Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

disha · Post by **disha** » 16 Sep 2012 13:15

In Indian Journal of Economics, Volume II, 1918-1919, The Earliest Agricultural Organisation in India and its methods (page 636 onwards) http://books.google.com/books?id=lQ5NAA ... 02&f=false

Above is a "tainted source" since it assumes that Aryans had already arrived and written RgVeda and the discusson then proceeds to agriculture in the time of Vedas. There is mention of monsoon, rains and agriculture mentioned in RgVeda. There is Urvara (or plough land) and private ownership of land. Yava (barley?) and Dhanu (Rice? Grain?) is mentioned. But no mention of steppes or horses to plough the grass lands. No discussion of grasslands covered with snow during winter months (there is mention of crop rotation and obtaining crops 2 to 3 times a year). The plough is mentioned as well. But again nothing of steppe.

Of course we do need Anthropologists who are now Horse Experts (Eg. David Anthony) to tell us about Aryans from Steppe and how horses are better in agriculture than the Red Sindhi or Sahiwal or other Bos Indicus species like Gir, Gujarath, Kankrej, Ongole, Nellore and several more. And development for all this cow species was done in a blink of time (maybe in 10 years) and the better horse relegated to history.

disha · Post by **disha** » 16 Sep 2012 13:27

Just on hunch, wanted to see how Bos Indicus (Zebu) arrives in Africa and guess what google chachi throws up?

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/ilri/x5442e ... #TopOfPage

Zebu arrives conservatively (and thus definitely) by 1500 BC in East Africa. The range of arrival given above is 2000 BC to 1500 BC. If in 2000 BC cows show up in East Africa, why would horses not show up in SIVC from Oman?

Bah, David Anthony and his minions can go take a hike now.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 16 Sep 2012 15:02

Brihaspati,

Boss, not trying to argue the case of AIT-AMT-ABI or whatever other nonsense some of these so-called scholars are trying to perpetuate. Just noting the kind of cock-ups that can occur in language analysis.

It is clear that racial and other motivations informed the "scholarship" of the 18 century to present in the West. Any halfwit can see that. What is not clear is why our own people, are perfectly willing to explore the motivations of those on our side who are challenging the "history", while not applying the same rigour to those Western scholars. That alone will kill the alphabet soup of historical theories being proposed for India by non-Indians.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 16 Sep 2012 18:45

disha wrote:From wiki on Rice:

First attested in English in the middle of the 13th century, the word "rice" derives from the Old French ris, which comes from Italian riso, in turn from the Latin oriza, which derives from the Greek ὄρυζα (oruza). The Greek word is the source of all European words (cf. Welsh reis, Ger. Reis, Lith. ryžiai, Serbo-Cr. riža, Pol. ryż, Dutch rijst, Romanian orez).[5][6][7] Ultimately, the original source for those languages is from the Tamil word அரிசி (arisi).[8][9]
So they Aryans came from steppe, forgot to mention that in RgVeda, pushed all the way down and cooked rice in Tamil Nadu (and called it arisi) and traded with Greeks via Romans and the word spread from there. What about the rice found in the SIVC? Oh they were dravidians who were pushed back. So what did the Aryans eat? Horses? Horse meat is not mentioned as diet in vedas (not even in Yajur) but vrihi (rice) is mentioned in Yajur. So Aryans forgot Steppe and Horse meat (in a blink) and became vegetarians on arrival (atleast non-horse eaters).

If you follow the reference [8], it is to Witzel's paper (Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan).
There he approvingly quotes other "experts" on the Dravidian migration theory.

As mentioned above, Zvelebil(1970,1990) is of the opinion that the Dravida entered South Asia from the Iranian highlands. Their oldest vocabulary (Southworth & McAlpin) is that of a semi-nomadic, pastoral group, not of an agricultural community.

It is indeed possible that the Dravida constituted a first wave of central Asian tribes that came to Iran before the IA, just as the Kassites came to Mesopotamia before the Mitanni-IA. In that case they knew the horse already in Central Asia, but would not have taken it over directly from the Indo-Iranians (as may be indicated by Brahui (h)ull ̄ı, O.Tam. ivu.li ‘horse’, etc., different from IIr. a ́cva).

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 16 Sep 2012 19:44

peter wrote: What frustrates me is that we Indians have no consistency in our story on the topic of dating Mahabharat war. For instance a while ago I read a paper by Achar, Narhari a physics PhD and professor at Memphis, Tennessee on the dating of Mahabharat.

He made a solid case for Mahabharat war taking place in ~3000 BC.

Before we make our research public should'nt we atleast mention what is wrong with the current / existing research?

Peter ji,
The fact that there are multiple proposals for dating of Mahabharata War (or other such historical instance) should excite you, not frustrate you.

You read Achar's paper and think he made a 'solid' case for MBH War taking place in 3067 BC (no need for ~3000 BC). Have he made a convincing case, as far as you are concerned?

If he has, I may ask you to few questions.. because I read the same paper and only observation that he could convince me out of 200+ astronomy observation from MBH text, for his year of 3067 BC (originally proposed by S Raghavan as far back as 1969 AD), is that of 'Saturn afflicting Rohini'. All other observations contradict his date.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 16 Sep 2012 20:09

My experience with my own name is that loss of retroflexion is much easier than addition of it. Yet, ....

The intermediate Hindukush area has been largely neglected in scenarios of this kind. ....
Furthermore, it is precisely in this area that the phonetic feature of retroflexation, so typical of Vedic (and of South Asian languages in general), must have set in (Witzel 1999 a,b).This feature is missing in Mitanni-IA and Old Iranian but typical for all languages of the Hindukush/Pamir areas, whether they be Burushaski, E. Iranian, N. Iranian (Saka), Nuristani, or IA (from RV to modern Dardic); retroflexation even has affected the eastern (i.e. S. Asian) dialects of the newcomer, Baluchi, a West Iranian language.

Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia
By Michael Witzel
Philadelphia: Sino-Platonic Papers 129, Dec. 2003, 1-70.

