HOW CAN BE THE WRONG HISTORY ABOUT THE ANCIENT INDIA CORRECTED?
(I-DISCOURSE BY N.R. SRINIVASAN, APRIL 2012)
Perhaps some of you are familiar with the book "India Unveiled" and its author Robert Arnett, a philosopher and historian. Probably this is the only publication of this kind ever published in the Western World to have been officially recognized by a Prime Minister of India. Why is it stopping at that?
Writing about Unbroken Indian Tradition 10,000 years old of which we Hindu migrants are also equally concerned: Robert Arnett writes: "Americans are taught that ancient Greek is the source of Western Civilization. Only recently I have learnt that Vedic India is an older civilization. Modern excavations and scientific research reveal that Indic tradition has an unbroken cultural continuity that goes back at least 10,000 years. Vedic India is one of the oldest documented civilizations on earth and through its Sanskrit language, religion, and culture, had a profound influence on European culture and much of the rest of the world. Linguists have shown that the pre-Christian religions in many European countries had at least one god whose name came from Sanskrit. The name of the Greek God Zeus, the father of all the Gods, is a derivative from the Sanskrit DYAUS. There are cross-cultural parallels in the myths also".
He further writes: "Based on the new corpus of knowledge, it is time for the West to revise the factual inaccuracies in its description of the origin of civilization. There is no justification to perpetuate an outdated account of history merely to conform to the limited understanding and dated racial consciousness of a nineteenth century Britain that chose to ignore India's formidable cultural antecedents. Eventually, the History of Western Civilization will be rewritten, and India will be accorded her rightful cultural legacy". In my opinion those Historians of nineteenth century have also written their history as if South India never existed. This is also the view of Vincent A Smith author of Oxford Indian History. Those historians only concentrated to acquire a working literary knowledge of Sanskrit which was not adequate enough to translate the ancient Vedic and other texts correctly.
Much light has also been thrown recently on India's unbroken tradition which is 10000 years old in the publication "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, New Light on Ancient India" by George Feurstein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley. "The True History and Religion of India" by Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, Austin, Texas, as well as "History of the Human Past" by Prof Laksmikantam, Florida and History of ancient India by Velanpalanisamy of Hinduism Today of Hawaii (an American who has taken to Hinduism) also support this view point with adequate data, all coming from the Western World.
Even in India some political parties have taken full advantage of the History of India, by the British authors of nineteenth century with their limited and biased approach, promoting race hatred and class hatred calling North Indians as Aryans, bracketing Brahmins from the South with them so that they could be firmly seated in Southern States as promoters of the cause of neglected cause of imaginary Dravidians clubbing low castes and outcastes with them. Probably, the Central Government of India feels it too sensitive an issue to focus their attention as the ancient history of India cannot be isolated from Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Tradition which can be easily identified with Hindu Religion of the modern concept and also can be clubbed as Aryan Religion by the political rival groups of the South who to continue to be in power which is now in their hold for the past three to four decades. But the fact remains that Sanatana Dharma is no religion and is universal in its message. No religion existed when Sanatana Dharma got revealed to humanity, and perhaps even the word religion did not exist then.
Modern History says Christianity is 2012 years old. As we all know Jesus did not start Christianity. In the first years after the Crucifixion, Christianity was only the seed of a new concept, lacking a developed liturgy, a method of worship, and a name which encompass modern concept of religion. Probably the word religion was also coined later and defined? As we all know Sanaatana Dharma does not also fit into the concept of religion. It is a way of life or code of spiritual conduct. The earliest followers of Christianity also called it simply "The Way". It was not even a formal sect of Judaism. Peter was its first champion. History tells eleven of the twelve Apostles were martyred. Apostles suffered gruesomely for spreading their radical views. This did not happen in Sanaatana Dharma. It even had in its fold Charwaaka Philosophy.
We often get excited and get confused too between historic facts and astronomical evidences in our attempt to prove Hinduism is very old and Puraanas are very old and deal only with historic events. This thought is inspired by the coinage of words Puraana and Itihaasa. Puraana in Sanskrit means "puraa nava iti" though old yet it is new. "Itihaasa" means "iti haa sa" it happened so. Currently attempts are made to study astronomical evidences from Puraanas and scriptures with the help of modern tools like Planetarium software. Dr. Narahari of Memphis, Professor of Physics has come to the conclusion that Mahabharata War should have occurred either in 3139 B.C.E. or 3067 B.C.E. taking into consideration both historic views as well as puraanic narrations and investigating the time between those two views after elaborate research using Planetarium software. Aryabhatta mentions this date as 3137 B.C.E. as found in the inscriptions of Aihole of Karnataka of 1634 A.D.
Encouraged by such studies by him as well Siddhart Kak and others attempts are being made in India to import the Planetarium software from USA and based on hurried investigation come to hasty conclusions. One such study by Pushkara Bhatnagar from Indian Revenue Service reveals Rama was born seven thousand years before and there was no caste system prevalent in those days referring to the epic Ramayana of Valmiki. It also tries to prove how Hinduism is oldest and Aryan theory was baseless and manipulated, without proper explanation. While some of the analysis seems possible like Rama married early at the age of thirteen, remained in Ayodhya till he reached the age of 25, returned back from exile at the age of 39 to Ayodhya, many other statements seem to be mere speculations. He also authoritatively mentions Rama was born on January 10, in 5114 B.C.E.
The statement that birth of Rama occurred 7000 years before seems to be too far-fetched in an attempt to prove it is historic disputing the dates of Ramayana as predicted by Western authors of History. Western authors mention 1500 B.C.E. as the date for their Aryan Invasion theory and date of Ramayana around 1200 B.C.E. which also seems to be clever manipulation. This author while suggesting the birth of Rama as 7000 years old occurrence indicates date of Prophet Mohamed as 1400 years, Jesus Christ 2012 years Gauthama Buddha 2600 years old. Kaliyuga as Hindus believe to-day started 5114 years ago. To this if we add 864000 years for Dwaapara yuga it would be 869012 years when Tretayuga ended. Ramayana says that Rama ruled for 11000 years after his incarnation at the end of Valmiki Ramaayana. This would put Rama's age around 900000 years back. By the time Tretaayuga started caste system created by human society was well established. Dasaratha invited Brahmin priests to conduct Yajna. Sages like Valmiki and Viswamitra though not Brahmins were above caste considerations like Aazhwars and Naayanmaars of to-day and were considered as Brahmarishis. Rama as Kshatriya felt it is his responsibility to protect and defend Varnashrama Dharma and so killed Sambooka who was a Soodra and who resorted to Yaaga to fulfill his objectives, which was the privilege of higher castes only even in those days. As you all know Ram never revealed he was an Incarnation till the very end unlike Krishna who declared he was none other than Supreme Principle quite often. We should be careful in our study of scriptures and fully understand the implications in their interpretation. We have well read historians who are also religious scholars who need to be convinced by any such study. Such studies by several Indian scholars in the past, has not changed the History of India as taught in schools. We have a flood of such revelations in the Internet every one claiming to be authoritative.
Vedas mention about five types of cycles of years—Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idavatsar, Idvatsara and Iduvatsara. We are only familiar with the 60-year cycle of Samvatsaras and their duration. We do not have any idea of other types of years. We are not sure in which type of years the duration of Yugas have been prescribed. We usually calculate as per Samvatsara of 60 years cycle generally known and understood by Panchangas. Ramaayana says Raama ruled for 11000 years (dasavrsha sahasraani
dasvarsha sataani cha). It does not say which kind of year was that from the above five.
dasvarsha sataani cha). It does not say which kind of year was that from the above five.
It may be of interest to remind ourselves of the people who lived in India nearly five thousand years ago as revealed by Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro excavations. Five thousand years ago, so called Dravidians built a big kingdom in the Indus Valley says the Indian History. They flourished in the Indus valley for at least a thousand years. Perhaps in the other parts of India also these Dravidians ((since they are not identified with Aryans as stated in the History who are considered migrants) built cities and towns and lived in peace, cultivating their lands, sailing in boats and trading with other countries of Asia. It is on these people and on their cities and on their forests that a new set of people should have fallen. These are presumed to be the Aryans which Indian History talks about, if the Aryan invasion theory is true, who destroyed these great cities and thus put an end to one of the greatest civilizations of ancient India which can be traced back in modern Pakistan as well as the South. How can they be called with the respectable term Aryans if they were engaged in destructive activities? Could this be a continuous dwelling-site of human society? In spite of new authentic evidence ancient Indian History remains the same as in the days of British, promoted by Western authors of vested interest and ably propagated by Western educated Indian historians.
Recently more light has been thrown on even older civilization based on oceanographic studies. In 2001 Murali Manohar Joshi, the then Union Home Minister for Human Resources and Development announced in the Indian Parliament that ruins of ancient civilization were discovered off the coast of Gujarat in the Gulf of Khambat (Cambay). The site was discovered by NIOT (National Institute for Oceanographic Technology) while they were making pollution studies using sonar. Mr. Joshi added that the site was an urban settlement that predated Harappa-Mohenjo-Daro civilization; it contained regularly spaced dwellings, a granary, a bath, a citadel and a drainage system. A piece of wood picked was carbon dated 9500 years old. The ruins of Gulf of Khambat and Dwaraka dates to between 40000 to 10000 years ago, (upper Paleolithic dates) predating agriculture, stone-age humans. No one on Earth was building any structure at this time, much less cities.
By strange coincidence Hindu Panchangas say Kaliyuga started 5114 years ago when at the end of total destruction of Yadu dynasty, at the end of Dwaaparayuga, the New world order started.
Kali Era 5114 starts on 23 March 2012, on Chandramana Yugadi Day as per all Hindu Panchangas. This coincides with the Harappan Hindu civilization traced by history so far as stated above. According to Surya Siddhanta, Kaliyuga started on 17th February 3102 B.C.E. This date is also confirmed more or less by the research findings of Dr. Narahari with Planetarium software for the Mahabharata War. Start of Kaliyuga is presumed to be the day of ascension of Lord Krishna who is believed to have lived on earth planet foe 125 years (yaduvamso-avateernasya bhavatah purushottama | saraccchatam vyateetaaya panchavimsaadhikam prabho- 11/6/25). If Krishna is so short lived why Rama should have lived that long on Planet Earth after eliminating all evil forces in a very short time? Probably this and other factors like the continuous dwelling-site of humans on the Indian sub-continent since 7000 B.C. E. should have prompted Pushkara Bhatnagar to pick up a convenient Chaitra Sukla Navami as Rama's Birthday (January 10, 5114 B.C.E.), based on Planetarium software.
In April 2006 Nature magazine announced about Mehrgarth civilization (5500 B.C.E. to 2600 B.C.E.) which is the precursor to Harappa Mohenjo-Daro Indus valley civilization. In the Indian Sub-Continent a continuous sequence of dwelling-site has been established from 7000 B.C.E. to 500 B.C.E. as a result of exposition in Pirak, Mehrgarh and Nausharo. Problem today is that Indian Subcontinent has been divided and distributed to various opposing cultures by invaders which are at constant conflict and do not find time to focus on these. Mehrgarh neolithic site is in Kachi Plain of Balochistan in Pakistan.
If the West changes its World history based on the authentic facts presented by American authors and others it would be far easier and smoother for India to revise its own History. India will not do it however authentic the information may be because of communal and religious wrangling, disputes and fights by the political parties in power . The initiative has to come from Migrant Hindus or preferably from Western cultures in USA, Canada, Britain and Australia where majority of the Hindu migrants live. Even though Pakistan's ancient history is the same as that of ancient history of India they will not take the initiative as it will indirectly contribute to support Hindu Religion whose ancient name is Sanaatana Dharma just as Iran will not change its past history as it will support Zarathustra Farsi culture. Islam or as a matter of fact no other faith existed then and countries like Pakistan are interested only in glorifying Islamic culture and shutting off information or act indifferent to other ancient cultures as it is not in their interest of promoting Islam. It is important for the Hindu migrants to take the initiative to correct the mistakes in Western History for that portion of the history of the human past and its civilization as it involves their origin and culture which they are preserving even as migrants at all cost. These countries enjoy social freedom and free press. It will be most practical to start the initiative seriously in USA as Hindus enjoy maximum freedom to practice their religion and preserve their cultural identity and rich heritage. Yes, they can! Because of the free access to Internet, special software and facility to operate through Face book and other tools available liberally based on authentic data. Otherwise it will end up as has happened to US Citizens of European origin today as to their cultural background. We have the choice before us—to hasten the process of inter-racial marriages and lose our identity to join the main stream or preserve our culture with special focus and effort while participating and living in harmony with Western culture.
[Please also refer to my discourse on "Orthodox and Historic Dates of Some Hindu Scriptures, Events and Personalities"]
The Date of the Mahabharata War
This is a momentous discovery. It proves that:
The myth of the Aryan-Dravidian divide and the “high caste”-“low caste” divide
“Amavasu migrated westward. His people are Gandhari, Parsu and Aratta.”
The original, non-Hellenized names of ancient Persian kings, Achaemenes Dynasty (c. 550 – 330 BCE).
