Indian Railways and Asian Development Bank
(ADB). In ADB where he worked for 18 years, he was responsible for setting up the world-wide network of
info. systems and disbursement of a 60-billion usd portfolio of loans. On Indian railways, he played a
pioneering role in introducing computers apart from functioning as financial advisor. He is recipient of
Vakankar Award (2000) and Dr. Hedgewar Prajna Samman (2008, 19th award).
See (33:40)(1/2)
Nicholas Kazanas, " A Vedic Scholar " from Greece - interviewed by S. Kalyanaraman Published on Dec 11, 2012
(10:17) (2/2)
In Chennai on 1 March 2011, the interview covered a wide range of issues related to vedic civilization, sprachbund (language union or linguistic area), indian ocean community and vedic studies.


"Economic Principles in the Vedic Tradition" by N. Kazanas has been published in 1992 by Aditya Prakashan, www.adityaprakashan.com.
The paper deals with economic principles as found in the more ancient sources of the Vedic period in so far as this is possible. Unlike a particular application of a law which may well be affected by circumstances and thus appear to be different from place to place and time to time, a principle has an unchanging, universal quality. Despite few economic terms used throughout the text like Land Value Taxation (which means simply taxing the value of land alone) there is nothing complex or complicated in this study and reading it does not require any training in Economics. By showing the relation of the Indic principles to certain modern concepts and particularly to Land Value Taxation the paper goes a long way in bringing into light many valuable economic concepts and practices supported by an institutional framework.
Thus we meet the same concern about the distribution of wealth that occupies the mind of modern economists. How much does a man or a family need to earn and how much should be given to the royal treasury (i.e. the State) and how should these be determined? Or to put it in other terms, how should taxation be levied? Then, how should the State dispose of its revenue? Also, how should lending operate and what would be fair rates of interest? The lawgivers in ancient India were fully aware of all these issues. One aspect of modern economies that is not treated by the ancients is unemployment because this problem appeared as such, on a large scale, only with the increase of population, the land enclosures (=privatization) and the industrial revolution in Europe at the end of the 18th century. But the texts take it for granted that people should feel secure in their different employments. A most surprising feature is the principles of free access to land for all and the Land Value Tax which should be the source of Government revenue (and expenditure). It is surprising because Land Value Taxation is supposed to be a fairly modern concept.
'Archaic Greece and the Veda' by N. Kazanas
This paper examines many parallels in the archaic Greek culture and the Vedic one. These are themes, poetic techniques, motifs and ideas in literature, mythology, philosophy, religion and ritual. For example, it is obvious that the names Zeus (Gr) and Dyaus (Vedic) are closely related. As in Greek mythology there is dog Kerberos guarding the entrance to Hades, so in the Vedic myths there are two dogs watching the path to Yama's netherworld. Many of these parallels have affinities with similar motifs in other Indo-european cultures like Celtic, Germanic and so on. Most classicists ignore these affinities or similarities and claim ( as W. Burkert does extensively) that many such elements in the Greek culture derive from Near-eastern sources. Thus Burkert thinks that the practice in Greece of having a young man or a seer sprinkling with a branch of laurel or tamarisk a polluted person or place came from Mesopotamia. However, the same practice is found in early Vedic texts where an apamarga branch is used. Consequently this paper argues with many examples that where such motifs and practices in Greece are found in the Vedic and other Indo-european cultures, they are most probably inherited forms from the Proto-Indo-European period before the dispersal of the various branches.
'The Collapse of the ait and the prevalence of Indigenism' : NICHOLAS KAZANAS.
This essay The Collapse of the ait and the prevalence of Indigenism: archaeological, genetic, linguistic and literary evidences by N. Kazanas refutes the theory of the Aryan invasion or immigration into India which was current for nearly 200 years.
'Vedic and Avestan' by NICHOLAS KAZANAS.
In this essay the author examines independent linguistic evidence, often provided by iranianists like R. Beekes, and arrives at the conclusion that the Avesta, even its older parts (the gaθas), is much later than the Rigveda. Also, of course, that Vedic is more archaic than Avestan and that it was not the Indoaryans who moved away from the common Indo-Iranian habitat into the Region of the Seven Rivers, but the Iranians broke off and eventually settled and spread in ancient Iran.
Vedic and Avestan was first published in Vedic Venues: Journal of the Continuity of Vedic Culture 2012, vol 1, published by Aditya Prakashan for the Kothari Charity Trust.
'Rigvedic all-inclusiveness' by N. Kazanas
The Rigveda contains and seems to preserve more common elements from the Proto-Indo-European Culture than any other branch of the family. This essay examines various points of language, poetry and philosophy but it focuses mainly on grammatical elements, lexical and syntactical, and on aspects of (fine) poetry. This is one aspect showing that Vedic and its culture is much closer to the PIE language and culture than any other branch in that family. Moreover, it shows that it is most unlikely that Vedic moved across thousands of miles over difficult terrains to come to rest in what is today N-W India and Pakistan, in Saptasindhu or the Land of the Seven Rivers. Certain other aspects show that Iranian moved away from Vedic and Saptasindhu and most probably the other branches did the same at a very distant but undetermined period. Finally, monotheism is also a notable feature in the RV despite its pronounced polytheism.
The article has already been presented in two Conferences in India and will be published in the book Perspectives on Origin of Indian Civilization edited by Angela Marcantonio & Girish Nath Jha in association with the Center for Indic Studies, Dartmouth (USA).

On Sarasvati
Here is Prof K.S. Valdiya's response to the comments made in 'In Indus Times, the River didn't Run Through It' by Lawler, Science 1 April 2011
An International Seminar on "How deep are the Roots of Indian Civilization: an Archaeological and Historical Perspective" was held in New Delhi during 25-27 November 2010. Eminent archaeologists and other scholars attended the Seminar.
Dr M. Witzel misrepresents this event in his usual insulting way with the comments he posts in the group: Indo-Eurasian_Research. Here Dr Kazanas replies to him.

