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Hinduism has a lot of flaws, but historical flaws in your analysis. Nobody says Indus flowed in Kerala, we know where exactly that is, which is Pakistan, you take NCERT textbooks of CBSE education they will show it there. Now, We identify with it, not cuz of general location but rather we continue most of the traditions started over there, Now did ancestors of the present day Pakistan started the religion called Hinduism, No. Pakistan was always a frontier nation and most rapes and pillages etc by Ghaznavi, Ghauri and other invaders did on the Pakistani Population of today's ancestors,
 
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Hinduism has a lot of flaws, but historical flaws in your analysis. Nobody says Indus flowed in Kerala, we know where exactly that is, which is Pakistan, you take NCERT textbooks of CBSE education they will show it there. Now, We identify with it, not cuz of general location but rather we continue most of the traditions started over there, Now did ancestors of the present day Pakistan started the religion called Hinduism, No. Pakistan was always a frontier nation and most rapes and pillages etc by Ghaznavi, Ghauri and other invaders did on the Pakistani Population of today's ancestors,

I didnt say Indus flows through Kerala. It doesnt even flow into India really, perhaps one or two fringe areas. It is true that you have adopted ONE or TWO of the traditions of the Vedics from Ancient Pakistan, and DEVELOPED the Vedic religion into Hinduism today. That's all fine, and I'm happy for anyone to do this, Indian, German, African whoever. But what most people object to it when you do this and then claim all of Pakistan's ancient history as "Indian" history, when in fact it is Pakistan's history. At least clarify this, or I will.

Now the ancestors of Pakistan did NOT start Hinduism. But they did start Vedism, not modern day "Indians". It is true that Pakistan has been a frontier nation, but i'm pretty sure that the likes of Ghaznavi and Ghauri did not rape and pillage as you say. Either way, the base populations of a country DO NOT change, unless you're advocating genocide which has not occurred.
 
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That depends on your definition of Hinduism, Its not one or two tiny weeny ittty bitty belief, We are the continuation of those people, Base people can change migrate etc. Its quite a natural phenomenon.


Rapes and Pillages of Ghauri and Ghazanvi are well documented especially on Hindu's, that is the ancestors of present Pakistan.
 
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Hinduism's losses

There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.

Note that attempts are made to deny this history. In Indian schoolbooks and the media, an idyllic picture of Hindu-Muslim harmony in the pre-British period is propagated in outright contradiction with the testimony of the primary sources. Like Holocaust denial, this propaganda can be called negationism. The really daring negationists don't just deny the crimes against Hindus, they invert the picture and blame the Hindus themselves. Thus, it is routinely alleged that Hindus persecuted and destroyed Buddhism; in reality, Buddhist monasteries and universities flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of monks were killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.

Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, "Indian mountain", was renamed Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer", when one cold night in the reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur conquered Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his journal that he made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim quarter, while in the Hindu areas, they took "twenty slaves each". Hindu slaves were converted to Islam, and when their descendants gained their freedom, they swelled the numbers of the Muslim community. It is a cruel twist of history that the Muslims who forced Partition on India were partly the progeny of Hindus enslaved by Islam.

Karma

The Hindu notion of Karma has come under fire from Christian and secularist polemicists as part of the current backlash against New Age thinking. Allegedly, the doctrine of Karma implies that the victims of the Holocaust and other massacres had deserved their fate. A naive understanding of Karma, divorced from its Hindu context, could indeed lead to such ideas. Worse, it could be said that the Jews as a nation had incurred genocidal karma by the genocide which their ancestors committed on the Canaanites. Likewise, it could be argued that the Native Americans had it coming: recent research (by Walter Neves from Brazil as well as by US scientists) has shown that in ca. 8000 BC, the Mongoloid Native American populations replaced an earlier American population closely resembling the Australian Aborigines -- the first American genocide?

More generally, if Karma explains suffering and "apparent" injustice as a profound form of justice, a way of reaping the karmic rewards of one's own actions, are we not perversely justifying every injustice? These questions should not be taken lightly. However, the Hindu understanding of reincarnation militates against the doctrine of genocidal "group karma" outlined above. An individual can incarnate in any community, even in other species, and need not be reborn among his own progeny. If Canaanites killed by the Israelites have indeed reincarnated, some may have been Nazi camp guards and others Jewish Holocaust victims. There is no reason to assume that the members of today's victim group are the reincarnated souls of the bullies of yesteryear, returning to suffer their due punishment. That is the difference between karma and genetics: karma is taken along by the individual soul, not passed on in the family line.

More fundamentally, we should outgrow this childish (and in this case, downright embarrassing) view of karma as a matter of reward and punishment. Does the killer of a million people return a million times as a murder victim to suffer the full measure of his deserved punishment? Rather, karma is a law of conservation: you are reborn with the basic pattern of desires and conditionings which characterized you when you died last time around. The concrete experiences and actions which shaped that pattern, however, are history: they only survive insofar as they have shaped your psychic karma pattern, not as a precise account of merits and demerits to be paid off by corresponding amounts of suffering and pleasure.

One lesson to be learned from genocide history pertains to Karma, the law of cause and effect, in a more down-to-earth sense: suffering genocide is the karmic reward of weakness. That is one conclusion which the Jews have drawn from their genocide experience: they created a modern and militarily strong state. Even more importantly, they helped foster an awareness of the history of their persecution among their former persecutors, the Christians, which makes it unlikely that Christians will target them again. In this respect, the Hindus have so far failed completely. With numerous Holocaust memorials already functioning, one more memorial is being built in Berlin by the heirs of the perpetrators of the Holocaust; but there is not even one memorial to the Hindu genocide, because even the victim community doesn't bother, let alone the perpetrators.

This different treatment of the past has implications for the future. Thus, Israel's nuclear programme is accepted as a matter of course, justified by the country's genuine security concerns; but when India, which has equally legitimate security concerns, conducted nuclear tests, it provoked American sanctions. If the world ignores Hindu security concerns, one of the reasons is that Hindus have never bothered to tell the world how many Hindus have been killed already.

Healing

What should Hindus say to Muslims when they consider the record of Islam in Hindu lands? It is first of all very important not to allot guilt wrongly. Notions of collective or hereditary guilt should be avoided. Today's Muslims cannot help it that other Muslims did certain things in 712 or 1565 or 1971. One thing they can do, however, is to critically reread their scripture to discern the doctrinal factors of Muslim violence against Hindus and Hinduism. Of course, even without scriptural injunction, people get violent and wage wars; if Mahmud Ghaznavi hadn't come, some of the people he killed would have died in other, non-religious conflicts. But the basic Quranic doctrine of hatred against the unbelievers has also encouraged many good-natured and pious people to take up the sword against Hindus and other Pagans, not because they couldn't control their aggressive instincts, but because they had been told that killing unbelievers was a meritorious act. Good people have perpetrated evil because religious authorities had depicted it as good.

This is material for a no-nonsense dialogue between Hindus and Muslims. But before Hindus address Muslims about this, it is imperative that they inform themselves about this painful history. Apart from unreflected grievances, Hindus have so far not developed a serious critique of Islam's doctrine and historical record. Often practising very sentimental, un-philosophical varieties of their own religion, most Hindus have very sketchy and distorted images of rival religions. Thus, they say that Mohammed was an Avatar of Vishnu, and then think that they have cleverly solved the Hindu-Muslim conflict by flattering the Prophet (in fact, it is an insult to basic Muslim beliefs, which reject divine incarnation, apart from indirectly associating the Prophet with Vishnu's incarnation as a pig). Instead of the silly sop stories which pass as conducive to secularism, Hindus should acquaint themselves with real history and real religious doctrines.

Another thing which we should not forget is that Islam is ultimately rooted in human nature. We need not believe the Muslim claim that the Quran is of divine origin; but then it is not of diabolical origin either, it is a human document. The Quran is in all respects the product of a 7th-century Arab businessman vaguely acquainted with Judeo-Christian notions of monotheism and prophetism, and the good and evil elements in it are very human. Even its negative elements appealed to human instincts, e.g. when Mohammed promised a share in the booty of the caravans he robbed, numerous Arab Pagans took the bait and joined him. The undesirable elements in Islamic doctrine stem from human nature, and can in essence be found elsewhere as well. Keeping that in mind, it should be possible to make a fair evaluation of Islam's career in India on the basis of factual history.


http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/irin/genocide.html
 
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That depends on your definition of Hinduism, Its not one or two tiny weeny ittty bitty belief, We are the continuation of those people, Base people can change migrate etc. Its quite a natural phenomenon.

No you're not a continuation of those people - you could argue you are a continuation of the BELIEFS of those people, but even this would be incorrect. Vedic society was very different to modern day Hinduism in India. The Vedic people of the Indus Valley ate cows, didn't have a caste system amongst many other differences. In fact the religion of modern day Hinduism is acknowledged to be completely different to the religion of the Vedics in the Mahabharatta where it describes purification rituals necessary for any Hindu that steps foot into Vedic Pakistan. So no, you're not a continuation of these people.

Base people do not change through migration, unless there's some sort of genocide. This did not occur, as genetics prove - The Ganges is almost completely non Aryan, which proves that no migration took place as you say.
 
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Read about the Aryan Push theory, Hinduism is Vedic relgion. PS: I would have eaten more Cow, Pork than you would have.
 
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Read about the Aryan Push theory, Hinduism is Vedic relgion. PS: I would have eaten more Cow, Pork than you would have.

I've explained how Hinduism arose and why - and how and where Vedism arose. If you don't understand what I wrote, it's not my fault. I'm not continuing this with you - it should be clear from what I've wrote that what you've said isn't true.

And you might very well have eaten more cow than me - you might not be strict, you might be one of these dharmic, adharmic believing Hindus that changes his beliefs to let the dharma flow - but the fact of the matter is the Rig Veda permits cow eating, all the Bharati derived books ban cow eating - even today cow eating is banned in several states of India - so your personal lifestyle is irrelevant. Cows are considered very sacred in modern day Hinduism by the Brahmins - cows were just another animal to the Vedic people of Ancient Pakistan though.
 
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Whats the big deal if Vedic Hindu's ate beef and modern Hindu's don't ?
 
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Whats the big deal if Vedic Hindu's ate beef and modern Hindu's don't ?

There is no such thing as a Vedic Hindu, using Hindu in the modern sense of the word. Vedism is one religion, Hinduism is another. Both are very different religions, and Vedic society aka Ancient Pakistani society, was completely different to modern Hindu society aka Bharati society. I know it's difficult to accept for you because you've been taught something else based on government curriculum.
 
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Alright, where did I get to. I'll start here for today.

Your going absolutely off-topic, picking up my out of context posts and replying to as I said your desperate to discuss and prove something which is not even being discussed.

Oh That I can agree to. Aryans existed outside of India (and Iran), and never invaded or migrated to either) - a quick look at the genetics will show this (I can agree to some Indian
Punabis and Indian Gujeratis being of mixed Aryan-Dravidian descent however).

The Aryan Invasion theory is wrong is what was being talked about nothing else, and indeed all these pages I gave some genetical articles to prove the same. Nothing else is being talked about, your emergency in putting something which isn’t being talked is strange.

Niaz, see even roadrunner agrees that there has been no Aryan invasion theory, yet he uses points proposed from the AIT proposers to create a hypothetical theory that Aryans existed only in Pakistan and not India When Aryan/Dravidian tride was created on linguistical differences thereby proposing AIT, amusing isn’t it?

Roadrunner I'm not commenting on your Punjabi-Gujrati-Dravidian Ancestory.

Interesting thing if your interested,

The Europeans invented the notion of an Aryan race to counter the
Jewish mystic tradition known as the Kabbalah or (Quabbalah) which
scholars believe is in turn a rehash of older Babylonian, Persian ,
Indian Greek and Celtic stories. The Kabbalah holds that just before
the Great Flood secret wisdom was taught by the Sons of God who
descended from the heavens and intermarried the descendents of Cain.
The Kabbalah subscribes to the notion of a superior or a root race
which received this divine wisdom. In the prevalent anti Semitic
environment, the European occultist thought this to be a great
embarrassment that this superior race was not them but the Jewish
people. William Jones' (1783) pronouncement of the relationship
between languages of Europe and India came at the most opportune time.
If there was a proto language then there must be a proto race who
spoke this proto language, the "Aryans." The Aryan race was offered
as the European answer for Kabbalah. According to Robert Drews (1988)

"It is an unfortunate coincidence that studies of the Indo European
language community flourished at a time when nationalism, and a
tendency to see history in racial terms, was on the rise in Europe.
There was no blinking the fact , in the nineteenth century, that most
of the world was dominated by Europeans or people of European descent.
The easiest explanation for this was that Europeans, or at least most
members of the European family, were genetically superior to people's
of darker complexion. It was thus a welcome discovery that the
ancient Greeks and the Persians were linguistically, and therefore one
could assume biologically, "related" to the modern Europeans. The same
racial stock, it appeared had been in control of the world since Cyrus
conquered Babylon. This stock was obviously the white race. INDIA, IT
IS TRUE, PRESENTED A PROBLEM, AND REQUIRED A SEPARATE EXPLANATION.
ARYANS HAD INVADED INDIA NO LATER THATN THE SECOND MILINNUM BC, AND
SUCCEFULLY IMPOSED THEIR LANGUAGE ON THE ABORIGINAL POPULATION, BUT
THE ARYAN RACE HAD EVIDENTLY BECOME STERILE IN THAT SOUTHERN CLIME AND
WAS EVENTUALLY SUBNMERGED BY THE ABORIGINAL AND INFERUIR STIOCK OF THE
SUBCONTINENT (emphasis added, Drews 1988 in Livingston 2003, p. 8)."