2. Lal B. B. The Rigvedic People: Invaders? Immigrants? or Indigenous? Aryan Books International; First Edition (2015).
3. Danino M. The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books (2010).
4. Sengupta S. et al. Polarity and temporality of high-resolution Y-chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exogenous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of Central Asian pastoralists. Am J Hum Genet. 2006;78:202–21.
5. Underhill P. A. et al. Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. Eur J Hum Genet. 2010;18:479–84. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.194.
6. Tamang R., Thangaraj K. Genomic view on the peopling of India. Investig. Genet., 3, 20. (2012).
7. Sharma S. et al. The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1* substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system. Journal of Human Genetics (2009) 54, 47–55; doi:10.1038/jhg.2008.2
8. Lucotte G. (2015) The Major Y-Chromosome Haplotype XI – Haplogroup R1a in Eurasia. Hereditary Genet 4:150. doi: 10.4172/2161-1041.1000150
9. Dolgin E. Indian ancestry revealed (2009). doi:10.1038/news.2009.935
10. Haak W. et al. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature. 2015;522(7555):207–11. doi: 10.1038/nature14317.
11. Thapar R. Can Genetics Help Us Understand Indian Social History? Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 2014;6(11):a008599. doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a008599.
Note: This article first appeared on IndiaFacts.Org.
APPENDIX
WHY IT IS URGENT TO WRITE HISTORY OF INDIA AS HAPPENED?
Mahabharata much older than we assume, say ASI Archaeologists - Sanauli Excavations vs Findings of BB Lal
Lal
also speculated that the war of Kurukshetra occurred about 800 BC and
claimed that during the time of Nichasku, who was the fifth ruler after
Parikshit, the kingdom was moved from Hastinapur to Kaushambi,
while Udayana, the Buddha's contemporary, was the 19th ruler in the Kuru clan. Udayana would have ruled around 500 BCE, according to Lal's research, after which 24 rulers ruled for 15 years each.
"Currently attempts are made to study astronomical evidences from Puraanas and scriptures with the help of modern tools like Planetarium software. Dr. Narahari of Memphis, Professor of Physics has come to the conclusion that Mahabharata War should have occurred either in 3139 B.C.E. or 3067 B.C.E. taking into consideration both historic views as well as puraanic narrations and investigating the time between those two views after elaborate research using Planetarium software. Aryabhatta mentions this date as 3137 B.C.E. as found in the inscriptions of Aihole of Karnataka of 1634 A.D.
Damage caused buy western journalists and correspondent
Guwahati:
Hinduism is the only religion today that accepts and respects all the
other religions and Hindus are descendants an ancient civilization
in human history, but there
are many western journalists and correspondents
who are still biased against Hindustan (Bharat or India). So said Francois Gautier, an India based senior French
journalist,
during an interactive session with Guwahati based scribes on 26 October
2019 through video-conferencing and asserted that the western media
should at least
respect the country with a wisest past and still gives birth to humans with wonderful qualities.
“But
most of the western correspondents posted in New Delhi take little
notice about the uniqueness of India paying almost no respect to the
billion-plus nation even after 70 years of its independence.
They are supposed to report honestly about India so that their readers,
many of whom are ignorant about the great nation, get enlightened,”
said Gautier.
Himself
a regular contributor to various international publications including
few from France, Gautier argued that the foreign correspondents are
normally assigned for four to five years in India
and that is not enough for understanding a country which is so vast,
diverse and also contradictory. More precisely, Delhi is very far from
southern or eastern India. Shockingly, the Indian journalists who
regularly write for western media outlets normally
follow the guidelines of their editors and very often they don’t
hesitate to paint a negative image of their own country exclaimed
Gautier. However, he feels that the alternate media has provided space
for many Indians, including qualified journalists, to
speak on various issues they deem fit for exposures.
“India is never in the news in the West unless there is some major catastrophe or huge elections.
Thus, if anyone wants to write for those publications, he or she has to
find stories that
might often border on the sensational, marginal and even misleading,”
commented the outspoken journalist, who is living in India for many
decades now.
Speaking about
Hindu tolerance, Gautier opined that it has been one-way traffic for the Hindus as they experienced cruel genocides in the sad history of humanity.
But Hindus have shown extreme tolerance and Hinduism is the only
religion that never tried to convert
others. However many Indian intellectuals claim that Hindus are
intolerant, fanatic or fundamentalists. India’s first Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru was a great admirer of English socialism and he adopted
British constitutional, judicial and even education
systems without considering the exceptional Indian socio-cultural and
traditional values.
Nehru had to nurture the sentient of a sizable Muslim population that
did not join Pakistan (west or east) and continued to live in India.
“For
these reasons, Nehru asked historians to show esteem to Muslim rulers
like Akbar or Aurangzeb and ignore the greatness of Hindu warriors like
Chatrapati Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Rani Lakshmibai
etc knowing that Hindus would not react not to speak of protesting,”
commented the contributor to Journal de Geneve, Le Figaro, La Revue de
l’Inde along with various Indian newspapers. Hence Gautier believes that
the Indian history should be rewritten and
he has reasons to explain. For over seven decades, the Indian
establishment comprising people from Nehruvian-Marxist and
pseudo-secular ideology used to influence everything from school
curriculum to public policy to history writing.
It has built up a false narrative that systematically condemned India’s civilizational journey. Since the overwhelming
majority of the people here remain Hindus, the establishment tried its best to turn itself as anti-Hindu.
It encouraged people to negate anything associated with Hinduism. The
tendency extended up to reproving the Vedas, Upanisad, Bhagavad Gita,
Ramayana,
Mahabharata along with Ayurveda and Sanskrit.
Bringing
the reference to Hebrew, the ancient language of Israel, Gautier
pointed out that Israeli people after getting a part of their holy land
in 1948 started welcoming Jews from various parts
of the world. As they came back to live in Israel a major problem was
aroused because they spoke different languages. The Israeli authority
asked their scholars to revive Hebrew, which had fallen in decrepitude
so that everybody can speak Hebrew.
“Today the Hebrew language has unified Israel like nothing else, which should inspire India to
revive Sanskrit. The government should invite some dedicated
linguists to sit down with Sanskrit scholars for devising a way of
simplifying and modernizing the mother all Indian languages. I am sure,
it would energize and revitalize the whole Indian
culture” stated the author of ‘India’s Self Denial’, ‘Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar, a Guru of Joy’, ‘A New History of India’, ‘A History of India
as it Happened’ etc.
Married
to an Indian woman, Gautier also argued that India and Israel share so
much in common and both can learn a lot from each other!
Hindus and Jews, far from being the persecutors of minorities have been persecuted for nearly two thousand years and have been the victims of worst genocides in history. While the German dictator Hitler murdered six million Jews in his
gas chambers, Gautier revealed eighty million Hindus had to die at the hands of Muslim invaders.
- NJ Thakuria
Mahabharata much older than we assume, say ASI Archaeologists - Sanauli Excavations vs Findings of BB Lal
Previously I sent you an E-mail as reproduced below about astreonomical and planetarium studies about the Date of Mahabharata War. But we now more certin about it baseds on narcheological findings at Sanauli
Mahabharata could be as old
as 1500 to 2000 BCE against currently believed 900-1000 BCE era, according to
The Economic Times reports.
(Courtesy S.K. Manjul/ Institute of Archaeology, ASI)
Two chariots (left), and mirror and comb (right), Sanauli, India
During excavations at
Sanauli in the Baghpat district of western Uttar Pradesh, a team from
the Archaeological Survey
of India (ASI) unearthed the remains of three chariots, along with a
number of coffins and other objects they believe are almost 4,000 years
old. “The discovery of chariots in burial pits is extremely important,
as they put India on par with ancient civilizations
such as Mesopotamia and Greece where chariots were extensively used,”
says S.K. Manjul, director of the ASI’s Institute of Archaeology. The
three chariots are two-wheeled open vehicles that can be driven by one
person. The dig has also unearthed eight burial
sites and additional artifacts, including three coffins, swords,
daggers, combs, and ornaments. The burial pits indicate that a warrior
class thrived in this region, according to Manjul. “These excavations,”
he says, “have proved that the chariots, swords,
and helmets were used in wars, as they were in Mesopotamia in 2000
B.C.”
Mahabharata much older than we assume, say ASI Archaeologists -
Sanauli Excavations s Findings of BBLal
The statement follows the observations of last year's
Sanauli excavation site, 68 km from Delhi, including the discovery of a horse-driven
"war chariot", a rusted bow and arrow, a burial site and ochre-colored pottery, battle helmets, spear, torch and hilt antennae
sword.
The director of the
ASI Institute of Archeology, Sanjay Manjul, who carried out the
Sanauli excavation, addressed these
findings on Friday. Mr. Manjul said the war chariot excavated was the
first discovery of a war chariot and that it was found to be "a
horse-pulled one" after advanced research, taking the site
“closer to the culture of Mahabharata”.
He said that the Sanauli excavations are a missing link to the Rigvedic culture and a symbol of continuity of civilization. In
Rigveda, Ramayana, and Mahabharata,
chariots are common.
Rusted Sword
All Images are taken from Google |
Mr. Manjul said his group was revisiting
Braj Basi Lal's discoveries in 1951-52, having performed excavations at Indraprastha
and Hastinapur. Lal had announced that a significant portion of the city had been destroyed by a heavy flood in the Ganga around 800 BC.
He had named the time of
painted grey ware (PGW) culture based on the relics recovered and said this was the earliest famous pottery linking all the Mahabharata sites including
Hastinapur, Mathura, Kurukshetra and
Kampilya.
Braj Basi Lal is an archaeologist from India. From 1968 to 1972,he was the
Director General of India's Archeological Survey (ASI) and has served
as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies,
Shimla. Lal served on various UNESCO committees as well.
According to
The Economic Times
report, Manjul also looked into the genealogy Kuru kings, starting with
Pratipa leading to Dhiritrashtra, Pandu
and Yudhisthir in fifth, sixth, seventh ranks, and completing with 36th King Kshemaka, preceded by Iramitra.
"Buddha's
contemporary was about 550 BCE, which was the Kuru kings ' 23rd gen.
When you assign the kings an average of 50 years each, which decreases
with regular wars in the later generations,
the date of the Mahabharata is around 1750 BCE.
Since the first
Indraprastha excavations in the
early 1950s, at least eight excavations have undertaken at places
mentioned in the Mahabharata, but no definitive, direct or genetic
evidence has been published by the ASI to date to determine
exact historical facts.
Time: Mahabharata in Artist's Imagination
|
The single war chariot
that were discovered in Sanauli excavation
site were the first to be discovered on Indian soil before this
extraordinary finding such chariots were only found in ancient and
Vedic literatures or shown in various television serials.
"Currently attempts are made to study astronomical evidences from Puraanas and scriptures with the help of modern tools like Planetarium software. Dr. Narahari of Memphis, Professor of Physics has come to the conclusion that Mahabharata War should have occurred either in 3139 B.C.E. or 3067 B.C.E. taking into consideration both historic views as well as puraanic narrations and investigating the time between those two views after elaborate research using Planetarium software. Aryabhatta mentions this date as 3137 B.C.E. as found in the inscriptions of Aihole of Karnataka of 1634 A.D.
The attached narration from
IndiaDivine.org after elaborate study says that Mahabharata War took
place in 1194 B.C. At present the Winter solstice falls on the 21st of
December. The Gregorian system, which is the basis of the calendars of all Europe
except Russia, Greece and Turkey, involves an error of less than a day in 3524
years. As the war took place in 1194 B.C., or 3094 years ago or 2776 years
before the calendar was last corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, we may be certain
that the winter solstice which occurred on the fifty-first day after the close
of the war, would have happened, as now on the 21st of December (New Style). We
may, therefore, conclude that the War commenced on the 14th of October, and was
brought to a close on the night of the 31st of October, 1194 B.C. Whether or
not this precise date, based as it is on data furnished by the Mahabharata
alone, proves to be acceptable to the critical eye of a historian, we may at
least be sure that the war took place in the latter part of the year 1194 B.C.
Aryabhatta –
whose fame spread to Arabia as Arjabahr and Constantinople’s vast empire as
Andubarius or Ardubarius – was born in 476 A.D. and the first to promulgate the
theory that the earth revolved round the sun, calculate the circumference of
the earth and explain the eclipses. According to him “the line of the
Saptarshis intersected the middle of Magha Nakshatra in the year of Kaliyuga
1910”, i.e. 1192 B.C. According to Vishnu Purana, the Sapatarshis were in that
very same position at the birth of Parikshit who was, therefore, born about
1192 B.C. Since the war occurred at the most a few months earlier than his
birth, it might have taken place about 1193 B.C.
Here are two contradicting views.
I do not know personally Dr. Narahari in Memphis. It will be a good idea to
refer the attached article on "The
Date of Mahabharata War by Pradip Bhattacharya,
IndiaDivine.org" to Dr. Narahari and get his opinion. Dr. Narahari's
article was published in Aradhana of Nashville Ganesha Temple.
India has not shown or written a
comprehensive history of India to the people of India. But real history has to
come through. The ICHR (Indian Council
of History of Religions0 now under the leadership of Sudershan appointed by the
Bharatiya Government should encourage
research about India and Greater India—from Southeast Asia all the way to
Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. There is enough archaeological evidence to show the
connection of our civilization there.
