Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[RajeshA]

-----------------
It is OT on this thread, but I may expand on this theme on other thread 'Archeoastronomy and dating of Indian texts ' (GDF) in future.

--------------------

It is fully on topic here on this thread. Only heated controversial debate within the OIT school is to be restricted here. Of course detailed discussion can also be taken to the 'Archeoastronomy and Dating of Indian Texts' Thread.

[RajeshA]

shiv saar,

this is for your references. The same argument made by David Anthony about horse burials is being recycled by Bettany Hughes.

Published on Oct 4, 2010
Unearthed Aryan cities rewrite history: The Australian

The first city, known as Arkaim, was discovered in 1989, soon after the soviet authorities allowed non-military aerial photography for the first time.

The full extent of the remains is only now becoming apparent. Items that have so far been dug up include many pieces of pottery covered in swastikas, which were widely used ancient symbols of the sun and eternal life. The Nazis appropriated the Aryans and the swastika as symbols of their so-called master race. Ms Hughes believes that some of the strongest evidence that the cities could be the home of the Aryans comes from a series of horse burials.

Several ancient Indian texts believed to have been written by Aryans recount similar rituals. "These ancient Indian texts and hymns describe sacrifices of horses and burials and the way the meat is cut off and the way the horse is buried with its master," she said. "If you match this with the way the skeletons and the graves are being dug up in Russia, they are a millimetre-perfect match."

The article is based on the Sunday Times article

Published on Oct 03, 2010
By Jack Grimston
Spiral cities clue to dawn of Europe: The Sunday Times UK

[RajeshA]

Published on Jan 13, 2013
Hindu group in US objects to 'The Story of India': Indian Express

A US-based Hindu advocacy group has taken strong objection to historian Michael Wood's documentary 'The Story of India,' being telecast on public television, describing its presentation of the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) as 'agenda driven.'

Rejecting the theory, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said India has always been the cradle of Hindu civilization and there is no debate about it.

"Michael Wood clearly admires India and its people, and this shows through in his passionate depiction of India," said Sheetal Shah, HAF's Director of Development and Outreach.

"We are not seeking to discredit the 'Story of India' in its entirety, but viewers should be aware that a major error was made in the documentary that fails scrutiny and should be corrected," she said.

The Hindu advocacy group said it has received a deluge of phone calls protesting the presentation of the 'now discredited' theory, currently being shown on television.

The AMT theorises that in 1500 BCE pastoral tribes that came to be known as Aryans, migrated from Central Europe to Northwest India eventually dispersing indigenous people and imposing their own culture.

"This theory, that is not supported by archaeological evidence, was first posited by European Indologists and British colonialists, eventually finding support from a section of India's politically motivated linguists and historians such as Romila Thapar, and famously, controversial Harvard linguist, Michael Witzel," she said.

This theory, the HAF believes, is 'agenda-driven'.

In his documentary, HAF says, Wood holds that the early Hindu practice of worshipping devas, or demigods representing elements, 'somehow implies that these practices were imported from Central Asia.'

While referring 'obliquely' to the Aryan Migration Theory as controversial, HAF said, Wood fails to present contrary evidence that many scientists believe refutes the claim that the progenitors of Hindu civilisation came from west of the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan.

"There is no debate that India was always the cradle of Hindu civilisation, and the Vedas, the Hindu's holiest scriptures, are the recorded history of our ancestors," said Suhag Shukla, HAF's Managing Director.

"We strongly oppose the insulting theory--advanced by agenda-driven activist historians -- that our rishis, the great sages who composed the Vedas, were foreign to India, and Wood does viewers a disservice in not presenting both sides of the coin, in an otherwise admirable work," he said.

The AMT is reviled by many Hindus, he said, due to its implicit proposition that a tribe of 'Aryans' migrated into the Indian subcontinent, subjugated an indigenous people dispersing them to South India and established a caste system where the highest castes are comprised of 'Aryans' in an ethno-religious apartheid system.

This 'explosive theory' that narrates that Aryans were only the first colonizers -- followed by Greeks, Mongols, Turks, Persians -- was used by European historians to justify the last foreign claim on India, the British Raj, he added.

However, he asserted, it is the latest genetic evidence, based on chromosomal and DNA analysis, that scientists believe definitively discredits the AMT.

