What is the longest living civilization?

It has been long claimed that the aryans invaded India & that the Dravidians are a different race alltogether. Please read excerpts of an article by David Frawley on this subject.

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.

One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.

---

Racial Theories

The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.

Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).

About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.

Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding.

---

Racial Interpretation of Vedas

Europeans Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.

European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas as yellow race?

The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.

This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?

In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?

---

The Term Aryan

A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.

Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.

---

New Evidence on the Indus Culture

The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.

The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.

This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.

---

Aryan and Dravidian Races

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.

For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.

Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.

---

North and South Indian Religions

Scholars dominated by the Aryan Dravidian racial idea have tried to make some Hindu gods Dravidian and other gods Aryan, even though there has been no such division within Hindu culture. This is based upon a superficial identifi- cation of deities with color i.e. Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of. In the Mahabharat, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the north and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose names meant dark (like Krishna Angiras or Shyava Atreya).

Others say that Shiva is a Dravidian god because Shaivism is more prominent in south than in north India. However, the most sacred sites of Shiva are Kailash in Tibet, Kashmir, and the city of Varanasi in the north. There never was any limitation of the worship of Shiva to one part of India.

Shiva is also said not to be a Vedic god because he is not prominent in the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, where deities like Indra, Agni and Soma are more prevalent than Rudra (the Vedic form of Shiva). However, Rudra-Shiva is dominent in the Atharva and Yajur Vedas, as well as the Brahmanas, which are also very old Vedic texts. And Vedic gods like Indra and Agni are often identi- fied with Rudra and have many similar characteristics (Indra as the dancer, the destroyer of the cities, and the Lord of power, for example). While some differences in nomenclature do exist between Vedic and Shaivite or Vedic and any other later teachings like the Vaishnava or Shakta - and we would expect a religion to undergo some development through time - there is nothing to show any division between Vedic and Shaivite traditions, and certainly nothing to show that it is a racial division. Shiva in fact is the deity most associated with Vedic ritual and fire offerings. He is adorned with the ashes, the bhasma, of the Vedic fire.

Early investigators also thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-call ed Dravidian Indus Valey civilization, with the existence of Shivalinga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However, further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the tradi- tional offers as found in the Hindu Brahmanas, thus again refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the Indus (Saraswati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements.

Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya, was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.

---

Aryan and Dravidian Languages

The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammer are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan. The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, bacause Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.

We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion. The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, nor do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore be unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.

Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit there are thirty to seventy per cent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both north and south Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology that links them close together, which European languages often do not share. This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compart- ments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.

In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there were already Drvidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early off-shoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been none other than Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text.

---

Dravidians in Vedic/Puranic Lore

Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana or Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people outside of the Vedic culture. However, they do not look at them as indigenous or different people but as fallen descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishwamitra. These same texts look upon some people of north India, including some groups from Bengal, as also outside of Vedic culture, even though such people were Indo-European in language.

Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. The Vedic rishi Agastya is also often portrayed as one of the progenitors of the Dravid- ian peoples. Hence there appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on with favour by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was largely temporary.

If we look through the history of India, there has been some time when almost every part of India has been dominated for a period by unorthodox traditions like Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks, the Scythians (Shakas) or the Huns. That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at some point in history does not require making something permanently non-Aryan about them. In the history of Europe for example, that Austria once went through a protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.

The kings of south India, like the Chola and Pandya dynsties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a south Indian king, Satyavrata. Hence there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of north India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.

---

Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic Culture

Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.

Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.

Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.

Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.

It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.

The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Edited by Vivek Sharma - 28-Aug-2006 at 01:47

AND HERE IS THE CONCLUDING PROOF :

Aryans: race or culture?

The evidence of science now points to two basic conclusions: first, there was no Aryan invasion, and second, the Rig-Vedic people were already established in India no later than 4000 BC. How are we then to account for the continued presence of the Aryan invasion version of history in history books and encyclopedias even today? Some of the results - like Jha's decipherment of the Indus script - are relatively recent, and it is probably unrealistic to expect history books to reflect all the latest findings. But unfortunately, influential Indian historians and educators continue to resist all revisions and hold on to this racist creation - the Aryan invasion theory. Though there is now a tendency to treat the Aryan-Dravidian division as a linguistic phenomenon, its roots are decidedly racial and political, as we shall soon discover.

 

Speaking of the Aryan invasion theory, it would probably be an oversimplification to say: "Germans invented it, British used it," but not by much. The concept of the Aryans as a race and the associated idea of the 'Aryan nation' were very much a part of the ideology of German nationalism. For reasons known only to them, Indian educational authorities have continued to propagate this obsolete fiction that degrades and divides her people. They have allowed their political biases and career interests to take precedence over the education of children. They continue to propagate a version that has no

scientific basis.

 

Before getting to the role played by German nationalism, it is useful first to take a brief look at what the word Arya does mean. After Hitler and the Nazi atrocities, most people, especially Europeans, are understandably reluctant to be reminded of the word. But that was a European crime; Indians had no part in it. The real Aryans have lived in India for thousands of years without committing anything remotely resembling the Nazi horrors. So there is no need to be diffident in examining the origins of the European misuse of the word. In any event, history demands it.

