Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[SBajwa]

My argument for Out Of India is that

Indian subcontinent is the one place in whole wide world which has perfect weather for life to live and survive without shelter (under trees) and too much effort for food.

Indian subcontinent has been well irrigated with numerous rivers and well protected by the Himalayas with regular monsoon every year at exact the same time.

Thus!! there is no other possible place in the whole wide world for life to survive its initial years.

[member_23438]

Excuse my ignorance, I am a new member, saw this interesting thread and would like to put a few points to begin our research
1. Find artifacts related to Indian culture (Statues of Hindu gods,common words,common traditions) ityadi
2. Follow the weather patterns
3.Follow the dressing patterns (How common is the dress of a person from a X country to those of ancient Indians)
4.Reference in their scriptures (are Indians, or a place that describes India mentioned in the culture, if yes how is it described)
5.Trade relations of Indians (~3000 B.C.) with other countries
I think we also have to see this theory from the perspective of Indians and not outsiders... I am researching these topics will post soon...

[Yogi_G]

Are we not chewing old tobacco here all over again? The horse, the dating of the mahabharata, iron, linguistics!

MB should be modeled as possibly a three layered construction where memories and traditions from at least three [perhaps even more] different periods have been woven, and finally given shape at the latest date in complete verse form. The final date will affect the linguistics. The different dates of formation of the layers will be indicated in overlays that seem anachronistic. This does not necessarily invalidate the core conflict incidents described in the epic at around 3100 BCE.

Three possible periods are : 5700 BCE, 3100 BCE, and middle bronze - between 1600-1400 BCE. Submergence of Dwarka however possibly belongs to the 5700 BCE period. The elaborate material descriptions of pomp and splendour probably belongs to the later bronze age. The compendium was also likely formulated in its final form in the post SSC phase - when society and philosophers had begun to search for a post-war, post-apocalyptic, moral foundation for society - and was giving birth to the precursor post Vedic philosophical milieu which over time would lead to Jainas, Buddhists or Ajivikas.

Elements of later periods occurring in text cannot and should not be used to deny the core events at an earlier period.

B ji, one thing which I never could relate to the dating was the mentioning of other kingdoms and foreigners who either sided with the Pandavas or Kauravas. Yavanas, Khambojas and Hunas etc. These are all kingdoms which came about in early iron age India. What do we make of their mentioning in the Mahabharatha. What do you make of this?

[member_23438]

Some good videos on Dwarka (the one of our kanha )



[youtube]1u_LDC3rOLI&feature=related[/youtube]



If these people are reliable enough, the Mahabharat took place about 36000 years ago... I also think that Ramayana was written/orally remembered at a time when homo sapiens (Like Shri Ram, Lakshman) and another species of humans that was more closer to apes lived together (Hanumanji, Angad,Nal-Neel; It's interesting to know that the Vanaras had their own kingdom and their own army suggesting that their population was quite huge and sustainable). If this theory is taken into consideration, then Hanumanji being strong makes sense too (as this another species was more closer to apes, their strength might have been similar to them; A chimpanzee is said to be ~4-8 times more stronger than a human (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 00829.htm))

[RajeshA]

kalkibhagwan ji,

there are all sorts of dating flying around, with Indian itihaasic epics being dated beyond the 10,000 BP range. Dates beyond 10,000 B.P. range, I would say are highly speculative, and one leaves the shores of scientific credibility and enters faith and since Hindu scriptures tend to date the Mahabharata not really later than 3200 BCE, dates beyond 10,000 BP really start sounding incredulous.

If these people are reliable enough, the Mahabharat took place about 36000 years ago... I also think that Ramayana was written/orally remembered at a time when homo sapiens (Like Shri Ram, Lakshman) and another species of humans that was more closer to apes lived together (Hanumanji, Angad,Nal-Neel; It's interesting to know that the Vanaras had their own kingdom and their own army suggesting that their population was quite huge and sustainable). If this theory is taken into consideration, then Hanumanji being strong makes sense too (as this another species was more closer to apes, their strength might have been similar to them; A chimpanzee is said to be ~4-8 times more stronger than a human

kalkibhagwan ji,

please consider the possibility that assigning extreme antiquities to our faith on a thread such as this, would actually weaken the Out-of-India argument, making it a target of laughter and pun.

We should assign these extreme antiquities ONLY AFTER we have some more archaeological proof or some other incontrovertible evidence.

Assigning extreme antiquities of more than 10,000 BP to Vedic civilization is not needed. It doesn't change anything. Does it matter if it is 20,000 years or 120,000 years? The message of our scriptures still remain.

But it does matter if the Vedic Civilization and its founders are considered from the Subcontinent or from outside it. It does matter if the Vedas are considered 3,500 years old or 7,500 years old, because the former is an effort to deny us Indians our indigenous origin and our spiritual heritage.

Let's be careful in what we claim! It is best if that what we claim, we can also substantiate or at least set it up as something the deniers cannot disprove.

[Yogi_G]

kalkibhagwan ji,

there are all sorts of dating flying around, with Indian itihaasic epics being dated beyond the 10,000 BP range. Dates beyond 10,000 B.P. range, I would say are highly speculative, and one leaves the shores of scientific credibility and enters faith and since Hindu scriptures tend to date the Mahabharata not really later than 3200 BCE, dates beyond 10,000 BP really start sounding incredulous.

If these people are reliable enough, the Mahabharat took place about 36000 years ago... I also think that Ramayana was written/orally remembered at a time when homo sapiens (Like Shri Ram, Lakshman) and another species of humans that was more closer to apes lived together (Hanumanji, Angad,Nal-Neel; It's interesting to know that the Vanaras had their own kingdom and their own army suggesting that their population was quite huge and sustainable). If this theory is taken into consideration, then Hanumanji being strong makes sense too (as this another species was more closer to apes, their strength might have been similar to them; A chimpanzee is said to be ~4-8 times more stronger than a human

kalkibhagwan ji,

please consider the possibility that assigning extreme antiquities to our faith on a thread such as this, would actually weaken the Out-of-India argument, making it a target of laughter and pun.

We should assign these extreme antiquities ONLY AFTER we have some more archaeological proof or some other incontrovertible evidence.

Assigning extreme antiquities of more than 10,000 BP to Vedic civilization is not needed. It doesn't change anything. Does it matter if it is 20,000 years or 120,000 years? The message of our scriptures still remain.

But it does matter if the Vedic Civilization and its founders are considered from the Subcontinent or from outside it. It does matter if the Vedas are considered 3,500 years old or 7,500 years old, because the former is an effort to deny us Indians our indigenous origin and our spiritual heritage.

Let's be careful in what we claim! It is best if that what we claim, we can also substantiate or at least set it up as something the deniers cannot disprove.

I agree. Timelines of ~3000 BC are themselves in synch with our own scriptural references and calculations by our astronomers.

The video above says the recovered artifacts from sea date back to 32000 years and the city submerged some 9000 years back with a mix of alien technology thrown in as well. Just wondering is it possible to carbon date a stone/rock?

[RamaY]

there are all sorts of dating flying around, with Indian itihaasic epics being dated beyond the 10,000 BP range. Dates beyond 10,000 B.P. range, I would say are highly speculative, and one leaves the shores of scientific credibility and enters faith and since Hindu scriptures tend to date the Mahabharata not really later than 3200 BCE, dates beyond 10,000 BP really start sounding incredulous.
b]

Limiting our minds, even for scientific "beliefs" is not scientific.

Science is yet to explain how it took hardly 100,000 years for man to evolve from Apes where as it took millions of years of evolution to move from one level of intelligence to another.

Even if we agree with this theory, this is a very small time period (100,000 years) for all the intermediate mutations between the apes and humans to disappear from the face of earth.

Thirdly, if it is possible for a 100 meter long dinosaurs to evolve into a 30cm long lizard on my wall, then it should be possible to have our ancestor species to be Aajanubaahu.

The MB is dated around 3200 BC with a continuous lineage of kings since then (we discussed this in Andhra thread w.r.t Sri Kota Venkatachalam garu). MB itself talks about many lines of lineage before that.

Ramayana is supposed to belong to a separate eon itself. Per the Manvantara system, Ramayana must have happened 1.9 crore years ago. Is it possible?

Perhaps we are using a Abrahamic linear time scale to events that appeared in a cyclical time system, hence the confusion?

[member_20317]

Kalkibhagwanji this should help your collection, in my humble opinion. This work is by the people who know what they are doing. Notice the earliest dates being mentioned.

http://drs.nio.org/drs/bitstream/2264/4 ... _28_57.pdf



Yogi_G Re. "Just wondering is it possible to carbon date a stone/rock?"

.

[RajeshA]

Limiting our minds, even for scientific "beliefs" is not scientific.

Limiting our arguments to those which abide by the linear time system are however more persuasive in the debate and thus more conducive to success.

Mind need not be limited.

Perhaps we are using a Abrahamic linear time scale to events that appeared in a cyclical time system, hence the confusion?

RamaY ji,

I suppose the linear time system is a segment of the cyclical time system. I also think that when we talk about the anthropological history of the present Indian Civilizational cycle it would be linear. Let's not be afraid of linear time system. We should be able to make our arguments within such system as well.

[brihaspati]

Are we not chewing old tobacco here all over again? The horse, the dating of the mahabharata, iron, linguistics!

MB should be modeled as possibly a three layered construction where memories and traditions from at least three [perhaps even more] different periods have been woven, and finally given shape at the latest date in complete verse form. The final date will affect the linguistics. The different dates of formation of the layers will be indicated in overlays that seem anachronistic. This does not necessarily invalidate the core conflict incidents described in the epic at around 3100 BCE.