The Story of India: BBC [Wikipedia]

The BBC TV documentary series of 6 episodes were first broadcasted in Aug-Sep 2007. However only now it seems they are being broadcasted in the USA.

BBC of course representing the Brits, the vanguard of AIT.

[Arjun]

A US-based Hindu advocacy group has taken strong objection to historian Michael Wood's documentary 'The Story of India,' being telecast on public television, describing its presentation of the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) as 'agenda driven.'

Rejecting the theory, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said India has always been the cradle of Hindu civilization and there is no debate about it.

"Michael Wood clearly admires India and its people, and this shows through in his passionate depiction of India," said Sheetal Shah, HAF's Director of Development and Outreach.

"We are not seeking to discredit the 'Story of India' in its entirety, but viewers should be aware that a major error was made in the documentary that fails scrutiny and should be corrected," she said.

The Hindu advocacy group said it has received a deluge of phone calls protesting the presentation of the 'now discredited' theory, currently being shown on television.

The AMT theorises that in 1500 BCE pastoral tribes that came to be known as Aryans, migrated from Central Europe to Northwest India eventually dispersing indigenous people and imposing their own culture.

"This theory, that is not supported by archaeological evidence, was first posited by European Indologists and British colonialists, eventually finding support from a section of India's politically motivated linguists and historians such as Romila Thapar, and famously, controversial Harvard linguist, Michael Witzel," she said.

This theory, the HAF believes, is 'agenda-driven'.

In his documentary, HAF says, Wood holds that the early Hindu practice of worshipping devas, or demigods representing elements, 'somehow implies that these practices were imported from Central Asia.'

While referring 'obliquely' to the Aryan Migration Theory as controversial, HAF said, Wood fails to present contrary evidence that many scientists believe refutes the claim that the progenitors of Hindu civilisation came from west of the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan.

"There is no debate that India was always the cradle of Hindu civilisation, and the Vedas, the Hindu's holiest scriptures, are the recorded history of our ancestors," said Suhag Shukla, HAF's Managing Director.

"We strongly oppose the insulting theory--advanced by agenda-driven activist historians -- that our rishis, the great sages who composed the Vedas, were foreign to India, and Wood does viewers a disservice in not presenting both sides of the coin, in an otherwise admirable work," he said.

The AMT is reviled by many Hindus, he said, due to its implicit proposition that a tribe of 'Aryans' migrated into the Indian subcontinent, subjugated an indigenous people dispersing them to South India and established a caste system where the highest castes are comprised of 'Aryans' in an ethno-religious apartheid system.

This 'explosive theory' that narrates that Aryans were only the first colonizers -- followed by Greeks, Mongols, Turks, Persians -- was used by European historians to justify the last foreign claim on India, the British Raj, he added.

However, he asserted, it is the latest genetic evidence, based on chromosomal and DNA analysis, that scientists believe definitively discredits the AMT.

Excellently drafted ! Shows how well-drafted interventions from advocacy groups can change equations in this cultural battle.

The BJP, RSS and other 'Indic' organizations probably need to learn some PR skills from HAF...

[member_23686]

New theory on African exit

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-theory-african-exit.html

Modern humans left Africa twice as early as previously thought, spreading in a number of climate-driven waves, new research suggests.

The paper, published in Quaternary International, pours fresh doubt on the previously-held consensus that humans spread from Africa in a single cohort.

'The consensus view has been that modern humans left Africa around 60,000 years ago by a coastal route, skirting around some very arid places, and spread to Australia very quickly,' explains Professor Michael Petraglia of the University of Oxford, one of the study's authors.

'We think that's wrong. We think people left Africa multiple times, probably a long time before, and we think it was terrestrial rather than coastal.'

Previous attempts to put a date on the exit of modern humans from Africa have relied heavily on evidence from genetics and archaeology.

Petraglia and his team believe that, by adding evidence on climate and environment into the mix, they will be able to unlock new clues as to both how and why humans spread from the continent.

'We know that the climate has shifted a lot of times. We think that has acted like a pump out of Africa, pushing waves of people into South Asia.'

'When the climate was humid, there would have been rivers and lakes across the Asian continent. We think modern humans would have used those as routes, but what we don't know is what happened to those populations when it became arid again.'

The idea goes against a well-established and widely-held consensus. But Petraglia sees signs that academics across the spectrum are beginning to change their minds.

