Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[RajeshA]

Perhaps you may like to comment on theories of Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan, which do not kick the Sanskrit speakers beyond Indian borders!

If you do not find any, one reason may be that Parpola may be a AIT-Nazi and Mahadevan simply playing to the phenomenon of Tamil victim-chauvinism, which is based on circular reasoning - "Aryans" pushed the "Dravidians" out of IVC, so IVC is based on "Dravidian" society and as one founds some "Dravidian" indicators there, it must be true that "Aryans" pushed "Dravidians" out, and all the glory for the highly developed Indus Valley Civilization belongs to Tamils alone!

If their views differs from such a stand, please do enlighten us!

[KLP Dubey]

KPL Dubey ji,

Could you perhaps have a look at the following possible view, and see if that is allowed from your perspective? Thank you!

I am not "disallowing" anything. We are living in a free society wherein buffoonery is allowed.

Here are my suggestions to the Rakshaks:

- Read the RV from one end to the other. From "agnimile" to "susahasati". Or backwards if you want to. It does not matter. The "meanings" are irrelevant, but if you want to feel more comfortable you can have the nirukta and nighantu at your side, and perhaps even a "translation" or two, just to understand how ridiculous all these translations and Sanskrit word-assignments are.

- Once you are familiar with the sounds, begin to memorize and reproduce them. Use the pratishakhya to remove all doubt. Whichever part of Bharat you are from , erase the defects of your "vernacular" accent and pronounce all syllables correctly and impersonally. Nowadays the entire RV recitations are available online due to the efforts of many pandits.

- Try this for one year. Now you are really protecting the Veda and the Bharatiya sanskrti.

- Then you will likely find that AIT/AMT/OIT etc are totally irrelevant tomfoolery and a playground of quacks.

- Tell others to follow the above (like I am telling you now). When thousands of people begin doing this, then the Bharatiya sanskrti is protected. Humans will still maintain their connection with the Veda. And you will not give a damn about AIT and OIT. They will fade away automatically.

- If you insist, refute the AIT/AMT by proving how ridiculous and false it all is. But do not feel the need to refute them with your own pet (and equally nonsensical) theories about "date" of Rgveda etc.

Best Wishes,

KL

[member_23630]

Dear Thread-Lovers,

I would like to urge everybody to not indulge in either name-calling or creating psychological profiles of other BRF members. This thread deserves better than to be a repository of psycho-analysis of individual members. For someone to be worthy of psycho-analysis one has to have accomplished much more in their lives and made a bigger name for themselves outside BRF like the worthies of Harvard and who are given considerations for Padma Bhushans for their stellar work in derecognizing Indian achievements.

We here on BRF are SDRE nobodies and therefore do not deserve to be made the subjects of psycho-analysis on this thread. This thread is there to honor those who have a name outside BRF!

The 'official' position is that anybody without a worthy resumé obtained outside BRF posting here is neither AIT-Nazi or AIT-Sepoy! AIT-Nazis would not dare post here , because they may lose their chaddi. Any BRFite posting here who is less than convinced of the "Indigenist"/OIT position, is simply that.

AIT-Nazis and AIT-Sepoys have been spreading so much AIT-Maya in India for so long, that it is to be expected that many Indians would be convinced of the AIT-position. This is not necessary culpability in the AIT-agenda. To be harsh, it is simply an affliction, and perhaps we can help cure our inquisitive visitors of it. Most probably we wouldn't, and even if we can't many passive readers may profit from the gyaan posted here.

Thanks for your cooperation!

Thank you, RajeshA-ji. It is very helpful to have some air-cover.

[member_23630]

SN_Rajan ji,

welcome to the thread and thanks for your fresh look at it!

1) From your posts, I have the impression that you are presuming we have not gone into the various arguments that the AIT-Nazis throw at us. I would urge you to read through the thread and if you see something which has gone unanswered please do point it out! You are welcome to ask for help if you are not making progress in your search here.

2) Please desist from making any untoward innuendos towards the believers in Indigenism or OIT! I would urge you to stick to the subject matter and debate it with a more serious disposition. Light banter is however welcome!

2) Quoting Wikipedia here is really useless as on controversial issues it is more a meter for activism than any objective study. However Wikipedia itself refers to various studies and articles and we are here more than willing to discuss them as long as they have not been discussed previously thread-bare.

3) Arjun ji has summarized the reasons why some people have earned themselves the epithets AIT-Nazis and AIT-Sepoys! They have been calling anti-AIT stance by various names - Hindu fundamentalists, Hindu fascists, Hindu nationalists, Hindutvavadis, etc and thus ignoring all arguments coming from the Indigenist/OIT-camp. and they have been doing this for quite some time now. They have drawn first blood. So it is time they themselves also receive some honors from us!

Yes, RajeshA-ji, understood and agreed. Will try what i can - again, i am nobody - just googling around and trying to see both sides.

Of course, i will also ask for help as needed. that will make discussions more educative for all of us.

Firstly, can we bring back ManishH somehow please

[member_23630]

Perhaps you may like to comment on theories of Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan, which do not kick the Sanskrit speakers beyond Indian borders!

If you do not find any, one reason may be that Parpola may be a AIT-Nazi and Mahadevan simply playing to the phenomenon of Tamil victim-chauvinism, which is based on circular reasoning - "Aryans" pushed the "Dravidians" out of IVC, so IVC is based on "Dravidian" society and as one founds some "Dravidian" indicators there, it must be true that "Aryans" pushed "Dravidians" out, and all the glory for the highly developed Indus Valley Civilization belongs to Tamils alone!

If their views differs from such a stand, please do enlighten us!

Hm, in fact, this is what exactly i am objecting to - subjective assessments, pisko analysis of victim hood. How does matter if Mahadevan is suffering from Victim hood in the fact-finding of IVC and RV relationship. Why can't he accuse back us saying we are suffering from Migrant victim-hood! We say Witzel is Nazi, and he says we are Hindutvadis. Full blame game on and on, and totally unproductive.

I see you said it is okay to do this for people who are, let's say, recognized in their/some field, but, then, qualify of discussion suffers and degenerates as whole putting off people like me.

Why don't we all please just stick to 'objective' assessments only, and leave all Pisko business to BENIS-like threads.

[member_23630]

Rajan ji, given your faith in pir reviewed scientific jernails, I assume that they translated IVC script

i see that deciphering is not yet done - and i also see the challange/bet by Farmer: http://www.safarmer.com/indus/prize.html

i doubt if it can ever be fully deciphered - statistically "insufficient data" is the main issue in my view.

anyways, even without 'full decipherment' of so-called script, or symboles, and there is tons and tons Archeological data, and 'best advice/view' on this from the IVC guru Parpola as follows:

Quoting from http://www.harappa.com/script/parpola6.html

6. Sanskrit or Dravidian?

Many hypotheses have been put forward about the affinity of the Indus language, but only two alternatives have had wider support.

Indo-Aryan languages have been spoken in the area once occupied by the Indus civilisation and gradually all over North India since at least 1000 B.C. It is natural to assume that they were spoken there even earlier. Speakers of Hindi, Bengali and other Neo-Indo-Aryan languages especially have been prone to interpret the Indus texts as Sanskrit (understood in the broad sense of Old Indo-Aryan), from which their own mother tongues have evolved.

The Sanskrit hypothesis, however, is difficult to reconcile chronologically with the date of the Indus civilisation (about the second half of the third millennium B.C.) and antecedent Early Harappan neolithic cultures which were responsible for its creation. Comparison of the Vedic texts with the Avesta and with the West Asian documents relating to the Aryan kings of Mitanni suggests that the Vedic Aryans entered the Indian subcontinent from Northeast Iran and Central Asia in the second millennium B.C.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the early Aryans were nomads and that the horse played a dominent role in their culture, as it did in the culture of their Proto-Indo-European-speaking ancestors. The horse is conspicuously absent from the many realistic representations of animals in the art of the Indus civilisation. Comprehensive recent bone analyses have yielded the conclusion that the horse was introduced to the subcontinent around the beginning of the second millennium B.C.

Horse-drawn chariots made the Aryan-speaking nomads a superior military force which gradually subdued all of North India. Numerically the early Aryans can have been only a fraction of the Indus population, which is estimated to have been about five million. Obviously these millions of people were not all killed; they were made to acknowledge the Aryan overlordship and to pay taxes. In the course of time and through gradually increasing bilingualism, the earlier population eventually became linguistically assimilated. It is most unlikely that this process of linguistic Aryanization happened without leaving clear marks of the earlier substratum language upon Indo-Aryan.