-Arun

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 16 Sep 2012 20:31

Shiv,

Instead of constructing a theory, can we gather all the pre-theoretical facts that have to be explained?
What I mean is, the observation that Latin pater and Sanskrit pitra are related is pre-theoretical.
Conceiving of a possible ancestor language (say PIE) and searching for its geographical origin is theoretical.

There certainly are going to be pre-theoretical facts that are dependent on an interpretation (e.g., sindhu is a proper noun in the Rgveda and not a generic river is a matter of interpretation), but whenever we have those we can make a note of that. There will be some that are difficult (e.g., an Indian writer who believes Parsu-rama means the Rama of Persia.)

The current landscape is so littered with migrating Aryans, Dravidians, Mundas, para-Mundas, etc., etc., that it is impossible to disentangle what is pre-theoretical fact, and what is derived from a theory.

If we had such an encyclopedia, then given any theory, we can evaluate it as follows:
1. These pre-theoretical facts are explained without force-fitting.
2. These pre-theoretical facts require force-fitting or additional conjectures.
3. These facts with such&such interpretations fit the theory.
4. These facts with such&such interpretations are discarded by the theory as wrong interpretations.
and so on.

Right now to do this means chasing down citation after citation going back to the 18th century.

A wiki structure might be the way to go.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 Sep 2012 21:09

JE Menon wrote:Brihaspati,

Boss, not trying to argue the case of AIT-AMT-ABI or whatever other nonsense some of these so-called scholars are trying to perpetuate. Just noting the kind of cock-ups that can occur in language analysis.

It is clear that racial and other motivations informed the "scholarship" of the 18 century to present in the West. Any halfwit can see that. What is not clear is why our own people, are perfectly willing to explore the motivations of those on our side who are challenging the "history", while not applying the same rigour to those Western scholars. That alone will kill the alphabet soup of historical theories being proposed for India by non-Indians.

Without Indians participating these theories will not last long. People such as Manish ji whose years of participation which provides information to the western scholars who will keep funding these subjects without scientefic basis. But it also displaces Indian history and Indian puranas out of Indian mind and Indian textbook permanently for the last 50 years with this cooked up nonsense. They have acheived what they wanted by changing the Indian mind for 50 years,

This has gone on for 100 years is also indicative of how much the outcome they are interested in. THe western history and the Christian history is dependent on these subjects which need wide belief in India. Otherwise the west and their history will never be accepted in the asia and India region. This is the REALITY which must be understood.

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 16 Sep 2012 23:15

A_Gupta wrote:My experience with my own name is that loss of retroflexion is much easier than addition of it. Yet, ....

This seems to be correct. Retroflexed human sounds are heavily concentrated in Indian languages, and result from the "full workout" that is afforded to the human vocal apparatus in reproduction of the RV sounds. There is no evidence of their borrowing from "Dravidian languages" and so on. If it were not for these sounds it is unlikely that humans would have any special reason to make and retain these retroflex sounds which require quite some effort.

In the RV pratishakhya (XIV.21), it is clearly mentioned that the tendency for "flattening the tongue" leads to a number of consonantal speech defects. These are categorized into various types of defects in XIV.22-29.

It seems a natural human tendency - perhaps following from monkeys and apes - to try and keep the tongue flat in sound production. I very much doubt if monkeys and apes produce retroflexed sounds easily (or at all). I am sure much is known about this matter, but here is something I found:

http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~hharley/c ... /EWC02.pdf

We use our large, muscular tongue to change the shape of our
oral cavity and produce many subtly different sounds. The human
tongue is a more mobile and precisely controlled one than most
tongues in the animal kingdom. The fact that we stand upright,
with our heads set squarely on top of our necks, rather than in
front of our bodies, plays an important role in speech production
as well: it means that our oral tract is a tube with an approximately
90° bend in it, which gives it unique acoustical properties.
Animals with a shallower curve to their throats, and without a
moldable, mobile tongue, cannot even begin to make the variety
of oral sounds that we can, which is one reason why it is impossible
to teach chimpanzees or dogs to use spoken human language.

The effort to produce retroflex consonants reflects a more highly evolved faculty of speech as found in India, and this effect spread to other parts of the world along with Sanskrit.

KL

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 16 Sep 2012 23:26

AntuBarwa wrote:KLP Ji,

I read number of your recent posts...

Thanks. No hard feelings at all.

KL

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 16 Sep 2012 23:29

ravi_g wrote:Slightly OT but needed at this point:

People have been suggesting Court route to settle the matter of AIT/OIT. KLP Dubey ji even suggested that the law is based on reason, when he said that "Reason is the basis for the legal system". People need to understand what law can and cannot do.

I wanted to return to your post. Your points are well taken regarding the legal system, but I just wanted to pointed out that in my opinion, neither Shiv nor I are advocating that we use the courts to decide an intellectual debate. This is unlikely to succeed. What the courts could be useful for, is to stop the mindless dissemination of unproven and highly unlikely theories as *established fact* in the educational system, creating an environment of "mass brainwashing".

KL

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 16 Sep 2012 23:36

Acharya wrote:
JE Menon wrote:Without Indians participating these theories will not last long. People such as Manish ji whose years of participation which provides information to the western scholars who will keep funding these subjects without scientefic basis. But it also displaces Indian history and Indian puranas out of Indian mind and Indian textbook permanently for the last 50 years with this cooked up nonsense. They have acheived what they wanted by changing the Indian mind for 50 years...

Yes, it is indeed important to identify clearly the "collaborators" who help to perpetuate this nonsense. At the same time, I believe there may be only a few truly "die-hard/dead-ender" types in the AIT/AMT crowd who will not change their views till they die. The rest need to be given an open "escape route" to rehabilitate themselves in a new and more correct/honest scheme of thinking.

KL

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 16 Sep 2012 23:39

brihaspati wrote:KL ji,
I meant it was problematic to explain based on the so-called "universal/non-universal" sound change laws. I have grave doubts about both Italic and Greek as claimed by the AITians.

