Why i am wrong about the Aryan Invasion

   Yes it is the prime objection against the indigousness of the Aryan however it is not something which a detailed study of the subject can not resolve. So i will answer that now.    
    The names of places and rivers in what is now Pakistan and North Western India have no Dravidian subtratum. It is somewhat anomaly as it is usually the case that the invaders take up the native names of the places which they conquered from the natives. As an example take a look at the huge number of places and river namse in the  USA which have a native american source for example Michigan, Massachusets, Oklahoma, Missisipi etc. Similarly all the four major cites of Spain have arabic names as even if the muslim arabs were not exactly natives but still they did rules Spain for about 700 years from which the next wave of people of Spain took up the administration. Gordoba is arabic Qurtaba, Grenada is arabic Gharnata, barcelona is arabic Bargelona and Madrid is arabic Magrid. If Aryans were invaders then you expect them to adopt at least some native names for the places and rivers of the region which we can then detect as a Dravidian substratum. But no, almost all of the important and chief places of the region have Aryan names.
    Now about the Dravidian substratum in vedic Sanskrit. Now many people are of the opinion that Sanskrit was a composed language. Its very clear set of rules and precise grammer stands in stark contrast to organic langaues which are a lot more ambitious and arbitrary. Now Sanskrit had been for all known history the standard language of northern sub-continent and it was never known to be the native language of any people. We all know about the Harappan civilization however the roots of Harappan civilization stretch very far back into antiquity. Infact each student who is learning Sanskrit is told that the development of Sanskrit took one thousand years after which it was considered complete. Again maybe hinting at the composed rather than the natural nature of the language. Now although the Sanskrit is the closest language to Proto-Aryan that which we know of however there are some features of Sanskrit which are more of a development than some of the other Aryan languages like Greek. Again hinting that although it retains many of the proto-aryan features some of its features hint at a development of the langauge from an earlier existing languages. The pre-harappan culture of Mehrgarh began in the 8th millenium B.C which then flowered into the Harappan civilization. The people living a settled life in those region felt the need for a common language and developed Sanskrit as a result. The language must have had its roots in the languages spoken in that area while still being slightly different from each one them as it may have had absorbed the elements from many of those languages while at the same time having some of its own unique features. As I have said in my earlier post that there may have been some groups of Dravidian people living in the Indus area (read my earlier post on the Brauhi people) and Sanskrit may have taken a few elements from their languages also. But the other Aryan people living in the region and speaking their own organic languages would not have had those Dravidian elements in their languages. When a migration from a region having more than one group of people takes place it does not happen that the migrating party has representatives from all the groups of the region. Rather it usually the case that the migrating party consists of individuals from just a few of the total ethnic groups. And the languages which as a result get transfered from the region are the ones which are the native languages of the people who migrate not all of the languages of the area. I don't think that it is much of a stretch to think that if Aryans were the predominant groups of that area then the people who migrated from there to Europe or Afghanistan were Aryans as most of the people inhabiting that area would be Aryans and these Aryans would be speaking native languages which would not have had a Dravidian substratum.. yet!.