Three possible periods are : 5700 BCE, 3100 BCE, and middle bronze - between 1600-1400 BCE. Submergence of Dwarka however possibly belongs to the 5700 BCE period. The elaborate material descriptions of pomp and splendour probably belongs to the later bronze age. The compendium was also likely formulated in its final form in the post SSC phase - when society and philosophers had begun to search for a post-war, post-apocalyptic, moral foundation for society - and was giving birth to the precursor post Vedic philosophical milieu which over time would lead to Jainas, Buddhists or Ajivikas.

Elements of later periods occurring in text cannot and should not be used to deny the core events at an earlier period.

B ji, one thing which I never could relate to the dating was the mentioning of other kingdoms and foreigners who either sided with the Pandavas or Kauravas. Yavanas, Khambojas and Hunas etc. These are all kingdoms which came about in early iron age India. What do we make of their mentioning in the Mahabharatha. What do you make of this?

They had a memory of a tradition that talked of "foreigners" taking sides in the actual conflict, from say more than a 1000 years previously. When they are actually writing/forming the final version, perhaps in the middle bronze/early iron age - they estimate the foreigners with what they see then. Original foreigners might simply have been much closer home to the Doab.

[ManishH]

I suppose the linear time system is a segment of the cyclical time system.

Rajeshji: my understanding is that the cyclical time represents values and memes. Moral dilemmas, evil doers, enlightened humans etc. are cyclical occurrences. But events are linear.

However there is nothing cyclical about the events mentioned in a particular epic. An epic is basically a snapshot of a meme-chain. I'm not sure why this urge to assign ancient dates. Probably it's the oral tradition, the way our gurus and grandparents narrate these epics, they sound like occurrences of aeons ago. That's part of the fascination and acts as a catalyst in preserving the cultural memories.

Linear time isn't a segment of cyclical time. They just represent different things.

It doesn't matter one bit if any group of people migrated into India. What is important to ask is - what was so unique about India, it's rivers mountains and birds that inspired them to compose these works of poetry, philosophy etc.

Why couldn't these hypothetical invaders just sit in their steppe grasslands and attain the same cultural milestones ? There is something about the land that brings out higher human achievement.

[RajeshA]

It doesn't matter one bit if any group of people migrated into India. What is important to ask is - what was so unique about India, it's rivers mountains and birds that inspired them to compose these works of poetry, philosophy etc.

Why couldn't these hypothetical invaders just sit in their steppe grasslands and attain the same cultural milestones ? There is something about the land that brings out higher human achievement.

ManishH ji,

everybody has his own focus, and for everybody something else has more importance.

As I see it, the migration into India or indigenous origin in India of the proto-Sanskrit-speaking people is of paramount importance for Indians. Why?

1) Except for a few corners of India, Sanskrit has played a defining role is the Indian civilization. If we accept that the proto-Sanskrit-speaking 'Aryans' came from outside and overwrote the existing civilization with their memes, then we are in fact accepting that other civilizations, who can show their 'superiority', also have the right to come into India and overwrite our Dharmic civilization.

That is the pretext used by British as well as extensively used by the Islamists - 'Nothing is indigenous in India', 'The Dharmics have no first right to determine India's direction on the basis of being indigenous'.

Even if one were to argue, that even if the proto-Sanskrit-speaking Aryans came from outside, but at least the body and material of our scriptures - from Vedas, to Ramayana, to Mahabharata, etc. have been composed and written on this soil, and thus it makes Dharma indigenous, the others would still argue that it was the outsiders who brought in the 'superior thought skills' and thus seeded the Indian Civilization with 'superior thinking'. Locals were just not up to the mark.

from the link given by nawabs.

One of the ancestral components—the ANI—is common not just in South Asia, but also in West Asia and Caucasus while the ASI is limited to South Asia. While this may seem to clearly demarcate the natives and the foreign migrants, it does not. Except for some Astroasiatic tribes and two small Dravidian tribes in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, all other South Indians have more than 40% of the ANI component. This means that everyone except these few groups are not purely native.

The important question then is this: When did the ANI mix with the ASI?. If that period is between 1900 BCE and 1500 BCE, then it would confirm the many versions of Aryan theory in existence right now. When these researchers modeled the data, they could not find any evidence of a dramatic Central Asian migration for this period. So they went back and till about 12500 Years Before Present (YBP) they could not find any evidence. Thus the mixing of the ANI and ASI did not happen 140 generations before as was believed, but probably more than 500 generations back (Each generation is 25 years). The paper explicitly mentions Max Muller’s theory and says that it is hard to find evidence for such a migration following the collapse of the Harappan civilization.

Technically speaking, I don't have a problem with claims that humans from outside, say the Ancestral North Indian, migrated into India. I however do have a problem, when claims are made that a civilization from outside India entered India and wrote the Rigveda and all that came after, civilization being defined by language and religion.

As seems to be the case, there is no need for an Indian to believe there was any substantial migration into India in the last 12,500 years.

2) Moreover as Indo-European language speakers are spread over a large Eurasian landmass, one set of Indo-Europeans can claim a higher level of racial representation of the original PIE speakers, and use that to dominate India or cause rifts between those in India, with whom that Indo-European Group allegedly shares racial and linguistic memes ('upper-caste fair-complexioned North Indians'), and with whom they don't (Dalits and Dravidians).

[member_20317]

RajeshA ji,

You are talking of the competiton between the Owner and the Squater in a bid to define and by logical extention confine the Owner.

Reality is even more sinister. By creating a disconnect with our Itihaas which represents 'Our values, Our life and Our will - Our soverignity', there is a political need to do away with the Owner as an Independent entity. What is sought to be achieved is a kind of 'we could not have it so we will not let you have it'. As Raj Malhotra says a desire to be 'Universal' at my cost and to somebody elses benefit. This is 'Imperialism by Stealth'. But quite like the Pakis the West fails to recognise that they cannot have by stealth what they could not have by force.

What is truly needed is for every party to be able to define themselves in their own understanding and then be asked to support the logical conclusions of these definations. Say for example Iran has to decide whether it wants to be in NPT because it is a peacful entity or it wants a Nuke because it is a Husainee entity. Similarly Chinese have to be ready to get what they give, instead of any Indian telling them what they are and hence how they should behave. This is also what those of clear mind like Raj Malhotra suggest.

Baki sab thik hai, chalta hai, we are peaceful SDRE people only. :Emoticon for Smoking a Peace Pipe

[RajeshA]

I am posting in full the following analysis of AIT polemic. It says how the AIT supporters try to argue and put the OIT supporters on the defensive.

Zydenbos vs. Rajaram: a Case Study in Aryan Invasion Polemic
By Dr. Koenraad Elst

A primer in AIT polemic

For a case study in anti-AIT polemic, I have chosen the article "An obscurantist argument" by the Dutch-Canadian scholar Robert J. Zydenbos. (1) His bona fades is unquestionable, and he represents the majority of AIT-believing scholars in that he merely accepts the predominant opinion without having a political axe to grind, though this makes him susceptible to being influenced by AIT defenders who do have political motives. He is emphatically not a representative of the anti-Brahminism so prevalent among Western India-watchers, being in fact the author of an informed critique of this ideological distortion of much contemporary scholarship. (2) Some of the rhetoric in this article typifies the way in which certain AIT defenders in positions of authority tend to over-awe the public with references to overrated evidence, and to vilify spokesmen of the dissident non-AIT school. The piece is an attack on N. S. Rajaram, a scientist from Karnataka (in AIT parlance: a Dravidian, not an Aryan) working in the USA, who has contributed decisive insights to the AIT debate. (3) I disagree on some important points with Prof. Rajaram, most of all with his rejection of the linguistic reconstruction of an IE protolanguage; but that is no reason to dismiss his work as "a textbook example of the quasi-religious-cum-political obscurantism that is so popular among alienated Non-Resident Indians", which is moreover "out of touch with what serious scholars both in India and abroad hold at present", as Zydenbos alleges. "The linguistic evidence for the Indo-European origin of Sanskrit outside India is Overwhelming", he claims, in almost verbatim agreement with Prof. Romila Thapar, whom he defends against Rajaram's critique of her article "The Perennial Aryans". (4) Neither in his nor in Prof. Thapar's much lengthier article is even one item of this "overwhelming evidence" mentioned. However, Dr. Zydenbos can claim the merit of being one of the first (to my knowledge, the very first) among the defenders of the AIT to actually respond to the rising tide of anti-AIT argumentation.

