Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[member_23630]

SN_Rajanji

My 'test' of OIT vs AMT in simple words:

1. My benchmark is IVC. The 'attested' date range for IVC is from 3300 BC to 300 BC - spanning 3000 years, population of 5 million plus, area of 1,260, 000 sq.km( making it the largest ancient civilization) and consisting of 1052 cities plus('nagara'). There is no dispute on these dates and areas, etc. It is all archeologically attested.
<snip>
6. And, i do trust RV date of 1500 BCE to 500 BCE because of the following reasoning:
<snip>

Doesn't the bolded statements put RV bang in the middle of IVC timeframe (as well space)? Then how does your following conclusion about IVC & RV of not being contemporary follow?:

e. Considering that IVC spanned 3000 years and RV spanned about 1000 years, it could also not have been contemporary as there are 'no' references / relations in any 'early' RV texts about IVC type of attributes, but of only 'armaka'.

My mistake and typo. Just corrected the original post too. Please read the IVC dates as 3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE.

[member_23630]

Rajan ji, could you please format your sentences? May be word wrap? It is difficult to read when the sentences don't continue on to next line without a fixed word limit per line....just a request

Self-deleted.

[RajeshA]

Rajesh, read it I will because he has caused Witzel enough pain for the latter to bitch about him sarcastically in his compendium of mothers of all verbal diarrhoeas - this is what Witzel says about Misra as "evidence" against Autocthonous Aryans

No doubt due to his complete (self-imposed?) scholarly isolation at Benares. His (lone?) trip to an
international meeting in Dushanbe, duly noted in his introduction his 1992 book, provided him with some
contacts, -- unfortunately not the best ones,

Oh that is indeed verbal diarrhea!

1) Shri S.S. Misra's work on laryngeals showing that Hittite is the only IE language with laryngeals and the theory that one should project laryngeals into PIE is absurd, because the laryngeals in Hittite come from the Semitic script they used.

2) Also the notion that more vowels a, e, o as did Greek than Sanskrit which had only a does not mean that the Proto-Indo-European should assume that more vowels came earlier which were merged in Sanskrit. There are too many exceptions as to how vowels change which go counter to the law of palatalization. Moreover he gave the example of how Asian Gypsy also use only a whereas European Gypsies use a, e, o, and there the direction of migration is clear!

3) PIE Charlatans claim that the IE k becomes ś in Sanskrit, but Misra claims that in Sanskrit itself at places ś itself becomes k before becoming ṣ! So the change must have been in the other direction ś > k!

So S.S. Misra is really causing some havoc among the PIE Charlatans like Witzel and breaking down their last bastion!

[RajeshG]

Witzel is a man after my own heart. He applies piskology like a master. But it is a game that two can play!

Sorry for picking on thsi statement, just using it as an example of a general trend. The above kind of statements are problematic in 2 ways :

1. Makes it look like this mahashaya is just being naughty like a 6 year old - but has a heart of gold.
2. Delegitimizes a perfectly valid style of inquiry.

I should qualify #2. From what I have seen so far the whole area of studies in the last 200-300 years has been inextricably linked with the contemporary fads and psychological yearnings of predominantly white european and slightly eccentric males. Folks from these areas have been so influential that they have led (or provided fuel to) ideological movements that have already led to huge wars and countless deaths, amazing amounts of material and cultural destruction . Given this kind of background, we should seriously observe this class of individuals. IOW rather then using piskology as meagre rhetorical tools, it should be a serious and legitimate line of study.

I can totally see other good hearted indians cringe at reading this post - perhaps even saying "dont shoot messenger, focus on message", "who cares who xyz is married to, look at his research of layers", "we are not like wendy amma" and what not. But in what little i have seen, motive is extremely important to find out - as *motive* drives the line of inquiry which eventually leads to "research findings".

I would again urge good-hearted Indians on this board to not ignore this aspect. Next time you see an asianist, try to build a psychological profile, see what his motivations are, who the person is married to, who was the advisor, does the person have children, are the children adopted, country of origin of adopted children, girlfriends, flings, rumors about goat $3x, how does the person dress/talk/brush-their-teeth.

Unlike hard-sciences humanities research papers should be read and understood after building the psychological profiles of their authors.

[member_23630]

I logically do not think any theory that can explain all points other than AMT - Occam's razor.

I believe you are guilty of being vague which exactly suits the theory you support. Which AMT do you subscribe to? Specifically, by what method has the source of Indo European langauges (also known as PIE) pinned down to a specific geograophic area? Where is that area? What was the route of migration? What are the timelines for migration? And finally what hard facts, also known as "attested proof" exists for any of these? I too am willing to believe your ideas if you can offer what no one, including Witzel has done.

Everyone has theories and everyone subscribes to one. But the facts available do not always fit in the absence of obfuscation and bluff.

Shiv Ji,

For now, i am just focusing on studying to see if the IE speakers are native to IVC or foreign migrants, as it seems to me to be much simpler 'test' as there is lots of data on IVC and RV dates very far off/late - which is what i tried to explain my post, and that satisfies the 'necessary and sufficient' condition to prove the migration.

[RajeshG]

While i did mention european-males as a typical psychological profile - consider a complete opposite.

Marija Gimbutas has been extremely influential in revival of invasionist claims after WW2. More knowledgeable folks can probably confirm or deny this, but my understanding is that post WW2 the whole aryan race theory and the images of blond, blue-eyed, white males rushing down the khyber pass on spoke-wheeled chariots (vedic tanks) became slightly uncomfortable. Political climate was not quite right to make these type of claims and hence the explanations gradually started changing to migrations and what not.

But then Marija came from a totally different profile - she could change a few things and still make essentially the same invasionist claims about macho aryans.

Read her profile on wiki

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


If somebody were to ask me, what dominated Europe and the west after WW2 in terms of culture, trends and fads I would list the following.

1. anti-communism
2. hippie culture
3. feminism
4. perhaps towards the end homosexuality.

This is upto the fall of berlin wall. I think after german reunification trends started changing again. But that is not relevant as the person in question, died in 1994.

[A_Gupta]

My 'test' of OIT vs AMT in simple words:

1. My benchmark is IVC. The 'attested' date range for IVC is from 3300 BC to 1300 BC - spanning 2000 years, population of 5 million plus, area of 1,260, 000 sq.km( making it the largest ancient civilization) and consisting of 1052 cities plus('nagara'). There is no dispute on these dates and areas, etc. It is all archeologically attested.

The word "Nagara" is not attested, or whatever they called it, is not attested.
Further, it is 1052 settlements, not all settlements can be termed cities. There must have been a lot of villages to support the cities.

