Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[shiv]

Shiv Ji,
I have a friend travelling to Bangalore, Kerala in a week. He has promised me that he will pick up 4 Vedas (Sanskrit to Hindi Translation by an 'Bhartiya' Author). It would be great help if you can tell me where in Bangalore can he find it.
TIA,
fanne

Fanne - that's a tough one. The easiest would probabaly be to try Motilal Banarsidas (MLBD) - which has an outlet in Jayanagar in South Bangaore (there may be others). There is a place that Manish had mentioned in South Bangalore again - but I am less familiar with that location.

It may be a good idea to contact MLBD beforehand. Their web page is here
http://www.mlbd.com/contactus.aspx
Bangalore address

236, 9th Main III Block Jayanagar, Bangalore-560011
Tel.# (080) 26542591, 32711690
Email: [email protected]

[Prem]

Shiv Ji,
I have a friend travelling to Bangalore, Kerala in a week. He has promised me that he will pick up 4 Vedas (Sanskrit to Hindi Translation by an 'Bhartiya' Author). It would be great help if you can tell me where in Bangalore can he find it.
TIA,
fanne

Ramakrishna Mission aka Vedanta Society in USA always carry these Books and can be ordered online or by calling them .

[shiv]

I am not sure how relevant this is..
Did Krishna exist?

Relevant over many threads

I think that a mixture of the post-colonial need to conform to western ideas of Indian civilisation and an inability to stand up firmly to bizarre western ideas are to blame. Also, any attempt at a more impartial look at Indian history is given a saffron hue.

[ShauryaT]

Shiv Ji,
I have a friend travelling to Bangalore, Kerala in a week. He has promised me that he will pick up 4 Vedas (Sanskrit to Hindi Translation by an 'Bhartiya' Author). It would be great help if you can tell me where in Bangalore can he find it.
TIA,
fanne

flipkart.com - works like a charm. Do not have to go anywhere in the mad traffic to buy books.

[shiv]

^^Should be easier to learn Rig Veda than go anywhere in Bangalore traffic

[shiv]

http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/843.full

I have not read early part of this thread and not sure if this V.K. Kashyap article was discussed. This is on genetic distances between different groups in India vs India and Europe.

Even though more than one explanation could exist for genetic differentiation between castes and tribes in India, the Indo-Aryan migration scenario advocated in ref. 19 rested on the suggestion that all Indian caste groups are similar to each other while being significantly different from the tribes. Using a much more representative data set, numerically, geographically, and definitively, it was not possible to confirm any of the purported differentiations between the caste and tribal pools. Although differences could be found to occur within particular regions, between particular caste and tribal groups, consistent and statistically significant variations at the subcontinental scale were not detected. Although it is arguable that assimilation of tribal populations into the caste system could skew distributions in any particular region, it cannot explain the persistence and prevalence of those lineages put forward as being typical of incoming IEs (J2, R1a, R2, and L) among many of those populations who are still designated as tribals

The distribution of R2, with its concentration in Eastern and Southern India, is not consistent with a recent demographic movement from the northwest. Instead, its prevalence among castes in these regions might represent a recent population expansion, perhaps associated with the transition to agriculture, which may have occurred independently in South Asia (23). A pre-Neolithic chronology for the origins of Indian Y chromosomes is also supported by the lack of a clear delineation between DR and IE speakers. Again, although appeals to language change are plausible for explaining the appearance of supposedly tribe-specific Y lineages among incoming IE speakers, it is much harder to conceive of a systematic movement of external Y-chromosome types in the opposite direction, via the uptake of DR languages. The near absence of L lineages within the IE speakers from Bihar (0%), Orissa (0%), and West Bengal (1.5%) further suggests that the current distribution of Y haplogroups in India is associated primarily with geographic rather than linguistic or cultural determinants.

[SaiK]

An old thread in forum History KB started by Michel Danino

Indians can't have done it

Some pisko-anal-uses of the Westerners!

Did you read the last two posters?

[Prem]

Instead of Shri or Shrimati, Mr or Ms, Indians should start using Arya Putra , Arya Putri, Arya Devi as prefixes and titles . This will instantly impart distinctiveness to the children of Bhartiya Sanskriti.

[Prem]

Instead of Shri or Shrimati, Mr or Ms, Indians should start using Arya Putra , Arya Putri, Arya Devi as prefixes and titles . This will instantly impart distinctiveness to the children of Bhartiya Sanskriti.

[shiv]

Aryan Homelands in Avesta Airyana Vaeja - Nations of the Avesta

According to this source Migration was from the original Aryan homeland (in the northwest Kashmir/Afghanistan region) towards the West and South, not towards the East as our horse riding linguists say. Westward expansion seems to have occurred after a spleit from the Vedic Hindus, but there was a late return to Hindu lands (15th in a list of 16 nations below)


Map at bottom.

The Vendidad, and indeed the entire Avesta, does not mention Persia or Media. This was because Persia and Media became nations after the Avestan canon was closed. However, The Achaemenian Persian Kings (c. 700 - 330 BCE) repeatedly proclaimed their Aryan heritage.

Pattern in the Listing of Nations

There is a pattern in the listing:

1. The first three nations listed after Airyana Vaeja are in the southern Uzbekistan, southern Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan area. The balance of the list of nations fan out, moving west and south in steps. The last two nations are the most southeast and west of the initial group.