Ethnically pure Aryans

Zydenbos starts his crescendo of allegations by stating something Rajaram never disputed: "No scholar seriously believes that there are any 'ethnically pure' Aryans in India today (and perhaps anywhere else, either). And why should anyone care?" Actually, Rajaram himself is among those who reject the notion of 'ethnically pure Aryans', not because of the obvious fact that countless inter-ethnic marriages have taken place, but because he rejects the use of "Aryan" as an ethnic term in the first place. As he and many others have argued time and again, the Sanskrit word Arya was not an ethnic term, it is Western scholars who have turned it into one. And it is the Western participant in this duel, Dr. Zydenbos, who, even after reading Prof. Rajaram, just continues to use "Aryan" as an ethnic and even as a racial term: "Those who called themselves 'Aryan' 1000 years ago were already very different from the various Aryan tribes that came over 3500 years ago (*) This too is historical fact. One only needs to learn Sanskrit to find this out." I fear that there is something very wrong with Sanskrit courses if accomplished indologists can read Arya in a racial sense unattested in the whole of Sanskrit literature. The anti-AIT authors may nonetheless be wrong in denying an ethnic meaning to Arya altogether. While Arya was definitely never a racial or linguistic concept, it may have had a precise ethnic usage at least in some circles in one specific period. As Shrikant Talageri has shown, in the Rg-Veda, the term Arya is exclusively applied to the Puru tribe, including the Bharata clan, the community which generated the Rg-Vedic texts. Thus, when something negative is said about "Arya" people, these turn out to be non-Bharata Purus; and when the merits of a non-Puru king or sage are extolled, he may be called any term of praise but never Arya. (5) Likewise, it seems that the Iranian Avesta uses Airya in referring to a specific community, the cultivators in the Oxus river basin, contrasting it with nomadic barbarians who were similar in race and equally Iranian-speaking (generically known as Shakas/Scythians), but who were not part of the sedentary Mazdean "Airya" world. (6) The matter must be studied more closely, after freeing ourselves from the AIT-related misconceptions. For now, I speculate that the term Arya spread over the Hindu world, which included many non-Vedic Indo-Aryan-speaking tribes (Aikshvaku, Yadava, Pramshava, etc. ), along with the Vedic tradition which was originally the exclusively local tradition of the Paurava tribe and Bharata clan settled on the banks of the Saraswati river. And that it originally had an ethnic connotation, something like "the Puru tradition", even when used as the name of a religious tradition and civilizational standard, viz. the Vedic culture, somewhat like the ethno-geographical term Roman came to mean "Catholic". At any rate, in classical Sanskrit, Arya means "civilized", specifically "following the norms of Vedic civilization", and this might imply a reference to the ancient situation when Vedic culture typified the metropolis, the Saraswati region (well-attested as being the centre of both the Rg-Vedic world and Harappan civilization), which the provinces tried to emulate. In the ShAstras and in literary works, the term Arya typically takes the place which would nowadays be filled by the term Hindu, or of "the Hindu ideal", Hindu in a normative rather than in a descriptive sense. It is in this (by that time definitely the usual) sense that the Buddha used the term Arya, as in the catvAri-Arya-satyAni, "the four noble truths", and the Arya-ashtANgika-mArga, "the noble eightfold path", meaning that his way (more than the petty magic with which many Veda-reciting priests made a living) fulfilled the old ideals of Vedic civilization. It is with a similar intention that the modern Veda revivalists of the Arya Samaj chose the name of their organization. While conceptions may differ concerning what the real essence of the Vedic worldview was, there has been a wide pan-Indian agreement for at least 3,000 years that Arya means a standard of civilization, regardless of language, race or even ethnicity.

Rajaram vs. Hitler

Next, Zydenbos attacks Rajaram's reading of Romila Thapar's article, esp. her insinuation (uttered much more explicitly elsewhere by other Marxist authors in India) (7) that the anti-AIT case is motivated by some kind of Hitlerian vision of Aryanism: "Romila Thapar does not 'obviously refer to Nazi Germany' when she speaks of the fantasy of an 'Aryan nation', but to the new Indian tendency among obscurantists towards creating something parallel." So, alleging that someone wants to "create something parallel to Nazi Germany" does not imply a reference to Nazi Germany? In that case, we might perhaps focus on the implied allegation that those Indians who question the AIT are entertaining a fantasy of creating an "Aryan nation". I challenge Prof. Thapar and Dr. Zydenbos to produce any publication of any Indian scholar presently questioning the AIT which contains even a hint of this "fantasy". And I reprimand them both for using the term Arya(n) uncritically, i.e. without explicitating that it has two distinct meanings, viz. "Hindu" for Hindus, and "of Nordic race" for the Nazis. If that distinction is made, the alleged connection between Rajaram and Hitler (through the "common" term Aryan) vanishes, and this seems to go against the AIT defenders' intentions. In the current opinion climate, accusing someone of Nazi connections is the single gravest allegation possible. I don't think that in an academic forum, one can simply get away with such extremely serious allegations; one has to offer evidence, - or apologies. If even scholars of Zydenbos's rank entertain the confusion between Aryan/Nordic-racist and Arya/Hindu, it is no surprise that this confusion vitiates much journalistic reporting on Hinduism and Hindu nationalism. Thus, the French monthly Le Choc du Mois once commented that the "sulphurous" BJP takes inspiration from "Bharat, the first Aryan prince in North India". By all accounts, Bharata, patriarch of the Vedic Bharata clan, came later than many other Aryans in North India: Manu, Ikshvaku, Mandhata, Yayati, Bharat's own ancestor Puru, et al. Anyway, here is the key to Hindu political thought: "The basis of the 'Hindu nation' will therefore be Aryanity, a warlike and conquering Aryanity which owes its imperial territory only to an unceasing struggle on the side of the gods." (8) This mixes a projection of stereotypes concerning Islamic fundamentalism onto its Hindu "counterpart" with the AIT-based Aryan lore. But seriously: are Hindu scholars, if only just a few of them, thinking along the lines of "Aryan" racism? Apart from reading the works of the Indian scholars concerned, I have also privately talked with most of them, and I feel certain that no such "fantasy" is at the back of the anti-AIT polemic. In fact, what they reject in Western scholarship is precisely the creation of the conceptual framework which has made the racialist misuse of the term "Aryan" possible: "Indian Marxists in particular are singularly touchy about the whole thing and hate to be reminded that their pet dogma of the non-indigenous origin of the Vedic Aryan civilization is an offshoot of the same race theories that gave rise to Nazism." (9)


The importance of being white

Dr. Zydenbos continues: "This includes the endorsement of blatant racism by certain Indian scholarly personalities. Thus, the archaeologist S. R. Rao, who also figures in Rajaram's article, said at a recent seminar in Mysore in response to a student's question about the Aryans that we should not listen to what 'white people' say." I don't know how Hitler would have felt about this slur on white people, but Zydenbos is quite mistaken when he infers that there is any "racism" behind Prof. Rao's remark. Rao obviously did not mean that whiteness makes one unfit for researching the question of the "Aryans". What he meant was, of course, that at present, Westerners in general are still basing their opinions about this question on theories rendered outdated by the recent findings of Indian scholars like himself, and of some paleface scholars as well, - but the latter have so far not carried Western or "white" opinion in general with them. Dr. Zydenbos, who is described editorially as a European indological scholar living in Mysore, must have found out for himself that being "white" still connotes authority and reliability for most Indians. (10) In heated debates like the one on the Aryan question, reference to Western opinion is still treated as a trump card. Often, this reference is used as a "circular argument of authority": first Western India-watchers borrow their opinions from the Times of India or the Economic and Political Weekly, then they express these opinions in the New York Times or the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and finally, these same opinions are quoted in the same Indian media as authoritative endorsements by "independent" Westerners of their own positions. If a student has been over-awed by the apparent Western consensus in favour of the AIT, Prof. Rao was right to break the spell and to put the student with his feet back on the solid ground of self-reliance, esp. in a field where. Western indological opinion happens to be out of touch with the latest research. Indeed, in his article, Dr. Zydenbos himself unwittingly plays the same game of over-awing the Indians with references to Western indologists, viz. to K. V. Zvelebil, H. Kulke and D. Rothermund, as sheer arguments of authority. (11) Zydenbos refers to Zvelebil to support this statement: "That the Indus Valley people were Dravidians is an unproven hypothesis; but the real, as yet undeciphered writings of that civilization give more support to this hypothesis than to any other." In fact, the scholars working from the Dravidian hypothesis have, after decades of intensive labour, not conclusively deciphered a single line of the Indus writings, and Zvelebil admits as much: "[The Soviet scholars] have not convincingly deciphered even one single short Harappan description, and they have not been able to offer a verifiable reading of any Harappan text." (12) Of the other teams working on the decipherment, Zvelebil has no hard results to quote either, though he praises their (and the Soviet scholars') merits in structural analysis, preparing concordances etc. He does not mention a single definite and positive (non-circular) indication that the language on the Harappan seals is Dravidian. In Kulke and Rothermund's book A History of India "can be found in detail the up-to-date view concerning the Aryan migration, and confirming it", according to Zydenbos. in fact, their book does not confirm (with independent research findings) but merely restates the AIT, without refuting or even taking into account the research findings on which Prof. Rajaram and Prof. Rao base their case.


