Reviews on 4 Important Vedic History Books

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Reviews

 

VEDIC BOOKSHELF

 

The Aryan Invasion: New Light on an Old Problem

 

 

 

Books reviewed

 

Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by Navaratna S. Rajaram

and David Frawley, with a Foreword by Klaus K. Klostermaier, 2nd

edition. 1997. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price Rs 450 (HB), Rs 150

(PB). Pages: 328 + xxi. Reviewed by Professor K.D. Prithipaul.

 

The Politics of History: Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of

Scholarship by N.S. Rajaram. 1995. Voice of India, New Delhi. Price

Rs 150 (HB), Rs 100 (PB). Pages: 243 + xviii. Reviewed by Professor

Uma Erry.

 

The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal, by Shrikant Talageri, with

a Foreword by S.R. Rao. 1993. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi. Price Rs.

350 (HB). Pages 373 + ix. Reviewed by Dr. N.S. Rajaram.

 

The Problem of Aryan Origins: From an Indian Point of View, by K.D.

Sethna, Second enlarged edition. 1992. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi.

Price Rs. 450 (HB). Pages 443 + xiii. Reviewed by Dr. N.S. Rajaram

 

 

 

Review of Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization

 

The impact of colonization during the British domination was not

merely political and economic. It extended to the collective

psychology of the people and the latter's perception of its own

culture. This was noticeable in the manner in which the educated

Indian citizen came to view his past history. The myth, which quickly

gained credence in academic circles, arose from the Western

Indologists' view that ancient Indian history was initiated by an

invasion of Aryans coming from somewhere in Central Asia. Several

generations of Indian scholars, honestly mistaken by the prestige

which the learned philologists trained in the scientific

and `objective' methods of research in Western academe,

conscientiously taught and wrote the history of their country by

taking the myth of the Aryan invasion as the starting point.

 

Of late however, some Indian and Western historians and certain

institutions in India and the West have deemed it necessary, under

the imperative of truth-seeking, to re-examine the premises of the

Western philologists' claim of the veracity of an Aryan invasion and

its cultural consequences. Dr. N.S. Rajaram and Dr. David Frawley

have, in this context, brought forth a cogent, coherent argument

which purports to lay to rest once and for all the erroneous theory

of the Aryan invasion of India around 1500 BC.

 

To buttress their thesis, the authors use their deep knowledge of the

Sanskrit language, their acquaintance with the most recent

archaeological discoveries, their expertise in mathematics and in

computing science. In short, they bring to focus a remarkable

synthesis of several "disciplines" to unlock the secrets of Sanskrit

texts which the early Indologists overlooked. The evidence thus

brought forth from several original sources provides sound reasons to

refute the earlier invasion theory.

 

The dominant idea which gives the clue to their theme is that while

the Aryans have a literature, but have no history or geography, the

Harappans have a sophisticated urban civilization, a history and

geography, but no language or literature. The paradox disappears when

the two are assimilated into a unitive history and geography. It

becomes logical then to argue for North India to be the original home

of the Aryans. The authors further argue for a reversal of the

movement of the Aryans: they moved out of India into the outlying

areas, into Persia and beyond. This new theory receives support from

archaeology, from a comparative analysis of Mesopotamian and Egyptian

mathematics with Vedic mathematics.

 

It is evident that the polyvalent learning of the authors provides a

better insight into the secrets of the past than the mere gratuitous

speculations of the earlier Indologists, of Max Müller in particular.

In fact the authors do pay a worthy tribute to Max Muller for his

many attainments and his contributions to the discovery of India by

Western scholars. At the same time, faithful to their own insights

and convictions, based on their own findings, they demonstrate how

the invasion theory was more an expression of the prejudice fed by

the racist theories spawned by Western academic anthropology

supported by triumphant colonial enterprises of the West European

countries. (See also The Politics of History by N.S. Rajaram reviewed

in this volume.)

 

The significance of the work consists in being an important

confirmation of Indian history having at last come into its own,

freed from the distortions of the arbitrary normative conclusions of

Western historians. The authors pay tribute to other contributors,

like K.D. Sethna, S. Talageri, S.B. Roy, K.C. Varma, Udaya Veera

Shastri and others whose contributions have altered the perceptions

of ancient Indian history with the evidence that it actually had an

indigenous genesis. With a fair measure of self-reliance and

confidence they even propound the thesis that it spread out to other

parts of West Asia and Africa.