There are several structural and lexical Dravidisms even in the Rgveda, the earliest preserved text collection, pointing to the presence of Dravidian speakers in Northwest India in the second millennium B.C. The 25 Dravidian languages spoken at present form the second largest linguistic family of South Asia. Until recently, about one quarter of the entire population has spoken Dravidian, while the speakers of Austro-Asiatic, the third largest linguistic family of long standing in South Asia, numbered just a few per cent. The Indus language is likely to have belonged to the North Dravidian sub-branch represented today by the Brahui, spoken in the mountain valleys and plateaus of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the core area of the Early Harappan neolithic cultures, and by the Kurukh spoken in North India from Nepal and Madhya Pradesh to Orissa, Bengal and Assam.

[member_23630]

Or, we will go by, Witzel & co, as it seems the logical that IE people are different from IVC, and IE were nomadic migrants coming later.

Ranajanji, I am interested to know your logic behind this conclusion. It is obvious that people who wrote Rigveda did not describe IVC. Lets also assume that they were after IVC. How do you conclude that they were migrant? How do you know that IVC were not IE people predating Rigveda? Can you explain it without first assuming that IE came to India from Kurgan?

UKumar-Ji,

While i don't fully understand all the intricacies as a non-expert, as curious one looking for ther side view: Witzel points out many of the new 'innovations' that have happened that could not have happened locally / spontaneously, i.e., there was indeed a migration.

Quoting section 8 from http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewi ... VS-7-3.pdf

§8. Immigration
Immigration, however, has often been denied in India especially during the past two
decades, and more recently also by some western archaeologists. How likely is an immigration
scenario on the basis of comparable cases from Indian and non-Indian history? Leaving aside
the prehistoric migrations starting with the move of Homo Sapiens 'Out of Africa' some
50,000 years ago, we actually do know that one group after the other has entered the Indian
subcontinent, as immigrants or as invaders, in historical times. They include tribal groups
such as the Saka, the Yue Ji (Tukhara), Kushana, Abhīra, Gurjara as well as large armies, such
as those of Darius' Persians, of Alexander's and the Bactrian Greeks in the first mill. BCE, of
both the Chinese via Tibet, Ladakh and Nepal, and the Arabs into Sindh in the 7-8th c. CE;
further the Ahom Tai in Assam, and the Huns, Turks, Moghuls, Iranians, and Afghans via the
northwestern passes in the first and second mill. CE. In addition, small-scale semi-annual
transhumance movements between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands
continue to this day (Witzel 1995: 322, 2000). Why, then, should all immigration, or even
mere transhumance trickling in, be excluded in the single case of the Indo-Aryans, especially
when the linguistic evidence, below §10 sqq., so clearly speaks for it? Just one "Afghan" Indo-
Aryan tribe that did not return to the highlands but stayed in their Panjab winter quarters in
spring was needed to set off a wave of acculturation in the plains, by transmitting its 'status kit'
(Ehret) to its neighbors.27 The vehement denial of any such possibility (see below §11 sqq) is
simply unreasonable, given the frequency of movements, large and small, into South Asia via
the northwestern corridors.
The important, clinching factor (§ 10) to decide the question is the following: the
Indo-Aryans, as described in the RV, represent something definitely new in the subcontinent.
Both their spiritual and much of their material culture are new; these and their language link
them to the areas west and northwest of the subcontinent, and to some extent beyond, to the
Ural area and to S. Russia/Ukraine. The obvious conclusion should be that these new elements
somehow came from the outside.
It is indeed historically attested that the Paršumaš (Persians) moved from
northwestern to southwestern Iran, but this is limited to a relatively small area only. More
important are the 'Mitanni' Indo-Aryans in N. Iraq and Syria (c. 1460-1330 BCE), who
clearly show IA, not Iranian influences (aika 'one' instead of Iranian aiva), and the Kassites
who, as a first wave, preceded them in Mesopotamia. They dislodged the local Akkadian kings
for several centuries, c. 1677-1152 BCE, and they have preserved names such as Šuriiaš (Ved.
Sūrya) or Abirat(t)aš (Abhiratha).28 All these groups that are in various ways culturally
related to the IIr.s are intrusive in their respective areas of settlement. The same may be
assumed as far as the Greater Panjab is concerned.
For, the massive cultural changes in the subcontinent could not have spontaneously
developed locally in the Panjab, even assuming an amalgamation (why, by whom, how?) of
various components that had been there before. Instead, it is easier to assume that a new
element actually brought in new items such as the domesticated horse and the horse-drawn
chariot (§21), and IE/IA style poetry, religion and ritual. Also, it is not very likely and,
indeed, not visible that leaders of the Indus civilization or rather their 'Panjabi' village level
successors planned and executed such a universal shift of the cultural paradigm themselves. A
massive, if gradual introduction of (some, if not all) IA traits seems the only viable conclusion
(see below, on Ehret's model).
The denial of immigration into the area of an already existing culture has recently been
proposed by some archaeologists as well; they posit a purely local, indigenous development of
cultures, e.g. by the British archaeologist Lord Renfrew (1987)29 and by some Americans such
as Shaffer (1984, 1999) who think that new languages were introduced by way of trade and
by taking over of new models of society.

If there was immigration, who then were the indigenous inhabitants of the
subcontinent? They can in fact still be traced in the substrates of the RV and of modern
languages: an unknown Indo-Gangetic language has supplied the c. 40% of the agricultural
terminology in Hindi (typical already for the RV, Kuiper 1955, 1991). A clear hint is
provided by Nahalī, a small IA language spoken on the Tapti River, NW of Ellichpur in
Madhya Pradesh. At successively "lower" levels of Nahali vocabulary, 36% are of Kurku
(Munda) and 9% of Dravidian origin, while the oldest level, some 24%, do not have any
cognates (Kuiper 1962: 50, 1966: 96-192, but see now Mother Tongue II-III, 1996-7) and
belong to the oldest language traceable in India (Witzel 1999a,b). Clearly, Munda, Dravidian
and IA are consecutive(?) overlays on pre-existing languages. Again, such a scenario is met
with in many other areas of the world.

[shiv]

You have misread Witzel and have posted that quote without reading. A small error and excusable maybe. But I see linguists theories as a series of small errors that have been excused for too long. You see, in this line 500 years is tossed around like we might lose or gain one minute. That allows a lot of bluffing to take place.

And in a 118 page document your error in quoting Witzel would not have been picked up unless one actually has read some of what Witzel writes. He writes a lot. Even more than me and I welcome people to pick holes in what I write as I pick holes in what others write

Yes, Shiv Ji. It was mistake on my part - excusable maybe

He mentioned that date range for all 4 vedas - not just RV.

However, how does it change the big picture? Even as per this the earliest date for RV is 1500 BCE.

Rajanji, you ask "how does it change the big picture". Without asking you what you mean by "big picture" let me repost your quote of Witzel

In short, the period of the four Vedas seems to fall roughly between c. 1500 BCE and c. 500 BCE

Now we move to a pdf from Witzel's own web page
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu ... tionin.pdf

..the earliest Indian texts (RgVeda) Composed in Greater Panjab (c 1200 BCE to 1000 BCE)

Witzel bends his own initial dates by 300 years in 2 of his own publications. This may be a minor of excusable error for someone like you on a forum, but for Harvard Professor Witzel it is inconsitency and fudging of dates. 300 years seem to make no difference to Witzel and almost as if you support such little acts of fudging, you ask "how does it change the big picture?"

Tsk tsk Rajanji, a Harvard Professor fudging and changing dates is no trivial matter, expecially when the matter concerns dates. 300 years this way or that does not matter to Witzel. Perhaps it does not matter to you, but are you seriously expecting me to accept this as wisdom just because of the Harvard tag attached? Did you mention Benis somewhere?

A word about the difference between Pir review and peer review. In a Pir review a respected Pir says something - it may even be trash, but his status and psoition as Pir make people accept that as true. In a peer review the man is not treatd as a Pir but as a peer who is answerable. Harvard style references are meant for Harvard internal consumption for their own Pir review process. Outside of Harvard it will get called out if it is trash.

[member_23630]

SN_Rajan ji, kindly do not bother Shivji with my stand.

Archeology and Carbon Dating are art and not science is my stand. Especially so with Archeology. Isotope dating has certainly advanced but if I gathered it right there was a time when supplying dates to the labs before they had put out their data was practiced. Kind of like a Linguist passing up a Pharra/Notes to an examinee.

