Vedic Origins : Children of Danu

39 Responses to Vedic Origins : Children of Danu

1. brian brady says:

   07 August 2005 at 17:12 PM

   very interesting site…any outside evidence to support textual claims? paticularly interested in the celtic claims of lineage to spain (milesius) and egypt (nectonibus)…the known pharohs of that name are one thousand years off of the timeline 1700 B.C.? anyone have a comment on this relatively major inconsistency?

   sincerely

   brian a brady
   kamloops, b.c., canada

   Reply
2. bev davis says:

   10 October 2005 at 16:43 PM

   The Celts and the Vedics are certainly related as both are descended from the protoIndoeuropeans, but the Celts were already in Spain before the Aryans were in India. It is also interesting to note that the Mittani were the farthest most west of the Aryan speaking group, and that Nefertiti might have been one of them.

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3. tom donnelly mitchell says:

   14 March 2006 at 13:51 PM

   certainly the danavas ancestors were present here in the pacific northwest, before the flood,,(missoula )see my photo#010.the crone in cartoon like profile ,a larger face,and….this one should be turned…i see proto sandskrit and a lot more…stand back and look…thanks,tom

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4. WaltDe says:

   01 September 2006 at 12:15 PM

   Very good reading. Peace until next time.
   WaltDe

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5. Sharad Sharma says:

   06 October 2006 at 02:14 AM

   My Dear Friend ,
   I am an Indian and consider myself of Aryan origin. I am in partial agreement with u.Indra is son of Aditi & not Danu as u have pointed out. The major differrences between them was of topreserve traditions. Indra wanted to preserve the word of Bramha(vedas) unlike Danvas who wanted otherwise.You have rightly pointed out that Europeans were considered as Danvas . Even now , devote Hindus point them as Asuras (don’t feel hurt) Europeans also term other as uncivilised.There has been fight among devs&danvas. My point is clear when the presence of vedas is cited among Indians (tyhat Indra wanted to preserve traditions). Also Zeus is Knowns as Dhaus( as u have called him Tvstha) the father os Indra.. The Europeans were later called as Yavanas in india . I have always felt that there is some kind of distinction between us &europeans . Your theory has finally endrosed it.
   Kashchap had 13 wives of which many different childrens were produced. Also , manu was not only the sole producer of atleast Indians are concerned . Unlike Europeans , whose myths considers them as children of Zeus &some ofhis sisters,we (read Indians) are childrens of 11 sages excluding Manu . some of them are Angira, Vashisstha,Pulatsya,Kratu,Marichi,Bhrigu(the most graceful of them) There wives has been provided by Brahma(The child of supreme soul ) Hindus consider as there creater.
   I think I have finally given many points .
   I am sorry for if I would have hurt oyur feelings

   Reply
6. Aine MacDermot says:

   06 October 2006 at 02:21 AM

   You aren’t hurting my feelings, I’m not the original author of this piece, but I did get the permission of the author to post his article here.

   It was written by Dr. David Frawley (Pandit Vamadeva Shastri), American Institute of Vedic Studies
   PO Box 8357, Santa Fe NM 87504-8357
   Ph: 505-983-9385, Fax: 505-982-5807
   http://www.vedanet.com/

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8. P. K. Garg says:

   04 December 2006 at 10:37 AM

   Interesting article. To me also Persia seems a place where much of proto-Aryan history unfolded. However, how this reconstruction based on literure only can be proved/disproved scientifically is very difficult to say. Faith, particularly of Indians and India-lovers seems to fog truely inquisitive inquiry into such issues.

   Reply
9. Neville Ramdeholl says:

   10 December 2006 at 16:34 PM

   Vamadeva, Namaste. The theory that the Indus is Aryan , I think is untrue and ridiculous. The main reason I am saying this is that for the following reason: If the Indus possessed horses as so many writers, archaeologists and historians maintain, then why there is no trace of horse trade between the Indus and the other civilizations such as Sumer and Mesopotamian and other countries? There are no documents, or attestation of horse trade between the periods of 3500-2700 BC. There are various written sources of Indian and non-Indian which states that the cities of the Indus has sites of supposedly horse remains and bones. How could the Indus alone possess horses at a time when the other civilizations did not? There has also been detailed written sources of books and Internet articles of trade of other products and natural resources from the Indus to other countries as Sumer, Mesopotamia, Dilmun, Magan and other Arabic countries but these sources fail completely to show any evidence of horse trade among them. Thus, the Indus civilization is not of Aryan origin.

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10. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    09 January 2007 at 22:02 PM

    Will anyone reply to me and prove that the Indus is of Aryan? Can anyone provide the evidence that the Indus is or was Aryan in origin? Readers, historians, archaeologists, writers of the Internet etc, Dinesh Agarwal and others?

    Reply
11. Aine MacDermot says:

    09 January 2007 at 22:08 PM

    From Wikipedia:

    Etymology

    Indo-Iranian ar-ya- descends from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *ar-yo-, a yo-adjective to a root *ar “to assemble skillfully”, present in Greek harma “chariot”, Greek aristos, (as in “aristocracy”), Latin ars “art”, etc. Proto-Indo-Iranian *ar-ta- was a related concept of “properly joined” expressing a religious concept of cosmic order.

    The adjective *aryo- was suggested as ascending to Proto-Indo-European times as the self-designation of the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language itself. It was suggested that other words such as Éire, the Irish name of Ireland, and Ehre (German for “honour”) were related to it, but these are now widely regarded as untenable, and while *ar-yo- is certainly a well-formed PIE adjective, there is no evidence that it was used as an ethnic self-designation outside the Indo-Iranian branch. In the 1850s Max Müller theorized that the word originated as a denotation of farming populations, since he thought it likely that it was related to the root *arh3, meaning “to plough”. Other 19th century writers, such as Charles Morris, repeated this idea, linking the expansion of PIE speakers to the spread of agriculturalists. Most linguists now consider *arh3 to be unrelated.

    The Old Persian form of *Aryāna- appears as Æryānam Väejāh “Aryan Expanse” in Avestan,[1] in Middle Persian as Ērān, and in Modern Persian as Īrān.[2] Similarly, Northern India was referred to by the tatpurusha Aryavarta “Arya-abode” in ancient times.

    Reply
12. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    28 January 2007 at 01:10 AM

    : To: Mr.Shrikant Talageri and others. :
    The idea that the Aryans are an indigenous lot is absurd as the theory that the Indus is Aryan. It is all plain for everyone to see despite the hundreds of books , articles and internet reports, that the Aryans are an intrusive people into India.
    For sometime now I have been reading several articles of the case for and against AIT/AMT versus OIT. Although the Indian historians and certain archaeologists have more or less proven that there was no invasion per se of India, by Indo-Aryans , the fact still remain that India was and still is occupied by the descendants of the Vedic Aryans whose culture and history make up what is India today and including those from the Indus civilization. A detailed reading and study of the various opinions by those historians and archaeologists on this website, especially from India still maintain and doubt that the horse and chariot came from outside the country and who insist that horses and chariots are indigenous to the land. I have perceived that there are three major points which mostly the Indian historians are stubbornly refusing to concede and that is :

    (A) They continue to hang on to the dead theory that the Indus
    civilization is Aryan and indigenous.

    (B) Despite the mountain of official documented and textual
    evidence from various sources eg: Andronovan proven Indo-
    Iranian sites, evidence from the Vedas itself, lack of evidence of
    horses and chariots in ancient India before the advent of the
    Aryans etc, Indian officials and historians still attempt to castigate
    the authors and doubt the veracity of the documented and
    archaeological evidence.

    (C) The clear absence of archaeological and attestation of horse trade
    between the Indus Civilization and its neighbors in the time period
    of supposed finds of horse remains.

    We begin from the beginning by placing the Aryans outside of India rather than being an indigenous people living thousands of years in India as so many Indian scholars believe. It is a fact that the Avesta places a home for the Aryans who sojourned outside India, which they called Airyana Vaejah or Aryan Homeland. The Aryans came through the Northwest of what is now today the state of Pakistan. That old natural pass called the Khyber. This same pass was used by different conquerors to conquer India in later times. This is a northwest route , not an east or west or south route and you can see from the geographical map where the Aryans forded and settled for a time calling it the Saptasindhu of which Five Rivers of the area were Shutudri called the Sutlej, the Vipasha or Vipash now called the Beas, the Parushini now called the Ravi, the Vitasta now called the Jhelum. Two main rivers were added called the Indus or Sindhu and the Sarasvati making it the Seven Rivers. The following points shows why the Aryans are intruders to India.

    a) Despite, the writings and articles of Indian historians, archaeologists and Internet writers, these are the only rivers other than the Ganga and Yamuna mentioned in the Vedas. If the Aryans were indigenous people, why didn’t they mention the Kaveri, the Krishna, the Bhima, the Godavari, the Narmada, the Chambal and the others?

    b) Why didn’t they mention all the other civilizations such as the Indus, and those of Southern India etc?

    c) Some may have noticed that the Vedas descriptions of their life and society only is confined to the northwest of India. There is no mention of areas of Bengal, Tamil Nadu or Maharastra and other areas.

    d) Do the historical departments of India and other such cultural organizations have the names of the original rivers , because these are mostly Rigvedic names. If the Harappans occupied the Indus civilizations for so long, surely they must have names for these rivers.

    This is the only way the Aryans could have come into India and that is through the Khyber Pass between the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you look closely at the geographical map of the region, the SaptaSindhu area with all the headwaters of the seven rivers draining from the Siwalk and Himalayan mountains , and here is where the Aryans first come into India and Afghanistan with the rivers Kubha, Gomati and Krumu. It formed part of the culture of the Swat region with the rivers Suvastu, Gauri, Kusava and Trstama. The Swat culture is the first settlement or region occupied by the Aryans. If anyone whether it be Talageri or other revisionists who believe that the Aryans migrated out of India or that they were indigenous, is without archaeological foundation. Unlike the AIT theory which has some trace of Aryan intrusion into India, the OIT theory has not a single iota or fragment or sliver of any archaeological attestation of such a venture. In his book, ( The Rigveda, A Historical Analysis. Page 83 Internet Publication) Talageri writes :

    that the evidence of the hymns of the Early Period of the Rigveda, as we have already
    seen locates the Indo-Iranians further east: i.e in the area from (and including) Uttar Pradesh in the east to (and including) the Punjab in the west. It is not , therefore, Central Asia, but India, which is the original area from which the Iranians migrated to their later historical habitats.

    The only thing wrong with the Talageri proposal is that the Iranians and Indo-Aryans had already separated from each other. The Indo-Aryans came into the Swat area thence to the Indus civilization. Most probably it was in Afghanistan that the Iranians branched off from the Indo-Aryans as the Aryans came into the Swat area. There they established their culture, bringing the first horse to India. Make no mistake the Iranians knew about the Seven Rivers area since they mentioned it in their Avesta book. Talager’s book as well as others are now outdated with the new discoveries on the Russian steppes of Central Asia. The archaeological sites of horses, chariots over a vast area are what now archaeologists and historians are now confirming are Indo-Iranians origins and recently the startling discovery on one of these sites of a human figure with a horse’s head as exactly written in the RV reveals one important thing. That it was an incident that occured during the former life and travels of the Aryans on their way to India. Treated as a myth and dismissed by some as such, it revealed the former home and culture of the Aryans and legend had become fact.

    The article written by Brigadier Kaul Rattan Online called (Aryan Sarasvat Brahmin of Kashmir) states the following on the location of the early Aryans in India as they intruded into the subcontinent. He states:

    Bharatvarsha was the ancient name for the geographical area South of the Indus
    (Sindhu) extending from the Northern to Central Bharatvarsha (Hindustan) including.
    geographical limits of Kashmir, East to the Western Sea and bounded on the North
    and South by the Himalaya/ Hindukush/ Sindhu and Vindhya mountains
    respectively.

    Perhaps Talageri would like to explain what the Iranians were doing in India since they were supposed to be on their way to Persia to colonize that country. The earliest hymns reveal that the Aryans were traversing the foothills of the Siwalk and the headwaters of the Seven Rivers. That comes from Book 2 the oldest of the Aryan hymns. It is logical that the oldest hymns which contain the earliest travels of the Aryans is factual and uncontested and that early journey ended in the Swat culture in northwest India. From here at Pirak, was discovered the remains of the first horse and cremation, a custom and innovation never before experienced in India. It is baffling that Indian historians and writers continue to argue for an Aryan Indus when the evidence reveals that the Indus people practiced an Afro-Austric custom of inhumation whilst the new intrusion of a new people reveals the IE rite of cremation.

    The Cemetery H Culture. This culture is the next stage of the continuation occupation of India from which the culture takes its name, area H at Harappa.This culture developed out of the northern part of the Punjab Seven Rivers system and occurs around the last stage of the Late Harappan civilization. or Localisation Era. The revisionists familiar writings of a continuity of civilization and ethnic biological theory is that the Aryans mixed and assimilated with the inhabitants which is expected and thus the skeletons discovered does not necessarily mean that the inhabitants are foreigners. The distinguishing features of this civilization are:

    1) The use of cremation of human remains.

    2) Expansion of settlements into the east.

    3) Rice became the staple diet.

    4) Urn burials which indicated the presence of a new people.

    Here in this northwestern area of the Saptasindhu of India, the new intrusive people called the Aryans founded two cultures the Swat and Cemetery H still hugging the vast riverine system dominated by the Indus and Sarasvati, rivers which they worshipped in the Vedas. The Aryans spent a short sojourn in Afghanistan where they began to compose the Vedas and this is evidenced by the mention of the Kubha and Krumu rivers in the Vedas. Some historians say that there is no archaeological evidence that the Aryans but these rivers do flow into the Indus and left the name of Aryana, the Vedic name they gave to Afghanistan. Some sources believe that Harappan archaeology and Vedic are the same maybe so because the Aryans dominated and ruled the day. There is no such thing as Vedic Harappans. Why? The Harappans are a different people as well as their civilization for theirs are Dravidian in origin and did not practice the cultural rites and customs until it was imposed on them. Harappa was an Indus city built by an indigenous people of India. Historians cannot prove that the city of Harappa owned horses and chariots before the advent of the Aryans. How more foreign can one get?

    Looking at the map of the SaptaSindhu with its riverine system I sometimes wonder why the Aryans chose that area to make their first settlements. Of all the places in India why did the Aryans chose to come here? Why this particular northwestern area? What routes did they follow? Why not any other area of India, say in Bengal or south in Tamil Nadu? Perhaps there are some solid reasons why they did choose this northwestern part of India due to easy access and that one easy access was the Khyber Pass which is the only available pass in the area. The Khyber Pass opens up to the vast plains of the Pontic region which in turn leads to the steppes of the huge Russian grasslands. A glance at the map shows that it is the only logical route from the Sintashta/ Androvono burial sites. How did they hear of the SaptaSindhu with its fertile alluvial valleys and plains? Perhaps by accident they did happen onto the subcontinent or it is possible that these northern tribes heard of the rich empires of the south and came for its booty. Indeed , they came as freebooters. The south with its prosperous empires were attractive targets for these nomads. If the Aryans are an indigenous people , why did they just develop in the northwestern corner of India alone and not in other parts of India? Why are the other tribal peoples of India silent in their chronicles of their presence in their midst? All these considerations only point to their foreign nature and customs which is quite different from those indigenous tribes already living in India. The Aryans most likely came from the Mittani territories which is the general opinion of experts who reject the possibility that they came from the Indian subcontinent. Their association with the horse, fire cult and worship, cremation and the worship and resemblances of gods similar to IE and Greek gods points to an outside migration and not an indigenous one.

    Time and again the readers and followers of revisionist scholars question the presence of the Aryans in India and seem baffled that a nomadic people as they should produce such a brilliant religious doctrine and language. This is nothing new since skeptics of all colors are found in all disciplines and studies of history , the arts and other such academic fields. Well, the Indus people did produce an astonishing civilization far in advance of its time and very modern and exquisitely built in retrospect to its time and people. The Indus people are Stone Age people using more or less primitive stone tools, and yet they produced something of value remarkable for such an age traded, maintained it and also produced or invented writing without attending scholastic classes. Thus, they used their intelligence and wit to match their brilliance, a remarkable achievement for a people still living in the mists of antiquity. They proved that the Age does not matter but the ability to imagine and to comprehend what to do with the tools at hand and those were very primitive tools so to speak.

    Yet the readers and revisionist followers never seem to question the Indus civilization and its achievements but in most Internet articles and publications , they question the Aryans’ ability to produce such religious hymns and near perfect language. These readers can’t believe or don’t want to believe that the Aryans composed and wrote down such beautiful verses for religious purposes in a matter of centuries. So why can’t they? The Indus people used their imagination and resources to build a civilization out of the mists of antiquity. Then, why can’t the Aryans despite being nomads gave India its great religious legacy so too did the Prophet Mohamed gave Arabia , Islam and they were all nomads on the move.

    The Aryans after they entered Afghanistan began to compose the Vedas and from the moment they left Afghanistan , for India they continue to compose the verses of the Vedas. The method they used , they were masters at. They chanted everything from memory led by the Artharvans, the high priests. Chanting the Vedas for thousands of years is the method the Rigvedic Aryans used to preserve their legacy. Yes, for those readers who doubt that the Aryans could not have created such beautiful poetry whilst on the move , that is the method they used. They committed it to memory. They used their ability and natural human recources even though they were nomads just like the nomads coming out of the sands of Arabia. Those Indian doubters should be aware of this since this legacy were passed down to them from their forefathers. The rivers they encountered in India from the headwaters of the mountains they named and having known the Sarasvati in Afghanistan , they gave the Sarasvati its name. As the river began to dry up the name remained in the Vedas simply because it was taboo to change the sacred hymns. And this brings us to the area already dominated by the Aryans. The oldest books of the Vedas which contain the early intrusion of the Aryans contain one natural phenomena which seemed to have bedeviled the Aryans as they struggled to make a living in the Seven Rivers area. And that is the rampaging floods that they wrote so much about India’s raging rivers pumped up by the Monsoons every year are mentioned by the Aryans. Here are a few from Bk 2 alone:

    Book 2 Hymn V11 Verse 3 through streaming water floods.

    X I Verse 2 floods great and many

    XII Verse 12 Seven great floods to flow at pleasure

    XIII Verse 1 rapidly the floods wherein it grows

    XIII Verse 12 Turviti heldest still the flowing floods

    XV Verse 5 the mighty roaring flood he stayed from flowing

    XIX Verse 3 sent forth the flood of waters to the ocean

    XXI Verse 5 from him who speeds the flood

    XXV Verse 3 He, mighty like a raving billowy flood

    XXXV Verse 3 Some floods unite themselves, On every side the bright
    floods have encompassed

    Book 3 Hymn 1 Verse 4 Him , Blessed One, the Seven strong Floods

    LIII Verse 9 … restrained the billowy river etc

    With the above , one can imagine the conditions and wild landscape , huge raging rivers and deep forested jungle and craggy mountains and fertile plains that the Aryans enountered in the land of the Seven Rivers. The constant stream of overflowing rivers and raging tides and flooding the land must have tested the faith of these people. The monsoons of India must have created havoc with the beliefs of the Aryans since these heavy downpours flooded the land and the rivers making them deadly, especially the Indus and the Sarasvati. In parts the Sarasvati must dried up during the years but the monsoons torrential downpours which is phenomenal and extensive surely would have created awe in the world of the Aryans. The Sarasvati’s name was transferred to this great river in India for as the people of the Indus disappeared from history, the newly intrusive Aryans must have applied the name to the river. With the fall and decline of the Indus civilization , the river which probably had a name was unknown to the newly arrived Aryans and so they gave it the name of Sarasvati, which they knew in Afghanistan. I have read somewhere that revisionist Frawley once said that it was not possible that the Aryans could have brought horse and chariots to the northwest of India. Well, they did and the earliest books from 2–7 is full of horses and chariots. The northwest of India also contain fertile which would have accommodate horses and chariots and Frawley’s et al have sought to disinform readers and supporters of the migration theory that the horses and chariots mentioned in the Vedas were symbolic connected with their religion. How come the Aryans of the Tarim basin used chariots and horses to occupy parts of this area surrounded by rugged mountains and built a civilization? But that is another matter. Despite, being troubled by rising flood waters, monsoons, cold weather, the Aryans continue to invoke their most popular god Indra to help them fight off enemies and foul weather. Time and again Indra is called upon to help Aryan prayers to persevere and we divert here for a moment for a chronology of the prehistoric Aryan origin. The ridiculous Frawley et al theory of an indigenous Indus Aryan civilization does not have any foundation whatsoever. Lets begin with the Vedas and the Avesta. Vedas means Vedic Hymns so too do the Zend Avesta. which implies or stipulates that the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians were one people living somewhere before in an ancient homeland. This suggests :

    a) They are new nomadic tribes to the subcontinent.

    b) The lifestyles of the Vedas and the Avesta are the same

    c) They shared the same language, customs, rites, etc.

    d) They used the same technology such as horses and chariots, which was
    unknown at that time in the region.

    e) They worshipped the same gods and both religions were alike in their
    formative stages.

    f) They belong to the same IE family of languages and ethnicity etc.

    g) Scanning the pages of the Vedas and Avesta in detail exposes the fact that
    the people does not have any knowledge of a vast subcontinent.

    h) Their immediate geography is limited to certain areas and there is no
    knowledge of other parts of India in that earliest period.

    i) The presence of names of areas and rivers in Afghanistan reveals that they
    knew the geography of the country and is the only other country they knew.

    j) Whereas, the Indus people knew of other countries such as Sumer,
    Mesopotamia, Dilmun, Magan, and some Arabian countries.

    k) There is not mention or knowledge of the above mentioned countries in the
    Vedas or the Avesta.

    l) We can compare the invasion of the Aryans like the migratory methods of the
    Mexicans to the US, the only difference is the Aryans took over India.

    m) The Aryans had to come from somewhere , they just could not have
    evolved from the vast subcontinent. There is no evidence to support
    that, especially in the south, where the population is very much darker
    than those in the north. It is reasonable that if the Aryans were in India
    for thousands of years, interbreeding would have produced a uniform
    white skinned or fair skinned nation. America is only two hundred years
    old and the Black population is turning white skinned already. With its
    thousands of years of history, one can imagine India would be like.

    n) The Aryans who tarried in the north and northwest for thousands of years
    were a segregated lot and very clannish. To make it worse their caste
    system for a while preserved their color. So we can see that the north
    bore the brunt of the migration as they assimilated.

    o) The Androvono, BMAC and other cultures smacks of the strong smell of an Indo-
    Iranian origin with its vast burial and cremation sites of horses, chariots, wheels
    and other practices mentioned in the Vedas. The Dadhanyac horse head legend
    now brought back to life with its discovery on the steppes of Russia. The burial
    relics associated with this cultures fits nicely with IE customs and rites and
    the migration route from the shores of the Black Sea to the Hindukush to the
    Swat culture and the only mention of a foreign country called Afghanistan. The
    Aryans knew the Kubha river and others. The Swat culture is the most
    likely locus of the earliest IE presence east of the Hindus Kush of the bearers of
    the Rigvedic culture (Wikipedia Page 5 Textual References.Internet Article)

    p) The Aryans in the Vedas have not mentioned any knowledge of being familiar
    with any people or tribes or their customs to suggest a past habitation.

    q) As proven outsiders and the clinching evidence that the Aryans were that is the
    evidence portrayed by the Swat Culture. Here there is a major change in the
    Swat Valley with the introduction of new ceramics, burial sites and cremation
    remains in urns which is a custom of the early Vedic people from the Sapta
    Sindhu which is reminiscent of the Trojan cremation urns. IE people are known
    to practice this custom and not people descended from Afro-Austric lineage.
    Then, there are horse burials and trappings. Do the revisionists accept this?
    Thus, attempts of proponents of continuity to portray the Rigvedic culture as
    native to the subcontinent, such as identification of horses and chariots in the
    Indus art have little or not acceptance from Indologists. (Horse and chariot,
    Page 11 Wikipedia. Internet Article)

    r) For those who like to quote the Nadistuti Sukta and its praise of rivers to base
    their argument for an indigenous Aryan civilization, should look again. The sages
    who compiled this list, suggests that the Aryans only knew these rivers in
    northwest India and Afghanistan. Nothing here suggests a hinterland geographic
    knowledge of the rest of the subcontinent.

    The migration into India as shown above is ironclad and I will now go on to change topic and
    make a few comments here on the supposed theory of the Out of India model as presented by Mr. Elst’s emerging model as presented in Wikipedia page 3. Internet Article.
    Mr. Koenraad Elst writes:

    The Out of India theory as suggested by him holds that the Indo-Iranians were
    remnants of the Proto-Indo Europeans culture that resided with the Indian
    subcontinent in the 5th millennium BC. After the split of the Proto-Indo-
    Iranians. The Iranians would have migrated towards the Hindu Kush and
    eventually towards the Central Asia making their discovery of the chariot during
    this period.