    Now the Dravidan elements are almost completely absent in the Rig Veda the earliest of the vedic texts while the Dravidian elements start to creep in the later vedas. The Iranian separation took place at the time of the Rig Veda as the Rig Veda clearly chronicles the conflict between the Iranians and the sub-continentals. And the European migrations may have taken place just a little bit earlier. Now Rig Veda if you try to date it without making the assumption of an Aryan Invasion then it can be dated to at least 4300 B.C. How?. Well there are many arguments which point towards that conclusion however the main and most conclusive evidence being the dating through astronomical references. This is a bit of a complex and convoluted topic which i will discuss in more detail in the coming posts. Right now just know that the Vedic Aryans saw some astronomical phenomena and recorded them in their literature. However with the knowledge of their times they had no way of being able to back calculate these dates form a later date. We can with our modern knowledge back calculate the dates of these phenomena from a later date however that was not the case at those times. The Vedic aryans by their own methods would have arrived at much different dates for the phenomena which they were recording, than the dates which they reported. They had to be present there in person to be able to record the phenomena and give those dates for the phenomena which they reported. And these dates for the texts are much earlier than what is currently thought. One of such an astronomical reference is in the Rig Veda which points to an astronomical phenomena which occurred in 4300 B.C. And also keep in mind that these dates and methodology was given by the mathematical luminary "playfair" and although many criticized his conclusion no one has been able to refute his methodology. And as i said that the Rig Veda clearly chorincles the clash between the Iranians and the Rig Vedic aryans. So the separation between the rig vedic aryans and Iranians must have taken place around 4300 B.C. I think that the European invasions may have taken place earlier. Reason, well there really isn't much mention of in any of the literature of as dramatic an out flux of people as the Eurpean invasions would have required meaning that i really don't know but its just a conjecture. As i have said that the Dravidian substratum is almost completely absent in Rig Veda adn Rig Veda was mistakenably composed in Punjab as it is full of geographic references about the land of Punjab the place of composition of Rig Veda. Now if that is the case then you would expect that the Dravidian elements would be quite visible in the Rig Veda if not in anything else then at least in the names of the places and rivers but that is not the case. All the rivers and places names are of aryan origin. Meaning that when the Rig Veda was composed not only was this area predominantly Aryan but the regions which they were inhabiting was so familiar to them that they had names for those places which were of their own language rather than taking the names from another language to refer to the places which were unfamiliar to them. In fact these Dravidian names should be most plentiful  in the Rig Veda as the invader gradually learns about the Geography of the invaded place and does not have to rely on the geographical expertise of the place of the Natives e.g It is highly unlikely that a place named in the USA will have a native American source or a place named in Spain will have an Arabic source in modern times.

 
    As i have already said that the Austro-Asiatic language family is not native to the sub-continent but rather belongs to the south east asian language family. We have documented proof of most of these south east asian tribes migrating into the sub-continent in medievel times. The older group of Munda also belongs to the Austro-Asiatic group and i think that its not that great a leap of faith if we assume that the Munda people also migrated just like the other Autro-Asiantic group somehwere in the distant but also not so distant past. The Munda people arrived into the subcontinent i think much later than 4300 B.C a time when most of the European and Iranian migrations would have taken place. And also the European invasions must have taken place from the punjab which is right at the opposite end of the sub-continent from where these groups would have entered.   

    So when the people of the Indus migrated they would have taken their native languages with them which uptil then would have little Dravidian or Munda substratum. And the people who stayed back would incorporate Dravidian and Munda elements into their languages as time went on as these people were living right next door to them while the European and Iranian branches developed according to their own circumstances. The Iranian and European branches have parted ways about 6500 years ago. That is a lot of time. And all of these languages would have grown apart and incorporated elements which would be absent in the other branches.

Edited by bilal_ali_2000 - 15-Nov-2007 at 20:26

Originally posted by Sander Bilal, its is a long post but there is no evidende of OIT in it. We need something else to work with.

    I know that there is no evidence of OIT in it. I made that post to counter an argument which is frequently raised against OIT. It is my intention in this thread to first answer the objections against OIT and then give my arguments for OIT.

Originally posted by Sander As another has pointed out, there are certain obstacles for the OIT. IE languages must come from somewhere, so if they did not come out of  India than they obviously went to it.

