A Fresh Look at the Aryan Controversy

A Fresh Look at the Aryan Controversy

Anexhibition preparedforFACT d f FACT byMichelDanino

Whatthetextbookssay… We find in textbooks used in Indian schools varying versions of the Aryan invasion theory. In Tamil Nadu especially, the following statement is bound to leave a psychological scar on young minds: It is believed that the earliest inhabitants of India were the Dravidians, Dravidians who “It were ... the people who lived in Mohenjodaro and Harappa.... The Aryans migrated from Central Asia and drove away the Dravidians after fierce battles…. The culture of the Aryans was entirely different from that of the Dravidians.” (From a textbook used in Class 4 a few years ago. The most recent textbooks perpetuate this scenario.) Accompanied by purely imaginary depictions for greater effect (below), such statements are misleading and based on no evidence.

ThebirthoftheAryantheory To explain the kinship between Sanskrit and European languages, 19thcentury European Indologists — in particular Max Müller, a German Sanskritist who lived in Oxford and published the full text of the Rig Veda for the first time — propounded that: ¾ An “Aryan race” speaking a “proto-Indo-European language” (PIE) somewhere in Central Asia, split into several groups: one migrated towards Europe, the other towards Iran and finally y India,, which they y entered around 1500 BCE.* ¾ They subjugated “indigenous tribals” (this was revised later to include “Dravidians”), composed the Rig Veda soon after their conquest of northwest India, and gradually spread Sanskrit, Vedic culture and the caste system throughout India. ¾ India was thus composed of distinct “races,” languages, literatures, and cultures, which turned the Aryan dogma into a political instrument of division between North and South, upper (= Aryan) and lower (= non-Aryan) castes. The British colonial powers also l argued d that th t they th had h d come to t bring b i about b t a “reunion” “ i ” off the th greatt Aryan A family; they were, after all, no more than a new wave of “Aryan” invaders of India! ¾ The concept of an aggressive, conquering “Aryan race” was devoid of evidence, but it suited the dominance of the white man in the colonial age. age Other “races” races , including the Jews and the Blacks, were regarded as inferior and unsuited to lead humanity. It was the same racial theory that Hitler later took over and used to assert that the Aryans were the “master race” (Herrenvolk) and had the right to rule the world and exterminate inferior races. * BCE = “Before Common Era” (= Before Christ). CE = “Common Era” (= AD).

Four approaches The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) remains an object of heated controversy in India, but is rarely debated on the basis of hard evidence and rational inquiry. Let us examine it from several angles: 1.

Literary & geographical

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A h Archaeological l i l & cultural lt l

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Anthropological & genetic

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g Linguistic

(Note: Other disciplines, such as archaeoastronomy or archaeometallurgy gy , also have evidence to contribute;; they y are not discussed here.)

1a. Literary Evidence ¾ Th The Rig Ri Veda V d is i supposed d to t have h been b composed d by b invading i di Aryans. A But B t it contains t i no reference whatsoever to a distant homeland or to an invasion / migration into India. Most importantly, the “battles” with the Dasyus, described as dark beings, are clearly of a y g character,, similar to the PurƗnas’ battles between devas and asuras. mythological ƒ Swami Vivekananda: “There is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryan ever came from anywhere outside India. ... The whole of India is Aryan, nothing else.” ƒ Sri Aurobindo: “There is no actual mention of such an invasion [in the Rig Veda]. ... There is no reliable indication of any racial difference [between Aryans and Dasyus].” ƒ George Erdosy, Canadian historian: “Even apparently clear indications [in the Rig Veda] of historical struggles between dark aborigines and Arya conquerors turn out to be misleading ” misleading. ƒ B.R. Ambedkar: “The theory of invasion is an invention. ... There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and its having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India. ... [The Aryan race theory is] so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago.”

¾ Ancient Tamil Sangam literature, from the 2nd century BCE remembers no migration from the North and no conflict with “Aryans” or anyone else. Moreover Sangam literature, even in its earliest anthologies, anthologies often praises Vedic gods, gods Indra, Indra Vishnu, Vishnu Agni etc. etc It also shows high regard for the Vedas, the chanting of Vedic hymns, Brahmins, the Himalayas, etc. ¾ India’s oldest literatures, whether from the North or the South, are therefore silent on an “Aryan y invasion” and also on a North-South divide. It is irrational to expect p that both the Rig Veda and the Sangam literature should have forgotten everything about an event (the Aryan invasion) that is said to have changed India’s cultural landscape radically.

