Dāśarājña over Ten Kings: No west to east crossing on Paruṣṇī

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

@hit&run please check the conversation at the earliest I am awaiting your suggestions. If you have a word limit for introductory post then do let me know.

Regards.

 

[airstrike99]

mods should open a thread with all the rules

 

[Vamsi]

S KALAYANARAMAN and SANATANAM SWAMINATHAM do include them I am going through their documentations and 5 words to sum it all "Absolutely Overwhelming Celestial Level research".

Sir, post all of their research here. I am very curious to know about our true history and chronology

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

Sir, post all of their research here. I am very curious to know about our true history and chronology

600+ threads confirm if I posted a refine version out of it. Will figure out eventually neverthless it will take a course of 15-25 months easily.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

Please dont call me sir.

 

[hit&run]

Opening Post Edited. Requesting member to go on first page and enjoy the reading.

@asaffronladoftherisingsun Thanks for the PM.

Link: https://defenceforumindia.com/threa...gs-no-west-to-east-crossing-on-parusni.82896/

 

[Vamsi]

When did this war happened ? 7000BCE?

 

[Indrajit]

The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda

The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda Shrikant Talageri To most people with a general...

talageri.blogspot.com

The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda

Shrikant Talageri​

To most people with a general knowledge of India and Hinduism, the most famous war or battle in ancient India is the Mahābhārata war described in India's Great National Epic of the same name.
However, to people with a much deeper knowledge of Indian and Hindu history and texts, and to Indologists and Vedicists, there is another very important and more ancient battle in India's history: the Dāśarājña battle described or referred to in the seventh Maṇḍala (book) of the Rigveda: more specifically in VII.18 and 83, and also referred to in VII.19 and 33, and indirectly in VII.5 and 6.
This battle has always been grossly misinterpreted by the Indologists to be a battle between invading "Aryans" and a coalition of "non-Aryan natives". But as has been clearly shown in my various books and articles, the battle was very clearly a battle between the Pūru Bharata king Sudās and his warriors on the one side, and a coalition of tribes mainly belonging to the Anu or Ānava tribal conglomerate on the other. These Anu tribes were the ancestors of the various Iranian tribes―and also of the Greeks, Armenians and Albanians―of latter-day history.
This completely revolutionizes Indo-European history. As per the linguistic analysis, the twelve known branches of Indo-European languages were together in a contiguous area of mutual contact, in and around the Proto-Indo-European Homeland, till around 3000 BCE. The first branch to separate from the rest was the Anatolian (Hittite) branch. The next was the Tocharian branch. Then the five European branches: Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. Finally, five branches were left in the Homeland after the departure of the other seven, and these five Last Branches―Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and IndoAryan―developed certain new linguistic features in common which are missing in the other earlier departed branches:
a) A “complete restructuring of the entire inherited verbal system” (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:340-341,345), with the formation of athematic and thematic aorists, augmented forms and reduplicated presents.
b) Oblique cases in *-bhi- (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:345).
c) The prohibitive negation *mē (MEILLET 1908/1967:39).
d) Also, some of these developed a change of *s > h from initial *s before a vowel, from intervocalic *s, and from some occurrences of *s before and after sonants, while *s remained before and after a stop (MEILLET 1908/1967:113): Greek, Armenian and Iranian.
The official theory, not based on any records or other evidence but only based on speculations and arguments, holds that this Homeland was in the Steppes.
But the recorded evidence of the Rigvedic hymns places all these five Last branches in the Punjab, on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (Ravi) river, at the time of the Dāśarājña battle.
Obviously there is opposition to this evidence from the entrenched vested interests: i.e. the AIT-theorists. Therefore it is necessary to clarify it again in clear terms.
We will examine the validity of this evidence as follows:
I. The Evidence in the Dāśarājña hymns.
II. The Doubts and the Objections.
III. The yardsticks: Data, Logic and the Weight of the Evidence.
IV. The Evidence Again.

I. The Evidence in the Dāśarājña hymns​

The basic evidence, as given in my earlier books and articles, is as follows:
Sudās, the Vedic (Indo-Aryan/Pūru) king enters the Punjab area from the east and fights this historical battle against a coalition of ten tribes (nine Anu tribes, and one tribe of the remnant Druhyu in the area), and later these tribes start migrating westwards.
The Anu tribes (or the epithets used for them) named in the battle hymns are:
VII.18.5 Śimyu.
VII.18.6 Bhṛgu.
VII.18.7 Paktha, Bhalāna, Alina, Śiva, Viṣāṇin.
VII.83.1 Parśu/Parśava, Pṛthu/Pārthava, Dāsa.
(Another Anu tribe in the Puranas and later tradition is the Madra).
These tribal names are primarily found in only two hymns, VII.18 and VII.83, of the Rigveda, which refer to the Anu tribes who fought against Sudās in the dāśarājña battle or "the Battle of the Ten Kings". But see where these same tribal names are found in later historical times (after their exodus westwards referred to in VII.5.3 and VII.6.3). Incredibly, they are found dotted over an almost continuous geographical belt, the entire sweep of areas extending westwards from the Punjab (the battleground of the dāśarājña battle) right up to southern and eastern Europe:
Iranian:
Afghanistan (Avesta): Sairima (Śimyu), Dahi (Dāsa).
NE Afghanistan: Nuristani/Piśācin (Viṣāṇin).
Pakhtoonistan (NW Pakistan), South Afghanistan: Pakhtoon/Pashtu (Paktha).
Baluchistan (SW Pakistan), SE Iran: Bolan/Baluchi (Bhalāna).
NE Iran: Parthian/Parthava (Pṛthu/Pārthava).
SW Iran: Parsua/Persian (Parśu/Parśava).
NW Iran: Madai/Mede (Madra).
Uzbekistan: Khiva/Khwarezmian (Śiva).
W. Turkmenistan: Dahae (Dāsa).
Ukraine, S. Russia: Alan (Alina), Sarmatian (Śimyu).
Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian:
Turkey: Phryge/Phrygian (Bhṛgu).
Romania, Bulgaria: Dacian (Dāsa).
Greek:
Greece: Hellene (Alina).
Albanian/Illyrian:
Albania: Sirmio/Sirmium (Śimyu).
The above named historical Iranian tribes (particularly the Alans and Sarmatians) include the ancestors of almost all other prominent historical and modern Iranian groups not named above, such as the Scythians (Sakas), Ossetes and Kurds, and even the presently Slavic-language speaking (but formerly Iranian-language speaking) Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and others.

II. The Doubts and the Objections​

Many people, not necessarily only those rejecting the evidence, have asked some questions about how these Rigvedic tribes have been identified with the Iranian-etc. tribes of latter-day. One reader of my article "The Full Out-of-India Case in Short" has very genuinely asked: "In the verse 7.83.1 you have identified the word 'pṛthuparśavo' as tribes (Pṛthu/Pārthava and Parśu/Parśava) but Griffith has translated this word as 'broad(pṛthu) axes(parśu)'. So how did you come to the conclusion that the word 'pṛthuparśavo' are names of some tribes and not broad axes?"
Another, in the comment section of my above article, asked Koenraad Elst: "Do you agree with Shrikant Talageri that Hellene are descendant from the Rig Vedic Alina tribe?"
It is possible that some readers may have genuine doubts or queries about these identifications, and, given the tendency among many Indian writers to freely indulge in such "identifications" based on chance or coincidental similarities in name, such questions are valid and must be clarified.
But it must be borne in mind that this article is meant to clarify these identifications for people who are genuinely open-minded and want to know the Truth in these matters, and not for objectors of the heckle-and-troll variety. Those can never be "convinced" and there is no need to explain anything to such people, since they are not interested in the Truth and will only simply brush aside all the evidence, whatever evidence is put forward, without blinking an eyelid.
There is the "Aesop's fable" about the wolf and the lamb:
A lamb is drinking water at a mountain stream. A little further up the hill, a wolf, also drinking from the stream, notices the lamb and decides he wants to eat that lamb and tries to think of an excuse to do so. He loudly calls out to the lamb and asks him why he is muddying the water of the stream that he, the wolf, is drinking from. The lamb answers that he can't be muddying the water, since he is downstream and the wolf is upstream. In any case, says the wolf, aren't you the same lamb who was calling me all kinds of names from a distance about one year ago? The lamb answers that he cannot be, since he is new to the area and is only a few months old. The wolf snarls in rage and says, anyway, if it wasn't you, it was your father. And he pounces on the lamb and kills and eats him up.
The people who refuse to accept the Rigvedic evidence that we are dealing with here, even after reading this article, are in the category of that wolf: they are not arguing because they really believe in something or have any genuine doubts or objections; they are arguing with a purpose in mind. Their purpose is to reject the evidence.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about these wolves. This article is meant for intelligent and honest human beings.

III. The yardsticks: Data, Logic and the Weight of the Evidence​

So how does one evaluate any evidence? There are three yardsticks: data, logic and the weight of the evidence. Another requirement is intelligence and honesty.
To illustrate how such evidence can be understood, let me give one very hypothetical example. You are at a loose end, and you casually pick up a story-book in English that you see lying around, and start reading it, without paying much attention to the title or author. You read through 8-10 pages. The story is about a small boy named Boris, whose father is a carpenter in a village. The story begins with the boy being given some breakfast by his mother, and then he leaves for school. On the way he speaks to his neighbor, then he meets various friends also proceeding to the school. They stop on the way to buy sweets from a village shop and have some altercation with the grouchy shopkeeper. They then go on to school, and then follow some descriptions of the classes conducted by two or three schoolmasters. That is as far as you have reached, when you misplace the book somewhere outside the house and that is all you know about it: later you cannot find the book.
A friend turns up and asks you what the book you were reading was about, and you tell him. He asks you where the story is situated: is the village, in the story, a Russian village or an English one?
What you have read till now does not mention the country. But you have one immediate piece of data: the boy's name is Boris, which (you happen to know) is a Russian name. So the village, you logically feel, must be in Russia. It is a story of a Russian boy in a Russian village.
But, persists the friend, it may just be a coincidence that the name sounds like a Russian name. And even if it is one, the boy may actually be in England. After all, the present PM of the UK is Boris Johnson. Also, there was an old and famous British actor named Boris Karloff. A little research shows that Boris Johnson was named Boris by his parents after a friend who was an immigrant from Russia. And Boris Karloff was a stage name adopted by the actor (1887-1969) borrowed from a novel which had a Russian character named Boris Karlov, and his actual name was William Henry Pratt. Nevertheless, the friend persists, there could be a boy in an English village named Boris, for whatever reason.
However, racking your brain, you remember the names of the neighbor and the shopkeeper, and of some of the friends and schoolmasters of Boris, in the story―and they are all Russian names. Now logic dictates that this could only be in a Russian village and not in an English one.
Why not, insists the friend? There are areas in England today filled with immigrants from some particular country even Indian neighbourhoods. This story could be situated in a Russian neighbourhood in England.
You now realize that your friend is not really interested in knowing where the story is situated. He is just determined, for the heck of it or for reasons of his own, to make you "accept" that the location may not be in Russia and could be in England.
Then you remember another point: the story mentions the year, if not the country, in which the story is supposed to be taking place: it is 1890 (although the actual book itself is a new one). Now it is extremely unlikely that there could have been a Russian neighbourhood in England in 1890.
But, as expected, your friend refuses to accept this as any kind of evidence. He insists that since the data (so far as the 8-10 pages you have read and remember) does not actually mention the country, it could be either Russia or England. More likely England, since the book is in English and not Russian!!
For a moment you are irritated: the data, the logic and the entire weight of the evidence makes it very clear that the story is located in Russia and not in England. Then you suddenly realize: why on earth are you even discussing the subject with that friend? Does it make the slightest difference to him? Can you "convince" him, or is it even at all necessary to "convince" him? Does it matter what he thinks, or claims or feigns to think? What a waste of time!! So you just give a tired and bored yawn, and firmly change the subject.
[As an irrelevant aside, the phrase "bored yawn" was used by me in my second book, where I wrote: "Some academic scholars have sought to prove such a migration by asserting that the Rigveda itself was composed in the west: 'Brunnhofer, Hertel, Hüsing and others, argue that the scene of the Ṛgveda is laid, not in the Punjab, but in Afghānistān and Irān'. [HCIP, p.248]. However, this view is so absurd, and so clearly contrary to the geographical facts of the Rigveda, that it can be dismissed with a bored yawn.'' (TALAGERI:2000:343-44). In his cantankerous review of my book, "Westward Ho:…", Witzel took note of this phrase: "Occasionally, however, T. lapses into 'a bored yawn' (p.344)", which I found so funny that I have a soft corner for this phrase ever since].
Well (to return to the issue on hand) , the entire weight of the evidence gives us the identity of the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña battle in the Rigveda as Iranians-Armenians-Greeks-Albanians. There is no need to "convince" people of the type represented by the friend above. It would be an unbelievable waste of time to even try.
But there is a need to present the weight of the evidence before more logical and honest questioners.

