INDUS VALLEY SCRIPT: When DREAMS Come True!
I came to know about Indus valley in my childhood while I was a student of class three, thanks to my studious habit. I got it in a Children`s history Book written in Bengali.
I got the Booklist of Dev Sahitya Kutir, a Kolkata based Publisher from the Old book saler in my village and dropped a POST card to the House demanding some books seemed Interesting. They sent me the books by VPP. My father was liberal enough to pay.
When I read History as a part of my school course in Class six, the Topic captured me once again. I had IRREPRESSIBLE Curiosity about Past, Present and Future which connected me to the natural source, History and Philosophy, Science, Politics,Economics and sociology.
Though I did not pursue History beyond Intermediate as I was more interested in Languages and Literature.
Later I came to realise that you may not understand anything without the SENSE of History.
However, for me, the Indus valley remained the Gate Way of Indigenous aboriginal India since I knew letters!
INDUS VALLEY SCRIPT is the source of the PRE ARYAN India, where from the Black untouchables originated! But the Ruling Manusmriti Hegemony does its best to DELINK us from the Legacy and Dreams of our Ancestors!
Archeological Survey of India may help a little! In context of Bengal, the Govt. Agency never tried to work out the details of ancient bengal inhibited by Aboriginal Indigenous NON Aryan Non Hindu Communities!
The Mahabharatha war describes the conquest of Gangetic planes by the Aryan kings.
It explains the numerous kingdoms and their stories!While Non Aryan Magadh and Banga sided with the Kauravas in Mahabharat, RAMA won over the DRAVID Geopolitics from DANDAKARANYA to Srilanka in RAMAYAN. Which inserted the aryan culture as well as hindutva in the veins of south India , the Dravid Bhumi also.
But bengal remained aloof until the Sen Dynasty finished the Pala dynasty as well as BUDDHISM, only religion aboriginal VANGA did know!
The wars in Ramayana depict the conquest of the Dravidians by the Aryans!
Indian culture as well as Religion is a MIX Up of races and blood.
Like Hitler, no one may dare to boast of PURE BLOOD though the Manusmriti and Caste System were created to manipulate the age old tradition of Unified India.
Brahmins introduced the hindutva version of Apartheid, UNTOUCHABILITY to defend GENE, inherited from the JEWS.
But their ancestors also were married to Balck Untouchable Women from the Indigenous aboriginal people. Hence, Manusmriti declared Hindu Women SHUDRA and deprived them of all RITUALS and Rights, Knowledge and Property as the shudras and Outcastes had been!
Indus history was interesting for me for its Civil society and Absence of Gender Bias.
Indus people worshipped Shiva as well as the Goddess Earth, FERTILITY.
Linga and Yoni were the Spritual Expression of Indigenous culture which was adopted by the Aryans.
Non Aryans always worshipped Mother Goddessses which were later manipulated war Goddesses and were invoked as different forms of Kali and Durga, shown as the DESTROYERS of the Non aryans.
Our Ancestors were demonised.
The INDIGENOUS Aboriginal People of Indus valley and elsewhere were LITERATE and Well Cultured Contrary to the Aryan Projection in their Holy Scripts. Manuals, Legends, epics and History.
Aryans INVADED India and Conquered India.
The RSS History Rewriting Project Golbalised reject the theory of aryan invasion and claim that the aryans were the Aboriginal Indigeous people themselves denying the existence of other Races, the NON ARYANS! Then, where from, the Austroloids, Negroids , Mangloids and dravids came?
David Frawley writes:
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India
One of the main ideas used to interpret and generally devalue the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion. According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC, who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the large urban ruins of what has been called the "Indus valley culture" (as most of its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to refer to this war between light and dark skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus turned the "Vedas", the original scriptures of ancient India and the Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers.
This idea totally foreign to the history of India, whether north or south has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient history Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted, even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question.
In this article we will summarize the main points that have arisen. This is a complex subject that I have dealt with in depth in my book "Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization", for those interested in further examination of the subject.
The Indus valley culture was pronounced pre-Aryans for several reasons that were largely part of the cultural milieu of nineteenth century European thinking As scholars following Max Mullar had decided that the Aryans came into India around 1500 BC, since the Indus valley culture was earlier than this, they concluded that it had to be preAryan. Yet the rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given by Muller was totally speculative. Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the Aryans in India before 1500 BC.
Muller therefore assumed that the five layers of the four 'Vedas' & 'Upanishads' were each composed in 200 year periods before the Buddha at 500 BC. However, there are more changes of language in Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are in classical Sanskrit since Panini, also regarded as a figure of around 500 BC, or a period of 2500 years. Hence it is clear that each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries and that the 200 year figure is totally arbitrary and is likely too short a figure.
It was assumed by these scholars many of whom were also Christian missionaries unsympathetic to the 'Vedas' that the Vedic culture was that of primitive nomads from Central Asia. Hence they could not have founded any urban culture like that of the Indus valley. The only basis for this was a rather questionable interpretation of the 'Rig Veda' that they made, ignoring the sophisticated nature of the culture presented within it.
Meanwhile, it was also pointed out that in the middle of the second millennium BC, a number of Indo-European invasions apparently occured in the Middle East, wherein Indo-European peoples the Hittites, Mit tani and Kassites conquered and ruled Mesopotamia for some centuries. An Aryan invasion of India would have been another version of this same movement of Indo-European peoples. On top of this, excavators of the Indus valley culture, like Wheeler, thought they found evidence of destruction of the culture by an outside invasion confirming this.
http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley.html
This manipulation of History dates back while almost FOUR Hundred years of the History of Bengal before the Pala dynasty beginning from SHASHANK, have been DELETED. In this period, the Aboriginal Indigenous People RULED all over the region. Charya Padas were written by Black Untouchables from which most of the North Indian languages and dialects originated.
But the archeological surve of India and Indian Universities did nothing to recover the missing links. Even archelogical survey of India Discontinued its SEARCH for Truth in Gauda in Maldahand karna subarno, the Capital of Shashank in Murshidabad.
Simply because the TRUTH does not suit the Brahaminical history justifying Hinduization and Mass Destruction of Indigenous aboriginal people.
If we analyse impartially, it would not be DIFFICULT that HINDVA had alwys been the RELIGION of VIOLENCE.
The Vedic literature and Holy Hymns express the VIOLENCE and DEEPEST DESPISE.
It is rather a HATE SPEECH whic Demonised our ancestors and GLORIFIED the GENOCIDE CULTURE.
The Metaphor for Monopolistic aggression in Ancient India remains INDRA, who is called PURANDAR, perhaps because he destoyed the Well PLANNED CITY Civilisation of Mohanjodoro and Harappa and its leagacy.
All kinds of Myths and legends full of SOFT PORN relates to INDRA and his INFATUATION for SWARG , the HEAVEN and the IMPERIALIST ORDER, most ancient.
It is the BLOOD of the aryans which GENETICALLY relates to FASCISM and IMPERIALISM.
It is the DEVA CULTURE of the SWARGA, the HEAVEN which has been transformed as AMERICANISM and ZIONISM.
The Ancient ORDER is talken over by the DESI Illuminiti which remains in the HEAVENLY Life and LIFE STYLE!
Hindu History relates to the RULERS only and Justify the Chronology of ASHWAMEDH YAJNA, the Imperialist AGGRESSION and COLONISATION. It deletes the detils about Indigenous and aboriginal People.
In recnt History we may find it very well in VOGUE, specially in Bengal where RANI RASMANI is not MENTIONED in RAMKRISHANA MISSION Hindutva Literature just because she,despite being the last Sovereign Ruler of kolkata in eighteenth century, had been a daughter of FISHERMAN.
Thus, we understand how the Black untouchable Leaders like Mayawati, LALU, Mulayam, Charan Singh , Devilal, Jogendra Nath Mandal, JINNAH, Jilalita,karunanidhi and so on .. are DEMONISEDand DEFACED.
We never get the details of INDIGENOUS INSURRECTIONS or even the details about Aboriginal Indigenous REBEL rulers all over Bengal, ORISSA, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra, Bihar, Kashmir, Punjab, Chhattishgarh, MP, UP, KASHMIR and entire North East and South India!
In fact,Aryans COOPTED Indian Nationalities to CREATE the arayan culture , later known as HINDUTWA linking it to the Indian name of INDUS, SINDHU!
Aryans Unified India adopting the Gods and Goddesses, Myths, Legends, Totems, Rituals, Superstitions and Hinduised the Aboriginal Indigenous People DELETIG their IDENTITY, nationality, Language and history.
Aryans manipulated the FOLK Culture with surgical Precision as the United States of America succeeeded to AMERICANISE the Globe.
British did the same.
Hitler wanted to the same but failed MISERABLY.
Russians also succeeded partially, but the DEMISE of USSR halted the process.
The Japanaese want to this with HUMANOIDS!
I used to DREAM very Wild and the DREAMS would often come TRUE.
I lost the DREAMS as I grew and groomed!
But I have some rare instances while I do see the Incidents of future anytime without dreaming.
it might be simply an Intution and it comes TRUE, also.
I often VISUALISE UNTOWARD Incidents involving me and my dear ones, rivals and when the Incidents take place, I may not stop them!
In my INFANT days, I often dreamt of a SPRING on the BOTTOM of the Himalays.
When I was banished to a DELINKED Shaktifarm area by my father as I was involved in Naxal Activism while I was only in class NINE., I was to STUNNED to find the SPRING of my dream!
Me and my friends, the students of the local govt. high school left the base for an EXCURTION and Cycled our way through the DENSE FOREST inhibited by Wild Elephants!
We touched the FEET of the HIMALAYS in Chorgalia which is now linked to KATHGODAM recently.
My Doctor Uncle, CHHOTO KAKA based in the remote area for some time which attracted me like a Magnet!
Just standing on the top of the SPRING in a Winter afternoon, while the Sun was setting in the West, I suddenly IDENTIFIED the Water Resource natural with my Infant dream!
During my GIC days, I used to DREAM INDUS valley consecutively night after night, month after month and year after year!
How it could happen, I would never understand.
But it became a constant source of FEEL GOOD.
Well, I was reading ancient History those days!
But we never experienced the VISUAL help.
We had no chance to enhance our virtual reality with any Documentation or Visual aid.
But I would find myself amongst the Pre Aryan people in a Mohanjodoro SET UP.
I would dream of the RIVER. At that time, I have not seen even the Gret Ganges! But the river Indus would flow within me live everytime and I would feel the Waves and the Water.
I would hear the NOISE of an ancient city and would interact with male female and children, the people.
I would involve myself in TRANSACTION also and would love to roam around!
At that time, I had not visited any Ancient Place. I visited Kolakta in 1973 and new delhi in 1975 for the first time!
I lost the dream while I was well aware of the People`s history thanks to tara chandra Tripathi`s guidence.
I read Rahul Sankratyan and his works on Asian History focused on the Missing links of Central, South East and South Asia along with the MIDDLE east and West Asia.
I also studies the Holy Books concerned with Various religion, the histories of Culture and religion and civilisation very late while I was engaged in writing my Novel, AMERICA SE SAVDHAN.
knowing about Subaltern studies in history and world wide balck untouchable, I never SUCCEDED to INVOKE the DREAM once again.
But during my GIC days, I could INVOKE our Ancestors at will!
The EXCERCISE of DREMING thus make me FEEL once again to achieve the DREAM COME TRUE while I read about the RECENT Works on INDUS SCRIPT!
Probably ARYAN was the first race to invade India. They came through the Hindu Kush Mountains (now in Afghanistan) and spoke Sanskrit. They settled at the valley. This era witnessed the transition of this nomad society to an agricultural based society. Mostly during the fist half period they were confined to the valley. Aryans were not a monolithic army of invaders. There came through multiple routs at various points of time. Each established there own society. And during the later half they spread further eastward and southward, creating kingdoms at the gangetic planes and in the south. Probably this formed the basis for numerous kingdoms and their rajas in India. These kingdoms were of various sizes and scattered all around the planes of India. Caste concept was introduced as a social system depicting who does what during this period.
Dravidian culture was established in the south.
During this period the culture and Gods of the Aryans and Indus' got mixed.
The 4,000-year-old Indus Valley civilization that thrived on the Indo-Pak border might have been a literate society which used a script close to present day languages like Tamil, Sanskrit and English, reveals a new finding announced on Thursday.India's history is not a one-dimensional one that can be explained in a simple chronological fashion. The reason is that there were too many happening throughout the Indian subcontinent at the same time. It is impossible to cover the whole of history even in very short synopsis.
A group of Indian scientists have conducted a statistical study of the symbols found in the Indus Valley remains and compared them with various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems like DNA and computer programming. They found that the inscriptions closely matched those of spoken languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit and English. The results published in the journal Science show that the Indus script could be "as-yet-unknown language".
The term Indus script (also Harappan script) refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Mature Harappan period, between the 26th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered. The underlying language is unknown, and the lack of a bilingual makes the decipherment unlikely pending significant new finds.
The first publication of a Harappan seal dates to 1873, in the form of a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, well over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia.
The Indus valley civilization spread across the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. Probably this is the largest known ancient civilization and the youngest to be discovered. The river Indus was the cradle of this civilization.
Mohenjo Daro was an important city. The hallmark of Indus valley civilization is that they had a system highly comprehensible to the modern day society. They had a well-developed system of town planning. The buildings and monuments at the center of the cities were decorative and sophisticated. Housing complexes were located at far places from the city center. The housed were mostly two storied.
There were grids of roads and the lanes. They had drain systems maintained by the town authorities.
They had a structured economy. Wheat and barley were cultivated extensively. Trade was a key profession. They used Indus River for transportation.
Lothal was and ancient sea port.
The development of art and skills are evident from the sophistication of toys for children.
I wish the Indus valley people had invented the MP3.
If so the archeologists would have the chance to dig out a couple of CDs.
It would have been definitely nice to hear how they sung their songs! But whatever they had been singing in 2000 years had gone with the winds and the humanity will never find an ancient sound.
Scientists have obtained what may be the first mathematical evidence to support the idea that the 4500-year-old inscriptions from the Indus civilisation were graphic representations of a language.
A research team from India and the US has found that certain statistical features observed in the Indus inscriptions are similar to those in several other natural languages — ancient and modern.
The scientists from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and other institutions have shown that the Indus script had patterns of flexibility also found in Sumerian, Old Tamil, English, and Sanskrit. Their research shows that this flexibility is absent in sequences of non-linguistic systems such as human DNA, proteins, or the artificially-created computer language, FORTRAN.
The Rosetta Stone allowed 19th century scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization and thus decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
But the symbols found on many other ancient artifacts remain a mystery, including those of a people that inhabited the Indus valley on the present-day border between Pakistan and India. Some experts question whether the symbols represent a language at all, or are merely pictograms that bear no relation to the language spoken by their creators.
A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online Thursday by the journal Science, found the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.
"We applied techniques of computer science, specifically machine learning, to an ancient problem," said Rajesh Rao, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering and lead author of the study. "At this point we can say that the Indus script seems to have statistical regularities that are in line with natural languages."
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Indus Valley civilization thrived on the Indo-Pak border
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 Asko Parpola's Homepage Lists all his publications. Corpus of Inscriptions of Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization Analysis of inscriptions in relation to metallurgical knoweldge of the times. The Collapse of the Indus Script Thesis The controversial paper and other current works by Steve Farmer arguing that Indus Valley signs do not represent a true script. Horseplay in Harappa The Indian Magazine Frontline covers one of many Indus Valley script decipherment hoaxes in an article by Harvard Indologist Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer. Indus Script Decipherment Dr. Madhusudan Mishra's theory that the Indus language was a primitive form of Aryan and is linked to Sanskrit. Indus Valley Script Informative article on the ideograms and language of the Indus script. The Indus Script: A New Decipherment Paradigm An article by Michel Korvink in the South Asia Graduate Research Journal, pp. 105-121. K. K. Raman's Interpretation A late scholar of many languages living in a remote Kerala village claims to have decipered the Indus seals. The Indus Valley Script A Swedish interpretation using Carl Gustav Jung's ideas. On The Origin of the Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article A very clear summation of different postions and cold facts. The Indus Script and the Rg-Veda A symbolic interpretation of the Indus Script in relation to the Rg-Veda. People and Languages in Pre-Islamic Indus Valley A monograph by Dr. Tariq Rehman on the linguistic puzzle in the Indus Valley region. Vedic Glossary on Indus Seals Book review of recent tome insisting on relationship of Indus script to Brahmi. |
The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate ...
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Mohenjodaro seals, toys to attract foreignersTimes of India - 14 hours ago The authorities have decided to put up for sale the replicas of articles related to Indus Valley civilization, especially Mohenjodaro's seals. ... Book on Indus Valley to be launched todayThe News International - Apr 22, 2009 'Melluhas of the Indus Valley' has captures 250 works of art by the ancient people and glorious part of the ancient recorded civilisation. ... Writing in blood: The Indo-Pak partition- Part IIMerinews - Apr 23, 2009 Stone Age 70000–7000 BC, Mehrgarh Culture 7000–3300 BC, Indus Valley Civilisation 3300–1700 BC. Late Harappan Culture 1700–1300 BC, Vedic Civilisation ... On the tragic futility of debating climate changeNew Straits Times - Apr 21, 2009 While we honour and celebrate the settlement and flowering of the Ganges River civilisation and all it wrought, for instance, we should not forget the Indus ... Mysteries of prehistoric Balochistan unravelledDaily Times - Apr 6, 2009 Though there was initially the idea that the civilisation in Balochistan was linked with the Indus Valley, however, the notion was dispelled by the findings ... Lecture on Balochistan unfolds province's ancient past The News International Archaeologist linked with world's oldest sitesThe Age - Apr 3, 2009 Dani revealed fascinating details about the site, proclaiming it "the first planned city in the world" and demonstrating that its Indus Valley civilisation ... Rise and decline of Islamic civilisationThe New Nation - Apr 14, 2009 Within a century after the death of the Prophet, the Arabs had reached as far as Spain in the West and the Indus Valley in the East, swiftly overtaking the ... Lost Languages, By Andrew RobinsonIndependent - Apr 6, 2009 ... known about the Indus Valley script, but its potential importance is huge. Cracking it, says Robinson, would break the silence of a great civilisation. ... |
Seema Singh
The following deciphered texts are presented by the way of examples. For more deciphered texts they may be looked into the books concerned.
In transcribing the Sanskrit words, the capital letters are cerebrals, R being the vocalic r, and, if vowels they are long, A like a in Market, I like ee in seen, U like u in rule. Besides, H is Visarga finally & a voiceless h initially & medially and M is Anusvara.
1. ta na Sa 2659,2374,1365,4464
From the womb gems come out. cf. ta'nas (child) RV 5,70,4.Further reduced to tars: Gothic Thars,Sanskrit tarS / tRS 'to be thirsty'. ta na Sa Tha in English 'thirst', German 'Durst'.
2. va Na Sa 4650
From the water life comes. cf. vanas in -pati 'plant'.vanas further reduced to vars : Sanskrit vRS 'to rain'.
3. ca Na Su va Na Sa 2263
ca Na Su = The moon may give knowledge.cf. ca'nas in cano-dadhAti. Further reduced to carS in carSaNi'.
4. sha ma yo Sa 1013
Let evil die; let comfort be there. cf. RV sha'M yo's (Wellbeing and Welfare).
5. va Na ra 8011
Into the dwelling the creatures go. cf. vanar- in vanar-gu, -sad (resting place).