'Indo-European Linguistics and Indo-Aryan Indigenism' by N. Kazanas
The essay Indo-European Linguistics and Indo-Aryan Indigenism is included in the bookIndo-Aryan Origins and other Vedic Issues written by N. Kazanas, ed. Aditya Prakashan, Dec 2009, N. Delhi. It examines the general IE issue and argues in favour of Indoaryan indigenism against the ait(Aryan Invasion/Immigration Theory) which has been mainstream doctrine for more than a century. The extreme positions that there was no PIE(=Proto-Indo-European) language or that this language is as currently reconstructed are refuted: the evidence suggests there was a PIE language but this cannot be reconstructed and all efforts in this reconstruction are misplaced. Since they are in no way verifiable, they should not be used as evidence for historical events. It is admitted even by rabid Indian nationalists that humans came to India from Africa sometime in the Pleistocene, and now there is evidence of change in the skeletal record of the region indicating that a new people may have entered c 6000-4500; even so, if these people were the IAs(=Indoaryans), they must, surely, be regarded as indigenous by 1700. Recent genetic studies do not suggest any entry of IAs within the last 10 000 years but state that the European peoples came out of South Asia after 50 000 B(efore)P(resent). Apart from such studies, other kinds of evidence and arguments will be used in full to demonstrate indigenism.
'An Explanation' : Author NICHOLAS KAZANAS.
An additional piece by way of explanation for some points raised by readers of the 'Open Letter to Prof. Witzel'. (Updated on 7 March 2010 due to a minor correction.)
(Download the PDF file - 130kB)'Open Letter to Prof M. Witzel' by N. Kazanas
Α new book by N. Kazanas has been published in December 2009 by Aditya Prakashan, N. Delhi with the title: Indo Aryan Origins and other Vedic Issues. Prof. Michael Witzel made some comments on this book in Yahoo Groups - Indo-Eurasian_research. Dr Kazanas replies with the Open Letter to Prof M. Witzel.

'The RV predates the Sindhu-Sarasvati Culture' : N. Kazanas
This paper was presented synoptically by Dr N. Kazanas at the Conference THE SINDHU-SARASVATI VALLEY CIVILIZATION: A REAPPRAISAL, in Los Angeles (Feb 2009).
Argument: There are misconceptions about rigvedic pur, ratha and samudra based on the Aryan Invasion/Immigration myth. Then, there are some 10 characteristic features of the Sarasvati-Sindhu Culture which are not found in the Rig Veda. Moreover palaeoastronomical evidence (mainly N. Achar's work) places some BrAhmaNa texts c 3000 and the oldest layers of the MahAbhArata 3067. All this (and more) suggests that the (bulk of the) Rig Veda should be assigned to well before 3200 BCE - however unpalatable to mainstream thought this may be.




An Explanation
Two men wrote saying that while Prof Witzel deserved the lashing he got in my Open
Letter to him (4/2/10), I went perhaps too far in my accusations of dishonest scholarship.
I don’t doubt at all that W knows Vedic and the RV. I have made this plain in other
earlier writings. Moreover, I accept that he, like all of us, makes inadvertent mistakes and,
whenever I met such, I (corrected them silently and ) bypassed them. I too make errors. Some
years back, I wrote that Whitney translated the word rathavāhana as ‘chariot-frame’ and not
as ‘a platform upon which is transported the chariot’. I was right in that he had used the
compound ‘chariot-frame’ (i.e. box of the cart) but in a subsequent note, which I had missed
in my first reading, he explained that he meant the ‘platform’. In a different paper I took the
phrase brahmā́yám to mean ‘this Spirit absolute’ ignoring the first accent which suggests ‘this
brahmin priest’ or, at best, ‘sanctity, the soul of the world’. The term ‘Spirit absolute’ would
have the accent on the first syllable bráhma-n. And more recently I wrote the Modern Greek
name Dēmētra instead of the classical Dēmētēr !
We all make such errors; most of us are prepared to acknowledge them and are grateful
to have them pointed out. Not so Witzel. He does not acknowledge mistakes and, if they are
spotted, he marshals all kinds of excuses to justify them, or attacks the other writer in most
vulgar, insulting or derisive terms. Thus he accused Talageri, among other unjustifiable
criticisms, of ignorance of linguistics and zoology (!) in their 2000-2001 altercation. Talageri
had written in his 2000 publication that Jahnāvī in the RV is, of course, the river Ganges
(post-rigvedic jāhnavī) and that śiṃśumāra is the Gangetic dolphin. W wrote that Jahnāvī is
the wife of Jahnu and the dolphin is that of the Indus. T replied cogently that no Jahnu is
mentioned in the RV while the context justifies the river-name and śiṃśumāra was said by W
himself to be the Gangetic dolphin in his own EJVS 1999! Indeed on p 465 of his book, T
cites the whole passage from W’s publication. W then replied with vague generalities and
accused T of employing unreliable texts! Such is W’s scholarly style of arguing and
“deconstructing” opponents – a term that both W and his henchman S. Farmer are fond of
using.
In 2003, in his comments (‘Ein Fremdling im Ṛgveda’ , i.e. a stranger in the RV) on my
paper ‘Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Ṛgveda’ (2000), W, in one of his many incoherent
fault-findings, criticized me for using mythological, not realistic data in my treatment of the
chariot. This of course is his usual diabolic distorting demeanour, because where I used
mythological details, as with the Aśvin’s car, I said so; furthermore I included realistic data
like the types of wood (i.e. śalmali, khadira etc) used in constructing chariots and also the
only real-life race of Mudgala/Mudgalānī in RV 10.102. In this race the car is magically and
perversely transformed into a chariot which is pulled by a bull, not horses (Kazanas 2002,
§VII, 1). Then W gave his own “realistic” details to show the differences between ratha (i.e.
light two-spaced chariot for race or war) and anas (heavy cart/wagon for transport). Thus:
“spokes ... surrounded by wooden rim... bent by the carpenter ... made of suitable wood ...”
and so on. These descriptions are solemnly presented by W as features specific to chariots!
He went even further. He gave another “realistic” feature, namely that the “(light)
chariot has two wheels (cakra)”, as if there are no carts with two wheels. And here he refers