    One concept that should be recognized in this discussion is the concept of Soft and hard evidence.  Soft evidence is when something points towards a possible conclusion while hard evidence is something which pretty much proves a conclusion.
    With almost all places where we have any hope of finding any concrete evidence of the origin of the Aryan people in light of these soft evidence being ruled out those places have come into favor where there is very little or bound to be very little evidence for the Aryan people. There is nothing remotely Aryan about Catal  Hyuk (Anatolia) and the only thing Aryan about the Kurgan culture is the horse. There are no signs of a culture having the resources and the demographics for the Aryan Invasions and i sense that eventually Kurgan hypothesis will also be abandoned because there will not be sufficient evidence. And soon experts will have to realize that they need to be mindful of this soft and hard evidence matter. Most of the facts have many interpretation and when you are dealing with time lines of thousands of years and across geographies thousands of miles there are bound to be many facts that when viewed from a certain looking glass would support a certain conclusion. While there will also be many facts which will negate that conclusion. That has been the problem with the Aryan debate because of the politics involved many take up such soft evidence which in a certain way supports a certain conclusion while at the same time ignoring facts which go against that conclusion. As one said about such debate
"are only on a mission to prove what they want to prove"
    The matter of Sanskrit is also such an example of soft evidence. Of course if Sanskrit had all the features of proto-aryan then that would automatically mean that OIT is correct. However just because Sanskrit is not proto-aryan doesn' t mean that OIT is wrong. There are many ways in which this fact can be explained away for OIT. e.g it is a bit of a stretch to think that the aryans speaking proto-aryan suddenly had a vision when the European and Iranian groups were migrating that the aryan group of languages would on day cover a big chunk of the world and felt the need to preserve proto-aryan as a time capsule in Sanskrit. In all likeliness they never had such a vision when the European and Iranian sub-groups were migrating and Sanskrit may be a development which took place much later after the European and Iranian migrations, that is why it is not proto-aryan. And it can also e explained away as that Sanskrit being a composed language had features which were a further development than the native languages of the region which were proto-aryan languages  and when they migrated from that region they took only the native languages and didn't take the elite language as is the case most of the times as when the European powers colonized the world they transferred their native languages of Spanish, Portugese or English and so on while not taking the elite languages of Greek or Latin.
   However the astronomical evidence which i have told you about is hard evidence which supports no other conclusion that the people who mentioned of that phenomena were present there in person on the mentioned date to record those phenomena.
    Here there is also the clash between soft evidence and hard evidence. The Aryan Invasion theory based on many soft evidence dictates that  Aryans came there in about 1500 B.C and rig veda was composed at that time at about 1500 B.C while the hard evidence says that Rig Veda must date back later than 4300 B.C. When there is a clash between hard and soft evidence i think that it is more wise to choose the conclusion of hard evidence over soft evidence. 

Edited by bilal_ali_2000 - 16-Nov-2007 at 13:14

Originally posted by ConradWeiser Very very interesting. I haven't really heard of this theory before, so I'm going to Wikipedia and the library to see what I can dig up. Thanks for renewing my interest in Indo-European origins.

   
    If you really are interested in this subject then i suggest that you broaden your horizon. Listen to both sides arguments. That what i have done. However if you restrict your research to only books then i feel that you will get only one side of the story as these books are mainly written in accordance with the AIT as AIT is the mainstream accepted theory and many of these books have arguments for the AIT which are no longer valid. So do some research on the internet as well where you will be able to find arguments for OIT. For example here is a very good book for OIT.
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/index.htm

    And  if these posts made you curious enough about this subject to investigate on your own then i have done my job. 