With Archeology you basically want us to believe that things that were definately not preserved for the benefit of the Archeologist in the first place can be startified and we have had cases of Axes being found in Tamil Nadu and fantastic Grave structures being passed up for evidence. If this is science then WTH are fine arts for.

Also kindly notice I did mention that Archeology is an Art implying thereby that with discipline in data sets analysis they can reach some acceptable conclusions, like for example find an excess of SIVC seals in other parts of the world makes you think. But without discipline Archeologist are just as blind. I mean going strictly by Archeology. There was nothing before & then between 'Narmada Man' and Lithics. And then people who used rocks did nothing else but eat game and chip rocks. Yeh right! thats science. All history indeed started 6000 or 7500 years back.

But SN_Rajan ji I promise you, I will not loose patience with you and will try to learn from you too.

RE. your query regarding OIT timelines. Notice that even after two pages of your first putting up this query people are not answering it. Let me guess most do not know. Only to be expected from a bunch that is waiting for some discipline bound studies to throw more light. I am a moodha agyani type so I will stick my neck out:

All the people who ever lived in history and who had largely the same kind of genetic structure and brain size as yours and mine were intelligent enough to understand thing well enough and thus OIT is tied up with the genetic movements. Which implies that language as we know it today, has been around for something like 50k probably even 80k ybp (The earliest dates are hidden in time and I am afraid will require the intervention of God Shiva. Scientific discipline of Archeology will not be much help here). And if all these people had at least a language if not more, then they had something to talk about too. 'Something' as in whatever they needed to get bye in life and quite unlike what is your understanding of what is needed thusly. Also I know I do not know much so dates I will not be able to confirm but yes ideas mentioned in RV are some of the earliest ideas. The difference between the essense of the unrecorded start of RV and the 'Dreaming' of the Abrogines could be as simple as the linguistic discipline that was used to enhance and propogate the two practices. RV being a Sanskrit interpretation of Brahmanaad had a clear head start and people to this day benefit from the message and 'Dreaming' being in Prakrits was lost for the most part and whatever remains will be lost simply by loss of the people who were supposed to have taken care of it. I guess karma is a biatch.




Added later:

About SIVC seals being Sanskrit or not well I do not have any proof, so I cannot claim its Sanskrit. Nor do I need it to be. I will be quite happy if Sanskrit is used only by forest bound Rishi & Rishikas. Also since you are so insistent on SIVC seals being everything except Sanskrit. I think I will muddy the waters for you. What proof do you have that it is everthing other then Sanskrit. Yes I know you have citations but I am asking for proof. Big difference.

Ravi_g Ji,

Somewhat OT - but, if you can please bear with me:

Actually, this line of argument calling an entire branch of science, be it lingustics, archeology, carbon-dating, etc, etc as non-science just because it not 'perfect' like pure mathematical theorem is not simply not right and in fact one of big fallacy.

Now, let's take Newton's third law: "When two bodies interact by exerting force on each other, these forces (termed the action and the reaction) are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction".

Can you physically prove it with "100% accuracy" - one can keep on questioning so many minor factors like wind direction, friction, altitude, magnetic and electric forces, etc, etc, and there will never 100% perfectly measurable proof. Does it mean that that law is wrong.

Also, consider other sciences. At some level, "experiments" and so, "stats" come into play. People think that stats/numbers actually 'conclusively' prove. But, then, one can ask so many questions on 'experiments' - is it 'truly' random(is there anything truly random in experiments with limited data set and limited computing power even with super computer !?), is it truly double-blind, is the data set large enough, on and on.

This true for physics observations to financial markets to drug trials to literally anything.

if you are interested some bed-time reading from a guru: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

The point that's how every science stream works from physics to social sciences - except the holy cow 'pure mathematical theorems' (million dollar prizes await for some pending proofs! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Prize_Problems)

So, i have no issue in accepting and working incomplete imperfect data and such sciences, as long as there is reasonable and fair work, and so, i just do not buy such arguments that it is not science, that it is not perfect, etc, etc.

And, yes, at the end of the day 'reasonableness and fairness' ones own judgement - nobody can force anything on anybody.

[member_23630]

Rajanji, you ask "how does it change the big picture". Without asking you what you mean by "big picture" let me repost your quote of Witzel

In short, the period of the four Vedas seems to fall roughly between c. 1500 BCE and c. 500 BCE

Now we move to a pdf from Witzel's own web page
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu ... tionin.pdf

..the earliest Indian texts (RgVeda) Composed in Greater Panjab (c 1200 BCE to 1000 BCE)

Witzel bends his own initial dates by 300 years in 2 of his own publications. This may be a minor of excusable error for someone like you on a forum, but for Harvard Professor Witzel it is inconsitency and fudging of dates. 300 years seem to make no difference to Witzel and almost as if you support such little acts of fudging, you ask "how does it change the big picture?"

Tsk tsk Rajanji, a Harvard Professor fudging and changing dates is no trivial matter, expecially when the matter concerns dates. 300 years this way or that does not matter to Witzel. Perhaps it does not matter to you, but are you seriously expecting me to accept this as wisdom just because of the Harvard tag attached? Did you mention Benis somewhere?

A word about the difference between Pir review and peer review. In a Pir review a respected Pir says something - it may even be trash, but his status and psoition as Pir make people accept that as true. In a peer review the man is not treatd as a Pir but as a peer who is answerable. Harvard style references are meant for Harvard internal consumption for their own Pir review process. Outside of Harvard it will get called out if it is trash.

Shiv-Ji,

1. i meant the big picture as the OIT explaining IVC aspects too.

2. I do see that he has differences of 300 years.

Few points:

i. While i will try to dig further and see the actual underlying references, and try to understand the reasoning, your references seems to be later one. So maybe there is some new data between the old parer and this, and that lead to change of date.

ii. In any case, given the nature of pre/ancient history, i am okay to even consider 500 years as acceptable margin of error, as we cannot have programming style timestamps up to milli second precision in such events anyways.

iii. I am mainly interested only in the "big-picture events and time ranges' and not so much in hair splitting on 'exact perfect dates' be it linguistics, archeology, etc.

[member_23630]

I just read the section on 'ayas'. Basically, he tries to pre-date RV by saying it is not smelted iron but actually iron ore. What can i say

SN Rajan,

For someone who makes grandiose claims of 'scientific honesty' - your statement above is astonishingly intellectually dishonest.

There are at least 4 different arguments used in that Ayas section of Prasanna's article:

1. Krishna Ayas literally refers to 'black metal'. That is the direct translation of the phrase. On what basis does one translate this to meaning 'smelted iron ore' ? There have been archeological finds of objects made of black iron ore as far back as 2600 BC - and there is absolutely no basis to reject the suggestion that krishna ayas could have referred to these objects.

2. Witzel's date anyway goes for a toss - based on the recent dating of archeological smelted iron ore in Ganga plains to 1800 BC

3. The Ganga smelted iron ore finds and the type and quantity of these finds indicate that the core technological advancement of iron ore smelting must have occured much earlier. So the argument is that, as in the modern period - there is often huge time lag between the introduction of a particular technological know-how and its mass acceptance in society. If the evidence of mass acceptance in society dates back to 1800 BC, how much further back can we go for the initial introduction of the technological know-how?

4. Edwin Bryant (a widely known Indologist) has been quoted as saying that the ayas evidence is NOT conclusive. Leading Indian archeologists - Chakrabarti & Tiwari have been quoted for their views that dismiss Witzel's claims. Lahiri (a leading historian) is quoted disagreeing with Witzel. On what basis do you claim that Witzel is right and all these other worthies are wrong?

Arjun Ji,

1. Are you seriously saying it refers to Iron Ore, and the not Smelted Iron - and still find it reasonable !?

2. Hm, Ganges Iron for RV dating in Punjab - hm, interesting. Sorry, i don't have have right references/links that you mentioned. Would you kindly pass it on please. I will try to have a look.

[member_23630]

ManishH Sir,

If you kindly advise on this point please - "*Raså -> R.Volga" :

Witzel's paper http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewi ... VS-7-3.pdf in section 9 on Immigration says:

Such a connection can be detected in the retention by the Iranians of IIr./IA river
names (Witzel 1987, 1999, Hintze 1998) and in the many references in the RV to mountains
and mountain passes.32 The mythical IIr. river *Raså corresponds in name to the Vedic Raså
(RV, JB), the E.Ir. (Avest.) Rahå, and the N.Ir. *Rahå that is preserved in Greek as Rhå and designates the R. Volga.33

Would greatly appreciate your expert comments on this.