An Explanation 2
An Explanation 3
to RV 1.164.13 and 8.5.29 and thus betrays incredible sloppiness. Because 1.164.13 has only
ONE wheel (with five spokes!) while the previous stanza (12) mentions SEVEN wheels (with
6 spokes). 8.5.29 has indeed two wheels but these are golden and the chariot belongs to the
Aśvins! So much then for W’s realistic two-wheel chariots.
His worst sin in this matter of “realistic” chariots is his reference to RV 10.85.11. He
obviously did not read the original nor the whole hymn. This refers to the Sungod’s daughter
Sūryā and her bridal car. This car runs indeed on two wheels but has also the sky as its
covering in stanza 10 and is said to be ‘the mind’ manas! But the original sanskrit text has
here anas ‘cart, vehicle, wagon’, not ratha as per Witzel! It is really too slovenly for words.
But neither he nor his braves bothered to read my reply and recheck W’s self-damning
citations.
Now, this is how wizard Witzel “deconstructed [N.K.] in hilarious fashion”, as S.
Farmer wrote on Feb 28, 2009 (Indo-Eurasian list) vilifying the Conference on the Sarasvatī
river held at Los Angeles a little earlier. These people, Witzel and his braves, thoroughly
enwrapped in their own self-importance, live high up in their cloud-cuckoo-land and are
blithely oblivious of the contempt in which they are held by reputable indologists in the USA.
Back in 1995 W “proved” that immigration took place by translating a passage from the
very late Baudhāyana Śrautasūtra (18.44). The original passage was given by him in
footnote 27, p 321:
prāṅ āyuḥ pravavrāja; tasyaite kuru-pañcālāḥ kāśī-videhā ity;
etad āyavam. pratyaṅ amāvasus; tasyaite gāndhārayas parśavo ’rāṭṭā ity; etad
āmāvasavam.
Some time later, K. Elst produced the following translation: ‘Āyu migrated/went
eastwards; his [poeple] are the Kuru-Pañcālās and Kāśī-Videhas: this is the Āyava
[migration]. Amāvasu [migrated] westwards; his [people] are the Gāndhārī, Parśu and Arāṭṭā:
this is the Āmāvasava [migration]’. (Note in the second statement about Amāvasu the verb
pra-vavrāja is omitted, as is common in parallel statements in all languages.) This translation
was later supported by G. Cardona, probably the most accomplished sanskritist in the West,
when Witzel first denied it. Independently B.B. Lal also produced a similar translation plus
the original in devanāgarī (2004).
But Witzel had translated the second statements as – “(His other people) stayed at
home in the west. His people are... ” etc! Now is it likely he knows no Sanskrit? Not likely,
since he translated correctly the first statement as – “Āyu went eastwards...” etc. Whence did
he drag in the phrase “(His other people) stayed at home in the West” which is not in the text?
Is it likely he did not know that in parallel statements one supplies the same verb where (in
the second) it is missing? I don’t believe it because he has shown that he is quite well-
educated.
What then? He is simply using stealth to prove his pet mainstream theory that some
Indoaryans emigrated from the N-W (Afghanitan, Bactria, etc) into a south-eastern location
while others stayed behind.
When in due-course W was notified of his mistranslation, he declared his innocence and
said the editors or publishers were to blame for distorting his (correct) text!

An Explanation 2
An Explanation 3
I think therefore I am quite justified in ascribing to W ‘dishonesty’ sarvaśas ‘on all
sides’.
Lal wrote he hoped W might change his ways. Hope never dies, of course, but W can’t
change, not in this embodiment.
tá eté vā́cam abhipádya pāpáyā sirī́s tantraṃ tanvate áprajajñayaḥ
‘having gained access to Vāk by evil means, they spin out their thread in
sheer ignorance’ (RV 10.71.9).
Finally, a note on Geldner’s translation of the RV in German. It is fairly good as far as it
goes, with an excellent critical apparatus, but it can be misleading. For instance, he translates
RV 2.35.6 āmā́su pūrṣú ‘in den rohen Burgen, in raw forts/towns’; realizing that this does not
mean much, he adds in note 6c nicht wie die gewönlichen Burgen aus gebrannten
Ziegelsteinen gemacht ‘not like the usual Burgs made from baked bricks’(!) but he does not
say that the RV has not a single mention of bricks, baked or unbaked. The text has no
bricks and Geldner imports them unjustifiably. This is one of the determinative points of the
RV date. For if the RV was post-Harappan there should have been mention of iṣṭakās ‘bricks’,
just as there is frequent mention of them in post-rigvedic texts. This and similar points are
mileading.
N.Kazanas.
References :
Kazanas N : ‘Open Letter to Prof Witzel’ 4/2/2010 <http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/en/
indology_en.asp>.
2002 ‘Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the RV’ in JIES 30, 69-128.
2003 ‘Final Reply’ in JIES 31, 187-240.
Lal B.B. 2004 ‘Should One Give up All Ethics for Promoting One’s Theory?’ in East and
West (Rome), 285-288.
Talageri S. 2000 The Ṛgveda, Delhi, Aditya Prakashan.
2001 Reply toWitzel’s critique at – <http//shrikanttalageri.voiceof
dharma.com>.
Witzel M. ‘Ṛgvedic History: Poets, Chieftains and Politics’ in G. Erdosy (ed) The Indo-
Aryans of Ancient South Asia, NY, Berlin, de Gruyter.
2003 ‘Ein Fremdling im Ṛgveda’ JIES 31, 1&2.
'Genetics and the Aryan Debate' by Michel Danino
This paper examines the latest genetic evidence which shows that there was no invasion or immigration into N-W India in significant numbers before 600 BCE. It was published in Puratattva, Bulletin of the Indian Archaeological Society, New Delhi, No. 36, 2005-06, pp. 146-154.
(Download the PDF file - 122kB)

'Indo-Aryan indigenism and the Aryan Invasion Theory arguments' (refuted)
by N KAZANAS
This paper examines the general IndoEuropean issue and argues in favour of Indoaryan indigenism against the ait (Aryan Invasion/Immigration Theory) which has been mainstream doctrine for more than a century. The extreme positions that there was no ProtoIndoEuropean (PIE) language or that this language is as currently reconstructed are refuted: the evidence suggests there was a PIE language but this cannot be reconstructed and all efforts and confidence in this reconstruction are misplaced. Indeed, all reconstructions of Proto-languages seem futile and, since they are in no way verifiable, should not be used as evidence for historical events. Indeed all the data used as evidence by the ait are wholly conjectural and arbitrary and often consist of misrepresentations and distortions, as will be clearly demonstrated in detail. All the arguments used for the ait have been analytically presented by E. Bryant (2001) and summed up in his concluding chapter. These will be examined one by one and shown to be fallacious. We shall also refer to some material not in Bryant - e.g. genetic studies after 2001CE and mythological motifs never examined in this connection.