 

The first point to note is that the idea of the Aryans as foreigners who invaded India and destroyed the existing Harappan Civilization is a modern European invention; it receives no support whatsoever from Indian records - literary or archaeological. The same is true of the notion of the Aryans as a race; it finds no support in Indian literature or tradition. The word 'Arya' in Sanskrit means noble and never a race. In fact, the authoritative Sanskrit lexicon (c. 450 AD), the famous Amarakosa gives the following definition:

 

mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah.

 

An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct.

 

And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as: arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanah.

 

Arya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone. The Rigveda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race. The nearest to a definition that one can find in the Rigveda is probably:

 

praja arya jyotiragrah ... (Children of Arya are led by light) RV, VII. 33.17

 

The word 'light' should be taken in the spiritual sense to mean enlightenment. The word Arya, according to those who originated the term, is to be used to describe those people who observed a code of conduct; people were Aryans or non-Aryans depending on whether or not they followed this code. This is made entirely clear in the Manudharma Shastra or the Manusmriti (X.43-45):

 

But in consequence of the omission of sacred rites, and of their not heeding the sages, the following people of the noble class [Arya Kshatriyas] have gradually sunk to the state of servants - the Paundrakas, Chodas, Dravidas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Shakhas, Paradhas, Pahlavas, Chinas, Kiratas and Daradas.

 

Two points about this list are worth noting: first, their fall from the Aryan fold had nothing to do with race, birth or nationality; it was due entirely to their failure to follow certain sacred rites. Second, the list includes people from all parts of India as well as a few neighboring countries like China and Persia (Pahlavas). Kambojas are from West Punjab , Yavanas from Afghanistan and beyond (not necessarily the Greeks) while Dravidas refers probably to people from the southwest of India and the South. Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold.  Interestingly, so were the Chinese. Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and other aspirations. Scientists have known this for quite some time. Julian Huxley, one of the leading biologists of the century, wrote as far back as 1939:

 

In 1848 the young German scholar Friedrich Max M�ller (1823-1900) settled in Oxford , where he remained for the rest of his life. ... About 1853 he introduced into the English language the unlucky term Aryan as applied to a large group of languages.... Moreover, Max M�ller threw another apple of discord. He introduced a proposition that is demonstrably false. He spoke not only of a definite Aryan language and its descendents, but also of a corresponding 'Aryan race'. The idea was rapidly taken up both in Germany and in England. It affected to some extent a certain number of the nationalistic and romantic writers, none of whom had any ethnological training.... In England and America the phrase 'Aryan race' has quite ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge, though it appears occasionally in political and propagandist literature. In Germany the idea of the 'Aryan' race found no more scientific support than in England. Nonetheless, it found able and very persistent literary advocates who made it very flattering to local vanity. It therefore spread, fostered by special conditions.

 

This should help settle the issue as far as its modern misuse is concerned. As far as ancient India is concerned, one may safely say that the word Arya denoted certain spiritual and humanistic values that defined her civilization. The entire Aryan civilization - the civilization of Vedic India - was driven and sustained by these values. The whole of ancient Indian literature: from the Vedas, the Brahmanas to the Puranas to the epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana can be seen as a record of the struggles of an ancient people to live up to the ideals defined by these values. Anyone regardless of birth, race or national origin could become Aryan by following this code of conduct. It was not something to be imposed upon others by the sword or by proseleytization. Viewed in this light, the whole notion of any 'Aryan invasion' is an absurdity. It is like talking about an 'invasion of scientific thinking'.

 

Then there is also the fact that the concept of the Aryan race and the Aryan-Dravidian divide is a modern European invention that receives no support from any ancient source. To apply it to people who lived thousands of years ago is an exercise in anachronism if there ever was one.

 

The sum total of all this is that Indians have no reason to be defensive about the word Arya. It applies to everyone who has tried to live by the high ideals of an ancient culture regardless of race, language or nationality. It is a cultural designation of a people who created a great civilization. Anti-Semitism was an aberration of Christian European history, with its roots in the New Testament, of sayings like "He that is not with me is against me." If the Europeans (and their Indian disciples) fight shy of the word, it is their problem stemming from their history. Modern India has many things for which she has reason to be grateful to European knowledge, but this is definitely not one of them.

 

European currents: 'Aryan nation'

As Huxley makes clear in the passage cited earlier, the misuse of the word 'Aryan' was rooted in political propaganda aimed at appealing to local vanity. In order to understand the European misuse of the word Arya as a race, and the creation of the Aryan invasion idea, we need to go back to eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, especially to Germany. The idea has its roots in European anti-Semitism. Recent research by scholars like Poliakov, Shaffer and others has shown that the idea of the invading Aryan race can be traced to the aspirations of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europeans to give themselves an identity that was free from the taint of Judaism. The Bible, as is well known, consists of two books: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament gives the traditional history of mankind. It is of course a Jewish creation. The New Testament is also of Jewish origin; recently discovered manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Christianity, in fact, began as an extremist Jewish sect. But it was turned against the Judaism of its founding fathers by religious propagandists with political ambitions. In fact, anti-Semitism first makes its appearance in the New Testament, including in the Gospels. Nonetheless, without Judaism there would be no Christianity. To free themselves from this Jewish heritage, the intellectuals of Christian Europe looked east, to Asia . And there they saw two ancient civilizations - India and China. To them the Indian Aryans were preferable as ancestors to the Chinese. As Shaffer has observed:

