From: "vrnparker" Mailing-List: list vediculture@yahoogroups.com Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 00:35:15 -0000 Subject: [world-vedic] Reviews on 4 Important Vedic History Books Reviews VEDIC BOOKSHELF The Aryan Invasion: New Light on an Old Problem Books reviewed Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by Navaratna S. Rajaram and David Frawley, with a Foreword by Klaus K. Klostermaier, 2nd edition. 1997. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price Rs 450 (HB), Rs 150 (PB). Pages: 328 + xxi. Reviewed by Professor K.D. Prithipaul. The Politics of History: Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of Scholarship by N.S. Rajaram. 1995. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price Rs 150 (HB), Rs 100 (PB). Pages: 243 + xviii. Reviewed by Professor Uma Erry. The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal, by Shrikant Talageri, with a Foreword by S.R. Rao. 1993. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Price Rs. 350 (HB). Pages 373 + ix. Reviewed by Dr. N.S. Rajaram. The Problem of Aryan Origins: From an Indian Point of View, by K.D. Sethna, Second enlarged edition. 1992. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Price Rs. 450 (HB). Pages 443 + xiii. Reviewed by Dr. N.S. Rajaram Review of Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization The impact of colonization during the British domination was not merely political and economic. It extended to the collective psychology of the people and the latter's perception of its own culture. This was noticeable in the manner in which the educated Indian citizen came to view his past history. The myth, which quickly gained credence in academic circles, arose from the Western Indologists' view that ancient Indian history was initiated by an invasion of Aryans coming from somewhere in Central Asia. Several generations of Indian scholars, honestly mistaken by the prestige which the learned philologists trained in the scientific and `objective' methods of research in Western academe, conscientiously taught and wrote the history of their country by taking the myth of the Aryan invasion as the starting point. Of late however, some Indian and Western historians and certain institutions in India and the West have deemed it necessary, under the imperative of truth-seeking, to re-examine the premises of the Western philologists' claim of the veracity of an Aryan invasion and its cultural consequences. Dr. N.S. Rajaram and Dr. David Frawley have, in this context, brought forth a cogent, coherent argument which purports to lay to rest once and for all the erroneous theory of the Aryan invasion of India around 1500 BC. To buttress their thesis, the authors use their deep knowledge of the Sanskrit language, their acquaintance with the most recent archaeological discoveries, their expertise in mathematics and in computing science. In short, they bring to focus a remarkable synthesis of several "disciplines" to unlock the secrets of Sanskrit texts which the early Indologists overlooked. The evidence thus brought forth from several original sources provides sound reasons to refute the earlier invasion theory. The dominant idea which gives the clue to their theme is that while the Aryans have a literature, but have no history or geography, the Harappans have a sophisticated urban civilization, a history and geography, but no language or literature. The paradox disappears when the two are assimilated into a unitive history and geography. It becomes logical then to argue for North India to be the original home of the Aryans. The authors further argue for a reversal of the movement of the Aryans: they moved out of India into the outlying areas, into Persia and beyond. This new theory receives support from archaeology, from a comparative analysis of Mesopotamian and Egyptian mathematics with Vedic mathematics. It is evident that the polyvalent learning of the authors provides a better insight into the secrets of the past than the mere gratuitous speculations of the earlier Indologists, of Max Muller in particular. In fact the authors do pay a worthy tribute to Max Muller for his many attainments and his contributions to the discovery of India by Western scholars. At the same time, faithful to their own insights and convictions, based on their own findings, they demonstrate how the invasion theory was more an expression of the prejudice fed by the racist theories spawned by Western academic anthropology supported by triumphant colonial enterprises of the West European countries. (See also The Politics of History by N.S. Rajaram reviewed in this volume.) The significance of the work consists in being an important confirmation of Indian history having at last come into its own, freed from the distortions of the arbitrary normative conclusions of Western historians. The authors pay tribute to other contributors, like K.D. Sethna, S. Talageri, S.B. Roy, K.C. Varma, Udaya