"Nevertheless fueled by an obstinate nationalism , Europeans denied
their essential absence from history , and by grossly misrepresenting
the facts, artistically created an ancient past, placing themselves
far back in time, as far back as the beginning of human history and in
the ranks of the great civilizations (Livingston 2002, p. xi).
Such ideas are commonplace even today even though the rhetoric is much
milder. After quoting two very contemporary mainstream scholars
McNeil (1986) and Roberts (1995) as examples, Livingston (2002)
concludes, " it is difficult to fathom that, in a society that
considers itself as liberal and as morally progressive as our own,
modern scholars present ideas as blatantly offensive as these. These
theories are not the rabid ravings of neo-Nazi fanatics. These are the
purported sober theories of mainstream intellectuals. However, their
claims are no different than the lunacies formerly upheld by Hitler
(p. 16)."
The concept of an IE language family originating in Europe is
absolutely critical to the very existence of the West.

Livingston, David (2002), "the Dying God: The Hidden History of the
Western Civilization," New York: Writers Club Press

If your more interested,

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
by G. W. F. Hegel
Translated by J. Sibree


http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Hegel%20- Philosophy of History.htm

Remember, Marxist Historian have throuout tried to prove the Euro-Centric viewpoint of AIT as per MAx Mueller, and their hypothesis is a derivation from Hegel and that of William Jones in early 1800 to 1900.

Some Points in summary why there was no AIT proposed by The European Scholars of the time.

1. The Aryan invasion model is largely based on linguistic conjectures which are unjustified (and wrong). Languages develop much more slowly than assumed by nineteenth century scholars. According to Renfrew speakers of Indo-European languages may have lived in Anatolia as early as 7000 BCE

2. The supposed large-scale migrations of Aryan people in the second millennium BCE first into Western Asia and then into northern India (by 1500 BCE) cannot be maintained in view of the fact that the Hittites were in Anatolia already by 2200 BCE and the Kassites and Mitanni had kings and dynasties by 1600 BCE

3. There is no memory of an invasion or of large-scale migration in the records of Ancient India-neither in the Vedas, Buddhist or Jain writings, nor in Tamil literature. The fauna and flora, the geography and the climate described in the Rigveda are that of Northern India.

4. There is a striking cultural continuity between the archaeological artefacts of the Indus-Saraswati civilisation and subsequent Indian society and culture: a continuity of religious ideas, arts, crafts, architecture, system of weights and measures.

5. The archaeological finds of Mehrgarh (copper, cattle, barley) reveal a culture similar to that of the Vedic Indians. Contrary to former interpretations, the Rigveda shows not a nomadic but an urban culture (purusa as derived from pur vasa = town-dweller).

6. The Aryan invasion theory was based on the assumption that a nomadic people in possession of horses and chariots defeated an urban civilisation that did not know horses, and that horses are depicted only from the middle of the second millennium onwards. Meanwhile archaeological evidence for horses has been found in Harappan and pre-Harappan sites; drawings of horses have been found in paleolithic caves in India; drawings of riders on horses dated c. 4300 BCE have been found in Ukraina. Horsedrawn war chariots are not typical for nomadic breeders but for urban civilisations.

7. The racial diversity found in skeletons in the cities of the Indus civilisation is the same as in India today; there is no evidence of the coming of a new race.

8. The Rigveda describes a river system in North India that is pre-1900 BCE in the case of the
Saraswati river, and pre-2600 BCE in the case of the Drishadvati river. Vedic literature shows a population shift from the Saraswati (Rigveda) to the Ganges (Brahmanas and Puranas), also evidenced by archaeological finds.

9. The astronomical references in the Rigveda are based on a Pleiades-Krittika (Taurean) calendar of c. 2500 BCE when Vedic astronomy and mathematics were well-developed sciences (again, not a feature of a nomadic people).

10. The Indus cities were not destroyed by invaders but deserted by their inhabitants because of desertification of the area. Strabo (Geography XV.1.19) reports that Aristobulos had seen thousands of villages and towns deserted because the Indus had changed its course.

11. Excavations in Dwaraka have lead to the discovery of a site larger than Mohenjodaro, dated c. 1500 BCE with architectural structures, use of iron, a script halfway between Harappan and Brahmi. Dwarka has been associated with Krishna and the end of the Vedic period.

12. A continuity in the morphology of scripts: Harappan, Brahmi, Devanagari.

13. Vedic ayas, formerly translated as 'iron,' probably meant copper or bronze. Iron was found in India before 1500 BCE in Kashmir and Dwaraka.

14. The Puranic dynastic lists with over 120 kings in one Vedic dynasty alone, fit well into the 'new chronology'. They date back to the third millennium BCE Greek accounts tell of Indian royal lists going back to the seventh millennium BCE.

15. The Rigveda itself shows an advanced and sophisticated culture, the product of a long development, 'a civilisation that could not have been delivered to India on horseback'.

16. Painted Gray Ware culture in the western Gangetic plains, dated ca 1100 BCE has been found connected to (earlier) Black and Red Ware etc.

A nice pic,

http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=aitstageseu8.jpg

Fanciful thinking at best. When the Saraswati (noone even knows if this existed) dried up, noone moved from the Indus except one or two tribes.

The Rig Vedic river Saraswati is not fiction, many in the sciences refer to it. Get updated with recent research done by indologists, There has been satellite imagiries of dried up river course, Kindly get updated with latest developments of past decade till now. Get updated with the wiki article on River Saraswati.

Saraswati is said to have originated from the Har-ki-Dun glacier in west Garhwal (Uttaranchal). It flowed parallel to the river Yamuna for some distance and later joined it, proceeding south as the Vedic Saraswati. The seasonal rivers and streams, including Ghaggar, joined Saraswati as it follow the course of the present river through Punjab and Haryana. River Sutluj, the Vedic Shatadru, joined the river Saraswati as a tributary at Shatrana, approximately 25 km south of Patiala. Saraswati then followed the course of Ghaggar through Rajasthan and Hakra in Bhawalpur before emptying into the Rann of Kutch via Nara in Sindh province, running parallel to the Indus River. It has been established that the river Saraswati, carrying the waters of three perennial and numerous seasonal rivers,.

Mostly, Indus and Saraswati, were the two major waterway, schemes of northwestern India during the Vedic period Sridhar have classified the rivers into four main groups– (i) Sindhu (Indus) and its tributaries, Vitasta (Jhelum) and Askini (Chenab); (ii) Shatadru (Sutlej) and its two major tributaries Vipasa (Beas) and Parasuni or Iravati (Ravi); (iii) Saraswati and its three tributaries, Markanda, Ghaggar and Patialewali, in its upper reaches and a major branch in its middle course; (iv) Drishadvati, and Lavanavati.

You might want to look in these few,

http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/

Parpola, Asko, Deciphering the Indus Script, London, 1994, pp.70-78

An outstanding contribution to the study of the script problem is the publication of the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (CISI) Two volumes have been published so far:

Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, 1. Collections in India, Helsinki, 1987 (eds. Jagat Pati Joshi and Asko Parpola)

Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, 2. Collections in Pakistan, Helsinki, 1991 (eds. Sayid Ghulam Mustafa Shah and Asko Parpola)

[A third volume containing other collections outside India and Pakistan is yet to appear.]

Many attempts at decipherment of the inscriptions are summarized in Parpola (1994, pp. 57-61): "In summary, none of the attempts at deciphering the Indus script made so far (including that of our Finnish team) has gained wide acceptance… numerous tests agree in establishing right to left as the preponderant direction of writing in the Indus inscriptions… Mahadevan who has carefully recorded the direction of the original in each of his 3,573 lines, distinguishes 2,974 lines running right to left (83.23 percent) and 235 going left to right (6.57 percent), in addition to such ambiguous sequences as 190 single-sign lines, 12 symmetrical sequences and 155 cases that are doubtful on account of damaged or illegible lines. A top-to-bottom sequence is recorded for seven lines."

Parpola suggests (Corpus, 1, 1987, p. xvi) that the pictorial motifs (some of which are iconographic) indicate religious motifs and some seals (such as M-319 with a carved hollow to hold an amuletic charm and a lid) which are probably charms provide clues to the Harappan religion. He also adds that many miniature tablets of Harappa may have functioned as tokens of votive offerings or of visits to temples. He cites the examples of moulded tablets Mk-478 and M-479 where the combination of 4 U signs stands next to an iconographic scene where a kneeling worshipper extends a pot shaped like the U-formed sign towards a tree. "Apparently the tree is sacred, and the man is presenting the pot (or according to the inscription, four pots) to it as an offering… The interpretation of the iconography of the Indus seals and tablets constitutes a major scholarly challenge…Sir John Marshall’s identification of a Proto-Siva in the buffalo-horned deity of a famous seal from Mohenjodaro (M-304) may well be correct, and so may be Alf Hiltebeitel’s even more convincing identification of this figure as Proto-Mahis.a, although this deity and his ‘yogic posture’ have close counterparts in the earlier glyptic art of the Proto-Elamites. Comparative studies thus suggest that the Indus Civilization may have been an integral if marginal part of the West Asian cultural area and that there is an unbroken cultural continuity in South Asia from the Harappan times until the present day."

And if you consider the groundbreaking deciphering of Indus scripts by recently a German Indologist the article which I have already posted here, who have done it using Brahmni Scripts and Sumeria Scripts (also proving the CLEAR LINK between Puranas and Vedas which was already proven before by the Puranas), Saraswati gets more profound philological proof, as it is very well chronicled in the Puranas, and the puranas has given a excellent analysis of many of the kingdoms and kings of that time and the flowing of the river.

Also look in these,

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/oct25/articles20.htm
FROM: Current Science, of the Indian Academy of Sciences

"Recent studies have shown that the onset of an arid climate occurred in two pulses – at 4700–3700 and at 2000–1700 BC26, both of which had fairly wide impact not only in India in the desertification of western Rajasthan but in other countries also, like Africa in the development of Saharan and Nubian deserts. The desertification is thought to have occurred 5400 y ago (3400 BC) and its onset greatly affected the monsoon rains and consequently the river systems too. The change from wetter to arid condition destroyed steadily the vegetation, which in turn affected soil moisture, its evaporation, atmospheric circulation and precipitation, all important links in the monsoon evolution chain and, ultimately the climate over the region. However, a recent study48 of water-table fluctuations and radiocarbon estimates from the Lunkansar Lake deposit do not support the views about aridity around 3500 BC, the period when Saraswati and Indus Valley culture were thought to have collapsed. The chronology emerging from these studies show that the once perennial lakes had ceased to be so and they had dried and desiccated more than 1500 y before the dated collapse of the civilization."

Ancient shorelines of Gujarat, India, during the Indus civilization (Late Mid-Holocene): A study based on archaeological evidences

Late Quaternary Drainage Disorganization, and Migration and Extinction of the Vedic Saraswati

CURRENT 1144 SCIENCE, VOL. 87, NO. 8, 25 OCTOBER 2004

And A bit of Archeological Evidence that of groundbreaking finding of Elephant fossils in Thar Desert.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2534775.stm

http://img162.imageshack.us/my.php?image=parp01rz2.jpg

http://img162.imageshack.us/my.php?image=discsitesmaphm8.jpg

Here is an article with a muslim author (Sri Zahid Hussain) in one of the journals of the The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Let me quote,

jstor

Abstract:
Interpretation of Landsat imagery and field investigations in the western part of Jaisalmer district in India have revealed some hitherto unknown abandoned courses of the former Saraswati River. It has been suggested that these course were alive before the Saraswati occupied the Raini or the Wahinda courses, and contributed to the alleviation of the region. The subsurface water in the region is contributed mainly by the Himalayan precipitation flowing subterraneously through the former courses of the Saraswati.

Main Text excerpt:
Literary sources: the Saraswati has been described as a mighty Himalayan river in the earliest and authentic literature of the subcontinent, the Rigveda (Wilson, 1854). The earliest available report for the drying up of this river is in the epic literature of the Mahabharata where it says that the river went underground at Binasana, near the present town of Sirsa. The Mahabharata also mentions the reappearance of the Saraswati at three places downstream, then known as Chamasodbheda, Sirodbheda, and Nagodbheda (Dey, 1927).

Nicholas Kazanas, Vedic & Mesopotamian cross influences, Oct 2004:

"The river Sarasvati dried definitely c 1900 BC, according to geological and palaeoenvironmental studies (Rao 1991: 77-9; Allchins 1997: 117)."

Now do not make me quote from details of the research treatises of Allchins, Kenoyer, Meadow and other Harappan Archaeology gurus, or get into Archeological excavations.

The Indus remained populated by the Vedic people - populations do not change like this. Mass migrations do NOT occur in this sense. You seem to forget that the most important river in the Rig Veda is the River Indus. This makes the Indus (aka Ancient Pakistan), the most important area to the Vedic Aryans - Now you tell me, why would they moved from their most important river (Indus), to their LEAST important river - Ganges.
You have repeated most of the above down under, so see them.