2. The nations border one another. The nation listed next to Airyana Vaeja is Sukhdho/Sughdha - modern day Sugd in northern Tajikistan and southern Uzbekistan.

3. The nations are all along the Aryan Trading routes - what are now called the Silk Roads (also see Tajikistan pages) - an ancient set of trading roads between the Orient, the Occident and the Indian sub-continent.

Relationship Between Airyana Vaeja and the Other Nations of the Avesta

The sixteen nations listed in the Vendidad were selected by the author or authors of the Vendidad from among the nations of the known world. The list is therefore not a list of the world's nations, but a list of nations connected with Airyana Vaeja. The Vendidad nations listed after Airyana Vaeja, are those to which Aryans migrated from Airyana Vaeja, intermingling as they did, with the peoples of those lands. While Zoroastrian-Aryans inhabited these lands, they were not necessarily the majority people in these lands.

All of the Vendidad nations would at some point come together as part of the larger Aryan, Iranian, or Persian empires.

Aryan Trade Routes - the Silk Roads

The Aryan trade routes would come to be known as the Silk Roads. Aryan trade extended from China in the east, to Asia Minor and Mesopotamia in the west, to the Iranian plateau and the Indus valley in the south.

Sogdian Aryan trading settlements have been found in China. Indeed, the earliest known manuscript of the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta, written in Sogdian, has been found in China. (Also see our page on Tajikistan.)

The pattern of the Vendidad's list of nations we noted above, moves from the Central Asian core, progressively west and south along the Aryan Trading (Silk) Roads into present-day Turkey and Pakistan. (The "central Asian Core" in this case is labelled "Aryan Homeland" - No 1 on the map)

This passage says that a Hindu-and pre-Zoroastrian split occurred in Vedic times and there was a later re-expansion of the Avestan lands into Hapta Hindu after westward expansion

The Hindu reverence for Yama, King Jamshid, grew at the same time when he lost favour with the Mazdayasni predecessors of the Zoroastrians, who record that King Yima lost his grace, grew too proud and thought himself a god. The Vedic verses appear to state that the lands Yima acquired became part of the permanent home of the Hindus - a land that would grow to include the entire Indian subcontinent, and would become separate from the original Aryan homeland. The comment above regarding a home that "cannot be taken from us," indicates a previous vulnerability of the predecessors of the Hindus in the original Aryan Homeland at the time the Vedas were written - a vulnerability either from foreign or internal foes.

It is unlikely that the expansion during the Jamshidi era included the river plains such as the lands that make up the Punjab today. Expansion into the Indus plains would take place later in history. Hapta-Hindu, the seven Indus lands that would include the plains, is the fifteenth, and last but one, nation in the Vendidad's list of nations. The part of upper Indus occupied during the Jamshidi era would include what are today's Eastern Afghanistan, the north of Pakistan and India - the areas on both sides i.e. just north and south of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountains. The limited size of the expansion is further indication that the original Aryan homeland was not very large.

[shiv]

Pre Zoroastrian Aryan religions

The earliest of the Hindu scriptures, the Rig Veda provides us with information about pre-Zoroastrian Vedic-Aryan deva worship.

Daeva and Div

The daeva and div in the Avesta and other Persian texts, are evil qualities, personification of evil qualities and demons. The terms 'demon', evil person and 'negative value' (or 'base quality') are freely interchangeable in the Zoroastrian concept of the daeva or div (as mentioned earlier, div is the later version of the Avestan word daeva).

The demonization of the Rig Vedic deva, primarily Indra, in the Avesta, the naming of a book of the Zoroastrian scriptures, the Avesta as the Vi-daevo-data (modern name: Vendidad) meaning the law against the daevas, as well as the name of the religion preached by Zarathushtra: Mazdayasno Zarathushtrish Vidaevo Ahura-Tkaesho, that is, Zarathushtrian Mazda-Worship opposed to the daeva through the laws of the Lord (Ahura), together signify the strong opposition of the Mazda worshippers to the daeva and the defining of Zoroastrian Mazda worship through it opposition to the daeva.

In the later Vedic texts starting with the Atharva Veda, the asuras are referred to in the plural, that is as a group of deities. It is also in these later texts that the asuras are depicted as being opposed to the devas. In conflicts between the two, the asuras were invariably victorious. The devas were victorious when they used a ruse or received the help of a benefactor trickster such as Vishnu.

In the post Vedic texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita, Puranas and Itihasas, the asuras are transformed and treated as a group of demons who possess the qualities of pride, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness, and ignorance (Gita 16.4). In the Brahmana texts, the asuras are hostile and opposed to the devas with whom they are in constant conflict.

Folks these are very interesting passages.

Zoroastrianism was set up in opposition to the Vedic devas.

The pre-Zoroastrian religion was not split up at the time of the Rig Veda but had split up by the time of the Atharva veda. This fits in with the timelines that say 1200 BC iron age for Atharva Veda, and implies pre-1200 BC for Rig Veda. Unless I am mistaken, this also fits in with what Shrikant Talageri has to say with regard to the number of generations of rishis the Rig Veda spanned. Need to re read.

if the Avestan religion and texts came after the Rig Veda, how did they come before the Rig veda while migrating from Pontic Steppe? if the Avestan religion and texts came after the Rig Veda, how did the Avestan language appear in Afghanistan before it appeared in the Sindhu region?

