‘Indian history was distorted by the British’

[Joe Shearer]

The problem is that many in the "knowledgeable" circles could be accused of intellectual dishonesty in the way they have approached this. They still rely on the original arguments of the AIT when they try & read into the Rg veda a conflict of races (Aryan, Dasa, Dasyu...)and argue that it indicates a militaristic suppression of indigenous races and have, elsewhere, for complete lack of evidence, changed their tack from invasion to migration. The two arguments are used while arguing against separate individual arguments but essential contradicting their argument made elsewhere. The same argument is also made on the presence of Dravidian languages in Pakistan (even AIT scholars including Witzel agree that they are later introductions) as somehow being proof of an earlier Dravidian presence in the North/NW which would be not really relevant if the argument has now changed to a slow gradual migration from the earlier belief of a cataclysmic invasion.

Coming to your point about the presence of Dravidian languages in north-west India (or south Asia, as our neo-literates in history may insist on calling the area), and the possible earlier Dravidian presence there, I wonder whether there is the same confusion between race and language creeping in. Would you have any difficulty in positing that an earlier prevalent language was swept away or replaced or folded within a later, more popular language? That seems to be very much the case for most of north India, where Dravidian languages are still spoken, but in tribal areas (as Gondi, Maria, Muria, and the like, as well as Kolami, and its associated languages).

Why should an earlier Dravidian presence be disproved by a gradual migration? For that matter, why should an earlier Dravidian presence be disproved by an initial strife-filled encounter, which died out over the years into strong social and religious pressure from groups which had formed themselves into an elite?

 

[rockstarIN]

Rigveda is dated between 5000 B.C to 600 B.C.

http://greenvalleykashmir.com/CMS/Files2/EARLY AND LATER VEDIC PERIOD.pdf

Read the Virat parva of Mahabharata, Caste system is not there during that period, Pandavas was considered as shudras immigrants when they went to Virat kingdom

On what form or the followings are debatable but the system prevailed there and you will find the evidence too. Even in Gita, Arjuna's words about the fall of his 'kula' due to the war within.

 

[zaxcollix]

Two words arya(with small 'a') and Arya(with bigger 'A') are mentioned in the vedas (rigveda) and none of them denote a race .

That was a joke ...only an idiot would take it otherwise.

 

[zaxcollix]

whatever your theory is, please give us a timeline of what happened, with evidence support.

lol...why ? ....are you planning to give us a certificate of authenticity ?

 

[Chak Bamu]

Fact, it appears, is stranger than fiction.

It is difficult to believe that in this day and age, there are still among us imbeciles who confuse language groups with ethnicity.

Ever since fascist and National Socialist theories of race and racial purity were subjected to close examination, and shown to be nonsense, nobody has confused the Aryan language group with any hypothetical race called Aryan; nobody, conversely, has confused the Dravidian language group with any hypothetical race called Dravidian. Nobody in knowledgeable circles, nobody resorting to aimless trawling for words and phrases that they believe are important.

What a waste of time!



I have read somewhere that the earth is flat and that the moon is made of green cheese. Since I have read these somewhere, I can't say where, the matter then stands proven beyond doubt.

Hilarious.

Excellent observation.

Identity is what it all comes down to. Based on genetic evidence we should conclude that humanity is a big family. That takes care of all of the supposed 'superiority' theories floating around.

 

[Punjabbi Munda]

Indian history

-Dravidian migration into South India
-Aryan invasion
-Hindu culture borrowed from Aryan IVC
-Caste system started
-Warring Hindu kingdoms
-Islamic invasion
-British invasion
-Caste system ended
-British left
-Caste system restarted
-Partition
-Republic of India

Your ancestors were Indians,word Pakistan is 65 years old.
Deal with it!

 

[dronedevta]

Rigveda is dated between 5000 B.C to 600 B.C.

http://greenvalleykashmir.com/CMS/Files2/EARLY AND LATER VEDIC PERIOD.pdf

The PDF you mentioned has has not even little bit of examination which lead them to the conclusion that the text were 5000 BC OLD . Anyone can write anything !

Read the Virat parva of Mahabharata, Caste system is not there during that period, Pandavas was considered as shudras immigrants when they went to Virat kingdom

That also simplifies caste origins, as shudra caste was not present in other early IE religions , they had only three .