 

�Many scholars such as Kant and Herder began to draw analogies between the myths and philosophies of ancient India and the West. In their attempt to separate Western European culture from its Judaic heritage, many scholars were convinced that the origin of Western culture was to be found in India rather than in the ancient Near East.�

 

So they became Aryans. But it was not the whole human race that was given this Aryan ancestry, but only a white race that came down from the mountains of Asia , subsequently became Christian and colonized Europe . No less an intellectual than Voltaire claimed to be "convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc." (But Voltaire was emphatically not intolerant; he was in fact a strong critic of the Church of his day.)

 

A modern student today can scarcely have an idea of the extraordinary influence of race theories in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe . Many educated people really believed that human qualities could be predicted on the basis of measurements of physical characteristics like eye color, length of the nose and such. It went beyond prejudice, it was an article of faith amounting to an ideology. Here is an example of what passed for informed opinion on 'race science' by the well-known French savant Paul Topinard. Much of the debate centered on the relative merits of racial types called dolichocephalics and brachycephalics, though no one seemed to have a clear idea of what was which. Anyway, here is what Topinard wrote in 1893, which should give modern readers an idea of the level of scientific thinking prevailing in those days:

 

�The Gauls, according to history, were a people formed of two elements: the leaders or conquerors, blond, tall dolichocephalic, leptroscopes, etc. But the mass of the people, were small, relatively brachycephalic chaemeophrosopes. The brachycephalics were always oppressed. They were the victims of dolicocephalics who carried them off from their fields.... The blond people changed from warriors into merchants and industrial workers. The brachycephalics breathed again. Being naturally prolific, their numbers [of brachycephalics] increased while the dolichocephalics naturally diminished. ... Does the future not belong to them?� [Sic: Belong to whom? - dolichocephalic leptroscopes, or brachycephalic chaemeophrosopes?]

 

This tongue-twisting passage may sound bizarre to a modern reader, but was considered an erudite piece of reasoning when it was written. In its influence and scientific unsoundness and dogmatism, 'race science' can only be compared in this century to Marxism, especially Marxist economics. Like Marxist theories, these race theories have also been fully discredited. The emergence of molecular genetics has shown these race theories to be completely false.

 

By creating this pseudo-science based on race, Europeans of the Age of Enlightenment sought to free themselves from their Jewish heritage. It is interesting to note that this very same theory - of the Aryan invasion and colonization of Europe - was later applied to India and became the Aryan invasion theory of India. In reality it was nothing more than a projection into the remote past of the contemporary European experience in colonizing parts of Asia and Africa. Substituting European for Aryan, and Asian or African for Dravidian will give us a description of any of the innumerable colonial

campaigns in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. According to this theory, the Aryans were carbon copies of colonizing Europeans. Seen in this light the theory is not even especially original.

 

The greatest effect of these ideas was on the psyche of the German people. German nationalism was the most powerful political movement of nineteenth century Europe. The idea of the Aryan race was a significant aspect of the German nationalistic movement. We are now used to regarding Germany as a rich and powerful country, but the German people at the beginning of the nineteenth century were weak and divided. There was no German nation at the time; the map of Europe then was dotted with numerous petty German principalities and dukedoms that had always been at the mercy of the neighboring great powers - Austria and France. For more than two centuries, from the time of the Thirty Years War to the Napoleonic conquests, the great powers had marched their armies through these petty German states treating these people and their rulers with utter disdain. It was very much in the interests of the French to keep the German people divided, a tactic later applied to India by the British. Every German at the time believed that he and his rulers were no more than pawns in great power rivalries. This had built up deep resentments in the hearts and minds of the German people. This was to have serious consequences for history.

 

In this climate of alienation and impotence, it is not surprising that German intellectuals should have sought solace in the culture of an ancient exotic land like India. Some of us can recall a very similar sentiment among Americans during the era of Vietnam and the Cold War, with many of them taking an interest in eastern religions and philosophy. These German intellectuals also felt a kinship towards India as a subjugated people, like themselves. Some of the greatest German intellectuals of the era like Humbolt, Frederick and Wilhem Schlegel, Schopenhauer, and many others were students of Indian literature and philosophy. Hegel, the greatest philosopher of the age and a major influence on German nationalism was fond of saying that in philosophy and literature, Germans were the pupils of Indian sages. Humbolt went so far as to declare in 1827: "The Bhagavadgita is perhaps the loftiest and the deepest thing that the world has to show." This was the climate in Germany when it was experiencing the rising tide of nationalism.