The Avestan texts clearly state a splitting off from Vedic religion (which pre existed) and then a westward and southward migration from Avestan homeland and a late final re migration to the "Hapta-Hindu"

[merlin]

Shiv Ji,
I have a friend travelling to Bangalore, Kerala in a week. He has promised me that he will pick up 4 Vedas (Sanskrit to Hindi Translation by an 'Bhartiya' Author). It would be great help if you can tell me where in Bangalore can he find it.
TIA,
fanne

Vedanta book house is your best bet.

[ManishH]

Shiv ji - For your reference Re. Earliest Horses BS

http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~ml12/downloa ... rticle.pdf

Marsha Ann Levine, University of Cambridge

1.1.4. Bitwear
Another example of this commitment to an earliest date is Anthony’s argument that the domesticated horse was present in the Ukraine earlier than in Kazakhstan. His evidence for this comes from bitwear studies of two samples of lower second premolars from two Eneolithic sites, Botai in northern Kazakhstan (5 from a total of 19 teeth) and Dereivka in the Ukraine (2 from a total of 6 teeth). He implies from this that horse domestication spread from west to east (Anthony 1995). Relatively little archaeozoological research has been carried out in the former Soviet Union, including both Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, and relatively few absolute dates are available (regarding the Ukraine, see Levine and Rassamakin 1996). Botai and Dereivka do not constitute representative samples of sites within the vast regions in question. They cannot, therefore, be used to answer questions about origins and earliest dates. Moreover, serious doubts have been raised about the stratigraphic location of the “ritual” skull from Dereivka, the basis of Anthony and Brown’s theory of the origins of early horse domestication (Rassamakin 1994). These doubts seem to be confirmed by the mean calibrated radiocarbon date recently obtained for that skull, 2915 B.C., more than 1000 years later than most of the other dates for that site (Table 1) (Telegin 1986).

Actually Anthony's book narrates the whole time-chain of how the Dereivka dates were challenged by one Haeusler and finally corrected by the archaeologist community when more data came in ...

From Horse, The Wheel and Language pp 215:

In 2000, nine years after our initial publication in
Antiquity, we published another Antiquity article retracting the early date for
bit wear at Dereivka. We were disappointed, but by then Dereivka was no
longer the only prehistoric site in the steppes with bit wear.

Of course Dereivka is no longer held as the earliest site of horse domestication. It is further east in Botai - which still is the Eurasian steppe.

[ManishH]

I have read in a few references ( I am sure links these are already posted in this thread ) that the genetic make up of people living in the IVC/SSVC area is pretty much same as what it was during the IVC/SSVC period.

Now if there was Aryan Invasion/Migration to this area, shouldn't the genetic makeup of the people living in the IVC/SSVC be different now?

Please do pass me a link which studies the "genetic makeup" of IVC human remains. I've been trying in vain to find a comprehensive study of the ancient human DNA found at Harappan sites.

[Arjun]

Not sure if folks here have followed CK Raju. He has written quite extensively about Western Science's core grounding in Christianity and its consistent record of stealing from other cultures...

Here are a couple that focus on the Origins of Calculus and how it was passed on from India to the West:

The Indian Origins of the Calculus and its Transmission to Europe Prior to Newton and Leibniz: Part 1

The Indian Origins of the Calculus and its Transmission to Europe Prior to Newton and Leibniz: Part II

There are many other hard-hitting treasures one can bring up through a Google search on CK Raju, or from his website (ckraju.net)

[ManishH]

Did it never occur to you that this is just an artificial gate-keeping mechanism to keep the non-whites out of any discussion? By submitting to the racket, you have shown yourself as someone gullible who can be manipulated by races more shrewd than you.

Interesting - this poster actually subscribes to a belief that certain "races are more shrewd". This in itself is a racist remark

However, all this accusation of racism on modern academia is false. I haven't found any example of institutionalized racism in any modern academic discipline. If anyone has allegations of racism, please quote with example. Not generalized mudslinging.

[Arjun]

More from CK Raju: Towards Equity in Mathematics Education: Good-Bye Euclid!

Racist history has been an instrument of inequity, and is still uncritically propagated in current Indian school texts in mathematics. As a first step towards equitable mathematics education, we need to do away with this. Critics have argued that the thrust for social justice in the mathematics classroom handicaps students. We argue to the contrary that the difficulties in teaching or learning mathematics arise because inequity and a brand of “theological correctness” are already embedded into the history and philosophy of current formal (theorem-proving) mathematics.

The philosophy of current formal mathematics derives from an analysis of the Elements by Hilbert et al. That analysis proceeded from a historical narrative about Euclid and his method of proof. However, in the absence of any serious evidence for the historical “Euclid” this narrative must be rejected as a racist fantasy. The real philosophy of the Elements, and its religious significance for Greeks, is brought out by Proclus in his Commentary—virtually refuting point-by-point the inequitable post-Nicene (Augustinian) Christian theology with which he had to contend. This linkage of mathematics and religion persisted in Islamic rational theology (aql-¯ı-kal¯am) which too used the Elements to promote equity and justice. However, during the Crusades, history was Hellenized at Toledo. The Inquisition enforced theological correctness, and the Elements was reinterpreted to align it with the prevailing Christian theology. Current school texts use Hilbert’s synthetic reinterpretation, which substituted “equality” by “congruence”, and eliminated also the empirical, thus completing the process of making the Elements theologically correct. However, synthetic geometry (apart from being an invalid interpretation of the Elements) is harder to understand, and counter-intuitive, compared to metric or empirical or traditional geometry, and certainly does not add any practical value. This applies not only to geometry but to all formal mathematics: it is this “theologification” that has made mathematics difficult to learn or teach. The remedy is to “de-theologify” or secularize mathematics and teach it in the cultural and practical context in which it developed.