 

A welcome aspect of this work is the refutation of certain Marxist

Indian historians who persist in their attachment to superstitious

theories bequeathed by the Indologists of Max Muller's generation.

The authors rightly point out that "not a single significant

contribution should have come from Indian historians belonging to the

elite `establishment'." At the same time they make it clear that they

are not driven by the need to write an apology of Indian chauvinistic

nationalism. Theirs is a statement of veracity based on hard facts.

 

At the same time the authors recognize that their work is not the

last say in the ongoing process of unveiling the truth about ancient

Indian history. They acknowledge that gaps still remain in the task

of reinterpreting Vedic history. Nevertheless, their contribution

provides substantial material which will enable the historians of

India to work for the common purpose of knowing what happened at the

beginning of the Vedic Civilization and collaborate with one another

to bring about a synthetic reconstruction of the historical integrity

of the country.

 

Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization stands out as a major

original fresh statement of what India was. It is lucidly written,

marked at times with an unusual sense of humor. The intricacies of

mathematical discussions, of Vedic linguistics, are expressed with

clarity in a language that will appeal to both the scholar and the

layman. This is indeed a felicitous way of writing about a difficult

and abstruse subject. The book is commendable for its style, the

seriousness of its purpose, and the originality of the thesis which

claims to establish the moral and intellectual order that marked the

early Vedic culture region which then stood as a greenhouse in which

were grown saplings which were subsequently transplanted and grew

into civilizations in the surrounding lands.

 

The reader must rush to read this very well written book on a subject

which will fascinate someone even unacquainted with the history of

India.

 

Editor's comment: Professor Prithipaul's review was based on the

manuscript of the first edition, but applies in all essentials to the

second. The second edition is recommended.

 

Professor K.D. Prithipaul

 

Department of Comparative Religion, University of Alberta, Canada

 

 

 

Review of The Politics of History

 

N.S. Rajaram in his book, The Politics of History explodes our belief

in the age-old theory of the Aryan invasion and shatters the myth

about the origins of the Vedic civilization. He has provided an

unbiased and a genuinely inquiring reader with sufficient and

stimulating material for thought. His book is an excellent study of

ancient India and the Vedic civilization; the honest reader has no

choice but to re-examine his understanding of history. Truth by its

very nature demands courage to acknowledge and accept it. The book

offers a clearer and deeper insight into our ancient past, the Vedas

and the Puranas. The present-day Indian historians need to correct

their myopic vision of history and their die-hard prejudices. They

should not only realign their frontiers of knowledge, but also be

bold enough to rewrite the history of the land.

 

Rajaram's book is the most systematic and thorough study of the Aryan

invasion theory presented to date. He traces the origin and

development of this ugly theory which, according to him, is "a

colossal intellectual blunder" of the 19th century European scholars,

particularly, Max Müller. The author points out that Indian history

was created by men who were neither Indians nor historians but

European linguists. What were the causes of this grim blunder and how

did it happen, is discussed in the chapter "Sahibs and Pundits."

Ignorance of the scientific method and lack of archaeological data

coupled with European politics and missionary interests were the main

forces behind this mythical creation. Also the upsurge of German

nationalism in the 19th century, and the German dislike of any

association with Semitic origin, added to this conspiracy. The author

shows how this contributed to the growth of racial science, which

dominated European thought in the 19th century. European linguistics

had a great deal more to do with the Aryan invasion theory than was

realized.

 

The author strongly condemns the present-day Indian historians of the

elite institutions in India, who have totally ignored the latest

findings of archaeology carried out by scientists and scholars like

S.R. Rao, V.S. Wakankar and Shrikant Talageri, findings which, when

studied and integrated with the Puranas, give us a totally different

sense. (See review of Talageri's book in the same feature — Editor.)