The ICHR is in the process of
acquiring digital records from centers of history in the US and Europe. This
will not only give India access to our own records but will also aid us in
writing history from Indian perspective.
Here is
an example which reveals how research can change the wrong views held by
religion: In what could prove something of a pot hole for current readings of
Islamic history, a carbon test carried out on a Quranic manuscript recently
discovered in England reveals the book is likely older than Muhammad, the
founder of the Islamic faith. This would radically alter the edifice of Islamic
tradition and the history of the rise of Islam in late Near Eastern antiquity
would have to be completely revised, somehow accounting for another book of
scripture coming into existence 50 to 100 years before, and then also
explaining how this was co-opted into what became the entity of Islam by around
AD 700"
The Date of the Mahabharata War
Posted by Pradip
Bhattacharya | Nov 22, 2013 |
Please help spread
Hinduism by sharing these articles on Facebook:
Aiyer had published a previous paper in the same journal
fixing the date of the beginning of the Kaliyuga from four different sources:
Vedanga
Jyotisha – 1173 B.C.
Gargacharya – a few years prior to 1165 B.C.
Classical historians – 851 years before Alexander’s stay in India, viz. 1177-76 B. C.
which is confirmed by the Malabar Kollam Andu commencing in August/September 1176 B.C.
Gargacharya – a few years prior to 1165 B.C.
Classical historians – 851 years before Alexander’s stay in India, viz. 1177-76 B. C.
which is confirmed by the Malabar Kollam Andu commencing in August/September 1176 B.C.
Aiyer concluded that the Kaliyuga began with the winter
solstice immediately preceding the commencement of the Kollam Andu, or at the
end of 1177 B.C. The Mahabharata War, he proposes, was fought a few years
before the beginning of the Kaliyuga.
One would like to know if any reactions to Aiyar’s research
were published in the “Indian Review”. Libraries in Chennai might yield the
information. An abridgement is presented in Aiyer’s own words as far as
possible. – Pradip Bhattacharya
Dating the Battle of Kurukshetra
According to the Mahaprasthanika Parva and the Vishnu
Purana, the Kali age would not affect the earth so long as it was touched by
Sri Krishna’s holy feet. When the Pandavas abdicated, Parikshit must have been
about 16 years old (the age of majority according to Hindu lawyers). If Kali
began in 1177 B.C., Parikshit would have probably been born in 1193 B.C. and
the war should have occurred towards the end of 1194 B.C.
Again, the Mausala Parva says that the Yadava race was
destroyed 36 years after the war and the Pandavas left soon thereafter at the
beginning of Kaliyuga. On the other hand, the Bhagavatayana Parva states that
Kali began at the time of the war itself. The Ashramavasika Parva states that
when 15 years had expired after the war, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti left
for the forest. In the 16th year after the war, the Pandavas visited them along
with Uttara who had recently become a mother and had her child in her lap. Now,
Parikshit was in the womb during the war (Sauptika Parva), hence he could not
have been an infant in the 16th year after the war. Therefore, this statement
in the Ashramavasika is incorrect. Rather, in the 16th year after the war the
Pandavas started not on a visit to the old people, but on their last journey.
There is no mention of Parikshit’s marriage, which would have occurred later. If
Parikshit were really 36 years of age when the Pandavas left, why should he be
placed under the tutelage of Kripacharya as stated in Mausala Parva? It would
be more consistent if Parikshit was about 16 when he was crowned, and the war
took place 16 years before the beginning of the Kaliyuga. This conclusion is
supported by other evidence.
Kalhana Pandit’s Rajatarangini, the well-known history of
Kashmir written in 1148 A.D., is the only indigenous work in India that can
pass for history. Verses 48-49 of the first Taranga state:
“Misled by the tradition that the Bharata war took place at
the end of the Dwapara, some have considered as wrong the sum of years
(contained in the statement that) in the Kaliyuga the kings beginning with
Gonanda I (and ending with Andha Yudhishthira) ruled of the Kasmiras for 2268
years.”
This Gonanda I was, says Kalhana, the contemporary of the
Pandavas. The 52nd in descent from him was Abhimanyu, son of Kanishka, whose
successor Gonanda III was the first of a new dynasty “which came to power 2330
years before Kalhana’s time” (1st Taranga, verses 52 and 49). In the
Rajatarangini the total for the reigns from the end of Andha Yudhishthira-the
last of Gonanda III’s dynasty-to Kalhana’s own time is 1329 years, 3 months, 28
days, say roughly 1330 years. Kalhana would have presumed that the interval
between the end of Abhimanyu’s reign and that of Andha Yudhishthira was
2330-1330 = 1000 years.
Clearly, in Kalhana’s time it was believed that 2268 years
had elapsed from the time of Pandava Yudhishthira to that of Andha
Yudhishthira. Hence, Kalhana gives 2268-1000 or 1268 years for the reigns of
the first 52 kings from Gonanda I to Abhimanyu and 1000 years for the 21 kings
of the dynasty of Gonanda III. This was the “tradition” Kalhana refers to in
the excerpt above. The latter portion may well be a later addition because
Kalhana himself says it is “thought” that the 52 kings down to Abhimanyu
reigned in all “for 1266 years” (verse 54, Taranga I-obviously an error for
1268 years).
However, Kalhana accepts only part of the old “tradition”,
namely that 2268 years elapsed from the time of Pandava Yudhishthira to that of
Andha Yudhishthira. He does not accept the part that Pandava Yudhishthira lived
at the end of the Dwapara Yuga because in Kalhana’s time, as now, the Dwapara
was supposed to have ended and the Kali to have begun in 3102 B.C. Kalhana
relied on Garga’s verse (quoted in Varahamihira’s Brihatsamhita, XIII. 3-4)
which he erroneously interpreted as meaning that Yudhishthira commenced to reign
2526 years before the era of Salivahana, in 2428 B.C. As Abhimanyu lived 1268
years after Pandava Yudhishthira, Kalhana placed him in 2448-1268 = 1180 B.C.
Since Kanishka and his successor Abhimanyu lived in the 1st century after
Christ, the false figures given by Kalhana for Abhimanyu and all the subsequent
kings down to the 6th century A.D. can be traced to his mistaken interpretation
of Garga’s verse.
Almost all Sanskrit scholars agree that Kanishka lived in
the 1st century A.D., though Cunningham thought that the Vikrama era from 57
B.C. began with Kanishka, and the Saka era beginning on 3rd March 78 A.D. dates
from him. Coins show that Kanishka reigned down to 40 A.D. Irrespective of
whether the era of Salivahana dates from Kanishka, clearly Abhimanyu must have
been reigning about the commencement of this era in 78 A.D. If so,
Yudhishthira, who lived 1268 years earlier, must have begun to reign about
1268-78 = 1190 B.C. Since his coronation took place soon after the war, it must
also have been fought around 1190 B.C.
Aryabhatta – whose fame spread to Arabia as Arjabahr and
Constantinople’s vast empire as Andubarius or Ardubarius – was born in 476 A.D.
and the first to promulgate the theory that the earth revolved round the sun,
calculate the circumference of the earth and explain the eclipses. According to
him “the line of the Saptarshis intersected the middle of Magha Nakshatra in
the year of Kaliyuga 1910”, i.e. 1192 B.C. According to Vishnu Purana, the
Sapatarshis were in that very same position at the birth of Parikshit who was,
therefore, born about 1192 B.C. Since the war occurred at the most a few months
earlier than his birth, it might have taken place about 1193 B.C.
The same result is arrived at if we consider the number of
kings who occupied the throne of Magadha from the time of the war to the
accession of Chandragupta. According to the Vishnu Purana – which is mostly
agreed to by the other Puranas – the 9 Nandas reigned for 100 years; the 10
Saisunagas of the next previous dynasty for 362 years; the 5 kings of the still
previous Pradyota dynasty for 138 years succeeding the famous Barhadratha
dynasty whose 22 kings sat on the throne since the date of the war. Thus, we
get 100 years for the Nanda and 500 years for the 2 previous dynasties. Very
probably the same number was reported to Megasthenes. However, what strikes one
most is the large average for each reign. The same Vishnu Purana gives 137
years for the 10 kings of the later Maurya dynasty, 112 years for the 10 kings
of the Sunga dynasty and 45 years for the 4 kings of the Kanwa line, i.e. an
average of about 12 years against 28 for the Pradyota dynasty and 36 for the
Saisunaga! For the Nandas, it is scarcely probable that a father and his sons
could have reigned for 100 years, especially when the last sons did not die
naturally but were extirpated by Chandragupta with the help of Chanakya. The
Puranas may have left out insignificant reigns, or these ancient kings may have
been longer-lived than those of the post-Chandragupta period, but even then the
averages are too large. It would be unsafe to deduce therefrom the probable
date of the war.
In England, from the Norman invasion to the 20th century,
35 monarchs had ruled for 835 years, the average being about 23 years. From
Hugh Capet to the execution of Louis XVI, France was ruled by 33 kings for
1793-987 = 806 years, yielding an average of about 24 years. 8 kings ruled
Prussia from Ivan III at 23 years. In Russia 22 monarchs up to the present
Emperor Nicholas II for 1894-1462 = 432 years giving an average of about 19
years. In Japan, the present Emperor Musu Hito is the 123rd, his ancestor Jimmu
Tenno having established the dynasty lasting unbroken for 2500 years, which
gives an average of 21 years for this long-lived dynasty. Thus, the averages
for each of the 5 foremost powers of our hemisphere are 23 for England, 24 for
France, 23 for Germany, 19 for Russia and 21 for Japan. The average of these,
about 22 years, may be taken as the probable duration of each reign of the
pre-Chandragupta dynasties. There were 22 Barhadrathas, 5 Pradyotas and 10
Saisunagas = 37 in all from the time of the war to the Nandas, and they might
therefore have reigned for 37 x 22 = 814 years.
Moreover, according to the Buddhist Mahavamso, composed by
Mahanama around 460 A.D., Mahapadma Nanda, called Kalasoka in the chronicle,
reigned for 20 years and had 10 sons who conjointly ruled for 22 years. Then
there were 9 brothers who reigned for 22 years. Thus, the Nandas reigned in all
for 20+22+22 = 64 years, a figure more likely to be correct than the Puranic
round figure of 100 years. Thus, the war must have happened about 814+64 = 878
years before Chandragupta, at 878+315 = 1193 B.C.
Against our reckoning of 814 years between the war and
Mahapadma Nanda’s accession, the Vishnu Purana (IV.24) gives 1015 years. This
seems based on supposing a round period of 100 years from the start of the
Kaliyuga to the time of Nanda’s accession and presuming that the Kali began 15
years after the war. If so, the genuineness of an interval of a round period of
1000 years between the beginning of the Kali and the coronation of Nanda is
suspect. The Purana period of 1015 years for the 37 kings between the war and
the coronation of Nanda yields an improbable average of over 27 years. The
author of the Vishnu Purana deals vaguely in round figures, giving 100 for the
Nandas, 500 for the Pradyotas and Saisunagas and 1000 years (IV.23) for the
Barhadrathas, the last figure directly conflicting with the statement about
1015 years intervening between the war and the end of the Saisunaga dynasty.
This Purana also states that the Saptarshis, which are
supposed to move at one Nakshatra for every 100 years (IV.24) had moved 10
Nakshatras from Magha to Purvashada during this interval, which therefore comes
to 10×100 = 1000 years. Obviously, this supposed movement was arrived at by the
author not by actual observation, for such a movement is astronomically
impossible, but by his deducing it from the other statement in the preceding
verse that 1015 years had elapsed during this interval. The author seems first
to have had in mind that the Kali began 15 years after the war and that 1000
year elapsed from the beginning of the Kali era to the accession of Nanda, and
then to have deduced therefrom the proposition that the Saptarshis which were
in Magha at the time of the war had moved on to Purvashada at the coronation of
Mahapadma Nanda.
In Chapter XIII of the Brihatsamhita, Varahamihira, born in
505 A.D., deals with the Saptarshi cycles and quotes Vriddha Garga: “When king
Yudhishthira ruled the earth, the seven seers were in Magha; the Saka era is
2526 years after the commencement of his reign.” The translator, Dr. Hultzsch
(Indian Antiquary VIII, p.66) comments, “The coronation of Yudhishthira took
place 2526 years before the commencement of the Saka era, or at the expiration
of the Kaliyuga-Samvat 653 and in B.C. 2448.” This agrees with Kalhana in
thinking that the Yudhishthira era is different from the Kali era.
On the other hand, Jyotirvidabharana, an astronomical work
attributed to Kalidasa, but which scholars place in the 16th century A.D.,
states that in the Kaliyuga six different eras will flourish one after another:
the Yudhishthira to last 3044 years from the beginning of Kali; the Vikrama to
last for 135 years afterwards; the Salivahana for 1800 years thereafter; and
the Vijaya, Nagarjuna and Bali ears to be current in the rest of the Kaliyuga.