Actually, Vedic people migrated northwards out of India-Pakistan-Iran-Aghansitan regions. Though migration on both ways are common FROM THE EPICENTRE of the mature phase of Indus-Saraswati civilization, but if we are to consider early migration that’s the actual disproponent of AIT, Under no circumsatnce can we imagine a Bronze age spread of IE into India. Kindly check the Archeological finding of Bronze age culture in South India and Sri lanka and the dates of such. Excluding this possibility we are led to Oppenheimer's dynamic of a northward repopulation from South asia due to the Ice age. If you look at latest researches (see wiki) about the Afro-Asiatic locus, they also need same deep time depths. And look into kivisild et al of the new genetic findings which totally de-anounces the Bamshed study of Indian caste population, a known Marxist and proposer of AIT, interistingly Kivisild was the co-author of the same but further mtDNA lines complete proved it wrong.

Let me explain a bit more simply which I said before,

There is no conclusive eividence that there has been a Aryan invasion,the Aryna inavsion theory(AIT)was so discredited in the academic community that it was replaced with Aryan migration theory(AMT),while Aryans did Migrate, but it was not from the Central asian steppes.

There good reaosn to belive that a ehtno-linguistic group may have inhabited the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers of North India (ghaggar is In present India.while hakra lso glows in modern pakistan) the people who authored Indus valley also may have co-habited the northern banks of the Ghaggar- hakra river along with Indus,the fact only 80 Indus valley sites have been excavated on the banks of river Indus and more than 415 on the banks of Ghaggar hakra river, and of 1400 known Indus valley sites that have been excavated, 917 are in india, 417 are in Pakistan and 1 in Afganistan

Its clear from this Indus was not the only river that sustanised the indus valley civilization,one of main was Ghaggar-Hakra , now it is widely accepted that the mythical Saraswati that is praised in the also Rigveda is the Ghaggar-Hakra , satellite based photographs and extensive GIS simulations and studying the shift patterns of Ghaggar Hakra, it has been concluded that Sutlej(sutidri) and yamuna were tributaries of Ghaggar-Hakra river, but subsequently shifted course and sutlej became a tributary of Indus and Yamuna the tributary of Ganges, Ghaggr-Hakra flowed between the Sutlej and Yamuna and before its drying up it was the major river west of ganges.

Rigveda was composed on the banks of river Ghaggar-hakra in the foot hills of the siwaliks in modern Punjab- haryana,the nAdai stuti praises ghaggar-hakra as a magnificient river that starts in the mountains and flows into the ocean, so when did it dry up, from geologoical evidence we know that ghaggar hakra began the slow process of drying up not later than 2000 BCE, and this is why at the end of the Vedic age,s indhu(indus) gains prominence while saraswati(ghaggar) loses its importance, by the time of mahabharatha(epic period)Saraswati is almost dried up, Note the word almost.

Sri Balarama's pigrimage journey form Mathura near Delhi to Dwarka via the Sarawati. This is decisive proof that Saraswati was extent during Mbh times. There are many such beyond excellent and accurate explanations of the same which are chronicled in the Puranas.

In simple terms, People who stick to AIT claim that Aryans invaded Indus valley in 1500 BC and destroyed it, but they cant explain why harappan civilization existed right upto 1300 BC,besides it cannot account for the fact that ghaggr-Hakra which was the river of Rigveda had already dried up by 1500 BCE, Rig veda praises the mighty ghaggar when in full flow which was certanly before 2000 BC,this was the mature phase of the harappan civilization, its clear that harappans did not vanish when the rig vedas were being composed and there was no invasion.

As for your oft-repeated assertion that Indus was more central to rigveda, or why Indus valley civilization would move to ganges (when this very assertion is wrong) see these two links: (which already has been proven wrong previously).

1. BBC on 1000 plus sites dotting the Saraswati
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2073159.stm

2. Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani writes (Ed. Indus Civilization -- New Perspectives, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, 1981, pp.3- 12): `To him (John Marshall) goes the credit of coining the term The Indus Civilization. But his geographic horizon no longer holds good and the term deriving therefrom is open to question ... . The wide-spread nature of the Indus Civilization throughout Panjab and Sind had already expanded the meaning of the original term. Still later in the post-1947 period the Indus Civilization sites have been discovered in large number outside the present Indus region right up to the very borders of Yamuna in the north-east (Alamgirpur on the Hindon, a tributary of the Yamuna about 30 miles north of Delhi), along the dried-up bed of the river Ghaggar in northern part of Rajasthan, and in Gujrat right upto the mouths of Narbada and Tapti rivers'.

3. Quoting Nicolas Kazanas again from, Vedic & Mesopotamian cross influences, Oct 2004:

- Indus Valley Civilisation is not restricted to the Indus, although the name was coined when the earlier excavations found remains at the Indus and thus the appellation stuck for some time. Of course it has now long been called the Saraswati-Sindhu Civilisation, Indus-Saraswati Civilisation or Harappan Civilisation.

It is insane to think that Indus valley civilization , as per the name means everything sorrounding Indus, Shows your unawareness of basic traits of history.

Let me explain this simply

[*]Vedic people lived only in Ancient Pakistan

Factually, Historically, Archeologically, Academically and Realistically incorrect.

(1) The purus had their terrotory in haryana and Punjab. The more ancient dynasties (eg Iskvakus) had a more eastwardly locus. Purus are known for authoruing Rig Veda while the exploits of the other dynasties are chronicled in the Puranas. Even Nadistuta hymn mention mention Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, in that specific order- from east to west. Oldest parts od Rig Veda contain references to Jahnavi (Ganga). This was the natural orientation of the peoples, continuing to the present day. Vedic Harappan gold was mined in the South. I am sure they were familiar with all terrotories spanning from Rasa in the NW to SE Asia. They even carried out a dispropotionate trade with the ME; entire corpuses of Indic artifacts have been unearthed form Mesopotamia and Egypt while hardly any ME artifacts are seen in India. Even the Romans later claimed that their treasury was being emptied by the Indian traders.

(2) Archaeology says people of IVC (Harappans) moved back east (again) and resettled in today's East Punjab and Gujarat:

So now we know the river Saraswati - which was praised as greatest River in the RV before the Sindhu ever was - existed, and that it lies in India not elsewhere.

According to Hindu literature, even the people who had moved westward (from their earlier eastern origin) and created the 'Indus Valley Civilisation' moved back to East Punjab and Gujarat and resettled there. This is confirmed in archaeology:

Also read, Vedic Evidence of Aryan Migration Theory : Omilosmeleton

[1] Archaeologists like Jim Shaffer and D. A. Lichtenstein [1999] completely reject the notion of transfer of IA languages into South Asia as a result of migrations and invasions, and speak in terms of cultural shifts and diffusion of cultural traits. They do however, acknowledge a population shift from the IVC area to East Punjab and Gujarat [1999:256]:

"That the archaeological record and significant oral and literature traditions of South Asia 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 traditions(s), outside of South Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this…. Within the context of cultural continuity described here, an archaeologically significant indigenously significant 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 traditions. As data accumulate to support cultural continuity in South Asian prehistoric and historic periods, a considerable restructuring of existing interpretative paradigms must take place. We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed in South Asian culture history. These still prevailing interpretations are significantly diminished by European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and antisemitism. Surely, as South Asia 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."

(FROM: James Schaffer and Diane Lichtenstein, Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology, University of Michigan Press, 1999.)

So, even if for a time they had moved from the Saraswati settlement to settle the Sindhu (Indus, Pakistan) and extend the IVC there, they moved back long ago. This '*significant*' regional population shift from the IVC to E Punjab and Gujarat that happened long ago means that even (by far the most, if not all) the descendants of the IVC in Pakistan territory have long been in - gasp - present India proper.

One or two tribes out of perhaps hundreds moved into the Gangetic Plains of modern India and RULED the indigenous Dravidian inhabitants by creating a NEW religion/philosophy for them that resembles modern day Hinduism
Your first part has already been answered before, Moving on,

Don't be a faux-historian. Either come up with undeniable proof from valid sources or don't say anything. In fact, if you have not read Hindu literature, no need to pontificate/speculate/invent stories from your chair.

There is no evdience of Dravidian being spoken in the north. In fact, Indologists have tied themselves up in contortions trying to wish away the purely Vedic placenames in the North. Dravidian transhumant economy was totally different than Vedic agricultural economy.

Also, give proof for Aryan Invasion please since you claim on one hand there was no Aryan invasion yet claim Aryans invaded India from Pakistan?. In fact, GIVE PROOF OF ARYANS (and subsequently Dravidians) please. References to writers who assume their existence or speculate on it does not count as 'proof'. Hard proofs are required: genetics, and archaeology and radio carbon dating - but only where archaeologists have found material remains with engravings like "the aryans were here" - else how do we know that 'aryans' made them? (See much further below for why this requirement.)

Before you rush off to the library or whatever, the situation before you is the following - in summary. There are a number of languages that scholars have grouped together as Indo-European ('Aryan'). Some scholars had put forth the theory that maybe these were all related by a common ancestor: a *hypothetical* language called PIE (the 'Proto-Indo-European' language).

NOTE: not all scholars believed this, and in fact, there's equally sound reason why there need not be any PIE at all.

NOTE: also that nothing written in PIE has ever been found at all. There's nothing, ZIP!

ONLY from the hypothesis that there may have been a PIE does the idea derive that there might have been a people who spoke it - a people which western schools call Indo-Europeans (the 'original Aryans'). That is, in this context, the 'Aryans/Indo-Europeans' are not a language, but are the hypothetical people of 'long ago' who spoke the hypothetical language PIE. That's no one today, definitely.

But here's some researchers working in Indo-European studies showing how there's serious doubt about (a) the very existence of any PIE and - even more doubt on - (b) the existence of any 'Indo-Europeans' (Aryans) who spoke it:

(1) Summary of Trubetskoy quotes below: Trubetskoy says that 'IE' languages need not have derived from a common ancestor at all. But that in fact, it is equally likely that different languages converged and that's why they ended up having similarities. In other words: he says there's no need for any PIE. If there's no need for PIE, this also means there's no need for the derived assumption that there existed a people who spoke it...

FROM: Trubetzkoy, N. S. (2001), Studies in General Linguistics and Language Structure, Anatoly Liberman (Ed.), translated by Marvin Taylor and Anatoly Liberman, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

- “It is usually supposed that, at one time, there was a single Indo-European language, the so-called Indo-European protolanguage, from which all historically attested Indo-European languages are presumed to descend. This supposition is contradicted by the fact that, no matter how far we peer back into history, we always find a multitude of Indo-European-speaking peoples. The idea of an Indo-European protolanguage is not absurd, but it is not necessary, and we can do very well without it (Trubetzkoy 2001, p. 87).”

- “There is therefore, no compelling reason for the assumption of a homogeneous Indo-European protolanguage from which the individual branches of Indo-European descended. It is equally plausible that the ancestors of the branches of Indo-European were originally dissimilar but that over time, through continuous contact, mutual influence, and loan traffic, they moved significantly closer to each other, without becoming identical (Trubetzkoy 2001, p. 88).”

- "This possibility must always be kept in sight when the Indo-European problem is addressed [and every statement about the problem should be formulated so as to be valid for either assumption: divergence or convergence.] Since only the hypothesis of a single protolanguage has been considered until now, the discussion has landed on the wrong track. Its primary, that is, linguistic, nature has been forgotten. Prehistoric archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology have been brought in without any justification. Attempts are made to describe the home, race, and culture of a supposed Indo-European proto-people that may never have existed. The Indo-European problem is formulated [by modern German (and not only German) scholars] in something like the following way: “Which type of prehistoric pottery must be ascribed to the Indo-European people?” But scholarship is unable to answer questions of this kind, so they are moot. Their logic is circular because the assumption of an Indo-European protopeople with definite cultural and racial characteristics is untenable. We are chasing a romantic illusion instead of keeping to the one positive fact at out disposal—that “Indo-Europeans” a purely LINGUISTIC concept (Trubetzkoy 2001, p. 90, emphasis in the original).”

(2) Bruce Lincoln also makes it clear there's no valid reason to accept belief in any imaginary people - the Indo-Europeans 'Aryans' - even *if* we assumed the hypothetical PIE existed. He also illustrates how other scholars in the field have stated that even if there were a PIE, there need not have been a single ethnic group that uniquely spoke it, how there are other hypotheses (than the one supposing Aryans) that are equally admissable.

FROM: Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

- "In specific, reconstructing a "protolanguage" is an exercise that invites one to imagine speakers of that protolanguage, a community of such people, then a place for that community, a time in history, distinguishing characteristics, and a set of contrastive relations with other protocommunities where other protolanguages were spoken. FOR ALL THIS, NEED IT BE SAID, THERE IS NO SOUND EVIDENTIARY WARRANT (Lincoln 1999, p. 95, emphasis added)"

- "we recognize that the existence of a language family does not necessarily imply the existence of a protolanguage. Still less the existence of a protopeople, protomyths, protoideology, or protohomeland (Lincoln 1999, p. 216)."

- "Other authors have challenged the Stammbaum model on other grounds, observing that even if the historically attested Indo-European languages did descend from a single proto-language, the existence of this ancestral language by no means implies the existence of a single, ethnically homogeneous people who spoke it. Thus Franco Crevatin suggested that Swahili—an artificial lingua franca, spoken across vast portions of Africa as an instrument to facilitate long distance trade—may be a better analogue than Latin for theorizing Proto-Indo-European. In Crevatin's view there was a Proto-Indo-European language and there were people who spoke it for certain finite purposes, but no community of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Similar is Stefan Zimmer's position, intended as a rebuke of racist theories, hypothesizing a protolanguage spoken not be an ethnically pristine Urvolk but by a shifting, nomadic colluvies gentium, a "****** confluence of peoples," (Lincoln 1999, pp. 212-213)."