Nehru's testimony

Dr. Zydenbos sums up "a few interesting questions", starting with: "Why should leading, respected Indian scholars (and even Nehru, who can hardly be accused of being politically naive or a colonial collaborator) accept the idea of the migration, if it is as patently false as our author claims it is?" We forego the occasion of preparing a list of factual reasons why "leading, respected scholars" have been found to defend the wrong position on numerous occasions in history. The interesting term in the question is "colonial collaborator", which Nehru is claimed not to have been. In fact, while politically an anti-colonial campaigner, Jawaharlal Nehru was culturally the archetypal "collaborator" with colonialism and with the colonial view of India. Free India's first Prime Minister never properly mastered his native Hindustani language and like his father, he demanded from his relatives that they speak only English at the dinner table. He was in most cultural respects a typical colonial Englishman ("India's last Viceroy"), fully equipped with the concomitant disdain for Indian and particularly Hindu culture, of which he was 100% ignorant. About the Sanskrit traditions which provide the information relevant to the Aryan question, he knew strictly nothing (in spite of his hereditary caste title Pandit), and he could not possibly have written anything about it except what he had read in the standard English textbooks. This can easily be verified in his book 'The Discovery of India', which reads like the history chapter of a tourist guidebook, but which according to Dr. Zydenbos "in essence still holds good" in its picturesque description of the Aryan invasion. (13) Nehru shared with many contemporary establishment academics an ideological reason to welcome the AIT. Just as the British liked to flatter themselves with the idea that they had "created" India as a political unit, so Congress politicians liked to see Nehru as the "maker of India". (14) in this view, prior to Queen Victoria and Jawaharlal Nehru, no such cultural entity as "India" ever existed, merely a hunting-ground for ever new waves of invaders, starting with the Aryans. Nehru didn't mind such a past for India, because as a Leftist utopianist, he believed that a great future could be built on any national past, even a very depressing one. It must be said to his credit that from a vision of a fragmented and invasion-ridden India of the past, he did not deduce the impossibility of creating a united and prosperous India in the future, unlike contemporary casteists and separatists. It must also be admitted that other Indian leaders have accepted the idea of an Aryan invasion without being any the less patriotic for it. Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Arctic Home in the Vedas, 1903) and Hindu Mahasabha ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (Hindutva, 1923) had also interiorized the AIT, simply because it seemed hard to refute. To most English-educated Indians of their time, the prestige of Western scholarship was so overwhelming that it seemed quixotic to go against it. But it was not hard for them to combine patriotism with a belief in a fragmented and conflictual origin of their nation, 3,500 years ago. After all, most nations in the world are younger than that. The USA was built on broken treaties, slavery and genocide, only a few centuries ago, yet there exists a heartfelt and legitimate American patriotism. The strange thing is not that Tilak, Nehru and Savarkar could be Indian patriots all while believing in the AIT, but that Marxists and missionaries question the legitimacy of Indian nationhood on the basis of a theory pertaining to events thousands of years in the past.


From Harappa to Ayodhya

Dr. Zydenbos summons Prof. Rajaram to own up some responsibility for India's communal conflict: "Does he really not see the parallel between Nazi attacks on synagogues in the 1930s and what happened in Ayodhya on December 6th?" We would not have believed it, but it is there in cold print: an academic tries to score against a fellow academic by arbitrarily linking him with an event which had not yet taken place when the latter's paper was published, and with which he had strictly nothing to do, viz. the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. In a later paper, Prof. Rajaram has accepted the challenge: 'From Harappa to Ayodhya', read at the Indian institute of World Culture in Bangalore (4 September 1997), discusses the parallels between the historians' debates on the Indus-Saraswati civilization and on the temple/mosque in Ayodhya. He argues that "what the history establishment has done through the models it has proposed for both the ancient and the medieval periods is to exactly reverse the historical picture". (15) Most importantly, for the ancient period, Indian Marxist and other anti-Hindu historians posit a massive conflict (between Aryan invaders and natives) in spite of the total absence of either textual or archaeological evidence for such conflict; while for the medieval period, they wax eloquent about an idyllic "composite culture" and deny a massive conflict spanning centuries (viz. between Muslim invaders and Hindu natives), against the copiously available evidence for this conflict, both textual and archaeological. This observation is entirely correct: both ancient and medieval history have been rewritten in the sense of belittling and blackening Hindu civilization and extolling its enemies. As a Westerner I may add that in both cases, there has been a wholesale, painfully naive endorsement of the Indian Marxist line by Western India-watchers in academe as well as journalism. There are exceptions, mostly in the past, e.g. Fernand Braudel who described Muslim India as a "colonial experiment" which was "extremely violent". (16) Braudel explained: "India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence. (*) The Muslims (*) could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm, burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves." (17) Braudel was not a Hindu chauvinist, just a scholarly observer, but in today's climate, he would be blacklisted. While there is solid evidence that the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, rubble of which was used in the Masjid's construction, this fact has been denounced as "Hindu chauvinist propaganda", and an entirely fictional claim was upheld that the Masjid had been built on an uncontroversial site, so that there was of course no trace of evidence for a preceding temple demolition. (18) Indian Marxists could reasonably have taken the position that while the temple demolition was a historical fact, this was no reason for a counter-demolition today. However, inebriated by their power position, they went farther and denied the temple destruction altogether, against the evidence, thinking they could get away with it. As usual, they could count on their Western contacts to cover them: to my knowledge, not a single Western academic has critically examined the Indian Marxist claim that the historical temple demolition at the Babri Masjid site was Hindu chauvinist fiction. All of those who have actually written about the Ayodhya affair, have acted as amplifiers to the Indian Marxist propaganda, explicitly or implicitly defaming those Indian colleagues who stuck to the evidence that a Hindu temple at the controversial site had indeed been destroyed. One of these was Prof. B. B. Lal, one of the greatest living archaeologists, who has been attacked for his expert testimony about the demolished temple at the Babri Masjid site (e.g. in an editorial in the Marxist-controlled paper The Hindu) (19) as well as for his progressively more determined support to the identity or close kinship of Vedic and Harappan culture. (20) Indeed, on both sides in the Ayodhya debate and in the AIT debate, both in academic and journalistic platforms, we find the same names. Without conspicuous exception, those who fight for the AIT have also fought for the Ayodhya no-temple thesis (and more generally for the view that the Islamic occupation of India was benign), and those who fought for the demolished-temple thesis are now fighting for the Vedic-Harappan kinship. So, Dr. Zydenbos is right in positing a parallel between the Ayodhya and AIT debates, though perhaps it is not the parallel he intended.


The denial of history

As for an Indian counterpart to the Nazi attacks on synagogues, any Hindu worth his salt will definitely welcome the simile. The demolition of literally hundreds of thousands of Hindu places of worship (often along with their personnel and customers) by Muslims, from the first Arab invasion in AD 636 to the destruction of hundreds of temples in Pakistan and Bangladesh and the vandalization of twenty-odd Hindu temples in Britain in "retaliation" for the demolition of the Babri Masjid, is often described in Hindu pamphlets as a "Holocaust". I disapprove of the ease with which every crime is nowadays likened with the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes; but in the present debate, it is Dr. Zydenbos who has uninvitedly introduced Nazi references. While the erratic and violent manner in which the Babri Masjid was disposed of is certainly deplorable, there is something badly disproportionate in the holy indignation of so many India-watchers about the Ayodhya demolition, when you notice how it is combined with a stark indifference to the vastly larger and longer record of Islamic destruction in India (including a million Hindus killed by the Pakistani Army in East Bengal as late as 1971), often even with a negationist denial of that very record of Islam in India. Here again there is a parallel: informed Hindus are pained by the denial of their centuries of suffering at the hands of Islam, and are likewise pained by the denial of their millennia of civilization-building, a denial which goes by the name of Aryan Invasion Theory. There may yet be another point to Zydenbos's comparison between Nazi attacks on synagogues and the attacks on places of worship in India. The Islamic swordsmen considered Pagan temples as monuments of Jahiliyya, the Age of Ignorance, and they wanted to destroy them in order to stamp out this evil superstition of Paganism and all reminders of its history. In Islamic countries with a great pre-Islamic past, history courses in schools start with Mohammed, and pay minimal (if at all any) attention to the long and fascinating history of the Pharaohs, the Achaemenids or Mohenjodaro; the intention is to deny an unwanted, "impure" part of history. As recently as 1992, this rejection of history led to raids to the ruins of Buddhist temples in Afghanistan to deface any remaining Buddha statues; and in 1992 and 1997, bomb attacks were committed against the pharaonic temples of Karnak. One could arguably hold it against the demolishers of the Babri mosque that they too have tried to wipe out an unwanted chapter of Indian history embodied in the Islamic architecture of the temple building. Bad enough, but its relevance for our topic is this: for Indians, the AIT likewise implies the denial of a long stretch of Indian history. The AIT denies principally the history of the Solar and Lunar dynasties and other tribes living in Aryavarta (the area from Sindh to Bihar and from the Vindhyas to Kashmir), as covered in the Flu for a period from the dawn of proto-history to the 1st millennium BC. The major motifs (epics, artistic standards, schools of philosophy) of Indian civilization are embedded in that history, which is simply denied in its long pre-1500 BC phase, and vilified as merely the cultural superstructure of an ethnic subjugation of pre-Aryans by Aryans in its post-1500 BC phase.


Blood and soil

Dr. Zydenbos continues: "Why should it be so important that the Aryans, or the extremely remote ancestors of anyone in India for that matter, have been in the subcontinent since all eternity? That would come close to the Blut und Boden [blood and sod] ideology of Nazism, with its Aryan rhetoric. Why the xenophobia?" Accusing Prof. Rajaram of something "close to" Nazi ideology looks like an old trick to associate someone with Nazism without taking the responsibility for calling him a Nazi outright and risking a frontal rebuttal if not a court case. I wonder: how would he fare if he accused a Western colleague in the same vein in a Western paper, considering the extreme importance which academics attach to reputation? There, slurs against a colleague's scholarly integrity are normally made to backfire on the slanderer himself. At any rate, AIT defenders display a tendency to exceed the topic of debate and launch unwarranted attacks ad hominem. Favouring the idea that the "Aryan" ancestors of the contemporary Indians have lived in the subcontinent "since all eternity" is what Zydenbos dubs "xenophobic" and "close to the Blut und Boden ideology of Nazism with its Aryan rhetoric". Actually, the historians in the SS research department were inclined to embrace the theory that the Nordic Aryans originated in Atlantis, whence they had fled to northern Europe after the inundation of their homeland. Hitler's attachment was not to the German territory but to the German race, which was free to wander and colonize other lands. Then again, most ordinary Nazis who cared, tended to accept some variation of the European Urheimat Theory, locating their own Aryan ancestors in Germany itself or nearby, "just as" Hindus nowadays locate their Urheimat in or near India itself. However, it is not Rajaram's school of thought which has given political implications to the question of the geographical provenance of India's population. As we have seen, it is precisely the AIT which has been used systematically as a xenophobic political argument against those groups considered as the progeny of the "Aryan invaders". Even most AIT opponents subscribe to the prevalent theory that mankind probably originated in Africa, so that all Indians, like all Europeans, are ultimately immigrants. The ridiculous argument of doubting the legitimacy of a community's presence in India on the basis of an ancestral immigration of 3500 years ago has been launched in all seriousness by interest groups wielding the AIT as their major intellectual weapon, not by the critics of the AIT.

