Author: Vasant Sharma
Publication: The Organiser
Date: April 1, 2001
Most readers may be aware that the
Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) and its Siamese twin the Aryan Migration Theory
(AMT) have been deep-sixed for good. Yet many academics in the West continue
to recycle material from hundred-year-old books under the exalted title
of "Western Indological Researches". Witzel of Harward University is the
chief purveyor of old rubbish. Despite his prestigious university position
he is a marginal figure quoted only for his blunders in Sanskrit grammar.
His retractions forced by Peer criticism of his own translations highlight
his deficiencies in Sanskrit. He writes about the Vedic civilization without
studying the primary sources. His training is in the speculative science
known as comparative linguistics. Readers are referred to a recent article
"Horseplay in Harappa" he wrote and which was published in the Indian magazine
Frontline (September 30-October 13, 2000, available online in the magazine
section at samachar.com). German by birth, among Western Indologists he
is one of the most fanatical propagandists of AIT The bigger, the more
preposterous the lie, the more it will be believed. The proof of this successful
propaganda technique is the AIT itself which had a run of more than a hundred
years until its relatively recent demise. With AIT and AMT gone, the reports
are that he now has the answer to how the Vedic civilization developed
through a new research tool called "sophisticated acculturation models".
Do not be taken in by the high-sounding description. This jumbled, hodgepodge
acculturation "research" has one aim: to obscure the truth. It is just
more of the same, another attempt to mislead and deceive. Like the AIT
and AMT, this specious simulation too has nothing to do with the Vedic
civilization, its creators, the origins of Sanskrit or anything else connected
with ancient India.
Parpola is another contributor to
Frontline. He has earned some renown for two volumes he co-edited with
Jagat Joshi and Sayid Shah known as the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions.
Often simply called the Corpus, this world-class photographic collection
is highly prized and considered an indispensable reference resource by
scholars in the field. But in the difficult and the hard world of scholarship
meant only for the very best, Parpola measures not at all. In his Frontline
article he comes across like a dim bulb with a broken filament unable to
emit any light popping off irrationally extreme speculations as scholarship.
This is how he and others in the AIT brigade write: personal attacks after
personal attacks; speculations piled upon speculations; not a single new
insight; not one new discovery; not one illuminating interpretation. Complete
disdain for independent scholars and writers outside the establishment
who are in fact doing all the trailblazing work in the field.
In thirty years of "research" on
the Indus script and several volumes, he has not read a single seal correctly,
Parpola's only contribution to scholarship is his claim dim "min" means
both "fish" and "star" in Tamil and therefore the fish sign is used also
as the star. The truth is that "mina" means fish in Sanskrit also and his
argument works for Sanskrit as well - making his claim a total failure.
The oxygen, the lifeblood and the
whole sustenance of AIT has been the false claim that horses were unknown
in India until they were brought in by invading light-skinned Aryan nomads
from somewhere in Central Asia their exact location known only to these
peddlers of AIT. It is also fraudulently claimed that they spoke some early
from of Sanskrit in which they later composed the Rigveda.
In the Ashvamedha or The Great Horse
Sacrifice, the Rig describes the Indian horse with 34 ribs or 17 pairs.
Here is a verse from the Rig: "The axe cuts through the thirty-four ribs
of the thoroughbred who is the mount and the companion of the gods." Of
these thirty-four, one is offered to the sun, one to the moon, five to
the planets and twenty-seven are dedicated to the constellations. The Central
Asian breed by comparison has thirty-six or eighteen pairs of ribs. The
Vedic horse is thus the native Indian horse. It did not come in with fictitious
nomads from Central Asia as invasionist scholars have been telling the
world for more than a hundred years. This fact alone should prompt many
establishment Western professors in the field to consider retraining for
jobs in other occupations like horse training or horse breeding. Their
Indology careers are over. In fact, Western Indology is itself on its death
bed.
Immediately below is a search for
an answer. It is an attempt to explain the near-absence of horse seals
and the relative paucity of images of the horse on other artefacts discovered
so far at Vedic sites. Because of the prominence of the horse in the Rigveda,
it is reasonable to say that many people had expected to see more horse
seals and artefacts than have been found so far. At the same time, it is
affirmed and reaffirmed here that both horse remains and horse artefacts
have been found at Vedic archaeological sites. Maybe not quite as many
as some would have liked.
Finding more horse seals and horse
artefacts is not a central issue any longer. But it is interesting to explore
the question why excavations have not turned up more of them so far. To
sum up: we have found them, but why have we not found a lot more of them?
The horse figures very prominently
in the Rigveda in a number of different roles: domesticated animal, war-horse,
racing thoroughbred, mythic mount and companion of the gods, and most important
to our discussion the sacrificial stallion. Also, the Sanskrit word for
the horse, ashva has other abstract meanings such as power, energy, heat
or vitality depending on the context. Many Western Sanskrit scholars have
tended to translate ashva to mean the domesticated animal every time in
every context without a knowledge of its many contextual meanings. These
translations have often provoked laughter.