[Neela]

The Origins of Astronomy, the Calendar. and Time ( Author: Mr.Kosla Vepa , a visitor to this site. )
There is a very long introductory chapter on early astronomy and mathematics and how everything is attributed to the Greeks/Hellenistic model. Indian contributions are largely ignored despite the fact that Arab mathematicians reppeatedly mention "Hindu" works from that time.


But even before reading the book, this thought struck me - with a clumsy numerical system (that you find in Greek mathematics)that fails to handle large and fractional numbers well, it is indeed quite strange that the Hindu system's contribution is completely ignored.

[RajeshA]

Did it never occur to you that this is just an artificial gate-keeping mechanism to keep the non-whites out of any discussion? By submitting to the racket, you have shown yourself as someone gullible who can be manipulated by races more shrewd than you.

Interesting - this poster actually subscribes to a belief that certain "races are more shrewd". This in itself is a racist remark

The poster most probably meant that that subsection of another 'race' which interfaced with Indians, used their intelligence for undermining us, while from the Indian side, our intelligence was used with an expectation of friendly relations. This experience is then generalized to the entire other "race", for that was the impression that was left behind after this interaction. It is normal in statistics that when a sample size shows overwhelming tendency, one could conclude that this tendency is prevalent in the whole!

However, all this accusation of racism on modern academia is false. I haven't found any example of institutionalized racism in any modern academic discipline. If anyone has allegations of racism, please quote with example. Not generalized mudslinging.

It is still an open issue whether certain "modern" academic disciplines like linguistics, history, anthropology and even to some extent archaeology are really "modern"! They may use modern tools for analysis, they may use modern formats for documentation, they may even use more political correctness in their vocabulary, but does that make them "modern"? "Modern" is invariably associated with a higher level of openness and objectivity and an absence of racial bias! The above named disciplines can just as well be old wine in new bottles, where the same civilization-based agendas and racial prejudices of the 19th and early 20th century continue, albeit in hidden form!

Considering the level of India-blindness, Euro-centricity, cultural digestion without due acknowledgement, historical fabrication, that one sees prevalent and uncorrected, I would consider these academic fields still as Old Racial Wine in New Modern Bottles!

Of course, one would hardly see person-based racism in modern academic institutions in the West, as long as these foreign people align themselves with the Western narrative of history or join up with the loyal opposition of liberal and marxist academics!

[ManishH]

So basically you cannot show an example of institutionalized racism in modern academics. You are just defending mud-slinging because you see a strategic problem with the opinions of this community. Fair enough in the world of propaganda. But not so in vedic philosophy wherein

satyenottabhitā bhūmiḥ ... ṛtenādityāstiṣṭhanti (The earth is upheld by truth, and Gods stand by ṛta)

All the mud-slinging will stand for naught as it's the truth that wins. And vedic philosophy is about the endless quest for truth irrespective of the strategic implications of it.

That's precisely why this thread should have been split into A) quest for the truth strategic implications

[RajeshA]

shiv saar,

in his book, "The Rigveda and the Avesta : The Final Evidence", Talageri states the following as per S. Kalyanraman's review of the book!

“The evidence of the Avestan meters confirms to the hilt the conclusions compelled by the evidence of the Avestan names: namely, that Zarathushtra, the first and earliest composer of the Avesta, is contemporaneous with the Late Period and books of the Rigveda (notably with the non-family Books), that the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda precede the period of composition of the Avesta, and that the ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture common to the Rigveda and the Avesta is a product of the Late Rigvedic Period.”

So simply based on this it is difficult to explain why the Avesta would be following the same meter as the late books of the Rig Veda, if the Rig Veda was composed in India, and that too after Sanskrit had time to develop in the 300 years between 1,500 BCE and 1,200 BCE, when the Iranians had already separated from the Indo-Aryans on the way from Central Asia before the latter reached India!

The linguistic analysis of the two as you pointed out debunks the notion of a Central Asian splitting of the two Iranians and Indo-Aryans even more comprehensively!

[member_23630]

satyenottabhitā bhūmiḥ ... ṛtenādityāstiṣṭhanti (The earth is upheld by truth, and Gods stand by ṛta)

[RajeshA]

So basically you cannot show an example of institutionalized racism in modern academics. You are just defending mud-slinging because you see a strategic problem with the opinions of this community.

Define 'institutionalized racism' please in the above context! If it were present, how would it have manifested itself and how would one recognize it? What would be the criteria to call it out as such?

Fair enough in the world of propaganda. But not so in vedic philosophy wherein

satyenottabhitā bhūmiḥ ... ṛtenādityāstiṣṭhanti (The earth is upheld by truth, and Gods stand by ṛta)

All the mud-slinging will stand for naught as it's the truth that wins. And vedic philosophy is about the endless quest for truth irrespective of the strategic implications of it.