6. Sa Tha 8013
The embryo rolled. cf. RV sa't (the rolling embryo) confused with the participal sa't (existing). Reparaphrased in the RV 10, 121, 1 hiraNya-garbhas samavartatAgre (a golden egg rolled forth in the beginning).
7. ta gra Sa ra gha 4325
Of the god, of the sun, the lustre will shine (The lustre of the divine sun will shine). At the inflexional stage,ta gra Sa ra was reparaphrased: devasya savitur vareNyam bhargas with dhImahi added. cf. RV 3, 62, 10.
8. Ha Tha sa 1123
In the empty space appeared an embryo. cf. RV sat'as in sato'-vIra, -mahat, -bRhat (strong, great, big like satas =Universe).
9. Ha Dha Sa 5280
In the empty space a drum appeared. Its reduced form sadha- in -mAda, -stha (rejoicing in or situated on the highest abode).
10.Na ga 5094
The light goes away = The darkness comes. cf. na'g (night) RV 7, 71, 1.
11.Sa ra Sa 4094
From the embryo runs (and) stops (the waters flowing from the mountain stops). cf. Vedic sa'ras (lake), saras-vat-I.
12.la Tha 2124, 3083, 1268
The time turns round. In the vedic language, initially reduced rata, and due to accent further reduced to Rta' (The regular order of the Universe). Even Rtu' (Season) goes to some la Thu (The time changes). cf. Avestan ratu (time).
13. THE SIGN BOARD TEXT OF "DHOLAVIRA".
The text runs from left to right with the following signs : 391- 256- 327- 391- 261- 134- 98-391-391-53. Some people read 134 as 124, but elsewhere it never makes any pair either with 261 or with 98.Therefore, it is 134. The text may be read thus: ci re pau ci ca i pa ci ci bha. There are 5 groups, each of two syllables; namely :
(i) ci re reflecting in the Vedic adverb cire "for a long time".
(ii) pau ci reflecting in the dialectal poc "vile, wicked".
(iii) ca i has contracted to ce in a Tantric formula "cAmuNDAyai
vic-ce".
(iv) pa ci reflecting in the verb pac "to cook".
(v) ci bha reflecting in the dialectal verb cibh "to crush under the
teeth".
Based on these reflections,
the clause ci re may mean : the time was passing slowly.
pau (wind) ci (be) may mean : there was a storm. The destruction caused by the storm may have brought the meaning to 'destructive', then to 'vile'.
ca (light) i (move) is doubtful, but it is perhaps some kind of blessing.
pa ci refers to some fiery accident, and means : there was a conflagration.
ci (be) bha (light) means : there was a lightning-blow.
The whole event may be summarized thus :
The time was passing slowly. Suddenly, there was a terrible storm. God forbid the evil. There was a fiery accident and a blow of lightning.
The isolating stage of a primitive language is not capable of conveying such lengthy message, but the requirement of an urbanised society had necessitated the use of language beyond its capacity.
14.THE TEXT AROUND "PASHUPATI".
The text runs with the signs 3-216-229-343-59-342-1 , and reads thus: ru i yU Si na Sa ra.
The first syllabic group ru (fire) i (move) makes a phrase : put on fire. The following syllabic group
yU Si reflects in the Vedic vocable yUs (soup, broth, sauce). In the urban culture this 'soup' would have been some (chemical) 'liquid'.
In the last group of three syllables, na (gem) is the object of the verb Sa (embryo) with the pluperfect affix ra : na Sa-ra = gems had been produced.
The whole text means:
The put-on-fire (decocted) chemical liquid had produced (= used to produce) gems.
15. THE LONGEST TEXT no. 1623 / 2847.
It consists of 26 signs, and may be thus transcribed:
lu bha dhe Sa-Tha, ga ga ga Na
ya gha Su, bra sI, cha ra
Su Na ga, ci ra, Dha Na, ta gra Sa.
In the first line, the first five syllables make a clause, bha (sky) qualified by lu (foggy) is in oblique case, meaning : in the foggy sky (lu bha) light ( dhe) be-past (Sa-Tha). The next clause is connected by 'because' : the stars (ga pl.) were shining (Na).
In the next line, there are three parts: the first clause , ya (loud) gha (sound) Su (embryo) seems to say : as a loud sound was produced...... It is related to the following clause, indicated by u-bending. The next clause bra (water-fire = the cloud with the lightning) sI (bird) means : the lightning cloud flew around. Then cha (unsteady) ra (speed) means : moved unsteadily.
In the last line, Su Na ga is an injunction : do know the truth. Then, ci ra (the time passed slowly, cf. Sanskrit ciram) is a phrase here: for a long time. Dha (sound) Na (knowledge) = It is well-known. ta gra Sa = the bright sun shone.
The whole statement may be summarised thus :
In the foggy sky there was light, because the stars were shining. As a sound was produced, the lightning cloud flying around moved unsteadily. Know it well. For a long time, the report goes on, the sun was shining brilliantly.
It may be supposed, this statement was issued when a great natural catastrophe had taken place and its warnings had remained unnoticed.
16. RbI'sa .
This word is restricted to the RV and means 'an abyss' (in the earth, from which hot vapours arise). In the 'vapours arising from an abyss', fire and water are involved. In the Indus inscriptions, there is a text 5086 of which the first part reads like ra (fire) bI (vapour) Su (embryo), meaning (because/ when) the fire generates / generated vapour ,........ .
The next clause of the same text, syntactically related, reads ni (interior) Sa (all) ra (speed), probably meaning : from the interior all men should runaway \ ran away.
The fossilised Vedic form of the first clause may be RbI'sa (ra becoming R due to accent on the following syllable). The same of the next clause may be nisara', which is obscure as to its meaning VS 30,14. However, in that stanza, because ayas-tApa' (iron-smith) is a professional for manyu (spirit), nisara' may be a similar professional for krodha (anger), probably a fireman.
In another text 4304 too, the first clause is the same ra bI Sa, but the second syllable has a slightly different sign. Perhaps both are duplicates. Its next clause va (dwelling) Na (light) Tha (circle) means: in the dwelling the fire turns round. It refers to a situation in the countryside just 50 years ago when a girl had to run from house to house in search of fire. This clause has fossilised as vana'd (domestic fire) in the RV, now derived as van-ad (wood-consuming).
Through some of these examples, we can imagine how the urban Indus culture is linked underneath with the pastoral Vedic culture. A centrally heated room of the urban Indus culture has become an abyss; the chemical liquid has become soup, and so on. As the form of the society changes, there is a perceptible change in the phonetic aspect of the language, but semantically it makes a frog's jump. Aravinda says: ....the vocabularies of primitive languages must have varied from century to century......many savage tongues change their vocabulary almost from generation to generation.. (The secret of the Veda, p.556). Because the Vedic words peep into the Indus texts we say that the Vedic and Indus form one stream of language.
http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:MpsgBOviVeAJ:www.indusscript.com/decipher.html+indus+script+deciphered&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=inVinay Lal
Bunche 5240; x58276
Office Hrs: Tue & Th
History 197 /201
Spring 1996
Wed, 2:00-5:00
Subalterns, Rebels, and Outcastes: Explorations in Modern Indian History
Explorations in Modern Indian History
Introduction: In the early 1980s, there emerged in India a 'school' of history that goes by the name of 'Subaltern Studies'; this 'school' has now gained a world-wide reputation, and 'Subaltern Studies' is beginning to make its influence felt in Latin American Studies, African Studies, 'cultural studies', and other arenas. Where previously the history of modern India, and particularly of the nationalist movement, was etched as a history of Indian 'elites', now this history is being construed primarily as a history of 'subaltern groups'. How are we to think about subalterns? Who and what are the 'subalterns', and how did this military term begin to be used as the center-piece of a body of work on resistance? We will begin with a consideration of the original problematic of subaltern histories and then ask how such histories can be written. What are the problems of writing such histories? 'Subaltern Studies', viewed as a collective enterprise, represents the most significant achievement of South Asian 'cultural studies'; it has effectively contested what were until recently the dominant interpretations of Indian history, and more generally it has provided a framework within which to contest the dominant modes of knowledge. However, subaltern history has not always had an easy relationship with feminism, and we will also interrogate the place of feminism within subaltern history. Feminist historiography, more than anything else, has brought questions of voice, agency, and resistance to the fore, and in this connection we will look at an oral history of women in the Telengana uprising, and some articles drawn from a recent anthology on constructions of womanhood and women in colonial India. The course will, in the final weeks, move to debates among subaltern historians, and a consideration of the argument that Subaltern Studies has been contaminated by post-modernism. Finally, we will ask: how do subaltern historians write histories of 'great men'? Does subaltern history condemn us to writing only of the history of this or that rebellion, this or that oppressed group? Are only fragmentary narratives possible, or is it possible to write a history of the nationalist movement as a whole, and if so, does that necessarily become a master narrative? The course will conclude with a discussion of Ashis Nandy's The Intimate Enemy, not a work belonging to the Subaltern School, but one of the most significant works on colonial India nonetheless; and we shall be interested particularly in attempting to locate it in relation to subaltern history.
Course material: All material on the syllabus will be placed on reserve in the college library. There will a reader for the course; any articles in the syllabus not found in the reader, or any one of the books ordered for you, will also be on 2-hour reserve. Items in the reader are indicated by a R in bold letters. The following books have been ordered at ASUCLA for your purchase (all Oxford books are Delhi, Oxford University Press, unless otherwise stated):
Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory (Oxford and Princeton)
Dipesh Chakrabarty, ed., Subaltern Studies, Vol. VIII
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought & the Colonial World (Minnesota)
Partha Chatterjee & G. Pandey, eds., Subaltern Studies, Vol. VII (Oxford)
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency (Oxford)
Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies, Vol. V (Oxford)
Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies, Vol. VI (Oxford)
Ranajit Guha and G. Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (N.Y.: Oxford)
Eugene Irschik, Dialogue and History (Berkeley: Univ. of California)
Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (Oxford)
Stree Shakti Sangathana,We Were Making History (Zed Books)
Requirements: As this is a seminar, your active participation is not merely expected and desirable, but indispensable. The only formal requirement is a paper which should be not less than twenty pages long. You may either tackle some of the books in the course and write a critical piece -- for example, you could discuss some of the achievements, shortcomings, or possibilities of subaltern historiography, or you could write on the discrepancies between feminist and subaltern histories -- or you can do a research paper, which would undoubtedly require some additional reading. You could look at the relation between subaltern history and what is more generally termed 'history from below'; you could consider the configurations of class in subaltern history, in relation to E.P. Thompson's work on class; or you could interrogate subaltern history by using Carlo Ginzburg's work on microhistory. The possibilities are infinite. This paper will be due by the Friday of the last week of classes.
Calendar of Readings:
Week 1: Who are Subalterns?
E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, pp. 1-29, 108-125, 150-53, in R.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1973), "Notes on Italian History", pp. 52-55 and "The Study of Philosophy", pp. 323-343. R
Amitav Ghosh, "The Slave of Ms. H.6", in Subaltern Studies VII (Delhi: Oxford, 1993), pp. 159-220.
Weeks 2: Aims and Limits of Subaltern Historiography: The Programmatic Notes and the 'New' Collaborationist History
Ranajit Guha, "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India", and "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency", both in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. R. Guha and Gayatri Spivak (New York: Oxford, 1988).
Eugene F. Irschik, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795-1895 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
Week 3: Subaltern Studies: The Foundational Text
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford, 1983).
Weeks 4 and 5: How Do We Write Subaltern Histories?
Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Conditions for Knowledge of Working-Class Conditions: Employers, Government and the Jute Workers of Calcutta, 1890-1940", in Selected Subaltern Studies.
Sumit Sarkar, "The Kalki-Avatar of Bikrampur: A Village Scandal in Early Twentieth Century Bengal", in Subaltern Studies VI (Delhi: Oxford, 1989), pp. 1-53.
Patha Chatterjee, "Caste and Subaltern Consciousness", in Subaltern Studies VI, pp. 169-209.
Ranajit Guha, "Chandra's Death", in Subaltern Studies V (Delhi: Oxford, 1987), pp. 135-165.
Upendra Baxi, "'The State's Emissary': The Place of Law in Subaltern Studies", in Subaltern Studies VII, pp. 247-264.
Gyanendra Pandey, "The Colonial Construction of 'Communalism': British Writings on Banaras in the Nineteenth Century", in Subaltern Studies VI, pp. 132-68.
Week 6: The Construction of an 'Event'
Carlo Ginzburg, "Two or Three Things I Know About Microhistory", Critical Inquiry R.
Shahi Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (Delhi: Oxford University Press; Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995).
Week 7: Feminism and Subaltern Historiography
Partha Chatterjee, "The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question", in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 233-253. R
Stree Shakti Sangathana. We Were Making History: Women and the Telengana Uprising. (London: Zed Press, 1990), pp. 1-73, 137-79, 258-84.
Vasantha Kannabiran and K. Lalitha, "That Magic Time: Women in the Telangana People's Struggle", in Recasting Women, pp. 180-203. R
Julie Stephens, "Feminist Fictions: A Critique of the Category 'Non-Western Woman' in Feminist Writings on India", in Subaltern Studies VI, pp. 92-125.
Susie Tharu, "Response to Julie Stephens", in Subaltern Studies VI, pp. 126-31.
Gayatri C. Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?", in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana & Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271-313. R
Week 8: Writing the History of Nationalist Elites
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London: Zed Books; reprint, U. of Minnesota Press, 1993).
Shahid Amin, "Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, Eastern UP, 1921-2", in Selected Subaltern Studies.
Sumit Sarkar, "Orientalism Revisited: Saidian Frameworks in the Writings of Modern Indian History." Oxford Literary Review 16 (1994):205-224.
Recommended: Ranajit Guha, "Discipline and Mobilize", in Subaltern Studies VII, pp. 69-120.
Week 9: Debates on Subaltern Historiography
Veena Das, "Subaltern as Perspective", in Subaltern Studies VI, pp. 310-314.
Gayatri C. Spivak, "Deconstructing Subaltern Historiography", in Subaltern Studies IV (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1986), or her introduction to Selected Subaltern Studies.
Rosalind O'Hanlon, "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia", Modern Asian Studies 22, 1 (1988):189-224. R
Gyan Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography", CSSH 32, 2 (April 1990):383-408; also published in revised form as "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Indian Historiography Is Good to Think", in Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas Dirks (Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 353-88. R [CSSH: Comparative Studies in Society and History]
Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, "After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World", CSSH 34, 1 (Jan. 1992):141-167. R
Gyan Prakash, "Can the 'Subaltern' Ride? A Reply to O'Hanlon and Washbrook", CSSH 34, 1 (Jan. 1992):168-85. R
Dipesh Chakrabarty, "History as Critique and Critique(s) of History." Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 37 (14 Sept. 1991):2162-66. R
Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for 'Indian' Pasts?" Representations, no. 37 (Winter 1992):1-26. R
Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Radical Histories and Question of Enlightenment Rationalism: Some Recent Critiques of Subaltern Studies." Economic and PoliticalWeekly 30, no. 14 (8 April 1995):751-59. R
Week 10: The Other Within: A Different Subaltern History, Perhaps, and Some Caveats on History
Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983).
Vinay Lal, "On the Perils of Historical Thinking: The Case, Puzzling as Usual, of India." Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies 3 (1996); revised version in Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (1996). R
Ashis Nandy, "History's Forgotten Doubles", History and Theory, Theme Issue 34 (1995):44-66. R
Indus script
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Indus script | |
| Type | Undeciphered Bronze Age writing |
|---|---|
| Spoken languages | Unknown (see Harappan language) |
| Time period | 2600–1900 BC |
| ISO 15924 | Inds |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | |
The term Indus script (also Harappan script) refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Mature Harappan period, between the 26th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered. The underlying language is unknown, and the lack of a bilingual makes the decipherment unlikely pending significant new finds.
The first publication of a Harappan seal dates to 1873, in the form of a drawing by Alexander Cunningham. Since then, well over 4000 symbol-bearing objects have been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia.
Some early scholars, starting with Cunningham in 1877, thought that the script was the archetype of the Brahmi script used by Ashoka. Cunningham's ideas were supported by G.R. Hunter, Iravatham Mahadevan and a minority of scholars continue to argue for the Indus script as the predecessor of the Brahmic family. However most scholars disagree, claiming instead that the Brahmi script derived from the Aramaic script.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Inscription corpus
[edit] Early Harappan
The script generally refers to that used in the mature Harappan phase, which perhaps evolved from a few signs found in early Harappa after 3500 BC,[1] and was followed by the mature Harappan script.
[edit] Mature Harappan
The Harappan signs are most commonly associated with flat, rectangular stone tablets called seals, but they are also found on at least a dozen other materials.
[edit] Late Harappan
After 1900 BC, the systematic use of the symbols ended, after the final stage of the Mature Harappan civilization.
A few Harappan signs appear until as late as around 1100 BC (the beginning of the Indian Iron Age). Onshore explorations near Bet Dwarka in Gujarat revealed the presence of late Indus seals depicting a 3-headed animal, earthen vessel inscribed in a late Harappan script, and a large quantity of pottery similar to Lustrous Red Ware bowl and Red Ware dishes, dish-on-stand, perforated jar and incurved bowls which are datable to the 16th century BC in Dwarka, Rangpur and Prabhas. The thermoluminescence date for the pottery in Bet Dwaraka is 1528 BC. This evidence suggests that a late Harappan script was used until around 1500 BC. [1] Other excavations in India at Vaisali, Bihar [2] and Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu [3] have revealed Indus symbols being used as late as 1100 BC.
In May 2007, the Tamil Nadu Archaeological Department found pots with arrow-head symbols during an excavation in Melaperumpallam near Poompuhar. These symbols bore a striking resemblance to seals unearthed in Mohenjodaro in the 1920s.[2]
In 1960, B.B. Lal of the Archaeological Survey of India wrote a paper in a publication called Ancient India. The publication carried a photograhic catalog of megalithic and chalcolithic pottery which Lal compares with the Ancient Indus script.[2] Ancient inscriptions bearing a striking reesemblance to those found in Indus Valley sites have been found in Sanur near Tindivanam in Tamil Nadu, Musiri in Kerala and Sulur near Coimbatore.[2]
[edit] Script characteristics
The script is written from right to left,[3] and sometimes follows a boustrophedonic style. Since the number of principal signs is about 400-600,[4] midway between typical logographic and syllabic scripts, many scholars accept the script to be logo-syllabic[5] (typically syllabic scripts have about 50-100 signs whereas logographic scripts have a very large number of principal signs). Several scholars maintain that structural analysis indicates an agglutinative language underneath the script. However, this is contradicted by the occurrence of signs supposedly representing prefixes and infixes.
[edit] Attempts at decipherment
Over the years, numerous decipherments have been proposed, but none has been accepted by the scientific community at large. The following factors are usually regarded as the biggest obstacles for a successful decipherment:
- The underlying language, if any, has not been identified.
- The average length of the inscriptions is less than five signs, the longest being one of only 27 signs.
- No bilingual texts (like a Rosetta Stone) have been found. Since the IVC was culturally isolated, it is highly unlikely there is one.
The topic is popular among amateur researchers, and there have been various (mutually exclusive) decipherment claims. None of these suggestions has found academic recognition.[6]
[edit] Dravidian hypothesis
The Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov, who has edited a multi-volumed corpus of the inscriptions, surmises that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script, with an underlying Dravidian language as the most likely linguistic substrate.[7] Knorozov is perhaps best known for his decisive contributions towards the decipherment of the Maya script, a pre-Columbian writing system of the Mesoamerican Maya civilization. Knorozov's investigations were the first to conclusively demonstrate that the Maya script was logosyllabic in character, an interpretation now confirmed in the subsequent decades of Mayanist epigraphic research.