Thanks for the clarification.

KL

Virendra · Post by **Virendra** » 16 Sep 2012 23:49

dharmaraj wrote:
vic wrote:If Dravidians were "forced" into south by Aryans then their old texts would have contained reference to it.
vic ji, AIT Nazi's have "found evidence" in none other than Agastya muni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agastya#Co ... Traditions
Contrast between Northern and Southern Traditions

The Comparision between the Two Traditions

The Comparison between the Two Traditions shows that the Northern Tradition is basically a historical,and is nothing more than a collection of incredible fables and myths dimly remembered from a very remote past with which those who recorded the tradition had lost living contact.On the contrary the Souther tradition rings much truer and appears to be a down to earth account of a historical event,namely the mass migration to the South of the Velir who are identified as part of living tradition at the time of the cankam polity described in the earliest Tamil works.[9]

The fact of Agastya's leadership of Velir clan

The fact of Agastya's leadership of Velir clan rules out the possibility that he was even in origin an Indo-Aryan speaker. The Velir-Velar-Velalar groups constituted the ruling and the land-owning classes in the Tamil country since the beginning of recorded history and betray no trace whatever of an indo-Aryan linguistic ancestry. The Tamil Society had of cource under the religious and cultural influences of the North even before the beginning of the Cankam Age but had maintained its linguistic identity.From what we now know of the linguistic prehistory of India,it is more plausible to assume that the Yadavas were the Aryanised descendants of an original Non-Aryan people that to consider the Tamil Velir as the later offshoot of the indo-Aryan speaking Yadavas.The Agastya legend itself can be re-interpreted as Non-Aryan and Dravidian even in origin and pertaining to the Pre-Vedic Proto-historical period in the North.[9]
We need to dismantle such "research"

If they recognize Agastya and his travel south, then they have to agree that Indians were producing electricity as early as at least 1500 BC.

Sutra from Agastya Samhita :-

संस्थाप्य मृण्मये पात्रे ताम्रपत्रं सुसंस्कृतम्‌।
छादयेच्छिखिग्रीवेन चार्दाभि: काष्ठापांसुभि:॥
दस्तालोष्टो निधात्वय: पारदाच्छादितस्तत:।
संयोगाज्जायते तेजो मित्रावरुणसंज्ञितम्‌॥

अर्थात् एक मिट्टी का बर्तन लें, उसमें अच्छी प्रकार से साफ किया गया ताम्रपत्र और शिखिग्रीवा (मोर के गर्दन जैसा पदार्थ अर्थात् कॉपरसल्फेट) डालें। फिर उस बर्तन को लकड़ी के गीले बुरादे से भर दें। उसके बाद लकड़ी के गीले बुरादे के ऊपर पारा से आच्छादित दस्त लोष्ट (mercury-amalgamated zinc sheet) रखे। इस प्रकार दोनों के संयोग से अर्थात् तारों के द्वारा जोड़ने पर मित्रावरुणशक्ति की उत्पत्ति होगी।
यहाँ पर उल्लेखनीय है कि यह प्रयोग करके भी देखा गया है जिसके परिणामस्वरूप 1.138 वोल्ट तथा 23 mA धारा वाली विद्युत उत्पन्न हुई। स्वदेशी विज्ञान संशोधन संस्था (नागपुर) के द्वारा उसके चौथे वार्षिक सभा में ७ अगस्त, १९९० को इस प्रयोग का प्रदर्शन भी विद्वानों तथा सर्वसाधारण के समक्ष किया गया।

http://cpdarshi.wordpress.com/2012/04/2 ... a-sanhita/

Kaushal · Post by **Kaushal** » 17 Sep 2012 01:06

RajeshA wrote:Kaushal ji,

I have sent you email.

RAJESH I DID NOT RECEIVE YOUR EMAIL

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 02:00

Books for the Library

Publication Date: June 15, 2003
Author: Mahesh Kumar Sharan
Studies In Sanskrit Inscriptions Of Ancient Cambodia [Amazon]

The book seems to be out of print. However on Google Books one can read many parts of it, and it seems to be a great book about the early Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South East Asia.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 17 Sep 2012 02:04

KLP Dubey wrote:
Yes, it is indeed important to identify clearly the "collaborators" who help to perpetuate this nonsense. At the same time, I believe there may be only a few truly "die-hard/dead-ender" types in the AIT/AMT crowd who will not change their views till they die. The rest need to be given an open "escape route" to rehabilitate themselves in a new and more correct/honest scheme of thinking.

KL

I agree with your proposal. We need a safe haven for many 'secular' scholars and accomodate them within the Bharatiya system

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 02:06

Kaushal ji,

I had sent it to *******44@googlva! But it may not be that relevant anymore!

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 05:23

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote: What frustrates me is that we Indians have no consistency in our story on the topic of dating Mahabharat war. For instance a while ago I read a paper by Achar, Narhari a physics PhD and professor at Memphis, Tennessee on the dating of Mahabharat.

He made a solid case for Mahabharat war taking place in ~3000 BC.

Before we make our research public should'nt we atleast mention what is wrong with the current / existing research?
Peter ji,
The fact that there are multiple proposals for dating of Mahabharata War (or other such historical instance) should excite you, not frustrate you.

I am not sure it excites me. It makes us look a bit immature because:
a) the impression it generates is that we cannot read and interpret Sanskrit verses correctly
b) we cannot use the software consistently to arrive at the same date for the war
After all if astronomy mentioned in Mahabharata war is going to be the litmus test than any one should be able to use the methodology and arrive at the same date.

Nilesh Oak wrote: You read Achar's paper and think he made a 'solid' case for MBH War taking place in 3067 BC (no need for ~3000 BC). Have he made a convincing case, as far as you are concerned?