The Vedic civilization dates back to 7000 BC, whereas the Harappan

civilization represents nothing but a continuation of the early Vedic

civilization. It was indeed the "twilight of the Vedic civilization"

and belonged to the Sutra period of the Vedic literature. And this

vast civilization came to an end because of ecological reasons,

particularly the drying up of the mighty Sarasvati River. That there

was a mighty river, which used to flow through Haryana, Punjab and

Rajasthan has been discovered by Wakankar's exploration and confirmed

by satellite photography. Archaeological sites have been found on the

riverbed which show that the river gradually became weaker and

finally dried up around 1900 or 2000 BC. But to get back to the

accounts in ancient literature, the second Mandala of the Rigveda

mentions the great Sarasvati River about fifty times, while the Ganga

is mentioned only once, and the seventh Mandala, attributed to Rishi

Vasistha, says, "the Sarasvati is a mighty stream" that flowed from

the "mountain to the sea … nourishing the children of Nahusha," RV

VII.95.2. The `Children of Nahusha' refers to the rulers of the famed

Bharata Dynasty, and the inhabitants of the Sarasvati heartland.

(Sic: The whole of the Rigveda, and not just the second Mandala

mentions the Sarasvati about fifty times — Editor.)

 

In his analysis of the Aryan invasion theory, according to which the

Aryans entered into India, from Central Asia — the writer has

assigned a whole chapter to Max Müller, the father of this "divine

theory". The chapter `Max Müller's Ghost' gives a comprehensive

account and evaluation of his work. While he exposes his sham

scholarship and a rather superficial rendering of the Rigveda, he

lauds the great effort to bring out a monumental 51-volume (Sic:

50) "Sacred Books of the East", which ironically led to a resurgence

of interest among the Indians in their ancient works. Thus his early

goal of discrediting the Indian scriptures by giving a negative

interpretation had exactly the opposite effect. Max Müller rejected

the astronomical evidence for Vedic chronology as suggested by

Colebrook. He assigned Vedic dates so as to coincide with his firm

belief in Biblical chronology, "according to which the creation of

the world was said to have taken place at 9 AM on October 23, 4004

BC." Though Max Müller later repudiated his own chronology for the

Vedic literature, he was "an extremely political creature, who did

not hesitate to use his position as Vedic scholar to advance the

cause of German nationalism with his theories about the Aryan race."

 

Max Müller 's theory was taken up by the nineteenth century linguists

and other scholars, who, after discovering Sanskrit and the

relationship which it bears to European languages, hit upon the

existence of a Proto Indo-European language to preserve their `pet

theory' of the Aryan invasion. The linguistic approach to history

reveals how the human mind can pervert facts, and how preconceived

ideas can falsify one's view of events. Nineteenth century

linguists "built whole historical scenarios around untested

linguistic conjectures." It proved to be a "monumental failure of

vision" as shown by archaeology, which began to have an enormous

bearing on the study of history. "All fanciful historical scenarios

began to crumble" in the face of data from archaeology, mathematics

and other sources, observes the author. Archaeologists have now

proved the existence of a vast civilization, the great Sarasvati-

Sindhu Civilization, spread over more than a million and a half

square kilometers.

 

Where did the Aryans originate from? Who were they, and what does the

word Aryan mean, and how it was misinterpreted by European

Indologists, are all discussed in [the chapter] `Emperor's Clothes.'

According to the Puranas, Eastern UP and Northwest Himalayas (Sic:

Northeast Himalayas) was the original home of the Aryans. While there

is no evidence and support for the Aryan invasion theory, there is

abundant evidence to show that massive movements of the Vedic Aryans

took place out of India (that is, in the reverse order) into West and

Central Asia. Linguistic analysis by S.S. Mishra, as well as

archaeological records of the Hittites, Mittani and the Kassites all

point to an expansion of the "Vedic Aryans out of India into West and

Central Asia." And this is also what the Puranas have to say: they

record a series of migrations out of India resulting from wars as

well as natural calamities. Aryan tribes settled in Persia, Parthia

and Anatolia. (The Puranas record them as Parsus and Partavas.)

