Archeological find of the century!

[Guest guest]

The Hindu (11-May-2006):

 

"Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu

 

T.S. Subramanian

 

Stone axe with Indus Valley script found near Mayiladuthurai

 

 

CHENNAI: A Neolithic stone celt with the Indus Valley script has been discovered by a school teacher, V. Shanmuganathan, in a village called Sembian-Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu. The celt, a polished hand-held stone axe, has four Indus Valley signs on it. The artefact with the script can be as old as 1500 B.C., that is, 3,500 years old. The four signs were identified by epigraphists of the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology, according to its Special Commissioner, T. S. Sridhar.

 

Iravatham Mahadevan, one of the world's foremost experts on the Indus script, called the find "the greatest archaeological discovery of a century in Tamil Nadu." The discovery proved that the Indus script had reached Tamil Nadu. He estimated the date of the artefact with the script to be around 1500 B.C. "I have cautiously and conservatively put it between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C.," Mr. Mahadevan said. It was in the classical Indus script. He ruled out the possibility of the celt coming from North India because "the material of this stone is clearly of peninsular origin."

 

Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, where hundreds of seals with the Indus script were discovered, are in present-day Pakistan. Neolithic means New Stone Age and it is datable in India between 2000 B.C. and 1000 B.C.

 

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the first sign on the celt depicted a skeletal body with ribs. The figure is seated on his haunches, body bent and contracted, with lower limbs folded and knees drawn up. The second sign showed a jar. Hundreds of this pair have been found on seals and sealings at Harappa. Mr Mahadevan read the first sign as "muruku" and the second sign as "an." In other words, it is "Murukan." The earliest references in Old Tamil poetry portrayed him as a "wrathful killer," indicating his prowess as a war god and hunter. The third sign looked like a trident and the fourth like a crescent with a loop in the middle.

 

Mr. Mahadevan commented that the latest discovery was very strong evidence that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Indus Valley people "shared the same language, which can only be Dravidian and not Indo-Aryan." He added that before this discovery, the southernmost occurrence of the Indus script was at Daimabad, Maharashtra on the Pravara River in the Godavari Valley.

[Guest guest]

of the AIT theory?

[Guest guest]

 

of the AIT theory?

 

 

why do people still suppose that if thre is absolutly one iota of evidence to point to one non-aryan culture in india before the advent of sanskrit, then it must automatically mean that the aryans invaded and the theory is right.

 

I personally, do believe there was a dravidian culture in pakistan and north india at one point. Their culture thrived around the sapta sindu region, particularly around the Saraswathi River. In actuality, almost 3/4ths of all city findings in the region occur along a long-ago dried up river bed bigger than the Indus, which many people suppose was the saraswathi. If this river was like the Nile to the Indus Valley people, meaning it was their life blood, and this river all of a sudden dried up and shrunk because of tectonic activity that shifted the corse of melting glaciers from the himalaya in a more easterly direction,, then these people would have lost a major asset to their civilizational superiority.

 

Without the saraswathi flowing the way it used to, there would need to be many changes made within the society. This could explain a easterly movement of indus valley people after 2000 BC.

 

Also, the Indus Valley/Harappan civilization was the major trade center of the south asian region and would have been a major asset to have as a neighbor to all those cultures that neighbor it. If the Harappans then move out and move east, naturally those neighbors to the west would come searching for their trading partners. This way, they could have taken over the territory once occupied by the harappans and naturally spread their culture and language into their newly occupied areas.

 

This neighbor is most likely the ghandharvas who occupied ancient afghanistan around this time and would have brought with them an ind-iranian language, which would have been refined to make sanskrit. Remember that sanskrit is itself a refined language. Of corse, there would have to refinements made to an already unrefined language in order for a group of people to define their newly refined and perfected language as the good one (sanskrit).

 

 

 

So, there was a migration of indo-aryan sanskrit speakers. Their influence upon the region was long lasting and definately affeected the corse of indian and world history on a major scale. But that doesnt qualify as an invasion or of any displays of hostiliy.

[mahakala]

 

I personally, do believe there was a dravidian culture in pakistan and north india at one point.

 

You are entitled t o your opinion.

 

FYI , Mahadevan is one of the world's foremost experts on the Indus script, who is more authoritative on this subject than you.

 

This is what he says

 

 

Mr. Mahadevan commented that the latest discovery was very strong evidence that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu and the Indus Valley people "shared the same language, which can only be Dravidian and not Indo-Aryan." He added that before this discovery, the southernmost occurrence of the Indus script was at Daimabad, Maharashtra on the Pravara River in the Godavari Valley.

[Guest guest]

i agreed with Mr Mahadevan. You may have read my post wrong.

 

I said i DO believe that there WAS a Dravidian culture in Pakistan and North India.

 

I was arguing against the Aryan Invasion Theory. There was no invasion. Nowadays, there is much more evidence to disprove this theory than there is to prove the theory