 

Whereas the German involvement in things Indian was emotional and romantic, the British interest was entirely practical, even though there were scholars like Jones and Colebrooke who were admirers of India and its literature. Well before the 1857 uprising it was recognized that British rule in India could not be sustained without a large number of Indian collaborators. Recognizing this reality, influential men like Thomas Babbington Macaulay, who was Chairman of the Education Board, sought to set up an educational system modeled along British lines that would also serve to undermine the Hindu tradition. While not a missionary himself, Macaulay came from a deeply religious family steeped in the Protestant Christian faith. His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a Quaker. He believed that the conversion of Hindus to Christianity held the answer to the problems of administering India. His idea was to create an English educated elite that would repudiate its tradition and become British collaborators. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, he enthusiastically wrote his father:

 

�Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious....... It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.�

 

So religious conversion and colonialism were to go hand in hand. As Arun Shourie has pointed out in his recent book Missionaries in India, European Christian missions were an appendage of the colonial government, with missionaries working hand in glove with the government. In a real sense, they cannot be called religious organizations at all but an unofficial arm of the Imperial Administration. (The same is true of many Catholic missions in Central American countries who were, and probably are, in the pay of the American CIA. This was admitted by a CIA director, testifying before the Congress.)

 

The key point here is Macaulay's belief that 'knowledge and reflection' on the part of the Hindus, especially the Brahmins, would cause them to give up their age-old belief in favor of Christianity. In effect, his idea was to turn the strength of Hindu intellectuals against them, by utilizing their commitment to scholarship in uprooting their own tradition. His plan was to educate the Hindus to become Christians and turn them into collaborators. He was being very naive no doubt, to think that his scheme could really succeed converting India to Christianity. At the same time it is a measure of his seriousness that Macaulay persisted with the idea for fifteen years until he found the money and the right man for turning his utopian idea into reality.

 

In pursuit of this goal he needed someone who would translate and interpret Indian scriptures, especially the Vedas, in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see the differences between them and the Bible and choose the latter. Upon his return to England, after a good deal of effort he found a talented but impoverished young German Vedic scholar by name Friedrich Max

M�ller who was willing to undertake this ardous task. Macaulay used his influence with the East India Company to find funds for Max M�ller's translation of the Rigveda. Though an ardent German nationalist, Max M�ller agreed for the sake of Christianity to work for the East India Company, which in reality meant the British Government of India. He also badly needed a major sponsor for his ambitious plans, which he felt he had at last found.

 

This was the genesis of his great enterprise, translating the Rigveda with Sayana's commentary and the editing of the fifty-volume Sacred Books of the East. There can be no doubt at all regarding Max M�ller's commitment to the conversion of Indians to Christianity. Writing to his wife in 1866 he observed:

 

�It [the Rigveda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.�

 

Two years later he also wrote the Duke of Argyle, then acting Secretary of State for India: "The ancient religion of India is doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?" The facts therefore are clear: like Lawrence of Arabia in this century, Max M�ller, though a scholar was an agent of the British government paid to advance its colonial interests. But he remained an ardent German nationalist even while working in England. This helps explain why he used his position as a recognized Vedic and Sanskrit scholar to promote the idea of the 'Aryan race' and the 'Aryan nation', both favorite slogans among German nationalists. Though he was later to repudiate it, it was Max M�ller as much as anyone who popularized the notion of Arya as a race. This of course was to reach its culmination in the rise of Hitler and the horrors of Nazism in our own century.

 

Although it would be unfair to blame Max M�ller for the rise of Nazism, he, as an eminent scholar of the Vedas and Sanskrit, bears a heavy responsibility for the deliberate misuse of a term in response to the emotion of the moment. He was guilty of giving scriptural sanction to the worst prejudice of his or any age. Not everyone however was guilty of such abuse. Wilhem Schlegel, no less a German nationalist, or romantic, always used the word 'Arya' to mean honorable and never in a racial sense. Max M�ller's misuse of the term may be pardonable in an ignoramus, but not in a scholar of his stature.

 

At the same time it should be pointed out that there is nothing to indicate that Max M�ller was himself a racist. He was a decent and honorable man who had many Indian friends. He simply allowed himself to be carried away by the emotion of the moment, and the heady feeling of being regarded an Aryan sage by fellow German nationalists. To be always in the public eye was a lifelong weakness with the man. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that Max M�ller saw the opportunity and made a 'bargain with the devil' to gain fame and fortune. It would be a serious error however to judge the man based on this one unseemly episode in a many-sided life. His contribution as editor and publisher of ancient works is great beyond dispute. He was a great man and we must be prepared to recognize it.

 

Much now is made of the fact that Max M�ller later repudiated the racial aspects of the Aryan theory, claiming it to be a linguistic concept. But this again owed more to winds of change in European politics than to science or scholarship. Britain had been watching the progress of German nationalism with rising anxiety that burst into near hysteria in some circles when Prussia crushed France in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. This led to German unification under the banner of Prussia. Suddenly Germany became the most populous and powerful country in Western Europe and the greatest threat to British ambitions. Belief was widespread among British Indian authorities that India and Sanskrit studies had made a major contribution to German unification. Sir Henry Maine, a former Vice Chancellor of Calcutta university and an advisor to the Viceroy echoed the sentiment of many Englishmen when he said: "A nation has been born out of Sanskrit."