    I am amused by his speculation which also include a map showing his theory how the
    PIE language spread from the Indus Valley outwards from India! Mr. Elst and his colleagues still believe in an Aryan Indus and and indigenous IE civilization of India and that it spreaded outwards despite the lack of convincing evidence of habitation, custom, rites etc that these people supposed to have left behind in Indian burial sites such as horses, chariots, pottery language etc. Mr. Elst’s emerging model is weak and has no foundation. Lets see:

    According to Mr. Elst a very highly educated and disciplined person in this craft, believed that the PIE originated in the Indus, that the Aryans left India to discover the chariot in Asia and spread the language in Europe etc. Then,

    a) How can a people of India migrated outside to Asia to discover the chariot,
    when 6,000 years ago the sites of the Russian steppes such as Sintashta and
    Petrovka and Kazakhstan were already buried in their burnt graves?

    b) If and when they got back to India why are there no evidence of horse burials
    or evidence of of chariot usage in India before the advent of the Aryans?

    c) Why did they not have evidence of the use of the horse and chariot in the
    Indus which is a complete blank in its archaeological sites. Did they come
    to India and used the horse and chariot excluding the Indus?

    d) How can PIE originate from the Indus civilization when the seals and script
    does not represent a spoken language per se?

    e) New analysis of material from the graves from this area shows that these
    chariots were built more than 4000 years ago , strengthening their case
    for their origin in the steppes rather than the Middle East. ( Remaking the
    Wheel-Evolution of the Chariot. Science Times Book of Archaeology. NY
    Edited by Nicholas Wade 1999. by John Noble Wilford 1994)

    Poor Mr. Elst et al , they cannot seem to account properly for the absence of the horse
    and chariot at the Indus, hence an OIT. This subject of the horse and chariot has thrown
    their axis out of tilt and they can’t seem to get it straight.
    I’d like to make a point on the subject of horses to those who believe that the Indus was a center for horse breeding from the inception of the Indus civilization circa 3500BC. Indian historians and some archaeologists have written a host of articles of horses at the Indus and reported findings of bones and remains. Also, we hear how the Indus empire was far flung in its trading with other nations such as Sumer, Mesopotamia and Arab lands. We read of the vast trading commerce of the Indus people with their sailing ships and we read of the products they traded with other people. Also , most of the Indian writers and historians state how vast deposits of horse bones are found in most Indus cities. If all this is true , then why in the trading documents are there no mention of horse trading of Indus ships with the other nations? Where are the detailed descriptions of the color of the horse, the breed of the horse etc in the trading lists of the Indus traders? Where are the parts of the chariots that was traded from the Indus to other cities and civilizations? Why are there no details of horse trading from the other lands , especially from the Arabs? How is it that the Indus ALONE possessed the horse from 3500BC, and no other civilization or city has no textual evidence of its presence within that time? The Indus was indeed overflowing with bones, asses and onagers. The Indus civilization drew on an inexhausted supply of asses and onagers from the Rann Of Kutch where the ass is known as khurs. This is where the Indus people derived the source of their transport , because the Rann OF Kutch was overflowing with asses and onagers and they were used for transport, pack animals, dray carts along with the oxen and bulls. Even today the area still depends on the Rann Of Kutch for its pack animals. So the Indian historians and archaeologists should stop looking in every nook and cranny of the Indus for horses. They didn’t exist. If any Indian archaeologist or historian could find any textual evidence that the Indus traded in horses with their neighbors , I’d recommend him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Indian scholars and historians who fervently believe in an Aryan Indus love to include in their books and pieces supposed evidence of horse bones, remains and fauna in the cities and sites of the ancient Indus. But none so far can prove that evidence exists that the Indus possessed this technology and as I have said above that if the Indus people knew this animal , they would have left evidence of horse trading in those ancient times. It is amazing that several historians and scholars give glowing accounts of reasons why the Indus is of Aryan origin but omits the main animal– the horse and worse yet go into detail about Indus trade and yet cannot produce attestation of horse trading. Every conceivable item, article and artifact is detailed for the trade industry for the Indus but the trade in horses is missing. Dr. Subhash Kak, a devotee of Aryan Indus in his article: “Vedic Elements In the Ancient Iranian Religion of Zarathushtra” ( Pages 51-56) makes a comparison of the two religions but ominiously leaves out the horse and chariot but includes the cow. This is cynical of the writings of historical revisionists who write and publish articles as the true history of India arguing for an Aryan Indus but omits the horse and chariot. This kind of argument never clinches their theories. Or if they do mention the horse and chariot, they rely on the false layer of deposits of ass bones found in the Indus as evidence of the animal’s existence. A horse rich Aryan Indus existing from 3500BC should leave us and archaeologists a vast amount of remains of a horse culture, a culture of attestation which should exhibit the training and breeding of horses, textual evidence of horse management, use of the horse as a mode of transport or for martial purposes and written documents of horse trade with the surrounding empires. None of this is available in the ruins of the Indus and while the Aryans and Trojans are superb examples of horse breeding, of which the evidence attests to this, the Indus are not known to have seen a horse and therefore are not horse breeders. There is no pictorial evidence of interaction or integration of the horse and chariot in the evidence produced so far in the Indus. There are no seals or scripts attesting to people of the Indus driving chariots pulled by horses as we have seen in other societies. If any animals were used in the Indus civilization , they were amply supplied by the limitless herds of asses and onagers roaming the Rann Of Kutch, known as khurs. As G.L Possehl the archaeologist said,

    “As far as I can tell, there are lots of asses documented at the Indus
    settlements , but not domestic horses.”

    Who else can be more right? All this has been confirmed by Meadow and Kenoyer the two leading archaeologists in the Indus excavations and most times they are irritated by the revisionist scholars whose enthusiasm carries they them away. This is what the various Hindunet articles are trying to suggest that the donkey carts of the Indus is a point of origin for the development of lightly rolling war chariots of the Vedas. They are employing lexemes, morphemes, phonemes and various other subtle ingenuous and insidious word building in these articles in order to fit the Aryans war machine for an Aryan Indus society when the archaeological evidence does not produce such a picture. Other internet articles state that:

    Carts were pulled by oxen and asses in Sumeria between 3000 and 2750 BC
    By the time of the Copper Age , 3000BC solid wheels and axles were used.
    There are records of two four wheeled carts pulled by oxen and asses in
    Sumeria and Mesopotamia between the above date. Also many model carts
    have been dug up. (www. Techitouk.com)

    The King of Sumer rides out in cart pulled by 4 donkeys for war.
    (www.answerbag.com)

    If the reader notices , these are the same time period which so called horse bones are found in the Indus and this brings up the following questions , which I am sure no historian or scholar of a revisionist nature will attempt to answer.

    a) If there was an Aryan indigenous civilization with the above dates, where are the
    cremation sites or urns from this time period? The Trojan civilization produced
    cremation sites and urns from this early period.

    b) Why is there no evidence of a deep and vast horse culture in the Indus?

    c) Why are there no remains of sacrifice and buried chariots which is the custom of
    Aryan people?

    d) If the Aryans were indigenous to India why is there an absence of such
    documentation in the texts and chronicles of other neighboring clans and tribes?

    e) Why is there only mention of cremation in the Vedas and not in other
    chronicles?

    f) Why is there only mention of horse sacrifice only in the Vedas and not in other
    chronicles of the other people?

    g) Most important of all, how can the Indus possess horses in a vaccum at a time
    when other empires did not have them? Did the Indus alone have them? If so
    why are there no evidence of trade?

    h) The Indus as a civilization has failed to demonstrate or illustrate its familiarity with
    horses in a two fold manner:

    The absence of interaction and integration of its people, history and
    archaeological remains with the horse and chariot.
    There is no pictorial or illustrative carvings, engravings or writings that allude to it
    familiarity of the horse with its people. eg. there is no pictures of people
    together with horses and chariots, no writings or seals that reveal the
    breedings, categories or worshipful reverence of the horse or allusions to rich
    people owning horses or horses used as transport in the cities.

    Secondly, the Indus civilization as a cluster for habitation for survival has no
    evidence that the horse existed as an integrative icon in its religion, culture ,
    lifestyle or as a tool for transport or for martial purposes. Its absence as an
    integrative icon or symbol in the society of the Indus is complete. Historians
    and archaeologists as AK . Sharma and Bonkoyi are dead wrong. They cannot
    prove that the horse was used for trading nor can anyone else connected with
    the Indus. The Indus has no evidence of trading in horses and thus its
    integrative absence is true. Also, had the horse existed in the Indus , its rulers
    would have certainly traded its value, used it for personal and martial purposes
    etc. I challenge anyone to provide evidence that the Indus traded horses with its
    neighbors between 3500BC-2500BC when supposedly horse bones and
    remains were found in its soils of its cities.

    I once posed this question to Mr. Elst about the question of evidence of horse trade from the Indus with their neighbors. His answer was not satisfactory nor was his attitude conducive to me in his reply. The trading of horses as an industry or occupation in the Indus is non-existent and revisionist writers bask in the glory of the greatness of the Indus in their trading relations with their neighbors. Dozens of books , articles and publications are devoted to the huge trading industry of the Indus with the distant empires and cities in faraway lands. We also read about the Indus people , especially sailors and merchants and traders lived in Sumer, Mesopotamia and other foreign lands and carried on trade with their counterparts. This is the time period that where most revisionist theories date the supposedly Aryan Indus from 3500BC to 2700BC in which horse remains and bones are plentiful in the Indus cities from Ropar in the north to Surkotada down south.and even further. Then there is the familiar terracota finds of horse figurines and such things that some archaeologists and historians label as true findings of the existence of the horse at the Indus. Mr. Elst’s long list of horse bones and remains is grand and convincing if one does not delve further into the history of the Indus. Here is a piece from the Internet dated July 9 2003. titled

    Trade and Economics of the Indus: The Harappan Tradition.

    A complex system of trade networks made the Harappans rich and guaranteed
    access to exotic goods. Internal networks moved every imaginable good throughout
    the Civilization. Shell, dried fish, and pearls from the coast; copper, tin, chert,
    precious metals and semiprecious stone from the hill country, and grain, animals,
    and wood from the rural areas flowed from one area to another, resulting in a
    nearly homogenous distribution of goods across the face of the civilization irrespective
    of origin. Networks extended into Central Asia, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian
    Peninsula. These networks exported every good and luxury available in the
    Harappan Civilization. It is unclear what was being imported, but it is likely to be
    wool , fish and grain.

    Subsistence and Trade

    Subsistence and trade settlements lay on the flood plains of the Indus and Gha
    riverss, where fertile land was annually refreshed by innundation. Recent research
    has shown wheat, barley, pulses, millets, fibers/ oilseed, melons ,coucumbers,
    squashes , and water buffalo, goat and sheep provided animal products.Floodplains
    lack raw materials, urban economies provided surplus for exchange to oil. Kenoyer
    proposed a series of trade or resource routes linking the urbanized centers with
    areas of lapis lazulli, carnelian, steatite, shells, chert, tin, copper and gold. These
    materials processed were redistributed within the Indus region and the surplus was
    traded to the Persian Gulf states as far as Elam and Mesopotamia.
    (Welcome to the Human Past Page 5&6 Internet Article 12/14/06)

    I will now continue with the Indus and its trading partners from the Internet article which is quite a thick document and has the following headlines. Of course, I am only extending the discoveries of the trade of the Indus and the neighboring cites and empires. I am doing this to point out a few instances where trade is claimed by the authors of this document dated 12/5/06 and has three separate titles. This will show precisely what was traded for the three different regions. viz:

    Central Asia, Mesopotamia and Sarasvati Sindhu civilization

    Sarasvati Sindhu civilization is one tip of the triangle linking
    with the Central Asian and Mesopotamian cultural areas.

    Bactrian – Margian – Archaeological – Complex BMAC

    From Bactria peculiarly the article does not say that trade was done with the Indus and the author assumed that,

    ” there is every ground to assume the dissemination from it of metal-works (celts, daggers,
    pins) and specific forms of earthenware (stemmed vases, saucers etc) in the eastern
    direction down to the valley of the Indus, by way of exchange, trade and cultural
    contacts. This period embraces the existence of the Harappan civilization and does
    not presuppose the arrival of new tribes. This is strikingly proved by the Harappa
    culture itself, which demonstrates a continuous line of development without any
    invasions from outside. We shall merely remark that southwestern Iran and possibly
    Caucasus emerge as a zpne where numerous metal articles come to be produced(mid
    2nd millennium BC) while Iranian Khorassan is doubtlessly the main venue for their
    penetration into the southern areas of central Asia, Bactria and possibly the valley of
    the Indus.
    (Viktor I. Sarianidi, 1979, New Finds in Bactria and Indo-Iranian Connections, pp 643-659, South Asian Archaeology 1977, Naples)

    The above information as I said looks peculiar to me. Here we have an assume trading of goods between BMAC region, Iran, and the Caucasus in the 2nd Millennium and only the mention of metal articles are noted for trade. This region is famous for horses because this is where the Aryans came down from the Black Sea area

    The Horse in Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization

    States dating Tepe Hissar IIIB a little before 2000 BC … skull of horse found and
    furthermore the horse is alleged to have been domesticated at Sha Tepe much
    earlier still thus anticipating it appearance at Boghazkoy in Central Asia Minor in the
    Hittite period…..

    What does this tell you? The theme running through this paragraph is that the skull is found at Hissar IIIB and domesticated at Shah Tepe says just that and nothing else. It does not say anything about the Indus. It does not connect the Indus with ShahTepe nor does it say that the horse was known at the Indus. The next few paragraphs from:

    AK Sharma, The Harappan horse was buried under the dunes of … in
    Puratattva…..In the Harrapan levels over here have been found clearly
    identifiable terracota figurines of this animal.

    (Pages 3,4,5 and 6.Mackay FEM , MEL Mellowan 1965 Early Mesopotamian and
    Iran, London Thames and Hudson p. 123

    Vol 1, page 289, Ak Sharma, Bulletin of the Indian Archaeological Society No 23,
    1992-93 pp. 30-34, Mackay FEM Vol 1 p 289 Wheeler Indus Civilization 1968
    p. 92 Cambridge. Prof. S Bokonyl, Director Archaeological Institute Budapest 13
    Dec 1993 , Dr Joshi,. Archaeological Survey of India, S. Rao, and B Nauth of
    the Zoological Survey of India 1985 p. 641, Lal, 1998 p. 112 , Gupta 1979,
    Vol. 2

    The professional names quoted above have put their signature and approval to the supposed horse finds at Surkotada, Mohenjodaro, Kolidhwa, Mahagara, Kachchha, northern
    Baluchistan, Lothal, Nausharo, and other areas. The carbon dating for these finds are from 3500 BC to 2315 BC and further down. Finds include supposedly, teeth, bones of true horse, terracota figurines, upper and lower cheek, incisors and phalanges or to bones, intermaxilla fragment , crib biting, faunal remains, cheek teeth, spur or protocone and upper molars of these supposed horses. What a find! Now, let us for argument sake say that all these finds are true, then we can come to only one conclusion and that is the following:

    a) Why aren’t there evidence of horse trade with the neighbors ot the Indus?

    b) The bloody place seemed to be overrunning with horses and yet we can’t
    find one engraving or etching on the seals and script. Why?

    c) How come the Indus have so many horses and her neighbors don’t have no
    evidence of trading in horses, no documentation to attest to this activity with
    the Indus.
    d) Horse trade among IE people is a lucrative trade but the supposed Aryan
    Indus seem to be bereft of this activity. Wht?

    e) It appears that all the experts who contributed to this article cannot seem to
    tell the difference between asses, onagers and half asses and the true
    horse.

    f) None of the trading partners as far as the Arabian lands have no evidence
    that they possessed the horse during this period of 3500 BC and 2700BC

    g) All the Internet articles written by the revisionists only allude to finds of
    horse bones for a particular area and not directly to the Indus civilization.
    None of the articles proves that direct horse bones and remains have been
    found at the Indus.

    h) Most likely and the only area which supplied the Indus and its partners with
    the ass , onager and half assses was from the great resource of the Rann of
    Kutch, on which great herds of these animals grazed. This is the area where
    the asses came from to supply the transport industry. Also, find a few horse
    bones, if they are true horse bones ,does not make the the Indus Aryan. This
    was a prized animal of the Aryans and highly valued, traded, breeded and
    worshipped and cared for. We see nothing of this in the history of the Indus.
    I see nothing in the seals or scripts saying or describing a horse, its breed, its
    uses or indications that the horse was used at the Indus.

    The Rigvedas is replete with horses and for those who still maintain that the Indus civilization is Aryan, here are a few examples of Aryan knowledge of horse breeding:

    BOOK HYMN TITLE VERSE DESCRIPTION

    2 1 Agni 5 givest noble steeds

    2 1 Agni 16 with kine and steeds

    2 2 Agni 10 valor with the steed

    2 2 Agni 13 kine and steeds

    2 10 Agni 2 dark steeds or ruddy

    2 11 Indra 6 two Bay steeds

    2 11 Indra 11 Indra, thy Bay steeds

    2 18 Indra 18 thy two Bay Coursers

    3 7 2 heaven hath Mares

    3 35 Indra 3 Tawny Horses

    3 36 Indra 9 Lord of the Tawny Coursers

    3 42 Indra 7 by thy Stallions

    3 43 Indra 4 let thy two Bay Stallions

    3 44 Indra 2&4 Lord of Tawny Steeds

    3 30 Indra 2 with thy Bay horses

    3 43 Indra 23 a sluggish steed men run not with the
    Parvata the courser, nor ever lead an ass before
    a charger.

    5 53/64 Maruts 3&9 They came with winged steeds
    Asvins with your winged steeds

    5 56 Maruts 6 the bright red mares

    5 59 Maruts 5 like steeds of ruddy color

    The Aryans were super horsebreeders and they knew it like the back of their hands the categories of horses that they used for transport and war, there was the Bays, the Coursers, the mares, the stallions and the steeds chargers They also knew flying horses which connect them with their Greek cousins with Pegasus etc. Can a supposedly Aryan
    Indus civilization have any evidence to show that they knew such details about horses? Not likely. So why do the revisionists still cling to the sterile imagination of an Aryan Indus when such details of an animal was not in their conception of an Aryan Indus? Where can one find such detail about horses in Elst’s supposedly Aryan Indus? All this is followed in the Vedas of details of the intricate part of the chariot which again is not found in the seals and script of the Indus. If the Indus knew the horse I still fail to see any evidence of detailed inscriptions or documents that they were familiar with the subject. The seals are blank as well as the script and this idea of an Aryan Indus is a very strange vision that has gripped the revisionists and every article and book they write has this idea as a background story. The Indus civilization do not only has to prove that the horse existed there but has to show further attestation of its presence. And that brings me to the most important concept of its presence in the Indus which is two fold.

    1) The revisionists will have to show its interactive role in the daily lives of the
    people.
    2) The revisionists will have to show evidence that the animal was an
    integrative part of its civilization.

    The Indus civilization had the necessary resources to leave evidence that they were familiar with the horse as an integrated factor of their society. Since its discovery site after site has shown nothing that could tell archaeologists that the horse was as integrated as the other animals such as the oxen and bullock and asses. There are plenty of asses , onagers and half asses as GL Possehl says but no evidence of the domesticated horse. None of the discoveries has exposed the real form of the horse or nary a close resemblance. That has gotten as far as the onager which are being mistaken for the real thing. The walls of the buildings also , unlike the Egyptian walls and tombs contain absolutely no etchings, paintings, carvings etc of the true horse. These people could write and it is strange that they never left us any image of the horse in their society. Therefore, one can only come to the conclusion that the horse was not a familiar sight in the eyes and knowledge of the Indus people. There are no references to the animal in the Indus society nor in its belief system or religion if any existed. From day one the archaeologists have been digging up the bones of oxen , asses , bullocks , onagers and half asses which was plentiful at the Rann Of Kutch and from where the Indus people solicited these animals. But nothing that points to the presence of horses has ever been found and they realized that the absence of a horse culture and its trappings was not there. The other part of this concept is the interactive side of the equation. Other civilizations have illustrated how they interacted with their animals but this too is absent from the Indus. There are no carvings, illustrations, seals and other such graphic themes that would tell us that the Indus people was using this animal for transport purposes , war, travel or for royal journeys as is done in other societies who knew it. This is understandable in that the horse did not reach the Stone Age societies of these civilizations at this time in antiquity. We see no drawings of the Indus people riding horses or references to it, no seals containing imprints of its form nor of its people driving chariots pulled by horses. All this is absent as well as the absence of stables and stalls for the animals and workshops to care for the vehicles and animals. Horses need a special kind of care , they have to be well fed, groomed, medically fit, trained and a host of other things. It is a point well taken that had horses existed at the Indus , they would certainly would have had horse trade with the other cities and empires but this too is absent, quite the opposite to the superb Aryan horse breeders and trainers. Nowhere are there any evidence that the traders indulged in this practice and there are no reference to the different kinds of horse breeds which is the first important thing a horse trader looks for. No documentation exists on this subject. Indus society has no reference in its daily lifestyle that point to the animal was interacting with their lives.

    People who want to change the history of India, must not only do away with something they find offensive or repugnant , but they must replace it with something of value and authentic. An Aryan Indus is not authentic nor is it being replaced with something of value. It is being replaced bya lie. But alas, other than the scholars and historians who really believe in an Aryan Indus , there are others who follow their misguided paths based on their wrong assumptions and mistaken history of India. Other than the history of the Vedas, the geography of the Rigveda is also under fire to suit the claims of those who advocate the Aryan Indus theory. And that is what it will remain a theory.

    I now refer Mr. R Goel’s ” Geography of the Rigveda” published on the Internet on 17/2/03 where he attempted to convince his readers that the Aryans of India are indigenous and that the Indus is Aryan. I personally think that it is an excellent attempt to prove the above but it has it flaws. For one, on page 15, he writes:

    That the historical movement of the Vedic Aryans across the Sutudri
    Vipas rivers at the time of Sudas, can only be a westward movement.

    Now, why would the Vedic Aryans who is supposed to be indigenous to India stop in this area which contains the Cemetery H Culture? This Culture is described by Wikipedia.org on page 1 as the following:

    The distinguishing features of this culture include:

    a) The use of cremation of human remains. The bones were stored
    in painted pottery burial urns. This is completely different to the
    Indus civilization where bodies were buried in wooden coffins.

    b) Reddish pottery , a completely different pottery to the Indus.

    c) Expansion of settlements into the east. This is evidence in
    contrast to Goel’s east to west scenario. His scenario has
    no attestation of such a movement.

    d) The cultivation of rice as a crop by the Aryans who learned it
    from the Indus people etc.

    This is a classic example of the overlaying of a new culture over the old one and of course
    the Aryans went through a process of assimilation, linguistic, cultural and political changes from the people they met from the Indus. Mr. Goel’s article of Aryans coming from the interior has no foundation since he cannot provide textual attestation that this is so. Whereas, evidence can be provided that the Aryans did come into India and left their mark in the form of culture , cremation, religion and political apparatus etc. But the major flaw in his article is the omission of the horse in the section that he discusses the animals of the Vedas. From page 31, he began to cite the names of animals found in the Vedas and they are the elephant, the buffalo, the bison the peacock and the spotted deer. On page 33 he states:

    Further, the names of these animals are purely Aryan Indo-European: the
    elephant for example, has four names each of which has a purely Aryan
    etymology.

    All well and good , but what happened to the horse? Mr. Goel. It seems that you have either forgotten the horse, overlooked it deliberately or chose to ignore it completely. This is the same journalistic transgression most revisionist writers do for the above reason. It is fascinating to see some of them composing histories of India and more or less just devote a few lines to the horse and chariot or chose not to. Maybe I should bring it to the attention of Mr. Goel, if he hasn’t noticed it already that his Rigvedic rivers are all confined to the north-west of India and he cannot provide any substantial evidence that the Aryans existed in an indigenous state in India. So if they did as he and other revisionists claim , then where are the attestation for this? Why are the revisionists only arguing for an Aryan Indus from the perspective of textual evidence from the Vedas, supposed evidence from the Indus, from the geography of the Vedic rivers, and not in return for evidence from other parts of India? Can Mr. Goel supply any evidence of Aryan indigenity for the following points?

    a) Any concrete evidence of Aryan habitation in India that
    can say that Aryans lived here?

    b) Any attested sites of cremation and burial of Aryans before 1500BC

    c) Remains of their pottery and artifacts.

    d) Textual evidence of the supposed Aryan neighboring tribes that
    can verify that Aryans once occupied the land before their
    supposed migration out of India.

    e) That horses and chariots existed in India before the advent of
    the Aryans in 1500BC.

    If Mr. Goel can provide these answers to the above then he has a case along Talageri et al. These writers and historians though they mean well, are screwed in their logic of trying to paint the Indus as Aryan. Their points of history of India is okay except for a few ideas that are flawed. One is that the Aryan Indus existed since 3500 BC and the other is the migration out of India. The other is the problem of the Sarasvati river and the other is the vexing one of the horse and chariot which has so far eluded them and thus making their theories outdated and impossible and illogical. First we will discuss the Sarasvati river which , since the satellite discovery of its disappearance has been jumped on by the historical writers who are using it to clinch their case to overthrow the Aryan occupation of India. We can see from the location of the Cemetery H civilization and settlements that the Aryans did not come from the East but from the north where they sojourned in Afghanistan. They had to be because Afghanistan ancient Aryan name is Arianna and this is an Aryan name and it is from this region where the Vedic people came from from their journey from Central Asia. One can believe that the rivers of the north-west of India were not named with their present names when the Indus civilization reigned supreme. What these people called the rivers we don’t know. But where did the Aryans come up with the name Sarasvati? It only had to come from some river they knew before and when they came into India and saw the river it was already drying up or in it last stages. They called it Sarasvati nevertheless from the one they knew back in Afghanistan. But one may ask why then should they glorify a river with such praise and epithets when probably it does not deserve it. The only logical reason is two fold:

    1 ) the Aryan custom of chanting and singing praises

    2) the sacredness of the religion and the taboo of changing
    words and religious articles of faith

    This may sound far fetched but the Aryan custom of chanting praises and verses still exist today as deeply as ever in every facet of its religion. One must remember this is a time of antiquity , an age of deep religious faith, in which verses and certain words chanted in good faith cannot be changed with the snap of a finger and is resisted by the sages, bards and seers of the tradition. We see this even today in the exact measurement of the fire altars which still have the exact length and with from thousands of years, of which not an iota has been altered. Thus , when the Aryans were in Afghanistan the local river which they named Sarasvati were praised and this was written down in the Vedas thousands of years before but was chanted as the same and they knew that the one in India ran to the sea. Nevertheless, they applied the same chanting praise and epithets to it. Perhaps, the Indian Sarasvati still packed some power , since the seasonal monsoon rains and floods probably ravaged the land before it petered out. That is why the Vedas still has the written words because it was handed down thousands of years , exactly as it was first spoken by the priestly Brahmins so long ago. I do not think for one moment a religious people as the Aryans were would worship a completely dried out river with such praises nor anyone in their right minds. Now,we turn to Mr. Goel’s theory of an east to west movement for indigenous Aryans of India which is all wrong for I will provide a chart grid to show why this is so viz:

    F i r s t M e n t i o n O f S a r a s v a t i I n V e d a s

    Name of Historian Earliest BK Hymn Verse Name First Mentioned Of

    Witzel 2 41 16 Various Dieties Sarasvati

    Revisionists 6 61 1 Sarasvati Sarasvati

    F i r s t M e n t i o n O f H o r s e s I n V e d a s

    Name of Historian Earliest BK Hymn Verse Name First Mentioned Of

    Witzel 2 1 5 Agni Steeds or Horses

    Revisionists 6 2 8 Agni Steeds or Horses

    F i r s t M e n t i o n O f H o r s e s A n d S a r a s v a t i I n BK ONE

    Earliest BK Hymn Verse Name

    HORSES 1 3 6 Asvins

    Reply
13. Aine MacDermot says:

    28 January 2007 at 02:28 AM

    Neville Ramdeholl : Thank you very much for that. You seem to know more about that history than I do.

    The Altai Steppe region is where many fairly recent discoveries of the earliest “horse culture” peoples are being discovered and slowly excavated. Their nobles were buried with their chariots and wagons, horses and servants, and even their weaponry. Because of the permafrost, many of these artifacts remain in relatively good condition while still frozen, and can be studied, photographed, and documented.

    Reply
14. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    29 January 2007 at 02:09 AM

    Thanks Aine McDermot, for reading my article. Its the kind of evidence that many so-called highly educated and intelligent historians and writers seem to ignore. Because this is the area where the Aryans of India came from. The evidence is there and they have eyes and see not.Thanks again for your kind words and insight.