Veera Shastri and others whose contributions have altered the perceptions of ancient Indian history with the evidence that it actually had an indigenous genesis. With a fair measure of self-reliance and confidence they even propound the thesis that it spread out to other parts of West Asia and Africa. A welcome aspect of this work is the refutation of certain Marxist Indian historians who persist in their attachment to superstitious theories bequeathed by the Indologists of Max Muller's generation. The authors rightly point out that "not a single significant contribution should have come from Indian historians belonging to the elite `establishment'." At the same time they make it clear that they are not driven by the need to write an apology of Indian chauvinistic nationalism. Theirs is a statement of veracity based on hard facts. At the same time the authors recognize that their work is not the last say in the ongoing process of unveiling the truth about ancient Indian history. They acknowledge that gaps still remain in the task of reinterpreting Vedic history. Nevertheless, their contribution provides substantial material which will enable the historians of India to work for the common purpose of knowing what happened at the beginning of the Vedic Civilization and collaborate with one another to bring about a synthetic reconstruction of the historical integrity of the country. Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization stands out as a major original fresh statement of what India was. It is lucidly written, marked at times with an unusual sense of humor. The intricacies of mathematical discussions, of Vedic linguistics, are expressed with clarity in a language that will appeal to both the scholar and the layman. This is indeed a felicitous way of writing about a difficult and abstruse subject. The book is commendable for its style, the seriousness of its purpose, and the originality of the thesis which claims to establish the moral and intellectual order that marked the early Vedic culture region which then stood as a greenhouse in which were grown saplings which were subsequently transplanted and grew into civilizations in the surrounding lands. The reader must rush to read this very well written book on a subject which will fascinate someone even unacquainted with the history of India. Editor's comment: Professor Prithipaul's review was based on the manuscript of the first edition, but applies in all essentials to the second. The second edition is recommended. Professor K.D. Prithipaul Department of Comparative Religion, University of Alberta, Canada Review of The Politics of History N.S. Rajaram in his book, The Politics of History explodes our belief in the age-old theory of the Aryan invasion and shatters the myth about the origins of the Vedic civilization. He has provided an unbiased and a genuinely inquiring reader with sufficient and stimulating material for thought. His book is an excellent study of ancient India and the Vedic civilization; the honest reader has no choice but to re-examine his understanding of history. Truth by its very nature demands courage to acknowledge and accept it. The book offers a clearer and deeper insight into our ancient past, the Vedas and the Puranas. The present-day Indian historians need to correct their myopic vision of history and their die-hard prejudices. They should not only realign their frontiers of knowledge, but also be bold enough to rewrite the history of the land. Rajaram's book is the most systematic and thorough study of the Aryan invasion theory presented to date. He traces the origin and development of this ugly theory which, according to him, is "a colossal intellectual blunder" of the 19th century European scholars, particularly, Max Muller. The author points out that Indian history was created by men who were neither Indians nor historians but European linguists. What were the causes of this grim blunder and how did it happen, is discussed in the chapter "Sahibs and Pundits." Ignorance of the scientific method and lack of archaeological data coupled with European politics and missionary interests were the main forces behind this mythical creation. Also the upsurge of German nationalism in the 19th century, and the German dislike of any association with Semitic origin, added to this conspiracy. The author shows how this contributed to the growth of racial science, which dominated European thought in the 19th century. European linguistics had a great deal more to do with the Aryan invasion theory than was realized. The author strongly condemns the present-day Indian historians of the elite institutions in India, who have totally ignored the latest findings of archaeology carried out by scientists and scholars like S.R. Rao, V.S. Wakankar and Shrikant Talageri, findings which, when studied and integrated with the Puranas, give us a totally different sense. (See review of Talageri's book in the same