'Indigenous Indoaryans and the Rigveda', by N. Kazanas
In this paper I argue that the IndoAryans (IA hereafter) are indigenous from at least 4500 (all dates are BCE except when otherwise stated) and possibly 7000. In this effort are utilized the latest archaeological finds and data from Archaeoastronomy, Anthropology and Palaeontology. I use in addition neglected cultural and linguistic evidence. I find no evidence at all for an invasion. The new term "migration" is a misnomer since a migration could not have produced the results found in that area. The Rigveda (=RV) is neither post-Harappan nor contemporaneous with the ISC but much earlier, ie from the 4th millennium (with minor exceptions) and perhaps before.
The bibliography of this study is available as a separate pdf file.
This paper was published in the Journal of IndoEuropean Studies 2002.

'A new date for the Rgveda', by N. KAZANAS.
This was published in Philosophy and Chronology, 2000, ed G C Pande & D Krishna, special issue of Journal of Indian Coucil of Philosophical Research (June, 2001). A shorter, slightly different version with the title 'The Rgveda and Indo-Europeans' by N Kazanas was published in the Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (ABORI), vol 80, 1999 (Pune, India, 2000). It presents the thesis that the RV is far older than mainstream indologists maintain and ascribes the composition of the bulk of it to the fourth millennium BC (some hymns even earlier). It argues that the IndoAryans were natives of Saptasindhu (ie the land of the Seven Rivers in what is today north-west India and Pakistan) examining archaeological, literary, linguistic and comparative-mythological material. Some of the arguments would need reformulation in view of new and firmer (mainly archaeoastronomical) evidence, which in fact reinforce the conlusions on the early date of the RV.

'Edmund Leach on Racism & Indology', by S Kak
Sept 1999, with Prof. Kak's permission ([email protected]).
'What is the Aryan Migration Theory?', by V. Agarwal
May 2001, with author's permission ([email protected])
'The RV Date - a Postscript', : N. Kazanas
This examines some of Prof M Witzel's (erroneous) notions which perpetuate the ait(=Aryan Invasion Theory) and which had not been discussed in 'The RV and IndoEuropeans'. It presents some new evidence and new ideas for a pre-3100 BC date of the RV and the indigenous origin of the IndoAryans and criticizes Prof Witzel's vicious attacks on some Indian and non-Indian scholars, who promote the indigenist point of view.


'Ait and Scholarship', : N. KAZANAS
N Kazanas wrote 'ait and Scholarship' in May-June 2001. This was first posted here. It deals with some additional (erroneous) notions of Prof M Witzel and the major (but not all) aspects of his 'Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts' (EJVS 7-3, pp 1-93, 2001). Apart from the ait, this study examines other cases of corruption in academic disciplines like Egyptology, Anthropology etc, where evidence against maistream views is discarded, as well as the etymology of the terms 'academia' and 'academic' and the development from Plato's Academy in Athens to modern notions.

'Reply to prof. Witzel', by N KAZANAS
Prof Witzel wrote a very superficial critique of 'aitand Scholarship' ignoring the title, lampooning the presentation of the development of modern academia and making all kinds of irrelevant remarks (5/7/01). So N Kazanas wrote a reply selecting some of the mosts salient points in 'Addendum to "ait and Scholarship"': reply to Prof Witzel and incorporating some (lengthy) remarks of V Agarwal. All this was completed and posted in sept 2001 here. The most significant point, apart from Prof Witzel's irrelevances, is N Achar's firm discovery that some astronomical dates in the Mahabharata indicate the date of 3067 BC for the Great War.

'Final Reply', by N. KAZANAS
Reply to nine critics in the debate on Indoaryan Οrigins initiated by and published in theJournal of Indo-european Studies, 2002-2003.

'A Reply to Michael Witzel's 'Ein Fremdling im Rgveda'' : VISHAL AGARWAL
11 August 2003.
(Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 31, No.1-2: pp.107-185, 2003).
The " A Reply to Michael Witzel's 'Ein Fremdling im Rgveda' " was sent to us by V.Agarwal (Minesotta, USA). It was written in July 2003 as a reply to Prof M. Witzel's 'Ein Fremdling im Rgveda', 2003, Journal of Indo-European Studies, and was posted on the Journal's website. It provides supplementary material to N. Kazanas' 'Final Reply' covering various aspects not dealt with by, or unknown to the latter. One should note that when Kazanas mentions "black copper" (kRshNa-/karshaNa-ayas or Syama- 'swarthy metal') he nowhere means bronze as Witzel takes it (p 175) and Agarwal need not have elaborated the bronze-aspect.

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http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/en/indology_en.asp#

The Rigvedic People: 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants? or Indigenous? Evidence of archaeology and literature
2 February 2015

B.B. Lal : Most cited author of BHARAT and world.
1,800.00Hardcover
Delhi : Aryan Books International

"Author Overview:

For several decades it has been orchestrated that there was an ‘Aryan Invasion’ of India which destroyed the Harappan Civilization. However, as shown in this book (pp. 10 ff.), there is no evidence whatsoever of any invasion or of the presence of an alien culture at any of the hundreds of Harappan sites. While one is glad to note that the ‘Invasion’ theory is dead, it is a pity that it is being resurrected in a new avatar, namely that of ‘Immigration’, of people from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of Central Asia, who, the proponents think, were nomadic Aryans. This book advances cogent arguments to demonstrate that this new theory too is totally wrong (pp. 19 ff.).