Yes and I have highlighted the reason below. Achar writes:

(i) the astronomical references in the Bhi_shmaparvan are not merely ‘astrological effusions fit for mother goose’s tales’ (as once characterized by Professor Sen Gupta), but follow a Vedic tradition of omens and describe mostly comets and not planets as generally assumed,

(ii) the few true planetary references in this parvan are identical to those in Udyogaparvan,

(iii) These common references lead to a unique date for the war, 3067 BCE.

(iv) all other astronomical references in the epic are consistent with the date

(v) The date agrees with the date given earlier by Professor Raghavan and is consistent with the traditional date~3000 BCE.

(vi) Using the planetarium software, it can be easily demonstrated that all other dates proposed by different authors are inconsistent with the planetary configurations referred to in (ii) above.

Thus when a professor of Physics says that *all* references to the heavenly bodies in Mahabharat give the same date, I as a lay man, am happy to accept this date.

Nilesh Oak wrote: If he has, I may ask you to few questions.. because I read the same paper and only observation that he could convince me out of 200+ astronomy observation from MBH text, for his year of 3067 BC (originally proposed by S Raghavan as far back as 1969 AD), is that of 'Saturn afflicting Rohini'. All other observations contradict his date.

Great. Here is the link to his paper and it would be truely awesome that you contradict each and every finding of his:
https://sites.google.com/site/sarasvati ... uly2006%29

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 05:26

Acharya wrote:
KLP Dubey wrote:
Yes, it is indeed important to identify clearly the "collaborators" who help to perpetuate this nonsense. At the same time, I believe there may be only a few truly "die-hard/dead-ender" types in the AIT/AMT crowd who will not change their views till they die. The rest need to be given an open "escape route" to rehabilitate themselves in a new and more correct/honest scheme of thinking.

KL
I agree with your proposal. We need a safe haven for many 'secular' scholars and accomodate them within the Bharatiya system

But how does one make some one believe that they are the children of the brown man?

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 05:31

shiv wrote: People. Dijda know that there is no Sanskrit cognate for steppe? The morons remembered horse, wheel, burials, but not steppe. How about that? Odd innit?

Very interesting! Let me put my AIT hat on and ask do words never fall off from a language? The AIT premise is that *all aryans* came thundering into India on their horse driven chariots from the steppe. If they did not find any steppe in India what would have they used the "steppe" word for? Would it have been forgotten in a few generations?

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 17 Sep 2012 05:55

I was watching the mocumentary about lost civilizations and they mention Mt Ararat in Anatolia where Mythical Noah's Mythical Ark came to stop on top of this mountain. Are PIE Guys trying to prove this Biblical myth of Noah and making the are as homeland of their dream civilization of Arya people speaking Sanskrit or Nani Sanskrit? This hypotheis also gels with Noah's Puttars Shaam, Dhaam and Jashpal.
Why the need to "Mount" Mythical Ashwa to conquer Indians with AIT and PIE Fatwa?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 06:04

peter wrote:
shiv wrote: People. Dijda know that there is no Sanskrit cognate for steppe? The morons remembered horse, wheel, burials, but not steppe. How about that? Odd innit?
Very interesting! Let me put my AIT hat on and ask do words never fall off from a language? The AIT premise is that *all aryans* came thundering into India on their horse driven chariots from the steppe. If they did not find any steppe in India what would have they used the "steppe" word for? Would it have been forgotten in a few generations?

They did not find horse either and should have forgotten. The AIT stories suggest that horses and chariots and burial of chariots and rivers of central Asia were all remembered and sung about in the Rig Veda. Only the word for steppe was forgotten.

Selective use of data and equally selective rejection and explaining away of inconvenient data points is what makes it easy to be critical of the methods used by philologists to write history. This is not even a pale shadow of the rigor that is required in science. What makes it even more interesting is that the culture that has been built up around this kind of bluffing includes character assassination, ad hominem and the use of smart semantics and rhetoric to push untenable hypotheses. The latter evokes mixed emotions in me. On the one hand I am horrified that all the attitudes and tactics of the Catholic church in the middle ages had died out at least in western universities. I find them all alive an healthy among people who write history using linguistics. On the other hand I feel amusement because it is difficult to break into an elite circle like physicists who are accustomed to talking pure science. In the case of linguistics, shelter is taken behind a thin veneer of phonological jargon. Lift that veil and you get exposed to the crass and underinformed buffoonery that passes for academia.There is actually a lot of work that needs to be done, and much needs to be done and re validated.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 06:19

peter wrote:
What frustrates me is that we Indians have no consistency in our story on the topic of dating Mahabharat war. For instance a while ago I read a paper by Achar, Narhari a physics PhD and professor at Memphis, Tennessee on the dating of Mahabharat.

He made a solid case for Mahabharat war taking place in ~3000 BC.

Before we make our research public should'nt we atleast mention what is wrong with the current / existing research?

Peter ji,

Before I jump into analyzing Achar's work with you, assuming you are interested, let me undertand your statement above.

Are you referring to 'we'--Indian in general, when you write.. 'before we make our research public', or referring specifically to Achar for not mentioning what is wrong with the current, existing research?

I am not sure it excites me. It makes us look a bit immature because:
a) the impression it generates is that we cannot read and interpret Sanskrit verses correctly
b) we cannot use the software consistently to arrive at the same date for the war
After all if astronomy mentioned in Mahabharata war is going to be the litmus test than any one should be able to use the methodology and arrive at the same date.

It should excite you because differences in proposal for timing of MBH War is reflection of the challenge one has in determing the timing of MBH War. To give you an anology, astronomy data was available for generations for at least 2000+ years in Europe but it took 1500 years before Copernicus proposed Heliocentric model, or Kepler propsoed ellpitical orbits for planets. It took adddition many years before Newton proposed common theme and then addtional 200+ years before Einstein came up with relativity.

Take Evolution or geology or Quantum mechancis, there is no dearth of data and there is no dearth of theories. Would you call it all immature that they still could not figure out what's behind QM experiments?

Yes and I have highlighted the reason below. Achar writes:

Since you are convinced of Achar's proposal, I may begin with.