IV. The Evidence Again​

1. So let us examine the weight of the evidence, starting with pṛthu-parśavah in VII.83.1: is it "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", meaning the names Pṛthu/Pārthava and Parśu/Parśava, literally "the Parthians and the Persians"? Or does it mean "with broad axes"?
The thing is that this combined phrase, pṛthu-parśavah, is not found anywhere else, not only in the whole of the Rigveda, but in any subsequent text in the whole of Sanskrit literature, so clearly it is not a common idiomatic "phrase".
And the word parśu does not mean "axe" at all: the word for "axe" in both the Rigveda (where it is found in 11 verses) and in later texts is paraśu, which is a different word altogether.
Parśu, which is found exactly four times in the Rigveda, means "rib" in I.105.8 and X.33.2, and is the name of a person in VIII.6.46.
The word in the sense of "rib" makes no real sense in the context of VII.83.1, but the Indologists do not want to create problems for themselves translating it as "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", literally "the Parthians and the Persians", so they either try to translate it clumsily as "holding some kind of broad (pṛthu) weapon or tool", or somehow treat the word as a reference to the "ribs" of the chest. So each translator makes up his own meaning (Sāyaṇa, obsessed with ritualistic translation, and ignorant of historical implications, treats it as the "ribs" of a horse, used for cutting the kusha grass for the sacrifice!):
Griffith: "with broad axes".
Peterson: "with broad axes".
Wilson: "with large sickles".
Grassmann: "with broad sabers" (i.e. swords).
Sāyaṇa: "with the large rib-bones of a horse"
Geldner: "with swollen chest".
Jamison: "the broad-chested ones".
However, as Griffith points out in the footnote to his translation of the verse, "Ludwig declares that the former meaning is perfectly impossible, and argues that pṛithu-parśavah must mean 'the Pṛithus and the Parśus'".
The clinching evidence that the phrase does indeed mean "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", apart from the fact that the combination of the two words is not found anywhere else, is that the first word Pṛthu (Pārthava) in VII.83.1 definitely refers to a tribe and not to the adjective "broad": the leader of the alliance against Sudās in the battle is Kavi Cāyamāna (VII.18.8), whose ancestor Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna is clearly called a Pārthava in VI.27.8.
[Incidentally, like the phrase pṛthu-parśavah, the name Kavi Cāyamāna is also camouflaged in most translations, the notable exception being Wilson].
But the evidence of "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", literally "the Parthians and the Persians", does not stand alone. Every next step produces additional, and more and more weighty, evidence that the enemies of Sudās in the battle were, to begin with, proto-Iranian tribes:
2. The other tribes named in the hymn include the Pakthas and the Bhalānas (VII.18.7). Is there any doubt about who these two tribes are? The words here cannot be identified as anything else but the names of tribes, and they are too distinctive and peculiar to be identified as anything but references to the two Iranian groups found immediately to the west of the Punjab-Sind line in Pakistan today: the Pakhtoons/Pashtuns and the Bolans/Baluchis. Even Witzel, among many others, makes the very obvious identification of the Pakthas with the Pakhtoons (incidentally also identifying the word Parśu with Persians!) and of Bhalānas with the Bolan pass area in Baluchistan:
"Parśu ~ Old Pers. Pārsa 'Persian', Paktha 8.22.10 (mod. Pashto, Pakhto)" (WITZEL:1999a:24, 2000a:§11).
"the Bhalānas tribe took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV 7.18) that settled the suzerainty of the Bharata chieftain over the Panjab tribes. The Bhalānas are identified with the Bolān pass and river near Quetta in Baluchistan" (WITZEL:1999a:24).
And again: "The southernmost tribe mentioned in the RV are the Bhalānas took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV.7.18) and are certainly to be located near the Bolān pass and river near Quetta" (WITZEL:2000a:§11)
So here we have, to begin with, four very prominent historical Iranian tribes whose ancestors were undoubtedly present as inhabitants of the Punjab at the time of the Dāśarājña battle: the Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons, Baluchis.
In 2001, after my second book, there was a desperate attempt by Witzel to do some firefighting with a broad sweeping and uncouth denial: "The eager efforts made by many Indian scholars of various backgrounds to rescue these lists as representing actual historical facts173" [fn.173: "The latest example is Talageri (1993, 2000) who builds a whole imaginative prehistory of South Asia on such 'data': with an early emigration of the Druhyu branch of the Aryans to Iran and Central Asia in the 5th millennium BCE, including such fantastic etymologies and identifications as Bhalānas = Baloch (who only appear on the scene after 1000 CE!), Bhṛgu = Phrygians, Madra = Mede (Māda), Druhyu = Druids, Alina + Hellenic people, Śimyu = Sirmio (Albanians), etc. -- these are Oakish cases where even Elst (1999: 192 sq.) does not always follow him"] (WITZEL:2001a:57).
This diatribe above represents a classic example of the brazen and fraudulent nature of the western vested interests backing the AIT:
a) See Witzel here superiorly telling us that the Baluchis "appear on the scene after 1000 CE" in sharp contradiction to his own identifications published just two years, and one year, earlier, and in fact even as early as 1995 (WITZEL:1995b). Note that Witzel earlier even specifically identified the Bhalānas as "Aryans": "the IA Bhalānas" (WITZEL 1999a:37).
b) Needless to say, when there are four clear identifications of the enemy tribes of Sudās in the battle with four major Iranian people of later times, this determined "scepticism"―to the point of sharp criticism and rejection―of a whole other bunch of identifications which add to the weight of the evidence, is clearly nothing but outright chicanery and mendacity. All these are not names culled from different sources or from some long, late list of persons from some extended Puranic account or from the Epics. They are all names found in just four verses from two hymns out of the 1028 hymns and 10552 verses of the Rigveda, all these names pertaining to a single historical event.
Note that while he summarily and sweepingly rejects as "Oakish cases" the massive evidence identifying the names of the tribes with the inescapably near-identical names (many identified even by himself) of latter-day Iranian and other Indo-European groups, he persists to this day in propagating the theory that the battle was a battle between invading "Aryans" represented by Sudās and native "non-Aryans" represented by the enemy tribes―in insolent defiance of the fact that he cannot produce any evidence at all, not even a single "Oakish case", showing that the names of the enemy tribes are Dravidian, Austric, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese, Sumerian or Semitic, or anything else linguistically "non-Aryan".
In fact, as recently as 2016, he published, in his Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, an article by a "scholar" repeating such trash―see my article "Stuhrmann, Witzel and the Joke that is Western Indology".
By his logic―and with there apparently being no need for him to produce evidence for his linguistic assertions and dissertations and for his very "imaginative prehistory of South Asia" (without any data)―he could well claim that the enemy tribes of Sudās were Japanese, Aztec, Inca, Eskimo, Maori, Papuan or Hottentot!
3. Before moving on to the other tribes, it would be significant to see the leaders of the enemy coalition. The battle hymn tells us that the king of this coalition is Kavi Cāyamāna (VII.18.8), and the priest is Kavaṣa (VII.18.12).
Both these names are Iranian names found in the Avesta: Kauui, Kauuaša.
Taking this backward, we see that the ancestor of Kavi Cāyamāna, Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna, is called a Pārthava in VI.27.8. Going forward, the main royal dynasty in the Avesta (after the Iranians have moved from the Punjab to Afghanistan) is the Kauuiiān (Kayanian) dynasty descended from their ancestral king Kauui. Still much later in time, it is the Parthians (Parthava) of ancient Iran who claim to be descended from this Kayanian dynasty.
4. Going to the larger picture, we must note the collective identity of the enemies of Sudās in the battle: they are tribes belonging to the Anu or Ānava tribal conglomerate: the battle takes place on the Paruṣṇī river, and the hymn tells us that the land taken over by the Bharatas was the land of the Anu: "Indra at once with conquering might demolished all their strong places and their seven castles; the goods of Anu's son he gave to Tritsu" (i.e. to the Bharatas): VII.18.13. This point is also noted by P L Bhargava: "The fact that Indra is said to have given the possessions of the Anu king to the Tṛtsus in the battle of Paruṣṇī shows that the Anus dwelt on the banks of the Paruṣṇī" (BHARGAVA 1956/1971:130). The area, nevertheless, continues even after this to be the area of the Anu, who are again shown as inhabitants of the area even in the Late Books: "The Anu live on the Paruṣṇī in 8.74.15" (WITZEL 1995b:328, fn 51), and even in later historical times, where it is the area of the Madra and the Kekaya, who were Anu.
Even apart from the Iranian names of the Anu tribes in the battle, there is more evidence that they were proto-Iranians:
a) According to the accounts in the Puranas, the Anu were originally inhabitants of Kashmir and areas to its west before a large section of them migrated southwards and occupied almost the whole of the Punjab: these northern areas are even today the areas of the Nooristani languages which have proto-Iranian linguistic features.
b) The Puranas narrate this migration from the north: "One branch [of the Anu], headed by Uśīnara, established several kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab […] his famous son Śivi [Auśīnara] originated the Śivis [footnote: called Śivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Śivapura, and extending his conquests westwards […] occupying the whole of the Punjab except the northwestern corner" (PARGITER 1962:264).
The name Auśīnara is an Iranian name found in the Avesta: Aošnara.
c) In later historical times, the name Anu is prominently found at both the southern and northern ends of the area described in the Avesta: Greek texts (e.g. Stathmoi Parthikoi, 16, of Isidore of Charax) refer to the area and the people immediately north of the Hāmūn-ī Hilmand in southern Afghanistan as the anauon or anauoi; and Anau is the name of a prominent proto-Iranian or Iranian archaeological site in Central Asia (Turkmenistan).
There is plenty of detailed evidence showing the Iranians migrated from India, but this massive evidence is connected with terms like dāsa, with the history of the priestly classes, and with geographical data in the Avesta, etc., so we will not detail it here, since here we are primarily concerned only with the identity of the enemies of Sudās. Whoever is interested can go through this evidence elsewhere (TALAGERI:2000:202-231; TALAGERI:2008:265-273).
5. The names Alina and Śimyu as enemy tribes in the battle are very important. Like the pairs Pṛthu-Parśu and Paktha-Bhalāna, so important in Iranian history, the pair Alina-Śimyu represents a pair of very important historical tribes which spread the furthest in later times: as far as South Russia and Ukraine in the north and as far as southeastern Europe in the south.
The Alina and Śimyu spread furthest in the north as historical Iranian or Iranized groups―the Alans and Sarmatians―who are the ancestors not only of many later Iranian people like Ossetes, Kurds and Scythians (Shakas), but also many presently Slavic-speaking people like Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and others.
And Alina and Śimyu, the original groups, spread furthest in the south in even earlier times, and reached southeastern Europe with their original languages which became the Hellene (Greek) and Sirmio (Illyrian, modern Albanian) branches of Indo-European.
Now, the objectors who say these identifications are far-fetched should note the following facts:
a) If four of the names of the tribes in the Anu coalition who fought against Sudās in the battle can be so clearly and irrefutably identified with the names of four very prominent Iranian tribes of latter-day history (Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons and Baluchis), then it becomes a matter of very special pleading to deny similar identifications of the other names, out of the few names mentioned in just four verses in two hymns referring to the battle, without investigation and serious consideration.
b) The two names are very significant names since they are found only in the Rigveda, and are not found anywhere else in any Indian text or record after that.
In fact, Alina is found only once, in the battle hymn in VII.18.7. Śimyu occurs twice in the Rigveda, and the two occurrences only strengthen the significance of the total disappearance of the name from later texts: it is found in VII.18.5 for the enemies of Sudās, and in I.100.18 for the enemies of Sudās' descendant Sahadeva (I.100.17) who has taken the expansion further westwards.
c) The two words are clearly not part of the Vedic or Sanskrit vocabulary, not only because they are not found anywhere else, but also because the word Alina at least is phonetically a non-Vedic word: the linguistic normal for Vedic and in fact for Vedic-Avestan (including Mitanni) words, is that the Indo-European "l" is represented by "r"―the Avesta, and the Mitanni records, in fact do not have the "l" sound at all, and its occurrence in the Rigveda is a result of influence from eastern dialects, which are supposed to have retained the "l" in many words.
[This, incidentally, is strong linguistic evidence for the OIT, see TALAGERI:2008:283-285].
The names in the hymns are therefore clearly the self-appellations of the two Anu tribes (the proto-Greeks and proto-Albanians), and their exact phonetic forms in the Rigveda are the approximate forms of these self-appellations as pronounced by the speakers of the Pūru Vedic language. In spite of that, the identification is very clear: Vedic "a" represents Greek "a", "e" or "o", so the Rigvedic Alina could be a representation of a Greek Eline (note: the modern Greek pronunciation of their name Hellene is Elini-ka). Śimyu is certainly a representation of the ancient Albanian/Illyrian self-appellation Sirmio.
d) These two words clearly leave a historical trail east-to-west from the Punjab to southeastern as well as eastern Europe, which would be too much of a coincidence if the strong similarity in names was purely accidental:
Alina (Sanskrit equivalent of a Greek Eline) found in the battle hymn as the name of an Anu tribe in the Punjab. Later it is found as Hellene, the Greeks in southeastern Europe. Finally, as Alan, or Alani in Roman records, (which would be an Iranian equivalent of a Greek Eleni), an important Iranian tribe which migrated northwards and westwards towards eastern Europe.
Śimyu is first found in the Old Book 7 in the Rigveda as the name of an enemy Anu tribe in central Punjab, then in the New Book 1 as the same enemy tribe now in Afghanistan (in the area beyond the Sarayu river). Then it is found in the Avesta in Afghanistan as Sairima. Then it is found as Sirmio, the ancient Illyrians/Albanians in southeastern Europe―the capital city of the Illyrians was Sirmium. Finally, as the Sarmatians―Iranian Sarmaha, or Sarmatae in Roman records, an important Iranian tribe which migrated northwards and westwards towards Ukraine.
Too much of a "coincidence" if the similar words refer to different people.
The Alina who migrated furthest retained their Greek name and language (Hellene), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (Alan).
We also see here an important historical phenomenon: the tribal group which
migrates furthest retains its linguistic identity, while those of that tribe who remain behind, or on the way, get absorbed into the surrounding linguistic group:
The Śimyu who migrated furthest retained their Albanian identity and language (Sirmio), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (Avestan Sairima, later Sarmaha).
We will see this phenomenon similarly repeated in the case of two more names.
6. Next we see the name Bhṛgu mentioned as the name of one of the enemy groups in the battle hymn, which can be identified with the Phrygians or Phryge, the ancient representatives of the Armenian branch of IE languages.
As we saw earlier, Witzel treats this identification also as an "Oakish case". Here he clearly seems to reject linguistically confirmed identifications: that Vedic bhṛgu = Greek phleguai = Phrygian phryge is an accepted linguistic case. In fact, this identification, even without the help of modern Linguistics, was made as long ago as in the ancient Greek records of Herodotus. The Wikipedia entry on an ancient tribe called Bryges tells us: "The earliest mentions of the Bryges are contained in the historical writings of Herodotus, who relates them to Phrygians, stating that according to the Macedonians, the Bryges 'changed their name' to Phryges after migrating into Anatolia".
Again we see: the Bhṛgu who migrated furthest retained their Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian name and language (Phryge), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (as their priestly class the Āθrauuan), and those who remained behind got linguistically absorbed into the Indo-Aryan branch (as the priestly class of Bhṛgu). The Armenians, in the Caucasus area, lost the name, but retained the original language much influenced by Iranian.
7. Now we have a strong set of seven names of enemy tribes from the battle definitely covering nine historical Iranian-Armenian-Greek-Albanian tribes: Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons, Baluchis, Alans (and Hellenes), Sarmatians (and Sirmios), and Phrygians. It would be churlish to still be too "sceptical" of the identifications. The following are two such cases:
Two more tribes in the list are Śiva and Viṣāṇin, both named in VII.18.7. [No, they are not Śiva and Viṣṇu! The context is clearly of enemy Iranian tribes].
About Śiva, we already saw Pargiter's reference to this tribe: "One branch [of the Anu], headed by Uśīnara, established several kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab […] his famous son Śivi [Auśīnara] originated the Śivis [footnote: called Śivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Śivapura, and extending his conquests westwards […] occupying the whole of the Punjab except the northwestern corner" (PARGITER 1962:264).
Curiously, Witzel also notes this connection with Śivi: "Śiva (= Śibi?)" (WITZEL:1995b).
This Anu tribe of the Śivas can easily be identified with the Khivas or Khwarezmians of latter day Uzbekistan.
That leaves Viṣāṇin. I identified this tribe, admittedly speculatively, in my books with the Nooristani or Piśāca people: the proto-Iranians of the north. Witzel, in his review of the second book, put it as: "the Viṣāṇin, identified, for no good reason at all, with the 'Piśācas (Dards)". My logic for the identification was that p and v are sometimes interchangeable in the Rigveda (paṇi=vaṇi), and the final n could become c in later times (bolan=baluch), so viṣāṇ could be piśāc.
This is admittedly speculative logic, and this last named word could be rejected as a mere, and non-justifiable, speculation, made just to round off the list. So I will not add this name in the list at the end of this article.
8. Now we come to a word which is regularly used in the battle hymn for the enemies of Sudās: dāsa.
This word is used in the Rigveda to refer to all non-Pūru people, but specifically to the Anu or proto-Iranians. This is proved by the fact that while the word is used in an inimical or hostile sense throughout the Rigveda, it is used in a good sense in three hymns: in VIII.5.31 (where the Aśvins are depicted as accepting the offerings of the dāsas), VIII.46.32 (where the patrons are directly called dāsas) and VIII.51.9 (where Indra is described as belonging to both āryas and dāsas). These three hymns belong to a special group of four hymns in the Rigveda, where (in three of them) the patrons gift camels to the composers of the hymn, and (in three of them) western Indologists (including Witzel) have identified the patrons as being kings with Iranian names.
Also, daha means "man" in the Iranian Khotanese language
Further, the Avesta has names with both dāsa and the related dasyu: Dāoŋha, Daŋhu.frādah, Daŋhu.srūta, Ātərədaŋhu, Jarō.daŋhu, Ərəzauuaṇt-daŋhзuš.
But, as in many such cases, dāsa could also be the name of a particular Iranian tribe (perhaps in fact, the ancestors of the Khotanese, known as the eastern Sakas).
In any case, we find a trail of this tribal name also spreading westwards: the Dahi in Afghanistan in the Avesta, and later the Dahae in W. Turkmenistan. And also the Thraco-Phrygian Dacians in southern parts of eastern Europe.
9. And finally, back to a very important Anu tribe which happens to be not mentioned in the Rigvedic battle hymn: the Madra.
Although not mentioned in the battle hymn, they are a very important tribe in Indian history: in fact, in the Puranic accounts, the two most important Anu tribes of ancient Punjab are the Madra and Kekaya. Obviously this is the post- Dāśarājña-battle ancient Punjab known to the Puranas and Epics―the Anu tribes of the battle, no doubt, are better known, as we saw, for their roles in world history after their departure from India. But anyone who knows the Epics knows the Madra and the Kekaya, and also the Gāndhār further west. Though they are Anu, they are Indo-Aryanized Anu of the area long after the battle (which took place in the period of the Oldest Books―6, 3, and 7―of the Rigveda, well before 2500 BCE). At the same time, though Indo-Aryanized, they remain perhaps in many ways rivals of the eastern Pūru. In my third book, I have pointed this out in some detail (TALAGERI:2008:105-6).
But, though not mentioned in the battle hymns in the Rigveda, the ancestors of these two tribes must obviously have been part of the Anu population, and perhaps the alliance against Sudās as well, and some of them may have formed part of the westward movement of the Anu Iranians out of India. We have no evidence of this in respect of the Kekaya (even if the name may remind the reader of some Parsi friend named Keki, short for Kaikhushroo), but we do have evidence of a very important Iranian tribe outside India: the Mada (Medes or Medians).
Again, we see the phenomenon, of the Madra who migrated furthest retaining their Iranian name and dialect (Mada/Mede/Median), while those who remained behind got linguistically absorbed into the Indo-Aryan branch (Madra) while retaining their tribal identity as Anu.
So this is the full case for the proto-Iranian-Armenian-Greek-Albanian identity of the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda.
It may be noted again that:
1. This evidence (except for the name of the Madra) is based wholly on names mentioned in just four verses in two hymns out of the 1028 hymns and 10552 verses in the Rigveda, and all pertain to one single event.
2. The identity of these names is unwittingly backed, in a large number of cases, even by western scholars opposed to the OIT (like Witzel), as we have seen. And the historical Iranian tribes and other (Armenian-Greek-Albanian) people with these names are found in later historical times in a continuous belt covering all the areas from the Punjab (the scene of the battle) to southeastern and eastern Europe:
Afghanistan: [Avesta: Sairima, Dahi] (and NW Pakistan): Pakhtoon.
Iran: SE (and SW Pakistan): Baluchi, NE: Parthian, SW: Persian, NW: Mede.
Uzbekistan: Khiva.
Turkmenistan: Dahae.
Turkey: Phrygian.
Greece: Hellene.
Albania, Slovenia: Sirmio.
Romania, Bulgaria: Dacian.
Ukraine, S. Russia: Alan, Sarmatian.
3. The names correspond to the names of ancient tribes or people belonging to exactly those four branches―Iranian, Armenian, Greek, Albanian―of Indo-European languages which, according to the linguistic analysis, were (along with Indo-Aryan) together in the IE Homeland after the departure of the other seven branches.
Can all these be "coincidences" or "Oakish cases"?
Should one accept all this massive evidence, or simply accept, without any evidence at all, that the enemies of Sudās in the battle were Dravidian, Austric, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese, Sumerian or Semitic, or anything else linguistically "non-Aryan"? Perhaps, Japanese, Aztec, Inca, Eskimo, Maori, Papuan or Hottentot?