Indian emperor Mandhata drove the troublesome Druhyus out of India

before 4600 BC, and according to Talageri (1993), "they became the

Celtic Druids of Europe, which fits in with the latter's tradition of

tracing their origin to Asia." Then there is question of Zoroaster,

his date and his origin. The Bhavisya Purana (139, 13-15)

records, "contrary to the Vedic practices, your son will become

famous by name of Mag. His name will be Jarathushtra Mag — and will

bring fame to the dynasty. His descendents will worship fire and will

be known by the name Mag (Saka), and being Soma worshippers (Magadha

Sakadvipi) will be known as Mag Brahmins." All this is so contrary to

what we have been subjected to learning in history books.

 

Putting aside the verdict of the Puranas and the Vedas, we may

legitimately ask how has the writer resolved the main issue, in other

words, what is the scientific basis used by the author for

repudiating the Aryan invasion theory? What are the flaws and

contradictions pointed out by the writer?

 

The chapter `Ancient India and the Modern World' focuses on this main

issue. The strength of the main argument and the evidence rest on the

recent findings of archaeology and satellite photography, which have

proved the existence of the ancient Sarasvati River and unearthed

archaeological sites on the riverbed; what the historians earlier

labelled as the Indus Valley sites in areas where none of the Indus

rivers flow, and were therefore a source of mystery to

archaeologists, have now been proved to lie along the course of the

great Sarasvati River. Wakankar's discovery of the ancient Sarasvati

helped to resolve the mystery. Mark Kenoyer, a North American

archaeologist (1991) has provided a detailed archaeological map of

the whole of Northwest India.

 

But the Rigveda tells us all this and much more; while it mentions

the Ganga only once, it lauds the great Sarasvati fifty times. It

also describes the geography of North India as it was before the

Sarasvati dried up. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley was

a continuation of the Vedic Civilization; its ending coincided with

the drying up of the Sarasvati around 2000 BC. Archaeological studies

have shown that there was a gradual depletion of water resources that

culminated in a drought in the 2200 BC to 1900 BC [period]. It was a

global phenomenon that affected civilizations across the immense belt

of Southern Europe to India. As S.R. Rao says, "People were forced to

seek new lands for settlement. The refugees from Mohenjo-Daro and

Southern sites in Sind fled to Saurashtra and later occupied the

interior of the peninsula." In addition to all this, the writer

provides evidence of geography, astronomy and literature and

metallurgy, and evidence of the mathematics or the Sulbasutras, often

called Vedic Mathematics, which was discovered by Seidenberg to be

the source of "all ancient mathematics from India to Old Babylonia to

Egypt to Pythagorean Greece."

 

All this is an unmistakable pointer to the existence and supremacy of

a vast Vedic Civilization spanning over thousands of years and kept

alive throughout by a living tradition. India is the only country

where the ancient past still breathes. Jean Le Meé, a French student

of the Vedas observes, "the pyramids have been eroded by the desert

wind, the marble broken by earthquakes and the gold stolen by

robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of

generations traveling like a great wave through the living substance

of mind." If historical research could be intensified by the new

generation of scholars, by combining tradition with science, all

history and not just India will benefit, says the author of this

brilliant book.

 

Professor Uma Erry

 

Bhavan's Journal, July 15, 1996

 

 

 

Review of The Aryan Invasion Theory, A Reappraisal

 

The writing of Indian history has been dominated by political

considerations for well over a century. First it was the nineteenth

century European biases which sought to present European as the

pinnacle of world civilizations. This was compounded by the

aspirations of the emerging German nationalism, and British colonial

interests. Christian missionaries also got on the bandwagon of

European colonialism and rewrote the history of India to facilitate

conversion. The result was the Aryan invasion version of ancient

history and the denigration of Indian contributions. After

independence, one had reason to hope that Indian scholars might go

back to the primary sources and use scientific methods to recast

Indian history on a more rational basis. They after all are in the

best position to do so.

 

Unfortunately this did not come about. For reasons that are

unnecessary to go into here, the Indian history establishment came to

be dominated by Marxist ideologues who went about recasting all

periods of Indian history to be conformity with the Marxist theology.

This resulted in a serious lowering of standards and the failure of

any Indian school of thought to emerge, despite a millennia-old

Indian tradition and its matchless records. This background is

necessary to understand why really significant and original

contributions to Indian scholarship have come from outside the

leftist dominated academic mainstream.