The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola repeated several of these suggested Indus script readings. The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BC, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt adorned with Indus script markings has been considered to be significant for this identification.[8][9] However, their identification as Indus signs has been disputed.
All scholars accept that the Dravidian theory is unproven. Iravatham Mahadevan, who supports the Dravidian hypothesis, says, "we may hopefully find that the proto-Dravidian roots of the Harappan language and South Indian Dravidian languages are similar. This is a hypothesis [...] But I have no illusions that I will decipher the Indus script, nor do I have any regret."[10]
[edit] Script vs. ideographical symbols
If the signs are purely ideographical, they may contain no information about the language spoken by their creators: they would qualify either as a purely logographic script, or as a system of symbols not qualifying as a script in the true sense (pictograms).
Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel[11] make the case that the symbols were not coupled to oral language, which in part explains the extreme brevity of the inscriptions. This view has been challenged by Parpola.[12]
A single-page preprint published in April 2009 claims that a statistical study found "evidence for the existence of linguistic structure in the Indus script".[13] Farmer and Witzel pulished a quick two-page in reaction to the study, [14] and announced a more detailed criticism would follow.[15]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Whitehouse, David (1999) 'Earliest writing' found BBC
- ^ a b c Subramaniam, T. S. (May 1, 2006). "From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu". The Hindu. http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/03/stories/2008050353942200.htm. Retrieved on 2008-05-23.
- ^ (Lal 1966)
- ^ (Wells 1999)
- ^ (Bryant 2000)
- ^ see e.g. Egbert Richter, N. S. Rajaram and Srinivasan Kalyanaraman for examples.
- ^ (Knorozov 1965)
- ^ (Subramanium 2006; see also A Note on the Muruku Sign of the Indus Script in light of the Mayiladuthurai Stone Axe Discovery by I. Mahadevan (2006)
- ^ Significance of Mayiladuthurai find
- ^ Interview at Harrappa.com
- ^ (Farmer 2004)
- ^ (Parpola 2005)
- ^ Rajesh P. N. Rao, Nisha Yadav, Mayank N. Vahia, Hrishikesh Joglekar, R. Adhikari, and Iravatham Mahadevan, Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script published online 23 April 2009 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1170391] (in Science Express Brevia)
- ^ [http://www.safarmer.com/Refutation3.pdf A Refutation of the Claimed Refutation of the Nonlinguistic Nature of Indus Symbols: Invented Data Sets in the Statistical Paper of Rao et al. (Science, 2009)[
- ^ Steve Farmer's website. 24 April 2009.
[edit] References
- Bryant, Edwin (2000), The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate Oxford University Press.
- Farmer, Steve et al. (2004) The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization, EJVS, vol. 11 (2004), issue 2 (Dec) [4] (PDF).
- Knorozov, Yuri V. (ed.) (1965) Predvaritel'noe soobshchenie ob issledovanii protoindiyskikh textov. Moscow.
- Mahadevan, Iravatham, Murukan In the Indus Script (1999)
- Mahadevan, Iravatham, Aryan or Dravidian or Neither? A Study of Recent Attempts to Decipher the Indus Script (1995-2000) EJVS (ISSN 1084-7561) vol. 8 (2002) issue 1 (March 8).[5]
- Parpola, Asko (2005) Study of the Indus Script. 50th ICES Tokyo Session.
- Possehl, Gregory L. (1996), Indus Age: The Writing System, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 081223345X .
- Rjabchikov, Sergei V. (2006a). A New Key to the Proto-Indian Writing System. AnthroGlobe Journal, 2006.
- Rjabchikov, Sergei V. (2006b). Protoindiyskoe pis'mo i ego rasshifrovka. Krasnodar.
- Subramanian, T. S. (2006) "Significance of Mayiladuthurai find" in The Hindu, May 1, 2006.
- Wells, B. "An Introduction to Indus Writing" Independence, MO: Early Sites Research Society 1999.
- Keim, Brandon (2009) "Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000 Year Old Mystery" in WIRED
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Indus Script (ancientscripts.com)
- "Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu ("Discovery of a century" in Tamil Nadu )
- The Indus Script (From harappa.com)
- BBC - 'Earliest writing' found
- How come we can't decipher the Indus script? (from The Straight Dope)
- Iravatham Mahadevan, Towards a scientific study of the Indus Script
- Script Image;Article
- Collection of essays about the Indus script (Steve Farmer)
- WIRED.com (WIRED.com)
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Indus script encodes language, reveals new study of ancient symbols
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The Rosetta Stone allowed 19th century scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization and thus decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
But the symbols found on many other ancient artifacts remain a mystery, including those of a people that inhabited the Indus valley on the present-day border between Pakistan and India. Some experts question whether the symbols represent a language at all, or are merely pictograms that bear no relation to the language spoken by their creators.
A University of Washington computer scientist has led a statistical study of the Indus script, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and nonlinguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language. The results, published online Thursday by the journal Science, found the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.
"We applied techniques of computer science, specifically machine learning, to an ancient problem," said Rajesh Rao, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering and lead author of the study. "At this point we can say that the Indus script seems to have statistical regularities that are in line with natural languages."
Co-authors are Nisha Yadav and Mayank Vahia at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India; Hrishikesh Joglekar, a software engineer from Mumbai; R. Adhikari at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India; and Iravatham Mahadevan at the Indus Research Center in Chennai. The research was supported by the Packard Foundation and the Sir Jamsetji Tata Trust.
The Indus people were contemporaries of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, inhabiting the Indus river valley in present-day eastern Pakistan and northwestern India from about 2600 to 1900 B.C. This was an advanced, urbanized civilization that left written symbols on tiny stamp seals, amulets, ceramic objects and small tablets.
"The Indus script has been known for almost 130 years," said Rao, an Indian native with a longtime personal interest in the subject. "Despite more than 100 attempts, it has not yet been deciphered. The underlying assumption has always been that the script encodes language."
In 2004 a provocative paper titled The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis claimed that the short inscriptions have no linguistic content and are merely brief pictograms depicting religious or political symbols. That paper's lead author offered a $10,000 reward to anybody who could produce an Indus artifact with more than 50 symbols.
Taking a scientific approach, the U.S.-Indian team of computer scientists and mathematicians looked at the statistical patterns in sequences of Indus symbols. They calculated the amount of randomness allowed in choosing the next symbol in a sequence. Some nonlinguistic systems display a random pattern, while others, such as pictures that represent deities, follow a strict order that reflects some underlying hierarchy. Spoken languages tend to fall between the two extremes, incorporating some order as well as some flexibility.
The new study compared a well-known compilation of Indus texts with linguistic and nonlinguistic samples. The researchers performed calculations on present-day texts of English; texts of the Sumerian language spoken in Mesopotamia during the time of the Indus civilization; texts in Old Tamil, a Dravidian language originating in southern India that some scholars have hypothesized is related to the Indus script; and ancient Sanskrit, one of the earliest members of the Indo-European language family. In each case the authors calculated the conditional entropy, or randomness, of the symbols' order.
They then repeated the calculations for samples of symbols that are not spoken languages: one in which the placement of symbols was completely random; another in which the placement of symbols followed a strict hierarchy; DNA sequences from the human genome; bacterial protein sequences; and an artificially created linguistic system, the computer programming language Fortran.
Results showed that the Indus inscriptions fell in the middle of the spoken languages and differed from any of the nonlinguistic systems. If the Indus symbols are a spoken language, then deciphering them would open a window onto a civilization that lived more than 4,000 years ago. The researchers hope to continue their international collaboration, using a mathematical approach to delve further into the Indus script.
"We would like to make as much headway as possible and ideally, yes, we'd like to crack the code," Rao said. "For now we want to analyze the structure and syntax of the script and infer its grammatical rules. Someday we could leverage this information to get to a decipherment, if, for example, an Indus equivalent of the Rosetta Stone is unearthed in the future."
For more information, contact Rao at 206-685-9141 or rao@cs.washington.edu.
More information about the Indus civilization and language is at http://www.harappa.com.
[ Print | E-mail | Share ] [ Close Window ] Scholars at odds over mysterious Indus script
- 19:00 23 April 2009 by Ewen Callaway
- For similar stories, visit the Human Evolution Topic Guide
An as yet undeciphered script found on relics from the Indus valley constitutes a genuine written language, a new mathematical analysis suggests.
The finding is the latest chapter in a bitter dispute over the interpretation of "Indus script". This is the name given to a collection of symbols found on artefacts from the Indus valley civilisation, which flourished in what is now eastern Pakistan and western India between 2500 and 1900 BC.
In 2002, a team of linguists and historians argued that the script did not represent language at all, but religious or political imagery.
Ordered or random?
From an analysis of the frequency and distribution of the script's characters, the team concluded that it showed few of the hallmarks of language. Most of the inscriptions contain fewer than five characters, few of the characters repeat, and many of the symbols occur very infrequently.
The new analysis by computer scientist Rajesh Rao and his team at the University of Washington in Seattle comes to the opposite conclusion.
Rao's team assessed the script samples using what is called "conditional entropy". When aimed at language, this statistical technique comes up with a measure for the "orderedness" of words, letters or characters – from totally ordered to utterly random.
"If you look at strings that contain words, then you should see that for any particular word in the string there is going to be some amount of flexibility in choosing the next word, but they're not randomly ordered," Rao says.
Which word next?
For instance, in English text, if you find the fragment "The boy went to the", there is some flexibility in what follows. Nouns like "park" and "circus" make sense, but a verb such as "eat" does not.
Rao's team applied this analysis to Indus script, Sanskrit, an ancient south Indian language called Old Tamil, and English. They also tested the conditional entropy of the Fortran computer programming language and non-languages, including DNA and protein sequences.
Indus script characters turned out to be about as randomly ordered as the other languages. Unsurprisingly, they proved less random than DNA or protein sequences and more random than the computer language, where unambiguity is essential.
Grammatical structure
"Now we can say, based on this evidence, that they probably were literate, so the big question becomes: Can you get at the underlying grammar?" Rao says. He hopes to refine his team's technique to determine the grammatical structure of Indus script and, potentially, the language family it belongs to.
"I think we are going to need more archival data, and if we are lucky enough we might stumble on a Rosetta Stone-like artefact," Rao says.
Rao's paper has already drawn a strong response from the researchers who proposed that Indus script represents religious and political symbols, not language.
"There's zero chance the Indus valley is literate. Zero," says Steve Farmer, an independent scholar in Palo Alto, California who authored a 2004 paper with two academics with the goading title "The Collapse of the Indus Script Thesis: The myth of a literate Harappan civilization."
Simulated language
As well as comparing the conditional entropy of Indus script to that of known languages, they compared it with two simulated character sets – one totally random, one totally ordered.
Farmer and colleagues Michael Witzel of Harvard University and Richard Sproat of Oregon Health and Sciences University in Portland contend that the comparison with artificially created data sets is meaningless, as are the resulting conclusions. "As they say: garbage in, garbage out," Witzel says.
Unlocking history
Farmer says that the debate over Indus script is more than academic chest thumping. If Indus script is not a language, a close analysis of its symbols could offer unique insight into the Indus Valley civilisation. Some symbols are more common in some geographical locations than others, and symbol usage seems to have changed over time.
"You suddenly have a new key for unlocking how that civilisation functioned and what its history was like," he says.
J. Mark Kenoyer, a linguist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says Rao's paper is worth publishing, but time will tell if the technique sheds light on the nature of Indus script.
"At present they are lumping more than 700 years of writing into one data set," he says. "I am actually going to be working with them on the revised analysis, and we will see how similar or different it is from the current results."
Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1170391 (in press)
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How come we can't decipher the Indus script?
Dear Straight Dope:
I just got a book on ancient civilizations. In the chapter dealing with written languages, they list Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mesopotamian pictographs, and Indus script as the three oldest known written languages. The book goes on to say Indus script has never been deciphered even though over 2,500 examples of it exist. Maybe I've watched too many sci-fi movies where a master linguist deciphers alien languages, but I really thought we had terrestrial languages mastered. What's the deal with Indus script? Is the art of linguistics still held hostage by our inability to decipher ancient languages without a "key" à la the Rosetta Stone?
Too much science fiction? No such thing. Star Trek, for example, teaches us that a good communications officer can send a message that transcends mere language, especially if she has legs down to here and a hemline up to there. Mmmmm. Mm-HMMMmmmmm . . . er, sorry. Was I saying something?
Yes, I was. The Indus script, which was written in and around Pakistan over a period of several centuries centered around 2500 B.C., is the most famous undeciphered script, but there are many others. Other mystery writing systems include Linear A (Greece, 1800 B.C.), Zapotec (Mexico, 500 B.C.), Meroitic (Sudan, 300 B.C.), Isthmian (Central America, A.D. 200), Rongorongo (Easter Island, A.D. 1800) and Joycean (Ireland, A.D. 1900). Okay, maybe not that last one.
Why haven't they been deciphered? It's instructive to look at some deciphered scripts to see what makes the enigmatic writing of the Indus valley different. Script decipherment is not as easy as it's made out to be in science fiction--and sometimes not as easy as it's made out to be in history books. Chances are the impression you took away from school was that the Rosetta stone made it child's play to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. Not so. How many schools teach that some of the best minds in the world pored over the Rosetta stone for a quarter century before it finally revealed its secrets?
One of the biggest obstacles was that the ancient Egyptians used a writing system unlike anything known when the Rosetta stone was discovered in 1799. Scholars knew about logographic systems like Chinese, where there are thousands of symbols, each normally representing a whole word or idea. They knew about alphabetic systems like Hebrew and English, where there are typically 20 to 30 symbols, each normally representing one consonant or vowel. Some scholars may have known about syllabaries, with several dozen symbols each representing one syllable, as in Japanese hiragana and katakana. But Egyptian hieroglyphics had too many distinct symbols to be an alphabet or syllabary, and too few to be logographic.
The decipherment published by Champollion in 1823 (building on work by many others, including Thomas Young) showed that Egyptian hieroglyphics were (neglecting some complications) a logo-phonetic system. In such a writing system, any given symbol can represent either an entire idea or word, or the sound (or initial sound) of that word. Some simple ideas can be expressed efficiently with a drawing of the object or an object it's associated with. But to express an abstract idea that can't be readily drawn, you can use a string of sounds. Suppose you want to express the English word "charitable" without an alphabet. You could draw a picture of a chair and a table (since "chair table" sounds sort of like "charitable"). This is the rebus principle. Today we may consider rebus puzzles to be nothing but a silly game, but to the ancients, they were a natural way to write a language. Other early scripts, like Mayan hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform, are built on the same principle.
The rebus approach may seem an unwieldy way to write a language, but it's a step up from non-linguistic pictograms. A picture of a chair and a table can only convey "chair and table," or at best an idea associated with a chair and table, such as the act of sitting down at a table. An abstract concept such as "charitable" is difficult to get across using pictograms. Writing systems built on the rebus system are a way of filling the void, but have the drawback (for us latter-day translators) that, unlike pictograms, they'll only work in one language. For a speaker of Latin, for example, pictograms of a chair (in Latin, sella) and a picture of a table (mensa) would never suggest the word for charitable (benignus).
I go into such detail about logo-phonetic systems because the Indus script appears to have about the right number of distinct symbols (250 to 400, depending on who's counting) to use this system. Knowing that, shouldn't it be easier to decipher the Indus script? Not really--the decipherers of Egyptian hieroglyphics had the help of the Rosetta stone, a bilingual or bitext (parallel texts of the same message in the unknown script and a known script). No bitext for the Indus script has yet been found.
A bitext is no guarantee that decipherment will be easy. Take the case of Etruscan writing, found in Italy. At a superficial level the script is easily deciphered, since the letters are close in form to archaic Greek and Latin alphabets. But the language remains largely uninterpreted. What's the difference? Given a piece of Etruscan writing, we have no difficulty pronouncing the words, but no idea what most of the words mean (think of a trained politician reading off a TelePrompTer). The trouble is that Etruscan is apparently unrelated to any language understood today. Champollion, the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphics, had the advantage of knowing Coptic, which he correctly suspected was the descendant of the ancient Egyptian language. Etruscan has left no descendants.
The dozens of Etruscan bitexts (with Latin, Greek, or Phoenician) aren't very helpful. All they really tell you is that a given block of mysterious text means such-and-such. There's no sure way to tell which Etruscan word corresponds to which word in the parallel text, since the order of ideas and number of words vary widely among the different languages. All is not lost, however. If, for example, a Latin word occurs several times in a text and a mystery word occurs the same number of times in the corresponding Etruscan text, you may be justified in supposing that they mean the same thing. But beware--often the two messages in a bilingual text are just paraphrases of each other, not word-for-word translations. Still, using methods like this, together with glosses (explicit translations of individual words in the documents), scholars have been able to determine--or at least make a reasonable guess at--the meanings of a couple hundred Etruscan words.
If we understand the language or a close relative or descendant of the language, it ought to be pretty easy to decipher the script, right? Not so fast. The Rongorongo script used on Easter Island after European contact almost certainly represents Rapa Nui, the well known Polynesian language of the Easter Islanders. But no one now remembers how the script symbols are meant to be read. Steven Fischer recently claimed to have deciphered Rongorongo, but his critics say "Wrong-o, wrong-o." I don't know if Fischer is right or wrong, but undeciphered scripts do seem to invite harebrained analysis. Jacques Guy bluntly calls them "kook attractors," but even serious scholars aren't immune. Hrozný, who correctly deciphered Hittite, later went down many wrong paths with other scripts.
The real kooks are those like Goropius Becanus of the Netherlands, who in 1580 proved to his satisfaction that Egyptian hieroglyphics represented Dutch. A Jesuit priest named Heras is one of scores who have claimed to decipher Indus script. Here's one of his translations: "There is no feast in the place outside the country of the Minas of the three fishes of the despised country of the woodpeckers." Whatever you say, padre.
You mention the 2,500 examples of the Indus script. The number of available texts now exceeds 4,000, but quantity is no indication of ease of decipherment. Some scripts have been translated with far fewer texts. Take Palmyrene, the first ancient script ever deciphered. A handful of inscriptions were found on the walls of the ruins of the city of Palmyra in Syria. Scholars knew from ancient Greek writers that the language spoken there was closely related to Syriac, a well known Semitic language. The script was obviously derived from the known Aramaic alphabet but many letters weren't immediately identifiable. Among the ruins were several bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Palmyrene. If you know the Aramaic alphabet, it's a fairly simple matter to use the identifiable Aramaic letters and the similarity of proper names in Greek and Palmyrene to get a good start. Then you can use your knowledge of Greek and Syriac to fill in the blanks. Your Syriac is a little rusty, you say? Not to worry--a decent Syriac dictionary will serve just as well. Soon after the first decent reproductions of Palmyrene inscriptions were published in Europe in the 1750s, Barthélemy in France and Swinton in England independently deciphered them, each taking just a few hours to finish the job. It was perhaps a bit more challenging than the cryptogram puzzles you can find in your Sunday paper, but not by much. Most decipherments, needless to say, are a good deal tougher to crack than that.