Appendix: The Eastern Front
(added 22/4/2020)​

As the title of the article makes clear, it deals with the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña battle. However, Dr Kalyanaraman has raised the point that the article is incomplete if it does not deal with all the names of the enemies of Sudās as given in the battle hymn VII.18. He is right: I am selectively dealing with the OIT aspect of the Dāśarājña battle, but since the main hymn dealing with this event is the battle hymn VII.18, it is necessary to deal with the hymn as a whole as well―and this includes other battles and other names in this hymn .
.
The battle hymn VII.18 does contain some more names of the enemies of Sudās, both by tribe and by personal name:
VII.18.6: Turvaṣa, Yakṣu, Matsya.
VII.18.11: Vaikarṇa.
VII.18.18: Bheda.
VII,18.19: Bheda, Aja, Śigru, Yakṣu.
VII.18.20: Devaka Manyamāna.
Who were these persons (Bheda, Devaka Manyamāna) and tribes (Vaikarṇa, Aja, Śigru, Yakṣu, Matsya, Turvaṣa) and what was their role in the battles of Sudās?
As we know from the Rigveda, Sudās' campaign of expansion and conquest starts in Book 3, where he performs a yajña and lets the horse loose and starts conquering "east, west and north" (III.53.11) under Viśvāmitra's priesthood. The yajña was in the Haryana homeland of Sudās, and he first (under Viśvāmitra) conquers eastwards in the region of the Yamuna.
Later, under Vasiṣṭha's priesthood, Sudās moves in the westward direction, towards the Punjab, and fights the Dāśarājña battle on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (Ravi) in central Punjab.
The battle hymn VII.18 is composed after Sudās completes all his conquests and the dust has settled down, by the Vasiṣṭhas, who receive gifts from Sudās (at the end of the hymn), and the hymn refers to all the battles of Sudās in a glorificatory summarization of his valour.
These other names in the hymn, which we have not dealt with earlier, pertain largely to his earlier eastern battles on the Yamuna. It may be noted that these names are distinctly different from the earlier names, and cannot be similarly identified with Iranian and other tribes. And they all clearly represent the east:
Thus VII.18.19 clearly tells us that the battles involving Bheda, Aja, Śigru and Yakṣu took place on the Yamunā. The previous verse, 18, again refers to Bheda, and the next verse, 20, to Devaka Manyamāna. All these are clearly earlier and eastern battles.
VII.18.6 refers again to the same Yakṣu, thus making it clear that this verse also refers to the earlier eastern battle. This is confirmed by the other two names in the verse: Turvaṣa and Matsya:
Turvaṣa and Yadu are the two great tribes (of the Five Tribes, or tribal conglomerates) to the south of the Yamuna, and this clearly shows that at least the Turvaṣa are directly named among the enemies of Sudās in the eastern battle.
Significantly, the name Yakṣu in the hymn is very regularly identified by Witzel, in practically every article of his, with the Yadu. In one place, he tells us: "Yakṣu 'sacrificer'―a pun for Yadu" (WITZEL:1995b).
Matsya is extremely important: the Matsya kingdom is one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas described in texts referring to the pre-Buddhist era, and it was located to the southwest of the Yamuna, south of Haryana. This analysis of the eastern enemies of Sudās in the Yamuna battle proves that it was already in existence in the time of the Old Books of the Rigveda!
That leaves only the Vaikarṇa, mentioned alone (in fact as the name of two allied tribes) in VII.18.11. It is not certain whether this tribe fought in the eastern battle or the western one, but it occurs among the western verses. For what it is worth, it may be noted that Witzel frequently associates this word with Vaēkərəta, the Iranian land mentioned in the Avesta: "Vaikarṇa (cf. Vaēkərəta V.1.19)" (WITZEL:1999b). And again "the caturgaoša in Avestan: v.i" (WITZEL:1995b).
If correct, we have here one more Iranian connection.

Actually, there is one final word left to be explained to round off the whole hymn: the word Pūru, referred to critically in VII.18.13. This is notable, since it is known that Sudās and the Bharatas (also called Tṛtsus in this hymn―although, since the word is used only by the Vasiṣṭhas and only in three of the hymns which refer to this battle, i.e. in VII.18,33,83, it is assumed by some people to be a reference to the Vasiṣṭhas themselves) are themselves a sub-tribe of the Pūru.
So what exactly is this critical reference to the Pūru? What does it indicate?
As pointed out repeatedly and in great detail in my books and articles, the Pūru are the Vedic "Aryans", the "People of the Book" in the Rigveda, and the Bharata (to which Divodāsa and Sudās belong) are a sub-tribe of the Pūru, but the Bharata Pūru are the particular "People of the Book" in the earlier period of the Family Books (2-7) before the Rigveda became a general Pūru book.
The Rigveda therefore refers to the Pūru (meaning particularly the Bharata Pūru) throughout the Rigveda in a benevolent and first-person sense. But in two cases, where there is some conflict or difference of interest between the Bharata Pūru and the other or non-Bharata Pūru, to whom the word then refers, the references are critical: VII.8.4 and VII.18.13. One of the two references is in the battle hymn.
Does this mean that the non-Bharata Pūru were also among the enemies of Sudās in the battle, as many scholars interpret? It is not impossible that this should be the case at least in the earlier eastern phase of the campaign, since it is clear that Sudās was an ambitious conqueror, and we have the numerous references to "ārya and dāsa enemies" and "kinsmen and non-kinsmen enemies", and finally Viśvāmitra's hymn in Book III which refers to the eastward beginnings of Sudās' campaign and explicitly tells us (III.53.24) that the Bharatas, when they set out to do battle or conquest, do not differentiate between kinsmen and non-kinsmen.
But, apart from that, there is no direct reference to the Pūru in references to the eastern battle. They are mentioned in the battle hymn in the verse which talks about the Tṛtsus (i.e. Sudās and the Bharatas) taking over the lands and properties of the Anu.
However, in the Dāśarājña battle hymn (VII.18.13), which is westward oriented―in the direction opposite to the eastern Pūru―it is not likely that these Pūru could be directly involved.
And indeed, the reference is so vague (since it refers to the Pūru as "scornful" and talks of defeating them "in sacrifice" rather than in actual battle) that it can lead to different interpretations:
1. Many scholars sweepingly include them among Sudās' enemies in the Dāśarājña battle which is clearly extremely unlikely, although this could be modified to take this as a reference to the earlier eastern battle.
2. In my books, I have suggested that the Pūru may have "scornfully" refused to align with the Bharatas in their westward campaign, and hence were expressly snubbed in the victory yajña.
3. Some others―Jamison, Stuhrmann, etc.―treat them as allies of the Bharatas, and the verse in question as a dispute over the "spoils".

[IMPORTANT ADDITION 24/4/2020: As I never paid attention to the eastern battles, beyond noting that they had taken place, in my earlier books and articles, until I started out on this appendix to this article two days ago, let me make note of a fact that I found out today; the Matsya referred to in the eastern Yamuna battle in VII.18.6 along with the Turvaṣa and Yakṣu (=Yadu) are also a branch of the eastern Pūru, so it could well be that at least this section of the eastern Pūru counted among his enemies in the eastern expansions of Sudās].
In any case, the exact role of the other non-Bharata Pūru in the hymn and battle does not change the main historical consequence of the war: the westward emigration of the Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian ancestral speakers​

 

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The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda

The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda Shrikant Talageri To most people with a general...