Nazis in India

As for the Nazi connection, let us at any rate be clear about an easily verifiable fact: in so far as the Nazis cared about Indian history, they favoured the AIT. On the AIT, not Rajaram but Zydenbos is in the same camp with Hitler. The only avowed Nazis in India, the Bengali scholar Dr. Asit Krishna Mukherji (ca. 1898-1977) and his French-Greek wife Dr. Maximiani Portas (Lyon 1905-Sible Hedingham, Essex, 1982) alias Savitri Devi Mukherji, had made the AIT itself the alpha and omega of their philosophy. (21) The one Indian who interpreted the AIT explanation of the Hindu caste system in Hitlerian terms, i.e. as a positive realization of the natural hierarchy between the races achieved by the conquering Nordic Aryans and imposed on the dark-skinned natives, was Asit Krishna Mukherji, "Brahmin conscious of his distant Nordic roots"(22) who published a pro-Hitler paper, the New Mercury, "the only truly Hitlerian paper ever to have appeared in India"(23), from 1935 until the British closed it down in 1937. He was instrumental in establishing the links between the Axis representatives and the leftist Congress leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who formed an Indian National Army (1943-45) under Japanese tutelage. His wife Savitri Devi cited with approval B. G. Tilak's version of the AIT, viz. that the Aryan tribes had come from the Arctic where they had composed the Rg-Veda. This erratic theory is inordinately popular among Western racists for providing "independent" Indian confirmation to a North-European Homeland Theory (in reality, Tilak had tried to bend the Vedic evidence, often ludicrously, to bring it in conformity with fashionable Western theories). (24) She also repeated the usual AIT annexe that the upper castes are Aryan immigrants, that the lower castes are largely and the tribals purely "aboriginals", a theory implicitly endorsed (see next para) by Dr. Zydenbos in this very article. (25) In fact, after reading her autobiography, "Memories and Reflexions of an Aryan Lady", there is not the slightest doubt left that for her and her husband, their belief in the AIT, along with their distortive reinterpretation of Hindu tradition in terms of the AIT, was the direct cause of their enthusiasm for Hitler. If Zydenbos shuns theories with Hitlerian connotations, he should drop the AIT at once. Indeed, the AIT happens to have the same historical roots as the race theories centred on white superiority which culminated in Nazi racism. in the 19th-century race theories, Indian civilization had to be the work of white people, who, like the modern Europeans, had colonized India by subjugating the dark natives; later, the mixing of the white Aryans (in spite of a belated attempt to preserve their purity through the caste system) with the dark natives caused the decline and "feminization" of the conquering Aryan culture, which invited a new conquest by Europeans taking up the "white man's burden" of bringing order and enlightenment to the dark-skinned people living in social, intellectual and spiritual darkness. The AIT was an essential part of this view, and Nazism a slight radicalization. While we let the topic of Nazism rest, we have to mention another "blood and soil" movement which has emerged in India, and again its basis was not Rajaram's denial of the AIT, but Zydenbos's AIT itself. The Dravidian movement, started with colonial and missionary funding and aid in 1916 (founding of the Justice Party in Madras, later renamed as Dravida Kazhagam) to counter the Freedom Movement, was based precisely on the AIT notion that the North Indians as well as the South Indian Brahmins were "Aryan invaders" who had stolen the land from the Dravidian natives. Militants of this movement roughed up Brahmins and Hindi-speaking people, and its leader Ramaswamy Naicker gained notoriety with statements like: "We will do with the Brahmins what Hitler did with the Jews." When the Chinese invasion of 1962 made Indians aware of the need for national unity, the demand for a separate Dravidian state was abandoned, and the anti-Brahmin drive lost its edge as Brahmin predominance in public office diminished. Meanwhile, the AIT-related doctrines of this movement have started a second life in a section of the Dalit (ex-Untouchable) movement, which attacks upper-caste people as "Aryan invaders", a notion which they could have borrowed directly from Dr. Zydenbos's article. Here again, slurs of "Nazism" against the supposed "Aryans" mask a vision of Indian society directly rooted in the very views which generated Nazism itself.


Aryans vs. Indians

The closing paragraph of "An obscurantist argument" reiterates the outdated notion that India's upper castes are the progeny of the "Aryan invaders" and pride themselves on it: "We can briefly sum up the 'Aryan problem' and the interest it creates among certain people as follows. Whatever problem is there, will not be solved by constructing a new bit of mythology on the theme of the evil foreign hand and the Indian academic community that is supposed to have no mind of its own. This has no basis in fact. Only certain people in certain castes who identify themselves strongly with the Aryans and pride themselves on being 'Aryan' rather than Indian, and thereby stress their difference from (and assume superiority to) other Indians, have a problem. As soon as the author [= N. S. Rajaram], and people of his ilk, make up their minds as to whether they are Indian or not, and whether they want to identify themselves with India and other Indians or not, the problem is solved." That the Indian academic community "has no mind of its own" has the following basis in fact: India has only just begun to decolonize at the intellectual level, and the view of Indian history instilled in the pupils of India's elite schools is still strictly the view inherited from colonial historiography. In another sense, however, the anglicized academic establishment certainly has a mind of its own: while the colonial British still had a condescending sympathy for native culture, the new elite is waging a war against it as a matter of cultural self-exorcism and of political class interest. It knows its own mind very well and has concluded that the AIT serves its interests better than a version of history which would boost native Indian self-respect. Of course, India is not the Soviet Union of Stalin's and Lysenko's days, so when the international academic opinion shifts away from the AIT, the Indian establishment will have to follow suit; but as long as the matter is in the balance, it throws its entire weight on the side of the AIT. If certain people in certain castes "pride themselves on being 'Aryan' rather than Indian", it means they have accepted the AIT, which posits the initial non-Indianness of the "Aryans" and identifies them with the upper castes. Of course, this view has no takers among traditionalist upper-caste Hindus, who pride themselves on being the progeny of the Vedic poets and epic heroes revered as the sources of Indian civilization. For them, it is not "Aryan rather than Indian", but "Arya, or Indian par excellence". Prof. Rajaram "and people of his ilk" have long made up their minds about whether they are Indian or not. That is why they feel strongly about the divisive effect to which the AIT has been used, first by interested outside forces (Zydenbos's sarcastic "evil foreign hand") who have tried to stress the difference- of the "Aryans" from other Indians as a weapon against native self-reassertion, and subsequently by sectional interest groups in India. Their first motive for arguing against the AIT is the sound academic consideration that it seems to bit contradicted by the evidence. And this evidence is not nullified at all by their secondary, political motive: the desire to stop the pernicious influence of the AIT on India's unity and integrity.

Footnotes:

1. Indian Express, 12-12-1993, in reply to a piece on a lecture by Prof. N. S. Rajaram, Indian Express, 14-11-1993, of which an expanded version constitutes the first chapter of Rajaram's book: Aryan Invasion of India, the Myth and the Truth, Voice of India, Delhi 1994.

2. Robert J. Zydenbos: "Virashaivism, caste, revolution, etc." , Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1997, p. 525-535, a review of the very Christian (and anti-Brahminical) look at the Virashaiva sect by Rev. J. P. Schouten: Revolution of the Mystics: On the Social Aspects of Virashaivism, Kok/Pharos, Kampen (Netherlands) 1991.

3. Apart from other works by Rajaram mentioned elsewhere, note also N. S. Rajaram: From Saraswati River to Indus Script, Diganta Sahitya, Mangalore 1998, an elaboration on the Sanskrit-based decipherment of the Indus script by N. Jha: Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals, Ganga Kaveri Publ. , Varanasi 1996.

4. Romila Thapar: "The Perennial Aryans", Seminar# 400 (1992).

5. Shrikant Talageri: The Rg-Veda, a Historical Analysis, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi, forthcoming.

6. It is as yet unclear whether in this consideration we should include the self-description of the Kalash Kafirs, the last semi-Vedic Pagans in the Hindu Kush mountains (unaffected by all the later developments in the Indian plains which now constitute Hinduism), as Arya-e-Koh, "Aryas of the mountains". Rather than authentic testimony, this could be the result of interiorizing theories learned from Western visitors.

7. E.g. Yoginder Sikand: "Exploding the Aryan myth", Observer of Business and Politics, 30-10-1993, discussed below.

8. Olivier Tramond: "Inde: le réveil identitaire de la droite", Le Choc du Mois, Sep. 1992.

9. N.S.Rajaram: The Politics of History, p. 98.

10. It is one of Mahatma Gandhi's achievements that "he made India safe for the white man", as the Indian Communists used to say around the time of Independence. Fact is that he must take credit for the friendly character of the decolonization of India, which led to the situation that Westerners who feel a strong hostility in countries like China and Malaysia, feel like honoured guests in India.

11. K. V. Zvelebil: Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction, Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture, 1990; and H. Kulke and D. Rothermund: A History of India, Rupa, Delhi 1991.

12. K. Zvelebil: Dravidian Linguistics, p. 90.

13. Dr. Zydenbos's use of Nehru as an argument of authority, along with his use of Indian English, has raised questions. A source inside the Indian Express office suspected that he had merely lent his name to an article by an Indian author. Zydenbos denied this when I asked him personally about it.