The three last are fictitious. This shows that Hindus have all along thought
that the Yudhishthira era commenced with the Kali. So also Aryabhatta computes
by the era of Yudhishthira, which corresponds to the Kaliyuga. Therefore, it is
not possible to concur with Kalhana and Dr. Hultzsch in placing the beginning
of the Yudhishthira era “at the expiration of the Kaliyuga-samvat 653 and in
B.C. 2448.”
What does “Sakakala” really mean? It has been proved that
Garga, the author of the shloka, lived about 165 B.C. Even granting Dr. Kern’s
contention that Garga lived in the 1st century B.C., it is not possible that
Garga could have meant by “Sakakala” either the Vikrama samvat, which began
later in 57 B.C., or the Salivahana Sakabda, which commenced still later in 78
A.D. It has not yet been proven that the Vikramasamvat era had been in use ever
since 57 B.C. Fergusson, Max Muller and Weber opine otherwise. Besides the Kali
or the Saptarshi era, there was in the days of Garga only one other prominent
era in existence, namely, the era of Nirvana, “which,” says Fergusson (in
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, p. 46), “was the only one that had
existed previously in India.” The era of Mahavira beginning in 527 B.C. might
have been then in existence, but the Jain religion was only confined
comparatively to a few and its era was not much in evidence before the public.
The era of Buddha’s Nirvana was, on the other hand, very widely known (being
the State Religion during Asoka’s time). A Tibetan work records a schism having
occurred under a “Thera Nagasena” 137 years after the Nirvana’ Chandragupta is
recorded to have ascended the throne 162 years after the Nirvana; the
inauguration of Asoka is stated to have taken place 218 years after the
Nirvana; and the Dipawanso, a history of Ceylon written in Pali verse about the
4th century A.D., makes use of the era of Nirvana in its computations.
Therefore, the era of Buddha’s Nirvana, which was in current use in the time of
Garga, might have been probably referred to by him.
Gautama Buddha was known by the name of “Sakya Muni” and
his paternal grandfather was also known by the name of “Sakya”. The race to
which Gautama belonged was often called by the name of Sakyas. R.C. Dutta says,
“A little to the east of the Kosala kingdom, two kindred clans, the Sakyas and
the Koliyans, lived on the opposite banks of the small stream Rohini
…Kapilavastu was the capital of the Sakyas.” The followers of Gautama Buddha
were often spoken of as “Sakyaputriya Sramanas” in contradistinction possibly
to the Sramanas of other sects. We may therefore infer that the era of Gautama
Buddha was probably known as “Sakya Kala” in those times. The era could not
have been called “Nirvana Kala” as the term might equally apply to the Nirvana
of Mahavira.
The shloka is written in the usual Arya meter. Similarly,
the first 2 slokas of the chapter are in faultless rhythm, but the third shloka
under discussion satisfies the rhythmic requirements in only the first three
quarters. The last quarter, shakakalastasya… is short by one “matra”. It is
inexplicable how Kalhana and other scholars could overlook such a glaring slip.
As the Rajatarangini also makes this mistake, we may infer that the error might
have been in existence from a very long time. The only way of correcting the
error is by insertion of the letter “Y” which has been somehow omitted, between
the letter “K” and “A” in the word “Saka”, correcting “Sakakala” to “Sakyakala”
which makes the shloka perfect and then we have the best of reasons to suppose
that Garga refers to the era of Nirvana, the epoch of the Sakyas, or of the
Sakya prince Gautama, or of the Buddha called Sakya Muni. Some early copyist,
better acquainted with “Sakakala” than with “Sakyakala” changed the latter into
the former, which he might have thought to be the corrector form. Even without
such a correction, “Sakakala” may be considered a corruption of “Sakyakala”.
Thus, in any case, the era of Buddha’s Nirvana is the one most undoubtedly
referred to.
The expression shadadvikpanchadvi means “twenty-six times
twenty-five” or 650 and not “six two five two” denoting 2526 as Dr. Hultzsch
interprets. The termination “ka” denotes “so many times”, and is not an
expletive that a precise mathematician like Garga may be expected to use
unnecessarily. Garga computed here by the Saptarshi cycle, which denoted the
lapse of every 100 years by a new Nakshatra and gave 25 years for each
Nakshatrapada, into four of which a Nakshatra was then usually divided. If the
Saptarshis had moved 6 ½ Nakshatras from the time of Yudhishthira’s coronation
to the Nirvana of Buddha, that would be more appropriately expressed as the
movement of the Rishis through 26 padas and the period denoted thereby would be
put down as twenty-six times twenty-five years.
Though Max Muller offers very fair reasons for fixing the
date of the Nirvana in 477 B.C., yet as Bigandet points out in his life of
Buddha, both the chronicles of Ceylon and Further India unanimously agree that
Buddha attained Nirvana at the age of 80 in 543 B.C. The Dipawanso computes by
the era of Nirvana beginning in 544-3 B.C. Burma, Siam and Ceylon are all
unanimous in giving this date and such widespread unanimity of opinion cannot
be expected unless the era of 544-3 B.C. had existed from a very long time.
Garga’s statement now indicates to us that the coronation
of Yudhishthira, and therefore the Mahabharata War, took place in the year 544
or 543 + 650 = 1194-3 B.C.
Almost in all parts of India the Brihaspati 60 year cycle
prevails from a very long time. In commenting on Taittiriya Brahmana, I.4.10,
Sayana says that this cycle comprised 12 of the ancient 5 cycles, which are so
often referred to in the Vedic works and in the Vedanga Jyotisha. The sun and
the moon take about 5 years to return to the same position at the beginning of
a year, which gave rise to the cycle of the 5 years known as Samvatsara,
Parivatsara, Idavatsara, Anuvatsara and Idvatsara respectively. As Brihaspati
makes a complete circuit of the heavens in about 12 years, all the 3 heavenly
bodies were expected to return to the same celestial region on the expiry of
every 60 years. Because of a correcting knowledge of Brihaspati’s motions,
Northern India has been expunging 1 year of the cycle in every 85-and-65/211
years so that after one such period the name of the next year is left out and
the name of the one following the next year is taken to be the next year’s
name. As no such practice prevails in Southern India, the current year (April
1901 to April 1902) which is the year “Pramadicha” in the North, is the year
“Plava” in the South.
When the names were invented, the year of the Mahabharata
War, the only famous epoch in the history of Ancient India, was named
“Prabhava”, the name of the 1st year of the cycle. But the dates given by the
orthodox for the war or for the beginning of the Kaliyuga do not correspond to
the 1st year of the cycle. But, if we adopt the date given by Garga for the
epoch of Yudhishthira, i.e. 1194-3 B.C., we find that the corresponding year of
the Brihaspati cycle for that date is “Prabhava”, the name of its very 1st
year.
We have suggested that the Kaliyuga began at the winter
solstice of 1177 B.C. We have also seen that, barring the argument based on
Rajatarangini, which gives us about 1190 B.C. for the war, our other lines of
discussion point to 1194-3 B.C. as the probable date of the war. This date is
further confirmed by the application of the principles of the Vedanga Jyotisha
to certain statements contained in the Mahabharata itself. We may here observe
that these statements are not to be explained by the astronomical calculations
of modern times, for these were unknown in the days of the War, but rather by
the calculations of the Vedanga Jyotisha, which, though cruder, are better
applicable to them, inasmuch as it is the oldest Hindu astronomical treatise
known to us and its astronomical details, as we have seen, relate to the
beginning of Kaliyuga.
In the Swargarohanika Parva of the Mahabharata, we are told
that Yudhishthira having observed “that the sun ceasing to go southwards had
begun to proceed in his northward course” set out to where Bhishma lay on his
bed of arrows. After telling Yudhishthira that the winter solstice had set in,
Bhishma said, “Yudhishthira, the lunar month of Magha has come. This is again
the lighted fortnight and a fourth part of it ought to by this be over.”
Whatever historical weight may be attached to these statements, they may be at
least taken to mean that the winter solstice then occurred on the expiry of the
fourth part of the bright fortnight in the month of Magha, that is, on the
fourth or the fifth day after new moon. Nilakantha, the commentator, thinks
that the expression tribhagashesha pakshah denotes ‘Magha Sukla Panchami’ or
the fifth lunar day in the month of Magha after Amavasya, the new moon.
As according to the Vedanga the winter solstice always
occurred with the sun in Dhanishtha the Amavasya referred to by the Mahabharata
must have occurred with the sun and the moon in Sravana Nakshatra; and as the
winter solstice occurred on the fifth day after this, the moon must have been, on
the solstitial day, in or near Revati Nakshatra. According to the Jyotisha,
this position could have occurred only at the beginning of the fourth year of a
five-year cycle, for it was then that the moon was in Aswayuja, next to Revati
Nakshatra. The difference of this one Nakshatra is due to the imperfections of
the elements of the Jyotisha. Thus we may infer that the winter solstice
following the Mahabharata war, and just preceding Bhishma’s death, was the
fourth of the five winter solstices of a five-year cycle. The particular
five-year cycle in which the Mahabharata war took place appears to have been
the fourth cycle previous to the beginning of the Kaliyuga in 1177 inasmuch as
we have found that the Rajatarangini points to1190 B.C., and that all other lines
of discussion lead to 1194-3 B.C. as the probable date of the War.
Consequently, the winter solstice shortly following the War was the fourth of
the fourth five-year cycle preceding the commencement of the Kaliyuga, which
began, like the five-year cycle, with a winter solstice and with the sun and
the moon in Dhanishtha Nakshatra. In other words, the Mahabharata war took
place a little before the seventeenth winter solstice preceding the
commencement of the Kaliyuga or towards the end of1194 B.C.
To
summarize the arguments above set forth:
We were first enabled by the Vedanga Jyotisha to place the
beginning the Kali era approximately at about 1173 B.C.
After enquiring into the date of Garga and of the Yavana
invasion he spoke of, we noted that he fixed “the end of the Yuga” for the
retirement of the Greeks from Hindustan. From this statement we inferred that
the Yuga, which ended sometime before 165 B.C, must have begun a few years
before 1165 B.C.
In explaining the figures given by the classical historians,
we concluded that the Kaliyuga must have begun in 1177-6 B.C.
The Malabar era furnished us with another authority for
fixing the commencement of the Kali era in1176 B.C.
We found that if the Kali commenced at the winter solstice
immediately prece ding the year 1176 B.C., the details of the Mahabharata would
lead us to place the war at the end of the year 1194 B.C.
The Tradition recorded in the Rajatarangini, enabled us to
fix the date of the war about 1190 B.C.
From a statement made by Aryabhatta that the Rishis were in
Magha in 1192 B.C., we inferred that the war might have taken place at about
1195 B.C.
The average duration of the reigns of the monarchs of the
five foremost powers of our hemisphere served to assist us in fixing the date
of the war at about1198 B.C.
From a shloka of Garga quoted in the Brihatsamhita, we
inferred that the war occurred in1194-3 B.C.
We also found that the first year of the Brihaspati cycle
of 60 years actually corresponds, as might naturally be expected, to the date
of the war as given by Garga, i.e. 1194-3 B.C.
We applied the elements of the Vedanga Jyotisha to a shloka
contained in the Mahabharata, which fixes the day of the winter solstice
occurring soon after the war, and concluded that the war should have taken
place in the latter part of 1194 B.C.
Thus we find all this cumulative evidence derived from
different sources converging to the result that the Kali era began at the
winter solstice occurring at the end of 1177 B.C., and that the Mahabharata war
took place at about the end of 1194 B.C. In arriving at these conclusions, we
had the testimony of the only historian that India can boast of who lived in
the twelfth century A.D., of the greatest of the astronomers of India who
flourished at the end of the fifth century A.D., of another brilliant
astronomer who shone in the second century B.C., and of a versatile Greek
historian who was also an ambassador at the court of the first great historic
Emperor of India who reigned in the fourth century B.C. We had also the
authority of the oldest astronomical work of India which claims to be a
supplement to the Vedas, of an ancient era which “forms such a “splendid bridge
from the old world to the new”, and of the famous sixty-year cycle. We tested
these conclusions by what we may call the common-sense process based on the
lists of kings contained in the Puranas. We have met and disposed of the
arguments of those that give an earlier date.
So far we have been treading on more or less firm ground.
But if we attempt to fix the actual days of the year 1194 B.C. when the War may
be supposed to have been fought, our authority will have to be the epic itself,
by itself an unsafe guide. The Mahabharata is unfortunately neither the work of
one author, nor of one age. It has been recently proposed to start an Indian
Epic Society mainly for sifting out the older portions of our incomparable
epic. But the labors of such a Society, when brought to a successful
termination, will not militate against the authenticity of the texts we are
presently to discuss. Most of these belong to the war portion of the
Mahabharata, which, according to Weber, is recognizable as the original basis
of the epic.
We have already referred to a shloka of the epic, which
states that the winter solstice, which took place soon after the war, happened
on the fifth day after new moon in the month of Magha. In the very next
preceding shloka, Bhishma tells Yudhishthira that he has been lying on his
‘spiky’ bed for the previous fifty-eight nights. Among Hindus it has for long
been considered good for one’s future state, for death to occur in the period
between the winter and summer solstices. The grand old Bhishma did not allow
the arrows sticking into his body to be removed lest he might die before the
commencement of the auspicious period, but rather preferred to suffer the
excruciating pain, to which one with a less magnificent physique would have
speedily succumbed.