For all this mess, the dating of the Rigveda to 1,200 BCE by Max Muller is squarely responsible. The combined evidence of hydrology, archaeology and C-14 method of dating shows that the Rigveda is assignable to the 3rd-4th millennium BCE (pp. 118 ff.). The Rigveda (X. 75. 5-6) also tells us that the Vedic people occupied the entire territory from the Indus on the west to the upper reaches of the Ganga-Yamuna on the east. Archaeologically, during the aforesaid period and within the above-noted territory, there existed one and only one civilization, namely the Harappan. Hence, the Harappan Civilization and the Vedas are but two faces of the same coin (pp. 122-23). Further, the evidence from Kunal and Bhirrana (pp. 54-55) establishes that the roots of this civilization go back to the 6th-5th millennia BCE, indicating thereby that the Harappans were the ‘sons of the soil’ and not aliens. Thus, the Vedic people, who were themselves the Harappans, were Indigenous and neither ‘Invaders’ nor ‘Immigrants’. "



Intemperate, unethical comments of Michael Witzel on BB Lal's new book (2015) without even reading it.


I have annexed a posting by Michael Witzel in a yahoo e-group as an example of the sad commentary on 'indological' studies. A serious book brought out by BB Lal is introduced but as Sunday amusement. In my humble opinion, this comment of Michael Witzel is not merely unethical but disrespectful, disdainful of the contributions made by BB Lal to 'indological' studies.

It is also unfortunate that flippant comments are made without even reading the book of BB Lal referenced. The motivations are obvious. Any book which claims to question the received wisdom of Aryan invasion or migration is branded upfront as coming from 'nationalistic/chauvinistic Hindutva exploits.' With such a preconceived view, how is a debate possible with the 'specialists'?

Any book by any Indian author is generally viewed as 'amusement' on the anti-hindu hate group and is not dealt with the seriousness to get at a fair reconstruction of the mists of the past to unravel proto-history, expected from an 'specialists' which the group claims itself to be.

The group description reads: "This group is mainly intended for premodern specialists. All can join, but professionals get priority in posting: amateurish posts won't be sent on to the List...The List was specifically designed to encourage critical discussion of major unresolved issues in premodern studies."
I have read through the exquisitely produced book by BB Lal with colorful illustrations and rendered in mellifluent prose with evidences collated from archaeology and referencing a number of studies which were intended to promote the theme of Aryan invasion/migration into ancient India.

Let me start with some excerpts from the book;

"Preface. Isn't it an occasion to congratulate the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a Government of India organization which is entrusted with the task of preparing textbooks for school-going children, to have finally come out of its shell and admit that the theory of 'Aryan Invasion' of India is untenable (Textbook in History for Class XII, Themes in Indian History, Part 1, New Delhi, Janury 2010, p.18)? But the engrained mindset for resisting the whole truth persists, as reflected by the following statement on p. 28 of the same book: 'There were sevral developments in different parts of the subcontinent during the long span of 1500 years folowing the end of the Harappan Civilization. This was also the time during which the Rigveda was composed by people living along the Indus and its tributaries.' The Rigveda refers to the river Sarasvati a number of times, which means that it was an active river during that period. Combined evidence of archaeology, radiocarbon method of dating, hydrology and other allied sciences has established that the Sarasvati dried up around 2000 BCE (see p. 122). Thus, the Rigveda has got to be earlier than 2000 BCE. How much earlier? It is anybody's guess. However, at least a 3rd millennium BCE horizon is indicated...There is yet another aspect which needs to be highlighted. The Rigveda also gives a very good idea of the territory occupied by the Rigvedic peope. Verses 5 and 6 of Sukta 75 of Mandala X refer to the entire area lying between the Ganga-Yamuna on the east and the Indus and its western tributaries on the west. It was the very area that was occupied by the Harappan Civilization during the 3rd millennium BCE, viz. the time of the Rigveda. Clearly therefore, the Harappans are none other than the Vedic people themselves. Furthr, C-14 dates for Bhirrana, a site in the upper Sarasvati valley, show that the roots of the Harappan Civilization go back to 6th-5th millennium BCE (p.55), which implies that the Harappans/Vedic people were deeply rooted in the Indian soil. To call them aliens is a sheer travesty of truth. How long shall we continue to blindfold ourselves? (Emphasis in the original)" (pp.vii-viii).

BB Lal proceeds to marshall his evidences and in Chapter 3 discusses the 'Aryan immigration' alternative with the following remarks: Even though vanquished, he would argue still -- Oliver Goldsmith's Village School Master. Argue they must, because it is their sacred duty to fight for their committed 'cause', namely that the Aryans must have come from outside. Thus, failing to sustain the 'Aryan Invasion' theory, two eminent scholars from India go in for an alternative. They postulate an 'Aryan Immigration'. Thus, Professor Roila Thapar, a well-known historian, came out with the alternative theory by avowing (1989-91:259-60): 'If invasion is discarded then the mechanism of migrtion and occasional contacts come into sharper focus. The migrations appear to have been of pastoral cattle breeders who are prominent in the Avesta and the Rigveda.' Faithfully following her, in fact elaborating her new thesis, Professor RS Sharma, another noted historian, asserted (1999:77): 'The pastoralists who moved to the Indian borderland came from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex of BMAC which saw the genesis of the culture of the Rigveda.' (pp.29-30).

BB Lal then presents his evaluation of the BMAC on topics such as town-planning and other architectural remains, sculptural art, metal objects, BMAC vis-a-vis the Aryans, Parpola's Bactria sword compared with Fatehgarh sword which is simply a part of the Gangetic Copper Hoards and provides his emphatic conclusion: "Even a beginner in archaeology would straightaway say that the single BMAC specimen cannot be the parent of the Gangetic Copper Hoard Culture. On the other hand, it is the BMAC specimen which must have been taken there from the Gangtic region. Enough of BMAC immigrants, please!" (pp.32-33).

BB Lal reviews the evidence of flora supposedly supporting the 'Aryan immigration' thesis and concludes: "...there is no case to hold that the authors of the Rigveda belonged to a cold climate." (p.40) and identifies the River Sarasvati during the Rigvedic times with the now-dry river which goes by the names of the Sarasvati-Ghaggar in Haryana and Ghaggar in Rajasthan (both in India) and by the names of Hakra in Cholistan and the Nara in Sindh (both in Pakistan) and not with the Helmand of Afghanistan. (p.48).