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The Identity of the Enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda
Shrikant Talageri

To most people with a general knowledge of India and Hinduism, the most famous war or battle in ancient India is the Mahābhārata war described in India's Great National Epic of the same name.
However, to people with a much deeper knowledge of Indian and Hindu history and texts, and to Indologists and Vedicists, there is another very important and more ancient battle in India's history: the Dāśarājña battle described or referred to in the seventh Maṇḍala (book) of the Rigveda: more specifically in VII.18 and 83, and also referred to in VII.19 and 33, and indirectly in VII.5 and 6.
This battle has always been grossly misinterpreted by the Indologists to be a battle between invading "Aryans" and a coalition of "non-Aryan natives". But as has been clearly shown in my various books and articles, the battle was very clearly a battle between the Pūru Bharata king Sudās and his warriors on the one side, and a coalition of tribes mainly belonging to the Anu or Ānava tribal conglomerate on the other. These Anu tribes were the ancestors of the various Iranian tribes―and also of the Greeks, Armenians and Albanians―of latter-day history.
This completely revolutionizes Indo-European history. As per the linguistic analysis, the twelve known branches of Indo-European languages were together in a contiguous area of mutual contact, in and around the Proto-Indo-European Homeland, till around 3000 BCE. The first branch to separate from the rest was the Anatolian (Hittite) branch. The next was the Tocharian branch. Then the five European branches: Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. Finally, five branches were left in the Homeland after the departure of the other seven, and these five Last Branches―Albanian, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and IndoAryan―developed certain new linguistic features in common which are missing in the other earlier departed branches:
a) A “complete restructuring of the entire inherited verbal system” (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:340-341,345), with the formation of athematic and thematic aorists, augmented forms and reduplicated presents.
b) Oblique cases in *-bhi- (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:345).
c) The prohibitive negation *mē (MEILLET 1908/1967:39).
d) Also, some of these developed a change of *s > h from initial *s before a vowel, from intervocalic *s, and from some occurrences of *s before and after sonants, while *s remained before and after a stop (MEILLET 1908/1967:113): Greek, Armenian and Iranian.
The official theory, not based on any records or other evidence but only based on speculations and arguments, holds that this Homeland was in the Steppes.
But the recorded evidence of the Rigvedic hymns places all these five Last branches in the Punjab, on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (Ravi) river, at the time of the Dāśarājña battle.
Obviously there is opposition to this evidence from the entrenched vested interests: i.e. the AIT-theorists. Therefore it is necessary to clarify it again in clear terms.
We will examine the validity of this evidence as follows:
I. The Evidence in the Dāśarājña hymns.
II. The Doubts and the Objections.
III. The yardsticks: Data, Logic and the Weight of the Evidence.
IV. The Evidence Again.
I. The Evidence in the Dāśarājña hymns

The basic evidence, as given in my earlier books and articles, is as follows:
Sudās, the Vedic (Indo-Aryan/Pūru) king enters the Punjab area from the east and fights this historical battle against a coalition of ten tribes (nine Anu tribes, and one tribe of the remnant Druhyu in the area), and later these tribes start migrating westwards.
The Anu tribes (or the epithets used for them) named in the battle hymns are:
VII.18.5 Śimyu.
VII.18.6 Bhṛgu.
VII.18.7 Paktha, Bhalāna, Alina, Śiva, Viṣāṇin.
VII.83.1 Parśu/Parśava, Pṛthu/Pārthava, Dāsa.
(Another Anu tribe in the Puranas and later tradition is the Madra).
These tribal names are primarily found in only two hymns, VII.18 and VII.83, of the Rigveda, which refer to the Anu tribes who fought against Sudās in the dāśarājña battle or "the Battle of the Ten Kings". But see where these same tribal names are found in later historical times (after their exodus westwards referred to in VII.5.3 and VII.6.3). Incredibly, they are found dotted over an almost continuous geographical belt, the entire sweep of areas extending westwards from the Punjab (the battleground of the dāśarājña battle) right up to southern and eastern Europe:
Iranian:
Afghanistan (Avesta): Sairima (Śimyu), Dahi (Dāsa).
NE Afghanistan: Nuristani/Piśācin (Viṣāṇin).
Pakhtoonistan (NW Pakistan), South Afghanistan: Pakhtoon/Pashtu (Paktha).
Baluchistan (SW Pakistan), SE Iran: Bolan/Baluchi (Bhalāna).
NE Iran: Parthian/Parthava (Pṛthu/Pārthava).
SW Iran: Parsua/Persian (Parśu/Parśava).
NW Iran: Madai/Mede (Madra).
Uzbekistan: Khiva/Khwarezmian (Śiva).
W. Turkmenistan: Dahae (Dāsa).
Ukraine, S. Russia: Alan (Alina), Sarmatian (Śimyu).
Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian:
Turkey: Phryge/Phrygian (Bhṛgu).
Romania, Bulgaria: Dacian (Dāsa).
Greek:
Greece: Hellene (Alina).
Albanian/Illyrian:
Albania: Sirmio/Sirmium (Śimyu).
The above named historical Iranian tribes (particularly the Alans and Sarmatians) include the ancestors of almost all other prominent historical and modern Iranian groups not named above, such as the Scythians (Sakas), Ossetes and Kurds, and even the presently Slavic-language speaking (but formerly Iranian-language speaking) Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and others.
II. The Doubts and the Objections

Many people, not necessarily only those rejecting the evidence, have asked some questions about how these Rigvedic tribes have been identified with the Iranian-etc. tribes of latter-day. One reader of my article "The Full Out-of-India Case in Short" has very genuinely asked: "In the verse 7.83.1 you have identified the word 'pṛthuparśavo' as tribes (Pṛthu/Pārthava and Parśu/Parśava) but Griffith has translated this word as 'broad(pṛthu) axes(parśu)'. So how did you come to the conclusion that the word 'pṛthuparśavo' are names of some tribes and not broad axes?"
Another, in the comment section of my above article, asked Koenraad Elst: "Do you agree with Shrikant Talageri that Hellene are descendant from the Rig Vedic Alina tribe?"
It is possible that some readers may have genuine doubts or queries about these identifications, and, given the tendency among many Indian writers to freely indulge in such "identifications" based on chance or coincidental similarities in name, such questions are valid and must be clarified.
But it must be borne in mind that this article is meant to clarify these identifications for people who are genuinely open-minded and want to know the Truth in these matters, and not for objectors of the heckle-and-troll variety. Those can never be "convinced" and there is no need to explain anything to such people, since they are not interested in the Truth and will only simply brush aside all the evidence, whatever evidence is put forward, without blinking an eyelid.
There is the "Aesop's fable" about the wolf and the lamb:
A lamb is drinking water at a mountain stream. A little further up the hill, a wolf, also drinking from the stream, notices the lamb and decides he wants to eat that lamb and tries to think of an excuse to do so. He loudly calls out to the lamb and asks him why he is muddying the water of the stream that he, the wolf, is drinking from. The lamb answers that he can't be muddying the water, since he is downstream and the wolf is upstream. In any case, says the wolf, aren't you the same lamb who was calling me all kinds of names from a distance about one year ago? The lamb answers that he cannot be, since he is new to the area and is only a few months old. The wolf snarls in rage and says, anyway, if it wasn't you, it was your father. And he pounces on the lamb and kills and eats him up.
The people who refuse to accept the Rigvedic evidence that we are dealing with here, even after reading this article, are in the category of that wolf: they are not arguing because they really believe in something or have any genuine doubts or objections; they are arguing with a purpose in mind. Their purpose is to reject the evidence.
Well, there is nothing that can be done about these wolves. This article is meant for intelligent and honest human beings.
III. The yardsticks: Data, Logic and the Weight of the Evidence

So how does one evaluate any evidence? There are three yardsticks: data, logic and the weight of the evidence. Another requirement is intelligence and honesty.
To illustrate how such evidence can be understood, let me give one very hypothetical example. You are at a loose end, and you casually pick up a story-book in English that you see lying around, and start reading it, without paying much attention to the title or author. You read through 8-10 pages. The story is about a small boy named Boris, whose father is a carpenter in a village. The story begins with the boy being given some breakfast by his mother, and then he leaves for school. On the way he speaks to his neighbor, then he meets various friends also proceeding to the school. They stop on the way to buy sweets from a village shop and have some altercation with the grouchy shopkeeper. They then go on to school, and then follow some descriptions of the classes conducted by two or three schoolmasters. That is as far as you have reached, when you misplace the book somewhere outside the house and that is all you know about it: later you cannot find the book.
A friend turns up and asks you what the book you were reading was about, and you tell him. He asks you where the story is situated: is the village, in the story, a Russian village or an English one?
What you have read till now does not mention the country. But you have one immediate piece of data: the boy's name is Boris, which (you happen to know) is a Russian name. So the village, you logically feel, must be in Russia. It is a story of a Russian boy in a Russian village.
But, persists the friend, it may just be a coincidence that the name sounds like a Russian name. And even if it is one, the boy may actually be in England. After all, the present PM of the UK is Boris Johnson. Also, there was an old and famous British actor named Boris Karloff. A little research shows that Boris Johnson was named Boris by his parents after a friend who was an immigrant from Russia. And Boris Karloff was a stage name adopted by the actor (1887-1969) borrowed from a novel which had a Russian character named Boris Karlov, and his actual name was William Henry Pratt. Nevertheless, the friend persists, there could be a boy in an English village named Boris, for whatever reason.
However, racking your brain, you remember the names of the neighbor and the shopkeeper, and of some of the friends and schoolmasters of Boris, in the story―and they are all Russian names. Now logic dictates that this could only be in a Russian village and not in an English one.
Why not, insists the friend? There are areas in England today filled with immigrants from some particular country even Indian neighbourhoods. This story could be situated in a Russian neighbourhood in England.
You now realize that your friend is not really interested in knowing where the story is situated. He is just determined, for the heck of it or for reasons of his own, to make you "accept" that the location may not be in Russia and could be in England.
Then you remember another point: the story mentions the year, if not the country, in which the story is supposed to be taking place: it is 1890 (although the actual book itself is a new one). Now it is extremely unlikely that there could have been a Russian neighbourhood in England in 1890.
But, as expected, your friend refuses to accept this as any kind of evidence. He insists that since the data (so far as the 8-10 pages you have read and remember) does not actually mention the country, it could be either Russia or England. More likely England, since the book is in English and not Russian!!
For a moment you are irritated: the data, the logic and the entire weight of the evidence makes it very clear that the story is located in Russia and not in England. Then you suddenly realize: why on earth are you even discussing the subject with that friend? Does it make the slightest difference to him? Can you "convince" him, or is it even at all necessary to "convince" him? Does it matter what he thinks, or claims or feigns to think? What a waste of time!! So you just give a tired and bored yawn, and firmly change the subject.
[As an irrelevant aside, the phrase "bored yawn" was used by me in my second book, where I wrote: "Some academic scholars have sought to prove such a migration by asserting that the Rigveda itself was composed in the west: 'Brunnhofer, Hertel, Hüsing and others, argue that the scene of the Ṛgveda is laid, not in the Punjab, but in Afghānistān and Irān'. [HCIP, p.248]. However, this view is so absurd, and so clearly contrary to the geographical facts of the Rigveda, that it can be dismissed with a bored yawn.'' (TALAGERI:2000:343-44). In his cantankerous review of my book, "Westward Ho:…", Witzel took note of this phrase: "Occasionally, however, T. lapses into 'a bored yawn' (p.344)", which I found so funny that I have a soft corner for this phrase ever since].
Well (to return to the issue on hand) , the entire weight of the evidence gives us the identity of the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña battle in the Rigveda as Iranians-Armenians-Greeks-Albanians. There is no need to "convince" people of the type represented by the friend above. It would be an unbelievable waste of time to even try.
But there is a need to present the weight of the evidence before more logical and honest questioners.
IV. The Evidence Again

