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The Aryan Invasion Theory and Hindu Politics
CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE WHITHER Genetic data suggest that questions have to be reformulated with due respect to empirical data with judicious use of literary records and tradition. by N.S. Rajaram Genetic studies indicate that there was no major input into the Indian subcontinent in the 2000 - 3000 BC period or at any time close to it. The last significant 'genetic splash' in the subcontinent took place about the same time it took place in Europe and Southeast Asia to China. This was about 50,000 years ago - more exactly 51,000 to 67,000 years ago. Any split therefore from a common homeland took place when several branches emerged at various times between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago. In historical terms this is a huge time span, so we should not talk about cultural and/or linguistic influences retained over nearly 20,000 years when the split probably took place. Going by the currently accepted theories of population genetics, this common homeland was Africa. In addition, the data also indicate that there is no significant genetic difference between the populations of North- and South India, as far as their relationship to Eurasian populations is concerned. It is hardly necessary to highlight the obvious - that this demolishes the Aryan invasion theory, though not for the first time. AIT advocates may keep dismissing every new piece of evidence while resolutely holding on to their beliefs, but this cannot go on any longer. They keep avoiding debate, while attributing ulterior motives to their opponents. I won't belabor this point because that would be beating a dead horse. The real question now is no longer the Aryan invasion, but the whole foundation of Indo-European studies: what happens to Indo-Europeans as a people? They obviously did not share a common homeland other than Africa more than 50,000 years ago, and they branched over a time span possibly as long as 20,000 years. But then the same homeland applies to Indians, Europeans, Chinese, American Indians and last but by no means the least, the Africans themselves. This means that the Indo-Europeans lose their special place in history. This is not surprising, because the Indo-Europeans are a product not of science but Euro-centric imagination. (It borrows from the Biblical concept of the 'chosen people' just as linguists borrowed the idea of a common ancestral language from the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.) There is a far more serious issue at stake: what happens to Indo-European language and the linguistic theories that it has given rise to? Can IE (or Proto IE, Proto-proto IE, etc) still exist without the existence of any people to speak it? It is easy to be frivolous, but some explanation has to be found for the undeniable fact that Indian and European languages show far too many similarities to be accidental. We need to find not just another explanation but also another methodology - one that does not require the search for a common homeland or urheimat. The only common homeland is Africa. Before saying any more about it I want to sound a note of caution to advocates of the Indian urheimat. Some of my friends in India are already claiming that this shows that India was the home of the original Indo-Europeans. It does not. The study was conducted with the limited objective of determining if there was any significant 'genetic splash' amounting to an invasion 3000 - 4000 years ago or thereabouts. The result is negative. This does not allow us to conclude that there was a reverse invasion from India to Eurasia and Europe. My own view is that the whole question was wrong, formulated as it was in terms of an assumed urheimat. There are no Indo-Europeans and therefore no Indo-European homeland. The whole thing must be restated taking the following into consideration: 1. Any model must account for the undeniable fact that Indian and European languages show affinities, but not force preconceived theories. 2. Must take advantage of empirical data from archaeology, and wherever possible, literary records. 3. Must allow the formulation and testing of hypothesis based on genetics. I shall next set forth a few options and suggest a test. The first point is that affinities between languages are not limited to India and Europe; they exist also between the languages of India and Southeast Asia. And we know that there was no invasion or large-scale migration from India to Indonesia or Thailand for example. What brought it about was the movement of an influential elite of rulers and priesthood and scholars. This is happening in America also - with immigrant Hindus building temples and importing priests from India. Hinduism and Buddhism are both growing in America without any Hindu invasion or Buddhist invasion. The influence of this movement on the immigrant Hindus and their American friends is far greater than that of the Indology departments at US universities. Could something like this have happened in prehistoric Europe and West Asia? I believe that there is both technical evidence and literary evidence to support it. Throughout history, India has been more densely populated than most countries of the world. And for this reason, it has been a net exporter of people, which is still the case. (During the Islamic period, c. 1000 - 1700 AD, Indian population declined very greatly because of the raids of vandals like Timur who enslaved them and sold them in the slave markets of Cairo and Damascus. But usually things were not so drastic.) In addition, some ecological and possibly political events spurred emigration. Fortunately, we have records of several of them, though they are of varying degrees of reliability. 1 The drying up of the Sarasvati River, c. 2000 BC, preceded by gradual desiccation of the region led to a migration from Western India into West Asia. Kassites, who were probably Sindhu-Sauviras, eventually overthrew the Amorite Empire of Babylonia and founded the Kassite Empire, which lasted 500 years. Even before the Kassites, we find many Harappan motifs and examples of writing in Sumer and Akkad. Jha and I have deciphered a few of them written in a corrupted form of Sanskrit. At least eighteen other examples of Harappan writing are known in West Asia, but their language is not Sanskrit. (We could not decipher them.) 2 The Puranas record a movement of Druhyus and their allies, the Parsus and the Prithu-Parthavas (Persians and the Parthians), following their defeat by the Puru king Sudasa in the famous Battle of Ten Kings. They were driven out into Gandhara (Afghanistan) and beyond. Frawley and I place it around 3800 BC (say 4000 BC). There was population pressure on the Sarasvati heartland because of loss of water in the northwest. Sites like Mehrgarh (c. 6500 BC) are located in a region where there is no water now. 3 A thousand years before the Battle of Ten Kings, the Ikshwaku king Mandhata came to the rescue of his mother's family in the Sarasvati heartland and drove away invaders from the northwest, which again included the Druhyus. This according to the Puranas resulted in a large-scale movement into the north where they went on to found new kingdoms. This would be about 5000 BC. I suggest that the movement of Parsus and Prithu-Parthavas following the Battle of Ten Kings led to the movement of an elite into Persia (Iran) and seeded the Iranian civilization. (This is supported by Iranian records.) I suggest also that Zarathushtra belongs to this age, and not c. 560 BC as claimed by modern history books. (Others claim 1300 BC.) Further, the earlier migration following Mandhata's campaign resulted in a movement of a Sanskrit speaking elite into Europe, which accounts for the Sanskritic influence on European languages. Just as English evolved combining French with Anglo-Saxon, European languages absorbed Sanskritic features. This has happened in India also - in the case of Marathi, Pujabi, Kashmiri, Urdu and Hindi, which are influenced by Persian and even Turki. (This probably will not find favor with many linguists with their attachment to proto-languages and morphology diagrams.) It will be noticed that this is roughly the scenario given by Shrikant Talageri. It is unfortunate that we do not have many artifacts from before 3000 BC that allow us to look for possible influences. We are on better ground when we get to the third millennium, especially in West Asia. The influence of the Harappans is profuse and in some cases at least, decipherable. (See my forthcoming book with N. Jha, 'The Deciphered Indus Script', for examples.) Harappan motifs like the bull and the unicorn are fairly common in West Asia, though seldom mentioned by scholars. We need to look at museums with fresh eyes. Can we test this? Can genetics tell us if there was a 'genetic splash' in Europe-West Eurasia in the period following Mandhata's campaign c. 5000 BC? Or was the size of the 'elite' that brought Sanskritic influence too insignificant relative to the indigenous population of Europe? More fundamentally, I suggest that we have to change our methodology taking into account the literary records and traditions from all cultures instead of building castles in the air. Jha and I found them to be invaluable in our study of the Harappan seals: these records proved their value while modern theories were totally worthless. In summary, these new results tell us that our methodology must change, and not just our viewpoint. I hope we will not repeat the mistake of repackaging old theories as was done following the discovery of the Harappan Civilization.
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article by Dr. Frawley as posted on The Aryan Invasion Theory By David Frawley A recent Western academic paper argues that the Aryan invasion theory is wrong and that there is an indigenous development of civilization in India going back to at least 6000 BCE (Mehrgarh). It proposes that the great Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture (2600 - 1900 BCE), which it notes was centered on the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame, had much in common with Vedic literary accounts. It states that the Harappan culture came to an end not because of outside invaders but owing to environmental changes, most important of which was the drying up of the Sarasvati. It argues further that the movement of populations away from the Sarasvati to the Ganges, after the Sarasvati dried up (c. 1900 - 1300 BCE), was also reflected in the literature. It thereby proposes a complete continuity of cultural development in India revealed both through archaeology and through ancient Indian literature. Perhaps more shockingly, the article states that the Aryan invasion theory reflects colonialism and Eurocentrism and is quite out of date. Such statements echo those about ancient India that various Hindus have been making since Sri Aurobindo nearly a century ago. Note the conclusion of the long article. The ie. notes and emphases were added by me. "That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate traditions of South Asia (ie. the Vedic tradition) are now converging has significant implications for regional cultural history. A few scholars have proposed that there is nothing in the 'literature' firmly placing the Indo-Aryans, the generally perceived founders of the modern South Asian cultural tradition(s), outside of South Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this. Within the context of cultural continuity described here, an archaeologically significant indigenous discontinuity occurs due to ecological factors (ie. the drying up of the Sarasvati river). This cultural discontinuity was a regional population shift from the Indus Valley, in the west, to locations east and southeast, a phenomenon also recorded in ancient oral (ie. Vedic) traditions. As data accumulates to support cultural continuity in South Asian prehistoric and historic periods, a considerable restructuring of existing interpretive paradigms must take place. We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asian studies approaches the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal." Is this the statement of a Hindu political ideologue? No, it is by a noted Western archaeologist specializing in ancient India, James Schaffer of Case Western University, who has nothing to do with Hindutva or even Hindu spirituality. It is part of his new article Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology soon to appear in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande, University of Michigan Press 1998. This article doesn't mean that Schaffer accepts a Hindu interpretation of history as a whole or that he is even aware of the political implications of this issue in India. He is simply stating his objective position based upon the evidence he sees as an archaeologist. It doesn't mean that all Western archaeologists have come to this conclusion, though most archaeologists in India like B.B. Lal, S.P. Gupta or S.R.Rao have argued similar points for several years now. But it does mean that views are changing and one can no longer reject those who question the Aryan invasion theory as academically unsound or politically motivated Hindus. The archaeological record shows nothing like an Aryan invasion but rather an indigenous urban based culture on the Sarasvati that shifted to the Ganga after the Sarasvati dried up. This reflects the shift from the Sarasvati based Vedic literature to the Ganga based Puranas. The Aryan invasion theory, as Schaffer notes, arose from a Eurocentric view that was hostile to an Indic basis for Western civilization or peoples. The discovery of close affinities between the Indo-European languages in the eighteenth century required an explanation. By placing the original Aryans in Europe, who later migrated to India where they got absorbed by the indigenous population, it took away any need to connect the ancient Europeans with India, which was not pleasing to the colonial mindset of the time. The theory eventually developed an antisemetic tone. It was used to trace Western culture not to the Jews and their Biblical accounts but to an proposed European homeland dominated by Nordic peoples. Thus the invasion theory eventually became one of the pillars for Nazi historians (yet strangely the communists in India have become strong supporters of the theory and accuse those who question it of being fascists!). Unfortunately some scholars today, particularly Indian leftists, argue that the rejection of the Aryan invasion theory is just a political ploy of Hindu fanatics. They point out how Hindu texts like the Vedas and Puranas, though mentioning different regions and rulers, contain many fanciful and unscientific ideas. How therefore can we take their history seriously? They fail to note that all ancient accounts like the Bible, Egyptian, Greek,or Sumerian records have their mythic and legendary elements and this is not used to so completely reject them. They similarly argue thatHindus today have many fanciful ideas about history, like placing the events of the Ramayanaover a million years ago, as if this barred any Hindus from ever having valid historical notions. Such scholars, who clearly have as much modern political as ancient historical concerns themselves, highlight how important Hindu nationalists like Savarkar and Golwalkar argued against the invasion theory. They are afraid that the rejection of the Aryan invasion theory will help pro-Hindu forces to stress the indigenous nature of Hinduism in India, which could be used to brand other religious groups as foreign and anti-national. Particularly they are afraid that it could be used to make Islam an intrusive invader religion and become a pretext to oppress theIslamic minority in the country. Since some Hindu nationalists like Golwalkar who argued against the invasion theory (though he never claimed to be an historian) had strange ideas like trying to place the north pole in India in the early Aryan period, these Hinduphobic scholars would like us to believe that anyone who rejects the Aryan invasion musthave similar unsound ideas about history, as well as a political bias, and therefore must be without credibility. They also project the idea that the Aryan invasion theory has somehowproved itself, though there is as yet no real archaeological evidence for it and all suchproposed evidence, like Wheeler's massacre at Mohenjodaro, have themselves been disproved as fanciful. That the Aryan invasion theory itself has been persistently used to promote anti-Hindu political agendas is similarly ignored. The invasion theory has been usedlike a stick to beat Hindus for the last two hundred years (some of these same scholars who arerasing the political bogey about the rejection of the theory have used it to attack Hinduismthemselves). That Hindus might use the demise of the theory for their own benefit is only to be expected and is perhaps little more than getting even or restoring balance on these issues. The British used the theory to discredit any indigenous civilization in the subcontinent, which was seen as succumbing to various waves of invaders from the West, making for a patchwork culture derived from outside influences. This made the British rule seem just another and perhaps necessary phase of a long invasionist saga. The communists used the Aryan Invasion theory as the basis for their history of India, substituting the caste war of the Brahmin invaders from Central Asia for the European class war model. Dravidian nationalists used it to their advantage, claiming an older purer Dravidian culture that was different from that of the Aryan invaders from the north. The Dalits used it to identify themselves with the original inhabitants of the country enslaved by the invading Brahmin dominated Aryans. Christian and Islamic groups have used it to brand the Hindu Rishis as primitive poets leading nomadic hordes, making the Vedas, the scriptures of Hinduism, as without any real spirituality! In fact, there is probably no other theory of ancient history that has been used with such blatant political intent or missionary aggression. The theory has even been used by some scholars to make the Yoga tradition or such systems as Tantra, Shaivism, Samkhya, Buddhism andJainism non-Aryan (though, for example, original Buddhism calls itself 'Arya Dharma'). Given this scenario any group would use the demise of such a hostile theory to reclaim value for their own traditions. But to use any possible advantage that Hindus may derive from this historical revindication as a grounds to reject it is ridiculous. The recent ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research) controversy comes in to play here. The new BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government,which has pro-Hindu sympathies, dismissed the old council members whose term was up, which was dominated by leftists and communists (including a number of self-proclaimed Stalinists). In their place it appointed scholars whose academic credentials were sound but who did not subscribe to leftist views and generally did not accept the Aryan invasion theory. The leftists cried foul and protested about a possible Hindu rewriting or distorting of history for political ends. They attacked senior scholars like B.B.Lal and branded his scholarship defective because he rejected the Aryan invasion theory, dismissing his forty years of work in the field as without basis. They projected anyone who questioned the invasionist scenario as a Hindu fundamentalist and academically suspect. By the same logic they ought to put Schaffer in this category. That some Indian archaeologists may be Hindus and find pride in discoveries that give antiquity to Hindu culture in India is not an adequate basis to reject their archeological work. Western archaeologists have long used their discoveries to find pride or justification for their Greek, Christian or Judaic traditions. They are not banned from archeology for doing so. Hindus might abuse the new historical scenario, just as other groups have already long abused the old idea. But this is no reason to reject the new data of history. The fact is that we use history to reflect or promote variouscultural, political or religious views. History as a human factor cannot be viewed in a totally neutral cultural light. The very importance of history is that it provides information on whichwe can build various interpretations of civilization not only relative to the past but to the present and future as well. Of course, we must be aware of the viewpoint, which may be a bias, of the historian and try to separate that from historical facts, which may have other possible interpretations. Certainly Hindus can find much consolation in the new archaeological data. It corroborates the Vedic historical record and shows a great urban culture, the Harappan, to go along with this magnificent literary tradition of the Vedas. The looming demise of the Aryan invasion theory is not a Hindu political ploy. There is much archaeological and literary evidence against it which continues to grow on a daily basis and hasmoved far behind the sphere of faithful Hindus. Schaffer's work shows this quite clearly. CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE
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