[member_23686]

dharmaraj ji, pranaam (interesting choice of handle, congrats)

Dhanyavaad Ravi ji. Pranaam

Do Earliest Relics == Earliest Usage. What if the earlier maal is simply reused and consumed due to normal depreciative wear and tear (Added later : even more plausible is recycled) and when the supply exceeded demand then these implements just got thrown out after a normal useful life and that is what the Archeologist found.

Nonetheless I do agree Archeologists are a considerably better set of people then certain other kinds of people.

I never meant this. I agree to your stand that Archeologists are also bit biased in their interpretations and depend heavily on the same people we want them to counter. Also, their hands are tied by their ability to dig and date. But still I'll appreciate all the help we can get. Who knows someday they might unearth a "rosetta stone" in SIVC.

The "meaning" of the Rgveda is ONLY in the correct utterance of its sounds. There is no history, geography, botany, or zoology in the Veda. These are humanly-derived subjects. The sounds of the Veda represent the Rules/Laws of Nature.

KL ji,

I agree to your argument. Kindly provide us some solid reasons that we can give to our kids when they ask us why we are protecting the Vedas if they have no meaning. Please keep in mind that the iGeneration is more inclined towards maya and the argument that Vedas are important to identify devatas is not enlightening enough for them.

[member_23686]

Rajan ji, given your faith in pir reviewed scientific jernails, I assume that they translated IVC script

i see that deciphering is not yet done - and i also see the challange/bet by Farmer: http://www.safarmer.com/indus/prize.html

i doubt if it can ever be fully deciphered - statistically "insufficient data" is the main issue in my view.

anyways, even without 'full decipherment' of so-called script, or symboles, and there is tons and tons Archeological data, and 'best advice/view' on this from the IVC guru Parpola as follows:

Quoting from http://www.harappa.com/script/parpola6.html

6. Sanskrit or Dravidian?

Many hypotheses have been put forward about the affinity of the Indus language, but only two alternatives have had wider support.

Indo-Aryan languages have been spoken in the area once occupied by the Indus civilisation and gradually all over North India since at least 1000 B.C. It is natural to assume that they were spoken there even earlier. Speakers of Hindi, Bengali and other Neo-Indo-Aryan languages especially have been prone to interpret the Indus texts as Sanskrit (understood in the broad sense of Old Indo-Aryan), from which their own mother tongues have evolved.

The Sanskrit hypothesis, however, is difficult to reconcile chronologically with the date of the Indus civilisation (about the second half of the third millennium B.C.) and antecedent Early Harappan neolithic cultures which were responsible for its creation. Comparison of the Vedic texts with the Avesta and with the West Asian documents relating to the Aryan kings of Mitanni suggests that the Vedic Aryans entered the Indian subcontinent from Northeast Iran and Central Asia in the second millennium B.C.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the early Aryans were nomads and that the horse played a dominent role in their culture, as it did in the culture of their Proto-Indo-European-speaking ancestors. The horse is conspicuously absent from the many realistic representations of animals in the art of the Indus civilisation. Comprehensive recent bone analyses have yielded the conclusion that the horse was introduced to the subcontinent around the beginning of the second millennium B.C.

Horse-drawn chariots made the Aryan-speaking nomads a superior military force which gradually subdued all of North India. Numerically the early Aryans can have been only a fraction of the Indus population, which is estimated to have been about five million. Obviously these millions of people were not all killed; they were made to acknowledge the Aryan overlordship and to pay taxes. In the course of time and through gradually increasing bilingualism, the earlier population eventually became linguistically assimilated. It is most unlikely that this process of linguistic Aryanization happened without leaving clear marks of the earlier substratum language upon Indo-Aryan.

There are several structural and lexical Dravidisms even in the Rgveda, the earliest preserved text collection, pointing to the presence of Dravidian speakers in Northwest India in the second millennium B.C. The 25 Dravidian languages spoken at present form the second largest linguistic family of South Asia. Until recently, about one quarter of the entire population has spoken Dravidian, while the speakers of Austro-Asiatic, the third largest linguistic family of long standing in South Asia, numbered just a few per cent. The Indus language is likely to have belonged to the North Dravidian sub-branch represented today by the Brahui, spoken in the mountain valleys and plateaus of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the core area of the Early Harappan neolithic cultures, and by the Kurukh spoken in North India from Nepal and Madhya Pradesh to Orissa, Bengal and Assam.

Rajan ji,

Did you even read the quote you posted?

AIT must be true because no sanskrit in SIVC. Sanskrit is "assumed" absent because AIT must be true.

Circular logic onlee

[member_23630]

Did you even read the quote you posted?

...

Circular logic onlee

Dharamraj Ji,

Yes, of course, i read it. And, no, it is not "circular" logic. It is "corroborative" logic in my view.

[Arjun]

Arjun Ji,

1. Are you seriously saying it refers to Iron Ore, and the not Smelted Iron - and still find it reasonable !?

2. Hm, Ganges Iron for RV dating in Punjab - hm, interesting. Sorry, i don't have have right references/links that you mentioned. Would you kindly pass it on please. I will try to have a look.

1. Yes sir, 'Krishna Ayas' is dark metal. It obviously refers to any metal which is dark - smelted or not smelted is a non-sequitor brought in by Witzel. Did you notice Edwin Bryant's quote in Prasanna's article? Which part of Edwin Bryant's argument (quoted by Prasanna) do you not understand ? And why does your previous defense of Witzel, as somebody whose views need to be given respect, not apply to Bryant?

2. All the material I have quoted is in the Prasanna article, my friend ! Please apply some scholarly diligence to reading it in full.

[member_22872]

Rajan ji,
here is the article on SSC-IVC, this article is based on multiple papers:
http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/ ... -saraswati
and I already know the objections raised by Farmer and Kocchar, you can refer to Rajesh ji's comments in previous pages. Farmer's objections go also against him too with regards to how Asva has multiple interpretations in Rg Veda, but that didn't stop him and his guru from using horse argument. But again, that is another topic and this article only talks about Sarasvati. Notice the drying up of Sarasvati, how the settlements gradually disappeared.

[shiv]

i. While i will try to dig further and see the actual underlying references, and try to understand the reasoning, your references seems to be later one. So maybe there is some new data between the old parer and this, and that lead to change of date.

ii. In any case, given the nature of pre/ancient history, i am okay to even consider 500 years as acceptable margin of error, as we cannot have programming style timestamps up to milli second precision in such events anyways.

iii. I am mainly interested only in the "big-picture events and time ranges' and not so much in hair splitting on 'exact perfect dates' be it linguistics, archeology, etc.

Beautiful. This sums up the exact attitude of the Witzel caste of people. In my view it is naive to believe that "newer developements" led to different dating when a whole body of data used by these worthies dates unchanged, unchecked and unvalidated from 1800 to 1900.

Fudge the dates in the direction that seems to fit in with one's own beliefs is the system used here, and the expression "big picture" is perfect for such fudging. I too am learning the language of linguism and for that am grateful The dates start becoming exact and rigid only when they start tending towards what Witzel and his fellow AIT nazis do not want to believe. Date fudging for "big picture" bluffing is not allowed for anyone else. Only Witzel and his cunning linguists.

Read on Read on. I am sure you will learn more by reading than by posting humongous passages from Witzel and his fake variable dating and his copious, uncheckable and obscure "pur-enthetical references" on here. If you have any doubts, ask yourself first. Since you believe you are honest with yourself.

[shiv]

Did you even read the quote you posted?

...

Circular logic onlee

Dharamraj Ji,

Yes, of course, i read it. And, no, it is not "circular" logic. It is "corroborative" logic in my view.

You are not only 100% correct, you are a master of rhetoric. A circle will always join itself and any point on a circle will exactly corroborate with itself no matter which direction you trace the circle. To that extent circular logic is pure science worthy of the pir-enthetical references to his own papers that Witzel makes.

[ShauryaT]

Kindly provide us some solid reasons that we can give to our kids when they ask us why we are protecting the Vedas if they have no meaning. Please keep in mind that the iGeneration is more inclined towards maya and the argument that Vedas are important to identify devatas is not enlightening enough for them.

The idea of rita or the universal order of things is the idea one is protecting in the vedas. Dharma is rooted in rita. But those immersed in Maya have to first be informed about Dharma, Brahma and Aatma gyan, in all its dimensions before immersing oneself even deeper, IMHO.