1. So let us examine the weight of the evidence, starting with pṛthu-parśavah in VII.83.1: is it "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", meaning the names Pṛthu/Pārthava and Parśu/Parśava, literally "the Parthians and the Persians"? Or does it mean "with broad axes"?
The thing is that this combined phrase, pṛthu-parśavah, is not found anywhere else, not only in the whole of the Rigveda, but in any subsequent text in the whole of Sanskrit literature, so clearly it is not a common idiomatic "phrase".
And the word parśu does not mean "axe" at all: the word for "axe" in both the Rigveda (where it is found in 11 verses) and in later texts is paraśu, which is a different word altogether.
Parśu, which is found exactly four times in the Rigveda, means "rib" in I.105.8 and X.33.2, and is the name of a person in VIII.6.46.
The word in the sense of "rib" makes no real sense in the context of VII.83.1, but the Indologists do not want to create problems for themselves translating it as "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", literally "the Parthians and the Persians", so they either try to translate it clumsily as "holding some kind of broad (pṛthu) weapon or tool", or somehow treat the word as a reference to the "ribs" of the chest. So each translator makes up his own meaning (Sāyaṇa, obsessed with ritualistic translation, and ignorant of historical implications, treats it as the "ribs" of a horse, used for cutting the kusha grass for the sacrifice!):
Griffith: "with broad axes".
Peterson: "with broad axes".
Wilson: "with large sickles".
Grassmann: "with broad sabers" (i.e. swords).
Sāyaṇa: "with the large rib-bones of a horse"
Geldner: "with swollen chest".
Jamison: "the broad-chested ones".
However, as Griffith points out in the footnote to his translation of the verse, "Ludwig declares that the former meaning is perfectly impossible, and argues that pṛithu-parśavah must mean 'the Pṛithus and the Parśus'".
The clinching evidence that the phrase does indeed mean "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", apart from the fact that the combination of the two words is not found anywhere else, is that the first word Pṛthu (Pārthava) in VII.83.1 definitely refers to a tribe and not to the adjective "broad": the leader of the alliance against Sudās in the battle is Kavi Cāyamāna (VII.18.8), whose ancestor Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna is clearly called a Pārthava in VI.27.8.
[Incidentally, like the phrase pṛthu-parśavah, the name Kavi Cāyamāna is also camouflaged in most translations, the notable exception being Wilson].
But the evidence of "the Pṛthus and the Parśus", literally "the Parthians and the Persians", does not stand alone. Every next step produces additional, and more and more weighty, evidence that the enemies of Sudās in the battle were, to begin with, proto-Iranian tribes:
2. The other tribes named in the hymn include the Pakthas and the Bhalānas (VII.18.7). Is there any doubt about who these two tribes are? The words here cannot be identified as anything else but the names of tribes, and they are too distinctive and peculiar to be identified as anything but references to the two Iranian groups found immediately to the west of the Punjab-Sind line in Pakistan today: the Pakhtoons/Pashtuns and the Bolans/Baluchis. Even Witzel, among many others, makes the very obvious identification of the Pakthas with the Pakhtoons (incidentally also identifying the word Parśu with Persians!) and of Bhalānas with the Bolan pass area in Baluchistan:
"Parśu ~ Old Pers. Pārsa 'Persian', Paktha 8.22.10 (mod. Pashto, Pakhto)" (WITZEL:1999a:24, 2000a:§11).
"the Bhalānas tribe took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV 7.18) that settled the suzerainty of the Bharata chieftain over the Panjab tribes. The Bhalānas are identified with the Bolān pass and river near Quetta in Baluchistan" (WITZEL:1999a:24).
And again: "The southernmost tribe mentioned in the RV are the Bhalānas took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV.7.18) and are certainly to be located near the Bolān pass and river near Quetta" (WITZEL:2000a:§11)
So here we have, to begin with, four very prominent historical Iranian tribes whose ancestors were undoubtedly present as inhabitants of the Punjab at the time of the Dāśarājña battle: the Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons, Baluchis.
In 2001, after my second book, there was a desperate attempt by Witzel to do some firefighting with a broad sweeping and uncouth denial: "The eager efforts made by many Indian scholars of various backgrounds to rescue these lists as representing actual historical facts173" [fn.173: "The latest example is Talageri (1993, 2000) who builds a whole imaginative prehistory of South Asia on such 'data': with an early emigration of the Druhyu branch of the Aryans to Iran and Central Asia in the 5th millennium BCE, including such fantastic etymologies and identifications as Bhalānas = Baloch (who only appear on the scene after 1000 CE!), Bhṛgu = Phrygians, Madra = Mede (Māda), Druhyu = Druids, Alina + Hellenic people, Śimyu = Sirmio (Albanians), etc. -- these are Oakish cases where even Elst (1999: 192 sq.) does not always follow him"] (WITZEL:2001a:57).
This diatribe above represents a classic example of the brazen and fraudulent nature of the western vested interests backing the AIT:
a) See Witzel here superiorly telling us that the Baluchis "appear on the scene after 1000 CE" in sharp contradiction to his own identifications published just two years, and one year, earlier, and in fact even as early as 1995 (WITZEL:1995b). Note that Witzel earlier even specifically identified the Bhalānas as "Aryans": "the IA Bhalānas" (WITZEL 1999a:37).
b) Needless to say, when there are four clear identifications of the enemy tribes of Sudās in the battle with four major Iranian people of later times, this determined "scepticism"―to the point of sharp criticism and rejection―of a whole other bunch of identifications which add to the weight of the evidence, is clearly nothing but outright chicanery and mendacity. All these are not names culled from different sources or from some long, late list of persons from some extended Puranic account or from the Epics. They are all names found in just four verses from two hymns out of the 1028 hymns and 10552 verses of the Rigveda, all these names pertaining to a single historical event.
Note that while he summarily and sweepingly rejects as "Oakish cases" the massive evidence identifying the names of the tribes with the inescapably near-identical names (many identified even by himself) of latter-day Iranian and other Indo-European groups, he persists to this day in propagating the theory that the battle was a battle between invading "Aryans" represented by Sudās and native "non-Aryans" represented by the enemy tribes―in insolent defiance of the fact that he cannot produce any evidence at all, not even a single "Oakish case", showing that the names of the enemy tribes are Dravidian, Austric, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese, Sumerian or Semitic, or anything else linguistically "non-Aryan".
In fact, as recently as 2016, he published, in his Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, an article by a "scholar" repeating such trash―see my article "Stuhrmann, Witzel and the Joke that is Western Indology".
By his logic―and with there apparently being no need for him to produce evidence for his linguistic assertions and dissertations and for his very "imaginative prehistory of South Asia" (without any data)―he could well claim that the enemy tribes of Sudās were Japanese, Aztec, Inca, Eskimo, Maori, Papuan or Hottentot!
3. Before moving on to the other tribes, it would be significant to see the leaders of the enemy coalition. The battle hymn tells us that the king of this coalition is Kavi Cāyamāna (VII.18.8), and the priest is Kavaṣa (VII.18.12).
Both these names are Iranian names found in the Avesta: Kauui, Kauuaša.
Taking this backward, we see that the ancestor of Kavi Cāyamāna, Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna, is called a Pārthava in VI.27.8. Going forward, the main royal dynasty in the Avesta (after the Iranians have moved from the Punjab to Afghanistan) is the Kauuiiān (Kayanian) dynasty descended from their ancestral king Kauui. Still much later in time, it is the Parthians (Parthava) of ancient Iran who claim to be descended from this Kayanian dynasty.
4. Going to the larger picture, we must note the collective identity of the enemies of Sudās in the battle: they are tribes belonging to the Anu or Ānava tribal conglomerate: the battle takes place on the Paruṣṇī river, and the hymn tells us that the land taken over by the Bharatas was the land of the Anu: "Indra at once with conquering might demolished all their strong places and their seven castles; the goods of Anu's son he gave to Tritsu" (i.e. to the Bharatas): VII.18.13. This point is also noted by P L Bhargava: "The fact that Indra is said to have given the possessions of the Anu king to the Tṛtsus in the battle of Paruṣṇī shows that the Anus dwelt on the banks of the Paruṣṇī" (BHARGAVA 1956/1971:130). The area, nevertheless, continues even after this to be the area of the Anu, who are again shown as inhabitants of the area even in the Late Books: "The Anu live on the Paruṣṇī in 8.74.15" (WITZEL 1995b:328, fn 51), and even in later historical times, where it is the area of the Madra and the Kekaya, who were Anu.
Even apart from the Iranian names of the Anu tribes in the battle, there is more evidence that they were proto-Iranians:
a) According to the accounts in the Puranas, the Anu were originally inhabitants of Kashmir and areas to its west before a large section of them migrated southwards and occupied almost the whole of the Punjab: these northern areas are even today the areas of the Nooristani languages which have proto-Iranian linguistic features.
b) The Puranas narrate this migration from the north: "One branch [of the Anu], headed by Uśīnara, established several kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab […] his famous son Śivi [Auśīnara] originated the Śivis [footnote: called Śivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Śivapura, and extending his conquests westwards […] occupying the whole of the Punjab except the northwestern corner" (PARGITER 1962:264).
The name Auśīnara is an Iranian name found in the Avesta: Aošnara.
c) In later historical times, the name Anu is prominently found at both the southern and northern ends of the area described in the Avesta: Greek texts (e.g. Stathmoi Parthikoi, 16, of Isidore of Charax) refer to the area and the people immediately north of the Hāmūn-ī Hilmand in southern Afghanistan as the anauon or anauoi; and Anau is the name of a prominent proto-Iranian or Iranian archaeological site in Central Asia (Turkmenistan).
There is plenty of detailed evidence showing the Iranians migrated from India, but this massive evidence is connected with terms like dāsa, with the history of the priestly classes, and with geographical data in the Avesta, etc., so we will not detail it here, since here we are primarily concerned only with the identity of the enemies of Sudās. Whoever is interested can go through this evidence elsewhere (TALAGERI:2000:202-231; TALAGERI:2008:265-273).
5. The names Alina and Śimyu as enemy tribes in the battle are very important. Like the pairs Pṛthu-Parśu and Paktha-Bhalāna, so important in Iranian history, the pair Alina-Śimyu represents a pair of very important historical tribes which spread the furthest in later times: as far as South Russia and Ukraine in the north and as far as southeastern Europe in the south.
The Alina and Śimyu spread furthest in the north as historical Iranian or Iranized groups―the Alans and Sarmatians―who are the ancestors not only of many later Iranian people like Ossetes, Kurds and Scythians (Shakas), but also many presently Slavic-speaking people like Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians and others.
And Alina and Śimyu, the original groups, spread furthest in the south in even earlier times, and reached southeastern Europe with their original languages which became the Hellene (Greek) and Sirmio (Illyrian, modern Albanian) branches of Indo-European.
Now, the objectors who say these identifications are far-fetched should note the following facts:
a) If four of the names of the tribes in the Anu coalition who fought against Sudās in the battle can be so clearly and irrefutably identified with the names of four very prominent Iranian tribes of latter-day history (Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons and Baluchis), then it becomes a matter of very special pleading to deny similar identifications of the other names, out of the few names mentioned in just four verses in two hymns referring to the battle, without investigation and serious consideration.
b) The two names are very significant names since they are found only in the Rigveda, and are not found anywhere else in any Indian text or record after that.
In fact, Alina is found only once, in the battle hymn in VII.18.7. Śimyu occurs twice in the Rigveda, and the two occurrences only strengthen the significance of the total disappearance of the name from later texts: it is found in VII.18.5 for the enemies of Sudās, and in I.100.18 for the enemies of Sudās' descendant Sahadeva (I.100.17) who has taken the expansion further westwards.
c) The two words are clearly not part of the Vedic or Sanskrit vocabulary, not only because they are not found anywhere else, but also because the word Alina at least is phonetically a non-Vedic word: the linguistic normal for Vedic and in fact for Vedic-Avestan (including Mitanni) words, is that the Indo-European "l" is represented by "r"―the Avesta, and the Mitanni records, in fact do not have the "l" sound at all, and its occurrence in the Rigveda is a result of influence from eastern dialects, which are supposed to have retained the "l" in many words.
[This, incidentally, is strong linguistic evidence for the OIT, see TALAGERI:2008:283-285].
The names in the hymns are therefore clearly the self-appellations of the two Anu tribes (the proto-Greeks and proto-Albanians), and their exact phonetic forms in the Rigveda are the approximate forms of these self-appellations as pronounced by the speakers of the Pūru Vedic language. In spite of that, the identification is very clear: Vedic "a" represents Greek "a", "e" or "o", so the Rigvedic Alina could be a representation of a Greek Eline (note: the modern Greek pronunciation of their name Hellene is Elini-ka). Śimyu is certainly a representation of the ancient Albanian/Illyrian self-appellation Sirmio.
d) These two words clearly leave a historical trail east-to-west from the Punjab to southeastern as well as eastern Europe, which would be too much of a coincidence if the strong similarity in names was purely accidental:
Alina (Sanskrit equivalent of a Greek Eline) found in the battle hymn as the name of an Anu tribe in the Punjab. Later it is found as Hellene, the Greeks in southeastern Europe. Finally, as Alan, or Alani in Roman records, (which would be an Iranian equivalent of a Greek Eleni), an important Iranian tribe which migrated northwards and westwards towards eastern Europe.
Śimyu is first found in the Old Book 7 in the Rigveda as the name of an enemy Anu tribe in central Punjab, then in the New Book 1 as the same enemy tribe now in Afghanistan (in the area beyond the Sarayu river). Then it is found in the Avesta in Afghanistan as Sairima. Then it is found as Sirmio, the ancient Illyrians/Albanians in southeastern Europe―the capital city of the Illyrians was Sirmium. Finally, as the Sarmatians―Iranian Sarmaha, or Sarmatae in Roman records, an important Iranian tribe which migrated northwards and westwards towards Ukraine.
Too much of a "coincidence" if the similar words refer to different people.
The Alina who migrated furthest retained their Greek name and language (Hellene), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (Alan).
We also see here an important historical phenomenon: the tribal group which
migrates furthest retains its linguistic identity, while those of that tribe who remain behind, or on the way, get absorbed into the surrounding linguistic group:
The Śimyu who migrated furthest retained their Albanian identity and language (Sirmio), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (Avestan Sairima, later Sarmaha).
We will see this phenomenon similarly repeated in the case of two more names.
6. Next we see the name Bhṛgu mentioned as the name of one of the enemy groups in the battle hymn, which can be identified with the Phrygians or Phryge, the ancient representatives of the Armenian branch of IE languages.
As we saw earlier, Witzel treats this identification also as an "Oakish case". Here he clearly seems to reject linguistically confirmed identifications: that Vedic bhṛgu = Greek phleguai = Phrygian phryge is an accepted linguistic case. In fact, this identification, even without the help of modern Linguistics, was made as long ago as in the ancient Greek records of Herodotus. The Wikipedia entry on an ancient tribe called Bryges tells us: "The earliest mentions of the Bryges are contained in the historical writings of Herodotus, who relates them to Phrygians, stating that according to the Macedonians, the Bryges 'changed their name' to Phryges after migrating into Anatolia".
Again we see: the Bhṛgu who migrated furthest retained their Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian name and language (Phryge), while those among them who settled down on the way got linguistically absorbed into the Iranian branch (as their priestly class the Āθrauuan), and those who remained behind got linguistically absorbed into the Indo-Aryan branch (as the priestly class of Bhṛgu). The Armenians, in the Caucasus area, lost the name, but retained the original language much influenced by Iranian.
7. Now we have a strong set of seven names of enemy tribes from the battle definitely covering nine historical Iranian-Armenian-Greek-Albanian tribes: Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons, Baluchis, Alans (and Hellenes), Sarmatians (and Sirmios), and Phrygians. It would be churlish to still be too "sceptical" of the identifications. The following are two such cases:
Two more tribes in the list are Śiva and Viṣāṇin, both named in VII.18.7. [No, they are not Śiva and Viṣṇu! The context is clearly of enemy Iranian tribes].
About Śiva, we already saw Pargiter's reference to this tribe: "One branch [of the Anu], headed by Uśīnara, established several kingdoms on the eastern border of the Punjab […] his famous son Śivi [Auśīnara] originated the Śivis [footnote: called Śivas in Rigveda VII.18.7] in Śivapura, and extending his conquests westwards […] occupying the whole of the Punjab except the northwestern corner" (PARGITER 1962:264).
Curiously, Witzel also notes this connection with Śivi: "Śiva (= Śibi?)" (WITZEL:1995b).
This Anu tribe of the Śivas can easily be identified with the Khivas or Khwarezmians of latter day Uzbekistan.
That leaves Viṣāṇin. I identified this tribe, admittedly speculatively, in my books with the Nooristani or Piśāca people: the proto-Iranians of the north. Witzel, in his review of the second book, put it as: "the Viṣāṇin, identified, for no good reason at all, with the 'Piśācas (Dards)". My logic for the identification was that p and v are sometimes interchangeable in the Rigveda (paṇi=vaṇi), and the final n could become c in later times (bolan=baluch), so viṣāṇ could be piśāc.
This is admittedly speculative logic, and this last named word could be rejected as a mere, and non-justifiable, speculation, made just to round off the list. So I will not add this name in the list at the end of this article.
8. Now we come to a word which is regularly used in the battle hymn for the enemies of Sudās: dāsa.
This word is used in the Rigveda to refer to all non-Pūru people, but specifically to the Anu or proto-Iranians. This is proved by the fact that while the word is used in an inimical or hostile sense throughout the Rigveda, it is used in a good sense in three hymns: in VIII.5.31 (where the Aśvins are depicted as accepting the offerings of the dāsas), VIII.46.32 (where the patrons are directly called dāsas) and VIII.51.9 (where Indra is described as belonging to both āryas and dāsas). These three hymns belong to a special group of four hymns in the Rigveda, where (in three of them) the patrons gift camels to the composers of the hymn, and (in three of them) western Indologists (including Witzel) have identified the patrons as being kings with Iranian names.
Also, daha means "man" in the Iranian Khotanese language
Further, the Avesta has names with both dāsa and the related dasyu: Dāoŋha, Daŋhu.frādah, Daŋhu.srūta, Ātərədaŋhu, Jarō.daŋhu, Ərəzauuaṇt-daŋhзuš.
But, as in many such cases, dāsa could also be the name of a particular Iranian tribe (perhaps in fact, the ancestors of the Khotanese, known as the eastern Sakas).
In any case, we find a trail of this tribal name also spreading westwards: the Dahi in Afghanistan in the Avesta, and later the Dahae in W. Turkmenistan. And also the Thraco-Phrygian Dacians in southern parts of eastern Europe.
9. And finally, back to a very important Anu tribe which happens to be not mentioned in the Rigvedic battle hymn: the Madra.
Although not mentioned in the battle hymn, they are a very important tribe in Indian history: in fact, in the Puranic accounts, the two most important Anu tribes of ancient Punjab are the Madra and Kekaya. Obviously this is the post- Dāśarājña-battle ancient Punjab known to the Puranas and Epics―the Anu tribes of the battle, no doubt, are better known, as we saw, for their roles in world history after their departure from India. But anyone who knows the Epics knows the Madra and the Kekaya, and also the Gāndhār further west. Though they are Anu, they are Indo-Aryanized Anu of the area long after the battle (which took place in the period of the Oldest Books―6, 3, and 7―of the Rigveda, well before 2500 BCE). At the same time, though Indo-Aryanized, they remain perhaps in many ways rivals of the eastern Pūru. In my third book, I have pointed this out in some detail (TALAGERI:2008:105-6).
But, though not mentioned in the battle hymns in the Rigveda, the ancestors of these two tribes must obviously have been part of the Anu population, and perhaps the alliance against Sudās as well, and some of them may have formed part of the westward movement of the Anu Iranians out of India. We have no evidence of this in respect of the Kekaya (even if the name may remind the reader of some Parsi friend named Keki, short for Kaikhushroo), but we do have evidence of a very important Iranian tribe outside India: the Mada (Medes or Medians).
Again, we see the phenomenon, of the Madra who migrated furthest retaining their Iranian name and dialect (Mada/Mede/Median), while those who remained behind got linguistically absorbed into the Indo-Aryan branch (Madra) while retaining their tribal identity as Anu.
So this is the full case for the proto-Iranian-Armenian-Greek-Albanian identity of the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña Battle in the Rigveda.
It may be noted again that:
1. This evidence (except for the name of the Madra) is based wholly on names mentioned in just four verses in two hymns out of the 1028 hymns and 10552 verses in the Rigveda, and all pertain to one single event.
2. The identity of these names is unwittingly backed, in a large number of cases, even by western scholars opposed to the OIT (like Witzel), as we have seen. And the historical Iranian tribes and other (Armenian-Greek-Albanian) people with these names are found in later historical times in a continuous belt covering all the areas from the Punjab (the scene of the battle) to southeastern and eastern Europe:
Afghanistan: [Avesta: Sairima, Dahi] (and NW Pakistan): Pakhtoon.
Iran: SE (and SW Pakistan): Baluchi, NE: Parthian, SW: Persian, NW: Mede.
Uzbekistan: Khiva.
Turkmenistan: Dahae.
Turkey: Phrygian.
Greece: Hellene.
Albania, Slovenia: Sirmio.
Romania, Bulgaria: Dacian.
Ukraine, S. Russia: Alan, Sarmatian.
3. The names correspond to the names of ancient tribes or people belonging to exactly those four branches―Iranian, Armenian, Greek, Albanian―of Indo-European languages which, according to the linguistic analysis, were (along with Indo-Aryan) together in the IE Homeland after the departure of the other seven branches.
Can all these be "coincidences" or "Oakish cases"?
Should one accept all this massive evidence, or simply accept, without any evidence at all, that the enemies of Sudās in the battle were Dravidian, Austric, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Andamanese, Sumerian or Semitic, or anything else linguistically "non-Aryan"? Perhaps, Japanese, Aztec, Inca, Eskimo, Maori, Papuan or Hottentot?