The war is expressly stated in the epic (Ashramavasika
Parva X.30) to have lasted for eighteen consecutive days. Moreover, in the
Dronabhisheka Parva (Sections II and V), Karna is said to have refrained from
taking part in the war for the ten days during which Bhishma was the
generalissimo of the Kaurava army. In the last chapter of Drona Parva it is
stated that Drona, who was the next Commander-in- chief, was slain after having
fought dreadfully for five days. Karna led the army for the succeeding two days
(Karna Parva I.15), and on the night of the next day (Salya Parva I.10-13)
after Karna’s death, the war was brought to an end. When Yudhishthira was
lamenting the death of Ghatotkacha on the fourteenth night of the war, Vyasa
told him that in five days the earth would fall under his sway (Drona Parva CLXXXIV.65).
From these references also it is clear that the war continued for eighteen
consecutive days. As Bhishma was mortally wounded on the tenth day of the war,
as the war lasted for eight days more, and as Bhishma is reported to have
stated (Anusasana Parva CLXVII.26-27) on the day of the winter solstice that he
remained on his bed of arrows for fully fifty-eight nights, the interval
between the end of the war and the solstitial day was fifty days. As a matter
of fact, this very number of days (ibid. 6) is stated as the period of the stay
of the Pandavas in the city of Hastinapura which they entered on the next day
after the war (Stri Parva XXVII, Shanti Parva XLI and XLV. Though the Pandavas
desired to pass the period of mourning which extended for a month outside
Hastinapura vide Shanti Parva I.2, their intention seems not to have been
carried out) until they set out on their last visit to Bhishma on the day of
the winter solstice. The epic says:
“The blessed monarch (Yudhishthira) having passed fifty
nights in Hastinapura recollected the time indicated by his grandsire (Bhishma)
as the hour of his departure from this world. Accompanied by a number of
priests, he then set out of the city, having seen that the sun ceasing to go
southwards had begun to proceed in his northward course” (Anusasanika Parva
CLXVII. 5-6).
After Yudhishthira reached Bhishma, the latter addressed
him in these words, “The thousand-rayed maker of the day has begun his
northward course. I have been lying on my bed here for eight and fifty nights”
(ibid. 26-27). We may therefore conclude that the winter solstice took place on
the fifty-first day from the close of the war.
On the next day after the close of war, Sri Krishna and the
Pandavas paid a visit to the dying Bhishma, whom Sri Krishna addressed in the
following words: “Fifty-six days more, 0 Kuru Warrior, art thou going to live”
(Stri Parva XXVII; Shanti ParvaXLI, XLV and LII). One need not be misled by the
prophetic nature of this expression and declare it to be of no historic value.
It might well have been a fact and put in the form of a prophecy by the
compiler of the epic. But it may be asked how Bhishma could have lived
fifty-six days after the close of the war, if only fifty days had elapsed from
that time to the winter solstice when Bhishma hoped to give up his life-breath.
But the explanation appears to me to be simple enough; though the winter
solstice occurred fifty days after the close of the war, Bhishma does not seem
to have died on the solstitial day, when the arrows were extracted from his
body but appears rather to have lingered on till the sixth day after the winter
solstice. We have seen that the solstice took place then on the fifth lunar day
after new moon in the month of Magha. It was on the sixth day from this, that
is, on Magha Sukla Ekadasi, that Bhishma, “that pillar of Bharata’s race,”
seems to have “united himself with eternity.” Tradition asserts that Bhishma
died on this very day, and our almanacs even now make note of the fact and call
the day by name of “Bhishma Ekadasi.” To this day, death on the eleventh lunar
day of the bright fortnight of the month of Magha is held in great esteem, and
next to that, death on such a day of any other month. Possibly the supposed
religious efficacy rests on the memory of the day of the royal sage’s death.
As the fifty-ninth day after Bhishma’s fall corresponded to
Magha Sukla Panchami, Revati or Aswini Nakshatra, the day of Bhishma’s
overthrow, which took place on the tenth day of the war, happened, in
accordance with the 84 principles of the Vedanga, on Margasirsha Sukla
Panchami, in Dhanishtha Nakshatra; and the Amavasya preceding it happened on
the fifth day of the war in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. As a matter of fact, Dr. G.
Thibaut gives this very Nakshatra for the last Amavasya but two of the third
year of a five-year cycle, which particular new moon our Amavasya actually is.
We may therefore conclude that the war began on the fourth Nakshatra preceding
Jyeshtha or in Chitra of the month of Kartica and ended in Rohini Nakshatra in
Margasirsa-month.
The Pandavas tried many milder means before they at last
resorted to the arbitratement of war; they even proposed to sacrifice their
interests to some extent, if war could thereby be averted. Shri Krishna was the
last to be sent on a mission of mediation and he started for Hastinapura
(Udyoga Parva, LXXXIII.7) “in the month of Kaumuda, under the constellation
Revati at the end of the Sarad (autumn) season and at the approach of the
Hemanta (dewy season).” According to the commentator and also to the
translator, Kaumuda is the Kartika month. As the latter half of autumn
corresponds to the month of Kartika, we may be certain that the statement means
that Sri Krishna left for Hastinapura in the Revati Nakshatra of the month of
Kartika. His efforts at reconciliation having been of no avail, he seems to
have returned to the Pandava camp in Pushya Nakshatra for, as soon as he left
Hastinapura, Duryodhana asked his warriors immediately to march the army to
Kurukshetra (Udyoga Parva CXLII.18), “For to-day the moon is in the
constellation of Pushya”. A little before Sri Krishna’s departure from
Hastinapura, he proposed to Karna, “In seven days will there be new moon; let
the war be begun on that day which, they say, is presided over by Indra.” As
the commentator says, “Sakradevatam” denotes the Jyeshtha Nakshatra, which is
presided over by Indra. The verse, therefore, indicates that the approaching
Amavasya was to happen in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. This serves to confirm our
inference drawn from other texts that the Amavasya, which occurred on the fifth
day of the war, took place in Jyeshtha Nakshatra. But, to say that the new moon
would occur on the seventh day seems to be certainly wrong, for Krishna was
speaking to Karna in Pushya Nakshatra and the Amavasya was said to occur in
Jyeshtha, the tenth Nakshatra from Pushya. Probably saptamat is an error for
dashamat.
The war, however, did not begin in Amavasya as suggested by
Sri Krishna for, Duryodhana moved out his army to Kurukshetra on Pushya Nakshatra.
The Pandavas too seem to have marched out of Upaplavya on the very same Pushya.
Both the contending parties were in such a hurry to march their armies to the
battlefield, because Pushya Nakshatra was considered auspicious for such
purposes. Yet, it was not possible to begin the actual fighting on the very
same day. Much remained to be done before the armies could meet each other in
battle array. If Sri Krishna returned from Hastinapura with the answer of
Duryodhana on Pushya Nakshatra it is reasonable to allow some time for the
marching of troops, for the ground to be cleared, for the pitching of tents,
for the divisions of the armies to be properly effected, and most of all, for
the allied princes to bring on their respective divisions to the field of
battle. It appears to me that all these preliminary arrangements were gone
through during the interval of the five days between Pushya and Chitra, in
which Nakshatra the fighting actually began. But our epic says that both the
parties were prepared for battle on the day when the moon had gone to the
region of Magha (Bhishma Parva XVII). The natural interpretation of the
expression is that on that day the moon was in Magha Nakshatra. In that case we
have to suppose that though the armies were almost ready for war in Magha
Nakshatra, the first shot was not fired till after the lapse of three more
days. The armies began their march to Kurukshetra in Pusha, were organized in
effective divisions in Magha, and actually engaged in battle in Chitra. Or, it
may be that ‘Magha’ is an error for ‘Maghava’. The expression then would mean
that the moon had entered the region of Indra,
that is the star Chitra presided over by Indra. If the emendation proves
to be correct we have here another testimony to the correctness of our
conclusion that the war began in Chitra Nakshatra.
It must be borne in mind that the epic was cast into its
present form more than a thousand years after the date of the war. There are
many statements in the epic which conflict with one another, a circumstance
which can be accounted for only on this historic basis. One such conflicting
statement occurs in the Gadayudha Parva. On the last day of the war Balarama
returned to Kurukshetra from his pilgrimage to the banks of the Sarasvati,
whither he had gone on the eve of the war in utter disgust with this horrible
fratricidal war. He said (Salya Parva XXXIV.6), “Forty-two days have elapsed
since I proceeded forth; I left on Pushya, I have returned in Sravana.” The
Epic states expressly that the Pushya Nakshatra on which Balarama went away on
pilgrimage was the one (Salya Parva XXXV.10-15; Udyoga Parva CLVII.16-35) on
which the Pandavas set out of Upaplavya to the field of battle. It also
certainly implies that the Sravana Nakshatra on which Balarama returned
happened on the last day of the war (Salya Parva LIV.32). If these statements
are to be taken as authentic, the obvious inference is that the war, which
began with the marching of armies to Kurukshetra on Pushya, came to an end in
Sravana forty-two days later.
This conflicts directly with the natural inferences we have
drawn from the other statements, namely, that the winter solstice occurred on
Magha Sukla Panchami fifty days after the close of the war, that the war lasted
for eighteen consecutive days, that the Amavasya which occurred on the fifth
day of the war took place in Jyeshtha Nakshatra, and that Sri Krishna left for
Hastinapura on his errand of peace on Revati Nakshatra of Kartika month and
returned to Upaplavya on the next following Pushya. To avoid such a contingency
two explanations of this manifestly corrupt text are possible. We have either
to suppose that the statements about Balarama’s departure on the eve of the war
and about his return on the last day thereof are spurious as being opposed to
the united testimony of other texts, or that the verse under discussion
requires a little emendation. In the former case the inference to be drawn from
the shloka is that Balarama left for the Sarasvati in Pushya Nakshatra
twenty-seven days before the march of troops on the next Pushya Nakshatra to
the battle field and that he returned to Kurukshetra in Sravana some days
before the close of the war. If, however, the shloka is incorrect, we may best
correct it by changing ‘forty-two’ into ‘twenty-four’. If Balarama had left on
pilgrimage in Pushya and returned on the last day of the war, that being the
twenty-fourth from the day of his departure, the last day of the war would
happen in Rohini, a result which is identical with the one we have already deduced
from other texts.
There is one other conflicting verse which we shall briefly
discuss. On the fourteenth night of the war there was a tremendous battle
between the contending parties. It is hinted in the epic (Salya Parva LIV.32)
that the moon rose up on that night after three-fourths part of it had expired.
This is certainly a mistake; for the new moon having taken place on the fifth
day of the war, the moon should have disappeared below the western horizon
about an hour and a half before three-fourths of the night was over. On the
evening of the fourteenth day of the war, Arjuna’s vow to kill Jayadratha
having been fulfilled, the Kurus, burning with revengeful thoughts, continued
the strife far into the night. The epic would have us believe that during the
first half of the night a tremendous battle raged in total darkness resulting
in the death of Ghatotkacha, that both the armies therefore lay down to sleep
for some time, and that on the rise of the moon at about three o’clock in the
morning, both the sides recommenced their fighting. It is more probable that
the war continued for as long as the moon was shining and that the armies
rested when the moon had set. The poet was perhaps led to make this mistake by
his anxiety to render the night sufficiently horrible for Rakshasa heroes to
fight with their powers of illusion.
But, barring these two conflicting statements which too may
be explained away, all other texts serve to support our conclusion. We are told
that:
the winter solstice happened on Magha Sukla Panchami; the
tenth day battle happened fifty-eight days before it;
Bhishma, who died on Magha Sukla Ekadasi, gave up the ghost
fifty-six days after the close of the war;
a
period of fifty days intervened between the end of the war and the winter solstice;
the
war lasted for eighteen consecutive days;
the
Amavasya, which occurred soon after the commencement of the war, happened in
Jyeshtha Nakshatra;
the
armies began their departure to the field of battle in Pushya Nakshatra; and
Krishna
had proceeded to Hastinapura on his mission of mediation on the preceding
Revati Nakshatra in the month of Kartika.
All these point but to one conclusion, namely, that the
war, which lasted for eighteen consecutive days, concluded on the fifty-first
night before the winter solstice.
At present the winter solstice falls on the 21st of
December. The Gregorian system, which is the basis of the calendars of all
Europe except Russia, Greece and Turkey, involves an error of less than a day
in 3524 years. As the war took place in 1194 B.C., or 3094 years ago or 2776
years before the calendar was last corrected by Pope Gregory XIII, we may be
certain that the winter solstice which occurred on the fifty-first day after
the close of the war, would have happened, as now on the 21st of December (New
Style). We may, therefore, conclude that the War commenced on the 14th of
October, and was brought to a close on the night of the 31st of October, 1194
B.C. Whether or not this precise date, based as it is on data furnished by the
Mahabharata alone, proves to be acceptable to the critical eye of a historian,
we may at least be sure that the war took place in the latter part of the year
1194 B.C.
The Aryan-Dravidian Divide Is A Political Myth
David Frawley
Traveling throughout India, including much time in the south, I have been trying to make sense of the proposed Aryan-Dravidian divide, and the call for a pure Dravidian culture that one hears in Tamil Nadu.