Why did Achar ignored astronomy observation of Arundhati? (Bhishma Parva 2:31-32)

(i) the astronomical references in the Bhi_shmaparvan are not merely ‘astrological effusions fit for mother goose’s tales’ (as once characterized by Professor Sen Gupta), but follow a Vedic tradition of omens and describe mostly comets and not planets as generally assumed,

What Achar is claiming here is indeed Mother goose's tale. But you don't have to believe me yet. It will be while before we would able to discuss this.

(ii) the few true planetary references in this parvan are identical to those in Udyogaparvan,

Wrong. Udyogparva refers to Saturn afflicting Rohini, Mars going vakri near Jyeshtha/Anuradha and afflicting Chitra.

Bhishma Parva refers to Saturn afflicting Rohini but also 'Bhaga' Nakshtra. Saturn and Jupiter together near Vishakha for up to a year, Jupiter going vakri near Shravana, Mars going vakri near Magha. Venus making round near Purva Bhadrapada, Mars becoming steady between Chitra/Swati while shining brightly. Sun and Moon together afflciting Rohini, Arundhati walking ahead of Vasistha.. on and on.

While Saturn afflicting Rohini is common to Udyoga and Bhishma 2:32 (and Rahu approaching Sun and mark on moon surface becoming indistinct). These 3 are common to both. Great. what about numerous planetary observations above (and this is only partial list) from Bhishma Parva that Achar has conveniently ignored?

(iii) These common references lead to a unique date for the war, 3067 BCE.

If Saturn afflicting Rohini is the common reference that is leading to date for the war of 3067 BC, then one can claim MBH war to have happened in 2001 AD, 1971 AD and going backward any year separated by 29.5 years (average orbital period of Saturn)!

(iv) all other astronomical references in the epic are consistent with the date

This is another mother's goose tale. Anyway, instead of quoting references that Achar avoid referrignt to in his paper.. let me quote what he does refer to, in fact he considers it critical for determinging MBH War., i.e. Bhishma lying on the bed of arrows for 58 nights. Later on I will show that this reference does not hold water either.. but for now.. I want to show that according to Achar since 22 Nov 3067 BC if first day of War and Bhishma fell on 10th day -i.e. 1 Dec 3067 BC, and since Achar claims that Bhishma Nirvana occurred on 17 Jan 3067 BC , this amounts to 47 days (and not 58 days)

Quoting another of his critical reference i.e. Balarama Tirthyatra....Balarama arrives at Kurukshetra, according to Achar on 12 Dec 3067 BC 3 days after the war is over, since he also admits that war is over on 9 Dec 3067 BC.

This is just scratching the surface! But it will do for now.

(

v) The date agrees with the date given earlier by Professor Raghavan and is consistent with the traditional date~3000 BCE.

Did Achar independantly arrived at this date or was he simply testing/verifying/corroborating date proposed by Raghavan? If former, how did he manage to arrive (jump) at 3067 BC? If latter, why did he not discuss Raghavan interpretations of astronomy observations, which are different that Achar + but also the fact Raghavan has discussed many more astronomy observations?

I have read his papers and I also sent a copy of my book. It is been more than year. I have not heard a word from him. Any guesses for his lack of response? Anyone?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 17 Sep 2012 06:32

Nilesh ji,
I have verified your elimination of "errors". A bow. Excellent. Do take my speculations based on climatologic considerations - as speculations, because climate data is probably much less explicit in MBH, but I am not sure. But I am really heartened at finding evidence for one of my suspected date ranges around 5700 BCE [probably decadal fluctuations went on for another +/- 100-150 years]. The local studies of sea-level fluctuations are more relevant - as the whole area was seismically active and remains so. But I have felt that clues abound that place many parts of MBH to be before but connected to "civilizations" starting off in Sumer and Egypt and inked to Dwarka/Yadu.

I will look into the local level data that I think I have in my repositories to check if I can match with your date for MBH.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 07:22

brihaspati wrote:Nilesh ji,
I have verified your elimination of "errors". A bow. Excellent. Do take my speculations based on climatologic considerations - as speculations, because climate data is probably much less explicit in MBH, but I am not sure. But I am really heartened at finding evidence for one of my suspected date ranges around 5700 BCE [probably decadal fluctuations went on for another +/- 100-150 years]. The local studies of sea-level fluctuations are more relevant - as the whole area was seismically active and remains so. But I have felt that clues abound that place many parts of MBH to be before but connected to "civilizations" starting off in Sumer and Egypt and inked to Dwarka/Yadu.

I will look into the local level data that I think I have in my repositories to check if I can match with your date for MBH.

B ji,
Thank you.
In reference to your comment, elswehere, --Krishna rehabilitating land to build Dwarka.. just as a speculation, look at the 'sea level plot' I posted in this thread few days ago (page 122). It seems earlier flood (significant sea level rise) had occured arond 7000 BC and then water level receded by 6000 BC. This may loosely, and only loosely corroborate Krishna's reclamation efforts in building Dwarka (possibly on the land that had become newly available).
As you said, if this area is/was seismically active, then all of this is directly right, but still speculative.
BTW, Kushasthalli was the older name of this area (Dwarka) and establishment of Kushasthalli goes back to few thousand years before MBH/Dwarka.
I am confident in not distant future, we will able to put together number of this broken pieces of puzzle.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 09:17

A_Gupta wrote: Instead of constructing a theory, can we gather all the pre-theoretical facts that have to be explained?
What I mean is, the observation that Latin pater and Sanskrit pitra are related is pre-theoretical.
Conceiving of a possible ancestor language (say PIE) and searching for its geographical origin is theoretical.

There certainly are going to be pre-theoretical facts that are dependent on an interpretation (e.g., sindhu is a proper noun in the Rgveda and not a generic river is a matter of interpretation), but whenever we have those we can make a note of that. There will be some that are difficult (e.g., an Indian writer who believes Parsu-rama means the Rama of Persia.)

