The missing centuries mentioned by Vedveer Arya have been bothering me. Now, I don't think world history is missing that many centuries, it is the cross-linkage of Indian history and rest-of-the-world history that is missing it. In this regard the recent carbon dating of the Bakhshali manuscript is of interest, in my very inexpert opinion. Original post with links on my blog, quoting without links here:
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... arger.htmlThe Bakhshali manuscript is now the oldest extant manuscript on Indian mathematics -- it has recently been carbon-dated by the University of Oxford to date to 200-400 AD. That date is much older than previously thought, at least by five centuries, if not more. This now supposedly pushes back the earliest recorded date for the use of zero in a place-value system.
Perhaps however, there is a larger point that is being missed. E.g., as per Wiki, the Bakhshali manuscript "is written in an earlier form of Śāradā script, which was mainly in use from the 8th to the 12th century, in the northwestern part of India, such as Kashmir and neighbouring regions."
To me it seems that now the inferred dates of everything written in the Śāradā script may need to be reexamined. (e.g., Wiki again: "The Śāradā or Sarada or Sharada script is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts, developed around the 8th century.") Even with the caveat that Wiki isn't the most reliable source of information, it seems to me that some non-trivial amount of history may need to be re-written.
Think about it:
1. If Sarada was the only thing dating Indian history, then, see, all of a sudden, around five additional centuries turn up. It may even be as much as the 660 or so years that Vedveer Arya postulates.
2. Why does Vedveer Arya need his 660 years or so? It is required because of the clash between the traditional Indian chronologies and the anchoring of Indian historical dates via Ashoka and Alexander the Great.
3. IMO, Vedveer Arya makes a mistake in e.g., trying to push back Muhammad the Prophet by 660 years, and so on. There is simply too much outside-of-India evidence to do any such thing.
4. IMO, the point is a good one that "Maka" in the Ashokan inscriptions likely refers to a Bactrian land that is mentioned in the Behistun inscription of Darius rather than Magas of Cyreniaca (ruled 276-250 BC) - Cyreniaca is the eastern coastal region of Libya. But why would "Maka" a place-name be mentioned along with people's names in the inscription? I think some further scrutiny here may be helpful.
5. IMO, even Aryan Invasionists like Hermann Jacobi who nevertheless placed the RgVeda to before 2000 BC, or Sten Konow who believed that the Mitani treaty mentions Indian gods, not gods of the postulated earlier period of Aryan (i.e. Indo-Iranian) unity or of an even earlier Indo-European period, need that five hundred-six hundred years, pushing back from the usual 1500 BC of the Aryan Invasion Theory.
I think where I'm getting to is that regardless of whether you are an indigenist or an AITer, there is a suggestion that there are centuries missing in the cross-linkage of Indian historical dates and the rest-of-the-world that can't be dismissed out of hand.