    Reply
15. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    24 April 2007 at 15:17 PM

    The Characteristic Features of Indo-Aryan India in an Indigenous
    Afro-Dravidian India

    The prevailing view nowadays is that from the prospective of the revisionists , the Indus Civilization is somehow Aryan in origin. All the writings that have gone beforehand have attempted to show that the Indus civilization from 3000BC originated with Vedic Aryans, despite certain innovations being absent such as the horse factor. Still, a whole gamut of writers with splendid education no doubt fell for this scenario and still continue to fall into this belief. Despite the proven archaeological evidence writers even up to today still argue and discuss with ardent fervor of this supposedly Aryan Indus and books, articles and magazine pieces continue to roll off the presses to display the newest evidence that is of Aryan nature. The new concept now being employed is the area of historical continuity of culture etc that certain extremist writers and historians try to portray this Indian civilization as THE Indian civilization and that the Aryans were part and parcel of the builders of this civilization, a civilization that is completely different from the customs and rites of the pastoral Indo-Aryans. Here is what Mr. Iravatham Mahadevan , a respected Indian linguist and scholar said about the Indus civilization in a recent interview from an online article dated 3/29/2007 and titled the ‘The Ancient Indus Valley Script’ :

    “Well, you can say from this that the Indus civilization itself is Aryan and the Dravidian hypothesis is wrong. I do not believe that is the correct answer. We do not have the horse in the Indus Civilization. There is no evidence for the wheeled chariot. There is no evidence for the spoked wheels. The Rgveda, the earliest document of the Indo-Aryans has no mention of great cities like Harappa or Mohenjaro-daro, so the only other possibility is that a some like cult based on some kind of hallucinogenic drug, crushed and filtered out of a plant and drunk ritually, must have existed in Harappa and that it was taken over by the Indo-Iranians and the incoming Aryans.” I make this clear that this is not Asko Parpola speaking, who is despised and a fearful figure in the world of those Indian scholars who wince every time he opens his mouth. I supposedly think that there are so many instances that can describe Aryan India because so far despite all the historical books, articles, magazines and other informational data, a no submission case has been made by a body of writers and those who want to paint over the Indus as Aryan. I still see the Aryans as an invading force despite the political correct language of these extremists. There is still a strong overwhelming Vedic presence in India and they refuse to acknowledge it. A keen reader will notice one thing with those who believe in an Aryan Indus. In every publication whether it is a book, article or magazine, the extremist scholars who are considered to be experts on this subject beat daily upon the Aryan aspects of the subject but never seem to be clear about the ramifications of the Indus civilization or its influence. For example, to impose their belief they theorize and write that the Vedic Aryans were in India from since 3000BC in order to accommodate the deficiencies or shortcomings of the Indus. Everything is pinpointed from the viewpoint of the Aryans , even the Sanskrit language is chopped up to accommodate the Dravidian indigenous language never the other way around. Apparently, this conceptual writing and viewpoint is done this way because the Indus, despite its greatness could not produce the horse, the chariot or the wheel. These are the thorns in the side of those who advocate the premise of an Aryan Indus.

    The Aryan people that lived on the banks of the Sarasvati River sang praises and worshipped this great body of water that ran from the mountains to the ocean. If one just close one’s eyes and imagine for a moment the pastoral camps that dotted this great Indian river, bustling with campfires and sounds of chanting and the smell of herds of cattle and horses as the Aryan people settled in their new lands. The Sarasvati was the central role for the life of the newly arrived Aryans. One can imagine the horse sacrifices and cremations and other rites and customs now new to India and that will lay the foundation for the future generations. Cremation, this new form of burial and funeral custom , never seen before in India must have been fascinated the indigenous people at first as the Aryans buried their dead as they brought in their warriors from raids from vast expanse of pastures and forests and mountains in the search of booty and riches. Yet, there is something lordly and noble as the Aryan nobles cremated their dead of those who die in battle and would normally receive special funeral honours. There is something lordly , indeed heroic about the great pyre flaming to the heavens, as the high priests and sages chanted to the heavens as they convey the soul of the dead to the Pitris. The Sarasvati must have witnessed many such events of Aryan life of heroic death and accumulation of wealth and treasures, a quality ingrained in the Aryans. The Saravasti was in its prime with tremendous flow of raging waters, swift and floods as the monsoon increase its volume from mountain to sea. But as far as I can see, the Sarasvati was not the name of the river on which the Indus cities were founded. It has an ancient Dravidian name.

    Thus, we began our investigation of the Sarasvati River, our Aryan Mother and its impact on the life of the people who occupied the northwestern part of India, giving its life waters to the Aryan settlers. But we just can’t begin our story with theory that the Sarasvati is found in India. We want to know most important how it came to be called by its Aryan name. We know by fact that the Indus people knew the Sarasvati but by another name in their own Dravidian language but after they left the region the Aryans took over and renamed the great river which was still in its glory. The name Sarasvati is a Sanskrit description of the river and there is no mistaking that and which is not contested. We also know that the mythological name Sarasvati is Sanskrit in origin and is an ancient river that is mentioned in Vedic hymns. The Nadistuti hymn in the Vedas says that the Sarasvati lies between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west. and it is later mentioned in the Mahabharata that it dried up in the desert. From the Wikipedia: “The name Sarasvati is an Aryan Proto-Indo-Iranian saras-vnt-t meaning “she with many pools” (Sanskrit saras- pool , body of water”) cognate to Old Avestan, Harahvaiti. In the younger Avesta, Harahvaiti is identified as a region rich in rivers and its Avestan name is thought to be the origin of the Helmand river system. Most scholars agree that references to the Sarasvati in the Vedas refer to the Ghaggar -Hakra river while the Helmand is often quoted as the locus of the early Rigvedic river.” (Page 1 Sarasvati River 3/8/2007)

    It seems that the Aryan invasion or migration goes back to its early stages in Afghanistan where the Indo-Aryans brought the name Sarasvati with them to India. But the notion of most of the Indus historians today seem to distort and submerge without compunction the name of the Sarasvati, in classifying it with or describing or lumping it with the Neolithic Indus civilization as on entity. This is an effort by scholars who should know the difference of historical dates and events that history is a sequence of affairs with subsequent beginnings, dates, places , events and endings which cannot be revised. One such geological method that disproves this is the method of carbon dating. Anyone can push back dates and events but if the carbon dating proves to be otherwise then it is foolish to do so. I refer and take task with Dr. S. Kalyanaraman’s zealously written internet article called ” Sarasvati River: An Overview ” (circa 3000 to 1500 BC) dated OCT 1997.
    I refer to the chapter ‘ Sarasvati: Economy and Polity.’
    Now this is getting into the realms of unreality as the doctor dates the Vedic period from 3000 BC as the background for Vedic occupation of India, where as we know that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Aryans was nowhere around that time and the Indus settlers were never described as Aryans. Dr Kalyanaraman’s description is ridiculous. Here as I mentioned before he is carrying out the typical revisionist’s view of how they regard the Indus civilization as Vedic. There is no history of how the Vedic people come to start the civilization. The Indus civilization is described as the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization , a metals economy on the banks of the Sarasvati despite the pages of the Vedas has no such description. He writes thus on the
    ‘ Metals economy of the civilization’ The trace impurity pattern of copper from the Khetri copper mines nickel and arsenic content compare with the Harrapan artifacts. Ganeshwar copper mines ascribed to the third millennium BC. (Sikar district Rajasthan) are located in the Drishadvati {Ghaggar -Hakra- Wahinda) system. RC. Agrawala made a remarkable discovery in 1977: an examination of the 60 flat copper celts (20to 25 cms Long) from a ‘hoard’ in Neem- ka -thana in Sikar district of Rajasthan were associated with the Indus Valley complex. Ganeshwar is about 15 kms from Neem-ka -thana; at this place, copper axes had been made more than four thousand years ago. This site is 250 kms. from Kalibangan and 160 kms from Bhadra. Both Kalibangan and Bhadra are in Ganganagar district of Rajasthan. By 1979, after further diggings , 1000 copper objects ( arrow heads, rings, bangles spear heads, chisels , balls celts) hand been found in Ganeshwar. Arrowheads, thin blades and fishhooks and other characteristic Indus civilization artifacts were also found. Rich copper ores are also said to exist in Afghanistan, at Tezin, east of Kabul. in the Shadkani Pass.” Page 36. He continues , ” The Early Harappans seem to have been involved in the minerals and metals economy. It is notable that sixteen furnaces were discovered on Mound F of Harappa. The civilization is most significantly a metals economy: excavations have produced : 2000 metal artifacts at Mohenjodaro and over 1000 at Harappa. The metals were copper bronze, gold silver, lead and more rarely electrum. Some necklaces or belts contain hundreds of metal beads. Metal tool types were: points, knives, chisels, needles. Tin bronze alloying was used for knives, axes and chisels. Metals additives were not used for tools such as points, razors and fishhooks. (Page 37)

    The above has ramifications for the theory of an Aryan Indus as Dr Kalyanaraman is espousing with his political correct language. The attempt to merge the Vedic and Indus civilizations is pathetic. The industrial engine that drove the Indus is as distinct as it was based on urban developments in great contrast to the nomadic life style of the Aryans. Thus, I can safely draw from the following cultural distinctions.

    (a) Copper found in the Indus is the primary metal that accompanied the different stages of the Indus civilization from 3000BC.

    (b) Since there is no evidence of Aryan presence in India, from 3000BC it can be safely say that the Indus used copper extensively for this was the primary metal used by neolithic peoples from this time.

    (c) Copper is used for weapons and other artifacts and was the mainstay for the Indus culture and its future development.

    (d) As a Neolithic society they used fish as a daily diet and this is evidenced by the extensive use of fishhooks found there.

    (e) The Vedic Aryans used beef as a diet and never used fish.

    (f) The extensive description of industrial use of metals, buildings, urban culture and society is in stark contrast to Aryan nomadic pastoral society.

    We can see that nowhere on the banks of the Sarasvati do we have evidence of cremation in the chronicles of the Indus as in the seals or scripts so how can the scholars illustrate in their articles that the Indus and Vedic are one? This is done as reasons tabulated above and for now we will leave it and go on to Minerals: references in the Rigveda: (Page 40)

    The author attempts to show that the pages of the Vedas reflects the minerals and mining that the Indus people extracted for a living. Nothing can be further than the truth. He distorts the need for wealth of the Aryans as the same as the Indus people which is false. In the pages of the Vedas , the Aryans method in search for wealth is quite different from that of the methods employed by the dwellers of the cities of the Indus The pages of the Vedas speak of the Aryans perennial greed for personal enrichment in the accumulation of a richer lifestyle. They indulge in oblations and prayers to the gods for the advancement of their tribes using such words as treasures, riches, cattle, horses, gifts, spoils and gold. Cattle raids and clan wars dominated their lifestyle as the custom of all nomadic people one would expect to behave. On page 44, Dr Kalyanaraman described the way the Indus city dwellers accumulated their wealth and it is quite different from the lifestyle of the Aryans. One such method was by way of trade. He writes:
    “There is overwhelming evidence of maritime trade by the archaeological evidence and discoveries of the so-called Harappan civilization which can now be re-christened Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization. ( How can the Indus civilization be named Sarasvati when the word Sarasvati is an Aryan name and the Indus is a Dravidian civilization?) Some beads were reported to have been exported to Egypt from this valley and the Sumerians had acted as intermediaries for this trade which extended to Anatolia and the Mediterrean…. Bahrain island , known as Telmur was the trading entrepot between Indian and Mesopotamian civilizations. Ur was in contact with Makkan and Telmun. RV describes the saving of Bhujyu from mid- ocean and of a shipwreck. (So ye , with birds, out of the sea and waters bore Bhujyu, son of Tugra, through the regions. Speeding with winged steeds through dustless spaces, out of the bosom of the flood they bore him. (RV.V1.52.61) How can this be? How can winged steeds be existing at this time in Indus literature and history when no such symbols or engraving of such images are completely absent from the civilizations? These are shades of Black Athena where the author tried to portray Egypt as the source of Greek history despite the absence of horses in its history. The vast trading and commerce empire of the Indus along with mining of ores and minerals are only part of the accumulation of wealth by the busy Indus people. There were also jewelers who provided people with riches and apart from these the fishing industry , weaving, pottery and bead making also flourished to make the Indus people very rich. Dr Kalyanaraman’s article submerged the two civilizations as is now the favorite method by revisionists using Vedic pages and descriptions. Notably absent is the interactive and integrative role of horses and chariots. Nowhere it is shown that the Indus civilization made use or knew of this technology in its writings or culture. The theory that the Indus is Vedic is ridiculed and dismissed by Ms Romila Thapar in her lecture ‘The Aryan Question Revisited ‘at the JNU Academic Staff College in 1999. page 19-21. She writes:
    ” The Vedas is a pre- Chalcolithic culture it does not speak of any urban centres. It certainly does not speak of any settlements which have the characteristics of Harappan cities. For example there is no reference to citadel areas and residential areas, there is no reference to drainage systems or to streets or to granaries or warehouses or to a public bath or to a sophisticated exchange system or weights and measures on a graduated scale which was known as and described. To me there are the essential characteristics or Harappan urbanization and all these characteristics are absent in the Vedas. You may have people saying ‘Oh” but there were coins in the Vedas and they mention the word ‘niska.’ Now niska can be a coin as was in the later period but during this period judging by the descriptions it was simply a little decorative piece in precious metal. These essential characteristics that I have mentioned none of these are referred to or described in the Vedas. The people of the Vedas are agro-pastoralists with small scale village societies essentially indulging in cattle raids and predatory raids. If you read the hymns the plea to the gods Indra, and Agni, whosover it is, is help us go and attack this ‘dasa’ village or this ‘dasapura’ help us get the cattle of the ‘dasa’. It is always the cattle that they are wanting. There is not question of help us go into battle and take over a whole territory. It is limited to small areas of attack. They are mobile pastoralists and the cattle raids and the predatory raids are surrogate for warfare. There are in fact no great battles or campaigns. Even the famous battle of ten kings is over the change that is taking place that is being brought into function over the river waters of the Ravi. It is not as if there is huge encampment on a plain and the two armies have got together and are fighting each other. None of that. It is something very much localized and controlled. Wealth as far as the Rgveda is concerned , is computed in horses and cows. You only have to read the ‘ danastuti’ hymns to realise how strong this notion is of may I be gifted ten thousand horses and sixty thousand heads of cattle. Exaggerated figures wildly exaggerated figures. Nobody had then thousand horse to give to begin with. But this is what is wealth. The centrality of the cow in words like ‘gavasti’ , the desire for cows which is also used for skirmish or a raid or ‘gopati’ as the head of a clan. The cow is also used as an item in barter and human life is calculated in terms of cows. Given this migration becomes extremely important because of the need to be continuously searching for two things– good pastures , access to water for the animals. We often forget we keep on talking about how water is important for irrigation for cultivators, but water is equally important for pastoralists, because animals need to have access to water and the shifting river courses in the Punjab obviously would create problems. You have a river like the Sutlej which is constantly changing its shape and size. So what are the pastoralists on the banks of the Sutlej to do. They have to moving all the time. Once they are moving , they are looking for good pastures, and if somebody else is over there , there is a fight and they throw them out. And the prayers are frequently for rain for this is fact a semi-arid region. Possibly even the migration eastwards was for better pastures. The centrality of pastoralism is also seen in the many terms that are used for cattle, cows, and the relative infrequency of terms used for grain and for crops. Secondly, very importantly, the eating of beef, of the flesh of the cattle is restricted to special occasions and ritual occasions. Now this is a prime characteristic of pastoral societies. This comes through very clearly in Evans Pritchard’s work on the Nuer and the work of innumerable others who worked on pastoralist societies. Herders, animal herders, do not eat their animals indiscriminately. And they are particularly careful about conserving the good livestock of the herd because the future of the herd depends on it. And so the killing of the animals for food is usually connected with ritual occasions and with very special occasions. And this is exactly so in the Vedas. Wherever there are references to the eating of beef, it is always in association either with the yajna or with the coming of the great or some special occasion. Furthermore, pastoralists have what has been called symbiotic relationships with agriculturalists. And the symbiotic relationship is that frequently and it’s at two levels one is , of course, at the level of exchange. The pastoralists bring in their products and the agriculturists have their products and there might be an exchange. For instance, dairy products may be give to the agriculturalists, while grain is taken from the agriculturalists by the pastoralists. But there is a much more subtle and intensive interrelationship. For example when the crop is harvested and the field is covered with stubble- usually six inches high after the harvest has been cut. That’s when the pastoralist come in with their herds and the animals feed on the stubble. And the animal droppings manure the field and then the animal herd will move on to the next village and do the same. An this is an unwritten convention between the agriculturist and the pastoralist. And this is extremely important because one can’t talk about the two being separate societies- they’re integrated societies…… The wealth that is raided and brought back is then distributed at the meeting of the vidatha where the vis and the rajan– the two categories of the people that constitute the main society of the Aryas and the RigVeda– are gathered and there it is partly a functional occasion, partly a ritual occasion. THERE IS ALSO NO DESCRIPTION IN THE RIG VEDA OF LARGE SCALE TRADE. Page 22 continues thus: What was their relationship to the sedentary agriculturalist once they arrived in the fertile areas? One was the immediate relationship which was to raid the local people and the Vedas is the great text describing a constant wish to raid and get wealth. It would seem that the Aryas are not very successful to being with because there is this continuous plea to the gods, please come and help us,please go and kill our enemies for us, please do this and please do that. It is as if there is a bewilderment about how they are to set about doing it. Then gradually that changes to a much more settled relationship. We are told in the Satapatha Brahmana that the asuras , and by this time the term asura is being used in the negative sense, were the cultivators and were extensively settled. So if there is a symbiotic relationship between the cattle herder and the cultivators where the cattle are coming and feeding off the stubble and manuring the fields and produce is being exchanged, there would be an exchange of other things –language, possibly inter marriage, one does not know rituals, three areas where usually exchange takes place. And all of this would also encourage bilingualism. The languages begin to change very rapidly and you would require then someone like Yaska to write an etymological text to explain the words because the meaning of words was becoming indistinct. And finally have a Panini who says that I am going to write the rules of the language so that more changes are not introduced and the language does not go off the rails. No, he didn’t actually say that. But that is the assumption behind an exercise of that kind. Did the existing sedentary agriculturalists appeal to an incoming pastoral chief for protection? This is a question I would like to pose. That you have these sedentary groups, they are people coming in who are attacking cattle keepers and sedentary groups. Did these sedentary agriculturalists who couldn’t protect themselves and remember now that the Harappan system has collapsed, the cities have declined, the protection which the Harappan system would have given to these agriculturalists is not guaranteed. It may have existed , it may not. So what does the sedentary agriculturalist do? Doesn’t he turn to the chief of this raiding tribe and say , please don’t raid me, let’s negotiate a settlement. So what I’m trying to suggest is that the pastoral chiefs come in at a level of dominance in terms of their relationship with the local population. But it is not a dominance based only on conquest. It is not dominance based only on raids. It does include the possibility of some other kind of negotiation. This would then have galvanized the long term relationship between them.”
    Also who could be quoted next but that doyen of Indian archaeology Prof. Gregory L. Possehl whose articles and contributions to this discipline has no equal. I shall use his online article dated 11/2/2006 to strengthen the arguments for an unwarranted existence for the Indus so Aryan civilization so far in 3000 BC. Mr Possehl’s account is derived from the archaeological record and as such is carbon dated and tested for its authenticity. The other scholars seem to runaway with the preconceived idea that the Indus existed from the above date. This series of lecture consisted of four parts and I shall narrate the first labeled the:

    Foundations of the Indus Civilization (Feb 18)

    The main theme of his 2nd lecture was that, despite all kinds of continuities with previous settlements in the region, IVC suddenly sprang into existence in the course of single century (2600-2500BC) as a planned urban environment inspired by a coherent ideology shared by a newly emerged elite. Before this period, there are recognizable differences in the archaeological record between regional domains such as Kulli, Sindh ( Mohenjo-daro), Sorath (chalcolithic) Ananta, Cholistan (Ganwerwala), Eastern (Rakhigarhi), Harappa, North- Western, that become unified during this period through a common civilization grid whose characteristic stamp is town planning , A ‘founder’s city’ ,Mohenjo-Daro. for example is the only Bronze Age city where one can still explore the streets, houses because they have all been preserved in baked in brick(which composes only half of Harappa, and is used only for drains and wells in Lothal), and was, like (not so) ancient Alexandria and modern Chandigarh (in Punjab) , conceived as a plan before it was built. The ideological founders apparently made a clean break with the local past for older townships were abandoned and new cities built from scratch. In Cholistan , for example, of 37 early Harappan sites 33 were abandoned; and 132 of 135 mature sites are on virgin ground. In ceramics, again, there is a sharp rupture between the typical Kot Diji early and mature Harappan pottery and artifacts. This frenzied urbanization was made possible by an amazing virtuosity in technological innovation, especially in pyrotechnology , that reveals itself in varied products; stoneware, faience, etching baked brick construction , wells double cropping, and the incredible reach of their deep sea maritime exploration. Critically developing earlier characterizations of the IVC peoples by John Marshall ( austere, peaceful, bourgeois merchants, etc) and Wheeler& Piggot (uniform, ordered, regulated, monotonous, without individuality etc). Possehl, after dismissing all speculations about their being governed by priest kings as in Sumer/Akkad, emphasized instead the universalizing fundamentalist ethos of a vigorous , rigid, disciplined elite intent on imprinting their cast of mind on the diverse populace. In fact, he goes so far as to characterize them as nihilists undetaking a socio- cultural revolution against a useless, meaningless past. S central was this ideology than when it collapsed so did the IVC peoples and the civilization itself from around 1900BC”. Coupled this with his next assertion of the IVC dominance of trade and together with their iron will in maintaining a civilization that revolves on the main occupation — that of accumulating wealth. He continues on the strict code of the dwellers of the Indus as they stretched their tentacles overseas to gather wealth in exchange for their products , an array of brilliant display of beads and jewelery and facience. In his third lecture titled page 28& 29)

    Indus Civilization & the 3rd Millenium Middle Asian interaction sphere

    In his 3rd lecture he revealed the IVC to be a major league player in what he calls the 3rd Millennium Middle Asian interaction sphere with trade extending from Central Asia (Indus dice at GonorDepe) across the Iranian belt to the Middle East and with tentacles into Africa. Not only did its sailors reach at least this mouth of the Red Sea, but our knowledge of this intercultural sphere begins with the discovery of the IVC, for example , with the typical’ unicorn’ seal of hump less( Bos Taurus) bulls so foreign to India (zebu= Bos Indicus), Meluhha IVC artifacts have been found in Mesopotamia (zebu and tweezers in Ur, unicorn in Kish, baked brick Indian house with drainage facilities in Tell Asimar) and Sargon the Great boasts of the boats of Meluhha-Dilmun -Magan anchored at this harbor. Among the imports from IVC, cornelian, lapis lazuli, pearls, 2 types of wood, fresh dates , a bird , peacock, a dog, cat, copper , gold, boat wooden furniture , figurines of birds. Though there is very little evidence of exchanges with ancient Egypt , IVC sailors seem to have imported African millet from the mouth of the Red Sea; thus sorghum , pearl millet and finger millet spread from Africa between 2400-2200 BC producing a huge impact , even today, on the agriculture of other wise wheat, rice and barley eating South Asians. More relevant to our problematic was his concluding focus on the shift, at the end of the 3rd millenium, of the center of gravity of this interaction sphere to the oases of Margiana- Bactria ( south central Asia at northern fringes of Afghanistan). Artifacts from this BMAC civilization are to be found all over the place from India to Egypt and even Greece and it is only over the last couple of decades that archaeologists are reviewing a vast treasure of scattered objects (much of them sold as pre historical merchanise at the Afghan markets) that previously did not make sense. Here is where Bernard Sergent has identified the archaeological traces of (pre Rigvedic culture that are scarce to come by in India itself ( traceable so far only down till to Pirak)

    The complete different lifestyle, customs and rites of the Indus and Aryans

    The detailed description of the life agricultural life of the Aryans in the Vedas is completely overlooked by the scholars who try to fit it in with the Indus dwellers in article after article. Nothing in the seals and scripts or the archaeological discoveries of the Indus pertain to any thing that the Vedas portrayed. Trade dominated the life and struggles of the Indus people. Trade with distant lands, commerce, huge construction of dams and harbors, cities and its relevant necessities like sewage , toiletry and irrigation etc. So how can the scholars lump the Vedic nomadic lifestyle and the Indus urban life with mining and other such industries as pottery, weaving ,carving of intricate and exquisite jewelery for urban wear and clothing? There are only more or less , some conclusions that can be drawn from the above evidence drawn from the lifestyle of the Aryans and the archaeological evidence of the Indus sites and they are these:

    (1) There are completely two different lifestyles between the two civilizations. One is that the Indus people were a busy , industrious urban population throughout their cities , always building new innovations to increase their wealth and standard of living. This they achieved from intensive and extensive trade far and wide and with their neighbors. There is no doubt about this.
    (2) Secondly, they were masters of their arts and industry for they made use of their statecraft and intelligence and the tools at hand despite the primitive age they lived in , and for this they are admired for this. Their minds were far advanced of their time.
    (3) The pastoral and nomadic lifestyle presented in the Vedas comes nowhere to that of the Indus. Their life consisted of oblations, prayers and sacrifice for wealth. Predatory raids brought in resources for the survival of the tribes and primitive agriculture and conquest were everyday occurrences . Without these , the Aryan occupation of India would not have lasted.
    To carry this theory a little further, I point to an article on the Internet by the famous Finnish scholar Asko Parpola dated 9/25/06 pages 15& 16 titled:

    Unresolved Problems in Identifying Vedic Aryans with the Harappans

    (a) If the Aryans and the Sarasvati- Indus Civilization are both indigenous to India, there is no continuity of cultural development from the Neolithic to the
    Harappa Culture in theSarasvati Valley.

    (b) The continuous growth is evidence only in Baluchistan right from the Upper Palaeolithic to Harappans and also their decline. Could that be the area of Aryavarta (India) of the Vedic Aryans?

    (c) The horse is so important an animal in the Vedas but is conspicuous by its absence in the Harappan seals and icons.

    (d) There is no archaeological evidence to show that the Indus Civilization grew and spread from the Sarasvati Valley towards the west; in fact, it grew in Baluchistan and spread eastwards!

    (e) The Vedic religion is animistic, in contrast to the Harappan religion which is patently iconic.

    (f) At the turn of the II Millennium BCE, there is a break writ large in all aspects : agriculture; diet; burials; architecture; settlement pattern; new cultural elements ( like Cemetery H, Jhukar, BMC artifactsetc) This all round break can perhaps be explained only by new people coming and dominating the scene.