1b. Geography: Rivers & Oceans in the Rig-Veda ¾ The Rig-Veda has numerous references to the ocean (samudra), India’s “eastern eastern and western seas” seas , ships, ships sailing sailing, storms, storms waves waves, etc etc. — all of which invaders from Central Asia would have been ignorant of. ¾ The Rig-Veda often mentions the Saptasindhava (“seven sindhus” or rivers): the Indus Indus, Sindhu, Sindhu its five tributaries tributaries, and the SarasvatƯ SarasvatƯ. That is the geography of the Northwest of the Indian subcontinent. ¾ The SarasvatƯ* is described as a “mighty river” flowing “unbroken” “from the mountain to the sea sea.” An important “hymn hymn in praise of rivers rivers” (10.75) (10 75) locates it between the Yamuna and the Sutlej. In the nineteenth century, British surveyors, topographers and geologists identified it with the huge dry bed of the Ghaggar–Hakra, which runs from Haryana to the Rann of Kachchh. Archaeology shows that this river, which nurtured hundreds of Harappan sites, started breaking up around 2700 BCE, and its central basin had dried up from 2000 BCE. Aryans invading India around 1500 BCE could not have worshipped hi d the th dry d bed b d as a “mighty “ i ht river i flowing fl i from f the th mountain t i to t the th sea”. The composers of those hymns must have lived on the river’s banks while it was in full flow—in the third or fourth millennium BCE. * For a fuller treatment, see my separate presentation, “SarasvatƯ, the Lost River”.

This geography of the Rig Veda (above) coincides with that of the Indus or Harappan civilization (right). Note the hi h density high d it off Harappan H sites it along l the th SarasvatƯ. But only one culture was found spread over this whole region, not two: the Harappan.*

* For a fuller treatment, see my separate presentation, “Glimpses of the Indus-SarasvatƯ Civilization”.

2a. The verdict of archaeology: negative ¾ Had the Aryans migrated into India, we should expect some evidence of different tools, weapons, objects of daily use, pottery style, art forms, etc. The opposite is the case: after more than a century of archaeological investigations, no physical evidence for the arrival in India of a new people in the 2nd millennium BCE has come to light. ¾ B B.B. B Lal, Lal Indian archaeologist: “The The supporters of the Aryan invasion theory have not been able to cite even a single example where there is evidence of ‘invaders,’ represented either by weapons of warfare or even of cultural remains left by them.” ¾ J.M. Kenoyer, U.S. archaeologist: “There is no archaeological or biological evidence for invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of the Harappan Phase, about 1900 B.C. and the beginning of the Early Historic period around 600 B.C.” BC”

¾ The Indus cities begin to collapse around 1900 BCE: even if Aryans had come around 1500 BCE, they would have had nothing to do with their destruction. Moreover there is no trace of man-made Moreover, man made destruction or warfare anywhere in the Indus civilization. There is therefore no justification for the crude misrepresentations found in textbooks depicting Aryans attacking Harappan cities. That is why y even those scholars who today y continue to believe in the arrival of Aryans have downgraded it to a peaceful immigration.

2b. The verdict of archaeology: positive Continuity between Indus-SarasvatƯ civilization and classical India According to the Aryan invasion theory, the Indus civilization (3rd millennium BCE) is “pre-Aryan” and “pre-Vedic,” while the later Gangetic civilization (1st millennium BCE), BCE) supposedly created by the Aryans, is of Vedic culture. This implies a complete cultural break between these two civilizations. i ili ti Let us examine the evidence.

Top: Kalibangan, 2800 BCE: a field with perpendicular rows of furrows, an ingenious system of intercropping for the winter season. Taller crops (mustard, etc.) can be grown in the north-south long furrows, without their shadows affecting shorter crops (gram etc.) in the eastwest furrows. Bottom: At Kalibangan, a field ploughed p g in the 1960s,, while excavations were going on. Peasants were still using the 4,800-year-old 4,800 year old system!