Returning to the matter at hand, is the lack of a bitext for the Indus script an insurmountable obstacle? Not necessarily. Some scripts have been deciphered without them, although not without a good deal of cleverness. Ugaritic writings, like Palmyrene, were found in Syria (in 1929), suggesting that they too might be a Semitic language. About two dozen symbols were used, suggesting an alphabetic script. Several of the words were only a single letter long, suggesting Ugaritic used a consonantal alphabet written without vowels (as was the case with other early Semitic alphabets such as Hebrew). Applying letter frequency analysis to the problem, Hans Bauer tentatively assigned the values L and M to two Ugaritic letters. In Semitic languages, L is common as a single-letter word, but not so common in suffixes and prefixes; M is the only letter that is really common in Semitic suffixes, prefixes, and as single-letter words.
On the assumption that related languages use similar words for common concepts (much as European languages have father/vater/pater), Bauer then used the M and L assignments to search the texts for the expected Semitic word for "king" (M-L-K or similar) and "kings" (M-L-K-K or similar). Proceeding along these lines, he found the words for "son" and the name of the god Ba`al, and so eventually determined the values of several other letters. His real insight was to guess that the word for axe might occur in the text inscribed on several axes. He turned out to be right about that, but chose the wrong phonetic values (he guessed G-R-Z-N as in Hebrew; the actual Ugaritic form was the related but not identical H-R-S-N). Édouard Dhorme later corrected the reading and finished the decipherment. One of the axe inscriptions said, in a language related to biblical Hebrew, "Unto the high priest doth this axe belong, wherefore shouldst thou keep thy hands off it!" Or something like that. It strikes me that Bauer's guess was pretty lucky--I have two axes in my garage but have yet to inscribe either with the word "axe." But hey, when the high priest tells me, "Inscribe the word 'axe' on this axe, chop-chop," I'm not about to wait around for him to axe me politely.
Ugaritic isn't the only language to have been deciphered without a bilingual. Georg Friedrich Grotefend made considerable progress in deciphering Persian cuneiform by looking for and finding proper names of Persian emperors known from ancient Greek and Hebrew sources. (Henry Rawlinson finished the decipherment in the 1830s.) The point is that bilinguals aren't necessary to decipher an unknown script. Still, in the case of Ugaritic and Persian, scholars had a pretty good handle on the language the script represented before they started work. In the case of Etruscan, where the language is largely unknown, complete decipherment thus far has eluded us.
What do we know about the language the Indus script wrote? We can say little for certain, but the best guess is that it's a language of the Dravidian family, an idea that has been around since at least the 1920s. Today most Dravidian speakers live in Sri Lanka and southern India, 800 miles or more from the Indus valley where the bulk of the Indus inscriptions have been found. But about a hundred thousand speakers of one Dravidian language, Brahui, live in western Pakistan and neighboring parts of Iran and Afghanistan, not too far west of the Indus. Contrary to earlier speculation about recent migrations, linguistic and genetic analyses show that they have been separated from other Dravidian speakers for at least several thousand years. Further evidence that Dravidian or related languages were once spoken in the general area comes from Linear Elamite inscriptions, found in the ruins of the ancient city of Susa in southwestern Iran. The script has been deciphered from a phonetic standpoint because of its similarity to Mesopotamian cuneiform, but as with Etruscan, the language remains largely unknown. A significant percentage of words in Linear Elamite appear to be of Dravidian origin, which could mean it is descended from a hypothetical Elamo-Dravidian ancestor language, or just that it borrowed a lot of words from a Dravidian language spoken nearby. In either case, the Elamite connection makes it seem more likely that a Dravidian or related language was spoken in the Indus valley when the inscriptions were made.
Many Indian nationalists, and some serious scholars, believe the Indus script writes a language of the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) branch of the Indo-European family, which includes Farsi (modern Persian), Sanskrit and Hindi. All things considered, this seems unlikely. The inscriptions go back to about 3200 B.C., which according to mainstream archaeological thinking is before any Indo-Europeans had come that far southeast. Another problem is that Indo-European peoples kept domesticated horses and used chariots and had other cultural traits not shared with the ancient Indus civilization. Indeed, according to the mainstream thinking, the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in the Indus Valley around 1800 B.C. is more likely to have been the end of the Harappan culture than the beginning of it.
If the Indus script turns out to write a language that is neither Indo-European nor Dravidian (or Elamo-Dravidian), then the chances of deciphering it are slim. In the words of Alice Kober, who helped decipher Linear B, "an unknown language written in an unknown script cannot be deciphered, bilingual or no bilingual." There are really no other decent candidates among known languages, so we would be left with an unknown language, and the prospects of complete decipherment would be as poor as with Etruscan.
But faint hope is better than none. Sumerian is a linguistic isolate, but the script has been phonetically deciphered, and the language partly deciphered. Most of the cuneiform scripts of Mesopotamia are direct descendants of the Sumerian script, though they're used to write unrelated languages. Babylonian and Akkadian and some other languages written in these related scripts were amenable to decipherment in part because they were members of the well understood Semitic family. The similarity of the scripts, the many Sumerian loanwords in these Semitic languages, and the unusually large number of bilingual texts have allowed scholars to reconstruct the Sumerian language with considerable success despite its being unrelated to any known language. No such combination of circumstances exists for the Indus script, and no discoveries along these lines are seriously expected.
What will we get if the Indus script is finally deciphered--great historical works that reveal the local political situation 5,000 years ago? Classic works of literature like the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh? Insight into ancient religious practices of the sort revealed by Ugaritic? No to all the above. The sad truth is that the longest known Indus inscription is only 17 symbols long. The bulk of the 4,000 or so Indus inscriptions are believed to be simple identifying marks. Most of the inscriptions are on seals or seal impressions, similar to signet rings or rubber stamps. So even if we decipher the script and the language, chances are we'll discover they say nothing more fascinating than "government property" or "John Smith" or "tax paid." As with the revelation that Linear B wrote an archaic form of Greek, if the Indus script is deciphered, the most interesting fact learned will be what language the ancient script wrote--that is, if it writes a language at all.
If it writes a language? They wouldn't call it the "Indus script" if it weren't a script, would they? Don't be so sure. When the first inscriptions were discovered in the 1870s in and around the Indus valley of Pakistan, and when the early cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were excavated in the 1920s, archaeologists assumed that civilization and writing always went together--a complex urban culture couldn't possibly develop without writing. The Indus sites were urban; ergo, the inscriptions were writing.
Today we recognize that civilization and writing don't always go together. The Inca empire, for example, was urban but lacked true writing. Historian Steve Farmer now questions the assumption that the Indus script is true writing. In a recent paper, he and two linguists compare the Indus script with medieval European heraldry. Like heraldry, they say, the Indus script may consist of discrete conventional elements that serve as identification marks but don't encode a spoken language.
This controversial idea has some points in its favor. Considering the corpus of texts as a whole, there's a considerable amount of repetition among symbols, as would be expected if they wrote a spoken language. But there's less repetition than expected within the texts, even considering their brevity. Further, several systems of pictograms from around the world--for example, the Vinca signs of southeastern Europe, written about 4000 B.C.--resemble the Indus script in their use of conventional symbols, but nobody believes they code a written language.
Traditionalists have some points in their favor too. The Indus script was linear, that is, usually written with symbols following one another in a line, rather than being placed randomly or in some other geometric pattern. Linearity is found in most writing, though not exclusively so. More to the point, the characters often crowd at the end of a line, as if the writer wanted to avoid breaking up a word. This is a distinctive feature of true writing. The comparison with heraldry may not hold water either. Hittite hieroglyphics were initially considered heraldry by serious linguists but were eventually found to be true writing and deciphered. Much the same has been said about many other undeciphered scripts likewise shown to be true writing.
Still, Farmer feels so strongly that the Indus script is not a real script that he has offered a $10,000 reward for proof that it is true writing. He will accept as proof an authenticated inscription more than 50 symbols long. Farmer thinks the extant texts are all so short because they don't write a language. The pro-language side thinks the longer texts once produced in Harappa and other cities have been lost because they were written on perishable surfaces. Certainly a long text would be a great gift to modern science. I just wish they wouldn't use the lame excuse that they couldn't give it to us because they ran out of Harappan paper.
Further reading
Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson, 2002
The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script by Maurice Pope, revised edition, 1999
"The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization" by Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel in Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, Dec.13, 2004. This and related items can be accessed from Steve Farmer's download page at www.safarmer.com/downloads/.
Revelation 13: The English King James version Bible code - Part 16a - Deciphering the Indus Script, ancient writing from India
The "Bible Code" is a way of looking for hidden prophecies and passages in the Bible, by using a software program to search for messages in the Old Testament Hebrew text.
The spaces between words are eliminated, so that the Old Testament is a continuous block of Hebrew letters. Then, by skipping letters at a programmed interval, the program searches for words. There appear to be patterns to the passages where the words are found, and what words are clustered together. The Bible Code also works in English in the King James Bible, as I show with the Bible Code matrices on this site. This page 16a is on the Indus Script, ancient writing from 2500 B.C. - 1800 B.C. that was discovered in settlements in India and Pakistan, that is still a mystery since it has never been deciphered. We will see here if the Bible Code can help us understand it.
The following Bible Code searches were done with Codefinder Bible Code software, on the King James Bible in English, where I have found the Bible Code also works. Also see the other pages on the King James Bible Code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
By using Bible code software I searched for some words in the King James New Testament and Old Testament (separately). I found that there is evidence of English Bible code patterns that the software found by skipping varying intervals, in the King James Old Testament or New Testament, made into a block of solid text, creating what is called a Bible Code matrix.
Note that it is important to look at other words and phrases in the matrix, as well as the search words, for meaning; some of these I have underlined. On this page I searched for matrices related to the Indus Script, ancient writing from India and Pakistan. A book I referred to in writing this page: "Lost Languages", by Andrew Robinson, published by McGraw-Hill, 2002.
A common symbol in the Indus Script is a symbol that resembles a fish, and it has many variations. There is little agreement on what it means. So we will use "fish" as a search word, and also "means", as in "fish means" (meaning of the fish symbol). The three matrices shown on this page resulted from a -10,000 to 10,000 ELS (skip) search in the New Testament, with the keyword "DECODE" (as in decode or decipher the script).
The first matrix at Mark 15:28 - Romans 1:4 contains:
-- DECODE (ELS skip=6795)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
-- FISH
-- MEANS
Note "THEY MIGHT ATTAIN" after MEANS, and below it HOLINESS where FISH is. Perhaps this indicates the meaning of the Fish symbol: a title like Minister, Father, Dr., Mr., indicating ones religious level, education, or occupation, and status in society. I think that some of the Indus Script seal drawings shown in the book "Lost Languages" are actually like Indus family Coats of Arms with a motto or saying, such as the ones on page 280 of a cow like creature, having different symbols including the fish symbol. Chapter X of "Lost Languages" discusses some of the theories on the Indus Script and what the common fish symbol means, which has several variations and sometimes occurs two or three times in a row:
-- Sir Flinders Petrie's theory that it indicates an inspector or title, with the multiple fish signs being different degrees of inspector.
-- Kinnier Wilson's theory that it literally stands for a fish, in allotments of fish rations.
-- Walter Fairservis Jr.'s theory tries to relate the signs to the Indian Dravidian language, and concludes that the different fish symbols relate to rank and occupation: priest, chief, etc..
Therefore I think that the Walter Fairservis theory is backed up by what I see in this Bible Code matrix, the fish symbol is related to ranks and occupation, and the seals shown on pages 280, 286, 287, 293 with long-horned cattle and the fish sign are actually like Coats of Arms of priests and/or persons of authority. The fish symbol indicates along with the other symbols an upper class person's rank and occupation, religious status (priest, Bishop, etc.), position, wealth, motto, and/or story. This makes sense with how beautifully made these seals are. The seals may have been stamped on the person's property and purchases. They are similar to Heraldry, Coats of Arms in Europe, which had mottos or sayings on them, and various symbols and animals. Also see this paper: "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization" by Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, (at www.safarmer.com), where their theory is that the Indus Civilization did not have true writing, but rather these seals are just similar to heraldry. But heraldry also can contain writing. So I would suggest that many of the seals are heraldry, coats of arms, but they may also contain true writing as European heraldry does: as mottos, etc..
Other relevant words and phrases that I have underlined in this matrix:
-- WHOSE IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPT (from Luke 20:24, King James version: "Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's.")
-- WROTE ON THE GROUND
-- MADE KNOWN UNTO (as in decipher)
-- SPOKEN TO YOU
-- STRANGE THINGS TO OUR EARS
-- MOREOVER YE SEE AND HEAR
-- ART
This next matrix at Acts 1:6 - 19:16 contains:
-- DECODE (ELS=-1509)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
-- FISH
-- MEANS
Other relevant words and phrases in this matrix:
-- FOR IT IS WRITTEN
-- BREAKING OF (as in breaking the code of the language)
-- THE ELDERS AND THE SCRIBES
-- SPEECHLESS HEARING A VOICE BUT SEEING ("speechless" undeciphered language)
-- AND GOD WHICH KNOWETH 
The next matrix at John 4:34 - 1 Corinth. 14:16 contains:
-- DECODE (ELS=-8356)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
-- MEANS
Also in this matrix:
-- WORKS SAY NOT
-- HAVE WRITTEN
-- FOR AS YET THEY KNEW NOT THE SCRIPT (an undeciphered language)
-- LETTERS
To test the theory that some of the seals are forms of Heraldry, (Coat-of-Arms), I did a New Testament search with keyword HERALDRY and I found this matrix at Luke 19:38 - 2 Corinth. 1:19:
-- HERALDRY (ELS=39860)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
Other relevant words and phrases in this matrix:
-- GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH FOR HE SHALL NOT SPEAK (an undeciphered language "shall not speak")
-- AND WHEN HIS EYES WERE OPENED HE SAW (deciphering of the script?)
-- SURNAME
-- THINGS MEAN
-- CHIEF MEN AMONG
-- HEATHEN (referring to non-Christian pagans)
-- NOT UNDERSTAND AND SEEING YES SHALL SEE
-- HAD NOT KNOWN
-- TEMPLE
-- THE CONSCIENCE OF HIM
-- GREAT GODDESS DIANA, AND OF THE IMAGE
The next New Testament matrix is at Mark 2:17 - 1 Corinth. 9:5, and has search words:
-- LITERATE (ELS=-19656)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
The next New Testament matrix is at John 5:30-6:11, and it contains search words:
-- WRITING (ELS=1)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
The next New Testament matrix is at Luke 9:60 - John 15:16, and it used search words:
-- UNICORN (as the single horn cattle in some seals has been described, ELS=19243)
-- INDUS
-- SCRIPT
-- MEANS
Note that also in this matrix is CHIEF PRIESTS AND OUR RULERS and THE KING which may indicate that the Unicorn symbol is used to identify a person of very high rank: a chief priest or ruler.
You can also watch my videos on subjects discussed on this web site.
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New Code to Decipher Indus Script
Source: Times of India, February 15, 1994
New Delhi: The key to unravelling the secrets of the great Indus Valley civilization lies in the Rig Veda, according to a German writer, who has developed a new method to decipher and decode the Indus script, that has defied researchers and scriptographers for centuries.
Experts are no doubt impressed by the method, but would like more in-depth study beore they put the seal of approval. Of the few scholars, who have claimed to have succeeded in deciphering the Indus script, the method evolved by the German, Mr Egbert Rochter Ushanas, gives a new dimension to the tantalising search.
After over six years of research, he has come up with a method that relies heavily on the verses of the ancient Rig Veda, and the premise that the holy scripture was influenced by the Indus way of thinking. He has found striking - if not parallel - similarities between the translations of the motifs on Indus seals and the verses in the Rig Veda.
(The news item provides the details of the connection between Rig Vedic hymns and the writings on Indus seals.)
According to him (mr Ushanas), it is impossible to arrive at a translation of an Indus inscription without the Rig Veda for comparison. All the Indus signs on the seals, including the number signs, were originally names of gods.
Mr M.C. Joshi, former director general of the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) is clearly excited about the conclusions. The deduction that the inscriptions have parallels in the Rig Veda may need further probe, but the methodology adopted by Mr Richter-Ushanas certainly has an interesting logic, he told the TOINS.
Excerpts on the decipherment of Indus script
Source: The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism
By Shrikant G. Talageri (Voice of India), 1993.
The discovery of the Indus Civilization by the archaeologists took the academically recognised history of India 3000 years back from the days of Asoka, and about half that number years back from the postulated period of the Aryan Invasion.
But the liguistic identity of the Indus people became a major subject of controversy. The major sites of the Indus Civilization cover roughly the same regions as the Rigveda testifies for its composers. As Sethana puts it, "Rigveda no less than the Harappa culture flourished in the Indus valley." (Karpasa in Prehistoric, A Chronilogical and Cultural Clue, by KD Sethna, 1981). Hence, while protagonists of the invasion theory classified the Indus Civilization as "Dravidian", others classified it as "Aryan".
The identification of the language spoken by the Indus prople is therefore of very crucial significance for Indian History. If they spoke a Dravidian language, it would certainly corroborate the Aryan invasion theory according to shich a Dravidian civilization in the north was destroyed by invading Aryans. If, however, they spoke an Indo-European language, it would certainly demolish the invasion theory, since the Indus civilization is archaelogically dated more than a millenniem and a half - almost two millenniums - before the alleged date (1500 BC) of the invasion, and its roots go even further back by more than a millennium.
But the main problem in identifying the language of the Indus people was that they did not leave behind documents and inscriptions in their language. The only things, in this connection, excavated by archaeologists from the Indus sites were thousands of small seals (used for stamping purposes) made of seatite, terracotta or copper, depicting figures of human beings and animals, and bearing short inscriptions of a few letters each, in an unknown script which has been simply called the Indus or Harappan script.
The major obstacle in deciphering the script was the inadequacy of the available material. The script was an absolutely unknown one, it was not found anywhere in conjunction with another known script and the inscrip- tions on the seals were nowhere of any great length than a few letters each...
....many attempts were made to decipher the Indus script, by individual scholars like Langdon, Hunter, Hronzy, Mahadevan and others, and by teams of Finnish and Soviet scholars. All these attepts, however, met with failure. Moreover, these scholars set out on the exercise of attempted decipherment was based on arbitrary and whimsical methods. Moreover, these scholars set out on the exercise with two preconceived notions: first, that the script could not be an alphabatic one, and could only be pictographic- ideographic one; and second, that the language of the inscriptions was a Dravidian one (or, in the case of some Indian scholars, that it was sanskrit)....
Having taken two arbitrary steps, in presuming the script to be a pictographic-ideographic one, and in presuming the language to be Dravidian, the scholars then proceeded to set out on a spree of reckless and whimsical interpretations: each individual letter of the Indus script was taken up and arbitrarily presumed to stand for a particular object or concept; then the letter was "read" by giving it the sound-value of the particular present-day Tamil or general Dravidian word which was arbit- rarily presumed to be the one word, out of many, which best expressed that object or concept; then that letter, on different seals, was variously read with different arbitrary variations of that sound-value, each variation being again arbitrarily connected up with other similar present-day Tamil or general Dravidian words or word-parts.
Using these arbitrary and whimsical methods, it is not very surprising that these scholars came up with a hundred diferent, even diametrically opposite "readings" for any single seal, and ended up tying themselves up into knots and convincing no one but themselves and their committed admirers.
However, Dr. S.R. Rao, the eminent archaeologist, decided to be less speculative in his method. He refused to presume the identity of the Indus language to be either Aryan or Dravidian, and preferred to await the results, if any, to decide its identity.