2. Now, if IE speakers are 'different && later' population in the IVC area, i consider that as 'Migration'. If the IE speakers are pre-existing natives or even contemporary, then, there is no 'Migration' to speak of. My test is as simple as that.

No one has any clue as to the IVC language, whether it was part of the IE family or not. The circular reasoning is made that IE speakers are "different & later" and therefore the IVC language was not IE, and therefore the IE speakers must be "different & later".

3. For that i just compare the IVC and IE/RV 'locations && attributes && dates'.

4. Now that IVC dates are known, we just have to compare the RV dates, to see if it is 'completed' before 3300 BCE or not. That is my boundary condition.

That is an arbitrary boundary condition. While the RV may be the oldest surviving text, it does not mean that there were no predecessor texts, etc. Just as an instance, how much did English have to develop before there were any works worth preserving (say Chaucer?).

5. From all the scholarly accounts, the dates i get is roughly around 1500 BCE to 500 BCE - with some acceptable errors: say type 1 error of x, and type 2 error of y. As i am interested in the 3300 BCE boundary condition, i am okay some error in RV dating.

6. And, i do trust RV date of 1500 BCE to 500 BCE because of the following reasoning:

a. RV does not mention of 'nagaras' but only of 'pur' and 'armaka'.

Even what might think is a key concept, "asura" in the RV, undergoes a total change of meaning over the course of the Samhita. At least, one would think that RV is about sura, asura, deva, etc., and less about anything else. And yet the meaning shift occurs. Varuna starts out as being asura.

So what to speak of what "pur" and "armaka" refer to?

BTW, when it was believed that Aryans sacked Mohenjodaro and Harappa, then the AITers were perfectly happy to believe that "pur" in the RV referred to those cities.

Only later, when they decided that the Aryans arrived only later, when Mohenjodaro and Harappa were already in terminal decline, that they decided that "pur" no longer meant those cities.

You'll have to tell me what other insight other than wanting to fit the theory led to the shift in meanings from "pur" == "IVC cities" to "pur != IVC cities". I mean, you have to show some new insight other than "I need pur != IVC cities" so that my theory works".

b. Because of Bronze Age and Iron Age relative dating. (i do not believe the iron ore, Ganges theory).

c. I also in trust linguistics relative dating of Mittani, Avestian and RV, by the linguistics rules and principles, and by also using 'locatable' and 'datable' markers such as the horse, wheel and chariot as there are numerous and detailed references for them in RV. (i do not believe in questioning linguistics as a science, and i accept some errors, and i also do not believe in attributing motives and other ad-hominess on linguistics).

The relative dating puts RV older than Avestan and Mittani, I believe, but how much older is not clear - the absolute dating doesn't work.

d. I also trust that IVC language is not IE, could have have Dravidian, plus Munda / Nihali, per Parploa, Witzel and Mahadevan, all of whom i consider scholars with lifetime of contribution(again, i do not believe in attributing motives and other ad-hominess on any of these).

On what basis do you trust that IVC language is not IE? What is the argument for the IVC language not being IE **other than** the theory that IE was a later arrival?

e. Considering that IVC spanned 2000 years and RV spanned about 1000 years, it could also not have been contemporary as there are 'no' references / relations in any 'early' RV texts about IVC type of attributes, but of only 'armaka'.

Addressed above.

f. Also, the 'new attributes' brought in RV into the landscape show that it is new in the IVC areas.

In your own words, what are these new attributes?

My main reference is of course the Witzel 2001 paper, sections 3, 8, 10 14, etc. Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts. EJVS May 2001 pdf http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewi ... VS-7-3.pdf

Sorry, you'll have to do better than that.

For reference on 'nagara':
Moving Targets? Texts, language, archaeology, and history in the Late Vedic and early Buddhist periods.Indo-Iranian Journal 52, 2009, 287-310
http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... 0CvJFfZj_A

The late Vedic texts are not yet aware of cities46 before
the so-called second urbanization of India of c. 450 BCE.
The word nagara occurs only in very Late Brāhmaṇa and
Āraṇyaka texts, such as in the post-Pāṇinean part of
Gopatha Br. (1.1.23), and in the Puraṇic-time part of
Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (1.11.7, 1.31.2).47

Added later: corrected IVC dates.

[/quote]

[A_Gupta]

PS: let me add that in more recent parlance, "pur" does mean city; ranging from ancient "Hastinapur" to modern "Singapore", and many in between.

[RajeshG]

From Marija's wiki page.

Ucko, for example, notes that early Egyptian figurines of women holding their breasts had been taken as 'obviously' significant of maternity or fertility, but the Pyramid Texts revealed that in Egypt this was the female sign of grief

Fleming, in his 1969 paper "The Myth of the Mother Goddess", questioned the practice of identifying neolithic figures as female when they weren't clearly distinguished as male, and took issue with other aspects of the "Goddess" interpretation of Neolithic stone carvings and burial practices

The 2009 book Knossos and the prophets of modernism by Cathy Gere examines the political influence on archaeology more generally. Through the example of Knossos on the island of Crete, which had been (incorrectly) represented as the paradigm of a pacifist, matriarchal and sexually free society, Gere claims that archaeology can easily slip into reflecting what people want to see, rather than teaching people about an unfamiliar past

[A_Gupta]

I will also point out that it is the theory that the horse and chariot were the drivers of IE language dispersal and dominance/adoption that leads to everything that SN Rajan cites with approval.

There is another theory, with a recent paper buttressing it (the paper that IE languages originated in Anatolia), the theory that IE languages spread with agriculture, and became dominant simply by the fact of a population explosion of agriculturalists. By this theory, it is quite possible that even though IE language originated outside India, the earliest agriculturalists of the IVC, 6000BC, spoke IE languages.

[member_20317]

SN_Rajan ji, ok let me try again. Since your response are spread over two posts I will take the liberty to use both in my arguements.

RE. - SN_Rajan Post subject: Re: Out-of-India - From Theory to TruthPosted: 03 Sep 2012 19:30

SN_Rajan ji, if RV people are nostalgic about Horses why are they not nostalgic about their Purs/Armaka whatever? And if they are where are these Purs/Armakas?

Simple. It is not theirs. And, they came in after the IVC became Armaka.

Premise – RV people are not SIVC and they are nostalgic
Conclusion – RV people can be expected to be nostalgic about Purs/Armakas also
Fact –
(1) RV people did not just die out, they continued to live on as Aranyka and Brahmana people.
(2) Purs are physical entities since your assumption is that RV is not the Universal Vibes. It is a source of evidence for you.
Request –
(1) Kindly show me the Pur/Armaka you are talking about
(2) Kindly show me where Aranyakas and Brahmanas are nostalgic about Purs/Armakas

SN_Rajan ji, the only thing that you are sure of is who you want to trust.