Appendix: The Eastern Front
(added 22/4/2020)


As the title of the article makes clear, it deals with the enemies of Sudās in the Dāśarājña battle. However, Dr Kalyanaraman has raised the point that the article is incomplete if it does not deal with all the names of the enemies of Sudās as given in the battle hymn VII.18. He is right: I am selectively dealing with the OIT aspect of the Dāśarājña battle, but since the main hymn dealing with this event is the battle hymn VII.18, it is necessary to deal with the hymn as a whole as well―and this includes other battles and other names in this hymn .
.
The battle hymn VII.18 does contain some more names of the enemies of Sudās, both by tribe and by personal name:
VII.18.6: Turvaṣa, Yakṣu, Matsya.
VII.18.11: Vaikarṇa.
VII.18.18: Bheda.
VII,18.19: Bheda, Aja, Śigru, Yakṣu.
VII.18.20: Devaka Manyamāna.
Who were these persons (Bheda, Devaka Manyamāna) and tribes (Vaikarṇa, Aja, Śigru, Yakṣu, Matsya, Turvaṣa) and what was their role in the battles of Sudās?
As we know from the Rigveda, Sudās' campaign of expansion and conquest starts in Book 3, where he performs a yajña and lets the horse loose and starts conquering "east, west and north" (III.53.11) under Viśvāmitra's priesthood. The yajña was in the Haryana homeland of Sudās, and he first (under Viśvāmitra) conquers eastwards in the region of the Yamuna.
Later, under Vasiṣṭha's priesthood, Sudās moves in the westward direction, towards the Punjab, and fights the Dāśarājña battle on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (Ravi) in central Punjab.
The battle hymn VII.18 is composed after Sudās completes all his conquests and the dust has settled down, by the Vasiṣṭhas, who receive gifts from Sudās (at the end of the hymn), and the hymn refers to all the battles of Sudās in a glorificatory summarization of his valour.
These other names in the hymn, which we have not dealt with earlier, pertain largely to his earlier eastern battles on the Yamuna. It may be noted that these names are distinctly different from the earlier names, and cannot be similarly identified with Iranian and other tribes. And they all clearly represent the east:
Thus VII.18.19 clearly tells us that the battles involving Bheda, Aja, Śigru and Yakṣu took place on the Yamunā. The previous verse, 18, again refers to Bheda, and the next verse, 20, to Devaka Manyamāna. All these are clearly earlier and eastern battles.
VII.18.6 refers again to the same Yakṣu, thus making it clear that this verse also refers to the earlier eastern battle. This is confirmed by the other two names in the verse: Turvaṣa and Matsya:
Turvaṣa and Yadu are the two great tribes (of the Five Tribes, or tribal conglomerates) to the south of the Yamuna, and this clearly shows that at least the Turvaṣa are directly named among the enemies of Sudās in the eastern battle.
Significantly, the name Yakṣu in the hymn is very regularly identified by Witzel, in practically every article of his, with the Yadu. In one place, he tells us: "Yakṣu 'sacrificer'―a pun for Yadu" (WITZEL:1995b).
Matsya is extremely important: the Matsya kingdom is one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas described in texts referring to the pre-Buddhist era, and it was located to the southwest of the Yamuna, south of Haryana. This analysis of the eastern enemies of Sudās in the Yamuna battle proves that it was already in existence in the time of the Old Books of the Rigveda!
That leaves only the Vaikarṇa, mentioned alone (in fact as the name of two allied tribes) in VII.18.11. It is not certain whether this tribe fought in the eastern battle or the western one, but it occurs among the western verses. For what it is worth, it may be noted that Witzel frequently associates this word with Vaēkərəta, the Iranian land mentioned in the Avesta: "Vaikarṇa (cf. Vaēkərəta V.1.19)" (WITZEL:1999b). And again "the caturgaoša in Avestan: v.i" (WITZEL:1995b).
If correct, we have here one more Iranian connection.

Actually, there is one final word left to be explained to round off the whole hymn: the word Pūru, referred to critically in VII.18.13. This is notable, since it is known that Sudās and the Bharatas (also called Tṛtsus in this hymn―although, since the word is used only by the Vasiṣṭhas and only in three of the hymns which refer to this battle, i.e. in VII.18,33,83, it is assumed by some people to be a reference to the Vasiṣṭhas themselves) are themselves a sub-tribe of the Pūru.
So what exactly is this critical reference to the Pūru? What does it indicate?
As pointed out repeatedly and in great detail in my books and articles, the Pūru are the Vedic "Aryans", the "People of the Book" in the Rigveda, and the Bharata (to which Divodāsa and Sudās belong) are a sub-tribe of the Pūru, but the Bharata Pūru are the particular "People of the Book" in the earlier period of the Family Books (2-7) before the Rigveda became a general Pūru book.
The Rigveda therefore refers to the Pūru (meaning particularly the Bharata Pūru) throughout the Rigveda in a benevolent and first-person sense. But in two cases, where there is some conflict or difference of interest between the Bharata Pūru and the other or non-Bharata Pūru, to whom the word then refers, the references are critical: VII.8.4 and VII.18.13. One of the two references is in the battle hymn.
Does this mean that the non-Bharata Pūru were also among the enemies of Sudās in the battle, as many scholars interpret? It is not impossible that this should be the case at least in the earlier eastern phase of the campaign, since it is clear that Sudās was an ambitious conqueror, and we have the numerous references to "ārya and dāsa enemies" and "kinsmen and non-kinsmen enemies", and finally Viśvāmitra's hymn in Book III which refers to the eastward beginnings of Sudās' campaign and explicitly tells us (III.53.24) that the Bharatas, when they set out to do battle or conquest, do not differentiate between kinsmen and non-kinsmen.
But, apart from that, there is no direct reference to the Pūru in references to the eastern battle. They are mentioned in the battle hymn in the verse which talks about the Tṛtsus (i.e. Sudās and the Bharatas) taking over the lands and properties of the Anu.
However, in the Dāśarājña battle hymn (VII.18.13), which is westward oriented―in the direction opposite to the eastern Pūru―it is not likely that these Pūru could be directly involved.
And indeed, the reference is so vague (since it refers to the Pūru as "scornful" and talks of defeating them "in sacrifice" rather than in actual battle) that it can lead to different interpretations:
1. Many scholars sweepingly include them among Sudās' enemies in the Dāśarājña battle which is clearly extremely unlikely, although this could be modified to take this as a reference to the earlier eastern battle.
2. In my books, I have suggested that the Pūru may have "scornfully" refused to align with the Bharatas in their westward campaign, and hence were expressly snubbed in the victory yajña.
3. Some others―Jamison, Stuhrmann, etc.―treat them as allies of the Bharatas, and the verse in question as a dispute over the "spoils".

[IMPORTANT ADDITION 24/4/2020: As I never paid attention to the eastern battles, beyond noting that they had taken place, in my earlier books and articles, until I started out on this appendix to this article two days ago, let me make note of a fact that I found out today; the Matsya referred to in the eastern Yamuna battle in VII.18.6 along with the Turvaṣa and Yakṣu (=Yadu) are also a branch of the eastern Pūru, so it could well be that at least this section of the eastern Pūru counted among his enemies in the eastern expansions of Sudās].
In any case, the exact role of the other non-Bharata Pūru in the hymn and battle does not change the main historical consequence of the war: the westward emigration of the Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian ancestral speakers​

Nice . Me working on 2nd half of introductory post will message @hit&run when done.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

When did this war happened ? 7000BCE?

3700bce-6000bce as per my initial investigation its a work in progress. Lots of chronologies require re assessments and addition of the Kings which were omitted by coomers.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

@hit&run I have messaged you complete text of introductory post. Please add the 2nd installement make a final edit to the original post.

Regards.

 

[Indrajit]

Q&A with Shrikant Talageri and a reader on the topic:

1. 1. Reply
2. 
   
3. 
   
   Raghavar Voltore2 May 2020 at 14:55
   Do the Puranas ever mentioned the Daśarājñá war?
   Reply
   Replies
   1. • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri2 May 2020 at 17:26
        No, which shows why we must be careful before treating Puranic information as the base for interpreting the Rigveda historically. The Rigveda contains incidental data which appears without motive, while the Puranas contain narratives meant to be treated as history; the Puranas deal with the whole of northern India, and contain very much later interpolations, and are heavily mixed with myths (of a different kind from the nature myths of the Rigveda).
        
        The dasarajna battle was the most important single event in the Rigveda, and its international historical repercussions make it very important for our analysis today. But to the Rigvedic people themselves, it was an ancient event of ancestral times, already half-forgotten except for the two-three hymns which referred to it half-heartedly.In fact, it is just mentioned once in passing in the Atharvaveda 20.128.12, and later Vedic texts retain garbled memories of the event:
        
        Witzel notes: “It is interesting to note that later texts show confusion about the participants in the battle, notably JB 3.244 which speaks of Pratrd instead of his descendant Sudas”. [These “later texts” include the other Samhitas:] “the shifting of the tradition (has) already (taken place) in the early YV Samhitas: MS 3.40.6, JB. 3.244, PB 15.3.7 have substituted other names for Sudas and Vasishtha”’ ... “even these relatively early texts manage to garble the evidence. Thus the JB (§205) calls Sudas Ksatra, while KS 21.10:50.1 has Pratardana and MS 37.7 Pratardana Daivodasi” (WITZEL 1995b :335,340).
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Raghavar Voltore3 May 2020 at 00:25
        Well thanks, I didn't know about this. I honestly thought that the dasarajna war was a contemporary battle.
        
        To my knowledge there are references to three kinds of wars in the Rig Veda:
        
        1. Druhyu war
        2. Dasrajna war
        3. Varsagira War
        
        The Puranas should have made some kind of reference to any of these three historical wars that took place. I find it very strange that they don't.
        
        Sir, you mostly make reference to the Dasrajna war but not the other two to that extant. Is is possible if you can write a blog that discusses the two wars in detail and if its supported in the Puranas?
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri3 May 2020 at 02:33
        There is no reference to the Druhyu wars in the Rigveda, because it is all pre-Rigvedic. It is recorded in the Puranas, and I have given the references in every single book and article of mine concerning the Druhyu migrations.
        
        The Varshagira war is found recorded only in IV.30.18 which refers to the battle beyond the Sarayu and I.100 which mentions some of the participants, who include Sahadeva on the Bharata side and the Shimyus in the oppostion. The Iranian texts record some garbled details, and, in different places mention Hushdiv (Huzdaeva) and Humayaka (Sahadeva and Somaka), and such as they are, I have given the details in my book (TALAGERI 2000:2015-220). If I want to go further in this much more research of the Iranian material will be required, and I don't want to put up a garbled or hashed-up job.
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Raghavar Voltore3 May 2020 at 04:04
        Thats very interesting. So what you saying is that the Rig Veda is not the starting point of recorded Indian history but rather its only a midpoint, probably a couple thousand years have past when the Rig Veda was first composed after these tribes actually settle down.
        