That's precisely why this thread should have been split into A) quest for the truth strategic implications

ManishH ji,

it is nice that you wish to adhere to Vedic Philosophy, but you see some quarters just use that tactically by declaring some truth as untruth and then proceeding to declare their resolve to establish the 'real' truth, which can simply be a bunch of lies nicely packaged with "Truth" written on it in golden letters and a Harvard stamp! In fact those who abuse Truth are prone to cite scriptures even more!

[Arjun]

Eurocentrism in academia, and how the Greeks were co-opted into the Grand but false Narrative of a superior Western Civilization deriving from Greek thought :

Racism & Eurocentrism

One of my favorite subjects is teaching against eurocentrism in academics. While the laptop experiment suggests that we all learn and think similarly regardless of culture, one of the central messages in education in America and Europe is that we belong to a special culture called “the West” which is superior to other civilizations, particularly in regards to reason and freedom. Often examples from ancient Greece are used to illustrate this superiority, and then the focus becomes modern Europe (ignoring all other cultures and the thousands of years in between the cultures of ancient Greece and modern Europe). This situation, which many like myself call eurocentric (and thus ignorant), is very recent. It came about in the last three hundred years in the wake of European success and dominance of the world. Before that time, Greeks, Romans and Europeans did not describe themselves as “the West”, nor did they claim to be superior in terms of reason or freedom relative to all other civilizations.

Greek civilization is indebted to Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian and Indian thought. Rome has been the ‘father’ of Christian Europe since the Roman Empire conquered much of Western Europe and converted them to Roman Catholic Christianity. How did the Greeks come to be the Grandfathers of civilization? How did the myth of “the West” happen?

It surprises many to learn that the term “the West” came largely into use in the years following WWII, after the Holocaust showed terrible anti-Semitism. Before WWII, academics freely used the term ‘European Race’ to describe the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans, and modern Europeans equally. After the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, the term became an eyesore. Academics began increasingly referring to this “race” as “The West.

All sorts of ridiculous statements in the first paragraphs of philosophy and history books show us this, where the Greeks are ‘the birthplace of reason’ without context. One of my favorite examples is the British historian who stated in the 50s that the most important event in British history was the battle at Marathon (holding out the Persian ‘Orientals’, who as Wolf points out were paying Greeks to fight the Athenians and Spartans, as they had done with the Athenians and Spartans in the past). Marathon is often cast as the birth of “the West”, even though no one, including the ancient Greeks, used the term until after WWII.

[Virendra]

Just out of curiosity: are they then claiming that the Macedonians actually tangled with Gupta and not Maurya ? And are things like "Mauryan coins" dated to ca. 300 BCE actually Gupta coins ?
KL

Dubey Ji, please read Kota Venkatachelam's "The Plot in Indian Chronology". He has resolved various dating issues there including Budha, Mahabharata, ChandraGupta etc. The book is downloadable from Jambudvipa's blog as well as the Digital Library of India.
There were 2 ChandraGupta, one in Gupta dynasty and other in Maurya.
First one was Alexander's contemporary in 326 BC, while the 2nd was in 1534 BC as mentioned already in the thread.

Regards,
Virendra

[RajeshA]

This is the part that seems to be doctored, as per V Lakshinikantham! Should read

“Shastyabdanam Shadbhiryada vyateetastra yascha yuga padah.”

instead we see

“Shastyabdanam Shastiryada vyateetastra yascha yuga padah.”

Now the challenge is to gather the various manuscripts of Āryabhaṭīyaṃ that may be in the hands of Indics whose age can be vouched for and to bring out the truth, or better yet to digitize their manuscripts and put them out on the Internet!

Rajeshji,
http://iishdownloads.info/01_HERITAGEBO ... ateeya.pdf
Here is one translation of aryabhateeya... ensoi
The relevant 10th stanza from kalakriya

Aryabhateeya has been divided into four chapters , in which the kaalakirya paada is the third. As the title means, it gives the measurement of time and processing with time. In the beginning itself the author gives specific definition for the angular and linear dimensions.

10. When sixty times sixty years and three quarter yugas (of the current yuga) had elapsed, twenty three years had then passed since my birth.
It is very important to note that ancient Indian mathematicians and astronomers have specifically given their date of their birth or the date on which the writing of their book was completed. This was given either in Saka era, or in Kali era. Sometimes they give , as a factor for correcting the astronomical parameters or position of the planets , in which the year will be given clearly. Here Aryabhatta has given his age on the day he completed the writing of the book based on the Kali era. Which has been fixed on back calculation as 3102 BC, Feb. 17th midnight on Thursday.

JwalaMukhi ji,

I am afraid, that the above translation and commentary done by the Profs K.S. Sukla and K. V. Sarma from Indian Institute of Scientific Heritage is still done with the doctored copy of Āryabhaṭīyaṃ, by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern or whoever made the first doctored copy! It is the easier copy to get one's hands on! It still says "sixty times sixty", even though as per V Lakshinikantham it should say "six times sixty"!