The horse sacrifice is a solemn,
funereal event conducted with the utmost gravity. Interestingly, the horse
is not thought to have died at all during the sacrifice. The Rigveda says:
"You are not harmed, you do not really die through this. You will be on
a pleasant journey to the abode of the gods." The departed earthly horse
becomes a celestial equine with extraordinary powers to protect and to
shower material blessings upon the worshippers.
The people probably felt that these
hallowed horses of heaven, formerly their earthly companions, were more
close, more personal, more generous in their blessings and more protective
than the other great gods of heaven whom they found too remote and impersonal.
The divine horses occupied the same place as personal gods. The people
seemed to be more comfortable with the idea of a personal divine guardian
than a distant god of theology. They also believed that their earthly existence
and well-being were closely bound and subject to the powers of these consecrated
creatures now residing in heaven. In this aspect, the horse indeed enjoyed
a supremely exalted status in the lives of the Vedic people.
This might have led to a ban on
the use of horse images on seals and other everyday objects by religious
officials to preserve its lofty and noble status as the consecrated sacrificial
victim and now their divine protector. Images on everyday objects would
have been demeaning if not sacrilegious. Or the people may have recognized
this on their own and may have chosen not to use horse images- voluntary,
self-imposed ban. No ban can be expected to be total and complete in a
civilization covering more than 300,000 square miles. This may explain
why seals or other objects bearing horse images have been scarce at Vedic
archaeological sites. Like all bans, official or voluntary, this one too
may have broken down over time. So more seals or other items with horse
images may still be found but perhaps not in great numbers.
Readers may find it interesting
to know that Buddha gave specific instructions to his disciples that after
his death his physical likeness should not be represented in any visual
art form and he should be represented in art as the Bodhi tree, the Tree
of Wisdom, under which he had attained Enlightenment. For more than three
hundred years the Buddhists respected the Master's wishes. During the time
of Ashoka, a typical representation of Buddha was the Bodhi tree recalling
his Enlightenment at Bodh-Gaya. There was not a single image of big anywhere.
Images of Buddha began to appear after his teachings and philosophy spread
beyond India and began to take hold in other countries. The images we see
today are intensely contrary to his stated wishes and everything he taught
and did.
With respect to the Vedic horse,
its near-absence on seals and the relative scarcity of other horse artefacts
raise the suspicion that there might have been some kind of taboo or prohibition
in effect against using horse images. The ban was probably prompted by
its status as a consecrated sacrificial victim and angelic, divine guardian
and to prevent profanation of this status.
Mythological works describe demons
and evil characters as having red hair or gold-yellow eyes but the Indian
traditions uniformly describe Rama and Krishna as pleasingly dark in color.
The most dominant rishis of the Rigveda-the Angiras-are described as dark
or coal- black and a prominent figure in the Rigveda is described as brown.
These authentic descriptions in the ancient texts are completely harmonius
with a tropical and sub-tropical India which receives large amount of ultraviolet
A and B radiations from the sun. This was also a pristine India several
thousand years before the invasions and attacks upon its land by the Greeks,
the Turks, the Persians and an assortment of Europeans like the pork-chu-geese,
the French fries and the English muffins.
Invasions and occupations have had
very little impact on the physical characteristics of the people except
in border states like Punjab and Kashmir and provinces in the north-west
now in Pakistan. Nationwide, less than one in two hundred perhaps shows
any foreign traces and almost all such people are from the border regions
or people who have settled in other parts of the country from those areas.
Most relevant to the topic under discussion is that occupations by foreign
armies took place some two thousand years or more following the Vedic age
in its original purity.
A bronze sculpture dating back to
the Vedic age has been identified as depicting the famous Vedic rishi Vashishtha.
Exactly matching its description in the Vedas, the sculpture displays a
unique hairstyle oiled and coiled in a tuft to the right (In Search of
the Cradle of Civilization, pp. 70-71). The finely chiseled nose, the large,
black and piercing eyes and other features on the face make the sculpture
look like a quintessential Indian priest.
Another Vedic-age figurine depicts
a svelte and beautiful woman who is clearly black. The graceful nude model
may have been the prototype of the Devadasis or Temple Virgins of later
India. A torso is all that has survived from Vedic times of a splendidly
crafted sculpture of a male in the nude. An interesting fact about these
artefacts is that not only the celebration of sex as exemplified in Vatsyayana's
Kama Sutra but also the celebration of the artistic beauty of the human
form has its origins in ancient India. Despite its current problems, an
India of the future, modem and prosperous, must reconnect itself with the
Vedic love and passion for life and establish a pervasive physical culture
throughout the subcontinent.
Now we have not only a proven description
of Vedic horse anatomy but also descriptions of the most powerful rishis
of the Rigveda including a bronze sculpture of one of them. This along
with a crushing mass of other evidence forcibly confirms the purely indigenous
lineage of our great rishis.
One old game Western Indologists
still play is proposing an "original homeland" outside India for everything
Indian. The current favourite seems to be the steppes of southern Russia.