[member_20317]

Now, let's take Newton's third law: "When two bodies interact by exerting force on each other, these forces (termed the action and the reaction) are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction".

Can you physically prove it with "100% accuracy" - one can keep on questioning so many minor factors like wind direction, friction, altitude, magnetic and electric forces, etc, etc, and there will never 100% perfectly measurable proof. Does it mean that that law is wrong.

SN_Rajan ji, I agree with your accuracy issue. Indeed absolute accuracy is not possible. In the instant case, accuracy will be affected if these two objects are in a curved motion, under two moons, in a free fall or an SRTC bus. Newton to that extent was a wise man. He never said his one statement is Gods will and absolute truth. That is why for his philosophy he got his due recognition. Reasonable people know that the theory is changeable and hence they try to provide error margins also. These error margins themselves change if better theories come about later on. Further notice how Newton never excluded the possibility of interactions on these two objects before the instant interaction presented for our witness. The two bodies interaction carries a basic logical assumption about the state prior to the interaction. That there is no reaction by one object on the other object prior to the instant interaction. They just go along their respective paths unless some stimulus (like your closed interaction example) is brought to bear on these two bodies.

See how wise he never said anything of what he was not sure of and left ample room for further refinements as well as the arrow of time.

SN_Rajan ji, I am not worried about the systemic error margins. But I am concerned about the externals that get supplied with it.

Say for example in your espousal of Parpola

Presumption – “represent something definitely new”.
New, compared to what? What does Parpola have that is prior to RV? Again granted he is working under the presumption that SIVC is prior to RV implying thereby that RV is to be compared to the already prevailing influence of SIVC. So the correct fully worded presumption is ‘RV is later and new compared to SIVC”.

Conclusion - “obvious conclusion should be that these new elements somehow came from the outside.”.
Because elements come from outside the SIVC system that is why they are New. Right? But wasn’t the newness the presumption?

Challo koi nahi, Presumption and Conclusion match. Hypothesis proved. How could I not figure that out#@#^&. My bad indeed. Bravo indeed.

But new guys and new culture could not have known Saraswati which dried up in 1900 BC. Fly in the ointment! Ok I let out my presumption in Parpola’s favour. RV is Naadbrahm and Saraswati is only a sound not the river. But MBH knew Vedas so MBH cannot be prior to Vedas, ergo if MBH mentions drying up/dried up Saraswati, Vedas and MBH both predate the newness concept. Second Fly in the ointment! Note I am not even mentioning the Archeo-astronomy pseudo science . So no third fly in the ointment uptill now. But wait Fire Altars in SIVC. Damn it, third fly in the ointment for sure. Also Seals show a clear reverence for the nature around quite like your RV. Fourth! Aah Horses in 2265 BC about 1000 years before they are needed. Fifth!. Spoked wheel representations in SIVC. Sixth! Horses in Halur, Karnataka in 1500 BC about 2000 km away from where they are actually needed by Parpola ji’s theory. Seventh! Lucky number for Parpola ji and yourself?

See no circularity involved. Simple bare necessacities. Straight forward Linear logic. You should understand this. Should we change the theory now. Not now. Koi nahi ji Cheers, Patiala wala.

No! there was no Presumption to begin with and hence there does not arise the need for proving a hypothesis. The ‘Newness’ was a proven fact based on Linguistics! My bad again. Moi bumbling OIT wala. What do I know ji. But in that case why is Parpola ji putting the same idea twice in the same breath. I understand Parpola ji is preparing Jalebi. Good better best bestier bestest.

I see SN_Rajan ji you have already called this a ‘"corroborative logic". I should not have put in too much of my time in this. But WTH.


Added later: Please read 'Parpola' as 'Witzel' in the whole write up. I mixed up two consecutive posts by SN_Rajan.

[A_Gupta]

The important, clinching factor (§ 10) to decide the question is the following: the
Indo-Aryans, as described in the RV, represent something definitely new in the subcontinent.
Both their spiritual and much of their material culture are new; these and their language link
them to the areas west and northwest of the subcontinent, and to some extent beyond, to the
Ural area and to S. Russia/Ukraine. The obvious conclusion should be that these new elements
somehow came from the outside.

I'm sorry, this is wrong at so many levels.

1. It is like saying every Indian who has a cell phone, every Indian who is a Musalman or a Christian, every Indian who speaks English, is an immigrant or invasionist to India.

Witzel, and the linguists in general, have great difficulty in separating language, culture, people. They deny it but their theories keep tending towards one language = one culture = one people.

That is absolute rubbish, as even today there are nomadic goatherders, village dwellers, urbanites, all in one geographical area speaking same or different languages, and having same or different religions, sharing some but not all physical artifacts of daily life.

Imagine if archaeological remains of some Rishis' ashrams in the forest are found and also Pandava's Indraprastha. Witzel & co would say - these are different cultures, possibly speaking different languages, blah, blah, blah.

2. What is Witzel basing his claims about the material culture of the Indo-Aryans on? Especially its "newness" in the Indian context?

3. With even more force, on what is Witzel basing his claims of spiritual culture of the putative non-Indo-Aryans that the Indo-Aryans displaced? Especially its "newness" in the Indian context?

These are just assertions. Nothing in the archaeological record tells us what the spiritual culture of the Harappans was.

[A_Gupta]

ii. In any case, given the nature of pre/ancient history, i am okay to even consider 500 years as acceptable margin of error, as we cannot have programming style timestamps up to milli second precision in such events anyways.

500 years is a big difference. If the putative Indo-Aryans arrived 2200 BC vs. 1700 BC, it makes a huge difference in the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory.

[member_22872]

Even Manish ji thought 576 years error introduced by introduction of 35-36 day month in the intercalary vedic calendars was something one must explain. And Rajan ji thinks 500 years variability is small error one can live with, why this variation of acceptability of time periods if not for convenience?

[svinayak]

Witzel bends his own initial dates by 300 years in 2 of his own publications. This may be a minor of excusable error for someone like you on a forum, but for Harvard Professor Witzel it is inconsitency and fudging of dates. 300 years seem to make no difference to Witzel and almost as if you support such little acts of fudging, you ask "how does it change the big picture?"

Tsk tsk Rajanji, a Harvard Professor fudging and changing dates is no trivial matter, expecially when the matter concerns dates. 300 years this way or that does not matter to Witzel. Perhaps it does not matter to you, but are you seriously expecting me to accept this as wisdom just because of the Harvard tag attached? Did you mention Benis somewhere?

A word about the difference between Pir review and peer review. In a Pir review a respected Pir says something - it may even be trash, but his status and psoition as Pir make people accept that as true. In a peer review the man is not treatd as a Pir but as a peer who is answerable. Harvard style references are meant for Harvard internal consumption for their own Pir review process. Outside of Harvard it will get called out if it is trash.

So is Harvard Institution a fraud or Mr Witzel is a fraud.

[A_Gupta]

The 7th century Arabia (and today's Arabia) have both sedentary city dwellers and the nomadic/semi-nomadic Bedouin, all speaking Arabic. But from the view of archaeologists 3000 years later, presumably there will be a city-dwelling civilization with a written tradition and a different nomadic one with an oral tradition only.

[shiv]

Now, let's take Newton's third law: "When two bodies interact by exerting force on each other, these forces (termed the action and the reaction) are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction".

Can you physically prove it with "100% accuracy" - one can keep on questioning so many minor factors like wind direction, friction, altitude, magnetic and electric forces, etc, etc, and there will never 100% perfectly measurable proof. Does it mean that that law is wrong.

It can be proved to the level of accuracy or inaccuracy that you are willing to allow. If you allow yourself more inaccuracy and allow others less inaccuracy you will only be lying to yourself.

Witzel and experts in linguism allow themselves plenty of leeway to buff their way out of the most absurd claims while no one else is allowed absurdity. Rhetoric always helps in this regard, Science is optional. The big picture is that the theory of migrants coming to India in 1200 BC bringing in Indo European languages is based on a series of fakes and convenient assumptions. No need to look at the little detail. You cannot prove or disprove the minutae.

[JwalaMukhi]

So is Harvard Institution a fraud or Mr Witzel is a fraud.

There are departments that are good. Humanities especially agenda loaded ones, political, sociological, linguistics etc., are quintessentially into psyo-ops and feel good factor about the anglo-saxons. It is citadel for running and shaping view of the world that suits the ruling class of goras.
P.s. Witzel is a willing and enthusiastic supramacist.
Without broadbrushing... here is a sample...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/harvard-cheati ... EIeZ6BmrTM

Administrators at Harvard College have accused 125 students of cheating on a final exam last spring, an allegation that Harvard graduate and author Eric Kester said reflects a "culture of cheating" at the school.