The current landscape is so littered with migrating Aryans, Dravidians, Mundas, para-Mundas, etc., etc., that it is impossible to disentangle what is pre-theoretical fact, and what is derived from a theory.

If we had such an encyclopedia, then given any theory, we can evaluate it as follows:
1. These pre-theoretical facts are explained without force-fitting.
2. These pre-theoretical facts require force-fitting or additional conjectures.
3. These facts with such&such interpretations fit the theory.
4. These facts with such&such interpretations are discarded by the theory as wrong interpretations.
and so on.

Right now to do this means chasing down citation after citation going back to the 18th century.

A wiki structure might be the way to go.

Good idea. About the Wiki format -I like it but I am a failure at implementing that format in one instance in which I was offered the possibility for some material of mine on the web.

I am still collecting info and I have started uploading stuff to Google drive which I believe can be shared.

For starters here are 3 brilliant documents sent to me by a BRF lurker who is heavy on science and zero on rhetoric and inane word games.

AIT killer -Twasta
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3JNY4 ... 0Q0cy1OVDg

AIT killer - CurrentSci
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3JNY4 ... HcxTEVqbWs

Indus Script
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3JNY4 ... 1hzbHlnVjA

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 09:39

The image below from Google earth shows how shallow the water is off the coast of Gujarat. The line marks the point up to which the depth of water is less than 10 meters. This line extends out tens of kilometers. In fact areas of Kutch are low lying swamp land. The River Saraswati, draining into this region could well have appeared as a river draining into a vast shallow lake - a meter or less in depth extending for several km. depending on average ocean water levels.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 17 Sep 2012 10:29

might have escaped my attention, but I did not notice much of the material posted covering the sanscript script (be it Devenagari or Brahmi or the one prior to that).
Given that current Devanagari script is much modern relative to antiquity we are talking about, it will be nice to also cover that aspect and see whether the AIT hara-kiri extended to that also. If folks have information, books, and links available, please post also.

It is obvious that if there is a large scale emigration/export of people, knowledge, culture etc then script may not have been immune to it.

Looks like the current oldest dates for Brahmi script per this link is 5th century BCE.

The Brahmi script was the ancestor of all South Asian Writing Systems. In addition, many East and Southeast Asian scripts, such as Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, and even Japanese to a very small extent (vowel order), were also ultimately derived from the Brahmi script.

If the influence extended eastwards along with other aspects, it might certainly have moved westwards too.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 17 Sep 2012 10:52

Beyond Brahmi, Indus text shaped modern scripts: study - recent news item published on Aug31, 2012

The text used in the Indus Valley may have shaped the southern and northern Indian languages, new studies suggest. An analysis has traced the origins of the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Prakrit and Devanagari scripts back to the Indus Civilisation and its writing, giving a new dimension to the conventional belief that Indian scripts owe their origin to the Brahmi script.

Two papers on the findings have been published in the July and August editions of Current Science. They were authored by scientific officers from the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Tamil Nadu.

“So far, it was believed all modern Indian scripts owe their origin to Brahmi script. Our findings add a new dimension and push back the evolution of both the Dravidian (southern India) and Aryan (north Indian) family of language scripts to the Indus Valley Civilisation and beyond. The presence of Brahmi- and Kharosthi-like scripts is also traced to the Indus script,” said S Srinivasan, principal author for both papers. The other authors are J V M Joseph and P H Harikumar (retired).

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 17 Sep 2012 11:25

Second image on this link is interesting as it compares Brahmi with Phonecian, Archaic Greek and Archaic Roman scripts. Also an interesting comment in that image that gives reference to the book/author.

I see lot of similarities in the symbols used although for not exactly same sounds.

The Brāhmī alphabet - Origins and evolution Authored by Kaushal ji

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 12:24

peter wrote:Thus when a professor of Physics says that *all* references to the heavenly bodies in Mahabharat give the same date, I as a lay man, am happy to accept this date.

Sorry, but that is something one doesn't do! This lay man argument is really a cop out!

There will be many models proposed. The public would have to make an assessment on who has been more scientifically rigorous!

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 13:47

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote: I am not sure it excites me. It makes us look a bit immature because:
a) the impression it generates is that we cannot read and interpret Sanskrit verses correctly
b) we cannot use the software consistently to arrive at the same date for the war
After all if astronomy mentioned in Mahabharata war is going to be the litmus test than any one should be able to use the methodology and arrive at the same date.
It should excite you because differences in proposal for timing of MBH War is reflection of the challenge one has in determing the timing of MBH War. To give you an anology, astronomy data was available for generations for at least 2000+ years in Europe but it took 1500 years before Copernicus proposed Heliocentric model, or Kepler propsoed ellpitical orbits for planets. It took adddition many years before Newton proposed common theme and then addtional 200+ years before Einstein came up with relativity.

Take Evolution or geology or Quantum mechancis, there is no dearth of data and there is no dearth of theories. Would you call it all immature that they still could not figure out what's behind QM experiments?

No dear. Apples and oranges. Having multiple theories about future unknown is fine and healthy. But having a million theories about what has already happened and is written clearly in a book is not kosher.

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote: Yes and I have highlighted the reason below. Achar writes:
Since you are convinced of Achar's proposal, I may begin with.

Why did Achar ignored astronomy observation of Arundhati? (Bhishma Parva 2:31-32)

I think Arundhati and Mizhar are not going to yield much for Mbh timing. Latest research shows that they are a binary star and orbit around a common centre of mass. Who is ahead when is not going to yield much. Play this video: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artis ... y_star.ogv and read this write up about the Alcor and Mizar: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3515

The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars—a pair of stars that orbit each other—ever known.

Rest of the post I will reply in a separate write up.