The first thing one notices is that the most pure Sanskrit names
are found in Tamil Nadu, extending to Dravidian political leaders like
Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi. Yet this is just the beginning of numerous
connections between the culture of south and the north.
If you are looking for the region of India where ancient Vedic
teachings are best preserved, you will find it in Dravidian Kerala, where
ancient Vedic rituals and fire sacrifices are regularly performed with
precision and devotion.
In the south one finds the largest Hindu temple complexes,
dwarfing anything in the north. Yet the temples are of the same great deities
as Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Ganesha as in the north. Southern temples
reverberate with the same Sanskrit chants, as in the north, with some chants in
Tamil as the north has some in Hindi.
Shiva, a Dravidian God?
Dravidian nationalists tell us that Lord Shiva was a Dravidian God
expropriated by the northern Aryans. Yet Shiva is the great deity of Varanasi,
Kashmir, Kedarnath and Kailas in the north, with the Ganga flowing down his
head as a Himalayan God. Varanasi is said to be one of the oldest cities in the
world.
The great Vedanta teachers over the last 1500 years have come from
the south: Shankara of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist), Ramanuja of
Visishtadvaita Vedanta (qualified nondualist) and Madhva of the Dvaita Vedanta
(dualist) school.
If one does pilgrimage to the Char Dham in the north – the four
Himalayan sacred sites of the Hindus – one learns that these great shrines were
renovated by Shankara, the great Vedantic guru of Kerala. Priestly families
from the south run many Himalayan temples, as in the case of Badrinath today,
where the Rawat or chief priest must be chosen from certain Kerala families.
Tamil and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit learning is best preserved in South India. Many of the
Sanskrit chants used in Hindu rituals throughout India are those of southern
teachers, starting with Shankara from Bhaja Govindam to Ganga Stotra.
Of course, Tamil and Sanskrit are very different languages, but
both have been used together in South India for as long as recorded history,
sharing common scripts like the old Grantha script from which the modern Tamil
script arises. Grantha in turn arose from the Brahmi script of North India,
which reached Sri Lanka over 2500 years ago. Sanskrit has been used side by
side with Tamil since as long as we can trace the history of the region.
South India as the Bastion of
Vedic Culture
Many great Vedantic teachers of modern times have come from the
south including Swami Dayananda (Arsha Vidya), Swami Chinmayananda and Ramana
Maharshi.
If one wishes to study traditional Ayurvedic medicine, one will
discover the most authentic traditions in the south, which has an entire
tourist industry based upon it. Aryan or Hindu culture is much more alive in
the south, including traditional dance or Bharat Natyam. Even South Indian
movies more commonly depict Hindu stories and deities than do the Hindi movies
of the north dominated by the Khans.
Spurious Theories
Behind this Aryan-Dravidian divide idea is the historical debate
whether the so-called Aryans invaded or migrated into India from the north and
pushed the Dravidians to the south – as western historians have proposed
(supposed to have happened around 1500 BC). This theory is under severe
scrutiny today and has no real evidence on the ground to prove it, including no
Aryan race type ever discovered archaeologically – but even if it has some validity
it is an event, more than three thousand years old. It is hard to see its
relevance as defining Dravidian versus Aryan culture today.
The origin of the Aryan-Dravidian divide idea had a lot to do with
the people of South India throwing off the rule of the old Brahmin class which,
incidentally, happened in the north as well. Yet we must remember that these
were their own local Brahmins, who had been living there for many centuries,
not any recent group of migrants from the north. To identify local Tamil
Brahmins today with descendants of proposed Aryan invaders of thousands of
years ago has little credibility, except as propaganda.
Others raise the issue of skin color, which was the old basis of
the now disproved Aryan and Dravidian races. Not surprisingly people in the
more equatorial south of India are darker in skin color than those in the
north, though north Indians also are usually dark in complexion.
Some have tried say that the caste system was racially based on
placing darker skinned Dravidians at the bottom and lighter-skinned Aryans at
the top. But traditional castes in India as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and
Shudra were defined by occupation like the nobility and priestly classes of
Europe, not by ethnicity. Such racial theories cannot be found in India texts
before the colonial era and its racist view of the world.
There is little in so-called Dravidian culture, ancient or modern,
that does not have strong connections with so-called Aryan culture. The
Aryan-Dravidian divide is largely a modern political construct. The culture of
South India has been intimately woven with Sanskrit, Vedic philosophies, Vedic
culture and Yoga as long as we can trace it.
Certainly there are cultural variations in India, including
between the north and the south, just as there are in Europe or any
subcontinent. But there is clearly a common culture that goes back many
centuries and cannot be divided by Aryan versus Dravidian theories.
How These Discoveries Changed India’s
History
Vijender Sharma
in Swarajya
The
discovery of the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in the early
twentieth century,
was the greatest archaeological feat in Indian History. It not only
brought an ancient civilization to light, but also pushed the antiquity
of India back by several millennia. However, there were other
discoveries, prior to the excavation of Harappan civilization,
which changed the way Indian history was perceived. These discoveries
were results of scholarship, imperial rivalries and chance encounters.
Together, these discoveries extended the influence of ancient India, far
beyond its territories.
The Enterprising India
One of the earliest such discovery was the Periplus
of the Erythraean Sea. The document has been around since 1533, as a
translation of an earlier manuscript. However, in 1800, William Vincent,
the Dean of Westminster, published the translation of the
Periplus, with his commentary and historically corroborated date of the document. The
Periplus is now believed to have written in the middle of first century by a sailor or a merchant, as a first-hand account.
The
document records direct trade relations between Roman Egypt and India.
At the time of its writing, the trade
from ports of Egypt was conducted by up to 120 ships every year,
setting sail to India, following the monsoon winds. Barygaza (modern
Bharuch in Gujarat) and Muziris (in modern Kerala) feature prominently
in the
Periplus.
The recent discovery of the port of Muziris, mentioned in the Periplus,
in Kodungallur, corroborates the records. Large hordes of Roman coins
have been found in various
places in Kerala and as far away as in Tamil Nadu, suggesting brisk
Roman trade with India. The
Periplus
apart from telling us about a direct trade route between India and
Egypt, also suggests that India was a major international export hub
since early centuries of the Common
Era. The need to lower the cost of imports, made the Romans, study the
monsoon patterns, bypass the Arab intermediaries and establish direct
trade contacts with the Indians.
The Zero and Ancient Mathematics
The
second discovery was the Bakhshali manuscript. It was found in 1881, in
the village of Bakhshali, Mardan (modern Pakistan). The manuscript
was discovered by a villager while he was digging a stone enclosure.
Along with the manuscript he also discovered an earthen lamp, a pencil
and an earthen pot with perforated bottom. Having no formal training in
archaeological excavation, much of the manuscript
was lost while the villager pulled it out, from the enclosure. It was
handed over to the assistant commissioner of Mardan and it eventually
reached the Oxford University in 1902. The manuscript is written in
Sharada script and deals in mathematical subjects
like algebra, geometry and mensuration. However, the most important
discovery in the manuscript was the use of zero as a number.
Until
recently, it was believed that the first recorded evidence of use of
zero dated back to mid ninth century
in a temple in Gwalior. The Bakhshali manuscript was not dated until
2017. Scholars debated the date of its writing and assigned it a date
between third and twelfth centuries, with most Western scholars favoring
a later date. The zero in the manuscript is
represented by a single dot. While rest of the world now uses the
modern symbol for zero, the Arabs still use the dot. This is probably
because the Arabs borrowed the Indic numerals when zero in India was
still represented by a single dot. The Oxford University,
after more than a century of acquiring it, decided to carbon date
the
manuscript, in 2017. It was found that the earliest dates of recorded
zero now go back to the third century. This has pushed back the use of
zero by almost 500 years than previously thought.
A Transnational Civilization
The third discovery was that of the Bower manuscript. Discovered in 1890, in Kucha in Chinese Turkestan (modern
Xinjiang), the manuscript was discovered by local treasure hunters. They sold it to a local
haji,
Ghulam Qadir. He in turn sold a part of it to a British Lieutenant,
Hamilton Bower. The manuscript, written in late Brahmi script, was a
Sanskrit text on Ayurveda, divination
and incantation. Based on the language and script, the manuscript was
dated to the Gupta Age. More than the contents of the manuscript, it was
the location that baffled the historians. Not much was known about
Chinese Turkestan back in 1890 and no one knew
that it was a major oasis on the ancient Silk Road. Finding an Indian
text, deep in the Taklamakan desert was a proof that ancient India had
flourishing trade and cultural contacts with China. This was the first
time that hard evidence was available on India’s
influence beyond the Karakoram. The discovery and translation of
Bower’s manuscript, as it came to be known, was path breaking. It led to
a race among the major European powers to collect antiquities from
Central Asia and more evidence of Indian influence
by means of trade and dispersal of Buddhism came to the fore.
Setting the Kushan Record Straight
The fourth discovery is recent, but had significant impact on dating of the ancient history of India. In 1993, Afghanistan
was fighting a bitter civil war, following the Russian withdrawal. A mujahideen, while digging a trench, in a village called
Rabatak,
discovered a stone slab with inscriptions. In a war torn country, where
rival camps were trying to establish an Islamic state, taking care of
the antiquities was not a priority. However, the slab, somehow reached
the local commander, Sayyidjaffar Nadiri. He
asked a British aid worker to take a video of the slab and send it to
London. The video reached Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams at the
British Museum and he did the first translation. However, parts of it
could not be translated since the professor has not
seen the actual inscription. While the inscription was lying at the
commander’s house, fighting intensified and his house was sacked. No one
knew where the inscription was.
In
2000, Dr. Jonathan Lee, a specialist in Afghan history, who had seen
the inscription on a previous occasion, returned to Afghanistan. He
wanted
to find the inscription and give it another read. However, between his
last visit and year 2000, much had changed. The Mujahideen were no
longer tolerant of pre-Islamic antiquities. In the very next year the
Bamyan Buddha would be destroyed by the Taliban.
Upon inquiry, Dr. Lee was given multiple versions of what could have
happened to the inscription, including it been sold off in London.
However, it was eventually found in a depot of the Department of Mines,
in Pul-i-Khumri. Upon its full reading the correct
genealogy of the Kushans were established and correct dates were
assigned to their rule.
The
inscription gives some valuable information on the administration of
the Kushans. After settling down, the Kushans
discontinued Greek and adopted Bactrian as their administrative
language. Kanishka, in whose name the inscription is issued, invokes
Persian, Indian and local Bactrian gods, to establish his credentials as
a son of the soil. He also gives the chronological
detail of his lineage, thus settling the debate around Kushan
chronology. We also see the Persian influence of assigning grand titles
to kings, in the inscription. Kanishka calls himself, “king of kings”, a
translation of pre-Islamic Persian term,
Shahenshah.
Together,
these discoveries contributed in enriching the ancient Indian history.
In some cases, like that of the Bower Manuscript, they also changed
the history of far off places. It was the discovery of the Bower
Manuscript that led to further discoveries in the Taklamakan, which
eventually recreated the ancient trade route, now known as the Silk
Road. The manuscripts in China, Buddhism in Japan, Indian
Cinnamon in Exodus (30:23) and the Hindu/Buddhist kingdoms of Southeast
Asia, all tell us a story. That India in the ancient time was the
commercial and cultural hub of the then known world. The modern
equivalent being the United States. But unlike US, ancient
India commanded power and respect based entirely on its soft power.
Vijender
Sharma is an aviation business consultant by profession, with a deep
interest in Indian history. He tweets at @indichistory.
The Aryan Invasion Myth: How 21st Century Science Debunks 19th Century Indology
- May 14, 2017
Introduction
The
Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) needs no introduction. It is the bedrock upon which
Indian history has been written. Its central thesis has three main components:
- India’s original inhabitants were “dark-skinned” Dravidians, who built a peaceful, highly developed, near-utopian urban civilization in western India and present-day Pakistan: the so-called Harappan or Indus valley civilization.
- India was invaded and conquered from the West by a nomadic people called the Indo-Aryans around 1500 BCE. These Indo-Aryans were of European origin (hence white-skinned), and spoke Vedic Sanskrit. They destroyed the indigenous Dravidian civilization, subjugated the natives, and forced them to migrate to India’s South.
- The Indo-Aryans then composed the Vedas, and imposed Hinduism and the caste system upon the hapless Dravidians and other indigenous peoples of India.
First
propounded by Max Müller, the AIT has been regarded as
self-evident since the 19th century. In the late 20th century, it was refined
into what is now known as the Indo-Aryan Migration theory (IAMT). According to this model, the
Indo-Aryans migrated into India rather than invaded it, which nevertheless had
the same effect on the indigenous peoples: their subjugation and the imposition
of Indo-Aryan religion (Hinduism) and culture.
The opposing view: Indigenous Aryans
The
opposing view, known variously as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the
Out of India theory (OIT), rejects the AIT/IAMT (henceforth AIT). It posits
that the Indo-Aryan people and their languages originated in the Indian
subcontinent and that the Indus valley civilization (Sindhu-Sarasvati
civilization) was the Vedic civilization, not a Dravidian civilization as
claimed in the AIT.