 

This obviously was an exaggeration, but to the British still reeling from the effects of the 1857 revolt, the specter of German unification being repeated in India was very real. Max M�ller though found himself in an extremely tight spot. Though a German by birth he was now comfortably established in England, in the middle of his lifework on the Vedas and the Sacred Books of the East. His youthful flirtation with German nationalism and the Aryan race theories could now cost him dear. German unification was followed in England by an outburst of British jingoism in which Bismarck and his policies were being daily denounced; Bismarck had become extremely unpopular in England for his expansionist policies. With his background as a German nationalist, the last thing Max M�ller could afford was to be seen as advocating German ideology in Victorian England. He had no choice but to repudiate his former theories simply to survive in England. He reacted by hastily propounding a new 'linguistic theory' of the Aryan invasion.

 

So in 1872, immediately following German unification, the culmination of the century long dream of German nationalists, Friedrich Max M�ller marched into a university in German occupied France and dramatically denounced the German doctrine of the Aryan race. And just as he had been an upholder of the Aryan race theory for the first twenty years of his career, he was to remain a staunch opponent of it for the remaining thirty years of his life. It is primarily in the second role that he is remembered today, except by those familiar with the whole history.

 

Let us now take a final look at this famous theory. It was first an Aryan invasion theory of Europe created by Europeans to free themselves from the Jewish heritage of Christianity. This was to lead to Hitler and Nazism. This theory was later transferred to India and got mixed up with the study of Sanskrit and European languages. Europeans--now calling themselves Indo-Europeans--became the invading Aryans and the natives became the Dravidians.

 

The British hired Max M�ller to use this theory to turn the Vedas into an inferior scripture, to help turn educated Hindus into Christian collaborators. Max M�ller used his position as a Vedic scholar to boost German nationalism by giving scriptural sanction to the German idea of the Aryan race. Following German unification under Bismarck, British public and politicians became scared and anti-German. At this Max M�ller worried about his position in England, got cold feet and wriggled out of his predicament by denouncing his own former racial theory and turned it into a linguistic theory. In all of this, one would like to know where was the science?

 

As Huxley pointed out long ago, there was never any scientific basis for the Aryan race or their invasion. It was entirely a product--and tool--of propagandists and politicians. Giving it a linguistic twist was simply an afterthought, dictated by special circumstances and expediency.

 

The fact that Europeans should have concocted this scenario which by repeated assertion became a belief system is not to be wondered at. They were trying to give themselves a cultural identity, entirely understandable in a people as deeply concerned about their history and origins as the modern Europeans. But how to account for the tenacious attachment to this fiction that is more propaganda than history on the part of 'establishment' Indian historians? It is not greatly to their credit that modern Indian historians--with rare exceptions--have failed to show the independence of mind necessary to subject this theory to a fresh examination and come up with a more realistic version of history. Probably they lack also the necessary scientific skills and have little choice beyond continuing along the same well-worn paths that don't demand much more than reiterating nineteenth century formulations.

 

It is not often that a people look to a land and culture far removed from them in space and time for their inspiration as the German nationalists did. This should made modern Indian historians examine the causes in Europe for this unusual phenomenon. It is one of the great failures of scholarship that they failed to do so.

 

We no longer have to continue along this discredited path. Now thanks to the contributions of science--from the pioneering exploration of V.S. Wakankar and his discovery of the Vedic river Sarasvati to Jha's decipherment of the Indus script--we are finally allowed a glimpse into the ancient world of the Vedic Age. The Aryan invasion theory and its creators and advocates are on their way to the dustbin of history.

 

Conclusion: historiography, not Indology, is the answer. The rise and fall of Indology closely parallels the growth and decline of European colonialism and the Euro-centric domination of Indian intellectual life. (Marxism is the most extreme of Euro-centric doctrines - a 'Christian heresy' as Bertrand Russell called it.) The greatest failure of Indology has been its inability to evolve an objective methodology for the study of the sources. Even after two hundred years of existence, there is no common body of knowledge that can serve as foundation, or technical tools that be used in addressing specific problems. All that Indologists have given us are theories and more theories almost all of them borrowed from other disciplines. If one went to botany to borrow tree diagrams for the study of languages, another went to psychology to study sacrificial rituals, and a third - followed by a whole battalion - borrowed the idea of the class struggle from Marx to apply to Vedic society. Not one of them stopped to think whether it would not be better to try to study the ancients through the eyes of the ancients themselves. And yet ample materials exist to follow such a course. With the benefit of hindsight, even setting aside irrational biases due to politics and Biblical beliefs, we can now recognize that Indology has been guilty of two fundamental methodological errors. First, linguists have confused their theories--based on their own classifications and even whimsical assumptions--for fundamental laws of nature that reflect historical reality. Secondly, archaeologists, at least a significant number of them, have subordinated their own interpretations to the historical, cultural, and even the chronological impositions of the linguists. (Remember the Biblical Creation in 4004 BC which gave the Aryan invasion in 1500 BC!) This has resulted in a fundamental methodological error of confounding primary data from archaeology with modern impositions like the Aryan invasion and other theories and even their dates. This mixing of unlikes--further confounded by religious beliefs and political theories--is a primary source of the confusion that plagues the history and archaeology of ancient India . In their failure to investigate the sources, modern scholars--Indian scholars in particular--have much to answer for.