He noticed two basic facts about the Indus script which had not caught the attention of the earlier scholars. Firstly, he noticed that of the 400 to 500 letters found on the seals, some letters seemed to be basic letters, while most of the other letters seemed to be those same basic letters with some additional signs attached to them. Secondly, he noticed that the script was, as generally believed, absolutely uniform over the entire period of the Indus civilization. Those seals, which were later in time, seemed to have less complicated letters, thereby indicating an evolution.
He, therefore, gathered together all the data on the different inscrip- tions and classified them periodwise. He also separated the basic letters from those with additional signs, and arrived at a small number of basic letters.
Then, he decided to examine, without prejudice, those scripts and alphabates of the world which were closest, in time, to the Indus script, to see whether those scripts or alphabates could give any clue as to the sound-value which could be assigned to these basic letters.
The oldest extant inscription of the Indian Brahmi script dated to around 450 BC or so, while the Indus sites excavated dated down to the mid-2nd millenium BC, leaving a gap of a thousand years.
However, in West Asia, the South Arabic and Old Aramaic alphabetes had come into prominence by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and the Ahiram Sarcophagus (1300 BC) and Gezer potsherd (1600 BC) provided the earlier stages of these West Asian scripts. And here Dr. Rao struck gold. He found that many of the basic letters of the Indus script bore resemblance to the letters of these two West Asian alphabets.
He decided to assign to each Indus basic letter the same sound-value as the West Asian letter which closely resembled it. After assigning these values to the Indus letters, he proceeded to try to read the inscriptions on the Indus seals. The language that emerged turned out to be a "Aryan" one.
The above is rather simplistic narraration of the procedure adopted by Dr. Rao, which is given in detail in the two relavant books: Lothal and the Indus Civilization, The Decipherment of the Indus Script.
Among the many words yielded by Dr. Rao's decipherment are the numerals aeka, tra, chatus, panta, happta/sapta, dasa, dvadasa and sata (1,3,4,5,7 10,100) and the names of Vedic personalities like Atri, Kasyapa, Gara, Manu, Sara, Trita, Daksa, Druhu, Kasu, etc.
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Book on civilisation of Indus Valley launched
ISLAMABAD: Asian Study Group (ASG) on Thursday held a ceremony to launch a book titled 'Melluhas of the Indus Valley (8000 BC-500BC)' at National Art Gallery (NAG).
Authored by Naeem Tahir, Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) chief executive and director general (DG), 'Melluhas of the Indus Valley (8000 BC-500BC)' is based on a story of rise and fall of the people of the Indus Valley and their culture, civilization and disappearances.
Dr Fazal Dad Kakar, Archeology and Museums DG, Kishwar Naheed, a poetess and human rights activist, diplomats, historians, foreigners, art lovers and a large number of students attended the book launch.
In his introductory speech, Tahir stated that Melluhas were mentioned in a Mesopotamian inscription of the time of Sargon, a famous ruler of Akkad (2334 BC- 2279 BC). He said linked Melluha with archeological evidence of some 30 Indus seals and artifacts in the Near East.
Dr Dad Kakar said Tahir had an exceptional interest in study of national heritage. "He has made a thorough study of archeological data and has also looked at many other sources to reconstruct the contribution of the people of the Indus Valley civilization," he said.
Kakar said Tahir had tried to lift the veil from a period sometimes referred to as 'dark'. "This period covered the times when little was known of what had happened to the great people after building a great civilization and where they disappeared to," he said.
He said the book would certainly invite further research. "It is written in his inimitable literary style that will hold the attention of readers," he said.
'Melluhas of the Indus Valley' contains 12 chapters in 268 pages with more than 200 coloured images.
Late Dr Ahmed Hassan Dani, Professor Emeritus at Quaid-e-Azam University, wrote in his introductory note on the book that 'Melluhas of the Indus Valley' was based on ten years of research, dedication and hard work of Tahir. "This study speaks about the people who were instrumental in building our great past," commented late Dr Dani.
Besides launch of the book, a dance programme titled 'Songs of Love' was also arranged in the auditorium of NAG. Akhtar Chanal sang songs of love.
From the wild and rugged mountains of Balochistan, a herdsman by occupation and a folk-singer by reputation, Chanal had earned Pride of Performance. He enthralled the large audience through his captivating voice.
| I | International Organizations |
India is a founding member of the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank). India is also a member of other organizations of the UN system, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), International Labor Organization (ILO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Health Organization (WHO), World Trade Organization (WTO), and Universal Postal Union. Since 1961 India has been a member of the Nonaligned Movement, a group of nations that did not align themselves with either the United States or the USSR during the Cold War. In keeping with its policy of nonalignment, India has not joined regional security arrangements. However, India has contributed troops and observers to international peacekeeping missions around the world. India is one of seven member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which was founded in 1985 to provide a forum for regional economic and social issues.
| VII | History of India |
India's history begins not with independence in 1947, but more than 4,500 years earlier, when the name India referred to the entire subcontinent, including present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. The earliest of India's known civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization (about 2500 to 1700 bc), was known for its highly specialized artifacts and stretched throughout northern India. Another early culture—the Vedic culture—dates from approximately 1500 bc and is considered one of the sources for India's predominantly Hindu culture and for the foundation of several important philosophical traditions. India has been subject to influxes of peoples throughout its history, some coming under arms to loot and conquer, others moving in to trade and settle. India was able to absorb the impact of these intrusions because it was able to assimilate or tolerate foreign ideas and people. Outsiders who came to India during the course of its history include the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the Kushānas from Central Asia, the Mongols under Genghis Khan, Muslim traders and invaders from the Middle East and Central Asia, and finally the British and other Europeans. India also disseminated its civilization outward to Sri Lanka and much of Southeast Asia. Buddhism, which originated in India, spread even farther.
Central to Indian history are the people of India who established complex political systems, whether local kingdoms or mighty empires, in which learning and religion flourished. Until the modern industrial era, India was a land famed for its economic as well as cultural wealth. Europeans visited the country to trade for the finest cotton textiles as well as spices. Eventually, the British colonized the region. Their exploitation of India's economic wealth and the subsequent destruction of its indigenous industry provoked and then fueled a nationalist movement, eventually forcing the British to grant India (partitioned into India and Pakistan) its independence in 1947. Since that time India has developed into a vibrant democracy, making slow but steady progress in development.
| A | Early Civilizations |
| A | 1 | Indus Valley Civilization |
For almost 1,000 years, from around 2500 bc to around 1700 bc, a civilization flourished on the valley of the Indus River and its tributaries, extending as far to the northeast as Delhi and south to Gujarāt. The Indus Valley civilization, India's oldest known civilization, is famed for its complex culture and specialized artifacts. Its cities were carefully planned, with elaborate water-supply systems, sewage facilities, and centralized granaries. The cities had common settlement patterns and were built with standard sizes and weights of bricks, evidence that suggests a coherent civilization existed throughout the region. The people of the Indus civilization used copper and bronze, and they spun and wove cotton and wool. They also produced statues and other objects of considerable beauty, including many seals decorated with images of animals and, in a few cases, what appear to be priests. The seals are also decorated with a script known as the Indus script, a pictographic writing system that has not been deciphered. The Indus civilization is thought to have undergone a swift decline after 1800 bc, although the cause of the decline is still unknown; theories point to extreme climatic changes or natural disasters.
| A | 2 | Aryan Settlement and the Vedic Age |
In about 1500 bc the Aryans, a nomadic people from Central Asia, settled in the upper reaches of the Indus, Yamuna, and Gangetic plains. They spoke a language from the Indo-European family and worshiped gods similar to those of later-era Greeks and northern Europeans. The Aryans are particularly important to Indian history because they originated the earliest forms of the sacred Vedas (orally transmitted texts of hymns of devotion to the gods, manuals of sacrifice for their worship, and philosophical speculation). By 800 bc the Aryans ruled in most of northern India, occasionally fighting among themselves or with the peoples of the land they were settling. There is no evidence of what happened to the people displaced by the Aryans. In fact they may not have been displaced at all but instead may have been incorporated in Aryan culture or left alone in the hills of northern India.
The Vedas, which are considered the core of Hinduism, provide much information about the Aryans. The major gods of the Vedic peoples remain in the pantheon of present-day Hindus; the core rituals surrounding birth, marriage, and death retain their Vedic form. The Vedas also contain the seeds of great epic literature and philosophical traditions in India. One example is the Mahabharata, an epic of the battle between two noble families that dates from 400 bc but probably draws on tales composed much earlier. Another example is the Upanishads, philosophical treatises that were composed between the 8th and the 5th centuries bc.
As the Aryans slowly settled into agriculture and moved southeast through the Gangetic Plain, they relinquished their seminomadic style of living and changed their social and political structures. Instead of a warrior leading a tribe, with a tribal assembly as a check on his power, an Aryan chieftain ruled over territory, with its society divided into hereditary groups. This structure became the beginning of the caste system, which has survived in India until the present day. The four castes that emerged from this era were the Brahmans (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), the Vaisyas (merchants, farmers, and traders), and the Sudras (artisans, laborers, and servants).
| B | The Emergence of Kingdoms and Empires |
By about the 7th century bc territories combined and grew, giving rise to larger kingdoms that stretched from what is now Afghanistan to what is now the state of Bihār. Cities became important during this time, and, shortly thereafter, systems of writing developed. Reform schools of Hinduism emerged, challenging the orthodox practices of the Vedic tradition and presenting alternative religious world views. Two of those schools developed into separate religions: Buddhism and Jainism.
|
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Ancient India and Hinduism to 1000 BCE
Mohenjo-Daro ruins 
[ A reader suggests a Hindu point of view expressed in The Invasion that Never Was, by Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar, and the website "Hindu Wisdom."]
.
The Lost Civilization of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa
Sometime around 6000 BCE a nomadic herding people settled into villages in the Mountainous region just west of the Indus River. There they grew barley and wheat using sickles with flint blades, and they lived in small houses built with adobe bricks. After 5000 BCE the climate in their region changed, bringing more rainfall, and apparently they were able to grow more food, for they grew in population. They began domesticating sheep, goats and cows and then water buffalo. Then after 4000 BCE they began to trade beads and shells with distant areas in central Asia and areas west of the Khyber Pass. And they began using bronze and working metals.
The climate changed again, bringing still more rainfall, and on the nearby plains, through which ran the Indus River, grew jungles inhabited by crocodiles, rhinoceros, tigers, buffalo and elephants. By around 2600, a civilization as grand as that in Mesopotamia and Egypt had begun on the Indus Plain and surrounding areas. By 2300 BCE this civilization had reached maturity and was trading with Mesopotamia. Seventy or more cities had been built, some of them upon buried old towns. There were cities from the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains to Malwan in the south. There was the city of Alamgirpur in the east and Sutkagen Dor by the Arabian Sea in the west.
One of these cities was Mohenjo-daro (Mohenjodaro), on the Indus river some 250 miles north of the Arabian Sea, and another city was Harappa, 350 miles to the north on a tributary river, the Ravi. Each of these two cities had populations as high as around 40,000. Each was constructed with manufactured, standardized, baked bricks. Shops lined the main streets of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, and each city had a grand marketplace. Some houses were spacious and with a large enclosed yard. Each house was connected to a covered drainage system that was more sanitary than what had been created in West Asia. And Mohenjo-daro had a building with an underground furnace (a hypocaust) and dressing rooms, suggesting bathing was done in heated pools, as in modern day Hindu temples.
The people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa shared a sophisticated system of weights and measures, using an arithmetic with decimals. Whether these written symbols were a part of a full-blown written language is a matter of controversy among scholars, some scholars pointing out that this and the brevity of grave site inscriptions and symbols on ritual objects are not evidence of a fully developed written language.
The people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa mass-produced pottery with fine geometric designs as decoration, and they made figurines sensitively depicting their attitudes. They grew wheat, rice, mustard and sesame seeds, dates and cotton. And they had dogs, cats, camels, sheep, pigs, goats, water buffaloes, elephants and chickens.
Being agricultural, the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa had religions that focused on fertility, on the earth as a giver of life. They had a fertility goddess, whose naked image as a figurine sat in a niche in the wall of their homes. Like the Egyptians they also had a bull god. They worshiped tree gods, and they had a god with three heads and an erect phallus, which they associated with fertility. Like some others, including the Egyptians, they buried objects with their dead. And they had taboos, especially about cleanliness.
The Disappearance of the Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Civilization
Between the years 1800 and 1700 BCE, civilization on the Indus Plain all but vanished. What befell these people is unknown. One suspected cause is a shift in the Indus River. Another is that people dammed the water along the lower portion of the Indus River without realizing the consequences: temporary but ruinous flooding up river, flooding that would explain the thick layers of silt thirty feet above the level of the river at the site of Mohenjo-daro. Another suspected cause is a decline in rainfall.
Agriculture declined and people abandoned the cities in search of food. Later, a few people of a different culture settled in some of the abandoned cities, in what archaeologists call a "squatter period." Then the squatters disappeared. Knowledge of the Mohenjo-daro and Harappa civilization died -- until archaeologists discovered the civilization in the mid-19th century.
The Aryan Invasions
If rainfall declined in the Indus region between 1800 and 1700 BCE, around 1500 BCE it increased again, making the Indus Plain better able to support life. It has been estimated by various scholars that between 1500 and 1200 an illiterate, pastoral people migrated from the northwest, perhaps the steppe lands of central Russia through what is now Afghanistan, onto the Indus Plain. These migrants were to be called Aryans and to be classified as Indo-Europeans, their speech related to modern European languages except Basque, Finnish and Hungarian. The Aryans are believed to have come to the Indus Plain on horseback and oxcart, in waves separated perhaps by decades or longer.
Like other pastoral people, they were warriors. They had two-wheeled chariots like the Hyksos, and coming through the mountains and the Khyber Pass they had the precious wheels of their chariots packed away on their carts.
The Aryans were familiar with prowling and hunting with bow and arrow. They enjoyed chariot racing, gambling and fighting. Like other pastoral peoples, men dominated the women. Like the pastoral Hebrews each family was ruled by an authoritarian male. And each Aryan tribe was ruled by a king who felt obliged to consult with tribal councils.
Gods, Creation and Human Mortality
Like other pastoral people, the Aryans were storytellers. They had centuries old sacred hymns, myths and oral history -- stories that expressed their desire to please the gods. Like the Hebrews, the Aryans had a father god of the heaven, sky and atmosphere: Dyaus Pitar (sky father). They had a male god of thunder and rain called Indra, who was a god also of that other awesome disturbance -- war. Indra was also called the "breaker of forts." And he was what the Aryan men thought a man should be: a warrior with courage, strength and energy who enjoyed drinking and making war.
The Aryans had a god called Agni who was fire. They believed that Agni hungrily devoured the animals that they sacrificed in their rituals of burning. These sacrifices were performed by priests to obtain from their gods the gifts of children, success in war, wealth, health, longevity, food, drink or anything else that contributed to their happiness.
The Aryans enjoyed singing around their campfires, and they had a hymn about creation. Like many other creation myths, theirs described the world as beginning with the kind of creation they understood: birth. They believed that their father god, Dyaus Pitar, the embodiment of sky, had mated with his own daughter, the goddess that was earth.
A later Aryan version of The Creation reads as follows:
In the beginning was nothing, neither heaven nor earth nor space in between. Then Non-being became spirit and said: "Let me be!" He warmed himself, and from this was born fire. He warmed himself further, and from this was born light.
The Aryans had a story that described humanity as having been created with virtue and everlasting life. According to this story, the gods were concerned that humanity would become gods like themselves, and to guard against this the gods plotted humanity's downfall. The gods talked Dyaus Pitar into creating a woman who lusted after sensual pleasures and who aroused sexual desires in men. According to this story, the world had become overcrowded because humankind lived forever like the gods. So Dyaus Pitar decided to make humankind mortal, and he created the goddess Death -- not a goddess who ruled over death, but death itself. This creation of mortality for humankind pleased the gods, for it left them separate and of a higher rank than humans.
According to this story, Dyaus Pitar proclaimed that he did not create the goddess Death from anger. And the goddess Death was at first reluctant to carry out the task assigned her, but she finally did so, while weeping. Her tears were diseases that brought death at an appropriate time. To create more death, the goddess Death created desire and anger in people -- emotions that led to their killing each other.
Settlement, Conquest and Autocracy
With the passing of generations, the waves of Aryan tribes that had come to the Indus Plain spread out across the region. They warred against local, non-Aryan people, and they settled in areas that provided them with pasture for their animals. They grouped in villages and built homes of bamboo or light wood -- homes without statues or art. They began growing crops. Their environment supplied them with all they needed, but, responding to their traditions, and perhaps impulses, the different Aryan tribes warred against each other -- wars that might begin with the stealing of cattle. The word for obtaining cattle, gosati, became synonymous with making war. And their warring grew in scale, including a war between what was said to be ten kings.
Gradually, Aryan tribal kings were changing from tribal leaders to autocratic rulers. Aryan kings had begun associating their power with the powers of their gods rather than the approval of their fellow tribesmen. They had begun allying themselves with priests. And, as in West Asia, kings were acquiring divinity. By taxing their subjects, these kings could create an army that was theirs rather than an instrument of the tribe. And these kings allied themselves with the horse-owning warrior aristocracy to which they often belonged.
Caste and Religious Blending
In the decades around 1000 BCE came a shortage of rainfall, and, running from drought, Aryan tribes trekked eastward along the foot of the Himalayan mountains, where jungles were less dense and rivers easier to cross. They entered the plains of the Ganges Valley. And some Aryan priests wandered ahead of their tribe and tried to evangelize among the tribes they came upon. They found these societies with a more egalitarian organization than they had, and they despised them for not having kings as autocratic as theirs.
By now, the Aryans had iron tools and weapons, iron having spread eastward through Persia. And with their superior weaponry and self-confidence, the Aryans fought those who resisted their advance, the Aryans believing that their gods were on their side and that resistance from local peoples was inspired by demons. Gradually the Aryans spread over much of the Ganges Valley, clearing land for themselves by calling on their god of fire, Agni.
Some Aryans migrated south along the western coast of the Indian continent, and some Aryans went down the eastern coast, to an area called Kalinga. A few Aryans went as far south as the island that in Hindu literature was called Lanka. And some Aryan priests went as missionaries to southern India, where they found a dark-skinned people called Dravidians. Occasionally the missionaries felt mistreated. They sought the aide of their king, and their king's warrior nobles came south to their rescue. But southern India remained independent of Aryan rule.
The Beginnings of Caste
With the Aryans settling alongside local peoples, a complex hierarchy of classes developed that would be called caste. At the top of this class ranking were the priests and their entire families: the Brahmins. Also at the top were the warrior-aristocrats, the Kshatriyas, whose job it was to practice constantly for combat. Neither the Brahmins nor the Kshatriyas conceded superiority to the other, but they agreed that the other classes were lower than they. The first of these lower classes were the Vaishas and their families: Aryans who tended cattle and served the Brahmins and Kshatriyas in others ways. The lowest class were the conquered, darker, non-Aryans who were servants for the Aryans: the Shudras. The Aryans made these four classifications a part of their mythology. The four groups, it was claimed, came from the body of the god Prajapati, the Brahmins from the god's mouth, the warriors from the god's arms, the tenders of cattle from his legs, and the Shudras from his feet.
This class system was less rigid than it would be centuries later. People from different classes could dine together. A man from a non-Brahmin family could still become a priest and therefore a Brahmin. And although marriage within one's own class was preferred, there was no absolute restriction against marrying people from a different class. Brahmins married women from a lower caste whom they found attractive, but this was a male prerogative. A girl from a Brahmin family was allowed to marry only someone also from a Brahmin family.
