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An
Approach To Indian History
-Prof. Kittu Reddy |
Indian civilization by all accounts has been known to be one of the most ancient cultures. Like all ancient cultures, it has not always been easy to trace the exact origins of the civilization. However, since the beginning of the 19th century, a great deal of study and research has been done mainly by European scholars and Indologists. Many theories were put forward and for a long time they became accepted as the basis of Indian history. However, in recent times and with further research based on modern methods of science many of these theories are being questioned and new theories are being presented. These theories deal primarily with the following.
These historical theories are the culmination of European scholarship and they are still being taught in text- books of Indian history all over the country. This history in not based on facts and ignores convincing scientific evidence from fields like archaeology, geology, genetics and astronomy.
We shall in this article take up these issues and show that it has become necessary to view the whole of ancient Indian history in the light of the new discoveries.
In the textbooks, which we have read in the last few decades, we have been told that the Vedic Aryans were the first invaders of the country. The image that has been given is of the Aryan hordes pouring down the passes of Afghanistan on horseback, destroying the indigenous urban Harappan culture that was Dravidian in nature. That there was no record of such an event in ancient Indian records, north or south, was ignored. That this theory never managed to prove itself was disregarded. There were many eminent scholars and personalities – like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo - who contested this theory in the beginning of this century. Yet the theory was propagated of the Aryan invasion and remains in textbooks in India even today.
We shall be looking at some of the new light that has been thrown upon this theory in the light of archaeological and scientific evidence.
Before we go into the new evidence, let us see the basis on which the theory of Aryan invasion and its corollaries were founded.
This theory was founded on three fundamentals:
1. There are two distinct races in India – the Aryan and the Dravidian.
2. There are two distinct language groups in India – the Sanskritic and the non-Sanskritic that correspond to the North Indian and South Indian languages.
3. The Vedas themselves refer frequently to ‘Aryans and Dasyus’, which indicates the tall and fair North Indian and the dark skinned and short Dravidians.
Today each one of these theories is being seriously questioned and in fact being proved of doubtful validity. New archaeological evidence – most importantly of the river Saraswati – and the new and modern dating system throw the whole Aryan invasion theory into disarray.
The Aryan invasion idea is becoming rejected worldwide in the light of the new archaeological evidence that contradicts it.
In a recent academic paper it is argued that there is an indigenous development of civilization in India going back to at least 6000 BC. It proposes that the great Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture 2600-1900, centred on the Saraswati river of Vedic fame, had much in common with Vedic literary accounts. It states that the Harappan culture came to an end not because of outside invaders but owing to environmental changes, most important of which was the drying up of the Saraswati. Note the conclusion.
"That the archaeological record and ancient oral and literate 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 outside of south Asia, and now the archaeological record is confirming this.
"We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations, which date back to the eighteenth century, that continue to be imposed on South Asian culture history. European ethnocentrism, colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism significantly diminish these still prevailing interpretations. Surely, as south Asian studies approach 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."
This is a statement by a noted Western archaeologist specializing in ancient India, James Schaffer of Case Western University as part of his new article, 'Migration, Philology and South Asian Archaeology'.
Today there is dramatic evidence relating to a Vedic river known as the Saraswati.
The "Rig Veda" mentions the Saraswati as a "mighty river" originating in the Himalayas and flowing southwest toward the Arabian Sea. It refers to the Saraswati as "the best of the rivers" (naditama) and "a great river" with perennial water. Another epic, the "Mahabharata," says the river disappeared underground somewhere near Sirsa town in Haryana.
The people of India today regard the Ganga (Ganges) as the sacred river, but it was not so in ancient times. To the Vedic people the sacred river par excellence was the Saraswati, a great river running in a course more or less parallel to the Indus but well to the east. This was long regarded as a mythical river. Beginning in the 1970s, satellite data showed that such a river once did flow as described in the Rigveda. Following this discovery, in a great exploration of several thousand miles, the late V.S. Wakankar traced the course of this ancient river. We now know that this great river had dried up completely by 1900 BC, if not earlier. This means the people who composed the Vedas must have been well established in India by then, long before 1500 BC — the date assigned for the Aryan invasion. The Geological Society of India has also proved this from various perspectives.
In recent articles in the British journal, Current Biology, there are references, which have major implications for India. Based on genetic tests, the articles note that a key mitochondria DNA of the Western Eurasian strain accounts for no more than 5.2 per cent in Indian populations, as against over 70 per cent in European countries. Simply put, this means that the supposed Aryan invasion is contradicted by genetics. The conclusion is that neither was there any Aryan invasion nor even any significant Aryan immigration.
Further this study shows that this genetic strain is present in roughly the same proportion in North and South India. This again goes to prove that there is no genetic divide between the so-called North Indian Aryans and the South Indian Dravidians. Thus the dichotomy created by these historians has according to the latest scientific evidence no basis at all.
Other factors, which have discredited this theory, are the decipherment of the Indus valley script. It was Natwar Jha who deciphered first the Indus valley script and announced it in 1996.
As a result, the model of Indian history based on the Aryan invasion stood shattered by science and objective research. There was a serious debate over the validity of the model, with archaeologists — both Indian and Western — insisting that they found no support for any invasion in ancient times. At the same, being ignorant of Sanskrit, most archaeologists found it difficult to interpret archaeological data that are identified with the Vedic Civilization. Jha’s knowledge of Sanskrit and his decipherment took a step towards this and the resulting readings provide clearly defined historical context for the Harappans by linking their archaeology to the Vedic literature.
What made this possible was Jha’s Vedic scholarship along with his mastery of paleography. He showed that the language of the Harappan seals is Vedic Sanskrit, and their written messages have close connections with the Vedic literature. This solved a fundamental problem by providing a historical context for the Harappans. Jha’s breakthrough was the result of applying an empirical methodology to the primary sources, backed by great scholarship. His decipherment is very much a part of this approach — one that combines modern science and ancient records.
At the same time N Rajaram had arrived at a similar conclusion. His conclusion was based on a combined study of the mathematics of ancient Indian texts known as the Sulbasutras and the architecture of Harappan cities. He writes “The mathematical precision displayed in the carefully laid out cities and structures of the Harappan Civilization had convinced me that its architects and builders must have had access to fairly advanced mathematics — of the kind found in the Sulbasutras”. Further, a study of Harappan archaeology and Vedic literature shows that Vedic mathematics texts were used in the design and construction of carefully planned cities of the Harappan civilization. The American mathematician A. Siedenberg has established that both Old Babylonia (1900-1750 BC) and the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (2050-1800 BC) borrowed heavily from Vedic Mathematics, which was already well known in Harappan times.
Today, a great deal of research is being done on languages in India. It has been found that there are thousands of words in the Tamil language that are common to Sanskrit. It is quite possible to believe that both these ancient languages are derived from the same root, from another one which preceded them.
Thus
the theory of an Aryan invasion and of two different races in India – the
Aryan and the Dravidian – stands discredited; similarly the dates of the Vedas
become much earlier than that of the Harappan and Mohenjodaro period. We shall
have to wait for a little longer when the research now being conducted all
over the world comes to a definitive conclusion; in the meanwhile the least
we can do is to disabuse our minds of the Aryan invasion theory and its corollary
theories that are being taught in most text books.
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