        Here comes an interesting question, then where do the Puranas locate these Vedic tribes prior to the Rig Vedic composition? According to the Puranas these five tribes are supposedly descendant from Pururavas.
        
        How do the Western scholar interpret the Puranas if the Puranas themselves locate all these tribes further east?
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri3 May 2020 at 06:07
        The Puranas locate all the tribes in India as descendants of "ten sons of Manu Vaivasvata", who include Ila and Ikshvaku, who represent the Lunar and Solar race; but they only elaborate on the branches of these two "sons". The "five sons of Yayati" appear long down the Puranic Lunar line. The "five tribes" of the Rigveda are obviously the inspiration for the names of the five sons of Yayati in the Puranas. We cannot literally take these tribes as "descendants" of some person named in the Puranas. But we can take the descriptions of the locations of these five great tribes, given in the Puranas, since it fits in exactly with the Rigvedic evidence. We should take the Puranic data as providing broad guidelines about the different tribes of India (certainly in analyzing the Vedic data), and not as literal lists of the exact descent of tribes from actual "ancestors", name by name from father to son. Pargiter, who analysed the Puranic data, realized that the earlier people were all in the east and that any "movement" was an east-to-west movement, but, as he accepted that "aryans came from outside" he tried to show that they all came from the north of the Himalayas. Other western scholars ignore the Puranic data completely or derive the Puranic dynasties from the Vedic people who were invaders from the northwest.
        
        The Rigveda is the text initially of one subtribe (Bharata) of one Great Tribe (the Purus). How can it be the starting point of Indian history when it is clear from the Rigvedic data itself that the other Puranic tribes already existed to their east and west?
        
   2. Reply

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

Much obliged @Indrajit commander.

 

[Indrajit]

Much obliged @Indrajit commander.

You are welcome. Always glad to find someone who shares interest in this subject and especially one who's willing to put in the work to put it out on display for others . Much appreciated.

 

[hit&run]

@hit&run please check the conversation at the earliest I am awaiting your suggestions. If you have a word limit for introductory post then do let me know.

Regards.

The Opening post is edited and rest of the thread fixed following chronology the way you posted your contents.

Thanks.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

The Opening post is edited and rest of the thread fixed following chronology the way you posted your contents.

Thanks.

Well done commander.

 

[airstrike99]

Q&A with Shrikant Talageri and a reader on the topic:

1. 1. Reply
2. 
   
3. 
   
   Raghavar Voltore2 May 2020 at 14:55
   Do the Puranas ever mentioned the Daśarājñá war?
   Reply
   Replies
   1. • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri2 May 2020 at 17:26
        No, which shows why we must be careful before treating Puranic information as the base for interpreting the Rigveda historically. The Rigveda contains incidental data which appears without motive, while the Puranas contain narratives meant to be treated as history; the Puranas deal with the whole of northern India, and contain very much later interpolations, and are heavily mixed with myths (of a different kind from the nature myths of the Rigveda).
        
        The dasarajna battle was the most important single event in the Rigveda, and its international historical repercussions make it very important for our analysis today. But to the Rigvedic people themselves, it was an ancient event of ancestral times, already half-forgotten except for the two-three hymns which referred to it half-heartedly.In fact, it is just mentioned once in passing in the Atharvaveda 20.128.12, and later Vedic texts retain garbled memories of the event:
        
        Witzel notes: “It is interesting to note that later texts show confusion about the participants in the battle, notably JB 3.244 which speaks of Pratrd instead of his descendant Sudas”. [These “later texts” include the other Samhitas:] “the shifting of the tradition (has) already (taken place) in the early YV Samhitas: MS 3.40.6, JB. 3.244, PB 15.3.7 have substituted other names for Sudas and Vasishtha”’ ... “even these relatively early texts manage to garble the evidence. Thus the JB (§205) calls Sudas Ksatra, while KS 21.10:50.1 has Pratardana and MS 37.7 Pratardana Daivodasi” (WITZEL 1995b :335,340).
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Raghavar Voltore3 May 2020 at 00:25
        Well thanks, I didn't know about this. I honestly thought that the dasarajna war was a contemporary battle.
        
        To my knowledge there are references to three kinds of wars in the Rig Veda:
        
        1. Druhyu war
        2. Dasrajna war
        3. Varsagira War
        
        The Puranas should have made some kind of reference to any of these three historical wars that took place. I find it very strange that they don't.
        
        Sir, you mostly make reference to the Dasrajna war but not the other two to that extant. Is is possible if you can write a blog that discusses the two wars in detail and if its supported in the Puranas?
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri3 May 2020 at 02:33
        There is no reference to the Druhyu wars in the Rigveda, because it is all pre-Rigvedic. It is recorded in the Puranas, and I have given the references in every single book and article of mine concerning the Druhyu migrations.
        
        The Varshagira war is found recorded only in IV.30.18 which refers to the battle beyond the Sarayu and I.100 which mentions some of the participants, who include Sahadeva on the Bharata side and the Shimyus in the oppostion. The Iranian texts record some garbled details, and, in different places mention Hushdiv (Huzdaeva) and Humayaka (Sahadeva and Somaka), and such as they are, I have given the details in my book (TALAGERI 2000:2015-220). If I want to go further in this much more research of the Iranian material will be required, and I don't want to put up a garbled or hashed-up job.
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Raghavar Voltore3 May 2020 at 04:04
        Thats very interesting. So what you saying is that the Rig Veda is not the starting point of recorded Indian history but rather its only a midpoint, probably a couple thousand years have past when the Rig Veda was first composed after these tribes actually settle down.
        
        Here comes an interesting question, then where do the Puranas locate these Vedic tribes prior to the Rig Vedic composition? According to the Puranas these five tribes are supposedly descendant from Pururavas.
        
        How do the Western scholar interpret the Puranas if the Puranas themselves locate all these tribes further east?
        
        
        
      • 
        
        Shrikant Talageri3 May 2020 at 06:07
        The Puranas locate all the tribes in India as descendants of "ten sons of Manu Vaivasvata", who include Ila and Ikshvaku, who represent the Lunar and Solar race; but they only elaborate on the branches of these two "sons". The "five sons of Yayati" appear long down the Puranic Lunar line. The "five tribes" of the Rigveda are obviously the inspiration for the names of the five sons of Yayati in the Puranas. We cannot literally take these tribes as "descendants" of some person named in the Puranas. But we can take the descriptions of the locations of these five great tribes, given in the Puranas, since it fits in exactly with the Rigvedic evidence. We should take the Puranic data as providing broad guidelines about the different tribes of India (certainly in analyzing the Vedic data), and not as literal lists of the exact descent of tribes from actual "ancestors", name by name from father to son. Pargiter, who analysed the Puranic data, realized that the earlier people were all in the east and that any "movement" was an east-to-west movement, but, as he accepted that "aryans came from outside" he tried to show that they all came from the north of the Himalayas. Other western scholars ignore the Puranic data completely or derive the Puranic dynasties from the Vedic people who were invaders from the northwest.
        
        The Rigveda is the text initially of one subtribe (Bharata) of one Great Tribe (the Purus). How can it be the starting point of Indian history when it is clear from the Rigvedic data itself that the other Puranic tribes already existed to their east and west?
   2. Reply

you sir, have a great day. you have provided insight into some of my missing links.

you have my appreciation.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

Let that this be drilled in your thick skull :

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

@hit&run Maha recommended read for all.
Obiliterating lies of stuhrmann, witzel & Joke that is western Indology -- ""SHRIKANT G TALAGERI"" ::
So this german scholar, Rainer stuhrmaan, has written a paper in german, entitled "die zehnkönigsschlacht am ravifluß" ("The Ten Kings' Battle on the Ravi"), appearing in witzel's "electronic Journal of Vedic Studies", Volume 23 (2016), Issue 1:
http://crossasia-journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/ejvs/article/view/933
The paper itself is in german, a language which is Greek to Indian (Hindu) bank-employee yokels like myself, but, fortunately, we have a summary of the paper translated (from german to English) by none other than witzel himself, which sheds a little light on the scholarly findings published in this paper. This paper is important because it shows more clearly than anything else how Indological studies in half assed western academia are nothing short of a joke: paper after paper is still written by scholar after scholar, reiterating utterly discredited and disproved themes and ideas which carry on nineteenth century misconceptions with the doggedness of the horse with cast-iron blinkers, who can neither see, nor is expected to see, newer interpretations and new facts and data in deeply-researched papers by writers outside the hallowed circle of the closed-door clique that constitutes the peer reviewed mutual admiration society that is western academia. It shows the utterly fake, fraudulent and outdated nature of present-day western "Indology", which has become nothing more than a powerful, academically recognized and financed, propaganda club or juvenile writers' cottage industry.

Before examining (on the basis of the translated summary of the paper by witzel) the hopelessly outdated aspects of stuhrmann's paper, it will be pertinent to point out a few positive points in his paper:

1. First, when he quotes witzel in describing the Battle of the Ten Kings as the "main political occurrence of the Rig-Veda (witzel 2007:435)". Indeed it is the main (and oldest recorded) political occurrence in Indo-European history, since it records the presence of five (Indo-Arya, Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian) of the twelve recognized branches of Indo-European languages, in fact the very five branches classified by linguists as being the last five branches to remain in any proposed Homeland after the departure of the other seven branches, in the most important historical event in the Homeland before the migration of four of these branches from that Homeland. See the last section of part 3 of my blogspot article:
http://talageri.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european.html

2. Two, when he goes against the consensus of most western Indologists that treats the Pūru tribe as being among the enemies of Sudās in the battle. Apart from accepting that the BHARATA's were "a subtribe of the Pūru", he writes: "Because of stanza 13 most interpreters of the hymn 7.18 are of the opinion that the Pūru who are allied with the Bharata throughout the Rig-Veda, belong to the defeated enemies of Sudās. However [….] the Pūru somehow must have been on the side of King Sudās and the Bharata, though not in the actual Ten kings' battle". Of course, he immediately spoils it by reiterating the usual Indological confusion, identifying the Purukutsa with the Pūru tribe! [Note: in his pointless "review" of my second book in 2001, Witzel had treated my use of the word "king" for Sudās as indicative of my pathetic ignorance of the state of the Civilization in Rigvedic times!]

3. Three, when, in the face of a determined trend among political scholars, including witzel, who have all along maintained that the Sarasvatī of the Rigveda is the present-day Ghaggar-Hakra river, but (after my three books) have now suddenly started a campaign to deny the identification, Stuhrmann writes: "archeological research of mughal and others have shown that until the mid-second millennium bce the banks of the Sarasvatī were still dotted with Indus Culture settlements", thus confirming the identity of the two rivers.

Apart from these little points, stuhrmann writes as if nothing has been written about the Battle of the Ten Kings since the nineteenth century (apart, of course, from the writings of "scholars" like witzel, who also have not moved beyond the nineteenth century). Coomer completely ignores (as we will see in detail presently) not only the irrefutable conclusions demonstrated by me in my books, but also the actual data in the Rigveda on the basis of which I have drawn those conclusions, and bases his interpretations wholly and solely onpurely extraneous theories and hypotheses which have been concocted by the Indologists on the principle that the Rigveda simply should not be treated as a source book of data and that theories and hypotheses about the Rigveda are to be concocted strictly without reference to any data from the text.
The two main discredited points Stuhrmann reiterates throughout his paper is a) that the enemies of Sudās and the Bharata-s in the battle were mainly "indigenous non-Aryans" native to the area of the Indus Civilization, and b) that the direction of movement and conquest of Sudās and the Bharata-s was from "west to east":

I. "Indigenous Non-Aryans"​

As this illiterate stuhrmann mongrel tells us: "Shortly after crossing the Ravi river, he[Sudās] was encircled by an alliance of Aryan and non-Aryan tribes", and again: "The alliance consisted of Aryan and non-Aryan tribes with whom the earlier Aryan immigrants, such as the Turvaśa, Yadu and Druhyu, had allied themselves". Half assed illiterate continues: "much points to non-Aryan indigenous tribes settled on the banks of the Ravi river and belonging to a 'hydraulic' civilization that had mastered the knowledge and tools necessary to affect a river system. In fact, there are many indications in the Rig-Veda of a hydraulic civilization that was familiar with river management by controls, dykes, reinforcement of dykes and with sluices - in other other words: the Indus civilization". In short, the "Aryan Invasion" of the "non-Aryan indigenous" Indus civilization, according to stuhrmann, is actually recorded as the "main political occurrence of the Rig-Veda (witzel 2007:435)". He generously concedes that these "non-Aryan indigenous tribes" (i.e. the people of the Indus civilization) had some "allies" among some "earlier Aryan immigrants, such as the Turvaśa, Yadu and Druhyu", thereby making it perfunctorily "an alliance of Aryan and non-Aryan tribes".


The insolence of such claims continuously being made in these Indological papers is breath-taking. These "scholars" at least should be aware that "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" (as they use these terms) are not general adjectives meaning something like "good" and "bad" or "pleasant" and "unpleasant" or "noble" and "ignoble" to be used in a general and subjective sense. Precisely speaking, in the context in which these "scholars" use them, they mean "Indo-European" and "non-Indo-European" in a very precise linguistic sense. But, even as they freely describe the enemies of Sudās as "non-Aryan", they are not able to give one single example of a word, in the hymns referring to the battle, which could be interpreted as a reference to any entity which could be categorized as linguistically non-Indo-European: not one word which can be linguistically identified as referring to speakers of a Dravidian language, an Austric (Kol-Munda) language, the Burushaski language, or an Andamanese dialect, or, for that matter, a Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, Uralo-Altaic or any other language belonging to any known language family in existence (or now extinct, like the Sumerian language) anywhere in the world. Then in exactly what sense do they have the academic guts to describe the enemies of Sudās as "non-Aryan"?

On the other hand, the data in the Rigveda makes it very clear that the enemies of Sudās (who belonged to the Bharata sub-tribe of the Pūru tribal conglomerate) belonged to the Anu tribal conglomerate. In fact, as I have pointed out in detail in my books, and in the last section of part 3 of my blogspot article cited earlier, the enemy tribes, specifically named in the two battle hymns, bear the names of the ancient tribes among the Iranian, Armenian, Greek and Albanian branches of Indo-European languages. To quote from that blog, the two hymns use the following tribal appellations for the enemies of Sudās who belonged to the Anu tribal conglomerate:
VII.18.5 Śimyu.
VII.18.6 Bhṛgu.
VII.18.7 Paktha, Bhalāna, Alina, Śiva, Viṣāṇin.
VII.83.1 Parśu/Parśava, Pṛthu/Pārthava, Dāsa.
[Puranic Anus: Madra.]