'There are lots of people buying into this idea in many different fields; in genetics, in archaeology, in environmental fields. We're seeing major cracks in the consensus view,' he says.

The team will now zoom in to examine some important sites in more detail, as they attempt to add flesh to their theory.

Petraglia believes that the research has important implications for understanding our present, as well as our past.

'It's in the public imagination. People are fascinated by our own species and how we populated the Earth,' he says.

'But we're also trying to understand this climate pump - how the climate affects the movement of populations and the speed at which that happens - and that could clearly have important implications for today.'

[shiv]

Several ancient Indian texts believed to have been written by Aryans recount similar rituals. "These ancient Indian texts and hymns describe sacrifices of horses and burials and the way the meat is cut off and the way the horse is buried with its master," she said. "If you match this with the way the skeletons and the graves are being dug up in Russia, they are a millimetre-perfect match."

[/quote]

The "master-reference" here, spreading this bullshit is David Anthony in his book "Horse, Wheel and Language". It is well written bullshit that is now appearing like dung stains all over. I will be refuting this in what I am working on.

[member_23629]

this is for your references. The same argument made by David Anthony about horse burials is being recycled by Bettany Hughes.

These people are experts at quoting each other to prove their case. They never make the mistake of sifting through primary sources -- they just quote previous "indologists" of their own variety, and that's it. This is standard tactic to carry on the charade.

[RajeshA]

Can't read Malayalam but still posting

Published on Jan 15, 2013
By സ്വന്തം ലേഖകന്‍
ഇന്ത്യക്കാര്‍ 4000 വര്‍ഷംമുമ്പ് ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയയില്‍ കുടിയേറി - പഠനം: mathrubhumi.com



ആദിമ ഓസ്‌ട്രേലിയക്കാരില്‍ ഇന്ത്യക്കാരുടെ ജീനുകളും

[Prem]

New theory on African exit

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-theory-african-exit.html

Modern humans left Africa twice as early as previously thought, spreading in a number of climate-driven waves, new research suggests.
Previous attempts to put a date on the exit of modern humans from Africa have relied heavily on evidence from genetics and archaeology.Petraglia and his team believe that, by adding evidence on climate and environment into the mix, they will be able to unlock new clues as to both how and why humans spread from the continent.'We know that the climate has shifted a lot of times. We think that has acted like a pump out of Africa, pushing waves of people into South Asia.''When the climate was humid, there would have been rivers and lakes across the Asian continent. We think modern humans would have used those as routes, but what we don't know is what happened to those populations when it became arid again.'

Lo Kar lo gal" exit made possible by the grace of India.
Even he dont have the courgae to say the truth when he refers to Indian Subcontinet as South Asia.
But, These BCE=BC experts must knwo that had Indian land mass not broken off Africa and not made the bridge for humanity to walk and spread out , all of these Goras and peelas would have been stuck in africa and SDRE like us . India made it possible for seeding these weddings and they still remain our Bacchus in every civilizational, genetic and Pre- historic sense .

[rgsrini]

‘Indian history was distorted by the British’

The Aryan invasion theory was actually part of the British policy of divide and rule, French historian Michel Danino, an expert on ancient Indian history, said on Thursday on the sidelines of the Kolkata Literary Meet. Danino, who authored books such as The Lost River: On The Trail of Saraswati and Indian Culture and India’s Future, blames the British for distorting Indian history and challenged the Arayan invasion theory, while maintaining that there was no actual Aryan-Dravidian divide.

“No ancient or medieval Indian text would support the Aryan invasion theory. It is genetically proven that Aryans and Dravidians belong to the same race, ”said Danino, who settle in India in 1977 and has since acquired Indian citizenship.

Danino said that early Tamil literature displayed a cultural fusion with north Indian literature. Even the name of the city Maduri was influence from the ancient north Indian heritage city, Mathura, Danino claimed.

“Indians are basically a mixed breed and the mixing started as early as the Stone Age. After the Saraswati river dried up, leading to the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization, people started settling on the banks of the Ganges. This phenomenon that occurred around 2000 BC led to massive mixing up of the populace as a while has to shift its base,” Danino explained.

“The Mahabharata defined ethnic groups as jatis, whereas the British brought in the term tribes to describe the same thing, thus denigrating the homogenous culture of India. Jatis were defined on ecological terms. There is a popular perception that casteism started in India since the Vedas but that is not true. There was no casteism even during the Mahabharata period,” he said.