BB Lal continues with archaeological evidences of fortified cities and pit-dwellings attested in Banawali and other sites, Bhirrana, Kalibangan presenting a chronological horizon, with the roots of the civilization going back to the 6th-5th millennnia BCE. (Chapters 6 and 7).

BB Lal summarizes his findings:

1. The Aryan Invasion of the Indian sub-continent is a total myth (Chapter 2).
2. Equally mythical is the postulate that the Aryans were 'immigrants', if not 'invaders' (Chapters 3 and 4).
3. The Rigvedic river Sarasvati is not the Helmand of Afghanistan but is to be identified with a now-dry river, which is known as the Sarasvti-Ghaggar combine (Chapter 5)
4. In the basin of this Sarasvati there evolved a remarkable civilization. To begin with, the people dwelt in pits, in the 5th millennium BCE, and progressed through various stages to reach a high level of civilization when they built fortified cities in the 3rd millennium BCE (Chapter 6)...
...
7. Rigvedic people are neither 'invaders' nor 'immigrants' but indigenous. (pp.124-125)

I would like to ask of Michael Witzel and other members of his yahoo e-group to first read BB Lal's evidences and logical conclusions derived and present contra viewpoints; hopefully, such a scholarly, unmotivated academic approach will help arrive at the truth of the roots of Sarasvati-Sindhu (Hindu) civilization.

Sottovoce: I have deliberately called the civilization as Sarasvati-Sindhu as against the mainstream designation of 'Harappan Culture' used by archaeologists. This designation can also be debated in the context of the language the Vedic people spoke as brought out in my works on Indus script decipherment, reading the inscriptions rebus as Meluhha (Mleccha) metalwork catalogs. Just as BB Lal concludes that Vedic and Harappan were two sides of the same coin, I have concluded that Chandas and Meluhha (Mleccha) are two sides of the same Indian sprachbund coin.

Sure, Michael Witzel is entitled to his opinions in Aryan migration into ancient India and the roots of Proto-Indo-European in the Steppes. I would only request, in the interest of progressing the 'indological' studies, not to prejudge contrary opinions as Hindutva zealotry. After all, any hypothesis to be tenable in academic discourse, should also be falsifiable (pace Karl Popper). Michael Witzel may also like to counter the views -- on the same topic of identity of ancient Hindus -- of Nicholas Kazanas and BS Hari Shankar mentioned at:
The Rigvedic People: 'Invaders'?/'Immigrants? -- New book by BB Lal. Kazanas' links refuting Witzel and 'mass migrationists'. Author : NICHOLAS KAZANAS.

And...

Unmasking the motives of Aryan immigrationists -- BS Hari Shankar. To attack Indian traditions and cultural unity.

Unmasking the Motives


Published in Organiser weekly
February 15, 2015Vol 66, No 33

AUTHOR - BS HARI SHANKAR

There are striking similarities between eurocolonialism and euromarxism. Western Marxism is a body of various marxshiti theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe. While György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch'sMarxism and Philosophy, first published in 1923, are often seen as the works that inaugurated this current, the phrase itself was coined much later by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, well known left ideologue and French phenomenological philosopher. Both eurocolonialism and euromarxism are united in the propogation of the Aryan invasion theory. Both are unanimous in targeting the scientific heritage of India . They exhibit strong unanimity in attacking Indian traditions and culture . Both eurocolonialism and euromarxism exhibit tremendous solidarity to oppose the idea of India’s cultural unity. According to J.M.Blaut, Professor of anthropology and geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has discussed issues of Marxism and Eurocentric diffusion, to most Marxist thinkers such as Bernstein, Bauer, Hilferding, and Kautsky, the European world was the edifice of historical changes, past and future, and non-Europe was the recipient of this diffusion. In 2005, Eric Sheppard, Professor of Economic Geography argued that contemporary Marxism has Eurocentric traits when it supposes that the third world must go through a stage of capitalism before "progressive social formations can be envisioned".

In India, any trend unyielding to such conventional guidelines of Euromarxist historiography, and questions left historians who dominate established historical research is condemned as saffronisation. This is evident from the resolution of the Indian History Congress recently passed at JNU , New Delhi .The resolution claimed that it meant to oppose efforts to project Indian science as fact and establish myths as history .India did not witness any isolated or mass protests condemning science as anti religious, equivalent with Papal inquisition . No scientific institution was dissolved or premier research terminated for questioning orthodox religious norms and beliefs. Nor did we read any reports of science censured in educational institutions.
But the resolution passed by Indian History Congress at JNU was questioned. Noted Indologist Michel Danino in an article published in ‘The Hindu,’ January 4, 2015 titled ‘Neglect of Knowledge Traditions’ accused that the kind of historiography that the authors of the Indian History Congress resolution represent is responsible for this situation. Danino further argued that mainstream historical books on classical India such as Professors D.N.Jha’s ‘Ancient India’, or Romila Thapars ‘Penguin History of Early India’ are totally silent on Indian scientific achievements. Danino pointed out that Jha briefly mention Aryabhata and Varahamihira. Simultaneously, Jha give wrong statements about Arya bhata and is virtually silent on Brahmagupta and Bhaskaracharya and their line of prestigious successors who survived till the 14th century. Romila Thapar limits her discussion on Indian science with few sentences on Aryabhata and Varahamihira. Danino wrote as an indologist . He has nothing to do with saffronisation.

But, Danino’s write up provoked the orthodox Euromarxist establishment. In his letters to editor column in ‘The Hindu’, Professor D.N.Jha, former Head of the Department of History, Delhi University accused Danino of being ignorant in ancient Indian science and technology and that his works lacked scientific vigour. Professor Jha claimed that his own work extended only upto 6thcentury AD which could not include later events .He also charged Danino of being ignorant in chronology of ancient India.