To further quote from my above blog:
These tribal names are primarily found only in two hymns, VII.18 andVII.83, of the Rigveda, which refer to the Anu tribes who fought against Sudās in the dāśarājña battle or "the Battle of the Ten Kings". But see where these same tribal names are found in later historical times (after their exodus westwards referred to in VII.5.3 and VII.6.3). Incredibly, they cover, in an almost continuous geographical belt, the entire sweep of areas extending westwards from the Punjab (the battleground of the dāśarājña battle) right up to southern and eastern eurofags:
(Avestan) Afghanistan: Proto-Iranian: Sairima (Śimyu), Dahi (Dāsa).
NE Afghanistan: Proto-Iranian: Nuristani/Piśācin (Viṣāṇin).
Pakhtoonistan (NW porkiestan illegal territory), South Afghanistan: Iranian: Pakhtoon/Pashtu (Paktha).
Baluchistan (SW porkiestan illegal territory), SE Iran: Iranian: Bolan/Baluchi (Bhalāna).
NE Iran: Iranian: Parthian/Parthava (Pṛthu/Pārthava).
SW Iran: Iranian: Parsua/Persian (Parśu/Parśava).
NW Iran: Iranian: Madai/Mede (Madra).
Uzbekistan: Iranian: Khiva/Khwarezmian (Śiva).
W. Turkmenistan: Iranian: Dahae (Dāsa).
Ukraine, S, Russia: Iranian: Alan (Alina), Sarmatian (Śimyu).
Turkey: Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian: Phryge/Phrygian (Bhṛgu).
Romania, Bulgaria: Thraco-Phrygian/Armenian: Dacian (Dāsa).
Greece: Greek: Hellene (Alina).
Albania: Albanian: Sirmio (Śimyu).

Further:
a) The leader of the enemy alliance is Kavi Cāyamāna: Kauui is an Iranian (Avestan) name.
b) The priest of the enemy alliance is Kavaṣa: Kaoša is an Iranian (Avestan) name.
c) Kavi Cāyamāna of the battle hymn was a descendant of Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna, who is described in the Rigveda (VI.27.8) as a Pārthava. The later Iranian (Avestan) dynasty (after the Iranians migrated westwards from the Rigvedic Greater Punjab into Afghanistan, and composed the Avesta), the oldest Iranian dynasty in historical record (outside the Rigveda) to which belongedZarathushtra's patron king and foremost disciple Vištāspa, is theKavyān (Pahlavi Kayanian) dynasty descended from this sameKavi/Kauui. In later historical times, it is the Parthians (Parthava) who maintained a strong tradition that the kings of the Kavyāndynasty of the Avesta belonged to their tribe.

In the face of all this very specific and detailed evidence within the hymns, in the form of the actual concrete data in the Rigveda, can these Indological papers, which continue to describe the enemies of Sudās in the Battle of the Ten Kings as linguistic "non-Aryans", without finding it necessary to produce an iota of evidence for this claim, be regarded as anything but lies and trash?
In the process, stuhrmann refers to Sudās and the Bharata-s as "the Pūru and Bharata latecomers", and as "Vedic conquerors". Hindu opponents of the aitcucks will object to these phrases, especially to the idea that the actions of Sudās and the Bharata-s were the actions of "conquerors", and would instead insist that it was a fight between "good Aryans" (represented by Sudās and the Bharata-s) and "fallen Aryans" (represented by their enemies), and insist that these "good Aryans" were somehow provoked into attacking, or were even fighting in self-defence against, an unholy alliance. However, the two phrases are right, but not in the sense that stuhrmann uses them: the Pūru-Bharata tribes were indeed imperialistic "conquerors" of the land and territory of other tribes, but they were not originally non-Indian "Aryan/Indo-European" tribes from the west conquering the land of indigenous Indian "non-Aryans/non-Indo-Europeans", they were indigenous Indian "Aryans/Indo-Europeans" (Pūru-s) from the east conquering the land of other equally indigenous Indian "Aryans/Indo-Europeans" (Anu-s) to their west, a normal (if unfortunate) phenomenon of mutually warring and conquering tribes that can be seen in any ancient civilization in the world. And they were "newcomers" not into India, but "newcomers" (as conquerors) from Haryana and western U.P. in the east into the then Punjab area of the Anu-s. Both these groups of tribes were components of what Stuhrmann calls "the Indus civilization" (or, more correctly, "the Indus-Sarasvati civilization").

II. "From West to East" or "From East to west"?​

Even more brazenly, stuhrmann whines us: "Along the Bharatas' trail of conquest [….] Sudās had crossed the Ravi from west to east, just as he had, earlier on, the Indus". He repeats the lie: "the Ten Kings battle took place after the crossing of the Ravi river from west to east". And then: "it opened up the further path eastward into the Indian core territory, where the Vedic conquerors followed the carriers of the Indus civilization that had been weakened by tectonic and hydrological changes".

Let us start examining this trail of lies from the starting point in stuhrmann's retardation: the crossing of the Indus river "earlier on" by Sudās:
The three Oldest Books of the Rigveda, in that order, are 6, 3 and 7. In any case, more relevant to the point under discussion, these are the books associated with the periods of Sudās and his ancestors: "In Book 6 of the Bharadvāja, the Bharatas and their king Divodāsa play a central role" (witzel 1995b:332-333), and "Book 3 [….] represents the time of king Sudās" (witzel1995b:317) (as, obviously does book 7, the Book of the Battle of the Ten Kings). In these three Books, the word "Sindhu" is used only in its original etymological sense of "river": except in 8 verses, it is used in the plural in the sense "rivers". In the 8 verses where the word is used in the singular, it refers in every case to a specific "river" whose identity is clear from the reference itself: Vipāś (III.33.3,5; 53.9),Paruṣṇī (VII.18.5), Yamunā (VII.33.3), Sarasvatī (VII.33.6; 95.1), and the ocean (VII.87.6).
Nowhere in these three Books is there a single reference even to the Indus river itself, let alone (either in these three Books or elsewhere in the Rigveda) to any "earlier crossing" of the Indus, let alone to any "earlier crossing" of the Indus by Sudās, let alone to any "earlier crossing" of the Indus by Sudās "from west to east". So where do witzel and stuhrmann get the information about this "earlier crossing" of the Indus by Sudās "from west to east"? Did Sudās appear in a dream and convey this information to them?
According to stuhrmann's fairy-tale (and witzel's before him), Sudās, and obviously his ancestors before him, were somewhere beyond (to the west of) the Indus river till the time Sudās and the Bharata-s set out on their "trail of conquest". Does the data in the Rigveda support this blatant and brazen lie? See what the geographical data in the Rigveda tells us, for which I will quote from part 2 of my blogspot article:

See - http://talageri.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-recorded-history-of-indo-european_27.html

a) The geographical area of the Early Old Books (6,3,7 in that order) [….] covers only the eastern parts of the Rigvedic area. These Early Old Books show complete ignorance of western areas, but easy familiarity with and emotional attachment to the eastern areas (in VI.61.16, the composer begs the river Sarasvatī: "let us not go from thee to distant countries"):
These three oldest books mention the eastern riversGaṅgā/Jahnāvī, Yamunā, Dṛṣadvatī/Hariyūpīyā/Yavyāvatī,Āpayā, Sarasvatī, Śutudrī, Vipāś, Paruṣṇī, Asiknī, but they do notmention the western rivers Marudvṛdhā, Vitastā, Ārjīkīyā,Suṣomā, Sindhu and its western tributaries Triṣṭāmā, Susartu,Anitabhā, Rasā, Śveti, Shvetyāvarī, Kubhā, Krumu, Gomatī,Sarayu, Mehatnu, Prayiyu, Vayiyu, Suvāstu, Gaurī, Kuṣavā, all of which are mentioned in the New Books.
They mention the eastern place names Kīkaṭa, Iḷāspada (also calledvara ā pṛthivyā or nābhā pṛthivyā, i.e. "the best place on earth" or "the centre of the earth") but they do not mention the western place names Saptasindhava, Gandhāri, both of which are mentioned in the New Books.
They mention the eastern lake Mānuṣā, but they do not mention thewestern lake Śaryaṇāvat(ī) and the western mountains Mūjavat,Suṣom and Arjīk, all of which are mentioned in the New Books.
They mention eastern animals like the buffalo, the gaur (Indian bison), the elephant, the peacock and the spotted deer, but they do not mention western animals (whose names are found in common with the Avesta) like the uṣṭra, varāha, mathra, chāga,vṛṣṇi, urā and meṣha, all of which are mentioned in the New Books.
b) Further, the western place names, lake name, mountain names and animal names are missing not only in the Early Old Books (6,3,7), but also in the Middle Old Books (4,2) and in the New Book 5: in short, in all the family books. And the river names appearfrom east to west in historical contexts:
i) The oldest Book 6 refers only to the Sarasvati (which is deified in three whole hymns, VI.61, VII.95-96, and in 52 other verses in the three Early Old Books) and to the rivers east of it: in VI.45.31 the long bushes on the banks of the Gaṅgā figure in a simile (showing their long acquaintance and easy familiarity with the topography and flora of the Gaṅgā area).
ii) The next Book 3 refers in III.58.6 to the banks of the Jahnāvī(Gaṅgā) as the "ancient homeland" of the Gods. In III.23.3-4, it remembers the establishment of a perpetual sacred fire byDevavāta, a far ancestor of the Rigvedic king Sudas, at Iḷaspada (in Haryana) on the eastern banks of the Sarasvatī. In III.33, it refers for the first time to the first two easternmost rivers of the Punjab, theVipāś and Śutudrī, in the context of the militarist expansion in all directions (after a religious ceremony performed at vara ā pṛthivyāin Haryana) by Sudās, and the reference is to his moving from Haryana into the Punjab and crossing the two rivers with his warriors.
iii) The next book 7 (which refers to the Yamunā in VII.18.19) describes (in VII.18, and also 19,33 and 83) the dāśarājña battle (the Battle of the Ten Kings) in which Sudās, fighting from the east on the banks of the third easternmost river of the Punjab, theParuṣṇī, fights the coalition of ten Anu tribes who are described (inVII.5.3) as the Asiknī people (as they are fighting from the west, from the direction of the fourth easternmost river of the Punjab, theAsiknī).
The three Early Old Books (6,3,7) do not refer to rivers further west.
iv) The Middle Old Book 4 (but not yet the Middle Old Book 2, whose riverine references are restricted to the Sarasvatī) for the first time refers to the Indus (Sindhu) and its western tributaries (Sarayu andRasā), in clear continuation of the earlier westward movement: it refers (in IV.30.18: which, incidentally, is a Redacted Hymn) to the battle fought by Sahadeva and Somaka, descendants of Sudās, in an area "beyond the Sarayu".
In short, the geography of the Rigveda in the period of the oldest book 6 and in the pre-Rigvedic period [….] is completely restricted to the area to the east of the Sarasvatī river, in Haryana and western U.P., which is regarded as "the ancient homeland". Needless to say, there is not the faintest trace in the Rigveda, even at this point of time [….], of any extra-territorial memories or migrations from the totally unknown far western areas.
c) Even in this period [….], there is not the faintest reference in the Rigveda to any non-Indo-European language speaking (let alone specifically Dravidian or Austric language speaking) people or entities, friend or foe, in the Rigvedic area, past or present, let alone any reference to the "Aryans" having invaded and displaced them.
d) Even in this period [….], the rivers in the Rigvedic area have (undeniably or arguably) purely Indo-European names, with no indication that there ever were any other names. [This is a powerful indication of the indigenous nature of the Vedic Aryans. As witzel points out: “In Europe, river names were found to reflect the languages spoken before the influx of Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus older than c. 4500-2500 B.C. (depending on the date of the spread of Indo-European languages in various parts of Europe).” (witzel1995a:104-105). But, in sharp contrast, “in northern India rivers in general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period, and names derived from the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on". (witzel1995a:105). This is "in spite of the well-known conservatism of river names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri”.
In the face of all this clear data in the Rigveda, which shows that the ancestors of Sudās were inhabitants of the areas (in Haryana and eastwards) to the east of the Sarasvati river many generationsbefore Sudās set out on his "trail of conquest", can these Indological papers, which continue to tell us fairy-tales about Sudās starting out "from west to east" from areas beyond (to the west of) the Indus, and about "the Ten Kings battle" opening up "the further path eastward into the Indian core territory, where the Vedic conquerors followed the carriers of the Indus civilization that had been weakened by tectonic and hydrological changes", without finding it necessary to produce an iota of evidence for these claims, be regarded as anything but lies and trash?

III. Common Sense and Logic​

This is the state of retarded western Indology today: the so called ass of prestigious western universities, and their respected "scholars", churning out Indological paper after paper full of blatant and brazen trash, completely ignoring the massive historical data in the Rigveda, and retailing centuries-old (and totally discredited) fairy tales about "Vedic conquerors" conquering "non-Aryan indigenous tribes settled on the banks of the Ravi river and belonging to a 'hydraulic' civilization [….] - in other other words: the Indus civilization". To buttress his fairy-tale, Stuhrmann goes a few steps ahead of his colleagues and cites "archeological" evidence about "an unusual high percentage of men, women and children killed by force that are found in the cemeteries and burial pits of late phase Harappa (ch 6)". So he combines his textual "evidence" with archeological "evidence" about Sudās' conquest of "the non-Aryan Indus civilization"!
While books and research papers (such as mine) failing to uphold the "retarded aitcucks " are completely ignored by the Hinduphobic bigoted western Indologists, such trash is accepted as academically sound scholarship, published in peer-reviewed notepads, given doctorates, and quoted as gospel truth based solely upon their own bs.

One reason why this happens is because Indian/Hindu scholarship is maliciously attacked by the bychcraft of marxshits . In fact, the Truth pinches these scholars more than the Lies of the western Indologists.

The immediate call of hour is that BHARAT gets its own Academia that mentions all of them chronologies Itihas the way they are and demolish marxshit bs.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

"The so called archaelogical evidence retard cited of a mythical massacre is inaccurate interpretation and thoroughly refuted."

Refer- https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-mythical-massacre-at-mohenjo-daro/