feature - Editor.) The Vedic civilization dates back to 7000 BC, whereas the Harappan civilization represents nothing but a continuation of the early Vedic civilization. It was indeed the "twilight of the Vedic civilization" and belonged to the Sutra period of the Vedic literature. And this vast civilization came to an end because of ecological reasons, particularly the drying up of the mighty Sarasvati River. That there was a mighty river, which used to flow through Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan has been discovered by Wakankar's exploration and confirmed by satellite photography. Archaeological sites have been found on the riverbed which show that the river gradually became weaker and finally dried up around 1900 or 2000 BC. But to get back to the accounts in ancient literature, the second Mandala of the Rigveda mentions the great Sarasvati River about fifty times, while the Ganga is mentioned only once, and the seventh Mandala, attributed to Rishi Vasistha, says, "the Sarasvati is a mighty stream" that flowed from the "mountain to the sea - nourishing the children of Nahusha," RV VII.95.2. The `Children of Nahusha' refers to the rulers of the famed Bharata Dynasty, and the inhabitants of the Sarasvati heartland. (Sic: The whole of the Rigveda, and not just the second Mandala mentions the Sarasvati about fifty times - Editor.) In his analysis of the Aryan invasion theory, according to which the Aryans entered into India, from Central Asia - the writer has assigned a whole chapter to Max Muller, the father of this "divine theory". The chapter `Max Muller's Ghost' gives a comprehensive account and evaluation of his work. While he exposes his sham scholarship and a rather superficial rendering of the Rigveda, he lauds the great effort to bring out a monumental 51-volume (Sic: 50) "Sacred Books of the East", which ironically led to a resurgence of interest among the Indians in their ancient works. Thus his early goal of discrediting the Indian scriptures by giving a negative interpretation had exactly the opposite effect. Max Muller rejected the astronomical evidence for Vedic chronology as suggested by Colebrook. He assigned Vedic dates so as to coincide with his firm belief in Biblical chronology, "according to which the creation of the world was said to have taken place at 9 AM on October 23, 4004 BC." Though Max Muller later repudiated his own chronology for the Vedic literature, he was "an extremely political creature, who did not hesitate to use his position as Vedic scholar to advance the cause of German nationalism with his theories about the Aryan race." Max Muller's theory was taken up by the nineteenth century linguists and other scholars, who, after discovering Sanskrit and the relationship which it bears to European languages, hit upon the existence of a Proto Indo-European language to preserve their `pet theory' of the Aryan invasion. The linguistic approach to history reveals how the human mind can pervert facts, and how preconceived ideas can falsify one's view of events. Nineteenth century linguists "built whole historical scenarios around untested linguistic conjectures." It proved to be a "monumental failure of vision" as shown by archaeology, which began to have an enormous bearing on the study of history. "All fanciful historical scenarios began to crumble" in the face of data from archaeology, mathematics and other sources, observes the author. Archaeologists have now proved the existence of a vast civilization, the great Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization, spread over more than a million and a half square kilometers. Where did the Aryans originate from? Who were they, and what does the word Aryan mean, and how it was misinterpreted by European Indologists, are all discussed in [the chapter] `Emperor's Clothes.' According to the Puranas, Eastern UP and Northwest Himalayas (Sic: Northeast Himalayas) was the original home of the Aryans. While there is no evidence and support for the Aryan invasion theory, there is abundant evidence to show that massive movements of the Vedic Aryans took place out of India (that is, in the reverse order) into West and Central Asia. Linguistic analysis by S.S. Mishra, as well as archaeological records of the Hittites, Mittani and the Kassites all point to an expansion of the "Vedic Aryans out of India into West and Central Asia." And this is also what the Puranas have to say: they record a series of migrations out of India resulting from wars as well as natural calamities. Aryan tribes settled in Persia, Parthia and Anatolia. (The Puranas record them as Parsus and Partavas.) Indian emperor Mandhata drove the troublesome Druhyus out of India before 4600 BC, and according to Talageri (1993), "they became the Celtic Druids of Europe, which fits in with the latter's tradition of tracing their origin to Asia." Then there is question of Zoroaster, his date and his origin. The Bhavisya Purana (139, 