A rejoinder was written by Danino in letters to editor column in ‘The Hindu’, countering Jha’s assertions. Danino questioned Jha’ s claims that his work was limited to 600AD. If Jha can include various aspects of Post 600AD such as Hsuan Tsang of 7th century, Sankaracharya of 8th century, Kailasanath temple of 8th century and Al-Biruni of 11th century why not Brahmagupta who is considered the father of Algebra and who substantially influenced Arabic Mathematics. Danino charged that it was a clear attempt of circumventing Brahmagupta and Bhaskaracharya and their successors. There are no hard and fast rules that even the names of these towering scientists of ancient India should hardly be mentioned by Jha in his work. There were personalities from mathematics to medicine after 600AD such as Vateswara, Manjula, Aryabhata II, Sripati, Satananda, Mahavira, Sridhara, Narayana Pandita, Madhava and Chakrapani Datta.
Marxist historians who sideline India’s history of science and traditional knowledge systems should look back how science was mutilated by their forefathers under Communist regimes. Professor Ethan Pollock has pointed out in 2006 that the most valuable repository for understanding Communism and science is the Central Party Archive which contains the Central Committee papers There are numerous events in erstwhile Communist Russia of imposing Marxist line on science from the institutes and universities to the presidium of the colossal Academy of Sciences, to deliberations in the Secretariat of the Central Committee, and finally to Stalin’s table which passed the final judgments .. Reputed Soviet physiologists such as L.A. Orbeli, P.K. Anokhin, A.D. Speransky and I.S. Beritashvily were assaulted for deviating from Marxist guidelines.

Consequently, Soviet physiology self-excluded itself from the international scientific community for many years. The Chinese Academy of Sciences was also explicitly modeled on the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Scientists in china were subjected to communist party compulsions .The terminology of the period distinguished between "red" and "expert". The scientific establishments were attacked during the Cultural Revolution, causing major damage to China's science and technology. Most scientific research ceased. In extreme cases, individual scientists were singled out as "counter-revolutionaries" and were subject to public criticism and persecution, and the research work of prestigious institutes were frozen. The entire staffs of research institutes commonly were dispatched to distant regions for political training under Communist comrades.
Instead of getting provoked by Michel Danino, the Marxist historians in India should have gone through the encyclopedic work on History of Indian Science published in 1971 by the Indian National Science Academy .The Indian National Science Academy, through its History of Science Board of 1958 and the National Commission for the Compilation of History of Sciences in India formed in 1967 which was renamed in 1989 as the Indian National Commission for History of Science, has published meticulous works on India’s scientific heritage. Professors B.V.Subbarayappa, D.M.Bose, S.N.Sen, S.P.Raychaudhari, R.C.Majumdar, K.A.Chowdhury, J.L.Bhaduri are few of the eminent scholars associated with this work since more than four decades..There are also encyclopedic works on Indian medicine especially Charaka, Susruta and Vagbhata by Professor M.S.Valiathan, currently, National Research Professor at Manipal University. These eminent personalities in science and medicine are not saffron idealogues. . As a means to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge, indigenous universities have been founded in various Latin American countries. They demand that multiple ways of knowing be recognized as valid, and suggest that indigenous knowledge can inspire new methodologies.
The Marxist historians should be aware of two events that invited global attention in 2004 and 2008. On June 18, 2004, an unusual event took place at CERN, the European Center for Research in Particle Physics in Geneva . A 2m tall statue of Shiva -Nataraja, the Lord of Cosmic Dance was unveiled at CERN. The statue, symbolizing Shiva's cosmic dance of evolution and dissolution , was given to CERN by the Indian government to celebrate the research center's long association with India. On the pedestal are etched two quotes. One is from physicist Capra: "In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics." The other is from the distinguished India-born art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who called the Nataraja "the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of." It was an appropriate metaphor of East-West symbiosis . Speaking at the unveiling ceremony, Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary to the Government of India, expressed his satisfaction that “the Indian scientific community is part of the quest for understanding the Universe”. Can we separate myth and science in this context ? Dr.Kakodkar does not belong to the saffron brigade.

The other incident occurred in 2008. Professor George Gheeverghese Joseph of Manchester University delivered a lecture on the ‘Transmission to Europe of Non-European Mathematics’ on September, 2008 at the Mathematical Association of America(MAA) . He focused on Indian School of Mathematics of the 14th century, in Kerala. It was founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama, which included personalities such as Parameshvara, Neelakanta Somayaji,Jyeshtadeva, Achyuta Pisharati, Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri andAchyuta Panikkar . Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri authored the famous ‘Narayaneeyam’ the abridged form of Srimad Bhagavatha in one thousand Sanskit verses. At the MAA's Carriage House Conference Center, he spoke about "The Politics of Writing Histories of Non-Western Mathematics." In a provocative address, this Indian Professor cited the example of the discovery of infinite series as one instance in which possible Indian and other Asian influences on European mathematics have been neglected in the past. Professor Joseph questioned on the trend of non-Western contributions generally neglected in histories of science and the difficulty for new evidence on non-Western contributions to become accepted and then percolate into standard histories of science and technology. Among Professor Joseph’s major works, the most acclaimed is ‘Crest of the Peacock:Non European Roots of Mathematics’ published in 1992 by Penguin . Even, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, has contemplated Indian science, especially Mathematics , in his work “The Discovery of India”.Nehru elucidates quite unambiguously:

“Highly intellectual and given to abstract thinking as they were, one would expect the ancient Indians to excel in mathematics.Europe got its early arithmetic and algebra from the Arabs—hence the Arabic numerals—but the Arabs themselves had previously taken them from India.The astonishing progress that the Indians had made in mathematics is now well known and it is recognized that the foundations of modern arithmetic and algebra were laid long ago in India.”

On January 2010, the Department of Sociology of Delhi University formally inaugurated a new European Study Centre at its premises funded by the European Union and aimed at restructuring the curriculum of the existing postgraduate and M. Phil programmes in consultation with European scholars. What was the need for Delhi University to teach European sociology since the days it was first set up? As Professor Kapil Kapoor former pro-Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University rightly remarked :

“All this knowledge has been marginalized by and excluded from the mainstream education system.Efforts to incorporate it or teach it have been politically opposed and condemned as revivalism.Europe’s thirteenth century onwards successful venture of relocating the European mind in its classical Greek roots is lauded and expounded in the Indian universities as ‘revival of learning’ and as ‘renaissance’.But when it comes to India, the political intellectuals dismiss exactly the same venture as ‘revivalism’ and ‘obscurantism’….It is these people wearing various garbs—liberal ,left, secular modern—who oppose, more often than not from sheer ignorance, any attempt to introduce Indian traditions of thought in the mainstream education system—a classic case of self-hate taking the form of mother hate.”