There is continuity between Harappan weights (right) and India’s traditional weights, used till the 20th century, for instance in medicinal preparations or jewellery as this table shows: jewellery,

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There is also continuity y between Harappan units of length: Lothal’s ivory scale points to a unit of 1.77 mm; Kaligangan’s terracotta scale (right) to 1 1.75 75 cm cm. This agrees with India’s traditional angula of 1.77 cm.

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Left: A tablet from Mohenjo-daro depicting a boat with raised sides and a central cabin. Right: A traditional Mohana boat on the Indus, with precisely the same shape.

Chess-like gamesmen from Lothal (left) and dice from Harappa (right) offer strong evidence of cultural continuity.

Left: The “dancing girl,” bronze statuette t t tt ffrom M Mohenjo-daro, h j d displays di l continuity in the wearing of bangles: rural women in Rajasthan and Gujarat often wear bangles over the whole left arm. The bronze-casting technique (“lost wax technique”) is still used by traditional craftsmen in India today ( (see th the Swamimalai S i l i bronze b casters). t )

Continuity of craft techniques, cutting, drilling, bleaching, etc., of semiprecious stones, metals and shells and even designs has been demonstrated between Harappan jewels (right) and those manufactured till recently in the Khambat (Cambay) region.

Several important Harappan symbols survived i d into i t historical hi t i l times. ti The Th “endless knot” is shown here on a Mohenjo-daro copper plate (far left) and on a Gujarat inscription of the 9th century CE (near left).

This Harappan symbol is very frequent on tablets, pottery etc etc. It is clearly the precursor of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain swastika.

This statuette from Nausharo, Baluchistan, 2800 BCE reveals the use of vermilion (sindnjr, kumkum) at the parting of the hair hair, just where married Hindu ladies apply it today.

Modest Harappan graves show respect for the dead dead, but unlike in ancient Egypt, where the Pharaoh, high priests or officials had glorious tombs, here the wealth was not buried with the dead; it remained with the living: death was not regarded as all-important. This is a typical Indian attitude.

Evidence of animal sacrifice (carefully built sacrificial pit from Kalibangan)

Other elements of Harappan religion: ritual purification f through water (left) at Mohenjo-daro’s “Great Bath”. Bottom left: tree worship. Harappans used conch shells just like today’s Hindus: with the mouth cut open and used to pour libations (b tt ) and (bottom); d with ith the th tip ti cutt off ff for f trumpeting (bottom right).

EvidenceoffireworshipinHarappanreligion

(Left) A fire altar, about 2.6 x 2.6 m in a street at Lothal; the pit was found to be full of ash and terracotta cakes; the big jar must have been used to keep liquid offerings, perhaps oil or ghee. Such a structure in a public place could only have been used for ritual purposes. (Right) Fire temple at Banawali, Haryana, with the central apsidal (semicircular) structure also found to be full of ash.

The Harappans worshipped a mothergoddess left. goddess, left This terracotta figurine has two basket-like cups on either side of the head, which were used as oil lamps: traces of soot were found in some of them.

Religion apart, the iconography also shows continuities, left: a Harappan mother-goddess; right: i ht a mother-goddess th dd off the th rd 3 century BCE. Both sport a headdress of large flowers, g ear-rings, g , a large g necklace huge and a pendant.

Evidence of linga g worship p (above ( left: Kalibangan) g ) and of the trishnjla (above right) is a strong argument for cultural continuity.

The ritual slaying of a buffalo on this terracotta t bl t evokes tablet k the th Mahishamardini theme, Durga’s slaying of the buffalo-asura.

Morepossible parallels between parallelsbetween HarappanandVedic cultures Indus seals: (Top left) A Vedic bull? (Top centre) The Unicorn: the Rig Veda speaks of a bull “with with a sharpened horn horn”;; Krishna in the MahƗbhƗrata, MahƗbhƗrata “In In days of old ... I was known by the name of Ekashringa [one-horned].” (Top right) Triple-headed mythical creatures: in the Rig Veda, Agni is “three-headed”.

A three-faced god in yogic posture, mnjlabandhƗsana expresses mastery over wild animals: an early representation of Shiva? Shiva g is the “Lord of Yoga” (YoganƗth) and also the “Lord of the Beasts”. A note of caution: Since the Indus script remains undeciphered, Harappan culture seen through archaeology is a folk culture, while the Rig Veda is a specialized text intended to invoke divine powers. Although bridges between the two are visible, they cannot be simply equated, just as today’s Hinduism practised in rural India is a mix of mainstream, folk and tribal deities and rituals.