Edited by bilal_ali_2000 - 15-Nov-2007 at 20:18

- The Indus Valley Civilization knew of no horse hence it cannot be Aryans-
    The horse was one of the most holy objects of the Aryan culturs and was part of the proto-Aryan culture. But horse did not seem to had occupied such as prominnet position in the Harappan culture and may even have been absent there so IVC cannot be an aryan culture. 
    Now for indiations that it was the indus valley and the indo aryans are the ones which brough the horse to mesopotamia. The Sumerian sign for horse was apparently borrowed from Elamite, which was spoken on the northern (now Iranian) coast of the Persian Gulf, half-way between Sumer and the Indus Valley. The Sumerian word si-si, known in Sumerian since the fourth millennium BC, and the derived Semitic words (Hebrew sUs), were borrowed from Indo-Iranian aSva. The subcontinent's hot and humid climate leads to a very quick decay of organic matter which and that is why we find very little organic remains in the archeological sites and that would be one of the main reasons that why we don't find much organic remains there. As an example of the discrepancy between the actual use ofhorse in a period and its relative paucity  the archeological record consider the situation in Hatinapur. The horse bones excavated from hastinapur in the fiirst milenium B.C make up a very small percentage of bones excavated yet the use of horse in that period is wel known. As an example of the desprepancy between the use of horse ans horse remains consider the fact that now cows are much numerous that horses as future archeologists are bound to observe in their time yet on ceremonial occasions like like rny parades you see a lot of horses but not a single cow. So archeology has confirmed of the situation in Hastinapur where the horses were few in total remains but were very important on riitual occasions as the ones reocorded in the vedas.  And likewise in Vedic culture: From the Vedic texts onwards the horse is symbolic of nobility and is associated with people of status.So, the Vedic attention paid to horses was quite out of proportion with their percentage in the domesticated animal population as horses do not have much use outside of war and transportation and therefpre as result are much less in number when coampared to cattle or even donkies whose daily use is much more widespread. Compared with central asia India was relatively poor in horses, and on top of that, it was by far not as good in preserving what much of horse bones it had, for reasons outlined above.
    Meanwhile, in several Harappan sites remains of horses have been found. Even supporters of the AIT have admitted that the horse was known in Mohenjo Daro, near the coast of the Arabian Sea (let alone in more northerly areas), in 2500 BC at the latest.But the presence of horses and even domesticated horses has already been traced further back: horse teeth at Amri, on the Indus near Mohenjo Daro, and at Rana Ghundai on the Panjab-Baluchistan border have been dated to about 3,600 BC. More bones of the true and domesticated horse have been found in Harappa, Surkotada (all layers including the earliest), Kalibangan, Malvan and Ropar. Recently, bones which were first taken to belong to onager specimens, have been identified as belonging to the, domesticated horse (Kuntasi, near the Gujarat coast, dated to 2300 BC).
    Admittedly, the presence of horses in the Harappan excavation sites is not as overwhelming in quantity as in the neolithic cultures of Eastern Europe. However, the relative paucity of horse remains is matched by the fact that the millions-strong population of the Harappan civilization, much larger than that of Egypt and Mesopotamia combined, has left us only several hundreds of skeletons, even when men sometimes had the benefit of burial which horses did not have.
    The cave paintings in Bhimbetka near Bhopal, perhaps 30,000 years old showing a horse being caught by humans, confirm that horses existed in India in spite of the paucity of skeletal remains. Other cave paintings, so far undated, show a number of warriors wielding sticks in their right hands and actually riding horses without saddles or bridles.
     The Dravidian language families have their own words for horse, Old Tamil ivuLi for wild horse and kutirai for domesticated horse and not borrowed from the language of the Aryans also indicates that horse was very much a known animal in the sub-continent. Partly because of the uncongenial climate, horses must have been comparatively rare in India compred to central asia but they were available.
    And then thequestion arises a to why the horse an animal which was central to all aryan cultures was not show on the seals of  IVC, then for that it may be pointed out that the cows were also not shown on the seals despite cows being very much known to the harappans as the bull was a common motif on the seals. There may have been some taboo on the depiction of the two most scared animals on the seals much like the Islamic taboo on depicting holy people in pictures.          

    First, one should note that horses and chariots were introduced into Egypt, China and Sumer it was not accompanied by a radical change of culture, language or population for an entire subcontinent as has been proposed for ancient India. Horseand cahriots are surely an advance but they arenot great of an advance that they are able to completely override all the other advanatges that another people may have. Ancient Egypt and China took on horses and chariots without any break in the continuity of their civilizations. Certainly, ancient India, the largest urban civilization of its time in the world, could have taken on a new horse/chariot culture without having to change everything else as well. Therefore, even if horses or chariots came into India from the outside at some point in time, this is no reason to assume that the language and culture of the region had to change as well.