14. See e.g. M. J. Akbar: Nehru, the Making of India, Penguin 1992.

15. N. S. Rajaram: From Harappa to Ayodhya, Sahitya Sindhu Prakashana, Bangalore 1997, p. 6; emphasis in the original.

16. Fernand Braudel: A History of Civilizations, Penguin 1988 (1963), p. 236.

17. Fernand Braudel: A History of Civilizations, p. 232.

18. See K. Elst: "The Ayodhya debate", in G. Pollet, ed. : Indian Epic Values, Peeters, Leuven 1995, p-21-42; and K. Elst: "The Ayodhya demolition: an evaluation", in Swapan Dasgupta et al. : The Ayodhya Reference, Voice of India, Delhi 1995, p. 123-154.

19. "Tampering with history", editorial in The Hindu, 12-6-1998. B. B. Lal wrote a reply: "Facts of history cannot be altered", The Hindu, 1-7-1998.

20. B. B. Lal: New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books International, Delhi 1997.

21. About Savitri Devi and her husband, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Hitler's Priestess. Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism, New York University Press, 1998, a book full of details but suffering from the same basic misconceptions as Dr. Zydenbos' article and most Western writing on the "Hindu-Aryan" connection. Also see K. Elst: The Saffron Swastika, Voice of India, Delhi 1999.

22. Savitri Devi Mukherji: Souvenirs et Réflexions d'une Arjenne, Delhi 1976, p. 41.

23. Savitri Devi Mukherji: Souvenirs et Réflexions, p. 41.

24. Savitri Devi Mukherji: Souvenirs et Réflexions, p. 27 and p. 272, with reference to B. G. Tilak & Hermann Jacobi: Arctic Home in the Vedas, Pune 1903. Tilak and Jacobi had met after separately concluding that astronomical data in the Rg-Veda indicated its time of composition as ca. 4000 BC, see B. G. Tilak: Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, Pune 1893. A detailed and convincing refutation of Tilak's arguments for the polar homeland is given by N. R. Waradpande: "The Home of the Aryans: an Astronomical Approach", in S. B. Deo & Suryanath Kamath: The Aryan Problem, Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti, Pune 1993, p. 123-134, and in Shrikant Talageri: The Rg-Veda, a Historical Analysis, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, forthcoming.

25. Savitri Devi Mukherji: Souvenirs et Réflexions, p. 157.

[ManishH]

That feeling of haplessness is something I want to understand. Even the Greek, Romance, Germanic language families descend from this PIE; yet these people don't express the same feeling of being hijacked.

I've never heard a Greek say "I cannot accept that my beloved Greek language descends from a language spoken by pastoral people of Eurasia. Because that'll imply the 'locals are not up to the mark'".

It's not as if culture remains static.

Somehow there is a notion that Sanskrit was a static language. And the language of Vedas was "pure". It really wasn't, it has all the warts, irregularities and ambiguities of a spoken language. It wasn't until the standardization of Pāṇini that it acquired the scientific regularity.

Re: horse

How likely it is that inspite of Horse not being native to India, all of IE family has similar sounding words for the horse . Not only do these ancient Indians import the horse, but impose their horse vocabulary on almost all of IE world!

How likely is it that a people who import the horse, use symbolic imagery of the imported "animal" for their dearest Gods, instead of native animals:

- Agni - compared to a red horse
- Indra - his chariot has two tawny (hari) horses
- Maruts - again they ride steeds
- Asvins - carried by winged horses
- Surya - rides 7 horses

Why is the 'imported animal' horse called devajata (borne of Gods) ? Why build a mythology that Agni gave mankind the horse:
RV_05.006.03.1 agnir hi vājinaṃ viśe dadāti viśvacarṣaṇiḥ

... why pray to Agni for horses in the same breath as good sons/warriors ?
RV_05.006.10.2 dadhad asme suvīryam uta tyad āśvaśvyam

... why pray to Indra for good horses, good sons, good cattle ?
RV_08.012.33.1{06} suvīryaṃ svaśvyaṃ sugavyaṃ indra daddhi naḥ

We really don't beseech the Gods for things which are bought by trade. We beseech Gods for things that are born naturally.

[ManishH]

The MB is dated around 3200 BC with a continuous lineage of kings since then (we discussed this in Andhra thread w.r.t Sri Kota Venkatachalam garu). MB itself talks about many lines of lineage before that.

Lineage lists are worthless for historical chronology.

This is the same for long lineage lists in Bible and Torah. For a modern view on Myth and Genealogies, see Joseph Blenkinsopp in the book "Creation, Un-Creation, Re-creation: A Discursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11".

A genealogy serves the purpose of expressing and promoting the unity and cohesion of the group and its links with the past through descent from a common ancestor. It can be useful in verifying who belongs to the group and who may lay claim to superior rank and status within it. We would expect this function to be particularly in evidence in times of transition, crisis and general disorientation.

... A good example is the insistence on genealogical validation of membership in Israel in the years following the Babylonian conquest in the early 6th century BC.

Another device used to give credence to rulers is to write genealogies as if they are being prophesied by some ancient writer.

Megasthenes is quoted by Arrianus saying that court of Chandragupta already had record of 153 kings at 300 BC. Assuming ~18 years of reign per king, that'd place Pātliputra as a thriving city state in 3000 BC! Something not borne by archaeology of Gangetic Valley.

Ramayana is supposed to belong to a separate eon itself. Per the Manvantara system, Ramayana must have happened 1.9 crore years ago. Is it possible?

Let's distinguish between literary trope and reality. There was no kings and kingdoms in gangetic valley 1.9 crore years ago.

A yuga isn't literally elapsed X^Y years. It's more like a significant change in social value system.

[RajeshA]

That feeling of haplessness is something I want to understand. Even the Greek, Romance, Germanic language families descend from this PIE; yet these people don't express the same feeling of being hijacked.

I've never heard a Greek say "I cannot accept that my beloved Greek language descends from a language spoken by pastoral people of Eurasia. Because that'll imply the 'locals are not up to the mark'".

It's not as if culture remains static.

Somehow there is a notion that Sanskrit was a static language. And the language of Vedas was "pure". It really wasn't, it has all the warts, irregularities and ambiguities of a spoken language. It wasn't until the standardization of Pāṇini that it acquired the scientific regularity.

ManishH ji,

Europe is very comfortable with the issue of migrations. If one were to study the history of European migration, one could see how the various tribes have been moving and making various parts of Europe their home, until they too are pushed further by newer migrants. Deutches Historisches Museum in Berlin has an impressive animation on these movements of people.

European identity is based on tribe - subtribes, supratribes, race. Then it has received another coating of glue, keeping it together - Christianity. Later on came several more layers of identity-strengthening glue - common history, trade, wars, pacts, empires, unions, treaties.

For Indics, the basis for our unity has been different - common Sanskriti. And much of that Sanskriti is based on our Itihaas - Ramayana, Mahabharat. Our spiritual worldview has been interwoven with the sacredness of the land.

For any European, what sacred ever happened there? Almost nothing. To look for sacredness they look to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, etc. They tried to subdue that sacred land, they failed and they learned to live without it. They built an alternative center - Vatican. As Christianity was to be a universal religion to be spread by proselytizing, it really mattered little whether they lived on sacred land or elsewhere.

Hinduism however does not see itself as proselytizing. It may not be something for everybody. It needs its janambhoomi, its punyabhoomi.

Now AIT comes along and claims that India is not Dharma's janambhoomi. Here Hinduism feels, "we are not going around taking away other people's homes, so you leave ours alone"!

Also in Europe, there is no conflict between those who inhabited Europe or a particular land earlier, and who inhabit it now. Serbia and Kosovo is of course there, but that conflict is not ancient. In India, with people with multiple identities living here since times immemorial, a non-native tag suffices to create narratives of oppression and victimization, especially if financed by foreign interests.

The Horse and the 'Aryans'

Re: horse

How likely it is that inspite of Horse not being native to India, all of IE family has similar sounding words for the horse . Not only do these ancient Indians import the horse, but impose their horse vocabulary on almost all of IE world!

Indians were able to push through their vocabulary for two reasons
1) Not the Horse was Indian, but because the Technology going with the Horse was Indian - rath, and thus the Indian word for horse came into use.

2) There was some mechanism through which Indic languages - proto-Sanskrit, Prakrits came to be spoken by a wide variety of peoples across Eurasia. We can speculate on those mechanism another time. If the knowledge of the Horse among Indians was from a very early era, even before the composition of Rigveda, in the same way would the 'horse' as the name of the animal, have spread among the IE people.

How likely is it that a people who import the horse, use symbolic imagery of the imported "animal" for their dearest Gods, instead of native animals:

- Agni - compared to a red horse
- Indra - his chariot has two tawny (hari) horses
- Maruts - again they ride steeds
- Asvins - carried by winged horses
- Surya - rides 7 horses

There is no denying that the Vedic people had deep respect for the Horse, even if it was imported.

Most European royal houses display a lion in their coat of arms somewhere, even though the Europeans haven't seen a lion in Europe for the last 10,000 years and even then it was still another kind of beast.

One just needs to look at the horse to know its beauty, its grace, its speed, its maneuverability.

In fact, the very rarity of the Horse made it a much prized commodity, and the Vedic people were willing to grace their gods with their most prized possessions.