 

As an immediate consequence of this, the vast body of primary literature from the Vedic period has been completely divorced from Harappan archaeology under the dogmatic belief that the Vedas and Sanskrit came later. This has meant that this great literature and its creators have no archaeological or even geographical existence. In our view, the correct approach to breaking this deadlock is by a combination of likes--a study of primary data from archaeology alongside the primary literature from ancient periods. This means we must be wary of modern theories intruding upon ancient data and texts. The best course is to disregard them. They have outlived their usefulness if they had any. In the final analysis, Indology--like the Renaissance and the Romantic Movement--should be seen as part of European history. And Indologists--from Max M�ller to his modern successors--have contributed no more to the study of ancient India than Herodotus. Their works tell us more about them than about India . It is time to make a new beginning. The decipherment of the Indus script--and the scientific methodology leading up to it--can herald this new beginning.

ARYAN INVASION- FICTITIOUS FABRICATION
by Padman Govindarajan

        In the history book currently in use in the Indian schools, the beginning of the Vedic civilisation coincides with Aryan invasion.  History, which records actual events, accomplished facts and hard realities, should have nothing to do with personal beliefs or pre-conceived notions and should depict factually the actual happenings.  Though history deals with the past, it has its own contribution to make in tackling the current problems and in shaping the future.  In his �Discovery of India�, Pundit Nehru says:   �Out of that distant past, which is history and the present, which is the burden of to-day, the future of India is gradually taking shape.  We must have an intellectual understanding of these mighty processes of history.  We must have even more, an emotional awareness of our past and present, in order to try to give right direction to the future.�

        The more remote the past, the hazier and murkier is the picture available of the ancient times.  Fortunately, of all the ancient civilisations, only India has preserved the clearest picture of the pre-historic times wholly in tact.  The unimpaired preservation of the Vedas from the remotest past through oral transmission has been hailed as the most marvellous feat of human mind.  Unlike the Old Testament, which is a historic record of several generations reduced to writing after Hebrew script came into existence, the Vedas are religious scriptures containing sacred hymns that make only a passing reference to the happenings of the time.  Western Indologists with their staunch religious leanings have inflicted the greatest damage and gravest injury on the Vedas by their wrong interpretations of the hymns and by according incorrect chronology to the Vedic civilisation.  Referring to this deep-rooted prejudice, anthropologist A.S.Sayce says: �To a generation which has been brought up to believe that in 4004 B.C. or there about the world was being created, the idea that man himself went back to 100,000 years was both incredible and inconceivable.�

        Among the Western Indologists, the first to take up the study of Sanskrit was William Jones, the Chief Justice in British Settlements of Fort William.  Jones who began his study of Sanskrit in 1784 noticed remarkable similarities between Sanskrit and European languages.  He says: � The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either.�  Jones regarded as the founder of Indology, with his Old Testament background, seems to have erroneously believed that the close affinity between several languages of East and West, revealed their origin from a common language spoken by their commons ancestor.  Linguists believed that speakers of Indo-European languages became separate migrating from the original common home, but their ancestors were one.  The common ancestor was traced to Aryans from the word WIROS for men occurring in the majority of the Indo-European languages.

        The search then began for this original Aryan home, the country of the WIROS, inferred from the data in these Indo-European languages.  By the process of elimination of hills, deserts, dense forests and inhospitable polar regions, Western researchers dominated by their religious bigotry, pitched upon the region around Caspian sea as the most likely original homeland of the Aryans.  The pre-Darwinian Western Indologists had implicit faith in the Genesis as the infallible word of God and they found it impossible to reconcile themselves to the view that any civilisation could ever have existed before Genesis.     They resented the hoary antiquity ascribed by the Indian tradition to Sanskrit literature and Vedic civilisation and much more to the origin of man from Manu.  The ancient Hebrews who were descendents of Aryans totally forgot their ancient ancestry and considered themselves to be the oldest of all races.

        In the pre-historic times, Sanskrit was the one and only spoken language and all its alphabets along with their consonants and vowels were appropriated by the other Indo-European languages after reading and writing came into vogue with the use of scripts.  The primeval man, whom the Hebrew called �Adam� is derived from Sanskrit word ATMA-BHU, one of the epithets of Brahma, the originator of mankind.  In the beginning of creation,  �Brahma gave names to all objects and beings� and so did Adam according to the Hebrew tradition.  The German scholar Dr. Spiegel was of the considered view that the Biblical theory of creation of the world has been borrowed from the ancient religion of the Persians.  Dr. Will Durant observes a passing reference to vegetarianism, to a �return to nature� and to the primitive simplicity which Hebrew legend pictures in the Garden of Eden.  The episode about deluge and Noah�s Ark is a corrupted version of the making of ship of specified dimensions by Manu.  Strange to say that the Hindu tradition supports the truth that the Biblical statements were derived from Persian, Babylonian and Egyptian scriptures, which according to the ancient history of the world were in turn derived from the more ancient Vedic sources.