    Second, a study of horse anatomy shows that there were two types of horses in the ancient world that we still find today. There is a south Asian and Arabian type that has seventeen ribs and a West and Central Asian horse that has usually eighteen ribs adn some times 34 and 38 ribs. The Rig Vedic horse, as described in the Ashvamedha or horse-sacrifice of the Rig Veda has thirty-four ribs (seventeen times two for the right and left side).
In the Rig Veda, Book 1, Hymn CLXII verse 18 
The four-and-thirty ribs of the. Swift Charger, kin to the Gods, the slayer's hatchet pierces.
Cut ye with skill, so that the parts be flawless, and piece by piece declaring them dissect them.
    It is highly unlikely that the poet was describing something which was happening in front of his eyes as poets usually compose hymns while idle and through their imagination. And even if they describe something which took place then it usually is that they first witness the event and then later using their verbal imagination describe it in verse. So most probably the poet was not describing something which was taking place in front of his eyes much less that he acually counted the ribs of the horse which he mentioned in his hymn. In all likeliness the rib count which he gave was the number of ribs which the horse which they were familiar with commonly had which in this case is the native indian horse which had 34 ribs as opposed to the central asian variety which has 36 ribs in common cases.
    And chess pieces have been excavated from Lothal in IVC from 2500 B.C. One of these chess pieces is that of horse head obviously representing cavalry. This means that not only the horse was known to the IVC people but its use was so common in their armies that it had its own seperate division.
            So as we have seen here that the much toutd horse evidence is really not all that is made out to be  and is not totally couNter conclusive to OIT.


Edited by bilal_ali_2000 - 18-Nov-2007 at 09:54

People for AMT says ,,,,Aryans were in Indus Valley   ....In 1500 BC.

Originally posted by Sander   (No seals presented by Rajaram please!! )

I am very busy right now I would respond to both of you very soon.

Edited by sreenivasarao s - 23-Nov-2007 at 16:50

OK, few things to understand about the historical proto-Indo-Europeans.

This group was not the Europeans coming in and conquering India. It was a group that dwelt between both regions and we don't really know if they were conquerors at all. The Indus Valley civilization collapsed around the same time as they arrived but it means nothing; it could be that there was an ecological catastrophe or weather change or something similar which caused both the collapse of the Indus cities and forced the PIEs to migrate, some into the subcontinent, some west to Europe. For all we know they arrived as peaceful refugees in both places.

Second, the influx was probably not a large number of people in either region. The language they brought with them seems to have been very popular, but this doesn't at all indicate that they replaced or dislocated the original inhabitants, only that their language was adopted.

Third, the PIEs aren't European any more than they were Indian. In both places there was definately pre-existant populations who, judging from genetic material, weren't impacted much by these newcomers. We don't really even know what they looked like or whether they were Caucasian, steppe peoples or what. We don't even know that they were a race or group of people at all, rather than just a material and linguistic culture that could have spread with very minimal movement of genetic material. What we do know, is that if there was genetic impact, it does not account much for present day genetic characteristics of populations in either region - whose genetic characteristics were, for the most part, formed during the Paleolithic and have changed remarkably little since.

I don't know why Hindu nationalists get upset by this one. They should be no more affronted about it than Europeans are, since both were affected by the same phenomena in equal measure and in an equal fashion, whatever that was.

-But there was no invasion but a migration-
    Ever since the idea came about that the Aryan languages were introduced in India the word used for the movement of the Aryan people with their languages had always been "invasion'. It is only in the past couple of decades that with the extensive excavation of the Indus Valley sites which show absolutely no signs of any conflict (not even any internal one let alone an external one) that this term migration has been introduced in this discourse.