    (g) The new DNA evidence show that there is a significant male Eurasian element in the DNA of the Kshatriyas and the Brahmins, which again shows the possibility of the migration of a male dominated small population.

    (h) The decipherment of the Indus script could throw some light on this problem but it has so far defied all attempts and now some scholars are seriously doubting if at all it was a script!

    And I might add the following. All other civilizations that existed on the face of the earth , have all given an account of what befell them , whether it was war, famine or some other natural phenomena. But the Indus seem to have never left us no record or chronicle of the coming of the Aryans. Why? Why are there not one iota of the mention of a new people coming into to fill the vaccum of the fleeing Dravidians? Nothing is etched on the seals or script nor one clue as to the existence of the Aryans. Even the downfall of the cities seem to disappear without a clue as to why they succumbed to decay. But modern geographical and geological disruptions point an accusing finger to the cut off of rivers and diverse earthquakes with terrifying consequences may be cause. The rivers have changed course and have caused the drying up of the land and thus the natural vegetation of land and this could lead to pestilence and famine.

    Now this is getting into the realms of unreality as the doctor dates the Vedic period from 3000 BC as the background for Vedic occupation of India, where as we know that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Aryans was nowhere around that time and the Indus settlers were never described as Aryans. Dr Kalyanaraman’s description is ridiculous. Here as I mentioned before he is carrying out the typical revisionist’s view of how they regard the Indus civilization as Vedic. There is no history of how the Vedic people come to start the civilization. The Indus civilization is described as the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization , a metals economy on the banks of the Sarasvati despite the pages of the Vedas has no such description. He writes thus on the
    ‘ Metals economy of the civilization’ The trace impurity pattern of copper from the Khetri copper mines nickel and arsenic content compare with the Harrapan artifacts. Ganeshwar copper mines ascribed to the third millennium BC. (Sikar district Rajasthan) are located in the Drishadvati {Ghaggar -Hakra- Wahinda) system. RC. Agrawala made a remarkable discovery in 1977: an examination of the 60 flat copper celts (20to 25 cms Long) from a ‘hoard’ in Neem- ka -thana in Sikar district of Rajasthan were associated with the Indus Valley complex. Ganeshwar is about 15 kms from Neem-ka -thana; at this place, copper axes had been made more than four thousand years ago. This site is 250 kms. from Kalibangan and 160 kms from Bhadra. Both Kalibangan and Bhadra are in Ganganagar district of Rajasthan. By 1979, after further diggings , 1000 copper objects ( arrow heads, rings, bangles spear heads, chisels , balls celts) hand been found in Ganeshwar. Arrowheads, thin blades and fishhooks and other characteristic Indus civilization artifacts were also found. Rich copper ores are also said to exist in Afghanistan, at Tezin, east of Kabul. in the Shadkani Pass.” Page 36. He continues , ” The Early Harappans seem to have been involved in the minerals and metals economy. It is notable that sixteen furnaces were discovered on Mound F of Harappa. The civilization is most significantly a metals economy: excavations have produced : 2000 metal artifacts at Mohenjodaro and over 1000 at Harappa. The metals were copper bronze, gold silver, lead and more rarely electrum. Some necklaces or belts contain hundreds of metal beads. Metal tool types were: points, knives, chisels, needles. Tin bronze alloying was used for knives, axes and chisels. Metals additives were not used for tools such as points, razors and fishhooks. (Page 37)

    The above has ramifications for the theory of an Aryan Indus as Dr Kalyanaraman is espousing with his political correct language. The attempt to merge the Vedic and Indus civilizations is pathetic. The industrial engine that drove the Indus is as distinct as it was based on urban developments in great contrast to the nomadic life style of the Aryans. Thus, I can safely draw from the following cultural distinctions.

    I quote Mr. Dinesh Agrawal’s online article dated 4/13/07 (History of India: Presence of the Horse at the Indus- Sarasvati sites) He writes

    ” that the Aryans were horse riding , used chariots for transports, and since no signs of horse was found at the sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the inhabitants of the Indus valley cannot be Aryans. Well, this was the case in the 1930-40 when the excavation of many sites were not completed. Now, numerous excavated sites along the Indus valley and along the dried Sarasvati river have produced bones of domesticated horses. Dr. S. R. Rao, the world renowned scholar of archaeology, informs us that horse bones have been found both from the “Mature Harappan” and ” Late Harappan” levels. Many other scholars since then have also unearthed numerous bones of horses; both domesticated and combat types. This simply debunks the non-Aryan nature of the habitants of the Indus valley and also identifies the Vedic culture with the Indus valley civilization”

    Here we have the normal horse arguments of various excuses and supposedly discoveries which Indian scholars have used to argue for an Aryan Indus. Not being satisfied with casting doubt on the Aryan invasion theory they now gleefully disdain. Okay, there may not be an invasion but there was a migration or intrusion of waves of Indo-European tribes which makes up the present population of India , Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. There is no doubt about this. And they all hate to admit that wherever the Aryans roam , they bring horses and chariots as I will prove.

    “Horses are prominent in the traditions of every known branch of the ancient Indo-Europeans…… “and most important…..” In Mesopotamia , horse trade made it appearance in about 2000 BC along with the IE communities.” Which brings me to the following title in answer to Dinesh Agrawal’s acknowledgement of horses in the Indus. My title is the following:

    The Absence of Horses in the Indus Valley Civilization

    I refuse to use the appellation “Indus Sarasvati-Sindhu” since the word Sarasvati is an Aryan word , not a Dravidian one. But the scholars seem to overlook certain features and characteristics that do not crytallize the Indus civilization as Aryan and this fundamental reason are many fold and destroys the argument of an Aryan Indus. Page 2 states further and gets a bit bizarre in trying to give the Indus the horse with the following argument, which is in itself is contradictory, no foundation nor makes any sense. It states:

    “But according to the first archaeological surveys, there had been no horses in the Harappan cities. By contrast, plenty of horse remains have been found in the Ukraine and South Russia, including bridle scarred horse teeth dated to 4300 BC . Is that not proof enough that horses are a foreign import into India, and that the momentous step of horse demestication was taken far outside India? Even if there had not existed any horses in Harappan India , it would still be conceivable that the Indians had domesticated the horse outside India. The idea of domestication may have been brought to the horse rich steppes from a more advanced area where donkeys and oxen were already being used as beasts of burden or even to pull carts.”

    What confusion! The idea that the horse was taken from the steppes and then domesticated outside and then brought back into India is far fetched. Now, the OIT turns it the other way around no matter, there are no vast burial sites in the Indus with horse bones and chariots and sacrifices. No matter that the Indians migration supposedly, outside of India, encountered the horse and chariot and domesticated it there on the steppes of Russia and brought it back to the Indus, thus making it Aryan. No matter that the Indus people is a different race altogether from the fairer skinned Aryans, no matter that the claim of the Indus being Aryan and when the floods and earthquake came , the civilization vanished but left us only with the record of the Aryan Rgveda, and finally no matter, the Aryan Rgveda alone records the disappearance of the Sarasvati but there is not an iota of a record in the scripts or seals of the Indus, telling us nothing about the floods and earthquake that made their civilization vanished without a trace. This is a sorry state of affairs for the Indian historians and nationalists. Now, I will illustrate the concrete reasons for the absence of the horse and chariot at the Indus and why they vanished without knowing these innovations in their daily lives and these include the twin concepts of integration and interaction withing Indus history and its society.

    The Absence of the Integration and Interaction of the Horse
    and Chariot in the Society of the Indus Valley Civilization

    1 There are no pictographic images of the horse and chariot in the seals ,.scripts or any other writing evidence that depicts these etc.

    2 All the animals of the Indus are evidenced in its art and paintings sculptings and other art forms except the horse. Why?

    3 The chariot is also not displayed like the horse because it is enough evidence that the horse and chariot were not known.

    4 It is plain to see that the Indus society is fully integrated with all of its
    known animals except the horse and that they knew the other animals as part of their society.

    5 Had there been horses and chariots, the civilization would have displayed its art form, since they knew how to write. Logical.

    6 The case by Frawley that there was a taboo on the lack of art for the horse and chariot is a flimsy one , since all civilizations do consider painting an object for art as part of its culture and history.

    7 The people of the Indus left no illustration that they interacted with the horse and chariot such as riding or driving one or going to war or transporting people to their destinations. Other societies have illustrated this.

    8 Also, the absence of the horse brings to the forefront the lack of evidence of horse trading. There is no records or chronicles that depict the Indus people trading horses with their neighbors or left behind any lists that they have done so. Other socieites can show that they have traded horses. Therefore, the remains of bones found in the cities of the Indus are not horse bones but asses and onagers.

    9 The Indus civilization traded every thing under the sun which is awashed with articles in the books , magazines and literature but not a single author has shown any or provide evidence for horse trading.

    10 There is no evidence in the records that the Indus people knew the classification of horse breeding , etc such as breeds of horses, colts, steeds etc, or groomed horses, knew about horse racing or chariot racing. The Vedas recorded all of these things.

    11 The attempt to merge Vedic Aryan history with Indus history is intellectual dishonesty, since these are two different lifestyles, one cremating the dead and the other burying their dead.

    12. There is no photographic art , seal , script or writing depicting the people
    or soldiers of the Indus standing , driving or riding a horse or chariot. In short there is no interaction with this animal or vehicle to show that they knew it.

    13. There is no evidence that attests to their history or culture that the horse and chariot was an integrative part of such important sections of their society.

    14. Finally, we as humans whether ancient or modern, do have some remembrance of those who had passed on whether from form of art or photographic evidence. We pray to our ancestors and in our modern day we remember those who had died. Those who had died usually leave something for us to cherish whether it be an object or human form. In the case the Indus people , they had nothing in the shape of the horse in terms of sculpture, written word or art to bequeath to future generations. Thus, that is exactly why archaeologists or historians cannot extract any given form of the horse and chariot in the ruins of their civilization.

    Then there is the most silly argument of Talageri et al about the whole scenario of the Indus civilization. Now, there are the arguments of all those who believe in the OIT etc about what happened to the Indus civilization. Now, if the Indus was Aryan in origin as they say and argue then, how come if the “Aryan Indus civilization” was decimated by huge floods and earthquakes, why only the Indus civilization disappeared and the “Aryan” side survived? If there was one civilization, why are we only extracting artifacts that have a Dravidian origin and writing?

    Reply
16. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    05 August 2007 at 13:22 PM

    The Androvono Strain

    Since I began writing on the controversial subject of the Aryans and against the notorious idea that the Indus is Aryan in nature, I have argued that the Indus Civilization could not possibly be what others have said it is, or that the Aryans are indigenous to India. I still believe as well as others that the Indus is uniquely Indian because of its originality and that the Aryans are an outside force who came and took over this civilization and land to establish their brand of civilization. So much has been written by Indians and foreigners and they spell the general idea that the Indus is Aryan but so far they have failed to decipher its scripts and seals which would give it some sort of identity, they have failed archaeologically to provide evidence that its material and artifacts unearthed are of Aryan origin and most important the inability to provide the evidence of the horse and chariot is monumental. Monumental, because it is the linchpin of Aryan domination of foreign lands and empires that they took by force. Without it, there would have been no intrusion of Indo-European peoples in India or anywhere else. I have been castigated, ridiculed, snubbed and rudely revoked impolitely about my past ideas on the nature of the Indus civilization. All of the above I do not mind, for such is human nature , but what I have written before is now all coming to pass and I will touch upon those things that I had predicted and written about the Indus. The reader must remember one thing in mind and that I had always maintained that the Aryans came from outside, from Central Asia, bringing their steppe life to India, not the other way around. Writing and believing are two different things but to convince historians and writers , especially those from India is a difficult task especially people like Mr. Talageri, Mr. Rajaram and others of the like mind set. These people , no doubt set out to do good, I hope intentionally, but somewhere along the line , they lost their logic and went haywire. They should have held to the maxim that no lost civilization should be identified until its language is properly deciphered so as to know who really built the civilization. Instead of doing or waiting for this result, a cacophony of voices and a deluge of literature descended on the media and other forms of information hailing the Indus as Aryan with their followers blistering anyone who deviates from this truth with bitter complaints that religious zealots , western propaganda and Muller and his henchmen are to be blamed for India’s misfortune for the so called invasion of India and its accompanying falsehoods and distortions. Complaints for the need for impartial historical evidence and literature are now emanating from these channels. Indeed it is. Russian, archaeologists, historians and writers are now discovering and have discovered the original homeland of India’s Aryans on the vast plains of the Russian steppes. At last, concrete evidence of the mysterious and enigmatic Indo-Europeans who intruded into Afghanistan, Iran and India are being unearthed in diverse places east of the Ural mountains as Sintashta for the identical type of chariot used in the Rgveda, in Androvono where identical ritual and sacrifices found in the pages of the Rgveda and most spectacular of all the lost Aryan homeland of Arkaim, the Swastika city.

    . First of all let me salute the masterful builders of the Indus of whom I am very proud for showing the civilized world that Indians, in such a time and age created and built something far advanced and unequalled in their history. The Neolithic Age, I don’t think have seen anything like it in its existence. The discovery of the IVC has opened a Pandora’s Box of fierce debate and at the same time a clouded atmosphere of fear never before seen in the history of archaeology. Stranger still,those who employed the archaeologists to dig up this ancient civilization are patently working furiously behind their backs in undermining the very work they employed them to do. On one hand while the archaeologists are exposing the cities of the Indus without finding any evidence whatsoever of Aryan influence, the historians and writers are flooding the informational and international media with such evidence twisting and turning this evidence and trying to give it an Aryan foundation. For example,lets consider the crucial point of contention of the Indus– the horse. Although no evidence of the horse has not been found in the Indus and despite the fraudulent attempt to prove it, it has been written by some that horse bones has been found outside India, that the migration of people from India to Asia and Europe where they found the horse, tamed it and brought it back to India. These prevailing views only demonstrate only one thing concerning the horse. Since it cannot be identified with India, then common sense dictates that several stories would accompany such lack of evidence. Really , I don’t see what revelance this has with India. Sharply divided into two camps, the two factions have traded barbed arguments as to the true nature of the IVC. Digging on the sites of one of the largest civilization in antiquity , archaeologists and historians alike are coming to grips with not only its artifacts but how to fit in the grandeur that once graced the magnificent ruins of this ancient empire in the north west of India, and this is the greatest question of all–was it indigenous or Aryan? A lot of pride hangs on this simple question and this article will forward the case for the reader to decide.
    To first decide whether it is indigenous or Aryan, we must turn to the pages of the Vedas since no decipherment of the script of the civilization has occurred. As in other civilizations language to language has been compared to ascertain whether such civilizations were IE or vice versa. Thus, it is only sensible to turn to the artifacts of the two civilizations and the Indus to see if they match or give a label to this vexing question. Until such time as the decipherment of the script, no claims should be made on the subject.
    The pages of the Vedas provide us at a glance of one sole fact. That it was a steppe culture fresh from the vast expanses of the Russian steppe and geographically in line to India and a host of other nearby countries.

    ANIMALS: The one animal the IVC do not expose in its ruins are the horse. This inescapable fact is completely absent in its ruins. All the others which were in the Indus are there and most of them the Vedic Aryans were familiar with except a few like the elephant and lion which are mostly tropical one. It is this one marker which differentiate the two civilizations. To keep the critics silent, I will enumerate the different breeds of horses , the Vedic Aryans knew.
    BREEDS: Steeds, stallions, mares bays, tawny coursers, bay steeds, bay coursers, red mares, dark steeds, flying steeds and horses.
    MYTHOLOGY: Throughout the Vedas references are given to winged steeds and winged horses as in IE myths and stories, eg. Greek and Roman histories and others. Then, there are the kinnaras, the Centaurs of Greek mythology. So far no pictographic , seal , script or engraving has been unearthed in the Indus depicting the form of the horse nor drawings of flying horses.
    PASTORAL: A glance at the Vedas and its lifestyle in its pursuit of life can tell the reader what kind of people who lived in its pages. They are definitely evolved from a country style of living and occupation and some critics in India, the very people who are trying change the course of history, know this since some of them probably came from this lifestyle and graduated to the towns to educate themselves. The steppe life hits you from its very first page in the worship of gods on the pastures of India where sacrifices are made on holy grass and the cremation of Vedic Aryans. These terms include cowpen, stables for horses, stalls, holy grass, sacred grass, herds, herdsman, woodcutting, brushwood, tribes and chieftains, warriors, clans, kinsmen, herders, pastures, nomads, villages, forest, mountains, rivers, 0 boughs and fodder etc. This is the lifelong scene which the Vedic Aryans are accustomed to from the time they left their homeland to migrate or to invade India and Afghanistan.
    OCCUPATION: The occupation of the Aryans include warriors, singers, priests, bards, sages, seers, chanters, weavers, eunuch, dressers of the soma, praisers, toilers heralds , wrights, nobles etc. Then, there are those who repaired the chariots etc such as the wrights and blacksmiths.
    LUST FOR RICHES: There are terms for riches, as treasures, wealth , spoils, bounty, booty, cattle, herds of horses. The Aryans raided and looted their neighbors for wealth and accumulation of treasures and trading of horses, a major pastime of the Vedic aryans, especially horses for sacrifices. The Indus people traded with near and far countries for wealth and prosperity. I don’t seem to remember the Indus people raiding other cities for wealth or trading horses to accumulate wealth.
    CHARIOT TERMS: As owners of fine breeds of horses, words like bits, bridles, harness , whips, girdles, cheekpieces, leather straps, horse saddles for there were horse riding in the Vedas on several occasions, wheels, felly, axles, spokes,yokes ,naves poles, wagons, lasso, tires and other such things associated with the horse and chariot. Nothing of this sort is found in the Indus.
    FIVE EERIE SIMILARITIES: Now lets go outside India for the origin of the Aryans or Indo-Europeans on the steppes of Russia. Here in the Sintashta- Petrovka archaeological site as well as countless others , we can draw the deep references and similarities as to where the Indo-Iranians were living before migrating to India and Iran. Here in the Sintashta Petrovka culture we find:
    1) Burial of chariots and horses where the same method is used as in India.
    2) The sacrifice of horses.
    3) The Dadhyanc figure. It is one thing to read about the mythic figure in the Vedas but is another to read that archaeologists have unearthed its reality in the steppes or Russia. Chillingly, brought to life, archaeologists were astounded to find the so called Vedic myth coming to life before their very eyes. In the Vedas, Dadhyanc who refused to give out the secret of the drink to the Asvins, had his head cut off and replaced with the head of a horse. This incident only shows that the Vedic Aryans were not telling myths in their holy scriptures but describing what had actually happened.
    4) The spread of IE people from the steppes with the chariots like those buried in the steppes of Russia and
    and spreading the language.
    5) The argument by certain historians and writers that the horse and chariot originated in the Near East has now been broken. It is now credited to the Indo-Aryans who introduced it to the southern empires, the Indus included.
    FOOD: The Vedas gave us such items as Soma, roasted corn, corn, roasted grain, holy cake, sweets, milk, curds, barley, nectar or honey, food of the gods, unguents, cucumber, butter, clarified butter, liquors,grain, meat, meal cakes, sap and groats.
    VESSELS: Cups, bowls, caldrons, earthen vessels, kettles, press stones, ladles, beakers,jars, water ewers, urns, jugs, pitchers and goblets. I don’t see a knife and fork civilization here.
    ARTIFACTS: Whetstone, grindstone, amulets, mortar, pestles, awls, stone hoes, braziers, bronze celts, spindles, the swastika and trident.
    JEWELLRY: Golden necklaces, earrings, golden chalice, silver chalice,gold decorations,bracelets,silver cups and ornaments.
    MILITARY ARMS: Coat of mail, socketed battle axes, breastplates, lances, hafted daggers, quivers and composite bows and arrows.
    WERGILD: The custom of wergild was brought to India from across the steppes from the Hittite civilization before the break up of the IE family of languages. No other people practiced wergild but IE peoples. The Indo -Iranians knew this custom when they were huddled in the homeland. The earliest ever recorded example of wergild is traced to the Hittites in the reign of King Telepinus around 1500 BC. They are the one of the first IE people to use this custom. This was a law passed by Tudhaliya IV as a debt cancellation edict for compensation owed for personal injury. Wergild is not an indigenous custom of India and its foreign nature reveals that it came from outside, thus putting to rest the notion that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indus. The Indus civilization never knew or practiced this custom. Thus, I can safely come to the conclusion that the Aryans are foreign intruders to the Indus civilization. The Indigenists don’t realize one thing in their proposals of an Aryan Indus. That most of the Vedic laws are of an IE nature and peculiar to its people, so too are its customs, rites and sacrifices.

    RITES: The pages of the Vedas and the Avesta is filled with customs and rites connected with feasts, oblations, libations prayers, chanting, sacrifices, banquets for the gods as well with all of the above itemized.
    As a comparison the different cultures on the Russian steppes have most of all this article has mentioned especially the Tarim Basin Tocharian civilization. The Androvono, Sintashta, Petrovka sites practiced the kurgan burial custom , the worship of solar sun god, horse sacrifice and the Tarim mummies were dressed in Iranian costume style and with tikas on their foreheads, an Indian custom. A whetstone was found on the eyes of an infant similarly in the Vedas we have whetstones. Drawings of centaurs on the cave walls and houses just as in Greek and Indian centaurs and kinnaras. Accoutrements relating to horse and chariot technology such as wheels, bridles , bits etc are also found there. Solar symbols of swastikas are found engraved on caldrons and on the walls of the occupants. Also, in the different archaeological sites on the Russian steppes are found to be similar to the Aryan occupation of India. The Pit Grave culture are found grindstones, weaving whetstones , kurgan mound burial etc. The Androvono culture depicts horses, chariots, hoes, grinders, pestles, mortars, clay vessels, awls, braziers, bracelets etc. The IE Scythians displays ploughs, yoke, horses, chariots and horse riding, girdles , reins, bits, cheekpieces, horse sacrifices and sun worship.
    GRAVE PIT BURIALS: The Aryan practice of grave pit burials at Krivoe Ozero on the steppes are uncannily similar to that of Vedic India. The grave goods of yokes,harness etc together with humans and ritually killed horses was practiced in India. No such practice is ever recorded in the Indus cities. What is observed throughout the Russian steppes is the use of grain instead of rice, especially barley which the early Aryans of India used for their diet. All the cultures has this in common. Rice was only used by the Aryans long after they settled down in India. This simple diet , so common among IE peoples simply destroys the arguments of the pro Aryanists Indus. Nowhere in the steppes of Russia can rice be found as a staple diet. The Sredny Stog culture , barley is used , the Androvono, also barley,the Vedas and the Avesta used barley,the steppe culture of Kazakhstan also, used barley as well as the Scythians. Isn’t this enough evidence that the Indus could not be Aryan?
    Now, I wonder who would speak up on the Indus and its supposedly similarities to call itself as Aryan in origin. But all their arguments are only polemics because not one of the above can apply to the Indus to support its claim as an Aryan entity.
    HORSE TRADE: Aryan life on the vast Russian steppes could not have been possible without the existence of the horse and chariot. Apart from their daily life of living and struggling to exist on the harsh plains, they took comfort from their possession of their prized animal, the magnificent horse. It brought them wealth, prosperity and land. Their migrations were possible, they were able to raid and fight to garner food and riches but most of all they traded their horses among their different clans and peoples. In exchange they obtained the most superb brands of stallions and steeds. They raced and gambled, they sacrificed them and made war and raids to expand their occupation and culture. This is the most significant difference between the Indus and the Aryans. Indus society was more or less sedentary and urbanized , not rural and pastoralized. Horses and steppe culture were not part of their civilization and to equate them as Aryan in origin is pushing the envelope too far. There is the religious rite of horse sacrifice, solar worship and swastikas so elaborately put together by the Aryans and IE peoples in their various cultures. If the proponents of the Aryan Indus can show me horse trade in the Indus cities, I am prepared to accept their arguments and so are others. In the meantime, they have no trace for such a transaction.
    Apart from the above, there are certain fields which I will lay out here that can only be from the origin of steppe life with its customs, rites and its nomadic style of living.

    THE REALITY OF DADHYANC: The Rgveda gave us a chilling description of the story of Dadhyanc and how his head was severed and until now this story was considered a myth by historians and writers but they got the shock of their lives when archaeologists discovered that the myth was true- discovered on the steppes of Russia. (LET THEM EAT HORSES. Institute For Equestrian Studies 1997 by Dr. David Anthony) He writes:

    The horses’s head was thought to be a source of power by itself, an idea that seems to have survived among the peasant cultures of Europe. One of the most intriguing myths in the Vedas concerns a man, Dadhyanc Atharvan, wh learned from Tvastr , the maker god the secret of making mead, an intoxicating hone drink. The Asvins , or the Divine twins who are themselves occasionally represented poetically as a pair of young horses insisted that Dadhyanc tell them the secret of the mead. He refused. They cut off his head and replaced it with the head of a horse, through which he became an oracle and told them the secret they desired. In other hymns in the Vedas horse heads flowed magically with honey.
    These ritual themes have been investigated archaeologically the IAES and its sister organization in Samara, Russia, the Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga. Excavations led by Dr. Igor Vasiliev have unearthed ritual deposits of horse heads at Syezh’ye, a Copper Age cemetery dated about 4500-5000 BC. in the Samara River valley in Russia. On the ancient surface above a group of nine Copper Age graves, Vasiliev’s team found two horse skulls lying with various ornaments, broken ceramic pots, and stone tools within a redstained patch of powdered red ochre. The horses obviously were part of a funerary offering , the oldest of its kind yet found. At Dereivka on the Dnieper River in the Ukraine, the now famous horse with bit wear on its premolar teeth was part of a head and hoof deposit at the edge of a settlement dated about 4200 BC. It was found with the remains of two dogs, which probably were part of the same ritual offering . In a grave in the Elista steppes south of the lower Volga in Russia, excavators found the skulls of 40 horses deposited in a Catacomb culture grave dated about 2500 BC. But the most fascinating discovery of this kind was a find that could have been the grave of Dadhyanc himself.

    At Potapovka, near Samara on the Sok river, excavations conducted from 1985 -1988 exposed four burial mounds or kurgans dated about 2200-2000 BC. Beneath kurgan 3, the central grave pit contained the remains of a man buried with at least two horse heads and the head of a sheep, in addition to pottery vessels and weapons. After the grave pit was filled, a human male was decapitated, his head was replaced with the head of a horse , and he was laid down over the filled grave shaft. This unique deposit provides a convincing antecedent for the Vedic myth. Now, lets analyze this story and see what it tells.
    A story like this in the Rgvedas would simply not have been narrated had it not been experienced before in their homeland. The unearthing of the burial mound is enough evidence that the Vedic Aryans were from the steppes and nomadic. The whole story is now coming to pass. Those who reject or consider the Aryans as people from the Indus civilization are now silent. How can a story related in a holy book can come true on the Russian steppes if it was not part and parcel of the culture of its people. Secondly, the writers of the Vedas knew these stories and retold them for future generations. Apart from this ritual , there is the telling evidence of horse sacrifice, a ritual not practiced by the Indus civilization and yet we hear of an Aryan indus.