Officials at the prestigious university in Cambridge, Mass., said Thursday that they had found at least 125 students who they believe collaborated on a take-home final exam during the spring semester this year.

"We take academic integrity very seriously because it goes to the heart of our educational mission," Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement. "Academic dishonesty cannot and will not be tolerated at Harvard."

[prahaar]

I have been following this thread since the beginning but am not qualified to comment on most of the "scientific" references. If after few thousand years, archaeologists dig up evidence, they might think about as India as the land of English speaking people (since in many cities name plates in English are more common now). Crazy analysis I am seeing in this field.

[shiv]

Wolfram von Soden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_von_Soden

Von Soden’s scholarship evidenced a Nazi outlook primarily by denigrating Semitic cultural influences in the ancient Near East in favor of Indo-European or “Indo-Germanic” cultures. This is especially marked in such works as Der Aufstieg des Assyrerreichs als geschichtliches Problem (1937, The Rise of the Assyrian Empire as an Historical Problem) and Arabische wehrsprachliche Ausdrücke (1942, Arabic Military Terminology and Expressions).

His significant learning, demonstrated in his scholarly publication, is undisputed. Works such as his Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik (Outline of Akkadian Grammar) and the Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Basic Akkadian Dictionary) remain, in new editions, standard works even up to the present day.

Very little of von Soden's scholarship has been translated from the original German; Donald Schley's English translation of von Soden's Einführung in die Altorientalistik (The Ancient Orient: an Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East) was published by W.B. Eerdmans in 1994.

From Witzel, taking gyan from von Soden
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/EJVS-7-3.pdf

A relatively small
immigrant elite population can encourage widespread language shift among numerically
dominant indigenes in a non-state or pre-state context if the elite employs a specific
combination of encouragements and punishments. Ethnohistorical cases ... demonstrate that
small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations."

Furthermore, even when direct evidence for immigration and concurrent language
takeover is absent, the texts often allow such deductions, as has been well articulated by W. von
Soden (1985: 12, my transl.) with regard to the much better known history of Mesopotamia:
"The study of languages and the comparison of language provide better possibilities for
conclusions with regard to migrations in prehistoric times. New languages never are successful
without the immigration of another group of people [different from the local one]. Influences
of [such] other languages can be determined in vocabulary and certain grammatical
formations. The older languages of an area, even when they are no longer spoken, continue to
influence the younger languages as substrates, not in the least in their sound system; new,
dominant classes influence the language of the conquered as superstrates in many ways. In the
early period, the influences of substrates and superstrates are always discernible only to a
certain degree."

Witzel uses Wolfram von Soden's langauge theories to say WHY Sanskrit was successful in India. The assumption is that Sanskrit was a new langauge introduced into Northern India in 1200 BC.

I say that Sanskrit came to India with horse and chariot from Central Asia between 3000 BC and 2500 BC. That would explain the 2000 BC Surkotada horse and 2300 BC solid wheel chariot findings. Later migrations brought the spoke innovation. It also explains why cities have no mention in the Rig Veda. It gels in well with 3600 BC for horse and chariot burial culture in Centra Asia and 2500 BC arrival of spoked whel in Central Asia. It also fits in with Bronze age in India - around 3300 to 3000 BC. No need to argue about language in Indus Valley

Why does Witzel have to resort to Lingusitic gobbledygook to explain what can be easily explained and still shove a finger up the asses of the Talageris and the OIT Hindutvadis? Why does he insist on a 1200 BC date?

Maybe I need to cross check with what david Anthony has to say on the subject..

[Murugan]

AIT Nazis are organized to UNDO the 'mistakes' made by Indologists of eighteenth and ninteenth century. All indications points to orgsnized efforts to bring a final blow to Indian heritage and self esteem. These guys also look to be somewhat connected to project ten forty

[ramana]

So AIT is old Nazi project to deJudafy Christianity and Europe now being taken up by the Anglo Saxons after the WWII conquest of Nazi Germany.

A true conquest happens when the victor adopts the conquered mindset or memes.

shiv you were saying I was piskoing!

[Nilesh Oak]

I say that Sanskrit came to India with horse and chariot from Central Asia between 3000 BC and 2500 BC. That would explain the 2000 BC Surkotada horse and 2300 BC solid wheel chariot findings. Later migrations brought the spoke innovation. It also explains why cities have no mention in the Rig Veda. It gels in well with 3600 BC for horse and chariot burial culture in Centra Asia and 2500 BC arrival of spoked whel in Central Asia. It also fits in with Bronze age in India - around 3300 to 3000 BC. No need to argue about language in Indus Valley

This makes sense as evidence fits the timeline. Good scientific theory. Afterall all we can do is piece together all available evidence we have. This also means...

These Sanskrit -or -vedic speakers composed Rigveda on the way from Central Asia to NW India, did final editing of it as soon as they identified rivers of this area, assigned them names, or learnt names of these rivers from natives and incorporated them in Rigveda. They looked east at night and saw Pleiades rising due east, wrote Brahmanas (e.g. Shatapatha, Kaushiki, etc.) in a hurry to match what they saw in the sky with what they wrote. This is the time they found SSVC. That explains no mention of cities in Rigveda.

They settled in Northern India and prospered. This is when they made accurate observations of sky, recognnized phenomeon of precession of equinoxes, developed pulsating epicycles, then developed sophisticated models of Astronomy back-calulations what we call today Newton's laws, made workable approximations to 3 body problems via corrections of what we call today Lagrange corrections and then sat down to write Science fiction called 'Mahabharata'. They employed their newly found knowldge of precession of equinoxes, proper motions of stars, positions of planets, etc. and introduced small errors at times, not always, to make this science fiction appear realistic.

To be creative -extra ordinaire - they wrote Ramayana after Mahabharta, but took extreme care to make it appear this second fiction -Ramayana- as if it occured before Mahabharata. They were very conversant with the process of iteration and re-iteration and thus maintained consistency whlie recording genealogies (fictional no doubt), in Ramayana, harivamsha, Puranas, but also added discrepancies between these additonal fictional works for touch of reality.

[ukumar]

Ranajanji, I am interested to know your logic behind this conclusion. It is obvious that people who wrote Rigveda did not describe IVC. Lets also assume that they were after IVC. How do you conclude that they were migrant? How do you know that IVC were not IE people predating Rigveda? Can you explain it without first assuming that IE came to India from Kurgan?

UKumar-Ji,

While i don't fully understand all the intricacies as a non-expert, as curious one looking for ther side view: Witzel points out many of the new 'innovations' that have happened that could not have happened locally / spontaneously, i.e., there was indeed a migration.

Quoting section 8 from http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewi ... VS-7-3.pdf
…….

While i don't fully understand all the intricacies as a non-expert

Ranjanji, this is amateur forum so qualification is not needed. At the same time I was serious when asked you to explain "your" logic behind the assertion without first assuming that there was invasion/migration after IVC. You gave big quote from Witzel without explaining your own reasoning. I am just a fellow truth seeker and I think we have enough intelligence to read something and judge if is logically coherent even as non-expert. I have already read the papers quoted by you and for various reasons I have articulated in previous posts I don't think they are logically coherent. As courtesy to fellow truth seekers please give your own analysis in view of the previous discussion next time.

Immigration, however, has often been denied in India especially during the past two
decades, and more recently also by some western archaeologists. How likely is an immigration
scenario on the basis of comparable cases from Indian and non-Indian history? Leaving aside
the prehistoric migrations starting with the move of Homo Sapiens 'Out of Africa' some
50,000 years ago, we actually do know that one group after the other has entered the Indian
subcontinent, as immigrants or as invaders, in historical times. They include tribal groups
such as the Saka, the Yue Ji (Tukhara), Kushana, Abhīra, Gurjara as well as large armies, such
as those of Darius' Persians, of Alexander's and the Bactrian Greeks in the first mill. BCE, of
both the Chinese via Tibet, Ladakh and Nepal, and the Arabs into Sindh in the 7-8th c. CE;
further the Ahom Tai in Assam, and the Huns, Turks, Moghuls, Iranians, and Afghans via the
northwestern passes in the first and second mill. CE. In addition, small-scale semi-annual
transhumance movements between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands
continue to this day (Witzel 1995: 322, 2000). Why, then, should all immigration, or even
mere transhumance trickling in, be excluded in the single case of the Indo-Aryans, especially
when the linguistic evidence, below §10 sqq., so clearly speaks for it? Just one "Afghan" Indo-
Aryan tribe that did not return to the highlands but stayed in their Panjab winter quarters in
spring was needed to set off a wave of acculturation in the plains, by transmitting its 'status kit'
(Ehret) to its neighbors.27 The vehement denial of any such possibility (see below §11 sqq) is
simply unreasonable, given the frequency of movements, large and small, into South Asia via
the northwestern corridors.