13-15) records, "contrary to the Vedic practices, your son will become famous by name of Mag. His name will be Jarathushtra Mag - and will bring fame to the dynasty. His descendents will worship fire and will be known by the name Mag (Saka), and being Soma worshippers (Magadha Sakadvipi) will be known as Mag Brahmins." All this is so contrary to what we have been subjected to learning in history books. Putting aside the verdict of the Puranas and the Vedas, we may legitimately ask how has the writer resolved the main issue, in other words, what is the scientific basis used by the author for repudiating the Aryan invasion theory? What are the flaws and contradictions pointed out by the writer? The chapter `Ancient India and the Modern World' focuses on this main issue. The strength of the main argument and the evidence rest on the recent findings of archaeology and satellite photography, which have proved the existence of the ancient Sarasvati River and unearthed archaeological sites on the riverbed; what the historians earlier labelled as the Indus Valley sites in areas where none of the Indus rivers flow, and were therefore a source of mystery to archaeologists, have now been proved to lie along the course of the great Sarasvati River. Wakankar's discovery of the ancient Sarasvati helped to resolve the mystery. Mark Kenoyer, a North American archaeologist (1991) has provided a detailed archaeological map of the whole of Northwest India. But the Rigveda tells us all this and much more; while it mentions the Ganga only once, it lauds the great Sarasvati fifty times. It also describes the geography of North India as it was before the Sarasvati dried up. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley was a continuation of the Vedic Civilization; its ending coincided with the drying up of the Sarasvati around 2000 BC. Archaeological studies have shown that there was a gradual depletion of water resources that culminated in a drought in the 2200 BC to 1900 BC [period]. It was a global phenomenon that affected civilizations across the immense belt of Southern Europe to India. As S.R. Rao says, "People were forced to seek new lands for settlement. The refugees from Mohenjo-Daro and Southern sites in Sind fled to Saurashtra and later occupied the interior of the peninsula." In addition to all this, the writer provides evidence of geography, astronomy and literature and metallurgy, and evidence of the mathematics or the Sulbasutras, often called Vedic Mathematics, which was discovered by Seidenberg to be the source of "all ancient mathematics from India to Old Babylonia to Egypt to Pythagorean Greece." All this is an unmistakable pointer to the existence and supremacy of a vast Vedic Civilization spanning over thousands of years and kept alive throughout by a living tradition. India is the only country where the ancient past still breathes. Jean Le Meo, a French student of the Vedas observes, "the pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations traveling like a great wave through the living substance of mind." If historical research could be intensified by the new generation of scholars, by combining tradition with science, all history and not just India will benefit, says the author of this brilliant book. Professor Uma Erry Bhavan's Journal, July 15, 1996 Review of The Aryan Invasion Theory, A Reappraisal The writing of Indian history has been dominated by political considerations for well over a century. First it was the nineteenth century European biases which sought to present European as the pinnacle of world civilizations. This was compounded by the aspirations of the emerging German nationalism, and British colonial interests. Christian missionaries also got on the bandwagon of European colonialism and rewrote the history of India to facilitate conversion. The result was the Aryan invasion version of ancient history and the denigration of Indian contributions. After independence, one had reason to hope that Indian scholars might go back to the primary sources and use scientific methods to recast Indian history on a more rational basis. They after all are in the best position to do so. Unfortunately this did not come about. For reasons that are unnecessary to go into here, the Indian history establishment came to be dominated by Marxist ideologues who went about recasting all periods of Indian history to be conformity with the Marxist theology. This resulted in a serious lowering of standards and the failure of any Indian school of thought to emerge, despite a millennia-old Indian tradition and its matchless records. This background is necessary to understand why really significant and original contributions to Indian scholarship have come from outside the leftist dominated academic mainstream. Fortunately there are signs of fresh wind blowing. There are now scholars - mainly outside the establishment - who are both original thinkers and compelling writers. One