Danino also rued the fact that Indians are apathetic towards the preservation of their rich culture and heritage. “1170 sites of the ancient Harappan civilization have been identified during its mature phase. But till date only around 100 sites have been excavated. There is a fear that 90% of the sites might disappear due to expansion of urban areas or agricultural land being converted to residential high rises,” Danino said.

He went on to give an example of how the archaeological Survey of India (ASI) could recover only eight kilos of Harappan gold when about 80 kilos of the same was unearthed at Mandi in Uttar Pradesh. Villagers pilfered the rest, depriving India of a useful insight into its rich heritage.

“ASI admitted to a Parliament query that 42 protected sites vanished from Delhi alone. No one noticed as land sharks went to grab the sites and construct high-rises on them,” Danino said.Historian Sanjeev Sanyal, speaking on the continuity of Indian history claimed that east European and north Indian people share genetic similarities.

[Agnimitra]

May be OT.

No international laws govern the christening of countries; the label that sticks is determined by the tastes or even the sanity of its rulers. Anti-colonialism, however, is the most common rationale for national renaming.

Filipinos have long bristled at the colonialistic implications of calling their country the Philippines, in honor of Philip II of Spain. During the regime of Ferdinand Marcos, there was a campaign to rename the country "Maharlika", a native word meaning noble and aristocratic.

Plans for the rechristening proceeded apace until an academic pointed out that the word was probably derived from Sanskrit.

Fine, its proponents said, Sanskrit is a non-imperialist language.

Yes, replied the scholar, but "Maharlika" was most likely derived from the words "maha lingam," meaning "great phallus."

That was the end of the campaign.

-- From Time Magazine, 19 June 1989

[Nilesh Oak]

May be OT.

No international laws govern the christening of countries; the label that sticks is determined by the tastes or even the sanity of its rulers. Anti-colonialism, however, is the most common rationale for national renaming.

Filipinos have long bristled at the colonialistic implications of calling their country the Philippines, in honor of Philip II of Spain. During the regime of Ferdinand Marcos, there was a campaign to rename the country "Maharlika", a native word meaning noble and aristocratic.

Plans for the rechristening proceeded apace until an academic pointed out that the word was probably derived from Sanskrit.

Fine, its proponents said, Sanskrit is a non-imperialist language.

Yes, replied the scholar, but "Maharlika" was most likely derived from the words "maha lingam," meaning "great phallus."

That was the end of the campaign.

-- From Time Magazine, 19 June 1989

Great find Carl ji. Maharlika.. was more likely 'Maharloka (7 heavens above...... bhu, bhava, swaha, Maha, Jana, Tapa, Satya). Oh, well.

[JwalaMukhi]

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food ... ingle.html

The term likely derives from kari, the word for sauce in Tamil, a South-Indian language. Perplexed by that region’s wide variety of savory dishes, 17th-century British traders lumped them all under the term curry. A curry, as the Brits defined it, might be a mélange of onion, ginger, turmeric, garlic, pepper, chilies, coriander, cumin, and other spices cooked with shellfish, meat, or vegetables.

Those curries, like the curries we know today, were the byproduct of more than a millennium of trade between the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia, which provided new ingredients to spice up traditional Indian stews.


But the original curry predates Europeans’ presence in India by about 4,000 years. Villagers living at the height of the Indus civilization used three key curry ingredients—ginger, garlic, and turmeric—in their cooking. This proto-curry, in fact, was eaten long before Arab, Chinese, Indian, and European traders plied the oceans in the past thousand years.

You may be wondering how on earth anyone can know what people were cooking 4,500 years ago. While the ancients left behind plenty of broken pots and mud-brick house foundations, they generally didn’t leave us their recipes. And foodstuffs, unlike pots, rapidly decay.

But thanks to technological advances, scientists can identify minute quantities of plant remains left behind by meals cooked thousands of years ago. It is no easy task; researchers must gather crumbling skeletons and find ancient dirty dishes before using powerful laboratory microscopes to pinpoint the ingredients of ancient meals. But the effort is paying off, in the form of evidence that curry may be far, far older than previously thought.
But to a careful researcher, they tell the story of what a cook dropped into the dinner pot 4,500 years ago.