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 13:53

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote: (iv) all other astronomical references in the epic are consistent with the date
This is another mother's goose tale. Anyway, instead of quoting references that Achar avoid referrignt to in his paper.. let me quote what he does refer to, in fact he considers it critical for determinging MBH War., i.e. Bhishma lying on the bed of arrows for 58 nights. Later on I will show that this reference does not hold water either.. but for now.. I want to show that according to Achar since 22 Nov 3067 BC if first day of War and Bhishma fell on 10th day -i.e. 1 Dec 3067 BC, and since Achar claims that Bhishma Nirvana occurred on 17 Jan 3067 BC , this amounts to 47 days (and not 58 days)

Raghavan and Achar concur and I quote Raghavan:

Bheeshma died at Midday on Magha Sukla Ashtami,
Rohini Nakshatra. Reckoning from Jyeshta Amavasya, the
number of days = 29.53x3+ 8 = 97. The number of days
from Jyeshta Amavasya to the beginning of the M.B. War
= 29.53+10 = 40 days. Therefore the number of days from
the beginning of MB. War to Bheeshma's death both days
inclusive = 58 days. This is referred to in the Santi Parva
ch. 46 and the Anusasani Parva chap. 272.273 and 274,
where in it is stated that "Bheeshma, who was in the bed of
arrows, said, *I have not slept for 58 days'." [as translated
by Sriman Vidwan Melma Narasimha Thathacharya
swamigal avl.] from the day he was made the General of the
Kaurava Army.

Besides let us not forget that Bhishma Ashtami is when the demise of Bhisma is celebrated.

peter · Post by **peter** » 17 Sep 2012 14:25

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote: (i) the astronomical references in the Bhi_shmaparvan are not merely ‘astrological effusions fit for mother goose’s tales’ (as once characterized by Professor Sen Gupta), but follow a Vedic tradition of omens and describe mostly comets and not planets as generally assumed,
What Achar is claiming here is indeed Mother goose's tale. But you don't have to believe me yet. It will be while before we would able to discuss this.

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote:(ii) the few true planetary references in this parvan are identical to those in Udyogaparvan,
Wrong. Udyogparva refers to Saturn afflicting Rohini, Mars going vakri near Jyeshtha/Anuradha and afflicting Chitra.

Bhishma Parva refers to Saturn afflicting Rohini but also 'Bhaga' Nakshtra. Saturn and Jupiter together near Vishakha for up to a year, Jupiter going vakri near Shravana, Mars going vakri near Magha. Venus making round near Purva Bhadrapada, Mars becoming steady between Chitra/Swati while shining brightly. Sun and Moon together afflciting Rohini, Arundhati walking ahead of Vasistha.. on and on.

While Saturn afflicting Rohini is common to Udyoga and Bhishma 2:32 (and Rahu approaching Sun and mark on moon surface becoming indistinct). These 3 are common to both. Great. what about numerous planetary observations above (and this is only partial list) from Bhishma Parva that Achar has conveniently ignored?

Nilesh Oak wrote:
peter wrote:(iii) These common references lead to a unique date for the war, 3067 BCE.
If Saturn afflicting Rohini is the common reference that is leading to date for the war of 3067 BC, then one can claim MBH war to have happened in 2001 AD, 1971 AD and going backward any year separated by 29.5 years (average orbital period of Saturn)!

I am sorry I disagree:
Here are verses from Mbh used by Achar, N to date the war using planetarium software:

Correlation of verses with planetarium software

I don't know about you but to me it seems like a perfect match of dates and time. Since you have access to planetarium like software why don't you see if Achar is right for at least these days and shlokas that he has quoted? This will be a good starting point for the debate.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 14:49

Books for the Library

Publication Date: December 1, 2005
Author: Amalendu Banerjee
A New Theory on the Origin and Evolution of Brāhmī Alphabet [Amazon]

Description
Inscriptions have been discovered from Indus culture areas, belonging to the intervening centuries between the eclipse of this culture and the appearance of Asokan edicts. The author analyses them and shows a distinct continuity of evolution of the characters from Indus to Brahmi script in the lapse of 2000 BC to 500 BC.
Phonetics of Brahmi characters have been successfully used by Professor B.B. Chakravorty as bridges to decipher Indus legends.
Similarly, Dr. S.R. Rao has used the phonetics of a majority of Semitic characters similar in shape to the Indus pictograms and obtained the picture of a relevant logical pre-Vedic language on decipherment.
The author has established that all Brahmi characters excepting three or four can be created by applying the principle of acrophony to the ancient Indo-Aryan language. The remaining letters were either created from Austric words or from other foreign languages, when trade contacts grew intensively around fourth-fifth century BC. Therefore, he concludes the source of both Brahmi and Semitic alphabets are the Indus characters themselves.

member_20317 · Post by **member_20317** » 17 Sep 2012 15:06

Peter ji,

I am sorry to butt in. Since you have started a discussion with Nilesh ji and it seems rather important I would suggest that you continue with it and merely let me have my say on the matter of Vashistha-Arundhati combine. You can reply as and when you feel you have time to do that.

Peter ji, one of the link you provided merely gives a generic artists impression of a binary. Another one gives the picture of Alcor B in relation to Alcor. I have tried to locate information on Vashistha-Arundhati on the net but there is not much. I wanted to attack Nilesh ji’s inference and for the most part I do not have much against it. If the verse in MBH is to be understood as Nilesh ji suggests then there is not much that can go against it.