of them is Shrikant Talageri, the author of the book under review. His book upsets the whole framework built on the belief that the Rigveda contains the oldest records of India; Talageri's contention, well supported, is that the much-maligned Puranas actually contain the accounts of the oldest dynasties of India. With this seemingly simple shift, he not only presents a coherent picture of ancient India, but also arrives at a plausible scenario for the origin and spread of the Indo-European speakers. When Talageri's book appeared in 1993, this was like a bolt from the blue; the late Girilal Jain wrote a major article on it, which appeared on the center page of the Times of India. But today, the idea seems less shocking. Let us now take a look at what Talageri has to offer. His book is ambitious and broader in scope than what its title indicates. His goal in fact is to provide an answer to one of the great questions of ancient history - the problem of the origin and spread of Indo-European speakers. Here is the problem: going back at least to the eighteenth century, historians and linguists have puzzled over the fact that people from India and Sri Lanka to England and Ireland speak languages clearly related to one another. We now call these languages members of the great Indo-European family. The recognition of these as members of the same language family led to the perfectly natural supposition that the ancestors of these speakers must at one time have lived in a single homeland. Ever since that time, the location of this Indo-European homeland has been one of the central problems of ancient history. As Talageri observes: When we consider the historical importance of the speakers of these languages, it becomes obvious that the earliest common history of these languages constitutes the most important unsolved mystery of ancient times. (pp 1-2). One cannot seriously argue with this assessment. Some of his claims however will strike many as extravagant, if not audacious. Towards the end of his book he goes on to assert: The whole description is based on the most logical, and in many respects the only possible, interpretation of the facts, ... Any further research, and any new material discovered on the subject, can only confirm this description. There may be minor points on which rectifications may become necessary, such as the exact identities and the interrelationships of the various Indo-European groups, past and present; ... (p 368) Can he really be serious - claiming that all future work can only lend support to his theory except on some minor points? But this is not all. Speaking of his use of the Rigveda to correlate the accounts found in the Puranas, he makes the astounding statement: In respect of the Vedas, there has always been a school of opinion in India which holds that everything is contained in the Vedas. While this can be taken with a heavy pinch of salt, the fact remains that a handful of hymns (out of a total of 1028 hymns which constitute the Rig Veda) provide us the key for solving the biggest historical problem of all time. (p 6; emphasis mine.) But strange as it may seem, his claims are not entirely unfounded. There are to be sure some problems; his chronology runs into contradictions both with Indian records and the records of ancient Europeans, especially the Celtic Druids. Fortunately this is not a major problem in the overall scheme. With the chronological framework that can now be formulated - with the help of data that was not available when Talageri was working on his book - most of these difficulties disappear. So it is possible to get a picture of the ancient age of the Vedas described in the Puranas, by studying the two together. I shall return to this point again, for this is now of paramount importance in any reconstruction of ancient history. As I read it, Talageri's main contribution is that he shows that the Puranas actually contain a fairly complete account of ancient India going back some one hundred generations before the Mahabharata War. Anyone familiar with the past century or so of Indological research will have no trouble recognizing this as a profound transformation in perspective. The truly radical point of departure in Talageri's approach is the fact that he does not accept the Rigveda as the starting point chronologically of the Aryan civilization of India. He shows convincingly that the Puranas preserve the earliest historical accounts, and the Vedas, in fact, confirm this. (Again it is important to note that this was much more radical five years ago when his book first appeared, than it may seem today.) And what makes all this possible is the discarding of the now discredited Aryan invasion theory. To his credit, Talageri does not stop there, he goes on to provide an alternative. The first step in Talageri's reappraisal is to analyze and explode the Aryan invasion theory. There are at least two incarnations of this theory: the first is the