 

Fortunately there are signs of fresh wind blowing. There are now

scholars — mainly outside the establishment — who are both original

thinkers and compelling writers. One of them is Shrikant Talageri,

the author of the book under review. His book upsets the whole

framework built on the belief that the Rigveda contains the oldest

records of India; Talageri's contention, well supported, is that the

much-maligned Puranas actually contain the accounts of the oldest

dynasties of India. With this seemingly simple shift, he not only

presents a coherent picture of ancient India, but also arrives at a

plausible scenario for the origin and spread of the Indo-European

speakers. When Talageri's book appeared in 1993, this was like a bolt

from the blue; the late Girilal Jain wrote a major article on it,

which appeared on the center page of the Times of India. But today,

the idea seems less shocking. Let us now take a look at what Talageri

has to offer.

 

His book is ambitious and broader in scope than what its title

indicates. His goal in fact is to provide an answer to one of the

great questions of ancient history — the problem of the origin and

spread of Indo-European speakers. Here is the problem: going back at

least to the eighteenth century, historians and linguists have

puzzled over the fact that people from India and Sri Lanka to England

and Ireland speak languages clearly related to one another. We now

call these languages members of the great Indo-European family. The

recognition of these as members of the same language family led to

the perfectly natural supposition that the ancestors of these

speakers must at one time have lived in a single homeland. Ever since

that time, the location of this Indo-European homeland has been one

of the central problems of ancient history. As Talageri observes:

 

 

 

When we consider the historical importance of the speakers of these

languages, it becomes obvious that the earliest common history of

these languages constitutes the most important unsolved mystery of

ancient times. (pp 1-2).

 

 

 

One cannot seriously argue with this assessment. Some of his claims

however will strike many as extravagant, if not audacious. Towards

the end of his book he goes on to assert:

 

 

 

The whole description is based on the most logical, and in many

respects the only possible, interpretation of the facts, ...

 

Any further research, and any new material discovered on the subject,

can only confirm this description. There may be minor points on which

rectifications may become necessary, such as the exact identities and

the interrelationships of the various Indo-European groups, past and

present; ... (p 368)

 

 

 

Can he really be serious — claiming that all future work can only

lend support to his theory except on some minor points? But this is

not all. Speaking of his use of the Rigveda to correlate the accounts

found in the Puranas, he makes the astounding statement:

 

 

 

In respect of the Vedas, there has always been a school of opinion in

India which holds that everything is contained in the Vedas. While

this can be taken with a heavy pinch of salt, the fact remains that a

handful of hymns (out of a total of 1028 hymns which constitute the

Rig Veda) provide us the key for solving the biggest historical

problem of all time. (p 6; emphasis mine.)

 

 

 

But strange as it may seem, his claims are not entirely unfounded.

There are to be sure some problems; his chronology runs into

contradictions both with Indian records and the records of ancient

Europeans, especially the Celtic Druids. Fortunately this is not a

major problem in the overall scheme. With the chronological framework

that can now be formulated — with the help of data that was not

available when Talageri was working on his book — most of these

difficulties disappear. So it is possible to get a picture of the

ancient age of the Vedas described in the Puranas, by studying the

two together. I shall return to this point again, for this is now of

paramount importance in any reconstruction of ancient history.

 

As I read it, Talageri's main contribution is that he shows that the

Puranas actually contain a fairly complete account of ancient India

going back some one hundred generations before the Mahabharata War.

Anyone familiar with the past century or so of Indological research

will have no trouble recognizing this as a profound transformation in

perspective.

 

The truly radical point of departure in Talageri's approach is the

fact that he does not accept the Rigveda as the starting point

chronologically of the Aryan civilization of India. He shows

convincingly that the Puranas preserve the earliest historical

accounts, and the Vedas, in fact, confirm this. (Again it is

important to note that this was much more radical five years ago when

his book first appeared, than it may seem today.) And what makes all

this possible is the discarding of the now discredited Aryan invasion

theory. To his credit, Talageri does not stop there, he goes on to

provide an alternative.