Blending of Pastoral and Agricultural Religion
The Common Era (CE) is equivalent to Christianity's Anno Domini (AD) -- in the year of the Lord.
Like the mix between the agricultural religion of the Canaanites and the pastoral religion of the Hebrews, in India a mix developed between the pastoral religion of the Aryans and the local religions of the conquered. This mix came with Aryan males marrying non-Aryan females, and it came with some among the conquered accepting the religion of their conquerors -- much as those in the Americas the 1500s CE [note] would accept the religion of their Christian conquerors. In India this blend of Aryan and local religions became known as Hinduism, a word derived from the Aryan word Sindu, the name the Aryans gave to the Indus River. The Hindu religion ranged from veneration of traditional Aryan gods by urban intellectuals to the worship of a diversity of local, rural, agricultural deities.
Hindu Scripture and Sin
Maybe before and maybe around the same time that writing spread to the Hebrews, it appeared among the Aryans in India. Some Brahmins considered it a sacrilege to change from communicating their religion orally. But a sufficient number of Brahmins supported the innovation, and they put traditional Aryan stories into writing, in what became known as the Vedas -- Veda meaning wisdom. The Vedas became wisdom literature, a literature that would be considered an infallible source of timeless, revealed truth.
The most important of the Vedas was the Rig Veda, which consisted of hymns or devotional incantations of 10,562 written lines in ten books. Another Veda, the Yajur Veda, focused less on devotional incantations and more on sacrificial procedures as a means of pleasing the gods. A third Veda, the Sama Veda, was mainly concerned with the god Indra. Indra was now seen as the god that had created the cosmos, the ruler of the atmosphere, and the god of thunderbolts and rain -- Dyaus Pitar having diminished in importance. Also mentioned in the Sama Veda were other gods of the sky and atmosphere: Varuna, guardian of the cosmic order; Agni, the god of fire; and Surya, the sun. A fourth Veda, the Atharya Veda, was a collection of 730 hymns, totaling six thousand stanzas, containing prescriptions for prayer, rituals for curing diseases, expiations against evils, protection against enemies and sorcerers, and prescriptions for creating charms for love, health, prosperity, influence, and a long life.
Among the Vedas were descriptions of funeral rites that included cremation, and there were descriptions of lengthy and solemn rituals for marriage. The Vedas implied that humanity is basically good, and, in contrast to the view of sin in West Asia, sin among the Hindus was viewed as a force from outside oneself -- an invader. Hinduism's Vedas saw evil as the work of demons that might take the form of a human or some other creature, which could be removed by the prayers and rituals of priests.
The Origins of Hinduism
The word "Hindu" was created by the British while they held India as a colony. Among those people called Hindus are believers in a divine origin of their religion. They take pride in Hindu scripture being the oldest scripture among the great religions of today, claiming that Hindu scripture was composed sometime around 3000 BCE by several sages in direct contact with their god, Krishna. They claim there is no evidence that outsiders -- Aryans -- invaded the Indus Valley and brought Hindu scripture with them. They blame the notion of this invasion on Christian scholars from the 19th century.
The Vedas, however, are said to reflect the rural lifestyle of the Aryans -- who were pastoral warriors with horses -- as opposed to the more urban culture of the Mohenjo-daro and Harappan civilization (Internet search, Ancient Indus Valley Script: Dani Interview. Horses were absent among the many representations of animals in Harappan civilization.
Recommended Books
Hinduism, Its Historical Development by Troy Wilson Organ, 1974
Origins and Development of Classical Hinduism, by A.L. Basham, 1991
A History of Ancient India by L.P. Sharma, 1992
A History of India, 4th Edition, by Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, 1998
A New History of India, 5th Edition, by Stanley A. Wolpert, 1997
http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch05.htm
| Hindu Religion |
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Hinduism Vedas Upanishads Puranas Epics Geeta and Dharma Shastra Shankaracharya & Ramanuja Vaishnava & Shakti Schools Hinduism in South India Hinduism reform movements Before discussing Hindu religion it would be useful and necessary to understand the meaning of the word "Hindu": it has its origins in the word "Sindhu", Sanskrit for the river Indus. A philological search would reveal that the people living around and to the east of the river Indus were the ones called "Hindus", Islamic invaders used the word 'Hind' to describe India during medieval period ( In Arabic India is still called ' Al Hind') and they described the people living in India as Hindus. The word "Hindu" was officially adopted by the British during their forced occupation of India to distinguish people of Indian origin who followed faiths that originated before Christ or Mohammed. Hinduism is the modern day name of the religion and philosophy which developed in ancient land of Bharata (India). History of Hinduism dates back to 6000 B.C (or even before that period ). Most of the other oriental religions like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikkhism have their roots in Hinduism. Unlike many other religions Hinduism is not dogmatic religion. There are no prophets and no single book. Vedas (4 in number) and Upnishads (108 in number) form the core of Hindu religion and its philosophy. While popular hindu religion also includes mythological stories (which have their own symbolic meanings) called Purans. Two great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata are also considered to be part of holy hindu scriptures. Bhagvad Gita which is a part of Mahabharat epic can be considered as 'soul' of Hindu religion. It consists of a discourse given by lord Krishna to his disciple Arjuna and it summarizes the eternal religion of Hinduism. Receptivity and all-comprehensiveness, it has been aptly stated, are the main characteristics of Hinduism. Since it has had no difficulty in bringing diverse faiths within its ever-widening fold, it has something to offer to almost all minds. The strength of Hinduism, lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human character and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher; its practical and concrete side congenial to the man of the world; its aesthetic and ceremonial side attuned to the man of the poetic feeling and imagination; and its quiescent contemplative aspect that has its appeal for the man of peace and the lover of seclusion. The Hindus, according to him, were Spinozists more than 2,000 years before the advent of Spinoza, Darwinians many centuries before Darwin. and Evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of Evolution was accepted by scientists of the present age. No civilisation anywhere in the world, with the probable exception of China, has been as continuous as that of India. While the civilisations of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria have disappeared, in India the ideas emanating from the Vedic times continue to be a living force. European scholars of Sanskrit like Sir William Jones noted similarities in the languages, terminology and substances of Indian scriptures with those of Greece and Rome. Even a superficial study convinced them that, while the language of the Vedas is a great critical instrument in the construction of the science of philology, the Vedic hymns constitute a compilation of most Indo-European myths in their primitive form. Max Muller went so far as to say that the Vedas are the real theogony of the Aryan races, Homer and Hesiod having given a distorted picture of the original image. The excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and those in Saurashtra have disclosed the existence of a highly evolved culture long before the Aryan immigration, perhaps dating back to 3000 B.C. or later. Among the remains discovered are a three-faced prototype of Siva seated in a yogic posture, representations of the Linga, and a horned goddess associated with the pipal tree. These symbols, evolved by a very ancient civilisation, were assimilated by the Aryan immigrants in slow stages-their earliest literary work, the .Rg-Veda, almost overlooks these aspects. The Vedic Aryans, it has been suggested, partly assimilated and partly destroyed the earlier culture. Vedic Aryans and Zoroastrianism It seems clear from the hymns of the .Rg-Veda and the Persian Gathas and Avesta that the Vedic Aryans and the Zoroastrians had a common origin. The languages in which Zoroaster preached and the Rsis sang their hymns are almost identical, and Vedic meters are re-produced in the Avesta. Evidently, the two groups of Aryans separated after a violent quarrel, so that several deities of one group - Indra or Jindra, Sarva and Nasatya - were transformed in the other into evil spirits. It is, however, to be noticed that Mitra, Aryama, Vayu and Vrtraghna are divine in both the systems. A period of unity was probably followed by civil war, as envisaged in the fight between Asuras and Devas. The Vedic Aryans were warlike, while the Avesta reflects an abhorrence of war. In the period when the ancestors of the Iranians and the Hindus had lived together, Asura had been a term of honour; and the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda was Asura Mahat, the great Asura. The .Rg-Yeda (III-55-11 & 15) cites several Asura qualities of the Divinities. Varuna, Mitra and several other gods were called Asuras. Later, when differences were accentuated between the two communities, Asura became equivalent to a spirit of evil and Sura came to signify a good spirit. The undivided Indo-Iranians must have passed a long time in their Central Asian home. The Indo-Iranian culture and religion have been reconstructed, at least in part, by comparing the Vedas with the Avesta. Before the occupation of Iranian high lands by tribes from the Indo-Iranian original home, the plateau was the seat of a culture that was probably matriarchal, and the people worshipped snake-gods in the manner of India's primitive non-Aryans. It is likely that the pre-Aryan cultures of North- western India and Iran were alike in origin and spirit. This ancient cultural link between pre-Aryan Iran and pre- Aryan India, instead of getting strengthened by Aryan migration into the two countries, as could be normally expected, was to all appearances completely severed. Also, there is nothing to show that the Vedic Aryans of India maintained an active cultural relation with their brethren in Iran. In the earliest days, while the Aryans of India must have been connected with the Aryans of Iran as friends or as foes, actual historical contact cannot be asserted with any degree of probability. The two peoples turned their backs upon each other, as it were, and developed their distinctive civilisations apparently without the least mutual influence, although in language, culture and religion their similarity in the earliest period had been little short of identity. When, later in history, under the Achaemenids, Greeks, Bactrians and Sakas, the Iranians and the Indians were forced to meet as citizens of the same empire, they met as complete strangers, not as cousins or as scions from the same stock. Links to Hinduism resources : Gateway for India (www.gatewayforindia.com) - Find pages on Hinduism, Veda, Yoga and also Indian History and culture Hindu-Unity - Forum for discussing deeper meanings of Hinduism History of India - Comprehensive site on Indian history |
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http://www.freewebs.com/hindureligion/
Indo-Aryan migration
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Models of the Indo-Aryan migration discuss scenarios of prehistoric migrations of the early Indo-Aryans to their historically attested areas of settlement (north west region of South Asia). Evidence for Indo-Aryan migration is primarily linguistic[1]but it includes a multitude of data stemming from Vedic religion, rituals, poetics as well as some aspects of social organization and chariot technology.
The Indo-Aryans derive from an earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian stage, usually identified with the Bronze Age Sintashta and Andronovo culture at the Caspian Sea. Their migration to and within North Western parts of South Asia is consequently presumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase of today's Pakistan (ca. 1700 to 1300 BC).
An influx of early Indo-Aryan speakers over the Hindukush (comparable to the Kushan expansion of the first centuries CE) together with Late Harappan cultures gave rise to the Vedic civilization of the Early Iron Age. This civilization is marked by a continual shift to the east, first to the Gangetic plain with the Kurus and Panchalas, and further east with the Kosala and Videha. This Iron Age expansion corresponds to the black and red ware and painted grey ware cultures.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] History and political background
In 19th century Indo-European studies, the language of the Rigveda was the most archaic Indo-European language known to scholars, indeed the only records of Indo-European that could reasonably claim to date to the Bronze Age. This "primacy" of Sanskrit inspired some scholars, such as Friedrich Schlegel, to assume that the locus of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat had been in India, with the other dialects spread to the west by historical migration. This was however never a mainstream position even in the 19th century. Most scholars assumed a homeland either in Europe or in Western Asia, and Sanskrit must in this case have reached India by a language transfer from west to east, in a movement described in terms of invasion by Max Müller. With the discovery of Bronze Age attestations of Indo-European in the 20th century (Anatolian, Mycenaean Greek), Vedic Sanskrit lost its special status as the most archaic dialect known.
The Indus Valley civilization (IVC), discovered in the 1920s, was unknown to 19th century scholars. The discovery of the Harappa and Mohenjo-daro sites changed the theory from an invasion of "advanced" Aryan people on a "primitive" aboriginal population to an invasion of nomadic "barbarians" on an advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. The decline of the IVC at precisely the period in history for which the Indo-Aryan migration had been assumed provides independent support of the linguistic scenario. This argument is associated with the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro as the victims of a warlike conquest, and who famously stated that "Indra stands accused" of the descruction of the IVC.
In the later 20th century, ideas were refined, and so now migration and acculturation are seen as the methods whereby Indo-Aryan spread into northwest India around 1700 BC. These changes are exactly in line with changes in thinking about language transfer in general, such as the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BC), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (between 2200 and 1300 BC).
[edit] Political debate and implications
The debate over such a migration, and the accompanying influx of elements of Vedic religion from Central Asia is politically charged and hotly debated in India. Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) organizations, especially, mostly remain opposed to the concept. Outside India, the perceived political overtones of the theory are not pronounced, and it is discussed in the larger framework of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European expansion.
Even though it would appear outside the orientalist academic consensus which still dominates the discourse at the Western universities, an "Indian Urheimat" has its proponents, such as Elst (1999) and Kazanas (2001, 2002). "Out of India" scenarios locating the Indo-European homeland on the Indian subcontinent have had some currency in the post-colonial Indian scholarship since the 2000s, although it has found little support in the Western scholarship yet.[2][3]
[edit] Linguistics
The linguistic center of gravity principle states that a language family's most likely point of origin is in the area of its greatest diversity.[4] Take, for example, the Germanic languages—of which English is one. North America may have more speakers of Germanic languages, but almost all of them are exclusively or primarily speakers of English. Northern Europe, where the Germanic languages are known to have originated, has in significant numbers speakers not only of English but also German, Dutch/Flemish, and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian.
By this criterion, India, home to only a single branch of the Indo-European language family (i.e. Indo-Aryan), is an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the Indo-European homeland; Central-Eastern Europe, on the other hand, is home to the Italic, Venetic, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, and Greek branches of Indo-European.[5]
Both mainstream Urheimat solutions locate the Indo-European homeland in the vicinity of the Black Sea.[6]
[edit] Dialectical variation
It has long been recognized that a binary tree model cannot capture all linguistic alignments; certain areal features cut across language groups and are better explained through a model treating linguistic change like waves rippling out through a pond. This is true of the Indo-European languages as well. Various features originated and spread while Proto-Indo-European was still a dialect continuum.[7] These features sometimes cut across sub-families: for instance, the instrumental, dative, and ablative plurals in Germanic and Balto-Slavic feature endings beginning with -m-, rather than the usual -*bh-, e.g. Old Church Slavonic instrumental plural synъ-mi 'with sons',[8] despite the fact that the Germanic languages are centum , while Balto-Slavic languages are satem.
There is a close relationship between the dialectical relationship of the Indo-European languages and the actual geographical arrangement of the languages in their earliest attested forms that makes an Indian origin for the family unlikely.[9]
[edit] Substrate influence
Bryant (2001:76) believes that evidence of a pre-Indo-European linguistic substratum in South Asia is solid reason to exclude India as a potential Indo-European homeland.
Burrow compiled a list of approximately 500 foreign words in Sanskrit that he considered to be loans predominantly from Dravidian. Kuiper identified 383 Ṛgvedic words as non-Indo-Aryan—roughly 4% of its liturgical vocabulary— borrowed from Old Dravidian, Old Munda, and several other languages. Thieme has questioned Dravidian etymologies proposed for Vedic words, most of which he gives Indoaryan or Sanskrit etymologies, and condemned what he characterizes as a misplaced "zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". Das even contends that there is "not a single case in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and probably Vedic in general) word". Burrow in turn has criticized the "resort to tortuous reconstructions in order to find, by hook or by crook, Indo-European explanations for Sanskrit words". However, later on he revoked many of his 26 Dravidian etymologies in the Rigveda. Kuiper reasons that given the abundance of Indo-European comparative material—and the scarcity of Dravidian or Munda—the inability to clearly confirm whether the etymology of a Vedic word is Indo-European implies that it is not. In addition, the state of the art of the three language families differs widely.[10]
Dravidian and other South Asian languages share with Indo-Aryan a number of syntactical and morphological features that are alien to other Indo-European languages, including even Old Iranian. Phonologically, there is the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals in Indo-Aryan; morphologically there are the gerunds; and syntactically there is the use of a quotative marker ("iti"). Krishnamurti states: "Besides, the Ṛg Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Ṛg Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer. All these features are not a consequence of simple borrowing but they indicate substratum influence (Kuiper 1991: ch 2)". Several linguists, all of whom accept the external origin of the Aryan languages on other grounds, are quite open to considering that various syntactical developments in Indo-Aryan could have been internal developments (Hamp 1996 and Jamison 1989, as cited in Bryant 2001:81–82) rather than the result of substrate influences, or have been the result of adstratum (Hock 1975/1984/1996 and Tikkanen 1987, as cited in Bryant 2001:80–82).[11] About retroflexion Tikkanen (1999) states that "in view of the strictly areal implications of retroflexion and the occurrence of retroflexes in many early loanwords, it is hardly likely that Indo-Aryan retroflexion arose in a region that did not have a substratum with retroflexes."
Writing specifically about language contact phenomena, Thomason & Kaufman (1988) state that there is strong evidence that Dravidian influenced Indic through "shift", that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages. Even though the innovative traits in Indic could be explained by multiple internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once – it becomes a question of explanatory parsimony; moreover, early Dravidian influence accounts for the several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[12]
Erdosy (1995:18) states that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Old Indo-Aryan is that the majority of early Old Indo-Aryan speakers had a Dravidian mother tongue which they gradually abandoned. Vijendra Kashyap, one of the authors of Sahoo et al. (2006), states that the people of the Indian subcontinent are indigenous to South Asia, but that Indo-European languages aren't, and that language change resulted from the migration of numerically small superstrate groups that are difficult to trace genetically.[13] Cavalli-Sforza (2000) also identifies the introduction of Indo-European languages to India as an instance of language replacement, when the language of a population changes accompanied by only modest genetic effects.
Zvelebil remarks[14] that "Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology, syntax and vocabulary".
In addition, the influences of other non-Indo-Aryan languages on early Indo-Aryan (such as Proto-Burushaski, the Indus substrate language(s), Witzel's Para-Munda, Masica's Gangetic "language X", Proto-Munda, etc.) have to be taken into account.
[edit] Material archaeology
Jim Shaffer wrote, "Current archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia any time in the pre- or protohistoric periods. Instead, it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments from prehistoric to historic periods"[15] The vast majority of the professional archaeologists Bryant (2001) interviewed in India insisted that there was no convincing archaeological evidence whatsoever to support any claims of external Indo-Aryan origins.[16] Kenoyer (as cited in Bryant 2001:231) and Shaffer (as cited in Bryant 2001:232) argue that current evidence does not support an invasion of South Asia in the pre- or proto-historic periods.
According to Kenoyer (as quoted in Bryant 2001:190):
Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the 'invasions' or 'migrations' of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts...
Similar arguments were made by Haüsler (as cited in Bryant 2001:141), who found that the archaeological evidence in central Europe showed continuous linear development, with no marked external influences. As Bryant (2001:235) points out, "India is not the only Indo-European-speaking area that has not revealed any archaeological traces of immigration." Mallory (in Blench & Spriggs 1997) states that archaeological continuity can be supported for every Indo-European-speaking region of Eurasia, not just India. Several historically documented migrations, such as those of the Helvetii to Switzerland, the Huns into Europe, or Gaelic-speakers into Scotland are not attested in the archaeological record.[17] Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "archeology can verify the occurrence of migration only in exceptional cases".
Bryant (2001:236) grants that "there is at least a series of archaeological cultures that can be traced approaching the Indian subcontinent, even if discontinuous, which does not seem to be the case for any hypothetical east-to-west emigration." Erdosy (1995) states that "some support was found in the archaeological record for small-scale migrations from Central to South Asia in the late 3rd/early 2nd millennia BC."