nineteenth century version propagated mainly by Max Muller and his followers. This is essentially what is followed by the Indian establishment historians, and also what is found in most history books today. Then there is its more modern incarnation created among others by Gordon Childe, and whose principal exponent in recent times was probably Marija Gimbutas. This is the so-called `Kurgan theory', more of which later. Talageri subjects these to a critical examination and shows them both to be baseless. His analysis of the so-called 'Kurgan' theory of Indo-European origins is on the whole more valuable than his critique of the old version which has been effectively demolished by others. His criticism of the Kurgan theory is masterful. This theory identifies the material culture associated with the 'Kurgan' gravesites dated to the fourth millennium BC in South Russia and the Pontic region as belonging to the proto Indo-Europeans. It is now enjoying some academic vogue as the potential homeland of the Indo- Europeans. What is astonishing about the whole thing is that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these people spoke Indo-European; there are no literary or linguistic records. But this has not deterred its proponents from claiming that they must have spoken proto Indo-European. And yet this identification is sought to be established by equating Kurgan archaeology with Indo-European linguistics! As Mr. Talageri perceptively notes the whole exercise is nothing but an example of "the extent to which any facts can be made to appear to `prove' any hypothesis by an entrenched and predetermined scholarship." The author next looks at the linguistic evidence which I'll try to summarize in as simple terms as possible. Though they exhibit great similarities, linguists hold that the Dravidian languages of South India and the so-called Indo-Aryan languages of North India belong to different language families. The similarities however cannot be brushed aside; they are by no means limited to vocabulary and lexical borrowing. A good sentence in a Dravidian language like Kannada for instance, when literally translated, becomes a good sentence in Hindi or Bengali. Also, Kannada has the same number of cases (eight) as Sanskrit while even the oldest Greek has only five. Nonetheless we can accept that the classification of languages as they now stand to be useful. But problems arise when linguists, and even worse, historians with preconceived notions, invoke 'linguistic evidence' to reconstruct the history and chronology of peoples and nations that existed thousands of years ago. This is a point that cannot be overemphasized. Indo-Iranian is the main and the oldest member of the Indo-European group - or so the linguists tell us. Even the oldest records from outside India - the Hittite and the Mittani of West Asia - already show Sanskrit and not any hypothetical proto Indo-Iranian. And Vedic Sanskrit is by far the oldest Indo-European language known. Indian records are on the whole the oldest of Indo-European records. So any attempt to find an Aryan or Indo-European homeland outside of India at once runs into formidable difficulties. The only way to get around this is to claim that the Vedas describe their invasion from a foreign land as was done by the early invasionists, or fabricate a scenario disregarding all evidence as later done by the Kurgan advocates. The result often is grotesque logic. As Talageri points out in the case of one invasionist: The very idea of considering the present-day distribution of Indo- European languages as making a "strong prima-facie case against the theory that India was the original home of the Aryans" is indicative of the bias involved. (p 68) That is to say, the very fact that the oldest and the greatest concentration of Indo-European speakers happens to be in India is used as proof that the languages are not native to India! One could similarly say (with more justice) that the present day distribution of English is enough to make a very strong prima facie case against England being the original home of the English. And it is a similar story with Dravidian speakers. They are now concentrated in South India, but they are claimed to have migrated from the north, having come from "their original homeland in the islands of the Aegean and along the tracts of mainland along the Aegean Sea - Greece and Asia Minor" as Chatterji put it (p 68). It is probably unnecessary to point out that Chatterji's claim was based on no evidence at all. So the thrust of the methodology is the argument that when a language or a group of languages is concentrated in a particular area, its speakers must have come from some place else where there is no trace of the language. This essentially is the logic behind making the Harappans Dravidian speakers. It is impossible to refute an argument when it rests on no evidence. (Jha's decipherment of the Harappan script has demolished it.)