Examining the human teeth and the residue from the cooking pots, Kashyap spotted the telltale signs of turmeric and ginger, two key ingredients, even today, of a typical curry. This marked the first time researchers had found unmistakable traces of the spices in the Indus civilization.

[Arjun]

^Thanks for that link, Jwalamukhi.

They found additional supporting evidence of ginger and turmeric use on ancient cow teeth unearthed in Harappa, one of the largest Indus cities, located in Pakistan west of the border with India. Why would cattle be eating curry-style dishes? Weber notes that in the region today, people often place leftovers outside their homes for wandering cows to munch on. There are numerous ancient Indus images of cattle on terra-cotta seals, suggesting that during Indus times, people may have regarded cows as sacred, as Hindus do today. The Harappan ruins also contain evidence of domesticated chickens, which were likely cooked in those tandoori-style ovens and eaten.

The connection between Harappa and 'holy cows' is very strong anti-AIT evidence...As also the fact that 'Arya' food habits seem to the same as that of Harappa.

[Prem]

The Rendlesham Forest alien message 2/2 .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRczObgoBF0

The UFO was piloted by SDRE Pardaddas.

[Vayutuvan]

Who is the fool who derived mahA lingam from maharlIka? Need to find the byline for that Time story.

[Klaus]

Yes, replied the scholar, but "Maharlika" was most likely derived from the words "maha lingam," meaning "great phallus."

That was the end of the campaign.

Points to vested interests present in anthropology to preserve the status-quo of Euro-Centrism. Such articles also do not help us in marking such individuals out for the future, like the way we can with Doniger, Witzel, Thapar.

I guess the renaming debate can now be raised with the looming spectre of Spain's fall.

Besides, the entire Indonesian archipelago in addition to Taiwan and Melanesia was known to Indians as 'Dvipanatra' since the time of Ramayana.

[Klaus]

New theory on African exit

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-theory-african-exit.html

There is consensus that the sea levels around the Med fluctuated wildly, a series of repetitive events collectively known and described as the Messinian salinity crisis. What is not being talked about and discussed is the high probability of the ancestors of European Neanderthals having taken the land bridge over Gibraltar into Europe around 2.5 Mya and the probability of routes across the Sinai being repeatedly re-discovered by other Hominin sub-species.

There were other climate disrupting events such as Toba sized (and slightly lesser on scale) volcanic eruptions occurring in Italy, New Zealand, Japan & Russia within the last 1 million years, which would have changed the climate of the Sahara temporarily (50-100 years) allowing hominins to cross over to the Levant and Asia and even spread farther out when the Sahara returned to being a desert, driven by changing ocean current patterns at the beginning and end of every salinity crisis in the Med.

The conventional Out of Africa theory is very similar to the AIT in its outlook and form, with the premise of humans being a disruptive and invasive force.

[Virendra]

I agree with Klaus ji.
I think in all the theories concerning India - AIT, AMT, OIT etc we (experts and mango abduls alike) haven't focused on the climate as much as we should and have made assumptions about consistent human power in the nature. While the nature itself is so dynamic.
If research were directed there, many hypothesis/conjectures would give way to solid facts and evidence.
Much of the mess is also because what people from all sides are saying till now, half of it is conjecture not proven/provable yet. Thus the deadlocks.
Study of climate contemporary to these theories would be a good to-do to fill some gaps.

Regards,
Virendra

[Lalmohan]

virendra - absolutely right; climate, geography and a host of other "non related" sciences have a massive role to play in explaining history. humans are forever searching for food (like other animals) - climate is a very strong factor in that search - we went where we could find the next meal (not because we admired the scenery)

[shiv]

half of it is conjecture not proven/provable yet. Thus the deadlocks.

You are being too kind to the bhenchods who are out there writing about the spread of Indo-European language. When they are not lying through their teeth they are doing shoddy and fundamentally racist work that ignores information that is freely available.

Everything points towards Indo European (Sanskrit) having been in India by 3000 BC or earlier, with no other language even coming close in terms of data available for that age. The only single argument hanging by a hair that goes against this is the linguist constructed AIT. It will by only a matter of time before this rubbish is overturned.

[RajeshA]

Following is a Blog which deals with "Aryan Race" and Christianity. It is from the PoV of a White concerned with the White Race and has many references to India. I'm linking it for the psychology presented in the blog deserves some psychoanalysis.

