Author:
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 19, 2013
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/sunday-edition/sundayagenda/books-reviews/123207-no-full-stops-only-commas.html

Land of the Seven Rivers
 Author: Sanjeev Sanyal
 Publisher: Penguin, Rs499

The book showcases continuity in our civilisational customs and mannerisms by pointing out

modern instances that have an uncanny resemblance to ancient traditions, writes Rajesh Singh

 At the official launch of Land of the Seven Rivers in Delhi recently, a member of the audience appeared deeply agitated. Taking on the book’s author Sanjeev Sanyal for claiming that the Aryans never invaded India, she wondered if all that the many respected historians had been telling us over these decades about an Aryan invasion which took over the Indus-Saraswati Civilisation, had been untrue. “Great historians like RC Mazumdar”, she added. Sanyal answered pithily, “They were wrong.”

 She is not alone in finding it difficult to come to terms with the reality. After all, generations of our students in schools and colleges have grown up learning that the Aryans were outsiders, that they forced their way into Indian territory and that they subjugated the native Indians (red Dravidians) and eventually drove them away south of the Vindhyas. In many educational curricula, the myth is still being perpetuated despite loads of fresh material which negate this theory.

 Sanyal has merely used the fresh evidence to nail the lie in his book. One reason for the continuation of this myth, which ought to have been consigned to the dustbin, is because of the ideological leaning of those who have been writing history in this country. While in the initial years since Independence, there may not have been enough material to conclude that the invasion by Aryans was not a fact, the evidence dug up by many historians and archaeologists over the last few years has not just cast doubts over the long-held belief but has also effectively negated it. Yet, the burden of ideology continues to act like a blinker.

 Sanyal, during his interaction with an impressive gathering at the launch of the book, pointed out that there was nothing like an ‘Aryan race’ and that the term ‘Aryan’ was used for people who were noble in deed; he was backed in this assertion by well-known author and a former corporate honcho Gurcharan Das, who shared the dais with him. Of course, there are many historians who will still debunk the thought, if not on evidence then on the premise that non-historians do not have the heft to come to such far-reaching conclusions. Yet, the fact is that Sanyal has merely presented some of the material which has been presented before the world by no less eminent historians in the course of taking a position.

 When one talks of the so-called Aryan invasion, one cannot but get into the controversy that surrounds the existence and the disappearance of the Saraswati river, on the banks of which much of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation came into being and flourished for at least 3,000 years. Lopsided ideology has played a villainous role here too in shaping what we have been taught over the decades about this river which has been described in the Rig Veda in highly adulatory terms, with a hymn, the Nadistuti Sukta, especially dedicated to it. Sanyal devotes an entire chapter outlining the importance of the river in sustaining the ancient civilisation and traces the decline of the latter as a consequence of the former drying up for a variety of reasons — what really happened to the river and how remain a subject of intense debate for now.

 The author delves into fresh material to assert that there indeed was a mighty Saraswati river (many historians more ideologically-oriented than historically-oriented had denied its very existence to begin with), that it indeed flowed into India from an Indian source (a Himalayan glacier, though it is still to be fully established whether the glacier indeed was the source or that the river was a seasonal one depending on monsoons), and that the Rig Veda is very specific in mentioning that the Saraswati flowed between the rivers Yamuna and the Sutlej, and it is as specific in tracing the flow right up to the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat.

 But it would be a mistake to assume that the Land of the Seven Rivers is all about the Aryans and the Saraswati. It is more than that, although no overview of the country’s history and geography is possible without taking serious account of the two issues. The author wonderfully establishes the sense of continuity that has existed in our civilisational customs and mannerisms and points to many modern instances that have an uncanny resemblance to ancient traditions and customs.

 Sanyal is persistent throughout in the book in dispelling the long-held notion that Indians do not have a sense of history. In his view, and it is one that cannot be easily faulted, there has been a complete interweaving of various stages of history — from ancient to modern — of the country. He calls it a “chain of history”. In pointing out the fallacy in the commonly held belief that ancient Indians wrote one formal history — Rajatarangini by Kalhana in the 12th century — Sanyal says that “it is important to recognise the degree to which this sense of continuity is deliberately maintained over generations”. At the introductory stage itself, Sanyal talks of this “misconception” in the following way: “This idea (that Indians never conceived of themselves as a nation and, consequently, never cared about their history) was often repeated by colonial-era officialdom”. Such a mindset exists in many historians to date.

 One of the many “extraordinary continuities” he offers to put across his point in a forceful manner is a rather ordinary example. The ratio 5:4 implies that the length is a quarter longer than the breadth (1.25 times). “The ratio was commonly used in the town planning of Harappan cities in the third millennium BC... Over a thousand years later, the same ratio appears in Hindu texts like the Shatapatha Brahmamana and Shulbha Sutra that use the ratio in their precise instructions on how to build fire-altars for Vedic ceremonies.” Obviously, the ‘quarter’ has some meaning that had been passed on from an earlier time. Now, look at the continuing continuity, as the author reflects: “When 17th century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb wanted to praise his vassal Maharaja Jai Singh, he called his ‘Sawai’ (meaning that he was worth a quarter more than any other man).”