 

The first step in Talageri's reappraisal is to analyze and explode

the Aryan invasion theory. There are at least two incarnations of

this theory: the first is the nineteenth century version propagated

mainly by Max Müller and his followers. This is essentially what is

followed by the Indian establishment historians, and also what is

found in most history books today. Then there is its more modern

incarnation created among others by Gordon Childe, and whose

principal exponent in recent times was probably Marija Gimbutas. This

is the so-called `Kurgan theory', more of which later. Talageri

subjects these to a critical examination and shows them both to be

baseless. His analysis of the so-called 'Kurgan' theory of Indo-

European origins is on the whole more valuable than his critique of

the old version which has been effectively demolished by others.

 

His criticism of the Kurgan theory is masterful. This theory

identifies the material culture associated with the 'Kurgan'

gravesites dated to the fourth millennium BC in South Russia and the

Pontic region as belonging to the proto Indo-Europeans. It is now

enjoying some academic vogue as the potential homeland of the Indo-

Europeans. What is astonishing about the whole thing is that there is

absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that these people spoke

Indo-European; there are no literary or linguistic records. But this

has not deterred its proponents from claiming that they must have

spoken proto Indo-European. And yet this identification is sought to

be established by equating Kurgan archaeology with Indo-European

linguistics! As Mr. Talageri perceptively notes the whole exercise is

nothing but an example of "the extent to which any facts can be made

to appear to `prove' any hypothesis by an entrenched and

predetermined scholarship."

 

The author next looks at the linguistic evidence which I'll try to

summarize in as simple terms as possible. Though they exhibit great

similarities, linguists hold that the Dravidian languages of South

India and the so-called Indo-Aryan languages of North India belong to

different language families. The similarities however cannot be

brushed aside; they are by no means limited to vocabulary and lexical

borrowing. A good sentence in a Dravidian language like Kannada for

instance, when literally translated, becomes a good sentence in Hindi

or Bengali. Also, Kannada has the same number of cases (eight) as

Sanskrit while even the oldest Greek has only five. Nonetheless we

can accept that the classification of languages as they now stand to

be useful. But problems arise when linguists, and even worse,

historians with preconceived notions, invoke 'linguistic evidence' to

reconstruct the history and chronology of peoples and nations that

existed thousands of years ago. This is a point that cannot be

overemphasized.

 

Indo-Iranian is the main and the oldest member of the Indo-European

group — or so the linguists tell us. Even the oldest records from

outside India — the Hittite and the Mittani of West Asia — already

show Sanskrit and not any hypothetical proto Indo-Iranian. And Vedic

Sanskrit is by far the oldest Indo-European language known. Indian

records are on the whole the oldest of Indo-European records. So any

attempt to find an Aryan or Indo-European homeland outside of India

at once runs into formidable difficulties. The only way to get around

this is to claim that the Vedas describe their invasion from a

foreign land as was done by the early invasionists, or fabricate a

scenario disregarding all evidence as later done by the Kurgan

advocates. The result often is grotesque logic. As Talageri points

out in the case of one invasionist:

 

 

 

The very idea of considering the present-day distribution of Indo-

European languages as making a "strong prima-facie case against the

theory that India was the original home of the Aryans" is indicative

of the bias involved. (p 68)

 

 

 

That is to say, the very fact that the oldest and the greatest

concentration of Indo-European speakers happens to be in India is

used as proof that the languages are not native to India! One could

similarly say (with more justice) that the present day distribution

of English is enough to make a very strong prima facie case against

England being the original home of the English. And it is a similar

story with Dravidian speakers. They are now concentrated in South

India, but they are claimed to have migrated from the north, having

come from "their original homeland in the islands of the Aegean and

along the tracts of mainland along the Aegean Sea — Greece and Asia

Minor" as Chatterji put it (p 68). It is probably unnecessary to

point out that Chatterji's claim was based on no evidence at all.

 

So the thrust of the methodology is the argument that when a language

or a group of languages is concentrated in a particular area, its

speakers must have come from some place else where there is no trace

of the language. This essentially is the logic behind making the

Harappans Dravidian speakers. It is impossible to refute an argument

when it rests on no evidence. (Jha's decipherment of the Harappan

script has demolished it.)