(3) And finally, here Stefan Arvidsson gives us a lowdown on all the 'evidence' there is in support of that hypothetical people, the Indo-Europeans/Aryans: All the proof for any Indo-European/Aryan people is .... air. That's it. There's nothing. There's only stuff that some obsessed western scholars have imagined might be the remains of their imaginary Aryans, but at the end of the day, what they're doing is just construing things the way they like.

FROM: Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

- "For over two hundred years, a series of historians, linguists, folklorists, and archaeologists have tried to re-create a lost culture. Using ancient texts, medieval records, philological observations, and archaeological remains they have described a world, a religion, and a people older than the Sumerians, with whom all history is said to have begun. Those who maintained this culture have been called "Indo-Europeans" and "Proto-Indo-Europeans," "Aryans," and "Ancient Aryans," "Japhetites," and "wiros," among many other terms. THESE PEOPLE HAVE NOT LEFT BEHIND ANY TEXTS, NO OBJECTS CAN DEFINITELY BE TIED TO THEM, NOR DO WE KNOW ANY "INDO-EUROPEAN" BY NAME. IN SPITE OF THAT, scholars have STUBBORNLY tried to reach back to the ancient "Indo-Europeans," with the help of bold historical, linguistic, and archaeological reconstructions, in the hopes of finding the foundation of their own culture and religion there. (Arvidsson 2006, p. xi, emphasis added)."

There can be no talk of Aryans (or aryan invasions or what not) unless you can prove that there were Aryans in the first place. And even if you ever managed to prove that (a) the hypothetical PIE existed, you'd still have to prove (b) a single ethnic group, specifically the Indo-Europeans/Aryans, existed who spoke it. That's because point (b) does not automatically follow from (a), as seen in (2).

A COLOUR based caste system was created by these rulers to maintain power

Conjecture and propaganda only.When Portuguese arrived they were horrified at the blackness of Indian Murthis. What 'colour'-based discrimination? Again Your disapproving the Aryan Invasion theory on one hand and proposing it on another to create your own theory?

The important aspect of your analogy that one or two tribes came from Pakistan created caste system to maintain power? This is again terms from the proponents of AIT moulded by you to make a mythical story of your version.

Even indologists agree that such interpretations were all manufactured - see for instance Thomas R. Trautmann's "Constructing the racial theory of Indian civilization" and Hans Hock's "Through a glass darkly: modern 'racial' interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on ārya and dāsa/dasyu in Vedic society".

- Trautmann goes over the historical record of early Indology to show how the race theories of the 19th century forced racial interpretations on text fragments which had never been read in that sense before, e.g. how the single reference to the enemies as an-ās, "mouthless" (i.e. "of defective speech", meaning "not groomed in Vedic culture", Sayana's reading consistent with the traditional cultural interpretation) was read as a-nās, "noseless",
i.e. "flat-nosed" by Max Müller, then cited by anthropometrist H.H. Risley as a racial description which the Vedic Aryans often made, and finally adopted in that version by most textbooks. ( p.287-288)

- Trautmann likewise points out that there is no contextual evidence supporting the nontraditional interpretation of varna, "colour, caste" as "skin colour": "On the evidence of use it appears that varna here simply means 'category, social group'." (p.288)

- Hans Hock ("Through a glass darkly: modern 'racial' interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on ārya and dāsa/dasyu in Vedic society") also points to the genesis of the racial interpretation in the context of the "scramble of the European powers to divide up the non-European world", in which "the British take-over of India seemed to provide a perfect parallel to the assumed take-over of prehistoric India by the invading 'Aryans'" (p.168). He argues that "such notions as 'race', defined in terms of skin color, are an invention of (early) modern European colonialism and imperialism and thus inappropriate for the prehistoric contact between ārya and dāsa/dasyu", citing as example the absence of racial considerations in the Roman empire. (p.159)

It seems to me your picking up nuggets from the proponents of AIT and making your ‘own theory’ and on the other hand dis-claiming AIT, whats your standing ground? Are you creating new theory out of yourself picking up theories from proponents of AIT and disproponent of AIT? There can be only two standing ground here not any third.

There are only two theories in academic circles and debates surrounding it and AIT , AMT. AMT has two branches each of one can br proposed in each way which is due to large size and heterogenous civilization; None of your theory does not falls inside any one parameters rather spans across one and two parameters from AIT and you have disproved AMT saying there were no migration other than 1 or two Tribes (citation remember one or two), your standing ground is False both historically and academically. On one hand you are disproving AIT and on another your proposing the Marxist-Euro-centric viewpoint of AIT, to create a pseudo-viewpoint of your own.

[*]The indigenous inhabitants of the Gangetic plains finally realized they had been subjugated unfairly, and usurped power from the Vedic Aryans, and THEN Hinduism was created - Hinduism is a purely Dravidian invention..The caste system became job based, BUT since all the darker people were placed in the lower castes beforehand, they got the wrong end of the job stick, and still it continues today

It has been already proved wrong. Your assumption of gagentic plains being Dravidian Transhumand economy is wrong in the very sense, I'm not even going into the others as much of it has been answered before.

[*]Summary : One or two people migrated from the Indus Valley to the Gangetic plains, and ruled the inhabitants who then created Hinduism. Vedism and the Vedic people never left the Indus Valley
[/LIST]

First you claimed There have been no findings about Harappan civilization in UP, and now your claiming one or two tribes moved there, Where do you got one or two tribes from? Again part of your answer has been answered before.

In any case, THERE HAS BEEN NO mention of Dravidians in the Vedas. The enemies mentioned in the Vedas (like Dasas, Dasyus, Panis and Pakthas) are all proven Iranian tribes - the names match those of Iranian tribes, as even confirmed by many indologists (incl. Bernard Sergent and Asko Parpola from Finland).

I have already dwelled upon this earlier, so check them there.
But thought of something more, (2003 research)

Northward movement of Indians after Saraswati dessication: They also show up in the ME as Kassites and Mittani, part of the Hittite phenomenon. Significantly, no trace of Russian or Germanic has ever been found in the ME.

But starting at about 1900 B.C.E.—2 or 3 centuries after the drying period to the west—the city and nearby settlements began to lose population. By 1600 B.C.E., people appear to have abandoned their towns and moved north[/B].

Climate Spurred Later Indus Change
by Andrew Lawler (2003)[/I]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/5827/978b

Read thus further regarding AMT,
http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/VedicEvidenceforAMT.pdf

The original migration was an E to W movement, of the civilization.

(1) Population movement in early times (before and during composition of Vedas): From river Ganga-Yamuna in E to Punjab in W.

Dr Eslt states,

(a) "The fragmentary Vedic data and the systematic Puranic account tally rather splendidly. The Puranas relate a WESTWARD MOVEMENT of a branch of the Aila/Saudyumna clan or Lunar dynasty FROM PRAYAG (Allahabad, at the junction of GANGA AND YAMUNA) TO SAPTA SAINDHAVAH, the land of the seven rivers. There, the tribe splits into five, after the five sons of the conqueror Yayati: Yadu, Druhyu, Anu, Puru, Turvashu. All the rulers mentioned in the Vedas either belong to the Paurava (Puru-descended) tribe SETTLED on the banks of the SARASWATI, or have come in contact with them according to the Puranic account, whether by alliance and matrimony or by war. LATER, the Pauravas (and minor dynasties springing from them) extend their power eastward, into and across their ancestral territory, and the Vedic traditions spread along with the economic and political influence of the metropolitan Saraswati-based Paurava people."

(b) Population movement in significantly later times (after Vedic culture was established):
And even when Witzel was desperately trying to read an 'Aryan invasion/immigration' (from the west into the east) in the Vedas, it turned out he had made a profound mistake in translating and the record has since been set straight. Besides, in his search for an eastward migration from the far west he had to resort to an "admittedly much later" text (the BSS) and yet his hopes of an Aryan migration eastward were disappointed.

Since this text was later than the oldest material of the Vedas which points to a westward migration from the Ganga/Yamuna to the Saraswati as seen above, all eastward migration are back into Indians' historically populated lands - lands of origin, as mentioned in (a) above. But now, the actual statement (in correct translation) still has something interesting to say about migration into *West* Punjab:

The summary meaning for BSS 18.44 is (full meaning below): "“Ayu went east, his is the Yamuna-Ganga region”, while “Amavasu went west, his is Afghanistan, Parshu and WEST PANJAB”. Though the then location of “Parshu” (Persia?) is hard to decide, it is definitely a western country, along with the two others named, WESTERN FROM the viewpoint of a people settled near the SARASWATI river in what is now HARYANA. Far from attesting an eastward movement into India, this text actually speaks of a westward movement towards Central Asia, coupled with a symmetrical eastward movement from India’s demographic centre around the Saraswati basin towards the Ganga basin." (Two sides of AMT as I said)

Now do you even know what is BSS text and their interpretations?


Saraswati was praised as greatest first - again indicating an E to W movement, The River Indus was glorified later than the River Saraswati - once more the meaning is an E to W migration.

"While conceding that the Saraswati is described as the most divine among the rivers and other superlatives in RV 2:41:16, (Indologist Hans) Hock reminds us that the Sindhu is also glorified in superlatives in RV 8:26:18. The 8th book of the Rg-Veda is the most northwesterly book, the one which mentions Afghan flora and fauna (8:5, 8:46, 8:56). From that perspective, the Sindhu is the greatest nearby river, even in the heyday of the Saraswati which was at any rate far more to the east, beyond even the five main auxiliaries (Panj-āb) of the Indus. But the 8th book is younger than the family books (2 to 7), which are unambiguously located in India and near the Indian Saraswati. If the Sindhu becomes more prominent than the Saraswati at some point, this amounts to a movement from east to west, from Panjab to the frontier (Indus) to Afghanistan."


Also Willem Caland states,

"Willem Caland, the Samavedin from Utrecht, translates[52] the verse in question as [same, Baudhayana Srautasutra 18:44 - 45]: “To the East went Ayus; from him descend the Kurus, Pancalas, Kasis and Videhas. These are the peoples that originated as a consequence of Ayus's going forth. To the West went Amavasu; from him descend the Gandharis, the Sparsus and the Arattas. These are the peoples which originated as a consequence of Amavasu's going forth.” Other renowned experts translate the verse in the same way as Caland does.[53]" (Willem Caland, Eene Nieuwe Versie van de Urvasi-Mythe. Album-Kern, Opstellen Geschreven Ter Eere van Dr. H. Kern, pp. 57 - 60)


Memory of the Urheimat states that,

The Vedas do not preserve any veneration, not even any mention, of an Urheimat. Compare this with the Thora (the first five books of the Bible): edited in about the 6th century BC, it gives a central place to Moses? exodus from Egypt in about 1200 BC, and of Abraham from ?Ur of the Chaldees? in about 1600 BC. Similarly, in the 16th century, the Aztecs in Mexico still preserved the memory of Aztlan (probably Utah), the country from which they migrated in the 12th century. Postulating that the Vedic people kept silent about a homeland which they still vividly remembered, as the invasionists imply, is not coherent with all we know about ancient peoples, who preserved such memories for many centuries.

Admittedly, the Vedas are a defective source of history. As religious books, they only deal with historical data in passing. But that has never kept the invasionist school from treating the Vedas as the only source of ancient Indian history, to the neglect of the legitimate history books, the ItihAsa-PuraNa literature, i.e. the Epics and the Puranas. It is like ignoring the historical Bible books (Exodus, Joshua, Chronicles, Kings) to draw ancient Israelite history exclusively from the Psalms, or like ignoring the historians Livius, Tacitus and Suetonius to do Roman history on the basis of the poet Virgil. What would be dismissed as ?utterly ridiculous? in Western history is standard practice in Indian history.

Essentially the same remark was already made by Puranic scholar F.E. Pargiter.41 It was dismissed by some, with the remark that the Puranas are even more religious and unhistorical than the Vedas.42 However, that does injustice to the strictly historical parts of the Puranas, mixed though they are with religious lore. No serious historian would ignore the Exodus narrative simply because it also contains unhistorical episodes like the Parting of the Sea and the voice from the Burning Bush.

Experience should also make us skeptical towards the knee-jerk skepticism displayed by historians when confronted with ancient historiography. Thus, the king-list of the Chinese Shang dynasty (16th-12th century BC) was dismissed as ?obviously mythical?, but when in the 1920s the Shang oracle bones were discovered, all the kings were found to be mentioned there: the ?mythical? dynastic list proved to be correct to the detail. Likewise, the first Bible historians were skeptical of Biblical history, e.g. of the ?obviously wildly exaggerated? description of the huge city of Niniveh; but then archaeologists discovered the ruins of Niniveh, and found that the Bible editors had been fairly accurate in their description.