Again if RV people are the usurpers of SIVC then why are they not gloating over their winning ways. Or do you already trust that Dasas are SIVC people who got killed by Indra?

ravi_g Ji,

Same as my previous answer: Simple. It is not theirs. And, they came in after the IVC became Armaka.

Maybe late/terminal stages of IVC. And, there is no evidence of 'Invasion' or 'usurping' in the current scholarship.

Same answer will take us to following conclusions:

Dasas are SIVC people. Dasas are actually mentioned as opponents in your RV ergo usurping is involved so your second statement that there is no evidence of Invasion/Usurpation is wrong per your premise that RV is an evidence for your benefit. But that would amount to equivocation, which a somewhat serious person (who relies on evidence) like yourself would loath doing.

So to simplify things lets deal with both the possibilities:

(1) Case 1 - Granted RV people came after SIVC when SIVC structures had become ‘Armaka’ but were not Usurped:

Kindly tell us on a scale of 1-10 how idiot were SIVC people who allowed their Settlements to become Armakas without pushing the matters. Since there is no usurpation involved they have to be classified as idiots having left their settlements to foreigners for being turned into Purs and Armakas


(2) Case 2 - Granted RV people came after SIVC when SIVC structures had become ‘Armaka’ but were notUsurped:

I will not burden you with the onus of having to prove Usurpation that you concede did not took place. But sir conceding that is going contrary to your stand if your stand matches Case 2. The week has 4 days left, lets first decide which way you would like to argue this week. Because my responses are dependent on your proposals so you have to lead.



I am including a Case 3 since it seems you are also alluding to it, that SIVC people had left their settlements and RV people had taken over these settlements and since there is no evidence for Invasion/Usurpation so RV people had to be real idiots to have taken over for living settlements that the SIVC people considered useless/harmful for their interests. Kindly tell us how idiots on a scale of 1-10.


I am also including a Case 4 which was not included by you but would be rationalized by you in near future. That RV people were not idiots when they took over the settlements abandoned by SIVC people, its just that their ‘Pastoral’ lifestyle does not require fixed settlements. But that would leave us with a new dichotomy either SIVC people were idiots that they themselves did not took to ‘Pastoral’ lifestyle or RV people were idiots that they did not take to urban lifestyle between 1500-500 BC a period of 1000 years even after having seen the high standards of living of SIVC people.

[RajeshA]

There is another theory, with a recent paper buttressing it (the paper that IE languages originated in Anatolia), the theory that IE languages spread with agriculture, and became dominant simply by the fact of a population explosion of agriculturalists. By this theory, it is quite possible that even though IE language originated outside India, the earliest agriculturalists of the IVC, 6000BC, spoke IE languages.

Except that that theory is just as valid for Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization (SSC, IVC), which had a bustling agriculture, which also provides the same reason for India to move out of the area and expand.

Wikipedia on Mehrgarh

Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Residents of the later period (5500 BCE to 2600 BCE) put much effort into crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BCE. Mehrgarh is probably the earliest known center of agriculture in South Asia.

In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence in human history for the drilling of teeth in vivo (i.e. in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh.

In India we need to do a lot more archaeo-botanical research!

[Nilesh Oak]

In India we need to do a lot more archaeo-botanical research!

Agree. One such effort by B B Lal - The Homeland of the Aryans -Evidence of Rigvedic Flora & Fauna & Archaeology.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Homeland-Arya ... 8173052832

I have read reference evidence of cultivation of Rice in Ganga Vally, going beack to 8000 years (~6000 BC) or even earlier. And in Thailand/Brahmadesh (Myanmar)/Laos for as early as ~20K years ago.

[A_Gupta]

Except that that theory is just as valid for Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization (SSC, IVC), which had a bustling agriculture, which also provides the same reason for India to move out of the area and expand.

My point is that either way, IVC had IE language. It is the theory that IE language was carried with horse and chariot that necessitate IVC to be non-IE.

[Virupaksha]

Except that that theory is just as valid for Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization (SSC, IVC), which had a bustling agriculture, which also provides the same reason for India to move out of the area and expand.

My point is that either way, IVC had IE language. It is the theory that IE language was carried with horse and chariot that necessitate IVC to be non-IE.

what is IE language by the way?? How did IVC get an Indo-European language. I think this needs more proof.

[svinayak]

There is no language called Indo European language.
It is a colonial construct for the Europeans to understand European history. It has nothing to do with India.

Indo European is a framework under which they 'try' to explain their history.

[KLP Dubey]

RajeshA,

Thanks for your detailed post.

One cannot enter this inquiry with "a mission" already defined to defeat the AIT with a predetermined conclusion. One must dispassionately go where reason and logic take us.

The title of this thread is: "OIT: From Theory to Truth". Surely we do not want Lies to lurk in the Truth?

In my very first post on this thread, I began by saying "OIT is correct for many other reasons, but not because the RV supports it." Other posters are pursuing other lines of investigation which do not rely on dating the RV. For example, Nilesh Oak is pursuing the dating of authored Sanskrit works. If his conclusions - which are very interesting - stand up to scrutiny then it will be a big boost to OIT. Similarly, there are arguments based on genetics, archaeology, etc. which appear to be bearing towards the validity of OIT.

Now, as for the RV: after many years of closely scrutinizing it (sound by sound) I can conclude that it does not support or contain any history, geography, or any other human cultural effort. Any such associations are humanly-created and we do not have independent testimony to verify the context and time of these associations. I will be sharing my findings by writing more posts (as time permits) on specific matters. The result will be that dating the RV is a futile task.

The overarching cause of that result - as has been rather obvious and known for thousands of years to those passing down the Vedic sounds - is that the Vedic sound is eternal. However, it is not necessary for you to "accept" that wisdom. All that is necessary is for consensus to emerge on the purely practical finding that the RV cannot be dated, and this can be shown without any recourse to the "eternal Veda" fact.

Now, these results will indeed be fatal for the AIT since it does rely heavily on the "date" of the RV and on claiming that the RV shows "west to east movements of IE peoples into India" as well as the "developing culture of the Indo-Aryans".

As for OIT, yes- some "retooling"/"reorientation" will be required. Those OITers whose main track was to establish a "new and improved" date for the RV will unfortunately be out of business too. But that is a good thing, because ultimately it focuses the OITers on the truth and only on those lines of investigation that are of merit. Overall, the victory will be lasting and genuine.

I do agree with you one important thing, which I also stated in my first post. That is, Sanskrit indeed originated in India due to the efforts of the Indians to understand the sounds of the RV, and it spread from India elsewhere in very ancient times. At a time when the rest of the world was likely communicating in "grunts and growls", the Indians were crystallizing the basics of phonetics, grammatical rules, etymology, etc through examination of the RV. It must have been a long and very ancient process.