Another is Central Asia. Of these, one is grasslands and other a patch
of earth inhabited by people who never created anything. According to Western
fantasies, perhaps pharmaceutically induced, nomadic barbarians popped
out of these places and went on to write something as grand and vast as
the Vedas in language of their own in which they were illiterate. Let us
review some facts. The four Vedas are in poetic form. They are a work of
high literary sophistication using as many as 15 distinct metres. They
consist of 20,358 verses. They are far more extensive than the much later
literary works like Homer's epics or the Bible. They are a work of literary
art created by master wordsmiths. The entire body of literature that may
have been produced in the last 6,000 years in the Russian grasslands and
in Central Asia would be trivial and puny compared to the timeless majesty
of the Vedas.
A fictitious invasion by illiterate
nomads is hardly the kind of event that will lead to the development of
the world's greatest civilization and its greatest body of literature.
The simple fact is that to set up a culture or transplant a civilization
elsewhere you have to proceed from an already advanced one. Even so, you
need brilliant people to do it, not illiterate nomads. And you need ongoing
communication links with and prolonged support from your original homeland
including a steady flow of people from all walks of life - from the home
country to the new land over many generations. As the world's great civilizations
go, the Russian Steppes and Central Asia are little more than compost heaps.
They have no relevance in any discussion about the Vedic civilization or
the origin of Sanskrit.
The reports are that the quest for
the "original homeland of the Indo-European speakers" continues unabated.
Supposedly, at present, "excellent cases" are being made by "scholars"
for some new place-to he anointed as the original homeland. It seems that
this is about the only thing going on now. If you get the drift, Western
Indology is already a dead discipline.
The other game is "reconstructing"
a fiction called "the proto language". It goes something like this: Sanskrit,
Greek and Latin have strikingly close affinities. Therefore they must have
all come from an older "proto language" from a conveniently "assumed" place
like Central Asia which is the cradle of all civilization. The proto-Sanskrit
speaking Aryans came out of there. Their charging war horses came out of
there. Last but not least fantasizing, yam-spinning Western Indologists
also came out of there. If you said, hey, wait a minute. None of this makes
any sense. Sanskrit is not an Indo-European language. It is Indian. Nothing
Indo-European about it. All its antecedents are in India. The many Prakrits,
the numerous dialects, the works. It is very old. Probably as old as the
air we breathe. Greek and Latin are far too junior to it. Now that would
turn everything upside down and force a complete rewriting of ancient history
and potentially bring down Western civilization along with Christ and his
kingdom to boot. As long as the place of origin is not India, their mission
is accomplished which is to deny India's great antiquity, to deny the primacy
of Sanskrit and India's supremacy as the greatest civilizing force in the
world through the millennia. The pathology underlying this compulsion to
falsify history is sustained by a toxic mixture of race, politics and missionizing
Christianity the last more harmful than all the world's industrial pollutants.
Making no assumptions, relying on
no speculations and introducing no extraneous material from other sources,
Shrikant Talageri has thoroughly studied and analyzed the extensive ancient
sources of India such as the Vedas, the Puranas and other historical literature
to give us an accurate picture of our ancient history. Western Indology,
a sick-house built on lies, fraud and speculations and sustained by money
and Missionary propaganda simply does not have the background, the skills,
the honesty and the integrity necessary to undertake an exhaustive study
of the primary sources.
Thanks to Talageri's work, the distribution
of various groups of people during the pre-Vedic and Vedic periods looks
as shown in the box. The readers are reminded that this is an India of
some six or seven thousand years ago. The population if extrapolated backwards
would be only a small fraction of what it is today. Some estimates put
India's population in minus 4000 (early Rigvedic period) at one million
and in minus 2000 (late Vedic or Harappan) at five million. Therefore,
the information may not quite correspond to the distribution of various
groups across the country as we know it today. Also the information presented
in the h ox is only what is clearly stated and described in the ancient
documents.
It is the Purus who created the
Vedic civilization in Punjab. They are the movers and shakers the kings,
the priests, the poets: the power and the brains, the heart and the soul.
It is they who wrote the Vedas. It is they who coined the word Arya.
There were no nomads in Vedic India
from Central Asia or the Russian Steppes or any other blinking place. Let
it be said here and now: The Vedic horse is our own. The Sanskrit language
is our own. Our rishis are our own-born and bred right here in this Sacred
Land of the Aryas.
Compare all this with the malevolent
and thoroughly bogus "light-skinned nomadic Aryans" from Central Asia-read
"white niggers" or "wiggers" trumpeted by Western Indologists for more
than a century as real poets of the Rigveda.
In the face of megatons of mounting
evidence from multiple disciplines Witzel, Parpola and others like them
are beginning to look more and more like a retarded bunch. They have been
left behind by new discoveries and have reduced themselves to a nuisance
and a sideshow. Their whole discipline created by Christian missionaries
and colonial agents has collapsed. They should make a graceful exit and
leave the field.
The truth will out sooner or later.
This is a natural law. Scholarship must be responsible, objective and reflect
the latest discoveries that many have dedicated their whole lives to make.
Establishment Western Indology, however, still lives in the nineteenth
century ignoring all new evidence and continues to keep its sinking, ship
of AIT afloat, but the water is rushing in from everywhere taking it down
and all aboard with it.