    BARLEY forms a continuous thread throughout the kurgan and Vedic lifestyle of the Indo-European peoples. The discovery of the Urumchi mummies in the Taklaman Basin in China also used barley as a major food item in the form of a bread which was placed in a wooden basin with legs on the bottom.
    (Nova #2502: Mysterious Mummies of China. Broadcast Transcript. PBS Air date, January 20, 1998) Mair and his fellow archaeologists have found saddles, cheekpieces, bits and bridles for horses, leather straps and reins and remains of sheep , goats and horses all of which are steppe artifacts from the Russian pastoral steppes.

    THE DOG SACRIFICE OF THE RGVEDA AND ANDROVONO STEPPE CULTURE: Another shocking discovery made by Russian archaeologists and historians is the dog sacrifice rituals practiced in the Androvono culture and that of the Rgveda. The report is taken from the (Samara Valley Project Update 2001. dated 7/28/07) appearing in the Institute for Ancient Equestrian Studies.

    The dogs: We have made some fascinating discoveries to work with, including the first ever example of a Srubnaya dog sacrifice ritual, a ceremony possibly referred to in the Rgveda, a Srubnaya well with waterlogged, perfectly preserved wooden artifacts in the bottom ; three burial mounds; and a variety of other Srubnaya sites. There is a large literature about the possible connection between this new kind of LBA steppe culture and the Aryans who composed the Rgveda and Avesta the earliest writing of the Hindu and Zoroastrian religions. Some of the Androvono people certainly spread southward across Central Asia to the edges of the Iranian plateau and their descendants might well have continued into Iran and India about 1650-1500BC where the Rgveda and Avesta were compiled in the following few centuries. The Srubnaya settlement site at Krasno Samarskoe (KS) in the Samara River Valley have yielded a vast amount of kurgan graves and bone artifacts and bronze tools similarly found in India. But the dog sacrifices was the profound surprise was the species of the animal bones inside the structure at KS. About 40% of the bones were from dogs. The majority of the bones were from sheep, goats and cattle, the remains of ordinary daily meals— just what we were looking for. Preliminary microscopic studies of season groth patterns on the animal theeth suggest that the cattle and sheep were butchered year round, so the KS settlement was not used just seasonally, it was occupied all year, a vital piece of information. The dogs, however were unique. Dog bones are found at almost every Srubnaya settlement, but never account for more than 25% of the bones , usually less than 1%. It is therefore pretty well established that the Srubnaya people did not ordinarily eat dogs. Then why do we have 40% dog bones? Microscopic study of the dogs’ teeth by Anna Pike-Tay at Vassar College might suggest an answer. Our dogs, unlike the sheep and cattle , seem to have been butchered just in the winter ( we await confirmation from the entire sample). Our four consulting archaeo-zoologists, led by Nerissa Russell at Cornell University agree that the method used to butcher the dogs was Uighly standardized and quite different from the way the cattle or sheep were butchered. The butchering of the dogs is difficult to explain functionally so it seems to have been determined by ritual. The dogs were chopped into very small pieces with single strong blows form a metal axe. There were up to 20- 30 cuts just to the head and the cuts were expertly done the same way for each dog. This partioning of the sacrifice into small, exactly equal portions, disregarding what we would see as edible/ non edible distinctions, is typical of many ritual animal sacrifices around the world, and could mean that the dog pieces were menat to be shared among celebrants at a ritual. The KS dog bones were burned and at least some were roasted with the flesh on. We seem to have the first know case of a strange Srubnaya winter dog saqcrifice. But why did they sacrifice dogs in the winter? Maybe we have a clue in the Rgveda. The poems and hymns of the Rgveda were compiled about 1500-1200 BC in the Punjab region of India/ Pakistan by pastoral tribes who, in their songs described their memories of invading the Punjab from the east, probably form eastern Iran and Afghanistan– places mentioned in their poems. Chariot driving chiefs who knew precisely the same gods, moral concepts and even spoke the same dialect as the Rgveda appeared historically about 1500 BC, perhaps as mercenaries in Syria among the literate Mitanni. They were probably a far western offshoot of the same tribes that were then moving eastward into the Punjab. Both could be connected with the archaeological Androvono more distantly with Srubnaya. It might seem a long stretch. But there are references in the Rgveda to a dangerous group of dice casting sorcerers called “dog priests”, Vratyas. They lived on the margins of society, but were responsible for conducting a 12 day ceremony at midwinter to bring back the sun. The Indologist Harry Falk thinks that this ceremony might be an ancient Scandinavian Twelve Nights of Christmas , originally a pagan festival during which the god Odin roared as a hunter through the forests with his dogs. The Vratyas were considered dangerous sorcerers by the poets and priests who compiled the Rgveda, perhaps because they represented an older pre-Vedic , shamanic element in Indo-European religion. At the KS settlement inside the same structure with the sacrificed dogs we also found dice polished from use , made of sheep ankle bones, also found in Rgvedic society. One last interesting aspect of the Vedic mythic evidence is that the dog priests are assigned to a morally ambiguous space on the periphery of the social order. …… The poorer occupants of the KS settlement perhaps were the kind of people whose traditions were not preserved in the Rgveda, except as a vague and distasteful memory retained principally in habitual insults(dog sorcerers is used as an insult in the Rgveda) and stories of wandering holy men.

    This second Rgvedic myth realized on the Androvono steppes only further reinforces the steppe character of the Vedic Aryans of India. I think it is very difficult for Indian historians and writers to deny the steppe character of the Aryans and their civilization though many still will continue to do so. One continuous and unifying factor that binds the Vedic Aryans and Russian steppe life are the horse and chariot and its accoutrements, certain bone and bronze tools,diet similarities found throughout the Russian steppe archaeological sites and grave sites, the various similar artifacts, dietary similarities and rites and customs all define the Androvono strain tell tale of Vedic India and its close archaeological relationship with the steppes of Southern Russia. Every dig, every archaeological site discovered, every piece of artifact scrutinized from the northern end of the steppes to China’s Urumchi mummies to the Punjab of India, exposes the trail of the Aryans and IE peoples as they traveled and searched for the rich empires of the south. I take issue with Mr. Dipak Basu’s article in which he tries to show that the Aryans originate from India and acquired steppe features from Russia is dishonest and is reminiscent of all the arguments of those historians and writers of India who are desperately trying to argue a case for an Aryan Indus from the perspective of Aryan history and origins. Nothing is argued from the evidence unearthed from the Indus sites to prove its originality. Sanskrit is used in this manner by certain people, the lifestyle and history of the Rgveda is also used in this perspective also. And it has all failed.

    Reply
17. krsna says:

    13 November 2007 at 09:28 AM

    this is replying to neville romedahl

    u seem intelligent, and like others u have come across vedic culture, have realised it is far, far superior to any other culture in history, but if you want to know the truth, stop being such a racist western schovanist (i know i cant spell scohvanist, and i dont care), it is so difficult for you white people to swallow that indians created such great philosophy, sciences and culture, and another thing you ignorant fool, you talk about afghnistan, in vidic times afghnistan was apart of india, all the way up untill moghul forces took control of it in the 11th century, just how pakistan and bangladesh used to be indian soil. the whole of afghanistan and beyond was always vedic, hindu, indian, kingdoms that formed parts of it were Kekeya, Gandhara, Kamboja etc . Another thing (hey guys this prooves how dumb neville is) how can records of horse trade be kept intact from over 10,000 years ago, you fool, also it is well known that horses were in the nw india because in the mahabharat many warriors have stated that the best horses are kamboj horses, they were stronger, fitter and did’nt scare easily as horses from other kindoms in aryavarta (india). the rg veda and all the other vedas state NOTHING at all about aryans migrating into india, however the vedas state on so many occasions about the aryans migrating out of india to establish sovereignty and dhrama in other lands.

    my final and main point which i say to all AIT believers and which always leaves them silenced is : such a great culture has to be developed even such philosophy and sciences get established over a vast period of time in a certain place. if the aryans did originate from central asia or LOL europe, why would they develop such a great culture then move away and give it all to a foreign race, and also leave no trace of a homeland where these ideas were born, developed and flourished. the AIT argument is that they were looking for new land to settle in, but you have to learn how to walk, before you can run, thus my arguement, before looking for and conquering new land you would of have to have had an original kingdom, where this culture was already thriving and has been settled for centuries. but no AIT enthusiasts are trying to say every single aryan just left , just got up and left in search of new land, if so where is the evidence of their motherland, with the settled culture of centuries old, and i mean proper evidence, not just the odd fire altar and script, i mean kingdoms, civilisations of great people like the aryans, their is’nt any outside of india, that is so advanced dating back 10,000 years, i mean vedic india including afghnistan. oh yeah by the way the indus valley civilisation script has’nt been deciphered yet, so they may have names for various things too, we just dont know.

    also in the rg veda it says the sarasvati was the mightiest river in the world at that time and considered very holy to them at that time it was still flowing in india, they did’nt just re-name another river sarasvati.

    u may know alot about the aryan culture because u realised how great it is, but your pathtic attempt at trying to convince yourself most off all that the aryans were causcasian or not indigeanous to india makes me laugh, i think it stems down to the the whole reason the AIT was invented, the rest of the worlds having to swallow that ultimately their language has developed from the mother sanskrit.

    e-mail me if you want a map of aryavarta 10,000 years ago with names and locations of all the kingdoms, rivers and mountains of Aryanvarta aka Indian Sub-Continent.

    krsna16@hotmail.co.uk

    India is a Continent not a country, racial diversity is vast in a continent, is the whole of europe blond hair blue eyes……..

    Aryans are, were and always will be indigeanous to India, GET OVER IT.

    pe&ce

    Reply
18. Rupa Abdi says:

    23 February 2008 at 10:37 AM

    Mr. Neville Ramdeholl,

    I am not a historian, so I am in no position to comment on the current debate regarding the origin of Aryans. However I do feel that one reason for non-acceptance of the non-Indian origin of Aryan theory by some Indian historians could be political. Some of these historians are supporters of ‘Hindutva’ ideology and are in favour of a Hindu Rashtra. That is, instead of a secular democracy, India should have Hinduism as the state religion. This demand is based on the premise that Hinduism and Hindus (ie. Aryans)are indegenous to India and all other religions such as Islam, Christianity etc. are foreign to this country.

    Brother krsna,

    I am an Indian too and was saddened by your abusive language. You talk about Indian/Aryan culture being highly civilised and advanced etc. Is this the kind of language that highly civilised people use ??

    Reply
19. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    18 April 2008 at 23:51 PM

    To Mr. Rupa Abdi, Tnx for your kind words and for defending me on the abusive language problem. It is a problem and I’m surprised at Krsna’s use of it since I did not use any such abusive words in my discourse on the subject. Goes to show that we all are different in outlook and perception. In my article I was only discussing the new discoveries pertaining to the Aryan problem in India, but it appears that Krsna apparently is hurt by the facts and as proven by the archaeological ramifications. He accused me of being a white person of which I am not. I am an Indian and I am only judging the presence of the Aryans in India as found in the record. On one salient point Krsna said that it is impossible for records to be found concerning the sale of horses. Now, if the Indus people can keep records of their language and scripts on stone from so many thousands of years ago, then it is possible that the records of horses can be put down in stone also. There is none. Krsna is a believer in Hindutva, and he has a right to believe in whatever he wants to. But it is ironic that the archaeologists who are putting together the record of the Indus found that the discoveries they make are being used to incorporate it into a political idealogy of indigenity and given an Aryan flavor. Politically, this is wrong and Krsna knows this. But I don’t see how a different people with new physical characteristics, culture, customs, a pastoral life and society can be part and parcel of an Indus civilization when those people came from outside. We all know what the anthropologists say that people born in the tropics grew up to be very dark skinned because of their genes and climate. The people of the northern half of India are fair light skinned people and this feature reminds us that they came to India not so long ago, whereas, the Indus people are indigenous to the country and has a very much darker skin. Krsna probably cannot reason this out and this goes for all countries that have similar history like India. Krsna is hurt by the fact that the Aryans came from the outside and this upsets his Hindutva belief. Thanks again for commenting on my essay.

    Reply
20. Dizzy says:

    23 April 2008 at 11:28 AM

    http://aum-in-crete-and-america.blogspot.com

    http://stonecircles-and-stonehenge.blogspot.com

    Above are a couple of very interesting links supporting your theories for any doubters, many genuine hindus know very well that its Marxist and Maoist Communists who attack and trash the concepts you put forwards.

    Reply
21. Vassilios Korosidis says:

    10 May 2008 at 16:28 PM

    Dear Mr. Ramdeholl,

    Krsna makes the valid point: “where is the evidence of the mother land of this grand Aryan civilization that you claim suppossedly came from outside of India?” I noticed that you quitely skipped over this point in your rebuttal. You simply arbitrarily stated “Aryans are from outside of India” without further explanation. Should we just accept your opinion capriciously? In my opinion that is not very objective.

    It makes perfect sense that the Aryans came from India because there is no trace of a seperate Aryan civilization.

    Also, you use the example of Afghanistan, but everyone knows it used to be a part of greater India. I have attached an article below for your reference.

    Another point: No Aryan Invasion theorist has satisfactorily explaned away how the Indians/Aryans knew about the Sarasvati River as mentioned in the Rig veda. Unless they had advanced satellites back then to indicate its prior existance they must have lived on its banks when it existed centuries before 1500 B.C. when the vedas were suppossedly written. The latter date came from Max Mueller, who never once stepped onto the Indian sub-continent.

    I am not an Indian. In fact, I am Greek-American and so of neutral origin to say the least. In fact, I have more reason to support AIT because many scholars past and present attribute many intellectual breakthroughs (especially mathematics) to Greek thinking when in fact the evidence points elsewhere: Ancient India.

    As far as “the stone tablet horse records,” vedic scholars recorded their scripture on palm or banyan leaves primarily and passed them down in this way as well as orally. Why would they bother handed sown receipts on horse trade? People don’t even keep receipts for more than a year, what to speak of handing them down for posterity.

    I must say, Krsna’s points are far more solid and your derogatory statements about “revisionists” betray your bias. Also, is Krsna’s etiquette the best rebuttal you and Rupa Abdi came come up with? Where is your substance?

    I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings (as I am being completely objective) but the Aryan Invasion theorists are a dying breed.

    Islamic Vedic culture in Afghanistan

    By Muzaffar Hussain

    (here under is a free-rendering of an article Muzaffar Hussain contributed to the Hindi Daily. Ranchi Express, dated Sunday, 27 February 2000)

    The very Kandhar city in Afghanistan which was recently the scene of a perilous hijack by Muslim / militants, of nearly 200 persons in an Indian aeroplane. Even less than 50 years ago the Hindu population in Kandhar was 150,000, while the Sikhs numbered 25,000.

    Kandhar is the current mispronunciation of the Sanskrit term Gandhar which was the capital of a flourishing ancient Hindu kingdom. Gandhari belonged to the region.

    After their defeat in the Mahabharat war, many of the Kaurava descendants settled in the Kandhar region which was their maternal home. From there they gradually moved to what are currently known as Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In ancient times Arab horses were well-known for their fine breed (Arva in Sanskrit signifies a horse. Consequently the Sanskrit term Arvasthan / currently mispronounced as Arbastan signifies `a land of horses.’)

    Being warriors Kauravas highly appreciated the well-bred horses of the region. That is why they named the region as Arvasthan.

    God Shiva was the deity worshiped in that entire region. Conversion to Islam led to the extinction of Shiva and Sun worship in the region.

    Shiva worship was widespread in Afghanistan too. But later the spread of Buddhism led to the gradual extinction of Shiva worship. Since Buddhism was an indigenous sprout, its religious practices were akin to those in vogue earlier. But the new religions (Christianity and Islam) led to the extinction of the earlier Vedic and Buddhist cultures in West Asia. Perhaps that was the result of contrasting soils. India being a fertile region, the religions and cultures there were tolerant and loving, while the religions and cultures originating in hot, desert lands of West Asia were intolerant and cruel.

    Gradually Afghanistan was occupied by Muslims invaders. Arab, Turk and Mongolian invasions led to the gradual extinction of Hindu, Vedic and Buddhist culture. One wonders how long can any vestige of its original, tolerant Hindu, Vedic culture survive in Afghanistan when that entire region is a victim of waves of Muslim militants sheltering Osama-bin-Laden, an intolerant Muslim leader. Thus the history of Afghanistan is the history of the rise and fall of Shiva worship that was prevalent for long in the region.

    There was a time when the entire region was replete with hundreds of Shiva temples celebrating Shiva-Parvati worship and abuzz with Shiva chants, prayers, legends and worship. Archaeological excavations in this region conducted by Sir Estine (an East India Company official) led to the recovery of uncountable idols and inscriptions. He has authored four books on that topic featuring photos of icons and inscriptions discovered. The photos show a sun temple and a Ganesh idol too. An Islamabad University professor Abdul Rehman has authored two books on those finds recalling the glory and prosperity of those times. Regimes of two Hindu rulers Kusham and Kidara lasted for fairly long periods. During their rule a number of Shiva temples were erected not only in Afghanistan but in other West Asian regions too. Uzbekistan and Tadzhikistan formed part of the Afghan kingdom in those times. Tashkent has one of those ancient Shiva temples standing even today. Professor Abdul Rehman states that Bukhara region was known as Shah Vihar in ancient times. It was ruled by an Hindu king. When Arabs invaded that kingdom its queen traveled to Kashmir to seek military help. Arab chronicles mention her as Khatoon, meaning ‘Woman’. Kalhan, the ancient Hindu historian of Kashmir, has mentioned that the army of the then Hindu ruler of Kashmir had a battle with a vast army of the Arab Khalifa Mamoon whose headquarters was Baghdad. At that time Bukhara had been under Muslim rule. He had invited a number of leading Hindu experts to Baghdad. An Ayurvedic practitioner of Varanasi (alias Benares) had treated the Khalifa for some ailment afflicting the latter. In those days it was Hindu Ayurvedic practitioners who were eagerly sought by Arab patients. A number of Arabs had translated Sanskrit Ayurvedic texts into Arabic. A list of those translated Sanskrit texts appears in a volume known as Al-Frisht.

    Baku (capital of the Azerbaijan region) known for its underground petroleum yields has still an ancient Hindu temple of the Divine Flame generated by the subterranean petroleum and gas. During the Tzar regimes in Russia a Punjabi priest officiated at that temple. The walls display some religious stanzas written in Punjabi Gurumukhi script. The market there also had Hindu merchants. Nearby was a locality too of Hindu inhabitants. Baku in Azerbaijani language actually signifies a Goddess. Therefore obviously Baku derives its name from a very ancient Vedic Goddess temple there.

    Kenduj, a province of Afghanistan, ruled by a king had a Hindu prime minister. This is mentioned in history books. Albiruni’s travel account contains details of ancient Hindu Afghanistan, He mentions a Hindu king Khingla whose coins bore the imprint of God Shiva. The first ruler of that dynasty was Vahitagni. History mentions a Shiva temple in Gardej township, which was plundered by Arab invaders. That dynasty ruled the region from 666 to 843 AD. From 843 to 850 AD a Brahmin minister ruled the region. The Kalka community of Brahmins had acquired prominence in those times. They were later known as kallers. A township of that name exists in Punjab. Prominent among them who find a mention in later history are Samantdev, Bheemdev, Jaipaldev, Anandpal and Trilochan. Jaipaldev suffered a defeat in 1002 when Mohammed Ghazni invaded India. Unable to bear that defeat Jaipaldev committed suicide.

    Arabs began invading Afghanistan around 1055 AD. A Persian chronicle TARIKH-E-SISTAN records that invasion and the plunder and devastation of a Shiva temple there. The invader Ibn-e-Samurah carried away the gold idol of Shiva among other valuables. When Ibn Samurah invaded Kandhar he carried out a general massacre.

    Abbasi khalifas repeatedly invaded Kabul. The notorious khalifa Yajid, at whose behest Sindh province ruled by Raja Dalhir was invaded by Arab forces, sent his army commander to invade the Hindu kingdom of Kabul. That proved to be a disastrous misadventure because in the fierce battle fought in Kabul the Arab army suffered a humiliating defeat.

    Dr. Rehman’s book carries photos of the coins and temples of Hindu rulers of Afghanistan. Along with them are reproduced photos of smashed idols of Shiva and Durga from temples destroyed in Gardej. The book mentions that temples in the Kherkana area of Kabul suffered great devastation. Idols of Shiva, Durga and the Sun are very attractive. Some of the coins recovered in excavations bear the names of the Hindu rulers there in Sanskrit. At Hudud on the banks of the Attack river stood a very massive fort of Hindu rulers. Excavations conducted in that township have revealed inscriptions concerning the regimes of Bheemadev, Jaipal, Rajkumari, Ratnamanjari and Maharani Kameshwari Devi. All those are on display in the museums at Lahore, Kabul and Peshawar. The inscription alluding to the reign of Jaipaldev, ruler of Kabul, has 13 lines in that Sharda script of Sanskrit language.

    That Afghanistan where in times bygone Hindu and Buddhist flags, signifying peace, piety, prosperity and progress held sway, is now the scene of slaughter and destruction. Looking at mulla Umar’s current directives and the slaughters rampant in Afghanistan these days, memories of Afghanistan’s ancient peaceful, noble and prosperous times seem to fade out of one’s memory.

    (We are grateful to Shree Muzaffar Hussain, who wrote that article, and to Dr. Shreekrishna Simha Sondh of Chittarpur who vigilantly mailed it to us. The Sistam region obviously is the Sanskrit term Shiva sthan, an area of sacred Shiva worship.)

    Reply
22. Vassilios Korosidis says:

    12 May 2008 at 17:20 PM

    Dear Ramdeholl,

    You say you are worried about India becoming a Hindu state, but Hindus are the most peaceful people. Gandhi freed India without shooting a single bullet.

    India has the largest Muslim population in the world and their Muslims have more freedoms and respect than in some of the Muslim countries.

    In fact, India is considered the motherland of all religions; one reason being her tolerance.

    Muslims and Christian missionaries on the other hand have been known to use extremely cruel and deadly methods against the Hindus either for conversion tactics or other political motives.

    The Aryan invasion theory particularly was developed by Europeans (particularly the British) in an effort to take over India. Their pretext was to “civilize” the Indians, but upon finding a civilization much more culturally advanced than their own, they had to purposefully degrade and destroy Indian civilization. It was remarked by a prominent British colonialist (paraphrasing): “You can’t rule India as long as they are Hindus.”

    Hindus considered the foreigners as mlechas, or meat eaters (cow killers); something extremely abominable in their eyes.

    Which brings us to another point-Hindu vegetarianism. They don’t even kill animals unnecessarily. Because the cow gives milk it is considered a mother. Where is there more integrity than that? In fact, this position is not only humane and healthful, but fully beneficial to the environment as well. In other words, I don’t think the Hindus are the ones we should be worried about, but the ones we have something to learn from.

    Reply
23. Vassilios Korosidis says:

    12 May 2008 at 17:31 PM

    Also, the astronomical data in the Vedas definatively points to the vedas being written earlier than 1800 b.c.

    Reply
24. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    19 May 2008 at 14:22 PM

    A reply to Mr. Vassilios Korosidis:

    Thanks for your reply. But it seemed that Krsna missed my point. The Aryans did not come into India as a grand civilization, they came as nomads as the evidence shows from Central Asia, bringing the horse and chariot, from the empire of the Mitanni bring the custom of wergild,and from Iran as Indo-Aryans with the horse and chariot. The effort to aryanize the Indus is being done despite what the excavations and archaeological records reveal. And I maintain my argument that horse remains will never be found at the Indus, because the epigraphical and arhaeological record reveal that the horse and chariot did not appear in India until after the Mesopotamians changed over from wagons and asses– that is until the Aryans came into India and that is a fact. Another point is that the system of wergild in mentioned in the Vedas which is an IE custom found in the records of the Hittite empire. Thirdly, various mentioning of words that signify outside influence of IE past homeland. These are Dragon, ford,herald,vales, hamlet, brook, goblins witches, sire, woodland and thatch among some more. These are words found in the four books of the Vedas in its hymns and the priests and sages who composed and sang these hymns could not have known these words if they were indigenous to India. Further, the failure of the archaeological evidence of the absence of the integration and interaction of the horse and chariot reveals the weaknesses of those who maintain that the Indus is of Aryan origin. Time will tell.

    Reply
25. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    19 May 2008 at 20:15 PM

    Vassilios, I take it that you’re believer in an Aryan Indus. If that is so give me the hard evidence that the Indus possessed horse and chariots. Give the hard evidence that the Indus people traded horses with their neighbors at the time when no horses were depicted in their epigraphical and archaeological history.

    Reply
26. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    19 May 2008 at 20:54 PM

    Vassilios, Perhaps you should read this article by the author , especially the piece on the Aryans, I think you would find it very interesting. Tnx

    HOLIGRATIVE PSYCHO-HISTORY OF INDIA

    V. George Mathew

    Holigrative Psychology Institute, Thiruvananthapuram – 695 583

    Holigration is a neologistic word which is short for holistic integration. Integration stands for harmony within a system. Holistic integration is harmony within and without. In fact there is no real difference between harmony within and without; both are complementary. Holigrative Psychology tries to understand and deal with behaviour using the IAS personality concepts. Holigrative Psycho-history attempts to interpret history using the Holigrative theory.

    Holigrative Psychology considers heredity and environment to be continuous. Cumulative ancestral experience becomes heredity. That which is ‘perceived’ as adaptive or useful is reinforced and that which is reinforced across generations tends to become part of heredity. Personality is shaped by environmental experiences and climate plays a major role in shaping the personality of people. Personality characteristics change by environmental experiences, but characteristics which have evolved over a long period of time across several generations tend to persist.

    The Indian Temperament

    Holigrative Psychology makes interpretations on the basis of the IAS (Inertia, Activation, Stability) theory of personality. The theory supposes that in every society there are people with different combinations of these three components. Societies differ in terms of the average levels of the three personality components. Climate is one among the many determinants of personality and therefore places with hot climate are likely to produce more I, places in the lower half of the temperate zone will have a higher mean for S, upper half of the temperate zone is likely to favour physically aggressive type of A and still higher regions are likely to produce more people with high linear intelligence and ritualistic behaviour.

    Indians are of mixed racial origin. Consequently their temperament is also mixed. However, there is at least some degree of S (Stability) expressed in simplicity, gentleness, mildness and deterministic acceptance of the inevitable, in all Indians. The climate and long mixing of different races have contributed to this.