When the future version of the OIT - free from any reliance on false "RV dates" - emerges, I am quite optimistic it will be consistent with that fact of Sanskrit going from India to other places. This would again be a good thing, for such consistency to emerge naturally from dispassionate and unbiased investigation.

In short - don't worry/panic. This will work out. Let's examine the RV in an unbiased manner.

KL

[KLP Dubey]

No discussion on the question of "rivers" and "riverine geography" in the RV can be complete without analysis of:

1) Sarasvati: While there are a number of passing references to Sarasvati made in RV suktas on other topics, it is not necessary to consider those in detail. The most important suktas are 7.95 and 7.96 which are on the subject of Sarasvati itself.

2) RV 10.75: This is a favorite of the "RV geographers". They misuse it in different ways to make claims regarding the date of RV, e.g. things like the "10th mandala is a "late Rgvedic" mandala".

Interested participants may want to take a look at those suktas from RV. I will discuss in more detail later.

KL

[shiv]

For now, i am just focusing on studying to see if the IE speakers are native to IVC or foreign migrants, as it seems to me to be much simpler 'test' as there is lots of data on IVC and RV dates very far off/late - which is what i tried to explain my post, and that satisfies the 'necessary and sufficient' condition to prove the migration.

Rajanji, with respect, I recall that you arrived on this thread with two basic premises that you made about yourself and others

1. That you were searching for the truth no matter what the truth turned out to be
2. That everyone else on this thread were being one sided and that you would, in your search for truth, also show how one sided and parochial all others were.

You will discover that a group of 20 or 30 educated Indians on this thread are not all "brainwashed Hindutvadi jingos" whose self image depends on bluffing and inflating the importance and history of India and Sanskrit/Tamil.

There is a problem in this field but you have to discover it yourself. The reason you have so many educated, confident people trashing Witless "Harvard Professors" is not out of blind jingoism. This thread is not about flag waving twentysomethings. Many of us have sucessful careers in science after passing ot from top Indian colleges and working in top western institutions and have no reason to be needlessly jingoistic or lie to each other. Many are accustomed to things like "evidence" and attestation, and when I say that it is possible to recognise bullshitting when it occurs I am not kidding.

Go ahead and learn, but if you have preconceptions in your mind, be prepared to face cognitive dissonance. There is more to this issue than meets the eye and not all of it is simple Indian jingosim versus objective western science. I note you started from posting humongous Witzel quotes and have now moved to making empirical judgements without the data you need outside of what Witzel has written and what appears on Wiki. We all started there. You need to dig deep and hard for data and the attested data is sparse. The bluffing and fudging is copious. And not just by Indians.

[shiv]

Sorry. My mistake/typo. Just edited my original post too.

I just referred to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) that was located in the northwestern region[1] of the Indian subcontinent,[2][3] consisting of what is now mainly present-day Pakistan and northwest India.[4] Flourishing around the Indus River basin, the civilization[n 1] extended east into the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley[8] and the upper reaches Ganges-Yamuna Doab;[9][10] it extended west to the Makran coast of Balochistan, north to northeastern Afghanistan and south to Daimabad in Maharashtra. The civilization was spread over some 1,260,000 km², making it the largest ancient civilization.

The Indus Valley is one of the world's earliest urban civilizations, along with its contemporaries, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. At its peak, the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The civilization is noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses.

Rajanji, there is one more error/typo/misunderstanding/misinterpretation in your original post which you have left unedited. Let me post your edited quote

My 'test' of OIT vs AMT in simple words:

1. My benchmark is IVC. The 'attested' date range for IVC is from 3300 BC to 1300 BC - spanning 2000 years, population of 5 million plus, area of 1,260, 000 sq.km( making it the largest ancient civilization) and consisting of 1052 cities plus('nagara'). There is no dispute on these dates and areas, etc. It is all archeologically attested.

I looked at the Wiki link (which I have come across several times in the course of this discussion). The dates 3300 BC to 1300 BC refer to the Bronze age, not the IVC, by which I presume you mean "Indus valley Civilization". Your post unambiguously states that the IVC is "attested" and archaeologically proven from 3300 BC to 1300 BC which I believe is completely wrong but am willing to be corrected if you can show some independent corroboration of the dates 3300 BC to 1300 BC for the Indus Valley Civilization. I have followed the 4 links in your quote and none are helpful to me in this regard. Perhaps you have better information about these radically revised dates of the IVC that you imply are absolute and uncontestable when you say:

There is no dispute on these dates and areas, etc. It is all archeologically attested.

I request you to kindly make me privy to the attested and proven archaeological information that you might have that allows such radical revision of dates for the IVC. TIA

[Theo_Fidel]

Found an interesting paper on dental traits. Oddly enough the greatest diversity of Indo-European traits is within specific tribal groups in India. Some relevant interpretations are below....

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.3319.pdf

"The scores of the PC are high
in Dravidian and Munda groups of India, in other Indian and
some Far East populations as well as in many populations in
the south of West Asia and in the north of Europe and Siberia.
In fact, the 2nd PC presents the paradox combination of eastern
(the distal trigonid crest on the first lower molar) and western
markers (four-cusped lower molars, precisely the first one).
In our previous study on the Caucasian populations we suggested
both southern and northern gracile subsets inWest Eurasia
had developed from one ancestral eastern group (Kashibad-
ze, 2006). The pattern on the map supports this assumption. For
the first time we find the traces of the initial group in the east
province. We can envisage the movement of this ancient group
from South Asia to the east and to the west, subsequent splitting
the west flow into northern and southern subsets, probably as a
result of populating postglacial continental space."

In spite of the enormous territory and the revealed divergence
the populations of the continent have undergone wide scale and
intensive time-space interaction. The maximal phenetic diversity
was detected in India, respectively lesser in North Europe,
West Siberia and Near East. Many details in the revealed landscape
could be backgrounded to dierent historical events.

One of the maps on the link.



One suspects that R1a hid in all sorts of places during the ice age.

[ShauryaT]

Now, as for the RV: after many years of closely scrutinizing it (sound by sound) I can conclude that it does not support or contain any history, geography, or any other human cultural effort. Any such associations are humanly-created and we do not have independent testimony to verify the context and time of these associations. I will be sharing my findings by writing more posts (as time permits) on specific matters. The result will be that dating the RV is a futile task.

Dubey ji: I for one will be looking forward to read your findings. Sri Aurobindo reached similar conclusions to yours and also went ahead to provide his own interpretations of the vedas (he was critical of the works of Sāyaṇācārya - the true parent of European scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries), fully cognizant of the fact that it was just an inspired interpretation.

Also agree with your view that OIT can be shown but not through a dating of the RV or through any histrocity associations attributed to RV.