Harappan figurines in Ɨsanas attest to some practice of yoga.

Left: The so-called “priest-king” (from Mohenjo-daro) in deep meditation. Right: the origin of India’s “namaste” (a figurine from Harappa).

The verdict of archaeology: gy p positive ¾

Between the Harappan and the Gangetic civilizations, we find numerous continuities on the material level, in agriculture, technologies and crafts.

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Harappan religion practises: ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ ƒ

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the ritual use of water fire worship Nature worship: trees and animals Linga worship Mother-goddess worship animal sacrifice religious processions Yoga and meditation

All these are also characteristic features of Hinduism. Hence:

ƒ “The [Harappan] religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguished from still living Hinduism....” John Marshall, 1931 ƒ “Current studies of the transition between the two early urban civilizations claim l i that th t there th was no significant i ifi t break b k or hiatus.” hi t ” Jonathan J th M. M Kenoyer K ƒ “It is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization.” Colin Renfrew The cultural and religious traditions of the Harappans provide the ƒ “The substratum for the latter-day Indian Civilisation.” D.P. Agrawal

3. Anthropology & Genetics ¾ K.A.R. Kennedy, U.S. bioanthopologist, after studying hundreds of skeletons of Harappan and later times: “Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity.... There is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture.” In other words, no demographic disruption by “Aryans”. ¾ S.P. Gupta: “There was neither an Aryan race nor a Dravidian race. The concept of ‘race’ itself is a myth.” ¾ Today’s Today s biologists and anthropologists no longer use the term of “race”, race , which is an unscientific concept: it is impossible to biologically define a “race”. Biologists speak of human types, ethnic groups, or haplogroups, which reflect the great complexity of our human genetic heritage. ¾ Contrary to a widespread misconception, darkness of skin is not related to “race” or to any ethnic grouping: it depends purely on the latitude. Melanin, a dark pigment in our skin, acts as a barrier against the effects of the ultraviolet rays of sunlight. The closer we move to the tropics and equator, the higher the content of melanin. Central Africans are black while North Africans are not; Italians are noticeably darker than Swedes. The darker skin tones of south Indians (with exceptions) have no other meaning; inhabitants of northern Karnataka or Andhra are already much fairer (though linguistically Dravidian).

Recent genetic studies of Indian populations have failed to detect the impact of an Aryan invasion / migration in the 2nd millennium BCE on India’s India s gene pool.

¾ Indian populations have great genetic y In a map p of g genetic distances diversity. (bottom left), the Chenchus, a Dravidianspeaking tribe of Andhra Pradesh, are much closer to Central Asia than Brahmins of the Goan region or Punjabis. Punjabis ¾ Y-DNA studies show that the “deep, common ancestry” between India and Central Asia is readily explained by northward migrations from India’s Northwest some 40,000 years ago (Sanghamitra Sahoo et al, 2006). g castes share more than 80 per p cent of ¾ “High their maternal lineages [mtDNA] with the lower castes and tribals.” (Kivisild et al, 2000) Brahmins and the caste system are of autochthonous origin” origin (Sharma et al al, 2009). 2009) “autochthonous Geneticists have started speaking of a “castetribe continuum”: the notion of ƗdivƗsi has no scientific validity. ¾ India’s populations are linguistically and ethnically very diverse, but share a “fundamental genomic unity” traceable to the original i i l peopling li off India I di by b migrants i t from f Africa some 50,000 years ago.