I would say, one even tends to fantasize and romanticize a lot more about things that aren't really in one's immediate environment, e.g. the winged horse, which too seems to be a IE myth, possibly an Indian export. One often imagines the wonders lying in far away lands. The Greeks for example used to imagine that the unicorn came from India. If the Horse was native to the pre-Vedic 'Aryans', they would have loved the horse a lot more, but would know that there aren't any flying horses.

We Indians may have Gods with animal attributes, but we don't have fantastical creatures based on our native macrofauna. There aren't flying elephants, for example.

Why is the 'imported animal' horse called devajata (borne of Gods) ? Why build a mythology that Agni gave mankind the horse:
RV_05.006.03.1 agnir hi vājinaṃ viśe dadāti viśvacarṣaṇiḥ

This could have something to do with the horse symbolizing energy. Sri Aurobindo too thought that the horse symbolizes energy in the Vedas.

The horse was also used to symbolize the Sun. Considering that the Sun is a disc which moves through the sky, and the only (or one of the few) earthly counterpart to that perhaps is the chariot-wheel, it is understandable why one would associate the sun with the horse.

... why pray to Agni for horses in the same breath as good sons/warriors ?
RV_05.006.10.2 dadhad asme suvīryam uta tyad āśvaśvyam

... why pray to Indra for good horses, good sons, good cattle ?
RV_08.012.33.1{06} suvīryaṃ svaśvyaṃ sugavyaṃ indra daddhi naḥ

We really don't beseech the Gods for things which are bought by trade. We beseech Gods for things that are born naturally.

Well actually the trade in horses was important simply because the breeding of horses in India itself was not very successful.

Rajas which could not import these horses easily from the Central Asian Steppes, for them their breeding programs were even more important.

Asking the Gods for good horses from their breeding programs, I presume, would be logical. After all those horses were in the future to be used to pull the chariots of the royalty.

[RajeshA]

Online Book

Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate
Publication Date: August 1999
By Koenraad Elst

Good way to start!

[member_22872]

The video above says the recovered artifacts from sea date back to 32000 years and the city submerged some 9000 years back with a mix of alien technology thrown in as well. Just wondering is it possible to carbon date a stone/rock?

Yogi_G ji, in of the videos Above, it is commented that C14 dating was already done for the artifacts and the results published in a journal article, the artifacts date corresponds to 7500 BP.

But I agree, talking of antiquity and alien technology has the reverse effect, even if the dates are correct, UFOs visiting etc makes the facts look silly and more towards fantasy.

[member_20317]

ManishH ji

Re. “I've never heard a Greek say "I cannot accept that my beloved Greek language descends from a language spoken by pastoral people of Eurasia. Because that'll imply the 'locals are not up to the mark'".

But that is a Greek problem. Why should Indians be made to confirm to it. Greeks are not a Karmic society. They don’t ‘need’ any Itihaas for their belief system. It is a Karmic society that believes in earlier actions having a bearing in the present and both having a bearing on future and that is why we need to understand what purpose we have served in our past to better deliver in future.

Re: horse
How likely it is that inspite of Horse not being native to India, all of IE family has similar sounding words for the horse [b/]. Not only do these ancient Indians import the horse, but impose their horse vocabulary on almost all of IE world!
How likely is it that a people who import the horse, use symbolic imagery of the imported "animal"[b/] for their dearest Gods, instead of native animals:

Sir I have never read the Ancient Hindu Scriptures. But I really really doubt that Horse was used in symbolic imagery ‘instead’ of native animals. Kindly mark the word ‘instead’, because to my understanding usage of Horse would most likely have been ‘in addition to’ and ‘never in derogation of’ the other esteemed animals . How about Peacock, Lions, Unicorns. Varaha-avtaar is the God himself, albeit in a later period but surely in a period which was the organic development of the same Vedic culture.

Why is the 'imported animal' horse called devajata (borne of Gods) ? Why build a mythology that Agni gave mankind the horse:
... why pray to Agni for horses in the same breath as good sons/warriors ?
... why pray to Indra for good horses, good sons, good cattle ?
RV_08.012.33.1{06} suvīryaṃ svaśvyaṃ sugavyaṃ indra daddhi naḥ
We really don't beseech the Gods for things which are bought by trade. We beseech Gods for things that are born naturally.

Bhai sahib, Baniyas pray for better business all their lives. Farmers pray for better prices for their produce. Hell I am a rajput and have prayed for a positive outcome on the Stock Market and every Tuesday and Saturday I formally pray for a great economy and great defence for my country even going to the extent of praying specifically for whatever I think is the best defence technology. People pray for their sons/daughters good job prospects. Even otherwise, leaving aside the prayer aspect, I have seen Hanuman ji danglers on cars. Ganesha in strange anachronistic clothing. Ram actually being worshiped while being alive for about 9 days and then forgotten like he was nobody the very 10th day. Again these are marks being left by society that finds itself in easy comfort with much earlier times.

I may be alone here but most of your assumptions are really not matching with the practices that we observe daily. Unless of course you are suggesting that people in Rig Vedic times were in some way different from people thereafter and these developments are all Linear with no Cyclical behavior involved at all. Its almost as if you want to draw some unseen line between ‘Sacred’ and ‘Secular’ and then wish that the Rig Vedics would do the same.

[RajeshA]

Koenraad Elst's Out-of-India Model

The emerging alternative to the Aryan Invasion Theory may be summarized as follows. In the 6th millennium BC, the Proto-Indo-Europeans were living in what is now Panjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, speaking a variety of mutually comprehensible dialects, and tending cattle as well as practising agriculture. Due to demographic growth, internal conflicts and the occasional economic crisis, some of them moved out through the Khyber pass to Margiana and Bactria, which was to remain a frontier zone of Indian culture for millennia. From there, some of them moved on to the Caspian coast, while others moved east to become the Tokharians. During this stay in Central Asia, they adapted to the local way of life, growing millet and domesticating the horse, a skill which was soon communicated back to the motherland. The group which separated earliest from the rest was the one which took the oldest form of the IE language along: we encounter them by 2,000 BC in Anatolia.

The next move of the IE settlers in Central Asia, by 4,500 BC, brought them across the Urals and the Volga into Europe. By internal development and because of interaction with ever new native populations, their dialects changed and differentiated. Expanding ever more westward and southward, they broke into the Old European civilization of the Balkans and overran Anatolia. Another group developed its own distinctive culture in northern Central Europe, and was poised to overrun Western Europe and the British Isles.

Meanwhile in India, civilization made great strides, writing was invented ca. 3,500 BC (unfortunately too late for the emigrants to take along), astronomy perfected, cities built of ever greater urbanistic quality. The language, still spoken only in a limited area, had developed the characteristic traits of Indo-Iranian, except in some outlying regions where older forms of IE were preserved, among them Proto-Bangani. Priests composed hymns to the gods and learned the hymns composed by their teachers and colleagues by heart, accumulating a tradition known as Veda.

In the northern Indus basin, the Indo-Iranians started fighting amongst each other, and one result was that several factions followed the beaten track to Afghanistan and beyond. We meet them in history as the Iranians, who had built strongholds in Bactria whence their adventurers trekked north and then east as well as west, turning the whole of Central Asia into an Iranian Lebensraum; much later, they also conquered the countries to the west and southwest as far as Mesopotamia. They often clashed with the Indians, who had just reached the apogee of civilization with their large and numerous well-planned cities, and who tried to gain control over the Afghan mining centres. Later, perhaps already as a result of the crisis which sounded the death-knell of the magnificiant Harappan cities, more people migrated from India to become the West-Asian Indo-Aryans. Having moved through Margiana to the south side of the Caspian Sea, they mixed with Hurrites, Kassites and others, and pushed as far west as Palestine, making their mark for a few centuries (18th-12th century BC) in different parts of West Asia before disappearing through assimilation,

In the southern Indus-Saraswati basin, the Indo-Aryans met the Dravidians whom they assimilated. However, Dravidian language and culture were preserved thanks to Dravidian colonists who had started settling in the south, in their turn assimilating the Veddoid and other native tribals. In a parallel movement, Indo-Aryans were colonizing India’s interior, assimilating the tribals they encountered, except in the less accessible corners where they left them to their traditional way of life. This movement from the northwest to the rest of India accelerated with the decline of the Harappan cities, yielding essentially the very distribution of languages over the Indian territory which exists till today.

This model will certainly need amendments and corrections, but it is better able to explain the data than the dominant Kurgan-to-India invasionist model.

[rkirankr]

Out of India is all fine, but just a new bee question, 30 years from now let us say, out of India is accepted and AIT discarded in dustbin. So the west says, look we did not colonize you, we just returned to our roots and gave you guys the gyan , technology vagera, vagera. We acquired knowledge by moving out and hence superior to you guys who stayed put. Some thing like some of NRIs who have a penchant for advising India on every subject from how to run a govt to how to pee.
So has anyone thought about it? How are we going to protect our future generations from self hating (whether AIT or OIT)?

[svenkat]

del

[RamaY]

Some kutarka -

What if Indics accept the AIT and demands that
1 - The west denounces Abrahamic faiths and returns back to their Vedic roots.
2 - Since Indics are the successors of ancient aryans, they should hold the leadership positions in the transformation of west back to its aryan roots.
3 - That Indic society, being the custodian of Vedic knowledge, must be given political and social space
4 - That Vedic varna-ashrama system is replicated all over western hemisphere (Devi Bhagavatam gives the names of Chatur-varnas in each of the sapta/seven dweepas/continents).

[RajeshA]

RajeshAji,

As per your theory,What should it matter to 'people' outside Punjab,Haryana,Western UP whether 'Aryans' came from Central Asia or went out of India?