The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The Gandhara Grave (GGC), Cemetery H, Copper Hoard and Painted Grey Ware (PGW) cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan movements. The Indo-Aryan migration is dated subsequent to the Mature Harappan culture and the arrival of Indo-Aryans in the Indian subcontinent dated during the Late Harappan period. Based on linguistic data, many scholars argue that the Indo-Aryan languages were introduced to India in the 2nd millennium BC. The standard model for the entry of the Indo-European languages into India is that this first wave went over the Hindu Kush, forming the Gandhara grave (or Swat) culture, either into the headwaters of the Indus or the Ganges (probably both). The language of the Rigveda, the earliest stratum of Vedic Sanskrit is assigned to about 1500-1200 BC.[18]
The separation of Indo-Aryans proper from Proto-Indo-Iranians has been dated to roughly 2000–1800 BC. It is believed Indo-Aryans reached Assyria in the west and the Punjab in the east before 1500 BC: the Indo-Aryan Mitanni rulers appear from 1500 in northern Mesopotamia, and the Gandhara grave culture emerges from 1600. This suggests that Indo-Aryan tribes would have had to be present in the area of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (southern Turkmenistan/northern Afghanistan) from 1700 BC at the latest (incidentally corresponding with the decline of that culture).
The Gandhara grave culture is the most likely locus of the earliest Indo-European presence east of the Hindu Kush of the bearers of Rigvedic culture, and based on this Parpola (1998) assumes an immigration to the Punjab ca. 1700-1400 BC, but he also postulates a first wave of immigration from as early as 1900 BC, corresponding to the Cemetery H culture. However, this culture may also represent forerunners of the Indo-Iranians, similar to the Kassite invasion of Mesopotamia early in the second millennium BC.
Rajesh Kochhar (2000:185–186) argues that there were three waves of Indo-Aryan immigration that occurred after the mature Harappan phase: the Murghamu (BMAC) related people who entered Baluchistan at Pirak, Mehrgarh south cemetery, etc. and later merged with the post-urban Harappans during the late Harappans Jhukar phase; the Swat IV that co-founded the Harappan Cemetery H phase in Punjab and the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans of Swat V that later absorbed the Cemetery H people and gave rise to the Painted Grey Ware culture. He dates the first two to 2000-1800 BC and the third to 1400 BC.
[edit] Andronovo
The conventional identification of the Andronovo culture as Indo-Iranian is disputed by those who point to the absence south of the Oxus River of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe.[19]
Based on its use by Indo-Aryans in Mitanni and Vedic India, its prior absence in the Near East and Harappan India, and its 16th–17th century BC attestation at the Andronovo site of Sintashta, Kuzmina (1994) argues that the chariot corroborates the identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian. Klejn (1974) and Brentjes (1981) find the Andronovo culture much too late for an Indo-Iranian identification since chariot-wielding Aryans appear in Mitanni by the 15th to 16th century BC. However, Anthony & Vinogradov (1995) dated a chariot burial at Krivoye Lake to about 2000 BC and a BMAC burial that also contains a foal has recently been found, indicating further links with the steppes. [20]
Mallory (as cited in Bryant 2001:216) admits the extraordinary difficulty of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". However he has also developed the "kulturkugel" model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over BMAC cultural traits but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.
[edit] Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC)
Some scholars have suggested that the characteristically BMAC artifacts found at burials in Mehrgarh and Baluchistan are explained by a movement of peoples from Central Asia to the south.[21]
Jarrige and Hassan (as cited in Bryant 2001:215–216) argue instead that the BMAC artifacts are explained "within the framework of fruitful intercourse" by "a wide distribution of common beliefs and ritual practices" and "the economic dynamism of the area extending from South Central Asia to the Indus Valley."
Either way, the exclusively Central Asian BMAC material inventory of the Mehrgarh and Baluchistan burials is, in the words of Bryant (2001:215), "evidence of an archaeological intrusion into the subcontinent from Central Asia during the commonly accepted time frame for the arrival of the Indo-Aryans".
[edit] Indus Valley Civilization
Indo-Aryan migration into the northern Punjab is thus approximately contemporaneous to the final phase of the decline of the Indus-Valley civilization (IVC). Many scholars have argued that the historical Vedic culture is the result of an amalgamation of the immigrating Indo-Aryans with the remnants of the indigenous civilization, such as the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture. Such remnants of IVC culture is not yet present in the Rigveda, with its focus on chariot warfare and nomadic pastoralism in stark contrast with an urban civilization.
The decline of the IVC from about 1900 BC is not universally accepted to be connected with Indo-Aryan immigration. A regional cultural discontinuity occurred during the second millennium BC and many Indus Valley cities were abandoned during this period, while many new settlements began to appear in Gujarat and East Punjab and other settlements such as in the western Bahawalpur region increased in size. Shaffer & Lichtenstein (in Erdosy 1995:139) stated that: "This shift by Harappan and, perhaps, other Indus Valley cultural mosaic groups, is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium B.C.." This could have been caused by ecological factors, such as the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and increased aridity in Rajasthan and other places. The Indus River also began to flow east and floodings occurred.[22] Shaffer (as cited in Bryant 2001:192) contends: "There were no invasions from central or western South Asia. Rather there were several internal cultural adjustments reflecting altered ecological, social and economic conditions affecting northwestern and north-central South Asia".
At Kalibangan (at the Ghaggar river) the remains of what some writers claims to be fire altars have been unearthed. Some of their characteristics suggest that they could have been used for Vedic sacrifices, while others, such as the presence of animal bones in them, strictly speak against this. In addition the remains of a bathing place (suggestive of ceremonial bathing) have been found near the altars in Kalibangan.[23] S.R. Rao found similar "fire altars" in Lothal which he thinks could have served no other purpose than a ritualistic one. [24]
[edit] Gandhara grave culture
About 1800 BC, there is a major cultural change in the Swat Valley with the emergence of the Gandhara grave culture. With its introduction of new ceramics, new burial rites, and the horse, the Gandhara grave culture is a major candidate for early Indo-Aryan presence. The two new burial rites—flexed inhumation in a pit and cremation burial in an urn—were, according to early Vedic literature, both practiced in early Indo-Aryan society. Horse-trappings indicate the importance of the horse to the economy of the Gandharan grave culture. Two horse burials indicate the importance of the horse in other respects. Horse burial is a custom that Gandharan grave culture has in common with Andronovo, though not within the distinctive timber-frame graves of the steppe.[25]
[edit] Physical anthropology
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Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, a U.S. expert who has extensively studied such skeletal remains, observes, "Biological anthropologists remain unable to lend support to any of the theories concerning an Aryan biological or demographic entity."[26] Chaubey et al. (2007) find that most of the India-specific mtDNA haplogroups show coalescent times of 40 to 60 millennia ago. Sahoo et al. (2006) states that "there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India" and that
It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny. Recent claims for a linkage of haplogroups J2, L, R1a, and R2 with a contemporaneous origin for the majority of the Indian castes' paternal lineages from outside the subcontinent are rejected, although our findings do support a local origin of haplogroups F* and H. Of the others, only J2 indicates an unambiguous recent external contribution, from West Asia rather than Central Asia.[27]
A 2002-03 study by T. Kivisild et al. concluded that the "Indian tribal and caste populations derive largely from the same genetic heritage of Pleistocene southern and western Asians and have received limited gene flow from external regions since the Holocene."[28] A 2006 genetic study by the National Institute of Biologicals in India, testing a sample of men from 32 tribal and 45 caste groups, concluded that the Indians have acquired very few genes from Indo-European speaking migrants.[29] However, Bamshad et al. (2001) state:
For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%-30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. [...] Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trend toward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians.[30]
Kennedy (as cited in Bryant 2001:230), who examined 300 skeletons from the Indus Valley civilization, concludes that the ancient Harappans "are not markedly different in their skeletal biology from the present-day inhabitants of Northwestern India and Pakistan". The craniometric variables of prehistoric and living South Asians also showed an "obvious separation" from the prehistoric people of the Iranian plateau and western Asia.[31] Furthermore, the results of craniometric variation from Indus Valley sites indicate "significant separation" of Moenjodaro from Harappa and the others.[31]
Kenoyer (as quoted in Bryant 2001:231) states that "there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities...with no biological evidence for major new populations."
Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:54) concluded, "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. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans." Comparing the Harappan and Gandhara cultures, Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:49) remarks that: "Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity." Cephalic measures though might not be a good indicator as they do not necessarily indicate ethnicity and there might be a tendency of plasiticity due to environment [32]
Hemphill and Christensen (as cited in Elst 1999) report on their study of the migration of genetic traits: "Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era." In a more recent study, Hemphill concludes that "the data provide no support for any model of massive migration and gene flow between the oases of Bactria and the Indus Valley. Rather, patterns of phenetic affinity best conform to a pattern of long-standing, but low-level bidirectional mutual exchange."[33]
Kivisild et al. (2003) point out that, although northwest India was ruled for several centuries by dynasties descended from the armies of Alexander the Great, neither the M170 nor M35 genetic markers associated with Greeks and Macedonians has been found anywhere in India, and cautions that the shared prehistoric genetic inheritance of Indian tribal and caste populations "does not refute the existence of genetic footprints laid down by known historical events. This would include invasions by the Huns, Greeks, Kushans, Moghuls, Muslims, English, and others." Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:60) states that discontinuities in the prehistoric skeletal record occur either too early or too late to fit the classic scenario of a mid-second millennium B.C. Aryan invasion, but that this does not preclude "a gradual infiltration of foreigners". Witzel (in Erdosy 1995:113) states that 'their genetic impact would have been negligible and, as was the case with the Normans in England, would have been "lost" in a few generations in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people.' Vijendra Kashyap, one of the authors of Sahoo et al. (2006), states that the people of the Indian subcontinent are indigenous to South Asia, but that Indo-European languages aren't, and that language change resulted from the migration of numerically small superstrate groups that are difficult to trace genetically.[13] Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "Archeology can verify the occurrence of migration only in exceptional cases" and identifies the introduction of Indo-European languages to India as an instance of language replacement, when the language of a population changes accompanied by only modest genetic effects.
The spread of the Indo-European languages is associated with Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1, which is identified with genetic marker M17. The Genographic Project conducted by the National Geographic Society states that M17 arose "in the region of present-day Ukraine or southern Russia.". Geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells states that "The Aryans came from outside India. We actually have genetic evidence for that. Very clear genetic evidence from a marker that arose on the southern steppes of Russia and the Ukraine around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. And it subsequently spread to the east and south through Central Asia reaching India." M17 "shows that there was a massive genetic influx into India from the steppes within the past 10,000 years" and "Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of people – not merely their language – from the steppe appears to be true."[34].
However (Kivisild 2003a; Kivisild 2003b) have revealed that a high frequency of haplogroup 3 (R1a1) occurs in about half of the male population of Northwestern India and is also frequent in Western Bengal. These results, together with the fact that haplogroup 3 is much less frequent in Iran and Anatolia than it is in India, indicates that haplogroup 3 found among high caste Telugus did not necessarily originate from Eastern Europeans. Kivisild et al. (2003) "suggests that southern and western Asia might be the source of this haplogroup". Studies of Indian scholars showed the R1a lineage forms around 35–45% among all the castes in North Indian population (Namita Mukherjee et al. 2001) and the high frequency of R1a1 present in the indigenous Chenchu and Badaga tribal Adivasis of south India making the association with the Brahmin caste more vague. However, a model involving population flow from Southern Asia into Central Asia during Paleolithic interglacial periods with a subsequent R1a1-mediated Neolithic migration of Indo-European-speaking pastoralists back into Southern Asia would also be consistent with these data[original research?]. A further study (Saha et al. 2005) examined R1a1 in South Indian tribals and Dravidian population groups more closely, and questioned the concept of its Indo-Iranian origin. Most recently Sengupta et al. (2006) have confirmed R1a's diverse presence including even Indian tribal and lower castes (the so-called untouchables) and populations not part of the caste system. From the diversity and distinctiveness of microsatellite Y-STR variation they conclude that there must have been an independent R1a1 population in India dating back to a much earlier expansion than the Indo-Aryan migration. The pattern of clustering does not support the model that the primary source of the R1a1-M17 chromosomes in India was a single entry of Indo-European speaking pastoralists from Central Asia. However, the data are not necessarily inconsistent with more complicated demographic scenarios involving multiple entries in both Paleolithic and Neolithic periods and two-way population flows into and out of South Asia. The absence of haplogroup R1b (Y-DNA) in Indo-Aryan and Dravidian populations which is found in all other Indo-European populations, in especially large proportions in western Europe, may suggest significant levels of native genetic base for the Indo-Aryan peoples compared to other Indo-European peoples. However, it must be noted that R1b, with few exceptions, is also not present in significant levels in Central Asian populations. Also, the high prevalence of haplogroup R1a1 relative to other Indian populations (including Indo-Aryans) in the northwestern portion of the subcontinent (northwestern India and present-day Pakistan) also suggests an affinity between this part of the subcontinent and the Central Asian steppes, perhaps brought about by longstanding two-way population flows.
Recent studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome,[27] microsatellite DNA,[35] and mitochondrial DNA [36] in India have cast overwhelmingly strong doubt for a biological Dravidian "race" distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent. The only distinct ethnic groups present in South Asia, according to genetic analysis, are the Balochi, Brahui, Burusho, Hazara, Kalash, Pathan and Sindhi peoples, the vast majority of whom are found in today's Pakistan.[37]
[edit] Textual references
[edit] Mitanni
The earliest written evidence for an Indo-Aryan language is found not in India, but in northern Syria in Hittite records regarding one of their neighbors, the Hurrian-speaking Mitanni. In a treaty with the Hittites, the king of Mitanni, after swearing by a series of Hurrian gods, swears by the gods Mitrašil, Uruvanaššil, Indara, and Našatianna, who correspond to the Vedic gods Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and Nāsatya. Contemporary equestrian terminology, as recorded in a horse-training manual whose author is identified as "Kikkuli the Mitannian," contains Indo-Aryan loanwords. The personal names and gods of the Mitanni aristocracy also bear traces of Indo-Aryan. Because of this association of Indo-Aryan with horsemanship and the Mitanni aristocracy, it is generally presumed that, after superimposing themselves as rulers on a native Hurrian-speaking population about the 15th-16th centuries BC, Indo-Aryan charioteers were absorbed into the local population and adopted the Hurrian language.[38]
Brentjes (as cited in Bryant 2001:137) argues that there is not a single cultural element of central Asian, eastern European, or Caucasian origin in the Mitannian area and associates with an Indo-Aryan presence the peacock motif found in the Middle East from before 1600 BC and quite likely from before 2100 BC.
However, received opinion rejects the possibility that the Indo-Aryans of Mitanni came from the Indian subcontinent as well as the possibility that the Indo-Aryans of the Indian subcontinent came from the territory of Mitanni, leaving migration from the north the only likely scenario.[39]. The presence of some BMAC loan words in Mitanni. Old Iranian and Vedic further strengthens this scenario.[40]
[edit] Rigveda
The Rigveda is by far the most archaic testimony of Vedic Sanskrit. Bryant suggests that the Rigveda represents a pastoral or nomadic, mobile culture,[41] still centered on the Indo-Iranian Soma cult and fire worship. With all the effort to glimpse historical information from the hymns of the Rigveda, it should not be forgotten that the purpose of these hymns is ritualistic, not historiographical or ethnographical, and any information about the way of life or the habitat of their authors is incidental and philologically extrapolated from the context.[42] Nevertheless, Rigvedic data must be used, cautiously, as they are the earliest available textual evidence from India. Koenraad Elst states that "The status question is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Central Asia"[43].
[edit] Rigvedic society as pastoral society
Fortifications (púr), mostly made of mud and wood (palisades)[44] are mentioned in the Rigveda mainly as the abode of hostile peoples, while the Aryan tribes live in víś, a term translated as "settlement, homestead, house, dwelling", but also "community, tribe, troops".[45]
Indra in particular is described as destroyer of fortifications, e.g. RV 4.30.20ab:
- satám asmanmáyinaam / purām índro ví asiyat
- "Indra overthrew a hundred fortresses of stone."
However, according to Gupta (as quoted in Bryant 2001:190), "ancient civilizations had both the components, the village and the city, and numerically villages were many times more than the cities. (...) if the Vedic literature reflects primarily the village life and not the urban life, it does not at all surprise us.". Gregory Possehl (as cited in Bryant 2001:195) argued that the "extraordinary empty spaces between the Harappan settlement clusters" indicates that pastoralists may have "formed the bulk of the population during Harappan times". The Rigveda is seen by some as containing phrases referring to elements of an urban civilization, other than the mere viewpoint of an invader aiming at sacking the fortresses. For example, Indra is compared to the lord of a fortification (pūrpatis) in RV 1.173.10, while quotations such as a ship with a hundred oars in 1.116 and metal forts (puras ayasis) in 10.101.8 all occur in mythological contexts only.
[edit] Rigvedic reference to migration
There is no explicit mention of an outward or inward migration in the Rigveda. Kazanas interpretes a mythological passage, RV 7.6.3, as: Agni turned the godless and the Dasyus westward, and not southward, as would be required by some versions of the AIT.[46] Talageri speculates that some of the tribes that fought against Sudas on the banks of the Parusni River during the Dasarajna battle have maybe migrated to western countries in later times, as they are possibly connected with some Iranian peoples (e.g. the Pakthas, Bhalanas).[47]
Just like the Avesta does not mention an external homeland of the Zoroastrians, the Rigveda does not explicitly refer to an external homeland[48] or to a migration.[49] Later texts than the Rigveda (such as the Brahmanas, the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas) are more centered in the Ganges region. This shift from the Punjab to the Gangetic plain continues the Rigvedic tendency of eastward expansion, but does of course not imply an origin beyond the Indus watershed.
[edit] Rigvedic Rivers and Reference of Samudra
The geography of the Rigveda seems to be centered around the land of the seven rivers. While the geography of the Rigvedic rivers is unclear in the early mandalas, the Nadistuti hymn is an important source for the geography of late Rigvedic society.
The Sarasvati River is one of the chief Rigvedic rivers. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later texts like the Brahmanas and Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.
Most scholars agree that at least some of the references to the Sarasvati in the Rigveda refer to the Ghaggar-Hakra River, while the Afghan river Helmand is sometimes quoted as the locus of the early Rigvedic river. Whether such a transfer of the name has taken place, either from the Helmand to the Ghaggar-Hakra, and the or conversely from the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Helmand, is a matter of dispute. Identification of the early Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra before its assumed drying up would place the Rigveda well before 1700 BC,[50] and thus well outside the range commonly assumed by Indo-Aryan migration theory.
A non-Indo-Aryan substratum in the river-names and place-names of the Rigvedic homeland would support an external origin of the Indo-Aryans. However, most place-names in the Rigveda and the vast majority of the river-names in the north-west of South Asia are Indo-Aryan.[51] They are, however, frequent in the Ghaggar and Kabul River areas,[52] the first being a post-Harappan stronghold of Indus populations.