The West's Darkest Hour: Western Racial and Cultural Preservation

[RajeshA]

This deals with the lore of the Maori people of New Zealand and Polynesia

Published on Feb 02, 2013
About Te Kauwae Runga and Te Kauwae Raro

This is not the place to dwell on the question as to where the Polynesian race originally came from prior to its entrance into the Pacific, though the writer believes that they can be traced back to India, where at the present day, possibly, the Angami tribes of Assam represent a belated branch, driven to the hills when the ancestors of the Polynesians were expelled, and in those hills have been subjected to many waves of Mongolian influence that have modified their race and their language. But it may be suggested as a tentative theory that these Caucasian Polynesians are an early branch of the Proto-Aryan migration into India, and, it is thought, the matter in this volume, and in that to follow, will afford support to that theory.* It is certain that many of the Polynesian Myths and Traditions find their counterpart in those of the Scandinavian, Celtic, Indian, and other branches of the Aryan race; and it is suggested that in the Polynesian versions we are frequently nearer to the originals as they obtained in primitive times than in any other branch of the Caucasian race, because of the long isolation of the people in p. v their island homes—just as so many of the northern myths have been preserved in their greatest purity by the Icelanders, and from the same cause.

Of course it would have nothing to do with Caucasian. However we need to look at the similarities between the lore of the Maoris and that of Indians.

Also the Maori timekeeping may have similarities with our timekeeping.

[svinayak]

Following is a Blog which deals with "Aryan Race" and Christianity. It is from the PoV of a White concerned with the White Race and has many references to India. I'm linking it for the psychology presented in the blog deserves some psychoanalysis.

The West's Darkest Hour: Western Racial and Cultural Preservation

Very important book which reveals the European History which as supressed.
It also reveals the Church history and how deep its control was on the people.

[harbans]

The word is derived from Sanskrit maharddhika which means “a man of wealth, knowledge, and ability”. In precolonial Java, maharddhika referred to members of religious orders, usually royal advisors, who were not obligated to pay taxes or tribute. In the 7th century Srivijaya Empire, the term referred to powerful individuals who controlled their own alipin.[2] In various Indo-Malayan languages (including the languages of the Muslim areas of the Philippines) the cognates mardika, merdeka, merdeheka, or maradika also mean "freedom" (as opposed to servitude).[3]

The maharlika were the feudal warrior class in ancient Tagalog society in the Philippines. They belonged to the lower nobility class similar to the timawa of the Visayan people.

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

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Change-th ... 5995341192

[Prem]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20668278
A certificate for holiness in India

Gautameshwar is a pilgrim centre where you can submerge yourself in holy waters, wash away your sins and get a certificate to prove you are cleansed.
Priest Jagdish Sharma says the temple is important for those who need to prove they are cleansed
All Hindus believe that a dip in holy waters washes away sin and many from across the country travel to pilgrim towns like Haridwar and Pushkar to take the holy dip.But this is not simply about piety. Here it is also about holding together the fabric of local tribal communities.

There is good probability that this Holy Dip ritual traveled to ME with traders and monks from India.
This new approach to wash sins was first adopted /copied by the John the Baptist, first Xerox Khan.

[svinayak]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20668278
A certificate for holiness in India
There is good probability that this Holy Dip ritual traveled to ME with traders and monks from India.
This new approach to wash sins was first adopted /copied by the John the Baptist, first Xerox Khan.

The BBC news must be stopped from India with such news report. It has no meaning for the west and they do not have connection to these things. It is a form of mocking report on India

[RajeshA]

Published Dec 12, 2012
By Dr. Navratna S. Rajaram
Indo-Europeans Origins - Part 1: The 200 Year-Old Question: Folks Magazine

Science has finally answered the 200 year-old question of why people from India to Iceland speak languages clearly related to one another. Natural history, not linguistics unlocks the puzzle of Indo-European origins.