[shiv]

Except that that theory is just as valid for Saraswati-Sindhu Civilization (SSC, IVC), which had a bustling agriculture, which also provides the same reason for India to move out of the area and expand.

My point is that either way, IVC had IE language. It is the theory that IE language was carried with horse and chariot that necessitate IVC to be non-IE.

The IVC certainly had the horse. It had wheels and wagons/chariots as well.

The AIT case is that the horse and chariot were brought along with Indo European languages to India by someone else around 1200 BC, 600 to 800 years after the end of the IVC.

This leaves the AIT theory with an irreconcilable paradox:

If horse existed in IVC in 2000 BC, the language must have been IE, if the theory of language origin in horse domesticating steppes is true. That means the langauge had reached India by 2000 BC and not 800 years later

But If the language of IVC was not IE, then the theory that horse and wheel arrived in India only along with migrants in 1200 BC is trash because the horse was known 800 years before that date. In fact the whole conquering migration being motivated by fast horses and chariots gets trashed.

Given the available attested, irrefutable archaeological proof, either IE languages were spoken in IVC as early as 2300 BC (discovery of wheeled wagon) or the horse dependent migration to India did not occur on the 1200 BC date as stipulated.

[shiv]

Witzel is a man after my own heart. He applies piskology like a master. But it is a game that two can play!

Sorry for picking on thsi statement, just using it as an example of a general trend. The above kind of statements are problematic in 2 ways :

1. Makes it look like this mahashaya is just being naughty like a 6 year old - but has a heart of gold.
2. Delegitimizes a perfectly valid style of inquiry.

I should qualify #2. From what I have seen so far the whole area of studies in the last 200-300 years has been inextricably linked with the contemporary fads and psychological yearnings of predominantly white european and slightly eccentric males. Folks from these areas have been so influential that they have led (or provided fuel to) ideological movements that have already led to huge wars and countless deaths, amazing amounts of material and cultural destruction . Given this kind of background, we should seriously observe this class of individuals. IOW rather then using piskology as meagre rhetorical tools, it should be a serious and legitimate line of study.

I can totally see other good hearted indians cringe at reading this post - perhaps even saying "dont shoot messenger, focus on message", "who cares who xyz is married to, look at his research of layers", "we are not like wendy amma" and what not. But in what little i have seen, motive is extremely important to find out - as *motive* drives the line of inquiry which eventually leads to "research findings".

I would again urge good-hearted Indians on this board to not ignore this aspect. Next time you see an asianist, try to build a psychological profile, see what his motivations are, who the person is married to, who was the advisor, does the person have children, are the children adopted, country of origin of adopted children, girlfriends, flings, rumors about goat $3x, how does the person dress/talk/brush-their-teeth.

Unlike hard-sciences humanities research papers should be read and understood after building the psychological profiles of their authors.

I can see your point and you have stated my intended meaning far better than I did. And you are right in saying that serious profiling must be done.

But maybe you did not actually read my post, because nothing I have written characterises Witzel as a harmless bunny. And you missed the sarcasm in calling such a vicious man "one after my own heart". Doing a psychological profile of someone (say an opponent) and then dragging him down is a very common thing and Witzel does exactly that. My statement was only intended to defend myself against the accusation that I should not focus on the messenger's personality and tactics but look at his message.

Witzel's message is all psy-war. I beleive I am the first on BRF to call it out for what it is.

[shiv]

Publication Date: September 24, 2005
Editors: Edwin Bryant, Laurie Patton
Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History [@scribd] Online Book

Chapter 6, Page 181
The Date of the Rigveda and the Aryan Migration: Fresh Linguistic Evidence
By Satya Swarup Misra

The same Bryant has a 1998 forum post on the horse issue because the horse and Rig veda translations are central to the AIT Nazis
http://www.svabhinava.org/aitvsoit/Hors ... -frame.php

I would like to submit a further point for consideration. Indo-Europeanists have constructed a proto form *ekwos. But some linguists have gone so far as to point out that it cannot actually be determined whether this animal was domesticated, or wild, or even what kind of an equid it was in the *proto*-period. It has been noted by a few linguists (troubled by the over-prioritization of the horse evidence) that the identification of this animal with caballus Linn. comes not from etymology, but from archaeology. It seems to me that there is an element of circularity here: linguistics cannot determine exactly what kind of an equid *ekwos refers to in the joint proto-period: archaeology does. But the archaeology of the (commonly accepted) Indo-European homeland is primarily situated in the Kurgan grave area because equus caballus Linn. was first domesticated there. And this is deemed conclusive (to a great, but not exclusive, extent) on the authority of linguistic palaeontology and its identification of a Proto-Indo-European horse which is generally assumed to be caballus Linn. It seems to me this could all be problematized.

Anyway, Gimbutas has her own detractors who need not detain us here.

Allowing, along with most linguists, that *ekwos does indeed refer to caballus Linn. (which I think is perfectly reasonable), one last connected point. We should perhaps focus attention, for a moment, on the assumption that the area of the domestication of the horse is necessarily the area of origin of the Indo-Europeans (several Indo-Europeanists have questioned this assumption, Gramkrelidze and Ivanov being the most recent). It is therefore not so easy to counter the Indigenous Aryan charge that the “horse could have been very well known to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in their original homeland before their dispersal from it (which is the only thing indicated by the facts), without the horse necessarily being a native of that homeland, or they themselves being its domesticators” (Talageri, 158). The logic, here, is that just as the horse has always been imported and central to Indic culture right throughout the historic period, it could likewise have similarly been imported and central in the Proto-Indo-Aryan period (for the Indigenous Aryan School, and earlier still in the Proto-Indo-European period for the Out-of-India school).

[Arjun]

Found an interesting paper on dental traits. Oddly enough the greatest diversity of Indo-European traits is within specific tribal groups in India. Some relevant interpretations are below....

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.3319.pdf

Thanks for the paper, Theo. The paper is quite conclusive about the direction of 'phene' flow as being Out-of-India - though timing is a matter of speculation.

Can we all welcome a promising new science (Archeophenetics) to this thread, adding to the enormously inter-disciplinary scope of AMT/OIT studies ?!

