Aryan Invasion theory - Myth

[Guest guest]

Swami Vivekananda saw " not one word in our scriptures, not one, to

prove that the Aryans ever came from anywhere outside India, and in

ancient India was included Afghanistan " .

 

In his discourses in the late 50s, the Kanchi Paramacharya,

Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, had said: " You will find no basis at

all in the Vedas and the Sastras for the theory of two races, Aryans

and Dravidians.... "

 

:The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

The latest archeological and historic evidence and the emergence of

molecular biology clearly show that the Aryan Race theory is false

and just a concoction of the Europeans, who have been obsessed for

the last several centuries with racism and a superiority complex

based on it (See; IDEAS OF RACE IN SCIENCE by Nancy Stepan,

Professor, Yale university, USA). Concoction of the Aryan Race was an

attempt by these racists to show that it was only the Europeans who

went to different parts of the world and developed all the

civilization there.

 

However, this is changing. Mr. David Frawley, who is a well known

authority on the suject and has written many books and articles,

describes the current situation on the suject in the following

article: INDIAN HISTORY REVISITED by David Frawley (Posted Nov 30,

1998 at india books forum).

 

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

Aryans were the first invaders of the country. They have been 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 (see below) argues that there is an

indigenous development of civilisation in India going back to at

least 6000 BCE (Mehrgarh). 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.

 

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. "

 

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 recent

archaeological findings. Instead, says Kenoyer, " it's likely that the

rivers dried up and shifted their courses, altering trade routes and

undermining the economy. " Kenoyer also argues that the Indus script

can be traced to 3300 BCE, making it older than Sumerian records of

writing.