4. Linguistics Problems with the linguistic scenario proposed by 19th-century century European linguists: ¾

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It is a fact that Sanskritic and European languages belong too the same family. But even after two centuries, linguists remain unable to agree on the location of the “original IndoEuropean [= Aryan] homeland. homeland ” Proposed homelands still today spread from Northern Europe to Southern Russia to the Caspian Sea or even Bactria. Language need not spread through invasion / migration alone. For example, Sanskrit spread through much of Asia in the first centuries CE but without any invasion by, or migration of, Indians; its spread was a cultural, not a demographic, migration. Beyond the “tree model”, with a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) as the trunk of the tree, more complex models have been proposed to take “lateral influences” into account. Linguists g agree g that PIE is a convenient model but probably p y was never a ground reality. One recent model (by Russell Gray & Quentin Atkinson) argues in favour of an early dispersal of PIE from Anatolia, from 6000 or 7000 BCE onward. With such a time-frame, dispersal from India is equally possible. possible In fact, fact another recent model (by U.S. U S linguist Johanna Nichols) takes Bactria to be the original homeland; Bactria (today’s northeast Afghanistan) was part of India’s cultural sphere. Scholars Koenraad Elst and Nicholas Kazanas argue that PIE migrated out of India. Dravidian languages (the four south Indian languages and a few other dialects) are distinct from the Indo-European family, but linguistics remains unable to pinpoint their origin. However, language and culture are distinct and should not be confused (e.g., Switzerland has three languages but one culture; English covers many different cultures.) In the end, linguistics, though an important discipline, is soft evidence which can be bent to various interpretations. It cannot clinch the issue.

Thehorsecontroversy

Proponents of the Aryan theory often claim that Harappans did not know the horse, while Vedic people did. The argument has many flaws. ¾ Top left: Figurine of a horse from Mohenjo-daro, identified as such by Mackay. Top centre: Figurine from Lothal. Top right: Horse bones from Surkotada, Gujarat, among horse remains from a dozen sites certified by the best experts experts. The Harappans did know the horse, although it is true that they did not depict the animal on their seals. ¾ If Aryans had introduced the horse into India around 1500 BCE, we should see an increase of horse remains and depictions; there is none. The horse remains very rarely depicted in India until the Mauryan age and many historical sites have no horse bones bones. ¾ In the Rig Veda, the adversaries of the Ɨryas (the dasyus and panis) also have “horses” (ashva). The equation horse = Vedic is a crude oversimplification. ¾ In Vedic hymns to the dawn, Ushas is praised as “gomati ashvavati ”— literally “full of cows and horses”! A literal reading of the Veda can only lead to such absurdities; the true meaning is “full of light (go) and speed/energy (asva)”. We need to look at the Veda afresh.

S Summary&Conclusions &C l i •

No sign of confrontation / man-made destruction anywhere in Harappan cities during and after the Mature (urban) phase.

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g of the arrival of a new population p p in the 2nd millennium BCE: no No sign archaeological or anthropological discontinuities of the kind an invasion should have caused.

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Harappan pp culture has many y similarities with later classical Indian culture: there is no cultural break of the kind imposed by the Aryan theory.

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The Vedic geography coincides with the Harappan civilization — but only one culture has been found in India India’s s Northwest, not two.

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There is no ground for the survival of divisive theories conceived in colonial times and unsupported by any hard evidence.

Suggested Further Reading ¾ Aurobindo, Sri, The Secret of the Veda, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998 ¾ Bryant, Edwin, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Oxford University Press, Press 2001 ¾ Chakrabarti, Dilip K, Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997 ¾ Danino, Michel, The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati, Penguin Books India, 2010 ¾ Danino, D i Mi Michel, h l The Th Dawn D off Indian I di Civilization Ci ili ti and d the th Elusive El i Aryans, A f th forthcoming i ¾ Elst, Koenraad, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, Aditya Prakashan, 1999 ¾ Feuerstein, Georg, Kak, Subhash & Frawley, David, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Motilal Banarsidass, 1999 ¾ Frawley, David, Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, Motilal Banarsidass, 1993 ¾ Kazanas, Nicholas, Indo-Aryan Origins and Other Vedic Issues, Aditya Prakashan, 2009 ¾ Lal, Lal B B.B, B The Sarasvati Flows On: The Continuity of Indian Culture Culture, Aryan Books International International, 2002 ¾ Lal, B.B, The Homeland of the Aryans: Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna, Aryan Books International, 2005 ¾ Rajaram, N.S. & Frawley, David, Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization: A Literary and S i tifi P Scientific Perspective, ti V i off India, Voice I di 3rdd ed, d 2001 ¾ Staal, Frits, Discovering the Vedas, Penguin Books, 2008 ¾ Talageri, Shrikant G, The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, Aditya Prakashan, 2000 y and British India, Vistaar, 1997 ¾ Trautmann, Thomas R, Aryans ¾ Trautmann, Thomas R, ed., The Aryan Debate, Oxford University Press, 2005