HOWEVER, there is 2 things that I am looking for specifically. That is the orbital duration for the Vashistha-Arundhati combine. And another is the angle at which these move w.r.t. our line of sight. I am rather hopeful that a group of stars that is Maharishi Vashistha (Mizar) and a group of stars that is Arundhati (Alcor), actually will have a very very long duration of orbit and as such it should appear the way it is needed for Nilesh ji’s conclusions. In fact the second link provided by you actually states that Alcor is towards the outer edge of the orbital system that Mizar carries – “Alcor has been sometimes considered a 5th member of the system, orbiting far away from the Mizar quadruplet”. Prima facie, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri share some similarity in that Vashishta-Arundhati are a confirmed Star Cluster while Alpha-Proxima are suspected to be, and look at the mind bogling orbital durations mentioned in the wiki quote below. If this is any indication to go by, then I don’t think I would require the orbital plane input.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri

The much fainter red dwarf star named Proxima Centauri, or simply Proxima, is about 15,000 A.U. away from Alpha Centauri AB.[19][27][32] This is equivalent to 0.24 light years or 2.2 trillion kilometres—about 5% the distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri AB. Proxima may be gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri AB, orbiting it with a period between 100,000 and 500,000 years.[27] However, it is also possible that Proxima is not gravitationally bound and thus is moving along a hyperbolic trajectory[46] around Alpha Centauri AB.[19] The main evidence for a bound orbit is that Proxima's association with Alpha Centauri AB is unlikely to be accidental, since they share approximately the same motion through space.[27] Theoretically, Proxima could leave the system after several million years.[47] It is not yet certain whether Proxima and Alpha are truly gravitationally bound.[48]

Proxima is an M5.5 V spectral class red dwarf with an absolute magnitude of +15.53, which is only a small fraction of the Sun's luminosity. By mass, Proxima is presently calculated as 0.123 ± 0.06 M☉ (rounded to 0.12 M☉) or about one-eighth that of the Sun.[49]

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 16:16

Satya_anveshi wrote:Beyond Brahmi, Indus text shaped modern scripts: study - recent news item published on Aug31, 2012
The text used in the Indus Valley may have shaped the southern and northern Indian languages, new studies suggest. An analysis has traced the origins of the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Prakrit and Devanagari scripts back to the Indus Civilisation and its writing, giving a new dimension to the conventional belief that Indian scripts owe their origin to the Brahmi script.

Two papers on the findings have been published in the July and August editions of Current Science. They were authored by scientific officers from the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Tamil Nadu.

“So far, it was believed all modern Indian scripts owe their origin to Brahmi script. Our findings add a new dimension and push back the evolution of both the Dravidian (southern India) and Aryan (north Indian) family of language scripts to the Indus Valley Civilisation and beyond. The presence of Brahmi- and Kharosthi-like scripts is also traced to the Indus script,” said S Srinivasan, principal author for both papers. The other authors are J V M Joseph and P H Harikumar (retired).

[/quote

The original paper is here saar, recd by me today frpm a BRFite
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... edit?pli=1

More on the subject on figure 13 here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3JNY4I ... edit?pli=1

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 17:09

Online Books: Rajtarangini of Kalhana

Rajtarangini of Kalhana can also important for dating, especially as suggested by Pandit Kota Venkatachelam for correcting the "sheet anchor for Indian history"!

Language requirements: Sanskrit, French

Publication Date: 1840
Presenter: M.A. Troyer
Râdjataranginî - Histoire des Rois du Kachmîr Volume I

Râdjataranginî - Histoire des Rois du Kachmîr Volume II

Râdjataranginî - Histoire des Rois du Kachmîr Volume III

________

Translations

Publication Date: 1879
Translator: Jogesh Chandra Dutt
Kings of Kashmira being a Translation of the Sanskrita Work Rajataranggini of Kahlana Pandita Volumes I and II [Elibron Classics]

Publication Date: 1900
Translator: Marc Aurel Stein
Kalhana's Rajatarangini. A Chronicle of the Kings of Kasmir. Volume 1. Introduction. [Google] [Amazon]
Translated, with an Introduction, Commentary, and Appendices. Books I - VII

Kalhana's Rajatarangini. A Chronicle of the Kings of Kasmir. Volume 2 [Amazon]
Translated, with an Introduction, Commentary, and Appendices, Book VIII. Notes. Geographical Memoir. Index. Maps

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 Sep 2012 17:18

Sir Marc Aurel Stein

During his visits to Kashmir time and again between 1888 to 1905 Aurel Stein obtained mostly through purchase more than 350 Sanskrit manuscripts at Srinagar. These purchases were mainly made by him through his contacts with the local Pandits. The Pandits, through whom Stein purchased the original manuscripts or got their copies prepared, chiefly were Devakak, Sahajabhatta, Daya Ram Jyotshi, Rajya Kaul, Prasada, Vishnu Bhat, Mukand Ram, Sunakak Razdan, Damodar, Govind Kaul, Vishnu Joo, Gopal Kokiloo, Narayan Bhat, Deva Bhat, Sarvanand Kaul, Kashi Ram, Shivdatt, Kantha Bhat, Tota Kak, Vasudev, Madhav Hundoo and Mahanand Joo.

Most of these texts were needed by Stein for his work which he devoted between 1888 to 1899 to the edition and translation Rajatarangini and there after he still acquired numerous manuscripts to assist the work of many fellow European scholars. Some manuscripts from this collection were given by Stein to his teachers Georg Buhler and Rudolph Von Roth for the libraries of the universities of Tubingen and Vienna. A small portion was also made over to National Institute of Bibliotheca, Paris.

In 1911, Aurel Stein handed over the entire collection of these manuscripts to Indian Institute, Oxford under certain conditions. These were :

The manuscripts would be kept separately in the library as Stein’s personal property during his life time and there after become assets of the Indian Institute Library in accordance to his will.

All the manuscripts of this collection would be made available to Stein wherever and whenever he required any of them and the library would make all the arrangements and incur all expenditures in this regard.

As per Stein’s instruction no manuscript was to be allowed to go outside the library and also no one could use their text for any research publication except with his written permission.

A catalogue of these manuscripts was desired to be prepared by the library in consultation with Aurel Stein with in 3 years of their deposit in the institute.

In accordance to Stein's instruction the catalogue was prepared within one year in 1912 by Gerard Clauson of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which was actually based on the one prepared by Pandit Govind Kaul in slips written in Sanskrit. This proto Sanskrit catalogue was revised and copied with reference to the original manuscripts in the winter of 1905- 1906 by Pandit Sahajabhatta.

Ever since the manuscripts, now lying in the Bodleian Library, have remained away from the public eye and are considered as the biggest and richest collection of Kashmir Sanskrit works in the world out side Kashmir.

Lots of theft going on here!