Argument is that there were immigration in historic times so is is possible even in prehistoric times. This is complete waste of ink because this is not relevant to the discussion. For two simple reasons.

1. Dispute is not if there were any immigration in to India. By giving argument against such absurd position no serious person is making he tries to belittle "OITWalla". This is how he earns "cunning" title.
2. None of the immigration above resulted in complete language/cultural transformation of the continent.

The important, clinching factor (§ 10) to decide the question is the following: the
Indo-Aryans, as described in the RV, represent something definitely new in the subcontinent.
Both their spiritual and much of their material culture are new; these and their language link
them to the areas west and northwest of the subcontinent, and to some extent beyond, to the
Ural area and to S. Russia/Ukraine. The obvious conclusion should be that these new elements
somehow came from the outside.

This argument assumes that Rigveda represents all the IE speaker in India and they were also the first IE speaker in India. This is exactly what I asked you to explain. While his scenario is plausible with many difficulties, it is not the only way to explain the fact.

The assertion about language and spiritual link is also not based on sound evidence as discussed in this thread with great details. Even if one assumes that there were links, it doesn't prove that people from Russia/Ukrain migrated to IVC and they were speaking IE.

You are free to trust him because no other peer reviewed paper is arguing against it but don't assume others to follow it blindly. What is frustrating is that fellow truth seeker like yourself scolds at such inquiry without evaluating it themselves.

For, the massive cultural changes in the subcontinent could not have spontaneously
developed locally in the Panjab, even assuming an amalgamation (why, by whom, how?) of
various components that had been there before. Instead, it is easier to assume that a new
element actually brought in new items such as the domesticated horse and the horse-drawn
chariot (§21), and IE/IA style poetry, religion and ritual. Also, it is not very likely and,
indeed, not visible that leaders of the Indus civilization or rather their 'Panjabi' village level
successors planned and executed such a universal shift of the cultural paradigm themselves. A
massive, if gradual introduction of (some, if not all) IA traits seems the only viable conclusion
(see below, on Ehret's model).

It is main stream view of the IVC archaeologists that the transformation from IVC to Ganga valley civilization was internal development. Archaeologists changed their positions in last few decades due to new findings. Even Harappa was continually inhabited even after 1900BC and shows same cultural change. Now this is nothing new. Gujarat is continually inhabited starting from 3500BC but it was ignored before.

Only linguists are hanging on to the argument that post IVC culture is result of intrusion. Funny thing is he mentions the archaeologists view in passing without saying that he prefers to ignore them.

Also there is nothing called IE/IA style material culture in Panjab as he describes. Interpretation is based on his original assumption that Rigvedic people were the first IA speaker in India.

It is indeed historically attested that the Paršumaš (Persians) moved from
northwestern to southwestern Iran, but this is limited to a relatively small area only. More
important are the 'Mitanni' Indo-Aryans in N. Iraq and Syria (c. 1460-1330 BCE), who
clearly show IA, not Iranian influences (aika 'one' instead of Iranian aiva), and the Kassites
who, as a first wave, preceded them in Mesopotamia. They dislodged the local Akkadian kings
for several centuries, c. 1677-1152 BCE, and they have preserved names such as Šuriiaš (Ved.
Sūrya) or Abirat(t)aš (Abhiratha).28 All these groups that are in various ways culturally
related to the IIr.s are intrusive in their respective areas of settlement. The same may be
assumed as far as the Greater Panjab is concerned.

He recognizes the glaring evidence of east to west movement of IA people but instead of connecting them to IVC he connects them to Russia. The connection to Russia is based on many other assumptions. But in first argument he used it as fact when making case for IA connection with Russia.

Note that except for the inscriptions there is nothing IE/IA about Akkadia. Nobody would have claimed IA presence in that area in absence of inscriptions. That should give you pause when somebody identifies IE/IA presence just based on archaeological evidence.

If there was immigration, who then were the indigenous inhabitants of the
subcontinent? They can in fact still be traced in the substrates of the RV and of modern
languages: an unknown Indo-Gangetic language has supplied the c. 40% of the agricultural
terminology in Hindi (typical already for the RV, Kuiper 1955, 1991). A clear hint is
provided by Nahalī, a small IA language spoken on the Tapti River, NW of Ellichpur in
Madhya Pradesh. At successively "lower" levels of Nahali vocabulary, 36% are of Kurku
(Munda) and 9% of Dravidian origin, while the oldest level, some 24%, do not have any
cognates (Kuiper 1962: 50, 1966: 96-192, but see now Mother Tongue II-III, 1996-7) and
belong to the oldest language traceable in India (Witzel 1999a,b). Clearly, Munda, Dravidian
and IA are consecutive(?) overlays on pre-existing languages. Again, such a scenario is met
with in many other areas of the world.

Do you seriously believe in this argument? Can't you see this is logically bogus argument to determine IVC/IA relationship? How does the Nahalli borrowed words in Hindi prove that Rigvedic people were migrant? How does Nahalli borrowing words from Kurku, Dravidian and some unknown language has anything to do with Rigvedic Sanskrit? What this shows is that he doesn't have such evidence in Vedic Sanskrit. I wonder how this goes unchallenged in peer reviewed world.

Not only that he is being selective in his reasoning. He ignores the fact that non IA languages are only found in east and south India which was populated after Iron Age. IVC region is almost completely IA/IIr speaking. Now we also know that great majority of the people living in the area are decedent of the IVC folks. There is continuous internal development which takes us from 4th millennium BC to historic time. It should be default to assume that they spoke same language. When they moved out of IVC in Iron Age, they came in contact with Dravidian and Munda people living in the east and south.

If east and south India did not change the language why assume that habitant of civilization with the 20% of world population, culturally and technically advance in prehistoric time changed the language? As ShivJi puts it why would they change the words for body parts, relatives and animals they used for 1000s of years? Unless AIT/AMT guys can explain It, they should at least push back the IE/IA date in India.

[KLP Dubey]

Kindly provide us some solid reasons that we can give to our kids when they ask us why we are protecting the Vedas if they have no meaning. Please keep in mind that the iGeneration is more inclined towards maya and the argument that Vedas are important to identify devatas is not enlightening enough for them.

In the previous post I was stating the arguments made by Mimamsa, which were focused primarily on the usefulness of the Samhita towards the execution of Vedic injunctions in the form of earthly Yajnas.

I have already stated the ultimate reason for upholding the Veda. The Veda is Eternal Sound. Furthermore, since they are the only eternal entities they are directly responsible for the cosmic Universal Order. They contain the Rules/Laws of Nature and operate continuously without any other requirement.

According to the Mimamsa attempt to understand the Veda, the "operative" actions on the cosmic scale occur by means of the "verbs" present in the Vedic sounds. These verbs relate the "nouns" and have a number of other adjunct sounds. These sounds together comprise the Universe (both as "material" and "causative agent") and are in continuous operation.

One can place the greatest trust only in actions resulting from the interpretation/interrogation of eternal sounds, and not in actions resulting from interpretations of authored works that are motivated by human reasons.

As a matter of fact, human attempts to understand the eternal Veda have already brought a long list of human benefits. The desire among humans to understand the Veda and to uphold it, has seeded every branch of human knowledge in the past (and in the future if the Veda continues to be interrogated appropriately). For example, it has seeded the human capability to communicate via language and resulted in the Sanskrit language which is at the core of Indian civilization.

At the personal level, committed reproduction of the Vedic sounds brings a number of mental, physical, and intellectual advantages over the average human. Moreover, study of the Mimamsa and Vedanta attempts to understand the Veda equips one with the means of rational and logical Inquiry leading to correct actions (dharma), as well as certain humanistic/spiritual qualities that generate health benefits and tranquillity. Otherwise one is adrift in the world and at the mercy of unreliable advice/testimony.