    Each community in India has its own racial history involving specific origins and amalgamations. People have poured in from different other places throughout history. The sasthras say that Brahmins are white, Kshathriyas are red, Vaisyas yellow and Sudras black indicating that these groups have different racial backgrounds and different places of origin. The primary meaning of the word Varna which is used to mean caste in Sanskrit is colour. When a migrating community has sufficient number of persons, they may maintain their separate identity. Otherwise they merge which an existing group most similar to themselves in terms of physical and mental characteristics.

    Framework for interpretations

    Each theorist makes interpretations of a culture from the point of view of his own culture. Holigrative concepts have been derived from a study of comparative religion and spirituality, particularly south Indian spirituality. Many people confuse between religion and spirituality, intellectual understanding and enlightenment, etc. Pure spirituality occurs in a society where most people are Stable (Sathwik). They may work very hard, but with a feeling of harmony with themselves, other people and all nature. Self-realisation occurs spontaneously or with a little deliberate detachment. There are many stories of hard-working and successful business men renouncing all wealth and getting enlightened or bursting into song with little formal sadhana or effort. In fact the main method of getting enlightened of the 18 famous Tamil siddhas is “doing nothing” (in the sense of absence of egoistic doership) in sharp contrast to the hard penance and effortful sadhanas of Jains and Buddhists and Ashtanga yoga of Patanjali, suited for people with different types of temperament.

    Major Indian Peoples

    Though considerable mixing has taken place, it is still possible to roughly delineate the different major groupings of Indian communities in terms their origin and history.

    The Indianoids and early Mongolian mix

    Science supposes that prehumans evolved in Africa around 10 million years ago and they gradually spread all over the world. They continued to evolve both in Africa and the other continents. There would have been continued intermixing of these intermediate species as well. There is a claim that skulls of prehumans (named Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus) around 10 million years old have been unearthed from India. The real homo sapiens also is supposed to have evolved in Africa around 2 lakh years ago. They also gradually spread to all continents. They are supposed to have reached India around 70,000 years ago. Exposure to different environmental conditions and experiences and intermixing led to the development of different races and subraces. India on the whole is a hot country near the tropics and this climate produces I (Inertia) conditions characterized by laziness and lack of self-respect. The colour of the early inhabitants would have been dark brown or black which prevents light rays from going in. They have broad noses which facilitate cooling of the air as it goes to the lungs. They are generally classified as belonging to Australoid, Negro and Negrito races. In the tropics there is no need to store food or prepare for winter or build big structures. These people (Indianoids) do not travel much. They lead settled lives or move around in a relatively small area. They make use of local materials for building simple dwellings as well as things for daily use. They exist on simple agriculture and trapping small animals. Their religion is based on superstitious beliefs. There would have been continued migrations from Africa and these migrants would have merged in the already existing Indianoid population. For example, the Negros brought as slaves and servants of the Portugese and Dutch in many places merged with the Indianoid population though in a few places where there were large numbers of such persons they retain their separate identity.

    Human beings migrating from Africa reached the end of the road in eastern Asia stopped by the Pacific Ocean. The yellow population in East Asia (by mistake called the Mongoloid race under the misconception that they originated in Mongolia) had a high reproductory rate and soon there was no space there. I use the term Mongoloid to refer to the whole of the yellow race and Mongolian to refer to people who specifically evolved in Mongolia. Southern Mongoloids are of short stature. Northern Mongoloids are tall probably as a result of mixing with the Nordic race. Mongoloids have round faces. They have relatively short arms and legs. They have heavily padded face and slanting eyes. They spread north and through the Bering straight crossed over to the Americas. Another branch spread south and populated south east Asia. Around 10,000 B.C. they started pouring into India also through Asam. This migration continued till very recent times. They spread west along the sub-Himalayan valleys and they also spread south near the Bay of Bengal coastlands. These Mongoloids (after considerable mixing with natives of south east Asia) mixed with the different local Indianoid populations in varying degrees. The Mongoloid race has a typical sex-wise division of occupational roles. Females do all the work and males specialise in fight. The yellow race also has a very clear ingroup-outgroup mechanism. They are very close to those whom they perceive as members of their ingroup. They have no hesitation in killing or fighting those whom they perceive as outgroup. They are fierce warriors and once they start fighting they forget their own personal safety (Bruce Lee and Jackie Chaan in films). They fight sacrificing themselves for group protection. The British recognised this characteristic and formed the Gurkha regiment. They tend to eat everything. Local Indian tribes with a great deal of Mongoloid mix became aggressive tribes and those with less Mongoloid mix show more docile and lazy characteristics. There would be very few Indian tribes without any Mongoloid mix. Of course the Mongoloid mix generally tends to be greater as we approach the north east. . The groups today classified as Adivasis (aboriginals), Dalits or scheduled castes (plains tribes) and tribes (forest dwellers) are derived from the mix of Indianoids and early immigrants from the north east. These groups generally keep the buffalo rather than the cow for milk. Till about half a century ago, the languages spoken by the Indianoids could not be understood by the others. Increased interaction and exposure to the media and modern education have obliterated these differences now.

    The Indianoids with the early Mongolian mix formed about 25% of the total Indian population, spread over 500 castes and tribes. In spite of a great deal of racial mixing, even today they retain their identity to a large extent.

    The Ivians from the Indus Valley civilization

    Climate is one of the factors affecting personality. A very cold climate induces fear of getting frozen and across several generations creates the need to compensate for this insecurity in terms of rituals and hyperintellectualisation. A cold climate seems to induce physical aggressiveness. A very hot climate induces laziness, self-hate and destructiveness (Inertia). A moderate climate is most conducive to Stability. Stability is also ease of instinctual transcendence and therefore contributes to spirituality. It has been observed that all major ancient civilizations including the Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese and the Indus Valley arose in the lower half of the temperate zone between the latitudes of about 23.5 to 43.5 degrees. Lower Mesopotamia was the cradle of human civilization. The Elamite civilization developed around B.C. 4000. Elam (Ezham) was the area on the eastern side of the mouth of the two rivers Euphretis and Tigris. Many linguists suppose that Elamite and Tamil belong to the same Elamo-Dravidian language family. Both the Elamite and Indus Valley scripts have not been deciphered yet. Ur was a city in Mesopotamian area with a population of 65000 inhabitants. Elam (Ezham) in Tamil now means SriLanka. Originally it referred to the whole of south India and there is a view that the original meaning of the word was motherland. Ur (oor) in Tamil means place of settlement. The Elamites built large structures using burned bricks and mud. They also developed urbanization. Groups of Elamites migrated south–east and settled in the Indus valley around 4000 B.C. Figurines of the type found in Elam with exaggerated representation of the eyes have been found in Indus Valley also. The earliest Indus Valley civilization centre was in Mehrgarh, west of Indus Valley. The Elamites also merged with the local populations (Australoid mainly and Negroid to a lesser extent). Slowly they migrated eastward and developed the big urbanised culture which is now known as the Indus-Valley (Ivian) civilization. The Elamite civilisation spread West to the area inbetween the two river mouths and a thousand years later became the Sumerian civilisation. The Elamite script developed into the cuneiform Sumerian script which has been deciphered. Close similarity between the Sumerian language and Tamil has been observed. For eample, “father” is Appa in Tamil and Abba in Sumerian, mother is Amma in Tamil and Ama in Sumerian. The Indus Valley civilization was highly developed in material, mental and spiritual levels. It covered an extensive area. Towards the end, around 1500 B.C. it extended up to Delhi in the East and Narmada in the south. Around 1400 cities have been unearthed though all of these may not have existed at the same time. The Ivians were artists, craftsmen and traders. They were hard working people. They had a highly organized system of agriculture with large granaries and storehouses. They lived in highly planned cities with broad roads and two-storied terraced buildings. They had a script (developed probably from the Elamite script). They made beautiful objects of art, necklaces and other ornaments. They had sailboats and bullock carts. They had wind mills. They played chess. They had stringed musical instruments. They had trade contacts with all the civilisations of their time namely Sumerians, Egyptians and Chinese. They therefore to some extent would have mixed with people of these cultures also. Racialy they belonged mainly to the Mediterranean and Australoid races. Some Mongoloid and Negroid skulls have also been excavated from the area. Theirs probably is the first globalised culture in the world. Their caravans went up to China opening up what later came to be known as the silk route. Travelling such long distances and seeing and mixing with people of different cultures would have had a deautomatising and opening up effect on their consciousness. The most important feature of the Ivian civilization is the absence of weapons used in war. They were peaceful people. Trading values cannot coexist with fight. Trading values involve respecting the other man and his right to possess what he has created or collected. Several figurines in what later came to be known as yogic postures (meditating padmasan) have been found. The Ivian culture comes closest to what has been conceptualized as a pure S (Stable) culture or a culture of pure spirituality. Since it was a vast culture, some sort of religion and some gods would have been there fore some people at some time, but largely it was a spiritual culture. The Indus cities, in contrast to lesser cities in other ancient cultures show the conspicuous absence of temples and palaces. The houses are more or less of the same size, built using baked bricks. There is a public bath. There is a sophisticated water supply system and drainage connected to each house. They had flushing toilets. They were probably governed by enlightened rulers (or kings) unanimously nominated by the people. The dignified bust of an enlightened ruler (with a string tied around the head having a circle on the Ajna chakra) is often misnamed as the “priest” king. They lived in harmony with all nature. They considered all nature sacred. There is much importance attached to animals and big trees as seen in their seals. There are several seals of enlightened men and women with a halo, often surrounded by adoring animals. The figure of an animal about to be speared in the presence of an enlightened person wearing a headdress with horns is often misrepresented as ritual sacrifice. It is more likely to be a poster warning against wanton killing of animals issued by an enlightened ruler. A man holding two erect tigers is likely to be a holy man before whom wild animals behaved like tame (story of Ayyappan riding tiger in south India) rather than a god fighting two tigers at the same time. A human figure with three heads in Indian tradition represents an enlightened person who sees past, present and future (trikala jnani) and not necessarily a god.. There are many figurines of women often misinterpreted to be fertility or mother goddesses. The Indus valley female figurines represent no more the fertility mother goddess than the semi nude female figures found in abundance in magazine covers and advertisements in modern cultures. The enlightened persons or kings of the Indus Valley tradition in later periods would have become gods and goddesses like Pasupathinath. The swasthika (both clockwise and anticlockwise forms) is in the list of Ivian symbols. The same has been found in ancient China also. The Yin Yang figure representing transcendence of the dualities is a modified form of Swasthika (where the centre point is the point of transcendence of the two moving arms. There is an Ivian moulded tablet showing two birds on a boat and two coconut trees. The boat is the spiritual wisdom which takes you across the ocean of worldliness. The two birds, one eating and the other merely watching represent karthru bhava or egoistic doership mode and sakshibhava or passive witness mode. The bird is Hamsa which in classical Indian mythology flies from the gross to be subtle. Ancient Taoist philosophy also speaks of the mode of transcendence (Wei wu-wei or action non-action mode). Druids were pre-Christian priests of Europe. Many people think that there is a connection between Dravid and Druid and that Ivian migrants would have contributed to the Druid practices of venerating nature, leading prayers and magic.

    The Indus valley region was made fertile by the rivers running down from the Himalayas. Himalayas are highly earthquake prone and earth quakes would have been much more frequent then than now. Earth quakes cause alteration in the path of rivers and also cause floods. The Ivians were troubled by these floods periodically. Sometimes a whole city was destroyed by floods. The starting point of a city was a citadel (small fortress) around which the city grew. The people could take refuge in the citadel from minor floods and also attacks by enemies. Some cities were rebuilt above the ruins of earlier cities as many as seven times. The earlier cities appear to be bigger and more neatly planned indicating that the builders came from another area (Elam) which already had developed an urban culture. Finally around B.C.1500 the Ivians gave up and decided to migrate further east. There has to be more than one cause to account for the Ivians covering a large area to quit. Epidemics, population pressure and invasions from different groups of migrants from the north-west would have hastened their movement towards the east. Their culture got diffused as they spread all over peninsular India. However their influence is seen maximally in south India (central Kerala and middle portion of Tamil Nadu along the Kaveri river ending in the ancient port town of Poompuhar. Another migration went to the north-east ending in Bihar first and later in Bengal area. Figurines of females with elaborate headdress of the Indus Valley type have been found in ancient Magadha. Among the different caste groups in India the Ivian influence is maximally seen among the Vaisyas (who traditionally handled all art, craft, trade and organized agriculture). The Ivians had trade contacts with south India. Their ships probably came to the south for spices and gold and it is possible that at the end of Ivian civilization many groups migrated to south as well as Bengal on ships.

    The word Dravid was initially used in Sanskrit to refer to the Ivians. Dramil was originally Tamil. Original Ivian languages no doubt got altered as a result of amalgamations with the Indianoid languages. There are groups of people speaking Dravidian languages in the north like Brahui of Afghanistan and Baluchistan and Kurukh in the north-east indicating the northern origin of Tamil. Mythology states that Tamil was created by sage Agasthya (he was probably the first to write Tamil grammar) who migrated from the north to south. The word Dravida has been politicalised much and acquired many different meanings. When DMK (Dravida Munnetta Kazhakam) was formed, originally it was a party of the Vaisyas in Tmail Nadu. Later it was expanded to include the Dalits and backward classes for numerical strength and today it has becomes a party of all people in Tamil Nadu. The term Dravidian originally did not refer to any particular race, but to a community of people (Ivians) racially mixed who lived in Indus Valley and developed a high degree of civilization and culture. Later on the word Dravida acquired the meaning south. An in-depth understanding of south Indian culture is necessary to correctly understand and interpret the Ivian culture and civilization.

    There is evidence for the beginning of rice cultivation in the Indus Valley. As the Ivians moved to south and north-east India, they would have shifted to rice cultivation as paddy is more suited for these areas. They created an elaborate network of paddy fields with a very sophisticated irrigation system. In Kerala they started using wood also to build their houses, as wood was abundantly available, but the type of house was Harappan, called Nalukettu with an inner courtyard. Different types of cemeteries (with Dolmen tombs, burial cists and Jars) have been found in different places in the south. Many of these megalithic burial monuments resemble Mediterranean megaliths. Cave characters resembling characters in the Indus script have been located in a few places (Edakkal and Perumkadavila in Kerala). There was a public bath in each settlement. The old kings lived close to the tank, and their houses were more or less the same type as the rest of the houses. The king was called ko and his residence was the kovil. There was a tradition of intense love and devotion to the king. The king lived for the people unlike in I societies where the king exploited the people and in A societies where the people existed for the king. With increased mixing with the Indianoids, the system of worshipping dead kings came into vogue and the kovil became the temple and the king’s residence started being called ‘kovilakam’ as different from the kovil. Ancient brick structures (for example temples) have been found both in South India and Bengal. Though Bengali is no longer a Dravidian language and has been influenced by other language families, similarities between Bengali and Tamil in syntax and other aspects have been noted. Both languages are musical and lyrical. Tamil is the simplest of languages with a minimum number of letters (18) and easy to pronounce words in contrast to Sanscritised Indo-European languages where there is a tendency to use hard consonants and combinations of consonants to make words high sounding. Tamil is the language of egolessness. Both Bengali and Tamil have several words to differentiate subtle human feelings and emotions (for example, anpu, nesam, pasam, kathal, etc. to denote different types of love in Tamil). There is similarity in appearance and skin colour (light brown) between Bengalis and south Indians. There is more Mongoloid mix in Bengal and more Indianoid mix in south. Both Tamils and Bengalis are proud of their language and culture. Both like to live the good life, eat good food, go on relatively long tours, etc. Caste and religious separations are less marked in these cultures as seen in intermarriages, compared to other places. There is a marked tradition to respect women and motherhood and also elders in both cultures. The practice of calling female children ‘mother’ is found in both cultures. The Baul tradition (wandering singers) in Bengal is paralleled by the tradition of Pandarams in the south. Both Bauls and Padarams like the Tamil siddhas do not worship local deities. Pandarams were Saivites and they used to bury their dead in a sitting posture and not cremate them. The root word ‘Pand’ in the south means olden times, it also means related to royalty (Pandara), anything of value like ornaments (Pandam), as well as storehouses and trade (Pandika). Pandi also refers to the southern most portion of south India and it is one of the the earliest Tamil royal dynasties. In north India the root is related to knowledge of truth (Panda, Pandit). The mystic tradition, the idea of transcendental godhead (as different from specific gods) is present in both South India and Bengal.

    Siva was probably an enlightened Ivian king who lived in the Sivalik hills near the Kailas-Manasasarovar area. He married the daughter of Daksha, a king of Central Asian migrants. Daksha does not invite Siva for a yaga he conducts because of Siva’s Dravidian practices (may be like keeping a cobra around his neck like the Ivian kings wearing animal horns). Agastyar goes south at the time of Siva’s marriage (around B.C.1000?). Agastya is of short stature. He was not admitted into a Vaishnava temple at Kuttalam because of his Saivite practices. Siva in the North Indian culture got identified with Rudra of the Vedas and became the god of destruction while in the south Sivam is “mangalam” (auspiciousness or positivity).

    In Rig Veda, Krishna is the name of a native king who fights the migrants. Krishna is considered the only Poorna Avathara (complete manifestation of divinity). He is neither Brahmin nor Kshathriya. He is king of Yadavas. Yadavas kept cows and not buffalo. He is dark complexioned. He keeps a peacock feather on his head like the Ivian kings wearing animal horns. He is considered urbanized (Naagar) living in a city. When his people were repeatedly attacked by Jarasandha, he migrates along with his people to far away Dwaraka, where they build another city, instead of fighting Jarasandha like the Ivian migration to far south and Far East from Indus Valley. Both Krishna and Buddha were adopted into the emerging popular Hindu tradition as incarnations of Vishnu by the Puranas. But Krishna was retained and Buddha dropped later on.

    The term yoga is probably Indo-European. (Latin root Jungere, pronounced Yunjere and the English Yoke, Join) . The idea of two initially separate things joining does not sound very appealing to the Saiva tradition, not even to the much later Saiva siddhanta. Saivism stresses a pre-existing inseparable harmony and vibrationary reality. Yogic postures are natural body positions of an enlightened person. The term yoga was probably first used in Jainism, later in Buddhism and adopted in Hinduism during the Upanishadic period. Similary the mantra Om is also Indo-European in origin. Om means ‘all’ in several European languages (eg. Omni, Omlette, Ombutsman, etc. Om as sacred syllable is used in Jainism, Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism. In Zorastrianism and Sikhism the syllable On is used instead of Om. The analytical divison of the four yogas is also not in line with south Indian spirituality in which parabhakti (as different from muda bhakti or worship of different personal gods) and jnana are the same and this is the natural state of a detached person who lives in harmony.

    The word India is derived from Sindhu. H of Persia becomes S in India and I in Greek. Sindhu is Hindu and Saraswathi is Harahwathi. Therefore the words Hindu and Indian are most applicable to the Ivians because they have been in the Indus region for the maximum duration and most Indian values have come from them.

    Coming of the Saks

    The European race is generally called the white race. They were by mistake called the Caucasoids under the earlier mistaken notion that they originated in the Caucasus Mountains. This race has three subdivisions based on the degree of latitude of origin. The lowest is the Mediterranean race with light brown skin colour. They were responsible for the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea including Egypt. The middle European is called Alpine and they have more whiteness of skin colour than the Mediterranean. These people correspond to the Mongolians in East Asia. The Celts are Alpine and to some extent they got mixed with the Mongoloids in the return migration of the Mongoloids from the east. Northern Europeans are supposed to belong to the Nordic race. . In Asia the corresponding area is northern Russia and Siberia. They have absence of skin colour and therefore most white, to favour formation of vitamin D with weak sunlight. They are tall and have blonde hair and blue eyes. They have long faces and narrow high nose to facilitate heating up the air as it goes to the lungs.

    The Saks originated in the Kazhakhstan area in lower Steppes, south of Russia i.e., south central Asia. They are red in colour. They migrated north-west, crossed over to America and became red Indians in America. They belong to the middle European (similar to Alpine) race. They were forced to move westward as a result of the return migration of the Mongoloids. The Chinese built the great wall to defend themselves against these warring Mongoloids. The numbers of the warring Mongoloids invading the West increased as time went by and in the fourth century A.D., it became the Hun invasion and in 14th century the invasion of Europe by Khans. The Saks would have mixed with the Mongoloids to some extent and also with the Celts. They came to be known as Scythians in Greece, and Saxon in Germany, after mixing with the local natives in those areas. They entered Egypt and mixed with the royal families originally belonging to Mediterranean stock. They were an aggressive fighting race when they entered Indus Valley. They had iron weapons unlike the Ivians who were skilled in the use of other metals for non-military purposes but did not use iron. The Saks would have hastened the departure of the Ivians from the Indus Valley. The Saks (Kazaks) came to be known as Kshatriyas in India (Kshayathiya in Persia). They recognized the spirituality of the Ivians. Their attempt to develop spirituality the violent way led to Jainism. All the 24 Jain Thirthankars were kings and Kshathriyas. Adinath, the first Thirthankar is supposed to have lived in Ayodhya in Kathiawad area on the West coast some time before 2000 B.C. Jainism is a religion of extremes. Living in harmony with nature of the Ivians became absolute non-violence in the case of Jains. There is a tree and an animal associated with each Thirthankar. Only extreme ascetic practices like long hard penance and absolute non-violence could nullify the aggressiveness and egoism of the Saks. Sanyas would have been a natural state after Vanaprastha (retiring to the forest) in the Indus civilisation. Rigveda expresses surprise at seeing bands of wandering people wearing orange colour clothes and showing siddhis of various kinds. The Jains formalized it and also introduced the system of monks living on alms so that the egoism and conquering tendency could be neutralized for final victory over one’s own self. Buddha is called Sakya Muni. Buddha’s father was a Sak, but his mother belonged to the Lichchavi community, probably of Ivian origin. The Lichchavi community had unanimously elected leaders, though they accepted the rule of Jain kings. Buddha had considerable regard for Lichchavis and probably was influenced by its natural spirituality and this led to his theory of moderation. The Lichchavis had a city of burned brick structures at Vaisali. Clay seals of the Indus Valley type have been unearthed from Vaisali. Buddha himself had to undergo hard penance and struggle with different intense effortful sadhanas before he could attain enlightenment. And as a consequence he had to preach for the rest of his life also.

    Coming of the Sarmas

    One strain of original migrants from Africa would have travelled steadily northwards, after a long period of time coming near the north pole. They would have undergone maximum evolutionary changes in the transition from tropics to the polar regions. The Rig Veda contains passages describing a place where the sun never sets. People of all races admire white skin colour, blonde hair, blue eyes and Nordic body proportions. Dolls having these characteristics are made and sold all over the world. If you ever lived in a place with subzero temperatures you will start admiring fire and the sun. You will also develop a root insecurity resulting from the fear of being frozen to death. This insecurity will cause a hidden aggressiveness and restlessness which you channelise through rituals and hyperintellectual speculations. You worship the Sun and like to sit near a fire, throwing whatever excess food you have as sacrifice to the fire god. The Sarmas were a Nordic race. They were an intellectual race given to rituals and ceremonies. They would have come down and finally settled in Sarmatia. Sarmatia is the old name of Poland. Sarmas were perhaps driven southward from north central Asia by Poles from Norway. Many other places where they settled temporarily later on have also been known as Sarmatia. Even today in Polish poetry the land is referred to as Sarmatia. Poland is West of Siberia. The horse sacrifice (Aswa Medha) was practised till recently in that area . There is an eye witness record of horse sacrifice in Siberia as late as the 20th century.

    They must have passed through Southern Russia (settling there for some time) in their south-east migration. Saraswat Brahmins claim that they came from southern Russia and that this fact is recorded in scrolls in their Partagali Mutt at Goa.

    As the Sarmas came to south eastern Europe, they came into conflict with the Saks. Sarmas called themselves Suras (they for some time settled in Suria, called Syria in English and the Saks in Asuria, called Assyria in English). Those with purer Mongoloid features seem to have been called Rakshasas. A sect of Saks went to Persia and they developed the religion of Zorastrianism. Their conflict continued in India as the Brahmin-Kshatriya conflict. Parasurama’s father was Brahmin and mother Kshatriya. He inherited physical courage from his mother but identified with his father’s community. He went round exterminating Kshatriyas.

    When one branch of the Sarmas entered the Indus valley, most of the Ivians had probably left. Descrptions of taking over a walled city and the knowledge and medicine of the people and the siege of Hariyupia (Harappa) by Indra in Rig Veda might have taken place when the Indus cities were occupied by later immigrants. The alter name of Indra the chief of gods in the Vedas is Purandhara meaning destroyer of cities. However the Ivian-Sarmatian struggle would have continued inside peninsular India. If at all the Sarmas usurped any land from the Ivians it must be using intelligence rather than physical force, as represented in the mythological story of Mahabali. Mahabali was a noble king and the non-Ivians were jealous of his popularity. Therefore Vishnu goes to him disguised as a poor Brahmin and requests him to give enough land for him to place his foot three times. A noble king grants what is requested. Then Vamana shows his real form and takes over heaven (Himalayan regions were known as Devaloka) and earth with his two feet and with the third, pushes Mahabali down to Patala (Patala is south of Vindyas) and people believe that Mahabali came and lived in south India (Mahabalipuram and later Mavelikkara in Kerala). Keralites still celebrate Onam as the official state festival believing that Mahabali returns on that day. One commonly made statement is that when Mahabali ruled, all men were equal, referring to the fact that there were no caste or class distinctions in the Ivian tradition.

    The Sarmas probably did not come into direct contact with Ivian spirituality until much later. Being an intellectual people they were keeping a record of their experiences and history in poetry form committed to memory. The Jains claim to have had scripts right from the time of Adinath though there is no epigraphic evidence for the same. Buddhist scriptures were written down shortly after Buddha’s death. This script is based on Brahmi. There is epigraphical evidence for writing down Vedas only from A.D.150. There is evidence for Tamil Brahmi script in south India from inscriptions dating as far back as 300 B.C. Perhaps whatever was written on perishable media got lost in time and what ever was handed down through human memory, namely the Vedas continued to exist. The earlier part of the Rig Veda (Samhita), composed around 1500 B.C., gives the picture of a people who had travelled long distances and achieved much mental elevation and broad mindedness. They worshipped the forces of nature and offered sacrifices to nature gods and drank soma (mixture of ephedra, cannabis, opium, etc.). The effedra plant does not grow in India and the substitute Soma plants do not contain any hallucinogen and therefore the practice of Soma drinking gradually stopped. There is evidence for the ritualistic use of these substances in ancient times in central Asia. The next part of the Vedas called Brahmanas describe rituals. There is a beginning of philosophy in Aranyakas. The Upanishads which are the last additions to the Vedas(7th century B.C. to 3rd Century A.D.) contain the intellectualised philosophy probably influenced by Ivian, Jain and Buddhist contacts. There is about 1000 years gap between the early Vedic Sanskrit and the language of the Upanishads which is closer to modern Sanskrit.

