What is 'Civilizational Continuity'?

[vsdoc]

If what your saying is true, great. That means our forefathers even gave you your religion. You don't have to lick our balls for that but you could say 'thank you' to us.

And this gem has been thanked by an Administrator (Agnostic Muslim) and a Think Tank (Developer).

While the Indian (vsdoc) who comments on it gets an Infraction.

I'm out of this discussion unless someone has the grace to be fair, much as it goes against the grain.

P.S. I give a flying fcuk if you ban me again. Just so you know.

 

[Developereo]

And this gem has been thanked by an Administrator (Agnostic Muslim) and a Think Tank (Developer).

While the Indian (vsdoc) who comments on it gets an Infraction.

I'm out of this discussion unless someone has the grace to be fair, much as it goes against the grain.

P.S. I give a flying fcuk if you ban me again. Just so you know.

No need for theatrics. I was thanking the substance of the post, minus that one comment. That poster has an unfortunate habit of spoiling otherwise good posts with such 'embellishments'.

Plenty from your side also throw in a zinger in their post, but we overlook it.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

And this gem has been thanked by an Administrator (Agnostic Muslim) and a Think Tank (Developer).

While the Indian (vsdoc) who comments on it gets an Infraction.

I'm out of this discussion unless someone has the grace to be fair, much as it goes against the grain.

P.S. I give a flying fcuk if you ban me again. Just so you know.

Infraction has been reversed - when I read Atanz's post I completely missed that part (I must have been skimming ... )

That said, as Joe Shearer argued with respect to Pakistanis not coming to knee jerk conclusions on the 'motives of Indians', I would ask you to do the same - engaging with the moderator team over PM regarding moderator actions works a lot better than venting on the open forum, which ends up with us typically considering the 'venting' as rants and ignoring the Posters complaints.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Infraction has been reversed - when I read Atanz's post I completely missed that part (I must have been skimming ... )

That said, as Joe Shearer argued with respect to Pakistanis not coming to knee jerk conclusions on the 'motives of Indians', I would ask you to do the same - engaging with the moderator team over PM regarding moderator actions works a lot better than venting on the open forum, which ends up with us typically considering the 'venting' as rants and ignoring the Posters complaints.

VSDoc, the word we need to guide ourselves is 'mellow', very mellow. Do come back. There's tons I have to say which will totally miss fire if you aren't there to ignite the remains.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Is this whole discussion not veering (ad nauseum given some of the usual participants from the other side) towards self-serving semantics now.

"South Asian" civilization? LOL Give me a break.

Why?

Because we are NOT Indian and therefore while we want to reclaim our past (well, some of us at least per Dr. Vinod's WIP thesis) we abhor the fact that the past is still linked to its origins - which inconveniently (for us) is still alive and thriving and did not succub en masse to a foreign faith of a foreign invader.

Please. A little honesty would go such a long way in mending ties between us.

IVC is ours you say. Convenient geographic dovetailing from thousands of years ago.

Did you perchance forget that India over its 8000 year recorded history had MANY such geographically discrete and overlapping pockets of mankind (often inclusive of and undifferentiated from the current political state of Pakistan) - but all linked by a COMMON thread?

Namely .....

BLOOD

FAITH

SOIL

If ever there was an event that challenged the above theorem of mine, it was the advent of Aryans on to the subcontinent, and the interplay over the next millenia between them and the native Dravidian race.

Geneticists do say that a period of churn occurred sometime between 3500 BC and 1200 BC. This is significantly close to the period when Indo-European speaking immigrants seem to have entered south Asia. While dates cannot be set for the regrouping of Dravidian languages into south India, there were major developments in those languages around 500 BC.

I am open to the idea that originally one civilization was displaced by another dominant one.

Are you open to the idea that the recent waves of invasion in contrast had very little cross seding in comparison and that you belong to the same stock?

Are you open to the idea that culturally and geographically and militarily the population of the present political entity called Pakistan has been traditionally the gateway to foreign invaders throughout history?

The first to fall.

The first to adopt a new and different faith?

IVC > Ancient Vedic > Hindu > Buddhist > back to Hindu > Islam.