The Bible provides another important parallel with the Epics and Puranas: most historians now accept the basic historicity of the Biblical account of Israelite political history from at least king David until the Exile, yet it is almost completely unattested in non-Biblical documents, just as ancient Indian history as narrated in the Epics and Puranas (and glimpsed in the Vedas) is practically unattested in non-Indic literature. The non-attestation of Israel?s history in the writings of its highly literate neighbours is more anomalous than the non-attestation of early Indian history in the writings of other literate cultures, which were more distant from India geographically and linguistically than Babylon was from Jerusalem. So, if Biblical history can be accepted as more than fantasy, the same credit should be given to the historiographical parts of the Epics and Puranas.

Value of the Puranas,

In spite of the low esteem in which they are held, the Puranas are essentially good history. More than 30 years ago, P. L. Bhargava has already demonstrated that the dynastic lists which form the backbone of Puranic history cannot be dismissed as legend or propaganda.43 His first argument is that the oldest names of kings, though mostly Indo-Aryan, are often of a different type (e.g. absence or paucity of theophoric names, like in ancient Greek or Germanic) than those common at the time of the Puranic editors, who show their unfamiliarity with the obsolete names by sometimes misspelling or misinterpreting them. This would not be the case if they had made them up.

Secondly, against those who think that court historians may have concocted genealogies and ancient claims to the land for their royal patrons, Bhargava points out that the Puranas do not locate any dynasties in those areas which are reasonably assumed to have been non-Aryan originally but which were dominated by Indo-Aryan dynasties (or Dravidian-speaking dynasties claiming an ?Aryan? ancestry) at the time of the Purana editors, e.g. parts of Bihar, the east coast (Utkala, Kalinga, Cola), and the south (Pandya, Kerala): ?This clearly means that the lists are all genuine and the later Puranic editors, in spite of their failings, never went to the extent of interspersing imaginary genealogies with genuine ones.?44

The argument is similar to one of Irving Zeitlin?s arguments for the authenticity of the Biblical account of the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites.45 Zeitlin shows that the land conquered by Joshua according to the Biblical narrative did not coincide with the Promised Land as promised by Jahweh to Joshua (it falls short of the promised area while also comprising some non-promised territory); a purely propagandistic narrative intent on legitimizing the later extent of the Israelite kingdom or on glorifying Jahweh?s reliability, would have made Joshua acquire the exact territory promised by the Lord.

Thirdly, many names from the Puranic lists also show up in other sources, including the Epics, the Jain Agamas, the Sutras, and earliest of all, the Vedas. Of course, persons are sometimes shown in a rather different light in different sources, and there are differences on details between the different Puranas as well as between the Puranas and the other sources; but that is exactly what happens when authentic events (such as a traffic accident) are related by different witnesses.

Dynastic history in the Puranas,

Shrikant Talageri takes up the argument where Bhargava had left it, and proceeds to demonstrate that the fragmentary Vedic data and the systematic Puranic account tally rather splendidly.46 The Puranas relate a westward movement of a branch of the Aila/Saudyumna clan or Lunar dynasty from Prayag (Allahabad, at the junction of Ganga and Yamuna) to Sapta Saindhavah, the land of the seven rivers. There, the tribe splits into five, after the five sons of the conqueror Yayati: Yadu, Druhyu, Anu, Puru, Turvashu. All the rulers mentioned in the Vedas either belong to the Paurava (Puru-descended) tribe settled on the banks of the Saraswati, or have come in contact with them according to the Puranic account, whether by alliance and matrimony or by war. Later, the Pauravas (and minor dynasties springing from them) extend their power eastward, into and across their ancestral territory, and the Vedic traditions spread along with the economic and political influence of the metropolitan Saraswati-based Paurava people.

This way, the eastward expansion of the Vedic horizon, which has often been read as proof of a western origin of the Aryans, is integrated into a larger history. The Vedic people are shown as merely one branch of an existing Aryan culture, originally spanning northern India (at least) from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Panjab. The approximate and relative chronology provided by the dynastic lists allow us to estimate the time of those events as much earlier than the heyday and end of the Harappan cities.

Puranic history reaches back beyond the starting date of the composition of the Vedas. In the king-lists, a number of kings are enumerated before the first kings appear who are also mentioned in the Rg-Veda. In what remains of the Puranas, no absolute chronology is added to the list, but from Greek visitors to ancient India, we get the entirely plausible information such a chronology did exist. To be precise, the Puranic king-list as known to Greek visitors of Candragupta?s court in the 4th century BC or to later Greco-Roman India-watchers, started in 6776 BC.47 Even for that early pre-Vedic period, there is no hint of any immigration.

Emigrations in the Puranas,

What is more: the Puranas mention several emigrations. The oldest one explicitly described is by groups belonging to the Afghanistan-based Druhyu branch of the Aila/Saudyumna people, i.e. the Pauravas? cousins, in the pre-Vedic or early Vedic period. They are said to have moved to distant lands and set up kingdoms there. Estimating our way through the dynastic (relative) chronology given in the Puranas, we could situate this emigration in the 5th millennium BC. It is not asserted that that was the earliest such emigration: the genealogy starts with Manu?s ten successors, of whom six disappear from the Puranic horizon at once, while two others also recede m the background after a few generations; and many acts of peripheral tribes and dynasties, including their emigration, may have gone unnoticed. But even if it were the earliest emigration, it is not far removed from a realistic chronology for the dispersion of the different branches of the IE family. It also tallies well with the start of the Kurgan culture by Asian immigrants in ca. 4500 BC.

Later the Anavas are said to have invaded Panjab from their habitat in Kashmir, and to have been defeated and expelled by the Pauravas in the so-called Battle of the Ten Kings, described in Rg Veda 7:18,19,33,83. The ten tribes allied against king Sudas (who belonged to the Trtsu branch of the Paurava tribe) have been enumerated in the Vedic references to the actual battle, and a number of them are unmistakably Iranian: Paktha (Pashtu), BhalAna (Bolan/Baluch), Parshu (Persian), PRthu (Parthian), the others being less recognizable: VishANin, AlIna, Shiva, Shimyu, BhRgu, Druhyu. At the same time, they are (except for the Druhyus) collectively called ?Anu?s sons?, in striking agreement with the Puranic account of an Anava struggle against the Paurava natives of Panjab. Not mentioned in the Vedic account, but mentioned in the Puranic account as the Anava tribe settled farthest west in Panjab (most removed from the war theatre), is the Madra (Mede?) tribe.

Talageri tentatively identifies the other tribes as well: the Druhyu as the Druids or Celts (untenable)48; the Bhrgus as the Phrygians (etymologically reasonable); the AlInas as the Hellenes or Greeks (shaky); the Shimyus with the Sirmios/Srems or ancient Albanians (possible), etc. It is hard to prove or disprove this; all we can say is that along with the Iranian tribes, there may have been several non-Iranian tribes who emigrated from northwestern India after the Battle of the Ten Kings.

More migrations are attested, of individuals, families as well as whole tribes. The Vedic character Sarama calls on the Panis to go far away and to the north; assuming that the Panis are not some kind of heavenly creatures, this presupposes that the northward exit was a well-known route, and perhaps a common trail for exiles, outlaws and refugees (just as in the colonial period, an Englishman who had lost all perspectives in his homeland could always move to Australia).49 Vishvamitra?s sons, fifty in number, dissented from their father and left the country, after which they are called udantyah, ?those of the northern border?.50 A group of Asuras are said to have fled across the northern border, chased by Agni and the Devas, who mounted guard there.51

Migration history of other IE tribes,

Other branches of IE have a clear migration history, even if no literary record has been preserved. It is commonly accepted that the Celtic and Italic peoples were invaders into their classical habitats. The Celts? itinerary can be archaeologically traced back to Slovakia and Hungary, and Germany still preserves some Celtic place-names.52 In France, Spain, and the British Isles, a large pre-IE population existed, comprising at least two distinct language families. Of the Iberian languages, only a few written fragments have been preserved. Etruscan is extinct but well-attested and fully deciphered, though we don?t know what to make of the persistent claims that it was a wayward branch of the IE Anatolian family. The Basque language survives till today, but attempts to link it to distant languages remain unsuccessful. At any rate, this area witnessed a classic case of IE expansion, resulting in the near-complete celtization or latinization of western and southern Europe.

Germanic, Baltic and Slavic cover those areas of Europe which have been claimed as the Urheimat: Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, South Russia. In the case of the Germanic peoples, there is no literary record (but plenty of archaeological indications) of an immigration, nor of the replacement or assimilation of an earlier population. The Baltic language group, represented today by Latvian and Lithuanian, once covered a slightly larger area than today, but there is no literary memory of a migration from another area. However, many Balts today will tell you that they originally came from India. Before this is declared to be an argument for an Indian Urheimat, it should be verified that this belief really pre-dates the 19th century, when it was the prevalent theory among scholars throughout Europe. The folklore avidly recorded by nationalist philologists in the 19th century could well contain not only age-old oral traditions of the common people but also some beliefs fashionable among those who recorded them. The Slavic peoples have expanded to the southwest across the Danube, and in recent centuries also (back?) to the east, across the Ural mountains. The farthest in time that human memory can reach, Ukraine and southern Poland seem to have been the Slavs? homeland.

When scholars from the Germanic, Baltic and Slavic countries started claiming their own country as the IE Urheimat, this certainly was not in contradiction with facts known at the time. But these Urheimat claims were only based on a weak argumentum e silentio: the first written records of these peoples are comparatively recent, several millennia younger than the break-up of PIE, and the true story of their migratory origins has simply been lost. This is not to deny that they may have preserved traditions of their own migrations for as long as the Israelites, but apart from the erosion wrought by time, it is christianization which has generally put a stop to the continuation of the traditional tribal knowledge. And where Christian monks stepped in to collect and preserve remnants of the national heritage (as in Ireland), it was too late: stories had gotten mixed up, the people who remembered the traditional knowledge were dying out, the thread had become too thin not to be broken,

That the Greeks took their classical habitat from an Old European population is not in doubt, but there is no definite memory of their immigration. Perhaps the myth of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, located in Georgia, should be read as a vague indication of a Greek migration from there, overseas to Thracia, whence the Greek tribes entered Greece proper in succession. But an actual immigration narrative is missing.

From Iranian Urheimat,

The one branch of IE which has preserved a relatively unambiguous record of its migration, is Iranian. The Iranians once controlled a much larger territory than today, after the Slavic and Turkic expansions. The Cimmerians and Scythians spread out over the steppes between Ukraine and the Pamir mountains; of this branch of the Iranians, only the Ossets in the northern Caucasus remain. The Sogdians in the Jaxartes or Syr Darya valley and even as far east as Khotan (Xinjiang) made important contributions to culture and especially to Buddhist tradition. An unsuspected wayward branch of the Iranian family is the Croat people: till the early Christian era, when they were spotted in what is now Eastern Europe, they spoke an Iranian language, which was gradually replaced by Slavic ?Serbo-Croat?. They call themselves Hrvat, apparently from Harahvaiti, the name of a river in Western Afghanistan, which is merely the Iranian form of Saraswati. In an Achaemenid inscription, the Harahvaita tribe is mentioned as one of the tribute-paying components of the Iranian empire. The migration of the Croats from Afghanistan to the western Balkan (and likewise, that of the Alans, a name evolved from Arya, as far west as France) could be the perfect illustration of the general cast-to-west movement which the Indian Urheimat hypothesis implies.


The Iranians are fairly clear about their history of immigration from Hapta-Hendu and Airyanam Vaejo, two of sixteen Iranian lands mentioned in the Zoroastrian scripture Vendidad. To the extent that they are recognizable, all sixteen are in Bactria, Afghanistan or northwestern India. Iran proper is not m the picture, nor is the Volga region whence the Iranians are assumed to have migrated m the AIT. Their religious reformer Zarathushtra, whom modern scholarship dates to the mid-2nd millennium BC, lived in present-day Balkh in Afghanistan, then a more domesticated land than today.53 Afghanistan was a half-way station in a slow migration from India. The Iranians may have brought the name of the lost Saraswati river along with them and given it, in the phonetically evolved form Harahvaiti, to a river in their new country; similarly with the name Sarayu, the river flowing through Ayodhya, becoming Harayu, the old name of another river in western Afghanistan.

The Iranian homelands Airyanam Vaejo, described as too cold in its 10-months-long winter, and Hapta-Hendu, described as rendered too hot for men (i.e. the Iranians) by the wicked Angra-Mainyu, are Kashmir and Sapta-Saindhavah (Panjab-Haryana) respectively.54 They are considered as the first two of sixteen countries successively allotted to the Iranians, the rest being the areas where the Iranians have effectively been living in proto-historical times. This scenario tallies quite exactly with the Vedic and Puranic data about the history of the Anavas, one of the five branches of the Aila/Saudyumna people: from Kashmir, they invaded Sapta-Saindhavah, but were defeated by the Paurava branch (which composed the Rg-Veda) and driven northwestward.

Those who deny this scenario have had to invent a second ?land of seven rivers? as the common Indo-Iranian homeland, from which the Iranians? Vedic cousins took the name but not the memory into India; or to interpret the Avestan river-name Ranha (correlate of Sanskrit RasA, the Puranic name of the Amu Darya or Oxus) as meaning the Volga.55 It is a safe rule of scientific method that ?entities are not to be multiplied without necessity? (Occam?s razor), and therefore, until proof of the contrary, we should accept that the term Sapta Saindhavah and its Iranian evolute Hapta Hendu refer to the same region historically known by that name. Both Indian and Iranian sources situate the break-up between Indians and Iranians, Deva- and Asura-worshippers, in Sapta-Saindhavah. Before such a concordant testimony of all parties concerned, it is quite pretentious to claim that one knows it all better, and that they separated in Iran or Central Asia instead.