    But as many people have pointed out that you cannot have a migration with the result of an invasion. We identy things with the effect that which they have and not on the exact nature of those things. For example a hammer made of wood and a hammer made of iron both are called Hammer because their function and their effects are the same. A wooden hammer is usually thought to be more similar to a steel one than it is to a chair made of wood. Why? Because even though in its constitution it is more similar to a chair made of wood however in its function it is more similar to a hammer made of steel. That is why a hammer made of wood and a hammer made of steel are both called hammer rather than calling a wooden hammer a "chair" because its constituents are more similar to chair. An ancient army is considered anlalogus to todays army despite the nature of their arnaments being completely different. A modern military helicopter is far more similar to a modern civilian helicopter than it is to any ancient military arnament yet when it is used militarily the agency that uses it becomes an Army similar to an ancient army despite the fact that the helicopter is acually mr similar to modern civilian equipment than it is to any ancient arnament yet the agency that uses it in that context is more similar to the ancient army than it is to any civilian helicopter ambulance because of its use and the result it produces which is to bring down the opposition in the battle field.        
    Threfore i will call a spade a spade and call an invasion an invasion which to me from all aspects looks like an invasion.
    And whats more this invasion was actually the invasioniest of invasions. Everybody calls the mongol incursions of the 13th century as invasions despite them being assimilated into almost every population that they conquered. Simlarly every one calls Hun incursions into the subcontinent invasions even though they were assimilated into the local population. However here we have an intrusive people who despite being much smaller in number not only imposed their language on the local population but also their culture (the vedic cannon has the pan IE culture in its most complete form) and yet we are not allowed to call them as invaders.             
       In the saem vein i consider the Mittani and the Hittite incursions into mesopotamia as invasions, even though in the end they got assimilated among the native population.  
    Similarly i also consider Iranian incursions into Iran proper as invasions even though their initial relations with the elamites may have been peaceful as can be gaged from the fact the Elamite language for a time was the official language of the Persian Empire.  
    And i am interested that exactly which which consequence of the Aryan Invasion do you distance yourself from. Do you no longer support the claim that the caste system was imposed by the invading Aryans to preserve their racial distinctiveness. Do you also no longer support the claim that the enemies of the Aryans in the Rig Veda were the aboriginals of the sub-continent (dark skinned or white skinned). Do you also no longer support the claim that the natives of the sub-continent were pushed to the south by the incoming aryans. Do you also no longer support the claim that the battle between the forces of lightness and darkness that which we find chorincled in the rig veda do not actually represent the battle between the light skinned aryans and the dark skinned natives. All of these in the past were presented as proof for the aryan invasion in support of the very shaky and conjectural linguitic evidence. If you no longer support such claims then you are effectively shutting off all doors for proof of the Aryan Incursions outside of the extremely sketchy linguistic evidence.          
Mr Sanders said
"Bilal likes to use obsolete terms ( and ideas) like 'invasions' for AMT but he never used 'invasions' for his suggested migrations from India (OIT)"

    That just shows how carefully you have read my posts. I have used the word "invasion" every time i talked about the European incursions because thats what they were invaders. When they were moving out of the subcontinent they were migrators because at that time they had no idea that where the future might lead them however when they moved into Europe they became invaders

When the group which was to take over Europe was moving out of the sub-continent i used the word migration

"And the European migrations may have taken place just a little bit earlier"


"when most of the European and Iranian migrations would have taken place"

When they moved into Europe i used the word invasion because thats what they were
"I think that the European invasions may have taken place earlier"

"And also the European invasions must have taken place from the punjab which is right at the opposite end of the sub-continent from where these groups would have entered."    

    The only reason that which i see that invasion has been tunrned to migration is to alleviate the buren of proof on the AIT. But even if it was a migration then it should still have some evidence of such a migration. Any development which cannot be explained by local evolution, any signs of the coming of a foreign culture or a foreign people. Yet there is no such  change at the specified time all we have is a gradual change from the culture of the Indus Valley Civilization to the later local cultures. The Grey Ware Culture claimed at one time to be the culture of the incoming aryans is now thought to be a native one.