[Nilesh Oak]

I am afraid, that the above translation and commentary done by the Profs K.S. Sukla and K. V. Sarma from Indian Institute of Scientific Heritage is still done with the doctored copy of Āryabhaṭīyaṃ, by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern or whoever made the first doctored copy! It is the easier copy to get one's hands on! It still says "sixty times sixty", even though as per V Lakshinikantham it should say "six times sixty"!

I presume 'Aryabhatiyam' would have other references that can be tested in the conext of birth timining of Aryabhatta. I always had problem with circular logic of 3102 BC and then this year -X = 499 AD. I will dig into few other papers I have, related to Aryabhatta, to see what I can find.

[ManishH]

Define 'institutionalized racism' please in the above context! If it were present, how would it have manifested itself and how would one recognize it? What would be the criteria to call it out as such?

It'll be institutionalized if a whole academic journal/institute or discipline were to ...

1. Boycott contributions from a group of people whom they identify with a term called "race". Eg. Are contributions by people of Indian origin rejected in their journals just because they happen to be Indians.
2. Claim inherent superiority or inferiority of "races" based on statistics of present human development parameters.
3. Associate human achievement with skin colour or physical features.

I've never seen any of these in any of the modern academic disciplines that you along with a few other posters are constantly maligning.

[RajeshA]

Nilesh Oak ji,

thanks for looking this up!

In the Āryabhaṭīyaṃ itself there must be much information on astronomy and star constellations, from which perhaps one can determine the date of observation as per Āryabhaṭa! After all he is a astronomer! So even if there was some fudging of text by the Westerners, it must show up.

Any astronomical dating of around 2742 BCE (when Āryabhaṭa finished Āryabhaṭīyaṃ) based on archaeo-astronomical evidence therein would in fact be extremely damaging for the AIT-Nazis! That itself can bring both AIT crumbling down as well as rewrite the history of science itself!

Even if they continue to disregard the astronomical dating of various Indian religious/philosophical scriptures, it will be very difficult to disregard a scientific text!

I don't know if Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern or whoever fudged the Āryabhaṭīyaṃ text with regard to Āryabhaṭa's date of birth would have also fudged any archeo-astronomical data! Perhaps that may have been too glaring than a little typo of a couple of consonants in a word! But who knows?

Of course, you may look into this when it suits you and you find time!

[RajeshA]

Define 'institutionalized racism' please in the above context! If it were present, how would it have manifested itself and how would one recognize it? What would be the criteria to call it out as such?

It'll be institutionalized if a whole academic journal/institute or discipline were to ...

1. Boycott contributions from a group of people whom they identify with a term called "race". Eg. Are contributions by people of Indian origin rejected in their journals just because they happen to be Indians.

One's superiority of race or one's notions of universalism have only then any footing in reality if and only if others also recognize it, and others take recourse to one's court of judgment (aka journals) for their own recognition.

So why would they stop the stream of Indians coming to them seeking their recognition, and writing papers which in their content also strengthen West's notion of universalism? Why would they stop a new generation of Indians from growing up learning to pay obeisance and showing deference to the West to get their papers published? Why would they stop a new generation of Indians from growing up propagating in India, the Western idea of superiority/universalism? Why would they stop a new generation of Indians from qualifying to become champion AIT-Sepoys?

After all, how else does one measure the "superiority of one's race"?

So those who help perpetuate one's racial superiority are not boycotted anymore, regardless of race!

2. Claim inherent superiority or inferiority of "races" based on statistics of present human development parameters.

Such claims destroys the chances of recognition of these claims, because it can trigger a defensive reaction by the others, and thus others may deny one such recognition!

If a Westerner says he is superior, the other would naturally say, "go screw yourself"! But if the Westerner fights off the urge to be so explicit, the other may give him the recognition for the same anyway!

The Westerners let the numbers in the statistics of human development parameters make the claim for them. That is also one of the reasons such statistics are collected and prominently displayed. Who established this system? You have all sorts of Western NGOs trying to reinforce the point again and again - they are the helpers, others need the help! Why did the British not want to stop their aid program to India, even though, I believe, Pranab Mukherjee himself told them, we don't need the aid?

So the mechanism for claiming inherent racial superiority has changed! It is just not explicit or crude anymore!

3. Associate human achievement with skin colour or physical features.

This in-the-face claiming is really a 19th century, early 20th century notion! Racism itself has developed over time and become sophisticated.

Today you have global media networks broadcasting 24x7, the achievements of the West, be it through Hollywood, literature, Western certificates and degrees, Olympics, fashion industry or through technology, you are getting a steady stream of reaffirming brainwashing that West is greatest, so what is the need for in-the-face racist remarks!

Only the dumbest in the West, the white-supremacists, are the ones still being honest, ... and crude!

May be in the past, when Western Universalism and Global Media Domination was not there, that they needed to claim superiority in the face, but they have come forward!

I've never seen any of these in any of the modern academic disciplines that you along with a few other posters are constantly maligning.

Of course you wouldn't!

It is all a question of from which civilization (and racial identity) one would source and historically thank the global deculturalized society!

[RajeshA]

Responding to post

Rajeshji, I have found a map and passages from Keynoyer book that talks about Indus seals in Oman. It is a very hard proof point that trade happened between the then Oman and SIVC. Our horses could have come from there (and over sea route). Of course being imported items, they were as priced as currently imported Ferraris. I will upload images etc soon.

disha ji,

this is of course good news! My thinking has been for some time now that we used to import horses from the Arabian Peninsula and the horse in India has nothing much to do with the Horse in Central Asia!