[svinayak]

Mapping Indo-European language expansion .

http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programm ... -european/
Trying to sound more scholarly on the same migration

[svinayak]

Ideological Agendas and Indo-European Origins: Master Race, Bloodthirsty Kurgans, or Proto-Hippies?
Written by Martin W. Lewis on November 6, 2012 81 Comments and 1 Reaction |


This final contribution to the Indo-European series turns once again to the potential ideological agendas lurking behind theories of IE origin and expansion. As was noted previously, no other issue in human prehistory has been so ideologically fraught; the original IE speakers have been recruited to serve a variety of fantasies, ranging in temper from naively benign to unimaginably vile. For Nazis and their ilk, the original Indo-Europeans constituted the Aryan super-race whose descendants were destined to rule the world. Followers of a certain feminist school of prehistory, in turn, have turned the “Aryan thesis” on its head, portraying the same people as the bloodthirsty “Kurgans” overrunning the peaceful, matriarchal civilization of “Old Europe” and ushering in a global age of violence and male domination. As was argued in the earlier post, it is understandable that some scholars would want to discredit all such overreaching interpretations based on the crushing might of the horse-empowered original Indo-Europeans. If it could be demonstrated that the IE languages were actually spread by Neolithic farmers slowly pushing into new areas as their numbers increased, all such troublesome theories would be effectively undermined.

Yet it is one thing to hope for such a paradigm switch and another to push it along by a purposeful manipulation of data and analysis. Doing so would be a blatantly ideological act, and hence a betrayal of science and reason. Assessing scholarly motivations, however, is a hopeless task, and we have no way of knowing whether Bouckaert et al. have intentionally selected their data and skewed their model in order to support the Anatolian thesis of IE origins. We do think that it is possible, however, that they have unconsciously let their own ideological commitments guide their research program. Our evidence here comes from two sources. First, as we have demonstrated over the past two months, both the data selection and the model construction are warped to consistently favor the Anatolian hypothesis, most egregiously by ignoring all ancient IE language spoken in the steppe zone and by ruling out advection as a mechanism of language spread. Second, it seems likely from the comments posted on this website that distaste for the idea of violent incursions, often viewed as a necessary feature of the “steppe hypothesis,” colors the authors’ perspective. Quentin Atkinson, the article’s corresponding author, quotes Larry Trask to make this point:

Nevertheless, the vision of fierce IE warriors, riding horses and driving chariots, sweeping down on their neighbours brandishing bloody swords, has proven to be an enduring one, and scholars have found it difficult to dislodge from the popular consciousness the idea of the PIE-speakers as warlike conquerors in chariots.

Although the desire to wish away the “bloody swords” of the human past is understandable, it is also naïve, as violence unfortunately pervades our history. One does not have to embrace the vision of Thomas Hobbes, recently updated and re-theorized by Steven Pinker in his tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, to accept that this is indeed the case. I suspect that Pinker exaggerates the bloodiness of hunting-gathering societies, a charge made most forcefully by Christopher Ryan, co-author of the intriguing and controversial Sex at Dawn, yet I also suspect that Ryan descends into hyperbole of his own in emphasizing the peacefulness and sexual license of our Paleolithic ancestors. But when it comes to pre-modern agricultural societies, the evidence is overwhelming: enveloping violence was the norm almost everywhere. If one wants to rule out the possibility of bloody swords and other weapons, one would be advised to examine something other than human history.

But even if armed struggle has been pervasive for most of the past 10,000 years, it does not follow that all non-foraging societies have been equally bloody. As is always the case, different groups vary considerably on this score. If one searches the ethnographic literature, one can find a few documented tribal farming societies that shunned warfare and all of its trappings. Yet the unfortunate truth is that such groups were usually victimized by their more aggressive neighbors, and hence were seldom successful in maintaining their numbers and territories.


Source: http://geocurrents.info/cultural-geogra ... z2JxbiMAaU

[ramana]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20668278
A certificate for holiness in India
There is good probability that this Holy Dip ritual traveled to ME with traders and monks from India.
This new approach to wash sins was first adopted /copied by the John the Baptist, first Xerox Khan.

The BBC news must be stopped from India with such news report. It has no meaning for the west and they do not have connection to these things. It is a form of mocking report on India

Not really. Its shows "baptism", "being born again' etc are Hindu customs. So the Southern Baptists neeed to rethink their customs or live as Hindoos.

[Murugan]

In one of the meets arranged by Mumbai University - Numismatics department, one local gentlemen (forgot his name:( talked about Kushans. He was replying to a British 'Expert' on Indian coins who was invited by our great guys to talk about our Kushan coins.

This gentleman hails from Lohana community, kshatriya lohana community to be precise. They call them Raghuvanshi and direct descendants of Lord Ram.