The Adi the vana the shanti parva all proclaim castes as divine .

Mahabharata is older than 600BC, around 800BC Bimbisara founded Empire of Magadh while legend of Jarasandh is even older than this.

I'am taking about text and writings not the original event BTW what makes you say bindusar was in 800 BC?

 

[dronedevta]

You simply cannot pick random dates for an Aryan invasion/migration/foreign presence in India. There is a reason why AIT supporters try & stick with 1500 BCE and later (Sarasvati be damned),

India history has a name problem , vyasa wrote MB vyasa compiled vedas vyasa wrote a commentary on yog sutras .

Saraswati even flow in Shatpath brhmanam But as we all know by the evidence of Iron in Atharva one can date it easily around 1200 BC and Shatpath is later to atharva .

it is because the whole theory is in danger of falling apart if Aryan presence in India is accepted as being earlier than that. It is simply difficult to accommodate other linguistic members of the Indo-European language family into any argument that could garner even the slightest credibility at dates before that(the argument is that the Indo-Iranian family, alomg with the Greeks & the Armenians were the last to leave the "original homeland", with the Greeks separating first followed by the Armenians & then the Indo-Iranians arriving to their respective homelands).

Ancestors of Rigvedic people as i said came to the area around 2000-2200 BC , even most WH acknowledge that .

 

[Gandalf]

There may have been no Aryan Invasion but nonetheless the Genetic difference betwen Punjabis,Haryanvis exist.
I mean a khatri like me won't have the same race genes like an Tamil or a Bengali.

 

[INDIC]

The PDF you mentioned has has not even little bit of examination which lead them to the conclusion that the text were 5000 BC OLD . Anyone can write anything !




That also simplifies caste origins, as shudra caste was not present in other early IE religions , they had only three .

The Adi the vana the shanti parva all proclaim castes as divine .



I'am taking about text and writings not the original event BTW what makes you say bindusar was in 800 BC?

I am talking about Bimbisara, the Magadh king of Rajgriha. Bindusara was second Maurya king, son of Chandragupta Maurya.

 

[Joe Shearer]

There may have been no Aryan Invasion but nonetheless the Genetic difference betwen Punjabis,Haryanvis exist.
I mean a khatri like me won't have the same race genes like an Tamil or a Bengali.

The scientific evidence doesn't say so, sadly. Sadly because I am a Bengali, and would have liked to retain some distance from - oh, let's just say, others.

 

[bronxbull]

India is a place that is so easy to defend...

Natural barrier of mountains uptop, and two huge, raging rivers(Indus, Brahamaputra) on both sides, surrounded by a unforgiving sea.

So why did India always get the brunt of foreign conquest?

because converts like u betrayed us.

How old are you?

i think ur age squared.

Well that's the problem here isn't.Indians were never good at writing history,Most of our knowledge of ancient India comes from foreign historians.Greek Megasthenes,Chinese travallers like Faxian and Xuanzang not to mention the long line of Muslim and European historians who wrote about India.We have relied on them too much we often don't seem to acknowledge their mistakes.

it got destroyed dude,thats all and the british purposefully did not let us get it,

http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/

 

[Bang Galore]

True at one plane, the original plane, O knowledgeable one! But I put it to you that even a mixed ethnicity could produce a ruling class, and without resorting to the final solutions that racial conflicts seemed to depict, it is possible to construct a picture of a steppe-descended elite, using its language as a social advantage, gradually seeping through upper India over the centuries, until it finally lost steam and petered out against the older languages still being spoken in the Deccan plateau.

This is not an argument for militaristic suppression, but of gradual social acceptance and dominance. Sharper and even more incisive incidents have happened in parallel circumstances, in Greece, for instance, and the older languages have survived under the onslaught for centuries, again, like Greece and the Pelasgian languages, for example. Migration is not necessarily always a peaceful process; it is arguable that at the outset, near the north-western passes at least, the encounter might well have been bloody. It is reasonable to assume that with increasing intermingling with autochthonous populations, the process of spreading of the Aryan language would have carried in its wake some degree of adoption of social and religious practices.