Proponents
of this theory cite archaeological evidence of civilizational and cultural
continuity, and Indian literary sources such as the Puranas, the Mahabharata
and the Ramayana – which contain extensive genealogies of kings that date back
thousands of years – and which mainstream scholars reject as mythology.
The
question of the origin of the Indo-Aryans has become the most controversial,
emotive, and polarizing debate in India today. It pits these two diametrically
opposing narratives against one another.
Scientific inquiry is the only way forward
The
scientific method requires researchers to take a theory seriously until it can
be irrefutably demonstrated to be false using systematic observations,
carefully controlled and replicable tests and experiments, scientific
techniques, the application of logic, and hard evidence. Science is not
concerned with narratives, ideologies, beliefs, dogma, or opinions. Science
deals in empirical or measurable evidence and in hard facts. Conclusions are
drawn based on scientific evidence, and can change in the face of new evidence.
While
India’s history textbooks continue to teach antiquated and unscientific 19th
century concepts and ideas well into the 21st century, the world has moved on.
The
interrelated fields of population genetics, comparative genetics,
archaeo-genetics, genomics, and genotyping have made it possible to gain an
unprecedented insight into the nature of human genetic diversity. These are
rapidly evolving disciplines which, in the coming years and decades, will
revolutionize our understanding of how our species evolved. These advances in
genetics, as well as new archaeological investigations, have brought forth new
evidence and presented us with new facts.
What is the new evidence?
What new facts have emerged? Let us find out.How old is the Indian civilization? Archaeological evidence
Radiocarbon
dating has demonstrated that Bhirrana, a site on the banks of the
now-defunct Sarasvati River, existed in the 6th millennium BCE (8,000 years before present). A more
recent study proves
that Bhirrana and other settlements in the Sarasvati valley are at least 9,500
years old, and possibly older [1].
Sarkar et al
study found that the Sarasvati was a mighty river along which Indian
civilization’s earliest settlements were founded. It states that the monsoon
declined monotonically after 5,000 BCE, gradually weakening the Sarasvati,
which is known to have eventually dried out to a large extent around 1,500 BCE.
The Harappan civilization thus gradually deurbanized due to declining monsoons,
rather than collapsed abruptly. Smaller settlements continued, and eventually
dispersed toward the Himalayan foothills, the Ganga-Yamuna plain, Gujarat, and
Rajasthan.
These
results were obtained by studying just one site on the Sarasvati’s dry
paleo-channel. More than 500 such sites are known to exist along the ancient
river’s course, and there may be many more. Investigating more sites will give
a better idea of the age of the civilization and possibly demonstrate that it
is even older.
Dating
the Rig Veda using Sarkar et al study
The
Sarasvati is extensively mentioned in the Rig
Veda, India’s
foundational literary text. It is referred to as “greatest of rivers”,
“glorious”, “loudly roaring”, and “mother of floods”. This clearly refers to a
mighty river in its prime, not one in decline.
This
falsifies the AIT account that the Rig Veda was composed after a purported
Aryan invasion/migration circa 1,500 BCE, and indicates that it was composed
closer to 5,000 BCE when the river was last in its prime per the results of
Sarkar et al study. This raises
serious questions about the AIT’s validity.
India’s
“mainstream” historians dismiss the Rig Veda as mythology. This is a naive and
subjective assumption that betrays an unscholarly bias on their part. If the
Rig Veda is mythology, then so are Herodotus‘
fanciful and inaccurate Histories. Herodotus, however, continues to be
cited as a reliable historian. This smacks of double standards. The Rig Veda is
certainly less fanciful than Herodotus’ Histories. Moreover, it is a veritable
treasure that gives us the earliest literary insight into human society and
thought. As such, it must be taken seriously.
Archaeology demonstrates Indian civilization’s continuity
The
renowned archaeologist Professor B. B. Lal, whose distinguished career spanned
more than half a century, refutes the AIT, based on his extensive archaeological
discoveries and research. He asserts that there is no evidence for warfare or
invasion, and that the theory of Aryan migration too is a myth. He further states that “Vedic” and
“Harappan” are respectively literary and material facets of the same civilization.
In
his book “The Rigvedic People: Invaders? Immigrants? or Indigenous?”, Professor
Lal gives extensive archaeological evidence that many of the traditions and
customs prevalent in the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization continue to exist in
modern India [2]. He demonstrates that Yoga, the Shiva-linga-cum-yoni,
the use of vermilion (sindura) in married women’s hair partition, the use of
spiralled bangles among women in Haryana and Rajasthan, the folk tale of the
thirsty crow, the Namaste greeting, Lord Shiva’s trident, and many other
aspects of contemporary Hinduism and Indian culture originated in the
Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization. Similar evidence is provided in Michel Danino’s
seminal work “The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati” [3].
This
refutes the theory that the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization was destroyed and
supplanted with a “foreign” Hindu culture and civilization, and proves that
modern India is a continuation of that ancient civilization. Dr. Vasant Shinde, another internationally renowned
archaeologist, concurs.
Genetic
evidence demolishes the AIT
The
science of genetics has revolutionized the study of ancient history and given
researchers an unprecedented ability of uncover details of humanity’s past.
India has lagged behind in genetic research, and the government of India has in
the past prohibited foreign researchers from collecting genetic samples of
Indians. This restriction has been removed of late, and, as a consequence, a
new picture of Indian history is emerging.
Consider the following:- This research paper demonstrates the absence of any significant outside genetic influence in India for the past 10,000 – 15,000 years [4].
- This research paper excludes any significant patrilineal gene flow from East Europe to Asia, including India, at least since the mid-Holocene period (7,000 to 5,000 years ago) [5].
- This research paper rejects the possibility of an Aryan invasion/migration and concludes that Indian populations are genetically unique and harbor the second highest genetic diversity after Africans [6].
These
three research papers demolish the AIT. They conclusively and irrefutably prove
that there was no Aryan invasion circa 1500 BCE. This is just the beginning of
the revelations.
The family that conquered the world … originated in India
In
genetic terminology, a “haplogroup” is a group of individuals that share a
common ancestor with a particular genetic mutation. A haplogroup pertains to a
single line of descent which typically dates back several thousand years. In
other words, a haplogroup is a large, extended family or clan, all of whose
members have a shared ancestry. There are two types of haplogroups:
Y-chromosome (patrilineal) haplogroups, and mtDNA (matrilineal) haplogroups.
Haplogroups are identified by letters of the alphabet (A, B, C, etc.) and
sub-groups are denoted by letters and numbers (A1, A1a, etc.).
The
Y-chromosomal (patrilineal) haplogroup R1a1a (also known as R-M17) is the
world’s most successful extended family. Its members number in the high
hundreds of millions, possibly over a billion. It is widespread across Eurasia,
with high concentrations in Russia, Poland and Ukraine, as well as in the
Indian subcontinent and the Tuva region of Russia.
R1a1a
is closely associated with the spread of Indo-European languages across
Eurasia. In India, R1a1a is identified as the haplogroup that represents the
Indo-Aryan people. It records an uninterrupted lineage of males, from father to
son, all of whom have descended from one common male ancestor.
This research paper demonstrates that the R1a1*
haplogroup, which is found throughout Eurasia, originated in India [7]. Here, the * refers to all subgroups of the parent
haplogroup R1a1.
The R1a* haplogroup which originated in India
is at least 18,000 years old [7].
This
more recent study published in 2015 confirms and refines the
results of [7],
demonstrating that the oldest examples of the haplogroup R1a are found in the
Indian subcontinent and are approximately 15,450 years old [8].
This is a momentous discovery. It proves that:
1.
The
R1a haplogroup originated in India.
2. The Indo-Aryan people
have lived in India for at least 15,450 years, which invalidates the theory
that the Indo-Aryans invaded India 3500years ago.
3. The hundreds of
millions of members (possibly over a billion) of the R1a family living across
the world today – a very large fraction of humanity – are all descended from
one single male ancestor who lived in India at least 15,450 years ago.
This
discovery demonstrates the close genetic (and hence linguistic and cultural)
affinity of Indians with the Russian and Polish people, the Vikings and Normans, and with the ancient Scythians and Tocharians, among many others.
This
is irrefutable scientific proof that not only did the Indo-Aryan people
originate in India over 15,450 years ago, but also that they expanded out of
India and settled lands far to the west in Europe. It thoroughly invalidates
the AIT.
Contextualizing contradictory genetic studies
While
I have presented several research papers that invalidate the AIT, I would be
remiss if I did not mention here that some other genetic studies claim that the
AIT is correct. How does one interpret this?
The
answer is simple: None of these other studies has been able to disprove the
results of [7] and [8], namely, that the oldest examples of the haplogroup R1a
are found in the Indian subcontinent and are at least 15,450 years old. None of
them has been able to find older examples of R1a anywhere else in the world.
As long as the results of [7] and [8] stand, the AIT remains invalidated.The myth of the Aryan-Dravidian divide and the “high caste”-“low caste” divide
The
supposed Aryan-Dravidian divide is a myth. This Nature report, which cites three genetic studies,
demonstrates that most Indians are genetically alike, belying the hypothesis of
an Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy [9]. Other studies have also demonstrated that people in
north India are no different from those in the south and that all share the
same genetic lineage.
The
R1a1a haplogroup is found in high frequencies in north Indians as well as south
Indians, in tribal communities, and in “low castes” as well as in “high
castes”.
Claims
that the Dravidians belong to a separate, non-Hindu civilization are also
discredited by ancient Tamil Sangam literature, which dates back to c. 300 BCE.
The Mahabharata is mentioned in the oldest Tamil Sangam literature. The Vedas
and the Ramayana are also mentioned in Sangam literature. Sangam literature
mentions the whole of India, starting from lands to “the north of the
Himalayas”, which contradicts the claim that the Dravidians were confined to
the south of India.
The
above evidence, taken together, demonstrates the genetic and cultural
continuity of India from the north to the south, and proves that the artificial
concepts of the “Aryan-Dravidian divide” and the “high caste”-“low caste”
divide have no basis in fact.
Literary Evidence for Westward Indo-Aryan expansion
Consider the Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra, a Vedic text. Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra 18:44 records:“Amavasu migrated westward. His people are Gandhari, Parsu and Aratta.”
This
refers to a Vedic king called Amavasu, whose people are the Gandhari (Gandhara
– Afghanistan), the Parsu (Persians) and the Aratta, who are tentatively
identified as living in the vicinity of Mt. Ararat which is located in Turkey
(eastern Anatolia) and Armeni
Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra 18:44.
Afghanistan
(Gandhara) was historically part of the Indian civilization until the Islamic
invasions. The name “Persia” comes from the ancient Parshva people (an Aryan
clan). The word “Parshva” is derived from the Sanskrit/Avestan (Old Persian)
word “Parshu”, which means “battle-axe”. There are clear linguistic and
cultural similarities between India and Persia.
The original, non-Hellenized names of ancient Persian kings, Achaemenes Dynasty (c. 550 – 330 BCE).
The
traditional Armenian name for Mt. Ararat is Masis. It is named after the
legendary Armenian king Amasya. The name “Amasya” is linguistically related to
the name “Amavasu” of the Indian king recorded in the Baudhayana Shrauta Sutra.
This establishes literary evidence for the westward expansion of Indo-Aryans,
via Afghanistan, to Persia, Armenia and Anatolia.
The
German Indologist M. Witzel and the Marxist historian Romila Thapar have in the
past misinterpreted this passage to mean that Amavasu migrated eastward, which
caused a heated controversy.
Archaeological Evidence for Westward Indo-Aryan expansion
The
ancient kingdom of Mitanni, located in present-day Syria and
Anatolia, had an Indo-Aryan, Sanskrit-speaking ruling class. Mitanni kings had
Indo-Aryan names.
The oldest recorded (Vedic)
Sanskrit words are found in a horse training manual by a Mitanni horse master
named Kikkuli.
Although the text is written in the Hittite language, it appears that Kikkuli
was not familiar enough with that language to use technical terms, which made
it necessary for him to use the terminology of his own language (Vedic
Sanskrit) instead.
Inscribed
clay tablets discovered in Boğazkale, Anatolia (Turkey), record a royal treaty
& invoke the Vedic gods Indra, Mitra, Nasatya & Varuna as witnesses.
The Boğazkale clay tablets are dated to c. 1380 BCE. This is around the same
time as Kikkuli’s horse training manual.
The Mitanni belonged to the
Indian-origin haplogroup R1a1a. This is clear evidence of a large-scale
westward expansion of Sanskrit-speaking Indo-Aryans, and their presence as the
ruling aristocracy in lands thousands of kilometers west of India. This quashes
the asinine claim that the first speakers of Sanskrit were Syrians, a
claim that would be laughable were it not portrayed as serious journalism in a
mainstream publication.
Genetic Evidence for Westward Indo-Aryan expansion
Recent DNA evidence shows that Europe experienced a
massive population influx from the east, beginning around 4,500 years ago [10]. Several haplogroups were involved in this demic
expansion, including the Indian-origin R1a1a. This was almost a total
replacement event, which indicates that Indo-Aryans, among others, expanded
westward into Europe and to a large extent replaced indigenous European males
and their Y-chromosome strata.