If you have any excerpts or maps, perhaps you can post them here!

Thanks

[Arjun]

Define 'institutionalized racism' please in the above context!

RajeshA ji,

I think we should use Eurocentric-racism as more precise terminology for the phenomenon. There are literally hundreds of books / articles written on Eurocentrism - so it is remarkably naive and ignorant of ManishH and SN Rajan to pretend to be unaware of it.

Here's my attempt to define Eurocentrism in academia -

A compulsive need to prove the pre-eminence of the European race (including those with European ancestry ie North & South Americans & Australians) or "Western Civilization" over other races through the means of taking recourse to slanted interpretations of primary data generated within academic disciplines.

While slanted interpretation of data is the primary means for academic Eurocentrism, it could also take the form of bias against views that are deemed to be threatening to Eurocentric supremacist beliefs, and denigration of papers and researchers who pursue a contrary viewpoint.

The social science fields of Anthropology, Sociology, History (which impinge directly on the study of society and civilizations) have suffered the maximum pollution from Eurocentric impulses over the last three centuries - however, this is not to suggest that other fields are immune.

[RajeshA]

Arjun ji,

that is a very apt formulation of Eurocentric-Racism!

[Rahul M]

Responding to post

Rajeshji, I have found a map and passages from Keynoyer book that talks about Indus seals in Oman. It is a very hard proof point that trade happened between the then Oman and SIVC. Our horses could have come from there (and over sea route). Of course being imported items, they were as priced as currently imported Ferraris. I will upload images etc soon.

disha ji,

this is of course good news! My thinking has been for some time now that we used to import horses from the Arabian Peninsula and the horse in India has nothing much to do with the Horse in Central Asia!

If you have any excerpts or maps, perhaps you can post them here!

Thanks

very interesting !
that might also explain why both of India's horse breeds in that region (western India) -- the marwari and the kathiawari are very similar to the arab horse and bear no similarity to the central asian breeds.

[Arjun]

A Critique of Eurocentric Social Science and the Question of Alternatives

The author is Claude Alvares. Doesn't sound like a Hindooootva name - so ManishH and SN Rajan can safely educate themselves on some fundamentals.

[Nilesh Oak]

Any astronomical dating of around 2742 BCE (when Āryabhaṭa finished Āryabhaṭīyaṃ) based on archaeo-astronomical evidence therein would in fact be extremely damaging for the AIT-Nazis! That itself can bring both AIT crumbling down as well as rewrite the history of science itself!

I have not investigated claims for time of Aryabhatta -either 499 AD or 2742 BC. Irrespective of the outcome of Aryabhatta date, Mahabharata War -5561 BC timeline nailed the final seal on AIT coffin (OIT is alltogether different issue and falsification of AIT , does not automatically prove OIT).

This is precisely the reason I do not expect any linguists and/or AIT supporters, worth their salt (or not) to explore my work on the Mahabharata War. I suspect they will attempt to ingore it as long as they can (to be fair, majority --and I am being euphemistic here--are incapable of evaluating it), and finally when they can not ignore it, they will jump on tangential issues -Horse, chariot, archeologoy, civilizations, languages, or even classic "But Aryan came to India only after 1500 BC'

[shiv]

very interesting !
that might also explain why both of India's horse breeds in that region (western India) -- the marwari and the kathiawari are very similar to the arab horse and bear no similarity to the central asian breeds.

On an impulse I called the chief Vet at the Bangalore Turf Club who does nothing but attend to racehorses. I introduced myself and asked him how many ribs does a horse have? Pat came the reply "18 per side".

I asked him can there be 17? And he said that it must be very rare if at all - and he has never seen one with 17 ribs. Now this is a man who has treated in excess of a thousand horses over his career. In the absence of other evidence it is safe to assume that there is a less than 1% probability of Equus caballus showing up with 17 ribs on each side. Now compute the possibility that this otherwise rare occurrence happened often enough just when the composer of RV 1.162 saw dead horses for him to assume 34 ribs per horse and write a verse mentioning the number.

The number cannot be explained away by anything as stupid as Prof Witzel, of Harvard University says i.e. "numerical symbolism" because the Vedas speak of 33 gods and the poet thought 33+1 is fine. Why didn't he think "hey 33+3"? I tell you it gets really laughable when you dig into detail. This sort of buffoonery would have been ripped to shreds in other specialities that deal in more critical work. It sems to be fine in social "sciences"

After reading that Avesta stuff I posted above I located Kocchar's paper on Saraswati=Helmand river in Afghanistan. That is a mind bogglingly blatant piece of handwaving. I was intitally going to attempt a point by point rebuttal, until I saw this little paragraph that tickled me

There is another problem with the identification of the naditama Sarasvati with the Old Ghaggar. It implies identifying the Rigvedic people with the Harappans. There are a number of reasons why this cannot be so. For one, the lower layers of Mehrgarh, the starting point of the Harappan tradition, represent an Aceramic Neolithic sedentary settlement. In sharp contrast the peripatetic Indo-Aryans and the other members of the Indo-European phylum were already familiar with metal, horse and wheeled vehicles before they dispersed (Kochhar 1997).