[shiv]

Since so many of us have put in so much reading I am going to summarize a few scholarly bluffs made to pass off the Aryan Migration theory as valid. These bluffs have become mainstream and are like the "captive wedding cat"* (OT Explanation below in tiny font). This is is to make it easier for us by listing the glaring issues of AIT for the benefit of newcomers who may think we are non secular brainwashed Hindutvadi saffron terrorists. These are the points that need to be addressed satisfactorily

1. Unsubstantiated Bluff 1: The Rig Veda can be unambiguously translated and those translations represent an accurate record of Indian history
2. Unsubstantiated Bluff 2: Rig Veda depicts a "horse cult" among the people and also describes graves of horses buried with kings like the horse and chariot graves of central Asia.
3. Unsubstantiated Bluff 3: The language spoken in central Asia where the modern horse was (allegedly) domesticated was a precursor of Indo European languages termed as PIE
4. Unsubstantiated Bluff 4: Horses, along with a language that later became Sanskrit were brought to India by horse domesticators of Central Asia
5. Unsubstantiated Bluff 5: Horses did not exist in India before the date stipulated by liguists for the arrival of horses in India

* Captive Wedding Cat: It became a tradition to tie a cat to a pole at some weddings until one day when no cat was available. People anxious not to do inauspicious things asked a hoary elder if they could do without the cat, and he said "Of course. 70 years ago a cat was playing havoc at my uncle's wedding and my grandfather caught the cat and tied it to a pole to prevent further mischief. Ever since then everyone thinks that tying a cat to a pole is an essential part of the wedding ceremony. AIT Nazis have made the horse and the Rig veda an essential component of their theory for the wedding ceremony of central Asia horse with India language.

[A_Gupta]

The IVC certainly had the horse. It had wheels and wagons/chariots as well.

The AIT case is that the horse and chariot were brought along with Indo European languages to India by someone else around 1200 BC, 600 to 800 years after the end of the IVC.

You, of course, are aware that the AITers strongly deny that the IVC had the horse; that the Surkotada horse was in reality an onager, etc.

[A_Gupta]

1. Unsubstantiated Bluff 1: The Rig Veda can be unambiguously translated and those translations represent an accurate record of Indian history.

Even if the Rig Veda could be translated unambiguously, it still does not represent a record of history, because as far as anyone can establish, being a record of history was not its intent. Any history, geography, mention of material artifacts, is incidental. As someone has pointed out, the Rig Veda does not mention salt. You cannot however draw the inference that the Rig Vedic people did not know salt.

[shiv]

The IVC certainly had the horse. It had wheels and wagons/chariots as well.

The AIT case is that the horse and chariot were brought along with Indo European languages to India by someone else around 1200 BC, 600 to 800 years after the end of the IVC.

You, of course, are aware that the AITers strongly deny that the IVC had the horse; that the Surkotada horse was in reality an onager, etc.

Arjunji - you too would stonewall or run if a huge horse bone was threatening to be pushed up your rear end, killing your favorite theory. To paraphrase Witzel, the AIT people, and Witzel himself know they have a big problem with that find.

But let us move further back in time to 2300 BC when wagons and wheel models were found in the IVC. The linguists tell us that there are deep and old links between all Indo-European langauges for terms like wheel and axle. They also tell us that the first wheels were made in central Asia around 4000 BC and all the original words "must have" originated there.

I would easily believe it if you told me that the first wheels and axles arrived in IVC from central Asia in 2300 BC after they were invented in Central Asia in 4000 BC. There is archaeological evidence of both.

But the AIT theory insists that horses and wheels did not move out of Central Asia until spoked wheels were invented around 2000 BC making fast war chariots, and so they could not have reached India before 1200 BC . The conclusion is that the langauge came well after IVC along with spoked wheel and horse. But if the solid wheel was invented in Central Asia in 4000 BC and arrived in India only as "spoked wheel" along with horse and langaugein 1200 BC how come solid wheel models and spectacular spoked wheel imagery are found in 2300 BC IVC? The only escape is denial and stonewalling and copious diarrhea of rhetorical words filling up the entire internet that bothers Witzel so much.

[Arjun]

Dubey ji: I for one will be looking forward to read your findings. Sri Aurobindo reached similar conclusions to yours and also went ahead to provide his own interpretations of the vedas (he was critical of the works of Sāyaṇācārya - the true parent of European scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries), fully cognizant of the fact that it was just an inspired interpretation.

Also agree with your view that OIT can be shown but not through a dating of the RV or through any histrocity associations attributed to RV.

I don't think Aurobindo's views can be compared to Dubey ji's.

Aurobindo's primary thesis was that a number of Western ( & Indian) translators had taken recourse to a literalist interpretation of the Vedas, and he rightly felt that there was a deeper and more esoteric essence that had been ignored. So, Aurobindo's essential departure with earlier methods was in the hermeneutics used for earlier interpretations (literalist meaning vs allegorical vs esoteric meanings assigned to passages). Aurobindo therefore proposed a new interpretation with more emphasis on the esoteric meaning of passages.

On the other hand, what Dubey ji seems to be suggesting is that it would be impossible to come up with any hermeneutics or any set of assigned meanings to the Vedas. By his reasoning - I would think Aurobindo's or anybody's elses version would all be equally suspect. The Vedas - he believes, cannot be assigned any meaning. And the power of the Vedas lie in the sounds and not in the meanings.

[A_Gupta]

On the other hand, what Dubey ji seems to be suggesting is that it would be impossible to come up with any hermeneutics or any set of assigned meanings to the Vedas. By his reasoning - I would think Aurobindo's or anybody's elses version would all be equally suspect. The Vedas - he believes, cannot be assigned any meaning. And the power of the Vedas lie in the sounds and not in the meanings.

The Vedas is too broad a term, I think Dubeyji just means the Samhita, not the Brahmanas or the Upanishads. The Samhita was preserved by sound, not by meaning, so Dubeyji is indisputably correct that that was the view - at least of all the people through the generations who preserved the Samhita - that sound, not meaning was primary.

[shiv]

1. Unsubstantiated Bluff 1: The Rig Veda can be unambiguously translated and those translations represent an accurate record of Indian history.

Even if the Rig Veda could be translated unambiguously, it still does not represent a record of history, because as far as anyone can establish, being a record of history was not its intent. Any history, geography, mention of material artifacts, is incidental. As someone has pointed out, the Rig Veda does not mention salt. You cannot however draw the inference that the Rig Vedic people did not know salt.

If the Rig Veda repreents an accurate historic record, it unambiguously mentions a 34 ribbed horse, as opposed to the 36 ribs of the modern horse. To explain this anomaly Witzel has to resort to this pathetic buffoonery in which the "accurate historic record of the Rig Veda" suddenly turns out like this

It should also be noted that numeral symbolism may play a role in the RV passage (1.162.18) mentioning
the 17-ribbed horse, which is part of an additional hymn of a late RV book. The number of gods is given in the RV
as 33 or 33+1, which would correspond to the 34 ribs of the horse (later on identified with the universe in BĀU 1);
note further that the horse is speculatively in brought into connection with all the gods, many of them mentioned
by name (RV 1.162-3)..

Numeral symbolism my foot.