        The Christian and Jewish bias impelled the Western Indologists to suppress the correct chronology of the Vedic civilisation in order to underrate and vilify Aryan civilisation and Sanskrit literature.  They could not persuade themselves to accept the fact that the Vedic Hymns were composed millennia before the Old Testament was written.  The pride of the superiority of their own religion and of the infallibility of their own conclusions about Indo-European languages so deeply ingrained in Western Indologists led them to propound the absurd and preposterous theory of Aryan invasion.  Prof. M. Rangacharya writes: �Incalculable mischief has been done by almost all the English and American scholars in assuming arbitrarily the earliest dates for Egypt and Mesopotamia � dates going back to B.C.5000 at least � and the latest possible dates for ancient India on the ground that India borrowed from them.�  The Western loyalty to their religious faith did not allow the acceptance of Sanskrit as being the mother language of at least the Indo-European group, as at first very ably propounded by Franz Bopp and endorsed by many Indian Indologists.

        The ancient history of India as recorded by Western Indologists begins with the advent of Aryans to India.  By no stretch of imagination, a small group of Aryans could have migrated from their original home to the East, going along the Danube, crossing the Plateau of Asia Minor avoiding the region between Euphrates and Tigris the seat of a powerful civilisation to reach Persia and proceed further to enter the million square K.Ms Indus Valley through the Khyber pass. The earliest source for the pre-historic period is the Rig Veda in the Deva Bhasha Sanskrit.  The understanding of the much-maligned word ARYA by the Western intellect is a perversion totally unrelated to its original Sanskrit meaning of nobility and profundity of wisdom.  The Aryan invasion is a fictitious invention of religious fanatics not borne out by the unbiased and impartial interpretation of Vedic hymns.

---

    The rewriting of the history of ancient India has been opposed by some historians who think that the move initiated by the Government must have been at the instance of those who want to serve the cause of Hindutva.  This apprehension is wholly misconceived, as the scholars who oppose the Government�s move seem to be oblivious of the grave injustice that has been done by the Western researchers to Vedic civilisation.   Ancient Indian history has been based on conjecture, hunch or surmise and is NOT a factual record of the actual past happenings.  The Vedic chronology decided the by the Western scholars based on superficial study of the language of the Vedas cannot be considered as sacrosanct or unalterable and if substantial evidence is produced by the modern Indian researchers to disprove and falsify the authenticity of the Vedic chronology, there should be no hesitation in amending the historical texts to present a more accurate, flawless and factual picture of ancient Vedic history.

        More than a century ago, Max Muller formulated the chronology of the Vedas wholly based on the literary style adopted by the Vedic seers in the composition of their hymns.  He seems to have totally ignored the fact that the purely conjectural pseudo-science of philology was too amateurish and crude a method to decide the antiquity of the highly venerated and sacred Vedas.  Vedas are basically religious scriptures believed to be APAURUSHEYA or divinely revealed and using them to decide the age of Vedic civilisation was not only improper but also mischievous.  The traditional Hindu belief has been that the Vedas are without any known human beginning and are, therefore, authoritative, infallible, universally valid and eternally applicable truths.   Ancients considered the Vedas as Divine Wisdom and memorised them to be passed on wholly in tact to the subsequent generations.  Finite human intellect cannot trace the origin or determine, with any degree of accuracy, the antiquity of the Vedas, which are in Deva Bhasha or language of gods i.e. Sanskrit.  The attempt to fix the age of Vedas on the basis of superficial philological study of the Vedic Samhitas, Brahmanas and Aranyakas cannot but be highly subjective and can result only in distortion of truth about the chronology of ancient past.

        Muller arbitrarily and deliberately assigned the oldest Rig Veda to 1200 B.C. and when questioned by critics he disowned his chronology saying: � Whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 years B.C., no power on earth will determine.�  In formulating his chronology, Muller must have been strongly influenced by his Christian belief that the creation of the world had taken place in 4004 B.C.  He must have feared that the assignment of any date to the Vedic hymns prior to 4004 B.C. may shake the already fragile faith of Christians in Genesis and critics may brand the creation of world in six days, origin of man in the likeness of God and Noah�s Ark as borrowed ideas from the more ancient Vedas.  Muller relied wholly on philology, as no archaeological evidence was available then.

        The Mohehjodaro in Sind was discovered in 1922 and Harappa in West Punjab a few years later.  Although the two sites were about 600 KMs apart, the two civilisations covering an area in excess of a million square KMs were considered as one Indus civilisation in view of the similarity of the objects discovered in the ruins.  The approximate period of the Indus Valley has been determined by a reference to the Rig Veda, keeping in view the already well-established Vedic chronology of Muller.  The early archaeologists erroneously concluded that the antique pieces found in the Indus Valley ruins belonged to the pre-Vedic period.  In their keenness to prove what they believed to be true, the investigators claimed that the prevalence of Lingam worship necessarily meant that the pre-Vedic people inhabiting the Indus Valley were Dravidian Saivites of South India.