The balance-sheet is that some branches of the IE family have no memory of any migration, some have vague memories of their own immigration into their historical habitat, the Iranian branch has a distinct memory of migration from India to Iran, and only the Indian branch has a record of emigration of others from its own habitat.


And, What difference is there between Hinduism and Vedic religion., we never called ourself Hindus, did Shankara ever call the Sanathana dharma Hindu, its was something the Greeks and Muslims adopted from Persian.in avestan the dialect 's' is replaced with 'H' dialect..do you think Persians called themselves Persians,Greeks called these as Persians after the Parshyus who founded the Achemenid dynasty. Parshyus are one of the ten tribes that fought king sudas which is mentioned in rig veda. Iranians themselves called their land Aryavenuim(similar to what north India was called Arya vartam) the whole Indo-Iranian geographical landscape was the heart of the ‘so called’ Aryan culture. Hapta Hindu is mentioned in Avestan and was later adopted by the Greeks,it refers to the land east of Parshyus(persia). Megasthenes wrote his travelogue 'India' and he was describing the empire of Mauryas ruled from Pataliputra in Modern Bihar,obviously he was referring to India as the country as we know today(which included pakistan).

It is ridiculous how a change of customs which difference were there even among the tribes of the whole of Indus society if being taken into account, determines The difference between Vedism and Hinduism in its absolute sense as per you, not withstanding hundred thousands of reforms that has went through the same religion, which is so diverse that if you move from one place to another you see a different way of it, It is pure hypocricy from your POV when you say Linguistics can be force fed, thus linguistics cannot be the basis of Aryan-Dravidian invasion theory (which is correct), yet you seem to take a few change in practices as not being something that can change over a period of time, not withstanding the vast similarities between the two that exists albeit with many dissimilarities just in the same way that there were differences even between Indus civilizations of mature period and early period and so on.

Even critical historians, If you want I can put up the whole interview who worked on differences between Late Hinduism and Early Vedism says Hinduism has evolved from the other and they are inseperable from other than material practice.

Don’t try to interpret something theologically when it isn’t Theological, Theological interpretations works for Theological religions viz Abrahmic faiths ((like Wahhabis claiming shias this and this, catholics claiming my path is of true salvation (recently pope commented on that), this is called throw the book or theological interpretations) and not Dharmic faiths. Todays Sanatana Dharma is much more than a central belief surrounding a few books, The very consideration of all religious or non-religious path leads to the same salvation is something unique to Dharmic faiths which does not requires dogmatic theological explanations.

Tomorrow you might as well claim Gita does not means anything to us since Krishna had more than 1 wives and tens of not hundreds of Ladies serving, but Hindus don’t marry more than one. You have no clue of Saurashtras, And Vedantas and Panchatantras and Puranas etc and their relations and the differences are. Then there are hundreds of sects inside Sanatana Dharma and each with their own sets of belief yet the core belief remains the same, like Shaivism, Vaishnivism, Shakha-hari and Mansak-hari et als.

John Marshall mentions the discovery of rectangular altar in the Indus valley site in Kalibangan and now we know such Altar were common throughout many of the Indus sites that have been excavated,the fire altar is at the heart of the Vedic religion till today,whether its the Upanayana ceremony,marriage,house warming ceremony or death. all the Hindu religion from gods to philosophy are from the Chatur Vedas, which central to the sanathana dharma, and the last time i checked its more closely related to them than the differences between them.

In the rig Veda please look at the kind of animals that are mentioned,there are cattle's,water buffalo's, elephants, Gaur(bisons are are usually found on the gangetc terai and further east and in forests of south india). Aryans or Sanskrit speaking vedic people have been on the ganga-yamuna delta along with the later Indus valley people for a long time, sites in sanauli in UP clearly shows this wasn't based on the Indus-Ghaggar alone, please tell me do you think that pastoral Aryans invaded Indus cities destroyed them and then sat down to write Vedas in just 500 years and in the mean time they also developed advanced knowledge of astronomy and medicine and surgery all in 500 years, not only that in just 5 centuries these pastoral nomadic Aryans also became experts in Agriculture and started cultivating the vast gangetic delta and started rasing three crops in a years., Aryas were no nomads they developed the science of agriculture just like the Sumerian and Egyptians did, over a period of couple or more thousand years.

The Indus valley civilization was the largest civilization among the 4 ancient civilization,spread over nearly 1 million square KM area, archaeologist don't believe even the people of Indus valley were entirely Homogenous THEY WERE HETEROGENOUS, even the cities style differed,cities found in upper Indus differed from cities excavated in south on the rann of kutch, cities excavated from east in sanauli differed from cities in harappa and Moenjodara, even the seals differed sometimes, the belief is Vedic people cohabited the subcontinent in the same areas as the harappans and harappans co habited the same areas where the the eventual authors of Vedas did, there was difference in cultural traits due to the immense size of the civilization. (I posted this part before)

Vedic-Harappans existed through out the indo-gangetic plain as we know from the ruined cities,it is believed that during times of flood and drought east-west and west-east migration was regular,and eventually the center of gravity completely moved towards the gangetic basin and people stopped migrating towards west(except perhaps into Iran and and westwards much earlier).

Take the example of Mesopotamia, Sumerians first developed the advanced urban culture in Mesopotamia and eventually the Akkadians took over, the Akkadians had cultural traits distinct from the Sumerians but they were of the same ethnic stock and many of their cultural iconry came from Sumerians, Sumerians and Akkadians were cohabitants of the same land but at some point of time the cultural traits of the Akkadians began to appropriate Mesopotamia. Cultures evolve with civilization, and when they evolve over a couple of thousands years they attain distinct characteristics which may make them indistinguishable from the original source. Vedic people may have evolved from the Indus cultural environment but embellished with unique traits which was a result of may centuries of evolution.

It is untrue to believe that Harappan people and their culture remained un evolved and unchanged over 5000 years,even the earliest harappan sites excavated from mehergarh(7000BCE)bear no resemblance to the sites excavated from the mature phase period, they evolved, the people of mehergarh cannot described as the same as Indus valley people if you dont take cultural evolution into account,what is important is that they show strong sense of inheritance which it does,same is the case with Vedics and Indus people,if we expected them to be the same, no they probably are not, but they(indus) clearly show traits which have been inherited and continued from their Vedic people(like the fire altar,burial ceremony)


India is not one race. And if it were, it's not Aryan for sure (which isn't a race anyway, more an ethnic group).
DUH, who says Indians are one race? Neither India is one Race nor are Indian Religions Homogenous, Even Islam in India is different than that of Islam in Turkey or say some other countries.

Hehe It seems like your sure about Pakistanis being Aryans ? :azn: Good!

Let's be clear now. When he says Indian soil, he means Ancient Pakistani soil.

Yes Lets be clear, In light with my points presented so far.

Wrong. "Hindu" is from Sindhu. The first reference to the word "Sindhu" is from the Saptha Sindhu of the Rig Veda who called their country (Ancient Pakistan), as Sindhu. The Persians and Greeks then pronounced the Vedic country as "Haptha Hindhu", and then after this as more and more of the subcontinent was discovered by the rest of the world, they called the people there Indians - this is why the majority of the early history (pre 500 AD - 1000 AD) or so of "India" is all Ancient Pakistan - in fact these were the majority of the great civilizations from the region.

I have given you a possible interpretations of the word Hindu (NOTE : I have not said which one of them is correct, you claimed all are wrong except one), I have told you NONE of our books mention the word Hindu but rather Sanatana Dharma, What if I’m a Persian and as I told you the book published in Lucknow calls a Hindu as chor , dakoo, I think that is legitimate, Can you explain me why it isn’t legitimate? .. Just for Example.

I’ll again Repeat this you need to proper reading, Sindhu in Rig Veda mentions the rivers as well as seas, the context of it can only be found or differentiated by someone of Vedic scholar or Indologists, and varies on verse to verse in Rig Veda.

I have repeatedly told here Hinduism is precisely known as Sanatana Dharma, not otherwise to end the mismatch of words.


Don't use language to determine who is Aryan and who is Dravidian. Languages can be forced or simply adopted by people over history. Language says nothing about genetics. One example - Baloch do speak a Dravidian language, but are of a completely different race to Tamils - this is obvious to everyone. There is no Dravidian gene as such, but any "Aryan" genes in India have been well and truly swamped out in time by the Dravidian ones.

Why are you picking out unconditional posts of mine from here and there?

At first you said, ‘Don’t use language to determine who is Dravidian and who is Aryan’, Then you are saying there is no Dravidian gene as such but there is Aryan gene that has been swamped out? It is wrong, go and Read latest research of Oppenheimers Genetical traits, or that of kivisilds general traits of genetics, who was once the author of Bamshed study of Indian caste population, which forcefed AIT, and was proved wrong by introduction of new genetical lines and research done.

I’m not so sure if I’m listening to pulp fiction here, you should write a book on this, I will pay back double the penny for each award you will win for your groundbreaking discovery on the exact 'LIST' you have done above

Just to clear something regarding Aryans since you want me to call Pakistanis as Aryans (I have no problem doing that because I dont really care about whose from whom), Please check my post above where I asked you to prove the existence of Aryans,

(1) Arya and Airya in the contexts of Sanatana Dharma and Zoroastrianism

Airya was applied by Zoroastrians only to Zoroastrians not other Iranians (Scythians were specifically not Airya even though they were Iranian). Likewise Arya was used by Sanatana Dharmics only for Sanatana Dharmics - in the Ramayanam, Rama addresses the monkeys fighting with him as Aryas. Otherwise Sanatana Dharmics applied it to those they considered as following comparable beliefs and practises, like Chinese Buddhists (historical records show Dharmics applied 'Arya' to them). Arya means a way to address respected people. But in Bharata too, the Scythians invaders were again branded anarya for their mass-violence and horrible behaviour. In its original and only sense, neither the Samskritam term nor the Avestan one can be applied to Pakistan's current religious climate - because as seen in the case of the earlier Scythians, the ethnic group or language of the subject is irrelevant (instead, it was both behavioural *and* religious co-resonance that mattered); and neither the original Zoroastrians nor ancient Sanatana Dharmics would have applied Airya/Arya to Islam.

http://img355.imageshack.us/my.php?image=aryavartamr6.jpg

(b)The western context: the recent word 'aryan'

'Aryan' is a modern term coined in the west, a word that has no meaning either in original Sanatana Dharma or Zoroastrian contexts. But in the west, it refers to a *language group*. Pakistanis can choose to call themselves that, but strictly speaking, they're naming themselves after a language family... So it comes down to asking yourself: are you a language or a person? In fact, the specific term applicable to the Indian subcontinet is the 'Indo-Aryan language family'. Thus, in terms of the western word too, you *can't* ethnically be an Indo-Aryan. Your language can be Indo-Aryan. However, many Pakistani scholars are falling over themselves in arguing that Urdu derives not from Hindi mainly (with some Persian and bits of Arabic) but rather mostly from Arabic instead (don't ask me to explain their logic). If you were to believe their 'arguments', then even *linguistically* (that is, in the western sense), Pakistan is not Indo-Aryan either (but Semitic instead)....

I hope I have not wasted my time by replying to you, by going through some of other posts and breifly having a introduction of the way you came into this argument and your theories , oh well, The last reply you gave to Samudra is ridiculously laughable, you mess it up while concluding ,Samudra I'm sure he dont even knows what is being taught in Indian Schools, or even how many Indian Education boards are there to begin with.

You need to read this and possibly buy this when it comes out, very simply done this map will come out after some years a ongoing project by Archeological Society of India, get it and get learned about the excavations and sites of Indus valley people, Thank You.

http://indarchaeology.org/archaeology/atlas.htm

Atlas of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization

In the year 2000 the Indian Council of Historical Research cleared our proposal for preparing an Atlas of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization under its scheme of major projects for a period of three years. The project is now over and we are preparing the manuscript for the press.
There are as many as 191 site Distribution maps and 400 page text covering practically all excavated sites and the areas where the cultural remains of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization have been found, particularly in India and Pakistan. However, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Mesopotamia, Bahrain and Oman have also been included in this Atlas showing sites with the Indus-Saraswati or Harappan antiquities. The maps covering India and Pakistan have been prepared according to the present-day District boundaries, State boundaries and Country boundaries to help researchers at various levels of their work. The maps show the location of each site according to their latitude and longitude.

The sites are mentioned in the maps by their names so that there is no confusion which sometimes occurs if the sites are mentioned by numbers. This we have done even in the case of Bahawalpur sites in Pakistan where they are in large numbers and located very close to each other.

The sites have been grouped broadly under three groups: the Early Indus-Saraswati, the Mature Indus-Saraswati and the Late Indus-Saraswati. The Early Indus-Saraswati includes Hakra as well Kot Diji-Sothi sites.

The dates are broad brackets for each one of them which are now accepted all over the world since these are based upon calibrated radiocarbon dates. Richard Meadow and J.M. Kenoyer (2003) have used these brackets for the periodisation of Harappa. There are, of course, at least two phases in the Early Indus-Saraswati and three phases in the Mature Indus-Saraswati at Harappa but that is not only a matter of details but also site-specific.