According to him Luv and Kush, two sons of Ram were great conquerors. Lord Ram asked Kush to go westward who might have gone upto the cost of Mediterranean while Luv went upto South China Sea.

The name Kushan is derived from Kush (and not from Yui-Chi the chinese tribes without moustache and beard). This is also apparent from Kushan coins on which the kings are depicted with long dense beards. (Chinese connection of Kushans according to him is not possible because they do not have more than 20 strands of hair each on moustache and beard if there is any)

Some examples of Kushan Kings depicted on their coins:
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/5807/8745044_1m.jpg

http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/5807/8745043_1m.jpg

[Murugan]

Is it possible that the word Abraham has some connection with the sanskrit word Abhiram?!

अभिराम m. Name of śiva
अभिराम mf( ā )n. pleasing, delightful, agreeable, beautiful
अभिरामम् ind. referring to rāma .

[RajeshA]

Murugan ji,

It could be possible that the Kushans called themselves Kushans in honor of Kush or because they considered him their ancestor.

The AIT-Nazis have given Kanishka of the Kushans a very late date (127 AD - 151 AD). According to Pandit Venkatachelam it should be 1294 BCE to 1234 BCE.

In any case Ramayana and hence Rama, Luv and Kush came a long time before that regardless of when we place the Kushans.

It is also possible they accepted Buddhism because Lord Buddha was considered an Avatar of Lord Vishnu and hence of Lord Rama.

[Murugan]

Murugan ji,

It could be possible that the Kushans called themselves Kushans in honor of Kush or because they considered him their ancestor.

The AIT-Nazis have given Kanishka of the Kushans a very late date (127 AD - 151 AD). According to Pandit Venkatachelam it should be 1294 BCE to 1234 BCE.

In any case Ramayana and hence Rama, Luv and Kush came a long time before that regardless of when we place the Kushans.

It is also possible they accepted Buddhism because Lord Buddha was considered an Avatar of Lord Vishnu and hence of Lord Rama.

Rajesh-ji

Kushans also embraced various deities, starting from Nana - a persian(!) deity of progeny and fertility, than ardoxo (sounds similar to Ardh-aksh(!)) a persian deity similar to goddess laxmi, than Lord Shiva and they depicted lord shiva on their coins too to Lord Buddha (bodo, as it is read in the first link of the two provided above)

[RajeshA]

Murugan ji,

sometimes it is often difficult to find out the Kings embraced as their Kuladevata, Religion and what they supported because some deity was the Kuladevata of the people over whom they ruled, and did it for legitimacy and respect. The Kushans did rule over areas where Persian deities would have been popular.

[Murugan]

Rajesh-ji

Thats true.

Hyder Ali minted coins (pagoda) with Shiv Parvati http://www.forumancientcoins.com/india/ ... der_p1.jpg

British minted venkata swamy pagoda for Madras Presidency
http://www.mcsearch.info/images/61_m/600324.jpg

Either Ghori or Gazni minted gold coins with Laxmi on reverse. Images later.

But in case of Kushans, the continued to depict Shiva, trident, havan kund/altar, nandi and Buddha till they 'vanished' or were assimilated (or IMHO vanquished by Gutpas) (at that time buddha was just part of dharmics and no separate identity as created by bruts and their chamchas later).

[Klaus]

According to him Luv and Kush, two sons of Ram were great conquerors. Lord Ram asked Kush to go westward who might have gone upto the cost of Mediterranean while Luv went upto South China Sea.

If Kush was the son who went westward, then how does it explain Lavapura (Lahore), which is supposed to have been founded by the other brother?

[Murugan]

The question is Westward from Where?

Lahore Itself? Purushpur (Peswar), Kapisa (Kabul) or Ayodhya?

And at What Age?



Or Lav established Lavpura to rest after returning from long campaign conquering till South China Sea!

[Klaus]

^^^ Realized that long ago sir. Just put the question out here in the open so that more are enlightened.

Being the right mix of conquerors, adventurists and explorers, it would not have been beyond the capabilities of the brothers to discover new routes through the Karakoram into Tibet, Central Asia and China. Perhaps, they were the first pioneers of the Silk Road itself!

Yunnan and Sichuan provinces also could have been explored by charting parallel to the numerous rivers making their way to the Airavati (Irrawaddy) and the Mekong Delta.