Are you open to the idea that based on your historic propensity for the same, were a new dominant faith to be born in this world today, and spread inorganicaly via invasion, the chances of you falling to the same before us would be so much stronger?

These are all thoughts that need to be discussed when we talk about the continuity of civilizations.

Beause what is man without his faith?

You are making me VERY uncomfortable with this suggestion of an entire population being prone to this personal trait or that. Any moment now, we will meet the ghost of the martial races theory backing into its doppelgänger, the decidedly unmartial races theory. Mirthful, but lurching towards that laddish racism.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Let's approach the issue from your angle: blood, soil and faith.

Take the first two. Except for a small patch of NW India, the rest of the Republic of India can kiss goodbye to any such link with IVC or the likes of Panini.

I sincerely hope you don't mean this seriously

Genetically speaking, except for the Pakhtun/Pathan enclave, north India is identical in genetic composition (I understand that south India also is identical, but we can confuse one issue at a time). On the grounds of blood, there is nothing to support the statement that the rest of the Republic of India has nothing to do with either Panini or with the IVC. Assuming that anybody alive has anything to do with the IVC due to descent and genealogy.

So we are left with faith. Fine, we accept that modern India has more of a living link with Panini, the Vedas and, to a miniscule extent, with the IVC. What you are really proclaiming, then, is that the rest of the subcontinent converted to the faith originating from now-Pakistan+NW India. Remember that the IVC itself was never part of a larger regional empire. Even the later empires spanned small periods of time and, regardless of the political conquest, the cultural transmission in question went from 'Pakistan' to the rest of subcontinent. You can use euphemisms like incorporated, assimilated, and held-hands-around-the-campfire-singing-kumbaya, but the reality of the conversion is not only indisputable -- it forms the core of your claim!

Moreover, given that the actual history is lost in antiquity and the narrative is written by the 'winning' culture, the real story will never be known. Was it conversion? coersion? a mix of the two? does it matter after all these millenia?

All we can say is that we are more than happy to be the land which gave all you converts (gasp!) this particular path to enlightenment. Some of us may have chosen another path later on, but we still acknowledge the validity of the ancient path.

You are welcome!

Two points - we have allowed ourselves to be hypnotised by VSDoc. Faith is not the only component that is a determinant, along with his postulation of Blood and Soil (there are moments when I felt that a discussion on roses or on fine French wine might not have differed much in their details). Instead, please consider the impact of society and societal organisation and values on civilisation. Panini was influential throughout cultural India, including the south east Asian hinterland, not for religious reasons, but more because his codification of the rather more free-flowing, flexibly defined Vedic language took the result out of the reach of the masses of society, and made it a tool for social and cultural control. There is nothing to suggest that this was ever intended; on the contrary, what we have is a brilliant, transcendental piece of scholastic endeavour. But the result, over centuries, was to give the controllers of the language control over society.

Regarding the somewhat tongue-in-cheek and entirely typical digs about the north-west having converted the rest, it is best to ignore it with a wry grin. The alternative would be to write a treatise on the reflection of the spread of the Sanskrit-speaking ruling class throughout north India (including the Indus Valley). There is ample material for such a treatise, and there are numerous very good books that deal with the subject. There is little or nothing of the originality of the north-west as a source of theology and dogma for the Hindu religion, as the centre of gravity passed to the south-west, to the other great river valley, in fairly short order.

 

[Joe Shearer]

That is not a valid statement. It was not as if a faith was being spread - it was an organic developmental process in which all regions made their own valuable contributions.

If you go really far back to the almost pre-historic era, then it was the Ganga-Yamuna-Saraswati region where the oldest chapters of the Rig Veda were written.

It is difficult to understand this statement, and the asynchronous approach taken, as if what happened on the banks of the Sapta Sindhu in 1200 BC and theological developments in Kerala in 800 AD are to be taken together. There was a language that was introduced, and prevailed over others spoken before its advent. There were hymns to gods and goddesses in that language. It seems that we are being asked to believe that the language came in, and prevailed, over hundreds of years, but that the faith, and the pantheon, was present from earlier than the language.

The statement about the Rg Veda being composed in the Ganga-Yamuna-Saraswati region is difficult to comprehend.