Therefore, it is possible that what happened was a mixture of two things: initial sharp encounters, gradually morphing into social and religious absorption of the older society, and its domination by the new way of doing things. There might have been increasing modification of the original social and religious customs, until what emerged was a composite, differing in its nature from one end to the other. Which is what actually seems to have been the case, between the Punjab and the foothills of the north-western mountains at one end to the Gangetic delta at the other end.

A mixture of initially warlike encounters and subsequent more measured and peaceful social domination is not necessarily a contradiction but more a reflection of the changes forced on an intruding system by the existent norms. Was that not what happened in numerous other examples of subsequent incursions?

Not correctly reflective of my argument. Many AIT supporters argue that the only explanation for the complete absence of archeological evidence for any "non -Indian" presence during the time of the supposed Aryan invasion/migration is that it was because the numbers of the
"Aryans" were very small and constituted only a cultural conquest & not an military one. That very small number simply does not then harmonise with the argument of any military conquests supposedly remembered in the Rg veda. By the end of the Rg veda, caste had started creeping into Indian society & any separation that existed in the genetic make up of the individual groups(if any) would have most likely been preserved as such. If however they were already absorbed into the local population, then the argument that those were recollections of some ancient ethnic possibility does not hold. In any case the word "Aryan" in the Rg veda is primarily associated with only one of the tribes, the Purus . The conflicts mentioned then are probably more correctly a reflection of inter-tribal fights between the 5 main tribes mentioned and there is no mention the Rg veda of a non-Aryan name of any tribe encountered. Btw, the word dasa when used in a friendly reference(there are 3 of them in Rg veda) have to do with patron kings & those kings have been identified by many, including Witzel as bearing proto-Iranian names.


The problem with the rest of the cultural conquest argument is the complete absence of non-Aryan place & river names which would be an extraordinary event & almost unheard of in any other place since place names & river names are extremely stubborn & have survived (earlier ones) both in Europe as well as in North America. Taking into account, the newer arguments that the "Aryans" were small in numbers & pretty much nomadic & that they succeeded in converting completely the people who had built the greatest urban civilisation till then is, well questionable to put it mildly. Your contention, while possible does not have any archeological proof to support it and while that does not negate it, it still leaves it in the realm of contentious positions, one of many that are available on this subject.

 

[Bang Galore]

Coming to your point about the presence of Dravidian languages in north-west India (or south Asia, as our neo-literates in history may insist on calling the area), and the possible earlier Dravidian presence there, I wonder whether there is the same confusion between race and language creeping in. Would you have any difficulty in positing that an earlier prevalent language was swept away or replaced or folded within a later, more popular language? That seems to be very much the case for most of north India, where Dravidian languages are still spoken, but in tribal areas (as Gondi, Maria, Muria, and the like, as well as Kolami, and its associated languages).

Why should an earlier Dravidian presence be disproved by a gradual migration? For that matter, why should an earlier Dravidian presence be disproved by an initial strife-filled encounter, which died out over the years into strong social and religious pressure from groups which had formed themselves into an elite?

There is no confusion, simply pointing out that any & all arguments are used, even if they are of the questionable variety. No disproving of anything if the arguments are purely of the migration variety but the tendency to link up disparate & mutually contradictory arguments must be criticised even if one were in favour of a more sophisticated argument in that very same line of thinking. As I have said earlier, the complete absence of non-Aryan place & river names have befuddled anyone who has argued along the lines that you seek to advance.

 

[Bang Galore]

Saraswati even flow in Shatpath brhmanam But as we all know by the evidence of Iron in Atharva one can date it easily around 1200 BC and Shatpath is later to atharva .

That is the problem, present archeological thinking suggests that the Sarasvati probably disappeared either in the late third millenium/early second millenium BCE(2200-1800BCE) or even earlier; 4th millenium BCE (3800 BCE) . Big problem when you consider how central the Sarasvati is to the Rg veda.

Ancestors of Rigvedic people as i said came to the area around 2000-2200 BC , even most WH acknowledge that .

Not really, those dates make it difficult to place anyone of the other related linguistic families anywhere at that time. Remember that even the Iranians can only be dated archeologically only to 900 BCE (Assyrian sources). Another big problem.