There is also a list of all the sites with their longitudes and latitudes. Gregory Possehl had listed them in his book The Indus Age. However, in quite a few of them the coordinates had to be corrected. . We have used GPS, an instrument which was not available to the old field-workers for recording exact coordinates; Survey of India maps alone were available to them. For mapping and plotting we have used a software named Geo-Media Prof. 4 for greater accuracy than that we get when manually produced.

The geo-physical maps are primarily based upon satellite imageries and field-work put together and published in recent years. The rivers, the mountains, the deserts, the seas, etc. are also based upon satellite imagery as adopted by the internationally recognised atlas published by Oxford.

The Atlas also includes the West Asian sites the coordinates of many of which are not available to us. Moreover, the political situation in Iraq, Kuwait, etc. is presently in turmoil to make attempts to obtain data required by us. We had, therefore, to depend on the old available data.

The Atlas of the Indus-Saraswati Civilization is, however, much more than mere site-distribution maps since the underlying concept was cultural. It is a cultural atlas. It embodies the data on the material remains unearthed at the excavated sites. The remains include major architectural remains such as the Great Bath at Mohanjodaro as well as the movable antiquities such as the seals and sealings. There are also the animal bones, human remains, burials, botanical remains, etc. which find place in the Atlas.
The data on each cultural item from excavated sites have been tabulated along with the references of publications where they appeared.

I'll conclude with a nice pic depicting Dynasties of Epic India,

http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=epicindiahz1.jpg

PS : Incase any Edit needed, I might do it. Have been edited number of times already.
 
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Vow!!. Joey's post qualifies for a Master's dissertation. I have no way of repudiating/or confirming it unless I read all the references Hon Joey has mentioned and see if his conclusions are correct. For that, I neither have the time nor inclination. I have just a couple of comments.

1. There is a river in Afghanistan called the Hari Ruud, the city of Herat takes its name from it. Your river Hrvat / Harahavati probably refers to Hari Ruud and not Sarasvati.

2. Achaemenid empire was founded by Cyrus also known as Kuroosh and not Parshyus. He combined the lands of Anshan and the Medes circa 550 BC. to form the Achaemenid empire. His great grandson Darius annexed Gandhara and Hindus among his domains. The country was not called Persia at that time. Whether it was referred to as Iran, I can't say.

3. The name Persia is from the Parthia of Roman times which was started when a Scyhthian tribe called Parni captured the lands of Eilam and Babylonia. Their empire lasted from circa 50 BC till 220 AD. ( Almost contemporay of Kushans).

Their capital was at Ctesiphoon, near modern Baghdad. The area today roughy corresponds to the Fars province of Iran and Iraq.

It is also known the Greeks called the new capital of Achamenids as Persepolis or city or the Persians. This is also located near Asfahan in the province of Fars in Western Iran. The area is the same as later known as Parthia. What we know as Iran today was never known as Persia by Iranis themselves.

4. I have not come across Shias calling Sunnis as non muslims, some Salafin /Wahabis do regard Shias as heretics.
 
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Vow!!. Joey's post qualifies for a Master's dissertation. I have no way of repudiating/or confirming it unless I read all the references Hon Joey has mentioned and see if his conclusions are correct. For that, I neither have the time nor inclination. I have just a couple of comments.

1. There is a river in Afghanistan called the Hari Ruud, the city of Herat takes its name from it. Your river Hrvat / Harahavati probably refers to Hari Ruud and not Sarasvati.

Well If Harahavati is referred than It is Harahavati and not Saraswati. Some people often likes to say that Hari Rudd is Saraswati which is wrong ofcourse,

The Saraswati in the Vedic literature occurs in a particular and specific context of Indian geography. It is described as "sea-going" and as nestled in between the Holy Sindhu (Indus) and the Holy Yamuna (see Nadi Stutam hymn). None of these applies to the much smaller Harahvati in afghanistan. Nonetheless, you will be excited to know that Hrvat namesake of the famous Croats in Eastern Europe is probably the end result of an Afghani/Persian migration to Europe. Again the direction of general movement is from East to West.

2. Achaemenid empire was founded by Cyrus also known as Kuroosh and not Parshyus. He combined the lands of Anshan and the Medes circa 550 BC. to form the Achaemenid empire. His great grandson Darius annexed Gandhara and Hindus among his domains. The country was not called Persia at that time. Whether it was referred to as Iran, I can't say.

And you will be surpised to know that the Kuru-Kauravas (Koroush) are the main protaganists of the MBH, of which the Pandavas are just a side branch. Now if Mbh mentions a drying Saraswati, and the Saraswati is known to geologically dried upto by 1900 BC at the latest, then what does that say about the prehistory of the Iranains/kurus who show up in the mideast a couple of millenia later to forge the achaemenid empire? Right, it places the iranain ancestors in India/Pak, same as the Vendivad list of Iranain homelands which mentions the hapta-Hendu (sapta-sindhu) among other Afghani ones. Also you are forgetting that GAndhari, wife of Dhritarashtra (a Kuru), in MBH is from Gandhara (afghansitan). All these regions were in the pan-Indian sphere of influence before yahoos form Mideast showed up.

3. The name Persia is from the Parthia of Roman times which was started when a Scyhthian tribe called Parni captured the lands of Eilam and Babylonia. Their empire lasted from circa 50 BC till 220 AD. ( Almost contemporay of Kushans).

IMHO, the name Persia can be most parsimoniously explained as a evolved form of Parshu (axe).These Parshus are mentioned in the famous Rigveda Dasarajana hymn VII:83.1 along with,

PRthus or PArthavas (VII.83.1): Parthians.
Pakthas (VII.18.7): Pakhtoons.
BhalAnas (VII.18.7): Baluchis.
Sivas (VII.18.7): Khivas.
ViSANins (VII.18.7): Pishachas (Dards).

They lose a battle with the Vedic king Sudas on the Ravi River and are banished to the Northwest. Again the Rigvedic historical material places these brave tribes in India much before they show up in the Mideast/west like latter day west-bound gypsies.

No one cares about 50 bce. In the 5th century bce this is what Darayavaush wrote:

Edict engraved on rock (Naqsh-i-Rustam, Iran) at the orders of Darius (Darayavaush), Persian Emperor of 5th century B.C.E.:

"Adam Darayavaush Khshaayathiya Vaazraka,
Khshaayathiya Khshaayathiyaanaam,
Parsyha Parshya Puthra Arya, Arya Chitra."

Translation:

"I, Darius, Great King
King of Kings
Persian/Parshya, Son of Persians/Parshyas (in later Iranian this became colloquially known as Parsi)
Noble (Arya) of Noble Family/lineage"

So there it is: Darius Shahanshah of the Persian Empire in the 5th century bce says he is a scion of Parshyas, and of 'Arya Chitra' - a noble, cultured family (Noble ancestry). By using both Arya and Parshya he is simultaneously stressing his faithful Zoroastrian credentials.


Their capital was at Ctesiphoon, near modern Baghdad. The area today roughy corresponds to the Fars province of Iran and Iraq.

Note, this the Eastern side of baghdad, again indicating a Eastward locus of entry for these tribes into the mideast. Also note the "sindi" surname common among Mideast kurds which indicates a Sindhi origin. Johanna Nichols, who is perhaps the world's most preeminent linguist, gives us a general principle of migration from East to west when discussing the so-called aryan migration (The Epicentre of the Indo-European Linguistic Spread):

"Several kinds of evidence for the PIE locus have been presented here. Ancient loanwords point to a locus along the desert trajectory, not particularly close to Mesopotamia and probably far out in the eastern hinterlands. The structure of the family tree, the accumulation of genetic diversity at the western periphery of the range, the location of Tocharian and its implications for early dialect geography, the early attestation of Anatolian in Asia Minor, and the geography of the centum-satem split all point in the same direction: a locus in western central Asia. Evidence presented in Volume II supports the same conclusion: the long-standing westward trajectories of languages point to an eastward locus, and the spread of IE along all three trajectories points to a locus well to the east of the Caspian Sea. The satem shift also spread from a locus to the south-east of the Caspian, with satem languages showing up as later entrants along all three trajectory terminals. (The satem shift is a post-PIE but very early IE development). The locus of the IE spread was therefore somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Bactria-Sogdiana."

Alas! Bactria-Sogdiana is just an arm's throw away from the Neolithic powerhouse of India/Punjab/Sindh.

It is also known the Greeks called the new capital of Achamenids as Persepolis or city or the Persians. This is also located near Asfahan in the province of Fars in Western Iran. The area is the same as later known as Parthia. What we know as Iran today was never known as Persia by Iranis themselves.

The city 'Persepolis' is Greek for Parsa (Pars) which is the own Persian (Parshya/Parsi) name for their ancient city. The name Pars itself derives from their ancestry, their religio-cultural-ethnic identity. Their language came to colloquially be called Parsi (turned to 'Farsi', because Arabic doesn't have 'p') and the people Parsis/Parsees (hence Persians). Persia was named after Parsa, and all Persians were named after the inhabitants of their capital. (Just like Romans of the main Italic part of the empire were named after the citizens of the empire's capital Rome.)

As for Parthians, it is not *known* they were Scythians, it is *hypothesized* they were because Afghanistan was invaded by Scythians some time later/around the period of the Parthian kingdom. (However, it seems likely Scythians could merely have been absorbed into Parthia, just as others were forced to absorb the Scythians.)

In any case, all Scythians known to history spoke Iranian languages, so linguistically they are Iranian (and we can assume ethnically too - western linguists make far greater leaps in assumptions, so why can't we make a sensible one?).

Here is Microsoft Encarta on Parthians - not the most reliable when it comes to such lame things as Oryans, I know (for instance it also states "The Parthians were of Scythian descent, and adopted Median dress and Aryan speech. How can they state that Parthians were solely, wholly of Scythian descent without giving historic evidence from records.)

But at least the following bit about them at Encarta is stating some historic, verifiable facts:

"Parthia, ancient empire of Asia, in what are now Iran and Afghanistan. ....
Parthia was subject successively to the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, and Macedonians under Alexander the Great, and Seleucids. About 250 bc the Parthians succeeded in founding an independent kingdom that, during the 1st century bc, grew into an empire extending from the Euphrates River to the Indus River and from the Oxus (now Amu Darya) River to the Indian Ocean. The main Parthian cities were Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Hecatompylos. After the middle of the 1st century bc Parthia was a rival of Rome, and several wars occurred between the two powers. In ad 224 Parthia was conquered by Ardashir I, king of Persia and founder of the Sassanid dynasty."

As we can see above, the Parthian managed to form a kingdom in 250 bce. It says that before that time they were subject to (amongst others) the Persians. That means the Persians existed before any independent Parthian kingdom. So you got it a bit wrong here. And Once the Parthian kingdom was formed in 250 bce, the kingdom was only in E Iran, W Afghanistan to C Afghanistan - which was the Parthian homebase. Only in the 1st century bce (upto ~220 ce) did Parthia expand to near ME (to Iraq). After ~220 ce Parthia was swallowed up by (now Sassanian) Persia again.

4. I have not come across Shias calling Sunnis as non muslims, some Salafin /Wahabis do regard Shias as heretics.

I defer my opinion to you, sir.
 
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Don't show your Sanghi mind here.
Fascist Attack on History and Secular Historians in India
The shadow of Fascism is looming large over the practice of history writing in India. The consequences of taking over of all the institutions of research and academic policy-making by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and filling them with RSS-linked nominees are now coming into play. It is indicative of the strength and excellence of secular historiography in India that it is now being seen as necessary by the Sangh Pariver (RSS linked organisations) to embark on a massive drive of crude suppression of academic freedom of the historian before it begins its long-cherished project of ‘re-writing’ India’s past.

The BJP policy on education has involved a major doctoring of school texts in the states ruled by the BJP, and there has also been a systematic and continuous attack on secular historiography, on democratic cultural expression and on minorities. It also needs to be stressed that these developments need to be opposed by all democratic people all over the world in whatever ways possible. International public opinion would certainly carry some weight. It would be nice if the matter could also be taken up at the level of different academic associations (a Historical Association, a Sociological Association, etc., and also a body concerned with south Asian or Asian studies), and they could perhaps express their concern to the Indian government.

In the face of a lot of lies being propagated by the BJP Government and its nominees who now control the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), and because not all the information is available to those who feel deeply concerned about the manner in which two volumes edited by Prof. Sumit Sarkar and Professor Panikkar dealing with the freedom movement have been arbitrarily and without warning withdrawn from the Press by the ICHR, we are sending you some additional material--some press clippings from various newspapers, reports of protests against this condemnable act, statements of the people concerned and other historians’ statements all of which give some details that you may find useful in further formulating your opinion and convincing others. It also needs to be stressed that this is not an isolated act.
 
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In the Name of History
Examples from Hindutva-inspired school textbooks in India

Communal historiography is quite old in India but the new additions reflect greater contemporary use in dividing society along communal lines. They are also stronger in the language and expressions used. Communal bias is woven into school textbooks with preposterous ‘facts’ in a way that can only have dangerous consequences for the educational standards in this country.