I also did not say the Veda has "no meaning". I meant that the "Sanskrit meanings" of the Vedic words are not reliable. Some may in fact be correct, we do not know. But we certainly know that the sum total of the "Sanskrit meanings" is not correct as of now. Until and unless we come up with a consistent set of word-assignments as a starting point, or discover some independent testimony throwing light on the history and context of the word-assignments, there is simply nothing of a historical nature than can be probed using the Vedic sounds. It is an incorrect and fraudulent use of the Veda.

Namaskar,

KL

[RajeshA]

Perhaps you may like to comment on theories of Asko Parpola and Iravatham Mahadevan, which do not kick the Sanskrit speakers beyond Indian borders!

If you do not find any, one reason may be that Parpola may be a AIT-Nazi and Mahadevan simply playing to the phenomenon of Tamil victim-chauvinism, which is based on circular reasoning - "Aryans" pushed the "Dravidians" out of IVC, so IVC is based on "Dravidian" society and as one founds some "Dravidian" indicators there, it must be true that "Aryans" pushed "Dravidians" out, and all the glory for the highly developed Indus Valley Civilization belongs to Tamils alone!

If their views differs from such a stand, please do enlighten us!

How does matter if Mahadevan is suffering from Victim hood in the fact-finding of IVC and RV relationship. Why can't he accuse back us saying we are suffering from Migrant victim-hood!

Mahadevan is suffering under no victimhood! He is only serving a political ideology which is based in a fundamental way on AIT, which equates Tamil Brahmins with Aryans from the North, who allegedly subjugated the native Tamils of other castes, and thus need to be purged and the religion allegedly of the North, which they represent, to be rejected.

So he has a political agenda, and with that agenda he can hardly do any objective work on IVC. He is making all his work based on the assumption that Indo-Aryans invaded from outside India. If one goes from this premise, one would become captive in a circular argument! All archaeological findings would be analyzed with this polarity.

Let's not forget that the reigning opinion and theory is Indic Indigenism. Indics have always believed that our civilization arose in the Indian Subcontinent. If another theory wants to take away that crown it needs to first provide the incontrovertible evidence. AIT has not provided that as yet! In fact AIT has provided ZERO evidence, but due to the dominance of the West since their colonial times, they have been acting as if the AIT is the reigning theory, and they have continued to build on it as if AIT is a clinched fact and they don't need to provide any evidence any more!

The onus is still on AIT to prove itself! And before Mahadevan pursues his circular logic he still has to disprove Indigenism.

We say Witzel is Nazi, and he says we are Hindutvadis. Full blame game on and on, and totally unproductive.

SN_Rajan ji,

We claim that Witzel is a AIT-Nazi, and not Nazi. Word "Nazi" has a specific historical meaning. AIT-Nazi has a different meaning. Let's keep the two separate.

Actually I don't really care about the blame game! They have thrown enough mud at those Indics who question their AIT views. It is time to throw back mud. I personally don't mind getting into the mud to wrestle pigs if need be!

I also don't think that mud-slinging is unproductive. Their mud-slinging has helped their cause. I am sure some of my mud would also stick. Today OIT or Indigenism is often associated with Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism in academic circles. Did it become so on its own. Hardly!

The AIT-Indigenist debate based on logical argumentation has been won by the Indigenists a long time ago!

I see you said it is okay to do this for people who are, let's say, recognized in their/some field, but, then, quality of discussion suffers and degenerates as whole putting off people like me.

I don't see how the quality of discussion has suffered. We are on 108th page here. All are friendly to each other. No acrimony! Most of the posts are objective, to the point!

If calling out Witzel as an AIT-Nazi and Mahadevan as an AIT-Sepoy perturbs you and puts you off than you either have the choice to fight this urge of being put off and contribute to the discussion regardless of it, or you have to listen to your feelings. That is really your own choice!

No "evidence" that AIT-Nazis or AIT-Sepoys produce in favor of AIT or any of its variants would be left unchallenged. All arguments would be responded to without this hand-waving of calling them AIT-Nazis and AIT-Sepoys. These honors would be done to them in addition to objective countering of their claims and arguments!

Why don't we all please just stick to 'objective' assessments only, and leave all Pisko business to BENIS-like threads.

Because Pisko-analysis is also science! In the case of AIT, after doing some digging, just below the surface we have discovered a great archaeological find - the piskology of AIT, and AIT is full of Piskology right up to its head!

On this note, I would also request you to provide more info on AIT-Nazis' arguments and the data it is based on. Earlier you just provided their conclusions, which they keep on parroting and hope somehow that the winds of their authority alone would pbe sufficient for the AIT-sails!

What one is looking for are non-circular-logic arguments and evidences of the AIT-Nazis and not their bhashans where they start with the premise anyway that the Indo-Aryans came from outside India!

[RajeshA]

AIT-Sepoy Rajesh Kochhar in his book made the case that Afghanistan-Eastern Iran is better suited to be the area where Rig Veda was written.

One reason he offered was that the Soma plant which some have identified with the Ephedra plant does not grow in Punjab or India generally, but it grows in Afghanistan and Iran region.

Haoma (Soma) I Botany: Encyclopedia Iranica
Haoma (Soma) II Rituals: Encyclopedia Iranica

However Shrikant Talageri in his book "The Rigveda - A Historical Analysis"! sends Rajesh Kochhar for a six!

Both Kochhar and Talageri are purveyors of utter tripe and nonsense. Just when you think one of them couldn't be any greater an idiot, the other one immediately tries to outdo him with even more ridiculous claims and "brilliant" theories.

The "meaning" of the Rgveda is ONLY in the correct utterance of its sounds. There is no history, geography, botany, or zoology in the Veda. These are humanly-derived subjects. The sounds of the Veda represent the Rules/Laws of Nature.

Vedas may be eternal and authorless, but I find your explanations till now of why it is so quite illogical!

[JE Menon]

So where do the Vedas come from then? Apparently, not India. Looks like we might be on the cusp of the Alien Instruction Theory (AIT). Not that I'm against the possibility, but some kind of rationale would be nice.

On the other hand, the general tendency of scholars appears to be, one way or other, to push the Anywhere But India agenda - at least some genetic evidence notwithstanding.

[KLP Dubey]

Vedas may be eternal and authorless, but I find your explanations till now of why it is so quite illogical!

I have NEVER explained "why" the Veda is eternal and authorless. So your telling me that you found my "explanation quite illogical" seems rather odd.

The eternal Veda ("shabda") is an epistemologic axiom, along with five other valid sources of knowledge (perception, inference, comparison, presumption, and non-apprehension). It is not a logical "deduction". Such epistemology forms the basis of rational and logical inquiry.

Axioms are fundamental to all knowledge, at the same time they cannot be arbitrary. Axioms are not deduced, they can only be falsified. A stream of inquiry can be shown to be entirely invalid when one or more of its axioms are falsified.

The axiom of Eternal Veda has NEVER been falsified despite more than 2500 years of recorded history of determined and highly intellectual attacks on it. You should read up on that, if you don't believe me. I am not here to tell you the entire story. To paraphrase an old saying: "A day in the library saves a year on Bharat-Rakshak".

On the other hand, if it is assumed that "the Veda is an authored work", such an assumption has been falsified every single time and shown to be without merit. This has already been conclusively shown by many. I was only repeating their results.

As I mentioned before in this thread, the lack of ability to perform ethical inquiry is due to a lack of understanding of Vedic principles. This in turn leads to a tendency to try and "use whatever is available" to score a point over another disputant, without bothering to see if it has higher-level validity in the first place. This is the state of the argumentation in both the AIT and (regrettably) also the OIT camps.

Namaskar,

KL

[KLP Dubey]

So where do the Vedas come from then? Apparently, not India. Looks like we might be on the cusp of the Alien Instruction Theory (AIT). Not that I'm against the possibility, but some kind of rationale would be nice.

The Veda is eternal and all-pervasive. They are always existing everywhere, so there is no question of "where they came from".

On the other hand, if by "where did they come from", you mean "how did it come into the consciousness of humans", that is a valid question to ask. Nobody knows - whatever happened is lost in time. Again in some sense, that is the whole point. If somebody could prove the event that occurred, then there would be no need for things like AIT and OIT. The AIT and OIT are playing a low-level game trying to prove that the RV was either composed outside India or inside India. Both these claims are immediately falsifiable.

It is possible that the event of "humans connecting with the Veda" was terrestrial or extra-terrestrial. There is no evidence to falsify either possibility.

Such questions are not unique to the Veda. People have all sorts of theories (both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial) about things like the origin of life, civilizations, etc. Such inquiries may be ongoing but the important thing is that the eternal Vedic sound has never been falsified.

KL