This genetic evidence indicates that several
Y-chromosomal (patrilineal) lineages, one of which was the Indian-origin R1a1a,
gave rise to the modern European population. Out of these lineages, R1a1a is
the most widespread and numerous.The children of Goddess Danu
The
primordial Rig Vedic river goddess Danu
is the mother/progenitor of the Danava
clan of Indo-Aryans. The Danavas revolted against the Devas, and were
eventually defeated and banished. As it turns out, that was far from the end of
their story.
The
Avestan (old Iranian) word for “river” is “dānu”. The Scythian (Saka/Shaka)
& Sarmatian words for “river” are also “dānu”.
Now
consider this: linguistically, the names of the European rivers Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, Don,
Donets,
Dunajec, Dvina/Daugava, and Dysna are all derived from the Rig Vedic Sanskrit
root word “dānu”. These rivers flow across eastern & central Europe. These
rivers, all named after the Rig Vedic goddess Danu, seem to trace the gradual
westward migration through Europe of the Danava clan of Rig Vedic Indo-Aryans.
So where did the Danavas
eventually end up?
According to Irish &
Celtic mythology, the Irish & Celtic people are descended from a mother
goddess – a river goddess – called Danu.
The ancient (mythological) people of Ireland are called the Tuatha Dé Danann
(Old Irish: “The peoples of the goddess Danu”).
Is
there genetic evidence to support this story? As it turns out, there is. The
R1a1a haplogroup is rare in Ireland, at 2.5% of the population. This can be
explained by the fact that Ireland has suffered many invasions since the Bronze
Age, which would have led to the gradual replacement of the R1a1a haplogroup with
those of the various invaders. The fact that R1a1a is still present in Ireland
proves that people of Indo-Aryan origin settled there in the past.
What the mountain of new evidence indicates
It
is clear that there is layer upon layer of archaeological, literary,
linguistic, and, most importantly, genetic evidence that forms a consistent,
repeated, and predictable pattern that debunks the AIT and supports the
Indigenous Aryans Theory. These layers of evidence, taken together, paint a
vast canvas and prove that:
- The Indo-Aryan people and languages originated in the Indian sub-continent.
- The Vedic civilization and the Indus valley civilization (Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization) are one and the same.
- The Rig Veda was composed closer to c. 5,000 BCE when the river Sarasvati was last in its prime, than to c. 1,500 BCE when it dried out. This makes the Rig Veda a strong candidate for being the world’s oldest known literature.
- Rather than being a religion of invaders, Hinduism is indigenous to India and has its origins in the very beginning of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.
- North Indians and South Indians are genetically and culturally alike. The Aryan-Dravidian divide is a myth; it has no basis in fact. The “high caste”-“low caste” divide also has no basis in fact.
- Indian civilization is a continuous, unbroken tradition that dates back to the very beginning of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization, at least 9,500 years before present. This makes India not only the world’s oldest civilization, older than Mesopotamia and Egypt, but also the world’s oldest continuously existing civilization. This makes India the true Cradle of Civilization.
- Indo-Aryans carrying R1a1a lineages expanded westward thousands of years ago, conquering and populating territories as far west as Europe. They were the most successful conquerors in human history. Their descendants are the Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, etc.), the Scandinavians, and many others.
In
other words, the new evidence comprehensively debunks the 19th century’s
colonial Aryan Invasion Theory and its late 20th century refinement, the
Indo-Aryan Migration theory.
Will the new evidence set the controversy to rest?
The
question of the origin of the Indo-Aryans concerns the very idea of India.
The
mainstream AIT/IAMT narrative, which portrays Indo-Aryan (Hindu) culture as
hegemonic, racist, intolerant, rapacious, and in-egalitarian, imposes an Indian
version of “white guilt” on persons of Indo-Aryan ancestry, and engenders deep
resentment and a desire to right historical wrongs among persons of Dravidian
and “Dalit” ancestry – which manifests itself in various forms such as
separatism and rejection of Hinduism and Indian culture, among others.
This
makes the AIT a powerful political tool which dovetails perfectly with the
leftist, “secular”, and “liberal” political narrative, as well as with the
agendas of Dravidian nationalists, Dalit supremacists, missionaries,
separatists, and other Breaking India
forces, internal as well as external. As such, it has long been used to neatly
divide India into dichotomous categories such as North and South Indians,
Aryans and Dravidians, the fair skinned and the dark skinned, “high castes” and
“Dalits”, the privileged and the oppressed.
It
is difficult to overstate how much the AIT has strengthened the leftist
narrative. The left/secular/liberal ecosystem derives much of its strength and
power from its decades-old stranglehold on Indian academia, especially in the
humanities (but also in other fields). Leftist academics staff or control most
of India’s humanities departments. Leftist historians and academics monopolize
academic discourse in India and marginalize dissenting voices. The leftist
clique has ensured that every school, college, and university textbook teaches
the AIT.
India’s
education system discourages students from asking questions and thinking on
their own. This conditioning makes them accept the leftist narrative without
question. As a consequence, several generations of Indians have grown up and
spent their lives hating, or, at the very least, feeling ashamed of their
culture and heritage.
The
AIT gives leftist academics the ideal rationale for denigrating Indian culture,
exhorting “lower caste” students to reject Hinduism and rebel against “the
establishment”, encouraging female students to reject Hinduism for being
patriarchal and misogynistic, calling into question India’s right to exist as a
nation, and supporting anti-national and separatist movements, all on academic
and scholarly grounds. This is the modus operandi by which several generations
of unquestioning and impressionable students have been indoctrinated and
recruited into the leftist movement.
The
AIT also gives India’s “liberals” and secularists the perfect justification for
promoting hatred and intolerance toward Indian culture while at the same time
claiming to be liberal and progressive.
The
AIT is thus the academic premise underpinning the entire spectrum of methods
the various “Breaking India” forces employ to attack India’s culture and
undermine India’s integrity. It is their trump card. Take it away, and they
have nothing else left.
It
is therefore vitally important for them that this theory remains the dominant
narrative in India. This is the reason why, instead of investigating the
Indigenous Aryans Theory (IAT) using all means available, India’s leftist
historians and academics have for decades dismissed it out of hand as “Hindutva”. This is why they decry any attempt
to alter the status quo (such as modernizing history textbooks) as “fascism”
and “historical revisionism”, and why they have marginalized scholars such as
the distinguished professor B. B. Lal, whose immense body of work has never
been allowed to make it to Indian textbooks.
They
will not be swayed by the mountain of new evidence that proves there was no
Aryan invasion of India. The truth does not matter to an ideologue. Leftist
academics are political activists first and foremost. Being a lecturer, a
professor, or a head of department is merely a means to an end for them, the
end being: to mold the opinions and political leanings of future generations of
Indians, to indoctrinate them into the leftist ideology, to recruit new
followers, and to champion the leftist agenda at all times.
I
therefore expect India’s “eminent” leftist historians to either ignore the
results of the research papers and studies cited herein (as they have largely
done thus far), or to respond with cherry-picked data and flawed logic as has
long been their wont.
Some
attempts to raise questions about the validity of genetic studies have already
been made. Consider this opinion piece, wherein Romila Thapar declaims that
genetics and DNA analysis are “not of much help to social historians” as,
according to her, “Aryan is a social construct and therefore genetic information
is unlikely to be useful unless the parameters defining the groups for analysis
undergo some rethinking” [11].
Her
Eminence could not be more wrong. The term “Arya” (which is anglicized to “Aryan”) is
an ethnic self-designation, not a “social construct”. It is one that both the
ancient Indians and Persians used for themselves. Ethnicities are ideally
suited for genetic investigation. If there is any confusion about the meaning
of this term, it is because ideologues like Thapar have used their academic
positions to systematically obfuscate its real meaning and give it political
and ideological color.
This
article [11] is typical of India’s leftist academics: devoid of
original research, based on other people’s work, presents a subjective opinion
rather than hard results, and uses far-fetched and convoluted logic to make
biased and untenable arguments that are unsupported by scientific evidence.
Expect
more of the same. And expect the left/secular/liberal ecosystem, especially the
mainstream media (which, ironically, espouses fringe views), to keep
championing the AIT and the leftist narrative.
The way forward: India must take ownership of research
It
is well-established that India’s population is genetically unique and harbors
the second highest genetic diversity after that of Africa. Research into
India’s genetics has not been given much importance and is still in its
infancy. Much of it is authored by foreign authors and conducted from outside
India. This must change. India must take ownership of the research into its
past, the same way China has done for itself. In order to achieve this, India
must do the following.
First, India must conceive and launch a
large-scale project whose objectives are:- To establish a detailed catalog of the genetic variation in India’s population.
- To correlate Indian genetics with those in other regions of Eurasia.
- To map migration patterns in and out of India.
To
do this, India needs to develop world-class genetics research groups and
establish state-of-the-art genetic testing laboratories. At present, Indian
researchers have to send genetic material abroad for testing.
Second, the DNA of skeletons found in
Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization sites such as Rakhigarhi must be analyzed in
order to determine their ancestry and genetics. Although there is undeniable
evidence that the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization is the same as the Vedic
civilization, its genetics are the one missing piece of the puzzle. If the
R1a1a haplogroup is detected in these skeletons, it will end the debate over
the civilization’s origins and language, once and for all.
DNA
from four such skeletons was extracted in 2015 and the material was sent to South
Korea for DNA testing. The results were expected to be published in 2016, but
have not yet seen the light of day. Research such as this must be prioritized
and fast-tracked.
Third, the well-known technique of forensic facial reconstruction should be employed to recreate the
faces of individuals whose skeletons have been found in various
Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization sites, so that we may learn what our ancestors
looked like. Many of these skeletons are kept in various museums throughout the
country. Forensic facial reconstruction is a routine, straightforward and
inexpensive technique which has existed for decades, and which was recently
employed to reconstruct the face of Richard III of England. It is inexplicable
that the ASI has not done this yet.
Fourth, Indian textbooks must be modernized.
They must be expunged of the blatant leftist slant that has plagued them for
decades. History textbooks especially need to be decontaminated. Education must
based upon hard facts and scientific evidence; it must not be allowed to be
used as a political tool.
Finally,
Fifth, the leftist
choke-hold on Indian academia must end. The leftist clique has succeeded in
propagandizing generations of otherwise intelligent Indians, conditioning them
to unquestioningly buy into their fringe narrative. Its institutionalized
sophistry has indoctrinated countless students into supporting Pakistan’s stand
on Kashmir and China’s stand on Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh, championing
separatist and anarchist movements, and questioning India’s right to exist as a
nation.
Education
and academia must deal in knowledge, not narratives. Knowledge must remain
pure, it must not be allowed to be influenced by ideology and politics. This
requires large-scale systemic reforms, which is a topic for another article.
In Conclusion
There
is now a mountain of scientific evidence that proves that the Aryan Invasion
Theory is a myth. It is fiction. It belongs in the Big League of unscientific
theories (which some still believe in), alongside creationism, anti-evolutionism,
the myth of Noah’s ark, and flat earth theory.
The
evidence shows that India is much more than a nation. It is the world’s oldest
civilization.
India
wasn’t born in 1947. Our great civilization was born at least nine and a half
millennia ago according to archaeological evidence, and fifteen and a half
millennia ago according to genetic evidence. The records of our great
ancestors’ deeds are lost, destroyed in the fires and the depredations of the
past millennium. The least we can do to honor our ancestors is to strive to
rediscover the truth about them.
Who
were the first Indians? When did they first arrive in India? Where from? What
were their lives like? What was their society like? How did ancient Indian
civilization evolve? What knowledge did they possess? What kind of science did
they have? What discoveries did they make? What technologies did they develop?
How did they build the largest ancient urban civilization the world has ever
seen? What did they call their great cities? What language did they speak? Did
they really develop a proto-democracy thousands of years before the Greeks?
What kind of future did they envisage for India? What lessons can we learn from
them?
These
are the questions our “eminent” historians have not deigned to ask for the past
seven decades. These are the answers we must seek, in order to rediscover our
roots and understand who we really are.
The
truth is out there. Its clues lie buried under our footsteps, scattered in our
languages and our literature, and hidden deep in our DNA. Science is the key.
We now possess the know-how and the technology to investigate and unravel the
mystery. It is time to utilize it.
India’s rediscovery of its
past has only begun. Exciting times are ahead.References
1. Sarkar A. et al. Oxygen isotope in archaeological bioapatites from India: Implications to climate change and decline of Bronze Age Harappan civilization. Sci. Rep. 6, 26555; doi: 10.1038/srep26555 (2016).2. Lal B. B. The Rigvedic People: Invaders? Immigrants? or Indigenous? Aryan Books International; First Edition (2015).
3. Danino M. The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books (2010).
4. Sengupta S. et al. Polarity and temporality of high-resolution Y-chromosome distributions in India identify both indigenous and exogenous expansions and reveal minor genetic influence of Central Asian pastoralists. Am J Hum Genet. 2006;78:202–21.
5. Underhill P. A. et al. Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. Eur J Hum Genet. 2010;18:479–84. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.194.
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Note: This article first appeared on IndiaFacts.Org.
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