In the name of curriculum reform there is an attempt to rewrite textbooks along communal lines on a scale that will submerge all secular interpretations in school level teaching. A whole generation would grow up with their collective memory of a shared heritage destroyed and with ideas and information that have no basis in reality. A successful implementation of these texts on a widespread scale will mean the triumph of unreason as well as a tremendous and sudden deterioration in the quality of education, where the minimum criteria of correct empirical data and a scientific temper and reason are thrown to the winds. Our children will be little suited to face the real world or the world of scholarship


These books already form an integral portion of the curriculum in the 20,000 or more Vidya Bharati schools and also the Shishu Mandirs. The introduction of these texts into the Government schools in the BJP ruled states has massively increased the number of children who are being being made victims of this second rate and poisonous ‘knowledge’ The take over of educational bodies from the highest levels to those determining the syllabi in schools, will carry this wave of fascist propaganda into the entire educational process. Coupled with other forms of popular education they could change our entire ways of looking at ourselves, and also propel our political visions along fascist rather than democratic lines.

We give below a sampling of these texts:



SOME GEMS FROM THE SANSKRIT GYAN TEXTS


Sanskrit Gyan texts are taught in Vidya Bharati schools and Shishu Mandirs. The recent RSS sponsored agenda paper on education that the Central Government tried to present before the Conference of the State Education Ministers suggested that these and similar texts be made compulsory for all schools.

The students are tested on dubious ‘facts’ such as:


Ram Janmabhoomi is the birthplace of Ram.

Iran was first settled by Indians (Aryans).

Homer adapted Valmiki’s Ramayana into an epic called Iliad.

Greek philosophers like Herodotus and Aristophanes were influenced by the Vedas.

The Egyptian faith was based on Indian traditions according to Plato and Pythagorus.

The language of the Native American Indians evolved from ancient Indian languages.

The cow is the mother of us all, in whose body Gods are believed to reside.

The Ayurveda is the finest medical system of the world, and it naturally evolved in India

Jesus Christ roamed the Himalayas and drew his ideas from Hinduism.

In the text books distributed in Vidya Bharti schools the map of India is shown as including not only Pakistan and Bangladesh but also the entire region of Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and even parts of Myanmar ( "punnya bhoomi Bharat" )

A SAMPLE FROM THE HISTORY TEXTS



These texts are being used in Shishu Mandirs and Government Schools in BJP controlled states.


Ancient history:


Rama and Krishna took birth here to destroy evil and defend justice, religion and Sarasvati, and god took birth here many times to make this land pure. India is referred to as Sone ki chiriya and jagadguru( p 4 ,Gaurav Gatha (henceforth GG), the textbook for Class 4, Sarasvati Shishu Mandir, written in an extremely emotional and provocative style.)


Our land has always been seen with greedy eyes by the marauders, barbarous invaders and oppressive rulers. This story of invasion and resistance is our 3000 year long Gaurav Gatha . When this proud tradition actually began is difficult to say because no books were written at that time…but we believe that the first man was born in this land(p. 8 GG)


To our ancestors these marauders were like mosquitoes and flies who were crushed (p. 8 GG)

Bacchus and Dionysis, among the earliest invaders, suffered such a defeat that feelings of terror ran in Greece(p. 9, GG) Darius had to face such a defeat that never could Iran raise its eyes towards India (p. 10 GG)


About 2200 years ago India’s trade was spread far and wide; foreign markets were filled with goods made in India. Heaps of gems and jewels and gold and silver filled the treasures People of the entire world used to look to India rith greedy eyes(p. 12 GG)


Mahapadma Nanda had so much wealth that if divided among the population, every person would get Rs. 50 lakhs each (p. 13 GG)


Alexander’s army was defeated at the hands of Puru and Alexander himself had to seek forgiveness(p., 15 GG)

Then came Demetrius …the preaching of ahimsa had weakened North India. The Kshatriyas--followers of the Vedic religion were-feeling frustrated….the ruler of Magadha was a Buddhist. So he did not come forward to fight. But then was the country enslaved/ Did the enemy become victorious in the birthplace of Bhagwan Rama? No, no (p. 31, GG)


Pushyamitra destroyed the Greeks. After this the people of Greece could not attack Bharat Later they came only as refugees. As beggars they begged for their lives but never dared to look with proud eyes…the great man who destroyed the Greek power from its very roots was emperor Pushyamitra. India is proud of him even today. Every day we remember his name.(p. 35-37, GG)

Asoka advocated ahimsa. Every kind of violence came to be considered a crime. Even hunting, sacrifices in yajnas and use of arms began to be considered bad. It had a bad effect on the army. Cowardice slowly spread throughout the kingdom. The state bore the burden of providing food to the Buddhist monks. Therefore people began to become monks. Victory through arms began to be viewed as bad, Soldiers guarding the borders became demoralised. (p. 30, GG)

With the finds of bones of horses, their toys and yajna altars, scholars are beginning to believe that the people of the Harappa and Vedic civilisation were the same. (High School Itihaas Bhaag (henceforth HSIB)1, p. 43, history textbook for secondary schools, Government of U. P. revised in 1992 to suit the communal interpretations of Indian history. This book seals with the history of India from pre- historic times to 1526.)


Aryan culture is the nucleus of Indian culture, and the Aryans were an indigenous race. " But about the Aryans who were the builders of Bharatiya Sanskriti in Bharat and creators of the Vedas, this view is gaining strength among the scholars in the country that India itself was the original home of the Aryans."(P. 48, HSIB 1.) Archaeological and literary evidence does not support this theory.


Chanakya desired to "see the entire Bharat united into one nation."(P. 77, HSIB 1) empire building is deliberately confused with nationhood.


In a revised textbook three lines have been interpolated which reflect an utter disregard for facts. These lines are"It is worth mentioning that inspite of such a large empire, Asoka had got his edicts engraved only in one script (Brahmi) and one language Pakti-Sanskrit). This symbolises the national unity of the times".


The entire period of Indian history from the death of Harsha till the 12th century has been described as the Rajput kaal (p. 168).


The qualities of ancient traditional self-pride, love of freedom, the feeling of pride towards Indian culture among Rajputs confirm the view that the Rajput race is the descendent of ancient Kshatriya families (p. 170 HSIB 1). That they had their ancestry in certain invaders is dismissed as a conspiracy of western historians.


Medieval history:

The religious factor was the predominant factor in policies and conflicts throughout the medieval period
Muslim rule in India was a foreign rule ( the reference is to the medieval period of Indian history when the rulers were Muslims, although factually even this is incorrect if one takes the entire country into account)
Lakhs of foreigners came during these thousands of years…but they all suffered humiliating defeat….There were some whom we digested…when we were disunited , we failed to recognise who were our own and who were foreigners, then we were not able to digest them. We were not able even those who for some compulsion had separated from us. Mughals, Pathans and Christians are today some of these people." ( Itihaas Ga Raha Hai for Class5 in Shishu Mandir schools)
Islam spread in India solely by way of the sword. The Muslims came to India "with the sword in one hand and the Qoran in the other"…"Numberless Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam on the point of the sword. This struggle for freedom became a religious war, Numerous sacrifices were made in the name of religion. We went on winning one battle after another. We did not let the foreign rulers settle down to rule, but we were not able to reconvert the separated brothers to Hinduism."( Itihaas Gaa Raha Hai)
Arabs (barbarians) came to convert people to their religion. Wherever they went, they had a sword in their hand. Their army went like a storm in all the four directions. Any country that came in their way was destroyed, Houses of prayers and universities were destroyed. Libraries were burnt.. religious books were destroyed. Mothers and sisters were humiliated. Mercy and justice were unknown to them. (p.s.52-53 GG)
The second phase of the freedom struggle began with the invasion of India by Mahmud of Ghazni (Gaurav Gatha Class 4)
Mohammad Ghori killed lakhs of people, Visvanath Temple and Bhagwan Krishna’s birth place were converted into mosques. In turn he was killed by Prithviraj Chauhan( p.s. 67-68, GG )
Qutb Minar was constructed by Samundragupta, and its original name was Vushnu Sthambha ( p. 73, GG)).

The ‘foreign’ ruler Muhammad bin Tughlak transferred his capital from Delhi to Deogiri in South India out of fear of the Hindu kings (p. 73, GG ).
When Peshava Madhav Rao came to the throne no one could raise his eyes. The English, the French and the Portuguese shivered; they presented gifts in homage in his court with their heads bowed. Delhi’s emperor was his puppet. Moghul power had ended. Nizam and other Muslim states with bowed heads sought his (Peshava’s ) refuge. The entire country was in a sense independent (p. 111 GG)
Due to the circumstances, it ( Islam )gradually assumed the form of a military religion ( sainik dharma) and with the force of arms, with a lightening speed it advanced and became an international religion.( p. 184, HSIB 1)


Now the sword of Islam was transferred from the Caliphs to the Turks (p. 189, HSIB 1)

The aim of Mahmud of Ghazni and Mohammed Ghori in coming to India , apart from plunder was the spread of Islam in India(p.s. 190, 195, HSIB1).


Allauddin imposed 50% land revenue on the Hindus. ( p. 228 HSIB 1).


Hindus acceptd turkish political supremacy only under compulsion. They retained their identity even while leading the life of insult and humiliation. (p. 260 HSIB 1).


Most of the Sultans adopted a policy of religious intolerance. They commited atrocities against hindus, demolished idols and temples.because of this the Hindus had surrendered to the Sultanate but they were always making efforts to destroy the Sultanate ( p.278 HSIB 1 )


The followers of Islam in this country whether they came as traders or as invaders-but with this country they could never establish full cultural harmony. One basic reason for their seperateness was the basic principle of their religion which is monotheism…there was continuous mutual struggle between the two cultures (p. 280, HSIB 1)


The indian society during the Sultanate period was divided into two main classes-ruling or muslim classes and ruled or non-Muslims of whom the Hindus were the majority) the majority of the population of the state was hindu but the Muslim class was patronised by rulers. Hindu was merely the payer of taxes . Inspite of being conquered in the political field, Hindus did not lose courage. To regain their lost independence, they went on raising their voices from time to time. Because of this historians have called it the "period of resistance". (p. 281, p. 283, HSIB 1)


In India the nature of the mussalman state was a religious state (p.282, HSIB 1)


By adopting jauhar vrat, women defended their religion and chastity.(p. 183 HSIB1)


Child marriage, jauhar, sati, purdah, jadu-tona and superstition were all due to the fear of the muslims (p.,. 284 HSIB 1)
The Babri Mosque was constructed after destroying a temple, which in turn stood on the exact spot where Rama was born.( High School Itihaas Bhaag 2, p. 146. This book covers the period from invasion of Babur to recent events)


The epithet intolerant is constantly used for Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb


The Qoran was the basis for the state policy of Aurangzeb, and whatever policy was adopted for running the Government was basically for promoting Islam9 HSIB 2, p. 119)


Destruction of temples and schools attached to them and the building of mosques in their place was a general policy with Aurangzeb .(HSIB 2 p. 120)

Shivaji and Rana Pratap were fighters for national liberation. All the ‘Hindu’ kings who fought for their kingdoms against the Moghuls are presented as such.

In the text books from Maharashtra, the medieval history of Maharashtra begins and ends with Shivaji. All other historical figures exist only in reference to him.


Modern Indian history:


About 190 pages of the book deal with the history of modern India, of which only 20 pages are devoted to the nationalist movement (HSIB 2), of which 3 pages are devoted to Dr. Hedgewar. Important nationalist leaders are mentioned incidentally in comparison. Quit India movement has ½ page, Jinnah is the villian.


Although there are 60 pages on the entry of the British and establishment of british rule, there is nothing that would promote an understanding of colonialism (HSIB 2)


Peoples movements find no place.


The book is full of factual errors, inconsistencies, and chronological lapses.


The Muslims are solely blamed for the partition of India.


The RSS as an organisation is presented as central to the Freedom Movement. Dr. Keshavrao B. Hegdewar is one of the tallest leaders of the freedom struggle. Statements of a large number of national leaders have been quoted in praise of the RSS.


In the section dealing with the movement against the partition of Bengal the name of Hegdewar has been added as a leader of the movement, the other names mentioned being those of Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal.


In the context of the civil disobedience movement there is no mention of the Lahore Congress or Purna Swaraj.


The shishu mandir text book is worse on all these counts, and the RSS and its leaders are said to have removed the evils which hundreds of years of slavery had given…this Sangathan became an object of pride for the country ( p. 86 )


SUBSTANTIAL amendments and additions that suit the RSS ideology have also been made in grammar, literature and political science books for Classes IX, X, XI and XII in Rajasthan.
In one of the texts, "A New Collection of Poems and Literary Writings" (Nutan Gadya Padya Sangrah--the original title in Hindi), prescribed for Class IX, there are, among others, four articles, one each by Prof. Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiya), RSS chief; Tarun Vijay, editor of the RSS weekly Panchajanya; K.C. Sudarshan, also an RSS ideologue; and Dr. Jalamsingh Ravlot of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. All four articles were added this year.


In a textbook for Class XI, titled Political Science - An Introduction and Indian Political Thinkers, a chapter on Deen Dayal Upadhyay has been added. This 1998-99 edition describes him as a person who had deep respect for "ancient and highly sophisticated culture of India", who envisaged an "ideal Dharmarajya" and who was upset that "while designing the Indian Constitution, the natural and national values had been ignored." The 20-page section highlights his belief in "Akhand Bharat" which was all for dissolving the 1947 Partition and cites the occasion in April 1964 when he along with Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia conceived of a "Mahasangh" in which India and the partitioned countries (Pakistan and Bangladesh) would be included.


Rana Pratap’s heroic deeds are the subject of a poem in the High school Hindi syllabus. The poem Haldighati, written by Shyam Narain Pandey was banned in 1975 as it was found to incite communal feelings.
 
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