It is only after recollecting the invariable effort of some revisionists to force-fit everything into the confines of the jingoistic OOI theory that all these make sense.

Right conclusion, wrong grounds.

 

[KS]

Hinduism originated in modern day Pakistan ?

C'mon gimme a break !

How many times and how many people have to tell you guys that the faith structure that was [and is] referred to Hinduism is not like the other organized religion - that you can ascribe one founder, one founding place and one founding time period to it and get away with it.

If at all, you can say it had a 'naming' period when the Persians started calling the people east of Indus as Hindus and then the British who officially did the naam karan ceremony of Hinduism.

 

[Sam_Bajwa]

And no body can be removed from a culture/civilization by merely adopting a new religion ...

what if the people insist on abandoning their culture just for the sake of some idea of different identity.
mate history is not a scrap book where you paste the fact's you like and ignore those which you don't if you people are so willing to lay claim on the ancient history don't claim a part of it accept it entirely.

 

[neutral_person]

Infraction has been reversed - when I read Atanz's post I completely missed that part (I must have been skimming ... )

That said, as Joe Shearer argued with respect to Pakistanis not coming to knee jerk conclusions on the 'motives of Indians', I would ask you to do the same - engaging with the moderator team over PM regarding moderator actions works a lot better than venting on the open forum, which ends up with us typically considering the 'venting' as rants and ignoring the Posters complaints.

Pakistan
I believe this post by newdelhiinsa summarizes and concludes the debate pretty well.


Indus Valley Civilization = Connect (Geography) Yes, Yes.

Continuity No.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity No, No.


India

Indus Valley Civilization = Connect Yes,

Continuity ~Yes.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity Yes, Yes.

 

[KS]

The Greeks, Swedes, Egyptians and Brits have changed faiths and are perfectly legitimate inheritors of the ancients. Just because you want to claim exclusivity is irrelevant to us. We don't need to be constrained by your self-serving rules which don't apply across the world anyway.

Developereo..say it a million times and then the million and oneth time that the Greeks, Swedes, Egyptians and Brits do not owe ther nationality to religion. Pakistan owes its existence to Islam and as is common knowledge Islam has nothing to do with IVC or Vedic civilization or any such things.

As I said Pakistan is an unique experiment of history and thus cannot be compared with any of the above said entities.

 

[KS]

.....The issue is not the name of Pakistan. The issue is the Indus Valley region and the people who have lived therein. At present they are called Pakistani. .....

Read the posts before the current post and then reply back.

LaBong, had made a very good point. There are two different histories. History of land and History of the people. IVC is the history of the land, may or may not be the history of the people.

What I find ironical is one of your most vociferous or thankiferous supporters, Joe Shearer, is an ardent supporter of the AIT [last time I checked :/] which actually nullifies the claim modern day Pakistanis have to IVC and showers us "South Indian dravidian" with the exclusive rights to it.

If what your saying is true, great. That means our forefathers even gave you your religion. You don't have to lick our balls for that but you could say 'thank you' to us.

Refer post # 158

No, they don't but if the deviation reaches a point where many of original beliefs have been turned on their head than you would argue you have another religion. Like say Christianity which has evolved from Judaism.

And how did the original belief "turn on its head", that we are converts to Hinduism, as per Agnostic Muslim's claim ?

 

[KS]

Did I not tell you in the other thread itself, that bolded term is becoming a bit stale and you sound more and more like our famous paranoid Digvijay Singh who sees an RSS hand everywhere ?

Your argument only has relevance for Hindutva revisionists - it is a concoction of a 'religion metric' in defining civilizational continuity and placing overwhelming importance on religion alone, ignoring the fact that the modern day religion of Hinduism is, at best, has no more links to Vedic civilization than Islam does to Judaism -

Dude like it or not, religion plays a huge role in every civilization. Infact religion is one of the defining factors of every civilization.

As regards the "fact" that modern day Hinduism has no more links to Vedic civilization than Islam has to Judaism - I differ. It is not a "fact". But your opinion which you can put forward and I can deny till cows come home.

Also am I wrong in saying that the Prophet was sent upon [Semitic] mankind to show the one true path,Islam, rejecting any earlier teaching which had become distorted ?