    The Arrival of the Varmas

    Pouring in of the warring peoples with some early Mongoloid mix through the north east continued all along. Even at the beginning of the English period there were conquests of Asam from Burma. Burman and Varman are interchangeable in the north east. Invaders of purer Mongoloid stock from Burma came to known as Burmans. They went on conquering area after area throughout India. They also mixed with local royal families. Rajputs of Rajastan are Saks, but their king was from Bengal who invaded and defeated them. The Varmas joined the Kshathriya caste which even originally might have had some Mongoloid blood. The presence of Mongoloid characteristics in the Kshathriya community has been noted by anthropologists. They also introduced matrilineage and worship of female deities like Durga and Kali. The original skin colour of Kshathriyas changed from red initially to reddish yellow later on.

    Development of the Caste system

    The Aryan Controversy and the Aryan Invasion Theory

    Aryan only means higher born. It is a relative term. In a practical sense it means foreign. It relates to the degree of difference from the Indianoids. Africans will not be considered high born, because they are black and like the Indianoid. Sarmas will be most Aryan because they are most white and have maximum the Nordic characteristics, generally admired. Compared to them the Saks will be non-Aryan, as they are middle European with some Mongoloid mix. Generally Vaisyas (Ivians) are accepted as Aryans, but of the third or last grade. In this general sense, Aryan means non-Indianoid. Manu Smriti considers all those who migrated from outside India like Dravidians, Saks, Yavanas (Greeks), Pahlavas (Persians) and Chinese, etc. as Aryans but degraded because they do not practise vedic rituals. Only those Aryans who practised vedic rituals namely the Brahmins became Grade 1 Aryans, the Kshatryias became Grade II Aryans because they had power and owned land, and Vaisyas Grade III Aryans because they had money. Because of the absence of a singular meaning, the term Aryan causes confusion in academic discussions.

    Genetic studies are under way and in general there seems to be an indication that the central Asian connection of Aryans (Grade 1 & 2) and Afrikan connection of Indianoids are being supported. It is observed in the DNA of males among Brahmins and Kshatriyas and women among Indianoids.

    Whenever different groups interact, the struggle for existence is inevitable. But to say that invasion by central Asian migrants is the only factor accounting for the departure of Ivians from the Indus Valley is an exaggeration.

    Formation of the Different castes

    Brahmins

    The Sarmas constitute the main component of Brahmins. Intermarriages and conversions (by Deeksha karmas) would have been common in the early periods. Migrant groups showing similar mental and physical characteristics would have been accepted totally. Among Brahmin groups the Misras probably are migrants from Egypt (Misra Desa). Black eyes and black hair are dominant characteristics, and through intermarriages, the Sarmas would have lost some of the Nordic characteristics. But still in most Brahmin communities those of high rank with all the rights and privileges especially the right to conduct yagas show more Nordic characteristics. There have been Brahmin kings in several places in India. But they were not able to continue for long against the fierce military prowess of the Kshatriyas. Brahmins form only around 3.5 % of the Indian population. The British considered them their nearest colonial cousins.

    Brahmins in south India and perhaps Bengal also show more evidence of racial mix. Namboodiri Brahmins of Kerala are in general light brown in colour and tend to be more Saivite than Vaishnavite. There is a also a belief that only a small number of them came from north and that many were converted from local (Ivian?) settlers. However those who have higher rank among Namboothiris are those with the right to perform yagas and they do show greater Nordic features.

    The hot climate of India would have been enervating for those who evolved in a very cold climate. My own supposition is that the Nordics originally were not physically very aggressive, but it is possible that the hot climate transmuted the physical aggressiveness into ritualism and intellectualism. They would have found it difficult to work outside and also to fight and defend themselves. They soon realized that their survival depends on the creation of a servant class which will be loyal to them, work and fight for them. Every community has its restrictive customs of interacting with other communities. Untouchability had to be introduced to counteract the tendency of the non-whites to touch the white or interact with them closely. The British also realized this and in many of their colonies different forms of untouchability had to be introduced. For example apartheid in South Afrika. Separate hotels and water taps and railway compartments for whites and blacks. Blacks had to sit in the back seats in buses. In India also, Indians were not allowed to walk on the malls (main roads) or enter residential areas of the whites. The castes considered higher, especially the Brahmin males interbred with the Indianoids and the offspings formed the Sudra caste. Sudra power also increased the bargaining capacity of the Brahmins with the rulers. Military and administrative power was with the Kshathriyas. The Brahmins tried to impress the kings with their scholarship and rituals for getting favours. They also declared themselves as the highest caste. Power is power and throughout history we find kings usurping properties of Brahmins who with their intelligence amassed wealth or property. Revival of Jainism and the establishment of Buddhism in 6th century B.C. made yagas unpopular and Brahmins went out of business. We read of many poor Brahmins like Kuchela in literature. Acoording to ancient literature brahmins had to collect the discarded grains from fields for survival. Many kings felt pity on the Brahmins and made it a custom to give them alms and also food. Many Brahmins joined Buddhism and throughout the history of Buddhism we read of Brahmin Buddhist monks. Brahmins being able to sense the wisdom of Jains and Buddhism accepted practices like vegetarianism. Both Buddhism and Jainism became corrupt by 3rd century A.D., because it is not easy for people with an A (aggressive) temperament to remain detached or keep up celibacy. Many of the Jain Mahapurushas like Rama and Krishna and Buddha were declared as incarnations of Vishnu in the Puranas.

    Brahmins started using intellectual debates to defeat Jainism and Buddhism by argument. However a Brahmin Buddhist monk by name Siddhanagarjuna came to the rescue in 3rd century A.D. . He travelled all over the country, defeating Hindu Brahmins in debate, reestablishing Buddhism. This revival could not last long. Jainism and Buddhism were again declining after 5th century and in 8 th century A.D. Sankara reestablished Brahminism through intellectual debates and created what is today known as popular Hinduism. The animistic religion of the early Vedas was abandoned in favor of the Indianoid iconic religion, justified and rationalized through the intellectualised philosophy derived from Ivian spirituality combined with practices and popular gods borrowed from Jainism and Buddhism. From that time only Brahmins could become Pujaris of temples or Heads of the four or five monasteries established by Sankara.. Only Aryans (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas) were eligible for Sanyasa .

    There are many evidences showing that the philosophical wisdom found in the Upanishads is intellectualized version of Ivian spirituality. Several stories in the Upanishads (like the story of Pravahana and Swetaketu in Chandogyopanishad) indicate that Jnana was originally with the kings (Ivian) and only later on imparted to the Brahmins. Intellectual learning and effortful sadhana however are supposed to be blocks for enlightenment in the Ivian tradition. In south India as well as Bengal there are stories of numerous saints and sages who got illumination simply by cutting social ties or renouncing the world. Also it is realized that the most enlightened persons need not be the most well known. A man who looks like a madman or beggar in the street may be in a state higher than that of the most acknowledged and revered spiritual giant.

    Kshathriyas
    Kshatriyas are Saks coming from north west combined with Varmas of purer Mongoloid descent coming into India from the north east. Perhaps the community which was having the maximum material benefit from the caste system and the struggle among the different castes for survival, was the Kshatriyas. Even in 1980, after all the land reforms, Kshatriyas who formed only about 5.5 % of the population owned about 80 % of the land. Original Indianoid kings were little more than tribal chieftains, though often oppressive and exploitative and the people as a whole led humble contented lives. The oldest kings possibly in the Ivian tradition were noble people often with a great deal of aesthetic talent and personal virtue who commanded respect from people because of their personal characteristics. The Kshatriya kings were originally Saks. They would have mixed with the Ivian royal families to some extent and to some extent they would have defeated the Ivians in battle. The Saks originated in south central Asia and they could retain some of their vigor in the hot climate. They probably had some yellow race mix initially and later on more pure yellow race fighters joined the Kshathriya community as Varmas from the northeast and Huns and Mugals from the north West . Mugal is the Persian word for Mongol. Though the Mugals came from Turkey they considered themselves as Mongolian in origin. The Kshathriyas and Mugals considered it their duty to keep fighting neighboring kings and amassing their land and property. When a king conquers the neighboring country everything in the country including land, properties, wealth and women becomes his. He could redistribute the land among whomever he liked on a kind of lease, the tenants being obliged to give tax which may get revised from time to time depending on the needs of the king to build big palaces, temples or go on a fighting spree. Whoever wrote the Dharmasasthras were forced to justify the plunder and invasions, saying that the Kshatriya dharma was to fight and grab the neighboring kingdom. Kshatriyas were not without any virtue. Kshatriyas had their own honor and code of conduct. They were honest and straight forward. They were not crooked. They will not hit a man behind his back. They will not join together and kill a defenceless man but challenge him for a duel. They will not fight after sunset. They will not run away like a coward, but fight valiantly till death, etc. Brahmins managed to impress the kings with their scholarship and rituals and to some extent succeeded in controlling and moderating the kings as rajagurus and advisers. Such kings had to make a show of power and pomp to impress people and had to keep fighting to show off physical courage. In some places at least, the Brahmins convinced the Kshatriyas that for better progeny, Kshatriya women should beget children from Brahmin males. Brahmins must have found that this is a way to dilute the aggressive gene of the Kshatriyas. Real genetic warfare !

    Vaisyas
    The Vaisyas formed about 6 % of the Indian population. The wealth of a country depends mainly on intelligent organized and planned effort in agriculture, production of goods and trade, and the presence of skilled workers and craftsmen. Keeping cows, production and marketing of milk and milk products was an important business in ancient times. Vaisya is the name given to a collection of communities in India pursuing such means of livelihood. Till the 18 th century professional artists also were included in this category. and most well known artists came from this community. Dancers and devadasis came mainly from this community. Devadasis were originally court dancers at the time of Ivian kings. When the palaces became temples, the dancers became devadasis . With less noble people becoming kings, the system became corrupted. It is to be noted that mere land owners are not considered Vaisya as people who merely owned cows were also not considered Vaisya.; only those who actively organize, execute and supervise cultivation of large areas or keep cows for large scale production and sale of milk would be Vaisya. . In many states land was owned by Kshathriyas to a large extent and Brahmins to a small extent, but the people in charge of cultivation were often Vaisyas. I have expressed the opinion earlier that Ivian migrants would have become the Vaisya community, particularly in south India and Bihar-Bengal area. Other migrants from different lands like Phoenicians, Jews, Arabs, Romans and Chinese coming for trade and settling down here would have merged with the Vaisyas. In the sasthras Vaisyas are said to be yellow in color. This must be the light brown of Ivians mixed with the yellow of the Chinese. During the Jain-Buddhist period many Vaisyas were in these religions. In Kerala many of this group would have espoused Christianity, starting from the 1st century as evidenced by the absence of a significant Hindu community involved in trade in Kerala. The Christians in Kerala were also known to have close ceremonial ties with the Hindu temples (many of them originally Jain or Buddhist) till the 16th century.

    Once the Indus valley civilization was discovered and its advanced nature highlighted, all major communities in India claim to have descended from it. A Brahminist theory of Indus valley civilization is that the ‘Aryan race’ originated there and that it later on came to India as the higher caste groups. There is the Brahminical claim that Vedas came from the Ivian civilization. However, the Samhita part of the Vedas (earliest) makes no reference to typically Indian things like the elephant or peacock but highlights the horse which is not an Indian animal at all. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and shares almost all root words with Latin and Greek. Among all the different communities in India Brahmins show maximum Nordic characteristics showing connection with high latitudes. There are small communities like the Brogpas of Ladak and Nuristhanis of Afghanistan who claim to be of pure ‘Aryan’ descent. These groups may not be racially as pure as they claim to be but they do show northern Caucasoid or Nordic features. They live in relatively simple settlements and show no evidence of having been heir to a great civilization. The central Asians practised cremation of the dead as against burial in cemeteries of Ivians. Central Asians had a different style of pottery (painted grey as different from the plain red or black colored Harappan pottery). The Saks called the Ghaggar-Hakra river Harahwathi (after the goddess Harahwathi of Persia) which the Sarmas later on would have pronounced Saraswati. The river has been becoming narrow and gradually drying up over a long period of time and now it is active only during the rainy season. Painted grey pottery (of the central Asian migrants) has been obtained from sites closer to the centre of the river, but not from the sites away from the centre of the river while earlier Indus city sites were found away from the centre, indicating that the central Asian migrants came and settled in the area much later compared to the Ivians. The Brahmins however are intelligent people and have been able to absorb the best elements of all influences: Ivian, Jain and Buddhist as the Westerners are doing today. Brahmin scholars have elaborated and systematised Indian thought.

    Some people who favour the Indianoids argue that some Indianoid groups have come from the Indus Valley civilization. However, no Indianoid group living in close proximity to the mainstream society or totally isolated from the mainstream society show any cumulative evidence of remnants of a sophisticated civilization. Often claims of Ivian origin is made on the basis of a single factor. For example it is said that the Santhals have a script resembling the Indus script. But it is also said that Santhal script is of very recent origin and that it was created for them by somebody who was not even a Santhal. The script contains only a small number of signs in contrast to the Indus Valley script having more than 500 discovered signs. There can be many accidental similarities and coincidences because of the limited number of possible geometric shapes. If the Santhal script was formulated by a single person, he perhaps knew the Ivian symbols. Even if it is shown that Santhals were having the script for a very long time, it would only mean that they got it from Ivian migrants and they have been holding on to it because they could not get more efficient scripts while the Ivians left the same for more efficient scripts (like Brahmi and Kharoshti) . The language of the Gonds is more similar to Dravidian root than Santhal language. Mere similarity in language alone is not sufficient to establish a migrant connection. The original Gond language would have been modified as a result of contact with Ivians. The same Indianoid root language would have influenced both the Dravidian root and Gondi, at some time in history. There are many examples in recent times of tribals losing their original language in a short period when mixing with other groups. Indianoids did very simple things, in agriculture, housing, etc. For example in cultivating paddy, each family cultivated its own paddy using dry farming. Even now some tribals in the South do this. No Indianoid group has been found to create wetland paddy fields for large scale cultivation of paddy which involves organized collective planning and effort for a sophisticated irrigation system ensuring the required level of water in the field all the time. The usual area of a tribal settlement is around 200 square kilometers. There are strong prohibitions about anybody going outside the area and anybody who ventures out is excommunicated. This is indicative of the fact that they have evolved in that locality for a long time. Brahmins have no restrictions about travelling by land. Brahmins all over India desire to visit the four holy places in the Himalayas at least once in their life time. Namboothiri Brahmins of Kerala have their own ghat in Benaras. Sankara goes all over India four times in his short life span of 32 years. However, Brahmins were prohibited from crossing the seas. This indicates that they were never a trading community, crossing seas for trade. Vaisyas, on the other hand used to travel long distances by land and by sea in ships going to places like Singapore for trade. The Pandians of the south were very ancient mariners.

    The Sudras generally claim that all civilization was theirs in the Indus Valley and that the Aryans who came from central Asia usurped all of it and made them servants. However the fact remains that there is no evidence that the Sudras ever in history showed any dynamism needed to create a civilization as seen in the Indus Valley and therefore this claim is not substantiated.

    The Sudras
    Sudras form definite communities in every state of India amounting to nearly 50 % of the Indian population. The Indianoids are not included in this. Sudras had already crystallized as a definite community or category around the turn of BC to AD when the Manusmriti was written. Many authorities have concluded that the Sudras resulted from intermixing of the Aryans and the Indianoids. Perhaps many of the Indianoid groups were not suited for this and those with some ancestral connection to Sudan in east Africa were found most suitable. The Sudras were originally servants of the Aryans, either serving them or fighting for them. Most of the restrictions and controls in the Dharmasastras are directed at Sudras and not against the Indianoids. It is true that Indianoids coming into close interaction or contact with the others were often enslaved or tricked into bonded labour or contracts disadvantageous to them. But in many states there were Indianoid groups (particularly tribals in the forest) or other communities (not included in the fourfold caste system) not coming into close direct contact with the “Aryans” and these groups had their own way of life and freedom, having little interaction with the members inside the caste system.

    It is noted in history that exploitation of the indigenous people by whites takes place when the whites come down to the tropics where they are unable to work or function effectively in physical terms. They need servants or slaves. The Anglican church leaders took a stand against racial discrimination, sitting in England. The north American whites accepted abolition of slavery because north America is relatively cold and there whites could manage without slaves. On the other hand in South USA they needed slaves to work in the cotton fields. This ended in the American civil war which was a battle between whites favoring abolition of slavery and whites who wanted to continue slavery. A somewhat parallel situation arose in India also. The British introduced the Indian Penal Code from 1836 granting equal rights for all citizens breaking age old caste rules. This led to a lot of riots and unrest until a new balance and resettlement gradually emerged.

    Racial mixing induces what is called the hybrid vigor. The Sudras benefited maximally from the lifting of caste restrictions and modern English education open to all. In many states, Sudra groups developed economically and culturally and became the communities highest in all round development .

    The Outcastes and Panchamas
    Outcastes are those who do not come under the caste system. By usage the term outcaste has probably acquired a derogatory meaning. Theoretically there are many groups in every state who do not come under the rigid caste system and each of these groups had a certain status in society (high or low) depending on their physical and mental characteristics. The term Panchama(meaning fifth) generally refers to the Indianoids or the earliest inhabitants of the land and seems to have an acquired derogatory connotation.

    Interaction among the different castes and communities
    Ivians were mixers. They were not racists. There is no evidence of class or caste in spite of several types of skulls being found in the Indus Valley. This would have continued after their migration to peninsular India. They would have employed the Indianoids as workers. The Indianoids were happy to work for them because of more efficient methods of agriculture, and storage methods assuring them of regular food supply all the year round. The Ivians would also have taken wives from the Indianoids. The Vaisyas have the tradition of employing Indianoids, but do not practice any rigid form of untouchability. I would say that the Vaisya community is likely to have maximum Ivian base. Next in line come the Kshatriyas and Sudras, equally, who are near Vaisyas in the caste hierarchy on either side. Among the different castes in India, the extremes, namely, Brahmins and the Indianoids would show least Ivian component. People in the Vaisya community were the entrepreneurs, the builders, planners and executers of all the development one sees. Kings in general wanted them to live in their country because they were needed for economic development. The question remains why the Ivians did not build any city with the same magnitude and quality like the developed cities found in the Indus Valley . The answer is that they were not let free to do that. Wherever they went there were Indianoids and soon they were followed by the Central Asian migrants. The Ivians were the victims of jealousy and prejudice from the other communities. Significant taxes can be collected only from the prosperous and the Kshatriya kings taxed them heavily. The Vaisyas had to pay for all the war games of the kings, their forts, palaces, temples and monuments and support their armies and wives (often larger in number than the army). Throughout India one hears stories of how Vaisyas were forced to run away from one kingdom to another because the king pressed them for more taxes or the king had an eye on their women. Invading armies looted whatever they could. In Kerala in relatively recent times, there is the case of a king who borrowed a huge amount of money from a merchant. When the merchant asked for the money back, the king cut both his ears and put him in prison.

    The true culture of an individual or a society reveals itself at the time of a crisis. A person with a high degree of root Stability may get transformed to a higher plane. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was outwardly an ordinary man. But the crisis that he faced made him the Mahatma. It was like Purandara Dasa or Pattanathu Pillayar getting transformed by a crisis in their lives. Gandhi was not killed by the British, but by the prejudices of his own countrymen. He could not even see independent India for one full year. He knew from experience that the common people in India could not fully understand his moral stand against the British. The common people were often resorting to violence. As soon as India got independence, he wanted the Congress party to be dissolved because he knew that the methods that he used against a foreign power and their unfair laws will be misused to create indiscipline and disorder in independent India .

    Independent India
    The primary responsibility of proper leadership is to create right system in the country created through right laws where constructive and intelligent work is encouraged and destructive impulses are curtailed. Proper leadership should encourage all people to appreciate, learn from and imitate the hardworking sects of the population.. Proper leadership also promotes personal growth in the form of Stability in people. Right politics encourages positive self-regard and self-respect in people which is the fundamental requirement for personal growth and consequently any real development.

    Independent India chose to be a democratic republic. The rule by kings who used brute force to grab the neighboring country and exploit the entrepreneurs was apparently over. However the hangover of this tradition continued into independent India. Politicians are doing what the oppressive rulers were doing. People do not know what freedom is. They think freedom is the right to destroy other people and their freedom. Jealousy and oppression merely took new forms like bribery and corruption. Communism and the supposed progress of Soviet Union and China became an excuse for government domination, nationalization of any successful private enterprise and thereby oppressing the entrepreneurs. Even after Russia and China have accepted free market economy, India finds it difficult to allow individuals freedom to enterprise in different spheres like industry, education, health care and so on. It seems emotionally difficult to allow hard working and enterprising people to get ahead. Income tax at one time was 95 paise per Rupee, unheard of in any other country. The money collected as tax is wasted in all kinds of wasteful government departments and public sector undertakings. Not even the old kings would have squeezed that much. The entrepreneur had no individual freedom. He was always in the straight jacket of rules and regulations. Nothing could be done without bribes for permissions. If a man is successful, the political parties demand huge contributions. They come with lists of people to be appointed who will do no work but have to be given whatever they ask. Electric

    Reply
27. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    25 May 2008 at 03:39 AM

    Krsna makes the valid point that the Aryan civilization came into India. So says Vassilios. Sir, at no time did I mention that an “Aryan civilization came into India.” What I did say is that a white nomadic tribe came into India to form a civilization. Anyhow, as Krsna is supposed to be right, I would ask him to justify (1) or explain why the following words which are found in the Rgveda, all of which are quite foreign in meaning and origin, and all of them do not by any means could not have been spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of the Indus. (2) Explain why the people of the Indus or ‘Aryan Indus’ as he so believes in, have TWO languages,viz: Sanskrit and the Indus Script! I have never read or ever have known that a civilization to produce two languages, one an undeciphered one, which seems to have no readable grammar and the other a refined, beautiful one with grammar which can be spoken. Fantastic! who have ever heard of a civilization producing an undeciphered language and a spoken one. Explain Krsna.

    (2) Krsna explain why the following words used in the RV and are quite foreign and strange in origin and are temperate in substance. You must bear in mind that those who compose the Vedas were acquainted and had some foreknowledge of these words from a different land. These words could not be used to describe the tropical flora and fauna of Vedic India but the users showed us that they came from outside which cannot be denied. Apart from the horse and chariot culture which came from the outside which you deny, here are the following words. Look up the Vedas you will find them, there are more.

    Hailstorm, dragon, serpent, ford, demons, tempest, bard, heralds, hoary, dames, fodder, wergeld, witches, witchcraft, wizards, magic, socket, hamlet, vale, curs, sire, woodlands, brook, goblins, fagots, heather and thatch.

    Krsna, what are EUROPEAN names and words doing in an Indian religious book supposedly written by indigenous Indians? Explain!

    If the Aryan Indus people wrote the Vedas why aren’t Vedic words found in the seals and scripts? Explain! or vice versa.

    If the Indus is Aryan, why aren’t the carved figure and name of the horse and chariot found in the scripts? Explain!

    How could the ‘Aryan Indus’ people write a script and don’t include the horse and chariot and also wrote the Vedas and include the horse culture? Explain!

    Explain why there is no horse trading from the Indus to neighboring countries for this period? Waiting for an answer.

    Reply
28. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    04 June 2008 at 15:01 PM

    Vassilios, Reading your reply only reveals to me the revisionist of your belief. Revisionist is not a dirty word since you and them consider the Indus as Aryan or indigenous. If the ‘Aryan Indus” possessed horses and chariots why did they record it on banyan and palm leaves which is perishable? Why not etch on the scripts or seals? You and the indigenists know that the Aryans and the Indus are not the same, that there were outside intrusions into India with a new culture and rituals. The Indus buried their dead and don’t show me or tell me that Vedic Indus burned their dead , as so many are doing now in their writings using the word Aryan to describe the Indus civilization. Explain to me why there are two languages one with horses and chariots and the other undeciphered and unreadable. Recent discoveries have shown cemeteries of the Indus people. The Mound of the Dead of Mojendaro is a funerary city of the dead. The aryans who came to India burned their dead. The first appearance of the horse showed up at Gandara, Pirak and Kachi cultures. The aryans traded their horses, trained them and groomed them according to the Vedas. There is no such thing in the Indus cities. If the Indus was aryan show me the similarites and grammar of the language of the script and seals in the Vedas. That you cannot do. It has already been proven that when the Aryans reached India , the cities of the Indus were already been abandoned. That is the real reason that there are no carvings of horses and chariots in the seals and script. You will see, that when they decipher the language of the Indus, there will be a bread or silence of the activities of the Indus people at the moment when they abandoned the cities. And Krsna and you are frustrated in your diligence to prove that the Indus is aryan, solely because the horse and chariot is absent from its records. Remember, Rajaram tried to prove it by fraud and he is still frustrated. One day I will be proven right as I did when I told them that the Indo-Iranians came fromt he Androvono cultures in Central Asia.

    Reply
29. parvati says:

    07 June 2008 at 20:56 PM

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    Reply
30. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    08 June 2008 at 03:40 AM

    THE NON EXISTENCE OF AN “ARYAN INDUS”

    Many Indian writers, historians,scholars and archaeologists have written so much of the civilization that is being unearthed now, in the north-west of India called the Indus Valley Civilization. So much so, that Indians and foreigners alike have dubbed it the ‘Aryan Indus’ a gross misnomer. Anyone, have read the Vedas would be at a loss why some educated people would call these excavations of large cities, with straight narrow streets, huge buildings, and apartments with urban utilities that could compare with contemporary times and describe it as of Aryan origin. The life in the Vedas is the exact opposite to the city dwellers of the abandoned cities. In endless publication after publication, of books, magazines, literature and other media forms, intellectuals and laymen alike have formed their opinion that the vast civilization of the Indus River valley is certainly so. Why this so? Is it because of religious and nationalist pride? Then, again a little common sense would prevail that what is being uncovered in the Indus valley is not a minor archaeological dig but a huge civilization spanning thousands of miles and as the mystery deepens, so too are the outpourings of speculations and opinions that explode onto pages for future history. The Vedas and the Indus histories have been highly documented and the comparisons have been endless as monumnental arguments and counter arguments swirl whether the Indus is Aryan or not. One factor at the center of all this is the Indus script and seals, the linchpin of a language not yet deciphered , though there are some who have written huge volumes on its decipherment, none of which have been recognized or have failed. All of these so called decipherments have been written from a background and perspective of Sanskrit which is sheer madness. Nevertheless, the vortex of the enigmatic, mysterious world of the Indus civilization still enthrall those who are happened to be caught in its snare. One wonders with the language still a mystery, how on earth can a historian or a linguist put together the puzzle of the Indus without a decipherment so as to compare it with the corresponding language of the Vedas or its astronomy?
    Quoted below are a part of the Indus Astronomy Symbols from an article from (freepages.history) None of this has been deciphered as yet to be Sanskrit, then revisionists will have to accept the fact that the Indus is different from the lifestyle of the Vedas. A civilization cannot produce TWO bodies of astronomic literature, in two different languages and with different symbols. So why are some linguists and historians calling for an ‘Aryan Indus?’ The answer may lie far deeper than we may imagine and that may lie in its religion which is a fiercely contested nation in its zealotry.

