[world-vedic] Indian History Revisited

[Guest guest]

By Dr.David Frawley

Indian history revisited

 

 

 

Most people in India today have been led to believe that the Vedic

Aryans were the first invaders of the country. They have been

indoctrinated with the image of the Aryan hordes pouring down the

passes of Afghanistan on horseback, destroying the indigenous urban

Harappan culture that was Dravidian in nature. Even Pandit Jawaharlal

Nehru d to this view and it remains in textbooks in India

today.

 

That there was no record of such an event in ancient Indian records,

north or south, was ignored. That this theory never managed to prove

itself was disregarded.

 

Recently, however, the Aryan invasion idea is becoming rejected

worldwide in light of new archaeological evidence that contradicts it.

However, Indian secular and Leftist thinkers like to denigrate any

questioning of the invasion theory as Hindu fundamentalist propaganda.

 

A recent academic paper argues that there is an indigenous development

of civilisation in India going back to at least 6000 BCE

(Mehrgarh).(8000 year minimum date of Vedic History.)It proposes that

the great Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture (2600-1900 BCE),

centred on the Saraswati river of Vedic fame, had much in common with

Vedic literary accounts. It states that the Harappan culture came to an

end not because of outside invaders but owing to environmental changes,

most important of which was the drying up of the Saraswati. It argues

further that the movement of populations away from the Saraswati to the

Ganges, after the Saraswati dried up (c 1900 BCE), was reflected in the

literature with Vedic Saraswati based literature giving way to Puranic

texts extolling the Ganga. Perhaps more shockingly, the paper states

that the Aryan invasion theory reflects colonialism and Eurocentrism

and is quite out of date. Note the conclusion:

 

"That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate

traditions of south Asia are now converging has significant

implications for regional cultural history. A few scholars have

proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the

Indo-Aryans outside of south Asia, and now the archaeological record is

confirming this.

 

"We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations,

which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed

on south Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations

are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism,

racism, and anti-semitism. Surely, as south Asian studies approach the

twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively

rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data

archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal."

 

Is this the statement of a Hindutva fanatic? No, it is by a noted

Western archaeologist specialising in ancient India, James Schaffer of

Case Western University as part of his new article, 'Migration,

Philology and South Asian Archaeology', soon to appear in Aryan and

Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited

by Bronkhorst and Deshpande, University of Michigan Press.

 

The Aryan invasion theory, as Schaffer notes, arose from a Eurocentric

view that was hostile to an Indic basis for Western civilisation or

peoples. The discovery of close affinities between the Indo-European

languages in the eighteenth century required an explanation. By placing

the original Aryans in Europe, who later migrated to India where they

got absorbed by the indigenous population, it took away any need to

connect the ancient Europeans with India, which was not pleasing to the

colonial mindset. The theory eventually developed an anti-semetic tone.

It was used to trace Western culture not to the Jews and their Biblical

accounts but to a proposed European homeland dominated by Nordic

peoples. Thus the invasion theory became one of the pillars for Nazi

historians, yet strangely the Communists in India have become strong

supporters of the theory and accuse those who question it of being

fascists!.

 

Archaeologist Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin, who is in

charge of the Indus Valley display that is touring American museums,

has similar views as related in an article on the 'Indus Valley:

Secrets of a Civilisation in Wisconsin Fall 1998':

 

"If previous scholars were wrong about the origin of the Indus people,

they also missed the boat when it came to explaining their downfall,

which they attributed to an invasion by Indo-Aryan speaking Vedic

tribes from the northwest." This theory has now been ruled out by the

lack of archaeological evidence. Instead, says Kenoyer, "it's likely

that the rivers dried up and shifted their courses, altering trade

routes and undermining the economy."

 

Kenoyer is also now arguing that the Indus script can be traced to 3300

BCE, making it as old as an Sumerian records of writing.

 

The skeletal record confirms that same data as archaeology as Kenneth

Kennedy notes in 'Have Aryans Been Identified in the Prehistoric

Skeletal Record from South Asia' appearing in The Indo-Aryans of South

Asia (Walter de Gruyter 1995). No such Aryan skeletons have ever been

found as different from indigenous ethnic groups.

 

"All prehistoric human remains recovered from the Indian subcontinent

are phenotypically identifiable as south Asians. Furthermore their

biological continuity with living peoples of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

and the border regions is well established across time and space.

Assumptions that blondism, blue-grey eyes and light skin pigmentation

are physical hallmarks of either ancient Aryans or of members of

brahmin and other social groups in modern south Asia, find their

origins in the improper marriage of excerpts from Vedic texts with

nineteenth century Germanic nationalistic writings."

 

Most archaeologists in India like B B Lal, S P Gupta or S R Rao have

argued similar points for several years. At a recent conference in Los

Angeles in August, sponsored by the World Association for Vedic Studies

(WAVES), Lal argued convincingly the same points in an excellent paper

called the 'Myth of the Aryan Invasion: Some Reflections on the

Authorship of the Harappan Culture'. Unfortunately, Indian Leftists

called B B Lal's recent book The Oldest Civilisation in South Asia as

"academically weak and unscholarly," though he is only relating the

implications of the latest archaeology. How many of these people ever

read Lal's book or the related archaeological studies is debatable.

 

Yet even a Communist historian in India like Romila Thapar, who

previously endorsed the invasion theory has been forced to backtrack

and no longer emphasises it. She recently notes in a Frontline

interview:

 

"Introducing archaeological data into historical studies also forces

historians to think along interdisciplinary lines. The decline of the

Indus cities is attributed to a range of causes, of which ecological

change is among the major ones."

 

The Aryan invasion theory has been used to promote various political

agendas. British, Communist, Dravidian and dalit groups have all used

it to their advantage, as have Muslim and Christian missionaries

portraying the invading Aryans as the bad guys and the invasion as the

source of all social, political and religious problems in the country.

No other theory of ancient history has been used for so much modern

political and religious mileage. That such groups are blaming Hindus

for politicising the issue now that it is turning against them is only

hypocrisy.

 

Regardless of one's political views, the Aryan invasion theory is

falling into the dustbin of history. India as a civilisation has as

much continuity both in terms of its ethnic groups and its literary

record. In fact a new claim for India as the cradle of civilisation may

be possible with further archaeological finds. Rather than a history of

invasions, there is an indigenous development of a civilisation with

distinctive features that can be traced back to the beginnings of

agriculture and cattle rearing in the region. A great history is there

that needs to be reclaimed and reinterpreted as an integral whole. A

new history of India needs to be written that recognises this

monumental heritage. A good place to start improving and Indianising

the educational system in the country would be to correct this

misconception which puts the entire history of the region on a wrong

foundation.