        The three crucial questions connected with Indus Valley are a) whether it is pre-Vedic or post-Vedic, b) whether the inhabitants were non-Aryans or Aryans or a mix of both and c) whether the language of communication was Sanskrit or Tamil?  Any conclusion about the age of Indus Valley should not be based exclusively on language or river basin but should take into consideration all available evidence in regard to food habits, beliefs and observances, religious customs and practices ornaments and weapons used, clothes worn, method of disposal of dead etc.  A comparison of the archaeological remains of Indus Valley with Vedic civilisation,  as can be made out from the Vedic hymns, reveals almost cent per cent similarities between the two civilisations in food habits, animal rearing, cotton weaving, personal cleanliness, use of metals for weapons and ornaments, method of worship, practice of Yoga, cremation of dead, belief in immortality of soul and after-life etc.  The absence of horse and rice in Indus Valley was taken as evidence of its non-Aryan origin but this negative evidence is no more tenable in view of the occurrence of horse bones and rice in several sites in India and Mohenjodaro in Pakistan.  The belief that only Vedic Aryans knew iron is incorrect, as the Sanskrit word AYAS is a generic term for metal and does not specifically refer to iron.  Furthermore, a deeper study of the so-called stone objects considered as Lingams turned out to be truncated conical weights.  It is well known that the accuracy and consistency of the weights developed by the Indus people were of a very high order.

        The detailed study of the Indus scripts by several researchers has revealed that it has closer affinity to Sanskrit than to the oldest Dravidian language of Tamil, which is hardly 2000 years old.  The fight between Aryas and Dasyus in the Rig Veda refer to the mythical battle between the enlightened and the ignorant as also the good and evil forces and it has nothing to do with any racial struggle between foreign and indigenous people.  In fact, there could have been no alien influx, as Aryans seem to have been local residents.  Modern satellite and field surveys indicate that the once mighty Saraswati River seems to have changed its course several times and went completely dry around 1900 B.C.  Some experts believe that the phonetically close affinities between the Deva Bhasha Sanskrit and several European languages may be due to the fact that natural calamities may have driven Indus Valley people to migrate out of India.

        From the details furnished above, the only obvious and unmistakable conclusion can be that Indus Valley should clearly be either Vedic or post-Vedic civilisation and certainly NOT pre-Vedic.  The Aryans must have been local residents and the language used by them could have been only Sanskrit.  Muller deliberately presented a highly biased and evidently subjective Vedic chronology using hopelessly flawed and totally unscientific method of philology to safeguard the Christian faith in Genesis.  It is highly unfortunate that even fifty-years after Independence, India does not have an ancient history of its own and it continues to rely on an obviously incorrect and patently wrong Vedic chronology provided by one single Western scholar.  Truth should not be allowed to become a casualty to linguistic interpretation of highly sacred Vedas and the injustice and wrong done to Vedic chronology should be corrected at the earliest.

Holy s..t, this is a long entry. Lots of questions here, I didn't even have time to finish reading it, nor am I familiar with anything enough to debate anything.
Are these your thoughts or are you reposting from a book(/article/magazine/other media source?

...and, yes, Cywr is right, if you're using other sources, it is preferable to post bibliography otherwise the copyrigth fairy might come out of the woods, crawl under yoyr comforter at night, and give a bite you-know-where

..on a more serious level
a) what is Vedic
b) what is Dravidian


Edited by konstantinius - 28-Aug-2006 at 02:31

Vedic refers to the Indian Culture / religion & Dravidas were one of the tribes inhabiting the southern part of the country.

If it Aint Greece the most advanced empire in the world or Rome the Greatest empire ever

Originally posted by Jeru     Although it's off topic,Kid's posts are mostly about China and how China is superior than other cultures(says that Indian culture isnt compared to Greece's while China's is.Arrogance in one word). He might not post in East Asian forum but he really should do. Maybe you knowing him won't let you see his arrogance and rudness,which i would totally understand in a way. If you still think i'm wrong then accept my apologies.

Originally posted by Kids "Largely propaganda"   What did you mean?

What exactly is the point of this argument? I'm completely missing it. These are my points of confusion (maybe the people with all the degrees can help me out):

There's seems to be a serious argument as to whether there was Inoeuropean infusion in the north of India. If there were, then it is assumed that the Indian civilization has Indoeuropean roots. The counter-argument holds that the darker-skinned Dravidian inhabitants of the southern part of the sub-continent are the true initiators of  Indian civ.  because they never lost the ancient Vedic roots of Indian culture.  Is this the core question?

Another point made is that Western ethocentrists are responsible for  falsifying the true dates of Vedic civilization in order to make it appear more recent and, thus, coinciding chronologically with the Ayan invasion and Indoeuropean infusion.
Directly linked to the above argument is the conclusion that the Indian civilization is, indeed, the oldest. Am I correct?

My questions: what does archaeology have to say about all this? Anyone on the Forum with a degree in that? I think archaeology would be the most reliable source on this matter.
Also, anyone knows any good books on the subject? And, since I mentioned books, the Forum member Vivek Sharma should post the sources of all the information.


Edited by konstantinius - 28-Aug-2006 at 18:37