See the pir-enthetical reference to Kochhar himself. The Aryans canot be identified with Harappa because they latter knew bout horse and chariot. Who says so? Kochhar himself in "(Kochhar 1997)". Kochhar said in 1997 that Aryans knew about Horse and chariot and Harappans did not. So the Aryans cannot be identified with Harappans.

But that is not all. Since Kocchar has already dated the Aryans as being later than a dried Saraswati, he argues that they (the Aryans) "would have found" a dry river so they could not have sung about a mighty river. But he looks at the Haraxwati and says "This is a mighty river" which they sang about. He has no explanation about how the Yamuna ended up 1200 km from the Haraxwati ("oooopsie" )

I tell ya - I wonder if this kind of logic and circular references to themselves can be predicted by pirenthetical referencing. But I am still looking for "Kochhar 1997" to see how he found out that the Aryans had horse and chariot when they saw a dry saraswati bed.

Witzel of course quotes Kocchar and the the circle is completed. Another star whose works I need to look at is one Rao or Rau from sometime in the 1960s.

[Nilesh Oak]

A Critique of Eurocentric Social Science and the Question of Alternatives

The author is Claude Alvares. Doesn't sound like a Hindooootva name - so ManishH and SN Rajan can safely educate themselves on some fundamentals.

Arjun ji,

Thanks for the article.

But this guy, Claude Alvares, belongs to Goa Association. So one can't imagine him to be impartial. On the other hand affection of Wit-mer gang for India is clearly exhibited via their links to Christian-Dalit Network.

[RajeshA]

Nilesh Oak ji,

my gut tells me that dating of our Itihaas, Ramayana and Mahabharata, is very crucial for Indians, so that they can be convinced of our antiquity and accomplishments.

As you say, AIT-Nazis with their back-patting clubs and circular-references-rings, would simply ignore the dating, hoping that any lack of publicity would help preserve their lies .... a little longer! They can afford this, because the Western historians don't really include Ramayana and Mahabharata into Indian history as history, but only as composing events (of fictional stories)!

So for them there is a certain unreality of our Itihaas, as well as for our NCERT book writers! That is why they can afford to simply ignore Indian Itihaas!

However the dating of any Indian literature which is part and parcel of the official Indian history, of course, Western-certified, is a different matter!

And this the Āryabhaṭīyaṃ is! Āryabhaṭa is an officially recognized historical figure! Same is the case with Gautama Buddha!

The case of Āryabhaṭa is special because he himself wrote the Āryabhaṭīyaṃ, AND it is a scientific text and that too on astronomy! There is much less probability that any archaeo-astronomical evidence in there could be attributed to misinterpretation as is the case with various suktas in religious or itihaasic scriptures!

For many of the skeptics everything before the Indus Valley Civilization is hocus-pocus and Hindu fundamentalism! Āryabhaṭīyaṃ composition however falls smack right in the middle of IVC and challenges official history!

Till now except for the stones and some "mute" seals, we have nothing from IVC that talks to us to tell what the IVC was really all about! If however Āryabhaṭa's birth and works falls in this phase, all of a sudden, the dead civilization would start speaking to us and telling us much, and what it may tell us could bury the whole talk of horse bones!

[Nilesh Oak]

After reading that Avesta stuff I posted above I located Kocchar's paper on Saraswati=Helmand river in Afghanistan. That is a mind bogglingly blatant piece of handwaving. I was intitally going to attempt a point by point rebuttal, until I saw this little paragraph that tickled me

There is another problem with the identification of the naditama Sarasvati with the Old Ghaggar. It implies identifying the Rigvedic people with the Harappans. There are a number of reasons why this cannot be so. For one, the lower layers of Mehrgarh, the starting point of the Harappan tradition, represent an Aceramic Neolithic sedentary settlement. In sharp contrast the peripatetic Indo-Aryans and the other members of the Indo-European phylum were already familiar with metal, horse and wheeled vehicles before they dispersed (Kochhar 1997).

See the pir-enthetical reference to Kochhar himself. The Aryans canot be identified with Harappa because they latter knew bout horse and chariot. Who says so? Kochhar himself in "(Kochhar 1997)". Kochhar said in 1997 that Aryans knew about Horse and chariot and Harappans did not. So the Aryans cannot be identified with Harappans.

But that is not all. Since Kocchar has already dated the Aryans as being later than a dried Saraswati, he argues that they (the Aryans) "would have found" a dry river so they could not have sung about a mighty river. But he looks at the Haraxwati and says "This is a mighty river" which they sang about. He has no explanation about how the Yamuna ended up 1200 km from the Haraxwati ("oooopsie" )

I tell ya - I wonder if this kind of logic and circular references to themselves can be predicted by pirenthetical referencing. But I am still looking for "Kochhar 1997" to see how he found out that the Aryans had horse and chariot when they saw a dry saraswati bed.

Witzel of course quotes Kocchar and the the circle is completed. Another star whose works I need to look at is one Rao or Rau from sometime in the 1960s.

I began writing a book with the same title 'The Vedic People'a while ago. My plan is to work on it/complete it after my work on Ramayana, since Kochhar talk of both Ramayana and Mahabharata. Interestingly, this 'well known astronomer' does less than handwaving (only finger waving)when it comes to astronomy evidence.