Whether Pakistan was founded in the basis of religion or Mickey Mouse does not change the fact that the religion co-opted local culture and vice versa, and therefore, in the continuation of the indigenous blood lines and cultural practices lies the continuity of civilization from the IVC.

Spare us that, religion co-opted culture in Pakistan to the extent most don't even know who Raja Dahir is and still sing paens about Mohammed bin Qasim.

If Islam had evolved from a polytheistic faith to a monotheistic faith, or vice versa, or incorporated 'atheism/agnosticism' at it origin, then yes, it would be a distinct faith.

A better analogy would be the evolution of faith in Middle East from Judaism (and earlier), Christianity through Islam.

AM, just answer the simple question, is Islam as practised today entirely identical to the one practised in 7th century Arabia. A "yes" or "no" would suffice.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

what if the people insist on abandoning their culture just for the sake of some idea of different identity.
mate history is not a scrap book where you paste the fact's you like and ignore those which you don't if you people are so willing to lay claim on the ancient history don't claim a part of it accept it entirely.

Again, changing one's religion is not equivalent to abandoning ones entire heritage and culture.

You and others have bandied this claim, about Pakistanis abandoning the IVC Civilization/culture, without any credible arguments as to how Pakistanis today have abandoned the IVC culture any more than Indians today have. After trying various routes and arguments, you lot invariable end up invoking the 'Religion Card' - Pakistanis are not Hindus anymore so therefore they have no claim on the IVC. For a nation that touts its 'secular' credentials and for posters that routinely criticize Pakistan's theocratic underpinnings, you lot sure are obsessed with making Hinduism a cornerstone of Indian identity.

Pakistan
I believe this post by newdelhiinsa summarizes and concludes the debate pretty well.


Indus Valley Civilization = Connect (Geography) Yes, Yes.

Continuity No.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity No, No.


India

Indus Valley Civilization = Connect Yes,

Continuity ~Yes.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity Yes, Yes.

That post summarizes the opinions of the poster, it does not justify those opinions/conclusions.

I can offer a similarly thoughtless expression of opinions on my end:


Pakistan

Indus Valley Civilization = Connect (Geography) Yes, Yes.

Continuity Yes.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity Yes, Yes.


India

Indus Valley Civilization = Connect Yes,

Continuity ~No.

Vedic Civilization = Connect Yes.

Continuity No, No.

Did I not tell you in the other thread itself, that bolded term is becoming a bit stale and you sound more and more like our famous paranoid Digvijay Singh who sees an RSS hand everywhere ?

Dude like it or not, religion plays a huge role in every civilization. Infact religion is one of the defining factors of every civilization.

As regards the "fact" that modern day Hinduism has no more links to Vedic civilization than Islam has to Judaism - I differ. It is not a "fact". But your opinion which you can put forward and I can deny till cows come home.

Also am I wrong in saying that the Prophet was sent upon [Semitic] mankind to show the one true path,Islam, rejecting any earlier teaching which had become distorted ?


Spare us that, religion co-opted culture in Pakistan to the extent most don't even know who Raja Dahir is and still sing paens about Mohammed bin Qasim.


AM, just answer the simple question, is Islam as practised today entirely identical to the one practised in 7th century Arabia. A "yes" or "no" would suffice.

I fail to see how you can argue 'religious continuity' when you agree (AFAIK) that Vedic Civilization/IVC was atheistic/agnostic in nature.

Hinduism, as widely practiced today, involves the worship of deities, as does Islam (deity). The suggestion that the Vedic Civilization/IVC was primarily (or significantly) atheistic/agnostic in nature means that it was a distinctly different belief system relative to modern day Hinduism - you simply cannot reconcile the two within the same 'belief system', though you can argue the existence of two distinctly different belief systems within the same culture/society/civilization. Either way, modern day Hinduism would be distinctly different and separate from any atheistic/agnostic belief system practiced by the IVC and VC.

Religions certainly evolve - Islam has evolved as has Hinduism - but a shift from atheism to deity worship implies a complete shift in the belief system, not a mere evolution within a religion. I am not sure why you are having so much trouble understanding this.