The other face of Marxist historians should be understood by our civil society. Talking high on secular and scientific history during daylight, the Marxist historians, especially at Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi has entered into a flagrant pact with churches in India and abroad for excavating the site at Pattanam in Kerala and proving it as the holy place where Apostle Thomas landed in India for conversions in the first century AD. The excavations are conducted by Marxist historians who specialized in Modern India under Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) dominated by leftared shitstoryans
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The KCHR director, Dr. P.J.Cherian a modern historian who specialized his research on Communist agitations of Central Kerala is directing Pattanam excavations.. Professor D.N.Jha has unambiguously stated in his two works Ancient India --In Historical Outline (Reprint 2007) and Early India –A Concise History(2004) about the arrival of Apostle Thomas in India. The only difference is that instead of Muziris, Jha articulates the court of Gondophornes at Parthia as the place where the apostle arrived , from where he moved to Kerala and was finally assassinated at Mylapore in Tamil Nadu. In 2011 March, The British Museum organized a seminar on Ancient Afghanistan in which Pattanam excavations director P.J.Cherian and Dr.Roberta Tomber a Research Associate of the Museum jointly presented a paper lending credibility to travel of Apostle Thomas at the court of Gondophornes, ruler of Parthia. The paper indirectly vindicated the position of Pope Benedict XVI that Apostle Thomas reached India through Parthia. Simultaneously it also corroborated Professor Jha’s stand of Apostle Thomas entry in Pathia. . In other words , Jha was supporting the Catholic church in Vatican which vehemently upheld its stand that Apostle Thomas reached India exclusively through Parthia .

But there was another issue to be settled. The Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala has for a long time upheld and propogated the view that Apostle Thomas landed exclusively in Kerala, converted the natives to Christianity and was finally assassinated by Shaivaite saints at Mylapore.The very existence of the Syro-Malabar church depended on this belief of Apostle Thomas landing in Kerala. Finally, Vatican officials agreed to acknowledge the stand of Syro-Malabar church .It send a letter on 2006, November 25, to Cardinal Mar Varkey Vithayathil of the Syro-Malabar church (N47.367) accepting their belief and acknowledging their stand that Apostle Thomas landed in Kerala. This acknowledgement was in par with the progress of excavations at Pattanam. Simultaneously Dr. Roberta Tomber who has been associated with Pattanam excavations from the beginning presented another paper on 2006 October titled "bishops and Traders-the Role of Christianity in the Indian Ocean during the Roman Period" at British Museum .She pointed out that only recently the landing spot of Apostle Thomas has been identified by P.J.Cherian the director of Pattanam excavations. Dr.Tomber argued that it was here that Apostle Thomas established seven churches.Once the path was cleared, on March 2011, P.J.Cherian declared in the official bulletin of the Assyrian Church of the East, that Pattanam has been identified as ancient Muziris, where Apostle Thomas landed in Kerala 2000 years back, for propogating Christianity. Romila Thapar, Professor Emeritus Professor of JNU had already articulated the myth of Apostle Thomas as an outcome of Mediterranean trade with India in her work --The Penguin History of Early India-- published in 2002.

The real face of Marxist history constructs is much more shocking. Dr.C.I.Issac, a former Professor of History has put forward documents on how the archaeological value of Pattanam has been enhanced. The site of Pattanam was subjected to trial trenching in 1998 by Shajan K.Paul a Ph.D student in Faculty of Marine Sciences, of Cochin University .He transferred unknown antiquities from the site to Union Christian College in Aluva where P.J.Cherian was in teaching faculty. What antiquities have been transferred from Pattanam is still unknown. The Centre for Heritage Studies in Kochi was granted license by ASI in 2004 (File No—1/ 36/ 97 E.E ) This license was allegedly hijacked from them by the Kerala Council for Historical Research to excavate Pattanam. It is also alleged that select antiquities might have been removed and required antiquities deposited at the site before beginning the excavations. Although these allegations came up in 2012, the former KCHR chairman who is a JNU luminary and Marxist historian, Professor K.N.Panikkar is virtually silent. He has not countered these allegations. The reason is that it was under the inspiration of K.N.Panikkar that in 2002, left historians such as Prof. R.S. Sharma Prof. Irfan Habib Prof. Satish Chandra, Prof. K.M. Shrimali, Prof. D.N. Jha, Prof. Sumit Sarkar, Prof. Tanika Sarkar, Prof. Mushirul Hasan, Prof. Arjun Dev, Prof. Shireen Moosvi, Prof. R.L. Shukla, Prof. B.P. Sahu, Prof. R.C. Thakran, Prof. G.P. Sharma, Prof. Iqtidar Alam Khan, Dr. Neeladri Bhattacharya, Dr. D.N. Gupta, Dr. V.M. Jha, Dr. Biswamoy Pati, Dr. Amar Farooqui and Dr. Lata Singh under SAHMAT argued for retaining KCHR for implementing the Pattanam excavations. Myths are thus conveniently transformed into history by Euromarxists as part of a global agenda in association with international religious denominations . The constant allegation of saffronisation on anything and everything in India is nothing beyond a ceaseless strategy to divert academic contemplation and public awareness from this global game plan which is diabolic for euromarxists and eurocolonialists in India .
 
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LondonParisTokyo

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I haven't read anything in this thread but have become fascinated with ancient history. I found this genetic analysis through my random readings. Wondering what other's might think: https://thuletide.wordpress.com/202...etic-diversity-illustrated-guide-for-novices/

I post this here because the "South Asian" or Indian group is a combination of "Australoid" and "Cauacasoid" which is congruent with what our own history says. This analysis does not mention an invasion or migration. However still interesting nonetheless.
 

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