    “The Indus Square is symbolic and as small as possible with 3 x 3 smaller squares. The Scandinavian Square has normally 14 x 14 squares. The golden plate from Stonehenge has 9 x 9 triangles and the Indus Square at centre. Astronomers have checked that it could be use for deciding the important calendar events of the year.

    ……The Sun Square symbolises the sun year with the Month Wheel in centre. Normally they were interested in the moon year since the water ritual followed that. Maybe the small squares symbolise 8 animals of their Animal Round. I have not yet found an image with them all, so my conclusions come from analysing the seals.

    … … Three of a kind symbolises the noun and the wavy line water. It could be the water god, but in this case it is the heavenly flood Watergate. One end is at Sagittarius and the birds fly above it Aquila, Swan and Owl = Lyre.

    Again we get a little help from Egypt where we find the same symbolism. Sometimes there is an eagle in the small corner square. That corner of square symbolises Ramadan

    …This symbol is then some other corner and that seems to be the symbol for LEEK or LEAK the beginning of growth.

    … We find something like this in Egypt symbolising the four pillars carrying heaven, i.e. the cardinal directions. This figure shows that the pillars belong to the same whole.

    In Scandinavia they are standing freely but surely it has been some kind of practical arrangement with pillars for deciding the directions when watching the stars. Later when they got used they needed only one stable alignment as for instance the Vi that was in use until 18th century in a few places in Denmark

    … … If you have a parted year you need two symbols for symbolising that. In Scandinavian symbolism they draw the second half with double lines or double the symbols. Generally they were only interested in the season

    … … … The first symbol creates a link to the U-shapes symbols. We see them with 2 or 3 strokes that establishes three of them and maybe they symbolises periods.

    ………… We must note that the symbols have been made in at least two”

    The attempt to push back Indian or Aryan Vedic history has been proven to be wrong by the findings of Dr. S. Balakrishna in his article Vedic Astronomy. Below is part of his article dated 6.8.08 from (www.vedicastronomy.net/stars)

    In his article, he illustrates the time with poignant accuracy when the Atharva Samhita of the Vedas was composed. I guess this blows away all those whose arguments state that the Indus civilization was Aryan.

    When was Atharvana Samhita composed?

    Though we consider that the Star system to be basically stationary with reference to Solar system, there is an earth wobble occurring at rate of 26000 years per revolution which makes the star system appear to move slowly with reference to Sun. This has been called Earth’s Precession and was first identified nearly 2000 years ago by Ptolemy and Hipparchus.

    The position of Chitra (Spica), which is very near the ecliptic, was recorded by Hipparchus (circa 150 BC) on the autumnal Equinox day with reference to Sun. It was studied again by Ptolemy (circa 150 AD) nearly 300 years later on same autumnal Equinox day. Ptolemy found that Chitra appeared to have moved about 3 degrees toward Sun (Ref 4). Ptolemy decided that Sun was moving one degree for 100 years in reference to stars. This observation made nearly 2000 years ago, was probably the first documented recording of Earth’s Precession. Today we know that Ptolemy was correct and that Earth’s Precession rate is about 1.36 degrees for 100 years.

    This 2000-year old observation, confirms the uniformity of Earth’s Precession validating the geocentric mathematical models that exist for motion of objects in the sky. It allows us to extrapolate backward and forward in time, positions of objects in sky using computer software like Load Star pro. Thus, any past Sun position records, on Equinox/Solstice days referring Sun position to stars, carries the astronomical time mark of the period (Ref-8).

    There are two possible definitions of a year as observed from Earth.

    A Sidereal year is time taken for Sun to move from one star, and then come back to same star. This is full 360 degrees movement of Earth around the Sun.

    A Solar year is the time taken by Sun in its passage from one equinoctical point back to same point.

    One would expect these two years to be same, but Solar year is shorter than Sidereal year by about 19 minutes and 50 seconds and is said to be caused by inertial effects. It is called Earth’s Precession.

    First let us get a contemporary picture of the location of our solar system in the Milkiway galaxy. This is illustrated in figure below. Our solar system is located at the edge of the Milkiway disk of stars. The Milkiway is estimated to be about 50000 light years in its diameter. It consists of a large number of stars and other matter. The stars visible to our naked eye are generally within a few hundred light years around us. Some giant stars are located nearly 1000 light years are also visible to naked eye. Thus most of the 10000 stars visible to us are very near our solar system.

    In the illustration below, the center of Milkiway Galaxy is in the direction of Moola nakshatra. Thus bulk of the Milkiway matter is concentrated, as seen from earth, near stars Jyeshtha, Moola, Poorva/Uttarashadha.

    Because of Earth’s Precession, the angle of earth’s motion to come back exactly to same latitude (Solar year) is only 359.864 degrees around the sun. Solar year is the classical definition of a year, as the 23.5 degrees earth’s tilt controls the weather, seasons and the position of Sun in its north-south traverse. A notional 360 degrees Sidereal year is irrelevant to us.

    But the 359.864 degrees Solar year is relevant because of repeating weather and seasons and hence Solar year is a natural year. That means every solar year, the Sun position drops back by about 0.0136 degrees with respect to stars. Also, it may be noted that the earth’s spin polar axis also shifts by same angle of 0.0136 degrees per year in a coning motion. Most popular books on Stars illustrate this spinning top like coning motion property of Earth’s Precession, but do not illustrate the apparent ecliptic plane motion of stars. The diagram below illustrates the star shift in the ecliptic due to Precession on spring equinox day. The diagram shows the 27 nakshatra’s in a circle of diameter of the order of few hundred light years with sun at the center.

    The diagram below shows the effect of Earth’s Precession on Sun/Star/Earth’s position exactly at the time of Spring Equinox. In this diagram, the Sun is always on equator and the day time equals night. Diagram shows Earth’s position from 2400 BC to 2000 AD. Every year, the Earth’s seasons start occurring 0.0136 degrees (or roughly 0.0136 days) earlier. The diagram also shows twenty-seven Bharateeya nakshatra’s in the infinite distance in the ecliptic plane. It should be noted that the Precession does not change the Equator position or the Earth’s tilt of 23.5 degrees. It only changes the direction of polar axis.

    The Bhaarateeya Veda’s have left some astronomical time marks in the texts. Amongst the Veda’s, Atharvana Veda is considered to be chronologically the last. Based on the identification of the twenty-seven Baharateeya Nakshatra’s, and using the astronomical time markers in Atharvana veda’s 19th kaanda/ 7th sooktha. it is possible to to identify when the last of the veda’s, Atharvana Veda was composed. The Atharva veda 19th kaanda/7th Sooktha reads,

    Atharvana Veda Kaanda 19 / Sooktam 7

    Gargya Rishi! Nakshatrani Devata! Trishtup-Bhurik Chandaha!

    Chitrani sakam divi rochanani sarisrupani bhuvanejavani

    turmisham sumatimichaamaano ahaani geerbhi saparyami nakam!1!

    suhavamagne krittika rohini chaastu bhadram mrigashirah Sham aardhrah !

    punarvasu soonruta chaaru pushyo Bhaanur aslesha ayanam magha mey !2!

    punyam poorva Phalguni chottra hasta schittra shiva swaati sukho mey astu!

    raadhe vishaakhe suhav anooradha jyeshta sunakshatramarishta moolam !3!

    annam poorva raasataam aashadha oorja devy uttaraa aavahantu!

    abhijinma raasataam punyameva shravanah shravishtaah kurvatam supushtim!4!

    Aa mey maha chatabhishagam vareeya Aa mey dvaya proshtapadaa susharma!

    Aa reyvato chashvayujow bhagam ma Aa mey rayim Bharanya aavahantu!5!

    This Sookta dedicated to Nakshatra’s was recorded (Drashtaara) by Gargya Rishi. The Sookta describes both astronomical and astrological elements. Twenty eight Nakshatras are identified starting with Krittika and reference is made to Ayanam occurring in Maghaa. A nakshatra Abhijit is shown between Uttarashadha and Shravana. Its use has been discontinued in the Jyotishya with only twenty seven identified currently. The authenticity of the Athrarvana texts is well accepted, by the very reverence shown towards precise learning. Hundreds of generations of Shrotreeya’s have carried veda’s down to us in its original language using oral traditions of Krama, Pada, Jatha, and Ghana Paatha so that distortions are nonexistent. Two major astronomical time markers are evident and implicit in the Sooktha. They are,

    1. Rishi Gargya starts the list of twenty seven nakshatra’s starting with Krittika. Choice of Krittika as the first of twenty-seven is very significant. In contrast Jyotishya Shaastra uses Ashwini as the first star. The choice of first Nakshatra must correspond to a logically first day of a solar year, which dictates the weather cycles. Which is the year’s first day? Astronomically speaking, the spring Equinox day in Northern Hemisphere temperate zone is a logical one. It heralds the arrival of the spring, in temperate zone of northern hemisphere of the earth. Vasantha ritu, the spring has always been considered as beginning of a year from Rig-vedic times. Hence, the first observation implicit in Rishi Gargya’s sooktha is that on spring Equinox day, Sun was at Krittika Nakshatra. Figure 13 shows Sun location on March 21, 2400 BC from Load Star Pro. The Sun is on equator and is pointing to Krittika nakshatra.

    Compare this to Figure 14 which shows Sun 4400 years later, on March 21,2000 at same equator but Sun is on Poorva Bhadrapada. Thus Sun has Precessed by about 57 degrees in 4400 years since Rishi Gargya’s Sooktha.

    2. Rishi Gargya refers to Ayana occurring in Maghaa during his time. Ayana refers to apparent direction of Sun’s North-South motion. The day of direction reversal is called an Ayana day (Uttara and Dakshina Ayana). When Rishi Gargya refers to Ayana he is clearly referring to a Solstice day and that Ayana occurred when Sun is at Maghaa.

    It could be either Dakshina Ayana(Summer Solstice ) or Uttara Ayana(Winter Solstice). Let us look at Load Star pictures of Sun at Daskhina Ayana (Summer Solstice) 4400 years ago. Figure 15 shows the Sun at +23.5 degrees on June 21, 2400 BC. This is the day of Dakshina Ayana. Sun is clearly at Maghaa Nakshatra.

    Rishi Gargya’s Ayana could also be Uttara Ayana, (Winter Solstice), but it fails because the first nakshatra would then have to be Hasta or Chitra and the date would be 22000 BC. The Soothra indicates Krittika as the first.

    The diagram below shows the picture of Earth’s position over past 4500 years on Summer Solstice day when Sun reaches the peak northern position of +23.5 degrees and starts his southern movement (Dakshina Ayana). The Sun position as observed from earth in 2400 BC on this day would be at Maghaa. In circa 400 BC, Sun would be in Pushya. Today, Sun is between Mrigashira and Aardhra.

    Hence Rishi Gargya’s Atharvana Veda 19 Kaanda and Sooktha 7, clearly has two astronomical time markers and provide a clue as to when it was composed. It is easy dismiss that the starting of Nakshatra list with Krittika as an accident, but recording of star locations which are true for both Equinox and Solstice in same sookta can not be accidental. It suggests a well understood contemporary knowledge of motion of Sun, Moon and Stars in the skies. While such knowledge may have been more thoroughly documented in other texts, only a brief poetic indication of that knowledge appears to have been made in the veda’s.

    Clearly, both the astronomical markers recorded by Rishi Gargya in Atharva Veda kaanda 19 sookta 7 would be correct only near about circa 2400 BC. This must certainly be incontrovertible proof that Rishi Gargya’s Sookta was composed near 2400 BC, dating Atharvana Veda to at least 2400 BC.

    Thus, the ancient Vedic texts stands as it it is,and as Dr. Balakrishna said, inconvertible and authentic. The appearance of the horse and chariot in Mesopotamia and its depictions the Mitanni intrusion and and the Androvono lifestyle from the Southern Russian steppes, all coincide with the dating of the Vedas and the appearance of the Aryans withing that time period. One important thing that stamped the newcomers of Aryan intrusion was the Indo-European custom of WERGILD found in the Hittite empire and in all IE peoples. Wergild in mentioned in the Vedas and practiced in the Mahabharata.

    Reply
31. Juven Bachan says:

    12 June 2008 at 10:52 AM

    The Quirky Enigmatic Arguments of Vedic History

    Proponents of an ‘Aryan Indus’ are now delving into something new. And that is the shifting of historical data backward in time to accommodate their version of an ‘Aryan Indus.’ Will this ever work? We don’t know but this quirkiness of playing with dates of history, and pushing them far back in time to achieve its purpose is intellectual dishonesty on the part of some scholars. A quick glance at a so called ‘Aryan Indus’ could produce a warped version of its history and civilization. Thus, we would have

    1) TWO lifestyles, one of the Indus suburban as exposed by the excavations and the other,a Vedic nomadic typical of the steppes of Russia as set down in the Vedas.

    2) TWO religions, the present Vedic religion as written in the Vedas which is animistic in its nature and the other, the Indus religion which is iconic and so far exposed by archaeologists.

    3) TWO bodies of astronomic literature, one Vedic called the Nakashatras, the other Harrappa Astronomy which is also being glossed over by fascinated scholars.

    4)TWO languages one of which is Sanskrit, very poetic,refining and ancient and brought by IE intruders and the other the Indus Script and Seals, now being studied by scholars.

    5) TWO cultures one that centers around cremation and horse culture called Vedic and the other centers around trade and a luxurious life.

    6) TWO methods of transportation, one driven by horse and chariot the other uses the ass and cart.

    7) TWO burial customs one Vedic which is cremation in which a soul ascends to the Pitris or Fathers, an IE custom, the other, burial in the Indus cemeteries.

    The above quirky contradictions does not make sense. Did an ‘Aryan Indus’ produce such a civilization as the proponents argue? How can a civilization produce two complete different languages with such different lifestyles? The Vedas described life and happenings in quite a different way than the Scripts of the Indus. The scripts reveal undecipherable animal figures and writings unlike Vedic Sanskrit. This idea that the Indus is Aryan does not fit well with some laymen and scholars. Even though the Indus civilization is or was a brilliant one for its achievements, it just is not capable to have done this. Yet, scholars and historians are trying to merge the two entities as one. When will it end?

    Reply
32. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    13 June 2008 at 23:27 PM

    The Quirky, Engimatic Shifting Historical Data of
    an ‘Aryan Indus’ Civilization.

    With the demise of the theory of an Aryan invasion, scholars have now taken on the idea that the Indus Valley Civilization is aryan in nature and origin. But this quirky idea cannot seem to hold well with the evidence which the archaeological explorations have produced in recent years. On one hand the civilization of the Vedas don’t seem to fit or to use a better word, correlate with the discoveries of the Indus valley excavations. There are several reasons this is so and proponents of an ‘Aryan Indus’ although they may reject the invasion idea, are desperate to paint an ‘Aryan Indus’ which certainly did not exist and are prepared to shift historical data to accommodate its ‘Aryan Indus’. Thus, an ‘Aryan Indus’ would seemingly but impossibly accommodate and comprise of the following:

    1) TWO sets of lifestyles, one described as nomadic and steppe like in the Vedas quite in contrast to the settled and urban life of the Harrapans. Here we have the IE or Aryans as you will, riding and warring as all nomads do on the plains of India, whilst the staid citienzry of the Indus are basking in luxurious trade with its neighbors.

    2) TWO modes of transport, of which the speed of the horse and chariot used by the nomadic intruders to settle disputes and in sports, whilst in the Indus the rich and contented people travel with the donkey and heavy wooden cart.

    3) TWO religions, first we have the Vedic religion dominated by warrior gods and nature gods to a nomadic people always praying for wealth and cattle and animistic in nature. The other religion is the Harrapan religion of the Indus people mostly connected with the animal kingdom and iconic.

    4) TWO sets of astronomic literature, the Vedic astronomy having the horse as one of its symbol and which is missing in the Indus one. Then, there is the Harrapan astronomy whose people were well versed in its intracies and very established.

    5) TWO languages of which we have the Vedic language well refined and used in ancient India, called Sanskrit. The other is the undecipherable Indus Scripts and its seals, still unbroken and a fascination for linguists. Used by the Indus people for its unparalleled value for its tremendous and burgeoning trading partners.

    6) TWO different funnerary burial rituals, the Aryans cremated their dead through libations in the hope their loved ones reach the land of the Fathers. The Indus people buried their dead as is evidenced by the cemeteries discovered in their civilization.

    This is fantastic , here we have a civilization just emerging from the Stone Age with its brilliance and is credited with ALL of the above, a double of every facet of human life. Is this possible? This quirkiness of an’Aryan Indus’ has western and eastern scholars and historians baffled. To speak of an ‘Aryan Indus’ with such glaring contradictions in its society and lifestyle is probably a minor embarrassment to its proponents, for what can be more embarrassing than to shift historical dates to accommodate a quirky theory? Best of luck to its proponents.

    Reply
33. Rupa Abdi says:

    13 July 2008 at 05:08 AM

    Dear Shri Vassilios Korosidis

    You said ‘Hindus are the most peaceful people’, such sweeping generalisations indicate a deep rooted bias.
    When did you last visit India or read any Indian newspapers ?
    Are you aware of the caste wars in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where entire Dalit families are massacared ?
    Have you read about the post-Godhra genocide of Muslims in Gujarat where Muslim girls and women were gang raped and burnt alive my Hindu fundamentalists ?
    Have you heard about female infanticied or bride burning among Hindu families ??
    I am not suggesting anything, only stating facts. Just as the likes of Osama bin Laden do not represent the entire Muslim community, someone like Mahatma Gandhi does not represent the entire Hindu community. By the way, Mahatma Gandhi, the icon of non-violent resistance, was assasinated by a Hindu fundamentalist.
    Please get your facts right before you make such sweeping generalisations about any community !!

    Reply
34. Neville Ramdeholl says:

    27 July 2008 at 22:56 PM

    The Indus Valley Civilization: Its Reality and Maddening Prevarications of Academia.

    Ever since the discovery of the IVC, the rush to Aryanize its society and culture has filled books, papers,

    media forums and other such articles and such entities has funded and encouraged historians and writers to

    let loose their imaginations in order to rewrite the history of India. The fierce debate whether the IVC is

    Aryan or not has opened up emotions and a stirring of nationalistic feelings among Indians of different social

    and political persuasions and has led to the rewriting of some history books. Even though the undertaking

    and exposing of the vast archaeological empire of the Indus still remains buried below the ground, opinions

    and speculations still persist that further and more radical change be made to the history of India.

    The proven point that the Aryans did not invade India and that horses existed in its society are two areas

    juxtaposed between the migrationist theories and those who proposed an “Aryan India” Between this sliver

    of Aryan and Indus woodwork, lies the heart of the matter, its linch-pin— the horse. Whoever can prove that

    the horse existed at the Indus empire will cap a belated crowning glory and achieve at the same time a

    kind of immortality in Indian history. The playing with historical dates like pushing them back further in time

    sounds like Russian roulette in order to achieve the inevitable and if such a hand can be played and the

    horse can be accommodated to form Indian history as among other things, thus far are historians are willing

    to go. The claims of historians and other writers of horse remains has so far has not been proven or

    recognized by some of local and international academia, even though such claims have been taken up by

    readers of different sorts of books and articles. The horse have remained evasive to not only archaeologists

    who would know one when they have analyzed its bones but to those who advocate its existence at the

    Indus. The so called tentative discovery of horse bones in the cities of the Indus, is the one weakness of

    those who want to weld Aryan history and Indus history together. This, I think will fail. The Indus civilization

    does not have a mythology that speaks of the existence of horse and chariot. First of all, all peoples have

    from their beginnings tales of mythology and from this, their civilizations are born, their society evolves, their

    beliefs entrenched and their livelihood maintained. Without these a people may not survive as a strong entity

    such like the Greeks and the Indian civilizations. Mythology is the fountain of a people, where a kind of fairy

    tale comes down to generation after generation, where images of the mythology are graven in the minds of

    its citizens and from which stories of daring and derring do are told. Greek mythology is filled with horses

    such as Pegasus and Arion, so we know that the Greeks knew about horses, Helios, the Sun god and the

    horses and also the Trojan horse. Our Hindu civilization also has a mythology of horses of the Sun, as well

    as other places mentioned in the Vedas and the Swat culture is one of the first places that the horse

    appeared in India. But can that be said of the Indus civilization? Where is the mythology of the horse and

    chariot in its ancient belief system? The belligerent screaming and writing by academia of horse bones in

    the Indus does not prove anything. There is not a shred of evidence of a horse culture or part of a

    mythologic reference to a horse or chariot in the history of the writing of the Indus nor in its society and the

    isolated claims of nationalistic writings has no foundation whatsoever. Claims of horse presence in the

    absence of a mythology in comparison with Hindu or Greek is not only a failure, but a historical greed to

    fulfill nationalistic grandeur for India which would be penitently false. I am sure Hindus would not like to

    incorporate a false version of historical data in their proud history. I personally would abhor such a travesty.

    Reply
35. Vijay says:

    29 July 2008 at 18:30 PM

    Is this another twisted version of the vedas to establish western supremacy or is it worth reading?

    Reply
36. Vijay says:

    30 July 2008 at 12:14 PM

    Well, now we all know that mankind came out of Southern Africa,made it’s way through Egypt, the middle east and the Indian subcontinent.Further emigration was from the Indian subcontinent towards the Caucuses,China and the Phillipine and other Pacific Islands.Now do these theories by the ‘bright’ scholars tow this line or do we have only opinions based which are proclaimed as history.I’ve been doing a lot of searching trying to find my roots and the origin of the Indus Civilization-including looking at the scriptures of various ancient civilizations.On doing some superficial research at first it seems that they all have a deep strong connection, but then when I look deeper, I tend to get lost.There is some connection, I can’t get a feel for yet, but I’m not convinced yet about something stronger. Although one would expect civilizations to follow the same path as mankind’s journeys, maybe not.Maybe the scriptures of various civilizations have all been twisted to confuse us?Any ideas?

    Reply
37. THE ARMY says:

    03 November 2008 at 06:47 AM

    I hope Neville (Ramdeholl) reads this. Don’t wanna waste our time, so I’ve put it point-wise. The following points just cannot be ignored about this AIT/OIT controversy. And I need an answer for each of them by anyone who has the right answers:

    1) If the ‘light skinned and mostly blonde haired and blue eyed’ Aryans had really invaded India and settled here thereafter, then why aren’t such people with such ‘white’ features found in India now? If it is because of centuries of racial intermixing, then how come one can still find some quite dark skinned people in India but not central Asian/ European type ‘white’ skinned people in India? Even the light brown skinned people found in the far north of India in places like Kashmir aren’t as fair as the ‘Aryans’ are considered to be.

    2) The Aryans divided themselves into 3 classes. The fourth class was the lowly ‘Shudra’ class, explained by the European historians as the Aryan conquered Dravidians’ class. By this logic, all the high castes, esp. the Brahmins had to be white/ light brown skinned and the people belonging to the ‘Shudra’ class had to be dark brown skinned. And yet, many dark skinned Brahmins and light skinned ‘Shudras’ can easily be found in India – both in north as well as south. And upon that, inter-caste marriages, esp. high and low caste ones, are still rare in almost all parts of India.

    3) How come almost all the light brown skinned people in India (considered to be the descedants of the original Aryans) belong to the cold climate locations of India like Kashmir and Himachal and the dark brown skinned (considered to be the Dravidians themselves) belong to the warm climate locations? This suggests that skin colour in India has more do do with the climate and atmosphere of a particular region in India.

    4) If the Aryans were outsiders in India, then why do their spiritual-cultural-social compilation ‘The Vedas’ do not mention any outside cities, rivers and mountains? Why do they only mention the places that are found in India, as their sacred most? Why not some place in Caucasus or Iran?

    5) If the Dravidians’ Indus valley civilization met its end at the hands of the invading Aryans, then how come no weapons, horse remains, broken chariots and burned buildings were discovered in and around the valley?

    6) How come there was (and is) no conflict or confrontation of any kind between the people or north and south India, ever? How come Brahmins (the highest Aryan caste) are present at both the locations? They should have been concentrated in the north.

    7) If Aryans were outsiders in India (and not the insiders), then how come ‘Swastika’ – an Aryan symbol – was found on some indigenous Indus valley seals?

    The invading Aryans have been described as either nomadic or semi-nomadic people. It is difficult to imagine that such nomadic people could write anything even close to the complex Vedas.

    9) India (or more specifically Hinduism which forms 80% of Indian population and which considers the Vedas as its highest spiritual-cultural-social authority and ‘Swastika’ as its religious symbol) does not have any oral or written account of any ‘Aryan invasion’ or any north-south or white-dark divide, past 3500-5000 years of its existence. Infact, the Britishers were the first ones to talk about all such things in India, to the utter shock of the Hindus.

    10) No race, religion, nation, group, caste and community on this planet that claims an Aryan lineage, has been able to preserve the Aryan devised socio-cultural traditions and symbols on a CONTINUOUS BASIS. Only India, with its Hindus, is an exception to this. Look at Iran – everybody knows that Aryanism (Zoroastrianism/ Parsis) is dead there now. Islam has taken over. And the funny thing is that almost half of the total Zoroastrians in this world live in India now! Look at Caucasus – just a few pieces of historical findings, and that too of no religious, spiritual importance for the people living there. Look at neo-Nazis and Pan Aryans- just 150 years back they and their forefathers hadn’t even heard of the term ‘Aryans/Aryas’.

    These above points do not completely destroy AIT, but they make such a mockery of it (AIT)…….

    Reply
38. THE ARMY says:

    03 November 2008 at 07:03 AM

    And yeah, one more thing…Neville…Sanskrit is a language, not a script. And what was found at Indus valley was not a language, it is a script which still lies undeciphered.

    That script may very well turn out to be Sanskrit shlokas/hymns.

    Reply
39. Reggie says:

    16 March 2010 at 10:37 AM

    Well Afro-dravidian people sounds like a typical propaganda by the colonialists to expand their soul harvesting. Similar to the Afro-dalit project where both are projected as down-trodden & exploited people who can be given the book & their lands taken away.
    Also recently there have been burials dug out with skeleton in Yogic samadhi positions. Its an article by Micheal Danino.

    Reply