Developereo..say it a million times and then the million and oneth time that the Greeks, Swedes, Egyptians and Brits do not owe ther nationality to religion. Pakistan owes its existence to Islam and as is common knowledge Islam has nothing to do with IVC or Vedic civilization or any such things.

As I said Pakistan is an unique experiment of history and thus cannot be compared with any of the above said entities.

Again, you can keep repeating your argument a million and one times, but you have yet to explain why the identity of the State has any relevance on civilizational continuity.

Did the IVC or VC describe themselves as 'Secular Republics'? If not, then your own argument works against India having any claim to past civilizations in South Asia.

 

[The HBS Guy]

The so-called Shiva Pashupati seal

Swastika Seals from the Indus Valley Civilization preserved at the British Museum.

Religion:

The religion of Hinduism probably has its roots in the Indus Valley civilisation. Hindus and Indus people, both worship a 'mother goddess' her names include Parvati and Sakti, and both regard the cow as sacred. Hindus and Indus people both bathe in the River for religious purposes and consider rivers holy.[58]

Some Indus valley seals show swastikas, which are found in other religions (worldwide), especially in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. The earliest evidence for elements of Hinduism are alleged to have been present before and during the early Harappan period.[59] Phallic symbols interpreted as the much later Hindu Shiva lingam have been found in the Harappan remains.[60][61]

Many Indus valley seals show animals. One motive shows a horned figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position and surrounded by animals was named by early excavators Pashupati (lord of cattle), an epithet of the later Hindu gods Shiva and Rudra.[62][63][64]

In view of the large number of figurines found in the Indus valley, some scholars believe that the Harappan people worshipped a Mother goddess symbolizing fertility, a common practice among rural Hindus even today.[65] However, this view has been disputed by S. Clark who sees it as an inadequate explanation of the function and construction of many of the figurines.[66]

There are no religious buildings or evidence of elaborate burials. If there were temples, they have not been identified.[67]

In the earlier phases of their culture, the Harappans buried their dead; however, later, especially in the Cemetery H culture of the late Harrapan period, they also cremated their dead and buried the ashes in burial urns.

It is possible that a temple exists to the East of the great bath, but the site has not been excavated. There is a Buddhist reliquary mound on the site and permission has not been granted to move it.[68] Until there is sufficient evidence, speculation about the religion of the IVC is largely based on a retrospective view from a much later Hindu perspective.[41]

Historical context and linguistic affiliation

After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately associated with the indigenous Dasyu inimical to the Rigvedic tribes in numerous hymns of the Rigveda. Mortimer Wheeler interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-Daro as the victims of a warlike conquest, and famously stated that "Indra stands accused" of the destruction of the IVC. The association of the IVC with the city-dwelling Dasyus remains alluring because the assumed timeframe of the first Indo-Aryan migration into India corresponds neatly with the period of decline of the IVC seen in the archaeological record. The discovery of the advanced, urban IVC however changed the 19th century view of early Indo-Aryan migration as an "invasion" of an advanced culture at the expense of a "primitive" aboriginal population to a gradual acculturation of nomadic "barbarians" on an advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. This move away from simplistic "invasionist" scenarios parallels similar developments in thinking about language transfer and population movement in general, such as in the case of the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BCE), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (between 2200 and 1300 BCE).

It was often suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded to proto-Dravidians linguistically, the breakup of proto-Dravidian corresponding to the breakup of the Late Harappan culture.[75] Today, the Dravidian language family is concentrated mostly in southern India and northern Sri Lanka, but pockets of it still remain throughout the rest of India and Pakistan (the Brahui language), which lends credence to the theory. Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola concludes that the uniformity of the Indus inscriptions precludes any possibility of widely different languages being used, and that an early form of Dravidian language must have been the language of the Indus people. Proto-Munda (or Para-Munda) and a "lost phylum" (perhaps related or ancestral to the Nihali language)[76] have been proposed as other candidates.

Indus Valley Civilization - eNotes.com Reference

List of IVC sites:

List of Indus Valley Civilization sites - eNotes.com Reference

Script:

The civilization was literate, and its script, with some 250 to 500 characters, has been partly and tentatively deciphered; the language has been indefinitely identified as Dravidian.

Indus civilization -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia