Maybe, maybe not.Not quite convinced. What is being suggested by you is a new theory to fit the genetic facts, all previously prevalent theories seem to go out of the window in light of those studies. The dates of the Aryan movements are a problem because of the importance of Saraswathi in the Rig veda. In previous theories this was largely discounted as mythical and therefore the dates could be moved as close as 1500 B.C. The drying up of the most important river & the tectonic shifts which resulted in the Sutlej moving into the Indus & Yamuna moving towards the Ganges would have been monumental if that happened very suddenly. The fact that the Saraswathi is mentioned as late as the Mahabharata(even if no longer mentioned as a flowing river) indicates a substantial passage of time where this occurred. The dates are important because it changes everything previously assumed. For the Indus to become the river it is and for it be the origin of the name that India is now known by, it must have postdated the drying up of the Saraswathi. So when was the Rig veda composed?
I am sorry, I should have stepped back one step and given you - and others - a little more of a perspective view.
In history, except during the precise recorded history that we find as we come further and further into modern times, where sometimes days and hours are possible to identify, it is safer to work with a range. Much of historical studies of ancient times, whether of Ancient Europe, of Ancient Iran, or of Ancient India, depends on intelligent estimation of
a range of dates which are equally possible. The exception is, of course, Ancient China; the Chinese have always been the most methodical with regard to their reporting and their administrative processes, bar none.
I am not sure exactly what is worrying you, but suspect that if you put down all the major events relevant to you for your analysis, whatever you believe those events to be, and assign an earliest possible date and a latest possible date to them, you may find that there is a lot of room for things to happen.
However, I do know that there are certain philosophical differences between us; in terms of the older historical paradigms, I belong to the AIT, and you perhaps to the OOI - these are the Aryan Invasion of India and the Out of India theories. The clue I got was your mention of the Saraswati; for reasons that I have not got deeply involved with till now, the existence and direction of flow of the Saraswati is very, very important for the OOI school.
If I remember correctly, and this is from memory, since I couldn't bring myself to read Frawley or Rajaram, the early mention of the Saraswati shows that the Rg Vedic culture was aware of it, it is seen as one of the sustaining rivers of the Indus Valley Civilisation, therefore, the OOI school say that with the IVC dependent on it, and its drying up rendering the IVC impossible to sustain, and with the evident knowledge of the river apparent in the earliest part of the Rg Veda, these events were almost contemporaneous. There is circumstantial evidence, therefore, to consider that the IVC may have been a Sanskrit speaking civilisation, rather than a Dravidian one, as conventional wisdom among the AIT had all along held.
I have nothing to say about OOI vs. AIT here. That is a thread, a blog, a book, a reference journal by itself. As of now, it does seem that the AIT has a credible story to tell, and that it is for others to put forth a stronger story, or to discredit this story in a conclusive way. That has not yet happened.
But about the dates, very briefly, and without prejudice, meaning I am representing the commonly held view for your ready reminder in a separate note (I will try and see if a table formed in Word can be fitted into this format).
Indo-Iranian tribes in Central Asia: 2500 BC to 2000 BC
Iranian tribes move westward: 2000 to 1700 BC
Composition of the Avesta: 1700 BC to 1300 BC
Indian tribes move eastward: 2000 to 1700 BC
Last dates of viable IVC settlements, latest: 1300 BC
Composition of the Rg Veda and three other Vedas*: 1700 BC to 1000 BC
Composition of the Mahabharata*: 800 BC to 800 AD
* Both contain evidence of earlier events and activities, in places other than their place of final composition.
You must consider that in the Mahabharata itself, a Scythian King, the Lord of the Parama Kamboja, is general for Duryodhana and the Kaurava Army after the death of Shalya. Connections between the tribes that drifted apart lasted much longer than these dates indicate, and there were links with east Iranian tribes such as the Parama Kamboja which were remembered as late as the 8th century BC. The split of the tribes happened around 1700 BC give or take a century, and was in any case a gradual process; nobody got up one morning, declared,"Right, today onwards we are Iranian," and marched off west to their manifest destiny. So there is a relationship which lasted into subsequent centuries, and was remembered nearly 900 years later.
Is it possible that likewise, the Saraswati was remembered years later, in the Mahabharata in 800 BC, while being first mentioned in the Rg Veda between 1700 to 1000? Would you be comfortable with its probable final stages being, say, towards the end of the Rg Vedic period, 1000 BC, and a couple of hundred years before the Mahabharata? That would more or less coincide with 1300 BC, the final years of the IVC.
//Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! I missed seeing your entire second paragraph//
The other problem is a complete lack of any evidence of widespread use of a pre aryan language system in Northern india. Some evidence must be around somewhere if the pre aryan people remained the majority. The similarity of religious figures in the whole of India especially when there was a concept of Aryavartha prevailing is a little odd. If the South of the Vindhyas was normally a no go zone then how did it start to resemble the North including in the concept of caste which incidentally is a post Rig vedic phenomenon.
Too many questions, too little answers. The genetic studies seem to have opened up a Pandora's box.
I am not sure if you are familiar with the connections between Kol-Mundari and the Tamil family, within the larger Dravidian group. Kol-Mundari, or Brahui, or similar languages prevailed all over north India, and it is considered that the Tamil/Dravidian words in Sanskrit were adopted from the sub-stratum languages in northern India.
There is actually a complete language coverage for the whole of India. It was the Dravidian family, and it retreated slowly, in fact, never lost its hold on some rural pockets in north India right until now.
Regarding the Dravidian pantheon, by simple elimination of the Aryan war-band from the present host in the combined cosmogony, we can get a thumb-nail sketch. It is clear that there was some elimination - Varuna, Mitra, the Nasatyas; some assimilation - Kartik is Subrahmanyam is Shanmugham; and some addition - the entire body of the Shaktis, Shiva. The composite Puranic culture apparently added some baggage; there are tempting indications that heroic men become demi-gods and then were elevated by their own particular sect to avatars. The first process was available in Greek and Roman Mythology already. I personally tend to suspect that the Dravidian pantheon was pretty close to the Great Mother cult suppressed by the patriarchal war-bands of the Greeks, the Celts, the Italians, the Germans, and arguably, the Indo-Aryans. The Titans turn up, too, in their expected places and expected roles; suddenly, we find Vanir and Aesir striding through our epics. Animal spirits abound; the strong similarity between Rg Vedic bear and mysterious man-killing quasi-humanoids of the woods is relatively easy to trace back.
Regarding your question of the spread to the south, consider it as a Sanskritisation process, which skipped the entire heirarchy and concentrated on key aspects. It acquired Brahmins probably by elevation of local shamans and partially by intermarriage with northern priestly families - I can write on this separately if anyone is interested, and point out the significance of Vadagalai and Thengalai. It allowed no one the Kshatriya rank; the Brahmins, by 800 BC, were facing increasing resistance to their encroaching ways and their universal greed, and the outburst of 600 BC must have been a long time in the making. Since this resistance was spearheaded by Kshatriyas, they may not have been too keen to elevate the warrior classes of the south to Kshatriya status. So Reddy, Thevar, Bunt, Nair stayed what they were, and didn't make it to the warrior castes, not to the level of the old Kshatriya. Businessmen got absorbed and Shettys/Chetttys abound in large numbers. Finally, the poor remained downtrodden and oppressed, here as in there.
But there is some room for doubt. Considering the striking difference between the Vedic war-band, whether that of the Gods or that of the humans, it is a tempting suggestion that the Indo-Aryans succumbed to caste under pressure from an existing system.
And I didn't get your reference to a no-go zone. It was emphatically nothing of the kind.
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