[A_Gupta]

Shiv,
FYI.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pala ... sage/13754

[shiv]

Shiv,
FYI.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pala ... sage/13754

Arun, Witzel has also made that argument, but there is some subtle bullshitting in the post you have linked which I will proceed to rip a new one for.

Actually, in any equid species the number of thoracic vertebrae
and the ribs extending from them may vary individually within certain limits,
and any veterinary will tell you that domestic horses with 17 pairs of ribs are
not that rare. It happens. There are also humans with 11 or 13 pairs instead of
the usual twelve.

Yes of course. There are exceptions.

I have myself seen at least 5,000 X rays of human chests and have not seen a single instance of humans with 22 ribs (11 per side) so if it occurs it has to be rare. As for humans with 13 ribs per side - there is a condition called "cervical rib" and I have seen a few - a handful in many decades, The chances of finding a human with 22 ribs is so unusual that one could dispute in a court of law that the remains are human and evidence would have to rest on other bones and one would have to ask if body parts aer missing and if so what happened to them

The Rig Veda says 34 ribbed horse. What are the chances that a composer who was urging the butcher to carefully dissect the 34 horse ribs in Rig Veda 1.162 suddenly decided to talk about an unusual 34 ribbed horse rather than the normal 36 ribbed horse which would have been sacrificed thousands of times by the "central Asian Horse Cult" that the Rig veda is supposed to represent.

The 34 rib objection is a valid one. i actually studied from the original work that is called "Gray's Anatomy". In the chapters on bones there is always a mention of supernumerary or missing bones and the percentages in which these findings occur. I have tried to find out that percentage for the horse in veterinary sources but have been unable to do that yet. But I wil be back here. The chances of having a poem composed 3200 years ago singing about a 34 ribbed horse that just happened to be one of the abnormal ones with 34 ribs instead of the normal 36 ribs sounds like a fabricated story to me.

[RajeshA]

Response to post:

One cannot enter this inquiry with "a mission" already defined to defeat the AIT with a predetermined conclusion. One must dispassionately go where reason and logic take us.

The title of this thread is: "OIT: From Theory to Truth". Surely we do not want Lies to lurk in the Truth?

1. This thread, if it has missed your attention, happens to be in Strategic Forum, and with that its mission statement is clear!
2. Paraphrasing one of your quotes:

   "A day in the library saves a year on Bharat-Rakshak"

   A year on Bharat-Rakshak saves a life-time in the library as far as strategic thinking goes!
3. To be frank about it, I am no Dharamraj, and even Dharmaraj Yudhiṣṭhira had to fudge about the death of Aśvatthāman, so not being Dharamraj, yes, I am willing to lie all the way, if it saves my nation, and on Bharat-Rakshak, I hope that is the first priority!
4. There are some constructions in the building industry, where one creates an artificial prop to support a structure, even as one continues to build on more permanent support! When the permanent support is finished, one can remove the artificial prop. And mind you, I am here trying very much to adhere to your definition of what is false and what is true!
5. However if one takes away your definition of "Truth", which many would claim as too constrictive, and more a matter of personal belief, then for them "Truth" lies in the diligent analytic work that Shri Shrikant Talageri has done!
   
   So I think in this debate, belief based "Truth" should be left aside for the time. If in the end the structure stands, belief-based "Truth" can claim its due if one has leeway to spare! May be this would help the Mimāṃsākas to focus their energies to ensure that there is sufficient leeway in the structure for them to claim their due!
6. When the "inquiry" has existential stakes of civilizational level then it is a "mission"! For those whom the stakes are clear, the way forward is also clear!

The overarching cause of that result - as has been rather obvious and known for thousands of years to those passing down the Vedic sounds - is that the Vedic sound is eternal. However, it is not necessary for you to "accept" that wisdom. All that is necessary is for consensus to emerge on the purely practical finding that the RV cannot be dated, and this can be shown without any recourse to the "eternal Veda" fact.

Now, these results will indeed be fatal for the AIT since it does rely heavily on the "date" of the RV and on claiming that the RV shows "west to east movements of IE peoples into India" as well as the "developing culture of the Indo-Aryans".

No AIT does not rely on any date for Rig Veda. They can put it variably at 1500 BCE or 1200 BCE or whatever. That is all guesswork for them. They are interested only in its relative chronological placement, after certain migratory events to the West, in order to reject India as the Urheimat and to deny India its ancient scientific accomplishments and contributions to the world!

Now you speak on the one hand about "a need for consensus", "purely practical finding" and on the other "these results will indeed be fatal for the AIT"! Do you see any contradiction?

On the Indians side, I can assure you, nobody is out to date the Rig Veda or to assign it a geography, due to any agenda we pursue, i.e. any agenda beside survival and defense! So finding consensus on the Indian side is easy, i.e. as soon as the survival and defense of the Indigenist narrative is guaranteed! It is really a question of getting consensus and agreement from the other side that is the whole issue! And why would they willingly give their agreement to it if, as you say, the results would be fatal to them? So you see, there is no question of practicality for them in this scenario!

Let me say, that most Indians are of the view that the Rig Veda was revealed to the ancient Ṛṣis in the Indian Subcontinent in very ancient times! Some qualify this with the narrative that Brahma gave the Vedas to mankind. But beyond that most Indics see no need to become more specific! So it is not the Indics who are holding up consensus! The Indic study of the Rig Vedas (as understood through Sanskrit) has been undertaken as a reaction to the Western initiative to translate the Vedas (according to their own understanding) and more prominently to use it to their own ends. One must be clear about this sequence of cause and effect.

As for OIT, yes- some "retooling"/"reorientation" will be required. Those OITers whose main track was to establish a "new and improved" date for the RV will unfortunately be out of business too. But that is a good thing, because ultimately it focuses the OITers on the truth and only on those lines of investigation that are of merit. Overall, the victory will be lasting and genuine.

Basically you are trying to say, "AL IZZ WELL"! If this was a movie, whose script was penned by me or you, I would agree with you, for in the end, there is a Happy Ending and AL IZZ WELL! But we are living in the hard reality!

It may have also escaped your attention, but ALL of the use of the Rig Veda that "Indigenists" have indulged in is of "defensive nature"! Nobody is trying to make a business out of it! The main battle is however being played out on several other battlefields - archaeology, genetics, archaeo-astronomy, geology, textual (non-Vedas), etc. even linguistics!

In my very first post on this thread, I began by saying "OIT is correct for many other reasons, but not because the RV supports it." Other posters are pursuing other lines of investigation which do not rely on dating the RV. For example, Nilesh Oak is pursuing the dating of authored Sanskrit works. If his conclusions - which are very interesting - stand up to scrutiny then it will be a big boost to OIT. Similarly, there are arguments based on genetics, archaeology, etc. which appear to be bearing towards the validity of OIT.