For the ''people'' of CentralUP,Eastern UP,Uttarakhand,HP,Bihar,Bengal,Odisha,Assam,the tribal tracts of Central India,MP,Gujarat,Andhra,TN,Kerala,KA,Maharashtra the 'Aryans' still came from 'outside'.

svenkat ji,

that is a good question! However when we pose it, we make some assumptions, which have been drilled into us from the Europeans.
1) Semantically speaking, the whole issue of 'Aryans' is distracting. Maybe 7000-9000 years ago 'Arya' were only those from the Puru clan. And I say, "May be"! I don't know!

But 'Arya' has been more of a 'descriptive' word, used to denote anybody who was willing to live by the noble ideas as revealed to the ṛshis - the Vedas, and thus himself become noble. So it was an open club.

2) Racially speaking, even if there were other tribes beside those of the Purus, from among whom the composition of the Vedas may have started, it does not preclude that they had a common ancestry with the other tribes in the Indian Subcontinent, going back to 10,000 of years when man arrived in the Indian Subcontinent. During the whole duration, there must have been trade and marital relations between the neighboring tribes, forming a [n * (n - 1) / 2] net or a somewhat less version of it. Today one speaks of only Ancestral North Indian (ANI) group and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI) group. Both of these components are pretty much even distributed among all Indians.

3) Religiously speaking, the Vedic Civilization spread in a manner in which there was philosophical dialogue among the ṛshis of various tribes, but it allowed the preservation of native customs and native deities. The model of expansion of Vedic beliefs was neither destructive of native cultures, otherwise we would not have the plurality and diversity we see today; nor was it under compulsion, otherwise those memes would have survived. It was not a uni-directional expansion but a mutual enrichment process.

So if we today see it as me vs you, "Aryan" vs "Dravidian", etc. and try to project our sense of identity and identity conflict to that era, we may just end up mischaracterizing the great adventure that was the creation of a unified civilization spanning from Baluchistan to Burma, Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

[member_22872]

deleted.

[svinayak]

svenkat wrote:
RajeshAji,

As per your theory,What should it matter to 'people' outside Punjab,Haryana,Western UP whether 'Aryans' came from Central Asia or went out of India?

For the ''people'' of CentralUP,Eastern UP,Uttarakhand,HP,Bihar,Bengal,Odisha,Assam,the tribal tracts of Central India,MP,Gujarat,Andhra,TN,Kerala,KA,Maharashtra the 'Aryans' still came from 'outside'.

Was Tami Nadu , Andra states and others were there during the vedic times in Bharat?

Was the social engineered 'people' were residing inside India.

[RajeshA]

Some kutarka -

What if Indics accept the AIT and demands that
1 - The west denounces Abrahamic faiths and returns back to their Vedic roots.
2 - Since Indics are the successors of ancient aryans, they should hold the leadership positions in the transformation of west back to its aryan roots.
3 - That Indic society, being the custodian of Vedic knowledge, must be given political and social space
4 - That Vedic varna-ashrama system is replicated all over western hemisphere (Devi Bhagavatam gives the names of Chatur-varnas in each of the sapta/seven dweepas/continents).

If Indians accept AIT, none of what you mentions follows from that.

One part of the Aryans moved to Europe, another group moved to India and wrote the Rigveda. How does that allow the Indics to dictate the narrative of all the Indo-Europeans.

However if OIT is accepted, then India would represent the linguistic homeland of the Europeans, and give us more leverage to define the historical and cultural narrative in Europe.

[member_22872]

RajeshA garu and ManishH garu:

I tried to get references to RigVedas being composed outside India in terms of journal article, but I am not able to, may be I not good at locating such journal articles through google, but in one the videos skalkibhagwan ji had posted, the commentator made a reference to AIT theorists claim that Rig Veda being composed by Aryans and being brought into India. Secondly, I read AIT theorists questioning the authorship of Rig veda by native Indians, to which, the answer was given that no where in Rig veda, the fauna and flora mentioned were foreign and all the references of such are actually found in India...so there is a notion among AIT vadins that Rig Veda wasn't composed in vedic India.

[svenkat]

RajeshAji,venugji,
I wish now that I had not stepped on this minefield.I am deleting my post.You can delete yours too.

[Theo_Fidel]

Technically this would be a Hypothesis. A Theory is close to scientific truth.

This Hypothesis must fit Genetic and Acheological evidence. That is the only thing that will change the western narrative.

[member_22872]

^^ Of which genetics is beyond common man's comprehension(even archaeology for that matter), hence can always be hijacked, twisted and lied about, hence OIT or any theory based on veracity but leaning towards Indian identity remain contentious, unless a stand is taken and educated on a massive scale.

[RajeshA]

Svenkat ji,

Culturally all the areas of India which are more or less Vedic or pre-Vedic but still having common motifs etc at that time, thus can be called Hindavasanskriti, then where is the question of anyone being an outsider? outsider concept is with respect to a culturally different people trying to colonize another region, but in this case, can we apply that definition?

Well said.

Indian Subcontinent is one unit, where people have always known how to treat the other - with respect and affection.

[RajeshA]

Of which genetics is beyond common man's comprehension(even archaeology for that matter), hence can always be hijacked, twisted and lied about, hence OIT or any theory based on veracity but leaning towards Indian identity remain contentious, unless a stand is taken and educated on a massive scale.

OIT would become the new standard.

As India rises, West would have ever less hesitation to associate itself with India.

The way to proceed is for India to put more money where our interests lie. We need to first win the debate among Indian scholars. Those who agree with OIT get the privileges, those who don't are simply ignored and their money gets cut. Then we finance a few seats in a few academic institutes in the West for professors who support OIT. Then we start holding seminars and sending out invitations to such scholars, putting them up in 5-star hotels. And then we repeat this.

What we need is more and more scholars in the West speaking out in favor of OIT. The fruits would be many!

[vishvak]

Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!
Inaugural Address delivered at the 19th International Conference on South Asian Archaeology, held at University of Bologna, Ravenna, Italy on July 2-6, 2007.
Presentation by B. B. Lal.

A review of book The Sarasvati Flows On: The Continuity of Indian Culture (2002) by B. B. Lal.
The sheer depths of Indian Civilisation

[Theo_Fidel]

The way to proceed is for India to put more money where our interests lie. We need to first win the debate among Indian scholars. Those who agree with OIT get the privileges, those who don't are simply ignored and their money gets cut. Then we finance a few seats in a few academic institutes in the West for professors who support OIT. Then we start holding seminars and sending out invitations to such scholars, putting them up in 5-star hotels. And then we repeat this.

This is perilously close to dogma. People are attracted to and research open fields where scientific contribution can be made. There is enough evidence for a far more complex origin history including genetic and cultural knowledge transfer. Such harsh measures are not necessary. OIT is part of the bigger story. And is a lot more fertile and fascinating than AIT.

Much about the genetics is known but is not common knowledge. Perhaps popularizing the genetic evidence with a bent towards India would help. We need an Indian 'History Channel'.

Let us not forget we are all Africans and definitely came from Africa. Most of present technology from fire to weaponry to language and culture was exported from Africa. Lines should not be drawn through dates.
----------------------------------------------------

Was Tami Nadu , Andra states and others were there during the vedic times in Bharat?

Hard to know about culture but the language far predates the script which came in the 2 Century BCE or so.

Genetically modern lines in the South are at least 30,000 years old. Far predates the vedas unless oral tradition persisted so long. It even far predates Meluha. Even the R1a line in North are 20,000 years plus old. If there was an invasion it far predates Meluha. Maternal lines are even older, 60,000 years+ old.

Even calling for Vedic dates, unfortunately discredits the true age of Indian Genetic lines.

[ShyamSP]

Much about the genetics is known but is not common knowledge. Perhaps popularizing the genetic evidence with a bent towards India would help. We need an Indian 'History Channel'.

Let us not forget we are all Africans and definitely came from Africa. Most of present technology from fire to weaponry to language and culture was exported from Africa. Lines should not be drawn through dates.

I may have missed some studies in recent years.

Is highlighted proven beyond doubt? It certainly make sense as genetic origins are traced to Africa and human body is designed for tropical environment.

Genetic theory by OOA proponents use big-bang theory style origin and expansion model. Are these tree-like models accurate and no alternative interpretation exists such as evolution at different places? Even languages are boxed with tree-like model with less alternative explanations.

[member_22872]

Oppenheimer's genetic studies so far supports out of Africa theory.

[Theo_Fidel]

Are these tree-like models accurate and no alternative interpretation exists such as evolution at different places? Even languages are boxed with tree-like model with less alternative explanations.

AFAIK there are no tree like models.

Many migrations took place OOA but only two have left traceable genetic signatures. All others must have died out. The only two that have persisted genetically, both came through India. The second one dawdled in India for a while before heading off to Central Asia. It should be pointed out that several separate OOA migrations to the middle east were recorded. All died out presumably during climatic changes.

Oddest of all, Western Africa shows strong evidence for Indo-European genetic lines. The Bantu for instance are lactose tolerant. The Tamarind tree, Silk cotton tree, Okra, Millet and castor beans all came from West Africa to India in pre-historic times. Genetics show that older tribal groups in India and amongst certain African groups may have shared a common ancestor.
--------------------------------------------------------------

For instance, take a look at Haplogroup T. The oldest Genetic lines of this group reside in India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_T_%28Y-DNA%29

There are hundreds of such ancient genetic lines with origins in India.

[Bade]

The biggest supporting evidence for OOA is perhaps the largest genetic variety in the population there. More the variation within a group, then very likely that the group is more ancestral to all other existing ones.

One can recursively argue along similar lines for all other groups and its relationship hierarchy with one another.