[edit] Iranian Avesta
The religious practices depicted in the Rgveda and those depicted in the Avesta, the central religious text of Zoroastrianism—the ancient Iranian faith founded by the prophet Zarathustra—have in common the deity Mitra, priests called hotṛ in the Rgveda and zaotar in the Avesta, and the use of a hallucinogenic compound that the Rgveda calls soma and the Avesta haoma. However, the Indo-Aryan deva 'god' is cognate with the Iranian daēva 'demon'. Similarly, the Indo-Aryan asura 'name of a particular group of gods' (later on, 'demon') is cognate with the Iranian ahura 'lord, god,' which older authors such as Burrow explained as a reflection of religious rivalry between Indo-Aryans and Iranians.[53]
Two alternative dates for Zarathustra can be found in Greek sources: 5000 years before the Trojan War, i.e. 6000 BC, or 258 years before Alexander, i.e. the 6th century BC, the latter of which used to provide the conventional dating but has since been traced to a fictional Greek source. Most linguists such as Burrow argue that the strong similarity between the Avestan language of the Gāthās—the oldest part of the Avesta—and the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rgveda pushes the dating of Zarathustra or at least the Gathas closer to the conventional Rgveda dating of 1500–1200 BC, i.e. 1100 BC, possibly earlier. Boyce concurs with a lower date of 1100 BC and tentatively proposes an upper date of 1500 BC. Gnoli dates the Gathas to around 1000 BC, as does Mallory (1989), with the caveat of a 400 year leeway on either side, i.e. between 1400 and 600 BC. Therefore the date of the Avesta could also indicate the date of the Rigveda.[54]
There is mention in the Avesta of Airyanəm Vaējah, one of the '16 the lands of the Aryans' as well as Zarathustra himself. Gnoli's interpretation of geographic references in the Avesta situates the Airyanem Vaejah in the Hindu Kush. For similar reasons, Boyce excludes places north of the Syr Darya and western Iranian places. With some reservations, Skjaervo concurs that the evidence of the Avestan texts makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were composed somewhere in northeastern Iran. Witzel points to the central Afghan highlands. Humbach derives Vaējah from cognates of the Vedic root "vij," suggesting the region of a fast-flowing river. Gnoli considers Choresmia (Xvairizem), the lower Oxus region, south of the Aral Sea to be an outlying area in the Avestan world. However, according to Mallory & Mair (2000), the probable homeland of Avestan is, in fact, the area south of the Aral Sea.[55]
[edit] Other Hindu texts
Some Indologists have noted that "there is no textual evidence in the early literary traditions unambiguously showing a trace" of an Indo-Aryan migration.[49] Texts like the Puranas and Mahabharata belong to a later period than the Rigveda, making their evidence less than sufficient to be used for or against the Indo-Aryan migration theory.
Later Vedic texts show a shift of location from the Panjab to the East: according to the Yajur Veda, Yajnavalkya (one of the Vedic Seers) lived in the eastern region of Mithila.[56] Aitareya Brahmana 33.6.1. records that Vishvamitra's sons migrated to the north, and in Shatapatha Brahmana 1:2:4:10 the Asuras were driven to the north.[57] In still later texts, Manu was said to be a king from Dravida.[58] In the legend of the flood he stranded with his ship in Northwestern India or the Himalayas.[59] The Vedic land (e.g. Aryavarta, Brahmavarta) is located in Northern India or at the Sarasvati and Drsadvati River, according to Hindu texts.[60] In the Mahabharata Udyoga Parva (108), the East is described as the homeland of the Vedic culture, where "the divine Creator of the universe first sang the Vedas."[61] The legends of Ikshvaku, Sumati and other Hindu legends may have their origin in South-East Asia.[62]
[edit] Puranas
The evidence from the Puranas is often disputed because they are a comparably late text. They are often dated from c.400 to c.1000 AD. The Rigveda dates from before 1200 BC. Thus the Rigveda and the Puranas are separated by approximately 1600 to 2200 years, though scholars argue that some contents of the Puranas may date to an earlier period.[63][64]
The Puranas record that Yayati left Prayag (confluence of Ganga & Yamuna) and conquered the region of Saptha Sindhu.[65] His five sons Yadu, Druhyu, Puru, Anu and Turvashu became the main tribes of the Rigveda.
The Puranas also record that the Druhyus were driven out of the land of the seven rivers by Mandhatr and that their next king Ghandara settled in a north-western region which became known as Gandhara. The sons of the later Druhyu king Pracetas are supposed by some to have migrated to the region north of Afghanistan. This migration is recorded in several Puranas.[66][67].
[edit] Vedic and Puranic genealogies
The Vedic and Puranic genealogies indicate a greater antiquity of the Vedic culture.[68] The Puranas themselves state that these lists are incomplete.[69] But the accuracy of these lists is disputed. In Arrian's Indica, Megasthenes is quoted as stating that the Indians counted from Shiva (Dionysos) to Chandragupta Maurya (Sandracottus) "a hundred and fifty-three kings over six thousand and forty-three years."[70] The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (4.6.), ca. 8th century BC, mentions 57 links in the Guru-Parampara ("succession of teachers"). This would mean that this Guru-Parampara would go back about 1400 years, although the accuracy of this list is disputed.[71] as student-teacher generations do not correspond to normal father-son generations of 20/30 years. The list of kings in Kalhana's Rajatarangini goes back to the 19th century BC.[72]
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Edwin Bryant, 2001
- ^ Bryant (2001:201) "all scholars, whatever position they might hold on the ultimate homeland of the Indo-Europeans, accept that the Indo-Aryans, at least, entered India from the West"
- ^ Mallory 1989 "the great majority of scholars insist that the Indo-Aryans were intrusive into northwest India"
- ^ Sapir (1949:455)
Latham, as cited in Mallory (1989:152) - ^ Mallory (1989:152–153)
- ^ Mallory (1989:177–185)
- ^ Hock (1991, p. 454)
- ^ Fortson (2004, p. 106)
- ^ Hock (1996), "Out of India? The linguistic evidence", in Bronkhorst & Deshpande (1999).
- ^ Thieme, Burrow, Kuiper, and Das, as cited in Bryant (2001:86–88)
Kuiper, as cited in Witzel (1999) and Bryant (2001:87) - ^ Bryant (2001:78–82)
- ^ Thomason & Kaufman (1988:141–144)
- ^ a b Handwerk, Brian (2006-01-10). "India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says" (in English). National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes_2.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-14.
- ^ Dravidian languages - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
- ^ Jim Shaffer. The Indo-Aryan Invasions : Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality.
- ^ Bryant (2001:231 ff) "The vast majority of professional archaeologists I interviewed in India insisted that there was no convincing archaeological evidence whatsoever to support any claims of external Indo-Aryan origins. This is part of a wider trend: archaeologists working outside of South Asia are voicing similar views."
Erdosy (1995:xiii) "Placed against Witzel's contribution, the paper by J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein will illustrate the gulf still separating archaeology and linguistics.
Erdosy (1995:13 ff) "we are a long way from fully correlating the linguistic and archaeological evidence"
see also Bronkhorst & Deshpande (1999), Bryant & Patton (2005) - ^ Anthony (1986), Sinor (1990, p. 203), and Mallory (1989, p. 166), as cited in Bryant (2001:235)
- ^ Mallory & Mair (2000)[page needed]
- ^ Klejn (1974), Lyonnet (1993), Francfort (1989), Bosch-Gimpera (1973), Hiebert (1998), and Sarianidi (1993), as cited in Bryant (2001:206–207)
- ^ Anthony & Vinogradov (1995)
Kuzmina (1994), Klejn (1974), and Brentjes (1981), as cited in Bryant (2001:206) - ^ Allchin 1995:47–48
Hiebert & Lamberg-Karlovsky (1992), Kohl (1984), and Parpola (1994), as cited in Bryant (2001:215) - ^ Flam (1981, 1991) and Mackay (1938, 1943) as cited by Kenoyer in Erdosy (1995:224)
- ^ (B.B. Lal. Frontiers of the Indus Civilization.1984:57-58)
- ^ (S.R. Rao. The Aryans in Indus Civilization.1993:175)
- ^ Mallory (1989)
- ^ Michel Danino. The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question.
- ^ a b Sahoo, Sanghamitra, et al. (January 2006). "A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios". PNAS 103 (4): 843-848. news full text.
- ^ Kivisild, T.; S. Rootsi, M. Metspalu, S. Mastana, K. Kaldma, J. Parik, E. Metspalu, M. Adojaan, H.-V. Tolk, V. Stepanov, M. Gölge, E. Usanga, S. S. Papiha, C. Cinnioglu, R. King, L. Cavalli-Sforza, P. A. Underhill, and R. Villems (February 2003). "The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations". American Journal of Human Genetics 72 (2): 313–332. doi:. PMID 12536373. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=379225&blobtype=pdf. Retrieved on 2007-09-09.
- ^ Brian Handwerk (2006-01-10). "India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says". National Geographic News. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes.html. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
- ^ Bamshad, Michael, et al. (2001). "Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations". Genome Res. 11: 994-1004.
- ^ a b Kennedy. "Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia? Biological anthropology and concepts of ancient races", in Erdosy (1995), at p. 49.
- ^ http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=137467 cephalic plasiticity
- ^ Hemphill 1998 "Biological Affinities and Adaptations of Bronze Age Bactrians: III. An initial craniometric assessment", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 106, 329-348.; Hemphill 1999 "Biological Affinities and Adaptations of Bronze Age Bactrians: III. A Craniometric Investigation of Bactrian Origins", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 108, 173-192
- ^ Wells (2002:167)
- ^ Sengupta, S.; et al. (2006-02-01). "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. (The American Society of Human Genetics) 78 (2): 201–221. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16400607. Retrieved on 2007-12-03.
- ^ Sharma, S.; Saha A, Rai E, Bhat A, Bamezai R. (2005). "Human mtDNA hypervariable regions, HVR I and II, hint at deep common maternal founder and subsequent maternal gene flow in Indian population groups.". J Hum Genet. 50 (10): 497–506. doi:. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16205836&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum. Retrieved on 2007-12-03.
- ^ Human Genome Diversity Project
- ^ Mallory & Mair (2000)[page needed]
Mallory (1989)[page needed]
StBoT 41 (1995)
Thieme, as cited in Bryant (2001:136) - ^ Mallory 1989[page needed] "It is highly improbable that the Indo-Aryans of Western Asia migrated eastwards, for example with the collapse of the Mitanni, and wandered into India, since there is not a shred of evidence — for example, names of non-Indic deities, personal names, loan words — that the Indo-Aryans of India ever had any contacts with their west Asian neighbours. The reverse possibility, that a small group broke off and wandered from India into Western Asia is readily dismissed as an improbably long migration, again without the least bit of evidence."
- ^ Witzel 2003
- ^ Bryant (2001:91)
- ^ Leach (1990), as cited in Bryant (2001:222)
"Ancient Indian history has been fashioned out of compositions, which are purely religious and priestly, which notoriously do not deal with history, and which totally lack the historical sense.(...)." F.E. Pargiter 1922. But we must not forget that "the Vedic literature confines itself to religious subjects and notices political and secular occurrences only incidentally (...)". Cited in R. C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalker (editors): The history and culture of the Indian people. Volume I, The Vedic age. Bombay : Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 1951, p.315, with reference to F.E. Pargiter. - ^ Koenraad Elst. The Vedic Evidence.
- ^ Rau 1976[citation needed]
- ^ Mallory (1989)[page needed] "...the culture represented in the earliest Vedic hymns bears little similarity to that of the urban society found at Harappa or Mohenjo-daro. It is illiterate, non-urban, non-maritime, basically uninterested in exchange other than that involving cattle, and lacking in any forms of political complexity beyond that of a king whose primary function seems to be concerned with warfare and ritual."
- ^ Kazanas, A new date for the Rgveda, p.11
- ^ e.g. MacDonnel and Keith, Vedic Index, 1912; Talageri 2000
- ^ R. C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalker (editors): The history and culture of the Indian people. Volume I, The Vedic age. Bombay : Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan 1951, p.220
- ^ a b Cardona 2002: 33-35; Cardona, George. The Indo-Aryan languages, RoutledgeCurzon; 2002 ISBN 0-7007-1130-9
- ^ The Saraswati:- Where lies the mystery
- ^ Bryant (2001)
- ^ Witzel (1999)[page needed]
- ^ Burrow as cited in Mallory (1989).
- ^ Bryant (2001:131)
Mallory (1989)
Mallory & Mair (2000)
Burrow, as cited in Mallory (1989)
Boyce and Gnoli, as cited in Bryant (2001:132) - ^ Bryant (2001:133)
Gnoli, Boyce, Skjaervo, and Witzel, as cited in Bryant (2001:133)
Humbach and Gnoli, as cited in Bryant (2001:327)
Mallory & Mair (2000) - ^ (Bryant 2001: 64)
- ^ Elst 1999, with reference to L.N. Renu
- ^ e.g. Bhagavata Purana (VIII.24.13)
- ^ e.g. Satapatha Brahmana, Atharva Veda
- ^ e.g. RV 3.23.4., Manu 2.22, etc. Kane, Pandurang Vaman: History of Dharmasastra: (ancient and mediaeval, religious and civil law) — Poona : Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1962-1975
- ^ Talageri 1993, The Aryan Invasion Theory, A Reappraisal
- ^ Elst 1999, chapter 5, with reference to Bernard Sergent
- ^ e.g. Bryant 2001:139
- ^ There are also references to a "Purana" in earlier texts like the Atharvaveda 11.7.24; Satapatha Brahmana 11.5.6.8. and 13.4.3.13; Chandogya Upanisad 3.4.1. Subhash Kak 1994, The astronomical of the Rgveda
- ^ Talageri 1993, 2000; Elst 1999
- ^ Bhagavata Purana 9.23.15-16; Visnu Purana 4.17.5; Vayu Purana 99.11-12; Brahmanda Purana 3.74.11-12 and Matsya Purana 48.9.
- ^ see e.g. Pargiter [1922] 1979; Talageri 1993, 2000; Bryant 2001; Elst 1999
- ^ see e.g. F.E. Pargiter [1922] 1979; P.L. Bhargava 1971, India in the Vedic Age, Lucknow: Upper India Publishing; Talageri 1993, 2000; Subhash Kak, 1994, The astronomical code of the Rgveda
- ^ Matsya Purana 49.72; Pargiter 1922; Kak 1994 The astronomical code of the Rgveda
- ^ Pliny: Naturalis Historia 6:59; Arrian: Indica 9:9
- ^ (see Klaus Klostermaier 1989 and Arvind Sharma 1995)
- ^ Elst 1999, with reference to Bernard Sergent
[edit] Bibliography and References
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- Bryant, Edwin (2001), The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195137779 .
- Bryant, Edwin F.; Patton, Laurie L., eds. (2005), The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-7007-1463-4 .
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (2000), Genes, Peoples, and Languages, New York: North Point Press .
- Chakrabarti, D.K. The Early use of Iron In India. Dilip K. Chakrabarti.1992. New Delhi: The Oxford University Press.
- Chakrabarti, D.K. 1977b. India and West Asia: An Alternative Approach. Man and Environment 1:25-38.
- Chaubey et al. (2007), "Peopling of South Asia: investigating the caste-tribe continuum in India", BioEssays 29 (1): 91–100, doi:, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114030416/ABSTRACT .
- Dhavalikar, M. K. 1995, "Fire Altars or Fire Pits?", in Sri Nagabhinandanam, Ed V Shivananda and M. K. Visweswara, Bangalore.
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- Elst, Koenraad (1999), Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, ISBN 81-86471-77-4, http://voi.org/books/ait/ .
- Erdosy, George, ed. (1995), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110144476 .
- Fortson, Benjamin W. IV (2004), Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell .
- Fussman, G.; Kellens, J.; Francfort, H.-P.; Tremblay, X.: Aryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale. (2005) Institut Civilisation Indienne ISBN 2-86803-072-6
- Handwerk, Brian (January 10, 2006), "India Acquired Language, Not Genes, From West, Study Says", National Geographic, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0110_060110_india_genes_2.html .
- Hock, Hans (1991), Principles of Historical Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter
- Jamison, Stephanie W. (2006), "Review of Bryant & Patton (2005)", Journal of Indo-European Studies 34, http://www.safarmer.com/Indo-Eurasian/Bryant_Patton.review.pdf .
- Kak, Subhash. The Astronomical Code of the Rigveda; Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd (2000), ISBN 81-215-0986-6
- Kivisild et al. (2003), "The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations" (PDF), Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72: 313–332, doi:, http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2003b.pdf .
- Klostermaier, Klaus. 1989. A Survey of Hinduism. Albany: State University of New York Press.
- Kochhar, Rajesh (2000). The Vedic People: Their History and Geography. Sangam Books.
- Kuz'mina, E. E. (1994), Откуда пришли индоарии? (Whence came the Indo-Aryans), Moscow: Российская академия наук (Russian Academy of Sciences) .
- Lal, B.B., (1984) Frontiers of the Indus Civilization.1984.
- Lal, B.B., (1998) New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books, Delhi 1998
- Lal, B.B. 2005. The Homeland of the Aryans. Evidence of Rigvedic Flora and Fauna & Archaeology, New Delhi, Aryan Books International.
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- Mallory, J.P. (1989), In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson .
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- Parpola, Asko (2005), "Study of the Indus script", Transactions of the 50th International Conference of Eastern Studies, Tokyo: The Tôhô Gakkai, pp. 28–66 .
- S.R. Rao. The Aryans in Indus Civilization.1993
- Sapir, Edward (1949), Mandelbaum, David G., ed., Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality, University of California Press, 1985 .
- Sethna, K.D. 1992. The Problem of Aryan Origins. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. ISBN 81-85179-67-0
- Talageri, Shrikant G. (2000), The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, ISBN 8177420100, http://www.voiceofdharma.com/books/rig/, retrieved on May 2007 .
- Talageri, Shrikant G. (1993), Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism .
- Thapar, Romila. 1966. A History of India: Volume 1 (Paperback). ISBN 0-14-013835-8
- Trautmann, Thomas (2005), The Aryan Debate, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-566908-8 .
- Thomason, Sarah Grey; Kaufman, Terrence (1988), Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics, University of California Press (published 1991), ISBN 0-520-07893-4 .
- Tikkanen, Bertil (1999), "Archaeological-linguistic correlations in the formation of retroflex typologies and correlating areal features in South Asia", in Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew, Archaeology and Language, IV: Language Change and Cultural Transformation, London: Routledge, pp. 138–148 .
- Wells, Spencer (2002), The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press .
- Witzel, Michael (1999), "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Ṛgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic)" (PDF), Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 5 (1), http://www.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.pdf .
- Witzel, Michael (2006), "Rama's realm: Indocentric rewritings of early South Asian archaeology and history", in Fagan, Garrett G., Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 203–232, ISBN 0415305926 .
[edit] See also
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[edit] External links
- The Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory
- Famous Personalities on Aryan Invasion Theory
- Witzel, Michael: The Home of the Aryans
- `What is Aryan Migration Theory ?' by Vishal Agrawal
- Agarwal, Vishal: Is There Vedic Evidence for the Indo-Aryan Immigration to India? (pdf)
- Thapar, Romila: The Aryan question revisited (1999)
- Kazanas, Nicholas homepage Articles by Nicholas Kazanas
- Elst, Koenraad: Update on the Aryan Invasion Theory - K. Elst's Online book, Articles, Book reviews
Archaeology
- Cache of Seal Impressions Discovered in Western India
- Central Asia 2000-1000BC (Metmuseum.org)
- Lal, B.B.: The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture: Some Thoughts By Archaeologist B.B. Lal
- Danino, Michel: The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question Article by Michel Danino
- Agrawal, D.P.: The Indus Civilization = Aryans equation: Is it really a Problem? By D.P. Agrawal (pdf)
Genetics
- Genetic Evidence on the origins of Indian Caste Population, Genome Research, 2001
- A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios, PNAS paper, 2006
- 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, AJHG paper, 2006
- Peopling of South Asia: investigating the caste-tribe continuum in India
Religious and political aspects
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