Contrary to your assumption, many are indeed already focused on all lines of investigation!

When the future version of the OIT - free from any reliance on false "RV dates" - emerges, I am quite optimistic it will be consistent with that fact of Sanskrit going from India to other places. This would again be a good thing, for such consistency to emerge naturally from dispassionate and unbiased investigation.

In short - don't worry/panic. This will work out. Let's examine the RV in an unbiased manner.

I think in some quarters there is a naive belief that Truth establishes on its own power! If it was the case, then we wouldn't have been living through more than two centuries of AIT lies! We wouldn't be having a government which teaches its citizenry a lie concocted by our former (and perhaps present) colonizers!

The AIT-OIT tussle would be won or lost not on the basis of Truth only! Propaganda dominance (of truth or lies) would play an important role! And considering the level of global institutional support that AIT enjoys, and zero support that Indigenists/OIT has, the propaganda war is an uphill task, and Indigenists cannot afford weakness on any front at all, for AIT-Nazis tend to be in a position to build their case on the flimsiest of openings they may see in the Indigenist defenses!

AIT-Nazis and their Sepoys have been now pouring lies into the ears of mankind for over two centuries now and much of it has seeped in!

Let me quote something you said earlier!

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.

So just as mist of time can wipe out the truth - "how it came into the consciousness of humans", similarly the din of propaganda today also has the ability to silence the truth!

So Sir, "ALL IZZ WELL" is a message which lacks any comforting effect, at least on this forum! Comfort comes from being in control!

I will be sharing my findings by writing more posts (as time permits) on specific matters. The result will be that dating the RV is a futile task.

In my previous post, I vehemently expressed my opposition to this line of pursuit. This is a undertaking which effectively undermines a national cause from within, in fact the core weakening the whole civilizational edifice!

What I am saying is what harm is there in pursuing this mission of yours, once OIT has won this ongoing war! Let OIT establish itself cutting through the global institutional defenses of AIT. Let OIT first become the official version of history in India. I don't know how long it takes 20 years, 50 years or more!

But once the truth of Autochthonous Indian Civilization is established, the Mimāṃsākas are free to pursue their cause and propagate the ahistorical and non-localizable nature of the Vedas!

If however you still fail to see the strategic need for this patience on your part, I would request you to pursue your anti-national and destructive pursuits at least on some other thread or forum or book!

I hope you can see why I feel this way, and do not take it personally!

[KLP Dubey]

On the other hand, what Dubey ji seems to be suggesting is that it would be impossible to come up with any hermeneutics or any set of assigned meanings to the Vedas. By his reasoning - I would think Aurobindo's or anybody's elses version would all be equally suspect. The Vedas - he believes, cannot be assigned any meaning. And the power of the Vedas lie in the sounds and not in the meanings.

You have not read my posts carefully. I have never said that it is *impossible* to come up with a set of consistent assigned meanings to the Veda. In fact, I clearly said that it would be an excellent (and advanced science and technology) project to produce even one set of consistent meanings for all the sounds in the RV. In a reply to the poster Shiv, I even laid out the problem statement formally ("given" and "to find"). This may very well require new advances in a number of fields as well as some pretty serious computing power. You were not reading - that is the problem, not my views.

Maybe you think I am a dilettante playing around with this stuff. No. I am dead serious about it.

If fields like hermeneutics are to become dynamic endeavors tackling difficult problems like the RV (rather than just people sitting at home with a book in their hand and thinking of some interpretations), it needs to think bigger. CDAC-India has already done some nice (but small) work in Vedic and Sanskrit text processing:

http://www.cdac.in/html/ihg/pns.aspx

Secondly, I pointed out that so far, we do not have a set of consistent (even broadly) meanings that can allow us to interpret the Veda, let alone trying to find any chronology in it. The *only* serious attempt to assign word-meanings was made by the ancient Indians (over an unknown stretch of time). The result of that attempt is what is called the Sanskrit language. Ultimately it is a force-fitted attempt with so many glaring loopholes, and is intended more as a language of daily parlance based upon commonly known earthly objects and actions.

The Indian philosophers wisely recognized this many moons ago, and hence decided to stop trying to interpret the Samhita. Disregarding this wise decision, 3000+ years later the western Indologists have decided to still have a go at it using the same Sanskrit words (because of their delusion that Sanskrit itself is the language of the RV!) and have created a huge mess. The OITers who also try to find human history etc in the RV are just followers on that "die-hard/dead-ender" path.

KL

PS: As pointed out by A_Gupta, the Veda really means the RV Samhita (and by extension the SV and YV Samhita). The Atharva Veda, the Brahmanas, and Upanishads appear to be authored works which borrow from/imitate the Veda and claim eternality by affiliation to the Veda. In this respect, I was told that my view on the eternality of the Veda is coincidentally closest to Dayanand Sarasvati (founder of Arya Samaj), although I have never read any of his works.

[KLP Dubey]

You cannot however draw the inference that the Rig Vedic people did not know salt.

They forgot to mention humble things like salt because they way too dazzled (in "shock-and-awe") by observing - on a daily basis - things like chariots in the sky, cows with nine legs and eight ears, and drinking the semen of strong horses (soma).

[RajeshA]

AIT/AMT versus OIT

We should perhaps focus attention, for a moment, on the assumption that the area of the domestication of the horse is necessarily the area of origin of the Indo-Europeans (several Indo-Europeanists have questioned this assumption, Gramkrelidze and Ivanov being the most recent). It is therefore not so easy to counter the Indigenous Aryan charge that the “horse could have been very well known to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in their original homeland before their dispersal from it (which is the only thing indicated by the facts), without the horse necessarily being a native of that homeland, or they themselves being its domesticators” (Talageri, 158). The logic, here, is that just as the horse has always been imported and central to Indic culture right throughout the historic period, it could likewise have similarly been imported and central in the Proto-Indo-Aryan period (for the Indigenous Aryan School, and earlier still in the Proto-Indo-European period for the Out-of-India school).

Publication Date: 1993
Author: Shrikant Talageri, S.R. Rao
Aryan Invasion Theory (A Reappraisal) [Amazon]

[KLP Dubey]

I hope you can see why I feel this way, and do not take it personally!

Your post is indeed a brilliant and nationalist roar of a lion. I think you fit the role of Bhima in Mahabharata. We already have "Arjuna" here. Shiv is Yudhishthira. Witzel et al are Duryodhana and party. Elst, Talageri, etc are various vassals. I am that mischievous guy who seemingly is pitting all of you against one another and claiming that "dharma will prevail in the end".

Kishen Lal (writing full name just in case you mistake me for Shakuni)



Will get back to topic in next post. Mods have probably had enough.